UCI engineers aim to pioneer tissue-engineering approach to TMJ disorders Irvine, Calif., March 20, 2019 - Here's something to chew on: One in four people are impacted by defects of the temporomandibular - or jaw - joint. Despite the pervasiveness of this affliction, treatments are lacking, and many sufferers resort to palliative measures to cope with the pain and debilitation it causes. "The TMJ is central to chewing, talking and so many other daily activities, so when this crucial joint is impaired, there are significant negative effects on quality of life," said Kyriacos A. Athanasiou, Distinguished Professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine. "The problem may start with slight pain and clicking and get progressively worse to the point where it's not just impacting the jaw but the entire body." Athanasiou is senior author on a paper published recently in the Cell Press journal Trends in Molecular Medicine that examines the causes of temporomandibular disorders, past failures in treating them, and new approaches based on tissue-engineering innovations developed in his laboratory. Co-authors are Ryan Donahue, UCI graduate student researcher in biomedical engineering, and Jerry Hu, UCI principal development engineer in biomedical engineering. Temporomandibular disorders can be the result of sudden injuries or wear and tear over time. The cartilage disc between the mandible and the temporal bone is subject to thinning or perforation. The condition usually affects patients between the ages of 20 and 50. Most strikingly, premenopausal women are eight times more likely to experience jaw joint problems than men - which Athanasiou calls the TMJ gender paradox. Typical treatments include physical therapy, splints and adjustments, corticosteroid injections and pain medications. Only about 5 percent of sufferers are candidates for surgical interventions. The TMJ is a joint like many others in the body, and surgeries to repair knees, elbows, hips and shoulders are commonplace, so why are operations on the jaw so rare? "It has to do with the proximity of the TMJ to the brain," Athanasiou said. "Back in the 1980s, many patients - primarily women - came forward with issues they had with the TMJ. The solution at the time was to insert a spacer between the two bones articulated in the jaw." The spacer was made of Teflon, a material approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "It turns out that Teflon was an absolute catastrophe for all of those women," Athanasiou said. "Because of the large mechanical forces generated in the jaw, the Teflon broke up into pieces, and because of the proximity of the TMJ to the brain, those pieces somehow found their way into the brain." This fiasco set back therapies for temporomandibular disorders for decades, but now Athanasiou and his colleagues in UCI's Department of Biomedical Engineering are working on new approaches that eschew synthetic materials entirely. They're developing biological TMJ discs in the laboratory that will be suitable for implantation in humans. "The end product that we aspire to use for treating afflictions of TMJ discs is a tissue-engineered product that's fully alive, biological and mechanically comparable to the real thing," Donahue said. "So even if it breaks down, it will be like any other biological component, without having pieces of foreign material entering the brain." In work detailed in a study published in Science Translational Medicine in June 2018, Athanasiou's team successfully took cells from the rib cartilage of a Yucatan miniature pig, grew them in their laboratory and implanted the tissue-engineered construct into a separate animal. Whereas some researchers may place bioengineered cells in some other part of an animal's body - on the back of a mouse, for example - Athanasiou said a key aspect of his group's work is to put the new disc in the exact place as the old one so it will be subject to all the normal stresses of the joint. "In eight weeks, we saw complete functionality of the TMJ disc, whereas the ones we left untreated deteriorated completely, developing full osteoarthritis in the joint," Hu said. "So we were able to show that by using our tissue-engineering approach in a large-animal model, we could achieve exceptional healing." Athanasiou said his team's goal now is to conduct trials in more large-animal models to determine if their solution will ultimately work in humans. A major hurdle will be gaining regulatory approval from the FDA, but Athanasiou recently received some encouraging signals from the agency. "The FDA has asked if we could help them figure out how to go about developing processes for bringing TMJ products to the market," he said. "We would be delighted to help create that pathway." ### Funding for this work was provided by the National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research). About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 222 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit http://www. uci. edu . Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists. This story has been published on: 2019-03-20. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Southern Weed Science Society honors Steckel JACKSON, Tenn. - The Southern Weed Science Society (SWSS) recently honored Larry Steckel, a professor with the University of Tennessee Department of Plant Sciences, with the Outstanding Educator Award. The award was presented at the society's 2019 annual meeting. The Outstanding Educator Award is presented annually to a weed scientist who has made significant contributions to the Southern Weed Science Society and the discipline of weed science through education. Steckel has served as UT Extension Weed Specialist since 2003. His responsibilities include conducting statewide educational programming and research in weed management for row crops. In this role, Steckel's calendar stays full speaking at many field days, extension workshops, seminars or short courses, and making farm visits to meet with producers individually to answer questions and assess a situation. He coordinates an annual weed tour for farmers and industry and uses social media tools such as YouTube, Twitter and blog posts to quickly communicate new research with producers and extension agents. As a professor, Steckel has served as a major advisor to seven graduate students, while also serving as a mentor to three faculty. "Dr. Steckel is truly deserving of this award," says Scott Senseman, head, UT Department of Plant Sciences. "He has a heart for education, and takes great pride in helping our state's producers tackle weed challenges. I am proud to work with him and see the positive impacts he is making in the field of weed science." A recent weed challenge in Tennessee involved dicamba herbicide drift. Steckel was charged with developing a training module to address the issue. Thanks in part to his extensive training efforts, Tennessee reported a significant reduction in dicamba-damaged crop acres in 2018. ### The Southern Weed Science Society was established to bring together weed control experts in the areas of research, education, regulation, manufacturing and merchandising. Through its mission of research, teaching and extension, the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA) touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. ag.tennessee.edu. This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. The exposition features four display areas of tea and coffee products; cakes and desserts; foodstuff; and restaurants to increase attractiveness and create more investment cooperation opportunities for businesses. Vietnamese Ambassador to Singapore Tao Thi Thanh Huong said the event will help promote exports of Vietnamese goods to the market, contributing to the balance of the bilateral trade. It also supports domestic firms, especially those operating in the fields of manufacturing and processing farm produce, she added. At the opening ceremony, the Restaurant Association of Vietnam (RAV) and its partners from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Cambodia signed a cooperation agreement to establish the ASEAN Restaurant Association Alliance. The signatories pledged to promote the quality of products and services, ensure environmental protection, and boost cooperation exchanges, according to Chu Hong Minh, a representative from the RAV. Luong Van Tu, Chairman of the Vietnam Coffee-Cocoa Association, said Vietnam is the second biggest coffee producer in the world. Vietnamese coffee has been sold in 80 countries and territories. The expo will run until March 23. Capital One Financial pays an annual dividend of $2.40 per share and currently has a dividend yield of 1.61%. Capital One Financial has been increasing its dividend for 2 consecutive year(s), indicating that it does not yet have a strong track record of dividend growth. The dividend payout ratio of Capital One Financial is 8.96%. This payout ratio is at a healthy, sustainable level, below 75%. Based on earnings estimates, Capital One Financial will have a dividend payout ratio of 12.49% next year. This indicates that Capital One Financial will be able to sustain or increase its dividend. View Capital One Financial's dividend history. The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: (Accenture Endustriyel Yazlm Cozumleri Limited Sirketi), 2nd Road, ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Limited, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! 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Ltd., SigInt Technologies LLC, Silveo, Silveo Consulting India Private Limited, Simian Pty Ltd, SinnerSchrader, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, Sirvart S.A., Sistemes Consulting S.L., Skylink SAS, Soltians Limited, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Somers Ventures Ireland Limited, Somers Ventures LLC, Spacelink SAS, Storm Digital, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Synership LLC, Systor AG, TXF LLC, TargetST8, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Ltd, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Tquila, Trivadis, Trivadis Austria GmbH, Trivadis Denmark AS, Trivadis Germany GmbH, Trivadis Holding AG, Trivadis Partner AG, Trivadis Services AG, Trivadis Services SRL, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Vector Acquisition Company LLC, Vector Topco LLC, Verax Solutions, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd, Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, WaveStrike LLC, White Cliffs Consulting LLC, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wise Partners SAS, Wolox, Wolox Colombia S.A.S, Wolox LLC, Wolox Mexico S.R.L de C.V., Wolox S.A., Wolox SpA, Workforce Insight, Workforce Insight LLC, Yesler, Yesler LLC, Yesler Limited, Yesler Singapore Pte Ltd, Zag, Zag Australia Pty Ltd, Zag Limited, Zag USA LLC, Zebra Worldwide Australia Pty Ltd, Zebra Worldwide Group Limited, Zebra Worldwide Media Pty Ltd, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines Inc, Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc, Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, solid-serVision.com GmbH, and umlaut. 8 hours ago 3 Dependable Dow Stocks to Buy in December Dow Jones Stocks Can Offer Dependable Long-Term Returns Adding components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average to your investing strategy certainly comes with its fair share of positives. Since the companies that make up this widely-recognized stock market index are some of the worlds best businesses, investors know they are getting quality by focusing on the Dow. Read Article American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. All rights reserved. 326 E 8th St #105, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 | U.S. Based Support Team at [email protected] | (844) 978-6257 MarketBeat does not provide personalized financial advice and does not issue recommendations or offers to buy stock or sell any security. Our Accessibility Statement | Terms of Service | Do Not Sell My Information 2021 Market data provided is at least 10-minutes delayed and hosted by Barchart Solutions. Information is provided 'as-is' and solely for informational purposes, not for trading purposes or advice, and is delayed. To see all exchange delays and terms of use please see disclaimer. Fundamental company data provided by Zacks Investment Research. ARHT Media Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the development, production, and distribution of digital human holograms and content worldwide. The company's patented technology allows for the capture, transmission, and display of the digital human holograms delivered to either an in-person or online audience, which are beamed onto virtually any stage in the world and displayed live for two-way interaction with an audience. Its products include technology rented and used for various one-off events, such as a product launch, client meetings, sales conferences, doctor training, 5G showcases, press events, and others; Capture Studio System, an end to end solution used to capture a subject for the purpose of presenting them holographically or digitally; HoloPresence Display, which is used for events, meetings, conferences, and other temporary installations; HoloPod Display, a permanent HoloPresence display system for offices, meeting rooms, and lecture halls; and ARHT Engine hardware and software, and proprietary display components, including the frame and mesh system. The company also offers transmission and maintenance fees, and subscription bundles services; and other services to customers, including equipment setup, training in the use of software and equipment, and content creation for events. ARHT Media Inc. has a strategic partnership with Liaison Technology Group to establish a capture and demo studio that offers HoloPresence and Virtual Global Stage solutions to corporate client base in the Chicago area. The company was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Read More There is not enough analysis data for Centaur Media. 5.0 Community Rank Outperform Votes Centaur Media has received 441 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Centaur Media has received 135 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Centaur Media has received 76.56% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Centaur Media and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe CAU will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe CAU will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next The following companies are subsidiares of Pfizer: AH Robins LLC, AHP Holdings B.V., AHP Manufacturing B.V., Agouron Pharmaceuticals LLC, Alacer, Alpharma Holdings LLC, Alpharma Pharmaceuticals LLC, Alpharma Specialty Pharma LLC, Alpharma USHP LLC, American Food Industries LLC, Anacor Pharmaceuticals, Anacor Pharmaceuticals Inc., Angiosyn, Array BioPharma, Ayerst-Wyeth Pharmaceuticals LLC, BIND Therapeutics Inc., BINESA 2002 S.L., Bamboo Therapeutics, Bamboo Therapeutics Inc., Baxter International - Marketed Vaccines, BioRexis, Bioren, Bioren LLC, Blue Whale Re Ltd., C.E. Commercial Holdings C.V., C.E. Commercial Investments C.V., C.P. Pharmaceuticals International C.V., CICL Corporation, COC I Corporation, Catapult Genetics, Coley Pharmaceutical GmbH, Coley Pharmaceutical Group, Coley Pharmaceutical Group Inc., Continental Pharma Inc., Covx, Covx Technologies Ireland Limited, Cyanamid Inter-American Corporation, Cyanamid de Argentina S.A., Cyanamid de Colombia S.A., Distribuidora Mercantil Centro Americana S.A., Encysive Pharmaceuticals, Encysive Pharmaceuticals Inc., Esperion LUV Development Inc., Esperion Therapeutics, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals, Excaliard Pharmaceuticals Inc., Farminova Produtos Farmaceuticos de Inovacao Lda., Farmogene Productos Farmaceuticos Lda, Ferrosan A/S, Ferrosan International A/S, Ferrosan S.R.L., FoldRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Foldrx Pharmaceuticals, Fort Dodge Manufatura Ltda., G. D. Searle & Co. Limited, G. D. Searle International Capital LLC, G. D. Searle LLC, GI Europe Inc., GI Japan Inc., GenTrac Inc., Genetics Institute LLC, Greenstone LLC, Haptogen Limited, Hospira, Hospira (China) Enterprise Management Co. Ltd., Hospira Adelaide Pty Ltd, Hospira Aseptic Services Limited, Hospira Australia Pty Ltd, Hospira Benelux BVBA, Hospira Chile Limitada, Hospira Deutschland GmbH, Hospira Enterprises B.V., Hospira France SAS, Hospira Healthcare B.V., Hospira Healthcare Corporation, Hospira Healthcare India Private Limited, Hospira Holdings (S.A.) Pty Ltd, Hospira Inc., Hospira Invicta S.A., Hospira Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, Hospira Ireland Sales Limited, Hospira Japan G.K., Hospira Limited, Hospira Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Hospira NZ Limited, Hospira Nordic AB, Hospira Philippines Inc., Hospira Portugal LDA, Hospira Produtos Hospitalares Ltda., Hospira Pte. Ltd., Hospira Pty Limited, Hospira Puerto Rico LLC, Hospira Singapore Pte Ltd, Hospira UK Limited, Hospira Worldwide LLC, Hospira Zagreb d.o.o., ICAgen, Idun Pharmaceuticals, Industrial Santa Agape S.A., InnoPharma, InnoPharma Inc., International Affiliated Corporation LLC, JMI-Daniels Pharmaceuticals Inc., John Wyeth & Brother Limited, Kiinteisto oy Espoon Pellavaniementie 14, King Pharmaceuticals Holdings LLC, King Pharmaceuticals LLC, King Pharmaceuticals Research and Development LLC, Korea Pharma Holding Company Limited, Laboratoires Pfizer S.A., Laboratorios Parke Davis S.L., Laboratorios Pfizer Ltda., Laboratorios Wyeth LLC, Laboratorios Wyeth S.A., Laboratorios Pfizer Lda., MTG Divestitures LLC, Mayne Pharma IP Holdings (Euro) Pty Ltd, Medivation, Medivation Field Solutions LLC, Medivation LLC, Medivation Neurology LLC, Medivation Prostate Therapeutics LLC, Medivation Services LLC, Medivation Technologies LLC, Meridian Medical Technologies Inc., Meridian Medical Technologies Limited, Monarch Pharmaceuticals LLC, Neusentis Limited, NextWave Pharmaceuticals, NextWave Pharmaceuticals Incorporated, P-D Co. LLC, PAH USA IN8 LLC, PF Americas Holding C.V., PF Asia Manufacturing B.V., PF PR Holdings C.V., PF PRISM C.V., PF PRISM Holdings S.a.r.l., PF Prism S.a.r.l., PFE Holdings G.K., PFE PHAC Holdings 1 LLC, PFE Pfizer Holdings 1 LLC, PFE Wyeth Holdings LLC, PFE Wyeth-Ayerst (Asia) LLC, PHILCO Holdings S.a r.l., PHIVCO Corp., PHIVCO Holdco S.a r.l., PHIVCO Luxembourg S.a r.l., PN Mexico LLC, PT. Pfizer Parke Davis, Parke Davis & Company LLC, Parke Davis Limited, Parke Davis Productos Farmaceuticos Lda, Parke-Davis Manufacturing Corp., Parkedale Pharmaceuticals Inc., Peak Enterprises LLC, Pfizer, Pfizer (China) Research and Development Co. Ltd., Pfizer (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Pfizer (Perth) Pty Limited, Pfizer (Thailand) Limited, Pfizer (Wuhan) Research and Development Co. Ltd., Pfizer AB, Pfizer AG, Pfizer AS, Pfizer Africa & Middle East for Pharmaceuticals Veterinarian Products & Chemicals S.A.E., Pfizer Anti-Infectives AB, Pfizer ApS, Pfizer Asia Manufacturing Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Asia Pacific Pte Ltd., Pfizer Atlantic Holdings S.a.r.l., Pfizer Australia Holdings B.V., Pfizer Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Pfizer Australia Investments Pty. Ltd., Pfizer Australia Pty Limited, Pfizer B.V., Pfizer BH D.o.o., Pfizer Baltic Holdings B.V., Pfizer Biofarmaceutica Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Pfizer Biologics (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd, Pfizer Biologics Ireland Holdings Limited, Pfizer Biotech Corporation, Pfizer Bolivia S.A., Pfizer Canada Inc., Pfizer CentreSource Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Chile S.A., Pfizer Cia. Ltda., Pfizer Colombia Spinco I LLC, Pfizer Commercial Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Commercial Holdings TRAE Kft., Pfizer Commercial TRAE Trading Kft., Pfizer Consumer Healthcare AB, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare GmbH, Pfizer Consumer Healthcare Ltd., Pfizer Consumer Manufacturing Italy S.r.l., Pfizer Corporation, Pfizer Corporation Austria Gesellschaft m.b.H., Pfizer Corporation Hong Kong Limited, Pfizer Croatia d.o.o., Pfizer Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Development LP, Pfizer Development Services (UK) Limited, Pfizer Domestic Ventures Limited, Pfizer Dominicana S.R.L, Pfizer ESP Pty Ltd, Pfizer East India B.V., Pfizer Eastern Investments B.V., Pfizer Egypt S.A.E., Pfizer Enterprise Holdings B.V., Pfizer Enterprises LLC, Pfizer Enterprises SARL, Pfizer Europe Finance B.V., Pfizer Export B.V., Pfizer Export Company, Pfizer Export Holding Company B.V, Pfizer Finance Share Service (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Pfizer Financial Services N.V./S.A., Pfizer France International Investments, Pfizer Free Zone Panama S. de R.L., Pfizer GEP S.L., Pfizer Global Holdings B.V., Pfizer Global Supply Japan Inc., Pfizer Global Trading, Pfizer Group Luxembourg Sarl, Pfizer Gulf FZ-LLC, Pfizer H.C.P. Corporation, Pfizer HK Service Company Limited, Pfizer Health AB, Pfizer Health Solutions Inc., Pfizer Healthcare Ireland, Pfizer Hellas A.E., Pfizer Himalaya Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Holding France, Pfizer Holding Ventures, Pfizer Holdings Corporation, Pfizer Holdings Europe Unlimited Company, Pfizer Holdings G.K., Pfizer Holdings International Corporation, Pfizer Holdings International Luxembourg (PHIL) Sarl, Pfizer Holdings North America SARL, Pfizer Hungary Holdings TRAE Kft., Pfizer Inc., Pfizer Innovations AB, Pfizer Innovations LLC, Pfizer Innovative Supply Point International BVBA, Pfizer International LLC, Pfizer International Markets Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer International Operations, Pfizer International S. de R.L., Pfizer International Trading (Shanghai) Limited, Pfizer Investment Capital Unlimited Company, Pfizer Investment Co. Ltd., Pfizer Investment Holdings S.a.r.l., Pfizer Ireland Investments Limited, Pfizer Ireland PFE Holding 1 LLC, Pfizer Ireland PFE Holding 2 LLC, Pfizer Ireland Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer Ireland Ventures Unlimited Company, Pfizer Italia S.r.l., Pfizer Italy Group Holding S.r.l., Pfizer Japan Inc., Pfizer LLC, Pfizer Laboratories (Pty) Limited, Pfizer Laboratories Limited, Pfizer Laboratories PFE (Pty) Ltd, Pfizer Leasing Ireland Limited, Pfizer Leasing UK Limited, Pfizer Limitada, Pfizer Limited, Pfizer Luxco Holdings SARL, Pfizer Luxembourg Global Holdings S.a r.l., Pfizer Luxembourg SARL, Pfizer MAP Holding Inc., Pfizer Manufacturing Austria G.m.b.H., Pfizer Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Pfizer Manufacturing Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Manufacturing Deutschland Grundbesitz GmbH & Co. KG, Pfizer Manufacturing Holdings LLC, Pfizer Manufacturing Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Manufacturing LLC, Pfizer Manufacturing Services, Pfizer Medical Technology Group (Belgium) N.V., Pfizer Medicamentos Genericos e Participacoes Ltda., Pfizer Mexico Luxco SARL, Pfizer Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pfizer Middle East for Pharmaceuticals Animal Health and Chemicals S.A.E., Pfizer New Zealand Limited, Pfizer Norge AS, Pfizer North American Holdings Inc., Pfizer OTC B.V., Pfizer Overseas LLC, Pfizer Oy, Pfizer PFE ApS, Pfizer PFE AsiaPac Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Australia Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Australia Pty Ltd, Pfizer PFE B.V., Pfizer PFE Baltic Holdings B.V., Pfizer PFE Belgium SPRL, Pfizer PFE Brazil Holding S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE CIA. Ltda., Pfizer PFE Chile Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Colombia Holding Corp., Pfizer PFE Colombia S.A.S, Pfizer PFE Commercial Holdings LLC, Pfizer PFE Croatia Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Eastern Investments B.V., Pfizer PFE Finland Oy, Pfizer PFE France, Pfizer PFE Global Holdings B.V., Pfizer PFE Ireland Pharmaceuticals Holding 1 B.V., Pfizer PFE Italy Holdco 2 S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Italy Holdco S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Pfizer PFE Limited, Pfizer PFE Luxembourg S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Mexico Holding 3 LLC, Pfizer PFE Netherlands Holding 1 C.V., Pfizer PFE New Zealand, Pfizer PFE New Zealand Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Norway Holding S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE PILSA Holdco S.a r.l., Pfizer PFE Peru Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Peru S.R.L., Pfizer PFE Pharmaceuticals Israel Holding LLC, Pfizer PFE Pharmaceuticals Israel Ltd., Pfizer PFE Private Limited, Pfizer PFE S.R.L, Pfizer PFE Service Company Holding Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer PFE Singapore Holding B.V., Pfizer PFE Singapore Pte. Ltd., Pfizer PFE Spain B.V., Pfizer PFE Spain Holding S.L., Pfizer PFE Sweden Holding 2 S.a.r.l., Pfizer PFE Sweden Holding S.a.r.l., Pfizer PFE Switzerland GmbH, Pfizer PFE Turkey Holding 1 B.V., Pfizer PFE Turkey Holding 2 B.V., Pfizer PFE UK Holding 4 LP, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 1 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 2 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 3 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 4 LLC, Pfizer PFE US Holdings 5 LLC, Pfizer PFE spol. s r.o., Pfizer PFE Ilaclar Anonim Sirketi, Pfizer Pakistan Limited, Pfizer Parke Davis (Thailand) Ltd., Pfizer Parke Davis Inc., Pfizer Parke Davis Sdn. Bhd., Pfizer Pharm Algerie, Pfizer Pharma GmbH, Pfizer Pharma PFE GmbH, Pfizer Pharmaceutical (Wuxi) Co. Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceutical Trading Limited Liability Company (a/k/a Pfizer Kft. or Pfizer LLC), Pfizer Pharmaceuticals B.V., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Global B.V., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Israel Ltd., Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Korea Limited, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals LLC, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Pfizer Pigments Inc., Pfizer Polska Sp. z.o.o., Pfizer Private Limited, Pfizer Production LLC, Pfizer Products Inc., Pfizer Products India Private Limited, Pfizer Research (NC) Inc., Pfizer Romania SRL, Pfizer S.A., Pfizer S.A., Pfizer S.A. (Belgium), Pfizer S.A. de C.V., Pfizer S.A.S., Pfizer S.G.P.S. Lda., Pfizer S.L., Pfizer S.R.L., Pfizer SRB d.o.o., Pfizer Saidal Manufacturing, Pfizer Sante Familiale, Pfizer Saudi Limited, Pfizer Seiyaku K.K., Pfizer Service Company BVBA, Pfizer Service Company Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Services 1, Pfizer Services LLC, Pfizer Shared Services Unlimited Company, Pfizer Shareholdings Intermediate SARL, Pfizer Singapore Holding Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Singapore Trading Pte. Ltd., Pfizer Spain Holdings Cooperatief U.A., Pfizer Specialties Limited, Pfizer Strategic Investment Holdings LLC, Pfizer Sweden Partnership KB, Pfizer TRAE Holdings Kft., Pfizer Trading Polska sp.z.o.o., Pfizer Transactions Ireland Unlimited Company, Pfizer Transactions LLC, Pfizer Transactions Luxembourg SARL, Pfizer Transport LLC, Pfizer Ukraine LLC, Pfizer Vaccines LLC, Pfizer Venezuela S.A., Pfizer Venture Investments LLC, Pfizer Ventures LLC, Pfizer Worldwide Services Unlimited Company, Pfizer Zona Franca S.A., Pfizer spol. s r.o., Pharmacia, Pharmacia & Upjohn Company Inc., Pharmacia & Upjohn Company LLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn LLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn S.A. de C.V., Pharmacia Brasil Ltda., Pharmacia Hepar LLC, Pharmacia Holding AB, Pharmacia Inter-American LLC, Pharmacia International B.V., Pharmacia LLC, Pharmacia Limited, Pharmacia Nostrum S.A., Pharmacia South Africa (Pty) Ltd, PowderJect Research Limited, PowderMed, Purepac Pharmaceutical Holdings LLC, Redvax, Renrall LLC, Rinat Neuroscience, Rinat Neuroscience Corp., Roerig Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Roerig S.A., Sao Cristovao Participacoes Ltda., Searle Laboratorios Lda., Serenex, Servicios P&U S. de R.L. de C.V., Shiley LLC, Sinergis Farma-Produtos Farmaceuticos Lda., Site Realty Inc., Solinor LLC, Sugen LLC, Tabor LLC, The Pfizer Incubator LLC, Therachon, Thiakis Limited, Treerly Health Co. Ltd, US Oral Pharmaceuticals Pty Ltd, Upjohn Laboratorios Lda., Vesteralens Naturprodukter A/S, Vesteralens Naturprodukter AB, Vesteralens Naturprodukter AS, Vesteralens Naturprodukter OY, Vicuron Holdings LLC, Vinci Farma S.A., W-L LLC, Warner Lambert, Warner Lambert Ilac Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Warner Lambert del Uruguay S.A., Warner-Lambert (Thailand) Limited, Warner-Lambert Company AG, Warner-Lambert Company LLC, Warner-Lambert Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Warner-Lambert S.A., Whitehall International Inc., Whitehall Laboratories Inc., Wyeth (Thailand) Ltd., Wyeth AB, Wyeth Australia Pty. Limited, Wyeth Ayerst Inc., Wyeth Ayerst S.a r.l., Wyeth Biopharma, Wyeth Canada ULC, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare LLC, Wyeth Europa Limited, Wyeth Farma S.A., Wyeth Holdings LLC, Wyeth Industria Farmaceutica Ltda., Wyeth KFT., Wyeth LLC, Wyeth Lederle S.r.l., Wyeth Lederle Vaccines S.A., Wyeth Pakistan Limited, Wyeth Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Company, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals FZ-LLC, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals LLC, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Limited, Wyeth Puerto Rico Inc., Wyeth S.A.S, Wyeth Subsidiary Illinois Corporation, Wyeth Whitehall Export GmbH, Wyeth Whitehall SARL, Wyeth-Ayerst (Asia) Limited, Wyeth-Ayerst International LLC, and Wyeth-Ayerst Promotions Limited. The following companies are subsidiares of Abbott Laboratories: 3A Nutrition (Vietnam) Company Limited, ABON Biopharm (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd., AGA Medical Belgium, AGA Medical Corporation, AGA Medical Holdings Inc., ALR Holdings, AML Medical LLC, APK Advanced Medical Technologies LLC, ATS Bermuda Holdings Limited, ATS Laboratories Inc., Abbott, Abbott (Jiaxing) Nutrition Co. Ltd., Abbott (UK) Finance Limited, Abbott (UK) Holdings Limited, Abbott AG, Abbott Asia Holdings Limited, Abbott Asia Investments Limited, Abbott Australasia Holdings Limited, Abbott Australasia Pty Ltd, Abbott B.V., Abbott Bahamas Overseas Businesses Corporation, Abbott Belgian Investments, Abbott Bermuda Holding Ltd., Abbott Biologicals B.V., Abbott Biologicals LLC, Abbott Bulgaria Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Capital India Limited, Abbott Cardiovascular Inc., Abbott Cardiovascular Systems Inc., Abbott Delaware LLC, Abbott Diabetes Care Inc., Abbott Diabetes Care Limited, Abbott Diabetes Care Sales Corporation, Abbott Diagnostics GmbH, Abbott Diagnostics International Ltd., Abbott Diagnostics Technologies AS, Abbott Doral Investments S.L., Abbott Equity Holdings Unlimited, Abbott Equity Investments LLC, Abbott Established Products Holdings (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Finance Company SA, Abbott Financial Holdings SRL, Abbott France S.A.S., Abbott Fund Tanzania Limited, Abbott Gesellschaft m.b.H., Abbott GmbH & Co. KG, Abbott Health Products LLC, Abbott Healthcare (Puerto Rico) Ltd., Abbott Healthcare B.V., Abbott Healthcare Costa Rica S.A., Abbott Healthcare LLC, Abbott Healthcare Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Healthcare Private Limited, Abbott Healthcare Products B.V., Abbott Healthcare Products Ltd, Abbott Holding (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding GmbH, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited, Abbott Holding Subsidiary (Gibraltar) Limited Luxembourg S.C.S., Abbott Holdings B.V., Abbott Holdings LLC, Abbott Holdings Limited, Abbott Holdings Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Hungary Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Iberian Investments (2) Limited, Abbott Iberian Investments Limited, Abbott India Limited, Abbott Informatics Asia Pacific Limited, Abbott Informatics Canada Inc, Abbott Informatics Corporation, Abbott Informatics Europe Limited, Abbott Informatics France, Abbott Informatics Germany GmbH, Abbott Informatics Netherlands B.V., Abbott Informatics Singapore Pte. Limited, Abbott Informatics Spain S.A., Abbott Informatics Technologies Ltd, Abbott International Corporation, Abbott International Enterprises Ltd., Abbott International Holdings Limited, Abbott International LLC, Abbott International Luxembourg S.ar.l., Abbott Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Ireland, Abbott Ireland Financing Designated Activity Company, Abbott Ireland Limited, Abbott Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Kazakhstan Limited Liability Partnership, Abbott Knoll Investments B.V., Abbott Korea Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Bangladesh) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco (Dos) SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Chile) Holdco SpA, Abbott Laboratories (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Laboratories (Mozambique) Limitada, Abbott Laboratories (Pakistan) Limited, Abbott Laboratories (Philippines), Abbott Laboratories (Puerto Rico) Incorporated, Abbott Laboratories (Singapore) Private Limited, Abbott Laboratories A/S, Abbott Laboratories Argentina Sociedad Anonima, Abbott Laboratories B.V., Abbott Laboratories C.A., Abbott Laboratories Finance B.V., Abbott Laboratories GmbH, Abbott Laboratories Inc., Abbott Laboratories International LLC, Abbott Laboratories Ireland Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited, Abbott Laboratories Limited - Laboratoires Abbott Limitee, Abbott Laboratories NZ Limited, Abbott Laboratories Pacific Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Poland Spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Laboratories Products B.V., Abbott Laboratories Residential Development Fund Inc., Abbott Laboratories S.A., Abbott Laboratories SA, Abbott Laboratories Services Corp., Abbott Laboratories Slovakia s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories South Africa (Pty) Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Laboratories Trustee Company Limited, Abbott Laboratories Uruguay S.A., Abbott Laboratories Vascular Enterprises, Abbott Laboratories d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories de Chile Limitada, Abbott Laboratories de Colombia S.A., Abbott Laboratories de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Abbott Laboratories druzba za farmacijo in diagnostiko d.o.o., Abbott Laboratories s.r.o., Abbott Laboratories(Hellas) Societe Anonyme, Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios S.A., Abbott Laboratorios del Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Abbott Laboratuarlari Ithalat Ihracat ve Ticaret Ltd.Sti, Abbott Laboratorios Lda, Abbott Laboratorios do Brasil Ltda., Abbott Limited Egypt LLC, Abbott Logistics B.V., Abbott Management GmbH, Abbott Management LLC, Abbott Manufacturing Singapore Private Limited, Abbott Mature Products International Unlimited Company, Abbott Mature Products Management Limited, Abbott Medical (Hong Kong) Limited, Abbott Medical (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Abbott Medical (Portugal) Distribuicao de Produtos Medicos Lda, Abbott Medical (Schweiz) AG, Abbott Medical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Abbott Medical (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Australia Pty. Ltd., Abbott Medical Austria Ges.m.b.H., Abbott Medical Balkan d.o.o. Beograd (Novi Beograd), Abbott Medical Belgium, Abbott Medical Canada Inc./ Medicale Abbott Canada Inc., Abbott Medical Danmark A/S, Abbott Medical Devices Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Espana S.A., Abbott Medical Estonia OU, Abbott Medical Finland Oy, Abbott Medical France SAS, Abbott Medical GmbH, Abbott Medical Hellas Limited Liability Trading Company, Abbott Medical Ireland Limited, Abbott Medical Italia S.p.A., Abbott Medical Japan Co. Ltd., Abbott Medical Korea Limited, Abbott Medical Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Abbott Medical Laboratories LTD, Abbott Medical Nederland B.V., Abbott Medical New Zealand Limited, Abbott Medical Norway AS, Abbott Medical Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Medical Sweden AB, Abbott Medical Taiwan Co., Abbott Medical U.K. Limited, Abbott Medical spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Abbott Middle East S.A.R.L., Abbott Molecular Inc., Abbott Morocco SARL, Abbott Nederland C.V., Abbott Nederland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Netherlands Investments B.V., Abbott Norge AS, Abbott Nutrition Limited, Abbott Nutrition Manufacturing Inc., Abbott Operations Singapore Pte. Ltd., Abbott Operations Uruguay S.R.L., Abbott Overseas Cyprus Limited, Abbott Overseas Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Overseas S.A., Abbott Oy, Abbott Point of Care Canada Limited, Abbott Point of Care Inc., Abbott Poland Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Procurement LLC, Abbott Products (Philippines) Inc., Abbott Products (Spain) S.L., Abbott Products Algerie EURL, Abbott Products B.V., Abbott Products Distribution SAS, Abbott Products Egypt LLC, Abbott Products Limited, Abbott Products Limited Liability Company, Abbott Products Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Products Operations AG, Abbott Products Operations LLC, Abbott Products Romania S.R.L., Abbott Products Tunisie S.A.R.L., Abbott Products Unlimited Company, Abbott Resources Inc., Abbott Resources International Inc., Abbott S.r.l., Abbott Saudi Arabia Trading Company, Abbott Scandinavia Aktiebolag, Abbott Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, Abbott South Africa Luxembourg S.a r.l., Abbott Strategic Opportunities Limited, Abbott Trading Company Inc., Abbott Universal LLC, Abbott Vascular Devices (2) Limited, Abbott Vascular Devices Limited, Abbott Vascular Inc., Abbott Vascular Instruments Deutschland GmbH, Abbott Vascular International, Abbott Vascular Japan Co. Ltd, Abbott Vascular Limitada, Abbott Vascular Netherlands B.V., Abbott Vascular Solutions Inc., Abbott Ventures Inc., Abbott West Indies Limited, Abbott drustvo sa ogranicenom odgovornoscu za trgovinu i usluge, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc., Alere, Alere (Shanghai) Diagnostics Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Healthcare Management Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Medical Sales Co. Ltd., Alere (Shanghai) Technology Co. Ltd., Alere A/S, Alere AB, Alere AS, Alere AS Holdings Limited, Alere BBI Holdings Limited, Alere Bangladesh Limited, Alere China Co. Ltd., Alere Colombia S.A., Alere Connect LLC, Alere Connected Health Limited, Alere Connected Health Ltd., Alere Diagnostics GmbH, Alere DoA Holding GmbH, Alere GmbH, Alere GmbH (Austria), Alere GmbH (Germany), Alere HK Holdings Ltd., Alere Health B.V., Alere Health BVBA, Alere Health Corp., Alere Health Sdn Bhd, Alere Health Services B.V., Alere Healthcare (Pty) Limited, Alere Healthcare Connections Limited, Alere Healthcare Inc., Alere Healthcare Nigeria Limited, Alere Healthcare S.L., Alere Holdco Inc., Alere Holding GmbH, Alere Holdings Bermuda Limited, Alere Holdings Pty Limited, Alere Home Monitoring Inc., Alere Inc., Alere Informatics Inc., Alere International Holding Corp., Alere International Limited, Alere Lda, Alere Limited, Alere Limited (New Zealand), Alere Medical BVBA, Alere Medical Co. Ltd., Alere Medical Pakistan (Private) Limited, Alere Medical Private Limited, Alere North America LLC, Alere Oy Ab, Alere Philippines Inc., Alere Phoenix ACQ Inc., Alere Pte Ltd, Alere S.A., Alere S.r.l., Alere S/A, Alere SAS, Alere San Diego Inc., Alere Scarborough Inc., Alere Spain S.L., Alere Switzerland GmbH, Alere Technologies GmbH, Alere Technologies Holdings Limited, Alere Technologies Limited, Alere Toxicology AB, Alere Toxicology Inc., Alere Toxicology S.r.l., Alere Toxicology Services Inc., Alere Toxicology plc, Alere UK Holdings Limited, Alere UK Subco Limited, Alere ULC, Alere US Holdings LLC, Alere s.r.o., Alisoc Investment & Co, Amedica Biotech Inc., Ameditech Inc., American Generics S.A.S., American Medical Supplies Inc., American Pharmacist Inc., Antares S.A., Apica Cardiovascular Limited, Aquagestion Capacitacion S.A., Aquagestion S.A., Arriva Medical LLC, Arriva Medical Philippines Inc., Arvis Investments Limited, Atlas Farmaceutica S.A., Avee Laboratories Inc., Axis-Shield AD III AS, Axis-Shield AD IV AS, Axis-Shield AS, Axis-Shield Diagnostics Limited, Axis-Shield Ltd., BBI Animal Health Limited, BBI Diagnostics Group 2 Public Limited Company, Banco de Vida S.A., Bioabsorbable Vascular Solutions Inc., Bioalgae S.A., Biohealth LLC, Biosite Incorporated, Bosque Bonito S.A., Branan Medical Corporation, Brandex Europe C.V., British Colloids Limited, CFR Chile S.A., CFR Interamericas EL Salvador Sociedad Anonima de Capital Variable, CFR Interamericas Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, CFR Interamericas Panama S.A., CFR Pharmaceuticals, California Property Holdings III LLC, CardioMEMS LLC, Caripharm Inc., Cephea Valve Technologies, Cephea Valve Technologies Inc., Colibri Medical Aktiebolag, Comercializadora y Distribuidora CFR Interamericas Honduras S.A., Concateno South Limited, Concateno UK Limited, Consorcio Tecnologico en Biomedicina Clinico-Molecular S.A., Continuum Services LLC, Cozart Limited, Dextech S.A., Diagnostik Nord GmbH, Distribuciones Uquifa S.A.S., Domesco Medical Import-Export Joint-Stock Corporation, Duphar International Research B.V., Endocardial Solutions, Epocal (US) Inc, Esprit de Vie S.A., European Chemicals & Co, European Drug Testing Service EDTS AB, European Services S.A., Evalve Inc., Evalve International Inc., FARMINDUSTRIA S.A., Fada Pharma Paraguay Sociedad Anonima, Fadapharma del Ecuador S.A., Farmaceutica Mont Blanc S.L., Farmacologia Em Aquicultura Veterinaria Ltda., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV Ecuador S.A., Farmacologia en Aquacultura Veterinaria FAV S.A., Fernwood Investment S.A., First Check Diagnostics LLC, Focus Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Forensics Limited, Forestcreek Overseas S.A., Fournier Pharma Corp., Fournier Pharma GmbH, Fournier Pharmaceuticals Limited, Framed B.V., Gabmed GmbH, Garden Hills LLC, Global Analytical Development LLC, Globapharm & CO LP, Glomed Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Golnorth Investments S.A., Gynocare Limited, Gynopharm Sociedad Anonima, Gynopharm de Centroamerica S.A., Gynopharm de Venezuela C.A., Hi-Tronics Designs Inc., IDEV Technologies Inc., IG Innovations Limited, IMTC Finance B.V., IMTC Holdings B.V., IMTC Technologies Inc., Ibis Biosciences LLC, Igloo Zone Chile S.A., Igloo Zone S.L., Inmobiliaria Naknek S.A.C., Innovacon Inc., Instant Tech Subsidiary Acquisition Inc., Instant Technologies Inc., Instituto de Criopreservacion de Chile S.A., Integrated Vascular Systems Inc., Inverness Canadian Acquisition Corporation, Inverness Medical (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Australia Pty Ltd., Inverness Medical Innovations Hong Kong Limited, Inverness Medical Innovations SK LLC, Inverness Medical Investments LLC, Inverness Medical LLC, Inverness Medical Shimla Private Limited, Inversiones K2 SpA, Inversiones Komodo S.R.L., Ionian Technologies LLC, Irvine Biomedical Inc., Kalila Medical, Kangshenyunga S.A., Knoll UK Investments Unlimited, LLC VeroInPharm, Laboratoires Fournier S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano Lafrancol S.A.S., Laboratorio Franco Colombiano del Ecuador S.A., Laboratorio Internacional Argentino S.A., Laboratorio Synthesis S.A.S., Laboratorios Lafi Limitada, Laboratorios Naturmedik S.A.S., Laboratorios Pauly Pharmaceutical S.A.S., Laboratorios Recalcine S.A., Laboratorios Transpharm S.A., Laboratory Specialists of America Inc., Lafrancol Dominicana S.A.S., Lafrancol Guatemala S.A. Sociedad Anonima, Lafrancol Internacional S.A.S, Lafrancol Peru S.R.L, Lake Forest Investments LLC, Lightlab Imaging Inc., Limited Liability Company Abbott Laboratories, Limited Liability Company Abbott Ukraine, Limited Liability Company VEROPHARM, Lung Fung Hong (China) Limited, Mansbridge Pharmaceuticals Limited, MediGuide LLC, MediGuide Ltd., Medscreen Holdings Limited, Metropolitana Farmaceutica S.A., Midwest Properties LLC, Murex Argentina S.A., Murex Biotech Limited, Murex Biotech South Africa, Murex Diagnostics Inc., Murex Diagnostics International Inc., Natural Supplement Association LLC, Negocios Denia Sociedad Anonima, Neosalud S.A.C., Nether Pharma N.P. C.V., NeuroTherm LLC, Normann Pharma-Handels GmbH, North Shore Properties Inc., Novamedi S.A., Novasalud.com S.A., Nutravida S.A., OJSC Voronezhkhimpharm, Omnilab Iberia Sociedad Limitada, OptiMedica, Orgenics France SAS, Orgenics International Holdings B.V., Orgenics Ltd., PBM-Selfcare LLC, PDD II LLC, PDD LLC, PT Alere Health, PT. Abbott Indonesia, PT. Abbott Products Indonesia, Pacesetter Inc., Pantech (RF) (PTY) LTD, Pembrooke Occupational Health Inc., Penagos S.A., Pharma International Sociedad Anonima, Pharmaceutical Technologies (Pharmatech) S.A., Pharmatech Boliviana S.A., Polygon Labs S.A., Quality Assured Services Inc., RF Medical Holdings LLC, RTL Holdings Inc., Ramses Business Corp., Recben Xenerics Farmaceutica Limitada, Redwood Toxicology Laboratory Inc., Rich Horizons International Limited, SC VEROPHARM, SJ Medical Mexico S de R.L. de C.V., SJM International Inc., SJM Thunder Holding Company, SPDH Inc., Saboya Enterprises Corporation, Salviac Limited, Scanax AS, Sealing Solutions Inc., Selfcare Technology Inc., Shandong Abbott Dairy Product Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Medical Devices Science and Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai Abbott Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Shanghai Si Fa Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Sinensix & Co., Spinal Modulation LLC, St. Jude Medical, St. Jude Medical AB, St. Jude Medical ATG Inc., St. Jude Medical Argentina S.A., St. Jude Medical Asia Pacific Holdings GK, St. Jude Medical Atrial Fibrillation Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Brasil Ltda., St. Jude Medical Business Services Inc., St. Jude Medical Cardiology Division Inc., St. Jude Medical Colombia Ltda., St. Jude Medical Coordination Center, St. Jude Medical Costa Rica Limitada, St. Jude Medical Europe Inc., St. Jude Medical Export Ges.m.b.H., St. Jude Medical GVA Sarl, St. Jude Medical Holdings B.V., St. Jude Medical India Private Limited, St. Jude Medical International Holding, St. Jude Medical LLC, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings II, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings NT, St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings SMI S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Luxembourg Holdings TC S.a r.l., St. Jude Medical Mexico Business Services S. de R.L. de C.V., St. Jude Medical Middle East DMCC, St. Jude Medical Operations (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., St. Jude Medical Puerto Rico LLC, St. Jude Medical S.C. Inc., St. Jude Medical Systems AB, St. Jude Medical Turkey Medikal Urunler Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Standard Diagnostics Inc., Standing Stone LLC, Swan-Myers Incorporated, TC1 LLC, Tendyne Holdings Inc., Tendyne Medical Inc., Thoratec Delaware LLC, Thoratec Europe Limited, Thoratec LLC, Thoratec Switzerland GmbH, Tobal Products Incorporated, Topera GmbH in Liquidation, Topera Inc., Tremora S.A., Tuenir S.A., TwistDx, UAB Abbott Laboratories, UAB Abbott Medical Lithuania, Union-Madison Realty Company Inc., Unipath Limited (dba Alere International/aka Cranfield), Unipath Management Limited, Unipath Pension Trustee Limited, Veropharm, Veropharm Limited Liability Partnership, Vida Cell Inversiones S.A., Vida Cell S.A., Vivalsol, W&R Pharma Handels GmbH, Western Pharmaceuticals S.A., X Technologies Inc., Yissum Holding Limited, ZonePerfect Nutrition Company, eScreen Canada ULC, eScreen Inc., ( ), and Abbott Laboratories Baltics. CoreLogic, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides property information, insight, analytics, and data-enabled solutions in North America, Western Europe, and the Asia Pacific. The company operates in two segments, Property Intelligence & Risk Management Solutions (PIRM) and Underwriting & Workflow Solutions (UWS). The PIRM segment combines property information, mortgage information, and consumer information to deliver housing market and property-level insights, predictive analytics, and risk management capabilities. It also offers proprietary technology and software platforms to access, automate, or track the information and assist its clients with decision-making and compliance tools in the real estate and insurance industries. This segment primarily serves commercial banks, mortgage lenders and brokers, investment banks, fixed-income investors, real estate agents, MLS companies, property and casualty insurance companies, title insurance companies, government agencies, and government-sponsored enterprises. The UWS segment combines property, mortgage, and consumer information to provide comprehensive mortgage origination and monitoring solutions, including underwriting-related solutions, and data-enabled valuations and appraisals. This segment also provides proprietary technology and software platforms to access, automate, or track the information and assist its clients with vetting and onboarding prospects, and meeting compliance regulations, as well as understanding, evaluating, monitoring property values. It primarily serves mortgage lenders and servicers, mortgage brokers, credit unions, commercial banks, fixed-income investors, government agencies, and property and casualty insurance companies. The company was formerly known as The First American Corporation and changed its name to CoreLogic, Inc. in June 2010. CoreLogic, Inc. was incorporated in 1894 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. Read More Bechtle AG provides information technology services primarily in Europe. The company operates in two segments, IT System House & Managed Services, and IT E-Commerce. The IT System House & Managed Services segment offers IT strategy consulting, hardware and software selling, project planning and implementation, system integration, IT services, and training for IT operation. It provides applications for business intelligence, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, product life-cycle management, computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing, product data management, enterprise content management, document management systems, artificial intelligence, and collaboration; and modern workplace solutions. This segment also offers data center, networking, security, consulting, managed, professional, financial, and remarketing services. The IT E-Commerce segment provides hardware and software products, and peripherals with a multi-brand portfolio that comprises approximately 40,000 products through an online shop and telesales. This segment also offers e-procurement services. The company also provides design, development, and implementation of software services. It serves customers in the fields of industry, trade, finance, and the public sector. Bechtle AG was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Neckarsulm, Germany. Read More Fraport AG operates airports in Germany, rest of Europe, Asia, and the United States. The company primarily focuses on the operation of Frankfurt Main airport. It operates through four segments: Aviation, Retail & Real Estate, Ground Handling, and International Activities & Services. The Aviation segment operates landside and airside infrastructure, which covers the area of airport charges. The Retail & Real Estate segment engages in retail activities, including marketing of real estate properties and land. This segment also manages buildings and facilities, and parking and retail areas; and rents advertising space. The Ground Handling segment provides loading, baggage, and passenger services through airmail and luggage transport to freight handling. The International Activities & Services segment acquires, operates, maintains, develops, and expands airports and infrastructure facilities. This segment also offers integrated facility and corporate infrastructure management, airport expansion south, and information and telecommunication services. Fraport AG was founded in 1924 and is headquartered in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Read More Medtronic Plc is a medical technology company, which engages in the development, manufacture, distribution, and sale of device-based medical therapies and services. It operates through the following segments: Cardiac and Vascular Group; Minimally Invasive Technologies Group; Restorative Therapies Group; and Diabetes Group. The Cardiac and Vascular Group segment consists of products for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of cardiac rhythm disorders and cardiovascular disease. The Minimally Invasive Technologies Group segment focuses on respiratory system, gastrointestinal tract, renal system, lungs, pelvic region, kidneys, and obesity diseases. The Restorative Therapies Group segment comprises of neurostimulation therapies and drug delivery systems for the treatment of chronic pain, as well as areas of the spine and brain, along with pelvic health and conditions of the ear, nose, and throat. The Diabetes Group segment offers insulin pumps, coninuous glucose monitoring systems, and insulin pump consumables. The company was founded in 1949 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Read More American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. All rights reserved. 326 E 8th St #105, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 | U.S. Based Support Team at [email protected]marketbeat.com | (844) 978-6257 MarketBeat does not provide personalized financial advice and does not issue recommendations or offers to buy stock or sell any security. Our Accessibility Statement | Terms of Service | Do Not Sell My Information 2021 Market data provided is at least 10-minutes delayed and hosted by Barchart Solutions. Information is provided 'as-is' and solely for informational purposes, not for trading purposes or advice, and is delayed. To see all exchange delays and terms of use please see disclaimer. Fundamental company data provided by Zacks Investment Research. Tsakos Energy Navigation Limited provides seaborne crude oil and petroleum product transportation services worldwide. The company offers marine transportation services for national, major, and other independent oil companies and refiners under long, medium, and short-term charters. As of April 2, 2020, it operated a fleet of 65 double-hull vessels. The company was formerly known as MIF Limited and changed its name to Tsakos Energy Navigation Limited in July 2001. Tsakos Energy Navigation Limited was founded in 1993 and is based in Athens, Greece. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Occidental Petroleum: 1PointFive Inc., 1PointFive P1 LLC, APC Aviation Inc., APC International Holdings LLC, APC Midstream Holdings LLC, APC Venezuela Srl, ARCO Long Beach, Altura Energy, Amarok Gathering LLC, Anadarko 20-25 Company, Anadarko 20-36 Company, Anadarko 20-47 Company, Anadarko 20-48 Company, Anadarko 20-49 Company, Anadarko Algeria Block 403 c/e Company, Anadarko Algeria Block 406B Company, Anadarko Algeria Company LLC, Anadarko Algeria Oil & Gas Company, Anadarko Brazil Investment I LLC, Anadarko Brazil Investment II LLC, Anadarko Canada E&P Limited, Anadarko China Holdings 2 Company, Anadarko Colombia Company, Anadarko Consolidated Holdings LLC, Anadarko Cote d'Ivoire Block 103 Company, Anadarko Cote d'Ivoire Company, Anadarko DBMOS Operator LLC, Anadarko Development Company, Anadarko Development Holding Limited, Anadarko E&P Onshore LLC, Anadarko Egypt Holdings Company, Anadarko Energy Holding Limited, Anadarko Energy Services Company, Anadarko Exploracao e Producao de Petroleo e Gas Natural Ltda., Anadarko Finance Company, Anadarko Gabon Company, Anadarko Ghana Mahogany-1 Company, Anadarko Global Energy S.a.r.l, Anadarko Global Funding 1 Company, Anadarko Global Funding II Ltd., Anadarko Guyana Company, Anadarko Holding Company, Anadarko International Development S.a.r.l, Anadarko International Energy Company, Anadarko International O&G Company, Anadarko International Trading Corporation, Anadarko Jordan Company, Anadarko Kenya Company, Anadarko LMM S.a.r.l, Anadarko Land Corp., Anadarko Mexico B.V., Anadarko Mexico S.a.r.l, Anadarko Midkiff/Chaney Dell BR Corp., Anadarko Midkiff/Chaney Dell LLC, Anadarko Natural Gas Company LLC, Anadarko New Zealand Company, Anadarko OGC Company, Anadarko Offshore Holding Company LLC, Anadarko Offshore Well Containment Company LLC, Anadarko Oil & Gas 5 LLC, Anadarko Peru B.V., Anadarko Petroleum, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Anadarko Realty LLC, Anadarko Rockies LLC, Anadarko Royalty Holdings Company, Anadarko UK Corporate Limited, Anadarko US Offshore LLC, Anadarko USH1 Corporation, Anadarko Venezuela Company, Anadarko Venezuela LLC, Anadarko Venezuela Srl, Anadarko WCTP Company, Anadarko West Texas BR Corp., Anadarko West Texas LLC, Anadarko Worldwide Holdings C.V., Atlantic Rim Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Aventine LLC, Baseball Merger Sub 2 Inc., Bear Branch Exploration LLC, Big Island Trona Company, Bitter Creek Coal Company, Bravo Pipeline Company, Cain Chemical, Cain Chemical Inc., Carbon Finance Labs LLC, Concord Petroleum Corporation, Conn Creek Shale Company, D.S. Ventures LLC, DMM Financial LLC, Deerwood Exploration LLC, Downtown Plaza II, Elk Hills Field, FLAG Development LLC, FP Westport Commodities Limited, FP Westport GmbH, FP Westport LLC, FP Westport Limited, FP Westport Services LLC, FP Westport Trading LLC, Fosters Mill Exploration LLC, Glenn Springs Holdings Inc., Globrep Representaciones S.A., Grand Bassa Tankers Inc., Grupo OxyChem de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Headwater II LLC, Houndstooth Resources LLC, INDSPEC Chemical B.V., INDSPEC Chemical Corporation, INDSPEC Chemical Corporation, INDSPEC Chemical Export Sales LLC, INDSPEC Holding Corporation, Ingleside Cogeneration GP LLC, Ingleside Cogeneration Limited Partnership, Interore Trading Ltd., Joslyn Partnership, KERR-McGEE TT E&P LTD., KM BM-C-Seven Ltd., KM International Insurance Ltd., Kerr-McGee Corporation, Kerr-McGee Natural Gas Company Inc., Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Onshore LP, Kerr-McGee Shared Services Company LLC, Kerr-McGee Stored Power Corporation, Kerr-McGee U.K. Energy Corporation, Kerr-McGee Worldwide Corporation, Kerr-McGee do Brasil Ltda., Kerr-McGee of Canada Northwest Ltd., Laguna Petroleum Corp., Laguna Petroleum LLC, Liwa Oil & Gas Ltd., MC2 Technologies LLC, Mariana Properties Inc., Marico Exploration Inc., Miller Springs Remediation Management Inc., Moncrief Minerals Partnership L.P., NGL Ventures LLC, Natural Gas Odorizing Inc., New OPL LLC, OEVC Energy LLC, OEVC Midstream Projects LLC, OIH LLC, OLCV CE Holdings ULC, OLCV CE US Holdings Inc., OLCV Net Power LLC, OLCV Services LLC, OOG Partner LLC, OOOI Chem Holdings LLC, OOOI Chem Sub LLC, OOOI Chemical International LLC, OOOI Chile Holder LLC, OOOI Ecuador Management LLC, OOOI Oil and Gas Sub LLC, OOOI South America Management LLC, OPM GP Inc., OPM Holdco LLC, OTCF LLC, OTH LLC, OXY CV Pipeline LLC, OXY Campus LLC, OXY Inc., OXY LPG LLC, OXY Libya E&P Area 103 BR4 B.V., OXY Libya E&P Area 35 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P Concession 103 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P EPSA 102 B.V., OXY Libya E&P EPSA 1981 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P EPSA 1985 Ltd., OXY Libya E&P NC 143 144 145 150 B.V., OXY Libya Exploration SPC, OXY Libya LLC, OXY Little Knife LLC, OXY Mexico Holdings I LLC, OXY Mexico Holdings II LLC, OXY Middle East Holdings Ltd., OXY Oil Partners Inc., OXY PBLP Manager LLC, OXY Support Services LLC, OXY Tulsa Inc., OXY USA Inc., OXY USA WTP LP, OXY VPP Investments LLC, OXY West LLC, OXY of Saudi Arabia Ltd., OXYCHEM (CANADA) INC., OXYMAR, Oakwood Exploration LLC, Occidental (Bermuda) Ltd., Occidental (East Shabwa) LLC, Occidental Advance Sale Finance Inc., Occidental Al Hosn LLC, Occidental Angola Holdings Ltd., Occidental CIS Services Inc., Occidental Canada Holdings Ltd., Occidental Chemical Asia Limited, Occidental Chemical Belgium B.V.B.A., Occidental Chemical Chile Limitada, Occidental Chemical Corporation, Occidental Chemical Export Sales LLC, Occidental Chemical Far East Limited, Occidental Chemical Holding Corporation, Occidental Chemical International LLC, Occidental Chemical Investment (Canada) 1 Inc., Occidental Chemical Receivables LLC, Occidental Chemical de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Occidental Chile Investments LLC, Occidental Chile Minority Holder LLC, Occidental Colombia (Series G) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series J) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series K) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series L) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series M) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series N) Ltd., Occidental Colombia (Series O) Ltd., Occidental Crude Sales Inc. (Canada), Occidental Crude Sales Inc. (International), Occidental Dolphin Holdings Ltd., Occidental Energy Marketing Inc., Occidental Energy Ventures LLC, Occidental Exploradora del Peru Ltd., Occidental Exploration and Production Company, Occidental Hafar LLC, Occidental International (Libya) Inc., Occidental International Corporation, Occidental International Exploration and Production Company, Occidental International Holdings Ltd., Occidental International Oil and Gas Ltd., Occidental International Services Inc., Occidental Joslyn GP 2 Co., Occidental LNG (Malaysia) Ltd., Occidental Latin America Holdings LLC, Occidental Libya Oil & Gas B.V., Occidental MENA Manager Ltd., Occidental Middle East Development Company, Occidental Midland Basin LLC, Occidental Mukhaizna LLC, Occidental Oil Asia Pte. Ltd., Occidental Oil Shale Inc., Occidental Oil and Gas (Oman) Ltd., Occidental Oil and Gas Corporation, Occidental Oil and Gas International Inc., Occidental Oil and Gas International LLC, Occidental Oil and Gas Pakistan LLC, Occidental Oil and Gas of Peru LLC, Occidental Oman (Block 27) Holdings Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 51 Holding Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 51 LLC, Occidental Oman Block 65 Holding Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 65 LLC, Occidental Oman Block 72 Holding Ltd., Occidental Oman Block 72 LLC, Occidental Oman Gas Company LLC, Occidental Oman Gas Holdings Ltd., Occidental Oman North Holdings Ltd., Occidental Oriente Exploration and Production Ltd., Occidental Overseas Holdings B.V., Occidental PVC LLC, Occidental Peninsula II Inc., Occidental Peninsula LLC, Occidental Permian Ltd., Occidental Permian Manager LLC, Occidental Permian Services Inc., Occidental Peruana Inc., Occidental Petrolera del Peru (Block 101) Inc., Occidental Petrolera del Peru (Block 103) Inc., Occidental Petroleum (Pakistan) Inc., Occidental Petroleum Corporation, Occidental Petroleum Corporation Political Action Committee, Occidental Petroleum de Venezuela S.A., Occidental Petroleum of Nigeria, Occidental Petroleum of Oman Ltd., Occidental Petroleum of Qatar Ltd., Occidental Power Marketing L.P., Occidental Power Services Inc., Occidental Qatar Energy Company LLC, Occidental Red Sea Development LLC, Occidental Research Corporation, Occidental Resource Recovery Systems Inc., Occidental Resources Company, Occidental Shah Gas Holdings Ltd., Occidental South America Finance LLC, Occidental Specialty Marketing Inc., Occidental Tower Corporation, Occidental Transportation Holding Corporation, Occidental West Texas Overthrust Inc., Occidental Yemen Ltd., Occidental Yemen Sabatain Inc., Occidental del Ecuador Inc., Occidental of Abu Dhabi (Bab) Ltd., Occidental of Abu Dhabi (Shah) Ltd., Occidental of Abu Dhabi Holdings Ltd., Occidental of Abu Dhabi LLC, Occidental of Abu Dhabi Ltd., Occidental of Bahrain Ltd., Occidental of Bangladesh Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Chipiron) Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Cosecha) Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Medina) Inc., Occidental of Colombia (Putumayo) Ltd., Occidental of Colombia (Teca) Ltd., Occidental of Colombia PUT-36 LLC, Occidental of Dubai Inc., Occidental of Iraq Holdings Ltd., Occidental of Iraq LLC, Occidental of Oman Inc., Occidental of Russia Ltd., Occidental of South Africa (Offshore) Inc., Occidental of Yemen (Block 75) LLC, Oceanic Marine Transport Ltd., Opcal Insurance Inc., Oryx Crude Trading & Transportation Inc., Oxy BridgeTex Limited Partnership, Oxy C & I Bulk Sales LLC, Oxy Canada Sales Inc., Oxy Carbon Solutions LLC, Oxy Carbon Storage LLC, Oxy Climate Ventures Inc., Oxy Cogeneration Holding Company LLC, Oxy Colombia Holdings LLC, Oxy Colombia TopCo Ltd., Oxy Delaware Basin LLC, Oxy Delaware Basin Plant LLC, Oxy Dolphin E&P LLC, Oxy Dolphin Pipeline LLC, Oxy Energy Canada Inc., Oxy Energy Services LLC, Oxy Expatriate Services Inc., Oxy FFT Holdings Inc., Oxy Holding Company (Pipeline) Inc., Oxy International Ventures Ltd., Oxy LPG Terminal LLC, Oxy Levelland Pipeline Company LLC, Oxy Levelland Terminal Company LLC, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures LLC, Oxy Midstream Strategic Development LLC, Oxy Oleoducto SOP LLC, Oxy Overseas Services Ltd., Oxy Permian Gathering LLC, Oxy Permian Plaza LLC, Oxy Petroleum de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Oxy Renewable Energy LLC, Oxy Salt Creek Pipeline LLC, Oxy TL LLC, Oxy Taft Hub LLC, Oxy Technology Ventures Inc., Oxy Transport I Company LLC, Oxy Vinyls Canada Co., Oxy Vinyls Export Sales LLC, Oxy Vinyls LP, Oxy Westwood Corporation, Oxy Y-1 Company, OxyChem Ingleside Ethylene Holdings Inc., OxyChem do Brasil Ltda., OxyChile Investments LLC, Oxychem Shipping Ltd., Permian Basin JV Tax Matters Member LLC, Permian Basin Limited Partnership, Permian VPP Holder LP, Permian VPP Manager LLC, Phibro, Placid Oil LLC, Ramlat Oxy Ltd., Rio de Viento Inc., Rodeo Midland Basin LLC, San Patricio Pipeline LLC, Scanports Shipping LLC, SequestCo LLC, Stetson Exploration LLC, Sun Offshore Gathering Company, Swiflite Aircraft Corporation, Transok Properties LLC, Troy Potter Inc., Turavent Oil GmbH [in liquidation], Tuscaloosa Holdings Inc., UP Petroleo III Ltd., Upland Industries Corporation, Venezuela US SRL, Vintage Gas Inc., Vintage Petroleum, Vintage Petroleum Argentina Ltd., Vintage Petroleum Boliviana Ltd., Vintage Petroleum International Finance B.V., Vintage Petroleum International Holdings LLC, Vintage Petroleum International LLC, Vintage Petroleum International Ventures Inc., Vintage Petroleum Italy Inc., Vintage Petroleum South America Holdings Inc., Vintage Petroleum South America LLC, Vintage Petroleum Turkey Inc., WGR Asset Holding Company LLC, WGR Canada Inc., Wardner Ranch Inc., Western Gas Resources Inc., Western Gas Resources-Westana Inc., Western Midstream Holdings LLC, Woodlands International Insurance Ltd., and YT Ranch LLC. Pacific Booker Minerals Inc. engages in the exploration of mineral properties in Canada. The company primarily explores for copper, gold, silver, and molybdenum concentrates. It primarily holds interests in the Morrison property located in British Columbia. The company was formerly known as Booker Gold Explorations Limited and changed its name to Pacific Booker Minerals Inc. in February 2000. Pacific Booker Minerals Inc. was incorporated in 1983 and is based in Vancouver, Canada. Read More iShares National Muni Bond ETF's stock was trading at $114.45 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, MUB stock has increased by 1.7% and is now trading at $116.39. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. iShares North American Tech-Multimedia Networking ETF's stock was trading at $43.75 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, IGN stock has increased by 82.0% and is now trading at $79.62. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. JPJ Group plc, through its subsidiaries, operates as an online gaming company in Japan, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Spain, rest of Europe, and internationally. The company operates through Jackpotjoy and Vera&John segments. It offers bingo, slots, casino, and other games through Jackpotjoy, Starspins, Botemania, Vera&John, Costa Bingo, InterCasino, Solid Gaming, and other brands. The company was formerly known as Jackpotjoy plc and changed its name to JPJ Group plc in June 2018. Jackpotjoy plc was incorporated in 2016 and is based in London, the United Kingdom. Read More KAZ Minerals PLC, together with its subsidiaries, engages in mining and processing copper and other metals primarily in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan. It operates through Bozshakol, Aktogay, East Region and Bozymchak, and Mining Projects segments. The company operates the Aktogay and Bozshakol open pit copper mines in the east region and Pavlodar region of Kazakhstan; three underground mines in the east region of Kazakhstan; and the Bozymchak copper-gold mine in Kyrgyzstan. It also develops greenfield metal deposits; operates Koksay deposit in Kazakhstan, and the Baimskaya licence area in the Chukotka region of Russia; and produces and sells various by-products, such as gold, silver, molybdenum, and zinc. In addition, the company supplies and distributes heat, water, and electricity; and offers construction, project management, financing, management, sales and logistics, and repairs and maintenance services. The company was formerly known as Kazakhmys PLC and changed its name to KAZ Minerals PLC in October 2014. KAZ Minerals PLC was founded in 1930 and is based in London, the United Kingdom. Read More Genesee & Wyoming Inc. owns and leases freight railroads. It operates through three segments: North American Operations, Australian Operations, and U.K./European Operations. The company transports various commodities, including agricultural products, autos and auto parts, chemicals and plastics, coal and coke, food and kindred products, lumber and forest products, metallic ores, metals, minerals and stone, petroleum products, pulp and paper, waste, and other commodities. It owns or leases 122 freight railroads, including 105 short line railroads and 2 regional freight railroads located in the United States, 8 short line railroads located in Canada, 3 railroads located in Australia, 1 railroad located in the United Kingdom, 1 railroad in Poland and Germany, and 2 railroads in the Netherlands with a total of approximately 16,200 miles of track. The company also operates 6,200 additional miles of track that is owned or leased by others. In addition, it operates deep sea maritime containers and provides bulk haulage, including coal, aggregates, cement, and infrastructure services. Further, the company provides rail service at approximately 40 ports; rail-ferry service in North America, Australia, and Europe; and contract coal loading and railcar switching for industrial customers. Genesee & Wyoming Inc. was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in Darien, Connecticut. Read More American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. 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The following companies are subsidiares of Teledyne Technologies: Alia Corporation Inc, Bolt Technology Corp, Bowtech Products, CARIS, CDL do Brasil Equipamentos e Servicos Submarinos Sociedade Empresaria Ltda., CETAC Technologies, DALSA, Demo Systems, Detcon Holdco Inc., Ensambles de Precision S.A. de C.V., Falcon Analytical, Frontline Test Equipment, GMI Group Holdings Limited, Hafmynd ehf, Hanson Research Corp, IST Oldham Instruments India Private Limited, Industrial Control Machines, Intelek, Intelek Limited, Intelek Pension Trustees Limited, Intelek Properties Limited, LeCroy (Beijing) Trading Co. Ltd., LeCroy Corporation, Lidar Aviation Services Inc., Maple Imaging LLC, Micralyne Inc, Ocean Design Ltda., Oldham Instrument (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Oldham Simtronics SAS, Oldham-Winter GmbH, PDM Neptec, Reynolds Industries Limited, Rhombi Canada LP, Rhombi Holdings Limited, Rhombi Netherlands B.V., Rockwell Scientific Company, Simtronics AS, TDY Jersey Limited, Teledyne Advanced Pollution Instrumentation, Teledyne Australia Pty Ltd, Teledyne BlueView, Teledyne Bogatin Enterprises LLC, Teledyne Bowtech Limited, Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc., Teledyne C.M.L. Group Limited, Teledyne CARIS B.V., Teledyne CARIS Inc., Teledyne CARIS UK Ltd., Teledyne CARIS USA Inc., Teledyne CDL Inc., Teledyne CDL Limited, Teledyne Catalyst Enterprises Inc., Teledyne Computer Access Technology Corporation, Teledyne Controls LLC, Teledyne Cougar, Teledyne Czech s.r.o., Teledyne DALSA (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Teledyne DALSA Asia-Pacific Ltd., Teledyne DALSA B.V., Teledyne DALSA GmbH, Teledyne DALSA Inc., Teledyne DALSA Industrial Products Inc., Teledyne DALSA K.K., Teledyne DALSA Semiconductor Inc., Teledyne Dalsa, Teledyne Defense Electronics LLC, Teledyne Denmark A/S, Teledyne Detcon Inc., Teledyne Digital Imaging Inc., Teledyne Digital Imaging US Inc., Teledyne Energy Systems Inc., Teledyne Europe Holdings C.V., Teledyne France, Teledyne France SAS, Teledyne Gas Measurement Instruments Limited, Teledyne Gavia ehf., Teledyne Germany GmbH, Teledyne Hanson Research Inc., Teledyne ICM SA, Teledyne ICM SPRL, Teledyne Innovaciones Microelectronics S.L.U., Teledyne Instruments Inc., Teledyne Instruments Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Teledyne Japan Corporation, Teledyne Korea Ltd., Teledyne Labtech Limited, Teledyne LeCroy AB, Teledyne LeCroy Delaware LLC, Teledyne LeCroy GmbH, Teledyne LeCroy Inc., Teledyne LeCroy India Trading Private Ltd., Teledyne LeCroy Japan Corporation, Teledyne LeCroy Korea Ltd., Teledyne LeCroy OakGate Inc., Teledyne LeCroy S.A.R.L., Teledyne LeCroy S.R.L., Teledyne LeCroy SA, Teledyne LeCroy Singapore Pte. Ltd., Teledyne Limited, Teledyne Micralyne Inc., Teledyne Monitor Labs, Teledyne Monitor Labs P.R. Inc., Teledyne Netherlands B.V., Teledyne ODI, Teledyne Optech Inc., Teledyne Paradise Datacom Limited, Teledyne RD Instruments, Teledyne RD Technologies (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Teledyne RESON, Teledyne RESON A/S, Teledyne RESON B.V., Teledyne RESON GmbH, Teledyne RESON Holding B.V., Teledyne RESON Inc., Teledyne RESON Pte. Ltd., Teledyne RESON UK Limited, Teledyne RISI Inc., Teledyne Rad-icon Imaging Corp., Teledyne Redlake MASD LLC, Teledyne Reynolds Inc., Teledyne SG Brown Limited, Teledyne Scientific & Imaging LLC, Teledyne Scientific Imaging GmbH, Teledyne Scientific Imaging Limited, Teledyne Signal Processing Devices Sweden AB, Teledyne Singapore Private Limited, Teledyne TSS Limited, Teledyne Taiwan Company, Teledyne Technologies (Bermuda) Limited, Teledyne Technologies (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Teledyne Technologies International Corp., Teledyne Technologies Israel Ltd., Teledyne Tekmar Company, Teledyne UK Limited, Teledyne VariSystems, Teledyne VariSystems Inc., Teledyne Wireless LLC, Teledyne e2v, Teledyne e2v (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Teledyne e2v (Overseas) Holdings Limited, Teledyne e2v Asia Pacific Limited, Teledyne e2v Limited, Teledyne e2v Semiconductors SAS, and The Oceanscience Group Ltd.. National Bank of Canada provides various financial products and services to retail, commercial, corporate, and institutional clients in Canada and internationally. It operates through four segments: Personal and Commercial, Wealth Management, Financial Markets, and U.S. Specialty Finance and International. The Personal and Commercial segment offers personal banking services, including transaction solutions, mortgage loans and home equity lines of credit, consumer loans, payment solutions, savings and investment solutions; various insurance products; and commercial banking services, such as credit, and deposit and investment solutions, as well as international trade, foreign exchange transactions, payroll, cash management, insurance, electronic transactions, and complimentary services. The Wealth Management segment provides investment solutions, trust and estate services, banking services, lending services, guaranteed investment certificates, mutual funds, notes, structured products, and other wealth management solutions through internal and third-party distribution networks. The Financial Markets segment offers risk management products and services; and debt and equity underwriting; advisory services in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, and financing. The U.S. Specialty Finance and International segment provides specialty finance expertise; financial products and services to individuals and businesses in Cambodia; and the activities of targeted investments in certain emerging markets. The company also offers credit cards. It provides its services through a network of 483 branches and 1,573 banking machines. The company was founded in 1859 and is headquartered in Montreal, Canada. Read More Nuveen Georgia Quality Municipal Income Fund is a closed ended fixed income mutual fund launched by Nuveen Investments, Inc. The fund is co-managed by Nuveen Fund Advisors, LLC and Nuveen Asset Management, LLC. It invests in the fixed income markets of the Georgia. The fund invests into undervalued municipal securities and other related investments the income from which is exempt from regular federal and Georgia income taxes. It seeks to invest in investment grade securities with an average maturity of around 17 years. The fund employs fundamental analysis with a focus on bottom-up stock picking approach to create its portfolio. It benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against Standard & Poor's (S&P) Georgia Municipal Bond Index and Standard & Poor's (S&P) National Municipal Bond Index. The fund was formerly known as Nuveen Georgia Dividend Advantage Municipal Fund 2. Nuveen Georgia Quality Municipal Income Fund was formed on October 26, 2001 and is domiciled in the United States. Read More PetroChina Company Limited, together with its subsidiaries, engages in a range of petroleum related products, services, and activities in Mainland China and internationally. It operates through Exploration and Production, Refining and Chemicals, Marketing, and Natural Gas and Pipeline segments. The Exploration and Production segment engages in the exploration, development, production, and marketing of crude oil and natural gas. The Refining and Chemicals segment refines crude oil and petroleum products; and produces and markets primary petrochemical products, derivative petrochemical products, and other chemical products. The Marketing segment is involved in marketing of refined products and trading business. The Natural Gas and Pipeline segment engages in the transmission of natural gas, crude oil, and refined products; and sale of natural gas. As of December 31, 2020, the company had a total length of 31,151 km, including 22,555 km of natural gas pipelines, 7,190 km of crude oil pipelines, and 1,406 km of refined product pipelines. The company is also involved in the exploration, development, and production of oil sands and coalbed methane; trading of crude oil and petrochemical products; storage, chemical engineering, storage facilities, service station, and transportation facilities and related businesses; and production and sales of basic and derivative chemical, and other chemical products. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Beijing, the People's Republic of China. PetroChina Company Limited is a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation. Read More There is not enough analysis data for Red Emperor Resources. 4.4 Community Rank Outperform Votes Red Emperor Resources has received 38 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Red Emperor Resources has received 19 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Red Emperor Resources has received 66.67% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Red Emperor Resources and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe RMP will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe RMP will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next Grand City Properties S.A. engages in the residential real estate business in Germany, the United Kingdom, and internationally. The company invests in, manages, and rents real estate properties in North Rhine-Westphalia and Berlin; metropolitan regions of Dresden, Leipzig, and Halle; and the cities in the north of Germany, Bremen, Hamburg, and Hannover, as well as other urban centers, such as Nuremberg, Munch, Mannheim, Frankfurt, and London. Grand City Properties S.A. was founded in 2004 and is based in Luxembourg. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Vodafone Group: 360 Connect S.A., [email protected] Telecom, A-ccelerator B.V., A-ccelerator Holding B.V, AAA (Euro) Limited, AAA (MCR) Limited, AAA (UK) Limited, Acorn Communications Limited, Africonnect (Zambia) Limited, Ag Mercantile Company Private Limited, Al-Amin Investments Limited, Amsterdamse Beheer- en Consultingmaatschappij B.V., Apollo Submarine Cable System Limited, Array Holdings Limited, Asian Telecommunication Investments (Mauritius) Limited, Aspective Limited, Astec Communications Limited, Autoconnex Limited, Aztec Limited, BelCompany BV, Bluefish Apac Communications Pte. Ltd, Bluefish Communications, Bluefish Communications Limited, Business Serve Limited, C&W Worldwide Nigeria Limited, C.S.P. Solutions Limited, CCII (Mauritius) Inc., CGP India Investments Ltd., CGP Investments (Holdings) Limited, COOP Mobil s.r.o, CT Networks Limited, CWGNL S.A., CWW Operations Limited, Cable & Wireless Access Limited, Cable & Wireless Americas Systems Inc., Cable & Wireless Aspac Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless CIS Services Limited, Cable & Wireless CIS Svyaz LLC, Cable & Wireless Capital Limited , Cable & Wireless Communications Data Network Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Communications Starclass Limited, Cable & Wireless Communications Technical Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd (Beijing Branch), Cable & Wireless Europe Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless GN Limited, Cable & Wireless Global (India) Private Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Business Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Holding Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Telecommunication Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Holdco Limited, Cable & Wireless Networks India Private Limited, Cable & Wireless Trade Mark Management Limited, Cable & Wireless UK Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless UK Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Waterside Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Pension Trustee Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Voice Messaging Limited, Cable & Wireless a-Services Inc, Cable & Wireless a-Services Limited, Cable and Wireless (India) Limited, Cable and Wireless (India) Limited Indian Branch Office, Cable and Wireless Nominee Limited, Cable and Wireless Worldwide South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Cavalry Holdings Ltd, Celfocus Solucoes Informaticas Para Telecomunicacoes S.A, Cellops Limited, Cellular Operations Limited, Central Communications Group Limited, Central Telecom (Northern) Limited, Centurion GSM Limited, Chelys Limited, City Cable (Holdings) Limited, Cobra do Brasil Servicos de Telematica ltda., Commnet Cellular Inc., Complete Network Technology, Connect (India) Mobile Technologies Private Limited, Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Limited, Dataroam Limited , Device Insight, Digital Island (UK) Ltd, Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited, East Africa Investment (Mauritius) Limited, Emtel Europe Limited, Energis (Ireland) Limited, Energis Communications Limited, Energis Holdings Limited, Energis Local Access Limited, Energis Management Limited, Energis Squared Limited, Erudite Systems Limited, Esprit Telecom B.V., Eudokia Limited, Euro Pacific Securities Ltd., Eurocall Holdings Limited, Europolitan Holdings AB (now Europolitan Vodafone AB), FB Holdings Limited, FM Associates (UK) Limited, FinCo Partner 1 B.V., FireFly Networks Limited, Flexphone Limited, GS Telecom (Pty) Limited, Gateway Communications Africa (UK) Limited, Gateway Communications Tanzania Limited, General Mobile Corporation, Generation Telecom Limited, Ghana Telecommunications, Ghana Telecommunications Company Limited, Global Cellular Rental Limited, Globe Limited, GrandCentrix GmbH, Grupo Corporativo ONO S.A.U., H3ga Properties (No 3) Pty Limited, HBO Nederland Cooperatief U.A., HBO Netherlands Channels sro, HBO Netherlands Distribution B.V., Hellas Online, How2 Telecom Limited, Hutchison Essar Ltd, Indus Towers Limited, Intercell Communications Limited, Internet Network Services Limited, Invitation Digital Limited, Ipergy Communications NV, Isis Telecommunications Management Limited, Jaguar Communications Limited, Jaykay Finholding (India) Private Limited, Jupicol (Proprietary) Limited, KABELCOM Braunschweig Gesellschaft Fur BreitbandkabelKommunikation Mit Beschrankter Haftung, KABELCOM Wolfsburg Gesellschaft Fur BreitbandkabelKommunikation Mit Beschrankter Haftung, Kabel Deutschland, Kabel Deutschland Holding, Kabel Deutschland Holding Erste Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Holding Zweite Beteilgungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Neunte Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Siebte Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabelfernsehen Munchen Servicenter GmbH & Co. KG, LG Financing Partnership, LGE HoldCo V B.V., LGE HoldCo VI B.V., LGE HoldCo VIII B.V., LGE Holdco VII B.V., LLC Vodafone Enterprise Ukraine, Le Bunt Holdings Limited, Legend Communications Limited, Liberty Global, Liberty Global Content Netherlands B.V., London Hydraulic Power Company, M-PESA Foundation, M-PESA Holding Co. Limited, ML Integration Group Limited, ML Integration Limited, ML Integration Services Limited, MV Healthcare Services Private Limited, Mannesmann AG, MetroHoldings Limited, Mezzanine Ware Proprietary Limited (RF), Mirambo Limited, Misrfone Trading Company LLC, MobiFon S.A., Mobile Commerce Solutions Limited, Mobile Phone Centre Limited, Mobile Wallet VM1, Mobile Wallet VM2, Mobile by Sainsburys Limited, Mobiles 4 Business.com Limited, Mobileworld Communications Pty Limited, Mobileworld Operating Pty Ltd, Mobilvest, Motifpros 1 (Proprietary) Limited, Multi Risk Indemnity Company Limited, Multi Risk Limited, ND Callus Info Services Private Limited, Nadal Trading Company Private Limited, Nat Comm Air Limited, National Communications Backbone Company Limited, Navtrak Ltd, Netforce Group Limited, Netgrid Telecom SRL, Number Portability Company (Proprietary) Limited, ONO, Omega Telecom Holdings Private Limited, Oni Way Infocomunicacoes S.A, Oskar Mobil S.R.O., Oxygen Solutions Limited, P.C.P. (North West) Limited, PPL Pty Limited, PT Network Services Limited, PTI Telecom Limited, Peoples Phone Limited, Pinnacle Cellular Group Limited, Pinnacle Cellular Limited, Plex Limited, Plustech Mercantile Company Private Limited, Prime Metals Ltd., Project Telecom Holdings Limited, Quickcomm Software Solutions, Radio Opt GmbH, Rian Mobile Limited, SBC SMART CITY 1517 B.V., SMMS Investments Pvt Limited, Safaricom Limited, Safenet N.P A., Sarmady Communications, Scarlet Ibis Investments 23 (Pty) Limited, Scorpios Beverages Pvt. Ltd, Silver Stream Investments Limited, Singlepoint (4U) Limited, Singlepoint (4U) Ltd., Singlepoint Payment Services Limited, Siro Limited, Spar Aerospace (Nigeria) Limited, Sport TV Portugal S.A, Starnet, Stentor Communications Limited, Stentor Limited, Storage Technology Services (Pty) Limited, T.W. Telecom Limited, T3 Telecommunications Limited, TKS Telepost Kabel-Service Kaiserslautern Beteiligungs GmbH, TKS Telepost Kabel-Service Kaiserslautern GmbH & Co. KG, TNAS Limited, TSM NZ Limited, Talkland Airtime Services Limited, Talkland Australia Pty Limited, Talkland Communications Limited, Talkland International Limited, Talkland Midlands Limited, Talkmobile Limited, Tele2 Italia SPA, Tele2 Spain, Telecom Investments India Private Limited, Telecommunications Europe Limited, Ternhill Communications Limited, The Cobra Group, The Eastern Leasing Company Limited, The Old Telecom Sales Co. Limited, Thus Group Holdings Limited, Thus Group Limited, Thus Limited, Thus Profit Sharing Trustees Limited, TnT Expense Management LLC, Tomorrow Street GP S.a r.l., Tomorrow Street SCA, Torenspits II B.V., Townley Communications Limited, Trans Crystal Ltd., UMT Investments Limited, UPC Nederland Holding I B.V., UPC Nederland Holding II B.V., UPC Nederland Holding III B.V., Unified Communications, Uniqueair Limited, Urbana Teleunion Rostock GmbH & Co.KG, Usha Martin Telematics Limited, VAPL No. 2 Pty Limited, VBA (Mauritius) Limited, VBA Holdings Limited, VBA International (SL) Limited, VBA International Limited, VEI S.r.l., VM SA, VND S.p.A, VSSB Vodafone Shared Services Budapest Private Limited Company, Verwaltung Urbana Teleunion Rostock GmbH, Victus Networks S.A., Vizzavi Finance Limited, Vizzavi Limited, Voda Limited, Vodacall Limited, Vodacash s.p.r.l., Vodacom (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Business (Angola) Limitada, Vodacom Business (Ghana) Limited, Vodacom Business (Kenya) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa (Nigeria) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa Group (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa Group Services Limited, Vodacom Business Cameroon SA, Vodacom Business Cote Divoire S.A.R.L., Vodacom Congo (RDC) SA, Vodacom Financial Services (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Group Limited, Vodacom Insurance Administration Company (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Insurance Company (RF) Limited, Vodacom International Holdings (Pty) Limited, Vodacom International Limited, Vodacom Lesotho (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Life Assurance Company (RF) Limited, Vodacom Payment Services (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Properties No 1 (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Properties No.2 (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Tanzania Limited Zanzibar, Vodacom Tanzania Public Limited Company, Vodacom UK Limited, Vodafone (NI) Limited, Vodafone (New Zealand) Hedging Limited, Vodafone (Scotland) Limited, Vodafone 2, Vodafone 4 UK, Vodafone 5 Limited, Vodafone 5 UK, Vodafone 6 UK, Vodafone Albania Sh.A, Vodafone Alternatif Telekom Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Americas 4, Vodafone Americas Virginia Inc., Vodafone And Qatar Foundation L.L.C, Vodafone Asset Management Services S.a r.l., Vodafone Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Automotive Deutschland GmbH, Vodafone Automotive Electronic Systems S.r.L, Vodafone Automotive France S.A.S, Vodafone Automotive Iberia S.L, Vodafone Automotive Italia S.p.A, Vodafone Automotive Japan K.K, Vodafone Automotive Korea Limited, Vodafone Automotive SpA, Vodafone Automotive Technologies (Beijing) Co Ltd, Vodafone Automotive Telematics Development S.A.S, Vodafone Automotive Telematics S.A, Vodafone Automotive UK Limited, Vodafone Belgium SA/NV, Vodafone Benelux Limited, Vodafone Bilgi Ve Iletisim Hizmetleri AS, Vodafone Business Services Limited, Vodafone Business Solutions Limited, Vodafone Canada Inc, Vodafone Cellular Limited, Vodafone Central Services Limited, Vodafone China Limited (China), Vodafone China Limited (Hong Kong), Vodafone Connect 2 Limited, Vodafone Connect Limited, Vodafone Consolidated Holdings Limited, Vodafone Corporate Limited, Vodafone Corporate Secretaries Limited, Vodafone Czech Republic A.S., Vodafone DC Pension Trustee Company Limited, Vodafone Dagitim Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Data, Vodafone Distribution Holdings Limited, Vodafone Egypt Telecommunications S.A.E., Vodafone Elektronik Para Ve Odeme Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Empresa Brasil Telecomunicacoes Ltda, Vodafone Empresa Mexico S.de R.L. de C.V., Vodafone Enabler Espana S.L., Vodafone Enterprise Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Austria GmbH, Vodafone Enterprise Bahrain W.L.L., Vodafone Enterprise Bulgaria EOOD, Vodafone Enterprise Chile SA, Vodafone Enterprise Communications Technical Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Corporate Secretaries Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Denmark A/S, Vodafone Enterprise Equipment Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited Czech Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited DubaiI Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Finland OY, Vodafone Enterprise France SAS, Vodafone Enterprise Germany GmbH, Vodafone Enterprise Global Businesses S.a r.l., Vodafone Enterprise Global Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Global Network HK Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Global Network Pte. Ltd., Vodafone Enterprise Hong Kong Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Italy S.r.L, Vodafone Enterprise Korea Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Luxembourg S.A., Vodafone Enterprise Netherlands BV, Vodafone Enterprise Norway AS, Vodafone Enterprise Regional Business Singapore Pte.Ltd., Vodafone Enterprise Singapore Pte.Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Spain S.L.U. Portugal Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Spain SLU, Vodafone Enterprise Sweden AB, Vodafone Enterprise Switzerland AG, Vodafone Erste Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Vodafone Espana S.A.U., Vodafone Euro Hedging Limited, Vodafone Euro Hedging Two, Vodafone Europe B.V., Vodafone Europe UK, Vodafone European Investments, Vodafone European Portal Limited, Vodafone Finance Limited, Vodafone Finance Luxembourg Limited, Vodafone Finance Sweden, Vodafone Finance UK Limited, Vodafone Financial Operations, Vodafone Financial Services B.V., Vodafone Fixed Ltd, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone Foundation Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Gestioni S.p.A, Vodafone Ghana Mobile Financial Services Limited, Vodafone Global Content Services Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise (Hong Kong) Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise (Italy) S.R.L., Vodafone Global Enterprise (Japan) K.K., Vodafone Global Enterprise (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Vodafone Global Enterprise Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise Russia LLC, Vodafone Global Enterprise Taiwan Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise Telecommunications (Hellas) A.E., Vodafone Global Network Limited, Vodafone Global Network Limited Slovakia Branch, Vodafone Global Services Private Limited, Vodafone GmbH, Vodafone Group (Directors) Trustee Limited, Vodafone Group Pension Trustee Limited, Vodafone Group Services GmbH, Vodafone Group Services Ireland Limited, Vodafone Group Services Limited, Vodafone Group Services No.2 Limited, Vodafone Group Share Trustee Limited, Vodafone Hire Limited, Vodafone Holding A.S., Vodafone Holdings (Jersey) Limited, Vodafone Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Vodafone Holdings Europe S.L.U., Vodafone Holdings Luxembourg Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Finance Pty Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Receivables Pty Limited, Vodafone IP Licensing Limited, Vodafone India Digital Limited, Vodafone India Limited, Vodafone India Services Private Limited, Vodafone India Ventures Limited, Vodafone Institut fur Gesellschaft und Kommunikation GmbH, Vodafone Intermediate Enterprises Limited, Vodafone International 1 S.a.r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone International 1 S.a r.l., Vodafone International 2 Limited, Vodafone International Holdings B.V., Vodafone International Holdings Limited, Vodafone International M S.a r.l., Vodafone International Operations Limited, Vodafone International Services LLC, Vodafone Investment UK, Vodafone Investments (SA) Proprietary Limited, Vodafone Investments Australia Limited, Vodafone Investments Limited, Vodafone Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l., Vodafone Investments Luxembourg S.a r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone Ireland Distribution Limited, Vodafone Ireland Ltd., Vodafone Ireland Marketing Limited, Vodafone Ireland Property Holdings Limited, Vodafone Ireland Retail Limited, Vodafone Italia S.p.A., Vodafone Jersey Dollar Holdings Limited, Vodafone Jersey Finance, Vodafone Jersey Yen Holdings Unlimited, Vodafone Kabel Deutschland Field Services GmbH, Vodafone Kabel Deutschland GmbH, Vodafone Kabel Deutschland Kundenbetreuung GmbH, Vodafone Kenya Limited, Vodafone Leasing Limited, Vodafone Libertel B.V., Vodafone Limited, Vodafone Luxembourg 5 S.a r.l., Vodafone Luxembourg 5 S.a r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone Luxembourg S.a r.l., Vodafone Luxembourg S.a r.l. Luxembourg Zweigniederlassung Bern, Vodafone M-PESA SH.P.K., Vodafone M-Pesa S.A, Vodafone M.C. Mobile Services Limited , Vodafone Magyarorszag Mobile Tavkozlesi Zartkoruen Mukodo Reszvenytarsasag, Vodafone Malta Limited, Vodafone Marketing UK , Vodafone Maroc SARL, Vodafone Mauritius Ltd., Vodafone Mobile Commerce Limited, Vodafone Mobile Communications Limited, Vodafone Mobile Enterprises Limited, Vodafone Mobile NZ Limited, Vodafone Mobile Network Limited, Vodafone Mobile Operations Limited, Vodafone Mobile Services Limited, Vodafone Multimedia Limited, Vodafone Nederland Holding I B.V., Vodafone Nederland Holding II B.V., Vodafone Nederland Holding III B.V., Vodafone Net Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Network Pty Limited, Vodafone New Zealand Foundation Limited, Vodafone New Zealand Limited, Vodafone Next Generation Services Limited, Vodafone Nominees Limited1, Vodafone ONO S.A.U., Vodafone Oceania Limited, Vodafone Old Show Ground Site Management Limited, Vodafone Overseas Finance Limited, Vodafone Overseas Holdings Limited, Vodafone Panafon International Holdings B.V., Vodafone Panafon UK, Vodafone Partner Services Limited, Vodafone Payment Solutions S.a r.l., Vodafone Portugal Comunicacoes Pessoais S.A., Vodafone Procurement Company S.a r.l., Vodafone Property Investments Limited, Vodafone Pty Limited, Vodafone Qatar Q.S.C., Vodafone Retail (Holdings) Limited , Vodafone Retail Limited, Vodafone Roaming Services S.a r.l., Vodafone Romania S.A, Vodafone Romania M - Payments SRL, Vodafone Romania Technologies SRL, Vodafone Sales & Services Limited, Vodafone Satellite Services Limited, Vodafone Servicios SL.U, Vodafone Servizi E Tecnologie S.R.L, Vodafone Servicos Empresariais Brasil Ltda., Vodafone Shared Services Romania SRL, Vodafone Specialist Communications Limited, Vodafone Stiftung Deutschland Gemeinnutzige GmbH, Vodafone Technology Solutions Limited, Vodafone Teknoloji Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Tele-Services (India) Holdings Limited, Vodafone Telecel-Comunicates Pessoais S.A., Vodafone Telecommunications (India) Limited, Vodafone Telekomunikasyon A.S, Vodafone Towers Limited, Vodafone UK Content Services Limited, Vodafone UK Investments Limited , Vodafone UK Limited1 , Vodafone US Inc, Vodafone Ventures Limited1 , Vodafone Vierte Verwaltungs AG, Vodafone Worldwide Holdings Limited, Vodafone Yen Finance Limited , Vodafone m-pesa Limited, Vodafone-Central Limited Vodaphone Limited, Vodafone-Panafon Hellenic Telecommunications Company S.A., VodafoneZiggo Group Holding B.V, Vodata Limited , Vouchercloud SA (Pty) Ltd, Wataneya Telecommunications S.A.E, Waterberg Lodge (Proprietary) Limited, Wayfinder, Wheatfields Investments 276 (Proprietary) Limited, Wireless Interactions & NFC Accelerator 2013 B.V., Woodend Cellular Limited, Woodend Communications Limited, Woodend Group Limited, Woodend Holdings Limited, XB Facilities B.V, XLink Communications (Proprietary) Limited, Your Communications Group Limited, ZUM B.V., ZYB, Zelitron S.A., Zesko B.V., Ziggo B.V., Ziggo Bond Company B.V., Ziggo Deelnemingen B.V., Ziggo Finance 2 B.V., Ziggo Financing Partnership, Ziggo Holding B.V., Ziggo Netwerk B.V., Ziggo Netwerk II B.V., Ziggo Services B.V., Ziggo Services Employment B.V., Ziggo Services Netwerk 2 B.V., Ziggo Zakelijk Services B.V., and Zoranet Connectivity Services B.V.. iShares MSCI Switzerland ETF's stock was trading at $35.66 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, EWL stock has increased by 43.7% and is now trading at $51.24. View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19. Zalando SE operates as an online fashion and lifestyle retailer. It offers a range of products, including shoes, apparel, accessories, and beauty products for women, men, and children, as well as free delivery and returns services. The company also sells its products through its Zalando Lounge; and brick-and-mortar stores in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, Leipzig, Hamburg, Hanover, MAnster, Stuttgart, Mannheim, and Ulm. It serves in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The company has a strategic partnership with Sephora SAS to create the online prestige beauty destination. Zalando SE was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Read More LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) - Indiana Workforce Recovery hosted an Employer Opioid Strategy Meeting in Lafayette on Thursday. This series is the first to equip employers with the tools needed to help struggling employees. Mike Thibideau is the Director for the Indiana Workforce Recovery. He has been traveling the state educating employers; Lafayette was his sixth stop. He said it's time to talk about addiction in the workforce. "We talk about the public health implications and the community implications and all the dynamics of this important medical epidemic that's going across this state, but there haven't really been a lot of focused conversations about how employers have a role in building solutions to that epidemic," he said. And he said they have a bigger role than you might think. Studies show that when an employer serves as the primary advocate for care they have better short term and long term outcomes measured at one and five year intervals than any other referral source," said Thibideau, who started in this role in October of 2018. He said Indiana is the only state in the country that has a full-time persons working on this issue. Thibideau has a very personal connection to addiction. "I started to use back in high school," he said. "I came from a very supportive and loving family but as I got older, I think a lot of people have this sense of feeling alone in a crowded room." He said he embodies the fact that there is no stereotypical person who struggles with addiction. You can still be a good kid struggle with this stuff at the same time," he said. "I was an Eagle Scout, I was the youth representative on my parish board, I was the vice president of my Model United Nations team. And thanks to family intervention in 2015, he got on the path to recovery and has been in active recovery ever sense. Now, it's his job to help Hoosier employers know how to handle present and potential employees who struggle with addiction. "I somewhat joke that when my family and friends were doing an intervention for me, they didn't have to worry about the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family Medical Leave Act, the HPPA and a number of other privacy and HR type of regulations that are in place in the work environment." Employers are uniquely situated to combat the opioid epidemic, considering 70% of Hoosiers struggling with substance use disorder are employed. "That means that this is both a concern for employers looking to help their people retain that talent and also looking to engage in untapped pools of talent that are potentially coming into the workforce," he said. Jennifer Moreland is the Director of HR at Wabash Center. She attended the conference to gain knowledge. "We need help," she said. "We don't have all the answers as employers and we need support and we need guidance and we need education." Moreland said one of her biggest takeaways was the free Naloxone training. This is the drug that can be used to reverse an overdose. "You have to start somewhere and just learning what opportunities and options there are to not only support employers but support your employees I think is a great place to start," she said. One thing that is a constant uphill battle in the world of opioid misuse disorder is stigma, and the workplace is no different. Stigma is an important part of the issue in that employers need to be considering it as a medical issue and not a social issue when making a hiring decision," said Thibideau. He added while someone who is using illicit drugs or is drunk on the job or during the interview process has no rights under the ADA, someone who is in recovery from substance use disorder is considered an individual with a disability the same way if someone had any other type of chronic medical condition. But stigma may be less of a problem than you may think for those in active recovery. For the most part, our Indiana employers, if they are hiring individuals who are in active recovery from addiction, they wont even know they are hiring an individual in recovery," he said. This is the first time a conference like this has been held in Lafayette, but Thibideau said he is impressed by the strides Lafayette is making. I frequently tout Lafayette as one of the leading communities in the state, and as a great roadmap for what other communities should do if they want to build pathways to successful recovery, he said. He hopes that people will take the time to come forward to their employers about their struggle with addiction in a positive way. If you are employed and you are struggling with addiction, come forward to your HR representative or to a person who is capable of providing you with assistance, he said. While not universal, I would say the vast majority of employers that we interact with, if someone comes forward before the event of a failed test or workplace accident and requests assistance, employers will help them get assistance. US judge sets precedent by blocking new drilling on public land in Wyoming due to climate change A federal judge has temporarily blocked new drilling on 300,000 acres (121,400 hectares) of land in Wyoming after ruling that the US Department of the Interior did not sufficiently consider climate change when allowing oil and gas companies to lease federal land in the state. This a shot across the bows of the Trump administration, which wants to encourage fossil fuel extraction and disputes climate change. Wyoming hydrocarbon extraction site - Image: Shutterstock In 2018, the Interior Department offered more than 12.8 million acres of public lands to oil and gas companies, according to the New York Times. In Wyoming, the number of drilling rigs doubled from 2016 to 2018. President Trump had directed government agencies to reduce the amount of consideration given to global warming in policy and permitting decisions. According to a report issued last year by the US Geological Survey, oil and gas drilling accounts for about 10% of the USAs total carbon output. Now, US District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Rudolph Contreras has ruled that, by doing so, the Interior Departments Bureau of Land Management (BLM) violated the National Environmental Policy Act. By not taking into account the effect of drilling on greenhouse gas and climate change, the department withheld crucial information to policymakers and the public that might have affected their attitude toward the sales. Given the national, cumulative nature of climate change, considering each individual drilling project in a vacuum deprives the agency and the public of the context necessary to evaluate oil and gas drilling on federal land before irretrievably committing to that drilling, Contreras wrote. Wyoming is one of the top producers of fossil fuels in the nation and this ruling could have a profound effect on oil and gas operators in the state. Under this order, the BLM now has to provide documents that show that it has taken a hard look at greenhouse gas emissions before it can issue any new permits to drill on the Wyoming land. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement: This bad decision will hurt workers in Wyoming, reduce revenue for the state and slow Americas energy production." But environmental group spokespeople quoted by the Washington Post and other sources said the ruling calls into question the legality of the Trump administrations entire oil and gas program and leaves future actions open to judicial challenge. Courts in the country are increasingly taking climate change into account when ruling on fossil fuel exploitation-related issues. Last month, a US magistrate in Montana ordered the Trump administration to redo its environmental impact analysis of mine expansion on federal land there to reflect factors including the climate impacts of moving the coal by rail and the economic impact of climate change spurred by the burning of coal mined on site. According to the Washington Post, federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration at least 63 times over the past two years, an extraordinary record of legal defeat that has blocked large parts of the presidents agenda on the environment and other matters. In case after case, judges have rebuked Trump officials for failing to follow the most basic rules of governance for shifting policy, including providing legitimate explanations supported by facts and, where required, public input. Two-thirds of the cases accuse the Trump administration of violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), a 72-year-old law that forms the primary bulwark against arbitrary rule. The normal win rate for the government in such cases is about 70%, according to analysts and studies. But as of mid-January, a database maintained by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law shows Trumps win rate at about 6%. More information... INDIANAPOLIS (WISH/AP) Indianapolis authorities have canceled a statewide silver alert for a missing Indianapolis 8-month-old. The FBI has also joined the search for Amiah Robertson. WISH-TV reports investigators were searching a stretch of the White River Wednesday. That may have turned up some articles linked to the infant. Police on Tuesday issued a statewide Silver Alert for the baby who was first reported missing Saturday by her family. Police said she is believed to be in extreme danger and may require medical assistance. Police say Amiahs family initially told investigators she had last been seen Thursday and was not believed to be in danger. That last sighting later was updated to Saturday. Police executed a search warrant Tuesday at a house on the west side of Indianapolis where Amiah was believed to have been left with a baby sitter by her mother's boyfriend. WISH-TV also reports Robert Lyons, the mother's boyfriend, was arrested on the same day Robertson was reported missing. He was arrested for criminal recklessness and leaving the scene of an accident. Witnesses and family members have described the charge against Robert Lyons as a domestic situation. They say the fight may have stemmed from some conflict over Amiah's paternity. Robertson is 23-inches tall, 13 pounds with blue eyes. If you have any information on Amiah Robertson, contact the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department at 317-327-6540 or 911. WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI) All Custom Plus Pharmacy owner Ben Rachwal wants is transparency and fairness. "Let's just uncover this story," said Rachwal. "Let's see where the money is going." He's talking about the money Pharmacy Benefit Managers or PBM's make. They control the cost of insurance company prescription claims. However, PBM aren't regulated and they aren't licensed. "Nobody knows what they're doing, it's the black box of the whole equation," said Rachwal. He said this secrecy would allow PBM's to pocket rebates from drug manufacturers to get on the preferred list. It's estimated that PBM's cost Hoosiers roughly 120 million dollars in Medicaid expenses. The practice is affecting taxpayers, prescription users and pharmacy owners. "We're losing money to fill prescriptions," said Rachwal. "That's the summary and that's not a good business model." In order to keep local pharmacies afloat and prices for consumers low, Rachwal said something needs to be done. U.S. Senator Mike Braun is proposing bills to help on the federal level but he knows it won't be easy. "I think there's going to be resistance and foot dragging but that's why I'm there," said Braun. "We have to thank him for taking up this cause," said Rachwal. "Because not a lot of people are aware that this is happening behind the scenes." Rachwal wants state lawmakers to get involved too. There's still hope for something to pass this session. "We're only asking for licensure and we are asking for transparency through annual reporting," said Rachwal. He doesn't think that's a lot to ask. "And if the estimates are correct, the state of Indiana is going to have a huge win!" said Rachwal. He encourages people to contact their state lawmakers. There are currently two house bills that are getting a hearing in the Senate next week that could contain PBM language. State Senator Ron Alting said he is already in support of transparency in this industry. He said he would likely vote yes on the bill. Explosion at Tata Steel plant in Netherlands injures four Four workers were injured in an explosion at the Tata Steel plant in Velsen-Noord, Noord Holland province, on March 20, according to the company. Those affected were undertaking maintenance, Tata said in a tweet, and were taken to hospital. The extent of their injuries is unknown. Tata Ijmuiden - Image: Shutterstock The accident took place during maintenance at the Kooks- en Gasfabriek 1 facility, part of the sprawling factory complex situated between IJmuiden and Wijk aan Zee. The explosion was first called in at about 11:15 a.m. Firefighter crews, at least two ambulances, and a helicopter trauma team were dispatched within a couple of minutes. Production was not interrupted by the incident, Tata said. The situation was reportedly brought under control by noon, and no toxic emissions were released. The cause of the blast is under investigation by the company and the state investigative agency Inspectie SZW. Contact Details and Archive... Women constitute about half of the world's population. Despite this fact, women are under-represented in government in many countries. The global participation rate of women in parliament in January 2017 was 23.3%. On the bright side, countries are exploring measures to increase the participation of women in government at all levels. As a result, women are increasingly being elected into office and are even holding presidentail posts. The Inter-Parliamentary Union has compiled a list of the countries with the largest percentage of women in the Lower House of government. The following are the countries with the most women in government as of January 1, 2019. Countries With the Most Women in Government Rwanda: 61.3% Rwanda is a developing country. With the countrys 2008 election, Rwanda became the 1st country to have the majority of women in the legislature. The increased number of women in the legislature was driven by a national conflict, the Rwanda Genocide, which killed 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days. After the genocide, the number of women in the legislature rose from 18% to 56% in 2008. The increase in female leadership was propelled by two pieces of legislation: the Rwandan Constitution (2003) which included a mandated quota of 30% reserved seats for all women in the legislature, and the Security Council Resolution 1325 which pressed women to participate in the post-conflict reconstruction. However, Rwanda still lacks spectacular gender equality in other aspects of society. Cuba: 53.2% Cuba ranks second with 53.2% of parliamentary seats in the Cuban National Assembly held by women. The Cuban constitution guarantees women the same opportunities as men in all fields, including politics. Bolivia: 53.1% This Latin American country has the third highest number of women in government. In fact, women hold the majority of Bolivias parliamentary seats, with 53.1% of women in the Lower House. Bolivia has made remarkable leaps in women representation, going from 12% in 2000 to 53.1% in 2019. Thanks to the 2010 constitutional changes with mandatory gender quotas, women must occupy at least half of all elected government positions. Other Countries with Women in Government Other countries that have been able to aim for gender parity in the parliament are Mexico (48.2%), Sweden (47.3%), Grenada (46.7%), Namibia (46.2%), Costa Rica (45.6%), Nicaragua (44.6%), and South Africa (42.7%). In contrast, the United States has only 23.5% of women in the Lower House. Even countries with women heads of state such as the United Kingdom and Germany ranked fairly low at 32% and 30.9% respectively. Human migration is a phenomenon whereby people move from one region to another with the aim of living in a new area temporarily or permanently. The most common form of migration occurs when individuals move from one area to another within the same country. An individual may choose to migrate on their own or as part of a larger unit which in most cases includes a group of related people. Migration experts do not consider movements by nomadic communities to be migrations as they only occur during specific seasons. Migration may happen for a variety of reasons such as people fleeing war-torn regions or looking for better economic opportunities. Due to the different nature of migration, some terms have been developed to describe the different types of migrants such as refugees, displaced people, and asylum seekers. Migration became more prevalent during the 20th century because of the improvement of transport systems around the world. Some events have also contributed to the massive waves of migration witnessed during these centuries. Industrialization One of the factors that contributed to significant migration was industrialization. The development of industrial technologies meant that jobs were more concentrated in some regions of the world than in others, which acted as a major pull factor for migrants. During the 20th century, massive improvements in the transportation industry were witnessed which also contributed to mass migration. Industrialization also contributed to colonization. Apart from people moving to the colonized countries, individuals also moved from the colonies to the colonizing nations. One of the areas that attracted vast numbers of people during the industrialization period was the United States. Internal Migration In The US Apart from people from different nations moving into the US, some of the migration during the industrial revolution period was internal. According to some estimates over a 60 year period, from 1910 to around 1970, more than 7 million African Americans moved from rural areas in the US, mainly in the southern areas, to settle in the more industrialized cities located in the Midwest and Western regions. Besides migrating in search of better economic prospects, African Americans also migrated to escape social prejudice prevalent in the southern areas of the US. Due to the massive number of people involved in the migration, historians refer to the phenomenon as the Great Migration. Wars During The 20th Century One of the significant causes of migration during the 20th century was conflict. The First and Second World Wars were two of the defining events of the 20th century as they affected the lives of millions. One of the communities that migrated as a result of the First World War was the Muslim community living in the Balkan region. A significant portion of the Muslim population left the Balkan area and settled in Turkey. In contrast, Christian communities moved from Turkey to the Balkan region. The Armenian community also fled from turkey due to the constant oppression by the Ottoman Empire. Another war that contributed to the migration of a large section of the population was the Russian Civil War. The war was one of the bloodiest in Russia's history as it resulted in the death of close to 8,000,000 people according to some estimates. To escape the bloodshed, more than 3,000,000 people fled from Russia. Some of the communities that fled the nation were the Poles, the Russians, and the Germans. During the Second World War, a massive number of Jewish people fled from Europe to avoid Nazi persecution. Potsdam Agreement After the Second World War ended, the victorious nations signed the Potsdam Agreement that resulted in one of the largest migrations ever witnessed within Europe's borders as more than 20,000,000 people were involved. One of the communities that were significantly affected was the Germans living in Eastern Europe. Estimates indicate that more than 16,000,000 Germans were forced to move from nations in Eastern and Central Europe back to their native home in Germany. The Second World War also resulted in several colonized nations gaining their independence. As a result of the countries gaining independence, several people from the colonizing nation moved back to their home countries. Another war that caused mass migration during the 20th century was the Rwandan Civil War. A large section of the Rwandese population moved to neighboring countries to escape the war. Partition Of India Another major event during the 20th century was the partition of India that resulted in the establishment of two distinct dominions, India and Pakistan. The two dominions would later become independent nations. Most of the people who migrated as a result of the partition moved due to their religious beliefs. The people who moved to Pakistan were mainly Muslims while the people who moved to India were typically Hindus and Sikhs. Migration is still prevalent in present-day India and Pakistan. The Impact Of Migration Migration has a significant effect on both the region where people are moving to and the regions where they are moving from especially if it involves vast numbers of people. In the region where people are moving from, there is a reduction in the available labor force which has a negative impact on the economy. On the other hand, in the region where people move to there is an increase in the available labor force. Mississippi is a US state that spans an area of 48,430 square miles in the countrys southeastern region. Native American communities have lived within the area of Mississippi since about 10,000 BCE. Despite the long history of human habitation in Mississippi, its borders only began taking shape after the arrival of Europeans into the region. The French were the first Europeans to settle in the present-day region of Mississippi during the early 18th century. The area later fell under the control of the British and the Spanish who also contributed to shaping the state's borders. In the modern era, Mississippi shares its borders with four other US states, namely Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Part of the state's southern boundary is also located along the Gulf of Mexico with 44 miles of coastline. Border with Alabama Alabama and Mississippi are separated by a border located on the eastern part of Mississippi. During the colonial era, the states of Mississippi and Alabama were both parts of the Mississippi Territory. The territory was split up in 1817 with the formation of the state of Mississippi and the territory of Alabama. Before the territory was split up, the state of Georgia claimed that the entire area should have been under its control. Georgia gave up its claim to the region in 1802. Congress created the boundary between Mississippi and Alabama and attempted to make the two territories have an equal area. Congress divided the agriculturally productive areas by drawing a straight line through them. The Tennessee River forms a small section of the border between Alabama and Mississippi. Congress decided to trace the path of the Tennessee River to ensure that all the land in Mississippi was on one side of the river. There are several major cities found on the Mississippi side of the border such as Luka, State Line, Columbus, and Leakesville. Detroit, Red Bay, and Waterloo are some of the major cities found on the Alabama side of the border. State Line is one of the unique cities in the US and it is located in two counties, Greene County and Wayne County. Columbus is one of Mississippi's major cities and it is the seat of Lowndes County. When the city of Columbus was founded, the residents thought it was in Alabama. The boundary between Mississippi and Alabama was corrected to place Columbus in Mississippi territory. Red Bay is a relatively young town in Alabama which was founded in 1907. In 2017, it was estimated that the city was home to about 3,086 people. Border with Louisiana The boundary that separates Louisiana and Mississippi is located in the western part of Mississippi. The border with Louisiana is one of Mississippi's longest boundaries. The Mississippi River forms a section of the boundary between the two states. Mississippi and Louisiana have often been involved in border dispute because of the changing course of the Mississippi River. The disputes between the two states have often been resolved by the Supreme Court such as in 1906, 1955, 1988, and 1995. Mississippi and Louisiana share several islands within the Mississippi River such as Togo Island, Davis Island, and Middle Ground Island. The changing shape of the Mississippi River has also resulted in Mississippi having control of several exclaves on the Louisiana side of the border. Louisiana has control of 8 exclaves on the Mississippi side of the border. Natchez, Vicksburg, and Picayune are some of the towns located on the Mississippi side of the border. Some of the major cities located on the Louisiana side of the border include Tallulah, Clinton, and Saint Joseph. Natchez is one of Mississippi's major cities and it is the seat of Adams County. Natchez is one of the oldest cities in the region and it was established in 1716 by the French. Natchez was named after a tribe of Native Americans that had inhabited the region for a long period. Tallulah is one of Louisiana's major cities and it is the seat of Madison Parish. The city was established during the antebellum period and was a major target of Union forces during the American civil war. Border with Tennessee Mississippi shares its entire northern border with Tennessee. Several rivers cross the boundary between the two states with the Mississippi River being the major one. Mississippi and Tennessee have had a relatively cordial relationship although, in 2014, Mississippi filed a lawsuit against Tennessee in the Supreme Court. The leaders of Mississippi claimed that the water being used in Tennessee came from Mississippi, and they demanded that Tennessee pay Mississippi damages. On the other hand, the leaders of Tennessee believed that the water was an interstate resource and requested the Supreme Court to decide how much water should be allocated to each state. By the end of 2018, the Supreme Court had not given a verdict on the issue. There are several major cities on the Mississippi side of the border such as Horn Lake, Olive Branch, and Corinth. Collierville and Germantown are some of the major cities located on the Tennessee side of the border. Horn Lake is a relatively large city in Mississippi and it covers an area of about 16 square miles and was home to approximately 27,095 in 2017. Germantown is an essential city in Tennessee and it was home to about 39,056 people in 2016. Border with Arkansas Arkansas borders Mississippi on its northwestern region. The Mississippi River forms a significant portion of the boundary between Arkansas and Mississippi. The boundary between the two states dates back to the late 18th century when the US and Spain signed a treaty marking their boundaries. Some of the major towns located on the Mississippi side of the border include Clarksdale, Rosedale, and Greenville. Arkansas City, Lake Village, and Helena are some of the cities situated on the Arkansas side of the border. Clarksdale is a major city in Mississippi and it is the seat of Coahoma County. The town was named after John Clark who established it during the mid-19th century. Arkansas City is one of the smallest cities in Arkansas and it covers an area of about 0.5 square miles and was home to 325 people in 2017. The Importance of Mississippi's Borders The borders of Mississippi are important because they reflect an important part of the state's history. The boundaries are also significant because they mark the limits of the jurisdiction of the Mississippi government. The Party official made the statement in Hanoi while receiving a delegation from the National Economic Research Institute (NERI) of Laos, led by its head Bouasone Bouphavanh, in Hanoi on March 20. Politburo member Binh spoke highly of the Lao delegations working visit and congratulated Laos on its significant achievements after three years of implementing the Resolution of the 10th National Congress of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party. Vietnam always treasures and gives priority to the development of Vietnam-Laos special relations, he affirmed. The great friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Laos have been nurtured and passed down to many generations of leaders and people of the two nations over the years, he added. Bouasone Bouphavanh, who is also former Prime Minister of Laos, lauded Vietnams socio-economic achievements over the recent years. He also expressed his hope that cooperative ties between the NERI and Vietnamese agencies will reap positive outcomes in the coming time. (HedgeCo.Net The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a Long Beach, Calif. investment adviser with stealing millions of dollars from investors to perpetrate a Ponzi scheme. The SEC alleges that Carol Ann Pedersen, a former CPA and unregistered investment adviser, raised at least $29 million from 25 investors, falsely promising to invest their money in securities. Pedersen told prospective investors that she would place their money in federally guaranteed securities with returns typically greater than 8%. Pedersen also solicited investments in the C.A. Pedersen Client Investment Pool, a limited partnership managed by Pedersen that she claimed owned a large and diverse stock portfolio. According to the complaint, rather than make the promised investments, Pedersen used about $25.6 million to make Ponzi-style payments to investors, and the remaining funds to pay for personal expenses including car payments and home renovation costs. To conceal her fraudulent scheme, Pedersen provided investors with fabricated account statements that falsely represented that their money had been invested and was earning a return. Pedersens scheme fell apart in 2017 when she began to experience chronic cash flow problems and investors sued her. In a separate action, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California today announced criminal charges arising from the same conduct. The SECs complaint, filed in federal district court in Los Angeles, California, charges Pedersen with violating the antifraud provisions of Section 17(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder, and Sections 206(1), 206(2) and 206(4) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 and Rule 206(4)-8 thereunder. Pedersen has agreed to the entry of a final judgment in which she consents to injunctive relief and to be liable for approximately $2.7 million in disgorgement and interest, which will be deemed satisfied by the anticipated entry of a restitution order against her in the criminal action. The final judgment also does not order a penalty against Pedersen in light of her anticipated guilty plea and conviction. The settlement is subject to court approval. The Finnish government cautiously welcomed the recent news that the economy is finally in full recovery mode . Employment levels are close to record heights, wage growth is outstripping inflation, and job creation is accelerating at a pace not seen since before the financial crash. While storm clouds still remain and growth is still faltering, there is some space for optimism. According to the latest sets of statistics, Finnish households and individual consumers are spending more than ever on so-called "non-essentials", such as recreation, eating out, and travel. Whilst this may in part reflect rising prices, the scale of the increases in certain areas suggests that Finns now have more disposable income than at any point since the 2008 crash and are more than happy to spend it. Finland is also spending more on essentials, particularly housing, with rental and mortgage prices in major population centres rising sharply in the past couple of years. In order to give a more detailed picture, we've compiled a comprehensive list of how Finnish households are spending their pay packets, according to the data. Rents are Rising Faster Than Wages Perhaps unsurprisingly, especially to those living in the capital, the cost of renting an apartment has risen steadily over the course of the last decade. The average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in an "average" neighbourhood in Helsinki is now close to 1000 euros, with more centrally located apartments often renting for several times that amount. Similarly, real estate prices in Finland's biggest cities have been rising steadily over the past few years, whilst declining in more sparsely-populated areas. This has been largely attributed to accelerating internal migration shifts, which have seen much of the rural areas and smaller towns empty out as people flock to the main economic centres in pursuit of opportunities. By some estimates, over half of the country will be living in Helsinki, Tampere, and Turku by 2030, whilst the population of the Greater Helsinki Area is projected to hit 1.7 million, up from 1.4 million today. Last year, the think-tank Pellervo Economic Research calculated that rents across Finland were rising faster than the cost of any other consumer good, far outstripping wage growth. This means that in 2019 most Finnish people are having to hand over a higher proportion of their pay to their landlords than before. People Are Spending (Slightly) Less on Alcohol A furious debate was ignited last year when it was agreed that supermarkets would be permitted to sell alcohol with a volume of up to 5.5%. Anti-drinking activists predicted that this would lead to a surge in alcohol consumption. However, while a slight uptick was recorded when the law was first introduced, it seems that the years-long trend among Finns of spending less on alcohol has continued apace. Sales of weaker drinks such as Lonkero and beer are up, but overall Finns are continuing to spend less and less of their income on alcoholic beverages. Interestingly, expenditure on non-alcoholic drinks has been rising sharply, suggesting that a wider cultural shift might be taking place. Finns Still Love to Gamble The decades-old penchant for gambling in Finland has continued to grow, with Finnish households still spending more of their income on slot machines and video poker than almost any other country in Europe. Whilst household spending on gambling declined somewhat in the years immediately following the financial crash, Finns now spend around 2 billion euros a year on real-money gaming, with close to 80% of the population gambling at least once a year. Eating Out is Becoming More Common One sure sign of rising prosperity can be found within Finland's booming restaurant industry. According to the latest OECD data, Finns spent over 7 billion euros last year on dining out, a record high that is almost one third higher than the amount spent in 2008. Rising incomes and employment certainly have a major role, but another factor may be a considerable increase in the choice and availability of restaurants in Finnish cities. Helsinki itself is currently in the midst of a culinary renaissance, having bagged a record number of Michelin stars in 2019 and placing itself firmly on the map for foodies across the world. Dining out in Finland is still notoriously expensive, but it seems that Finns are more than happy to pay. Transport Costs Are Rising Sharply According to the same OECD data, Finns are now spending a record amount on transport. Car ownership is slowly declining, given the prohibitive costs of owning and insuring an automobile, but rising petrol costs combined with a steady uptick in public transport prices mean that Finns are left with little choice. Public transport in the capital is actually more affordable than in many other major European cities, but transport costs in cities such as Turku and Tampere are higher than the European average. Price increases have certainly been more modest than in many other EU countries, with places such as the UK and France experiencing significantly higher increases, but the fact remains that Finns are spending more on transportation than ever before. For better or worse, Finns are spending more money. Whether this will translate into meaningful gains for the economy remains to be seen, but it's clear that Finns have more money to spend than they have had for a while. HT Images: Lehtikuva Following the March 15 terrorist attack by Australian fascist Brenton Tarrant, who killed 50 people in two Christchurch mosques motivated by hatred of immigrants and Muslims, the political establishment and media in New Zealand, Australia, the US and Europe have sought to wash their hands of any responsibility for the massacre. The gunman is being falsely presented as someone who acted alone and whose extremism had nothing to do with the right-wing, anti-immigrant policies advocated for decades by the media and capitalist politicians. Seeking to cover its tracks, New Zealands opposition National Party removed a link from its website to a petition opposing the recent UN Migration agreement. Media outlets such as Newstalk ZB have reportedly been removing articles from website archives demonising Muslims. The media and government are largely blaming the tragedy on social media and demanding a crackdown on the ability to upload live videos. A major element of the campaign to divert attention from the real causes of the terrorist attack is the near-universal glorification of NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Arderns inspirational leadership. A nationalist personality cult is being promoted around Ardern in order to drown out any discussion of the role played by the Labour Party, and every party in parliament, in promoting anti-immigrant xenophobia to divide the working class and deflect blame for the social crisis created by capitalism. On Tuesday the New York Times, the US newspaper of record, aligned with the Democrats, published an article by Sushil Aaron, Why Jacinda Ardern Matters, which declared that Arderns moral clarity is inspiring the world. New Zealands prime minister, Aaron declared, is emerging as the definitive progressive antithesis to the crowded field of right-wing strongmen like President Trump, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Narendra Modi of India, whose careers thrive on illiberal, anti-Muslim rhetoric. As evidence, Aaron pointed to Arderns expressions of sympathy at vigils and meetings with victims families. He also cited the prime ministers suggestion that Trump should show sympathy and love for all Muslim communities. This lame comment is being falsely depicted as a major rebuke to Trump, a fascistic figure who has deliberately stoked anti-Muslim bigotry and was seen by the Christchurch terrorist as a symbol of white renewal. The Times article largely resembles a travel advertisement for New Zealand, depicting the country as a liberal paradise with a national culture unlike any other in Europe or the Americas, beautiful scenery, parks, libraries and modest healthcare and education costs. Outrageously, Aaron claims that migrants face only subtle forms of exclusion in New Zealand and there is a vibrant political debate on immigration and about the need to import skilled labor without provoking domestic tensionsall conducted without rancor or vitriol. The entire article is a pack of lies and distortions. Like similar articles in the UK Guardian and the New Zealand and Australian media, the New York Times does not mention the fact that the Labour Party has for years worked in an alliance with the right-wing nationalist NZ First Party, the main promoter of anti-immigrant, anti-Chinese and anti-Muslim demagogy. Labour has adopted NZ Firsts policies, including demands for major reductions in immigration. As in Europe, India and the US, right-wing nationalists have been actively promoted within New Zealand and are now at the centre of the government. The Labour Party and the Greens contested the 2014 and 2017 elections in an alliance with NZ First and the three parties formed a coalition government in October 2017. Far from being the antithesis of the Trump administration, as the Times would have it, the Labour-NZ First-Greens coalition deal was backed by Washington. Following the election, Trumps appointed ambassador Scott Brown publicly criticised the previous National Party government for its reluctance to fully endorse Trumps threats against North Korea, and made clear that the next government should align more strongly with the US build-up to war against China. NZ First, which only received 7.2 percent of the votes, was given unprecedented power by Ardern. Its leader Winston Peters was made foreign minister and deputy prime minister. NZ Firsts Ron Mark became the defence minister. The Ardern government significantly strengthened the alliance with the US. Its 2018 defence policy statement adopted the Trump administrations description of Russia and China as the main threats to global stability. Peters has called on the US to increase its military presence in the Pacific to push back against China, while supporting a media-led witch-hunt against Chinese influence in New Zealand. Peters told the media on Tuesday that the Christchurch atrocity was committed by a person who is not a New Zealander, is utterly contrary to our core beliefs. On the same day, however, he refused to retract his past anti-Muslim statements, including a 2005 speech in which he said New Zealand has never been a nation of Islamic immigrants, and accused moderate Muslims of working hand and glove with militants who threatened the Christian faith. Labour and the Greens made no criticism of Peters stance. In June 2016, after Peters delivered another chauvinist rant accusing the Islamic community of harbouring extremists, Green and Labour MPs hypocritically denounced his statements as shameful and disgraceful. At the same time, however, Greens leader James Shaw told TVNZ: I feel very comfortable with the idea that we may end up working with NZ First in government. The climate of anti-Muslim racism which helped produce the fascist attack in Christchurch has been deliberately created to justify the US-led war on terror, which successive Australian and New Zealand governments have supported over the past two decades. The Ardern government has kept soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they have been implicated in massacres of civilians. More than a million people have died in these brutal imperialist wars. The Labour Party has always used nationalism and anti-immigrant policies to divide the working class. Following the 2008 financial crash, Labour supported the then-National Party governments austerity measures, which led to soaring social inequality, and repeatedly sought to divert blame onto immigrants. In 2015, Labour notoriously scapegoated people with Chinese sounding names for New Zealands lack of affordable housing, caused by rampant speculation. The Ardern government banned foreigners from buying houses. It also restricted the ability of foreign students to work in New Zealand, after NZ First and the trade unions attacked them for taking jobs from Kiwi workers. Then-Labour leader Andrew Little declared in 2017 it was too easy [for employers] to get somebody from overseas and keep locals out of work. Such nationalist rhetoric failed to boost the partys support in the working class, where it is widely seen as a party of war and big business, just like National. The working class is increasingly international in character, with one in four New Zealand residents born overseas. Ardern was made leader just two months before the 2017 election in a desperate bid to save the party from a disastrous defeat. Despite a media campaign to promote her as progressive, based on her youth and her gender, Labour only received 36 percent of the votes and could only form a government with NZ First and the Greens. Since then, Ardern has been glorified in the international media, including for having a baby while in office, which was ludicrously presented as a major step forward for women workers. A September 8, 2018 article in the New York Times described Arderns victory as a preview of what could be possible in the US, where a stampede of womenincluding young mothersis seeking office in 2018. The right-wing character of such identity politics, central to the Democratic Party, is revealed in New Zealand, where the purpose of Arderns feminism is to provide a progressive facade to a pro-war, anti-working class government. The posturing of Ardern and the Labour Party as opponents of anti-Muslim xenophobia and racism is an attempt to cover up the fact that every establishment party in New Zealand, Australia, Europe and the US has helped to create the foul political atmosphere in which fascists and right-wing nationalists have grown. Fascism can only be defeated by the international working class, united in a socialist struggle against the capitalist system, which is the source of austerity, nationalism and imperialist war. Brazil, one of the most unequal and violent countries in the world, was left stunned a week ago on Wednesday by the brutality of a school shooting in the city of Suzano, in the industrial belt surrounding Sao Paulo. Two former students of the Raul Brasil State School, one aged 17 and the other 25, opened fire during a class break, killing five students and two school officials and wounding 17 others, before the 17-year-old shot his older accomplice and killed himself as the police arrived. It soon emerged that another murder in the city minutes earlier, of the 17-year-olds uncle, was the beginning of the rampage. This week, police announced the provisional detention of another 17-year-old youth, charged with helping to organize the massacre. As the police and media investigation into the reasons for the massacre and the profiles of the shooters began, it immediately became clear that deep social alienation had been a major factor in their lives for a long time. Despite the age difference, the two had been friends from an early age and shared a considerable portion of their lives together playing video games at a local LAN gaming center, where workers told investigators they mostly played so-called shooting games, as do most of those who go there. While the older shooter, Luiz Henrique de Castro, had graduated from the school, the younger one, Guilherme Taucci de Monteiro, had dropped out a year ago, telling his parents and grandparents, with whom he lived, that he couldnt bear the feeling of social awkwardness and exclusion. His family, itself in considerable social distress as a result of the mother being unemployed for two years and also suffering from severe drug addiction, was unable to help. The conditions affecting his family are widespread in the city, at the center of a growing rust belt in Sao Paulos far east, in which no less than 25 percent of families are recipients of poverty relief benefits, and industry and trade are facing a slow recovery from a 43 percent collapse. According to family members, despite the long build-up of Monteiros distress, the death of his grandmother three months ago plunged him into what appeared to be severe depression. Much evidence, including social media posts, has also shown that the shooters had grown increasingly close to the far-right milieu, including to the online defenders of unabashed police violence in Brazil and promoters of violent threats against public figures associated with the left, and, not least, those targeted by Brazils fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro himself. At some point, Monteiro started adopting American neo-Nazi symbols, including the skull balaclava that he wore when he invaded the Raul Brasil school, and which is worn by members of the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division in the US. An active line of investigation is being pursued into what extent the shooters had been involved with dark web chanslike those used by the fascist terrorist of Christchurch, where, in the wake of the massacre, monitors have detected not only messages of celebration, but also the emergence of messages being attributed to the shooters in Brazil. In the official reactions from authorities and media, broader social issues remained the great unmentionable. For the know-nothings in the government and media, no word was warranted about the Brazilian social apartheid that is fueling civil-war levels of youth deaths in drug wars, countless state-sponsored police murders and the locking-up of 700,000 people, who live in constant terror of being decapitated in another riot in the veritable dungeons that constitute the countrys prison system. While city and state authorities immediately issued perfunctory condolence statements. The fascistic president Jair Bolsonaro took six hours to post a statement on social media, predictably calling the massacre an act of incomparable monstrosity and cowardice. The Supreme Court president issued a dismissive statement in which he absurdly claimed that this kind of violence is not part of our culture. Meanwhile, in Congress, politicians reduced the massacre to the questions of either gun control or the arming of teachers. Leaders and members of Congress from the Workers Party (PT) and Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), acting with the minds of petty state bureaucrats, issued mealy-mouthed statements, peppered with cheap psychoanalysis, about it being necessary to end the culture of violence, which presents guns as a purveyor of power. Much more significant, however, was the bankrupt and reactionary response of what passes for the progressive press, as expressed in Folha de S. Paulos opinion pages, where the consensus was that reporting on the issue only encouraged future tragedies, and that attempting to reflect on wider underlying issues such as inequality, unemployment and the generally violent relations under capitalism was a distraction from the problems of patriarchy and entitlement, as well as the suffering of the victims. Such opinions were expressed against the ominous backdrop of a statement by Sao Paulos Public Attorneys office announcing that it is seeking to bring terrorism charges against anyone involved in the attack, unleashing the draconian 2016 anti-terror law approved by the PT. The measure would set a precedent for the witch-hunt of hundreds of thousands of people sharing, in one way or another, gun-related material the Attorney Generals office considers akin to that shared by the assailants. Expressing the lurch to the right by the upper middle class, cultural critic Nelson de Sa quickly reacted to the tragedy with unmistakable #MeToo language, writing: contrary to American journalism, we in Brazil still havent learned that the protagonists in this kind of story are the victims, not the assassins. In other words, any attempt to understand what motivated two youth to kill others and then take their own lives is forbidden, and the public must accept that such tragedies just happen. Another reactionary piece was written by the papers Ombundsman, who gained notoriety during the election for criticizing Folhas editorial board for not classifying Bolsonaro as a far-right politician. Defending Sas line of reasoning, she related the Suzano tragedy with the Christchurch attack, asking rhetorically about the Australian fascists manifesto: what is the point of reporting someones amateurish evaluation of the effect of race mixing on a nations development? In other words, the Brazilian public must not be warned of the international fascist danger. Another high-profile piece posted by Folha was a 2018 New York Times article by Frank Bruni that blames all such tragediesas well as Bolsonaros electionon the internet, and concludes with a call for censorship: I dont know exactly how we square free speech and free expressionwhich are paramountwith a better policing of the internet, but Im certain that we need to approach that challenge with more urgency than we have mustered so far. Democracy is at stake. So are lives. Such privileged layers, with nothing by contempt for the public in general and the working class in particular, are shifting ever further rightward. They are terrified that such supposedly incomprehensible tragedies are pushing broad layers of the population to see and react against the whole of capitalist irrationality, as shown by the outpouring of solidarity for the slain children. Fifteen thousand people attended their collective funeral. As for the reaction of the parents, one of them told the press: It never crossed my mind not to forgive the assailants. They are kids. They too are victims. He added: Dealing with them was first their familys responsibility. But if the family cant help, what is to be done? The army of petty-bourgeois identity politics pseudo-leftists are determined to suppress such questions. Their thoroughly reactionary response includes the assertion by Vice News that the attack was typical of someone feeling wronged for not having what was promised to him [as a man]: a fancy job, high salary and sex with beautiful women. Similarly, Marcelo Hailer in Revista Forum stated that toxic masculinity killed the Suzano students, adding that this masculinity promises a world of conquest for heterosexual men. It never occurs to these misanthropes that far more than a world of conquests is missing for millions of youthparticularly in deindustrialized towns like Suzano. More and more, the logical conclusion of this pseudo-left interpretation of the tragedy coincides with that of the far rightthe youth who carried out the shootings were monsters. A break with such reactionary views and the pseudo-left organizations which promote them is ever more urgent, as the far-right is openly targeting youth in Brazil and internationally in anticipation of major class struggles, and the Bolsonaro government is seeking to rally a far-right base by constantly appealing for parents, and even students, to denounce Marxist indoctrination by teachers and professors. This campaign is being closely coordinated with the international far right. This was shown in Bolsonaros US visit, which included meetings with both Steve Bannon and the Virginia-based fascistic charlatan Olavo de Carvalho. Supported by powerful corporate backers, right-wingers supporting the campaign have already pushed the PT and the pseudo-left out of two major student unions, in Rio Grande do Sul in the far south and in the capital Brasilia, while Bolsonaro supporters have just finished their first Conservative Students Congress, hailing Brazils military dictatorships murderers and promising to escalate the witch hunt against socialism. There is no doubt that such a fascistic campaign had its role in the channeling of the two shooters social alienation into such extreme anti-social behavior. The Suzano tragedy has exposed the dismissive attitude of the PT and its satellites towards broader issues, which has in itself facilitated the official red-baiting. Despite their claims to be an anti-fascist opposition to Bolsonaro, these organizations have never missed an opportunity to answer far-right rants and threats by Bolsonaro and his supporters by completely dissociating themselves from socialism. The plantation workers conference convened by the Abbotsleigh Estate Workers Action Committee and the Socialist Equality Party at Hatton Town Hall in Sri Lanka on March 17 unanimously passed the following resolutions. Free Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange immediately! This conference condemns the joint conspiracy of the US, British and Australian imperialist powers against principled journalist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange and American whistleblower Chelsea Manning, and demands their immediate and unconditional release. While adding our voice to the worldwide campaign of the Socialist Equality Parties and the World Socialist Web Site to mobilise workers, youth and concerned intellectuals to free Assange and Manning, we wholeheartedly appeal to the multi-millioned masses of the South Asian region to join this struggle. By putting their lives on the line to reveal the military crimes of US imperialism in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries worldwide, Assange and Manning have rendered an invaluable service to the people of the world. We understand that imperialism is trying to persecute Assange and Manning and set an example of the punishment that will be used against all those who oppose its crimes and conspiracies. As working people we have suffered a 30-year bloody civil war against the countrys Tamil minority, and have also passed through a period of intensified attacks on democratic rights in the decade since the war ended in 2009. Now the pro-imperialist ruling class of this country is determined to make this island a centre of US war preparations against China and is working systematically to curb the democratic rights of the masses for that purpose. This conference firmly endorses the assessment of the SEP and WSWS that freedom for Assange and Manning can only be ensured through a unified movement of the international working class. We pledge to give all possible support to build this campaign. Release jailed Maruti-Suzuki workers! Two years ago, on 18 March 2017, a court in Gurgaon, India, following a protracted legal frame-up, sentenced 13 workers from car manufacturer Maruti-Suzuki to lifetime imprisonment. Four workers were sentenced to five-year terms and another 14 given three-year terms. This plantation workers conference called by the Abbotsleigh Estate Action Committee and the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka) extends its fullest support to the campaign being conducted by the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site to demand the immediate release of the 13 Maruti Suzuki workers joined for life and the 18 others imprisoned on lesser sentences. These workers were framed up in a bogus case concocted by management of the car manufacturer, the police and judicial officers, accusing them of being responsible for the death of a human resources manager during a workers struggle that flared up in 2012 at a Maruti-Suzuki assembly plant in Manesar, Haryana State, near the Indian capital New Delhi. The then Indian Congress government and the current Bharatiya Janata Party government supported this dreadful act. These workers are entirely innocent. Their only crime was to challenge the brutal workplace conditions imposed by the Japanese-based multi-national corporation with the full backing of the trade union scabs loyal to the company. The repression of the Maruti-Suzuki workers is a part of the onslaught of crisis-ridden world capitalism against the social and democratic rights of the international working class. This is the context in which militant estate workers in Sri Lanka have been sacked in an attempt to break the justified struggle of plantation workers for a pay rise, and police brutality is being unleashed against the struggles of teachers and students. This conference appeals to workers worldwide, and all who defend the democratic rights, to come forward and support the determined Maruti-Suzuki workers and demand their immediate release. Around 1,800 waterside workers at stevedoring company DP World Australias (DPWA) container terminals in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle are set to begin a campaign of industrial action this Friday, endorsed in a union-organised ballot. The industrial action proposed by the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) includes a series of rolling bans on overtime, shift extensions, accepting late call-ins on advanced or delayed start times, and on employees working above normal grades. Strike action, if it occurs, would be restricted to one-hour stoppages in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Longer strikes, of up to 24 hours, may be held in Fremantle. Facing deepening competition, DPWA is seeking to maximise its market share and profits by drastically slashing costs at the expense of its workforce. In the bargaining process for a new enterprise agreement (EA), after the previous deal expired in February, the company has demanded that the MUA abandon its entire log of claims, including restrictions on the use of casual labour. It has also rejected calls for a 15 percent pay increase over three years. Instead, the company has offered just 2.6 percent annually, an amount that bears no relationship to the rapidly rising cost of living. DPWA is also insisting that the workers accept the rollover of the previous regressive agreement brokered by the MUA, thereby ruling out any improvement in working conditions. Moreover, it has threatened it will not renew union-controlled income protection arrangements, which were included in the 2014 EA. In a statement to employees, newly appointed DPWA chief executive Glen Hilton insisted that a 15 percent pay rise was completely out of touch with the companys financial outlook. I will not support an EA outcome that continues to disadvantage DP Worlds competitive position, when compared to Patricks, Hutchison Ports and VICT, Hilton declared. While DPWA is denying it has the capacity to provide any improvement in pay, and claims to be struggling financially, it is part of the highly profitable global stevedoring group DP World, whose profit increased 10 percent last year to $1.29 billion. Its revenue jumped to $5.6 billion, from $4.7 billion the year before. A significant part of the revenue growth came from a number of acquisitions last year. These included Continental Warehousing Corporation (CWC) in India and Unifeeder and P&O Ferries in Europe. DP World is seeking to diversify into logistics and other areas of the supply chain, while reducing costs at its port operations. DP Worlds group chairman and CEO Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem made clear that the attacks being carried out at the company were part of a planned assault on workers conditions across its global operations. In recent comments to the media, he said the global company aimed to integrate our new acquisitions and drive synergies across the portfolio with the objective of removing inefficiencies in global trade, improving the quality of our earnings and driving returns. The MUA and its national secretary Paddy Crumlin have demagogically postured as opponents of DP Worlds attacks. At the same time, however, they have signalled their willingness to strike a sell-out agreement, as they have during every previous dispute. Last month, Crumlin pointed to the unions role in imposing company demands in the 2014 EA, declaring wages were restrained in the last round of negotiations setting DP World Australia up for massive profits. The primary concern of the union, as always, is to maintain its privileged position as an industrial police force and labour bargaining agency, negotiating away workers jobs, wages and conditions for its own benefit. The MUA is particularly fearful that the abolition of the income protection scheme will deprive it of a lucrative stream of financial resources. The real purpose of the unions current proposals for limited industrial action is to allow the rank and file to let of steam, while the union tops manoeuvre to reach an agreement in line with the companys demands. A new round of negotiations was due to begin no March 26, but the management has refused to participate while industrial action or the threat of stoppages is underway. The union could well invoke this stand-off as justification for calling off the campaign, by declaring it to be necessary in order to bring the company back to the negotiating table. Such ruses have been used many, many times before, enabling the unions and major companies to shut down industrial action in the midst of disputes. The MUA is already working to contain this current dispute within the restrictive confines of the draconian Fair Work (FW) industrial laws, which were introduced by the former Labor government in 2009, with the full support of the unions. It has enforced the order handed down last month by the pro-business Fair Work Commission, requiring the union to give an unprecedented five-day notice of intended industrial action. This is aimed at ensuring that any bans or stoppages have minimum impact on DPWAs operations. At the same time, the union is utilising the countrys FW laws to prevent any unified struggle by workers at DPWA with their colleagues at Hutchison Ports container terminals in Sydney and Brisbane, who are also currently in dispute over a new work agreement. Nor has the MUA called for workers at rival companies, such as Patrick, to take any supportive industrial action. The destruction of conditions, intensification of labour processes and growing casualisation across Australian ports are the direct outcome of a decades-long collaboration between the unions and the stevedoring and shipping companies over the past three decades. More than three decades ago, the Waterside Workers Federation (WWF), the MUAs predecessor, enforced the Hawke Labor governments 198791 Waterfront Industry Reform, which eliminated 4,500 jobs. And one betrayal after another followed it. The MUA, formed through the amalgamation of the WWF and the Seamens Union of Australia in 1993, sold out the 1998 struggle of port workers against sweeping attacks by the Patrick stevedoring company, resulting in the destruction of another 1,400 port jobs and a major expansion in the use of casual labour. This then became the basis for further union enforced attacks across the waterfront, and for the ever growing levels of casualisation that are now endemic in the industry. The record demonstrates that workers at DPWA and Hutchison Ports can go forward only by breaking with the union and establishing new organisations of struggle, including independent rank-and-file committees. These committees would act to end union-imposed isolation and to organise coordinated industrial and political action by all port and stevedoring workers, along with other sections of the working class in Australia and internationally. Above all, workers need a newsocialistperspective, aimed at establishing a workers government that would place the ports, shipping and other basic industries, along with the banks and major corporations, under public ownership and democratic workers control. The author also recommends: Australian maritime union betrays Hutchison workers [18 November 2015] MOT on Monday reported that 84 of the 152 foreign citizens who were the subject of a criminal deportation request were ordered to be removed from the country by the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri). The remaining 64 foreign citizens, on the other hand, were allowed to stay in the country on a temporary basis. ROUGHLY A THIRD of requests to deport a foreign citizen on grounds of a sex crime conviction were rejected in Finland in 2018, according to MOT, a team of investigative journalists at YLE. Migri considered a total of 37 cases in which the subject of the request had been found guilty of at least one sex crime, according to the public broadcasting company. Two-thirds (25) of the people were deported, while the remaining 12 were allowed to stay in Finland. MOT also revealed that in many cases the request to deport a person convicted of sex crimes was denied on grounds of the situation in the subjects country of origin. The Finnish legislation stipulates that no one can be deported or sent back to a country where they may be in mortal danger or face persecution, or to a country where they would remain in need of international protection. Other factors that may weigh in the decision include the subjects life situation in Finland. The legislation states that a criminal deportation can be carried out in circumstances where an alien has been convicted of a crime carrying a maximum punishment of at least one year in prison or repeated offences. Prime Minister Juha Sipilas (Centre) government unveiled its action plan for preventing and combating sex crimes last month, pledging to draft amendments to the aliens act that allow authorities to withdraw international protection from a person who has been found guilty of a serious offence in Finland. Aleksi Teivainen HT Source: Uusi Suomi Thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes as communities throughout the US Midwest experience historic flooding events. States of emergency have been declared in four states, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin and South Dakota. As of this writing, four people have died, while thousands remain in emergency shelters or trapped in their homes, surrounded by water. Seventy out of 99 counties in Nebraska are under state-issued emergency declarations, as are 41 of Iowas 99 counties. In both states, melting snow, ice jams, and falling rain have engorged river systems with rushing water that has overwhelmed insufficient levee systems and destroyed outdated dams. The flooding, which began last week, but was predicted weeks in advance, will continue throughout the week and into spring, as snow and ice melts while rain continues to fall. According to the National Weather Service, flooding has impacted approximately 9 million people in 14 states. A record-setting winter snowfall season followed by last week's bomb cyclone, which brought high winds and heavy snow across the Midwest, in conjunction with warming temperatures, proved to be a deadly combination that has overwhelmed neglected infrastructure and transportation systems. The latest environmental and social crisis, exacerbated by climate change, will have devastating effects on local farming economies. Meteorologists have documented a 15 and 20 percent increase in rainfall in the Upper Midwest in recent decades. The frequency of high impact rainfall has nearly doubled in the same timeframe. The message is clear: just as hurricanes and tropical storms have increased in intensity, flooding events in the Midwest are expected to increase as well. Flooding events in the United States will increase food prices on a global scale. The Midwest and Great Plains states, including Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota and Minnesota, contain some of the most productive and valuable agricultural land in the country. In Nebraska early estimates place the economic losses to farmers from the current flooding, primarily centered on corn and livestock, at over $1 billion, with that number expected to rise. The flooding along the Missouri and Mississippi flood plains has compromised approximately 210 miles of the federal levee system in four states, making travel arduous or impossible for residents seeking to find shelter or return home and assess damages. In addition to overflowing levees, at least two dams have been compromised. The Spencer Dam, located on the Niobrara River in Nebraska, was destroyed last week, leading to at least one fatality. Vice President Mike Pence conducted a flyby of the submerged Nebraska plains and briefly stopped in Omaha for photo opportunities with local government officials on Tuesday. Pence assured those in attendance that once he returned to Washington, D.C. federal disaster declarations would be expedited. Despite Pences rehearsed remarks workers can be assured that whatever funds are made available after the fact will be severely lacking and difficult to access, while lucrative rebuilding contracts will be made available to campaign contributors and connected business interests. The flooding has been particularly devastating to rural farmers in the affected area, many of whom were already teetering on financial ruin. Bankruptcy among farmers rose by 19 percent across the region in 2018, including in Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin. Dairy farmers, already in a precarious financial situation as milk prices continue drop due to escalating trade war tariffs between the United States and China, have been forced to dump thousands of gallons of milk, with some farmers forced to quit the industry all together. Farms that havent been inundated with floods arent safe from the effects of the deluge. Vital rail and road infrastructure used to transport feed, grain and livestock has been washed away, isolating the farmers from local and global markets. In Nebraska, over 40 state and federal highways remain closed due to flooding. In some cases National Guard troops have been airlifting in hay and feed to prevent a mass culling of livestock. Even so, farmers are reporting massive losses as thousands of animals have either been trapped in overflowing barns or swept away by rushing water. The Army of Corps of Engineers has warned that flooding will continue and that a majority of the federal levee systems are compromised ... along the Missouri River from the confluence of the Platte River to Rulo, Nebraska. In 2011, following a major flood that breached a two-mile-long levee in Hamburg, Iowa, residents took matters into their own hands and raised the height of the levee to prevent future flooding. Federal officials however, intervened against this act of self-preservation and ordered the locals to reduce the size of the levee to pre-flood levels unless they were willing to make an additional $5.5 million in improvements. This proved to be too costly for the small town so the levee was lowered. Hamburg residents such as Lana Brandt, 70, are flummoxed as to the government's intentions, now that Hamburg, eight years later, is once again under water. The government made us tear the top off of the levee and bring it down to stump size...and so the waters rushing over the levee now, Brandt told The Daily Nonpareil. Whereas, if we had been able to keep that levee, we might have been able to keep our community dry, and we wouldnt lose businesses and property and crops. This is huge. While workers and farmers are forced to pack sandbags and erect dirt berms in order to protect their lives and homes, the federal government is flying in hundreds of feet of retaining walls to protect military assets located at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. A 740 foot-long, four-foot-tall system of barriers was flown in from Louisiana to the base overnight on Sunday to protect flight simulators from being flooded. The long-term effects of the massive cleanup that will be required will include innumerable environmental impacts on farmers and communities. Waterlogged fields will need to be dried before spring planting can begin, lest fields rot, mold over or fail entirely. The flooding has produced a dangerous concoction of industrial chemicals and pesticides that has covered hundreds of miles of farmland and seeped into the walls of homes, schools and businesses. The water is chock-full of stuff. This is a toxic brew that is going down the riverthe water took out gas stations and farm shops and fuel barrels, John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, told the Washington Post. Once the waters begin to recede, workers and farmers will be left to pick up the pieces on their own. Thousands of people who couldnt afford flood insurance will continue the American tradition of appealing to their fellow workers on websites such as GoFundMe.com for the funds and supplies necessary to survive once Red Cross shelters close and token government assistance shrivels up. With each successive natural disaster American capitalism reveals itself incapable of and unwilling to mitigate the impact on the working class. The systematic negligence of vital infrastructure is another expression of class exploitation in the United States. Only through the reorganization of society on a scientific socialist perspective, organized for human need rather than private profit, will future climate disasters be mitigated and unnecessary loss of life be stopped. Click here for graphs detailing increase in water precipitation in Midwest. Graduate student workers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) went on strike Tuesday to fight against low wages, unfair appointment policies and to demand full healthcare coverage and protect tuition waivers, among other issues. The strike so far has caused many classes at UIC to be canceled. About 1,500 students work as graduate and teaching assistants for professors in undergraduate courses, some responsible for class sizes of more than 60 students. Graduate students grade papers, run discussion sections and labs, tutor one-on-one, and perform research and other essential duties while also studying in PhD and Masters programs. The minimum salary for graduate workers is just $18,065 and requires 20 hours per week of work for the nine-month school year. Most students are also responsible for an average of $2,000 in university fees each year. Many graduate students have to work more than one additional job to make ends meet. The minimum annual income needed to live in Chicago is estimated at $28,000. The strike comes after more than a year of bargaining between the UIC administration and the graduate workers union, the Graduate Employees Organization (GEO)affiliated to the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) nationallyfailed to produce any agreement. The GEO has proposed a contract which would waive all fees for graduate workers, increase the percentage the university pays for healthcare coverage, reform the system for earning appointments, and provide a wage increase to $24,000 by 2021. The UIC administration has so far rejected these proposals. The next bargaining session is set to take place Thursday. In a show of support, hundreds of students, educators and graduate student workers from across Chicago have joined the picket lines. Graduate student workers staged a rally yesterday with hundreds in attendance. Alize, who is working on her PhD in anthropology, spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about the struggles facing graduate student workers. Since I have started working here as a grad student, which is five years ago, there has been an exorbitant amount of increase in fees. As an international student, I pay more than $2,000 dollars each year, which is a big burden, especially considering we make $15,000 dollars a year and have to pay these fees in August, before we start getting paid. The university acts on the assumption that international students are inherently rich, which is just not true and offensive. There have been so many times that I had to take time off my studies and teaching to go to focus groups to make some extra moneywhereas I should be able to focus on my research and giving a good education to undergraduate students. She continued, Recently, UICs budget has increased, and millions of dollars have been invested to new buildings rising on Harrison, as well as bonuses for the high-up administrators. Graduate students are barely making ends meet and are already extremely overworked. I have had 75 students per semester! When asked what she would like to see in a new contract, she said, Id like to see these fees waived and living wages. Also, the university doesnt enforce a procedure for TA/GA appointments such as when they should be finalized, who can get them, how they can be chosen, etc. This essentially means that there is no guarantee that grad workers will have a job from one semester to the next. Alize spoke on the universitys response to the strike, They have been using desperate intimidating tactics, telling undergrads we want their tuitions raised or that we make $62,000 a year. The university arrived at this higher number by counting tuition waivers as income. When asked about her experience on the picket line, Alize said, It was amazing. It was wonderful to see the university community show up and show so much support. We had truck drivers passing by and other riders on Halsted have shown us so much love and support! That was very powerful. Im angry at the administration but also very energized and ready to go back! Another student told the WSWS the official numbers do not tell the real story of their conditions: While the numbers that get bandied around is that TA/GA get paid $18,000 total for nine months work, in truth there are scenarios like mine, where I get paid for 8 months because of the winter break. So, in truth I make around $16,000 a year. UIC then takes back $2,000 in fees every year, and I pay about $1,500 in taxes. So in truth, I am surviving in Chicago on about $12,000. He continued, I have savings and my wife works, so I am surviving, but I cant really imagine other people doing so on these wages. The UIC graduate student strike is part of a wave of educator walkouts from West Virginia to Oklahoma, Los Angeles, Oakland and around the world. The strike at UIC is not just an issue of one university administration, but a fight back against a nationwide attack on public education, backed by both big business parties, Democrats and Republicans. UIC graduate workers should pay close attention to these struggles. They are rightly inspired by the militancy of hundreds of thousands of teachers who have walked off the job to fight for better conditions and to defend public education, and seek to unite with them. But they should also be aware of the role the unions have played in selling out these struggles and blocking a united struggle by educators. In the case of last years strike at UICs sister school, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), the GEO sold out the students central demands for guaranteed tuition waivers and full healthcare coverage. In a Facebook post Monday night, UIC GEO praised the UIUC agreement saying, They set the example for us. This is a warning. Graduate student workers cannot place their faith in the GEO, an organization whose past agreements have produced the conditions facing UIC student graduate workers today. It is through unions like the IFT and AFT, the GEOs state and national parent organizations, that the Democratic Party is able to enforce its pro-austerity education agenda. The many experiences in recent years of betrayals of other educators in Chicago, West Virginia, Champaign-Urbana, Los Angeles and Oakland have confirmed this. Grad student workers confront the same obstacles as educators in other areas and they face the same obstacle in the unions. Graduate workers should turn to the broadest sections of the working class and form a democratically elected rank and file organization in order to carry out the fight to defend public education on their own terms, not those dictated by the AFT, the Democratic Party and ultimately the university administration. The Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality are prepared to assist and we urge graduate student workers to contact us today. After Wednesdays meeting of the council of ministers, French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux announced that President Emmanuel Macron would activate army units during this weekends yellow vest protests. This is the first time since the 19541962 war in Algeria that the army is to be mobilized in police operations on French soil against the population. Griveaux announced that the operation would have the task of securing fixed and static points in conformity with their mission, that is to say principally the protection of official buildings. He justified his recourse to the armed forces by claiming this was necessary to allow the police forces to concentrate on protest movements and on the maintenance and re-establishment of public order. Today, Defense Minister Florence Parly is slated to meet representatives of the police forces in the late afternoon to discuss operational details on the upcoming deployment this Saturday. The mobilization of army units comes on top of a series of repressive measures the government announced on Tuesday. These include allowing the state to ban protests if radicals attend them, increasing fines for participating in a banned protest from 38 to 135 euros, the setting up of anti-hooligan brigades of police, the use of drones, the firing of chemical agents allowing police to trace demonstrators, and the use of police checkpoints to stop and identify demonstrators. The resort to the French army to threaten protests against social inequality marks a historical turning point of international significance. A wave of strikes and protests is spreading across the world, driven by mounting political anger at decades of austerity and militarism. These range from protests by the yellow vests to strikes against decade-long wage freezes across Europe, to the mass protests against the Algerian military dictatorship, to the strikes of US teachers and Mexican maquiladora workers and mass strikes in Sri Lanka and India. Macrons decision to deploy the army against the yellow vests is part of the increasingly desperate attempts of the ruling class internationally to intimidate the rising political opposition among workers and, failing that, to create conditions to try to repress it through force of arms. The government is deploying the army amid the media frenzy that followed the looting of the Champs- Elysees avenue in Paris during last Saturdays yellow vest protests. But there is no hard evidence that yellow vest protesters carried out this looting. Top officials, including Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, have said these actions were committed by far-right groups who exploited a breakdown in the chain of command of the police forces, some of whom were filmed joining in the looting of shops on the Champs- Elysees. Despite the murkiness of Saturdays events, the government is responding by rapidly stepping up threats against protesters. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner brazenly declared that on Saturday, police were facing 10,000 hooligans, implying that the vast majority of peaceful yellow vest protesters were violent criminals whom police could treat as such. Speaking about the violence on Saturday, Macron for his part provocatively declared that supporters of the yellow vest movement have made themselves complicit in it. The looting Saturday is only a pretext for the implementation of plans that have been long prepared. A possible resort to the army inside France has been publicly discussed for several years, since the then-ruling Socialist Party (PS) began calling for dispatching the army to working class districts of Marseille and other cities under President Francois Hollande. The use of troops to crack down on domestic political opposition underscores the correctness of the WSWSs long-standing opposition to fraudulent claims that the war on terror launched by Washington and its European allies aims to protect the people. The PS began Operation Sentinel under the state of emergency it declared after the Nov. 13, 2015, terror attacks in Paris, perpetrated by Islamist networks the NATO powers were using in the Syrian war. Now Macron, a former minister in the PS government, is using these supposedly anti-terror troops to reinforce the mobile police squads he is throwing against the yellow vests. Sensing itself to be deeply isolated and despised by workers internationally, and terrified by rising protests in both France and Algeria, the financial aristocracy intends to wage ruthless class war. A February article in the Monde diplomatique titled Class struggles in France pointed to the panic seizing broad sections of the ruling class amid the growing political opposition that is for now largely peaceful but also very deep in the French and international working class. The monthly wrote, Fear, not of losing an election, or failing to reform, or to take stock market losses. But of insurrection, of revolt, of destitution. For a half century, the French elites had not experienced such a feeling. The director of a polling institute mentioned for his part big CEOs who were indeed very worried, and an atmosphere that resembles what I have read about 1936 or 1968 (the two French general strikes). There is a moment where they tell themselves, we have to be able to spend a lot of money to avoid losing what is essential. And so the financial aristocracy is pouring resources into repression and breaking with longstanding guarantees that the army would not be sent to fire on the population. After former PS presidential candidate Segolene Royal called for sending the army to Marseille in 2013, history professor Jean-Marc Berliere reviewed the history of the French armys use for police operations in an interview in Le Monde. In the 19th century, Berliere explained, the armys repeated murder of workers, including women and children, during strikes and May Day rallies provoked enormous class anger: Massacres like those that periodically took placeat Fourmies, Narbonne, and so onseriously hurt its image, which was already badly damaged by suspicion of social and political collusion due to its engagement during strikes on the side of the employers. After the October 1917 Revolution in Russia during World War I, which saw mass mutinies in the French army, the government decided it could no longer trust the army for domestic policing. After the victory and the sacrifices of the 19141918 war, it was no longer possible to use the victorious army for internal operations, Berliere said. Asked whether the French army was active after World War I in domestic policing inside the borders of current-day France, he added: Basically, no. The political risk was too great: what would be the attitude of the conscripts? After the armys infamous resort to mass torture and murder in a failed attempt to keep Algeria under French rule during the 19541962 independence war, Macron is again turning to the army. His hailing last year of Nazi-collaborationist dictator Philippe Petain as well as Georges Clemenceauwho as interior minister before World War I oversaw army operations leading to the murder of 18 workersreflect continuous official attempts to legitimize repression. This underscores the reactionary character of continuous proclamations from within the political establishment that left-wing, socialist and working-class politics are irrelevant and dead. They create conditions where a deployment of the army against working people, lacking any shred of legitimacy, proceeds without meaningful opposition in official French life. The central task, in which the yellow vest protests mark an initial step, is to independently mobilize the growing political opposition in the working class against this drive to military-police dictatorship. Such is the level of disgust and disaffection with the Australian political establishment, that this Saturdays election in New South Wales (NSW), the countrys most populous state, could produce a hung parliament, with no party able to form a majority government. Years of widening social inequality and worsening living conditions under successive Liberal-National and Labor governments have created deep discontent within broad layers of the working class, which finds no voice within the official political setup. Real wages are in serious decline and youth unemployment is at endemic levels, including in Sydney, the state capital and the countrys financial industry hub. Rural poverty is widespread. The states official unemployment rate is 3.7 percent, largely as a result of a six-year property boom, which is now crashing. But the rate is more than three times higher in working-class suburbs, such as Liverpool, Fairfield, South Granville and Mount Druitt, and in regional centres like Albury, Tamworth and Nowra. These statistics are just one indicator of the yawning gulf between the corporate elite, whose wealth has soared since the 2008 global financial meltdown, and the workers and youth who have paid the price via casualised employment, record levels of household debt and deteriorating social services and infrastructure. Billions of dollars have been poured into corporate pockets for long-delayed and mostly privatised road and rail projects, while the state has more than 1,000 dysfunctional demountable school classrooms and the median waiting time for elective surgery in public hospitals has risen to 234 days. More than 37,700 people experience homelessness on any nightup by 40 percent in eight yearsand falling house prices mean that many households now owe more on their mortgages than the market value of their homes. Another indication of mass discontent was expressed last Friday, when tens of thousands of school students, in towns and cities throughout the country, joined their international counterparts by walking out of their classrooms to take a political stand against the escalating threat of climate change and the governments and corporations responsible for it. Notably, they did so in defiance of disciplinary threats from the state government and school principals. State Labor Party leader, Michael Daley, used the strike to criticise the current Liberal-National Coalition government for denouncing the students, but both major parties have failed to come anywhere near a commitment to the students demand for 100 percent renewables by 2030let alone any broad, scientifically-worked out plan to halt climate change and prevent the planets destruction. The lack of any fundamental differences between the major establishment parties has seen the states voters deluged by negative attack ads and mud-slinging, accompanied by phony promises to suddenly make available billions of dollars to tackle the longstanding decline in public health and education, enforced by both Labor and Coalition-led governments for decades. The agenda of whichever party leads the next government has been determined in advance: to impose the burden of the intensifying capitalist breakdown onto the backs of the working class. Buried by the corporate media, an official pre-election budget update warned that global factors, including rising political tensions, policy uncertainty, financial market volatility and hikes in trade tariffs were clouding the states economic outlook. In particular, deteriorating conditions in the housing market are having a stronger than expected negative impact on consumer spending and dwelling approvals. According to market analysts, Sydneys median house price has fallen more than 10 percent from its peak in mid-2017 and worse is yet to come. As well as throwing over-stretched working-class families deeper into financial stress, this is stripping billions of dollars from state government revenues. The election is also being held amid a deepening political crisis. After 16 years in office, the last pro-business and notoriously corrupt Labor government was thrown out in 2011, reducing Labors vote to an historic low of 25.5 percent. At the last state election in 2015, Labors vote rose to just 34.4 percent, despite its hypocritical efforts to exploit the hostility to the federal Coalition government. Opinion polls indicate little pickup in Labors support since then, leaving it short of winning the 13 seats in the 93-seat lower house needed to form a majority government. But the Coalition is also languishing at less than 40 percent. A defeat for the eight-year-old Coalition state government is likely to intensify the factional war inside the unstable federal Coalition government, which must go to an election by the end of May. Last year, NSW Liberal MPs urged Prime Minister Scott Morrison to call an early federal poll, in order to get smashed and improve the chances of the Coalition clinging onto office in NSW. Instead, Morrison has delayed the federal election for as long as possible, and certainly until after the NSW vote. State Premier Gladys Berejikilian is a member of the Liberal Partys moderate wing, as was Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, whom the partys hard right faction removed last year. There is nothing remotely progressive, however, about either faction, with both supporting deeper attacks on living conditions and democratic rights, and stirring up nationalism and anti-immigrant xenophobia. Berejikilians defeat, however, would intensify the federal inner-party crisis. The hard right, led by Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, would exploit the loss to intensify its push to transform the Coalition into an anti-immigrant, populist and fascistic movement, along the lines of Trump in the US and far-right parties in Europe. Both Berejikilian and Labors Daley have contributed to the demonisation of immigrants, blaming them for the lack of infrastructure, loss of full-time jobs and other social problems. Berejikilian has agitated for months for the halving of immigration into NSW. Following last Fridays fascist attack on Muslims in New Zealand, a speech by Daley surfaced on social media showing him accusing Asian immigrants and other foreigners of moving in and taking the jobs of our kids. White Australia nationalism and racism, upon which the trade unions established the Labor Party in the 1890s, remains at the core of their political DNA. This has been underscored by the fact that Mark Latham, who led the Labor Party nationally less than 15 years ago, is standing in the NSW election as the lead candidate for the virulent anti-immigrant Pauline Hansons One Nation, one of a plethora of far-right parties seeking to divert growing working class unrest into reactionary racist and nationalist directions. Daley, who was installed as Labor leader last November, is being presented in the corporate media as new and relatively unknown. Given the level of popular hostility, this is regarded as an electoral advantage. In reality, he was a roads, police and finance minister in the last Labor government, which boosted the police force to deal with social unrest, sold off the states electricity retail assets, axed jobs and sent household power prices soaring, in order to accelerate the privatisation of public services and utilities. The union bureaucrats, who policed the last Labor governments policies, in tandem with the pseudo-left groups, such as Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative, are campaigning, yet again, for the return of another big business Labor government, perhaps in alliance with the Greens, as a supposed lesser evil. This claim has been peddled at virtually every Australian state and federal election for decades, and millions of ordinary people now know it to be a lie. Both major parties unashamedly represent the financial and corporate interests of the countrys power elites, and both are utterly impervious to the crisis facing the vast bulk of the population. Moreover, Labor and the Liberal-National coalition, along with the Greens, fully support the countrys military alliance with the US, and are deeply implicated in Washingtons drive to war against China, in order to reinforce its global hegemony. Workers and youth need to take firm stand against the new round of lies being promoted in the 2019 NSW state election, and turn to the socialist and internationalist perspective that alone represents the interests of the working class. That is the perspective advanced by the Socialist Equality Party, for social equality, for democratic rights, including freedom for Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, and for the international unity of the working class in the struggle against austerity and war. With just six weeks left in the school year, New Vision Academy, a Nashville, Tennessee, charter school, has made the abrupt decision to close. The decision followed a year of local, state and federal investigations into financial irregularities and noncompliance with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The March 8 closure is not only a flagrant attack on the right to education for the schools 158 students and their parents, but an all-too-frequent scenario involving the nations privately run charter schools. Nashville families were left stranded, scrambling to enroll their children in another school by March 18a mere 10 days notice. A very similar incident occurred last year in Ohio, when one of the largest online charter schools in the US, Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), suddenly shut down, impacting as many as 12,000 students and forcing seniors to frantically search for a way to graduate on time. The investigation into New Vision began last year after teachers at the school compiled an anonymous whistleblower report. In addition to financial irregularities and ADA noncompliance, teachers accused New Vision of failing to provide adequate instruction time for English-language-learning students and students with learning disabilities. Teachers who had spoken with the Tennessean about the report were immediately terminated by the school. New Visions decision to shut down this month came after the Nashville school district found that the school was cramming as many as 20 students in classrooms designed for 8, a direct violation of the fire code. The Office of Charter Schoolsnot New Visionnotified parents of the schools decision in a letter sent home with students on March 6, just two days before the school was set to close. On March 7, Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) officials held a meeting for parents following the schools decision. More than 100 parents and students attended the meeting, expressing their frustration and anger over the closure. The schools founder and executive director, Tim Malone, could not be bothered to attend the meeting. Malone and his wife, LaKesha, who is also an executive at New Vision, have a combined salary of $562,000. One parent, Silvia Giron, said of Malone, It is frustrating. He should have been here and he should have been man enough to say I screwed up. The closure of New Vision is by no means a fluke. A 2015 report by the liberal watchdog group The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) concluded that approximately 2,500 charter schools shut down across the US between 2001 and 2013, affecting 288,000 students, and noted that the failure rate for charter schools is much higher than for traditional public schools. As well, the report points out that school closures leave a lasting impact on students success rates and can contribute to higher rates of youth incarceration. New Visions financial irregularities are no anomaly, either. On Jan 9, 2019, it was reported that up to 100 charter schools in Arizona could close as a result of financial mishandling. Another report by CMD titled Charter School Black Hole demonstrated that charter schools and their state and federal overseers could not account for the $3.7 billion they had received since 1995. The CMD report also found that millions of dollars went toward ghost schools, charters that either never opened or briefly opened and then shut. Tennessee established charter schools, which are privately owned and operated yet receive public funding and little oversight, in 2002, with the Tennessee Public Charter Schools Act. Since then, both Democratic and Republican administrations have sought to expand the charter school sector while carrying out assaults on public education and other social rights. In 2011, former Republican Governor Bill Haslam announced a multimillion-dollar project to create 40 privately run charter schools in the state. Prior to that, the legislature had raised the limit on charter operations from 50 to 90. In a move directed against teachers in impoverished school districts, Haslams predecessor, Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen, instituted a law in 2010 tying 50 percent of teachers job reviews to student improvement. Haslams successor, newly elected Republican Governor Bill Lee, has made clear that he intends to escalate the attack on public education. He has proposed the creation of a $25 million education savings account (ESA) program in Tennessee, a type of voucher scheme in which public funds are siphoned into a spending account that can be used to send children to private schools. Lee would also seek an additional $12 million for charters to purchase new property and upgrades. In a hypocritical gesture, the governor stated he would provide $25 million to public schools in the first year of the ESA program as a poor substitute for the millions they will lose. Since Lees State of the State address, new details have emerged on the governors plan. In an amended version, which was expected to be filed on March 15, the program would require at least $75 million for its first year. By 2024, the program would cost taxpayers as much as $125 million. The former CEO of a highly profitable electrical and plumbing business, Lee is also seeking to expand workforce developmenti.e., the subordination of working-class education to the immediate needs of the moneyed elite. Lees proposal is part and parcel of the ongoing assault on public education in the US. In its recently unveiled budget proposal for 2020, the Trump administration is seeking to cut public education by $7 billion while expanding funding for charter schools and creating tax credit scholarships. Trump is continuing and deepening the pro-privatization policies established under Democrat Barack Obama while doubling down on the predatory wishes of billionaires such as his Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. This cabal is deeply involved in the politics and profits of charterization. Hastings, for one, is the co-founder of the charter chain Aspire Public Schools, which is considering shutting down its Memphis, Tennessee, operations. The governors ESA proposal is also similar to schemes introduced in West Virginia and Kentucky, among other states, which have been denounced by teachers as backdoor vouchers attempting to collapse the student populations of underfunded public schools in favor of private, religious, and for-profit operations. The ESA legislations in West Virginia and Kentucky were among the policies that prompted teachers to conduct sick-outs over the past two months. Workers are keenly aware of the fact that charter schools and voucher schemes serve to undermine and erode public education. Teachers have repeatedly struck against the growing incursion of charter operations around the country, but have been betrayed in this struggle by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, which seek not to oppose privatization, but to gain the dues franchise among this highly exploited workforce. The first step in opposing the growth of privatization is for teachers to launch rank-and-file committees, uniting students, parents and all defenders of public education, independently of the unions, the Democrats and Republicans. Contact the WSWS Teachers Newsletter to get involved! Amid a mounting economic and political crisis, voters across Turkey will go to the polls March 31 in local elections. Facing bitter tensions with Washington and Turkeys other NATO allies over the decades-long wars in Iraq and Syria and an economic crisis triggered by the Trump administrations trade war measures, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) faces possible defeat in the countrys principal cities. This raises the prospect that the government led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his right-wing populist AKP, which has ruled the country since late 2002, could unravel and fall. Whatever the elections outcome, they will solve nothing. The main rival of the Peoples Alliance of the AKP and the fascistic Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) is the so-called Nation Alliance. It unites the Republican Peoples Party or CHPthe party of the capitalist-military-bureaucratic Kemalist elite that dominated the institutions of the Turkish Republic in the 20th centurywith the Good Party, a split-off from the MHP. The Nation Alliance is backed by the Kurdish nationalist Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) and a wide swathe of petty-bourgeois pseudo-left organizations. The CHP-Good Party-Kurdish bourgeois alliance is no less hostile to the interests of the working class than the AKP-MHP alliance, from which it is distinguished mainly by its more pronounced orientation to, and closer relations with, the imperialist powers. Amid growing class struggles internationally, including the emergence of a revolutionary movement among workers and youth against Algerias military regime, the Nation Alliance-HDP partnership serves to chain growing working class anger against Erdogan to the capitalist system and to imperialist war. The AKP-MHP alliance emerged after the MHP backed the AKP against an abortive US- and German-backed coup attempt, launched from NATOs Incirlik air base on July 15, 2016, that aimed to kill Erdogan and topple his government. This alliance, which has controlled the national government since then, now faces a deepening economic slump, growing popular anger over social inequality, and mounting pressure and threats from Turkeys traditional imperialist allies. Increasing tensions between Turkey and the US came to a head when Washington made the Syrian offshoot of the PKKthe Kurdish nationalist group against which Ankara has been waging a bloody war for the past 35 yearsits principal proxy army in the fight to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria. Incensed, Ankara refocused its intervention in Syria from regime change in Damascus to blocking the emergence of a PKK proto-state there. In pursuit of this goal, it has entered into a shaky alliance of convenience with Russia and Iran, who share the objective of rolling back US influence in Syria. Since the 2016 aborted coup, Erdogan has attempted to straddle the fault lines of world geopolitics, insisting Turkey wants to maintain close relations with the US and pursue membership of the European Union. But Washington has responded with bullying and ever more strident threats. Deepening economic crisis US efforts to punish Turkey economically have had a significant impact on an economy that was already facing turbulence. After Trump imposed tariffs on Turkish exports to the United States last year, Turkeys economy entered its first recession in a decade, falling 2.4 percent in the last three months of 2018. Turkey last fell into recession in 2009 amid the global economic crisis triggered by the 2008 Wall Street crash. Unemployment has surged to 13.5 percent, and 24.5 percent among the youth. In the last six months, almost 1 million people have applied for unemployment pay. At the beginning of 2018, the minimum wage, paid to almost half of Turkish workers, was 1,603 TL (US$424). As Turkeys currency collapses and prices soar, particularly for food, the purchasing power of the minimum wagedespite a 26 percent rise to 2,020 TLhas fallen to US$370. As the AKP falls in the polls and faces possible defeat in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities, there are signs that the AKP could disintegrate. Ex-Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, ex-President Abdullah Gul and other ex-AKP officials are reportedly considering launching a new party. Some sources claim they have more than 50 parliamentary deputies from both the AKP and CHPenough to potentially bring down the AKP-MHP alliance in the national parliament. Erdogan has responded by running a bellicose nationalist campaign, claiming an AKP victory is crucial to the Turkish peoples survival against its external and internal enemies. At an AKP rally, he also attacked AKP turncoats, denouncing those who have gotten off the [AKP] train and boarded another. Those who betray us today will betray the place they go in the future. Erdogan and MHP leader Devlet Bahceli are branding the CHP, the Good Party and the HDP as terrorist groups, saying they are aligned with the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) and what they call the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETO) of Fethullah Gulenthe US-based preacher Ankara blames for the 2016 coup attempt. In the run-up to the elections, the Erdogan government has intensified its political repression, targeting opposition leaders and candidates for legal attack. CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has been accused of insulting the interior minister in a TV speech 10 months ago, and prosecutors have begun proceedings to remove his parliamentary immunity so he can be charged and tried. HDP co-leader Sezai Temelli and the CHPs Ankara candidate Mansur Yavas have also been hit with legal charges. Erdogan is seeking to appeal to popular opposition to US imperialism and NATO, talking up plans to buy the S-400 air defense system from Russia, and denouncing as terrorists the Kurdish forces that the US and its other nominal NATO allies have used to wage their ruinous regime-change war in Syria. The opposition Nation Alliance tries to put itself forward as the only alternative to AKP-MHP fascism. CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has pledged to fight for a strong democracy and a strong social state with sustainability. At the same time, the CHP and its allies are generally silent on relations with Turkeys NATO alliestrying to signal to the imperialist powers that they would be more reliable allies than Erdogan. The pledges of the Nation Alliance to fight for democracy, jobs and social spending are empty rhetoric. In fact, it is just as hostile to the struggles and social aspirations of the working class as the AKPa point that the CHP made very clear by joining the AKP in denouncing the Izmir metro strike. Moreover, as the party of the traditional Kemalist elite, the CHP is directly implicated in all its crimes, including repeated coups and the brutal anti-Kurdish war. Subordinating the working class to pro-imperialist parties in the name of fighting fascism To present itself as to the left of Erdogan, the Nation Alliance relies on the services of the Kurdish nationalist HDP and the pseudo-left parties. The HDP is endorsing the Nation Alliance even though it supports Erdogans cross-border military operations in Syria and Iraq, and Erdogans decision to jail thousands of HDP members, including former HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas and other HDP parliamentary deputies. The HDP has refrained from nominating candidates in the major cities of western Turkey and is instead endorsing those of the Nation Alliance. The HDP is issuing empty promises to its voters that if they elect Nation Alliance candidates, these candidates will be obliged to listen to them. HDP co-chair Sezai Temelli recently said, Mansur Yavas will know if he becomes Ankaras mayor it is with HDP votes. He cant run his politics ignoring HDP voters. The HDP is running its own candidates mainly in the Kurdish-majority areas of southeastern Turkey. It is also cooperating with the Felicity Party (SP, a smaller Islamist party) in some places. From prison, where Erdogan has placed him for calling for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey in alliance with US-backed Kurdish militias across the border in Syria, Demirtas has endorsed a Nation Alliance vote as an anti-fascist vote against Erdogan. He calls on HDP voters to cast your vote for a strategic purpose to limit and retract the fascist bloc. HDP voters should never consider other parties or party members as enemies. The defeat of the AKP and the MHP depends on an effective outcome of votes you cast. The pseudo-left parties are claiming opposition to the AKP-MHP bloc is justification for supporting the bourgeois CHP and HDP, and even the far-right Good Party or the Islamist Felicity Party. As the World Socialist Web Site stated before last Junes parliamentary and presidential elections, The Turkish pseudo-left parties and organisations are lining up behind the pro-NATO and pro-EU bourgeois opposition parties. ... They are all in agreement on the rejection of an independent perspective for the working classindependent of all the discredited bourgeois camps. Alper Tas, the leader of the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ODP), has accepted the CHPs nomination as a candidate for the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, with HDP and Good Party support. On March 19, Labor Party (EMEP) leader Selma Gurkan also endorsed CHP candidates in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, telling the daily Evrensel that the forces of labor and democracy, which includes us, have agreed to support CHP candidates in Turkeys major cities. Turkeys Socialist Equality Group endorses none of the bourgeois candidates in these elections, which will resolve nothing, regardless of which camp wins. It seeks to intervene in these elections to lay out the basis of an independent policy of the Turkish and international working class, oppose the wars and bankrupt political pretensions of the capitalist parties, and develop its struggle to build a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International in Turkey. A massive show of police force is taking place for the trial of former East Pittsburgh police officer Michael Rosfeld, who shot 17-year-old Woodland High School honor student Antwon Rose three times in the back last year, killing him. Antwon was shot and killed on June 19, 2018 as he and another youth ran away from the car they were riding in, after Rosfeld pulled over the car and ordered the driver out. The streets around the courthouse building have been blocked with dump trucks filled with gravel and the sidewalks have been barricaded, as police in full riot gear patrol the area. Reinforcements and SWAT teams are on standby. The massive police presence is designed to intimidate protesters from showing up outside the court building. The murder of Antwon provoked weeks of protests over the summer, and city and county officials want to use a show of force to frighten people away from renewing their protests. The police are very fearful of the anger that is growing over the increasing number of police killings throughout the country. In the few cases where police officers are brought to trial, the vast majority are acquitted. Earlier this month, officials announced that no charges would be filed against the two police officers who shot and killed Stephon Clark in Sacramento, California while he held a cell phone in his grandmothers backyard. The police presence in Pittsburgh is in sharp contrast to the treatment of two rallies held in December in which about 150 heavily armed supporters of gun rights were allowed to carry multiple weapons, including fully loaded AR-15 and automatic handguns, throughout the downtown area of the city, including on the steps of the same courthouse and City-County building. No attempt was made to prevent that rally, which included many members of far-right white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups. Police stood by, only posting signs stating that the protesters could not bring their guns into the county buildings. The massive police buildup also serves another purpose. It is an attempt to influence the jury to side with Rosfeld. Look at how dangerous things are. Police are under attack and always fear for their lives, is the message sent to jurors by the presence of barricades and police. As in other cases of police killings of innocent workers and youth, Rosfeld is seeking to defend his murder of Antwon with the claim that it was self-defense. On the first day of testimony, Lashaun Livingston testified that she began taking a cell phone video a few moments before Rosfeld fired the fatal shots that killed Antwon. Explaining that she started taking the video when she heard Rosfeld shouting, Ms. Livingston said, That type of tone frightened me, myselfAn angry toneharsh. It was more so angrythat he was mad at someone or something. I had a bad feeling. Ms. Livingston explained that at no time did she see Antwon point a gun or any object at Rosfeld. Her video, which has been seen by tens of thousands, does not even show the youth turning around as he attempted to flee down along the side of a home. Another witness testified that she was on her porch at the time of the shooting and that she saw Antwon and another boy, later identified as Zaijuan Hester, run from the car. Automatically, Boom, boom, boom! Three shots, Debra Jones said. The police officer shot three times. I said, You shot them boys for running. The judge, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Alexander P. Bicket, has issued a number of rulings that are clearly intended to favor Rosfeld. First Bicket decided to bring in a jury from Central Pennsylvania rather than take a jury from the Pittsburgh area. That jury was picked and bused to Pittsburgh on Monday. The jurors have to pass the massive police presence every time they enter and leave the courthouse. On Monday, during a hearing on a series of motions, Bicket ruled that Rosfelds attorney may tell the jury about a drive-by shooting that took place in a neighboring town 13 minutes before Antwon was killed. On Friday, Zaijuan Hester pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in that case. A video of that shooting shows Hester rolled down his back-seat window and fired shots out of the moving car. Antwon was the front seat passenger in the car and he never rolled down his window or fired any shots. The District Attorney stated that Antwon did not do anything to further that crime. Rosfelds attorneys want to introduce the video into the trial in the hope it will show that Rosfeld feared for his life when he shot Antwon in the back. Bicket has not yet ruled on other motions made by Rosfelds attorneys, including allowing them to bring up the charge that Antwon participated in an armed robbery five hours earlier, or that prosecutors can only seek a first-degree conviction instead of lesser charges. First-degree murder is much more difficult to prove, since jurors must find that Rosfeld acted with premeditation. Antwons family has received growing support from people throughout the area as well as nationally, from a group of mothers whose children have been killed by the police. Michelle Kenney, Antwons mother, has told reporters that she has talked frequently with Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice of Cleveland, who was shot and killed by police as he played with a toy gun in a park. With less than two weeks left in the presidential campaign, the Ukrainian Interior Minister has mobilized against incumbent president Petro Poroshenko the very same far-right forces that were instrumental in the imperialist-backed 2014 coup that brought Poroshenko to power. Last week, Poroshenko, who currently sits in third place in Ukraines Presidential election polls, behind comedian and leading candidate Volodmyr Zelenskiy and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, was accosted by members of the far-right Azov Battalion-affiliated National Militia in the city of Zhytomyr during a campaign stop. In a photo that was widely shared on social media, Poroshenko was seen fleeing reporters and the far-right thugs while jumping through puddles in the street. Earlier that week, on March 9, members of the National Militia and other far-right groups attacked Poroshenkos office in Kiev, leading to the deployment of 700 officers with tear gas to prevent a potential coup against Poroshenko prior to the March 31 presidential elections. The attacks by the far right on Poroshenko come weeks after the release of an explosive Youtube video reporting that the son of one of Poroshenkos close political allies, Ihor Hladkovskyy, had begun smuggling military parts from Russia in 2015 and then used private companies linked to Hladkovskyy and Poroshenko to sell the smuggled parts to the military at highly inflated prices. According to the report, the government knew that the items were smuggled into Ukraine from Russia and that the prices were inflated, but continued to purchase the parts in order to enrich companies linked to Hladkovskyy and Poroshenko. Poroshenko later removed Hladovskyy from his position as deputy secretary of Ukraines National Security and Defense Council. In the wake of this report, figures such as far-right Azov Battalion leader Andrey Biletsky and his ally Interior Minister Arsen Avakov have come out publicly in opposition to another presidential term for Poroshenko. Despite being a member of Poroshenkos government and parliamentary bloc, Avakov stated in an interview with Ukraines ICTV, We are at the end of the political cycle. One way or another, when this political cycle ends, we will have a new president and a new government. And here I am absolutely calm. Biletsky and the Azov Battalion have demanded the resignation of Poroshenko prior to the elections, and promised to break up all Poroshenko campaign events prior to March 31. Interior Minister Avakov, who is the only minister who has been part of changing administrations in Kiev ever since the coup in 2014, is rumored to be allied with Poroshenkos rival in the election, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Both Biletsky and Avakov are regarded as political friends of the exiled oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi. Kolomoyskyi is said to be bankrolling both Tymoshenko and leading candidate Volodmyr Zelenskyi against Poroshenko in the upcoming elections. Avakov, who as Interior Minister controls the countrys police force, National Guard, and successor militias to the Azov Battalion which have been incorporated into the government, has immense power to control and threaten voting sites in the upcoming elections. He could also easily order police to stand by in the event of a far-right insurrection against the Poroshenko government. In addition, the Biletsky-affiliated National Militia have been named official election observers by the countrys Central Election Commission. The group has promised to violently threaten anyone it perceives as committing fraud, stating, If we need to punch someone in the face in the name of justice, we will do this without hesitation. The comments by Biletsky and Avakov and the threats by the far right point to potentially violent clashes on March 31, with each side crying foul. Poroshenko, who still enjoys the support of the regular military and his Western imperialist backers, has begun making statements promising that the upcoming elections will be honest and would fully meet European standards of the election campaign. He is using these declarations to set the stage to condemn the results due to election fraud, and to seek Western support if he fails to make it out of the first round of the voting. Poroshenko, whose campaign has relied chiefly on the whipping up of nationalism, religious separatism and Russophobia, has responded to the attacks from the far right by stepping up militaristic threats against Russia. He has tried to portray his far-right opponents as playing into the hands of the Kremlin, stating in one interview, Putin hopes that anyone but Poroshenko will be elected, so that the new Ukrainian leaders crawl on their knees and grant him Crimea. My positiondont count on it! We will liberate Crimea. Poroshenko is well aware that both Tymoshenko and Zelenskyi are seen as less reliable allies of the United States and NATO in their ongoing confrontation with Russia. Zelenskyi, a native Russian speaker who enjoys widespread popularity both in Russia and Ukraine, previously appealed to Putin to avoid a military confrontation between the two countries. Tymoshenko likewise has had previous business contacts with Russia, and has made vague promises to end the conflict peacefully. The mobilization of the far right, which is drenched in the blood of thousands of Ukrainian civilians who were killed in the past five years of civil war and has rampaged through numerous villages of the Sinti and Roma ethnic minorities, is a direct result of the imperialist-backed coup in 2014, fraudulently portrayed as a democratic revolution by the bourgeois media. In reality, exploiting the factional warfare within the oligarchy, the imperialist powers, above all the US and Germany, mobilized far-right forces to bring to power a regime directly subservient to their interests and complicit in their open war preparations against Russia. Whatever the outcome of the upcoming elections, US imperialism, which views Ukraine as a country of strategic significance in the encirclement of and war preparations against Russia, will not tolerate any deviation from the confrontational stance taken toward Russia by Poroshenko. The fascistic forces mobilized openly in 2013-2014 have now become the trump card in the internecine factional battles of the oligarchy. Fueling the explosive conflicts within the oligarchy and the government are the enormous social tensions in the country. The months leading up to the election campaign have seen a growing wave of protests and strikes by the impoverished working class. The Poroshenko regime responded to these class tensions with an imperialist-backed provocation against Russia in the Azov Sea in late October, and the declaration of martial law in several Ukrainian regions before the election campaign. Recent polls and media reports show that the overwhelming sentiment in the Ukrainian population is one of opposition both to the ongoing war in the east and to the staggering levels of poverty prevailing in the country. With Poroshenko and Tymoshenko widely hated, the comedian Zelenskyi has been able to capitalize on popular discontent by portraying himself as a pro-peace candidate who would de-escalate tensions with Russia and fight the endemic corruption in the country. The current situation harbors serious dangers for the working class. The same shock troops that have been targeting Poroshenko and that have been employed against the East Ukrainian civilian population since 2014, will be employed in any major social confrontation between the countrys working class and the oligarchy. They will also be utilized in the case of an escalation of the war, both domestically and against Russia, which continues to be the policy direction of substantial sections of Ukrainian ruling circles, and of the US foreign policy establishment. The newspaper reported yesterday that popular support for the opposition party crept up by 0.4 percentage points to 14.0 per cent, whereas that for the ruling party dropped by 0.4 percentage points to 14.3 per cent between February and March. THE GREEN LEAGUE has moved to within touching distance of the Centre Party, indicates an opinion poll commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat. What a wild situation! The Greens are within 0.3 [percentage points] of the third-largest partys spot, tweeted Ozan Yanar (Greens), a first-term Member of Parliament from Helsinki. Olli-Poika Parviainen (Greens), a first-term Member of Parliament from Pirkanmaa, viewed that the opposition party is now well-positioned to continue its work on the campaign trail. An election victory is becoming a reality one vote at a time. Everyone is needed, he commented on Twitter on Wednesday. The Social Democratic Party has consolidated its position as the frontrunner heading into next months elections, with popular support for the party creeping up by 0.2 percentage points to 21.0 per cent between February and March, according to Helsingin Sanomat. The National Coalition contrastively saw its popularity decrease by 0.5 percentage points to 18.1 per cent. The Finns Party saw its recent resurgence come to an end, with voter support for the populist party decreasing by 0.3 percentage points to 11.1 per cent. The Left Alliance, Swedish Peoples Party and Christian Democrats all saw their popularity increase marginally, the first by 0.2 percentage points to 8.9 per cent, the second by 0.1 percentage points to 4.4 per cent and the third by 0.2 percentage points to 4.2 per cent. Also the Blue Reform registered a rise of 0.2 percentage points in popular support but continues polling well behind the other parties, at 1.2 per cent. A total of 2,490 people were interviewed for the opinion poll between 18 February and 15 March by Kantar TNS. Aleksi Teivainen HT Source: Uusi Suomi Country United States of America US Virgin Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands Canada Mexico, United Mexican States Bahamas, Commonwealth of the Cuba, Republic of Dominican Republic Haiti, Republic of Jamaica Afghanistan Albania, People's Socialist Republic of Algeria, People's Democratic Republic of American Samoa Andorra, Principality of Angola, Republic of Anguilla Antarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S) Antigua and Barbuda Argentina, Argentine Republic Armenia Aruba Australia, Commonwealth of Austria, Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Bahrain, Kingdom of Bangladesh, People's Republic of Barbados Belarus Belgium, Kingdom of Belize Benin, People's Republic of Bermuda Bhutan, Kingdom of Bolivia, Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana, Republic of Bouvet Island (Bouvetoya) Brazil, Federative Republic of British Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago) British Virgin Islands Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria, People's Republic of 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Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe Xbox Cloud Gaming is Now Being Tested on Consoles for Xbox Insiders Life is Strange 2: Episode 1 is Now Free to Play on Xbox One Budapest Airport is planning to open a new parking facility for 670 vehicles in June, the airport managing company announced on Tuesday. The existing car parks for 4,200 vehicles were often full on March 15, as 44,746 passengers transited through the airport. Budapest Airport began work on a new parking garage last autumn but authorities cancelled its permit in December. The airport has agreed with Budapest transport company BKK to increase the frequency of the 100E express bus between the airport and the city centre. Right after the vote was taken, Joseph Daul, chairman of EPP, wrote on Twitter that Fidesz will be suspended with immediate effect and until further notice following todays vote of EPP members (190 in favor, 3 against). The suspension entails: No attendance at any party meeting; no voting rights; and no right to propose candidates for posts. Pretty clear, isnt it? Western media without exception interpreted the news that way. Politico reported that EPP officials are so angry with Viktor Orban that, if he adopts a combative posture, the next step will be expulsion. With this act, Orban has lost his political patron, observed the article. The Guardian called the suspensiona significant blow to Orban. But if you ask Viktor Orban, todays meeting wasnt about his partys indefinite suspension but about the future of the European Peoples Party. The next few months will determine whether EPP will survive at all, claims Orban. The leadership of EPP, supported by the great majority of the member parties, decided to work on its demise by insisting on Fideszs suspension from the family of Christian democrats. What a gift that is for EPPs political rivals, he insisted. Moreover, Fidesz wasnt actually suspended because, before that could have been done, he himself offered his partys voluntary retirement from participation in the affairs of EPP. He also agreed to receive a delegation of three conservative politiciansthe Belgian Herman van Rompuy, the German Hans-Gert Pottering, and the Austrian Wolfgang Schussel who, in the coming months, will assess the situation in Budapest. Orban has already named his own three wise women and man (Katalin Novak, Judit Varga, and Jozsef Szajer), who will negotiate with the EPP delegation. The idea of a delegation of three wise men is a copy of the solution the European Union came up with in 2000 during the Austrian political crisis when the same Wolfgang Schussell, then chancellor of Austria, had to accept an investigative delegation because of his decision to form a coalition government with Jurgen Heiders Freedom Party. The delegation found no reason for further action because, at that time, there was no EU law that would have justified engaging in further measures against the Schussel government. Of course, we have no idea what conclusion the members of the delegation to Budapest will reach, but I doubt that, given the mood within EPP, they will return with a verdict of full compliance with the values of EPP. This is especially the case since Viktor Orban swears up and down that Fidesz will not change its position on key issues. As far as Orban is concerned, all the criticism against his government is fake news. He claims that Fidesz is the party that represents the true values of Christian democracy, that EPPs present leadership led it astray, transforming it into a liberal party. He has no intention of adjusting his policies just to please the current leadership. He would like to stay with EPP, but not at any price. He cant rejoin EPP unless the delegation changes its attitude on the migration question and returns to the true Christian values Fidesz espouses. You can only guess that whether this is the last word on the subject depends on the results of the May elections and his negotiations with other right-wing parties and groupings. It doesnt matter how valiantly Orban tries to hide the truth, this suspension is an unexpected blow. Up until the very last minute he was hoping that support for Fideszs suspension or expulsion was not as strong as it turned out to be. The hope was that CDU and CSU would stick by him and that those small Benelux parties that were insisting on Fideszs expulsion would be in the great minority. It didnt work out that way. For Orban, this is a serious loss of political power both at home and abroad. Only total astonishment can be expressed that there are journalists in Hungary who see the results as a great victory for Orban, who is one of the best practitioners of Realpolitik anywhere in the world. One of these people is Peter Peto of 24.hu, who naively believes that those journalists working for Magyar Nemzet, Origo, Pesti Sracok, and so on made asses of themselves when they urged him to leave EPP. Does Peto really believe that these hack journalists conduct their propaganda on their own? He is not interested in anything else but in acquiring the toolbox necessary for power, which happens to be the European Peoples Party. After this humiliation, does he really think that Orban will be able to remake EPP in his own image? It was not only the enthusiastic right-wing hack journalists who urged Orban to leave EPP. Gergely Gulyas, his chief-of-staff, only a few hours before their departure for Brussels, said that Fidesz will immediately leave EPP if it is being suspended. Pretending that the suspension is actually not a suspension doesnt strike me as a brilliant move on the part of the best practitioner of Realpolitik in Europe. Most sane people, like Ildiko Lendvai, former chairperson of MSZP, called the story of the pseudo-suspension a funny episode in the drama. Very rightly she called it a communication crutch for domestic purposes. The assumption, also advanced by Peto, that the decision to suspend Fidesz from EPP was necessary to ensure that Weber becomes the next president of the European Commission, is questionable. Manfred Weber almost certainly will not sail into the position without the help of other parties. For example, only yesterday Frans Timmermans, the socialist candidate for the job, said in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that as long as EPPs top candidate, Manfred Weber, does not clearly announce that he will not work with the far right, I will have nothing to talk with him about. Thus, the final EPP decision is still ahead of us, probably post-election. This is just one chapter in the continuing saga of EPP and Fidesz. MTI Photo: Szecsodi Balazs Ruling Fidesz and the opposition parties were divided on the outcome of Wednesdays meeting of the European Peoples Partys political assembly where Fidesz agreed to suspend its membership in the centre-right grouping. Fidesz declared the debate a failed attempt by the pro-migration delegates to expel the party while the opposition called it a defeat for Fidesz. Fideszs parliamentary group leader Mate Kocsis said that while many demanded that the EPP expel Fidesz, including the European Socialists, Dutch MEP Judith Sargentini and - using the liberal media - [Democratic Coalition leader] Ferenc Gyurcsany, the group decided neither to expel nor to suspend the party. In fact, Fidesz has itself decided to voluntarily suspend its participation in the work of the EPP, he said. The opposition Socialists said Fidesz had lost its interest representation powers [in the EU]. Hungary, however, must not, Bertalan Toth said on Facebook. It is now our job to defend Hungarys interests in the EU since [Prime Minister] Viktor Orban will no longer be able to do that, he said. The Socialists will launch a signature drive so that Hungarians can express their will to keep the country in the EU, Toth said. Jobbik deputy leader Marton Gyongyosi said in a statement that even though the EPP allowed Fidesz to agree to the suspension of its membership, it was still clear that Fidesz had taken the first steps towards quitting the European Union. Democratic Coalition (DK) MEP Csaba Molnar told a press conference that Fidesz was basically ejected from the EPP. They can try to prove that the opposite is true, but this is what has really happened, he said. Leaders of the LMP party reacted by saying that it is absolutely irrelevant from the Hungarian peoples point of view what sort of a deal Fidesz and the EPP have made. Fidesz has proven on several occasions that it is unwilling and unfit to represent the Hungarian people in the European Parliament, they said in a statement. Benedek Javor, an MEP of Parbeszed, said on his Facebook page that Viktor Orbans plan to pull the EPP to the right had failed and his game of bluffs is over. The Hungarian Liberal Party said it regretted that the EPP retreated from ousting Fidesz from its ranks. A suspension of Fidesz in the group has made Hungary a weaker and more vulnerable country, the party said in a statement. MTI Photo: PM Press Office Szecsodi Balazs Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has accepted the Bavarian provincial governments offer concerning scientific cooperation with the Central European University, Florian Herrmann, the Bavarian minister of state for EU and media affairs told Munich daily Suddeutsche Zeitung. According to the proposal, the Munich Technical University (TUM) would fund two faculties on democracy and governance at CEU. CEU was barred from issuing American degrees in Hungary last year, as the government said it had failed to comply with a law amendment requiring educational activity in the universitys country of origin. TUM would co-fund a third faculty which would operate as a foundation, Herrmann said. He said Orban had guaranteed that the CEU would be allowed to continue its research and educational work in Budapest. Herrmann said he believed the gesture on the part of the Hungarian prime minister was a clear sign that he wanted to dampen the controversy surrounding his Fidesz party within the European Peoples Party (EPP). MTI Photo The cosiness of your living room and the ambiance of an evening spent with friends, paired up with a culinary experience on a fine dining level. This is the best description one can give about the eating experience at the apartment restaurant of Zaida and Igor Zincenco. The former pastry chef at Costes Downtown Michelin-awarded restaurant and the experienced gastro-entrepreneur started the exclusive dinner evenings some two months ago and delight the Budapest audience with them three times a week. Spending an evening at Zincenco Kitchen and visiting a restaurant on the corner could not be more different: for one, there is the fact that its not so easy to get in. To visit Zaida and Igor Zincenco you have to make an appointment first and then ring the bell of the right door at the right time. Their place only opens from Thursdays to Saturdays and only at 19:00. There is no plate or advertisement outside 20 Bihari Janos utca that would suggest the presence of a restaurant, and when you walk into the strange house near Nyugati railway station you feel a little like the victim of a conspiracy. But this is only a conspiracy for the sake of good taste. Between living room and restaurant The host, Igor Zincenco, greets at the apartment door. During the evening he will be the waiter, sommelier and entertainer at the same time. Once he has taken the coats he leads into the room where the rest of the evening will be spent. In less than 30 square metres there are not only six tables but even a sitting corner, a piano, a record player and a kitchen, which at first look does not seem to be better or worse equipped than the one most people have at home. The difference is that Zaida Zincenco is at work here, performing her kitchen magic, and she is already laying the first canapes on a tablet, including red cabbage strudel, beef tartare and bread rolls with a piquant cream. They serve a glass of Prosecco with the entree. Apartment- or living-room restaurants, whatever you call them, are a trend that is associated with hobby cooks. However, Zaida is professional and has proven her skills at numerous first-class establishments. Igor is not a rookie either, having operated several bistro pubs in Great Britain. Still, the two chose to adapt this amateur business model, and they are not only successful with it but also happier than ever before. "We got the idea during the time we spent together in Great Britain," they tell. "We invited some friends to eat over sometimes. They were always so impressed that the whole thing soon developed into a fixed evening every week, which was freed up by everyone so they could be there. When we moved back to Budapest we wanted to open something of our own, and we remembered these home-cooking evenings." Full evening program with six courses Eating at the Zincencos is a full evening program, as instead of offering a la carte they prepare a degustation menu for every guest, with a seasonally changing content. It takes about four hours to get from the Amuse Bouche to Dessert. No matter if we are talking about foie gras, quail egg soup, catfish filet or beef tenderloin, all dishes are prepared with perfect technique and arranged in a refined way on plates designed especially for this restaurant. A Hungarian ceramic artist, Judit Lantos, painted the monogram of the restaurant on the plates and bowls. You can eat with cutlery from the assortment of British designer Robert Welch. "Details are simply important for me when we are dealing with good gastronomy," Igor explains. You can see that in the design of the guest space too. The couple started designing and rebuilding the former private apartment five months ago. During the renovations they tore up the floorboards, scraped the walls and had special furniture made. "The interior has to reflect the style of Zaidas kitchen progressive but rustic, classic but delicate, timeless yet modern." The result gives an impression of relaxed serenity, with an expressly unpretentious style that you can also find in hip large cities, such as London or New York. Unlike the culinary creations of Zaida, though, with which she always points back to her Hungarian home. If you wish, you can watch the 28-year-old chef in action over her shoulder. Zaida is happy to offer insight about the ingredients, preparation and her time spent in the kitchens of awarded restaurants. Igor is always ready to tell a few jokes, and has good anecdotes about several Hungarian winemakers. The mix of good cuisine, good wine and good conversation is something that you are reluctant to finish even after spending four hours. However, accompanied by the last few digestives, everyone is ushered outside the door just a couple minutes after 23:00. See you next time at the Zincencos. Evaluation If you are a fan of excellent cuisine and extraordinary gastronomic experiences, you have to visit this apartment restaurant in 2019. Of course, you have to pay the price: at HUF 13,500 for the six courses and an additional HUF 7500 for the matching wine selection, we are not talking about peanuts. However, if you compare this with the degustation menu of other restaurants, the price is still quite favourable. Igor Zincenco knows this too. However, he is not planning to increase the price in the long term. "Its important for us that not only a tiny circle of rich customers is able to afford this experience," he says. Instead, he would like to charm as many people as possible with this kind of sophisticated cooking. Still, Zincenco Kitchen is not about everyday eating, much rather a great experience that is best reserved for special occasions. Venue: Zincenco Kitchen 1055 Budapest, Bihari Janos u. 20. Open Thursdays to Saturdays 19:00 to about 23:00 Reservations at (+36) 30 686-5419 and hello@zincencokitchen.com Street Art is practised in all kinds of dimensions in Budapest, from small stickers to huge wall paintings on previously ugly firewalls. This art form, which is creatively presented in open space, would like to make art available to everyone. Neopaint Works, one of the most important representatives of the street art scene, told about about the background of this special form of painting. Everyone surely has already stumbled across them in Budapest and perhaps even stopped for a second to stare. No wonder, since they are hard to miss due to their size: large, free-standing house walls painted with bright colours, making up unique artworks, the so-called murals. You can find them all around the city but especially in District VII, which has a broad selection of this kind of artwork. The formerly rather neglected Jewish Quarter has developed into one of the most popular Budapest neighbourhoods in the past years. A few years ago it was dominated by run-down houses and bald parking places, surrounded by sad firewalls. Giving the district a new chance "We wanted to give the district a new chance," Barnabas Jankovits, the founded of Neopaint explains when we ask how he got the idea to paint whole house walls. "We wanted to show the mayor that we have the chance to create something unique here, which is good for the district and good for the city." In 2011 Neopaint completed its first mural on a firewall in Kiraly utca, on the corner of a playground. "This mural was meant to be an example showing how to beautify the city by a lot in just a short time. This is why we made the first one for free." However, as Jankovits explains, it was not at all easy to get authorisation. "It took more than a year before the mayor authorised it. There had been no former references. Nobody could know how it would work out."Furthermore, five different authorities had to approve. When the authorisations were finally available, the once bald firewall completely changed in just a week. "It was a huge success," Jankovits tells us proudly. "The media reported about it and everyone was thrilled." When he founded Neopaint 15 years ago, he never dreamed of becoming so famous in the Budapest street art scene. Actually, it was not the murals but a completely different business idea that made him found the company, which consists of three full-time employees and about ten freelance artists. Making contact with the artists It all began when he was just a boy, Jankovits remembers, in a time when this whole lifestyle was still new. Many of his friends began to paint and spray on walls, both legally and illegally. "At a point of time I noticed that many people like this kind of art; not only the graffiti but the legal wall painting with real artistic value. People were looking to make contact with the artists to decorate their homes, restaurants or business rooms." This is how the ultimate business idea of Neopaint was born in its founders head. He tells us with a shrug: "I am not the best artist but I am very good in organising. This is why I began to work as a contact person between artists and clients who were looking for good, quality pictures." In time the young company received more and more assignments, mainly from companies that wanted to decorate their offices but also from private persons. The price for painting a wall depends on different components, such as the size, the material costs, working hours and the difficulty of the painting technique. Have there been any accidents while painting? Jankovits knocks on the wooden table three times and answers with obvious relief: "Fortunately not, we are always very careful. We closely collaborate with a scaffolding company and everyone is secured with straps while working." The work on the murals often takes place at dizzying heights. One of the first questions that he always asks artists who apply to the company is if they are afraid of heights. "Well, as for myself, I am," Jankovits confesses with a grin, but this is no problem as he mainly takes care of the bureaucratic aspects and organisation, most of which happens at ground level. For the artists, however, being able to work with a steady brush at height is a must because the team does not work with pre-fabricated stickers that need to be glued on. They complete every single mural by hand with brushes and real exterior facade paint. A dream come true As the 37-year-old owner reports, it was hard work to get Neopaint where it is today. "I never wanted to do anything else. We did not just want to get rich. This has always been my goal and I knew that if we work hard and invest a lot of time and energy, then we can do it. This is a dream come true." The Neopaint team has been painting the firewalls of Budapest for the past seven years but they are not the only ones. In the framework of the Szines Varos Festival (Colourful City Festival), which has been organised for the fourth time in the Hungarian capital, artists are invited from around the world to beautify the empty walls of the city with their artistic murals. The festival aims to present the versatility of existing styles, combined with the appeal to people to be open to new things and to learn to value diversity. If you look more closely, you can find clear differences between the works of Neopaint and artists of the Szines Varos Festival. Art that informs When compared to the sometimes abstract, colourful paintings of these latter artists, who all paint in their own unique style, Neopaint seems to be rather conservative. During the interview the founder emphasised expressly that they do not consider themselves as street artists. "We are graphic designers. As opposed to street artists, we are not aiming to present our own styles. Everything that we do is not for ourselves but for the public." Neopaints focus is having an effect on the public. For them the most important thing is that their murals match their environment and its history. "We want to point something out and give information," Jankovits explains. "It makes me happy and proud to see when tourists stand in front of one of our works, and I can see that they are not only taking a photo and moving on, no, they are really interested for what is lying behind the picture." He presents one of the most popular murals as an example: Rubiks Cube. This painting was completed by Neopaint in 2014 both to honour the 70th birthday of the Hungarian inventor, Erno Rubik, (who was appointed an honorary citizen of the capital in the same year) and to commemorate the 40th birthday of the popular cube. Jankovits says he has a special connection to this mural. "We had the opportunity to discuss the picture personally with Erno Rubik, to find out how we were able to make something really artistic out of it." It appears they succeeded. Looking at the cube more closely reveals that its composed of numerous crosses, which altogether form the 250-square-metres large magic cube. The inventor is commemorated with a citation on the left side: "There is always a solution and not only one." The murals are no doubt unique works, already just by their presentation on the largest canvases of the city. This however can also mean a disadvantage by being too temporary. "When we are selecting the wall to be painted, we take care that the firewall wont disappear the next year. In order to make sure, we are collecting information about the wall from all kinds of sources and we talk to the owners," Jankovits says. Unfortunately, there are no guarantees. Just recently two Neopaint works were destroyed because the owners wanted to use the walls for promotion. The artists of the Szines Varos Festival have also seen several of their murals erased by newly built houses recently. "The murals are like children to me," the Neopaint founder says, "so of course I am sad when they are destroyed." Calling attention to political problems Street art is often presented in large dimensions but sometimes in smaller too. Especially when transmitting critical messages about politics or society, artists often reach back to more compact formats, sometimes just small stickers. Despite their smallness, the messages are seen and understood, especially by the locals. An excellent example was the excitement last June about a parodic presentation of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The wall painting depicted him sitting on a small blue train based on the childrens show "Thomas the Tank Engine". Although it was quickly removed, the mural went viral in only a few hours. The satirical party Magyar Ketfarku Kutya Part (Two-tailed Dog Party), which mocks and provokes the political elite by using all kinds of street art, took credit for the mural. While these kind of messages are sometimes hard to locate, the team of Budapestflow can help. They offer a three-hour tour for EUR 45 per person, giving a glimpse of the history, culture and creative concept of the Budapest street art scene. Besides visiting the large murals, the tour guide presents graffiti and other forms of street art and offers a broad knowledge of the topic, such as information about the artists and the social-political background of the works. The Budapestflow tours are for small groups of up to five people, thus distancing themselves from the classic tours with large groups. As the founder explains, direct communication is very important for the Budapestflow activists. They want to bring the variable and steadily growing street art scene closer to people, to introduce their guests to its background, and to point out the connections of the artwork with history and culture. Street Art Tour: Contact Budapestflow here Find more information on the street art tour here. MTI Photo: Mohai Balazs Kai and her mother Kimberly Shappley recently moved to outside Austin, Texas, because of the discrimination Kai faced in another Texas town. Kai is like any other girl at her school except that she had to move to a different district so that she could use the girls bathroom because she is transgender. Kai is the subject of a short verite documentary that offers an intimate view into how she and her mother are fighting for her right to be who she is. The other films in this series feature Eisha Love from Chicago and Jennifer Chavez in rural Georgia. Both women have faced discrimination Love in the criminal justice system and Chavez in employment because they are transgender. Related stories Memo to Distributors: Buy These 2019 SXSW Films SXSW 2019: The 10 Best Film and TV Projects at the Festival 'It Started as a Joke' Review: A Sweet Little Doc About Finding Catharsis Through Comedy -- SXSW The three films are produced by the American Civil Liberties Union and Little by Little Films, and released in partnership with Conde Nasts them. Each film is directed by an LGBTQ+ filmmaker, produced by an inclusive and majority-LGBTQ+ production team, and informed by a panel of transgender advisers. Trans and nonbinary people are dying because people refuse to see our humanity, said Chase Strangio, an ACLU attorney and series producer. We want these films to cut through the dehumanizing rhetoric too often heard by lawmakers and spark conversations about ending the day-to-day indignities and discrimination faced by trans people. The ACLU has increased its efforts to advance transgender equality with the recent hiring of LaLa Zannell as the Trans Justice Campaign Manager. I believe that to advance trans justice we have to have a political education component to the legal and policy work, said Zannell who joined the ACLU in March. We need to make sure people understand the harm caused by the discrimination and systems of oppression we see in these films. My goal is to sharpen and inform the amazing work the ACLU does to support transgender and nonbinary people, including transgender women of color like myself. Story continues Read More:ACLU Debuts Animated Films as Part of Campaign for Smart Justice ACLU affiliate offices in more than a dozen states have started education campaigns related to transgender and nonbinary people. These have included community forums, meeting with state lawmakers, and efforts to go door-to-door to introduce people to their transgender neighbors. Transgender people in America often have to become advocates for themselves and others just to survive. Love was joined by other transgender advocates for a screening of her film and a discussion on discrimination against transgender people in the criminal justice system. Chavez, the subject of the third film, went to court after she was fired because she is transgender. While Chavezs legal battle ended, the issues her case raised whether or not transgender people are protected by laws prohibiting sex discrimination is the subject of a case currently being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. You can watch the short films below and learn more about the ACLUs Trans Justice Campaign here: Kai Shappley Eisha Love Jennifer Chavez Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Photo credit: SAMUEL HABTAB - Getty Images From Esquire The True Tale of Deregulation featuring the Boeing 737 Max took another plot twist on Thursday. From The New York Times: As the pilots of the doomed Boeing jets in Ethiopia and Indonesia fought to control their planes, they lacked two notable safety features in their cockpits. One reason: Boeing charged extra for them. For Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers, the practice of charging to upgrade a standard plane can be lucrative. Top airlines around the world must pay handsomely to have the jets they order fitted with customized add-ons...other features involve communication, navigation or safety systems, and are more fundamental to the planes operations. Many airlines, especially low-cost carriers like Indonesias Lion Air, have opted not to buy them - and regulators dont require them. Whose genius marketing idea was this? OK, charge the airline more for extra legroom seating and so on. But devices that help keep the pilots from flying the plane into the ground? Those would seem to fit the definition of mandatory. Turns out it's just another example of shareholder value killing people. Add-on features can be big moneymakers for plane manufacturers. In 2013, around the time Boeing was starting to market its 737 Max 8, an airline would expect to spend about $800,000 to $2 million on various options for such a narrow-body aircraft, according to a report by Jackson Square Aviation, a consultancy in San Francisco. That would be about 5 percent of the planes final price. Photo credit: JEMAL COUNTESS - Getty Images Boeing charges extra, for example, for a backup fire extinguisher in the cargo hold. Past incidents have shown that a single extinguishing system may not be enough to put out flames that spread rapidly through the plane. Regulators in Japan require airlines there to install backup fire extinguishing systems, but the F.A.A. does not. There are so many things that should not be optional, and many airlines want the cheapest airplane you can get, said Mark H. Goodrich, an aviation lawyer and former engineering test pilot. And Boeing is able to say, Hey, it was available. But what Boeing doesnt say, he added, is that it has become a great profit center for the manufacturer. Both Boeing and its airline customers have taken pains to keep these options, and prices, out of the public eye. Story continues The Justice Department is issuing subpoenas now in a criminal investigation of Boeing, but I don't expect anything to come of that except an impressive-sounding fine that Boeing will pay out of the petty cash drawer. Putting corporate officers in the slam is not something we do much any more. Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here. ('You Might Also Like',) The Doha Film Institutes unique Qumra workshop wrapped its fifth edition on Wednesday following six days of masterclasses, labs and mentoring sessions that bolstered the DFIs status as the prime entity fostering Arab filmmaking and connecting directors from most of the region with the rest of the world. Programmers from Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Berlin and many other major festivals were in attendance, as has become customary, as well as a select group of industry execs from more than 30 countries including a high-caliber U.S. contingent. They came to provide their input on 36 DFI-backed projects, most of which by Arab directors, and to hobnob in a relaxed informal setting. Related stories Berlin: Robert Bosch Foundation Announces Prizes For Arab-German Projects Eugenio Caballero and Alice Rohrwacher Join Doha Film Institute's Qumra Lineup Egypt's Mohamed Karim on Working With Nicolas Cage in Indie Thriller 'A Score to Settle' Its a very intimate structure that doesnt just offer support or critique, but also real dialogue, said Iraqi-Moroccan director Tala Hadid (pictured) one of this years Qumra mentors. They choose and curate very carefully who should go with which project, and who will be able to help it, she added. Several attendees praised the projects on display some of which are tipped to surface soon on the festival circuit starting with Cannes, similarly with what happened in 2018 after last years edition. Standouts in the Qumra picture lock section were France-based Algerian director Mounia Meddours Papicha, a portrait of a young woman who refuses to submit to fear during the Algerian Civil War; Tunisian director Hinde Boujemaas Noura Dreams, about a woman who dreams of divorcing her husband who is about to be released from jail; and black comedy The Unknown Saint by Moroccan helmer Alaa Eddine Aljem, in which a thief, after years behind bars, returns to the site where he had buried a large sum of money to discover that it has become a holy shrine. Story continues A non-Arabic pic, Bulgarian director Svetla Tsotsorkovas drama Sister, a followup to her well-received debut Thirst, also generated buzz. Roughly 20% of DFI-financed projects are non-Arabic in order to ensure that the core of its grantees is not isolated in an Arabic ghetto. And about 50% are by woman directors, though there is no quota system. DFI CEO Fatma Al Remaihi said she was proud of the fact that so many DFI-backed projects last year were at Cannes or Venice, and also found distribution. In 2018 there were six at Cannes, including Nadine Labakis Capernaum, in competition, and also six spread around several Venice sections. The best achievement for this event is being a place of discovery for Arab cinema, she added. Qumras increasing influence on the festival circuit was reflected in the especially strong presence of U.S. execs at this edition. It comprised Netflixs now London-based acquisitions executive Funa Maduka, whose role has recently expanded to include development, Amazon Studioss marketing exec Ashley Hasz, Mubi VP of Content Bobby Allen, Elliott Whitton, head of development at film production and finance outfit Cinereach, and Sam Morrill, director of curation at Vimeo. Wild Bunch, The Match Factory, and Doc & Film International where among attending sales companies, while producers who made the trek included Jason Gray at Tokyo-based Loaded Films, Polands Ewa Puscynszka of Opus Film, Moroccos Lamia Chraibi, and Georges Schoucair, head of Beirut-based Abbout Productions. The master classes held by directors Pavel Pawlikovski, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Alice Rohrwacher and others in the I.M. Pei-designed Museum of Islamic Art were of uneven quality, the latter two hampered by language/interpreter issues. Direct press access to the Qumra masters was also more problematic than in past editions. In general the small international press corps was a bit relegated to the sidelines, one sore spot being no access to any of the Qumra projects screenings. Similarly to last year the Saudi Arabia-led air and sea blockade imposed on Qatar since June 2017 loomed in the background. We all feel it, said Palestinian director Elia Suleiman, who is Qumras creative director. Its very frustrating to see whats going on. But we know that the answer is not anger; its actually to create cinema and react to it that way. Al Remaihi reiterated that Qatar has not changed its grants policy. The DFI is still open to applicants from all countries, but politics are preventing filmmakers from countries that are imposing the blockade to access this funding. There are many instances now of filmmakers now of filmmakers [from Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia] who would like to participate, but are reluctant because they are afraid of the consequences, she said. The DFI chief also underscored that efforts to foster Qatari filmmakers are starting to bear fruit. Stills of Qatari director Hamida Issas environment-themed doc Places of The Soul, screening in the works-in-progress section, were printed on the cover of the Qumra catalogue and on several marquees to celebrate what is en-route to become the first completed Qatari feature shepherded by the DFI. Issas doc is a personal exploration that juxtaposes two landscapes, the ice desert of Antarctica with the sand desert of Qatar and what the tiny oil and gas-rich nation has now become. Its about preservation of our roots for the future, she said. Almost like Im reminding myself and my people who we were, Issa added. I remember when I was 7 years old: there was nothing here. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Refugees rarely get to tell their own stories, which means their stories get told for them often inaccurately and with undue hostility. Lack of resources is one issue, but a lack of stability is another: Asylum-seekers are in a frightening state of limbo, fleeing the imminent dangers of their native countries only to suffer the indifference or suspicion of potential adoptive homes. Filmmaker Hassan Fazili and his family logged three perilous years and hundreds of miles in exile from Afghanistan, where the Taliban had put out a call for his death. Shot on three mobile phones, Fazilis Midnight Traveler is a documentary that feels like a modern-day message in a bottle, an urgent appeal for help from a family thats still searching for a home. After lapping ashore at the Sundance Film Festival and other spring festivals, it should find an empathetic reception in the West. Speaking via Skype at the True/False Film Festival in early March, Fazili told the audience that his familys asylum application had yet to be processed, due in part to poor legal representation. In that sense, Midnight Traveler never loses the shroud of uncertainty that haunts it from the beginning, when Fazili and his family wife Fatima Hossaini and their two young daughters, Nargis and Zahra are forced to pull up stakes in Tajikistan after their request for asylum is denied and theyre deported back to Afghanistan. Their statelessness and homelessness is heartbreaking enough, but what cuts deepest is the perception of invisibility that seems to greet them at every turn, as if their fundamental personhood is being denied. They feel like a problem that no government, and few private citizens, are willing to even acknowledge, much less address. Before the Taliban took notice of them, Fazili and Hossaini were partners in operating Kabuls Art Cafe and Restaurant, a place where reform-minded men and women could congregate in defiance of the Talibans religious police, which pressed for segregation of the sexes. After a conservative mullah called for a boycott, protesters and authorities rallied against the cafe and shut it down. In March 2015, the Taliban put out a call for Fazilis death, prompting him and his family to move to Tajikistan, but as Midnight Traveler opens, theyve been deported from their temporary home after 14 months. Through a network of friends, they join a wave of refugees fleeing Afghanistan for the Turkish border first by car, then by foot, with Hossaini wearing a burka that functions both as adherence to religious code and a way to travel incognito. Story continues While keeping their smartphones charged is a challenge, especially when theyre trekking through the forest, Fazili offers vivid pieces of his familys journey to the edge of Hell, which takes them through Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia en route to their intended destination in the European Union. The conditions that greet them are often astonishingly harsh, whether theyre camping out on rain-sodden ground, squeezing bare mattresses into the hallways of urban refugee facilities, or simply finding corners of abandoned buildings that are unoccupied. Still worse are other threats, like a violent mob that terrorizes migrants on the streets of Bulgaria. Because Fazilis status is in constant flux, away from any resources more sophisticated than a phone, his footage has been carefully assembled by Emelie Mahdavian, a filmmaker and scholar whose interest in Central Asian cinema brought her into contact with him. Mahdavian covers each step in the familys fractured journey while honoring Fazilis instinct to pick up on the lighter moments along the way, when his girls are growing and playing and making the best of difficult circumstances. Midnight Traveler has a home-movie quality thats enormously effective in putting a human face on a global crisis. There are many thousands of families out there just like Fazilis, seeking shelter from a never-ending storm. The film makes them visible. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Its a runway reunion for Heidi Klum and Gisele Bundchen! The legendary supermodels recently reunited to pass down their superstar knowledge to the next class of up-and-coming models for an episode of Germanys Next Top Model, and seeing the two together will give you strong 2000s flashbacks. Klum and Bundchen teamed up for an episode of Germanys Next Top Model, of which Klum is a host and judge, and leading up to the episode, the two filmed a cute behind-the-scenes clip reminiscing on their past modeling days. I think I was 19, Bundchen, now 38, said about meeting Klum for the first time. So [its been] 19 or 20 years. We had great times together but were busy ladies and now we have kids. Now were women, we used to be girls but now were women, but were still having fun, Klum, 45, said, to which Bundchen added: Always, never stop having fun, thats important. In a sneak peek clip posted on Bundchens Instagram story, she sits down with contestants and Klum for an intimate chat during one episode. Heidi Klum/Instagram The two supermodels started their careers together as Victorias Secret Angels back in the 2000s. Bundchen was with the brand from 2000 until mid-2007, while Klum worked with the lingerie giant from 1999-2010, and the models had many appearances at in-store events and runway shows together during their tenures. They both rocked the mid-2000s low-rise jeans look at a Victorias Secret store event in 2003, below. Sylvain Gaboury/FilmMagic And were joined by their fellow Angels, Alessandra Ambrosio, Adriana Lima and Tyra Banks in 2004 at a VS event. J. Countess/WireImage And of course, they walked the same runways many times at the annual Victorias Secret Fashion Show, pictured in 2003, below, with Karolina Kurkova, Tyra Banks and Adriana Lima. Story continues Jason Nevader/WireImage Last December, Klum supported her friend during the release of Bundchens new memoir, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, by posting a selfie of the two reading the book in bed together. Bedtime Stories with @gisele, Klum captioned the pic. In the book, released last fall, Bundchen discussed her ongoing battle with anxiety, why she regrets her plastic surgery procedures and many more candid accounts of her modeling and private life. Bridget McCain, the youngest daughter of John McCain, on Thursday appealed directly to President Donald Trump on Trumps favorite platform, Twitter amid his continued fuming about the late Arizona senator. Everyone doesnt have to agree with my dad or like him, but I do ask you to be decent and respectful, Bridget, 27, tweeted at the president early Thursday. If you cant do those two things, be mindful. We only said goodbye to him almost 7 months ago. In a second tweet, Bridget went on the offensive, casting the presidents fixation on her father as part of his broader narcissism and poor impulse control. Even if you were invited to my dads funeral, you would have only wanted to be there for the credit and not for any condolences, she wrote. Unfortunately, you could not be counted on to be courteous, as you are a child in the most important role the world knows. Bridgets older sister Meghan, who is a co-host of The View, discussed her tweets on the show later Thursday. Meghan has frequently spoken out about Trumps continued disparagement of her dad, but it had clearly taken a toll. I dont like coming here every day and having to do this. Its extremely emotionally exhausting, she said. Im not the only child in my family. I have six brothers and sisters. and my little sister Bridget, for the first time ever, has decided she wanted to speak out shes very, very private. RELATED: What to Know About Bridget McCain, the Youngest of Sen. McCains 7 Kids Meghan noted that Bridget has long stayed out of the spotlight, tracing back to a smear campaign against Sen. McCain during the 2000 presidential primary. But speaking up now, I think its very brave of her, Meghan said of her sister. Shes very young and she does not speak publicly. Meghan expanded on her sentiments on Instagram after the show. She posted a photo of her, Bridget and their dad and wrote, Incredibly proud of my brave sister Bridget for speaking out against President Trump. I love you more than I could ever possibly say. Your strength and grace continues to help carry us all through our grief. Story continues Bridget McCain | Jae C Hong/AP/REX/Shutterstock On Wednesday, as the View panel discussed President Trumps animosity toward the Arizona senator, who died last summer from brain cancer, Meghan called it a new bizarre low. Trump and McCain, at different times both leaders of their Republican Party, made no secret of their political differences: Sen. McCain was the deciding vote in blocking efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act two years ago. But Trump, as is his pattern, has personally targeted McCain as well, including mocking him for being captured while fighting in the Vietnam War. During a Twitter spree over the weekend while some of his family fled the spotlight for Florida the president retweeted another user who wrote, Millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not McCain. Im one! We hated McCain for his ties to the Russian dossier & his vote against repealing Obamacare. Trump also derided McCain, falsely, as last in his class while in the Naval Academy. Speaking with reporters on Tuesday, the president said: I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be. On Wednesday, during a speech in Ohio, the president bizarrely said he had not gotten a proper thank you after approving Sen. McCains funeral last year. It is unclear what he meant, though he was likely referring to authorizing the use of military planes. Abby Anderson is in love, and all she wants to do right about now is sing about it. Premiering on PEOPLE, Good Lord tells the real-life story of her romance of one year with her boyfriend from Georgia. I feel like I learned what love is this year, admits Anderson. This love is peaceful and it feels like home. I can be myself with him. I dont have to be some extra version of myself. Its refreshing just to be me with him. This undeniable feeling served as the catalyst for her new song, which was written by Anderson and co-writers Josh Kerr and Jordan Minton. Its one of those songs that sneaked up on me, she recalls. I was in Washington D.C. last year singing at the Christmas tree lighting and I had brought my tour bus because I knew I needed to write while I was there. I went to do soundcheck, but before I left, I told Josh and Jordan that I wanted to sing about my boyfriend. I had the Good Lord, I have a good man line down, but by the time I got back from soundcheck, they had already finished the entire chorus. Anderson jokes, It was funny that two grown men ended up writing this about my boyfriend. I think they have a little crush on him too. RELATED GALLERY: Shes Good! Inside Abby Andersons The Long Way Tour Diary: All the Behind-the-Scenes Photos Abby Anderson | John Shearer After the chorus was complete, Anderson continued working with her fellow wordsmiths, determined to infuse little details into the song that would truly tell her and her boyfriends story thus far. Everything in the song is true, she says with a laugh. Like, the line about the yellow Post-its is totally real. Whenever I need to leave or something, we leave little Post-its on the fridge. Those little notes can make for some fun lyrics. So does the boyfriend, whom Anderson prefers remains nameless at this point, love the song? Oh I would guess he does, Anderson chuckles in that distinctive laugh of hers. Hes so shy and humble. Its about him so I think he should love it. Story continues Its this transparent nature and fun-loving personality that has not only caused her boyfriend, but countless of country music fans to fall in love with the girl from Texas since the release of her debut EP Im Good. Heck, even folks overseas know her name. Going to the UK really proved to me the power of social media and streaming and such, says Anderson, who recently returned to Nashville after her debut performance at C2C in London. I could have been a no-name over there but these people filled that theatre and they actually knew who I was and knew all the words to my songs. Abby Anderson | John Shearer The growing momentum behind Anderson and her promising career has even landed her on Rob Thomas 44-date Chip Tooth Smile Tour, which is set to kick off on May 28 in Red Bank, New Jersey and run through most of the summer. Ive long been a huge fan of Rob Thomas, says Anderson, who also recently collaborated with fellow country star Jimmie Allen on a cover of the Oscar-winning song Shallow. I had kind of gotten used to the fact that I would be busy this summer playing festivals and such, but when they called to tell me about the opportunity to go out with him, I mean, I was speechless. Like I was honestly dead silent. Its crazy. And while she continues to travel and write, Anderson is content to enjoy life right now, at this very moment. Im 22 and Im in love, she raves. Its weird. I do think I feel more confident in my skin. Ive always had a good idea of who I am but physically and mentally, I think Im growing up. Man Attempts to Smuggle Tortoises Disguised as 'Chocolate' Into German Airport The man told customs officials that the three tortoises were chocolate Perhaps he should have left these desserts in the desert. A German man was busted by airport customs officials after he attempted to smuggle three Moroccan tortoises into the country by passing them off as chocolate. The man, 69, flew into Berlins Schonefeld Airport from Cairo, Egypt, on March 2, according to a customs office press release translated from German. Hauptzollamt Potsdam Though he tried to enter Germany by way of a green channel meant for people without goods that need to be registered, he was inspected by officers, who found on him a package containing strange contents. When asked what the package contained, the man claimed it was only chocolate but officials quickly learned the three objects were actually tortoises. Photos provided by customs officials show that the animals were arranged neatly in a box with a clear plastic top from a pastry shop called Etoile Patisserie. As the animals are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention, they were confiscated and handed over to a border veterinarian, according to the release. RELATED: Grandma, 63, Accused of Smuggling $500K in Cocaine Through Detroit Airport The convention is an international agreement between governments since the 70s to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival, according to the conventions website. The tortoises are one of more than 5,000 animals and 30,000 plants protected. The release says violating species protection regulations is punishable by fines up to the equivalent of $56,887, or up to five years in prison. CRITICS CONDEMN TRUMP ATTACKS ON McCAIN: The president continued his attacks Tuesday on the late Sen. John McCain seven months after his passing the co-hosts weigh in. https://t.co/ks6IVOGZUL pic.twitter.com/Nq9zrJ0Ryg The View (@TheView) March 20, 2019 Meghan McCain had only warm words for her fellow View co-hosts on Wednesday as they rallied around her amid President Donald Trump ongoing attacks on her father, the late Sen. John McCain. For all that warmth, Meghan, 34, was equally cutting about the commander-in-chief. I do think this is a new bizarre low, she said as the panel discussed President Trumps animosity toward the Arizona senator, who died last summer from brain cancer. The two, at various times both leaders of their Republican Party, made no secret of their political differences: Sen. McCain was the deciding vote in blocking efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act two years ago. But Trump, as is his pattern, has personally targeted McCain as well, including mocking him for being captured while fighting in the Vietnam War. During a Twitter spree over the weekend while some of his family fled the spotlight for Florida the president retweeted another user who wrote, Millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not McCain. Im one! We hated McCain for his ties to the Russian dossier & his vote against repealing Obamacare. Speaking with reporters on Tuesday, Trump said: I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be. On The View on Wednesday, Meghan said she would not hesitate to continue speaking out for her father as long as the president keeps attacking him. My dads not here, but Im sure as hell here, she said. RELATED: Cindy McCain Reveals Hateful Message Sent to Her About Her Husband Amid Trumps Twitter Attacks 7 Months After McCains Death Story continues From left: Sen. John McCain, Meghan McCain and President Donald Trump | NBC via Getty Images; Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images RELATED VIDEO: Meghan McCain Slams Donald Trump for Attacking Her Late Dad John My Father Was His Kryptonite Meghans co-hosts Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, Abby Huntsman and moderator Whoopi Goldberg also spoke up in defense of the McCain family, with Behar saying she believed Trump was jealous of Sen. McCain and obsessed with people that didnt support him. Bullying comes from the top, the bullying comes from the administration, Hostin said. Huntsman echoed that: Where we arent seeing inspiration is from that man in the White House. Meghan said she was grateful for all of their kind words. Later in the episode, she joked that in future conflicts, Im just gonna send Joy. Theres real sisterhood and support at this table and we all support each other, and first and foremost the support I have and love I have from this show in particular thank you, all of you, for real, Meghan said. She continued: If I had told my dad, Seven months after youre dead, youre going to be dominating the news and all over Twitter, he would think it was so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death as well. On Tuesday, Meghans mom and Sen. McCains wife, Cindy McCain, tweeted a screenshot of a vicious message sent to her by a Trump supporter attacking her husband and wishing death upon her daughter. But, Meghan said, Do not feel bad for me and my family. We are blessed, we are a family of privilege. Feel bad for people out there who are being bullied that dont have support, that dont have women of The View to come out and support their family. There were more people suffering more horribly than them, Meghan said. There are kids committing suicide because of cyberbullying there are people going through rough times, she said. We have 20 veterans a day committing suicide. Focus on these issues. These are the issues I beg the White House to pay attention to. Celebrity SheKnows Paris Jackson: fashion icon, singer, actress, and overall one of the coolest people in the industry isnt afraid to shy away from being bold. Whether it be a unique dress on the red carpet or staying ever-so blunt, Jackson keeps it real. And most recently, she bared all for her Instagram for this spiritual event. [] One day before a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet operated by Lion Air crashed into the Java Sea off Jakarta, Indonesia, back in October, killing 189 people, an off-duty pilot flying in the cockpit of that same model of plane on the same airline helped its passengers and crew avoid a similar fate. According to a report from Bloomberg, the unnamed pilot jumped to the aid of crew members as the Lion Air plane flying from Bali to Jakarta experienced difficulties, disabling a malfunctioning flight-control system that is thought to have have caused the fatal crash in Indonesia, and more recently, in Ethiopia, in February. RELATED: Trump Gives Emergency Order to Ground all Boeing 737 MAX Planes in the U.S. After Deadly Crashes Sources familiar with the incident told Bloomberg that the off-duty pilot instructed the crew to cut the power to the motor in the failing trim system, which was causing the planes nose to repeatedly tilt down. The move is part of a checklist all pilots are required to memorize, the outlet said. Crew-members on the doomed Lion Air Flight 610 reportedly didnt know how to respond to the same malfunction when it occurred the next day. Three sources familiar with that planes cockpit voice recorder recovered as part of the investigation told Reuters on the condition of anonymity that in the minutes before the crash, the crew was heard checking their quick reference handbook for how to handle the emergency situation. Achmad Ibrahim/AP/REX/Shutterstock A Lion Air spokesperson did not immediately respond to PEOPLEs request for comment on either Bloomberg or Reuters reports, but Indonesias National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) continues to investigate the Lion Air crash. Indonesian authorities, who discovered Flight 610s cockpit voice recorder in the Java Sea back in January, have said it could take up to a full year to publish the complete crash report. Investigators are also still looking into the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight operating the Boeing 737 MAX 8 that crashed shortly after takeoff earlier this month, killing all 157 passengers on board. Story continues Countries around the world have grounded the controversial Boeing jet, including the United States, the European Union, Australia, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. The acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration, Daniel Elwell, announced last week that their investigations had found a potential link between the two deadly crashes. We are much closer to that possibility and thats why we grounded the airplanes, he said on the Today show We got new information yesterday and we acted on it. It is in our minds now, a link that is close enough to ground the airplanes. Str/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock RELATED: FAA Administrator Says New Information May Link the Boeing 737 MAX Plane Crashes Numerous airlines, including U.S. carriers like American and Southwest, use the 737 MAX 8 for their flights, but have temporarily grounded them following the order. According to the FAA, there are currently 74 MAX 8 and MAX 9 planes that were in operation in the U.S. and 387 worldwide. President Trump has weighed in on the situation, saying he feels planes are now too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT, he wrote in a tweet. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Boeing had stood behind the plane it created for several days following the Ethiopian crash, writing in a statement, we have full confidence in the safety of the 737 MAX. They have since complied with the FAAs grounding of the fleet. According to Boeings website, the 210-seat MAX 8, which debuted in 2017 and was first flown by Southwest in the U.S., was designed to be a more comfortable, reliable and fuel efficient way to travel. Its also the fastest selling plane in the companys history, accumulating 4,700 orders worldwide to date. Photo credit: Sony Pictures Television From Esquire Fans of Breaking Bad, rejoice: Schraderbrau is finally happening. Sony Pictures Television announced this week that Hank Schrader's homemade German-style lager from Season 2 of the critically acclaimed series is headed to a fridge near you-and according to the actor who played Hank, it should be there just in time for summer. "I'm excited, man," said Dean Norris, who portrayed the golden-hearted DEA agent for all five seasons of Breaking Bad. "We talked about it a long time ago, but it's finally coming." Norris is more than just a spokesman for an obscure-but-beloved reference from the series. The actor, who now plays a Dixie mob boss on TNT's Claws, led the charge to bring the brew to life, which involved extensive research and testing to make sure it was a product worthy of Schraderbrau's purported "silky perfection." "It took a long time to find the right brewery," said Norris, who joined forces with California's Figueroa Mountain Brewing Co. to produce Schraderbrau. "I knew if I put out a beer, it's gonna get a lot of scrutiny-I dont want people going, 'Ah this is crap.' We finally got one that made a really fantastic beer." Esquire jumped on the phone with Norris to get the lowdown on all things Schraderbrau. Photo credit: Sony Pictures Television Making Hank a homebrew guy was brilliant. That was all [Breaking Bad creator] Vince Gilligan-he thought that seemed like a Hank-kind-of-thing to do, you know? And he's right. It felt right for the character, and it allowed that one scene where the bottles are popping off that showed his anxiety about gunshots, where he almost shoots Marie. Breaking Bad fans have been asking him about Schraderbrau for years. People online always talk about how they would love to have a Schraderbrau, so I'm really happy to be putting it out there. I was thinking about it close to when the show ended, and I messaged Vince. He thought it was a great idea. But I was on another show right away and just got busy. What spurred my interest again was when we had the 10-year anniversary last year, and I thought, "Oh, that could be a fun project." Story continues Norris is serious about making a beer that lives up to the name. My main concern was that it wasn't a gimmicky-type thing. We wanted to make sure someone wasnt just buying it to put it on their shelf-although, theyre welcome to put it on their shelf as well. We wanted them to taste it and go, "Wow, thats perfect." Everybody that has tasted it has used the word "fantastic," so we really love it. It's more than just a one-and-done. Weve got one style now, which is a Marzen-style German lager, and we have plans for a winter ale, a special "Oktoberfest" style, a summer pale ale-maybe we'll even get my buddy Gomie [Agent Gomez, from Breaking Bad] involved and do a cerveza. Schraderbrau will be here just in time for summer. It should be on shelves in late May! Well have it online and some national retailers. It'll retail somewhere between $5.99 and $6.99 a bottle. It's got a 6.3 ABV, so it's a nice little buzz in a 22-ounce bottle. We love it and hope people love it too, and come back for more. ('You Might Also Like',) The Tribeca Film Institute has announced the 14 films to be honored with grants at the 16th annual Tribeca All Access program, which amplifies stories from underrepresented voices. Seven films and seven documentaries will earn grants from the program to aid their productions, many of them having not received previous funding. The filmmakers will attend the TFI Network event during the Tribeca Film Festival to meet distributors, funders, programmers and mentors in the film industry. Related stories Maya Erskine-Jack Quaid Rom-Com 'Plus One' Sells Ahead of Tribeca Premiere Hideo Kojima to Talk 'Death Stranding' at Tribeca Film Festival TV News Roundup: Netflix Drops 'The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Part 2' Trailer (Watch) Several TAA projects have gone on to premiere at the film festival, like The Short History of the Long Road, Stray Dolls and The NFLs Cheerleader Program. Since 2004, the TAA has supported filmmakers like Roger Ross Williams, RaMell Ross, Natalia Almada, Pacho Velez and Tchaiko Omawale. I am thrilled to be welcoming these filmmakers into the TFI family, and into a larger community of their peers during the three days of the TFI Network, said Amy Hobby, the TFI executive director. High-level industry will have the fortune of meeting these storytellers at a critical moment to launch their projects and careers. The Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts help fund the TAA, and a new grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies will support several grantees from Latin America. The seven scripted projects winning grants are: Coyote Boys After the death of his graffiti-writer brother, 15-year-old Trey follows Luke, a train hopping crust punk and his surrogate family of runaways, artists and activists on illegal train rides that take him deep into a world off the grid. Coyote Boys is a portrait of rootless youth experiencing loss and loneliness creating alternative ways of surviving 21st century America. Story continues Writer, Director, Producer: Haley Elizabeth Anderson Co-Producer: Adrien Cothier The Hole in the Fence (Mexico) The first-year students of an elitist religious school are attending a faith and integration camp outside Mexico City. What begins as a tranquil retreat soon becomes dangerous when a mysterious hole is found in the perimeter fence. Director, Co-Writer: Joaquin Del Paso Co-Writer, Production Designer: Lucy Pawlak Producer: Fernanda De la Peza The Inspection In the age of Dont Ask, Dont Tell, homeless youth Ellis French joins the Marine Corps in a last-ditch attempt to change his life, but must conceal his attraction for his drill instructor in order to survive boot camp. Director, Co-Writer: Elegance Bratton Producers: Chester Algernal, Valerie Steinberg Keep it Together In 1976 civil-war-torn Beirut, a young rebellious woman fights to free her neighborhood from the control of the Holiday-Inn Sniper and to maintain her relationship with a woman bound by social norms. Director, Screenwriter: Bane Fakih Producers: Federica Belletti, Birgit Bernbock Lingua Franca In Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, a Filipina immigrant scrambling to avoid deportation becomes involved with a Russian slaughterhouse worker who is unaware that shes transgender. Director, Producer, Screenwriter: Isabel Sandoval Producers: Darlene Malimas, Jhett Tolentino, Carlo Velayo Osian Set in an apartment complex outside Oakland, Osian tells the story of neighboring Persian-American families through the eyes of two teenagers one reeling with the death of her mother, the other obsessed with raising money for his own funeral. Director, Writer: Babak Khoshnoud Producers: Will Abramson, Zoey Taylor Toll (Brazil) Told with dark humor, TOLL centers on Suellen, a toll booth attendant who realizes she can use her job to help a gang of thieves steal watches from the wealthy people driving between Sao Paulo and the coast. But this is only for a noble cause: to send her son to an expensive gay conversion workshop led by a renowned foreign priest. Director, Screenwriter, Producer: Carolina Markowicz The seven documentaries winning grants: Above and Below Ground The documentary tells the story of brave indigenous women activists and punk rock pastors who come together in the struggle for environmental self-determination in Myanmars war-torn North. A last line of defense for communities caught between coveted natural resources, military cronies, and profit-hungry multinationals, these activists fight back the best way they know howthrough protest, prayer, and Karaoke music videos. Director, Cinematographer: Emily Hong Producer: Maggie Lemere Black Mothers The documentary follows the journey of two women working to disrupt the cycle of racist violence within our countrys injustice system. As one mother navigates the aftermath of her sons attack by local police, the other channels her grief into organizing other mothers to fight for and win concrete change and justice. Director, Producer: Debora Souza Silva Producers: Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, David Felix Sutcliffe Joonam A filmmaker searches to uncover her familys Iranian past. Excavating the formative memories of her grandmother, mother, and self, Joonam explores the evolving shape of girlhood and, with it, the complex relationships between mother and daughter, Iran and America, and the immigrant experience as it ripples over time. Director: Sierra Urich North by Current Trans filmmaker Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown following the death of his infant niece and the wrongful incarceration of his brother-in-law. As he navigates a town steeped in addiction, economic depression, and religious fervor, Madsen creates a relentless portrait of an enduring pastoral family. Director: Madsen Minax Producer: Felix Endara The Other Side (Colombia) As the war between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian State comes to a long-awaited end, filmmaker Ivan Guarnizo and his brother pursue the truth behind their moms kidnapping at the hands of the FARC group and struggle to understand how she was able to forgive her captors in the last years of her life. Director: Ivan Guarnizo Producer: Jorge Caballero Co-Producer: Pablo de la Chica Executive Producer: Rosa Ramos The Silence of my Hands(Mexico) THE SILENCE OF MY HANDS follows Rosa and Saira, two Mexican deaf women in love, as they struggle with the adversities of their language, the distance that separates them and the limited time that they have together, as an unforeseen illness impacts their relationship. Director: Manuel Acuna Producer: Monica Velasco Truth or Consequences Faced with a dying Earth, humanity built a spaceport in the desert of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Those who could leave, ventured in search of new planets to call home. This is the story of the people who stayed. Director: Hannah Jayanti Producer: Sara Archambault Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Tribeca Film Institute has selected 14 scripted and documentary projects for the 16th annual Tribeca All Access program which amplifies stories from historically underrepresented voices. The Tribeca All Access program has supported over 560 filmmakers since it was first established in 2004. It is the Institutes longest-running filmmaker program. Filmmakers supported by the program include Roger Ross Williams (God Loves Uganda, Traveling While Black), RaMell Ross( Hale County This Morning, This Evening), Natalia Almada (Al Otro Lado), Pacho Velez (The Reagan Show), and Tchaiko Omawale (Solace). Some recent supported films include some of the most critically acclaimed festival favorites including Monsters and Men, Midnight Traveler, Pahokee, Building the American Dream, Selah and the Spades, Whose Streets?, Always in Season and The Unafraid. Related stories StandUp NBC Sets Audition Cities For Diverse Comedians Search CAPE Teams With Adele Lim, Daniel Chun, Walter Hamada And Others For Annual New Writers Fellowship New Study Shows Lack of Equity And Advancement For Diverse TV Writers This year, The Short History of the Long Road, Stray Dolls and A Womans Work: The NFLs Cheerleader Problem will make their debut at the Tribeca Film Festival and are all Tribeca All Access-supported films. Seven grants will be awarded to scripted projects in various stages: COYOTE BOYS After the death of his graffiti-writer brother, 15-year-old Trey follows Luke, a train hopping crust punk and his surrogate family of runaways, artists, and activists on illegal train rides that take him deep into a world off the grid. COYOTE BOYS is a portrait of rootless youth experiencing loss and loneliness creating alternative ways of surviving 21st Century America. Writer, Director, Producer: Haley Elizabeth Anderson Co-Producer: Adrien Cothier THE HOLE IN THE FENCE (Mexico) The first-year students of an elitist religious school are attending a faith and integration camp outside Mexico City. What begins as a tranquil retreat soon becomes dangerous when a mysterious hole is found in the perimeter fence. Director, Co-Writer: Joaquin Del Paso Co-Writer, Production Designer: Lucy Pawlak Producer: Fernanda De la Peza Story continues THE INSPECTION In the age of Dont Ask, Dont Tell, homeless youth Ellis French joins the Marine Corps in a last-ditch attempt to change his life, but must conceal his attraction for his drill instructor in order to survive boot camp. Director, Co-Writer: Elegance Bratton Producers: Chester Algernal, Valerie Steinberg KEEP IT TOGETHER In 1976 civil-war-torn Beirut, a young rebellious woman fights to free her neighborhood from the control of the Holiday-Inn Sniper and to maintain her relationship with a woman bound by social norms. Director, Screenwriter: Bane Fakih Producers: Federica Belletti, Birgit Bernbock LINGUA FRANCA In Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, a Filipina immigrant scrambling to avoid deportation becomes involved with a Russian slaughterhouse worker who is unaware that shes transgender. Director, Producer, Screenwriter: Isabel Sandoval Producers: Darlene Malimas, Jhett Tolentino, Carlo Velayo OSIAN Set in an apartment complex outside Oakland, OSIAN tells the story of neighboring Persian-American families through the eyes of two teenagers one reeling with the death of her mother, the other obsessed with raising money for his own funeral. Director, Writer: Babak Khoshnoud Producers: Will Abramson, Zoey Taylor TOLL (Brazil) Told with dark humor, TOLL centers on Suellen, a toll booth attendant who realizes she can use her job to help a gang of thieves steal watches from the wealthy people driving between Sao Paulo and the coast. But this is only for a noble cause: to send her son to an expensive gay conversion workshop led by a renowned foreign priest. Director, Screenwriter, Producer: Carolina Markowicz Seven grants will be awarded to documentary projects in various stages: ABOVE AND BELOW THE GROUND ABOVE AND BELOW THE GROUND tells the story of brave indigenous women activists and punk rock pastors who come together in the struggle for environmental self-determination in Myanmars war-torn North. A last line of defense for communities caught between coveted natural resources, military cronies, and profit-hungry multinationals, these activists fight back the best way they know howthrough protest, prayer, and Karaoke music videos. Director, Cinematographer: Emily Hong Producer: Maggie Lemere BLACK MOTHERS BLACK MOTHERS follows the journey of two women working to disrupt the cycle of racist violence within our countrys injustice system. As one mother navigates the aftermath of her sons attack by local police, the other channels her grief into organizing other mothers to fight forand winconcrete change and justice. Director, Producer: Debora Souza Silva Producers: Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, David Felix Sutcliffe JOONAM A filmmaker searches to uncover her familys Iranian past. Excavating the formative memories of her grandmother, mother, and self, JOONAM explores the evolving shape of girlhood and, with it, the complex relationships between mother and daughter, Iran and America, and the immigrant experience as it ripples over time. Director: Sierra Urich NORTH BY CURRENT Trans filmmaker Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown following the death of his infant niece and the wrongful incarceration of his brother-in-law. As he navigates a town steeped in addiction, economic depression, and religious fervor, Madsen creates a relentless portrait of an enduring pastoral family. Director: Madsen Minax Producer: Felix Endara THE OTHER SIDE (Colombia) As the war between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian State comes to a long-awaited end, filmmaker Ivan Guarnizo and his brother pursue the truth behind their moms kidnapping at the hands of the FARC group and struggle to understand how she was able to forgive her captors in the last years of her life. Director: Ivan Guarnizo Producer: Jorge Caballero Co-Producer: Pablo de la Chica Executive Producer: Rosa Ramos THE SILENCE OF MY HANDS (Mexico) THE SILENCE OF MY HANDS follows Rosa and Saira, two Mexican deaf women in love, as they struggle with the adversities of their language, the distance that separates them and the limited time that they have together, as an unforeseen illness impacts their relationship. Director: Manuel Acuna Producer: Monica Velasco TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES Faced with a dying Earth, humanity built a spaceport in the desert of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. Those who could leave, ventured in search of new planets to call home. This is the story of the people who stayed. Director: Hannah Jayanti Producer: Sara Archambault Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This cable tech working while holding a fussy child is all you need today originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com When a cable technician visited Jessica Donnahoo's home in Greenville, South Carolina, on Saturday, he did more than just set up their TV for streaming he got a whole lot of cuddles from a fussy little boy and in the process helped a mom who really needed a hand that day. Rob Kinney has been working for Spectrum for nine years, he told "Good Morning America," and on Saturday, March 16, Donnahoo's home was on his list. That day, Donnahoo told "GMA," was "chaos." Her 3-year-old son, Sailor, was adopted at birth after years of infertility, she said. He was born with two rare brain defects, too. One of them is optic nerve hypoplasia, which caused him to be blind since birth, she said, noting that he has what's known as a Chiari malformation of the brain. Sailor also has a seizure disorder. (MORE: Viral photo shows 'crazy mix of emotions' mom has about adding a new baby to the mix) Due to his blindness, Sailor has heightened senses and sensory issues, she said. He often gets overwhelmed by new textures and sounds. He doesn't eat solid food and lives solely off of Pediasure, Donnahoo said, and he cannot differentiate day from night, so he often wakes up throughout the night. All of these issues culminated in Sailor being extra fussy on that Saturday, Donnahoo told "GMA." But it also came to an end when Kinney arrived. "When Sailor heard Rob the Spectrum technician speak, Sailor walked over to him and reached his arms in the air. Rob didnt ignore him or turn him away, but instead, happily scooped Sailor up for a cuddle," Donnahoo said. "He had to occasionally put Sailor down so that he could plug in equipment or go out to his truck, but otherwise, he held Sailor off and on for the entire 45 minutes that he was in our home." (MORE: Mom photographs birth of her own son in live birth photos) Story continues Donnahoo, who said she often holds Sailor in a baby carrier, used that free time to fold and put away laundry that she said was "covering her couch." "I said, 'You want me to pick you up buddy?' while looking at her just to get a feel or not if it would be a problem," Kinney told "GMA." "She seemed OK with it so I picked him up and held him while I was doing a few things inside. He was super comfortable with it to the point he started getting sleepy." Having a child in his arms didn't stop Kinney from doing the work he had to do. "He would bounce Sailor using one arm to hold him and make internet adjustments with the other. As a momma, I was incredibly grateful for his kindness," Donnahoo said. People around the world have been moved by Kinney's kindness just like Donnahoo. Her now-viral Facebook post has been shared over 118,000 times. Kinney is a single dad to a 4-year-old and that's one of the reasons Donnahoo thinks he stepped up. "He understood the need for help, saw an opportunity to help another human being and took it," she said. "I think the reason that this act of kindness has resonated with so many people is that we can all relate as parents, grandparents or just anyone who has been overwhelmed. In a world of mass shootings, political scandals, and drugs, we all need to be reassured that humanity and kindness still exist. Rob and my post did just that." Kinney, however, would like to give credit where he feels it's due. "For them to adopt him and take care of him on a daily basis is much more than what I did for a short period of time," he said. "God really has blessed that family and will continue to do so because of the kind and gentle spirit they have. They deserve more recognition than anyone." Genius dad improvises breastfed baby's nighttime feeding while mom is out originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com A dad came up with a smart solution to feeding his newborn daughter while mom was out for the day. Baby Ava is usually breastfed by her mom, so her dad Allen Lamarr Fails Jr. decided to improvise by cutting a hole in his shirt and placing the bottle through. The hilarious video was shared on Facebook where it racked up 15 million views. PHOTO: Allen Lamarr Fails Jr. of Mississippi, is seen in an undated photo with his daughter, Ava Sheron Tamarr Fails. (Allen Lamarr Fails Jr.) "My daughter is famous and she's not even two weeks old," Fails, a dad of two from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, told "GMA." "My wife left the house and the baby got hungry. [She] wouldn't take the bottle and I didn't know what to do." PHOTO: Allen Lamarr Fails Jr. is seen in an undated photo with his wife, Alexis Jolinder Fails. (Allen Lamarr Fails Jr.) Fails said he thought quickly on his feet and simulated a breast by placing the bottle through his shirt. His wife Alexis appreciated him buying time until she got home. PHOTO: Allen Lamarr Fails Jr. is photographed with his children, Ava Sheron Tamarr Fails, 1 week old and Allen Lamarr Fails III, 1. (Allen Lamarr Fails Jr. ) "She was like, 'Allen, your video has [so many] views.' She was laughing about it," Fails said. "I [recorded] it to show people there's more than one way to do something...whenever you care about somebody youll do anything to make it work, even when you don't have the resources." JetBlue pilots accused of sexually assaulting 2 female crew members, lawsuit says originally appeared on abcnews.go.com Two JetBlue pilots sexually assaulted two female airline workers during a layover in San Juan, according to a lawsuit the alleged victims filed in Brooklyn federal court. The two airline crew members, who were identified as Jane Doe 1 from Utah and Jane Doe 2 from Texas, met the pilots, Eric Johnson and Dan Watson, on a beach and shared a beer, the lawsuit said. The alleged incident occurred last May. The beer was laced with a drug, and after that point, the rest of the night became a blur for Doe #1, Doe #2 and the other crew member, according to the lawsuit. (MORE: Woman gives birth on JetBlue flight from Puerto Rico to Florida) The party ended up back in a hotel room where the women said they were attacked, leaving one of them with an STD, the lawsuit said. The company told ABC News in a statement: While we cannot comment on pending litigation, JetBlue takes allegations of violent or inappropriate behavior very seriously and investigates such claims thoroughly. We work to create a respectful workplace for all our crew members where they feel welcome and safe. The Air France-KLM flight from Amsterdam landed about 1 p.m. local time in Los Angeles. (Photo: NurPhoto via Getty Images) A dog traveling in the cargo hold of an Air France-KLM flight from Amsterdam to Los Angeles was found dead on arrival Tuesday afternoon. The dogs owner has been notified and we express our condolences, said a statement from Air France-KLM sent to HuffPost. The plane was a KLM Boeing 747-400, which arrived at Los Angeles International Airport about 1 p.m. local time. The airlines statement said that a necropsy would determine the cause of death and that the dog had been loaded correctly according to KLMs pet policy. However, TMZ, which was the first to report on the incident, cited an anonymous airline employee with knowledge of the incident as saying that the dog had been incorrectly loaded in the cargo hold and experienced a loss of oxygen during the flight. KLMs pet policy states that cats or dogs up to 18 pounds can travel in the cabin with passengers. Pets over that weight but under 165 pounds can fly in a ventilated part of the cargo hold. Certain breeds inclined to respiratory difficulties, such as English and French bulldogs, Boston terriers and pugs, are not permitted to fly. TMZ, which said it had obtained photos of the deceased dog but declined to publish them, reported that the dog looked like a husky. Though pets dying in plane cargo holds is relatively rare, it does happen. Animal welfare experts typically recommend avoiding transporting a pet in cargo if possible. Besides the risk of death or injury, flying in cargo can be extremely stressful for pets due to factors like fluctuating temperatures, rough or improper handling, and inadequate ventilation. This article has been updated with information on the Air France-KLM pet policy and to reflect that the plane was a KLM plane. Related Coverage If You Love Your Pet, Think Twice Before Checking Them As Airplane Cargo United Airlines Mistakenly Flies Family's Dog To Japan Instead Of Kansas City United Airlines Temporarily Suspends Cargo Travel For Pets Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. This article originally appeared on HuffPost. From bone-chilling podcasts to mind-boggling documentaries, our true-crime obsession is at an all-time high. So if youve already watched every single episode of Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez and dont think anything else could compare to its binge-worthiness, keep reading for 11 other hidden Netflix true-crime gems. 1. Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez It might not be considered hidden, but its worth a mention. Aaron Hernandez shocked the world when he went from budding NFL star to convicted killer. The docuseries features interviews with friends, family and players, who examine the chain of events that led to his demise. *Adds to queue* Watch Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez (2020) 2. The Confession Killer Meet Henry Lee Lucas, a serial killer who confessed to more than 600 murders. Although there was no hard evidence linking him to the victims, Lucas recalled gruesome details about the crimes that werent known to the general public, resulting in his conviction. When modern DNA testing contradicts his claims, police begin to wonder: Was Lucas telling the truth? Watch The Confession Killer (2019) 3. Abducted in Plain Sight This doc can be summed up in three easy words: Trust no one. When a friendly neighbor manipulates the parents of a young girl into letting him kidnap their daughter, youd bet a million dollars that the parents wouldnt fall for it againuntil they do. Watch Abducted in Plain Sight (2017) 4. Long Shot The 40-minute documentary introduces viewers to Juan Catalan, a young man whos on a mission to prove hes innocent of murder. So he does what no defendant has done before and obtains footage from a popular TV show in an attempt to solidify his alibi. (Fun fact: The Los Angeles Dodgers played a big role in his case.) Story continues Watch Long Shot (2017) 5. The 43 In 2014, forty-three students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College planning a political protest in Iguala, Mexico, went missing. This docuseries disputesto chilling effectthe Mexican governments account of how and why they vanished. Watch The 43 (2019) 6. The Investigator: A British Crime Story Renowned criminologist Mark Williams-Thomas uses his 11 years of police training to reexamine a string of mysterious murders. With two seasons currently streaming on Netflix, youll be investigating alongside the detectives in no time. (The British accents are just icing on the cake.) Watch The Investigator: A British Crime Story (2016) 7. Wormwood If youve ever been curious about MKUltrathe CIA mind-control programthis is a must-watch. Directed by Errol Morris (American Dharma), the docudrama is as genre-bending as it is mind-bending, using Oscar-worthy reenactments like youve never seen before to explore the mysterious death of a U.S. scientist entangled in the secret Cold War initiative. Watch Wormwood (2017) 8. The Keepers In 1969, Sister Cathy Cesnik (a beloved nun and Catholic high school teacher) went missing and was never seen again. Although her body was recovered two months later, her murder remains unsolved to this day. This is her unsettling story. Watch The Keepers (2017) 9. Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes Ted Bundy is one of Americas most notorious serial killers. Oscar-nominated director Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory) offers a never-before-seen look at the case, using archived footage and audio recordings from when Bundy was on death row. The four-part series features more than a hundred hours of interviews, so buckle up. Watch Conversations with A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) 10. The Innocent Man The documentary reintroduces viewers to the controversial 80s case that shook the small town of Ada, Oklahoma. Inspired by the namesake book by John Grisham, the six-part series examines new evidence that is making everyone question whether they got the right people or if the real killers are still at large. Watch The Innocent Man (2018) 11. ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke You probably remember Sam Cooke for his huge soul hits, including A Change Is Gonna Come and Chain Gang. But this documentary explores how the crooners outspoken views on civil rights might have led to his untimely death at age 33. This reexamination of one of the 20th centurys most iconic talents life and death is undoubtedly a must-watch. Watch ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke (2019) 12. Strong Island Rewind to April 1992, when a 24-year-old African American teacher named William Ford Jr. was murdered by a white male. Although Ford was unarmed, he immediately became a suspect in his own murder. Strong Island tells his story, along with how racism shaped the upsetting outcome of the case. Watch Strong Island (2017) RELATED: 20 Oscar-Winning Movies on Netflix Right Now Photo credit: Kurt Iswarienko From Cosmopolitan Someone is about to snap...and kill. From those words alone, you know Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists is going to be a wild effing ride. And if you watched the premiere last night on Freeform, youll know that it definitely is. Based on the original Pretty Little Liars series, The Perfectionists takes place a couple years after the PLL finale left off. Although Aria, Spencer, Hanna, and (maybe) Emily all departed from the series, Alison DiLaurentis (Sasha Pieterse) and Mona Vanderwaal (Janel Parrish) are back and more mature than ever-or are they? Both of the Liars have left Rosewood to start fresh as faculty members at Beacon Heights University in Beacon Heights, Oregon. Along with Alison and Mona come a whole crop of new characters-including BHU students Ava Jalali (Sofia Carson), Caitlin Park-Lewis (Sydney Park), and Dylan Walker (Eli Brown). At BHU, perfection is expected, and Ava, Caitlin, and Dylan are all feeling the pressure to perform. On top of dealing with school stress, theyre all in a complicated love/hate-rectangle with a fellow student named Nolan Hotchkiss (Chris Mason), who is part of a very rich and powerful family. Nolan is dealing with the death of his sister, Taylor, but not everything is as it seems in Beacon Heights. Sound familiar? Even though The Perfectionists is a brand-new show, the ghosts of PLLs past cant help but follow. Not sure what we mean? Check out all the OG Pretty Little Liars moments you might have missed in the premiere. Alex and Mary Drake Escaped from Monas Dollhouse Photo credit: Eric McCandless - Getty Images In the very last scene of the PLL series finale, it was revealed that Mona kidnapped Alex and Mary Drake (the evil masterminds who tortured the Liars in their dollhouse). Mona moved to Paris under the guise of opening a doll shop, but that was just a cover-up for her real plan to force Alex and Mary to play in her dollhouse. She certainly got her revenge, but it appears the Drakes somehow managed to free themselves from Monas clutches. Story continues After showing up to Alisons new house in Beacon Heights uninvited and wielding a giant knife (#JustMonaThings), she explains why she left France. Photo credit: Allyson Riggs - Getty Images That was great for awhile, but eventually the reasons I was there escaped me, she tells Alison. And by reasons, she probably means Alex and Mary Drake. Emily Is Still in the Picture...Literally Aria, Spencer, and Hanna have all gone their separate ways, but for Emily, its a bit more complicated. If you remember from the PLL finale, she and Alison were engaged and happily raising their new twin girls, Lily and Grace. But since then, it hasnt all been bliss for the couple. During a conversation with Mona, Ali vaguely explains their situation. Photo credit: Eric McCandless - Getty Images Emily loves me; she just cant get past the past, she says. Were happy, and then were not. It all comes back to trust. But Im not giving up. Emily might not be in Beacon Heights, but shes still in the picture-like, an actual photo. As Alison unpacks her things, she places a picture of herself, Emily, and the twins on a shelf with a wistful look on her face. Photo credit: Freeform TD;LR: Its complicated. They Paid Homage to PLLs Famous Symbol Photo credit: Freeform Hmm, that poster looks awfully familiar, doesnt it? Thats because one of the original Liars made a very similar pose on the Pretty Little Liars poster. Photo credit: Freeform Clearly the citizens of Beacon Heights have some secrets of their own. The Theme Song Is the One You Know and Love Photo credit: Kurt Iswarienkio - Getty Images Not only did Alison recreate Arias famous shhh symbol, but The Perfectionists also uses the same iconic theme song from PLL-albeit a different, shorter version. In the intro, an eerie voice sings, If I show you, then I know you wont tell what I said / Cause two can keep a secret if one of them is dead. Yep, were still dealing with dead people. Heres the original version, in case you forgot: A New Character Is Scarily Similar to Alison Photo credit: Allyson Riggs - Getty Images Alison had her fair share of doppelgangers in PLL, but now theres another one-with a strikingly similar story. Alison arrives in Beacon Heights after the death of Taylor Hotchkiss, one of its residents. Both Taylors brother, Nolan, and her mother, Claire (Kelly Rutherford), tell Alison that she reminds them of Taylor, and Mona mentions to Alison that Alis house was actually owned by Taylor before she died. This leads Alison to look Taylor up online, where she sees from a photo that they look almost like twins. Photo credit: Freeform But its not just her appearance thats similar. Taylor supposedly committed suicide, but shes not really dead. Sound like any other blondes you know? The Threatening Messages Havent Stopped Photo credit: Allyson Riggs - Getty Images Alex Drake might be gone (for now, anyway), but that doesnt mean the threats have stopped. For years, the Liars were haunted by creepy anonymous messages, and now Alison is on the receiving end of a new stalker. After she found out she was living in Taylor Hotchkisss old house, she noticed a tear in the wallpaper. She then ripped off a good portion of the wall, which revealed an ominous warning. Photo credit: Freeform THEYRE WATCHING was written in what looked to be blood, and, understandably, Alison was shook. Could this be Taylors way of warning Alison about her suspicious family? Mona Is Still Up to No Good Photo credit: Allyson Riggs - Getty Images Mona might seem reformed now, but lets not forget she was the original A. Clearly, shes still scheming. In the beginning of the episode, shes seen looking at and talking to herself in mirrors. Considering all the batsh*t crazy things Monas done in the past, this honestly doesnt seem that weird by her standards. But later in the episode, we learn theres actually someone else on the other end of her conversations, and shes part of something much bigger than her job description. But is it for good this time, or for evil? Youll have to tune in to the next episode to find out. ('You Might Also Like',) Do Americans have a constitutional right to a livable planet? Twenty-one young people say they doand are suing the Trump administration to prove it. Julia Felsenthal talks to the Youth v. Gov plaintiffs about their fight for the future. Vic Barrett, a nineteen-year-old climate activist from New York, has three tattoos on his arm. One depicts a daisy and a lily; another a rose and a skull, captioned aut vincere aut moriLatin for to conquer or to die. The third is the number 370. Its the amount of parts per million of carbon that were in the atmosphere the year I was born, Barrett explains. Today were past 400, and many scientists agree were in the danger zone until we drop to 350, a goal that requires a radical worldwide curbing of greenhouse gas emissions. The ink is a reminder: Thereve been whole generations of kids born into a world that cant sustain them. Barrett is doing his part to change that. Hes one of 21 young plaintiffsranging from eleven to 23 years oldwho are suing the Trump administration for contributing to climate change. (The case, officially Juliana v. United States, goes by the nickname Youth v. Gov.) Their argument is rooted in the constitution: Its tough to enjoy life, liberty, and property on an increasingly inhospitable planet, and their generation will suffer the most. In October, a United Nations report raised the stakes sky high: If our global emissions continue at the current rate, it will lead to climate catastrophe, with a window of just over a decade to reverse course. These [reports] have been getting progressively more dire, says Barretts coplaintiff, nineteen-year-old Nathan Baring. This one set out a very specific timeline and in a very forceful way. Since that dread diagnosis, there have been school strikes across Europe and, in the U.S., government sit-ins organized by the youth-led Sunrise Movement. But the urgency of the U.N. forecast was best summed up by a sixteen-year-old Swede named Greta Thunberg, who came to Davos with a warning to the global bazillionaire class: I dont want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. The Juliana plaintiffs have been collectively panicking since 2015, when they first filed suit with lawyers Philip Gregory and Julia Olson, and the latters Eugene, Oregon, nonprofit, Our Childrens Trust. The attorneys found eligible plaintiffs through their involvement with youth environmental organizations. Even so, the lawsuit was daunting to some parents. I was like, Youre what? remembers Barings mother, Sharon. You dont just sue the federal government without consequences. She came around when she realized that Olson and company werent trying to put words into the kids mouths; they were trying to be a megaphone for their deep sense of violation and concern. Story continues Environmental litigation, historically, has been piecemeal. Somebody wants to build a power plant, Gregory says, you try to shut it down. The Juliana lawyers are attempting something far more sweeping, aiming to persuade the courts to impel the executive and legislative branches to do what has thus far been politically untenable: implement a set of policies that will transition the United States off fossil fuelsand fast. An intricate legal strategy that took us there in incremental steps would have been a good idea 30 years ago, says activist and author Bill McKibben. Now, probably not so much. Whats important about this case is that it says we need to act now. Of course, the courts arent exactly known for being fleet of foot. These kids first filed suit against the Obama administration, which, despite enacting environmental regulations, also oversaw a fracking boom. Obamas Department of Justice tried to get the case dismissed. Trumps DOJ has tried even harder. Last year, a temporary Supreme Court stay dashed hopes of a long-planned October trial in the Oregon district court. And now the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has agreed to hear an early appeal from the government challenging, among other things, the plaintiffs legal standing to sue. Oral arguments are slated for June and will determine whether the case moves to trial. (Tellingly, despite the Presidents Twitter posturing, DOJ lawyers have not disputed the science undergirding the plaintiffs claim. Says Gregory: Fake news in the courtroom is perjury.) As the Juliana case lurches through the legal system, it has acquired a sort of David and Goliath statusand won support from high-profile Democrats, including Oregon senator Jeff Merkley, currently eyeing a presidential run. He doesnt think any candidate, at least no Democrat, can compete in 2020 without a clear climate plan: It was a profound disappointment that it wasnt talked about more in 2016. And though hes ruled out a run, Tom Steyer, the campaign mega-donor, stands squarely behind the case: When the emperor has no clothes, he says, its the young person who tells the truth to the naked emperor. (For the record, Steyer isnt bankrolling the Juliana kids: The suit gets roughly two-thirds of its cash funding from grassroots donors and a third from organizations like the Wallace Global Fund and the Libra Foundation.) The legal community has qualms. One lawyer I spoke with fretted about undermining the separation of powers; another called the constitutional strategy innovativemeaning who knows how it will play in court. But thus far, Juliana has proved remarkably durable, the little case that could. If I were a betting person, I would bet the Ninth Circuit will not find in favor of the kids, says UCLA School of Law professor Ann E. Carlson. Still, virtually every law professor who follows this, except those involved in the case, thought this was going to get kicked out of court right away. That didnt happen. In fact, says Michael Gerrard, who directs the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, the suit represents the first time a [U.S.] court has held that there might be a constitutional right to a clean environment. That right seems obvious to the plaintiffs. Isaac Vergun is a quiet sixteen-year-old who devoted his bar mitzvah project to a fossil-fuel divestment campaign in his hometown of Beaverton, Oregon. Wildfires are making his asthma worse. Last fall, when the state of California went up in flames, he was surprised more Hollywood celebrities didnt speak up about climate change. He frames the problem in teenager terms. We like to procrastinate, but we still have to get things done before the deadline, he says. Im hopeful that very soon everything is going to start clicking in everyones minds. Staying optimistic is a struggle. I think we need a big fat cry, says Isaacs sister, Miko Vergun, seventeen, who was adopted from the Marshall Islands, the low-lying Pacific archipelago that may soon succumb to rising seas. She and her coplaintiffs are lounging on a massive sofa in an Airbnb in Manhattan, where theyve descended for five days of meetings and group bonding (including a field trip to Hamilton). Miko is grinning as she says it, her braces gleamingbut shes serious. Many of the plaintiffs organized their lives around the October trial, took off school, quit jobs, and now theyre left hanging. All are grappling with the reality that this case, already three and a half years old, is nowhere near resolved. I mean, its like seven years until were all adults, points out Hazel Van Ummersen, a soft-spoken fourteen-year-old in a Carhartt hat. Alex Loznak, 22, a senior at Columbia University, is dressed business casual for an internship interview. We started out with the hashtag #kidsvgov, he says. Then we changed it to #youthvgov. If the appeals keep going its going to have to be just #adultsvgov. #peoplevgov, someone suggests. Our adults trust! When do you think theyre going to start studying us in law school? asks Aji Piper, an eighteen-year-old who dropped out of high school to focus on the suit and related speaking opportunities (hes seeking a more flexible program that lets him take his schoolwork on the go.) They already are! Loznak exclaims. Ive taken classes studying this case. Which is a surreal experience. Kelsey Juliana, 23, a University of Oregon undergraduate who lent her name to the court filings, raises a different point. She chokes up describing the pressure of being, as she puts it, a holder of hope. I have professors pleading with me: Can you please skip your class to come to my class and educate 200 people that are your age about why they should be hopeful? I feel like I have to be an emotional and spiritual compass. They dont want to take the time to understand whats going on. [Theyre like]: Just tell me how to be happy! Its snowing and the youngest plaintiff, Levi Draheim, eleven, who lives on an imperiled barrier island off the coast of Florida, is doing his best to contain his desire to run around outside. You guys need snacks, concludes their lawyer, Olson, and vegan Mexican takeout soon appears. Several girls, whose luggage Delta lost, head to Forever 21. Van Ummersen starts watching a pottery video on her phone. Another plaintiff, Nick Venner, seventeen, dons headphones and begins solving differential equations on his laptop. A snowball and then a paper airplane go zooming by, care of Draheim, who disappears upstairs and returns wearing a psychedelic wizard robe sewn by his mother. Several of the plaintiffs describe the group as family. Birds of a feather flock together, is how Piper puts it. Some of my best friends in the world, says Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, eighteen, a hip-hop artisthis new track features Jaden Smithof Aztec descent. Theyre doing this lawsuit for the planet, but also, one senses, for one another. At first [the government lawyers] laughed in our faces and said, Oh, this case makes no sense; youre going to be thrown out real quick, says Jayden Foytlin, fifteen, a hard-talking Louisianan. And now theyre acting scared, doing all they can to make sure we dont [get to trial]. Her voice softens. Im tired of waiting, she admits. I just want to see the smiles on all my fellow plaintiffs faces when were in court. Employees of an Australian accounting firm will be able to take six to 12 weeks of vacation per year as part of the companys new life leave policy. Ernst & Young Oceania will begin offering its employees a flexible vacation policy on April 1 that will allow them to either take a generous leave, work part-time or realign their work schedules with their outside-work goals. And yes, the policy is supposed to make you jealous. The firm hopes that by introducing flexible time-off policies, they will be able to draw and retain top-talent employees. According to research by the firm, a flexible work situation increases employee engagement by 11 percent. Were innovating so we dont lose these people while they pursue passions outside of work, EY Oceanias people partner Kate Hillman told The Independent. Hillman specifically listed employees who might be interested in pursuits like volunteering abroad, trekking through Nepal or partaking in extended training programs. Employees will also be able to choose between two new options: term-time working or part-time working. Those with children may prefer the first schedule option which would allow them to work full-time during the year and then take school holidays off. Others may prefer the second schedule which allows employees three months of part-time hours per year. There is one catch: the life leave policy is self-funded, meaning that employees wont get paid while theyre away from the office. Employees will be able to take their life leave in either one big block or two smaller chunks per year. That's plenty of time to get out and explore the world, maybe even a chance to visit one of Travel + Leisure's 50 best places to visit in 2019. Photo credit: Getty Images - Getty Images From Town & Country The origin of the luxury handbag is likely one of fashion's best kept secrets. It all began in Belgium, in 1829 to be precise, when the accessories brand Delvaux was founded in what was then not yet the Kingdom of Belgium. A year later, when the country ratified its independence as a constitutional monarchy, Delvaux became the official purveyor of the Belgian royal court, a distinction that continues to this day-Queen Mathilde is regularly photographed carrying popular styles like Le Brillant. American royals are fans too, Lady Gaga and Beyonce among them. Outside its native country, Delvaux has observed a low-key profile for nearly 200 years, but that is starting to change-a new flagship in New York is a testament to its growing ambition. Chairman and chief executive officer Jean-Marc Loubier and artistic director Christina Zeller didn't just pick any spot on Fifth Avenue, but the corner adjacent to the tony Sherry-Netherland hotel and across the street from The Plaza Hotel. Photo credit: Getty Images - Getty Images It was especially important to open in a location that is meaningful and impactful in the country, and there is no better place than on the legendary Fifth Avenue in New York City where we can tell the story of both America and Belgium, says Loubier. This cross-cultural exchange is evident throughout the store: The staircase, which retains its baroque railing from the buildings life as the art and antiques purveyor A La Vieille Russie, has been re-carpeted in the colors of the Belgian flag. A chandelier from a Flemish church hangs over a French 18th century Regence table, once owned by American railroad magnate George Jay Gould I. Photo credit: Joshua Scott Photo For the uninitiated, the store offers a brand primer: A full sweep of the companys heritage is on display, from vintage leather-cutting tools from the Belgian atelier to whimsically themed mini-bags Delvaux creates in honor of particular cities (fries for Brussels, taxis for New York and so on). It is also the first Delvaux boutique to boast a discrete mens space. Story continues Photo credit: Joshua Scott Photo Upstairs, visitors pass the emblem of Official Purveyors to the Royal Court of Belgium to visit the VIP room, which overlooks Central Park. There, clients can peruse the top of the line exotic handbags while enjoying a glass of champagne, a retail experience that needs no translation at all. ('You Might Also Like',) Photo credit: Temi Oyelola From Oprah Magazine Broccoli. Thats the word that comes to mind as my plane descends into Iquitos, Peru. From my window, the Amazon jungle appears to be made up of countless bunches of flowering broccoli heads. I have never seen anything like it-neither the broccoli trees, nor the snaking tributaries of water that weave between them. Looking back, I think my brain was trying to make sense of the landscape as I landed in a part of the world where I had never been. But I have not come for the scenery. I have come in search of a miracle. What is my lifes purpose? How do I break through this crippling self-doubt? Am I meant to have children? Will I ever learn to give and receive love? These are the questions I often ask myself, but I have no clue how or if I will discover the answers. As I deplane, I am suddenly startled by the more practical things I dont know, such as the local currency or where Im going to sleep tonight. I always leave these kinds of things up to John, my husband of five years. Our life together has become one continuous fight. Everything is wrong, and its all his fault. Its also all my fault. I cant forgive John for being human anymore than I can forgive myself. Deep down, I know I start arguments in order to distract myself from my deepest fear, which is that there is something irreversibly wrong with me-that I am defective, the consequence of some horrible mistake made at whatever cosmic factory produced me. Standing in the airport as unfamiliar life whizzes past me, I envision myself lying in bed, thinking about a rope and a ladder, wondering if the rafters in the garage would be sturdy enough to bear my weight. This is what life has been like for me over the last few months. Eventually, I see a banner for Blue Morpho Shamanistic & Ayahuasca Retreat and join the other people who have signed up to travel deep into the Amazon rainforest to take part in five shamanic ceremonies presided over by two Master Shamans, or healers: Don Alberto, and Maestro Hamilton. We will meet the shamans later. For now, its just us, fifteen Americans who are all, presumably, in serious emotional and psychological pain. Story continues Eventually, we pile into a beat up old yellow bus that appears to be made entirely of wood. A few people make nervous small talk on the way to our first stop: Hamiltons house in the middle of Iquitos. I sit silently in the back, watching dusty, ancient cars whip past, turning my face away from the constant clouds of dust that drift through the open windows. A heavy sense of foreboding travels from my gut all the way up to my throat, and I wonder-as I often wonder about my marriage-if I have made a terrible mistake. I have always believed in miracles. My family attended church regularly when I was growing up. I was christened and confirmed in the same Episcopal chapel, and was thrilled when I became old enough to assume the duties of an altar server. Privately, however, I nursed a passionate faith that extended beyond the staid Anglican liturgy we recited every Sunday. My belief in God-in all otherworldly phenomena-was made of rhapsody, not reason. I never questioned the logic of a virgin birth. Could Jesus turn water into wine? Sure. Why not? I believed in God and the biblical stories I learned in Sunday school the way I believed in poetry, in beauty itself. Besides, logic hadnt saved me. The many years worth of hours I had spent in my therapists office had not made a dent in the depression that has been my constant companion for many years. Today, I am beyond reason. Only divine intervention will bring me back. My decision to come to the Amazon in search of healing was impulsive, but not random. Maestro Hamilton is a former student of one of my husbands best friends, Gary, who is already here at the Blue Morpho site. Gary has told me a lot about Hamilton, but I am still startled by the person I meet. Blond, blue-eyed, and wearing an unassuming green polo shirt, Hamilton doesnt look like an oracle. We sit crossed-legged in a circle as he describes the spiritual crisis that brought him to shamanism, and explains the tradition of the shamanic ceremony, the centerpiece of which is ayahuasca, a sacred amalgam of plants and bark that has been the cornerstone of shamanic practice since time immemorial. We will drink five times over the course of five different ceremonies. Dosages will differ according to individual need, which the shamans will intuit. When we arrive at the Blue Morpho site, we are invited to sit down individually with the Master Shamans and explain why we came. My story spills out of me. I tell Hamilton, who translates for Don Alberto, about the bridges Ive burned and friendships Ive destroyed-about the casualties that have resulted from my war with rage and despair. I tell him about my longing to simply disappear. I tell him that despite my depression and fears about my marriage and myself, I am desperate for a child, yet I secretly fear I have been deemed unworthy of motherhood by the same cosmic forces that started me off at birth with a losing hand. My most vivid childhood memory is sitting at the dining room table, bursting into tears as I tell my mother that I dont think I should have children. I dont think I can make them happy, I tell her. She explained that I, like her and her father, suffer from depression, that it is an extra burden I will have to bear. It is the night of our first ceremony. I sit on a thin cot in a dimly lit hut, my emotions ricocheting between dread and excitement. We have been given plastic buckets and rolls of toilet paper. Dont fight the purging, Hamilton tells us. We should see it as a manifestation of negative energy leaving our bodies. The lights are extinguished as Hamilton, Don Alberto and their apprentices begin to chant spirit songs, blow smoke, and shake palm fronds, all while welcoming sacred spirits and warding off the devil. Over the next five days, I purge from every orifice in my body. In between bouts of nausea, crying, and diarrhea, I have extraordinary visions and sensations. On the second night, I feel the scratch of two sets of baby teeth as I pull them from the bottom of my throat. In another vision, Hamilton offers me a bright blue stone that emits brilliant rays. On the last night, I see-in broad, grand colors-the richness of the life that has always been inside of me. By the end, I will find that my experience in Peru isnt what I came looking for-but it is more than enough. When I get home, I write down a quotation from God Shiva, one of my favorite songs by Meshell Ndegeocello: You are in truth the truth you seek. Nearly ten years later, I still have it tucked in my wallet. It's possible that the ayahuasca retreat alone was what finally guided me out of my despair. Maybe the spirit songs penetrated my heart and mind and helped me relax into my marriage, allowing love and forgiveness to flow between my husband and me. Or maybe it was the fact that, eight years later-while laughing hysterically with twin daughters at bedtime-I suddenly remembered Hamiltons blue jewel. The memory stopped me in my tracks, and I whispered, I did it. My daughters are the most joyful people I know. But I cant take credit for my childrens happiness. At eight years old, they are already their own people. Nearly a decade after my time with the shamans, I've realized a miracle happened there, but the miracle was not at all what I expected. The miracle is finally coming to understand that the only person whose happiness I can control is my own. The miracle, I believe, is the self itself-the fact that we all, as Walt Whitman once wrote, contain multitudes. Rage, despair, hope and joy-its all there, as well the capacity for healing and growth. The miracle is having the privilege of growing older-being able to look back upon that time and my life and see its beginning and end. Life itself is the divine, the revelation and the glory. In the end, I found my miracle not in Peru, but inside the very same person who used to lie in bed and imagine a rope and ladder. Today, I can embrace that person, as well as the person who now laughs hysterically with her daughters at bedtime-the person who is learning to be a better friend, wife and mother all the time. I realize now that I can make miracles every day. The miracle, it turns out, is me. For more ways to live your best life plus all things Oprah, sign up for our newsletter! Two female JetBlue crew members claim they and a third women were drugged by two pilots for the airline, and that one of those pilots also raped them and intentionally passed on a sexually transmitted disease, according to a lawsuit filed Monday. The plaintiffs, referred to in the suit as Jane Doe 1, of Riverton, Utah, and Jane Doe 2, of Fort Worth, Texas, say the incident occurred in San Juan, Puerto Rico in May 2018. The women had just completed their shift on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Puerto Rico, and checked into the Intercontinental Hotel in San Juan. They then headed to the beach together, where they met Eric Johnson and Dan Watson, the defendants. After a brief chat, they learned the men were JetBlue pilots. Related: A 24-year-old woman assaulted a flight attendant and now she could go to jail for 21 years According to the suit, Johnson then pulled an opened beer from his lunchbox and offered it to Jane Doe 1, who drank some and shared it with Jane Doe 2. A third crew member, who is not named as a plaintiff, also allegedly drank some of the beer. The rest of the night became a blur for the women, who claim the beer must have been laced with a drug. At some point, the women found themselves back at the hotel with the pilots, but they have no memory of going there. Jane Doe 1 says she was aware of Johnson getting on top of her and having sex with her against her will, but because she was in a haze, she couldnt fight him off. She also references having flashes of memory of Johnson raping Jane Doe 2. She claims Johnson then told her, Thank you for making my fantasy come true. Jane Doe 1 describes feeling groggy and numb the next day. She discussed the evening with the third crew member, who acknowledged she had also been drugged and raped; they say they were stunned by the incident. Upon boarding their return flight to Newark, N.J. that day, the three women claim they were nauseous and vomited in the bathroom. They say it was an effect they had not felt before despite having consumed alcohol previously, according to the suit. Story continues Want daily pop culture news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoos newsletter. Upon arriving at New Jerseys Newark airport and departing the flight, the three women reconvened and confirmed once again they all had identical memories of the nightmarish experience including the inability to consent or even react to sexual intercourse and huge gaps in their memories of the evening. They then researched the symptoms of date rape drug intoxication, and the descriptions rang true to the women; they were all convinced they had been drugged and raped by the pilots. Jane Doe 1 also developed a tremendous fear that she had contracted an STD from the rape, says the lawsuit. The pilot promised her he would get tested. In the meantime, Jane Doe 1 went to the hospital to get screened for drugs and STDs; the doctors later confirmed she had contracted human papillomavirus, or HPV, for which she had previously tested negative. She also contacted JetBlues New York headquarters, where she was employed, and reported sexual assault, rape and sex and gender discrimination, according to the suit. She was told the airline would investigate the matter, but she claims no action was ever taken against Johnson and Watson. So she contacted a lawyer. The ensuing lawsuit alleges that the drugging Jane Doe 1 experienced, the rape she endured and the HPV she contracted have left her extremely humiliated, degraded, victimized, embarrassed and emotionally distressed. The suit also states the woman will experience ripple effects including loss of income and loss of salary, bonuses, benefits and other compensation which such employment entails, as well as future monetary losses, emotional pain, humiliation, suffering, inconvenience and loss of enjoyment of life. When contacted by Yahoo Lifestyle, a representative for JetBlue said, While we cannot comment on pending litigation, JetBlue takes allegations of violent or inappropriate behavior very seriously and investigates such claims thoroughly. We work to create a respectful workplace for all our crewmembers where they feel welcome and safe. The women are asking for $75,000 in damages, according to the suit, plus attorney fees and costs. Yahoo Lifestyle has also reached out to the womens attorneys at Derek Smith Law Group for further comment. Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. Nick Ayers is Vice President Mike Pences former Chief of Staff, former Executive Director of the Republican Governors Association, andaccording to Omarosathe author of The New York Times anonymous op-ed claiming to be the resistance inside the Trump administration. Ayers was born in 1982 in Cobb County, Georgia to parents who voted for Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. Growing up, Ayersin his own wordswas high on Bill Clinton and Georgias Democratic governor Zell Miller. By 2000, when Ayers enrolled at Kennesaw State University, his democratic roots had worn off. He spent most of his time chairing the universitys College Republicans. In 2001, he organized a rally in Athens, Georgia where he met then gubernatorial candidate and now secretary of agriculture, Sonny Perdue. After befriending him, Ayers, a 19-year-old freshman, left Kennesaw State University for the campaign trail. When Ayers was 22, Perdue tapped him to lead his re-election effort as campaign manager. But things got weird when Perdue also tapped Ayers to become part of his family. When Perdue found out Ayers was dating a girl from the elite coastal state of New York, he said, Youre crazy, youve got to date a Southern girl. So Perdue set Ayers up with his second cousin. Ayers was hesitant at first, but she was kind of persistent, he said so they married in 2005. It was no doubt a stressful time for Ayers and things werent about to get easier. In 2006, as Perdues campaign manager, less than two weeks before the election, Ayers was pulled over for drinking and driving. An officer reportedly caught him weaving in and out of lanes doing 50mph in a 35mph zone. Ayers tried getting out of it by telling the officer he had been a fan of his work for quite some time. But unfortunately for the self-diagnosed chucklehead, the officer deemed drinking and driving dangerous and decided not to let him off the hook. Ayers refused to take a breathalyzer, which automatically results in an arrest in Georgia. Six months later, after Perdue won his re-election, the charges against Ayers were reduced to reckless driving. He announced in an email he had a calling to utilize the talents God has given him by working the 2012 presidential campaign of Tim Pawlenty, the guy who once said based on results, Im the most pro-life candidate and legalizing marijuana is unneeded and unwise. The higher purpose God reportedly called Ayers to was a losing campaign. After just three months, Pawlentys campaign ended before the primaries even began. The campaign racked up nearly half a million dollars in debt and Nick Ayers was deemed The most hated campaign operative in America by the Tucker Carlson-founded conservative site, The Daily Caller. It was around this time the drunk driving video surfaced. But in 2015, after hitting rock bottom, Ayers, depending on how you look at it, was on the rise. He was hired to work on Mike Pences gubernatorial re-election campaign as a general consultant. A source close to Pence told HuffPost that, Ayers is very religious and Mike liked that about him. Everyone seemingly liked Ayers except for Pences campaign pollster and former standup comedian, Kellyanne Conway. Two years later, when the White House was considering Ayers for Pences chief of staff, Conway reportedly tried to block Ayers from getting the gig. Ayers was hired in June of 2017. Then-Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci explained the hiring. Nicks there to protect the Vice-President because the Vice-President cant believe what the fuck is going on. Ayers emerged as a top contender for chief of staff. He and the president reportedly seriously discussed the job, but when the President offered him the gig, Ayers didnt want it. According to a CNN report, Trump was super pissed Ayers didnt take the role. Ayers will reportedly, instead, head up a pro-Trump super PAC for the 2020 campaign. At one point, Ayers reportedly was gearing up to position Pence for a presidential run in 2020. An administration official told Vanity Fair, Everybody knows Nick [Ayers] is not loyal to the president. This video, "Who is Nick Ayers? Narrated by Shane Torres", first appeared on nowthisnews.com. Karen Uhlenbeck, a professor at the University of Texas, is the first woman to win the Abel Prize, math's top award. Read about it here. While women face gender discrimination in just about every field, the world of STEM is notoriously male-dominated. Even today, female scientists, engineers, and mathematicians remain in the minority. Which is why were cheering over news that Karen Uhlenbeck, a professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, has just become the first female mathematician to win the prestigious Abel Prize (basically the Nobel Prize of math). HuffPost reports that the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters made the announcement today, March 19th. As part of the award, Uhlenbeck will receive six million Norwegian kroner, which is equal to about $700,000. According to The New York Times, Uhlenbecks greatest mathematical contribution is in a field called geometric analysis. Her work has been instrumental in quantum physics, and techniques that she developed are still used today. The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters notes that her research lays the foundation for contemporary geometric models in mathematics and physics. The academy also points out that she has been a role model and strong advocate for gender equality in science and mathematics. It notes that she helped co-found the Women and Mathematics program at Princetons Institute for Advanced Study, which aims to recruit and provide support for female mathematicians. Karen Uhlenbeck has been awarded the Abel Prize. Her work, which unified parts of geometry and analysis, has produced some of the most dramatic advances in mathematics in the last 40 years. @EricaKlarreich explains her math with great clarity here: https://t.co/CSCt5lk5km Steven Strogatz (@stevenstrogatz) March 19, 2019 The Times notes that since there is no Nobel Prize in mathematics, the Abel Prize is considered to be its equivalent in the field. It has been presented annually since 2003, and all previous 19 winners were men. Maths other top prize, the Fields Medal, has only been presented to one woman, Maryam Mirzakhani, who received it in 2014. The Abel Prize is a monumental accomplishment, but its not the only prestigious award Uhlenbeck has received. In 2000, President Bill Clinton presented her with a National Medal of Science, and according to the Times, she received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1983. We cant wait to see the incredible women who will undoubtedly follow in her footstepsand forge new paths of their own. As a number of designers were heralding a return to glamour on the runways this season, Rawdah Mohamed, a 27-year-old Somali influencer living in Norway, was delivering it on the streets in the form of face-framing feathers, dramatic eyewear, and even a medieval-style mesh snood, all of which she wore with a hijab. Grandeur suits Mohamed, a healthcare professional working with autistic children, who can trace the start of her international street style career back to last August when she attended Oslos Spring 2019 season; between shows, she found time to sign as a model, due to her striking features and unconventional style. Mohamed was active on Instagram before that, though, followed mainly by modest-dressing Muslim women who were intrigued by her ability to take readily available piecesfrom H&M or Zara, sayand pair them chicly in what she calls an East-West mix. Mohameds foray onto the international show circuit has not been easy; Paris did not reveal itself as a City of Light to this influencer, attending the shows there last month for the first time. From negative body language to the intense scrutiny she received for entrance to shows, despite carrying an invitation in hand, Mohamed discovered that discrimination remained rampant, even with the strides that have been made in terms of diversified casting. I really wanted [fashion] to be a place where I could just be myself and everyone would just accept me for who I am, she says. I was very sad to realize that, no, this is yet another place where I still have to fight to be me and to be able to free to dress however I like and to look however I like. Mohamed, who has worn a hijab since she was about 7 years old, has been fighting this fight since she moved to a small town in Norway. The bullying she was subjected too, however, only strengthened her resolve to wearing the hijab. I never really liked the idea of having to adjust the way I speak or the way I look just because it makes other people uncomfortable, she says. I just continued wearing it and it sort of became my shield and something I was proud of. In so doing Mohamed has unintentionally become a role modelan exemplar of a modern day Muslim woman wearing fashion clothes. For Mohamed, the hijab is a form of expression, not oppression. Im definitely using it to make a statement that, yes, Im a Muslim woman, Im doing this, and you guys have to deal with itjust like I was using it when I was a kid growing up with my hijab. I feel like Im doing the exact same thing with fashion. Deep down Im hoping [by my doing this] it will be easier for other girls. Story continues Here, Mohamed speaks to Vogue about her unabashed love of glamour and fighting for real inclusivity in the fashion world. When did you start wearing a hijab? Ive been wearing it since Ive been a first-grader, I think. I used to wear it back in [Somalia] and I wore it when I came to Norway. Ive never taken it off. I didnt think much of it because in my home country everyone was wearing it, it was part of the uniform so you didnt really think much about it. The only ones that were not wearing it were the Christians, so it was just like, Okay, this is what we do. Photographed by Acielle / Style du Monde What was the reaction to your hijab in Norway? Norway is a small country and I came to a very small town. Because of my hijab and because of my skin colorwe were the few black people in the community, and you know some of my classmates had never seen black people beforeso it was very, very difficult and obviously there was a lot of bullying but I think [that] made me continue to wear it. The adults in my life were saying, If it helps with the bullying maybe you can take it off, or maybe you can wear it in a different style thats not as covering, but I didnt want the bullies to win. I didnt want them to have such power over my life. I used to think, Why do I have to change? Im not telling them to change. You know, I think they look weird but thats fine, I look weird to them, too. I never really liked the idea of having to adjust the way I speak or the way I look just because it makes other people uncomfortable. I cant change the way I look, even if I take off my hijab, Im still black and you know I cant change that. So then what? I just continued wearing it and it sort of became my shield and something I was proud of. I had all this pressure, [people] were telling me, This is not good enough. This is not how we want you to be, and I kept wearing it and it just became part of my identity, it was who I was and everyone just had to deal with it. Photo: Ludovic Pieterson / Courtesy of Rawdah Mohamed How would you describe your style? I think I would say, modern, modest, and maybe a little bit daring. I want my style to be something a little out of the norm, especially when it comes to my hijab. Thats what I was trying to do this season, I didnt want it to just be plain [and] boring, I wanted to add headpieces to my hijab to make it more fashionable. I wanted to make it more like an art. Thats how I found the medieval headpiece and other hats and all those things. When people look at me the first thing they notice about me and my identity is my hijab, so I thought, okay, this is what every photographer is going to capture, this is whats going to be in the pictures, so I wanted to build my outfits around the headpiece for this season. Photo: Ludovic Pieterson / Courtesy of Rawdah Mohamed Glamour was a talking point of the Fall season and you really delivered it. How do you work it into your look? Modest dressing is always portrayed as something boring [and it can be] difficult to add glamour to it because sometimes theres no shape to whatever youre wearing and layering makes it even harder. Glamour forces you to work with whatever you have; its a bit tricky but I love that challenge and I loved seeing it on the runway because now I have all this inspiration, now I have something that I can work on and its something that is available to me now. Photo: Ludovic Pieterson / Courtesy of Rawdah Mohamed Youre also very interested in beauty. I taught myself how to do my makeup. I grew up in a small town there werent any foundations in my color. When my aunties who live in America came to Norway for holiday, they used to bring us [some]. Now there are all these brands that [provide products for a broad range of skin tones] so now I can become more like an artist. Its not as limiting as it used to be before and for me that makes it much more fun, you know I like to do the colors, do the glitter. I want [my look] to be the way I envisioned it; I dont want it to be less because the makeup brands are not making makeup for me. But now I feel very lucky to have all these brands that [do and] I like to take advantage of it. I think because Ive been waiting for it for so long, now that I have the opportunity, I sometimes go all crazy because Im very excited about it. Photographed by Acielle / Style du Monde Can you talk about layering in terms of modesty and Scandinavian style? Its very cold here most of the year so you have to add some layering into it [your style but] for me its mostly about modesty. If I buy a long maxi skirt, it usually has a split to the side, and not actually quite what Im looking for in my modest dressing, so sometimes I have to add jeans or wide-legged pants underneath to cover the split, or I would have to sew in the split. I live in Scandinavia and Im obviously interested by the style here, which I also love, so I think Im lucky because I can do the Scandi style, which is in the stores here, and I can still do modest. Do you incorporate any Somali dress traditions into your wardrobe? Not [so much] the actual clothes. Im African, and you know we are very colorful in our cultural clothes; I like to [wear] colors because of my heritage. [I might choose] an orange hijab, or if I can find a cultural print, I like to do that with the hijab. I do those looks more in the summer than in the winter. We have this dress called dirac; we wear it when we go to weddings and if theres a festival because its very glamorous. I had some shiny silver [Dirac fabric] made into a skirt [that I wore in Paris with] a black denim miniskirt on top. I had to tone it down it a bit because the skirt is very glittery, a bit too much and I was wearing that as a day look. Photographed by Phil Oh How did you start blogging? I just wanted to capture my outfits because they were so different. My page was private [at first]. My friends were encouraging me to go public just to see how the feedback would be from people who didnt know me and so at the end of 2016, or maybe even the beginning of 2017, I made it public and then from then on it kind of just grew. Most of the followers I had at the beginning were Muslim girls and they liked the fact that I was using Western clothes, the stuff that you buy from the shops here, and making them more modest; kind of like how East meets West. [Im a] modern day Muslim woman wearing the fashion clothes that are in the the magazines and that are trending. I think Muslim women appreciated that because then they had something to look at because they were not getting that from campaigns and magazines and other online sources. They would ask me, Where did you get this coat? And I would say I just got it from my local store, and they would go buy it. It just sort of gave them an idea of how to style the clothes that were actually available for them and not something that was shipped from their home country or the stuff they usually get when they are on holiday. I was using the clothes that were selling in Norway and that I would buy from London that were accessible for everyone to get. Photographed by Acielle / Style du Monde What was the tipping point in your social career? I think definitely the turning point was when I did Oslo Fashion Week [Spring 2019] because then I entered the Western world of fashion; before it used to be women in Africa, Asia, or the Arab countries who were my following. When I Went to Oslo Fashion Week thats sort of when I introduced myself to the Western world. Thats when I met my manager. When I first [signed], it was for modeling. I told them, Modeling is fine, but I also want to sign with you as an influencer as well. I think its Oslo Fashion Week that made it happen for me. Photographers and people in fashion were coming up to me and giving me compliments, that was really good for me because [it was my] first time and I was a bit shy and I didnt know if I could truly do it the way I wanted to do it. I didnt know if I could be the optimal version of me. I was just testing it and I tried to be a little more daring when I went to Copenhagen Fashion Week [for Fall 2019]. [Now] I have a lot of people who are not Muslims who are following me. I think it has something to do with the fashion week. I attract other people who also dress modestly. I have a lot of following from American Christian communities who are not Muslims but wear modest clothes. I [also] have all these people now asking me stuff basic stuff about being a Muslim. What makes me really happy is to see that other peoplenot just from my country or my religion[following me] because want my account to be for everyone not just for certain people. Are you a role model? I dont consider myself to be it, but I know I am; thats what my followers are telling me and that is something I have to be considerate of when I dress because I just wear in whatever I like and whats in my style, I dont think much about how this is going to influence other people. Can you talk about your first Paris Fashion Week? Discrimination is something that always happens to me in my daily life. Now being in the fashion scene, a place where you know everyone is creative, I was hoping that people would be more open minded and more accepting of other ethnicities, other religions, and the way other people dress. I was hoping that it could be a place of escape for me. So it was a little bit of a shock to see the reaction, although I feel like I should have known. I was in denial, hoping for the best and when I got some of the reactions that I did I was very disappointed because I really wanted [fashion] to be a place where I could just be myself and everyone would just accept me for who I am. I was very sad to realize that, no, this is yet another place where I still have to fight to be me and to be able to free to dress however I like and to look however I like. Photo: Ludovic Pieterson / Courtesy of Rawdah Mohamed What kind of behaviors? It can be body language or, for instance, when youre going into a show they would double check your invitation and make you stand on the side while other people are coming in and theyre not checking their invitations as much. Its like you have the exact same invitation, [and] your name is on it. Sometimes they would ask for your ID and nobody else needs the ID but they need to double make sure that you are who you are who you say you are, and sometimes they would check your ID and your name and they would call another person or their manager or whoever it is to double check that info again. Or it can just be simple things, as when you go up to order a drink or whatever, and youre being ignored. Its all these things that are very unnecessary. You know, its the small things you pick up during the whole day at every fashion show and at the end it just gets very exhausting. What are your thoughts on diversity, or the lack of it, in street style? I saw that Teen Vogue was doing a story on diversity for Paris Fashion Week. I read the article and I think that was really good. It was a very positive thing to see and it sort of gave me hope in the very hopeless situation I was in. I kept coming across all these negative comments and peoples behavior so to see that was like a light in a dark moment so I really appreciated that. Photo: Ludovic Pieterson / Courtesy of Rawdah Mohamed Youve said that the media usually portray Muslim women as oppressed and without a voice. It seems that you are using your hijab as a form of free expression. Would you agree with that assessment? Yes, definitely, definitely. People make us feel like we dont belong, and I think the way for me to use fashion is [to say]: Im here, and Im here with my hijab, and I belong here as much as you guys do, I deserve to have the same opportunities as you. When I speak with other bloggers, they dont have to worry about these things. Theyre allowed to enjoy fashion week, theyre allowed to come and just be themselves and no one is questioning them and nobodys making them doubt themselves. And so Im definitely using it to make a statement that, yes, Im a Muslim woman, Im doing this, and you guys have to deal with itjust like I was using it when I was a kid growing up with my hijab. I feel like Im doing the exact same thing with fashion. Deep down I think Im hoping [by doing this] it will be easier for other girls to dress however they want and be whoever they want without having to go through what I went through, just like other women in the past have worked hard and have gone through the harshness just so we can vote or so we can have an education. I mean Im not as great as them, but if theres any way that I can help the next generation then of course [I want to do that]. Thinking about something that is much bigger than me and the way I want to dress helps me stay positive. Its about the women who are coming after, and for me that makes it very easy to deal with the negatives. I think this is just a small sacrifice that I have to do, the picture is much bigger, and that gives me hope. This interview has been edited and condensed. Photo credit: AJ_Watt - Getty Images From Men's Health By now, you've seen the alarmist headlines claiming that wireless headsets, like Apple AirPods, could potentially cause cancer. But does this "news" mean you should ditch those beloved bluetooth headphones for old school ear buds? The answer isn't so simple. Here's why people are talking about this: Last week, a Medium article questioned the safety of AirPods and other bluetooth headphones. The story quotes Jerry Phillips, a biochemistry professor at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, who believes wireless headphones aren't as safe as we assume. My concern for AirPods is that their placement in the ear canal exposes tissues in the head to relatively high levels of radio-frequency radiation, he said. Phillips told the website that risks include abnormal cell functioning, which may cause tumors or other health conditions. The story surfaced a petition urging the United Nations and World Health Organization to strengthen guidelines and regulatory standards for bluetooth devices. The document is signed by 250 researchers from more than 40 countries who caution that using certain devices may increase cancer risk. However, the petition isn't newit originated in 2015and specifically calls out non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (used in all bluetooth devices), as well as radiofrequency radiation emitting devices (like cell phones and Wi-Fi) as dangerous. There's no question that bluetooth headphones emit radiation, but that doesn't mean you need to give them up, says Dr. Michael Schulder, Director of Northwell Health's Brain Tumor Center in Lake Success, New York. Although most experts agree that there is no safe level of radiation, it's simply not possible to avoid exposure, Schulder says. "We cannot avoid radiation in our lives even if we lived a completely pastoral existence off the grid," he says. That's because radiation is in our food, plants, airplane travel, and even the sun. The bigger question, then, is how much do you willingly want to expose yourself to radiation? Story continues Photo credit: Getty Images - Getty Images "For me, the added convenience of the AirPods doesnt matter to me so I choose not to use them," Schulder says. However, if you really enjoy wireless headphones, there's no reason to give them up. Schulder explains that wireless headphones emit less radiation than another gadget most of us are glued to: cellphones. "There has not been a major bump in tumors to suggest that cell phones are causing it [the tumors] and we know that the bluetooth radiation is less than cell phones themselves," he says. Bottom line: If you want to wear AirPods, go ahead. ('You Might Also Like',) Stylist Clare Byrne Wore Not One, But Two AREA Dresses at Her Wedding in Australia Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Photo: Courtesy of Clare Byrne Clare Byrne and Michael Moffatts love story started back in school. We lived in the same student residence at Sydney University and became close friends, the fashion stylist remembers of how she initially got to know Michael, whos now an engineer. It was a couple of years until we started dating, but weve been together for over 10 years now, which included a long-distance stint between the United States and Australia. Eventually, Michael took Clare to Shelter Island for her birthday and proposed with a gold, vintage-style engagement ring after dinner one evening during a big storm. Apparently thats a good omen, she adds. Once the excitement of their newly engaged status had sunk in a bit, Clare and Michaelwho are now both New York Citybasedstarted searching for a venue in their home country, all from the other side of the world. They ultimately chose Cooks Co-op, about an hour drive from Sydney on the Hawkesbury River. Michael went to Australia a week earlier than me the year before the wedding, so he actually chose the venue and just took me to see it when I arrived, Clare explains. The property is owned by Martin Boetz, a well-known chef who moved out of the city to focus on events and sourcing local produce for other restauranteurs in Sydney. We used the space itself as a starting point to inform the rest of the aesthetic, Clare says of how she and Michael approached the wedding planning process sans an event planner. We were able to organize our own alcohol, which was perfect as we had fun selecting a mix of our favorite wines and cocktails. The wine served at the wedding was actually chosen by committee. We had dinner with friends the week ahead of the wedding and voted on some of the local Australian wines! As one might expect of a stylist bride, Clare was able to call upon industry friends for help with her wedding day look. I work closely with the brand Area, and the designers, Piotrek Panszczyk and Beckett Fogg, are two of my closest friends, Clare explains. Piotrek and I met when we both first moved to New York, so it seemed natural that they would design my dress, and it made the process quite relaxed. The first step was finding the fabricthey spoke to several mills and eventually decided on a double-faced hammered silk. It had a nice weight and draped well. I wanted something quite simple, but the hammered texture was a nice detail. Piotrek sketched some ideas, and we chose the design about two months out. I had my first fitting a month before the wedding. Story continues The ceremony dress had sleeves, so Area designed a second one without sleeves for the reception. It was based on the same shape of the first dress, but shorter and easier to dance in, Clare says. Im really glad we did that! She wore a pair of baroque-pearl and crystal earrings from Celine and comfortable shoes by Dries Van Noten. For hair and makeup, Clare really just wanted to feel like herself, so she had her friend Nadine Monley create her wedding day beauty look using the products she normally wears. Comfort and ease were top of mind for the bridesmaids as well. They were all given instructions to choose a simple black dress they felt best in. At 4:00 p.m. on March 17, the ceremony was held in a clearing overlooking the Hawkesbury River. My father walked me down the aisle, and Michael and I each had a couple of our closest friends by our side, Clare says. I was excited and nervous, but it was also hot! It was 95 degrees, which was a real curveball as it was fall in Australia. After the service, guests moved into the reception space, where there was a big, leafy ceiling installation by Dani Butchart and not much else in terms of florals. We had oyster shuckers and cocktails outside the venue followed by dinnerroast lamb shoulder and ocean troutwith toasts by both of our parents as well as our bridesmaids and groomsmen. The guests included friends from New York as well as London and all over Europe. Most flew in the week ahead of the wedding, so there were dinners, beach days, and lots of time spent together in the lead-up to the main event. This meant that all of our friends and family were able to meet and get to know each other before the wedding itself, Clare says. The reception felt like a big party at the end of an already incredible week. The evening wasnt totally surprise-free, though. At the end of the night, for some reason, the driver didnt arrive to take us back to the cottage we were staying in, Clare says. So we hid in our car and watched all of our guests leavingsinging with Champagne bottles in handwhich was really funny to see! Theres very little room for mystery in the world. Its all been Google-mapped and GPSd to hell. Everything is searchable, as weve come to expectand few things annoy us more than a web search that fails to yield an answer swiftly or, worse, a cell phone rendered useless by an unexpected gap in service. We should know everythingor at least be able to know anything at a moments notice. Take away that security, that hubris, and suddenly the world becomes frightening. The best thing that Usthe wildly anticipated second film from Get Out writer/director Jordan Peeledoes is suggest that there is, in fact, much that we do not know. It does this with symbols and foreboding, with matching red jumpsuits and leather-finger gloves, rabbits and sets of golden shears that appear too elegant to be deadly weapons, but arent used as anything but. All the objects must mean something, something thatll make us feel in control and capable of knowing everything again. Were pulled forward not just because we want to see our heroes survive, but because we hope that maybe well get the answers that we want. That we deserve. But thats awfully selfish when theres a family fighting for their lives in this movie. Us begins with the Wilson familyAdelaide (Lupita Nyongo), Gabe (Winston Duke), Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), and Jason (Evan Alex)as they travel to their secluded summer home near Santa Cruz. It isnt long, however, before their home is invaded by macabre doppelgangers, twisted mirror images of themselves that only seem interested in their torment. As a horror-parable, Us is delightfully on the nose. (Get Out wasnt subtle either, it just seemed that way if you were white.) We are Americans, Adelaides doppelganger tells her during their first terrifying encounter, in a line that feels like its more for us than for Adelaide. The threat that the Wilson family faces is, literally, themselves, and belaboring that pointhowever topical it isfeels cheap, especially when you consider all the other things the movie is out to do: warping iconography both familiar and uncanny, cracking the foundation beneath you, and eliciting tremendous performances out of its small cast, who pull double duty with aplomb. (Nyongo, in particular, delivers twin performances that are utterly engrossing and unsettling, culminating in a third-act confrontation that is one of the best full-on showstoppers we've gotten in a major release this year.) In his films, writer/director Jordan Peele works in a genre he likes to call social thrillers, films that use outlandish and unsettling conceits as a means of telling stories about things that we, as a society, are unsettled by. While Us eventually explains plenty of thingsmaybe too muchit still leaves plenty of room for questions, the answers to which you won't ever really be able to pin down. And that's kind of the point: trying to solve other things, other people, other, other, otherthat might just be the thing that gets us all killed. CAIRO (AP) Dozens are missing and bodies have washed ashore after a boat carrying 44 migrants seeking a better life in Europe capsized off the coast of Libya, officials said Thursday. Jassim Ayoub, a spokesman for the Libyan navy, said the coast guard of the western city of Sabratha has rescued 17 migrants since the boat capsized Tuesday. Bodies, including those of children, have also been retrieved from the water. Most of the migrants were from African countries, he said. Thousands of migrants have perished trying to make the perilous Mediterranean crossing, often undertaking it in crowded wooden ships or inflatable rafts. In recent years, European countries have provided training and funds to Libyan authorities to reduce the crossings. But critics say those efforts leave the migrants trapped in Libya, where they face abuse and exploitation at the hands of smugglers and local militias. Doctors Without Borders said Thursday that dozens of migrants are suffering from hunger while being held in a detention center in Libya's capital. The aid group said over 300 people, including more than 100 children, are being held in the Sabaa detention center in Tripoli. Around 75 detainees are malnourished or underweight, with children significantly more likely to suffer moderate or severe malnutrition, it said. Several people reported receiving only one meal every two to three days, with new arrivals waiting four days before receiving food, it said. "What we see today in this single detention center is symptomatic of an uncontrolled, unjustified, and reckless system that puts the lives of refugees and migrants at risk," said Karline Kleijer, the group's head of emergencies. She urged Libyan authorities to release those held in Sabaa, almost half of whom have been detained for six months or more. Libya was plunged into chaos after the 2011 uprising that toppled and later killed longtime ruler Moammar Gadhafi, and has since emerged as a major transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East and seeking a better life in Europe. Story continues Sam Turner, head of the Doctors Without Borders mission in Tunisia, said the EU policies to address migration "are directly resulting in people being held in these conditions in Libya." "It is an extremely cynical approach ... and the cost is human lives," he said. Last month, Libyan police moved in to end a protest by migrants held at the Trig al-Sikka detention center in Tripoli, setting off clashes in which around 50 people were wounded, according to the U.N.'s migration agency. Doctors Without Borders says an estimated 670,000 migrants are in Libya, including 5,700 held in detention centers, where they are regularly exposed to human rights abuses including extortion, torture, sexual violence and forced labor. Berat (Albania) (AFP) - On a sloped, cobblestone street in southern Albania sits a small shop, empty except for a dozen framed panels on the walls bearing photos and stories from 500 years of Jewish life. It may be modest but this is Muslim-majority Albania's only Jewish history museum. And the story it tells is exceptional: the Balkan state is the only Nazi-occupied territory whose Jewish population increased during World War II, thanks to the bravery of ordinary families who harboured hundreds of refugees fleeing persecution during the Holocaust. The tiny Solomon Museum, which opened in the city of Berat last year, was a labour of love for local historian Simon Vrusho. But his death last month at age 75 has put its future at risk, with rent only paid through to April. Until now he had covered the museum's costs with his pension and small donations from a box by the door. "Memories need to have their own home," Vrusho, a wiry man with warm eyes, told AFP, shortly before he died following a heart attack in February. He spent years harvesting documents, photos and memories bearing witness to a Jewish community that first arrived in Berat in the 16th century from Spain. At the centre of the collection are the stories of Muslim and Christian Albanians who sheltered Jews in their homes and basements during the Holocaust -- a chapter of history that has only recently become more widely known. When Germans took control of Albania in 1943, local authorities also refused to hand over lists of Jews inside the country. Thanks to these quiet acts of heroism, the country's Jewish population surged from several hundred before the war to more than 2,000 afterwards. And, according to Israel's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, "almost all Jews living within Albanian borders during the German occupation... were saved, except members of a single family", who were deported and all died except for the father. Another family was also deported and survived. Story continues - Code of honour - When asked to explain this history, Albanians will say it lies in "Besa" -- a cultural code of honour to "keep the promise" at any cost. There is also a rich history of religious tolerance in a country with a tapestry of different faiths, visible in Berat where a church and mosque face each other on the same square. Inside the museum, Nezir Ago, a 40-year-old artist, points to a faded photo of an elderly man. "This is my grandfather," he says, explaining that the Muslim baker took in a Jewish family of three in the early 1940s. "He did not know them before... or have an obligation to shelter them," he adds. The photo sits alongside several dozen others from the more than 60 families in Berat who rescued Jews, making the city a hub for refugees during the war. A list of some 600 names of those rescued identifies the European countries they hailed from -- many from Balkan cities like Belgrade or Pristina, where Jews were brutally exterminated by Nazi-allied powers. The Albanian families who took them in were "Christian and Muslim, rich and poor," says a caption taped to the wall. They were "deeply, unimaginably humane" people, recalled Vrusho, an Orthodox Christian who spent years interviewing Berat elders for their stories. - Bread, pain and joy - Today, Albania's Jewish population is nearly nonexistent, with fewer than 100 living mostly in Tirana. After World War II, Albania fell into the clutches of a communist dictatorship that barred religion. When the regime collapsed in 1991, many of the remaining Jewish community left for Israel. Marilena Langu Dojaka, 77, is one of those who stayed. "We are not yet free of our fears," she says, of the terror that has stuck with her decades later. She was born in Albania in 1942 after her mother fled there from then-Czechoslovakia. They found refuge with a family in the northern town of Mat. "When the Nazis passed through the village... our host family hid us in the mountains, in a cellar until the danger had passed," she told AFP, welling with emotion. Clutching a framed photo of relatives her mother left behind, she says softly: "They all died in the camps." Dojaka has kept close ties with the Albanian family who protected hers. "They shared everything with us: bread, pain and joy." - Recognition - It wasn't until after the fall of communism that the stories of the role played by Albanians in protecting Jews came to light. Today some 75 Albanians are recognised as part of the Righteous Among The Nations -- those who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. The history is a growing source of pride in Albania, where the government holds annual events on Holocaust Remembrance Day and devotes an exhibit to the history in Tirana's national museum. But Vrusho's museum is the only standalone centre dedicated to the sweep of Jewish history in that corner of Southeastern Europe. Since it opened in May 2018, there have been several thousand visitors from around the world. If he had more means, Vrusho said he would have opened a museum "double the size". Now, his widow Angjlina says she is "very worried about the museum's fate." "It took him a lifetime," she said through tears. ROME Steve Bannons whirlwind tour of three continents took him to Italys capital on Thursday, to deliver a head-spinning diatribe on world events, economics, the environment and the prospects of Donald Trumps reelection, about which he characteristically managed to be both cryptic and definitive at the same time. If Trump can last the next six months, and thats a big if, Bannon said, he will win bigger than in 2016. Bannon, who has been spending much of his time lately in Europe, promoting an alliance of populist right-wing parties, was in Japan less than two weeks ago, praising Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as Trump before Trump before jetting off to Cincinnati, then Detroit, to rally support for privately funding the Great Mexican Wall, with attendees nearly outnumbered by protesters outside. Former White House strategist Steve Bannon arrives to deliver a speech at Rome's Angelica Library, March 21, 2019. (Photo: Gregorio Borgia/AP) Two days ago, he was in Washington, D.C., along with the son of visiting Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, partying with conservatives at the Trump International Hotel. And here he was in Rome, speaking before a group of around 150 journalists at the 17th century Biblioteca Angelica, a gorgeous high-ceilinged building lined with a million old books. The stunning library was built in 1604, he noted, three years before the British set foot in Virginia, my home state, a remark whose significance was lost on most of the Italian journalists present, and the Americans. Chinese President Xi Jinping is making secret deals with Pope Francis, he asserted, without citing evidence except that Xi was also in the Italian capital that evening. The Catholic Church in North America will soon go broke and Chinese tech giant Huawei is a Trojan horse that will bring the world to data wars. The 5G rollout of Huawei will give them complete domination of manufacturing, he said. Their concept is to absolutely break the Westphalian system, he added, in a reference to the 1648 treaties that ended the Thirty Years War. He went on to pass along the little-known fact that the yellow jacket movement in France was a result of forcing ordinary citizens to pay for Chinese pollution. Story continues Pope Francis holds a live-stream conference with all the Scholas Occurrentes headquarters around the world, March 21, 2019. (Photo: Vatican Pool/Getty Images) The environmental movement is a new religion, a theology, not a science, he went on. And the reason its reared up is conservatives have ceded power in education and allowed progressives to instill cultural Marxism in the schools. There was much more in his rambling hourlong talk, sponsored by the Italian press association, Lettera 22, followed by an equally uninformative hourlong question-and-answer period. About the 2020 election in the U.S., he gave his opinion that the most potent Democratic combo would be Sen. Kamala Harris and former Rep. Beto ORourke. But he also predicted that Hillary Clinton might yet enter the race, since the vampire hasnt had a stake driven through her heart. The late Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has been the object of a sustained attack by President Trump over the last week, would never have won his last Senate race if Trump hadnt endorsed him, said Bannon, who went on to echo Trumps grievance over McCains deciding vote to kill Obamacare repeal in 2017. And even though Russia was thuggish, it should be embraced, because the world would need its help against China, whose president, along with the pope, seems to have become one of Bannons newest targets. Eyes grew glazed, yawns were stifled and when the show was finally wrapped up, photographers surrounded Bannon, nearly mobbing him, until in an instant he had disappeared into the night and, hopefully, into a bed for what appears to be much-needed sleep. Former White House strategist Steve Bannon at Rome's Angelica Library, a gorgeous high-ceilinged building lined with a million old books, on March 21, 2019. (Photo: Gregorio Borgia/AP) Melissa Rossi is an American journalist based in Western Europe. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: During the visit, Deputy Minister Son met with Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies of Chile Maya Fernandez Allende, and paid a courtesy call to Foreign Minister Roberto Ampuero Espinoza. He also participated in a political consultation with Secretary General for Foreign Policy of the Foreign Ministry of Chile Patricio Torres. He then met Vice Minister of Trade Rodrigo Yanez; President of the Chile-Vietnam Friendship Parliamentarian Group Karol Cariola; head of the Chile-Vietnam Culture Institute Patricia Abrajua; and other Chilean officials. On the occasion, he laid flowers at President Ho Chi Minhs statue in Santiago de Chile. At the meetings, the two sides shared their delight at the growing Vietnam-Chile partnership in all fields. The Chilean side expressed admiration for Vietnams achievements as well as the rising prestige of the country, saying Chile considers Vietnam as an important partner in Asia-Pacific. To mark the 50th founding anniversary of bilateral diplomatic relations (March 25, 1971-2021), the two sides agreed to increase high-level delegation exchanges and maintain political consultation to facilitate bilateral ties. They reviewed the implementation of cooperation frameworks and agreements and agreed to coordinate to promote negotiations for several new deals to complete the legal framework for bilateral affiliation. Both sides also discussed measures to strengthen cooperation in economy, trade, investment and promising areas such as agriculture, aquatic farming, agricultural and aquatic product processing, climate change response, startups, innovation, training, tourism, and sports. They will continue holding meetings of the Vietnam-Chile free trade council, while working closely during the implementation of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). They stressed the need to strengthen collaboration between the two parliaments and increase diplomatic activities. Vietnam and Chile agreed to continue supporting each other within the frameworks of the United Nations, the World Trade Organisations and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, while fostering the partnership between the ASEAN and the Pacific Alliance. MILAN (AP) At the heart of Chinese President Xi Jingping's visit to Rome that started Thursday is a key prize: a deal to make Italy the first major democracy to join China's ambitious Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte has pledged to sign a memorandum of understanding with China on Saturday, despite Western concerns about Beijing's growing economic clout. Italy's allies and some within the country's coalition government also think the Belt and Road deal could give China more political influence in Europe and the West. But Xi's visit, at the invitation of Italian President Sergio Mattarella, also has a broader aim of deepening trade and cultural ties. Conte has even suggested that Italy could play a role in easing trade tensions between China and the United States. Xi and his wife, Peng Liuan, arrived at Rome's main Fiumicino airport on Thursday evening. The Chinese president's itinerary includes meeting with Mattarella and attending a wreath-laying at Italy's monument for unknown soldiers on Friday. Here's a look what's at stake in the visit, which ends on Sunday: ____ INFRASTRUCTURE Italy's signature on the ambitious Belt and Road infrastructure-building project would give legitimacy to a project that envisions overland and maritime routes connecting China with Europe, reviving the old Silk Road traveled by Marco Polo in the Middle Ages. The initiative encompasses about 60 countries through Asia and Africa to Europe. Conte has dismissed concerns that signing the framework with China would downgrade Italy's strategic ties with Europe and the United States, saying its focus was more commercial and on encouraging trade with China. The White House has criticized the deal, saying it is weighted in China's interests. Italy's European allies have declined to sign a joint declaration on the "Belt and Road," saying it lacks standards on financing and transparency. Story continues While full details have not been released, it reportedly includes collaboration and investments in the northern Italian ports of Genoa and Trieste as well as roads, railways, airports and telecommunications. "Our two countries may harness our historical and cultural bonds forged through the ancient Silk Road," Xi wrote in the Corriere della Sera newspaper this week. ____ TECHNOLOGY Key Italian officials have insisted that the issue of expanding Chinese company Huawei's 5G network into Italy is not part of the "Belt and Road" memorandum. The Chinese 5-G network is viewed with suspicion, mainly by the U.S. government, which says it could give Chinese security services a backdoor to snoop on consumers. The issue is a major source of tension between China and the U.S. While European countries have balked at banning Huawei outright from participating in the creation of the new 5G networks, one key member of Italy's government, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, shares the concerns, saying nothing in the memorandum can threaten Italians' data. ____ CULTURE Ahead of the visit, Xi noted that China and Italy are the countries with the largest number of UNESCO world heritage sites, sharing both cultural and tourism resources. He suggested that the two countries could form "twinning relationships" between world heritage sites and cooperate on art exhibitions, TV and movie production, language course and travel. Mattarella said that the heritage of Italy and China both "arouse admiration around the world" and could help develop the economy. The two countries are expected to soon announce the pairing of the Langhe, Roero and Monferrato wine region in Piedmont with China's Honghe Hani rice terraces, while Verona and Hangzhou are to establish sister-city relationships. Culture and tourism officials will be meeting Saturday on the sidelines of Xi's visit. ____ TRADE Conte said he aims to rebalance trade with China. Currently 1 billion Chinese consumers provide a market for 13 billion euros (nearly $15 billion) in Italian goods, while Italy's 60 million people buy 60 billion euros in Chinese-made products each year. Italy's undersecretary for economic development, Michele Geraci, says Italy lags its European partners in trade with China by 15 or 20 years, and that the aim is to increase Italian exports to China by 7 billion euros, putting Italy in line with France. Mattarella said that Italy sees China "not only as an economic partner of prime importance, but also as a driver of global trade," and a market for Italian technology and expertise in areas like environmental protection, food security, health services and machinery. He called for "open and transparent" trade with both countries acting "on an equal basis." Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Chao said the "Belt and Road" deal would be beneficial for both countries' economic development and trade. However, Francois Godement, a specialist in Chinese politics at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, called such claims "bogus," because Chinese companies already have significant investments in Italy. ____ This story has been corrected to show that Xi Jingping is China's president, not premier. ___ Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report. [CORRECTS WORDING IN SECOND PARA ON INFORMATION SHARING, ADDS 'ACCORDING TO MEDIA REPORTS' IN 12TH PARA] Germany launches its auction Tuesday for the construction of an ultra-fast 5G mobile network as a transatlantic dispute rages over security concerns surrounding giant Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei. The United States has warned it could scale back the sharing of sensitive information with Berlin if it does not exclude hardware made by Huawei from the infrastructure, arguing that Chinese equipment could help Beijing spy on Western companies and governments. Attempting to play down the row on Monday, Jochen Homann, chairman of the German Federal Network Agency (BNA), said: "No matter whether a supplier comes from Sweden or China, companies must meet certification requirements and security checks." '5G' -- 'fifth generation' -- is the latest, high-speed generation of cellular mobile communications and Berlin will require winning bidders to offer 5G service to at least 98 percent of German households and along motorways and rail lines. Germany, Europe's biggest economy whose wireless networks however rank 46th in the world for download speeds, wants to close the sizeable digital gap by making the shift to the ultra-fast 5G system. The BNA started the auction in Mainz at 0900 GMT on Tuesday and the process will allocate 41 different frequency blocks. Four operators are in the running, among them Germany's three main mobile network providers -- Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica Germany (O2) -- plus United Internet (1&1), a German company specialising in internet services. Huawei is not one of the bidders but provides the four German companies with essential hardware such as antennas and routers. The US has accused Beijing of using Huawei's 5G network gear as a Trojan horse, forcing operators to transmit data to the regime, but Washington has not provided evidence to support their suspicions. Story continues Huawei has strenuously denied allegations its equipment could be used for espionage. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday lashed out at what he called "abnormal, immoral" attacks on Huawei and demanded a "fair and just competition environment" for Chinese firms. US-led attempts to encourage other nations to ban Huawei equipment from their telecoms infrastructure suffered a setback when Chancellor Angela Merkel's government decided against imposing company specific-restrictions on the 5G auction. - US fears of security compromise - According to media reports, US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell last week warned that Washington could review intelligence cooperation unless Berlin agreed a Huawei ban. In a letter, Grenell told Peter Altmaier, Germany's economy minister, that intelligence-sharing cooperation could be scaled back if Berlin allows the Chinese firm to be part of the 5G network, the Wall Street Journal reported. The threat escalated last week when NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US General Curtis Scaparrotti, warned Germany that NATO forces would cut communications if Berlin works with Huawei. "We're concerned about their (Germany's) telecommunications backbone being compromised in the sense that, particularly with 5G, the bandwidth capability and ability to pull data is incredible," Scaparrotti told the House Armed Services Committee last Wednesday. "If it also is inside of their defence communications, then we're not gonna communicate with them. "And for the military that would be a problem." Merkel has tried to reassure senior figures in Washington by saying Germany would consult with the US over whether to use Huawei tech, but would "define our standards for ourselves". However, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) shares some of the US fears. BND security experts have asked the government to take China's overall strategy into account, including a law on forced cooperation in security matters, according to a report in Der Spiegel magazine. Other media outlets claim Berlin is drawing up a catalogue of measures, for all 5G providers, to change the telecommunications laws. These measures range from a non-espionage clause to the requirement of testing all components and the obligation to publish source code used in infrastructure. In some cases, the government could insist equipment already installed is replaced, which could exclude Huawei from the infrastructure without pronouncing a formal ban on the Chinese firm, according to business daily Handelsblatt. The Hague (AFP) - Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will lose his senate majority after upstart anti-EU populists surged in provincial elections just two days after a suspected terror attack in Utrecht. Controversial eurosceptic Thierry Baudet's Forum for Democracy party came from nowhere to be the second biggest in parliament's upper house after Rutte's, an exit poll by leading broadcaster NOS said. The coalition led by Rutte's centre-right VVD party is set to collapse from 38 to 31 seats in the 75-seat senate, which passes legislation approved by the lower house. The blow for Rutte -- who painstakingly formed his ruling coalition to freeze out the far-right after general elections in 2017 -- will be closely watched abroad ahead of European Parliament elections in May. Self-proclaimed intellectual Baudet -- who faced criticism after failing to stop campaigning after Monday's shooting on a tram in Utrecht in which three people died -- slammed Rutte's record on immigration. "We are being destroyed by the people who are supposed to be protecting us," the telegenic 36-year-old told a crowd that chanted his name on Wednesday night. "Successive Rutte governments have left our borders wide open, letting in hundreds of thousands of people with cultures completely different to ours." Referring to the fact that the Turkish-born Utrecht suspect had only been released from jail two weeks ago, he added: "We have seen it in Utrecht on Monday, rapists and thieves go free. It's shameful." Baudet has previously called for a "Nexit", or exit from the EU by the Netherlands, but has recently backtracked on as the chaos over Britain's departure from the bloc escalates. The flamboyant former academic is known for controversial statements such as "women in general excel less in jobs and have less ambition". - 'Get to work' - After eight years in power, Rutte, meanwhile, is an influential figure in Europe including in its Brexit negotiations, but the result leaves him vulnerable at home and needing to rely on other parties to pass legislation. Story continues "We are going to have to get to work," Rutte told supporters. "We have to talk with other parties so we can continue to lead this country well." Rutte's VVD is set to drop from 13 to 12 but the other coalition partners took a hammering with the left-leaning progressive D66 falling from 10 to 7 and the Christian Democrat CDA from 12 to 8, although ChristenUnie rises from 3 to 4. Baudet led his party to win 10 seats. The anti-Islam Freedom Party led by far-right politician Geert Wilders is set to win six seats, down from nine, but could be influential if it teams up with Baudet. Long a standard bearer for the far right in the Netherlands and more widely across Europe, the bleach-blonde Wilders appeared to have lost seats to the newer figure of Baudet. Rutte could now be left to rely on opposition parties to pass legislation, including the leftist ecological party GroenLinks (Green Left) party led by Jesse Klaver, which had a good night and is set to double its seats from four to eight. Senate members will officially be decided in May by the 570 representatives elected to the country's 12 provinces in Wednesday's election. The head of the Dutch socialist party had called the vote a "Rutte referendum", although Rutte has insisted he would not step down if his coalition lost its majority. However after nearly a decade in power, Rutte has been widely tipped to take up a top EU post in Brussels when the current set-up led by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker steps down later this year. MANILA, Philippines (AP) Two former Philippine officials have taken the bold step of filing a complaint with the International Criminal Court accusing Chinese President Xi Jinping of crimes against humanity over his government's assertive actions in the disputed South China Sea, which they say deprived thousands of fishermen of their livelihood and destroyed the environment. Former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario and chief anti-graft prosecutor Conchita Carpio Morales said Thursday that they filed the complaint with the tribunal last week, before the current Philippine president's move to withdraw the country from the tribunal took effect last weekend. They accused Xi and other Chinese officials of turning seven disputed reefs into islands in a massive engineering feat, causing extensive environmental damage, and of blocking large numbers of fishermen, including about 320,000 Filipinos, from their fishing grounds. "This has seriously undermined the food and energy security of the coastal states in the South China Sea, including the Philippines," del Rosario and Carpio Morales said in a statement. China's island building, which started in 2013 in an effort to construct air and naval bases in the disputed waters, reportedly destroyed large expanses of coral reefs and endangered fisheries. "It presents one of the most massive, near permanent and devastating destruction of the environment in humanity's history," they said. "Though widely publicized, these atrociously inhumane actions of Chinese officials in the South China Sea and within Philippine territory remain unpunished, and it is only the ICC that can exact accountability on behalf of Filipinos and the international community," they said. There was no immediate reaction from China. Chinese officials have long claimed virtually the entire waterway, one of the world's busiest, with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also contesting ownership of parts of the strategic waters, where a large amount of world goods and the oil that fuels Asia's bustling economies transit. Story continues When he was the Philippines' top diplomat, del Rosario questioned the legality of China's massive claims and other actions in a landmark international arbitration case against Beijing which the Philippines won but was ignored by China. The arbitration tribunal declared in its July 2016 ruling that China's claims based on historical grounds were invalid and that Chinese forces have unlawfully prevented Filipino fishermen from disputed Scarborough Shoal. The tribunal also ruled that China breached its obligation under a 1982 U.N. treaty to protect the environment by undertaking island-building works and tolerating illegal fishing by Chinese nationals. Despite the arbitration ruling and a 2002 accord with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to stop occupation and constructions in the disputed region, Beijing "behind the scenes" planned and later constructed the islands in the disputed territory, the complaint said. "This has placed billions of dollars' worth of natural resources, including fish, fossil fuels and shipping lanes, under Beijing's control," it said. The complaint outlined China's increasingly assertive actions through the decades, starting in 1974, when it forcibly dislodged Vietnamese forces from the Paracels, to 1995, when it seized Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef, and 2013, when it started its island building. Aside from Xi, it named as "perpetrators" Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Chinese Ambassador to Manila Zhao Jinhua. The legal offensive against China contrasts with President Rodrigo Duterte's rapprochement with Beijing since he took office in mid-2016 while often criticizing the security policies of the United States, a treaty ally. Duterte has lashed out against Washington for raising alarm over his anti-drug crackdown, which has left thousands of poor suspects dead and sparked two complaints charging mass murder before the ICC. Duterte decided to withdraw the Philippines from the ICC last year in a move that took effect last Sunday, prompting del Rosario and Carpio Morales to file their complaint ahead of that date. Duterte's move has been challenged by human rights advocates before the Philippine Supreme Court. Asked by reporters for his reaction, Duterte said he doubted that the complaint would succeed, citing the ICC's lack of jurisdiction over China, which is not a party to the Rome Statute that established the tribunal. "Anybody can bring a suit against anybody, but whether or not it would prosper or whether or not we have the jurisdiction, that's something else," Duterte said. Europes largest economy is taking its first steps towards building a next-generation mobile network. Germanys 5G bandwidth spectrum auctions began Tuesday morning at the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) in Bonn, with four telecoms companies bidding on 41 spectrum bundles. Just as 4G networks made it possible for smartphones to become a part of our everyday lives, 5G networks are expected to enable the full potential of the Internet of Things, including autonomous driving. The procedure to award these slices of the future takes a surprisingly old-fashioned form, however. The four firms, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, Vodafone and Drillisch 1&1, are bidding via a secure network from separate rooms in a former army barracks, Reuters reports. Having surrendered their smartphones upon entering, the representatives can only discuss strategy with their head offices via fax machine. Despite being renowned worldwide for their technology, Handelsblatt reports that two-thirds of German companies regularly use faxes, whereas only half of them use video conferencing technologies and just one-third use messaging services or online collaboration tools. The simple reason is that Germans consider faxes more secure than digital messaging and that faxed documents carry legal weight with banks and insurance companies, while emailed documents do not. Vodafone Germany CEO Hannes Ametsreiter tweeted Tuesday morning: The network of the future waits behind this door. The #5G auction is starting, and our bids are submitted from this strictly secured auction room In Dusseldorf [sic]. Im going in there now. My phone, unfortunately, has to stay outside. Hinter dieser Tur wartet das Netz der Zukunft. Die #5G-Auktion startet und aus diesem streng gesicherten Auktionsraum in Dusseldorf werden unsere Gebote abgegeben. Ich geh jetzt mal da rein. Mein Handy muss leider drauen bleiben. ???? pic.twitter.com/ljec0OilW4 Hannes Ametsreiter (@H_Ametsreiter) March 19, 2019 The 41 spectrum bundles are being auctioned simultaneously, with one hour allotted for each round of bidding. Bidding will take place from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with a lunch break from noon to 2 p.m. Story continues The auctions are expected to take at least three weeks and could raise as much as 5 billion ($5.7 billion) for Germanys federal government. Germanys last spectrum auction in 2015 raised 5.1 billion from three bidders: Deutsche Telekom dtegf , Vodafone vodpf und Telefonica tef . Drillisch 1&1s entry into the 5G auctions was not certain until January. The subsidiary of United Internet udirf currently relies on using other telecoms networks as a virtual mobile network. CEO Ralph Dommermuth arranged 2.8 billion in funding for the 5G spectrum auction in the hope of becoming Germanys fourth mobile network. Starting bids for each 5G spectrum block ranged from 1.7 million to 5 million. In the first round of bidding Tuesday, Drillisch 1&1 came out stronger than any of its competitors with high bids of more than 20 million for numerous spectrum blocks. The 5G auctions come after months of uncertainty. A German court last week dismissed lawsuits from the telecoms operators, who had argued that the governments requirement to provide high-speed coverage to 98% of German households by 2022 was too demanding. Regulators also had to clarify rules on network equipment following U.S. pressure to ban Chinas Huawei Technologies on national security grounds. Germany decided instead to impose stricter requirements on all hardware vendors. Bissau (AFP) - Guinea-Bissau's historic ruling party on Monday signed a deal to form a coalition government after falling just short of a majority in parliamentary elections last week, political figures said. According to the National Election Commission, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) won 47 of parliament's 102 seats and 46.1 percent of the popular vote. Another 48 seats were taken by two opposition parties, with the final seven seats won by factions who last week agreed to back a PAIGC-led government. A two-page document envisages an "inclusive" coalition government lasting the four years of the parliamentary term, with a focus on reform of the constitution and the security and public administration apparatus. "There is no winner nor loser. What is important is to work together to get our country out of the crisis it has been going through for several years," said Mama Saliu Lamba of the APU-PDGB party which won five seats and is part of the planned coalition. PAIGC head of the PAIGC, Domingos Simoes Pereira, said "the people made a choice on March 10 and have given us a mission." "The signing of this agreement creates the conditions for a majority in parliament," he added. The Supreme Court has yet to formally endorse the election results but President Jose Mario Vaz has already congratulated the PAIGC on the result. It was hoped that the March 10 vote would draw a line under the crisis that erupted in August 2015 when Vaz -- also a PAIGC member -- sacked Pereira, his then prime minister. The two men have had a very strained relationship since then and there had been fears the polls could have left the poor, volatile West African state heading into a fresh confrontation, analysts warned. The PAIGC -- a one-time Marxist party which has run the country of two million people for most of the 45 years since independence from Portugal -- won the previous polls in 2014 with 57 seats. Crema (Italy) (AFP) - Italy was in shock Thursday after the dramatic rescue of 51 children taken hostage by their school bus driver who torched the vehicle in protest at Mediterranean migrant deaths. The Italian driver of Senegalese origin on Wednesday hijacked the bus as it was taking the 12-13 year-olds from a gym to school in Crema, east of Milan. The incident prompted Italy's populist government to demand that the driver lose his Italian citizenship. Armed with two petrol canisters and a cigarette lighter, Ousseynou Sy threatened the youngsters, took their telephones and told the adults to tie them up with electric cable. "He blocked all the doors with chains," teaching assistant Tiziana Magarini told AFP. "He showed me a knife and told me to tie up all the children." The 40-minute ordeal, during which the bus also slammed into a car, was brought to an end when police managed to smash windows open and get those onboard out just as the driver set fire to the vehicle. A dozen children and two adults were taken to hospital for smoke and fume inhalation, according to emergency services. "It's crazy, absurd, it's unacceptable. Someone has to pay, and dearly," said Filippo Razzini, the father of a pupil at the school in the small town of Crema who was not on the bus. "It's good to go back to school today because unfortunately these things are today a reality. But if it were up to me I'd be out there waiting for this guy somewhere," he told AFP. The driver's lawyer said his client had wanted to "draw attention to the consequences of (Italy's) migration policies". Italy has clamped down on immigration under far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, demanding it close its ports to charity vessels rescuing migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean. Salvini said Sy should have his nationality, granted in 2004 after his marriage to an Italian, revoked. "We shall do all we can to ensure this nefarious person is stripped of his Italian nationality," said Salvini. Story continues Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio of the League's governing partner, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, agreed. "I think it is a duty to withdraw immediately the citizenship of this criminal," said Di Maio. Sy could lose his citizenship if convicted of a terror attack under a tough security decree introduced last year. Salvini meanwhile indicated that a Moroccan-born and an Egyptian-born boy on the bus who alerted police could receive speedy naturalisation. Salvini's far-right League party is riding high in the polls in part because of its tough anti-migrant stance. - 'Lone wolf' - The Milan police anti-terrorism unit has been charged with investigating the hostage-taking, during which Sy reportedly told students: "No one is getting out of here alive." The incident has shaken Crema's community. "My daughter was in shock yesterday, she said 'Mummy, I could have been there too'," parent Luisa Ginelli told AFP Thursday. The driver had no links with Islamic terrorism and "acted as a lone wolf", Alberto Nobili, head of counter-terrorism at the Milan public prosecutor's office, told a news conference. Nobili said Thursday that Sy had planned the hijacking over several days and "wanted the whole world talking about his story". He posted a video on YouTube to explain his actions and call on relatives and friends in Crema and Senegal to take action, saying: "Africa -- arise." Sy got his Italian nationality and job in 2004 and managed to keep subsequent convictions for drink driving and sexual assault of a minor secret from his employer, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported. A neighbour told La Stampa newspaper that he was known as "Paolo". "That's what we called him because his name was too complicated. I saw him go out every morning, he drove a bus. A quiet man but solitary," she said. Colleagues told Italian media that Sy's separation from his Italian wife, with whom he has two teenage children, was "when his problems started". SheKnows Paris Jackson: fashion icon, singer, actress, and overall one of the coolest people in the industry isnt afraid to shy away from being bold. Whether it be a unique dress on the red carpet or staying ever-so blunt, Jackson keeps it real. And most recently, she bared all for her Instagram for this spiritual event. [] Former Rep. John Delaney smiles a lot, considering that he was the first Democrat to enter the race for president and that after campaigning for 20 months he is barely a blip in the polls. He smiles, not in an unctuous Howard Dean way, but in the eager manner of a man unafraid of questions and excited to answer them. In a 35-minute interview with Yahoo News, he outlined a full slate of policy ideas: the future potential and pitfalls of technology as it relates to national security, climate change and jobs. He didnt flinch at questions about the autonomous-weapons race with China, regulation of Big Tech and whether the looming deficit or poverty is a more urgent issue (he said poverty). Delaney believes many of his policy proposals could win support from moderate Republicans, and he has hammered home the need for bipartisanship to achieve solutions to the nations greatest problems. But he has something else going for him in the race besides his policy expertise. Delaney appears to be positioning himself to run as the Democrat who best embodies the rank-and-files rage at Donald Trump. Delaneys demeanor changed when he talked about the president, whom he called utterly petty for his recent attacks on the late Sen. John McCain. The son of a working-class New Jersey family, Delaney, 55, clearly can envision himself on the debate stage against Trump, and he is eager for the fight. John Delaney speaks in Knoxville, Iowa, on Feb. 17. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images) Delaney describes his rise from blue collar roots to millionaire status as the classic American dream. Neither of his parents went to college, and it was a scholarship from his fathers labor union that helped fund Delaneys attendance at Columbia University. After earning a law degree from Georgetown and briefly practicing law, he went into the world of finance and founded two companies -- the first, a lender to health care companies, and the second a lender to small and medium-size businesses. The only thing my dad helped me do was carry in the furniture, he said about the help he received when starting his first company. In 2012 he gave up his business career and ran for Congress in Marylands Sixth District, a gerrymandered swath that includes more conservative western Maryland as well as the liberal and wealthy Washington suburbs of Montgomery County. He served three terms, but gave up his seat to run for president. Delaneys background stands in stark contrast to Trump, the son of a wealthy real estate developer who a New York Times investigation revealed was given $413 million over his lifetime by his father. Story continues But his humble beginnings arent the only area where he could be a foil for Trump. Conservative columnist George Will recently wrote that Democrats who want to defeat Trump should take Delaney seriously: He speaks with the calm confidence of one who understands, as the man he hopes to displace does not, that the lungs are not the seat of wisdom. Delaney may not be the loudest person in the room, but he says he wouldnt hesitate to punch back if hes given the opportunity to run against Trump. Listen, bullies are weak, he said. Theyre totally weak. They have insecurities. Whenever theres a fight, theyre the first to the doors, and I think Trump is that way, which is why he avoided serving in Vietnam because of his bunions and all that garbage, right? Hes not really a tough guy. Delaney has seized on Trumps continued feud with the late senator and war hero McCain to underline his case about the presidents temperament. He issued a statement after Trumps weekend twitter attacks, describing the president as unfit for the office of the presidency and a stain on our nation. Trump is not decent, and doesnt have a moral compass, Delaney said to Yahoo News. Hes lawless, hes attacking the separation of powers. Theres no reason to doubt Delaneys sincere disdain for Trump, but his new emphasis may reflect a reality about the 2020 Democratic race: After 20 months of campaigning on policy issues with little support to show for it, Delaney needs a new tack. His task now will be to convince Democratic voters not just how different he is from Trump but that he is the one who can beat him. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: By Tina Bellon NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bayer AG had hoped a new trial strategy focusing jurors on scientific evidence could stem a burgeoning tide of U.S. lawsuits over its glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup, but a second jury finding on Tuesday that the product caused cancer has narrowed the company's options, some legal experts said. Bayer shares tumbled more than 12 percent on Wednesday after a unanimous jury in San Francisco federal court found Roundup to be a "substantial factor" in causing California resident Edwin Hardeman's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The jury decision was a blow to Bayer after the judge in the Hardeman case, at the company's request, had split the trial, severely limiting evidence plaintiffs could present in the first phase. Tuesday's defeat on terms considered advantageous to Bayer sets up the second phase to be even tougher and limits the grounds on which the company could appeal any final verdict, the experts said. "The fact that Bayer lost this trial despite it being set up in the most favourable way for them is a huge setback," said Thomas Rohback, a Connecticut-based defence lawyer. Bayer in a statement on Tuesday said it stood behind the safety of Roundup and was confident the evidence in the second trial phase would show that Monsanto's conduct was appropriate and the company not liable for Hardeman's cancer. The company, which bought Monsanto last year, on Wednesday declined to comment beyond that statement. Tuesday's finding did not address liability, which will be determined following the second trial phase that began on Wednesday. Bayer denies glyphosate or Roundup cause cancer. The German company faces more than 11,200 lawsuits over the popular weed killer. Last August, following the first Roundup trial, a California state court jury issued a $289 million verdict against the company. Two weeks after that verdict, which was later reduced to $78 million and is being appealed, Bayer Chief Executive Werner Baumann reassured analysts that the company had a new legal strategy based on focusing jurors on the scientific evidence. Story continues "Bayer and the joint litigation team are working to ensure that, going forward, this overwhelming science will get the full consideration it deserves," Baumann said in an Aug. 23 conference call. A LOT AT STAKE There is a lot at stake for Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto last year for $63 billion (47.7 billion pounds). Though Bayer does not break out sales figures for Roundup, glyphosate is the world's most widely used weed killer, and Roundup is the leading brand. Bayer's new strategy was focused on keeping out plaintiffs' allegations that the company improperly influenced scientists, regulators and the public about the safety of Roundup. Bayer has denied it acted inappropriately and said in public statements following the August verdict that it thought the jury was inflamed by the claims of corporate misconduct. Vince Chhabria, the San Francisco federal judge overseeing the Hardeman case, agreed with the company's argument that such evidence was a "distraction" from the scientific question of whether glyphosate causes cancer. He agreed to split the trial in a January order. Had Bayer had won the first phase, there would have been no second phase looking at company liability. Now that it has lost, almost all of the previously excluded evidence can be presented to the jury. Plaintiffs' lawyers hit Bayer with those allegations in their opening statements for the second phase on Wednesday. Aimee Wagstaff, one of Hardeman's lawyers, said Monsanto influenced the science around Roundup through its "cozy" relationship with regulators. Bayer could convince the jury in the second phase that, despite their finding that Roundup played a substantial role in Hardeman's cancer, the company was not liable. Experts said that was unlikely. "They could present evidence of how careful they were in developing Roundup, but that's an uphill battle given that the scientific evidence was their strongest argument," said Alexandra Lahav, a law professor at the University of Connecticut. A lawyer for Bayer on Wednesday argued that Bayer could not be held liable because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as other regulators worldwide, approved Roundup without a cancer warning. If the Hardeman trial had not been split and a final verdict went against Bayer, the company might have been able to appeal any damages award to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by claiming the jury had been improperly swayed by inflammatory evidence, said Lori Jarvis, a Virginia-based mass tort defence lawyer. That argument will now be difficult to make. "It would not be surprising at all for the 9th Circuit to uphold what the jury did in this case, particularly given the great effort Chhabria put into creating a level playing field for Monsanto," Jarvis said. Some lawyers said Bayer could still argue on appeal that plaintiffs' experts and their scientific evidence were insufficient and statistically invalid and should not have been admitted at trial. But they noted the 9th Circuit, which oversees the San Francisco federal court, has generally been permissive in allowing expert testimony. However, experts said it was probably too soon to write off Bayer's legal strategy, noting future Roundup cases could result in different outcomes. "It's a relatively early phase in this litigation as a whole and we just need to see more trials to understand Bayer's liability," said Adam Zimmerman, a law professor at Los Angeles-based Loyola Law School. (Reporting by Tina Bellon; Editing by Anthony Lin and Bill Berkrot) Kentucky governor Matt Bevin on Tuesday signed a bill that bans abortions chosen on the basis of an unborn childs sex, race, or disability. A court filing in the U.S. District Court in Louisville indicated that the governor has signed the bill, which included an emergency clause stipulating that it would go into effect immediately. Physicians must now certify in writing that the patient did not request the abortion for a reason related to the babys sex, race, or disabilities. Flouting the new law puts doctors at risk of losing their medical license or being prosecuted for a felony, although the mother of the unborn child would not be targeted. The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the bill in federal court as an unconstitutional restriction on a womans right to abortion. Instituting laws that instantly affect critical patient care should not be a cat-and-mouse game, the group said, asking that it be notified when the bill is signed. Another new law that bans abortions after about six weeks or when a heartbeat can be detected forced Kentuckys sole abortion clinic, EMW Womens Surgical Center in Louisville, to cancel some appointments on Friday until a federal judge intervened. EMW and its abortionists have responded with a novel claim: Women have a constitutional right to undergo race-based abortions, gender-based abortions, and disability-based abortions. In plaintiffs view, somewhere in the Fourteenth Amendments penumbra lies a protection for eugenics, the governors lawyer M. Stephen Pitt wrote in defending the ban on eugenics-based abortions. This is a perverse distortion of Roe v. Wade. More from National Review Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday welcomed US President Donald Trump's "historic" pledge to recognise Israel's disputed annexation of the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967. "At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognises Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights," he wrote on his personal Twitter account. "Thank you President Trump!" Trump's statement of intent on the strategic plateau Israel seized in the Six-Day War came after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Jerusalem and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Netanyahu at the Western Wall in the city's Israeli-annexed eastern sector. It was the first time such a high-ranking US official had visited the highly sensitive site in the Old City, part of the mainly Palestinian east of Jerusalem, alongside an Israeli premier. Both US gestures serve to boost Netanyahu's campaign for a fifth term, less than three weeks before Israel's April 9 elections. Netanyahu's office said he had spoken to Trump by phone and thanked him personally for his decision, telling him: "You made history." Netanyahu has been pushing for the White House to recognise Israel's sovereignty over the Golan, and Trump tweeted Thursday that "it is time" to do so. Pompeo's visit with the premier to the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, could be taken as tacit approval of Israel's sovereignty over the city's eastern sector, which is claimed by the Palestinians. Israel sees the entire city as its undivided capital. Although the Palestinians make no territorial claim to the Golan, senior official Saeb Erekat slammed Israel's rule over the 1,200 square kilometre (460 square mile) swathe it took from Syria. "(Trump's) policy does not change international law, which considers the Golan and all of the Palestinian land occupied in 1967 to be occupied Arab land," he told AFP. "It will stay like that despite all the attempts of the (Israeli) occupation and the American support for it." The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General confirmed it has launched an investigation into whether Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan has violated any ethics rules by promoting his former employer Boeing while serving in the Trump Administration. The investigation comes a week after a government watchdog group, called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), wrote a nine-page complaint to the Pentagons inspector general urging the agency to scrutinize the relationship. At issue is whether Shanahan pushed the Pentagon to buy more Boeing-made F-15X fighter jets, which the Air Force does not want, and whether he castigated Boeing-rival Lockheed Martin Corp. during government meetings. Shanahan, who came to the Pentagon after spending more than three decades at Boeing, has routinely fended off questions about potential conflicts of interest with the aerospace company that also happens to be one of the largest suppliers for the U.S. military. Last week, he told Congress that he welcomed any such investigation into his actions in office. In its complaint, CREW cited a Politico report in January that said Shanahan had been promoting Boeing while criticizing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a Lockheed Martin program. The plane was f-cked up, he reportedly said, and Lockheed Martin doesnt know how to run a program. The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General has decided to investigate complaints we recently received that Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan allegedly took actions to promote his former employer, Boeing, and disparage its competitors, allegedly in violation of ethics rules, Dwrena Allen, a spokesperson for the inspector general, said in a statement. In his recent Senate Armed Services Committee testimony, Acting Secretary Shanahan stated that he supported an investigation into these allegations. We have informed him that we have initiated this investigation. The confirmation of the investigation is a rarity for the Inspector Generals office, which usually maintains a policy not to confirm or deny the existence of investigations. In January, Shanahan told reporters that claims of favoritism were just noise and he was biased toward performance; I am biased toward giving the taxpayer their moneys worth. The allegations, however, take on increased importance now that Shanahan, 56, is under serious consideration to become Defense Secretary. He has the dubious distinction of being the longest serving Acting Defense Secretary in the nations history: 78 days and counting. He stepped up from the No. 2 spot to take the lead role after James Mattis resigned as Defense Secretary on Dec. 31. NEW YORK (AP) The apparent suspension of Jeanine Pirro is squeezing Fox News Channel in two directions. A prominent Muslim-American civil rights organization is calling for advertisers to boycott Fox News, while another group is petitioning to have the weekend host reinstated. Pirro wasn't on the air Saturday, a week after Fox publicly condemned her for comments questioning U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar's loyalty because she wears a Muslim head covering. Fox hasn't explained the former New York-area district attorney's absence, declining to comment on "internal scheduling matters." The network's schedule for the upcoming weekend lists another program in Pirro's time slot. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights organization, this week said that advertisers should boycott Fox News until Pirro and prime-time host Tucker Carlson were fired. Carlson has been fighting back since being criticized last week for comments made on a radio show a decade ago and unearthed last week. Meanwhile, the lobbying group Act for America urged its members write to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott to complain about Pirro's absence. In its online message, Act for America said that instead of rewarding its anchor for opening a much-needed debate, "Fox News caved to pressure from the radical left." "Jeanine Pirro did nothing wrong," the group's leader, Brigitte Gabriel, said via tweet. "People should be outraged." Act for America has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for anti-Muslim rhetoric. Gabriel has tweeted in recent days that she considered SPLC a hate group. Act for America said more than 20,000 people have responded to its request to email Scott. Fox News had no comment on the campaign Tuesday. Act for America was echoing tweets by President Donald Trump last weekend. He had also proclaimed his support for Pirro and advocated for her reinstatement. Story continues Pirro has issued one statement through Fox, saying she did not call Omar un-American and that "my intention was to ask a question and start a debate, but of course because one is Muslim does not mean you don't support the Constitution." Gabriel had appeared with Pirro last Friday on the online Fox Nation service, where the advocacy group leader referred to Omar and a colleague, Rep. Rashida Talib, as anti-Semitic, in a transcript provided by the liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America. Of the two representatives, Pirro said, "it's almost as though they think they're representing another country." Gabriel also criticized Fox in the wake of its hiring Monday of former Democratic National Committee chief Donna Brazile as a political commentator. Between the suspension of Pirro and hiring of Brazile, "if that doesn't show you the direction Fox News is headed I don't know what will," she tweeted. BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Anti-graft campaigner Zuzana Caputova could win 60.5 percent of votes in Slovakia's presidential election run-off, an opinion poll showed on Thursday, an outcome that would stand in contrast to the rise of populist, nationalist politicians across Europe. Pro-European, liberal Caputova won the first round with 40.6 percent, decisively ahead of the candidate backed by the ruling Smer party, European Union commissioner Maros Sefcovic with 18.7 percent. The run-off is set for March 30. Caputova has campaigned to end what she calls the capture of the state "by people pulling strings from behind," a message resonating with younger, educated voters, according to polls. The Median agency poll for public broadcaster RTVS, the first since Caputova's first-round victory on March 16, put Caputova at 60.5 percent and Sefcovic at 39.5 percent. Corruption and change have been top themes in the election, coming a year after investigative journalist Jan Kuciak, who covered fraud cases involving politically connected businessman, and his fiancee were murdered at their home. The killings, for which five people have been charged, sparked anti-government demonstrations that led long-time prime minister Robert Fico to resign, although his three-party government remains in place. Voters, though, look set to punish Smer - the biggest parliamentary party since 2006 - with many still unhappy with efforts to rein in graft, which was on display last month when thousands rallied on the first anniversary of Kuciak's murder. Anti-immigrant and far-right candidates failed to advance in the first round. Analysts say that has helped Caputova as Sefcovic, mindful of his position in Brussels and with EU elections two months away, is unlikely to attack too hard. "Sefcovic has refused to get dirty in the campaign and attack Caputova in a way that the anti-system candidates would," said political analyst Samuel Abraham, who heads the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts. He said only a failure of Caputova's voters to show up by taking her victory as a given due to polls could threaten that. "She needs to mobilize her voters," he said. Caputova, a 45-year-old lawyer, was previously best known for a long fight against an illegal landfill in her hometown. Sefcovic, who is also pro-European, said he would seek to unite the divided country and has pitched his Christian values to court socially conservative voters, gaining backing from some in the church in the predominantly Catholic country of 5.4 million. But on Thursday, Caputova was endorsed by the junior government party Most-Hid, which represents the country's ethic Hungarian minority. Outgoing President Andrej Kiska, who defeated Fico in the last presidential vote in 2014 by gaining 59.4 percent, has also backed Caputova. (Reporting by Tatiana Jancarikova, Writing by Jason Hovet, Editing by Robin Pomeroy, William Maclean) By Nidhi Verma and Marianna Parraga NEW DELHI/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - India's Reliance Industries, operator of the world's biggest refining complex, has turned to selling fuels to Venezuela from India and Europe to circumvent sanctions that bar U.S.-based companies from dealing with state-run PDVSA, according to trading sources and Refinitiv Eikon data. Reliance had been supplying alkylate, diluent naphtha, and other fuel to Venezuela though its U.S.-based subsidiary before Washington in late January imposed sanctions aimed at curbing the OPEC member's oil exports and ousting Socialist President Nicolas Maduro. At least three vessels chartered by the Indian conglomerate supplied refined products to Venezuela in recent weeks, and another vessel carrying gasoil is expected to set sail to the South American nation as well, according to the sources and data. Reliance, an Indian conglomerate controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has significant exposure to the financial system of the United States, where it operates subsidiaries linked to its oil and telecom businesses, among others. The Indian market is crucial for Venezuela's economy because it has historically been the second-largest cash-paying customer for the OPEC country's crude, behind the United States. Additional sanctions against Venezuela are possible in the future, as U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has not yet tried to prevent companies based outside the United States from buying Venezuelan oil, a strategy known as "secondary sanctions." Refinitiv Eikon trade data shows that Reliance shipped alkylate, a component for motor gasoline, to Venezuela on vessels Torm Mary and Torm Anabel in recent weeks. Those originated in India and passed through the Suez Canal. It also shipped a gasoline cargo using tanker Torm Troilus to Venezuela and is preparing to send 35,000 tonnes of gasoil in a vessel called Vukovar to the South American nation. "Reliance is also supplying some products from its Rotterdam storage," a source familiar with Reliance's operation said. Story continues Reliance did not respond to emails seeking comment. PDVSA did not reply to a request for comment. In a statement last week, Reliance said its U.S. unit has completely stopped all business with PDVSA. Reliance also halted all supply of diluents including heavy naphtha to Venezuela and does not plan to resume such sales until sanctions are lifted, according to the release. Venezuela has overall imported some 160,000 barrels per day of fuel and diluents for its extra heavy oil output since the U.S. measures were imposed, according to PDVSA and Refinitiv data, below levels prior to the sanctions but still enough to supply gas stations and power plants. Reliance is among the biggest buyers of Venezuelan oil, although the company has recently said it has not increased crude purchases from Venezuela. In 2012, Reliance signed a 15-year deal to buy between 300,000 to 400,000 bpd of heavy crude from PDVSA. Ship tracking data obtained by Reuters showed that Reliance's average purchases from Venezuela were less than 300,000 bpd in 2018 and in the first two months of this year. Venezuela has suspended its oil exports to India, its main cash market, Azerbaijan's energy ministry said on Tuesday, citing Manuel Quevedo, Venezuela's oil minister and PDVSA president. Quevedo met with the Azeri minister of Industry and Energy Parviz Shahbazov in Baku. But Venezuela's crude exports to India have not stopped. A very large crude carrier (VLCC) is anchored off Venezuela's Jose port waiting to load oil bound for India, and at least six other vessels of the same size are underway to India's Sikka and Vadinar ports, according to the Refinitiv data. PDVSA's second largest customer in India is Nayara Energy, partially owned by Russian energy firm Rosneft, one of PDVSA's primary allies. (Reporting by Nidhi Verma in New Delhi and Marianna Parraga in Mexico City; Editing by Phil Berlowitz) The Midwest is facing even more historic and catastrophic flooding, according to the National Weather Service in the wake of a bomb cyclone that dumped unusual amounts of snow and rain across the region last week. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds has included 41 of Iowas 99 counties in her state disaster declaration, according to the Associated Press. Several rivers in the region including the Missouri and the Mississippi have swelled to dangerous levels, flooding small towns and breaching more than a dozen levees. Three people have died as a result of the floodwaters and two men in Nebraska have been missing since Thursday, according to the Associated Press. Emergencies have been declared in 74 cities and 65 counties according to the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, and water levels are expected to rise with more rain expected and snow continuing to melt. According to the National Weather Service, 9 million people across 14 states are still under flood warnings. Vice President Mike Pence is traveling to the Midwest Tuesday to survey the damage in Omaha, Nebraska, where hundreds of homes have been damaged and tens of thousands of acres covered in water, according to the Associated Press. Devastation has been particularly concentrated in eastern Nebraska. The Nebraska Emergency Management Agency described the flooding as one of the most devastating disasters in recent history. Towns like Fremont have been completely surrounded by water, making relief and rescue efforts particularly challenging. Pilots have been flying supplies in to people who are stranded, according to local media. Video footage from an airplane show fields and roads in the area completely submerged. Roads and highways have also been severely damaged in areas surrounding the city of Omaha. The flooding has so far had an estimated cost of $550 million on the public sector in Nebraska and $90 million on private infrastructure. In Iowa, failing levees in Mills County forced residents to evacuate. Buildings in the towns of Hornick and Pacific Junction were overwhelmed by water, forcing more than 400 people to evacuate, according to the Des Moines Register. Story continues RVs, washed away by the flood waters of the Platte River, are seen in Merritt's RV Park in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, March 17, 2019. At sunrise, Norfolk City Engineer Steven Rames inspects the levy next to the Northeast Community College on March 15, 2019, in Norfolk, Nebraska. Firefighter Brian Farr carries a baby from the boat as the GBFD assisted residents with home evacuations on Crooks Street due to the East river flooding on March 15, 2019 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Businesses on the southwest side of Hamburg, Iowa, were flooded on March 17, 2019, from the flood waters of the Missouri River. An abandoned car sits on Industrial Highway in flood waters north of Norfolk, Nebraska on March 14, 2019. According to a trooper on scene, the occupant had to be rescued. A neighborhood in Bellevue, Nebraska, is flooded by waters from the Missouri River, seen here with the Offutt Air Force Base runway. By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared poised to side with a black Mississippi death row inmate put on trial six times for a 1996 quadruple murder who accused a prosecutor of repeatedly blocking black potential jurors, though the court's only black member sounded skeptical. Justice Clarence Thomas, who had not posed a question during an oral argument in three years, asked several in the case involving Curtis Flowers, 48, who has argued that his constitutional right to a fair trial was violated. Thomas, an idiosyncratic conservative and only the second African American ever appointed to the court, signaled through his questions he might vote against Flowers, who otherwise drew broad support among the other justices, both liberal and conservative. The case is the latest to reach the nine-member court over allegations of racial bias against minorities in the American criminal justice system. Some prosecutors, including in Southern states like Mississippi, have been accused over the decades of trying to ensure predominately white juries for trials of black defendants to help win convictions. Prosecutors and defense lawyers can dismiss - or "strike" - a certain number of prospective jurors during jury selection without giving a reason. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that people cannot be excluded from a jury because of their race based on the right to a fair trial under the U.S. Constitution's Sixth Amendment and the 14th Amendment promise of equal protection under the law. Thomas focused on whether lawyers for Flowers sought to exclude white people from the jury in the most recent trial, which would indicate that both sides used race as a factor in selecting jurors. First Thomas asked whether the defense struck any jurors. Then he asked, "What was the race of the jurors struck there?" Sheri Lynn Johnson, Flowers' attorney, said the jurors the defense sought to block were white, but argued that what was relevant in the case was the motives of the prosecutor, not the defense lawyer. Story continues The other justices largely sounded supportive of Flowers' claim. "We can't take the history out of this case," conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh told the state's lawyer, Jason Davies. Another conservative, Justice Samuel Alito, said "the history of this case prior to this trial is very troubling" and noted that it was "cause for concern and certainly relevant" to how the justices decide the dispute. Liberal Justice Elena Kagan questioned why prosecutors excluded a black potential juror, Carolyn Wright, who had said she supported the death penalty and had an uncle who is a prison security guard. "Except for her race, you would think that this is a juror that a prosecutor would love when she walks in the door. Isn't she?" Kagan asked. A ruling is due by the end of June. QUESTIONS FROM THOMAS Thomas not had asked a question since a February 2016 gun rights case in which he voiced concern that people convicted of domestic-violence misdemeanors could permanently lose the right to own a firearm. In another 2016 case, Thomas was the sole dissenter when the court ruled in favor of a black Georgia death row inmate who made a similar jury claim. On race issues, Thomas has been a decisive vote to restrict affirmative action programs designed to help minorities overcome past discrimination. In 2013, he was part of the majority when the court struck down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, passed in 1965 to protect black voters in Southern states from ongoing discrimination. The justices heard Flowers' appeal of his 2010 conviction - in his sixth trial - on charges of murdering four people at the Tardy Furniture store where he previously worked in the small central Mississippi city of Winona. His lawyers accused long-serving Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans of engaging in a pattern of removing black jurors that indicated an unlawful discriminatory motive. Evans has given non-racial reasons for striking jurors. Flowers was found guilty in his first three trials but those convictions were thrown out by Mississippi's top court. Several blacks jurors participated in the fourth and fifth trials, which ended without a verdict because the jury both times failed to produce a unanimous decision. In the sixth trial, there were 11 white jurors and one black juror. The jury in the first trial was all-white. One black juror took part in each of the three other trials. Prosecutors said Flowers was upset with the store owner for firing him and withholding his paycheck to cover the cost of batteries he previously had damaged. He was convicted of killing store owner Bertha Tardy, 59; bookkeeper Carmen Rigby, 45; delivery worker Robert Golden, 42; and part-time employee Derrick Stewart, 16. All except Golden were white. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham) CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) In a day without precedent, people across New Zealand were planning to observe the Muslim call to prayer Friday as the nation reflected on the moment one week ago when 50 people were slaughtered at two mosques. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and thousands of others planned to congregate in leafy Hagley Park opposite the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch to observe the call to prayer at 1:30 p.m. Thousands more were planning to listen in on the radio or watch on television as the event was broadcast live. The prayer was to be followed by two minutes of silence. The observance comes the day after the government announced a ban on "military-style" semi-automatic firearms and high-capacity magazines like the weapons that were used in last Friday's attacks. At least 42 people died at the Al Noor mosque and at least seven others at the nearby Linwood mosque after a white supremacist gunned them down. An immediate sales ban went into effect Thursday to prevent stockpiling, and new laws would be rushed through Parliament that would impose a complete ban on the weapons, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. "Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned," Ardern said. The gun legislation is supported not only by Ardern's liberal Labour Party but also the conservative opposition National Party, so it's expected to pass into law. New Zealand does not have a constitutional right to bear arms. Among those planning to attend Friday's observance was Samier Dandan, the president of the Lebanese Muslim Association in Sydney and part of a 15-strong delegation of Muslim leaders that had flown to Christchurch. "It was an ugly act of terrorism that occurred in a beautiful, peaceful city," Dandan said. He said his pain couldn't compare with that of the families he'd been visiting who had lost loves ones. He was inspired by their resilience, he said. Story continues "And I've got to give all my respect to the New Zealand prime minister, with her position and her actions, and it speaks loud," he said. Ismat Fatimah, 46, said it was sad to look at the Al Noor mosque, which was still surrounded by construction barricades, armed police officers and a huge mound of flowers and messages. "We're feeling stronger than before, and we are one," she said. She said she prayed for the people who died. "I'm just imagining what would be happening last Friday," she said. "People were running around so scared and helpless. It's just not right." Erum Hafeez, 18 said she felt comforted by the overwhelming response from New Zealanders to the tragedy: "We are embraced by the community of New Zealand, we are not left behind and alone." There are nearly 250,000 licensed gun owners in New Zealand, which has a population of 5 million. Officials estimate there are 1.5 million guns in the country. Ardern said people could hand over their prohibited guns under an amnesty while officials develop a formal buyback scheme, which could cost up to 200 million New Zealand dollars ($140 million). The government said the police and military would be exempt. Access for international shooting competitions would also be considered. The man charged in the mosque attacks had purchased his weapons legally using a standard firearms license and enhanced their capacity by using 30-round magazines "done easily through a simple online purchase," Ardern said. Although the exact weapons used in the mosque attacks have not been announced, images posted by the gunman show at least one of them to be a semi-automatic rifle similar to an AR-15 that is widely available in New Zealand. Ardern's announcement came as authorities said all 50 bodies from the attacks were formally identified. A 28-year-old Australian white supremacist, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, was arrested by police who ran him off the road while he was believed to be on his way to a third target. He had livestreamed the attack on Facebook and said in his manifesto he planned to attack three mosques. Tarrant, 28, is next scheduled to appear in court on April 5, and Bush said investigations were continuing. Police have said they are certain Tarrant was the only gunman but are still investigating whether he had support. He has been charged with one count of murder and more charges are expected to follow. Workers at the Al Noor mosque have been working feverishly to repair the destruction from the attacks, said imam Gamal Fouda. "They will bury the carpet," he said, "because it is full of blood, and it's contaminated." Fouda said he expects the mosque to be open again by next week and that some skilled workers had offered their services for free. The gun prohibition includes semi-automatic guns or shotguns that can be used with a detachable magazine that holds more than five rounds. It also applies to accessories used to convert guns into what the government called "military-style" weapons. The ban does not apply to guns commonly used by farmers and hunters, including semi-automatic .22 caliber or smaller guns that hold up to 10 rounds, or semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns with non-detachable magazines that hold up to five rounds. Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court appeared vexed on Wednesday by the case of a black man who was tried six separate times for the same crime in a process tainted by charges of racism. Associate Justice Samuel Alito, one of the five conservative justices on the nine-member bench, said he found aspects of the case of death row inmate Curtis Flowers "troubling." Flowers, 48, was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to death for the July 1996 murders of four people in a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi, where he had briefly worked until being fired. Flowers was tried five separate times for the crime before his 2010 conviction and has spent nearly half his life behind bars. Three convictions were thrown out on appeal because of prosecutorial misconduct and two trials ended in a hung jury. The Supreme Court is not examining the guilt or innocence of Flowers but whether the district attorney deliberately sought to keep black people off the jury in his most recent trial. While prosecutors and defense lawyers are allowed to use what are called peremptory challenges to eliminate potential jurors they are not allowed to do so on the basis of race. Lawyers for Flowers argued that district attorney Doug Evans, who prosecuted all six cases and is white, rejected potential black jurors in what amounted to racial discrimination. US law forbids someone from being tried twice for the same offense, but since the cases were eventually inconclusive Flowers could be tried again. During the 2010 trial which resulted in Flowers' conviction and death sentence, Evans rejected five of six potential black jurors. Jason Davis, representing the state of Mississippi in court on Wednesday, said this was because they either had links to Flowers or debts to the furniture store. - 'Extremely aggressive' - Sheri Lynn Johnson, Flowers' lawyer, responded by pointing out that the five potential black jurors were asked 145 questions compared to just 12 for the 11 eventual white jurors. Story continues And the questioning of the potential black jurors was "extremely aggressive," Johnson said. "It looks as if he was trying to create a record to strike black jurors," said Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court's four liberal justices, all of whom appeared sympathetic to Flowers' case. Another liberal justice, Sonia Sotomayor, said Evans had shown an extraordinary "passion for this case" by putting Flowers repeatedly on trial. Flowers was arrested several months after the murders, when two witnesses said they saw him near the scene of the crime. He has maintained his innocence. The case gained national prominence after it was the subject of a podcast called "Into the Dark" by journalist Madeleine Baran and a radio colleague from American Public Media. "Curtis Flowers was always tried by an all-white jury or a nearly all-white jury, even though the place where the murders happened and where he lived was nearly 50 percent African-American," Baran said. In Mississippi, a southern state with a history of slavery and racial segregation, "I met only one white person who thought that Curtis Flowers was innocent," Baran told AFP. In an unusual occurrence, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative renowned for his silence during oral arguments, asked his first question in over three years. Thomas asked what the race was of the jurors dismissed by the defense and was told they were white. The court is expected to render its decision by June of this year, but Baran noted that even if it rules in Flowers' favor he could still go on trial again. President Trump on Wednesday said he supports making Special Counsel Robert Muellers final report public, predicting that it will not contain damning revelations about his 2016 campaigns connections to Russia. Let it come out. Let people see it, the president told reporters at the White House. Lets see whether or not its legit. Mueller is required to provide Attorney General William Barr with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached at the conclusion of his investigation. Afterward, Barr must brief Congress on the report. Barr has not said precisely how much of the report he will release to lawmakers and the public, but assured Congress during his confirmation hearings that he aims to provide as much transparency as I can consistent with the law. Trump said last month that such decisions would be left totally up to Barr. Muellers investigation of the Trump campaigns ties to Moscow is approaching the two-year mark, and he is expected to wrap it up in the coming weeks. 34 individuals have already been indicted for a variety of crimes in connection with the probe, including former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trumps longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen, , long-time Trump adviser Roger Stone, and former national-security adviser Michael Flynn. More from National Review Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump lashed out at the late John McCain again on Tuesday, saying he was "never a fan" of the Arizona senator and Vietnam War hero and "never will be." Trump, who also criticized McCain in a series of tweets over the weekend, launched his latest attack on his fellow Republican in remarks to reporters during a White House meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. "I'm very unhappy that he didn't repeal and replace Obamacare," Trump said of McCain, who voted in 2017 against a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. "Our country would have saved a trillion dollars, and we would have had great health care," Trump asserted. "I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be," he said. Over the weekend, Trump took to Twitter to criticize McCain, who died of brain cancer in August at the age of 81. Among the tweets was a claim that McCain had finished "last in his class" at the US Naval Academy. McCain actually finished fifth from the bottom and went on to fly jets in Vietnam, where he was captured and spent more than six years incarcerated. Trump, who avoided military service with a medical deferment, once said he only liked war heroes who "weren't captured." McCain's daughter Meghan fired back at the president following his weekend tweets. "He spends his weekend obsessing over great men, because he knows it, and I know it, and all of you know it, he will never be a great man," she said Monday on the ABC show "The View," where she is a co-host. "My father was his kryptonite in life and he was kryptonite in death," she said. McCain was one of Trump's most persistent critics and made it clear in his final wishes that he did not want the president at his funeral. Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump on Tuesday reaffirmed that "all options" are being considered in his drive to bring down Venezuela's socialist President Nicolas Maduro. "All options are on the table," he told reporters in the White House. "It's a shame what's happening in Venezuela -- the debt and the destruction and the hunger." Trump spoke at a meeting where he hosted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has backed the US-led campaign to pressure Maduro. In response, the Venezuelan foreign ministry accused Trump and Bolsonaro of being apologists for war, and described their statements as "dangerous" and a "threat to international peace and security." "No neofascist alliance will succeed in overcoming the independent and sovereign will of the Venezuelan people, nor will it succeed in its aim to spread hatred and war strategies," it said. The United States and more than 50 other countries, including Brazil, recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido, the head of the National Assembly, as Venezuela's rightful president. The White House said Trump would also discuss the Venezuela crisis with Caribbean leaders -- including from the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Saint Lucia -- at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Friday. (Reuters) - A U.S. judge has ruled that Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido's representatives can present arguments in a court battle with Canadian mining company Crystallex International Corp, a boost to his efforts to retain control of the country's overseas assets. Guaido, who heads the opposition-controlled National Assembly, invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, arguing President Nicolas Maduro's 2018 reelection was fraudulent. He has been recognized as Venezuela's rightful leader by most Western countries, including the United States. His team has sought to take control of overseas assets owned by state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, namely U.S. refiner Citgo. But Citgo is under threat from Venezuela's creditors attempting to seize shares in the company in return for unpaid debts. In a March 20 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said Guaido's representatives could request a stay in the dispute with Crystallex, which is going after Citgo to collect on an arbitration award in compensation for Venezuela's expropriation of a gold mining project. "We grant the Republic of Venezuela's motion to intervene," Judge Thomas Ambro wrote, referring to a March 1 request by Venezuela's lawyers for a 120-day stay to allow Guaido's interim government "sufficient time to evaluate its position in this and other cases." Guaido named a board of directors to Citgo in February, a move he described as "protecting our assets." Maduro, a socialist who says he is the victim of an attempted U.S.-led coup, has accused the opposition of trying to "steal" the company. Ambro wrote that Guaido's team had until April 3 to present its argument for a stay, and Crystallex would have until April 10 to respond. The move comes after a Florida judge earlier this month threw out a PDVSA lawsuit against oil trading companies in a bid-rigging scheme that yielded billions of dollars in illicit gains. The case was brought by a U.S. litigation trust, which would have received a portion of any award, along with PDVSA. The judge ruled that the trust lacked standing to sue, since it had been declared invalid by the opposition-run National Assembly, "the only governing body in Venezuela recognized by the United States." (Reporting by Luc Cohen; Editing by Richard Chang) By Humeyra Pamuk, P.J. Huffstutter and Tom Polansek WINSLOW, Neb./CHICAGO (Reuters) - Midwestern farmers have been gambling they could ride out the U.S.-China trade war by storing their corn and soybeans anywhere they could - in bins, plastic tubes, in barns or even outside. Now, the unthinkable has happened. Record floods have devastated a wide swath of the Farm Belt across Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and several other states. Early estimates of lost crops and livestock are approaching $1 billion in Nebraska alone. With more flooding expected, damages are expected to climb much higher for the region. As river levels rose, spilling over levees and swallowing up townships, farmers watched helplessly as the waters consumed not only their fields, but their stockpiles of grain, the one thing that can stand between them and financial ruin. "Ive never seen anything like this in my life," said Tom Geisler, a farmer in Winslow, Nebraska, who said he lost two full storage bins of corn. "We had been depending on the income from our livestock, but now all of our feed is gone, so that is going to be even more difficult. We havent been making any money from our grain farming because of trade issues and low prices." The pain does not end there. As the waters began to recede in parts of Nebraska, the damage to the rural roads, bridges and rail lines was just beginning to emerge. This infrastructure is critical for the U.S. agricultural sector to move products from farms to processing plants and shipping hubs. The damage to roads means it will be harder for trucks to deliver seed to farmers for the coming planting season, but in some areas, the flooding on fields will render them all-but-impossible to use. The deluge is the latest blow for the Farm Belt, which has faced several crises in the last five years, as farm incomes have fallen by more than 50 percent due to a global grain glut. President Donald Trump's trade policies cut off exports of soybeans and other products, making the situation worse. Story continues Soybeans were the single most valuable U.S. agricultural export crop and until the trade war, China bought $12 billion worth a year from American farmers. But Chinese tariffs have almost halted the trade, leaving farmers with crops they are struggling to sell for a profit. CORN AND SOYBEANS DESTROYED As prices plummeted last year amid the ongoing trade fight, growers, faced with selling crops at a loss, stuffed a historic volume of grain into winding plastic tubes and steel bins. Some cash-strapped families piled crops inside their barns or outside on the ground. Farmers say they are now finding storage bags torn and bins burst open, grain washed away or contaminated. Jeff Jorgenson, a farmer and regional director for the Iowa Soybean Association, said he has seen at least a dozen bins that burst after grains swelled when they became wet. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy, flood-soaked grain is considered adulterated and must be destroyed, according to Iowa State University. Some farmers had been waiting for corn prices to rise just 10 cents a bushel more before making sales, which would earn them a few extra thousand dollars, Jorgenson said. "That's the toughest pill to swallow," Jorgenson said. "This could end their career of farming and the legacy of the family farm." As of Dec. 1, producers in states with flooding - including South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois - had 6.75 billion bushels of corn, soybeans and wheat stored on their farms - 38 percent of the total U.S. supplies available at that time, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. Iowa suffered at least $150 million in damage to agricultural buildings and machinery, and 100,000 acres of farm land are under water, said Keely Coppess, a spokeswoman for the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. Jorgenson surveyed more than two dozen local farmers to assess the damage and tallied about 1.25 million bushels of corn and 390,000 bushels of soybeans lost just in Fremont County, Iowa, worth an estimated $7.3 million. EXTENT OF DAMAGE UNCLEAR The record flooding has killed at least four people in the Midwest and left one person missing. The extent of damage is unknown as meteorologists expect more flooding in coming weeks. Early estimates put flood damage at $400 million in losses for Nebraska's cow-calf industry and another $440 million in crop losses, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts told a news conference on Wednesday. "The water came so fast," said John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. "We know our farmers didn't have enough time to move all the cattle or empty all their grain bins." Multiple washouts and high water on BNSF Railway Cos main lines have caused major disruption across parts of the Midwest, the company warned on its website. The flooding also has disrupted part of Hormel Foods Corp's supply chain, the company told Reuters. The roads are so bad that Nebraska's National Guard on Wednesday will push hay out of a military helicopter to feed cattle in Colfax County stranded by floodwaters, Major General Daryl Bohac said. It is the first time in at least half a century that such an air drop has been conducted, he said. Cattle carcasses have been found tangled in debris or rotting in trees, while tractors and other expensive machinery are stuck in mud, unable to be moved. At Geisler's farm in Winslow, Nebraska, two trucks and a tractor were seen buried in mud in wooden barns where water pooled. "We should have been getting into planting for next season, but now all of our equipment is flooded and its going to take at least three to four weeks to bring back that equipment into shape," said Geisler. (Reporting by P.J. Huffstutter and Tom Polansek in Chicago and Humeyra Pamuk in Winslow, Nebraska; Additional reporting by Julie Ingwersen and Mark Weinraub in Chicago; Editing by David Gaffen and Matthew Lewis) By Karen Dillon BROWNVILLE, Neb. (Reuters) - Vice President Mike Pence arrived in Nebraska on Tuesday to survey the devastation unleashed across the U.S. Midwest by floods that have killed four people and caused more than a billion dollars in damage to crops, livestock and roads. The floodwaters have inundated a large swath of farm states Iowa and Nebraska along the Missouri River, North America's longest river, prompting half of Iowa's 99 counties to declare states of emergency."Touched down in Omaha, Nebraska to survey flood damage & thank volunteers & emergency personnel," Pence said on Twitter, in a post that included photos of him meeting with the governors of both states and lawmakers. "The hearts of the American people are with those who have been impacted across the Midwest!" Pence said in the tweet. Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin have all declared states of emergency in the floods, which stem from a powerful winter hurricane known as a "bomb cyclone" that slammed into the U.S. Farm Belt last week, killing untold numbers of livestock, destroying grains and soybeans in storage, and cutting off access to farms because of road and rail damage. The latest confirmed death was identified by the sheriff in Fremont County, Iowa, as 55-year-old Aleido Rojas Galan, who was pulled from floodwaters along with another man on Friday and later succumbed to injuries. Authorities said they had rescued nearly 300 people in Nebraska alone, with some rivers continuing to rise. Rescuers could be seen in boats pulling pets from flooded homes. Some roadways crumbled to rubble, while sections of others were submerged. In Hamburg, Iowa, floodwaters covered buildings. In Brownville, Nebraska, floodwaters lapped at the edge of the small town of 132 people, closing the main bridge across the Missouri River. $1 BILLION IN DAMAGE "Its a lot worse than Ive ever seen it, said Malina Wheeldon, who went ahead with the scheduled opening of her new Euphoric Soul Salon & Boutique business despite the floods. Her husband, Justin, who grew up in Brownville, agreed, saying he had lived through the floods of 1993, 2010 and 2011. "About every five years now, we have a 100-year flood, he said. The Missouri was expected to crest at 47.5 feet (14.5 m) on Tuesday, breaking its 2011 record by more than a foot (31 cm), the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency said. The flooding was expected to continue through Thursday. Nebraska officials estimated more than $1 billion in flood damage for the state's agricultural sector so far, according to Craig Head, vice president of issue management at the Nebraska Farm Bureau. Head said the number was expected to grow as floodwaters recede. "It's really too early to know for sure how bad this is going to get. But one thing we do know: It's catastrophic for farmers," said Matt Perdue, government relations director for the National Farmers Union trade group. "Were hoping it's only $1 billion, but that's only a hope." Nebraska officials estimate the floods have caused $553 million in damage to public infrastructure and other assets, as well as $89 million in privately owned assets, according to the state's Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday. The water also covered about a third of Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, home to the U.S. Strategic Command, whose responsibilities include defending against and responding to nuclear attacks. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is distributing 400,000 sandbags to operators of 12 levees along the Missouri River in Missouri and Kansas that were in danger of being breached by floodwaters, the Army Corps said in a news release on Tuesday. In Niobrara, Nebraska, south of the Missouri River near the border with South Dakota, Mayor Jody Stark said flooding that began on Thursday had devastated his community of 350 people, with businesses being the hardest hit. "Our road system is shot pretty much in every direction coming into town," Stark said. "It's one day at a time. We will do what we can to get back on our feet," Stark said. "It's just so heartbreaking. It's going to be tough, but hopefully we can all get through it." The floodwaters were the result of snowmelt following heavy rains last week and warm weather, said Bob Oravec, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center. The weather service's website shows some locales along the Missouri River in Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri are expected to see waters rise for several more days. Roads leading to the Nebraska Public Power District's Cooper nuclear plant near Brownville were engulfed by floodwaters from the Missouri, but the facility was still operating safely at full power on Tuesday. The plant operator was flying staff members and supplies to the plant with helicopters, said power district spokesman Mark Becker. (Reporting by Karen Dillon; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Rich McKay in Atlanta, Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia, P.J. Huffstutter and Mark Weinraub in Chicago and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney) Soussa (Syrie) (AFP) - US-backed forces pressed an offensive against the Islamic State group in its last redoubt in Syria on Thursday, denying reports the jihadist enclave had fallen. "Mopping up operations continue in Baghouz camp," the command of the Syrian Democratic Forces said in a brief statement. The SDF, which launched a final assault against the village of Baghouz in eastern Syria on February 9, denied reports that the IS enclave had completely fallen to its forces. "The information of the total liberation of the village is unfounded," said the command. An AFP team on the ground saw trucks carrying people out of Baghouz on Wednesday night. Thousands of people have fled the besieged IS pocket in recent weeks and turned themselves in. Since January, some 67,000 people have left the enclave, including 5,000 jihadists who surrendered, according to the SDF. On Tuesday the advancing Kurdish-led SDF announced its forces had driven diehard fighters out of the main encampment where they had been confined in recent days. "This is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight against Daesh," SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. US President Donald Trump on Wednesday praised the progress of the fight against IS since he came to power, saying the fall of their self-proclaimed "caliphate" was imminent. "The caliphate is gone as of tonight," Trump said at a military tank factory in Lima, Ohio. The US president has signalled the group's imminent demise on several previous occasions, although IS has yet to wave the white flag of surrender. Trump, who announced in December the withdrawal of some 2,000 US troops who had been deployed in Syria, said about 400 of them would remain on the ground "for a period of time". IS declared a "caliphate" in June 2014 across territory it seized in Iraq and Syria. The loss of the Baghouz enclave would signal the demise of the "caliphate" in Syria, after its defeat in Iraq in 2017. But IS has already begun its transformation into a guerilla organisation, and still carries out deadly hit-and-run attacks from desert or mountain hideouts. Syria's war has killed more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it began with the repression of anti-government protests in 2011. Washington (AFP) - The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on two Chinese shipping companies for doing business with North Korea, vowing to keep strictly enforcing sanctions on Pyongyang even amid top-level diplomacy. "The maritime industry must do more to stop North Korea's illicit shipping practices," national security adviser John Bolton tweeted after the Treasury Department's announcement. "Everyone should take notice and review their own activities to ensure they are not involved in North Korea's sanctions evasion," he said. The Treasury Department said it was blocking all potential US interests of the Dalian Haibo International Freight Co. Ltd. and prohibiting Americans from dealing with the firm. The United States charged that the company last year shipped cargo from the Chinese port of Dalian to North Korea on behalf of the Paeksol Trading Corporation, which in the past has sold metal and coal to earn money for Pyongyang. The Treasury Department also sanctioned the Liaoning Danxing International Forwarding Co. Ltd., saying it had assisted North Korean officials based in Europe in procuring goods for the regime. The action comes less than a month after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in Hanoi with President Donald Trump for a second summit that broke down in part over Pyongyang's demands for immediate sanctions relief. Trump, while walking away from the talks, has been eager to reach a potentially landmark agreement on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, announcing the latest measures, said that the United States remained committed to seeking a denuclearization deal with North Korea but believed fully enforcing UN-backed sanctions "is crucial to a successful outcome." By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Republican-led U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a resolution seeking to end U.S. support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in the war in Yemen, in a rebuke of President Donald Trump's policy toward the kingdom. The vote was 54-46 in the Senate, more than the 51 needed to pass in the 100-member Senate, as seven Republicans joined Democrats in backing the measure. The war powers resolution seeks to end any U.S. military involvement in the conflict, including providing targeting support for Saudi air strikes, without authorization from Congress. The four-year-long civil war in Yemen, which pits the Saudi-led coalition against Houthi rebels backed by Iran, has killed tens of thousands of people and spawned what the United Nations calls the world's most dire humanitarian crisis, with the country on the brink of famine. Backers of the resolution, including a handful of Trump's fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, argued that U.S. involvement in Yemen violates the constitutional requirement that Congress, not the president, should determine when the country goes to war. "We're helping a foreign power bomb its adversaries in what is undoubtedly, irrefutably, a war," said Republican Senator Mike Lee, who sponsored the resolution, urging a 'yes' vote. The Yemen vote could be only the first of two major setbacks for Trump this week, as senators are due to vote tomorrow on a resolution disapproving of his use of his emergency powers to pay for a wall on the border with Mexico, even though Congress has not approved it. The resolution must still be approved by the House of Representatives to be sent to the White House, which said earlier on Wednesday that Trump plans a veto. It would be the first of his two-year-long presidency. MESSAGE TO TRUMP - AND RIYADH Democrats and Republicans reintroduced the resolution two weeks ago as a way to send a strong message to Riyadh - and to Trump - about the humanitarian disaster in Yemen. Many lawmakers also want to push Trump to demand a stronger response from the Saudi government to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey in October. Trump has held back on criticizing Saudi Arabia, calling them an important strategic ally and counterbalance to Iran in the region. He has also touted Saudi purchases of U.S. defense equipment as a generator of American jobs. Resolution opponents argued that support for the Saudi-led coalition is not an appropriate use of the war powers act limiting the president's ability to send troops into action, because U.S. forces are not actively engaged in fighting. Some also contended that stopping U.S. support would help Iran, and potentially prolong the conflict by ending Washington's ability to influence Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a partner in the conflict, to pursue a sustainable political settlement. "We need to stay engaged with the limited engagement that we have," said Senator Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He also said the resolution "sets a bad precedent" because the United States is not directly involved in Yemen. The Senate had approved the war powers resolution in December, during the last Congress, the first time such a measure had passed the chamber. But Republicans, who controlled the House until January, did not let it come up for a vote. With the Democrats in control, the House passed its own version of the resolution in February, but a procedural issue meant the House must vote on the Senate's version of the measure. Overcoming a veto would require two-thirds majorities in both the Senate and House, more votes than it has garnered so far. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by James Dalgleish) New Zealand is not known for gun violence or mass shootings. Its a peaceful, tranquil country, says domestic terror expert Daryl Johnson, owner of DT Analytics and author of the upcoming book Hateland: A Long Hard Look At Americas Extremist Heart. But last week, it had one of the worst terrorist attacks against Muslims in the civilized world, Johnson says, New Zealand shows us that no country is immune. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. Fifty people were killed in two mosque attacks on Friday, with 36 people hospitalized as of Saturday, New Zealand Police wrote on Twitter. Courtesy Humera Khan; 3MI Photography A 28-year-old suspect, Brenton Tarrant, who according to multiple reports was a bodybuilder from Australia, has been charged with murder in the attack. According to The Washington Post, he did not enter a plea in court on Saturday. Hate crimes have been increasing every year, Johnson notes. FBI data released in November shows a nearly 20 percent increase in hate crimes from the year before. There is a rising tide of hate, Johnson says. RELATED: Grieving New Zealand Shooting Survivor Says He Knew Everybody Who Died at Mosque Attacks by white supremacists arent new, confirms Humera Khan, co-founder and President of Muflehun, a nonprofit that works to combat hate, extremism and violence. This has been ignored, Khan says. Its not just one attack and one attempt. Its been happening for years and years. Most people, she says, remember the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh. Other examples of right-wing violent extremism include the trio in Kansas stopped by the FBI before they could take down a Somali apartment complex, as well as Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine people in the Charleston, SC church massacre. Theyre trying to create an Aryan nation, Khan says. These are like the grandchildren of Hitler. White power extremists dont just hate Muslims, Khan says they hate everyone who isnt exactly like them: Its a spectrum. Story continues What people have ignored in the New Zealand assailants manifesto, Khan says, is that he wants to see a Civil War in America. Thats one of his goals: to see America fall apart, she says. He wants to have a single race rule everyone else. Hes against any sort of diversity. Hes against any sort of difference. With reporting by K.C. Baker and Greg Fulton Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Inspired by Tang Dynasty poet Luo Binwang's, Korean-Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu's same-titled film explores love in his signature style of scenery and poetry. Park Hae Il and Moon So Ri, who appeared in the director's, partner up again three years later for Poet Yoon Young (Park Hae Il) has always been in love with his acquaintance's wife Song Hyun (Moon So Ri). After Song Hyun and her husband get divorced, she and Yoon Young travel to her hometown of Gunsan together. During the trip, the two stay in a guest house run by Lee (Jung Jin Young, Heung-boo: The Revolutionist) and his autistic daughter Joo Eun (Park So Dam, The Priests). While spending time with each other, Song Hyun seems to feel something for Lee, and the four people start to develop an intricate tangle of relationships. The opposition Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy on Tuesday set forth its agenda in its negotiations with the Nicaraguan government to overcome the local crisis, noting that - besides expected court proceedings and elections - it desires the presence of international actors and guarantees that any agreements reached with the Daniel Ortega regime will be fulfilled. In a communique read by constitutional expert and Alliance member Azahalea Solis, the opposition movement explained the five points of its agenda whereby it seeks to establish democracy in Nicaragua and obtain justice for the victims of violence. The first point deals with the release of political prisoners and guaranteeing public freedoms and rights established in the Nicaraguan Constitution, as well as annulling the trials against imprisoned anti-government demonstrators. The second point concerns the return of democracy via the establishment of a trustworthy electoral system that includes the recommendations and observations for future elections that will be free, fair, transparent and observed by international monitors. In its third point, the Alliance seeks justice via a process of finding the truth, trials, reparations and guarantees that human rights violations will not be repeated, that peace, security and human rights will be consolidated and that impunity will not prevail for rights violators. The fourth point concerns the implementation of mechanisms so that the agreements can be implemented within the shortest possible time. The fifth and last point seeks to ensure that the Ortega regime fulfills its promise to implement the 18 recommendations issued in mid-2018 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to overcome the crisis, among which were an end to repression and bringing those responsible for violent acts to trial. The details of the agenda were presented publicly so that Nicaraguans may know what the government is accepting and rejecting as the talks proceed, the Alliance said. Solis said that the agenda was prepared by consulting with assorted sectors of Nicaraguan society and that it is not definitive. On March 11, the government presented an agenda in which is said it was open to discussing issues such as releasing imprisoned demonstrators, electoral reforms, justice and reparations and methods to ensure implementation of the agreements. The Civil Alliance has accused the government on numerous occasions of hindering the discussion on agenda issues, which so far - after 12 sessions of talks - have not been agreed to. The negotiations are being witnesses and monitored by the Vaticans apostolic nuncio in Nicaragua, Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, and by the Organization of American States delegate to Nicaragua, Luis Angel Rosadilla. Nicaragua is going through a serious crisis that has left at least 325 people dead over the past 11 months, according to the IACHR, although some local humanitarian groups say that 561 people have died. The Ortega administration puts the death toll at 199 and has complained that the opposition is trying to mount a coup detat. At least 762 people are in jail in Nicaragua after participating in anti-government protests, according to the Pro Liberation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners Committee. The IACHR says that the Ortega government has committed crimes against humanity. Some say that at some level all of us are racist or prejudiced and we discriminate against others based on their skin color, nationality, religion or even social status. Undoubtedly, many of us suffer from that disease, which in its softest form is characterized by verbal hostility and bysometimes brutalphysical violence in its most extreme. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter The situation is not improving, not in Israel and not in the rest of the world. The International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21 is meant to warn us, and the very need for such a day, requires every effort to defeat our evil instincts. Many of us here in Israel exhibit signs of prejudiced behavior while swearing to not have a racist bone in our bodies. We discriminate against Ethiopian Jews because of their skin color, against Arabs because of their nationality and religion, against the ultra-Orthodox because of their weird clothing and against immigrants from the former Soviet Union because of their accent. Campaign against racism launched in Karnei Shomron in the West Bank The French philosopher and Holocaust survivor, Emmanuel Levinas, dedicated much of his work to making people understand the concept of the other. Israelis would not have become his best students. In a Jewish and democratic state we are supposed to, perhaps more than any other nation, to distance ourselves from racism as far away as possible. Because the Holocaust is the ultimate manifestation of prejudice in its most extreme form. Rabbi Akiva, hundreds of years ago, talked about the need to treat each other with fairness. This message, however, has not been internalized, since we see people who clearly hold prejudiced and racist views enter the Knesset. The Palmur Commission report, initiated by the Director General of the Ministry of Justice, was submitted to the government three years ago and found that racist and prejudiced attitudesespecially toward Ethiopian Jewsare rampant among the government employees in various ministries. As part of the recommendations that were adopted by the government, a special unit was establishedmeant to coordinate the fight against racism within the Israeli officialdomas well as a public advisory committee, which was headed by me. The unit, which has been operating for the past two years, works to eliminate racism and prejudice in government institutions. The legal and ethical foundation of the unit is based around the principle of equality, which in turn is an integral part of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and is anchored in court rulings. In addition, I believe that it should be enshrined in Basic Law, which, despite the opinions of some, will not harm Israel's identity as a Jewish and democratic state. The unit has already received hundreds of complaints. Racism and prejudice, unfortunately, exist within the establishment, and it shouldnt be discounted as just another expression of populism. As far as the Ethiopian Jews are concerned, one can only wonder why some have clung to the Chief Rabbinates decisions in the 1980s that required immigrants from Ethiopia to go through a ritual conversion ceremony, while ignoring the ruling of the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who recognized the community as Jewish according to halacha. The principle of equality is not too hard to grasp. We should all treat each other the way we want to be treated. There is no room for racism or prejudice, certainly not in the public sector and certainly not in the Knesset. Anti-Semitism is the oldest form of racism. Since we just celebrated Purim, lets remember that the Book of Esther begins with an episode describing prejudice and racial hatred. Anti-Semitism, as inexplicable as it is, refuses to die, and only takes different shapes every other generation. Some of us believed after the Holocaust people would be ashamed to be anti-Semitic, but unfortunately we had been proven wrong. In Britain, for instance, anti-Semitic discourse in the Labor Party is a cause for great concern. When we first started to take notice of this phenomenon growing in the governmental sphere some 30 years agowhen I served as the Government Secretaryone of the senior ministers said to me: "Governments must deal with problems of the present and the future, anti-Semitism is in the past. You could say he was overly optimistic, may he rest in peace. In order for us to lawfully combat anti-Semitism, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movementacross diplomatic, educational, and legal sectorswe must eliminate prejudice within our society in order not to supply our enemies with anything they could weaponize against us. Just some food for thought. New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an immediate ban Thursday on sales of "military-style" semi-automatic and automatic weapons like the ones used in the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch that killed 50 worshippers. The man charged in the attack had purchased his weapons legally using a standard firearms license and enhanced their capacity by using 30-round magazines "done easily through a simple online purchase," she said. "Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned," she said. In a campaign that spanned five years and two U.S. presidencies, unleashed more than 100,000 bombs and killed untold numbers of civilians, the U.S. military engineered the destruction of the Islamic State group's self-proclaimed empire in Iraq and Syria. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter That's a military success, but not necessarily one that will last. Battles against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq (Photo: AFP) The Islamic State group is down, but it is not done. U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday flashed a color-coded map to illustrate what he called the imminent demise of IS in its last speck of Syrian territory. At its peak, in 2014-15, it controlled an area the size of Britain across Syria and Iraq and launched a series of terrorist attacks around the world. His suggestion of finality for the anti-IS struggle, however, seemed premature. If history is a guide, the reconquering of IS-held territory may prove a short-lived victory unless Iraq and Syria fix the problem that gave rise to the extremist movement in the first place: governments that pit one ethnic or sectarian group against another. The U.S. military has been through this scenario before. In 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, ousted the ruling Taliban regime in a matter of weeks and installed Hamid Karzai as the country's leader. The war seemed over. But the Taliban regrouped while Washington shifted its attention to Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and by 2009 the top U.S. commander in Kabul was calling the war a stalemate. The U.S. military is still in Afghanistan amid uncertain peace prospects. The Iraq experience followed a similar path. The U.S. military had seemingly conquered the Sunni insurgency in Iraq by 2011 after eight years of war. American forces departed, only to see sectarian tensions revive and provide an opening for Syria-based IS to take over large parts of Iraq in 2014. As Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, architect of the plan for defeating IS in Iraq and Syria, put it in 2015, the majority of Sunnis in Iraq simply refused to fight for their government when IS swept across the Euphrates and took control of much of the country's north and west. "They allowed -- and in some cases facilitated -- ISIS's push through the country," Austin said. The reason for their complicity, though he didn't say it, was a deep Sunni distrust of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. President Barack Obama, who had called the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq a mistake, sent small numbers of U.S. military advisers back to Iraq in the summer of 2014, followed by an air campaign. This time a new approach was adopted: train and equip the Iraqis to do the fighting, rather than do the fighting for them. Thus was born a counter-IS strategy that ultimately prevailed in both Iraq and Syria. The problem now is achieving the political goal of reconciling the rival internal groups in both countries. Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, sees a strong chance that IS will remain an insurgent threat in Iraq and Syria with an intensity that is likely to grow. 'The American military is still in Afghanistan amid uncertain peace prospects'- U.S. forces in Afghanistan (Photo: Reuters) "If it gets worse, which it probably will, then I suspect that analysts in 2025 looking back on this will see the eviction of ISIS from its last contiguous territory and the associated American celebrations as yet another example of overly narrow, short-sighted reactions to secondary events," Biddle wrote in an email exchange. Brett McGurk, the former special U.S. envoy to the counter-IS coalition, wrote on Twitter Wednesday that the Islamic State group is "near finished" in Syria "thanks to the campaign plan designed under Obama and carried forward under Trump." McGurk, who resigned in December after Trump abruptly declared that American forces would withdraw entirely, said the military success "requires follow-through." A new analysis by the Institute for the Study of War says IS is re-establishing insurgent networks in historical strongholds in northern Iraq and setting the stage for future attacks on the Iraqi government. "The U.S. and its partners should not view the current relative security in Baghdad as confirmation of the defeat of ISIS," the Institute's Brandon Wallace wrote in a recent analysis. Gen. Joseph Votel, who oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East as commander of Central Command, told Congress earlier this month that extremism in Iraq and Syria is a "generational problem." When the U.S. military began its counter-IS campaign it focused mainly on Iraq, in part because Baghdad itself seemed in danger. The going was slow, and in May 2015 the whole effort appeared in doubt when Iraqi defenders were routed at Ramadi. The U.S. defense secretary at the time, Ash Carter, questioned the Iraqis' will to fight, but gradually the tide began to turn in their favor. The Syria campaign also began slowly and was marked by startling setbacks. In September 2015, Austin, the commander of U.S. Central Command, acknowledged during congressional testimony that despite hopes of putting several thousand U.S.-backed Syrian rebels into battle against IS, they had managed only four or five. "This is a total failure," Sen. Jeff Sessions, D-Ala., declared, prematurely. But the effort gained momentum, and by early 2016 the U.S. had recruited and organized what came to be called the Syrian Democratic Forces, which U.S. special operations troops trained, advised and assisted. Despite new complications on the battlefield, such as Russia's entry into the conflict, the campaign methodically recaptured IS territory and cut off the extremists' lifelines. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) denied a report on Thursday that all of Islamic State's final enclave has been captured after a Kurdish media outlet said the jihadist group had been finally defeated there. "Combing continues in the Baghouz camp and there is no truth (to the report) about the complete liberation of the village," an SDF media official said, quoting the commanders of the offensive. Earlier, Hawar News reported the SDF had "liberated all of Baghouz from the Daesh mercenaries" and with that the campaign had "ended with the defeat of Daesh and the victory of the SDF", quoting its correspondents. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. A string of explosions struck near a Shiite shrine and cemetery in Kabul as people gathered there on Thursday morning to mark the holiday of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, leaving at least five dead and as many as 20 wounded, Afghan officials said. The police's initial investigation indicated that three explosive devises had been remotely detonated, setting off the successive blasts, according to the Interior Ministry's spokesman Nasrat Rahim. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing but the Islamic State affiliate that has taken root in Afghanistan has targeted the country's minority Shiite Muslims on numerous occasions in the past. The Sunni militant group considers Shiite Muslims heretics. Kabul's Emergency Services director Mohammad Asim said two children were among the wounded in the blasts. The extent of their injuries was not immediately known. Jordan's King Abdullah II is vowing to keep protecting Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, calling it a "red line" for his country. Abdullah said Wednesday, during a visit to the Zarqa governorate outside Amman, that he's under pressure to alter his country's historic role as custodian of the Jerusalem holy sites but that he wouldn't. Abdullah says: "I will never change my position toward Jerusalem in my life." He added that "all my people are with me." He did not specify what kind of pressure he was encountering. Sources in the State Prosecutor's Office believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be facing yet another criminal investigation, this time into the massive profts from shares in a Texas steel plant managed by a relative while it was performing poorly, Israeli television reported Wednesday. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter According to the Israeli media, Netanyahu's shares in the SeaDrift factory quadrupled in value between 2007 and 2010, despite a poor performance by the plant. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Moshe Mizrahi) Haaretz said that Netanyahu acquired SeaDrift shares worth some NIS 4 million (approx. $1.1 million) in 2007, when he was head of the opposition and Ehud Olmert was prime minister. Netanyahu sold his shares in the factory, which is managed by his cousin Nathan Milikowsky, on November 29, 2010 - approximately a year and a half after he was elected prime minister. Milikowsky himself bought the shares, through one of his own companies. According to Haaretz, he received at least NIS 16 million for the sale, roughly four times the value of the shares when he acquired them, despite a dramatic downturn in the performance of the company. The State Prosecutor's Office is examining when Netanyahu received the shares and why, the Israeli TV reports said. Investigators suspect that the inflated value could be disguising a gift worth millions of shekels, Haaretz newspaper reported. Investigators also want to know why Netanyahu asked his personal lawyer and relative David Shimron for a loan in order to pay the taxes on the sale. The day after the sale was completed, SeaDrift merged with a company called GrafTech International, which had previously held 19% of SeaDrfit shares, and which supplied parts to ThyssenKrupp, the German shipbuilding company at the center of a separate Israeli police investigation known as Case 3000. The investigation into Case 3000 deals with suspicions that Israeli officials unlawfully profited from the acquisition from ThyssenKrupp of three submarines and four patrol boats, which were earmarked to secure Israel's gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea. Police suspect that substantial bribes were paid to Israeli officials to guarantee that the sale was completed. While the prime minister has not been directly implicated in the 2 billion-euro deal, a number of his associates, including his personal lawyer and cousin David Shimron, attorney Yitzhak Molcho, former chief of staff David Sharan, former Navy commander Eliezer Marom and former National Security Council deputy chief Avriel Bar-Yosef, have been detained and/or questioned. On Tuesday, key state witness Miki Ganor, who was ThyssenKrupp's agent in Israel, announced that he was changing his statement about the affair, which backed up police suspicions of bribery and corruption in the sale, and was promptly arrested. Miki Ganor in court (Photo: Moti Kimchi) Netanyahu has denied any connection to GrafTech International, and insisted he and Milikowsky had never discussed the company. The business partnership between Netanyahu and Milikowsky came to light when the prime minister sought to receive aid from his cousin to pay legal costs stemming from the three other criminal investigations into his activities. The State Comptroller's Committee, rejected Netanyahu's request for funding, but said that information provided by the prime minister in a previous request in 2009 revealed that he and Milikowsky jointly owned shares in a steel company. The prime minister's Likud party hit back at the television reports Wednesday, accusing Netanyahu's political rivals of leaking the details of the investigation. "Twenty days before the elections, there are leaks to the media about an attempt to open another investigation into Prime Minister Netanyahu," the party said. "Only the citizens of Israel will choose their prime minister - a right-wing government headed by Netanyahu or a left-wing government headed by Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz." Israeli and American officials say they expect an announcement on US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights as soon as next week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not yet been made public. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter While US Secretary of State Pompeo avoided the issue of sovereignty over the Golan during his visit to Israel on Wednesday, he lauded the White Houses warm ties with the Jewish state and promised to step up pressure on Iran, giving a public boost to Netanyahu at the height of a tight re-election campaign. Netanyahu accused Iran of attempting to set up a terrorist network to target Israel from the Golan, and said that the territory was a buffer to keep Israel's enemies at bay. Wildlife on the Golan Heights (Photo: Nature and Parks Authority) You could imagine what would have happened if Israel were not in the Golan, he said. You would have Iran on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The White House meanwhile announced that Netanyahu would be welcomed in Washington over two days next week, with Israel just two weeks from the April 9 polls. Standing together, neither Netanyahu nor Pompeo made mention of the heated election campaign. But Netanyahu, facing a tough challenge from popular former military chief Benny Gantz and reeling from a string of corruption investigations, has repeatedly sought to focus attention on his foreign policy record and strong ties with President Donald Trump. Blasting Iran for its anti-Israel stance, Pompeo touted last months Mideast conference in Poland, where he said dozens of countries discussed ways to stop Irans regional rampage. Mike Pompeo and Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Wednesday (Photo: AP) Accusing Iranian leaders of seeking the annihilation and destruction of Israel, he pledged continued American support. With such threats a daily reality of Israeli life, we maintain our unparalleled commitment to Israels security and firmly support your right to defend yourself, he said. A change in the US view of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, along with the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, was hinted at last week when the State Department changed its usual description of the plateau from "Israeli-occupied" to "Israeli-controlled" in an annual global human rights report. A separate section of the report on the West Bank and Gaza Strip also did not refer to those territories as being "occupied" or under "occupation." Republican Senator Lindsey Graham earlier this month also vowed to push for the US to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The South Carolina politican made his pledge during a tour of the frontier with Netanyahu and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. The Golan is not disputed. It is in the hands of Israel and will always remain in the hands of Israel, Graham said from a cliff overlooking Syria, where Syrian flags could be seen fluttering in the distance on buildings damaged in the countrys civil war. My goal is to try to explain this to the administration, he said. Graham, Netanyahu and Friedman on the Golan Heights (Photo: Amos Ben Gershom, GPO) In past negotiations, Syria has demanded a withdrawal from the Golan as part of any peace deal. With Syria ravaged by a nearly eight-year-old civil war, peace talks with Israel seem unlikely anytime soon. Graham called the prospect of Israeli withdrawal from the Golan a strategic nightmare and political suicide, citing shared Israeli and American concern over Iranian entrenchment in neighboring Syria. Israel has admitted to carrying out scores of airstrikes in Syria against Iranian targets in recent years. A beaming Netanyahu applauded Grahams remarks and asserted that Israel would never give up the land. Netanyahu considers Iran to be Israels greatest threat. In recent years, Israel has carried out many airstrikes in Syria to halt what it says are Iranian arms transfers to the Hezbollah militant group, and to prevent Iran from establishing a permanent military presence in the country. Iranian and Hezbollah forces have been supporting Syrian President Bashar Assads troops since the early days of the eight-year civil war. Netanyahu said he was working closely with the U.S. to roll back Iranian aggression in the region and around the world. There is no limitation to our freedom of action and we appreciate very much the fact that the United States backs up our actions, he said. He also welcomed last years U.S. withdrawal from the international nuclear deal with Iran, as well as tough U.S. sanctions that were re-imposed on the country. This pressure is working, he said. We need to increase it. We need to expand it. Netanyahu is one of Trumps strongest backers on the global stage. Since taking office, Trump has upended U.S. policy and taken a series of steps welcomed by Israel, most notably by recognizing contested Jerusalem as Israels capital and moving the US Embassy there from Tel Aviv. Documents show that South Sudan's committee overseeing the fragile transition from civil war has approved almost $185 million in spending on vehicles, food and home renovations while the country's peace deal suffers from an alleged lack of funds. As the East African nation emerges from a five-year conflict that killed almost 400,000 people and displaced millions, experts warn the government's lack of financial transparency will gut the confidence of international donors being encouraged to donate to the peace transition fund. The internal government documents show that on Nov. 5, two months after warring parties signed the peace deal, the committee that includes government and opposition representatives authorized payments for 1,000 vehicles and food including 50,000 tons of sorghum to be delivered to the capital, Juba. Prosecutors for the Tel Aviv district said Thursday that they may nix a plea deal in the investigation into the purchase of submarines from a German shipbuilder, thought to have involved kickbacks to Israeli officials. The plea deal was reached with Miki Ganor, the agent for the shipbuilder in Israel, who this week announced that he was recinding the statement to police about the alleged illegalities of the purchase. Ganor was arrested in the wake of his announcement. Venezuelas Bolivarian National Police on Tuesday prevented public workers supporting the head of Parliament, Juan Guaido, as interim president from marching to the legislative seat to demand that lawmakers approve a bill to protect workers who defend democracy. Plans were for the march to head along a west-central Caracas avenue to Parliament, but the workers could not even gather at the staging area, Morelos Square, because it had been cordoned off by police. A workers committee, however, did manage to get to the legislature and delivered a document demanding that the bill they have dubbed the labor guarantee law be approved by lawmakers. The bill provides protection for all workers who at some time go out to defend democracy, ... to defend the institutions, the general secretary of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation (CTV), Jose Elias Torres, told reporters. He also said that the bill seeks to protect the rights of workers against the possibility that the state might try to fire them due to political discrimination. The workers are also demanding that Parliament designate who was responsible for the massive power blackout the country suffered 11 days ago and that lawmakers debate whether there is any basis for calling for an international trial. In addition, they urged the legislature to demand that the commission sent to Venezuela by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights meet with the workers. Among the workers who had been intending to march were workers at the state-run Corpoelec electricity company, the Cantv communications station, the Foreign Ministry, the Social Security administration, the petroleum and university sectors. Still full of Chavista paraphernalia, the Venezuelan consulate in New York is now in the hands of the head of the opposition-controlled Parliament, Juan Guaido, and his supporters, who are promising to reopen the facility as soon as possible so that their countrymen can begin to return home. We have begun the recovery of the assets of the Republic, assets that belong to all Venezuelans, Gustavo Marcano, the No. 2 official in the delegation to the US named by Guaido and the head of the Monday operation to take over the consulate, said on Tuesday. Less than 24 hours after taking control of the consulate, Marcano opened the buildings doors to a group of journalists to show them the conditions inside what many consider to be the jewel in the crown of Venezuelan diplomacy in the US. The deterioration of some of the floors in the consulate, which for some time has been closed to the public, is evident, with wrecked and perforated ceilings and significant damage to walls and floors. On other floors, in much better shape and filled with symbols of the Bolivarian Revolution, one can still see drinking glasses on the tables and personal items strewn around, as if people had left the facility in a great hurry. According to Marcano, that is indeed more or less what occurred, given that the building was being occupied by officials of the Nicolas Maduro regime. Those people were mainly, he said, personnel accredited to Venezuelas mission to the United Nations, which remains in the control of the Maduro regime, although nobody was in the building when the diplomat and his team broke the locks on Monday afternoon. Marcano, an opposition figure who previously served as a city mayor and lawmaker, insisted that the recovery of the consulate was absolutely according to the laws. At present, Guaidos representatives are focusing on taking an inventory of everything that they are finding inside the consulate, including the diplomatic pouch, computers and other materials with an eye toward preparing a report that they are intending to make public. There could be items of a criminal nature - that wouldnt surprise us, said Marcano, who also wants to assess the damage caused to state properties, including works of art that he and his colleagues say were removed to make room for portraits of the late Hugo Chavez and Maduro. According to Marcano, the facility will soon be free of any kind of political propaganda. The downtown Manhattan consulate - a six-story building valued at millions of dollars - is a symbol for Guaido, since it is the most important diplomatic facility he controls in the US and, in contrast to others, it remains the property of the Venezuelan state. The intention of the new landlords is to reopen the consulate within several weeks and to start providing services to Venezuelans. The first step, they said, will be to begin registering all the Venezuelans who are in the US and to listen to their concerns. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday refused to rule out supporting a potential US intervention in Venezuela after his US host and counterpart, Donald Trump , said that at their White House meeting the pair were keeping all options ... on the table and threatened to tighten sanctions against Caracas. Saying that he thought he could speak for both the US and Brazil, Trump remarked that all options are on the table during his meeting with Bolsonaro. Trump was responding to a reporters question about whether he wanted Brazil to involve itself in a potential US military intervention in Venezuela, despite the fact that Brazilian Vice president Hamilton Mourao said in February that the military option (has) never (been) an option for Brasilia. Bolsonaro gave an ambiguous response on the matter at the joint press conference the two leaders held after their White House meeting when a reporter asked him if he would allow Brazilian territory to be used to launch a US military intervention in Venezuela or if he would allow Brazilian personnel to take part in such an operation. There are some issues that, if you talk about them, theyre no longer strategic ... Its a question of strategy. Everything that we discuss here (in private) we will carry out, but you dont talk about some possibilities in public, Bolsonaro said. Trump took advantage of the press conference to ask the Venezuelan armed forces to shift their loyalty from President Nicolas Maduro, whom he called nothing more than a Cuban puppet, to self-proclaimed interim President Juan Guaido, adding that Brazil has been an extraordinary leader in supporting the Venezuelan peoples efforts to reclaim their liberty and their democracy. The US president did not predict how much time will pass, in his judgment, before Nicolas Maduro is no longer Venezuelas president, but he expressed the opinion that change will be coming. Trump warned that the US still had not levied really tough sanctions on the Maduro regime, saying we can go a lot tougher if we need to do that, and noting that Washington has imposed only moderate restrictions so far on Caracas. The US president also emphasized that he knows exactly what he wants to happen in Venezuela from this point forward, but he did not specify what that might be. He said at the beginning of his meeting with Bolsonaro that what is happening in Venezuela right now - the death, destruction and hunger - is a shame, adding that it is difficult to believe that one of the worlds richest countries is now one of the poorest. And in Caracas, some portions of the capital and nearby Miranda state suffered a new power outage on Tuesday, less than two week after a massive blackout left almost the entire country in the dark. The power failure affected mainly eastern Caracas, but there were also some reports of outages in the western part of the city. The state-run Corpoelec electricity company said on its Twitter account that it was trying to restore service in the Santa Rosa A4 circuit, without providing further details. The outage shut down two stretches of the Caracas Metro, which moves millions of people around the city each day. The new blackout also affected part of Miranda state, specifically the Caracas satellite cities of Guarenas and Guatire and the resort city of Higuerote located some 120 km (75 mi.) from the capital, according to various reports. Discredited British historian and Holocaust denier David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for his views on the genocide of the Jewish people, is offering tours of WWII death camps apparently to examine the subject of Nazi history. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter The tours are being marketed under the title Controversial Camps, and are set to include visits to Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek and Belzec, all death camps associated with Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to wipe out European Jewry in its entirety. Six million Jews - two thirds of European Jewry and one third of the world's Jewish population - were murdered by the Nazis. Majdanek (Photo: AP) Irving has begun collecting fees for the tours via his website and is even offering early bird discounts. The tours are set to take place beginning in September, over a period of nine days. Irving stated in advance that there will be no refunds if, for whatever reason, he or the group are banned from entering any of the camps. Irving bills himself as an expert on Adolf Hitler and guarantees that the tour will also include a visit to Hitlers bunker, which today is buried under a parking lot in Berlin. In 2011, during a visit to Majdanek, Irving claimed that the crematoria there were fake and were built after the Second World War. In lectures to school students, Irving tells the pupils to be skeptical regarding what their teacher tells them about the gas chambers in the death camps. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum condemned Irvings intention to give tours of the camps and expressed hope that they would not in fact take place. Holocaust denial is a false conspiracy theory. Despite the fact that factually it is similar to claims of the earth being flat, it is actually dangerous and is used to conceal anti-Semitism and hatred. The presence of Holocaust deniers at sites of the genocide is an insult to the victims, they stated. Putting to one side the embarrassing and anti-feminist messages in Ayelet Shakeds election campaign video , in which she spoofs perfume ads to sell her political policies, the justice minister has some strong arguments against the Supreme Court. Others, however, are less strong - to say the least. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter Our High Court has rightfully earned the distrust the Israeli public feels for it. It repeatedly intervened in governmental decisions regarding the separation barrier in the West Bank and the natural gas deal, and it even outright overturned Knesset decisions, like with the amendment to the Prevention of Infiltration Law. Ayelet Shaked in her new election campaign video Certainly the courts recent decision, to disqualify Michael Ben-Ari from the upcoming elections while allowing Ofer Cassif to participate is beyond explanation. It angered me and many others, even those who do not traditionally belong to the rightist, conservative political camp. This decision paved the way for Shaked to offer what she calls a revolutionary plan for Israels judicial system. And as the disturbing memory of her video fades, there is definitely room to thoroughly examine what she has in mind. A judicial revolution, whispers a voice in Shakeds video, and its first step is the one most precious to the minister a dramatic change in the way High Court judges are appointed. There certainly is nothing wrong about reconsidering the way judges have been appointed here for decades, using a Judicial Selection Committee that includes both judges, ministers, MKs and representatives from Israels Bar Association. Shaked proposes that judges will be chosen by the government, according to the justice ministers recommendation and after a hearing in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee. She claims this is the way the procedure is done in most OECD countries, but that isnt entirely accurate. Appointing judges in the different OECD countries usually entails getting a majority in parliament or selecting from a list put together by a professional committee. While it is important to learn and think through options that other countries utilize, Israel should never be mistaken for being identical to other countries since our systems are very different. For instance, getting the Knesset approval on appointments is an empty procedure in a country where the parliamentary system allows the coalition pass any decision it desires, by installing a party whip. Things work very differently in the US Senate, where a hearing for judicial candidates is a long-standing tradition. In our raging Knesset, all on camera and with no such tradition, a hearing could end up looking more like a lynching in a citys main square than parliamentary procedure. Any changes we might consider implementing need to be cautiously observed. The second part of Shakeds plan refers to appointing a judicial advisor for all ministries, chosen by the justice minister themselves. Governability, whispers the voice in the video. But seriously, Shaked, do you really think it makes sense that every minister brings along his very own associate advisor, to back them up on problematic issues while not being regulated by anyone? Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett: The New Right And what will the next justice minister in line do when he or she inherits the advisor chosen by their predecessor? And what if that legal advisor rules contrary to what the justice minister feels is right? Should the advisor then be worried for their job? And who in this messy scenario will be dealing with the public? Shaked further said that a minister who disagrees with his appointed advisor will be able to debate the decision in court, while represented by his own private lawyer. According to this new plan, when a legal disagreement pops up, either the justice minister or the government will be the one to decide on the matter, as long as the court doesnt rule otherwise. So is it the minister or the government? It remains unclear. Governance is important. Im all for it. But what Shaked is offering could lead us to anarchy. I was a minister in five Israeli governments, and Ive worked with several legal advisors. We argued often sometimes I was able to convince them of what I thought was right and sometimes it was the other way around. Sometimes we agreed to disagree. It never even occurred to me to seek or demand private representation against them. The third problematic offer Shaked made in the video is appointing Israels attorney general by government decree rather than a judicial selection committee. There is definitely room to create two different roles, of an attorney general and a prosecutor general. But not like this. Its clear to me some people are going to say I wasnt brave enough when in the system, and that its easy for me to talk freely now that Im out of it. Not at all. Among the various whispers in Shakeds video there are some statements I absolutely agree with. Diminishing legal activism, pursuing separation of powers, governance. But how is appointing a legal advisor for ministers governance? Madam Justice Minister, making changes and criticizing the system is legitimate. I appreciate your skills and abilities, but perhaps slow it down a little? The Kremlin on Thursday said that flights by U.S. nuclear-capable B-52 strategic bombers across the Baltic Sea's neutral waters near Russia's borders created tension in the region. Russia's Defence Ministry said earlier on Thursday that it had scrambled fighter jets to intercept a U.S. B-52 strategic bomber after it began flying toward Russia's borders. "In general, I will limit myself to only saying that of course such actions by the United States do not lead to a strengthening of an atmosphere of security and stability in the region that directly adjoins Russia's borders," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. "On the contrary, they create additional tensions." Soldiers from one of Israel's most elite units, the Air Force's Shaldag commando paratrooper unit, accidentally left a computer containing highly sensitive information at a coffee shop in a gas station. It it hadn't been for a savvy bus driver, the data contained on it could have fallen into enemy hands, with severe implications for Israel's national security. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter The incident occurred at the end of a combat mission, whose precise nature cannot for security reasons be detailed. The unit involved is active on two fronts, one in the north and one in the south, even during peacetime. At the end of the mission, en route to their home base at Palmachim, the unit stopped at a gas station for a break. The soldier responsible for carrying the computer took it to the nearest coffee shop. Shortly afterwards, the soldiers returned to their car - leaving the computer behind. Shaldag troops in action (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit) It is unclear how long was the computer was left in the coffee shop before a bus driver realized that the computer contained classified information and turned it over to the police, who traced it to the unit. Due to the sensitivity of the information, the computer was handed over to the IDF unit responsible for data security to check whether it had been breached. According to military sources, however, the computer had not been accessed by any unauthorized personnel. Senior IDF officials say that if the computer had fallen into the hands of the enemy, it would have caused serious damage to Israel's national security. The Military Police has opened an investigation into the incident and the five soldiers have been suspended from their duties in the unit. The outcome of the investigation is will determine if and how they are allowed to continue their service in the unit. The IDF Spokesperson confirmed the incident, saying that, "when the investigation is completed, the findings will be passed to the military prosecutor." Shaldag - Hebrew for kingfisher - was established 43 years ago and since then has lost nine of its soldiers in combat. The unit has conducted hundreds of operations in the recent years aimed at intercepting high quality weapons making their way from Iran to the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, as well as to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in what is commonly known as "the war between wars." The unit played an instrumental role in bringing Ethiopian Jews to Israel. In 1991, under the command of former IDF chief Benny Gantz, the unit oversaw the airlift of 14,000 Jews from Addis Ababa to Israel. Other famous former members of the unit include Tal Russo, Doron Almog and Gal Hirsch. Operation Solomon in 1991 (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit) In past few years there have been several breaches of sensitive information in the IDF, although the army has not treated those responsible with a uniform level of severity. For example, then-commander of IDF Manpower Directorate, Maj. Gen. Hagai Topolansky, was forced to resign his post when it was discovered that his computer containing classified information was stolen from his home. Similary, a colonel in the IDF Northern Command and senior Air Force commander were dismissed for losing classified information. By contrast , then-IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, decided to only reprimand Col. Avi Blut, then head of IDF Commando Brigade, when classified documents were stolen from his car in June 2018. Eisenkot was criticized for his soft approach towards Blut, who is today Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's military secretary. British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn says he is focused on finding a majority in Parliament to pass a Brexit divorce deal. Corbyn is in Brussels for meetings with EU officials and chief negotiator Michel Barnier, the same day that British Prime Minister Theresa May attends a summit for leaders of the 28-nation bloc. With Brexit eight days away on March 29, May is seeking a delay until June 30. The EU says that is conditional on getting a deal approved by Parliament. Corbyn says there is no majority for May's Brexit deal, which has been rejected by British lawmakers twice. He is trying to build a majority in Parliament for Labour's alternative, which calls for a close post-Brexit relationship between Britain and the EU. Corbyn said "we can constrict a majority that will prevent crashing out, and all the chaos that will result from crashing out." The Israel Defense Forces is preparing for tens of thousands of Palestinians to gather along the Israel-Gaza border next weekend, as they join a Hamas "million man march" to mark the one year anniversary of the March of Return" protests held regularly at the frontier. The IDF will deploy hundreds of snipers along the Gaza border in anticipation of the march, set to take place on March 29. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter According to IDF assessments, Hamas will not only try to re-enact the earlier Friday marches attended by thousands of Gazans, but will in fact seek to surpass them by transporting more than 50,000 people to the main protest points along the border fence. Troops on Gaza border (Photo: Yoav Zitun) The IDF is preparing for the disturbances by doubling the amount of troops that will be deployed along the Gaza border in order to thwart any infiltration attempts by hostile Palestinians into Israel and prevent attacks at the border town communities. The army believes that Hamas will make an effort to channel the frustrations of the Gaza population which has been protesting the harsh economic reality under Hamas rule away from themselves and toward Israel, near the fence. Therefore, Israel is anticipating an unusual amount of violence and for events to spiral out of control. Economic Protests in Gaza So far, Hamas has managed to forcibly suppress the street protests against it, including assaulting journalists, human rights activists and the local Fatah leader in the Strip (a rival faction). The protests were organized by minor Palestinian parties in Gaza, mainly from the left, against Hamas and to a certain extent Islamic Jihad. Alongside the violence, some 600 people were arrested by Hamas authorities. Those same organizations that protested Hamas the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the Popular Front (PFLP), the Communist Party, the Palestinian Democratic Union (FIDA), Fatah and the Arab Liberation Front are also helping to organize the weekly protests along the border. Israeli officials estimate that these organizations will stand alongside Hamas, just like on every Friday for the last year (except last week), for the planned million man march. However, the Hamas leadership is aware that although the Gaza street protests under the banner of Let Us Live may have been suppressed, the criticism against Hamas, both from the street and from the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, will continue. Until a solution is found that will improve the economic situation, the Gaza street could well rise up again. IDF pounds Gaza targets There are signs that this Fridays protest, at which 10,000 protesters are expected, is a dress rehearsal for the big event next week. On the day after the "million man march," Israeli Arabs will mark Land Day, a day expressing solidarity with the Palestinians in the territories. In the meantime, there has been a return of the nightly harassment units, Gazans dispatched to make the lives of Israelis living on the other side of the border miserable. These units resumed their activities this week with loud noise and smoke, after a 10-day pause due to Egyptian-brokered negotiations, and the rate of these activities is increasing. Israel is preparing for a worst case scenario, in which the protests get out of hand and there are dozens of casualties, as happened last May. Such a circumstance may set off another round of military conflict, which Israel has been trying to avoid. Near Rafah Furthermore, Land Day kicks off a two-month period consisting of several of noteworthy days, each of which may be used by Hamas as a focal point for violence. Following Land Day on March 30 is the Day of the Palestinian Prisoner on April 17; in May there is Nakba Day (commemorating the effects of Israeli independence on the Palestinians) and in June, Naksa Day (when the Palestinians mark the Arab defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War). In between is the Muslim holy fast month Ramadan and the agitation it can entail. The only way to stave off this frightening scenario is to implement the partial understandings reached between Egypt, Israel and Hamas. Most of the subject matter was found to be acceptable by both sides. Israel agreed to allow Hamas to expand the Gaza fishing zone to 12 nautical miles from the Gaza coast and allow the UN to fund the employment of some 90,000 Gazans currently without work. Israel also agreed to provide Gaza with additional electricity capacity. IDF troops on the Gaza border (Photo: Reuters) Egypt proposed establishing two purple zones, at the Erez Crossing for example, where Israeli and Palestinian businessmen can meet and do business, and Israel expressed willingness to increase the number of permits given to Gaza businessmen allowed to enter these zones. Israel might also open the Karni Crossing and in the long term, establish industrial zones at these crossings. Hamas for its part is being asked to reinstate the 300-meter security zone adjacent to the border, to guarantee that the protests keep their distance from Israeli territory. In Israel, officials expect that if the sides manage to reach an agreement and the Qatari funds continue to flow at a rate of $30 million a month, Hamas will make an effort to prevent a deterioration since its financial situation is very dire. In the last fiscal year, the Hamas government has only managed to raise 30% of its annual budgetary needs. Iran has also drastically cut its aid to Hamas, which has been forced to raise taxes on residents and businesses in Gaza. Cigarette prices jumped by 200% and pita bread by 40%. Such harsh economic realities brought Gazans out into the streets to protest. Therefore, it is crucial for Hamas to reach an agreement; at least until the summer, as Israel is asking. Israel is facing the threat of an escalation of tensions in the West Bank, as well as in Gaza, after four Palestinians were killed there by Israel Defense Forces fire in just 24 hours. The latest death - of 28-year-old Ahmad Jamal Manasra from the village of Wadi Fukin - has generated considerable Palestinian outrage due to conflicting circumstances surrounding the incident, which occurred Wednesday night near an IDF post in the Bethlehem area. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter The Israeli military said that troops stationed in the area where Manasra was killed, noticed a suspect hurling stones at vehicles and fired at the perpetrator. The 28-year-old was killed and another person was wounded. Scene of the shooting (: ) X The Palestinians on the other hand, claimed that the IDF troops fired at a car of a Palestinian family and wounded the driver. Manasra, whose car was behind the Palestinian family, got out of the vehicle to help the hurt driver and was subsequently shot dead himself. "The situation in the city is not good at all, our blood is boiling," said a resident of Bethlehem, a touristy city whose residents hold mostly moderate political views due to a thriving economy. Ahmad Mansara The incident might not have had such a resonance in the West Bank if Mansaras death did not come following the killing of two Palestinians - who were hurling explosives at troops protecting Jewish worshippers near Josephs Tomb - in Nablus, as well as the terrorist, Omar Abu Lila, who committed the deadly attack at the Ariel Junction. "He didnt do anything illegal, he was murdered in cold blood," said Lutfi Assad from a village near Bethlehem. "Its comparable to me being shot right now, in the middle of this interview," he added, looking straight at the military post from which the shots had been fired. Ahmad Jamal Manasra's funeral (Photo: EPA) In the meantime, Judea and Samaria Division Commander Brigadier General Eran Niv and Etzion Regional Brigade Commander Colonel David Shapira, conducted an investigation into the incident and didnt rule out a possibility of a brawl between Palestinians, which involved the throwing of stones. The entire area is under the watchful eyes of security cameras, so its safe to assume the entire incident had been documented (although no footage has so far been released). In addition, the Military Police has also opened an investigation into the killing. Manasra's funeral In light of the incident, the city of Bethlehem announced a general strike starting Thursday. "The atmosphere is very tense and people are nervous," said Mohammed Jafri, a resident of the city. "I dont know if there are going to be revenge attack, but some people are enraged." On Thursday afternoon, Manasras funeral got underway amid the outpouring of emotions among the locals of the village of Wadi Fukin. My son died for Palestine and with the help of Allah, Palestine will be liberated," said his mother ahead of the proceedings. "He stopped the car and all he wanted to do was help the wounded person," said Amin, a resident of a neighboring village. It is time for the US to "fully recognize" Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, US President Donald Trump said Thursday in a twitter message that coinfirmed a shift in American foreign policy that has been hinted at for several weeks. "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels (s)overeignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Trump posted, as his secretary of state Mike Pompeo prepared to deliver a joint address from Jerusalem with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is time for the US to "fully recognize" Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, US President Donald Trump said Thursday in a Twitter message that confirmed a shift in American foreign policy hinted at for several weeks. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook STRONG> and Twitter "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels (s)overeignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Trump posted, as his secretary of state Mike Pompeo prepared to deliver a joint address from Jerusalem with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Wildlife on the Golan Heights The tweet came less than a day after Israeli and American officials said they expected an announcement on the issue as soon as next week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not yet been made public. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2019 Netanyahu thanked the US president for his decision to "boldly recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights," on his official Twitter page. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! @realDonaldTrump Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) March 21, 2019 Netanyahu also said that the Golan was a buffer to keep Israel's enemies at bay, in particular Iran. You could imagine what would have happened if Israel were not in the Golan, he said. You would have Iran on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. While Pompeo avoided the issue of sovereignty over the Golan during his visit to Israel on Wednesday, he lauded the White Houses warm ties with the Jewish state and promised to step up pressure on Iran, giving a public boost to Netanyahu at the height of a tight re-election campaign. The Hermon ski resort on the Golan Heights A change in the US view of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, along with the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, was also hinted at last week when the State Department changed its usual description of the plateau from "Israeli-occupied" to "Israeli-controlled" in an annual global human rights report. A separate section of the report on the West Bank and Gaza Strip also did not refer to those territories as being "occupied" or under "occupation." L-R: Lindsey Graham, Benjamin Netanyahu and David Friedman Republican Senator Lindsey Graham earlier this month also vowed to push for the US to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The South Carolina politican made his pledge during a tour of the frontier with Netanyahu and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. The Golan is not disputed. It is in the hands of Israel and will always remain in the hands of Israel, Graham said from a cliff overlooking Syria, where Syrian flags could be seen fluttering in the distance on buildings damaged in the countrys civil war. My goal is to try to explain this to the administration, he said. An IDF tank attacked a Hamas military position in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday in response to border violence and incendiary balloons launched into Israeli territory. The US Department of Transportation announced Tuesday that it ordered an audit of the certification process of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft, after the accident of one of these aircraft on Mar. 10 in Ethiopia in which 157 people died. The department said in a statement that Elaine L. Chao , the head of the department, has asked that, as part of an ongoing review of factors related to aviation certification, the Inspector General conduct a formal audit of the certification process for the Boeing 737-MAX 8 aircraft. The Inspector General (IG) is an office in federal and state agencies and departments that is charged with overseeing their actions and preventing illegal or ineffective actions. In her petition to the IG from the Department of Transportation, Chao indicated that safety is the top priority of the Department, and all of us are saddened by the fatalities resulting from the recent accidents involving two Boeing 737-MAX 8 aircraft in Indonesia and Ethiopia. The Ethiopian incident occurred after another Boeing 737 MAX 8, owned by the Indonesian airline Lion Air, crashed into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, 2018 just minutes after taking off from Jakarta, all 189 people on board where killed. Chao recalled in the note that Boeing requested an amended type certification for this aircraft in January 2012, and the Federal Aviation Administration issued the certification in March 2017. The Secretary of Transportation explained that she has decided to request the audit in order to compile and obtain an objective and detailed record of the actions for the certification of this type of aircraft. She stressed that this step is intended to help inform decision-making in her department and assist the FAA to ensure that safety measures are effectively implemented. In response to this announcement, Boeing Airlines tweeted that it will fully cooperate in the Department of Transportations audit announced by Secretary Chao. On the other hand, the White House revealed on Tuesday in a statement US President Donald Trump s intention to nominate a new administrator of the FAA, an entity that is part of the Department of Transportation. The chosen is former pilot Stephen M. Dickson, who, according to the note, has until recently been Senior Vice President of flight operations of the national airline Delta Air Lines. During his tenure, Dickson was responsible for Deltas safety and operations, pilot training and regulatory compliance, among other things. Dickson will replace Daniel Elwell, who has been acting administrator of the US highest civil aviation authority since January 2018. The FAAs performance after the Ethiopian accident has been controversial because days after the incident it still said there was no basis for ordering the immobilization of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 fleet. Finally, Trump ordered on Mar. 13 to ground Boeings 737 MAX 8 and 9 in the US, joining the measures taken by about 50 countries and airlines around the world in reaction to the accident. Russia said Thursday that it will never follow in the footsteps of US President Donald Trump, who earlier announced his decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. "Russia will never recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Trump is damaging to the international community and to the Arab world," said Oleg Morozov, member of the Federation Council's Foreign Affairs Committee. Palestinian medical sources said Thursday that seven people were wounded in IDF attack in the southern Gaza Strip earlier. Israeli military confirmed that an IDF tank attacked a Hamas military position in response to border violence and launching of incendiary balloons into Israeli territory. HURLEY Fe Universitys next course offering will look at the topic of immigration with Northland College instructor Jennifer Kuklenski. Debate and misunderstanding surrounding immigration issues dominate the world news today, said organizer Wendy Thiede. Why do people leave their homes to immigrate to another country, and how does their move affect the economy and politics of their new country? The course aims to help students understand this complex topic, she added. Realities of Immigration Today will be held for four Wednesday afternoons, April 24 through Ma... Pylons block two lanes of traffic along U.S. 2 in Bessemer Wednesday as it is prepared for extensive repairs to potholes. By BRYAN HELLIOS [email protected] BESSEMER - U.S. 2 through Bessemer is down to just two lanes as major repairs are scheduled to tackle a rash of potholes. Dan Weingarten, communications representative for the Michigan Department of Transportation, said this year has been hard on roads due to a lot of freeze-thaw cycles. "This has been a really bad spring for potholes all across the Upper Peninsula, but that is one of the worst spots right now," he said. When moisture under the road freezes it causes the pavement to buckles up which creates cracks, he said. Those cracks turn i... By RICHARD JENKINS [email protected] LANSING The Michigan House of Representatives recently approved $870,400 in funding for recreation and conservation projects in the western Upper Peninsula, including more than half a million dollars for a pair of Gogebic County trail projects. The house approved a total of $26 million in funding for 34 recreational development projects and 30 land acquisitions statewide. These include $280,000 for the development of a new mountain biking trail system in Ironwoods Miners Memorial Heritage Park and $299,900 for development of a 3-mile sec... Latest News Yuma, Arizona - The donations manager at a North Carolina thrift store was warned by the donor that the furniture in question was haunted, reports the Association of Mature American Citizens. According to the store Operations Director, Elizabeth Brady, "he was told 'you don't want those, they're haunted.' And he said 'well, now I definitely want them'." The buyer, Ricky Scott, gladly paid $1,000 for the hand carved haunted bedroom suite saying, "maybe it will be a nice ghost," Soy producers in eastern Bolivias Santa Cruz region welcome the governments decision to allow cultivation of genetically modified soy, albeit only for the purpose of producing biodiesel. President Evo Morales ' administration, which has been skeptical about GM crops, said Monday that it would authorize farmers to plant modified soy as part of a project to produce biodiesel and reduce imports of the fuel. The head of the National Association of Oilseed and Wheat Producers (Anapo), Marcelo Pantoja, has spoken out about a critical period ahead for farmers. Hydrocarbons and minerals have been the engine of the countrys development, but they are depressed, they have problems, so I believe that its the epoch of the countryside, Pantoja told journalists visiting Santa Cruz on an excursion organized by the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade (IBCE). Fidel Flores, the Anapo representative in Cuatro Canadas, Santa Cruz, told reporters that by planting the drought-resistant HB4 strain of GM soy, growers could boost yields by between 20 percent and 30 percent from the current average of 2,500kgs (5,506lbs) per hectare (2.2 acres) Last week, associations representing both small farmers and large producers in Santa Cruz joined in declaring an agricultural emergency in the region, pointing to damage affecting more than a third of the soy crop planted during the current austral summer. Destruction due to drought, floods and other causes has already generated more than $168 million in losses, the associations said, urging the government to approve the use of HB4 and consider accepting GM maize. Morales and other senior officials met with business owners Monday in Santa Cruz city to discuss biotechnology. Hydrocarbons Minister Luis Alberto Sanchez announced the approval of GM soy to make biofuel. The authorization calls for planting 250,000 hectares (617,763 acres) with GM soy to be used exclusively to make biodiesel and includes roughly $2 billion in public funds for the necessary infrastructure and machinery, the minister said. Sanchezs announcement was some of the best news in the last five years for small and major producers, IBCE director Gary Rodriguez told EFE. Producing its own biodiesel, which is less polluting than fossil fuel, will reduce Bolivias need to import conventional diesel, he said. Last year, Bolivia spent around $900 million on imports of conventional diesel fuel, according to IBCE data. Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business. Sharing is caring! 30 shares Share 27 Tweet Pin 3 Travel more, worry less! For as long as I can remember, Bali has always been on my radar as one of *those* iconic travel destinations around the world that can, and does, change lives. A popular hub for tourists from Australia and New Zealand, being close by, its almost a travel mecca in this part of the world, attracting explorers, surfers, expats, and tourists looking for a good time in a chill place, a vibe Bali exudes in abundance. At the risk of being a total travel cliche, I definitely have had my own fair share of Eat, Pray, Love moments from Bali minus a fling with Javier Bardem! With my first journey there five years ago to go diving and have a holiday away from my constant holidays (LOL), Bali has safely held a place in my heart as a beautiful part of the world, even with the monkeys. Stay away from monkeys. Since moving to New Zealand, travel has been a big part of my life. Back when I first visited Bali 5 years ago, I used to just either buy individual travel insurance policies for each trip if I was forced to, or better yet, not at all. Oh to be young and naive again! But with experience comes knowledge and Ive seen enough misfortunes and experienced plenty of my own too, to realized that not having travel insurance is just plain dumb, especially when so many things could go wrong that are completely out of control. Bali is one of those places that while its filled with Aussies and Kiwis (cough cough, Kuta, Im looking at you) and can easily feel like home, it still is another country and unpredictable to a certain degree. Also monkeys. Just like packing a bathing suit, sunscreen and beautiful twirly dresses are a must for my trips to Bali, so is travel insurance. I used to just buy individual policies for each trip that I was taking, but it was adding up so now I just buy an annual policy and after shopping around, Southern Cross Travel Insurance (SCTI) is now my go-to provider for all things insurance related on all my travels around the world. I was doing more and more hardcore trips that often required me to have travel insurance with a high evacuation coverage this means if I have an accident in Antarctica where its SUPER expensive to get back to mainland for medical coverage or riding horses in Mongolia or even just hiking in the mountains in a place where, if anything happened, I would need to be medivac-ed out, Im taken care of. I LOVE saying yes to seemingly crazy new adventures and SCTI really gives me the freedom to explore the world with peace of mind. While my last trip to Bali was all about diving and having a real holiday, it was marred by getting a serious case of Bali belly or food poisoning waylaying me for two days in Amed. Totally uninsured at the time, I was really lucky to be staying at a luxury hotel that took care of me until I could move again, and it didnt really impact my trip too much. All I can say is thank god it wasnt the day I was flying home can you imagine? Wait, dont. Anywho. This time around I was headed to the little expat hotspot of Canggu with my business partners to work for a week together. Cheaper for us to all meet in Bali, I dont think any of us could have booked our flights faster. But being the total clumsy person I am and bit of a magnet for misadventure, Im more likely to trip and break an arm in Italy or get my bag stolen in Australia then have something major happen. I think. touch wood. I can count on SCTI look after me whether Im chasing penguins in South Georgia to scootering in Bali to shopping in Sydney, freeing up my anxiety so I can travel more and worry a lot less. As a total worrywart and a person who has developed a lot of anxiety and stress as an adult, this is so important to me, and its worth every penny. I was so excited to see how Bali had changed, after watching it explode on Instagram over the years, and I knew I was in for a treat. It didnt disappoint. Bali was DIVINE. From what I remember, Canggu was just a bunch of rice paddies and a surf beach the last time I was there; now its transformed into a veritable hub of influencers, creators, surfers and expats, a chill and relaxed place where you can prop up your feet for a $9 massage, sip a coconut and afford to stay for a good long while. And man, has the food scene stepped it up! The cafe and restaurant scene in Canggu (and next door in Seminyak) is just incredible. I didnt have time in my schedule for Bali Belly Round 2, and luck and lady hygiene was on my side and there was no bout of sickness by any of us, and we didnt skimp out on eating all the things. Here are some of my picks for best meals in Canggu many of them recommended by Irish expat Janet from Journalist on the Run who is based there: Coffee and Coconuts Betelnut Cafe Lacalita Bar y Cocina The Slow Crate Cafe Fat Mermaid The Loft The Shady Shack Milk and Madu (Seminyak) Kynd Community (Seminyak) And wow, let me just say, Canggu has quickly moved to one of my new favorite places in the world, and I do not say that lightly. I could even live there for a stint, and I hope to one day. Its like Canggu is a little haven for travelers just like me. Ive found my people! A beautiful place filled with lovely people, right by the beach, heaps of big comfortable and modern cafes where you can work all day in drinking the most lovely juices, heaps of healthy and clean eating thats affordable, yoga everywhere, fast wifi and lots of creative people traveling solo too. Its my place! I really fell in love with Canggu on this trip, and my partners and I have already booked trips back later this. Having travel insurance with SCTI is vital for me to continue feeling safe and worry free as I travel the world and spend more time overseas in places like Bali. I can eat all the things, drive and ride on scooters, go to new places and try new things while feeling safe and secure. Now where should we go next in Bali? Spill! Do you have travel insurance when you go exploring? Have you been to Canggu or Bali before? Any crazy travel misadventures to share? Spill! Images by Lauren Bath and Liz Carlson Many thanks to SCTI for sponsoring this post like always Im keeping it real all opinions are my own, like you can expect less from me! New Delhi: Top Bhojpuri actress Antara Biswas aka Monalisa celebrated the festival of Holi with her family and friends. Monalisa took to Instagram and shared her pictures on social media. Mona wrote: Happy Birthday my Loving DADA .... Double Celebration For Us Today.... Happy Holi To all.... All The Colours On Me Are Of Love .... love You My cutie Vivan #happyholi #familytime #kolkata #havingfun #masti #coloursoflove .... missing you my @vikrant8235 ... The actress previously also wished her fans and followers on Instagram. Mona has acted in more than 125 Bhojpuri films and acted in several language movies such as Hindi, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Oriya and Bengali as well. She became a household name after participating in hit reality show 'Bigg Boss 10'. Mona hogged the limelight as she got married to her then-boyfriend Vikrant Singh Rajpoot on the show. The couple is now happily married and shares lovey-dovey pictures every now and then. Here's wishing the readers a happy and safe Holi! New Delhi: The colourful festival of Holi will be celebrated this year on March 21. The entire nation is soaked in the festive fervour and it can be felt all around. On this special day, songs play a very important role. After all, any dance party is incomplete without good music, right? So, here's a list of all time favourite Holi songs which you must have in your playlist: 1. Rang Barse from Silsila 2. Holi Khele Raghuveera from Baghban 3. Arre Ja Re Natkhat from Navrang 4. Holi Ke Din from Sholay 5. Aaj Na Chhodenge from Kati Patang 6. Holi Aayi Re Kanhai from Mother India 7. Balam Pichkari from Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani 8. 'Do Me a Favor Lets Play Holi' - Waqt-The Race Against Time Now that the playlist is decided, get on with your celebration mode and enjoy your day. Here's wishing our readers a happy and safe Holi! New Delhi: A jawan of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) allegedly fired at his colleagues on Wednesday, killing three. The reported incident of fratricide occurred in the 187th battalion camp of CRPF in Jammu and Kashmir when constable Ajit Kumar allegedly shot three of his colleagues. News agency PTI quoted CRPF officials as saying that an altercation between the jawans may have led to the firing in which Ajit also shot himself and is injured. The other three CRPF troopers who died in the incident have been identified as head constables Pokarmal R of Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan, Yogendra Sharma of Delhi and Umed Singh of Rewari in Haryana. Top CRPF and police officials are investigating the incident which took place in the Battal Ballian area in Udhampur. Although the precise reason for the shooting is yet to be ascertained, work stress is a factor that has long been seen as a challenge for CRPF and other paramilitary forces in the country. In a 2015 report submitted to the Centre at the time, it was cited that stress at work is leading to the social isolation of CRPF jawans. Fratricide cases, however, are not uncommon in armed and paramilitary forces around the world. The Ministry of Defence had said in January that there were eight such incidents in the Indian Army in 2018. A number of steps are being taken to bring down incidents of fratricide and suicide in the armed and paramilitary forces. Measures such as yoga and meditation classes to de-stress security personnel are being conducted, as per the Defence and Home ministries. There are also steps taken to assure security personnel get adequate daily rest and time off after demanding postings. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday released list of 100 candidates for the upcoming Assembly election in Odisha. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) releases list of 100 candidates for the upcoming Odisha assembly elections. pic.twitter.com/U3ywkecTxV ANI (@ANI) March 21, 2019 The BJP has emerged as a strong force in Odisha in the last five years and it is expected that the party would give a tough fight to ruling Biju Janta Dal (BJD) in the upcoming Assembly election. It is to be noted that several senior BJD leaders, including 2 MPs and some MLAs have quit the party recently to join the BJP. In 2014 Assembly election, BJP had won just 10 out of 147 Assembly seats in the state but political experts maintain that the party would perform much better this time. Earlier on Thursday, the BJP released its first list of 184 candidates for Lok Sabha poll, including 28 seats from Uttar Pradesh, 16 from Maharashtra, 8 from Assam, 5 from Chhattisgarh, 5 from Jammu and Kashmir, 22 from Karnataka, 13 from Kerala, 2 from Manipur, 10 from Odisha, 16 from Rajasthan, one from Sikkim, 5 from Tamil Nadu, 10 from Telangana, 2 from Tripura, 5 from Uttarakhand, 28 from West Bengal, two from Andhra Pradesh, one from Lakshadweep, one from Dadra and Nagar Haveli and one from Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest from Varanasi, while BJP President Amit Shah will enter the fray from Gandhinagar. Home Minister Rajnath Singh will be party's candidate from Lucknow and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari will contest from Nagpur. Addressing a press conference, Union Minister and senior BJP leader Nadda told reporters that meeting of BJP Central Election Committe (CEC) was held on March 16, 19 and 20 to finalise the names and it was presided by BJP President Amit Shah. The meetings were attended by PM Modi, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and other CEC members A person 19 or under dies every 60 minutes due to firearms in Brazil, according to a study by the Brazilian Society of Pediatrics released Wednesday by state news service Agencia Brasil. In 2016 alone, the last year in which the Ministry of Health has data on the matter, 9,517 accidental and intentional shooting deaths were recorded in the age group, the report said. The figure sets a new record for Brazil, doubling the 4,846 cases reported in 1997. Between 1997 and 2016, the number of young people 19 or under who were killed by firearms totaled some 145,000. Brazil is considered one of the most violent countries in the world with an average of 60,000 homicides per year, of which around 70 percent are committed with firearms. The countrys far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, signed a decree in January that facilitates civilians purchase of weapons under the pretext of guaranteeing citizens the right to self-defense. The initiative was criticized by the opposition and various civil society organizations, who argued that the greater the number of weapons in circulation, the greater the violence and the more victims will result. According to the report by the Brazilian Society of Pediatrics, every two hours a child or teenager enters a public hospital with gunshot wounds, accounting for almost 96,000 hospitalizations between 1999 and 2018. Providing treatment to all those gunshot victims resulted in government expenditures of 210 million reais ($55.5 million). In some cases, deaths and injuries result from stray bullets fired in clashes between security forces and criminal suspects. A total of 54 children have been killed in Rio de Janeiro by stray bullets since 2007, the anti-violence group Rio de Paz said on Wednesday during an event honoring 13-year-old Maria Eduarda Alves, killed during a police operation in 2017. Antonio Carlos Costa, the president and founder of the group, told EFE that Maria Eduardas case could have been a tragedy of great proportions because it took place inside a school where the children had to throw themselves on the floor to avoid the bullets fired by the police. The pediatricians report indicates that most of the youth deaths from firearms were the result of homicide (94 percent), distantly followed by suicide (2 percent), accidents (1 percent) and other undetermined causes (4 percent). A week ago, Brazil experienced one of the worst school massacres in its history. Two former students, ages 17 and 25, entered Raul Brasil high school in Suzano, 60km (37mi) from Sao Paulo city, and opened fire, killing eight people before taking their own lives. According to a report of Indian intelligence agencies, China has deployed its troops in Sindh region of Pakistan to protect the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The report noted that China has deployed the troops of People Liberation Army (PLA) for the security of coal mines in Sindh's Thar region. Located in Tharparkar district of Pakistan, Thar region is only 90 kilometers away from Indo-Pak border. Several Chinese projects are going on in Sindh and most of these projects are facing stiff resistance from local people. It seems that China has decided to deploy its troops for securing the CPEC fearing such protests. ''The Border Security Forces (BSF) deployed at the Indo-Pak border have also noticed the movements of Chinese troops close to the border. It seems that due to the opposition of Chinese projects by locals in Sindh and Balochistan regions China has deployed its troops," said an intelligence officer. The CPEC project is around three thousand kilometer long and Pakistan has already deployed 17,000 of its troops for the security of CPEC. It is learnt that out of these 17,000 soldiers, 4000 are from special forces of Pakistani Army. But it seems that China does not have much faith in the Pakistani army and this is the reason why Beijing has decided to send PLA troops too. It may be recalled that Pakistan's army chief had visited China in July last year and met with Chinese Prime Minister emier Li Keungang and vice president Fen Changlong. During the meeting, China had thanked the Pakistani Army for the security of CPEC and Pakistani Army Chief had also assured China of providing full security to CPEC. SRINAGAR: Two policemen and a civilian got injured on Thursday as security forces engaged in encounters with terrorists at three places in Jammu and Kashmir, authorities told IANS. The first encounter started in Sopore and two encounters were reported later from Bandipora and Baramulla. A cordon and search operation was launched by security forces in Hajin area of Bandipora district following intelligence inputs that some terrorists were hiding in the area. The encounter started after the terrorists who were in hiding in Mir Mohalla opened fire at the security forces. "Security forces are carrying out the operation with caution as two civilians are reportedly inside the house from where the militants are firing at the security forces," a police officer said. It is to be noted that Hajin was once regarded as a zone "liberated" from terrorists. Another encounter started in Baramulla's Kandi area after security forces resumed a search operation on Thursday morning. The search operation was called on Wednesday evening due to darkness. "As the search operation was resumed, militants fired at the security forces, triggering an encounter in Kandi," the officer said. Meanwhile, a Station House Officer (SHO) and his security guard got injured on Thursday when a grenade was hurled by terrorists at security forces in Warpora area of Sopore. "Both the policemen have been shifted to Srinagar for specialized treatment. The operation against the militants is going on," a police officer said. A civilian also got injured in the encounter at Sopore town. He was admitted to hospital and is reported to be in stable condition. Mobile Internet service has been suspended in Sopore town by authorities as a precautionary measure. (with IANS inputs) Washington: The United States has asked Pakistan to take sustained, verifiable and irreversible action against the perpetrators of terrorism, while warning the country that another terror attack on India will prove to be "extremely problematic". "We need to see Pakistan taking concrete and sustained action to reign in the terrorist groups, mainly the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Lashkar-e-Taiba in order to ensure that we don't have re-escalation (of tension) in the region," a senior administration official told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. "And, if there's any additional terrorist attack without Pakistan having made a sustained, sincere effort against these groups, it would be extremely problematic for Pakistan and it would cause re-escalation of tensions, which is dangerous for both countries," the official said on the condition of anonymity. Asked about the steps being taken by Pakistan in the aftermath of the Balakot air strike by Indian fighter jets, the official said the US and the international community needed to see "irreversible and sustained" action against the terror groups. "It's early to make a full assessment," the official said. In the recent days, the official said Pakistan has taken some "initial" actions. They have frozen the assets of some terrorist groups and made some arrests. They have taken administrative control of some of the JeM facilities, the official added. "But we clearly need to see more. We need to see irreversible action because in the past, what we've seen is they made some arrests and then a few months later, they released these individuals. The terrorist leaders are sometimes still allowed to travel around the country, hold rallies," the official said. Reiterating that the United States is looking for "irreversible action", the official said America is working with its international partners to increase pressure on Pakistan. "Because it has been too long that these groups have been able to operate." Observing that Pakistan has economic concerns as well, the official said the Financial Action Tasks Force (FATF) is one area which demonstrates the need for them to take these actions against terror groups. "Otherwise, they're at risk within the system and the FATF to be grey-listed," the official said. Pakistan needs to decide if it wants to be viewed as a responsible international player and have access to all the financial mechanisms that are available or is it going to continue to fail to take the steps necessary against these terrorist groups and see itself further isolated. "The choice is Pakistan's," the senior administration official asserted. While the situation between the two south Asian neighbours have de-escalated, the two armies are still on high alert and that concerns the US, the official said. "So, we realize that if there, God forbid, would be another terrorist attack that you could quickly see the escalation in the situation once again. So that's why, we're making clear that any additional military action by either side runs an unacceptably high risk, for both countries and for the region," the official said. The Trump Administration, the official said, has taken sort of a "zero tolerance policy" on the issue of safe havens to terrorists. "The terror terrorist attack on February 14th on India was a demonstration that Pakistan's continuing provision of sanctuary for any terrorist group is not acceptable," the official said. During the height of the crisis -- February 26-28 -- the United States was in continuous contact with Indian and Pakistani officials, both on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad. "They were working the phones continuously and were deeply engaged in seeking to deescalate what was a very dangerous moment in India-Pakistan relations," the official said. The United States has also reached out to influential countries to have them help deescalate the situation, the senior administration official said. Some of these countries are China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and Australia. From almost blinding opulence and a glitzy lifestyle to the dark cells of Wandsworth prison, life has turned on its head for fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi who now finds himself in a jail that is infamous for being 'Britain's worst.' Nirav, a key suspect in the Rs 13,000 crore PNB loan scam, was arrested by the Scotland Yard on Wednesday. His bail application was denied later in the day and was remanded to police custody till March 29. The 48-year-old was then taken to Her Majesty's Prison (HMP) Wandsworth where he has reportedly been given a solitary cell. A cell to himself in one of Britain's most infamous prisons is of microscopic consolation to a man accustomed to majestic villas, flashy diamonds and ostrich-hide jackets. Wandsworth, UK's largest prison, has repeatedly made the news for its strict rules and regulations, often bordering on being unforgiving to inmates. The Guardian reported in 2013 that inspections here have revealed that inmates are dealt with extremely sternly with hardened criminals often locked up for 22 hours in a day. Weekends are even worse. Many of the inmates were found with injury marks. It was also reported that the staff at Wandsworth - and not the management - maintain an iron hand over daily proceedings here. Just last month, the prison was in a state of lockdown after a prisoner escaped. In addition to all of these, UK's Standard reported that there is a brewing drug menace. It is perhaps important to note here that the prison houses some of the deadliest criminals and terror suspects in UK, and Nirav is unlikely to be anywhere close to the wing reserved for such individuals. Nonetheless, just being an inmate of Wandsworth prison proves that Nirav's punishment for charges against him may have already begun even as Indian authorities work overtime for his extradition. JAMMU: An Indian Army soldier was martyred in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Sunderbani sector of Rajouri district Thursday morning. Rifleman Yash Paul, 24, lost his life after Pakistan violated the ceasefire by resorting to heavy shelling in forward areas and posts with mortar bombs. The martyred soldier was a resident of Udhampur, Jammu. Pakistan also violated ceasefire at around 2:45 pm in Nowshera sector of Rajouri district prompting Indian Army to retaliate strongly. ANI reported that firing from Pakistan side stopped at around 4:45 pm. Artillery guns were used by Pakistan Army for shelling. On Monday night, Pakistan had violated ceasefire in Akhnoor and Sunderbani sectors by resorting to shelling with mortars and firing of small arms at around 10:45 pm. The Indian Army retaliated strongly but the ceasefire violation continued till Tuesday morning. This happened just a day after an Army jawan was killed in ceasefire violation along the LoC in Sunderbani sector. Pakistani troops have violated the ceasefire over 110 times along the LoC since January. In 2018, Pakistan had violated ceasefire 2,936 times, the highest number of ceasefire violations by the Pakistani troops in the last 15 years. With peace and prosperity of India and Indians in mind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday sent out their Holi greetings. Underlining how Holi paints a single shade of unity across the country, PM Modi wished fellow citizens the best on the occasion. "I wish every Indian on the auspicious occasion of Holi. This festival of happiness shows the colour of our unity and compassion," he wrote. President Kovind too hoped that the festival ushers in happiness in the lives of all. "Greetings and best wishes to fellow citizens in India and abroad on the auspicious occasion of Holi. The festival of colours, Holi is a celebration of spring and fraternity in our society. May it bring peace, joy and prosperity to everyones lives," he tweeted. Greetings and best wishes to fellow citizens in India and abroad on the auspicious occasion of Holi. The festival of colours, Holi is a celebration of spring and fraternity in our society. May it bring peace, joy and prosperity to everyones lives #PresidentKovind President of India (@rashtrapatibhvn) March 21, 2019 A festival of colours, Holi is celebrated across the country and elsewhere with enthusiasm. The enthusiasm that the festival brings with it has also seen celebrations in different parts of the world. Although it has traditionally been a Hindu festival, Holi is celebrated by people cutting across artificial lines of race, religion, caste and colour. SRINAGAR: Two terrorists were killed by security forces in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's Baramulla district on Thursday. Srinagar-based Defence Spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia told PTI that three Army personnel, including an officer, were injured in the encounter. "Two terrorists have been eliminated in Nambalnar operation in Kalantara area of Baramulla," he said, adding that the encounter was still on. Colonel Kalia said the injured personnel were admitted Army's 92 Base Hospital at Badamibagh Cantonment. A cordon and search operation was launched by security forces in the area after specific inputs were received about the presence of terrorists in the area. As soon as the security forces launched the operation, the terrorists opened fire on them, which started a gun battle. Meanwhile, a Station House Officer (SHO) and his security guard got injured on Thursday when a grenade was lobbed at security forces by terrorists in Warpora area of Sopore. "Both the policemen have been shifted to Srinagar for specialized treatment. The operation against the militants is going on," a police officer said. Sources said that a civilian also got injured in the encounter at Sopore. The civilian was immediately rushed to a hospital and is reported to be in stable condition. Mobile Internet service has been suspended in Sopore town as a precautionary measure. (with PTI inputs) Bollywood superstar Salman Khan on Thursday rejected reports that he is planning to contest elections, saying that he has no plan to jump into politics and is also not thinking of campaigning for any political party. "Contrary to the rumours I am not contesting elections nor campaigning for any political party," Salman said in a tweet. Contrary to the rumours I am not contesting elections nor campaigning for any political party.. Salman Khan (@BeingSalmanKhan) March 21, 2019 Speculations are rife that the Madhya Pradesh Congress is trying to get Salman to campaign for the party in Indore. It is to be noted that Salman was born in Indore. Talking to PTI, Congress spokesperson Pankaj Chaturvedi had said that Congress leaders were in touch with the Bollywood superstar to campaign for the party in Indore and it is almost certain that he will campaign for the Congress. "He spent his childhood in Indore. His grandfather was a senior police officer there," Chaturvedi added. Congress sources said that Salman is without doubt the most popular actor of Bollywood and his decision to campaign for the party will definitely prove to be a blessing for the Congress in the Lok Sabha poll. Indore is Madhya Pradesh's largest city and the Congress has not won this seat since 1989 after BJP leader Sumitra Mahajan defeated former chief minister and senior Congress member Prakash Chandra Sethi. Mahajan is an eight-time MP and is currently the speaker of Lok Sabha. It may be recalled that in 2009, Salman had campaigned for Congress' Indore mayoral candidate Pankaj Sanghavi but even his campaigning failed to stop BJP leader Krishna Murari Moghe from defeating Sanghavi. Salman also posted a tweet urging citizens to vote in the Lok Sabha election. We are a democracy and it is every Indian's right to vote. I urge every eligible Indian to exercise your right and participate in making the government, he wrote. We are a democracy and it is every Indian's right to vote. I urge every eligible Indian to exercise your right and participate in making the Government. https://t.co/WsTdJ3w84O Salman Khan (@BeingSalmanKhan) March 21, 2019 The tweet posted by Salman on Thursday was in response to an earlier message from Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had asked Salman and Aamir Khan asking them to use their mass appeal to inspire the citizens to participate in upcoming Lok Sabha poll. (with PTI inputs) Kalraj Mishra, a senior BJP leader and MP from UP's Deoria, announced on Thursday that he won't contest the upcoming Lok Sabha election. Choosing to focus on responsibilities given to him by his party, Mishra told news agency ANI that he won't fight the election. "I will not contest elections this time, I have been given a lot of other responsibilities by the party so my time will be devoted to that," he said. Speaking to Zee News, Mishra said that he has already informed the party leadership of his decision, adding that he expects the BJP to win the election with ease. "BJP should have no trouble winning, especially in Uttar Pradesh. The entry of Priyanka (Gandhi Vadra) will have no benefit for Congress and the party will be rejected once again by people at large." A seasoned politician and a veteran in the BJP, Mishra had defeated Bahujan Samaj Party's Niyaj Ahmad in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. He had received 4,96,500 votes at the time, scripting his win by a margin of over 2.65 lakh votes. Mishra, 77, was appointed the Union Minister of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises after Narendra Modi took oath as Prime Minister but he resigned in September 2017. This was before a cabinet reshuffle even though he said this had nothing to do with his decision to resign. He even claimed that when he met PM Narendra Modi to give his resignation, his performance was appreciated. Fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi was arrested in London on Wednesday but it hardly impressed opposition leaders who questioned its timing. A few like Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress and Congress' Ghulam Nabi Azad even said that the arrest was made keeping the upcoming Lok Sabha election in mind. Although the Enforcement Directorate has been working overtime to ensure Nirav, who fled to London in January of 2018, is brought to the book, several opposition leaders have accused the government of having allowed him to escape. One of the main accused in the Rs 13,000 crore PNB loan scam, Nirav has turned into a political pawn of sorts in a battle between BJP and rival parties. His arrest has only inflamed the war of words. "This is a ploy of the BJP. The credit must go to the London Telegraph journalist who exposed Nirav Modi. It is a got-up match. No credit goes to the BJP government," Mamata told reporters on Wednesday. Azad too was scathing in how he viewed Nirav's arrest in London. "The BJP helped him flee the country, now they are bringing him back. They are bringing him back for the elections and will send him back after elections," he told news agency ANI. And while these opposition leaders are questioning the timing of Nirav's arrest, many of them had asked about what the government is doing to bring him back. Even after a warrant was issued against Vijay Mallya, another fugitive businessman who fled to London, they had questioned the government over Nirav. Now that Nirav has been arrested and the move to bring him back to India is likely to gather pace, the timing is being seen as rather dubious by opposition leaders. The BJP, however, does not appear to be taking accusations from opposition leaders to heart. Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Hardeep Singh Puri hailed the arrest of Nirav and said that it was a major achievement for the Narendra Modi-led government. PM Modi himself had said in an interview that economic offenders who have fled the country will be brought back in due course of time. Nirav may not be extradited to India anytime soon but his arrest comes as a major development in the case 14 months after he had fled. His bail application has been denied by a UK court and he has been remanded to police custody. The next date of hearing in the case is on March 29. Egyptian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Khaled Tharwat made the remark at a talk with Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Quoc Cuong who paid a two-day visit to Egypt from March 18. Tharwat hailed Vietnams socio-economic achievements as well as the nations roles in the regional and international arenas, and reiterated that Egypt supports Vietnams candidacy as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2020-2021 tenure. He expressed his hope for closer collaboration with Vietnam at regional forums and the UN. Cuong, for his part, congratulated Egypt on taking the chairmanship of the African Union (AU), asking the country to back Vietnam in the process of establishing ties with the AU in the coming time. Vietnam is willing to assist Egypt and the AU in fostering relations with the ASEAN bloc on the principle of consensus, the Vietnamese Deputy FM stressed. Regarding measures to promote result-oriented partnership between the two countries, both diplomats agreed that ministries, sectors and localities should enhance delegation exchanges and mutual understanding. Besides, priority must be given to the implementation of the signed agreements, including the deal on purchasing rice from Vietnam and the cooperation agreement between Ninh Binh province and Luxor province. The Egyptian side informed that they will give more scholarships to Vietnamese students to study the Arab language in Egypt. Members of the anti-violence group Rio de Paz hold signs and march during an event honoring 13-year-old Maria Eduarda Alves, killed during a police operation in 201. On March, 20, 2019, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. EPA-EFE / Antonio Lacerda New Delhi: Giving out all the colourful festive vibes, Google, on Thursday, dedicated its doodle to the festival of Holi celebrated across India. Splashing colours, music, food and lots of happiness, the Doodle, designed by Chennai-based artist Chaaya Prabhat, features everything that Holi stands for. Also known as the festival of colours, Holi marks the end of winter and beginning of spring season. While it is predominantly celebrated in India and Nepal, the festival, these days, is widely celebrated in other Asian and Western countries owing to the presence of Indian diaspora in these regions.Celebrations begin a night before with Holika Dahan, wherein people perform religious rituals in front of a bonfire and pray for the destruction of evil, just the way Holika, the sister of the demon king Hiranyakashipu, was killed in the fire. On the day of Holi, people smear each other with colours and hurl water balloons at one another. People are often seen engaging in celebratory dance to the beat of drums, thus furthering the spirit of togetherness. Festivities also include some lip-smacking sweets and savouries, as well as bhang- a customary drink made from cannabis.Be it Indian festivals or birth anniversaries of prominent figures of the country, Google Doodle has been consistent in marking the making significant days in the country by dedicating India-specific doodles in past. Washington: US President Donald Trump has attacked the late Senator John McCain, complaining that he "didn`t get a thank you" for his state funeral. "We sent him on the way, but I wasn`t a fan of John McCain," the President said during a visit to an Ohio tank factory, the BBC reported on Wednesday. Trump has repeatedly assailed the late Arizona senator in recent days, reigniting a feud that dates back to before his presidency. The Vietnam War veteran died of brain cancer last August at the age of 81. During his visit on Wednesday to the tank factory in Lima, Ohio, the president renewed his assault on McCain. "I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve," he told workers at the factory. "I don`t care about this, I didn`t get a thank you. That`s OK." Trump approved the military flight of McCain`s remains from Arizona to Washington, but it was Congress that accorded the late senator the honour of lying in state. The US president said McCain "didn`t get the job done for our great vets and the VA" by refusing to repeal Obamacare and attacked him for "a war in the Middle East", in reference to the senator`s support for the Iraq War. "Not my kind of guy," the president said. "But some people like him and I think that`s great." The president revived his spat with McCain on Saturday by tweeting that the late senator had backed the so-called Steele dossier, an unverified 2016 document by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, claiming ties between Trump and the Kremlin. On Sunday, Trump went after McCain again, saying the "last in his class" senator had sent "the Fake Dossier to the FBI". Asked by a reporter about his attacks while hosting the Brazilian president at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said: "I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be." Trump has regularly clashed with McCain going back to his presidential campaign. The college is currently looking for a new dean to take over the workforce programming. BCC Restructuring Workforce Development Offerings PITTSFIELD, Mass. Berkshire Community College is restructuring its workforce development arm. The college is currently looking for a new dean who will be in charge of bringing the community education and workforce development programming under the oversight of traditional academic programming. The rest of the staff, minus an administrative assistant, will be let go at the start of the fiscal year and the new dean will determine how the non-credit course work will be administered in the future. "We want to better align our credit and non-credit offerings. Generally, at BCC, our credit programs have been in academic divisions and our non-credit programs have been in the workforce arm. While that served well for a time, right now the way people are hired and the way higher education is, it is much more advantageous to have non-credit and credit be administrated and thought about in the same ways," Vice President of Academic Affairs Jennifer Berne said. The concept is hoped to strengthen the non-credit programs. Right now the college offers a wide range of non-credit courses, workshops, training, and camps that residents in the community or employees of businesses can take at a reduced cost. But those courses don't count toward a degree. "It was much more flexible. We charged students differently, they didn't have to become part of the college, didn't have to fill out an application," Berne said. The administration of all of those offerings was independent of the academic side and the dean of workforce reported directly to the president. Now the new dean will have the community education and workforce piece as part of their academic duties, which Berne hopes will align those credit offerings much closer to academic programs. "An academic dean is going to have a different eye on programming. They are going to think about our faculty and how our faculty can be helpful in delivering these type of programs. They will think about seeking out faculty that we don't have in the ways that we seek out credit faculty. It is really moving the administration," Berne said. For those taking those courses, Berne said there won't be any difference when it comes to registering for courses or training. But the move will likely reduce the slate of non-credit offerings at the college. "We are going to be able to offer different opportunities that we hadn't offered in the past. Because of that, we may stop offering some opportunities we have offered in the past," Berne said. The college tends to create a large list of non-credit offerings and only the ones that have enough people enrolled move forward. Berne said the college will hone in on the programs that have the biggest needs -- specifically looking to build the new course load around the Berkshire Blueprint's goals of supporting the largest economic sectors in the Berkshires. For example, Berne said the college has a new non-credit culinary program that has already gotten a lot of interest. She envisions being able to put more resources toward programs like that instead of running a number of less popular classes or courses that could be served by online vendors without BCC being involved. "We really want to inspect our non-credit offerings in the same rigorous way we inspect our credit offerings. We want to make sure we equip the high quality faculty in both with everything they need and that they have support for curriculum building," Berne said. Berne said the change was somewhat driven by needs in academic programming, leadership attending conferences about bringing best practices in credit to the non-credit side, and handling a reduction in resources and population. She said the hope is to become more strategic with the workforce development aspects. "We started to have a concern that our credit and non-credit programs were too much removed from one another. That was their initial impetus for thinking about a new way to do it," she said. "We need to focus more carefully on the needs of our community and our students." She added that the college will look for ways to further integrate the different types of students. "We know we will be able to create opportunities for students to come in as non-credit and move over the credit and also to come in as credit and see some non-credit offerings that may support their growth," Berne said. The new dean is expected to be brought on prior to July 1 and programs are set to continue through the summer. By the fall, the college will likely temporarily halt some of the non-credit offerings, eliminate some, and start new ones. "This is a person who will have a background in academics and a background in community workforce development. It is an unusual position so we are excited to find somebody who fits that," Berne said. Mount Greylock students attend a career fair on Wednesday morning featuring a number of graduates of the high school. PreviousNext Mount Greylock Students Attend Career Fair WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. From firefighters to financiers, a wide range of options were laid out to Mount Greylock Regional School students on Wednesday morning. And while the vocations presented in a career fair in the schools cafeteria offered a variety of choices, the role models tended to have one thing in common. "Almost everyone who is here presenting was a student here at Mount Greylock," Mount Greylock teacher Lisa Mendel said. Mendel organized the fair with the help of a grant from the Berkshire Workforce Development Board. The event, geared to freshmen, sophomores and juniors, brought bankers, first-responders, contractors, cooks and health-care providers to the school to talk about their professions and answer questions from the students. It was the first time in about five years that the school has hosted such an event, Mendel said. To ensure that the students circulated throughout the fair, they were asked to collect stickers from each of the presenters they talked to on a form that the kids then entered into a raffle if they met at least 10 of the visitors. But other than ensuring that the students did not stay too long in any one spot, the incentive of a raffle hardly seemed necessary. The students seemed engaged and inquisitive. And while ninth- through 10th-graders were the target audience, a few seniors found their way to the cafeteria for the event. The presenters were chosen in collaboration with the schools guidance department to make sure the students were exposed to a variety of perspectives. And Mendel had no trouble recruiting the professionals to come and share their time. "A lot of them are [former students] Ive remained friendly with and kept in touch with," Mendel said. "They were all so excited to come because theyve been in these kids seats." 'Transit': As in, Letters of ... One has to be either a fool or a complicit coward not to recognize the mercilessness regularly perpetrated on humankind by immoral governments and their tyrannical leaders. Equally clueless are those who don't realize that the worldwide, mass immigration being used as a scapegoat by said guilty-as-sin autocrats is in essence a product of their regimes' greed, racism and ineptness. Ever notice that the really bad guys are never ever wrong? While Rick in "Casablanca" (1942) occasionally confesses to a lack of judgement, you'll never hear good Nazi Major Strasser admitting a mistake. Civics Lesson No. 1: Rick is good; Major Strasser is bad. What all this has to do with "Transit," adapted by director Christian Petzold from Anna Seghers' 1942 novel, is just about everything, albeit in an artistic, symbolic, poly-metaphorical way. Read the plot synopsis and it seems rather clear-cut: A man fleeing France from the invading Germans assumes, at first unintentionally, the identity of a dead author whose wife he falls in love with upon their chance meeting. She doesn't know her husband is dead. However, in weaving his muckraking tale of turmoil and inhumanity in the world of borders, checkpoints and provincialism, leave it to Petzold to invariably take the more obscure path. Perhaps it's his form of audio-visual touch-n-feel in an attempt to make us appreciate the uncaring horror inflicted on those caught in the vice of tyrants playing at government. And just to make it a little more murky in an arthouse sort of way, especially for those watching it stateside with subtitles, while Seghers' story takes place in the 1940s, when the Nazis are indeed invading and occupying France, Petzold asserts a current poignancy by setting it in the present day. To further complicate matters, subtitles or not, you can't help but feel a tad disoriented by actors speaking German playing the French people who are being forced to flee from the Nazis who would "cleanse" them. We are tossed headlong into the discomfort of the protagonist, Georg, ably played by Franz Rogowski, an everyman attempting to find some sort of mental and physical terra firma on which to stand in this never-ending upshot of a Babel toppled for its overweening vanity. Marie (Paula Beer), the starry-eyed wife who simply won't believe that her famous writer spouse is dead, co-represents the face of immigrants. They weren't born immigrants with DNA denoting that, but flung into it, putting a face on it. In short, people just like you and me. They once went to work, watched TV at night, rooted for Bernie at the little league game on Saturday and agonized about not being able to find a good, honest handyman. Now someone wants to see their letters of transit, and more often worse. The film is a refresher course in what goes on if we blink too long and miss the signs alerting us to a democracy in jeopardy. Sadly, I know the story only too well, not because I am astute, but because I have been around for a while and those ignominious powers that be rarely take a break from their blatant attempts to evaporate our freedom. They are the bully in the playground who grew up without benefit of a life-changing epiphany. This isn't happy viewing. Still, while it would be more enjoyable were I a college sophomore parsing the recently screened film in a coffee shop with my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed cohorts, and planning how we will change the world, I'm grateful the discussion is still in progress. Granted, it is esoterically embroidered. Yet even after we're confident that "Transit" is like something Aesop may have written were he determined to challenge the wiles and wherefores of contemporary totalitarianism, we're still at a bit of a loss. You can't help but feel that there is yet another cryptic element of human psychology to be deciphered, that there is a gene in some folks that not only precludes them from calling out obvious tyrants, but actually causes them to vociferously side with them. Organisms in good health move toward pleasure and away from pain. Thus, one needn't be Dr. Freud to understand that any aberration thereof is, well, aberrant, and in human beings specifically, downright unsociable. Plopped atop all this high-minded contemplation, director Petzold submits a mini thesis on bravery and sacrifice in the face of world upheaval. And, proving that brilliant minds do indeed think alike, one should note that while the windup in "Transit" bears heroic similarities to "Casablanca," the two stories were written at about the same time. Both are primers of civic-mindedness that essentially ask, would that candidate you're about to vote for give up his or her letters of transit so that Victor Laszlo and Ilsa could continue their fight for freedom? "Transit," not rated, is a Music Box Films release directed by Christian Petzold and stars Franz Rogowski, Paula Beer and Godehard Giese. Running time: 101 minutes Israeli Security Forces Take Down Terrorist Murderer Stand for Israel | March 21, 2019 Following a deadly attack Sunday that left two dead and another injured, Israeli security forces searched for and killed the terrorist responsible for the murders. Killed in the attack were Rabbi Achiad Ettinger, a Tel Aviv rabbi and father of 12, and 19-year-old Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier Gal Keidan. A third victim of the terrorist attack, 19-year-old IDF soldier Alexander Dvorsky, underwent surgery this week for his injuries and remains in serious condition. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in a joint news conference focusing on Iranian influence in the Middle East. Netanyahu will travel to the U.S. next week to meet with President Trump. In the wake of two rockets being fired at Tel Aviv last week, Fellowship President Yael Eckstein wrote for FoxNews.com about how Israeli mothers have less than 90 seconds to get their children into a bomb shelter during such attacks. Recent reports indicate that six more Hezbollah tunnels have been discovered in southern Lebanon, two of which have crossed into Israeli territory. This weeks Israel in the News Perspective features the Fellowships Yonit Rothchild on the ongoing threat of anti-Semitism ROME, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Tuesday that r cooperation with China within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is in line with Italy's national interests. "Our economic and trade focus (on the BRI) and on China is fully legitimate and justified in light of our national interests," Conte told lawmakers ahead of a European Union (EU) summit on March 21-22, whose agenda includes discussions on cooperation with China. "We will boost our exports toward an enormous market; our businesses will get the chance to participate directly in new and significant infrastructural investments," added the prime minister. In addition, "our peninsula, our ports and trade hubs, will not be bypassed ... but will enjoy the economic advantages" created by the BRI trade routes from China, he said. Conte confirmed that he will attend the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation scheduled for April in Beijing. Attending the forum, he said, "will give me a chance to promote the Italian and European vision on the BRI, in a spirit of collaboration with Beijing." Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to Italy on Thursday for the first state visit by a Chinese head of state to the European country in 10 years. During the visit, the two countries will, among others, strengthen practical cooperation in various areas within the BRI framework, said the Chinese Foreign Ministry prior to the trip, which comes amid growing anticipation that the two sides might ink a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on BRI cooperation. Conte said that the possible signing of a MoU is not a challenge to Italy's Western alliances. The MoU "is strictly concerned with economic and trade matters, and does not in any way call into question our Euro-Atlantic placement," Conte said. China has said that the Belt and Road Initiative is designed to promote common development and follows the "golden rule" of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. African-Americans in Indiana have a 12 percent higher incidence rate and a 38 percent higher mortality rate from colon cancer than whites, according to Hoosier Cancer Research Network. March is Colon Cancer Awareness Month, and health care providers want to spread the message that early detection through screenings is key to preventing death from this highly treatable form of cancer, said Dr. Ruemu Birhiray, an oncologist with St. Vincent. According to the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, doctors diagnose 137,000 people with colon cancer a year, and the disease kills 50,000 annually, making it the second most widespread cancer that affects both men and women behind lung cancer. If found and treated early, theres a 90 percent chance of curing colon cancer, Birhiray said. Chances of successfully treating colon cancer decrease when it spreads to the lymph nodes. Oncologists can limit further spreading with chemotherapy, but the likelihood of remission still drops to 50 percent. If the cancer remains undetected long enough to spread from lymph nodes into organs, it may be incurable at that point, Birhiray said. Chemotherapy and surgery may help, but the chance of surviving five years after colon cancer metastasized to an organ is around 20 percent. The best way to prevent fatal colon cancer is to undergo frequent tests, allowing doctors to catch it while it is still treatable. According to data from the Indiana State Department of Health, the number of colon cancer diagnoses decreased since the 1980s. Experts attribute this decline to better testing technology. Birhiray recommended people get checked every five to 10 years starting at age 40 for colon cancer. The previous recommendation was age 50, but the average age patients were being diagnosed with colon cancer decreased, resulting in a change in recommendation. Those with a family history of colon cancer should be tested earlier and more frequently, Birhiray said. However, Hoosiers too often neglect testing. Indiana has a 63 percent colon cancer screening rate for adults age 50 and older, placing Indiana in the bottom fourth of all states and as the second lowest Midwestern state behind Illinois, according to data from American Cancer Societys Colorectal Cancer Facts & Figures 2017-2019. From a general awareness standpoint, it reflects that we need to do a better job informing the public about the failure of screening, about the risks of not being screened, Randy Dillinger, director of public relations and communications at Hoosier Cancer Research Network, said. Dillinger believes the best way to encourage people to get tested is encouragement from friends and loved ones. For those undergoing colon cancer treatment, Dillinger recommends patients speak to their doctor about clinical trials. They are going to receive the best treatment possible, Dillinger said. Theyre getting nothing less than what is considered the standard treatment, the best treatment available. As part of that study, theyre going to be closely monitored. I dont think you could find another scenario where theyre going to receive better care then when theyre on a clinical trial. Contact staff writer Ben Lashar at 317-762-7848. Follow him on Twitter @BenjaminLashar. In addition to screenings for colon cancer, there are a number of other health screenings recommended for people depending on their age and gender. St. Vincent provided the following recommendations: Women in their 20s: Get annual exam and discuss family health history with your doctor. Women in their 30s: Start co-testing for cervical cancer (Pap smear plus HPV test). Continue clinical breast exams. Women in their 40s: Get first mammogram and then get them every one or two years. Undergo a colorectal (colon) screenings. Consider doing the procedure earlier if you have a family history of colon cancer. Women in their 60s: Undergo the Welcome to Medicare Preventive Visit, which is free if you are eligible through Medicare. Men ages 18 to 39: Undergo a skin cancer screening and ask you doctor if they would recommend routine visits. Men in their 40s and 50s: Talk to your doctor about whether you need a digital rectal exam and a prostate-specific antigen test to check for prostate cancer. Undergo a colorectal (colon screenings. Consider doing the procedure earlier if you have a family history of colon cancer. Undergo a lung cancer test and repeat early if you are a current smoker or quit within the last 15 years. Chinese President Xi Jinping met with president of Harvard University Lawrence Bacow in Beijing Wednesday and expressed the hope that Sino-U.S. cultural and people-to-people exchanges could produce more positive results. Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with president of Harvard University Lawrence Bacow at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 20, 2019. [Photo: Xinhua] Noting that this is Bacow first overseas visit after taking office, Xi said the tour showcases the importance attached by Bacow to Sino-U.S. education exchanges. Xi said education exchanges and cooperation are an important part of Sino-U.S. relations and help enhance the public opinion of the bilateral friendship. China advocates mutual learning, encourages Chinese students to study abroad and supports education exchanges and cooperation with other countries. Xi said that he felt very happy that U.S. President Donald Trump also expressed support for bilateral cultural and people-to-people exchanges and cooperation in their meeting in Argentina at the end of last year. Xi stressed that over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China's rapid development has also benefited from the improvement of education. China is committed to advancing the modernization of education and making its education system satisfying for its people. "We will expand the opening up of education, strengthen exchanges and experiences sharing with countries around the world, and jointly promote the development of education," said Xi, expressing the willingness to conduct more extensive exchanges and cooperation with U.S. educational and research institutions such as Harvard University. Bacow said he is visiting not only as the president of Harvard University but also as a representative of U.S. universities to promote education exchanges with China. He said maintaining and deepening exchanges and cooperation between the two countries' education and cultural institutions is crucial to promoting U.S.-China relations in the long run. Hailing the popularity of the Chinese language at Harvard, Bacow boasted that Harvard has a large number of Chinese students. Bacow said it is admirable that the Chinese government attaches great importance to higher education and makes huge efforts in this regard, noting that Harvard will continue to promote exchanges and cooperation with Chinese educational and scientific research institutions. The Senate President, Olubukola Saraki, has said that the victory of the ruling All Progressive Congress(APC) at the just concluded general elections would be short-lived. He made this remark today, March 20th, during the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) National Executive Committee(NEC) meeting at the Parts secretariat, Abuja. Nigerians in their reactions have fired heavy shots at him saying that he is long due for retirement. Reactions: And his defeat will be long lived Abdulazeez Abdullahi (@Promxeey) March 20, 2019 Absence of shame! You lost your constituency, your state, etc! Leaders bereft of Patriotism resort to BlackMail AgainstSelf ibe okpokwu (@ibeokpokwu) March 20, 2019 Senator Shehu Sani, representing Kaduna Central has been granted access to inspect elections materials used during the February 23 National Assembly elections in his constituency. Justice A. H. Suleiman who is the Chairman of Kaduna States National and State Houses of Assembly Election Petition Tribunal granted Senator Sanis request to inspect the INEC collation result sheets for Kaduna Central Senatorial district The decision followed a motion filed by Shehu Sani and the Peoples Redemption Party, PRP seeking access to INECs election materials. In the application, Senator Sani asked the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to make results sheets and incident forms available for inspection. Shehu Sani challenged the outcome of the February 23 Senatorial election in Kaduna Central. Senate President, Bukola Saraki has said that President Muhammadu Buharis reelection victory would be short-lived. The senate president said this, while speaking at the opening session of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting on Wednesday in Abuja. Saraki, the election revealed the true character of the PDP and that they must build on it. See full statement below First of all, the true reflection of the presidential election showed the kind of character that the PDP has. I think that is something that we should build on. My own appeal to everybody is to say this victory that the other party has seen is going to be short-lived. We have a great future ahead and I believe we will start that on Saturday, to make sure that we defend those five states that are declared inconclusive. If anybody believes that it is a loss to PDP, it is a loss to the country that history will not forgive. We said many times here, that the worst to do is to do an election that as a country, Nigeria will not be proud of. We have done an election that no doubt anybody and even those that think they have won are ashamed of the kind of election we did. I think it is a shame to the country and those that were given that reponsiblity to do. We are setting a bad example not only in Nigeria but in the continent, when we bring militriasation into our election. Two members of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC was on Thursday, gruesomely killed by cultists in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, while on a robbery operation, with one grappling with his life in Intensive Care Unit. The residence of the corps along the School Road in Swali, were reportedly attacked by the armed robbers, shooting three of them but two of the victims were confirmed dead at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Yenagoa. The third corper is said to be fatally injured in ICU. According to reports, the activities of the robbers have become intense, occurring frequently, with security personnel unable to do anything. Frustrated residents of the small town Yenagoa have expressed their sadness and pains at being at the mercy of armed robbers and cultists, who do to them, what the will, according to the Nation. It is also important to note that Yenegoa has headquarters of the 16th Brigade of the Nigerian Army, Central Naval Command of the Nigerian Navy, Mobility Command of the Airforce, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), the Joint Task Force, Operation Delta Safe (ODS), the police, the DSS and other security agencies, lawlessness is the other of the day. Popoola Oluwatobi Olamide(30), an Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) graduate, George Onokpoma and Gbenga Dada. Popoola was said to have been instantly killed, Onokpoma died at the FMC and Gbenga is battling for his life in the hospital. He said: We heard gunshots from the direction of the corps members room. One of the attacked corps members was heard screaming repeatedly and asking what was their crime. Another gunshot sounded and there was silence, a neighbour said. We are saddened by this incident. The deceased corps members were quiet and easy-going individuals. They hardly kept late night. They were always sitting at their doorpost whenever there was power outage, another neighbour said. The federal government has urged Nigerians to disregard reports, that it has stopped the Trader Moni scheme, upon winning the election. According to Olaoluwa Akande, media aide to vice Yemi Osinbajo on Wednesday, about 30,000 new loans have been given across ten states since after the February 23rd, presidential election. He stated also that the Buhari led government is so committed to the scheme, that there 10 million Nigerian petty traders would benefit, in the next four years. Full statement below President Muhmad Buhari has promised that during his second term in office, he will carry everyone along. In a statement released by Garba Shehu, Senior Special Assistant on Media and publicity, President promised to run a transparent government policies that will guarantee security and economic safety of every citizen and an all inclusive government. President Buhari made this commitment when he received a delegation of the Nigerian Union of Journalists led by Mr Chris Isiguzo at the State House, Abuja on Thursday. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has said that the cases of inconclusive elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in the last election is a dangerous and unacceptable precedence in our political history. According to Dogara, it was even more alarming that the spate of inconclusive elections was under the watch of a first class professor of history, Prof Mahmood Yakubu. Elections inconclusive in at least six states, were declared inconclusive by INEC, whipping up sentiments among Nigerians. While addressing a national executive council meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Abuja, on Wednesday, Dogara described the situation as pure evil. His words: It will be very, very unfortunate that INEC, which is led by a first class professor of history, will set this dangerous and unacceptable precedence in our political history. What has happened is pure evil. Our consolation as faithful members of this society is that evil does not last forever and no evil doer has ever escaped punishment. it is a law of nature, that whatever you sow is what you will reap. For those who believe in power for the sake of power and not because they want to empower people, not because they want to better the lives of our People, there are also lessons they can learn from history. History is replete with examples of all those who pursued power for the sake of power. Whether it is Hitler, I dont want to name more, one example is enough. Their lives have always ended up in some tragedy, that is the fate of anyone that seeks power for the sake of power. We have seen that displayed in Nigeria and I wish we can take heed from the lessons of history. Former Governor of Lagos state and the current Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Fashola, has said that injuries and avoidable accidents that occur on highways are not always due to bad roads as claimed by many Nigerian road users. He cited that most of these accidents are caused by over speeding and recklessness of the driver. Nigerians who are known for having zero chills have been on social media sending heavy missiles at him for making such comment. Reactions: Fashola haa finally gone mad fred vargas (@fredvargas4) March 21, 2019 https://twitter.com/hugo22return/status/1108721490638323712 See what is coming out of fashola's mouth, truly the mighty are falling under Buhari, so sad. Olu Sage (@mideloxine) March 21, 2019 https://twitter.com/iamjubal_theo/status/1108724470615887872 Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday urged solid efforts to complete the development target and tasks set for this year, according to a State Council executive meeting. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang chairs a plenary meeting of the State Council which discusses a draft version of the government work report and analyzes economic work in the first quarter of 2019 in Beijing on January 14, 2019. [File photo: gov.cn] Government departments should introduce detailed measures as soon as possible to accomplish key tasks including deepening reform and opening-up, streamlining administration and cutting taxes and fees, according to a document issued after the meeting. The meeting, chaired by the premier, stressed the implementation of policies and work plans that were previously made and called for the efficient allocation of funds to support the policies. The meeting clarified measures to reduce the value-added taxes, decided to extend some tax incentives that were due, and announced tax breaks to firms with expenditures on poverty alleviation and pollution control. From Jan. 1, 2019 to the end of 2022, company spendings on donations to specific impoverished regions will be deducted from its taxable income, the document said. From Jan. 1, 2019 to the end of 2021, corporate income tax rate for third party pollution prevention and control companies will be reduced to 15 percent, according to the document. The All Progressives Congress (APC), has said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar have slipped into post-election depression. APC said this, while reacting to claims by PDP, that it won the presidential election with over 1.6m votes. In a statement by the ruling party via its publicity secretary, Lanre Issa-Onilu, on Wednesday, it describes PDPs claim as simply ridiculous and delusional. PDP and Atiku, in a petition filed to the presidential election tribunal in Abuja on Monday, said it defeat President Muhammadu Buhari with about 1.6 million votes in the just concluded presidential election. The party claimed the real result from the polls, was revealed to it by the computer server of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Meanwhile, in the result announced by INEC, while declaring Buhari the winner of the polls, the president scored 15,191,847 while Atiku got 11,262,978 votes. However in its Wednesday statement, APC said: Judging by Atiku and PDPs recent utterances and actions, it is now clear that they have slipped into severe depression and post-defeat hallucination that have left many Nigerians questioning their current state of mind, the APC said through its spokesperson. The most ridiculous is his claim that the server of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) indicated he won the Presidential Election by 1.6million votes. Indeed, Atikus constant reference to the INEC server should raise concerns as it is becoming apparent that he and the PDP are up for some dastardly activities that are targeted at jeopardizing the INEC database and internal storage system. Therefore, urged INEC to be alert to the devious schemes aimed at thwarting their will and consequently, the majority of the voters handed them a harsh verdict which remains sacrosanct. Oral care advocate, Pepsodent and the Nigerian Dental Association (NDA) have initiated dental outreaches in Lagos schools and markets and a dedicated, toll-free oral care support system- Call A Dentist to commemorate 2019 World Oral Health Day. The programmes are key components of the Pepsodent oral care mission in partnership with NDA, World Dental Federation, FDI, federal and state ministries of health. Call A Dentist enables citizens to talk to a dentist free of charges on oral health issues through a dedicated line 08073776338. The programme runs till March 31. The school and market outreaches are aimed at getting children and adults to appreciate and understand the importance of oral hygiene. Also, 2,000 school children joined the Unilever Nigeria team, owners of the Pepsodent brand, celebrity, Adunni Ade, government officials, and health institutions at Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos to observe the significant day set aside to raise global awareness and demonstrate the importance of optimal oral health in maintaining general health and well-being. Commenting on Pepsodents contributions to global awareness on oral care, Corporate Affairs and Sustainable Business Director, Unilever Nigeria and Ghana, Soromidayo George said: As the official global partner of the World Oral Health Day, Pepsodent has been consistent in raising awareness about the benefits of good oral hygiene and the prevalence of tooth decay (a disease that is preventable), not only in Nigeria but globally. We are committed to helping children and adults manage their oral hygiene to forestall absence from school, work and socialising. We have communicated this effectively in the days leading to the World Oral Health Day. We will forge ahead in this direction throughout the year. Speaking at the event, President, Nigerian Dental Association (NDA), Dr Evelyn Eshikena stated, The theme for this year 2019 celebrations: Say Ahh!.Act On Mouth Health, motivates all children, adults and the government to take tangible action towards oral health. Poor oral health can negatively affect a childs confidence, social skills as well as the potential for success later in life. Oral health is, therefore, essential to a childs general health and well-being. Dr Eshikena added, We need to encourage children to brush their teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste and help them avoid foods and drinks high in sugars. We also need to prioritize regular dental checkups. The Nigerian Dental Association is grateful and appreciates Unilever Nigeria Plc for their commitment and continuous support as Nigeria participates in the brush day and night project towards the actualization of optimum oral health for all Nigerians. Emphasizing the roles children play in promoting oral care messages, Category Manager (Oral Care), Unilever Nigeria, Toluwaleke Salu noted, Children are change agents. They are naturally blessed with the potential to drive behavioural change among those close to them their parents and peers. They are influential to the Pepsodent Brush Day and Night Schools Program, a 21- day behavioural change campaign that encourages regular brushing, day and night and transfer of this message to their parents and friends. Whilst commending Unilever Nigeria for its oral care efforts, Head Dentistry Division, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr Bola Alonge urged children and parents to prioritize regular brushing to ensure general health. The Federal Ministry of Health is proud to associate with Unilever Nigeria PLC, makers of Pepsodent fluoride toothpaste for sustaining efforts at making citizens appreciate oral hygiene. It is crucial to urge children and parents to give importance to regular brushing, twice a day morning and before bedtime. Regular brushing forestalls oral diseases and ensures good health. 2,000 school children joined the Unilever Nigeria team, owners of the Pepsodent brand, celebrity, Adunni Ade, government officials, and health institutions at Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos to observe the significant day set aside to raise global awareness and demonstrate the importance of optimal oral health in maintaining general health and well-being. Free dental outreaches to markets and schools across Lagos were equally facilitated by Pepsodent and the Nigerian Dental Association. World Oral Health Day (WOHD) is celebrated globally every year on 20 March. The wife of the Kaduna state governor, Mrs Hadiza Isma El-Rufai has expressed excitement about how fresh her husband, Nasir El-Rufai now looks, upon returning from his vacation. The governor had taken a short vacation, shortly after winning the 2019 governorship election in the state, that he will see him, lead the state for another four years. While on his vacation, there were rumours and speculations that the governor had fallen into coma, after a terrible auto-crash, that left his driver dead. However, the governor retuned back from his trip, a day ago, looking relaxed and fresh, according to his wife. Taking to social media on Thursday afternoon, Mrs El-Rufai joked that her husband has been substitutes with a fresher and more relaxed one. She wrote: Hey KD people, I need your help. I know you wont believe me, but theyve definitely substituted my husband. The one they returned to me is too fresh and relaxed. Nollywood actress Tonto Dikeh is busy throwing shade at whom many believe to be her ex-husband, Churchill Oladunni Olakunle via her IG page. The mom of one took to her Instastory to share several cryptic posts which included the statement A worthless man is always a worthless man This is coming after Olakune slammed claims he squatted at her place when they first started dating. In his words; You mean squatting? This is ridiculous. Before I met the Nollywood actress, Tonto Dikeh, I was already one of the most successful young millionaires in Africa. I met her at a nightclub, during my brothers birthday party in 2014 and it was about the same time I acquired the latest Benz cars. Three months after we met, she got pregnant. I have never really stayed in Nigeria for too long, because I do business in Ghana, although I have an office at Ikoyi. She visited me in Ghana several times and when she broke the news of her pregnancy three months into the relationship, I decided to visit her in Nigeria. I had to visit her often, because she was carrying my child. I have never squatted or lived with her and the only time we stayed together was after the birth of my son, which came with the approval of her parents, after I had completely satisfied the traditional requirements for her dowry. I flew her to the United States to deliver my child in one of the best hospitals in America. She stayed at my family house in London few months after delivery, before she returned to Nigeria. On her arrival, I had already prepared a well-furnished exquisite apartment for us this was the first and only times we lived together until the divorce. We only lived together for six months. Still on the issue of squatting, it will interest you to know that Tonto will never marry or date a man who lacks prospects or is unsuccessful. She likes to live the life. We broke up in 2016 at a house I newly acquired for my mother in Lekki, Lagos State. Our marriage was plagued with several frivolous claims of falsity, ranging from domestic violence to false allegations and all what not. I never laid my hands on her. I have never done that in my life before. She made up those things to discredit my philanthropic works. I am from a proper disciplined Yoruba home. Betty Irabor, the founder of Genevieve Magazine, has shared the story of a broke Nigerian guy who has two degrees but unemployed. She said the guy got across to her for job placement and she used her influence to secure an interview for the guy via an HR company but told the recruiting company to keep her anonymous. According to her, the HR company sent the guy an email inviting him for an interview and the guy failed to show up even after a call was put across to the guy. The guy reportedly told the HR company that he didnt apply for any job with them. Nigerians in their reactions have said it is not the guys fault. See what they said: Her tweet: A guy reached out to me..2 degrees, jobless, broke. I askd HR to invite him for interv without disclosing my identity. HR sent guy a mail; guy didnt respond. HR calld him but guy said he didnt apply for a job & didnt turn up 4 interview. Now he knows its me & wants an interv Betty Irabor (@BettyIrabor) March 20, 2019 Reactions: Someone I know got an invite for an Interview for a job he didnt apply for, we didnt hear from him for a week after going for the interview. He was kidnapped, robbed, tortured and almost killed. All his savings taken, he was dumped in a remote village. You should have told him. (@EL_GEEZZE) March 20, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js A person who has searched endlessly for a job, and has fallen victim of several job scams, (probably travelled a good distance only to realize that the job wasnt real) would be very circumspect about unsolicited job interviews. Kindly give him a Chance Ma. Deji Teye (@mydeji247) March 20, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Please dont turn your back on him. He must have assumed that the anonymous email and call were part of a scam to get money that he doesnt have. You might be unearthing a diamond employee. See how he performs at an interview. Osasu Obayiuwana (@osasuo) March 20, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Dont blame him, too many spam job scams these days. Interview him & give him the job if he merits please DJ FRiSKY (@DeejayFrisky) March 20, 2019 However, mother luck has smiled on the guy as she said she has been Interviewed afterwards. She wrote: On February 25, 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the United Kingdom (UK) had not properly decolonized its holdings in the Indian Ocean and that it needed to end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible. This ICJ litigation is part of a larger campaign by a variety of groups including the UN General Assembly (UNGA), dispossessed islanders, island nations and others to wrestle control of the Chagos Archipelago and the island of Diego Garcia (DGAR) from the UKs legal control. Even though the ruling puts the UKs colonial claims to the Chagos in doubt, it is the United States that has the most to lose since it relies upon a long term lease from the UK to support its continued occupation of DGAR an important and geographically irreplaceable base in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Virtually every media outlet that covered the case described it as a loss for the UK, although some seemed skeptical that the decision would change behavior since it was a non-binding advisory opinion. The UK Foreign Office asserted that the advisory opinion was not a decision and the defense facilities are vitally important to protect the British people, and others from terrorist threats, organized crime and piracy. Clearly, the British are putting up a stiff upper lip and not inclined to give the ICJ opinion much credence since ICJ advisory opinions are sometimes ignored by major powers The 1965 ICJ advisory opinion which forbid the actual or threatened use of nuclear weapons, and the 2004 advisory ruling condemning Israels construction of barriers on the West Bank is illegal are examples where these opinions are discounted. And, in this case, the national security interests of two powerful countries would be affected by the loss of the strategic base of DGAR. Given this, is it likely that the current decision will be regarded as interesting but legally irrelevant? Or, is this case something different and where is the US? Lastly, now that the ICJ questioned the legitimacy of continued UK sovereignty over the Chagos, is there a path forward for the UK and the US to retain their operating rights to DGAR while at the same time address the legitimate concerns expressed in the ruling? Where Does the Decision Put the UK (and US) Legally and Politically? ICJ cases cannot be understood without historical context. The forced eviction of Chagossian Islanders in 1965-1972 to make way for the US base on Diego Garcia has made its way through courts in the UK up to and including their Supreme Court an International Law of the Sea Arbitration and the European Court of Human Rights. The UK governments right to exercise sovereignty over the Chagos has survived all of this litigation, including a formal Arbitral Decision (paragraphs 490-498) that ruled in favor of Mauritius in 2015 that the UKs establishment of a Marine Protected Area (MPA) around the Islands (including DGAR) was improper. To reach the conclusion that the UK did not respect the reversionary rights of Mauritius to the Chagos, the Tribunal upheld the Landcaster Agreement that was concluded in 1965 between the UK and Colonial Administrators in Mauritius (the Chagos were part of colonial Mauritius) which carried forward once Mauritius became independent in 1968. For its part, the Tribunal criticized the UK for not living up its end of the Landcaster Agreement for not engaging in proper consultation (para 534) with Mauritius prior to establishing an MPA in 2010 and possibly for bad faith for even establishing the MPA (due to Wikkileaks cables). Fortunately for the UK, the decision by the Arbitration Panel never contested whether the UK was entitled to continued use of the Chagos (and DGAR in particular) so long as there was a valid defense purpose. Incidentally, the Tribunal never cited the UK for bad faith in establishing the MPA but there was contemporaneous press reporting in the UK that the UK had really established the MPA to block/frustrate the Chagossians return rights. Other cases in the UK Courts and the European Court of Human Rights never dealt with the sovereignty/decolonization decisions. These other actions assessed whether the former Chagossian were paid proper compensation when they were evicted and whether they had rights to resettle on the islands. The UNGA, however, was never satisfied that the UK had the right to detach the Chagos from colonial Mauritius and the UNGA (and the African Union) both issued resolutions in 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1980 and 2010 condemning the detachment as contrary to the UKs obligation to fully decolonize. Given this ongoing concern with the UKs continued retention of the Chagos, the UNGA felt obliged to get an ICJ ruling whether the UK had completed the process of decolonization of Mauritius to include the Chagos. The fact remains that India has significant and enduring ties to Mauritius and would likely be very amenable to use its good offices to broker some sort of arrangement that could either breathe new life into the Landcaster Agreement or exact specific promises from the UK. The ICJ could have followed the decision in the 2015 Arbitration and found that the UK had not fully complied with the Landcaster Agreement and then advised the UK that it had to work through the process with the UNGA and Mauritius. However, the ICJ ruled in a nearly unanimous decision that Landcaster Agreement was legally invalid in its entirety and ordered that the UK to bring its occupation to an end. This portion of the decision is interesting because it completely disregarded the findings of the UN Law of the Sea Arbitration Panel and also ignored the fact that successive Mauritian governments had ratified the Landcaster Agreement after gaining independence. The ICJ could have also ruled that the UK government needed to begin to resettle the former Chagos residents in Diego Garcia or some of the associated islands or offered them land somewhere else. But the court applied a meat cleaver to the matter and held that the UK needed to turn the Chagos over to Mauritius under the supervision of the UNGA. Where Does the Ruling Leave the UK and US? The ICJ judges are careful to say that their decision does not affect ultimate sovereignty over the Islands, although one must question how the ruling can be interpreted in any other way than an invalidation of the UKs rights to the Chagos Islands. Of course, since the United States basing rights are predicated on a long term lease through 2036, the massive US infrastructure investments in runways, hangers, tracking stations, port facilities, communications facilities, repair facilities, etc., and its ability to occupy DGAR are entirely derivative of the UKs ability to maintain its legal presence. It is wrong for Washington to simply assume that the UK government will continue to carry the water for the US. Though technically termed a Permanent Joint Operating Base, the UKs complement aboard DGAR is 40-50 military personnel while the American presence is on the order of 2500 military and civilian personnel, although the actual number is higher if one takes into account civilian contractors. Because this base is not associated with a NATO mission, the UK will have a much more difficult time defending its actions internally, since it is based on a bilateral relationship with the US. Since most of the UK military personnel are present on DGAR to only administer the US lease, versus serve an important UK defense or treaty commitment, proponents for preserving the lease cant convincingly argue internally that retention of the territory is important to UK national security. This also makes it more difficult for proponents within the UK to argue for business as usual to keep things as they are, since the Landcaster Agreement states that the UK can only retain the Chagos so long as there is a valid defense purpose. It is true that DGAR serves a critically important defense need; however, it is mostly a US need. Also, there is a great deal of internal sympathy for the plight of the Chaggosians who emigrated to the UK and there are a few reports that the government has been split on whether carrying the water for the US is worth alienating people at home. To be clear, neither the UNGA nor the ICJ in an advisory opinion can legally compel the UK to do anything. However, the ICJ advisory opinions are binding on other UN agencies (like the UNGA) and there is no doubt that if the UK did not take some action, that would create more political problems for the UK at home and abroad in which the colonial optics are not favorable to the UK. Also, the decision gives the UNGA plenty of fuel to constantly harass the UK with UNGA resolutions or find other ways to seek to hold the UK accountable within the UN system US Course of Action Since the US has the greatest amount of risk, the question becomes whether Washington should continue to hitch its wagon to London or strike out in a different direction. In July 2018, this author wrote that India is potentially a critical actor in this overall debate concerning DGAR. On the one hand, the US/India defense relationship continues to flourish. In September, at the so-called 2 plus 2 meetings involving Secretaries of State and Defense and their counterparts, the US and India reaffirmed their strategic partnership on both regional and global issues. There is also the recent designation of India as Major Defense Partner. On the other hand, India voted with UNGA to send the Chagos matter to the ICJ, knowing how important DGAR is to US defense needs. There is reporting that India welcomes the US presence in the Indian Ocean; however, India probably had no practical political choice but to support the UNGA since the matter, after all, had to do with getting the UK to divest itself of colonial holdings. But the fact remains that India has significant and enduring ties to Mauritius and would likely be very amenable to use its good offices to broker some sort of arrangement that could either breathe new life into the Landcaster Agreement or exact specific promises from the UK. A new Landcaster Agreement might (a) grant Mauritius access to lands and waters that are not in immediate use for defense purposes; (b) ensure that Mauritius receives either lease payments for the US use of Diego Garcia or some other form(s) of long term tangible economic benefits, such as base operating contracts set aside for Mauritian contractors. Alternatively, India could possibly play a role in helping broker a change in the status of the Chagos in which, perhaps, the UK cedes sovereignty but assumes the role as a Trustee of DGAR on behalf of the Mauritius and the former Chagossians. That could be coupled with additional benchmarks on how the former Chagossians and Mauritius will be able to gain access to the fisheries, minerals, or to participate in some of the economic activities at DGAR. There are an infinite number of formulations that could be attempted to pay respect to the ruling and the anti-colonial aspirations of Mauritius and the dispossessed residents of the Chagos while at the same time retain a key defense facility. However, pretending that the opinion is advisory and hunkering down seems to be unsustainable for the US and the UK in the long term, especially given the new Indo-Pacific Strategy in which the US is seeking to align itself with India and other Indian Ocean coastal and island nations to confront Chinese political and economic expansion in the Indo-Pacific region. There is no evidence that Mauritius wants the US to leave DGAR, so a process to engage Mauritius in some ways would be in Washingtons long term interests. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author alone and do not reflect the views of CNA or any of its sponsors. China and the European Union (EU) both know how to control differences and resolve problems in between, and thus develop their relations healthily, said Ambassador Zhang Ming, head of the Chinese Mission to the EU on Wednesday, on eve of the EU summit which will talk about issues including contacts with China. Zhang made the remarks at a seminar held by the Brussels-based think tank Friends of Europe. Also in presence was Gunnar Wiegand, Managing Director for Asia and the Pacific at the European External Action Service, besides dozens of scholars and observers. Ambassador Zhang Ming, head of the Chinese Mission to the EU. [File photo: China Plus] The ambassador believed that China-EU relations have not undergone fundamental changes, and thus could be mended and move on so as to continue to help stabilize the world. Zhang expressed his belief on the grounds of the reiteration of the comprehensive strategic partnership by Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who paid a visit to the EU earlier this week, and Federica Mogherini, EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Last week, the European Commission laid out a ten-action proposal defining China as a cooperation partner, economic competitor and systematic rival. The joint communication is to be discussed among the leaders of the EU members this week. "Inevitably there is competition between us, and we won't shy away from it," said Zhang. Admitting competition is "not a bad thing", he reminded that "competition and cooperation are two sides of one coin. Competition is not a you-lose-I-win and winner-takes-all game". Meanwhile, Zhang argued that China and the EU, while adopting different political systems, are not necessarily becoming rivals. Wiegand said he couldn't agree more with Zhang about the definition that the EU and China are comprehensive strategic partners, and he assured that the EU will not become the U.S. "There is the public discussion in many of our member states. There is a significant or higher degree of realism or sincerity when discussing our relations with China," said Wiegand. "It's not just hopes or naive assessments. It is experience from many years of working together, and being much more conscious about how much we mean to each other," he elaborated. About the proposal to be discussed at the EU summit, Wiegand said it is a contribution to discussion and it is the question whether some of the concepts would in principle be endorsed. "But it is not a formal decision," he told Xinhua reporters. "This is not the direction of confrontation; this is not a direction of containment. This is a direction of cooperation and of working together resolving our differences," he underlined. Both Zhang and Wiegand reviewed the tremendous size of trade and investment between China and the EU. For 15 years, the EU has remained China's top trading partner, and China is EU's second largest partner. Zhang also replied to European concerns over alleged unfair competition with China. Addressing the worry about Chinese investment, Zhang pointed out that Chinese investment accounts for under 0.5 percent of foreign investment in Europe, far less than the U.S. investment which accounts for 15 percent. Meanwhile, European companies have rapidly increased their investment in China. Last year, EU investment in China grew by more than 22 percent, Britain and Germany by 150 percent and 79 percent respectively. About the market access in China, Zhang repeated the Chinese commitment to the opening-up policy. He also expressed his anticipation that the EU will not push for wider access to the Chinese market while gradually closing its own doors. About the reciprocity, Zhang reminded that Chinese per capita GDP is only one fourth of EU. Chinese industrialization is far from finished. He said it "does not make sense" for 40-year development to be fully equally treated with the 260 years of industrialization. The media briefing was followed by a round table closed door seminar later Wednesday. Modafinil is the most popular "smart drug" or "study drug", along with Ritalin and Adderall. Basically, taking a pill of Modafinil is like drinking a coffee in the morning, only 10 times stronger. It helps you stay focus, it keeps you awake and motivated, and it prevents your mind to wander. It is especially popular with students preparing exams: In the UK or in the US, it is reported that between 25% and 30% of them have tried them at least once. What has made this drug so appealing is that it has been considered safe by researchers from both Harvard and Oxford. According to them, the side effects are mild (sometimes headaches or migraines) and there are no risks of physical addiction. However, I also read elsewhere that it is not recommended in the long term as your brain will adapt and the stimulating effect will slowly fade away. After a few weeks, you might feel less alert and more tired than before. Can you Buy Modafinil in Indonesia? The first time I heard about Modafinil, I was living in Bali. I got a bit curious and I tried to see if I could buy a few pills locally. I tried the chain pharmacies like Guardian, Century, Kimia Pharma and Apotek K-24. Not only they didn't have it, they had never heard of it. Then, I went to the smaller, independent pharmacies, and I got the same answer: "Obat itu untuk apa?" (what is this drug for?). Finally, I ended up looking at social media for hashtags like #modafinilindonesia, #belimodafinil, #modafiniljakarta, or #modafinilbali. On Instagram, I found this Indonesian company that advertises quite a lot called Nootropics ID (nootropic is another term to call smart drugs). They have a Tokopedia page selling all kinds of imported drugs and supplements with ingredients like L-Theanine or Caffeine, but no Modafinil. Conclusion: Modafinil was clearly not available in Indonesia (and this is still true today) So this led to a second question: Is Modafinil Legal in Indonesia? If Modafinil is so hard to find, maybe it is simply because it's forbidden? As it often turns out in Indonesia, the situation is more complicated: Modafinil doesn't exist according to Indonesian law. It is neither legal or illegal. There are no laws (as of 2019) classifying it as a narcotic (see the full list of forbidden substances here ) but pharmacies are not allowed to sell it as it hasn't been given a license. To summarize : You can possess it, but you can't import it or sell it. How Can I Get Modafinil if I'm in Indonesia? President Xi Jinping meets Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow and wife, Adele, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday. [Photo by Wu Zhiyi/China Daily] China will expand opening-up in education, enhance mutual learning with different countries and jointly push forward the development of education, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday. Xi made the remark during a meeting with Harvard University President Lawrence Bacow at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Xi said China advocates mutual learning, encourages its students to study overseas and supports exchanges and cooperation in education with other countries. He said he hopes more positive outcomes can be achieved from people-to-people exchanges between China and the United States. Bilateral exchanges and cooperation in education are important for China-US relations because they help enhance public support for those relations, he said. Xi added that he is glad that US President Donald Trump also voiced his support for bilateral exchanges and cooperation in education during their meeting at the G20 Summit in Argentina in December. The rising level of education has been a major contributor to China's rapid development in its 40 years of reform and opening-up, he said. China remains committed to advancing the modernization of its education, making itself an education powerhouse and developing education that people are satisfied with, he added. During this process, China is willing to conduct broader exchanges and cooperation with education and research institutions including Harvard University, he said. Bacow, who last year became the 29th president of Harvard University, said he is glad to make China his first overseas stop since his inauguration. The visit was not only for Harvard but also on behalf of all of US higher education in order to promote bilateral educational exchanges, he said. "I am here precisely because, like you, I believe these ties are extremely important for our academic institutions, but even more importantly, for our nations," he said. He noted that there are a large number of overseas students from China at Harvard, and the Chinese language is among the most popular foreign languages at the institution. He also expressed his admiration for the great emphasis the Chinese government has placed on education and its efforts to enhance higher education, adding that Harvard University is ready to move forward with exchanges with Chinese education and research institutions. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development Celina Caesar-Chavannes rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Friday, May 25, 2018. Celina Caesar-Chavannes has informed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that she will no longer be part of a the Liberal caucus and will sit as an independent MP. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang British Prime Minister Theresa May (Front) speaks during the Prime Minister's Question Time in the House of Commons in London, Britain, on March 20, 2019. Theresa May confirmed Wednesday she has written to the European Union seeking to delay Britain's departure from the bloc until June 30. (Xinhua/UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor) LONDON, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Prime Minister Theresa May announced Wednesday she will not delay Britain's departure from the European Union beyond June, ruling out a further extension if MPs reject her Brexit deal. Her message from 10 Downing Street to the British people came after another tense day in the House of Commons when she announced she has asked EU Council President Donald Tusk to delay Britain's exit from the bloc. Her forceful message was throwing down the gauntlet to MPs that if they reject her deal there will be no deal, paving the way for Britain leaving the EU after a membership of 46 years. Political commentators said the speech was a risky tactic for May because of the way she criticized MPs, the very politicians she needs to get her deal over the line. It was a change to her stance last week when she said she would seek a longer extension from Brussels if MPs rejected her deal. But its clear May was furious when this week the Speaker of the House of Commons ruled that May could not present her Brexit bill a third time to MPs unless there were dramatic changes. May heads to the EU Council meeting Thursday hoping to gather some words to add to her deal to enable it to be put before the Commons, probably next week, a third time. It will be a risk factor for the Prime Minister because her deal has already been rejected twice, the first time by 230 votes, the highest ever defeat in British political history, and by 149 votes last week. By insisting she would not keep Britain in the EU beyond June, May is effectively giving squabbling MPs the chance to accept her deal or risk no deal. May started her statement by saying it was of great personal regret that Britain is not leaving on March 29, the departure date set in 2017 when the British government voted by a big margin to trigger the two-year countdown mechanism. "I am absolutely sure you the public have had enough. You are tired of the infighting. You are tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows," May said. She added people were tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when there are real concerns about children's schools, the National Health Service, and knife crime. "It is now time for MPs to decide," she added, "do they want to leave the EU with a deal which delivers on the result of the referendum, or do they want to leave without a deal." May accused MPs of just being willing to say is what they do not want. "Some argue that I am making the wrong choice, and I should ask for a longer extension to the end of the year or beyond, to give more time for politicians to argue over the way forward. That would mean asking you to vote in European Elections, nearly three years after our country decided to leave," she said in her message. Earlier Tusk Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, suggested that EU leaders will only approve May's request for a three month delay if MPs approve her Brexit deal next week. Tusk said in Brussels a short extension to Britain's exit would be possible, but it would be conditional on a positive vote on the Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons. May said in her short speech she will work night and day to try and convince MPs from her own Conservative Party, as well as the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP and others to back her deal. Warning that a delay beyond June would mean British people having to vote in EU parliament elections, May said it would be bitter and divisive at the time that the country needs to come back together. Reaction from MPs was swift with former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, who backs a second referendum saying he will not be bullied by anybody in Government to support something he does not believe in. Liberal Democrat politician Ed Davey commented: "Theresa May has lost it. Threatening our country with a 'No Deal' Brexit is not leadership." Media reports in London said that at a private meeting with leaders of political parties ahead of her statement, she ruled out an option of calling a snap election. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. SETAC Europe 29th Annual Meeting Brussels -- The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Europe is organising its 29th annual meeting from 26-30 May in Helsinki, Finland, and is expected to draw over 2,000 scientists from more than 60 countries to discuss the latest research in environmental science. Environmental protection is playing an important role in public health, and experts from academia, government and business, including representatives from international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the UN Environment, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the European Commission, national governments and others will discuss major environmental topics. The meeting theme, "One Environment. One Health. Sustainable Societies" reflects the importance that a variety of scientific disciplines and research objectives come together, connect and debate the scientific questions at the intersection of the human, animal and ecosystem health triad. Sessions such as wildlife ecotoxicology, fate and effects of oil spills on aquatic and marine environments, climate impacts on polar and alpine ecotoxicology and environmental chemistry, but also gender bias and equal opportunity in scientific research and many other subjects are central to this theme. Featuring more than 2,000 presentations over 77 sessions, including special sessions with invited talks, this conference allows environmental and human health scientists an opportunity to present their own research while connecting with others to learn about the most recent scientific knowledge, developments and applications for reducing and regulating the use of chemicals in the environment, remediating soil, air and water pollution, and to find more sustainable solutions for managing environmental and human health. The key to successful and efficient environmental quality management has been proven to hinge upon transdisciplinary collaboration between environmental and human toxicologists, environmental chemists, and scientists and policy-makers from a diversity of disciplines, such as conservation biology, ecology, human health, aquaculture, sociology, law and economy. SETAC conferences have a strong record in strengthening this kind of collaboration. "The diversity in scientific disciplines present at the SETAC conferences is huge. Discussing research methods and results with scientists from related disciplines often offers new insights that bring us closer to understanding and solving environmental health issues" says Bart Bosveld, Executive Director at SETAC Europe. ### The meeting includes a lineup of keynote speakers who will address important environmental topics. Headlining the event is Cynthia de Wit with her talk on "One Health, Persistent Organic Pollutants and the Arctic" on 26 May. De Wit is a professor at the Department of Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry, Stockholm University. On 27 May, Bjorn Hansen, executive director at the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), will address the question "Can One Environment, One Health and Many Chemicals be Sustainable?" Closing keynote speaker, Juan Gonzalez Valero, head of Sustainable and Responsible Business from Syngenta will address "Innovation Where Everyone Wins: A Call for a New Dialogue in Environmental Toxicology, Chemistry and Risk Assessment" on 29 May. Registration for this unique event, which will be held at Messukeskus Helsinki, Expo and Convention Centre, is now open. This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. BEIJING, March 20 (Xinhua) -- China will implement a slew of measures to cut the value-added tax (VAT) rates, making sure that tax burdens on all industries will only go down, not up, the State Council's executive meeting presided over by Premier Li Keqiang decided on Wednesday. The Government Work Report this year set out the plan for larger-scale tax cuts, including lowering the VAT rate in manufacturing and other industries from 16 to 13 percent, and the VAT rate in transportation, construction and other industries from 10 to 9 percent. A host of concrete measures were decided upon at the Wednesday meeting to achieve such targets, which will be enacted since April 1. Input VAT eligible for deduction will be expanded and will cover passenger transportation services. Tax payers will be able to get their input tax on real estate payments deducted in full on a one-time basis, instead of on two occasions in two years. Taxpayers whose main businesses are postal services, telecommunications, modern services and consumer services shall enjoy 10 percent additional input VAT deduction before the end of 2021. Increase in the overpaid VAT following this round of tax cuts will be refunded through due procedures. "The planned VAT cuts must be delivered in no time. Its implementation must be ly monitored to ensure that tax burdens are meaningfully reduced in the major industries and lowered to various extents in some industries. All industries will see their taxes go down, not up," Li said. "In case of increased tax burden due to inadequate deductions in certain individual industries, the government will work out targeted solutions," Li added. In the Government Work Report this year, Li said that the government's moves to cut tax on this occasion aim at an accommodative effect to strengthen the basis for sustained growth while also considering the need to ensure fiscal sustainability. It is also a major measure to lighten the burden on businesses and boost market dynamism, and is also the result of a major decision taken at the macro policy level in support of the efforts to ensure stable economic growth, employment, and structural adjustments. In 2018, taxes and fees levied on enterprises and individuals were reduced by around 1.3 trillion yuan as a result of multiple preferential tax policies introduced by the government. The Wednesday meeting also decided upon adjustments to the export tax rebate rates of certain goods and services and to the tax deduction rate of purchases of farm produce. It was also decided at the meeting to increase transfer payments to local governments, focusing on supporting the central and western regions and counties and prefectures in difficulty. "The share that goes to enterprises in the national income distribution needs to be increased to boost market vitality. This will help keep employment stable, expand tax sources and make public finance sustainable," Li said. Yang Jun-mo, center, as Ahn Jung-geun in Musical "Hero" / Courtesy of ACOM International By Kwon Mee-yoo This year marks the centennial of the March 1 Independence Movement, which provided a catalyst for Korean resistance during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation. In commemoration of such a crucial moment in Korea's turbulent modern history, a handful of theatrical events are on show, revealing stories of the patriots who risked their lives for the liberation of their homeland and history-making events of the period. Hero The musical "Hero" tells of the national hero Ahn Jung-geun who fought against Japan when the Korean Empire was on the brink of annexation. The musical revolves around Ahn, a Korean independence activist best known for the 1909 assassination of Ito Hirobumi, Japan's prime minister and the first resident governor general of Korea. The musical, premiered in 2009 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Ahn's death, returned to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the March 1 Movement as well as the 10th anniversary of the show. "Hero" was staged at New York's Lincoln Center in 2011 as well. For this production, Chung Sung-hwa and Yang Jun-mo alternate the role of Ahn. Jung Sung-hwa as Ahn Jung-geun in Musical "Hero" / Courtesy of ACOM International The show begins with Ahn pledging for Korea's independence with his colleagues. It traces Ahn's journey to the assassination of Ito at Harbin Railway Station on Oct. 26, 1909. The famous song of the musical is "Who Is the Criminal?" sung at Ahn's trial scene. Ahn insisted he should be treated as a prisoner of war, not a criminal, since he is a lieutenant general of the Korean resistance army engaged in a war of independence against Japan. The song names 15 crimes Ito had committed according to Ahn, including assassinating Empress Myeongseong, dethroning King Gojong, forcing unequal treaties on Korea and massacring innocent Koreans. The dramatic song is set in a courtroom and Ahn solemnly recites Ito's charges. Even in prison, Ahn's Pan-Asianism influenced his prison guard. Ahn wrote his essay "On Peace in East Asia" in his cell, asserting the need for creating a harmony between East Asian countries: China, Japan and Korea. Though Ahn is mostly portrayed as a determined independence activist who dedicates himself to the nation's freedom, the musical also gives a glimpse of his human side. Ahn is burdened by his duty and fears of the consequences of his plan and he misses his family, especially his mother Jo Maria. A scene from musical "Hero" / Courtesy of ACOM International While most of the male characters are based on real people, two female lead roles Seol-hui and Lingling were born in the imagination of playwright Han A-reum. Seol-hui is a court lady to the late Empress Myeongseong. Seeking revenge on Japan which ordered the assassination of the Korean empress, Seol-hui volunteers for the independence movement and heads to Japan, where she finds favor in the eyes of Ito and extracts information. She attempts to assassinate Ito on their way to Harbin in a train, but fails and jumps out of the train carriage. Another character is Lingling, a Chinese girl who helps Ahn with her brother Wang Wei in his dumpling restaurant. Though her effort and love for Ahn is notable, her character is flat and her relationship with Ahn seems unnatural. The 10th anniversary production of "Hero" runs until April 21 at the Sejong Center for the Performing Arts. For more information, call 02-2250-5941. A scene from musical Sinheung Military School / Courtesy of Ministry of National Defense and Shownote Sinheung Military School The musical "Sinheung Military School," named after the independence fighter training school in Manchuria in the early 20th century, is produced by the Ministry of National Defense and the Republic of Korea Army, starring soldiers on active duty. The musical premiered last fall to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Republic of Korea and returned in March in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement and the establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea. Though the plot remains almost the same, director Kim Dong-yeon elaborated on lines and scenes to make the drama clearer. Choreography for large-scale war scenes such as the Battle of Bongo-dong and the Battle of Cheongsanli were amended to maximize symbolism. Some of the characters are based on real people. Lee Hoe-yeong, founder of Sinheung Military School, was an educator and independence fighter who established the military training school. Ji Cheong-cheon, played by Sungkyu of Infinite and Onew of SHINee, is also based on an actual independence activist who later became a politician. In the musical, Ji appears as a student of the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, complete with sleek K-pop style choreography. However, he defects to join the Korean Liberation Army where he becomes the commander-in-chief. However, most of the lead roles are fictional, representing unsung youngsters who fought for the freedom of their country, as the creators wanted to pay respect to those nameless soldiers. Ji Chang-wook as Dong-gyu in musical Sinheung Military School / Courtesy of Ministry of National Defense and Shownote Four main characters who enter the Sinheung Military School have their own stories. Dong-gyu, played by Ji Chang-wook and Ko Eun-sung, dreams of becoming a poet, but he decides to join the independence army after his father dies in a hunger strike opposing the Japanese authorities. "You can feel how these innocent people joined independence activities in harsh times," Ji Chang-wook said. Pal-do (Kang Ha-neul and Jo Kwon) is a former servant of the army school founder Lee Hoe-yeong. Despite his ignorance, he grows into a competent soldier with a cheerful disposition. Kang said he did not know of the Sinheung Military School until he read the script of this musical. "I am excited to see more people find out about the school through our show," Kang said. Lee Tae-eun as Na-pal in musical Sinheung Military School / Courtesy of Ministry of National Defense and Shownote Na-pal (Lee Tae-eun and Hong Seo-young) is a woman disguised as a man who hopes to become a military trumpeter. Hye-ran is the daughter of a bandit boss in Gando area who joins the trainees to provide support with a sling. "There are many women who contributed to the independence movement in various ways. Some participated in armed struggles, while others joined the Manse rallies and looked after officials of the Provisional Government in Shanghai. Na-pal and Hye-ran represent these women who fought with their own methods. For Hye-ran, it's her sling," Lim explained. "Sinheung Military School" runs until April 21 at the BBCH Hall of Kwanglim Arts Center in southern Seoul. A scene from musical "Eyes of Dawn" / Courtesy of Suki Company Eyes of Dawn "Eyes of Dawn" was a big hit drama in 1991, achieving a viewer rating over 58 percent. The drama was sensational back then with its large-scale production filmed in the Philippines, Saipan and China. Suki Company adapted the drama into a stage musical, bringing the life and love of three people trapped in a maelstrom of political and social upheaval. Among the three shows, "Eyes of Dawn" portrays the latest period from forced labor and draft by Japanese authorities in the early 1940s and liberation from Japan through the Jeju Uprising, also known as the April 3 Massacre, in 1948 and the 1950-53 Korean War. The drama was revolutionary in the early 1990s when it brought up the issue of so-called comfort women, wartime sex slaves during World War II, as the protagonist Yoon Yeo-ok is forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese army and she meets Choi Dae-chi, a Korean drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army, at a brothel. In the drama, Chae Shi-ra rose to stardom for her portrayal of Yoon, and in the musical version Kim Ji-hyun and Moon Hye-won alternate the role. Kim Ji-hyun as Yoon Yeo-ok in musical "Eyes of Dawn" / Courtesy of Suki Company Financial Services Commission Chairman Choi Jong-ku speaks about the government's new innovative financial policies at Seoul Government Complex, Mar. 20. Yonhap South Korea's financial regulator said Thursday it will offer innovative firms and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) loans worth 100 trillion won (US$88.5 billion) over the next three years. The massive loan package is aimed at revitalizing the nation's sluggish economy at a time when the economy faces downward risks, including weaker domestic investment and global trade disputes. In a policy report to President Moon Jae-in, Financial Services Commission (FSC) Chairman Choi Jong-ku said the FSC will overhaul credit assessment systems for innovative firms and SMEs for the planned loan package. The FSC will also improve financing mechanisms to enable such firms to borrow or raise funds based on their growth potential. "To support innovative growth, the financial industry needs to be changed in an innovative manner," Choi said. The FSC will encourage financial firms to adopt risk-taking culture to make more loans to start-ups and SMEs with limited collateral, Choi said. As part of measures to promote biotechnology and new digital industries, including financial technology and artificial intelligence, the FSC said it will ease listing rules for them. By softening rules, the FSC aims to help 80 firms in biotechnology and new digital industries list their stocks on the KOSDAQ market over the next three years. Financial Services Commission Chairman Choi Jong-ku, left, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, third from left, and Minister of Economy and Finance Hong Nam-ki, right, meet employees at Industrial Bank of Korea's office on Euljiro road in Seoul's Jung-gu, Mar. 21. Yonhap ROME, March 20 (Xinhua) -- An upcoming state visit to Italy by President Xi Jinping will open up a new chapter in Sino-Italian relations, Chinese Ambassador to Italy Li Ruiyu has said. Xi's visit, starting Thursday, will be the first of its kind in a decade, Li said in a recent interview with Xinhua, noting that bilateral relations have been on the fast track since the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1970, and especially since they forged a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2004. The China-Italy traditional friendship is growing ever deep, bilateral cooperation in various fields is booming, and high-level exchanges are witnessing sound momentum, added the ambassador. Meanwhile, the two sides have always understood and supported each other on issues of core interests and major concerns, continuously consolidating political mutual trust, Li said. As China and Italy celebrate the 15th anniversary of their comprehensive strategic partnership this year and the 50th anniversary of their diplomatic relations next year, Xi's upcoming visit is of great importance, stressed the ambassador. The state visit, he said, is set to steer forward the development of bilateral relations by drawing up a new blueprint for ties, creating new cooperation opportunities, and infusing new vigor into the long-running friendship between the two countries. China and Italy have highly complementary economic structures and broad shared interests, Li pointed out, noting that bilateral trade reached a record of 54.23 billion U.S. dollars in 2018 despite weak global trade. In addition, cooperation in such areas as port construction, 5G communications and third-party collaboration is gathering steam, the number of high-quality cultural exchange programs are growing, and people-to-people and subnational exchanges are on the rise, he added. The Chinese ambassador highlighted how thousands of opportunities in tech cooperation have been created through the nine editions of the China-Italy Science, Technology and Innovation Week. China and Italy, at the two ends of the ancient Silk Road, are important partners within the framework of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Li said, noting that Rome has responded positively to the initiative and deems it an important opportunity in bilateral relations. During his visit, Xi will exchange views with Italian leaders on deepening bilateral ties and BRI cooperation, and the two sides are expected to sign a series of important agreements, said the ambassador. "I am confident that the implementation of these cooperation agreements will surely inject new energy into the development of China-Italy relations in this new phase, open up a new space for jointly building the Belt and Road, and lift the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership to a new level," he said. On cultural and people-to-people exchanges, Li said the leaders of the two countries will further promote mutual learning and bilateral friendship during Xi's visit. He added that in order to help both countries to better understand each other, Rome will host a second plenary meeting of cultural cooperation between China and Italy, as well as multiple high-level exhibitions and artistic programs. On technological cooperation, the ambassador noted that the two sides share a strong willingness to deepen ties in science, technology and innovation. The two countries, he added, will continue to step up cooperation in such fields as aerospace, artificial intelligence, fundamental research, environmental protection, sustainable development and health care, to the benefit of both peoples. In the field of education, Li said bilateral exchanges have been expanding rapidly, with Italy now hosting about 24,000 Chinese students and China hosting 6,430 Italian students in 2017. As bilateral cooperation grows deeper within the BRI framework, more Italians are starting to familiarize themselves with the Chinese language and culture. Since 2006, 12 Confucius Institutes and nearly 40 Confucius Classrooms have been established in Italy, more than 100 Italian primary and secondary schools have opened Mandarin courses, and the Chinese language has become a major in more than 40 Italian universities. Xi's visit, said the ambassador, will add fuel to the "Mandarin fever" in Italy and help reinforce public support for further deepening political ties between the two countries. "Italy is a trustworthy good friend and good partner of China in the European Union (EU)," Li said. Through this visit, he added, China hopes to join hands with Italy to send a clear message to the world that China will work with Italy and the EU to advocate openness and win-win cooperation, while firmly safeguarding multilateralism and the rules-based free trade system. In so doing, said the ambassador, the two countries will bolster bilateral and China-EU relations, as well as to efforts to promote world peace, stability and prosperity. Yoo Kwang-yeol, Financial Supervisory Service (FSS)'s First Senior Deputy Governor, front row fourth from left, poses with State Bank of Vietnam's Governor Le Minh Hung, third from left in the same row and other officials, at the bank's headquarters in Hanoi, Thursday. Yoo held a series of meetings with regulatory counterparts in Indonesia and Vietnam this week, to discuss Korean finance companies' business in the region. / Courtesy of FSS By Jhoo Dong-chan Shinhan Financial Group has decided to drop out of its internet-only bank consortium led by Viva Republica, a fintech firm operating mobile wire transfer app Toss. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) will receive preliminary applications for a new internet-only bank for two days from March 26. The result of the applications will be announced in May, and Shinhan's decision is expected to dampen the consortium's plan. "Due to differences in the internet bank's future business and its operations, Shinhan decided not to remain with the consortium to establish a new internet-only bank," said a Shinhan Financial Group official. According to industry sources, the two firms have failed to narrow their differences about their future share structure and financing plan after establishing the bank. However, mounting concerns about Viva Republica's capital source are the major reason behind the alliance fallout. Under related laws, minimum capital requirement for a new internet-only bank is about 25 billion won ($22.1 million). In a bid to properly operate future loan services, however, market observers say it requires at least 1 trillion won. Viva Republica has yet to post a profit, but is now required to secure a great deal of cash reserve for the new internet-only bank's future businesses. The nation's second-largest non-life insurer Hyundai Marine & Fire Insurance, e-commerce platform Cafe24 and online shopping mall Musinsa are also part of the consortium. Due to Shinhan's exit, however, they now need to reshape their future share structure and financing plan. Another consortium led by Kiwoom Securities has reportedly concluded its future share structure and financing plan before submitting its preliminary application with the FSC next week. Hana Financial Group and mobile carrier SK Telecom joined the consortium to set up a new internet-only bank. By Park Hyong-ki The government has decided to lower the stock transaction tax rate by 0.05 percentage points to 0.25 percent this year, and seek to gradually abolish it by 2024. At the same time, it will increase the scope of capital gains taxes on the trading of KOSPI and KOSDAQ shares, while offering incentives to funds investing in tech companies. These are part of comprehensive measures jointly announced Thursday by the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Financial Services Commission (FSC) to boost financial innovation and vitalize capital markets by encouraging more investment in startups. "We will revise the relevant tax laws to benefit funds investing in such companies," President Moon Jae-in said during an event to introduce his administration's vision for financial innovation the same day. He added the finance ministry will soon draw up a clearer plan to reduce the stock transaction tax in tandem with specifics regarding the capital gains tax. The tax rate has been fixed at 0.3 percent since the late 1970s. It was reintroduced to keep speculators from the market after the country discontinued imposing the tax to attract investment to develop the capital market in the early 1970s. Korea's 0.3 percent rate is higher than Singapore's 0.2 percent, and China and Hong Kong's 0.1 percent. The United States and Japan do not have transactions taxes. Investors had to pay a 0.15 percent tax included in the 0.3 percent rate whenever they bought or sold KOSPI or KOSDAQ listed stocks. The 0.15 percent collected by the government is used for the development of rural areas. This will remain unchanged. As the finance ministry and the regulator are increasing state support for startups and investment funds such as venture capital and private equity, they said they hope this will help companies to list and relist their shares first on the KONEX, and then on the main bourse as they grow. The President said his government will overhaul the system to enable startups to get funding based purely on their technological and future potential, instead of on how much assets such as property and facilities they have. FSC Chairman Choi Jong-ku told the press the day before the event that the regulator will change rules governing the listing of those companies in accordance with the sectors in which they operate. For example, the stock market regulator will not apply the same listing rules to biotech companies that need to go through years of testing their drugs to get approval, as it does with traditional manufacturers. "We will apply a set of distinctive rules enabling biotech and other innovative companies to raise funds in the capital market based on their future potential and technology," the FSC chairman said. He said the FSC will seek to increase the number of companies related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution listed on the KOSDAQ to 80 within the next three years, from the 38 over the past three years. By Park Hyong-ki The Ministry of Economy and Finance is considering a 9 trillion won ($8 billion) supplementary budget within the first half of this year. In an economic policy briefing by Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon and Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki at the National Assembly, Thursday, Hong said the ministry is looking into it as suggested recently by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "We are considering it in line with our comprehensive review of our economic situation," he told lawmakers. The IMF has recommended the ministry to allocate over 0.5 percent of the country's GDP for extra spending to support growth, he noted. This will include spending to tackle and reduce elderly poverty and fine dust, the minister said. The Democratic Party of Korea has suggested using 2 trillion won to 3 trillion won in the supplementary budget to reduce poverty. The IMF said the fiscal authorities should provide more fiscal stimulus through a supplementary budget, while the central bank should maintain an accommodative monetary policy to support short-term growth and contain risks. Prime Minister Lee has apologized for causing social confusion and economic difficulties following rapid hikes in the minimum wage backed by the government's income-growth policy. He said the government's key labor policy has been both good and bad. For the negative influence it has had, Lee said, "I am truly sorry" as small businesses faced more difficulties in paying wages to their employees. As a result, a lot of jobs were lost. On the other hand, he said it has helped reduce the number of low-paying jobs. He added the government will not give up the policy because it is about more than just increasing wages. It deals with boosting social protection, healthcare and welfare for low- and middle-income groups. KEB Hana Bank CEO Ji Sung-kyoo speaks at a press conference for his inauguration at the bank's headquarters in Seoul, Thursday. / Yonhap A vendor makes grilled cheese and skewered rice cakes. Myeong-dong is a cultural melting pot where various creative cross-cultural fusion foods are pushing aside the homegrown street food trio gimbap, tteokbokki and sundae. Korea Times photo by Lee Han-na Street food in Myeong-dong adapting to international flavors By Lee Han-na Seoul's bustling shopping district of Myeong-dong has long been a hot place for international tourists. Streets there are always crowded with foreign visitors. The district is also a haven for shopaholics it is home to chic and trendy eateries, and homegrown cosmetics and almost all kinds of cuisines are available there. But there is a lesser-known aspect of the busy Myeong-dong district the delicious and innovative street foods. With an increase in foreign tourists year after year, street food there has been undergoing dramatic changes lately. The cross-cultural fusion food is pushing the traditional street food trio namely gimbab, tteokbokki and sundae out of business. Street food in Myeong-dong is adapting rapidly to international flavors. In the middle of alleys, food vendors are everywhere and different types of food are served from easy-to-grab snacks and authentic Korean cuisines to even high-end dishes you might expect in a restaurant. The variety, then the quality and ultimately the taste will capture your senses. Fried banana available in two forms: crushed (left) and whole (right) with two syrups: condensed milk and chocolate. Korea Times photo by Lee Han-na "Fried banana" is the latest street food offering in Myeong-dong. Inspired by Vietnamese cuisine, a vendor introduced it just a week ago to attract tourists from Southeast Asian countries. There are two versions: crushed and whole banana and each have different tastes. Asking for anonymity, the vendor proudly shared his months of research and effort to provide the top-quality food. After many trials which sometimes led him to be burned, he successfully found the right temperature and timing to fry bananas with perfect crumbs from a recipe of seven ingredients. The tastes differ by temperature and form of the banana. There are two ways of enjoy it one with condensed milk which is the authentic way of eating in Southeast Asian countries according to the vendor, and the other with chocolate syrup. A vendor is preparing cabbage omelet in Myeong-dong, Seoul, Tuesday. Korea Times photo by Lee Han-na For cheese lovers, there is a perfect choice. Aside from the "so-tteok so-tteok" (sausage and rice cake), "rice cake and cheese in sequence on a stick" is on sale. With a rich flavor of milk, the grilled cheese and tteok are the perfect combination to soften the hotness of other street foods. Meat lovers might wonder if they can find something suitable in Myeong-dong. Unbelievably there is ready-to-go steak on the street, paving the belief that Myeong-dong is truly a cultural melting pot. Steak with mung bean sprouts is served with a special spicy sauce the vendor made. The vendor said his sauce is very popular and fellow vendors repeatedly asked if he could sell it to them, a request he has rejected. Korea Times photo by Lee Han-na The vendor of the steak house has been providing the Korean beef steak for about four years. His steak is popular and he has regular clients who visit there for the food. He also shared how he made a chili-like sauce for Chinese customers who want it spicier. His spicy sauce is so popular that he says other vendors repeatedly ask if he could sell it to them. It is served with thinly sliced tender Korean beef on top of mung bean sprouts. The mung bean sprouts capture the cheesy taste of the beef maximizing the juiciness of the meat. Seafoods such as scallops, octopus, sea snails, shrimp and even small lobster are also available in Myeong-dong. Fire-grilled fresh scallops with cheese on top. Korea Times photo by Lee Han-na Fire-grilled cheese scallops are one of the famous dishes in Myeong-dong. They are freshly served by putting cheese on top of the fresh scallops from the southwestern sea off the Korean Peninsula and grilling them with a strong fire for a few minutes. The owner said customers love it with hot pepper paste and vinegar. There are blanched octopus and sea snails, and skewered grilled shrimp as well. During winter, tourists also enjoy takoyaki with whole webfoot octopus in it, not to mention the tenderness of the grilled lobsters with melted cheese as a remarkable quality street food in Myeong-dong. However, it does not mean that simple yet authentic Korean street foods are unavailable in Myeong-dong. In fact, there is a twist on the traditional street food. Fusion foods croissant fish bread (left) and cabbage omelet with bacon (right). Korea Times photo by Lee Han-na Andrew Kim, center, the former head of the CIA's Korea Mission Center, arrives with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at Sunan International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, Friday, July 6, 2018. AP-Yonhap North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is seeking to visit Russia in an apparent move to boast his close ties with the neighboring country after the breakdown of his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, a former U.S. intelligence official was quoted as saying. Andrew Kim, who retired last year as head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Korea Mission Center, made the remark during a closed-door lecture in Seoul on Wednesday, according to local daily Donga Ilbo. In this photo released by North Korean state TV broadcaster KCTV in May 2018, Andrew Kim, in circle, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, second from left, and his aides in Pyongyang. Yonhap Cheongung medium-range surface-to-air missile is being launched at a shooting range in Daecheon, South Chungcheong Province, Nov. 2, 2017. Courtesy of Republic of Korea Air Force An Air Force investigation team said Thursday that this week's unintentional launch, and mid-air explosion, of an anti-aircraft guided missile was caused by a mistake during a routine maintenance check. The Cheongung medium-range surface-to-air missile exploded in midair near an Air Force base in Chuncheon, 85 kilometers northeast of Seoul, on Monday after being unintentionally fired off. No one was injured in the blast. The Air Force said that two mechanics mistakenly left an operational cable connected to the missile during the maintenance check, although they were supposed to replace that with a testing cable. The missile was unintentionally launched when the operational cable received a mock launch signal for a testing purpose. The mechanics admitted their mistake and will be referred to a disciplinary panel, the armed service said. In these photos taken by a civilian, a Cheongung medium-range surface-to-air missile soars in an inconsistent course over the sky of Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, Mar. 18. Yonhap By Jung Min-ho Two South Korean energy companies have agreed to plead guilty and pay $127 million in criminal and civil fines for fixing fuel prices for U.S. military bases here. S-Oil, whose top shareholder is Saudi Aramco, and Hyundai Oilbank will pay $75 million in criminal fines and $52 million in separate civil resolutions for rigging bids to supply fuel to U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force bases, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement Wednesday (local time). The Justice Department also unsealed indictments against seven South Korean nationals, including former employees of the companies, in connection with the case. "Illegal bid-rigging schemes violate fundamental tenets of government contracting and lead to inflated charges and costs to the government," said Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt for the Department of Justice's Civil Division. "We will not waver in our dedication to prosecuting corporations and individuals, wherever they are located, that seek to profit at the expense of American taxpayers The department remains steadfast in its commitment to upholding the rule of law and protecting our nation's military and the American taxpayer from conduct that undercuts competition." pleaded guilty and were fined $236 million in November for their part in bid rigging. The Justice Department said the investigation began as a result of a tip telephoned into the Defense Logistics Agency Inspector General Hotline. The office developed the information, interviewed the complainant, and then referred the case to the investigation department. Eric Havian, a partner at Constantin Cannon, which represents the whistleblower in the case, said his client was "an essential part of revealing this massive conspiracy to cheat consumers, the government and American taxpayers. "This settlement is a stark example of how whistleblowers can expose back-room collusion and help bring anticompetitive behavior to justice. "This unusual case is both the largest-ever False Claims Act antitrust recovery and the largest False Claims Act settlement involving bid-rigging." The U.S. stations about 28,000 troops here to deter North Korean aggression, after the Korean War ended in 1953 without a peace treaty. Last December, the Sino-Africa Joint Research Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences held an eight-day training course on advanced agricultural technology in its headquarters in Kenya, attracting more than 40 participants from 10 African countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia. It marked the first time that the center provided training for young scientists and technicians in Africa, with Chinese technical experts present to teach hybrid rice breeding technology, high-yield cultivation techniques and corn farming technology. The research center, located in Nairobi, is the first overseas research and education institution of China, and has now developed into a major platform for technological cooperation and personnel training between China and Africa in such fields as biodiversity protection, ecological and environmental monitoring and modern agriculture. To date, the center has financed 149 African technicians to study in China and has organized 17 training courses and seminars with the joint efforts of relevant institutions in Africa. The average yield of hybrid rice certified by the research center is four to five times higher than that of the local varieties in Kenya, providing support for the future spread of hybrid rice in the eastern African country, said an African student who is now studying in China under the scholarship. He added that the yield of selected species of corn and sorghum had also increased. The Sino-Africa Joint Research Center has been making breakthroughs in guaranteeing food security, which is a top priority for national development among African countries. A number of agricultural enterprises contributed to the planting of Chinese hybrid rice in African countries, and thanks to the center, Kenya has also introduced cash crops such as grapes. The center has also helped to promote the basic research of biodiversity conservation, disease control and prevention in Africa. South Korea said Thursday it will provide Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi with a total of $500,000 worth of humanitarian assistance after they suffered huge damage from a cyclone. The southern African countries were recently hit hard by Cyclone Idai, which has killed hundreds of people and left many others missing or displaced. "The government plans to offer $300,000 to Mozambique as well as $100,000 each to Zimbabwe and Malawi in consideration of the scale of the damage and the international community's request for support," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. "The humanitarian aid at this time is expected to contribute to the stabilization of the people in the three nations and recovery from the damage." South Korea, as a middle-power country, will continue to provide such assistance, the ministry said. (Yonhap) By Jung Min-ho Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha has apologized in parliament over President Moon Jae-in's diplomatic gaffe during a summit with his Malaysian counterpart last week. Addressing questions from Rep. Baek Seung-joo of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party at the National Assembly Wednesday, Kang apologized for what she said a "painful mistake." This came soon after Prime Minister Lee Nak-Yeon acknowledged the error at the Assembly. He said he thought there were "unprofessional" officials at Cheong Wa Dae. During a press conference with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on March 13, Moon used the expression "Selamat sore," which means "good (mid)day" in Indonesian. He should have said "Selamat petang." The presidential office or the foreign ministry did not receive any complaint from the Malay government. But the issue came into the spotlight when opposition lawmakers and some media pointed out the mistake and criticized the administration for "incompetence." Controversy is growing after a convicted sex offender, who later enrolled as a medical student at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), is likely to apply to take the 2020 state examination to qualify as a doctor. / Yonhap By Kim Jae-heun Controversy is growing after a convicted sex offender, who later enrolled as a medical student at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), is likely to apply to take the 2020 state examination to qualify as a doctor. The 31-year-old, identified as Park, was studying at Korea University in eastern Seoul eight years ago, when he was convicted of sexually assaulting a female student with two of his classmates in April 2011, and recording the attack. The three were expelled from the school and the Supreme Court confirmed lower court sentences that sent them to prison Park received two-and-a-half years. However, all three are said to have taken the university entrance exam again and have entered different medical schools. Park enrolled in Sungkyunkwan as a freshman in 2014. The student council of the SKKU medical school raised a question on Park's admittance in 2016 after news of his enrollment spread through campus. However, the school then issued a statement that there was no law preventing a convicted sex offender from entering medical school. Now, he is in his last year of the four-year regular course before taking the national exam. The examination takes place every January. According to statistics released by the Korea Health Personnel Licensing Examination Institute, 94 percent of test-takers passed the test on average over the last five years. There is no regulation banning a convicted sex offender from applying to take the state medical examination. According to the relevant laws, the grounds for disqualification are very limited, including clauses banning those repeatedly convicted of drug-related crimes and people with chronic psychiatric conditions that could affect their judgment in interactions with patients. Even if a licensed doctor commits a crime, the license is not revoked unless they receive a prison term for a "medical-related" offence. So a doctor convicted of a sex crime can keep their license and continue to deal with patients, under current laws. According to the National Police Agency, 184 violent crimes were committed by doctors between 2013 and 2017, and 177 of them, or 96 percent, were sexual in nature. Ahn Gi-jong, head of the Korea Alliance of Patients Organizations, said being a doctor is a job that requires high moral standards as they deal with a patient's naked body. "The political circles or medical associations should take the initiative in restricting those convicted of sex crimes from obtaining a medical license," Ahn said. Meanwhile, SKKU refused to comment on the issue or make an official announcement, saying this would breach its Personal Information Protection Act. Lee Boo-jin, a daughter of Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee and the head of Hotel Shilla, leaves the hotel in central Seoul after participating in it's regular general meeting of shareholders, Thursday. / Yonhap By Kim Jae-heun Police are looking into suspicions that Lee Boo-jin, a daughter of Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee and the head of Hotel Shilla, regularly abused propofol, a controlled substance used as a sleep inducer for surgery and other medical procedures. Officials at Gangnam Police Station in southern Seoul, Thursday, visited the plastic surgery hospital where Lee allegedly received propofol, to check the facts regarding the allegations, together with officials from the regional public health center. The move follows a media report the previous day, which raised the allegations based on testimony from a former staff member at the hospital. "We are conducting an investigation of the hospital regarding its propofol management," a police officer said. "Following the results, we will decided whether to question Lee or not." According to the report by Newstapa, Lee was regularly given propofol at the hospital from January to October 2016 while the witness worked there. The former employee said Lee received the substance in a VIP room at least twice a month. By Kang Seung-woo As the earthquake that shook Pohang in 2017 turned out to be a man-made disaster caused by a government project, the government is expected to face a series of damage suits, with the amount of compensation likely to reach up to 9 trillion won ($8 billion). A banner is put up to prevent people from entering an earthquake-stricken apartment in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, Wednesday. The building was severely damaged by the 5.4-magnitude quake in November 2017. / Yonhap On Wednesday, the government-led research team concluded after a one-year investigation that the 5.4-magnitude quake in the North Gyeongsang provincial city was "triggered" by a nearby geothermal power plant, opening the doors wide to damage suits by citizens. The tremors left 118 injured and cost 84.5 billion won, but the amount could reach 332.3 billion won when indirect economic losses are included, according to the Bank of Korea's Pohang office. Citizens and civic groups are set to hold the government fully responsible for their direct and indirect suffering through legal actions either civil or criminal suits. By Lee Suh-yoon A Seoul subway operator has been placed in the driver's seat for the construction of the first urban railway system in Da Nang, a tourist destination on Vietnam's east coast. Seoul Metro, the operator of Seoul's subway lines 1 through 8, signed a special memorandum of agreement with the People's Committee of Vietnam at the committee's regional office in Da Nang, Wednesday. The agreement is a follow-up to a memorandum of understanding made between the two parties in January last year. Representatives from Korean construction firms that will partake in this civil works project Lotte Engineering & Construction and Saman and Dang Viet Dung, vice chairperson of the committee's regional office, were present at the signing ceremony. "With a public-private partnership, and the participation from Korean construction firms that are a part of the project's consortium, we will try our best to realize Da Nang's first urban railway system,"Seoul Metro CEO Kim Tae-ho said in a press statement, Thursday. "We hope this signing ceremony can become the foundation for the project." Under this agreement, Seoul Metro and Da Nang City will conduct preliminary feasibility tests for the project and use the results to draw up specific subway line plans and public-private operation models. Seoul Metro also provided consultation services for Ho Chi Minh City's railway system in 2015 and 2017. By Lee Min-hyung The Ministry of Unification plans to seek amendments to laws concerning North Korea to reflect the recent progress in inter-Korean reconciliation. This was included in the ministry's annual unification white paper released Thursday. "We plan to revise relevant laws on inter-Korean relations by institutionalizing recent agreements between the two Koreas," the ministry said in the paper. The 2019 white paper highlighted inter-Korean reconciliation and exchanges initiated by the first meeting between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last April. In particular, the ministry will push for a swift ratification of the Panmunjeom Declaration adopted in the summit by teaming up with the National Assembly to pave the way for the law revision. Seoul and Pyongyang held three summits last year to discuss complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The latest one came last September when Moon and Kim reached a detailed agreement to disarm the border area and build lasting peace here. To reflect on the sudden shift in inter-Korean relations, the ministry added 82 more pages into this year's paper, compared to that of last year. "A new history of peace and reconciliation began on the peninsula in 2018, and 2019 will be a more crucial time to bring in greater hope here," Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said in the preface of the paper. President Moon Jae-in, right, shakes hands with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on his visit to Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday. Yonhap By Kim Yoo-chul President Moon Jae-in received advice from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in their meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday, on how to make the most of social media for communication, according to the presidential office. Discussions with Dorsey were inspirational for Moon who has a lot of interest in direct communication with the people, it said. Moon has 1.76 million Twitter followers. Cheong Wa Dae runs two official Twitter accounts _ @moonriver365 and @TheBlueHouseKR. Former U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon speaks in a press conference at Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday, after accepting South Korean President Moon Jae-in's offer to lead a new government organization tackling the country's rising air pollution caused by particulate matters. Yonhap South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday sought the help of a former head of the United Nations to tackle the thorny issue of fine dust pollution, which could upset his country's fragile relations with China. In a meeting held at his office Cheong Wa Dae, the president renewed his request for former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to head a new government organization to be set up. Moon's initial request was made earlier in the month when his chief of staff, Noh Young-min, paid a visit to Ban, who stepped down as the U.N. secretary-general in late 2016. Following his meeting with the president, Ban said he has accepted the offer. Former U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, left, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in met at Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday, to discuss the country's rising air pollution caused by particulate matters. Yonhap "Many have expressed concerns (about me taking the job) and it was because fine dust pollution is a complicated issue caused by many factors inside and outside of the country that will not be easy to solve," he told a press conference. "The reason I agreed to take the job is because avoiding it would run counter to my principles when the lives and health of our people are seriously threatened by fine dust," Ban added. The new anti-pollution organization was first proposed by the head of the minor opposition Bareunmirae Party, who emphasized the importance of coordinated efforts to tackle an issue that is evidently becoming more regional. Moon earlier proposed joint efforts with China to prevent particulate matter moving between the two countries, ordering his government to study the possibility of the countries jointly creating artificial rain over waters between them. A drone jointly flown by the National Institute of Environmental Research and Metropolitan Air Quality Management Office scans air quality above Ansan's Danwon-gu in Gyeonggi Province, Thursday. Yonhap Rep. Hong Young-pyo, floor leader of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, speaks during a policy coordination meeting at the National Assembly, Thursday. Seen on the right is Cho Jeong-sik, a chief policymaker of the ruling party. Yonhap By Jung Da-min Ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) floor leader Rep. Hong Young-pyo called for a thorough investigation into the geothermal plant in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, Thursday, one day after the government announced it triggered an earthquake there in 2017. "The project to build the geothermal power plant started at the end of 2010, under the Lee Myung-bak administration," Hong said. "We assume that the project proceeded without specific plans, resulting in the earthquake that caused about 1,300 to become homeless, about 300 billion won ($266 million) of property damage and even the postponement of the national college entrance test." The Spring Equinox, the fourth of China's 24 solar terms, usually starts around March 20. This year, it falls on March 21. The Equinox signals the equal length of the day and night. After the Equinox, the sun moves northwards, resulting in gradually longer days in the Northern Hemisphere and longer nights in the Southern Hemisphere. Customs Egg-standing game Standing an egg upright is a popular game across the country during the Spring Equinox. It is an old custom that dates back 4,000 years. People practice this tradition to celebrate the coming of spring. It is believed that if someone can make the egg stand, they will have good luck in the future. To reward the farm cattle This practice is widespread in the southern area of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. As the Spring Equinox comes, farm work starts and both the farmers and the cattle become busy. Farmers will reward animals with sticky rice balls to express their gratitude. Meanwhile, people will make a sacrifice to the birds, to thank them for bringing warnings and also in the hope that they won't eat the grain later in the year. To glue the beak of sparrows According to the custom, peasants will eat tangyuan, sweet dumplings stuffed with black sesame paste. Meanwhile, they will place some unstuffed tangyuan on sticks around the crops, for the sparrows. This way, the farmers hope the sparrows will eat the tangyuan and get sticky beaks, leaving them unable to eat the crops. Traditional food Ludagun According to the old tradition of Beijing locals, when the Spring Equinox falls, people are supposed to eat Ludagun to avoid evil and pray for good fortune. Ludagun is made from millet flour or sticky rice stuffed with red bean paste. The Ludagun is then rolled in sesame seeds, as the seeds look just like a cloud of dust raised by a donkey rolling on the ground. Thus, Ludagun is known as Rolling Donkey. Spring vegetables Eating spring vegetables during the Spring Equinox is a common custom in many regions of China. Spring vegetables refer to wild edible leafy greens. In China, people believe that eating wild greens helps them stay healthy. Sun cake During the Spring Equinox, Beijing locals traditionally offer sacrifices to the God of Sun. The "sun cake", a round cake made from wheat and sugar, serves as the main offering. During the Spring Equinox, locals will buy sun cakes and place them to the center-right of the table, to express their gratitude to the God of Sun. President Moon Jae-in talks with former U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at Cheong Wa Dae, Thursday. Yonhap By Kim Yoo-chul Former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, also chief of a newly established national committee to fight fine dust, said Thursday South Korea will "soon begin" discussions with China for "comprehensive measures" aimed at addressing the worsening air quality. "South Korea designated the worsening air pollution as a national disaster. Record levels of fine dust have blanketed most of the country. Yes, this is a national disaster. We have to address it by developing relevant talks with countries in Northeast Asia including China," Ban said in a press conference at Cheong Wa Dae. President Moon Jae-in thanked the former U.N. chief for his decision to accept an offer to lead the committee upon his visit to the presidential office. The meeting lasted for 40 minutes from 2 p.m., Thursday, according to presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he departs the White House for a day trip to Ohio, Wednesday. UPI-Yonhap Some $1.18 billion of US troops payment left unused By Lee Min-hyung Over 1.3 trillion won ($1.18 billion) from payments made by South Korea to the U.S. for the upkeep of its forces stationed here remained unused as of 2018, according to a National Assembly report, Thursday. The report suggested that Seoul develop a new method to calculate what it pays to Washington as the latter is pressuring it to pay more for the USFK presence. Media reports also showed that the President Donald Trump administration is even trying to use some of the money to build his border wall with Mexico. Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Defense unveiled a fact sheet on the "funding pool" for Trump's border wall plan. The sheet included information that the U.S. government will take $70.5 million from the USFK maintenance budget. The funding pool report states the money will come from the budgets for two U.S. bases here Camp Tango in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, and Kunsan Air Base in North Jeolla Province. The report is in contrast to Trump's repeated claims that South Korea doesn't pay enough in cost sharing for the USFK. With the U.S. considering using the money for its own internal purpose, calls are growing here for Seoul to express concern to the U.S. over this issue. When contacted, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which deals with the defense cost sharing agreement, declined to comment. Whenever dust particles hang thick in the air in South Korea, sales of pork rise due to an old belief. Has urban pollution got you down? South Koreans say they have a unique solution for dusty days: a sizzling plate of pork barbeque. 15-YEAR-OLD SOUTH KOREAN, HAN DONG-JAE, SAYING: "My mom told me that pork helps - and pork belly is my favorite food - so I eat more pork when it's smoggy like today." An old belief in South Korea goes - that pork is good for smog. Coal miners thought all the oil would help the dust slide down their throat. Though health experts say there's no scientific rationale behind that belief. A Seoul doctor told Reuters you should, instead, wear a face mask or to just avoid going outside altogether. But still, on especially hazy days this year pork sales in the country have seen big spikes. Gettyimagesbank 49-YEAR-OLD SOUTH KOREAN, KIM DONG-WOOK, SAYING: "It feels like oil from the meat washes away the dust in my throat." South Korea faces a battle against unhealthy air. A lot of it's from cars and coal-fired power plants but it's not just a domestic problem: smog has been blowing across the border from NorthKorea and China too. Along with pork air purifiers and masks are seeing a sales boom as well, but not just masks for people. 36-YEAR-OLD SOUTH KOREAN, CHO EUN-HYE, SAYING: "His breed requires regular walking, so I have no choice but to make him put on this mask. It's inconvenient but I think we'll have to keep living with that." Sales of pet masks increased more than 5 times than usual last month, according to Korean pet products maker 'Dear Dog.' This month new legislation designated South Korea's pollution plague as a 'social disaster' which could potentially unlock emergency funds. The World Health Organization has warned, air pollution can cause cancer, asthma, pneumonia, and other respiratory diseases. (Reuters) By Andrew Hammond Chinese President Xi Jinping begins an Italian trip Thursday to reportedly sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The expected move will be the first time any G7 state has endorsed the $1 trillion plan which lies at the center of a geopolitical contest between China and the United States for global influence. While Rome is not always seen as being among the top-tier global powers, part of the reason why the development has such potential significance is Italy's continued systemic importance in Europe. As a G7 country, it is the third-largest eurozone economy and poses perhaps the biggest threat to the single currency area's future because the country has the second-biggest debt load in the bloc after Greece. And it is Rome's current economic travails which are a big driver of its apparent decision on the Belt and Road. With Xi starting his trip in Venetia, some Italian leaders have also invoked the spirit of Marco Polo by hailing what some have called the "new Silk Road." The revelation that Rome has been deep in discussions with Beijing first emerged two weeks ago when Italian Undersecretary of Economic Development Michele Geraci said that Italy was considering signing an "initial framework" accord. That prospect, which predictably irritated Washington, drew an immediate rebuke from Garrett Marquis, a National Security Council spokesman who asserted that there was "no need for the Italian government to lend legitimacy to China's infrastructure vanity project". Yet, it is not just Washington that is concerned, but also Brussels too. EU officials are increasingly conscious of Beijing's influence across the continent, including the so-called "16+1" initiative of China and key countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Buttressing this, a number of EU states have already signed MOUs with China on the BRI, including Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Greece, Malta and Portugal. Like Washington, Brussels has reservations about the BRI, not least given wider frustrations over Beijing's perceived slowness to open up its own economy, and a wave of Chinese takeovers of European firms in key industries. Yet, Brussels has declared it will cooperate with the grand initiative "on the basis of China fulfilling its declared aim of making it an open platform which adheres to market rules, EU and international requirements." As well as being divisive with Washington and Brussels, Geraci's initial comments prompted an apparent split in the Italian government itself too indicating that Rome had not 100 percent made up its mind on this issue. Take the example of Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Guglielmo Picchi who commented last week that "at the moment, I do not think we should proceed with the signature." These signs that Italy might back out of the plan, especially in light of U.S. criticism, then irked China. Take the example of Foreign Minister Wang Yi who hit back that "Italy is an independent country. We trust that you'll stick to the decision you have independently made" on the BRI. Wang's frosty response and the concern about the BRI in much of the West stem from the scheme's immensely ambitious nature. Beijing has big plans to boost trade and stimulate economic growth across Asia, Africa and beyond by building massive amounts of infrastructure and connecting it to countries around the globe. Take the example of Pakistan, for instance, where Beijing has already made commitments of around $60 billion under the BRI. While this is to be largely spent on infrastructure, it has cemented warming geopolitical ties with Islamabad, a previous longstanding U.S. ally during the Cold War. In this context, one of the key reasons why Washington will have been so upset by recent revelations from Rome is that the Trump team had been trying to form its own strong relationship with the populist government there. Indeed, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who met with Donald Trump several times last year, including at the White House, was perceived by some to be emerging as the U.S. president's strongest supporter in Western Europe. Trump last year declared Conte "a really great guy" and that he "will do a great job the people of Italy have got it right". And this political affinity appeared to rest not just on apparent personal chemistry, but also the alignment of their policy positions on key issues like Russia and immigration. While the Trump team therefore has particularly perceived reason to feel vexed, should Conte sign the MOU with Xi as reported, concern about the BRI is bipartisan in Washington given the concern of many Democrats about the growing Chinese international influence. This was underlined, during the Obama administration, when Washington raised significant concerns about the degree to which London was then perceived to be cozying up to Beijing under the previous government of David Cameron, including the U.K.'s decision to become a founder member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which is being championed by Beijing as a potential alternative to the World Bank. Taken overall, Italy's anticipated endorsement of the BRI will be a political breakthrough for Beijing. This is especially so given that the White House had perceived that the populist stripe of the administration in Rome had brought new spice to bilateral bonds following the positive initial meetings last year between Trump and Conte. Andrew Hammond (andrewkorea@outlook.com) is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics. A week after a Boeing 737 Max 8 passenger jet crashed in Ethiopia, that country's transport minister said recovered flight recorders from Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 showed "clear similarity" to a deadly accident in Indonesia last October involving a Lion Air plane of the same model. When two new, highly sophisticated airplanes fall from the sky in similar, mysterious circumstances, passengers have a right to be alarmed. This is a crisis for Chicago-based Boeing and CEO Dennis Muilenburg. The company has a stellar reputation for aircraft design and building a reputation now on the line. Here are four questions for Boeing that require investigation while the 737 Max 8 and 737 Max 9 models remain grounded: What, precisely, caused the crashes of these two jets within the space of five months? The Ethiopian 737 Max 8 jet, delivered in November 2018, took off in clear weather from the capital, Addis Ababa, March 10, but the pilot almost immediately reported problems and asked to return to the airport. The plane crashed within minutes. Similarly, Lion Air Flight 610, a 737 Max 8 delivered in August 2018, went down just after departure, moments after the pilot sought to return to the field. In both cases, the 737 Max apparently failed to maintain a steady climb, veering erratically as if the pilots were struggling to keep control of the aircraft. The focus of scrutiny is an automated anti-stalling program known as MCAS, or Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, that pushes down the nose if it senses the risk of a stall. MCAS is intended as a safety measure to compensate for the airplane's larger engines, which could affect the 737 Max's aerodynamics. In the Lion Air crash, sensors possibly misread the plane's performance and sent the jet into a dive to avoid a phantom stall. The pilot evidently lost a battle for control. Did the Ethiopian Airlines flight suffer a similar fate? Did any element of the design or certification process for the 737 Max introduce a risk factor? The U.S. government, Boeing, airline officials and others are examining the crashes. A focus of inquiry is the development and certification process of the 737 Max, a newly updated version of the workhorse single-aisle jet. The issue is whether Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration properly analyzed the function of the MCAS flight control system. The Seattle Times reports that a Boeing safety analysis may have understated the system's ability to respond forcefully to a perceived stall and then reset to repeatedly push down the nose. The newspaper, citing unnamed sources at the FAA and other aviation organizations, explored whether the FAA delegated too much authority to Boeing to assess the airworthiness of its own product. Was pilot training adequate? A Boeing sales advantage to customers is that the 737 Max is an advanced version of a familiar jet, which should make it easier and less expensive for airlines to introduce to the fleet. But news reports after the Lion Air crash quoted some pilots suggesting Boeing didn't adequately explain to pilots how the plane could commandeer flight controls. Boeing and regulators also apparently agreed that pilots previously cleared to fly the 737 didn't require additional time training in a flight simulator. How will Boeing assure that the 737 Max is safe to fly? The answer to this question depends in large part on final assessments of what caused each accident. A final report on the Lion Air crash is expected later this year. Boeing and the FAA have said that safety certification of the 737 Max met government requirements. Muilenburg said Boeing is examining the design and operation of the 737 Max and will make any appropriate changes. For several months, the company has been working on software fixes to MCAS that are due to be introduced in April. Trust in the safety of aircraft is implicit in the act of flying. No one should have to book a flight wondering what may happen during or after takeoff. Muilenburg, on behalf of the flying public: Figure out what went wrong aboard the 737 Max, make it right, and reassure the flying public that air travel is safe. The above editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune. It was distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Cheong Wa Dae fails to properly assist Moon's trips The incompetence of Cheong Wa Dae's protocol team left President Moon Jae-in an embarrassing position during his trip to Southeast Asia last week. The three-day trip to Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia did not gain a lot of media attention. Unfortunately, the mistakes from Cheong Wa Dae have overshadowed the accomplishments of the trip that was part of Moon's efforts to forge stronger ties with ASEAN nations for a more balanced diplomacy. After the trip was over, the local media belatedly reported that Moon had used an incorrect greeting during a joint press conference with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on March 13. Moon used the greeting "Selamat sore," which means "good afternoon" in Indonesian. The correct Malaysian greeting is "Selamat petang." Cheong Wa Dae later explained that confusion had occurred while preparing greetings that would convey a sense of friendliness to the host country. The presidential office also said that it will do its best to prevent a similar situation in the future. But the explanation does not sound very sincere, when considering that Cheong Wa Dae's vice spokeswoman Ko Min-jung said Wednesday that the Malaysian government did not make an issue over it. But the absence of a protest from the host country does not excuse the unbelievable carelessness of Cheong Wa Dae's protocol team. Given the importance President Moon has placed on strengthening diplomacy with Southeast Asia, the presidential office should have been fully prepared to assist Moon in making a good impression on the host countries. This isn't the only mistake from Cheong Wa Dae regarding the trip. During Moon's visit to Cambodia, Cheong Wa Dae posted an introduction to the country on its Facebook page with photos of another country. One cannot help but wonder whether there is something seriously wrong with the operation of Cheong Wa Dae's communications office. Diplomatic blunders have been a regular part of Moon's overseas trips. Many still remember when Moon missed the photo session with other heads of states during the ASEM summit in October 2018. During an interpellation session at the National Assembly, even Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon admitted that there are people at Cheong Wa Dae who lack focus and expertise on diplomacy. Such problems are inevitable when political appointments dominate Cheong Wa Dae. Moon has come under fire already for incompetence in diplomacy after a series of questionable nominations to Korea's key ambassador posts. In addition, Cheong Wa Dae staff have aroused controversy for their involvement in various scandals recently. All of these incidents show that Cheong Wa Dae is suffering from a serious lack of professionalism and ethics, which is undermining the people's confidence in the President. The people will not continue to overlook Cheong Wa Dae's carelessness in managing state affairs. By Hyon O'Brien One of the things I do regularly each week is to share with my Rotary Club members in Bal Harbour, Florida an eclectic list of miscellaneous historical events that happened on that day "today in history." The recent 100th anniversary of Korea's March 1, 1919 Independence Movement against Japanese occupation inspired me to do the same thing for the month of March. So here is "this month in history." On March 1, 1919, Seoul was overflowing with marches by people from around the country protesting against Japanese colonial rule. One of the leaders, at the tender age of 16, was student Ryu Gwan-sun (1902-1920). When her school was closed, Ryu continued her ongoing independence protests in her home in Chungcheong Province. Along with her family, Ryu worked tirelessly going door to door and encouraged the people to join the Independence Movement. Ryu organized a demonstration of about 3,000 protesters chanting "Long Live Korean Independence!" The Japanese military police arrived and fired on the unarmed Korean protesters and killed 19 people including Ryu's parents. Yu was arrested and died in prison on Sept. 28, 1920 due to injuries sustained from torture and beatings inflicted by the Japanese prison wardens, one of 7,500 who reportedly died at the hands of the Japanese authorities. On a more upbeat note, on March 14, 1879 Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was born in Germany. He developed the theory of relativity, and is best known to the general public for "the world's most famous equation," his mass-energy equivalence formula, E=mc2. Coincidentally, one of my favorite people in the world was also born on March 14. Lorraine Graham O'Brien (1920-1989) is my husband's mother. When I first met her in Seoul 50 years ago, I instantly liked her for her quiet dignity, elegance and kindness. She and her husband, James O'Brien, had flown to Korea to meet my family. For the next 20 years, I gradually got to know her and she became my role model. Her unconditional love for her three children, her discretion in her treatment of them, and her strong support and respect for all of them as individual adults became my guidelines. When we had our first child in 1973, she dropped all her responsibilities as a teacher, organist and wife and drove 200 miles to help us cope with the new baby. Her love of books and words, and her incredible knowledge of music, have influenced me and we were able to connect deeply beyond the relationship made as in-laws. Her skill as a piano teacher, her work as an organist for her church, her leadership of the Parkchester Chorus in the Bronx, all deepened my admiration of her. I will never forget her kindness, selflessness, friendship and love. Happy 99th birthday, Mom! Other things of note that happened in March: March 15, the Ides of March is the best-known day in the Roman calendar as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C. As many as 60 conspirators participated, led by M. Junius Brutus and P. Servilius Casca. March 17 is the feast of Saint Patrick (385-461), the 5th century Romano-British Christian missionary and patron saint of Ireland. St Patrick's Day is a cultural and religious celebration held on March 17, the "traditional" date of his death. The day is marked with parades around the world, including a spirited celebration in Seoul. On March 1, 1872, Yellowstone became the first National Park in the United States. It is the first and the oldest national park in the world followed by the Royal National Park established in 1879 in Australia. John Muir (1838-1914), the American naturalist, known as the Father of the National Parks, dedicated his life as an advocate for the preservation of wilderness. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and many other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club (yours truly is a member) that Muir founded is a prominent American conservation organization. On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) obtained the patent for the telephone. I remember visiting his home in Nova Scotia, Canada, when I silently thanked him for his invention. It was a surprise to discover that he also did groundbreaking work in hydrofoils and optical telecommunications. I vividly remember our family getting our first telephone installed at our home in Wonju in 1959. It was an unforgettable experience to hear my friend speaking at the other end of the line. On March 26, 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk (1914-95) announced the successful test of a vaccine to fight polio. Since 1985, Rotary International's main focus of service for the world community has been polio vaccinations. For a time the disease seemed to have been eradicated by this effort, but currently six cases of polio have been diagnosed in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rotary continues to campaign to "End Polio Now," sending doctors to vaccinate where needed. One of my friends spent a week recently in India with a Rotary team overseeing polio vaccinations in remote villages. In March 1838, Charles Dickens (1812-70) issued the first four chapters of his serial novel "Nicholas Nickleby," his third published novel. It was an instant success that cemented his reputation. Let's look forward to an equally historic April. Hyon O'Brien (hyonobrien@gmail.com) is a former reference librarian now living in the United States. By Baek Byung-yeul Samsung Electronics will launch the world's first fifth-generation (5G) network-enabled smartphone Galaxy S10 5G on April 5, the tech firm confirmed Thursday. "The Galaxy S10 5G models will be officially launched on April 5," said an official from the mobile phone maker, adding no pre-order reservations will be available. "Samsung will offer its Galaxy Buds wireless earphones and a wireless charging package as well as a 50 percent discount coupon on screen replacement," the firm said. Samsung introduced four variations of Galaxy S10 smartphones in February but the launch of the 5G-enabled model was postponed, with industry sources saying the firm seems to need more time for testing. The S10 5G model finally passed electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) testing by the National Radio Research Agency on Monday. This is an essential process for telecommunication device manufacturers to release their products in the domestic market. With this plan, Samsung will become the world's first phone maker to offer a 5G-enabled smartphone, six days earlier than U.S. mobile carrier Verizon, which plans to launch its 5G smartphone on April 11. Though Samsung didn't announce the price of the device, industry officials estimate it will be between 1.4 million won ($1,241) and 1.5 million won. U.S. Department of Justice antitrust chief Makan Delrahim says SK Energy, GS Caltex and Hanjin Transportation have agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to rig fuel prices at U.S. military bases in Korea. AP By Jung Min-ho Three Korean companies will plead guilty to conspiring to rig fuel prices at U.S. military bases in Korea, the U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday (KST). SK Energy, GS Caltex and Hanjin Transportation will pay $236 million in criminal and civil penalties for their role in a conspiracy to fix the price of fuel between 2005 and 2016. Makan Delrahim, head of the department's antitrust division, said there may be other co-conspirators and investigators will dig deeper into the case. The main entrance to the United States Forces Korea's Camp Casey / Korea Times file "These charges are the first to be announced in this investigation into bid rigging and price fixing of fuel supply services to the Department of Defense in this critical region," Delrahim said. "As a result of the anti-competitive agreement, the U.S. Department of Defense paid substantially more for fuel supply services than it would have absent the collusion." The petroleum and refinery companies and their agents tried to suppress competition during the bidding process for U.S. military fuel contracts, according to the department. Delrahim refused to disclose the exact amount of money the U.S. military lost in the rigging, but said the civil penalties against the companies were more than they had overcharged. The three will pay some $82 million in criminal fines. Separately, they will pay about $154 million over civil charges brought against them. The U.S. stations about 28,000 troops here to deter North Korean aggression, after the Korean War ended in 1953 without a peace treaty. Shanghai will likely surpass Singapore as the world's fourth-largest financial hub within three years, based on the metrics of a recent ranking of global financial centers that put the city in fifth position, thanks to its strength in the volume of products and deals, as well as further opening-up, a Chinese analyst said on March 17. The 632-meter-high Shanghai Tower is a landmark building in Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone of Shanghai. (Photo: Peoples Daily Online) Shanghai retained the No.5 position but saw its score move closer to those of global hubs including New York and London, according to the 25th edition of the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI 25) compiled by the China Development Institute in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province and London-based Z/Yen Partners. The GFCI 25 provides evaluations of future competitiveness and rankings for more than 110 major financial centers has received considerable attention from the global financial community. China announced an action plan in January to transform Shanghai into an international financial center by 2020, with a focus on yuan-denominated products and strong financial resource allocation capability. New York remains in first place in the index with 794 points, followed by London, Hong Kong and Singapore. Shanghai was just ahead of Tokyo with a score of 770 points. In the previous survey in September 2018, Shanghai's ranking was also fifth with a score of 766 points. In April 2018, China's first "unmanned bank" opened in Shanghai. In "unmanned bank", all kinds of business are handled by two intelligent robots. (Photo: Peoples Daily Online) "This ranking focuses on volume. Shanghai has the vast Chinese domestic market as its source for growth," Xi Junyang, a professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics told the Global Times on March 17. Shanghai made great progress in 2018 in terms of the volume of deals and the growth in types of financial products, Xi said. Its level of openness also greatly improved. In 2018, Shanghai had financial market turnover of $245.15 trillion, up 15.2 percent year-on-year, according to news site jiemian.com on Friday. Indication of greater openness in recent years in Shanghai included the internationalization of the Shanghai Gold Exchange and the creation of a crude futures exchange. A bond connect plan is also in the works to integrate bond investors with the global market, and the daily quota on the Hong Kong-Shanghai stock link program has been expanded. "Improved rankings of Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong reflect the advance of China's financial industry and its trend of greater openness. Their influence is also rising as global economic activity shifts toward Asia," Zhao Xijun, deputy director of the Finance and Securities Research Institute at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times. When the index was first published in 2007, Shanghai only ranked in 24th position with a score of 576 points. Its gap with the No.1 global hub narrowed by 165 points over the years,said jiemian.com. However, experts saidto catch up with global leaders, Shanghai still has a lot to do. "There has been much progress but there is also much room for improvement," Zhao said. "We must not forget that the reason China develops its financial industry is to let it serve the overall economy. Orion Vice Chairman Huh In-cheol, left, shakes hands with Mann Ventures Founder Sukhbir Singh Mann, Wednesday, at a groundbreaking ceremony for a manufacturing plant which Orion will establish by the first half of 2022 in Rajasthan, India. / Courtesy of Orion Wang Zhimin, director of the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong, speaks at a forum on Wednesday. Photo from South China Morning Post By Tony Cheung Beijing's top official in Hong Kong has taken a swipe at the United States, saying Canada's arrest of Huawei's chief financial officer last year at Washington's request only boosted the tech giant's global fame. Wang Zhimin, director of Beijing's liaison office in Hong Kong, said on Wednesday that the arrest of Sabrina Meng Wanzhou was actually "the world's biggest advertisement for Huawei's 5G technology". "Now, many of my friends and I are using Huawei phones, and we are proud of our nation's technological leadership. I believe Hong Kong will play a more important role as the nation innovates," Wang said. Meng, who was arrested in Vancouver on December 1, was wanted in the US on fraud charges relating to alleged breaches of sanctions against Iran. Washington ordered Meng's extradition from Canada, where she remains awaiting legal proceedings. Wang's remarks came as he addressed hundreds of local politicians and businessmen at a forum on the outcomes of the annual sessions of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the nation's top advisory body, and the National People's Congress (NPC), which concluded on March 15. Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, left, leaves her home to attend a court appearance in Vancouver, British Columbia, Wednesday, March 6, 2019. The executive was arrested in December at Vancouver's airport at the request of U.S. authorities and Canada announced last week it intends to proceed with the extradition case. AP-Yonhap Ma Fung-kwok, an NPC deputy who has been using a Huawei phone for more than a year, said he agreed with Wang. "It was objectively true that Huawei gained international fame," he said. Another NPC deputy, David Wong Yau-kar, said Wang was just highlighting China's technological strength. "China started much later than many other countries, and it has done well in areas such as 5G and high-speed railways," he said. "There is still much to be done in some other areas, but the US, Japan and Germany are not the world's leaders in all technological fields." Wang said President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang made important remarks during the annual sessions which would guide the nation and influence Hong Kong's economic development in the years to come. In his annual report on March 5, Li said Hong Kong and Macau would develop and progress with the mainland as they seized opportunities under Beijing's ambitious "Greater Bay Area" plan. The plan aims at turning the two cities and nine neighbouring cities into an innovation and technological powerhouse rivalling Silicon Valley by 2035. Max Wang, from China and now living in Vancouver, holds a placard during an extradition hearing for Huawei Technologies Co Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou at the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, March 6, 2019. Reuters-Yonhap Eyesore cottages likely to be restored soon Restoration on the Red Roost and Red Rest cottages located at 1187 and 1179 Coast Blvd. is probably less than a year from starting. I know people are curious and I dont want everyones hopes to get high, said the architect charged with handling the work, who would only comment anonymously, but in less than a year could be less than six months youre going to have the story of a lifetime. For now, the old roof tarps tossed over the cottages when a previous owner decided not to repair or maintain them have been removed and will be replaced with new ones. This is not part of the future work, the architect said. (A spokesperson for the La Jolla Cove Hotel & Suites, which owns the cottages, said only that nothing is planned for the cottages right now.) The path toward restoration was paved in February 2018, when a San Diego Superior Court lifted an injunction against developing the property upon the settlement of a 2014 contractual-interference lawsuit, which also transferred ownership to the partnership of La Jolla Cove Suites LLC and La Jolla Exclusive LLC. The Red Rest and Red Roost were built in 1894 for George J. Leovy and Dr. Joseph E. Fishburn, respectively. Also known as the Neptune and Cove Tea Room cottages, they are believed to be La Jollas oldest still-standing structures. They are on the City, state and national lists of historic registers. La Jolla Symphony & Chorus director retiring Diane Salisbury, executive director of La Jolla Symphony & Chorus (LJS&C) since 2006, will retire in June. She leaves the LJS&C having successfully established a $1.5 million endowment and with a budget nearly double what it was when she was hired. Affiliated with UC San Diego since 1967, the nonprofit ensemble is known for performing both traditional and contemporary classical music. Salisbury said she looks forward to spending more time traveling with her husband and being able to pursue other interests. LJS&C has launched a search for a new executive director. Airbnb loses appeal A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has rejected an appeal brought by Airbnb against a Santa Monica ruling prohibiting short-term vacation rentals (STVR) without a resident present. This critical local law prevents residences in our community from being converted into de facto hotels, Santa Monica city attorney Lane Dilg said in a statement quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle. It protects affordable housing and it helps residents stay in their homes. The San Diego City Council passed similar regulations last August, but they were repealed last October. San Diego Juvenile Justice Commission appointing San Diego Superior Court seeks applicants for two vacancies on the San Diego County Juvenile Justice Commission (JJC). The JJC is a state-mandated, court-appointed citizens commission charged with inquiring into the administration of juvenile court law in San Diego County and providing leadership for citizen action. Appointments are for a term of four years and pay $25 per meeting, with a maximum of two meetings per month. Applicants should become familiar with the mandated and elective activities of the JJC prior to applying. Applications, due by April 12, are available at bit.ly/2TckANo Looking for friends The on-campus resale shop for UC San Diegos Friends of the International Center seeks volunteers. Profits from the store benefit programs supporting international education, including academic scholarships. Volunteers are asked to work one 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. shift per week, and receive a parking pass. To volunteer, e-mail Mayra Nevarez at icfriends@ucsd.edu Three La Jolla artists chosen St. Marks United Methodist Churchs 56th annual Lenten Art Show features three La Jolla artists Georgette Baker, JoAnna Potthoff and Terri Smith. The show, themed Beauty Revealed, runs now through April 21 in the church sanctuary at 3502 Clairemont Drive. (858) 273-1480. UC San Diego makes liver-cancer breakthrough Preclinical data from the UC San Diego School of Medicine offers proof-of-principle for a combination immunotherapy that suppresses tumor growth in the liver. In the January 28, 2019 online issue of Hepatology, researchers with UCSDs Moores Cancer Center report that combining two reagents a synthetic double-stranded RNA polyinosinicpolycytidylic acid with a programmed death-ligand 1 antibody stopped the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma in its tracks, with complete tumor remission and tumor-free survival observed in some mouse models. The most encouraging and important message from this study is that we have found a strategy or rationale to make liver cancer highly responsive to immunotherapy, said Gen-Sheng Feng, UCSD professor of pathology and molecular biology and senior author of the paper. Based on our preclinical data in animal models, a clinical trial could be designed and implemented quickly because both reagents are already being used separately to treat patients so there is no question about safety. Mayor Faulconer reports City is filling potholes Responding to severe winter storms that wreaked havoc on San Diegos roadways, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer has announced an expansion of the Citys pothole-repair program, nearly tripling the number of repair teams from nine to 26 crews per day. The City typically fills about 30,000 potholes each fiscal year. This fiscal year crews have fixed 25,000 and counting in fewer than nine months. San Diegans are encouraged to make repair requests through the Citys Get It Done app, available via smartphone or at sandiego.gov/get-it-done Students show their art The San Diego Unified School Districts annual Student Art Exhibit presents 640 pieces by students in 12 high schools, 10 middle schools, and 26 elementary schools throughout the district. Encouraging their success within the arts is just as important as reading and writing, said superintendent Cindy Marten. We must learn to follow our creative instincts, experiment, try, fail, try again, be curious and go out and explore the world. That is how we create amazing things, see the infinite possibilities, change this world for the better and create a better San Diego. The Student Art Exhibit can be seen on the second floor of the Eugene Brucker Education Center, 4100 Normal St., 7:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. through April 12. (619) 725-8000. It has been said that one of the chief responsibilities of local government is public safety. District 1 City Council candidate and La Jolla democrat Aaron Brennan takes that responsibility very seriously. A firefighter and current La Jolla Town Council trustee, Brennan said he decided to run following a series of personal experiences rooted in public safety. It started in 2015. My house got broken into while I was on duty at the fire station, he told La Jolla Light. My wife called me in the late afternoon she had called 9-1-1 and police said they were sending someone. So she stayed on the phone with me and 20 minutes went by, then 30 minutes went by and no one came. After a few hours, and having determined the robbers were no longer in the house, Brennans wife called the police again and told someone to come and investigate the next day. That was a really upsetting experience, especially for someone like me, whose whole identity is about helping other people, he said. I couldnt be there for my wife. It was traumatic for her and my kids, and it got me thinking that we can do better than this. After a friend nudged Brennan to run for office, the seed was planted. He started with the La Jolla Town Council. I knew I needed to get more involved in my community to see what issues people were thinking about and what was important to them, he said. The Town Council is an amazing venue for citizens to share what is bothering them and it is an amplifying voice for the citizens of La Jolla. Should he be elected to higher office, Brennan, unsurprisingly, said he would focus on public safety. Being a first-responder, I know there are improvements we could do at the City that we are not doing, he said. One of my bigger projects would be to do away with private 9-1-1 transport. I dont know why we have a for-profit company providing a public service. There is an inherent conflict of interest they are beholden to shareholders, which means they want to reduce costs which means fewer ambulances. Brennan added that hes been on calls during which he waited 20 minutes for an ambulance. There was an incident down in the South Bay where the fire captain decided to transport a stroke patient in the fire engine because it was going to take too long for the ambulance to get there, he said. This is personal to me. I see hiring City people to provide the level of service citizens need. Creating permanent jobs is an obvious solution. He would also prioritize environmental efforts and create steps to implement the Citys Climate Action Plan, improving housing affordability and increasing transit routes. As to why he would be good for the job, Brennan said: I have been on the receiving end of policy-makers decisions and how that played out. So I bring that perspective to the race. I also bring a leadership background (having been in the Navy Reserve since 1988), and with 90 guys who work under me I understand management. Coming from an admittedly interesting childhood, Brennan shared residences between Southern California and Colorado after his parents divorced. After his mother and the man who would become his stepfather moved to Arkansas, Brennan lived outside in nature. I literally lived in the middle of nowhere, like four miles of a dirt road before a highway, king of nowhere. I lived in a teepee for a summer while they were building a house, he said. It was amazing growing up in nature. And I also grew up with my dad near the ocean, so that is important to me. Brennan said he came to San Diego after visiting a friend in college and decided to finish his education here. I wound up in La Jolla because I married an amazing woman who earns more than a firefighter does. Im very proud of her. She is a complete rock star, he said of wife Kim Goodwin. Im happy some pretty volleyball player broke her heart right before I met her. Together they have two young children. Of his goals for his City Council term, Brennan concluded: I want to leave San Diego better than I found it and make the political bickering stop. A good idea is a good idea, not because of who thought of it. I hope I can bring that mindset to the Council. I want to get stuff done. I want my wife not to have to wait two hours for a police car to show up. Learn more at aaronforsandiego.com Election season has officially begun. In less than one year, residents of District 1 will have the opportunity to vote in the San Diego City Council primary election (March 3, 2020). Six candidates have already filed to run, and La Jolla Light will bring you an interview with each one in the coming weeks (and as they file). District 1 includes La Jolla, Carmel Valley, Del Mar Mesa, Pacific Highlands Ranch, Torrey Hills, Torrey Pines and University City. Next week: An interview with Carmel Valley resident Will Moore. San Diego Police Department community relations officer Larry Hesselgesser and new Northern Division Lt. Lisa McKean attended the La Jolla Shores Association (LJSA) meeting March 13 to provide the latest on a concern that has arisen in recent months: people sleeping in cars. In August 2018, the U.S. District Court ordered the San Diego Police Department to immediately cease enforcement of vehicle habitation laws, McKean said. Citing a ruling that the law was considered too vague for effective enforcement. Specifically, the court said: 1) The San Diego Police Department is enjoined from ticketing any person under San Diego Municipal Code vehicle habitation laws; 2) The San Diego Police Department is enjoined from impounding any vehicle on the basis of violating that code; and 3) The City of San Diego is enjoined from continued prosecution of, or enforcement of, any outstanding tickets issued under that section of the Municipal Code. LJSA trustee Dave Gordon said he saw the consequences first hand. I first found out about this in January after I saw two different cars parked in front of my house with people sleeping in them, he said. I called the San Diego Police Department non-emergency line and the dispatcher said: We arent enforcing that any more. I asked to have a supervisor call me back and he said that the law had changed. Hesselgesser explained: Based on the Citys position on vehicle habitation, our officers are hands-off now. Whereas before, back when sleeping in your car was illegal, that was enough probable cause for us to approach someone and see whether they had a criminal background or were just down on their luck and homeless. But since we dont have that tool any more, we just have probable cause. If someone calls and says there has been a suspicious vehicle in their neighborhood for a while, then we have probable cause to approach the vehicle and ask for a license to find out if the occupant has a history of criminal activity. LJSA trustee John Sheridan opined that action was needed because if I was homeless, the best place for me to sleep in my car would be the beach because there are showers, restrooms and other services there. He said that makes the Shores more impacted by the problem Its open season. Gordon added: Weve been asked by the police to be the eyes and ears of the community and now were seeing something that is obviously not right and we cant do anything about it, the police cant do anything about it, and we need the City Council to do something. Hesselgesser said the only solution would be for the City to go back and re-write the ordinance. It would best assist (the police) to write to your City Council representative to tell them youd like them to re-write the ordinance in such a way that it would help (us) find out if there is criminal activity, which would give us back the toolwe need to reach out to those people, he said. A motion passed unanimously to write a letter to City Council member Barbara Bry outlining the boards concerns, asking for further research and to recommend the City find a solution for where homeless people can safely sleep in their cars. In other LJSA news Election results: In the most recent election, six candidates ran to fill 10 seats. All six were elected: M.O. Andi Andreae, Pam Boynton, Janie Emerson, Sharon Luscomb, Ross Rudolph and Coco Tihanyi. (Andreae was not in attendance, and will be sworn in at the next meeting) There were also three write-in candidates, but LJSA chair Janie Emerson later told La Jolla Light they were not eligible for the board because they were not registered members at the time of the election. To fill the remaining seats, the goal is to appoint eligible members in the next two months. Outgoing LJSA trustee Brian Earley swears in newly elected members: Coco Tihanyi, Pam Boynton, Janie Emerson, Sharon Luscomb and Ross Rudolph. M.O. Andi Andreae was also elected, but not in attendance, and will be sworn in at the next meeting. Ashley Mackin-Solomon Calling the police: Regarding wait times when dialing the San Diego Police Departments non-emergency phone number (619) 531-2000 McKean said while dispatchers are fully staffed, confusion over which police phone number to call might be a contributing factor. The non-emergency number is for crimes that have already happened, she said. Crimes that are happening right now someone is breaking into a house or stealing a car that is a 9-1-1 call. On 9-1-1, the last I heard, the response time is eight seconds. Hesselgesser added that when calling the non-emergency phone number: If you push the star key, you can bypass the phone tree: press 1 for this, press 5 for that. You still have to wait, but you can jump the line a bit. Receptions to return: Starting in June, the pre-meeting receptions will resume at 6 p.m. when Shores businesses will provide refreshments on the patio fronting the Martin Johnson House and, occasionally, speakers will make presentations. Previous speakers have included Harry Helling, executive director of Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. PRC charter cleared: La Jolla Shores Permit Review Committee charter and bylaws were approved for, presumably, the last time. In February, LJSA approved the separation of the current PRC charter into two documents: a formal charter that would serve as an establishing document and a set of bylaws that outlines policies and procedures. By separating the documents, changes could be made as needed to the bylaws while preserving the charter. The revised documents were sent to the La Jolla Community Planning Association for ratification, where minor modifications were made. After the Community Planning Association approved the amended charter and bylaws, LJSA approved them one final time. Looking at the role of women in the past, present and future of politics, UC San Diego hosted a part lecture-part workshop with Sara Guillermo, chief program officer for IGNITE National a movement to educate and motivate young women who are ready and eager to become the next generation of political leaders. The March 12 event in the UCSD Womens Center opened with an interactive agree/disagree exercise where participants were encouraged to review certain statements and then stand in designated areas that indicated whether they agreed, disagreed or were unsure of the statements. These included: Women dont run for office because of social media backlash and trolling; Women dont run for office because of the family roles they serve; Women dont run for office because they arent recruited or asked to run; Women dont run for office because they dont feel qualified; and I want to run for office. (More on these later.) The Past In the next activity, participants were given the name of a woman or event in history and asked to research them, say why they are significant, and share their findings with the group. Figures and events included: Victoria Woodhull, the first female presidential candidate of the United States in 1872; Shirley Chisholm, first African-American woman elected to Congress in 1968; Roe V. Wade, the court case that legalized abortion in 1973; bell hooks, the author who deliberately uses lowercase letters to spell her name and who wrote about race, capitalism and gender; Anita Hill, the attorney who accused her supervisor, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, of sexual harassment in 1991; the year of the women in 1992, when a then-record number of women 11 were elected to the Senate and Congress Why these were chosen to illustrate the political past of women in the United States, Guillermo said, was because they serve as a reminder of how things change, but still stay the same. Citing the Anita Hill testimony and its parallel to the 2018 testimony of Christine Blasey Ford (who accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault), she said: The big piece in looking at these moments in our history is that they repeat themselves, but also increase the ways we are thinking of womens strides in politics. Some of them have cycled back into our lifetimes right now. The Present In 2016, Guillermo explained, the political representation of women in office was: 20 percent of Congress, 25 percent in the State legislature, 12 percent of governors and 22 percent of mayors representing 30,000 people or more. Students opined the number should be closer to 50 percent given that women make up 50 percent of the population and called the statistics sad and shocking. And perhaps worse, Guillermo said, at the rate this is going, there will not be 50 percent women in political leadership until 2121. One student joked global warming might get us first. But, Guillermo added: When we think about the past two years, and after the 2016 election, there were people who took to the streets in activism, particularly the Womens March of 2017. In 2018, we elected the largest and most diverse group of women to Congress ever. We saw candidates that debunked some of the (statements) from the agree/disagree exercise. Citing Congress members Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, she explained: They all ran against white men in their districts. Instead of knocking on the doors of voters, they knocked on the doors of people who did not vote in the election prior and the list of new potential voters. They ran massive voter registration drives. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wanted to reach a new demographic. The Future Going forward, Guillermo said IGNITE is looking to harness your energy and look to the future, by registering people to vote and getting varied perspectives on governmental boards all of which leads to a healthier democracy. In the 2018 midterms, we had the largest surge since 2008 of people registering to vote. Were starting to see that across the country, she explained. In looking at where the focus of government is, it is mostly the top 10,000 seats in this country the president, your state legislature, etc. but people forget there are half a million seats at the local level from the mayor to the mosquito abatement board. They are tackling issues the federal government wont tackle. To encourage those in attendance to become involved in civic issues, Guillermo suggested three takeaway steps: 1) political socialization, through which young women meet candidates and elected officials to demystify the political process and to (possibly) think about running for an office down the line; 2) campaign training, including how to fundraise, speak in public and communicate your message; and 3) increasing legislative knowledge to learn how policies are made. To learn more, visit ignitenational.org The photo taken on March 20, 2019 shows donated items in Harare, Zimbabwe. The Chinese Embassy and Chinese community in Zimbabwe donated food, purified water and equipment worth 200,000 U.S. dollars to help the victims of Cyclone Idai in the country. (Xinhua/Zhang Yuliang) HARARE, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Embassy and Chinese community in Zimbabwe donated food, purified water and equipment worth 200,000 U.S. dollars to help the victims of Cyclone Idai in the country. These donations will be sent to the disaster-stricken areas and reach the people in need as soon as possible, Chinese ambassador Guo Shaochun said at the handover ceremony on Wednesday morning. Guo said the SinoZim wildlife foundation, an organization created by Chinese people and working on protecting wild animals in Zimbabwe, also sent three badly-needed charge boats to the affected areas to rescue the people who are still trapped. "As a brother of Zimbabwe, China deeply feels how the Zimbabwean people are feeling and are always standing side-by-side, ready to offer maximum possible support," Guo said. He said the Chinese government will provide more assistance through official channels, including donating funds and 10,165 tons of rice and drilling another 500 boreholes for Zimbabwe this year. Martin Rushwaya, Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Defence and War Veterans Affairs, said the Zimbabwean government is so grateful for the gesture of goodwill from China. Idai have left at least 98 people dead, 217 missing and 102 injured in Zimbabwe. The death toll is expected to rise amid fears that some bodies could have been swept by the high waters into neighboring Mozambique. Thousands of people, especially in Chimanimani and Chipinge districts of the country's eastern province of Manicaland, have been left homeless after their houses were destroyed by the cyclone which also damaged roads and bridges. In Chipinge, another crisis is brewing, after water pipes were washed away in the cyclone-induced floods leaving residents without potable water. The United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom have also come on board to provide help to the victims. Some African countries that also have pledged to help out are Tanzania, South Africa, Namibia and Angola. SHANGHAI, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Police in Shanghai said Wednesday that they had arrested 32 members of a ring counterfeiting luxury brand products including LV, Kenzo and Loewe. Police seized over 4,000 bags, clothes, shoes and accessories and closed two assembly lines used to make the fake goods. The public security bureau of Shanghai's Qingpu District said they launched the investigation last year after being tipped off about sales of counterfeit LV bags on WeChat, China's mobile messaging app. Arrests were made in January in the provinces of Guangdong and Jiangsu. Police found the gang produced the fake products at the cost of 200 yuan (29.8 U.S. dollars) each. An initial estimate suggested the gang had produced and sold 100,000 counterfeited luxury products worth 100 million yuan. UKIP No Longer About BrExit, Becomes BNP 2.0, Muslim Hate Party UKIP's embrace of Tommy Robinson has fuelled one of Britain's foremost hate preacher to reach a broad audience many of whom are increasingly being radicalised into committing acts of violence, though thank fully given Britain's tough gun laws nothing on the scale of last weeks New Zealand terror attack. One such attack that is being widely reported on by the mainstream media was in London on Saturday near Heathrow airport where a white male after an near hour of hurling racist and white supremacist abuse on the street at passers by including "death to all muslims","I want to kill muslims", and "this is for Tommy Robinson" as reported on by witnesses, eventually went and stabbed an asian teenager in a nearby Tesco car park. Home Secretary Sajid Javid commented We must stand together as a society and reject the terrorists and extremists who seek to divide us. Nows the moment for us all to challenge the hatred, ignorance and violence they peddle and stand up for the kind of country we are and want to be. A welcoming, tolerant, proudly diverse country that draws strength and prosperity from that diversity." As Home Secretary Im determined that every individual and community should feel safe to live their lives. To any communities who are feeling vulnerable and under threat I say we are with you. You benefit our country, you are part of our country, part of us. The far rights near total takeover of UKIP, the party that played a pivotal role in delivering a LEAVE victory at the June 2016 EU Referendum under Nigel Farage's leadership. Which given the collapse in electoral support from a high of 18% of the vote to today's polls barely registering 5% support ensures that should there be a 2nd EU referendum then there is virtually ZERO chance that LEAVE would win a new vote. Even if Nigel Farage manages to get his new BrExit party of the ground. As today's UKIP's primary objective is no longer for the UK to LEAVE the EU but to perpetuate and magnify hatred of all things muslim, that even resulted in UKIPS former leader Nigel Farage resigning membership of the party in the wake of its growing obsession with Islamophobia, increasingly embracing right wing extremist ideologies most notable of whom or Tommy Robinson (fake name) and Katie Hopkins, as UKIP continues to trend towards becoming BNP 2.0. Which soon becomes apparent when visiting any of the popular UKIP facebook groups, that UKIP / BNP 2.0 is no longer a party focused on the UK leaving the EU but rather in disseminating hatred of muslims with many similar tropes posted as found at the heart of the right wing extremist terrorist's so called manifesto focused on the 'Great Replacement'. Apparently UKIP / BNP 2.0 have a particular hatred of London's Lord Mayor, Saddique Khan. Where an increase in security around mosques in the wake of the terror attack was met with comments such as : For instance Gwilliam Thomas writes "I wonder if they (muslims) all want the money so they can go back to where they come from if so I will chip in" Whilst others revel in conspiracy theories that blame the victims by implying they were terrorists (Milo Yiannopolous) and that the Al Noor mosque was a terrorist factory and thus implied they deserved being killed. Whilst others peddle a narrative that the New Zealand attacks were fake, that the killer in the video was firing blanks. Fake blood, actors rehearsing a scene, no bullet holes etc. Though it should be added most of the posters are likely fake. And this is typical of what gets posted about Dianne Abbott several times per day! Again espousing very similar tropes as the New Zealand terrorist. Here commentators agree with the Australian Senator that the victims were to blame for migrating to New Zealand. With one UKIPers in Oldham Manchester crossing the line and actually heaping racist praise on the terrorist who was promptly arrested for by Manchester Police. We have deliberately blurred the whole of his post so as to avoid the spread of his hate speech amongst other UKIp supporters. However, the consequences of the transformation of UKIP into BNP 2.0 in that it would now be near impossible for LEAVE to win a Second EU Referendum which appears to be the most probable outcome out of Britain's ongoing BrExit chaos. And given UKIP's embrace of Tommy Robinson then I would not be surprised if he becomes UKIP's next leader or at the least represents UKIP / BNP 2.0 as a prospective parliamentary candidate at the next general election, though I am sure electoral law dictates that people cannot stand for parliament under a fake name. So the time has come for UKIP to change their name to BNP 2.0 so as to allow Nigel Farage's new BrExit party a better chance at rebuilding an effective electoral base in attempts at winning a probable 2nd EU referendum that now seems inevitable because UKIP clearly no longer stands for the UK Leaving the EU but rather an all things Muslim hate party with Tommy Robinson (fake name) as their propaganda leader. By John York http://www.marketoracle.co.uk Copyright 2005-2019 Marketoracle.co.uk (Market Oracle Ltd). All rights reserved. 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. Green New Physics You could probably say Im sympathetic to the schoolchildren protesting against climate change, and Im sympathetic to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her call for a Green New Deal. Young people are the future, and they deserve a voice about that future. At the same time, Im also deeply skeptical about their understanding of the issues they talk about. In fact, I dont see much understanding at all. I think thats because they base their comprehension of the world theyve been born into on information provided by the very people theyre now protesting against. Look kids, your education system sucks, it was designed by those destroying your planet, you need to shake it off and get something better. But I know what you will do instead: youre going to get the proper education to get a nice-paying job, with a nice car (green, of course) and a nice house etc etc. In other words, you will, at least most of you, be the problem, not solve it. And no shift towards wind or solar will make one iota of difference in that. Want to improve the world? Improve the education system first. Climate change is just one of an entire array of problems the world faces, and in the same way the use of fossil fuels is just one of many causes of these problems. And focusing on only one aspect of a much broader challenge simply doesnt appear to be a wise approach, if only because you risk exacerbating some problems while trying to fix others. In order to fix whats broken, youre first going to have to find out what broke it. The impression I get is that fossil fuels have been named the designated culprit, and people think that if only we have access to some other form(s) of energy well be fine. But species extinction appears to be at least as large an issue as climate change, and the loss of 60% of all vertebrates, and 90% of flying insects in some places, since 1970 is linked to climate change only sideways. Its one thing to run into problems you could not have foreseen. Its quite another to run into them because you elected to ignore readily available knowledge. But its the latter issue thats behind by far most of the problems were running into. Because, again, our education system is broken. And perhaps we should try to be forgiving when well-meaning children and young politicians dont have a full grasp of political and economic issues heaped upon them by older generations. But physics? That you can only and always ignore at your own peril. The First Law of Thermodynamics says energy cannot be created or destroyed; the total quantity of energy in the universe stays the same. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that the use of energy produces waste (because entropy tends to increase). Neither law talks about fossil fuels. This brings me once more to one of my favorite quotes of all time (because it explains so much): Erwin Schrodinger (1945) has described life as a system in steady-state thermodynamic disequilibrium that maintains its constant distance from equilibrium (death) by feeding on low entropy from its environment that is, by exchanging high-entropy outputs for low-entropy inputs. The same statement would hold verbatium as a physical description of our economic process. A corollary of this statement is that an organism cannot live in a medium of its own waste products. Herman Daly and Kenneth Townsend And unfortunately, as Ive said before in Mass Extinction and Mass Insanity: What drives our economies is waste. Not need, or even demand. Waste. 2nd law of thermodynamics. It drives our lives, period. Not only do we produce waste with every calorie of energy we burn, our economic systems depend on us burning as much as we can. We optimized them for it. Energy efficiency is the enemy of our economies. We transport ourselves in vehicles that are 20 times our own weight, and that use only 10% of the fuel we put in them for the purpose of transporting us. Thats what keep the economic engine going. Its also what destroys the planet. Theres probably no moment of deeper despair for the world than when I see a Swedish schoolgirl and a Dutch historian pop up at Davos to tell the billionaires and power hungry the truth. Davos is the last place to be when you have good intentions. All those people owe their money and power to the system you say youre protesting. You think theyre going to give it up, or even risk it? What those people will tell you, and what many of you are already parroting (check the Green New Deal), is that going green will be a very profitable undertaking. Get the best of both worlds and eat it too. Tempting, for sure, but also incredibly stupid. I covered that before as well in Heal the Planet for Profit, in which I cited an article by Michael Bloomberg and Mark Carney literally called How To Make A Profit From Defeating Climate Change. That epitomizes the Davos crowd. Stay away from that. Theres nothing for you there. They just want you to be inefficient in the use of another form of energy, only more this time. Were going to use a huge sh*tload of fossil fuels to build an infrastructure that allows us to use less fossil fuels. Darn, that makes a lot of sense. Were saved!. See, saving the planet, and all the species were eradicating as we speak, will at the very least require an enormous decline in energy use. Because thats the only way to reduce waste production. But that in turn will mean a huge hit to the current economic system, which cannot continue without the principle of maximizing waste production that its based on. There appears to be a principle in nature that says when you hand a species an X amount of free energy, that species will burn through it as fast as it can. Perhaps thats simply a move towards equilibrium. The species will maximize energy use per individual, and proliferate, create more individuals, its a very predictable process, from bacteria in a petri-dish to the human species. So maybe it cannot be helped, or stopped. But you can try. Its just that, if you want to do that, youre not going to achieve it by insulting your own, and my, intelligence through the complete disregard for the laws of physics, the most reliable gauges we have when it comes to understanding our world and the impact we have on it. That goes for the schoolchildren, and it goes for Ocasio-Cortez and other Green New Deal proponents too: ask yourself what physics says about it. Ask yourself what will happen to the economy. Never presume it will be easy or even profitable. Youre not going to save the planet for profit; youll have to find a different incentive. And get educated. But forget about universities, theyre one of the leading drivers behind the mess you find yourselves in. By Raul Ilargi Meijer Website: http://theautomaticearth.com (provides unique analysis of economics, finance, politics and social dynamics in the context of Complexity Theory) 2019 Copyright Raul I Meijer - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors. Raul Ilargi Meijer Archive 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. Spring heralds a fresh start. At the invitation of Italian President Sergio Mattarella, President Xi Jinping will pay a state visit to Italy. This visit is the first visit to Italy by a Chinese President in a decade, and marks Xis first state visit to Italy. It is of epoch-making significance for China-Italy relations and will surely open a new chapter in bilateral friendship and pragmatic cooperation. China and Italy are outstanding representatives of eastern and western civilizations. Although they are far from each other geographically, the friendship between the two countries goes back a long way. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Italy in November 1970, especially since the establishment of China-Italy comprehensive strategic partnership 15 years ago, bilateral relations have embarked on the fast track of development, with traditional friendship brimming with new vitality and vigorous cooperation in various areas. China and Italy are sincere friends that respect and trust each other. In recent years, high-level exchanges between the two countries have maintained a good momentum. In November 2016, President Xi made a stopover on the Italian island of Sardinia en route to South America and met with the then Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. In 2017, President Mattarella paid a state visit to China. The then Italian Prime Ministers Matteo Renzi and Paolo Gentiloni attended the 2016 G20 Hangzhou summit and the first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in 2017, respectively. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte successfully started the prime ministers regular meeting mechanism between the two countries. The two sides have always understood each other and supported respective core interests and major concerns, and constantly cemented the political foundation of bilateral relations. China and Italy are win-win partners on the basis of mutual benefit. The two countries are highly complementary to each other in economy and share prominent common interests. Bilateral trade hit a record level of $54.23 billion in 2018. The two-way investment between China and Italy has kept expanding to exceed $20 billion. Italy participated in the first China International Import Expo with high standards, introducing more high-quality commodities made in Italy to the Chinese market. With the continuous deepening of cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the two countries enjoy a broader prospect of cooperation, and will make fresh progress in such areas as infrastructure construction, aerospace, communications and third-party cooperation. China and Italy are friendly countries that help each other. After the Wenchuan earthquake in southwest Chinas Sichuan Province in 2008, the Italian side immediately donated relief supplies and dispatched an emergency medical team to the disaster area. After the earthquakes in L'Aquila and Amatrice, Italy, China and the Chinese communities in Italy donated money and materials to the disaster-stricken areas in time to help the victims rebuild their homes. After the outbreak of the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis, China worked together with Italy like passengers in a same boat to overcome difficulties through mutually beneficial cooperation. China and Italy are good teachers and helpful friends who learn from each other. The two countries have successfully held their respective culture years in each others cities, witnessing more high-level exhibitions and performances. The China-Italy innovation week program has become a model of China-Europe cooperation in science and technology. 92 pairs of provinces, cities and regions from both sides have established friendly relations with each other. There are more than 20,000 Chinese students studying in Italy, and China has become the second largest host of Italian students following the European Union. The two countries are witnessing more tourists from each other. As 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations, President Xi Jinpings visit this time will chart the course and open up new vistas for the future development of bilateral relations. Standing at a new historical point of the development of bilateral ties, both sides should implement the important consensus of the leaders of the two countries to constantly elevate bilateral relations in the new period to new stages. China and Italy will further deepen political mutual trust, adhere to the spirit of treating each other as equals and seeking common ground while reserving differences, respect their respective development paths, and jointly build a closer comprehensive strategic partnership. The two sides will further expand shared interests, strengthen top-level design, further synergize development strategies, actively leverage the role of dialogue mechanisms including the Joint Meeting of China-Italy Government Committee, promote implementation of the four-year action plan for strengthening cooperation, and strive for more mutually beneficial results under the BRI framework, so as to bring more benefits to the two peoples. Both sides will also further strengthen international cooperation, and continue maintaining close communication and cooperation on major issues such as global economic governance and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations (UN) within multilateral frameworks including the UN. The two countries will together to advocate openness and win-win results, and safeguard multilateralism and free trade. The two sides will also further strengthen people-to-people and cultural exchanges, and continuously improve the quantity and quality of exchanges and cooperation in such fields as culture, science and technology, education and tourism, as well as at sub-national levels. More measures should be introduced to facilitate personnel flows and promote closer people-to-people ties. As a Chinese saying goes, a man of virtue will not be isolated. Cherishing the traditional friendship, China is willing to work with Italy to deepen friendship, strengthen cooperation, meet challenges, and strive for a better future for bilateral relations. The author is Chinese Ambassador to Italy Gold Price To Continue To Base Below $1320 For Weeks Our research team, at Technical Traders Ltd., believes Gold will continue to base below $1320 for at least another 3~5 weeks before setting up a momentum price base. Our research suggests general weakness in the US stock market over the next few weeks/months as a Head-n-Shoulders pattern unfolds. Interestingly enough, our research also suggests Gold may continue to base below $1320 (likely below $1300) for at least another 2~4 weeks before forming a rounded bottom type pattern as a base. This would likely result from a mild price rotation in the US major indexes and possibly weakness in the US Dollar. Weakness in the US Dollar and Equities Markets may be just enough impetus to cause Gold to rotate into the Momentum Basing pattern we have been expecting since January 2019. Weve highlighted the price range, on the chart below, in purple. We believe the price of Gold will re-enter this range at least once or twice over the next 2~4+ weeks to set up a basing pattern. After April 21, we believe the basing pattern should be complete and a new upward price swing should begin. We expect to attempt to target opportunities below the $1300 price level in Gold to accumulate a LONG position ahead of the upside breakout. The opportunity for prices to stay below $1320 and for skilled traders to pick entry levels that are suitable for their futures should not be underestimated. The next upside price leg in Gold will likely see prices well above $1450. Take advantage of any price levels below $1290 because this may be the last time you see them for a while. We have also been sharing our stock market forecast looking forward 1-3 weeks from now which goes against everyones bias/sentiment including yours likely, but its something you should think about because you could give back a lot of profits if you dont act now! Please take a minute to visit www.TheTechnicalTraders.com to learn more about what we do and how we can help you stay ahead of these market moves. Visit www.TheTechnicalTraders.com/FreeResearch/ to read all of our recent research posts. We take great pride in our ability to provide our members and followers with the highest level of research, trading signals, daily video content and more. Find our why our hundreds of members continue to believe in the opportunity we provide them each and every day. Isnt it time you invested in your future success today? Chris Vermeulen www.TheTechnicalTraders.com Chris Vermeulen has been involved in the markets since 1997 and is the founder of Technical Traders Ltd. He is an internationally recognized technical analyst, trader, and is the author of the book: 7 Steps to Win With Logic Through years of research, trading and helping individual traders around the world. He learned that many traders have great trading ideas, but they lack one thing, they struggle to execute trades in a systematic way for consistent results. Chris helps educate traders with a three-hour video course that can change your trading results for the better. His mission is to help his clients boost their trading performance while reducing market exposure and portfolio volatility. He is a regular speaker on HoweStreet.com, and the FinancialSurvivorNetwork radio shows. Chris was also featured on the cover of AmalgaTrader Magazine, and contributes articles to several leading financial hubs like MarketOracle.co.uk Disclaimer: Nothing in this report should be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell any securities mentioned. Technical Traders Ltd., its owners and the author of this report are not registered broker-dealers or financial advisors. Before investing in any securities, you should consult with your financial advisor and a registered broker-dealer. Never make an investment based solely on what you read in an online or printed report, including this report, especially if the investment involves a small, thinly-traded company that isnt well known. 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Chris Vermeulen Archive 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. It has been a year since the murder of David Dragicevic, a student from Banja Luka, which shook the Republic of Srpska to its core. Dejan Prodanovic, a member of Banja Lukas branch of the Marxist organisation, Reds, explores the causes for and the dynamics behind the Justice for David movement, which rattled the reactionary regime of Milorad Dodik. This article, apart from giving a detailed description of the protests and the actions of certain figures within it, also gives an insight into the class character of Dodiks rule. Read the original at Workers' Portal | Milorad Dodiks rule over the Republic of Srpska, one of the two main entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is one of the longest-lasting regimes in the Yugoslav area after the civil war. Dodik and his Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), with a few coalition partners such as the Democratic Peoples Alliance (DNS) and the Socialist Party of RS, have had a firm grip on power ever since 2006. During that period, candidates from the SNSD held positions as Serbian members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the elections of October of 2018, Milorad Dodik became the Serbian member of the presidency. He can be compared to Montenegros Milo ukanovic, in terms of the length of his rule over the Republic of Srpska and his personification of all of the entity's institutions. The class basis of Dodiks rule In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the international community had confidence in Dodik, since he was a counterpoint to the nationalist policies of the leadership of Karadzics Serbian Democratic Party (SDS). Dodik even invited Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic to voluntarily surrender to the International Court of Justice and stop holding the Serbian people hostage. Some 10 years later, after his rise to power, he presented himself as a defender and admirer of the prisoners in The Hague, and he even named a students dormitory in Pale after Radovan Karadzic. His change from a pro-Western liberal politician to a so-called defender of the Bosnian Serbs from the imaginary threat of Bosniaks shows that Dodik is merely an opportunistic, oligarchical politician who is in politics only to defend his selfish interests and those of his bourgeois circle. Dodiks rhetoric is often pointed against NATO and the meddling of Western imperialism in the national affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which makes a certain number of people in the Republic of Srpska support his patriotic regime. They even glorify him as a decent fighter against Western imperialism. However, despite his occasional grumbling and threats of holding a referendum, in reality Dodik and his SNSD regime go no further than insisting that the Dayton Peace Treaty is upheld, a treaty that stands for the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina under imperialistic authority of the EU and NATO states, while the economic policies of his regime are a long way from genuine anti-imperialism. Imperialist foreign capital in the RS never had an easier job of draining local resources and subsidies, and exploiting our workers. In the pro-war plunder of state property in the RS, 716 companies were privatised. According to data from the Alliance of Labour Unions of RS, 67 percent of those companies ceased to exist. Those that did not vanish or end up in the hands of tycoons and war profiteers were seized by foreign capital in the early 2000s. All the praise for foreign investors, whose money and knowledge was supposed to fix our economy, turned out to be a sham. Most of the time, there were no serious investments; foreign capital was drawn in by generous state subsidies, a lack of taxes, and most importantly, cheap and non-unionised labour. Ruling politicians even boasted about the economic advantage of cheap labour and highlighted it during their election campaigns. Those in power never cared much about the working conditions in factories owned by foreign companies. The important thing was to take photographs at opening ceremonies, and (after cameras were turned off) the workers were abandoned to merciless exploitation. One example is the textile factory Dubikoton, which is under Italian ownership. Dodiks rhetoric is often pointed against NATO and the meddling of Western imperialism, but he depends heavily on foreign capital and has historically been its loyal servant / Image: public domain Alongside the sections of industry owned by foreign capital, the regime is very servile when it comes to the exploitation of natural resources. Forests are being cleared with abandon, and private sawmills export intermediate goods and firewood primarily to Italy and Austria. In the latest act of plunder, the government gave away 64 percent of shares in Ljubija Iron Mine and plans to sell them to an Israeli company, one of whose shareholders is Ari Livne, an advisor of Dodiks. Furthermore, the banking sector is in the hands of Italian and Austrian banks. In the last few years, Dodik has played the card of Russophilia, an essential component of Serbian nationalism. However, below the thin veneer of love between Orthodox brothers hides the economic interests of Dodiks family, since his son Igor is the owner of a trading company that distributes fruit to Russia. On the other hand, the oil industry in the RS is owned by Nyeftegazinkor from Russia, which owns 1.6 million convertible marks in corporate taxes, according to the Tax Administration. In late 2018, the government signed a contract with a Chinese company that is supposed to build the Banja Luka-Prijedor highway, and get a 30-year lease, while the government agreed to compensate the Chinese investors with 32.5 million marks from road tolls, or from the state budget if the road tolls are not enough. There is no doubt that this will happen, since all the infrastructural projects, as well as this one, are carried out without conducting feasibility studies. Dodiks nationalism, like any other nationalism, is a tool used by the ruling class to divert attention from the social confrontation between itself and the working class. Of course, Dodik is helped by Bosniak and Croatian bourgeois elites in sparking national intolerance, as well as by parts of the so-called civil opposition, primarily the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Democratic Front, both of which use the card of integral Bosnian nationalism. Such a party line only fuels the nationalist hysteria of the regime in the RS. This enables Dodik to constantly flaunt potential referendums if the Dayton Peace Treaty is not upheld. And while Dodik and the SNSD allegedly defend national interests with their nationalist demagogy, in reality they use every chance they get to turn against the workers and aid domestic and foreign capitalists. The ruling coalition always carried out and voted for anti-worker policies, in unity with the tycoon parties from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the other main political entity). Implementing measures that hurt workers rights or make already poor living conditions even worse was never a problem for the defenders of national interests. An example of this is carrying out the reform agenda at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a whole. In fact, it was a set of austerity measures dictated by the IMF and the World Bank that aimed to cut public spending, reduce social benefits, liberalise the market and change the labour law in the interest of the capitalists in order to increase economic investments between 2015, and 2018. In late 2015, the government adopted a new Labour Law, which, amongst other things, reduced the compensation for past labour from a coefficient of 0.5 to 0.3. Furthermore, probation periods were increased from one to two years. The Law on Strikes was also changed, rendering strikes meaningless. According to the law, the government appoints representative unions, and the bosses decide on the minimum workflow, which enables them to set it at 50 percent of the workers, as happened in the railway company of the RS. Negotiations about defining the General Collective Agreement between the government, the Association of Employers, and the Alliance of Labour Unions have been taking place since 2015. The negotiations halted at the question of travel expenses and annual leave. Attacks on living standards are constant. In 2018, excise taxes on oil were increased, which made the prices of basic goods increase. In 2019, the government announced an increase in the price of electricity and of VAT from 17 percent to 19 percent. The reason for this is an attempt to fill the holes in the budgets of the state and its entities. The increase in prices is not matched by an increase in wages, however. The average wage in RS is 852 marks (around 440 Euros), and according to the Alliance of Labour Unions, the living wage should be around 1,869 KM (over 900 Euros), which means that the average wage is only 45 percent of that. Even official data on the average wage does not paint the real picture, since the largest part of the qualified workforce in the industry and retail sectors work for lower wages, around 600 KM (approximately 300 Euros). The Republic of Srpska has also struggled with an exodus of young and highly qualified workers in the last few years. The Alliance of Employers often complains about the lack of labourers, but they and the government did nothing concrete, nor did they try to drastically increase the wages to make young workers stay in the country. Especially alarming is the fact that even medical workers are leaving the country (the average wage of a nurse is a miserable 650-800 KM). A few days ago, there was news of childrens cardiologists leaving the Clinical Centre of Banja Luka. Aside from nationalist demagogy, Dodiks regime bases itself on a clientelistic network of people positioned in the state apparatus and public enterprises. He also has complete control over the radio and television networks of the RS, which have practically turned into a public media service for the ruling coalition. The Alternative Television from Banja Luka was recently bought by Slobodan Stankovic, an oligarch, and it has changed from a medium that presented a balance between the regime and the opposition, and which often criticised the government, into an adjunct of RTRS. It should also be mentioned that the ruling coalition has no real opponents in the opposition bloc, which is led by the right-wing Serbian Democratic Party and the liberals from the Party of Democratic Progress. Justice for David: the first true challenge to the regime David Dragicevic, whose murder sparked a social movement that shook the regime / Image: Dragicevic family It took a long time before we saw protests of sufficient scale to shake the regime. Indeed, in 2012, there were protests under the name The Park is Ours in Banja Luka, which lasted for months and were directed against the creation of an office building called Grand Trade, owned by Mile Radisic, another oligarch close to the regime. The building was finished anyway, the activists were fined, and Radisic fled to Serbia to avoid being charged. This movement showed that there is a mood for civil resistance against the attacks of the corrupt regime and arrogant tycoons in Banja Luka. The rebellion of Tuzla in 2014 did not overflow into the Republic of Srpska, except for a few solidarity meetings. The regimes media outlets did their job of fearmongering and dubbed it an alleged attempt to destabilise the RS. In 2017, there were a few hunger strikes on the RS railways and the strikers made threats of railway blockades if their demands continued to be ignored. This made the regime panic and mostly accept their demands, which showed that the government is not so stable, and that every act of rebellion by the working class on the streets deepens the anxiety of the ruling elite. Justice for David was created as a spontaneous civil movement led by the parents of David Dragicevic, a murdered student from Banja Luka. After the young mans disappearance on the night of 17 March 2018, his body was found on 24 March. The first police reports and press conferences showed that the Ministry of Interior is not telling the truth and is trying to hide something. At first, the Ministry and the media insisted that it was a suicide, and that David was a drug addict and a thief. This behaviour only aggravated the parents and a part of the public, which provoked a spontaneous civil gathering on the Krajina Square on March 26. Since that day, protests under the name of Justice for David Stop the Unsolved Murders have been taking place every day in Banja Luka. They managed to attract a large number of people from different social layers and age groups: pensioners, workers, the petty-bourgeoisie and the youth. Even though these protests were triggered by the death of David Dragicevic, they directed attention to a string of unsolved murders, starting with mafia liquidations and traffic accidents that involved oligarchs and politicians, for which no one was held accountable. Furthermore, the protests provided a platform to express the discontent and anger of common people about long-lasting injustice, corruption, malfunctioning of the courts, poverty and suffering. Since 26 March 2018, protests under the name of Justice for David Stop the Unsolved Murders have been taking place every day in Banja Luka / Image: fair use The pressure from the masses and daily meetings forced the government to form a Research Committee in parliament, which was supposed to ascertain the facts about the Dragicevic case. Its purpose was to identify uncertainties and irregularities in the investigation, which meant that, two-and-a-half months after the beginning of protests, the prosecutors finally started to investigate the murder. Since this took place in an election year, the protests attracted politicians from the opposition, who tried to profit from them politically. Davids father, Davor Dragicevic, demanded that the protests should be carried out without political symbols, even though opposition politicians were among those gathered. The oppositions TV station from Bijeljinja, BN TV, held live broadcasts of the massive gatherings on 21 April, 7 July and 5 October 2018. The regime reacted to the presence of opposition politicians and their demands by accusing them of using tragedies to score political points, while exploiting the parents grief. Although the opposition was certainly doing this, their actions revealed the hypocritical logic of the regime. The regime politicians do the exact same thing when they lament the victims of the wars in the 1990s and the Second World War at electoral meetings to whip up chauvinism, hatred and fear. 10,000 people protesting on 5 October 2018 in Krajina Square / Image: fair use Besides Davids parents Davor Dragicevic and Suzana Radanovic, the core of the movement consists of Davids friends and a few of liberal and civil activists. In its early stages, the spontaneous and confused movement had a legalistic outlook. For more than two decades, the people have listened to propaganda about liberal democracy and independent institutions about everything a capitalist state can never provide. So these protesters are saying: you promised us the rule of law, now give it to us. The rule of law is a liberal illusion. The state is not aloof from society and the class system, it is an organ of the ruling class that protects its interests. The state under capitalism will always protect the interests of the ruling class. Common citizens, workers and peasants will never be equal to tycoons and politicians before the institutions of the bourgeois state. This was all exposed by the Justice for David movement. Davor and Suzanas speeches railed against the oligarchy and the system, especially at the gathering on 5 October 2018. This is a clear manifestation of class instinct. Meanwhile, the regimes machinery has constantly attacked the movement with invented claims that it aims to destroy the government and abolish the institutions of the Republic of Srpska, and that the entire movement is being abused by politicians from the Federation and foreign intelligence services with the goal of a coloured revolution and the destruction of the Serbian people. After the general elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina in October, and the disappointment among liberal layers, it seemed as though the movement entered a phase of exhaustion. In the meantime, it was registered as an NGO, which aims to fight for justice over un-resolved murders. After the elections, politicians of the opposition turned to the composition of parliament. Furthermore, soon after the election, Dodik bribed a part of the opposition and gave them positions in the government. This included the prominent liberal Dragan Cavic and his Peoples Democratic Movement Party, the faction of the Serbian Democratic Party centred around Banja Luca Mayor of Doboj Obren Petrovic. Cavic was one of the fiercest critics of the ruling coalition, but then he became part of it and gave his support to Dodik. After ignoring and discrediting the seemingly waning Justice for David movement, the regime started with open repression / Image: fair use After ignoring and discrediting the seemingly waning Justice for David movement, the regime started with open repression. The National Day of the Republic of Srpska on 9 January was drawing near, which Dodik usually takes as an opportunity to show that the RS is a state and that the Serbian people in it are happy and free, but the gatherings at the square were ruining this image. Feeling stable after a landslide victory in the election, getting rid of the deplorables in the ruling coalition and attracting certain parts of the opposition, the regime tried to arrest Davor Dragicevic on 25 December a date deliberately chosen since it is in the holiday season. Police searched his house looking for weapons, (which were not found) and removed symbols of the movement from the Kraijna Square. The regime tried to justify the repression on the basis of alleged threats to security, caused by a gathering of the movements sympathisers that was held a few days prior to the arrest in front of parliament and as a response to the re-election of Dragan Lukac as Minister of Police of the RS. His reelection was considered a provocation and a continuation of the cover-up of Davids murder. Lukac was called out at the Krajina Square for months and was marked as the main obstacle to the investigation. Besides that, his previous mandate was identified with unresolved mafia confrontations, members of the special forces who robbed banks, police inspectors accused of smuggling and trading narcotics, a streak of unsolved murders, attacks on journalists (we have to mention the most recent example of an attempted murder of BN TV journalist Vladimir Kovacevic, who reported from the Krajina Square), security disruptions in Banja Luka, etc The regimes propaganda, which claims that the gatherings in the square are threatening the security, is especially hypocritical if we take into account that, during nine months of protests, there was not a single incident. Surprisingly, the opposite happened. The regimes provocateurs repeatedly tried to provoke Davor and even threatened to kill him. The police repression on the 25 December against peaceful protesters and videos of police brutality against children, youth and the elderly caused anger, not only in the RS, but in the entire region, as well as a new wave of protests. On one hand, the regime repressed the most active members of the movement in the following days, while on the other we heard Milorad Dodik and Dragan Lukac saying that the prosecutors were too slow in solving Davids case. Dodik even announced that he would join the people if they protested in front of the Prosecutor's Office. The point of these announcements is merely to transfer the blame among the ruling apparatus, since everyone can see that Dodiks staff controls every pore of the RSs institutions. On Sunday, 30 December, a large meeting called by Davids father, Davor took place, attended by a few thousand people. The estimates vary from 3,000 to 6,000 people. At the meeting, Davor read the demand for the resignations of Dragan Lukac (Minister of the Interior), Darko Culum (Director of the Police), Zeljko Karan (a pathologist and the head of the Institute for Forensic Medicine), Zelimir Lepir (prosecutor) and Dalibor Vreca (prosecutor). The meeting then turned into a protest march from the Krajina Square to the parliament and government of the RS, with participants occasionally blocking traffic and chanting Justice for David, Justice for Dzenan, Resignation for Lukac, Thieves. Then the protest spent some time in front of the building of the RTRS, chanting the words Factory of Lies. RTRS is seen as belonging to Dodiks party, and it spreads the most despicable lies and nonsense to present Justice for David movement as a conspiracy created by the Federation and international community with the goal of tearing down the institutions of the RS. After returning to the Krajina Square, the crowd dispersed after approximately 40 minutes, but the police forcibly dispersed the remaining 50 people and used this chance to arrest around 10 ringleaders. They even arrested bystanders and people who happened to be at the bus station. The police claimed that Davor Dragicevic ran away and that he was not arrested. The arrests continued in the following days, and an MP from the Party of Democratic Progress, Drasko Stanivukovic was arrested. His use of scandals and sensationalism to attract attention can be compared to Croatian right-wing politician, populist and conspiracy theorist Ivan Pernar. Its quite possible that, with time, he will become an independent politician and follow the path of right-wing populism, since he gathered around 20,000 votes at the October elections. Meetings of the Justice for David movement were completely outlawed and the police were patrolling the Krajina Square. The new repression was excused by the fact that the organisers carried on with the protest after the allowed time period from 6pm to 8pm, and that they were not allowed to hold a march that blocked traffic. Subsequently, a New Years concert in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art was cancelled. Igor Radojicic was very vocal when it came to accusing the protests of ruining the citys image by preventing New Years celebrations from taking place. While the aggrieved parents are struggling for justice for their murdered child, Radojicic is struggling to preserve the image of the city, threatened by the images of police repression and police occupation of the Krajina Square. It is interesting to note that Radojicic was silent regarding daily meetings of citizens seeking truth and justice. Meetings of the Justice for David movement were completely outlawed following the protests of 30 December 2018, after which and the police were patrolling the Krajina Square / Image: fair use Although the gatherings of the movement Justice for David are now formally prohibited and attempts in the main city square have been persistently suppressed by the police, the most relentless members of the movement have found a way to gather in public. While trying to escape police brutality, the members of the movement and followers gathered in the churchyard of the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and lit candles. The police did not dare to use force on the churchs grounds, because they were afraid of the message it would send to instigate violence in front of a church well known for its architectural value and importance to many Banja Lukas inhabitants. In that way, the silent protests continued to be held daily under the close watch of the police. From the very beginning, followers of the movement have pointed out the tenacious silence of the dignitaries of the Serbian Orhodox Church about the case of David Dragicevic. The outcry continued because the doors of the church were always locked. As always, the Church chose the side of the regime. All illusions in the Church taking a stance against the regime have been absolutely shattered. When the regime forced the movement to hold their gatherings in silence in front of the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, they cleared the main city square and used it for the purpose of the parade in honor of the National Day of the Republic of Srpska on 9 January, cynically praising the freedom in which its inhabitants supposedly live. In the next few months, Davor Dragicevic has addressed the public several times by posting videos recorded in unknown locations on social media. In his address to followers, he strongly condemned the actions of the police to suppress the protests and stated a clear connection of their actions to the ruling politicians in the Government of Republic of Srpska. He accused the police of attempting to kill him and announced the continuation of the fight for solving the murder of his son by seeking help from international institutions. Bearing in mind that Davids mother Suzana is living with her children in Austria, people speculated that this is where Davor was probably located. This was proved to be true, four days before the one-year anniversary of Davids death when an upsetting photograph of Davor kissing the coffin containing Davids remains circulated the media. David remains were exhumed at the request of his parents and transported to Vienna. Davor said: I told you a long time ago that I will ask for the exhumation of the remains of my child. Yes, the Republic of Srpska, Prosecutions Office and the Ministry of the Interior they are all killers and criminals. Therefore, David has left this world and that country, and for me, there are no institutions of the Republic of Srpska [they have no legitimacy and might as well not exist]. These institutions killed my child. I hope that he finds eternal peace here, when he could not find it in the country of his birth. What to do next? The Justice for David movement showed a high level of determination and courage during the 12 months of its daily struggle. This is particularly true for Suzana and Davor, who showed superhuman strength in the struggle against repression, provocations and lies of the unjust state apparatus and pro-regime media. However, in the light of violent repression; liberal illusions and appeals to the conscience of the state apparatus are a dead-end street. It seems that the movement is running out of ideas about how to successfully fight back when the regime clamps down. This was obvious during the police actions on 30 December, when the people tried to defend themselves against shields and batons by throwing flowers at them. This definitely did not influence the consciousness of the police officers, whose task was to defend the system. Also, calling for interventions from the European Union, the international community and foreign embassies is problematic on several counts. The Justice for David movement showed a high level of determination and courage, but how to proceed from here? There can be no illusions in 'international institutions' / Image: Medullaoblongata Projekt Primarily, this appeal for the intervention of foreign actors alienates a large number of people from the movement and is congruent with the propaganda that portrays Dodik as a defender of the RS and every display of discontent as an attempt to bring Dodik down. Secondly, it is obvious that Western imperialism has no major issues with Dodik, since he has proved himself to be a loyal and efficient servant of foreign capital. His occasional excesses, with threats of launching a referendum, have the objective of throwing dust in peoples eyes to prevent them from seeing the plundered wealth of tycoons, himself and his family, rather than challenging the unity of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Every time Dodik goes too far in his excesses, he is slapped back into his place by the representatives of American diplomacy and is threatened with sanctions from the USA. Dodik is very aware of how dependent he is on foreign capital and international financial institutions when it comes to buying social peace and stability in the RS. Thirdly, even if an intervention of Western imperialism removed Dodik from power, that would mean nothing for the working class. The opposition, whose programme does not differ from Dodiks in any significant way, would come to power. That would only be a cosmetic change, and it is important to understand that both the Social Democratic Party and the Party of Democratic Progress held power at the levels of the state and entity several times and that they are currently in power at a local level. The interests of the imperialists, just like those of the local capitalists, are diametrically opposed to those of working people. David Dragicevic is a victim of a capitalist system that creates injustice at every step. His murder and the subsequent movement arising from it show that what is needed is a fightback on a class basis / Image: fair use It is obvious that these are two sides of the same profiteering coin, and simply sought to use the movement to score political points during the elections. After the events of 30 December, different groups in the opposition threw accusations at each other, saying that Drasko Stanivukovic tried to talk Davor into entering RTRS, which would make the regime accuse him of staging a coup. This is only speculation and it is most likely that the regime tried to bribe certain people and fracture the movement. However, the police were not present around the RTSRSs building, despite being everywhere else the march took place, which could indicate that they pled ignorance and expected the building to be entered. In his speech in front of the building, Davor mentioned multiple times that he could enter it without a problem, but that he did not want to do that. There is a small group of SDS supporters around the movement, and it is assumed that they are responsible for bringing Boris Malagurski to give a short speech, which got only a lukewarm response from the mass. The presence of Serbian nationalists can be potentially harmful for the solidarity between Justice for David and Justice for Dzenan [a movement around a young Muslim who was murdered in Sarajevo in 2016], and it could possibly alienate a part of people from the Federation who support the movement. The task of Marxists is to support and take part in Davor and Suzanas fight, thus helping them to find out the truth about their sons death. Also, we must try to direct the struggle towards the widest social layers, since that is the only way to fight for these goals and against police repression. Most importantly, we must use this occasion to expose the capitalist class and their so-called democracy. Generally, the left is very weak in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and still struggles to people over. Its voice is barely heard in the nationalist and pro-market cacophony. However, movements such as this one, the rebellion of Tuzla or the strike of the railway workers give us a chance to take an active part and, by putting forward concrete propositions, get a platform from which our programme can reach a much larger audience. During several larger meetings and in their media statements, Suzana and Davor spoke up against tycoons, war profiteers and various scum, who have been brutalising us for 30 years. This class instinct and anti-system mood offer an opportunity for the left to present their ideas. We must use this to attract new layers of workers into the revolutionary movement. The workers of the RS feel all the injustice of the system on their shoulders. They can feel the oligarchs exploitation in their workplaces and witness the haughtiness of the rich and their children every day. When these messages penetrate into the consciousness of working masses, it wont be long before Dodik is seen as the political representative of the rich, whose government applies austerity measures in healthcare, education and welfare, in order to make money for foreign and domestic tycoons whose empires have been built on the workers blood. David Dragicevic is a victim of a capitalist system that creates crime, poverty and injustice at every step. His murder and the subsequent movement arising from it shows that what is needed is a fightback on a class basis. A united, working-class movement would be able to strike decisive blows against the state apparatus and the interests of capital. Once the working class begins to move decisively on an organised basis, nothing can stop it. We have already seen small instances of this. Threats of blocking the railways in 2017 immediately alarmed the government and sent Dodik grovelling at the strikers feet, and promptly fulfilling their demands. Similarly, the New Years programme cancellation caused dissatisfaction among hoteliers and representatives of the service industry, and they probably exerted a certain pressure on the regime to ban the protests. Other movements have had similar effects. The most important thing in order to achieve victory, however, is to unify these struggles throughout the former Yugoslavia. That can only be achieved, by the creation of a workers party with a revolutionary programme of radical social change in the interests of the working majority. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. Studying Chinese is leading students from an Italian Chinese-language international scientific high school into a new world, as the oriental language is opening a new window for them to know more about China. Students of Italian boarding school Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II read a Chinese book. (Photo by Guan Kejiang from Peoples Daily) The Chinese-language international scientific high school, located at the fourth floor of the boarding school Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II, is the only public high school that lists Chinese as a compulsory course in Italy. It also has Italys largest Confucius Classroom. Posters made by the students can be seen on the wall of the school corridor. Filling with Chinese culture elements, these posters present a beautiful picture together with the peach blossoms of the schoolyard in early March. Paolo M. Reale, president of the Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II, and eight students of the school wrote a letter to Chinese President Xi Jinping before the Chinese leaders upcoming state visit to Italy, expressing their willingness to promote friendship between Italy and China. The students are eager to share their experiences in learning Chinese language with President Xi Jinping, said Reale, adding that the students are very enthusiastic about China and its culture. Immersive learning, summer camps in China and short-term overseas study tours have brought them closer with China, which further increased their passion for the country, Reale told Peoples Daily. In the letter to the Chinese President, the students expressed their willingness to work hard to promote dialogue of minds, cultural exchanges, and mutual learning with their Chinese peers. Alesslo Treggiari, a fifth-grader from the school and also one of the eight students writing the letter, told Peoples Daily that learning Chinese has broadened his horizon, and helped him build the habit of thinking from a global perspective. He plans to come to China for graduate study and work for Chinese enterprises when he returns home. Learning Chinese has guided us into a new world, said Giovanni Stoppoloni, also a 5th-grade student. He told Peoples Daily that he always wanted to know more about China when he learned Chinese. A student of Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II practices Chinese calligraphy. (Photo provided by Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II) Last year, the boy went on a study tour to Shanghai with his classmates and witnessed the development achievements and vitality of the oriental country. He was impressed by the vastness and splendor of the world. I wrote a poem for President Xi to share my Chinese learning experiences in the past 5 years. In the poem, I used a metaphor to describe how China adheres to virtuous traditions and sticks to innovative development, he said. Stoppoloni believes that his future will be closely linked with China. The Chinese-language international scientific high school under the Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II is one of the 6 Confucius Classrooms affiliated to the Confucius Institute at Sapienza University of Rome. Thanks to the high-quality education, each year half of the schools students would pass the level 5 exam of the Chinese Proficiency Test even before they graduate. In the past 10 years since its establishment, the number of students at the high school increased from 28 to over 250 in 5 grades. A total of over 100 students from the school have studied in China self-funded for 6 to 12 months, and about a dozen of the schools graduates have been admitted to Chinese universities. Only by learning languages can the students better understand other cultures, said Reale, noting that the notion of the high school is to introduce Chinese culture to more young Italians, develop a global perspective for the students and let them become ambassadors of Italy-China friendly cooperation and East-West cultural exchange. Because of the continuous social and economic development of China, more Italians are willing to strengthen all-round cooperation between Italy and China and make good use of Chinas development opportunities to develop themselves, said Reale. The young people, by learning Chinese, not only open a window for Italy-China cultural exchange, but also enhance their competitiveness in future career. Last Christmas, Reale received an greeting card sent from Shanghai by former Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano. The former diplomat expressed his gratitude toward Reale for making his child fall in love with Chinese culture through learning Chinese at the high school. Alfanos child later decided to go to China for study. Reale introduced that Chinese courses were well-received by local people and boosted their confidence. He said the school will actively share teaching experiences with its peers to further promote Chinese teaching in Italy, and make new contribution to Italy-China cultural exchange. We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. In the Tesla's new gigafactory in Shanghai, hammer apparatus, excavators, dumper lorries, and dozens of electric workers are busy with the construction of a plant that is capable of producing 500,000 cars each year upon completion. The photo shows a Tesla Model 3 at a car exhibition in Beijing, April 25, 2018. (Photo: Peoples Daily Online) As the first wholly foreign-owned new-energy car subsidiary in China, the super factory received 50 billion yuan ($7.45 billion) of investment from Tesla. Started on January, the project is scheduled to be completed in July and put into operation by the end of 2019, which stands for a high-efficient job since it usually takes at least 18 months to build such a sizable factory. The US electric car maker is one of the latest and symbolic beneficiaries of Chinas new round of efforts to open up the auto sector. The country announced to phase out share-holding limits for foreign investors in automobile sector last April and cut import tariffs on vehicle products a month later. Thanks to the stepped-up efforts in opening up the sector, Tesla inked the agreement to set up wholly-owned subsidiary in China last July, and German automaker BMW took a majority stake in its China joint venture in October 2018, making itself the first beneficiary since China relaxed the joint-venture equity limit for automobile sector. In six months, the countrys determination to deliver its words has ignited enthusiasm of auto makers across the world to put a bet on the Chinese market. Five months after Tesla sealed the agreement of plant establishment in July 2018, it moved fast to break the ground in this January. Elon Musk, CEO of the American car manufacturer, wowed Chinas impressive development speed and working efficiency, saying that it is hard to imagine that the process of opening a car factory could be done in such a short period of time. It is benefited from Chinas sound business environment and demonstrates Chinas resolution to open up to the outside world, he added. BMW is another foreign investor gripped by Chinas resolution. The Munich-based maker, on October 11, 2018, announced to increase investment in the joint venture it set up with Chinese partner Brilliance Auto. Two BMW new-energy sharing cars are unveiled at an event promoting green transportation in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, September 22, 2017. (Photo: Peoples Daily Online) A groundbreaking ceremony was held for a new BMW Brilliance plant in Tiexi district in the city of Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province on that day. According to their cooperation plan, BMW would invest more than 3 billion euros to help the factory increase its annual production capacity to 650,000 vehicles in three to five years. A total of over 52 billion yuan has been invested to build a high-end car manufacturing base with a gross output of 200 billion yuan since Brilliance Auto and BMW cooperated in joint venture 15 years ago, said Qi Yumin, chairman of Brilliance Auto. BMW Brilliance has created more than 18,000 local jobs and contributed taxes of over 24 billion yuan in 2017, Qi added. The deal came in as Brilliance Autos response to the national reform and opening up campaign, and also as a great opportunity for the company to inspire vitality by reforming across the board, Qi pointed out. Car industry is one of the earliest sectors that China open up to the world. China allowed foreign car makers to build joint ventures alongside local entities with an ownership restricted to 50 percent in 1994, making the country rise as the worlds biggest car market packed up with nearly all transnational car makers in 2009. Till last year, China has stayed as top player for ten consecutive years with over 28 million cars sold in 2018. The new round of opening up has brought Chinese car industry more opportunities for cooperation and joint venture. BMW sharing car officially hits the road after a month of test, September 16, 2017. Local citizens could scan QR code to unlock the car. (Photo: Peoples Daily Online) Last April, Aisin Seiki, Japans auto component and system producer, signed joint venture agreements on automatic gearbox with Chinas FAW Group Corporation, Geely Auto, and Trumpchi. Two months later, German automaker Volkswagen transferred its one percent share in SAIC Volkswagen to another car maker giant Audi. Then in last July, BMW signed a deal with Great Wall Motors to produce MINI electric vehicles in joint venture. A more open car sector not only drives technological innovation and industrial upgrading in home, but also propels other international companies to jump on the bandwagon. BMW got the first license to have a road test of self-driving vehicles in Shanghai, and also became the first transnational car company having license for ride-sharing business in China last year. Daimler AG, German multinational automotive corporation, wasted no time to catch up and got the road test license for driver-less cars in Beijing, after which the company conducted cooperation with Baidu, Chinese tech giant, in auto driving and the internet of vehicles. Two companies under Daimler AG and Geely Auto announced to establish a joint venture providing ride-hailing mobility services on October 24, 2018, followed by the cooperation between Volkswagen and Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi for offering similar services on February 28 this year. Dr. Kathy Neuzil is Leading an International Consortium of Researchers Working to Accelerate Introduction of Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine Each year there are nearly 11 million cases of typhoid, a disease that is spread through contaminated food, drink and water. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine are leading an international consortium that is studying the impact of a typhoid conjugate vaccine (TCV) in an effort to accelerate introduction of the vaccine in countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia where there is a high burden of typhoid. In a supplement published by Clinical Infectious Diseases, Kathleen Neuzil, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics and Director of the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health (CVD) at UMSOM, underscores the importance of introducing a TCV, while outlining the challenges in accelerating wide use of the vaccine in typhoid-endemic countries. In the past year, policy and financing milestones have paved the way for the introduction TCVs. In this supplement, collaborators from around the globe detail efforts and provide data to inform country-level decisions on vaccine introduction as a critical part of public health interventions to decrease typhoid disease, said Dr. Neuzil, who is leading the Typhoid Vaccine Acceleration Consortium (TyVAC), an international group of researchers with a mission to accelerate the introduction of TCV in low-income countries. The special TyVAC journal supplement, edited by Dr. Neuzil, Dr. Andrew Pollard of Oxford University and Dr. Anthony Marfin of PATH, brings together the body of research conducted by TyVAC to date, as well as additional research from other research partners. The research underscores the challenges of typhoid surveillance, the growing resistance to antibiotics and the increasing numbers of typhoid outbreaks in the most vulnerable low-resources settings. The growing threat of typhoid necessitates a global effort that includes preventative measures such as vaccines and improved waster, sanitation, and hygiene., said Dr. Neuzil. In the supplement, TyVAC researchers detail clinical trials that are underway in Nepal, Bangladesh, Malawi, and Burkina Faso. They highlight the health economics of the disease, the growing concerns of drug resistance, and the cost-effectiveness of mass campaigns of a vaccine. Release of the supplement comes as TyVAC researchers in addition to several UMSOM disease experts in the CVD will present their research in Hanoi, Vietnam on March 26-28 at the 11th International Conference on Typhoid and Other Salmonelloses. Dr. Neuzil is a keynote speaker at this event. This research led by Dr. Kathleen Neuzil demonstrates the impact our work at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has across the globe. It will help inform global vaccine policymakers in settings where diseases like typhoid are a serious threat, said UMSOM Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, who is also the Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor. About the University of Maryland School of Medicine Now in its third century, the University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 as the first public medical school in the United States. It continues today as one of the fastest growing, top-tier biomedical research enterprises in the world -- with 43 academic departments, centers, institutes, and programs; and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals, including members of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and a distinguished recipient of the Albert E. Lasker Award in Medical Research. With an operating budget of more than $1 billion, the School of Medicine works closely in partnership with the University of Maryland Medical Center and Medical System to provide research-intensive, academic and clinically based care for more than 1.2 million patients each year. The School has over 2,500 students, residents, and fellows, and more than $530 million in extramural funding, with most of its academic departments highly ranked among all medical schools in the nation in research funding. As one of the seven professional schools that make up the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine has a total workforce of nearly 7,000 individuals. The combined School and Medical System (University of Maryland Medicine) has an annual budget of nearly $6 billion and an economic impact more than $15 billion on the state and local community. The School of Medicine faculty, which ranks as the 8th highest among public medical schools in research productivity, is an innovator in translational medicine, with 600 active patents and 24 start-up companies. The School works locally, nationally, and globally, with research and treatment facilities in 36 countries around the world. Visit medschool.umaryland.edu. About the Typhoid Vaccine Acceleration Consortium The Typhoid Vaccine Acceleration Consortium (TyVAC), a partnership between the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, and PATH, an international nonprofit, aims to accelerate the introduction of new typhoid conjugate vaccines (TCVs) as part of an integrated approach to reducing the burden of morbidity and mortality from typhoid in countries eligible for support from Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi). It is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Back to nature: Palm oil plantations are being turned back into protected rainforest The foundation for this unique project will be laid today at the Heart-of-Borneo-conference in Malaysia. The project will buy palm oil plantations, clear them in parts and reforest them with near-natural rainforest. In this way fragmented areas of rainforest can be joined up again. The aim is to link up key forest areas to minimise the threat of extinction of isolated wildlife populations. This planned pilot project contributes to the fulfilment of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets set by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the climate goals set at the 2014 UN-Climate Change Actions Summit, where it was agreed to reforest 350 million ha of rainforest and to re-naturise degraded land by 2030. So far, however, there is a lack of evidence-based experience in practice. With this pilot scheme, the Rhino and Forest Fund (RFF) would like to close this knowledge gap. In the coming years, the fund aims to convert 15.5 ha of palm oil plantations back into rainforest. A research team from the German Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) together with environmental experts from Zurich want to provide scientific monitoring for this project. "The signing of a purchase agreement at the current Heart-of-Borneo conference in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, marks a breakthrough in the creation of a significant wildlife corridor. In order to prevent mass extinction of species, isolated forest areas must be reconnected as soon as possible. Therefore the costly acquisition of certain areas of oil palm plantations and their conversion into protected areas are indispensable. It is very surprising that no one has ever done this before", says Robert Risch, board member of RFF and employee of the Leibniz-IZW. "We are also very proud that the government of Sabah today officially recognises the RFF for its achievements in habitat conservation and we would like to thank the local authorities for their great and long-standing support." Through the purchase of oil palm plantation areas, the RFF creates the basis for a central land connection between the isolated wildlife reserves of Tabin and Kulamba in the east of the Malaysian state of Sabah on the island of Borneo. Both protected areas are of central importance for the conservation of highly endangered and threatened species such as the hairy-nosed otter, Borneo-orang-utan, Sunda clouded leopard, Borneo-elephant and Borneo-banteng. "The challenge is to investigate the optimal transformation of oil palm plantations and their degraded soils into near-natural rainforests. Knowledge gained from this enables us to make statements about future optimal surface reconstruction," explains Dr Philippe Saner, expert for environmental studies from Switzerland and founding member of the RFF. "I am particularly interested in the repopulation with wildlife of those areas that have hardly any species left," explains Dr Petra Kretzschmar, ecologist at the Leibniz-IZW and board member of RFF. "So far, the main focus has been on the loss of biodiversity, but we want to find out how long it takes for palm oil plantations with very little species to return to their original biodiversity after re-naturation. Scientific monitoring of the entire transformation process is important in order to provide recommendations for a future sustainable transformation of agricultural land into near-natural rainforest." "To realise this monitoring the scientists are now looking for funding from state sources. But it is also a great opportunity for businesses to make a sustainable contribution to nature and set the course for future generations," explains Steven Seet, Head of Public Relations at the Leibniz-IZW and member of the RFF's executive board. The areas acquired by the RFF through donations are converted into protected land by the government of Sabah and reforested by the RFF. The resulting wildlife corridor is to be continuously expanded over the next few years through further acquisitions. The Germany-based RFF has been active on Borneo since 2010 and in collaboration with the Sabah Forestry Department and with the support of the Sabah Wildlife Departments has already transferred over 2,000 ha of endangered forest areas back into strictly protected habitats. What is more the RFF has up until now reforested 24 ha of destroyed rainforest. The RFF is a spin-off from the Leibniz-IZW and supports its research initiatives. The RFF has been supported by the German Leipzig Zoo since its foundation in 2009. ### Contact: Dr Petra Kretzschmar Department Evolutionary Ecology, Board Member RFF Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in the Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. Alfred-Kowalke-Strae 17, 10315 Berlin Germany Phone: +49 30 5168513 E-mail: kretzschmar@izw-berlin.de Robert Risch Department Evolutionary Ecology, Board Member RFF Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in the Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. Alfred-Kowalke-Strae 17, 10315 Berlin Germany Phone: Tel.: +49 30 5168513 Phone: +49 7851-6366281 E-mail: risch@izw-berlin.de; info@rhinoandforestfund.org Dr Philippe Saner Experte fur Umweltwissenschaften, Grundungsmitglied RFF Datascientist.ch Bellerivestrasse 59 8008 Zurich Schweiz Cell phone: +41 76 581 81 88 E-mail: ps@datascientist.ch Steven Seet Head Science Communication, Board Member RFF Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) in the Forschungsverbund Berlin e.V. Alfred-Kowalke-Strae 17, 10315 Berlin Germany Phone: +49 30 5168125 Cell phone: +49 177 857 26 73 E-mail: seet@izw-berlin.de Rhino and Forest Fund e.V. Auf dem Stein 2 77694 Kehl Germany Phone: +49 7851-6366281 Fax: +49 7851-6366282 E-mail: info@rhinoandforestfund.org Web: http://www. rhinoandforestfund. org This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. This 70-year-old Chinese bodybuilder has changed the perception of what a pensioner should look like. Yang Xinmin (Photo/Luo Yunfei) Yang Xinmin began bodybuilding in 1984 when he was a spritely 35 years old. At that time, bodybuilding was new in the Chinese fitness community. In 1985, he won the 70kg weight class at a bodybuilding contest held in his hometown Yantai, in eastern China's Shandong province. Yang has witnessed the development of Chinas bodybuilding industry over the past 35 years. In the 1980s, he used simple facilities to train and ate normally. Yang Xinmin (Photo/Luo Yunfei) At that time, people were conservative about bodybuilding. It was not until a bodybuilding competition in Shenzhen when female athletes wearing bikinis walked on stage for the first time that people began to accept the sport. The event was reported all over China and even made headlines overseas, which excited Yang. In the 1990s, fitness rooms began to emerge in big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou as people started to pay more attention to keeping fit. After the year 2000, bodybuilding became popular throughout China. According to a white paper, the number of fitness rooms in China reached 46,050 last year, with 43 million active users. Yang Xinmin (Photo/Luo Yunfei) Yang Xinmin in a contest in 1993. (Photo courtesy of Yang Xinmin) Metropolitan News-Enterprise Wednesday, March 20, 2019 Page 1 Ninth Circuit: Action Over Seized Romanian Film Company May Proceed Panel Says Exception to Sovereign Immunity Might Apply Based on Violation of International Law By a MetNews Staff Writer The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday reinstated an action by two brothers, who are expatriates of Romania, based on the Communist regimes expropriation in 1948 of the familys film company. A memorandum opinion reverses summary judgment by District Court Judge Fernando M. Olguin of the Central District of California in favor of RADEF RomaniaFilm, an arm of the Romanian government, on a cause of action for expropriation. The action was brought by Jak and Edward Sukyas on March 16, 2015 based on the seizure of Cinegrafia Romana (CIRO), even before the Romanian Peoples Republic nationalized all industries. Allegations of Complaint The complaint alleges: Plaintiffs uncle and father, brothers Melik Soukias and Vahram Sukyas respectively, were equal owners of CIRO when the Romanian Communist government illegally expropriated CIRO in 1948 in violation of international law, by way of a sham stock purchase made under duress from threats of imprisonment and threats to safety. Since that time, the company has been operated by state-owned successor-in-interest companies, which continue to do business in the United States. The value of CIRO was assessed in 2013 at $2 billion. Exception to Immunity Under 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(3), a foreign state enjoys no sovereign immunity where rights in property taken in violation of international law are in issue and that property or any property exchanged for such property is present in the United States in connection with a commercial activity carried on in the United States by the foreign state; or that property or any property exchanged for such property is owned or operated by an agency or instrumentality of the foreign state and that agency or instrumentality is engaged in a commercial activity in the United States. Yesterdays opinion declares: The district court incorrectly concluded that the expropriation exception is inapplicable because the Sukyas brothers could not show that RADEF Romania Film is engaged in a commercial activity in the United States. In fact, by licensing U.S. films to screen in Romania, RADEF Romania Film receives profits and benefits...derived from U.S. sources, thus bringing the Sukyas brothers claims within the commercial-activity nexus clause of 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(3). Another Exception Invoked The plaintiffs also invoked an exception to sovereign immunity under 1605(a)(2), which applies where the action is based upon a commercial activity carried on in the United States by the foreign state; or upon an act performed in the United States in connection with a commercial activity of the foreign state elsewhere; or upon an act outside the territory of the United States in connection with a commercial activity of the foreign state elsewhere and that act causes a direct effect in the United States. Affirming summary judgment granted to RomaniaFilm under that section, the opinion says: The Sukyas brothers claims arise from the Romanian governments alleged expropriation of their familys film company, Cinegrafia Romana (CIRO), disruption of CIROs business relationships with U.S. companies, and continued operation of CIROs film business in Romania. However, with no evidence that identifies any specific contractual relationships (and resulting contractual duties) between CIRO and U.S. film companies at the time CIRO was expropriated, the Sukyas brothers cannot show that Romania disrupted or assumed specific business relationships CIRO had with U.S. companies. The case was remanded for a determination as to whether CIRO was taken in violation of international law. The case is Sukyas v. Romania, 17-56557. Copyright 2019, Metropolitan News Company ROME, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Receiving Chinese President Xi Jinping's reply to their letter, students at an Italian boarding school were surprised, excited and encouraged. "I'm so happy to know that President Xi has received our letter," Giovanni Stoppoloni, a fifth-grader at Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II, told Xinhua cheerfully. The boy was one of the eight students who, together with President Paolo M. Reale of the school, wrote to Xi ahead of the Chinese president's state visit to Italy to express their expectations for the visit and their willingness to promote friendship between the two countries. In his reply on Sunday, Xi encouraged the students to be cultural ambassadors between the two countries, saying that he was very pleased to see that the students could express themselves in fluent Chinese. "Our students have been working very hard to learn Chinese over the years," said Reale, adding that Xi's reply was the "best reward and recognition" for the students. Opened in 2009, Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II is an international high school that teaches science-related courses in Chinese. The school has the largest Confucius Classroom in Italy, and learning the Chinese language and culture is popular among the students. Stoppoloni said learning Chinese has helped him broaden horizons and understand Chinese history and culture. In the process, he added, he has also learned to cooperate and share, and become more aware of young people's responsibilities in the future. Ludovica Olivari, another student, said she was deeply impressed by the sentence in Xi's letter that "Youth always goes hand in hand with dreams." "We are young people, who must have goals and dreams," she said. "We will keep on studying hard and open arms to pursue our dreams." Mario Lomonaco's dream is to pursue a China-related career in the future. The student said learning Chinese has brought him many opportunities and opened a door for him to a new world. Nicolas Kovacich, a student at the school, told Xinhua that he would go to China next year to study economics and that he looks forward to his college life in the Asian country. "I look forward to working in China as well in the future," he said. Have you ever wondered why China builds high-speed railway tracks on bridges? (Photo/Xinhua) China is home to 29,000 kilometers of high-speed railway, which has created comfort and convenience for a huge number of passengers. However, have you ever wondered why most high-speed railway tracks are built on bridges? Su Wei, the chief engineer of the bridge department under China Railway Design Corporation, recently explained the countrys preference for bridges during the construction of high-speed rail in an interview with Economic Daily. Bridges account for 88 percent of the mileage of Chinas first 350 km/h high-speed rail, and also 86.5 percent of the Beijing-Shanghai High-speed Railway. Su explained that high-speed railway bridges make sure railway operation is safe, smooth and stable. Bridges have a considerable advantage in the fact that they occupy much less ground space than subgrade engineering, Su said, adding that China constructed substantial bridges for high-speed rail in the plains to replace subgrade projects a standard method in common railway lines. According to Su, bridges are vital in developed regions that are densely populated, as they can save 2.9 hectares of land per kilometer extended. Additionally, high-speed rail has a high standard for operational conditions, so they must bypass immovable barriers such as buildings. By building bridges, the railway can avoid such areas and lower the space division of cities. Now, bridges are often pre-engineered and prefabricated in factories and then transported to construction sites, which helps achieve better quality control and reduces the construction period, Su noted. Education Montgomery County Community College will present the spring installment of the interview/talk show program Issues and Insights April 20 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in Science Center room 214, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The programs will be simulcast to the Colleges West Campus in South Hall room 216, 101 College Drive, Pottstown. Dr. Kolsky will offer a humorous presentation, Carrots, Sticks and Politics: A State of the Nation and the World Message. In this speech, he will provide his interpretation of domestic and international politics and then welcome questions from the audience for discussion. Issues and Insights, is free and open to the public. For information, contact Dr. Thomas Kolsky, professor of political science, at 215-641-6380 or tkolsky@mc3.edu. Montgomery County Community Colleges STEM Scholars Program will host a STEM Jam! open house April 25 from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the Advanced Technology Center at the Colleges Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The drop-in event is designed for students interested in learning more about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Activities will include STEM program information and career advising, STEM speakers throughout the day from industry and academia, micro-helicopter and robotics competitive obstacle courses and demonstrations and static models of STEM student and faculty work. For more information about STEM Jam! or STEM programs at MCCC, contact William Brownlowe at wbrownlowe@mc3.edu or 215-641-6644, or Robin Zuhlke at 215-619-7440 or rzuhlke@mc3.edu. Temple Ambler, located at 580 Meetinghouse Road, presents the following events: International Club Global Bazaar April 15 from 5 to 8 p.m. The Ambler Campus International Club invites all students, faculty, staff and the community to celebrate a multitude of diverse cultures, which will be showcased at the organizations Global Bazaar. This family friendly event will highlight cultural traditions and celebrations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South American, North America and Africa through music, entertainment, food and informative displays developed and presented by students at the Ambler Campus. Young visitors will be provided with passports, which they may get stamped at each country they visit. Prizes will be awarded to world travelers who talk to cultural representatives, answer questions about the countries theyve visited and take part in fun-filled activities designed to help them learn about the rich diversity of cultures found throughout the world. Refreshments will be served. The event is free. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail tuc36466@temple.edu. EarthFest 2011 April 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. More than 75 exhibitors, including the Philadelphia Zoo, The Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Elmwood Park Zoo and the Insectarium, will take part in EarthFest 2011. School students of all ages are invited to attend and develop displays of their own. EarthFest partner the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society also offers its Kids Grow Expo, featuring the Junior Flower Show, as part of the event. For more information, call 267-468-8108 or e-mail duffyj@temple.edu. Annual Spring Plant Sale May 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The plant sale an Ambler Campus tradition dating back to the early 1900s will feature woody plants and perennials in portable sizes, hardy trees, shrubs, and vines, native plants that are attractive to wildlife, herbs, and hanging baskets. There will also be numerous special plants for sale to highlight Amblers special anniversary year. Garden books and garden tools will also be available for sale. Students, staff, and volunteers from the Department of Landscape Architecture and Horticulture and the Ambler Arboretum Advisory Committee will be available to answer questions. All proceeds from the Spring Plant Sale will support the Ambler Arboretum Fund and the Pi Alpha Xi National Honor Society. Information: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. June Homecoming/Louise Bush-Brown Garden Dedication June 5 from 12:30 to 2 p.m. (June Homecoming), Bright Hall Lounge; 2 p.m. (Garden Dedication), Ambler Campus Formal Perennial Gardens. Tickets June Homecoming: Participant $18 per person; Sustainer $25 per person; Benefactor $40 per person. The 2011 June Homecoming, sponsored by the School of Environmental Design Alumni Association, will include the Alumni Association annual meeting and luncheon. June Homecoming will be followed by the formal dedication of Temple University Amblers Formal Perennial Gardens as the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Gardens. During this 100th anniversary of the campus, Temple University Ambler and the Ambler Arboretum of the Temple University is honoring Louise Bush-Browns many contributions to the history of the campus by formally dedicating the gardens in her honor. During the program, campus Executive William Parshall will welcome guests, Ambler Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey will speak about the Bush-Browns and the history of the garden, and an official ribbon cutting will be held for the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Garden. Following the ribbon cutting, guests are invited to take a tour of the gardens, which will wend their way to the Campus Greenhouse for the School of Environmental Designs annual Plant Auction. Information (Garden Dedication): 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Information (June Homecoming): 215-482-0722. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. Northview Garden Tour and Fundraiser for the Ambler Arboretum June 12 from noon to 5 p.m. Call for reservations. Tickets: $15 per person or $20 at the door. In addition to the gardens of the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, Arboretum Director Jenny Rose Carey has a garden oasis all her own right in Ambler Northview. Visitors will have the opportunity to take self-guided tours throughout the many gardens, where garden experts will be available to answer questions about the various designs. The Ambler Keystone Chapter of the Womans National Farm and Garden Association will also provide tea and refreshments. All proceeds from the tours will support the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University. Information or to register: 267-468-8001 or judy.shatz@temple.edu. Learn more at www.ambler.temple.edu/anniversary. The Senior Adult Activities Center of Montgomery County, 536 George Street, Norristown, will hold the following events: SAAC Adult Day Care, an alternative to Nursing Home Care is available for information call 610-275-1960 Volunteers are needed for Meals on Wheels Program (call the number above) SAACs Fifth Avenue Boutique opens Monday through Friday from 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Exercise with Theresa will be held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 1 p.m. Dance class is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Tai Chi is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Yoga is held every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m. Line Dancing is held every Thursday at 10:30 a.m. Dancing with Joan is held every Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. Sculpture Class is held Wednesdays from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Why Should I Learn Spanish? will be held Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. Generations On-Line computer classes for seniors will be held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. 4 p.m. computers are available during those hours. Health Living will be held every Tuesday at 1 p.m. Boomer U will hold the following events. Boomer U is located at 45 Forest Avenue, Ambler. Registration & payment is required for all events: 215-619-8863. Pilates Class is held Wednesdays and Fridays at 9:30 a.m. First class is free; please bring a mat. For information call 610-291-5376. Blue Bell School of Dance, 921 Penllyn Blue Bell Pike, Blue Bell, hosts Argentine Tango Classes and a Milonga dance party every Friday evening. Lessons start at 8:30 p.m. followed by dancing at 9:30 p.m. Andrew Conway, master Argentine Tango dancer, instructor and performer and his partner Linda Chase will instruct. All levels welcome and no partner is needed. Refreshments will be served. Fee is $12 per person and includes lesson and dancing. Information: 215-634-1101 or www.amoretango.com. The Montgomery Hospital Medical Center will offer the following classes: Childbirth Education Class- all parents are invited to participate, including those who are delivering at other hospitals. For more information on maternity services or classes, call 610-270-2020. CPR and First Aid Courses are offered for beginners to experiences health care providers. Call 610-270-2313. The Ambler SAAC (Senior Adult Activities Center), located at 45 Forest Ave in Ambler will hold the following events: Tai Chi every Monday and Thursday at 11 a.m. Yoga is every Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Friday at 10:30 a.m. Strength and balance training every Wednesday at 10 a.m. Armchair Aerobics is held every Monday at 10 a.m. Gourmet Weight Wise every Thursday at 12:30. Fitness Center and Pool Room open daily 8 a.m.-4 p.m. The Diabetes Education Center will offer day and evening classes each month. Health insurance pays for diabetes education classes. Preregistration is required. Call 610-270-2301. For Kids & Families The Ambler Kiwanis Club will host its annual Easter Egg Hunt April 26 at 10 a.m. in Ambler Borough Park, located just off of the intersection of Hendricks Street and Valley Brook Road. Members of the Wissahickon Key Club will assist Kiwanians in hiding thousands of wrapped chocolate eggs in a designated area of the park. Also hidden will be plastic colored eggs, which are redeemed for prizes. Elementary school children are separated by age. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation will hold its 21st annual Storybook Egg-Stravaganza April 15 fom 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Upper Dublin Township Building. Toddlers and preschoolers love this annual event where photo opportunities with favorite friends abound! Treasures are collected from UDP&Rs assortment of lifesize cutouts of favorite cartoon characters from Disney, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon and other well-known animation. Children can have their picture taken with Bugsy OHare; bring your own camera. And dont forget a basket for goodies! $7 for UD residents; $12 for non-residents. Pre-register at 215-643-1600 ext. 3443. Splash Week is a free week-long program that teaches children and families basic swimming skills and water safety practices. All YMCA branches will host multiple classes each day from April 11 to 15. For more information, contact the Ambler Area YMCA at 215-628-9950. Healthy Kids Day is April 16 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The day is filled with fun, engaging and artistic activities that cultivate healthy living as part of the YMCAs larger efforts to help more kids and families become physically active. All activities are free and open to the community. For more information, contact the Ambler YMCA at 215-628-9950. No reservation is required. The Ambler Area YMCA has added several new programs for area youngsters. Classes are held late afternoons or evenings on various weekdays. For more information, visit philaymca.org or call 215-628-9950. Basic Beading: Ages: 10+. Wednesdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. This class will teach you the fundamentals of wiring and stringing along with how color can be used to create unique and vibrant beadwork design. You will create various jewelry including earrings, bracelets, charm pendants and much more! Supplies will be provided. Bringing your own jewelry pliers or tools would be a plus. Messin with the Masters: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 7 to 7:45 p.m. Learn about some of the worlds greatest artists. You will be inspired to create your own Starry Night with oil pastels and tempera paints, a tissue paper painted Monet garden, a Picasso head using scraps of paper, a Georgia OKeeffe clay flower bowl and a Rousseau jungle collage. Super Scientist: Ages: 5-7. Mondays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Well be concocting chemistry experiments such as making slime, mixing potions and having fun with magnet magic. Your budding little scientist will enhance his/her creative thinking and motor skills and to top it off will learn that science can be serious fun. Wacky Junk Art: Ages: 8-12. Thursdays 6 to 6:45 p.m. Why throw it away! Instead join us to make household junk into aliens from outer space, wacky specs, crazy hats, body masks or a recycled train. Globe Trotters: Ages: 4-6. Tuesdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Youre never too young to start thinking globally. Each week, we explore a new country through crafts, games, music, stories and even some taste-testing. A perfect introduction to our great big world! Crazy about Crafts: Ages: 5-7, Thursdays 4:30 to 5:15 p.m. Let your childs creative juices flow with our fun arts and crafts projects each week. Fine motor skills and creative thinking skills will be enhanced with this crafty class. Come out and join the Ambler Area YMCAs Teen and Junior Leaders Club. Participants are given the freedom to plan community service projects year round and truly make a difference in the lives of people in need. Those in Teen and Junior Leaders also attend leadership retreats all along the East Coast three times a year and meet other leaders who are doing the same great work in their respective areas. Dont miss out on this inspiring opportunity. Teen Leaders, ages 13-17, meet every Wednesday from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Junior Leaders, ages 10-12, will begin in the spring and will meet every Monday. For more information, contact Mike Miles, Teen Director, 215- 628-9950 x 1540 or mmiles@philaymca.org. Did you know that the new Ambler Area YMCA holds childrens birthday parties at its site for members and non members as well. The Ambler Y does all the work from start to finish and birthday parties include a personalized cake, ice cream, beverage and paper products. Parties are held on Saturday and Sunday afternoons and include two party hosts to lead activities, set-up, clean-up and assist with serving. You can have a Splash Party for children ages six to 12 in the new zero depth entry pool with water slide and spray fountains. Up to 25 children have exclusive use of the pool area with 30 minutes in the party room. Sports Parties are offered for kids ages four to 12 with age appropriate activities and games, and sports such as floor hockey, soccer, basketball or dodge ball. Children ages three to five years of age will enjoy parties in the Family Active Center with use of the Moon Bounce and organized activities, such as parachute play and songs. For information, 215-628-9950 ext. 1583. Community Events at the Ambler Y: -YAchievers YMCA Achievers is a developmentally based, extracurricular, educational and team mentoring program designed to help students in grades five through 12 prepare for fulfilled livelihoods in college and beyond. Participation is free and all students in this program receive a free YMCA membership. Registration for the 2009 program begins now. You do not need to be a YMCA member to utilize these special services. Call 215-628-9950 to register. Greater Norristown Art Leagues Childrens Weeklong Summer Art Camps will be held at 800 West Germantown Pike in East Norriton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday throughout the summer. The cost per session is $125 per student for ages 6 and up. Jo Ann Cooksey Bono teaches an introduction to basic drawing skills and techniques from 10 a.m. until the lunch break each day. In the afternoon sessions, Mary Vogel Lozinak involves the students in hands on projects such as collage, papermaking, T-shirt printing, 3D design and sculpy clay. Fridays Graduation Day includes an art show, awards ceremony and reception for parents, siblings, grandparents and friends. All supplies are included. Students provide their own lunch. A refrigerator is available and the building is air-conditioned. This is the 15th year to run this successful program. Both instructors are professional artists with State Police and Child Abuse Clearances. To register, call Jo Ann at 610-279-1008, or register on-line at www.gnal.org. Health Dresher Physical Therapy is hosting an interactive seminar discussing its Golf Assessment Progam April 30 from 10 a.m. to noon at Dresher Physical Therapy, 1075 Virginia Drive, Suite 200, Fort Washington. Physical therapist Chris Miller, certified through the Titleist Performance Institute, will discuss why your body may be the most important piece of golf equipment you invest in and how this can drastically improve your game. $10 in advance; $15 at the door. Call 215-619-4545 to reserve your spot. The Chestnut Hill Center for Enrichment, Center on the Hill and Chestnut Hill Hospital will host a Senior Health and Resource Fair April 14 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church, 8855 Germantown Ave. The event is free. For more information, call 215-248-0180 or e-mail chseniors@cavtel.net. The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is hosting Help Yourself to Health, a new six-week workshop for older adults with ongoing health conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety, heart disease and others. The free workshop will take place at the Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center, 45 Forest Ave. on six Thursdays, May 12 through June 16 from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Although there is no charge to participate, registration is required. To register, call 215-619-8863. The Ambler Senior Adult Activities Center is sponsoring an eight-week program called A Matter of Balance: Managing Concerns About Falls. Presented by the Montgomery County Health Department, this workshop will be held on Tuesdays, May 3 to June 21 from 10 a.m. to noon at the Ambler Center, 45 Forest Ave. If you pre-register by April 27, the fee is only $5! Registration at the first class is $10. (Checks should be payable to SAAC and will benefit our Meals on Wheels program that serves homebound seniors.) A workbook will be provided and refreshments will be served. Call 215-619-8863 to register or for more information. Fort Washington Wellness Center classes are ongoing. There are several offered during lunch or right after work, for your convenience: Boot Camp from noon to 1 p.m. on Monday; Zumba is MWF from 11 a.m. to noon and Friday at 4 p.m.; there are 25 cycling classes; Ashtanga and Vinyasana Yoga and Pilates; and a group Womens Strength Training class M-F from 10 to 11 a.m. Questions, call Cathy DeMarco at 215-641-1245. Following the success of other local area programs, Impact Sports and Upper Dublin Parks and Recreation are delighted to team up again to offer a spring program for the 2011 season! Upper Dublin area children ages 3-5 years old can attend a Sports Program featuring their favorite sports games; soccer, rugby, hockey, track and field, basketball, and more. The program will start on April 27 and run through June 1. Cost for the program is $85 for the six weeks. The classes will be running 12- 1 p.m.; 1- 2 p.m.; 2- 3 p.m. For more info or to register, call Upper Dublin Township on 215 643 1600 or visit their website a http://www.upperdublin.net. Spring Aquatic Programs UDHS Pool: -Summer is just around the corner Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool can help get you into shape! Programs begin in March; preregistration is required. Shallow Water Aerobics Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 8-8:45 p.m., $40R/$50NR. Adult Swim Instructions Two 5-week programs, Wednesday nights, 7-8 p.m., $50R/$60NR -Open Rec Swims are fun for the whole family! Come out on Fridays from 7-9 p.m. or Saturdays from 1-4 p.m. and enjoy use of the pool and diving area. Fridays are offered through June 17; Saturdays are offered March 12-May 21. -Join a growing group of adult lap swimmers and water walkers. Lanes are set aside evenings and weekends for use; lanes are shared. Monday Thursday from 7:30-9:30 p.m.; Fridays from 7-9 p.m. and Saturdays (March 12-May 21) from 1-4 p.m. -Private Swimming & Diving Lessons for ages 3-adult are offered at the UDHS Pool through a partnership with the Upper Dublin Aquatic Club (UDAC). Visit the UDAC website for more information, www.udac.us, and click the link to UDHS Private Lessons. -Looking for local programs for US Masters Swimming (adults) or Water Polo (all ages)? UDAC and UDSD are working together to develop programs that will be offered at the UDHS Pool. Add your name to Interest Lists by emailing slohoefer@upperdublin.net. emails will be sent about clinics and program start dates. Questions about Community Aquatic Programs at the UDHS Pool, group use of the pool or pool rental? Contact Susan Lohoefer, Facility & Community Affairs Manager at slohoefer@upperdublin.net or call 215-643-8800 x8994. SilverSneakers Fitness Program. The Healthyways SilverSneakers Fitness Program is a result-oriented program that enables older adults to take charge of their health. The program is an innovative blend of physical activity, healthy lifestyle and socially oriented programing. Members of the program are eligible for a free YMCA membership, with use of the pool and exercise equipment, along with customized classes designed for older adults who want to improve their strength, flexibility, balance and endurance. If you are a subscriber to Independence Blue Cross (Personal Choice 65 PPO) or Keystone 65 HMO, Bravo Health, or Health Options Programs (HOP), call the Ambler Area YMCA, 215-628-9950 or Hatboro Area YMCA, 215-674-4545. You can also visit www.silversneakers.com. Zumba Fitness offers Zumba dance/fitness classes at Academy of Dance and Music/BBAD Studio located at 1524 DeKalb Pike in Blue Bell (behind Sherwin Williams). Classes are offered three times a week: Tuesdays at 6 p.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 8 a.m. For a free trial pass for your first class, email us at info@danceandmusic.biz or call 610-277-2557. For more info, visit our site at www.academyofdanceandmusic.org. Chestnut Hill Health Systems presents the following Health Education Programs: FITNESS CLASSES Golden Yoga: A Breathing, Stretching and Relaxation Class. Fridays, 2:30-3:30 p.m. Lea Auditorium, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. Registration for four classes at a time required. Golden Yoga is Classical Yoga, adapted by the SKY Foundation, to accommodate those who have difficulty getting up and down from the floor. The program includes postures, breathing, relaxation and meditation techniques, all performed while sitting in a chair and standing. Registration required. Call 215-247-3029. Cost: $20 for 4 classes per month. Tai Chi: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 8:30 9:30 a.m. Springfield Residence, 8601 Stenton Ave. Classes, for the novice or beginner/intermediate student, are designed to improve balance, power, posture, coordination, flexibility and mental focus. Slow, gentle movements are modified to most everyones abilities. For more information or to sign up for a free introductory class, call 215-882-2804. Cost: $8 per class/paid monthly. SUPPORT GROUPS Weight Loss Surgery Support Group: Fourth Wednesday of the month, 7-8 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. Join us for a monthly get-together where well share information for those interested in weight loss surgery, learn from guest speakers discussing current news on issues including lifestyle modification, nutrition and exercise and provide ongoing support for those who have completed surgery. Registration required. Call 215-753-2000. Breast Cancer Networking Group: Fourth Tuesday of the month 5:30 7 p.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia. A free, confidential support group for women living with a diagnosis of breast cancer designed to provide a forum for sharing information, feelings and concerns associated with breast cancer. Facilitated by Tish Wakefield, LCSW, Oncology Social Worker. Registration required. To register or for more information, call 215-248-8047. New Moms Support Groups Tuesdays 10:30 a.m. 12 p.m.; contact Jeanine ORourke, MSW or 2:30 4 p.m.; contact Susan Schack, Ph.D Volunteer Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. The Center for Postpartum Depression at Chestnut Hill Hospital is pleased to offer two new support groups to support new moms. Both groups will be run by experienced mental health professionals who really get it when it comes to new motherhood and juggling relationships, extended family, work/family balance and self-care. If you are experiencing new mom challenges that often heighten anxiety and involve hormonally driven depression, join us for an informative and supportive forum to connect with other moms. Infants are welcome. $30 per session (flexible based on need). Registration is required. Call Dr. Schack, 646-265-2484, or Ms. ORourke, 215-206-2931. Man to Man Prostate Cancer Support Group Third Thursday of the month 8-9 a.m. Williams Conference Room, Chestnut Hill Hospital, 8835 Germantown Ave. A networking group for men diagnosed with prostate cancer designed to provide education, support and encouragement. Spouses and partners welcome. Harry M. Baer, MD, Chief, Urology Division, will host Ask the Doctor. Registration required. Call 215-248-8325. Contact the Senior Center by phone 215-248-0180 or email (chseniors@cavtel.net) with your questions about these programs or any of our on-going activities and classes. Holy Redeemer HomeCare and Hospice seeks compassionate and emotionally mature volunteers to provide support to local hospice patients and their families in Bucks, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. Volunteers may also assist with pet therapy and administrative work within the hospice department and are requested to have daytime availability. Hospice patient care volunteers visit with patients in their homes or nursing facilities once a week for two to three hours. They provide emotional support and companionship to patients and family members, assist with errands or provide respite for caregivers. Bereavement volunteers support the families of hospice patients following the loss of a loved one, while administrative volunteers assist with typing, mailings and/or filing. Hospice care workers provide a great service to families and loved ones of hospice patients. Many volunteers also report a great deal of personal satisfaction as a result of their services. Patient care and bereavement volunteers complete an application and attend an 18-hour volunteer training program that covers the medical, psychological and spiritual aspects of hospice volunteering. Day and evening training programs are offered. To sign up for volunteer opportunities in Pennsylvania, contact Holy Redeemer Volunteer Coordinator Jean Francis at 215-698-3737 or email jfrancis@holyredeemer.com. Librarytalk Upper Dublin Public Library, 805 Loch Alsh Avenue, Ft. Washington, 215-628-8744 www.upperdublinlibrary.org APRIL CHILDRENS PROGRAMS: Storytimes: Please register in the library. o Wee Ones: 0 to 23 months Thursdays and Fridays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. o Tiny Tots: age 2. Wednesdays 10:30 to 10:50 a.m. and Fridays 11 to 11:20 a.m. o Jr. Book Lovers: ages 3 to 6. Tuesdays 10:30 to 11 a.m. o Bedtime Storytimes: 7 to 7:30 p.m. April 20 and 27. Wear your jammies, bring your teddy & hear Miss Barbara read bedtime stories! For ages 3 to 6. APRIL TEEN PROGRAMS: North Hills Library Teens April 28 from 4 to 6 p.m. Movie Matinee APRIL UDPL ADULT PROGRAMS: NEW! ESL Conversation Group. Tuesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. Interested in practicing your English in a safe and caring environment? Come to our conversation group and improve your skills! Please register with Kay Klocko at 215-628-8744 or kklocko@mclinc.org. One-on-One Computer Mentoring. Get personalized assistance from experienced computer volunteers! Sign-up for a one-hour session. Limit one session per month. Please register contact info above. Book Groups Please register with Kay Klocko 215-628-8744. o Daytimers: April 21 at 1:30 p.m. Tired of book groups where you all read the same book? Read any fiction or non-fiction book on this months theme: Explorers. Please register. Meetings: Annual Meeting of the Friends of UDPL: April 14 at 1 p.m. Board of Directors: April 20 at 7 p.m. Blue Bell Library www.wvpl.org Upcoming Events: The Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 650 Skippack Pike (Route 73) in Blue Bell, is diagonally across from the Blue Bell Inn. Call 215-643-1320 or visit their website at www.wvpl.org. For children and teens at Blue Bell: * Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian. * Mondays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages. * Fridays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Family Movies, new releases, second Saturdays of the month at 1:30 p.m. * May 14 Despicable Me * June 11 Alpha and Omega * Special Events * April watch for date of spring/Easter events * April 14 at 4:30 p.m. Junior Lego Club for children ages 3 through 5. Parents and caregivers need to stay with children. * April 14 at 7 p.m. Jeopardy for ages 11 to 18. Test your book and library knowledge for prizes. Sign up to be a contestant. No sign up to be in the audience. Snacks provided. * April 16 at 1 p.m. Adult Mystery Book Group discussing The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King. * April 16 at 1:30 p.m. Childrens event for One Book, Every Young Child celebration. Story and craft for book Whose Shoes? * April 19 at 7 p.m. and April 26 at 1:30 p.m.- Adult book group discusses The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. Group led by Adam Button. * April 30 through May 3 Friends book sale with about 10,000 items for sale for children, teens and adults. * May sign up for Science in the Summer * June sign up for Enrichment Programs for Elementary-Age children * June sign up for Summer Reading, all ages For adults at Blue Bell: * Daytime Book Discussion Group fourth Tuesday, Jan April at 1:30 p.m. * April 26 The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester * Night-time Book Discussion Group third Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m. o April 19 The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester * Art Series with Dr. Sheldon Weintraub, docent at The Barnes and speaker at local colleges o April 27 at 2 p.m. The Art of Looking at Art-Is She Nude or Is She Naked? *Mystery Book Discussion Group, third Saturday of the month at 1 p.m.; new mystery theme each month; www.wvpl.org/programs * Yoga on Mondays at 1:30 p.m. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop-in class. * Tai Chi on Mondays at 3 p.m. with Dr. Kurt Findeisen. $20 for eight classes; $5 per drop in class. * Philadelphia Museum of Art presents class on their Marc Chagall exhibit, April 13 at 2 p.m. * Giant Book Sale, April 29 May 3 o Starts with almost 10,000 items for children and adults! o Held during library hours. o Preview for members of the Friends of the Library, April 28 at 7 p.m. o Join the Friends and attend the preview sale. Modest fee to join. * Blooms at Blue Bell Gardening Series o May 11 at 1 p.m. Summer Bulbs by PA Horticultural Society * Knitting group Mondays and Wednesdays at 10 a.m. Work on your project or observe and learn. The groups continue year-round in the community room. * Socrates Cafe discussion group every Monday at 7 p.m. You pick the topic to discuss each week. No sign-up, nothing to read. * Bridge every Friday at 12:30 p.m. New players welcome. * Mah Jong every Wednesday at 1 p.m. New players welcome. *Chess every Wednesday at 7p.m. for adults and teens 14 and older. * Movie Matinee showing recent releases every Thursday at 2 p.m. April 14: Maos Last Dancer; April 21: Welcome to the Rileys; April 28: Conviction; May 5: Inception; May 12: Inside Job; May 19 The Kings Speech; May 26 The Fighter; June 2 Rabbit Hole; June 9 Black Swan; June 16 127 Hours * Ongoing like-new, year-round book sale for adults & children during library hours * Library opening at 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday! Ambler Library, a branch of the Wissahickon Valley Public Library, 209 Race St., 215-646-1072. www.wvpl.org. All the following events occur at the Ambler Library. * Story times with guitar music by Miss Michelle, the singing librarian. * Tuesdays at 10:30 a.m. for all ages. * Thursdays at 4:30 p.m. for all ages. * For adults: * Beading Group meets the first and third Monday of every month at 1 p.m. Work on your own projects or come to watch and learn. * Free Family History Lookup with Connie Briggs. Email Connie for an appointment at the Ambler Library. conniebriggs@comcast.net * Special Events: * April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Book Group discusses Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian. * April 19 at 7 p.m. Travel to Paris with world traveler Harry Balin. Tea and scones at 6:30 p.m. * April 21 at 7 p.m. Art with Sara for children in fourth through seventh grades. *May 2 at 6:30 p.m. Discuss the movie Lone Star with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time. *May 10 Robert Capucci discusses Art into Fashion. Tea and scones served at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m. *May 12 at 1:30p.m. Book Group discusses The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman. *May 17 Tour the gardens of Devon and Southwest England with Lois McMullen. Tea and Scones at 6:30 p.m. Program at 7 p.m. *June 13 at 6:30 p.m. Discuss the movie Blade Runner with Temple Professor Lisa Hawkins. Watch the movie ahead of time. Meetings and Lectures The Unisys Blue Bell Retiree Group will meet in the Church on the Mall in the Plymouth Meeting Mall April 14 at 1:30 p.m. Kathy Sacket Young, director/trainer with the North Penn YMCA, will speak on Keeping Fit in Retirement. For more information, contact Membership Committee Chairperson Jerry Feldscher at 610-275-3538 or President Al Rollin at 215-368-4833. The next FWBA meeting will be April 28 at the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Networking begins at 11:30 a.m.; meeting from noon to 1 p.m. Leon Singletary, Principal, First Contact HR and FWBA Executive Board, will present: Social Media: How to Use It To Get More Business. Lunch is provided courtesy of the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Washington. Members are welcome to bring a guest. An RSVP is requested by return email or 215-628-0313. Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern PA is hosting a information sessions over the next few weeks on how to become a Big Brother. The information sessions will take place: April 16 at noon, April 19 at 8 a.m. and April 28 at 6 p.m. All sessions will be held at the groups Norristown Office,t 530 DeKalb St., Norristown. For more information, call 610-277-2200. The North Penn Chapter of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) normally meets on the third Tuesday of each month from now until May. Meetings are held at the William Penn Inn on Route 202 and Sumneytown Pike, Upper Gwynedd, PA. Social hour starts at 5:30 p.m., dinner is served at 6:30 p.m., and the technical program begins at 7 p.m. Cost with reservation is $28 for members. Members without reservations and guests pay $30. Students with reservations pay $15. Reservations may be made by noon on the Monday preceding the meeting by phoning 215-371-1854 or emailing the reservation to northpennima@yahoo.com northpennima@yahoo.com. Information about the North Penn Chapter is available at http://northpenn.imanet.org/. LeTip, a professional organization of men and women who are dedicated to the highest standards of competence and service meets every Tuesday at Cedar Brook Country Club, 180 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell at 7 a.m. -meeting officially starts at 7:16 a.m. and ends at 8:31 a.m. Our purpose is the exchange of business tips, leads, and referrals. Each business category is represented by one member and conflicts of interest are disallowed. Guests are welcome to visit any of our breakfast meetings. Every third Thursday of month, Sunrise Assisted Living of Blue Bell (795 Penllyn Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422, 215-619-2777) serves as a satellite site to 148th Legislative district PA congressman Mike Gerber from 10 a.m. to noon. Stop by for help needed with things such as disability placards and license plates, vehicle registration, utilities issues, birth/death certificates,property tax/rent rebates, etc. Notary services arranged by appointment. The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce is an action-oriented organization dedicated to promoting its members and the economic health of eastern Montgomery county. The Chamber is committed to serving as a catalyst by uniting business, community agencies, government and education to make our county a great place to live and work. For information, call 215-887-5122 or visit www.emccc.org. Do you have a fear of public speaking? Blue Bell Toastmasters Club can help. We meet from 7 to 9 p.m., on the second and fourth Tuesday at the Marriott Courtyard, located on Route 202, directly across from the Montgomeryville Mall. Learn how to improve communication and leadership skills in a friendly and supportive environment. Guests are welcome. Admission fee: $5. For more info, visit www.bbtoast.org. The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will hold the following meetings (for reservations to any of the following, email info@PennSuburban.org) -Breakfast News Network, 7:30-8:45 a.m. at Normandy Farm Hotel (1401 Morris Road, Blue Bell, PA 19422) $15 members, includes full buffet breakfast. Join us for a networking program at Normandy Farm Hotel every Thursday morning for breakfast, business news, informative speakers, and plenty of networking. The cost includes a full breakfast buffet. Copies of the business cards will be made available to those who would like them. The BNI, Fort Washington Chapter meets every Monday at The Hilton Garden Inn, 520 Pennsylvania Ave., Fort Washington for a networking meeting. Meetings are from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. Visitors are welcome. The only cost to attend is the cost of your meal. For information or a reservation to attend, please call Luanne Cram at 215-947-7784, or visit our Internet site at: http://www.BNIDVR.Com and click on the menu item Find a Chapter. For the past seven years, people have enjoyed participating in WVWAs Adopt-a-Tree program. Individuals can support the Association in its reforestation efforts by purchasing native trees to be planted. Supporters can plant their adopted tree or have WVWA volunteers will plant it. Trees cost $30 each. If you would like to volunteer or purchase a tree(s), please contact: Bob Adams at Bob@wvwa.org or call: 215-646-8866 for more information. Check www.WVWA.org for directions and maps. Sustainable Upper Dublin, http://sustainableupperdublin.org, meets the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m., at the Upper Dublin Township Building, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington, PA 19034. Please send any questions to suec@sustainableupperdublin.org or call 610-996-6316. To learn more about Sustainable Upper Dublin, view or join the discussion at http://googlegroups.com/group/sustainableupperdublin. Special Events The Mattie N. Dixon Community Cupboard will hold its first nutrition class April 19 at 10 a.m. at the Community Cupboard, 150 N. Main St., Ambler. Lynne Sinclair, a nutritionist from Abington Memorial Hospital specializing in diabetic nutrition, will conduct the class. Topics will include healthy eating, beneficial foods, recipes, making meals with every day foods, and how to use unfamiliar produce. A healthy snack will be provided.The class is is open to all residents in Montgomery County. The Historical Society of Fort Washington presents The History of Conshohocken April 19 at 8 p.m. at the Clifton House, 473 Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington. Jack Coll will present an illustrated program on the history of the Borough of Conshohocken. Coll is a longtime resident of Conshohocken and a member of the Conshohocken Historical Society. He is co-author with his son, Brian, of the Arcadia Then and Now Series book Conshohocken. He has also done books Conshohocken and West Conshohocken Sports and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Italian Feast. He has taken many photos for the Conshohocken Record and the Norristown Times Herald. This program is free. Refreshments will be served. For additional information, call 215-646-6065. Taste of the White House Soiree featuring former White House Chef Walter Scheib will take place April 29 at 6 p.m. at Manufacturers Golf & Country Club in Fort Washington to celebrate HealthLinks 10th anniversary and honor its founders, the Eugene Jackson Family. The evening will heat up with a Chef Meet & Greet, followed by a specially selected presidential menu. Gala tickets are $150 per person. Proceeds benefit HealthLink, a free clinic providing compassionate, quality medical and dental care to uninsured, working adults in Bucks and Montgomery counties who fall in between the health care cracks. Go to http://tasteofthewhitehouse.charityhappenings.org to make reservations online or lend support through sponsorship. For event information, call 267-699-0124 or email jmarushak@healthlinkmedical.org. The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association will hold an open house at the Evans-Mumbower Mill April 17 from 1 to 4 p.m. The Mill is at the corner of Swedesford and Township Line Roads in Upper Gwynedd. The open house is free but donations are welcome. For more information, call 215-646-8866 o email info@wvwa.org. The Eastern Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce will host Breakfast With Your County Commissioners and State Representatives April 21 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the Holiday Inn Fort Washington, 432 W. Pennasylvania Ave. Commissioners: James R. Matthews (Chairman), Joseph M. Hoeffel (Vice Chair), State Representatives: Todd Stephens (District 151) and Josh Shapiro (District 153). Register onlineat www.emccc.org. $10 for EMCCC member; $20 for non-members. Upper Dublins Districtwide Allied Art Show will be held April 27 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. in the Upper Dublin High School Athletic Complex. The Rev. Alfred Muli, chaplain at Fort Washington Estates, will be the featured speaker at the Kiwanis sponsored breakfast observing the National Day of Prayer May 5 at 7 a.m. at the William Penn Inn. The breakfast is open to the public ($15). Reservations can be made by calling 215-646-4356 or by emailing georgesaurman@Juno.com. The Upper Dublin Shade Tree Commission invites people to participate in its spring bare root planting events, sponsored in part by Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Friends of Robbins Park. On April 9, zix trees will be planted at the Evelyn B. Wright Park & Community Pool, 401 Logan Ave., North Hills, at 9 a.m., followed by the planting of 10 trees at Sheeleigh Park, Loch Alsh Avenue and Douglas Street, Ambler, at 10:15 a.m. On April 29, students from Upper Dublin High School will join the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society to plant 16 trees in Robbins Park, Butler Pike and Meetinghouse Road, Ambler, to help launch the societys Million Trees campaign. This event will occur in conjunction with Temple Amblers EarthFest. Experienced tree-tenders are sought to assist the students. For more information,contact Ron Ayres at 215-653-0421 or 215-483-4348. The Friends of the Wissahickon and the Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association are teaming up once again to clean the Wissahickon Creek from top to bottom April 30 from 9 a.m. to noon. This spring marks the 41st anniversary of Wissahickon Valley Watershed Associations annual Creek Clean Up, and the second year that FOW has teamed up with WVWA. Volunteers of all ages will clean the creek, the surrounding trails and the many tributaries of the Wissahickon Creek. Armed with bags, volunteers will be assigned to sections of the creek. Following the clean up, all volunteers are invited to WVWAs Talkin Trash picnic in Fort Washington State Park, with food provided by Whole Foods Market of North Wales. The pavilion is located on Mill Road in Flourtown. To help out in Montgomery County, all volunteers must be pre-assigned a section of the Wissahickon Creek to clean. Please contact Bob Adams, WVWA director of stewardship, at 215-646-8866 ext. 14 or bob@wvwa.org. To work with the Friends of the Wissahickon in Philadelphia, meet at the pavilion along Forbidden Drive, a short distance south of the intersection of Forbidden Drive and Northwestern Avenue. Limited parking is available along Northwestern Avenue and other nearby streets. Volunteers are encouraged to bike or carpool to the event. To participate, register at www.fow.org. Contact Kevin Groves with questions at 215-247-0417 ext. 105 or groves@fow.org. Montgomery County Community Colleges International Club invites the community to the second annual International Festival April 20 from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Central Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The rain date is April 26. The International Club will transform the outside quad area into multicultural celebration with various performances by dancers, singers and musicians. Artists will share their artwork at various display tables. Activities include games, raffles, Easter egg decorating and henna tattoos. Students will have samples of international cuisine at tables representing different countries and will serve food from various local ethnic restaurants. Throughout the evening, volunteers will accept donations and will raffle gift baskets and prizes to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. Donations of food, international clothes and prizes are needed. Volunteers, including artists and performers, are welcome. For more information or to sponsor an activity, contact Gillian Nel, International Club president, at gnel9277@students.mc3.edu or 267-974-0163. The Arts and Humanities Division at Montgomery County Community College is partnering with the Philadelphia Writers Conference to host Memoirs Matter: How Life Stories (Including Yours) Can Transform Your Relationship to Literature April 23 from 1 to 3 p.m. in Advanced Technology Center room 101, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell. The event is free and open to the public. In the first part of this two-hour seminar, professor and author Robert Waxler will explain how writing his two memoirs affected his life as well as his relationship to literature. In the second part, blogger and workshop leader Jerry Waxler will present a sequence of steps to help writers find their own story. For information, contact Dana Resente at dresente@mc3.edu. The Maple Glen Garden Club will hold its fourth annual Plant Sale on May 7 from 8 to 11 a.m. Perennials, shrubs, vegetables and native plants grown by the club members will be sold. The club uses the plant sale proceeds to fund community projects, a college scholarship and community plantings. The sale will be held in the 500 block of Coach Road, Horsham, as part of a neighborhood garage sale. Plants will be sold at bargain prices. For more information, email MapleGlenGardenClub@gmail.com. The Relay for Life Craft Show is looking for local crafters to participate in show, which will be May 21 from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Wissahickon High School track, 521 Houston Road, Ambler. There is a $10 entry fee, and 20 percent of sales are donated to the American Cancer Society. Participants will receive a 6-foot table under a tent. For information, contact Joanne at joannescoles@comcast.net or Mindy at mcamsilver@comcast.net. Spring House Estates is hosting its annual book fair on April 18 from 4 to 7 p.m. and April 9 from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Included will be hardback and paperback used books. Spring House Estates is located at 728 Norristown Road, Lower Gwynedd. The PennSuburban Chamber of Commerce will present the Penn Suburban/Hatfield Joint Business Card Exchange April 20 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Univest Bank Lansdale Area Financial Service Center, 120 Forty Foot Road, Hatfield. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. Join Univest National Bank and Trust Co. for a spring-inspired Business Card Exchange at its newest office in the Hatfield Pointe Shopping Center. Come out and meet members of Univests executive management team while enjoying fine food and beverages. 13th Annual Community Reading Day Kick-off Breakfast Get Together April 26 from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at the North Wales Area Library, 233 Swartley St., North Wales. The event is free. To make reservations, visit PennSuburban.org/Events. For more information, contact the chamber office at 215-362-9200 or info@pennsuburban.org. Join presenting sponsor Verizon, chamber staff and fellow members for the Community Reading Day volunteer get together. The Community Reading Day program allows volunteers to read a designated book to second-grade students throughout 38 area public and private schools and present the book as a gift to each class. Even if you are not a volunteer, you are cordially invited to stop by to network, enjoy coffee and pastries. Ambler Mennonite Church is hosting a Spring Craft Show and Flea Market May 21 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Rain date will be May 28. The community is invited to shop the great craft booths, find some gifts and deals, as well as enjoy home baked goods and tasty lunch specials. Childrens activities are planned. All vendors are encouraged to contact the church at 215-643-4876 or AmblerMennonite@verizon.net. Advertising, signage, customer parking and a shuttle to auxiliary parking at nearby lots for vendors will be provided. 10 foot by 10 foot spaces can be rented for $5 each and tables for an additional $5 each. All proceeds from space and table rentals go toward school kits for children around the world. The church is located at the corner of East Mt. Pleasant Avenue and North Spring Garden Street, Ambler. The Wissahickon Valley Watershed Association presents The Life & Times of Aquatic Insects in the Wissahickon Creek April 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. Join WVWA for a hands-on program. RSVP required: www.wvwa.org or 215-646-8866. WVWA member fee: $5 per person / $15 per family. Non-WVWA member fee: $10 per person / $20 per family. The photography exhibition Natures Palette by photo-artist Judy Miller will run March 18 to May 19 at the Art in the Storefront gallery, 41 E. Butler Pike, Ambler. JPRN Networking For People in Transition & People Who Can Help Them Unemployment remains high. JPRN, the Jarrettown Professional Relationship Network can help. Are you trying to network your way to a new job? Do you have expertise or contacts that can help people in transition? Is your company or organization looking for people in the area? This is a free outreach program to support those seeking work, involve people with contacts and networking know how, and involve local companies. Meetings held monthly at Jarrettown United Methodist Church, Limekiln Pike. Pennsylvanias Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) grant program is now open for the 2010-11 heating season. Grants are based on income, family size, type of heating fuel and region. Additional information, such as specific income limits, and applications for LIHEAP grants are available online via the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Access to Social Services (COMPASS) website at www.compass.state.pa.us. Applications are available at most public officals district offices, county assistance offices, local utility companies and community service agencies, such as Area Agencies on Aging or community action agencies. Begin your holiday shopping at Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation! Entertainment books for 2011, Philadelphia North, are now on sale at $30 each. Regal/United Artists movie tickets are on sale for just $7.50 each, and tickets to the Adventure Aquarium, Baltimore Aquarium, and the Philadelphia Zoo are also available. Discounted ski vouchers to area mountains will be arriving in December; call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. RSVP of Montgomery County and the Wissahickon Valley Public Library have partnered again to offer the public their popular free mock interview sessions. The mock interviews are conducted by RSVP volunteers who are retired professionals, some of whom were in hiring positions themselves. Packets of information which include a sample employment application and interviewing tips with mock interview questions are available at the library to pick up prior to a scheduled mock interview or will be sent via email once the interview is scheduled. To schedule your interview, please contact Janis Glusman at RSVP 610-834-1040, ext. 16. The library is also offering a free resume review service. Bring in your current resume and the professional reference staff will assist you with hints and tips on capturing your work history accurately. Registration for Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation summer playgrounds, Camp B.I.G. and Small Folks, X-Zone, and sports camps has began. Register online at www.upperdublin.net/store, or at the UDP&R office, 801 Loch Alsh Avenue, Fort Washington. Call 215-643-1600 x3443 for more information. Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation and Danielles Espresso Cafe presents Mornings at Mondaug Bark Park April 16 and May 21 from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Meet fellow dog lovers. These events include complimentary coffee, treats for people and pups and raffles/giveaways. Upper Dublins Annual Spring Flea Market will be held June 4 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Reserve a table, or come and shop. Tables are $15 for UD residents, $20 for non-residents. This successful event occurs rain or shine. Refreshments available. Call 215-643-1600 ext. 3443 to register for a table. Regal movie tickets available for purchase at Upper Dublin Township Parks & Recreation. Reduced rate: $7.50 per ticket. Some restrictions apply. Call 215-643-1600 x3443. Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation movie tickets $7.50 Regal Cinemas, United Artist & Edwards Cinemas on sale throughout the year Monday Friday from 9 a.m. 4 p.m. Whitpain Township Parks & Recreation Camp Sign-ups for Stony Creek Day Camp Stony Creek Tracers and Park n Tots. Register on-line at www.whitpaintownship.org OrCome to Township Building with check or Visa MasterCard Monday Friday from 9 a.m. 4 p.m. For additional information call 610.277-2400 ext. 374 Upper Dublin Parks & Recreation offers exciting new programs for the fall: -Returning favorites include UK Elite Petite Soccer, Tiny Dancers, Kiddie Tennis, Fun-nastics, Messy Playtime, Little Chefs, and more. Babysitters Training will be offered in November and December. Continuing Adult Fitness Classes include Cardio Circuit, Core & More, Yoga, Boxing, and Adult G.Y.M. For more information call 215-643-1600 x3443. Register for programs online at www.upperdublin.net/store. Music and Theater The community is invited to a Cantors Concert April 16 at 8 p.m. Congregation Beth Or, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen. Listen and hum-along to the Yiddish, pop tunes and classical music performed by Congregation Beth Ors own Cantor David Green and his special guest, Cantor Irvin Bell, from Temple Beth Israel in Deerfield Beach, Fla. The cantors will be accompanied by Mark Sobol and his Klezmer musicians. Tickets are $18 in advance and $25 at the door. RSVP with payment to Barb Murtha, 239 Welsh Road, Maple Glen, PA 19002, or call 215-646-5806 ext. 220. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse will host the Jameson Sisters May 14. Doors open at 7:30 pm, performance at 8:00 pm. Gwynedd Friends Coffeehouse is located at the corner of Rte. 202 & Sumneytown Pike, Gwynedd. $5 suggested donation. Light refreshment available at a modest cost. For further information, call 215-393-9576 or visit gwyneddmeeting.org/coffeehouse.html. Celebrate patriotism through song with Gwynedd-Mercy Colleges choir, the Voices of Gwynedd, as it presents Hear America Singing April 15 at 8 p.m. The choir will perform song selections from all over the country, including Georgia on My Mind, New York State of Mind, and a medley including Philadelphia Freedom and Allentown. The performance will end with When the Saints Go Marching In to acknowledge the choirs upcoming tour in New Orleans. Hear America Singing will take place in the Julia Ball Auditorium, located in St. Bernard Hall. Parking is available in lots A, C and D. Admission is free. The Choristers will present Anton Dvoraks Stabat Mater April 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church in Ambler. The choir will be accompanied by a 41-piece orchestra. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for senior citizens, $10 for students and children are free. Tickets will be sold in advance or at the door. For more information, call 215-542-7871 or visit TheChoristers.org Religious News The Staircase Gallery at Or Hadash: A Reconstructionist Congregation in Fort Washington will feature the work of Emily Ennuat-Lustine. The artist will be showing paintings and graphics inspired by her own personal spiritual journey and quest for meaning. Some of the works to be shown have been inspired by Biblical Psalms and writings. Her work has been shown at Abington Art Center, Cheltenham Arts Center and Old City Gallery of Jewish Art among others. The exhibition is open Friday evenings starting Feb. 18 after Shabbat services. Gallery hours are: Mondays through Thursdays 10-4:30, Fridays 10-3 and following Shabbat Services and Sundays 10-1. The synagogue is located at 190 Camp Hill Road in Fort Washington. For additional information contact the synagogue office at 215-283-0276. Reunions St. Matthews High School Conshohocken Class of 1961 is looking for classmates. For details, contact Greg Marincola at 215-646-2239, 215-740-1296 or gregcola@comcast.net. Olney High School Class of 1971 is Lloking for classmates for a 40th reunion Oct. 28. For details, contact Judy at ohsclassof71@yahoo.com or 215-870-7572. Abington High School Class of 1961 is seeking classmates for a 50-year reunion to be held Oct. 14-15, 2011.Visit the website, www.abington61.com, for details or call 215-947-1779. Overbrook High School class of January 1956 is having a 55 year reunion on May 22, 2011 at the Bala Golf Club in Philadelphia. For information please contact overbrookreunion56@comcast.net Germantown High School Class Of January 1961 is looking for classmates for 50th year reunion to take place in May of 2011. Please contact: 215-362-9148, 856-577-0659 or samdelcomo@comcast.net The June 1961 class of Germantown High School is holding their 50th reunion on May 15, which will be a brunch. For further details please contact Linda Dorfman Alten at lindaalten@yahoo.com or call 215-441-8411. Support New Life Presbyterian Church in Dresher, will host GriefShare, a special seminar and support group which will run on Monday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m., from March 7 through June 6. At each meeting there will be a DVD about the grief process, discussion and reference to a grief workbook. Preregistration is required to secure a place in the group and to purchase a GriefShare notebook (for a one-time fee of $15). The notebook goes along with the 13-week schedule covering such topics as: living with grief, the effects of grief, and stuck in grief. For more information or to register, call: Sandy Elder at 215-884-5149. PUPS (People Understanding Parkinsons) A self-help group for those adjusting to a new diagnosis or dealing with the early stages of Parkinsons Disease. Meets fourth Tuesday of the month from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at Abington Health Center, Schilling Campus, Willowood Building, 2510 Maryland Road, Suite 251, Willow Grove. For more information or to RSVP, contact Lorna at 215-542-2931. The North Penn Visiting Nurse Associations Meals on Wheels program is looking for volunteers to pack or deliver meals to the elderly and infirmed. Meals are packed and delivered mornings, Monday through Friday. You can volunteer for as many days per week or month as you would like. Packaging meals requires approximately 2-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves making sandwiches, packaging food into individual serving containers and packing coolers with the meals. Delivering meals requires approximately 1-1/2 hours of your time each day and involves loading coolers into your car and delivering a route of approximately 10 to 15 stops. The Meals on Wheels program is also in need of emergency, winter-weather volunteers to pack and deliver meals in bad weather. North Penn VNA is located at 51 Medical Campus Drive in Lansdale and delivers meals in the Lansdale, North Wales and Blue Bell areas. For more information or to volunteer, please call Bridget, North Penn VNA Meals on Wheels coordinator at 215-855-8296. Elkins Park Area CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) meets the first Tuesday of every month, 7- 8:30 p.m., at Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital in Elkins Park. For information on CHADD or ADHD, please see our website www.chadd.net/249 or call Claire Noyes at: 215-779-6656. Center for Loss and Bereavement, 3847 Skippack Pike, Skippack (610-222-4110) www.bereavementcenter.org Offers professional counseling for individuals, couples, children and families dealing with issues of loss and bereavement. Six-week adult support groups: Newly forming young adult grief support group every other Wednesday, 7 8:15 p.m. (free of charge); Monthly loss of child support second Mondays, 7-8:15 p.m.; Six-week young loss of spouse/partner Thursdays, 10-11:15 a.m.; Other groups scheduled as interest is shown for suicide loss support, adult loss of parent, motherless daughters, adult loss of sibling, coping with chronic illness and disability and mens loss of spouse. Nellos Corner Family Bereavement program offers peer grief support groups for ages 4 through teen and their caregivers Every other Tuesday or Wednesday (free of charge) Local chapter of Parents of Murdered Children also meets at the Center. Registration required. Call for further information. CHADD is a national organization for children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, providing education, advocacy and support for individuals and their families with AD/HD. Einstein at Elkins Park Hospital, 60 Township Line Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027, will host children & adults with Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder on the First Tuesday of each month 7 8:30 p.m. Free, no childcare provided. The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphias Kehillah of Old York Road is sponsoring a free Caregiver Support Group for individuals who care for an elderly person with cognitive and/or physical impairments. The group meets at SarahCare Adult Day Care Center, 101 Washington Lane, Suite G-6, Jenkintown, Pa., on the first Wednesday of each month. Patty Rich, Shares of Boeing declined nearly 2 percent on Wednesday following media reports that the FBI has joined the criminal investigation into the approval of the 737 Max 8 aircraft. According to a report by CNBC News that cited the Seattle Times, the FBI is assisting the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in investigating the procedures of certifying the plane's anti-stall system known as MCAS. Earlier, the US Department of Transportation requested its subsidiary organization check if there were illegal activities in the FAA's certification for the MCAS. Boeing and the FAA approved the certification of the 737 Max 8 in 2017. However, an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed on March 10, the second Boeing 737 Max 8 model to crash in five months. The investigation team has noted clear similarities between Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 and Lion Air Flight 610 in the verification process of the FDR (Flight Data Recorder) data. The Boeing Company is reportedly making efforts to update the control software of the 737 Max 8 MCAS to fix it. Chinas first cloned police dog Kunxun plays with a researcher at a Beijing-based company. (Science and Technology Daily/Hong Xing) Chinas first cloned police dog, a two-month-old Kunming wolfdog nicknamed Kunxun, reported for duty at the Kunming Police Dog Base in southwest Chinas Yunnan province earlier this month, Science and Technology Daily reported Tuesday. Kunxun was cloned from a seven-year-old female Kunming dog nicknamed Huahuangma serving in Yunnans Puer police station, who has assisted the police in multiple cases. It usually takes four to five years and up to 500,000 yuan ($74,480) to train a dog like Huahuangma, so the police came up with the idea of cloning the dog to save time and money. To clone Kunxun, a tiny piece of skin was taken from Huahuangma and sent to a laboratory in Beijing for cell cultivation, and later an embryo was grown and transplanted into a surrogate mother. The surrogate mother was a gentle beagle. To prevent obstructed labor and improve survival rate, we performed a cesarean section, said technician Liu Xiaojuan. A researcher conducts an experiment of nuclear transfer. (Science and Technology Daily/Hong Xing) Kunxun weighed 540 grams and was 23 centimeters in length when she was born. Her DNA is 99.9 percent identical to Huahuangma's, according to a test by Nanchang Police Dog Base. The project was conducted by Yunnan Agricultural University and Sinogene, a Beijing-based company specializing in cloning pets and animals for commercial use. After arriving in Kunming, Kunxun has adjusted well. The dog is friendly, social and alert, said Wan Jiusheng, a researcher at the dog base. The puppy is not scared of dark or unfamiliar places. It can quickly find hidden objects thanks to its strong sense of smell, and is also an excellent hunter, Wan added. Police dog cloning is still at an experimental stage. We hope in the next 10 years, when the technology is ready, we will be able to produce more exceptional police dogs, Wan said. Vendor Management, Appraisal, and Compliance Products; FHA Changes Turning Heads Want a growth industry? How about aging? PulteGroup's Del Webb 55+ brand will build 10 new Del Webb communities, planned to open over the next 18 months. Boomers welcome! Another growth industry isWite-Out?! Often used as the butt of jokes about using it to fix mortgage applications, correction fluid sales are doing fine (+1%) as Wite-Out sales rose 10 percent in 2017 versus the flat U.S. stationary and office supply market. So someone out there is using it. Lender Services and Products Maxwells industry-leading digital mortgage point-of-sale continues to get even better. Maxwell just announced their integration partnership with pricing leader Optimal Blue, enabling loan officers to run and save scenarios from within a borrower file. Maxwells elegant integration with Optimal Blue streamlines the process of evaluating, saving, and curating the best products for your borrowers, all in one intuitive interface. Maxwells world-class product design and engineering teams create thoughtful integrations with the technology critical to the mortgage process. From leading LOS providers and Day 1 Certainty verification services to credit providers and disclosure platforms, Maxwells integrations enable your team to spend time with people, not paper. Interested in learning more about Maxwell and their new pricing integration with Optimal Blue? Request a personal demo by visiting www.himaxwell.com or simply book your time here. Looking for ways to grow your business? Freddie Mac is collaborating with clients to deliver automation and insights that provide a competitive edge. Cut back on documentation and reduce time to close with Loan Product Advisor automated income and asset assessment capabilities. Save borrowers time and money with ACE appraisal waivers, now available for certain condo unit loans. Grow your condo business with Freddie Macs unit-level condo exception tool, Condo Project AdvisorSM. Get greater efficiency with simpler collateral QC and underwriting in Loan Collateral Advisor Get The Freddie EdgeSM. For a limited time only, NewRez Wholesale is offering free appraisal offers through the end of March! Choose one of NewRezs Smart products or a NewRez FHA loan and well reimburse your borrowers appraisal fee. Contact your AE today to learn more about how you can get an appraisal fee credit for your borrowers loan closing. Dont forget to ask your AE about our improved MI pricing for all new loans that hit UW after March 18th. Exclusions and restrictions apply. Max appraisal value reimbursement for Smart Series is up to $650 and FHA up to $550. This offer is available for all new locks through March 31st. The Compliance NewsHub is your free mortgage credit and compliance resource library. Join the thousands of industry professionals whove subscribed to ARMCOs Compliance NewsHub, the mortgage industrys first free comprehensive searchable online resource for regulation-related news and information. The Compliance NewsHub provides mortgage lenders with fast and easy access to the most comprehensive source of current information on a full range of regulation-related topicsfrom investor guidelines to state law and CFPB mandates. ARMCOs Compliance NewsHub provides the latest compliance news and announcements by category: federal legislation, legal, industry, agency/GSE, disaster and state. The Compliance NewsHub Calendar offers a searchable library of past and future regulation announcements that users may search according to date, industry and regulating body. SUBSCRIBE to the ARMCO Compliance NewsHub Bulletin and get a free checklist on How to Survive an Onsite Audit. Congrats to Kevin Pettaway whom Triserv Appraisal Management Solutions has announced is its new Director of National Sales. Kevin is very well known in the industry as a longtime mortgage industry veteran with extensive experience and knowledge of mortgage lending as well as the appraisal management process. As a valuable asset to Triserv, Kevin will help Triserv continue to grow as one of the premier appraisal management companies and will cover clients on a national level. Please contact Kevin (303-870-2538) to help with your appraisal needs. Caliber Home Loans, Inc. is set to launch the latest addition to its Portfolio Suite. Professional Elite is a new loan program specifically tailored to self-employed borrowers. Self-employed borrowers are typically left without many options when it comes to home financing due to their unique financial profiles. Professional Elite allows Caliber to verify income using personal and business earnings statements rather than relying on W-2s. Caliber has long been regarded as the pioneer in post-crises, non-Agency lending and was the first lender to reintroduce non-Agency products back into the mortgage space. Email CPLTeam@CaliberHomeLoans.com for more information. Mortgage vendors routinely deal with consumers sensitive personal and financial data, and if that information is mishandled or compromised, its the lenders, not the vendors, that are on the hook. Thus, vendor contracts are critically important to mitigating any risk lenders might face from these relationships. Dont gamble with your vendor contract reviews! Learn which contract provisions are most critical to addressing vendor risk in, Rolling Sevens: The Top 14 Provisions Every Lender Should Examine When Reviewing Vendor Contracts, a free white paper from HQVM, MQMRs vendor management division. HQVM has helped lenders of all sizes establish a right-sized vendor management program that meets regulatory requirements and effectively reduces risk. Contact sales@mqmresearch.com to learn more or to set up a meeting at the MBA Tech Conference in Dallas. While youre there, dont miss The Art and Science of Vendor Management session by HQVMs Erin Harris on Monday, March 25 from 2:00 - 3:00 pm. Servicing News The question of whether to retain more, or less, servicing in the current mortgage environment really depends on capital/cash, accounting, risks and mortgage policy for both banks and independent mortgage banks. Its not an easy road to navigate, and it requires having data driven solutions to understand the current and potential impacts on your originations and servicing lines of business. For example, a lender that can originate at $6,000 per loan, retail (and one of six lenders do, according to data from the PGR: MBA and STRATMOR Roundtables Program) can retain much more servicing without incurring cash flow problems than a lender that has retail costs of $8,000 or more. In his article in the March issue of STRATMORs Insights Report, Finding Balance: Servicing in the Mortgage Lenders Strategy, STRATMOR Principal Seth Sprague, CMB provides insight into the top-of-mind concerns for Banks and Independents in todays evolving servicing environment. Its all about servicing in STRATMORs March Insights Report. Fun With FHA The industry took note of the tighter scoring model, and its impact on certain borrower groups, that goes into effect for mortgages with case numbers assigned on or after March 18, 2019. (FHA INFO # 19-07). Amy Glatte at Bell Bank Mortgage writes, HUDs new scoring model not being applied until the FHA Case # is pulled is way too late in the lending process because most Realtors will not even start showing Borrowers homes until they have been pre-approved for a mortgage. If HUD does not reprogram FHA TOTAL Scorecard to move up when they apply their new tighter scoring model, it will mean all of our FHA pre-approvals of Borrowers will be in jeopardy of losing their automated approval after the loan is retransmitted with a FHA Case # after they have purchased a home! Maybe other Lenders will take the time to contact HUD (202-708-1112) to bring this to HUDs attention! Thank you, Amy! Yes, the FHA is taking initial steps to better mitigate the increasing risks in recent Single-Family fiscal year (FY) endorsements. Effective for mortgages with case numbers assigned on or after March 18, 2019, FHA will update its Technology Open to Approved Lenders (TOTAL) Mortgage Scorecard to specifically manage the decrease in average borrower credit scores and the excessive risk layering that results when multiple risk factors are present. Federal Housing Commissioner Montgomery has publicly stated numerous times in recent months that FHA must seek the right balance between mission of supporting sustainable homeownership. To be successful long term, FHA must maintain the integrity of its insurance endorsements. This includes assessing the causes of the increase in higher-risk credit characteristics in the portfolio and making prudent and necessary changes to recalibrate and adjust its policies as warranted to manage credit risk. FHA recently published Mortgagee Letter (ML) 2019-05, Removal of the Ten-Year Protection Plan Requirements, which streamlines home warranty requirements for FHA single family mortgage insurance by removing the requirement that borrowers purchase ten-year protection plans in order to qualify for certain mortgages on newly constructed single family homes. This guidance saves the homeowner the cost of the protection plan and follows the December 14, 2018, publication of the final rule of the same name, which streamlined these home warranty requirements, effective March 14, 2019. The homebuyer and builder will continue to execute a one-year Warranty of Completion of Construction, which provides FHA with assurances that the home was built according to plan and protects the buyer against defects in equipment, material, or workmanship supplied or performed by the builder, subcontractor, or supplier. The warranty further states that the warrantor agrees to fix and pay for any defects and restore any component of the home damaged in fulfilling the terms and conditions of the warranty. The one-year warranty begins on the date that title is conveyed to the buyer, the date that construction is complete, or upon occupancy, whichever date occurs first. The news about Mortgage Scorecard system (that reinstates manual underwriting requirements for certain mortgages with credit scores below 620 and DTIs above 43%) has caught a fair amount of attention. Large banks have been steering clear of the program, with its low FICOs and high DTIs, for several years now despite the profit found in the loans. With a reported average FICO of 670 some call the FHA program the new subprime and supporters view this as a step in the right direction to protect a program against adverse selection. More than 28% of the traditional single-family loans the FHA endorsed during the first quarter of the current fiscal year have credit scores below 640, and more than 13% of all traditional single-family mortgages the FHA endorsed during the same time period had credit scores below 620. Additionally, there is an increasing concentration of loans that have both credit scores below 640 and DTIs above 50%, according to the FHA. Correspondent Group posted a FHA third party verification and reminder regarding tax transcripts. MWF posted Wholesale Bulletin 19W-020 regarding FHAs update to its TOTAL Scorecard. US Bank Correspondent posted Seller Guide SEL 2019-012 updating changes to the Lender Scorecard on VA cash-out refinances. PennyMac posted upcoming update requirements for the Purchase Special on the Conventional and Government LLPA tabs of the Best Efforts and AOT/DT rate sheets. Capital Markets How bout dem rates!? But do we want a slow economy? Signaling no more rate hikes in 2019, yesterdays dovish Fed events saw U.S. Treasuries rally to their lowest yields of the year, including the 10-year dropping -8 bps to 2.54%. Hopefully your lock desks were busy! The March FOMC Statement confirmed the Fed's patient-minded stance as expected, but the central bank's dot plot showed that policymakers no longer expect to hike rates in 2019. Additionally, the FOMC lowered its 2019 GDP growth forecast for the U.S. to between 1.9% and 2.2% from 2.3%-2.5% forecast in December. The final dovish action was the FOMC signaling that the balance sheet runoff will slow in May and end in September. Despite the above, Fed Chairman Jay Powell said during his press conference that economic fundamentals remain strong and the FOMC's outlook is positive, for what that is worth. Overseas market movement on Tuesday centered around China potentially not complying with the terms of the trade deal, President Trump stating that the U.S. is likely to keep tariffs on imports from China until China complies with the terms agreed upon, and news that the People's Bank of China may lower the reserve requirement ratio during the second quarter. British Prime Minister Theresa May officially requested to push the Brexit date back to June 30, though European Council President Donald Tusk said in response that a short extension would be conditional on the UK House of Commons voting in favor of a deal. The US calendar just began with weekly jobless claims and the Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index (-9k to 221k, and strong at 13.7 respectively). Coming up is February leading indicators at 10AM ET. Economic news is overshadowed by yesterdays Fed statement. We begin today with agency MBS better by .125 versus Wednesdays close and the 10-year yielding 2.50%. Jobs Perch, a real estate technology company, is looking for an experienced mortgage professional who is passionate about building a modern mortgage brokerage from the ground up. Perch has offices in New York, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio, and raised over $50 million in financing from top tier investors. We are looking for a Head of Mortgage Operations to lead the design and implementation of Perch Mortgage. This is an exciting opportunity to join an early stage venture-backed company in an instrumental role. The ideal candidate possesses deep knowledge and experience in residential mortgage lending, including a valid Texas Residential Mortgage Loan Originator license. For more information on the role and company, please see our full posting here and reach out to Sarah Decker. Ready to make your move from retail LO to independent mortgage broker? The time has never been better. At BeAMortgageBroker.com, we can match you with a mortgage broker in your area or help you take the next steps toward opening your own shop. We are your single, no-cost source for the information and tools you need to become an independent mortgage broker. Call us for a free, confidential consultation and continued support throughout the process at 800.229.6342 or learn more at BeAMortgageBroker.com. Attending the Atlanta Mortgage Expo? Come visit Symmetry Lending at booth 512! Meet with our Area Managers, Caleb Riso and Jeff Thomas, to learn more about Symmetrys commitment to Service, Speed, and Simplicity. As your reliable HELOC specialists, Symmetry follows agency guidelines with very few overlays. Not attending the Atlanta Mortgage Expo? Visit symmetrylending.com/areamanager to Find Your Area Manager today. Symmetry is growing! Learn more about positions for new Area Managers and other roles at indeed.com/cmp/symmetry-lending. (Photo/21jingji.com) Sleep disorders are becoming increasingly common in China, severely endangering both the physical and mental health of Chinese citizens, 21st Century Business Herald reported Wednesday. Over 80 percent of those interviewed said that they are losing sleep, revealed a social report released earlier this year. Back in 2016, 38 percent of adults in China were troubled by insomnia, and more than 300 million Chinese people suffered from a sleep disorder. Whats worse, that number is rising every year, according to a report recently released by China Sleep Research Society. Sleep disorders can occur at any age, but in general, it seems that young people are more prone to them than seniors. 84 percent of the surveyed post-90s generation said they had trouble sleeping, according to the social report. Three-quarters of those interviewed got to sleep after 11:00 p.m., while one third said they only managed to drift off after 1:00 a.m on an average night. Aside from work pressure, it's thought that the cause could be the amount of time young people spend on digital devices in bed. We have seen growing morbidity rates linked to mental illness in recent years, and lack of sleep is one of the causes, said Yu Xiaonian, chief of psychosomatic medicine at the China Medicine University. Though sleep disorders are a common problem across the country, its still not easy to find correct treatment. Currently, treatment for a patient with a sleeping disorder and other mental illness is relatively simple. We basically just give them medical attention, said Li Yan, a sleep psychologist from Guangdong. Professional medical institutions should urgently improve their mental health services to better meet patients diversified demands, Li added. On Feb. 26, over 100 parents and students joined the Israel Putnam staff for Parent Pizza Night focusing on attendance. While the students were eating pizza and having fun in the gym and computer lab, the parents were in the cafeteria learning about Putnams attendance data. Parents also took part in a break out session with an Israel Putnam staff member to discuss any questions, concerns or comments pertaining to the school and their childs education. This event was a success and a great way for administration, teachers and parents to collaborate together on ways to ensure the best education for our students. The Franciscan Life Center, a counseling and education center in Meriden, Connecticut, has a NEW web site thanks to a grant from The Maximilian E. and Marion O. Hoffman Foundation, Inc. Please take a moment and visit us at www.flcenter.org to learn more about programs and services. Synergic Systems, a Franciscan consulting service, created the design of the web site. MERIDEN City officials issued a statement this week addressing questions theyve received about a reported spike in absenteeism at Washington Middle School due to flu and other illnesses. School Superintendent Mark Benigni said the district regularly tracks attendance and we are up a few percentage points (Tuesday). We work closely with the Health Department, which employs our school nurses, and they recommended that we disinfect all touch points this evening, Benigni said. Our custodial staff will be staying tonight to ensure that the recommended cleaning occurs. Associate Health Director Stephanie Denya said its not uncommon to see a small spike in school absences, during cold and flu season, which lasts well into late March. We encourage children to stay home when they are sick, use proper hygiene, and to get the flu shot, if they have not received one yet, Denya said in a statement. The attendance rate at Washington Middle School this week fell about five to seven percentage points below the average, according to Miguel Cardona, assistant superintendent for teaching and learning. The school has an average attendance rate of about 92 to 93 percent, Cardona said, and the rate fell to 88 percent, 87 percent, and 85 percent on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday respectively, he said. Washington Middle School is a grade 6-8 school with an enrollment of about 800. An absenteeism increase of five percent would represent about 40 more students absent than the average. mzabierek@record-journal.com 203-317-2279 Twitter: @MatthewZabierek MERIDEN A Middletown mosque is considering an appeal after the Planning Commission denied the groups bid to open a place of worship on Research Parkway. We havent yet received a written decision for the basis of why they denied our request, said attorney Refai Erfin, who represents the Omar Islamic Center. Were reserving all rights, including the right to appeal. The citys Planning Commission voted unanimously last week to reject the Omar Islamic Centers special permit application to allow a place of worship in an M-4 zone at 999 Research Parkway. In voting against the plan, commission members said the primary purpose of M-4 zoned lots is industrial, office and commercial uses and the "proposed use does not meet the special exception criteria because it is not congruent with the surrounding land uses and it does not augment the primary use of land." Commission Chairman Enrico Buccilli said the panel also determined the application wasn't in line with the city Plan of Conservation and Development's call for the promotion of commercial and industrial development. "We didn't think it was appropriate for that particular area, and it also goes contrary to the POCD, which calls for an increase in commercial and industrial development," Buccilli said. Mosque President Ahmed Badir called the decision disappointing. The Omar Islamic Center, which currently meets in Middletown, has outgrown its current space. The Research Parkway property, meanwhile, has been vacant for 17 years and is currently a target for vandalism and trash dumping, he said. The owner is donating the building to the mosque rather than see it deteriorate. Badir helped found the Sunni mosque currently on East Main Street, restoring a vacant, run-down building into a neighborhood improvement. He intends to do the same thing with the Research Parkway property, he said. While the mosque would qualify for a property tax exemption, the Omar Islamic Center intends to rent offices to professional members of the group and, as a result, put some of the space back on the tax rolls. Commission members asked Badir if he considered other properties that could be used for the mosque. The group cannot afford to purchase a building now, he said. Badir and Erfin were prepared to go before the City Council and present a letter from the property owner, but were never given the opportunity, Badir said. M. Farooque Mesiya, the buildings current owner, documented in a Feb. 19 letter to the City Council and Planning Commission his struggle trying to find a tenant for the site despite help from city staff and commercial real estate agents. Mesiya founded American Lightwave Systems Inc. in 1986 and later moved the company to 999 Research Parkway. Several attempts to sell the building to non-profit organizations were blocked by the city administration, Mesiya wrote. The last attempt was to lease the building to a school in Wallingford which was also denied, although the clients came through the Meriden Economic Development organization. Mesiya disputes the commissions argument that Research Parkway should be reserved only for industrial and commercial enterprises, saying the business model for buildings like his has been obsolete for over a decade and that businesses havent been showing interest in Connecticut. Let us use the building for a good civic and useful purpose rather than be ravaged by remaining unoccupied for decades to come, he wrote in the letter. He estimated he has spent $1.5 million combined on local taxes, maintenance, and repairs for destruction and theft on the property The Planning Commission was also asked to consider the "equal terms" provision of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law that protects religious institutions from unduly burdensome or discriminatory land use regulations. City Director of Planning Renata Bertotti didnt make a recommendation but did instruct commission members on applicable laws. "The staff believes that since there are secular uses allowed ... in this zoning district, approving this application would be consistent with the equal terms provision of RLUIPA, Bertotti told the commission in February. Buccilli, along with regular members Laura Uhrig, Leonard Rich, and alternates Kevin Curry and David Cooley, voted against the application. Curry and Cooley were seated for the vote because they had attended Februarys public hearing. New alternates Steven Iovanna and Donald Cariati Jr., who were appointed in January, were ineligible to vote because they werent sworn in before the hearing. Regular member Ross Gulino was not present for the vote, meaning Rich, who did not attend the public hearing, voted instead. Buccilli said he asked Rich to familiarize himself with the minutes of the public hearing prior to voting. mgodin@record-journal.com 203-317-2255 Twitter: @Cconnbiz SOUTHINGTON Fire commission members praised the response time of fire crews to a car blaze Monday that damaged a Dunkin Donuts on Meriden-Waterbury Turnpike near the Meriden line. Deputy Fire Chief Scott DiBattista said the scene was a long drive from headquarters on North Main Street, one of two locations in town with on-duty firefighters around the clock. The cause of the fire hasnt been determined, but it started in the engine compartment of a vehicle in the Dunkin drive-through. A video on social media shows the car engulfed in flames. Heat from the fire damaged the restaurant but no one was injured. Fire commission member Chris Robertson said the damage could have been much worse. Career and volunteer firefighters responded to the incident. I think the response time was incredible, he said. They did a hell of a job. The alarm came in at 12:17 p.m. according to DiBattista, who was first on the scene in a command truck at 12:28 p.m. Department leaders are usually the first to arrive and theyre responsible for getting people away from the fire and planning the response when engines arrive. DiBattista said there was nothing he could have done to extinguish the fire himself. I could have had 100 fire extinguishers and I couldnt have put it out, he said. Fires in that section of town can be a challenge to reach quickly. From headquarters, its a long response, DiBattista said. Its almost on the Meriden line. Even when using lights and sirens, Fire Department vehicles have to move cautiously through intersections and are sometimes required to navigate traffic on major roads. The first engine from headquarters arrived a minute after DiBattista. A volunteer engine arrived shortly thereafter. When responding to a fire, volunteers must first respond to their station and suit up before heading to the scene. Staffing changes have added career firefighters at Station 5 in the north end of town around the clock to improve response times. Robertson said the plan implemented by Chief Richard Butler has resulted in good coverage throughout town and improved times by volunteers. The volunteers have stepped up. Theyre getting out the door, Robertson said. In the future, there may be a need for a station staffed around the clock with career firefighters in the south end of town, but Robertson said he is pleased with the current plan. In my opinion the town is now totally covered, he said. jbuchanan@record-journal.com 203-317-2230 Twitter: @JBuchananRJ Connecticut lost 400 jobs last month and its unemployment rate remains at 3.8 percent, essentially leaving Connecticuts labor market unchanged from January, a Department of Labor official said in a report Thursday. The report also revised job numbers for January to reflect a loss of 2,500 jobs in that month, 1,000 more than initially indicated. Januarys final revision was sharply down from our preliminary release, partly due to the normal revision process as more data became available for the sample, and partly due to a correction to estimates on our construction supersector, DOL Director of Research Andy Condon said i a press release. With the revisions, Connecticuts employment has grown by 4,600 jobs over the last 12 months. . The number of the states unemployed residents was estimated at a seasonally adjusted 73,900 in February, unchanged from January. As a result, the states February unemployment rate is 3.8. Professional and business services had the strongest gains with an increase of 800 jobs. The manufacturing supersector followed, adding 600 jobs. Information grew by 200 and government and other services added 100 positions. Trade, transportation and utilities shed 1,000 jobs, followed by education and health services with a decline of 600 jobs. The leisure and hospitality supersector shed 400 positions, while construction and mining fell by 200. The state has now recovered 80.7 percent, or 97,100 jobs, of the 120,300 jobs lost in the recession from March 2008 through January 2010. Some economists said the drops in the past two months and downward revisions of 2018 prove the state is not keeping up with the national recovery. "Weve had some very troubling job numbers over the last two months," Joe Brennan, president of the Connecticut Business and Industry Association, said in a press release. Connecticuts recently released final 2018 employment numbers also made dramatic revisions, with the initial 19,000 job gain revised down nearly 50 percent to 10,000. The initial private sector gain of 23,100 jobs was revised down to 9,700, Brennan said. "These numbers confirm that Connecticut is still mired in low economic growth and job creation, well below the national average and much of the New England region," Brennan said. Brennan called on lawmakers to reject higher costs, mandates and regulations that stymie economic growth. "Lawmakers should be alarmed by the fact that the national economy is growing and Connecticut has only gained back 80 percent of the jobs lost in the last recession, and they need to act accordingly, Brennan said. mgodin@record-journal.com 203-317-2255 Twitter: @Cconnbiz State NPCC vows to fight for Naga political issue, against CAB (L) KL Chishi receiving the Congress Lok Sabha ticket from K. Therie and (R) Congress candidate for by-election, Alemjongshi. (NP) Correspondent KOHIMA, MAR 21 (NPN) | Publish Date: 3/21/2019 11:59:18 AM IST Nagaland Pradesh Congress Committee (NPCC) has vowed to fight for resolution of the Naga political issue, besides opposing the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB). Speaking at a ticket distribution ceremony for the ensuing Lok Sabha election and 26 Aonglenden by-poll at Congress Bhavan here on Thursday, NPCC president K Therie said, given an opportunity, his party would bring a solution to the protracted Naga political issue and urged the Nagas to throw out the party, if it failed. While KL Chishi was formally handed over party ticket to contest from the States lone Lok Sabha seat, Alem Jongshi was given the ticket to contest from the 26 Aonglenden Assembly constituency. Admitting that Congress had taken a backseat at one time, Therie warned that RSS and BJP would not provide any solution as their ideology was to bring uniform civil code one nation, one law. He alleged that BJP did not want any special identity or provision for the Nagas and even wanted to remove Article 371 (A), He added that this was understood only by Congress as its policy was unity in diversity. Therie asserted that Congress Prime Ministerial candidate Rahul Gandhi was prepared to give solution by acknowledging the decision of NPCC political affairs committee that emphasised solution through peaceful and constitutional means. He remarked that 21 years of negotiation without solution was not reasonable, and termed this as deliberate. He alleged that BJP took advantage of various issues in the Northeast and wanted to bring more than two crore immigrants by granting them citizenship to finish the tribal people. Referring to the stand of BJP president Amit Shah to pass CAB in Rajya Sabha, if voted to power, the NPCC president said such statement was an insult to the people of Northeast and regretted that regional parties did not understand the issue. He accused NDPP of selling out Nagas. To fight the issues, he said Congress had sought support from likeminded parties, adding that he had appealed to NPF and NCP to support its candidate as the two parties stand was same over Naga political issue and CAB. He exuded confidence that the two parties would consider his partys appeal. Thanking party workers for overcoming various obstacles in the past many years, Therie said the ensuing Lok Sabha poll battle would be between Congress and BJP. He asserted that there was no other party with ideology and affirmed to protect secularism. Taking a dig at the PDA candidate, he said an MP from regional party hardly gets time to speak in Parliament, adding that even if he sheds tears no one bothers. However, a national partys MP, whether from opposition or ruling, gets time to speak, he claimed. Terming Congress candidate Chishi seasoned, matured and tested, he appealed to the electorate to give him a chance to represent the Nagas in the parliament. He claimed that his party was leading in Dimapur, Peren and other districts and expressed joy at receiving new members in the party fold. Referring to the issue of unemployment in Nagaland, Therie remarked that it was mounting and that educated youth saw no hope as government appointments were not based on merit but on corruption and nepotism. He alleged that the State government did not even bother to bail out the 126 Naga youth locked up in Delhi prison (call centre issue) and acknowledged Nagaland Youth Congress for taking up the matter. He appealed to the gathering not to think of the past, but to look at the bright future and march ahead together, even as he assured all possible help. Speaking for more than one hour, Chishi thanked Congress leaders for welcoming him back to the party though he admitted that he never intended to contest the Lok Sabha polls. He said he felt suffocated while remaining with BJP for one year. He claimed that though he was physically with BJP, his spirit remained with Congress, saying today Im honoured to be the partys candidate. Asserting that many former MPs could not deliver on the aspirations of the Nagas, he said the ensuing election would be different as the issue now would be to let the Centre know that Nagas were neglected. He said current chief minister Neiphiu Rio, who was also an MP, was fed up of sitting in Parliament because he hardly got three minutes to speak and, by the time he finished addressing the dignitaries, he was barely left with a minute and thus could hardly speak. Chishi said even the current MP, who tried to speak on Naga political issue, was not given time as he belonged to regional party. He said, if elected, he would take up the Naga political issue and CAB as a top agenda, adding that NDPP succumbed to the pressure of the Centre as defying the Bill would have brought danger to the PDA government. Mentioning that the absence of the States lone member in Parliament on the day of voting over CAB was questionable, Chishi pointed out that even though the MP was absent, he had subscribed his signature. Besides CAB and Nag political issue, he promised to give priority to unemployment and infrastructure development. While appealing to the party workers to work for him, the Congress candidate said he accepted the challenge of contesting to fight communalism. In his brief address, Congress candidate for Aonglenden by-election Alem Jongshi said his priority, if given an opportunity, would include healthcare, education, infrastructure and economic development and social harmony. Acknowledging NPCC for allotting him the ticket, Jongshi said Congress in Mokokchung stood tall and exuded confidence to gain more support based on the partys ideology and principles. Earlier, the NPCC president formally handed over the party ticket to the two candidates, even as SBC Kohima associate pastor Khekavi Yeptho offered dedicatory prayer to the candidates. The programme was chaired by NPCC working president Khriedi Theunuo, while captain GK Zhimoni gave the welcome address. Meanwhile, Chishi announced that he would file his nomination papers on Friday. Chinese officials have revealed a number of highlights from President Xi Jinpings ongoing state visit to Italy, Monaco and France, which began on March 21. Xis six-day visit to Europe marks the first overseas trip in 2019 by the Chinese head of state, bearing historical significance for the development of relations between China and the three countries, Vice Foreign Minister Wang Chao said during a press briefing on Wednesday. China-Italy pragmatic cooperation in jointly building the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Wang said that this year marks the 15th anniversary of the establishment of a comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Italy, and next year will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has reacted positively towards closer cooperation with China within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative and has planned to sign an MoU with China. At this point, Italy is anticipated to be the first G7 country to join the BRI. Xis visit will enhance bilateral political trust and elevate the cooperative relationship to a higher level, said Dong Jinyi, former Chinese Ambassador to Italy, noting that Italy is an important member country of the G20 and the EU. The BRI provides a platform for win-win cooperation, and joining the initiative will bring tangible benefits to both countries, Dong added. China-Monaco relations in a new era Monaco, the worlds second smallest country and one of the most densely populated countries in the world, will be the second stop on Xis itinerary. Located in the Mediterranean Sea, the European country is known for environmental protection, culture, tourism and sports. Xis visit to Monaco will mark the first state visit by a Chinese head of state, at which time Xi is scheduled to meet with Head of State of the Principality of Monaco, Albert II, who has visited China 10 times and seeks in-depth cooperation in politics, economy, people-to-people exchanges and environment protection. Ruan Zongze, executive vice president of the China Institute of International Studies, said that Xis visit to Monaco reflects Chinas diplomatic thought of treating all countries equally regardless of their size. Furthermore, it will write a new chapter for bilateral ties as well as the relations between China and small countries. China, France to expand cooperation and continue protecting multilateralism France was the first major country in the West to establish diplomatic relations with China. Xi's visit this time coincides with the 55th anniversary of China-France diplomatic ties. The former Chinese ambassador to France, Zhao Jinjun, noted that both countries would take the opportunity to exchange opinions on major international issues, and further promote bilateral relations. China and France already have good cooperation in aircraft, high-speed rail and nuclear power, said Zhao, adding that in the future, there will be broad space for cooperation in the fields of finance, people's livelihood and consumption. China and Europe are firm advocates of multilateralism, sharing common interests in safeguarding multilateralism and global governance, said Ruan. Xis visit indicates Chinas great attention to China-EU relations, while strengthened cooperation will inject certainty into the international situation. Zhao explained that Xis visit would expand cooperation of the BRI between China and Europe, as well as help clear any current doubts from European countries. By Lisa Soronen In Apodaca v. Oregon (1972) and Johnson v. Louisiana (1972), five justices agreed that the Sixth Amendment requires unanimous jury verdicts in federal criminal cases. Five Justices also agreed that jury verdicts in state criminal cases dont have to be unanimous. In Ramos v. Louisiana, accepted for consideration this week, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Sixth Amendment requiring a unanimous verdict in criminal jury trials applies to the states. Only Oregon and Louisiana allow non-unanimous jury verdicts in criminal cases. Evangelisto Ramos was convicted by a 10-2 jury vote of second-degree murder based solely on circumstantial evidence. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Ramos argues that the 14th Amendment fully incorporates the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a unanimous verdict when it comes to the states. When the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 it applied only to the federal government. Following the adoption of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court has held that its Due Process Clause incorporates most, but not all, of the Bill of Rights, making them applicable to the states and local governments. In Apodaca four justices, in an opinion written by Justice White, looked at the function served by the jury in a contemporary society and rejected incorporation. Justice Powell, writing alone, adopted what Ramos describes as a never-used-before-never-used-since theory of partial incorporation of the Sixth Amendment. Justice Powell believed that the Sixth Amendment required unanimity at the Founding, and in federal cases, but opined that the protections guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment were less than those offered by the Sixth Amendment. Ramos argues that there has been a sea change in constitutional exegesis with regard to the application of the Bill of Rights to the states. According to Ramos, since Apodaca the court has focused on a constitutional rights historic origins rather than its functional purpose. The historical record is clear that unanimity was an essential component of what was conceived of when the Constitution referred to juries. Ramos also argues that since Apodaca the Supreme Court has rejected the notion of partial incorporation or watered down versions of the Bill of Rights. In its brief opposing certiorari, Louisiana argues that Ramos has failed to show any new or compelling justification for overruling Apodaca. No recent developments in this Courts Sixth Amendment jurisprudence justify upsetting longstanding precedent in the manner Ramos proposes. To the contrary, this Court has not questioned Apodaca and has cited it positively a number of times. Incorporation is on the Justices minds. In February, in a unanimous decision in Timbs v. Indiana the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendments Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated or applicable to the states and local governments. Lisa Soronen is executive director of the State and Local Legal Center and a frequent contributor to the NCSL Blog on judicial issues. By PTI MUMBAI: The pilots' grouping of Jet Airways has said that the airline is on the "verge of collapse" and that they are facing lot of financial hardships without any relief in sight. Flagging concerns about non-payment of salaries, the National Aviators Guild (NAG) has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "We fear that the airline is on verge of collapse and this will leave thousands of people unemployed and change the dynamics of aviation as fares will increase due to reduction in capacity and travelling public will face major inconvenience," the letter said. ALSO READ | Government looks at providing Jet Airways' unused airport slots to other domestic airlines On Tuesday, the pilots' body warned that they would stop flying from April 1 unless there is clarity on the resolution process and salary dues by end of this month. In the letter sent to the Prime Minister on Wednesday, the guild said that since last seven months, the salary payouts for pilots have been sporadic. "The pilots and engineers are now almost three months behind salaries and facing a lot of financial hardships with no relief in sight," it said. The guild said that uncertainty and financial difficulties are causing extreme stress to pilots and engineers. "Stress in this section of employees can easily compromise safety and is not at all desirable in a profession that demands the highest levels of alertness and safety," it added. The guild represents around 1,000 domestic pilots. On Wednesday, NAG members held a meeting in the national capital wherein they endorsed Tuesday's decision to stop flying from April 1. The meeting was attended by around 100 pilots, according to a pilot. By Express News Service BSNL is set to approach the National Company Law Tribunal soon in order to recover around Rs 700 crore in dues from bankrupt Reliance Communications (RCom), according to reports. BSNL has already invoked a bank guarantee of around Rs 100 crore submitted by RCom for default on payments. Decision was taken on January 4 by BSNL Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Shrivastava to start legal proceedings against RCom for recovery of dues of around Rs 700 crore, news agency PTI reported sources as saying. RCom had earlier this year approached the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) stating that it wants to voluntarily take up the insolvency process, since it would help monetise its assets. It had also sought a direction from the top tribunal to 37 lenders led by SBI to release Rs 260 crore directly to Ericsson. However, the courts ruled in favour of the lenders and RCom chairman Anil Ambani had to cough up the money to prevent ending up in jail. By Bloomberg The Union government is mulling options to save jobs at Jet Airways including asking low-cost carrier SpiceJet to consider taking over some of the debt-laden companys aircraft, people with knowledge of the matter said. The proposal involves SpiceJet, led by Chairman Ajay Singh, acquiring as many as 40 of Jet Airways grounded planes that are owned by lessors, one of the people said, asking not to be identified as discussions are preliminary. The government has also reached out to other carriers, the person said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to avoid the collapse of an airline that employs about 23,000 people, weeks before elections. The need to save jobs at the beleaguered carrier became urgent this week after lenders led by State Bank of India failed to convince Etihad Airways PJSC, which owns 24 per cent of Jet Airways, to infuse funds into the Indian carrier. Jet Airways has amassed about $1.1 billion of debt and has fallen behind on paying loans and salaries. Once Indias second-biggest airline it has been forced to ground almost two-thirds of its fleet because of its inability to pay lessors. Earlier today an Indian government official said they were trying to revive Jet Airways by changing its management but any decision on the carriers future will be a commercial decision by the lenders. ALSO READ | Pilots look to board SpiceJet as IndiGo captains seek to abort their entry Both SpiceJet and Jet Airways operate Boeing Co.s 737 planes making it feasible for the budget carrier to fly the aircraft. SpiceJet, which had cash of about $15 million as of Sept. 30, will initially operate a two-class configuration of business and economy under the SpiceJet brand, one of the people said. Lessors have been in discussion with SpiceJet to take over the planes, the person said. Operating 40 aircraft will help employ as many as 250 pilots as well as cabin crew, maintenance workers and engineers, the person said. A representative for SpiceJet didnt respond to an email, while a spokesman at Modis office declined to comment. While such an arrangement could help ease the immediate pressure on Jet Airways, it wouldnt solve its underlying problems, said Jitender Bhargava, an aviation expert and a former director at Air India. This is only a temporary solution to mitigate the current issues -- the problems will not be at bay. How do you run the show? And who pays for it? Bhargava said. SpiceJet could bail out a part of Jets operations as they fly the same Boeing planes, but its only temporary. ALSO READ | SpiceJet becomes first Indian low-cost airline to join IATA Singh, who is credited with turning around SpiceJet from the verge of closure in 2015, and rivals including IndiGo are potential beneficiaries of Jet grounding most of its fleet. SpiceJet surged 16.4 per cent, its biggest gain in 10 months, in Mumbai on Wednesday, while InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., which runs IndiGo, jumped 7.3 per cent. Lenders to the carrier will make every effort to keep the ailing carrier in operation, State Bank of India Chairman Rajnish Kumar said in New Delhi on Wednesday after meeting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Our aim that corporate debtor which is Jet Airways should not be harmed, we are not concerned with who the promoter is, he told reporters. Lenders are seeking Jet Airways Chairman Naresh Goyals resignation and want him to reduce his stake to below 10 per cent, a person familiar with the matter said. Banks will infuse 15 billion rupees as an emergency fund to keep the airline afloat once Goyal resigns, the person said, asking not to be identified because the talks are not public. Singh partnered with firms including a unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co. in 2015 to rescue SpiceJet, which he had co-founded. By Express News Service State-run Indian Oil Corp (IOC) this week announced that it would give a second interim dividend of Rs 1,412 crore for the current financial year. The development comes even as the government scrambles to mop up enough funds to meet its Rs 80,000 crore divestment target for the current financial year. It is also expected that oil explorer ONGC will follow suit and declare a second interim dividend too. In a stock exchange filing on tuesday, IOC said that its board at a meeting on Tuesday approved the payment of Rs 1.50 per share of 15 per cent in a second interim dividend for 2018-19 to its shareholders. The dividend will be credited to the account of the shareholders or the dividend warrant in respect thereof will be dispatched on or before April 10, 2019, the filing said. IOC is owned by the government with a 53.88 per cent stake, which means it stands to gain around Rs 761 crore, excluding dividend distribution tax in this interim dividend. The government also expects some more funds from ONGC, which is expected to consider a second interim dividend at a board meeting to be held on March 23. These are only the latest public sector firms to have announced interim dividends in order to help the government meet its revenue shortfalls and divestment targets. According to reports, government revenues may fall short by around Rs 80,000 crore of its fiscal deficit target. For instance, state-run coal major Coal India Ltd on March 14 declared a second interim dividend of Rs 5.85 per share. The government holds 72.91 per cent stake in Coal India and stands to get Rs 2,647 crore, excluding dividend tax. While ONGC had reportedly resisted declaring another interim dividend for the year stating that it does not have surplus cash to make such payments within a month of an interim dividend payout, sources now say it will likely do so after its board meeting. According to regulations, a company cannot declare a second dividend within a month of the previous payout and companies like ONGC would need to seek approval of markets regulator Sebi to make such a payment. IOC in December declared Rs 6.75 per share interim dividend alongside a Rs 4,435-crore share buyback to help the government meet its revenue targets. ONGC had announced an interim dividend of Rs 5.25 per equity share on February 14 while also approving a Rs 4,022-crore share buyback. According to reports, the governments tax shortfall is likely to be around Rs 30,000-40,000 crore in terms of GST targets and a similar one in direct tax collections. This might make it difficult for the government to meet its revised fiscal deficit target of 3.4 per cent. In quest for funds Reports say the governments tax shortfall is likely to be around Rs 30,000-40,000 crore in terms of GST targets and a similar one in direct tax collections. The second interim dividends announced by major public sector firms is likely to help the government meet its fiscal deficit target and divestment targets for the current fiscal Of the Rs 1,412 crore second interim dividend declared by Indian Oil now, the government will get around Rs 761 crore. ONGC is likely to consider a similar move at its board meeting on March 23 Government-owned Coal India Ltd had earlier this month also declared a second interim dividend of Rs 5.85 per share, with the government set to gain around Rs 2,647 crore By PTI MUMBAI: The harried pilots of Jet Airways, which is on the brink of shuttering operations, have now approached SpiceJet seeking employment. Jet Airways pilots had earlier been wooed by IndiGo with compensation for their pending salaries and other benefits, leading to murmurs of protests from its own pilots. The largest airline has been facing acute shortage of cockpit crew, leading to the cancellation of hundreds of its flights last month. ALSO READ: Government looks at providing Jet Airways' unused airport slots to other domestic airlines Jet pilots along with engineers and senior management have not been paid for more than three months now as the airline is facing its worst existential crisis since its inception a quarter of a century ago. The Gurugram-based SpiceJet, which has all its 12 Boeing Max planes grounded following the crash of an Ethiopian Airline plane early this month, is looking to hire pilots for its expansion plans and has also conducted walk-in interviews here, Wednesday. "As many as 260 Jet pilots, including 150 captains, appeared for the interviews in Mumbai today," a SpiceJet source said. Unlike IndiGo, which flies majorly Airbus 320s, SpiceJet has Boeing 737s in the fleet. On the other hand, it can be noted that majority Jet Airways pilots are trained and type-rated for Boeing planes, the source said. ALSO READ: Jet Airways is on 'verge of collapse', says pilots' union IndiGo is offering jobs to Jet pilots along with compensation for overdue salaries from the full-service airline. It can be noted that pilots at full-service carriers get higher pay and other benefits. With no assurance on the payment of their pending salaries, Jet pilots had Tuesday warned that they would stop flying from April 1 if the management failed to provide clarity on the revival plan along with a deadline to clear their salary dues by March 31. According to IndiGo, all job offers are in line with its current terms and conditions. But its own pilots have termed the move as "injustice" and "unacceptable". "They are taking us lightly. Offer to Jet Airways pilots is sheer injustice to us as they're being offered a two-month bonus along with the same designation-salary," argued an IndiGo source. Moreover, they have also been allowed to choose their operational base, which is unacceptable to the IndiGo pilots, the source added. Questions sent to IndiGo chief operating officer Wolfgang Prock-Schauer as also to its spokesperson did not elicit any response. "The management is saying it is not a bonus but it is compensation for their (Jet pilots) delayed salaries. Are we also not entitled to similar bonuses?" the source asked. Also, Jet pilots are joining with designation protection. So, basically, if a non-type-rated examiner is joining us, she/he will be joining with pay protection of the IndiGo examiner, pointed out the source. Alleging that the IndiGo pilots have not been given a hike since the last three-four years, the source also pointed out that after joining, the Jet pilots will again get a hike when Indigo revises the salaries of its existing pilots. SV Krishna Chaitanya By Express News Service CHENNAI: Chennai-based Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) has finalised a $1 million deal with the Ethiopian government as licencing fee to transfer home-grown Waterless Chrome Tanning Technology (WCTT), which is being hailed as a game-changer for the leather industry. Leather tanneries use large volumes of fresh water and are often accused of polluting water bodies and soil by discharging highly toxic chromium contaminated water. After the Tamil Nadu government made Zero Liquid Discharge mandatory and the Central Pollution Control Board bringing stringent pollution norms, tanneries are forced to spend a bomb on effluent treatment because removing chromium from the waste water is expensive. All these concerns have been addressed by WCTTs invention, where no water is used - meant no waste water discharge - making the entire chrome tanning environmentally sustainable. P Saravanan, Head (Project Planning & Business Development), CLRI, told Express that WCTT is patented and has been adopted by 70 tanneries in India, of which about 22 are in Erode, Ranipet and Ambur of Tamil Nadu. An MoU has been signed with the Ethiopian government and $1 million licensing fee was agreed upon. All tanneries in Ethiopia will be adopting WCTT. Besides, talks are in advanced stage with Sri Lanka, Vietnam, South Africa, Kenya, and Romania, he said. Official estimates show that chromium is the most sought-after tanning agent. Of the 18 billion sq ft of leather produced globally every year, nearly 16 billion is made using chromium. India produces about 2 billion sq ft of leather, of which 32 per cent is produced in Tamil Nadu. Annually, about 70,000 tonnes of basic chromium sulphate is used. The average uptake (absorption) of chromium by leather pelts during tanning is only 55 per cent out of chrome tanning agent offered. This means, 30,000 tonnes of chromium tanning agent remains unabsorbed and gets discharged along with waste water, which is a huge environmental risk. Chief Scientist J Raghava Rao, who headed the project, said using WCTT tanneries can completely eliminate two processes. Tanning process consists of five stages -- liming, de-liming, pickling, basification and chrome tanning. In WCTT, the de-limed pelts are subjected to pre-treatment. Basic chromium sulfate will be added to the drum without any water. Pickling and basification need not be done so discharge of water with high salinity and chloride can be avoided. Technology outline and benefits 1. Complete elimination of water input for chrome tanning 2. No discharge of waste water from chrome tanning 3. Total elimination of pickling and basification 4. Suitable for both hides and skins Water saver 1. One tonne of hide requires 1,000 litres of water in conventional process 2. 7 lakh tonnes of hides are processed annually, which means 700 MLD of water is saved C Shivakumar By Express News Service CHENNAI: In a bid to curb illegal constructions in the setbacks (minimum open space required around any building), Greater Chennai Corporation has issued a guideline that corporation officials should ensure no structure should be constructed within the minimum prescribed setback spaces. The guideline issued by the civic body has exempted sunshades not exceeding 0,6m; motor room of area not exceeding two sq.m. and height not exceeding 1.8 metre without affecting parking and driveway requirements. In case of non high rise buildings with height upto nine metre, the exemptions have been given to open single flight or spiral staircase or open double flight staircase so long as such structure does not fall within 0.50 metre from the side boundary or one metre from the rear or front boundary of the site or street alignment. The circular also states that balcony and wardrobe should not be allowed in setback spaces. Balconies or wardrobe will be accountable for extra Floor Space Index, the guideline issued by the principal chief engineer said. This comes after the Tamil Nadu Combined Development and Building Rules 2019 were notified by the government. The communication which was issued recently also states that structures in setback spaces that is the terrace above the top most storey, areas covered by staircase rooms and lift rooms and passages thereto, architectural features, elevated tanks (provided its height below the tank from the floor does not exceed 1.5 metre) are excluded from the floor space index. Staircase and lift rooms and passage thereto in the stilt parking floor or upper floors used for parking, staircase and lift rooms and passage thereto in the basement floor or floors used for parking and area of the basement floor or floors used for parking are also exempted. By Express News Service KOCHI: Kochi Port is bustling with activity due to a steady arrival of cruise liners from all over the world. Since the beginning of the year, around 16 cruise liners have docked at Kochi Port with March contributing the most to the total figure. According to Port authorities, since the beginning of March, five cruise liners have already visited the port. On Wednesday, two cruise liners Queen Mary 2 and Costa neoRiviera docked at BTB. Another six cruise liners will arrive at the port by the end of the month, said the authorities. The cruise liners will arrive on March 22, 27, 28, 29 and 31. Two ships will call at the port on March 29, said a port officer. The cruise season is charted from April to March. So, from April 2018 to March 2019, around 44 ships have called at Kochi Port. Once the remaining six visit, the total number will go up to 50, he said. It is expected April too will be a busy month with respect to cruise liner dockings. According to him, of the two ships that came calling at the port on Wednesday, Queen Mary 2 is the largest ocean liner ever built. The Queen Mary 2 is carrying 2,483 passengers and 1,255 crew members, he said. The ship came from Chennai and will be going to Colombo. It is termed the largest ocean liner ever built, he said. Meanwhile, Costa neoRiviera came in from New Mangalore and will be going to the Maldives. The ship has 1,110 passengers and 560 crew, he said. According to him, Queen Mary 2, which arrived at 5:50 am departed by 6 pm after the tourists were taken for a tour of the city. Meanwhile, making the arrival of the tourists a comfortable one, Aster Medcity arranged medical support for the passengers. The fully-equipped bike ambulance service of the hospital provided medical support round-the-clock to tourists throughout their stay. The bike ambulance team also accompanied the tourists during their visit to the city. By Express News Service VIJAYAWADA: General Manager of South Central Railway (SCR), Gajanan Mallya, made a courtesy call on Chief Secretary Anil Chandra Punetha at the latters chambers in the Interim Government Complex in Velagapudi on Wednesday. The GM told Punetha about various newly sanctioned and ongoing railway projects in the State and the latter told him to expedite the works. GM Mallya also met Director General of Police (DGP) RP Thakur at his office in Mangalagiri and discussed the security coordination issues in the State. Earlier, the GM inspected the routine overhaul depot, where he interacted with women employees and planted a sapling to symbolically contribute towards improving the environment. He also visited the Railway Hospital and inspected its various wards. He talked to the patients and doctors to know about the facilities provided to them by the hospital and whether they were up to the mark. Vijayawada Railway Divisional Manager R Dhananjayalu briefed the General Manager on the ongoing works related to the construction of a new Out Patient Block in the hospital premises. Mallya also inspected the Multi-Disciplinary Divisional Training Centre and Krishna Canal Junction, and inaugurated the Administrative and Training Block. The GM also discussed the performance of the Vijayawada division with Divisional Officers. By Express News Service Actor Nicolas Cage will co-star with Kickboxer fame Alain Moussi in an upcoming martial arts film, Jiu Jitsu. The film, based on a comic book of the same name, will be directed by Dimitri Logothetis. Logothetis, who wrote and directed Kickboxer: Vengeance, and Kickboxer: Retaliation, will be joining with Moussi once again in this film, which is being written by Jim McGrath. The comic book is about expert Jiu Jitsu fighters who face-off against alien invaders in a battle for Earth every six years. Cage is expected to play the leader of these fighters, who join forces with Moussi to defeat the invaders. In a statement, Logothetis said, Jiu Jitsu is guaranteed to satisfy the millions of martial arts and science fiction lovers across the globe. Alain Moussi joins superstar Nicolas Cage for some formidable, no-holds-barred fight sequences set in exotic Burma. Avinash Ramachandran By Express News Service Nirbhaya. Just the word is enough to leave a lump in your throat and transport you to that horrific night on December 16, 2012. Richie Mehtas new Netflix show, Delhi Crime, takes a look at the event from the perspective of the Delhi police who apprehended the six perpetrators involved, within six days of the incident. Delhi Crime is about understanding evil. It is about the people who we need to fight this evil for us. It is about the effect such an incident has on them, says Richie, who adds that the series is backed by solid research and is also a reflection of his own perceptions and opinions. While certain dialogues and sequences in this show especially the ones concerning the alleged government interference during the investigation could potentially ruffle up some feathers, Richie is insistent that he hasnt shown anything that isnt already known. WATCH TRAILER: Im simply trying to show a specific point of view about a specific moment in time. Im not generalising. This is an experience of these characters, who are all inspired by people Ive met and of course, fictionalised for dramatic purposes, he says. For instance, the character of the no-nonsense Deputy Commissioner of Police, Vartika Chaturvedi, played by Shefali Shah, is based on a real-life cop, Chhaya Sharma who was involved in the investigation. Other actors in the ensemble cast like Rasika Dugal and Rajesh Tailang also play real-life characters. On the person her character is based on, Shefali says, She is incredible. She is 100 times more than what you see on screen. There is a lot I got from her as an actor, but even as a person, it is overwhelming to meet someone like that. Meanwhile Rasika, who plays Neeti Singh, a young IPS trainee, interacted with a number of trainees to get under the skin of her character. They are so sincere, with a great sense of duty, and a lot of idealism, which had begun to turn into skepticism. This was heartbreaking, and my character Neeti too goes through something similar, shares the Qissa actor. It has been six years since that incident, and nightmarish visions of the day still haunt us. Rajesh, who plays Bhupendra, a battle-hardened cop, says, There was anger inside all of us. But we had our limitations. We wanted justice to be delivered soon. Bhupendra too faces a similar struggle. He too has his anger, his rage, but he is limited as a police officer and has to follow the law, and work within the legal framework. Rasika adds that she too, like many others, went back to the complacency of her life, but notes that it is important to remember that something like this happened. I didnt know anything about the Nirbhaya incident from the police perspective, and that was very new to me it was like entering a new world, says Rasika who believes that there is no role that can be truly removed from oneself. Shefali too agrees: There is no blurring of lines between the various roles played by my character. You cant box someone only as a housewife/working woman/mother/daughter-in-law/wife. Vartika Chaturvedi is all this and more. However, the Dil Dhadakne Do actor does add that it wasnt easy to recreate the times and lives of the people involved in that ghastly crime, without it taking a toll on the cast and crew. There is no way of doing something like this without becoming a part of that emotion. If it taxes you, well, it taxes you. If it exhausts you, it does. But isnt that what we are aiming to do? This is not the first time actors like Shefali, Rajesh and Rasika are playing such intense roles. Are they worried about getting typecast? I have never been worried about that. Scripts are different, directors are different, and even similar roles on paper can turn out to be something completely different on screen. In my mind, if the role is nuanced, it will never be like another role, says Rasika. Rajesh believes that getting stereotyped poses a unique challenge. Ultimately, your talent determines how well you can differentiate between these characters and bring something new to the table. The actors point out that the boom in the digital platforms is giving them well-defined roles, the sort reserved only for protagonists in cinema. The ensemble cast includes other prominent names like Adil Hussain, Denzil Smith, Jaya Bhattacharya, Gopal Dutt, and Yashaswini Dayama. So, do we see these investigating officers led by DCP Vartika Chaturvedi making a comeback in season 2? Definitely. Same cops. Same cast. Different crime, signs off Richie. Produced by Golden Karavan and Ivanhoe Pictures, Delhi Crime, which is created, written, and directed by Richie, will stream on Netflix from March 22. By Express News Service Even as Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota, the Vasan Bala directorial, bankrolled by Ronnie Screwala under his RSVP Movies, is set to hit the screens on March 21, it has come to light that the film will not be released in the INOX chain of multiplexes. A still from the film The issue stems from Ronnie filing a case with the Competition Commission of India against four theatre chains in India PVR, INOX, Cinepolis, and Carnival Cinemas for charging exorbitant Virtual Print Fee(VPF). Ronnie took to social media to announce that despite being one of the biggest Hindi releases in Taiwan, the film will not be releasing in INOX screens across the country. WATCH TRAILER: The filmmaker also added that the Vicky Kaushal-starrer Love Per Square Foot was supposed to be a theatrical release, but the VPF issue forced him to release it on streaming platforms. Considering how Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota is releasing only in limited screens, fewer theatres wont augur well for the box-office collections of the film, which stars Abhimanyu Dassani, Radhika Madan, and Gulshan Devaiah. By Online Desk Actor Siddharth is one of the very few actors who has always been quite vocal about political and social issues. The 'Rang De Basanti' star on Thursday took a dig at the trailer of Narendra Modi's biopic, 'PM Narendra Modi', which released on Wednesday. He took to Twitter and put out a series of sarcastic tweets hitting out at the Vivek Oberoi-starrer. He said, "PM Narendra Modi Trailer does not show how Modiji won India's Independence by single handedly wiping out the British Empire. Looks like another cheap trick by the sickular, libtard, commie, naxals and of course that Nehru." #PMNarendraModiTrailer does not show how #Modiji won India's Independence by single handedly wiping out the British Empire. Looks like another cheap trick by the sickular, libtard, commie, naxals and of course that Nehru. #IstandwithModi Siddharth (@Actor_Siddharth) March 21, 2019 Siddharth also questioned the integrity of filmmakers who come up with biopics of politicians like ex-Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa and PM Narendra Modi. In his following tweet, he said," Seeing the honesty of our film makers when making these "Biopics" like PM Narendra Modi, my mind boggles at how much goldwashing is going to happen in the many #Jayalalithaa based films coming our way. It's forgivable to not know your history, unforgivable if you try to change it!" Seeing the honesty of our film makers when making these "Biopics" like #PMNarendraModi, my mind boggles at how much goldwashing is going to happen in the many #Jayalalithaa based films coming our way. It's forgivable to not know your history, unforgivable if you try to change it! Siddharth (@Actor_Siddharth) March 21, 2019 ALSO READ: Respects both bhakts and critics of PM Narendra Modi, says Vivek Oberoi The Omung Kumar-directed film was previously scheduled for April 12, apparently a day after the completion of the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections, but has now been preponed to April 5. Kumar, who has previously directed films such as Mary Kom" and "Sarbjit", said he has been neutral in his approach. "I am a very neutral person. It is a big responsibility. The story is so inspiring. Who wouldn't want to make a film on him? I like the zero to hero story. I like the stories of struggle as that inspires one. He did it and we all got inspired from it," Omung said. During the trailer launch of the film "PM Narendra Modi", the 42-year-old actor Vivek Oberoi said he is not an "extreme" person when it comes to his political leanings. "I'm not an extreme kind of a person. I am a balanced person. I appreciate the bhakts and criticism of the critics. You are portraying a living legend and those who hate or love him, do that with intensity. People have become his bhakt," he said. The actor turned up at the event dressed as Modi and he said it was because he was shooting a montage scene for the film. (With inputs from PTI) Alisha Rahaman Sarkar By Online Desk Bengalis dont play Holi, they celebrate Dol Purnima (welcoming spring with colours) which is observed a day prior to the main festival. Although the festival is known for celebrating love and amity, in poll-bound spring, it is a war of colours. Bengalis have never shied away from wearing their political opinions on their sleeves. Then, why spare colours? This year, the sale of the colour green (used by the ruling Trinamool Congress) has seen a spike in several parts of the state. We play Holi with all the colours, except saffron. We dont want the colour saffron or the ideologies related to that (BJP) party to exist in Bengal. Also it is poll season so why not use green to play Holi to show our support to Didi (Mamata Banerjee), said 49-year-old Biplab Basu, a TMC party functionary. The Model Code of Code (MCC) bars political parties from capitalising on religious sentiments for elections. So, does using the colour green in festivals violate the MCC? Certainly not for Nirmal Das, a shopkeeper, who has been in the business for over two decades. This is a routine, every time the election collides with spring, the colour of the ruling party witnesses a sharp rise in sale. Earlier it used to be red, now it is green, he said. Violation of code or not, the politicisation of colours has been rather profitable for several vendors in the city, especially those who received bulk orders for Holi parties. Pink and red have been an all-time favourite. But this year, I received four bulk orders, each demanding 5-10 kilograms of green gulaal (dry colour). If the political leaders want to send a message, then let them. Its only profitable for us," quipped Sumanta Maity, a retailer based in North Kolkata. However, in places like Central Kolkata, Bhowanipur and Alipur, dominated by the non-Bengali speaking population (mostly Marwaris and migrants from Bihar), the colour saffron remains popular. The non-Bengali speaking citizens make up 12%-15% of the citys population which doubles as the BJPs vote bank. Arey Holi mein bhagwa se nahi khela toh kya khela (How does one play Holi without using the colour saffron?). There has been a good sale of gulaal this year. When people play with colours, they dont distinguish between the ruling party and the Opposition. Having said that, red and saffron were the hot sellers this year, said Gulam Anwar, a retailer from Bhowanipur. When design student Arnaud Chastaingt discovered the J12 in 2000, he immediately fell in love with its perfect silhouette, unique look and androgynous appeal. For him, it was also a revelation about the watch as an object. In 2003, when the J12 was launched in white ceramic, his fascination grew. He describes this as a radical creative act, and one he internalised unconsciously. In the same year, after finishing his studies, he began working as a designer for Cartier where, over the next decade, he climbed the ranks. He then moved to the Maison Chanel, attracted by the companys atypical approach to creation, where style and design take priority over the measurement of time. In an interview for the Baselworld 2019 issue of GMT Magazine, Nicolas Beau, director of business development for Chanels jewellery and watchmaking divisions, describes their decisive 2013 meeting. The first sketches Arnaud Chastaingt produced had nothing to do with the J12, however; they were for other Chanel watches: the Monsieur, the Boyfriend and the Camelia Skeleton, among others. Arnaud Chastaingt Chanel Change everything, or nothing When Arnaud Chastaingt finally came face to face with the J12 in 2014, the young studio director could see only two options: Change everything, or change nothing. But he was torn by this paradox. He had the greatest respect for the original design by Jacques Helleu, Chanels former artistic director, but at the same time he refused to set the J12 aside completely. In order to put his own stamp on it, he began by taking the watch into foreign territory, changing its appearance in unusual ways, like the XS version, or putting it on a NATO strap. What about gender? It doesnt matter, particularly where the new generation is concerned, that women have adopted this object created basically by a man, for men. My main concern was to ensure it remained contemporary. For a designer, not changing anything is a complex exercise, even more so than creating a completely new watch, like the Boyfriend. So I changed everything, without changing anything, working hand in hand with everyone in the watch department. I developed a new relationship. It was almost a surgical operation, to absorb as much as I could. We carried out many tests in order to achieve that balance between the DNA and the new aesthetic. In the end, we changed 70% of the components. Its not a new J12, its the J12. [Read "All change for the J12" by Paul O'Neil for more information] J12 XS Chanel New movement, new parameters In his role as director of the watch design studio, Arnaud Chastaingt doesnt necessarily make the movement a priority in his initial reflections. Nevertheless, one of Chanels new strategic priorities is to develop its own calibres. For Nicolas Beau, In our vision of tomorrows watchmaking, the watch has gone from a pure instrument to an instrument that is a beautiful object. And what goes with that is developing the movement in terms of aesthetics and durability. A wonderful design needs a wonderful movement. And that means being able to see the movement through a sapphire case back. When this new manufacture movement turned out to be marginally bigger than the previous one, the case clearly needed tweaking too. Naturally, the design mentality was also brought to bear on this new upgraded calibre, which comes with COSC certification and a 5-year guarantee. I didnt want to see the traditional rotor architecture; I wanted it to be immediately identifiable, a perfectly circular opening with the baseplate showing through. Indeed, thats one element of our haute horlogerie design charter. So we designed the rotor in tungsten. It was a huge challenge to make a tungsten rotor with such a big opening, but thats what design is all about. Polished and brushed finishes on the rotor complete the overall aesthetic on show through the sapphire case back. Calibre 12.1 Chanel A redesigned manufacture case With the more generously sized movement, the caseband had to be substantially redesigned to accommodate the difference in depth. The sides are now softer, slightly convex, which gives the illusion of a more slender profile. The diameter of the crown has been reduced by a third, as has the inset cabochon, while retaining the same ergonomic characteristics. The metal ring around the bezel has also lost a third of its width, but the number of metallic ridges has increased from 30 to 40, giving it a more pronounced identity. The back of the watch is slightly domed to accommodate the shape of the movement. A new ceramic back was designed to enclose the sapphire window, and this affected the way in which the watch was assembled. Another effect of the ceramic back is that the J12 can now claim to be 100% scratch proof. Previously, the steel back was the only part that tended to show wear. The J12 is also lighter. The ceramic is manufactured internally by G&F Chatelain in La Chaux-de-Fonds, and it requires specific skills that very few watchmakers possess. For the ceramic back in particular, a number of technical limitations had to be accounted for, including the fact that ceramic shrinks by 20 to 30% when it is fired. The ceramic link bracelet has also been reworked to make it more dynamic, with longer links and a more pronounced drape. Case back view Chanel Microscopic variations on the dial Chanels progress in ceramics means that the 2019 J12 now also features ceramic numerals (up to now, only the dial itself was made of ceramic). And the numerals themselves have been updated, with a new typography in line with the codes of the Maison. As Arnaud Chastaingt explains, If you look through a loupe, some of the lines are now more graceful, and the ceramic markers are higher quality, with flatter surfaces and sharper lines, which makes them easier to read. Even the typeface for the date has been changed, despite the complexity involved, particularly for two-digit dates. If you have a microscope, the internal curves of the 6s and 9s are really something to see (They exude perfection)! At the same time, because the dial is wider, the Swiss Made label at the base of the dial now has more room between the markers and the inclined plane of the added chapter ring. The hands have also been refined: There was a difference in their widths, and I have now made the minutes hand wider than the hour hand. The Superluminova is more elegant and the seconds hand is more delicate. The powdery effect of the dial has been accentuated to give the piece greater coherence. Close-up of the dial Chanel An accessible muse But what about the price? With all these improvements, a considerable price increase would be par for the course. But in fact the price is one thing that hasnt changed much. At just 350 more, the J12 costs just 5300. Nicolas Beau smiles: With this J12, weve found the secret to eternal youth. Arnaud Chastaingt concludes: Today, I consider the J12 to be my muse. Im not its father, but Ive officially adopted it. For now, my definition of the J12 is black and white. But Im not ruling anything out for the future. Additional complications (chronograph, moon phases, GMT, tourbillon) are in the pipeline. We look forward to seeing something rather special in 2020, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the J12. By ANI NEW DELHI: With the Lok Sabha elections inching closer, the Railways has decided to withdraw tickets carrying photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Officials said the withdrawal of these tickets comes in the wake of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) being in force. The announcement comes a day after an All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) delegation approached the Election Commission of India (ECI) accusing the BJP of violating the Model Code of Conduct. FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE The TMC delegation, comprising Derek O'Brien, Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, and Chandan Mitra, claimed that Prime Minister Modi's photo was being published on railway tickets as part of a government scheme, which, the party said, was in violation of the MCC. Seven phase elections in the country will begin on April 11 and culminate on May 19. Counting of votes will take place on May 23. Rajesh Kumar Thakur By Express News Service PATNA: RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav on Wednesday said Bihars Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) is intact and the final seat-sharing announcement would be made Friday. Rubbishing rumours that all was not well in the grand alliance, he said all allies were on board and would be united on the agenda to defeat the BJP led NDA. Sources within the alliance said a broad agreement had reached on the 40 seats and the irritants in the way had been removed. As per the formula, the RJD would contest 20 of the 40 seats with Congress fielding candidates on 9 seats and RLSP contesting 4. FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE The Sharad Yadav led Loktantrik Janata Dal, Jitan Ram Manjhis Hindustani Awam Morcha and the CPI-ML (L) would contest 2 seats each with Mukesh Sahni led Vikasheel Insaan Party contesting 1 seat. Congress insiders said, the alliance was not yet sealed. The party had wished to contest 15 seats, which was slashed to 11 on mutually agreeable terms, but the RJD had left just 9 in the final analysis. Congress president Rahul Gandhi will have to agree on it first, they said. RJD leaders say, two seats had to be curtailed from the Congress quota of 11 to accommodate CPI-ML(L), which has already announced a candidate from Ara. They said, the differences were largely over Darbhanga, Patliputra, Aurangabad and Hajipur seats. Kirti Azad has claimed Darbhanga, while RJD wants MAA Fatimi, a former MP on the seat from its quota. RJDs Misa Bharti is also adamant on Pataliputra. However, the irritants will be over by March 22, an RJD leader said. Anuraag Singh By Express News Service One seat, many names in the running Even as the BJP takes time to decide candidates for the Lok Sabha polls in Madhya Pradesh, every day a new potential candidates name keeps cropping up for the Bhopal constituency, which has been a saffron bastion since 1989. Several names, including ex-CMs Babulal Gaur and Shivraj Singh Chouhan, ex-MP minister Umashankar Gupta, union minister Narendra Singh Tomar and even that of Union Minister Uma Bharti (who had announced she wont be contesting the polls) are doing rounds of BJP circles. Recently, Bhopal mayor Alok Sharma said publicly that he, too, was in the race. FB Live to connect with first-time voters Aiming to connect with the electorate ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the Election Commission is banking on the power of social media. Joint chief electoral officer (Joint CEO) Abhijeet Agrawal held a live session on Facebook on Monday, which was shared by several hundred users. Over 160 users asked questions during the half-an-hour live session that started around 5 pm. The viewers numbered more than 3,200. Our main objective was to reach out to young voters who are smartphone users, Agrawal said. The questions asked pertained to the procedure of getting their names enrolled and how to find the exact location of polling booths. BJP leaders lobbying for tickets for children For long, the BJP has attacked the Congress over the politics of dynasty. However, just a few days after the schedule of Lok Sabha polls were announced, senior BJP politicians, including former ministers, are believed to be lobbying for LS tickets for their children. FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE While Gourishankar Bisen, the agriculture minister in the Shivraj government, is backing daughter Mausam Bisens claims from Balaghat seat, present Leader of Opposition Gopal Bhargava justified sons and daughters of politicians stepping into their parents shoes. Babulal says wont contest on Congress ticket A few weeks after he created a flutter by making public that senior Congress leader and former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh had offered him a Congress ticket to contest the Bhopal Lok Sabha seat, BJP veteran and former MP Chief Minister Babulal Gaur has now ruled out contesting the polls on Congress ticket. Im with the BJP and will remain here only. If the party gives me ticket, Ill contest, if not then Ill work for the partys success in the Lok Sabha polls, Gaur said. After another BJP veteran Sartaj Singh joined the Congress to unsuccessfully contest from Hoshangabad assembly seat last year, Gaur, too, raised the banner of revolt, demanding a ticket from Govindpura seat, his pocket-borough for the tenth time. But the party pacified him by fielding his ex-mayor daughter-in-law Krishna Gaur from Govindpura. By Express News Service KOLKATA: Responding to Left Fronts decision to not field candidates in four Bengal constituencies won by the Congress, the Grand Old Party has reciprocated the gesture by deciding not to put up candidates in 5 constituencies in south Bengal. Though we felt insulted by the Left Fronts decision to declare its first list of candidates without holding prior consultations with us, we have responded to its gesture (of not fielding candidates in four seats) by deciding not to put up candidates in Asansol, Tamluk, Arambagh, Bishnupur and Diamond Harbour constituencies, West Bengal Pradesh Congress Committee president Somen Mitra said. FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE Holding the Left Front responsible for the failure of the seat-sharing agreement, Congress Behrampore candidate Adhir Ranjan Choudhury said, When there is an alliance, its only fair for us to have been taken into confidence. After realising their mistake, they are trying to rectify it by not declaring candidates in 4 seats. By PTI NEW DELHI: In the wake of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi's arrest in London, Union minister Prakash Javadekar Wednesday said he will be extradited to India like AgustaWestland case accused Christian Michel and all "thieves" will be put behind bars under the Narendra Modi-led government. The Human Resource Development Minister said the government will ensure that the money looted from the country is returned to the nation. FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE "Michel was extradited, then Talwar and Saxena were brought in and Vijay Mallya is also going to be brought back soon. Nirav Modi has also been arrested. All thieves under the leadership of Narendra Modi will be put behind the bars and will have to return the looted money to the nation,"Javdekar said. He said the arrest of Nirav Modi only "prove" that the country is in safe hands under the leadership of the prime minister. Nirav Modi, the main accused in the USD 2 billion PNB scam case, was arrested in London and a court on Wednesday remanded him in custody till March 29, saying there are "substantial grounds" to believe that he would fail to surrender if granted bail. By PTI KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday refused to give credit to the Narendra Modi government for the arrest of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, saying it was a "got-up match" and the arrest may have been fixed by the Centre beforehand. Talking to reporters here, she termed the development a "strike" by the Modi government to reap electoral dividend. Nirav Modi (48), the main accused in the USD 2 billion Punjab National Bank scam case, was arrested in London and was on Wednesday remanded to custody there till March 29. He has been absconding from the country for over a year. FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE "I think the Nirav Modi arrest is a got-up match. It is one of the 'strikes' by the Modi government to reap electoral dividends. I have been told by some people that two to three more such 'strikes' are in the offing and will take place in between the seven phases of Lok Sabha polls," Banerjee said. Stating that the Modi government should not claim any credit for the arrest of the fugitive, the Trinamool Congress supremo said, "One journalist of a UK media found out where he stayed. What were the government agencies doing all these times? "Those hiding behind the curtains please come out, your game is up," she added. Stating that the Modi government was past its "expiry date", the chief minister said, "They are branding those asking uncomfortable questions as 'traitors'. We are not traitors, we are protectors, we love the country. But you (Narendra Modi) are selling off the country by shielding the corrupt." In a dig at Modi for addressing 'chowkidars' (watchmen)over the radio and calling himself one, Banerjee said, "From 'chaiwala' (tea seller), he has now turned into a chowkidar. But the true chowkidar does not flaunt such fashionable dresses." She also criticised the Modi government for announcing projects just before the announcement of the parliamentary elections. "When the unemployment figures in the country have reached its highest level in 45 years, when two crore people have lost jobs in recent times, he is promising the moon to the people of the country. The people are not fools," she said. The TMC leader said the condition of blue-chip public sectors like Air India and BSNL have deteriorated, while the farmers are in distress and dying. "Demonetisation ripples are still being felt, but Narendra Modi is making tall claims at meetings after meetings," she said. Demonetisation was announced in November 2016. Accusing Modi of playing the religion card ahead of the polls, Banerjee said, "We see him attending meetings with a 'tilak' on his forehead," referring to his recent address in Varanasi. She had on Tuesday lashed out at the BJP for questioning her religion and challenged the prime minister and BJP president Amit Shah to compete with her in chanting 'mantras' (hymns). Fayaz Wani By Express News Service NEW DELHI: A paramilitary Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) jawan, who was critically injured in Pakistan troops mortar shelling along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kamalote village of Uri on March 10, succumbed to injuries at a Srinagar hospital on Wednesday. An official said four persons, including SSB jawan Reyaz Ahmad Khatana, who had returned home to assist his family in rebuilding their house had sustained injuries in Pakistan shelling. He critically injured both legs and was evacuated to a Srinagar hospital. The doctors in the Srinagar hospital had amputated his left leg and his condition had deteriorated on Tuesday.With the death of SSB jawan, the death toll in Pakistani firing and mortar shelling along the LoC since February 26 has risen to seven. By PTI NEW DELHI: The Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad on Thursday clearly conveyed to Pakistan that the trial into the 2007 Samjhauta Express terror case was carried out in a "transparent" manner, official sources said here. The Indian High Commissioner was summoned by Pakistan's Foreign Ministry to lodge a strong protest against the acquittal of all four accused, including Swami Aseemanand, in the case. Sixty-eight people, mostly Pakistanis, were killed in the attack. The sources said the Indian envoy highlighted that the due process of law was followed by the Indian courts and judicial system in a transparent manner. ALSO READ: We didn't get justice, says Samjhauta express blast victim's family on Aseemanand's acquittal He also called out the lack of cooperation from Pakistan, including in serving court summons to Pakistani witnesses in the case, the sources said, adding the summons were returned by Pakistan foreign office. A special court in Panchkula in Haryana acquitted Aseemanand and three others in the Samjhauta Express case. The verdict came after NIA special judge Jagdeep Singh dismissed the plea filed by a Pakistani woman for examining eyewitnesses from her country, saying it was "devoid of any merit". The Indian envoy also asked for an expeditious trial in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack case in which detailed evidence has been given to Pakistan, they said. He expressed disappointment that progress in these trials is held up and the perpetrators and prime accused continue to roam freely in Pakistan, the sources said. The envoy shared India's concerns at the lack of progress in investigations in the Pathankot terror attack even when a visit by a Pakistani team to India was arranged and detailed evidence in the case were shared, the sources said. They said it was also pointed out that Pakistan is yet to take credible and irreversible steps against JeM and other terror entities as well as individuals, despite a detailed dossier being shared with Islamabad after the Pulwama attack. By Online Desk The state of Jammu and Kashmir witnessed violence on the wee hours of Holi as two policemen, including an officer, were injured in a grenade attack by militants in Sopore township of Baramulla district, while a soldier was killed along the Line of Control (LoC) due to Pakistani firing on Thursday. The grenades were lobbed by militants at a security forces party at Main Chowk Sopore in the north Kashmir district, a police official said. He said two policemen, including the station house officer of Dangiwacha police station, sustained minor injuries in the explosion. The injured have been hospitalised. Security forces have cordoned off the area and a search has been launched to nab the attackers, the official said. J&K: Army rifleman 24 year old Yash Paul lost his life in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Sunderbani sector earlier today pic.twitter.com/7kY8FBrhCU ANI (@ANI) March 21, 2019 There was another ceasefire violation from Pakistan along the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district on the same day. One Army jawan was killed as Pakistani forces heavily shelled forward areas and posts with mortar bombs in Keri belt of Sunderbani sector. Pakistani troops have violated the ceasefire over 110 times along the LoC since January. An Army soldier was killed and four others were injured Monday when Pakistan Army violated the ceasefire by resorting to heavy mortar shelling and firing along the LoC in Rajouri district. The border skirmishes witnessed a spurt after India's air strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror camp in Balakot, Pakistan, on February 26 in response to the February 14 Pulwama attack that killed 40 CRPF personnel. The year 2018 witnessed the highest number of ceasefire violations -- 2,936 -- by Pakistani troops in the last 15 years along the India-Pakistan border. They have continued violating the 2003 ceasefire agreement with India despite repeated calls for restraint and adherence to the pact during flag meetings between the two sides. On the other hand, an encounter broke out between security forces and terrorists in Mirmohalla area in Hajjin locality of Bandipora district on Thursday morning. The contingent of security forces comprised units of Army's 13 Rashtriya Rifles, CRPF's 45 Battalion and SOG. The encounter which started around 10 am, is still continuing. Civilians have been evacuated from the spot. There were no reports of any casualties so far, the official added. Security forces also launched a cordon and search operation in Sopore in Baramulla district. (With Inputs from Agencies) By Express News Service MANDYA: A day after top leaders of JD(S) and Congress sent a clear message to put up a united fight against their arch rival BJP in the state, it was indeed a contrasting picture in Mandya on Wednesday. Thousands of Congress workers turned up to express their solidarity with actor-turned-politician Sumalatha Ambareesh. Narasimha, the incumbent president of Congress ST Block, Nagamangala, said, I am ready to face any action taken by the high command. But, I owe my loyalty to Sumalatha. Be it former chief minister Siddaramaiah or Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara, I dont have any regrets. Let them hobnob with any leaders of the regional party, we cannot bury the hatchets by compromising with our self-respect.Mahesh, a Congressman from Channappana Doddi said, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamys claim that he has helped the agrarian community is nothing but a farce. ALSO READ: Consolidation of votes is Congress-JD(S) strength, infighting its weakness Congress leaders Shivanna and Srikanta from the same village agreed. Vasu, son of Bullet Krishna, president of Ambareesh Fans Association from Mangala village, said, Ambareesh never ignore people and always cared for Mandya over Cauvery river water sharing dispute. He stepped down as the Union minister. Can we expect such acumen from Kumaraswamy and others? Later, at the public meeting addressed by Sumalatha, many Congress leaders were seen on the dais, showing their support. New bylaws established by Egypt's top media regulator and approved by the Egyptian parliament and published in the official gazette came into force Monday. The new bylaws aim to regulate all forms of media as well as social media accounts for people with more than 5,000 followers. Below is Ahram Onlines guide to the new bylaws. Q: What are the new bylaws? The Supreme Council for Media Regulation issued a nine-page resolution, No 16 for 2019, concerning sanctions and measures that apply to entities subject to the oversight of the Supreme Council for Organising the Media. Q: To whom do the bylaws apply? The bylaws apply to press institutions, national newspapers, private media institutions, public media institutions, private media outlets, public media outlets, websites, and newspapers. Q: What are some of the new stipulations? The nine-page legislation has 14 articles on violations that could occur on media platforms, and stipulates the different sanctions to be applied for these violations, which include: Article 14: Conflicting with Provisions of the Law Sanctions will be implemented against a press organisation, media organisation, media outlet, newspaper or website that publishes any article or declaration whose content conflicts with the provisions of the constitution or calls for the violation of the law, violates the obligations set forth in the Code of Professional Honour, violates public order or public morals ... or offends religious doctrines. Article 16: Defamation, Slander Sanctions will be implemented for using or permitting the use of words or phrases that slander, defame or violate the privacy of citizens, misleading the public, or disseminating false information. Threatening or harming the public's feelings are also punishable offenses. Article 17: False News, Inciting Violence on Social Media Sanctions will be implemented for the publication or dissemination of false news or rumours, incitement to violence, hatred, discrimination, sectarianism, racism or threats to national unity. Insults to the law, misleading public opinion, insulting public opinion or the opinion of the other, disseminating information from social media sites without verifying its validity are also punishable. Article 22: Covering Military and Security Failure to comply with the rules of covering military or security operations or terrorist incidents can result in a prohibition on publishing or broadcasting or the temporarily blocking of the proscribed page, section, program or website. In case of this violation as assessed by the Supreme Council for Media Regulation the council may take whatever measures it deems appropriate to address this violation in accordance with Article 6 of these regulations. Article 26: Protection of Intellectual Property Rights The Supreme Council for Media Regulation shall take the necessary measures to ensure the protection and respect of intellectual property rights in the field of journalism. Violators shall be obliged to pay a sum not exceeding EGP 5 million or the equivalent in a foreign currency, and the violator shall be obliged to pay the appropriate financial compensation to the party whose intellectual property rights have been violated. Q: What are the sanctions for violations? The sanctions range from warnings to media publications and fines and penalties of EGP250,000 without a court order. Other sanctions include banning and blocking websites and social media accounts with over 5,000 followers if they are deemed a threat to national security. Media outlets that continue to publish "offending material'' will be fined up to EGP 5 million. Q: What criticisms are being levelled against these new laws? Prominent Egyptian journalists have called the measures unconstitutional. Mohamed Abdel-Hafiz, a board member of the Journalists Syndicate, told Ahram Online that the newly introduced bylaws contravene articles 70 and 71 of the constitution, which guarantee freedom of the press and freedom of publication. Abdel-Hafiz quotes Article 71 of the constitution; It is prohibited to censor, confiscate, suspend or shut down Egyptian newspapers and media outlets in any way. Exceptions may be made for limited censorship in time of war or general mobilisation. Abdel-Hafiz said that the new bylaws are worded too vaguely. These new bylaws put a stamp of legality on the ongoing struggles faced every day by journalists and the media, and they give the council the power to decide what can be published without any court orders, said Abdel-Hafiz. Q: How has the council reacted to criticism? Supreme Media Council head Makram Mohamed Ahmed responded to the criticism in a statement issued late on Sunday. Ahmed said that the council's regulatory role gives it the right to act as a watchdog and sanction all kinds of media, including social media networks. Ahmed said that blocking or banning can take place in cases of extreme necessity in the face of serious media crimes and non-compliance with council decisions. The chief of the regulatory body highlighted that this procedure has not been taken since the council was established 20 months ago, except in one case, where a media outlet committed 45 violations, each of which was investigated and the outlet was warned several times. Q: What's next? Members of the press syndicate board have been discussing the matter with lawyers, according to Abdel-Hafiz, and have filed an appeal with the State Council against the new legislation. I have been in contact with all my colleagues in the press syndicate. We all hold the same position and we will appeal against these bylaws, which not only contravene the constitution, but also many laws," said Abdel-Hafiz. Search Keywords: Short link: By Express News Service CHENNAI: RY George Williams, an advocate, has appealed to Chief Justice of the Madras High Court to deploy more police personnel at the four Family Courts on the High Court campus, to give more protection to the litigant public. He made a mention to this effect before the first bench headed by Chief Justice VK Tahilramani when it resumed work at 10.30 am on Wednesday. Citing the incident at one of the Family Courts, in which a woman was stabbed by her husband on Tuesday, the advocate pleaded for installation of CCTVs and deployment of police personnel, both inside and outside the Family Courts and to extend CISF protection to family courts and other lower courts, too. The Chief Justice directed him to submit a memorandum to the authorities concerned with a sketch. Accordingly, he submitted a representation to the Registrar-General and the State Law department. Meanwhile, in the wake of the stabbing incident on Tuesday, security has been increased in the court campus, especially in the family court area, with Special Action Group and Tamil Nadu police deployed at the entrance. A senior police official said that for the family court building alone, there will be 25-30 personnel with at least two of them from the Special Action Group present throughout, manning the exit gates with metal detectors and full body scanners. By PTI WASHINGTON: Donald Trump has prioritised peace efforts in Afghanistan and his special envoy has initiated direct talks with the Taliban, but the US President will not accept a "bad deal" on efforts to end America's longest war, the White House has said. According to a senior Trump administration official, America has "contingency" plans, which might involve "military options" if the peace talks fail to yield desired results. As part of his efforts to garner international support for ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad will hold talks with counterparts from Russia, China and the European Union on Thursday and Friday. Khalilzad has held three round of talks with the Afghan Taliban in order to reach a settlement that would allow the US to withdraw its army and end the 17-year-old Afghan war, America's longest. "We are certainly prioritising peace efforts in Afghanistan. But as with all negotiations that involve vital US national security interests, we have contingency plans. The president has indicated he hopes for the best in these peace talks, but he will also not accept a bad deal," the official told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. The official explained that the US was hoping for the success with the peace process. ALSO READ | Donald Trump says media 'working overtime' to blame him for New Zealand massacre "But it's not the only route that we are looking at in terms of protecting vital US national security interests in Afghanistan," the official said. The contingencies being talked about might involve "military options", the official said. Noting that the US still faces terrorist threats in Afghanistan, the official said America will continue to do what is necessary to protect its interests. The US has a lot of options, the official said, adding that while no decision has been taken on withdrawal of troops, president Trump would like to bring the troops back. "He also recognises that we have vital terrorism interests in Afghanistan and he certainly is focused on keeping American safe. So we will do what we have to do to ensure those vital national security interests are protected," the official said. The Trump administration, also recognises that for "any peace agreement to be sustainable the Taliban would have to sit down with the Afghan government" and other Afghan stakeholders to discuss political way forward, the official said. The US will not sacrifice the key gains of the last 18 years, including on human rights, particularly women's rights, at the negotiating table, said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We won't sacrifice those gains," the official insisted. Khalilzad is working hard to establish an inter-Afghan dialogue with the Taliban, sitting down with the government officials and other stakeholders, the official said. The top American diplomat believes that he is getting closer to that goal, the official noted. Referring to the State of the Union Address by President Trump early this year, the official said as the US makes progress in the negotiations, America would be able to look at reducing its troop presence and focusing more on counterterrorism mission. "The president said he didn't know if we would be successful in these negotiations, but it was certainly worth trying," the official said. Last week, the White House cancelled the meeting of its National Security Council with Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib, who launched a personal attack against Khalilzad. Responding to questions on outburst by Mohib against Khalilzad, which has resulted in tension between US and Afghanistan, the official said the administration has strong objection to the personal attacks by the Afghan national security advisor. The official, however, said that the issue was not going to affect the strong bilateral ties between the US and Afghanistan. "We deeply value this relationship. We are fighting shoulder to shoulder on the battleground with Afghan security forces, we are working to stabilise the country and defeat terrorists' threats there together," the official said. "But, they are a reflection of the Afghan frustration that they're not in room in these talks between the US and the Taliban. So it's, urgent that we convince the Taliban to sit down with the Afghan government and other Afghans and engage in a political process," the official said. The official reiterated that any settlement simply won't be sustainable unless the Taliban agrees to sit down with other Afghan stakeholders and work out a political settlement. "The Taliban must sit down with the Afghan government as well as other Afghans to work these issues out. I think it pointed up the need to put urgency on that aspect of the peace process," the official said. The White House official asserted that the US will be consulting closely with the Afghan government in with regard to the peace talks with the Taliban. "We can look at ways to improve the communication between our two governments," the official said, adding that the US will be looking at ways to enhance its coordination and cooperation moving forward. By Online Desk LUSAKA: Zambian authorities have banned an energy drink after test results showed that it contained the active ingredient of the popular anti-impotence drug Viagra. In Uganda, a consumer complained of a prolonged erection and profuse sweating after consuming SX Energy Natural Power drink produced by Revin Zambia. Authorities in the Zambian city of Ndola where the manufacturer is based, ordered "a product recall of natural high energy drink SX". Ndola city spokesperson Tilyenji Mwanza said in the statement that results from Zimbabwe and South Africa correlated with those from tests conducted in Zambia which indicated "a positive presence of Sildenafil Citrate". Revin Zambia officials were not immediately available to comment. (With AFP inputs) By PTI PESHAWAR: An anti-terrorism court in northwest Pakistan Thursday awarded life imprisonment to two accused in the lynching case of Mashal Khan, a university student who was murdered by an angry mob for allegedly committing blasphemy in 2017. Judge Mahmoodul Hassan Khattak announced the verdict, awarding life imprisonment to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Counselor Arif Khan and Asad for their involvement in the 2017 public lynching at Bacha Khan University in Mardan city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. Two other accused were acquitted in the case. The court had reserved its verdict on March 13. On April 13, 2017, Khan, 23, was beaten and shot to death by a mob accusing him of blasphemy. The lynching, which took place within the university's campus, was filmed and widely circulated on social media. A 13-member joint investigation (JIT) found that the allegations of blasphemy were used as a pretext to incite a mob against Khan, a Mass Communications student. Earlier, an anti-terrorism court in Abbotabad had awarded death penalty to main suspect Imran, life imprisonment to five and, one to three-year rigorous imprisonment to 25 others. A total of 61 people suspected of involvement in the lynching - the majority of them students and university employees - were charged in the first information report. By Online Desk ALMATY (Kazakhstan): Scores of people took on to the street in the capital city of Astana on Thursday protesting the rechristening of the city as 'Nursultan', in honour of Nursultan Nazarbayev who stepped down as president after three decades in office. Police arrested several people who were protesting the name change close to the capital's mayoral office. They were later released. Career diplomat and political loyalist Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who was sworn into office less than 24 hours on Wednesday, proposed changing the name of the Central Asian nation's capital from Astana to Nursultan, or "Sultan of Light" in Kazakh, and parliament approved the change within hours. ALSO READ | Kazakhstan renames capital 'Nursultan' after ex-president "There were around a dozen of us," Askhat Akhmedyarov, who is an artist, said. "They put us in a police van and took us to the police station where they checked our phones. They wanted to know if we had any ties to (the opposition)," he said. "I am at home now," he confirmed, adding that he had not been fined by police. The interior ministry did not comment on the arrests. One online petition against the name change gathered close over 36,000 signatures as of Wednesday despite the petition website appearing to be blocked in Kazakhstan. Public gatherings in Kazakhstan are illegal unless they receive permission from local authorities, which is almost never provided in the case of political demonstrations. Akhmedyarov said he was protesting a name change that "showed Nazarbayev's insecurity." "This is a person who has looted the country and left millions in poverty. Now he has named the capital after himself and put a puppet president in charge. Next he will probably try to put his daughter (in the presidency)," Akhmedyarov said. (With AFP inputs) The high altar. More decorations in the Neapolitan Baroque style, beautifully reconstructed after the church was destroyed during World War II. Looking back on the countryside of Campania. Statues of Ss Benedict and Scholastica in the courtyard. Mosaic decoration in the crypt, in a more modern (but very worthy) style. ... including the Archabbey of St Vincent. For the feast of St Benedict, we are happy to publish some photos of the abbey of Montecassino taken by our friend Jordan Hainsey, who has shared a lot of beautiful images with us over the years, and was there recently during the Italian pilgrimage of St Vincent Seminary in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.The courtyard leading into the abbey church, which, like any good monastic foundation, has its own well.The place in front of the main sanctuary where St Benedict was originally buried; there is still a debate as to whether his relics are still there, or were translated after the abbey was destroyed in the early Middle Ages to the French Abbey of Fleury, also known as Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire.The church possesses a very impressive collection of relics; here we see a prelatitial habit of the Blessed Cardinal Ildephonse Schuster, who was a Benedictine monk for almost 30 years before his appointment to the See of Milan in 1929. He was Procurator General of the Cassinsense Benedictine Congregation from 1914-29, and was elected abbot of the monastery of St Paul Outside-the-Walls in Rome in 1918.Fr Boniface Hicks, OSB, director of spiritual formation at St Vincent Seminary, celebrated Mass for the pilgrimage group in the chapel which houses a lot of the relics.Here we see mosaics of the crests of various abbeys and bishops of the Cassinense Congregation... RTHK: Trump backs Israeli sovereignty in Golan Heights President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States should acknowledge Israeli sovereignty over the hotly-contested Golan Heights, in a major pre-election gift to his ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights," Trump said in a tweet. Trump called the Golan -- a strategic area seized from Syria and annexed in a move never recognized by the international community -- "of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" About 20,000 Israeli settlers live in the Golan, which overlooks Syrian territory. Trump's abrupt announcement was immediately cheered by Netanyahu, who faces a tough reelection battle and visits Washington next week. "At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights," the right-wing prime minister wrote on Twitter. "Thank you President Trump!" There was also quick approval from the senior Republican in the US Senate, Lindsey Graham, who is pushing for Congress to recognize Israeli control over the Golan. "President Trump's decision to recognize the Golan as part of Israel is strategically wise and overall awesome. Well done, Mr. President!" Graham tweeted. Trump's announcement coincided with a visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Jerusalem, where he became the first high-ranking American official to visit the Western Wall alongside an Israeli prime minister -- another boost for Netanyahu. However, Leon Panetta a veteran Democrat who served as CIA director and defence secretary, among other roles, blasted Trump for "tweeting out another policy that obviously has not been worked out with our international partners." The Golan recognition is only the latest diplomatic bombshell dropped by Washington, which is Israel's main backer, in seeking to redraw the fraught Middle East map. In 2017, Trump also went against decades of practice in recognizing the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, rather than the previously accepted Tel Aviv. The Golan Heights move was hinted at a week ago when the State Department changed its usual description of the area as "occupied" to "Israeli-controlled." The Trump State Department has likewise dropped previous definitions of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as being "occupied" by the Jewish state. Israel occupied the Golan Heights, West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six-Day War. It later annexed the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem in moves never recognized by the international community. During Pompeo's Jerusalem trip, there was also speculation that his Western Wall visit with Netanyahu could be interpreted as tacit approval of Israel's claim to sovereignty over the site. The wall is one of Judaism's holiest spots, but located in mainly Palestinian east Jerusalem. Trump's latest shakeup comes ahead of the expected unveiling of a White House plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Palestinian leaders, who broke off contact with Washington after the recognition of Jerusalem by Trump, say they expect the plan to be blatantly biased in favor of Israel. Panetta, who was speaking on CNN, said the Golan recognition "gives up one of the chips that everyone thought would be part of a Middle East peace agreement deal." "It's going to create real problems with our Arab partners in that part of the world," he said. Trump will host Netanyahu at the White House next Monday and Tuesday. The Israeli leader will be in Washington for the annual conference of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) pro-Israel lobbying group. Netanyahu, who is campaigning under threat of indictment for corruption, is hoping that the strong US backing will help push him over the finish line. But Robert Malley, president of the Crisis Group consultancy, said the "intensely political" decision by Trump was "in disregard of international law" and "an ominous step at a time when voices in Israel calling for the annexation of the West Bank are growing louder." (AFP) This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. The first hearing session on proposed amendments to Egypt's 2014 constitution took place on Wednesday Egypt's national dialogue on proposed amendments to the constitution began on Wednesday. Parliaments speaker Ali Abdel-Aal, who is leading the dialogue, said there will be six sessions. "There will be a long one on Wednesday, two on Thursday, one next Wednesday, and two next Thursday, " said Abdel-Aal, adding that "there could be more hearing sessions if there is a need to listen to more views." He vowed that transparency would be the hallmark of the national debate on the proposed constitutional amendments. "We need wide participation in the dialogue and we need all forces, including the opposition, to give their views on the amendments in an open, free and transparent way," said Abdel-Aal. The dialogue is being held at the meeting hall of the old Shura Council. Representatives of Egyptian universities, religious institutions and media organisations were invited on Wednesday. Sabri El-Senossi, dean of Cairo University's Faculty of Law, took all by surprise when he called for amending the constitution to remove the current limit on presidential terms. "There shouldn't be a two-term limit because this goes against the principle of free competition," said El-Senossi, arguing that "in Western democracies there is no limit on presidential terms and if there is a good, popular, capable and forceful president, why we should prevent the people from electing him several times?" Representative of the Islamic religious institution of Al-Azhar Abdel-Moneim Fouad said the constitution shouldn't be considered a Quran. "This is a human product and it can be amended whenever possible to go in line with changing conditions," said Fouad. Representative of the Coptic church Archbishop Polis said the 2014 constitution was drafted in critical conditions and those who drafted it were under pressure. "The constitution was drafted in a hurry to tackle the mistakes of the past but now we need a new constitution that should take us to the future," Polis said. Well-known journalist Makram Mohammed Ahmed said the proposed amendments to Egypt's constitution have gained national consensus, particularly the one that re-establishes the Shura Council. Makram said the demand for increasing a presidential term from four to six is very logical. However, he said the transitional article allowing President El-Sisi to run again after the expiry of his term in 2022 was not drafted in a good way. In another dialogue held by the Egyptian National Business Council on Wednesday, Fathi Sorour, a speaker of parliament for many years during the regime of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, said he is in favour of not allowing an elected president to run for more than two terms, with each lasting six years. Sorour heaped praise on President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, describing him as having saved Egypt from chaos. Sorour faced accusations in 2005 and 2007 of having manipulated constitutional amendments to help Mubarak's son Gamal inherit power from his father. Speaking at the dialogue, he said he is in favour of reinstating the old Shura Council, which was dissolved in July 2013. "I approve that this second house be recreated under the name of the Senate with the stipulation that it gains complete supervisory and legislative powers," he said, adding that "the recreation of this Senate also requires that the number of members of the House of Representatives be considerably reduced." Search Keywords: Short link: Reporter Lyndsay Jones is a reporter covering education at The News-Gazette. Her email is ljones@news-gazette, and you can follow her on Twitter (@__lyndsayjones). The governor of Daqahliya discussed with the French officials the process of preparing the technical studies required for establishing a subway system in the capital of The governor of Daqahliya in the Nile Delta, Kamal Sharobim, discussed on Wednesday with experts from Frances public transport engineering company SYSTRA, proposals to set up a subway system in the governorate's capital, Mansoura, state news agency MENA reported. The talks were also attended by representatives of Egypt's National Authority for Tunnels. The two sides discussed proposals to tackle Mansoura's traffic problem, including setting up a metro system covering a total distance of 27 kilometres, a tram network, and a monorail system. Officials discussed the process of preparing the technical studies required to build the metro system. The project would be financed by the French government. Daqahliya is one of Egypt's most populated governorates, home to more than 6.5 million people, according to figures released by state statistics agency CAPMAS in early 2018. The population of the Greater Mansoura is estimated at one million. Sharobim reviewed the results of studies conducted by the French group, including the project's total cost, ahead of submitting them to President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi for consideration. If approved, this will be Egypt's second metro network after the Cairo underground, which began operating in late 1987 and now serves more than 3.5 million commuters daily. Search Keywords: Short link: AT least 300 more people are feared dead in Chimanimani and Chipinge due to the devastating effects of Cyclone Idai that swept through the country over the weekend, leaving thousands homeless and property damaged. This came amid reports that most Cabinet ministers had been commandeered to join President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is already in Manicaland province to assess damage caused by the deadly cyclone. All ministers who were selected to be in the Cabinet taskforce on disaster management are going to Manicaland and many others are also going, although a few will remain behind. We are going. Many of us are going to Mutare. Some are already in Mutare, but some will be following in the morning, Information deputy minister Energy Mutodi said last night. Briefing journalists at a post-Cabinet meeting in Harare yesterday, Local Government minister July Moyo said although the confirmed death toll still stood at 98, information from villagers in some parts of Rusitu in Chimanimani indicated that at least 300 bodies were seen being swept into Mozambique. He said government had resolved to send the army to retrieve them. We understand there are bodies which are floating. Some are floating all the way into Mozambique, as you know Rusitu is near Mozambique and we hear that the residents of Mozambique have been calling some of our people saying we have seen bodies here, Moyo said. We believe those bodies are coming from Zimbabwe. The total number, we were told they could be 100, some are saying they could be 300. Chimanimani district and some parts of Chipinge, which are near the border with Mozambique, bore the brunt of Cyclone Idai and have been cut off from the rest of the country, as rescue teams still battle to reach marooned people after roads and bridges were washed away. The Local Government minister said due to the poor state of the roads, soldiers were now conducting rescue operations on foot. The number of casualties has been a very fast moving figure. And I can tell you why. Most of the casualties come from either collapsed buildings or the mudslides and people are buried under the mud and villagers are excavating their loved ones using shovels and things like that, he said. Now this 98, I am sure again is the last that we have. Let me combine with the issue of 300, that number is not a confirmed number. Yes, the people in the area, the people in the Kopa area that I talk about, Rusitu area, they are the ones who started calling saying we have bodies here. At first, they said we have 100. Then they said we hear from Mozambique that there are Zimbabwean bodies that are floating there. But until the army and the relief agencies go to that area to start counting and burying the people, the figure will continue changing. Government has been accused of failing to prevent the high number of casualties, with some saying it was known beforehand that a cyclone was heading towards Zimbabwe and authorities ought to have evacuated those who were in low-lying areas. Moyo said government could not have forced people to leave their homes for safety, but admitted that more could have been done to save the communities. I can tell you that all of us are perplexed that with the whole information that went out before this cyclone, why do we have so many casualties? he said. Is it a failure by government to inform or is it a failure by communities or is it a failure by the people to believe in what is being said? I think the President (Emmerson Mnangagwa) said last night (Monday) these are lessons that we must learn. Cyclones have occurred before and people have died. A few weeks before this cyclone occurred, we already knew that the intensity was going to affect those areas. Moyo also blamed a recent earthquake in December last year, saying it compounded the situation since the ground was already weak before the cyclone hit. The 5,5 magnitude earthquakes epicentre was 53km from Chipinge on the border with Mozambique. Earlier, Moyo had told Parliament that Chimanimani urban, Ngangu and Kopa near Rusitu along the Mozambican border, as well as Chikukwa were the worst affected, adding that Buhera, Bikita, Masvingo, Zaka and Gutu also bore the brunt of the cyclone. In a ministerial statement on Cyclone Idai, Moyo said most bridges through Ngangu, Chikukwa to Rusitu had been washed away. He said the only way to navigate through was Wengezi Road through Tanganda and Birchenough Bridge Road to Mutengeni, Chipinge and then to Chimanimani. He said after Skyline, army officers had to walk to Ngandu, Chimanimani, where they buried 45 bodies. At Kopa, 147 people were missing and now we hear some of the dead bodies are floating in the rivers, and even villagers in Mozambique are calling saying more bodies are floating to their side. Rusitu has become a big pool, he said. At St Charles Lwanga Secondary School, when children were eating, a mudslide came and 50 of them were trapped in the dining hall for two days. Two of them and a worker died and we could not rescue them. At Chipinge 175 children were rescued at schools by the army. Moyo said three Air Force of Zimbabwe helicopters had been dispatched, including a Mars helicopter hired by the Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company to rescue its workers, but is now rescuing villagers. He said food handouts had been moved to Chipinge and Skyline, adding that the army would carry some food to affected areas on foot. Moyo revealed that Finance minister Mthuli Ncube had released $50 million, with more than $30 million to go towards repair of bridges and the rest to Health, Energy and Local Government ministries. We are giving warning to the people in Mutoko, Chikomba and Mvuma right now because the epicentre of the cyclone is moving to Malawi and we think those people will be affected, he said. Asked why government had only released three helicopters and had not deployed police officers and why villagers and schoolchildren in low-lying areas had not been evacuated before the storm hit, Moyo admitted that government should have ordered schools in Chimanimani to close before Cyclone Idai hit. If we had closed schools, we would have saved lives, he said. Moyo also claimed that the affected St Charles Lwanga students had received counselling services, adding that the police were also on the ground. President Mnangagwa has said Government will engage experts to investigate an earth tremor that was felt in Chimanimani before Cyclone Idai hit the district last week, resulting in massive loss of lives and destruction of property. The President was speaking during his tour of Chimanimani to assess the extent of the damage caused by the cyclone and meet with the affected communities to evaluate their immediate needs. He was accompanied by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, Defence Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Monica Mutsvangwa and various other ministers, service chiefs and some members of the Zanu-PF Central Committee. Speaking at Mutare Aerodrome on arrival from Chimanimani yesterday, where he toured the affected areas, the President said it was evident that an unexplained weather phenomenon had struck the community just before the cyclone. We visited the area and saw that infrastructure in relation to roads has been seriously damaged and there is destruction of almost every single bridge you can think of and the roads themselves have been washed off by the cyclone, he said. But beyond that, it is quite revealing that some areas which we visited had landslides before the rains came and the local people say there was some sound which came earlier on and a lot of mud began falling from the mountains. Rains began falling two hours later. So, you can see that there is some other phenomenon which we are not quite clear about. President Mnangagwa said some of the areas he had visited were littered with huge rocks that villagers were not clear of their origins. Mutsindo wavakanzwa uchirira ndobva makomo atanga kusundidzira ivhu richipisa richiyerera nematombo asingawanikwi munzvimbo iyoyo akatozara mahombe ayifamba achitswanya dzimba, achitswanya zvinhu zvakawanda asi asiri matombo anowanikwa munzvimbo iyoyo, he said. Matombo akabva pasi hatisi kuziva kuti zvinorevei, asi tichabvunza nyanzvi kuti zvinorevei. Mvura yakazouya kwatova imwe nguva. Yakazouya mvura ikatutsirawo kuparadza asi zvinhu zvanga zvatoparara kare. President Mnangagwa said some of the bodies that were being discovered in Mozambique might have been swept away from the Rusitu area where a whole village had been swept away. In Rusitu, there is an area where three rivers meet, an entire village was washed away, he said. I think that the bodies which are now being found in Mozambique came from there and because of the passage of time some bodies have been damaged. We still dont have access to the Mozambican side, but our military personnel are on their way there. Cyclone Idai, which has been described as one of the worst disasters recorded in Southern Africa has affected more than 2,6 million people in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi. In Mozambique, President Filipe Nyusi on Tuesday said the cyclone has killed 200 people. The death toll in Malawi was at 56, while in Zimbabwe 104 deaths have so far been recorded, with the numbers likely to increase as more bodies are being discovered. Earlier yesterday at Skyline Junction, President Mnangagwa assured the Cyclone Idai survivors that Government would work flat out to ensure that their welfare is catered for. President Mnangagwa and his entourage visited Ngangu and Kopa areas that were also hard hit by the cyclone. We are here with Vice President Chiwenga to see for ourselves what happened after we gathered that disaster has struck here, he said. As your Government, we want to assure you that we have enough food for everyone. We know that you lost everything and we are mobilising enough resources to make sure that your lives return to normal. We will avail clothes, blankets and all your medicinal needs. President Mnangagwa said the response for their distress call was overwhelming both locally and from international organisations. Our teams are working flat out to ensure that all the secured goods are brought here timeously, he said. We do not want to hear cases of people suffering here yet stocks of donated goods will be piled in warehouses in Mutare. Our ministers are on the ground co-ordinating the speedy distribution of all sourced goods. All those who were injured will receive the necessary care, while the deceased will be accorded decent burials. President Mnangagwa hailed the Zimbabwe National Army for working round the clock to clear all blockages on roads leading to the most affected areas. He assured the gathering that all damaged infrastructure would be repaired. Your road network was badly affected and we will ensure that our engineers are on the ground running and ensure that the damaged bridges are repaired, said President Mnangagwa. Your local school, St Charles Lwanga, was aslo badly damaged, but we will chip in and assist in its refurbishment. Your children should have better education and we will work to improve the infrastructure. They should not lose out because their school was damaged by the natural calamity. President Mnangagwa said a new rural housing development plan would soon be rolled out to ensure that better houses were built. He said there was need to have properly constructed houses, as haphazardly constructed houses had contributed to the significant loss of lives. We have lost lives due to sub-standard construction of houses, he said. Our housing construction should change forthwith and Government will also assist in this regard. We want stronger structures to save lives. President Mnangagwa said Government would ensure that there was enough medication to treat all water-borne diseases that were likely to breakout because of the heavy rains. (Newser) Welcome to Britain's hell day. Facing a no-deal Brexit in only nine days, Prime Minister Theresa May called Wednesday for a delay as some lawmakers sought her resignation and others engaged in a feverish blame-fest, the Guardian reports. "Of this I am absolutely sure: you the public have had enough," May said in a televised address. "You're tired of the infighting. You're tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows. Tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit, when you have real concerns about your children's schools, our national health service, knife crime." Essentially blaming members of parliament, she concluded, "I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide." story continues below And decide they apparently must, because President of the European Council Donald Tusk tentatively approved May's June 30 extension request as long as UK parliament signs off on May's negotiated Brexit dealwhich British lawmakers have twice rejected, CNN notes. At an angry meeting of senior politicians that saw Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn walk out, at least two MPs suggested May needs to resign. And May herself indicated she might do so without a June 30 parliament-approved Brexit deal. "I have never been in a meeting like it, the atmosphere was extraordinary," says one MP. "She looked like Alice in Wonderland when she drank that potion, shrinking in her chair." As it stands, May will make her case to the European Council in Brussels on Thursday. (Read more Brexit stories.) (Newser) As some communities along the Missouri River start to shift their focus to flood recovery after a late-winter storm, residents in two Iowa cities are stuck in crisis mode after their treatment plants shut down and left them in need of fresh water, the AP reports. Tanker trucks from the Iowa National Guard and a private company are hauling water into Hamburg and Glenwood, said Lucinda Parker, a spokeswoman with Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Many evacuated from flooded areas in the southwestern part of the state are staying in shelters or with family and friends in the wake of the flooding and water struggles it has caused. "The water is starting to go down in communities and they're looking at how they're going to start their recovery," Parker said Wednesday. story continues below Trucks are hauling about 300,000 gallons per day to Glenwood's water treatment plant from the neighboring cities of Red Oak and Shenandoah, according to the state Department of Natural Resources. Grocery store chains Hy-Vee and Fareway also have provided truckloads of bottled water. Mike Wells, superintendent of the Hamburg Community School District, said one of the biggest concerns about having no fresh water is staying clean. The school district has coordinated providing buses for residents to ride 25 miles to Shenandoah or 10 miles to Sidney to shower. A local ministerial society has been picking up residents' laundry at the school district, taking it to Shenandoah to wash it, and returning it. "These are the best people," Wells said. "There's no despair. There's no giving up." (Read more flooding stories.) (Newser) Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin says he deliberately exposed his children to chickenpox so they would catch the highly contagious disease and become immune. During an interview on Bowling Green radio station WKCT, Bevin said his children were "miserable for a few days" after contracting chickenpox but "they all turned out fine." "Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox," the Republican said. "They got the chickenpox on purpose because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. They had it as children." Bevin and his wife, Glenna, have nine children, four adopted. They were all born after the chickenpox vaccine became available in 1995 and so-called "pox parties" became rare. story continues below Public health authorities strongly discourage the practice of deliberately exposing children to chickenpox. It's "not an example for any of us," Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Nashville's Vanderbilt University Medical Center tells the AP. "We should vaccinate all our children. It's a great triumph of public health in the United States. Let's not take a step backward." Bevin said parents worried about chickenpox should have their children vaccinated. But he suggested that the government shouldn't mandate the vaccination. "In many instances, those vaccinations make great sense," he said. "But for some people, and for some parents, for some reason they choose otherwise." Kentucky requires that children entering kindergarten be vaccinated for chickenpox, but parents may seek religious exemptions or provide proof that a child already had the disease. (Read more chickenpox stories.) (Newser) Something highly unusual happened at the Supreme Court on Wednesday: Justice Clarence Thomas asked a question. The Hill reports that spectators were shocked when the notoriously silent justice asked a questionand a follow-up during an argument on racial discrimination in jury selection. The court was hearing the case of Curtis Flowers, who was sentenced to death in his sixth trial for four 1996 murders in Mississippi. His lawyers say a prosecutor unjustly dismissed black jurors, but in his first question in three years, Thomas took the argument in a different direction and asked if Flowers' defense team had struck any jurors, the Washington Post reports. When attorney Sheri Lynn Johnson said they had, Thomas asked what race they were. story continues below Flowers' attorney told Thomas that the jurors excluded had been white, but added that the question before the court was the motivation of prosecutor Doug Evans, not Flowers. Thomas last asked a question from the bench in 2016, and three years isn't that long an interval for him: Before the 2016 question, he had been silent for more than a decade. He has given different reasons over the years for his silence, once saying that he felt self-conscious because of his Georgia accent, but has more recently said that he doesn't ask questions out of "simple courtesy" to other justices, the New York Times reports. (Read more Clarence Thomas stories.) Egypts Court of Cassation, the countrys highest appeals court, has upheld prison terms against 66 people convicted of committing various violent offenses during the dispersal of a 2013 sit-in by supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. The court rejected on Thursday appeals by the 66 defendants, upholding prison sentences ranging from three to 15 years to life - 25 years. The defendants are among 262 people who were sentenced by a criminal court in January 2018. They faced charges including terrorizing and endangering the lives of the public, the murder of two policemen, attempted murder of a conscript and others, and vandalism during the dispersal. Seventeen people at the time were sentenced to life in prison, 223 were given 15 years and another 22 were handed three years; the court acquitted 115 others accused in the case. Today's verdicts are final and cannot be appealed. Search Keywords: Short link: (Newser) President Trump continued his feud with the late John McCain Wednesday, telling an audience at a tank factory in Ohio that he "wasn't a fan" of the senatorand complaining that he was never thanked for approving his funeral seven months ago. "I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which as president I had to approve," Trump said. "I don't care about this, I didn't get a thank-you, that's OK." Trump who was not invited to the funeralapproved the military flight that carried McCain's body from Arizona to Washington, but it was Congress that gave him the rare honor of lying in state at the Capitol, the BBC reports. The president began his latest attacks on McCain with tweets over the weekend. story continues below In Ohio, Trump also complained that McCain "didn't get the job done for our great vets" and said he pushed a war in the Middle East "so hard," the Washington Post reports. The president's attacks on the highly respected McCain have been criticized by lawmakers including Sens. Mitt Romney and Johnny Isakson, reports the New York Times. "It's deplorable what he said," Isakson, a Georgia Republican, said Wednesday. "It will be deplorable seven months from now if he says it again, and I will continue to speak out." Daughter Meghan McCain said Trump's remarks Wednesday were a "bizarre new low," and said her father would find it "hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death as well." (McCain's widow has been receiving hateful messages.) (Newser) The mother was 35 weeks along when advanced ultrasound imaging was used to investigate a suspected liver cyst in her fetus. It turned out to be something else entirely: a baby within a baby, a twin within her twin. The Colombian case of "fetus-in-fetu," described by the New York Times, is highly rare, believed to happen in just one in 500,000 births. Diagnosing it during pregnancy is even rarer still. The doctor who did so, Dr. Miguel Parra-Saavedra, says the imaging allowed him to see that what he expected to appear as a cyst was in fact a much smaller fetus who had an umbilical cord of its own that attached to the intestine of the larger fetus. story continues below The 33-year-old mom gave birth to a daughter named Itzamara via C-section two weeks later, over fears the girl's abdominal organs were being squashed by what Parra-Saavedra says was her identical twin. That two-inch twin was removed using laparoscopic surgery the following day. Parra-Saavedra said there was no brain or heart though a head and limbs were discernable. Read the full Times article for more on how the doctors believe the condition occurs. (An unborn twin was removed from a 15-year-old in 2016.) (Newser) Before the US stepped up sanctions on Nicolas Maduro's government, Citigroup struck a deal with Venezuelaand with part of that deal having expired, the bank plans to sell several tons of gold Venezuela had offered as collateral in what Reuters calls a "setback" for Maduro. His government has been using so-called "gold swaps" since 2014, using its gold reserves to get its hands on cash. In the 2015 Citigroup deal, Venezuela took out a $1.6 billion loan, and sources say $1.1 billion of it came due March 11. Since Venezuela has not paid up, the bank plans to sell the gold it had been holding as a guarantee, which reportedly has a market value of around $1.358 billion. The extra $258 million, representing the difference in price between when the gold was acquired and now, will be put in a New York bank account; Bloomberg reports Maduro won't have access. story continues below The gold swaps were started as revenue from oil decreased, making it hard for Venezuela to get hard currency, but over the past two years, as the country's economic situation has worsened and financial sanctions have been imposed by various nations in an attempt to oust Maduro from power, Venezuela has had a hard time getting its collateral back and the country is struggling with shrinking gold reserves. Last month, sources told Bloomberg Citi was in talks with the US Treasury Department about how to handle the matter, and said that Juan Guaidothe opposition leader recognized by most Western nations as Venezuela's legitimate presidentwas asking Citi not to take possession of the gold. Reuters reports that his team's attempt to negotiate a 120-day extension of the gold repurchase deadline with Citi was unsuccessful, but Bloomberg notes he may eventually be given the extra $258 million. (Read more Venezuela stories.) (Newser) ISIS is down to its last scrap of territory and it will be "gone by tonight," President Trump declared Wednesday, showing reporters at the White House two maps of Syria and Iraq. "I brought this out for youthis is a map of everything in the red, this was on election night, in 2016, everything red is ISIS," he said, pointing to a map with large areas in red. Pointing to a second map, he said: "When I took it over it was a mess, now on the bottom it's the exact same. There is no red," he said, ABC reports. "In fact there is a tiny spot which will be gone by tonight." At a tank factory in Ohio later in the day, Trump brought the maps out again, saying the "caliphate is gone as of tonight," the AP reports. story continues below Trump has announced the imminent defeat of ISIS before, but the battle for the tiny enclave of Baghouz has dragged on for weeks longer than expected. Authorities say the offensive was slowed down when an unexpectedly large number of civilians fled the villageup to 30,000, most of them believed to be the families of militants. The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have now taken control of the village, though some fighters are still believed to be holed up with women and children in a sliver of land by a river. With that area still controlled by ISIS, "it would be weird to expect an announcement in the next day," an SDF official tells the New York Times. (At the Ohio factory, Trump continued his feud with the late John McCain.) (Newser) A bus driver in northern Italy abducted 51 children and their school chaperones Wednesday, threatening the hostages' lives for 40 minutes and setting the bus on fire at a police blockade. Officers from the national police force, the Carabinieri, broke windows at the back of the bus to reach the passengers and got all of them out without serious injuries before flames destroyed the vehicle, authorities say. The driver was apprehended and treated for burns. Prosecutors described him as a 47-year-old Italian citizen of Senegalese origin and said he told authorities he wanted to vindicate Europe-bound migrants who have died in the Mediterranean Sea but did not plan to hurt anyone, the AP reports. story continues below However, prosecutors said the suspect, identified as Ousseynou Sy, made preparations that showed his actions were premeditated, such as buying a canister of gasoline and restraints. He also sent a video to friends indicating plans for a bold action and with the message, "Africa, Rise up," they said. Sy is being investigated on suspicion of kidnapping, intention to commit a massacre, arson, and resisting law enforcement, with terrorism as an aggravating circumstance since the event caused panic. Police say the driver, threatening to spill gas and set the bus ablaze, confiscated phones from middle school children and ordered chaperones to bind their hands. "No one will survive today," he allegedly told the bus passengers. One student says he managed to call the police after pulling off the restraints and picking up a phone that had fallen to the ground. (Read more Italy stories.) (Newser) New Zealand has brought in stronger gun laws less than a week after the worst mass shooting in the country's history. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced sweeping changes to the country's gun laws Thursday, including a ban on military-style semi-automatics and assault rifles like the one used in last week's Christchurch mosque shootings, the New Zealand Herald reports. Ardern says there will be a gun buyback scheme and those who already own such weapons will have to turn them in, but they will be offered "reasonable compensation," the Guardian reports. The New Zealand government believes the scheme will cost up to $150 million. story continues below There are believed to be up to 1.5 million guns in New Zealand, which has a population of around 5 million. Officials estimate there are 13,500 semi-automatic weapons in circulation, but they can't say how many assault rifles might be out there. "Our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too," Ardern said. "For many people, you will now be in unlawful possession of your firearms," Police Commissioner Mike Bush said, advising gun owners to contact police for instructions instead of simply turning up at police stations with their weapons. Authorities say that as with a similar ban Australia introduced in 1996, exceptions will be made for farmers who need the weapons for pest control, the BBC reports. (Read more New Zealand stories.) (Newser) What constitutes excessive barking? A wealthy New Jersey suburb may soon be able to tell you. Saddle River, one of many municipalities to ban excessive noise by dogs, will soon vote on whether to define what that means: A proposed ordinance would forbid continuous barking or yelping over 20 minutes between 7am and 10pm, or over 15 minutes any other time of day, with fines ranging from $100 to $1,000, reports the New York Times. The proposal comes after multiple complaints to police about dogs belonging to the doctor who now lives in the mansion formerly owned by Russell Simmons. "All I know is, it is my right to have dogs, and dogs bark," says owner William Focazio, who has received at least seven summonses over the last year in relation to his two German shepherds and Belgian shepherd. story continues below He says the dogs, including a police-trained K-9, were purchased for protection following a break-in, but are sweet, and only bark when there's a visitor or intruder. "They don't moo," he quips to the Times. The neighbor who lives behind Focazio counters that family members are roused from their sleep at all hours by barking. At NPR, Steve Inskeep quipped that the suburb should be sure to consider "some fine points" of the proposed ordinance. "What if you don't like your neighbors, so you train your dog to bark exactly 19 minutes, then briefly pause?" In terms of Focazio's dogs, the whole situation might ultimately be moot: Per the Times, his 20,000-square-foot home is on the market for $14.75 million. Meanwhile, Tucson Weekly reports Oro Valley, Ariz., recently cracked down on excessive animal noise after a similar dispute. (Read more New Jersey stories.) (Newser) In 1941, the Gestapo stole more than 160 paintings from a Jewish couple, who'd fled Nazi-annexed Austria. Hitler's photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, nabbed "View of a Dutch Square" by Jan van der Heyden, but he didn't have long to enjoy it. Retrieved by the Allies after the end of World War II, the painting was sent to the Bavarian government in Germany. But Gottlieb and Mathilde Kraus would never see it again. As revealed in 2016, the painting was sold for $75 to Hoffmann's daughter, also Hitler's secretary, who went on to sell it to St. Victor's Cathedral in Xanten, Germany, for "about 54 times as much," per the New York Times. But "it is never too late to grant a measure of justice and compassion," American John Graykowski, a great-grandson of the Krauses, tells the Art Newspaper, which notes the work is finally going home. (See the painting here.) story continues below St. Victor's Cathedral, pictured in the painting, has agreed to surrender it to Kraus heirs on Thursday. "I'm the first one in my family to actually see this painting in 80 years, since 1938," Graykowski tells the Times. Church officials say they were previously unaware of the painting's messy past. Still, Graykowski wonders why it took eight years of negotiations with the Commission for Looted Art in Europe "since the first time we presented the incontrovertible evidence and that it belonged to my family." He plans to donate the painting to a Jewish museum in Vienna, per Time. Meanwhile, the commission is working to return other paintings stolen from the Krauses. "This is only the seventh painting to be returned to them," says founder Anne Webber. Per the Art Newspaper, the other six paintings were returned by Austria in 2002 and 2004. (Read more looted art stories.) (Newser) The Conway marriage saga continues: On Thursday, Kellyanne Conway went on Fox Business, where the White House adviser took issue with her husband's very public criticism of her boss, President Trump. "My husband ... has been very critical of the president publicly, which is unlike him," she said, per Mediaite. "Hes traditionally been a very private person. In 2016, which was known as the year of the tweet, George Conway sent exactly zero tweets. So this is new. And what also is new is not supporting the agenda of the president and my work there." She pointed out that when George turned down a job at the Justice Department two years ago, he put out a statement declaring his support for the president. She went on to say she appreciates Trump defending her amid his spat with her husband, but added, "I was raised in a household of strong Italian Catholic women that taught me you air grievances like that in private, so it is very surprising to see it be so public." story continues below She talked about her family making the decision together to move to DC for her job, and said that ultimately, "I don't talk much about this publicly because my first duty is and will always be the protection of" the couple's four children. "But does your husband know that?" host Maria Bartiromo asked. Conway deferred questions about George to George himself, but noted, "I think the media is getting into a very dangerous area ... in discussing people's marriages." On Wednesday, she had taken the president's side a bit more explicitly, telling Politico that for months Trump ignored her husband's attacks "out of respect for me," but asked, "you think he shouldnt respond when somebody, a non-medical professional accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?" (To get caught up on the George Conway-Trump spat: Conway called Trump mentally ill, Trump called Conway a "total loser," Conway fired off a bunch of tweets in response.) (Newser) President Trump said Thursday that it's time for the US to recognize Israel's control over the disputed Golan Heights, signaling a shift in policy ahead of the Israeli prime minister's visit next week to the White House. The administration has been considering recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, the AP reports. Last week, in its annual human rights report, the State Department dropped the phrase "Israeli-occupied" from the Golan Heights section, instead calling it "Israeli-controlled." On Thursday, Trump tweeted, "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Minutes later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted: "At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump!" story continues below Trump's announcement came as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Jerusalem, lauding warm ties with Israel and promising to step up pressure on Iran. Pompeo's words gave a public boost to the Israeli leader at the height of a tight re-election campaign. Standing together in Jerusalem, neither Netanyahu nor Pompeo mentioned Israel's heated April 9 election. But Netanyahu, facing a challenge from a popular former military chief and reeling from a series of corruption allegations, has sought to focus attention on his foreign policy record and strong ties with Trump. Netanyahu thanked Pompeo for the administration's strong stance against Iran, which Israel regards as an existential threat. Pompeo also paid a solemn visit Thursday to Jerusalem's Western Wall with Netanyahu, an apparent sign of support for Israel's control of the contested city. He's the highest-ranking American official to tour the holy site with any Israeli leader. (Read more Golan Heights stories.) At least eight workers were killed and five others were injured on Thursday in an explosion at a phosphorus fertiliser warehouse in Egypts Ain El-Sokhna, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported. The explosion occurred during an operational test of one of the ammonia tanks inside a compound for fertilizers and chemicals in Ain El-Sokhna, 120 kilometers east of Cairo. Two of the injured are in critical condition, according to news reports. Ambulances and fire department vehicles rushed to the explosion site, and the injured have been taken to Suez General Hospital. The Egyptian Ministry of Health has not yet issued a statement about the incident. Jordan Peele dares everyone to look at the horrors of 'Us' Let us know what you're seeing and hearing around the community. Submit here The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574. Community Perspective Send Community Perspective submissions by mail (P.O. Box 70710, Fairbanks AK 99707) or via email (letters@newsminer.com). 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The Daily News-Miner reserves the right to edit or reject letters without consulting the writer. Police on Thursday arrested a 14-year-old junior high school boy on suspicion of attempted murder after he stabbed a classmate at their school in Saijo, Ehime Prefecture. According to police, the incident occurred at around 8:30 a.m. in the school gym. Witnesses said the boy approached the victim, also 14, from behind and stabbed him in the back of the head with a fruit knife, Sankei Shimbun reported. Teachers subdued the boy while police were called. The victim was taken to hospital but no information about his condition has been released yet. Inaugurated by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, the Arab-African Youth Platform in Aswan was attended by 1,500 young people. During the opening, Al-Sisi stressed the important role young people can play in overcoming the challenges facing Arab and African countries. Africa is home to the worlds youngest population and it is growing rapidly, according to the United Nations Commission of Africa (UNCA). A 2017 UNCA study revealed that 15 to 24 year-olds accounted for 19.4 per cent of the total population, and those under 15 a staggering 41 per cent. Arab and African youth have an optimal chance to communicate together to build the future of their countries, said Al-Sisi during the inaugural session World Youth Forum: New Horizon. Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in Aswan Al-Sisi addressed the platform attendees saying youth are our priority. The government provides them with care and support we all aspire to a better future for the African continent. Al-Sisi noted that the platform was a continuation of earlier efforts to foster dialogue. An Arab-African summit was convened by President Anwar Al-Sadat in Egypt in 1977, he said. This was followed by a meeting in the Libyan Sirte in 2010, in Kuwait in 2013 and in 2016 it was convened in Malabo. The next summit is planned for the Saudi capital Riyadh. Al-Sisi traced Arab-African links to a shared history of fighting against colonialism, of which the Non-Aligned Movement of the 1960s was a product. Egypt was looking forward to closer cooperation and coordination to promote joint African action during its chairmanship of the African Union, Al-Sisi told delegates to the platform. Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in Aswan The conference ended with a raft of recommendations to improve young peoples access to knowledge, education and health. Topping the recommendations was opening up the Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) to African and Arab researchers. The EKB is an online library with two portals providing learning resources and tools for educators, researchers, students and the general public. The platform also saw the launch of an initiative to treat one million African patients with hepatitis C, capitalising on Egypts success in combating the virus. Egypt is taking huge steps to eradicate the virus, thanks to affordable, domestically produced drugs. In September Egypt launched a campaign to all Egyptians for the virus, hypertension and diabetes. The platform recommended that African and Arab residents of Egypt be included in the campaign. Other recommendations included establishing a committee of young Arabs and Africans to explore opportunities for integration and setting up a working group to examine ways to tackle extremism and counter-terrorism. During his speech to participants Al-Sisi reiterated Egypts determination to combat all forms of terrorism and extremism. He referred to this weeks attack on two mosques in New Zealand, underlining the international dimensions of the problem. Fifty people died in the attacks, including four Egyptians. It is regrettable that the Arab region and African continent are the scene of the lions share of conflicts. We live in a region that is being eviscerated by conflicts that threaten to destroy the future and obliterate the past, he said. Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi in Aswan The president also noted the importance of increasing African Union efforts to contain and prevent conflicts and develop mechanisms for reconstruction and development in post-conflict situations. Al-Sisi attended several sessions and panels during the course of the two-day platform. During the closing session he honoured young people from Egypt, the Arab world and Africa who had distinguished themselves in the military, media, telecommunications, architecture, IT, social media and sports. The platforms last day included free tours for Arab and African delegates in Aswan. *A version of this article appears in print in the 21 March, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: New horizons Search Keywords: Short link: The Independent National Electoral Commission has released the schedule for the supplementary elections which will hold in Bauchi St... The Independent National Electoral Commission has released the schedule for the supplementary elections which will hold in Bauchi State on Saturday, 23rd March 2019. The schedule, obtained from the INEC office in Bauchi State, indicated that the re-run will hold in 36 Polling Units in 29 Registration Areas (wards) scattered across 15 of the 20 Local Government Areas of Bauchi State. It further showed that a total of 22, 641 registered voters are expected to participate in the exercise. Recall that the Returning Officer of the elections in Bauchi State, Prof. Kyari Mohammed, had early hours of Monday, 11th March 2019, declared the Governorship election in the state as inconclusive. According to him, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Sen. Bala Mohammed got 469, 512 votes to lead his closest rival, the incumbent Governor, Mohammed Abubakar of the All Progressives Congress, who got 465, 453 votes. He said that because the margin of lead between the two candidates is 4, 059 votes, having earlier cancelled the entire votes of one of the three Local Government Areas Speaker Yakubu Dogara represents in the House of Representatives, Tafawa Balewa, which has 139, 240 registered voters, a winner cannot be announced. Mohammed who said that the number of cancelled votes in the elections even without that of Tafawa Balewa LGA is 45, 312, therefore declared that based on Section 26 (53) of the Electoral Act, the elections in Bauchi State is inconclusive, and directed INEC to conduct re-run elections in the affected LGAs within 21 days. But an investigative committee led by the National Commissioner, Information and Voter Education, sent from the INEC Headquarters, Festus Okoye, during its three days assignment in the state, discovered that the cancelled votes in Ningi LGA were 2, 533 and not 25, 330 during the collation. The INEC Headquarters, following the recommendation of the Okoye-led Committee, directed that the error of the 22, 797 cancelled votes in the LGA be corrected and deducted from the 45, 240 votes earlier announced. The breakdown of the areas affected and the number of registered voters according to the document, showed that: Alkaleri -1 ward 1 PU 1,190 reg. voters Bogoro 1 ward 1 PU 1,130 reg. voters Darazo 3 wards- 4 PUs 2,746 reg. voters Dass 1 ward 1 PU 872 reg. voters Gamawa 1 ward 1 PU 405 reg. voters Ganjuwa 2wards -2PUs 1,306 reg. voters Giade 4 wards 4PUs -1, 899 reg. voters Itas Gadau 1ward-3PUs 2,252 reg. voters Jamaare 2wards 2PUs 829 reg. voters Katagum 2 wards -3PUs 2,055 reg. voters Kirfi 2 wards 2PUs 1,111 reg. voters Misau 1 ward 1 PU 1, 007 reg. voters Ningi 4 wards 5PUs 2, 533 reg. voters Shira 1 ward 1 PU 438 reg. voters Participants at the Arab-African Youth Platform highlighted the factors binding them together Geography, a common history and a plethora of natural resources should encourage integration and cooperation between Arab and African countries, concluded participants at this weeks Arab-African Youth Platform in Aswan. The Nile Valley: The Pathway for Arab-African Integration, a roundtable held as part of the platform, addressed the obstacles in the way of greater integration and possible ways to overcome them. Heba Al-Beshbishi, a specialist in African affairs, said that though the challenges are grave they include terrorism, security issues and illegal migration the fact that they are shared should be an incentive for Arab and African countries to integrate. Political instability that often threatens the nation state and has led to civil war in some African countries requires urgent action, said Abdel-Latif Farouk, a parliamentary researcher in African affairs. The gravity of the challenges requires more effort on the part of all states, he told the roundtable. Rashed Al-Shamsi, deputy speaker of the Arab Parliamentary Union, stressed the importance of structuring legislation to create a more hospitable climate for agreement and cooperation. President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi pointed out that Arab-African rapprochement is not a new idea. Arab-African summits were convened in Egypt in 1977, in Sirte, Libya in 2010, in Kuwait in 2013 and in Malabo in 2016, and a summit is scheduled in Saudi Arabia later this year. What the summits have revealed, added Al-Sisi, is that common factors binding Arab and African states outweigh the factors that divide. A crisis in one country affects the stability of the whole continent. The stability of every country should be our common goal... We should invest in the stability of each and every country before we talk about investment among countries, he said. Empowering youth and women is an essential component of the battle to beat instability, and empowerment should be generated by the political leadership who can transform it from desire to reality. More than 60 per cent of the population of Africa is below 40 years of age, a fact that Al-Sisi said necessitates major vocational training schemes, as well as innovative ways to encourage young people to take more active roles in their countries. Al-Sisi discussed efforts exerted via the Young Leaders Initiative and the National Academy for Training Youth, saying both were motivated by a strong belief in the abilities of young people. Hamaza Attarawna, a local councillor in Jordan, explained how Jordans decision to reduce the age of candidates to 25 had allowed more young people himself included to stand in elections. Jakiza Alvera, a former researcher in a project supporting African-European partnership, focused on the cultural obstacles women face in seeking empowerment. She said women in many countries have limited access to education and fewer job opportunities than men. They face discrimination in the workplace, and are often disparaged by male colleagues. Circumcision is the clearest evidence of the way social traditions weigh heaviest on women, she said. We need to face up to these problems in a realistic way. Tarek Babakr Abdel-Salam, a young member of Sudans Conference Party, focused on the special relationship between Egypt and Sudan. This platform is held on the Nile, in Aswan. Both the river and the town embody the unique elements that bind Egypt and Sudan in a relationship built over thousands of years, he said. The two countries, he added, share a common border, language and history. Agreeing with Abdel-Salam, President Al-Sisi added that Egyptian-Sudanese relations could serve as an example for relations between African states and Arab-African countries. Al-Sisi concluded by saying Arab-African integration needs diligent work from all parties and requires improvements to infrastructure, including establishing a network of land and railway links. He recommended that papers be prepared for the next Arab-African summit in Riyadh focusing on creating a common Arab-African market, ways to provide funds for start-up projects and the best ways to establish transport links and link electric grids. The sessions, workshops and roundtable discussions held as part of the platform were an attempt to bridge the gap between young leaders and senior policy and decision-makers. The Arab-African Youth Platform was originally mooted at the World Youth Forum held in Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2018. President Al-Sisi subsequently designated Aswan as the capital of youth. *A version of this article appears in print in the 21 March, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Umbrella for Arab-African integration Search Keywords: Short link: Leaders and elders from Borno State have called on former Senate Leader, Mohammed Ali Ndume, to join the race for the office of the Sen... Leaders and elders from Borno State have called on former Senate Leader, Mohammed Ali Ndume, to join the race for the office of the Senate President of the ninth National Assembly. Speaking under the aegis of Concerned Borno Citizens, the group comprised of former governors, former Ministers and other politicians said Ndume was a loyal party man and possessed the right quality and experience to lead the Assembly. The former Nigerian Ambassador to Pakistan, Dauda Danladi, who addressed journalists on behalf of the group in Abuja on Thursday said Ndumes Senate Presidency would ensure rapid development for the country. Danladi said, At this critical moment of our quest for credible leadership, we give glory to God Almighty for the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yeml Osinbajo. There is no doubt that the Ninth National Assembly has a critical role to play if the government is to actualise all its developmental projects, programs and policies that will propel Nigeria into the industrialised world in the near future. Hence a cooperative partnership-driven National Assembly that will support, encourage and work with the executive to accelerate the achievement of socioeconomic objectives of the Government cannot be overemphasised. The supplementary election scheduled for Saturday will not hold in Adamawa state. This is as a result of a suit filed against the In... The supplementary election scheduled for Saturday will not hold in Adamawa state. This is as a result of a suit filed against the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) by Mustafa Shaba, governorship candidate of the Movement For Restoration and Defense for Democracy (MRDD). Shaba had sued the commission over the omission of his partys logo on the electoral materials used in the March 9 election. The court had initially asked INEC not to go ahead with the supplementary election but the commission said the order was not binding on it. Citing section 87 sub-section 10 of the electoral act, Kassiam Gaidam, resident electoral commissioner (REC) of Adamawa state, had said: Going by the electoral act, even court orders cannot stop any election at this point. Although we are not aware of any court restraining INEC, however let me tell you that court order will not stop any election. But Gaidam made a U-turn on Wednesday, saying the commission had been served with the court order. He added that the court would determine the fate of the supplementary governorship election. I want to confirm to you that today, indeed a court order was served on the commissions headquarters, and the commission in its usual very good tradition of compliance with court orders has sent appropriate notices, filed counter motions and counter originating sermon, he said. We would be waiting to hear the outcome or the decision the court will take tomorrow. On Thursday, Abdulazeez Waziri, a member of the panel presiding over the case, adjourned the matter till Tuesday. He had first ordered journalists out of the courtroom before delivering his judgment. Commenting on this, Tahir Shehu, chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state, said the court could only delay the rerun election and not the victory of his party. Danladi Umar, chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), says he will not hesitate to send any journalist distorting facts from... Danladi Umar, chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), says he will not hesitate to send any journalist distorting facts from proceedings to jail. Umar said this on Thursday while reacting to some newspaper headlines from proceedings on the last adjourned date. The CCT judge alleged that some newspapers distorted facts when they allegedly reported that Walter Onnoghen, suspended chief justice of Nigeria (CJN), accused the federal government of tampering with his asset declaration forms. Onnoghen is standing a six-count on false assets declaration. Umar said Adeboyega Awomolo, counsel to the federal government, only described the forms which were tendered as exhibits on the last adjourned date as loose. Are there journalists here? Umar asked. There were publications, three print media. Let me start with one. The front page of the newspaper reported: Onnoghen accuses FG of doctoring his asset declaration forms. Note doctoring. Another: Drama as Onnoghen accuses FG of tampering with his asset forms. These are considered as mischievous, distorted facts, misrepresentation of what transpired. You are very lucky today, I would have used the full wrath of this tribunal and send you to prison. I will not hesitate to deal decisively with any journalist distorting facts. You will stay there until I retire that is 28 years from now. The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved five more contracts for the clean up of Ogoni land in Rivers State. This was anno... The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved five more contracts for the clean up of Ogoni land in Rivers State. This was announced by the environment minister, Suleiman Hassan, while briefing journalists at the end of a seven-hour meeting of the council on Wednesday. The meeting was chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari. Mr Hassan said the new contracts, valued at N3.039 billion, are different from the 16 earlier approved and which sites were handed over to the contractors in January. While the 16 contracts awarded earlier were within the ministerial tenders board, the five approved today is above the tenders board and that is why we presented them to the council, he said. The minister said the ongoing Ogoni clean-up exercise follows a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report. Also, the governor of Kebbi State, Atiku Bagudu, who is the vice chairman of the National Food Security Council, said the council, chaired by Mr Buhari, submitted two memos which were both approved by FEC. Mr Bagudu said the first memo is in respect of intervention for states that have been affected by conflicts and insecurity, where many have been displaced from their homes and some are living in Internally Displaced Persons camps. The governor said whole support has been given in terms of accommodation, food and welfare. He said the food council considered the importance of helping those displaced to restore their livelihood, particularly agricultural activities. Council approved the memo by Mr President and approved N8,558,529,755 for intervention in Adamawa, Benue, Borno, Plateau, Taraba, Yobe and Zamfara. The beneficiaries are estimated about 69,872 people. The intervention includes the provision of fertiliser, seedlings, chemicals, poultry and animals to enable them to resume economic activity, he said. The Kebbi governor also said the council considered and approved the submission which originated from the National Food Security Council on states that have been severely affected by flooding. He said it is not an exhaustive list because the National Emergency Management Agency statutorily provides support to states that experience one emergency or the other. Last year, there was an unusual amount of flooding in some states, about 14 of them, and the National Food Security Council considered the impact of that flooding on the agricultural sector, food security, animal husbandry and fisheries. And so, today the council approved an intervention totalling N18,942,818,912.14. Contracts would be awarded to 15 companies to provide seedlings, agrochemicals and fertilisers to 163,117 beneficiaries located in 14 states. The states are Adamawa, Anambra, Bayelsa, Benue, Delta, Edo, Jigawa, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Niger, Rivers, Sokoto and Taraba, he said. He also said as part of the work of national food security council, other interventions have been considered and are being worked upon by the beneficiary communities and also the livestock sector. The Minister of Interior, Lt. Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazau (rtd) has ordered the closure of the land borders of Adamawa, Benue and Sokoto... The Minister of Interior, Lt. Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazau (rtd) has ordered the closure of the land borders of Adamawa, Benue and Sokoto States with effect from 12 noon on Friday March 22 to 12: 00 noon of Sunday, March 24, 2019. Dambazau said the development is to restrict movements across the borders of the affected states during the election days. A statement in Abuja by the Comptroller General (CG), Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), Muhammad Babandede, explained: Further to the re-run of the Governorship Elections taking place on Saturday 22, March 2019, the Honourable Minister of Interior, Lt. Gen (rtd) Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau, has directed the closure of Land Borders of Adamawa, Benue and Sokoto states with effect from 12.00 noon of Friday 22, March to 12:00 noon of Sunday 24th March, 2019. At least, 47 of the over 70 political parties that contested the 2019 governorship election in Imo State have announced intention to d... At least, 47 of the over 70 political parties that contested the 2019 governorship election in Imo State have announced intention to drag Emeka Ihedioha, to the election petitions tribunal. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had declared Ihedioha of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) winner of the March 9 gubernatorial election in the state. But, the opposition parties rejected the result, claiming that the general conduct of the election was marred by massive irregularities and did not comply substantially with the provision of the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act (as amended). Among the parties were the Peoples Party of Nigeria (PPN), Mass Movement of Nigeria (MMN), Advanced Congress of Democrats (ACD), Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), Save Nigeria Congress (SNC), Nigerian Peoples Congress (NPC) and Democratic Alternative. Others were KOWA Party, National Democratic Party (NDP), Legacy Party of Nigeria (LPN) and Independent Democrats (ID). The Spokesman of the parties and National Deputy Chairman of PPN, Chief Chinedu Ukadike, disclosed this while addressing newsmen in Owerri on Wednesday. Ukadike said Ihedioha was wrongly declared by the electoral body as he did not meet the constitutional requirements of 25 per cent spread in at least two-thirds of the 27 local government areas of Imo State as stipulated in the constitution. Ukadike, added that the suits filed are not consolidated, but individual parties and their gubernatorial candidates are suing to correct anomalies perpetrated by INEC. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the supplementary governorship election scheduled for Saturday in Bauchi sta... The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) says the supplementary governorship election scheduled for Saturday in Bauchi state will still hold. Festus Okoye, chairman of the information and voter education committee, disclosed this while addressing a press conference in Abuja on Thursday. Mohammed Kyari, the returning officer of the election had declared the poll inconclusive after the number of cancelled votes exceeded the margin of victory between the two leading candidates. While 45,312 votes were announced to have been cancelled, Bala Mohammed, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was leading with a margin of 4,059 votes. Okoye said the court order that directed the commission to suspend collation in the last LGA in the state did not affect the supplementary election. The commission had fixed Tuesday to conclude collation of results from Tafawa Balewa LGA but a federal high court in Abuja issued an order stopping the process pending the determination of a suit brought by Mohammed Abubakar, governor of the state. Okoye also said 22,641 registered voters are expected to participate in the exercise. An official of Standard Chartered Bank, Ifeoma Okeagbue, confirmed to the Code of Conduct Tribunal on Thursday that the suspended Chief ... An official of Standard Chartered Bank, Ifeoma Okeagbue, confirmed to the Code of Conduct Tribunal on Thursday that the suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, was granted a loan of $500,000 by the bank as of January this year. Okeagbue, who was testifying as the third prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of Onnoghen on charges of false and non-declaration of assets, also confirmed that the loan was guaranteed by the suspended CJNs investments in Federal Governments bonds and shares, among others. She said this while being cross-examined by the suspended CJNs lawyer, Chief Adegboyega Awomolo (SAN). The witness, who had earlier said in her evidence-in-chief that Onnoghen had five accounts, confirmed that the ones in euro, dollar, and pound sterling were domiciliary accounts and not foreign accounts. The conversation between Awomolo and the witness went thus: Awomolo: The defendant has a facility or loan of $500,000 granted by the bank as of January 2019. Witness: Yes. Awomolo: The security for the loans is his investments in Federal Government bonds and other investments such as shares. Witness: Yes. Awomolo: The pound sterling, dollars and euro are domiciliary accounts operated in Nigeria not overseas. Witness: Yes. Awomolo: The bank encouraged him as a disciplined account holder to invest in some other profit venture. Witness: Yes. Awomolo: And interests on these investments are credited back to his accounts. Awal Usman, a former director of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), says the asset declaration forms have not been verified by the bureau... Awal Usman, a former director of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), says the asset declaration forms have not been verified by the bureau since 2016. Usman said this on Thursday while testifying in the ongoing trial of Walter Onnoghen, suspended chief justice of Nigeria (CJN). Onnoghen is standing trial for a six-count charge bordering on false asset declaration. Speaking while he was being cross-examined by Adeboyega Awomolo, counsel to Onnoghen, the former director said the forms of public officer holders are kept in a safe place under lock and key. He said only the chairman of the bureau can authorise access to he asset declaration forms of any public office holder. There are concerns as to how Dennis Aghanya, the executive secretary of Anti-Corruption and Research Based Data Initiative (ARDI), got a hold of the suspended CJNs forms. When asked again if it was only the chairman that could authorise access to an asset form, the witness said no. He said I dont know when he was asked if he knew if he knew it was a criminal offence to have unauthorised access to declaration forms. The Edo Command of the Nigerian Police Force, has confirmed the rescue of Enogie Godwin Aigbe, the abducted Monarch of Ukhiri Community,... The Edo Command of the Nigerian Police Force, has confirmed the rescue of Enogie Godwin Aigbe, the abducted Monarch of Ukhiri Community, Ikpoba-Okha Local Government Area of the State. DSP Chidi Nwabuzor, the Commands Public Relations Officer, confirmed the development in Benin on Thursday. Nwabuzor said that the monarch was rescued by officers of the Anti- kidnapping and Cybercrime Unit of the command, led by SP Balogun Richard, who acted on intelligence report. He said the monarch was rescued Wednesday night at about 10: 00 p.m. at Upper Sakponba axis of the area. Aigbe was abducted by unknown gun men last Saturday in his palace. The abductors were said to have contacted the family and demanded for a ransom to be paid in foreign currency. As part of a series of events celebrating the American University in Cairos (AUC) 100th anniversary, the AUC held a lecture at Euwart hall on Wednesday to honour the memory of Nadia Younes, who was tragically killed in a bombing in Iraq in 2003 while serving as chief-of-staff to UN diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello. The primary speaker at the event, Nemat Shafik, director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), gave a lecture titled Global Leadership in a Changing World, focusing mainly on womens empowerment, social mobility, quality of education, leadership and management, as well as other economic local and global developments. Shafik said that childrens access to nutrition, basic human interaction and education are essential to restoring social mobility and achieving positive economic change. "I strongly believe talent is spread evenly around the world, but opportunity is not," Shafik said. "Many economic and development problems today in Egypt exist due to the facts that success in Egypt is currently more determined by luck than effort, and that the middle class is getting hollowed out," she added. Shafik argued that more women should join the workforce for greater economic equity and prosperity, as they currently represent 16 percent of the Egyptian labor market, affirming that adopting a critical mindset towards the economic situation gives room for development as downwardly mobile Egyptians currently outnumber those who are upwardly mobile. The Egyptian-born Shafik became the first woman to run the London School of Economics and Political Science in September 2017. She served as the deputy governor of the Bank of England in February 2017, and led the LSE as director starting September 2017. In 2015, Shafik was honoured by Queen Elizabeth II for her outstanding contributions in her field. Originally from the coastal city Alexandria, the world renowned economist, widely known by her nickname Minouche, was made a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) for the several leading positions she has assumed in the UK and worldwide. In recent years, the Nadia Younes Memorial Lecture has invited renowned international figures in the fields of politics, international relations and humanitarian affairs to speak at AUC. Former Speakers have included Kofi Annan (2005), former secretary-general of the United Nations; Dr. Bernard Kouchner (2006), former foreign minister of France and co-founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres; Mary Robinson (2007), former president of Ireland and the first female to assume that post; Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland (2012), former prime minister of Norway, former director-general of the World Health Organization and founder of the sustainability movement; Nabil Elaraby (2013), secretary-general of the League of Arab States; Nabil Fahmy (2014), Egypts former foreign minister and dean of AUCs School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and Michael Mller, UN under-secretary-general (2015); in addition to many other prominent speakers and global leaders. In addition to the annual series, the fund has helped establish the Nadia Younes Conference Room, which serves Cairo International Model United Nations members, and the Nadia Younes Award for Public and Humanitarian Service. Search Keywords: Short link: Leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are threatening to stop with a courts order President Muhammadu Buharis inauguration u... Leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are threatening to stop with a courts order President Muhammadu Buharis inauguration until the determination of the petition challenging the Presidents victory in the February 23 election. The Presidency has dismissed the threat as unserious and dared the PDP to launch its legal battle. The main opposition party was reacting yesterday to the plethora of court cases filed against the announcement of results of the March 9 governorship and state Assembly elections in Bauchi and Rivers states by candidates of the Presidents party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). Governor Mohammed Abubakar (APC) of Bauchi State has obtained an ex parte order at the Federal High Court stopping the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from concluding the governorship election. A similar court case was filed by the governorship candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC) in Rivers State, Mr Awara Biokpomabo, seeking an order of the court to stop INEC from releasing the results of the governorship election in the state. But the PDP, which believes that its candidate, Governor Nyesom Wike, won the election, alleged that the case filed by the AAC and its candidate was instigated by the APC. The PDP has filed a petition with the National judicial Council (NJC) against Justice Ekwo Inyang who granted the Bauchi governor the order, inciting a violation of the Constitution and Section 87(10) of the Electoral Act. The said provision of the Electoral Act prescribes that no court has the power or jurisdiction to stop any election pending the determination of a suit. The National Chairman of the PDP, Prince Uche Secondus, who decried the action of the petitioners, expressed concerns over hiccups in the conduct of the 2019 general elections. The party, at an emergency National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Abuja yesterday, complained about the inability of INEC to conclude the elections in record time. The PDP chieftains were particularly miffed that almost two weeks after, INEC could not conclude the governorship and state assembly elections that were held on March 9. Winners of the governorship elections are yet to be declared in seven states where the polls were inconclusive. The states are: Kano, Sokoto, Benue, Plateau, Adamawa and Bauchi states. The concluding part of the elections are billed to hold in the states on Saturday. The governorship election in Rivers state has become a subject of legal rigmarole by interested parties following the suspension of the announcement of the results. Also of grave concern to the main opposition party is what it called the militarisation of the elections in many states in the Southsouth. Secondus who presided over the meeting, called on the military not to allow themselves be called out again for what he described as illegal duties. He enjoined the military and other security agencies to resist any attempt to be dragged into paying manipulative roles in Saturdays supplementary elections. According to him, inconclusive is a rigging strategy introduced by the INEC to aide the APC and its candidates. He expressed optimism that PDP candidates will emerge victorious in the upcoming supplementary elections in five of the six states that the election will take place. Secondus said that posterity will hold the INEC Chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, responsible for the consequences of all his actions. He said: The way they are going about getting court injunctions stop elections that have already been held, if we also go to court to stop inauguration of elected officers, it will disrupt the democratic process. If INEC has to give people the opportunity to go to court, we too can go to court and stop the swearing in ceremony, be it the President or other (APC) governors. Senate President Bukola Saraki said the result of the presidential and state elections reflected the strength and character of the PDP and urged members to build on the foundation. Saraki said the victory of the APC in the presidential and state elections will be short lived, adding: We have a great future ahead and I believe we will start that on Saturday to make sure that we defend those five states that are declared inconclusive. If anybody believes that it is a loss to PDP, it is a loss to the country that history will not forgive. We said it many times here, that the worst to do is to do an election that our country, Nigeria will not be proud of. We have done an election that no doubt anybody and even those that think they have won are ashamed of the kind of election that we did. I think it is a shame to the country and to those that were given that responsibility to do. They have Saturday as their last opportunity to try as much as possible to reclaim part of their embarrassment to the country. How can a country like Nigeria have this type of election? Ghana has done it, Congo and Zimbabwe have done elections. And we say we do elections, with seven inconclusive. We did elections in 2015, we did it in 2011 and 1999 and after so many years, this is what we can produce. It is not a loss to the PDP; it is to the country. It just showed the level of desperation. I have confidence that this will be shortlived and, as such, let us ensure on Saturday that these fives states that are ours remain within the PDP and INEC should, for once, do what is right, Saraki said. Also speaking at the meeting, House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara said: Elections are done all over the world, elections are conducted in Africa and at no time have we heard of this inconclusive elections in other jurisdictions. Ghana elections were held not long ago. It will be very unfortunate if INEC, which is led by a first class Professor, set this very dangerous and unacceptable precedent in our political history. That I want them to take note of. And also what has happened is pure evil; our consolation as members of this party is that evil does not last and no evil doer has ever escaped punishment. If they do what others have done before, they will see what those who did evil saw. Definitely they cannot escape from it. Its a law of nature and in the scriptures of God, that whatever you sow so you shall reap. This is also for those who believe in power for the sake of power, not because they want to empower people, not because they want to better the lives of our people. There is also lessons they can learn from history. History is now replete with examples of all those who pursued power for the sake of power. Their lives have always ended in tragedy that awaits anyone who seeks power for the sake of power. We have seen that display in Nigeria. For us as members of this party, I dont want us to despair, even though we have inconclusive elections in some states. In five of those states, PDP clearly won the election in those states. The PDP vice presidential candidate in the February 23 election, Mr Peter Obi, said besides blaming the INEC and the security agencies, the biggest shame goes to those who are directing them to do the wrong thing. Obi said: If you choose to be a leader, especially with APC that claims integrity, the biggest corruption and the biggest show of a government that does not believe in integrity is to rig election. Because the process through which you come into office, is far more fundamental than what you do there after. I think we should hold them responsible for what is happening in this country now. The examples we are setting for the young ones, I dont know what they will tell a young man who is cheating in an examination in this country after seeing the ways our elections are conducted. I dont know what they will tell those who are robbing banks and kidnapping people, because we have seen the biggest of it by this election where people are happy after robbing the nation and their states. The chairman said we will do a post mortem after the election. I thank the party, because it is the party that is going to court, not just the presidential candidate going to court to challenge this rascality. I, as a person, have always believed that the biggest enemy of freedom or progress are happy slaves. And thank God that this party has chosen this path, and we will all stand by it. The Presidency said the threat by the opposition party to block May 29 was not suprising. It said: From the day they lost the presidential elections by a margin of four million votes, the biggest margin of defeat by anyone in the Fourth Republic, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP has embarked on a plan to erode the credibility of the internationally acclaimed election and erode the authority of this countrys elected government under President Muhammadu Buhari. So much has been said and written about their so-called Dubai Plan or blueprint, designed to win at all cost or paralyse the elected government. So much has been said and written about their so-called Dubai Plan or blueprint, designed to win at all cost or paralyse the elected government. The opposition party is doing everything to backslide Nigerias democracy and this countrys judiciary, bureaucracy and civil society should not allow them to do so. The PDP has no right to give sermons about democracy, given their dismal and shameful track record during their 16-year tenure. Council, Festus Keyamo (SAN), dared the opposition party to go ahead with its plan. Also reacting, the Director of Media and Publicity of the Muhammadu Buhari Presidential CampaignCouncil, Festus Keyamo (SAN), dared the opposition party to go ahead with its plan. He said: We challenge them to go to court. Buhari is the sitting president. He will continue in office till when they want him to be sworn-in. Let them go to court. We shall meet there. Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, has warned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) against settin... Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the house of representatives, has warned the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) against setting a dangerous precedence by declaring elections inconclusive. INEC had declared elections inconclusive in at least six states, including Bauchi where the speaker hails from. Addressing a national executive council meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday in Abuja, Dogara cited election cases in Ghana and other African countries, saying it is only in Nigeria that election are declared inconclusive. It will be very, very unfortunate that INEC, which is led by a first class professor of history, will set this dangerous and unacceptable precedence in our political history, he said. What has happened is pure evil. Our consolation as faithful members of this society is that evil does not last forever and no evil doer has ever escaped punishment. it is a law of nature, that whatever you sow is what you will reap. For those who believe in power for the sake of power and not because they want to empower people, not because they want to better the lives of our People, there are also lessons they can learn from history. History is replete with examples of all those who pursued power for the sake of power. Whether it is Hitler, I dont want to name more, one example is enough. Their lives have always ended up in some tragedy, that is the fate of anyone that seeks power for the sake of power. We have seen that displayed in Nigeria and I wish we can take heed from the lessons of history. Urging PDP members not to despair, Dogara said the party already won five out of the six states where there will be supplementary elections. Two serving members of the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) have been shot to death in Bayelsa. A resident of Yenagoa, the sta... Two serving members of the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) have been shot to death in Bayelsa. A resident of Yenagoa, the state capital, said the deceased were killed in Swali community of Yenagoa, on Wednesday night. They were immediately taken to Federal Medical Center (FMC), Yenagoa, where one was pronounced dead on arrival while the other died while receiving treatment. A police officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told TheCable that they were shot at a primary school in Swali. The identities of the corps members had not been ascertained as of the time of filing this report. A pupil of the school where the deceased were teaching was also shot but details are sketchy. More to follow Dave Umahi, governor of Ebonyi state, says Sonni Ogbuoji, his All Progressives Congress (APC) rival in the March 9 gubernatorial elect... Dave Umahi, governor of Ebonyi state, says Sonni Ogbuoji, his All Progressives Congress (APC) rival in the March 9 gubernatorial election in the state, will never become a governor. Umahi, who spoke in an interview with Guardian, was reacting to allegations that he was nursing plans to defect to the APC. In the election, the governor polled 393,343 votes ahead of Ogbuoji who had 81,703 votes. Umahi said he has no problem with President Muhammadu Buhari, but he is not considering leaving the PDP. He said the only problem he has is with Ogbuoji, whom he accused of castigating him. I never had a deal with anybody. I have sense of my own. But what I said all along, I campaigned for Atiku and I stood for Atiku, he said. But I kept saying that the president is my friend. He is not a political friend. He is my boss and that I was not going to castigate him and nobody from Ebonyi will castigate him, even his party we did not castigate when we were running. It is only the cockroach that ran against me that was worrying us but because of the respect for the president, we did not castigate the APC. This is very important. Now it is the same Ogbuoji that is afraid of himself and his shadows that is castigating us. He is afraid that if I come into APC, I will displace him. Tell me, should my coming into APC not be a plus for the party? Why is he worried about my coming into APC? The important thing is that, I dont move unless God asks me to move and God would have brought me to governance through APC but he never did. So I am still a PDP member. I never thought of leaving PDP. I never contemplated leaving PDP, but he is afraid that if I come into APC he is finished. But he is finished already because he has no future at all. I told him when I was campaigning that he will never be governor all his life. I am still very busy with my projects and he is talking about jumping into APC. Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi ordered the government on Thursday to withdraw its appeal against the High Administrative Court ruling issued in February concerning the right of pensioners to receive annual increases to their pensions, the Egyptian presidency announced. The president ordered the government to send the matter to the general assembly of the State Council. On 21 February 2019, Egypt's High Administrative Court ruled that post-2006 pensioners have the right to receive annual increases from the government, putting an end to a lawsuit that started in March 2018 against the government by the Pensioners Union, which was headed by long-time workers and pensioners activist El-Badry Farghaly. The Egyptian government declared following the court ruling that it would appeal the decision. The Egyptian president held a meeting on Thursday with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and the ministers of finance, social solidarity and planning as well as Abbas Kamel, the head of the General Intelligence service to discuss the matter. Search Keywords: Short link: The governor of the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem said Thursday that Israeli soldiers shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian man who was trying to aid another near the city. Governor Kamel Hmeid said Israeli troops in the adjacent village of al-Khader fired at a car and wounded the driver late on Wednesday night. He said Ahmad Manasra was in the car behind and got out of his vehicle to help the wounded man, who was shot in the abdomen. As Manasra was returning to his car, the Israeli soldiers shot and killed him, he said. ``This is a summary execution and Israel bears the full responsivity for this crime,'' Hmeid said. The Israeli military said a soldier stationed at a military post near Bethlehem identified rocks being thrown at Israeli vehicles and in response fired his weapon. The military said it was investigating the incident, which comes amid heightened tensions in the West Bank. Wabeb Manasrah, a cousin of the slain Palestinian, confirmed the governor's account. He said they were trying to help the wounded man and that his cousin was going to drive his wife and children away when he was gunned down. ``There were no clashes, no stone throwing, nothing at all,'' he said. ``I don't know why they shot him.'' On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it shot and killed two Palestinians who had attacked troops in the West Bank city of Nablus. This followed the killing of a Palestinian suspected of carrying out a weekend stabbing and shooting attack that left two Israelis dead near a West Bank settlement. The military said 19-year-old Omar Abu Leila was fatally shot when he opened fire on soldiers trying to arrest him after an intensive two-day manhunt. The uptick in West Bank violence comes as Israel is currently in the midst of an election campaign and Egypt is trying to broker a long-term truce between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers. Search Keywords: Short link: The party of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said Wednesday it supports protesters' calls for change while backing his call for dialogue to overcome the country's political crisis. The National Liberation Front (FLN)'s statement comes after cracks emerged within two other pillars of Bouteflika's regime, key trade union the General Union of Algerian Workers (UGTA) and the Business Leaders Forum. FLN chief Mouad Bouchareb said the government "was not in the hands of the party", in remarks seen as an attempt to distance the FLN from the Bouteflika regime. The FLN has been in power since Algeria won independence in 1962. Algeria has been gripped by unprecedented protests since February 22, following Bouteflika's announcement he was running for a fifth term as president despite concerns about his ability to run the country. The 82-year-old president, in office for two decades, uses a wheelchair and has rarely appeared in public since suffering a stroke in 2013. "FLN activists fully support the popular movement" by which "the people demand change through massive street marches," said Bouchareb. Bouteflika, who is honorary leader of the party, had "made it clear he was moving towards changing the system, towards a new Algeria", Bouchareb said. "The people spoke unequivocally and FLN activists... will work to achieve the expected goals following a clear plan," he said. "It is necessary to sit around a table for dialogue to attain a new Algeria." The FLN and its allies have for months supported Bouteflika's bid for a fifth term, with the party appointing him as its candidate for elections that had been scheduled for April 18. Both the UGTA and the Business Leaders Forum have been hit by dissent and resignations over their leadership's initial support of Bouteflika for another term as president. Analysts said the defections were a sign that Bouteflika's days in office could be numbered. "Bouteflika is losing touch and everybody is trying to salvage the situation," Rachid Grim, a political scientist at the Higher Institute of Management and Planning in Algiers, told AFP. The president has "no base any more, the people have let go, everybody has let go", he said. Mohamed Hennad, a former political sciences professor at Algiers University, said the cracks in pro-regime ranks were "a sign the system is falling apart and that change is near". Bouteflika said on February 10 that he intended to stand in the election, triggering weeks of protests. In a surprise announcement on March 11, he said he was pulling out of the race -- but postponed the poll. Protestors initially greeted the move with elation, but staged further mass demonstrations after they realised he still intended to remain in office. The veteran leader announced he was rolling out reforms through a "national conference", and confirmed on Monday that his plan would see him stay in power after his term ends on April 28 until a new president is elected. Search Keywords: Short link: NASA sees Tropical Cyclone Veronica affecting Australia's Pilbara Coast Visible imagery from NASA's Terra satellite showed Tropical Cyclone Veronica skirting the Pilbara coast of Western Australia. On March 21 the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of Veronica. Veronica had a 10 nautical mile wide pinhole eye surrounded by powerful thunderstorms. Bands of thunderstorms spiraled into the center of circulation from the northwest and east. Veronica's southeastern quadrant was spreading clouds along the Pilbara coastline of northern Western Australia. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology or ABM updated warnings and watches on March 21, 2019. The Warning zone stretches from Pardoo to Mardie including Port Hedland, Karratha and Barrow Island. The Watch zone stretches from Pardoo to Wallal Downs, Mardie to Onslow and extending to the inland Pilbara to include Pannawonica, Tom Price and Marble Bar. At 8:48 a.m. EDT (8:48 p.m. AWST Australian Western Standard Time) on March 21, 2019, maximum sustained winds near Veronica's center were near 121 miles (195 kilometers) per hour. Veronica was centered near 17.3 degrees south latitude and 117.3 degrees east longitude. That's about 223 miles (360 kilometers) north-northwest of Port Hedland and 239 miles (385 kilometers) north of Karratha. AMB noted in that advisory, "Severe Tropical Cyclone Veronica, a Category 4 system, is moving slowly towards the Pilbara coast. The cyclone should continue its south to southwest track tonight and Friday before taking a more south southeast track on Saturday. Whilst it is possible that the cyclone may weaken before reaching the Pilbara coast, a severe coastal impact is likely." ABM forecasts Veronica to move in a southerly direction and make landfall on March 24, near Whim Creek. Whim Creek is located between Port Hedland to the northeast and Exmouth to the southwest. ### For updated forecasts from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, visit: http://www. bom. gov. au By Rob Gutro NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday described the heavily armed Hezbollah group as a risk to their fellow Lebanese and conferred with Israel about the Iranian-backed militia ahead of a trip to Beirut. Pompeo, who has been on a regional tour to promote the Trump administration's hard tack against Iran, received a warning from Israel, which worries it may again be in the sights of Hezbollah fighters winding down their intervention in Syria's civil war. Washington also has been increasingly voicing concern at Hezbollah power, echoing Israel, whose forces were fought to a standstill by the militia in a 2006 Lebanon war. Hosting Pompeo at his office, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri "cannot say to anyone that Lebanon is separate from Hezbollah" - a reference to the group's clout in Beirut where it has ministers in the coalition cabinet as well as lawmakers in parliament. "If some(thing) will happen from Lebanon toward Israel, we will hold Lebanon as the responsible (party)", Rivlin said. Asked what message he would take to Lebanon, his next stop, Pompeo told reporters: "We're going to be very clear about how America sees Hezbollah and our expectations about how Lebanon's success depends on the Lebanese people (demanding) that a terrorist organisation not be in control of their government and not drive policies and create risk for their country as well." ELECTORAL FORCE In Lebanon's 2018 elections, parties and individuals who back Hezbollah's possession of a military arsenal won a majority of seats in parliament. President Michel Aoun called Hezbollah's arms "an essential part of defending Lebanon", though Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said its weapons were illegitimate. Pompeo also reinforced Rivlin's veiled warning that Israel could retaliate against Lebanon for any Hezbollah attack: "We all know the risk, right? Hezbollah does something inside of Lebanon, the risk of escalation is real. "The people of Lebanon don't want that. The people of Israel don't want that. The people of the United States of America don't want that." For its part, Israel has carried out repeated air strikes on Hezbollah in Syria, where the Shi'ite Muslim militia - along with Russian air power - helped President Bashar al-Assad turn the tables against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and militants. Iran has faced economic hardship since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew last year from the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers and reimposed sanctions. In a speech broadcast on the Persian New Year on Thursday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Islamic Republic had successfully resisted "unprecedented, strong" U.S. sanctions. Pompeo told Rivlin that Hezbollah, along with Palestinian Hamas and Yemen's Houthis - both also Iranian-backed - "are determined to wipe this country (Israel) off the face of the planet and we (the United States) have a moral obligation and a political one to prevent that from happening." Coming just three weeks before a closely contested Israeli election, Pompeo's trip to Jerusalem was widely seen in Israel as a boost for the prime minister, who enjoys a close relationship with Trump. Search Keywords: Short link: The Gaza Strip suffers dire economic conditions that have reached unprecedented levels, causing Gazan youth to take to the streets demanding a dignified life Demonstrations have escalated in several areas in the Gaza Strip and sometimes have resulted in clashes between Hamas security forces and youth demonstrators. Gazans are, in fact, denouncing high prices and economic decline amid a siege of Gaza since Hamas came to power in 2006, and ensuing inter-Palestinian divisions. Palestinian activists in Gaza shared video footage showing security forces using force to clamp down on mass demonstrations, hitting protesters and arresting them. Palestinian political analysts believe the protests are a natural outcome of the dire economic reality in Gaza, while others believe security forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah are fomenting unrest to pressure Hamas. One analyst, Reham Ouda, believes the Palestinian people have reached a breaking point due to unemployment and high prices. They took to the streets to express their anger, so perhaps their leaders and officials would reconsider their policies and living conditions of Gazans which are compounded by inter-Palestinian division and the Israel siege, she said. Ouda added that the Palestinians, like any other people, can be patient and endure, but lately prices skyrocketed, and even the price of bread has shot up. The people are now demonstrating to express their rejection of what is happening, she said, adding that the Palestinian street has the right to express anger at current political and economic conditions. It is democratic to allow them to express their thoughts, there is nothing wrong with that, she said. Another Palestinian political analyst and writer, Walid Al-Qotati, said protesters are making legitimate demands, irrespective of who is responsible for Gazas miserable conditions. Nonetheless, some are trying to hijack the protests and use them in the media for their own political purposes, Al-Qotati said. This legitimate right of expression of suffering and demanding rights cannot be resolved with security measures alone, he argued. Suppressing protesters and preventing them from expressing their suffering and hunger, muzzling their voices and cries, violates their human and legal rights. He noted this is one aspect of the truth. The other, more important part, is how Gaza reached this critical point of extreme poverty, need and destitution through a diabolical plot which begins at the root of the scourge: the Zionist entity that occupies all of Palestine and has put the Gaza Strip under siege, he said. The occupation caused the Nakba and the tragedy of the Palestinian people inside and outside Palestine. On top of this, Gazans suffer siege, wars and terrorism to force the resistance and its grassroots supporters to surrender to the will of the occupation. The tragedy continues after two Nakbas or two setbacks as the plan for liberation retreats, the interim period is abridged, and the national authority is reduced to an obscure entity that has abandoned the revolution before achieving statehood and is contingent on security cooperation and economic dependency on the occupation. Al-Qotati continued that the Palestinian Authority whitewashed the occupation and gave them spoils at no cost. It became a civilian administration without any real powers or sovereignty. Now, it stands as a barrier between the occupation and the resistance, he added, while settlement schemes and Judiacisation of the West Bank and Jerusalem pass under its nose. It paved the way for division when some thought we were actually fighting over real powers, and that opposition is tolerated. Instead, there were quarrels then fractures followed by partisan bickering and finally punitive steps that have afflicted the steadfast Palestinian people who are resisting in the Gaza Strip. Their goal was to create a resentful street that would explode in the face of Hamas rule, and perhaps deflate the resistance which galvanises and is championed in Gaza. Wessam Afifa, a writer, political analyst and director of Hamass affiliate Al-Aqsa Channel, agrees there are some protestors who are truly impacted by difficult living conditions and want their voices to reach officials. However, there is also manipulation of security agencies in the West Bank by Fatah, Hamass political rival. Afifa argued that Fatah is using groups in Gaza to incite the street and wreak havoc to pressure Hamas to surrender to President Mahmoud Abbass terms regarding eliminating the group from the political scene. Hamas wants to maintain security in Gaza, he explained. Therefore, it will evaluate the current condition. If protesters are making genuine mass demands, then Hamas will support them, but if they become a tool for mayhem, then the response will be firm. Afifa believes that tensions could decrease if de-escalation talks between the Palestinians and Israel are successful after months of negotiations, because this would improve conditions in Gaza. If a truce fails, mass action will not be limited to marches and will expand towards the occupation, he warned, in reference to growing Right of Return marches that began in March 2018 near the Gaza border. There could also be military escalation with Israel, he suggested. Rassem Obeidat, a Palestinian journalist and analyst, said the timing of the protests is due to this critical phase for the Palestinian people and their cause. It is clear that the US, the occupation and some Arab and regional powers are cooking up the deal of the century which will be announced after Israeli elections. Meanwhile, pressure by the US, Israel and Europe is mounting on Arab players to finance the plan and force the Palestinian leadership to accept it, he continued. The money earmarked by some Arab countries is very tempting considering current living conditions there. The complex and fractured Palestinian situation could also enable the implementation of a regional solution that is forced on the Palestinians, he said. Obeidat continued that in light of these dangers, statements by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu assert that 22 Arab countries have relations with his country, so there is no need for a Palestinian state; only Jews have the right to self-determination; and Israel is the national homeland for Jews and the rights and demands of the Palestinian people are ignored. The US State Departments human rights report has removed the label occupied from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights, which means the US is determined to continue its assault against the Palestinian people, void the Palestinian cause and dismantle the peoples national project. I am calling on Hamas and its leadership to revise their policies and positions regarding the mass protests. Responding to the needs of the street and grievances of the people, without accusations of treason and demonisation or suspicious political plots, Obeidat said. Instead, they along with active forces and factions in Gaza must remain cautious of any hidden agendas or anyone trying to ride the wave of popular and peaceful dissent to serve their own political agendas and interests. *A version of this article appears in print in the 21 March, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Breaking point in Gaza Search Keywords: Short link: New Zealand imposed a ban on assault weapons Thursday, moving swiftly following the Christchurch massacre and triggering renewed calls from leading American politicians for gun controls in the United States. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons were now banned with immediate effect, making good on a pledge to the country of the military-style weapons used in last week's slaughter by a white supramicist of 50 Muslims praying in two mosques. The killings at two Christchurch mosques by an Australian white supremacist have caused national soul-searching over New Zealand's lax gun laws. But the crackdown promises to have political repercussions beyond the country's shores, including in the United States where gun control is one of the most divisive national political issues. "In short, every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country," Ardern said. She added that high-capacity magazines and devices similar to bump stocks -- which allow users to fire weapons faster -- will also be banned. Proponents of gun control in the United States and around the world praised the move and denounced the powerful US pro-gun lobby on social media, while American gun supporters defended their constitutional right to bear arms. - 'Follow NZ's lead' - "This is what real action to stop gun violence looks like," Democratic US Senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders tweeted. "We must follow New Zealand's lead, take on the NRA (National Rifle Association) and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States." High-profile Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez contrasted Ardern's swift action with US failure to enact even modest controls following recurring horrific shootings such as at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, in which 20 children and six school staff died. "Sandy Hook happened 6 years ago and we can't even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. "Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market. This is what leadership looks like." US President Donald Trump did not immediately react on his Twitter feed, but NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch responded to Sanders by tweeting that "the US isn't NZ." "While they do not have an inalienable right to bear arms and to self defense, we do," she said. Accused shooter Brenton Tarrant livestreamed the carnage in real-time, sparking worldwide revulsion and concern over access to guns and the use of social media by extremists. Tarrant had written that he planned to use firearms for his attacks to encourage US gun control advocates to push for curbs, thus tearing open the bitter political debate. "This attempted abolishment of rights by the left will result in a dramatic polarization of the people in the United States and eventually a fracturing of the US along cultural and racial lines," he wrote. New Zealand's ban includes interim measures to prevent a run on such guns before legislation is enacted, and outlawing weapons already in private possession. Guns are to be handed in and destroyed via a buyback scheme that will cost between Nz$100 million and $200 million (between US$69 million and $139 million), depending on how many are received and their valuations. - A changed nation - NZ Police Commissioner Michael Bush said there were around a quarter of a million firearms users in New Zealand, but he did not give a breakdown on how many possess semi-automatics. Conservative estimates indicate some 1.5 million weapons are in circulation in New Zealand, equating to three guns for every 10 people, well below the US ratio of more than one weapon per person. "The vast majority of New Zealanders will support this change. I feel incredibly confident of that," Ardern said. Simon Bridges, leader of the opposition National Party, embraced the ban and pledged to work with the government on it. "The terrorist attack in Christchurch last week has changed us as a nation," Bridges said. "We agree that the public doesn't need access to military-style semi-automatic weapons." Initial public reaction was positive in the still-shocked country, where hundreds of people turned out for a second day for sombre funerals in Christchurch. "It's a good thing. Why would we need to have guns like this in our houses?" Kawthar Abulaban, 54, who survived the shootings, told AFP. *This story was edited by Ahram Online Search Keywords: Short link: In the wake of last weeks New Zealand massacres, it is more necessary than ever that serious steps are taken to combat online far-right propaganda Few people around the world could have taken comfort from New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bushs conclusion that the Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a self-described white supremacist who killed 50 Muslims in a mass shooting at two mosques in New Zealand, was a lone wolf. The description is misleading, especially as it has been revealed that the attacker met extreme right-wing groups during a European tour two years ago, according to investigators who are looking at a possible international dimension to the tragic attacks and whether the gunman had links with violent individuals and racist organisations around the world. Although the attack was described as the work of a lone wolf acting alone in this tragedy, this does not mean that the gunman did not receive help, inspiration or facilitation from a much wider set of people, organisations and ideas. There is an international terrorist dimension, as Western governments try to understand the extent of Tarrants relationships with white supremacists. It is now known that the gunman travelled to different European countries, as well as to North Korea, Pakistan and Turkey. Hungarys Counter-Terrorism Centre said that Tarrant had arrived in Hungary as a tourist last November on a train between Timisoara in Romania and Budapest in Hungary. In a statement, it said that Tarrant had entered the country on 26 November 2018 at the border railway crossing in Lokoshaza about 250 km (155 miles) southeast of Budapest. It said that Tarrant was travelling by himself when he entered Hungary, did not appear on any terrorist database, had not been flagged by authorities elsewhere and would have been allowed to stay in Hungary for up to 90 days without a visa. The centre said it was investigating what Tarrant did and where he went while he was in Hungary. The travels and his views on different social-media platforms did not raise concerns at the time. This shows that such individuals and many ultra-right organisations are not as closely watched as are Muslim extremists, for example. But after the carnage in New Zealand, questions are being asked about how to define, measure and understand the threat of ultra-right groups in the West. Most of the far-right attacks in the West in recent years were not carried out by organised cells like the Islamic State (IS) group, but by lone wolves. Atrocities from the Wisconsin Sikh Temple shooting in 2012, the Jokela School shooting in Tuusula, Finland, in 2007, the Utoya massacre in Norway in 2011, the Oslo shooting in 2017, the Trolhattan attack in Sweden in 2015, the Munich shooting in 2017, the Charleston Church shooting in the US in 2015, the Umpqua Community College shooting in the US in 2015, the Quebec City Mosque shooting in 2017 and the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting in 2018 were all carried out by lone wolves. The nature of the attacks and the fact that they were launched in the name of the extreme right in Europe, America or elsewhere with the apparent involvement of a lone wolf has made the security authorities in the West downplay the risks of this rising tide and deal with the white supremacy threat at the national level and not as an international threat as they do when it comes to international jihadists. The question of a potentially larger network of people and ideas that bind far-right groups and white supremacy ideology sympathisers together crystallised after the Christchurch attacks, which appear to be well planned and part of a broader trend. They came fewer than six months after a gunman shot and killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in the United States. Tarrant claims he planned and executed the attacks himself. But in the same breath, he pointed out that he got inspiration and developed relations with the Knights Templars, a group that was also mentioned by Anders Behring Breivik who killed 77 people in a bombing and mass shooting attack in Norway in July 2011. In a 74-page manifesto the gunman disclosed that he did contact the reborn Knights Templars for a blessing in support of the attack, which was given. He continues that I have only had brief contact with knight Justiciar Breivik, receiving a blessing for my mission after contacting his brother knights, indicating that he had been inspired by other infamous far-right operators. I support many of those that take a stand against ethnic and cultural genocide. Luca Traini, Anders Breivik, Dylan Roof, Anton Lundin Pettersson, Darren Osbourne etc., the gunman wrote, naming white supremacists ahead of the massacre. The gunman also mentioned Tommy Robinson, the leader of the far right in the UK, who in recent years has managed to cultivate a new kind of far-right activism in the UK, a country which has not been historically attracted to it. As Daniel Trilling, the editor of New Humanist magazine put it, after his efforts to build an anti-Muslim street movement failed first with the collapse of the English Defence League in 2013, then an attempt to launch a UK branch of the German anti-immigrant movement Pegida in 2016 Robinson reinvented himself as an online propagandist. Robinson is the figurehead of a headless movement that feeds on xenophobia, Islamophobia and white supremacy, beliefs which are usually barred from mainstream debate. For his followers, Robinson is an anti-establishment hero. He claims to have been silenced, but he receives a huge amount of media attention and has almost a million followers on Facebook. The question is whether there is now an underground movement of militants working together, via encrypted online applications, to spread white supremacist ideology and prepare future terrorist attacks. Many of the far-right networks in the West have international linkages, from Germany and Italy to France, the United States and Russia. Changing Face Of The Far-Right The far-right, extreme-right, hard-right, radical-right, fascist-right or ultra-right are all terms used to describe a wide range of political, cultural and social beliefs. Identity and race also play crucial roles in the ideology of the far-right groups. During the attacks in New Zealand, the gunman live-streamed his killing of children, women and men in a video posted on 8Chan, an extreme right-wing forum from where it was widely disseminated. During the live-stream, the attacker revealed racist and anti-immigrant views before opening fire on people at random. In recent years, observers have noticed that the far-right groups have become more fixated on Islam, characterising the religion as a threat to Western culture, Christianity, liberal values and the white race The gunman listened, while driving to carry out the attack, to a song from a Serbian nationalist video made in 1995 during the war against Bosnian Muslims. The lyrics praised the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic who was subsequently convicted of genocide and war crimes. There were also references to historic battles between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire in his manifesto. The names of men convicted of murdering Muslims and Jews in Europe were found on the weaponry he carried. Moreover, the words for Rotherham, a reference to the sexual abuse of 1,400 children in the South Yorkshire town in Britain between the late 1980s and 2013 at the hands of a gang consisting of British-Pakistani, Kurdish and Kosovan men, were also found. Most of the victims were white girls, but British Asian girls in Rotherham also suffered abuse and did not report it to the authorities because of the fear of shame in their community. In his manifesto of 16,500 words, the New Zealand terrorist explains why he carried out the murders by advocating white supremacist ideology and praising non-diverse nations, naming China as his ideal state in following a policy of monoculturalism. He also says he began planning the tragic attacks after a visit to Europe in 2017. He justifies the killing of children by arguing that children of invaders do not stay children; they become adults and reproduce, creating more invaders to replace your people. Some argue that it is difficult for the intelligence agencies to distinguish serious threats and potential attacks from the expression of extreme views. Some experts on the international far-right movements argue that the task is much harder now because the far-right online community disguises itself by using coded language and symbols that it can be difficult for the ordinary eye to understand. It also uses methods like posting large amounts of content of aggressively, ironically and trollishly poor quality to an online forum or social network, in some cases to derail discussion or otherwise make the site unusable for its regular visitors. The gunman in the New Zealand attack tailored his manifesto to the online underground community using coded language and jokes, a technique used in online right-wing media culture to hide its real agenda. Inside the Daily Stormers Style Guide, a handbook for a neo-Nazi blog founded in 2013, there is a list of 18 advisable racial slurs and extreme exaggeration. It suggests that for legal reasons followers online should not openly incite violence. But it goes on to add that whenever someone does something violent, it should be made light of The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not. The ultimate goal is to dehumanise the enemy to the point where people are ready to laugh at their deaths, the Guide instructs. While racial slurs are allowed/recommended, not every reference to non-white[s] should be a slur. It should not come across as genuine raging vitriol. That is a turnoff to the overwhelming majority of people, it says. A radicalised online far-right culture makes the fight against it a huge challenge. Platforms used to communicate such as 4Chan and 8Chan make it difficult to flag potential threats as they are not regulated and do not make the efforts of mainstream social-media platforms to take down offensive material and flag dangerous individuals. The fight against these groups will require commitment not only from politicians, the security services and the police, but also the mainstream media and social-media platforms. The massacre in New Zealand could be a wake-up call for the real and rising danger of far-right extremist movements and their hate culture. *A version of this article appears in print in the 21 March, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Lone wolf or an army? Search Keywords: Short link: New Zealands Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed never to say the name of the Christchurch mosques gunman. She addressed a special meeting of parliament on Tuesday which she opened by using the Islamic greeting al-salaamu alaikum. The mans rampage left 50 people dead. He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety that is why you will never hear me mention his name, Ardern said in her emotional address. I implore you, speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them. He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless. New Zealands prime minister declared she would do everything in her power to deny the gunman a platform for his racist views after he dismissed his lawyer and opted to represent himself at trial. I agree that it is absolutely something that we need to acknowledge and do what we can to prevent the notoriety that this individual seeks, Ardern said. He obviously had a range of reasons for committing this atrocious terrorist attack. Lifting his profile was one of them. And thats something that we can absolutely deny him. The gunmans desire for publicity led him to compose a 74-page manifesto justifying Fridays massacre and to livestream footage of his attack on the Al-Noor Mosque. The video prompted widespread revulsion and condemnation, and will lend weight to ongoing international campaigns seeking to change how the media reports such masscres. One of the highest profile campaigns was started in 2012 by parents of a victim of the mass shooting at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado. It is called, simply, No Notoriety. Its Website argues for no name, no photo and no notoriety, challenging the media to deprive violent like-minded individuals the media celebrity and media spotlight they so crave. The Dont Name Them campaign, headed by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Centre at Texas State University, also argues that giving attackers publicity allows the shooter to accomplish one of his goals and validates his life and actions. Facebook said it removed 1.5 million videos of the shooting during the first 24 hours after the massacre. But on Tuesday Ardern expressed frustration that the video remained available online, four days after the attack. Despite the original video being taken down, it was quickly shared on other platforms, including YouTube and Twitter. Ardern spoke with British Prime Minister Theresa May about the importance of global efforts to clamp down on the distribution of such material. UK Home Office Minister Ben Wallace warned it was perfectly possible for a far-right attack like that in New Zealand to happen in the UK and warned MPs that the UK was seeing a growing threat from the far right. He said the attack in New Zealand must be a wake up call for social media companies which should be ashamed they enabled the shootings to be live-streamed and shared. The shooters manifesto ended with the sentence Europa rises. The 74 pages were a diatribe against liberal values, multi-racial, -religious and -cultural societies, migration and Muslims who were called invaders and foreign scum. Muslim scholars and community leaders, though horrified by the massacre, were not totally surprised. This massacre was inspired by hatred of Islam and Muslims. This bigotry has been fuelled by certain callous academics, reckless politicians as well as media outlets which regularly feature those who demonise Islam and Muslims with impunity, disguising their vile mantra behind a veneer of objectivity, said a joint letter signed by Muslim leaders from the UK, US, France, Canada, Sweden and other countries published in Britains The Guardian newspaper after the attack. The massacre of Muslims did not just begin with bullets fired from the barrel of Tarrants gun. Rather it was decades in the making: inspired by Islamophobic media reports, hundreds and thousands of column inches of hatred printed in the press, many Muslim-hating politicians and unchecked social-media bigotry. Muslims have been constantly cast as suspect communities, foreigners with barbaric views who are a threat to our society. We are now reaping the awful outcome of systemic and institutionalised Islamophobia woven into many sections of our societies. This racism and xenophobia that has been allowed to fester for far too long has deadly consequences presenting one of the most significant challenges to civilised society in contemporary times, the joint statement continued. Harun Khan, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain told Al-Ahram Weekly that prejudice against Muslims and anti-immigration sentiments are easily mistaken for freedom of expression in many parts of the world, and linked main-stream media coverage to Islamophobia and the increasing number of attacks against Muslim communities. Many Muslim leaders argue that we are at a crossroad and need to define the term Islamophobia, if not kill it altogether. It is misleading, they say, and serves as a gloss for racism, a shortcut to hide hate crimes, racism and intolerance. There is no single reason or explanation for the rise of the far right. But the only way to fight back is not to underestimate its danger. Unfortunately, it sometimes appears as if we are already losing the plot. In the wake of the New Zealand attacks US President Donald Trump said he did not believe white nationalism constituted a danger. His view is not really shocking. Trump, after all, has a long history of making derogatory remarks about Muslims, and in 2016 declared that Islam hates us. His administration has also implemented policies barring citizens from some Muslim-majority countries from travelling to the United States. In the purported manifesto the New Zealand terrorist wrote that he supported Trump as a symbol of renewed white identity. The White House rejected any connection between Trump and the tragedy. Its outrageous to even make that connection between this deranged individual that committed this evil crime to the President who has repeatedly condemned bigotry, racism and made it very clear that this is a terrorist attack, Mercedes Schlapp, the White Houses director of Strategic Communication, told reporters. US member of Congress Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill) was asked during a CNN interview about the gunman invoking Trumps name. He replied: Im not defending all of the presidents language on this stuff This hate for people whether its religion or race has been since the beginning of humanity. This disgusting animal is evil. If President Trumps language triggered him, that wasnt President Trump triggering. Regrettably, the fight against the far-right will not be easy or straightforward. Many Western politicians are in denial and there is a tendency to downplay the danger of these movements. Condemnation is seldom followed by consistent action. The New Zealand terror attack will either be a turning point or a tragedy soon forgotten by the press and politicians. We will find out which soon enough. *A version of this article appears in print in the 21 March, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Killer without a name Search Keywords: Short link: Fears are growing that neo-Nazis and Islamic State militants alike may be using the Internet to support their activities, making it a breeding ground for terrorism and extremism. The Dark Web, a platform for both Nazi enthusiasts and Islamic State (IS) militants, has come under scrutiny in Europe. The argument that more Internet encryption is necessarily beneficial to democracy, privacy and cyber-security was dealt a severe blow as details emerged of the tools utilised during the anti-Muslim massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this week. Australian national Brenton Tarrant, currently standing trial for his terrorist attack on two mosques on Friday, killing 50 people and injuring 50 others, reportedly prepared himself for the attack not just through content available on the Internet, but also via encrypted networks described as the underground Internet. It is also commonly referred to as the Dark Web, a part of the Internet that is not indexed by regular search engines. According to a 2016 study by Kings College, London, 57 per cent of the content hosts illicit material. The gunman, 28, live-streamed his attack on Facebook for 17 minutes. He also made a 73-page manifesto available days before the shooting, reportedly through the anonymous file-sharing services used by the Islamic State terrorist group. Although Facebook said it had removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, including 1.2 million blocked during uploads, the video is still not difficult to find. Tarrant posted download links to his manifesto, which linked to extreme right-wing propaganda on his social-media accounts before they too were suspended. It now appears on messaging boards. The fact that the gunman was possibly self-radicalised online and successfully made his video and manifesto widely available is feeding fears that the online underground has become a breeding ground for extremism. Shortly before beginning his attack, Tarrant posted one final time to the imageboard site 8Chan, saying well lads, its time to stop shitposting and time to make a real-life effort post. 8Chan, or infinitychan, emerged in 2013 as a response by its creator to what he perceived as rapid surveillance and the loss of free speech on the Internet. Although the sites terms of use prohibit anything explicitly illegal, the unrestricted nature of 8Chan means that topics like child abuse can surface. While 8Chan is accessible to anyone, it has since the shooting been referred to as part of the Dark Web (links to Tarrants Facebook video were shared on 8Chan). While the term alludes to heavily encrypted networks where much illegal content is shared, the fact that mainstream sites like Facebook and Twitter enabled Tarrant to disseminate his content has demonstrated how dark social media can become. On Saturday, the US magazine Foreign Policy proclaimed that The Dark Web Enabled the Christchurch Killer. In his manifesto, Tarrant named Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik as his source of inspiration. Breivik killed 77 people in 2011. His targets, government representatives and members of the ruling Norwegian Labour Partys youth wing, were selected on the charge of being so-called cultural Marxist traitors deliberately facilitating a Muslim invasion of Norway. Besides the high death toll, it was one of few cases where the perpetrator completely self-radicalised online. It was also the only complex extreme-right terrorist attack in the past three decades that combined explosives with firearms, wrote Jacob Assland Ravndal, a postdoctoral fellow with the Centre for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo. Both these characteristics seem to be shared by the Christchurch shooter, who carried explosives in one of his cars, and appears to have self-radicalised online without interacting with organised extreme-right groups. Since the Christchurch terrorist targeted mosques and Muslims rather than white children, he may end up with greater status inside the underground movement than Breivik did, Ravndal added. There are already indications on various extreme-right forums that readers support the attacks. The UK parliament on Monday attacked both 8Chan and 4Chan (the first imageboard Website created in 2003) where misogynists and both IS militants and neo-Nazi far-right white supremacists gather their followers. In Germany, the legislative body that represents the countrys states, the Bundesrat, voted to introduce legislation that would criminalise the act of providing technical infrastructure for so-called Dark Web marketplaces where illegal activities take place. *A version of this article appears in print in the 21 March, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Fears of a Dark Web Search Keywords: Short link: Zimbabweans have really come together in facing the devastating effect of the tropical cyclone Idai which has affected a lot of people in Manicaland, Zimbabwes eastern province. Almost a hundred Zimbabweans had been confirmed dead at the time of publishing this. thousands of homes have been destroyed or partially destroyed and about 600 families have been left completely homeless. Citizens from across the country and others outside the country have involved themselves in offering relief. Here are some of the initiatives that you can contribute to: Every Contribution Counts - To Donate Towards Cyclone Idai Relief Here Are Your Options The UN describes this as the worst natural disaster in Southern Africa ever.Almost a hundred Zimbabweans had been confirmed dead at the time of publishing this. thousands of homes have been destroyed or partially destroyed and about 600 families have been left completely homeless. Citizens from across the country and others outside the country have involved themselves in offering relief. Contribute on *151*2*1*320041*Amount# 2. NetOne OneMoney Shortcode: *111*2*1*4*19707# 3. Agribank: Account Name: Cyclone Idai Relief Fund, Account No: 114000014856, Branch: Agrigold (49638) OR EcoCash: *151*2*1*49638# 4. FBC Holdings: Acc Name: FBC Cyclone Idai Donations Acc No: Account Number : 1070230530115 Centre Branch 5. ZB Financial Holdings: Account Number: 4190815125840 Natal Road Branch, Ref: Idai Donation 6. Alpha Media Holdings via EcoCash. *151*2*2*104628*Amount# (ZimInd Publishers) 7. ONEchurch via EcoCash *151*2*2*151449*Amount# (One Church) 8. ONEchurch via bank: Account Name: Highlands Presbyterian Church. Acc No: 1003090427. Northridge Park. In-kind contributions: Thousands of people in Chimanimani, Chipinge and other areas need food, clothing, medical supplies and other essentials. There are organisations that are collecting such in-kind contributions. Its important to bear in mind that these families are probably going to need a lot of support for quite some time as some of them have to start from the ground up to build livelihoods and homes. Here are places where you can drop off your contributions: Harare: 1. Any Econet Shop 2. Miracle Missions: Highlands Presbyterian Church. 112 Enterprise Road, Highlands 3. Eat Out Movement: 3 Allan Wilson Avenue. Greater Avenues 4. ONEchurch: 15 De noon Road, Avondale 5. Chisipite Senior School: (Front Office on Monday 18 March) All items to be dropped off by Tuesday, 19 March 6. Jah Prayzah Offices, 31 Herbert Chitepo Harare Bulawayo: 1. Any Econet Shop 2. 45 Moffat Ave Hillside (Along Burnside road) Or call 0773 103 262 they will come and pick your donation. Whole Zimbabwe: 1. Any Econet Shop 2. Any TelOne Exchange Call toll-free 08002000 3. Any ZB Bank or ZB Life Managers office Please note, if there are any ongoing campaigns not listed here that you know, let us know in the comments and we will vet them and add them. 1. Zimbabwe Cyclone Relief on GoFundMe (Ideal for Offshore Contributions). https://www.gofundme.com/zimbabwe-cyclone-relief code 320041. Econet has pledged to match dollar for dollar all individual contributions made towards this cause. Resolute Rejects Repap Resources' Bid for Fort Frances Mill, Says It Will Proceed with Redevelopment Resolute completely shutdown the Fort Francis mill in January of 2014 and announced its permanent closure in May that same year. The mill, located in Fort Francis, Ontario, Canada, produced commercial printing papers. March 20, 2019 (CBC News) - Resolute Forest Products has rejected a bid from a private investment group interested in purchasing the shuttered paper mill in Fort Frances, Ont., and says it will turn its attention to redeveloping the site. That was communicated in a letter sent by the forestry giant to Fort Frances mayor June Caul on Monday. Repap Resources Group said on Friday that it had submitted a "multi-million dollar" offer to purchase the mill and its assets. Resolute closed the plant in 2014; the company said Repap's offer "fell short on multiple fronts." Resolute had already signed an agreement with a company that specializes in redeveloping industrial sites in January, according to the letter to the town from Resolute president and chief executive officer Yves Laflamme, but entertained interest from other parties, including Repap. Laflamme's letter said that Repap was the only party to actually submit a bid. "In spite of our best efforts, Repap did not produce an offer providing us the level of certainty required to move forward with them," Laflamme wrote. "They failed to provide the required financial deposit, did not mark up the asset purchase agreement, did not address our key requirement to perform environmental remediation and did not produce sufficient, committed financing to move forward." The full story is available on CBC's website: Resolute Rejects Repap Resources' Bid for Fort Frances Mill . SOURCE: CBC News Koehler Paper Names Eckhard Kallies as Director of Flexible Packaging Eckhard Kallies March 21, 2019 - Koehler Paper Group announced that Eckhard Kallies has been named Director of Flexible Packaging. A native of northern Germany, Kallies took up his new position on March 1. Kallies has worked in the paper industry for almost 30 years. "Mr. Kallies brings to our team a great deal of experience in the area of papers for flexible packaging," said Koehler's CEO, Kai Furler. "In his previous roles, he made a name for himself as an executive who thinks and acts strategically." With headquarters in Oberkirch, Germany, Koehler Paper Group produces over 500,000 tons per year of specialty paper and board at its plants in Kehl, Greiz, and Weisenbach. The Group employs around 1,800 people. To learn more, please visit: www.koehlerpaper.com . SOURCE: Koehler Paper Group South African gqom music used to be a boy's game. The Durban-born house genre (pronounced "gome" with a click at the beginning) first emerged from townships just before 2010. The dark, underground sound, aptly named for the Zulu word for drum, is the product of a direct approach to the dance floor. Gqom is a renegade genre, not dissimilar from punk or hip-hop, which both spawned from the talents of young, self-taught creatives who otherwise felt disenfranchised from the mainstream. DIY producers, often with bootleg software, created a lo-fi, hard hitting sound with a spacious feel. Early gqom creators took to WhatsApp and Kasimp3 (a platform where South African artists upload their music for free download) to share their music, and the low bit compression rates they used on their unmastered tracks became a staple characteristic of the genre. Its grassroots origins and close ties to club drug culture have made gqom a tough pill to swallow for more traditional listeners. The music found its fanbase and distributors in Durban's taxi drivers, who famously drive around the city blasting the local tunes from their cars. Since 2010, Gqom has steadily gained more mainstream acceptance thanks to breakout stars like Rude Boys, Distruction Boyz and DJ Lag. Despite these male roots, the people currently responsible for the genre's most considerable expansion, both nationally and internationally, are not "boyz" at all. In recent years, a tidal wave of feminine energy has transformed gqom music and culture. Artists like Babes Wodumo (featured on the 2017 Black Panther soundtrack) and pan-african poster child Sho Madjozi have reached the top of the charts and commanded the attention of popular culture. Wodumo and Madjozi are just two pieces of a larger movement, led by female rebels and role models, who are actively shaping South African culture both on and off the dance floor. The South African queens of gqom have not only conquered the genre, but also injected it with newfound meaning. What was previously dismissed as mere party music has become a platform for promoting messages of feminism and sexual liberation. Below, meet four women shaking up the genre: Busiswa Photo by Elijah Semosa Few people better represent gqom's female forward agenda than Busiswa. The musician grew up listening to gqom in Durban, where she immersed herself in what she describes as its "rebel" subculture. In gqom clubs, Busiswa felt a sense of revelation and liberation. "Women in gqom clubs were relieved of the obligation of being a lady," she said. "It's a beautiful space where everyone could really let themselves go. You could be whoever you wanted to be for the night, the women we aren't allowed to be in everyday life." The widely respected workhorse has a background in poetry, and her aptitude for lyricism has launched a career that pivots on messages of empowerment. It was a chance meeting with beat maker Sir Bubzin in 2011 and an ensuing feature that got her noticed and later signed to Oskido's Kalawa Jazmee Records. "The thing that happens most often with female vocalists in gqom," she said, "much like in hip-hop, is that a male producer or musician will put them on one song and then discard them. It's onto the next track, with the next 'sexy' vocalist. It's a 'come through' attitude that makes women feel disposable." Busiswa has managed to dodge this narrative, proving herself to be a unique force to be reckoned with rather than a passing fad. By merging the inherent celebration and debauchery of party music with messages of empowerment, Busiswa aims to "inspire and to motivate," especially when it comes to other women breaking into the scene. "Women just take it to another level," she said. "They add nuance. Guys can bring fun, but they can't bring flirty, energy, rebellious energy, or sexy energy to it. We are adding in that feminine power, and calling for all of the other women to celebrate it with us." Moonchild Sanelly Photo courtesy Moonchild Sanelly, another resonate and radical female voice in gqom, also came of age in Durban's poetry and jazz scene. Her striking turquoise hair and self-designed wardrobe are matched with an equally poignant sound. Although her first album explored a more alternative vibe, something clicked for Sanelly when she finally wrote verses to a gqom beat while in the studio with DJ Maphoriosa. She's since found her stride in the dark, underground sound, letting the beats carry her messages straight to the people. "I think gqom has allowed my music to reach more people who otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to that kind of content," she said. "The alternative space is very niche, but gqom connects me to a much wider audience." The self-described "future ghetto punk princess" has also been turning heads in South Africa and beyond, not just as a performer, but as a progressive sex symbol. Sanelly's fearlessly and frank support of female pleasure is a key pillar of her brand. "There are women in this country having children who don't even know the meaning of the word orgasm," she said. "It's easier to talk about taboo topics like female sexuality from the dance floor. South Africa is a country based on dance, so if you can translate a message through that form, you've really accomplished something. Even if people aren't consciously listening to what I'm saying, that poetry still breaks through." Despite, or perhaps due to, her commercial success, she still receives plenty of flack for her unfiltered opinions. Men who don't simply dismiss her for her sexual agenda attempt to leverage it against her. "One of the most challenging things about being a woman in this field is learning how to say 'fuck you' to a room of men after talking business. I've been offered so many things and have had to say, 'No babe, I'm great, I'll get there on my own time," Sanelly said. She also resents that male producers and artists often pit women in the industry against one another, which inhibits their collective power. "New people on the block, particularly women, are always disrespected in the beginning. In an ideal world, the future gqom scene will be run by women who can celebrate newcomers and not hold the gate with boys, because they also had to fight hard to be in this space and understand the struggle," she said. DJ Prie Photo by Pedro The women changing gqom culture aren't just spitting rhymes on a mic they're also behind the decks. One star shining particularly bright is DJ Prie. She started DJing at the ripe age of 17, and in the five years since has proven herself one of the most innovative, adept and influential figures in the industry. Prie has toured the US, Canada and Western Europe, has shared a stage with DJ Khaled and was even the first woman to perform at the Geneva Music Festival. Today she's a beloved resident DJ on South Africa's Soweto TV and a producer in her own right. Prie's move into the world of production feels especially inspiring, given that women are so underrepresented in producer and DJ roles. "There's no way you can hear my music and not dance," Prie said. "I'm headstrong with my mixing. I play the hardcore tracks and always deliver that energy." Her choice to focus on gqom was initially bewildering to some, considering its stigma. "Gqom is the new thing, it's influenced by young and fresh people, so naturally it's misunderstood," she explained. "Even now, many think gqom music is only for people who take drugs. It's dismissed as ratchet and I am often discredited because of my affiliation with it." Despite her many naysayers, Prie knows that its her expertise in gqom that has enabled her career to soar, particularly overseas. "I hate to say it, but it's still such a challenge in South Africa," she said. "I have to work 10 times harder than any guy for promoters or producers to take me seriously. They dismiss me solely based on my being a girl, or otherwise, will try to sleep with me before making a hire." She added that she's had better reception and more respect in international markets. "Overseas, they appreciate my sound because its unique, and I feel they appreciate that I'm a young woman and that I'm pushing." Her sets also offer an opportunity to promote the work of other female gqom artists and give them much-needed airtime, something Prie acknowledges: "I definitely do my best to bring up the women in the scene." Sne Mbatha Photo by Posh Photography Gqom music has bred a very specific style of dance that reflects its renegade spirit. Durban born choreographer and dancer Sne Mbatha has become the global ambassador of the gqom movement. "It moved me instantly as a dancer, because the sound itself speaks to your body," she said. She vividly remembers her introduction to the genre as a child through hometown taxi drivers. "The base hit so hard, you felt it all the way from your school shoes up to your head. Once you're inside a gqom taxi, you can hear that 808 vibrating the windows and nothing else. Sometimes people would get out of the car and start dancing in the street. No matter how bad your day was, a ride in a gqom taxi meant guaranteed fun." Today, Mbatha says gqom dance styles are some of the most popular in the country. The basic move that underpins it all, called the bhenga, is what Mbatha calls "the essential style, to carry you through the mood." It became popular in nightclubs where patrons were doing their best not to break a sweat, eventually settling in as the foundation of the style. While people of all genders love to dance, Mbatha, who has toured South Africa with Kendrick Lamar and opened the likes of Jay Sean, Kanye West, Nas, Usher and Timberland, says that there are just as many hurdles to overcome for female dancers as there are for vocalists and producers. "There are so many challenges, even in being casted," she said. "As a female dancer, your sex appeal counts before your brain and your ability." That objectification results in a lower bar (and appreciation) for technical ability. "The crowd reacts so differently to how men and women perform," she said. "If a girl does a hard hitting routine, it will never receive as much applause as a feminine piece with some ass shaking." Mbatha, though, has made a name for herself as an expert in a style that doesn't appease traditional gender stereotypes. "I've let it be known in the industry that I am Sne and this is how I dance," she said. "I've never been ashamed to dance 'like a boy' and have always told those who don't like it to buggar off." That defiant spirit has helped her make a positive impact and establish a more liberated precedent for other female dancers in the future something that's desperately needed for girls and women looking to break into the genre. "Gqom music is a very hard industry to tap into, it's worse than house, hip-hop or anything else," she said. "It's still male controlled, not even male dominated. It's also an up and coming genre. If you aren't doing it exactly like Babes Wodumo, they don't really accept you. So I look at every woman in this industry with major respect, because it's hard to commit your energy to something that the gatekeepers traditionally deny." This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions The White House has rejected a request by Demcoratic lawmakers to provide information about President Donald Trump's communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, CNN reported on Thursday. The White House sent its denial in a letter to Congress, it said. The chairmen of the House of Representatives Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees asked the White House and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in early March for documents and interviews about Trumps conversations with Putin. Search Keywords: Short link: PHOTOS: Iranians celebrate Persian New Year Norooz at Tomb of Poet Hafez 03/21/19 Photos by Mohammad Ali Haqshenas, Mehr News Agency Iranians gathered at the Tomb of Hafez in Shiraz, Fars province, last night to celebrate Persian New Year, Norooz. The vernal equinox which took place at 1:28 AM local time marked the start of spring and Norooz holidays in Iran. Shiraz is known as the City of Poets, Literature, Wine and Flowers. Hafez was a Persian mystic and poet. He was born sometime between the years 1310 and 1337 in Shiraz, Medieval Persia. John Payne, who has translated the Diwan Hafez, regards Hafez as the greatest poet of the world. His lyrical poems, known as ghazals, are noted for their beauty and bring to fruition the love, mysticism, and early Sufi themes that had long pervaded Persian poetry. Moreover, his poetry possessed elements of modern surrealism. About Norooz: International Norooz Day was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly, in its resolution A/RES/64/253 of 2010, at the initiative of several countries that share this holiday (Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Turkmenistan. Inscribed in 2009 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as a cultural tradition observed by numerous peoples, Norooz is an ancestral festivity marking the first day of spring and the renewal of nature. It promotes values of peace and solidarity between generations and within families as well as reconciliation and neighbourliness, thus contributing to cultural diversity and friendship among peoples and different communities. Iran: Harsh Sentence for Rights Lawyer Threatens Activism 03/21/19 Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran Lengthy Prison Terms Shows Effort to Deter Rights Advocacy Nasrin Sotoudeh (New York, March 20, 2019) - The prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh's draconian sentence for her peaceful activism shows the threat posed by Iran's revolutionary courts to human rights work, the Center for Human Rights in Iran and Human Rights Watch said today. Iran should immediately and unconditionally release Sotoudeh and other human rights defenders who are unjustly spending Nowruz, the Persian New Year, behind bars. On March 11, 2019, Reza Khandan, Sotoudeh's husband, announced that authorities had formally communicated to her that they had added another 33 years in prison and 148 lashes to Sotoudeh's existing five-year sentence. According to Khandan, based on Iran's penal code, if confirmed, Sotoudeh must serve 12 years in prison. "Nasrin Sotoudeh joins the large number of activists in Iranian prisons who are there solely for their lawful activism," said Hadi Ghaemi, CHRI executive director. "This reflects the depth of repression in Iran, where the most peaceful activities are criminalized, and the authorities disregard even the most minimum standards of law and justice." In the past four years, human rights groups have documented an increase in the length of prison sentences handed down to human rights activists. Under article 134 of Iran's penal code, which went into force in 2014, each defendant will only serve the harshest sentence among all, but the sentencing pattern suggests a significant increase in the criminalization of free speech and peaceful assembly. On February 18, 2019, Khandan published a detailed note taken from the verdict showing that Sotoudeh had been sentenced solely for her peaceful activism. According to the published verdict, branch 28 of Tehran's Revolutionary court sentenced Sotoudeh on the charges of: "assembly and collusion to act against national security" (7.5 years in prison); "propaganda against the state" (1.5 years in prison); "membership in illegal group of LEGAM" (Step by Step to Stop the Death Penalty) (7.5 years in prison); "encouraging (moral) corruption and prostitution" (12 years in prison); "appearing without a headscarf in public" (74 lashes); "publishing false information to disturb public minds" (3 years in prison and 74 lashes); and "disrupting public order" (2 years in prison). The Revolutionary court has reportedly refused to provide Sotoudeh with a copy of the verdict. According to article 134 of Iran's penal code: "if the number of offenses that are committed are more than three, the penalty shall not be more than the maximum prescribed punishment provided that it shall not exceed 1.5 times the longest sentence. In these cases, only the harshest prison sentence shall be served." Based on the information that Sotoudeh's family has received regarding her case, that would be 12 years. Branch 28 of Tehran's Revolutionary court deemed Sotoudeh's peaceful activities, such as "publishing a statement along with several prominent anti-revolutionary figures... [and] calling for a referendum under the supervision of the United Nations" as sufficient evidence for the charge of "assembly and collusion to act against national security." The verdict also cites her other activities such as "conducting interviews with foreign media and against the Islamic Republic," as well as participation in three "illegal" demonstrations, one of them by the local civil society group LEGAM in front of the United Nations Office in Tehran on October 12, 2017, as evidence against her. According to the verdict, "after women appeared in the street and took off their headscarves, in order to promote corruption and prostitution in the society and in support of women who took off their hijab, [Sotoudeh] published a video of herself on social media without a headscarf in public and with the cooperation of her husband, Reza Khandan, and some other anti-government figures and to encourage people not to wear hijab went to the location the women had taken their headscarf and put a flower bouquet on the utility box and distributed badges that said, 'I oppose compulsory hijab.'" Khandan told the Center for Human Rights in Iran that Sotoudeh was tried in absentia in Tehran on December 30 at branch 28 of the revolutionary court, with Judge Mohammad Moghiseh presiding. She refused to appear in court because she was denied the right to choose her own lawyer and wanted to protest the unjust judicial process. On March 11, Moghiseh told the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) that his court had sentenced Sotoudeh on the charge of "assembly and collusion against the state" to five years in prison and to two years on the charge of "insulting the supreme leader." Sotoudeh's family is not aware of this sentence and she does not face the charge of insulting the supreme leader, according to Sotoudeh's family. "On top of its shameless criminalization of human rights activism, the Iranian judiciary is further eroding justice through its lack of transparency in the judicial process and the sentence itself," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Journalists and the international community should challenge the Iranian authorities with respect to the charges and evidence they used to sentence Sotoudeh, a well-known and respected human rights defender." Iranian authorities arrested Sotoudeh on June 13, 2018 to serve a five-year sentence issued against her in absentia on September 3, 2016. She was arrested shortly after she filed a case on behalf of a woman who was arrested for removing her headscarf. The authorities had neither previously informed Sotoudeh of this sentence nor publicly announced the 2016 conviction or sentence. Sotoudeh's previous verdict said, citing Intelligence Ministry reporting, that she carried out: "Activities against national security in collaboration with domestic and foreign anti-revolutionary elements, including [by] participating in meetings with foreign diplomats suspected of having ties to intelligence services, and these meetings have taken place with a human right cover to increase pressure of enemy governments [on Iran] and to condemn Iran as a human rights violator..." The verdict also cites her public support of the "illegal" group Step by Step to Stop the Death Penalty, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to reducing executions in Iran. The verdict claims that Sotoudeh's support for this group reveals "her strategy in opposing the Islamic rulings and abolishing death penalty and qisas," a retributive punishment under Sharia law. Scores of human rights defenders are behind bars in Iran for their peaceful activism, including Narges Mohammadi, Atena Daemi, Arash Sadeghi, Gholrokh Iraee, Ismal Abdi, and Mohammad Habibi. The Iranian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release all these rights defenders as Iranians celebrate the new year (Nowruz) in Iran, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Human Rights in Iran said. Dr Albert Tourna Mama, Ghanas Resident Representative at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), says Ghanas macroeconomic outlook is now better than five years ago when she went in for the IMF programme. He noted that for the first time in a decade, Ghana achieved a primary surplus in 2017 and 2018, while the key macroeconomic indicators were trending positively. He expressed the belief that some efficient policies rolled out by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and the Finance Ministry played a pivotal role in the success story. Dr Tourma Mama, who is a member of the Committee that reviewed Ghanas IMF programme recently, announced that it would present its final report to the Executive Board of the IMF on Wednesday, March 20, and chart the way forward towards sustaining the countrys economy for accelerated growth. Dr Tourna Mama made the remarks when contributing to a panel discussion on Ghanas macroeconomic environment and how it could attract private sector investment at the ongoing Africa Climate Week (ACW) at the Accra International Conference Centre. The 2019 Africa Climate Week (ACW) is being held under the theme: Climate Action in Africa: A Race We Can Win. The five-day event, organised by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Government of Ghana and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), brought together diverse actors from the public and private sectors to firm up the action plan to deal with the negative effects of climate change. For instance, he said, the BoG cut the monetary policy rate by more than 400 basis points, and at the last Monetary Committee Meeting in January, this year, the Bank also cut the monetary rate from 100 per cent to 60 per cent, which were positive achievements. Those positive outcomes, Dr Mama said, culminated in the high rating given the nation by the Standard and Poors, an international rating agency, last year in addition to the high patronage of the Governments Eurobond issued on the global market last year. He said one of the key conditions with the IMF programme was to strengthen domestic revenue mobilisation and create space for increase in taxes. Therefore, the landmark legislation presented to Parliament last week was to rationalise tax exemption and increase investment in certain sectors of the economy as well as increase financial viability of some public institutions. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Mr Nathaniel Kove, a cassava processing expert, has said the Hohoe enclave is an ideal location for the establishment of a major cassava processing industry. He said cassava production has long flourished in the area and with the right support, farmers would readily deliver under the industrial regime of the One District One Factory policy. Mr Kove, who owns NK Farms and Trading Enterprise, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), said small scale processors in the area were expanding and would require Government's help with uninterrupted supplies of inputs and utilities. He said due to the zero waste and high industrial demand, cassava continues to rank high amongst the most extensively farmed crops. Mr Kove said with over 20 years experience in cassava processing, his company works at helping to advance the capacities of farmers in developing the crop into a high earner for players on its supply chain. He said over 50 farmers from within the Hohoe Municipality were currently benefiting from the companys share cropping project, which aims at producing 3200 tonnes of the root tuber from about 200 acres of land. Mr Kove said his company is engaging stakeholders including the Ministry of Trade on securing a support package of about GHC 100,000 for its out grower project, whiles targeting about 3 million USD towards the establishment of a factory. He said with the support of the Volta Regional Coordinating Council, about 1000 acres of land has been released by the Fodome community towards Governments industrialisation agenda adding that there is the need to address various challenges including power supply, roads and access to water. Mr Kove said the Ministry must also provide support teams to drive the implementation of the 1D1F. He said the company currently produced high quality cassava flour and granules, ethanol, and potato flour aimed at suppling the textile, plywood, and catering industries. NK Farms was once adjudged the best gari processor in the Hohoe Municipality, and continues to identify and support farmers with high yield cassava sticks. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Maafo, has explained the cause of the recent slump in the local currency, saying it was as a result of strenuous effort by government to successfully exit the external credit facility (ECF) under the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He said since Saturday, March 16, a government delegation has been preparing to meet their IMF counterparts over the exit by Ghana from the facility. After the meeting on Wednesday, March 20, Mr Osafo Marfo confirmed, Ghana exited the programme with the the Cedi starting to appreciate. I can say with confidence that the Cedi will remain stable for quite some time, the former Finance Minister stressed. He made this known on Thursday at the annual conference of the Ghana Insurance Brokers Association in Kumasi. He said government will turn its attention of reforms from the banking sector to the insurance sector, therefore urging insurance firms to consider merging if necessary. As government, we are taking tough decisions to sanitize the banking sector. We will soon sanitize the insurance sector also because the two move together. The Senior Minister confirmed that Ghana has successfully exited the IMF programme entered into in 2015 by the erstwhile administration. So now we are masters of our own economy, he stated. And that makes a big difference. He explained that before the country exited the programme, she was made to meet seven prior actions. And a couple of the prior actions were inimical to the currency stabilisation and that was the cause to the immediate, within the last month, rapid depreciation of the Cedi. But he assured that the efforts made by government to stabilize the currency will pay off. Source: 3news.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video To help curb graduate unemployment and equip students with the necessary skills that will make them employable after school, GTUC has organized the annual Career Info shop Fair today, 21 March, 2019. The Fair under the theme Securing a future in a technology-driven economy was to inform students about career opportunities in the job market as well as create a platform for networking with industry leaders to gain practical insight into what they have studied in the classroom. Speaking at the event Mr. Emmanuel Payne, a level 400 Engineering student, expressed his excitement and appreciation at the opportunity created for them. He said that most of his colleagues have seized the opportunity to learn more about the various work industries and how they relate to their respective areas of studies. The Ag President (GTUC), Professor Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa cut the tape to launch this years Career Info Shop, he congratulated the Office of Student Affairs for the continued effort in ensuring the event is carried out annually. Dr. Adjin also encouraged the students to take advantage of the platform created and learn more about the job opportunities related to their respective areas of study. While some students visited the various organizations set up at the GTUC forecourt (Main Campus), others interacted with prospective employers at the GTUC Career Info Shop. They also engaged in some activities such as seminars, workshops, CV clinics and counseling sessions facilitated by professionals from industry. Organizations who exhibited at the event included; Vodafone, MTN, Brands Africa Ghana, Fidelity Bank, Ghana Armed Forces, etc. Some GTUC Alumni also attended the event to share their experiences with the students. Also in attendance were, the Registrar, Dr. Mrs. Juliana Owusu Ansah, Head/Students Affairs, Ms.Evelyn Asiedu, staff and faculty members, students and invited partners. The GCIS 2018 provided GTUC students with relevant information to educate them on career options and choices. Meanwhile the Acting President of GTUC, Professor Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa, has called on the government to expedite action on the passage of the GTUC Bill into law to make the institution a fully fledged public university. He said the timely passage of the bill would not only make the GTUC more competitive internationally but also better position it to be a leading technology-based institution that would produce technocrats to respond appropriately to the country's developmental challenges. We are pleading with the government to speed up the process, so that we can have the bill passed into an act this year to enable us to award our own degrees and broaden our base towards the technical human resource needs of the country. The Chief Executive Officer for LAINE Services Ltd Dr Ellen M.Hagan also asked for policies in our education to scientists in the country. Source: Josephine Acheampomaa/Peacefmonline/[email protected] Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo on Wednesday said the world must step up efforts in fighting the threat of climate change, the biggest threat to the survival of humans. He said global negotiators and parties must streamline access to international climate finance to complement national funding as Africa strives to halt the impact of climate change. He urged all Africans to support and join in the fight, saying; It is imperative that we join the call as enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals to protect, restore, and promote the sustainable use of terrestrial eco-system, land, forests, combat desertification, and stop land degradation. President Akufo-Addo said this at the opening of the Africa Climate Week (ACW) underway in Ghana, on the theme: "Climate Change Action in Africa: A Race We Can Win". As the Co-chair of the United Nations Group of Eminent Advocates of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the President said climate change was threatening the realization of the Goals and becoming an issue of grave concern to world leaders. The world is recording rising sea levels, severe and extreme weather conditions, long droughts, floods, erratic rainfall patterns, and increasing desertification. President Akufo-Addo cited the recent devastation caused by the tropical cyclone Idia, in Mozambique, and sympathized with delegates from that country and neighbouring ones like Zimbabwe and Malawi for their loss. The President described the Africa Climate Week as an important conference for Africans since the ravages of climate change affect Africa the most. He said the week-long event, therefore, affords the opportunity to showcase the progress Africa was making in tackling the phenomenon as well as deepening the partnerships required at the global level to combat it. We suffer the most in Africa because our economies allow us to be susceptible to the effect of climate change, and our capacities to withstand the shock are unknown. President Akufo-Addo mentioned agriculture, water, and energy as essential drivers of development in African countries but at the same time were characteristically sensitive to changing climate. This week-long conference affords us the opportunity to showcase the progress we are making in tackling this phenomenon as well as deepening the partnership required in the global level to combat it. He said it was in the interest of African nations to consider the economic fortune of the Continent and step up their collective efforts to fighting global warming decisively. The President said the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows the global community had only 12 years to stop the phenomenon, a development that required aggressive actions to tackle. He noted that though the discourse on climate change had different dimensions, the most important aspect of it was that majority of nations had committed to tackling and reducing the current global temperature to two degrees Celsius minimum below pre-industrial level and increasing it to 1.5 degrees Celcius above the pre-industrial level. President Akufo-Addo said in conformity with the Constitution, Ghanas development plan, which would be implemented from 2017 to 2024, had been submitted to Parliament, while major policy interventions had been introduced to combat the impact. He cited programmes such as the Planting for Food and Jobs, One Village One Dam and One-District-One-Factory (IDIF) geared towards boosting industrialization and rural development as well as building the countrys resilience to climate impacts. The Strategic focus of the IDIF initiative in the northern regions of Ghana is to provide all-year-round access to water to smallholder farmers to practically have a more variable alternative livelihood during the dry season. We are also determined to make the natural gas, which we have in abundance, available for the generation of electricity, President Akufo-Addo said, adding that the country, in her 2019 Budget, provided special incentives for the introduction of electric cars in Ghana. He expressed the belief that the ACW would throw more light on practical ways to mobilize financial resources to support the implementation of national climate actions. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Islamic scholar and member of the National Peace Council (NPC), Sheikh Mahmoud Gedel has condemned last weeks attack on a mosque in New Zealand. The attack, which happened in the city of Christchurch, claimed 50 lives during Friday prayers last week. This was after an armed man opened fire on Muslims who were praying without any provocation. Australian and white supremacist, Brenton Tarrant, 28, who committed the dastardly act, is currently held in a specialist facility and has been placed under 24-hour observation for his own safety. Even though he condemned similar attacks on Christians and members of other sects, Sheikh Gedel believes there is what he called a conspiracy among various global interest to declare war on the Quran. That, he said, will never help the world to live in peace. Islam is a peaceful religion practised by peace-loving people, in business, politics, research and culture, Muslims are contributing enormously. He told DAILY GUIDE that if there are crisis in the world of human beings, find the solutions in global systems; you dont attribute human failures to Islam, Islamophobia is not a solution to global problems and global failures. Sheikh Gedel, therefore, described the Christchurch mosque shootings as a debacle against world peace and condemned it without reservations. It was an act of cowardice disgraceful to civilizations. Source: Daily Guide Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has implored organisations, businesses and individuals to ensure regular and prompt payment of their taxes. Officials of the state agency in Kumasi, the Ashanti regional capital, warned Ghanaians to regularly pay their taxes to avoid the payment of severe penalties. Speaking at a media encounter in Kumasi last Friday, Samuel Sakyi Duodu, Assistant Commissioner at the Asokwa Medium Tax Office (MTO), urged the citizenry to file their tax returns by April, this year in accordance with the law. GRA, he said, had put plans in place to introduce electronic or online filing of tax returns to ensure convenience and efficiency by the middle of the year. He appealed to the media to support the Authority to sensitise taxpayers about its activities. According to him, the ongoing registration for Tax Identification Numbers (TINs) was necessary to build a database for all Ghanaians to identify potential taxpayers and facilitate business transactions. Mr. Duodu also explained that the introduction of the excise tax stamp in Ghana would help check unwholesome products that are imported into the country. Isaac K. M. Quaye of the Adum Small Tax Office stressed the need for Ghanaians to pay serious attention to the registration for TINs, filing of returns and payment of taxes to avoid penalties. He said the payment of taxes has become topical in Ghana currently. Source: Daily Guide Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Inspector General of Police David Asante-Apeatu has directed the immediate interdiction of the three Police officer who allegedly assaulted some journalists working with the Ghanaian Times newspaper. They are Inspector Isaac Opare of the Ministries Division, Accra, SergeanAssaultt Ebenezer Akrofi of the Accra Regional Police Headquarters and Lance Corporal Evans Kofi Ntim of Police Visibility in Accra. The IGP has also directed the Accra Regional Crime Officer to take over investigation of the case from the Ministries Police Station, while instructing the Commander of Accra Central Motor Traffic Unit to take over the motor traffic accident of the case. In a statement signed by the Director-General of the Public Affairs Department of the Ghana Police Service, ACP David Eklu said both are to submit a report on the matter in one week. Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly attended on Thursday the signing of three partnership contracts between Egypt's New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA) and real estate developers to execute investment and development projects in new urban communities. The contracts were signed by Egypt's Minister of Housing Asem El-Gazar, the vice chairman of the New Urban Communities Authority for Real Estate and Commercial Affairs Tarek El-Sebai, managing director and board member of SODIC Maged El-Sherif, CEO of Al-Ahly for Real Estate Development Hussein Sabour, and the CEO of Arkan Palm for Real Estate Investment Mamdouh Badr El-Din. The minister of housing noted that the projects are to be constructed on a total area of 849 acres on a number of plots in the cities of Sheikh Zayed and 6 October, with the aim of pumping investments of about EGP 93.5 billion and providing 163,000 direct and indirect job opportunities. The agreement with Arkan Palm involves the construction of an integrated commercial, administrative, medical, and recreational complex overlooking the 26th of July Axis in Sheikh Zayed City, on an area of 205 acres and at an expected investment cost of EGP 59 billion, providing about 57,000 job opportunities. The agreement with SODIC involves the construction of an integrated urban community on the Dabaa axis, the western extension of Sheikh Zayed City, on an area of 500 acres with an expected EGP 29 billion in investments and 100,000 job opportunities. The housing minister said that a meeting with the World Bank mission in Cairo will be held later on Thursday to review ways of involving real estate developers in the implementation of social housing projects and other projects carried out by the Urban Communities Authority. Search Keywords: Short link: Mr. Alban Sumana Bagbin, Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament and a former National Democratic Congress (NDC) Flagbearer hopeful, has encouraged his party in the face of current tribulations that members are going through, saying it is just a test of character. In an interview with journalists in Accra, the revered lawmaker for Nadowli-Kaleo and longest-serving Legislator in the 4th Republic said the party had survived even worst trials in the past than it was currently suffering. If you compare what we are going through under the Akufo-Addo government to what we went through under the Kufuor government, this is childs play. Under Kufuor, Tsatsu Tsikata went to jail. Victor Selormey died in prison after being convicted under very controversial conditions. Kwame Peprah and Dan Abodakpi were not spared, but we survived and returned to power for two terms, Mr Bagbin said. The Nadowli-Kaleo MP, therefore urged his party to be strong in the face of intimidations that the Akufo-Addo government was putting members of the party through. Among others; the Akufo-Addo government has paraded former CEO of COCOBOD, Dr. Stephen Opuni, before court on charges of importing powdery fertilizer rather than liquid ones. Documentary evidence which proved that the powder imported by Opuni was liquid has mysteriously gone missing from the archives of the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG). On the party level, three National Executives of the party, including National Chairman, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, have been charged by the Police for supposedly conspiring to commit crime on the basis of a secretly recorded tape that has been heavily spliced. Against the backdrop of all this, President Akufo-Addo has taken advantage of the disgruntlement of one of the NDCs own, former Attorney General Martin Amidu, to hound the NDC, appointing Mr. Amidu as Special Prosecutor to target appointees in the former NDC Government. Many are the troubles that surround the NDC, but we shall overcome. How do I know this? Because we have overcome before, Bagbin said. He recalled that he was Minority Leader when a National Reconciliation Commission was set up to embarrass leading members of the NDC. Mr. Bagbin recalled how the intimidation under Kufuor cowed many NDC frontline members into hiding, leaving only he, the then Minority Leader and a few others such as Dr. Tony Aidoo and the then National Chairman, Dr. Kwabena Adjei, to hold the fort for the party. The respected Legislator, therefore, urged the rank and file of the NDC to be strong, saying, This party NDC will not only survive, but it will also return to power. He paid tribute to the late Dr. Kwabena Adjei, saying that the former NDC Chairman really paid his dues to both party and country. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The government has accused the Minority in Parliament for what it described as a deliberate attempt to use the depreciation of the countrys currency to project fear into Ghanaians, particularly the business community. According to the Minister of Information, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, although the countrys currency had depreciated in the first quarter of this year, efforts being put in place by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and the Ministry of Finance had seen a gradual comeback of the Ghana cedi, particularly against the United States (US) dollar. Addressing journalists in Accra yesterday, he said the decision of the minority to play down on the countrys currency and speculate fear into the business community is a bit late. No need to fear We have all seen what the cedi is doing in the past few days as it has begun to appreciate because of measures being rolled out by the government. So what the Minority in Parliament is saying is just an attempt to put fear into the people, Mr Nkrumah said. He said the government was confident that in the coming weeks, the Ghana Cedi would resume its strong position on the global market. There is no need for anybody to fear or believe what the Minority is saying. In times past they have projected and said a lot of things that never happened and were not accurate, Mr Nkrumah said. The Information Minister also called on institutions and individuals to desist from speculating a possible fall of the countrys currency since it had the potential of making people hoard or rush for more foreign currencies. He also urged the business community to do business with the forex agencies since their operations could be traced by the government. Put Ghana first Mr Nkrumah called on the minority to put Ghana first by desisting from statement that sough to cast doubts on the countrys economy in the eyes of the international community. He said there was no need for the minority to cast negative sentiments anything the country faced some economic challenges. I urge the minority to stop what they are doing in the name of Ghana, Mr Nkrumah added. Source: Daily Graphic Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video A member of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) Communications team, Eric Amoako Twum, has said the government may have to go back to the drawing board to redefine its flagship policy One-District One-Factory to properly address the economic needs of Ghanaians. The NPP while in opposition promised to establish a factory in each of the 216 districts (now 254) in the country, but on coming into government less than 100 factories to produce various goods have been established or revived. In the wake of conversations about the alarming depreciation of the cedi, many experts, including the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, have blamed it on the countrys high appetite for imported goods. An extended conversation on the matter questions why the country continues to import when the 1D1F was supposed to help reduce importation. Some critics however think that the policy could focused on setting up factories for goods that the country imports the most rather than seeking to set up different factories across the country. Speaking on TV3s New Day Thursday, Mr. Twum agrees it will not be out of place to consider the options being proffered by the critics. And people have come out and said, listen, maybe even for the one district one factory, four, five, six products that are major imports into this country and create a huge factory to afford for economies of scale, he said. I believe that we can go back to the drawing board and redefine the 1D1F in terms of 5,6 strategic factories, he added. Asked if he is convinced that is the way to go to make the policy better, Mr. Twum responded in the affirmative, I believe in it. Private legal practitioner and member of the Conventions Peoples Party (CPP), Kwame Jantua, who was also contributing to the discussion observed that it has always been his position that the 1D1F policy focuses on a few factories that manufacture goods the country has a competitive advantage in. The focus of one-district one-factory should not have been the way it is, he observed. Member of Parliament (MP) for the Tamale North Constituency, Alhaji Alhassan Suhuyini, also noted that it is welcoming news to the National Democratic Congress (NDC), that the NPP has agreed to go back to the drawing board. According to him, it has always been the position of the NDC that the government did not think through their policies properly but governs as you go. Source: 3news.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video An Accra High Court (Human Rights Division) has once again adjourned the hearing of an application by the Electoral Commission (EC) praying the court for another one year to implement the Representation of People Amendment Act (ROPAA). This was after the Sampson Lardy Anyenini, counsel for the plaintiffs prayed the court for an adjournment to enable him file a supplementary affidavit in opposition to the ECs application. The court presided over by Justice Nicholas Abodakpi at its last sitting adjourned the matter to today because the ECs application for extention of time had not been served on the counsel for the plaintiffs. Appearing in court today, Mr. Anyenini prayed the court to adjourn the matter to allow him file the supplementary affidavit to enable the applicant respondents to fully make their side of the story. Justin Amenuvor, counsel for the EC did not oppose the adjournment sought by his fellow lawyer, saying he has not seen the supplementary affidavit and would therefore leave it entirely to the court to determine the way forward. The presiding judge subsequently adjourned the matter to April 3, 2019. EC Application In an application filed by the EC to ask for time to implement Act 699, the Chairperson of EC, Jean Mensa, said the Commission has been bedeviled by some challenges which affected its ability to implement the Act. An Accra High Court (Human Rights Division) on December 17, 2017 ordered the EC to activate the process that would enable Ghanaians living abroad to vote in the countrys elections. The court said within 12 calendar months beginning from January 1, 2018 the EC should lay before parliament the modalities for the implementation of the ROPAA Act so that Ghanaian citizens living abroad can take part in election 2020. The court, presided over by Justice Anthony K. Yeboah, also ordered the EC to explain why it failed to implement the Act within one month after the expiration of the 12-month period. It also ordered the Commission to publish the reasons in the media. In a motion filed at an Accra High Court, the EC said the Act has not been implemented principally because of three main challenges which the EC faced shortly after the order. The challenges, the EC Chairperson said, include the removal of Charlotte Osei and her two deputies, Amadu Sulley and Georgina Opoku-Amankwa, who were found guilty of six allegations leveled against them by some petitioners. The EC said it failed to implement the order of the Court thereafter because of its work relating to the referenda to create six new regions in the country. Mrs. Mensa indicated in the affidavit of support that the EC had inaugurated a committee, chaired by the Deputy Chairperson, Dr. Bossman Asare Eric. She said the committee was working with the general public, stakeholders and other countries that are practising External Voting to take the appropriate steps for its implementation in Ghana. She, therefore, prayed the court to give EC more time to operationalize Act 699 for 12 calendar months ending January 2020. Source: Daily Guide Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video National Organizer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Sammy Awuku has called on the leadership of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to stay committed to the cause of disbanding political vigilante groups in the country. Sammy Awuku is asking his colleague politicians not to renege on the decision to have a meeting between the two main political parties - the NPP and NDC - with regard to President Nana Akufo-Addo's directive that they should find ways to dissolve vigilante groups in order to end political violence. Speaking to host Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's flagship programme 'Kokrokoo', the NPP National Organizer was optimistic the leadership of the two parties can come to an agreement on the issue. For us in the NPP, what we want our NDC friends and colleagues to also do; come to the same table with honesty," he said. Sammy Awuku further cautioned media houses in the country not to inflame passions by creating panic in their reportage on the issue. He took a swipe at a media report on the De-Eye Group which labeled the group as a "militia'; asking how can you a vigilante group which condemns its colleagues for using violence to solve a problem? To him, for the disbandment of the vigilante groups to be successful, it behoves all parties including the media to work together. The nation awaits leadership from these two political parties . . . This discussion about disbanding these groups, they have come out strongly and we have shown leadership. We want the NDC to do same. However, what the NPP will not also support or condone is to deliberately create panic from some media quarters and media houses, he stated. Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Mike Oquaye has ordered the removal of the Right to Information bill from parliaments motion paper on Thursday. The order preceded a planned reading of the bill for the third time as captured by the Order Paper. The Speakers action was necessitated by the Civil Society Organisations decision to make additional proposals to be inserted into the bill. Meanwhile, Chairman of the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee of Parliament and deputy Minority Whip, Ben Abdallah Banda, says parliament should not be blamed for the delay in the passage of the bill. He noted that the leadership of parliament has expedited action on the bill because it is passionate about it. He pointed out, The executive have done their part, parliament has also done out part, it is the coalition to the Right to Information, they are saying they dont want it to be passed the way we have done itso the public should take that it is not Ghana parliament that is trying not to pass the Act now. Background The object of the RTI Bill is to provide for the operationalisation of the constitutional right to information held by public and some private institutions, subject to exemptions that are necessary and consistent with the protection of public interest in a democratic society. It also seeks to foster a culture of transparency and accountability in public affairs and to provide for related matters. The RTI Bill was first drafted in 1999, reviewed in 2003, 2005 and 2007 but was only presented to Parliament in 2010. It was brought back to the Sixth Parliament but could not be passed till the expiration of that Parliament on January 6, 2016. After months of waiting, the Bill was laid in Parliament early last year (2018) by the Deputy Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Mr Joseph Dindiok. The RTI Bill has passed through the first and second readings. Source: 3news.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Northern Regional Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Police Service, DSP Mohammed Yussif Tanko has disclosed that there is still more work to do in ensuring that total calm and peace is restored at Chereponi where violence has left many displaced and houses torched. He says though there is calm in the area now, they still need to work harder to ensure that the expected peace is provided and activities brought to normalcy. Speaking on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme, he added that currently with the support from the police headquarters in Accra, enough personnel and resource have been deployed to Chereponi to ensure that there is relative peace in the area. "We were able to retrieve some locally manufactured guns and also arrested some 22 people who were involved in the violent clashes. "Let me also appeal to the local people to assist the police and security agencies in brokering peace between the two factions. They cannot continue to engage and live in violence," he said. "Currently, the properties that have been destroyed within the short pace of time cannot be quantified. So we are urging the chiefs and people of the area to help ensure that this matter is brought to a rest," he added. He also pleaded with government to implement the findings of a committee that was chaired by the former Inspector General of Police, Mr. Patrick Kwarteng Acheampong when similar violence between these groups broke up. The government set up a five-member fact-finding committee to delve into the circumstances that led to the recent outbreak of communal violence between the Chokosis and the Konkombas in the Chereponi and the Saboba districts in the Northern Region in January. The committee, which was tasked to find out the remote and immediate causes of the conflict and come up with solutions to ensure lasting peace in the conflict area, is chaired by a former Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr Patrick Kwarteng Acheampong. The renewed clashes between the Konkombas and Chokosis resulted in the burning down of several houses and properties in Nandoni, a farming community in the district. The Chokosis and the Konkombas have been fighting over the ownership right of a parcel of land. . Source: Isaac kwame Owusu/Peacefmonline.com/[email protected] Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Speaker of Parliament, Rt Hon Prof. Michael Aaron Oquaye, has ordered removal of the Right to Information bill ( RTI ) from the order paper following demands by Civil Society Organisations ( CSOs ) for some amendments to be effected to the bill before its passage. The RTI coalition has presented some proposals to be incorporated into the bill before its passage. The Second Deputy Speaker of Parliament Hon Alban Bagbin yesterday cautioned that the inclusion of the new proposals will render the bill unimplementable when passed into law. The RTI bill which is at the final stage of the process for its passage, has been advertised several times in the Order Paper of Parliament but the House has not been able to continue with the consideration of the bill due to demands by the RTI Coalition. The Speaker Prof. Oquaye has therefore directed leadership of Parliament to meet the coalition in order to address their concerns. Rt Hon Prof Michael Aaron Oquaye however asked the public to understand that any delay to the passage of the RTI bill currently is due to demands by the CSOs in relation to the bill and not the making of Parliament. The Deputy Minority Whip and MP for Banda, Hon Ahmed Ibrahim advised the media to be mindful of their reportage on the current development on the RTI bill in order not to create the impression that Parliament is delaying the passage of the bill since the delay is rather due to the demands by the CSOs. Source: Emmanuel Akorli/ Peace Fm/ Parliamentary Correspondent Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has written back to the president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, over the call for an engagement with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) in disbanding their vigilante groups. Signed by NDCs National Chairman Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, the letter on Thursday made reference to the presidents latest letter on Thursday, March 14, raising concerns about the triggering of a legislation process to stamp out the menace. President Akufo-Addo had indicated in his letter that without prejudice to the dialogue, he had instructed the Attorney General to prepare and submit a legislation to Parliament. As indicated in our previous letter and again above we believe the problem of political violence requires much more than a law-and-order response, Mr Ofosu Ampofo stated. It requires a national dialogue that can generate a renewed commitment to constitutional values and processes. He pointed out that without prejudice to the prerogatives as president, we think that a National Dialogue would provide the best opportunity to evaluate the adequacy of our legislation and get broad consensus behind whatever interventions Your Excellency intends. The NDC National Chairman, however, expressed satisfaction with the NPPs interest in a wider participation in the dialogue by other stakeholders. The letter even suggested that the dialogue be named National Dialogue on Constitutionalism and Non-Violent Social Engagement. It said this has been as a result of the evolution and clarification the largest opposition party has had in the last month over the proposal. President Akufo-Addo made his first call for an engagement between the two major political parties against political vigilantism at his February 21 state of the nation address. It came after he set up a commission of inquiry led by retired Supreme Court judge Francis Emile Short to look into the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election violence. Immediately before then, a drive-by deadly shooting had interrupted a meeting of national executives of the NDC at its Ashanti Region office. Pending this, the NDC highlighted in its letter on Thursday, we note that the general law empowers you as President to issue an executive instrument proscribing organisations whose operations are inimical to the public interest. We also note that Your Excellency as Chair of the National Security Council, can demand that it ceases the unlawful organisation and deployment of armed forces such as we saw in the Ayawaso West Bye-Election. The officers from the National Security Council whose presence during the by-election raised hackles And of course, Your Excellency can also instruct your ministerial appointees at the Ministries for National Security and Interior to take steps to disband these forces. The president has already vowed to stamp out the menace from Ghanaian politics. Akufo-Addo vows to stamp out violence from politics The NDC commended the president for his posture, declaring commitment to ensure peace. We hope to remain constructive partners in advancing the quest for constitutionalism and peaceful engagement in all areas of national life. Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video If you belong to the list of the many Ghanaians who only attend church on 31st of December for the last watch night church service to end the year, then you can count actress cum movie producer, Tracey His Only Chick Boakye as a member of the union. According to the enterprising mother of one, she only attends church once in a year, which is the 31st December watch night service, where she goes to thank God for all his mercies and blessings in the year. She also stressed that even though she hardly goes to church week in, week out, all her prayers are always answered by her maker. Tracey made this revelation on the Uncut show when she reacting to the suggestions from some quarters that her recent successes chalked in the business world is because she is somebody who loves to visit shrines and other ungodly places for help. She stressed that anytime she hears such things, she gets shocked because her father in heaven is always there for her even though she hardly goes to church, and as such, what will see need a shrine for? Watch the video below: Source: zionfelix Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Egypt's Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany is to officially inaugurate the Tutankhamun, the Treasures of the Pharaoh exhibition in Paris this evening Tutankhamun fever hit the French capital this week as Paris is welcoming the Tutankhamun, the Treasures of the Pharaoh exhibition on its second leg after Los Angeles in the US as part of a worldwide tour. The features of the golden boy-king can be seen everywhere in the city centre, including in metro stations, shops, restaurants and outside residential buildings. Meanwhile, the golden sarcophagus of Tutankhamun has caught the front pages of many French newspapers and magazines, some of which have devoted issues to Tutankhamuns treasures, history, and the discovery of his tomb. Statuette of god Horus The collection of the young Pharaoh is back in Paris, 52 years after its last visit in 1967 when more than 1.2 million visitors gathered to admire 45 objects from the boy-kings collection exhibited in the Petit Palais. Managing director for exhibitions at the IMG company that organised this years show, John Norman, said the exhibition was like none that had been seen before. Millions of people around the world would get the opportunity to see these ancient objects in an immersive context, he said, adding that Tutankhamuns place in peoples imaginations will be secure for generations to come. The mask According to the organiser of the exhibition, some 130,000 tickets had been sold, and it is expected that this will reach 150,000 tickets before the public opening of the exhibition at the Grande Halle de la Villette on 23 March. A VIP inauguration by Egypts Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany is to be held on 21 March. The immersive exhibition will unveil more than 150 artefacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun over the next six months. More than 50 pieces from this collection have travelled for the first time out of Egypt. It is a unique opportunity for worldwide audiences to rediscover the history of one of the most perplexing kings in ancient Egyptian history who lived almost 3,300 years ago as well as many of the personal belongings of the young sovereign that accompanied him in the two worlds of life and death. These will be exhibited within the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) that is currently under construction overlooking the Giza Plateau and is scheduled to open in 2020. Ka Visitors will be able to learn about how scientific analysis of the Pharaohs 3,000-year-old mummy has revealed new information about his health and lineage, as well as how cutting-edge archaeological tools have assisted in discovering tombs and analysing existing ones in ways never before imagined. The discovery of the tomb and the history of Egyptian archaeology, along with new scientific analysis of the mummy, will be also shown through a video exhibition in the show presenting scan data of Tutankhamuns mummy. The god Horus New DNA testing shows that the young Pharaoh suffered from malaria and had a badly broken left leg above the knee that pierced his skin. This likely resulted in the infection that caused his death. The exhibition also takes visitors into the afterlife, visualising it through objects from Tutankhamuns tomb. It combines technology, music and animation in novel ways. We have used a lot of technology in the exhibition, Norman said, describing it as a very theatrical experience. Tutankhamun The most important artefacts on show include a 40cm gold coffin, the gold diadem from Tutankhamuns mummy, a gold fan featuring an ostrich hunt, a small gold canopic coffin ornamented with faience, a silver trumpet used for religious ceremonies, a gilded wooden statuette depicting the king riding a black varnished leopard, four marble canopic jars, and a gilded wooden jackal-headed figurine with the god Duamutef on the base. There is a wooden travelling chest with gilded knobs inlaid with ebony and ivory, gold finger rings with images of the god Amun-Re on a cartouche-shaped bezel, a marble game board, and tapestry woven linen gloves. One iconic item in the exhibition is a statue of Ka, a wooden guardian statue with gilded head-dress and skirt, and other items including ushabti figurines, head-rests, boxes and jewellery. We had to change the 110 doors of the Grande Halle to hardened steel models to protect the works from the risk of fire and to ensure their safety. We also had to modernise the temperature conditions, since it was necessary to cool the room without air-conditioning, Didier Fusillier, head of the Grande Halle de La Villette, told the French newspaper Les Echoes. The works arrive from Los Angeles and only come out of their container inside La Villette. Cranes and trucks enter directly into the Grande Halle, which avoids the manipulation of objects. Tutankhamun posters We have equipped the crates with a SenseAware system, which provides information on geolocation and environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity, Mathilde Goffard, vice president of land operations at FedEx France, told the newspaper. Elham Salah, head of the Museums Sectors at the ministry, said the collection had been insured for $800 million. It would be accompanied by an officer from Egypts Tourist and Antiquities Police, a restorer and a curator, she said, adding that the revenue from the exhibition was estimated at $50 million for each country involved, and there would also be a percentage paid on the number of tickets and souvenirs sold. The ministry would benefit from 10 per cent of the value of the items sold, as well as $1 for each visitor above 400,000, reaching $4 per visitor at 700,000 visitors. The exhibition arrived in Los Angeles in March 2018, and it is now in Paris as a message of peace from the Egyptians to the whole world to show how the ancient Egyptians built their own great civilisation with passion, faith, love, knowledge and art, El-Enany said. It will allow humanity to admire our treasures and encourage visitors to come to see the fascinating monuments in their original context in Egypt, he added. Other legs of the exhibition include the Saatchi Museum in London, the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, the Sydney Museum in Australia, the National Museum in South Korea, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Muri Art Centre in Tokyo and the Osaka Museum of Art. The French TV channel France2 described the Tutankhamun exhibition as the most important cultural event in Paris for years, while the one held in 1967 was the most beautiful Christmas gift imaginable, it said. Recalling the 1967 exhibition, Jean-Marc Gonion, the editor of Le Figaro magazine, told Tarek Al-Awadi, the curator of the exhibition, that although he was young at that time he remembered that his parents had left him at his grandmothers house so he would not stand queuing at the Petit Palais to explore the treasures of the Egyptian boy-king. He was very happy to have a chance to see the exhibition on its return to Paris 50 years later, he said, adding that in the queues for the exhibition in 1967 some marital problems had been solved while other couples had been divorced. New friendships had been created, and some bachelors had found marriage, he said. *A version of this article appears in print in the 21 March, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Tutankhamun comes to Paris Search Keywords: Short link: -FILE- In this Sunday, March 5, 2017 photo, a damaged election poster showing, left, Thierry Baudet and Theo Hiddema, from the Forum for Democracy party, FVD, is displayed in a park in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Netherlands woke up to the stentorian sound of a new populist star on Thursday. Right-wing lawmaker Thierry Baudet surged into the Dutch political mainstream as the biggest winner in nationwide elections that determine the makeup of the parliament's upper house and also impacts the coalition government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte.(AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) A woman walks in front of a new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. A woman walks in front of a new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. A tram conductor shows the price of a ticket (5 Egyptian pounds) for a ride on a new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. A tram conductor shows the price of a ticket (5 Egyptian pounds) for a ride on a new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. Nader Nabiel, 32, drives a new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" in Alexandria, Egypt, March 16, 2019. Nader Nabiel, 32, drives a new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" in Alexandria, Egypt, March 16, 2019. Commuters use a new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. Commuters use a new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. Commuters use a new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. Commuters use a new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. A new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" arrives at El-Shatby tramway station in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. A new tram made by Ukrainian tram manufacturer "Tatra-Yug" arrives at El-Shatby tramway station in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. A man walks at El-Shatby tramway station beside an old electric tram in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. A man walks at El-Shatby tramway station beside an old electric tram in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. A boy looks through the window of an old electric tram in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. Picture taken March 16, 2019. A boy looks through the window of an old electric tram in Alexandria, Egypt March 16, 2019. Picture taken March 16, 2019. If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here New research shows people with PAD could have an omega-3 deficiency New research published in the March 18th edition of Lipids showed that people who have peripheral artery disease (PAD) have a lower Omega-3 Index compared to those who don't have the disease. PAD is a disease that affects the blood vessels outside the heart and brain. Evidence from other studies suggests that omega-3s affect many steps of the atherosclerotic process. More specifically, they improve endothelial function; promote vasodilatation through relaxation of smooth muscle cells; exert antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antithrombotic actions; delay development of plaques and increase their stability; and decrease wall stiffening. Because PAD is essentially atherosclerosis of the leg arteries, researchers in this study believe that patients with PAD may have an omega-3 fatty acid deficiency. To study the relationship between the Omega-3 Index and PAD, the investigators compared the Omega-3 Index in 145 patients with PAD to 34 controls without PAD. They found that the Omega-3 Index was significantly lower in the PAD patients than the controls (5% vs 6%). When they controlled for other patient characteristics that might have influenced these findings (like age, smoking, blood pressure, diabetes, drugs, etc.), the Omega-3 Index was still lower in the cases vs. the controls. In the final analysis, for every 1% unit reduction in the Omega-3 Index, the odds of being a PAD patient increased by 39%, and for every additional pack-year of smoking the odds of being a PAD case increased by 4%. "It is likely that the lower inflammatory burden associated with a higher Omega-3 Index may be part of the explanation for these results," said Bill Harris, Ph.D., one of the study's authors. "Whether long-term use of omega-3 supplements and/or increased consumption of oily fish could prevent the development of PAD should be examined in future studies." ### Media Inquiries: Becky Wright Marketing & Communications Manager, OmegaQuant 201-675-0197 news@omegaquant.com About OmegaQuant: OmegaQuant is an independent, CLIA-certified lab that offers Omega-3 Index testing to researchers, clinicians and the public and sets the standard for fatty acid testing. OmegaQuant performs fatty acid analysis in Sioux Falls, SD for commercial and academic research collaborators, and for consumers interested in monitoring their nutritional status in both blood and breast milk. Its goal is to offer the highest quality fatty acid analytical services to researchers and to provide simple tests of nutritional status to consumers, with the ultimate purpose of advancing the science and use of omega-3 fatty acids to improve health. Most recently, it opened an additional lab in Brisbane, Australia. It also recently received approval in the EU market and opened a lab in Scotland, officially making the Omega-3 Index an internationally accessible test. This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. How to prevent the deepening of the divide between the civilised world and that driven by hatred and racial, sectarian and religious violence is the urgent issue of our times, writes Hussein Haridy It was supposed to be another Friday prayer, both in Muslim countries and in countries where large Muslim communities gather to perform this weekly rite. In Christchurch, New Zealand, where some 50,000 Muslim immigrants and refugees live, hailing from different Arab and Muslim countries, from Syria to Afghanistan, many of those gathered had chosen New Zealand when fleeing war and destruction in their countries of origin. No one expected this particular Friday to witness a carnage that claimed the lives of 50 innocents, all of the Islamic faith, who just happened to be at two mosques in the second biggest city in New Zealand. A 28-year-old called Brenton Tarrant, from a small town in Australia that goes by the name of Grafton, opened fire on the unsuspecting worshippers, mowing down scores with many more injured, some of them critically. The bullets fired that black Friday did not only shatter the lives of the deceased but also reminded the whole world that mankind has almost lost its humanity. As German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the same day the mass shooting took place, when people are murdered solely because of their religion, this is an attack on us all. Eight minutes before he had started firing at the worshippers, Tarrant had sent an 87-page manifesto to New Zealands Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, filled with anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim vitriol. He has described himself as a white supremacist out to take revenge for the attacks in Europe perpetrated by Muslims. It has been reported that he toured Europe and visited some Muslim countries, such as Turkey and Pakistan during the last three years. In Europe, he also toured Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, in late 2016. What is surprising is that he studied the battles between Christendom and the Ottoman Empire. He also visited France, Spain and Portugal in 2017. Last November, he made a trip to Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. What all these countries have in common, more or less, is that historically they had seen wars and battles between Christianity and Islam, but also tolerance and renaissance. Tarrant is a symbol of a growing far-right extremism in the Western world against non-Whites and non-Christians. This far-right extremism has had its counterpart in the Muslim world led by the Salafis, political Islam and Islamic fundamentalism. What the two phenomena have in common that they are absolutist and almost totalitarian in nature; in addition, they have preached hatred and rejection against all those who do not share their vision. When Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi emerged in 2014 to proclaim the so-called Islamic Caliphate in large parts of Syria and Iraq, he was incarnating a message of rejection as well as shaping an identity that excludes those who do not share his vision and those of his followers, of Islam and the world. However, neither Tarrant nor Al-Baghdadi represent all Christians and Muslims. They represent a small minority of a disenfranchised mass of people who have not found their proper place in a globalised world. The rapid pace of globalisation in the last three decades has created divisions among nations, and divisions within nations across the world. Syrias Raqqa in 2013, Iraqs Mosul in 2014 and New Zealands Christchurch in 2019 are a reminder that todays world is adrift, and dangerously so. Prime Minister Ardern called last Friday, 15 March, the darkest day in the history of her country and that the heinous crime perpetrated by Tarrant is not us meaning the people of New Zealand. In a gesture of sharing in the grief of the Muslim community in New Zealand, she wore a hijab when she visited the bereaved families in Christchurch. Her message was meant to stress that New Zealands national identity transcends religious affiliation. In fact, this message is urgently needed around the world. Religious or racist bigotry has no place in todays world. The instrumentalisation of the politics of identity for short-term political gains, be it in the West or in the realm of Islam, should be rejected. In the age of empires, the politics of identity was almost absent. Empires had succeeded in turning their domains in a melting pot for different races and religions. It is ironic that globalisation has failed, so far, in developing a set of universal values that could bring about solidarity and coexistence among existing civilisations. This year marks the 25th anniversary of Professor Samuel Huntingtons book entitled, The Clash of Civilisations. In an article in Foreign Affairs under the same title one year before his book was published, Huntington wrote: It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principle conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilisations. The clash of civilisations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future. The last 25 years have neither proven Huntington right nor wrong. However, growing wealth disparities among nations and within nations have tended to exacerbate economic, ethnic, sectarian and religious differences. The politics of fear and exclusion have contributed, among other political and geostrategic developments (11 September 2001, the invasion of Iraq, the ill-defined war on terrorism, Israeli expansionism and warmongering), to the rise of all forms of extremism in the world. If the pretexts given by the likes of Tarrant and Al-Baghdadi for their atrocities are clad in racial and religious messaging, the true and deep causes for their supremacist visions of the world are to be found elsewhere than in the clash of civilisations. Still, the most urgent challenge after the mass shooting in Christchurch is how to prevent the deepening of the divide between two worlds, one civilised and the other a world of hatred and insurmountable and deadly racial, sectarian and religious divisions. Four centuries ago, in Toledo, Spain, there had stood a church called Santa Maria La Blanca. Muslims used to celebrate their Friday prayers there, Jews theirs on Saturdays and Christians their Mass on Sundays. This site was a mosque, a synagogue and a church all combined together in one place. A House of God for all. Maybe todays world needs to recall this lofty spirit and vision. Let us unite in a moment of prayer for all those who have lost their lives at the hands of extremists and terrorists, regardless of race, sect and religion. *The writer is former assistant foreign minister **A version of this article appears in print in the 21 March, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Christchurch between Tarrant and Baghdadi Search Keywords: Short link: Next Tuesday evening at the JW Marriott, The West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (HCCWM) will host its 2019 Awards Gala, honoring six Latinx individuals and businesses who have exemplified success and commitment to community. The more than 800 people attending the sold-out event will see more than awards and award winners; they will gain important insights into the huge, positive economic impacts that Latinx businesses make on the entire region. Right now, a lot of negativity is going around in reference to immigration. Its so important for us to showcase the wonderful work that Hispanics are doing in our community, says Anna Jose, program manager for the HCCWM Transformando program. Thats one of the reasons the Chamber is taking the lead on this. Media are coming, magazines who have never been here before, adds Guillermo Cisneros, HCCWM executive director. We will have a red carpet, amazing food, all of our financial partners and business owners. This is going to be a great event. Last year we broke record numbers with more than 600 attending. Thats 25 percent growth in one year. Its exciting. When asked about the contributions that Latinx and other immigrants make to West Michigan, Cisneros is quick to reference data from the United States Census Bureau American Community Survey. In 2016, Kent Countys foreign-born residents contributed $3.3 billion to the areas GDP. Of the $1.3 billion that these new Americans earned in 2016, $219.4 million went to federal taxes and $101.5 million went to state and local taxes. That left them an additional $943.7 million dollars in spending power, spending that helps to sustain the entire regions economic prosperity. In addition, these local immigrants contributed $124.6 million to Social Security and $33.3 million to Medicare. Cisneros notes that Latinx businesses not only create success for themselves, but also job opportunities for others. These business owners generate employment opportunities for many people within the community, Cisneros says. When they generate employment, we have more people with economic power. For example, a couple of years ago, one of our business owners was barely making $100,000. This past year, they made more than $300,000, Jose adds. This gave them the opportunity to hire 10 more employees 10 people that have stable employment because of the work that this business owner is doing in the community. The HCCWM will present awards in the following categories: Hispanic Business of the Year, Hispanic Businessperson of the Year, Young Professional of the Year, Most Promising Hispanic Business, Building Bridges, and Non-Profit Champion. We definitely look for individuals and businesses that have been in existence a few years and have showed success that have a good reputation throughout the community, Cisneros says. This event is to celebrate the success of all of them and the impact that these Latino businesses have had in West Michigan. We also want to identify individuals who are leaders in our community, who are showing up to different tables to have a voice. People that are into helping the Hispanic community, Jose adds. We are people that care about one another and we are people that care about our neighbors. We are not here to take anything away from anyone else. We are here to make a true contribution. Written by Estelle Slootmaker, Development News Editor Photos courtesy the West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Detroit-native and small business owner Zena Patillo shares her story of overcoming obstacles, building social capital, and pushing for continued growth. She shares insights on the changes shes seen over the past 30 years, as well as opportunities for further advancement when it comes to intentional inclusion within the community. A Detroit-native, Zena Patillo came to Grand Rapids over three decades ago to attend Grand Valley State University. Utilizing her masters in human resources, with an emphasis on training, Patillo launched a consulting firm, Training Paradigm, LLC, which provides human resources and organizational development training, project management, and strategic planning assistance. Securing contracts in Michigan with organizations including: the State of Michigan, Michigan Rehabilitation Services, and the Juvenile Detention Center, as well as subcontractor roles with the city of Dallas, Patillo and her team are no strangers to working on larger opportunities.Despite this, it hasnt been an easy journey and Patillo says shes still not where she wants to be. I have not yet grown to the state that I would like to. I still need to grow. Because you are small and you dont get some of the contracts you want, its always a constant grind, she says. Due to the nature of small business cash flow, sometimes this may be taking a step back and focusing your attention elsewhere so you can continue investing in your business.You have to make money. You have to sometimes stop and go be employed somewhere so that you can have an income because youre not getting those contracts.When it comes to pursuing contracts, like many small business owners, Patillo has often second-guessed herself or received pushback from the potential clients. Not having access to the same resources as larger businesses has also been a struggle.Sometimes Ive felt like I was too small to even bid on some of the bigger contracts or my brand wasnt well-known enough, she says.I went for a diversity and inclusion contract and [the company] thought that we were too small to be able to handle the volume that they had. What they didnt know was that we had a whole team of subcontractors.It can be easy for small businesses, especially new businesses, to be overlooked during these processes. Its like when you first graduate college [and] no one will give you a job because you dont have experience. But how do you get it, if no one hires you? says Patillo.As a minority business owner, Patillo has also seen where her lack of social capital was detrimental.When I came here from Detroit, I didnt know anyone, she says. Its a lot of know, like, and trust thats just how business is done. Minorities may or may not have that same social capital. I still have a very well-connected social group in Detroit. I can go there and do things that I cant do here. I live, work, and play here. I want to be able to work in my own community.Having been in Grand Rapids for several decades now, Patillo can see the changes taking place, as well as continued opportunities for growth.What amazes me is that Ive been here 30 years and were still talking about the same thing as it relates to diversity. But diversity is not inclusion. Inclusion is something that you have to be intentional about. I think that it is the right thing to do. There are noted benefits to business and community that diversity brings.As long as Ive been here, [Grand Rapids has] been trying to recruit talent but they dont stay. The difference in Detroit is that they will use [a minoritys] skills and talent and pay you for it. They realize that there is value in the diversity of thought and experience and culture.Patillo is not the only one to feel this way. A Forbes article defines inclusion as a call to action within the workforce that means actively involving every employees ideas, knowledge, perspectives, approaches, and styles to maximize business success.With todays workforce being comprised of multiple generations, seeing an increased reliance on technology and additional worker knowledge, the article pinpoints one of the focal points within the business community should be moving from diversity initiatives alone to creating a culture of inclusion," which will assist companies in catering to the needs of the diverse workforce while impacting a companys capacity to compete.Patillo adds, What I think would be helpful is if people wanted to see innovation in the community or their business, have the inclusion. Whatever percentage of [minority] representation you have in your community, try to hire that [same percentage] in small business. If you can start with some of the small businesses and small contracts and build a reputation with them, it just adds to the greatness of your community. If contracts could reflect that, that would be huge. Think about what that does for your community.Patillo has become actively involved within the community and challenges others to do so, too. Currently serving as a facilitator with SpringGR, this is one of several organizations Patillo sees helping to make a difference. SpringGR and Partners Worldwide have done so much to help bridge that gap. They seek to build trust, especially with the smaller minority businesses, as it relates to relationships and the social capital that they help [people] attain. They empower [people] and make sure the right people are around the table. SpringGR makes it a safe place for all of us to have real conversations.Even having the right people at the right tables does not solve all of the problems. Sometimes the onus lies with the individual to step out of their comfort zone and seize the moment and think beyond just selling.Go out and about! Go to [events], join [groups], you have to meet people. [Get involved] with things where you can build relationships with people. Dont seek something from [people]. Build a relationship. What can you give them? Dont be in sell-mode all the time, Patillo encourages.Another challenge may be getting out of your own way, Patillo argues. As your social capital develops and your network grows, sometimes the first step may be vocalizing your issue or need. Dont be afraid to ask. Sometimes were so prideful. We dont know how to do something [but] we dont want people to know we dont know how to do it because then it looks like we dont know what were doing. Then you miss an opportunity when youre afraid to let someone help you or youre afraid to trust. As small business owners, we have to stop doing that. We have to speak up. Through your networking, you can possibly find someone that can assist you. If not, [take advantage of] some of the entrepreneurial programs [like] GROW [and] SpringGR where people are going to stick with you and work with you.You have to put the time in if you want it. Thats the bottom line. Weve had jobs and we were working 60 hours a week because thats what it took for that time period. If you want it bad enough, you have to put the time in and not give up.If you have taken on outside employment or are still working full-time to help fund your business, Patillo says you are in control of what happens next, regardless of your size. Decide early if you want [your business] to be part-time or full-time. [Then] you can decide how to work yourself out of your full-time job so you can give yourself the time you need to grow your business and scale it. You absolutely have to network to start out on a good foundation. Then youre ready for the contracts that do come. A lot of people are scared to leave their full-time job but if you plan it out properly, [that] gives people confidence.--- This article is part of State of Health, a series examining health disparities, how they affect Michigan's children and seniors, and the innovative solutions being developed to address them. It is made possible with funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund. Michigans urban centers boast medical systems with highly rated obstetric and neonatal units, yet infant mortality in those areas is still drastically higher among Black residents than white residents. Statewide, three times as many Black Michigan babies die in their first year of life (14.6 babies out of every 1,000 live births) as white Michigan babies (4.8 babies out of every 1,000 live births), a ratio that has sadly risen in recent years. But the numbers are even more alarming in many of Michigans urban centers. Muskegons Black babies have the highest death rate, at 26.5 deaths per 1,000 live births. Black infant mortality rates in Saginaw, Flint, Pontiac, Lansing, and Detroit are all higher than the Michigan average. These numbers coldly reflect the faces of hundreds of African-American infants who died before their first birthday. The disparity extends to mothers as well. In Michigan, nearly three times more African-American women die during pregnancy and childbirth (41.3 deaths per 100,000 live births) than white women (15.1 deaths per 100,000 live births). "We have had, for a long time, disparity between white, African-American, Hispanic, and other minority groups in the state," says Amy Zaagman, executive director of the Michigan Council for Maternal and Child Health (MCMCH). What are the social determinants of health behind these statistics? And, more importantly, what are Michigans communities doing to improve them? Zaagman says that while some mothers and babies die because of lifestyle choices, systemic issues such as differential treatment and lack of access to care, healthy food, good housing, and transportation are at the heart of the problem. Amy Zaagman. "All those things tie in. Its not an easy answer," Zaagman says. "How do we change systems and communities where racism and other underlying social determinants of health are more deeply rooted?" Research shows that socioeconomic factors including income and educational attainment have either no effect on health outcomes for Black moms and their babies or less effect than they do for white families. "When you take out these socioeconomic factors, that means structural racism is a determining factor that you can measure," says Demetrias Wolverton, director of mission impact for the YWCA Kalamazoo. "Racism definitely has the potential of creating trauma that women are constantly having to deal with. For Black women, its not just access to doctors, but navigating systems that create trauma where they work, where they shop, in all the systems they interact with every day. All these different things continue to add more stress. The trauma that is associated with racism is alive and well." Addressing the problem YWCA Kalamazoo leads one of the many Michigan initiatives aiming to reduce infant mortality: Cradle Kalamazoo, formerly the Kalamazoo Infant Mortality Community Action Initiative. The initiative provides programming for families, women, and their children and also collaborates with the region's healthcare providers, insurers, religious organizations, Planned Parenthood, and the NAACP to dismantle the structural racism that leads to infant deaths. Wolverton notes that municipal bodies like the city of Kalamazoo and Kalamazoo County are "taking steps in the right direction" not only through involvement in Cradle Kalamazoo but also in initiatives like Shared Prosperity Kalamazoo. Demetrias Wolverton. "We are asking, What can we do as a city, a community foundation, to ensure that our community is healthy and thriving and that racism is no longer a social determinant of health?" he says. Cradle Kalamazoos hands-on programming for high-risk women and families includes home visits, infant safe-sleep education, and respectful reproductive health education and support. As another facet of the initiative, Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services and Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine lead the county's monthly Fetal-Infant Mortality Review (FIMR) in order to understand and improve mortality numbers. The Detroit area offers a variety of resources to help support the health of mothers and their infants. Detroits St. John Hospital Mother Nurture Project supports breastfeeding among its African-American patients. Moms and Babes Too, a WIC program, provides high-risk expectant mothers access to early intervention and preventive care. WIN Network: Detroit addresses maternal and infant mortality by providing a variety of health-related services and connections to local resources for young women considering pregnancy, expectant mothers, infants, and fathers. Great Start Wayne works with these organizations and many others in an effort to enhance Detroit's early childhood system. Its messaging campaign, My Baby: Born Ready, is an important example of how Great Start's many partner health systems and agencies collaborate. The campaign's ready-made graphics, text, and social media content, which emphasize healthy pregnancy and healthy babies, are used by Detroit-area medical providers, hospitals, WIC programs, community organizations, and health departments. "We really focus on collaboration in Detroit. Organizations, programs, and research initiatives that address infant and maternal health meet regularly and with great focus," says Great Start Wayne executive director Kathleen Alessandro. "All recognize that it is important that families receive clear, consistent information that does not send mixed messages." "A productive amount of outrage" Combating racial inequity has increasingly become a crucial part of efforts to address infant and maternal mortality in Michigan. Underpinning Michigan's many regional initiatives, the State of Michigans Mother Infant Health and Equity Improvement Plan (MIHEIP) recognizes "health inequities and unjust treatment" as a primary cause of maternal and infant mortality. Introduced this year, the plan is described as an "iterative, evolving road map" that builds on the state's previous Infant Mortality Reduction Plan. The plan lays out a generalized plan for aligning public and private efforts to address health inequity, which Alessandro says is key. "First and foremost, racial disparities in maternal/infant care need to be recognized, acknowledged, and accepted," Alessandro says. "Education about the disparities needs to be shared among all maternal and infant health touchpoints, and action steps need to be intentionally taken to eliminate the disparities and inequities." But that will still take considerable work and a heightened sense of awareness among multiple groups of Michigan stakeholders. On March 12 and 13, 400 stakeholders in infant and maternal health gathered in East Lansing for the states second Maternal Infant Health Summit. Zaagman expressed excitement for the event. "We are trying to be involved not only in spreading awareness about how policies impact the systems and care but also making sure that the medical professionals and public health professionals are involved in that work," she says. "We are listening very closely to what they say will help and using that information to advocate with the administration and with legislators." Despite engagement from those higher-level stakeholders in the medical and legislative spheres, Zaagman says the major missing piece is "broad-based support where the community is driving the solution." Despite the alarming numbers on infant and maternal mortality in Michigan, she says public awareness of the issue is still remarkably low. "We need a productive amount of outrage," Zaagman says. --- Editor's note: There are many other great organizations working in the space of health equity, infant mortality, and the health of families in West Michigan. To read more, check out the following: Untangling the complex issue of health equity in Michigan Strong Beginnings UIX: Breastfeeding mothers share experiences and insight to help others succeed??????? Strong fathers, strong families: New program aims to support Latinx community??????? A freelance writer and editor, Estelle Slootmaker is happiest writing about social justice, wellness, and the arts. She is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media , communications manager for Our Kitchen Table , and chairs The Tree Amigos, City of Wyoming Tree Commission . Her finest accomplishment is her five amazing adult children. You can contact Estelle at [email protected] or www.constellations.biz A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. Tribes in Hajjah rally to condemn Saudi aggression crimes [21/March/2019] p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:left;direction:ltr;unicode-bidi:embed">HAJJAH, March. 21 (Saba) Tribes of al-Jamimah district of Hajjah province on Thursday a protest rally to denounce the Saudi aggression crimes' war crimes and violations against the Yemeni people. At the rally, the participants stressed of the importance of enhancing the internal unity and doing together to repulse the aggression's plots against Yemen. The rally praised the triumphs made by the army against the aggression and its mercenaries in the battle fronts. Ali Ahsan saba By SA Commercial Prop News Brazil, Russia, India and China all form the Brics organisation along with South Africa, and the bank serves as a collective pot for all member states. SA's prayers may have been answered as BRICS Bank plans to lend R11 billion to Eskom Holdings which could alleviate some of the pressure on the countrys electricity grid. With Eskom given a lifeline by the Brics backed New Development Bank, it should go a long way to alleviating the power utility's financial burden. The Bank plans to lend as much as R11 billion to Eskom for infrastructure projects this year as the ailing power utility battles to keep power supply steady. Eskom, which on Wednesday entered a seventh day of controlled power cuts, is contending with operational and financial challenges, threatening the productivity of Africas most-industrialized economy. ALSO READ: The Global Lift & Escalator Expo comes to South Africa The government is considering various interventions to turn the company around, including a $4.8 billion bailout over three years and splitting the organization into three parts to help contain costs. The NDB, back by the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is in talks with the government about loans that could alleviate some of the pressure on the countrys electricity grid, the lenders president, K.V. Kamath, said by phone. The development institution is rolling out a $180 million loan to Eskom to build transmission lines and is considering two further projects in 2019, he said. The first is a $480 million loan that will pay for retrofitting flue-gas desulfurization equipment to make the Medupi power plant compliant with new environmental standards. The second is a further $300 million facility to improve the countrys battery-storage capacity, Kamath said. ALSO READ: Click here if you need reasonable modern Office Space Power is now a critical element in South Africas infrastructure and at this point in time it is imperative that we work with the government in alleviating this problem, Kamath said. Medupi will have about 4,800 megawatts of installed capacity once completed. The plan to split Eskom into generation, transmission and distribution units is heartening, Kamath said. We are equally clear that this wont happen overnight, so there is always a need to extend a hand during the transitioning process and thats what we are doing. The funding planned for Eskom will make up most of the $900 million the NDB will extend in South Africa in 2019. By the end of the year, the lender will have roughly $2.4 billion of loans in the country, Kamath said. Eskom didnt respond to requests for comment. ALSO READ: Sandton grows apace with R3bn Skyscraper The NDB was started in 2015 to support sustainable infrastructure projects across its emerging-market members. The Shanghai-based bank will have extended $7.5 billion to $8 billion across its members by the end of year, bringing its total to assistance to BRICS nations to about $15 billion. Earlier this month, South Africas energy regulator, Nersa, granted Eskom average power price increases that were far below what the utility had asked for, saying it aimed to balance the interests of the company and the public. Eskom was granted a 9.4% tariff hike for this year along with an increase of 8.1% for 2020 followed by 5.2% the following year. The longest government shutdown in the countrys history has tanked the number of companies that went public so far this year, cutting U.S. public listing activity dramatically in the first quarter. While the rest of the nation slowed to a halt, San Diego appears to have cruised right past. The region saw more activity than average during the quarter, with one massive deal that caught nationwide attention. The ability to raise money by selling stock to the public is a financial windpipe for companies, helping upstarts and other businesses to grow, hire and build. Thats why initial public offerings, or IPOs, are often indicators of economic health. In the first quarter of 2019, that indicator took a beating, as the number of IPO deals fell 41 percent, while proceeds tumbled 74 percent. The data come from EY (which used to be known as Ernst & Young) in the companys latest IPO report. Advertisement Tim Holl, an EY partner in San Diego, said the government shutdown slowed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from reviewing paperwork and communicating with companies preparing to list. Although the shutdown ended in late January, some companies delayed their debut on the stock markets because financial data had become outdated or the conversation with regulators was postponed. Meanwhile, the San Diego region saw two IPOs in the first quarter: Gossamer Bio and Inmune Bio, both of which listed in late February. Inmune, a tiny La Jolla company working on anti-cancer drugs, raised a mere $8 million, which is far less than typically seen in biotech. Gossamer, however, bolstered the quarter, raising $317 million in one of the biggest biotech IPOs of the year. Two public offerings in one quarter might not seem like much, but EY says its about normal for San Diego. In the first quarter of 2018, 2017, and 2015, San Diego only had one IPO. In 2016s first quarter, the region had none. San Diego likely dodged the depressed IPO pace because of its concentration of biotech companies. The life science sector accounted for 59 percent of U.S. IPOs and 29 percent of proceeds in the first quarter of 2019, according to Holl. San Diego tends to do well when the overall life science market is good, Holl said. Were getting our relative share of that market, and San Diego has a very vibrant early stage life science community. Hall said EY is generally optimistic about the IPO market in 2019, although macro and geopolitical factors such as Brexit and U.S. trade policies will influence outcomes. Its also important to monitor the performance of companies that have listed in 2018, Holl said. Historically, the success of these big deals can help raise the overall market, Holl said. If theyre successful, other investors will feel comfortable investing in similar deals. Business brittany.meiling@sduniontribune.com 619-293-1286 Twitter: @BrittanyMeiling Board the Wild Arctic simulator at SeaWorld, and youre transported via a jet-helicopter to a frozen landscape, the journey punctuated with a few twists and turns along the way. But after more than two decades, it seems that the ride has run its course as the San Diego marine park looks to eventually remove it and replace it with a new attraction. While SeaWorld has confirmed that it is planning a replacement for the the simulated helicopter ride, it is silent on what it will be. The simulators are almost 25 years old, so were looking to replace the ride experience at the attraction, said park spokesman Dave Koontz. It would be another ride but arctic-themed. Advertisement The new ride, he added, will be under 30 feet in height. Dan Sehlhorst, a project manager with SeaWorld, made a brief presentation on plans for Wild Arctic earlier this month at a meeting of the Mission Bay Park Committee, but he revealed little more than what Koontz described. The new attraction is expected to arrive in 2021. In the meantime, SeaWorld is busy preparing for some other new rides the park is hoping will appeal to thrill-seeking theme park enthusiasts. It will open its new Tidal Twister coaster in May, and its next mega attraction will be in 2020 when it will unveil the Mako dive coaster, described as the parks tallest roller coaster yet. When the helicopter simulator opened in 1997, a Union-Tribune reporter described the journey as beginning with a wild ride on a simulated jet helicopter that terminates at Base Station Wild Arctic. Along the way, passengers are treated to dramatic vistas of rocky glaciers and snowy ice floes. In a recent post on the Behind the Thrills blog, the author describes the simulator as showing its age and notes that the projection graphics are definitely lacking. In addition to the helicopter ride, Wild Arctic is also home to five beluga whales, four Pacific walruses, three harbor seals and one ringed seal. In addition, the attraction offers two interactive programs: one, where guests wear wetsuits to experience the habitat of the beluga whales and feed and touch them; and a second one that is a behind-the-scenes experience with the beluga whales and walruses. New SeaWorld signage (Courtesy of SeaWorld) SeaWorlds focus lately hasnt been entirely on new attractions. As it celebrates its 55th anniversary, the park recently completed new entry signage that is designed to make the park more vibrant and welcoming. SeaWorld, says the new sign, welcomes you to a world of wonder. Business lori.weisberg@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-2251 Twitter: @loriweisberg La Mesa has opened the door wider for accessory dwelling units after the City Council updated its rules about backyard cottages and rental units built outside a main home, sometimes called granny flats. By a 3-2 vote on March 12, with Mayor Mark Arapostathis and Akilah Weber dissenting, the City Council approved changes that will loosen restrictions on the units. The council also unanimously passed an ordinance allowing junior accessory dwelling units, which are areas set aside in a main home with separate facilities to be used as a residential unit. Despite objections from a dozen locals, the new rules will take effect immediately. Advertisement La Mesa now joins other San Diego County jurisdictions in relaxing laws for property owners to build other dwelling units on the same lots as their existing homes. The change may help the city and county meet state housing mandates. La Mesa currently has 22 accessory dwelling units under review and has permitted about 60 of them in the last decade, City Manager Yvonne Garrett said. The regions planning agency, the San Diego Association of Governments, said this kind of housing can help La Mesa meet the states Regional Housing Needs Assessment. At a previous City Council meeting, Councilwoman Kristine Alessio said that California legislation could mandate that La Mesa build as many as 10,000 units within the next eight years. At what point will this city be maxed out when it comes to our nine acres here in La Mesa? resident and real estate agent Marcia Tolin asked the City Council. At what point is it that our streets cannot handle more traffic? At what point is it that our residential streets cannot handle any more parking? We seem to almost always have close to or over 1,000 units in the permitting or building process here in La Mesa. Am I missing something? Granny flats are becoming more popular throughout the region for homeowners who want to earn some extra money renting out additional dwelling places and providing more affordable housing options for some renters. The extra housing units are also good for people looking for an extra place for their college-age offspring or senior family members to live close to home. In La Mesa, many of the homes built decades ago are quite small sometimes 800 square feet or less and the updated city ordinance will allow homeowners to build a larger home, move into it, and rent out the smaller unit. Changes will include: Property owners no longer will have to live on the premises to be able to rent out another dwelling unit; Special parking spaces will not have to be provided for renters; Setback requirements will be eased; New homes built on a lot can be up to 1,200 square feet. Those opposed to the updating asked the City Council to reconsider some of the ordinances wording. Several asked that the city make it mandatory that owners live on the premises, to require stays of 30 days or longer and require parking to be provided by the homeowner. Several La Mesa residents encouraged the council to provide more public hearings to discuss the matter and Weber said she agreed that more community input would be prudent. More than a dozen people, many of them with a background in housing sales, building or development industries, spoke out in favor of the changes. Matt Davis, who said he is a real estate broker who has lived in La Mesa for five years, said the city is becoming a hot commodity and the ordinance will keep La Mesa moving in that direction by creating more places to live and making those places more affordable. karen.pearlman@sduniontribune.com It appears the last volunteer fire department in San Diego County will cease to exist. Voters who have been served by the Julian-Cuyamaca Fire Protection District for the last 35 years have opted to abandon the independent agency staffed by local residents and to join the regional Fire Authority instead. Although official results of a special month-long election wont be known for another week or two, with perhaps 100 mail ballots still to be counted, voters in Julian supported the county takeover by a 55.56 percent margin 719 yes votes to 575 no votes. It was hoped that the vote, which ended Tuesday, would silence an acrimonious debate that has been raging for years in the rural community, a debate that has weighed heavy on the hearts of the residents of the popular tourist destination that sits in the northeastern part of the county. Advertisement Although we dont have final election numbers yet, it is my hope that the community will now come together regardless of the outcome and heal after what was a long and often divisive debate over this issue, said county Supervisor Dianne Jacob, a champion of the Fire Authority since its inception a decade ago. We all want a safer and better protected Julian, and I believe we should work side-by-side to reach that goal. But a truce seems unlikely. Several volunteers and their supporters spoken with Wednesday sounded very upset and far from conciliatory. They suggested lawsuits are coming and accused the county of all sorts of wrongdoing, including voter fraud, though they had no evidence to support the allegations. Following the firestorms of 2003 and 2007, which began in the backcountry and blew into more urban areas destroying thousands of homes and killing many, the county decided to form a fire department which would replace volunteer departments with professional firefighters and equipment. The Fire Authority contracts with Cal Fire, which now mans stations throughout the unincorporated region. Only the Julian-Cuyamaca Fire Protection District had held out, despite annually facing financial problems. The volunteers and their many supporters said they didnt trust the county to provide services as well as the volunteers have done. They said volunteers who live in, know, and care about the community are better suited to serve the area than professional firefighters who dont know the people and myriad back roads. Several years ago, the county offered the independent district a deal in which they would provide equipment and other services to the volunteers on the condition that its board of directors would seriously consider dissolution and joining the authority in the future. After much back and forth, a split board last year voted to ask the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) an organization that oversees special districts such as fire and water departments for dissolution, a request joined by the county. In September, LAFCOs members voted unanimously to make the move, but under rules never before used in San Diego, a protest was initiated and when 26 percent of the registered voters said they were opposed to the takeover, a special election was called. A month ago, ballots went out to all 2,496 registered voters in the 81-square-mile district. The initial results, posted Tuesday night, mirrored a vote taken in November in which voters in the fire district were asked to raise a fire assessment property tax from $50 to $200 to support the volunteer department. That measure failed by a 54 percent to 46 percent margin, a result supporters of the volunteers optimistically said was the outcome of people not wanting to raise taxes on themselves and not a sign of support for the countys position. Tuesdays results suggest that wasnt the case. So what happens now? Fire Authority and local Cal Fire Chief Tony Mecham said once the Registrar of Voters certifies the election results, and after the LAFCO board accepts the results at a meeting it will hold on April 8, the dissolution and takeover can happen right away. But he said he would rather have the transition take some time. While I feel this is the right thing for the community, I also recognize that it has been a divisive issue, Mecham said. My number one goal is that we can move forward together doing what is right for that community and move toward a peaceful transition of services. He said if the volunteers sit down with the county to reasonably discuss the transition, the change might not take place until July 1. But if they decide for some reason they dont want to cooperate with the county or want to fight with us, then we would almost immediately dissolve the district, he said. Thats kind of the nuclear option which I dont want to go to. Im hoping that after a week or so this will have set in and theyll understand this is the way to go. Under the terms of the dissolution, the county will assume control of the volunteers new fire station off state Route 79, as well as the $1.2 million mortgage still owed on the building. Cal Fire firefighters and equipment will staff the station 24/7 and respond not just to wildfires, as they have been doing in the area for decades out of their own stations, but also to all other calls of structure fires, medical aids and traffic accidents. Mecham said any volunteers who would still like to work with the department are welcome, but they would have to meet stringent training and physical fitness requirements. Mike VanBibber, chief of the volunteer department, said Wednesday hes unsure where things are headed. I really dont know, he said. The county is not being forthcoming and neither is LAFCO so were just taking it one day at a time until they tell me I have to leave the station. Were still doing our jobs. Told about Mechams comments about the two options for the timing of the dissolution, Van Bibber said it was the first he had heard such details. I welcome any type of discussion, he said. Weve always been open to talk and negotiation but thats been the issue all the time. There have been no negotiations. Its our way or the highway is what weve been told. Obviously, were kind of heading down the highway at this moment. But well see. There are other things in the works that could change things and turn it all around. VanBibber also said he still holds out a slim ray of hope that the election results will swing the other way as more late ballots are counted. He said he knows of several dozen people who didnt send in their ballots until the last day and they may not have arrived yet at the Registrars office to be counted. Im hopeful, he said. They can take away my station. They can take away my title. They can take away our responsibility to our community. But they cant take away my hope. jharry.jones@sduniontribune.com; 760/529-4931; Twitter: @jharryjones San Diego County educators were among those recently receiving Reading Is The Way Up literacy grants from City National Bank, totaling close to $77,000 to support literacy-based projects and financial literacy. The 84 grants went to elementary, middle and high school teachers in California as well as in Nevada, New York, Georgia and Tennessee. Reading Is The Way Up is an award-winning nonprofit literacy program through which City National has donated nearly 1 million new books to elementary school libraries in those states, and awarded nearly 1,400 teacher grants totaling $1.6 million since the program started in 2005. The grants range from $500 to $1,000 and will help literacy projects that were judged to be creative and engaging, and that would have a tangible effect on student achievement. The winning programs are expected to directly improve literacy for more than 10,000 students in more than 80 schools and nonprofits. Applications are available to educators each fall in every school district where the bank has a presence across the country. City National is very proud of the support it has provided to hundreds of teachers in five states through its literacy grant program for the past nineteen years, said City National Vice President Carolyn Rodriguez, manager of Reading Is The Way Up, in a statement. This program is providing much-needed support to teachers who are funding a lot of their extracurricular programs from their own pockets. The monetary support we provide to grant recipients helps augment the budget shortfalls teachers are experiencing every day in trying to educate our children. Advertisement In San Diego County, those receiving grants are: Banyan Tree Foundations Academy, San Diego: Brynn Bonas, Cheryl White, Meredith Minerich Good Shepherd Catholic School, San Diego: Kyle Solana High Tech Elementary, San Diego: Jeffrey Feitelberg, Meg Hassey High Tech High, San Diego: Jessie Ganesan, Gina Wickstead High Tech High Chula Vista, Chula Vista: Anna Santoleri High Tech Middle Media Arts, San Diego: Braden Philips, Julie Ruble, Antonette Hrycyk Hope Elementary School, Carlsbad: Rachel Jacyna, Juanita Bass Magnolia Elementary School Library, Carlsbad: Kathleen Connally, Tiana David Mira Mesa High School, San Diego: Dr. Margarita Bacigalupo-Diaz Sandburg Elementary, San Diego: Kim Nurmi, Karen Kozma, Serena Newell, Laura Codiga-Edwards, Wendy Goodmar, Heather Eisenberg Walker Elementary, San Diego: Jennifer Jimenez Visit cnb.com. laura.groch@sduniontribune.com Whats new and exciting on the San Diego restaurant scene? Oh, one or five things. From restaurant openings to menu debuts and expanded offerings, heres a taste of the ever-changing and improving local landscape. Born & Raised has launched a classy and creative happy hour that includes waffles and caviar for $9. (James Tran photo) New happy hour: Born & Raised If you love the food at Born & Raised and how can you not? but not the dent a full meal at this stunning Little Italy steakhouse can put in your wallet, this will make you happy. Advertisement An innovative, new happy hour menu introduced in late February lets you savor the singular and swanky Born & Raised experience at a fraction of the price. Plates range from $2 to $12, five specialty cocktails are $7 each and a handful of wines are discounted, between 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday. Born & Raised is unlike any other restaurant in San Diego, so naturally its early-bird menu had to be an elevated affair. No wings or poppers here, thank you very much. Instead, the 11 small plates are an extension of the luxe, meat-centric dinner offerings, complete with cheekily written descriptions, like the savory/sweet Le Slim Jim beef spheres ($2 apiece), satisfying dry-aged Philly cheesesteaks ($5; with our own farm fresh, locally sourced processed American cheese sauce) and ultra-flaky mini meat pies ($8; just gleefully pissing off the big hot pockets lobby). Exceptional choices are the smoky charcoal-roasted oysters with a trio of creamy aioli droplets to balance the smoky brine ($2 each); malty, humble waffle sticks paired with opulent caviar ($9, Eggos for One-Percenters); and melt-in-your-mouth tender Wagyu steak sandwiches ($12, take comfort in the fact were probably losing money on every one of these we sell). We didnt taste any steak flavor in our Wagyu-infused bourbon Old Fashioned ($7), but the sandwich more than made up for it. Two of us shared seven dishes and came away full and stoked. In every bite, you could taste the amount of thought that went into that menu from managing partner and culinary director Jason McLeod and his B&R team. We opted to sit at the dazzling main bar rather than on the upstairs deck, which made it easier to slide over to the dining room to try the luscious, new tableside bananas Foster. Born & Raiseds recently named executive chef, Ted Smith, said hes looking at ways to enhance the restaurants signature tableside service. Smith, who comes from CH Projects sister spot Craft & Commerce, will also unveil a menu refresh this summer. No doubt with a fresh arsenal of cheekiness. 1909 India St., Little Italy. (619) 202-4577. bornandraisedsteak.com Lou and Mickeys, part of the Kings Seafood Company, has opened a state-of-the-art dry-aging room. (Darren Edwards photo) New dry-aging room: Lou & Mickeys Dry-aged beef is apparently the new black. The trendy, tender and intensely flavored some would say funky cuts have been popping up on steakhouse menus around town. But its the rare restaurant that has the resources to invest in its own dry-aging room. (Born & Raised is one.) Now, the venerable Gaslamp steakhouse Lou & Mickeys has opened an on-site, pink Himalayan salt-lined, temperature- controlled room right in the dining room. There, porterhouse, T-bone, and bone-in ribeye and New York steaks from Washington States Double R Ranch are aged at temperatures hovering around freezing, and between 75 to 85 percent humidity, for 30, 45 and 60 days. A chalkboard lists the cuts available to be butchered by one of the three in-house butchers. The extended dry-aging process and steakhouses need to hold onto its inventory drives up the price. But that doesnt seem to be affecting its current popularity. It seems like in the last couple of years, people have a heightened awareness dry-aging and are asking for it, said Nathan Mantyla, Lou & Mickeys executive chef. In the simplest terms, the beef is placed on racks, and the continuously circulating air helps break down the meats collagen. As it ages, mold spores form an outer crust (which is later trimmed), the beef loses moisture and gets buttery tender, while the flavor becomes more concentrated. The taste can be polarizing, with fans considering it the finest expression of beef and detractors decrying its somewhat gamy quality. Ive had dry-aged steaks Ive loved and a dry-aged burger I couldnt even finish so I jumped at the invitation to test-drive Lou & Mickeys new room. Led by Mantyla, I tagged a side of bone-in ribeye with my name and said goodbye until it was time to try it at 30 days. Ill also try it at 45 and 60 days. Ill report back at the conclusion of my meaty research project. 224 Fifth Ave., Gaslamp. (619) 237-4900. louandmickeys.com My bone-in ribeye thats being dry aged at Lou & Mickeys. Ill taste it at 30, 45 and 60 day to compare the flavor and texture of the steaks and will be reporting back. (Michele Parente photo) One of the new, Asian-inspired dishes at Island Prime is the exquisite Skuna Bay salmon in green curry broth. (Courtesy photo) New, lighter fare: Island Prime Another steakhouse shift is happening at Island Prime, where executive chef Deborah Scott has introduced a new lineup of dishes that reflect diners changing tastes. I wanted to go lighter and brighter, less steakhouse, Scott said, adding that she has upped the number of gluten-free and vegan options, as well as those with Asian ingredients. I love cooking with Asian flavors, she said. Scott said shell soon be updating the menu at the Harbor Island waterside steakhouses sister restaurant, Coasterra Modern Mexican, trying out the new dishes as menu specials to see which ones click with customers. Of the six new selections I tried at Island Prime recently, all of them clicked with me, particularly the crunchy kale salad with marinated artichokes and pecorino Romano in an exceptional white balsamic dressing and the perfectly poached citrus glazed Skuna Bay salmon with PEI mussels and coconut rice in a sumptuous spicy green curry broth. Both showed the kitchens deft precision and restraint. Also lovely were the spicy Korean-style Wagyu ribeye tartare with avocado mousse (although my dining companion thought it was too spicy), the sesame seared yellowfin tuna in mushroom and brown butter dashi and the hazelnut-crusted scallops with curried cauliflower puree. Charred rainbow carrots with harissa-honey glaze and toasted pistachios make a swell side, as do the velvety mashed potatoes. So much for moving away from steakhouse fare: We devoured the impeccably grilled 28-day dry-aged New York strip. But we skipped the three sauces it comes with. Not because we were full but because the beef was so flavorful, why mask it? 880 Harbor Island Drive, Harbor Island. (619) 298-6802. cohnrestaurants.com/islandprime The merguez sausage flatbread taco at Medina Moroccan Baja Kitchen is a marvelous mash-up of cuisines. (Courtesy photo) New Moroccan-Mexican: Medina File this under small but essential. Medina Moroccan Baja Kitchen is a stylish, fast-casual restaurant with a limited menu thats finally putting substance in the overused dining descriptor Baja-Med. The culinary mash-up makes sense, owner Alia Jaziri told me the night before Medinas March 1 opening, because there are complementary flavor profiles in Mexican and Moroccan cooking coming from the use of cumin and fresh coriander, cinnamon and mint. Plus, I grew up in San Diego eating Mexican food, and I really couldnt do Tun-Asian, Jaziri joked. Her father is Tunisian; her mother Chinese. Staying simple to start, shes serving tacos and bowls with Moroccan-spiced chicken asado, homemade merguez lamb sausage or roasted sweet potato and black beans, as well as a shakshouka skillet with North African-style poached eggs in a smoky, spicy tomato-vegetable sauce. For my $5.50, the merguez taco is the star of the menu. Served on a tortilla flatbread, the just-spicy-enough sausage is topped with pico, queso fresco, pickled onions, scallion vinaigrette and crema. Wash that down with some Valle de Guadalupe red and extra bonus points to Jaziri for pouring Monte Xanics wonderfully acidic sauvignon blanc and youll have yourself a global feast on El Cajon Boulevard. 2850 El Cajon Blvd., North Park. (619) 230-5037. medinakitchen.com Sidecar Doughnuts are some of the best Ive ever had. Buttery, moist and made fresh every hour, theyre all I think about. (Courtesy photo) New obsession: Sidecar Doughnuts & Coffee It took me a while to get to Sidecar, the popular SoCal doughnut chain that opened in December. Now all I do is dream of going back. Flavors rotate each month, but the regular daily lineup is where I found my nirvana: the butter and salt, made from brown butter cake glazed with brown butter and fleur de sel. Simple yet decadent, rich and oh-so-buttery. The old fashioned and Oregon huckleberry were also favorites, as was the now-gone chocolate red wine (didnt get the wine; all I tasted was deep, intense chocolate). I got there too late to try the Basil eggs Benedict doughnut and the maple bacon was coming out just as I was leaving, so a return visit is mandatory. Baked fresh in small batches all day they wont sell anything more than an hour old these little rounds are my new culinary crack. Just dont ask me to choose between them and Little Italys Devils Dozen! I cant. I wont. 3435 Del Mar Heights Road, at Del Mar Highlands Town Center, Carmel Valley. (858) 847-2019. sidecardoughnuts.com/del-mar michele.parente@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @sdeditgirl Thousands of fluttering iridescent butterflies will swoop and softly land on unsuspecting visitors at Butterfly Jungle, opening in the Hidden Jungle Aviary on Saturday at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The bird- and plant-filled space will burst with flowers and more than 30 species of butterflies many of them exotic visitors from Central and South America like the Common Blue Morpho, a China-blue beauty that is as big as your hand, or the male Grecian Shoemaker, black and orange and eye-popping all over. Butterfly identification guides will be provided so you can put a face to a name. Have a butterfly eat out of your hand as you hold a special, approved treat you can purchase at the Nairobi Village. Butterfly Jungle: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday through May 12. San Diego Zoo Safari Park, 15500 San Pasqual Valley Road, Escondido. $46-$56. (760) 747-8702. sdzsafaripark.org Advertisement carolina.gusman@sduniontribune.com Spend an evening surrounded by art and glamour at The Art of Dance, a fundraising event to benefit local youth outreach programs. Enjoy tapas by chef Daniella de la Puente, themed cocktails and dance performances by the Malashock Dance Company, plus a pre-event cocktail hour on a rooftop lounge with a view of the skyline, taking pictures with fashion models, and an interactive photo booth with portrait photographer Josue Castro. The Art of Dance fundraising event: 5:30 p.m. VIP reception, 6:30 p.m. general admission Saturday. The Hub at IDEA1, 899 Park Blvd., San Diego. $125-$175. malashockdance.org/events/the-art-of-dance-fundraising-event Homicide detectives are investigating after the discovery of a human skull in a remote part of Apple Valley over the weekend, San Bernardino County sheriffs deputies said. Hikers who were camping in a desert area near Deep Creek Hot Springs found the skull entangled in the roots of a bush about 4:15 p.m. Saturday, according to a news release. Detectives from the Sheriffs Department homicide division were contacted, and officials searched the area for other remains. Authorities would not disclose whether any other bones were found but said the investigation is ongoing. Advertisement Anyone with information is asked to call (909) 387-3589. alejandra.reyesvelarde@latimes.com Twitter: @r_valejandra For the second time this month, Los Angeles County public health officials are warning travelers that a person with measles flew into Los Angeles International Airport. The person arrived at LAX on March 5 and traveled through Los Angeles County while infectious. We may continue to see measles cases that travel through L.A. County, so it is important if you or someone you know has been exposed to or has measles to contact your healthcare provider by phone right away before going in, Dr. Muntu Davis, Los Angeles County Health Officer, said in a statement. People who may have been exposed to measles and who have not been immunized, may receive measles immunization and be protected from developing the disease. Getting immunized is the best way to keep from getting and spreading measles. Advertisement The passengers flight, United Airlines flight 240, came from Newark Liberty International Airport where New Jersey health officials issued a warning earlier this week of a person who flew into Newark on March 4 from Aruba and left for California. Passengers were warned that the exposure to measles lasted from March 4 at 9 p.m. to March 5 at 9:30 a.m. Los Angeles public health officials said the case is not known to be related to the measles case announced last week, when officials warned travelers of a passenger who had a layover at LAX on Feb. 21 who was diagnosed with measles. Officials didnt say where that person traveled to or from, but that they arrived on a China Eastern Airlines flight. There is no known current risk of measles at LAX, officials said. But the two cases this month seem to be part of a larger trend. Measles outbreaks related to unvaccinated international travelers have been reported in New York, Washington, Texas, Illinois and California, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In New York City, there have been 181 confirmed cases of measles in Brooklyn and Queens since October, according to the most recently available data from the citys health department. Most of these cases have involved members of the Orthodox Jewish community. The initial child with measles was unvaccinated and acquired measles on a visit to Israel, where a large measles outbreak is occurring. Since then, there have been more people from Brooklyn and Queens who were unvaccinated and acquired measles while in Israel, according to the citys health department. People who did not travel were also infected in Brooklyn or Rockland County, where there is also a measles outbreak occurring. In California this year, three cases were linked to a patient with international travel, according to the California Department of Public Health. Measles is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus. It spreads through coughing and sneezing. It can be prevented with the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella. The vaccine is safe and effective. Two doses of the MMR vaccine are about 97% effective at preventing measles; one dose is about 93% effective, according to the CDC. The family of a 22-year-old man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies last year following a pursuit in Pico Rivera filed a lawsuit against the county this week, alleging that authorities used unreasonable and excessive force. Carmelo Pizarro Jr.s parents, his daughter and his daughters mother say that Pizarro was unarmed when deputies opened fire and killed him in front of his house in the early morning hours of July 19. The family is suing for an unspecified amount in damages based on allegations of wrongful death and excessive force. The complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, says Pizarro is a victim in a disturbing trend of unarmed people being fatally wounded by sheriffs deputies in Los Angeles County. Rather than take measures to address the staggering epidemic and wave of such shootings, such as holding the culprits accountable, local authorities have fomented a culture pursuant to which individual deputies and their supervisors look the other way when such shootings take place and when deputies involved fabricate stories that purport to justify the shootings, the filing states. Advertisement The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. On the morning Pizarro was killed, sheriffs deputies saw him driving his Mitsubishi Eclipse at Washington and Passons boulevards in Pico Rivera shortly after 1:30 a.m. Deputies suspected he was intoxicated and tried to pull him over, but he sped away, Lt. Joe Mendoza said at the time. The car eventually crashed into a light post near Eglise Avenue and Bert Street, and Pizarro ran from deputies. One deputy shot at him about a block from the crash site, Mendoza said, but its not clear whether he was hit at that time. Mendoza said Pizarro was initially armed with a handgun but dropped it while running from deputies. The lawsuit contends that Pizarro was running in fear of his life, but surrendered to deputies near his home, where he was shot despite being visibly unarmed. The filing also alleges that deputies did not warn Pizarro that they were going to open fire and did not quickly provide him with medical care after he was wounded. Pizarro was pronounced dead at the scene. hannah.fry@latimes.com Twitter: @Hannahnfry Last year, more than 300 damaged vehicles classified as total losses by insurance companies found themselves back on the highway with new owners who were grateful to have them. On Thursday, San Diegos Erick Dorsey will become one of them. The 14-year Navy veteran will be given a 2015 Toyota Tacoma. Under the National Auto Body Councils recycled rides program, Allstate Insurance donated the car. Then technicians at Caliber Collisions Vista facility volunteered their time to restore it to give to someone in need. Upon retiring from the military in 2010, Dorsey turned to welding, a skill he used in the Navy to make a living while he transitioned back to civilian life. Two years ago, though, an eye injury put an end to his welding career. Advertisement Dorsey now is attending Cuyamaca College full time and was hired by the Veterans Resource Center on a VA work-study program. He was relying on public transportation and friends with cars to travel to work and to school when San Diegos Support the Enlisted Project nominated him for the car giveaway. The recipient drives away without having to pay a single dollar (with the exception of required auto insurance), said Kim Kimbriel, Recycled Rides spokeswoman. Vehicles selected generally have body damage, such as dents from a hail storm, rather than mechanical problems, she explained. This spaceship mural by street artist Invader, called The Mothership, is being auctioned over the artists objection. New owners of the building are remodeling and have re-painted the former San Diego Art Center around the mural. They say the art has to go. (Diane Bell) Behind the story: The French street artist who goes by the name Invader does not want a mural he created on a San Diego building nine years ago to be sold at auction. The mural, called The Mothership, was added to the facade of the San Diego Art Center at Park Boulevard and G Street during a 2010 street art exhibition orchestrated by the Museum of Contemporary Art. L.A. gallery Over the Influence, which represents Invader, exchanged emails last fall with the buildings new owners, Paragon Real Estate. It is remodeling and had offered to let the artist remove the mosaic at his expense and keep it. Lauren Every-Wortman, the gallery spokeswoman, said Paragons offer was declined and the gallery wanted the mural destroyed and requested photographs of its destruction. She contacted Invaders studio, which did not approve of reselling the mural. Invaders studio and his representatives would never give permission to sell any mosaic tiles taken from a public location. Those are just tiles, the studio would have destroyed them anyway except that Paragon was asking for the studio to pay for the costly removal using their contractors. We told them they could remove the tiles but not to associate the name of Invader to those tiles because neither he nor the gallery would ever be able to authenticate them. Tanya Cravero, Paragon asset manager, said they had given the artist the legally required 90-day window to reclaim his tile spaceship mural. Since that offer was declined and the art technically belongs to the building owner, she said they went ahead and listed it for sale in Juliens Auctions April 25 auction. Every-Wortman said other pieces of Invaders street art have been sold by the auction house over their objection. She stressed that the art is valueless once it has been removed from the space for which it was designed. A lot of people enjoy his art, Cravero explained. Rather than have it demolished, this gives someone an opportunity to enjoy it. Bringing in the green: Every March, county Treasurer Dan McAllister holds a St. Patricks Day-themed fundraiser for his next re-election bid. As in previous years, commercial real estate broker Frank ODwyer sang Irish songs ending, as usual, with Danny Boy. This year, however, ODwyer then rushed off to New York City to march in the annual St. Patricks Day parade with his extended family 125 of the ODwyer clan. They had good reason to be there. Franks cousin, Brian ODwyer, was parade grand marshal, and his uncle, William ODwyer, was the 100th mayor of New York City, serving from 1946-1950. Feeding syringes? These arent normally on a baby shower online registry. Along with towels and Gerber baby food, requested gifts on one Amazon.com registry include nuts, seeds, terrariums, exercise wheels, reptile caves, tree trunk hideouts, Kritter Keepers, oh, and gerbil hammocks. San Diegos Project Wildlife is staging its first virtual baby shower on Amazon.com, asking for items needed to care for the coming baby boom of abandoned and orphaned wildlife newborns. Its in lieu of the live baby shower that the rescue organization traditionally holds every March. Theres a reason. The wildlife group is moving from its longtime location on Custer Street to more spacious quarters at 5433 Gaines St. across from the San Diego Humane Society, which oversees it. It plans to re-open there on March 21. So far this year, close to 1,000 animals have been taken in, including the usual contingent of injured raccoons, opossums, raptors, ducks and even gophers displaced by the rain, says wildlife rehabilitation director Lauren DuBois. The birthing season, though, is just beginning, with mostly cottontail bunnies and hummingbirds rescued so far. While the virtual shower is going well, DuBois hopes to return to their real shower next year, giving the public a behind-the-scenes peek at the demands of baby care. We really enjoy doing the live one, she says. Meanwhile, the Humane Society will continue holding its kitten shower online as it gears up for its expected spring deluge of 3,000 or so furry newborns needing around-the-clock care. diane.bell@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1518 Twitter: @dianebellSD Facebook: dianebell.news A San Diego federal jury awarded a nearly $6.5 million verdict to the family of a 9-month-old girl who was burned by coffee at the Omni La Costa Resort and Spa. The Deruveyer family was visiting from Michigan in May 2016 when the incident occurred. The familys three children and 22-year-old nanny were seated at a patio table at the hotels Bistro 65 for breakfast when a waiter left a pot of hot coffee on the table within reach of Hadley, who was sitting in a wooden high chair, according to evidence presented at trial. The nanny didnt see the waiter place the carafe because her back was turned to help another child with his clothing. Hadley then pulled the carafe on top of her, spilling the scorching liquid on her left finger, torso and upper thighs, according to the family. Advertisement No adult saw the incident; the father was dealing with a stroller nearby and the mother in the restroom when they heard their daughters screams, according to a trial memorandum. Hadleys older brother, now 8, testified at trial and demonstrated how the waiter placed the coffee pot in front of his sister, according to Gomez Trial Attorneys, the firm that represented the family. The infant suffered third-degree burns, requiring several surgeries, her attorneys said. More surgeries will be needed as she grows, and she will be permanently scarred. Attorneys for the resort argued that the girl didnt pull the carafe onto herself, but rather reached into a coffee-filled mug. They said the waiter placed the carafe on the table at the instruction of the nanny. The waiter testified at trial that he warned the nanny that the pot was hot. The hotel further placed blame on the nanny for not properly supervising the children and on the parents for allowing the nanny to be responsible for three young children. The jury on Tuesday found Omni negligent and awarded Hadley, now 3, $5.6 million in damages, including $160,970 in past medical expenses, $441,397 in future medical expenses and $5 million in non-economic damages. The jury also awarded Hadleys mother, father and two brothers a total of $879,000 in damages for negligent infliction of emotional distress. The jury found Omni 92.5 percent responsible for the incident and the nanny 7.5 percent. The verdict was rendered after about a day of deliberations. Omni did not immediately respond to a request for comment. kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @kristinadavis San Diegans like the idea of raising taxes to beef up the regions bus and trolley network, including funding the construction of a San Diego Grand Central to connect public transit to the San Diego International Airport. At least, thats according to officials with the Metropolitan Transit System, who cited polling data on Wednesday that has yet to be released to the public. Looking at cities that really work, theres an integrated transportation system that moves people more efficiently, reliably and affordably so that taking transit is a real choice, San Diego City Council President and MTS board chair Georgette Gomez said at a media event Wednesday. According to MTS officials, 67 percent of voters polled said they would definitely or probably vote for a half-cent sales tax to fund an expansion of the existing transit network. Another 3 percent reportedly said they were undecided but lean yes. Advertisement Nineteen percent of the 834 respondents polled said they definitely oppose the idea, with another 6 percent saying they would probably vote against the tax increase, according to MTS. Imposing the new sales tax would require approval from two-thirds of voters in MTSs service territory. The agencys jurisdiction accounts for roughly 75 percent of the countys population, stretching from the coast, east to Campo and Borrego Springs. Northwestern parts of the county, such as Ramona, Encinitas, Escondido, Oceanside and Fallbrook are not included. The outcome of such a vote could hinge on to what extend a well-funded opposition movement emerges. Tony Krvaric, chairman of The Republican Party of San Diego County, said his groups position will largely be determined by whats in the proposal. We generally support buses and roads and freeways, but if youre talking fixed rail that nobody rides or things that wont pencil out, then we generally oppose that, he said. Krvaric also questioned the accuracy of the unreleased polling, saying: Of course its in how you ask things, and theyre self-interested. Elected officials at Wednesdays event said the polling results were encouraging enough to move forward with a community-outreach campaign to determine what specific project would be included in a November 2020 ballot measure. The agency expects to have draft language by the end of the year. Its clear that we have significant public interest among the people of San Diego in bringing a faster, safer, more reliable public transportation system to San Diego, said San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, who also sits on the MTS board. The data were releasing today shows it. Voters rejected a half-cent sales tax increase in 2016 floated by the San Diego Association of Governments, which would have funded public transit as well as highway and road improvements. Following the vote it was exposed that the agency suppressed an internal debate about whether the tax measure had promised projects to voter that it wouldnt have been able to fund. A subsequent reform bill by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez shook up the power dynamics on the SANDAG board, while also giving MTS the legal authority to raise taxes. Twitter: @jemersmith Phone: (619) 293-2234 Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com Homeless people in San Diego and San Marcos may have two new places to safely and legally park overnight in the near future. More than 1,000 people, including families with young children, are estimated to live in cars and other vehicles throughout the county. Sleeping in cars is illegal in many cities, but there are a few legal places for them to park. Jewish Family Service, which already operates two parking lots where homeless people can spend the night, is proposing to open a third lot with 30 spots at a San Marcos church. Dana Toppel, chief operating officer for the nonprofit, on Wednesday said the name and location of the church have not been announced, but the lot could open as early as May.. Advertisement Another safe parking lot was proposed by San Diego City Councilwoman Jennifer Campbell in a March 14 memo to Mayor Kevin Faulconer. In her memo, Campbell suggested the South Shores Parking Lot near Sea World would be an appropriate location because it has 200 spaces and restrooms. The lot is in District 2, which she represents, and people who live in vehicles already frequent the lot. San Diegos homeless crisis needs action on all fronts, she wrote in the memo. As we work towards permanent solutions, opening additional overnight safe parking lots is the fastest way to provide some measure of comfort to those in need. Greg Block, senior press secretary for Mayor Kevin Faulconer, said Campbells offer was appreciated and would be evaluated. Faulconer had asked all council members to consider creating permanent supportive housing in their districts, and Campbell was the first to offer a safe parking lot. This would be the first city-owned parking lot used as a safe-parking area for homeless people. The city funds a 60-spot safe parking lot at Jewish Family Service in Kearny Mesa and a 60-spot lot in a city-owned yard off of Aero Drive near Interstate 15. The nonprofit Dreams for Change also operates a 30-space lot at a church on 28th Street and in November it opened a 50-spot lot at 5605 Imperial Ave. that allows recreational vehicles. Both new lots would be connected with service providers, and both are seeking funds from the states Homeless Emergency Aid Program, which provided grants to the City of San Diego and the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless last year. Campbells memo did not name what service provider might work with people at the South Shores lot, but her memo referred to $14 million the city had received in HEAP money for homeless programs. Toppel said the budget for the San Marcos program would be about $300,000, and Jewish Family Service is seeking funding from the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless, which received $18.8 million in HEAP money. Private donations also are being sought, and Toppel said Jewish Family Service is committed to opening the San Marcos lot even if the HEAP funding doesnt come through. Interfaith Community Service would partner with Jewish Family Service to provide services ranging from showers to health care. Toppel said the Escondido-based nonprofit was chosen because it is much closer than services at the Kearny Mesa-based Jewish Family Service headquarters. Last years regional homeless count found about 1,300 people were living in vehicles. Sleeping in cars was illegal in San Diego until the City Council revoked the law last month, but similar ordinances still exist in other cities. While living in cars in San Diego is no longer illegal, there still are waiting lists at safe parking lots that provide access to toilets, food and other services. Toppel said she knows there is a need for a North County safe parking lot because some clients who have used the Jewish Family Service lots have come from as far away as Oceanside, San Marcos and Vista. Dreams for Change had opened a safe parking lot in North County six years ago, but the effort was short lived. In July 2012, the nonprofit set up a space for homeless people to park at Cornerstone Christian Church on Crest View Road in Vista, but the city cited the church. The church also was served with a cease-and-desist order and told it would have to hold a public hearing to amend its conditional use permit to resume the operation. Dreams for Change left the church, but in September it was invited to set up a lot at the Masonic Lodge. That plan was called off before it started after a city official said the plan violated the citywide prohibition on camping. San Marcos has a law against sleeping in a car on a public street for more than two hours, but it allows people to camp on private property with permission of the owner. San Marcos City Attorney Helen Peak said she did not have details about the parking lot plan, but in general the plan did not seem to violate city law. Homeless Playlist On Now San Diego hepatitis outbreak continues to grow: 481 cases On Now Homeless entrenched in booming tent city along Santa Ana River On Now San Diego mayor agreed to homeless hub, then delayed, advocates say On Now Homeless outreach in San Diego On Now Video: Street Art: Portraits of San Diego's Homeless #8 On Now In poverty himself, 'Water Man Dave,' is the fearless saint of San Diego's homeless 5:41 On Now Video: Homeless living in cars find safe havens 2:21 On Now Street Art: Portraits of San Diego's Homeless #7 On Now Pitching a tent plan for San Diego's homeless On Now Homeless efforts get $80M boost for various services gary.warth@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @GaryWarthUT 760-529-4939 President Donald Trump on Thursday abruptly endorsed permanent Israeli control of the disputed Golan Heights, saying on Twitter that the area seized from Syria in the 1967 Arab war is of critical strategic and security importance to Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pressed the United States to formally recognize Israels annexation of the land, including making a public appeal for U.S. help as he welcomed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Jerusalem on Wednesday. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Trump tweeted. Trumps statement has no immediate practical effect, but it puts his administration on record as backing a key political priority of Netanyahus just three weeks before Israels national elections. Advertisement At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Netanyahu wrote in English on Twitter. Thank you President Trump! Trump will welcome Netanyahu at the White House next week for meetings and a private dinner organized by his son-in-law and Middle East adviser, Jared Kushner. Trumps statement follows other actions sought by Netanyahu, including the move of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the U.S. withdrawal from the international nuclear deal with Iran. Trump has also closed the U.S. political office used by the Palestinian Authority and closed a decades-old U.S. diplomatic mission to Palestinians in Jerusalem. In addition, Trump has agreed to leave 400 U.S. troops in Syria after initially saying he would close down that military mission entirely. The U.S. departure alarmed Israelis and pro-Israel U.S. lawmakers, although Netanyahu said he respected Trumps decision. Israel has sought international recognition of its sovereignty over the Golan territory for years, but Netanyahu has intensified the effort with U.S. officials and lawmakers over the past several months. He has prominent Republican allies, including Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas. Graham and Cruz are pushing legislation that would say the United States has a national security interest in ensuring that Israel retains control over the Golan Heights as the Syrian war winds down and Syrian President Bashar Assad remains in power. Graham, who toured the Golan Heights with Netanyahu earlier this month, tweeted his support for Trumps declaration: President Trumps decision to recognize the Golan as part of Israel is strategically wise and overall awesome. Well done, Mr. President! Now I, along with Senator @tedcruz, will try to get Congress to follow your lead. Israels ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, welcomed Trumps statement. We are at the beginning of a historic moment for the State of Israel, he said in a statement. President Trump once again proves the strength of the alliance between the U.S. and Israel. The time has come for the world to recognize that the Golan Heights is an inseparable part of the State of Israel. Both Netanyahu and his main election rival, former Israeli military chief of staff Benny Gantz, have championed permanent Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights as a campaign issue. The two are neck and neck in the polls ahead of the election April 9. Netanyahu, who is battling corruption allegations, has repeatedly boasted of his strong relationship with Trump and the achievement of securing the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem last year. Huge roadside billboards in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv show the two leaders shaking hands, with the slogan Netanyahu, in a different league. Pompeo had refused to discuss the Golan request with reporters traveling with him and said it would be inappropriate to comment on internal Israeli politics. He denied the timing of his visit was an indication of support for Netanyahu before the vote, and U.S. officials said the aim of the visit was to discuss regional issues, including curbing Iranian power in the region. Israel has repeatedly raised alarm bells over the entrenchment of Iranian forces across the border in Syria. Before Netanyahu and Pompeo met Tuesday evening, the Israeli leader urged international recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. You can imagine what would have happened if Israel were not in the Golan, he said. We would have Iran on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Its time that the international community recognizes Israels stay in the Golan, the fact that the Golan will always remain part of the state of Israel. Breaking with the protocol of previous administrations, Pompeo visited the Western Wall with Netanyahu on Wednesday afternoon. Previous secretaries of state have avoided making the visit to the Jewish holy site alongside Israeli officials, with concerns that such a move could be seen as a recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the site. The wall lies in east Jerusalem, land the United Nations and much of the international community considers illegally occupied. Netanyahu and Pompeo, who were accompanied by the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, placed notes in the wall, a religious tradition. Morris reported from Jerusalem. John Wagner and Carol Morello in Washington contributed to this report. President Donald Trump said he believes special counsel Robert Muellers report should be released to the public, even as he disparaged its very existence as ridiculous. Let it come out, let people see it, Trump told reporters as he left the White House on Wednesday for a trip to Ohio. Lets see whether or not its legit. Mueller is expected to present a report to the Justice Department any day now outlining the findings of his nearly two-year investigation into Russian election meddling, possible collusion with Trump campaign officials and possible obstruction of justice by Trump . Mueller is required to produce a confidential report that at a minimum explains decisions about who was and was not prosecuted. Attorney General William Barr is then expected to produce his own report for Congress and has said he wants to make public as much of Muellers findings as he can under the law. Advertisement Trump said he was personally looking forward to reading the findings, even as he scorned the fact that Mueller was empowered to write the report in the first place. I just won one of the greatest elections of all time in the history of this country. ... And now I have somebody writing a report that never got a vote? Trump said. Its called the Mueller report. So explain that because my voters dont get it. And I dont get it. Trump went on to mischaracterize the effort, saying its sort of interesting that a man out of the blue just writes a report. The House voted unanimously last week for a resolution calling for any report in Muellers investigation to be made public. It was a symbolic action designed to pressure Barr into releasing as much information as possible. Trump and his outside attorneys have worked for months now to undermine Mueller and cast doubt on his eventually findings. Trump continued that effort Wednesday, calling Mueller conflicted and criticizing the lawyers who have worked on the case. Though Muellers office has said nothing publicly about the timing of a report, several prosecutors detailed to Muellers team have left in recent months, suggesting the investigation is winding down. Trump, for his part, said he had no idea when the report would be released, but maintained his innocence, saying there was no collusion and no obstruction. There was no nothing. With all of that being said, he added, I look forward to seeing the report. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report. Venezuelan police arrested a top assistant of self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido on Thursday, an act that the leader of the opposition to sitting President Nicolas Maduro described as a kidnapping. The arrest of Roberto Marrero, who serves as Guaidos office manager, took place at his home and was carried out by intelligence police, according to a statement released by Guaidos press office in Caracas, the nations capital. No reason for the arrest was given, and Venezuelas Communications and Information Ministry did not respond to a request for details. It was a vile and vulgar kidnapping, Guaido said Thursday during a visit to a school in the La Castellana barrio in eastern Caracas, where he spoke to reporters. The kidnapping is an attempt to intimidate us. Here we are in the plain light of day. Advertisement Marrero is a close friend and associate of Guaido, having accompanied him on a tour of Latin American cities in February after attempts failed to facilitate the entry to Venezuela of humanitarian aid from Colombian and Brazilian border cities. Guaido, leader of the National Assembly, said he would file a protest with the United Nations, whose chief human rights representative, Michelle Bachelet, has sent a commission to Venezuela to investigate alleged abuses. Before being led away in the early hours of Thursday, Marrero telephoned Guaido and said that police were searching his home. Guaido, who has the support of dozens of nations including the United States and Colombia, said that the home of opposition National Assembly deputy Sergio Vergara was also searched Thursday morning but that Vergara was not arrested. MORE: U.S. withdrawing last of its embassy personnel from Venezuela Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido. (Natacha Pisarenko / Associated Press) The Lima Group, an assemblage of Latin American countries formed to address the impacts of Venezuelas ongoing social and economic crisis, including the exodus of millions of citizens, issued a statement Thursday condemning Marreros arrest . The Maduro regime is responsible for the security and physical integrity of Roberto Marrero and Sergio Vergara. We demand the end of harassment of Venezuelan democrats and of the systematic practice of arbitrary detention and torture in Venezuela, said the Lima Groups statement. Guaido is under restrictions that include a travel ban, which he violated when he left Venezuela last month to travel to Bogota for a Lima Group meeting that included U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. Maduros government so far has not detained him, saying his case is under investigation by the attorney generals office. There is a risk in making politics in Venezuela, but it is evident that today they dont dare do anything to me because while we remain mobilized in the streets we are strong, Guaido said Thursday. Mogollon is a Times special correspondent. Special correspondent Chris Kraul in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report. On Thursday afternoon, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an immediate ban on all military-style semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles. She also said the government intended to launch a buyback program for people who own the banned weapons. It had been all of six days since a gunman identified as a white supremacist killed 50 Muslims in the city of Christchurch, the deadliest shooting in New Zealand history. The quick action was a stark contrast to the slow pace of making gun legislation in the United States. Advertisement (Los Angeles Times) Firearms are part of the culture in both countries. New Zealand has 4.7 million people and 1.5 million guns, and the U.S. has 328 million people and between 265 million and 393 million guns. But when it comes to gun laws, there are some big differences. Most importantly, New Zealands constitution does not guarantee the right to own a gun. And though the gun lobby is influential in both countries, it is stronger in the U.S. There is a lot of energy in the days after a mass shooting in America, but it tends to wane pretty quickly, said John Donohue, a law professor at Stanford University who teaches on gun policy. Many attempts to change federal gun policy have failed over the years. When gun reform advocates have had success, it was often at the state level. Heres a look at five notorious mass shootings in the U.S., the legislation they inspired and how long it took for it to pass: (Mike Stocker / Associated Press) Feb. 14, 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Deaths: 17 Gun policy that arose: Gun purchase and ownership restrictions, increased school safety measures. Scope: State. Floridas Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act banned bump stock sales, raised the minimum age for gun buyers to 21 and set aside funds for school safety officers and security. The law also gives police more authority to confiscate guns from people deemed unfit to have them a provision that nine other states and Washington, D.C., have since used as for their own red flag laws. Time elapsed: 23 days First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs associate Pastor Mark Collins officiates during the funeral service for Annabelle Pomeroy at First Baptist Church of La Vernia in La Vernia, Texas on Nov. 13, 2017. Annabelle was killed in the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas the site of a shooting that killed 26 and left many injured. (Nathan Hunsinger/The Dallas Morning News/TNS) NO MAGAZINE SALES MANDATORY CREDIT; NO SALES; INTERNET USE BY TNS CONTRIBUTORS ONLY ** OUTS - ELSENT, FPG, TCN - OUTS ** (Nathan Hunsinger / TNS) Nov. 5, 2017 First Baptist Church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas Deaths: 26 Gun policy that arose: Enhanced background checks for gun purchases. Scope: Federal. President Trump signed the Fix NICS Act on March 23, 2018. The law, which was promoted by Texas legislators, aims to change the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to keep felons and domestic abusers from buying guns. Time elapsed: 138 days LAS VEGAS, NV - OCTOBER 01: (One of a 115-image Best of Year 2017 set) People run from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after apparent gun fire was hear on October 1, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. A gunman has opened fire on a music festival in Las Vegas, leaving at least 20 people dead and more than 100 injured. Police have confirmed that one suspect has been shot. The investigation is ongoing. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images) ** OUTS - ELSENT, FPG, CM - OUTS * NM, PH, VA if sourced by CT, LA or MoD ** (David Becker / Getty Images) Oct. 1, 2017 Route 91 Harvest festival shooting in Las Vegas Deaths: 58 Gun policy that arose: Bump stock bans. Bump stocks, which were used in the shooting, modify firearms so they can shoot like automatic machine guns. Scope: State and federal. Massachusetts, the first state to pass legislation in response to the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history, banned bump stocks on Nov. 3, 2017. A new federal rule on bump stocks was listed in the Federal Register more than a year later, on Dec. 18. The rule, which takes effect Tuesday, makes it illegal to sell or own bump stocks nationwide. Time elapsed: 33 days for the Massachusetts law, 443 days for the federal rule. ORLANDO, FL - JUNE 13: Law enforcement officials investigate at the Pulse gay nightclub where Omar Mateen allegedly killed at least 50 people on June 13, 2016 in Orlando, Florida. The mass shooting killed at least 50 people and injuring 53 others in what is the deadliest mass shooting in the countrys history. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) ** OUTS - ELSENT, FPG, CM - OUTS * NM, PH, VA if sourced by CT, LA or MoD ** (Joe Raedle / Getty Images) June 12, 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla. Deaths: 49 Gun policy that arose: None. No gun law reform legislation passed specifically in response to the Pulse shooting. On June 22, 2016, House Democrats staged a sit-in to demand a vote on gun laws. States also increased hate crime protections in response to the deaths. NEWTOWN, CT - DECEMBER 19: Twenty miniature stockings adorn a makeshift memorial for the mass shooting victims on December 19, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut. Adam Lanza reportedly shot his mother Nancy Lanza last Friday before he killed 26 others, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 158706534 (John Moore / Getty Images) Dec. 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Deaths: 26 Gun policy that arose: Gun purchase and ownership restrictions. Scope: State and federal. On Jan. 1, 2013, New York became the first of several states to pass gun reform laws after the Sandy Hook shooting, in which 20 first-graders and six faculty members perished at the school, in addition to the gunmans mother at her home. The Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, which New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed, restricted semiautomatic weapons, increased background checks and had provisions to keep certain people with mental illness from purchasing guns. The same day, President Obama signed a series of executive actions on guns. Many of the 23 actions focused on directing federal agencies to better coordinate information on gun ownership and background checks, but they did not make major reforms. Time elapsed: 33 days. Police tape hangs in the trees in front of Norris Hall on the campus of Virginia Tech Monday, April 16, 2007, in Blacksburg, Va. A gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, in a classroom across campus Monday, killing at least 30 people. Most of the victims were killed inside Norris Hall. (AP Photo/Casey Templeton) ORG XMIT: VACA104 (Casey Templeton / Associated Press) April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech university in Blacksburg, Va. Deaths: 32 Gun policy that arose: Better background checks for gun purchases, campus safety improvements. Scope: Federal. President Bush signed the NICS Improvement Amendments Act in Jan. 8, 2008. The law was supposed to improve state reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. But the NICS was still regularly criticized for lacking comprehensive data. Time elapsed: 267 days President Trump claimed credit for John McCains funeral on Wednesday and complained about not receiving a thank you for the somber event even though he had nothing to do with it. For a second day in a row, Trump went after the late Arizona senator for various familiar grievances, including the Vietnam War heros no vote on repealing Obamacare in 2017 and his alerting the FBI to a damning dossier about the Presidents alleged ties to Russia. But, speaking at a U.S. Army tank manufacturing plant in Lima, Ohio, Trump also tried out a new anti-McCain tirade that was hardly accurate. I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as President I had to approve, Trump said. I dont care about this. I didnt get thank you. Thats OK. We sent him on the way, but I wasnt a fan of John McCain. Advertisement The audience remained quiet during Trumps McCain-bashing monologue. It was not immediately clear what the President was talking about, and a White House spokesman did not return a request for comment. Trump authorized the use of Air Force 2 to transport McCains body from Arizona to Washington, D.C., after his death, but the President had nothing to do with his state funeral at the U.S. Capitol on Aug. 31. Rather, McCains lying in state was approved via a resolution passed by the Senate. Trump was notably asked by the McCain family to not attend the late senators funeral. The Presidents latest attack against the dead senator prompted even some of his most loyal supporters to speak out against him. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham a staunch Trump ally who used to be one of McCains closest friend in Congress told reporters that the Presidents comments about Sen. McCain hurt him more than they hurt the legacy of Sen. McCain. Some military veterans were not as measured in their responses. Every single senator should speak up regarding their former colleague, Senator McCain. No matter the side. They also should censure POTUS on his latest remarks, retired U.S. Army Gen. Mark Hertling tweeted. Anything else is cowardly and speaks to a lack of honor. An SUV was consumed by flames Wednesday morning after firefighters were mistakenly told the driver threw gasoline on the burning vehicle and held off tackling the blaze, a Chula Vista fire official said. The fire was reported shortly after 11:40 a.m. on Valley Ridge Street near Proctor Valley Road. Chula Vista Battalion Chief David Albright told OnScene TV that flames were already coming from the vehicle when crews arrived. However, firefighters didnt immediately start fighting the fire because there were told the incident may have been a crime, Albright said. Witnesses reported that a male was dumping gasoline on a vehicle and starting fires, he said. Because they had to stand back, the fire did get well developed and it actually did consume the vehicle. Advertisement After talking to the driver, firefighters determined the car had ignited from a mechanical issue and the driver was trying to extinguish it with water, the battalion chief said. It was a misunderstanding, he said. It was all a mechanical issue and he was pouring water on the vehicle so the witness statements were incorrect. Video showed the vehicle burned down to its frame. No one was injured in the blaze. Twitter: @karenkucher (619) 293-1350 karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com A 67-year-old woman was seriously injured early Wednesday when she crashed her car head-on into an oncoming pickup near San Diego State University, police said. It happened about 4:30 a.m. on Campanile Drive between Dorothy and Baja drives, a little south of Montezuma Road, San Diego police Officer Sarah Foster said. The woman was headed north in a 2006 Chrysler PT Cruiser when, for unknown reasons, she allowed the car to drift left and slam head-on into an oncoming 2010 Ford F-150 pickup, Foster said in a statement. Medics took the woman to a hospital with serious injuries to both legs, Foster said. She sustained an open fracture to her right ankle, while her left ankle was fractured and dislocated. Advertisement The 35-year-old man driving the Ford pickup was apparently not injured. Alcohol was not considered a factor in the crash, police said. Officers from the San Diego Police Departments traffic division were investigating the collision and trying to determine what caused the crash. Twitter: @Alex_Riggins (619) 293-1710 alex.riggins@sduniontribune.com Homicide detectives were investigating the fatal shooting of a man in Spring Valley early Thursday. Residents called 911 to report hearing shots fired in an alley behind Delrose Avene near Elkelton Boulevard around 1:20 a.m., sheriffs officials said. Deputies found the victim in the alley, unresponsive and suffering from severe injuries, said sheriffs Lt. Rich Williams. The man had suffered at least one gunshot wound, sheriffs Lt. Karla Menzies said. Advertisement Despite lifesaving efforts by deputies and paramedics, the man died before he could be taken to a hospital. The name of the victim wasnt released. Williams said investigators have no suspects and are asking the public to contact sheriffs officials if they have any information about the shooting. We have no suspects yet and are asking for the communitys help to solve this crime, Williams said. Theres no evidence the shooting was gang-related, he added. Anyone with information about the shooting was asked to call sheriffs homicide investigators at (858) 974-2321 or (858) 565-5200 after-hours or on weekends. Tipsters who wish to remain anonymous can contact San Diego Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477, or online at sdcrimestoppers.org. City News Service contributed to this report. Twitter: @karenkucher (619) 293-1350 karen.kucher@sduniontribune.com Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and mayors from 10 other large California cities lobbied Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, asking for hundreds of millions in additional funding to combat homelessness in their communities. The request followed a successful effort last year from big-city mayors, including Garcetti, San Diegos Kevin Faulconer, San Joses Sam Liccardo and others, to push for $500 million in state grants for homelessness prevention efforts under then-Gov. Jerry Brown. Garcetti said that major cities have already committed three-quarters of the money allocated to them and that the spending shows cities can help additional homeless residents with more resources. The need is out there, Garcetti said. Its proof that we can put this to work right away. Advertisement Gov. Gavin Newsom threatens to cut state funding from cities that dont approve enough housing The city of Los Angeles has set aside more than half of the $85 million it received for its proposal to build homeless shelters citywide, including one in each council district. So far the money has gone to 11 projects with a total of 849 beds once the projects are complete. The city has also put $20 million toward homelessness prevention efforts on skid row. In his January budget announcement, Newsom set aside $500 million for regional and local homeless programs. Of that money, $200 million would go to cities and counties to use for any purpose, including those unrelated to housing, if they boost efforts to build new homeless housing projects and shelters. There is no way to realize our state goals unless they are realized at the local level, Newsom said at a news conference after the 45-minute meeting with the mayors. That means our partners are the ones on the front lines that have to be supported. The group of mayors praised Newsom for dedicating money for homelessness prevention in his initial budget; Brown, in contrast, did not agree to a full allocation of funds until he reached a final budget deal with the Legislature. But Garcetti and the other mayors hope Newsom will increase funding, with more of it going directly to cities rather than being routed through regional agencies. Newsom seemed open to their request. The budget just changed, he said. This was an important meeting. I did not just listen. I took notes and Im taking direction. The governors office did not provide details on how Newsom planned to change his homeless housing plans. Newsom will unveil a revised budget proposal in May and must reach an agreement with the Legislature on a new spending plan by mid-June. The states nonpartisan Legislative Analysts Office has estimated the state would need an additional tens of billions of dollars a year to provide new housing for the neediest Californians. Though Newsoms proposed spending to address homelessness doesnt come close to that amount, state homeless funding has increased in recent years, most notably when voters approved a $2-billion bond to build housing last fall. Californias homeless population decreased slightly last year, to almost 130,000 residents, according to federal statistics. liam.dillon@latimes.com @dillonliam Longtime San Diego Unified School Board Trustee Kevin Beiser has been accused by four men just starting out in local politics of misconduct, including groping, harassment and sexual assault. Three made their allegations on the record to Voice of San Diego. A fourth person who has not offered his name on the record alleged in a lawsuit that he was raped, that his paid work as an aide to Beisers campaign was conditioned on his accepting Beisers advances and that he was fired because he rejected Beiser. Beiser, 50, did not return voice and text messages from The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board on Wednesday, but he has denied wrongdoing and asserted he is facing a politically motivated witch hunt. He of course should be able to defend himself against any accusations. But statements made by friends and family members of the three men interviewed by Voice of San Diego corroborate that they were told of Beisers alleged actions after they happened. That some of the alleged incidents occurred after the #MeToo scandal broke in fall 2017 adds further troubling context. And the mens powerful statements collectively suggest Beiser engaged in a pattern of awful, exploitative behavior. In November 2017, responding to appalling, credible allegations about state and federal lawmakers, our editorial board wrote that [h]arassment claims should be handled as consistently, quickly and publicly as possible, protecting the rights of all, starting with victims. This view informs our belief that Beiser should resign from the school board, as many of Beisers fellow San Diego Democrats have said. All of Beisers fellow board trustees Richard Barrera, John Lee Evans, Michael McQuary and Sharon Whitehurst-Payne and state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, Assembly members Todd Gloria and Lorena Gonzalez, and City Council President Georgette Gomez share our view that Beiser can no longer effectively serve as a trustee. He has failed to be the role model a school board member must be. Advertisement Beiser is now on leave from the Sweetwater Union High School District, where he teaches at Castle Park Middle School. The Sweetwater Union High School District, where Beiser teaches at Castle Park Middle School, did the right thing in placing him on leave. But the school board has no power to compel Beiser to resign. That will take community pressure beyond a 58-4 San Diego County Democratic Party vote. Or Beiser reflecting on how he has lost the confidence of these four men, his party and many more. Twitter: @sdutIdeas Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion Northbrook, IL -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/20/2019 -- According to a new market research report "Combined Heat & Power Market by Capacity (>10 MW, 10-150 MW, 151-300 MW, >300 MW), Prime Mover (Gas & Steam Turbine, Reciprocating Engine, Fuel Cell), End-User (District Energy, Residential, On-Site Industrial & Commercial) - Global Forecast to 2023", published by MarketsandMarkets, the global Combined Heat & Power (CHP) market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.48%, from 2018 to 2023, to reach a market size of USD 27.01 billion by 2023. The increasing demand for energy efficiency, government programs, and incentives to promote CHP are driving the growth for the Combined Heat & Power Market. Emerging technologies such as fuel cell based micro-CHO in Europe and Asia Pacific provide opportunities for the growth of the CHP market. Speak To Analyst: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/speaktoanalystNew.asp?id=26572447 The residential segment of the Combined Heat & Power Market, by end-user, is expected to grow at the fastest rate from 2018 to 2023. The segment is driven by government programs for fuel cell based micro-CHP in countries such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The program is aimed at increasing distributed power generation in households for better energy efficiency and reduce emissions. The ene-field project of the European Union is spearheading the penetration of residential micro-CHP in Europe by providing incentives. Browse and in-depth TOC on "Combined Heat & Power Market" 77 - Tables 35 - Figures 138 - Pages View detailed Table of Content here: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/combined-heat-power-market-26572447.html On the basis of fuel, the natural gas segment is expected to grow at the fastest rate from 2018 to 2023. The growth of this segment is mainly due to the rising share of natural gas in the energy mix in the Asia Pacific region, particularly in China. The shale gas boom in the US has also contributed to the rise in natural gas fired power generation in North America, and thus driving the Combined Heat & Power Market in the region. The up to 10 MW segment, by capacity, is estimated to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period. The segment consists mainly of residential and on-site industrial and commercial CHP installations. Larger capacities in this range are usually on-site commercial CHP installations for end-users, such as healthcare and data centers, where there is a growing need for energy efficiency. The market for this segment is driven by the government micro-CHP programs for fuel cells in regions such as Europe and Asia Pacific and the growth of distributed power generation in North America and Asia Pacific. Request Sample Pages of the report @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsampleNew.asp?id=26572447 The Combined Heat & Power Market has been segmented, by region, into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, South America, and Africa. Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period, followed by Africa. The growth in the market in Asia Pacific is driven by countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea. The growing share of natural gas in the energy mix in these countries has given rise to large-scale gas-fired cogeneration plants and is driving the market for CHP in this region. The leading players in the Combined Heat & Power Market include GE (US), Siemens (Germany), Veolia (France), 2G Energy (Germany), FuelCell Energy (US), Wartsila (Finland), Caterpillar Energy Solutions (Germany), MAN Diesel & Turbo (Germany), AB Holding (Italy), Capstone(US), Clarke Energy(UK), and MHPS (Japan). Related Reports: Generator Sales Market by Type (Diesel, Gas), Application (Standby, Peak Shaving, Continuous Power), Power Rating (<100 kVA, 100350 kVA, 3501,000 kVA, >1,000 kVA), End-User (Residential, Commercial, Industrial), and Region - Global forecast to 2023 Micro Combined Heat & Power (Micro CHP) Market by Type (Engine, Fuel Cell), Technology (Internal Combustion Engine, Rankine Cycle Engine, Stirling Engine, PEMFC, SOFC), Application (Residential, Commercial), & Region - Global Forecast to 2020 About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 7500 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve. MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "Knowledge Store" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. Contact: Mr. Shelly Singh MarketsandMarkets INC. 630 Dundee Road Suite 430 Northbrook, IL 60062 USA : 1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Los Angeles, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/20/2019 -- Dental Needles is a sterile dental needle used in Dental syringe, helping a dentist to numb various areas of a patient's mouth in preparation for oral care procedures The US was the highest revenue generator in the market, primarily driven by the rising demand for cosmetic corrections among people, increasing dental deformity cases, and an increasing prevalence of maxillofacial deformities or trauma. This was followed by EMEA with technological advancement as the most important market driver. In APAC, the emerging market conditions and high population have contributed to the growth of the dental syringes market. The global Dental Needles market was 53 million US$ in 2018 and is expected to 76 million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 5.3% between 2019 and 2025. This report studies the Dental Needles market size (value and volume) by players, regions, product types and end industries, history data 2014-2018 and forecast data 2019-2025; This report also studies the global market competition landscape, market drivers and trends, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, sales channels, distributors and Porter's Five Forces Analysis. Get PDF template of this report: https://www.qyresearch.com/sample-form/form/1026690/global-dental-needles-market Geographically, this report is segmented into several key regions, with sales, revenue, market share and growth Rate of Dental Needles in these regions, from 2014 to 2025, covering North America (United States, Canada and Mexico) Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia and Turkey etc.) Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam) South America (Brazil etc.) Middle East and Africa (Egypt and GCC Countries) The various contributors involved in the value chain of the product include manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, intermediaries, and customers. The key manufacturers in this market include Septodont Dentsply Sirona Terumo Shinhung Nirpo J. Morita Mitsui Chemicals EXELINT International Biodent KDL By the product type, the market is primarily split into 25G 27G 30G 31G Others By the end users/application, this report covers the following segments Dental Clinic Hospital Other We can also provide the customized separate regional or country-level reports, for the following regions: North America United States Canada Mexico Asia-Pacific China India Japan South Korea Australia Indonesia Singapore Malaysia Philippines Thailand Vietnam Rest of Asia-Pacific Europe Germany France UK Italy Spain Russia Rest of Europe Central & South America Brazil Rest of Central & South America Middle East & Africa GCC Countries Turkey Egypt South Africa Rest of Middle East & Africa Get Complete Report in your Inbox within 24 hours: https://www.qyresearch.com/customize-request/form/1026690/global-dental-needles-market About QYResearch QYResearch always pursuits high product quality with the belief that quality is the soul of business. Through years of effort and supports from the huge number of customer supports, QYResearch consulting group has accumulated creative design methods on many high-quality markets investigation and research team with rich experience. Today, QYResearch has become the brand of quality assurance in the consulting industry. Ann Arbor, MI -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/21/2019 -- Intagent is one of the leading web solution providers based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They are known for offering exceptional website designing, development, and marketing solutions to real estate companies, brokers, and agents at genuine prices. The company takes great pride in the fact that it has so far successfully helped many real estate companies, businesses, agents, and brokers to take advantage of visually appealing and easy to use websites. This, in return, has helped them grow their business in a way that would not have been possible otherwise. With the intent to provide insight into the broad range of web solutions on offer, the spokesperson of Intagent stated, "We understand that in an increasingly internet-savvy world where most of the businesses are shifting online, a strong online presence is mandatory to remain competitive and profitable. The real estate industry is no exception either. We offer web solutions to real estate agents, brokers, companies, and businesses alike. We help them own websites that are highly functional, easy to use, and visually appealing too. We design these websites to help each one of our clients make their web ventures successful and achieve the desired business growth easily." Besides offering highly interactive, effective, and expert web development and marketing solutions, Intagent helps clients cater to the user search queries easily, efficiently, and effectively. This further helps realtors to excel as compared to the competition in their respective areas without any hassle. A strong online presence, on the other hand, helps Intagent's clients to not only remain competitive, but also profitable. Hence, this web solutions provider meets or exceeds the requirements, expectations, and aspirations of realtors every time. Elaborating on the web solutions on offer, the spokesperson further commented, "Since we have been in the industry for a considerable time now, we understand how important it is for businesses to have a strong online presence therefore we help them get the same. In a highly lucrative and competitive real estate industry, we help clients quell the intense competition, increase areas that still remain unexplored, and grow business and client base to a greater extent. Not surprisingly, we have a long list of satisfied clients." Real estate agents who want to get into this business and become an authority in the industry can reach out to Intagent. Whether a real estate agent is new or a seasoned one, the company helps them establish their name into this niche market and make their presence felt. Therefore, those looking for a visually appealing and highly effective website for realtors or those want to know more about the real estate website design cost can get in touch with Intagent. About Intagent A leading web solutions provider, Intagent is known for offering expert, result-oriented, and value for money web designing, development, and marketing solutions to real estate agents, companies, businesses, and realtors alike. The company helps real estate clients have a strong online presence and reap a great business profit out of it. Therefore, those looking for real estate website design with a difference can count on Intagent. Contact Details: Company : Intagent Address: 1872 Stonebridge Dr S, Ann Arbor, MI 48108 Phone: (800) 209-0740 Website: http://www.intagent.com/ New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/20/2019 -- Recent industry assessment report on the Network Traffic Analyzer market applies qualitative and quantitative research techniques to probe into the complete business scenario of the Network Traffic Analyzer market for the forecast period 2018 - 2026. The study churns out some real-time data and offers enough information on the estimated market size, growth, and share to the stakeholders, field marketing personnel and product owners planning to multiply profitability and reduce costs. Importantly, the market intelligence research dives deep into customer preferences, spending capacity and production volume with the aim to ensure unmatched customer delight. A thorough assessment of trends from the yesteryears and future discussed in the report can help business owners identify tweaks that might be needed to the existing business strategy. The major players covered in this Network Traffic Analyzer report are: Cisco Systems, SolarWinds, NETSCOUT SYSTEMS, CA Technologies, Ipswitch, ManageEngine, Plixer, Colasoft, HPE, Nokia, Kentik, Genie Networks Premium sample copy of Network Traffic Analyzer report available on demand@ https://www.marketexpertz.com/sample-enquiry-form/32063 Understanding the Network Traffic Analyzer market size The size of the Network Traffic Analyzer market is viewed in terms of the Share of Market, Total Available Market as well as Served Available Market. Not only does the study present the combined revenue for a particular market but also the market size for a specific geographic region. Analysis of percentage or the size of the Total Available Market based on the type of product, technology, regional constraints and others form an important part of the Network Traffic Analyzer report. Market split by Type, can be divided into: - Cloud - On-premises Market split by Application, can be divided into: - BFSI - Healthcare - Government - Retail - Others Market split by Sales Channel, can be divided into: - Direct Channel - Distribution Channel Knowing the trends influencing the Network Traffic Analyzer industry performance Stakeholders, marketing executives and business owners planning to refer a market research report can use this study to design their offerings and understand how competitors attract their potential customers and manage their supply and distribution channels. When tracking the trends researchers have made a conscious effort to analyze and interpret the consumer behaviour. Besides, the research helps product owners to understand the changes in culture, target market as well as brands so they can draw the attention of the potential customers more effectively. Our trend analysts look for the crucial connection between consumer trends, behaviour and values, to provide context for the sectors, demographics and global themes that matter to you. Geographically, this Network Traffic Analyzer report studies the top producers and consumers in these key regions: - North America - Europe - China - Japan - Other Regions (India, Southeast Asia, Central & South America and Middle East & Africa) We can also provide the customized separate regional or country-level Network Traffic Analyzer reports, for the following regions: North America, United States, Canada, Mexico, Asia-Pacific, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Rest of Asia-Pacific, Europe, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, Russia, Rest of Europe, Central & South America, Brazil, Argentina, Rest of South America, Middle East & Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Rest of Middle East & Africa In this Network Traffic Analyzer study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Network Traffic Analyzer are as follows: History Year: 2013-2017 Base Year: 2017 Estimated Year: 2018 Forecast Year 2018 to 2026 Order Now (Customized report delivered as per your specific requirement)@ https://www.marketexpertz.com/checkout-form/32063 The study objectives of this Network Traffic Analyzer report are: # To analyze and study the global Network Traffic Analyzer sales, value, status and forecast (2018-2026); # To analyze the top players in North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and India, # to study the sales, value and market share of top players in these regions. # Focuses on the key Network Traffic Analyzer players, to study the sales, value, market share and development plans in future. #Focuses on the global key manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the market competition landscape, SWOT analysis. #To define, describe and forecast the market by type, application and region. #To analyze the global and key regions market potential and advantage, opportunity and challenge, restraints and risks. #To identify significant trends and factors driving or inhibiting the market growth. #To analyze the opportunities in the market for stakeholders by identifying the high growth segments. # To strategically analyze each submarket with respect to individual growth trend and their contribution to the market # To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market # To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies Browse complete Aerospace Fiber Optic Sensors report description And Full TOC @ https://www.marketexpertz.com/industry-overview/network-traffic-analyzer-market Key elements from table of content: Chapter 1 Network Traffic Analyzer Market Overview 1.1 Network Traffic Analyzer Definition 1.2 Global Network Traffic Analyzer Market Size Status and Outlook (2013-2026) 1.3 Global Network Traffic Analyzer Market Size Comparison by Region (2013-2026) 1.4 Global Network Traffic Analyzer Market Size Comparison by Type (2013-2026) 1.5 Global Network Traffic Analyzer Market Size Comparison by Application (2013-2026) 1.6 Global Network Traffic Analyzer Market Size Comparison by Sales Channel (2013-2026) 1.7 Network Traffic Analyzer Market Dynamics 1.7.1 Market Drivers/Opportunities 1.7.2 Market Challenges/Risks 1.7.3 Market News (Mergers/Acquisitions/ Expansion) Chapter 2 Network Traffic Analyzer Market Segment Analysis by Player 2.1 Global Network Traffic Analyzer Sales and Market Share by Player (2016-2026) 2.2 Global Network Traffic Analyzer Revenue and Market Share by Player (2016-2026) 2.3 Global Network Traffic Analyzer Average Price by Player (2016-2026) 2.4 Players Competition Situation & Trends 2.5 Conclusion of Segment by Player Continued About MarketExpertz Planning to invest in market intelligence products or offerings on the web? Then marketexpertz has just the thing for you - reports from over 500 prominent publishers and updates on our collection daily to empower companies and individuals catch-up with the vital insights on industries operating across different geography, trends, share, size and growth rate. There's more to what we offer to our customers. With marketexpertz you have the choice to tap into the specialized services without any additional charges. Contact Us: John Watson Head of Business Development Market Expertz | Web: www.marketexpertz.com Direct Line: +1-800-819-3052 E-mail: sales@marketexpertz.com News: www.marketexpertz.com/market-news Tulsa, OK -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/21/2019 -- When people in and around Oklahoma are unfortunately locked out of their homes, offices, or cars, one name they prefer reaching out to is OKC Locksmith JB Tulsa. The company is known for offering reliable, expert, trusted, secured, and value for money lock and key services to people locked in and/or out of their properties or vehicles. The expert professional of the company reaches the location at the earliest and helps people come out of this otherwise unlikely situation safely and quickly. With the intent to put some light on the lock and key services on offer, the spokesperson of OKC Locksmith JB Tulsa stated, "We intend to help people who have locked themselves in and/or out of their domestic and commercial properties, or vehicles for that matter, to come out of this unpleasant situation quickly. For this purpose, stranded people can reach out to us at any point in time 24/7 and we make sure that they get the expert assistance without spending a fortune for the same." To book locksmith services, all that a customer has to do is call OKC Locksmith JB Tulsa on the number provided on its website. One of the company's friendly professionals answers the customer's query, takes the address, and reaches the location without wasting any time. With the expert lock and key services, the professional tries his level best to lock or unlock any modern and/or traditional locking device. Since the company only hires seasoned professionals with considerable knowledge, it is capable of providing instant and effective locksmith solutions. Elaborating on the locksmith services, the spokesperson further commented, "We have been in the industry for a considerable time now and have all the modern as well as traditional equipment at hand. Hence, we understand the configuration of most of the modern and traditional locking devices generally used in homes, commercial properties, as well as vehicles. Whether the customer has lost the keys, forgotten the security code, or has locked the keys inside, we offer effective solutions for all the problems." OKC Locksmith JB Tulsa offers requisite locksmith solutions keeping the security concerns of people in mind. The company is committed to keeping all the locking device related details intact, secured, and away from any unauthorized access. With this, it enables property and car owners to take a sigh of relief about their prized possessions and inmates being safe. As this locksmith service provider aims for a high position in the locksmith industry, it creates an environment, which encourages innovation, improvement, and teamwork. Therefore, those looking for a locksmith in Catoosa or OKC locksmith Tulsa can get in touch with OKC Locksmith JB Tulsa. About OKC Locksmith JB Tulsa OKC Locksmith JB Tulsa, as the name indicates, is a locksmith services provider based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is known for offering expert, reliable, instant, and value for money lock and key services to those locked in and/or out of their homes, offices, and cars. Its skilled professionals reach out to the customer's location instantly and help them come out of the unlikely situation fast. For those who are looking for a reliable and affordable locksmith in Claremore, OKC Locksmith JB Tulsa remains the best choice. Contact Details: Company : OKC Locksmith JB Tulsa Address: Tulsa, OK, 74133 Phone: (918) 319-9998. Contact: https://okclocksmith.com/tulsa/contact-us/ Web: https://okclocksmith.com/ Dhaka, Bangladesh -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/20/2019 -- Sellcardbtc is a customer-centric trading platform that was developed with the intent of providing sellers in China, Ghana, and Nigeria with a partner for all their transactions. The company has managed to live up to its expectations thanks to the simplicity and speed of their trading system which makes them the number one choice for all clients. Apart from the rapid transactions, Sellcardbtc has also made it their objective always to offer their customers the best rates in the market making each gift card count. Talking about their online trading criteria, the Company Spokesperson said, "You can easily trade through our website at any time once you have registered an account with us. To register, all you have to do is visit our website and click the 'trade on website' option which will direct you to our e-trading platform. You will be required to provide basic information which includes your name, telephone number, and email address before you can create a password. Once the registration is complete, you can proceed to make a trade right from our site which competes within a few minutes." It takes an average of five minutes to convert iTunes gift card to Naira on Sellcardbtc making it an option that is favorable for each person who wants instant cash. The localized transactions mean that all limitations are avoided as most sites lack the capacity for instant payments to local accounts. Sellcardbtc is concerned about always making a good impression and never keeps their clients waiting on what should be an instant procedure. Immediately the gift card is received and verified, there is the automatic processing of funds which is sent to the specified account. Speaking on what it takes to convert gift cards to Bitcoin, the Company Spokesperson said, "Instead of holding gift cards which will not be used any time soon, many people prefer having them in the all popular crypto-currency, Bitcoin. Since we also trade in Bitcoin, we give you an instant solution that will see you have the gift cards exchanged for the high-value digital currency. Similar to all other transactions for cash, the criteria for trading is the same, and we will credit the specified Bitcoin address in a matter of minutes." It is never a bad time to trade iTunes gift card as Sellcardbtc works around the clock to give all their clients the best trading platform. Largely described as a market leader in the niche segment, the company leaves up to expectations through their favorable terms and condition. Sellcardbtc facilitates trade both through their website and Whatsapp where there is always an agent ready to complete the process and make payments. The company accepts a wide range of gift cards in virtually all denominations which dictate the amount to be received. About Sellcardbtc Sellcardbtc is run and managed by a team of Bitcoin and Gift card trading specialists who have developed a reliable system which allows for local trades in Ghana, Nigeria, and China at the most competitive rates. Contact Details Company Name: Sellcardbtc Azad Centre, Room 2701. Dhaka - 1000 Bangladesh Telephone Number: +8801887470099 Email: Hi@sellcardbtc.com Website: https://sellcardbtc.com/ Burlington, NJ -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/21/2019 -- Stanley Paving is calling for Burlington County, NJ residents to improve their driveways today. Too many driveways are affecting the lives of homeowners through wear and tear, cracking, and weather damage. In some cases, driveways have become practically unusable. The solution, contacting the best driveway paving companies in Burlington County, NJ. The Stanley Paving team has over 60 years of professional experience and expertise serving the Delaware Valley area. With four generations of pavers, their skilled professionals combine their experience with the latest technologies that get each job done with speed and efficiency. Residents of Burlington County and the surrounding areas understand the importance of keeping their landscape safe, appealing and functional. Art Stanley, Asphalt Paver at Stanley Paving has said: "For six decades, our family has been providing residential, commercial, and municipal services to the Greater Philadelphia area. We're proud to have an excellent reputation within the local community for our honesty, hard work, and commitment to excellence." A professional, correctly installed driveway can last as long as three decades. The job of a professional paving company consists of hard labor, complex engineering, experience, skills, and implementation. However, it's best to do some research and check the credentials of any driveway paving company that you are thinking of hiring. Luckily, Stanley Paving has all these qualities working in synergy through their highly skilled team. Click here now to get a free quote today for all your needs regarding driveway paving in NJ. About Stanley Paving With four generations of pavers, Stanley Paving has assisted the Delaware Valley for over 65 years, valuing their commitment to service and expertise. To the Stanley Paving crew, no job is ever too small or too big, whether it be commercial, residential, or municipal, they get it done promptly. Their equipment and experienced paving crew provides the best service in the area. Learn more by visiting: http://www.stanleypaving.com/. Minister for Defence, National Security and Foreign Affairs Inia Seruiratu (front, sixth from left) with Chinese Ambassador Qian Bo (front, seventh from left) and the outgoing Chinese experts at the Fiji Navy Base on March 20, 2019. Photo: Ilaijia Ravuwai Source: fijisun.com.fj Minister for Defence, National Security and Foreign Affairs Inia Seruiratu says its a privilege for Fiji and the Republic of Fiji Navy (RFNS) to have received a vessel that is modern and skillfully designed. He made the remark at the farewell for the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) expert training team, who successfully completed four months of training for the RFNS Kacaus crew yesterday. The 18-member PLA Navy training team was farewelled at the Captain Stanley Brown Navy base at Walu Bay, Suva. It is a testament to the growing enhanced relationship between our two nations, Fiji and the Peoples of Republic of China, which is based on mutual respect and understanding, Mr Seruiratu said. Mr Seruiratu said the donation of the RFNS Kacau to the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) Naval Division was an indication of the close relationship between the two countries and their partnership in maritime sovereignty and security. RFNS Kacau is the first of its kind that will grace our seas because of its range of operational capability, which is not limited to hydrographic survey but maritime surveillance, HADR, diving, Search and Rescue, he said. Chinese Ambassador to Fiji Qian Bo said during the four months, the Chinese experts had their gains as well. They have gained friendship, with their Fijian counterparts and the Fijian people, he said. China is committed to world peace and regional stability. China is quite willing to work with Fiji to take our comprehensive strategic partnership to new heights. Type-002 aircraft carrier has completed several sea trials. Will it be featured among the latest hardware at the fleet review to commemorate the PLA Navy's 70th anniversary next month? The Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) Navy will celebrate its 70th anniversary on April 23, 2019. Following the substantial progress made in Chinese national defense over the past decades, naval equipment has also made significant upgrade. What new equipment will the Chinese Navy showcase at the fleet review held next month? Firstly, the most eye-catching hardware might be the first homegrown Type 002 aircraft carrier. Resembling the aircraft Liaoning, the new aircraft carrier has also fitted with a ski-jump assisted short take-off. However, it has been improved in many ways. For instance, the Type-002 aircraft carrier has reportedly been fitted with a new generation of phased array radar system, optimized air traffic command room and flight deck. Its carrier aircraft will also be a new generation of ship-borne J-15 fighter jet equipped with phased array radar. That translates into considerably enhanced combat capability. Secondly, another equipment likely attracting wide attention should be the first Type-055 guided-missile destroyer independently developed in China. With the estimated full load displacement of 10,000 tons, the destroyer can carry more launch pits for its vertical launch systems (up to 112). With the help of Chinas homegrown dual-band radar, the detection capability of the Type-055 is expected to be more powerful. In addition, the destroyer will install a powerful Z-20 ship-borne anti-submarine helicopter. The development of the Chinese naval vessels represents the development of the country. The most important reason why China can build so many advanced surface warships is due to its stronger national strength and national defense scientific research capability. China is also paying greater attention to its own maritime rights and interests. Therefore, it is not hard to see an increasingly powerful Chinese navy. The fleet review in April will be a good showcase of what the country has achieved so far. The 10,000-ton class Type-055 guided-missile destroyer is a landmark product in the history of the development of Chinese destroyers. Its significance to China should not be less than the J-20 heavy stealth fighter jet. The destroyer will likely attract considerable attention in the fleet review next month. Brain Institute receives over $7 million to study the neurophilosophy of free will The newly-minted Institute for Interdisciplinary Brain and Behavioral Science (The Brain Institute) at Chapman University, with Dr. Uri Maoz as project leader, is the recipient of a total of $7.04 million to study how the human brain enables conscious control of decisions and actions. The John Templeton Foundation funded $5.34 million; the Fetzer Institute funded $1.55 million; and the remaining $150,000 comes from the Fetzer Memorial Trust. This is Chapman's largest non-federal research grant to date. With the Chapman Brain Institute serving as the central hub, this grant supports research efforts at 17 universities spanning four continents, including Charite Berlin (Germany), Dartmouth, Duke, Florida State University, Harvard, Indiana University Bloomington, NIH, Monash University (Australia), NYU, Sigtuna (Sweden), Tel Aviv University (Israel), University College London (UK), University of Edinburgh (UK), UCLA and Yale. The project launched at an international conference on the Neuroscience of Free Will that the Brain Institute and Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences at Chapman University hosted in mid-March. "We were pleased to establish Chapman's Brain Institute and to bring the faculty associated with it to Chapman University last year," said Daniele Struppa, Ph.D., Chapman University president. "Their approach to research reflects Chapman's goal of combining research with teaching and involving undergraduate and graduate students at all levels in the process. We are grateful for this grant from the Templeton Foundation and the Fetzer Institute, which recognizes Chapman as a leader in this developing field." "This grant aims to create a new field in the study of the brain--the neurophilosphy of free will," said Uri Maoz, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology and computational neuroscience at Chapman University. "The extent and scope of human free will has been debated by philosophers for millennia. In recent decades, neuroscientists have joined the discussion, leading to some interesting discoveries. The current project, however, represents a four-year effort forging structured, close collaborations on these questions between eight neuroscientists (including Dr. Aaron Schurger, assistant professor of psychology, the latest faculty recruit to the Brain Institute at Chapman) and nine philosophers from around the world. Hopefully, in 10 years we will look back at the grant and say that's where it all started," said Dr. Maoz. "This large-scale investment, by the John Templeton Foundation and the Fetzer Institute, comes to the Brain Institute even before its official launch next month," said Amir Raz, Ph.D., Chapman University professor of psychology and brain sciences and director of the Brain Institute. "Work at the Brain Institute addresses fundamental questions of human experience: do we have free will? Are we, in fact, free to do what we wish? What is the role of consciousness in our decisions? We are grateful for the opportunities the combined grant offers as well as the testament it provides to confidence in our work." "The Templeton Foundation and Fetzer Institute grant acknowledge that consequential, complex questions find answers only when approached through the lenses of multiple disciplines and their research techniques," said Janeen Hill, Ph.D., dean of Crean College. "Chapman University and Crean College's commitment to brain science and its inherent interdisciplinarity is reinforced by the significance of this combined grant." Entitled "Consciousness and Free Will: A Joint Neuroscientific-Philosophical Investigation," the grant aims to advance efforts in the neurophilosphy of free will. For example, researchers at the Brain Institute and their collaborators will use advanced analysis techniques of brain activity and strive to decode decisions and actions before they take place. Or they will use various techniques to compare human brain activity when people make arbitrary decisions (e.g., when asked to randomly raise their left or right hand) and deliberate ones (e.g., when asked to raise their left or right hand to donate to one charity or another). "This grant, placing Chapman as a leader in neuroscience, reflects our deepening commitment to research and to academic excellence," said Glenn Pfeiffer, Ph.D., provost of Chapman University. "This announcement comes soon after the recent elevation of Chapman University to Carnegie Classification R2, signifying 'high research activity.' We have never been stronger as a research institution than we are right now." "In fact," said Thomas Piechota, Ph.D., PE, vice president of research, "this is an opportune time to partner with Chapman University. The research being conducted by the Brain Institute and throughout Chapman is exciting and innovative. Our faculty are exemplary researchers and the involvement of students of every level - including first-year undergraduates - is a fundamental part of the personalized education that we offer." Hosted at the Rinker Health Science campus in Irvine, as well as on the Orange campus, the Brain Institute comprises a network of interdisciplinary researchers who conduct empirical investigations into the cognitive neuroscience of altered planes of consciousness, neuropsychology, volition, formal models of higher brain functions among other fields. Our work draws on clinical populations, healthy volunteers, and innovations in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data. "Questions about consciousness and free will are of enduring interest in both philosophy and the sciences. This project will feature field-leading researchers on these two topics, using rigorous and collaborative methods to advance our understanding of both of them. It is therefore a perfect fit for the John Templeton Foundation, and we are pleased to support Chapman in this initiative," said John Churchill, director of philosophy and theology programs at the John Templeton Foundation. "We are drawn to this work because of its cutting-edge exploration of free will, the breadth of the research effort Chapman University has developed, and the scale of this major funding collaboration with Templeton," said Mohammed Mohammed, Fetzer Institute program director of research, discovery, and development. "We are excited about this venture into the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience." ### About the John Templeton Foundation Founded in 1987, the John Templeton Foundation supports efforts to advance human well-being through rigorous scientific research and related scholarship. Its founding benefactor, the late Sir John Templeton, held the conviction that rigorous scientific research could reveal ever-deeper truths about the universe and humanity's place within it. With over $3.4 billion in assets and annual grants of $129 million in 2017, it ranks among the 25th largest grantmaking foundations in the United States. Headquartered outside Philadelphia, PA, the Foundation's philanthropic activities have engaged all major faith traditions and extend to 35 countries around the world. The Foundation is dedicated to the ideals of humility, open-mindedness, and curiosity. About the Fetzer Institute The Fetzer Institute is a nonprofit, private operating foundation based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Established by broadcast pioneer John E. Fetzer (1901-1991), the Institute uses its philanthropic resources to advance programs that help build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Its current priorities include understanding spiritual formation at the individual and community levels, healing the heart of democracy, and exploring the intersection of science and spirituality. Learn more at fetzer.org. About Chapman University Chapman University is California's third largest private university and ranks fifth in the U.S. News & World Report listing of Best Regional Universities in the West. Chapman is categorized by the Carnegie Classification as an R2 "high research activity" institution and offers personalized education to more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Chapman strives for diversity and inclusion by recruiting and supporting students representing a variety of backgrounds, experiences, learning styles and unique talents. The campus has produced a Rhodes Scholar, been named a top producer of Fulbright Scholars and hosts a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest and most prestigious honor society. Founded in 1861 and based in the City of Orange, California, Chapman also includes the Harry and Diane Rinker Health Science Campus, 21 miles south, in the Irvine Spectrum, Orange County's technology hub. In 2020, the university will open its 11th college, the Fowler School of Engineering in its newest facility, Keck Center for Science and Engineering. This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. http://vv.chinamil.com.cn/asset/category3/2019/03/21/asset_355411.mp4 Beijing on Wednesday refuted the U.S. accusations against China and Russia of raising the risk of conflict in space as "groundless" while blaming Washington for aggravating the threat of "weaponizing the outer space." China and Russia meanwhile also pushed for a jointly drafted treaty on prevention of space arms race, negotiations of which are currently ongoing in Geneva. "The Chinese side did not, and will not take part in an arms race in outer space of any form. Our stance remains unchanged," Chinese Foreign Minister Spokesperson Geng Shuang told reporters, reiterating Beijing's long-standing position of preventing the weaponization of outer space. "Here I want to remind all of you of a fact that the U.S. publicly defines outer space as a new battlefield. It has built an Outer Space Command and is building an outer space troop, and it plans to deploy laser weapons in outer space. Who is worsening the threat of weaponization and turning it into a battlefield? Who is threatening the security of outer space? I believe the answers are self-evident," Geng remarked. "The U.S. accusations against China are totally groundless. China will not accept them. If the US side truly cares about the security of outer space, it should work with China and Russia and actively participate in the arms control process of outer space instead of doing the opposite," he added. The Chinese spokesperson was responding to accusations by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Yleem Poblete who on Tuesday charged both Moscow and Beijing of pushing for an arms race in space by developing anti-satellite weapons. Addressing the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Poblete questioned whether China and Russia were sincerely committed to the ongoing talks aimed at negotiating a draft, proposed jointly by Beijing and Moscow, for a legally-binding treaty on prevention of space arms race. The negotiations, also being held in Geneva, involve experts from 25 nations including the U.S., China and Russia and are scheduled to run through March 28. "How can we believe (Russia is) serious about preventing an arms race in outer space when they are the ones that are developing ground-launched anti-satellite weapons?" Poblete asked, while also accusing Moscow of trying to develop lasers that could "blind or damage satellites." Poblete accused China of developing a range of anti-satellite capabilities, including jammers and ground-based missiles intended to target "low-Earth-orbit satellites." Given that, "it is difficult to determine the truthfulness of China's concern about the prevention of an arms race in space," she said, as the U.S. took over the rotating presidency at the Conference on Disarmament. 'Outer space belongs to mankind' Dismissing Poblete's remarks, Geng said: "While going ahead with its military buildup in outer space, the U.S. is cooking up the so-called threat from China and Russia in outer space, trying to seek pretexts to pursue unilateral military advantage and develop advanced weapons." Asserting that the "outer space belongs to all mankind," Geng underscored that it is the shared responsibility of the international community to uphold outer space security. "China has remained committed to the peaceful use of outer space and advocated the prevention of placement of weapons and an arms race in outer space. We have been promoting the draft treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force against Outer Space Objects (PPWT) along with Russia at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva over the years," he added. Meanwhile addressing the conference after Poblete's speech on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Washington of refusing to even begin negotiations on the draft treaty on prevention of space arms race. China and Russia had first released the joint proposal in 2008 and amended it in 2014, but it was rejected on both occasions by the U.S. "For the second decade, we hear only excuses," Lavrov said. "They say, the development of a treaty is 'a long-term issue,' it is premature to begin negotiations before there is a real threat of launching weapons into space, and it is generally impractical to establish a legally binding ban." "Meanwhile, the U.S. has already allocated funds to establish a space segment of the air defense system and deployment of the space strike weapons," he added echoing the concerns expressed by the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson. "Apparently, this segment will have the ability to hit, among other things, objects in space. Thus, a real combat structure will be built, ready at any time to cleanse outer space from the orbital property of countries that Washington does not like," he added. Imagine you are an Information Security Manager for a shipping company and while docked in port, a service technician boards your ship to perform a software update of the Voyage Data Recorder system and unknowingly introduces a virus. As a result the ships ECDIS system becomes infected resulting in a denial of service once youve set sail. The ship is now sailing without ECDIS and the last course direction was towards North Korean waters. What do you do next? That exact scenario was played out with 60 delegates from the Greek shipping community and five UK companies at the Athens residence of British Ambassador. The wargame scenario was created and overseen by Professor Siraj Shaikh of Coventry University, author of Future of the Sea: Cyber Security for the UK Government Office of Science. Five UK organisations with specialist cyber security interest hosted the Greek event and promoted discussions on the tables. CyberOwl, ESID Consulting, Inmarsat, Lloyds Register and the University of Plymouth all took part. Daniel Ng, CyberOwl told delegates: The cyber war game format facilitated some fantastic, and sometimes passionate, discussions. It is clear the Greek shipping community is concerned about cyber risks and are struggling to understand where and how best to start managing them. Events like this are so important to engage in such important dialogue and showcase the best British capabilities that can be brought to the table. Gary Peace of ESID Consulting described the event as truly ground breaking. He said it provoked intense discussion and exchanges showing just how complex the response to a cyber-attack can be. Importantly the scenario posed showed what actions and decisions need to be considered and taken when managing an organisational response to a cyber breach and to stop it turning into a crisis. LRs Elisa Cassi said: As cyber threats continue to increase in the marine industry, it is our mission to ensure clients never make the headlines for the wrong reasons. Whilst its impossible to eliminate cyber threats, implementing the right strategy, education and services covering both information and operational assets will dramatically reduce the risk of a breach, and the associated operational and safety risk as well as reputational and financial impacts. No business can make itself impregnable. What it can do, however, is seek to temper any attack on its critical business drivers by creating a scalable security posture, said Cassi. Wayne Perks of Inmarsat said it is great to see the enthusiasm and proactive responses from Greek ship operators and owners towards the increasing cyber security threat. Inmarsat has been responsible for safety at sea for over 40 years, the cyber war-game scenario gave a clear demonstration of why treating a cyber security event as critical as you would a distress situation is so important, said Perks. The Society of Maritime Industries Tom Chant said that with the growth of the digital sector the society has created a Digital Technology Group to support this type of activity for the sector. The new agreement with BP Exploration (Caspian Sea) Limited sees seven offshore support vessels under contract until 2025, three until 2023 and two until 2022. The contracts also have options to extend for two further years. No financial details of the contracts were disclosed. The vessels will continue to support BPs work on the Shah Deniz and ACG fields in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea. Topaz has 21 vessels operating in Azerbaijan This contract extension adds important secured revenue and credit strength to our balance sheet, laying further foundation for a solid 2019 and beyond, said Rene Kofod-Olsen, ceo of Topaz Energy and Marine. The Caspian has been a strategic region for Topaz for more than two decades and this agreement in Azerbaijan demonstrates our commitment to building on our existing position supported by our highly-valued partners in the country. This article is part of State of Health, a series examining health disparities, how they affect Michigan's children and seniors, and the innovative solutions being developed to address them. It is made possible with funding from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund. Michigans beautiful rural areas have an ugly secret: high infant mortality and poor maternal health, fueled in part by substance abuse, lack of access to healthy food, and dwindling birthing hospitals and OB-GYNs. The root causes may be different from those in Michigan's urban communities, but the results are the same: Michigan's African-American and American Indian babies are three times likelier than white babies to die in their first year of life. Lynette Biery, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services' Bureau of Family Health Services, notes that clusters of higher infant mortality are found in the Upper Peninsula, the northern Lower Peninsula, and southwest Michigan, near the Indiana border. While hard to document, anecdotal evidence also points to increasing Hispanic infant deaths among rural migrant communities due to fear when family members are undocumented. "For American Indians, Latinos, and a handful of African-Americans in the rural communities, social injustice inequities certainly top the list (of mortality causes)," Biery says. "Transportation and access to care is huge. When you live in a county that has no provider, its an hour and a half to the hospital, and you dont have a car, that sets you up for significant challenges and adverse outcomes." Biery is among a contingency of Michigan experts and practitioners devoted to reducing mother and infant deaths. Their newly launched initiative, Mother Infant Health and Equity Improvement Plan (MIHEIP), has as its vision "Zero preventable deaths. Zero disparities." "For infants, the Improvement Plan is largely about preventing preterm birth and low birth weight," she says. "We are being very focused, creating evidence-based initiatives to reduce the number of moms smoking, and were seeing payoff." Changing habits, overcoming addictions Addiction is one of the biggest challenges for Michigan's rural mothers and infants. In Michigans rural areas, more pregnant women smoke cigarettes and abuse opioids than pregnant women in urban areas. "Cigarettes are the most commonly used substance during pregnancy and are at least as powerful a contributor to infant mortality as any of the other substances," says Dr. Steven Ondersma, a professor in Wayne State University's departments of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences and obstetrics and gynecology. "If I could wave a magic wand and remove one thing from pregnancies everywhere, it would be cigarettes." Steven Ondersma. Dr. Tami Michele saw the devastating results of substance abuse during the nine years she served as medical director of the obstetrics department at Spectrum Health Gerber Memorial Hospital in Fremont, 25 miles northeast of Muskegon in Newaygo County. In addition to high rates of smoking among pregnant mothers, she says heroin-, opioid-, and meth-addicted babies were "common." "The attitude was 'My friends smoked or did drugs and their babies are fine,'" Michele says. "One of the hardest realities about drug use is that even if we screened every woman, there were no local resources for interventions." Newaygo County women seeking treatment had to travel to facilities in Muskegon or Grand Rapids. Considering that methadone treatment requires daily visits, the distance and transportation challenges were insurmountable for many. Another roadblock is that very few rural doctors are certified to prescribe alternative medications for opioid-addicted expectant mothers. Mandatory drug screenings or court involvement are often proposed as solutions to the issue, but Ondersma believes those approaches do more harm than good. "Conflating healthcare with a forensic approach causes women to avoid healthcare, to not tell the truth, to see healthcare as the enemy rather than where they can get help and support," he says. "We will do more good if women feel free to talk about what theyre doing so they can get help in healthcare settings." Ondersma is developing a unique app to educate women about the risks of substance abuse and the interventions available to them, designed for use during a woman's first obstetrician appointment. A friendly animated character asks the user basic screening questions and provides a motivational intervention if she screens positive. Steven Ondersma demonstrates his app. The first part of the screening asks about use of legal substances, like cigarettes. These answers will be shared with the patient's healthcare team. In the second section, the patient can choose to remain anonymous as she answers questions about illegal drug use and partner violence. "Women are traumatized when exposed to violence," Ondersma says. "(In addition to physical harm) you have the resulting stress, substance use, sleep issues, poor eating habits, and less prenatal care all the things you want dont want if you are going to have a healthy baby." Healthy eating for two Lack of access to healthy foods is another social determinant impacting rural mothers and babies. Michele saw a lot of obese expectant mothers drinking one to two liters of soda pop every day understandable when the most accessible grocery retailer is the nearby Wesco gas station. Many of Michele's patients developed gestational diabetes. "Theyd run in and get candy bars, chips, and fast food. The result was hypertension, preeclampsia, large babies, pre-term babies," she says. "High sugar makes everything more high-risk. It increases inductions and C-sections." Michele engaged a registered nurse with experience as a childbirth educator to lead successful classes for her patients beginning with their second prenatal visit. In addition to stressing the importance of good nutrition, including getting 80 to 100 grams of protein a day, the classes covered prenatal exercises, what to avoid, and what to expect during pregnancy and birth. "Poor nutrition is the basis of a lot of health issues in rural communities," Michele says. "Nutrition education needs to start at a young age and include the whole family so they provide healthy choices for their children." Increasing access to care Another factor affecting rural mothers and infants is a startling lack of adequate medical care. Because rural hospitals cannot keep up with costs, especially when many of their obstetrical populations have Medicaid, an increasing number of them have closed their labor and delivery departments. "Weve seen a steady decline in the number of birthing hospitals," says Amy Zaagman, executive director of the Michigan Council for Maternal and Child Health (MCMCH). "We have areas where women have to travel two and three hours to get to a hospital that does labor and delivery." Amy Zaagman. What's more, fewer OB-GYN physicians are opening practices in rural communities. While the Michigan State Loan Repayment Program has brought more than 30 new physicians into northern Michigan obstetrics practices, more incentives are needed. "(When) one OB-GYN is on call to manage laboring patients, unplanned cesareans, obstetrical and gynecological emergencies, its a big responsibility," Michele says. Many physicians would rather work in larger groups in a city, which leads to a lack of doctors in rural areas." Michele would like to see more hospitals embrace a midwifery model of birth. Countries like the Netherlands that employ such models have much better outcomes than the United States. She notes that approximately 100 women give birth at home in Newaygo County each year. "Having a good process for hospital systems to accept homebirth transfers, prenatal consultations, access to labs, ultrasounds, and collaborative health care is essential," she says. "Increasing the availability of certified nurse midwives in rural hospitals would benefit families and is a solution to cost-effective maternity care in low-resource areas." No matter what color a babys skin, being born in the United States is riskier than in 55 other countries, including Cuba, Taiwan, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. But being born African-American or American Indian is downright dangerous. Whether embracing a midwifery model or advancing policies that dismantle systemic racism, changes are needed to ensure that every baby born in Michigan and the U.S. enjoys their right to pursue life, as well as liberty and happiness. A freelance writer and editor, Estelle Slootmaker is happiest writing about social justice, wellness, and the arts. She is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media, communications manager for Our Kitchen Table, and chairs The Tree Amigos, City of Wyoming Tree Commission. Her finest accomplishment is her five amazing adult children. You can contact Estelle at Estelle.Slootmaker@gmail.com or www.constellations.biz. Steven Ondersma photos by Nick Hagen. Amy Zaagman photo courtesy of Amy Zaagman. Theres a word that keeps coming up when talking to the leaders of some of Detroits boutique marketing firms. Nimble. Look it up on Dictionary.com and youll see why. "Nimble: Quick and light in movement; moving with ease." "Nimble: Quick to understand, think, devise." In Detroits ever-changing economy, smaller marketing firms are experiencing the benefits of remaining small. It allows them to respond and adapt to the market as it evolves. As more and more businesses open throughout Detroit, albeit the vast majority of them in the citys greater downtown, it follows that more and more boutique marketing firms are popping up to help tell their stories. Lovio George is a full-service in-house advertising studio and PR firm. They know a thing or two about running a boutique agency in Detroit; partner Christina Lovio-George first opened the firm here in 1982. She likes to say that she opened her doors while the rest of the moving trucks were going in the other direction. The company has thrived in Detroit ever since. Theyve weathered the ups and downs of the Detroit economy. Theyve scored numerous national accounts, yet they maintain a local presence, too. They have benefited from the past few years of increased development, even with the new marketing firms that have opened as a result. They dont mind the competition at all. "It shows that Detroit is a place where people want to do business," says John George, Vice President and Creative Director at Lovio George. "Theres enough happening here for more of us. Im encouraged by it." One of those new firms is SAGA Marketing. Founded in 2015 by business partners Eric Thomas and Marcus Burrell, SAGA is a prime example of remaining nimble. The company adds and subtracts contractors, depending on its workload. At one point, they had 40 contractors; at another it was just the two principals. Eric Thomas and Marcus Burrell's firm SAGA Marketing has experienced a lot of growth since its founding in 2015. Thomas expects their list of clients to grow this summer. And since theyve passed the three-year point of being a business, SAGA is going to begin telling its own story in order to get more business. "Were about to shift into sales mode. We get a lot of work by word of mouth, but now were going to be more active in our growth strategies and plans," Thomas says. "As a creative, you get swept up in the idea of only doing creative work, but thats not always the case. Business is business, and firms come and go because creatives focus only on the creative end." Much of SAGAs business so far has been focused on Detroit and its residents. Thomas, a native Detroiter himself, is a strong believer in Detroiters telling their own stories, and in representation. Often critical of the way Detroit is marketed, Thomas made waves when the "Metro Times" published his "Why I Hate Detroit" essay. It pokes and prods the narrative of Detroits current "renaissance," one thats largely contained to the increasingly white and moneyed residents of greater downtown while all too often failing to reach the majority black population throughout the rest of the city. The key, he says, is to let Detroiters tell their own stories, and not from a top-down perspective. "Just because Detroit is hot, people want to capitalize on it. They want to sell its grit but not understand where the grit comes from. Grit is not a veneer," Thomas says. "Just because someones an art director here doesnt mean theyre going to have the perspective of long-time residents. And that might not be in your job description. But maybe its your job to talk to them and elevate their perspective." Even as SAGA seeks to grow its client base, Thomas plans to remain true to his convictions. He believes that theres a way to be a marketing firm thats honest and not one that sells people things that they dont need. SAGA chooses its clients carefully and aims to continue to maintain that balance. And if that means a handful less clients, so be it. "We belong to us. If we start manipulating just for a sale, were hurting our own people. There is a moral obligation to tell the truth," Thomas says. "Does it cut out a portion of our clients? Sure. Do I want to work with people that are assholes? Absolutely not." The owner of another relatively new agency also believes that Detroits marketing firms should be more representative of Detroit. Billy Strawter, Jr. started the full-service digital marketing firm MILO Detroit in 2016. It has since grown to 18 employees. Strawter is currently weighing expansion options and looking at cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, and New York as locations for additional offices. Still, he says, MILO will remain rooted in Detroit. Business is good here. And its home. "For Detroit, its an exciting time. There are so many opportunities and enough business for everyone," says Strawter. "But the challenge for Detroit is that theres still a gap, a lack of people of color working or running agencies. Its important to have diversity, representation." Strawter himself visits Detroit schools, speaking to the students and letting them know about the opportunities in marketing. Theres a lot of creativity in the city. Its time to unlock it. "We need more Detroiters in marketing," he says. "So you have to get out there and introduce people to the industry, go out to schools and talk about the opportunities." "Awareness is key." The MILO firm works with both national and local brands, the former of which is the impetus for expanding to another city. Leading up to its formation, Strawter tried his hand at starting a number of similar firms, yet none of them stuck. He took the lessons learned from failing and applied them to MILO. He found success in not specializing in one facet of marketing, like social media, but adding services like web development, ad campaigns, and television broadcast spots. Consultancy, he says, could be the next big step. Stay nimble. Adapt. "Its when people end up being laid off from big agencies and transition into freelance work, which transitions into it going well, and then its, 'Now I need more people,'" Strawter says. "All of a sudden you have 18 hires." Photo of Eric Thomas and Marcus Burrell by Nailah Ali. Courtesy of SAGA Marketing. This feature is courtesy of Driven , the story of how the Detroit region is leading the world in next-generation mobility. Michigan visionaries in the fields of AI, mobility and autonomous vehicles showcased Detroit as an automobility hub with their best demos, hacks and networking at the Consumers Electronics Show (CES), a global convention in Las Vegas of consumer technologies. Many Detroit-based companies, some which have a presence in the PlanetM Landing Zone, headed there to showcase the technologies theyre building in Michigan. Startups including Ann Arbors Intvo to Bloomfield Hills-based Karamba Security joined more than 4,500 exhibitors at CES, adjacent to the exhibition areas of industry giants such as Bosch, Google and LG Electronics. The technology companies launched new products, announced new partnerships and engaged more than 180,000 attendees on topics ranging from robotics to augmented reality to smart cities. The conference was an opportunity to meet with potential investors, other founders and Detroit-area startups that will help Intvo evolve, said Assam Alzookery, CEO and founder of the early-stage company that uses AI to help autonomous vehicles better understand people and pedestrian behavior. CES offers a world stage for validating your business proposition. We received live, instant feedback on our startup and business model, said Alzookery, who said Intvo officials met with OEMs like Ford, FCA and Mercedes as well as automotive suppliers including Magna and Bosch. Now, Alzookery said Intvo is now working with one of the investors it met at CES to close on its first seed round funding. For Bosch, it was a chance to show its evolution into a global IoT company, said Alissa Cleland, head of communications and CSR for Bosch North America. CES served as the global debut of its future concept vehicle, the Bosch IoT Shuttle, which showcases the systems and components it has developed for automation, connectivity and electrification of shuttle systems. The company also launched #LikeABosch to highlight Boschs people-focused approach to IoT. CES was an ideal spot to highlight its deep roots in the mobility startup community, both regionally and globally, Cleland said. In 2018, Boscha PlanetM Landing Zone memberacquired Detroit-based startup SPLT and made a strategic investment in Mojio, allowing both with access to the Landing Zone services including wrap around services provided by the Detroit Regional Chamber and Michigan Economic Development Corporation At CES, we announced a new partnership with Mojio to co-develop solutions in connected services for both manufactures and consumers, beginning with vehicle communication and diagnostics as well as crash detection and notification, Cleland said. Mobility services are a central element for the future mobility landscape at Bosch. We believe that cooperation and collaboration within the industry will help build the ecosystem for market development. Karamba Security CEO and Co-founder Ami Dotan said he and company representatives worked for four months before CES to set up 350 meetings during the all-important conference. A staff of 12 Karamba officials met with people around the clock while also doing a live hacking demonstration that highlighted how its cybersecurity programs block attacks on autonomous and connected vehicles. Part of what I noticed at CES is how 2019 is a different era. You dont have to convince the OEMs, suppliers and other companies that cybersecurity should come hand in hand with the safety of cars, passengers and pedestrians, Dotan said. CES was a great experience because people were more aware that there are solutions at hand. Intvo, Karamba Security, SPLT, and Bosch are all members of the PlanetM Landing Zone, a coworking space for global mobility startups and automotive companies in downtown Detroit. Through the Landing Zone, members can connect, share and collaborate to drive innovation in next-generation mobility. For more information on the PlanetM Landing Zone, visit www.planetmlandingzone.com. Visit Driven and learn how the Detroit region is leading the world in next-generation mobility. Its a common refrain these days: You dont need a university degree to make a good living.Theres a workforce shortage in the trades. The workforce is getting older without a sufficient supply of young people lined up to take their place. Many high schools are preparing students for standardized tests and college applications, and not so much for careers in dependable, sustaining fields of work.Community colleges across the state, however, are working to change that.Robert Feldmaier is the interim dean for Engineering & Advanced Technology at Macomb Community College. Two mega-trends he can identify in mobility today are fuel economy and emissions regulations driving the electrification of vehicles, and the development and eventual proliferation of connected and autonomous vehicles.A lot of the information we develop for engineering techs rolls into mechanic techs, as well, he says.Institutions like Macomb Community College (MCC) are developing a bevy of programs to train the next generation in the trades. And while cultural trends may tell students that theyre supposed to attend universities rather than become mechanics, Feldmaier has a message for todays students: Tomorrows mechanics arent yesterdays mechanics.As technology drives mobility forward, the next generation of auto workers will need a whole new chest of tools to develop and maintain tomorrows vehicles. Lets call them mobility technicians.The field includes opportunities in maintenance, development, and manufacturing tech.The skill sets technicians need to learn today, they have to understand mechanics but now also electrical systems and IT, Feldmaier says.MCC offers a host of opportunities for students to prepare themselves to develop and maintain the future of mobility.The Electric Vehicle Development Technology certificate program , for instance, is designed to prepare students to become Electric Vehicle Technicians. Such a title can work in a variety of fields, including development, electrical testing, sales support, service, mechanical testing, and manufacturing.Students that complete the Vehicle Development Technician program earn an Associate of Applied Science. Its a degree that demonstrates just how multi-faceted todays workforce must be. Over the course of the degree, students work on electrical, flammable, and high-pressure systems while also writing software programs to acquire data and control test systems.The school also offers associate degree programs with direct ties to major automotive companies, like the General Motors Automotive Service Educational Program and the FCA Automotive Manufacturing Program.Each is designed to funnel students into the local workforce, and typically for the major auto companies and their suppliers, Feldmaier says. MCC and its Center for Advanced Automotive Technology is funded by the National Science Foundation and its Advanced Technological Education program to help develop the curriculums.There is a lot of interest, Feldmaier says. But the main challenge is getting students to get on board and convincing their parents that you dont need a four-year degree to have a well-paying career.One way in which MCC is achieving that is through its annual Auto STEAM Days event, which promotes education in automotive, science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics, and manufacturing. The two-day exhibition exposes students to careers in automotive design, robotics, and advanced manufacturing and the exciting technologies driving each. Over 20 companies and prospective employers are on hand as students walk from table to table, learning about each.Of course, programs such as these arent just important to those graduating from high school. As technologies change, so too must the existing workforce.The industry needs these people and local workers, says Feldmaier.A lot of our workforce development comes in continuing education. Its very important, as well.Visit Driven and learn how the Detroit region is leading the world in next-generation mobility.Photos courtesy of Macomb Community College A Utica Community Schools teacher has received a first-ever Inspiring Teacher award through the regional Scholastic Arts Tournament.Dr Lisa Grunewald, a photography teacher at Henry Ford II High School, was honored during the Michigan Thumb Region Scholastic Art Awards on January 28 at Macomb Community College.Dr Grunewald inspires her students to reach their full potential and creates an environment for students to express themselves, UCS superintendent Dr Christine Johns says.Her work reflects what we know is true at Utica Community Schools. Our teachers and staff members are committed to helping students succeed both academically and in life.Dr Grunewald has been a UCS teacher for 15 years, and previously taught art at the junior high school level. The award was based on nominations from her former junior high students. Some of the comments from the students who put her name forward include:- I think she truly believes that any student has potential. She has inspired me to do my best in every piece of art I do, and that every piece of art is good and unique in its own way.- She isnt just all about artshe also listens to me when I talk. When I went on to high school we didnt have a chance to talk as much anymore, but I emailed her pictures and asked her opinion. She always responded right away.- "Without her I dont think I would be doing art in high school. I just want to thank her for everything she has taught me as an artist and as a person. She truly is a remarkable teacher and deserves this inspiring educator award.The 2019 award ceremony also showcased 549 individual pieces of winning student artwork and 23 portfolios from the 2019 Scholastic Art and Writing Competition for the Michigan Thumb Region. Categories included editorial cartoon, poetry, graphic design, fashion, science fiction and video game design and winners included students from Henry Ford II, Bemis Junior High School, Davis Junior High School, Sterling Heights High School and the Utica Center for Science and Industry. Ken Faris A magazine advertisement showing the price of Twinsy Toys back in the day. An elf made from a sock was an original Twinsy Toy. Long before college dropouts like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg made it big and became household names, there were the Squier sisters from Battle Creek, who founded a successful business in 1918 at their home at 18 Fremont Street after attending the University of California Berkeley for one year.The business established by twin sisters Bernice and Blanche Squier was known as Twinzy Toys and for more than five years, Ken Faris, who lives in the Historic Northside Neighborhoods which includes Fremont, has been spending the little free time he has trying to re-establish the business. Faris day job is a Management Consultant with Accenture Interactive. He added the title of Chief Executive Officer and re-founder of Twinzy Toys after seeing a plaque of a Twinzy doll at Quaker Park, the location for a tag factory owned by the father of the Squier sisters where the dolls were first made.The original dolls were made out of cotton that was cut into patterns and stuffed. They were then decorated to represent different character toys made by the sisters and their employees.As one might expect, as a part-time startup venture this one goes in fits and starts when I have time, Faris says. I have attempted to drive sales through Facebook marketing and have branded our own website as twinzytoys.com. You can consult multibillion-dollar organizations on how to do this stuff, but doing it on your own is a different story.It takes a lot of time and effort to do it really well and consistently. I still believe in the product and the story behind it.The story, which has been documented by the Historical Society of Battle Creek, goes something like this: Shortly after the twins graduated from high school, a southern friend sent them a stocking doll. The doll was novel, different and attractive. When they discovered there were none like it to be had in Battle Creek, they decided to make some. Their father allowed them to use a small room on the second floor of his tag factory, located at 151 Fremont Street.They took the first dolls the Buddy doll to the former Robinsons department store in downtown Battle Creek, where they sold well. Then they took dolls to a large department store in Grand Rapids, where they also sold well. Rather than adding stores one or two at a time, the Twins printed up 1,000 circulars at the tag factory and sent them to stores that sold playthings. They didnt get 1,000 orders in return, but they did get enough that they had to hire some workers to help them fill the orders.Mary Butler, Archivist Emerita for the Historical Society, said, the legend is that the twins decided they wanted to attend college at the University of California-Berkeley. I am sure this is what actually happened.They bet their father that they could earn the money to pay for college by making and selling the dolls. Thanks to the popularity of the Buddy doll and their winning business strategy, they succeeded. While at Berkeley, they continued to receive requests for their dolls.Butler says the sisters recognized that they could make money with their dolls, so they left Berkeley and returned to Battle Creek to establish the toy company, which formally began in 1918.In 1920 they exhibited at the Chicago Toy Fair and received their first U.S. patent. Seven years later, they exhibited at the New York Toy Fair. Archival information states that the twins were surprised to find that nearly every other toy factory was represented by men, which worked to their advantage because the received a lot more attention.They opened an office in New York City and by 1935 Twinzy Toys were being sold in 46 states. Prior to World War II, more than 40 varieties of Twinzy Toys were being sold with names like Jerry Giraffe, Emma Elephant and General Maude, an Army mule sold exclusively at West Point.An article which appeared in thein the mid- to late-1940s said that While some toy manufacturers work only for the Christmas market, Twinzy Toys have a year-round demand and their output in January is almost as great as it is in December.This demand was also the reason given for not seeking opportunities to work in foreign markets.The sisters never married and together raised a nephew in their Fremont Street house. Blanche passed away in 1950 in Battle Creek after battling cancer. Bernice continued running the business for another decade before closing it down in 1961. She passed away seven years later.The Squier sisters were way ahead of their time, Butler says.There were very few female entrepreneurs in this era and they simply said were going to do it and they did, Butler says. This is a story a lot of people dont know.They came back after one year at Berkeley. They ran a successful business for 40 years that had accounts with major department stores like Hudsons and Macys and they did custom dolls for the military, Faris says. After Bernice passed, it just sort of faded away.Their legacy came to Butlers attention in 1991. She was doing a door-to-door survey for the Historic District Commission that brought her to the door of the original home of the Squier sisters and their family.I got to know the family (who lived in the Squiers' home) and knew they had discovered Twinzy Toys patterns and papers that had been stuffed into the homes rafters for use as insulation. Some of it was beat up and some was usable, Butler says.When that family moved, those the patterns, papers, and other remnants of the Twinzy Toy Company landed on the Historical Societys doorstep. We cleaned up and saved what we could, Butler says.Several boxes containing what is left of the Squier sisters company are stored on shelves in the Historical Societys office in the basement of the Fieldstone Center on Washington Avenue.The collection grew with the acquisition of more Twinzy dolls and a relationship that developed between the Historical Society and a descendent of the Squier family, Geri Sullivan, who lives in Massachusetts. Butler says Sullivan traveled to Battle Creek several years ago to give a presentation about her aunts and their company.Faris approached the Historical Society to discuss the possibility of taking ownership of the Twinzy Toy brand. An agreement was reached which gave Faris the opportunity to re-start the business with a contractual obligation to provide revenue to the Society.I told them that you have all of this stuff and I think its worth something, he says. I wanted to take ownership if I could. It was a way for me to create something out of thin air to say, 'this is real.' I told them that I wanted to leverage the intellectual property they have and find ways to market it. Its a venture that would have social impact and support.He is currently working his way through a maze of paperwork and regulations to get a trademark and a place on Amazon. In the meantime, he has been working with local organizations who have been providing the raw materials and production expertise.Christman Screenprint in Battle Creek is providing printing support and volunteers with the Charitable Union, believed to be the citys oldest nonprofit, have cut the material and sewn it together to make the dolls that have been used for test-marketing with children in the community.Teresa Allen, Executive Director of the Charitable Union, says the collaboration made sense because Twinzy Toys began in the same neighborhood that her organization is located in. She says she was really drawn to the story of the Squier sisters and what they had accomplished.We all know about the stories of Post and Kellogg and how they came about and the impact theyve had on the community, Allen says. Then, youve got these young women running a business at a time when women werent running businesses. Its kind of an amazing story about how they raised money to do that and how independent and empowered these women were at a time when in certain areas of the country women couldnt own property.The material used to make the dolls today is an organic cotton hemp blend that was selected because it has been exposed to fewer pesticides and is a lot more durable, Faris says. Children can use washable markers to design their dolls which are machine-washable.The toys are really part of a larger business model, Faris says. What people really like about the toys now is the backstory. Weve done test pilots with kids in pre-school and elementary schools and they love them. We offer printouts, so they can color the dolls in whatever way they want and write a little story or description on the back.Faris larger vision is to create not just dolls, but a network of co-creators who will come up with their own characters and stories to go with them. He says this will empower everyone to develop their own entrepreneurial skills.The Squier sisters did this so they could make money to go to school. I want to take that same drive and mission and let others participate and create a brand with me and (together we) benefit, Faris says. Thats whats compelling about this. Its the bigger business model and that vision that keeps me going. Press Release March 21, 2019 Angara to employers: Shun hiring practices that discriminate women Reelectionist Senator Sonny Angara is urging employers not to engage in discriminatory recruitment practices that favor men over women just to avoid paying additional benefits, particularly maternity leave claims. "Employers should never hire new employees based on their gender, much more if the intention is to evade payment of maternity benefits. Such practice is not only unfair; it is also illegal," said Angara, co-author and sponsor of Republic Act 11210 which extends the paid maternity leave to 105 days from 60. The lawmaker from Aurora issued the statement following a survey by the Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) indicating that the costs entailed in implementing the Expanded Maternity Leave Law would affect the decision to hire women by some companies. The poll showed that 66 percent of 70 companies surveyed by ECOP said the new law would affect their hiring decisions. However, it was not immediately clear if this meant that employers would not hire more women or they would set a limit on the number of female workers. Angara, who was also one of the authors of RA 7910 or the Magna Carta of Women which prohibits discrimination against women in all forms, said employers should provide equal opportunities to all qualified applicants regardless of their gender. He also said that it was not the intention of RA 11210 to encourage companies to prefer men over women in the hiring of new employees. "In fact, the law prohibits employers from basing their hiring decisions on gender alone," Angara said, as he warned that those who engage in discriminatory hiring practices are exposing themselves to criminal liability. "The law clearly and specifically states that no employer shall discriminate against the employment of women to avoid the expanded maternity leave benefits," Angara pointed out. Section 18 of RA 11210 provides that whoever fails or refuses to comply with its provisions shall be punished by a fine between P20,000 and P200,000, and a jail term of not less than 6 years and one day or not more than 12 years, or both. If the violation is committed by an association, partnership, corporation, or any other institution, its managing head, directors or partners shall be liable to the penalties for the offense. It was the second-largest quake to hit the Korean Peninsula on record and happened just over a year after a 5.8 magnitude quake rocked Gyeongju. The Korea Meteorological Administration said the quake was centered in an area around 9 km north of Pohang at a depth of only 8 km underground. It happened just 43 km away from the tremor that shook Gyeongju and was followed by 30 aftershocks measuring between 2.0 to 4.3 in magnitude occurred until 10 p.m. Wednesday night. Although the earthquake had only a quarter of the strength of the Gyeongju tremor, it was shallower and resulted in about the same amount of damage. Locals reported shakes strong enough to move heavy furniture, and tremors were felt as far afield as Seoul. Handong Global University, which is close to the epicenter, suffered damage to the wall of a building, while staff at Samsung and LG plants in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province were temporarily evacuated. President Moon Jae-in convened a meeting of senior officials and was briefed on the situation as soon as he returned from a Southeast Asia trip. Volunteers embark on four-day trip around Northern Luzon to help Sen. Bam's re-election bid Campaign volunteers of Sen. Bam Aquino have launched a four-day trip around Northern Luzon from March 20 to 23 to consolidate support and garner additional volunteers to boost his re-election bid. Dubbed as "Bamwagon", the trip covers Pangasinan, Benguet, Mt. Province, Kalinga Apayao, Nueva Vizcaya, Nueva Ecija and Bulacan, where the volunteers hope to gain more support for Sen. Bam. "Gagawin namin ito bilang tulong kay Sen. Bam na makabalik sa Senado. Kailangan ng taumbayan ang katulad ni Sen. Bam," said Bianca Lacaba of Kaya Natin, one of the convenors of the trip. "We will be using our own money and resources in this endeavor. This is our way to help Sen. Bam return to the Senate and continue his work for the welfare of the Filipino people," said Atty. Julz Esquivas. Esquivas stressed that Sen. Bam deserves a second term, given his track record and legislative accomplishments of more than 40 laws in less than six years as lawmaker. Press Release March 21, 2019 Spate of lawyer killings proves rule of law in PH 'decaying' - De Lima Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has denounced the unabated spate of killings of lawyers in the country, the recent of whom include the senseless killing of lawyer Rex Jasper Lopoz whose death is linked to the Duterte administration's all-out war on drugs. De Lima, a lawyer by profession, said the recent spate of killings involving legal professionals sends a chilling message that the rule of law in the Philippines is "decaying at a rapid rate." She also welcomed the initiative of an international law delegation composed of lawyers from Belgium, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands and the United States in conducting a probe into these murders involving lawyers. "Lady justice has been raped, and she is dying. Her children are caught in the middle of the bloodbath," she said in her recent Dispatch from Crame No. 488. "Imagine, the very people who swore a sacred oath to uphold and protect the rule of law, are being silenced - perhaps until no one and nothing would be left to stand in the way of Duterte. Walang pinipili ang walang habas na pagpaslang, walang takot na paghasik ng karahasan," she added. Lopoz was reportedly shot dead by unidentified gunmen as he was about to board his vehicle parked outside a mall in Tagum City, Davao del Norte last March 13. His family believed his representation of accused in drug cases prompted his murder. According to the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and the Human Rights Watch, Lopoz was the 38th lawyer to have been murdered since Mr. Duterte assumed presidency in 2016. He was representing defendants in drug-related cases. After conducting interviews and research into 37 cases of lawyer killed under Duterte's presidency, the international probers concluded that most of their cases remain unresolved since the authorities failed to conduct proper investigation into their deaths. "At this time, we saw in several cases that prosecutors have a passive role, don't push the police officers to do a proper investigation. Impunity is obviously quite clear in several cases," said Joan Callewaert of Belgian group Progress Lawyers Network (PLN). De Lima, a former justice secretary, urged her colleagues from the legal community to stand united in pressing the Supreme Court to investigate the continued spate of killings of lawyers in the country. "Let us storm the gates of the Supreme Court and beg the gods of Padre Faura, to stand for their slain brothers and sisters," she said. "The scales of justice should never bend to cater to the whims and caprices of a demagogue. Huwag natin pabayaan at ipagsawalang-bahala ang mga pagpatay ng mga tagapagtanggol ng batas," she added. Last year, De Lima filed Senate Bill 1721 seeking to protect the members of the legal profession and the justice sector officials by increasing the penalty against crimes committed against them. Press Release March 21, 2019 Duterte's favored candidates cannot match Roxas' integrity - De Lima Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has maintained that Mr. Duterte's favored candidates could not outshine the performance and track record of former Sen. Manuel Roxas and seven other members of the united opposition's Senate slate "Otso Diretso." De Lima, a human rights and social justice champion, said she holds the view that Duterte is trying to pull down the senatorial candidates of "Otso Diretso" because he knows that his chosen candidates lack competence and credibility. "Duterte's rants against Secretary Mar only show that the President is still insecure of his former rival. He already won in the 2016 elections yet still chose to unleash his vicious tongue against the erstwhile presidentiable-turned-senatorial candidate this coming May polls," she said in her recent Dispatch from Crame No. 487. "Why the need to lash out? It's because the President and his chosen candidates could not match Mar's integrity," she added, noting that Mr. Duterte is endorsing two plunderers, a liar, an enforcer of the murderous War on Drugs, and a loser in the 2016 elections, among others. In a recent campaign rally in Cauayan City, Isabela, Duterte falsely accused Roxas of being disloyal for serving in the Cabinets of different presidents, and even threatened to hurt him. "You are nothing to me. I can even shoot you for free," Duterte was quoted as saying. Roxas, who served under the past administrations of former president and now House Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her successor former president Benigno Aquino III, explained that his "loyalty is to the people and to the Filipino nation." Since the campaign period kicked off last Feb. 9, Mr. Duterte has unfailingly lashed out at the opposition senatorial bets while trying to boost the public image of his administration's 13-man Senate slate. Aside from Roxas, the members of "Otso Diretso" are: Rep. Gary Alejano, Sen. Bam Aquino, human rights lawyer Chel Diokno, civic leader Sam Gutoc, former solicitor general Florin Hilbay, election lawyer Romy Macalintal, and ex-Rep. Erin Tanada. "Mr. President, it seems that you lack confidence over the same surveys that gave you high trust ratings and catapulted your favorite candidate from obscurity to the magic 12 of the Senate race. This is why you still need to whip out that forked tongue of yours just to pull down the rivals of your allies," De Lima said. Instead of attacking the candidates from the opposition slate, the lady Senator from Bicol advised Duterte to focus on solving the pressing issues in the country which continue to burden the Filipino public, including the current water crisis. De Lima has urged the Commission on Elections to reconsider its refusal to facilitate a debate among senatorial candidates, saying that organized debates among candidates are important to help public gauge the competence and ability of their future leaders. Donald Trump has announced that the U.S. will recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, in a dramatic move likely to bolster Benjamin Netanyahu's hopes to win re-election, but which will also provoke international opposition. Previous U.S. administrations have treated Golan Heights as occupied Syrian territory, in line with UN security council resolutions. Trump declared his break with that policy, in a tweet on Thursday. He said: "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" By defying a 52-year-old unanimously adopted UN resolution on "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war," Trump has also broken the postwar norm of refusing to recognise the forcible annexation of territory which has underpinned western and international opposition to the Russian annexation of Crimea. ...Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, quickly tweeted his gratitude for Trump's gesture. "At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, [Donald] Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights," the Israeli prime minister wrote. "Thank you [Donald] Trump!" Julian Borger at theDonald Trump didn't come up with this idea. It's so specific, and so far outside anything Trump has ever evento know anything about, that we must question the genesis of Trump's decision to "fully recognize" Israel's sovereignty over Golan Heights.That the decision undermines the rationale for opposing Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea, and delights Netanyahu, gives us a pretty good idea of the answer to that question. PGG Wrightsons largest shareholder Alan Lai and his company Agria have been fined $220,000 and ordered to pay another $30,000 in costs by the High Court for breaching good character conditions imposed by the Overseas Investment Office. The breaches arose from Lai and Agrias settlement last year with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission over violations of US securities law. In imposing the fine, Justice Christine Gordon said the nature and extent of the breaches were serious. There is a strong need to deter breaches of the good character requirement, having regard to its importance in the context" of the Overseas Investment Act, Justice Gordon said. The penalty was needed to ensure that large corporations take their obligations under the Act seriously, she said. OIO general manager Vanessa Horne welcomed the decision. The judgment reinforces that overseas investment in New Zealand is a privilege and there are ongoing responsibilities when investing here. Agria has been ordered to pay $100,000 in penalties while Lai has been ordered to pay $120,000 in penalties and another $30,000 towards the OIOs costs. Horne says the size of the penalties reflects the serious nature and extent of the securities violations alleged in the US, which involved fraudulent accounting and share price manipulation. As part of its settlement with the OIO, Agria agreed to divest its interest in Wrightson to below 50 percent, which it did in December last year. Agria, which is a Cayman Island registered company, now owns 46.6 percent of Wrightson. Lai, who used to chair Wrightson and is also known as Lai Guanglin, is a citizen of Singapore who lives in Hong Kong. (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. 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Related News: 10th December 2021 Morning Report Ebos Group Limited (NZX: EBO) EBOS Announces Successful Placement Pacific Edge Limited (NZX: PEB) PEB Announces Agreement with Northern Health in Australia AFT Pharmaceuticals Limited (NZX: AFT) AFT welcomes Australian Federal Court appeal success 9th December 2021 Morning Report Ebos Group Limited (NZX: EBO) Acquisition of LifeHealthcare, Equity Raising Livestock Improvement Corporation Limited (NZX: LIC) Special Dividend 8th December 2021 Morning Report New Zealand King Salmon Investments Limited (NZX: NZK) Market Update Scales Corporation Limited (NZX: SCL) Market update Farmers and investors will need to be patient with Fonterra Cooperative Group's overhaul of its business, which sometime-critic First NZ Capital analyst Arie Dekker says is moving in the right direction. The cooperative's board is working through a review of the business which has seen several assets put on the market to help cut the milk processor's debt levels, and has signalled more divestments are coming. Chair John Monaghan yesterday described the review as pre-empting a fundamental change of the cooperative, with the top priority in achieving top-dollar from New Zealand's value-add products. The focus will be on the sustainability and provenance throughout Fonterra's supply chain, qualities that command a premium in markets such as China where food safety is top-of-mind for consumers. FNZC analyst Dekker told clients in a note today that the turnaround will take some time and patience is required by holders of Fonterra Shareholders' Funds units. "There are many strategic issues for FSF to address across the right sizing of the asset portfolio, debt and equity capital structure, and the ability to remain competitive for milk supply in NZ given its significant embedded stainless steel capacity and desire to invest further in value-add processing," he said. "FSF must be realistic about its capability and 'DNA' through this process having seen significant value destruction as it has invested away from its core business without the capital structure to necessarily withstand bumps along the way." Once Fonterra figures out the shape of a leaner version of itself, Dekker said it will be in a position to deal with longer-term problems around capital structure and how to position itself in the market. "We expect FSF to work out what it looks like before it turns to capital structure considerations in detail and were encouraged by managements acknowledgement that these issues will need to be progressed and worked on in the lead up to, and beyond, the FY19 result," he said. "Being clear on what it means to remain competitive for milk supply in NZ over the longer term should be a key outcome of all this work." Dekker has been forthright in his criticism of Fonterra's inability to convert capital investment into earnings, and at one stage lowered his rating on the Fonterra Shareholders' Fund to 'underperform'. FNZC is restricted in rating the stock at the moment given its investment banking arm is running the sale of Tip-Top. Dekker isn't optimistic that Fonterra will pay a final dividend and is assuming it won't, citing the uncertain earnings outlook for the rest of the financial year and the company's need to shore up its balance sheet. "While this is a not a good situation for farmers, a robust outlook for the milk price in FY19 should help support this decision if the board finds themselves in that position," he said. The Fonterra Shareholders' Fund was launched in 2012, giving outside investors exposure to the milk processor's earnings stream, while preserving the farmer-shareholders' control of the cooperative. The fund was launched in tandem with Fonterra's Trading Among Farmers scheme, as a means to reduce the redemption risk when farmers either reduce their milk production or exit the cooperative. Fonterra was saddled with a $742 million redemption bill when milk production dropped in the 2007/08 drought. Some farmers were reluctant to let the fund go ahead, seeing it as a threat to their control of the cooperative and potentially undermining the farmgate milk price. That prompted Fonterra to reduce the size of the fund as a proportion of its stock. At the time of the offer, it was envisaged that the fund's units on issue would amount to 7-12 percent of Fonterra's shares. Some $77 million of units were redeemed in the six months ended Jan. 31, while $71 million of new units were issued. After a $40 million negative revaluation of the liability to unitholders, the fund's net assets attributable to unitholders was $524 million. In the prior period, $122 million of new units were issued and $51 million redeemed. After an $18 million gain on the revaluation, net assets were $852 million. The fund had 110.6 million units on issue at Jan. 31, or 6.9 percent of Fonterra's shares, down from 137.4 million, or 8.5 percent of Fonterra's stock, a year earlier. John Shewan, chair of the fund's manager, said in its first-half report that he views the strategic review and attempts to deal with Fonterra's performance as a positive step, albeit one that won't happen overnight. "The commitment in the interim report to take difficult decisions and to a culture of accountability and performance right across the organisation is welcome," he said. The units recently traded at $4.25, having dropped 8.6 percent so far this year. They hit a record low $4.17 on Feb. 28. Fonterra chief financial officer Marc Rivers told reporters yesterday that the fund is still fit for purpose, and that the focus on improving performance will be key in turning that around. "The route that we have to improve comes back to performance - that's the focus of the strategic review," he said. "If we do that then the share price will be reflective." (BusinessDesk) Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. 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Related News: 10th December 2021 Morning Report Ebos Group Limited (NZX: EBO) EBOS Announces Successful Placement Pacific Edge Limited (NZX: PEB) PEB Announces Agreement with Northern Health in Australia AFT Pharmaceuticals Limited (NZX: AFT) AFT welcomes Australian Federal Court appeal success 9th December 2021 Morning Report Ebos Group Limited (NZX: EBO) Acquisition of LifeHealthcare, Equity Raising Livestock Improvement Corporation Limited (NZX: LIC) Special Dividend 8th December 2021 Morning Report New Zealand King Salmon Investments Limited (NZX: NZK) Market Update Scales Corporation Limited (NZX: SCL) Market update The 48-year-old businessman was arrested from Holborn on Tuesday afternoon on behalf of Indian authorities and was produced before a judge at the Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday. London/New Delhi: Fourteen months after he fled India, fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi has been arrested in London in connection with a Rs 13,500 crore PNB fraud case and was sent to police custody till March 29 after being denied bail. He was denied bail and will stay in custody until the next hearing on March 29. According to informed sources, the Westminster court in its lengthy hearing observed that Nirav Modi should be kept in Metropolitan Police custody due to his involvement in fraud of high value funds and access to means of escape. The Police made the arrest seven days after the Westminster Court issued an arrest warrant against Nirav Modi who left India days before the scam came to light in January 2018. The court had issued arrest warrant after UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid referred to India's extradition request for Nirav Modi. The Interpol had issued a Red Corner Notice against Nirav Modi in July 2018 at the request of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The businessman's whereabouts were a mystery as he had been spotted in New York, Hong Kong and other cities. Along with his uncle Mehul Choksi of Gitanjali Group, Nirav Modi left the country before the CBI formally started investigating the PNB scam. The ED had on May 24 and 26 last year filed chargesheets against both men. Non-bailable warrants were also issued against them. The development came days after the The Telegraph newspaper in Britain claimed that Nirav Modi was spotted in London. He was said to be living in a three-bedroom flat, occupying half the floor of the landmark Centre Point tower block, the daily reported. It claimed Nirav Modi was involved in a new diamond business, run from an office in Soho, just a few hundred yards from his apartment. The new business was incorporated in May 2018, it said. An extradition request against him had been pending before the UK authorities since September last year. The ED on February 26 attached Rs 147 crore worth of property of Nirav Modi and his associate companies in connection with the PNB case. Chinese visitors are avoiding swanky nightclubs in Gangnam that had become something of a pilgrimage site for K-pop fans after a snowballing scandal swallowed up some of their idols. The scandal focused on a nightclub called Burning Sun, which was owned by Seung-ri of boy band Big Bang and which was allegedly a hotbed of drug abuse and sexual impropriety. One 25-year-old Chinese woman said, "Rumors spread among Chinese women that people spike their drinks in Gangnam nightclubs and drag them over to tables with groups of male customers." At one club in Seocho-dong that used to be popular with Chinese visitors on Monday night, all 50 guests were Korean, and the situation was the same at another 2 km away. The only foreigners were two Caucasian men. "This is a ploy of the BJP. The credit must go to the London Telegraph journalist who exposed Nirav Modi. It is a got-up match. No credit goes to the BJP government," Banerjee told reporters at the state secretariat, Nabanna. Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday refused to give any credit to the Narendra Modi-led government for the arrest of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi in London and termed it a "got-up match". Calling the businessman's arrest a "strike" by the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the Trinamool Congress supremo said there will be a number of such "strikes" by the Centre during the general elections. "You will see many such 'strikes' during the time of elections. You have seen a strike on Nirav Modi. There will be two-three similar strikes. All these are made up like a film script. They (Centre) have done this intentionally," she said. "You (the Centre) cannot see where he is hiding. Now a journalist is giving you information about where he is staying. Don't we know what is going on behind the curtains? It has been exposed that the main thief is behind the curtain," Banerjee said, making a veiled reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Banerjee said the BJP government's ploys would not yield much benefit as its "expiry date" was already over. "This government has no credibility. I have said before that its expiry date is already over. We do not need their 'medicines'. We do not consume medicines that have passed their expiry dates," she said. "I do not give them any credit. There is another man. I do not want to mention his name. He is also there. They are not Indian citizens now. There are so many people with a lot of property," she alleged. Taking a swipe at Modi for calling himself the "chowkidar" (watchman) of the country, Banerjee said it was more important to be loyal to the nation and maintain peace than turning oneself from a "chai-wala to chowkidar". Fourteen months after he fled India, Nirav Modi was on Wednesday arrested in London on charges of defrauding on a huge loan taken from the Punjab National Bank (PNB), official sources said. The police made the arrest seven days after the London Westminster Court issued an arrest warrant against the businessman, who left India days before the scam came to light in January 2018. Bollywood actress Aditi Rao Hydari who made debut in Tollywood last year in Indraganti Mohan Krishna'shas been declared as Most Desirable Woman for year 2018. Hyderabad Times that annually publishes these lists has picked up Aditi Rao as the most desirable. "I have no idea what made them pick me from so many stunning women. This is my first year in the Telugu industry and the love I received has been overwhelming," she told the Hyderabad Times. Samantha, Pooja Hegde and Rashmika stood at third, fourth and fifth positions respectively. Aditi Rao has also signed Nani's next film. She has acted in Mani Ratnam's Cheliya and Nawab. Text: Telugucinema.com Images: Instagram/Twitter President Moon Jae-in's Southeast Asia trip was riddled with gaffes big and small. In Malaysia, Moon was caught in a language slip during a summit and dinner with Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, when he offered an evening greeting in Bahasa in the afternoon and vice versa in a clumsy attempt to endear himself to his hosts. In Brunei, during a dinner hosted by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Moon proposed a toast that apparently offended some pious guests in the strictly dry Muslim country. Some Bruneian officials apparently refused to respond to Moon's toast, while others even tried to stop the Korean guests from joining in. But a Cheong Wa Dae official said the toast had been "agreed by both sides in advance." Political leaders and especially parliamentarians should refrain from hate speech, acrimonious criticisms and extreme postulations through perhaps codes of ethics and self-control. A new political culture is necessary even in Australia. by Laksiri Fernando He sought many things from his act of terror, but one was notoriety, and that is why you will never hear me mention his name He is a terrorist, he is a criminal, he is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be namelessAnd to others I implore you: speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them. He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing, not even his name. Jacinda Ardern (Prime Minister, New Zealand) I have just voted for the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in the New South Wales elections, casting my vote also to the local Labor candidate, Stephen Bali, in the Blacktown constituency. I have voted by post without waiting for the final election day of 23rd March. However, I was not so impressed by the ALPs rather wishy-washy and lacklustre statements and stand on the horrific shooting and massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, by an Australian Barbarian when Muslim devotees were worshiping in two mosques in that city on Friday the last (15 March). I dont give the actual name of the this Barbarian, heeding the advice of the Labor leader and the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern. ALP Statements When Bill Shorten, the ALP leader, first said almost immediately after the incident, Do not share the footage. Do not watch the footage. This is not part of normal life, he was right. Because a primary objective of the Barbarian was to inflame the emotions of all extreme sides, portray himself as a hero to his side, and perhaps create a major calamity in the country and outside. The Barbarian had a camera fixed to his head and broadcasted his cruelty, brutality and viciousness to the world through the social media. There were over 1.5 million people viewing the footage without any censorship. Only after strong protests from the New Zealand PM, and many others, that the social media circulations were curtailed by the owners of the Facebook, Twitter and You Tube. It is also true that this is not part of our normal life. How could it be? That is exactly why it should have been condemned at the outset, in the strongest possible terms, particularly by a labour or a social democratic party. It was done in New Zealand, but not so much in Australia. It should have been condemned not because it was callously planned, but because it was a terrorist attack. Subsequent statements of Shorten also were somewhat subdued, in my observation. Whatever the contribution that the thinking of the Liberal/NationalParty and its present leader, Scott Morrison, has made in inflaming sentiments against migrants or refugees at times, on this incident, he came forward in condemning the massacre in strongest terms. This was lacking on the part of the ALP and its leader. It has become a puzzle to me, personally, because under normal circumstances and in day to day politics, Bill Shorten appeared to me a principled, rational, and a sober leader, compared to Scott Morrison or others. Perhaps this merit could have been the debit during the crisis situation. Christchurch massacre on last fateful Friday undoubtedly was a crisis situation where all democratic political leaders should have shown their true mettle against terrorism and extremism. The New Zealand Labor leader, Jacinda Ardern, has shown that enough appearing almost continuously on media, updating the nation on the events, giving a true and a sober analysis, meeting with the grieving families, and also within seventy two hours taking measures to tighten the gun laws, one of the reasons for the scale of the massacre. Australian Connection If the reason for the ALPs lacklustre response was anchored in the leadership, Bill Shorten and others might be able to correct that in the future collectively. However can there be other or more profound reasons? This is something that the ALP and others should contemplate on which might even have some relevance in understanding the Christchurch massacre, the motives of the Barbarian and political roots of the whole incident. The Barbarian originated in Australia. However, no Australian leader, as far as I know, visited Christchurch in sympathy with the aggrieved community or condemn the massacre jointly with the New Zealand leaders. Obviously the ALP leaders, the present and past, are busy these days with the New South Wales (NSW) elections.Perhaps they dont have much time to focus on the Christchurch massacre! I have so far not seen any official party statement on the matter. However, what transpired the day before is a statement made by the NSW Labor leader, Michael Daley, with overtones on Asian migration and migration in general. The statement has been made six months ago when he was the deputy leader. What he has said exactly is the following: Our young children will flee and who are they being replaced with? They are being replaced by young people from typically Asia with PhDs. So theres a transformation happening in Sydney now where our kids are moving out and foreigners are moving in and taking their jobs. After uncovering this speech by the opponents (even he must have forgotten), he has apologised to the possible aggrieved parties as a gentleman politician. However, the Liberal Party leader, Scott Morrison, has utilized it to condemned the remarks as appalling, upsetting and offensive, disregarding what he has been possibly saying in similar or more offensive manner in the past. This is part of power politics. What can be troubling moreover in all these undercurrents is that there is a clear unease, fear or anxiety among the old settlers against the new commers.Daley has used the expressions like our young people, and our kids, in contrast to people from Asia and foreigners. There are undoubtedly problematic issues particularly in a country like Australia related to migration, refugees, jobs and property due to economic and other issues. Some of them are obviously labour issues. However it should not be that difficult to distinguish them from racism, possible racism or xenophobia. No person or party can be considered perfect. However a labour party should try its best to be beyond these tribal or archaic feelings. There are so many indications that the ALP is not completely free from these ailments. One of its former leaders, Mark Latham, is now with Paulin Hansons One Nation Party which is grossly a xenophobic party, not to call racist. Broader Issues When Bill Shorten attended the Islamic Council of Victoria, the following day of the massacre, he was perfectly correct in sayingNot all right-wing extremist hate speech ends in violence, but all right-wing extremist violence started in hate speech. However, hate speech or sentiments expressed closer to hate speech are not just on the margins of the politics of Australia, but sometimes almost at the centre. They are not just the evil-jokers on the margins. Such simple dismissive language is also not sufficient. As Shorten himself has admitted, there can be a link between political rhetoric on immigration and the Christchurch terror attack. Where that could be rectified and addressed? This is the crucial question. It was extremely disturbing that at the wake of the massacre, Senator Fraser Anning, former One Nation and now independent senator, went to the extent of blaming the victims. He has said, Real cause of the bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place. To correct him, there were no bloodshed in the streets of New Zealand, but brutal shooting of Muslim devotees at Friday prayer at two mosques in Christchurch. When Anning was uttering those words in Melbourne, he was whacked with an egg by a 17-year-old teenager in protest. But that was also a violent act that cannot be condoned by any means. More disturbing was Annings reactions, violently attacking again and again the now dubbed Egg Boy, showing his true colours. Anti-Muslim sentiments or Islamophobia is almost everywhere and disturbingly growing. On the other extreme, there are violent and terrorist acts committed by people who belong to the Islamic side or in that name even in Australia. This is apart from IS and similar movements. These are the extremes on both sides that should be abated and curtailed internationally. This cannot be done through other extremes like egg throwing or blaming and naming without context or excessively. The Greens are also trying to exploit the situation for their cheap political gain and it was excessive for them to name Michael Daley a racist just because of his single comment. There are no perfect puritans in this world. Necessary Measures At least the Egg Boy was on the right side, although excessive in his reactions. However it is not clear where the young generations in general stand on these issues. The Barbarian himself was just 28 years. What appears clear is that almost all these violent people have largely been males. How are they brought up and/or educated? These are necessary questions to ask. There can be various measures that could be taken in abating such developments or preventing them. Security measures and strict gun control should take immediate priority. If there were strict gun controls, at least the number of casualties could have been curtailed in the Christchurch massacre. Security measures to track the suspicious people or potential terrorists are equally important,respecting the rights and dignity of all. Political leaders and especially parliamentarians should refrain from hate speech, acrimonious criticisms and extreme postulations through perhaps codes of ethics and self-control. A new political culture is necessary even in Australia. Even if the two major parties, the Liberals and the Labor, were fairly reasonable in handling the main crisis, they appeared to loose the balance when the Turkish President, Tayyip Erdogan, fired his typical rhetorical barrage, exacerbating Islamic sentiments in his country. This is exactly what the Barbarian intended to instigate. There should be careful editing and restrictions on extremism, hate speech and pictures of them in the social media in particular (Facebook, Twitter, You Tube etc.) and the media in general, again respecting the general norms of freedom of speech and expression. Most important might be the education. While students are prepared for NAPLAN (National Assessment Program Language and Numeracy) they should also be prepared for NAPTAC (National Assessment Program - Tolerance and Coexistence). The ALP has already launched an exemplary reform program for future education in Australia. But it should incorporate NAPTAC, multiculturalism and indigenous education as well. Having to know about Australias indigenous heritage, their grieving and grievances might sober the minds of the young generations of the old settlers as well as the new ones. 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Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fe7c77bc8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe7c872e0)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fe7c77bc8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe7c872e0)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fe78b88d8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe7c872e0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe7c872e0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe6f3e7d8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fe1b191e8)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fe1b191e8)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28:
29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951 /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fe7494728)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe74f4570)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fe7494728)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe74f4570)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7f3fe749b520)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe74f4570)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe74f4570)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7f3fe6f3e0b8)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fe74701d0)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7f3fe74701d0)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 Posted Wednesday, March 20, 2019 6:42:07 PM General Hospital fans are beyond thrilled that Dominic Zamprogna is back on the canvas as Dante Falconeri, and the exciting wrap-up storyline has come at the perfect time: the actor was just nominated for a Daytime Emmy award. Soap Central caught up with Zamprogna to find out how he feels about receiving the third nomination of his career and to get a little scoop about what fans can expect from his short return to Port Charles. Keep reading to get the answers to those questions and to find out the fun reason he may have ruffled his family's feathers. Soap Central: Congratulations on your Emmy nomination! Dominic Zamprogna: Thank you. You're going to get tired of saying that to everyone you have to interview today, I'll bet. Soap Central: Ha, maybe. But there are so many people from General Hospital nominated, and I'm so excited for all of you! Zamprogna: I am, too! It's really great. Soap Central: This is your third Emmy nomination, so do you believe in the saying, "Third time's a charm?" Zamprogna: No, and I was just thinking about that earlier. With the first one, you know you're not going to win because it's your first one. The second one, you're like, "Yeah, I want to win, and I should because it's my second one!" And the third one is like, "Well, I'm just happy to be there again." If it happens, it happens. And if it doesn't, that's okay. I really love that Max [Gail, Mike Corbin] got nominated, as well. I think he's done an amazing job with the storyline he had last year. It's a good group of people all around, and hopefully, if I don't win, he does. Soap Central: I would imagine that being up against someone from your own show would make you feel more competitive, but I like that you just pointed out that it at least makes the chances of someone from your show winning a little higher. Zamprogna: [Laughs] Well, technically, mathematically, that's how it should work out. But I don't know if that's always the case. Soap Central: How did you find out you'd been nominated? Zamprogna: I was working out, and [I received some calls and texts]. My trainer was taking a break, and I looked at my phone and saw that someone from production had texted me. Soap Central: So you were working out at the time? Zamprogna: Yeah, my buddy just does some training with me, just to get some aggression out, you know? Soap Central: Okay, cool. I get that. And as an actor, you always have to stay in shape and be ready for whatever comes. Zamprogna: That is true. You've got to work out the body and the mind, the whole thing. Soap Central: Who did you share the news with first? Did you call anyone or message anyone about your nomination? Zamprogna: I'm still waiting for my family to text me, because I haven't heard from them yet. I've gotten text messages from a lot of friends and people from the show. But I'm still waiting for my dad and my sisters -- I think they're mad at me for something, I don't know! Soap Central: Maybe they don't know! You've got to tell them! Zamprogna: They might not know, but they've known every other time! But I heard from Maura West (Ava Jerome) and Frank (Valentini, our executive producer) and some other people at the studio. But the first person [I told] was my buddy that I was training with and then my wife. My kids don't really care, so I haven't really told them yet. Soap Central: Your kids are quite young, right? Zamprogna: They're three, six, and eight. Soap Central: Yeah, okay -- they're probably a little young to understand how cool this is. Zamprogna: Yeah, my three-year-old could care less. My six-year-old is sick on the couch, so she might care when she's not vomiting. Soap Central: Oh, no, she's sick? I will keep my fingers crossed that she gets better soon. Zamprogna: Someone is always sick when you've got three kids -- it never ends! Someone is always sick. Soap Central: What can you say about the scenes you chose for the reel you submitted? Zamprogna: This round, we submitted the stuff with Max, a scene in the stables when he has taken Avery, thinking she's Courtney. We submitted also the stuff with Ryan [Peavey, ex-Nathan], when he's dying a year ago. And also some stuff with Wes [Peter August] in the interrogation room, where Dante has just found out he's sort of responsible for Nathan's [Ryan Paevey] death. And I think we had the stuff with Lulu [Emme Rylan], my last scenes on the show before I left in May, where he says goodbye to her. I can't remember if those were on the final cut, but I think they were. Soap Central: It sounds like you had a really nice mix and range of material. Was it a tough decision, narrowing down what made the cut for the reel? Zamprogna: No, it wasn't. I left the show in May, so I only had material up until May. But it was kind of easy because I think you know when you're doing scenes. You kind of file it in the back of your head, like, "Oh, that might be something worth revisiting that could be submitted." When I did the stuff when Nathan was on his death bed, I thought, "Well, you know, maybe I'll throw that in." The stuff with Lulu, I kind of knew I wanted that. And you know, our stage manager, Craig McManus, he constantly comes up to me, because we have a little bit of a joke going on where if he can ever see me acting, then I've got to go and do another take. He came up to me after the stuff with Wes and didn't say that. Instead, he said, "I think you've got some good stuff for your reel now." So, I kind of use other people's judgment. Those guys see everybody's stuff, day in and day out, so when they come up to you and say something [positive], it really hits home and means a lot. Soap Central: Do you have any idea of who you might bring to the ceremony this May? Zamprogna: Oooohhhhhh, well probably my wife, Linda. I have to start by asking her, of course. But if not, I thought it would be fun to take one of my sisters. But they live in Canada, so I'll have to see if they're not mad at me anymore and want to come with me. If so, maybe I'll take one of them. Soap Central: Okay, this is the second time you've mentioned that your family may be mad at you. What did you do?! Zamprogna: Oh, I bailed on our Mexico trip, because we're going to Europe on Monday for three weeks. I bailed on our family Mexico trip. I'm just joking around about them being mad at me, but they were upset that I didn't go. Soap Central: Well, that's fun that you're going to Europe! And for three weeks? That is pretty much most of the time from here on up to the Emmy Awards in May. That doesn't leave you much time to prepare! Zamprogna: Yeah, we're coming back on the 17th, so I'll have a week and half or so before the big night. Soap Central: You're lucky that you're a guy and you can skip the whole dress search. That's really the stress before the Emmy Awards. Zamprogna: [Laughs] I can just wear a black suit, pick a new tie, and get a fresh haircut! Soap Central: Exactly! Do you think that you'll be celebrating your nomination tonight or this weekend, or are you too busy packing for Europe? Zamprogna: No, we're just going to chill out because we have so much to do before we take off on Monday. We'll probably just lay low and take care of the kiddies. Soap Central: Are you taking the kids to Europe? Zamprogna: We are. Soap Central: Oh, wow. Have you traveled long distances with them yet? Zamprogna: We've traveled, but usually to Canada to see family or to Mexico. The most we've ever done is a five-hour flight, so this will be a little different because we'll be going all the way to London, and then we have a layover for a couple of hours in London, and then we head to Rome on Monday afternoon. I think we'll be okay. They're looking forward to it and are excited. They don't want to fly over the ocean, but who does? Soap Central: Have you been to Europe before? Zamprogna: Yeah, I went when I was fifteen with my dad and my grandparents to visit family and meet them for the first time. It was to meet my dad's side of the family. We're Italian, so I got to meet all of those guys for the first time, my grandparent's family. And then my mother's family is in England, so we're going to go there this time, too. But I haven't been to England in [a long time]. I went to Rome was I was fifteen and eighteen, and I went to England when I was twenty. And that was the last time I've been anywhere over there. It's been fun planning, just looking at all the Airbnb's and drives. There's so much stuff we've never seen before, so we're looking forward to it. Soap Central: Dante has returned to GH and I'm wondering if there's anything you can tease as far as what fans can expect from his return to the canvas? Zamprogna: Viewers are seeing some darker shades of him; he's been through a bit since he's been gone. And there's some good stuff coming with Lulu that I think will be either at the end of this week or the beginning of next week. Hopefully people will be excited and are looking forward to that. Soap Central: Is there anything else you'd like to add before I let you go? Zamprogna: Just that I'm really looking forward to [the Emmys on] May 5th! Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Rome on Thursday at the start of a three-day visit during which he will sign an accord drawing Italy into his giant "Belt and Road" infrastructure plan, despite U.S. opposition. Italy, seeking new export deals to boost its stalled economy, will become the first Group of Seven major industrialized nation to join the multi-billion-dollar project, which is designed to improve Beijing's global trade reach. Xi is due to meet Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Friday and is set to sign the memorandum of understanding with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Saturday before traveling to the Sicilian capital Palermo. More than 30 deals, worth up to 7 billion euros, are also expected to be agreed during the trip in an array of sectors, including accords opening up the northern ports of Trieste and Genoa to Chinese containers. "We are at the heart of the Mediterranean, yet the Chinese are everywhere in the region except here," junior industry minister Michele Geraci said in a video on his Facebook page. However, the prospect of the accord has caused ructions both within the coalition government and among Italy's allies -- notably in Washington, where the White House National Security Council urged Rome not to give "legitimacy to China's infrastructure vanity project." And on the very day that Xi flew into Rome, European Union leaders in Brussels considered adopting a more defensive strategy towards China, having last week branded the world's second largest economic power a "systemic rival." Banke, March 21 Indian customs officials have stopped 140 petroleum-laden tankers headed to Nepal through the Rupaidiha border crossing, officials say. The online entry system of the customs office has been out of order for the last two days, they said. Nepalgunj customs officer Sharad Kumar KC informed that Indian officials have halted more than a dozen trucks loaded with fruits and vegetables in the last two days. According to him, although there has been an agreement between the Nepali and Indian officials to allow trucks ferrying fruits and vegetables to pass by recording their movement offline, trucks with petroleum cannot be allowed to enter Nepal in such a manner. We have been coordinating with the Indian customs since Wednesday. We have information that they have problems with the server and they are trying to fix it, he said. KC added that the Indian customs officials have obstructed the movement of fuel tankers and other trucks on many occasions citing problems with their servers. Indian customs officials state that they need to seek the permission of the customs deputy commissioner for clearing goods worth more than one million, and that can only be done online as the deputy commissioners office is in Lucknow. Chief of Nepal Oil Corporations Nepalgunj depot Abhisekh Kumar Thakur said initiatives have been taken to bring the fuel tankers into Nepal. We are trying to bring the tankers as soon as possible, he reiterated. According to him, NOCs depot in Nepalgunj has enough diesel stock to last a week and petrol for three days. RSS EU Parliament urged to strip ExxonMobil lobbyists of access badges Brussels, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 The European Parliament faced calls Thursday to strip ExxonMobil lobbyists of their access badges after the US oil giant missed the assembly's first hearing into claims it knowingly misled the public on climate change. Greens deputy Molly Scott Cato told the hearing in Brussels she would formally make the request later Thursday to deny ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil firm, its six registered parliament access badges. Activists and scientists told the hearing that ExxonMobil has for decades misled the public about the threat climate change poses to the world. ExxonMobil again rejected what it called the "false allegation that ExxonMobil suppressed scientific research on climate change." Under parliamentary rules, Cato said, "lobbyists shall have their access badges denied" when they refuse without good reason to comply with a formal summons to attend a committee hearing or inquiry. "I believe this provides us with grounds we need to withdraw Exxon's lobby badges," the British MEP said, adding she would write a letter to that effect later Thursday. Her call was supported by MEP Eleonora Evi, who sits on the petition and environment committees that hosted the first EU public hearing into Exxon's approach to climate change. Evi told AFP she was optimistic based on the example of Monsanto. In 2017, the European Parliament decided to deny access to Monsanto executives and lobbyists after the US agro giant turned down an invitation to a hearing over claims Monsanto influenced scientific research on a weedkiller's safety. In a letter dated Wednesday, ExxonMobil said the oil company is "constrained from participating because of ongoing climate litigation in the United States." It said it was concerned that public commentary, including at the Brussels hearing, "could prejudice those pending proceedings," according to a copy obtained by AFP. - 'New Big Tobacco' - Frida Kieninger, who pushed for the hearing as campaign officer for Food and Water Europe, told reporters Exxon also exerts an indirect influence through some 214 other lobby badges for consultancies and trade associations. Cato did not rule out taking up that challenge later. Geoffrey Supran, a Harvard University researcher, told the panel that "60 years ago the oil industry knew that its products were potentially dangerous." In 1959, he said, the American Petroleum Institute, which included ExxonMobil's precursor firms, was warned in detail by physicist Edward Teller that projected global warming due to fossil fuel burning "was sufficient to melt the ice cap and submerge New York." But yet, he said, the industry has cast doubt on the science for decades. A peer-reviewed study of nearly 200 Exxon documents spanning decades and co-authored by Supran found that four-fifths of scientific studies and internal memos acknowledged global warming is real and caused by humans. At the same time, a similar proportion of hundreds of paid company editorials in major US newspapers over the same period cast deep doubt on these widely accepted facts, according to the study published more than a year ago. "The most fundamental thing this (Brussels) hearing does is start to put the evidence on record," Supran told AFP. "It also adds momentum and precedent to calls for US Congress and other governments to hold similar hearings into what Exxon and the entire fossil fuel industry knew and did about climate change," he said. Supran told the hearing that "big oil is the new big tobacco," adding it was using similar strategies and tactics to those used by cigarette firms to maintain sales despite public health concerns. In a statement to AFP, ExxonMobil said allegations it suppressed scientific research is refuted by decades of studies conducted publicly with the US Department of Energy, academics, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. lc/rl EXXONMOBIL Monsanto Macron, Merkel, Juncker and Xi to meet Tuesday in Paris Brussels, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 French President Emmanuel Macron will hold trade and climate talks on Tuesday with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The leaders will be joined by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker as they seek "points of convergence between Europe and China", Macron's office said Thursday. The meeting is part of Xi's European tour, which comes with Europe divided over his "Belt and Road" trade infrastructure project and under US pressure to shun telecom giant Huawei. As he arrived for an EU summit in Brussels, Macron welcomed what he called Europe's "awakening" to the challenge posed by China, after Brussels published a 10-point plan for a more assertive stance. But Macron's office struck a more conciliatory tone in announcing Tuesday's talks, saying it was an opportunity to explain Europe's strategy to China. "We thought it was needed, because to defend multilateralism the discussion must move to the European level and not that of France alone," Macron's office said. The meet comes ahead of an EU-China summit in Brussels on April 9. The EU is split on handling China, with some fearing the rise of a global superpower and others, especially in Europe's south, willing to make deals for investment in ports, energy and transport. On his trip, Xi is expected to secure a non-binding agreement for Italy to join the $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, spooking EU partners worried Rome will open its doors to Chinese influence. EU members Greece and Poland have also embraced the "New Silk Road" but others in the bloc fear it could lead to growing Chinese government sway over politics on the continent. Twenty years ago, NATO launches strikes on Serbia Paris, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 On March 24, 1999 NATO started 11 weeks of air strikes on Yugoslavia, after a year of pressure on president Slobodan Milosevic to stop his deadly crackdown on Kosovo separatists. It was the alliance's first intervention against a sovereign state in its 50-year history. Thirteen months earlier, Milosevic had deployed troops into Kosovo, then still a Serbian province, whose population was 90 percent ethnic Albanian. He was trying to crush the pro-independent Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas. Some 13,000 people, mostly Albanian, were killed and around one million driven from their homes during the two-year conflict. - Diplomacy fails - Milosevic had steadfastly refused over February and March 1999 to accept a peace accord hammered out at Rambouillet chateau near Paris which provided autonomy for the province. NATO members feared the conflict would spread throughout the Balkans, only three years after the end of wars in the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia and Croatia. An 11th-hour visit by US envoy Richard Holbrooke to Belgrade to try to mediate the crisis failed to budge Milosevic. - NATO orders strikes - NATO headquarters gave the go-ahead for air strikes late on March 23, saying the decision was taken in agreement with all 19 of its members. Every attempt to find a negotiated political solution had failed, said Secretary General Javier Solana: "There is no alternative but to take military action." The first bombs fell a day later, with strikes around 8:00 pm on Belgrade, Kosovo's capital Pristina and other cities and towns. Serbia television aired dramatic pictures of buildings engulfed in flames, smoke billowing high into the night sky. The attacks were carried out without a green light from the United Nations, where Serbia's ally Russia, and China, were against military intervention. - Preventing 'catastrophe' - US president Bill Clinton went live on television to say the NATO strikes were vital to prevent the Kosovo "powder keg" from triggering a bigger conflict. "We act to prevent a wider war, to defuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe, that has exploded twice before in this century with catastrophic results," he said. British said eight NATO member states had taken part in the opening wave of attacks -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States. Some 70 aircraft, including 10 F-117 Stealth bombers, took off from a NATO air base in northern Italy in successive waves, spokesmen said. - Ethnic cleansing - NATO appeared confident that a few days of "surgical" air strikes would bring Milosevic back into negotiations. Instead the Yugoslav leader stepped up his brutal campaign against the province's ethnic Albanian community. The world watched in horror as hundreds of thousands of Albanians were driven from their homes. As refugees began to arrive in neighbouring Albania and Macedonia, tales emerged of homes being burned out, summary executions and mass rapes. - Civilians killed - Over the 11-week campaign NATO aircraft carried out 38,000 sorties, including 10,000 bombardments, according to alliance figures. Attacks were extended beyond purely military targets to include key infrastructure such as petroleum and power plants, road and rail bridges and, most controversially, the installations of Serb television and radio. Blunders such as the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade or the attack on a refugee convoy near Djakovica severely tested the allies' commitment to the campaign. - Milosevic capitulates - The civilian death toll has never been established: 500, according to NGO Human Rights Watch; 2,500 according to the Serbian authorities. Milosevic had to contend with the losses of his soldiers, hints of a rebellion among his generals, a crippled economy and no sign of a let-up in the NATO bombing. On June 10, 1999 he finally ordered his forces to withdraw from Kosovo, which was effectively taken over by the international community. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move Serbia, China and Russia refuse to recognise. At least 54 dead as ferry sinks in north Iraq: officials Mosul, Iraq, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 At least 54 people died when an overcrowded ferry carrying families sank Thursday in a swollen river in northern Iraq during Kurdish New Year celebrations, officials said. Another 28 people were missing after the disaster on the Tigris in the city of Mosul, according to an interior ministry official who did not want to be named. "The boat sank because there were too many passengers on board, more than a hundred," another security official based in Mosul told AFP. The vessel was packed with men, women and children crossing the Tigris to go to a popular picnic area, he said. The authorities had warned people to be careful after several days of heavy rains led to water being released through the Mosul dam, causing the river level to rise. NGOs urge France to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia Paris, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 A group of NGOs on Thursday urged France to suspend the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia and to work for a political solution in Yemen which has been ravaged by four years of conflict. "I don't know how many more Yemenis have to die, be injured or go hungry before the world decides that the war must end," Radhya Almutawakel, head of Yemen Mwatana human rights organisation told a press conference in Paris. "Peace is possible, but it never happens because the rest of the world doesn't care. The international community must put pressure on all parties and stop feeding the conflict by selling arms to Saudi Arabia," she added March 26 will mark the fourth anniversary of the intervention in Yemen of a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and The United Arab Emirates (UAE) -- with logistical and political backing of the United States -- in support of the government in the struggle against Huthi rebels supported by Iran. An estimated 10,000 people have been killed since March 2015, though rights groups put the toll much higher. "All sides of the conflict are committing human rights violations," said Almutawakel. NGOs have repeatedly called on the West, and particularly on France Saudi Arabia's third largest arms supplier, to halt munitions deliveries. The French government insists that the arms it sells to Saudi Arabia are strictly controlled and don't play a part in the conflict in Yemen. However, Amnesty International representative in France Aymeric Elluin urged France to "follow the German example". Last October Berlin imposed a temporary freeze on arms sales to Saudi Arabia following the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor and critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2. The NGOs meeting in Paris also called for aid to be sent urgently to Yemen. "Humanitarian aid is vital, but NGOs are increasingly hampered by security and administrative obstacles," said Care France's Fanny Petitbon. Meanwhile, another French NGO announced it has filed a law suit against former members of the French Foreign Legion accused of acting as UAE mercenaries and carrying out assassinations in Yemen. The International Alliance for the Defence of Rights and Liberties (AIDL), founded by exiled Yemen journalist Mohamed Al Shami, lodged the complaint with a Paris court for "war crimes" and "participating in mercenary activity". Nine former Legionnaires are cited in the court papers, seen by AFP, as members of a group led by two US mercenaries alleged to have carried out more than 20 targeted killings. The plaintiffs claim their recruitment was organised by Mohammed Dahlan, a former head of security in the Palestinian Gaza Strip who is now an advisor for the Saudi crown prince. Iran leader dismisses Europe trade mechanism as 'bitter joke' Tehran, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday dismissed a trade mechanism launched by European countries to bypass renewed US sanctions as a "bitter joke" and said Europe could not be trusted. "This financial channel they recently set up resembles a joke, a bitter joke," Khamenei told a thousands-strong congregation in a televised address at a shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad, where he speaks every year to mark the Iranian New Year. Britain, France and Germany launched the special payment system called INSTEX -- Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges -- in late January after President Donald Trump abruptly quit the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in May last year. The three countries were the European signatories to the deal, also signed by the US, Russia and China, that curbed Tehran's nuclear ambitions in return for sanctions relief. London, Paris and Berlin launched the device in the hope it will help save the deal by allowing Tehran to keep trading with European companies despite Washington reimposing sanctions. "The difference between what they are obligated to do and what they are proposing is as far as the earth is from the sky," Khamenei said. "We should completely forego (any hope) of help or cooperation from Westerners in strengthening our economy, we shouldn't wait for them," he said. "Once again the Europeans have stabbed us in the back, they have betrayed us," Khamenei said, cursing Western politicians as "savages". "They wear suits, they put on ties and eau de cologne and carry Samsonite briefcases but they are savages," Khamenei said. "What I am saying does not mean (Iran) should cut Western ties, not at all... there is no problem in having relations with them, but trusting them is a mistake, don't trust them," he said. Iran on Tuesday registered a parallel structure to INSTEX called the Special Trade and Finance Institute or STFI, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported. "With the registration of STFI, we expect that, in cooperation with INSTEX, it would facilitate trade between Iran and Europe and be influential in countering limitations caused by US sanctions," said Iran's central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati. Earlier on Thursday, Khamenei called the economic difficulties of Iranians the most urgent problem facing the country. "Specially in recent months the difficulties for people's livelihoods have increased," Khamenei said in a prerecorded message to mark the March 21 start of the New Year. "The economy is the country's urgent problem, it's the country's (most) serious and primary problem," he said, pointing to the rial's devaluation, decline in purchasing power and falling production. kas/mj/hc Tighter gun controls following massacres Paris, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 As in New Zealand, where assault weapons were banned Thursday after the Christchurch massacre, mass shootings have prompted stricter gun controls in some countries. Here are some notable examples. - Australia - After the April 1996 Port Arthur massacre of 35 people, tougher new gun laws included a general ban on the use of semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and pump-action shotguns except for specific purposes. They also required owners to provide a genuine reason for possessing a gun and to undergo safety training. More than 600,000 weapons, including semi-automatics, were destroyed after being handed over to officials in a multi-million dollar buy-back programme. - Britain - Tighter controls on gun ownership were introduced after the 1987 massacre of 16 people near Hungerford in southern England by a gunman with firearms licence. The laws expanded prohibited weapons to most semi-automatic and smooth-bore shotguns, as well as self-loading or pump-action shotguns, according to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey research project. Following the 1996 massacre of 16 pupils and a teacher in the Scottish town of Dunblane, there was also a ban on most handguns, the project says in a 2011 report. - European Union - The European Union in 2017 approved laws obliging member states to tighten controls on weapons and the issuing of gun licences. This included enforcing licensing of blank-firing firearms, which can be easily converted to fire live ammunition, and were used in the 2015 Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in Paris in which 12 people were killed. There were also stricter controls on certain semi-automatic firearms. - Finland - Tougher handgun laws went into effect in Finland in June 2011 amid outrage over school massacres in 2007 and 2008 which left eight and 10 people dead respectively. The new legislation raised the minimum age for a handgun permit from 18 to 20, required applicants to be trained by a police-approved instructor at a gun club and obliged medical and military personnel to report anyone they feel is mentally or socially unsuitable to own a gun. Norway plans to ban semi-automatic firearms as of 2021, a decade after right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik's mass shooting that left 69 people dead, lawmakers said last year. - Germany - Gun laws were tightened after two school massacres in the eastern city of Erfurt in April 2002 and in the southwestern town of Winnenden in March 2009, both of which were also carried out with legal weapons. The country, which has some of the strictest gun laws in Europe, now requires anyone younger than 25 to pass a psychiatric exam before applying for a gun licence. - United States - Despite a bloody record of mass shootings by civilians, legal moves to tighten gun controls have mostly been limited to state level. Florida, for example, pushed through stricter controls after the Valentine's Day 2018 killing of 17 people at a high school, including a "red flag" law allowing judges to order the seizure of guns from people deemed to be mentally unstable. The state also raised the minimum age for purchasing a gun to 21. The sale and possession of devices known as bump stocks, which allow semi-automatic weapons to fire as fast as illegal machineguns, were also banned. In December 2018 President Donald Trump barred them at the national level. Amid resistance from the powerful gun lobby and with the Constitution guaranteeing the right to bear arms, significant nationwide reform has been elusive although lawmakers last month presented Congress with a bill that would require universal background checks prior to gun purchases. Sources: AFP, Small Arms Survey 2011. British military opens no-deal Brexit nerve centre London, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 Britain's defence ministry has started up a no-deal Brexit operations centre in a nuclear-bomb-proof bunker in central London, a spokesman told AFP on Thursday. "It's a team that's ready to support any action if it becomes necessary," the spokesman said, adding that the new centre has "all the right infrastructure". "As we get closer to a theoretical or possible no-deal, this is the place where the response could be co-ordinated", the spokesman said. Britain is due to leave the European Union on March 29 without a deal, unless one can be agreed in time or an Brexit extension is implemented. The defence ministry in December said 3,500 military personnel would be on stand-by to help government departments for "any contingencies" in case of a no-deal outcome. The spokesman said those troops were now "at readiness". The military's crisis management operation for a no-deal Brexit, which is dubbed "Operation Redfold", was activated at the beginning of this week. The bunker is underneath the Ministry of Defence's main building in Whitehall and is the facility used in times of national emergency, British media reported. Military personnel could be used to help transport food, fuel and other goods into and around the country in case of delays at the border, the reports said. Dozens dead as Tigris ferry on spring holiday trip sinks in Iraq Mosul, Iraq, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 At least 77 people died as a ferry packed with families celebrating Kurdish New Year sank in a swollen river in the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, in Iraq's worst accident in years. There was an outpouring of grief among residents who only this year resumed the annual festivities on the banks of the Tigris after the northern city's recapture from the Islamic State group. The vessel was crammed with men, women and children crossing the Tigris to go to a popular picnic area to celebrate Nowruz, the Kurdish New Year and a holiday across Iraq marking the start of spring. While war and jihadist attacks have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq in recent years, such accidents are relatively rare. "It's a disaster, no one expected that," said a young man who had just managed to reach the shore. "There were a lot of people on the boat, especially women and children," he told AFP. A Mosul security source said the high water levels and overcrowding on the boat, with well over 100 people on board, had been to blame for the disaster. The health ministry put the death toll at 77, after the interior ministry's spokesman Saad Maan said the victims included 19 children, with 55 people rescued. "The boat sank because there were too many passengers on board," another security official based in Mosul told AFP. The health ministry said earlier that 33 women were among those who drowned. - Bloated river - Iraq's justice ministry said it had ordered the arrest of nine ferry company officials and banned the owners of the vessel and the tourist site from leaving the country. The authorities had warned people to be cautious after several days of heavy rains led to water being released through the Mosul dam, causing the river level to rise. Videos shared on social media showed a fast-flowing, bloated river and dozens of people in the water floating in the water or trying to swim around the partly submerged boat. Search operations stretched hundreds of metres (yards) downstream from the site where the boat sank, according to an AFP journalist. Hundreds of people who had flocked to the forested area for the first days of spring gathered on the river banks as the disaster unfolded. Ambulances and police vehicles transported the dead and wounded to hospitals in the city of nearly two million people. Photos of victims, many of them women and children, were posted on the walls of a morgue for families unable to enter because of the large crowd outside to identify their relatives. One man, scanning over the pictures, stopped abruptly at the image of a woman. In shock, he gasped: "It's my wife", before collapsing in tears. IS turned Mosul into their de facto Iraqi capital after the jihadists swept across much of the country's north in 2014. The city spent three years under the group's iron-fisted rule until it was recaptured by Iraqi troops backed by a US-led coalition in 2017. - Fears at the morgue - Nawar, who had been aboard the craft, said it had capsized in mid-stream. "It was carrying too many passengers, so the water began to rush onboard and the ferry became heavier and overturned," he said. "With my own eyes I saw dead children in the water." As ambulances shuttled back and forth to the morgue, three young girls and a boy were huddled together in a blanket, in tears, waiting for news of their parents. Iraq's last major boat disaster was in March 2013 when a floating restaurant sank in Baghdad, killing five people. Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi put health services on alert and instructed all available teams to mobilise to find survivors after Thursday's accident. He ordered a swift investigation "to determine responsibilities". Several political leaders denounced the lack of safety at dilapidated leisure facilities in a country where the dismal state of public services was one of the triggers for widespread protests last year. US sanctions Chinese ships over N.Korea sanctions Washington, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on two Chinese shipping companies for doing business with North Korea, vowing to keep strictly enforcing sanctions on Pyongyang even amid top-level diplomacy. "The maritime industry must do more to stop North Korea's illicit shipping practices," national security adviser John Bolton tweeted after the Treasury Department's announcement. "Everyone should take notice and review their own activities to ensure they are not involved in North Korea's sanctions evasion," he said. The Treasury Department said it was blocking all potential US interests of the Dalian Haibo International Freight Co. Ltd. and prohibiting Americans from dealing with the firm. The United States charged that the company last year shipped cargo from the Chinese port of Dalian to North Korea on behalf of the Paeksol Trading Corporation, which in the past has sold metal and coal to earn money for Pyongyang. The Treasury Department also sanctioned the Liaoning Danxing International Forwarding Co. Ltd., saying it had assisted North Korean officials based in Europe in procuring goods for the regime. The action comes less than a month after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in Hanoi with President Donald Trump for a second summit that broke down in part over Pyongyang's demands for immediate sanctions relief. Trump, while walking away from the talks, has been eager to reach a potentially landmark agreement on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, announcing the latest measures, said that the United States remained committed to seeking a denuclearization deal with North Korea but believed fully enforcing UN-backed sanctions "is crucial to a successful outcome." France urges Iran to free human rights lawyer Paris, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 France on Thursday called for Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh to be released and warned Tehran that its adherence to a nuclear accord does not give it a blank cheque on human rights. "We will do all we can to secure the release of Mrs Sotoudeh", French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told the upper chamber Senate. "She was condemned under astonishing conditions," for "defending the rights of women, in particular those who contest the obligation to wear the Islamic veil," he added. Sotoudeh's husband Reza Khandan told AFP on Sunday that his wife had been sentenced to a total of 33 years in prison over a case with seven charges, but she is to only serve the longest sentence, 12 years imposed on Sunday for "encouraging corruption and debauchery". She has also been convicted of espionage. Sotoudeh has also been sentenced to a total of 148 lashes for appearing in court without the hijab Islamic head covering and for another offence. According to Khandan, Sotoudeh has refrained from choosing a lawyer as attorneys on her previous cases have faced prosecution for representing her. "We have been making considerable efforts in recent months to preserve the (Iranian) nuclear accord, despite America's withdrawal," said Le Drian. "We are doing so because we respect our signature, but Iran must also respect its obligations in particular those international agreements relating to civil and political rights," he added. Last month the UN atomic watchdog said that Iran has been adhering to its deal with world powers on limiting its nuclear programme, as diplomatic wrangling continues over the future of the accord. The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran was still complying with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with global powers under which Tehran drastically scaled back its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief. Last week, European nations rejected a call from US Vice President Mike Pence to follow the US lead in withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal. Le Drian said Thursday: "Our wish to preserve the Vienna accord does not grant carte-blanche to Iran and certainly not in the matter of human rights." Before her arrest, Sotoudeh, 55, had taken on the cases of several women arrested for appearing in public without headscarves in protest at the mandatory dress code in force in Iran. Sotoudeh won the European Parliament's prestigious Sakharov Prize in 2012 for her work on high-profile cases, including those of convicts on death row for offences committed as minors. She spent three years in prison after representing dissidents arrested during mass protests in 2009 against the disputed re-election of ultra-conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. US military chief warns over 5G development progress Washington, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 America's top military officer urged industry Thursday to strengthen efforts to build the next-generation wireless network based on 5G technology, saying armed forces security would depend on it. Faced with a tough challenge in telecommunications development from China, General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said American industry "needs to step up and dominate 5G, because it will be in our national interest to do so." "If we don't get out in front in that regard, we won't be able to trust 5G and we'll be at a competitive disadvantage," Dunford told a forum at the Atlantic Council in Washington. Systems based on 5G technology "have to be trusted," he said, making the dependence on foreign technology -- like that of market leading Chinese telecoms firm Huawei -- a security risk. "This is why I think American industry needs to step up and dominate 5G because it will be in our national interest to do so," he added. Dunford was alluding to negotiations between European countries and Huawei, which hopes its 5G technology, more advanced than its rivals, will be deployed around the world. The US government though has deep suspicions that Huawei's technology would offer the Chinese government the ability to monitor traffic, making it a security risk. The US government has urged allies not to adopt the technology, pressuring Germany most recently to avoid it. "Whether it's 5G or not, today and in the future, our ability and our willingness to exchange information intelligence with partners is going to be based on their ability to protect that information," Dunford said. Marines commandant protests US border deployments, wall Washington, March 21 (AFP) Mar 21, 2019 America's top marine warned that deployments to the US-Mexico border and President Donald Trump's plan for a wall pose an "unacceptable risk" to the force, according to documents revealed Thursday by The Los Angeles Times. In memos addressed to acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan and Navy secretary Richard Spencer, General Robert Neller wrote that he had been forced to cancel or reduce exercises in five countries. Marines will miss exercises in Indonesia, Scotland and Mongolia, and their participation in joint exercises in Australia and South Korea will be reduced, Neller said in the documents dated March 18 and 19. A Marine Corps spokesman confirmed the validity of the documents published by the LA Times. Neller said Trump's emergency declaration to secure $6.7 billion from the Pentagon's 2019 budget for his wall meant the corps could not afford to rebuild hurricane-hit bases in North Carolina and Georgia. "The hurricane season is only three months away... and we have Marines, Sailors, and civilians working in compromised structures," Neller wrote. "While (financial year 2019) was supposed to be a 'good year' given an 'on-time' enacted budget and topline, those positive attributes are now overcome by the negative factors... imposing unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency," he added. Shanahan has not yet released the funds claimed by the president. "Monetarily, recovery for those areas affected by the hurricanes is by far the most significant budgetary pressure listed in the memo," said Marines spokesman Captain Joseph Butterfield. 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Privacy Statement Geneva (Switzerland) March 21, 2019 (SPS) the negotiating team of the Frente POLISARIO has met with the UN envoy for Western Sahara, Horst Kohler, to finalize the preparations for the second round table with Morocco in Geneva, Switzerland. The UN envoy brings together the parties to the conflict to break the blockade and give impetus to the peaceful process aimed at holding the referendum on self-determination. The new round of negotiations is "one more step in the political process to reach a just, lasting and mutually acceptable political solution that allows the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara," says Horst Kohler. Sources close to the negotiating team of the Frente POLISARIO reiterated the full willingness of the Saharawi delegation to work in a constructive atmosphere that could aim to respect the aspirations of the Saharawi people to self-determination and independence. The same source added that the delegation regretted the lack of will on the part of the Moroccan regime and the intentions to hinder the work of the UN. The second round table, March 21 and 23, will continue the first meeting held on December 5 and 6, 2018, and responds to resolution 2440 of the UN Security Council, which urges the parties, Frente POLISARIO and Morocco, sit down at the negotiating table. Other issues that will be present, with Mauritania and Algeria as observer countries, are the challenges facing the region and the need to join efforts to end a conflict that prevents the development of North Africa. The UN Security Council meets in April to analyze the progress made and the renewal of the mandate of the UN Mission for the referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).SPS 125/090/TRA The Ministry of Highways & Road Development together with Petroleum Resources Development has developed the draft national policy on natural gas with a view to establish and develop the natural gas industry in Sri Lanka.With the view of further improvement and development of the policy, Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka together along with The Ministry of Highways & Road Development and Petroleum Resources Development Secretariat has decided to call public and expert comments on the draft national policy on Liquid Natural Gas.Exploratory evidence on natural gas deposits in Mannar Basin and the pursuit of relatively clean alternative fuels for enhancing the diversity of power generation energy mix have heightened the interest in natural gas in the country.First Natural Gas discovery in Sri Lanka was made in the MannarBasin, off North Western coast in 2011. So far, exploratory drilling has made two discoveries from the same block with estimated reservoir capacities in excess of 1 Trillion Cubic Feet (TCF) of natural gas and 10 million BBL(barrels) of condensate.The draft policy explained despite positive prospects, however, Sri Lanka has no experience in natural gas in any economic sector so far and there is substantial evidence to indicate that Sri Lanka can reap significant economic, social, and environmental benefits from using natural gas as a source of energy in power, industrial, transportation, household and commercial sectors and a raw material for industrial purposes.The national policy on natural gas will facilitate the exploration and production of natural gas, importation and exportation of Liquefied Natural Gas and utilization of natural gas as an energy source and raw material; and to establish the legal, regulatory and institutional framework for the natural gas industry in Sri Lanka.The draft policy is available on www.pucsl.gov.lk and the written comments can be submitted via post (Chairman, Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka, Level 06, BoC Merchant Tower, No. 28, St.Michaels Road, Colombo 03), via fax (0112392641) or via email (consultation@pucsl.gov.lk).The oral submission or the discussion would be held on 28th March 2019 at cinema lounge BMICH and interested parties can be participated by registering via 0718622800. English20/03/2019 KARADZIC HOPES FOR A POSITIVE OUTCOME BELGRADE, THE HAGUE, March 20 /SRNA/ - The first Republika Srpska President, Radovan Karadzic, is calm on the eve of a final verdict that will be handed down to him at The Hague on Wednesday, hoping for a positive outcome and believing that injustice inflicted on him will be corrected, reports the Vecernje Novosti daily. Karadzic believes the Appeals Council will correct injustice from the first-instance ruling and take into account arguments from his appeal, having in mind that he precisely pointed to many illogical things and superficialities in the decision-making of the first-instance trial chamber. The first Republika Srpska president, who pointed out that his guilt was determined merely on suppositions, is optimistic and convinced that one cannot turn a blind eye twice to the truth and facts. His brother Luka Karadzic told the Vecernje Novosti daily that Radovan is keeping is head up and that he believes that justice is attainable. He is well familiar with his case, he knows that there were many false witnesses and this is why he is optimistic. He gave us hope in a good outcome of the proceedings so that we all hope for and believe in justice, Luka said. On the eve of a public pronouncement of his verdict, Karadzic sent to the Vecernje Novosti daily four of his aphorisms he wrote at the jail in Scheveningen. The one who swallows his pride in the morning will maybe have something for dinner. A new speech impairment: SPORAZUM (agreement) is pronounced as SPORAZIM (with defeats word PORAZI means defeats), He is a fool, but an energetic fool, and And who stands behind a failed man? Two years ago, Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison by the ICTY for alleged genocide in Srebrenica, crimes against humanity, violations of laws and customs of warfare and the participation in a joint criminal enterprise. Of the 11 counts of the indictment, he was found guilty of 10. Karadzic acted as his own defense counsel but had a team of lawyers who were helping him. He alone wrote an appeal of the first-instance verdict on 2,000 pages, asking to be acquitted of all charges. The pronouncing of the second-instance verdict to Radovan Karadzic will start today at 14:00 at The Hague with a 30-minute broadcast delay. /end/sg Insilico to present at the CHIC Conference Thursday, March 21, 2019 - Insilico Medicine, a Rockville-based company developing the end-to-end drug discovery pipeline utilizing the next generation artificial intelligence, will present its latest results in modern and next-generation AI for Drug Discovery and productive longevity at the 10th Anniversary CHIC Conference in Shanghai, March 26-28. Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques, such as deep learning (DL) and reinforcement learning (RL) play a pivotal role in transforming pharmaceutical industry, making the hunt for new medicines quicker and more effective. The presentation will cover the recent progress in the end-to-end drug discovery pipeline development at Insilico Medicine and recent advances in the generative adversarial networks (GANs) and reinforcement learning (RL) used for generation of novel chemistry, and identification of novel biological targets. "We are happy to present our latest research at the 10th Anniversary CHIC Conference, which gathers the leading longevity leaders. The topic of AI for Aging research and Productive longevity is rapidly gaining popularity, and we are happy to be at the leading edge of this research and one of the innovation drivers in the area", said Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., Founder, and CEO of Insilico Medicine, Inc. The CHIC Conference is the event of the year to meet and learn about upcoming Chinese healthcare companies and industry trends, with senior executives from over 65 of the industry's most influential companies who will share their insights through keynote presentations and candid panel discussions. The event is held in Shanghai, on March 26-28, 2019. ### Insilico Medicine is regularly publishing research papers in peer-reviewed journals. The company was first to apply the generative adversarial networks (GANs) to the generation of the new molecular structures with the specified parameters and published a seminal peer-reviewed paper submitted in June 2016. The concept was further extended and augmented with advanced memory and reinforcement learning. One of the latest papers published in the Journals of Gerontology demonstrated the application of the deep neural networks to assessing the biological age of the patients. The latest special issue in Molecular Pharmaceutics featured several research papers by Insilico Medicine. Insilico published an overview of its results in aging research including the development of AI aging biomarkers, target identification, cross-species comparison and geroprotector discovery in Aging Research Reviews, one of the highest-impact journals in the field. For further information, images or interviews, please contact: Contact: Klug Gehilfe ai@pharma.ai Website: http://insilico. com/ Official website of the conference: http://www. chinahic. com/ index. php?lang= en About Insilico Medicine, Inc Insilico Medicine is an artificial intelligence company headquartered in Rockville, with R&D and management resources in Belgium, Russia, UK, Taiwan, and Korea sourced through hackathons and competitions. The company and its scientists are dedicated to extending human productive longevity and transforming every step of the drug discovery and drug development process through excellence in biomarker discovery, drug development, digital medicine, and aging research. Insilico pioneered the applications of the generative adversarial networks (GANs) and reinforcement learning for generation of novel molecular structures for the diseases with a known target and with no known targets. In addition to working collaborations with the large pharmaceutical companies, the company is pursuing internal drug discovery programs in cancer, dermatological diseases, fibrosis, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, ALS, diabetes, sarcopenia, and aging. Through a partnership with LifeExtension.com, the company launched a range of nutraceutical products compounded using the advanced bioinformatics techniques and deep learning approaches. It also provides a range of consumer-facing applications including Young.AI. In 2017, NVIDIA selected Insilico Medicine as one of the Top 5 AI companies in its potential for social impact. In 2018, the company was named one of the global top 100 AI companies by CB Insights. In 2018 it received the Frost & Sullivan 2018 North American Artificial Intelligence for Aging Research and Drug Development Award accompanied with the industry brief. Brief company video: https:/ / www. youtube. com/ watch?v= l62jlwgL3v8 . http://www. insilico. com This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. . - . . UFC 269, . , . ,... In Transit, based on Anna Seghers 1944 novel, a Jewish refugee from Germany flees Paris as the Nazis begin their 1942 roundup of Jews only to get stuck in Marseille as he tries to escape the Nazi advance through free France. This French/German drama, which played the Toronto, Berlin and New York film festivals, is the second film directed by Christian Petzold that deals with the Shoah. Some writers have described this innovative, moving film as a reimagining of Casablanca by way of Kafka. Like Petzolds previous film about the Shoah, the noirish period film Phoenix (2014), Transit also deals with identity and impersonation but adds an innovative twist. While it keeps the dialogue and story of the novels 1942 setting, what we see onscreen takes place in the contemporary world. That choice serves as a reminder of the Shoah but also that Nazi ideology is still with us and history does not always conveniently stay in the past. It also makes the story modern and more universally about refugees and conflict. Georg (Franz Rogowski) is a German Jew who fled to Paris and seems to have some loose connections to the French Resistance. Just as he about to leave, accompanying a wounded man to Marseille, Georg comes into possession of the papers of a dead writer named Weidel. Among the papers are an unfinished novel, letters from his wife and, more importantly to Georg, transit papers that give him passage to Mexico.As he travels south to Marseille, Georg assumes Weidels identity as his means to escape, but he also begins to read the novel. In Marseille, he starts the process of securing passage and finds himself waiting with other refugees. ADVERTISEMENT As he waits, he meets Marie (Paula Beer), the wife of the dead writer, and Georg is drawn into a series of complex relationships with her and other refugees. The Nazis are unseen in the film but they are an ever-present threat looming over everything the characters do. We hear updates on their approach they are three days away, they have occupied this town, they will be here tomorrow creating a ticking clock effect for those waiting. Connect with your community every morning. Mixing time periods is a tricky approach, but Petzold handles it brilliantly. Scenes are shot in present-day Marseille in neighborhoods with a mix of modern and historic architecture. The actors are not in period costumes but are dressed in classic shirts, suits and dresses. The carefully chosen shots avoid including anything too glaringly modern, like a McDonalds, but freely show modern cars and ordinary present-day street scenes. Walking this narrow line allows the audience to slip in and out of time periods. It is a fascinating, engrossing effect that feels more natural than it sounds. Seghers novel is framed as a story told by a refugee to another, in first-person narrative. Petzold keeps that narration in voiceover but changes it to the second person recounting it to us (in the manner of Stanley Kubricks Barry Lyndon) although we do not meet the storyteller until late in the film. The acting is very good, deeply drawing us into these characters stories and their plight. Rogowski is excellent as Georg, a self-focused working-class man who stands apart from the world and seems perhaps a little shady. Yet as he reads the unfinished novel, he absorbs some of the writers character. Beers is also very good as Marie, who had written her husband that she was leaving him but then wrote again that she had changed her mind. Now she searches unceasingly for him, in part because she needs his papers to escape but also out of guilt. You wouldnt think a story about waiting waiting in line, waiting for papers, waiting for ships would be so tense and dramatic, but it is. The story unfolds like a thriller, but it is also an exploration of a man whose identity is shifting. There is a romantic element as well, as Georg finds himself falling for Marie and struggles with telling her that he has assumed her husbands identity. Deeply affecting, Transit touches on love, loss and identity, as well as serving as a reminder of the Shoah. It takes a startlingly clever approach to telling its story, but not every audience will go along with the device. Some may find the mixed time periods too distracting while others may find linking the memory of the Shoah with present-day refugees unsettling. The Australian-first Aerostructures Innovation Research Hub (AIR Hub) will bring together the best of Victorias aerospace research, design and manufacturing leaders to work with industry on the next generation of air mobility. Saudi Arabia, one of the worlds driest countries, has announced a national program for rationalising water consumption in the Kingdom, setting ambitious targets that include slashing usage by nearly 24 percent by next year and some 43 percent by the end of the next decade. The announcement came at the Saudi Water Forum 2019, held this week in Riyadh, and with World Water Day set for Friday, March 22. Speaking at the March 17-19 Forum, Saudi Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture, Abdulrahman Al Fadley, officiallylaunched the Qatrah (Arabic for droplet) program, aimed at reducing water consumption as part of the ministry's efforts to attain water sustainability, along its official website (www.qatrah.com) and social media accounts. Citizens can pledge to conserve water by registering on the site. With the theme Sustainable Water for Sustainable Development, the forum itself aimed to promote sustainability in Saudi Arabia's water management sector, localize international expertise in the sector, attract foreign investment into the industry, and increase the implementation of state-of-the-art water technology. Saudi Arabia, which has a population of about 33.4 million, is the worlds third largest per capita consumer of water after the United States (pop. 324.5 million approx.) and Canada (pop. 37.2 million), according to the Qatrah website. Through the Qatrah program, the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture aims to reduce daily per capita consumption from 263 liters to 200 liters by 2020 and to 150 liters by 2030. The water conservation program will be implemented by the government-owned National Water Company in all regions of the Kingdom which occupies one of the world's highest levels of per capita water consumption globally, not in keeping with its water conditions, a statement said. The Qatrah program promotes the importance of water conservation, proposes methods for rationalizing industrial and residential consumption and educates individuals on the importance of modifying their own water usage. The rationalization of water consumption, both industrial and residential, is part of the National Transformation Program 2020 and the Kingdoms Vision 2030 roadmap for the future. Qatrah has been established to contribute to changing the behavior of individuals, raising water awareness, sustaining water resources, optimizing water resources through rationalization, and will allow society of maximize the benefits of food, fuel, electricity and water support, as well as safeguard natural resources, the statement said. Water security is a key challenge facing Saudi Arabia and has already led to the Kingdom emerging as the worlds largest producer of desalinated water. According to the Global Food Security Index 2015, 97 percent of Saudi Arabias population has access to potable water, despite extremely low annual rainfall, very high evaporation rates and the depletion of groundwater through previously unfettered usage. Water conservation is far from just a Saudi issue. World Water Day 2019 falls on Friday March 22 and was created to highlight the importance of freshwater and to advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. The internationally recognized theme this year is 'Leaving no one behind'. DEVELOPING TECHNIQUES FOR WATER PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION AT LOWEST COST A number of government ministers and senior officials in the water sector from inside and outside the Kingdom attended the Saudi Water Forum, which is being held under the theme "Sustainable Water for Sustainable Development" and intends to shed light on the efforts and future directions of the water sector, according to Vision 2030 and National Water Strategy. In his address at the Water Forums opening ceremony on Sunday, Minister Al Fadley praised the governments unity of purpose that has been indispensable to the Ministrys success in implementing strategic water projects. The reality of the water sector in the Kingdom requires all of us to work together -- the public sector, the private sector and the citizenry with the aim of developing techniques for the production and distribution of water at the lowest possible cost, Al Fadley said. Undersecretary of the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture, Dr. Faisal Al-Subaie, in his opening remarks pointed out that the forum takes place during the same week as World Water Day, enhancing the opportunity for all water sectors to learn about the experiences and technical developments that address the scarcity of water and resources locally, regionally and internationally. The Forum hosted five workshops on water project management, focusing on 1) the latest designs and operations of membrane desalination plants; 2) the use of intelligent technologies in water distribution management; 3) discussion of Japanese water strategy; 4) private sector participation in water; and 5) sanitation projects. Additionally, Forum attendees have the opportunity to sit in on three panel discussions dealing with 1) privatization and investment in the water sector; 2) the role of society in water sustainability and rationalization of use; and 3) the role of research institutes in water sustainability. RATIONALIZING WATER USE IN THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR Dr. Abdul Hameed Al-Zaraa, Advisor and Director of the Water Projects Monitoring Office at the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture, also addressed the Forum, informing participants about the Ministrys most important initiatives and projects. He also highlighted sources for the Kingdoms water and how they pertain to the agricultural, urban and industrial sectors. According to Dr. Al Zaraa, the Kingdoms water sources include desalinated water, renewable groundwater, non-renewable groundwater, treated wastewater and surface water. In 2016, he said, a total of 82 percent of non-renewable water consumption came in the agricultural sector, while the industrial and urban sectors accounted for 5 percent and 12 percent of non-renewable consumption, respectively. The agricultural sector consumes the most water, requiring the implementation of a number of initiatives that reduce water consumption in this sector, the most important of which are national transformation initiatives to control and regulate water consumption in agriculture and in the consumption of well water, he said, adding that the Ministry plans to reduce the amount of water used in the agricultural sector and increase the amount of water available to the urban sector in 2030. Between 2012 and 2016, per capita consumption of water in Saudi Arabia increased significantly from 237 liters to 271 liters, he continued, pointing out the significant challenges to reducing water consumption. This problem, he stressed, is not confined to the Kingdom but is, indeed, a global problem. FORGET CAPE TOWN, LOOK TO CALIFORNIA Dr. Jacob Tompkins, Co-Founder & CTO of Londons The Water Retail Company, was quoted on the Qatrah website as saying that in Saudi Arabia there is virtually no surface water and groundwater supplies are being depleted. Desalination on a vast scale is able to provide for the countrys water needs, but for how long? The demand for industrial and municipal water is still growing and, at the same time, Saudi Arabia has one of the highest levels of per capita water consumption in the world. Producing water at this scale is unsustainable.... In seeking a parallel for Saudi Arabias water conditions, Tompkins puts the focus on California rather than Cape Town, South Africa, the worlds first city to face a serious shortage. Saudis, he wrote, should look at California where a very severe drought prompted restrictions on supply and warnings of catastrophe. This prompted Californians to change their behaviors and private enterprise and public bodies to develop new technologies and devices that optimized water use. This lead to an amazing reduction in water use of almost 25%, he wrote. Saudi Arabia and California are both prosperous and have a strong focus on the power of technology. But Saudi Arabia has several advantages over California, firstly there is no immediate water crisis so there is time to plan and take action. Secondly, cohesive forces like family and faith mean that there are strong forces for positive collective action and behavioral change, and thirdly that there is an appetite for social change that has a national benefit and a diversification of the economy, he wrote, pointing out that while there will always be a need for desalination, it is time for Saudi Arabia to embrace the technology of the next century, to use information technology and behavioral campaigns and optimized systems to move Saudi from one of the highest consumers to become one of the lowest. In February 2018, Saudi Arabia announced plans to build nine water desalination plants on the Red Sea coast, at a total cost of more than SAR 2 billion and with total production capacity of 240,000 cubic meters of water per day. The project to build the plants was to be ready in less than 18 months. Today, Saudi Arabia has more than 30 desalination plants in 17 locations. When we started InstaReM four years ago, our mission was to make moving money internationally, faster and more convenient through seamless digital payments. Its the whole concept of open money which were trying to par. So, you should be able to send money anywhere which is a remittance platform, spend money anywhere which is a card piece and receive money anywhere which is a pay in product. Our mission remains unchanged, the latest round of funding reflects investors continuing confidence in our business and value proposition. The digital cross-border payments market is growing and disrupting at an unprecedented rate. For InstaReM to continue to expand and stand out we need to offer a customer experience like no other, and so thats our main focus as we move forward. Topcoder , a Wipro company, and the worlds largest talent network and crowdsourcing platform for developers, designers, data scientists and testers, today announced that its on-demand, crowdsourced Quality as a Service (QaaS) offering has powered a three-fold surge in speed, a two-fold increase in the regular work volume, and five-times the risk coverage for 60 client organizations, as compared to those enabled by traditional quality assurance and testing methods . QaaS is an innovative, on-demand crowdsourced software testing and quality assurance (QA) delivery model that combines Topcoders 1.4 million-member community with Wipros QA expertise. Wipro has been cited as a Leader in Gartners Magic Quadrant for Application Testing Services for five consecutive years*. One of the first customers to benefit from the increased speed of test cycles, expand its QA coverage and reduce project costs was Zurich Insurance, a Switzerland-based insurance company. With Wipro and Topcoder, Zurich Insurance has on-demand access to a global network of quality engineering talent that helps us enrich customer experience and drive innovation, said Sajeev Nair, Global Head of Application Development and Maintenance, Zurich Insurance. The Topcoder platform offers a rare combination of speed, quality and scale. The Topcoder Quality as a Service offering includes: Real World Testing: Create and execute test cases, or generate feedback through real-time testing, to validate functional, digital accessibility, localization and UI/UX requirements. Performance Testing: Test the availability and reliability of applications against user and business scenarios. Mobility Testing: Complete functional and non-functional tests, including device compatibility certification and user sentiment analysis. Automated Testing: Build cross-browser, device-ready automation frameworks and test scripts using open source tools. Salesforce Testing: Pre-built test assets bundled with tool licenses ideal for new salesforce implementations, upgrades, customizations and enhancements. Companies initiate QA projects and receive deliverables through the Topcoder platform and crowdsourced software testing (i.e. crowdtesting) via the Topcoder Community and/or Wipro QA engineers, said Mike Morris, Global Head of Crowdsourcing, Wipro Limited. Our Quality as a Service offering is unique: its a scalable, on-demand way for companies to quickly integrate the highest quality testing and QA competencies from a global community of elite engineers and developers, as needed, into any aspect of the software development lifecycle. In the September 2018 report, Market Guide for Application Crowdtesting Services**, Gartner said crowdtesting is becoming an integral part of application testing as speed, new technology skills and customer experience top digital agendas. Gartner also estimated that by 2022, automated and crowdsourced security testing platform products and services will be employed by over 50 percent of enterprises, up from less than 5 percent in 2018. WhatsApp: The trick to automatically deleting messages from your chats Today we will introduce you to a trick Application From Share You will learn how to self-delete all messages from your conversations, so if you still do not know the SUMMONS STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA COUNTY OF RICHLAND IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS Case No.: 2021-CP-40-04853 Crystal Goodwin and Tyrone Goodwin, Plaintiff, vs. Jatorri Jefferson, Defendant. TO: THE DEFENDANT ... All persons having claims against the following estates are required to deliver or mail their claims to the indicated Personal Representatives, appointed to administer these estates, and to file their... Composed of sound installations, photograms and live performances, Claytons British and Namibian heritage is reinvigorated in this eerie space. Visitors are encompassed in unfamiliar territory, an otherworldly environment. Clayton addresses this: there are other worlds within us - internally, the places that we retreat to - the secret locations that we tap in to out of joy, need, love, fear, and I wonder about how we map this to our exterior world. The micro and macro - the Quantum in time, space... travel. These imaginary worlds we create in our minds are echoed in Claytons artificial setting. Libita Clayton, Quantum Ghost, 2019. Installation view. Commissioned and produced by Gasworks. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andy Keate. The exhibition begins with a collection of photographic prints, ghostly glowing images that seem to depict the surface of other planets. These were produced by pressing minerals and personal objects onto light-sensitive paper, creating what Clayton calls an aura radiating from the crystals, sand, shells, rocks, skin, through light and chemical processing. The fragments of matter are - suspended in time like a shadow of itself. These kaleidoscopic images merge the artificial and natural, personal and unfamiliar onto one picture frame. the space A tunnel-like structure then leads visitors into the sound installation. Made from clay, sand and straw, and doused in red light,conjures images of a mine shaft, or perhaps an ear canal. The artist described this experience: the terrain you walk on is uneven and noisy - you walk over mounds of gravel, and the sound moves all around you, from the speakers, and sub pushing out pressure. It is another - non-place - another world. Libita Clayton, Quantum Ghost, 2019. Installation view. Commissioned and produced by Gasworks. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andy Keate. The encompassing experience is a shock to the senses: I realised that for this to exist there would have to be some sort of collective alchemy, Id have to reimagine the gallery space. This creation of an unfamiliar landscape originated from Claytons musings about her recollections of childhood. I was trying to remember being a baby, to go as far back as I could to feel the memories that were evidenced to me in photos. But I couldnt access the feelings really, I could sense them, but I felt a loss - a disconnect to the image.But I soon realised the way in which we gather to tell stories, Clayton reveals, is a group experience, a kinetic and magnetic thing that requires certain energy, a feeling of being comfortable, or a ritual around the act of sharing. This exhibition was the result of a years research for Clayton, but it was important that the process was an organic one, reflecting the ideas of recall present in her work.I trusted that the project would reveal itself to me the artist claims, it meant I could sit, breathe, read, be lost, travel etc..trying to find a way to translate the everything of life - death - family, history into an artwork - a container. Libita Clayton, Quantum Ghost, 2019. Installation view. Commissioned and produced by Gasworks. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Andy Keate. parents Clayton's sonic archive, collected from her trips to sites of significant familial value, particularly in relation to her fathers exile from his home country, explores the sounds of the pink salt lakes in Namibia, and the tin mines of Cornwall, amongst other places. This multi-channel audio installation is a process of collecting and collaging, a reflection of the intersecting nature of personal histories. Quantum Ghost is the surfacing - the material and immaterial manifestation of an ongoing journey - a life journey into finding out, and unearthing information about my ancestry Clayton reflects. This by nature - is personal, but global in the rhythm of movement and migration of the African diaspora. I am part of that lived experience, of that ghosting and resonance. Clayton explains that, beneath it all, this is an exhibition about familial love and the importance of personal histories: its really at its essence a love storyof coming to be out of the circumstances that led to mymeeting. Asking mum; how the hell did you and dad meet in this tiny town full of white people? Can you imagine 1980s Britain - interracial relationship, mixed-race kid - it was a very violent landscape. Libita Clayton, Untitled, 2018. Photogram. Courtesy the artist. here here Quantum Ghost is a personal journey, but also a universal one, of family heritage, fragments of memory, and the importance of constructing your own history. On an intimate level, Clayton claims, exploring the philosophical and spiritual nuances of coincidence and ancestry helped me to navigate this lived black, mixed heritage experience. WWF Image Credit:Derrick Brutel on Wikipedia Like many endangered species, one of the most instrumental factors in their decline was through habitat destruction and change. Tigers are found in the Asian continent.Typically their habitat includes tropical forests, temperate forests and grasslands found in countries such as Borneo, Sumatra and around the Himalayas regions. A variety of sub-species exist under the tiger species. According to Tigers World , theis already extinct in the wild. Theis classified as critically endangered. Other species such as theand theare classified as endangered Tigers, like many large predators act as an integral part of the ecological food chain, maintaining a balance in their habitats. In changing our behaviour to protect tiger habitats, we would have a positive knock-on effect on all other species that flourish in these areas too.Asia is notorious for its extensive population, these people require land to live and grow crops to feed them. Increased demand for agricultural land in the region means many of the forested areas have been cleared, it is estimated that 99% of China's original forest habitat has been destroyed . Human expansion into tigers' habitats decreases the available resources for tigers to live off. This includes their shelter, camouflage and prey. This fragmentation of tiger habitats places pressure on tigers to survive. Along with increased settlements comes pressure from domestic animals. Human and tiger conflict can be common in areas of settlement where people own livestock. Sometimes tigers are shot by local people on the grounds of protecting their livestock from starving tigers. Not only can tigers be shot to protect domesticated animals, tiger skins are are also popular around the world and available on the black market. Tiger poaching is an illegal act, but as the Independent estimated, the net worth of poaching was around 11 billion per year back in 2014 so its still a very prevalent business. This makes poaching a real threat to tigers along with the habitat loss they are faced with. Image Credit: World66 from Wikipedia Like many other species which are endangered today, a hugely influential attribute to the tigers decline is anthropogenic climate change. Rising sea levels are reclaiming much of the low lying land particularly in Asia, such as the mangrove regions. Factors such as erosional damage and fresh water saline levels increasing will alter the equilibrium in a tigers habitat. In turn this forces the tigers to move out of their comfort zone and into areas closer to human populations or lacking in their desired prey.However all is not lost for our tigers, sources actually suggest that tiger numbers are finally challenging their decline. Wildlife reserves act as protected areas such as Indonesia's Kerinci Seblat, in order to remove the threat of poachers and local people competing for similar food resources. However, these pose their own risks, tigers can easily become isolated and then chances of reproduction are at risk of becoming severely reduced. Although numbers have dropped significantly they're still living in the wild after losing almost 93% of their habitat area. WWF also acknowledge there is much more work to be done in helping protect the planet's tiger population. Their own aim is to double the number of tigers in the wild, under their own goal 'T x 2' by 2022 , the next chinese year of the tiger. Act for Wildlife also claims that there has been a 63% increase in the number of tigers existing in wild Nepal. There is a large focus on reducing the human-tiger conflicts that are becoming an inevitable issue in the area, as tiger habitats grow smaller and smaller. Undoubtedly, the biggest and most significant threat to the tiger today, are the human species themselves. Our associated impacts and demands on habitats are so severe, it pushes species such as the tiger into extinction. Although positive efforts are evident and have been made to save tigers from becoming completely extinct, there is still plenty of action required to boost tiger populations and to protect and nurture their habitats once again.Lead Image: Sargasso & Grey is a footwear brand that specialises in making womens shoes for wider feet. Wide fitting shoes are notoriously unflattering and unattractive well, until Sargasso & Grey came along. Launched in 2014 by Katie Owen, this is one brand determined to prove any negative stereotypes surrounding wide-fitting shoes wrong. Katie was inspired to start Sargasso & Grey after her own personal experience with finding shoes to fit. She spotted a gap in the market for wide-fitting shoes and it went from there: I have fairly wide feet, but I also found that my feet swelled up like balloons when I was pregnant so I couldnt get my feet into my work heels. I felt like the ugly sister trying to get into Cinderellas shoe! I went to buy some wider fit alternatives and was horrified at the limited choice. They were all granny shoes! I mage courtesy of Katie Owen / Sargasso & Grey Confidence and comfort Womens comfort and confidence is at the very core of Sargasso & Grey. Katie explains: Whether its a wedding, work, collecting an MBE (true, but not me!),or going for a night out with friends, the last thing on their mind should be painful feet. For Katie, the best thing about creating the brand is the customer feedback. These women have gone through their lives wearing ugly ill-fitting shoes and thought that it would be that way forever. I absolutely love delighting customers and you would be surprised at how much a pair of stylish, well-fitting shoes can make a difference. The personal stories she receives on the feedback section of the website are extremely important to Katie. I had an email from a customer who has severe rheumatoid arthritis (in her 40s). She has a wardrobe full of designer heels which she cant wear any more. She thought she would be destined to spend the rest of her life in ugly flats. Then she found our brand and bought some shoes, which she said were life changing. Of course, its not curing cancer, but a good pair of heels is certainly a confidence booster! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sargasso & Grey (@sargassoshoes) on Feb 25, 2019 at 4:55am PST Female empowerment Another huge part of the ethos behind the brand is female empowerment. Empowering women and making them feel good about themselves is incredibly important to Katie. Women are so strong and so capable but often we lack the confidence to make the best of ourselves and our situation. That is down to hundreds of years of being seen and treated as the lesser sex. Things are not going to change overnight but we can start by making small changes to help boost our confidence, and with confidence comes the ability to try new things, take risks and create change. We create shoes to make womens lives that little bit more comfortable, giving them one less thing to be concerned about so that they can focus on the greater things they can achieve. We are removing the footwear corsets, so to speak! Speaking of empowering women, are there any women in particular who have inspired Katie during her career? My mum definitely gave me my work ethic. She had a career as a physio when we were children. My parents divorced when I was eight and my mum always worked hard to maintain her financial independence and to instil that in me. This work ethic, inspired by her mother, was a huge drive for Katie, but she admits its difficult to find a work/life balance, although it is incredibly important. As a child you dont appreciate the sacrifices your parents make and sometimes my children give me a bit of a hard time about not being around due to my business commitments, so I try and remember how I felt as a child in the same situation, and how I feel now. I do think it is important to find a balance between home life and business life. Often running your own business gives you the best opportunity to do this and maybe this is why we are seeing so many women becoming entrepreneurs." Supporting each other Another big part of female empowerment is supporting other women. Katie explains about the importance of working with other women at the start of her career. She says: "I think it is important to listen and learn from other women and I am indebted to one woman in particular, who has her own shoe business and who opened doors for me. It is so important for women to support and help one another. Hopefully I have done the same for other women starting out in business. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sargasso & Grey (@sargassoshoes) on Feb 19, 2019 at 2:57am PST Not coming from a fashion background Despite running a successful footwear brand, working in fashion wasnt always on the cards for Katie. I got my degree in American Studies from The University of Manchester. Nothing to do with fashion at all! Then again it had nothing to do with banking, which was my previous career for 20 years! However, when she got the idea to start Sargasso & Grey, Katie decided to go back into education. When I decided to start my shoe business, I knew that I needed to acquire some knowledge of shoe design and manufacturing, so I took an evening course at The London College of Fashion. Short courses and evening courses can be an amazing way to help you if you want to change careers. For Katie, style and creating classic pieces is what interests her. I am more interested in style than fashion. I am not one to follow trends but I get a real buzz when I find something in my wardrobe that I have owned for the last 20 years and I know it is as stylish now as it was then. They say that style never goes out of fashion! Top picks So as the owner of a shoe business, obviously we had to find out what Katies three top picks from Sargasso & Grey are. 1. The 'Ava' - A snakeskin and black leather lace up kitten heel. 2. The 'Grace' - A leopard print block heel, with scalloped edge detailing. 3. The 'Sienna' - A camel leather block heeled court shoe. Words of wisdom Finally, what are Katies three top tips for starting your own business? 1) 1. "Speak to as many business owners as you can. Squeeze them for knowledge and advice and that will help you avoid the many pitfalls of running your own business." 2) 2. " There is an abundance of free help and advice for start-ups. Get on a start-up programme such as the Natwest Accelerator Programme (which I was on for nearly 18 months). It was amazing in helping me grow my business." 3) 3. " If you have a business idea. Dont keep it to yourself. Shout about it and get a following on social media so when you finally launch your business you have a ready-made customer base." Lead image courtesy of Katie Owen / Sargasso & Grey To read more from our 'Behind the brand' series, click this link. C-sections are seen as breastfeeding barrier in US, but not in other global communities WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- The increase in cesarean sections is on the verge of a global epidemic. Though the World Health Organization recommends an optimal C-section rate of 10-15 percent, the United States' C-section rate is more than 30 percent. In many Latin American countries, the procedure is sky rocketing, reaching more than 50 percent in some. While C-sections are lifesaving in some cases, they are increasing beyond recommended rates with harmful consequences for children's health. Cesarean delivered children tend to be susceptible to infections, obesity, asthma and allergies. This occurs in part because many mothers are unable to successfully breastfeed them after a C-section. However, recent research shows that this may be culturally mediated. In some parts of the world, mothers are able to breastfeed successfully after C-section deliveries, and this practice may reduce their negative child health effects. Amanda Veile, an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University, and her team report that indigenous mothers in farming communities in Yucatan, Mexico, breastfeed for about 1.5 months longer following cesarean deliveries than they do following vaginal deliveries. Veile believes this is possible because the mothers live in an exceptionally supportive breastfeeding environment. "Moms living in this Mexican community don't have to hide in a bathroom to feed their child when they are in public," says Veile, a biological anthropologist who specializes in infant and child development. "Here, it is a cultural norm to breastfeed anytime, anywhere, and to sustain breastfeeding for longer than two years. And we think that prolonged breastfeeding offers protective benefits that reduces some of the health problems we often see in children delivered by C-section." Veile's research appears in the American Journal of Human Biology's special issue on the evolutionary and biocultural causes and consequences of rising cesarean delivery rates. Veile and collaborator Karen Rosenberg, a professor from the University of Delaware, are the guest editors for the special issue. It features 10 research articles written by anthropologists, biologists and healthcare practitioners, which are available open access through spring 2019. In Veile's study, she and her team compared breastfeeding durations and childhood infection rates based on how the child was born to Yucatec Maya farmers. Following 88 children from birth until age 5, the results show that those children born via C-sections were breastfed for about 2.7 years, whereas vaginally delivered children were breastfed for just over 2.5 years. There was no difference in infection rates between the two groups of children. "What a powerful message supporting breastfeeding," Veile says. "We need to continue studying this issue, but it seems that these mothers, perhaps subconsciously, increased their breastfeeding efforts post-cesarean." Veile says that Yucatec Maya women do experience post-cesarean challenges in the hospital environment, such as prolonged separation from their infants, latching issues and delayed milk let-down reflex. Still mothers overcome these challenges through determination, consumption of special foods, and the use of herbs and compresses. They also receive emotional support and breastfeeding advice from their family and friends. "Now that C-sections are becoming more universal, it is important to understand more about the consequences for children's health in a variety of settings," Veile said. "This includes very rural communities worldwide that are transitioning to increased health care access, while simultaneously experiencing poor community sanitation and the double burden of malnutrition." ### This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Purdue Research Foundation and Dartmouth College. Veile collaborated with Sydney M. Tuller, graduate student in Purdue's Department of Anthropology; Amy A. Faria, graduate student in Purdue's Department of Consumer Science; Sydney Rivera, medical student at the Indiana University School of Medicine; and Karen L. Kramer, professor of anthropology at the University of Utah. Other research by Veile examined childhood growth patterns and environmental health issues in indigenous children as related to C-sections. Veile is the director of the Laboratory for Behavior, Ontogeny and Reproduction (LABOR), which studies maternal reproductive biology and the immuno-nutritional development of infants and children. In addition to Mexico, she has conducted research in Bolivia, Venezuela and Peru. The work aligns with Purdue's Giant Leaps celebration, acknowledging the university's global advancements made in health, longevity and quality of life as part of Purdue's 150th anniversary. This is one of the four themes of the yearlong celebration's Ideas Festival, designed to showcase Purdue as an intellectual center solving real-world issues. This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Salam Shalom, You are a blessing, Jews against bigotry ,LGBT American Jews stand with our Muslim sisters and brothers, We Pray With Our Feet, all messages written on placards. On Saturday 15th of March, NYU Muslim students attended Jummah prayers at the Islamic Centre At New York University to mourn the loss of the 49 people killed at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. As they walked through to the entrance they found Jewish allies lining the entrance with encouraging and comforting placards in an act of solidarity and love. Jews created a path holding signs of solidarity outside a mosque entryway in New York so when Muslims walked through to enter the mosque, they see the support. THIS IS HUMANITY Retweet pic.twitter.com/G1UetqFOZJ StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) March 17, 2019 Rowaida Abdelaziz noted on twitter how many worshippers walked in with tears, overwhelmed by the kindness in their time of grief. A stunning portrayal of solidarity where many have gathered outside the Islamic Center of NYU wishing worshipers words of support and love. Many Muslims are walking in with tears, overwhelmed by the kindness. pic.twitter.com/Lfrmi9hZ2m Rowaida Abdelaziz (@Rowaida_Abdel) 15 March 2019 The event was organised by Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST), a Jewish organisation for the LGBTQ community. CBST were joined by Jews For Radical & Economic Justice NYC, Bend The Arc: Jewish Action, Interfaith Centre New York, NYC Human Rights and NYC clergy. Since a video of the group's Saturday solitary rally went viral its come to light CBST has been attending ICNYUs Friday prayers in an act of love and support ever since Donald Trumps 2016 Inauguration. Every Friday, rain or sunshine, our Jewish family from @CBST stands outside @ICNYU w/ messages of solidarity for Muslims during Jummah. This Friday, Muslims will stand in solidarity w/ our Jewish sisters &brothers at CBST's Shabbat services.Thanks @Ayisha_Irfan for organizing. pic.twitter.com/pS15pdKJCT Widad (@WidadIndie) October 31, 2018 President Trump has been repeatedly criticised for his comments on Muslims, including for comments made in a 2016 interview when he said, I think Islam hates us. As well as in 2017 when he controversially ordered a travel ban against seven Muslim-majority countries. CBST has consistently extended their kindness and love to ICNYU through the holding of numerous solidarity rallies. In 2018 CBST even received a similar show of kindliness from ICNYU following the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. In times of great grief and tragedy the two religious groups have supported one another and this is something which has really touched people. We will continue to work together for a future filled with more justice and more peace, CBST said on twitter. Backpacking defines who I am, says Michael Huxley, a travel blogger and backpacker who has visited over 100 countries in the last 15 years and is the creator of Bemused Backpacker. Backpacking has always been popular, but with a recent rise in low-cost flights, cheap hostels and Airbnb, more and more people are taking the opportunity to travel the world without breaking the bank. Image credit: Bobby Hendry on Unsplash However, the readiness of budget travel is not the only reason why people are going abroad more. A report from the Boston Consulting Group suggests that the millennial generation, defined by them as people between the ages of 16 and 34, are keener than older generations to travel abroad as much as possible. At the same time, the United Nations determines that nearly 200 million travellers (20% of all international tourists) are young people. Many young people think of travel as a way to escape from the stress of the daily routine, experience different cultures and broaden their perspective on the world. But what does "backpacker" mean exactly? "Being a backpacker is a philosophy of life, says Javier Liebana, a globe-trotter who has travelled solo around Southeast Asia. A backpacker is someone travelling long-term that wishes to immerse themselves into a new experience, a new culture, and push themselves. It is someone willing to open their mind and experience how you can live with very little, explains Gemma Thompson, founder of Girls That Travel and a solo travel blogger who has visited over 30 countries. "Backpacking is definitely more immersive than being a traditional tourist, and more challenging as well, Gemma says. However, even though backpacking might sound more familiar to us now than 20 years ago, it is not a new phenomenon at all. Backpacking emerged during the 60s with the popularity of the Hippie Trail, a route extending from Europe to India. Nevertheless, some old-school backpackers argue that the nature of backpacking has changed since then. I think whats different now is that backpacking has become far more commercialised with companies offering you travel packages, says Michael. "You used to get travellers like myself who would buy a plane ticket and see where they ended up. I think that sense of adventure, in a lot of ways, has been lost. However, backpacking has also seen positive changes with the rise of technology and social media. For instance, imagine travelling without relying on Google Maps or being unable to book a flight or hotel last-minute. The trendiness of backpacking has also meant that more travellers are going abroad without fully researching their destination. People have become so reliant on social media and the internet that they forget how important it is to research the country they are visiting, says Charlie McGrath, director of Objective Travel Safety, a company that runs safety training for backpackers. You need to know about the political and cultural situation of the country, as well as its history and religion. That can save you a lot of trouble. Safety is paramount to a successful backpacking trip since backpackers are often seen as easy targets. In 2017, two young Australian backpackers made headlines after they were reportedly kidnapped, assaulted and robbed at gunpoint while travelling through Guatemala. In the same year, a British backpacker and her Canadian friend were found dead after feeling unwell in a Cambodian hostel. However, these are only two tragedies among many positive trips. The three main risks you can encounter are violent crime, disease and road traffic accidents, says Charlie. Another way to enjoy your adventure of a lifetime without any undesirable surprises is to be aware that every country is different. In the West, being caught in possession of drugs such as cannabis might only land you a small fine, but the same discovery in countries such as Thailand, China or Indonesia can result in penalties up to life imprisonment or the death penalty. The Daily Mail reported that Australian backpacker Jake Mastroianni is currently serving a double life sentence in one of Thailands worst prisons after being found in possession of ecstasy in 2014. The problem by taking drugs is that it is illegal and all youre doing is putting yourself into the hands of criminals. Most people get away with it but they dont realise that penalties are really harsh, affirms Charlie. Playing by the rules of the country you are visiting also involves respecting the local culture and their customs. The Times reported that in January 2018, ten backpackers were arrested for producing "pornographic" pictures at a party near a temple in Cambodia. However Michael, who has experienced Dengue fever, nearly drowned in Thailand and has been held at gunpoint in Central America, still believes that none of these events happened because he was in a so-called dangerous country. The media scaremongering gives backpacking a certain reputation but if you look at the actual reality it is not true. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's all about understanding the risks that are out there and being prepared for any eventuality. According to the Office For National Statistics and The Foreign Commonwealth Office, from the four million UK citizens who travelled abroad between 2014 and 2015 (the latest statistics available), only 17.517 needed consular assistance around the world, counting serious crime as much as losing their passport . I n terms of travel safety, travelling the world is relatively safe. From all those who travel, very few get into trouble. Those that do make the headlines, says Charlie. Travelling is such a good education and I would really urge people to do it, besides the risks it entails. Backpacking is an amazing way to push yourself out of your comfort zone, indulge in a complete different culture, discover places you had never imagined, learn to live a simpler life, meet people with similar beliefs or to simply bring to light more about yourself. But the list doesnt stop there. Living in a city like London, we complain about everything, while in places like Cambodia, where people have so little, they are much happier than us. I think that is one of the humbling things that travel teaches you. For me, its a crime not to travel, says Gemma. Backpacking can completely change you and your outlook in life. It has definitely made me the person I am today. Each culture and place Ive experienced has made me look at who I am and what I want my life to be, says Michael. But it can also change the world. If more people travelled there would be a lot less hostility to other cultures and there would be less racism. The world would be a better place, he believes. Unfortunately, The Content Is Not Here You have arrived at this page because the page or post you were looking for no longer exists. Please check our main navigation pages for other content: Home Page Local woman who also lives in New Zealand recounts horror of terrorist attacks remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. MBABANE - Standard Bank Eswatini is demanding over E200 000 from popular RnB artist Tiyas. The real name of the popular RnB crooner is Tiyamike Maziya. The money, according to the bank was in respect of a personal loan it advanced to the award-winning artist. Through its attorneys, Standard Bank Eswatini has since instituted legal proceedings against Maziya where it is demanding E215 670.63. This comes after the artist reportedly failed to service the loan. Loan In its particulars of claim, the bank submitted that on or about May 6, 2016, it entered into a loan agreement with Maziya. The bank alleged that it loaned and advanced to the defendant (Maziya) a sum of E200 000. According to the bank, the material, express and implied terms of the loan agreement were that; It would loan and advance Maziya the sum of E200 000 and that the purpose of the loan was for personal use. It was also allegedly agreed between the parties that Maziya would pay monthly instalments in the sum of E5 188.11. Another implied term of the agreement was the loan period was to be for 60 months. Standard Bank Eswatini asserted that it duly and timeously performed its duties and obligations to the defendant and provided the loan facility as per the terms of the agreement. I would like to congratulate the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on the role it played in making sure that the children of Ekufikeni enjoy their rights like every citizen. The community must also be commended for taking up the initiative and making sure that the children are assisted. This is what the country needs for it to move forward. But this matter also got me thinking about the parents of the children. I do not know how educated the father is but the mother is seemingly someone who is not well educated. But their education is not a justification for them to deprive their children a better life. Most of our parents never went to school but had a vision to allow us to attend school and paid our school fees. It is even better now because parents do not pay for primary education. In my opinion, though, the problem is lack of knowledge of the Constitution by people of this country. Whether this is fortuitous or by design, I do not know. But to me it is by design. I say so because the very fact that the institution that is constitutionally expected to capacitate the people on their rights is not funded to carry out this task. According to the Paris Principle, our Human Rights Commission should be funded to fully exercise this function. But by the design of our government it is not, thus making people ignorant of the Constitution. Therefore, we cannot blame the Vilakatis of Ekufikeni because they were never told by anyone about the rights of their children. I am sure they have never heard of freedom of religion. This, however, is not to fully exonerate the commission because it has also not acted in a way to help capacitate people, especially the leadership of the commission. I am yet to see a report filed by the commission with the different United Nations bodies on the violations carried out in the country and this is worrying. Ignorance Ignorance of the Constitution may be worse with Vilakatis but they are not the only ones. Even our parliamentarians are struggling to follow the Constitution. This can be adduced from some of the submissions they make in Parliament. Or rather they are not able to apply the provisions of the Constitution to the way we conduct our daily lives. Whose duty is it to make sure that they are well versed with it if it is not the Human Rights Commission? Yes they are supposed to read the Constitution but the commission has a duty to educate people on their rights. Surely the commission can have funds to educate parliamentarians or combine with NGOs to educate the parliamentarians at least before they start their work. It is embarrassing to hear our parliamentarians making submissions that are discriminatory. Discrimination is one of the behaviours that are prohibited in the Bill of Rights and parliamentarians should be fully aware of that. I was very disappointed, and I mention it again, to hear them mentioning that our female parliamentarians should cover their heads while their male counterparts are not ordered to do so. To say people should be dressed presentably would have been good enough than to then say, because they are women, they should cover their heads. If women in Parliament are forced to do such, what should we expect from people like those at Ekufikeni? Let me mention now that I have a filial attachment with Ekufikeni. Our Constitution, through the Bill of Rights, mentions that all children in this country should access primary education for free and the DPM has assisted the children to enjoy this right. But I have read in the newspapers that Senator Cleopas Dlamini submitted that some children in the country should now be discriminated. I do not think that a person who is in Senate and aware of the Bill of Rights would have the audacity to say such. To say that some children should be deprived of primary education because they are born from privileged families is not the right way to go. Why should they be discriminated against over their birthright? From my knowledge, discrimination is the treatment of an individual or a group based on their actual or perceived membership in a certain group or category in a way that is worse than the way people are treated. So for the senator to say certain children should be denied free primary education because they are from certain families is not good. This tells me that there is a problem and some education needs to be done because clearly, people are not aware of the provisions of the Constitution. MANZINI - Socio-economic groups have brought a twist to the 2019/20 National Budget by launching a campaign, which if successful, the countrys history books can be rewritten. In fact, in their Peoples Budget Campaign, which they launched in the presence of the European Union (EU) Ambassador to Eswatini, Esmeralda Hernandez Aragones at The George Hotel yesterday, the socio-economic clusters called for Parliament to reject the 2019/20 National Budget. They demanded that Parliament should reverse their decision of passing the budget without amendments, and that this should stand until everybody in the communities participates and brings opinions in prioritising their needs. Equal The Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenbergs budget should remain unapproved until the nation develops a pro-poor and equitable budget to mainstream job creation, equal opportunities and one that is transparent, reads part of the campaigns concept note. The theme of the campaign is; Rights4all and it calls for a national budget that would be pro-poor, equitable, able to create jobs, meet the health and social needs of the people. Jerome Shongwe from the Foundation of Socio-Economic Justice, who introduced the campaign, said the people of Eswatini knew their problems and did not need anyone to lecture them about same. On that note, he said they also did not need to be told where money should be allocated. Further in the concept note, the groups said the 2019/20 National Budget appeared to have adopted economic policies that aimed to speedily raise incomes towards addressing the ailing national economy through increasing taxes and levies. They said the country seemed to be aiming to borrow money from other countries and international banks to support its ailing economy. These measures will worsen the living standards in the country, increase poverty and hunger as bus fares, food and basic family costs shall increase, the groups said. They said those employed would not be able to support their childrens education, feed themselves and cater for their medical bills among other things. They argued that in order to come up with a compressive national budget, all emaSwati should have participated in its development. They said issues of national budget should not be for professionals and elected representatives only, but every citizen should be involved. Argued Again, they argued that a national budget should be developed to meet the needs of the poor and look into livelihoods of individuals and workers. They said it should also support food security measures and seek to improve education and health sectors. It should also have concrete provisions to foster equality, human rights and non-discrimination for all, with special attention to vulnerable people like women, children, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) among others, they said. Furthermore, they highlighted a number of international declarations that were signed by the country, which the budget should respect and adhere to. It should be noted though that a breakdown and further analysis of the ministers budget actually shows that low income earners will be left with more money in their pockets. To achieve their goals, Shongwe said since they had launched their campaign, they would march to deliver petitions to different government departments, including the Ministry of Finance, Parliament and the Prime Ministers Office, to mention a few. Again, he said they would hold rallies in communities to sensitise members of the public that they should stand up for their rights. In the process, he said they would also collect information on what the different communities wanted to see in the budget and that would help in compiling an alternative budget, which they would table to government. Shongwe said they were aware that their campaign might not have the intended effect this year but from the 2020/21 National Budget, they would make sure that the country developed one that was people-driven. Promoted The Peoples Budget Campaign is promoted by COSPE, FSEJ, Arterial Network Swaziland, Trade Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA), Coalition of Informal Economy Association Swaziland (CIEAS) and Diabetes Swaziland. The project got financial support from the European Union (EU) in Eswatini under the Right4All project. International declarations signed: In 1990, Eswatini signed an agreement in a World Declaration on Education for All Framework for Action, where it agreed that everyone has a right to education. So, government should fully pay for primary, secondary and high school levels. In April 2001, Eswatini signed and ratified the Abuja Declaration where it agreed to allocate at least 15 per cent of the national budget to health. In 2002, the government of Eswatini signed the Maputo Declaration on agriculture and Food Security, where it agreed to allocate at least 10 per cent of its national budget to agricultural development. In 2003, in the UNESCO Convention for safeguarding and promotion of intangible cultural heritage, the government of Eswatini agreed to strengthen arts and culture. In 2004, Eswatini ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the budget should adhere to it. The international labour standards are legal and binding instruments drawn by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) constituencies involving government employees and government, where the constituencies unanimously agreed to respect and protect rights to organise collective bargaining for equal remuneration. This includes the right to organise and participate in labour protests. Eswatini is part of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and shall adhere to its protocols, especially those addressing gender equality and expressly mention issues related to gender responsive budgeting. MANZINI Its a sigh of relief for MPs as sponsorship worth E5.9 million has been availed to legislators for them to each facilitate the burial of 20 members of destitute families in their constituencies. This sponsorship literally relieves 59 elected Members of Parliament (MPs) the burden of being undertakers, in their various constituencies. It, however, excludes the four regionally elected women legislators. The sponsorship is courtesy of United Life Assurance, a division of United Holdings Group of Companies. It is a 100 per cent locally owned company and is responsible for all the insurance business which was overseen by Dups Holdings. The policy was launched yesterday. Nelisiwe De Souza, the Chief Executive Officer of United Holdings Group of Companies, launched the Tinkhundla Funeral Cover Sponsorship, wherein her entity sponsored the 59 constituencies in the country to the tune of E5.9 million. Supporting her was Philip Lobengula De Souza her husband and Executive Director of the company. This happened at The George Hotel, Manzini, where the Prime Minister, Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini, was the guest speaker. Among those present were Cabinet ministers in Minister of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs, Harries Madze Bulunga and the Minister of Tinkhundla Administration and Development, David Cruiser Ngcamphalala. Also, there was the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Petros Mavimbela, MPs and representatives of the United Holdings Group of Companies executive. When launching the sponsorship, De Souza said each constituency originating MP shall get access to funeral cover for 20 members of their constituency which shall be valued at E5 000 per person. Our sponsorship to this initiative is that of 60 months of the sponsorship duration; the benefiting member and the MP shall not be paying any premium. The period of sponsorship cover commences April 1, 2019 and shall expire in 2023. The CEO said United Life Assurance shall donate the premiums to ensure that the client was covered. A premium within this funeral cover is E11 per person. When computing this, it amounts to E100 000 per constituency. Once the five-year period lapses, De Souza said: It is expected thereafter that the MPs shall then take this sponsorship funeral cover and ensure it is sustained. The businesswoman said her entity believed such a sponsorship was sowing a seed into the communities and would make a difference in the lives of many members. She said her company had achieved all its success because of the contribution by the public. De Souza said the plight of the poor had brought about the need for the sponsorship. We cannot cover every member of the community for free. We expect members of the communities who are not selected in the list of 20 people to sign up on their own to ensure they are covered. The entrepreneur emphasised that the sponsorship would be championed by the legislators. Such news was welcomed with a round of applause, ululation and appreciation by the MPs. The Speaker said many legislators were indebted to micro-lenders and banks following loans they secured to assist the destitute when they needed to bury their loved ones. He emphasised that those who were willing to be in Parliament for consecutive terms should take the insurance policy. In the same breath, Mavimbela applauded the generosity extended by the Minister of Tinkhundla David Ngcamphalala, who upon learning of the great benefits brought about by this entity made sure that they were also involved. I have already phoned my constituency councillor to request that he sets up a meeting with community health givers so that we could identify the destitute, Mavimbela said. The Speaker further advised the MPs to lead the way when recruiting constituents as delegating the task could be to their detriment come 2023. He further pleaded with the legislators to support the initiative as it was local company. PIGGS PEAK When robbers entered a shop to steal items and cash, little did they know they would go out fleeing. A shootout ensued between robbers and Sigayoyo Magongo, the Deputy High Commissioner of Eswatini to Mozambique. This is said to have happened around Fontotje near Buhleni, at Magongos homestead. The robbers are said to have earlier stolen a Nissan sedan from a soldiers homestead around Msahweni near Matsamo, which is about 31 kilometres from Magongos home. It is alleged that about five armed men arrived at a homestead where there is also a shop, which is said to be operated by businessmen of Asian origin. The robbers are said to have been targeting money in the shop as well as cellphones. It was gathered that they entered through the ceiling of the shop. At the time, Magongo is also said to have visited his homestead, though he is based at the Eswatini High Commission in Mozambique. While the robbers were stealing from the shop, Magongo is said to have heard some noises and decided to investigate what was going on. As he was leaving the house, he was forced to rush back inside due to the sound of gunfire. The thugs are said to have fired at him without any warning but luckily, none of the bullets hit him. When Magongo went back to his house, he is said to have also obtained his licensed firearm. Bullets An exchange of gunfire ensued thereafter and some of the bullets are said to have hit Magongos vehicle. The thugs eventually fled but no one was shot during the shootout. They allegedly fled with cellphones as well as over E10 000 in cash. Though they live near the shop, the Asians did not come out of the house as the gunfire continued. This publication has also established that the thugs are part of a syndicate which also involves foreign nationals colluding with locals, including an ex-convict. Police officers were then called from Buhleni Police Post and they arrived within a few minutes but the thugs had already fled the scene. A Diamond Street building that was partially destroyed in a fire last year may not see demolition any time soon due to the high costs of the project. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic), one of the worlds largest diversified petrochemicals companies, has signed deals with nine construction contractors for various industrial projects in the kingdom, said a report. Of these eight contractors - H K Al Sadiq Sons Contracting Company, Sendan International Company, Global Sources for General Contracting, Al Manar Arabian Corp, Jal International Company, Central Gulf Engineering and Technical Sev (Zain Thermal), Abdullah Faleh Al Dossary and Specialized Industrial Services Company - are based in Saudi Arabia, while The Third Chemical Engineering Construction Company of China (TCC) is in the Huainan province of China. The contracts, signed in Jubail, are for Saudi site projects, reported Saudi Gazette. Sabic has a long history of outstanding relationships over the past years with these suppliers and always considered them as partners in the success that it has made in the chemical industry, stated the report, citing senior officials. "Sabic is now taking its relationship with them to the next level and commencing new long-term alliances to achieve significant values for the companies, its customers and the kingdom," remarked Engineer Awadh Al Maker, the executive vice president shared services, and Nawaf Al Zahrani, global procurement general manager, of Sabic after signing the deals. Al Maker said the Saudi group was committed to fostering opportunities for the general construction industry aimed at stimulating local content and supporting promising sectors for future growth. "By finding new opportunities for SMEs (emall and medium enterprises), enabling local investors and attracting global investments, Sabic will enhance EHSS cultural operation excellence and provide opportunities for downstream growth across the kingdom," he stated. This is part of a national effort to enhance co-operation between the public and private sectors to support local content development and enable Saudi Vision 2030, he added.-TradeArabia News Service Abu Dhabi National Energy (Taqa) has reported profit attributable to equity holders of the parent of Dh398 million ($108.35 million) for 2018, an increase of 149 percent year-on-year. Revenues also grew by 6 percent in 2018 to Dh17.7 billion and EBITDA grew by 6 percent to Dh9.7 billion, mainly driven by an increase in oil and liquid prices in 2018. Free cash-flow generation remained strong at Dh7.1 billion despite higher capital expenditures, which increased from Dh1.3 billion in 2017 to Dh1.7 billion in 2018. Taqas capex was completely self-funded by cash generated from the companys operations and was focused on sustaining and developing its power and water and oil and gas assets, positioning the company to leverage future growth opportunities. The company reduced its total debt by Dh4 billion, and reduced interest paid by Dh163 million during 2018. The robust financial performance has resulted in improved leverage ratios where net debt-to-EBITDA multiple improved to 6.5 from 7.3 the year before. Taqa also reported a strong liquidity position of Dh13.1 billion, with cash and cash equivalents of Dh3.4 billion and undrawn credit facilities of Dh9.7 billion, giving the company flexibility to address opportunities and challenges as they arise. Taqas chairman Saeed Mubarak Al-Hajeri said: Despite challenging business and economic conditions, Taqas financial and operational performance remained impressive throughout the year. We continued to define and implement a growth strategy that took into account emerging challenges while also capitalizing on the opportunities offered by the evolving power, water, oil and gas industries. Operationally, Taqas power and water achieved steady performance with gross power generation of 89,922 GWh and technical availability increasing to 93.1 percent from 92.1 percent last year. Gross water desalination reached 246,556 million imperial gallons (MIG) versus 249,469 MIG on the prior year. The Oil and Gas business achieved average production of 123,100 boe/d, a 2.4 percent decline from 2017 as the company mitigated natural base decline of existing assets with investment in new development projects, the most notable being the Atrush field in Iraq which achieved entitlement production of 3,855 boe/d over 12 full months of operations in 2018. Saeed Hamad Al Dhaheri, CEO of Taqa, said: In a year that businesses confronted challenges emerging from the global energy transition, Taqa has delivered strong financial and operational performance in 2018 with profits up year-on-year and revenue increasing by approximately Dh1.0 billion. In 2018, we successfully achieved a debt reduction of AED 4.0 billion, which was the result of a robust cost rationalisation exercise and operational improvements executed across the organisation. The impressive financial and operational performance registered by Taqa was driven by a combination of factors: strong performance of our Power and Water division; enhanced oil and liquid prices; and the managements dedication towards delivering maximum shareholder value. Al Dhaheri added. TradeArabia News Service Indian carrier Jet Airways has announced a further cancellation of flights, with Bahrain being the latest international destination to be dropped from its network, media reports said. The cash-strapped airline has already cancelled all flights to Abu Dhabi and some of its flights to Dubai, with the airline stating "operational reasons" for the disruption. A passenger expecting to fly out to India (Mumbai) from Bahrain via Jet Airways in April received the following message: "Dear Guest, Your Jet Airways flight has been cancelled. We regret the inconvenience to you and apologise for the same. For your onward connection or for any information regarding your reservation and your revised ticketing details ; please contact any of your nearest Jet Airways offices." Upon enquiring with the Jet Airways office in Bahrain, an official said that all its services between India and the kingdom have been cancelled until April 27. An airline official said passengers affected by the cancellations will be offered full refunds and they can write to [email protected] Planes grounded Jet Airways has been forced to cancel a total of 41 aircraft as it failed to pay outstanding amounts to lessors, reports said. Jet is down to operating 150 flights a day from 450 at full capacity. The struggling carrier is desperately seeking an infusion of cash, and is currently in talks with state-run banks and its Gulf investor, Etihad Airways, which holds a 24 per cent stake in the airline, reports said. Minor Hotels has announced a series of general manager appointments across its Anantara and Avani brands in the Indian Ocean and both North and Southern Africa. 2019 will see the opening of a number of new Anantara resorts, including Anantara Mauritius Resort and Anantara Tozeur Resort in Tunisia as well as continued opportunities at existing properties The Royal Livingstone Victoria Falls Zambia Hotel by Anantara and Avani Victoria Falls Resort. Coetzer Deysel has been appointed general manager of Anantara Mauritius Resort, opening in Q4 2019. Deysel joined Anantara Hotels, Resorts & Spas in February 2016 as cluster general manager in the Maldives for Anantara Dhigu, Anantara Veli and sister property Naladhu Private Island. During this time, Naladhu was voted the #1 Resort in The World in the Conde Nast Traveler Readers Choice Awards 2017 and #1 Resort in the Indian Ocean in the Conde Nast Traveler Readers Choice Awards 2018. Having grown up in South Africa, Deysel's career in hospitality started out leading safaris in Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. He then returned to South Africa where he furthered his career in a number of acclaimed South African game reserves. In 2007, Deysel joined Starwood Hotels & Resorts as resort manager at W Retreat & Spa Maldives, before being promoted to general manager at W Retreat Koh Samui in Thailand. He then held various other general manager positions with Starwood in China and a vice president of operations role for the Naked Retreats Hotel Group, based in Shanghai, China. With a focus on guest satisfaction and a knack for pleasing high end, discerning travellers, Deysels career has spanned over 20 years and taken him to more than seven countries. In his most recent cluster role, Deysel also focused on introducing several sustainable initiatives such as the adoption of Solar Power and the launch of the Minor Hope programme for underprivileged Maldivian students. Joining the Anantara Tozeur Resort, Tunisia, is Lotfi Masbahi, who has taken on the role of general manager to lead the team during the pre-opening and opening of the resort, which is scheduled for September this year. An experienced hotelier, Masbahi brings with him a wealth of hospitality leadership in both resorts and luxury hotels spanning three decades in his native Tunisia as well as time in Qatar, Spain and Germany. This includes a decade with Melia Hotels International, where he attained his first managing director (general manager) role and several years later heading up two Vincci Hotels properties. Lotfi started his career in the industry working in both food and beverage and human resources. He has demonstrated his skill in managing the pre-opening of hotels, notably in the role of opening general manager with La Cigale Tunis Hotel, a member of The Leading Hotels of the World and named Africas Leading New Hotel in the 2015 World Travel Awards. Masbahi, who speaks Arabic, French and English, joins Anantara from his previous position with Radisson Hotel Group as general manager of Radisson Blu Sousse. Laurie Burr has been named cluster general manager for The Royal Livingstone Victoria Falls Zambia Hotel by Anantara and Avani Victoria Falls Resort. A hospitality veteran, Burr joins Anantara from Legacy Hotels & Resorts, South Africa and Zimbabwe, where he was area general manager looking after a portfolio of five hotels. Prior to that, Burr spent several years with Soneva Resorts in the Maldives as the area general manager. Earlier still, he built his career as a commis chef at the London Hilton with tenures at two legendary London hotels The Dorchester and The Savoy, before moving to the Caribbean to continue as a chef. A British national, Burr possesses over three decades of proven success in analysing multinational hotels and resorts critical business requirements, with a focus on operational efficiency, creating unique guest experiences and better staff environments for enhancing competitiveness, increasing revenues and improving customer service offerings. - TradeArabia News Service Marriott International and Dur Hospitality have announced the opening of Riyadh Marriott Hotel Diplomatic Quarter and Marriott Executive Apartments Riyadh, Diplomatic Quarter. The complex is strategically located in the heart of one of the most sought-after areas in the city with easy access to key embassies and major corporate headquarters, just a 30-minute drive from King Khalid International Airport. We are delighted to enhance our footprint in Saudi Arabia with the opening of two strategically important hotels that not only complement each other but also deliver very distinct brand experiences. Saudi Arabia continues to be one of our key markets and we are delighted to further strengthen our partnership with Dur Hospitality, said Alex Kyriakidis, president and managing director, Middle East & Africa, Marriott International. The hotel is inspired by the scenic and fertile Wadi Hanifa, a beautiful desert oasis running through Riyadh. The low-rise hotel resembles the smooth, dry canyon walls that make for a dramatic arrival experience. Once you step inside, the waterways guide the way into the heart of the building, ushering guests through the arrival court into the palm-dotted oasis in the heart of the hotels lush courtyard. Planted cacti, flowering vines, plentiful blooming desert flora and native date palm trees create a soothingly calming ambience, providing shaded secluded areas from the scorching desert sun. Here, life happens against a scenic lush backdrop in one of the restaurants and cafes. The complex is the first five-star full-service hotel in the Diplomatic Quarter and features 80 spacious modern rooms, and 140 fully equipped apartments. The deluxe rooms feature modern decor and ample workspace, allowing guests to stay connected with in-room technology including high-speed WiFi and bedside USB outlets. Guests staying in one of the six Premium Suites or the Presidential Suite can enrich their experience in the M Club Lounge offering an international buffet, hors doeuvre and local specialties 24 hours a day. Sparking brilliance through spaces that seamlessly blend work and play with state-of-the-art business facilities and innovative spaces such as The Greatroom, the hotel caters for the needs of both business and leisure travellers. Guests can enjoy an elevated experience through the Mobile Guest Services, delivered with the warm and professional service for which the brand is globally renowned. Riyadh Marriott Hotel Diplomatic Quarter houses three dining venues: Gojia Kitchen a sophisticated all-day dining destination, a la carte restaurant Mesquite and Agave Cafe located in the lobby. The hotel offers multiple recreational areas surrounded by lush greenery. An open-air swimming pool serves as an ideal spot to unwind after a long day. Other facilities include 24-hour fitness centres for both men and women and a sublime Saray Spa featuring a Turkish Hammam and female and male treatment rooms. Meeting the highest standards for energy and environmental (LEED) Gold Certification requirements, the hotel site creates a protected micro-climate and maximises on environmental impacts. By amplifying useful daylight via a complex reflection process, the hotel can decrease its illumination needs during the day. Plentiful shaded areas and the buildings structure allow for natural ventilation, reducing the need for air conditioning and additional cooling. The opening of Riyadh Marriott Hotel Diplomatic Quarter and Marriott Executive Apartments Riyadh, Diplomatic Quarter marks the fifth collaboration between Marriott International and Dur Hospitality following Riyadh Marriott Airport, Marriott Executive Apartments Riyadh Convention Center, Courtyard by Marriott Riyadh Diplomatic Quarter and Riyadh Marriott Hotel. - TradeArabia News Service Gulf Air, the national carrier of Bahrain, was recently named the 'Fastest Growing Airline in the Middle East region' at the 19th Airline Marketing Workshop, organised by Athens International Airport in the Greek capital. The event takes place annually in Athens and includes all carriers that operate to and from Athens International Airport. The award ceremony was attended by Gulf Airs representative who accepted the award on behalf of the airline. Gulf Airs chief commercial officer Vincent Coste said: This is a great achievement for Gulf Air to be awarded as the fastest growing airline in the Middle East region by the authorities in Athens International Airport. Athens is one of our important European destinations and the route sees steady growth rates year on year. The upcoming summer season will see increased flights to and from Athens as it is a popular route by many of our passengers. We thank the organizing committee of this event for recognising the hard work for the airline and we will always work hand in hand to further strengthen our position in the Greek market." Gulf Air operates five weekly nonstop flights between Bahrain and Athens and provides excellent two-way connectivity between the two countries and beyond. Regional passengers can seamlessly connect via Bahrain to Athens while Greece-based travellers can fly non-stop to Bahrain, with onward connections to key cities throughout the Middle East, Africa, Indian Subcontinent and the Far East. During the summer, Gulf Air will operate daily flights to/from Athens to cater to increased travel demand during the summer holiday. - TradeArabia News Service CANNABIS CORNER: The Legislative Outlook So, not sure where and what cannabis legislation is moving through the statehouses and local jurisdictions? Cowen & Co. shared with Traders Magazine its Cannabis Tracker update - a bi-weekly rolling update on cannabis legislation in individual states. Here is a summary of the latest report, State Lines by Eric Assaraf of Cowens Washington Research Group. The New Stuff: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently signed a bill that eliminates the state's ban on smokable medical cannabis. Source: Bloomberg A bill to legalize recreational use of marijuana in New Jersey was up for discussion today at legislative hearings in the Assembly Appropriations and Senate Judiciary Committees, setting up a potential final vote as soon as March 25. Source: Marijuana Moment New Mexico is poised to become the next state to decriminalize marijuana as lawmakers approved legislation to remove criminal penalties for cannabis possession early Saturday morning. The bill now heads to the governor's desk to be signed into law. Source: Marijuana Moment Alaska Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer (R) signed new regulations into law on March 12 that will allow Alaska residents to consume cannabis at licensed dispensaries later this year. Some states like California and Colorado allow for on-site consumption in certain locales, but Alaska is the first to do so state-wide. Source: Marijuana Moment Connecticut On March 14, legislative leaders announced a plan to legalize recreational use of marijuana via multiple bills rather than comprehensive legislation. Public hearings on the new measures are scheduled for March 22. Source: Marijuana Moment Florida Florida State Reps. Michael Grieco (D) and Carlos Guillermo Smith (D) filed bills in late February related to legalizing and taxing adult use cannabis in the state. The bills would allow adults 21 and older to purchase and use limited amounts of cannabis in their homes or other private places and purchase up to 2.5 ounces at a time. If someone were to smoke cannabis in public, they would face a $100 penalty. The state's House of Representatives also passed a bill March 13 that would eliminate the state's ban on smokable medical cannabis, which now heads to the governor's desk. Source: ABC Action News Georgia On March 5, the Georgia House of Representatives approved a bill that would allow medical cannabis to be grown, manufactured and distributed in the state. Georgia has previously allowed patients to use medical cannabis for seizures and cancers since 2015. In addition, former Governor Nathan Deal (R) signed a bill last year allowing for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and intractable pain to use cannabis oil for treatment. However, it has previously been against the law to grow, buy, sell, or transport the drug, leaving patients on the medical cannabis registry with no method of obtaining it. The proposal would also license 60 medical cannabis dispensaries in the state. Source: The Hill Hawaii The effort to legalize recreational marijuana in Hawaii stalled after a legalization bill did not meet a March 1 deadline to be considered by the state Senate. The bill made it farther than in past sessions, but the legalization effort is now essentially shelved as a ballot initiative is not an option in Hawaii. Source: Honolulu Star Advertiser Kentucky 1 2 3 next For more information on related topics, visit the following channels: The 2019 Human Development Report will provide a comprehensive picture of the many forms of inequality that are shaping the 21st century. UNDPs Human Development Report (HDR) celebrates its 30th birthday next year, and the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) is embarking on a major effort to re-articulate human development for todays world. The HDR came at a turning point in the global development debate, marking a new era in which progress was not defined by economic growth alone, but by peoples opportunities and freedoms. Global development stands at another milestone today: the 2030 Agenda offers a roadmap to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy lasting peace and prosperity. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) offer an opportunity for human development thinking to inspire a new generation of work to revolutionize global development. They also provide an opportunity to rethink development. We will start with inequality. There is no doubt that despite some progress, todays world remains deeply unfair. The prospects of a newborn in a poor country or household are radically different from those of wealthier children. Everywhere longstanding forms of inequality persist while gaps are opening in new aspects of life. The next Human Development Report, to be released towards the end of 2019, will focus on understanding those dimensions of inequality most important to peoples well-being, and what is driving them. The 2019 report will provide a comprehensive global analysis of inequality using a brand-new framework that goes: Beyond income to consider other inequalities health, education, access to technologies and exposure to shocks that are important to wellbeing; Beyond averages to move away from an analysis dominated by summary measures like the Gini coefficient, leveraging new data to paint a more accurate picture of inequality across the planet; Beyond today - taking a long-term view of inequality to 2030 and beyond. Using such a framework will allow the report to tackle emerging challenges, including understanding how inequality in key areas of human development is converging and diverging at the same time. For example, in many places the gap between rich and poor children has closed when we look at their access to primary education. But differences between these children are widening when we consider the quality of that education. HDRO will not do this work alone and the 2019 report builds upon a rich history of producing human development reports in partnership with others. Numerous consultations are already planned around the world including a symposium on Measuring Inequality in the 21st Century in New York at the end of March. The Human Development Report has always sought to influence policy. This year the discussion about inequality will be central on the global stage. The High-Level Political Forum, the G20 and G7 meetings and the first SDG Summit for Heads of State and Government will give an opportunity to ensure UNDPs very own human development thinking helps to shape both global understanding of inequality and global responses to tackle it. We hope that the Human Development Report will continue to evolve as a platform for analysis, debate and policy making, so that human development thinking can guide work for the achievement of the SDGs and beyond. To read more, click here. Published: March 21, 2019 UT Junior Named Best New Emerging Artist at Festival, Her First Public Show One of Nneka Jones goals before she graduates in 2020 is to do a portrait of UT President Ronald Vaughn. Having just captured the emerging artist award at the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, she might be one step closer to her goal. Id like to have my artwork in the school. Its on my bucket list, said Jones, a fine arts major with a concentration in printmaking and painting and a minor in marketing. Growing up in Port of Spain in Trinidad and Tobago, Jones was always doodling and drawing. Her mother, father and three sisters would open their work planners and school notebooks to find Jones sketches serendipitously in the margins. She always found herself pulled to art, even in how it related to her science classes. Id be more intrigued by the drawing of the skull and skeletal system, stuff like that, she said. I just was always pulled that way, and I kept practicing and drawing. It was progressive. Jones explored both business classes and art in high school. She had friends at UT who told her about the beautiful campus and the professors they enjoyed, so she had the University in the back of her mind as a choice after she graduated high school. But at the top of her list were art schools. Her parents suggested she pick a school that would give her more options in case she found that art wasnt going to work out. I thought that made sense, she said. She started at UT as an art major, but considered switching to business, feeling self-conscious about her ability to make a career out of her art. Then she spoke with her professors. They told me that my artwork was extremely strong, and youre very gifted, so why not give it a try at least for one more semester, which she did, knowing she could change her mind after that. Soon after, she attended a faculty exhibition at the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery and noticed Professor Chris Valles paintings. They featured sheets of plastic over the human figure, and I was like no way, he has to teach me this, she said. There is no way Im switching from art to marketing without taking a class from him. I have to. Valle said its been fun watching Jones advance through the foundations program, developing a strong technical background and work ethic. During this past year she has started to combine experimental approaches and concepts that complement her technical abilities in painting very well, Valle said. I am excited to see her continue to hone her conceptual ideas as she begins to develop her culminating body of work for the BFA exhibition in May 2020. Jones is happy she stayed the course. She is active in the Caribbean Students Association, vice president of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and was recently invited to the selective collegiate honors society Phi Kappa Phi. The professors arent just professors. I wouldnt say they are friends, but they go beyond that of just being my professor, she said, citing Jack King and Ryan McCullough, who helped bridge her transportation challenges by purchasing art materials for which she would reimburse them. She is also thankful to her marketing professors, who have given her the tools to be able to speak about her artwork through the lens of branding. As a sophomore at UT, Jones started an art blog on Instagram (@ArtYouHungry), where she posts regularly about her process, not just her pieces. I wanted to get my artwork out there, said Jones. With art, you cant just make it and sit at home and hope people see it. You have to make the effort to get peoples attention in some way. Its paid off with opportunities for networking among other artists and commission requests. When she graduates next year, she hopes to build from those connections and work toward her ultimate goal of owning her own gallery. This summer, she has applied for a marketing internship in New York City, where one of her sisters lives. Jones doesnt have a particular style or medium that she prefers. The experimental art course she took last semester opened her eyes to creating art on different surfaces. She created a self-portrait using embroidery that required a second look to realize it wasnt paint but threads. She used condoms as the base of a series of three portraits to bring awareness to the issue of sex trafficking. Those pieces were submitted to the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts earlier this month, earning Jones the William P. ODowd Memorial Emerging Artist Award. My art is very narrative as well, so faces, expressions and emotions help with communicating a story or evoking emotions, said Jones, whose artwork focuses on social injustices, especially with women. For the Gasparilla submissions, Jones bought the condoms in bulk (which she did online to avoid embarrassment, as well as at UTs Health Center), arranged them in a target pattern and then painstakingly applied gesso (a primer that prevents paint from being absorbed fully by the canvas) in all the cracks and crevices of the condom packages, which numbered up to 300 per painting. Then she waited for the gesso to dry, which took longer because of the plastic packaging of the condoms. It took several coats for the surface to be properly primed before she could then begin painting. It was fun but challenging, said Jones of the time-consuming process. She had only completed two, which took four weeks, and carried one to the Gasparilla preview party, intending to show just the single piece. Based on the highly positive reaction, she quickly decided to add one more to make it a series of three. That was one week before the show. I had to hold a fan over the condoms so they would dry, Jones said. I worked on two or three hours of sleep, but I finished it. It was her first ever public show, and she took home the emerging artist award. It was amazing and much more than I expected, she said. People who had never seen me or heard me speak about my work had their own reaction to it by just looking at the art, without me speaking to them before. It was amazing. I dont even have words to describe it. Jones nearly didnt apply for the show when applications were due last fall. She was slammed with finals and end-of-semester projects, and didnt think shed have time. But there was a small voice inside her, telling her to take a risk. Part of me was like, just put yourself out there, because you never know what could happen. Have a story idea? Contact Jamie Pilarczyk, Web Writer Subscribe to News and UT Life stories Read more UT Life stories UTSAs Tracy Cowden researches how music positively impacts the brain and body. (March 21, 2019) -- UTSA researcher, Tracy Cowden, D.M.A, the Roland K. Blumberg Endowed Professor in Music and chair of the UTSA Department of Music, is fascinated with the idea of music as medicine. The pianist and lecturer studies the ways music positively impacts physical and mental health, frequently reducing the need for pain medication. As a collaborative pianist, Cowden enjoys making music with others, whether in duos, chamber music or orchestral settings. She has presented master classes and workshops on topics related to collaborative music-making and creative programming across the nation. Cowden has also been a presenter or performer at several different national music conferences. Cowden is a Michigan native and first-generation college student. She received her D.M.A. and M.M. degrees in piano accompanying and chamber music from the Eastman School of Music, and a B.M. degree in piano performance from Western Michigan University. We asked Cowden about her research on music as medicine, which is a topic she recently discussed during UTSAs 50th Anniversary Scholars Speaker Series. Can you tell us about your research? This is a relatively new area of research for me, but as a performing artist, Ive been interested for a long time in how I can use my performances to directly benefit the health and wellbeing of those around me. Ive performed in various health care settings on and off throughout my career, and Im now trying to pair that with research opportunities to clarify the connection between music and health. Ive had preliminary meetings with potential research partners across various fields, including music therapists, social scientists at UTSA, leaders of non-profit arts organizations, and medical professionals in San Antonio, and I am very excited to launch new research opportunities soon. Tell us about the most important thing going on in your field that people arent talking about enough. There is mounting evidence of the health benefits of listening to or participating in music making, and yet arts-based experiences are not yet a part of the entire picture of health and well-being in the United States. Sound Health is a new initiative, a partnership between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Kennedy Center, and these organizations are both supporting research in this area and serving as a hub for promoting and disseminating this transdisciplinary work in music and wellness. This is one of the most exciting large-scale initiatives in this work in the United States. What makes the UTSA Department of Music so unique Our students and faculty have such a wide range of experiences and interests, and as a result, they create really interesting career portfolios in music. We have several very entrepreneurial faculty members who work in multiple sub-disciplines within music, and being in such a vibrant city as San Antonio gives them an opportunity to use those skills in vastly different ways. They are always willing to share those experiences and mentor students to develop their own unique path in music and beyond, and this helps our students not only see what is possible, but gain practical and artistic skills that will help prepare them for their professional careers. The department also has a strong focus on pedagogy; we prepare future music educators of all types (school music, individual studio instruction, community music), and they have a wide range of opportunities to practice those skills while they are students at UTSA. How has your personal journey influenced your work As a pianist, I primarily perform with other musicians in duos, chamber music and orchestral settings. Those experiences of working with so many different types of musicians have built my interest in looking at the bigger picture of music in higher education and trying to help all areas within that be successful. I still really enjoy performing, but I especially enjoy helping others strive for success, no matter what the task is. And as a former first-generation college student, I am especially passionate about helping those students succeed. Whats your favorite thing to do in San Antonio? Explore the city! My husband and I love learning about what makes San Antonio unique, and we have enjoyed experiencing new (to us) food, culture, nature, neighborhoods and historic sites in the area. Wyoming Business Tips for March 25-31 A weekly look at issues facing Wyoming business owners and entrepreneurs from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Network, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming. By Kelly Haigler-Cornish. WSSI manager, Wyoming SBDC Network Do you have an environmental, medical, robotic, distributed ledger, cybersecurity, educational, manufacturing, space or Internet of Things innovation? These are among some of the 24 broad topics to choose from at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The good news is the NSF is a granting agency, so they have very broad topics, including one called Other. You may find a topic fit for innovative research at NSF. The NSF Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs fund novel, high-risk research projects that address some of our nations challenges. These research projects must lead to a commercial product or services with demonstrated market pull. What does novel mean? The NSF uses the words game-changing, revolutionary and unproven to describe the projects they fund. What does high-risk research mean? NSF describes this as a high degree of technical risk, that means your proposed research might fail since there are unknowns. The NSF is piloting a new program called Project Pitch. Any small business interested in applying to NSF is required to submit a Project Pitch that includes a description of your technical innovation, the technical objectives, technical challenges, the market opportunity and information on your small business. This pilot process helps you and the agency determine if your project is a good fit, saving time for your small business and the agency. The scientists at NSF will review your Project Pitch and send you an invitation to submit a full proposal for up to a $225,000 grant, or they will provide feedback on why your project is not a good fit. Each small business can submit two Project Pitches per open window, but only one can be under consideration at a time. If your pitch is accepted, then you have to wait to hear back on the full proposal before submitting a new or revised pitch. Small businesses also are limited to one funded project per open window. Does it sound daunting? Your local Wyoming Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Network adviser can help explore the SBIR/STTR program and the technology team at the Wyoming SBDC Network can assist in developing and polishing your project pitch. We can connect you with critical market research, help you define your business model and identify your customer niche. To get started, visit www.wyomingsbdc.org to sign up. The NSF also is offering webinars to explain the new Proposal Pitch at seedfund.nsf.gov/events. We advise that you dont wait until late April to submit a Project Pitch since it will take up to three weeks to receive feedback. The Wyoming SBDC Network offers business expertise to help Wyoming residents think about, launch, grow, reinvent or exit their business. The Wyoming SBDC Network is hosted by UW with state funds from the Wyoming Business Council and funded, in part, through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. To ask a question, call 1-800-348-5194, email wsbdc@uwyo.edu, or write 1000 E. University Ave., Dept. 3922, Laramie, WY, 82071-3922. Did Bing Crosby bring in Barry Fitzgerald's real mother while shooting 'Going My Way'? 21-03-2019 13:08 Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations has produced a special build of the Discovery SUV for the research team over at Mobile Malaria Project. The team will head into the depths of the African Tropics to study malaria-bearing mosquitos and find possible ways to keep the epidemic in check. The off-roader has been fitted with rescue equipment, sun-blocking tents, and a mobile lab for DNA sequence analysis. The entire equipment needed by the mobile research station is conveniently located inside the spacious (1,137 liters / 40.1 cu.ft.) trunk area of the vehicle. Included are a portable power battery, a fridge for biological materials, and an assortment of cases and boxes fastened with belts and loops. SVO has worked together with the research team to design the optimal storage layout for their entire inventory. Among other things, the Africa-going Land Rover Discovery comes equipped with a roof-mounted light rack, a winch, an expedition rack, and sand tracks. During their quest to study malaria, the expedition will subsequently visit Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Namibia. Photos: fourwheeler.com Reporter Artem Sukhanov State and local health officials have confirmed three probable cases of mumps in St. Clair County. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and St. Clair County Health Department confirmed two probable cases of mumps in adults who traveled internationally to India and became ill after their return in early March. The third probable case is a student at Fort Gratiot Middle School in Port Huron. Mumps is a vaccine-preventable disease that is spread through saliva or mucus from the mouth, nose or throat, usually when the person coughs, sneezes or talks. The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine is the best protection from mumps, said Dr. Annette Mercatante, the St. Clair County Health Departments medical health officer. It is important to make sure you and your childrens vaccines, including MMR, are up to date now and before any international travel. Symptoms of mumps usually begin 16 to 18 days after exposure, but can appear up to 25 days after exposure and may include fever, headache, muscle aches, tiredness, loss of appetite and swollen and tender salivary glands under the ears on one or both sides. Mumps can occasionally cause complications, especially in adults. Complications can include deafness, as well as inflammation of the brain, the tissue covering the brain and spinal cord, the testicles, the ovaries and breast tissue. Preliminary counts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show more than 150 cases of mumps were reported by 30 states and the District of Columbia from Jan. 1 to Feb. 28. Before the U.S. mumps vaccination program started in 1967, about 186,000 cases were reported each year, but the actual number of cases was likely much higher due to underreporting. Since the two-MMR dose vaccination program was introduced in 1989, U.S. mumps cases decreased more than 99 percent, with only a few hundred cases reported most years. Since 2006, there have been several increases in cases and outbreaks about every five years. Outbreaks in the United States started to increase in late 2015. From January 2016 to June 2017, health departments reported 150 outbreaks, or 9,200 cases. Mercatante reiterated the importance of overall vaccination. Vaccines save lives, and a fully vaccinated community protects each other, she said. The St. Clair County Health Department offers the MMR vaccine and travel consultations. Walk-in vaccine clinics are available from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays at the main office, located at 3415 28th St. in Port Huron. Vaccination and travel consultations are available by appointment Tuesday through Friday. For more information, call 810-987-5300 or go to scchealth.co. Katelyn Larese is a Local News Editor at The Voice. She can be contacted at 586-273-6196 or klarese@medianewsgroup.com. Penn engineers demonstrate metamaterials that can solve equations The field of metamaterials involves designing complicated, composite structures, some of which can manipulate electromagnetic waves in ways that are impossible in naturally occurring materials. For Nader Engheta of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science, one of the loftier goals in this field has been to design metamaterials that can solve equations. This "photonic calculus" would work by encoding parameters into the properties of an incoming electromagnetic wave and sending it through a metamaterial device; once inside, the device's unique structure would manipulate the wave in such a way that it would exit encoded with the solution to a pre-set integral equation for that arbitrary input. In a paper recently published in Science, Engheta and his team have demonstrated such a device for the first time. Their proof-of-concept experiment was conducted with microwaves, as their long wavelengths allowed for an easier-to-construct macro-scale device. The principles behind their findings, however, can be scaled down to light waves, eventually fitting onto a microchip. Such metamaterial devices would function as analog computers that operate with light, rather than electricity. They could solve integral equations -- ubiquitous problems in every branch of science and engineering -- orders of magnitude faster than their digital counterparts, while using less power. Engheta, H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, conducted the study along with lab members Nasim Mohammadi Estakhri and Brian Edwards. This approach has its roots in analog computing. The first analog computers solved mathematical problems using physical elements, such as slide-rules and sets of gears, that were manipulated in precise ways to arrive at a solution. In the mid-20th century, electronic analog computers replaced the mechanical ones, with series of resistors, capacitors, inductors and amplifiers replacing their predecessors' clockworks. Such computers were state-of-the-art, as they could solve large tables of information all at once, but were limited to the class of problems they were pre-designed to handle. The advent of reconfigurable, programmable digital computers, starting with ENIAC, constructed at Penn in 1945, made them obsolete. As the field of metamaterials developed, Engheta and his team devised a way of bringing the concepts behind analog computing into the 21st century. Publishing a theoretical outline for "photonic calculus" in Science in 2014, they showed how a carefully designed metamaterial could perform mathematical operations on the profile of a wave passing thought it, such as finding its first or second derivative. Now, Engheta and his team have performed physical experiments validating this theory and expanding it to solve equations. "Our device contains a block of dielectric material that has a very specific distribution of air holes," Engheta says. "Our team likes to call it 'Swiss cheese.'" The Swiss cheese material is a kind of polystyrene plastic; its intricate shape is carved by a CNC milling machine. "Controlling the interactions of electromagnetic waves with this Swiss cheese metastructure is the key to solving the equation," Estakhri says. "Once the system is properly assembled, what you get out of the system is the solution to an integral equation." "This structure," Edwards adds, "was calculated through a computational process known as 'inverse design,' which can be used to find shapes that no human would think of trying." The pattern of hollow regions in the Swiss cheese is predetermined to solve an integral equation with a given "kernel," the part of the equation that describes the relationship between two variables. This general class of such integral equations, known as "Fredholm integral equations of the second kind," is a common way of describing different physical phenomena in a variety of scientific fields. The pre-set equation can be solved for any arbitrary inputs, which are represented by the phases and magnitudes of the waves that are introduced into the device. "For example, if you were trying to plan the acoustics of a concert hall, you could write an integral equation where the inputs represent the sources of the sound, such as the position of speakers or instruments, as well as how loudly they play. Other parts of the equation would represent the geometry of the room and the material its walls are made of. Solving that equation would give you the volume at different points in the concert hall." In the integral equation that describes the relationship between sound sources, room shape and the volume at specific locations, the features of the room -- the shape and material properties of its walls -- can be represented by the equation's kernel. This is the part the Penn Engineering researchers are able to represent in a physical way, through the precise arrangement of air holes in their metamaterial Swiss cheese. "Our system allows you to change the inputs that represent the locations of the sound sources by changing the properties of the wave you send into the system," Engheta says, "but if you want to change the shape of the room, for example, you will have to make a new kernel." The researchers conducted their experiment with microwaves; as such, their device was roughly two square feet, or about eight wavelengths wide and four wavelengths long. "Even at this proof-of-concept stage, our device is extremely fast compared to electronics," Engheta says. "With microwaves, our analysis has shown that a solution can be obtained in hundreds of nanoseconds, and once we take it to optics, the speed would be in picoseconds." Scaling down the concept to the scale where it could operate on light waves and be placed on a microchip would not only make them more practical for computing, it would open the doors to other technologies that would enable them to be more like the multipurpose digital computers that first made analog computing obsolete decades ago. "We could use the technology behind rewritable CDs to make new Swiss cheese patterns as they're needed," Engheta says. "Some day you may be able to print your own reconfigurable analog computer at home!" ### The research was supported by the Basic Research Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering through its Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship program and by the Office of Naval Research through Grant N00014-16-1-2029. This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. The first activity of the new WCO A-CIP Programme took place in Sierra Leone 11-15th March. WCO experts working together with the National Revenue Authority (NRA) of Sierra Leone an official A-CIP Partner Administration identified key areas to inform NRAs integrity strategy and action plan, to be supported by A-CIP. In addition, experiences were shared by the Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA) to help inform NRAs establishment of a new Internal Affairs Unit (IAU). Seventeen key recommendations were made following two meetings of the IAU Working Committee. The meetings were attended by senior staff members from a cross section of NRA departments who provided active and constructive contributions allowing for a critical review of the integrity and anti-corruption agenda. This first scoping mission provided the opportunity to define a clearer roadmap for future activities to better implement the Revised Arusha Declaration, and to strengthen NRAs capacity to establish a new Internal Affairs Unit. The mission was a successful start for the A-CIP Programme in Sierra Leone and an excellent example for future actions under A-CIP. Launched in January 2019, the Anti-Corruption and Integrity Promotion (A-CIP) Programme seeks to enable Customs administrations to combat corruption. The Programme aims to help Administrations strengthen their capacity to fight corruption while concurrently improving the business environment for cross-border trade for selected WCO member countries. The countries participating in this new Programme are: Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Ghana, Lebanon, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Tunisia. Financed by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), the A-CIP Programme supports these beneficiary countries in implementing new measures to fight corruption and promote integrity in accordance with the ten areas of the Revised Arusha Declaration. Other WCO members have shown interest in the Programme, and A-CIP is open to support from other donors which could enable more WCO Members to benefit from the Programmes targeted technical assistance and capacity building. For more details, please contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org Fort Polk, LA (71446) Today Cloudy. Morning high of 61F with temps falling to near 50. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Evening clouds will give way to clearing overnight. Low 37F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Email To : Multiple e-mail addresses must be separated with a comma character(maximum 200 characters) Email To is required. Your Full Name: (optional) Your Email Address: Your Email Address is required. By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 21, 2019 | 09:59 AM | MARSHALL COUNTY A man was arrested Wednesday on methamphetamine and other charges. According to the Marshall County Sheriff's Office, a deputy was traveling behind a vehicle on Gilbertsville Highway. The vehicle allegedly pulled into the same address where the deputy was going to serve a warrant. The deputy made contact with a man that got out of the vehicle, who was later identified as Douglas Hargrove. According to the deputy, Hargrove became nervous and appeared to be under the influence of some type of intoxicant. When the deputy asked for identification, he noticed a pipe with Hargrove's wallet when he pulled it out of his pocket. As a result of the investigation, Hargrove was placed under arrest and charged with DUI, possession of methamphetamine, possession of drug paraphernalia and tampering with physical evidence. He was lodged in the Marshall County Detention Center. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 19:42:28|Editor: ZX Video Player Close SUVA, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Fiji highly appreciates the work that has been done by a group of Chinese experts to train the Fijian naval personnel to operate the China-aided hydrographic survey vessel which was handed over to the Fijian Navy last December. Speaking at a grand farewell ceremony held on Wednesday in a Fijian naval base in Suva, capital of the island nation, Minister for Fiji's Defense, National Security and Foreign Affairs Inia Seruiratu highly commended the Chinese experts for their expertise and efforts. "The four months was a short time to conduct the training, however, the Chinese expert team delivered results as expected from a highly skilled and experienced team. I commend your expertise and efforts," he said. On behalf of the Fijian government and the people, the minister also expressed sincere appreciation to the Chinese government for the donation of the hydrographic survey vessel, and the Chinese training team who has successfully completed the four-month training of the vessel. "It is indeed a privilege for Fiji and the Fijian Navy to have received a vessel that is modern, skilfully designed and with due respect, unrivalled in the history of the Fijian Navy," he said. "It is a testament to the growing enhanced relationship between our two nations Fiji and China which is based on mutual respect and understanding." He hailed the donation of the vessel as "an indication of our close relationship and partnership in maritime sovereignty and security," saying that the huge contribution from China will always be remembered in the South Pacific island nation. For his part, Chinese Ambassador to Fiji Qian Bo said that the practice of the military-to-military cooperation has demonstrated that such cooperation has been fruitful and much more should be done to carry the cooperation forward. "China is committed to world peace and regional stability. China is quite willing to work with Fiji to take our comprehensive strategic partnership to new heights," he said. Meanwhile, Shi Yong, chief of the Chinese training team, told Xinhua that thanks to diligence and cooperation of the Fijian Navy, the training has been going on smoothly and the Fijian Navy leadership is satisfied with the quality of the ship and the training. "We will never forget the days and nights of the four months as we have worked together with our Fijian counterparts. We have learnt from each other and helped each other. And the most important thing is both of us have gained friendship, the friendship between us, the friendship between our two navies and the friendship between our two countries," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 22:43:28|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close JUBA, March 20 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan said on Wednesday the much-awaited Transitional Unity Government (TGoNU) will be formed in May, amid doubts by the opposition who cite delays in unifying the army and determining number of states and boundaries. Michael Makuei Lueth, minister of information, told Xinhua that the TGoNU will be formed despite delays by the warring parties to agree on cantonment, unifying of their forces, and number of states and boundaries. "Even if the unification of forces have not been completed by May, the TGoNU will just go on," he said in Juba. He said failure to agree with the opposition groups on exact figures of their forces has caused delays in setting up of cantonment sites. "They (cantonment sites) have not been established for various reasons, including failure of the opposition to give the government exact figures of their forces. The figures which they gave us are not correct," said Makuei. Manawa Peter Gatkuoth, deputy chairperson of information of the main rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-In-Opposition (SPLM-IO), recently said the TGoNU may not be formed in May when the pre-transitional period ends, citing delays in setting up of cantonment sites, training and deployment of the unified forces. Gatkuoth also added that it was not viable to form the unity government, without allowing the recently established International Boundaries Commission (IBC) to first determine the number of states and boundaries. But Makuei disclosed that lack of funds have delayed implementation of the transitional security arrangements which include screening of the forces before they are integrated into the national army. "The soldiers should have been by now deployed to their respective units," he said. President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar signed the revitalized peace agreement mediated by regional leaders in late September in 2018 in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa to end five years of conflict. South Sudan descended into civil war in late 2013, and the conflict has created one of the fastest growing refugee crises in the world. The UN estimates that about four million South Sudanese have been displaced internally and externally. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-20 23:53:50|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close MANILA, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has dissolved the government panel negotiating peace with the leftist rebels, driving another nail into the coffin of peace talks between the Duterte administration and the insurgents. The panel was chaired by Philippine Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello. In letters addressed to Bello and the four panel members dated March 18, the Office of the President said their appointments are now terminated since Duterte already ordered the scrapping of the talks in November 2017. The letters, signed by Philippine Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea, said "by order of the president", the termination of their designation is "effective immediately". "To ensure uninterrupted delivery of public service, you are hereby directed to turn over all official documents, papers and properties in your possession to the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity," the letter read. In November 2017, Duterte formally terminated the government's peace negotiation with leftist rebels. He said the leftist rebels "failed to show its sincerity and commitment in pursuing genuine and meaningful peace negotiations as its engaged in acts of violence and hostilities." The leftist rebels have been trying to overthrow the government since 1969. The conflict peaked in the 1980s, under the repressive government of Ferdinand Marcos. However, military operation coupled with an internal split crippled the underground organization. The number of guerrillas dwindled from 26,000 in the mid-1980s to less than 4,000, according to military estimates. The military still considers the rebel forces a threat to national security, adding that an "all-out war" is necessary to deal a fatal blow to the rebels who refused to talk peace with the Duterte administration. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 00:39:13|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close TUNIS, March 20 (Xinhua) -- On the 63rd anniversary of Tunisia's independence day, President Beji Caid Essebsi urged Wednesday the political class to bear responsibilities to solve "the real problems of the country". "The political class must show responsibility," said Tunisian president on Wednesday during a ceremony held at the Carthage Palace in the presence of many ministers, political leaders and members of civil society. According to the president, the celebration of March 20 is an opportunity to recall the "enormous sacrifices" made by the Tunisian people in all the crises experienced by the country, especially since national unity has succeeded in overcoming difficulties. "The political disagreement does not serve the interest of Tunisia; it complicates the situation," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 00:39:14|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close WARSAW, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The next European Union budget could bring up to 8 billion euros (9 billion U.S. dollars) in funds for Poland to fight smog, Polish media reported on Wednesday. Gazeta Wyborcza, one of the largest Polish newspapers quotes documents from the European Commission it has seen, which indicate this sum could be available to finance Polish efforts to fight smog under the next EU Budget, covering the period 2021-2027. "The Polish economy is one of the least effective in terms of CO2 emissions," writes the European Commission document. This money would be added to the already substantial financial commitments made by the Polish government and various local authorities to combating smog. Last year, the central government launched the "Clean Air" program which would make 103 billion zloty (27 billion US dollars) available - via grants and loans - over 12 years for exchanging polluting household stoves and the thermo-modernisation of buildings. The newspaper notes, however, that only 147 contracts were signed with beneficiaries under the national program since the call for projects was launched last September and that the European Commission has called for simplifying the procedures for accessing the funds under "Clean Air". The burning of poor quality coal or even trash in old household boilers is considered to be one of the main causes of smog in the Polish capital and elsewhere around the country. According to the World Health Organisation, 33 out of the most polluted 50 cities in the EU are located in Poland. In many cities, the number of days when the average daily concentration of PM10 is above the limit exceeds one third of the year. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 02:54:44|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close JERUSALEM, March 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Wednesday, and vowed to increase pressure against Iran. Pompeo praised the warm ties between Israel and the White House, publicly stressing Trump administration's support to Netanyahu in the latter's tight re-election campaign. Speaking in joint remarks after their meeting in Jerusalem, Pompeo praised the "unparalleled" U.S. military support for Israel. "With the threats of annihilation that Iran is making against Israel, we are committed to Israel's security and its right to self-defense," he said. "With rocket threats from Gaza and threats from the north, we are proud to stand by your side," he added. Pompeo said the purpose of the visit was to harden the pressure against Israel's arch-enemy, Iran. He hailed February's conference in Warsaw on the Middle East as "a historic conference," saying "Arab leaders and Israel discussed terrorism and how to stop Iran's campaign of destruction in the region." Netanyahu, on his side, used the opportunity to urge the international community to recognize Israel's sovereignty in the annexed Golan Heights, an original Syrian territory. Israel seized the land in a war in 1967 and annexed it in the 1980s, but the international community has never recognized the move. "Time had come for the international community to recognize the Israeli presence in the Golan Heights and the fact that the Golan will always remain part of Israel," Netanyahu told Pompeo. "Only last week, we exposed Hezbollah's efforts, backed by Iranian funding, to establish a military base in Syria on the border of the Golan Heights," Netanyahu said. On March 11, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham toured the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and vowed to lobby the White House to acknowledge the disputed territory as part of Israel. Earlier on Wednesday, the White House issued a statement saying Trump will host the prime minister at the White House next week. Netanyahu is seeking to be re-elected for a fifth term in the April 9 elections but he faces a tough fight from Israel's former Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz, and a series of allegations over fraud and bribery. On Feb. 28, Israel's Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit said he intends to indict Netanyahu on three separate corruption cases, pending a hearing that will be held after the elections. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 03:44:56|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close VILNIUS, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said on Wednesday that Lithuania attaches great importance to constructive relations and practical cooperation with China. Skvernelis made the remarks when he met with Chinese Ambassador to Lithuania Shen Zhifei to discuss bilateral cooperation and other issues of relevance. "China is definitely our most important trading partner in Asia. The cooperation between Lithuania and China in the field of agriculture is of particular significance," said Skvernelis, adding that Lithuania regards China as one of the priority export markets for Lithuanian food industry. The prime minister said that Lithuania is seeking to expand its cooperation with China in the areas of cargo transit, agriculture, financial technology, tourism, science and culture. The Chinese ambassador emphasized that China will always be a partner of Lithuania and pose no threat to Lithuania. China will promote the policy of opening up, which will bring more opportunities for Lithuania. The ambassador hoped that Lithuania will keep its market open and build a level playing field and a fair business environment for all companies and foreign investors seeking to develop in Lithuania. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 04:20:04|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close TIRANA, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Albanian police seized 328 kg of cannabis and arrested 10 people involved in drug trafficking in Vlora district, southwest of the country, police said in a statement on Wednesday. After 72 hours of work, police concluded the operation dubbed "Petruna" with the arrest of 10 people, who acted as a criminal group in drug trafficking and the 328 kg of cannabis were found hidden in two rubber boats in Petruna bay in Karaburun Peninsula. According to the statement, 80 police officers took part in the operation. The police said that they were trying to identify the suspects and the search for other persons involved in this criminal activity is underway. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 04:55:14|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close MINSK, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Belarus-China car maker BelGee planned to start the production of executive-class sedans, BelGee Acting Director General Gennady Svidersky told local media on Wednesday. The official said the plant is working on new modifications of cars. It will be the executive-class sedan, the car of the new generation Geely Emgrand GT, he added. Svidersky said the company plans to produce the first 100 cars and study the demand in the second half of 2019. The joint venture has already produced a total of 11,200 cars of three models, including Geely Atlas, Geely Emgrand X7 and Geely Emgrand 7. More than half of the cars were exported to Russia, where 50 dealer centers have been opened. Svidersky said the company plans to export cars to Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Moldova and Serbia. The plant plans to produce 20,000 cars in 2019, he added. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 06:45:34|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close LONDON, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The South China Sea needs peace rather than conflict, stability rather than turbulence and it serves the interests of not only countries in the region but also all the countries in the world, Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming said in a signed article published in The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday. In the article entitled with "'Gunboat diplomacy' does not promote peace", Liu said it is vital that countries outside the region come to recognize how important this is to all people, and contribute to the peace and stability of the South China Sea, rather than doing the opposite. As asserting their nation's right to freedom of navigation has long been an excuse for certain Western politicians to "flex their military muscles by sending naval vessels to the South China Sea", the Chinese diplomat stressed that freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is already protected under international law. "Every year, more than 100,000 merchant vessels, which between them account for one third of the world's seaborne trade, pass through the South China Sea. Never has any single one of them been interrupted or impeded," he said. Citing the example that the majority of the goods traded between Britain and China, which last year topped 80 billion U.S. dollars for the first time, was shipped through the South China Sea, Liu said there can be no doubt that the South China Sea has the world's "busiest, safest and freest" shipping lanes. "Those who keep calling 'freedom of navigation' in the South China Sea an issue are therefore, as a Chinese adage so aptly describes, 'worrying about troubles of their own imagination'," he wrote. The situation in the South China Sea is not as unstable as is often claimed, the Chinese ambassador said, arguing that the only way to a proper settlement is through negotiation and consultation on the basis of the free will and sovereign equality of the parties concerned, which is exactly what China and other nations have been working towards. He recalled that over the years, China and members of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have been working actively to address the South China Sea issue, stressing that the relevant disputes have not affected the development of bilateral relations between China and other states in the region, but prompting the parties to sit down together and discuss plans to achieve stability and safeguard peace. Liu denounced the behavior of other countries who choose to send warships on so-called "freedom of navigation" operations. He said the South China Sea is more than three million square kilometers in area and has numerous shipping lanes. However, some still choose to steer their navy warships close to the waters adjacent to China's islands and reefs or even illegally enter China's territorial waters. "These moves flagrantly infringe upon China's sovereignty and maritime rights, deliberately drive a wedge between China and its neighbors, and exacerbate regional tensions," he wrote. "If these acts of gunboat diplomacy, motivated by a Cold War mentality, are not deliberate attempts to stir up trouble then I don't know what is. The world must say no to these hegemonic actions," said the diplomat, stressing that "freedom of navigation" is not a license to do whatever one wants. "The UK plans to build a 'global Britain' after Brexit. My understanding of the word 'global' entails strategic thinking and a broad vision. It means active contribution to world peace and development, rather than the old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy," Liu said, suggesting that Britain should be able to make a choice that can stand the test of time as a country of vision and wisdom. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 08:10:50|Editor: Liu Video Player Close LOS ANGELES, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Two isolated mountain lion populations in U.S. southern California's Santa Ana and Santa Monica Mountains are at risk of local extinction, perhaps as soon as within 50 years, according to a study published in the journal Ecological Applications. The study showed the extinction risk is due to low genetic diversity and mortality that affects the stability of the population, said a release of the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) on Wednesday. Mountain lion mortality is often caused by humans, but can also result from changes in the environment, such as wildfire and fluctuations in prey density. The two mountain lion populations in the human-dominated landscape of southern California are isolated by freeways and development. For the study, lead author John Benson of the University of Nebraska and co-authors at other universities and institutions including the University of California, Los Angeles, UC Davis, the National Park Service and the University of Washington, used population viability modeling to predict the possibilities of extinction from genetic and demographic risk factors. "It's easy to read our paper as yet another pessimistic story about wildlife threatened by human actions -- and in a sense that is true," said Benson. "However, there is also a more optimistic message in that our model predicted that these populations can persist with relatively modest increases in landscape connectivity. If we can maintain healthy populations of mountain lions -- a species that roams widely and requires such large spaces -- here in greater Los Angeles, that bodes well for our ability to conserve large carnivores anywhere," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 10:16:08|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close by Zhang Jianhua, Wang Shan VIENTIANE, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Ducks are paddling around in a pool of water near Sun Paper Holdings Laos Co., Ltd (Sun Paper Laos), and moving closer, you even can see beautiful goldfish swimming in the pond. Don't mistake it for a natural pond; it is the drainage outlet of Sun Paper Laos which is a wholly-owned company of Shandong Sun Paper Group, one of China's top 500 enterprises. Located in Xepon, Savannakhet Province, some 410 km east of the Lao capital Vientiane, Sun Paper Laos has always attached great importance to local environment protection since it was established in 2008. Chen Wenjun, general manager of the company, told Xinhua that while ensuring all emission data meet requirements, keeping fish and ducks in the outlet has made locals and visitors to get a better understanding of the company's efforts in environment protection. Undertaking the "Forest-Pulp-Paper Integration" project in Laos, Sun Paper Laos has planted 32,000 hectares of pulp forest and 6,450 hectares of cooperative forest in the country since its operation more than a decade ago. It has also used tree barks, wood chips and waste liquid to generate electricity for itself, and extra electricity has been sold to Electricite du Laos, the Lao electricity supply company, with 10 million kilowatt-hours monthly. "Although there is some profit made from power generation, the construction cost of a power station is much higher," Chen Wenjun said. He noted that what they want to achieve in doing so is waste utilization and emission reduction so as to better protect environment. Just like Sun Paper Laos, other Chinese enterprises in Laos under the framework of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative also attach great importance to local environment protection while operating in the country. The contractors of the six sections of the China-Laos railway project have been doing their best to build a "green railway" in the country since construction began in December 2016. "Every Chinese railway engineering company has set up leading teams in charge of the environment protection, striving for construction progress and environment protection at the same time," said Xiao Qianwen, a member of the joint working committee of the China-Laos railway. In the northernmost section of the China-Laos railway, China Railway No. 5 Engineering Group (CREC-5) has planted various kinds of vegetation such as local ixora chinensis lam, winter jasmine, axonopus compressus and tea trees on roadbeds and tunnel slopes. In the middle section, Sinohydro Bureau 10 Co., LTD is responsible for the construction of the fifth section. As the project headquarters is located in Vang Vieng, a tourist town in Laos, the project base camp always ensures that construction and other activities do not affect local tourism and landscapes. The sewage control system in the camp area is inspected and maintained by special personnel on a daily basis to ensure normal operation, and dustbins are well placed to facilitate collection of garbage there. Effective sewage sedimentation tanks and clean-water reservoirs are built in concrete mixing stations as well as tunnels for sewage collection and treatment. The sixth section of the southernmost part of the China-Laos railway, constructed by the CREC-2, is located in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. Based on the environment protection experience of the railway connecting two famous Chinese tourist cities -- Hangzhou and Huangshan, Chinese builders here have made full use of local vegetation on both sides of the line when restoring ecological environment. They have also creatively designed greening schemes at each station to realize harmony between greening effect and surrounding scenery. Noting the fragile ecological environment along the China-Laos railway, Xiao said that the project has so far accomplished many "impossibles," including in environment protection, in the eyes of local people. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 10:31:12|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close KIEV, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The upcoming Canton Fair in China's Guangdong Province will become a driver for bilateral economic cooperation between Ukraine and China, said a Ukrainian official here Wednesday. "This is an extremely important event that gives Ukrainian companies the opportunity to show their ability to sell goods and services, as well as to see the latest global trends in the trade sector," said Yaroslav Sydorovych, chief of the Head Department for Introduction of Reforms at Ukraine's presidential administration, when addressing the promotion conference for the 125th Canton Fair. The 125th Canton Fair will be held in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province between April 15 and May 5, which is expected to draw more than 25,000 exhibitors and about 200,000 buyers from some 200 countries and regions. Ukraine wants to show its potential in such areas as agriculture, information technologies, industrialization, infrastructure and tourism at the fair, Sydorovych emphasized. The fair would be an important tool to further boost trade and business ties between China and Ukraine, said Gennady Chizhikov, president of the non-governmental Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "China for the Ukrainian business is very significant," Chizhikov noted, adding that Ukraine is "looking with an interest for opportunities to build connections for cooperation with this country." During the promotion conference, China Foreign Trade Center, the organizer of the fair, signed a memorandum on cooperation with Chinese Commerce Association in Ukraine and renewed a memorandum on cooperation with the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The conference attracted more than 200 guests including Ukrainian officials and businessmen, representatives of China Foreign Trade Center, the Chinese Embassy in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Chinese Commerce Association in Ukraine. Launched in 1957 by the Chinese government, the Canton Fair is held biannually every spring and autumn. The exhibition is widely seen as a barometer of China's trade. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 11:11:22|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close MEXICO CITY, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Wednesday that Mexico and the United States have made progress on a development plan to invest 10 billion U.S. dollars in southern Mexico and Central America. He said that the progress was made through his meeting on Tuesday with Jared Kushner, a senior advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump. "We basically (addressed) the issue of cooperation for development, so that we can sign a bilateral agreement to guarantee investments in Central America and the country, in the amount of 10 billion U.S. dollars," he said. The president explained that the investments aim "to have jobs, to have work and that migration becomes optional, voluntary, not forced due to lack of opportunities or violence." The idea is "to have investments, generate jobs and drive economic growth, not only in Mexico, but also in Central American countries," he noted. During a press conference, Lopez Obrador said his meeting with Kushner was positive and done "on good terms." He added that Mexico seeks to maintain a respectful and friendly bilateral relationship with the United States, as well as sealing the cooperation agreement for development in Central America and Mexico. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 11:21:23|Editor: Xiaoxia Video Player Close A policeman stands guard near the scene of the attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 21, 2019. Military style semi-automatic weapons (MSSA) and assault rifles are to be banned in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Thursday. New Zealand government has also moved to ban a number of accessories which can take lower capacity semi-automatic fire arms to weapons of greater killing might. (Xinhua/Guo Lei) WELLINGTON, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Military style semi-automatic weapons (MSSA) and assault rifles are to be banned in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Thursday. New Zealand government has also moved to ban a number of accessories which can take lower capacity semi-automatic fire arms to weapons of greater killing might. Related parts used to convert those guns into MSSAs are also being banned, along with all high-capacity magazines. Ardern would not rule out a gun register system in the longer-term tranche of changes into gun laws. The ban started 3:00 p.m. local time on Thursday, said Ardern, who is confident that the vast majority of New Zealanders will support the changes. Opposition National Party has endorsed the ban on MSSAs. Leader Simon Bridges agrees that the public doesn't need access to military style semi-automatic weapons. The total number of firearms in New Zealand is estimated to range between 1.2 million and 1.5 million. It is understood that an amnesty period will apply and a buy-back scheme will be detailed soon. The ban came after attacks in Christchurch last Friday which killed 50 people. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 11:36:25|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close LONDON, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched in 2013, it has provided an important framework for UK-China cooperation in a number of areas, such as transportation, infrastructure, financial and professional services, said Mark Hedley, regional director for Greater London at the China-Britain Business Council (CBBC). Britain is the first Western country to issue RMB sovereign bonds and the first major Western country to apply for full membership of the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). In early 2018, British Prime Minister Theresa May highlighted the importance of the BRI and Britain's position as a "natural partner" for the initiative during her visit to China. "As an international financial center, London takes foreign exchange trading as one of its remarkable features, with its trading volume reaching 40 percent of the world's total," said Yang Aimin, chairman of China Construction Bank (London) Ltd. "Currently, the trading volume of London's daily RMB exchange is as much as China Foreign Exchange Trading Center's daily trading volume," he told Xinhua. Another key project of cooperation is London-Shanghai Stock Connect which is expected to be launched to provide a direct channel for equity trading between the two countries. "Linking one of the world's largest capital markets with one of the world's most international financial centers is good news for Britain, China and the wider global economy. It will allow global investors to benefit from China's growth through London, while Britain-listed companies will be able to access Chinese investors directly," said Catherine McGuinness, chair of the Policy and Resources Committee of the City of London Corporation. In terms of infrastructure, another key milestone was the maiden journey of the Yiwu-Barking train in 2017, the first direct freight railway route linking China and Britain. It provides a more cost-saving shipping option for Chinese and British exporters. "China's plans for going global, internationalizing its currency and opening up its financial services sector means it continues to prioritize London as a partner," said McGuinness in a recent interview with Xinhua. She said the BRI is a centennial project and could bring about some 1.8 billion British pounds (2.4 billion U.S. dollars) to Britain's gross domestic product (GDP) if her country fully joins it. Speaking of the future opportunities for British businesses, Hedley told Xinhua that Britain has expertise across a wide range of areas relating to BRI projects, including project financing, project management, engineering and design, standards, legal services, and so on. The CBBC is a British organization helping its member companies to develop commercial links with Chinese ones. "As a membership organization, our network includes a wide spectrum of British companies providing different products and services that are in significant demand from BRI investors and contractors," said Hedley. He said that the CBBC had previously published a number of reports highlighting opportunities along the Belt and Road for British businesses and organized events to publicize the opportunities created by the BRI. Private finance is increasingly necessary alongside state capital to fund BRI projects, Hedley said, adding that banks such as Standard Chartered and HSBC have been increasingly providing financial instruments to fund new projects. British companies have much experience in risk management, including pre-project due diligence, project insurance and post-project restructuring to help mitigate some of the risks involved in BRI projects, he said. Besides, Britain has some of the world's best engineering, construction and design companies like Arup, Atkins, Mott Macdonald and John Wood Group which are actively involved in a wide range of BRI projects, covering areas such as infrastructure, energy, water resources, and planning for new cities and development zones, he said. Other areas in which Britain excels include legal services, international standards, education and training, marketing and public relations, he said. China will host the second BRI forum in Beijing in late April. "We hope that this year's BRI forum can provide a platform for a further deepening of international Belt and Road collaboration," he added. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 11:46:31|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close WASHINGTON, March 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. State Department said Wednesday that U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad will host his counterparts of Russia, China and the European Union to discuss the Afghan peace process. According to a statement issued by the State Department, the U.S. envoy will meet with Russian Presidential Special Representative Zamir Kabulov, Chinese Special Envoy Deng Xijun, and EU Special Envoy Roland Kobia at the Department of State on March 21 and 22. The statement added that their discussion topics "include international support for the Afghan peace process, the role each party can play in bringing an end to the war and the progress to date in peace talks." Khalilzad said on March 13 that the peace talks between United States and Afghan Taliban have made progress after tough negotiations in Qatar and conditions for achieving peaceful settlement have improved. However, Afghanistan's National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib said later in Washington that "Ambassador Khalilzad ... doesn't know how to negotiate or in fact there may be other reasons behind what he is doing." He has reportedly refused to apologize for his remarks after the U.S. State Department expressed dissatisfaction It also remains unclear if the Taliban would like to talk directly with the Afghan government. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 11:51:32|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close Photo taken on March 20, 2019 shows the promotion conference for the 125th Canton Fair in Kiev, Ukraine. The 125th Canton Fair will be held in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province between April 15 and May 5, which is expected to draw more than 25,000 exhibitors and about 200,000 buyers from some 200 countries and regions. (Xinhua/Sergey) KIEV, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Ukrainian businesses are an important part of the Canton Fair, China's largest trade fair in southern Guangdong Province, the organizer of the fair said on Wednesday. "China and Ukraine are important trading partners. Ukrainian companies are a very important part of the upcoming Canton Fair," Xu Bing, deputy director general of China Foreign Trade Center, which is in charge of organizing the event, told Xinhua in an interview. The 125th biannual session of China Import and Export Fair, also known as the Canton Fair, will be held in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province between April 15 and May 5. More than 25,000 exhibitors and about 200,000 buyers from some 200 countries and regions are expected to attend it. Xu, who is in Kiev to promote the fair, said the number of Ukrainians participating in the fair has been growing every year. About 1,500 Ukrainian buyers participated in the 124th Canton Fair, he said. "This is evidence that trade relations between Ukraine and China are developing steadily and rapidly. In addition, this indicates that Chinese goods enjoy high demand in Ukraine," said Xu. Xu believes that the upcoming fair would attract a greater number of participants from Ukraine, including both buyers and exhibitors. "We hope that even more Ukrainian companies will take part in the fair and introduce even more high-quality Ukrainian goods to the Chinese market," Xu said. Chinese entrepreneurs are particularly interested in seeing Ukrainian-made high-tech products at the fair, he noted. Xu emphasized that Ukrainian businessmen may use the exhibition as an opportunity to reap benefits from the growing Chinese market. "China is the world's second largest economy, the second largest global importer, and the second largest consumer market. In addition, China's middle class has 400 million people, and its purchasing power is constantly growing," Xu said. Launched in 1957 by the Chinese government, the Canton Fair is held in the spring and autumn seasons each year. The exhibition is widely seen as a barometer of China's trade. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 12:26:36|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close KUALA LUMPUR, March 21 (Xinhua) -- A Malaysian teenager reported missing since a shooting in New Zealand last week was confirmed to have been killed, the Malaysian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. Muhammad Haziq Mohd Tarmizi, 17, is confirmed to be one of the 50 killed during the attacks on mosques last Friday, the ministry said in a statement. "He is the son of Mohd Tarmizi Shuib who was also injured when the attack took place. Other injured Malaysians are Muhammad Nazril Hisham Omar and Rahimi Ahmad," it said. The ministry added that Minister in the Prime Minister's Department for Religious Affairs Mujahid Yusof Rawa will be heading to Christchurch, New Zealand, to represent the government and provide support to the family. The attacks left 50 people killed and 50 others injured, with the attacker being arrested shortly after the incident. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 12:51:40|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close Photo taken on March 21, 2019 shows the drilling-through ceremony of Boten Tunnel along the China-Laos railway in Boten of Laos. A Chinese railway engineering company on Thursday drilled through Boten Tunnel, the first major tunnel over 5,000 meters along the China-Laos railway. This marks an important milestone in the construction of the project. The Boten Tunnel, with a length of 6453.5 meters, is among the 10 major tunnels longer than five km along the China-Laos Railway. The tunnel has to pass through unfavorable geology such as karst, bedding rock, fault fracture zone, gypsum, carbon mudstone, and water inrush, and it varies, thus creating lots of difficulties to the Chinese engineering company, China Railway No. 5 Engineering Group (CREC-5). (Xinhua/Wang Jingqiang) BOTEN, Laos, March 21 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese railway engineering company on Thursday drilled through Boten Tunnel, the first major tunnel over 5,000 meters along the China-Laos railway. This marks an important milestone in the construction of the project. The Boten Tunnel, with a length of 6453.5 meters, is among the 10 major tunnels longer than five km along the China-Laos Railway. Khamsouk Bounyavong, vice president of Lao People's Revolutionary Party Central Committee's Inspection Committee, and Ju Guojiang, chairman of the Laos-China Railway Co., Ltd, the joint venture in charge of the construction and the operation of the railway, attended the drilling-through ceremony in Boten on Thursday. The tunnel has to pass through unfavorable geology such as karst, bedding rock, fault fracture zone, gypsum, carbon mudstone, and water inrush, and it varies, thus creating lots of difficulties to the Chinese engineering company, China Railway No. 5 Engineering Group (CREC-5). The Boten Tunnel was selected to be built as a high-quality demonstration model for the railway project. Since March 2017 when the construction started, the Chinese engineers have strictly implemented the managing requirements of mechanization, industrialization, informatization and profession. The CREC-5 strengthened the on-site safety and quality control and extensively applied tunnel construction kits, vigorously carried out scientific and technological research, actively promoted the application of new technologies, and paid close attention to process management so as to ensure the safe and orderly advancement of tunnel construction, and lay a solid foundation for the Thursday's victorious breakthrough. The China-Laos Railway is a strategic docking project between the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and Laos' strategy to convert from a landlocked country to a land-linked hub. The 414.332-km railway runs from Mohan-Boten border gate in northern Laos to the capital of Vientiane within an operating speed of 160 km per hour. The electrified passenger and cargo railway is built with the full application of Chinese management standards and technical standards The project started in December 2016 and is scheduled to be completed and opened to traffic in December 2021. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 13:06:43|Editor: Xiang Bo Video Player Close Paolo M. Reale (1st R, back), president of Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II, an Italian boarding school, and students who wrote to Chinese President Xi Jinping pose for a photo in Rome, Italy, March 18, 2019. Receiving Chinese President Xi Jinping's reply to their letter, students at the Italian boarding school were surprised, excited and encouraged. TO GO WITH Feature: Italian students encouraged by Xi's letter (Xinhua/Cheng Tingting) ROME, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Receiving Chinese President Xi Jinping's reply to their letter, students at an Italian boarding school were surprised, excited and encouraged. "I'm so happy to know that President Xi has received our letter," Giovanni Stoppoloni, a fifth-grader at Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II, told Xinhua cheerfully. The boy was one of the eight students who, together with President Paolo M. Reale of the school, wrote to Xi ahead of the Chinese president's state visit to Italy to express their expectations for the visit and their willingness to promote friendship between the two countries. In his reply on Sunday, Xi encouraged the students to be cultural ambassadors between the two countries, saying that he was very pleased to see that the students could express themselves in fluent Chinese. "Our students have been working very hard to learn Chinese over the years," said Reale, adding that Xi's reply was the "best reward and recognition" for the students. Opened in 2009, Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II is an international high school that teaches science-related courses in Chinese. The school has the largest Confucius Classroom in Italy, and learning the Chinese language and culture is popular among the students. Stoppoloni said learning Chinese has helped him broaden horizons and understand Chinese history and culture. In the process, he added, he has also learned to cooperate and share, and become more aware of young people's responsibilities in the future. Ludovica Olivari, another student, said she was deeply impressed by the sentence in Xi's letter that "Youth always goes hand in hand with dreams." "We are young people, who must have goals and dreams," she said. "We will keep on studying hard and open arms to pursue our dreams." Mario Lomonaco's dream is to pursue a China-related career in the future. The student said learning Chinese has brought him many opportunities and opened a door for him to a new world. Nicolas Kovacich, a student at the school, told Xinhua that he would go to China next year to study economics and that he looks forward to his college life in the Asian country. "I look forward to working in China as well in the future," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 13:16:46|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close TASHKENT, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Uzbekistan's central bank said on Wednesday that it has temporarily suspended nine commercial banks from foreign exchange trading for their violations related to stock exchange deals. "Due to systematic irregularities related to stock exchange deals a number of commercial banks are temporarily suspended from participating in tenders until clarification of the circumstances," the bank said in a statement. The central bank listed the nine banks but gave no further details. The same banks were previously subject to sanctions due to violations of the currency legislation and were fined 2.5 billion Uzbek soums (about 298,000 U.S. dollars) in 2018 and 2019, according to the central bank. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 13:21:49|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close SYDNEY, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of thousands of eggs have been pulled from supermarket shelves across Australia after five cases of salmonella illness were traced to a farm in the eastern state of Victoria. Foods Standard Australia New Zealand has recalled eggs from Bridgewater Poultry farm, which are available from the country's largest supermarket chains, with the farm itself going into lockdown. "There'll be hundreds of thousands of eggs involved, hundreds of thousands of laying hens are involved," Victoria's chief health officer Brett Sutton told the national broadcaster. Symptoms of salmonella poisoning include fever, headache, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, usually appearing within 72 hours of consumption and lasting up to seven days. "We'd just like people to check and if they do have any of these eggs they should return them or throw them out to avoid any risk of food poisoning," Sutton said. Australians consume around 17 million eggs per day and health authorities have warned that while other eggs are safe to consume they should always be cooked through to avoid risk of contamination. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 14:01:57|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close KABUL, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Several people were feared killed or injured after three blasts hit New Year celebrations near a shrine in the western side of Kabul on Thursday, witnesses said. "We heard a huge blast at the main traffic circle in Jamal Mina neighborhood at 09:30 a.m. and the blast was followed by two consecutive explosions at the area, which is called Kart-e-Sakhi," eyewitness Mohammad Jafar told Xinhua. The bomb attacks came as Afghan security forces have beefed up security across the country ahead of Nawroz Festival celebrations falling on Thursday which marks the Afghan New Year. "The area was closed for traffic as New Year celebrations were underway in Sakhi Shrine but the blasts occurred as big crowd of people were walking toward the shrine," Jafar added. "One of the roads of the square leads to Sakhi Shrine. The whole place has now been sealed off by security forces," he said. Several warning shots were also fired by the security forces. "There are causalities. We still cannot provide details on causalities," a police officer told Xinhua near the site. Rescue teams, police and security forces from nearby also rushed to the site. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks yet. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 14:06:59|Editor: ZX Video Player Close Jiang Jianguo (C), deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, and Paolo M. Reale (5th, L), president of Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II, an Italian boarding school, pose for a photo with Italian sutdents at a seminar on "Xi Jinping: The Governance of China" in Rome, Italy, March 20, 2019. Readers at a seminar on "Xi Jinping: The Governance of China" held here Wednesday said the book impressed them and facilitated a better understanding of the Asian country. About 200 guests, including officials and political figures from China and Italy, engaged in in-depth discussions at the event, which took place on the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the European nation. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong) ROME, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Readers at a seminar on "Xi Jinping: The Governance of China" held here Wednesday said the book impressed them and facilitated a better understanding of the Asian country. About 200 guests, including officials and political figures from China and Italy, engaged in in-depth discussions at the event, which took place on the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the European nation. Vito Rosario Petrocelli, president of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate of Italy, said the book carries deep connotations. The title is particularly appropriate because the book sheds light on Xi's thoughts on governance, and it also helps readers understand the complexity of governing a big country like China, Petrocelli said. As an Italian reader, he said the book also facilitates a better understanding of China. Jiang Jianguo, deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said the book opens a window for understanding the achievements, driving forces and prospects of China's development. "Xi Jinping: The Governance of China" has been warmly received by readers across many countries with increasing popularity, and is now very influential in the world, Jiang said. At the seminar, Jiang presented two books -- both signed by Xi -- to President Paolo M. Reale and eight students of Rome Convitto Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II, an Italian boarding school. Reale and the students wrote a letter to Xi to express their eager expectations for his visit and their willingness to promote friendship between Italy and China. In his reply on Sunday, the Chinese president encouraged the students to be cultural ambassadors between the two countries. Reale told Xinhua at the seminar that the school will be "wide open" in facilitating its students' access to Xi's book and other books on China in the school library. "We will buy this book because it will be interesting for us to learn how to lead China in a global market, and we think Xi Jinping must be a very smart person," Giovanni Bartolomeo, a student of the boarding school, said to Xinhua. The seminar is one of a series of bilateral events organized on the sidelines of Xi's state visit to Italy. Other events include a conference of media executives, music performances and exhibitions. Marina Sereni, former vice president of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament, said she read the book and felt that both China and Italy have a rich history and they share similarities in terms of development. Wishing the Chinese president a successful visit, Sereni said she hopes that the visit will further advance bilateral ties. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 14:47:05|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close ISLAMABAD, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani security forces recovered four kidnapped Iranian soldiers from the border region in southwestern Balochistan province, the military said early Thursday. The army's media wing Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement that the security forces conducted a successful intelligence-based operation at Amori area in district Chaghai, Balochistan about 3-4 km from Pakistan-Afghan border. "Terrorists of a proscribed organization were reported to have entered Pakistan from Afghanistan side along with abducted Iranian soldiers. After exchange of fire, four Iranian soldiers were recovered from a transitioning hideout," the statement said. The Iranian soldiers will be handed over to Iranian authorities, it added. Iran said in October last year that 14 Iranian security personnel were kidnapped on the southeastern border with Pakistan. A militant group Jaish al-Adl operating in the border area reportedly claimed the abduction. Pakistani security forces had safely recovered five of the kidnapped Iranian border guards in November last year. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 14:52:06|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close SUVA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The two-way trade between Fiji and New Zealand has increased in recent years and this upward trajectory will continue in the coming years, a Fijian government minister said on Thursday. Speaking at an event to mark the first anniversary of the opening of the Fiji Trade Commission in Auckland, a city in New Zealand, Fiji's Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism Premila Kumar said that the two-way trade between Fiji and New Zealand in 2017 recorded over 992.2 million Fijian dollars (about 466.7 million U.S. dollars). New Zealand's engagement with Fiji continues to be enhanced in terms of two way trade, tourism and investment as the Fijian economy is soaring to a record 10th consecutive year of economic growth, and confidence in the island nation is at an all-time high. New Zealand has been one of Fiji's top 10 export destinations over the past five years, with Fiji's exports to New Zealand valued at 110 million Fijian dollars (about 51.7 million U.S. dollars) on average. New Zealand has been one of Fiji's top five import markets over the years. In 2017, the highest number of imports were from New Zealand, valued at 858.1 million Fijian dollars (about 403.6 million U.S. dollars). According to Kumar, a lot of visitors from New Zealand visit Fiji every year, and the island nation received 198,718 visitors from New Zealand last year, an increase of 7.7 percent, the highest number recorded in a given year. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 14:52:07|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close KABUL, March 21 (Xinhua) -- At least two people were killed and 14 others wounded after three blasts hit New Year celebrations near a shrine in the western side of Kabul on Thursday, officials said. "Two killed and 14 wounded have been admitted in Ali Abad hospital following Thursday morning's blasts in Jaman Mina," a health official told Xinhua. The bomb attacks came as Afghan security forces have beefed up security across the country for Nawroz Festival celebrations falling on Thursday which marks the Afghan New Year. "The numbers of casualties will likely rise as the affected people were shifted to multiple hospitals and further details of the incident will be shared with media later in the day," the official added. "We heard a huge blast at the main traffic circle in Jamal Mina neighborhood at 9:30 a.m. and the blast was followed by two consecutive explosions at the area, which is called Kart-e-Sakhi," eyewitness Mohammad Jafar told Xinhua. "The area was closed for traffic as New Year celebrations were underway in Sakhi Shrine but the blasts occurred as big crowd of people were walking toward the shrine," Jafar added. "One of the roads of the square leads to Sakhi Shrine. The whole place has now been sealed off by security forces," he said. Several warning shots were also fired by the security forces. "There are causalities. We still cannot provide details on causalities," a police officer told Xinhua near the site. The nature of the blasts were not known at this point. At least one suicide bombing was suspected, the police official added. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks yet. Kabul with a population of nearly 5 million has been hit by series of terror attacks over the past couple of years. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 14:57:08|Editor: mingmei Video Player Close GENEVA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday expressed his concern over the crisis around the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the U.S. refusal to talk about preventing placement of weapons in outer space. Attending the two-day Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva, the United Nations' multilateral disarmament forum, Lavrov said that the United States wishes to resume nuclear testing. Speaking of the "purposeful destruction of the INF Treaty" by the United States, Lavrov said that Washington wants to have unrestricted missile capabilities in the regions where it wants to push through its interests. "The crisis around the INF Treaty clearly shows that the nuclear arms race reduction process can no longer be based on the bilateral Russian-U.S. reduction basis," said Lavrov. "It is time to seriously reflect on how to launch a multilateral process on nuclear control building on the principle of common indivisible security," he said. There is a deterioration in the international environment and Washington is blocking the work of the CD on biological weapons and toxins, Lavrov said. Signed in 1987 between the Soviet Union and the United States, the INF Treaty marked the first-ever pact reached by Washington and Moscow on nuclear disarmament and a major step forward in restricting the arms race. However, the two sides have been accusing each other of violating the arms control agreement amid increasing tensions in recent years. Besides his concern over the INF Treaty, Lavrov also said that it is time "to talk about space weaponization as the issue is becoming increasingly relevant to preventing an arms race in space." The United States refused "to negotiate the prevention of placement of weapons in outer space," he said, adding that instead of a constructive response, there was talk of "the resumption of nuclear testing, placement of strike combat systems in outer space and even about the possibility of a limited nuclear conflict. This prospect is unacceptable for Russia." The United States has already allocated funds for the creation of a "space segment of the air-defense system and deployment of the space strike weapons," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 14:57:08|Editor: Yamei Video Player Close WASHINGTON, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Embassy in the United States confirmed Wednesday that one Chinese citizen was killed in a bus crash in the U.S. state of Virginia. The crash, which took place early Tuesday, also led to injuries of several other Chinese passengers, but none were life-threatening, the embassy said in a statement to Xinhua. The deceased Chinese citizen is believed to be male, but his identity is still being withheld for privacy reasons. A team from the Chinese embassy has been dispatched to the scene of the crash to offer consular services and has expressed heartfelt condolences on behalf of Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai to the Chinese passengers, according to the statement. A commercial bus carrying 57 people, including the driver, was traveling from Florida to New York City (NYC) when it crashed on a ramp of the Interstate 95 highway in Prince George County, about 60 kilometers south of Richmond, Virginia's capital, killing two people and injuring dozens. Local police said a significant number of passengers on the bus were Chinese-speaking. All passengers were sent to local hospitals for treatment or inspection, and by Tuesday evening, about half of the passengers had been released and continued their journey in a bus arranged by the bus company. The driver, a 40-year-old male named Yui Man Chow, was taken into custody and is charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. Yui Man Chow took the wheels when the bus made a stop at Rocky Mount to switch drivers. The bus belongs to Tao's Travel Inc., which obtained its permit and license in Flushing, NYC, but is based in Middleton, state of Massachusetts, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The reason for the crash is under investigation. Heavy fog and speeding may have contributed to the accident. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 15:12:11|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close HAVANA, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Cuba seized 2.43 tons of drugs in 2018, the lowest in the past three years, the Ministry of the Interior said on Wednesday. The authorities said that the narcotics seized included 2,071 kilograms of marijuana, 363 kilograms of cocaine, 3 kilograms of cannabinoids, 1 kilogram of crack and 0.15 kilograms of hashish, the official daily Granma reported. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the majority of the narcotics confiscated was marijuana abandoned by international drug traffickers at sea or close to Cuba's coast although Cuba was not the intended destination. More than 90 percent of drug trafficking operations around Cuba occur via sea in 2018, the ministry said. Among them, two attempts to introduce drugs via speedboat were foiled with four people arrested and 144 kilograms of marijuana seized. At the airports, there were 49 attempts to bring drugs into the country. As a result, there were 90 arrests (54 Cubans and 36 foreigners) and 81 kilograms of drugs seized, more than the 64 kilograms from the previous year. Some traffickers attempted to hide the drugs in food and parcels, while others concealed them in capsules and even body cavities. Cuba maintains a "zero tolerance" policy against drugs. For decades it has had an active national program focused on prevention with personalized, free medical attention for addicts. According to Granma, the 2018 figures reinforce Cuban government's absolute commitment to building a drug-free society, a vital element in achieving sustainable development and well-being of the people. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 15:22:13|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close TEHRAN, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday called for economic initiatives and the boost of production to offset U.S. sanction pressures. He hailed what he called the nation's "fortitude and prudence" against the enemies' conspiracies. Khamenei made the remarks on the occasion of the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, which began on Thursday local time. "We had an eventful year ... The enemies hatched many plots," he said, adding that however, "the nation's fortitude and prudence as well as the perseverance of the youth foiled the enemies' conspiracies." Over the past year, "the Iranians also showed a strong and robust reaction to the severe and allegedly unprecedented sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe both in the political and economic domains," he added. In the meantime, Khamenei acknowledged the enduring economic woes, including hardship in the people's livelihood, and urged the Iranian administration to address people's economic concerns. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 15:47:17|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SEOUL, March 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export fell in the first 20 days of March amid lower price of memory chips, the country's major export item, customs office data showed Thursday. Export, which accounts for about half of the South Korean economy, amounted to 28 billion U.S. dollars during the March 1-20 period, down 4.9 percent from the same period of last year, according to Korea Customs Service. The daily export averaged 1.93 billion U.S. dollars in the cited period, down 4.9 percent from a year earlier. The outbound shipment kept a downward trend since December last year as chip export tumbled on lower product price. Chip export plunged 25 percent in the March 1-20 period from a year earlier, and oil product shipment dipped 11.8 percent. Shipment of telecommunication devices, such as smartphone, shed 4.1 percent, but auto export grew 9.7 percent. Export to China, South Korea's biggest trading partner, reduced 12.6 percent, and those to the European Union and Vietnam retreated 6.1 percent and 3.1 percent respectively. Shipment to Japan slumped 13.8 percent, but export to the United States added 1.9 percent. Import fell 3.4 percent to 27.4 billion dollars in the cited period, sending the trade surplus to 0.6 billion U.S. dollars. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 16:02:20|Editor: Xiang Bo Video Player Close URUMQI, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region said Thursday that the number of endangered wild Bactrain camels has increased to 650. Cameras have captured an increasing number of the wild animals at several water sources in the Altun Mountains, said Cheng Yun, who works for the Xinjiang Lop Nur Wild Camel National Nature Reserve. As of November 2018, the population of wild Bactrain camels reached around 600. Cheng said the increase of population is attributed to the steadily improving environment and the reduction of human activities. Protective measures including strengthening monitoring, investing more into wild camel protection and banning tourism and expeditions in the nature reserve have also helped the restoration of the wild camels. Bactrian camels are the last remaining wild camels of any type in the world. Experts estimate that around 880 wild Bactrian camels lived in the harsh deserts of China and Mongolia in the 1990s. The Bactrain camel is listed as critically endangered on the Red List of Threatened Species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 16:02:21|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SEOUL, March 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea's export of the information and communications technology (ICT) products declined for four straight months to February on weak demand for major tech items, a government report showed Thursday. The ICT export tumbled 19 percent over the year to 12.7 billion U.S. dollars in February, keeping a downward trend since November last year, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy. Chip export plunged 24.9 percent to 6.87 billion dollars on lower memory chip price, and display panel shipments reduced 17.2 percent to 1.56 billion dollars last month. Mobile phone export shrank 13.4 percent to 860 million dollars, but export for OLED panel and secondary battery increased 7.9 percent and 10.7 percent each. The ICT export to China, South Korea's biggest trading partner, dropped 30.4 percent last month, and those to the European Union and Vietnam slumped 19.3 percent and 1.7 percent respectively. Import of the ICT products stood at 7.29 billion dollars in February, sending the trade surplus to 5.41 billion dollars. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 16:07:21|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close CAPE TOWN, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) on Wednesday urged South Africans suffering from a worsening power shortage to join a national day of action against what "is now a national crisis." The DA said it planned to launch the national day of action on March 29, with the aim of urging the government to take real action when the country is being crippled by consistent power outages. "We call on South Africans in every community, town and city across the country to join us in a collective protest against what is now a national crisis," the DA said. As rolling power outages continued, more and more South Africans have vented their anger on social media at the government's failure to fix the power shortage. Fear among the public has been mounting following messages circulating on social media that South Africa will run out of electricity soon. But electricity utility Eskom on Wednesday denied the allegation, calling it "false and misleading." "Messages being circulated via social and digital media indicating that there will not be electricity in South Africa are false and misleading," the utility said. For the past week, South Africa has been hit hard by continued rolling blackouts. As power outages become more frequent, President Cyril Ramaphosa has urged South Africans to prepare for tougher times in days to come. Load shedding has turned from bad to worse since Saturday after tropical cyclone Idai struck Mozambique. South Africa is so dependent on electricity imports from neighboring states that a loss of 1,100 megawatts (MW) from Mozambique forced Eskom to implement stage 4 load shedding, which allows for up to 4000 MW of the national load to be discarded. Stage 4 is the most severe load shedding that was first implemented in February and now has been in effect for the past five consecutive days. There have been reports that Eskom is preparing stage 5 and 6 load shedding, which means that the utility will shed 5,000 MW and 6,000 MW respectively. This is an indication that the national grid is on the brink of collapse. South Africa has never experienced higher than stage 4 load shedding. Eskom has denied that it would implement stage 5 and 6 load shedding but has acknowledged that there is a race against time to ensure that a national blackout and grid collapse do not occur. "Load shedding is controlled and managed on a rotational basis for a period of between two or four hours at a time, depending on the schedule that the customer is on, on a particular day," said the state-run parastatal, which provides about 95 percent of the electricity consumed in South Africa. It must be noted that load shedding is implemented as a last resort measure to protect the national electricity system, Eskom said. "We will continue to provide regular updates about the state of the power system through various media and through the official Eskom social media platforms," it said. On Wednesday, hundreds of people gathered at outside Eskom headquarters in Johannesburg, demanding an end to load shedding and protesting against the government's failure to provide this basic service to the nation. It is a complete failure of governance that has brought the country to the brink of collapse, with nationwide electricity blackouts becoming the new normal, DA leader Mumsi Maimane said. "As South Africans, we must take a collective stand before it is too late," he said. The DA, he said, will mobilize the nation to pressure the government to take the action required to fix this national crisis. "South Africa needs this change, and we need it now. And I urge every citizen who loves this country to join this national day of action so that we can usher in change and save our nation from the brink of collapse," said Maimane. Maimane reiterated the DA's call to privatize Eskom and allow a diverse range of energy to enter the grid, thus increasing competition and lowering costs. Ramaphosa has ruled out the possibility of privatizing Eskom that has long been hampered by alleged corruption and poor management. Eskom is facing debts amounting to 420 billion rand (about 30 billion U.S. dollars). The utility has urgently appealed to the government to help it repay the debt so as to prevent it from bankruptcy. Eskom has been accused of using load shedding to blackmail the government, but the utility has denied the allegation, saying the recent load shedding was caused by the breakdown of several power stations. Previous attempts by the government to bail out embattled Eskom have failed. On Wednesday, Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni confirmed in a letter to the DA that the National Treasury does not know how big the new proposed bailout to Eskom will be. In his budget speech last month, the minister said that the government will bail out Eskom with 23 billion rand (about 160 million dollars) yearly over the next three years. However, this bailout is now likely to increase given Eskom's current situation, Mboweni said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 16:32:26|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Two policemen including an officer were wounded on Thursday in a grenade attack in restive Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said. The policemen were attacked during a cordon operation at Warpora village of Sopore town in Baramulla district, about 53 km northwest of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir. "This morning militants lobbed a grenade at a police party in Warpora Sopore, wounding Station House Officer Dangiwacha and his escort personnel," a police official said. "Both of them have been removed to a hospital." According to a police spokesman, the village has been cordoned off and searches were going on. "It's part of gunfight site where government forces are engaged in a stand-off with militants," the spokesman said. Meanwhile, a separate gunfight between militants and Indian troops has started at Kalantara Kandi village in the district. "The exchange of fire is underway," a senior police official said. "Two to three militants are believed to be trapped in the area." Officials said the village was cordoned off following specific intelligence information suggesting presence of militants. Reports said government forces have also launched cordon and search operation at village Hajin in adjacent Bandipora district. Authorities have suspended mobile internet service in both the districts and closed roads leading to the gunfight sites. A guerilla war is going on between militants and Indian troopers stationed in the region since 1989. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 16:42:27|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close ISTANBUL, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Some people were wounded on Thursday when a public bus crashed into pedestrians in Istanbul, local media reported. The incident happened in the Beyazit neighborhood of Fatih district in central Istanbul when the driver lost control of the bus for an unknown reason, the NTV broadcaster reported. The bus hit five vehicles before crashing into the crowd waiting at a bus stop, the report said, noting ambulances and police were sent to the scene. The number of the injured was not immediately clear. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 16:42:28|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close MOGADISHU, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Somali government forces have vacated three military bases to protest non-payment of salaries, a move that may jeopardize years of security gains, officials and local residents said on Wednesday. Security officials who declined to be named said the Somalia National Army (SNA) soldiers vacated three bases in middle Shebelle, stoking fear among the residents that the al-Qaida allied terrorist group, al-Shabab may take over the abandoned bases. "We are on our way to Mogadishu. The security forces have not been paid for several months," a security officer who requested anonymity said, adding that the withdrawal was to protest the non-payment of salaries. However, Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire refuted the allegations, saying the SNA soldiers are paid regularly and on time. Khaire said the soldiers who have not received their salaries refused to register themselves under the biometric system which was put in place to weed out fraud. "We have paid salaries and allowances regularly to our armed forces who have registered in our biometric system via their bank account," Khaire said at a forum in Mogadishu, calling on the protesting soldiers to register in order to receive their salaries. The U.S., EU and the United Arab Emirates are some of the countries which have been helping the Somali government to pay salaries for the security forces. Experts have warned that the move to abandon military bases may expose the Horn of Africa nation to al-Shabab threats. The military group on Monday briefly captured Bal'ad town, about 30 km north of the Somali capital Mogadishu, burnt battle wagons and freed detainers, but were overpowered by government forces backed by the African Union Mission in Somalia. Meanwhile, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) has refuted reports that it was planning to evacuate its staff in Somalia due to the current security situation. "Rumors of a crisis meeting and evacuation of UN Somalia staff are completely unfounded. No such meeting has taken place and there are no evacuation plans underway," UNSOM said on Wednesday evening. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 16:47:31|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close NEW DELHI, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The death toll in Tuesday's under-construction building collapse in India's southern state of Karnataka rose to 10, with at least 15 people still feared trapped under the rubble, a senior government official told Xinhua on Thursday. The under-construction building collapsed in Kumareshwar Nagar of the state's Dharwad district on Tuesday. Speaking to Xinhua over phone, Dharwad Additional District Magistrate Suresh Itnal said three dead bodies were recovered on Thursday afternoon, taking the total death toll to 10. Every effort was being made to ensure that those trapped under the debris were rescued alive, he added. "Even last night we rescued two live persons after more than 36 hours. They were perfectly fine with no major injuries, and walked back to their homes," he said. The district official said the relief and rescue personnel were pumping in oxygen into the collapsed building in order to ensure that those trapped were able to breathe. "It depends on the amount of will-power of the trapped. Those having strong will-power and able to breathe with the help of oxygen we are pumping in, will survive and have high chances of being rescued alive," said Itnal. According to him, as many as 56 people had been rescued so far. The relief and rescue work is expected to continue for the next two-three days. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 16:52:34|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close MANILA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) signed Thursday the Cofinancing Framework Agreement for Sovereign Operations that will guide overall cofinancing arrangements between the two institutions going forward. ADB President Takehiko Nakao and AIIB President Jin Liqun met on Thursday in ADB's headquarter in Manila and discussed a range of strategic and operational issues, the ADB said in a statement. So far, the ADB and the AIIB have cofinanced five projects, comprising four sovereign loans in Bangladesh, Georgia, India and Pakistan, and one collaborative transaction in Myanmar through the ADB's Private Sector Operations Department. "Further cofinancing for sovereign and non-sovereign projects is being actively pursued," the ADB said. The ADB said it has shared with the AIIB its experiences and practices regarding environmental and social safeguards, procurement, treasury operations, institutional issues and governance. The delegation of AIIB also had discussions with ADB vice presidents and senior staff from ADB's Office of Cofinancing Operations, Strategy, Policy and Review Department and regional departments, the statement added. Established in 1966, the ADB is composed of 68 members, and 49 of which are from the Asia Pacific region. The AIIB, a multilateral development bank headquartered in Beijing, began operations in January 2016. The ADB and the AIIB signed the Memorandum of Understanding for Strengthening Cooperation in May 2016. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 16:52:34|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close An injured man is seen at a local hospital after a blast in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 21, 2019. At least six people were killed and 23 others wounded after three blasts hit New Year celebrations near a shrine in the western side of Kabul on Thursday, officials said. (Xinhua/Rahmat Alizadah) KABUL, March 21 (Xinhua) -- At least six people were killed and 23 others wounded after three blasts hit New Year celebrations near a shrine in the western side of Kabul on Thursday, officials said. "About 23 people were wounded and six people were martyred in today's explosions in Kabul," Wahidullah Mayar, spokesman of the Afghan Ministry of Public Health, tweeted. The incident happened in Police District 3 of the city where thousands of Afghan citizens attended an event to mark Nawroz Festival celebrations falling on Thursday, which marks the Afghan New Year. "The first blast occurred at a main square in Jamal Mina neighborhood roughly at 9:30 a.m. The initial blast was followed by two consecutive explosions at the area, which is called Kart-e-Sakhi," eyewitness Mohammad Jafar told Xinhua. "The blasts occurred as a big crowd of people were walking toward the Sakhi Shrine for the New Year festival," he said. The bomb attacks came as Afghan security forces have beefed up security across the country for Nawroz celebrations. The shrine was hit by terror attacks in the past. The nature of the blasts was not known at this point. However, an official of the Ministry of Interior Affairs told local media that the blasts were caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted in multiple locations. Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani strongly condemned the attacks and instructed the related departments to provide best treatment to the victims, according to the Afghan Presidential Palace. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks yet. Kabul, with a population of nearly 5 million, has been hit by series of terror attacks over the past years. On March 7, about 11 civilians were killed and 95 others wounded after a mortar attack targeted a gathering at an open area in Dashti Barchi in western Kabul and the Islamic State (IS) militants claimed responsibility for the attack. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 17:17:41|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua (L) meets with Argentine President Mauricio Macri in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 20, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Ming) BUENOS AIRES, March 21 (Xinhua) -- China and Argentina will strengthen bilateral ties and deepen cooperation in a wide range of areas, visiting Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua and Argentine President Mauricio Macri said in a meeting here on Wednesday. Hu conveyed President Xi Jinping's warm greetings and good wishes to Macri. Hu said President Xi attaches great importance to the development of China-Argentina relations and sent him to attend the Second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation and visit Argentina. Hu also extended congratulations to Macri on the successful plenary session held on Wednesday morning. Hu pointed out that China appreciates Argentina's support for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and is willing to discuss specific cooperation projects with Argentina and expand pragmatic cooperation in areas like infrastructure, agriculture, energy and mining. Hu welcomed the active participation of Argentina to the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation to be held in Beijing in late April. He said that China is willing to strengthen cooperation with developing countries and attaches importance to the dialogue and cooperation with the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), a regional bloc that currently has four full members, namely, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay and is aimed at promoting free trade and the free flow of capital, labor and goods. It is hoped that Argentina would take the opportunity of holding the rotating presidency of Mercosur in the first half of 2019 to support the dialogue and cooperation with China in facilitating free trade, Hu added. For his part, Macri said he attaches great importance to the friendship and mutual trust with President Xi. Macri said Argentina is willing to jointly further strengthen the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries and deepen bilateral cooperation in trade, infrastructure, nuclear power, tourism and civil aviation. Argentina supports the BRI and hopes that more Chinese companies will increase their investment in Argentina in areas such as agriculture, said Macri. He said Argentina is willing to further promote dialogue and cooperation between Mercosur and China as well as deepen South-South cooperation, which refers to the technical cooperation among developing countries. Hu also met on Wednesday with Marcos Pena, the head of the cabinet of ministers. The two sides exchanged views on pragmatic cooperation in the fields of agricultural development, nuclear power, fishery industry and science and technology. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 17:27:43|Editor: Xiang Bo Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- China and the United States will hold their eighth round of high-level economic and trade consultations in Beijing from March 28 to 29, the Ministry of Commerce (MOF) said Thursday. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were invited to visit China for the talks, MOF spokesperson Gao Feng told a news conference. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, was invited to visit Washington D.C. for the ninth round of talks in early April, Gao said. Recently, both sides have held several rounds of talks by phone on economic and trade issues and agreed on holding the eighth and ninth rounds of high-level consultations, he said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 17:32:44|Editor: Xiang Bo Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Italy, Monaco and France are the three legs of Chinese President Xi Jinping's first overseas trip this year. Xi's state visits from March 21 to 26 are expected to boost the economic ties between China and the European countries. Here are some facts and figures revealing the growing vitality of trade and investment between China and the countries as well as broader economic exchanges. -- Bilateral trade between China and Italy hit a historical high of 54.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2018. China is Italy's largest trading partner in Asia, while Italy is China's fifth largest within the European Union. -- Italy had invested 7.21 billion dollars in 5,937 projects in China by the end of last June. -- Chinese investment in Italy has exceeded 11 billion dollars, mainly in the spheres of energy, high-end manufacturing, chemicals and sports. -- Chinese tourists made a total of 1.8 million trips to Italy last year. Italy issued 15 percent more visas in China in 2018. -- According to a recent report by the China Tourism Academy and the travel agency Ctrip, Italy was the second most popular European destination for Chinese tourists. -- The volume of trade between China and Monaco surged 794.8 percent year-on-year to 127 million dollars between January and September 2018. -- Monaco had invested 3.59 million dollars in 24 projects in China as of last August. -- China has vowed to deepen cooperation with Monaco in environmental protection, climate change, clean energy, low carbon and wild animal protection, under the Belt and Road Initiative. -- Bilateral trade between China and France exceeded 60 billion dollars in 2018, also a historical high. -- China was the largest Asian trading partner of France as of last September, while France was China's fourth largest in the EU. -- Two-way investment between China and France was also robust. French companies had invested 17.49 billion dollars in 5,647 projects in China as of November 2018, while China's investment in France reached 330 million dollars in the January-November period. -- French investors in China prefer the energy, automobile, aviation, telecommunication and chemicals sectors. -- China is one of the largest sources of tourists to France with a total of 2.3 million trips in 2018, an all-time high. French products, such as luxuries, cosmetics, food and liquor, have been popular among Chinese consumers. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 17:37:45|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close NANJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Global semiconductor manufacturer SK Hynix will set up a nine-year private school in the city of Wuxi, east China's Jiangsu Province, according to an agreement signed with the city's high-tech zone Wednesday. The company from the Republic of Korea plans to invest 300 million yuan (44.8 million U.S. dollars) to provide first-class educational resources in the school, which is built for children of company employees and those from its affiliated companies in Wuxi. With the first-phase construction covering an area of 2.9 hectares, the school is expected to accommodate 1,000 primary and 500 junior high school students. The enrolment time has yet to be announced, local authorities said. SK Hynix will continue to deepen cooperation with Wuxi in the fields of semiconductors, power batteries, medicine, education and funds, said Lee Seok-hee, CEO of SK Hynix. Affiliated to SK Group, SK Hynix has invested more than 14 billion U.S. dollars since it came to Wuxi in 2005. In April 2018, SK Hynix announced plans to invest 600 million U.S. dollars to build a hospital in Wuxi, and in September the company established its Chinese sales headquarters in the city. Li Xiaomin, Party chief of Wuxi, said that SK Hynix had formed a close friendship with Wuxi and achieved impressive results in its 14 years in the city. Wuxi will fully support the school project and work together with SK Hynix for the early completion of the project. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 17:42:47|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close CHANGSHA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Central China's Hunan Province has stopped operation of 34 hydropower plants and demolished 10 dams in the past two years in a key reserve of giant salamanders. Municipal officials of Zhangjiajie, a popular tourist destination, said they planned to demolish most of the 88 hydropower plants, mainly small ones built before the establishment of the National Giant Salamander Nature Reserve. There are 3,000 kilometers of rivers in the reserve, which was established in 1995 as a provincial level one but upgraded to national level in 1996. "More and most of the dams will be demolished," said Hu Shenghu, head of the city's water conservancy bureau. "Only those that have flood control, irrigation and water supply functions will be retained." Officials and conservationists have blamed the hydropower plants for blocking and fragmenting rivers and hindering fish migration, reducing prey and habitats for the rare amphibians. "We plan to dismantle all dams that only had power-generating functions in the nature reserve before the end of 2020 and reevaluate the functions of the rest," Hu said. Ecologists have hailed the decision to close the hydro projects as a milestone for habitat restoration of giant salamanders, which date back 350 million years to the age of the dinosaurs. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 17:52:50|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close MOSCOW, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The first flight of the new Russian military transport aircraft Il-112V will take place at the end of March or the beginning of April, local media reported Thursday. "Everything is ready, all issues with engines have been resolved," TASS news agency quoted a source in the defense industry as saying. Il-112V will be accompanied by an An-26 aircraft on its maiden flight. "The An-26 will fly in parallel, at the same altitude and speed, to monitor the operation parameters of different systems," the source added. Light military transport aircraft Il-112V is designed for the transporting and parachuting of light weaponry and equipment, as well as cargo and military personnel. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 17:57:51|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SRINAGAR, Indian-controlled Kashmir, March 21 (Xinhua) -- An Indian army trooper was killed Thursday in an exchange of heavy fire with Pakistan army on the Line of Control (LoC), dividing Kashmir, officials said. The two sides targeted each other's positions in frontier Rajouri district, about 222 km southwest of Srinagar city, the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir. "Pakistani forces this morning resorted to unprovoked firing of small arms and shelling of mortars in Sunderbani sector," an Indian army official said. "Our side effectively retaliated to the firing and in the exchange we lost on trooper." For the past over two weeks, there has been a flare up on the LoC in Kashmir. Both Indian as well as Pakistan controlled parts have suffered civilian and troop casualties during the skirmishes. The daily firings have forced population on both sides of the divide to migrate to safer locations. The latest tension between New Delhi and Islamabad grew after India carried out an air strike inside Pakistan, triggering a retaliation. Though the situation has de-escalated to some extent following calls of restraint from several countries, the situation on the LoC is yet to show desired results. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 18:02:52|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close NANJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Austrian food company Agrana said that the construction of its new production site in east China's Jiangsu Province has been completed. With an investment of 31.3 million euros, the new fruit preparation plant is located in the National High-Tech District in the city of Changzhou. Construction was completed on Monday, and it will manufacture fruit jam, fruit juice concentrate, vegetable products and sauce, starting this year. The facility will work with well-known domestic and overseas firms including Danone and Mengniu Dairy. The new plant is a strategic move to help the company capture more markets in Asia, said the plant manager Anne Marie Rouault. The company has already had two factories in China, located in nothern Hebei Province and northwestern Shaanxi Province, respectively. "Changzhou is confident in providing the best business environment and support for Agrana in China," said Zhou Bin, a senior official of the High-Tech District. Agrana is the first European food processing firm to settle in Changzhou National Hi-Tech District, which has attracted over 1,700 overseas enterprises from 68 countries and regions, including 33 Fortune Global 500 firms. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 18:07:53|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua delivers a speech during the Second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 20, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Ming) BUENOS AIRES, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua on Wednesday called for expanding areas of the South-South cooperation with more innovative modes when addressing the opening session of the Second High-level UN Conference on South-South Cooperation scheduled through Friday. The South-South cooperation is a term historically used by policymakers and academics to describe the exchange of resources, technology, and knowledge between developing countries. Hu emphasized in the speech that China firmly supports multilateralism and the multilateral mechanism with the UN as its core, and resolutely safeguards the basic principles of respect for sovereignty, equality and mutual benefit, and non-interference in other countries' internal affairs. He said he hopes that this meeting will reach a consensus and provide a solid foundation for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. He pointed out that China is a firm supporter, active participant and important contributor of the South-South cooperation, which is a common cause of developing countries, and a complement to North-South cooperation instead of a substitute. China will continue to shoulder the international responsibilities that are compatible with its own development stage and actual capabilities, and work together with all countries to build a community of a shared future for mankind, he said. During the meeting, Hu also met with Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Programme. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 18:12:54|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close NAIROBI, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese companies and government have taken the lead in promoting the use of cleaner vehicle technologies around the world through partnerships with national and city authorities, a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) official said. Jane Akumu, program officer in charge of Air Quality and Mobility Unit at the Economic Division of UNEP, said through its work with Chinese authorities, progress is being made locally and regionally to introduce cleaner city transport technologies in Africa. "We are collaborating with China. China is looking for partnerships on how to implement some of these technologies through awareness creation," Akumu told Xinhua in a recent interview. "They are willing to transfer these technologies and plants to Africa," she added. Chinese electrical cars and motorcycle maker TAILG announced recently in Nairobi its plans to donate electric cars and motorcycles to African city authorities to be used in pilot studies ahead of possible introduction of the more technologically efficient vehicles for city transport. The Chinese firm is presently engaged in efforts to increase the ownership of electric bicycles and other two-wheelers as a strategy to reduce the consumption of oil, which leads to greenhouse gas emissions. "Air pollution has become a serious problem because of industrialization...if developing countries can use new technologies such as the electric cars to reduce air pollution, we are willing to partner in the pilot projects. These would require government policy support," said Jayson Huang, General Manager at TAILG. The UN environment officials are also currently in discussions with the Chinese authorities on how to accelerate the production and availability of vehicle sensors to regulate the emissions from fossil fuels used in cars. According to Akumu, the UNEP is currently encouraging governments to use tax measures to promote the use of clean technologies. "It would take policies, taxation and standards to achieve these clean technology use. There is also the issue of consumer awareness. How can you encourage these? You do it by making consumers know that a certain product is good. Awareness is quite important," Akumu said. She said those discussions are focused on how the Chinese manufacturers could engage in producing the vehicle sensor systems to detect carbon emissions from all types of fuels used in cars in developing countries. These would be mounted on the vehicles to monitor carbon emissions. "We are partnering with China to see how they can bring these technologies to developing countries. The developed countries are quite ahead in technology; our work is in developing countries," Akumu said. In Kenya, the Chinese firm has partnered with the County government of Kisumu in western Kenya, to introduce an initial 50 electric motorbikes with plans to introduce other more technology efficient vehicles and street lighting using solar technology to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, Jayson said. "The power of success will help us deal with the resistance to technology," said Anyang Nyong'o, Governor of Kisumu who said the county government will benefit from the use of electric bikes. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 18:27:58|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close WASHINGTON, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. Department of Defense said Wednesday it had launched an internal probe to determine whether acting defense chief Patrick Shanahan is biased toward Boeing, where he had worked for over 30 years. "The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General has decided to investigate complaints we recently received that Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan allegedly took actions to promote his former employer, Boeing, and disparage its competitors, allegedly in violation of ethics rules," Pentagon Inspector General spokesperson Dwrena Allen said in a statement. "In his recent Senate Armed Services Committee testimony, Acting Secretary Shanahan stated that he supported an investigation into these allegations. We have informed him that we have initiated this investigation," the statement said. The probe came after activist group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics filed a complaint earlier this month alleging Shanahan is biased toward Boeing and against Lockheed Martin, both major defense manufacturers. Shanahan spokesman Lt. Col. Joseph Buccino said Shanahan supports the investigations, saying that Shanahan's ethics agreement "ensures any matters pertaining to Boeing are handled by appropriate officials within the Pentagon to eliminate any perceived or actual conflict of interest issue with Boeing." Shanahan, 56, became the Deputy Secretary of Defense on July 19, 2017, and was made acting defense chief in Jan.1, 2019 after former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis left. Prior to his post in the Pentagon, Shanahan worked in Boeing from 1986 to 2017. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 18:53:03|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday sent a message of condolence to Indonesian President Joko Widodo over the recent deadly floods in the southeast Asian country. More than 100 people have been killed in flash floods and landslides in the eastern Indonesian province of Papua, and dozens of others are still missing, according to Indonesian officials and rescuers. On behalf of the Chinese government and people, and in his own name, Xi expressed deep condolences over the loss of lives, and extended sincere sympathies to the families of the victims and the missing. "Our sympathies lay with the Indonesian people," Xi said, adding that he is confident that under the firm leadership of the Indonesian president and government, the Indonesian people will certainly overcome difficulties and rebuild their homeland. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 19:38:18|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close TEHRAN, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said here Thursday that the United States have failed in the exercise of "illegal" sanctions against Iran. The country's achievements in the past year, including "victory over terrorism" as well as the "Iranian nations' victory in the international arena and international courts," are evidences that the United States have not succeeded in its anti-Iran policies, said Rouhani. He made the remarks, broadcast live on the state TV, on the occasion of the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, which began on Thursday. In the meantime, the global community have supported Iran, since "we have kept our oath and stood by our words" by being committed to the international Iranian nuclear deal, said Rouhani. "Those who broke the oath revealed their nature; those who committed crimes must know that the end of this path will not be in their favor," the Iranian president said referring to the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal in May last year. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 19:43:24|Editor: Xiang Bo Video Player Close A Pakistani woman works at the construction site of Multan-Sukkur Motorway under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in Pakistan on March 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Luo Xiangjun) by Misbah Saba Malik, Liu Tian ISLAMABAD, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Ambreen Shah was confident of a better future when she joined the Chinese company working on a power project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Southwest Pakistan's Balochistan province. Shah joined the China Power Hub Generation Company (CPHGC) as head of the legal department and was later promoted to vice president for Legal and Corporate Affairs for her hard work and expertise. Shah told Xinhua that working in the Chinese company not only enabled her to excel, but also allowed her, a mother, to strike a better balance between her work and personal life than in a transnational company where she was previously employed. "Their differences are from the Chinese culture. So, this is what makes it easy to work with them because they want to understand others and they want to adjust to that too," Shah added. The power plant project with an estimated cost of 2 billion U.S. dollars and cutting-edge environmentally-friendly technology is expected to generate enough electricity to meet the needs of some 4 million households. WOMEN LEARN SKILLS THROUGH CPEC PROJECTS Shah said over 30 percent of the employees at CPHGC are women, some of them in important positions. "There is absolutely no gender discrimination by (the) Chinese when they hire workers. They'd rather look at qualifications and competence levels," said Shah. For her and many other Pakistani women, the CPEC provides an opportunity for them to learn skills and values which will not only help them excel in work, but also help them become stronger in facing challenges in life. CPEC, a corridor linking Pakistan's Karachi and northwestern Peshawar and running through the populous provinces of Punjab and Sindh, highlights energy, transport, industrial cooperation and Gwadar port construction. Seeking to expand cooperation to such sectors as finance, science and technology, education, poverty alleviation and urban planning, the corridor is a major pilot project under the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). "The women who are working here, have not just gained knowledge and expertise on the technical side of the project management, but they have also learned teamwork, ... about how to get more support from each other and to provide more support. I think this is something that I really like about CPEC projects. They make you strong," Shah said. According to Pakistan's official data, CPEC has provided over 70,000 direct jobs for Pakistanis since it was launched in 2013. Addressing a seminar earlier, Pakistan's Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari said job opportunities for women will increase tremendously in the forthcoming industrial cooperation under CPEC. CPEC is also a boon to Pakistan's blue-collar women workers, who can enjoy health care, education and a better work environment in Chinese companies. The Thar region of South Pakistan's Sindh province is considered as one of the most underdeveloped areas in Pakistan, which is hard hit by droughts and people there are largely engaged in animal husbandry and agriculture. Krishna Kumari, a senator from the Thar Desert area, said hope has increased for women in her district when Chinese companies under CPEC brought them jobs. The senator said locals who have been trained under CPEC projects could take home a handsome amount of money every month. In many households, women can now earn more than men, thus reducing their financial dependence on men and enabling them to pursue their dreams through hard work, she said. EMPOWERMENT OF RURAL WOMEN In Pakistan, rural women usually do not actively take part in political affairs. Unlike in the rest of the country, women voters outnumbered men in Thar during the last general elections -- an evidence of the empowerment of women, said Kumari. According to a UN Women report, women account for only 22 percent of the labor force aged 15-64 in Pakistan, and about 73 percent of the women workers are associated with agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing sectors. Musarrat Amen, an assistant professor for Defense and Diplomatic Studies in Fatima Jinnah Women University Rawalpindi, said CPEC gave more women employment opportunities in non-agriculture fields, broadening the Pakistani women's vocational scope. Amen obtained her PhD in international relations from a reputable Chinese university. After returning to Pakistan, Amen published several research papers on the CPEC. She is currently writing a book on the mega project to address the frequently asked questions from students and researchers about the CPEC. "Being associated with China for a long time, I was asked questions about CPEC. To address queries of my students I started research on CPEC, and the deeper I dug into it, the more I learnt how it is going to be a game changer for Pakistani economy," Amen said. She said that the CPEC is a "hot topic" for Pakistani scholars and seminars, and she is often invited as a guest speaker at conferences. "I am teaching women and I know that Pakistani women have a lot of potential and their potential can be tapped by the CPEC. As Chinese women were equal agents of China's economic change, through CPEC Pakistani women will also get chance to contribute to the Pakistani economy," said the scholar. (Video reporters: Liu Tian, Jiang Chao; Video editor: Lin Lin) Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 19:53:26|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close Italian President Sergio Mattarella reacts during a joint interview with Xinhua and other Chinese media in Rome, capital of Italy, March 19, 2019. The partnership between Italy and China is built on solid foundations, Italian President Sergio Mattarella said in an interview. (Xinhua/Italian Presidential Press Office) ROME, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The partnership between Italy and China is built on solid foundations, Italian President Sergio Mattarella told Xinhua in an interview ahead of a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries, and this partnership is "built on solid foundations, inspired by natural convergences between two very ancient civilizations," said Mattarella, who paid a state visit to China two years ago. Mattarella ascribed the positive achievements in bilateral relations to efficient intergovernmental dialogue and the "growing and fruitful interaction between our peoples, who are so similar in terms of industriousness and creativity." Both China and Italy recognize that "uniting the efforts of the entire international community is needed to successfully face the main challenges of our time, from the safeguarding of peace and stability, fighting climate change, to enacting the agenda for inclusive and sustainable development," Mattarella noted. Xi's visit, which starts Thursday, is an expression of the "solidity of the bond and the mutual respect" between Italy and China, he said. "I believe there could be no better way to celebrate the eve of the important anniversary (our two countries) will share in 2020, which will mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations," Mattarella said. The Italian president said that economic and trade relations "play a key role" in Italy-China ties, and that the consistently growing trade, business cooperation and mutual investments "confirm the trust on which our relations are based." "Italy sees China not only as an economic partner of prime importance, but also as a driver of global trade," Mattarella said, adding that Italy has experience, advanced technology and solutions in various sectors, such as energy, environmental protection, sustainable urbanization, machinery manufacture, food security, health services and geriatric care. To promote trade relations, the two sides should create "a context that is as open and transparent as possible," in which economic players from the two countries can act "on an equal basis" and "in a mutually free and balanced way," he said. The two sides must "favor access to their respective markets while protecting investments and intellectual property, as well as the vital principles and standards of social, economic and environmental sustainability," Mattarella added. On the cultural front, noted the president, the heritage of both Italy and China "arouses admiration everywhere in the world" and this heritage could be a great development driver. Calling for the "promotion and valorization of each other's cultural and creative industries," Mattarella said "these dynamics must be facilitated, so they can realize their enormous potential." He specifically referred to the mechanism of forging twinning relationships between the two countries' World Heritage Sites. The two sides, he said, will soon announce the pairing up of Italy's Vineyard Landscape of Langhe-Roero and Monferrato and China's Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, as well as the establishment of sister-city relationship between Italy's Verona and China's Hangzhou. As for people-to-people exchanges within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, the president said that Italy not only participates in building the new Silk Road, but hopes to turn it into a path for better mutual understanding. More Chinese tourists are coming to visit Italy, the two countries are hosting more students from each other, and joint research programs are increasing between the two countries' universities, added Mattarella. Speaking of how the Italy-China partnership contributes to a better and more stable world, the president said that Italy is committed to safeguarding peace and rules-based multilateralism, and is pleased to see the two sides have consensus on that. He suggested that in order to better understand each other's positions and concerns, Italy and China carry out "continuous dialogue" within frameworks such as the Group of Twenty and the United Nations. In addition, both countries "are committed ... to promoting the UN 2030 Agenda and fighting climate change, a challenge in which China has a growing decisive role, and in which Italy is ready to make its contribution," Mattarella said. "There can be no peace without development, social justice, and protection of the environment," said the president. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 19:58:28|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close ISLAMABAD, March 21 (Xinhua) -- At least two people were dead and 13 others injured when a fire erupted in a multi-storey building in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi Thursday afternoon, local media reported. According to reports, at least 50 people were trapped after the fire erupted on the third and fourth floors of the 14-storey building located on the University Road in Karachi's Gulshan-e-Iqbal area. A senior local police officer told media that two people lost their lives after jumping off the building to escape, while 13 others including a woman suffered burn injuries in the fire. The injured were shifted to the Civil Hospital Karachi and the Jinnah Medical College Hospital, where hospital officials said several among the injured were in critical condition. Five fire tenders took part in the operation to douse the flames, said rescue officials, adding that firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze after three hours of hectic work and cooling process of the building was underway. The fire erupted owing to a short circuit in an air conditioner on the fourth floor and spread through electrical wires, the fire brigade officials said. Pakistan Navy helicopters were used to airlift people trapped in the building off the roof to safe area. Chief Minister of Sindh Province Syed Murad Ali Shah directed the concerned authorities to take immediate steps to safely evacuate people from the building. He also asked hospital authorities to provide best medical treatment to the injured people. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 19:58:31|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close THE HAGUE, March 21(Xinhua) -- The suspect of the tram shooting on Monday in Utrecht is for now suspected of three criminal offenses with a terrorist motive, the public prosecutor announced on Thursday. The offenses are multiple murder or manslaughter with a terrorist objective, an attempt to do the foregoing and threat with a terrorist objective. The 37-year-old suspect will be brought before the examining magistrate judge on Friday. During the shooting at the 24 Oktoberplein in Utrecht on Monday three people were killed and several wounded. The investigation is still ongoing. The prosecutor stated that no relationship has yet been found between the suspect and the victims and that there are no indications that the suspect received any help from other persons during the shooting incident. "Furthermore, it is investigated whether the accused acted solely for the sake of a terrorist motive, or whether his actions were based on personal problems in combination with radicalized ideas," the prosecutor stated. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 19:58:32|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close SINGAPORE, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Singapore-headquartered e-commerce giant Lazada Group said on Thursday that it will create 20 million jobs in the e-commerce ecosystem by 2030. At the LazMall Brands Future Forum, the company said it plans to serve hundreds of millions of consumers by the year, as well as cultivate eight million successful and flourishing entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprises. Lazada Group whose majority is owned by Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a top online shopping and selling destination in Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The company also announced a series of products and services that will fire up the growth of its brands and sellers to win market share in the region by transforming them into "Super eBusinesses." The company told the brands and sellers who gathered at the annual summit to discuss growth opportunities and technological advancements that the offerings, dubbed super-solutions, are aimed at resolving three pain points that brands and sellers face, namely branding, marketing and sales. "No seller is too small to aspire, and no brand is too big to be a Super eBusiness. That is why we are thrilled to roll out super-solutions to help our brands and sellers become more nimble in digitizing their businesses and better reach customers," said Pierre Poignant, Lazada Group chief executive officer. The super-solutions will also make it easier for brands and sellers to open up stores on LazMall, which is a dedicated space for Lazada users to get direct access to over 1,500 trusted leading international and local brands and top-rated online brands, and authorized brand distributors. It also announced that it will host a first-of-its-kind concert, called Super Party, in Jakarta next week as part of its birthday shopping event. Poignant said that backed by Alibaba's technology and logistics infrastructure, Lazada has been able to launch over the past yearS industry-leading tech innovations, such as search-image function, consumer engagement games and in-app live streaming, to become a "shoppertainment" platform in the region. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 20:13:37|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close LUANDA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Construction work on a middle school in Kuito city, capital of central Angola's Bie province has begun, the constructor China Railway 20 Bureau Group Corporation said on Thursday. The school will cover an area of 1,769.5 square meters, and its construction is expected to be completed by 2020, according to the company. Zhu Qihui, chairman of China Railway 20 Bureau Group International Angola, said during the cornerstone laying ceremony that the company is fully aware of the responsibility for building such a middle school in Angola, a country that highly values education. "We will guarantee the efficiency and quality of the construction, and offer a good learning environment to all the students as soon as possible," said Zhu. Pereira Alfredo, governor of Bie province, expressed his confidence in the company, saying he is looking forward to a satisfying project. The governor said the government will be committed to improving infrastructure and local people's living conditions. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 20:13:37|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close Administrator of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Achim Steiner, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Argentine President Mauricio Macri, and United Nations General Assembly President Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces (from L to R) attend the Second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 20, 2019. (Xinhua/Martin Zabala) BUENOS AIRES, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The Second High-level United Nations (UN) Conference on South-South Cooperation kicked off here on Wednesday, with senior officials urging to deepen and expand the initiative to realize development goals. South-South cooperation is the key to the world's sustainable development and the fight against global warming, said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the opening session of the three-day conference. "South-South cooperation will be vital to ensure mutual support and exchange of best practices, to enhance adaptation and increase the resilience of developing countries and communities facing the devastating impacts of climate change," said Guterres. "South-South cooperation can also support the transformation of economies dependent on fossil fuels, with strategies that reinforce both sustainable development and environmental protection," he said. "South-South cooperation is a global exercise of all countries of the South to benefit everyone, including the least developed countries," Guterres added, saying that now is the time to take bold and transformative action. "Together, we can achieve the sustainable development goals, beat climate change, and transform the lives of people around the world," the UN chief concluded. Argentine President Mauricio Macri called for deepening South-South cooperation in his speech, saying that cooperation is a great tool to promote horizontal links between countries at different development levels. The conference marks the 40th anniversary of the UN Conference on Technical Cooperation Among Developing Countries, which was also held here, adopting the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (BAPA). Maria Fernanda Espinosa, president of the UN General Assembly, said the BAPA is a symbol of the determination of the Global South to advance equality for all. "It is clear that we are helping to restore confidence and the effectiveness of international cooperation and multilateral action. South-South cooperation represents the best of our people. The principles of solidarity and acting for the common good make South-South cooperation a powerful force," she said. South-South cooperation is a term historically used by policymakers and academics to describe the exchange of resources, technology, and knowledge between developing countries, also known as countries of the Global South. The central theme of the conference this year is how the South-South cooperation represents an opportunity to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the globally-agreed blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 20:23:39|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The Brazilian government on Wednesday presented to the Congress a bill for the reform of the social security system of the military. The reform will affect the pension and retirement system of members of the Armed Forces, Military Police Corps and Fire Department squads. According to the Ministry of Economy, the reform will help save some 10 billion reais (2.6 billion U.S. dollars) in 10 years in the Armed Forces, while state governments are expected to save 52 billion reais (13.8 billion dollars) meanwhile, as the Military Police corps and Fire Department squads are state workers. The bill for the reform of the civilians' social security system has been presented to the Congress, but Rodrigo Maia, head of the House, said the Congress will not submit the bill to a vote if the government does not present a bill for the military as well. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro called for a quick analysis of the bills, so that they can be approved soon. The bill increases the minimum service time of the military before retirement, in a similar manner as it was proposed for civilians, from 30 to 35 years of service. However, it does not propose a minimum age of retirement, which means that the military will still have advantages over civil workers from both the private and public sectors. The reform bill for civilians presents a minimum retirement age of 65 years for men and 62 for women, regardless of the number of working years. In addition, the bill also features an increase in the share of the salary to be paid to the social security system, from 7.5 percent to 10.5 percent by 2022. However, the figures are significantly smaller than those featured in the civilian reform -- for civilians, the government's bill proposes a maximum contribution of 11.68 percent for private sector workers and 16.79 percent for public sector workers. The social security system of the military has a deficit of 43.9 billion reais (11.6 billion dollars), while the system serving civilian citizens in the private sector has a deficit of 195 billion reais (51.7 billion dollars). Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 20:23:39|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The bilateral trade volume between China and France surpassed 60 billion U.S. dollars, hitting a record high last year, the Ministry of Commerce (MOF) said Thursday. The bilateral trade volume saw a 15.5-percent increase to 62.9 billion U.S. dollars, with France's exports of agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and luxury clothing seeing fast growth, MOF spokesperson Gao Feng told a news conference. For the first two months in 2019, the bilateral trade volume grew 19.4 percent year on year to 10.6 billion U.S. dollars. China's imports of goods from France grew 42.2 percent, said Gao. In terms of investment, France is the fourth largest country in the European Union (EU) to invest in China and ranks third in attracting Chinese investment in the EU. In 2018, the direct investment from France to China grew 28 percent, while investment in reverse went up 12 percent. By the end of January this year, the total investment between the two countries exceeded 40 billion U.S. dollars. According to the MOC, China and France have kept deepening cooperation in traditional industries such as nuclear, aviation and automobile industries, while actively expanding cooperation in emerging industries including environmental protection, elder-care and finance. In the future, China would like to work with France to deepen cooperation in the traditional fields and expand cooperation in agriculture, finance and elder-care industries, Gao said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 20:33:41|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close MOGADISHU, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Somali forces backed by African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) killed two al-Shabab militants during midnight clashes in Bula-Marer area in the country's southern town of Kuntuwarey, officials said on Thursday. Muhudin Khalif Aliyow, deputy governor for security of Kuntuwarey town told journalists that the allied forces engaged fierce battle with the extremists in Bula-Marer in Lower Shabelle region. "The militants attacked our military base at midnight attempting to overrun it but our forces fought them back bravely and inflicted them heavy casualties killing two of them," the official said. He added that Somali forces are in full control of the town and are making operations to pursue those who are hiding in the town. Residents said they were terrified by the heavy weapons exchanged by the two warring sides. "Al-Shabab fighters launched an attack on a military base used by government forces, there was street fighting that lasted for a while," Qamar Adam, a local resident told Xinhua by phone. The attack comes a day after al-Shabab militants conducted a similar attack on the government forces in Bal'ad town in Middle Shabelle region in southern Somalia. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 20:38:42|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close DAR ES SALAAM, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania and Qatar have pledged to build up cooperation in investments in gas, mining, tourism and infrastructure, the State House said on Thursday. The two countries promised to strengthen their bilateral relations during talks between President John Magufuli and Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, said a statement released by the Directorate of Presidential Communication. The statement issued by State House in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam said President Magufuli assured Qatar of Tanzania's determination to work closely with foreign investors. "Tanzania has abundant opportunities for investments in gas, mining, tourism, air transport," said President Magufuli, inviting Qatari investors to do business in these areas. "I understand Qatar has vast experience in gas processing. And we have enough gas reserves so we are inviting Qatar investors to come and invest in this sector," said the head of state. Tanzania has more than 57 trillion cubic feet of total estimated recoverable natural gas reserves. For his part, the Qatari Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mohammed, assured President Magufuli that his country will bring investors in various areas to the east African nation. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 20:48:44|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close BERLIN, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Ahead of the European summit starting on Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated her will to fight for an orderly Brexit "until the last day, until the last hour". "One can certainly talk positively about a short extension" for Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, said Merkel during a speech at the German parliament. On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Theresa May had called upon the European Union to postpone the date of Britain's withdrawal until June 30. According to Merkel, the governmental leaders of the European members would probably comply in principle with Britain's request for a postponement. However, Merkel stressed that "the legitimacy of the European elections in May" must be preserved. Merkel also stated that a condition for a postponement was that there would be a positive vote on the withdrawal treaty in the British parliament as negotiated with the EU. If there would be no agreement in the parliament in London for the withdrawal treaty "then we will keep it open whether there should be another meeting before the resignation date", Merkel said. A major issue would be the problems surrounding the so-called backstop. It is still unclear how the border regulations between Northern Ireland which belongs to Britain, and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member, are to be designed. Merkel stressed that the EU had made sufficient concessions on this controversial issue. Meanwhile, she pointed out that Germany, as well as the other EU members, had been preparing for an unorderly Brexit with regards to issues like the rights of British citizens living in Germany. Relations with Britain could not be as close after Britain left the EU, Merkel said. However, "the door is wide open to close cooperation in friendship and mutual benefit from our side," she said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 20:58:47|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The China Writers Association on Thursday launched a poverty relief program together with a domestic enterprise to encourage more Chinese writers to visit rural or less developed areas. The program plans to invite about 50 writers, including winners of top literature prizes in China, to visit cities or counties in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, northwest China's Shaanxi Province and several other provincial-level regions. The writers will have the opportunity to take a closer look at the on-going poverty relief campaign in these areas and are expected to write more works based on their experiences, according to the China Writers Association. They will also be invited to give literature lessons to students and literature fans in the areas they visit. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 20:58:48|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close CHANGSHA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- A central Chinese province has stopped operation of 34 hydropower plants and demolished 10 dams in the past two years in a key reserve of giant salamanders, the world's largest existing amphibian. Municipal officials of Zhangjiajie said they planned to demolish most of the 88 hydropower plants, mainly small ones built before the establishment of the National Giant Salamander Nature Reserve. "Only those that provide important flood control, irrigation and water supply responsibilities will be retained," said Hu Shenghu, head of the city's water conservancy bureau. Officials and conservationists have blamed the hydropower plants for blocking and fragmenting rivers, hindering fish migration and reducing prey and habitats for the rare amphibians. "We plan to dismantle all dams that only have power-generating functions in the reserve before the end of 2020 and reevaluate the functions of the rest," Hu said. The decision to close the hydro projects, which came in 2017 in concord with China's pursuit of a greener path of development, has been hailed as a milestone for habitat restoration of giant salamanders, which date back 350 million years to the age of the dinosaurs. "A MORE COMFORTABLE LIFE" Giant salamanders are commonly known as "baby fish" in China as their cries, according to legends, resemble that of a human baby; though in reality, they lack vocal cords to cry out. They are under state protection in China, threatened by habitat loss and consumption of their meat. Liang Zhiqiang, an associate researcher at the Hunan Fisheries Science Institute, said giant salamanders like to inhabit caves with flowing water. They usually go out for small fish at night and return before dawn, so the factitious barriers in rivers, such as dams, could hinder their foraging. "When the dams are gone, giant salamanders can live a more comfortable life," Liang said. Deng Zhiyong, head of the protection unit of the reserve, said the removal of the dams will also benefit the entire ecosystem. "It is not simply about the species but also its habitat. Only when its suitable ecological environment is preserved, can giant salamanders survive in the long run," Deng said. To protect the species, now held as an icon and mascot of Zhangjiajie, the local government said they stopped all sand dredging activities in the reserve and tore down river blocks to increase water flow. As 89.1 percent of Sangzhi county's water area is in the reserve, Gu Guosheng, director of the county's water conservancy bureau, said they often communicated with the affected communities before demolishing a dam. To their relief, Gu said most locals chose to support their decision. "Many locals agreed that protecting the environment is not only about our generation but also good for future generations," Gu said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 20:58:49|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close ANKARA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's comments on the deadly mosques shootings in New Zealand have sparked a sharp diplomatic row as the NATO country's leader denounced what he called rising hatred and prejudice against Islam. Erdogan, who is also the leader of the Justice and Development Party, has been campaigning for local elections due on March 31. He called on New Zealand to amend its laws to ensure that the attacker, who killed 50 people in two mosques, should be severely punished. The Turkish president also warned that anyone travelling to Turkey with anti-Muslim sentiments would be "sent back in coffins like their grandfathers" at Gallipoli, where a blood-drenched WWI battle occurred. Australia and New Zealand sent troops to fight in WWI's Gallipoli campaign in northwestern Turkey. The Gallipoli battle, marked by heavy casualties on both sides, was a disastrous defeat for the allies against the then Ottoman Empire in 1915. Erdogan's comments were made in Canakkale province in northwestern Turkey, which is home to the historic battlefields, on the anniversary of a WWI Turkish naval victory. His comments drew a strong protest from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who summoned Turkey's ambassador on Wednesday. Australia also issued a travel advisory warning people visiting Canakkale for the anniversary to "exercise caution." Morrison said that he will review the bilateral ties and "all options are on the table" if Erdogan does not withdraw his comments. Hundreds of New Zealanders and Australians travel to Canakkale each year for Anzac Day on April 25 to mark the start of the battle of Gallipoli. "I consider President Erdogan's remarks highly offensive to Australians and highly reckless in this very sensitive environment," Morrison told reporters in Canberra, Australia's capital. "They are offensive because they insulted the memory of our Anzacs and they violate the pledge that is etched in the stone at Gallipoli," he said. Since the weekend, the Turkish leader has been using video footage of the Christchurch attack to denounce Islamophobia during campaign rallies ahead of local elections. The video, which was blurred but had clear sounds of automatic gunfire, has been shown to thousands of people at several rallies and aired live on Turkish television, despite efforts by New Zealand to halt its spread. The video prompted widespread condemnation. On Wednesday, a senior Turkish official said that Erdogan's words "were unfortunately taken out of context." "As he was giving a speech at the (Gallipoli) commemorations, Erdogan framed his remarks in a historical context of attacks against Turkey," Fahrettin Altun, presidency communications director, said on his Twitter account. "Turks have always been the most welcoming and gracious hosts to their Anzac visitors," he added, trying to rectify the situation. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Wednesday that Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Istanbul this week for a meeting of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation to discuss the mosques shootings. He was expected to take up the issue during the visit. In an op-ed published in the Washington Post on Wednesday, Erdogan argued that the attacker in New Zealand is not different from the Islamic State who is still fighting coalition forces in Syria. He also hailed New Zealand's prime minister's "courage." Turkey is heading to key municipal elections which are considered a test for Erdogan's leadership after he considerably strengthened his executive powers following a general election in 2018. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:11:18|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close An Indian girl has her face smeared with colored powder during the celebration of Holi, the festival of colors, in Mumbai, India, on March 21, 2019. The Hindu festival of Holi heralds the arrival of spring. (Xinhua/Stringer) Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:08:51|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close NAIROBI, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Kenya and Tunisia are considering a bilateral air services agreement (BASA) in order to boost air transport links, a government official said on Thursday. Betty Maina, principal secretary ministry of industry, trade and co-operatives, told a trade forum in Nairobi that currently there are no direct flights between the two countries and this has hampered volume of trade between the two countries. "A Bilateral Air Services Agreement between the two countries is at an advanced stage of negotiation, providing an opportunity for ease of travel and exports between the two countries," Maina said during the first Tunisian-Kenyan economic forum. The two-day event brought together Tunisian investors to meet their Kenyan counterparts for trade deals and formation of joint ventures. Maina said that the trade forum presented an opportunity to develop mutually beneficial engagements on trade and investments between Kenya and Tunisia. She said that the Kenya-Tunisia Joint Framework for Cooperation was signed in 2001, but to date, no session of the Joint Cooperation Commission (JCC) has been held. The official added that both nations are keen to enhance their bilateral cooperation especially now that Kenya has adopted an Afro-centric approach in her foreign policy orientation. "It is important that such a JCC session be convened in 2019 at the earliest to allow for deepening and structured engagement," she noted. Maina said that bilateral trade between Kenya and Tunisia, has been modest. Kenya's exports to Tunisia were 29. 3 million shillings (about 292, 750 U.S. dollars), while its imports were about 634,737 dollars in 2017, Maina said. She added that Kenya mainly exports coffee, tobacco, leather, iron and steel bar rods to Tunisia while it imports prefabricated buildings and electrical appliances, medicaments, petroleum oil, animal feeds from the north African country. The ministry of industry said that there exists opportunities for export of Kenyan products, especially coffee and tea to Tunisia. "Other potential products include nuts, sisal and sisal products, cut flowers," she noted. Tunisian Minister of Commerce Omar Behi called on its investors to take advantage of the emerging opportunities in Kenya and the East Africa Community. Behi said his country offers a gateway to the European market and both countries needed to review their approach to cooperation and development so as to benefit the people of Kenya and Tunisia. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:28:56|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close CHANGCHUN, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Telecom giant China Mobile has launched a 5G base station in the city of Hunchun, northeast China's Jilin Province. The station, located in the resort of Fangchuan, is the first 5G base station in the city, as well as the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, which governs Hunchun. A panorama image captured by the camera on the base station was sent real-time to the press conference held Wednesday in Yanji, the capital city of Yanbian. Phones and laptops at the conference were able to access the 5G network via the wireless router. All the current 4G base stations in Hunchun will be upgraded to 5G, and residents in the city will be able to use 5G phones during the second half of this year, according to the China Mobile Yanbian branch. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:28:57|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close A man works in a TBEA solar power station in Egypt's southern province of Aswan, March 18, 2019. China's renewable energy company TBEA Sunoasis has finished the construction of three solar power stations at the Benban Solar Energy Park in Egypt's southern province of Aswan, a TBEA official said. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa) ASWAN, Egypt, March 21 (Xinhua) -- China's renewable energy company TBEA Sunoasis has finished the construction of three solar power stations at the Benban Solar Energy Park in Egypt's southern province of Aswan, a TBEA official said. The stations, with an output of 186 megawatts, are part of the giant Benban Solar Plant, Gu Huchen, director of Engineering Management Department of TBEA's New Energy International Engineering Division, told Xinhua. "The project consists of three sub-projects, each with a capacity of approximately 62 megawatts," Gu said, adding that about 600,000 components were used in the projects. The projects, which TBEA started to build a year ago, are owned by Spanish renewable energy project developer Acciona and Saudi investment firm Swicorp, with an investment of around 180 million U.S. dollars. The three projects are financially backed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Two of the projects have started to sell power to local utility under a 25-year feed-in tariff contract, Rawy Komar, an engineer with Acciona told Xinhua. "The third will reach full capacity with grid connection in about one week," he added. The Benban Solar Plant, which is expected to be fully completed in mid-2019, aims to generate around 2 gigawatts of utility-scale solar capacity through a total of 40 stations. The park, about 650 km south of Cairo, is financed by a number of global funding agencies and banks, including the AIIB and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The solar plant, which occupies an area of 37 square km, will help Egypt increase its use of renewable energy to 22 percent of all domestic energy use by 2020. The project is estimated to help to reduce global greenhouse gas emission through cutting more than half a million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Talking about the construction period, Gu said that "at the peak, there were about 1,500 Egyptians on the scene. Around 1,300 are from Aswan, while the rest of them are from Luxor and Alexandria." "According to our vague calculations, we have provided at least 5,000 jobs to the local area throughout the construction process," Gu added. TBEA Sunoasis is a major global green and smart energy service provider with business in more than 20 countries. It is devoted to achieving sustainable development of human society with the use of smart, efficient and green energy. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:33:59|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close JAKARTA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia's resort island of Bali is scheduled to celebrate the annual landmark yoga festival of Bali Spirit on March 24-31, promoting harmonious life of all mankind in the world, a tourism official said on Thursday. Entering the 12th year, the Bali Spirit Festival will be featured with more attractions and spiritual healing sessions for participants who come from the world. During the week-long event, participants can attend some 300 activities held in Bali Purnati Center in Ubud, head of 2019 Calendar of Events team in the Tousism Ministry Esthy Reko Astuty said. Among the activities will be symposium, mass meditation, master class, breathing management training, self-development workshops, mind healing, traditional music and dancing performances. "Through Bali Spirit, each participant could change their lifestyle into a better one. This changing may eventually affect their community or even in the world," she said. The festival is a way to promote Bali's traditional philosophy of Tri Hita Karana that suggests harmonious and balanced life by respecting others, preserving the nature while worshiping the gods. The festival, known as the world's fifth largest of its kind, is apparently benefiting tourism in Bali, Esthy said. Besides attracting significant number of foreign tourists, the festival has been providing lucrative income for the economy around the venue. "This event was catered to thousands of foreign tourists in the past several years. We noted that the festival has generated some 9.1 million U.S. dollars of income for the economy of people around the event from 2013 to 2018," Esthy said. Indonesia Tourism Minister Arief Yahya said the festival is originally designed to hone up participants' potential positive attitudes to make positive changes in their lives through yoga. The event is apparently attracting more foreign tourists in the last few years as the participants always come again and bringing more of their relatives and friends interested with activities throughout the festival. "Bali is very capable of holding this kind of event with its very beautiful surroundings and nature that fit and highly support the activities in the festival. This is what makes Bali Spirit Festival different from others in the world," he said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:34:00|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close DOHA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The Qatari Armed Forces started on Thursday a military training with armed forces of friendly countries, the Qatari News Agency said. The training consists of seven stages, said the commander in charge of the exercise from the Qatari side. The stages of the drill cover planning, as well as control and evaluation of the situation of the armed forces, he added. The exercise partners, the United States and Qatar, will facilitate a bilateral response to transnational security threat, a local newspaper said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:44:04|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close JAKARTA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji agreed on Thursday to start negotiations over preferential trade agreement which is expected to boost trade and investment among the nations. The agreement was reached during the Indonesia South Pacific Forum (ISPF) in Jakarta. "One of the results of the ISFP meeting is that Indonesia agreed to the commencement of negotiation over preferential trade agreement with Papua New Guinea and Fiji," Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said. The agreement was expected to drive up trade volume and ease barriers in trade and investment, Minister Retno said. The minister said that Indonesia and countries in South Pacific region face common challenges particularly in creating balance between pursuing higher economic growth and preserving environment. "I reaffirm Indonesia's commitment to cooperate with countries in South Pacific in addressing problems and maximizing common potentials for the prosperity of our people," she said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:49:05|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close HARARE, March 21 (Xinhua) -- African countries have been urged to address drivers of fragility in order to reduce fragility of growth on the continent. Addressing an African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) 21st Senior Policy Seminar under the theme "Fragility of Growth in African Economies" in Harare Thursday, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya said it was sad that the continent, which is endowed with rich natural resources, continues to battle high poverty levels due to prolonged uneven and unsustainable growth. He said addressing growth fragility would result in Africa attaining robust and sustainable growth that would enable it to lift millions of its people out of poverty. Industrialization and value addition, he said, are key to driving Africa's growth. According to the World Bank, growth in sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to rise to 3.4 percent in 2019 and 3.7 percent in 2020-21. However, per capita income growth is expected to remain modest, aggravating sub-Saharan Africa's development challenges. Mangudya said Africa's growth fragility was traceable to both internal and external factors. "Weak macro-economic policies, high dependency on agricultural and mineral products with little value addition, low production, adverse terms of trade shocks especially falling commodity prices, weak innovation as well as poorly sequenced economic reforms and low physical and human capital investments are among the major factors that continue to weigh down Africa's development," Mangudya said. The two-day seminar to discuss issues around addressing the factors causing fragile growth in sub-Saharan Africa ends Friday. It is being attended by participants drawn from Africa and beyond including governors of African central banks, heads of civil services, permanent secretaries and heads of government agencies and parastatals, among others. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:49:05|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close ANKARA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Talks between Turkey and the United States have so far failed to secure an agreement to create a safe zone in northeast Syria to ease Ankara's security concerns, amid confusion over the U.S. pullout from Syria. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration continues to walk back its planned exit from Syria and is now considering to leave around 1,000 troops in the country, a move that would, again, cause apprehension among Washington's allies. "We understand that there are some differences of views in the different stages of the U.S. administration regarding the pullout, but for us, Trump's announcement is valid," a Turkish diplomat told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. He said that the discussions are still ongoing over a proposed safe zone, without detailing when and whether a deal can be brokered. Since Trump first announced a "complete withdrawal" of some 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria in December, there has been serious backpedaling as a result of internal debate in Washington. NATO allies Turkey and the U.S. as well as European partners have launched talks to set up a safe zone in northeastern Syria, which was proposed by Trump in the event of U.S. exit from Syria to ease Ankara's growing concern over a local Kurdish militia. U.S. forces have long relied on the Syrian People's Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey sees as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party which is banned as a terror group by Ankara. The Kurdish fighters have been a major ally for the U.S. troops in fighting the militant group Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Turkey insists that the proposed buffer zone should be under its control, a precondition under which Ankara will not launch a new cross-border operation against the Kurdish fighters. Some experts believe that it is unlikely that Turkey would control such a buffer zone because of the complexity of the power struggle in Syria. Kerim Has, Moscow-based expert on the Turkey-Russia relations, explained that it seems improbable that Ankara will convince Moscow and Washington to set up a buffer zone under its jurisdiction because of its insistent hostility towards the Syrian government and the Kurds. Has also emphasized that the U.S. was worried that the expected U.S. withdrawal from Syria would spark a military conflict between Turkish troops and YPG fighters. In a recent interview with state-run Anadolu Agency, Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar reaffirmed Turkey's tough position with regard to creating a security zone inside Syria. "This question has a very short answer. Who will be there? The Turkish Armed Forces. It is certain," he said. Akar explained that this zone will span a 440-kilometer strip from east of the River Euphrates to the Iraqi border with a depth of 30 to 40 kilometers inside Syria. Washington now faces the difficult task of alleviating the security concerns of its ally Turkey while ensuring that events in northern Syria do not pave the way for the return of the Islamic State or wider regional instability. Experts also believe that if a deal is reached on a safe zone, it would give Ankara and Washington a unique opportunity to work together after two years of bilateral tensions stemming from differences on the Syrian war. "Concerned about a probable Turkish intervention against the YPG in northern Syria, the U.S. is exerting efforts to prolong the talks with Turkey on the safe zone issue," said Serkan Demirtas, a Turkish journalist and political analyst. But if the stalemate in the Turkey-U.S. negotiations continues, it will possibly result in new unilateral Turkish threats to launch cross-border attacks against the YPG forces. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:49:05|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close NANCHANG, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Three people are dead after strong thunderstorms, gales and hail swept through parts of Jiangxi Province in eastern China on Thursday, local authorities said. The severe weather has toppled 77 houses and caused 188 people to evacuate, said Jiangxi's emergency management bureau. Some 81,000 people in the region were affected, and the estimated direct economic losses are 250 million yuan (about 37.4 million U.S. dollars), said the bureau. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:59:07|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The Ministry of Civil Affairs on Thursday called for efforts to ensure safety on Tomb Sweeping Day which falls on April 5 this year. Agencies in charge of funeral services and graveyards are asked to conduct safety overhauls to check hidden risks and ensure safety measures are well implemented, according to a meeting on safety on Tomb Sweeping Day held by the ministry. The meeting emphasized traffic congestion and fire prevention efforts, calling for well organized, green activities to avoid stampedes and fires. On Tomb Sweeping Day, or the Qingming Festival, people visit their ancestors' graves and tombs of their deceased loved ones, which often involves long road trips. During the day, people pay respects to their ancestors and departed family members by setting symbolic objects alight. This can result in fires in drought-hit areas. More than 9.7 million Chinese visited cemeteries to honor their deceased relatives during the three-day holiday for Tomb Sweeping Day in 2018. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 21:59:07|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close RAMALLAH, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian Prisoners' Club said Thursday that Israel is detaining 22 Palestinian mothers of 79 children, out of 45 Palestinian females imprisoned in Israel jails. It said in an emailed press statement on the occasion of the Mother's Day that the Israeli authorities prevent the 22 mothers from the visits of their children and their family members to prisons. "Those mothers who are prevented by the Israeli authorities to hug their children are also deprived of contacting them by telephone," said the statement. The statement added that among the detained females, there are mothers who still need to breastfeed their infants and were sentenced for a long-term of imprisonment. It accused Israel of targeting the mothers and families of Palestinians killed in the conflict and practicing collective measures against them. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:14:12|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close RIGA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- As Latvia is preparing for this year's European Parliament elections in May, lawmakers on Thursday voted to appoint Kristine Berzina as the new head of the Central Election Commission, parliamentary spokespeople said. Berzina beat the commission's long-standing chairman Arnis Cimdars in the race to become Latvia's chief election official. While the opposition Greens and Farmers Union had nominated Cimdars for reappointment, the governing center-right coalition proposed replacing him with Berzina, an experienced election official who has been heading the election commission's information department. In the vote, 53 MPs supported Berzina and 29 cast their ballots for Cimdars. Berzina, who is due to take office as the new Central Election Commission's new chair, said on public radio that she was not planning immediate reforms in the commission as it is necessary to complete all the preparations for the coming European Parliament elections. "My first job is to manage the European Parliament election process well, correctly and fairly," the new election chief said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:14:14|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close TRIPOLI, March 21 (Xinhua) -- British Ambassador to Libya, Frank Baker, on Thursday welcomed the UN-sponsored Libyan National Conference to be held in April that aims to end Libya's political crisis. The ambassador made his remarks during a meeting with the UN Special Envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, in the capital Tripoli. "Ghassan Salame discussed with Frank Baker recent political developments in Libya," the UN Support Mission in Libya said. "The ambassador expressed his government's full support for the National Conference, and welcomed the announcement of the date and location," the mission added. The National Conference is a part of Salame's action plan proposed last year, aiming to end the political division in Libya. On Wednesday, Salame announced that the conference would be held between April 14 and 16 in the southwestern Libyan city of Ghadames. Libya has been suffering escalating violence and political division since the fall of the late leader Gaddafi's regime in 2011. The North African nation has been struggling to make a democratic transition, despite signing a UN-sponsored political agreement later in 2015. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:19:15|Editor: xuxin Video Player Close MOSCOW, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kazakhstan's former and incumbent presidents on Thursday agreed to closely coordinate their actions to promote stronger bilateral ties. Putin held a telephone conversation with Nursultan Nazarbayev, founder of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the incumbent head of the Security Council of Kazakhstan, and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, according to the Kremlin. Putin thanked Nazarbayev for his personal contributions to the development of Russia-Kazakhstan relations and to the success of Eurasian integration. He expressed confidence that Nazarbayev would continue to actively contribute to strengthening cooperation within the framework of the Eurasian Economic Union. Also, Putin congratulated Tokayev on assuming office as Kazakhstan's president and wished him every success. Nazarbayev, who had served as the Central Asian country's president since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, announced his resignation on Tuesday. He has named Tokayev, the speaker of the upper house of the Kazakh parliament, as interim president. RTHK: US defence secretary probed over Boeing bias Acting US Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan is being investigated by the Pentagon's inspector-general for alleged favouritism in acquisitions toward his former employer, Boeing. Investigators aim to find out if Shanahan, as deputy defence secretary, had violated ethics rules by promoting Boeing and disparaging its rival Lockheed Martin in meetings at the Pentagon. Government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) last week submitted a complaint to the inspector-general, citing several media reports that alleged the 30-year Boeing veteran cast aspersions on Lockheed's F-35 fighter while pushing Boeing's F-15X. "Mr Shanahan reportedly praised Boeing in discussions about government contracts, said that Boeing would have done much better than its competitor Lockheed Martin had it been awarded a fighter jet contract, and repeatedly 'dumped on' the jet Lockheed produced," Crew said. "Through his conduct and comments, Acting Secretary Shanahan may have violated [Pentagon)] ethics rules," it said. A Pentagon spokesman said Shanahan welcomed the probe. "Acting Secretary Shanahan has at all times remained committed to upholding his ethics agreement." Shanahan was the Pentagon's number two until defence secretary Jim Mattis, a former Marine Corps general, quit in December after disagreeing with President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria. Trump has yet to nominate a permanent replacement, and it remains unclear if he wants Shanahan to remain in the job. (AFP) This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. rypson/iStock(NEW YORK) -- Two JetBlue pilots sexually assaulted two female airline workers during a layover in San Juan, according to a lawsuit the alleged victims filed in Brooklyn federal court. The two airline crew members, who were identified as Jane Doe 1 from Utah and Jane Doe 2 from Texas, met the pilots, Eric Johnson and Dan Watson, on a beach and shared a beer, the lawsuit said. The alleged incident occurred last May. The beer was laced with a drug, and after that point, the rest of the night became a blur for Doe #1, Doe #2 and the other crew member, according to the lawsuit. The party ended up back in a hotel room where the women said they were attacked, leaving one of them with an STD, the lawsuit said. The company told ABC News in a statement: While we cannot comment on pending litigation, JetBlue takes allegations of violent or inappropriate behavior very seriously and investigates such claims thoroughly. We work to create a respectful workplace for all our crew members where they feel welcome and safe. Copyright 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:19:16|Editor: Li Xia Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese authorities Thursday announced detailed measures to implement the country's value-added tax (VAT) reform to further reduce the tax burden on various industries. Starting April 1, taxpayers that are subject to the 16-percent VAT rate on their taxable sales or imported goods will enjoy a 13-percent VAT rate, while those who are subject to the 10-percent VAT rate will only need to pay 9 percent, according to a joint statement released by the Ministry of Finance, the State Taxation Administration and the General Administration of Customs. Buyers of agricultural goods who are subject to a 10-percent deduction rate, which is used to calculate input VAT, will be subject to a 9-percent deduction rate, according to the statement. The statement also laid out a series of supporting measures for VAT reform such as the extension in the scale of goods and services eligible for input tax deductions. The announcement came after a State Council's executive meeting Wednesday, which decided that the country will implement a slew of measures to cut the VAT rates, making sure that tax burdens on all industries will only go down, not up. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:29:23|Editor: Xiang Bo Video Player Close HONG KONG, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Britain launched a year-long campaign in China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Thursday to promote British design and boost cooperation on creative industry. The campaign, named "Great British Design", will include around 21 events with different themes including fashion, media, industrial design and architecture, and will bring the largest ever delegation of British designers to Hong Kong, according to the British Department of International Trade in Hong Kong (DIT Hong Kong). "This campaign is not being launched anywhere else around the world. This is a campaign for Hong Kong," said Paul McComb, director general for trade and investment at DIT Hong Kong, adding that the pinnacle of this campaign will be Business of Design Week (BODW) 2019, for which Britain has been named the official partner country. BODW is an annual program in Hong Kong and enjoys the reputation as Asia's premier event on design, brands and innovation. This year's BODW, to be held in December, will see Britain's return as the official partner country after their initial collaboration back in 2006. "British design and innovation, when harnessed to local Hong Kong design and innovation, was so powerful, and it was regional. That was the thing we were trying to create here in a place like Hong Kong, which is, as we all know, a super conductor for this region," British Consul General Andrew Heyn told a reception marking the launching of the campaign. In a video message, John Sorrell, a renowned designer and the British prime minister's business ambassador for creative industries, said that the British design industry can offer Hong Kong and the surrounding region talents, ingenuity as well as partnership. Sorrell, who will lead the British design delegation to BODW in December, said that he hopes to have conversations in Hong Kong about possible cooperation that is "to everyone's benefit." Eric Yim, chairman of the Hong Kong Design Center, the host of BODW, pointed out that BODW has been mentioned as a major industrial event in both the HKSAR chief executive's recent policy address and the Chinese central government's outline plan for the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. "Sharing the same vision as the DIT about the role of design in shaping our collective futures, we are thus very excited to be partnering with Britain for BODW. Your support in bringing the best design industry leaders to Hong Kong will surely increase the impact of the event and enforce a dynamic learning and exchange of ideas between economies, cities and industries," Yim said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:34:27|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close MANILA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday that his administration has no more plans to talk peace with the leftist rebels, adding he will leave the matter to his successor. "I am officially announcing the permanent termination of our talks between the government peace panel and the Communist Party of the Philippines," Duterte said in his speech at the 122nd anniversary of the Philippine Army. He added, "I am no longer entertaining any interventions or maybe persuasions in this democratic state of the Republic of the Philippines." He advised the rebels to just talk peace to his successor. "My sense is that maybe you can talk to the next president of this republic one day," Duterte said. Already, Duterte has dissolved a government panel negotiating peace with the leftist rebels. He sent letters dated March 18 to the members of the panel chaired by Philippine Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello to inform them that their appointments have been terminated. "To ensure uninterrupted delivery of public service, you are hereby directed to turn over all official documents, papers and properties in your possession to the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Peace, Reconciliation and Unity," the letter read. In November 2017, Duterte formally terminated the government's peace negotiation with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front of the Philippines (CPP-NPA-NDFP). He said the rebels "failed to show its sincerity and commitment in pursuing genuine and meaningful peace negotiations as it's engaged in acts of violence and hostilities." The rebels have been trying to overthrow the government since 1969. The conflict peaked in the 1980s, under the repressive government of Ferdinand Marcos. However, military operation coupled with an internal split crippled the underground organization. The number of guerrillas dwindled from 26,000 in the mid-1980s to less than 4,000, according to Philippine military estimates. The military still considers the rebel forces a threat to national security, adding that an "all-out war" is necessary to deal a fatal blow to the rebels who refused to talk peace with the Duterte administration. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:39:28|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday stressed the implementation of larger-scale tax cuts to further boost the vitality of market entities. Li, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remarks at a symposium held during his inspection at the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration. Vice Premier Han Zheng, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, attended the symposium. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:49:31|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers have revealed that different fruit colors are significant to the large-scale dispersal, distribution and diversification of plants. The discovery is based on a study of more than 280 different fruit colors of Gaultherieae that distribute around the Pacific, conducted by a research team led by Li Dezhu and Wang Hong from the Kunming Institute of Botany with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. By quantifying the relationship between fruit color and plant dispersal, elevation and latitudinal distribution, as well as diversification rates, the researchers found that lineages with red fruit prefer high latitudes and low altitudes and are significantly associated with large-scale dispersal events. Lineages with violet fruits are mostly distributed in low latitudes and high altitudes. Though spreading less frequently, they diversify faster, leading to more violet-fruited species globally, according to the research recently published online in the academic journal Global Ecology and Biogeography. As an advanced outcome of plant evolution, fruit is one of the main forces that drive the flowering plants, also known as angiosperms, to dominate Earth as the most diversified land plants. However, how fruit colors correlate with their geographic distribution and diversification rates remained unanswered in previous studies. The research is also supported by the U.S. University of Arizona and Botanical Research Institute of Texas. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:54:33|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Researchers have disclosed that alpine plant species tend to move to higher elevation and latitude areas. A research team from Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences cooperated with overseas institutes in conducting an analysis of 17 alpine plants at altitudes from 2,000 to 5,600 meters in the Himalayas and the Hengduan Mountains, based on analysis of historical specimen records and species distribution modeling. The researchers predicted that the distributions of the species will shift upward in elevation and northward in latitude with global climate change. The species will also expand the size of their range. Alpine species are sensitive to climate change, according to their study published in the journals Plant Diversity and Ecology and Evolution. The researchers estimated that the species would face extinction if global temperatures continued to rise. The researches aim to provide data support for the protection of alpine plants. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:54:34|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close LUSAKA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Zambia on Thursday joined the rest of the world in commemorating the International Day of Forests with the government expressing concern on the increasing levels of deforestation. Jean Kapata, Minister of Lands, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection, said the country was facing challenges in protecting its forests because of unsustainable practices, adding that there was need to educate citizens on the importance of protecting the forests. Among the challenges include unplanned land use changes, forest fires, poor agriculture practices and indiscriminate cutting of trees for production of charcoal, she said. She said protecting the forests was vital because forests play a pivotal role in the country's development, adding that failure to manage the forests properly was being done at a great cost to the country. According to her, Zambia loses about 276,000 hectares of forests each year due to poor management. The theme for this year's commemoration is "Forests and Education", and has been chosen to raise awareness on how sustainably managed forests provide a wide array of contributions to countries. The Zambian minister said the theme was timely and urged all stakeholders to get involved in raising awareness on the protection of the country's forests. Janet Rogan, United Nations (UN) Resident Coordinator in Zambia, said although Zambia was among few countries with above average forest cover of 66 percent of totaled land cover, the country was experiencing a high rate of deforestation. According to her, the country risks having no forests by 2199 if the current rate of cutting down tress continues with no change. "The general population needs to be taught why conserving forests is essential for future generation as well as for the necessities of the current population, especially for water," she said. She further said people needed to be educated so that they can understand the importance of preserving forests and the dreadful consequences of unregulated cutting of trees. She however commended the government for coming up with a national investment plan to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, saying it was a commendable step towards changing the dynamic in forest conservation through investing in the needs of local communities. The UN, she said, will continue to be a strong partner in the work to preserve forests in Zambia and to promote the sustainable management and use of natural resources, including fragile ecosystems. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 22:59:34|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close SINGAPORE, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Business people from the regional food and beverage industries gathered here Thursday for three shows, together with the initiation of another exhibition which is the Restaurant Asia 2019. A total of 250 exhibitors from 28 countries joined in the Restaurant Asia 2019 and the three other shows, namely the 7th Cafe Asia 2019, the 7th International Coffee & Tea Industry Expo and the 6th Sweets & Bakes Asia. The three shows are organized by the Conference & Exhibition Management Services Pte Ltd(CEMS), while the Restaurant Asia 2019 is organized by the Restaurant Association of Singapore in partnership with CEMS. Covering a floor space of 7,000 square meters, the four shows were officially opened at the Marina Bay Sand Singapore Expo & Convention Center by Singapores Senior Minister of State for Education and Trade & Industry Chee Hong Tat. Chee noted in his speech that while the rapid growth of the establishments of food and beverage in Singapore have outpaced the growth in demand and somewhat lowered the productivity of the food services industry, the business people in the catering industry must try to excel in product, service and experience. For example, healthier as well as tasty dishes and more customized menus will help the restaurants remain competitive, he added. Moreover, the use of data might enable the diners to have more pleasant experiences and improve the efficiency of the providers. A symposium will be held together with the three-day Restaurant Asia 2019 to share insights on productivity, capability development and ways to leverage on technologies, said Edward Liu, group managing director of CEMS. The Cafe Asia 2019 and the 7th International Coffee & Tea Industry Expo are hosted by the Singapore Coffee Association. Victor Mah, president of ASEAN Coffee Federation and Singapore Coffee Association noted that the ASEAN Coffee Federation Specialty Coffee Auction will also be hosted for the first time as one of the highlights of the Cafe Asia 2019 to mark the hard work of those in the industry, who have witnessed a growing coffee scene in the region. A memorandum of understanding was also signed at the opening ceremony between representatives from the restaurant associations in Singapore, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam to facilitate the forming of the ASEAN Restaurant Association Alliance. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 23:04:36|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close NAY PYI TAW, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The Myanmar government and eight non-ceasefire signatory ethnic armed organizations (EAO) reached a five-point consensus over peace efforts Thursday following a meeting in Nay Pyi Taw. According to a joint statement released after the meeting held at the National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC), the consensus includes striving for conflict reduction; continued coordination for maintenance of peace and stability of the whole country; placing emphasis on regional development and regional people's affairs; settlement of political issue through political means and frequent holding of meetings participated by persons who can make decision. In this regard, the government proposed to hold such a meeting every two months, U Zaw Htay, director-general of the State Counselor's Office, told the reporters. According to U Zaw Htay, the military and the eight non-ceasefire signatory EAO will hold talks on Friday and more meeting with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) is being planned for April, as well as a trilateral meeting between the military, Revolutionay Council of Shan State (RCSS) and Shan State Progressive Party (SSPP). Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 23:09:38|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BAGHDAD, March 21 (Xinhua) -- At least 55 bodies were recovered and 30 people rescued Thursday after a ferry sank in Tigris River in northern city of Mosul, the Iraqi Health Ministry said. "The civil defense teams so far recovered 55 bodies of victims of the sinking ferry in the Tigris River in the city of Mosul, some 400 km north of Baghdad," Sayf al-Badr, spokesman of the ministry, said in a statement. He said 33 of the recovered bodies were for women, 12 for children and 10 for men. The civil defense teams also rescued 30 people, al-Badr added. Earlier in the day, a civil defense source said that dozens of people, mostly children and women, drowned in the Tigris River when a ferry, owned by a tourist office of an island in the river, sank. Overloaded with more than 100 people, the ferry originally was designed to carry some 30 people, the source said, adding that an investigation was launched into the incident. The civil defense, police and civilians are still searching for more victims in the river, the source added. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 23:14:38|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close TEHRAN, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said here Thursday that Europe's new institution of Instrument in Support Of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) to secure Iran's interest is a "bitter joke," reported by the state TV. Khamenei said that "Europeans did not implement their obligations" following the U.S. exit from the Iranian nuclear deal in May last year. He made the remarks, broadcast live from the IRIB TV, in Iran's northeastern city of Mashhad on the first day of Iranian new year. Although the Europeans remained in the nuclear deal after the U.S. exit, "in practice, they have also dropped the deal" and they are imposing sanctions against Iran too, Khamenei said. On Jan. 31, the European Union announced the setting up of the INSTEX to secure trade with Iran and skirt U.S. anti-Iran sanctions after Washington pulled out of the 2015 landmark nuclear deal. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 23:24:40|Editor: Yang Yi Video Player Close Jiang Jianguo (L), deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, delivers a speech at a dialogue in Rome, Italy, March 20, 2019. Representatives of leading Chinese and Italian media pledged on Wednesday here to renew and expand collaboration to facilitate mutual understanding between the peoples and to promote bilateral ties. On the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Italy, some 200 government officials, media executives, reporters and experts of the two countries participated in a dialogue in the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Rome. (Xinhua/Zheng Huansong) ROME, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Representatives of leading Chinese and Italian media pledged on Wednesday here to renew and expand collaboration to facilitate mutual understanding between the peoples and to promote bilateral ties. On the eve of Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Italy, some 200 government officials, media executives, reporters and experts of the two countries participated in a dialogue in the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts, Rome. In a speech delivered at the dialogue, Jiang Jianguo, deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, proposed the establishment of a regular exchange and cooperation mechanism between the two countries' media to boost integrated media development and experience-sharing. He said media of both sides should contribute positive energy to the development of friendly Sino-Italian relations through various forms of interaction and cooperation. Chinese Ambassador to Italy Li Ruiyu urged the two countries' media staff to seize the historic opportunity of Xi's visit to forge closer links and to help usher in a brighter future for the friendly ties between China and Italy. Vito Crimi, Italian state secretary of the Council of Ministers with responsibility for information and publishing, said there are cultural and informational implications of furthering bilateral ties, in addition to the economic perspective. Sun Shangwu, deputy editor-in-chief of China Daily, said China and Italy are both ancient civilizations, and there are many famous historical figures known to the peoples of both countries in the history of bilateral exchanges, such as Marco Polo, Matteo Ricci and Xu Guangqi that can be tapped and covered by the media. Alessandro Banfi, a director with the Italian TV network Mediaset, said he has just returned from a trip to China, where he had in-depth discussions with Chinese counterparts and found ample room for collaboration. The dialogue also featured the inking of a cooperation accord between China's Economic Daily and Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 23:39:43|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close NEW DELHI, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Unidentified gunmen shot and injured a lawmaker of main ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, local media reported on Thursday. Yogesh Verma, a BJP member of Uttar Pradesh legislative Assembly who represents the Lakhimpur assembly constituency, was shot at while he was on his way back to his residence after celebrating the festival of colors "Holi" at his office in Patel Nagar area of the city. According to the reports, when Verma reached near the Guru Nanak Inter College unidentified gunmen shot at him. The lawmaker was reportedly to have received gunshot injuries below his right knee. The injured lawmaker was rushed to a neighboring hospital, where doctors attending on him said his condition was out of danger. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 23:44:44|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close MOSCOW, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday that "Belarus is a fraternal country, the most reliable, strategic partner of Russia" amid concerns about future bilateral ties. Russia is at odds with Belarus over energy prices among other issues that led to recent public criticism of Moscow by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Russians and Belarusians are not indifferent about how relations between the two allied countries will develop, especially against the backdrop of the current international situation, the ministry said in a statement. In an address to the parliament in February, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russians consider it appropriate to strengthen cooperation within the framework of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, including in the foreign policy and economic spheres, the statement recalled. The statement said that in Russian-Belarusian relations, there are scenarios in which the assessments and approaches of the parties do not completely coincide. "At the same time, however, we have always found and will find solutions to even the most difficult issues," it read. The ministry stressed that the two countries maintain close contacts at all levels to iron out differences. The Commonwealth of Belarus and Russia was founded in April 1996 and the two countries signed the Treaty on the Creation of a Union State in December 1999 to enhance integration in multiple spheres. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 23:49:48|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's former President Michel Temer was arrested on Thursday in a corruption investigation, according to local media. The arrest was ordered by Judge Marcelo Bretas, who is in charge of the Operation Car Wash investigations on corruption in the government. Temer, the predecessor of current President Jair Bolsonaro, left office last year. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 23:59:52|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close TEHRAN, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday that his country will defeat the United States in the latter's anti-Iran "economic war." "The enemy has waged economic war on us. We must defeat the enemy in this war," said Khamenei in Iran's northeastern city of Mashhad. He made the remarks, broadcast live on the state IRIB TV, on the first day of the Iranian New Year. "We must establish economic deterrence so that it (the United States) cannot use economic loopholes to harm the country," he added. Iran will manage to turn the U.S. "oppressive and malicious" sanctions into opportunities to free the economy from relying on oil, the Iranian top leader noted. Meanwhile, Khamenei warned against relying on western countries' assistance or cooperation over Iran's economic issues. He described the Instrument in Support Of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), Europe's new transanctions channel designed to secure Iran's interest under the Iranian international nuclear deal, as a "bitter joke." "The Europeans did not implement their obligations," said Khamenei. On Jan. 31, the European Union announced the setting up of the INSTEX to secure trade with Iran and skirt U.S. anti-Iran sanctions after Washington pulled out of the 2015 landmark nuclear deal last May. Although the EU remained in the nuclear deal, "in practice, they themselves have dropped the deal" and are imposing sanctions against the Islamic republic, said Khamenei. As per the nuclear deal, "the Europeans stabbed us on the back," he warned. Earlier in the day, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the United States has failed in its "illegal" sanctions against Iran. Iran's achievements in the past year, including "victory over terrorism" and the "Iranian nations' victory in the international arena and international courts," are evidence that the United States has not succeeded in its anti-Iran policies, said Rouhani. "Those who broke the oath revealed their nature; those who committed crimes must know that the end of this path will not be in their favor," the Iranian president said, referring to the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal in May last year. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-21 23:59:52|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close VALLETTA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Malta is pushing to implement a number of measures to address shortcomings in its justice system, which were flagged by the Council of Europe's Venice Commission in its report on the rule of law on the Mediterranean island. At a press conference on Thursday, Maltese Justice Minister Owen Bonnici announced an amendment to Malta's Constitution, creating separate roles for the attorney general and the prosecutor general. As things currently stand, the Office of the Attorney General is both the government's lawyer and chief prosecutor. This was one of several issues flagged by the Venice Commission due to the potential conflict of interest this entailed. The person responsible for prosecutions will now be separate from the attorney general, who fills the role of the government's legal counsel. Apart from the attorney general's dual role, the Venice Commission has highlighted the excessive powers held by the prime minister and the mechanism by which members of the judiciary are appointed, saying it does not not guarantee full independence from the executive branch of government. Bonnici said the government would also reform the method of appointing and removing members of the judiciary as suggested by the Venice Commission. The minister also announced that next Monday he intends to launch the legislative process needed to address other areas flagged by the Venice Commission, such as the role of the ombudsman, permanent secretaries, positions of trust, independent commissions and the police force. To date, the government has been focusing on a third of the issues raised by the Venice Commission, he said, adding that once these changes are implemented, the government will tackle the remaining recommendations. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 00:04:54|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close LONDON, March 21 (Xinhua) -- British business group and union body jointly warned Thursday the country were facing a national emergency, urging British Prime Minister Theresa May to change approach over Brexit. Writing a joint letter to the prime minister, Frances O'Grady, general secretary of Trades Union Congress (TUC), and Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said:"Our country is facing a national emergency. Decisions of recent days have caused the risk of no deal to soar." Together representing millions of workers and tens of thousands of businesses, the two said:" Firms and communities across the UK are not ready for this outcome. The shock to our economy would be felt by generations to come." They called on May to take three steps to tackle current scenario. "First, avoiding no deal is paramount, "the letter said, "businesses and employees alike need to see their Government clearly acknowledge the reckless damage no deal would cause and recommit itself to avoiding this outcome." "Second, securing an extension has become essential," the letter noted that "88 percent of CBI members and a majority in Parliament agree this is better than no deal." "An extension must genuinely allow a way forwards, and be long enough for a deal to be agreed," it added. "Third,'the current deal or no deal' must not be the only choice. A Plan B must be found," stated the letter, and added "A new approach is needed to secure this -- whether through indicative votes or another mechanism for compromise. " In the end of letter, the two heads requested an urgent meeting with May to "discuss our concerns and hear your response." Joshua Hardie, deputy director general at CBI, said in twitter that:"When employers and employees speak out together, it's worth listening." Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 00:09:56|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte reacts during a joint interview with Xinhua and other Chinese media in Rome, capital of Italy, March 20, 2019. (Xinhua/Chigi Palace Press Office) ROME, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to Italy would boost the prospects of stronger bilateral cooperation within the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) framework, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told Chinese media on Wednesday. "The tradition of our relationship is very ancient, as our two cultures can be traced back to one or two thousand years ago," Conte said, noting that Xi will be the first Chinese president to visit Italy in a decade. "Italy believes our relationship is already very good, and the prospect of collaboration will be further boosted" thanks to the BRI, Conte said. "(Italian) President Sergio Mattarella was in China in 2017, and I would like to remind you that next year, in 2020, we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of our diplomatic relations," he added. He said the visit and the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the BRI are part of a framework of ties "that is very solid already." During his visit, Xi will exchange views with Mattarella, Conte, and other senior political leaders in Italy on the prospect of deepening bilateral ties. Representatives of the two countries are expected to sign a series of agreements in various sectors. Much anticipation is focused on the signing of the MoU on the BRI cooperation. If confirmed, Italy would be the first country in the Group of Seven (G7) to ink such a document. Proposed by China in 2013, the BRI refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aimed at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa through the revival of ancient trade routes. "I think the increasing collaboration between Italy and China will first and foremost benefit the two countries," Conte declared. "Third countries will also benefit from it, because the strengthened (Sino-Italian) cooperation would allow us to face global challenges together," he said. Conte added that Italy "is always in favor of dialogue, because the global challenges awaiting us are so insidious that facing them on our own -- outside an effective multilateralism -- is not possible." The trade and overall economic exchanges between Italy and China are already intense, and would possibly grow further in a perspective of mutual interest. "In my opinion, we can still improve on this, because obviously China is a massive economy with a huge potential, including for Italian companies," he said. Conte also mentioned several sectors in which the two countries could work more closely together, including tourism, agriculture, sustainable urbanization, aviation, transportation, infrastructure and technology innovation. The Chinese leader's upcoming visit would boost the bilateral ties to fulfill all the potential, according to the Italian head of government. "I think Xi's visit will play a very important role, giving a greater impulse to our relations," Conte said. "We await him with great friendship and enthusiasm," he added. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 00:30:03|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Chinese Premier Li Keqiang inspects the State Taxation Administration in Beijing, capital of China, March 21, 2019. Li Keqiang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, presided over a symposium during his inspection at the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration. Vice Premier Han Zheng, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, attended the symposium. (Xinhua/Yan Yan) BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday stressed the implementation of larger-scale tax cuts to further boost the vitality of market entities. Li, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remarks at a symposium held during his inspection at the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration. Vice Premier Han Zheng, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, attended the symposium. China's tax and fee cuts will bring benefits to the country both in the short and long term, as it not only reduces corporate burden and helps stabilize employment but also optimizes economic and income distribution structure and promotes sustainable fiscal spending, Li said. China should accelerate the implementation of tax cut measures to further unleash the vitality of companies, which will help the economy keep running within a reasonable range and promote high-quality development, Li said. Li said that this round of tax cuts must ensure that the tax burden on major industries such as the manufacturing sector is decreased significantly and lowered to various extents in some industries. "All industries will see their taxes go down, not up," Li said. The government will work out targeted solutions to solve potential tax burden rise as a result of a decrease in input tax deductions in some industries, Li added. Li said the government must live on a tight budget to support the tax cuts. Except for those projects that must be done and key programs, the central fiscal authority will cut its expenditures by 10 percent, Li said. Local governments should also resolutely cut general expenditures and improve the efficiency of existing resources, Li said. The central government should increase the transfer payments to local governments, especially the fiscal authorities in the central and western regions. "The tax cuts will be effective only when the market entities enjoy the concrete benefits," Li said. Li said that all regions and government departments should strengthen coordination to tackle the issues reported by companies and the people in a timely manner. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 00:45:07|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BANGKOK, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's export growth leaped 5.91 percent in February year on year due to the rising crude oil price and other factors, the Commerce Ministry said on Thursday. Exports of Thailand in February reached more than 21,550 million U.S. dollars and rose 5.91 percent after contracting for three consecutive months. In January, shipments contracted 5.65 percent from a year earlier. The depreciating Thai baht and the improving situations of human trafficking and labour in Thailand also contribute to the growth of shipment and have brought developed countries' confidence to Thai products. Popular Thai products in Asian market including dry fruits, drinks, cosmetics helped drive up the growth. The ministry warned exporters of the fluctuation of Thai baht's value and the enforcement of the free trade agreement between Europe and Vietnam, an emerging southeastern Asian country regarded as Thailand's rival in export sectors. The ministry believed that exports will continue to soar in the second quarter. The ministry forecast an export growth of eight percent in the whole year. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 00:55:08|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- For more than a month, Tong Fangping has spent half of his work time at a tree seedling base of the Hunan Academy of Forestry. As spring comes, the base is sending a large number of tree seedlings to two once barren old mining regions in the central Chinese province of Hunan. Rich in mineral resources, Hunan has a total mining area of 400,000 hectares. Dozens and even hundreds of years of mining activities have damaged the ecological environment. "We must first select trees that are adaptable to the environment," said Tong. "Some tree species could hardly survive in the mining regions because of heavy soil pollution." Some tree species, however, could help absorb heavy metals in the soil and are therefore suitable for local afforestation programs, Tong said, adding that local authorities have selected over 10 tree species to help reforest the mining areas. Planting trees in the mining areas, however, is much more difficult than elsewhere as the ground in these areas are covered in slags. In order to improve survival rates, workers often need to dig trenches and plant trees with new soil brought from elsewhere and sometimes with the help of nutrient solutions. In an afforestation campaign launched in 2011, the city of Lengshuijiang in Hunan managed to plant trees on one-third of its tin mining area of 6,600 hectares. The efforts have helped reduce the concentration of heavy metals in the soil by 20 percent in the past eight years, according to government monitoring. A similar campaign has also helped reduce the desert area in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, an important ecological security barrier in northern China. The region now has 26 million hectares of forests, with the forest coverage rate at 22.1 percent, up 1.07 percentage points from 2014. "The annual precipitation here is about 100 mm, leaving many plants unable to grow," said Liu Hongyi, head of the forestry work station of the Alxa Left Banner, Alxa League. In the long-term struggle against wind and sand, local forestry workers have found a more effective solution: planting mainly shrubs and also some trees and grass, said Liu. The scale of afforestation has been increasing over the past years as the government stepped up spending on ecological protection, he said. Other parts of Inner Mongolia have also been seeking a sustainable path for ecological protection and restoration to make the northern China region greener, said Yu Guangjun, head of the economic research institute with the regional academy of social sciences. Mu Yuan, director of the regional forestry and grassland bureau, said the region will mobilize all walks of life to plant 860,000 hectares of trees in 2019. The city of Yan'an on the Loess Plateau, where 258 million tonnes of mud and sand were once washed into the Yellow River each year, has also seen its landscape improve greatly. Since 1999, local government has returned 718,000 hectares of farmland to forests, increasing the local vegetation coverage rate from 46 percent in 2000 to 81 percent in 2017. Data showed that the city reported fewer sand and dust days in recent years, and the annual amount of mud and sand washed into the Yellow River has been slashed by 88 percent to 31 million tonnes. A study using data from NASA satellites confirmed China's efforts on afforestation. Data shows that China and India are leading the increase in land greening and concludes that the "effect comes mostly from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries." China plans to add 6.73 million hectares of afforested areas in 2019 to further expand forest coverage. Under a long-term afforestation plan, China expects to increase its forest coverage rate to 23.04 percent by 2020 and to 26 percent by 2035, as part of the plan to build a Beautiful China. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 01:20:12|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close ADEN, Yemen, March 21 (Xinhua) -- At least two people were killed when a booby-trapped vehicle exploded near a military checkpoint in Yemen's southeastern province of Shabwa on Thursday, a security official told Xinhua. The four-wheel-drive vehicle, loaded with large quantities of explosive devices, went off near the military checkpoint in Markha district of Shabwa Province, leaving two people killed at the scene, the source said on condition of anonymity. No casualties among the soldiers were reported, the source added. Meanwhile, a government official based in Shabwa told Xinhua by phone that the vehicle belongs to an arms dealer and "exploded by accident, killing only two on board." According to the government source, the incident was not an attack against the security forces but only "ammunition inside the vehicle that blasted because of the heat and bad storage conditions." Militants of the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch frequently launch drive-by attacks on security checkpoints in the Yemeni southern provinces as the government forces, backd by the United Arab Emirates, increase military operations on their hideouts in the war-plagued Arab country. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 01:30:16|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close WARSAW, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Poland would agree to a delay to Brexit if that could help bring about an orderly exit, the Polish government's spokesperson said on Thursday. "A no-deal Brexit is the worst solution of all," spokesperson Joanna Kopcinska said during an interview with Polish state radio. "We are against and we'll do everything to avert a no-deal Brexit, but the Polish government is also prepared for this unfavourable scenario," Kopcinska said. "If the proposal to postpone the date of Britain leaving the EU is helpful for the ratification (of the exit deal), then Poland will present its tangible, crucial and fact-based stance," Kopcinska said. "We totally support finding the best solutions and we would like great Britain to be (in the EU) as long as possible, as Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said: the exit process could as well take years," she said. Marcin Ociepa, undersecretary of state in the Polish Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Technology, told the Polish State News Agency (PAP) on Thursday: "Today we see that, if we stick rigidly to the date of the divorce between the UK and the EU set for the end of March, we are not able to obtain a rational Brexit." "That's why Poland will surely accept the position to postpone Brexit as long as needed so that the British people can be well prepared for it," Ociepa said. Kopcinska and Ociepa were speaking as the EU member states' leaders converged on Brussels for a two-day summit starting Thursday afternoon, during which the Brexit date will be a major subject. British Prime Minister Theresa May was expected on Thursday to ask for the postponement of the Brexit date until June 30 from the scheduled March 29, to allow more time to persuade the British Parliament to approve an exit deal. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 02:05:21|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BRUSSELS, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The eleventh national climate march, initiated by the Youth for Climate movement, took place Thursday in Brussels and other parts of Belgium, local Belgian press reported. Carrying slogans such as "We are hotter than the climate" and "The planet is too hot and the government does nothing", young demonstrators skipped school to call for action on climate change. The biggest mobilization took place in Liege, where more than a thousand young people, supported by "yellow vests" and seniors, took to the streets in protest. "After eleven demonstrations involving thousands of young people, politicians must know that the movement is not about to stop," said a representative of the Youth for Climate movement in Liege. A thousand students, according to a police estimate, gathered shortly after 1:00 pm in the streets of Prime Minister Charles Michel's hometown of Wavre. In Brussels, around 500 high school and university students demonstrated, which was a much smaller turnout than in previous marches. Last week, the call for a global climate strike, inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg who protests against global warming weekly outside Sweden's parliament, brought together over 30,000 people in Brussels. Young people plan to demonstrate every Thursday until the May 26 European Parliament elections to demand ambitious climate policy reforms. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 02:15:22|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close RAMALLAH, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The European Union warned on Thursday of the repercussions of changing the status quo in Jerusalem following the recent developments at al-Aqsa Mosque in the eastern part of the holy city. The warning was issued after a meeting held in Jerusalem between heads of EU diplomats in Ramallah and Jerusalem and representatives of the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf (Endowments) Council. "Any unilateral measures to change the status quo of Jerusalem may strongly contribute to instability," an EU press statement said, The statement also urged respect for the status quo of the holy places in Jerusalem. An Israeli court in Jerusalem earlier decided to close the Bab al-Rahma gate of al-Aqsa Mosque and gave the Islamic Waqf Council a 60-day ultimatum to respond to the court verdict. The Palestinians want the eastern part of Jerusalem, which was occupied by Israel in 1967, as the capital of their independent state, while Israel insists on the entire city as its eternal capital. File Photo: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before leaving for Alabama to survey areas devastated by powerful tornadoes, in Washington D.C., the United States, on March 8, 2019. (Xinhua/Ting Shen) WASHINGTON, March 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said that it is time for the United States to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967. In a sudden tweet, Trump said that "after 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Israel seized the land in a war in 1967 and annexed it in the 1980s, but the international community has never recognized the move. In response to the statement that would mark a major change of U.S. policy on this issue, Israel's Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer tweeted "THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!" Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 03:20:38|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close ROME, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Rome Thursday for a state visit to Italy to map out the future of the bilateral relationship and move it into a new era. It is the first visit by a Chinese head of state to the European nation in 10 years. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 03:55:46|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close BAGHDAD, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Iraq on Thursday declared three-day mourning for the victims of the ferry sinking in the northern city of Mosul, which left at least 93 dead. A statement by the media office of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who is on a visit to Mosul, some 400 km north of the capital Baghdad, declared "official mourning in all parts of Iraq and in the embassies and (diplomatic) representations of Iraq abroad for three days from Thursday." On Thursday evening, Abdul Mahdi paid a surprise visit to Mosul, capital of Nineveh Province, and held a meeting with Nineveh's Operations Command, which is responsible for the security of Nineveh. "We condole the families of the victims of the ferry on behalf of all Iraqis, and we are here a few hours after the ferry incident to follow up the investigation," Abdul Mahdi told reporters in Mosul. Earlier, Abdul Mahdi ordered an investigation into the ferry sinking. "With pain and sadness, we follow up the ferry incident in the city of Mosul, which killed dozens of innocent women, men and children," Abdul Mahdi said in a statement issued by his office. Earlier in the day, a civil defense source said dozens of people, mostly children and women, drowned in the Tigris River when a ferry, owned by a tourism office, was carrying passengers from the bank of the river to a tourist island in the river in northern Mosul. The ferry was overloaded with more than 100 people, the source said, adding that the ferry was originally designed to carry some 30 people. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 03:55:47|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close WASHINGTON, March 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Thursday that the toughest sanctions against Venezuela's Maduro government are "yet to come." "As President Trump clearly stated, the toughest sanctions are yet to come," he tweeted. Noting that the Maduro government officials "will be strangled financially," Bolton said that "the window is closing." U.S. President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday that "we really haven't done the really tough sanctions yet" against the Venezuelan government. The U.S. Treasury Department so far has slapped six rounds of sanctions since January to pile up pressure on the nation's President Nicolas Maduro. On Tuesday, the Treasury sanctioned a Venezuelan gold mining company and its leader, accusing them of supporting Maduro. The Trump administration recognized Juan Guaido as the nation's "interim president" on Jan. 23, days after Maduro was inaugurated for a second term as Venezuelan president. Earlier on Thursday, Bolton criticized via Twitter the Venezuelan government for its reportedly arrest of Roberto Marrero, the aide of the opposition leader Guaido. The alleged arrest "will not go unanswered," Bolton said. "He should be released immediately and his safety guaranteed." In response to Washington's support for Guaido, Maduro has announced he was severing "diplomatic and political" ties with the United States. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 04:00:48|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close KHARTOUM, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Thursday issued an emergency order banning storage of and speculation in the national currency. "The order is prohibiting speculation in the national currency with the purpose of harming the national economy or storing it outside the banking system for purposes of speculation," said a statement by the Sudanese presidency. The order banned possession or storage of the national currency exceeding 1 million Sudanese pounds for individuals and 5 million pounds for corporate entities, it noted. Violators, according to the statement, would be imprisoned for a period between six months and 10 years, in addition to payment of a fine and confiscation of the money. On Feb. 22, al-Bashir declared a state of emergency all over Sudan for one year after mass protests erupted in December last year over deteriorating economic conditions and price hikes of basic commodities. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 04:31:01|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and his wife Peng Liyuan disembark from the airplane upon their arrival in Rome, Italy, on March 21, 2019. Xi arrived in Rome Thursday for a state visit to Italy to map out the future of the bilateral relationship and move it into a new era. (Xinhua/Wang Ye) ROME, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Rome Thursday for a state visit to Italy to map out the future of the bilateral relationship and move it into a new era. It is the first visit by a Chinese head of state to the European nation in 10 years. Two Italian fighter jets escorted Xi's plane as it entered the country's airspace. Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, were greeted by senior Italian government officials at the airport. While delivering a written speech upon arrival, Xi said that the China-Italy relations have withstood the test of time and international vicissitudes since the two countries forged diplomatic ties 49 years ago. Upholding the principle of mutual respect, trust and benefit, China and Italy have constantly promoted their friendship and cooperation, setting an example of developing bilateral ties between two countries of different social systems, cultural backgrounds and development stages, Xi said. The practical cooperation between the two countries has yielded fruitful results, bringing tangible benefits to the two peoples, said Xi, adding that the bilateral cultural and people-to-people exchanges are rich and colorful, and have enhanced mutual understanding and friendship. The Chinese president noted that he is looking forward to meeting the Italian leaders to jointly draw the blueprint for the future development of bilateral relations. "I believe with the concerted efforts of both sides, the China-Italy comprehensive strategic partnership will enjoy a better tomorrow," Xi said. Italy is the first stop of Xi's three-nation Europe tour, which will also take him to Monaco and France. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 04:41:04|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close TUNIS, March 21 (Xinhua) -- The first Tunisian satellite, Challenge 1, will be launched in 2020, a Tunisian lawmaker said Thursday. "An agreement will be signed on April 1 for the official launch of the first Tunisian satellite in cooperation with the Russian spacecraft Soyuz-2," said Mohamed Frikha, also a businessman, on his official Facebook page. "A seminar will be held next month at the Digital Research Center of the Sfax Technology Park and will be followed by the signing of the partnership agreement for the launch of Challenge 1 with a Russian delegation," he added. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 05:21:12|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close RIO DE JANEIRO, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's former President Michel Temer was arrested on Thursday in a corruption investigation, according to local media. The arrest was ordered by Judge Marcelo Bretas, who is in charge of the Operation Car Wash investigations on corruption in the government. Temer, the predecessor of current President Jair Bolsonaro, left office last year. The police reportedly also seek Moreira Franco, who served as Minister of Mines and Energy in the Temer government, and Eliseu Padilha, who served as Temer's Chief of Staff. It remains unclear which particular accusation Temer is being arrested for, as he was charged in several cases. Temer is the second Brazilian president that has been arrested for corruption, following Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is currently serving a 12-year-and-one-month prison sentence for corruption and money laundering. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 06:21:28|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close Ambulances arrive at a hospital after the ferry sinking in Mosul, Iraq, March 21, 2019. The death toll of the ferry sinking incident in Tigris River in Iraq's northern city of Mosul on Thursday rose to 93, most of them women and children, the Interior Ministry said. (Xinhua) BAGHDAD, March 21 (Xinhua) -- A ferryboat sank in Tigris River in Iraq's northern city of Mosul on Thursday, leaving at least 93 dead and sparking anger among Iraqis. The incident took place in the afternoon when a ferryboat carrying dozens of people capsized because of high water levels while crossing from the bank of the river to a small tourist island called Um al Rabeein in northern Mosul, some 400 km north of the capital Baghdad. According to a civil defense source, the ferryboat owned by a tourism office was overloaded with more than 100 people, while the ferryboat is originally designed to carry some 30 people. An Interior Ministry source said some 93 people, mostly women and children, drowned in the river and their bodies were recovered, while 55 others were rescued, including 19 children. "We have 93 people killed in the ferry sinking in Mosul, and the search operations continued for more possible victims," Saad Maan, a ministry spokesman, said in a press release. No accurate figures are available yet about the number of people the ferry was carrying when the accident happened. The search operation is expected to continue in the coming days. "Investigation is underway, and apparently the capacity of the ferry was below the number of passengers aboard," Maan said earlier. Meanwhile, a statement by the Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council, said Mosul investigation court has decided to arrest nine workers responsible for the ferry. "The court also issued an arrest warrant for the owner of the ferry and the owner of the island," the statement added. Hours after the incident, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi paid a surprise visit to Mosul, capital of Nineveh Province, and held a meeting with Nineveh's Operations Command, which is responsible for the security of Nineveh. A statement by the prime minister's media office said Abdul Mahdi declared "official mourning in all parts of Iraq and in the embassies and (diplomatic) representations of Iraq abroad for three days from Thursday." "We condole the families of the victims of the ferry on behalf of all Iraqis, and we are here a few hours after the ferry incident to follow up the investigation," Abdul Mahdi said in Mosul. During his trip to Mosul, Abdul Mahdi visited a site of the incident on the Tigris River and a hospital where many of the survivors were receiving treatment. "Justice must take its course through an investigation by a committee formed for this purpose to identify the causes of the sinking of the ferry and those defaulters must be punished according to the law," Abdul Mahdi told reporters during his visit to the hospital. For his part, Iraqi President Barham Salih condoled Iraqis on the incident, saying he is in contact with the federal government, Nineveh's provincial government and the regional government of Kurdistan "to mobilize efforts to treat the wounded and search for the missing people," according to a statement issued by his office. Salih confirmed that the "tragedy will not pass without serious accountability" for those responsible for the incident, the statement said. Source: Xinhua| 2019-03-22 06:56:36|Editor: Mu Xuequan Video Player Close WASHINGTON, March 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that was is time for the United States to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967. Such a bold move marking a major shift in U.S. policy would further complicate the situation and escalate tensions in the region, U.S. experts said. In a surprise tweet, Trump said that "after 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" In response, Israel's Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer tweeted "THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has always asserted that the Israeli presence in the Golan is "thwarting" Iran's ambitions of expansion and "is a guarantee for stability" in the region, also tweeted that "at a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump!" Richard N. Haass, head of U.S. think tank Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted that he "strongly disagree(s) @realDonaldTrump; now NOT the time 4 US to recognize Israel sovereignty over Golan Hts." "No Arab govt would make peace w Israel & would violate UNSCR 242 which rules out acquiring territory by war and serves Israel as it says all states have right 2 live in peace," he added, refering to United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. Trump's statement came after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Wednesday, when Netanyahu said "I think it's time that the international community recognizes Israel's stay in the Golan, the fact that the Golan will always remain part of the state of Israel." Pompeo said earlier on Wednesday at a joint press conference with Kuwait's Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Sabah that "there's been no change in U.S. policy with respect to" the position on the Golan Heights. But recent signs have shown otherwise, indicating that the Trump administration was moving in accordance with Israel's appeal. A State Department human rights report unveiled earlier this month used the term "Israeli-controlled" instead of "Israeli-occupied" to describe the status of the Golan Heights, sparking wide speculation and worry among observers. Pompeo told the press traveling with him in the Middle East on Thursday that "we used that language in the Human Rights Report with great intentionality." "We didn't make a mistake. It's there for a reason. It's not a change in U.S. policy. It was our intent, as it is in every element of the Human Rights Report, to be as factually descriptive as we can, and that's what we did," he said, according to the transcript provided by the State Department. Israel seized the land in a war in 1967 and annexed it in the 1980s, but the international community has never recognized the move. The UN peacekeeping force tasked to patrol the buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights was deployed in 1974 to separate Syrian and Israeli forces. Since then, the buffer zone had remained quiet until the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011. In July 2018, the Syrian state media outlets said the rebels in southern Syria near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights accepted plan to evacuate and surrender their heavy weapons to the Syrian army, which has restored control of large swathes of territories in the region, including the crossing with the Golan Heights. Netanyahu called on the White House in January this year to recognize "Israeli sovereignty" over the Golan Heights in a joint statement with U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton in Jerusalem. The White House said Wednesday Trump will host next week at the White House the Israeli prime minister, who is now seeking re-election for a fifth term in the April 9 elections. Unde joaca acum maramureseanul Cristian Ponde, fosta speranta a fotbalului portughez Atacantul portughez nascut in Romania, care are 30 de meciuri si 12 goluri la nationalele lusitane de juniori, se anunta a fi noul star propus de Sporting Lisabona. O accidentare suferita la varsta de 19 ani l-a scos din circuit [citeste mai departe] Many of the sanctioned individuals had played a role in either the 2014 annexation of Crimea or the seizure of three Ukrainian navy vessels and their crew last November Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko Open source Ukraine hit hundreds of Russian citizens and entities with new sanctions on Wednesday in connection with their role in the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko, who has taken an especially tough line with Russia ahead of the March 31 elections, issued the sanctions against 848 people and 294 entities. Many of the sanctioned individuals had played a role in either the 2014 annexation of Crimea or the seizure of three Ukrainian navy vessels and their crew last November. Experts note that these new sanctions will not have the wide-ranging impact that U.S. or European Union sanctions have on Russia's economy. "These sanctions reflect an attempt by Ukraine to respond to Moscows ongoing aggression and especially the escalation at Kerch [Strait]," John Herbst, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told Newsweek. "They will have some impact, but, with rare exceptions, Ukrainian sanctions cannot produce the effect of U.S. or E.U. sanctions." Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a sustained conflict since 2014, when a pro-Western social movement ousted a pro-Russian president from power. Now, with elections around the corner, Ukraines relationship with its larger neighbor is on the minds of both candidates and voters. Poroshenko in particular has expressed a desire to move Ukraine closer to both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and has said he would push for membership in both alliances were he re-elected. NATOs Secretary General Jen Stoltenberg has not ruled out the possibility, despite the fact that Ukraine is locked in an ongoing conflict with its neighbor. Since Russias illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO has stepped up political and practical support to Ukraine. This commitment was reconfirmed at the Brussels Summit in July 2018, where NATO leaders met with President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, together with President Giorgi Margvelashvili of Georgia, Stoltenberg wrote in a report released earlier in March. He continued to say that NATO allies stand by the declaration made during NATO's 2008 Bucharest Summit, which noted that the military alliance would welcome Ukraines and Georgias Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership. Nevertheless, Poroshenko is lagging behind in the polls after Volodymyr Zelensky, an actor and comedian. The top three candidates based on Ukrainian public opinion poll surveys are Volodymyr Zelensky, incumbent Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko. One candidate must win at least 50 percent of the popular vote in the first round to become president, Helen Becker, an intelligence analyst focusing on Europe and Russia, told Newsweek. That scenario is unlikely since there are 39 candidates confirmed in the running for President. A run-off election, slated to take place April 24, between the top two candidates from the first round of voting is highly likely. Ukraines security services have already accused Russia of interfering in the election by paying people bribes to support specific candidates. Read the original text at Newsweek. uschamberfoundation.org Recent events in the Russian Federation regarding the oppression of freedom of speech are important not only for Russians, but also for Ukrainians in the context of an adequate understanding of what is happening in the aggressor state and what effect it can have on freedom of speech in Ukraine, given the bill No. 10139 registered in parliament by MP Igor Lapin (Narodnyi Front faction), which provides criminal liability for the deliberate or accidental distribution of false information in the media and the Internet. But first, lets talk about the realities of freedom of speech in Russia. "You criticize the power - you are punished according to the law on insulting the power, you praise the power - you are punished according to the law on fake news." Such are the realities that citizens of the Russian Federation will definitely feel, since on March 18, 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a package of laws on fake news and punishment for publicly speaking with disrespect for the authorities. A few words about these laws and their adoption. March 7, 2019 the State Duma of Russia in its third and final reading adopted a package of the aforementioned bills. So, Draft No. 606593-7: 322 (72%) - for, 78 - against, 0 - abstained; Draft No. 606594-7: 327 (73%) - for, 40 - against, 1 - abstained; Draft No. 606595-7: 327 (73%) - for, 79 - against, 0 - abstained; Draft No. 606596-7: 323 (72%) - for, 43 - against, 0 abstained. March 13, 2019, the bills successfully passed the Council of Federation (149 senators - for, 3 - against, 3 - abstained). But after March 7, no one had any doubts about the bills passing the Council of the Federation or signing by Putin himself. On March 18, the laws on amendments to the laws "On Information, Information Technologies and Protection of Information" and "On Amendments to the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation" were published on the official portal of legal information of the Russian Federation. These laws state that Roskomnadzor has obtained the right, under the sanction of the General Prosecutors Office of the Russian Federation, to demand that site owners delete news that they consider unreliable. The Prosecutor Generals Office received the right to block false news and to fine their distributors. The amount of the fine will be from 30 thousand to 1.5 million rubles (from 454 dollars to 22.7 thousand dollars). It also provides for administrative arrest for up to 15 days. The corresponding amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses indicated that the dissemination of information expressing "obvious disrespect for society, the state, official state symbols of the Russian Federation, the Constitution of the Russian Federation or authorities exercising state power in the Russian Federation" is equal to petty hooliganism and entails a fine (from 454 dollars to 22.7 thousand dollars) or arrest up to 15 days. It should also be noted that during the final adoption of this package of bills, the opposition deputies of the Duma subjected it to considerable public criticism, but, predictably, this did not affect the results of the voting. The Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC) also called on the Federation Council to reject bills on punishing fake news and insulting the authorities in the form adopted by the State Duma and sending it back for revision within the Conciliation Commission. On Monday, March 11, the HRC sent expert opinions to the Federation Council that criticize these two initiatives. According to the HRC experts, the concept of "false information", the dissemination of which is prohibited by the first law, implies "the presumption that state control bodies ... know absolute truth", "however, as is known from philosophy, truth is always relative." In addition, the law sets an extremely difficult task of law enforcement, since the wording knowingly false information stipulates that the person who disseminated it owned exact knowledge that it does not correspond to reality. In general, the category of authenticity "has a rather indirect relation to the objective truth of information and much more to the trust" of its source. This, in their opinion, may entail the fact that "the court will have to consider such far-away from law issues as faith and trust", which "will inevitably lead" to the violation of citizens' rights to freedom of receiving and spreading information, freedom of speech, opinions and media. Moreover, so that no one has any illusions that the adoption of this law in the Russian Federation went unnoticed, on March 10 in Moscow thousands of Russians went to the rally with inscriptions No censorship, Isolation is death, etc. on their posters. All ended with the detention of about twenty protesters for "blue balloons", law enforcement officers suggested that these were drones for intelligence purposes... That's it. Evaluation. When writing this part of the material, I tried to be as objective as possible, so I gave a lot of numbers, percentages and direct links, deliberately not expressing my point of view. And now I will express it. Fake, disrespect, state, government, society - these are words that mask the meaning of these laws! In fact, they are aimed at protecting the highest officials of the state from harsh criticism. A similar situation was in 1990, when the Kukly program on NTV sharply criticized the highest state officials. As a result, the law On the protection of the honor and dignity of the president of the USSR appeared. We all remember very well how it ended for the USSR... Both neglect of human rights and absolute disregard for the norms of international law further lower the Russian Federation into the abyss of both international and domestic isolation. Ordinary citizens and authorities in the Russian Federation are completely different people! One can have offshore accounts, and the other - cheese counter-sanctions, one - foreign education and business, and the other - 15 days for blue balloons ... Sometimes it seems to me that they even speak different languages, so they do not understand each other. It only remains to launch Russian internal web and social network named "Cheburashka", and we can assume that the Russian authorities heroically did everything possible to protect their citizens from the "harmful influence of the West" ... Putin is trying to compensate the largest loss of electoral positions in the history of his ruling by repressive laws and isolationist foreign policy. Disguise as a peacemaker state, manifestation of patriotism while giving priority to external goals over internal problems and, as a desired consequence, the inevitable return of the geopolitical domination of the great Russian Empire in the world is the ideology of internal consumption that is broadcasting through federal TV channels, and any other alternative opinion is a fake, a lie or even worse - deliberate public false information with a manifestation of particular cynicism, aggression and disrespect for all society, the authorities and the state ... Only one conclusion. And the conclusion is not mine, but the generally accepted laws of physics. If the pressure force in a closed sphere reaches a critical level - there will inevitably be an explosion. But we, as they say, would not allow this to happen with freedom of speech in our country... And now about our realities of freedom of speech in Ukraine. For Ukraine, the main thing now is freedom of speech in the media. Through them, millions of Ukrainians receive information daily. Unfortunately, the realities are troubling, especially in the context of draft law No. 10139. This bill, registered on March 12, 2019, provides criminal liability for intentional or accidental dissemination of false information in the media and the Internet. Thus, the draft law, in particular, proposes to supplement the Criminal Code of Ukraine with a new article, introducing criminal responsibility for disseminating false information in the media or in Internet discrediting the honor and dignity of other people (sanction is a fine of up to UAH 8500 (312 USD) or public works up to 80 hours, or correctional work up to 1 year). Also, a fine of 8,500 to 17,000 UAH (625 USD) or public works up to 120 hours, or correctional work up to 1 year can threaten violators if the dissemination of false information is related to a charge of committing a grave or especially grave crime or crime committed during the electoral process regarding: - MPs candidates; - party members; - candidates for the presidency of Ukraine. If deliberate dissemination of obviously inaccurate information associated with an accusation of committing a grave or especially grave crime or committed during the electoral process, the penalty may range from 34,000 (1250 USD) to 51,000 UAH (1875 USD) or be punished with public works for up to 240 hours, or correctional work to 2 years. The draft law also proposes an amendment to the Civil Code, which establishes the possibility to consider cases of protection of honor, dignity and business reputation in a simplified proceeding, and also provides for reduced terms of judicial review. The draft law provides for the right of the court to decide on a temporary (until the end of the electoral process) suspension of the license, a temporary ban (until the end of the electoral process) of the print edition. Such legislative initiatives on the part of a people's deputy, a representative of the Narodnyi Front party, are at least strange. MPs, the party that was actually created on the Maidan, struggled with Yanukovychs draconian laws, which defended the rights of individual citizens and the whole nation on its own pro-European path, are now applying for registration a no less controversial legal act ... Thus, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, in its Recommendation No. R (99) 15 on media coverage of election campaigns, notes that any legislative restrictions on election coverage must comply with the principle of freedom of expression, guaranteed by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court in its practice, including regarding Ukraine, has repeatedly stressed the importance of the existence of a free political discussion, especially during elections, and noted that Article 10 of the European Convention does not prohibit discussion or dissemination of the information received, even if there are serious doubts about its authenticity, or information turns out to be unreliable, despite bona fide verification by journalists. Ukrainian human rights activists and media representatives expressed their vision of this bill in a joint statement: Such legislative initiatives can serve as a dangerous tool for censorship and pressure on independent media. Even the threat of criminal liability creates a chilling effect for the dissemination of socially important information, because any investigation of abuse or corruption will have the risk of receiving a response to a crime. Only thanks to freedom on the Internet, a revolution took place in Ukraine - people were united by a network that Yanukovych could not control. Attention In this article I tried to describe objectively and realistically that dangerous practice of lawmaking, which is now taking place in the Russian Federation, and its possible consequences. And the most important thing is to warn against repeating mistakes that can cost much to our young but very ambitious country! I am deeply convinced that it is preventive actions aimed at raising the political awareness of citizens will have a much better effect than the introduction of criminal responsibility and additional state regulatory mechanisms in the media sphere. Over the past 24 hours, Russian-backed militants have performed 11 attacks March 20, three Ukrainian soldiers sustained injuries in Donbas combat zone, as the Joint Forces Operation HQ reported. Over the past 24 hours, Russian-backed militants have performed 11 attacks. The enemy used Minsk-banned weapons, including 82mm and 120mm mortars. 74 shells and five guided missiles were fired against our military in total. The illegal armed formations fired from automatic grenade launchers and heavy machine guns near Lebedynske and from sniper weapons near Marinka. Russian troops also performed attacks with 120mm and 82mm mortars and grenades near Novoluhanske. The militants used 120mm and 82mm mortars, heavy machine guns, and small arms near Staryi Aidar. The enemy fired from 120mm and 82mm mortars, grenades of various systems and heavy machine guns near Katerynivka. Near Troitske, the enemy used 120mm mortars and IFV, and 82mm mortars near Stanytsia Luhanska and Pishchane. According to the intelligence, on March 20 two occupants were eliminated and five injured. Besides, an ammunition warehouse and one enemys vehicle were destroyed. No attacks since midnight of March 21 reported. Related video: Nine trucks with humanitarian aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross were sent to Novotroitske checkpoint to the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has sent nine trucks with humanitarian aid to the uncontrolled territory of Donbas, as the press office of Ukraines Border Guard Service reported. Nine trucks with humanitarian aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross were sent to Novotroitske checkpoint to the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine. The vehicles transport nutrition, office supplies and building materials and equipment weighing 140 tons for residents on Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the border guards reported. It was noted that all the checkpoints on the contact line in the Joint Forces Operation zone work in normal mode. 47,100 people and 5,200 vehicles passed through the checkpoints. Earlier, the representatives of the illegal armed formations did not let three trucks carrying humanitarian aid from the International Committee of the Red Cross occupied Donbas. February 23, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent humanitarian aid to Donetsk and Luhansk regions weighing 190 tons. Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenkos probe was prompted by a Ukrainian parliamentarian's release of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton's campaign Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko and John Solomon Open source After nearly three years and millions of tax dollars, the Trump-Russia collusion probe is about to be resolved. Emerging in its place is newly unearthed evidence suggesting another foreign effort to influence the 2016 election this time, in favor of the Democrats. Ukraines top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his countrys law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton. The leak of the so-called black ledger files to U.S. media prompted Manaforts resignation from the Trump campaign and gave rise to one of the key allegations in the Russia collusion probe that has dogged Trump for the last two and a half years. Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenkos probe was prompted by a Ukrainian parliamentarian's release of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton's campaign. The parliamentarian also secured a court ruling that the leak amounted to an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign, Lutsenko told me. Lutsenko said the tape recording is a serious enough allegation to warrant opening a probe, and one of his concerns is that the Ukrainian law enforcement agency involved had frequent contact with the Obama administrations U.S. embassy in Kiev at the time. Today we will launch a criminal investigation about this and we will give legal assessment of this information, Lutsenko told me. Lutsenko, before becoming prosecutor general, was a major activist against Russias influence in his country during the tenure of Moscow-allied former president Viktor Yanukovych. He became chief prosecutor in 2016 as part of anti-corruption reforms instituted by current President Petro Poroshenko, an ally of the U.S. and Western countries. Unlike the breathless start to the Russia collusion allegations in which politicians and news media alike declared a Watergate-sized crisis before the evidence was fully investigated the Ukraine revelations deserve to be investigated before being accepted. After all, Ukraine is dogged by rampant corruption. It is a frequent target of Russian President Vladimir Putins dirty tricks. And it is a country that, just last year, faked a journalist's death for one day, reportedly to thwart an assassination plot. But the chief prosecutor, a member of parliament and a court seemingly have enough weight to warrant serious scrutiny of their allegations and an analysis of the audio tape. Furthermore, the mystery of how the Manafort "black ledger" files got leaked to American media has never been solved. They surfaced two years after the FBI investigated Manafort over his Ukraine business activities but declined to move forward in 2014 for lack of evidence. We now have strong evidence that retired British spy Christopher Steele began his quest in what ultimately became the infamous Russia collusion dossier with a series of conversations with top Department of Justice (DOJ) official Bruce Ohr between December 2015 and February 2016, about securing evidence against Manafort. We know the FBI set up shop in the U.S. embassy in Kiev to assist its Ukraine/Manafort inquiry a common practice on foreign-based probes while using Steele as an informant at the start of its Russia probe. And we know Clintons campaign was using a law firm to pay an opposition research firm for Steeles work in an effort to stop Trump from winning the presidency, at the same time Steele was aiding the FBI. Those intersections, coupled with the new allegations by Ukraines top prosecutor, are reason enough to warrant a serious, thorough investigation. If Ukraine law enforcement figures who worked frequently with the U.S. embassy did leak the Manafort documents in an effort to influence the American election for Clinton, the public deserves to know who knew what, and when. Lutsenkos interview with Hill.TV raises another troubling dynamic: The U.S. embassy and the chief Ukrainian prosecutor, who America entrusts with fighting corruption inside an allied country, currently have a dysfunctional relationship. In our interview, Lutsenko accused the Obama-era U.S. embassy in 2016 of interfering in his ability to prosecute corruption cases, saying the U.S. ambassador gave him a list of defendants that he would not be allowed to pursue and then refused to cooperate in an early investigation into the alleged misappropriation of U.S. aid in Ukraine. Lutsenko provided me with a letter from the embassy, supporting part of his story by showing that a U.S. official did in fact ask him to stand down on the misappropriation-of-funds case. We are gravely concerned about this investigation for which we see no basis, an embassy official named George Kent wrote to the prosecutors office. The State Department on Wednesday issued a statement declaring that it no longer financially supports Lutsenkos office in its corruption-fighting mission and considers his allegation about the do-not-prosecute list an outright fabrication. My reporting, however, indicates Lutsenko isnt the only person complaining about the U.S. embassy in Kiev. Last year, when he served as House Rules Committee chairman, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) wrote a private letter asking Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to recall the current U.S. ambassador, alleging that she made disparaging statements about President Trump. The ambassador has spoken privately and repeatedly about her disdain for the current administration in a way that might call for the expulsion of Americas top diplomat in Ukraine, Sessions wrote. Such dysfunction does not benefit either country, especially when Russia is lurking around the corner, hoping to regain its influence in the former Soviet republic. Investigating what's going on in the U.S. embassy in Kiev, and whether elements in Ukraine tried to influence the 2016 U.S. election to help Clinton, are essential steps to rebooting a key relationship. Read the original text here. Long a global leader in efforts to reduce nuclear-weapons stockpiles and limit nuclear proliferation, the United States is now fostering the conditions for a new global arms race. With hawks calling the shots in US President Donald Trump's administration, a nuclear conflagration in one of the world's hot spots is becoming more likely A B-52H from Barksdale AFB flying over desert wikipedia.org Ten years ago, during his first trip to Europe as US president, Barack Obama delivered a historic speech in Prague. Much to the delight of the crowd, Obama described a world free of nuclear arms as being both desirable and within reach. That declaration was unprecedented for an American president, and would contribute to his winning the Nobel Peace Prize later that year. Obama also used the occasion to reassure Czechs and Europeans generally that the United States would never turn its back on them; that its commitment to the principle of collective defense under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty was permanent and unconditional. Those words now seem like a relic of a bygone era. Obamas successor, Donald Trump, has questioned that key pillar of NATO, departing from almost 70 years of diplomatic tradition. Worse, he recently announced his intention to withdraw the US from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, which has been fundamental in guaranteeing European security since 1987. And though the Obama administration did end up deprioritizing nuclear disarmament over time, Trump seems to have replaced that goal with its polar opposite: rearmament. To be sure, bilateral agreements like the INF Treaty an artifact of the late Cold War are no longer sufficient in todays multipolar world. While the US and Russia are forbidden under the treaty from possessing land-based missiles with a range of 500-5,500 kilometers (300-3,400 miles), an estimated 95% of Chinas missile arsenal now comprises precisely such weapons. Moreover, the US and Russia have both accused the other of violating the INF Treaty, implying that the agreement has become moot anyway. But a far more sensible US strategy would have been to reaffirm its commitment to the treaty, thereby pressuring Russia to do the same in light of its own presumed violations. By taking the high ground, the US would have been far better positioned to extend the same normative framework to China and its arsenal. Instead, the author of The Art of the Deal has followed the advice of someone who has yet to meet a deal he didnt want to tear up: Trumps national security adviser, John Bolton. Having already dispensed with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, during his tenure in President George W. Bushs administration, Bolton has used his position in the Trump administration to launch attacks against the INF Treaty and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Most likely, his next target will be New START. Signed by Obama and then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Prague in 2010, that nuclear arms reduction treaty will expire in 2021, barring an agreement on its extension. With the steady collapse of the international arms-control architecture has come a fresh race to develop new types of nuclear weapons. The potential use of these weapons is now discussed with such frivolity as to foreshadow a return to the darkest days of the Cold War, but one that is even more dangerous, because other countries not subject to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), such as North Korea, have since joined the nuclear club. During Trumps first year in office, his incendiary public exchanges with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un brought relations between Washington, DC, and Pyongyang to their tensest point in decades. While Trump has since abandoned his threats of fire and fury and given diplomacy a chance, his administrations approach to North Korea has ignored all of the canons of effective diplomacy. This has given rise to another kind of frivolity: the spectacle of vacuous praise. In the end, the lack of consensus among US foreign policymakers and the misaligned expectations of the two negotiating parties, combined with Trumps own improvisations, condemned his recent summit with Kim to failure. A reorganization is now urgently needed, particularly to incorporate the other regional powers and keep Bolton and other hawks in the administration from derailing the process further. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan, two other NPT non-signatories, recently engaged in a cross-border military confrontation, following a terrorist attack last month in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Once deemed the most dangerous place in the world by former US President Bill Clinton, Kashmir is essentially shared between three nuclear powers: India, Pakistan, and China. Not since Pakistan revealed its nuclear capacity to the world in the late 1990s have Indian-Pakistani relations been so tense. Worse, as the latest instability shows, the presence of nuclear weapons is not sufficient to prevent conflict. Instead, it merely raises the risk that quarrels will escalate into existential conflagrations. Lastly, in the Middle East, the Trump administration has actively sowed the seeds for nuclear proliferation. The decision to abandon the JCPOA was entirely counterproductive, merely reflecting Trumps blind support for Israel another NPT non-signatory and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the Trump administration is even exploring the possibility of exporting nuclear material to the Saudi regime without putting the necessary safeguards in place. Apparently, Trump is not bothered by the fact that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has neither ruled out developing nuclear arms nor committed to a strict regime of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. One false step, though, could plunge the Middle East into a nuclear arms race truly a worst-case scenario for such a fraught region. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump raised a red flag for the umpteenth time when he suggested that Japan and South Korea should develop their own nuclear weapons as a means of self-defense. This idea couldnt have been more wrongheaded. Logic dictates that if more countries acquire nuclear weapons, the likelihood of such weapons being used will increase. The Cold War gave us a glimpse of the risks we run when our single-minded pursuit of some geopolitical interests causes us to lose sight of the most important of them all: international security. As Obama emphasized ten years ago in Prague, the US is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons, and therefore has an historic responsibility to ensure that they are never used again. For the US to forsake this responsibility and champion a new era of nuclear proliferation would be a tragic outcome. Read the original text here. EU Patrol Boat Luerssen Defence On November 26, a day after Russia attacked three small Ukrainian naval vessels attempting to pass through the Kerch Strait, German Chancellor Angela Merkel received official notification about this incident from Ukraines President Petro Poroshenko. In addition to sharing with Merkel the details of the act of aggression at sea, Poroshenko informed her of Kyivs response, including the introduction of Martial Law (Unn.com.ua, November 26, 2018). Several days later, on November 29, Poroshenko declared, Germany is one of our [Ukraines] closest allies and we hope that NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] countries are now ready to place warships in the Azov Sea to help Ukraine and provide security (BBCUkrainian service, November 29, 2018). This approach looked reasonable in light of Moscows illegal activity limiting Western merchant vessels passage through the Kerch Strait, including months of unmotivated Russian boarding inspections (Blackseanews.net, July 10, 2018). From the outset, however, observers noted that Poroshenkos request for a Western naval presence in the Azov Sea would meet with stern pushback from Russia. It should be noted that Moscow can appeal to the Agreement Between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on Cooperation in Use of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait (the so-called 2003 Agreement), according to which the Sea of Azov is determined to be historically internal waters of both states (Zakon.rada.gov.ua, April 20, 2004). As such, the agreement further stipulates that any warships of third states can access the waters only with express permission of both Russia and Ukraine. However, this bilateral compact contradicts the internationally recognized right of freedom of navigation and was never registered with the United Nations (as all international treaties are supposed to). Furthermore, some Ukrainian experts believe Kyiv should denounce the 2003 Agreement because it no longer serves the countrys national interests (Eurointegration.com.ua, October 4, 2018, Gordonua, July 11, 2018, Day.kyiv.ua, September 25, 2018). Deputy Foreign Minister Olena Zerkal, however, disputes this contention: last autumn she told reporters that denouncing the 2003 Agreement would do nothing for Ukraine, while opening the door to new Russian territorial claims (Ukrinform, October 20, 2018). Despite the inherent uncertainty in Ukraines maritime policy, the deployment of European Union or NATO warships (with Kyivs support) into the Sea of Azov to protect international shipping has a clear legal basis in provisions of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (Un.org, accessed March 20, 2019). Specifically, UNCLOS includes internationally recognized mechanisms for protecting the freedom of navigation, with naval-civilian convoy formations allowed to protect civilian vessels. Such an accompaniment of merchant vessels by warships is not the same thing as the one-time inspection Russia has proposed instead. An UNCLOS-mandated convoy would be given legal right to perform maneuvers in the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov and not be restricted to only port or coastal inspections (Interfax, January 18). The Western convoy to protect international shipping in the Kerch Strait and Azov Sea, ultimately never materialized. Reportedly, when meeting with United States Vice President Michael Pence at the Munich Security Conference last month (February 2019), Chancellor Merkel indicated she was willing, in coordination with the French, to send a convoy through the [Kerch Strait] waterways as a one-time maneuver but Poroshenko said that wasnt enough to solve his problemhe wants to ensure the strait is open permanently (Bloomberg, March 7). The whole episode, raises at least three important lessons: First, it is not possible to provide maritime security, achieve sea control or win naval battles using solely soft power. Security and defense policy must include a careful balance between soft and hard power toolssometimes referred to as smart power (Thecipherbrief.com, March 17, 2017). The navy, as an instrument of a states hard power, is thus tasked with securing access to vital maritime areas, providing enduring physical presence, and protecting the states interests in these areas. A Western convoy maritime operationwell-prepared and diplomatically reinforcedwould have been a step forward toward safeguarding the Wests and Ukraines interests in the Sea of Azov as well as stabilizing the situation there. Second, as Lieutenant General Serhiy Naev, the Ukrainian joint forces commander, stressed, When it comes to troops and weapons, the numerical advantage is on the side of the Russian army. Therefore, if full-scale aggression takes place, our success will depend not only on the combat resilience of our soldiers and officers, but also on the consolidation of Ukrainian people and the assistance of our allies and international partners, since this threat can only really be coped with through joint efforts (Mil.gov.ua, March 16). In turn, unified efforts under an effective common maritime strategy is critical for Ukraine to be able to survive and deter Russia. Importantly, Ukraines open flanks and vulnerable choke points exist not only in the Sea of Azov, but in the northern part of the Black Sea as well. Kyiv, thus, needs to develop as soon as possible a comprehensive maritime strategy based on a common Western-Ukrainian professional visionprofessional vision being the key phrase. Third, after more than three months since the November 25 Kerch Strait incident, the 24 Ukrainian sailors who were captured by Russian forces remain in jail, inside Russia. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has recognized the detained Ukrainian sailors as prisoners of war, but Moscow does not confirm this status and has charged them with criminal acts under Russian law (Pravda.com.ua, March 14). Appeals and persuasion to bring these Ukrainian service members home have been entirely ineffective, to date. A much more proactive course of action by Kyiv, together with its strategic Western partners, utilizing various mechanisms of joint influence may be required to secure the sailors release. Learning from these lessons may be crucial for Kyiv and Western capitals on both sides of Atlantic to avoid a Ukrainian Pearl Harbor as well as deter Moscows further westward encroachment beyond Donbas. Read the original text here. Pavlo Gryb, the Ukrainian political prisoner Hromadske The debates on the case of Ukrainian political prisoner Pavlo Gryb has begun at North Caucasus Military court, Rostov-on-Don, Russia as Hromadske reported. Gryb notes that he feels bad and he is not provided with proper medical assistance. Since the last session, when I became ill, nobody did anything; I am taken here and they tell that I am healthy. I ask you to postpone the session. I should not sit and suffer from illnesses here, Gryb said. It is reported that Ukrainian political prisoner complains about nausea and pain. Gryb reported that he was taken to the separate room in the morning to look at his documents I have nothing special there. The applications, appeals, the final statement, he added. According to the prisoner, his case is exclusively political. I think it is politics. I think when this case was opened, nobody thought that it will happen in such a way, Gryb noted. Earlier, Ukrainian political prisoner Pavlo Gryb was taken to the court session with a fever. Pavlo Gryb is the son of the former Ukrainian border guard Ihor Gryb. The Russian special service detained the 19-year-old boy on August 25, 2017, when he went to Gomel (Belarus) to meet his friend. Later, he was convoyed to Russia. The Russian law enforcers suspect Pavlo Gryb of preparing a terrorist attack at a school in Sochi (a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, located on the Black Sea coast, - 112 International). Russia did not provide the European Court of Human Rights with information about the Ukrainian political prisoner Pavlo Gryb's health status. Pavlo Gryb was not allowed to see his mother and the Ukrainian consul. Russia promises to give permission to the meeting with the consul, but only after the verdict. Yet, the consular convention signed between Ukraine and Russia does not provide for such refusal. Related video: He denied all charges from the Russian FSB, calling them 'bandits and murderers' Pavlo Gryb, the Ukrainian political prisoner Hromadske Ukrainian political prisoner Pavlo Gryb delivered his last plea in North Caucasus military court in Rostov-on Don, Russia. Hromadske reported this, quoting Gryb as he spoke during the court debates Thursday. 'For the first time, I get this chance to say my word. My final plea, in which I'd like to finally tell how it actually happened', the young man said. Gryb denied all charges from the Russian FSB, calling them 'bandits and murderers'. He also claimed that no one had reasons to believe that neutral Belarus would actually 'appear to be dangerous'. Pavlo wished all fellow political prisoners to endure the captivity with dignity, 'standing for truth and conscience'. He concluded his speech with the words 'Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Ukrainian nation!' As is known, the debates on the case of Ukrainian political prisoner Pavlo Gryb began Thursday, March 21. Russian special service detained the 19-year-old boy on August 25, 2017, when he went to Gomel (Belarus) to meet his friend. Later, he was convoyed to Russia. The Russian law enforcers suspect Pavlo Gryb of preparing a terrorist attack at a school in Sochi (a city in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, located on the Black Sea coast, - 112 International). Russia did not provide the European Court of Human Rights with information about the Ukrainian political prisoner Pavlo Gryb's health status. Pavlo Gryb was not allowed to see his mother and the Ukrainian consul. Russia promises to give permission to the meeting with the consul, but only after the verdict. Yet, the consular convention signed between Ukraine and Russia does not provide for such refusal. The decision was made even though there's no Ukraine-Russia gas transit agreement Peter Szijarto, the Hungarian foreign minister stated that Russia and Hungary agreed on the supplies of the Russian gas in 2020 - even without the agreement on gas transit between Kyiv and Moscow. This is mentioned in the message on the Hungarian foreign ministry. According to him, Hungary can purchase part of the natural gas via Austria, like it was done this year; in addition to that, the Hungarian side can use its own gas depots. 'Today, me and Gazprom Director-General made the agreement, which stipulates that Gazprom will provide natural gas supplies to Hungary with no regard whether the transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine on the future takes place', he said. In April 2018, Russian energy monopolist Gazprom declined the opportunity of extending the contract on gas transit with Naftogaz; only consultations would be held on this particular topic. Four citizens of Mykolaiv and four citizens of Odesa turned out to be the agitators The workers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) have exposed the anti-Ukrainian internet agitators in the group consisting of four citizens of Mykolaiv and four citizens of Odesa, as the SBU reported. The members of the networks spread the materials with the signs of the separatist content in the regional and state segments of the Internet. They aim for the artificial escalation of the public and political situation in the region on the eve and during the presidential elections in the country, the message said. It is reported that the perpetrators obeyed to the Russian curators and spread the information materials with the signs of the urges to change the borders of the state border of Ukraine in Vkontakte social media through the anti-Ukrainian societies News-Front Novorossiya South-East front, Republic Novorossiya anti-Maidan. The members of the network got the money reward for their work through the money transfer services, which were put on the sanctions list and which are banned in Ukraine, particularly, Gold Crown and Webmoney. The SBU stated that the Russian curators spread information about the impossibility to hold the honest elections of the president in Ukraine since the end of 2018. Russia stokes the inter-confessional conflicts amid the delivering of Tomos to Ukraine. Besides, the Russian special services continue to spread propaganda materials with anti-state content. Earlier, SBU exposed the spy ring of the Chief Department of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Donbas. Besides, Ukraines Security Service detained Deputy Head of Kharkiv City Council Department under suspicion of cooperation with Russian special services. The investigation was suspended in March 2018; currently, the ex-Georgian leader flees from justice, hiding abroad Open source Ukraine's SBU, the state security service resumed the investigation against ex-Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. Ruslan Chornolutsky, his lawyer, posted that on Facebook. Specifically, the lawyer released a letter from the Prosecutor General Office, in which they mention that the investigation, conducted by the SBU Main Investigation Department in Kyiv region is resumed. The probe was suspended in March 2018 due to 'the need for adhering by the actions foreseen within the international cooperation'. It was resumed when it appeared that there was a need to carry on with the criminal proceeding. According to UNN news agency, in February, the SBU got access to Saakashvili's case materials within the investigation into seizing power in Ukraine. 'According to the case materials, during the protest actions in Kyiv, radical protesters planned to use brute force, firearms and ammunition (grenades), smoke pellets, sticks, bricks, tires and gas in order to capture the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine by storming it, on one of the days after October 17, 2017, while the MPs were present there. Their goal was to make the lawmakers vote for the impeachment of President of Ukraine and for the decision to disband themselves', the SBU's appeal says. Previously, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said Saakashvili funded the protest actions in Kyiv, aimed at coup d'etat in Ukraine. He was said to have used the money of Viktor Yanukovych's sidekicks, especially, Serhiy Kurchenko. In December 2017, Saakashvili was detained and charged with aiding a criminal gang. The court sentenced him to 6 years in prison in absentia. Social media RIA News Chief Editor Kyrylo Vyshynsky, accused of state treason, stated that he did not write a statement addressed to the Russian President Vladimir Putin asking to exchange him for one of the Ukrainian political prisoners, as he told the journalists in the Cassation criminal court of the Supreme Court, Ukrinform reported. I never filed any documents to anybody, I did not sign any statements, Vyshynsky said. According to the accused, the question of the exchange is not important for him. To be honest, this question does not bother me, I care about fairness concerning what is happening to me, but not the exchange, Vyshynsky noted. Answering the question why did he accept Russian citizenship, Vyshynsky noted: My wife is the citizen of Russian Federation, she lives in Moscow, and I wanted to have a possibility to live with her under the law of the country she lives in. I had no other secret motives. He added that he welcomed the initiative of Ukraines PM Pavlo Klimkin to regulate the question of dual citizenship. As it was reported, the former RIA News Head Kyrylo Vyshynsky was transferred to Kyiv to the Lukyanivska prison. Earlier, Kherson City Court extended detention for RIA News Head Kyrylo Vyshynsky to April 8. On May 15, the Security Service (SBU) considered the detention of the head of RIA News Ukraine agencys office. Kremlin has already responded to the incident and called the actions of the SBU outrageous. Besides, Russia promised to assume reciprocal measures. Then, the state sent a protest note over searches at the mass media office. The actions of Vyshynsky were preliminarily qualified as the state treason. The same day the SBU reported that Kyrylo Vyshynsky is now officially suspected of state treason. Bayraktar TB2 has started from the military airfield in Starokostiantyniv City, Khmelnytsk region, and fulfilled the military task, precisely destroying the targets at Zhytomyr firing range Olexandr Turchynov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council and Bayraktar TB2 NSDC The testing of the Turkish unmanned combat aerial vehicle Bayraktar TB2 has successfully finished in Ukraine as Ukroboronprom, state concern, which supervises defense industry production facilities, reported. The unmanned combat aerial vehicles Bayraktar TB2 have successfully passed the trials in Ukraines sky. During the flight, UCAV worked out the finding of different types of targets, transmission of their coordinates to the command center and striking by precision weapon, the message said. Olexandr Turchynov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, specified that unmanned combat aerial vehicle Bayraktar TB2 has started from the military airfield in Starokostiantyniv City, Khmelnytsk region and fulfilled the military task, precisely destroying the targets at Zhytomyr firing range. This new unmanned combat aerial vehicle leads our unmanned aviation at another qualitative stage. Bayraktar TB2 can hold the reconnaissance of the military positions of the enemy set at the distance of 4,000 km, precisely destroy the targets from 7-km height and stay in the air for 24 hours, Turchynov said. President Poroshenko also stayed in Khmelnytsk region during the testing of the Bayraktar TB2 drone. As it was reported earlier, Ukraine purchases Bayraktar TB2, the combat drones developed by Turkish designers; they can carry missiles and are capable of engaging the naval targets. Petro Poroshenko said this. Bayraktar TB2 are capable to develop the maximum speed of 222 km per hour. The effective flight range makes 150 kilometers; it can be armed with anti-tank guided missiles and aviation bombs. It was also reported that failure to comply with the main indicators is a reason for early termination of his mandate. Andry Kobolev, the Head of Naftogaz-Ukraine RBK-Ukraine The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has prolonged the contract with Andriy Kobolev, the Chairman of Naftogaz, till March 22, 2020. The relevant decision of the Government was published on its official website. To extend the mandate of the Chairman of the Board of Naftogaz-Ukraine Andriy Kobolev from March 23, 2019, to March 22, 2020, the statement says. The document has three core indicators which Naftogaz has to reach over the period of the new contract. In particular, Naftogaz gas to produce no less than 18,2 billion cubic meters of gas till January 1, 2020; guarantee gas transit through Ukraine to EU member states; provide separation of gas transportation system of Ukraine from Naftogaz as an independent company; provide a draft of a financial plan for 2019. The representatives of the Government stress that failure to comply with the main indicators is a reason for the early termination of his mandate. As it was reported, Naftogaz prolongs a two-million contract with Kobolyev. Earlier, Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolev said that the Government could not reduce gas prices for Ukrainians despite all the campaign promises as its market price is one of the conditions of Ukraines cooperation with the International Monetary Fund. Kobolev explained that despite the promises of the presidential candidates, they cannot lower gas prices, the President does not have such power. It will not happen even after the parliamentary elections, according to Naftogaz CEO. Ukraines Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko news.liga.net Ukraines Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko stated that the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch handled him a 'do-not-prosecute list'. He said it in an interview for The Hill. Unfortunately, from the first meeting with the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, [Yovanovitch] gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute, Lutsenko said. Lutsenkos Press Secretary Larysa Sarhan in a commentary for BBC Ukraine specified that this list contained names of the Ukrainian MPs. The U.S. Department of State called Lutsenkos statement a blatant falsification. The representatives of the establishments added that they do not provide assistance to Ukraines Prosecutor General Office, yet earlier they tried to support the fundamental reform of the judicial system, including Prosecutor General Office. TSN Ukraine's TV program has got the commentary of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. They informed that Lutsenkos statement does not correspond to reality, and they want to weaken the reputation of Ambassador Yovanovitch. The representatives of the body also noted that allegation against the U.S. representatives is a manifestation of corruption. The total weight of the found drugs is 257 kg, it is around $51 million Smuggled cocaine from South America found in Odesa, March 21 State Border Guard Service of Ukraine The officers of Ukraines Security Service (SBU) in Odesa region along with the Prosecutors Office, National Police, Border Guard Service, and State Fiscal Service revealed a sea channel of smuggling from the country in South America of large amounts of cocaine, as SBU press office reported. The law enforcers blocked an attempt to deliver smuggled cocaine in boxes with bananas which were imported to Ukraine. During the inspection of the cargo, bags with white powder were found. The expertise showed that this was cocaine. The total weight of the found drugs is 257 kg, it is around $51 million, SBU officers stated. The Security Service opened a criminal proceeding. The establishment is trying to define the individuals involved in the smuggling process through this channel. According to the State Border Guard Service, the drug came from Ecuador to Yuzhny sea port with banana cargo. 220 bricks of cocaine were found in total. Sanctions were applied against heads of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and MPs of the State Duma of the Russian Federation The order of Ukraine #82/2019, which imposes the action of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) from March 19, 2019 On implementation, cancellation and adding of amendments to the personal special economic and other restrictive measures (sanctions), has come into force. It includes the sanctions against heads of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and MPs of the State Duma of the Russian Federation. The document was published on the parliamentary official platform. The order was published by the president earlier. It notes that the document comes into force since the day it was published. According to the document, at the initiative of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine and the National Bank of Ukraine, the sanctions are imposed against 294 legal entities and 848 individuals, who: -were involved in the construction of the bridge over the Kerch Strait; - were involved in the armed attack and seizure of the Ukrainian military vessels and illegal detaining of the Ukrainian sailors; - organize and encourage the conduction of the fake elections in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk and on the Crimean peninsula; - demonstratively violated the Ukrainian legislation on entry-exit of the temporarily occupied territories of the Ukrainian Crimea; - spread the printed productions with anti-Ukrainian content; - illegally obtained and use the museum heritage, which belongs to Ukraine. Besides, it is specified that the sanctions are imposed against the heads of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation. The National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine has also imposed the restrictive measures against separate individuals and legal entities, against whom the EU, Canada, and the USA have implemented sanctions as well, - the message said. Besides, upon the request of the National Bank of Ukraine, the sanctions were imposed against four banks of the aggressor state. At the same time, taking into account the achievement of the goal of imposing sanctions, upon the recommendation of the Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, restrictive measures on 8 legal entities, most of which their ceased economic activity, were lifted, the message said. According to article 1 and 5 of the law on sanctions of Ukraine, the sanctions are imposed on legal entities, residents of Ukraine, only if they are involved in the terrorist activity. Ukraine, as well as the U.S., is the free country with the free media and the politicians, experts and mass media have a right to share their opinion, which is the part of the political process, but it does not mean that such statements are true Open source The U.S. Department of State has stated that the words of Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yury Lutsenko that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch supposedly gave him the list of people, who should not be prosecuted are not true and aims to tarnish the reputation of Ambassador Yovanovitch, as Interfax-Ukraine reported. Ambassador Yovanovitch presents the U.S. President here, in Ukraine and America supports the ambassador after his statement. The statements of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine do not correspond to the reality and aims to tarnish the reputation of Ambassador Yovanovitch. Such accusations are an advantage only for the corrupt figures, the U.S. State Department said. The State Department emphasized that Ukraine, as well as the U.S., is the free country with the free mass media and the politicians, experts, and mass media have a right to share their opinion, which is the part of the political process, but it does not mean that such statements are true. Such attacks double our determination to help Ukraine to win in the fight against the corruption, U.S. State Department representative emphasized. As we reported Ukraines Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko stated that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch a do not prosecute list. Lutsenkos Press Secretary Larysa Sarhan in a commentary for BBC Ukraine specified that this list contained names of the Ukrainian MPs. Thank's for the fish. -- Douglas Adams Come back again sometime. Thank you for visiting. PRINT | EMAIL | PERMALINK Found Objects Trash Talk photo by Callie Interiano It is hard to say exactly how many municipal solid waste departments around the country have their own custom designed T-shirts that they sell to the general public, but this Sunday you can count Albuquerque among that number. Thats right, those of you who had previously been limited to wearing a trash bag as a shirt to show your Albuquerque Solid Waste Management pride will soon be able to don a fresh T-shirt with the now-ubiquitous One Albuquerque logo in a flattering light blue. The fun begins with a T-shirt launch party at Canteen Brewhouse (2381 Aztec Rd NE) this Sunday from 4pm to 7pm with music by Le Chat Lunatique. T-shirts will be available for $20 and those sporting the same will receive a discount on their bar tab. View in Alibi calendar Border Issues Natalie Scenters-Zapicos poetry brings a personal perspective on that border we have all heard so much about recently. From the sister cities of El Paso, Texas, USA, and Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, Fronteriza poet Scenters-Zapico comes to the National Hispanic Cultural Center (1701 4th St SW) this Friday to read selections of her work including the premiere of four new poems on the theme of poetry and democracy. The reading is preceded by a walk along the Rio Grande Bosque led by Albuquerque Poet Laureate Michelle Otero and New Mexico Centennial Poet Levi Romero to read and contemplate Scenters-Zapicos When the Desert Made Us Visible and Walt Whitmans Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. The walk begins at 5pm and the reading at 6:30pm. Both are free and open to the public. View in Alibi calendar Milking It If you like contemporary choral productions, biographies about American gay rights icons and driving out to Rio Rancho, then you are going to love I Am Harvey Milk. Billed as part choral work, part theater piece, the New Mexico Gay Men's Chorus presents the Tony Award-nominated composer Andrew Lippas ode to the late, great Harvey Milk who became the first openly gay man elected to political office in California and was subsequently gunned down for his trouble. The performance is this Sunday at 3pm at the V. Sue Cleveland H.S. Concert Hall (4800 Laban Rd NE) in Rio Rancho. Tickets range from $20 to $35. For more information see nmgmc.org. View in Alibi calendar Rob M. Hopefully you were prepared for this. House Bill 356 died abandoned and alone before the Senate Finance Committee last week. It was the closest New Mexico has ever come to legalizing recreational cannabis. It seemed a painful and undignified death. The bill would have made it legal for adults over 21 to possess up to an ounce of cannabis as long as they had a receipt proving it was purchased from a legal source. We would have been the 11th state to legalize the maligned plant. It would have protected employers who wished to maintain a drug-free workplace andmost importantlywould have created a system of state-run recreational marijuana producers and retailers. The House approved the bill earlier this monthan unprecedented step in a long history of attempts to legalize. It also passed through its first assigned Senate committee, but fizzled soon after. You might have already noticed it while talking to your peers: No one's crying over the loss. Lord knows I hate criticizing our honored government, but the idea of a New Mexico state-run recreational cannabis industry is enough to paint abject terror onto the face of every voter I've spoken to about the subject. An industry pal of mine crossed herself and whispered a prayer in what I mistook at the time for mock concern. I first read about changes made to the bill while riding an elevator a few weeks back. I accidentally laughed in shock despite myself. The other passengers glanced over nervously. Those changes were the result of a bipartisan compromise that seemed designed to make the bill an untouchable and unlovable piece of trash. It was made to align more with Senate Bill 577, which had already been tabled. The original version of HB 356 would have made it legal to possess up to two ounces (sans receipt), left room for protection of users andmost importantlydid not include a state-run retail system. On the final day of the legislative session, the Associated Press quoted Sen. John Sapien saying he thought the bill was dead. Sen. John Arthur Smith, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, reportedly told the Albuquerque Journal that there wouldn't have been enough votes to pass it out of his panel and that one of the bill's sponsors had asked him to ignore it if that were the case. Sapien reportedly said some private companies and medical marijuana providers were concerned about the bill's final wording. No kidding. It's like Dancing With the Stars, but with much less attractive people. No, dear reader, that spontaneous wrinkle in your nose isn't a sign of an oncoming stroke. You probably smell a rat. Head of FDA Resigns Last month, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the federal agency was looking into possible alternative approaches to regulating CBD products. During a National Association of State Departments of Agriculture conference, Gottlieb reportedly told those gathered that he recognized the need for clear regulations in the wake of President Donald Trump signing the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp and removed it from the list of scheduled substances. The new bill seemed to be legalizing hemp-derived CBD, but the FDA quickly came out to say that since CBD was the active ingredient of the administration- approved pharmaceutical Epidiolex, the substance couldn't be used in over-the-counter food or supplements without further study and approval. But Gottlieb's comments at the conference in February seemed to indicate a speedy resolution to the issue. Were planning to seek broad public input on this pathway, including information on the science and safety behind CBD. But we know that this process could take time, Gottlieb said. So were also interested in hearing from stakeholders and talking to Congress on possible alternative approaches to make sure that we have an appropriately efficient and predictable regulatory framework for regulating CBD products. Still, he also pointed out that until that framework was in place, he said the agency would continue acting against companies that make unsubstantiated claims about their CBD products or engage in interstate commerce. The next day he told the House Appropriations Committee that the FDA would begin holding public hearings on the subject in April. He told the committee that he was dedicated to straightening out the issue. You have my commitment I'm focused on this one, he said. But earlier this month, Gottlieb dropped the shocking news that he would be resigning from the FDA in April. It is unclear if he will still be in the position when the hearings begin and what his absence could mean for the proceedings. It's also unclear who will be taking his place and whether they will continue to champion a resolution. Getting to Know All About You If you haven't noticed, I'm a proponent of arming yourself with scientifically researched data in the new territory of cannabis medicine. As a patient, knowing how your medicine works is crucial. As an activist, knowing your facts are based on solid data is just as crucial. Whether marijuana advocates like myself want to admit it or not, unsupported and false claims of efficacy can be far more harmful to the movement than false claims of harm. This Sunday, March 24, Weekly Alibi is sponsoring the 2019 New Mexico Medical Cannabis Conference. From 9:30am to 5pm, attendees will hear from medical experts in the field who will cover a wide range of subjectsfrom the entourage effect to selecting proper cannabis products. Keynote speaker Tiffany Bowden will discuss intentional misinformation campaigns that have been waged against cannabis in Rebranding the War on Drugs. Tickets start at $45. The titular Gloria Bell (played by the always welcome Julianne Moore) is a woman of a certain age who appears to be coasting through lifes latter half, fueled by low-key regret and quiet disappointment. Shes been divorced for just over a decade, works behind a desk at a thoroughly uninteresting insurance company, is generally ignored by her offspring and tries to fill her voluminous spare time with stuff like yoga classes and laughter therapy. Her only true joy seems to be dancing the night away at a disco-themed, Los Angeles-area singles barnot some fancy,hotspot, but a low-key hotel bar-looking joint frequented by various older, middle-class white people clutching at the fraying threads of nostalgia. The rigorously unsentimental romancer Gloria Bell is the work of Chilean writer-director Sebastian Leilo, a remake of his universally loved 2013 film Gloria, where the wannabe free-spirited main character was played by the pitch-perfect Paulina Garcia. For this nearly scene-for-scene reshoot, Leilo has chosen wisely his replacement muse. Moore quickly slips into the skin of the character, a lonely woman for whom loneliness has becomes something of a comforting blanket. We first see her sitting at the bar of the dance club, back to the audience, sipping at her cocktail. We witness her dancing, silently, with various anonymous older men. Shes happy to be moving, happy to be dancing, but her happiness is small, fleeting and insular. Shes not here to pick up guys; shes here because dancing to Anita Ward is just a thing that makes her happy. Leilo isnt asking us to pity this woman, thankfully, but to join Moore inside her skin and figure out what makes her tick. One evening Gloria catches the eye of fellow divorce Arnold (John Turturro). He actively (if awkwardly) flirts with her, dances close to her and ends up taking her home for some mutually healing, long-time-coming sex. When Arnold actually calls her back days later, Gloria dares to think she might have stumbled into a worthwhile adult relationship. But Arnold, a former military guy who now owns a paintball park, is far closer to his divorce than Gloria. Hes only been away from his wife for a yearnot that you could tell. His needy former spouse and his two hopelessly inept adult daughters call him every day asking for help, advice, money, whatever. Evidently, every stuck pickle jar is a crisis to them. And poor Arnold, nice guy that he is, doesnt have the huevos to cut them out of his life. Suddenly, Gloria, who looked like the poster child for post-middle-aged singleton ennui, seems like shes not such a sad sack after all. A dinner party involving Glorias ex-husband Dustin (Brad Garrett) and his new wife (Jean Tripplehorn) sends Arnold into a spiral of jealousy. He sees Gloria and Dustin interacting nicely, reminiscing over old family photographs, and he assumes theyre still in love. He storms out of the dinner, only to call again in a day or so, full of regrets. What he fails to see in Gloria and Dustins face-to-face, however, is ordinary, friendly, semi-comfortable human interaction. For a guy who spends every day screaming into his cell phone to his former spouse, it just doesnt compute. And its our first real indication that maybe Glorias life isnt as screwed up as it seems. The on-again off-again nature of Gloria and Arnolds relationship forms the only real center to Leilos loose narrative. The rest of the film is driven simply by Moores lived-in performance. She underplays wonderfully, hinting at the feelings percolating just under Glorias drab countenance. Initially, it should noted, that its a little hard to swallow Julianne Moore as the sort of dull wallflower who would fail to attract attention at a singles club. Well on her way to closing out her 50s and ushering in her 60s, Moore is still a mesmerizing figure and would certainly lure swarms of AARP-eligible businessmen at an LA singles club. Leilos patient screenplay (adapted by Alice Johnson Boher) offers few answers as to the whys and wherefores of Glorias current life. Her grown children, Peter (Michael Cera, raising a baby with a wife who seems MIA) and Veronica (Alanna Ubach, pregnant by an itinerant Swedish surfer) are clearly bogged down in their own issues regarding intimacy and relationshipsbut that proves slight excuse for the utter indifference with which they treat their mother. At the end of the day, though, Gloria Bell is less about wallowing in misery and more about seeking out and accepting joy in lifes tiny moments. You only get a certain amount of time on this planet, and you might not want to wait until youre staring down retirement to start looking for personal fulfillment. Of course, Gloria Bell is not How Stella Got Her Groove Back. Its not about transformation and you go girl triumph. Even the films empowering coda is mild and delivered as a spur-of-the-moment whim. Its an act that leads less to a life-changing epiphany and more to a moment of Zen-like acceptance. Gloria Bell is all about the small things, and its filmmaker does a commendable job of expressing his characters thoughts and feelings symbolicallyyou know, without having to say them loud and proud. Gloria is seen continually ejecting a neighbors cat from her apartment. Shes simultaneously rejecting unconditional love and proving shes no lonely old cat ladynot yet, anyway. Her crazy upstairs neighbor screams at the walls on a nightly basis, giving voice to the inner turmoil hidden beneath Glorias passive exterior. Finally, our heroine finds a bit too much significance in the pop songs she sings along to on the car radiofrom Gilbert OSullivans Alone Again (Naturally) to Laura Branigans Gloria. Who among us hasnt been guilty of that? And who among usat least those of us who are rapidly approaching a certain agecant sympathize with this low-key learn to love yourself romance? Newscity NM Sees Rise in Asylum-Seekers The New Mexico Health Department sent a van equipped with a medical exam room to shelters housing migrant families last week. According to KOB4, the mobile medical exam unit was sent to Las Cruces, where it visited 12 different shelters and churches that have reportedly seen an increase in the number of asylum-seeking migrants. The mobile unit will help evaluate the health of migrants, relieving some of the strain felt by hospitals in the area over the last weeks. The unit is equipped to check vitals and assess hydration levels, according to US News. All of the medicine used for the program has been donated and the doctors and nurses involved are all volunteers. If the program is successful, officials might expand it into other communities dealing with an influx of asylum-seekers. Last week, nearly 300 migrants were reportedly brought to Albuquerque by ICE to be held while background checks are administered. Once they have been cleared, they will be sent to join their sponsor and await a hearing. Mayor Tim Keller told reporters that federal immigration officials have warned that more migrants are on the way, and the city is seeking medical volunteers and temporary housing accommodations. James Devaney/Getty ImagesChris Lane and his girlfriend have taken things to the next level. Former Bachelor bride-to-be Lauren Bushnell has relocated from Los Angeles to Nashville and moved into a downtown condo with the I Dont Know About You hitmaker. Coincidentally, Chris has long been an avid fan of the ABC reality series. Lauren finished season twenty in 2016 by accepting Ben Higgins proposal, though they later broke up. Lauren moving to Nashville has been the best thing for our relationship, Chris tells People. Its been such an easy transition and she makes each day even better. There is nothing like waking up next to the person I love, he adds, going about my day -- working out and working on music -- and then coming back home to her! Im a lucky guy. The pair first stepped out in public as a couple in November at the BMI Awards in Music City, but it turns out theyd actually been friends for years. According to Chris, their romance developed on a random trip" to the Bahamas. He took her home to meet his parents in Kernersville, North Carolina in December. Copyright 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Renowned Arizona pizzeria Grimaldi's is finally opening up an outpost in Brooklyn, in an extremely iconic location the pizza-loving among you will surely recognize: 1 Front Street in DUMBO. Ha ha what?!?!?! If you find yourself feeling a little turned around by that news, don't worry, I'm right there with you. In short, the original Grimaldi's (heretofore owned by Frank Ciolli) is being subsumed by its spawn, the spinoff national chain of the same name. Frank's son, Joseph Ciolli, serves as CEO of that company, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. Joseph is consolidating the original Grimaldi's under his corporate umbrella, and on March 29th, will reopen the famous pizza parlor that's been mysteriously shuttered for months. In a statement, Joseph said he was "very excited to welcome the original, historic Grimaldi's location" to the family, the same family that birthed it. "The Brooklyn pizzeria is the inspiration for all of our other locations," he added, perhaps to help me personally puzzle out this arrangement, "and we look forward to continuing to serve the iconic Grimaldi's coal-fired brick-oven pizzas at the One Front Street location that generations have come to love." It's a confusing twist in an already bamboozling saga, so allow me to briefly recap: Grimaldi's appeared to shut its doors in January, ostensibly to complete some quick renovations. As a tipster brought to our attention in February, however, trucks had been seen carting huge amounts of debris away from the premises, even though building permits reflected minor updates in the kitchen. The renovations also dragged on for longer than notices on the door originally projected, and audio from a hearing in a legal dispute between Joseph and the people who sublet the 1 Front Street location to his father mentioned both bankruptcy on Frank's part, and Joseph's purported plans for continued operation. It was all very murky and convoluted. Today, however, it seems that Grimaldi's-classic will finally return, sort of...? This refurbished Brooklyn Grimaldi's will showcase, according to the press release, "family-friendly comfortable rustic decor," while "the restaurant's design will feature Grimaldi's signature red and white gingham tablecloths, handcrafted hanging wine bottle chandeliers, and classic black and white still photographs of Brooklyn, NY, the city where the renowned eatery originated." Further, the menu will boast "authentic, New York-style ... offerings," such as "hand-crafted pizzas, calzones, and antipasto, as well as a variety of specialty desserts made in-house daily." All of which is to say, as far as I can tell, it will be the same Grimaldi's vibe that's been exported to franchises around the country, recycled back to the original location. According to the press release, the original Grimaldi's was "previously managed as an independent restaurant under license" by Grimaldi's national. We have asked Grimaldi's national for clarification as to the series of events that led us here, and will update if we hear back. In the meantime, according to a communications rep for the chain, "There will not be any change in ownership to the Grimaldi's location in Chelsea and on 6th avenue," because Joseph's company has "no affiliations with these locations." Both are closed and will, it seems, remain closed. Sketchy Interviews is a recurring series on Gothamist featuring visual interviews with some of the best illustrators, cartoonists and graphic artists working in the city today. We previously talked to New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast, Broad City animator/cartoonist Mike Perry, All The Restaurants In New York artist John Donohue, and cartoonist Julia Wertz. This week, we spoke to cartoonist Mort Gerberg, who has been documenting life in New York City, the fight for women's rights, politics, the Miracle Mets, the minutiae of aging and everything in between in cartoons and illustrations which have appeared in the likes of the New Yorker and Saturday Evening Post. Through May 5th, the New-York Historical Society is hosting a retrospective of Gerberg's work; the exhibit comes in conjunction with a new retrospective book, Mort Gerberg On the Scene: A 50-Year Cartoon Chronicle. You can get more information about the exhibit and the book from the NYHS here. What is your nightmare NYC scenario? What's your favorite item of food in NYC? Who is your favorite neighborhood personality? What's the weirdest thing you've seen on the subway? What would be your utopian idea to improve NYC? The release of the harrowing HBO documentary Leaving Neverland has sparked an ongoing public conversation about Michael Jackson, and how individuals, and the culture at large, is responding to James Safechuck and Wade Robson's accusations that the superstar molested them for years when they were children. As Wesley Morris wrote, "If we believe the accusers (and I believe Wade and James), what do we do with the art? With Jackson, what can we do?" It's a question that thinkpiece writers around the country have been wrestling with in recent weeksjust yesterday, The Atlantic's Caitlin Flanagan argued for the importance of Jackson's musical gifts, saying, "Art isnt something mere; it doesnt exist as the moral bona fides of the person who made it." And then there's the more practical matter of how one avoids music, particularly music that is as omnipresent as the air we breath: "Its easier not to go to a movie than to shut out all of the great Motown stuff [Jackson] was associated with," Vanity Fair reporter Maureen Orth said in an interview with The Ringer. And it's true that Jackson's music is so ubiquitous, it goes beyond sonic wallpaperhe's influenced multiple generations of musicians, who have either tried to mimic his sound (like Justin Timberlake) or literally sampled his songs (like Kanye West). Even Robson said this week he isn't sure whether individuals should stop listening to songs, saying, "If I have any hope its just that were questioning who were worshipping and why." But while it may be up to each individual to decide whether or not to continue listening to him in private, there is also the matter of what happens in public spaces. Do restaurants and bars continue to play "PYT" in the background? Do DJs at clubs and weddings still break-out "Billie Jean" to get people on the dance floor? As Slate's Carl Wilson noted, "Music often invades our ears in public, uninvited. In the near future, Jacksons songs shouldnt be played on the radio or in any other way that might cause people whove been abused to encounter his music against their will." And should we still have "Thriller" flashmobs during the Halloween Parade? What about the MJ jukebox musical that is still scheduled to come to Broadway in 2020? And what of the vast number of artwork and tributes scattered across the globespecifically, what about the giant mural of Jackson's face in the East Village? (Scott Lynch/Gothamist) That striking mural of Jackson, which depicts Jackson as both the young boy who fronted the Jackson 5 and the adult who radically altered his face with plastic surgery, has been located on 11th Street and First Avenue since last July. Street artist Eduardo Kobra was asked by Time Out New York whether he thought the mural should be taken down in light of the documentary. Here's why he doesn't want to take it down despite the accusations: I decided to keep the mural on, for a few reasons: First, because the mural itself is not a simple tribute to MJ. My entire idea was to show the transformations he went through during his entire life: from black to white, kid to adult, from natural to unnatural. The whole project that I did in NYC last year was about peace, and in that mural in particular I was trying to describe that people sometimes have to go through so much to be able to reach their own peace of mind.. and even then, sometimes doesnt matter what people do, they can never reach that peace. In the second place, I believe MJ is part of American History, and also part of the worlds music history. You can catalog music Before and After MJ, so much was his influence. He still is the biggest pop star that has ever lived, and that we have ever seen, and I believe we are never going to see another pop star like him again. Therefore, we cant just erase him from history. These new allegations can be true or not. It is not up to me to judge if MJ is guilty or notand now, since he is dead, he wont be judged by justice anymore. So I really hope that mural can do its [sic] part and bring us to think about it all and how we, as persons and as a community, will deal with this new fact concerning MJs life. Hopefully this discussion leads us all to the desire to be a better person everyday. Kobra views his mural in a larger context about identity, but the historical angle is a slippery slope. Jackson wouldn't be erased from history if we took down a mural or stopped effusively praising him in public monuments and displays, any more than Christopher Columbus would be erased from history if we stopped celebrating him with an extra day off in October. And it isn't like Jackson's music, his most enduring legacy, seems to be going anywhere right nowhis songs are still on streaming services, with radio play only down slightly. O.J. Simpson's likeness in the old Potrero Hill mural was just slowly defaced until it eventually disappeared. I seem to recall devil horns; it was interesting. This was, of course, before people made insanely large, hideous murals for people to Instagram. https://t.co/9olAbKuqqu willy (@willystaley) March 21, 2019 By leaving the mural up, is NYC celebrating a man accused (but not convicted of) heinous crimes? Or can the mural be seen strictly as a celebration of the artist, not the man? This is a debate that is bound to come up again when/if Spike Lee decides to throw his annual celebration of all things MJ with his Michael Jackson Block Party this summer, as he has for the previous eight years. On March 27, WNYC's Arun Venugopal is hosting a Micropolis event about Jackson's legacy in the wake of Leaving Neverland, covering questions like, "Can we separate the art from the artist? Should we? Who is this we thats even deciding whats acceptable? And who are the artists youve cut off based on their transgressions, and who do you continue to enjoy in spite of them?" His guests includeHot 97s Peter Rosenberg, author Margo Jefferson, DJ Alisa Ali and The Atlantics Spencer Kornhaber. More details here. With Democrats having won a clear majority in the New York state Senate for the first time since the 1960s, there is strong momentum to strengthen the states rent-regulation laws. Legislators and housing activists say changes are virtually inevitablefrom the rollback of Giuliani-era loopholes to a proposed expansion of renter protections that some have touted as "universal rent control." But the real-estate lobby, even in a climate where some politicians are proclaiming their refusal of its campaign donations, is pushing to minimize the scope of any changes. And both Governor Andrew Cuomo and state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie have indicated that they may oppose more radical reforms. The nine bills introduced or planned by state legislators fall into two categories: Some would increase protections for tenants whose apartments were already regulated, primarily by closing the loopholes enacted by the state in 1997. Others would dramatically expand the number of regulated apartments, by letting local governments outside New York City and its inner suburbs enact rent stabilization, and prohibiting eviction except for good cause statewidewhich would include banning evictions of tenants who could not pay "unconscionable" rent increases. The first category includes a bill to repeal the 1997 decontrol of high-rent vacant apartmentsat the time, any apartment where the landlord claimed the legal rent was $2,000 or moreand reregulating most of the estimated 300,000 apartments deregulated under that law. Other measures would repeal the 20 percent rent increase on vacant apartments established in 1997 and make preferential rent discounts last for the duration of the tenancy, so renters can't be hit with a sudden increase from $1,300 to $1,800 when they renew their lease. The Assembly regularly passed similar bills over the last several years, but they went nowhere in the Republican-controlled Senate. Another bill would base increases for the 30,000 remaining rent-controlled tenants on those for rent-stabilized tenants. In practice, Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) told a Metropolitan Council on Housing meeting March 16th, this would reduce increases from 7.5 percent a year to about 1 percent. I think were in good shape on the ones we passed last year, says Assemblymember Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan). But the bills to expand the scope of rent regulations, he admitted, will be a tough lift. Those include the good-cause eviction measure proposed by Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn); an extension of the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974 beyond New York City and Westchester, Nassau, and Rockland counties, so places like Rochester, Syracuse, or Suffolk County could regulate rents; and two bills that would abolish rent increases for building-wide major capital improvements (MCIs) and individual apartment improvements (IAIs), which have been widely used by landlords to increase rents by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The most far-reaching measure is Salazars bill, which would prohibit landlords from evicting tenants or refusing to renew a lease without a reason such as the resident not paying rent or creating a nuisance; buildings of three units or less that are occupied by the owner would be exempted. As current rent regulations only apply to buildings with six or more units, this would effectively expand protections to cover the four-apartment buildings common in neighborhoods like Bushwick, Ridgewood, and East New York. The measure would also give tenants the right to stay if they fail to pay an unconscionable rent increase, which it defines as more than 1.5 times the previous years increase in the region's Consumer Price Index. As of now, that would effectively limit rent increases to about 3.5 percent, although landlords would have the right to try to prove they need more. Legislators and activists who support expanding rent controls statewide say unaffordable housing is no longer just a New York City issue. Many of the upstate legislators can no longer say this doesnt affect my community, Salazar told the Met Council meeting. Both upstate and downstate should have good tenant protections, says Assemblymember Pamela Hunter (D-Syracuse), the bills lead sponsor in the lower house. In Syracuse, a city of 125,000, she says, courts now handle 12,000 eviction cases a year, as downtown gentrifies and low-rent apartments over storefronts get replaced with $400,000 condos. People who live in these places shouldnt get booted out because they live in a prime spot for real estate, Hunter says. Theres nowhere for them to go. Our city needs it like crazy, says Allison Dentinger, director of the Supports on the Streets homeless-outreach program in Rochester. The number-one reason people are becoming homeless is because they cant pay their rent. Rochester, with about 210,000 people, now has more than 1,000 visibly homeless people, she says, and that doesnt include those living in cars or doubled up with friends or relatives. In the last couple years, shes seen a drastic increase in the number of people who didnt have drug or mental-health problems before they became homeless. Its only going to get worse as the city gentrifies, Dentinger says. Rochester is almost half renters, she explains, and a lot of landlords are moving to 30-day leases, which tenants have no right to renew. Tenants rally for rent freezes and rent roll-backs before a meeting of the Rent Guidelines Board in 2018. (Katherine Hernandez / Gothamist) To the real-estate lobby, the biggest source of campaign money in state elections, these eviction restrictions are a back-door way to enact statewide rent control. Real-estate interests suffered a major defeat in the 2018 elections. Democrats gained eight seats in the state Senate, giving them a solid 39-24 majority. And six of the eight Democratic incumbents whose alliance with Republicans helped them kill Assembly-passed bills to strengthen rent regulations lost primaries to challengers running on an explicitly pro-tenant platform. They know vacancy decontrol is going to be repealed, says Michael McKee of TenantsPAC. The lobbys strategy now, he says, is to cultivate Democrats from upstate and Long Island, trying to discourage them from signing on to measures such as allowing local governments there to enact rent stabilization. What we are desperately pleading with people is to understand the unintended consequences of some of the legislation, John Banks, head of the Real Estate Board of New York trade group, told The Real Deal in February. The proposals weve seen so far do nothing to ease vacancy rates, make apartments more affordable, or create a single new unit, Banks said in a statement released March 19 by the Taxpayers for an Affordable NY coalition. The coalition, which consists of REBNY, the Rent Stabilization Association, and two smaller landlord groups, argues that the bills proposed would hurt small owners most, that MCIs and other increases have contributed to improving the quality and quantity of the citys rent-regulated housing stock, and that more than 28,000 households who earn more than $200,000 a year live in rent-stabilized apartments. (Thats about 3 percent of the 966,000 rent-stabilized units in the city, whose residents had a median household income below $45,000, according to the citys 2017 Housing and Vacancy Survey.) Cuomo has only committed to a short list of rent law changes: repealing both vacancy decontrol and the 20 percent bonus that landlords are allowed to tack on to regulated rents when an apartment becomes vacant; closing the preferential-rent loophole; and reform of MCIspossibly making them temporary increases until the cost of the renovations is paid off. The governor has apparent support from Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx), who told a Crain's New York Business breakfast March 8th that while the city has become almost unaffordable, he didnt want to have the pendulum swing all the way back to the other side, to the point where it would disincentivize landlords from investing in their properties. He said that while he wouldnt rule out other legislation, his top priorities would be ending vacancy decontrol, and reforming vacancy bonuses, preferential rents, and MCI and IAI increases. The Speaker has been one of Albany's more aggressive fundraisers, setting up a PAC last year that has collected donations from REBNY among other major funders. In the last five years, when he ran unopposed or with only token opposition, he has received about $74,000 from real-estate sources, including the Rent Stabilization Association PAC and Hudson Yards developer the Related Companies. Heasties office did not respond to requests for comment from Gothamist. Cuomo spokesman Tyrone Stevens said the governor is fully committed to working with the legislature and tenant community to reform rent regulations, including ending vacancy decontrol, repealing preferential rent and limiting capital improvement charges to protect affordable housing and respect tenants rights. The fact that we have an overwhelming Democratic majority in both houses is no guarantee were going to win, McKee told the Met Council meeting. We have to hold every single legislator accountable, including our friends. Regulated housing in New York City has plummeted since the 1970s. (Community Service Society, based on city Housing and Vacancy Survey data) One key battleground will be the bills to ban rent increases for major capital improvements and individual apartment improvements. As of now, theyre permanent additions to the rent, with IAIs the main means of jacking up the rent on specific vacant apartments; building-wide MCIs are more commonly used to raise rents on current tenants in areas where the market isnt as hot. There is currently no oversight over those increases, says Assemblymember Epstein, formerly a tenant representative on the city Rent Guidelines Board. A landlord could put a bill in to say they spent $30 million, and nobody looks at it. That lack of regulation is one reason why so many apartments have been deregulated under the 1997 vacancy law. Until 2015, the state allowed landlords to use renovations on vacant apartments to raise rents over the deregulation threshold, removing those units permanently from rent stabilization. The only way to contest those increases was if individual tenants challenged them, and the 1997 law largely prohibits challenging illegal increases more than four years old. One bill introduced this year by Assemblymember Jeff Dinowitz (D-Bronx) and Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn) would expand challenges to include all "reasonably necessary" past rent hikes. The bill to repeal vacancy decontrol, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester), would also reregulate deregulated apartments in New York City that rented for less than $5,000 a month in the last six years, plus those that rented for less than $3,500 in Nassau, Westchester, and Rockland counties. It would roll back rents on these units to their 2014 levels, plus any annual increases allowed by the Rent Guidelines Board since then. Repealing vacancy decontrol has been the centerpiece of tenant demands for some two decades, but the movement is now demanding more. Like the decline of labor unions, the weakening of rent regulations has created a two-tier economy, with most younger people excluded from rights and protections. Strengthening rent controls would protect the some 2 million people living in regulated apartments, but would still leave the rest of New Yorkers exposed to unlimited rent increases or forced to move when their lease runs out. In this years political climate, the real-estate lobby would likely consider it a victory if it can preserve this two-tier system. While Cuomo included some measures to strengthen rent stabilization in his proposed budget, Myrie said both houses of the Legislature have agreed they dont want to try to wedge complex rent legislation into the budget bill. We feel very strongly this has to be done outside that process, he said. That leaves less than three months for debate on the myriad bills to be considered. The budget is due April 1st, and the rent-stabilization laws expire June 15th. After April 1st, you need to be in the ears of your legislators every single day, Myrie told the Met Council meeting. The people who dont want to see this happenthey are relentless, and they have a lot more money than you. You have two months to explain these are absolutely critical issues, Epstein says. We could get something amazing done this year. Georgia Kromrei contributed data on campaign contributions. I don't trust robocars and you can't make me. This was true before a self-driving Uber hit and killed a woman as she crossed the street last year, and has only become truer since. Nevertheless, tech companies continue to push their driverless chaos agent agenda. New York City will not be exempt. Apparently, we're getting self-driving vehicles as soon as this year. The Verge reports that a Boston-based start-up called Optimus Ride plans to launch an "autonomous shuttle service" in the Brooklyn Navy Yard within the next few months. They'll also be sending some of these Neighborhood Electric Vehicles to Paradise Valley Estates, a retirement community in Fairfield, California, so at least we're not alone. But hey, maybe this news excites some of you! In an email to Gothamist, an Optimus Ride representative said the company would start with four vehicles, with the eventual goal of adding more to the fleet. Each will hold "either four or six" passengers, and rides will be free to the approximately 8,500 Navy Yard workers (by the Verge's count) and to the eventual ferry passengers who disembark there. Optimus Ride envisions this as a convenient link to Flushing Avenue and existing public transportation. From the company's perspective, the Navy Yard is attractive both because it's geofenced (and regular fenced) and because "Brooklyn residents tend to be open to new tech." I suppose I am grateful that the cars will only travel 25 mph, and that they'll be confined to the Navy Yard rather than unleashed in the streets. Really, though, this feels like a baby step and I'm not ready to walk just yet. See, again, the autonomous Uber that mowed down a pedestrian. In October 2017, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that Manhattan would welcome autonomous vehicles, from GM and Cruise Automation, in early 2018. He touted their "potential to save time and save lives," although nothing ever came of the plan. At the time, though, Cornell computer science professor Bart Selman told Gothamist that NYC, with all its congestion and constant surprise traffic interruptions, actually offered preternaturally fertile testing ground for driverless cars. Rolling along at relatively slow speeds, "the cars will be able to react much faster than people," Selman said. "The vision system and the sensor systems, they are becoming almost superhuman, they can see around the car most of the time." That people will invariably walk out in front of these robot zoomers will only sharpen their reflexes, he added: "I call it bullying of the self-driving cars." And yeah okay, human drivers make mistakes too, some of which prove fatal. And sure, this Endgadget reporter rode an autonomous bus in Times Square and had a perfectly boring time. Maybe it will all be okay! Maybe I will have to ride in one of these Optimus robots to find out. BEE & El/RCA RecordsOn Friday, Flora Cash will release a new EP called Press. The five-song collection features "You're Somebody Else," the breakthrough single for the duo, made up of husband and wife Cole Randall and Shpresa Lleshaj [luh-SHEGHZ]. Speaking to ABC Radio, Randall describes how "You're Somebody Else" reflects the rest of Press. "Overall, there's a theme of breaking through limitations, whether self-imposed or external limitations," Randall explains. "I think in that sense, thematically 'You're Somebody Else' really fits...it's very cohesive with the rest of [the EP]." From a sonic perspective, however, Randall doesn't feel "You're Somebody Else" is wholly representative of the EP's sound. For example, the follow-up single "They Own This Town," employs heavier percussive elements than its predecessor. "It maybe sounds cheesy, but we really always try to treat every song like it's an individual thing," Randall says. "At least sonically, it's not necessarily part of some larger vision." In April, Flora Cash will hit the road with lovelytheband, and they hope to have a new full-length album out later this year. "Most of the songs that are gonna be on this EP are also gonna be a part of a full-length album," Randall says. "It's a little bit tentative at the moment, but it's looking somewhere around late summer that we'll have a proper album, which we're really excited about." "It's mostly finished," he adds. Copyright 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. In a landmark victory for disability rights advocates, the de Blasio administration has agreed to survey and ensure that all of the citys roughly 162,000 sidewalk curbs are accessible for New Yorkers with mobility and vision-impairment issues. A U.S. District Court judge on Tuesday issued preliminary approval of a settlement that resolves two class action lawsuits brought by disability rights activists, the first going back as far as 1994. Susan Dooha, the executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled, the lead plaintiff in the most recent case from 2014, called the agreement with the city long overdue. Her organization sued the city for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act after finding that more than 75 percent of the 1,066 curbs in Lower Manhattan had barriers that presented safety hazards for those with mobility and vision issues. More than a quarter had no curb cut whatsoever. We believe it will make a tremendous difference in peoples lives when it is carried out, she said, adding, Carrying it out is going to be important to monitor. In addition to requiring a series of surveys to address the status of curb cuts, the city must submit its findings and plan of action to a court-appointed monitor. Curbs must have ramps as well as visual markers for the visually impaired. The first survey is due by October 31st, 2019. Curbs must have ramps as well as tactile pavings for the visually impaired. New York City has been singled out for having an especially poor track record on accessibility. Following the 1994 lawsuit, the city reached a settlement in which it agreed to make significant investments in curb upgrades. But a federal court-ordered report in 2017 found that 15 years after that agreement was reached, 80 percent of curb cuts were still not ADA compliant. Its frustrating that it takes lawsuits like this to enforce what is already guaranteed in the ADA, said Joe Rappaport, Executive Director at Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled. But its definitely a groundbreaking case. According to 2016 census data, there are 570,560 New Yorkers with some form of ambulatory disability, and 201,134 who are visually impaired. The settlement comes shortly after another major ruling in favor of disability advocates. Earlier this month, a federal judge ruled that the MTA broke the law by failing to install elevators during a 2013 renovation of a Bronx subway station. The MTA had unsuccessfully tried to argue that the scope of the work did not trigger the accessibility requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act. New York City takes ADA compliance seriously, and is deeply committed to continuing to make pedestrian ramps accessible Citywide, said Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the citys law department, said in a statement to Gothamist on Thursday. We've already spent over $125 million on ramp upgrades during the last three complete fiscal years. In 2017, city officials said that of the citys 162,000 curb corners, about 2,246 have no ramps. The Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to a request for the most recent data. The administration has said it has a budget of $1.55 billion over the next ten years to meet the requirements of the settlement, according to a spokesman. That includes adding more than 500 positions to the Department of Transportation. Dooha, however, warned that it was premature to assign costs to the plan. Unless they have completed that survey, there is no way to know the cost other than coming up with a guesstimate, she said. Milagros Franco, a 42-year-old wheelchair user, treated the news with cautious optimism. Franco, who works as a housing activist at Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, uses a motorized wheelchair to commute to work from her home near Stuyvesant Town. Using a subway, she said the trip to downtown Brooklyn takes about an hour and relies on her knowledge of all the area's "good curb cuts." She said that even when she does find curb cuts, it is not uncommon to see them in crumbling condition, making them hard to cross or causing damage to her wheels. Because her regular wheelchair was in the shop, Franco on Thursday had to use her manual wheelchair, a test of her muscle strength. A close-call with a car while crossing the street further reminded her how difficult it was for the disabled to navigate the city. She said she wanted to see the city make the improvements before celebrating the settlement. The fat lady isnt singing yet, she said. But its a step in the right direction. The trial of alleged "socialite grifter" Anna Sorokin, a.k.a. Anna Delvey, is underway this week. Sorokin, 28, is accused of posing as a German heiress and swindling numerous people out of $275,000. Jury selection for her case started on Wednesday, and the Post reports that she had a "fashion emergency." Upon seeing Sorokin, who has been in custody at Rikers Island, her lawyer Todd Spodek reportedly "had an associate run to the clothing shop H&M and spend $200 on something that didnt scream 'inmate.'" She changed into a "black blazer, cropped black capris and beige sweater," but wasn't able to wear the stilettos, because the Correction Department "deemed them too dangerous." Before her downfall and arrest, Sorokin had enjoyed a glamorous life, attending fancy parties, living in boutique NYC hotels, taking lavish international trips, and sticking to a beauty regimen that included "$800 highlights" and "$400 eyelash extensions." But her extravagant lifestyle was financed by unsuspecting friends, like a Vanity Fair photo editor who wrote about being duped out of $62,000 during a trip to Morocco. Prosecutors also say her wildlyambitious plans to rent a 45,000 square foot building for her arts foundation were built on lies. In 2017, she was arrested for her alleged scams, including overdrafting a checking account by $55,000 and trying to get a loan for $22 million by faking bank accounts showing that she had 60 million. In December, Sorokin rejected a plea deal that would have let her, as a German national, leave the country this year. At the time, Spodek told the judge, "Listen, she has to do what's right for her. She has committed herself to trial." Dozens of witnesses are expected to testify against her, and Spodek told Insider that he thought hotelier Andres Balazs and Aby RosenSorokin stayed at their hotelsmight be among them. "Jurors will hear that Sorokin allegedly Googled the phrases 'faking bank statements, 'generate fake credit score report' and 'faking bank statements [sic] penalties,' according to the judges ruling," the Post reports. There are said to be two Hollywood projects about Sorokin in production, one based on the Vanity Fair story that has interested Jennifer Lawrence and Margot Robbie and the other, a Netflix project produced by Shonda Rhimes, based on the New York magazine feature. Less than a week since it opened, Hudson Yard's Vessel has drawn a lot of scrutiny over its Terms & Conditions, which included an overreaching rights grabs for your content. Those Terms & Conditions have now been changed for the better (though they're still troubling), but they'll probably need to be updated again sometime in the future to better reflect the fact that it likely won't be known as 'Vessel' forever. A lot of people might not be aware of this, but the name 'Vessel' is just a working title for the honeycomb-like structure created by British architect Thomas Heatherwick. Despite the fact that all the language on the Hudson Yards website and all the promotional materials so far have referred to it as such, there is already a public naming competition quietly happening as we speak. "Our hope is that after people visit Vessel, they will tell us their best idea about what to name the centerpiece," said Jessica Scaperotti, a spokesperson for developer Related Companies. "As you're leaving Vessel, there is signage by the exits where people can scan a QR code and give us their suggestions." She also added that they will be sending out emails to anyone who reserves tickets to visit Vessel to see if they want to suggest a name, though those emails haven't started going out yet. Indeed, there are two signs by the exit (see photo below), each about as big as a piece of printer paper, directing people to participate. Except they choose to de-emphasize the naming callout by putting that part in the smallest font, and don't explain the QR code or how it even works. The signs read: "What's Next? We hope you enjoyed your visit to New York's newest landmark! Now, make your mark on Hudson Yardstell us your best idea about what to name this unique neighborhood centerpiece." If you scan the QR code, it takes you to this website, where you can suggest a name if you put in your email address. (Brahmjot Kaur/Gothamist) When we visited Vessel on Wednesday, just about everyone we spoke to knew it by the Vessel name, and no one had any idea it was changing names, or that they could participate in renaming it. "Real question: what is this supposed to be? Modern art? I was really trying to figure it out, because it really looks like a rib cage," said Katlyn Westhoven, who was visiting the city from Albany. Anthony from Brooklyn suggested it should be called The Hive (because of its resemblance to a bee hive) and said the sculpture was "ground-breaking, next level, forward-thinking, chrome." Jennifer from Manhattan offered up The Vase, while Kevin from Queens said his friends call it The Acorn, although he prefers its current name. "I think the name is beautiful, I think it fits," he told Gothamist. "I dragged my friends here to see it because I've been hearing about it for months now. I love everything about it. The first time i saw it, I was on the High Line and I saw it from a distance when they were first building it, and it looked futuristic and different and exciting." (Scott Lynch / Gothamist) Scaperotti added that it's unclear how long the naming contest will go on, nor how exactly the final name will be chosen (will it be a public vote? does the architect get to decide?). "'NY Staircase' and 'Vessel' were always working names," she said. "But we felt the name would evolve after people experienced it. Because it's not just something you look at, it's something people experience." In that spirit, we have a few name suggestions of our own to offer up. Feel free to submit one of these names as well: The Roach The Garbage Can Some Mall Escalators The Rejected M.C. Escher Fever Dream The Cheese Grater The Hand-Weaved Waste Basket The Roach Abdomen The Privacy Nightmare A Hunk Of Metal The Comically-Oversized Pine Cone NYC's Very Own Eiffel Tower (MUST CREDIT STEPHEN ROSS) The Great Shawarma In The Sky The Climbable Lattice Crust The $150 Million Staircase To Nowhere Thorax Vibes The Please Read The Terms & Conditions Before You Come Here Additional reporting by Brahmjot Kaur New Braunfels, TX (78130) Today Cloudy and windy this morning, becoming partly cloudy this afternoon. High around 60F. Winds N at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.. Tonight Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 34F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Bleubeard and I welcome you Art, including the journey, background techniques, sewing on both paper and fabric, new experiments, photos, failures, and successes will be shared on this site. I have removed my e-mail address until such time as I can get it to work again. Thank you for understanding. You can always leave a note on my blog and I will visit you. Please check out my Previous Collaborations link above to see what projects I have been involved in over the past ten years. Current and ongoing projects only are shown below. Occasionally, Silent Sunday will showcase photos of my home, neighborhood, or community. A picture is often worth a thousand words. Feel free to drop by every second Thursday of the month for my Second Thursday Tutorials. They are interspersed with my other Tutorials found at the link above. El canciller @NestorPopolizio participo en la Segunda Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre la Cooperacion Sur-Sur, que se inicio hoy en Argentina. pic.twitter.com/gVUxnjCOcd 13:22 | Lima, Mar. 21. Likewise, he indicated it is necessary for the Inca country's sectors to join forces in order to fight corruption , which he deemed as an endemic and structural problem. Those of you who read what I write know what I have written about the political conundrum in Malaysia these last many months. You know I have written not... A joint expedition by the Russian Geographical Society and the Northern Fleet to the Franz Josef Land will study the sites where German troops were deployed in the Arctic during WWII, RGS President Sergei Shoigu said in an interview with the TASS News Agency and the newspapers Rossiyskaya Gazeta and Komsomolskaya Pravda. Shoigu said that many RGS expeditions were held jointly with the Northern Fleet. "One such expedition went to Novaya Zemlya to test new equipment and to study the areas where German troops were deployed during the Great Patriotic War. This year, we will send a large expedition to the Franz Josef Land to get answers to many questions. We have found many items including the remains of old equipment, which indicates that a German group was deployed there, just as on Novaya Zemlya, during the war. We have no notion what they did there," Shoigu said, as quoted by TASS. The RGS and the Northern Fleet will continue working on the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, Cape Schmidt and Sredny Island. "They [the military personnel of the Northern Fleet] are preparing for these expeditions with great interest and enthusiasm. We have retrieved several Lend-Lease Sherman tanks from a sunken British ship. Moreover, we have set up a workshop to restore and repair these tanks, which are now able not only to move but also shoot," Sergei Shoigu noted. YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei called on to boost production in the conditions of the US sanctions, reports Armenpress. Especially in recent months, peoples livelihood problems have increased, the Supreme Leader said in his message on the Iranian New Year, Nowruz. What I would like to mention in this regard is that the countrys urgent and serious matter and its priority in the present time is the issue of the economy. Regarding the economy, the issues that we have are many: the issue of the decrease in the value of the national currency is an important matter. The same is true of peoples purchasing power. The same condition exists regarding factories, their lowered capacity and the closing down of some of them. These are the problems. Based on research and having benefitted from the viewpoints of experts, one concludes that the key to all these problems is the expansion of national production, Khamenei said as quoted by IRNA. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. The March 21 Cabinet meeting agenda includes a bill on amending the law on public holidays of Armenia to create a new holiday the Day of Citizen of Republic of Armenia. If passed, the Citizens Day will be celebrated on the last Saturday of April. The purpose of the new holiday is to honor the unprecedented political situation that took place in April of 2018 the mass peaceful protests that eventually became known as the Armenian Velvet Revolution. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan sent a congratulatory letter to the Kurdish community representatives on the occasion of their New Year Nawroz, the PMs Office told Armenpress. I warmly congratulate the representatives of the Kurdish community of Armenia on New Year Nawroz. Nawroz is one of the ancient and most popular pan-national holidays of Kurds. It is perceived as a symbol of natures awakening and beginning of a new year. Let this spring holiday, that symbolizes a new life, become a new beginning on the path of fulfillment of dreams for the Kurdish friends who are part of Armenias equal brotherly family. Let this New Year be a year of peace, solidarity, new achievements and success. I wish welfare, happiness and determination to the Kurdish community of Armenia to jointly build free, fair and prosperous country for all of us. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. According to the decision of the government of Armenia, Vahagn Vermishyan has been appointed chairman of the State Urban Development Committee, reports Armenpress. During todays Cabinet meeting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan congratulated Vermishyan and wished good luck. Avetik Eloyan has been recently dismissed from the post of Chairman of the State Urban Development Committee and appointed advisor to deputy PM Tigran Avinyan. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Kazakh police have detained protesters who were demonstrating outside a government headquarters in Astana against the renaming of the capital city to Nursultan, eyewitnesses told Interfax. The protest was very small in numbers, reaching around 20 people, according to the report. Approximately 30 minutes into the demonstration, police officers and masked agents arrested the protesters and took them away in a bus. Nearly all demonstrators were arrested. Earlier locals were petitioning online against the change of the capitals name. Kazakhstans lawmakers have adopted Constitutional amendments whereby the capital city of Astana will be renamed to Nursultan, in honor of First President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who resigned earlier after 30 years in office. A historic decision has been adopted, Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament Nurlan Nigmatulin said, according to RIA Novosti. Speaker of the Upper House, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, was sworn in as the new president after Nazarbayevs resignation. He was the one who proposed renaming the capital city. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian government approved the bill on making amendment in the law on holidays and commemoration days aimed at creating a new holiday the Day of the Citizen of the Republic of Armenia, reports Armenpress. The Day of the Citizen of Armenia will be celebrated on the last Saturday of April. In case when May 1 coincides with Saturday, the Citizens Day will be celebrated on the last Sunday of April, justice minister Artak Zeynalyan said during todays Cabinet meeting. The adoption of the bill is conditioned with the recent unprecedented political situation in Armenia in April 2018. With the necessity to quickly solve numerous socio-economic, legal and political issues, thousands of citizens were presenting their demands to the authorities through protests and rallies. These protests and rallies, accompanied with peaceful actions, covered the capital city Yerevan, the towns and villages of provinces, the inter-state and inter-community roads and were the evidence of the citizens public demand for systematic changes and deep reforms. The PMs resignation and the victory of this pan-national movement were one of the outcomes of this movement, the minister said. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Deputy prime minister of Armenia Mher Grigoryan received the delegation of Sweden led by Minister for International Development Cooperation Peter Eriksson, the deputy PMs Office told Armenpress. Welcoming the guests, the deputy PM said Sweden is a friendly country for Armenia, and its achievements in democracy, human rights and social protection are specifically exemplary. Mher Grigoryan introduced the main four fields the government plans to make reforms, such as economy, infrastructures, development of human capital, human rights protection and justice. According to him, there are challenges on the path to reforms, but they can be overcome through the institutionalization of main values proposed by the government. In his turn the Swedish minister thanked for the reception and stated that Sweden is ready to open a bilateral cooperation window for Armenia. The meeting participants agreed that there is a great potential for the development of the bilateral partnership, and this potential should be utilized. A number of issues relating to the agenda of economic reforms in Armenia, the logic of tax reforms and anti-corruption policy, as well as womens engagement in economy were discussed. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Armenias Ethics Committee for High-Ranking Officials has concluded that Director of the State Oversight Service Davit Sanasaryan has breached ethics rules of public service. The published conclusion of the committee notes that it began a probe based on the request of Yerevan State University Rector Aram Simonyan earlier in January. Simonyan argued that Sanasaryan made statements that are severe violation of the rules of ethics as envisaged under Article 28 on the Law on Public Service. The State Oversight Service was carrying out inspections at the university at the time of the allegations. The conclusion of the committee noted that Sanasaryans public statements and [Facebook] post regarding the inspections at the Yerevan State University can reasonably be perceived and interpreted as a manifestation of biased attitude and show of force. The committee ruled that Sanasaryan, with his actions, did not contribute to the development of trust and respect for the position that he occupies and the body he represents. Sanasaryan is entitled to file objections over the ruling in court within a month, the committee said. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. While on an official visit in Germany, Speaker of Parliament of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan and his delegation on March 20 had meetings at the Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), after which they met with Minister of State for Europe at the Federal Foreign Office Michael Roth, the Armenian Parliament told Armenpress. During the meeting issues relating to human rights, the implementation of the Armenia-EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA), as well as regional security were discussed. The sides highlighted the role of the Eastern Partnership for the EU and discussed the importance to launching visa liberalization talks. The Armenian delegation members also attended the plenary session of the German Bundestag. The Speaker of the Armenian Parliament continues meetings in Germany. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Armenian President Armen Sarkissian had a telephone conversation today with First President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, who stepped down from office on March 19. According to the Armenian presidents office, Sarkissian and Nazarbayev have warm personal relationship for many years. During the conversation Sarkissian emphasized Nazarbayevs big contribution in the development of the collegial relations between Armenia and Kazakhstan and deepening of political, economic and humanitarian cooperation between the two countries, according to the official readout. President Sarkissian also attached importance to Nazarbayevs significant role in various integration processes. Sarkissian wished Nazarbayev good health and good luck for the strengthening of friendship and cooperation between the two countries, and further progress of Kazakhstan. Sarkissian also sent a cable to Nazarbayev. Nursultan Nazarbayev continues serving as Chairman of the Security Council of Kazakhstan. Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Healthcare minister Arsen Torosyan met with Ambassador of Cuba to Armenia Emilio Pevida Pupo (residence in Astana), the ministry told Armenpress. The Ambassador invited the minister to Cuba to get acquainted with the healthcare field, the achievements recorded, as well as to share experience. Arsen Torosyan accepted the invitation with pleasure, stating that he is familiar with Cubas healthcare system to some extent, but during the visit it will be possible to observe the sectoral issues. The sides discussed the possible cooperation frameworks during the meeting. Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan YEREVAN, 21 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 21 March, USD exchange rate up by 0.19 drams to 486.10 drams. EUR exchange rate up by 2.99 drams to 554.45 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.09 drams to 7.64 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 2.18 drams to 640.24 drams. The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals. Gold price down by 54.53 drams to 20374.84 drams. Silver price down by 1.31 drams to 239.43 drams. Platinum price up by 145.85 drams to 13424.86 drams. YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Works are underway for abolishing roaming in Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), ARMENPRESS reports Board Chairman of the Eurasian Economic Commission Tigran Sargsyan told Komsomolskaya Pravda. Thank to our active efforts roaming tariffs have significantly dropped in EAEU area. I want to note that the scale of the territory also has a role. We should not forget that it was only last year that Russia abolished inter-state roaming. We work with concrete companies represented in EAEU area so that this approach can be applied to the entire area of the Union, Sargsyan said. The EEC Board Chairman noted that its still early to talk about the terms of abolishing roaming, since a number of meetings are scheduled with business representatives and mobile phone operator. Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan received the delegation led by Minister for International Development Cooperation of Sweden Peter Eriksson on March 21. As ARMENPRESS was informed from the Office of the Prime Minister of Armenia, the PM welcomed the visit of the Swedish Minister to Armenia, noting that its a good opportunity to discuss the prospects of Armenian-Swedish partnership. Nikol Pashinyan noted that the democratic processes in Armenia are irreversible and create new opportunities for deepening relations with the EU member states, including Sweden. According to the PM, Armenia has a great agenda for reforms and is ready to expand partnership with the EU in the sidelines of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement. Thanking for the reception, Peter Eriksson noted that its his 1st visit to Armenia and is happy for the opportunity to discuss the issues referring to the development of bilateral relations. The Swedish Minister for International Development Cooperation saluted the changes taking place in Armenia. He noted that Sweden is ready to deepen relations with Armenia on both bilateral and multilateral formats, including in the sidelines of the Eastern Partnership as one of the countries to initiates the Eastern Partnership 10 years ago. Nikol Pashinyan and Peter Eriksson discussed a range of issues of bilateral interest, including partnership prospects in protection of environment, renewable energy and other spheres. The sides agreed to work jointly for developing a memorandum of understanding, which will indicate the concrete directions and projects for cooperation. The sides also exchanged views on issues of regional stability, particularly referred to Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement issue. At the end of the meeting Nikol Pashinyan conveyed his warm greetings to Prime Minister of Sweden Stefan Lofven. Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. The European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy (EAFJD) has issued a statement on the death of Armenian Patriarch of Turkey Mesrob Mutafian and the elections of the new Patriarch. ARMENPRESS reports the statement runs as follows, Following the funeral service and the last consecration of the 84th Armenian Patriarch of Turkey Mesrob Mutafian, the European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy expresses its deep condolences to the patriarchs relatives and the Armenian community in Turkey as whole. The EAFJD will carefully follow the election process of the new Armenian Patriarch. Throughout the period of Patriarch Mutafians illness, the Turkish authorities used every opportunity to create obstacles for the election process, split the Armenian community and prevent them from exercising their right to elect a new patriarch. After the death of Patriarch Mesrob Mutafian the Erdogan regime, which has been using his illness as a pretext, can no longer delay new elections. Furthermore, any interference of the Turkish authorities in the election process is unacceptable. The Armenians of Turkey are free to elect their religious leader. The EAFJD also calls on the Armenian community in Turkey to remain determined in exercising their fundamental rights in this crucial period. Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan YEREVAN, MARCH 21, ARMENPRESS. Foreign Minister of Armenia Zohrab Mnatsakanyan received Minister for International Development Cooperation of Sweden Peter Eriksson on March 21. As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of MFA Armenia, greeting the guest, FM Mnatsakanyan congratulated him on being appointed to this responsible position and wished him success in his mission. The sides highlighted the dynamics of the existing political dialogue between the two countries and reaffirmed their mutual commitment to deepen the mutually beneficial cooperation on both bilateral and multilateral formats. The ministers particularly highlighted high-level contacts and mutual visits. Minister Mnatsakanyan emphasized also the role of parliamentary diplomacy in progressing the bilateral relations. The Armenian FM also referred to the recent domestic political changes in Armenia and the reform process of the Government based on the broad mandate of the people aimed at further enhancing democracy, rule of law and human rights. Minister Mnatsakanyan pointed out creation of conductive atmosphere for carrying out economic revolution based on high technologies and innovations as a priority for the government, The side also referred to cooperation prospects in the sphere of environment protection and renewable energy. Minister Mnatsakanyan and Peter Eriksson also exchanged views on Armenia-EU cooperation. In this context Zohrab Mnatsakanyan emphasized that the 10th anniversary of the Eastern Partnership will be a good opportunity to sum up the achievements and outline the directions of the future works. At the request of Peter Eriksson, Zohrab Mnatsakanyan presented the approaches and position of Armenia on the peaceful settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan Many people felt the project would fail because the local Makol tribe was involved in tribal fighting. But now strawberries are produced there for export as well as potatoes for Port Moresby. This is the result of hard work put in by Governor Sir Peter Ipatas who encouraged Israeli company Innovative Agro Industries to partner with the Enga Provincial Government to establish a K23 million vegetable project at Taluma in the Sirunki area of Laiagam. That perception will hopefully be erased now that a market has been established in Singapore for Enga strawberries and possibly other agricultural products. WABAG - Nobody believed the people of Enga Province would one day export premium strawberries. To outsiders, it seemed their main achievement was to involve themselves in tribal warfare. To increase production, a second vegetable project has been established at Yogos in the Tsak Valley of Wapenamanda, an area also the scene of intense tribal warfare where hundreds of men died and millions of kina in property were lost including everything the Catholic Church owned at Tsak Pumakos. The Enga provincial hospital project It was risky to take multimillion kina projects to fighting zones but this direct challenge to the people has been a trademark of Sir Peter. Enga School of Nursing, Mulitaka Secondary School, Tsak Secondary School and the multimillion kina provincial hospital under construction at Aipus are other major projects. Where did Sir Peter draw the strength to provide visionary leadership, maintain political stability and establish projects that directly impacted on the lives of ordinary people? Ill go back to the time when Cr Peter Ipatas was president of Wabag local level government in the 1980s, when Enga experienced a dark period of political instability and social tension that nearly tore the province apart. On 9 February 1984 the provincial government was suspended and premier Danely Tindiwi gaoled for seven years for misappropriation. Tindiwi was re-elected in 1992 but, after being in office for only a year, was suspended a second time on the same charges. An old kiap, Bill Bates, was appointed administrator to run the affairs of the province, which did not please a lot of people. On 26 March 1993, the provincial headquarters complex was burnt to ashes in broad daylight. Then people from Laiagam, Kandep, Porgera, Paiela and Maramuni threatened to break away to form their own province. Other people pushed to re-establish the provincial headquarters in a new location at Wapenamanda or Laiagam. In August 1995 provincial government reforms were introduced and Enga regional MP Jeffery Balakau was sworn in as governor. Tindiwi became his deputy. On that historic day, all five open members and council presidents were also sworn in as provincial assembly members. Cr Peter Ipatas was one of them. Then PNG prime minister Julius Chan meets the new, dynamic Enga governor Peter Ipatas in 1996 to celebrate the rebirth of the provincial headquarters Jeffery Balakau and Danely Tindiwi, who had been elected in 1992, were not to complete their full terms: Jeffery Balakau was suspended, and later dismissed, by a leadership tribunal and Tindiwi was replaced by Peter Ipatas as acting governor. In that capacity, Sir Peter moved quickly. He rebuilt the provincial headquarters and invited then prime minister Sir Julius Chan to a ground-breaking ceremony in late 1996. The following year he was elected by an absolute majority to serve a full term as governor and in the national parliament. I wrote an account of this turbulent period for Enga Nius in 1993 and here are some extracts that shed light on how the people felt. __________ The very foundations of Enga Province shook when the main provincial headquarters office complex was burnt down by arsonists in broad daylight on Friday 26 March, 1993. At exactly seven minutes past four, I locked our office and went for a drive in my bus intending to return to complete some typing. As I drove back after half an hour, somebody at the main market waved me down and said the Bromley and Manton supermarket was on fire. He warned me not to go in case I might receive injuries in a riot that had started. But I drove on, hoping that the Bromley and Manton shop in town did not burn down a second time. The company had lost thousands of kina worth of goods when arsonists torched the wholesale building they were renting from the Wabag Local Level Government when late Malipu was shot in Mt Hagen in 1989. But soon I discovered to my horror that the finance and management services as well as the upstairs commerce office were engulfed in flames. The fire was spreading fast to all parts of the complex which housed almost all government divisions including the provincial government offices, Air Niugini office, two court rooms and two conference facilities. The only divisions saved were social services, the secretarys office and my own media unit which were housed in separate buildings. I stood and watched hopelessly for four long hours as the complex burnt to a shouldering ruin. No sane person dared to venture close to the hot flames while the dark smoke never ceased to billow skywards to merge with dark shadows as night emerged to cover the small township as if to conceal the wanton destruction. It was sort of strange but for a moment I laughed to myself - not the kind which expresses joy and enlightenment but the type that comes with hate and total despair as tears begin to well up in your eyes. I heard a lone local leader from the Lanekep tribe, one of the original tribes that owned the Wabag town land shout repeatedly: Why are you burning this office which belongs to everybody in Enga? There was no response from anybody only the flames roared on. I came to my senses when I saw a brave men climb to the roof of my office to prevent it from catching fire. It used to be the main colonial administration office building during the colonial administration period located near the Air Niugini office on the eastern end of the PHQ complex now in the grips of a consuming inferno. I hastily opened the main door of my office and grabbed whatever I could my word processor, the office type writer and a few files and rushed out. Outside, I saw police beat up two looters who attempted to carry away office equipment from the Secretarys office which was still safe. One policeman from the Eastern Highlands explained to me why they were beating up the looters. I dont see any reason that prompts these people to loot state property. I dont know if they realise that with those flames goes Enga Province, he said. People dont seem to see the long term implications for Enga. I think what normal people should do is rub mud on their bodies and mourn like they do when somebody is killed in a tribal fight. This province is burning in that fire. In Enga society one cannot burn or destroy public property like a hausman (mens house) or excrete near water springs that belonged to everybody. The crowd kept growing but nobody spoke except some brave men who stood on the roofs to prevent the fire from spreading to the social services building, the secretarys office and my own office. Most people just stood with their mouths agape staring at the flames doing its destructive work. The silence was broken from time to time as police fired teargas to discourage looters. I came across one public servant who dared say something and his message was clear: I hate to be an Engan. Everything about this place is always negative...negative. I hate to have been born here. With those words lingering in my mind, I left the smoldering ruins, never once looking back. __________ Now, over 26 years later a more modern office complex stands on the old ruins with the national court house beside it. An overseas market has been established which will encourage people to produce more strawberries, onions, potatoes and other cash crops which thrive so well in Enga. And Governor Ipatas has recently announced the provincial government will promote tourism as the next major step to boost economic activity. He continues to challenge the people, seeming to say: Either you keep the projects, look after them, benefit from them or destroy them again. Its all yours to keep or lose. Im just doing my duty. At the close of 2018, social mapping and landowner identification studies carried out by consultants to petroleum companies, clan-vetting exercises carried out by officers of the Department of Petroleum and Energy, and alternative dispute resolution processes implemented by the judiciary had failed to solve the problem. The identification of landowners has been a major difficulty, and assigning responsibility for completing the task has been a matter of debate. Under agreements reached in 2009, landowners of eight petroleum licence areas, eight pipeline licence areas and a liquefaction plant site near Port Moresby were to receive royalties. By February 2019, payments had been made to people in only the last of these areas. CANBERRA - The Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas (PNG LNG) project commenced exporting gas to China, Korea and Japan in May 2014. By this time too, agreements for two other LNG projects (in Western Province and Gulf Province) were under discussion. In January 2019, Petroleum Minister Fabian Pok told parliament that the government would not repeat the mistakes of the first LNG project. He wanted the companies to be responsible for identifying landowners in the new LNG project areas and he wanted this done before those projects moved to production. On 23 January, referring to the Gulf Province LNG project, prime minister Peter ONeill said that the government had tasked the developer to do the landowner identification process and Minister Pok reported that Total the developer had agreed to do this. The small print is not yet to hand so we cannot be sure just what the government has requested or what Total has agreed to do. Here, however, we argue that ceding responsibility for landowner identification to the petroleum companies is a seriously bad idea bad for the companies, the government and for the people of Papua New Guinea. Under the Oil & Gas Act 1998, final determination of landowner beneficiaries for a petroleum licence area is to be made by the responsible minister and gazetted as a Ministerial Determination. Recent determinations provide a record of landowner beneficiary identification for specified licence areas or pipeline segments. Those determinations name clans (variously major clans, stock clans, beneficiary clans) but do not name individuals within those clans. With reference to differential benefit-sharing arrangements they may subdivide clans as highly impacted, least impacted and invited. The concept of landowner is used here in a broad and fluid sense. It is not used in agreement with any likely academic definition, with any detectable legal rigour or in conformity with a pan-PNG ideology of tenure because, of course, there is no pan-PNG ideology of tenure. The Oil & Gas Act requires that a company applying for a petroleum development licence must submit a full-scale social mapping study and landowner identification study of customary land owners of that licence area. Under the Act, customary landowners are persons whose relationship with the land has to do with rights of proprietary or possessory kind. Not all clans identified as landowner beneficiaries in ministerial determinations satisfy this definition. And the status of others, both the included and the excluded, as members of this category will be always amenable to contention. No petroleum company can produce a list of clans that will conform to, or satisfy, the sorts of decisions that currently inform ministerial determinations. They did not do so in the past and they cannot do so in the future. If companies now assume responsibility for producing a definitive list of landowner beneficiaries, there will no longer be any ambiguity about who to blame or who to take to court when the list is considered defective. The fault will be theirs. On these counts, the desire to shift responsibility or at least the perception of responsibility to the petroleum companies might, in the short term, prove beneficial to the government in domains of financial management and public relations. There is, however, another reason why responsibility for identifying landowners should remain with the government. Only Papua New Guineans the PNG government, courts, and the landowners themselves can determine who owns the land in Papua New Guinea. This responsibility should not be ceded to outsiders. It should not be ceded to American, Australian, Chinese or French companies. Papua New Guinea is not their country. They are guests. Only Papua New Guineans can determine what is right for Papua New Guinea. The petroleum companies should recognise and acknowledge this and step back from this area of decision-making. The government should also recognise and acknowledge this and step forward to ensure that the rights of all Papua New Guinean woman and men are guaranteed by Papua New Guineans. Elsa the Snow Queen and Princess Anna arrive at the premiere of Disney On Ices Frozen. Image: Getty Its a particular set of skills: singing, dancing, wearing floaty dresses and falling in love in 24 hours or preferably less. And while Cinderella, Belle and Ariel definitely didnt receive salaries, a new job opportunity in England is offering a substantial sum to whoever will be their personal Disney princess. A family in the UK is on the hunt for a nanny willing to dress like a Disney princess five days a week, and theyll pay a 40,000 (AU$74,000) salary to the person who will do it. According to the job ad posted on Childcare.co.uk, a couple in Brookmans Park, a suburb in southeast England, is looking for a nanny who will look after their 5-year-old twin girls while dressed as a different Disney princess each month, including Princess Anna, Moana, Rapunzel, Tiana, Cinderella, Belle and Merida. The princess outfits will be covered by the family. Like most 5-year-olds, our girls are obsessed with Disney and we feel this would be the best way to communicate some important values, the mother explained. We know this isnt a normal request for nannies, however we think it would be a great way to teach our girls about things like determination, compassion, fearlessness and ambition from strong yet relatable female role models. Dream job alert. Image: Childcare.co.uk She said theyre looking for someone who can commit to the character, be fun but also be unafraid of disciplining the children who can be little terrors at times. Understandably, candidates will need to have a creative flare and passion for Disney. The nanny will be required to pick up the children after school four days a week, before engaging in different Disney-related activities like singing, baking and making art. The nanny will also need to cook dinner and put them to bed when the parents are home late. We know this isnt exactly a normal job offer, but we think its a great opportunity for someone to get really creative and add a little magic to our girls lives! the mother said. So, if there are any Disney-mad nannies out there whod be able to help us out, please get in touch. Bikers have vowed to stand guard outside New Zealand mosques as Muslims take part in their first Friday prayer following the Christchurch shootings.Biker gangs like the Mongrel Mob, King Cobra, and the Black Power have promised to protect their local Muslim communities across the country.Even one of the gang's Australian chapters has reportedly been patrolling a mosque in Sydney.Bikers have vowed to stand guard outside New Zealand mosques as Muslims take part in their first Friday prayer following the Christchurch shootings.Gangs like the Mongrel Mob, King Cobra, and the Black Power have promised to protect their local Muslim communities across the country after 50 people were killed and 50 were injured in the terror attacks on March 15.Waikato Mongrel Mob president Sonny Fatu offered to shield the Jamia Masjid Mosque in Hamilton."We will support and assist our Muslim brothers and sisters for however long they need us," Fatu told New Zealand news outlet, Stuff."We will support and assist our Muslim brothers and sisters for however long they need us," Fatu told New Zealand news outlet, Stuff.co.nz.He explained how the Mongrel Mob were contacted by representatives saying members of the Muslim community were fearful about Friday prayers. Fatu said, "The question was posed whether we could be a part of the safety net for them to allow them to pray in peace without fear.""Of course we would do that there was no question about that and we will be dressed appropriately.""We will not be armed. We are peacefully securing the inner gated perimeter, with other community members, to allow them to feel at ease."Asad Mohsin, head of the Waikato Muslim Association said he appreciated the support received from "different sections of society, different interests, and dispositions."He added: "It all gives us strength to overcome the grief we are undergoing.""We would welcome them to come into the mosque and pray with us. They are part of us as we are part of them. Islam is inclusive, free of judgement we don't see gang members, as we see them."We value them as humans and we appreciate that they value us too."Mohsin also told the New Zealand Herald: "There are no fears, and we are not scared. They don't have to stand outside the mosque, they can come inside, right behind where the sermon is given."Members of the King Cobra gang also paid their respects to senior members of the Al-Masjid Al-Jamie mosque in Ponsonby on Saturday.Other Mongrel Mob chapters have also shown their support throughout the country, including the Aotearoa branch who paid their respects at Hagley College school in Christchurch.Even one of the gang's Australian chapters has reportedly been patrolling a mosque in Sydney.Read the original article on Evening Standard. Copyright 2019. Follow Evening Standard on Twitter. Gangs like the Mongrel Mob, King Cobra, and the Black Power have promised to protect their local Muslim communities across the country after 50 people were killed and 50 were injured in the terror attacks on March 15. Waikato Mongrel Mob president Sonny Fatu offered to shield the Jamia Masjid Mosque in Hamilton. "We will support and assist our Muslim brothers and sisters for however long they need us," Fatu told New Zealand news outlet, Stuff. "We will support and assist our Muslim brothers and sisters for however long they need us," Fatu told New Zealand news outlet, Stuff.co.nz. He explained how the Mongrel Mob were contacted by representatives saying members of the Muslim community were fearful about Friday prayers. Fatu said, "The question was posed whether we could be a part of the safety net for them to allow them to pray in peace without fear." "Of course we would do that there was no question about that and we will be dressed appropriately." "We will not be armed. We are peacefully securing the inner gated perimeter, with other community members, to allow them to feel at ease." Asad Mohsin, head of the Waikato Muslim Association said he appreciated the support received from "different sections of society, different interests, and dispositions." He added: "It all gives us strength to overcome the grief we are undergoing." "We would welcome them to come into the mosque and pray with us. They are part of us as we are part of them. Islam is inclusive, free of judgement we don't see gang members, as we see them. "We value them as humans and we appreciate that they value us too." Mohsin also told the New Zealand Herald: "There are no fears, and we are not scared. They don't have to stand outside the mosque, they can come inside, right behind where the sermon is given." Members of the King Cobra gang also paid their respects to senior members of the Al-Masjid Al-Jamie mosque in Ponsonby on Saturday. Story continues Other Mongrel Mob chapters have also shown their support throughout the country, including the Aotearoa branch who paid their respects at Hagley College school in Christchurch. Even one of the gang's Australian chapters has reportedly been patrolling a mosque in Sydney. Read the original article on Evening Standard. Copyright 2019. Follow Evening Standard on Twitter. * Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson have begun posting on social media platform Gab after being banned by Twitter and Facebook. * Gab, which is heavily populated with right-wing extremists, markets itself as 'The Free Speech Social Network'. * New Zealand and Australian Prime Ministers have called for greater regulation of major social media platforms, but questions remain about the darker corners of the internet. * Gab co-founder Andrew Torba has previously spoken to right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has also been de-platformed.Two of Australia's leading hard-right activists have begun using a messaging service heavily populated with right-wing extremists after being banned by Twitter.Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson, who've both been booted from Twitter and Facebook in the last month, started publishing material this week on Gab, an alternative that markets itself as 'The Free Speech Social Network'.Both men have criminal convictions and have previously promoted neo-Nazi material through their social media accounts. The pair have encouraged their followers to shift over from Facebook and Twitter over to Gab.The news raises further questions for policymakers and technology executives about how to manage the rise of extremism in the wake of the Christchurch mosque massacre.Twenty-eight year old Brenton Tarrant has been charged with murder after 50 muslims were gunned down at two mosques in the southern New Zealand city. A manifesto thought to have been penned by Tarrant was distributed on social media shortly before the killings, while the massacre itself was seen live on Facebook.New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison are calling for greater regulation of social media platforms. Facebook deleted 1.5 million videos of the massacre in 24 hours.But questions remain about whether the social media platforms are capable of limiting violent material from being distributed online and to what extent they can stamp out non-violent extremist behaviour on their platforms.Cottrell and Erikson's appearance on Gab is a reminder that extremists have other options available.Gab is heavily populated with hard-right fanatics. Co-founder Andrew Torba has spoken to right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has himself been banned from social media, last year where he spoke about the need for the hard-right to build their own platforms. Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson have begun posting on social media platform Gab after being banned by Twitter and Facebook. Gab, which is heavily populated with right-wing extremists, markets itself as 'The Free Speech Social Network'. New Zealand and Australian Prime Ministers have called for greater regulation of major social media platforms, but questions remain about the darker corners of the internet. Gab co-founder Andrew Torba has previously spoken to right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has also been de-platformed. Two of Australia's leading hard-right activists have begun using a messaging service heavily populated with right-wing extremists after being banned by Twitter. Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson, who've both been booted from Twitter and Facebook in the last month, started publishing material this week on Gab, an alternative that markets itself as 'The Free Speech Social Network'. Both men have criminal convictions and have previously promoted neo-Nazi material through their social media accounts. The pair have encouraged their followers to shift over from Facebook and Twitter over to Gab. The news raises further questions for policymakers and technology executives about how to manage the rise of extremism in the wake of the Christchurch mosque massacre. Twenty-eight year old Brenton Tarrant has been charged with murder after 50 muslims were gunned down at two mosques in the southern New Zealand city. A manifesto thought to have been penned by Tarrant was distributed on social media shortly before the killings, while the massacre itself was seen live on Facebook. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison are calling for greater regulation of social media platforms. Facebook deleted 1.5 million videos of the massacre in 24 hours. But questions remain about whether the social media platforms are capable of limiting violent material from being distributed online and to what extent they can stamp out non-violent extremist behaviour on their platforms. Cottrell and Erikson's appearance on Gab is a reminder that extremists have other options available. Gab is heavily populated with hard-right fanatics. Co-founder Andrew Torba has spoken to right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has himself been banned from social media, last year where he spoke about the need for the hard-right to build their own platforms. An Australian man was sentenced to two years in prison in Washington Thursday for exporting restricted aviation equipment to Iranian buyers in violation of US restrictions. Seven years after he was charged, David Levick, 57, from Cherrybrook, Australia, was ordered to prison after pleading guilty to four counts of violating the US International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which places tight restrictions on sales of sensitive equipment to Iran. The exports took place in 2007-2008. At the time Levick was general manager of ICM Components, Inc., located in Thornleigh, Australia. US authorities say he ordered the restricted materials on behalf of an Iranian company for transshipment to Iran. When he was first charged, US authorities accused Levick of selling Iran US components of missiles, drones and torpedoes. But the Justice Department statement Thursday made no mention of those. Instead, he admitted to selling "precision pressure transducers," sensor devices with many applications, including in the avionics industry. He also sold the Iranians emergency flotation system kits and assemblies for mounting lights on aircraft. Levick was extradited from Australia in December 2018. Levick was also ordered to forfeit nearly $200,000, the value of the goods involved in the Iran deals. An Australian man was convicted of selling sensor devices, emergency flotation system kits and assemblies for mounting lights on aircraft to Iranian buyers Boeing's ill-fated 737 MAX and federal regulators next week will face the first public grilling by Congress over the two fatal plane crashes in recent months. Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, called for a hearing of the Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation and Space, for March 27, with three transportation officials, notably the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration. Cruz intends to hold a second hearing to question Boeing officials as well as pilots and others in the industry, according to the statement. More than 300 people perished in the two crashes of 737 MAX 8s that occurred shortly after takeoff in Indonesia in October and in Ethiopia earlier this month. Boeing and the FAA are under investigation by the Transportation Department for how the rollout of the jet was handled, especially the a new flight system, the MCAS stall-prevention system, which was implicated in the Lion Air crash in October. Pilots have complained they were not informed about the new system, which can force the nose of the plane down if it gets an erroneous reading from a sensor making it appear the plane is at risk of stalling. The committee will hear next week from FAA acting chief Daniel Elwell, as well as the Transportation Department's chief investigator, Calvin Scovel, and National Transportation Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt. The FAA said Wednesday it will review the information from the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder from the Ethiopian Airlines accident as it becomes available. "Understanding the circumstances that contributed to this accident is critical in developing further actions and returning aircraft to service," the FAA said. Investigators in Ethiopia comb the site of the Boeing 737 MAX crash on March 16, while flight data information will be scrutinized for clues on the cause of the second accident of the aircraft in five months Dutch anti-immigration populists shocked Prime Minister Mark Rutte to become the largest party in the senate Thursday following elections that took place just days after a suspected terror attack. Thierry Baudet's Forum for Democracy party, which also backs a "Nexit" from the EU, came from nowhere to win most votes in Wednesday's provincial elections, with more than 98 percent of ballots counted, the NOS broadcaster said. The result will ring alarm bells across Europe where populists are expected to make big gains in European Parliament elections in May. Baudet, 36, a former academic with a history of controversial comments about women and immigration who backs closer relations with Russia, accused Rutte of "arrogance and stupidity". "We stand here in the rubble of what was once the most beautiful civilisation," he told a cheering crowd late Wednesday in a speech laced with classical references. - 'Mega-win' - The party, which only launched two years ago, will now be the largest in the upper house of parliament with 13 seats, followed by Rutte's party with 12 seats, the Dutch news agency ANP said. The final shape of the 75-seat senate will be determined in May by the 570 representatives elected to the country's 12 provinces in Wednesday's election. Turnout was 56 percent, up from 48 percent in 2015. Dutch newspapers reacted with astonishment to the results. Algemeen Dagblad said "Baudet grabs mega-win" while De Telegraaf said simply: "Landslide". Rutte, an influential figure in Europe's negotiations with London over Britain's departure from the EU, will now have to rely on other parties to get laws through the senate. The coalition led by Rutte's centre-right VVD party -- set up after a 2017 general election to keep far-right leader Geert Wilders out of power after he too won a surge in votes -- is set to collapse from 38 to 31 seats. "We are going to have to get to work," Rutte told supporters. "We have to talk with other parties so we can continue to lead this country well." - 'Borders wide open' - Rutte said he may have to work with leftist parties including the ecological party GroenLinks (Green Left) party led by Jesse Klaver, which had a good night and is set to double its seats from four to eight. But Rutte said he was not discarding the possibility of working with Baudet, saying he was looking forward to contacting him "to see how we can get to sensible majorities." "What I hope is that the Forum for Democracy, now that it has become so large, is ready to consolidate the basis of political management in the Netherlands," he told reporters on Thursday before heading to Brussels for an EU summit. Baudet has previously called for the Netherlands to immediately leave the EU but has recently softened his rhetoric due to the chaos over Brexit. However he kept up his fiery tone on multiculturalism and immigration, and made references in his speech to the shooting on a tram in the city of Utrecht on Monday in which three people died. A Turkish-born man is to be charged with "terrorist" murder or manslaughter over the attack. The populist faced criticism after failing to stop campaigning on the day of the shooting. "We are being destroyed by the people who are supposed to be protecting us," he said Wednesday night. "Successive Rutte governments have left our borders wide open, letting in hundreds of thousands of people with cultures completely different to ours." Baudet is also known for controversial statements such as "women in general excel less in jobs and have less ambition". Baudet seemed to have taken votes from Wilders, whose anti-Islam Freedom Party is set to win five seats, down from nine, amid signs that his fierce rhetoric is alienating voters. The Netherlands has had a long line of flamboyant populist leaders dating back to Pim Fortuyn, the gay anti-immigration politician who was assassinated in 2002 by an animal activist. But populists have also made ground across Europe in recent years, from Italy to France and Britain, analysts said. "The terrorist attack in Utrecht could have been a factor boosting the votes of this party," Anais Voy Gillis, a specialist on the far-right from France's Institute for Geopolitics, told AFP. "But in the European context it's a logical follow-on from what we've seen before," said Gillis, adding that Baudet was "very reminiscent" of Austria's right-wing chancellor Sebastian Kurz. The Eurosceptic Forum for Democracy (FvD) led by Thierry Baudet came from nowhere to win most voters in the Dutch provincial elections Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is an influential figure in Europe's negotiations with London over Brexit A security firm with former US military contractor Erik Prince on its board has moved into Myanmar to provide protection services for international investors, the company told AFP, as it weathers backlash to revelations over planned work in China's restive Xinjiang region. Hong Kong-headquartered Frontier Services Group specialises in providing security and logistics for firms working in risky and conflict-hit regions. One of the company's board members and its deputy chairman is former Navy SEAL Prince, co-founder of notorious private security firm Blackwater and the brother of US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Employees of Blackwater -- which was later renamed -- played a controversial role during Washington's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the 2007 killing of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians. AFP reported in February that FSG signed a preliminary deal with China to build a training centre in Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims have been targeted in an unprecedented security crackdown, including mass incarcerations. A company spokesman confirmed it was now also operating in Myanmar. "(FSG) has established a joint-venture security company in Myanmar and obtained a security licence to provide international-standard security services to international investors in Myanmar, including those from China, Japan and Thailand," he said Wednesday. He declined to give additional details and it remains unclear which companies FSG would work with and where. The firm has been active in Myanmar since at least mid-June last year. Photos of an FSG-run "Personal Protection Specialist Training Graduation Ceremony" were posted then on the Facebook page of a former senior military official. Many large investment projects in Myanmar are in the restive borderlands where the military is waging war against various ethnic rebel armies. This includes Rakhine state where the military conducted a bloody crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim community in 2017, forcing some 740,000 over the border into Bangladesh. All three countries mentioned by FSG are ploughing money into the frontier market, with China by far the largest investor. Beijing is financing ports, dams, pipelines and mines across the country and yet more cash is expected to pour in under Beijing's massive "Belt and Road" global infrastructure project. A subsidiary of Chinese state-owned CITIC Group, CITIC Group (Myanmar), is the main investor in Kyaukphyu deep port in Rakhine, a project signed off in November at a cost of $1.3 billion. CITIC Group chairman Chang Zhenming is also board chairman for FSG. But CITIC (Myanmar) could not immediately be reached for comment on whether FSG is already -- or will be -- providing services for the company. Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi wants to attract investment to Rakhine, one of the poorest states in the country. But uncertainty over the future of Rohingya repatriation and fresh conflict with ethnic Rakhine rebels is standing in the way of any major transformation. The instability provides a landscape ripe for security companies, and rights groups are concerned what FSG's entry into the market will mean. "In a country like Myanmar where rights abuses by security forces are all too common, Erik Prince and FSG will sadly fit right in," Phil Robertson from Human Rights Watch said, calling on the media and civil society to scrutinise the firm's activities. Erik Prince was the co-founder of private security firm Blackwater which played a controversial role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan The bravery displayed by the police officers who captured the Christchurch gunman has been heralded by the New Zealand police minister who revealed the distressing words the suspect shouted as he was taken to the ground. Police Minister Stuart Nash said the courage and response time from the officers involved almost certainly prevented the gunman from launching another attack, after he shot up two mosques during Friday morning prayer last week. Shortly after the gunman returned to his car following an attack on the second mosque, two police officers rammed the suspects car, forcing him off the road before dragging him from the drivers seat. It was there he yelled Ive got a bomb, Minister Nash explained. The gunman screamed Ive got a bomb as police captured him. Source: 7 News These two guys pull this guy out but at the same time he was yelling, Ive got a bomb and shooting at the same time, so we overuse the word hero, but not in this case, he said. When quizzed if the officers heroism would be officially recognised, Minister Nash said there arent too many more acts of bravery higher than that. Fifty people were killed and dozens more injured during the 36-minute reign of terror. Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, 28, was charged with murder one day after the attack. $10m raised for Christchurch families The outpouring of support continues with nearly $9.7 million (AUD) raised for the families of victims. The largest of a series of crowdfunding pages quickly set up following Fridays terror attack in Christchurch, run by the New Zealand Council of Victim Support Groups, had collected more than $7.1 million by Thursday. Weve been overwhelmed with donations, more than we thought possible, organisers said of the 86,000 donations to the Givealittle page. Relatives and other people arrive to attend the burial ceremony of the victims of the mosque attacks, at the Memorial Park Cemetery. Source: Reuters Mourners break down at a memorial for the victims. Source: AP A second campaign, by the New Zealand Islamic Info Centre, had separately received about $2.3 million for grieving families. No amount of money will bring back their loved ones, but we do hope to lessen their burden in some way, orgaisers on the LaunchGood page said. Story continues Victims also have access to New Zealands public insurance scheme, the Accident Compensation Corporation, which has offered assistance with funeral costs, grants to families and covers medical costs for those hurt, including visitors to the country. It was earlier reported A-list celebrities such as Madonna, Ben Stiller and Chris Rock had been donating to various charities following the event. Zaed Mustafa, in wheelchair, arrives at Memorial Park to farwell his loved ones who were killed in the massacre. Source: AP The donations come after the Melbourne teen, dubbed egg boy announced he would donate the money raised for him in a crowdfunding page to the victims. The 17-year-old was whacked in the face by disgraced Senator Fraser Anning and taken to the ground by his supporters after he slapped an egg on the independents head on Saturday. Will Connollys action came after the ultra-conservative Queensland senator said Muslim immigration contributed to the 50 deaths in the Christchurch massacres. Do you have a story tip? Email: y7newsroom@yahoo7.com.au. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter and stay up to date with the latest news with Yahoo7s daily newsletter. Sign up here. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday dismissed a trade mechanism launched by European countries to bypass renewed US sanctions as a "bitter joke" and said Europe could not be trusted. "This financial channel they recently set up resembles a joke, a bitter joke," Khamenei told a thousands-strong congregation in a televised address at a shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad, where he speaks every year to mark the Iranian New Year. Britain, France and Germany launched the special payment system called INSTEX -- Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges -- in late January after President Donald Trump abruptly quit the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in May last year. The three countries were the European signatories to the deal, also signed by the US, Russia and China, that curbed Tehran's nuclear ambitions in return for sanctions relief. London, Paris and Berlin launched the device in the hope it will help save the deal by allowing Tehran to keep trading with European companies despite Washington reimposing sanctions. "The difference between what they are obligated to do and what they are proposing is as far as the earth is from the sky," Khamenei said. "We should completely forego (any hope) of help or cooperation from Westerners in strengthening our economy, we shouldn't wait for them," he said. "Once again the Europeans have stabbed us in the back, they have betrayed us," Khamenei said, cursing Western politicians as "savages". "They wear suits, they put on ties and eau de cologne and carry Samsonite briefcases but they are savages," Khamenei said. "What I am saying does not mean (Iran) should cut Western ties, not at all... there is no problem in having relations with them, but trusting them is a mistake, don't trust them," he said. Iran on Tuesday registered a parallel structure to INSTEX called the Special Trade and Finance Institute or STFI, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported. "With the registration of STFI, we expect that, in cooperation with INSTEX, it would facilitate trade between Iran and Europe and be influential in countering limitations caused by US sanctions," said Iran's central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati. Earlier on Thursday, Khamenei called the economic difficulties of Iranians the most urgent problem facing the country. "Specially in recent months the difficulties for people's livelihoods have increased," Khamenei said in a prerecorded message to mark the March 21 start of the New Year. "The economy is the country's urgent problem, it's the country's (most) serious and primary problem," he said, pointing to the rial's devaluation, decline in purchasing power and falling production. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei greets thousands of Iranians at Mashhad's Imam Reza shrine where he delivered a speech to mark Persian New Year Italy was in shock Thursday after the dramatic rescue of 51 children taken hostage by their school bus driver who torched the vehicle in protest at Mediterranean migrant deaths. The Italian driver of Senegalese origin on Wednesday hijacked the bus as it was taking the 12-13 year-olds from a gym to school in Crema, east of Milan. The incident prompted Italy's populist government to demand that the driver lose his Italian citizenship. Armed with two petrol canisters and a cigarette lighter, Ousseynou Sy threatened the youngsters, took their telephones and told the adults to tie them up with electric cable. "He blocked all the doors with chains," teaching assistant Tiziana Magarini told AFP. "He showed me a knife and told me to tie up all the children." The 40-minute ordeal, during which the bus also slammed into a car, was brought to an end when police managed to smash windows open and get those onboard out just as the driver set fire to the vehicle. A dozen children and two adults were taken to hospital for smoke and fume inhalation, according to emergency services. "It's crazy, absurd, it's unacceptable. Someone has to pay, and dearly," said Filippo Razzini, the father of a pupil at the school in the small town of Crema who was not on the bus. "It's good to go back to school today because unfortunately these things are today a reality. But if it were up to me I'd be out there waiting for this guy somewhere," he told AFP. The driver's lawyer said his client had wanted to "draw attention to the consequences of (Italy's) migration policies". Italy has clamped down on immigration under far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, demanding it close its ports to charity vessels rescuing migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean. Salvini said Sy should have his nationality, granted in 2004 after his marriage to an Italian, revoked. "We shall do all we can to ensure this nefarious person is stripped of his Italian nationality," said Salvini. Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio of the League's governing partner, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, agreed. "I think it is a duty to withdraw immediately the citizenship of this criminal," said Di Maio. Sy could lose his citizenship if convicted of a terror attack under a tough security decree introduced last year. Salvini meanwhile indicated that a Moroccan-born and an Egyptian-born boy on the bus who alerted police could receive speedy naturalisation. Salvini's far-right League party is riding high in the polls in part because of its tough anti-migrant stance. - 'Lone wolf' - The Milan police anti-terrorism unit has been charged with investigating the hostage-taking, during which Sy reportedly told students: "No one is getting out of here alive." The incident has shaken Crema's community. "My daughter was in shock yesterday, she said 'Mummy, I could have been there too'," parent Luisa Ginelli told AFP Thursday. The driver had no links with Islamic terrorism and "acted as a lone wolf", Alberto Nobili, head of counter-terrorism at the Milan public prosecutor's office, told a news conference. Nobili said Thursday that Sy had planned the hijacking over several days and "wanted the whole world talking about his story". He posted a video on YouTube to explain his actions and call on relatives and friends in Crema and Senegal to take action, saying: "Africa -- arise." Sy got his Italian nationality and job in 2004 and managed to keep subsequent convictions for drink driving and sexual assault of a minor secret from his employer, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported. A neighbour told La Stampa newspaper that he was known as "Paolo". "That's what we called him because his name was too complicated. I saw him go out every morning, he drove a bus. A quiet man but solitary," she said. Colleagues told Italian media that Sy's separation from his Italian wife, with whom he has two teenage children, was "when his problems started". The Italian driver of Senegalese origin on Wednesday hijacked the bus taking the 12-13 year olds from a gym to school in Crema, east of Milan Driver Ousseynou Sy said under questioning that he wanted "to draw attention to the consequences of migration policies", according to his lawyer Student Ramy Shehata (2ndL), 14, managed to call the police from his mobile phone while he was being held hostage on the bus Officers have been posted outside the "Giovanni Vailati" secondary school in Crema following Wednesday's incident A model has been sentenced to jail charged for drug trafficking. Tereza Hluskova, 22, from the Czech Republic, was sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison after facing court in Lahore, Pakistan on Wednesday. According to the court, Hluskova was arrested in possession of 8.5 kilograms of heroin in January 2018 at the Lahore airport from where she was heading to Ireland via Dubai in United Arab Emirates. Tereza Hluskova, 22, from the Czech Republic, was jailed after facing court in Lahore, Pakistan after trying to smuggle 8.5kg of heroin. Shes pictured (left) crying outside of court after sentencing. Source: Getty Images and Instagram/ Tereza Hluskova Hluskova was convicted during a court appearance last week. Her sentence also includes a fine of more than $1100. The 22-year-old claims she didnt know drugs were inside her luggage, The Sun reported. The heroin was worth about $2 million. During her arrest she claims she received three statues she thought were gifts, the publication said. The Czech woman claims she was given statues as a gift in her luggage when the heroin was found. Source: Instagram/ Tereza Hluskova Its further alleged she was told of a modelling opportunity by a Pakistani man in Manchester who had set up a fake photography studio. She had stayed in Pakistan having been told she would promote products of a leading fashion brand. He then allegedly gave her a bag of heroin to fly from Lahore airport The Sun reported. Her lawyer, Sardar Asghar Dogar, said she will appeal. With Associated Press Do you know more or have a story tip? Email: y7newsroom@yahoo7.com.au. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter and stay up to date with the latest news with Yahoo7s daily newsletter. Sign up here. Transgender mystic Zoya Lobo turns over three oracle cards, studies them for a minute and looks up. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will definitely win India's general election this summer, she proclaims. Clairvoyant Larra Shah also predicts a victory for Modi owing to his "extremely powerful aura", but astrologer Raj Kumar Sharma thinks opposition leader Rahul Gandhi will win because his party's moon sign is Virgo. Vedic astrology is big business in Hindu-majority India and stargazers are making a host of predictions for the world's biggest elections starting next month -- their many followers hanging on every utterance. Some 900 million voters are registered to cast ballots in the vote in April and May which will see Gandhi's Congress party seek to dislodge Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from power. Shah, 49, a celebrity holistic healer who practises tarot reading, says most of them will plump for Modi, himself a devout Hindu. "When it comes to tarot cards Modi is like the emperor or the magician where the power of self-knowledge, of spiritual balance, of karma, is in perfection," she explains to AFP. "Rahul Gandhi is more like the devil because he's always confused. There is a conflict there because he is a Gemini so has a dual personality," Shah adds. Modi, 68, and the right-wing Hindu nationalist BJP swept to power five years ago by winning 282 out of 543 seats, forming the country's first majority government in almost three decades. Shah expects Modi to be returned, but with a vastly reduced majority. Pre-election polling suggests an even closer contest, with many forecasting that neither party will win the 272 seats needed for a majority. Lobo also has a prediction that hits closer to home for her -- a 35 percent chance that Modi will do something to help India's two-million-strong transgender community. - Planets aligned - Indians consult soothsayers for advice on a raft of subjects from whom to marry to whether to buy a house or strike a business deal. Many businessmen, Bollywood actors and politicians have personal astrologers scrutinise their stars closely to determine auspicious days to hold functions, release a movie or make political announcements. For the election, Sharma says the planets are aligning in favour of Congress -- based on the birth dates of the parties and their leaders -- and that it will be able to persuade smaller, regional parties to join them in a coalition. "Congress's moon sign is Virgo and at present a favourable Jupiter Mahadasha (period) is happening for them while the BJP's moon sign is Scorpio," he explains. "Rahul Gandhi's favourable period has started and his moon is more powerful than Narendra Modi's moon so my prediction is very clear: Rahul Gandhi will either become the prime minister or will make the prime minister with the support of his party." He sees the elections being "extremely volatile" because they were declared at an inauspicious time -- when the sun was setting instead of rising -- and that they may witness more violence between India and Pakistan. Clairvoyant Larra Shah predicts a victory for Modi owing to his "extremely powerful aura" Indians consult soothsayers for advice on a raft of subjects from whom to marry to whether to buy a house or strike a business deal Sharma says the planets are aligning in favour of Congress -- based on the birth dates of the parties and their leaders Lobo believes there is a 35 percent chance that Modi will do something to help India's transgender community A Queensland mum who took her two daughters to Somalia for genital mutilation has been sentenced to four years in prison. The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identities of her children, is the first person to be sentenced in Queensland for removing a child from the state for female genital mutilation. She was found guilty of taking her daughters, then aged 10 and 13, to her birth country in April 2015 for the procedure, and will have her sentence suspended after eight months. The trial heard the girls had no idea the surgery was going to be carried out until they were called inside while playing at their grandmothers house. A mother is facing jail after taking her daughters to Somalia for female genital mutilation. Source: AAP They were conscious and unsedated throughout the process, which caused pain for days. Their stepsister tipped off child safety services when they returned to their home in the Logan area several months later. The mother denied any involvement in the procedure, and told police whatever had happened to the girls was from God. The court heard she had endured a similar procedure when she was a child. A pediatrician gave evidence there was no therapeutic reason for the operation. The mother, who has cancer and back problems, will be sentenced in the Brisbane District Court by Justice Leanne Clare. Do you have a story tip? Email: y7newsroom@yahoo7.com.au. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter and stay up to date with the latest news with Yahoo7s daily newsletter. Sign up here. The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on two Chinese shipping companies for doing business with North Korea, vowing to keep strictly enforcing sanctions on Pyongyang even amid top-level diplomacy. "The maritime industry must do more to stop North Korea's illicit shipping practices," national security adviser John Bolton tweeted after the Treasury Department's announcement. "Everyone should take notice and review their own activities to ensure they are not involved in North Korea's sanctions evasion," he said. The Treasury Department said it was blocking all potential US interests of the Dalian Haibo International Freight Co. Ltd. and prohibiting Americans from dealing with the firm. The United States charged that the company last year shipped cargo from the Chinese port of Dalian to North Korea on behalf of the Paeksol Trading Corporation, which in the past has sold metal and coal to earn money for Pyongyang. The Treasury Department also sanctioned the Liaoning Danxing International Forwarding Co. Ltd., saying it had assisted North Korean officials based in Europe in procuring goods for the regime. The action comes less than a month after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in Hanoi with President Donald Trump for a second summit that broke down in part over Pyongyang's demands for immediate sanctions relief. Trump, while walking away from the talks, has been eager to reach a potentially landmark agreement on North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, announcing the latest measures, said that the United States remained committed to seeking a denuclearization deal with North Korea but believed fully enforcing UN-backed sanctions "is crucial to a successful outcome." North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un attends a welcoming ceremony on a state visit to Vietnam in March 2019 following a summit in Hanoi with US President Donald Trump, whose administration is keeping up pressure on Pyongyang Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's regime defied the US on Thursday to arrest a top aide of opposition leader Juan Guaido, whom Washington recognizes as the crisis-hit country's interim leader. Interior Minister Nestor Reverol accused the aide, Roberto Marrero, a 49-year-old lawyer who serves as Guaido's chief of staff, of leading a "terrorist cell" bent on attacking the government's leadership with the help of Colombian and Central American mercenaries as well as "acts of sabotage on public services to create chaos." He said weapons and foreign cash were found in a predawn raid on Marrero's home. He added that Marrero's 34-year-old bodyguard, Luis Paez, was also arrested and faced the same charges and a search was on for "identified" collaborators. Later, President Nicolas Maduro said he would "not be afraid to fight terrorist groups to put them in jail." The development triggered alarm internationally. The United States, the European Union, and a grouping of Latin American nations plus Canada all denounced Marrero's arrest and demanded his immediate release. The United States has repeatedly warned Maduro's government against arresting Guaido or his close aides, saying it would face unspecified repercussions. US President Donald Trump reiterated this week he was considering "all options" at his disposal to see Maduro dislodged and Guaido installed in power, implying military action if he deemed it necessary. A UN spokesman Thursday expressed "concern" at the arrest, urging "all actors in Venezuela to take immediate steps to lower tensions and refrain from any action that could lead to further escalation." - 'Vulgar kidnapping' - The arrest was denounced earlier Thursday by Guaido as a "vile, vulgar kidnapping." He said "we won't be intimidated." One opposition lawmaker who is a neighbor of Marrero's and whose home was also searched, Sergio Vergara, told reporters that Marrero had yelled out during his arrest that SEBIN intelligence officers had planted two assault rifles and a grenade in his place as a pretext. "The United States condemns raids by Maduro's security services and detention of Roberto Marrero, Chief of Staff to Interim President @jguaido. We call for his immediate release. We will hold accountable those involved," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter. "Maduro has made another big mistake. The illegitimate arrest of Roberto Marrero, Interim President Juan Guaido's aide, will not go unanswered. He should be released immediately and his safety guaranteed," added National Security Advisor John Bolton. Maduro and Guaido both claim to be Venezuela's legitimate leader but Maduro, 56, retains the loyalty of the military brass and has control of state apparatus. Guaido, 35, declared himself interim president on January 23 and has the backing of the US and more than 50 other countries. So far their power struggle has hit an impasse, with Maduro railing daily about the US "imperialists" trying to dislodge him and Guaido touring the country to rally supporters and pledging he'll be taking over "very soon." Maduro's forces have reinforced obstacles blocking a border bridge linking Venezuela and Colombia to prevent Guaido's supporters trucking in US aid. Extra shipping containers and concrete blocks have been moved into place on the bridge. - 'Ransacked' home - Vergara said Thursday's raid, which occurred around 2:00 am (0600 GMT), was carried out by around 15 officers of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service, or SEBIN. He said he was thrown to the floor and his own place "ransacked" for around two hours before the officers went a short distance to bang on Marrero's door and enter his apartment. "The dictatorship is abducting citizens," Vergara said. The Lima Group, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Peru, issued a statement "calling for Nicolas Maduro's illegitimate and dictatorial regime to immediately release Mr. Marrero" and leave Vergara alone. "We demand the end of harassment of Venezuelans upholding democracy and the systematic practice of arbitrary detention and torture in Venezuela," said the statement issued by Peru's foreign ministry. - US warning - The United States has cautioned Maduro against laying a finger on Guaido or National Assembly deputies, threatening unspecified repercussions. In January, Bolton tweeted: "Any violence and intimidation against US diplomatic personnel, Venezuela's democratic leader, Juan Guaido, or the National Assembly itself would represent a grave assault on the rule of law and will be met with a significant response." The United States this month withdrew all its diplomats from Venezuela. In just over a month, on April 28, increasingly harsh US sanctions on Venezuela will intensify to a critical level with a ban on all oil sales to the United States, Venezuela's main crude buyer. The step is expected to worsen already dire economic conditions ravaging Venezuela, a once-wealthy South American nation that has become impoverished under Maduro. Police guard the entrance of the Caracas headquarters to the SEBIN intelligence service after its officers arrested the chief of staff to Juan Guaido, recognized by the US as Venezuela's interim leader The US has warned Maduro's regime to not arrest Guaido, pictured here with his chief of staff Roberto Marrero, or his aides Maduro's forces have used shipping containers and concrete to block a border bridge linking Venezuela and Colombia Opposition lawmaker Sergio Vergara, pictured here outside the headquarters of the SEBIN intelligence service, says his place was "ransacked" and he saw Marrero forcibly taken away Venezuelans have sunk deeper into poverty and desperation as their economy implodes U.S. Rep. John Katko is supporting a bill to address the nationwide doctor shortage by creating more residency positions. The bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, would increase the number of Medicare-supported residency positions. Over a five-year period, 15,000 residency positions would be created within the Graduate Medical Education program. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects there will be a shortage of between 42,600 and 121,300 doctors by 2030. Before becoming a practicing physician, medical school graduates must finish a residency. Medicare, which is the main source of payments for residents, caps the number of residents it funds. Proponents of Sewell's bill say the cap limits the expansion of the training programs. "Our nation faces a dire physician shortage, and we need to do more to allow teaching hospitals and academic medical centers to train more health care professionals," Katko, R-Camillus, said in a statement. Central New York hospitals endorsed the bill. Dr. Mantosh Dewan, interim president of SUNY Upstate Medical University, explained that the number of residency positions supported by Medicare hasn't increased since 1996. Dewan lauded Katko and Sewell for their proposal to address the physician shortage. "Increasing the number of residency slots with the appropriate financial support will strengthen our ability to train the next generation of physicians and protect patients' access to care," Dewan said. Dr. Joseph Spinale, chief medical officer at St. Joseph's Health in Syracuse, added that increasing the number of residency positions is "a long overdue step." "In line with most hospital systems across the country, St. Joseph's Health has long been concerned with the physician shortage, and the inevitably of that shortage worsening without a drastic intervention by policymakers," Spinale said. Katko is one of three original cosponsors of the bill. The measure has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees for consideration. Online producer Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 AUBURN At least two Cayuga county artists one a painter, the other a sculptor will be among dozens showcasing their work this weekend at Auburn's west end art museums. First, Victoria Fitzgerald, an oil and acrylic painter of Auburn, will present her work Thursday, March 21, at this year's "CNY Emerging Artist Project" at the Cayuga Museum. The show, now in its second year, showcases rising artists throughout central New York once a month from March to November. The lineup for the exhibit's additional artists includes Ed Catto, Tong Zhang, Karen Faris, Maxwell Wood, Renqian Yang, Christine Chin, Todd Bachta, Star Greathouse and the Sanctorum Art Collective. Focusing on raw human emotion, Fitzgerald's work revolves around depicting people (usually women) in a relatable way. In doing so, she whimsically captures facial expressions and body language. "Who are these beautiful women and what are they feeling? Do they remind you of someone you know?" Victoria Fitzgerald A painting by Auburn resident Victoria Fitzgerald, who is the next artist in the Cayuga Museum's CNY Emerging Artist Project. These are questions Fitzgerald hopes viewers ponder. In pieces with more than one figure, she then asks viewers to consider the figures' depicted relationship. "The art in this collection draws from personal experience and are often based on real people," she said. "If they are not based on a specific person, than they are based on an emotion." Last year, Fitzgerald had attended the Cayuga Museum's show as a visitor. This year, she's "humbled and excited" to be the first artist presenting Thursday. Fitzgerald said she's been painting her whole life, but she never showed her work off until a mentor egged her on. "It's hard to show your work because it's like exposing your life to the public," she said. Fitzgerald will also be teaching an art camp in April at the next-door Schweinfurth Art Center, where another art exhibit is kicking off this week. At the Schweinfurth, 60 New York state artists and 75 works of art will be showcased at the art center's "Made in NY" exhibit, starting on Friday, March 22. More than 500 pieces were submitted to jurors for entry. Stephen Datz, a sculptor from Skaneateles who's been in the show before, is returning as one of the selected artists. Datz Work by Stephen Datz, of Skaneateles, is on display in the "Made in NY" exhibit at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn. Visitors will be able to get an up-close look at Datz's piece, "View from a Bunker," a multi-material piece constructed from lead, tar, paint, wire Plexiglas and more. The work is what Datz called an "eye slit perspective," as it gives viewers a scope of a brutal landscape from inside a military bunker. The work portrays a "battle with anything," Datz said, as it has nothing to do with war, and instead hints at "the edge of chaos." "It's kind of this idea of protection," he added. "There are layers of protection from looking out." In addition to "Made in NY," the Schweinfurth is holding an opening reception for Fayetteville artist Willson Cummer's exhibit, "Common Places," on display at Gallery Julius. A reception is set for 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, March 22. The exhibit runs through May 12. Staff writer Dan Orzechowski can be reached at (315) 282-2239 or dan.orzechowski@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @OrzechowskiDan. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Stay up-to-date on what's happening Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Its Womens History Month. One thing I know for sure is when women gather around important issues great things always happen! I believe this to be true with every fiber of my being. The numbers of women in the new freshman class in Congress exemplify my belief. However, their presence also makes me realize this belief is not held by everyone. I am particularly intrigued by dynamics surrounding my new favorite emerging woman leader: U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a.k.a. AOC. I often refer to what is happening to her as the curious case of AOC. Why are so many people triggered by the presence of this confident, competent, courageous and calm woman leader? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the perfect example of what we refer to at Gwen Inc. as an Unexpected Leader. Her arrival in Congress provides an opportunity to exemplify the unique journey of this type of leader. Upon election AOC shattered the glass ceiling in Congress, arriving in Washington among a class of First, Only and Differents. The country has never experienced this much diversity in the House of Representatives before. The mere presence of AOC and her sister leaders in the House sends weekly shockwaves throughout the country. Since entering the Capitol building there are daily challenges to her credibility. The focus is on her clothes, her speaking style, her intellect and even that she dared dance on a rooftop in college. How dare a 29-year-old Latina think she can have a voice in Congress? These challenges have little to do with qualifications. The challenges stem from unconscious bias and microaggression arising from the fact that no one expects it to be her. Lets face it, Congress is not historically known for having in its ranks a young, hip, Latina, who is walking around like it is her birthright to be in office when, in fact, it is. AOC has Congress and America shook. With every step and tweet she focuses on making America great for all and building her legacy of leadership. AOC is not one bit scared. She reminds me of my mentees. I monitor trend data that indicate that over the next five to 10 years approximately 85 percent of new entrants to the workforce will be millennial, female and people of color; the Unexpected Leaders are coming. The good news for companies is Unexpected Leaders always exceed expectations when employers create the right opportunities for them to succeed. Yet, as I work with leaders around the country on topics of leadership and diversity, like Congress, most companies dont seem to believe the data is true. They dont expect this to be the changing face of the workforce. I find this incredibly curious! As this demographic slowly emerges, they do so with expectations of being hired, recruited and positioned for leadership opportunities. We need to get ready people! AOCs generation is on the move, and they are ready to lead. Companies understanding this trend engage in specific strategies in anticipation of dealing with a workforce filled with Unexpected Leaders. These companies: Engage in business discussions about the emerging workforce; Examine practices to reduce the impact of unconscious bias in hiring processes; Train current leaders to manage bias and microaggression in the workplace; Develop new leaders to manage diverse workplace teams; Create affinity groups to support diverse employees; Actively prepare high potential Unexpected Leaders for entry into the leadership pipeline; Promote Unexpected Leaders; Collect data to continually improve opportunities for Unexpected leaders; The dynamic of "unexpectedness makes Unexpected Leaders seem the exception instead of the rule. Inside their respective communities there is an expectation for them to succeed, they are the rule. But this expectation doesnt carry over as these leaders enter spaces and places where they become the First, Only and Different. There is work current leaders must do to open opportunities for those following in the footsteps of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her peers. In fact, if the trend data is correct, we have no option but to do this work. The pool for selecting future leaders will be millennial, female and people of color. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you are on my mind more than ever during Womens History Month. Thank you for being a brave Unexpected Leader. For girls and young women, the sky is the limit for leadership. I am so happy they are able to see you setting an example for them. Keep leading. Keep disrupting the status quo. Keep exceeding expectations. Keep rising! Founded by sought-after lecturer, conference keynote speaker and leadership development expert Gwen Webber-McLeod, of Auburn, Gwen Inc. exists for the sole purpose of helping leaders achieve business goals by focusing on the competencies of confidence, competence, courage and calm. The companys hallmark division, The Leadership Connection: A Resource Centered on Great Leadership, provides leadership education, professional consulting/facilitation, mentoring/coaching and technical assistance in organizations, businesses and public venues. Gwen Inc. also produces You Cant Fail, a conference for professional women of color and those who support them. For more information on Gwen Inc., visit gweninc.com. Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Auburn Community Hospital is denying claims made in a former employee's lawsuit alleging the hospital failed to address a doctor's dangerous behavior, while an attorney for the doctor described in the lawsuit calls the complaints against him and the hospital "a settlement shakedown." In an official response filed in U.S. District Court last week, the hospital denied the claims in a suit by Dr. Gregory Serfer that he was pressured into resigning for reporting another doctor whose behavior was cited as problematic in a state report. Serfer's lawsuit, filed late last year, is one of three legal complaints from former employees against the hospital around the same issue. Former hospital stroke program director Dr. Karen Odrzywolski filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court last month and former intensive care unit nurse practitioner Dan Dennis filed a discrimination and hostile workplace complaint earlier this month with the state Division of Human Rights. The cases all make similar allegations that the hospital either retaliated or failed to respond to complaints made regarding Dr. Jeremy Barnett, who worked in the ICU. Barnett is not named as a defendant in Serfer's complaint but is in the complaints from Odrzywolski and Dennis. The law firm Gattuso and Ciotoli is representing all three plaintiffs. Barnett has not responded to calls seeking comment, but this week a lawyer representing him emailed The Citizen and said Barnett has been cleared of any wrongdoing by the hospital and the state. Serfer has said Barnett was the same doctor identified in a state review of the hospital on behalf of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regarding similar complaints. As part of that review, the hospital was required to enact a "plan of correction," the implementation of which has been accepted by the state. Responding to the "factual background" portion of Serfer's lawsuit, the hospital denied claims that patient care was ever jeopardized or that administration acted improperly both in general and in specific instances. For example, the response denied a claim in Serfer's suit describing an incident in which Barnett allegedly did not act on the hospital's surgery team's recommendation to transfer a patient, eventually resulting in their death. Based on the claims of retaliation against his whistleblowing, as well as being replaced by Barnett as ICU head while Serfer was serving with the National Disaster Medical System, Serfer's suit is seeking damages. The hospital is asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit. Speaking with The Citizen previously, Serfer said the suit was about "the protection of the community, the protection of employees at the hospital and the common good," and taken as a last resort after previous complaints went unanswered. The hospital's response lists nine affirmative defenses against Serfer's claims and complaints. Among others, the defenses say Serfer did not suffer damages because of the hospital and that employment actions were taken for "good-faith, legitimate, non-discriminatory, non-retaliatory reasons." Separate from the hospital's response, in an email to The Citizen on Tuesday regarding the newspaper's coverage of the lawsuits, a lawyer for Barnett said the news coverage of the story "is ruining a good doctor for no reason other than office politics and a settlement shakedown." Florida attorney Jennifer Kreder wrote that Serfer's lawsuit is relying on what her client believes will be the hospital's willingness to settle, without regard for Barnett. "Those suing to extort a settlement will get what they are after no matter how much damage they do to Dr. Barnett despite the fact that he has been fully cleared," Kreder wrote. Kreder did not provide documentation supporting the claim that Barnett has been cleared. State health officials have not yet responded to requests for comment regarding any investigations involving Barnett. Through a spokesperson, the hospital on Wednesday said it does not comment on ongoing legal and personnel matters. "However, we can state that the allegations made in this lawsuit are unproven and made from the perspective of a former employee. The hospital intends to address these allegations as part of the legal process," a statement sent to The Citizen said. Staff writer Ryan Franklin can be reached at (315) 282-2252 or ryan.franklin@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @RyanNYFranklin Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 The Hillside Family of Agencies will close its residential treatment campus at the former Seneca Army Depot site by the end of this year, the organization announced Wednesday. Hillside, which operates facilities in central and western New York, decided to not renew the lease for its residential treatment campus. The lease is set to expire in March 2020. There are 79 children housed at the Seneca County site and 235 full- and part-time employees. Roughly 60 of the employees will transfer to other Hillside campuses. The remaining employees, according to a news release, will be "supported in pursuing other positions within the agency or with other employers in the region, if they prefer." The transfer of the youth residents, programs and staff is expected to be completed by Dec. 31. Hillside cited several factors for its decision to close the Seneca County campus, including the demand for residential treatment services and retention of direct care staff. "We have carefully and thoroughly considered all of our options, and have determined this approach will be best for the youth we serve, their families, Hillside employees and our family of agencies as a whole," said Maria Cristalli, Hillside's president and CEO. Seneca County's state representatives expressed concern about the impact of Hillside's decision not to renew its lease. Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, who represents a portion of the county, said the transition period will be important for employees and residents at the facility. State Sen. Pam Helming, whose district includes all of Seneca County, plans to collaborate with the state Department of Labor and local agencies to assist employees affected by the closure. She also wants to ensure that the transition won't disrupt programs for children served by the facility. "It is important for New York state to work with Hillside students and their parents to make sure these children continue to get the education, therapy and support to lead healthy and successful lives," Helming said. It's at least the second youth residential treatment center to close in the Finger Lakes and central New York regions over the past year. In 2018, Cayuga Centers in Auburn shuttered its residential treatment program and cut 120 jobs. Online producer Robert Harding can be reached at (315) 282-2220 or robert.harding@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @robertharding. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 A social justice advocate and Wells College alumna will serve as the speaker at the college's commencement. Rebecca Haag will be featured at the ceremony at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 18 outside the front entrance of Macmillan Hall on the Wells College campus in Aurora, according to a news release from the college. Haag is currently the executive director of the nonprofit Island Growth Initiative, which is centered on making a food system that is "regenerative and equitable" on the Massachusetts island Martha's Vineyard, according to the press release. The news release said the island is one of the poorest counties in Massachusetts, with over 11 percent of the area's year-round population living in poverty and 40 percent of the area's school population getting subsidized lunches. The organization began the first summer food service for area children in summer 2017, and started a mobile farmers market selling fresh produce at an affordable price in a low-income neighborhood. The initiative also makes produce left by local farmers into stews, soups and prepared meals sent to elderly and disabled people. Her other achievements include previously serving as the executive director of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts and winning various awards for her work over the years. While at Wells, Haag served as chairperson for the students capital campaign and was on the college's board of trustees for two years upon graduating. She graduated magna cum laude from Wells in 1974 with a bachelor's degree in economics and management and later obtained a master's degree from Boston University. "Throughout her career, Rebecca has demonstrated a commitment to using her considerable talents to improve the lives of those around her, Wells President Jonathan Gibralter said. She is a perfect example of how our students and alumni use the education they gained at Wells to cultivate lives of meaning and purpose. I look forward to hearing her share her wisdom with our graduates this spring. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 A weird-looking, enormous sunfish was discovered by two fishermen on the shore at Coorong National Park in South Australia over the weekend. The ocean sunfish (Mola mola) was spotted at the mouth of the Murray River by Steven Jones, the supervisor of a cockle fishing crew, and his colleague Hunter Church. "He thought it was a piece of driftwood as they were driving past on the work truck," Jones' partner Linette Grzelak, who posted the photos of the fish on Facebook, told CNN. "None of them had seen anything like this before." "They find all sorts of sea life along the beaches they dig but it has been mostly sharks and seals. This was something very different," Grzelak added. "Steven said it was extremely heavy and its skin was leathery like a rhinoceros." National Parks South Australia said these sunfish are the world's largest bony fish and can weigh more than a car. The Mola mola, discovered and named only in 2017, feeds largely on jellyfish and can grow well over 2 meters (more than 6 feet) although this one was "only" 1.8 meters long, putting it on the smaller end of the scale, according to the South Australian Museum. "The Mola mola is known for its large size, odd flattened body shape and fins," the museum's fish collection manager, Ralph Foster, told CNN via email. He added that he was able to identify the fish from the markings on its tail and the shape of its head. Foster added that the fish is also known as a sunfish because it enjoys basking in the sun. Their size and sun bathing habit mean they can be hit by boats, and some are so large they actually sink yachts, he said. "Researchers have been putting satellite tags and data loggers on these fish and found they will come to the surface and lay on their side on the surface, hence the name the sunfish," Foster said. "Once they are warm enough they dive down several hundreds of meters and feed on jellyfish and stay down there for lengthy periods of time." "We know very little about them. It's only in the last few years that technology has allowed us to start learning about them," Foster explained. "The fish was thought to be a purely Southern Hemisphere species, but just a couple of weeks ago one made the news when it turned up on a Californian beach, highlighting how little we know about sunfish in general." The museum said there's no way of knowing why this specimen died. The-CNN-Wire & 2019 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 I usually use this column to try to illuminate how things work in our newsroom and hopefully convey to readers that they are blessed to have so many dedicated, talented and passionate journalists covering their community. As the editor overseeing that department at The Citizen, these are the people and operation I know best. But it's also important that I use this space from time to time to tell you about the crucial work done in other departments. The great work our reporters and editors do to bring readers news and information relies on additional great work done in multiple other operations within our company. We need our printing press operators to get the hard-copy edition published each night. Our packaging department (often referred to as the mailroom in newspaper lingo even though it has little to do with the postal service) receives, prepares and inserts the commercial inserts that get into the paper; it also bundles the papers for our drivers to take to homes and stores throughout the region. We need our advertising sales staff to help bring in revenue that's so vital to our ability to employ the journalists we have. And like any business, we need accounting staff to keep track of everything and make sure we are making the right financial decisions. Down the road, I'll try to dig into these operations in more detail, but today I want to focus on the delivery force, which is commonly referred to as the circulation department. And my reason for doing so today is because of what happened at Wednesday at 5:58 p.m. According to the National Weather Service, that's the precise time in our time zone that spring arrived. That's a big deal to newspaper circulators. Several years back, we had a manager in our circulation department who would frequently tell me that in their line of work, each day completed in winter "means that we're another day closer to spring." If you've ever driven through a blinding winter storm at night, you can understand the sentiment. Just imagine facing those conditions while also trying to get papers delivered to scores of different properties under a deadline. And doing it over and over through the course of a central New York winter. Just as with the newsroom when we most often hear from people when they have a concern to express but not when they've received a fully reported local newspaper for the day readers tend to notice the circulation staff only when there's an issue. Sometimes the weather is too much to overcome and the paper has to be delivered late or the next day. Sometimes unexpected things like a car breakdown or a health issue can complicate the operation. And on rare occasions, sometimes people just make a mistake, like we all do ... because we are human. But I can tell you that the percentage of missed deliveries at The Citizen is minuscule. We track customer complaints carefully, and any company would love to have this level of quality control. If you can manage a few seconds every once in a while to leave your carrier a note of thanks and perhaps an occasional tip, I'm sure it would mean a ton to them. And understand that you're supporting and encouraging a key part of the team that brings you the news every day. Executive editor Jeremy Boyers column appears Thursdays in The Citizen and he can be reached at (315) 282-2231 or jeremy.boyer@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter @CitizenBoyer Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. With a vote scheduled for next Tuesday on the controversial, and restrictive, new European Union Copyright Directive, which AVN.com explained last October, the free porn mega-site Pornhub joined two other online giants using their sites to register their protest against the new lawand encourage visitors to the sites to pressure EU lawmakers to vote it down. Pornhub posted a banner at the top of the European version of its site on Thursday, as seen in the image at the top of this page. The discussion forum Redditthe self-described front page of the internetand the sprawling online encyclopedia Wikipedia also protested the planned new law, according to a Business Insider report. Reddit flashed error messages every time a user inside the EU attempted to upload a file on Thursday, while Wikipedia completely blocked its site to users in several EU countries, including Germany and Denmark, Business Insider reported. To be clear, however, any EU directive is not a binding law. But the EUs 28 member countries are expected to implement the directive by passing their own internal laws to line up with the directives requirements. According to The Electronic Frontier Foundation, while most of the new copyright directivethe first since 2001is technical and non-controversial, two articles have caused a political and online earthquake, and could drastically change how Europeans use the internet. As AVN.com detailed in an earlier report, Article 11 would impose a link tax, requiring sites such as Google News and other aggregators to pay a fee for linking to outside articles, if the linking site reprints more than a "snippet" of the original, linked article. But as EFF notes, the EU directive does not define what constitutes a snippet, leaving that up to individual countries to decide. The law also contains no protection for smaller sites, such as personal blogs, or noncommercial sites including Wikipedia. Among numerous other chilling effects on digital speech, Article 11 further consolidates the control of online news and information in the hands of giant corporate content providers, EFF says, because giant companies will license the right to link to each other but not to smaller sites, who will not be able to point out deficiencies and contradictions in the big companies' stories. The second and even more controversial provision, Article 13, requires sites to take full responsibility for copyright violationsor alleged violationsby users on their sites. The provision would force social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube to monitor their entire networks 24/7 for possible violations. That requirement willand already has, says EFFlead the sites to deploy content filters, that is, algorithms that scan relentlessly for possible copyright violations. Not only does the requirement discriminate against smaller sites, because, EFF says, all but the crudest filters cost so much that only the biggest tech companies can afford to build them, but theres also the well-known fact that algorithms in general are far from perfect. As AVN.com has reported, the algorithm used by Tumblr to enforce its recent porn ban regularly scoops up content that is not porn at all. Filters are notoriously inaccurate, prone to overblocking legitimate materialand lacking in checks and balances, making it easy for censors to remove material they disagree with, EFF wrotenoting also that copyright filters operate on the assumption that people who claim copyrights are telling the truth, opening the door to freelance censorship and blocking by bad actors who falsely claim copyright over material they do not own. Photo by European Digital Rights Twitter Lantmannen Unibake UK has appointed Peter Drew as marketing & innovation director for the UK. Drew, who has been with the Unibake business for nine years, is returning to the UK side of the operation after spending five years at the groups HQ in Copenhagen as group innovation director. He will now take up the dual UK marketing and innovation role, where his primary objectives will be driving further growth in retail and foodservice. Lantmannen Unibake UKs line-up include pastries and speciality breads under the Schulstad Bakery Solutions brand, and buns, baps and hotdog rolls under the Americana brand. Drew will also support further investment in the companys bakeries in Milton Keynes and Bedford and its growing business in Australia, South Africa and the Far East. Lantmannen Unibake has evolved into a really strong business and Im truly excited to be part of the team that will drive the next phase of its development, said Drew. Im committed to supporting the teams vision to develop and grow our business in all our core product categories and to drive our Schulstad Bakery Solutions and Americana brands. There are some exciting times ahead. Drew started his career with Unilever before joining Bakehouse, which was acquired by Unibake in 2010. At Bakehouse he held roles including marketing director, category director, product director, trading director and innovations director. Make your birthday special - by brewing a beer originally made on that date. For a mere 25 euros, I'll create a bespoke recipe for any day of the year you like. As well as the recipe, there's a few hundred words of text describing the beer and its historical context and an image of the original brewing record. Just click on the button below. N. Oregon Coast Events Take Different Look at History Published 03/21/2019 at 5:53 AM PDT By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff (Seaside, Oregon) It's almost a case of dueling lectures on the north Oregon coast on March 28. Except that you can attend one at 4 p.m., and then hit the next at 6 p.m. (Above: the Cannon Beach History Museum). Seaside Museums History & Hops takes a different look at Lewis & Clark, while Cannon Beachs history museum delves deep into some archaeological finds in Asia. It seems that talking about the weather transcends all eras. Not only did Lewis and Clark write about the weather in their journals but many of the Corps of Discovery also made notes during their sojourn. How do these entries equate to todays weather patterns? Meteorologist George Miller has researched the last 200 years of Pacific Northwest weather patterns and events. At Seaside Museums next History & Hops, Miller will share insights into the incredible difficulties the Corps of Discovery faced. The famed and fascinating north Oregon coast program features Weather Disagreeable this month, happening on March 28 at 6 p.m., at the Seaside Brewing Co. (851 Broadway, Seaside). Miller retired in 1994 from a 34-year career as a meteorologist in Oregon, Colorado and Utah. He has authored two books on Pacific Northwest weather, including "Lewis & Clarks Northwest Journey Weather Disagreeable!' " History & Hops is a series of local history discussions hosted by the Seaside Museum on the last Thursday of each month, September through May. www.seasideoregonuseum.com. On the same day, the Cannon Beach History Museum takes you on a journey to Asia. The March presentation will focus on the latest archaeological work in Angkor, Cambodia with Professor Alison Carter. Carter has done extensive archaeological work in Cambodia and will share her discoveries with the community of Cannon Beach on Thursday, March 28 at 4 p.m. Angkor, centered in the modern nation of Cambodia, was one of the largest preindustrial settlements in the world and has been the focus of more than a century of epigraphic, art historical, and architectural research. However, few scholars have examined the lives of the people who built the temples, kept the shrines running, produced the food, and managed the water. This presentation will discuss two recent excavations that examined Angkorian residential occupation. First, she will discuss excavations on a house mound within the enclosure of the state temple of Angkor Wat. Then she will discuss their 2018 excavations on occupation mounds near the small provincial temple of Prasat Basaet, across the Tonle Sap lake from the Angkorian capital in the province of Battambang. Through this multidisciplinary research they aim to better understand the nature and timing of occupation at these sites, the types of activities taking place within an Angkorian household and compare life in the capital with life in the provinces. Alison Carter is Assistant Professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Oregon. She holds her degrees from the University of Wisconsion, Madison (M.S. and Ph.D.) and Oberlin College. Seating for Professor Carter's presentation is very limited so please arrive a little early to get a seat, grab a cup of coffee or tea, and peruse the museum before the lecture starts at 4 p.m. Doors are closed at 4:15 p.m. For more information visit www.cbhistory.org. 503-436-9301. Lodging in Seaside - Lodging in Cannon Beach - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours Angkor Wat photo courtesy Alison Carter More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted Another such penalty is deportation, which is effectively exile, a penalty we impose for no other crime. The Democrats must proceed from the starting point that, in almost all cases, deportation is both cruel and unnecessary. Even deporting those who commit violent crimes is a visceral punitive reaction that does nothing to either rehabilitate the individual or protect the people they might go on to hurt in their country of origin. To the extent that the Democrats must make concessions based on fears about public safety, any policy must be aimed at whittling down the categories of people to whom deportation applies. Another oft-cited public-safety concern is cross-border smuggling. It may make sense to keep some investigative units at the border, as long as these are focused on cartel-related violenceas well as the serious problem of human trafficking for the purpose of forced laborand not on terrorizing irregular migrants. Any such measures should be coupled with the acknowledgement that U.S. drug policies contribute significantly to violence in source and transit countries, and with disinvestment in the drug war. Continued decriminalization of drugs in the United States will also reduce cross-border smuggling. More ambitiously, the Democrats should also put forward legislation that creates an ongoing avenue for unauthorized immigrants to regularize their status after they enter the country. This is not quite open borders, since it still acknowledges a distinction between authorized and unauthorized entry and requires people to make themselves known to the government, but it would certainly be a big improvement. A new status, something like new resident, could be created, carrying the same labor rights and benefits as U.S. citizens and offering an eventual bridge to a green card. Protesters in Orlando, Fla., join nationwide May Day rallies in 2006 as part of the day without immigrants, in opposition to so-called immigration reform legislation. (Photy by Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images) To the question of whether new immigrants will hurt U.S. workers, Democrats should seize the opportunity to talk about whats already hurting U.S. workers. Currently, little effort is made to ensure that anyone has access to wage and labor protections. ICEs 2018 budget for its enforcement and removal department was $4.8 billion, while the Department of Labors 2018 budget for its wage and hour department was $280 million. We spent 20 times the amount chasing unauthorized immigrants than we did chasing unscrupulous employers. What if, rather than putting resources into preventing unauthorized immigrants from entering the workforce, we put resources toward ensuring that labor standards are actually enforced for all workers? Ultimately, Democrats must commit themselves to the principle of absolute equality between all human beings, regardless of their birthplace. A Democrat who truly believes in this principle will make it her tireless mission to see that it is enshrined in our laws and our practices. What About the Welfare State? Some progressives may balk at the abolitionist approach because they believe that open or nearly open borders are incompatible with the welfare state. This problem causes fewer moral conundrums for libertarian and pro-business open borders advocates like the Cato Institute, which envisions immigrants serving as a tier of secondclass citizen without access to public benefits. To be fair, some immigrants might prefer to be second-class citizens in the United States rather than struggle in their home countries, as libertarian economists frequently point out. And it would certainly be morally unjustifiable to oppose immigration because we disliked the sight of comparative poverty in our own country and preferred that it simply exist somewhere else, even if it were worse. However, there is no real reason to presuppose that the welfare state could not encompass more residents. In raw numbers, balancing the budget on the ambitious public programs the Left wants to implement, even if we dont take into account new immigrants, is a challenge. Current welfare spending (when we include Medicare and Medicaid) adds up to roughly $1 trillion. Some additional monies can be reallocated from areas like military spending ($716 billion in the 2019 budget), corporate subsidies (estimated at $110 billion) and, indeed, ICE ($7.6 billion). We can also consider the possibility that, in a world where all workers earn a living wage, fewer people would need certain kinds of benefitssuch as the $6.2 billion annually that subsidizes Walmarts low wages. Still, the reality is that all of the Lefts proposed social programs for expanding housing, healthcare, childcare and education accesswill require a massive increase in spending, with the costs of additional immigrants being a marginal increase. Progressives generally propose to accommodate these new budget items through greatly increased redistributive taxation, and adherents of Modern Monetary Theory would suggest anxieties about the negative economic impacts of a large deficit are misplaced. CJ photo by Kari Travis The House unanimously passed Senate Bill 214 Wednesday, March 13, to drop voter identification requirements from 2019 elections, and sent it to Gov. Roy Cooper.The bill removed student IDs as an acceptable photo ID for casting ballots. The first time university-issued student identification and state agency employee IDs could be used to vote would be 2021.House Rules Committee Chairman David Lewis, R-Harnett, said the delay is necessary because two special congressional elections are scheduled this year. The process to complete photo identification rules wouldn't be done in time to include those elections. The 3rd Congressional District seat is open because Republican U.S. Rep. Walter Jones died. A new election was ordered in the 9th Congressional District after state investigators unearthed widespread election fraud. Federal and state investigations of the election fraud continue.Lewis said S.B. 214 would ensure a uniform process for all elections this year, including municipal elections scheduled in the fall.Lewis said delaying the photo ID mandate, which voters passed as a constitutional amendment Nov. 6, was necessary because voting by mail begins Friday in the 3rd District. That doesn't leave enough time for counties to implement bipartisan legislation the House passed unanimously to reform voting by mail.Lewis said. Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune is in the 3rd District.The measure sailed through debate and passed 116-0. Some observers anticipated legislative fireworks after senators passed the measure on a 29-21 vote Tuesday. None occurred.Rep. Ray Russell, D-Watauga, offered an amendment to extend the compliance deadline for universities and community colleges by six months, letting students and state workers use IDs in elections this year. It was rejected.Russell said. The State Board of Elections didn't meet the statutory requirement to get timely information to universities to allow them to meet Wednesday's deadline to submit requests for their student IDs to be used, he said. Private and historically black colleges and universities would be especially disadvantaged.Lewis didn't disagree, but said it was more important to meet Friday's federal election deadlines for military and other absentee voters. Adding the amendment would force the bill to return to the Senate for concurrence.Lewis pledged the General Assembly would vote this session to allow secure student IDs to be used in elections.Earlier in the day, State Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Strach told the House Elections and Ethics Law Committee 47 universities and state agencies submitted requests to allow their student and employee identifications to be used for voting. She did not have a breakdown of those numbers.Strach said current legislation is clear that universities and state agencies would have to wait until 2021 to use their state-issued IDs for voting if they are not approved this year. She must approve or reject requests and notify applicants by Friday, and has little discretion under the law.UNC System Senior Vice President and General Counsel Tom Shanahan issued a statement Wednesday saying the system office expected all 17 of its institutions to submit request letters by Wednesday's deadline. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has unleashed a barrage of openly anti-Semitic commentary. She suggested that Israel had "hypnotized the world." She recently suggested that Jewish money lay behind American support for Israel. Finally, she suggested that American Israel supporters are representatives of dual loyalty. Her fellow Democrats shielded her from blowback by subsuming a resolution that condemns her anti-Semitism within a broader resolution that condemns intolerance of all types. Many of them suggested that labeling Omar's anti-Semitism actually represents a type of censorship - an attempt to quash debate about Israel, though none of Omar's comments even critiqued the Israeli government, and though many on the left have made anti-Israel arguments without invoking anti-Semitism.Now Omar's defenders have come out of the woodwork to suggest that criticism of her anti-Semitism was somehow responsible for the white supremacist shooting of 50 innocent people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Two protesters, New York University students and best friends Leen Dweik and Rose Asaf, confronted Chelsea Clinton, who had gently chided Omar for her Jew hatred.Dweik screamed,Dweik, it should be noted, has called for the complete elimination of Israel.Her message was parroted by terror supporter Linda Sarsour, who tweeted:Meanwhile, mainstream commentators attempted to use the New Zealand anti-Muslim terror attack to blame critics of radical Islam. Omer Aziz, writing for The New York Times, slammed Jordan Peterson for calling Islamophobia "a word created by fascists" and Sam Harris for calling it "intellectual blood libel." Bill Maher has come in for similar criticism; so have I, mostly for a video I cut in 2014 in which I read off poll statistics from various Muslim countries on a variety of topics, concluding that a huge percentage of Muslims believed radical things.Here's the truth: Radical Islam is dangerous. The Islamic world has a serious problem with radical Islam. And large swaths of the Muslim world are, in fact, hostile to Western views on matters ranging from freedom of speech to women's rights. To conflate that obvious truth with the desire to murder innocents in Christchurch is intellectual dishonesty of the highest sort. If we want more Muslims living in liberty and freedom, we must certainly demolish white supremacism - and we must also demolish radical Islam, devotees of which were responsible for an estimated 84,000 deaths in 2017 alone, most of those victims Muslim.And here's another truth: Anti-Semitism is ugly, whether it's coming from white supremacists or Ilhan Omar. Making that point has nothing to do with the killing of Muslims in Christchurch.So long as the media continue to push the narrative that criticism of Islam is tantamount to incitement of murder, radical Islam will continue to flourish. So long as the media continue to cover for the dishonest argument that criticism of anti-Semitism forwards the goals of white supremacists, anti-Semitism will continue to flourish. Honest discussion about hard issues isn't incitement. 'Gun Control' Against The AR-15 Is Full Of Lies Efforts to outlaw the AR-15 are part of an incremental movement to ban all semi-automatic guns By David Harsanyi. March 18, 2019 This conflict over the 2nd amendment and the attempted removal of firearms rights will ultimately result in a civil war that will eventually balkanize the US along political, cultural and, most importantly, racial lines, wrote the Christchurch, New Zealand mass murderer in his demented manifesto. Some Americans, unfortunately, immediately used the bloodbath to support their political causes. Sen. Chris Murphy wondered, for instance, why Americans needed semi-automatic rifles, at all. Nobody needs an AR-15 to hunt, the Connecticut senator tweeted. Nobody needs a semi-automatic rifle to defend their home. But mass shooters NEED these weapons in order to murder as many people as efficiently as possible. And so nobody will miss them when they are illegal except for the killers. One of the nice things about having individual rights codified in a Constitution is that Americans dont (or shouldnt) have to explain to government officials why they choose to practice them. Im certain nothing in the Second Amendment mentions hunting, because the right of self-defensean individual concern, as well as a collective onewasnt about shooting deer, it was about protecting Americans from the state confiscating their firearms. ..... One of the most popular statements against the AR style rifle is "it's designed as a weapon of war" - usually regarding it erroneously as being the full auto version, and also being swayed by the 'black rifle cosmetics'. The bottom line is as ever the constant push to ban any and all semi-auto rifles, which in turn presents the starting point for ultimately an attempted ban on all civilian owned firearms. The criminals will not complain. The full article has been archived on JPFO Back to Top 'Gun Control' Against The AR-15 Is Full Of Lies Efforts to outlaw the AR-15 are part of an incremental movement to ban all semi-automatic guns By David Harsanyi. March 18, 2019 Original Source This conflict over the 2nd amendment and the attempted removal of firearms rights will ultimately result in a civil war that will eventually balkanize the US along political, cultural and, most importantly, racial lines, wrote the Christchurch, New Zealand mass murderer in his demented manifesto. Some Americans, unfortunately, immediately used the bloodbath to support their political causes. Sen. Chris Murphy wondered, for instance, why Americans needed semi-automatic rifles, at all. Nobody needs an AR-15 to hunt, the Connecticut senator tweeted. Nobody needs a semi-automatic rifle to defend their home. But mass shooters NEED these weapons in order to murder as many people as efficiently as possible. And so nobody will miss them when they are illegal except for the killers. One of the nice things about having individual rights codified in a Constitution is that Americans dont (or shouldnt) have to explain to government officials why they choose to practice them. Im certain nothing in the Second Amendment mentions hunting, because the right of self-defensean individual concern, as well as a collective onewasnt about shooting deer, it was about protecting Americans from the state confiscating their firearms. While Murphys reductionist take is obviously wrong on several counts, its exceptionally wrong in claiming that killers would miss these rifles. Killers will always have weapons. And they dont need AR-15s, even though there are probably between 10 and 15 million of them in circulation in the US. And unless Murphy believes federal agents should be tasked with going house to house and confiscating every semi-automatic riflean unlikely scenariothey will be with us a very long time. Nor is there evidence that banning the AR-15 would reduce criminality or mass shootings, anyway. The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (1994 to 2004) did nothing to alter gun violence trends. Once the assault weapon was lifted, and the AR-15 became the most popular rifle in the country, gun violence continued to precipitously fall. Considering the political hysteria around crime, and the slight uptick in crime in 2017, many Americans might not be aware that every category of violent crime has fallen to historic lows over the past 25 years. And while every school shooting is a distressing event, inflicting deep pain on individuals, communities, and the nation, its important to point out that despite the proliferation of the AR-15, schools are much safer today than they were 20 years agoeven school shootings are less common, according to researchers at Northeastern. Four times as many children were killed in schools in the early 90s than today. Then again, AR-15s are rarely used in the crimes, in general. If you need any more proof that the AR is being singled out for political reasons, mostly due to its aesthetics, its worth noting that in 2017, the last year of FBI data, there were 7,105 Americans murdered by handguns and 374 by all rifles (only a fraction of which were AR-15s.) There were 1,604 knife homicides during that same span. There were 656 people killed by fists and kicking. Fact checkers like to point out that not every national police department reports on the type of gun is used in homicides (3,077 to be exact), but its reasonable to believe that the same trends would apply to those crimes. Its mostly big cities that dont share information on the types of guns criminals use. Theres a good reason that gun controllers want to depict the AR as uniquely dangerous. As a longtime gun owner and supporter of the Second Amendment, I agreed with the Supreme Courts Heller holding that concluded Americans had the right to keep and bear arms. But that constitutional protection did not, and will not, extend to guns designed as weapons of war, explained Joe Scarborough in a Twitter thread. If you own an AR-15, keep it, the gracious presidential candidate Beto ORourke told the American people the other day, Continue to use it responsibly and safely. I just dont think that we need to sell any more weapons of war into this public. There are two major problems with these talking points. One: No matter how many times gun-controllers refer to the AR-15 as a weapon of war it will still be historically and mechanically incorrect. Writers like James Fallows have, for years, been misleading readers about the history of the AR-15, purposely conflating it with the military M-16. Eugene Stoner, chief engineer of ArmaLite and its parent company Colt, marketed the AR (ArmaLite Rifle) directly to the civilian marketplace in the early 1960sbefore its more powerful version was adopted by the US military. Of course, every gun from the musket, to the rifle, to the revolver, to the semi-automatic handgun was once used as, or developed into, a weapon of war. In the end, every gun is designed to kill, otherwise it would be worthless. And if any weapon that kills can be categorized as a weapon of war then the AR will have some stiff competition. John Browning designed the 1911 handgun before World War I, and it was subsequently used by the US military until 1986. Now it is one of the most popular handgun designs in the country. It was a weapon of war. And every great gunmaker in American history sought government contracts as a way to maximize profits. But that doesnt mean the civilian and military versions of the AR are the same. Americans like AR-15s for a variety of reasons, include ease of use, but the civilian iteration was never used as a weapon of war. The major difference is that the AR-15 fires once every trigger pull, like any other semi-automatic weapon on the market. In fact, it uses smaller ammunition than most semi-automatic guns. The M-16 (and M-4)actual weapons of warcan be fully automatic or used in three-round bursts. The AR-15, in fact, can be considered less a weapon of war when Stoner sold it to civilians (until 1977 when the patent ran out) than many other legal guns of the time. Fully automatic firearms were only effectively banned in 1986. Two: Using the phrase weapon of war is just a pretext. The District of Columbia v. Heller decision found that the Second Amendment protected weapons in common use by law-abiding citizens. The AR-15 clearly meets this criteria. Scarborough invents an exceptionally narrow definition of Heller, in which he argues that the decision basically only protects handguns for the purpose of home protection, and, I guess, bolt-action hunting rifles. But this is clearly untrue. The Heller decision found that the Second Amendment was an individual right to keep and bear arms for any lawful purpose, not merely home protection (or hunting). It found that the Second Amendment guarantee[s] the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation. Gun restrictionists focus on the AR-15 because it looks like a military weapon. Once stripped of emotion, however, the argument against ARs, which feature the same mechanics as many others firearms, is that they work better. There will always be a gun that works better than other guns. The focus on the AR is merely part of an incremental push towards broader prohibitions. After all, many gun controllers openly argue that we should roll back technology to musketalso a weapon of warbecause the founders never imagined firearms would become more powerful. This is historically inaccurate, as well. But when politicians go back to writing pamphlets rather than making their cases on TV and the internet, we can start to have that conversation. David Harsanyi is a Senior Editor at The Federalist. He is the author of the new book, First Freedom: A Ride Through America's Enduring History with the Gun, From the Revolution to Today. Follow him on Twitter. Back to Top In response to the explosive growth of Christianity in China, the countrys communist authorities have ramped up efforts to curb the trendimprisoning Christians, shutting down churches and schools, and moving to release their own state-sanitized revision of the Bible. Last December, Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu became a target of such efforts, forced to shut its doors as an estimated 100 members were hauled away by state police. This included the pastor, Wang Yi, and his wife, Jiang Rong, both of whom are still detained for inciting to subvert state power, a crime that could keep them in prison for up to 15 years. According to church sources, authorities have now arrested more than 300 members of their church, including children. As we witness these violations of individual freedom, it can be easy to focus only on resisting and restricting the autocrats at the top and how we might dismantle their preferred methods of systemic oppressionin this case, Chinese-style Communism. Indeed, this is an important and necessary step. Yet according to Yi himself, now detained in a jail cell, the revolution thats needed is not so much against Communism as it is for the Kingdom of God, which, in turn, is sure to spread the law of liberty up and down and back again. In a sermon titled The Gospel of Peace, preached almost a year ago before his imprisonment, Yi outlined his views on the political significance of the cross, emphasizing that its power comes not from humanistic control and manipulation but from an free-flowing peace that repairs and restores peoples, communities, economies, and ideological factions across public life. The gospel is true politics, Yi explains. It is a higher kind of politics, the politics of God. It is a kind of politics that is invisible, that does not need the sword, that refuses the sword, that says, put your sword away. Those who do not believe the gospel think that politics ultimately depends on the sword, dont they? How can you have politics without relying on the sword? How can you gather together those who are scattered about? How can you rule? How can you get rid of the walls dividing people? How can you maintain stability? You can listen to an excerpt of the sermon here: Speaking directly to his congregation, Yi highlights the significance of all this in their specific situation. In our church, are there descendants of Communist Party members and descendants of Kuomintang members? I believe there are, Yi explains. In our church, are there capitalists and workers? I believe there are. In our church, are there people who were Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution? Are there people who, during the Revolution, were bullied by Red Guards and whose homes were ransacked by them? There are, arent there? Amid these divisions, and amid the past social and economic destruction and ongoing oppression, the gospel is still wielding restorative power in repairing these relationshipsall at work through local churches such as theirs. If the church becomes full of former Communist Party members and former Kuomintang members, and the two confess their sins to each other and repent of their sins, and through the redemption of Christ become brothers and members of His body, if they come together to the Lords table, let me ask you, does this have political significance? Yi asks. Of course it has political significance. For Yi, these are the relationships that will repair the broader social order. If they are given room to flourish from the standpoint of policy, that restoration can certainly be accelerated. But without them in the first place, the changes on the surface will be merely that. For full and authentic flourishing to take place across all of society, those systems need to be inhabited by something true. If they arent, Yi explains, communism will only be replaced by a different idol unto man: No matter how messed up Chinese society is, no matter how despotic the rulers in China are, as long as the church is there, as long as the gospel is still being preached, Chinese society is moving toward the ultimate political solution. And this ultimate political solution is the gospel, even though it may not be influencing politics and society at the moment. In China today, if we do not continue to preach the gospel, if there is not a gospel revival, if this does not continue for another 50 to 100 years, then I cant think of any other way to solve the many political conflicts between the Han and the Tibetens, between the Han and the Uygurs, between mainland China and Taiwan. As soon as the Chinese Communist Party loses its status as an autocratic power, Im afraid that Chinese society will enter into a long period of ethnic conflict and social unrest If we do not spread the gospel, China is doomed. If we do not spread the gospel, as soon as the Communist Party collapses, disaster will befall China. We see this in the American context, as wellalbeit from an entirely different cultural and political context. We, of course, have our capitalistic system, tainted and cronyist though it may be, and yet amid all of our prosperity, we see the dangers of an eroding civil society and an increasingly daunting spiritual vacuum. The places that have been spared much of the turmoil: those with strong and active churches and religious communities. Having the right economic and political systems is simply not enough. Without a corresponding moral and spiritual foundation and framework, such systems will inevitably regress, along with whatever fruits they manage to produce. In our advocacy for freedomreligious, economic, political, and otherwiselets not forget it, whatever the particular context in question. No man can bring us peace, Yi concludes. No man can remove bitterness and resentment. No man can prevent mutual animosity between people groupsOnly a gospel movement of the church can. Residents in Newton, Mass., with the support of several nonprofit advocacy groups, have filed a lawsuit against the district and even individual teachers, claiming their high school social studies curriculum is anti-Semitic and anti-Israel, a charge the district hotly denies. The move seems certain to pour more fuel on the fire of an already years-long debate in Newton over the appropriate presentation of geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East. The district serves about 13,000 students, and the city is known for having a sizable Jewish population. In the lawsuit, filed March 11 in the state superior court, the plaintiffs contend that educators in two Newton high schools have deliberately refused to comply with Massachusetts laws and regulations requiring school curricula to encourage respect for the human and civil rights of all individuals regardless of race, identity, religion, color, sex, and national origin. The complaint claims that those teachers have taught using flawed, biased materials. It goes so far as to identify specific texts, passages, maps , and other resources teachers have usedincluding a New York Times video and mainstream magazine articlesthat, it alleges, favor a Palestinian point of view over a Zionist one, misconstrue the impact of the Holocaust on the establishment of Israel, and elevate Muslim spiritual texts above Jewish and Christian ones. It further says that administrators were not responsive to the Jewish residents complaints and continued to teach certain topics even after promising to drop them until they were revised. Anti-Semitism is a deadly hatred. Defendants either disagree with this statement or share in this hatred because, for years, they have stubbornly refused to remove anti-Semitic and anti-Israel materials from the history lessons that they teach in the high schools of the City of Newton, the complaint reads. The lawsuit names the superintendent, the chairwoman of the school board, two principals, and four teachers. It doesnt seek damages but does, in effect, seek to force the schools to revise the curriculum. Curriculum Accuracy or Censorship? The lawsuit is the latest evolution of a situation thats been brewing in Newton for seven years , according to the local news station WBUR. It began with a parent complaint about a textbook that purported to provide the Palestinian perspective on world affairs. Although a state official later ruled that the district hadnt violated any rules in using that textbook, the situation attracted the attention of Charles Jacobs, who heads up the controversial nonprofit Americans for Peace and Tolerance. The group tries to counter anti-Semitism in schools and universities, the radio station reported. Jacobs has since aggressively sought to change the curriculum in Newton schools. According to the filing, in 2013, APT began filing public-records requests for history teachers email communications and copies of Newtons high school curriculum. A second nonprofit pro-Israel group, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, issued a critical monograph in 2017 based on the materials obtained by APT. Both Boston-based groups have also promoted their findings in various conservative publications. District officials have repeatedly contested those portrayals, saying the curriculum accurately reflects multiple perspectives on the conflict and the value of having students think critically about them. These baseless claims, often reliant upon materials and documents taken out of context, are misleading and only serve to denigrate the hard work and professionalism of our skilled and dedicated faculty, Superintendent David Fleishman wrote in a letter to the community last September. The teachers in the district have also been defended by the Newton affiliate of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. In a September 2018 letter, the union accused the APT of having weaponized open records requests with the goal of censoring other perspectivesnot improving curriculum. APTs supporters charge that by raising any legitimate question about specific government policies, we are anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, anti-American, or even anti-Western civilization, the union wrote in that letter. It is in fact APT that would have Newton indoctrinate its students by teaching a politicized, sanitized, and overly simplistic history. Things came to a head in November, after the residents filed an unsuccessful petition to fire Newton Supt. David Fleishman and to require the district to halt its teaching of these subjects until an unbiased curriculum could be found. At a public hearing, teachers walked out en masse and administrators refused to adopt a plan to reform the curriculum, infuriating the petitions supporters. In an unusual public statement in December, Mayor Ruthanne Fuller backed the school system. ... I categorically reject the allegation that Newton Public Schools curriculum is anti-Semitic or that there is an anti-Semitic bias inherent in our schools, she said then. I support our Newton Public Schools teachers. I am particularly disturbed by the targeting of individual teachers, and am deeply concerned about the effect these attacks on individual teachers have on the way class discussions are led and emails are written. Context for a Debate The Newton district sent along a statement in response to a query about the lawsuit, signed by Fuller, the school board, and Supt. Fleishman. While the approach is new, the allegation is the same, they wrote. We strongly disagree with the allegations and stand by the message we shared with the [Newton Public Schools] community last fall. Its also important to note that the APT has been criticized by other Jewish groups . The New England chapter of the Anti-Defamation League has also met with the district on other occasions to review curriculum materials, and has apparently approved of many of them, although it did criticize the programming of a Middle East Day in the school district last year. The executive director of the ADL New England didnt immediately return a call seeking comment on the Newton lawsuit. One of the reasons this situation warrants attention now is because of current events. Anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise in the United States and in Europeas are anti-Muslim attacks. Both appear to be at least in part tied to a global resurgence of white nationalism. State guidelines are not much help. In the United States, curriculum requirements on teaching the Holocaust and on genocide more generally are all over the place. Complicating matters, theres also been a push to increase the teaching of the Bible in public schools, and President Trump has supported those efforts. (Legislation to that end has been introduced in six states. ) All of this suggests that it is incredibly difficult for teachers, curriculum writers, and students to address things like this conflictespecially at this particular moment in time, when geopolitical and religious issues are deeply intertwined with the incredibly polarized, fractious political environment in Congress. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omars widely reported critical comments about Israel last month, for example, received both vociferous criticism and defenses from her Democratic colleagues. Her comments have been viewed as anti-Semitic by some and part of a legitimate criticism of how lobbying groups shape foreign policy by others. They have also reawakened a widespread debate about whether criticism of Israels current policies is intrinsically anti-Semitic or not. Just how do you teach all that in a classroom? Heres another wrinkle: When it comes to a situation as complicated as the political, religious, and social history of the Middle East, advocacy can cut in more than one direction. In Fairfax County, Va., a number of Muslim women have been testifying to the school board that textbooks there are biased in the other way emphasizing Arab culpability for conflict in the region. They want the school toyou guessed itsupplement or replace the curriculum. A word that often seems to come up in these debates, both with the Newton curriculum and in Virginia, is objective, and the pursuit of objectivity in curriculum. But when you have a situation in which basic facts, scholarship, and even the language and terms used are contested, who gets to decide what is and isnt objective? Increased Scrutiny for Curriculum Nationwide? Its unclear whether the ongoing situation in Newton is an outlier, or whether it presages more of these tensions showing up in American K-12 classroomsespecially if individual text choices become a battleground, as they are in Newton. At the very least, it has echoes of curriculum debates in other fields. In those cases, as in Newton, the curriculum reformers say they are seeking to expunge bias and ensure accuracy, while their opponents say the groups efforts are really a guise for censoring perspectives they dont like. An ascendant Texas group that trains local reviewers to examine textbooks claims in many of its summaries that the United States is a Christian nation and that history textbooks suffer from anti-Israel, pro-Muslim viewpoints. And in Florida, a group has successfully pushed for revisions to science textbooks because they include evolution and climate change. That group currently has its sights on removing supposedly pornographic literature . Are you a teacher who is struggling to talk about world religions or the Arab-Israeli conflict? Education Week would love to hear from you about your experiences. Please email ssawchuk@epe.org. In San Diego, the United States Border Patrol grabbed a girl who is 9 and a U.S. citizen and on her way to school, accused her of lying about her identity, then detained her for 36 hours. Many families in the San Diego-Tijuana area cross the border routinely for work, school, and shopping. The child and her mother live on the Mexico side, and school is on the U.S. side. They were reunited after the kid had been held away from her parents for 36 hours, when the Mexican consulate got involved. It's hard to imagine this sort of thing routinely happening under Trump's white supremacist presidency to families who look differently. Say, blonde and white and wealthy. Below, the NBC San Diego news segment video. From NBC San Diego's online report: Thelma Galaxia said her friend, Michelle Cardenas, was driving each of their two children from Tijuana, where they live, to their schools in San Ysidro Monday morning, as they do nearly every day. Galexia's 9-year-old daughter, Julia Isabel Amparo Medina, attends fourth grade at Nicoloff Elementary School and her 14-year-old son, Oscar Amparo Medina, attends ninth grade at San Ysidro High School. Both are passport-holding U.S. citizens. When they got in line at the border at 4 a.m. Monday, traffic was moving slow. Cardenas told the four children to walk across the border instead. She was going to call them an Uber so they could make it to school on time. But Oscar and Julia Medina never made it across, according to their mother. Galaxia says CBP officers accused her daughter of lying about her identity. Officers told the girl she didn't look like the girl in her passport card picture. Julia Medina told NBC 7 that CBP officers accused her of being someone else, her cousin Melanie. The children said officers also accused Oscar Medina of smuggling and other crimes which he said he didn't understand. "My daughter told her brother that the officer told her that if she admitted that she was her cousin, she would be released soon so she could see her mom," Galaxia said. "I was scared. I was sad because I didn't have my mom or my brother. I was completely by myself," Julia Medina said. She said she woke up several times throughout the night, sad because she wasn't with her family. Galaxia said officers made Oscar Medina sign a document that said his little sister was his cousin. "That is not true," Galaxia said. "She is my daughter. He was told that he would be taken to jail and they were going to charge him for human trafficking and sex trafficking." Oscar told NBC 7 he felt terrible for signing the document. He said he just wanted to see his sister. When CBP officers told Galaxia that Oscar and Julia Medina were detained, she got the Mexican consulate involved. And after the consulate got involved, the child was released, and the family reunited. CBP was asked by the San Diego NBC news reporters "why officers detained a 9-year-old U.S. citizen and kept her from her mother for 36 hours," and a spokesperson said CBP "would respond to questions when it had more details on the case." The Mexican consulate told NBC 7 it will also provide more information as to how they were able to reunite the family. [via @SaraLibby] Some falsely believe chickenpox is a harmless disease, but it can lead to death in children and adults who suffer complications. Kentucky's antivax Republican Governor Matt Bevin said in a radio interview today that he exposed his children to chickenpox intentionally so they would catch the highly contagious disease, and become immune. Bevin was on Bowling Green radio station WKCT earlier today, and revealed that his kids were "miserable for a few days" after they got chickenpox, and "they all turned out fine." Bevin and wife Glenna have nine children, four of whom are adopted. Governor Bevin said parents who fear their children will contract chickenpox and want to have their children vaccinated should do so, but that government should not mandate vaccination. From the USA Today-affiliated Courier-Journal in Kentucky: In the interview, Bevin also suggested that the government stay out of mandating vaccines. In Kentucky, varicella (chickenpox) is among vaccines mandated for all children entering kindergarten, though parents may seek religious exemptions or provide medical proof that a child has already had the disease. "And I think, why are we forcing kids to get it?" Bevin said in the radio interview, speaking about the chickenpox vaccine. "If you are worried about your child getting chickenpox or whatever else, vaccinate your child. But for some people, and for some parents, for some reason they choose otherwise. This is America. The federal government should not be forcing this upon people. They just shouldn't." Jacobson said he recommends vaccines as a safe and effective way to prevent disease. "We're no longer living in the 17th century," he said. "I really recommend to my parents that they vaccinate their children, that they do it in a timely manner, and they recognize they are doing the right thing for their children." Bevin's comments followed news reports this week of a chickenpox outbreak at a Northern Kentucky Catholic school, where at least one student reported not being vaccinated for religious reasons. Chickenpox is an infectious disease that produces fever and itchy skin blisters. It is preventable with a vaccine that became publicly available in the U.S. in 1995. Many people falsely believe chickenpox is a harmless disease, but it can lead to death in children and adults who suffer complications. The Courier-Journal quotes Dr. Ruth Carrico, an associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in Kentucky: "On more than one occasion, I have had a patient who is a pregnant woman who became exposed to chickenpox and became ill and developed pneumonia. Either she or her baby or both did not survive." Carrico said people should get the chickenpox vaccine and other immunizations not just for themselves, but for others who may not be able to do so for medical reasons and who are susceptible to infection. [Photo illustration from public health imagery and photograph from Governor Matt Bevin's campaign Facebook page.] The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. I read William Gibson's Neuromancer for the first time in 1985. I bought a copy at the San Francisco State University bookstore (Carla was attending college there and I was working at Memorex/Burrough in nearby Santa Clara as a mechanical engineer) after we went to a talk by Timothy Leary and he raved about it. It's probably safe to say that without Neuromancer, Carla and I might not have ever started the bOING bOING zine in 1987, because the novel was hugely influential on the way we thought about technology and society. Neuromancer is on sale on Amazon in the Kindle edition for a very low price right now. Get it before the price goes back up. Ritu Beri, one of the most known fashion designers in the country now adds another feather to her cap as the Cultural and Tourism Ambassador of Uzbekistan in India by the Ministry of Tourism of Uzbekistan. Ritus appointment is a recognition of her contribution towards bringing two countries together by way of her fusing cultures through her fashion line designs. She is the first Indian to be appointed to this position. A stunning fashion show with Uzbekistan designers showing in tandem with Ritu Beris collection created using Uzbekistan fabrics was the highlight of a glamorous evening hosted by Uzbekistans Ambassador H.E. Farhod Arziev at the embassy. As part of her responsibilities as Cultural and Tourism Ambassador, Ritu will plan and initiate new ventures that will strengthen the long-standing cultural ties between the two countries. The beautiful designer, known for her dramatic and unusual creations with contemporary elegance and flamboyance, says, I am delighted and honoured to present the glory of Uzbekistan and create a connecting story between the two countries. It would be my endeavour to deepen the cultural and social ties between the two countries. Farhod Arziev, Ambassador of Uzbekistan added It is a pleasure to appoint Ms. Beri as the cultural and tourism ambassador of Uzbekistan. Though she had already been doing a lot of work at her personal level, now there is official recognition of her work. Her work would lead to the start of a movement which brings greater closeness between the two countries. Designer Ritu Beri launched her label in 1990 when India was still awakening to the couture era. She forayed into France, and as a protege of embroidery maestro Francois Lesage she became the first Indian fashion ambassador to show on the catwalks of Paris. Her presentations gave the French fashion connoisseurs a glimpse of mystical India. She then traveled the globe showing her creations to critical acclaim. She is the recipient of the prestigious French honor, Chevalier des art et des Lettres award. Former US President Mr. Bill Clinton, Hollywood celebrities like Nicole Kidnam, Ivana Trump, Supermodels, famous Parisian Socialites, to the Prima Donna of Indian Movies and a bevy of many others have worn the Ritu Beri label. She is also the founder of the Blessed Hearts Foundation, a charity for Children and The Luxury League, a Not for Profit organization, which aims to brand India globally. Intended as a discussion group, the blog has evolved to be more of a reading list of current issues affecting our county, its government and people. All reasonable comments and submissions welcomed. Email us at: bill.pysson@gmail.com REMEMBER: To view our sister blog for education issues: www.district100watchdog.blogspot.com Bowalley Road Rules The blogosphere tends to be a very noisy, and all-too-often a very abusive, place. I intend Bowalley Road to be a much quieter, and certainly a more respectful, place. So, if you wish your comments to survive the moderation process, you will have to follow the Bowalley Road Rules. These are based on two very simple principles: Courtesy and Respect. Comments which are defamatory, vituperative, snide or hurtful will be removed, and the commentators responsible permanently banned. Anonymous comments will not be published. Real names are preferred. If this is not possible, however, commentators are asked to use a consistent pseudonym. Comments which are thoughtful, witty, creative and stimulating will be most welcome, becoming a permanent part of the Bowalley Road discourse. However, I do add this warning. If the blog seems in danger of being over-run by the usual far-Right suspects, I reserve the right to simply disable the Comments function, and will keep it that way until the perpetrators find somewhere more appropriate to vent their collective spleen. v777999/iStock(MARICOPA, Ariz.) -- A YouTube star is accused of physically abusing her seven adoptive children, who told authorities they were pepper-sprayed, beaten and deprived of food and water if they didn't participate in her videos. Machelle Hobson, 48, whose YouTube channel "Fantastic Adventures" has garnered almost 800,000 subscribers and 250 million views since 2012, was arrested last Friday following a welfare check at her home in Maricopa, Arizona, about 35 miles south of downtown Phoenix, according to the complaint filed in Pinal County Superior Court. A 19-year-old woman told the Maricopa Police Department on March 13 that her younger adoptive stepsister disclosed being abused by her mother, Hobson. Officers then conducted a welfare check at Hobson's residence, where they found seven children "who appeared to be malnourished, due to their pale completion, dark rings under their eyes, underweight, and they stated they were thirsty and hungry," according to the probable cause statement. All seven children were removed from Hobson's custody. Police interviewed two of the children and attempted to speak with a third but "she was visibly nervous, shaking, and it appeared she was too scared to answer any questions," according to the probable cause statement. The four other children were not questioned. One child told police Hobson locked her in a closet for days at a time without food or water and made her wear a pull-up diaper, not allowing her to use the bathroom. The child alleged her adoptive mother would spray her and her six siblings with pepper spray, spank them and force them to take ice baths. She allegedly would further punish them if they resisted, according to the complaint. The child told police she was once pepper-sprayed between her legs and was in pain for several days. Another child told police, "I either get beat with a hanger or belt," "or a brush," "or get pepper-sprayed from head to toe," according to the probable cause statement. He also alleged Hobson would grab his "privates" and, on numerous occasions, pinched him with her fingernails until he bled. Hobson denied the allegations, saying the only forms of punishment she uses are grounding, spanking and making the kids stand in the corner, according to the complaint. All of the kids mentioned having to partake in their mother's YouTube series, which featured the adopted children in different scenarios, according to the complaint. The kids told police they were punished if they forgot their lines or didn't follow Hobson's directions. "This is one of the reasons their mom took them out of school, so they can keep filming their series and they mentioned they have not been in school for years," the probable cause statement reads. The YouTube channel was still up on the video-sharing site as of Wednesday morning but later appeared to be taken down. YouTube will terminate accounts upon discovery of repeated violations of its community guidelines. "We work closely with leading child safety organizations and others in our industry to protect young people. When we're made aware of serious allegations of this nature we investigate and take action," a YouTube spokesperson told ABC News in a statement Thursday morning. "We immediately suspended monetization when notified of the arrest. In cases where there are Community Guidelines violations, we may take additional actions, including terminating the channel." The Pinal County Attorney's Office called the allegations "highly disturbing and alarming." "Children are our community's most precious resource, and this office is committed to holding those individuals who choose to harm them fully accountable for their actions," Pinal County Attorney Kent Volkmer said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. Hobson and her two adult sons, Logan and Ryan Hackney, were taken into custody by local law enforcement at their residence on March 15, according to the complaint. Logan Hackney allegedly admitted to police that the children would be locked in the closet for long periods of time as punishment and that he had knowledge of the alleged pepper spray and ice baths. He also told police he observed physical injuries on the kids and heard them scream and cry, according to the complaint. Logan Hackney claimed he had a discussion with his brother about reporting the child abuse, and the children told police Ryan Hackney would sneak them food when they were locked in the closet. Hobson and her two sons had their initial court appearance on Saturday. Hobson's bond was set at $200,000 secured and she remains in custody, according to the Pinal County Attorney's Office. She was booked on two counts of child molestation, seven counts of child abuse, five counts of unlawful imprisonment and five counts of child neglect. Hobson has a preliminary hearing scheduled for March 26. The attorney appointed to Hobson did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment Thursday morning. Hobson's last name was listed as "Hackney" in the initial complaint by the Pinal County Attorney's Office, which later changed it. Logan and Ryan Hackney, Hobson's biological children, were booked into Pinal County Jail on seven counts each of failing to report child abuse. They were released on their own recognizance on Tuesday and are due back in court April 8. Logan and Ryan Hackney have hired a private attorney, who did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment Thursday morning. Zeb and Tawny Schnorr, a couple in Scottsdale, Arizona, run their own YouTube channel starring their 10-year-old and 6-year-old sons called "Extreme Toys TV," which has amassed over 4.1 million subscribers and over 2.1 million views since 2015. The Schnorrs told ABC News they have never met Hobson but her two adult sons contacted them about a year ago for help with filming and editing content. And just a few weeks ago, Logan and Ryan Hackney brought over Hobson's seven adoptive children to the couple's house to film a collaboration. The Schnorrs told ABC News they didn't notice anything out of the ordinary with the seven children, who appeared to be well-behaved and playing normally with their two kids. The parents said they were shocked to learn of the allegations. "I just wish that there was something I would've seen," Tawny Schnorr told ABC News in an interview Wednesday. "I was one-on-one with these kids, and there was no sign they were in danger." "I had those kids in my house, twice they were here, and I just feel like it was my responsibility as a mom to help them and I feel like I could've saved them," she added, in between tears. "The things those kids had gone through and were going through, my heart breaks for them because nobody deserves that." Copyright 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. What do I need to apply for a UK visa from South Africa? Most South Africans long to explore the United Kingdom for varied reasons that stretch between adventurous castles to cultural diversity and academic purposes. Even better, you will have plentiful to discover while threading on powerful states such as England, London, Scotland, and Wales. For successful completion of your UK visa South Africa application process, you must have particular documents and follow the laid down procedure. Image: instagram.com, @marcgf87 (modified by author) Source: Instagram UK visa application is now more straightforward and accessible than ever before. South African applicants with passports must first acquire this travelling authorization before going to the United Kingdom. The following thread provides sufficient details on all the mandatory requirements and processes when hunting for this travelling permit. Most importantly, this process is exclusively customized for UK visa application South Africa. How to apply for UK Visa in South Africa Start your application at www.visa4uk.fco.gov.uk/home/welcome and www.gov.uk/. While on these UK visa South Africa application pages, provide all the necessary details before proceeding to local application offices for the completion of the process. It is always advisable to complete your application ahead of time to avoid rush hour preparations. READ ALSO: Passport application at banks: 10 crucial tips 2019 Types of UK visa South Africa Before kick-starting your application, it is necessary to establish why you want to travel to the UK. Once you are clear on the reason of travel, prepare all your UK visa application South Africa supporting documents. 1. Standard visitor Citizens who intend to travel to the UK as tourists or business people should apply for the standard Visitor traveling authorization. Applicants under this category can flexibly extend their stay for another six months before the expiry of the first duration. Such is the case with applicants who visit the UK for private medical treatments on condition that the medical treatment bills are cleared fully. Image: visa4uk.fco.gov.uk Source: UGC 2. Marriage Visitor Applicants intending to travel to the United Kingdom for marriage or registration of civil partnerships and return after that must apply for Marriage Visitor traveling permit. 3. Permitted Paid Engagement This is also available for applicants with invitations to the UK for a particular paid task or as an expert in a particular line of work. The earliest you can apply for this type of UK South Africa travel authorization document is 3 months prior to your travel. 4. Parent of a Tier 4 Child For South Africans with children attending fee-paying independent day schools in the United Kingdom, parents are advised to apply for Parent of a Tier 4 Child traveling authorization and renew it annually alongside adherence to all requirements until the child attains an age of 12. 5. Transit South Africans travelling to other destinations through the United Kingdom must apply for the Transit Visa which may include Visitor in Transit or Direct Airside Transit. It is advisable to apply for DATV if you do not intend to leave the airport and will not undergo border control when shifting flights. Visitor in Transit is crucial if changing flights will require that you change planes and you will be leaving the UK within 48 hours. 6. Short Term Study South Africans eyeing for UK short courses should apply for Short Term Study travel permit. 7. General student (Tier 4) Applicants who are less than 16 years old with licensed 4 Tier sponsorship should apply for Tier 4 (General) Student traveling authorization to the United Kingdom. 8. Work traveling authorization Working is another common cause of interest that often attracts most South Africans with the intention of travelling to the UK. It is appropriate to apply for the most suitable work traveling authorization based on different kinds of professional work experience. UK Visa South Africa validity Standard Visitor: 6 months Permitted Paid Engagement: 1 month Marriage Visitor: 6 months Short-Term Study: 6 months Parent of a Tier 4 Child: 6-12 Months Visa in Transit: 48 hours Direct Airside Transit: 24 hour Tier 4 (Child) Student: 6 years, 4 months for under 16 and 3 years, 4 months for 16 and 17 Tier 4 (General) Student: 6 months for course dependent and longer for course dependent How much does a visa to the UK cost? The cost of applying UK Visa South Africa varies considerably, primarily depending on the type. Provided below is a breakdown of various UK visa South Africa prices. 1. Standard Visitor Image: visa-fees.homeoffice.gov.uk Source: UGC 2. Short-term study and visa in transit Image: visa-fees.homeoffice.gov.uk Source: UGC 3. Parent of children at school visas and child visitors visas Image: visa-fees.homeoffice.gov.uk Source: UGC UK Visa South Africa costs mentioned above are dynamic and may no longer apply soon. Always check with the mentioned online application platforms for an updated list of Visa application prices. UK visa South Africa application process and guide 2019 The earliest duration within which you can successfully secure the official traveling authorization to the United Kingdom is three months. Those seeking Marriage, Visitor, Standard, or Permitted Paid Engagement traveling authorization documents should closely follow the procedure outlined below. Those seeking other types of the traveling permit must first register with www.visa4uk.fco.gov.uk/home/welcome before applying for their Visa to the UK. Visit the UK visa application portal at www.gov.uk/apply-uk-visa Check the type of a visa you intend to apply. Fill the application form provided. Check that you have a passport document that is valid. Now fill the form of declaration. Confirm all the information provided including the supporting papers that you intend to supply. Confirm your visa duration. Follow the system prompts to clear your application payments to complete the process. Print the form then deliver it to UK Visa application offices. Secure an appointment to complete your application process with all your original application documents. UK visa application South Africa centres Applicants can now flexibly complete their applications under the following UK Visa centres between 08:30 and 15:30 on weekdays. Cape Town - 2 De Smit Street, Green Point Durban - 430 Peter Mokaba Ridge, 3rd Floor, the Atrium Port Elizabeth - Ground Floor, Fairview Office Park, 66 Ring Road, Greenacres Johannesburg - 2nd - 3rd Floor, 24 Central Building, 8 Gwen Lane and Fredman Drive Pretoria - 1st Floor, Menlyn Corner, 87 Frikkie De Beer Street, Menlyn Note that those in Lesotho and intend to get the traveling permit to the United Kingdom should apply from South Africa. READ ALSO: Top 10 tips for emigrating from South Africa 2019 If you carefully follow our guide on UK visa South Africa applications, you will successfully obtain the permit to travel to the United Kingdom. All the best and enjoy your stay in the UK! READ ALSO: 10 Tips on passport renewal in South Africa 2019 How to get your tax number in 2019 How to get police clearance South Africa? How to track a number in South Africa Facts on unemployment in South Africa Source: Briefly.co.za The need for convenience has prompted a large percentage of South African citizens and residents to acquire a car. Unfortunately, criminals have taken advantage of this need and have intensified their vehicle hijacking activities. The hijackers often pursue car owners in public spaces, such as shopping malls, from where they rob them off their personal items as well as their vehicles. While every driver is at risk of vehicle hijacking, the top 5 most hijacked cars in South Africa have been identified, and the owners of these models should exercise more caution while using them. Image: pexels.com (Modified by author) Source: UGC Statistics from the police force in the country show that 16,325 vehicle hijackings were reported between April and March 2019. It is astonishing to note that at least one motorist gets hijacked every 32 minutes in the country. The 5 most hijacked cars in South Africa are selected based on their demand in the market and the prospect of valuable items belonging to the owners of luxury automobile brands. Many citizens and residents own the most stolen cars in South Africa because they offer utility and comfort at an affordable cost. Criminals, therefore, find it easy to resell them or to dismantle them for the resale of their parts. Which cars get hijacked the most in South Africa? The following cars are most subject to hijacking; Volkswagen Polo For years now, this compact automobile has remained a best seller in the South African market. It is one of the top stolen cars in South Africa due to its high demand. There is a ready market for the spare parts, and the model can be reused for other criminal activities. What colour car is most likely to get stolen? Interestingly, the green coloured Polo is more likely to be hijacked. Since this model is the most commonly targeted, the owners and drivers ought to exercise caution by parking only in secure places that are well lit and with security guards on the watch. Driving will all the doors locked and all windows rolled up is also recommended. READ ALSO: Somizis G-Wagon was stolen in a hijacking incident in Ridgeway Johannesburg 2. Toyota Hilux and other Toyota Models It is indisputable that Toyota is one of the biggest sellers in the African market. The Hilux is not only bold but also sporty and with impressive specifications. For this reason, it has been bought by many locals. Unfortunately, it is not among the low-risk cars in South Africa as many units have either been hijacked or stolen. Similarly, the Toyota Fortuner has been targeted. Both these models have a sense of class and style and are the envy of many. Criminals usually hijack and steal these vehicles to filter them into the same market or to resell them to the neighbouring nations. Other Toyota models that are more susceptible to hijacking are the Etios, Auris and Corolla. 3. Ford Ranger Criminals have not spared this sturdy car that offers both utility and luxury. The model is associated with class, so the criminals are out to steal the possessions of their owners. Hijackers can also resell the automobile without strain. Any Ford Ranger driver should never store their valuable belongings inside this model. 4. BMW X5 One would expect this luxury automobile to be among the least hijacked cars in South Africa. Unfortunately, this is not the reality. Criminals are after these luxury units for resale both locally and in the broader African market. Since their owners can afford a few other luxuries, any valuable items that may be inside the vehicle are much sought after. 5. Chevrolet Spark The Spark is a versatile model that was notably made by Chevrolet for use in the city environment. This subcompact is economical in fuel utilisation and adapted for cruising the streets. Many city dwellers in South Africa own it. Its high demand in the urban centres has made it every criminals target since the parts are very marketable. The models are also stolen for resale at a lower price. Image: pixabay.com (Modified by author) Source: UGC How to avoid being carjacked in South Africa All vehicle owners should know that carjacking victims are carefully vetted before the crime happens. It is thus necessary to minimise susceptibility by; Avoiding strict routines when driving. Whenever possible, drivers should avoid travelling alone. Drivers should always survey the external surroundings and the inside of their cars before unlocking them. Drivers should know all the police stations within their locality and avoid areas where high crime rates have been recorded. Drivers should leave an adequate room when parking behind other cars to allow them to make an emergency exit if needed. Drivers should avoid travelling very late at night or very early in the morning because carjacking criminals are more likely to attack then. What is the least hijacked car in South Africa? Another feasible way of avoiding carjacking is exploring and selecting from among vehicles that are the least likely to be abducted in South Africa. Examples of models that are unlikely to be stolen or hijacked include the Peugeot 308, Subaru Outback, Volvo V40, Citroen C4 Picasso, Honda Civic, Alfa Romeo Giulietta. and Mitsubishi Outlander. The critical step to take before buying an automobile is extensive research before making a decision on the car model to purchase. Being carjacked is a nightmare experience for any driver. In South Africa, criminals have been hijacking vehicles at an alarming rate. What cars are mostly stolen? This is a question every car owner asks themselves. The 5 most hijacked cars in South Africa cars include the Volkswagen Polo, Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger, BMW X5, and Chevrolet Spark. Nonetheless, all vehicle models are at risk of being stolen or hit by criminals. While the government should work towards mitigating these crimes, all drivers must always be cautious while driving. READ ALSO: 5 best electric cars South Africa 2019 Top 10 worst selling cars in SA revealed Source: Briefly.co.za Transparency International Canada claims in a new report that criminals are "snow-washing" billions of dollars through anonymous purchases of luxury homes in the GTA. What does that mean? "Bring your dirty money to Canada and it will be cleaned like the pure white snow," explains James Cohen of Transparency International. The anti-corruption group, along with Canadians for Tax Fairness and Publish What You Pay Canada, presented their report on the risks of widespread money laundering at a news conference at Queen's Park on Thursday. The report's authors looked at some 1.4 million residential property transactions dating back to 2008. Among the group's chief concerns is that privately-owned corporations have spent $28.4 billion on luxury residential homes (those worth between $7-10 million) over that timeframe and didn't provide information about their beneficial owners. Graeme Roy/The Canadian Press Those companies also appear to have paid $9.8 billion in cash for homes, something that could allow them to dodge the scrutiny of financial institutions. When they did require mortgages, half of the borrowing done by corporations was through unregistered lenders that are not subjected to anti-money laundering provisions, Transparency found. CBC The report says between 2008 to 2018, $25.4 billion in residential mortgages in the GTA fell under this category. Report author Adam Ross noted that the Toronto housing market has ranked among the least affordable in the world, with rental properties in short supply and buying a home in the city out of the reach of many. "Dirty money exacerbates this affordability crisis by adding extra demand from buyers who have a perverse incentive to overpay for properties in order to wash more dirty money through a transaction," said Ross. "None of us wants to live next door to a criminal or to a property that sits empty and unmaintained." Story continues Ontario's previous Liberal government brought in a foreign-buyers' tax in 2017 and instituted audits to discourage speculation, however it's unclear if that's cutting down on the activity. Ross says lax enforcement of suspected money laundering has encouraged criminals to come here, as such cases rarely go to trial and are often settled out of court if they do. But he said he was glad that the federal budget tabled on Tuesday added $16.9 million in funding for the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), the country's intelligence unit devoted to detecting, preventing and deterring money-laundering. Most transactions are transparent, real estate board says The Toronto Real Estate Board says there are already mechanisms to detect and deter money laundering in the real estate market, and that everyone involved must comply with federal rules, which are regularly audited by FINTRAC. "It is also worth pointing out that the vast majority of the more than half a trillion dollars worth of transactions over the past decade were transparent in nature," TREB CEO John DiMichele said in a statement to CBC Toronto. DiMichele said there's nothing wrong with property owners wanting to remain anonymous if they choose to. Ontario's land registry system allows companies or trusts to hold the title to property to accomplish that. FILE PHOTO: Visitors gather outside the Nokia booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Sergio Perez HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's data protection ombudsman said on Thursday he would investigate whether Nokia-branded phones had breached data rules after a report said the handsets sent information to China. Nokia-branded mobile phones are developed under license by Finnish company HMD Global, which said no personal data had been shared with a third party although it said there had been a data software glitch with one batch of handsets that had been fixed. Ombudsman Reijo Aarnio told Reuters he would assess whether there were any breaches that involved "personal information and if there has been a legal justification for this." Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported on Thursday a data breach related to the Nokia 7 Plus model, built by HMD. It said the company had "admitted that an unspecified number of Nokia 7 Plus phones had sent data to the Chinese server." Nokia, which receives royalties from HMD but has no direct investment in the firm, declined to comment. U.S. accusations that Chinese telecom giant Huawei posed an espionage risk has heightened Western government security concerns. Huawei, which competes with Nokia in the network business, denies it poses any such risk. NRK said it was alerted to the data issue after a Nokia 7 Plus user contacted them to say his phone often contacted a particular server, sending data packages in an unencrypted format. NRK said HMD had declined to say who owned the server. "We can confirm that no personally identifiable information has been shared with any third party," HMD Global said in an email to Reuters, adding there had been "an error in software packaging process in a single batch of one device model". "Such data was never processed and no person could have been identified based on this data," HDM said, adding the error had been fixed in February and that nearly all affected devices had installed the fix. Nokia, once the world's dominant cellphone maker but which struggled to keep up with the shift to smartphones, sold all its handset activities and is now focused on telecom network equipment. The handset business was initially sold to Microsoft in 2014. HMD, set up by former Nokia executives, took over the Nokia feature phone business from Microsoft in 2016 and struck a deal with Nokia Oyj to use the brand on smartphones. (Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki and Terje Solsvik in Oslo, additional reporting by Tarmo Virki; Editing by Edmund Blair) By Gabriela Baczynska and William James BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Britain could leave the European Union without a Brexit deal on April 12 if lawmakers fail next week to back Prime Minister Theresa May's agreement with Brussels, EU leaders said after a crisis summit in Brussels on Thursday. With just a week to go until Britain risks lurching out into legal limbo at midnight (2300 GMT) next Friday, EU leaders gave May an extra two months, until May 22, to leave if she wins next week's vote in parliament. But she failed to convince the other 27 that she would succeed, prompting a frantic seven hours of talks to find a way to get Britain out without seeming to push. The conclusion was a deal that suggested that Britain could, if May fails, come back and ask for a much longer delay. But this would be on the condition -- likely a major stumbling block -- that it takes part in elections to the new EU parliament on May 23. For it to do so, British election law says that would have to be announced six weeks beforehand, by April 12. If it does not call an EU election, Britain will be out. "The European Council agrees to an extension until 22 May 2019, provided the Withdrawal Agreement is approved by the House of Commons next week," the statement said. "If the Withdrawal Agreement is not approved by the House of Commons next week, the European Council agrees to an extension until 12 April 2019 and expects the United Kingdom to indicate a way forward before this date for consideration by the European Council." (Reporting by Robin Emmott, Gabriela Baczynska, Elizabeth Piper, Richard Lough, Anthony Deutsch, Philip Blenkinsop, Giulia Paravicini, William James, Thomas Escritt, Jan Strupczewski and Alastair Macdonald in Brussels and Guy Faulconbridge and Kylie MacLellan in London Writing by Alastair Macdonald, Jan Strupczewski and Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Alastair Macdonald) Inland waterways become part of Nepal-India trade and transit treaties India has agreed to incorporate Nepals proposal to extend inland waterway facilities up to its nearest navigation points in the bilateral trade and transit treaties for third country trade via India. The City of St. John's has been sending out far too many messages of condolence lately, according to Mayor Danny Breen, who, along with other members of council, spoke passionately about combating intolerance and hate during Tuesday's meeting. St. John's city council began and ended with comments of support for the Muslim community at large in the wake of a mass shooting on the other side of the globe. Fifty people were killed in a terror attack Friday that targeted mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. While messages of support like the one he sent the local Muslim community are comforting, Breen questions if it goes far enough. "We need to work hard at making sure that the City of St. John's is inclusive, that it's welcoming and it's a place where all the residents feel that they belong." Non-welcoming emails Breen himself has received emails "from people who've made comments that I certainly didn't appreciate. And I know that that's not the type of thing that I want to let go." "And I think we all have a responsibility to make sure that people realize that that's not the type of community that we have here in this." Though not threatening, the emails, he said, were certainly not welcoming. Sherry Vivian/CBC "And that's not the St. John's that I know and that's not the feelings of the whole community, but those feelings are there," Breen said. "And I think that they need to be identified when they're brought out." Suggestion to join anti-racism network Meanwhile, Coun. Maggie Burton expressed her concern over reading comments on a local social media page, in which a commenter lauded the attacks in New Zealand, adding the shooter "was right to feel justified in wanting to murder Muslims." Burton suggested that St. John's join a chorus of 75 other Canadian municipalities who work to combat racism and discrimination. The Canadian Coalition of Municipalities Against Racism and Discrimination, a network of the Canadian Coalition of UNESCO, works together to develop policies of inclusion. To put action into words, Breen said leaders such as himself need to be public in his support for others and ensure the city offers inclusive programs. Read more articles from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador Saskatchewan's government is putting $30 million more toward mental health and addictions in 2019-20. About half of that money $13.7 million is going toward North Battleford's new Saskatchewan Hospital, which offers long term psychiatric rehabilitation. The federal government has also contributed $6.25 million, bringing the Ministry of Health's total dollars for mental health and addictions to $402 million in 2019-20. "We just think we need to do better on the whole mental health front and this is, I would say, a huge step forward," Health Minister Jim Reiter said. He said the budget includes "the largest commitment ever to mental health services in our province." Reiter highlighted more beds, extra staff and new mental health clinics as some of the province's key areas of spending. The province has also sectioned off $1 million for harm reduction initiatives. The government outlined the plans for new beds in its release: About 75 new residential support beds for people transitioning from hospital back into the community About 50 pre and post-addiction treatment beds for people moving between detox and in-patient treatment or back to the community 10 new in-patient addiction treatment beds at Pine Lodge in Indian Head Six new inpatient addiction treatment beds at Calder Centre in Saskatoon Six new in-patient addictions beds for youth in southern Saskatchewan Opposition says dollars don't go the distance NDP finance critic Trent Wotherspoon welcomed the "smart investment," but said this is just a start. "It's certainly not going the distance to the level that Sask people need and deserve," Wotherspoon said. He said the province still has a long way to go when it comes to closing the gaps for timely supports and services. "We need to realize that we have a crystal meth crisis across this province that's ravaging people's lives and families and communities," he said. Story continues "The kind of detox and rehab that's needed there is a longer duration." Temporary unit becomes permanent The province is putting $1.5 million in funding to turn the temporary Mental Health Assessment Unit in Saskatoon permanent as a Mental Health Short Stay Unit. It has seven beds and will provide people with acute mental health care needs up to seven days of care. The province had previously indicated it intended to close the temporary unit, causing concern amongst mental health advocates. The new budget also allots $1.6 million to start up three "Rapid Access to Addiction Medicine Clinics" in Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert. Sask. seeking new hires The province said it is looking to hire more staff to provide mental health and addictions treatment. The province hopes to use $1.1 million to hire up to 12 full-time staff to help kids and youth who need mental health care. It is also allotting $650,000 to hire up to seven primary care counsellors. More than 139,000 people in the province seek care every year from counsellors like this, often for anxiety and depression. It alloted $515,000 to hire an unspecified number of pediatric nurses and social workers at the not-yet-open Jim Pattison Children's Hospital emergency department. The province is putting $300,000 to help the La Ronge Detox Centre provide 24/7 nursing support. Getty Images/iStockphoto Boosting existing services The government is also putting money toward existing organizations: $1.2 million for 18 mental health walk-in counseling clinics across through province through Family Services Saskatchewan $420,000 for vocational programming for people with mental health needs through Canadian Mental Health Association of Saskatchewan $200,000 split between the Autism Resource Centre in Regina and Autism Services of Saskatoon $250,000 for Mental Health Commission of Canada's Roots of Hope Suicide Prevention Initiative in Buffalo Narrows $600,000 annually for Sanctum 1.5, a 10 bed unit to help pregnant women with HIV and substance abuse issues (in partnership with the Ministry of Social Services) More Saskatchewan budget stories St. John's had a totally different look and feel to it in August 1995. No tourists rushed in for fine dining, there were no slick commercials promoting the province abroad, and the Hsu family had just landed at the airport from Taiwan. "Before we came here didn't even know what Newfoundland was," Li-Hui Hsu said. "We never heard of it." Hsu is looking back on her family's first days in the city as the province's Sharing Our Cultures program marks its 20th anniversary this week, an annual province-wide effort to foster diversity. The Hsus took part in its very first edition in 1999. Jeremy Eaton/CBC English immersion But years before that, the family had just arrived in St. John's: Hsu, her husband and their two children, Tzu-Hao then just 11 and her little brother Tzu-Yang, 7. Hsu had initial thoughts of continuing on to Vancouver, but didn't for fear her kids would only hang out with other Chinese or Taiwanese immigrants, and never learn English. A few short weeks later, Tzu-Hao and Tzu-Yang were dropped off at a McDonald Drive Elementary classroom with no grasp on a new language. "They didn't know anything about English," their mother said. A steep learning curve for two young Taiwanese students, but a challenge they were up for, even if there was only one English word they knew. "I am in a place where I don't speak the language and the only thing I recognize is McDonald's. What am I going to do?" Tzu-Hao said, with a smile. Now a business manager, Tzu-Hao spent a lot of time learning phrases from the Chinese-English dictionary their mother had bought her and Tzu-Yang. I am in a place where I don't speak the language and the only thing I recognize is McDonald's. What am I going to do? - Tzu-Hao Hsu As practice, she'd just blurt out phrases and base the success of her English on her friends' reactions, while Tzu-Yang took a more calculated, quiet approach and soaked in all the language he could. Story continues "The teachers were a little concerned 'he doesn't ever say anything,'" Tzu-Yang said. "Then a couple of months in they said they couldn't get me to shut up." Both Hsu kids said they benefited greatly from the English as a Second Language (ESL) program at their school, and their vocabulary, along with their circle of friends, quickly expanded. When their mother floated the idea of moving, "they said, 'Mommy no, we are staying here,'" Li-Hui Hsu recalled. "Then we went to look for a house and that was it. No more talking about moving." Submitted by the Hsu family 'It was a lot of fun' Then, in 1999 the Sharing Our Culture initiative began, with its goal to promote inter-cultural understanding in the province and connect culturally diverse school-aged children. As part of that program 20 years ago, Tzu-Yang and three other ESL students got the chance to share with their peers the stories of where they came from. The four Grade 6 students partnered with high schoolers, with the older students asking their younger counterparts questions about how they grew up. "It was a lot of fun," Tzu-yang said. "They just wanted a chance for all of us to tell our own stories about our countries, our hometown and our interests." Out of those stories came four books, one for each ESL student, that became teaching tools for social studies classes. The Hsu family still has a copy of Tzu-Yang's, filled with colourful drawings based on his stories. Submitted by Hsu family Likewise, Tzu-Hao also got the chance to teach her peers about Taiwan through the Sharing Our Culture program. This year the event makes four school stops across the province: in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Grand Falls-Windsor, Corner Brook and at The Rooms in St. John's. Now Newfoundlanders The Hsu children both attended Memorial University and continue to live and work in St. John's, and have witnessed the transformation of the city into a diverse, dynamic place. "You don't realize it, until you sit down and think about how far we've come as far as multiculturalism," Tzu-Yang said. "You take a stroll on Water Street now the cuisine that is available now is not even comparable to 10 years ago." His sister calls their life here a "fantastic ride," as she now identifies as Newfoundlander, Canadian and Taiwanese. You take a stroll on Water Street now the cuisine that is available now is not even comparable to 10 years ago. - Tzu-Yang Hsu "There were some unique challenges to go with it. Once your path is established, being here, or being anywhere else in the world, it's no different," she said. As her two children told CBC News the story of their start in St. John's in 1995, Li-Hui smiles. "My daughter-in-law is a Newfoundlander, my son-in-law is a Newfoundlander which is really, really good," she said. "Newfoundland people are really, really kind and nice." Her ties to the province are about to grow even stronger: she's set to become a grandmother in the coming months. Read more articles from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador A crowd of about 200 people gathered outside the Faculty of Law building at the University of Windsor to mourn the 50 people who died after two mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand. The Muslim Law Association of Windsor organized the event as a way to remember the lives that were lost. "It's definitely been jarring," said Mariam Jammal, president of the association. "I think in any situation like this, it hits home for a lot of people, because these are just everyday people who are going about their lives, doing things that all of us regularly do," she said. Sanjay Maru/CBC The gunman opened fire during Friday prayers. A 28-year-old Australian man has been arrested in connection with the shootings and has been charged with murder. One shooting killed 42 people at one mosque, and seven died at a second. One person later died in hospital. There were 50 people who were injured during the attacks. At the vigil in Windsor, Imam Yousef Wahb said mass shootings are happening far too often. "We are tired of vigils," he said. "The problem is I don't believe myself that that was just a result of some Islamophobic incentives, because I don't think Islamophobia will actually produce all this evil." Sanjay Maru/CBC According to Jammal, a positive thing that has come out of this tragedy is seeing the way people have come together. "I think it's important to take this time as a community to process and to reflect and to stand united together," Jammal said. "We've rallied around each other in a way that I think is just very beautiful." Photo: Care International/Josh Estey via Reuters)A general view shows destruction after Cyclone Idai in Beira, Mozambique, March 16-17, 2019 in this still image taken from a social media video on March 19, 2019. (Care International/Josh Estey via REUTERS Christian Aid is appealing for donations as it assists communities affected by Cyclone Idai, which has killed hundreds and devastated communities across Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. The charity is providing emergency assistance to communities affected by the cyclone but it also wants to build resilience to help them be better prepared for when the next big storm strikes. Over a million people have been affected by severe flooding and power outages triggered by the cyclone, which Clare Nullis, of the UN's weather agency, said was "shaping up to be one of the worst weather-related disasters ever to hit the southern hemisphere". The President of Mozambique Filipe Nyusi said the death toll in his country alone could exceed 1,000. While the full impact of Idai is not yet known, Christian Aid also expects large-scale damage to road networks, water and sanitation infrastructure, telecommunications, schools and health facilities. One of the immediate dangers is water-borne diseases, but people will also need help in rebuilding their homes and livelihoods. For farmers, the impact has also been devastating, with fields under water and recently planted crops decimated. In some areas, like Nsanje in Malawi, the cyclone has only compounded already "dire" food shortages, Christian Aid said. It is working with partners in Malawi and Zimbabwe to provide food, shelter, clothing, water, healthcare, sanitation, hygiene and psycho-social support services. However, Nicholas Shamano, Christian Aid's country director for Zimbabwe, said the charity was also taking a long-term approach to its response. "The situation is already dire. Lives, livelihoods, infrastructure and property have been lost," he said. "The priority now must be on addressing the immediate needs of the affected communities. But we also need to focus on addressing the effects of natural disasters and improve disaster preparedness for communities at risk to ensure resilience to extreme weather systems." World Help, which also has partners on the ground responding, asked Christians to pray for those affected. "People are terrified. They're wondering if their lives will ever be the same. Please stop whatever you're doing and pray on behalf of families impacted by this cyclone," said Vernon Brewer, founder and CEO of World Help. "Yes, we must provide help so they may survive this disaster, but we also must send them hope through our prayers so they know they are not forgotten and they still have a future." It makes you sick in the stomach. The stories are extravagantly poignant. The cases are too close to home. The psychological pain is excruciating. Lives have been completely wrecked. Families have been downright destroyed. People have lost their faith in God and in humanity. The churchs reputation has been decimated. Our view of people in power has radically shifted. Our understanding of the compassion of God has been put to the test. And its because some idiot has chosen to abuse a child. The stories The stories are far too prevalent. And I cant for one minute think I have the emotional capacity to deal with hearing much more. Not because I dont want to, or because Ive become somewhat inoculated from human suffering, but because the raw, emotional hurt that comes to the surface is just well difficult. The survivor I cant begin to imagine or comprehend the story of a survivor of sexual abuse. I hesitate even to write this paragraph, because I dont understand the pain. All I know is that the stories are all too frequent, and the breadth of reach of such vile behaviour has in recent years spread far too wide. I know some survivors. Ive heard some of their stories. One lady took decades before she let go of much of the bitterness that had held her back from having a positive outlook on life. One young man still carries the psychological weight of abuse on his shoulders. To every survivor: Please dont give up. Please dont stop running the race, until you find justice and closure. Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. May your day of vindication come. The family Entire family units are caught up in the trauma of abuse. While individuals may be groomed and abused, entire families become broken. The ordeal is never just experienced on the individual; the psychological scarring spreads like wind across close circles of influence. And somehow the family or community that surrounds the survivor needs to try and hold it all together, despite the facts that all the while theres anger and theres confusion, and theres feelings of powerlessness. Though, in those moments we attempt to be strong, to offer hope, to speak words of healing and offer prayers of blessing. Despite feeling useless, we seek, by Gods grace, to become useful in demonstrating compassion and love to those who are hurting. The local church Im in disbelief of the sheer numbers of cases of abuse that Ive heard about in recent years from the global church (cases from decades previous, recent convictions, former priests, etc). The church has all but lost the respect of the broader community. Credibility is a word it even struggles to spell. Its still reeling from decades of unchecked abuse within its institutions. Theres a lot of healing work to be done, in the name of Jesus Christ. And holiness needs to find itself preached from the pulpit once again. My heart sank recently when I read a social media post about a former Catholic Priest convicted of paedophilia. The discussion went like this: This Priest baptized my son. I feel nauseas. He did our marriage; like actually officiated our wedding. I just cant process that. The Priest used to visit in our house on a regular basis. How could I let that happen? The story of the impact of clergy abuse has ripple effects. It destroys peoples lives, and it rips communities of faith apart. Suddenly the momentous rites of passage and sacramental celebrations of years previous feel devastatingly meaningless. Of all things, Jesus actually speaks to this issue, where in Matthew chapter 18, verse 6, he says, If anyone causes one of these little onesthose who believe in meto stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. In light of what Im writing about, I would suggest Jesus words are pretty strong and rightly so. We stand by the words of Jesus. The world would be better if children were safe; free from exploitation and free from the scourge of child abuse. We dont want children to be forced to stumble. The destructive path Let me shine the light on this a little clearer: A pedophile creates a destructive path in our communities that takes years to repair. The selfish, lust-filled choices of one can ruin the lives of scores of people. And while they may experience a mere 3 to 6 years in jail (if even convicted), others experience a lifetime trying to find life, joy, hope and purpose. There are no easy answers to fix the destructive path of a pedophile. Judicial proceedings must be swift. Redress must be generous. Survivors must be protected. Criminals must be convicted. Healing must be accessible. Society must be honest. Churches must be sanctified. We may not stop feeling sick in the stomach, but we can pray that God might use us to make some meaningful difference in the life of a survivor. Pete Brookshaw is the Senior Minister of The Salvation Army Craigieburn. He has a Bachelor of both Business and Theology and is passionate about the church being dynamic and effective in the world and creating communities of faith that are outward-focused, innovative, passionate about the lost and committed to societal change. He has been blogging since 2006 at http://www.petebrookshaw.com about leadership and faith and you can find him on: Facebook: www.facebook.com/petebrookshaw Twitter: www.twitter.com/petebrookshaw Peter Brookshaws previous articles may be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/peter-brookshaw.html White Hat Cigars has announced two store exclusive vitolas of its H.R. Signature line. Corona Cigar Company, based in Central Florida has received a lancero offering while Fox Cigar Bar in Arizona will receive a Gran Toro. Both cigars are being released to commemorate what would have been Allejandro Robainas 100th birthday, the grandfather or Hirochi H, who the H.R. cigar is named for. The H.R. Signature Lancero is a traditional 7 x 38 vitola. According to White Hat Cigars, the cigars have been aging at the La Corona factory for two years. It is available in 20-count bundles. Pricing is set at $12.95 per cigar or $259.00 per bundle. The H.R. Signature Lancero is currently available at Corona Cigar Companys three Orlando stores, its Davidoff Tampa location, and its online store. Meanwhile the H.R. Signature Gran Toro is a 5 1/2 x 58 sized parejo. According to White Hat Cigars, it has been aging for five years at the La Corona factory. It will be available in 10-count boxes. Pricing is set $14.95 per cigar or $149.50 per box. The H.R. Signature Gran Toro is expected to be available in May at Fox Cigar Bars two locations and online store. Blend-wise, both new vitolas feature an Ecuadorian Habano 2000 wrapper over a binder from Jalapa and a combination of fillers from Nicaragua (Jalapa and Esteli), and Pennsylvania. Production is handled at the La Corona factory in Esteli, Nicaragua the operation run by Omar Gonzalez Aleman. The late Rob Stewarts activist documentary Sharkwater Extinction is an urgent and moving plea for action against the illegal trade in shark fins and more generally for the conservation of marine life in our rapidly dirtier and emptier oceans. Sharkwater Extinction literally begins lost at sea. Diver, activist and filmmaker Rob Stewart recalls how he once surfaced miles from where his boats was in the open sea. He made a decision then to just keep swimming and his survival instincts this time saved him. However, it is a foretaste of the tragedy to come as well as a moment when we feel a more pervasive despair at how the Anthropocene is causing a mass extinction, the likes of which have never been seen. Following on from his 2006 documentary Sharkwater, Stewarts film trots the globe from coasts of Costa Rica, Panama, Africa to his own native Californian waters, documenting with the help of local activists the multi-million dollar trade in shark fins which have mainly become a precious commodity because of an Asian love of shark fin soup. Legal loopholes, political venality, criminal intimidation and secrecy backed with a threat of actual violence confront Stewart and his team and lead many to worry about the filmmakers own safety. With many of the undercover investigations, hes the one pushing forward, testing the limits of what he can get before the security or worse is called. The crew also use drones to capture evidence of the trade, and this along with the beautiful underwater photography gives the film cinematic moments to relish. Unfortunately, the wide-ranging global campaigning leads to something of a patchy narrative. Theres no unifying mission to bind the thriller elements together as there was in Louie Psihoyos The Cove for instance. And Stewart doesnt do any infographic explaining of the wider context. In one way this is refreshing, but it also means that some of the most convincing points are not hammered home quite as effectively. According to Stewart, 99% of the shark population has been destroyed in the last three decades, with 100 million sharks killed each year. With such alarming figures cited, itd be good to have the sources and authorities backing it up on-screen. Stewart recognises that sharks are far less cuddly than most iconic wildlife ambassadors for conservation like the tiger and panda, and his argument that they have been demonised is backed up with many shots of him swimming with hammerheads and other fearsome monsters in apparent safety. But he is also canny enough to show that as an apex predator shark meat is actually highly toxic and a wander around some Florida supermarkets finds shark DNA in a range of surprising products. This isnt only the Chinese and their soup. Tragically, Stewarts final film (the director died at the age of 37 in a scuba diving incident while shooting Sharkwater Extinction) also serves as his testament. As such it shows a young man who dedicated his life to marine conservation and to the fight to end of some of the most brutal fishing practices around. Again tragically, the subtitle of the film indicates that the fight might be a lost cause. John Bleasdale | @drjonty Binod Ghimire covers parliamentary affairs and human rights for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2010, he has reported primarily on social issues, focusing on education and transitional justice. MacDermid Alpha Electronics Solutions Hosts High Reliability Workshop in Brazil Published: 21 March 2019 by Chelsey Drysdale by Chelsey Drysdale (Waterbury, CT USA) March 21, 2019 The Assembly Division of MacDermid Alpha Electronics Solutions hosted a day long technical workshop on Assembly Solutions for High Reliability Applications for regional customers in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The workshop focused on three core themes: Solder Alloys for High Reliability Applications, Solder Preform Technologies, and Void Reduction Solutions. Individual workshop moduals concentrated on: High reliability and low temperature lead-free solder pastes The advatages of incorporating preform technologies in specific assembly processes Voiding and innovative strategies for void reduction Representatives from over 17 companies, spanning a variety of industries, including automotive, argriculture, mobile, lighting and consumer products were in attendance. Discussions included both indepth technical training and market-focused strategies for how these different applications and solutions support the many assembly challenges faced by these quickly changing industries. These educational workshops are an important part of MacDermid Alphas business, said Eduardo Carqueijo, South America Sales and Marketing Manager. It is a critical opportunity for us to share the latest solutions, technologies and ALPHA products that we have to offer. The workshop also allows us to exchange ideas and trends with industry and market experts from different businesses. For additional information about MacDermid Alphas latest technologies and products, please visit www.macdermidalpha.com or contact us @ info@macdermidalpha.com. About MacDermid Alpha Electronics Solutions MacDermid Alpha Electronics Solutions is a Platform Specialty Products business. Through the innovation of specialty chemicals and materials under our Alpha, Compugraphics, and MacDermid Enthone brands, we provide solutions that power electronics interconnection. We serve all global regions and every step of device manufacturing within each segment of the electronics supply chain. The experts in our Semiconductor Solutions, Circuitry Solutions, and Assembly Solutions divisions collaborate in design, implementation, and technical service to ensure success for our partner clients. Our solutions enable our customers manufacture of extraordinary electronic devices at high productivity and reduced cycle time. Find more at MacDermidAlpha.com. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram Dakar, Senegal, March 21, 2019 Authorities in Ghana should hold to account the police officers responsible for beating journalist Malik Sullemana, ensure a thorough investigation into their actions, and protect the safety of the press during interactions with police, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Sullemana, a court reporter and investigative journalist with the state-owned Ghanaian Times newspaper, was beaten by police officers in Accra and then arrested following a traffic incident in the morning of March 14, the journalist told CPJ. Sullemana said he was beaten again at the police station before being permitted to leave and seek medical attention later that day. Sullemana and his colleagues who were also at the scene, reporters Salifu Abdul Rahman and Raissa Sambou Ebu, told CPJ that while they do not think they were targeted for their profession during the initial traffic incident, they believe the officers treated them more harshly because they were journalists. The incident came nearly one year after journalist Latif Iddrisu was attacked by officers in an Accra police station in the course of reporting, as CPJ reported at the time. There is absolutely no reason for police in Ghana to have assaulted journalist Malik Sullemana, and those involved should be held accountable, Angela Quintal, CPJ Africa Program Coordinator, said from New York. This attack, and at least one other like it, indicate that some police officers in Ghana not only disregard journalist safety but are actively hostile and violent to the media, which is unacceptable. According to Sullemana, the altercation began when a police officer on a motorcycle collided with the Ghanaian Times-branded car that Sullemana, Rahman, Ebu, and their driver were riding in at the time. The officer fled the scene, and the Times staffers followed him and confronted him, Sullemana said. The Times staffers began arguing with the officer, and the argument escalated after several other officers arrived and noticed Sullemana filming them, Rahman told CPJ. Sullemana told CPJ that officers punched him in the face during the argument, searched him, and then arrested him. Rahman told CPJ that he witnessed officers beat [Sullemana] up before handcuffing him and pushing him into a police vehicle. Ebu told CPJ that she was also struck by police officers during the altercation. She was hit in the stomach; she told CPJ that she was recovering from a cesarean birth three months earlier, and had to be rushed to the hospital, where her condition soon stabilized. Sullemana told CPJ that during the ride to the station, a senior officer said that journalists, write negative stuff about [the police]. When they arrived at the station, Sullemana said the same officer told him they would teach you a lesson and did not intervene as other officers proceeded to kick, punch, and insult him, resulting in blood clotting in his left eye, bruises on his left arm, and swelling in his left leg. On March 18, Sullemana gave an official statement to the police about the incident, he told CPJ. On March 20, three of the police officers involved in the incident were suspended pending an investigation, according to a statement from the Ghana police on social media and Ghanaian police spokesperson David Eklu, who spoke with CPJ over WhatsApp. Eklu told CPJ the suspension would last for a maximum of three months. According to the statement, the officers involved in the roadside incident are being investigated by regional authorities for the alleged assault of journalists from Ghanaian Times. The Police Professional and Standard Bureau has opened a separate investigation into the conduct of the officers who were on duty at the police station when Sullemana was assaulted there, according to the statement and Eklu. When Sullemana gave his official statement, he was informed that an investigation had been opened alleging that he assaulted a police officer, the journalist told CPJ. Eklu told CPJ on March 20 that he cannot tell at this stage if any of the Ghanaian Times journalists are under investigation. EDITORS NOTE: This text has been updated to correct that Ghanaian Times is a state-owned paper. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram Taipei, March 21, 2019 Chinese authorities should immediately release ILabour.net editor Wei Zhili and ensure that editors and reporters will not be arrested for reporting on workers rights. Police from Shenzhen arrested Wei early yesterday morning in the city of Guangzhou, in Guangdong province, on charges of disturbing public order, according to his wife and prominent feminist writer Zheng Churan, who spoke with CPJ, and news reports. Ke Chengbing, another ILabour.net editor, went missing yesterday and is believed to also be in police custody, according to human rights group Weiquanwang and news reports. The websites editor-in-chief, Yang Zhengjun, remains in prison after he was arrested in January and charged with picking quarrels and provoking trouble, according to ILabour.net. Zheng told CPJ that she believes authorities arrested Wei and his coworkers because of their reporting on labor rights issues and on the prevalence of black lung disease among Chinese workers. The arrest of Wei Zhili is just the latest example of how frightened Chinas leadership is of journalists who expose the truth about labor conditions in China, said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler in Washington, D.C. Wei and his colleagues should be released and hailed as heroes for covering the laboring class, which Chinas communist leaders have abandoned. Zheng wrote on Facebook that Wei was arrested at his parents home by officers from the Shenzhen Public Security Bureaus Longhua branch, who told Weis parents that he had been brainwashed. She told CPJ that she does not believe Wei did anything illegal, and was just telling workers stories and helping them get justice. An officer who answered the phone at the Shenzhen Public Security Bureaus Longhua branch told CPJ that he had no information regarding Weis case. At least 47 journalists were imprisoned in China at the end of 2018, making it the second largest jailer of journalists worldwide, after Turkey. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram Bangkok, March 21, 2019 Vietnamese authorities must immediately and unconditionally release detained blogger Truong Duy Nhat and allow him to travel freely outside of the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Nhat, a blogger with the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Asias Vietnamese language service, is being held without charge at Hanois T-16 detention center, under the authority of the ministry of public security, according to news reports and his daughter Thuc Doan Truong, who communicated with CPJ via WhatsApp. The reports of Nhats detention are the first news of his status since he went missing from a shopping mall in Bangkok on January 26, as CPJ reported at the time. Vietnamese authorities should immediately and unconditionally release blogger Truong Duy Nhat and allow him to travel freely outside of Vietnam, said Shawn Crispin, CPJs senior Southeast Asia representative. Authorities in Vietnam and Thailand should investigate the circumstances around Nhats apparent abduction in Thailand and hold those responsible to account under the fullest extent allowable under local laws. Prison authorities told Nhats wife, Cao Thi Xuan Phuong, that the blogger was formally arrested in Vietnam on January 28 and taken to the T-16 detention center the same day, where she has not been allowed to visit him, according to Radio Free Asia. Truong told CPJ and RFA that she believes Nhat was taken from Thailand on January 26 against his will. Its clear that my father did not voluntarily go back to Vietnam, she told RFA. Nhat had applied for refugee status at the UNHCRs office in Bangkok on January 25, the RFA report said. Vietnams Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to CPJs emailed request for comment. Two of Nhats associates and several activists tracking the case in Thailand, who spoke with CPJ on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal, said they suspect he was abducted by Vietnamese agents working in cooperation with Thai special police and driven across the Thai-Cambodian border and then on to Vietnam. Nhat was previously arrested in Vietnam in 2013 and served two years in prison for abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interest of the state, for his critical blogging on the Communist Partys leadership, CPJ reported at the time. Thailands status as a regional safe haven for journalists and dissidents has deteriorated under nearly five years of military rule, with reported cases of dissidents being abducted by foreign agents or arrested and deported by Thai authorities to their home countries where they faced harsh reprisal, according to news reports. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram New York, March 21State security today arrested documentary filmmaker Zenzele Ndebele and charged him with possession of offensive weapons at public gatherings, under Section 43 of Zimbabwes Criminal Law Code, according to his lawyers and news reports. Security officers found a used tear gas canister in the journalists car when he arrived for a meeting between President Emmerson Mnangagwa and civil society organizations at State House in Bulawayo, his lawyers Nqobani Sithole and Lewis Maunze, told CPJ. Ndebele told the security officers that he had picked up the canister at a protest and forgotten about it, Maunze said. Ndebeles home and office were raided and he is in custody at the central police station until a scheduled court appearance tomorrow morning, local time, Maunze said. Ndebeles camera operator, Sautsani Ali, was also detained but has since been released, according to the Zimbabwean chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA). We urge Zimbabwean authorities to release Zenzele Ndebele immediately and to drop the ridiculous charge against him, said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal. His arrest smacks of retaliation for his past work, and makes a mockery of the very idea of dialogue between President Emmerson Mnangagwa and civil society. Police questioned Ndebele in September about his documentary Gukurahundi Genocide: 36 years later, on a massacre by the army of thousands of civilians in the 1980s, according to news reports and a statement at the time by MISA-Zimbabwe. Ndebele told CPJ at the time that he had received death threats. If found guilty, Ndebele could face up to five years in prison or a fine of US$2,000, according to a MISA-Zimbabwe tweet. Police arrest two Chand outfit members in Kavre after exchange of fire With the government deciding to brand the Communist Party of Nepal, led by Netra Bikram Chand, a criminal outfit and crack down on its activities, police have swung into action. Share this: Twitter Facebook WhatsApp LinkedIn Email Telegram Evrensel journalist acquitted over Paradise Papers charge An Istanbul court on March 19 acquitted Cagr Sar, the former responsible news editor for the leftist daily Evrensel, of insult and libel, her employer reported. The case focused on Evrensels coverage of the Paradise Papers in April, which alleged that President Recep Tayyip Erdogans son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, who is also Turkeys treasury and finance minister, and Albayraks brother, Serhat, were involved in corrupt deals. As responsible news editor, Sar is accountable for all of the outlets content. A Diyarbakr court on March 20 acquitted Esra Solin Dal, a reporter for the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya News Agency, of being a member of a [terrorist] organization (PKK), her employer reported. An indictment in January had accused Dal of practis[ing] journalism against the government and making heavy accusations against the military, CPJ documented. Journalists detained covering weekly prison protest Police detained and questioned two journalists covering an event outside Mardin Prison on March 20, Mezopotamya News Agency reported. Ahmet Kanbal, a reporter for Mezopotamya, and Rojda Aydn, a reporter for the pro-Kurdish, all women Jin News Agency, were covering a weekly event held by politicians from the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), and relatives of prisoners. Police questioned Kanbal about a story on hunger strikes in prisons and Aydn about pictures she took of police intervention, the report said. The police warned the journalists not to come to the prison again, the report said. Police also detained freelance reporter Ali Dinler and released her after questioning, according to local news site Ozgur Manset. Semra Turan, a reporter for the Mezopotamya News Agency, was taken into custody in the southeastern city of Tunceli on March 19, and transferred to capital ,Ankara, her employer reported. Police previously detained Turan overnight on March 6 and confiscated her camera, according to the report. On March 19, police called Turan and asked her to come to the station to pick up her camera. When she arrived, police took her into custody as part of a separate investigation, according to the report. Mezopotamya reported that anti-terrorism police questioned Turan about stories she worked on in Ankara. The report added that she is expected to be interviewed by a prosecutor on March 22. Police in the southeastern city of Adyaman detained Hac Yusuf Topaloglu, a reporter formerly with the defunct pro-Kurdish news website Dihaber, on March 19, Mezopotamya News agency reported. Police detained the journalist after a tip off, but no further details were provided, according to the report. A court released him under a travel ban later that day, the report said. Witnesses withdraw testimony against Jin News reporter Two witnesses who previously testified against Jin News reporter Beritan Canozer, withdrew their statements at the first hearing in the trial in Diyarbakr on March 20, her employer reported. Canozer, who is free pending the outcome of the trial, pleaded not guilty to being a member of a [terrorist] organization (PKK). Salih Ates, a PKK member who attended the hearing via teleconference, said he did not know the journalist and that he was forced to sign the testimony against her. Beran Aslan, another witness, also withdrew his testimony and said he was tortured and forced to sign a testimony that was not his. The defence claimed the testimonies of other witnesses are contradictory and false, according to the report. The next hearing is scheduled for July 26. Columnist Ahmet Altan guilty of insulting president, again Ahmet Altan, a novelist, columnist, and founding chief editor of the shuttered liberal daily Taraf, was found guilty of insulting the president in a column, the news website T24 reported. The charge relates to a May 2016 column on P24, a sister publication to T24, on the attempted assassination of journalist Can Dundar. The Istanbul court sentenced Altan to 11 months and 20 days in prison, which was converted to a fine of 7,000 Turkish lira (US$1,289). Altans lawyers said they will appeal, according to the report. Altan was sentenced last year to life without parole for his alleged coup involvement, and he has been convicted of insulting the president in other cases, according to CPJ research. Reporter questioned over article on prosecutors criminal record Seyhan Avsar, a reporter for the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, is under investigation for making targets of those assigned to combat terrorism, for her report on a prosecutor convicted of soliciting bribes from suspects in a child molestation case, her employer reported on March 20. According to Cumhuriyet, when prosecutors questioned Avsar she told them she had confirmed details of the charge and tried to contact the prosecutor in question, but that he did not return her calls. Avsars lawyer, Nesrullah Oguz, said that the law the journalist was accused of breaking is to protect civil servants and security personnel whose identities are secret, not a prosecutor whose identity is known publicly, according to the report. Question: Regarding my posts about the terrible perversion of Torah and halacha that Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky has engineered with his prod... lt is clear that no one in the world has the authority to establish guilt anyone without both [the accuser and accused] coming ... Important!! email - yadmoshe@gmail.com I have a love hate affair with thrillers these days. There are just so many out there and some sound wonderful and others sound too samey--have publishers (finally) stopped comparing them to Gone Girl (my little test--if the blurb compares the book to it I tend to put it back on the bookstore shelf) yet? I do understand why books are promoted that way--if you liked this book, you will love this one, too--and that can be a great selling point. But it just seems a tired selling point these days. But thrillers are kind of appealing to me at the moment and the field is full of new ones. Here are ten that sound especially good to me at the moment. Stone Mothers by Erin Kelly -- Why have I not yet read Erin Kelly? She has all the marks of being an author right up my alley! And a new one to look forward to. "This first-rate psychological thriller and deft exploration of the delicate dance of marriage and the secrets people keep works on multiple levels, and the passages about the early days of Laura and Kits relationshipfilled with the gossamer promise of new lovemake what's in store for them even more harrowing. A stunning conclusion will take more than a few days to fade from memory." Kirkus, Starred Review The Body Lies by Jo Baker -- "When a young writer accepts a job at a university in the remote English countryside, it's meant to be a fresh start, away from the bustle of London and the scene of a violent assault she is desperate to forget. But despite the distractions of her new life and the demands of single motherhood, her nerves continue to jangle. To make matters worse, a vicious debate about violence against women inflames the tensions and mounting rivalries in her creative-writing class. When a troubled student starts turning in chapters that blur the lines between fiction and reality, the professor recognizes herself as the main character in his book--and he has written her a horrific fate. Will she be able to stop life imitating art before it's too late?" Theme Music by T. Marie Vandelly -- "For the lucky among us, life is what you make of it, but for Dixie Wheeler, the theme music for her story was chosen by another long ago, on the day her father butchered her mother and brothers and then slashed a knife across his own throat. Only one-year-old Dixie was left alive, infamously known as Baby Blue for the song left playing in the aftermath of the slaughter. Twenty-five years later, Dixie is still desperate for a connection to the family she cant remember, so when her childhood home goes up for sale, Dixie sets aside all reason and moves in, re-creating a macabre decor with her familys salvaged furniture. But as the ghosts of her family seemingly begin to take up residence in the home that was once theirs, Dixie starts to question her own sanity and wonders if the evil force menacing her is that of her father, or a demon of her own making." The Invited by Jennifer McMahon -- "A chilling ghost story with a twist: the New York Times bestselling author of The Winter People returns to the woods of Vermont to tell the story of a husband and wife who don't simply move into a haunted house--they build one . . ." The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware -- "When she stumbles across the ad, shes looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to missa live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smittenby the luxurious 'smart' home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family. What she doesnt know is that shes stepping into a nightmareone that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder." Queen of Bones by Teresa Dovalpage -- This sounds quite different, and different appeals to me these days! "Padrino, a former detective on the Cuban police force, has retired and found a new, happy life as a Santeria priest. But he is drawn back in for a murder investigation when his goddaughter, Rosita, who works at the local cemetery, recognizes one of the bodies that crosses her embalming table. Meanwhile, an old flame of Rositas, Juan, has returned to Cuba after fleeing by raft twenty years ago. He is with his American wife, Sharon, and has come back to catch up with his old college circleVictor, his estranged best friend, and unbeknownst to Sharon, his most serious ex-girlfriend, Elsa, with whom he never quite fell out of love." While You Sleep by Stephanie Merritt -- "A modern-day ghost story set on a remote Scottish island, While You Sleep is a page-turning, chillingly erotic Hitchcockian thriller evoking the dark atmospheric of a house that may be more than it seems . . ." The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell -- "Libby Jones was only six months old when she became an orphan. Now twenty-five, shes astounded to learn of an inheritance that will change her life. A gorgeous, dilapidated townhouse in one of Londons poshest neighborhoods has been held in a trust for her all these years. Now its hers. As Libby investigates the story of her birth parents and the dark legacy of her new home, Clemency and Lucy are headed her way to uncover, and possibly protect, secrets of their own. What really happened in that rambling Chelsea mansion when they were children? And are they still at risk?" Flowers Over the Inferno by Iliaria Tuti -- "In a quiet village surrounded by ancient woods and the imposing Italian Alps, a man is found naked with his eyes gouged out. It is the first in a string of gruesome murders. Superintendent Teresa Battaglia, a detective with a background in criminal profiling, is called to investigate. Battaglia is in her mid-sixties, her rank and expertise hard-won from decades of battling for respect in a male-dominated Italian police force. While shes not sure she trusts the young city inspector assigned to assist her, she sees right away that this is no ordinary case: buried deep in these mountains is a dark history that may endanger a group of eight-year-old children toward whom the killer seems to gravitate." The Policewomen's Bureau by Edward Conlon -- Not a thriller per se, but I really want to read this one! "The Bronx, 1958. The Policewomen's Bureau isnt respected within the Department, even when it handles cases the men cant solve. Marie Carrara is a young police matron who wants to move beyond the grim routine of guarding female prisoners to become one of the few female detectives in the NYPD. Though she is a shy and naive, from a sheltered, immigrant background, Marie dives into the strange and terrifying world of big-city undercover work without hesitation, using her genuine innocence to deceive degenerates and drug dealers into thinking that shes an easy target. As she begins to create tougher undercover characters, she discovers that they might be able to inspire her in her off-duty life as well. Despite the violence of her job, the sexism she faces daily, and a rocky-at-best marriage waiting for her at home, Marie is determined to make a name for herself within the NYPD and be the role model her young daughter deserves." So many good things coming. (And so many good books in progress on my night table at the moment). Too many books and too little time. (Sigh). Kerala: Fishermen, govt in a tangle over juvenile catch by V Sajeev Kumar March 21,2019 | Source: The Hindu Business Line Keralas mechanised fishing boat operators and Fisheries department are at loggerheads over the seizure of fishing boats and imposition of fine after the discovery of small fish in their deep-sea catches. The boat operators have sought the intervention of the Chief Minister seeking an end to the alleged harassment by Fisheries officials. Joseph Xavier Kalappurackal, General Secretary, All Kerala Fishing Boat Operators Association, said that officials at the Munambam Fisheries Harbour had recently confiscated a boat and fined ?2.5 lakh after finding small fish in the catch. Under CMFRI rules, such catches are considered a violation only if more than 50 per cent of the samples are composed of fish below the prescribed minimum legal size (MLS). At the meeting conducted for determining MLS violations, it was agreed that the sampling should be carried out in the presence of fisheries department officials, marine scientists and the boat owner. The penalty can be imposed only if the catch contained more than 50 per cent of small fish, Kalappurackal said. To determine MLS violations, the Fisheries Department was advised to take a random species-wise sub sample of the catch, take appropriate measurements and consider the catch as a violation if 50 per cent of the sample is composed of fish at or below the prescribed MLS. Such inspections should be carried out at sea or in the landing centres using an unsorted sample, he added. Refuting the allegation of harassment, State Fisheries Minister J Mercikutty Amma said that the department is implementing the CMFRI recommendations on MLS to protect exploitation of all juvenile fish and to prevent overfishing. A strict implementation of the rule has started yielding results, which is evident from the 12 per cent rise in the catch at 6,42,580 tonnes in 2018 compared to previous years. Rule for all Coastal States Moreover, the Southern Fisheries Ministers Conclave held in Kochi in November last year had unanimously decided to implement CMFRI recommendations in all the coastal states, the Minister said. We are committed to implement the order to improve the fish wealth and maintain healthy stock of marine fish off the Kerala coast. This will ensure a better income to fisher folks on a sustainable basis. The department will take stern action against mechanised fishing boats only if 50 per cent of the catch is below the prescribed MLS, she told BusinessLine. The boat operators association convened a meeting at Beypore recently and decided to organise a march and mass dharna before the Joint Director of Fisheries at Kozhikode on April 2 followed by similar ones in Ernakulam and Kollam. They have also threatened to hold a one-day token strike or an indefinite strike if the government does not take a favourable decision in the matter. Andhra Pradesh: Open Source Fisheries yields good results in coastal districts March 21,2019 | Source: The Hans India Under the Open Source Fisheries (OSF) programme, the nursery farmers in Srikakulam, Vizianagaram, Visakhapatnam and East Godavari have produced 4.42 crore fingerlings in 2018-19. The programme helped fishermen to use 543 ponds and 62 cages as nurseries to produce fingerlings, and 1,717 ponds for growing fish to marketable size. The phenomenal rise in fingerling production from two crore last year to 4.42 crore in the present fiscal helping about 18,000 families in the four coastal districts. The daily per capita food consumption is between 2010 and 2030 stands to increase by 27 per cent. The need now is to foster a shift to more sustainable resources of food such as inland culture fisheries. As many as 184 integrated farming demonstrations, which covers fish, vegetables and poultry have been piloted and 100 low-cost, locally made cages have been installed across the four districts, said Programme Manager OSF Karthik Ramesh said. Two dead, dozens others injured during Holi celebrations in Kathmandu Valley At least two people died and dozens others were injured in various accidents and assaults during Holi celebrations in the Kathmandu Valley on Wednesday. Bangladesh: Four Bangladeshi fishermen return from Myanmar jail after nine years March 21,2019 | Source: Dhaka Tribune Four Bangladeshi fishermen have returned from Myanmar after serving nine years in jail in the neighbouring country. They were brought back through a flag meeting between Bangladesh and Myanmar border guards at the Maungdaw immigration centre on Wednesday afternoon. A delegation of Myanmar immigration department handed over the four fishermen to Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) personnel. They are Md Jasim, Md Elias, Azgar Ali and Sabbir Ahmad. All of them are from Nazirpara and Moulvipara areas under Teknaf Sadar. BGB officials said the four men were placed into the Teknaf police custody to be handed over to their families. Teknaf-based BGB 2nd battalion Acting Commanding Officer Maj Shariful Islam Jamaddar had led the 11-member delegation into the flag meeting with the eight-member Myanmar side. According to the BGB, the four fishermen were arrested by a Myanmar law enforcement agency in 2009 after they illegally entered the countrys territory on a fishing trip. All four were later sentenced to 25 years in prison each by a Myanmar court. But the Myanmar government pardoned them after they served nine and half years behind bars. Maj Shariful said the fishermen were brought back after Myanmars foreign and home ministries gave the green light. However, there are still more Bangladeshis in Myanmars prison. We are also trying to bring them back through the same process, he added. WASHINGTON For the first 55 minutes of a Supreme Court argument on Wednesday about racial discrimination in jury selection, the justices seemed united in their view that a white Mississippi prosecutor had violated the Constitution in his determined efforts to exclude black jurors from the six trials of Curtis Flowers , who was convicted of murdering four people in a furniture store. As Mr. Flowerss lawyer concluded her argument, Justice Clarence Thomas asked his first questions from the bench since 2016 . He wanted to know whether the defense lawyer in the sixth trial had excluded any jurors. The lawyer said yes. And what was the race of the jurors struck there? Justice Thomas asked. White, said the lawyer, Sheri Lynn Johnson. Justice Thomas holds the modern record for silence on the bench. Before his questions in 2016, he had gone a decade without asking one. His explanations have varied, but he has said lately that the other justices asked so many questions that they were rude to the lawyers before them. The balance of the argument went well for Mr. Flowers, whose case has attracted widespread attention. Justices across the ideological spectrum said the track record of the prosecutor, Doug Evans, was deeply troubling. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. called it unusual and really disturbing. In the first four trials, held between 1997 and 2007, Mr. Evans used all 36 of his peremptory challenges ones that do not require giving a reason to strike black jurors from serving. Three of those trials ended in convictions reversed on appeal, and one in a mistrial. Official court records do not show the racial makeup of the jury pool for the fifth trial, in 2008, but the jury itself included nine white and three black people. It deadlocked, and the judge declared mistrial. Over the years, Mississippi courts twice ruled that Mr. Evans had violated Batson v. Kentucky , a 1986 decision that made an exception to the centuries-old rule that peremptory challenges are completely discretionary and cannot be second-guessed. In the Batson case, the court ruled that racial discrimination in jury selection was different, and it required lawyers accused of it to provide a nondiscriminatory explanation. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who wrote an article in The Yale Law Journal calling for vigorous enforcement of the Batson decision when he was a law student, said that Mr. Evanss track record in the case mattered in the Supreme Courts assessment of the sixth trial, which took place in 2010. We cant take the history out of the case, he said. Even the states lawyer, Jason Davis, said that the history in this case is troubling. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked whether the court was entitled to take account of that history, and Mr. Davis said it could. But he added that Mr. Evans had offered valid race-neutral reasons for each strike in the sixth trial. At that trial, Mr. Evans accepted the first black prospective juror and struck the next five. Mr. Evans questioned black prospective jurors closely, asking an average of 29 questions of each of them. He asked the 11 white jurors who were eventually seated an average of one question each. In that disparity, Justice Elena Kagan said, the numbers themselves are staggering. Justices Alito and Sonia Sotomayor both suggested that Mr. Evans should have been taken off the case long ago. Could the attorney general have said, you know, enough already, were going to send one of our own people? Justice Alito asked Mr. Davis, the states lawyer. Under Mississippi law, Mr. Davis replied, state officials can step in only when requested by local ones like Mr. Evans, and there was no such request in the Flowers case. So that was not an option in this case, he said. Much of the argument delved into Mr. Evanss stated reasons for striking jurors in the sixth trial. Justice Stephen G. Breyer described the characteristics of two potential jurors, one black and one white. Both were women in their mid-40s who had completed some college, strongly favored the death penalty and had some professional interactions with members of Mr. Flowerss family. Justice Breyer suggested that race had been the decisive factor. Justice Elena Kagan seemed to agree, noting that the black potential juror had an uncle who worked as a prison guard and a relative who had been victim of a violent crime. Except for her race, Justice Kagan said, you would think that this is a juror that a prosecutor would love when she walks in the door. The justices had varied responses to whether the reasons offered by Mr. Evans appeared to be pretexts for racial discrimination. But there was something like a consensus that Mr. Evanss past conduct tipped the balance in Mr. Flowerss favor. Mr. Flowerss case was the subject of season-long examination by the podcast In the Dark, which raised substantial questions about his guilt. In February, the podcast won a George Polk award , a prestigious journalism prize, for its work about the case. While the Supreme Court seemed likely to rule that the jury selection in Mr. Flowerss latest trial was marred by unconstitutional racial discrimination, setting up the possibility of a seventh trial, its ruling is unlikely to establish any fresh legal principles. Justice Kavanaugh said the key principle in the Batson decision was sufficient to address the matter. You cant just assume that someones going to be favorable to someone because they share the same race, he said. Part of Batson was about confidence of the community and the fairness of the criminal justice system, he said. And that was against a backdrop of a lot of decades of all-white juries convicting black defendants. When Justice Thomas spoke near the end of the argument, it jolted the courtroom. His three questions suggested that both sides rely on racial stereotypes in picking jurors. Justice Sotomayor responded that, with one exception, the defense lawyer could not have stricken any potential black jurors because Mr. Evans had already excluded them all. Justice Thomas has offered shifting reasons for his silence during Supreme Court arguments. In his 2007 memoir , My Grandfathers Son, he wrote that he had never asked questions in college or law school and that he had been intimidated by some of his fellow students. He has also said he was self-conscious about the way he spoke, partly because he had been teased about the accent he grew up with in Georgia. But in recent years, he has mostly said that he did not ask questions out of simple courtesy. On the last two occasions on which he asked questions, in 2016 and on Wednesday, Justice Thomas asked questions only after the last lawyer finished early and was about to sit down. | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde In a victory for the media and advocates of open government, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on March 18, 2019 that Alabama must disclose key portions of its highly secretive lethal-injection execution protocol to the public. The Associated Press, the Montgomery Advertiser, and Alabama Media Group had sued for access to the protocol, which came under intense scrutiny in the wake of Alabamas failed attempt to execute Doyle Lee Hamm (pictured) in February 2018. Hamm, who has terminal cancer, challenged Alabamas execution protocol. He argued that his veins had been compromised by his illness and executing him by lethal injection would constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The courts permitted the execution to proceed after Alabama said it would not attempt to insert an IV-line in Hamms arms or upper extremities. On February 22, 2018, executioners tried and failed for 2 1/2 hours to set an intravenous execution line. Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Jeffrey Dunn called off the execution but told the media, I wouldnt characterize what we had tonight as a problem. Dunn repeatedly asserted the state had followed its execution protocol and claimed the execution had been halted only because the late court rulings in the case did not leave corrections personnel sufficient time to execute Hamm before his death warrant would have expired. Hamm filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit seeking to prevent Alabama from attempting to execute him a 2nd time. As part of that suit, he filed a doctors reportthe only public document describing the circumstances of the execution attemptthat indicated execution personnel had unsuccessfully inserted IV needles more than 10 times into Hamms feet, legs, and right groin, causing bleeding in his groin, and likely puncturing his bladder, causing blood in his urine. Shortly thereafter, Hamm and the state reached a confidential settlement in which Alabama agreed not to seek another execution date, the court records of the case would be sealed, Hamm would dismiss his lawsuit, and Hamm and his lawyers would not disclose any additional information about the case. In the aftermath, the three media outlets filed a motion to gain access to the protocol and execution records. A federal district court ruled in their favor in May 2018. Alabama appealed that ruling, arguing that the lethal-injection protocol had never been formally filed with a lower court, and therefore was not a court record subject to public access. The appeals court rejected that argument, with Judge Charles Wilson writing: Alabamas lethal injection protocol may not have been formally filed under the rushed timeline of Hamms approaching execution, but the protocol constitutes a judicial record subject to the common law right of access because it was submitted to the district court to resolve disputed substantive motions in the litigation, was discussed and analyzed by all parties in evidentiary hearings and arguments, and was unambiguously integral to the courts resolution of the substantive motions in Hamms as-applied challenge to the protocol. The decision also addressed the importance of transparency to the public, saying Judicial records provide grounds upon which a court relies in deciding cases, and thus the public has a valid interest in accessing these records to ensure the continued integrity and transparency of our governmental and judicial offices. Alabamas execution secrecy has been at the core of several other execution controversies. In December 2016, execution witnesses reported that Ronald Smith clenched his fists and gasped repeatedly for nearly 15 minutes. After the execution, Dunn told the public only that the state had followed [its] protocol. State officials later refused to provide any documentation about the execution. In February 2019, late disclosure of its secret protocol provision mandating that a Christian chaplainand no other religious adviserbe present in the execution chamber led to the controversial execution of Muslim prisoner Domineque Ray without affording him access to an imam at the time of his execution. | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde Malaysia pleads for citizen as Singapore prepares to execute man convicted of murder Mahathir seeks clemency for condemned man in Singapore Barring a last-minute pardon or stay of execution by Singapore authorities, Michael Garing will be put to death in the early hours of March 22. The 30-year-old Malaysian is 1 of 4 men who went on an armed robbery spree in the island republic in 2010 that ended in the murder of 41-year-old Shanmuganathan Dillidurai. Michael was given the death sentence for the crime. His family received notification last week to make funeral arrangements for him. The short notice has triggered 11th-hour efforts by human rights activists and Malaysian politicians including Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad to make representations to save his life. The planned execution of its citizen in the neighboring country comes as Malaysia moves towards abolishing the death penalty. Singapore, in its bid to make the city state crime-free and safe, has kept its ruthless approach to murder and drug smuggling and routinely executes offenders. The case has been closely followed in Singapore, which is known for having one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world. The sharply diverging approaches to crime and punishment between the close neighbors could lead to an awkward stand-off. Speaking to the press after a parliamentary sitting on March 20, Mahathir said he hopes Singapore extends clemency to the condemned man and joins Malaysia in abolishing the death penalty, which is a contravention of international law. We are trying to save his life. As we know in Malaysia now, people think that the death penalty is excessive," state news agency Bernama reported him as saying. "We hope that other countries will also look at it that way. Malaysias Law Minister Liew Vui Keong said a letter would be sent to Singapore President Halimah Yacob as she has the power to grant pardons or commute the sentence of any convicted person. "I just came to know about this and will work on it, he told reporters on March 19, adding that the government would "write to the president and see what she has to say. Short notice for family Prominent Malaysian human rights lawyer N. Surendran was scathing of the rush to execute Michael after the condemned man's family from a small town in the interior of Sarawak were given 8 days' notice by letter to make funeral arrangements. "The extremely short notice is disturbing and cause for concern. It gives the family scant time to spend with Michael in his final days and to make preparations, he said in a statement. "Michael was only 21 years old when he committed the crime. We accept that it was a serious crime and that he must face punishment. But like any young person who has committed a crime, Michael must be given an opportunity for rehabilitation. By executing him, the state is answering his wrongdoing with an even greater wrong. "Singapore gains nothing by carrying out this execution, except to strengthen the perception of indifference and callousness to human life. The death penalty has never been proven to be a deterrent to serious crime. Killing Michael only entrenches the culture of violence and will not make Singaporeans any safer in their daily lives. "We strongly urge the president of Singapore to exercise clemency and commute Michael's sentence to life imprisonment. It is not too late to do so. We further urge the government of Singapore to impose a moratorium on all executions and work towards abolition of the death penalty." Amnesty International has also urged Singapore to halt the execution. Researcher Rachel Chhoa-Howard said: "No matter how heinous the crime, the death penalty is a degrading and inhuman punishment. We denounce its use in all circumstances. When their trials were held, prosecutors presented Michael and his accomplices Tony Imba, Hairee Landak and Donny Meluda as part of a gang of 4 Sarawak natives who carried out 4 violent robberies over a few hours in May 2010. Their first 2 victims were construction worker Sandeep Singh, 24, and national serviceman Ang Jun Heng, 19. They were both beaten and slashed with a machete. A 3rd victim, Indian national Egan Karuppaiah, then 43, had both arms almost hacked to the bone. Their final victim was Shanmuganathan, who was knocked off his bicycle by Tony and slashed repeatedly. He died after sustaining a fractured skull and a severed jugular vein among other injuries. Tony is serving life in prison, while Hairee Landak and Donny Meluda each received 33 years in jail and 24 strokes of the cane. Law minister Liew said the Malaysian government's stand was not new, noting that it had made similar representation to the Singapore government last year to spare the life a man convicted of drug smuggling. Prabu Pathmanathan, 31, was executed at Changi prison in October 2018. He was convicted of smuggling 228 grams of heroin into Singapore in 2014. Malaysia previously mandated capital punishment for crimes ranging from murder and kidnapping to drug offenses and treason. Drug offenses once accounted for the largest number of executions in the country. | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde ucanews.com, March 21, 2019 Change the law Foreign investment in small industries could do more harm than good But I dont want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you cant help that," said the Cat: "were all mad here. Im mad. Youre mad." "How do you know Im mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldnt have come here. Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland With freedom comes responsibility. Eleanor Roosevelt Politico Yesterday, not long after Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson noted that he deserves a whipping for his vicious bad-mouthing John McCain, Senor Trumpanzee was off to Lima Ohio. His for-TV-backdrop was an Abrams tank plant, which he says was destined for closure before massive new military spending ($2 billion for tanks) revived orders. That's on the other side of the state from General Motors' now-idled factory in Lordstown that Trump has been screeching about for a couple of weeks, blaming Mary Barra, GM's CEO, the auto workers union and anyone else but his own policies for the shutdown. In fact, many people say that it was his own misguided and ego-driven actions "to save manufacturing" that have been battering the auto industry and eating into the overall economy of Midwest "rust belt" states. reported that his "tariffs on steel and aluminum have cost Ford and GM about $1 billion each" and noted that "Barra cited the tariffs in November when she announced the 14,000 job cuts that included the Lordstown plants shuttering. Potentially making things even worse, Trump is now weighing new tariffs on foreign automobiles that could threaten hundreds of thousands of additional U.S. jobs." The reality is auto tariffs would put Ohio into a recession, said Dan Ujczo, a Columbus-based international trade lawyer who has been closely studying the impact of recent trade actions on Ohio companies. Ultimately, that could jeopardize Trumps support in the Mahoning Valley and other blue-collar Great Lakes regions that voted for him in 2016. Hell lose those the second he puts auto tariffs on, Ujczo said. These people understand you cant cut off your nose to spite your face. According to a Morning Consult tracking poll, Trumps approval rating in Ohio has fallen 19 percentage points since January 2017. While Trump is focused on exhorting GM not to shutter the Lordstown plant, where it makes the compact Chevrolet Cruze model, the industrys economic reality is much more complicated. Trumps simple formula of demanding that specific plants should stay open doesnt account for the sophistication of the global auto industry. The auto making supply chain is global; foreign companies build cars in the U.S. but with some foreign-made parts. Likewise, cars made abroad often contain American parts. And automakers move workers from plant to plant as demand for different kinds of autos shifts. GM says the Ohio plant is closing because demand has softened for the Cruze; the company says it is talking to workers about relocating to other facilities. Its unusual for any president-- especially a Republican one-- to tell private manufacturers how to run their businesses. Theres a school of thought that these decisions are best left to the companies and the unions, said Marick Masters, director of the labor studies program at Wayne State University in Detroit. It's even more unusual for a president to blame a labor union for a plant closing. Dave Green, president of the United Auto Workers local at Lordstown, appears to have infuriated Trump Sunday when he said on Fox News that Trump's 2018 tax cut incentivized imports. Or perhaps Trump was irritated at Green for letting the press know in February that he'd written the president about the Lordstown closing in July 2018 and received no reply. Whatever the specific provocation, Trump tweeted Sunday that "Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce," then followed up with a tweet that noted GM's Barra "blamed the UAW Union" for the shutdown, prompting an angry retort from the UAW: "Corporations close plants, workers dont. Trumps previous efforts to intervene in vehicle plant closings have resulted in tepid gains at best. Trump lashed into Ford during the 2016 campaign for shipping jobs to Mexico, then claimed credit in early January 2017 when Ford, in an unrelated move, announced that it would create 700 jobs in Michigan to build electric and self-driving cars-- while simultaneously expanding two plants in Mexico. Trump was similarly irate in June 2018 when Harley-Davidson said it would offshore an unspecified number of jobs to offset the impact of European tariffs imposed in retaliation to Trumps steel tariffs. Trump was so furious that he said hed support a boycott of Harley-Davidson, prompting the companys steepest sales drop in nearly a decade. Trumps protectionist policies are cutting into profits for automakers, even though they employ far more workers than the steel and aluminum industries the tariffs are designed to protect. The auto industry employs around a million people, while steel and aluminum less than one tenth of that (combined). Since Trump's ill-starred tariffs went interplay, the steel industry has added 6,200 jobs and the aluminum industry 100 new jobs. Trump's policies have triggered a very steep decline in investment in the auto industry. Economists are shocked not so much that "Trump doesn't seem to understand that the automobile production process involves intensely global supply chains," but that there's no one around him who can explain this to him and make him understand that his policies are harming American industry. The Washington Post's David Ignatius noted that "Trump's angry, backward-looking approach may still appeal to some Rust Belt voters. But in the Ohio and Pennsylvania towns that helped win the presidency for Trump in 2016, his vow to turn back the clock hasn't worked out very well, and there are signs the Rust Belt may be corroding for him politically." He explained that "Lordstown's struggles, like those of other nearby mill towns, illustrate the harsh fact that manufacturing is a dynamic process. Old jobs are disappearing because of changes in technology or consumer preferences; trying to resist change is usually a fool's game. Rust Belt communities that are succeeding are the ones that have adapted by embracing new technologies and innovation. Presidential leadership in this period of technological transition should focus on the future, rather than the past. But Trump seems almost a technophobe." After Trump's Twitter tirade, Rep. Tim Ryan, the Ohio Democrat who represents the Lordstown area, fired back: "The President's tweet ... is offensive and does nothing to help bring back the manufacturing jobs he promised to my district." Ryan argued that "the best thing is to help" GM renovate Lordstown and perhaps build electric vehicles there. Local residents said much the same thing to the Youngstown Vindicator this month: GM or a new owner should focus on new technology and making products people want to buy, rather than restore production of the low-selling Chevrolet Cruze. Trump is vulnerable in the Rust Belt because he made such extravagant promises when he successfully wooed voters in 2016. "He won this area-- a largely Democratic area-- and he has not said a word yet, and that's just pathetic," warned Jim Graham a former UAW leader at Lordstown, in an interview with the Vindicator back in November, when GM said it planned to halt Cruze production there. Local residents remember Trump's proclamation at a July 2017 rally in nearby Youngstown: "Those jobs [that] have left Ohio, they're all coming back... Don't sell your house." Tommy Wolikow, a Lordstown worker, told the Vindicator: "I kind of turned into a Trump supporter at that time. I believed what he said... Almost two years later, I'm seeing nothing but job losses." Homeowners in Youngstown certainly haven't seen a boom. According to Zillow, the online realty broker, the median price for a house in Youngstown is $39,900. The national median price of homes currently listed is $279,000. Browse the real estate ads for mill towns across Ohio and Pennsylvania and you'll see just how tough it is to be a Rust Belt resident, trapped in a downward cycle. What's the right answer for Rust Belt towns where the old manufacturing base has disappeared? An interesting example is Erie, Pennsylvania. Most big factories there have closed in recent years, but the city is rebuilding itself around its local universities and a big insurance company. Profits from a big gambling casino in Erie County are funneled partly to "innovation spaces" at four local campuses. Erie may have lost manufacturing jobs, but it's above the state average in advanced industries, says Ben Speggen, a local journalist who helps run a think tank in Erie called the Jefferson Educational Society. "There has been a real shift in understanding that our Rust Belt economy is not solely tied to manufacturing," he says. Another key to success is welcoming foreigners. About 10 percent of Erie's population is refugees, according to James and Deborah Fallows in their recent book, Our Towns. One of the 10 characteristics they found in successful local communities adapting to change is that "they make themselves open." In the 2016 primaries Both Hillary and Bernie got more votes than Trump in Erie County. In fact, Hillary and Bernie together got 37,341 votes. All six Republicans combined took just 30,050. But after months of Trump's extravagant and baseless promises, he beat Hillary in the general election by 2 points. Two years later there was a significant change. In the 2018 midterms, Democrat Bob Casey beat Trumpist Lou Barletta in Erie county-- and by a lot, 58.4% to 40.0%. Governor Wolf did even better there, beating the right-wing Trumpist Scott Wagner 59.8% to 38.7%. Erie County is entirely in the 16th congressional district now and incumbent Mike Kelly was reelected 51.6% to 47.3% against a weak Blue Dog Democrat. But not in the Erie part of the district. The county gave the Blue Dog a massive D+20 margin, almost enough to overcome Kelly's lead in the other 4 counties. Does this foreshadow a Democratic win in Erie County in 2020? Most likely, yes, unless the Democrats nominate another mushy centrist, like Hillary, with nothing to offer but a slick campaign and a bio. Foxconn Vietnam general director Harry Zhuo met Quang Ninh provincial Peoples Committee vice chairman Nguyen Van Thang yesterday to seek investment opportunities. Zhou said the company was operating production factories in Bac Ninh, Bac Giang and Vinh Phuc provinces and it was looking to expand investment in Vietnam. He said Quang Ninh was offering good investment opportunities as it has built modern and synchronized infrastructure, which is luring big investors. Quang Ninh recently opened three key infrastructural works, including Van Don international airport, Halong international tourist seaport and Halong - Van Don expressway. The travel time between Quang Ninh and Haiphong has also been shortened significantly owing to the construction of Halong - Haiphong expressway and Bach Dang bridge. Foxconn entered Vietnam in 2007 with a signing of a $5 billion investment framework, pledging to invest in a series of projects in the hi-tech sector and supporting industries. Foxconn is the worlds biggest electronics contract manufacturer and a key Apple Inc supplier. It was reported late last year to be considering setting up a factory in Vietnam to mitigate any impact of an ongoing trade war between the United States and China. Authorities have pulled the plug on an amusement-hotel project in central Nha Trang Town after the investor failed to start work for a decade. Con Nhat Tri, a VND1.2-trillion ($51.7 million) project on 21 hectares (52 acres) with a five-star hotel, an amusement area and apartments, was approved in 2009. But work on it never started, leaving over 7,000 people in Vinh Phuoc Commune in Nha Trang of Khanh Hoa Province, whose lands were to be taken over, in limbo. In May 2015 provincial authorities handed it over to Pham Tran Investment LLC, but last year the company backed out saying it was unable to acquire the lands, and the task required a lot of time, money and human resources. The project was meant to improve infrastructure in Con Nhat Tri, an unorganized area not suitable for a tourism town like Nha Trang, Deputy Chairman of the town, Nguyen Sy Khanh, said. A top official in the provincial Department of Planning and Investment said if no private investor is interested, the government needs to use its own funds to improve the area. Nha Trang received 6.3 million tourists last year, 16 percent up from 2017, with the majority being from China and Russia, according to official figures. Taiwanese Tung Ho Steel seeks to compete with Vietnamese steel producers with its new factory set up in the southern Ba Ria - Vung Tau Province. Photo by Reuters Taiwans Tung Ho Steel has invested a total of VND4.22 trillion ($183 million) in a plant in southern Vietnam as it seeks to take on local players. The plant, which has been operating since 2008 in Ba Ria Vung Tau Province, has an annual capacity of 1 million tons of steel billets and 600,000 tons of hot-rolled steel. Tung Ho chairman, Huang Bing Hua, said the company chose Vietnam because the market had seen a compounded annual growth rate of 20 percent in the 2014-2017 period. But there are signs of supply exceeding demand and some steel products are being slapped anti-dumping steel in other countries, he told VnExpress. What foreign companies have to deal with in Vietnam is competition with traditional brands, he said. To achieve competitive pricing, Tung Ho has invested in advanced technologies to reduce 75 percent of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, he added. The company projects revenues to mainly come from exports initially and does not expect domestic sales to catch up for a long time. Vietnamese steel firms sold 21.7 million tons of steel last year, up 20.9 percent from 2017, in which 4.7 million tons were exported, up 26.6 percent, according to the Vietnam Steel Association. Local brokerage house Phu Hung Securities Corporation said in a note that the steel industry might see slower growth this year due to risks from the U.S.-China trade war and a fall in demand due to fears of slower global economic growth. Edwin Ong Wee Kee has asserted that his $120,000 prize winning photo was taken spontaneously in Vietnam. Malaysian Edwin Ong Wee Kee, whose photo won the Grand Prize at the Hamdan International Photography Award (HIPA) this year, has refuted allegations that his winning photo was staged. He told Malaysian newspaper The Star Online: "In this trip to Vietnam, we (the photographers) went to the rice field and there was a mother (with two children) that passed by. "We then asked her whether we could take her photo of which she willingly sat down and allowed us to take her photo." None of the photographers had told the woman to stand up or sit down, and she was still sitting there after they left, he added. Ha Lee, another Malaysian photographer in the group, also stressed that the photo was taken spontaneously and on-the-spot without any pre-arrangement. Lee said the woman and her children only happened to pass by the group and went to look at what they were doing out of curiosity. The photographers then asked if they could take a photo of her with her children, to which she said okay. Kee also told The Star Online that he had submitted both the raw and edited versions of the winning photo for the competition, so the judges got to look at both photos before giving the prize. "The accusation of the photo being staged does not upset us photographers," he said, stressing that there were many others who also witnessed the photo being taken. Speaking with VnExpress, photographer Duong Quoc Binh said that before making a judgement as to whats right and wrong, it was necessary to understand the work of photographers and their purpose. According to Binh, Wee Kee was not taking the picture in a journalistic context, so should not be bound by the journalistic principles of honesty, accuracy, and no staging. It would not be appropriate to take a framework for one field to apply to another. "The definition of staging is subject to wide interpretation. However, it can be narrowed down: whether a photo was staged or not depends on whether the photographer has interfered with the subject of the photo," he said. "In any event, should this photo have been staged, it would only violate the rules of journalistic photography," Binh added. Kee's photo, titled Mother's Hope, which captured the HMong mother with a speech disorder holding her children, was awarded the grand prize of $120,000 at HIPA's award ceremony in Dubai last week. However, the prize sparked controversy after another photographer shared a behind-the-scenes picture of the winning photo being taken, which showed many photographers taking pictures of the woman and her children at the same time and from the same angle. This photograph led to accusations that the winning photo was staged. While HIPA does not have any regulation disallowing staged photos, the fact that one of many similar photos won a lot of money has angered many photographers, critics noted. HIPA organizers have offered no feedback on the incident. With the annual total prize money of $450,000, HIPA offers the largest prize money among photography awards in the world. It is also one of the most inclusive photography awards, charging no fees and having no entry barriers including age, photographic status, gender or nationality. Police escort a Chinese suspect after busting a drug gang in Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday. Photo by VnExpress/Quoc Thang Police are questioning around 20 suspects, mostly Chinese, after Wednesday's seizure of 300 kilos of meth in HCMC. They believe that a Chinese man, 56, is the leader of this drug ring, and that he was operating under the cover of a garment firm in the outlying Binh Tan District. According to the Ministry of Public Security's Drug Crime Investigation Department, the ring was smuggling meth from the Golden Triangle into Vietnam before distributing it across the country. Investigators said the garment company, Hasan, is registered in the name of a Vietnamese woman in her 40s, believed to be a girlfriend of the Chinese drug lord. They said that in the five years since Hasan was established, it had only 40 customs declaration forms for garment products, which made police suspicious. Members of the ring rented apartments or stayed in hotels near the company. The company hired Vietnamese guards, but no one was allowed to know what they were guarding, they said. Every time the "goods" arrived, the guards would be told to stay away. After a long period of surveillance, a raid was carried out on Wednesday by officers from the Drug Crime Investigation Department in coordination with the Southern Border Guard's Special Forces, and police from HCMC and the Central Highlands province of Dak Nong. Dozens of armed mobile police officers, plainclothes policemen and border guards raided the mansion behind the company. The mansion was being used as a hideout and warehouse by the drug trafficking gang. Among the 20 or so people arrested during the raid were three Vietnamese and 16 Chinese. A specific number of suspects was not given. Chinese suspects questioned after huge meth bust in HCMC Police register largest ever meth bust in HCMC Wednesdays seizure of 300 kilos of methamphetamine worth VND600 billion ($26 million) is said to be the largest drug haul ever in HCMC. The drug is believed to have originated from Laos and smuggled into Vietnam through roads around the Bo Y Border Gate in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum. The shipment was slated for delivery to Taiwan. Police said they found many sacks that are of the same type as the ones theyd collected from previous drug busts in the central and Central Highlands regions. On February 17, police had detained Vangchueyang Briachear, a 25-year-old Lao man, when he was on his way to bring 294 kilograms of meth from Laos to Vietnam. Earlier, in October last year, police arrested Xeng Vang, 23, also from Laos, when he was driving a truck carrying 300 kilos of meth from Ha Tinh to Da Nang in the central region. The public security ministry is working with local police in different provinces and cities to expand the investigation. Vietnam is a key trafficking hub for narcotics around the Golden Triangle, an intersection of China, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar and the world's second-largest drug producing region. It also has some of the worlds toughest drug laws. Those convicted of possessing or smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine face the death penalty. While heroin has long been common among users in Vietnam, the use of synthetic drugs like meth or ecstasy is on the rise, especially among youth. Seven people died after using drugs at an electronic music festival in September last year in Hanoi, sparking off an alarm and prompting tougher crackdowns. Traffic jam on a street of Ho Chi Minh City's District 10 in January 2019. The city expects to use AI to deal with traffic jams and other major problems. Photo by VnExpress/Huu Khoa HCMC leader says the city should develop and use artificial intelligence (AI) towards realizing its Industry 4.0 potentials. The municipal Party Secretary, Nguyen Thien Nhan, said at a scientific conference Wednesday that the city should work with experts, relevant units and companies that have developed AI related projects. At the same time, it should set up a board to develop and operate a master program for coordination and research in AI, he said. That board would gather scientists and researchers who will advise the city on what it should study and invest in; who it should choose as strategic partners; and what aspects it should focus on in the coming years. "If we want to make HCMC a smart city and enter the Industry 4.0 era, we have to study and apply AI," Nhan said. In 2017, the southern metropolis, the biggest city in Vietnam, started implementing a master plan to transform itself into a smart city by 2020. The goal of this ambitious plan is to use scientific advances to solve problems the city is facing, including rapid population growth, unsustainable economic growth, inadequate forecasting, planning and management, poor health, education and transport, pollution and weak public administration. The plan will focus on creating a better living environment for the citys residents, it was said. Nhan told the meeting that as an economic hub with a large population of more than 10 million, HCMC has enough conditions to set up a center for studying and applying AI. He added that the citys budget can be used to implement AI projects, but the money should be spent wisely and reasonably. The city will propose the AI master plan to the government soon so that it can be implemented at the earliest, Nhan said. Experts attending the conference said the city should focus on training personnel, keeping updated with new technology trends and getting foreign investors involved so as to turn its AI dream into reality. Vu Hai Quan, deputy director of the Vietnam National University-Ho Chi Minh City, suggested adding programming to the general education program and organizing AI courses in some specialized schools. Under this plan, the city should master basic AI technologies between 2020 and 2025, and spend the subsequent five years on upgrading and developing technologies that the city can directly apply in healthcare, traffic infrastructure, and military defense. Time for action Professor Ho Tu Bao from the Vietnam Institute for Advanced Studies in Mathematics said AI should bring about drastic changes in some key areas such as digital governance (text database, public administrative services), traffic (digital traffic and logistic maps in transport), and healthcare (medical electronics and digitized health records). "After two years talking about Industry 4.0 and 'smart city,' its time for us to actually work on that and achieve specific results," he said. Other experts said that apart from adding new courses to schools and training staff, HCMC should equip its employees with needed knowledge and skills in AI and establish a channel to connect Vietnamese experts with foreign counterparts. Nguyen Duy Luan, a lecturer at the University of Texas in Austin, suggested that the city issues preferential policies for foreign investors in high-tech areas. "Foreign investors in this sector should be supported in terms of taxation and administrative procedures; and Vietnamese colleges should connect with foreign firms to organize AI courses," he said. Nguyen Hoang Tu Anh, principal of the University of Information Technology under Vietnam National University-HCMC, said the city needed a chief architect for its AI development program. From the side of investors, Hoang Minh Phuong, CEO of a young tech firm based in the city, said he expects that the bidding to choose companies for implementing the AI master plan will be a transparent and fair process. He was assured by the citys Deputy Chairman Tran Vinh Tuyen, who said all auctions will be made public. Duong Anh Duc, director of the municipal information and communications department, said the city will order independent research teams to work on specific projects that could meet practical and urgent needs of the people, instead of letting researchers work on their own projects and wait in line for approval. Then, the group that could create the most feasible and convincing product would get funding, he said. Neither here nor there: Vietnamese-Cambodians live in no mans land Recognized neither as Cambodian nor as Vietnamese, thousands have lived with neither home nor identification for generations. Ba Tai stopped by a wet market near the Tonle Sap River and the lake of the same name in Cambodia to buy some tobacco, rice, salt and incense sticks. Then he walked to a nearby cemetery to visit his parents and grandparents graves. In family stories that Tai has been told, his ancestors came from Dong Thap Province in southern Vietnam. His family is one of thousands who belong to an ethnic Vietnamese community that has lived on hundreds of floating villages on the Tonle Sap. Tai used to think that he would end up at this cemetery with the rest of his family one day, but that is unlikely to happen. After the cemetery visit on an afternoon in August 2018, he returned to his boat, where his wife helped him hang a small plastic bag containing rice, salt and a small bundle of wood on its bow, a long-standing ritual among the Vietnamese Cambodians, a prayer that the ancestors will watch their steps and bless them with peace on long journeys. "Lets go!" Together, the four boats that were home to Tai and his big family, including children and grandchildren, left the pier. That was their last day in Cambodia, where they were born, grew up and lived all of their lives. Since that day, Tai and his family, for long bereft of a national identity, have no idea where they belong. Tai and his three grandchildren on his boat. Tai took his family "back to Vietnam," a place he has no connection with, except his ancestry. And like Tai, tens of thousands of other ethnic Vietnamese have left and will leave Cambodia, unable to prove that they are official citizens. Between the late 19th century and early 20th century, the French sent thousands of Vietnamese to Cambodia to work on their rubber farms and through the years, a Vietnamese community took root in the new land. This community became a genocidal target under the Khmer Republic and Khmer Rouge governments in the 1970s. Thousands were killed and many more sought refuge in Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, general secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, Cambodia's former ruling party, invaded Vietnam and killed tens of thousands of Vietnamese between 1975 and 1979. On the plea of Cambodian revolutionaries, Vietnamese soldiers entered Cambodia in January 1979, launched a retaliatory attack on the Khmer Rouge and succeeded in freeing Phnom Penh and large parts of Cambodia from their grasp. After the war ended, the ethnic Vietnamese returned to Tonle Sap, where their parents, grandparents and they were born, only to discover that they had been labeled as "illegal immigrants." As the Cambodian law only allows Cambodia citizens to buy land, thousands of ethnic Vietnamese settled in villages on stilts. After the pioneers, two more generations of Vietnamese Cambodians have been born in Cambodia, living with no official documentation of their existence. According to the Cambodian Overseas Vietnamese Association, over 1,500 Vietnamese families live in floating villages by Lake Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater body in Southeast Asia that used to boast one of the most fertile ecosystems in the world and provided 75 percent of Cambodia's freshwater fish catches. Since 2017, the Cambodian government has been making plans to relocate this community as part of a master plan to beautify the riverfront and improve water quality. At a meeting last November, Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn and Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh agreed to work together to relocate the floating families in the Tonle Sap area. In February last year, Cambodias Ministry of Interior pledged to issue a residency green card to roughly 70,000 ethnic Vietnamese people. Immigration chief Sok Phal told the PhomPenh Post that the system would be similar to the green cards given to immigrants in countries like the U.S. or Canada. However, a New York Times report says Cambodian officials have demanded that residents either volunteer to move to Vietnam, or pay a biannual fee for an immigration card identifying the holder as Vietnamese. With no formal legal identity and few of the rights enjoyed by their Khmer and Cham neighbors, ethnic Vietnamese people say they have had to pay large bribes to the fisheries police, the environmental police, the maritime police and other authorities. They are frequently subject to evictions, mobs and capricious imprisonment, the NYT report said. Tai confirmed this. Regular harassment It is regulated by Cambodian police that each fishing boat belonging to ethnic Vietnamese on the Tonle Sap Lake has to pay a VND20 million ($860) fee every fishing season. "And as we have no legal papers, its always been hard for us to go fishing without being harassed by local authorities. In recent years, they have either showed up to seize our nets or fine us, and we are not protected by law when our nets are stolen," he said. Faced with this oppressive situation, many of ethnic Vietnamese families decided to move to Vietnam, hoping that the land of their origins will help them. They did not know that leaving Tonle Sap will not change their state of statelessness. Alive, no existence on paper A community of Vietnamese Cambodians in Vinh Hung District, Long An Province. Along with Ba Tai, 30 Vietnamese Cambodian families sailed to southern Vietnam and resettled in Tuyen Binh Commune in Vinh Hung District of Long An Province, two kilometers (7.5 miles) from the Vietnam-Cambodia border. They built huts on a 500 square meter area along a waterway and began paying rent to locals. But their new life has been tough, even tougher than the old one in the floating villages on Tonle Sap. Tai, his wife, son, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren share a space that is just a little more than 10 square meters. Inside the hut, they have to hang hammocks so that everybody gets space to lie down. Back in Cambodia, Tien, Tais wife, did not have to worry much about their daily meals. The only thing that Tonle Sap folks needed to buy was meat. They had an abundant source of fish and vegetables around, and wood was easily found in nearby jungles. Since moving to Vietnam, Tien and her children have had to tighten their daily budget. They normally skip lunch to save food for days when they are unable to catch any fish. In the area where Tais family settled down in Long An, the waterways are badly polluted and there is no future in fishing or aquaculture. During the flooding season last year, Tai and his son would leave early in the afternoon to fish in several tributaries of the Mekong River and return close to midnight. They did this so that the women at home could take the fish to the market and sell it first thing in the morning. But there were several nights that the father and son returned empty handed. "My parents communicate in both Vietnamese and Cambodian, and I cant tell if Im Vietnamese or Cambodian," Phiep, Tai's neighbor, said in Vietnamese. Her memory, which has been affected by heavy alcohol use, tells Phiep that she grew up on a floating village on the Tonle Sap Lake. She lived all her life in that village, saw her parents pass away, got married and had her own family. After her husband passed away, Phiep took her daughter, son-in-law and four grandchildren, and followed a group of Vietnamese Cambodians to Tuyen Binh Commune. Every day, Phiep stays home to look after her youngest grandchild when her son-in-law goes fishing and her daughter and grandchildren go into town to sell lottery tickets. Life is sad, Phiep says, so she spends a small sum on wine every day to forget that sadness and also her muscle pain. Sometimes, some benefactors call on them, but people like Tai and Phiep are steeped in poverty. What they actually need is a legal citizenship and a national identity card so that they can get a job and their children and grandchildren can go to school. Around 100 meters from where Tais family stays in Hung Ha Commune of Tan Hung District is another community of Vietnamese Cambodians with a dozen families or so. In the flickering light from a battery, Phuongs family was preparing dinner with some fish hed caught in the afternoon. That evening, Phuong, 33, had dinner with rice and broth from the fish soup so that his three kids could have the fish. Phuong's family has dinner with rice and fish soup in Tan Hung District, Long An Province. In his neighborhood, men like Phuong can only find jobs as porters at a nearby rice milling plant and earn no more than VND200,000 ($9) each day, but this is just a seasonal job and there are days they have no work. The women and children either collect water hyacinths and dry the plant for sale (as the weed can be used to make baskets or bags), or go into town to sell lottery tickets. "Of course its sad and sometimes I want to go and find a job in Saigon (the nations biggest city that borders Long An) or Binh Duong (the industrial hub that neighbors Saigon) so that my kids can have a better life, but who would hire me when I don't have any legal papers?" Phuong said. Doi is Phuongs neighbor. The young man is an example of what happens to Vietnamese Cambodians when they have no legal ID. In 2018, Doi went to Saigon and asked for a job at a construction site. He accepted an offer of VND3.5-4.5 million ($150-194) per month. He shared a rented room with other workers and sometimes, when the local police ran a check on temporary residence papers, Doi had to hide himself. But his difficulties do not stop there. The contractor did not pay him, after finding all excuses to delay it. So he quit, struggling in the city for sometime before moving to another construction site. The new employer also failed to pay him his monthly salary of VND4.5 million ($195). He finally had to call his brothers to travel all the way to Saigon to pick him up, because he did not have money to buy a bus ticket. "They know I have no paper, and I cannot sign contracts with them. So it is obvious that there is no way I can sue them if they do not pay me," Doi said. So far, 20 young Vietnamese Cambodian men in his neighborhood have had similar experiences. Free migrants Despite such suffering, authorities in Long An have failed to find any solutions. A couple of years ago, commune level authorities in the province identified this community as "Viet Kieu," or overseas Vietnamese, but now, they call them "free migrants" because it is almost impossible to prove their Vietnamese roots. In July last year, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc assigned social-affairs authorities and authorities of provinces that share the border with Cambodia to pay more attention to Vietnamese Cambodians returning from Tonle Sap, especially on the issue of birth certificates and education. But local authorities have done nothing to help, so far. "The biggest problem now is that the current regulation requires that a person should prove that he or she has lived for at least 20 years in Vietnam to earn citizenship," said Huynh Thanh Duoc, vice chairman of Tuyen Binh Commune in Vinh Hung District. Nguyen Thi Phuong Lan, vice chairman of Hung Ha Commune in Tan Hung District, said the commune is now home to more than 70 Vietnamese Cambodian families with nearly 300 members, but only a dozen families have got legal papers. These are families that can still identify where their forefathers came from and authorities in those places are able to track down their roots. "Apart from the minimum time of living in Vietnam for 20 years, Vietnamese Cambodians must prove they have roots in Vietnam to get the citizenship," Lan said. At this point, the local authorities can only help by letting them borrow or hire land. A Vietnamese Cambodian family in Tuyen Binh Commune in Long An Province Recently, Tuyen Binh Commune began giving birth certificates for babies born to those families, so that they can go to school. Hung Ha has issued a temporary residence book to each family in the commune. However, this book only helps authorities manage the families better, rather than helping people like Doi find a job away from home. The first Vietnamese Cambodians returned to Vinh Hung District in 1993, and for more than two decades, they have been waiting for that one ID card, and their children have not been able to attend school. Literacy volunteers These days in Tuyen Binh Commune, some border guards have volunteered to work as teachers in their free time to teach Vietnamese Cambodian children read and write. "Our classes can only go as far as helping them to read and write and do basic math, we cannot follow the secondary and high-school programs," said senior lieutenant Dao Dinh Luyen. But it is not easy for the border guards to have kids attend these classes. Luyen had to spend time encouraging each family and look for free books to give the kids. Most of the kids are more interested in selling lottery tickets than studying because they can earn money right away. Two Vietnamese Cambodian boys sell lottery tickets in Tan Hung Town of Tan Hung District in Long An Province. One afternoon, 30 minutes after one such charity class had started, Nguyen Thi Kim Ly rushed in. As she looked for a seat, she wiped the sweat on her forehead and face. She had just returned from town after selling lottery tickets. At 13, Ly should be in secondary school, but she follows a program for the third grade. Ly has been in Vietnam for more than five years. Her father is a construction worker while she, her mother and 10-year-old sister go to town every day to sell lottery tickets. And that is not all. There are families that do not stick to one place but travel back and forth between Vietnam and Cambodia to catch up with both the fishing season in Tonle Sap and the rice harvesting season in Long An. "Children of these families are the most disadvantaged as they have to live a nomadic life and cannot follow our classes," said Luyen. Ly lives such a life. Luyen said Ly was a hard-working, bright student but there was not much hope for her, the fourth generation of Vietnamese Cambodians. He said he was afraid that her future will follow the same path as that of her parents. "I really dont know where my actual home is, here in Long An or somewhere in Tonle Sap," she said. A Vietnamese Cambodian man goes fishing in Long An Province. In January this year, Cambodia decided to postpone the resettlement of Vietnamese people after considering the impact it would have on the livelihoods of the community there. "We constantly think about the peoples livelihoods. In this case, they have been doing cage fish farming. So if we move the cages on to land, the fish will die. So we let them keep their homes and cage fish farms temporarily," Kampong Chhnang provincial governor Chhour Chandoeun said in a statement. "They need to settle on land. They can keep their cage fish farms but cant live in the area permanently." He added that authorities are preparing for the relocation within the next six months. The relocation will be done in two phases, according to provincial deputy governor Sun Sovannarith. In the first phase, the government will build the required infrastructure for families already relocated and those who do not make a living from fish cages. In the resettlement areas, local authorities and NGOs will build roads, schools, health centers, and water and power supply systems, according to the plan. In the second phase, authorities will work with private companies to turn fish farms into tourist attractions. For now, a life of misery and deprivation is the reality for most undocumented immigrants. Sitting in his neighbor Ois hut in Hung Ha Commune, Phat was in tears as he pointed at the only light bulb in the hut, saying that his community has to ask a local to register for electricity usage. "Even for this light, we had to beg from others." Even as they are locked in this grim, daily struggle for survival, the undocumented immigrants wonder if they would ever get Vietnamese citizenship. In resigned acceptance, Oi says: "Maybe I will not get it until I die." Hundreds of police officers raided a warehouse in Binh Tan District Wednesday and seized over 300 kilograms of meth. The raid was carried out by officers from the Ministry of Public Security's Drug Crime Investigation Department in coordination with the Southern Border Guard's Special Forces, Ho Chi Minh City police and police from the Central Highlands province of Dak Nong. Dozens of armed mobile police officers, plainclothes policemen and border guards raided a mansion in Binh Tan District's Binh Hung Hoa B residential area. The mansion was being used as a hideout and warehouse by the drug trafficking gang. Police register largest ever meth bust in HCMC Police register largest ever meth bust in HCMC At least 11 people of Lao, Chinese and Vietnamese nationalities were detained and a pickup truck transporting about 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of methamphetamine was seized. The drug haul, said to be the largest ever in Ho Chi Minh City, is believed to have originated from Laos and smuggled into Vietnam through roads around the Bo Y Border Gate in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum. About 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of methamphetamine was seized. Photo by VnExpress/Q.T Police said they were also raiding other suspect warehouses Ho Chi Minh City, Dak Nong and the southern provinces of Binh Duong and Tay Ninh. Vietnam has some of the worlds toughest drug laws. Those convicted of possessing or smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or cocaine or more than 2.5 kg of methamphetamine could face the death penalty. The production or sale of 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics is also punishable by death. In case you missed it: Here are the top five news from today Take a quick look at some of the important news you may have missed from todays paper. Authorities in Lang Son Province send six Chinese nationals who illegally entered the country home on Tuesday. Photo by VnExpress/Binh Minh Immigration authorities in the border province of Lang Son expelled six Chinese nationals Tuesday for illegal entry. The two men and six women were detained by police and immigration officials at the province's Huu Nghi border gate the previous day for illegally crossing through the border into Vietnam and failing to show valid documentation. The group admitted that theyd planned to enter Vietnam first and go on a trip to Cambodia to seek work there. Cases of Chinese nationals illegally entering Vietnam via the northern borders are showing no sign of abating. Last year, seven Chinese nationals were arrested for illegally crossing through the border gate in Quang Ninh Province. They came for a tour of the famous Ha Long Bay. Despite a 1.3 percent year-on-year decrease, China topped the list of foreign visitors with 889,888 arrivals in Vietnam in the first two months of this year. Vietnamese jailed for possessing sword, using drugs in Cambodia A Cambodia court sentenced a Vietnamese national to a year in jail Wednesday for possessing a samurai sword and using drugs. Nguyen Choangchou, 37, was arrested last October after the police received a complaint about a group of youths using drugs at a shop in Prek Pnov District in the capital Phnom Penh, Khmer Times quoted Major Truong Sophath, the districts deputy police chief, as saying. "When police were entering the shop, Mr Choangchuo, who was high on drugs, came out armed with a long samurai sword to confront them. "He threatened to hack our police officers but was arrested." The meter-long samurai sword and drug paraphernalia were seized from the scene. Nguyen, a known drug dealer, user and owner of the shop, was sentenced by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court. Judge Key Manera also ordered him to pay one million riel to the "states coffers." A Vietnamese gang of six is suspected to have shoplifted goods worth $114,000 from drugstores in Japan. Japan Today reported Thursday that one of them, an unnamed 30-year-old woman, is said to have committed 38 counts of shoplifting, totaling 2,229 items worth around $58,600 in Fukui, Mie and Aichi prefectures last year. The paper cited information from the Fukuoka District Court, where a trial has begun. Investigators said the stolen items were primarily cosmetics, medicine and clothing items. The technical trainee would enter stores with a large shoulder bag and stuff it with up to 150 items in a single run, they added. Police believe the woman was not acting on her own, but was part of a gang with five other Vietnamese nationals who also came to Japan under technical training programs. The five were men aged between 24 and 28, police said. Together, the gang is suspected to have committed 109 counts of shoplifting across eight prefectures, stealing items worth around $114,000. The stolen items were typically sold to Vietnamese social media users, police said. The woman is likely to be deported once the trial is over, since she was also found to have overstayed her technical trainee visa without acquiring a Japanese residency permit. Vietnam has surpassed China to become the largest group of technical intern trainees in the country, with around 127,000 in 2017, according to Japans Immigration Department. But Vietnamese nationals also accounted for almost half of the foreign residents whose residency rights were revoked in Japan in 2017, according to a report from the Japans Justice Ministry in October last year. Many of them were found staying in Japan illegally after graduation. The reputation of Vietnamese people living in Japan has also been tarnished following a 2017 Japanese police report that said they committed more crimes than any other foreign non-permanent residents in the country. Police recorded 5,140 crimes committed by Vietnamese people in 2017, up from 3,177 the year earlier, accounting for 30.2 percent of the total number of crimes committed by foreign nationals. A still image taken from CCTV footage shows a man forcibly kissing a woman in an apartment building elevator in Hanoi last Sunday. Vietnamese citizens were outraged after a man was fined $8 for forcibly kissing a woman in an elevator. The #MeToo movement never took off in Vietnam, a country where gender-based violence is widespread but remains a taboo topic. Citizens took to social media this week after a man was fined VND200,000, or more than $8, for forcibly kissing a woman in an elevator in her Hanoi apartment building. CCTV footage showed the man chatting to the woman before cornering her and suddenly jumping on her before she scrambles out of the elevator as he grabbed her arm. The footage quickly went viral, stoking public anger. "The fine... was a mockery and humiliation against the dignity of Vietnamese women," said Facebook user Duong Dai Trieu Lam on Wednesday. Office worker Nguyen Trang told AFP: "It's ridiculous, I can't accept this... I'm worried for my kids and myself." Unlike rape, sexual assault is not a criminal offence in Vietnam, but is considered an administrative violation falling under the category of "indecent speech and behaviour." The maximum fine for sexual assault is $13. An online petition calling for an amendment to the law gathered steam Wednesday. Official data on sexual harassment is not routinely published in Vietnam, though 87 percent of women and girls experienced sexual harassment in public, according to a 2014 survey of 2,000 women by the NGO ActionAid. The last comprehensive survey on gender violence in 2010 published by the World Health Organization and the Vietnamese government said 34 percent of women reported regular abuse by their spouses. Many are too scared to report the abuse, said Khuat Thu Hong, director of the Institute for Social Development Studies, who welcomed the public outcry following the elevator attack. "The reaction is a good sign, society has shown its support to those who are courageous to speak out," Hong told AFP. This is not the first time tales of sexual harassment in Vietnam have gone public. In 2017 model and actress Vu Thu Phuong said she was harassed by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, but her story failed to spark a wider #MeToo movement seen elsewhere in Asia, including in China and South Korea. Police officers and workers in protective suits are seen at a checkpoint on a road leading to a farm owned by Hebei Dawu Group where African swine fever was detected, in Xushui district of Baoding, Hebei, China, February 26, 2019. Photo by Reuters/Hallie Gu Farmers and industry insiders said Chinas African swine fever epidemic is far more extensive than official reports suggest, making the disease harder to contain. When pigs on the Xinda Husbandry Co. Ltd breeding farm in northern China began dying in growing numbers in early January, it looked increasingly likely that the farm had been struck by the much feared African swine fever, an incurable disease that has spread rapidly across the country since last year. But after taking samples from some pigs, local officials in the Xushui district of Baoding city, about an hours drive from Beijing, said their tests came back negative, said Sun Dawu, chairman of Hebei Dawu Agriculture Group, the farm owner. As hundreds of pigs began dying daily on the 20,000-head farm, the company obtained a test kit that showed some positive results for the virus. But after further lobbying by Xinda, officials just offered the company subsidies for farm buildings and other investments, said Sun. Suns account of events and pictures taken by farm staff of dead pigs lying in rows and a pile outside the farm could not be independently verified. Xushui district said in a faxed response to Reuters on Tuesday that it was opening an investigation into the case, adding that it had found some "discrepancies" with the reported version of events. "If there is illegal behavior, relevant departments will handle it according to the law," added the statement from the local governments investigative committee. Farmers and other industry insiders told Reuters that Chinas African swine fever epidemic is far more extensive than official reports suggest, making the disease harder to contain, potentially causing pork shortages and increasing the likelihood that it will spread beyond Chinas borders. "Our full expectation is that the number of cases is under-reported," said Paul Sundberg, executive director at the Swine Health Information Center in Ames, Iowa, which is funded by American pork producers. "And if theres so much of that virus in the environment in China, then we are at increased risk of importing it." China does not permit the commercial sale of African swine fever test kits, though many are now available. Official confirmation must come from a state-approved laboratory. "Public confirmation of disease is the governments job," Sun told Reuters at his company headquarters in Xushui in late February. Frustrated by the lack of action and mounting losses from the disease, Sun eventually published details of the suspected outbreak on Chinas Twitter-like platform Weibo on Feb. 22. Two days later, it became the first African swine fever case in Hebei province, one of the norths top pig producing regions, to be reported by Chinas Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, about seven weeks after the company says it had alerted local authorities. By then, more than 15,000 pigs on the Xinda farm had already died, said Sun, and the company even sold on thousands of pigs - potentially spreading the disease further. Sun said officials did not explain why their first test had been negative, though he suggested it may have been because they took samples from live pigs on the farm and did not test the dead ones. Chinas Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs did not reply to a faxed request for comment on the case. The agriculture ministry has warned against covering up outbreaks of the disease, and in January highlighted two large farms that had tried to conceal outbreaks. Unconfirmed outbreaks Detailed accounts of unconfirmed outbreaks shared with Reuters by two other farm company managers suggest Suns experience is not unique. In one case in northern China last year, local officials declined to even carry out a test. In another case in Shandong province, official test results came back negative, despite clinical symptoms that strongly pointed to African swine fever and a positive test result obtained by the company itself. Neither manager was willing to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. Once an outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) is confirmed, all pigs on the farm, as well as any within a 3-km (1.8-mile) radius, must be culled and disposed of, according to Chinese law, and farmers should be paid 1,200 yuan ($180) per pig culled. For some cash-strapped county governments, avoiding compensation payments could be an incentive not to report disease, said a senior official with a major pig producer. When the disease hit one of the companys 6,000-head sow farms in the northeast in November, local authorities did nothing, the official said. "It was never tested by the government. We couldnt do the test because we didnt have the capability. But theres no question it was ASF, based on the symptoms and lesions," he told Reuters, declining to be identified because of company policy. A county official in northeastern Liaoning province told Reuters in January that the local government had poured so much money and resources into preventing and controlling African swine fever that it risked bankrupting the county. But wealthy Shandong province, northern Chinas biggest producer of hogs, has only confirmed one case of the disease, on Feb. 20. Insiders at one company said four of its farms in the province had suffered swine fever infections, however, suggesting more unconfirmed outbreaks may have occurred. After the companys first outbreak in early January the local government tested and the results came back negative, said an executive, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. Shandong provinces animal husbandry bureau did not respond to a fax seeking comment on unreported cases. Spatial randomness There is no cure or vaccine for African swine fever and it kills about 90 percent of infected pigs. Analysts forecast pig production in China, which eats about half of the worlds pork, will fall more than during the 2006 blue ear epidemic, one of the worst disease outbreaks in recent years, with some expecting a decline of around 30 percent in 2019. That would send meat prices soaring and trigger huge demand for imports. The agriculture ministry said last week the pig herd in February had dropped 16.6 percent year-on-year, and sow stocks were down more than 19 percent. China also has a patchy record of reporting disease. Details of the blue ear outbreak, which infected more than 2 million hogs, did not emerge until months after the damage had already been done, and the number of pigs that died is still disputed. Like blue ear, African swine fever does not harm people. But it is classified a reportable disease by the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), a global body that promotes transparency, and member country China is obliged to report each outbreak. "You need to move faster than the virus, its a very simple equation of how to control disease," said Trevor Drew, director of the Australian Animal Health Laboratory at the national research agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. "If you dont know where the virus is, you cant stop it." Since August 2018, Beijing has reported 112 outbreaks in 28 provinces and regions. The increase has slowed considerably in 2019 and the agriculture ministry said earlier this month the situation was "gradually improving". But some suspect the disease is worse than the official data suggest. "I am very much hoping that I am wrong, but if I consider the epidemiological characteristics of this virus disease, I would have to be extremely skeptical," said Dirk Pfeiffer, a professor of veterinary epidemiology at the City University of Hong Kong. He pointed to the "spatial randomness" of the reported outbreaks, unusual for an infectious disease, which normally develops in clusters. The high rate of detection of the virus in food products carried from China to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia, as well as domestically, also indicated a much higher presence of the virus in Chinese pigs than reported, said Pfeiffer and others. Large farms, large losses With extremely high density of pigs, raised largely on low-biosecurity farms, tackling disease is widely recognized as a major challenge for China. But the disease has hit both small farms and large producers, say industry insiders, despite better hygiene and training at factory farms. "The large producers have not been spared," said a manager with a company that supplies several of Chinas top pig producers. "Everyone is trying really hard on biosecurity, but theyre still getting outbreaks, and theyre frustrated and losing hope." He said he knew of eight large breeding farms that had experienced outbreaks, including two on very large, 10,000-head sow farms. None were officially reported. He declined to be named or to reveal the names of the producers because of client confidentiality. Beijing has not officially reported any swine fever on the farms of large listed producers, whose shares are trading at record levels as investors bet the big producers will benefit from tighter supplies. Qin Yinglin, chairman of Chinas No.2 producer, Muyuan Foods Co Ltd, which raised 11 million pigs for slaughter last year, said most large companies were likely to be infected. "If you checked carefully, testing one-by-one, then for sure everyone has it," he told Reuters in an interview. "This is a high probability event." He said it was "not yet known" if his firm had been hit. This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going. Open Systems International, Inc. (OSI) has been awarded a contract by TasNetworks for a new Distribution Management System (DMS) based on OSI's monarch operational technology (OT) platform and delivered on OSI's unified OpenXphere platform. TasNetworks has relied on OSI's SCADA/EMS technology for years, and this fully virtualized DMS will integrate seamlessly with their existing system, providing invaluable, modernized tools to efficiently monitor and control the distribution resources on their network. The new system will include natively integrated DMS components including Distribution Network Operating Model; Distribution Power Flow; Fault Location, Isolation, and System Restoration; and Switch Order Management. It will also feature OSI's web-based real-time graphical viewer to support remote users. "We have used OSI technology for transmission management (EMS) for many years," said Michael Westenberg, general manager of technology and performance at TasNetworks. "The addition of OSI's advanced DMS applications enables us to improve efficiency and service reliability for our customers." "Australia has been a rapidly growing market for OSI and we are excited to expand our technology platform at TasNetworks to include distribution in addition to transmission," said Dan Candotti, senior director of utilities at OSI's Australia office. "Supporting transmission and distribution systems on a unified technology platform is at the core of OSI's OpenXphere solution for enterprise-wide operations technology." TasNetworks (www.tasnetworks.com.au) is a Tasmanian state-owned corporation that supplies power from the generation source to homes and businesses through a network of transmission towers, substations, and powerlines. The company formed on 1 July, 2014 following a merger between Aurora Energy's distribution network and Transend Networks. They own, operate, and maintain 3,564km of transmission lines and underground cables, and 22,400km of distribution overhead lines and underground cables. Open Systems International (www.osii.com) headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota provides open, state-of-the-art and high-performance automation solutions to utilities worldwide. These solutions include Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, Network Management Systems (NMS), Energy Management Systems (EMS), Distribution Management Systems (DMS), Outage Management Systems (OMS), Generation Management Systems (GMS), Substation Automation (SA) Systems, Data Warehousing (Historian) Analytics, Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS), Situational Awareness Systems, individual software and hardware products, and Smart Grid solutions for utility operations. OSI's solutions empower its users to meet their operational challenges, day in and day out, with unsurpassed reliability and a minimal cost of technology ownership and maintenance. For additional information regarding this news release, please contact news@osii.com. SK Innovation, a leading developer of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), was joined Tuesday by Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to kick off construction of the company's new EV battery factory located outside the City of Commerce in Jackson County, Georgia. "Today's (3/19) groundbreaking marks an important step in SK Innovation's blossoming partnership with the U.S., the state of Georgia and global automakers throughout the region whose collective confidence in our technology helped spur this investment," said SK Group Executive Vice Chairman Jae-won Chey. "I have no doubt that today's ceremony will go down in history as the beginning of a brand new chapter in global car development." Located on 283 acres inside Commerce's industrial complex, the $1.67 billion facility - SK Innovation's first EV battery factory in the U.S. - will generate 2,000 jobs by 2025 and boast a production capacity of 9.8GWh beginning in 2022. "SK Innovation's plant represents one of the largest single investments in a job creating initiative in Georgia's history," said Governor of Georgia Brian Kemp. "We are humbled by SK's investment in our students, workers and our state's future and look forward to years of collaboration to ensure our best days are ahead." The EV battery cells produced from the Commerce factory will be supplied to major global automakers with manufacturing operations in the U.S. "This major investment by SK in Georgia is evidence that our work to make the United States the best place in the world to invest has been fruitful," Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said. "Innovative products and the processes to make those products are revitalizing the U.S. economy, which is growing faster and creating more jobs than it has in decades." In addition to Secretary Ross and Governor Kemp, the ceremony was attended by over 200 guests, including state legislators, members of the U.S. Congress, Executive Vice President of SK Group Jae-won Chey, and CEO and President of SK Innovation Jun Kim, along with SK employees. With the construction of this battery plant in Georgia, SK Innovation will have expanded its EV battery production base to span four countries, including South Korea, Hungary, China, and the United States. Currently, SK Innovation has the capacity to produce 4.7GWh in EV batteries annually, all in South Korea. By 2022, upon completion of plants in Hungary, China and the U.S., SK Innovation's annual production capacity for EV batteries will jump to 60GWh - more than six times its current capacity. SK Innovation started out as one of the largest energy and chemical companies in South Korea, and has been expanding its business into EV batteries and LiBS (Lithium-ion Battery Separator). SK Innovation has successfully developed and commercially produced the NCM811 battery for the first time in the world, boasting its superior technological competitiveness. In addition, SK Innovation has developed Wet-type LiBS, a key component of the EV battery, back in 2004 for the third time in the world. Its LiBS technology helps SK Innovation to offer clearly superior quality products. About SK Innovation Co., Ltd Established as South Korea's first oil refining company in 1962, SK Innovation engages in diverse areas of business, including exploration and production (E&P), batteries, and information and electronics materials. It owns SK Energy, South Korea's No.1 refining company, SK Global Chemical, the leader in the domestic petrochemical industry, SK Lubricants, a global lubricants company, SK Incheon Petrochem, a refining and chemical company, and SK Trading International, a trader of crude oils and petrochemicals. As part of their management system, SK Innovation pursues the maximization of happiness for all stakeholders. It is for this reason that SK Innovation recognizes the importance of and pays attention to social enterprise, a way to create social values through business. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Monday (3/11) issued the following statement after the New Mexico House approved Senate Bill 489, landmark legislation that will aggressively transition New Mexico toward renewable energy sources and establish the state as a national leader in climate-conscious governance. The Senate overwhelmingly approved the legislation with bipartisan support March 6. "The Energy Transition Act is a promise to future generations of New Mexicans," Gov. Lujan Grisham said. "When we were presented the chance to move toward cleaner sources of energy, we took it, boldly charting a course to a carbon-free future, permanently centering our commitment to lower emissions and setting an example for other states. Crucially, this legislation does not leave our neighbors in San Juan County behind, as we will provide millions for trainings and economic development." Senate Bill 489 ensures greater renewable energy production while providing tens of millions of dollars of economic and workforce support for communities impacted by coal plant closures, as well as the development of renewable replacement power in San Juan County. The legislation raises New Mexico's renewable portfolio standard to 50 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2040, in addition to requiring 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2045 for investor-owned utilities. India and the Pacific Region With rising new Asian powers like India and China, the balance of power in world politics is shifting dramatically Ormat Technologies Inc. (NYSE: ORA) today (3/20) announced the signing of a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) between a subsidiary of the Company and Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA). Under the PPA, SCPPA will purchase 16MW of power generated by the expected 30MW Casa Diablo-IV (CD4) geothermal project located in Mammoth Lakes, California. SCPPA will resell the output to the City of Colton. The CD4 power plant will be the first geothermal power plant built within the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) balancing authority in the last 30 years. The 16MW of energy deliveries under the PPA will begin no later than the end of 2021 with an extension option. The PPA is for a term of 25 years and has a fixed price of $68 per MWh. Ormat intends to sell the balance of 14MW to other offtakers or at the spot market. Isaac Angel, CEO of Ormat Technologies said, "This strategic PPA supports Ormat's long-term plans to grow our geothermal business domestically. CD4 Project is a new state-of-the-art air-cooled binary geothermal facility that is renewable and will have no CO2 emissions, will provide resource adequacy and ancillary benefits. CD4 will allow the City of Colton to meet its clean energy standards while also ensuring grid reliability. We are delighted to be chosen again by SCPPA and greatly appreciate their confidence in Ormat." "The Colton Electric Department looks forward to taking delivery of energy from a geothermal facility as the cornerstone of our renewable resources," said, Colton Mayor, Frank Navarro. "CD4 will be a long-term, renewable resource with no greenhouse gas emissions and will provide resource adequacy capacity and energy at an affordable price to Colton's ratepayers. CD4 will provide almost 25 percent of Colton's annual energy supplies. This power purchase agreement with Ormat for CD4 demonstrates Colton's commitment to a green economy with affordable energy prices for our citizen's while committing to zero emission sustainable resources." ABOUT ORMAT TECHNOLOGIES With over five decades of experience, Ormat Technologies, Inc. is a leading geothermal company and the only vertically integrated company engaged in geothermal and recovered energy generation ("REG"), with the objective of becoming a leading global provider of renewable energy. The Company owns, operates, designs, manufactures and sells geothermal and REG power plants primarily based on the Ormat Energy Converter - a power generation unit that converts low-, medium- and high-temperature heat into electricity. With 77 U.S. patents, Ormat's power solutions have been refined and perfected under the most grueling environmental conditions. Ormat has 584 employees in the United States and 762 overseas. Ormat's flexible, modular solutions for geothermal power and REG are ideal for vast range of resource characteristics. The Company has engineered, manufactured and constructed power plants, which it currently owns or has installed to utilities and developers worldwide, totaling over 2,900 MW of gross capacity. Ormat's current 910 MW generating portfolio is spread globally in the U.S., Kenya, Guatemala, Indonesia, Honduras, and Guadeloupe. Ormat expanded its operations to provide energy storage and energy management solutions, by leveraging its core capabilities and global presence as well as through its Viridity Energy Solutions Inc. subsidiary, a Philadelphia-based company with nearly a decade of expertise and leadership in energy storage, demand response and energy management. ORMAT'S SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT Information provided in this press release may contain statements relating to current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about future events that are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally relate to Ormat's plans, objectives and expectations for future operations and are based upon its management's current estimates and projections of future results or trends. Actual future results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, see "Risk Factors" as described in Ormat's Form 10-K/A filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") March 1, 2019 and from time to time, in Ormat's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q that are filed with the SEC. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Ormat Technologies Contact: Smadar Lavi VP Corporate Finance and Head of Investor Relations 775-356-9029 (ext. 65726) slavi@ormat.com Investor Relations Agency Contact: Rob Fink Hayden - IR 646-415-8972 rob@haydenir.com On Feb. 18, 1949, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) made a decision that has had a lasting positive impact on Idaho and the nation: It decided to build the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS) in eastern Idaho. In 2005, Congress designated the Idaho site as the nation's lead nuclear energy research and development laboratory. At that point, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) was born. Feb. 18, 2019, marks the 70th anniversary of the federal government installation in eastern Idaho. Over that time, INL has played a central role in the development of the commercial nuclear energy industry and supported U.S. Naval nuclear propulsion technology. INL built and operated 52 original nuclear reactors. Today, the laboratory works to extend the lives of U.S. commercial nuclear reactors that generate 19 percent of America's electricity and more than half of our carbon-free electricity. INL also works with industry to develop, demonstrate and deploy next-generation reactors. The seven-decade evolution of INL has extended the laboratory's reach beyond nuclear energy. INL is a world leader in cybersecurity and power grid resiliency. The laboratory also is a leader in broader clean energy research, including electric vehicle batteries, biomass, integration of renewables such as wind and solar into the power grid, and development of integrated energy systems that will allow industry to produce products more efficiently while reducing carbon emissions. "We are incredibly proud of our R&D history and grateful to those who came before us at INL," said Laboratory Director Mark Peters. "But, even as we celebrate 70 successful years, all of us at INL are focused on the future. We are determined to help ensure America's safety and prosperity for decades to come through our clean energy and national security research." Seven decades ago, Idaho's leading citizens and policymakers lobbied the federal government to build the NRTS in the Gem State. People such as Idaho Falls Mayor Tom Sutton, newspaper publisher E.F. McDermott and businessman Bill Holden knew the NRTS would serve the nation by enabling the use of atomic energy for electricity production. They also anticipated that the NRTS would benefit eastern Idaho's economy. That proved true 70 years ago and continues today. INL contractor Battelle Energy Alliance is Idaho's sixth largest private employer. The laboratory's total economic output exceeds $2 billion, and in the recent fiscal year, INL spent more than $148 million with Idaho businesses. INL is one of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) national laboratories. The laboratory performs work in each of DOE's strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and environment. INL is the nation's leading center for nuclear energy research and development. Day-to-day management and operation of the laboratory is the responsibility of Battelle Energy Alliance. Read the full story. NEWS MEDIA CONTACTS: Sarah Neumann, 208-520-1651, sarah.neumann@inl.gov Lori McNamara, 208-520-6066, lori.mcnamara@inl.gov Three climate-resilient solar power projects in the Bahamas, Barbados, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are being inaugurated this week under the US$50 million UAE-Caribbean Renewable Energy Fund (UAE-CREF), the largest renewable energy initiative of its kind in the region. The fund is a partnership between the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, and Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company). In total, the three projects, which broke ground in November 2018, will deliver 2.35 MW of solar and 637 kWh of battery storage capacity, while displacing more than 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. Combined, they will also achieve diesel savings of more than 895,000 litres per year, worth about US$1.1 million. The Bahamas, Barbados, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines face some of the highest power costs in the world, due to their reliance on diesel. All three projects are designed to withstand up to 160 mile per hour winds and extreme weather, per a new requirement instituted in the UAE-CREF in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. The projects will be inaugurated by HE Bader Almatrooshi, UAE Ambassador to Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica and Representative to the Association of Caribbean States. "By funding renewable energy solutions globally, ADFD is enabling Small Island Developing States to tackle their development challenges, meet their outlined priorities, and optimise use of their natural resources," said His Excellency Mohammed Saif Al Suwaidi, Director General of ADFD, the UAE's leading national entity for international development aid, which fully finances the UAE-CREF. He added: "Together with our strategic partners - the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and Masdar - we are proud of the timely delivery of three of the UAE-CREF projects. We are confident that these projects will continue to drive socio-economic benefits to local communities in the Bahamas, Barbados, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines." The three projects all represent significant steps forward in realising the three countries' renewable energy ambitions. In the Bahamas, which hopes to generate 30 per cent of its power needs from renewable sources by 2030, the Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium 925kW Solar PV Carport Power Plant will displace 310,000 litres of diesel per year, saving the government US$350,000 and offsetting 856 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. The project is the largest-ever solar plant to feed into the national grid and sets a critical regulatory precedent for future private development. The project was developed in partnership with the Bahamas Ministry of Environment and Housing, with initial concept work by the Rocky Mountain Institute. In addition to power generation, it also serves as a carport with 342 parking spaces, including two spaces that are equipped with fast-charging electric vehicle charging stations. In Barbados, the government aims to generate 100 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. As part of this target, the Bridgetown 350kW Solar PV Carport Power Plant and Bow Manston 500kW Solar PV Power Plant in Barbados are expected to save US$381,000 per year by displacing 265,000 litres of diesel fuel and 975 tonnes of carbon annually. Both projects were developed in partnership with the Barbados Water Authority (BWA), providing power to its water treatment plant and the water pumping stations. The 350kW solar PV carport also provides 124 parking spaces, as well as six level 2 electric vehicle charging stations. In Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the project - with 600kW of solar PV and a 637 kilowatt-hour (kWh) lithium-ion battery - is unprecedently able to supply 100 per cent of Union Island's daytime power requirements. The plant alone also meets over 30 per cent of Union Island's energy needs and will displace 320,000 litres of diesel fuel per year, saving the island US$368,000 and offsetting 825 tonnes of carbon annually. The hybrid plant was developed in partnership with St Vincent Electricity Services Limited (VINLEC), again with initial concept support from the Rocky Mountain Institute. With its combination of solar PV and battery, the project also provides a model for high penetration of renewable energy on small outer islands, which can dramatically reduce their crippling power costs. The government has set a target to generate 60 per cent of the country's energy from renewable sources by 2020. "Masdar is pleased to leverage its global expertise and experience in renewables to support the Caribbean's sustainable energy transition, as well as its climate resilience," said Masdar CEO Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi. "These landmark solar projects will pave the way for further investments in clean energy across the countries. By delivering tailor-made solutions to address the specific energy needs of each country in partnership with their governments, Masdar is fulfilling its mandate to deliver on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and ensure sustainable energy for all." Since its inception in 1971, ADFD has funded thousands of development projects worth approximately AED83 billion in 88 beneficiary countries. Mandated to implement Abu Dhabi government's development programme policies, ADFD provides concessionary loans, manages Abu Dhabi government grants and injects direct long-term investments with the aim of driving economic development in partner countries. The UAE-CREF was launched in 2017 on the sidelines of the annual assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), under the umbrella of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. The fund intends to deploy renewable energy projects in 16 Caribbean countries in three cycles to reduce energy costs, increase energy access, and enhance climate resilience. The Bahamas, Barbados, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines constituted the first cycle, while a number of second cycle countries are shortly going into procurement, including Antigua and Barbuda, which will see the rebuilding of the power system on hurricane-devastated Barbuda. The third cycle of the fund was announced in January 2019. UAE foreign aid for renewable energy projects now totals almost US$1 billion since 2013, supporting more than 40 countries. Spring can be warm and wonderful, but the change in seasons can also be wild and wooly. The official arrival of Spring also ushers in a host of potentially extreme weather that can bring high winds, lightning, hail and even tornadoes. All these things can cause power outages and bring down power lines. Entergy Texas prepares year-round for these disruptive events. Employees monitor the weather round-the-clock, and when severe weather threatens, crews mobilize for outage restoration. "We encourage customers to prepare, too," said Stuart Barrett, Entergy Texas vice president of customer service. "Severe weather can develop quickly. Once that happens, it's too late to start working on a preparedness plan. Advance planning and staying weather aware helps ensure you survive these storms, which can sometimes be deadly." Here are some safety tips to keep in mind: Never go near downed power lines and never assume that the lines are dead just because they are on the ground. After a storm, some power lines can be hard to spot, as they could become tangled in trees or covered by storm debris. Have an emergency supply kit filled with water, medicine, non-perishable food and other items. Purchase and use surge protectors for your special electronics. Keep phones, computers and other rechargeable electronics fully charged. Check batteries in flashlights to make sure they are working properly. Install a smart phone app that will alert you to severe weather in the area or sign up for emergency alerts on your smart phone. Have a weather radio with a loud alarm that will wake you when severe weather threatens at night. Once a storm hits, know how to give and get information if you need help: Check the View Outages map on Entergy's website or app for outage info and, if available, cause and estimated restoration time Download the free Entergy app for Apple or Android to check power at your home or business and to report outages Visit the Entergy Storm Center for updates and information. Register for MyAccountAnywhere to get outage information on your mobile phone and to send and receive texts. You may also report outages by calling 1-800-ENTERGY. "We work hard to stop outages before they happen, but storms can be powerful and unpredictable," Barrett said. "Being prepared and having everything you need in one central location, including a way to notify us, will help you be more comfortable during an outage. It will also instill order and safety while our crews restore service." Entergy Texas, Inc. provides electricity to approximately 458,000 customers in 27 counties. Entergy Corporation is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including nearly 9,000 megawatts of nuclear power. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.9 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of approximately $10.8 billion and nearly 13,000 employees. " " Does keeping a smartphone from communicating with networks drain the battery less? Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images If you're a heavy-duty smartphone user which includes just about everybody these days, since the average American spends 4.7 hours a day gazing at and tapping that little screen you know how agonizing it is to have to stop looking at cat videos for a while and plug your phone into a charger to replenish the battery. And some phones can take hours to charge. But you can reduce your separation anxiety a bit by following this tip: While charging, switch your phone to airplane mode, so that the phone won't slow down the process by continually burning energy trying to connect with cell phone towers and plot your location with its GPS function. Advertisement The trick actually works to an extent, but there are caveats, as this article on mobile provider Verizon's website details. The reason why is that while your phone is in its regular mode, it's continually trying to signal cell towers and pinpoint your location. And even though your phone most likely has assisted GPS, which calculates your location coordinates using the cellphone network rather than satellites, the function still burns up a lot of juice. That's because the location-finding stops your phone from going into full-on, energy-saving sleep mode. When you switch to airplane mode, you turn off reception of those radio transmissions, and as a result, your phone charges more quickly. But don't get too hyped, because it won't save you that much time. When CNET tested the proposition a few years ago, airplane mode only shaved four minutes off a phone's charging time in one trial, and 11 minutes in another. " " New Yorkers who lost power after 2012's destructive Hurricane Sandy gather to charge their mobile devices. Viviane Moos/Corbis/Getty Images Now That's Interesting Some people apparently try to plug their old phones into latest-generation rapid phone chargers, which are designed to feed new phones that can handle a higher voltage. But that doesn't work too well, because the chargers automatically shift to a slower mode when they're hooked to an older device. Nepali bureaucrats regularly asked for their cut from Melamchi contractor, Italian officials say Rampant corruption, regular demands for commission by government officials, and labyrinthine bureaucratic hassles forced the Italian contractor to abandon the Melamchi Water Supply Project, throwing the national pride project that is close to completion into uncertainty once again, a Post investigation has revealed. Construction at the main intake of Ambathan Adit of the Melamchi Water Supply Project has been stalled since mid-December last year following financial disputes between the main contractor CMC and the government. Kiran Panday /TKP Workers changing the sign on the Catalan government building. Albert Garcia The tug-of-war over Catalan independence symbols on public buildings continued on Thursday, when regional premier Quim Torra, a hardline separatist, switched a yellow ribbon for a white-and-red one in a bid to circumvent election campaign rules. Spains Central Electoral Board, the JEC, had given Torra a deadline to comply with legislation that prohibits partisan symbols on buildings owned or run by public authorities during election time. That deadline has passed, and the JEC will meet this afternoon to determine whether it will take any legal action. The Catalan ombudsman has recommended taking down the symbols In Catalonia, many public buildings have been displaying yellow ribbons, used to show support for separatist leaders standing trial for rebellion, and esteladas, the unofficial flags used by supporters of Catalan independence. A week ago, the JEC reminded Catalan authorities of their legal obligation to preserve political neutrality ahead of the local, regional, general and European elections coming up in April and May. Torra resorted to requesting the advice of the Catalan ombudsman, the Sindic de Greuges, which yesterday said in a report that it recommended taking down the symbols. The Catalan agriculture department with yellow cut-out figures on the windows. Grego Casanova Flowers and fish On Thursday morning, workers removed a large sign demanding freedom for political prisoners and depicting a yellow ribbon from the facade of the Palau de la Generalitat, the seat of the regional government. It was immediately replaced with a similar sign, except the ribbon this time was white with a red line across it. Meanwhile, some regional officials have gotten even more creative: the department of agriculture, which is controlled by the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), has taken down most of the yellow ribbons in the last few hours and replaced them with yellow cardboard cut-outs of flowers, tractors, roosters, rabbits, fish and other animals. Just across from there, at the Health Department, drawings of yellow ribbons remained on display at the building entrance. The head of security said that he had received no orders to take them down, but that management wants them removed if any employee complains about them. Two enormous ribbons were also in plain view at the Department of Territorial Affairs and Sustainability, next to a mural showing the faces of the separatist leaders who are standing trial for rebellion in Madrid. Employees inside the lobby said that they had received no orders to remove the symbols, either. It was a similar story at the departments of Justice and Economic Affairs. Before dawn, two municipal workers took down ribbons that were tied to the fences around the Generalitat building and Barcelona City Hall, both located in Sant Jaume square. Around half an hour later, however, an activist showed up and tied seven new ribbons around City Hall and one near the regional government headquarters. English version by Susana Urra. The North Korean embassy in Madrid. ULY MARTIN This week on our Que? podcast we examine the curious break-in at the North Korean embassy in Madrid, in which the CIA may have been implicated. And we respond to a host of reader letters, taking the time to retell the story of the killing of left-wing activist Carlos Palomino. The perpetrator of last weeks terrorist atrocity in New Zealand had written the name of Palominos killer on his rifle magazine. We explain the background to that story. Que? is a podcast that tries to explain to an English-speaking audience the curious, the under-reported and sometimes simply bizarre news stories that are often in the headlines in Spain. You can subscribe through this RSS Feed or via your favorite podcast app, such as Google Podcasts or Apple Podcasts. If you have any comments or questions about the topics we discuss, or would like to suggest issues for future podcasts, email us at englishedition@elpais.es or tweet Simon Hunter at @simoninmadrid using the hashtag #quepodcast. And if you want more information about all the podcasts available from EL PAIS, visit this website. Vox leader Santiago Abascal (r). Alvaro Garcia (EL PAIS) The leader of the Spanish far-right political party Vox, Santiago Abascal, has called for the countrys criminal code and gun regulations to be reformed to make it easier to own a gun and to ensure people who shoot home invaders are not prosecuted by the law, as is the case in the United States. In an interview with the weapons publication Armas.es last weekend, just days after the deadly shooting at two mosques in New Zealand, Abascal proposed a radical and urgent change to the law to allow Spaniards not only to keep a weapon at home but also to ensure they can use it in situations of real threat to their life without having to face a legal nightmare, prison sentences or even compensation to the families of the criminals who assaulted them. The experience of other countries has shown that more weapons lead to greater violence Juan Fernandez, Civil Guard association AUGC Vox is a common-sense party and of course we support the right to self-defense of upstanding Spaniards, he added. Currently, citizens in Spain without a criminal record and in full use of their mental faculties are able to keep a hunting rifle in their home. Other firearms are also permitted if the owner has received a license from the Civil Guard proving they need the weapon. According to Civil Guard sources, there are handguns in just 10,000 households in Spain, while there are hunting rifles in a million homes. Tens of thousands of military members and security personnel also possess weapons. Abascal, who was once threatened by the Basque terrorist organization ETA, has stated that he has a Smith & Wesson pistol with him at all times. The leader of Vox, a party known for its controversial stand on a number of issues, wants a complete overhaul of the criminal code to widen the concept of legitimate defense. The law is treating these people like villains and their attackers like victims Vox leader Santiago Abascal Under Article 20.4 of the current Spanish criminal code, a person is exonerated of criminal responsibility, including compensation, if the case meets three conditions: it was a response to unlawful violence, there was a rational need to stop it using the means employed, and it was unprovoked by the defendant. The article expressly states that illegal entry into a home is considered an unlawful cause for violence. A defendant, however, must prove they have met these requisites to be exonerated. The alternative, which is what Abascal has proposed, is total immunity. In the interview, Abascal mentioned two self-defense cases that are still awaiting judgment. One involves an elderly man in Tenerife in Spains Canary Islands who was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for killing a burglar who entered his house and abused his wife in 2015. The High Court of the Canary Islands threw out the sentence last August and ordered a retrial. The other concerns a local police officer in the southern city of Seville who is facing 20 years in prison for shooting at four men who fled after breaking into his home in 2011. The officer says he did not know the assailants but they claim they had come to his house to demand repayment of a 15,000 debt. According to the assailants, the officer was involved in drug trafficking. The law is treating these people like villains and their attackers like victims, something that also occurs with squatters. We find this dramatic, said Abascal. Unnecessary and dangerous Representatives of several police unions and Civil Guard associations have told EL PAIS that Abascals proposal is madness, arguing it would only increase violence in the country. Spain has one of the lowest crime rates in Europe. According to the latest crime statistics from Eurostat from 2016, Spain has the fourth-lowest homicide rate in the European Union. In 2018, there were 289 murders in Spain, 6% down on 2017, according to the Interior Ministry. Juan Fernandez, spokesperson for the main Civil Guard association AUGC, says these figures show that Abascals plan is unnecessary, as well as dangerous. The experience of other countries has shown that more weapons lead to greater violence, he said. Jose Maria Benito, from the Federal Police Union (UFP), believes the Vox leader is exaggerating the problem to win votes ahead of the general election on April 28. Its total madness, an electoral promise of a party that has no possibility of governing and will not have to fulfill it. English version by Melissa Kitson. The shareholders of Ukrainian Insurance Group (Kyiv) at a meeting on March 20 decided to increase the charter capital of the company, according to the official information of the insurer. Earlier the meeting's agenda said it was planned to raise charter capital by UAH 95 million (by 83.1%, to UAH 201.3 million) by conducting an additional issue of shares with a nominal value of UAH 100 per share. As reported, in January-September 2018 the insurance company collected insurance premiums in the amount of UAH 672.9 million, which is 13.5% more than in the same period a year earlier (UAH 477.8 million). Of this amount, UAH 609.9 million were premiums for voluntary types of insurance, UAH 63.1 million for mandatory types of insurance. As of September 30, 2018, the company's charter capital amounted to UAH 114.3 million, assets some UAH 959.7 million. Insurance reserves are formed at the level of UAH 581.9 million. In the first nine months of 2018, Ukrainian Insurance Group settled more than 89,000 insurance claims, paid out UAH 355.5 million of insurance claim fees. Ukrainian Insurance Group has been operating in the Ukrainian insurance market since 2000. It is part of Vienna Insurance Group, one of the largest insurance groups, the leader of the insurance market in Central and Eastern Europe. Ukraine has imposed sanctions on Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, the State Duma said on its Facebook page. "[Russian] MPs believe that the State Duma chairman has been included in the sanctions list because of his remarks," it said. The State Duma has also suggested that Kyiv did so in response to the State Duma's "decision to form a working group that will be responsible for carrying out an analysis of the economic damage caused by Ukraine to Crimea and Sevastopol over 23 years." Such a group, headed by the chamber's First Deputy Speaker Ivan Melnikov (from the Communist Party of Russia) was set up on Volodin's initiative on Wednesday to assess the damage caused by Ukraine to Crimea from December 1991 to March 2014. Stoltenberg: We do not intend to deploy new land-based nuclear missiles in Europe NATO does not plan to deploy new land-based nuclear missiles in Europe, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. "NATO is preparing for a world without the INF Treaty," Stoltenberg said in an interview with Interfax. "Any steps we take, we will take together. NATO will continue to maintain credible and effective deterrence and defense," he said. "However, we do not intend to deploy new land-based nuclear missiles in Europe," Stoltenberg said. The full text of the interview will appear at www.interfax.com. Lutsenko says U.S. ambassador to Ukraine gave him list of persons who should not be investigated Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko in an interview with the Washington, D.C.-based The Hill publication said U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch gave him a list of persons who should not be investigated. However, Lutsenko said he considered it inadmissible to comply with the suggestion. On Thursday morning Lutsenko's Spokeswoman Larysa Sarhan on Facebook released four fragments from Lutsenko's interview and confirmed to the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency that Lutsenko indeed gave an interview to the Hill and in one episode he talked about such a list. "Unfortunately, from the first meeting with the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, [Yovanovitch] gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute," Lutsenko, who took his post in 2016, told Hill.TV last week," The Hill quoted Lutsenko as saying. "My response of that is it is inadmissible. Nobody in this country, neither our president nor our parliament nor our ambassador, will stop me from prosecuting whether there is a crime," Lutsenko said, according to The Hill. The Hill writes that the U.S. Department of State called Lutsenko's claim of receiving a do not prosecute list, "an outright fabrication." The Hill said the U.S. Department of State currently does not fund programs at Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office and that Lutsenko said "the situation was actually rather strange" involving U.S. government technical assistance worth $4 million, which was allocated by the Americans but never received. There have been no official statements about which names could have been in the list given to Lutsenko by Yovanovitch, and Interfax-Ukraine has not received it. An informed source told the agency that maybe persons loyal to the U.S. embassy in Ukraine were included in it. New rule to encourage use of electronic cargo tracking system In a bid to facilitate the implementation of electronic cargo tracking for third country imports, Nepal Rastra Bank has allowed commercial banks to issue payment instruments in foreign currency for cargo transported by railway to Birgunj dry port and Biratnagar customs point only. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko must either receive written documented confirmation backing up the claim of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko about receiving a list from U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch of persons who should not be investigated, or dismiss Lutsenko, Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, Oksana Syroyid has said. "President [Petro] Poroshenko this morning can only have two documents: either information substantiating the claim of Prosecutor General Lutsenko, or his submission to parliament that Lutsenko be dismissed as Ukraine's prosecutor general," she said on Facebook on Thursday. Lutsenko earlier in an interview with the Washington, D.C.-based The Hill publication said U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch gave him a list of persons whom should not be investigated. Lutsenko said he ignored the request. "Unfortunately, from the first meeting with the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, [Yovanovitch] gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute, Lutsenko, who took his post in 2016, told Hill.TV last week," The Hill quoted Lutsenko as saying. The prosecutor added, "My response of that is it is inadmissible." A humanitarian convoy of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) carrying humanitarian aid is on its way to the territory of the Donetsk region uncontrolled by Kyiv, the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service said on Thursday. Nine trucks carrying ICRC humanitarian aid have passed the Novotroitske checkpoint, the report said. According to Ukrainian border guards, the humanitarian convoy is carrying food, office supplies, construction materials and equipment weighing a total of 140 tonnes. The claim made by Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko that U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch gave him a list of persons who should not be investigated does not correspond to reality, the television news service (TSN) of Kyiv-based TV Channel 1+1 has said, citing comments received from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv to their questions. "The statement of Ukraine's Prosecutor General does not correspond to reality and is meant to weaken the reputation of Ambassador Yovanovitch," TSN said, citing the response. According to TSN, the embassy said the accusation against U.S. officials is an example of corruption. "Such attacks exacerbate our steadfastness to help Ukraine in achieving victory in the battle against corruption," American diplomats said, according to TSN. The officials said the fact Lutsenko made the statements to American media do not make them true. TSN said the response of American officials also expressed the loyalty of the United States to the idea of supporting reform in Ukraine. "To succeed, Ukraine needs dedicated officials and strong anti-corruption institutions," the statement said, according to TSN. Commenting on the lack of financing for Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) from the United States, about which Lutsenko spoke [in his interview with The Hill], the U.S. Embassy said their country steadfastly sticks with its obligations, including financial support required for helping Ukraine develop its judicial system. However, the funds are dispersed depending on the needs of the moment, U.S. officials said, according to TSN. "In the absence of the political will, for example, from the PGO, we are guided by our responsibility to U.S. taxpayers and transfer funds [to programs] where they can contribute to a positive result," the U.S. Embassy said, according to TSN. As reported, Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko in an interview with the Washington, D.C.-based The Hill publication said U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch gave him a list of persons who should not be investigated. However, Lutsenko said he considered it inadmissible. The U.S. Department of State called Lutsenko's claim of receiving a do-not-prosecute list, "an outright fabrication." The Hill said the U.S. Department of State currently does not fund programs at Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office and that Lutsenko said "the situation was actually rather strange" involving U.S. government technical assistance worth $4 million, which was allocated by the Americans but never received. The human rights committee of the Verkhovna Rada together with social organizations has developed a draft law on legalizing cannabis for medical and scientific purposes, representative of the Ukrainian Association of Medical Cannabis Hennadiy Shabas said at a press conference in Kyiv. "After the petition for legalizing medical cannabis received the 25,000 signatures, the parliament's human rights committee reviewed the issue. They said they had prepared a draft law and asked us for help. This issue will be resolved in any event. I think we will have a law this year," he said. In turn, Medical Director of the Farmak pharmaceutical company (Kyiv) Vitaliy Usenko said Ukrainian pharmaceutical developers are ready to develop products based on medical cannabis. "If there are amendments to Ukraine's legislation, then it will be possible [to develop medicines on the basis of medical cannabis]. We are able to develop these products and introduce them in clinical practice. They will be herbal products," he said. As reported, a petition for legalizing medical cannabis placed on the parliament's website over 42 days garnered the 25,000 signatures required for consideration. The petition, which was registered on January 30, called for legislation to regulate access for patients to products with cannabis to treat chronic ailments, epilepsy, anorexia, post-traumatic stress disorder, immune deficiency illnesses, arthritis and rheumatism, among other ailments. Moscow's statements threatening to target NATO member states if U.S. missiles prohibited by the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty are deployed there are unacceptable, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. "Russian statements threatening to target Allies are unacceptable and counterproductive," Stoltenberg said in an interview with Interfax. "The 9M729 (NATO reporting name SSC-8) missile system developed and deployed by Russia violates the INF Treaty, and poses a significant risk to our security," he said. "These missiles are mobile and hard to detect. They can reach European cities with little warning, carrying conventional or nuclear warheads, and they lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons," Stoltenberg said. "The United States and other Allies have engaged with Russia about this missile system for several years," he said. "Unfortunately, Russia has not shown any willingness to return to compliance. That is why the United States, with the full support of all NATO Allies, has announced its intention to withdraw from the INF Treaty," he said. "This will take several months, so Russia still has a chance to come back into compliance. We call on Russia to take this opportunity," he said. The full text of the interview will appear at www.interfax.com. Police register about 500 reports on likely bribery of voters since start of presidential election campaign Police register about 500 reports on likely bribery of voters since start of presidential election campaign KYIV. March 21 (Interfax-Ukraine) The National Police of Ukraine have registered 3,500 reports and statements related to the electoral process, including about 500 reports on likely bribery of voters, since the beginning of the presidential election campaign. Some 189 criminal proceedings were initiated on the above facts, the police's press service said on Thursday. The largest number of offenses was registered in the city of Kyiv and the following regions: Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Vinnytsia, Odesa and Kyiv regions. In particular, 1,900 facts are connected with illegal campaigning, 490 are related to buying off voters, and 269 to hooliganism. Some 594 protocols on administrative offenses were drawn up, and 661 facts are being checked under the Law of Ukraine on Appeals of Citizens. The police said that 25 people had been informed about suspicion of committing criminal offenses related to the electoral process. The U.S. Embassy announces close monitoring of developments regarding PrivatBank. "We are closely monitoring developments surrounding PrivatBank. Its nationalization was a milestone in economic reform and the fight against corruption," the U.S. Embassy to Ukraine said on Twitter. As reported, with the approach of the presidential elections in Ukraine, which will be held on March 31, discussions have begun about the possibility of revising the decision to nationalize PrivatBank. As reported, the Government of Ukraine, on the proposal of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and former shareholders of PrivatBank, the largest of whom at that time were Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholiubov, decided to nationalize this largest Ukrainian financial institution on December 18, 2016. According to the NBU, as of January 1, 2019, PrivatBank was ranked 1st in terms of total assets (UAH 525.248 billion) among 77 banks operating in the country. Plenary debates in connection with the fifth anniversary of the occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation will be held within the walls of the European Parliament next week, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said. According to him, the decision was taken following the Ukraine-EU mini-summit held in Brussels on Wednesday. "An important result of yesterday's Ukraine-EU mini-summit in Brussels - next week the European Parliament will hold plenary debates in connection with the fifth anniversary of the Russian occupation of Crimea. The whole world will hear again that Crimea is Ukraine!" Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday. One soldier of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) has been killed, another wounded as a result of attacks by Russia-led mercenaries on Thursday. "One Ukrainian soldier has been killed, another wounded as a result of shelling attacks by Russia-led armed groups. The defending units responded to the enemy's shelling with fire weapons on duty. Casualties of the adversary are being clarified," the JFO said in its update as of 18:00 published on Facebook. Iran has expressed support for the change at top leadership in Kazakhstan, praising the outgoing president Nursultan Nazarbayev. The current changes in the Republic of Kazakhstan and transfer of power was in the framework of the constitution and for that reason we support it, the spokesperson of Irans foreign ministry Bahram Ghasemi was quoted as saying, by IRNA. Nazarbayev who led Kazakhstan as a leader since 1989 and when it declared independence from the Soviet Union, was president of the oil-rich country for three decades until he announced his resignation this week. Ghasemi called Nazarbayev an outstanding, influential and intelligent politician in Kazakhstan and added that relations between the former Soviet country and Iran during his rule was always friendly and expanding. Peaceful transition is also an issue in Iran, where large protests in 2009 and again in 2017-2018 called for a major change in the country. Irans supreme leaders are chosen by a council and enjoy an open-ended term claiming to have religious legitimacy. The current leader Ali Khamenei has also been serving since 1989. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- President Donald Trump announced to reporters at the White House Wednesday that the Islamic State in Syria would be "gone by tonight." He made the announcement with some fanfare, unfurling a big piece of paper that he had carried out with him to Marine One. He then guided the press through two maps of Syria and Iraq showing the progress of the Islamic States defeat. "I brought this out for you -- this is a map of everything in the red, this was on election night, in 2016, everything red is ISIS. When I took it over it was a mess now on the bottom it's the exact same. There is no red," Trump said, pointing his finger at the different parts of the map. "In fact there is a tiny spot which will be gone by tonight," Trump said. It was the third time in recent months that the president announced victory -- or near victory -- over the Islamic State. In February, the president said ISIS would be 100 percent defeated "very soon," and in December he declared "we have won against ISIS." Currently, only a small holdout of ISIS territory remains in eastern Syria, but there are no indications the Syrian Democratic Forces plan to declare the region is liberated of the terrorist group. Trump appeared eager to share the news with reporters gathered on the South Lawn to pepper the president with questions before he left to tour a factory in Lima, Ohio. The president emerged from the Oval Office and had previously received his intelligence briefing. "This just came out 20 minutes ago," Trump said of the map. The timing raised questions about whether the president -- who is known to appreciate colored maps and charts in his intelligence briefings -- took the map to journalists shortly after a classified meeting with top officials. The White House did not directly respond to a question about the origins of the map. "The map highlighted the fact that over the last two years, under President Trumps leadership, the United States and our Coalition partners have liberated more than 20,000 square miles of territory previously held by ISIS in Syria," a White House spokesperson said. Later in Ohio, the president was again eager to share his colored map with an audience. "Where is that chart? They gave me economic trends and not the ISIS chart. Bring up, if anyone has it," Trump said, calling out for an aide to deliver him the maps. "Here is the story," Trump began. "I don't want to have them make a big chart. Costs too much and I am a business guy. I asked how much it costs to make a big chart. Like it matters but it matters to me, does that make sense? Two maps identical. Except the one on top was Syria. See that? The one on top was Syria in November of 2016. This is all ISIS. On the bottom, today, the caliphate is gone as of tonight. Pretty good. That is pretty good, right?" In December, the president announced unexpectedly that he planned to withdraw all remaining U.S. forces from Syria. The decision caught the U.S. military off guard and even prompted the resignation of then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Since then, 400 American fighters remain in different parts of the region. Copyright 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Rebels without a cause No one seems to understand what exactly Biplab wants, not even Biplab himself Islamabad, March 21, 2019 (AFP) - The Pakistan military said in a statement on Thursday that it had rescued four Iranian soldiers being held captive by a militant group in the country's restive southwest. The rescue took place in Chaghi district of Balochistan province, near the Afghan border, the statement said. "Terrorists of a proscribed organization were reported to have entered Pakistan from Afghanistan side along with abducted Iranian soldiers," it said. "After exchange of fire, four Iranian soldiers (were) recovered," it continued. The statement said the soldiers were being handed over to Iranian authorities, though it did not say when. It also did not say what date the rescue took place, or name the group holding the soldiers. Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi expressed Tehran's gratefulness for the rescue of the soldiers in an official statement issued on Thursday. "We express our thankfulness and appreciation to the Pakistan government and army for the successful operation that freed these brave border guards," said the statement, published on the official website of Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Ghasemi further expressed hope that the remaining border guards will be freed and returned to Iran as soon as possible. The incident comes months after the Sunni jihadist group Jaish al-Adl abducted 12 Iranian security personnel in October last year near the border. Five of them were later released and handed back to Iran by Islamabad. Relations between Pakistan and Iran recently suffered another blow after Tehran said a Pakistani suicide bomber was behind a February 13 attack that killed 27 Revolutionary Guards in its volatile southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan. Jaish al-Adl, which Tehran says operates mostly out of bases in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the blast. What is the Trump administration trying to achieve in Iran? More than two-and-a-half years after candidate Trump made Iran a centerpiece of his foreign-policy platform on the presidential campaign trail, and over a year after Iran emerged as one of his administrations core international priorities, there is still a great deal of confusion about what, exactly, the White House is seeking to accomplish vis-a-vis the Islamic Republic. The confusion is understandable, because so far the Administration appears to have embraced at least three separate approaches. The first, articulated by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in his May 2018 speech before the Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC, envisions Iranian acquiescence to a range of invasive demands from the withdrawal of its troops from Syria to permitting greater inspections of the countrys nuclear facilities and ballistic missile arsenal as a prerequisite for diplomatic normalization between Washington and Tehran. These demands, Pompeo has made clear, do not amount to a call for regime change, but rather simply an insistence that Iran behave as a normal country and responsible international stakeholder. What isnt clear, however, is whether Irans regime can do so and still maintain its ideological cohesion. The responses from Irans leaders to date suggest that they dont think it can. By contrast, President Trump has gravitated toward a more transactional approach. He has repeatedly signaled his willingness to negotiate a new framework accord with the Iranian regime as long as that deal is more beneficial to America and its international partners then the 2015 nuclear deal crafted by his predecessor, which he believes was disastrous. Finally, the preferred outcome of some of the administration most prominently National Security Advisor John Bolton involves applying broad ranging economic and political pressure on the Iranian regime, even to the point that it precipitates some sort of regime collapse. Far less attention, however, has been paid by the Administration to just what form that collapse, if it does occur, might take. Here, Iran faces a number of potential alternative futures, from a military takeover (like in Egypt) to national fragmentation (like in Libya) to protracted regime decline (like in Venezuela), each of which would have a very different outcome for the country and its people. At first blush, these strategies seem contradictory, even if the tactics they use to achieve them (including a massive re-imposition of economic sanctions) are the same. But a closer examination suggests that the way the White House thinks about Iran is more open-ended and flexible. Here, its helpful to look at an official summary of the administrations approach to Iran recently released by the White House. Authored by Victoria Coates, the National Security Councils Senior Director for the Middle East, it lays out the clearest rationale to date for the steps that the Administration has taken so far against the Islamic Republic. The United States, Coates lays out, sees Iran as a malign regional actor, whose current path of destructive regional activity and expansion has been greatly empowered by the dividends it received from the 2015 nuclear deal. As a result, the Administrations core objective is to foster a systemic change in the Islamic Republics hostile and destabilizing actions. These include curtailing all paths by which Iran might be able to acquire a nuclear weapon, and preventing the regime from exporting terrorism throughout the region or beyond. Left unanswered in this discussion is whether the White House has embraced the idea of regime change within Iran, as some have contended. But the silence is itself an answer. Simply put, to the degree that the Trump administration believes it possible to change the Islamic Republics behavior and moderate the global threat it poses, it will stop short of advocating regime change. If it becomes convinced that real change is impossible from the current regime in Tehran, however, the Administration is prepared to embrace another. And, as President Trump and his team see it, the decision is entirely Irans to make. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Radio Farda Baku, Azerbaijan, March 21 Trend: Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops 30 times, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said March 20, Trend reports. The Armenian armed forces were using heavy machine guns. The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts. Baku, Azerbaijan, March 21 Trend: If occupation by Armenia ceases, Azerbaijan could contribute to South-South cooperation more actively, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said, Trend reports citing the countrys Foreign Ministry. He made the speech at the plenary session of the Second High-level UN Conference on South-South Cooperation in Buenos Aires, Argentina. "Mr. President, Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,I am privileged to address the Second High-level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation, which is a timely opportunity to assess what has been reached so far, where we stand and what South-South cooperation can do to tackle the development challenges. At the outset, I would like to thank the Government and the people of Argentina as a host country for warmly receiving us here in Buenos Aires. I would like also to express gratitude to the President of the General Assembly, the President of the High-level Committee on South-South Cooperation, the Co-Facilitators and all delegations for their outstanding support in this process," he said. Minister noted that ue have gathered here to commemorate a historical event in advancing the South-South cooperation. "The United Nations Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries, held in this city in 1978, was a major landmark in the continuing efforts of the United Nations to promote economic and technical cooperation among developing countries. This meeting is an occasion to reaffirm the continued relevance of South-South cooperation to build a more equitable global partnership for development and peace. As we are all aware, South-South cooperation is an expression of South-South solidarity that had proven its relevance by a rapid growth. It is a rising and dynamic phenomenon, an important process that is vital to confront the challenges faced by developing countries, making an increasingly important contribution to their development. In the light of the processes of globalization and deepening interdependence among economies, strengthening of South-South cooperation has become a major imperative both as a development strategy and as a means for ensuring that developing countries participate fully in international economic relations, which is a key objective of the United Nations," minister said. He noted that the rapid economic growth of some major developing countries has, indeed, dramatically improved the development prospects of neighboring countries, spurring economic growth and South-South trade and investment. "Today, developing countries have accumulated varying degrees of capacities and experiences in development that can be shared on a South-South basis. Global partnership as agreed in Goal 17 would be crucial for meeting the challenges of developing countries. The construct of South-South & Triangular Cooperation requires that developing countries have the policy space for their own development. The South-South learning and policy coordination and the peer-to-peer transfer of expertise and technology are effective ways to accelerate sustainable development. In other words, developing countries face similar development challenges. Therefore, the proximity of experience and methods allows sharing common views on national development strategies and priorities. Our approach to South-South Cooperation has been therefore to share this experience and knowledge in a spirit of solidarity with countries from the South treading similar paths of socio-economic development. Drawing on our own country, we understand the essential role of South-South cooperation in the provision of collaborative frameworks and cross-border and interregional programmes, as well as standards, regulatory arrangements and implementation mechanisms. Having joined the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Azerbaijan is currently intensifying its efforts to align national development strategy with the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), while translating them into national policies and programs. Building inclusive and resilient growth, moving from oil based to a more diversified economy, continuing investment in human development, and ensuring greater connectivity to regional and global markets to fully unleash Azerbaijans export potential are among the top priorities for the Government," he said. According to him in order to ensure effective implementation of SDGs and their regional coordination, Azerbaijan in cooperation with the UN Country Office organized Baku Forum on Sustainable Development last year to discuss the means of implementation of the national sustainable development agenda, share relevant knowledge and experience and learn best international practices related to SDGs. "Attended by the officials responsible for coordination of SDGs implementation at the national level as well as UN representatives, international and local experts, the conference adopted Baku Principles for National SDG Mainstreaming and Acceleration, which can serve a good basis for knowledge-sharing. The national stocktaking exercise on Trends and opportunities in advancing South-South and Triangular Cooperation in Azerbaijan conducted by the UN Country Office and the UN Office on South-South Cooperation in 2016 suggests that Azerbaijan has a comparative advantage in sharing its expertise in various fields of development, such as effective public service delivery, education, labor and social protection, youth empowerment, mine action and others. It should be noted that pursuing prudent economic policy, Azerbaijan has made a rapid social-economic success during the last 15 years, which transferred our country from recipient to a donor. The social-economic growth was followed by increasing appeals to Azerbaijan from foreign governments and international organizations for humanitarian aid and development assistance. To respond to these requests in a timely and well-coordinated manner, the national donor institution the Azerbaijan International Development Agency (AIDA) was established within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan in 2011," Mammadyarov said. Minister noted that since its inception, AIDA has being employing multiple mechanisms to address poverty eradication and sustainable development in developing countries through building the human and institutional capacity, sharing good practices and experiences in a manner consistent with their national and strategic plans. "During the past years, over 90 countries, especially those in Africa, Asia and Latin America have so far benefited from technical assistance and humanitarian aid programs delivered bilaterally and multilaterally by AIDA. We have helped nearly 2 million people, and the number of beneficiary countries and the volumes of provided aid are constantly growing. One of the vital importances of the new donor countries, such as Azerbaijan, is that they present new vital sources for replenishment and reversal of declining trend of Official Development Assistance (ODA), which is extremely important for sustainable development of vulnerable economies, such as LDCs, LLDCs, and SIDS. They also serve as an example and encouragement for other developing countries that consider the possibility of joining their ranks and becoming donor countries themselves. However, Azerbaijan represents an interesting example of a donor country. We provide international assistance under the circumstances when 20 percent of our territory has been under the military occupation of Armenia for over 2 decades, as a result of which more than 1 million people have become refugees and IDPs. Yet, Azerbaijan has succeeded in recovering, diversifying and modernizing its economy, while reducing poverty level from 49 to 5 percent. Most importantly, having effectively integrating both refugees and IDPs into the society, Azerbaijan has accumulated a vast experience in providing them with adequate shelter, health and education services, employment, while strengthening their human capital, which could serve as possible areas for the South-South cooperation," he said. Minister stressed that aside from being a donor country, Azerbaijan has also become the leading economy in the region and the initiator of large-scale regional projects, and if the military occupation by Armenia ceases, Azerbaijan could contribute to South-South cooperation more actively. "We recognize triangular cooperation as a modality closely linked to and supportive of South-South cooperation, which brings an added value by leveraging and mobilizing additional technical and financial resources, sharing of experiences and flexible arrangements between Southern and other partners. Azerbaijan signifies the role of taking concrete and practical steps to stimulate and enliven the cooperation and economic integration in the South-South direction. We believe that the Non-Aligned Movement is one of the most relevant venues to discuss and define the ways and mechanisms for such cooperation. During its chairmanship to the Movement starting from October 2019, Azerbaijan will do its best to explore new opportunities in this direction," Mammadyarov said. Minister noted that Azerbaijan believes that one such opportunity lies in the heart of ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for the youth from the developing countries. "With the orders of President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, H.E. Mr. Ilham Aliyev, last year my country has adopted full scholarship programs for 2018-2022 that would annually enable 40 students from Member States of Non-Aligned Movement and Organization of Islamic Cooperation to obtain higher education at the universities of Azerbaijan. The five-year program is expected to contribute to strengthening of the human capital and the fulfilment of sustainable development goals in the OIC and NAM countries. In addition, Azerbaijan attaches high importance to applying innovative technologies in public administration to promote effective public services and realization of the Agenda 2030. In 2018 the UN Human Rights Council has unanimously adopted a resolution on Promoting human rights and SDGs through transparent, accountable and efficient public services delivery at the initiative of Azerbaijan. This resolution highlighted the vital importance of public services as one of the key areas of meeting the standards of human rights while achieving the SDGs. It also promoted the concept of ASAN public service delivery brand of Azerbaijan, which received the UN Award in 2015 for successful public delivery that can serve as one of the areas among countries for South-South cooperation. Detailed information about what Azerbaijan offers for international cooperation in general can be obtained from the Azerbaijani stand in the South-South Cooperation Expo 2019 to which all the esteemed participants are cordially invited. In conclusion, I would like to remind that the strategic partnerships harness the collective experiences towards a common goal while increasing the pool of resources and that strong partnership among countries of the South supported by the UN system will help unlock the economic potential of the developing countries and benefit the entire international community. This Conference will certainly contribute to further strengthen South-South cooperation". Baku, Azerbaijan, March 21 Trend: The Azerbaijani President`s Assistant for Public and Political Affairs Ali Hasanov has described Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan as the fraternal countries that share common history, culture and traditions. After independence was gained these traditional relations were maintained and even developed through efforts of national leader of the Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev and leader of the Kazakh people Nursultan Nazarbayev, Ali Hasanov told the special correspondent of Kazinform news agency, Trend reported. We can say unambiguously that Nursultan Nazarbayev has played a decisive role in all positive changes in the public, political, socio-economic and cultural life of Kazakhstan in the past 30 years. It is thanks to his wise policy that Kazakhstan has grown into an influential player of international politics and an industrial state aiming to become one of the world`s rapidly developing and leading economies. Nursultan Nazarbayev`s entire activity is dedicated to ensuring his people`s well-being. He is an outstanding political figure of not only the Kazakh people, but also the Turkic-Muslim world. So we are confident that Nursultan Nazarbayev`s decision will be a positive step in the fate of the Kazakh people. Azerbaijan believes that this will ensure prosperous future of the Kazakh people. The Azerbaijani government will certainly remain committed to its path of friendship and partnership with Kazakhstan and its newly-forming official bodies, Ali Hasanov added. Baku, Azerbaijan, March 21 Trend: Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship of the Republic of Argentine Jorge Faurie within his visit to Argentine, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. Minister Elmar Mammadyarov expressing congratulations to his counterpart for successfully hosting the UN High-level Conference on South-South Cooperation in Buenos-Aires stressed the importance that Azerbaijan attaches to the cooperation within this platform. Minister Mammadyarov noted that the developing countries face with the similar development problems and therefore, this platform contributes to sharing and discussing the common views, experiences and methods of national development strategies and priorities. At the meeting, exchange of views was held on the current situation of the Azerbaijan-Argentine bilateral relations and the issues of the cooperation agenda. Noting the existing wide prospects for cooperation in the fields of agriculture, energy, transport, health and tourism, common intention for strengthening the joint efforts were expressed. Noting that he was following the prominent achievements of Azerbaijan in the socio-economic sphere after the restoration of its independence, Minister Faurie expressed his willingness to visit Azerbaijan. Baku, Azerbaijan, March 21 Trend: Jewish holiday Purim was celebrated in Baku, Trend reports March 21. The event was attended by the Ambassador of Israel in Azerbaijan Dan Stav, as well as representatives of the embassy. Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, who was planning to kill all the Jews. This took place in the ancient Achaemenid Persian Empire. The story is recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther. The holiday begins with Fast of Esther during the 13th day of the month of Adar (the 12th month in the Jewish calendar) in memory of the fast imposed by the queen upon herself, on the servants, and on all the Jews of the city of Susa. Baku, Azerbaijan, March 21 Trend: Veyseloglu Group commentsed on the introduction of financial sanctions by the Ministry of Taxes of Azerbaijan, Trend reported citing company. "The country's press has circulated the information that the Ministry of Taxes imposed a fine on Veysaloglu. In this regard, we would like to state that at the end of the last year operative tax inspections of goods that are subject to mandatory labelling with excise marks, employees' labor contracts and cash management checks were held in all companies, belonging to Veyseloglu Group of Companies. However, no discrepancies in the activities of our company were detected in the areas of inspection. Thus, all labour contracts of our employees, all the warehouse stock records of our companies, as well as all the records on the goods that are subject to mandatory labelling with excise marks and cash circulation were in order," said in the message. Noted that during the inspection, all inquiries and questions arising from tax officers were timely responded and relevant documents were submitted. "Even during inspection and post-inspection periods, tax officers have repeatedly voiced positive feedback on our tax records compliance with the legislation and have cited us as a good example to other companies under inspection. The main reason for this was the fact that we responsibly reacted to minister's call for declaration of 2018 as a transition year to transparency and made serious efforts in this direction. However at the beginning of 2019, our company was fined. Our company did not accept this unfounded penalty and for this reason immediately appealed to the Ministry of Taxes. At the same time, we provided all the tax records that prove that the penalty was unfounded. At present, our objections are being investigated by the Ministry of Taxes. We hope that in the near future the Ministry of Taxes will confirm our rightness and will make a fair decision. The cases of sales tax evasion that are included in the article does not reflect the truth. During the inspection carried out in this direction, all the necessary documents required by the tax authorities were presented and the facts of sales tax evasion were not revealed," said in the message. According to the statement we would like to state that our company welcomes and fully supports all steps taken by the relevant government agencies to transparency. "Today, our group of companies is continuing its activity in this direction. Veysaloglu has always supported the tax policy of our country during long years of its existence and cooperated with the tax authorities within the framework of the legislation," said in the message. Baku, Azerbaijan, March 21 By Leman Zeynalova Trend: Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR is welcome to take part in construction of Albanian gas infrastructure, Albanian Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy told Trend. In this regard, the ministry said that the Master Plan on the Gasification of Albania was approved by the Council of Ministers by Decision no. 87, dated 14.02.2018. "In accordance with this Master Plan several gas infrastructure projects are developing. Among the important projects is also the gas pipeline project that will link the TAP project with TPP Vlora," said the ministry, adding that companies that will apply for the concession reconstruction and operation of TEC Vlora, are expected to show interest in financing this project. Based on the application of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy in the 20th round of the WBIF, a grant of 1.1 million euro was approved for the preparation of the detailed technical design for the pipeline connecting the TAP project with TPP in Vlora, said the ministry. "Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR is welcome to participate in the construction and operation of gas infrastructure, as well as in the gas supply of the various sectors of the Albanian economy," said the ministry. Based on the Gas Master Plan, as well as on the "National Energy Strategy for the period 2018-2030", the development of the gas sector will be a strategic priority, according to Albanian ministry. Head of SOCAR Balkan Murad Heydarov earlier told Trend that SOCAR is considering various forms of participation in Albanias gasification. "Albanian government has approved the results of the feasibility study of the master plan for this countrys gasification. The process of contractor selection will begin soon. SOCAR Balkan is considering different forms of participation in this process," he said. Heydarov added that at the same time, the company plans to carry out a detailed engineering design of the pipeline between the cities of Fier (Trans Adriatic Pipeline compressor Station (TAP) in Albania) and Vlora. --- Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn The First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan - the Leader of the Nation Nursultan Nazarbayev has held a phone talk with President of the Turkish Republic Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trend reported citing Kazinform. During the telephone conversation, the Turkish leader lauded Nursultan Nazarbayev's historical role in the formation and development of independent Kazakhstan. Recep Tayyip Erdogan stressed that the fraternal people of Turkey highly appreciate Kazakh First President's work as a prominent representative of the Turkic world and global-scale politician. He wished Nursultan Nazarbayev sound health and new success. The sides exchanged their greetings on the occasion of Novruz holiday. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said here Thursday that the United States have failed in the exercise of "illegal" sanctions against Iran, Trend reported citing Xinhua. The country's achievements in the past year, including "victory over terrorism" as well as the "Iranian nations' victory in the international arena and international courts," are evidences that the United States have not succeeded in its anti-Iran policies, said Rouhani. He made the remarks, broadcast live on the state TV, on the occasion of the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, which began on Thursday. In the meantime, the global community have supported Iran, since "we have kept our oath and stood by our words" by being committed to the international Iranian nuclear deal, said Rouhani. "Those who broke the oath revealed their nature; those who committed crimes must know that the end of this path will not be in their favor," the Iranian president said referring to the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal in May last year. Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif headed to Istanbul Thursday evening to attend an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on terrorist massacre of Muslims in New Zealand, Trend reports citing IRNA. The meeting will be held on Friday to condemn the attack on two mosques in Christchurch, which left at least 50 worshipers dead and wounded dozens others last Friday. Turkeys foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday that Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu would chair the meeting. Representatives from the UN, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have reportedly been invited to the event. The emergency meeting comes following a phone conversation between Zarif and Cavusoglu earlier this week, in which they censured the "heinous crime". Among the victims of the terrorist attack were nationals from Syria, Jordan, India, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. El Salvadoran President Salvador Sanchez Ceren highlighted here on Tuesday the development of bilateral relations with China, Trend reported citing Xinhua. At a handover ceremony of laptops which were donated by China to El Salvadoran public schools, the president stressed the significance and benefits of El Salvadora's relationship with the Asian country. "This donation is a sign of the genuine wish to drive projects of cooperation, that will always be of benefit to the people of the two countries, with transparency and without any political conditions," he said. The president also highlighted the decision to establish diplomatic relations with China in August 2018. "We established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China through a sovereign, transparent act, without political conditions and of mutual cooperation, with the benefit of pushing development and progress between the two peoples," the president said. China's ambassador to EL Salvador, Ou Jianhong, thanked the president and the attendees for the opportunity to share with the Salvadoran people the historic moment. "Despite the immense geographical distance between China and El Salvador, the Chinese people send their friendship and solidarity with the Salvadoran people and are ready to offer their sincere and selfless help," Ou said. Sharjah, UAE, March 21 By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend: The organizers of EXPO-2020 in Dubai expect to attract a large number of visitors from foreign countries, Executive Director of Expo 2020 Bureau Najeeb Mohammed Al Ali said during a meeting with journalists in the framework of the International Government Communication Forum 2019, which is underway in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), Trend's special correspondent reports. According to him, usually, the majority of the visitors come to the exhibition from the host country. But in the case of Expo 2020, the organizers expect that 70 percent of visitors will be guests from foreign countries. "This has never happened before," he said. The Executive Director noted that, on the whole, the exhibition is expecting to receive 25 million visits. "We started very humble and won a strong victory when 116 countries voted for us. Speaking "modestly", I mean only the beginning of our way. But time passes quickly. We expect to finish all the buildings and infrastructure a year before the opening, that is, about, in October-November of this year," he said. The Executive Director stressed that all works will be on schedule. "We are very lucky that 190 countries of the world have confirmed their participation at Expo 2020. This is one of the highest participation rates in the exhibition," Najeeb Ali said. He noted that many of these countries have already signed a participation agreement, and some choose the time to announce this. Najeeb Ali added that the city will be ready for Expo by October 2020. "With the advantage of early completion of construction work, we will be able to check everything, check all operations, make sure everything works correctly so that nothing remains at the last minute," he said. Representatives of Trend news agency are taking part in the International Government Communication Forum 2019 organized by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) News Agency WAM. Secretary-General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit announced that the league fully supports Syrian sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Trend reports citing Sputnik. "The League of Arab States fully supports Syria's right for its occupied territory. We have a specific position, based on resolutions, on this issue," Aboul Gheit said on Thursday. The official insisted that the Golan Heights were occupied territory belonging to Syria under international law and the resolutions of the United Nations and the UN Security Council. Meanwhile, a representative of the European Union's diplomatic service stressed that the EU still doesn't recognize the territory as part of Israel. The Golan Heights, considered by Syria to be a part of its territory, was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. It was not until 1981 that Tel Aviv passed legislation formally annexing the area. The United Nations has not recognised the annexation. Earlier on Thursday, Trump took to Twitter during a visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Jerusalem to say that it was time for the US to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, adding that the territory "is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and regional stability". Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Trump's statement by thanking the US president for his support. The European People's Party (EPP) suspended Hungary's ruling Fidesz party until further notice, and set up a panel led by former European Council president Herman Van Rompuy to supervise Fidesz's respect of the EPP's basic values, Trend reporting to Xinhua. EPP President Joseph Daul announced the party's decision in a tweet on Wednesday. The announcement followed a vote in the EPP assembly in Brussels by delegates from its member parties. The decision passed with 190 in favor and 3 against. "The suspension entails: No attendance at any party meeting; No voting rights; No right to propose candidates for posts," Daul tweeted. The main center-right grouping in the European Parliament has had trouble with Fidesz, a long-term EPP member. Several EPP member parties have criticized Fidesz for not complying with the group's values and rules. A week earlier, senior EPP leader Manfred Weber visited Budapest and tried to solve the problems with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Weber wanted Orban and his Fidesz party to stop his government's anti-EU campaign, let the Central European University (CEU) founded by U.S.-Hungarian billionaire George Soros stay in Budapest, and apologize to other EPP member parties. Weber said his talks with Orban had been constructive but "problems were not yet solved." Alongside Van Rompuy, the other members of the evaluation commission are the Wolfgang Schussel of Austria and Hans-Gert Pottering of Germany. A similar three-men commission had been set up by the EU back in 2000, when Austria's conservative governing party formed a coalition with the far-right. Orban took part in the debate preceding the vote, and held an international press conference streamed live by the Hungarian media, in which he underlined that a "compromise had been reached." "We have disputes with only those members of the EPP who wanted us to be expelled, not with the majority of the EPP," he said. He said that Fidesz was also to set up its own three-member commission tasked with negotiating with the EPP's commission. Asked about the deadline for the commission to present its evaluation, Orban said that it would certainly take longer than a few months, and its work would likely last until after the European Parliament elections at the end of May. He also said that the question of whether the Fidesz delegates to be elected in May -- 13 or 14 according to polls -- will join the EPP was still "an open question." "As long as Fidesz does not completely restore the EPP's trust, they cannot remain full-fledged members," German CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said earlier. The mainstream conservative EPP is the largest political family in the European Parliament. An Italian man of Senegalese origins was arrested Wednesday after he hijacked and set fire to a school bus carrying 51 children to protest the deaths of asylum seekers in the Mediterranean Sea, Trend reported referring to Xinhua. The man blamed the hardline anti-immigrant policies of Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio for the deaths and told passengers he wanted to kill himself in protest, Italian news agency ANSA reported. The man hijacked the bus carrying 51 middle school students on a provincial road near the northern Italian city of Milan, poured gasoline and set fire to it, according to ANSA. Police chased the bus after a distress call from one of the kids on board, forcing it stop and then breaking all the windows to let the children out before the vehicle went up in flames, Sky TG24 private broadcaster reported. The man was identified as a 47-year-old who obtained Italian citizenship in 2004. Twelve kids and two adults were hospitalized after inhaling toxic fumes, none of them in serious condition, ANSA reported. Charges against the man include multiple counts of kidnapping, attempted mass murder and terrorism, because his act caused panic among the population, Sky TG24 cited counter-terrorism prosecutor Alberto Nobili as telling reporters in Milan. "School bus hijacked and set on fire, the defense minister (Elisabetta Trenta) compliments Carabinieri (military police) who arrested the man responsible for this absurd gesture: thank you for saving the lives of 51 children and because you make our cities safer," the defense ministry tweeted. "Accordng to witnesses, the man who set fire to a bus today, putting at risk the lives of 51 kids who were on a school outing, shouted: I want to end it all, the deaths in the Mediterranean must be stopped," RAI public broadcaster's TG3 news tweeted. RAI TG3 reported that rescue efforts were sparked by a call from a 12-year-old boy who called his father to tell him that the bus had been hijacked. The public broadcaster posted a video of the bus loaded with screaming children, who are later seen running away, followed by footage of the charred remains of the vehicle. The man had been a driver for the company that owned the bus for 15 years, and had given no sign of mental instability, RAI TG3 reported bus operator Autoguidovie as saying. The man had been reported once for drunk driving and was once accused of sexual assault but had been acquitted, neighbors and acquaintances told Sky TG24. However, leftist MP and former Lower House speaker Laura Boldrini tweeted: "How is it possible to entrust a school bus to a man with a police record for drunk driving and sexual assault on a minor?" A petition calling for Theresa May to cancel Brexit by revoking Article 50 has passed a million signatures, Trend reports citing BBC News. Parliament's petitions committee tweeted that the rate of signatures was "the highest the site has ever had to deal with", after the website crashed. It comes as the prime minister is in Brussels to ask the EU for a delay to next Friday's Brexit date. Downing Street said the prime minister "has said many times she will not countenance revoking Article 50". The PM's spokesman added: "The PM has long been clear that failing to deliver on the referendum result would be a failure of democracy and a failure she wouldn't countenance." Revoke Article 50 has been trending on Twitter as people were urged to sign it. At one point, the petitions committee said there were nearly 2,000 signatures a minute. The petition's heat map shows the constituencies with the highest number of signatories, including seats in Bristol, Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford, London, Cambridge and Brighton. It is not the most popular ever on the Parliament website. A petition for a second EU referendum in June 2016 attracted more than four million signatures and was debated in the Commons - but thousands of signatures were removed after it was discovered to have been hijacked by automated bots. Another popular petition aimed to prevent US President Donald Trump from making a state visit, which attracted 1.8m signatures. People signing petitions on the Parliament website are asked to tick a box saying they are a British citizen or UK resident and to confirm their name, email address, and postcode to sign. Data from the petitions website on Thursday afternoon suggested more than 960,000 signatures were from people who said they were from the UK, nearly 9,000 from France, nearly 5,000 from Spain and nearly 4,000 from Germany, among others. A Commons spokesman said signature patterns are investigated to check for fraudulent activity and suspect signatures are removed, including those that are "clearly bots". He added: "Anyone who is a UK resident or a British citizen can sign a petition. This includes British citizens living overseas." US President Donald Trump said on Thursday it was time to back Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights that Israel seized from Syria in 1967, providing a boost to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the middle of his re-election campaign, Trend reports citing Reuters. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Trump wrote on Twitter. The recognition of the disputed area, seized by Israel in the Middle East war of 1967, would mark a major shift in US policy a week before Netanyahu arrives in Washington to meet with Trump and address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It was the most overt move made yet by Trump to help Netanyahu, who faces an April 9 election. Trump remains popular in Israel, and his advisers have been developing a Middle East peace proposal for release sometime after the Israeli elections. Netanyahu has been pressing for the United States to recognize its claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights. He thanked Trump for the gesture. The prime minister had been expected to raise the issue with Trump during his visit to Washington next week, an Israeli official said. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! @realDonaldTrump, Netanyahu wrote in a tweet. Whenever we have to go roaming in another country, then there governing rules prevents us from going there. This is because in every country there is a visa and there is a different rule of visa applied in all the countries. Many people, even after having time and money, will take only this time for the other country to not get into this affair.When asked if you can get an entry in a country without having a visa as an Indian, you will definitely take the name of Nepal and Bhutan. If we say that apart from this there are many countries where you can go without a visa, then your reaction will be astonishing. There can be great news for Indians, without visa you can make entries in these 17 countries. Read about it in detail. Vanuatu It is basically a country of South Pacific Ocean. People of India can stay here for 6 months without visa, but the entry will require a passport. Trinidad and Tobaco In this country of the Caribbean Sea many people of Indian origin live here and there can be 6 months without visa. Provided that your passport's validity should be valid for next 3 months. St. Vincent and the Grenadines This is basically the Southern Caribbean country where people of India can live without a visa for 30 days. But the validity of their passport should be left. Senegal This country is settled on the West Coast of Africa. Here people of India can stay for 90 days without visa, but they must have the validity of their passport. St. Kitts and Nevis In this country, Indians have been allowed to stay without a visa for 30 days. They should have a passport. Let us know that it is located between the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean. Micronesia This is the island country in the West Pacific Ocean. Here, people of India can stay for 30 days without visa, but a passport is necessary to go here too. Mauritius Indians are allowed to stay in Mauritius for up to 60 days. Your passport should be valid and it is a very popular place among Indian tourists. Macao Macao is also a very famous country for Indians, where they often come to India. People of India can stay for 30 days without visa but their passport must be valid. Jamaica In this country of the Caribbean Sea, Indians can live without any visa for 14 days. Indonesia People of India can live without visa for 30 days here. Here the visa entry also depends on your passport. Haiti Haiti is an African country where people of India can stay for 90 days without visa. Just check your passport's validity time to time. Grenada This is basically the Caribbean country where Indians can stay for 90 days without a visa. Just your passport must be valid. Fiji Here you will find most Indian people come here to roam around and get a business deal. That's because Indians can stay for 120 days without visa. Just do not have the validity of passport. Salvador It is a central American country on the Pacific Ocean coast. Here, Indians can stay for 30 days. But the validity of your passport should be for 6 whole months. also read Good news for Travellers, this company is offering free world trips also read A couple slammed on social media for shooting dangerous pics 1. Yes. The Schlueter Group has extensive experience and contacts. Its a good investment. 2. Yes. The firms namesake has a background as a legislator and knows Killeen well. 3. No. The expenditure is a waste of money. Our lawmakers should be doing that work. 4. No. The contract should be shorter, incentivized and based on performance benchmarks. 5. Unsure. Its not always easy to quantify the outcomes of lobbying efforts. Vote View Results Oppostion leader in Pakistan, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari opened a new line of attack from within and accused the Pakistani PM Imran Khan of shielding leaders of banned organisations. Bilawal said claims of the Pakistani PM Imran Khan are untrue. He said, "We have heard again and again that action has been taken against banned organisations. I don't think so," said the chairperson of Pakistan's Peoples Party. "You (Imran Khan) say that you have arrested them (leaders of banned organisation. I say that no, you have taken them into protective custody so that India's fighter jets can't target them. You say that you have frozen their bank accounts but how do we know? Why should we believe this?" Bilawal then said that Imran ought to win the trust of all political parties in the country by 'showing seriousness.' "You have to engage with the Opposition and win our confidence. This has been my stance throughout. You have taken a U-turn for having taken the support of banned elections to win the election and helping them enter the mainstream and then claiming you have taken action against them." Pakistani government is under tremendous pressure from the world community as well as from within Pakistan to act against terror. A few days ago, the atmosphere of tension between India and Pakistan was very hot. Since the Pulwama attack, Pakistan had been disturbed since the IAF had demolished terror groups of Jais in Balakot, Pakistan. Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthman on February 27 killed Pakistani fighter plane F-16 The Abhinandan have made this shocking act of the year-old MiG-21. The Abhinandans aircraft crash in Pakistan during the war fell. The Abhinandan moved in the possession of the present Pakistan. At first, Pakistan was not ready to give up Abhinandan in any condition. He was keeping the conditions in front of India to leave the Abhinandan. But after the stiff attitude of India later, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had to leave the Abhinandan after coming under pressure. also read There was blood everywhere": Eyewitness of New Zealand mosques attack In the meantime, India has thrown up the Abhinandan from Pakistan's occupation, but there have been reports recently that a US general has played an important role in redemption. America's General Joseph Votel was in constant touch with Pakistan and he had made it clear that Abhinandan should be returned to India safely as soon as possible. India will just calm down on the return of Abhinandan As soon as the Abhinandan that had gone in the occupation of the Pak army, all machinery from Delhi to Washington had become active. America's military officers were repeatedly pressurizing Pakistan to release Abhinandan at the earliest, only then stress can be reduced. The news is that the US's SantCom commander, General Joseph Votel, spoke on the phone from Pakistan Army Chief General Kamar Javed Bawja and asked to leave the Abhinandan as soon as possible. Let it be said that the head of the command, Joseph Vetel, is also responsible for the operation in Afghanistan. Pakistan is constantly trying to lobby the Taliban at the negotiating table. The only source of the Pakistan Army is to talk to Saintcom Commander America. At that time General Joseph had mostly talked to America. During this conversation, he was accompanied by US National Security Adviser NSA John Bolton. At that time, Bolton was continuously interacting with India's NSS Ajit Doval. Although Bolton had put on the responsibility of dealing with Pakistan on General Joseph itself. The United States sent a message to Pakistan through Britain. Let's say, Britain's military has a lot of influence on Pakistan. also read China moves in UNSC on Masood Azhar is with a goal of propping up Pakistan By Juliet Nalwooga. The minister for Lands, Housing and Urban Development Betty Amongi has revealed plans to amend the Land Acquisition Act. In 2017 government submitted the constitution land amendment bill before parliament seeking to amend Article 26 of the constitution to facilitate timely acquisition of land for government projects. A report was made by parliament advising government to withdraw the amendment but introduce an amendment to the Land Acquisition Act of 1965 instead. Addressing journalists at media center in Kampala Amongi said that as such consultations have kicked off in Hoima, Karamoja district and a national dialogue is be held in Kampala tomorrow. Key among the issues in the proposed bill is the introduction of a tribunal that will be mandated to settle disputes between land owners and government over compensation within 30 days. Amongi cited the Entebbe Express Way, Northern Bypass and oil roads whose implementation has been delayed by disputes arising out of the compulsory land acquisition process. Scientists in China have developed a process for converting plant waste from agriculture and timber harvesting into high-density aviation fuel. Their research, published March 21 in the journal Joule, may help reduce CO2 emissions from airplanes and rockets. Cellulose, the main component in the biofuel, is a cheap, renewable, and highly abundant polymer that forms the cell walls of plants. While chain alkanes (such as branched octane, dodecane, and hexadecane) have previously been derived from cellulose for use in jet fuel, the researchers believe this is the first study to produce more complex polycycloalkane compounds that can be used as high-density aviation fuel. Ning Li, a research scientist at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics and an author of the study, believes this new biofuel could be instrumental in helping aviation "go green." "Our biofuel is important for mitigating CO2 emissions because it is derived from biomass and it has higher density (or volumetric heat values) compared with conventional aviation fuels," says Li. "As we know, the utilization of high-density aviation fuel can significantly increase the range and payload of aircraft without changing the volume of oil in the tank." To produce this biofuel, Li and his team found that cellulose can be selectively converted to 2,5-hexanedione using the chemical reaction hydrogenolysis. They then developed a method of separating the compound 2,5-hexanedione by converting the 5-methylfurfural in hydrogenolysis product to 2,5-hexanedione, while keeping 2,5-hexanedione in the product unchanged. This resulted in a 71% isolated carbon yield--a 5% increase from the product yield in their initial work. Finally, they reacted hydrogen with the 2,5-hexanedione from wheatgrass cellulose to obtain the final product: a mixture of C12 and C18 polycycloalkanes with a low freezing point and a density about 10% higher than that of conventional jet fuels. Much of the biofuel's magic lies in this high density--it can be used as either a wholesale replacement fuel or as an additive to improve the efficiency of other jet fuels. "The aircraft using this fuel can fly farther and carry more than those using conventional jet fuel, which can decrease the flight number and decrease the CO2 emissions during the taking off (or launching) and landing," says Li. Although the researchers produced the biofuel at a laboratory scale in this study, Li and his team believe the process' cheap, abundant cellulose feedstock, fewer production steps, and lower energy cost and consumption mean it will soon be ready for commercial use. They also predict it will yield higher profits than conventional aviation fuel production because it requires lower costs to produce a higher-density fuel. The biggest issue holding the process back is its use of dichloromethane to break down cellulose into 2,5-hexanedione; the compound is traditionally used as a solvent in paint removers and is considered an environmental and health hazard. "In the future, we will go on to explore the environmentally friendly and renewable organic solvent that can replace the dichloromethane used in the hydrogenolysis of cellulose to 2,5-hexanedione," says Li. "At the same time, we will study the application of 2,5-hexanedione in the synthesis of other fuels and value-added chemicals." ### This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, DNL Cooperation Fund, CAS, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Key Projects for Fundamental Research and Development of China, the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China, and an iChEM postdoctoral fellowship. Joule, Liu et al.: "Integrated Conversion of Cellulose to High-Density Aviation Fuel" https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30085-6 Joule (@Joule_CP), published monthly by Cell Press, is a new home for outstanding and insightful research, analysis, and ideas addressing the need for more sustainable energy. A sister journal to Cell, Joule spans all scales of energy research, from fundamental laboratory research into energy conversion and storage up to impactful analysis at the global level. Visit: http://www.cell.com/joule. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) are syndromes that share many medical similarities but whose physiological causes are poorly understood. An opinion article publishing March 21 in the journal Trends in Neurosciences suggests that the inability for an individual to wake up when their CO2 blood levels rise, likely due to a faulty neural reflex, may be a shared cause for incidences of death in both disorders. "If someone's airway is blocked with a blanket, for example, they are unable to expel CO2, which causes their CO2 blood levels to rise. Normally, this triggers a series of reactions that cause the individual to wake up and either re-position themselves so that they can breathe again, or cry out for help, like in the case of a baby," says author Gordon Buchanan, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Iowa. "However, in instances of SIDS and SUDEP, evidence is beginning to suggest that elevated CO2 doesn't trigger this wake-up response like it should, which can ultimately result in death." Why a person would fail to wake up from increased CO2 is not fully understood, but a potential explanation is that a malfunctioning serotonin receptor in the midbrain may be responsible. "Serotonin neurons in the medulla are involved in regulation of breathing, and we think the ones in the midbrain are involved in regulating a person's ability to wake up," says Buchanan. "In instances of SIDS and SUDEP, autopsies frequently reveal that there are abnormalities in the individual's serotonin system in the brain. "It is very possible that there is a direct path by which CO2 is sensed by serotonin receptors in the midbrain, and when there is too much CO2 present, the brain reacts by waking up the individual," he says. "The existence of this direct pathway is important because it could drive future treatments." However, applying this information to create preventative therapies for these syndromes is still in the works. In addition to validating that SIDS and SUDEP are caused by an inability to wake up because of a defective CO2 system, a safe and reliable way to test if a person has dysfunctional serotonin receptors needs to be developed as well. Currently, such determinations are possible only through autopsies. In the meantime, parents or caregivers for infants or people with epilepsy should employ the same preventative measures that have been recommended, and largely successful, for decades. "For infants six months and younger, which is the population most susceptible to SIDS, parents should put babies on their backs to sleep. At that age, they can't really roll, so they should stay put through the night," Buchanan says. Further, not putting plush toys or blankets in the crib and dressing the baby in tight-fitting clothing are other guidelines to follow. "As for people with epilepsy who may be prone to SUDEP, which tends to be people who have nighttime seizures, they can also try to sleep on their backs, although it's less likely that they'll stay like that throughout the night since they can roll," says Buchanan. "And in both cases, using a baby monitor to keep an eye on the individual can be helpful." ### Buchanan is supported by the NIH/NINDS; the Pappajohn Biomedical Institute and Iowa Neuroscience Institute at the University of Iowa; and the Beth Levitt Tross Professorship in Epilepsy Research. Trends in Neurosciences, Buchanan, G.: "Impaired CO2-induced arousal in SIDS and SUDEP" https://www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/fulltext/S0166-2236(19)30018-9 Trends in Neurosciences (@TrendsNeuro), published by Cell Press, is a monthly review journal that brings together research covering all disciplines of the neurosciences, allowing researchers, students and teachers to keep up with the last developments, insights, and future directions in the field Visit: http://www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com. Firearm-related deaths in school-age children are increasing at alarming rates in the United States where homicide rates are about 6- to 9-fold higher than those in comparably developed countries. This epidemic poses increasingly major clinical, public health and policy challenges. A study led by researchers at Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine explored temporal trends in deaths from firearms among U.S. schoolchildren by age and race from 1999 to 2017. Their report quantifies these recent epidemics using data from the Multiple Cause of Death Files of the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Results of the study, just published in the American Journal of Medicine, show that from 1999 to 2017, 38,942 firearm-related deaths occurred in 5 to 18 year olds. These included 6,464 deaths in children between the ages of 5 to 14 years old (average of 340 deaths per year), and 32,478 deaths in children between the ages of 15 to 18 years old (average of 2,050 deaths per year). "It is sobering that in 2017, there were 144 police officers who died in the line of duty and about 1,000 active duty military throughout the world who died, whereas 2,462 school-age children were killed by firearms," said Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., senior author, first Sir Richard Doll Professor, and senior academic advisor in FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine. Statistically significant increases in firearm-related deaths began in 2009, with the first epidemic among 5 to 14 year olds followed by a second epidemic that began in 2014 among 15 to 18 year olds. Each of these epidemics has continued through 2017, the most recent year for which U.S. mortality data are currently available. Percentages of all deaths due to firearms were 5.6 at ages 5 to 14 years old and 19.9 at ages 15 to 18 years old. Black children aged 5 to 14 years old experienced statistically significant increases in firearm-related deaths beginning in 2013. Between 2013 and 2017, racial inequalities in firearm-related deaths between blacks and whites increased significantly among 5 to 14 year olds as well as 15 to 18 year olds. The listed cause of deaths in the school-age children were, 61 percent due to assault; 32 percent due to suicide; 5 percent accidental; and 2 percent undetermined. Blacks accounted for 41 percent of overall deaths, and 86 percent of all deaths were in boys. Among the 5 to 14 year olds, cause of death was classified as accident, 12.8 percent (830 deaths); suicide, 29.6 percent (1,912 deaths); assault, 54.8 percent (3,545 deaths), and undetermined, 2.7 percent (177 deaths). Among the 15 to 18 year olds, cause of death was classified as accident, 3.5 percent (1,121 deaths); suicide, 32.9 percent (10,688 deaths); assault, 62.3 percent (20,247 deaths), and undetermined, 1.3 percent (422 deaths). There were no deaths classified as terrorism. Hennekens and study co-authors Alexandra Rubenstein, a second-year premedical student at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine; Sarah K. Wood, M.D., senior associate dean for medical education in FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine; and Robert S. Levine, M.D., an affiliate professor in FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine and a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, believe that combatting the epidemic of mortality due to firearms among U.S. schoolchildren without addressing firearms is analogous to combatting the epidemic of mortality from lung cancer due to cigarettes without addressing cigarettes. ### Continental rift valleys are huge fractures on the surface of our planet that progressively break continental plates with the eventual development of new oceans. The African rift valley between Ethiopia and Kenia is a classical example of this geodynamic process. There, volcanism, earthquakes, and fracturing of the Earth's surface result from the enormous forces that tear the eastern portion of the African continent apart. This system of linear valleys extending for thousands of kilometers is believed to result from the growth and propagation of isolated rift segments that evolve into a continuous zone of deformation. However, although instrumental in driving climate and biosphere of that region which in turn may have influenced habitats and the pattern of migration of human species in East Africa, and possibly even conditioned hominin evolution, this process is poorly documented and understood. In a study published in Nature Communications and funded by the National Geographic Society, an international group of scientists from universities and research institutions from Ethiopia, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, of which Sascha Brune from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences was a part, has shed new light into the recent evolution of the African rift valley. Its focus was on the spatial and temporal sequence of the propagation, interaction and linking of the Ethiopian rift section with the Kenyan part of the rift fracture. By conducting fieldwork in a remote area at the border between Ethiopia and Kenya, and integrating the results of that field campaign with laboratory analysis of volcanic rocks, analysis of the seismicity, morphology and numerical modelling, the authors have been able to reconstruct the geological history of an almost unknown sector of the African rift valley: the Ririba rift in South Ethiopia. The scientists showed that the Ririba trench formed about 3.7 million years ago as the southernmost advance of the Ethiopian rift segment. Sascha Brune says: "In my research group at the GFZ we were able to substantiate the geological observations with numerical experiments. To this end, we brought together regional structures, deformation laws and basic physical equations to modelling in a supercomputer. In this way, we were able to show how the focusing of the rift valley contributed to a direct connection between the Kenyan and Ethiopian Rift." In contrast with previous theories of rifting in the region, the new data indicate that the southward growth was short-lived and aborted around 2.5 million years ago. At this time, deformation migrated westward into the Lake Turkana region, where the Ethiopian and Kenyan sectors of the rift valley are now directly connected. A later phase of volcanism, expressed by numerous lava flows and impressive explosive volcanic craters (maars), have since affected the Ririba area; however, this volcanic activity was unrelated to tectonic activity, opening new questions on how volcanism and faulting interact during rifting. Overall, the results of this work provide new insights into the break-up of continents: "In the East African rift, we can observe processes that are important far beyond the region," says Sascha Brune. "The same dynamics that determine the rift development in East Africa led to the opening of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans many millions of years ago and thus had a decisive influence on the face of the Earth." ### Media contact: Dipl.-Phys. Philipp Hummel Public and Media Relations Helmholtz Centre Potsdam GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences Telegrafenberg 14473 Potsdam Tel.: +49 331 288-1049 E-Mail: philipp.hummel@gfz-potsdam.de Twitter: @GFZ_Potsdam Replay of the telebriefing will be available at 5 p.m. EDT until Mar. 28 at 11:59 p.m. on: United States (800) 475-6701; International (320) 365-3844; Access Code: 465592 In what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind systematic look at pregnancy frequency and outcomes among imprisoned U.S. women, researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine say almost 1,400 pregnant women were admitted to 22 U.S. state and all federal prisons in a recent year. They also found that most of the prison pregnancies -- over 90 percent -- ended in live births with no maternal deaths. Historically, say the researchers, these numbers have not been tracked by U.S. federal agencies or state prison systems, yet most of the women in American prisons are of reproductive age. And although this particular study didn't address how pregnancy care was provided, the researchers say gathering diverse, nationally representative data such as this is a much-needed first step toward developing consistent guidelines for tracking the numbers and improving maternity care in the U.S. prison system. "Currently, there are no mandatory standards for prenatal and pregnancy care for women in prisons," says Carolyn Sufrin, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study, an assistant professor in gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and author of Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars. "This study gives us insight into the actual numbers, which will help us better understand the scope of care needed by pregnant people behind bars. Having this information could also help inform policies to consider alternatives to incarceration for pregnant people." The findings of the new study, conducted by the researchers in collaboration with prison officials who reported information on a monthly basis for one year, were published online March 21 in the American Journal of Public Health. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), there were more than 110,000 women in federal and state prisons in the United States at year-end 2016, with 75 percent of these women being 18-44 years old. A 2004 BJS survey found that 3 percent of women in federal prisons and 4 percent of women in state prisons reported they were pregnant at intake. Until this new study, this BJS survey from 15 years ago, which only accounted for self-reported pregnancies, was the only data on pregnancy prevalence in prisons. Other and more current national health statistics databases exclude data from prisons, further contributing to the lack of maternal health and birth information about imprisoned populations. To help close the information gap, the Johns Hopkins researchers gathered data on pregnant women in 22 state systems and all federal prisons, and tracked pregnancy outcomes over a period of 12 months from 2016-2017. They did so by first contacting the prisons' custody and health care administrators via email or phone with an invitation to participate in the study. For federal prisons, approval of participation was granted by the acting director of the U.S. Department of Justice and administrators at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The states' departments of corrections' policies allowed for participation of state prisons. The researchers then arranged for a designated "site reporter" in each prison to use a survey form to track outcomes on a monthly basis among the pregnant patients in their prisons, reporting data on miscarriages, live births, stillbirths, maternal deaths, preterm births and abortions. Site reporters could be wardens, prison research coordinators, women's programming coordinators, medical directors or other health care personnel. At the end of each month during the survey year, site reporters sent their findings to the Johns Hopkins researchers using a secure, web-based program, Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap). In a bid to keep the data-gathering as accurate as possible, the Johns Hopkins researchers interviewed nearly half of the site reporters (43 percent) midway through the study to better understand how they tracked the data and to ensure accuracy. Data were also reviewed by research staff monthly to assess and correct inaccuracies. All data errors were corrected by site reporters during the study period. From the data reported from each site, researchers determined that 1,396 already-pregnant women were admitted to the 22 state and all federal prisons in the study over the 12-month study period. These prisons house 57 percent of imprisoned women in the United States. For this study, no specific demographic information, such as race or age, was collected. Of the pregnancies that ended while women were in custody, 753 resulted in live births. Six percent of the live births were preterm, and 30 percent were delivered by cesarean section, but these numbers varied greatly by state. The national statistic for preterm births and C-section deliveries in the general population are 10 percent and 31.9 percent, respectively. Forty-six of the pregnancies ended in miscarriages, 11 ended in abortions, four ended in stillbirth and three newborns died. None of the mothers died. In the United States, there are more than 700 maternal deaths each year. "We can't know for sure that these numbers come from the same women who were admitted who also had pregnancies that ended in prison," says Sufrin. "They could have gotten released." The researchers said differences such as pre-incarceration health conditions, access to prenatal care, food, shelter and access to illegal drugs could account for the level of preterm birth rates in specific prisons that were higher or lower than the national average. In 2016, the national average for preterm births was 9.85 percent. The average for prisons in the study was 6 percent. Access to and quality of reproductive health care varies from prison to prison, the researchers note, so the findings cannot be generalized to states that did not participate in the study. The researchers also recorded large variations in pregnancy outcomes by state. For example, in Kansas, Vermont and Arizona, 20 or more percent of pregnancies ended in miscarriage. Additionally, Texas and Ohio had months with more than 50 pregnant women present in their prisons, while Maine and Rhode Island had some months with zero pregnant inmates. Sufrin says that the state-by-state differences could be attributed to state sentencing laws, prison health care policies, access to public reproductive health care or other factors not measured in this study. "We were very surprised by how willing and eager the prisons were to participate and to have better data to work with," says Sufrin. "With the collective help of the prisons, our research team was able to take the initial steps to gather more systematic and standardized information." She added: "We know there are pregnant people in prison, and until now, it wasn't clear whether or not people wanted to pay attention to this particular population or do the adequate research needed to advance the quality of reproductive health care in prisons." The researchers cautioned that the study had several limitations: It didn't assess how far along in pregnancy the women were at intake, the size of the prisons, the pregnancy testing policies of the prisons, the type of hospital in which imprisoned women deliver and the variability in prison living conditions. All of those factors may or may not have contributed to variations in outcomes. They also weren't able to collect pregnancy statistics from the other 28 state prison systems, including three large systems that declined participation (California, Florida and New York). In future studies, the researchers hope to collect more information on the individual experiences of the women by interviewing, collecting demographic data and assessing the quality of their maternity care. "Our hope is for these findings to be used to advance national standards of care for imprisoned pregnant women," says Sufrin, "and to support those who advocate for policies and laws that guarantee acceptable and safe pregnancy care and childbirth, that consider alternatives to incarceration for pregnant people, uphold reproductive justice, and encourage more attention to the reproductive health needs of marginalized women and their families." Sufrin has been researching reproductive health care in jails and prisons since 2005, and the pregnancy care of incarcerated women specifically, since 2009. She is also the author of Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars. ### Other authors on the paper include Lauren Beal and William Mosher of Johns Hopkins, Jennifer Clarke of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections and Rachel Jones of Guttmacher Institute. This research was supported by Society of Family Planning Research Fund, the National Institutes of Health and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K12HD085845). The authors have declared no conflict of interest. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found that type IgG antibodies play an unexpected role in atherosclerosis. A study on mice shows that the antibodies stabilise the plaque that accumulates on the artery walls, which reduces the risk of it rupturing and causing a blood clot. It is hoped that the results, which are published in the journal Circulation, will eventually lead to improved therapies. Atherosclerosis is the main underlying cause of heart attack and stroke, and is expected to be the leading cause of death in the world from a long time to come. Approximately a third of patients do not respond to statin treatment. The disease is characterised by the narrowing of the arterial walls resulting from the accumulation of lipids and cells - the so-called atherosclerotic plaque. When the plaque ruptures, blood clots can form that restrict the blood flow to vital organs, such as the heart and brain. To reduce the number of deaths from atherosclerosis, researchers are therefore trying to find ways to prevent this from happening. Immune system B lymphocytes produce antibodies that are involved in fighting infection. But the antibodies can also help to clean up damaged tissue, for instance in the form of atherosclerotic plaques. Scientists also know that the immune system has a bearing on the development of plaque, but exactly how this happens remains largely unresearched. The team behind the present study has studied how atherosclerotic plaque develops in mice that lack antibodies. "We found that plaque formed in an antibody-free environment was unusually small," says study leader Stephen Malin, senior researcher at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Medicine in Solna. "But on closer inspection, we discovered that the plaque looked different and contained more lipid and fewer muscle cells than normal. This suggested that the plaque is unstable and more prone to rupturing, which also turned out to be the case." The researchers found that the necessary ingredient for plaque stability was so-called IgG antibodies, the most common class of antibody in the blood. Further analyses showed that the smooth muscle cells of the aorta need these antibodies to divide correctly; when the cells cannot divide correctly, the plaque seems to become smaller and more unstable. "It came as a huge surprise to us that antibodies can play such an important role in the formation of arterial plaque," says Dr Malin. "We now want to find out if it is some special type of IgG antibody that recognises plaque components. If so, this could be a new way of mitigating atherosclerosis and hopefully reducing the number of deaths from cardiovascular disease." ### The study was financed with grants from the EU Seventh Framework Programme, the Swedish Research Council, the Professor Nanna Svartz Foundation, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Ragnar Soderberg Foundation, the German Research Council (DFG), the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), the European Research Council and Karolinska Institutet (KID funding). Publication: "Germinal center-derived antibodies promote atherosclerosis plaque size and stability". Monica Centa, Hong Jin, Lisa Hofste, Sanna Hellberg, Albert Busch, Roland Baumgartner, Nienke Verzaal, Sara Lind Enoksson, Ljubica Matic Perisic, Sanjaykumar Boddul, Dorothee Atzler, Daniel Li, Changyan Sun, Goran Hansson, Daniel Ketelhuth, Ulf Hedin, Fredrik Wermeling, Esther Lutgens, Christoph Binder, Lars Maegdefessel, Stephen Malin. Circulation, online 21 March 2019. A new model quantifies how forest change affects local surface temperatures by altering sunlight-reflection and evapotranspiration properties, and predicts that Brazilian deforestation could result in a 1.45C increase by 2050, in a study published March 20, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jayme A. Prevedello from the Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil, and colleagues. Forests are known to reflect less sunlight and have higher evapotranspiration than open vegetation, meaning that deforestation and forestation could affect local land surface temperature. However, until recently there were limited high-resolution global data. The authors of the present study used a global dataset from 2000-2010 to quantify impacts of forest change on local temperatures. They used newly-released data on forest cover, evapotranspiration rates, sunlight-reflection and land surface temperature and built a model to quantify the relationship between these variables for tropical, temperate, and boreal regions. The authors found that deforestation and forestation generally appeared to have opposite effects of similar magnitude on local temperature. However, the nature of the effect and the magnitude of the temperature change depended on latitude: in tropical and temperate regions, deforestation led to warming, while forestation had cooling effects. In boreal regions, deforestation led to slight cooling, though the magnitude of the effect was smaller. The magnitude of the forest change effects was greatest in tropical regions, with, for example, deforestation of approximately 50 percent leading to local warming of over 1C. The authors used their model to predict local temperature change in Brazil between 2010 and 2050. Assuming the current rate of illegal deforestation is maintained, this predicted an annual land surface temperature rise of up to 1.45C in some areas by 2050. However, if no further illegal deforestation occurred, the temperature rise could be far more limited. This new model quantifies the effect of forest change on local surface temperatures, through changes in sunlight-reflection and evapotranspiration. The authors note that their Brazil case study "illustrates that current land use policies can impact future local climate." The authors add: "Forestation has the potential to reverse deforestation impacts on local climate, especially in tropical and temperate regions." ### Peer-reviewed; Modelling study; People, Environment Citation: Prevedello JA, Winck GR, Weber MM, Nichols E, Sinervo B (2019) Impacts of forestation and deforestation on local temperature across the globe. PLoS ONE 14(3): e0213368. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0213368 Funding: JAP was supported by grants from Fundacao Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (processes n. E-26/010.002334/2016 and E-26/010.000398/2016) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq; process n. 424061/2016-3); GRW received a post-doctoral fellowship and a technical grant (INCT/DTI-B) from CNPq (processes n. 151984/2016-6, 381247/2017-1), and currently receives a post-doctoral fellowship grant from CNPq (process n. 206876/2017-3); MMW received a post-doctoral fellowship grant from Programa Nacional de Pos-Doutorado from Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (PNPD/CAPES, process number 1594913). BS was supported by an Emerging Frontiers grant from NSF (EF-1241848) and a Pesquisador Visitante Especial (PVE) scholarship from CNPq. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0204368 Quantum computing, along with 5G and AI, has been the focus for the next-generation technology in the last decades. Up to now, numerous physical systems have been investigated to build a test device for quantum computing, including superconducting Josephson junctions, trapped ions and semiconductors. Among them, the semiconductors is a new star for its high control fidelity and promise for integration with classical CMOS technology. Professor Guo-Ping Guo with his co-workers, Xin Zhang and Hai-Ou Li from the Key Laboratory of Quantum Information, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, reviewed recent developments of qubits based on semiconductors and discussed the challenges and opportunities for scalable quantum computing. This work, entitled "Semiconductor quantum computation" was published in National Science Review (Natl Sci Rev 2019; 6: 32-54). Qubit, or quantum bit, like the bit in a classical computer, is the basic unit of a quantum processor. According to the life cycle of a qubit technology, the typical qubit progression can be roughly divided into six stages. It starts from the demonstration of single- and two-qubit control and measurement of coherence time (Stage I), then moves to the benchmarking of control and readout fidelity of three to ten qubits (Stage II). With these developments, the demonstration of certain error correction of some physical qubits can be made (Stage III) and after that, a logical qubit made from error correction of physical qubits (Stage IV) and corresponding complex control should be completed (Stage V). Finally, a scalable quantum computer composed of such logical qubits is built for fault tolerant computing (Stage VI). In the fields of semiconductor quantum computing, there are various types of qubits spanning from spin qubits, charge qubits, singlet-triplet qubits, exchange-only qubits, hybrid qubits and etc. Among them, control of both single- and two-qubit gates were demonstrated for spin qubits, charge qubits and singlet-triplet qubits, which suggests they have finished stage I and the on-going researches shows the state II is also going to be completed. Up to now, benchmarking of single- and two-qubit control fidelity near the fault tolerant threshold were demonstrated and scaling up to three or more qubits are necessary in the following years. One example of such devices is shown in figure (a), which was fabricated by Guo guoping's group at the University of Science and Technology of China for coherently controlling the interaction between two charge qubit states. For further developments, there are still some challenges to resolve. In this review, the authors put forward three major problems as more effective and reliable readout methods, uniform and stable materials, and scalable designs. Approaches to overcome these obstacles have been investigated by a number of groups, such as employing microwave photons to detect charge or spin states and using purified silicon to replace gallium arsenide for spin control. The scalable designs with the strategy for wiring readout lines and control lines were also proposed, and in these plans the geometry and operation time constraints, engineering configuration for the quantum-classical interface, suitability for different fault tolerant codes to implement logical qubits were also discussed. One example of such design is illustrated in figure (B), which was proposed by Li et al. at Delft University of Technology in 2018. In such a device, the crossbar architecture of electrodes can form an array of electrons in silicon and their spin states can be controlled by microwave bursts. In the light of arguments for noisy intermediate-scale quantum technology (NISQ), which means that a quantum computer with 50-100 qubits and low circuit depth that can surpass the capabilities of today's classical computers will be available in the near future, the authors anticipated that as a new candidate to compete in the field of scalable quantum computing with superconducting circuits and trapped ions, semiconductor quantum devices can also reach this technical level in the following years. ### This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Anhui initiative in Quantum information Technologies. See the article: Xin Zhang, Hai-Ou Li, Gang Cao, Ming Xiao, Guang-Can Guo and Guo-Ping Guo Semiconductor quantum computation Natl Sci Rev 2019; 6: 32-54 https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwy153 The National Science Review is the first comprehensive scholarly journal released in English in China that is aimed at linking the country's rapidly advancing community of scientists with the global frontiers of science and technology. The journal also aims to shine a worldwide spotlight on scientific research advances across China. Bowling Green, Ohio March 21, 2019 - Roya Ayman, PhD, has been named a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). Ayman is one of 20 distinguished industrial-organizational psychologists to be awarded SIOP Fellow status on Thursday, April 4, 2019 at the 34th Annual SIOP Conference. The profession of industrial and organizational psychology addresses the full range of human interactions in organizational settings. Members of the profession may be researchers, teachers, practitioners or administrators. They work in several settings including in business, government, consulting, and academia. SIOP Fellows may be recognized for outstanding contributions to the profession in any of these areas. Dr. Roya Ayman, Director of the Illinois Institute of Technology's I-O psychology program since 1989, has made significant contributions to the profession in several areas, including teaching, scholarly research, and academic leadership. Her primary research specializations include Leadership, Cross Cultural Research; and Leadership, Gender, and Culture relationships. She's supervised 34 PhDs and 64 Master's degrees, and many of her proteges have achieved high-level success as corporate executives, educators, consultants and entrepreneurs. Dr. Ayman has also contributed service to the profession and the wider community through her work on editorial boards, conference committees, state-wide education working groups, and international volunteer work. Dr. Ayman's work has been impactful far beyond the borders of the United States through her international presentations, teaching and consulting work. ### To be considered for SIOP Fellow status, a member must be nominated by another member, and endorsed by at least three more SIOP Fellows. A member who has been active in the Society for ten years or more is eligible based on meaningful, sustained and unusual impact on the field. About SIOP The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is an international professional organization with an annual membership of more than 10,000 industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists. SIOP's mission is to enhance human well-being and performance in organizational and work settings by promoting the science, practice, and teaching of I-O psychology. Bowling Green, Ohio March 21, 2019 - Seth Kaplan, PhD, has been named a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). Kaplan is one of 20 distinguished industrial-organizational psychologists to be awarded SIOP Fellow status on Thursday, April 4, 2019 at the 34th Annual SIOP Conference. The profession of industrial and organizational psychology addresses the full range of human interactions in organizational settings. Members of the profession may be researchers, teachers, practitioners or administrators. They work in several settings including in business, government, consulting, and academia. SIOP Fellows may be recognized for outstanding contributions to the profession in any of these areas. Dr. Seth Kaplan is a consummate scientist-practitioner, highly accomplished at research, teaching, and service. He is a prolific scholar whose 45 peer-reviewed publications have received over 3000 citations. His program of research addresses the overarching themes of subjective experience of work and employee well-being, and team dynamics in high reliability and extreme contexts. The latter has helped shape how medical, airline, and mining team members communicate with each other in extreme conditions, been cited in major media outlets, and will be summarized in a forthcoming practice-oriented book on team dynamics. Dr. Kaplan's service to the profession includes leadership as chair of George Mason's I-O program and important work as the first chair of SIOP's Government Relations Advocacy Team (the GREAT committee). To be considered for SIOP Fellow status, a member must be nominated by another member, and endorsed by at least three more SIOP Fellows. A member who has been active in the Society for ten years or more is eligible based on meaningful, sustained and unusual impact on the field. ### About SIOP The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) is an international professional organization with an annual membership of more than 10,000 industrial-organizational (I-O) psychologists. SIOP's mission is to enhance human well-being and performance in organizational and work settings by promoting the science, practice, and teaching of I-O psychology. VANCOUVER, B.C. -- Today, the Government of Canada reaffirmed its longstanding support for TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre, with the announcement of a $292.7M investment over five years to support laboratory operations. This funding represents the largest single investment in TRIUMF to date. It comes in response to the bold vision presented in TRIUMF's recently published Five-Year Plan 2020-2025. Details of the new funding were included in the 2019 federal budget, which was announced today in Ottawa. TRIUMF is grateful for this strong support and appreciates the Government of Canada's sustained commitment to science and innovation. Today's investment will bolster TRIUMF's broad portfolio of activities across three core pillars: science and technology; people and skills; and innovation and collaboration. It builds on Canada's strength in science and research and will help ensure the nation's continued competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. TRIUMF's Five-Year Plan 2020-2025 lays out a blueprint for TRIUMF's future, grounded in three state-of-the-art platforms: The Advanced Rare Isotope Laboratory (ARIEL), a multidisciplinary research facility for isotope research in science, medicine, and business; The Institute for Advanced Medical Isotopes (IAMI), a world-class centre for the research and development of new isotope-based medical technologies; TRIUMF Innovations, a commercialization engine translating TRIUMF's discoveries into commercial opportunities. With this support, the laboratory will be well-positioned to realize its mission of delivering discovery and innovation, inspiration and education, and knowledge and opportunity for all. "Today's announcement sends a strong message of support for Canadian science and its role in Canada's research and innovation ecosystem," said TRIUMF Director Dr. Jonathan Bagger. "TRIUMF's vision is for Canada to lead not only in discovery but also in technology, innovation, and training so that our country will continue to develop the people and skills necessary for translating science to society. These goals lie at the heart of our Five-Year Plan 2020-2025. We are grateful to the Canadian government for its show of confidence in our vision for Canada's future." "This investment from the federal government will allow TRIUMF to realize its potential," said Dr. Digvir Jayas, Chair of the TRIUMF Board of Management. "By leveraging ARIEL, IAMI, and TRIUMF Innovations, TRIUMF will continue to be a global leader in translating science and technology into innovation and commercialization. Today's announcement represents a major milestone for the lab's community of university members, researchers, students, users, industry partners and collaborators, and for all the people the lab serves." ### For more information about TRIUMF's Five-Year Plan 2020-2025, please visit: https://fiveyearplan.triumf.ca/ New York, NY (March 21, 2019) -- In a perspective published today in the journal Cell, researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reveal that genomic data extracted from population biobanks across the globe contain much less ethnic diversity than desirable. Of the nearly 5 million samples of DNA contributed to biobanks worldwide, 68 percent come from individuals of European ancestry. This lack of diversity not only limits researchers' ability to identify associations between genetic variants and disease, but may also contribute to widening ethnic disparities in health care, ultimately preventing underrepresented minorities from benefiting from the fruits of personalized medicine. Personalized medicine describes the emerging medical model in which clinicians use genomics and other advanced tools to determine the best strategy to care for each individual patient. This model stands in stark contrast to traditional medicine, which historically employs a one-size-fits-all approach, often offering the same treatment to every patient. Sequencing of the first human genome, completed in 2003, and the nationwide adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) starting in 2004, set the stage for personalized medicine, as the integration of genomic and clinical data aided clinicians in the prediction, prevention, and treatment of disease. Today, more than 95 percent of U.S. hospitals employ EHR technology and millions of human DNA samples have been sequenced. But even as the biomedical field advances, one prominent obstacle remains: a lack of diversity. A Mount Sinai-led global investigation of data from biobanks, which store biological samples often used in medical research, revealed that out of the millions of participants enrolled in biobanks across the globe, nearly two-thirds are of European ancestry, a group that makes up only about a quarter or less of the world's population. The underrepresentation of people with roots in Africa, Asia, and the Americas is a major pitfall for personalized medicine: diseases more commonly found in minority populations are understudied, as are diseases that strike all populations but have different progression and prognosis depending on ethnicity, such as chronic kidney disease. Thus, the diversity gap in biobanks may hinder our understanding of disease in some population groups, contributing to global health disparities, such as the significantly poorer health outcomes in blacks as compared to whites. Mount Sinai stands at the forefront of the effort to curtail narrow genetic sampling with the creation of its BioMe Biobank, one of the first biobanks in the United States to link DNA sequencing data to clinical information within EHRs. With more than 65 percent nonwhite participants, representative of population diversity in New York City, it is also one of the most diverse biobanks in the world. By targeting underrepresented populations, researchers at Mount Sinai were able to discover that a recessive genetic disease, Steel syndrome, is most commonly found in populations of Puerto Rican descent. This demonstrates that the next generation of personalized medicine will undoubtedly benefit from ethnic diversity in genomic sampling and research, which will help identify at-risk populations, improving population health on a global scale. "To propel personalized medicine of today into better medicine tomorrow, the embodiment of diversity at all levels of biomedical research is essential," said Eimear Kenny, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Genetics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Director of the Center for Genomic Health, and senior author of the publication. "The use of genomic data in clinical settings is fairly new, and there is much more to learn when it comes to the clinical interpretation of genomic data. Even so, the expansion of EHR-linked biobanks coupled with an industry-wide focus on increasing sample diversity could mean a brighter future for individualized care." ### About the Mount Sinai Health System The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City's largest integrated delivery system, encompassing eight hospitals, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. Mount Sinai's vision is to produce the safest care, the highest quality, the highest satisfaction, the best access and the best value of any health system in the nation. The Health System includes approximately 7,480 primary and specialty care physicians; 11 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 410 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. The Icahn School of Medicine is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report's "Best Medical Schools", aligned with a U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" Hospital, No. 12 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding, and among the top 10 most innovative research institutions as ranked by the journal Nature in its Nature Innovation Index. This reflects a special level of excellence in education, clinical practice, and research. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 18 on U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" of top U.S. hospitals; it is one of the nation's top 20 hospitals in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Geriatrics, Nephrology, and Neurology/Neurosurgery, and in the top 50 in six other specialties in the 2018-2019 "Best Hospitals" issue. Mount Sinai's Kravis Children's Hospital also is ranked nationally in five out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report. The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked 11th nationally for Ophthalmology and 44th for Ear, Nose, and Throat. Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Mount Sinai St. Luke's, Mount Sinai West, and South Nassau Communities Hospital are ranked regionally. For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. EL PASO, Texas - Thanks to a generous $750,000 gift from the Jim and Julie Cardwell Fund and the Cardwell Family Foundation, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso (TTUHSC El Paso) is establishing an endowed chair in the department of neurology. TTUHSC El Paso is matching the gift, establishing the Jim and Julie Cardwell Endowed Chair in Neurology. The chair will be supported by a $1.5 million fund thanks to the combined gift and match. The gift and endowed chair are part of a long-term effort to increase the number of neurologists available to treat the El Paso community. The Cardwell Family Foundation is an affiliate of the El Paso Community Foundation. "We have a serious physician shortage in El Paso and Southern New Mexico," El Paso businessman Jim Cardwell said. "This is an opportunity to bring TTUHSC El Paso to the forefront in the training of physicians. Hopefully some of them will stay here in El Paso, but if not, at least we're training more, so there are more doctors. We need more access to medical providers so that families do not have to leave our region to receive specialty care." "The inspiration for this gift was to help the future generations of this region," Cardwell said. "This is a building block of many things to come." Matching funds are being leveraged by TTUHSC El Paso to recruit and attract physicians in specialty areas that are underserved in our region. The goal is to build upon these specialties so that both patient care and research expertise expand over time. There are additional matching funds for endowed chairs and professorships in several areas, such as psychiatry, emergency medicine, orthopedics, surgery and internal medicine. There is a shortage of neurologists nationwide, leading to a "neurology desert" in areas with no neurologists. Though El Paso is not in that situation, with about 20 practicing neurologists, there are too few for a city this size, and El Paso patients are faced with waiting lists, said Dr. Salvador Cruz-Flores, professor and chair of TTUHSC El Paso's department of neurology. According to the American Academy of Neurology, a city should have three to five neurologists for every 100,000 inhabitants - a minimum of 35 if there are 700,000 people in El Paso County. El Paso neurologists serve patients from the entire Paso del Norte region, Dr. Cruz-Flores said. About 45 percent of the care provided by neurologists at TTUHSC El Paso is uncompensated care for the uninsured or underinsured. Though part of their mission, Dr. Cruz-Flores said this adds to the need for more neurologists. "This endowment is meant to grow the activities of the department of neurology, perhaps creating more residency opportunities and clinical lines of service such as a multiple sclerosis clinic, or growing an epilepsy service," Dr. Cruz-Flores said. "In general, this will expand the services of the neurology department with the idea of providing more access to neurological care for our community." ### For more information on how to make an investment in the future of health care in the Paso del Norte region and take advantage of matching funds, contact Andrea Tawney, associate vice chancellor of TTUHSC El Paso's Office of Institutional Advancement, at andrea.tawney@ttuhsc.edu. Scientists of Ural Federal University and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, received additional funding to conduct research on the creation of new materials. The project is a continuation of the cooperation of the researchers of the Institute of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Ural Federal University, and a research team from the Laboratory of High-Pressure Physics and Synthesis of Superhard Materials, Scientific and Practical Center for Materials Science of Belarus National Academy of Sciences. 'Scientific research is aimed at creating new materials based on classical ceramics of bismuth ferrite and barium titanate,' says the project leader Denis Alikin, senior researcher of the Department of Optoelectronics and Semiconductor Technology Division, UrFU Institute of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. 'The key task is to achieve improved piezoelectric properties of materials for their subsequent use in various electromechanical devices. The Belarusian side will be engaged in the synthesis, and the Russian in the study of functional properties'. Denis Alikin also notes that the relevance of such work is due to the need of creating lead-free multifunctional materials with high values of the piezoelectric coefficient, optimal dielectric and magnetic properties. The use of complementary macroscopic and local research methods will allow to form complementary data for analyzing the structure and properties of the compositions. 'Understanding the relationship of the evolution of the structural state of the compositions in the field of phase transitions and improving the electromechanical, dielectric and magnetic properties of such compositions will allow synthesizing materials with optimal and controlled functional parameters - residual polarization, coercive field, dielectric constant and loss, conductivity, residual magnetization. Materials with improved functional properties will find application in the creation of a wide range of electrotechnical devices,' explains Denis Alikin. From the Russian side, the research will be supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR). Financing a two-year grant will be 700 thousand rubles annually. The support of scientists will be held within the framework of the RFBR contest for the best scientific projects carried out jointly by teams of young scientists from the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. ### Seychelles warblers live and breed in family groups on the tiny island of Cousin. In each group, a dominant female and male reproduce. When helpers assist the with incubation and feeding of chicks, the dominant female breeders age more slowly and live longer, a study by biologists from the University of Groningen and colleagues from the Universities of East Anglia, Leeds, Sheffield, and Wageningen shows. The results, which are published in the journal Nature Communications on 21 March, indicate how cooperative breeding - which also occurs in other species, including humans - can increase life span. The Seychelles warbler lives on Cousin Island in the Indian Ocean, measuring just 500 by 700 meters. Some fifty years ago, only a handful of birds survived. However, conservation efforts have led to a spectacular increase in the population, and new populations have been established by translocating birds to four other islands nearby. 'There are about one hundred breeding territories on Cousin, each with a dominant male and female and a number of subordinates, which are often the offspring of the dominant pair', explains University of Groningen biologist Martijn Hammers, lead author of the study. Survival Inside the groups, some - often female - subordinates may help the dominant female with the demanding tasks of incubation and raising chicks. 'Not all dominant females get help', explains Hammers. That is why the Seychelles warbler is well suited to investigate the effect of having helpers on aging in dominant breeders. Ever since the 1990s, the Seychelles warblers on Cousin Island have been fitted with colored rings, so scientists are able to follow them over time. Hammers and his colleagues used data on survival and breeding success collected over fifteen years. In addition, they measured the shortening of telomeres, which can be used as a marker of condition and aging. Telomeres are repetitive DNA sequences at the end of chromosomes, which shorten in response to stress. Telomere shortening is a sign of biological aging, and in the Seychelles warbler, telomere length predicts survival. Positive feedback 'Our analysis showed that in dominant females who get help from subordinates, the shortening of the telomeres is slower than in birds who do not get help. Also, for the older dominant females, this help results in much better survival.' Dominant males do not appear to benefit as much from having helpers, probably because they invest much less energy in breeding. Hammers and his colleagues also discovered a positive feedback system: 'Birds who get more help age more slowly and live longer. But older birds also tend to be more social and recruit more helpers.' The helping subordinates are often daughters of the dominant female. In helping their mother, they raise siblings with whom they share genes. Humans The study shows how cooperative breeding could increase an individual's lifespan. 'Of course, the effects we have measured were within one generation, not between generations.' Nevertheless, it supports a long-held hypothesis that cooperative breeding - which also is the norm in humans - can reduce the cost of raising young and may slow down the negative effects of aging. 'It provides an explanation for why more social species tend to have longer lifespans', Hammers concludes. ### Reference: Martijn Hammers, Sjouke A. Kingma, Lewis G. Spurgin, Kat Bebbington, Hannah L. Dugdale, Terry Burke, Jan Komdeur and David S. Richardson: Breeders that receive help age more slowly in a cooperatively breeding bird. Nature Communications, 21 March 2019 A better system for forecasting and communicating severe weather events in Africa is needed to reduce the impact of storms such as Cyclone Idai, say researchers. Not only do forecasters in Africa need training in spotting the formation of tropical storms and tracking their path, there needs to be a more robust way of anticipating the impacts of these events - so the public and disaster relief organisations can be put on rapid alert. Douglas Parker, Professor of Meteorology at the University of Leeds, is part of a major international collaboration being led by the university with the aim of improving weather forecasting across Africa. He said: "Understanding and forecasting severe weather events is one of the hardest tasks that forecasters face. "Storms such as Cyclone Idai are the result of fundamental physics happening in the atmosphere above the tropics, and that science contains many uncertainties. "Forecasters in Africa are being asked to do one of the toughest jobs in forecasting, but they often lack the techniques and computing capacity to deliver timely and effective forecasts to the right audiences. "A general distrust of weather forecasts may mean that individuals or organisations do not react to warnings. We are working to build confidence between forecasters and users, by working with local meteorologists, and the people who may need to take action." Professor Parker said while many cyclones in the Indian Ocean follow an unpredictable track, Idai was well forecast by the computer models. International agencies had issued warnings of severe impacts in Mozambique a few days before Cyclone Idai made landfall off the coast of Mozambique towards the end of last week. It then tracked westwards to Malawi and Zimbabwe causing devastation in its path. He said: "One of the reasons this cyclone has had such a big impact is that it has moved slowly over land and then back over the ocean. As it did so, it was picking up moisture and that caused the heavy rains and flooding." African Science for Weather Information and Forecasting Techniques (African SWIFT) is a 7.9 million project funded through the Global Challenges Research Fund, part of the UK aid budget, which brings the best research brains to bear down on the big intractable problems facing the world - including building resilience to climate change. The project started in 2017 and is bringing together 25 UK scientists and 45 academics from Africa to undertake fundamental research into tropical weather systems, and the way the public can be alerted to protect themselves if a severe event is predicted. Professor Parker said: "Timely and accurate weather forecasts have the potential to save many lives in Africa, and to protect property. "Computer models and satellite data are available which can provide useful warnings from hours to days ahead of an event. But accurate forecasts are only going to help people if they are communicated effectively, to people and groups with the capacity to take action." The scientists are working with the Met Office and with several African forecast agencies to develop new computer models and new satellite methods that will improve the accuracy of forecasts. They are also bringing forecasters together with users to develop better ways of building confidence in the forecasts. ### Notes to Editors For further information, please contact David Lewis in the media office: 0113 343 2049 or 07712 389448. Please send any requests to talk to Professor Parker to David Lewis on pressoffice@Leeds.ac.uk The weather project, African SWIFT, involves an international collaboration including the UK Met Office, the University of Reading, CEH Wallingford and academic and meteorological organisations in four African countries: Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya. The Global Challenges Research Fund comprises 1.5 billion of UK aid money. University of Leeds The University of Leeds is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK, with more than 38,000 students from more than 150 different countries, and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities. The University plays a significant role in the Turing, Rosalind Franklin and Royce Institutes. We are a top ten university for research and impact power in the UK, according to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, and are in the top 100 of the QS World University Rankings 2019. The University was awarded a Gold rating by the Government's Teaching Excellence Framework in 2017, recognising its 'consistently outstanding' teaching and learning provision. Twenty-six of our academics have been awarded National Teaching Fellowships - more than any other institution in England, Northern Ireland and Wales - reflecting the excellence of our teaching. http://www.leeds.ac.uk Follow University of Leeds or tag us in to coverage: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Instagram Remote communities in the Peruvian Andes depend on the water from melting glaciers and mountain ecosystems to provide them with food and power Remote communities in the Peruvian Andes, as well as communities downstream, depend on the water from melting glaciers and mountain ecosystems to provide them with food and power, and to support industry. But climate change is increasingly putting that in jeopardy, posing a serious threat to future water resources and having potentially severe implications for the vulnerable populations living in river basins fed by the glaciers. Now a major research project is looking to establish the precise effects future changes in the glacial system might pose, and how agencies and the communities themselves can work together to mitigate the potential effects of changing water quantity and quality as the glacier retreat. The project is being led by the University of Plymouth and the Geophysical Institute of Peru, and draws together glaciologists, hydrologists, geographers, environmental and social scientists. It is being funded in the UK through the Newton Fund, awarded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), while the Peru researchers are supported by CONCYTEC, the National Council of Science, Technology and Technological Innovation. The key objectives of research include: Identifying the dynamic role of glacial melt in the basin water budget, building upon existing glacier and hydrological monitoring networks in the Cordillera Blanca and remote sensing data; Developing a conceptual model determining the links between upstream pressures and downstream responses through identification of sources of water, sediment and contaminants from both glacier and non-glacier-fed areas; Evaluating the downstream impact of variability in water and sediment supply on contaminant levels and environmental quality; Establishing local capacities to mitigate supply challenges through co-design of a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) model, designing a response to a long-term trend of decreased water availability and increased (competing) demands on resources. The research will build on research projects led by the University examining the effects of climate and social change on communities in East Africa and Chile. Dr Caroline Clason, Lecturer in Physical Geography, is Plymouth's Principal Investigator on the new project, working alongside Professor of Catchment Science Will Blake and Professor of Geoscience Communication Iain Stewart. The research also involves Plymouth Marine Laboratory and the Westcountry Rivers Trust. Dr Clason said: "The glaciers of the Andes are crucial for these communities. For example, in the Ancash region of Peru, glacial melt provides up to 67 per cent of the dry season water supply going up to 91 per cent during extreme drought. The rapid retreat of glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca has already had notable impact on that supply, posing challenges for downstream agriculture, industry and hydropower generation not just through a reduction in water but also an increase in sediment and contaminants transported downstream during wet season floods. Fully understanding these challenges, and working with local people and agencies to find ways to overcome them, is essential." Dr Sergio Morera, of the Geophysical Institute of Peru, added: "Although the Santa basin is the most studied catchment system in Peru, the outputs of scientific studies emerging in the region have not yet translated into development and improvement of management and adaption policies. Our own studies have shown that the Santa catchment has the highest erosion and sediment transport rates along the Pacific coast, reflecting the susceptible geology and intense mining activity, but to date there has been no policy response. Our strategy will try to promote a real change in policy through a combination of stakeholder engagement, training and knowledge exchange activities. These are integrated with our research programme, permitting research output and impact to develop iteratively in parallel." ### New research published in the March 18th edition of Lipids showed that people who have peripheral artery disease (PAD) have a lower Omega-3 Index compared to those who don't have the disease. PAD is a disease that affects the blood vessels outside the heart and brain. Evidence from other studies suggests that omega-3s affect many steps of the atherosclerotic process. More specifically, they improve endothelial function; promote vasodilatation through relaxation of smooth muscle cells; exert antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antithrombotic actions; delay development of plaques and increase their stability; and decrease wall stiffening. Because PAD is essentially atherosclerosis of the leg arteries, researchers in this study believe that patients with PAD may have an omega-3 fatty acid deficiency. To study the relationship between the Omega-3 Index and PAD, the investigators compared the Omega-3 Index in 145 patients with PAD to 34 controls without PAD. They found that the Omega-3 Index was significantly lower in the PAD patients than the controls (5% vs 6%). When they controlled for other patient characteristics that might have influenced these findings (like age, smoking, blood pressure, diabetes, drugs, etc.), the Omega-3 Index was still lower in the cases vs. the controls. In the final analysis, for every 1% unit reduction in the Omega-3 Index, the odds of being a PAD patient increased by 39%, and for every additional pack-year of smoking the odds of being a PAD case increased by 4%. "It is likely that the lower inflammatory burden associated with a higher Omega-3 Index may be part of the explanation for these results," said Bill Harris, Ph.D., one of the study's authors. "Whether long-term use of omega-3 supplements and/or increased consumption of oily fish could prevent the development of PAD should be examined in future studies." ### Media Inquiries: Becky Wright Marketing & Communications Manager, OmegaQuant 201-675-0197 news@omegaquant.com About OmegaQuant: OmegaQuant is an independent, CLIA-certified lab that offers Omega-3 Index testing to researchers, clinicians and the public and sets the standard for fatty acid testing. OmegaQuant performs fatty acid analysis in Sioux Falls, SD for commercial and academic research collaborators, and for consumers interested in monitoring their nutritional status in both blood and breast milk. Its goal is to offer the highest quality fatty acid analytical services to researchers and to provide simple tests of nutritional status to consumers, with the ultimate purpose of advancing the science and use of omega-3 fatty acids to improve health. Most recently, it opened an additional lab in Brisbane, Australia. It also recently received approval in the EU market and opened a lab in Scotland, officially making the Omega-3 Index an internationally accessible test. IRVING, Texas (AP) -- Nexstar is selling 19 television stations for $1.32 billion as part of its buyout deal with Tribune Media. Nexstar agreed in December to buy Chicago's Tribune Media for about $4 billion. Part of that agreement requires Nexstar to sell certain television stations in order to comply with the FCC local and national television ownership rules and to get FCC and Justice Department approval of the Tribune Media transaction. Nexstar Media Group Inc. is selling 11 stations to Tegna Inc. for $740 million and eight stations to E.W. Scripps Co. for $580 million. Nexstar said Wednesday that it's still in active talks to sell two stations in Indianapolis. The company said it'll use proceeds from the sale of the television stations to fund its Tribune deal and to lower debt. The 10 Rules That Made Warren Buffett a Billionaire Warren Buffett may be worth tens of billions, but he still lives simply, and his strategies for smart investing and amassing wealth aren't too complicated either. But if it's so easy, you ask, why aren't more people as incredibly rich as Buffett? Because his approach takes the kind of discipline, patience and instinct that many either don't have or are unwilling to develop. Here are 10 rules that have helped the Oracle of Omaha find and sustain success. 1. It starts with good communication Becoming Warren Buffett / HBO Buffett says you need to develop good communication skills if you want to lead. Buffett's first key to prosperity has little to do with picking stocks. He says you need to become a strong communicator: Wield words as your most important tools. "Without good communication skills, you wont be able to convince people to follow you even though you see over the mountain and they don't," Buffett once told a Stanford MBA student. While this is sage advice for financial planners, it's good for helping anyone develop leadership skills and the ability to think in stressful situations. 2. Look forward, not to the past Dean Drobot / Shutterstock Warren Buffett tells investors to focus on what's ahead, not past performance. Buffett famously stated in the 1950s that "the investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth." This maxim still holds true today. According to Buffett, following past trends is much less important than identifying new opportunities. When deciding whether to invest in a company, focus on what's in its future, not its history. Don't stay stuck in the past when it comes to your mortgage either. No matter how long you've held onto your current home loan, consider trading it in for a new one at today's ultra-low mortgage rates. 3. When investing, innovate don't follow Marjolijne / Shutterstock Warren Buffett was never one to follow the herd. Adopting a herd mentality is a surefire way to get middling results, Buffett believes. "You need to divorce your mind from the crowd," he has said. It's tough, but you have to break out from the pack by developing your own investing strategy based on your knowledge and experience. "To be a successful investor you must divorce yourself from the fears and greed of the people around you, although it is almost impossible," Buffett says. Story continues At the same time, be open to good advice. Good financial planning can help guide you toward the perfect retirement and through companies such as Facet Wealth, financial planning services are even available online now. 4. Live frugally Carolyn Franks / Shutterstock For a billionaire, Buffett is known to live a surprisingly frugal life. Buffett famously lives well below his means. He has been known to drive an older, modest car. He still resides in the house he bought in Omaha, Nebraska, for $31,500 in 1958, and he picks up breakfast at a McDonald's drive-thru almost every day. Think of wealth as security, not a license to spend foolishly. Live modestly, and you'll be able to weather dips in the financial markets. If you invest to feed a lavish lifestyle, you'll soon find yourself making rash decisions based on greed. You can follow his example by looking for new ways to stretch your dollars. Start by eliminating debt with the help of a low-interest debt consolidation loan. When shopping for life insurance, choose an inexpensive term life policy. And, earn gift cards the easy way by watching videos and completing surveys through an app called Swagbucks. 5. Know when to fold 'em Luis Louro / Shutterstock Buffett says you have to know when to walk away from the table. Don't get the wrong idea Buffett does sell stocks when he has to. Despite his overall success, he has bet on plenty of clunkers. The trick for long-term investing success is knowing when to walk away. Buffett learned these lessons as a young man betting on horse races. He tried to make up for losses by increasing his bets, and he lost more money. Recognize when a stock is a genuine loser, so you can walk away and minimize your losses. And remember that when you use an automated investment service, like Betterment, it automatically adjusts your portfolio to protect you from stocks that are in trouble. 6. Always be willing to learn new things Becoming Warren Buffett / HBO Warren Buffett begins each day by reading a newspaper. Buffett likes to say that knowledge accumulates just like interest in the bank. (Especially if you've got a high-interest savings account.) He starts each day with a newspaper, and he reads books on various topics every day. Consuming information will not only influence your investing, but it also will prepare you for success in all areas of life. Soak up what others can tell you about new technologies and new strategies. Those who avoid learning new things risk becoming obsolete. Be like Buffett, and you'll never grow too old to learn a new trick. 7. Never invest borrowed money nazarovsergey / Shutterstock Buffett says invest with your own money -- don't borrow. When investing, use your own money. Buffett says it's "crazy" to borrow. "It's insane to risk what you have and need for something you don't really need," he told CNBC. If you borrow to invest, your strategies will be too closely tied to your need to repay the money. Some investments require long-term planning and holding out for growth, which is difficult with a debt hanging over your head. Already have too much debt? Roll it into one loan with one low interest rate. You can comparison-shop for a debt-consolidation loan that works for you. 8. Think loooooooong term Bennian / Shutterstock Buffett says invest for the long term and don't get caught up in the stock market's day-to-day moves. "Buy and hold" is a common, long-term investment strategy that calls for sticking with a stock even when it's having a bad day or month. Buffett's approach might be called "buy and hold and hold." As he likes to tell his Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, "Our favorite holding period is forever." He doesn't mind when a stock takes an occasional tumble, because those are good opportunities to buy more shares at a discount. 9. Dividends are key to long-term growth Niloo / Shutterstock Buffett's company earns millions of dollars from Coca-Cola, in the form of dividends. Warren Buffett loves stocks that pay dividends. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, gets hundreds of millions of dollars each year from Coca-Cola in the form of dividends. Dividends come from reliable companies that consistently meet or exceed their goals. Their stocks may not make you a lot of money quickly, but their dividends can put your investing on autopilot. Other high-dividend-paying companies include Caterpillar, AT&T, Verizon and the investment firm BlackRock Capital though, ironically, not Berkshire Hathaway. 10. Remember, anything is possible Cheryl Casey / Shutterstock Warren Buffett keeps headlines like these around to remind himself of what could happen. Buffett is known to plaster his walls with what he calls "instructional art." This includes newspaper front pages with screaming headlines about stock market crashes. They remind him that, in investing and in life, you need to be ready because anything can happen. If you keep this in mind, then you will proceed with caution and make informed decisions about your investments. You'll avoid risky debt, won't live an unsustainably lavish lifestyle, and will be able to withstand market fluctuations just like Warren Buffett. Take a look at today's low mortgage rates where you are. Airlines Strike a Delicate Balance When Selling Discount Tickets Before it was absorbed by Alaska Airlines, Virgin America fashioned itself a business persons airline, focusing on tech-forward travelers willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to fly last-minute to and from San Francisco and Los Angeles. Because techies, consultants, producers, directors, and actors in Silicon Valley and Hollywood could pay two to five times as much as leisure travelers, Virgin America set aside seats for them, hoping they would snatch them up a few days before departure and boost profits. When Alaskas revenue managers examined the data, they didnt like what they saw. Sometimes, the high-value customers materialized. Other times, they didnt, and the airline may have lost revenue it could have earned weeks earlier. Alaska changed the strategy. On former Virgin America routes between major cities, it reduced the number of seats held for last-minute travelers, increasing availability for leisure passengers who book further in advance but demand cheaper prices. Our traditional comfort level was to take them further out and so we adjusted our booking practices there, Alaska Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Harrison told investment analysts in January. Alaska is one of two U.S. airlines to tweak its booking curve strategy recently. The other, United Airlines, went the other way, saying it had erred by leaving too few seats for big spenders. On core business routes, its probably tougher to score a deal on United than a few years ago. The struggles to get it right at Alaska and United highlight an ongoing dilemma for revenue managers. Leisure travelers book early, and often demand deals. But most airlines dont want to sell out at $49 or $99 fares. They must hold enough seats for the lawyers, consultants and bankers who will pay astronomical prices. But how many? To decide, airlines look at basic indicators, including route, day of the week, and time of year. They also plug information about past bookings into sophisticated computer systems, which spit out recommendations. Story continues But humans guide the computers, and some management teams have more tolerance for risking empty seats than others. Some carriers prefer to book more revenue early, giving them certainty, while others wait for big spenders. The whole concept of revenue management is that you get a call from a customer and you have to decide whether or not to take it, said Tom Bacon, a consultant and former vice president for revenue planning at Frontier Airlines. It is a bird in the hand issue. You can say, Nope I am not going to take this booking at $79 because I know I can get a higher fare passenger to book if I just wait. Uniteds Case Uniteds journey to taking more last-minute revenue began after Scott Kirby joined as president in August 2016. Early in his tenure, Kirby told investment analysts the airline had an antiquated revenue management system that could not predict with enough certainty which customers would show last minute, so it preferred to fill planes early. And even when computer recommended United wait for better revenue, Uniteds revenue managers might override it. They feared having too many empty seats, Kirby said. Its easy to sit around and say, Oh my God, December load factor is off by x points, Kirby said three years ago, pitching the need for a better system to analysts. [People say] Weve got to go open inventory or lower the fares. Over the past three years, United had updated its revenue management platform, now called Gemini. United sets aside more seats for its most lucrative passengers, and sells fewer deeply discounted tickets months in advance. Also, United lets the system work as designed with limited human interference. We continue to successfully shift our booking profile to reduce dependence on lower-yielding tickets booked further out from departure, while increasing our share of higher yielding business tickets generally booked closer in, United Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said on the airlines January earnings call. Indications suggest its working. In 2015, United filled 83.4 percent of its seats, with an average yield of 15.72 cents per passenger mile. In 2018, load factor was 83.6 percent, with yield of 16.38 cents. In October, analyst Hunter Keay of Wolf Researched credited the system with driving high loads and close-in yields, as designed. How does United know how many passengers will show? It is a guess based on math. United may not sell all seats it leaves open. But the airline has calculated it will make more money attempting to sell them than if it put the seats on sale six weeks prior to departure. These models try to come up with the best possible guess or demand predictions, and it is a statistical estimation, said Surain Adyanthaya, senior vice president of Strategy for PROS, a revenue management consulting firm. It is a combination of the mathematics along with the strategy the airline wants to employ in that market. If the demand does not materialize, an airline can sell cheap seats last minute. But since no premium airline wants a corporate lawyer to snag a low fare three days before departure, the carrier may decide to leave the seat empty. (Another option to sell only basic economy fares cheaply just before departure, since business travelers rarely buy them.) We dont actually achieve 100 percent load factors despite demand that might suggest we could get 100 percent load factors, Bacon said. Thats because we have set aside those last three seats for high fare passengers with only a 60 percent chance that they will be filled. The probabilities and statistics suggest that is a better result. Different Philosophies United and Alaska probably should have disparate philosophies about when to book more revenue, since they have different business models. United has hubs in five of the top six U.S metropolitan areas, as measured by the U.S. census bureau. It carries a disproportionate number of business travelers, many of whom book in premium cabins. Alaska has just one major hub, in Seattle, along with smaller ones in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. Alaska, which is more of a leisure airline than United, is not as confident last-minute business travelers will show, Shane Tackett, executive vice president of planning and strategy, told investment analysts on the airlines recent earnings call. The trade-off is if you hold out for yield or not, and then you sort of hope that it comes and when it doesnt, you feel bad about your strategy and when it does you feel great, Tackett said. We traditionally like to manage that just further out the booking curve. For airlines, early-booking passengers have benefits, too, Adyanthaya said. They may not help a carrier produce massive margins, but they give you certainty to keep the planes full and keep the machinery running, he said. In addition, Adyanthaya said, some low-cost-carriers find early-booking passengers more valuable than ever. When customers book three months in advance, an airline has 90 days to ask them if they want to add hotel rooms, rental cars, seat assignments, baggage and onboard meals to their bookings. All are high-margin items. That changes the equation a little bit, Adyanthaya said. Now you want the planes as full as possible. There is a bigger cost to spoilage, since you are not getting the potential ancillary revenue from having a full flight. But it can be more complicated, Bacon noted. Some low-cost-airlines call themselves spill carriers, thriving by selling to customers who cannot afford a legacy airlines last-minute fare. These airlines may save tickets for the end of the booking curve, waiting until full-service carriers hike their prices. If a major airline asks for $400 one-way a next-day flight, a spill carrier might charge $300. Market dynamics play a role, too. Most airlines will sell more tickets early in the booking curve on pure leisure routes, as vacationers rarely book late.. Uniteds strategy on Los Angeles to Honolulu is likely much different than from Los Angeles to Newark. Where an airline is based also matters, Adyanthaya said. In some countries, airlines place an emphasis on filling every seat. In others, thats less important. Youll see some premium international carriers that really strive to have the best possible product and they value their product very highly and they are willing to wait in the booking cycle to get the demand for their flights and risk some spoilage, whereas the North American and European carriers are more aggressive in just filling the planes, he said. Other Factors U.S. airlines have reporting record or near-record profits since 2013, so carriers can afford to be choosy about which passengers they want. What about during rougher periods? Other factors come into play, Bacon said. In 2008 and 2009, when he was running Frontiers revenue management department, the airline was in bankruptcy. It needed cash, and Bacon had to find it. We were managing cash flow every week, monitoring whether we had enough cash to keep the airline going, so booking early was pretty important to us, he said. Every change was a crisis. We wanted to be aggressive and get the bookings in early. Sometimes, the situation can be out of an airlines control. During the financial crisis, Frontier noticed passengers werent booking Christmas season flights months in advance as usual. The airline, Bacon said, was fearful it would miss out on one of its most lucrative periods. Thats not what happened. Perhaps fearing the crisis would worsen, leisure travelers waited. But as the holiday season approach and travelers had to decide whether to skip travel or go on the usual trip, most booked. The whole booking curve had changed, Bacon said. Our revenue was right on track even though we hadnt got the bookings as well as expected. Kirby said hes seen similar changes, which is why he tells his revenue management team to trust the computer. Just as long-term investors should not panic and sell all their stock when the market drops for a couple of weeks, revenue managers should not change focus because theyre not selling as many tickets as expected, he said. Every single time the revenue environment has turned in my career, there was a month or two where you were looking out and saying, Oh my God, and worried about it, he said. But we had faith in the system and had faith in the forecast and it turned, Kirby said. Subscribe to Skift newsletters covering the business of travel, restaurants, and wellness. Aligns Second Training Facility in China Reflects Companys Continued Commitment to Clinical Education SHANGHAI, China and SAN JOSE, Calif., March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Align Technology, Inc. (ALGN), today announced the opening of the Align University Training Institute in Shanghai, China. This is Aligns second training facility in China. The Chengdu training center opened in 2017. The state-of-the-art facility represents the companys commitment to clinical education and support for doctors in China. It will be a major training facility that will allow Align to educate doctors and showcase the company's latest product and technology innovation in orthodontic treatment and digital dentistry. Photos accompanying this announcement are available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/14bfe79c-2d72-4c44-b1ec-ab8741f71ade http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/df5c9749-b28a-48a6-a4b9-9353667b76a1 We see enormous potential in China with a growing demand for Invisalign clear aligners, said Julie Tay, Align Technology senior vice president and managing director, Asia Pacific. As consumer demand grows, we want to ensure we provide our doctors with the latest innovation and training to deliver great outcomes for Invisalign patients, and ultimately more beautiful smiles. This is another important investment we are making in China to provide localized training and support to our doctors, as we continue to lead the industry in clear aligners and digital dentistry. The Align University Shanghai Training Institute features state-of-the-art technology, including iTero intraoral scanners and dental simulation equipment. It holds three training rooms, including one multiple training room, one ClinCheck workshop room and one demonstration lab for iTero intraoral scanners and dental simulation equipment. The Align University will provide training, clinical education programs, and the tools and process demonstration needed for doctors to adopt innovative technology and treatment options in their practices. Story continues China is the second largest market for Align. It opened its first office in Shanghai in 2011. The company now has more than 1,200 employees in seven offices across China. To date, Align has trained more than 150,000 Invisalign doctors worldwide. About Align Technology, Inc. Align Technology designs and manufactures the Invisalign system, the most advanced clear aligner system in the world, and iTero intraoral scanners and services. Aligns products help dental professionals achieve the clinical results they expect and to deliver effective, cutting-edge dental options to their patients. Visit www.aligntech.com for more information. For additional information about the Invisalign system or to find an Invisalign doctor in your area, please visit www.invisalign.com. For additional information about iTero digital scanning system, please visit www.itero.com. Alphabet GOOGL is leaving no stone unturned to bolster presence in the self-driving space on the back of growth initiatives taken by Waymo. This is evident from the companys latest plans of establishing an 85,000-square-foot technical service center in the Phoenix area near Mesa, AZ, which is anticipated to open in the second half of the year. The new center will be an addition to Waymos existing service center, which is located at Chandler in the suburb of Phoenix. We believe Waymos latest move will strengthen the capability of handling technical issues of its self-driving cars. Moreover, the opening of this service center is likely to aid the company in delivering enhanced car servicing. This will aid the company in serving the growing commercial fleet in Phoenix. Growing Autonomous Driving Initiatives Alphabets robust self-driving technology and winning deals for testing its driverless cars are acting as tailwinds. Recently, Waymo unveiled its first paid self-driving taxi, Waymo One in Arizona, which currently serves people of suburbs of Phoenix namely Chandler, Tempe, Mesa and Gilbert. Moreover, the company simplified the system by creating an app via which riders can avail the service. Further, Alphabet expanded its scope in this particular space by rolling out self-driving trucks for freight services. Notably, this initiative is also gaining steam and driverless trucks are anticipated to come on road soon. Further, the companys efforts toward licensing its technology to automakers for direct selling to customers remain a key catalyst. Additionally, the company is reportedly seeking outside funding in order to expand the autonomous vehicle business unit. Growth Opportunities & Competitive Edge We believe growing autonomous driving initiatives are likely to aid Alphabet to penetrate the global self-driving car and truck market. Per Grand View Research, this market is projected to witness a CAGR of 63.1% between 2021 and 2030. Further, per Zion Market Research, this market is expected to witness a CAGR of 25.7% between 2018 and 2024 and hit $26.58 billion by 2024. Moreover, the above-mentioned growth prospects are alluring enough to attract companies like Apple AAPL, Amazon AMZN, Baidu and General Motors GM. Notably, these companies are also making advances to strengthen their presence in the autonomous driving space. Apple, in an attempt to speed up the launch of its self-driving car, hired Doug Field, a former chief vehicle engineer of Tesla, and Jaime Waydo, a former engineer of Waymo and a veteran of NASA, for its self-driving project. Further, Amazon patented an autonomous driving technology that deals with navigation of traffic jams, construction and weather condition. Meanwhile, the China search company, Baidu added Apolong, an autonomous minibus, to its Apollo autonomous driving platform. Additionally, General Motors is working to strengthen its driverless project, Cruise Automation. Recently, the company teamed up with DoorDash to test a food delivery service in San Francisco, using its autonomous vehicles. Nevertheless, Alphabets strong endeavors toward enhancing its self-driving service with an increasing number of service centers and commercial autonomous driving cars will continue to give it a competitive edge against these above-mentioned companies. Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, wouldn't you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? From more than 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank, these 10 were picked by a process that consistently beats the market. Even during 2018 while the market dropped -5.2%, our Top 10s were up well into double-digits. And during bullish 2012 2017, they soared far above the market's +126.3%, reaching +181.9%. This year, the portfolio features a player that thrives on volatility, an AI comer, and a dynamic tech company that helps doctors deliver better patient outcomes at lower costs. See Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) : Free Stock Analysis Report Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) : Free Stock Analysis Report General Motors Company (GM) : Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Yong Suk Lee is leaving the CIA to work for Google. (Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: AP, C-Span, Getty Images) A senior official at the CIAs Korea Mission Center is leaving the agency to work for Google in Asia, according to two sources directly familiar with the matter, marking the second high-ranking employee to leave the division amid high-level talks between U.S. and North Korean officials on denuclearization. Yong Suk Lee, the deputy assistant director of the Korea Mission Center, is highly respected within the Korea-watchers community as well as the intelligence community. Lee is an institution and his departure will be a huge loss, said one former CIA officer familiar with his work. There was no indication Lee was leaving because of any tensions or problems with ongoing negotiations. But the former official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, said Lee is the latest in a string of departures from the agency toward technology companies. Yong is excited to move to Singapore to work for Google Asia, said a second person familiar with his new role. Andy Kim, the former director of the center, retired in November and recently joined Stanford University as a visiting scholar. Kim declined an interview request, according to Stanford. John Fleming, a career CIA officer, has taken over as head of the Korea Mission Center, according to the CIA. John Fleming has nearly three decades of CIA experience and shaped the Korea Mission Center working with Andy Kim since its inception in 2017, wrote CIA spokesperson Tim Barrett in an email to Yahoo News. In addition to his years on the North Korea issue, he also worked on CIAs support to previous high-stakes negotiations in other regions. Google declined to comment. Since the CIA established the Korea Mission Center in May 2017 to focus on addressing the nuclear and ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea, it has been supplying frequent intelligence updates to President Trump who has vacillated between fire and fury and love toward North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. At the most recent summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, Trump left early after negotiations stalled. Story continues North Koreas isolation, geography and lack of internet connectivity has made it one of intelligence communitys most difficult targets. The United States does not have an official diplomatic presence in Pyongyang, making the CIA even more critical in assessing the regimes intentions. Lee, famous at the agency for his bow ties, appeared in public to provide remarks in October 2017 at George Washington Universitys annual Ethos and Profession of Intelligence conference. Lee, the current deputy assistant director of the Korea Mission Center and a top analyst, told the audience that the CIA does not believe Kim is a madman and rather has a clarity of purpose in his behavior. President Trump shakes hands with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February before a meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) The last person who wants conflict in the region is actually Kim Jong Un, said Lee, who has studied North Korea for more than 25 years. The intelligence community has for several years now had to compete with tech giants, which offer significantly higher salaries than the government and the chance to step out of the shadows. Increasingly, private companies are able to compete with the government in satellite imagery analysis and threat intelligence work in ways previously considered impossible due to resource constraints and availability of advanced technology. The former official familiar with Lees departure suggested its possible the departing agency official was eager to work with a former colleague who is already at Google: Deborah Wituski, the former director of analytic resources in the CIAs Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis. Top intelligence officials in recent years have stressed the importance of technology companies working closely with the intelligence community, and allowing a flow of talent between the two sectors. Sue Gordon, the principal deputy director of national intelligence and the person who came up with the idea for In-Q-Tel, the CIAs venture capital arm, has spoken about the topic frequently. Kim, the former head of the center, was often seen on the sidelines of talks with North Korean officials, traveling with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. While the intelligence community is typically further in the background for high-level diplomatic talks, the decision to more openly include them at the table is not unprecedented. As CIA director, George Tenet was deeply engaged in the security side of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations during his tenure, for example, according to his account of events in his book, At the Center of the Storm. A second former agency official told Yahoo News that Lees departure was likely a matter of time. Reaching that level of policy involvement is usually an indicator youre about done, the official said. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: BERLIN, March 21 (Reuters) - Germany is prepared to agree to Britain's request for a postponement of Brexit if the parliament in London backs British Prime Minister Theresa May's exit deal, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday. The European Union requires unanimous agreement from all member states to grant an extension to the so-called "Article 50" process that currently envisages a British exit from the European Union on March 29. "I believe we can say, as Germany, we can meet that request," Merkel told German legislators ahead of Thursday's European Council meeting. "We can discuss this wish next week if we have a positive vote in the British parliament on the exit agreement." But Merkel warned that an extension of the Brexit deadline to June 30, as requested by May, would be complicated because of the question of Britain's possible participation in the European Parliament elections. (Reporting by Joseph Nasr Writing by Thomas Escritt Editing by Michelle Martin) Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 21, 2019) - Body and Mind Inc. (CSE: BAMM) (OTC Pink: BMMJ) (the "Company" or "BaM") a multi-state operator, is pleased to announce expansion into Arkansas with in-state partner, Comprehensive Care Group LLC ("CCG"). The companies will work together to develop a medical marijuana dispensary facility in West Memphis, Arkansas. Medical marijuana dispensaries in Arkansas are licensed for both retail sales and cultivation of up to 50 plants within the same facility. Nevada Medical Group LLC ("NMG Nevada") and DEP Nevada Inc. ("DEP Nevada"), wholly owned subsidiaries of the Company, recently entered into a management agreement and a convertible loan agreement, respectively, with CCG whereby the Company has agreed to provide CCG with: A management agreement whereby NMG Nevada will provide operations and management services, including management, staffing, operations, administration, oversight, and other related services. Under the management agreement, NMG Nevada will be paid a monthly management fee equal to a percentage of the monthly net profits of CCG, subject to conversion of the convertible loan as discussed below upon which the monthly management fee shall be USD$6,000 per month, unless otherwise agreed by the parties in writing. A convertible loan of up to USD$1,250,000 from DEP Nevada to CCG with proceeds used to fund construction of the facility, working capital and initial operating expenses. The loan bears interest at a fixed rate of USD$6,000 per month until the parties mutually agree to increase the interest. Within one year of granting of a medical marijuana dispensary license or one year after entering into the convertible loan, DEP Nevada may elect to convert the loan into preferred units of CCG equal to 40% of all outstanding units of CCG, subject to approval of the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission. Additionally, CCG has issued a convertible promissory note in favor of DEP Nevada which promises to pay DEP Nevada the principal sum of up to USD$1,250,000 or so much thereof is advanced under the terms of the convertible loan with interest on the balance of such principal sum from time to time outstanding. Story continues "We are pleased to have been successful in assisting Comprehensive Care Group obtain a dispensary license through the application process, an initiative that creates significant value for all stakeholders. Secondly, this deal provides BaM shareholders greater retail exposure, a fourth platform for growth and a path to launch some of its' own products to the medical patients of Arkansas," stated Robert Hasman, director of the Company. "We are proud to have been selected as one of only 32 dispensary licenses awarded in Arkansas and look forward to working with Comprehensive Care Group." Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. For further information, please contact: Michael Mills 778-389-0007 mmills@bamcannabis.com About Body and Mind BaM is a publicly traded company investing in high quality medical and recreational cannabis cultivation, production and retail. Our wholly-owned Nevada subsidiary was awarded one of the first medical marijuana cultivation licences and holds cultivation and production licenses. BaM products include dried flower, edibles, topicals, extracts as well as GPEN Gio cartridges. BaM marijuana strains have won numerous awards including the Las Vegas Hempfest Cup 2016, High Times Top Ten, the NorCal Secret Cup and the Emerald Cup. BaM continues to expand operations in Nevada, Ohio and its investment in California and is dedicated to increasing shareholder value by focusing time and resources on improving operational efficiencies, facility expansions, state licensing opportunities as well as mergers and acquisitions. Please visit www.bamcannabis.com for more information. Safe Harbor Statement Except for the statements of historical fact contained herein, the information presented in this news release constitutes "forward-looking statements" as such term is used in applicable United States and Canadian laws. These statements relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. Any other statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans, "estimates" or "intends", or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and should be viewed as "forward-looking statements". Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and other factors include, among others, the actual results of activities, variations in the underlying assumptions associated with the estimation of activities, the availability of capital to fund programs and the resulting dilution caused by the raising of capital through the sale of shares, accidents, labor disputes and other risks. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements contained in this news release and in any document referred to in this news release. Certain matters discussed in this news release and oral statements made from time to time by representatives of the Company may constitute forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be achieved. Forward-looking information is subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Many of these factors are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict. Important factors that may cause actual results to differ materially and that could impact the Company and the statements contained in this news release can be found in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company assumes no obligation to update or supplement any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43570 By David Shepardson and Cindy Silviana WASHINGTON/JAKARTA (Reuters) - Boeing Co plans to offer as standard a safety feature that might have warned earlier of problems that possibly played a role in the crashes of Ethiopian and Indonesian planes that killed almost 350 people, two officials briefed on the matter said on Thursday. Boeing will mandate a previously optional cockpit warning light as part of a software update to the 737 MAX fleet that was grounded in the wake of the fatal crashes, said the officials, who asked not to be identified. The March 10 Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 on board has set off one of the widest inquiries in aviation history and cast a shadow over the Boeing MAX model intended to be a standard for decades. Initial investigations show similarities between the Ethiopian crash and the Indonesian accident in October that killed all 189 crew and passengers. A direct link between the crashes has not been proven, but attention has focused on an automated flight-control system, MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), that came into service two years ago with the MAX. Chicago-based Boeing, which the officials said also will retrofit older planes with the cockpit warning light, previously offered the alert, but it was not required by aviation regulators. It is unclear how long it will take Boeing to refit existing MAX planes with new software or hardware. Experts said it could take weeks or months to be done, and for regulators to review and approve the changes. Regulators in Europe and Canada have said they will conduct their own reviews of any new systems. The software is designed to prevent a loss of lift which can cause an aerodynamic stall, sending the plane downwards in an uncontrolled way. In the Lion Air crash, it may have been erroneously activated by a faulty sensor, investigators believe. The FAA has said installation of the new software and related training was a priority. Story continues STEPS TO IMPROVE SAFETY Boeing did not immediately comment on the plan to make the safety feature standard. However, in London Thursday, Randy Tinseth, Boeing's vice president of commercial marketing, said the manufacturer is moving quickly to make software changes and expects the upgrade will be approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the coming weeks. "That includes changes in the control laws of the airplane, an update of the displays, the flight manual, as well as the training," he said at a conference, adding Boeing has tested the improvements in a simulator and in the air. The product and training updates were being made "to further improve the safety that ensures that this will not happen again," Tinseth said. He said it was too early to speculate on what the investigations will show, but defended Boeing's design and production processes. Boeing also said it would slow work at its 737 plant in Seattle next week to allow employees to catch up on work that was previously delayed, but said this was because of winter storms and supplier delays and not fallout from the crashes. Meanwhile, in Jakarta, Indonesian investigators described the panic of pilots grappling with airspeed and altitude problems in the last moments of the Lion Air flight. "It seemed the pilot felt he could no longer recover the flight. Then the panic emerged," Nurcahyo Utomo, an investigator at Indonesia's national transportation committee, said. Reuters reported Wednesday the Lion Air pilots scrambled through a handbook to understand why the jet was lurching downwards in the final minutes before it hit the water. A final report on the Lion Air crash is expected in August. Boeing has said there was a documented procedure to handle the automated system at the heart of the problem. In both flights, crews radioed about control problems shortly after take-off and sought to turn back. MULTIPLE INQUIRIES Investigations of Boeing's conduct are starting to pile up, with several lawsuits already filed on behalf of victims of the Lion Air crash referring to the Ethiopian accident. Boeing declined to comment on the lawsuits. Consumer advocate and former U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader lost a grand-niece in the Ethiopian crash and urged whistleblowers to help challenge the aviation industry and get to the bottom of what happened. "They lulled us into complacency," he said in an interview in Thursday's Wall Street Journal. SIMULATORS Simulators for the MAX are now being manufactured but they have yet to be delivered to most airlines that have ordered them. Ethiopian Airlines said on Thursday the simulators are not designed to replicate the MCAS problems. The airline is among the few that do have such a simulator but the captain of the doomed flight had no chance to practice on it before the fatal crash, a pilot colleague said. In Washington, Boeing faces a criminal investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and executives also will be summoned to a U.S. Senate panel hearing for questioning. (Additional reporting by Jamie Freed in Singapore, Bernadette Christina Munthe in Jakarta, Maggie Fick and Jason Neely in Addis Ababa, Tim Hepher in Paris, Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Writing by Sayantani Ghosh, Georgina Prodhan and Ben Klayman; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne, Nick Zieminski and Grant McCool) By Maggie Fick, Cindy Silviana and David Shepardson ADDIS ABABA/JAKARTA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co faced growing pressure in Washington on Wednesday as U.S. lawmakers called for executives to testify about two crashed 737 MAX jets while the world's biggest planemaker worked on returning the grounded fleet to the skies. The Senate hearing, at an unspecified date, would be the first time that a U.S. congressional committee has called Boeing executives to appear for questioning about 737 MAX passenger plane crashes in October in Indonesia and March 10 in Ethiopia. On March 27, the same panel, the Senate Commerce subcommittee on aviation and space, also will question U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials. They will likely be asked why the regulator agreed to certify the MAX planes in March 2017 without requiring extensive additional training. Meanwhile, the FAA on Wednesday sent a notification to global aviation authorities saying the installation of Boeing's new automatic flight software in the grounded jets and related training was a priority for the agency. The Ethiopian Airlines crash has shaken the global aviation industry and cast a shadow over the flagship Boeing model intended to be a standard for decades to come, given parallels with the Lion Air calamity off Jakarta in October. The two crashes killed 346 people in all. Boeing was sued on Wednesday in federal court in Chicago by the estate of one of the Lion Air crash victims in which the plaintiffs referred to the Ethiopian crash to support a wrongful death claim against the company. A Boeing spokesman said the company does not respond to, or comment on, questions concerning legal matters. Also on Wednesday, the Seattle Times reported the Federal Bureau of Investigation was joining the investigation into the MAX's certification. An FBI spokeswoman in Seattle would neither confirm nor deny that it was a part of any investigation. Criminal prosecutors at the U.S. Justice Department, who are also investigating the FAA's oversight of Boeing, have issued multiple subpoenas to Boeing in an effort to find out more about how the MAX was certified and marketed, CNN reported late on Wednesday, citing sources briefed on the matter. Story continues Meanwhile, the Pentagon Inspector General said it would investigate a complaint that Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, violated ethical rules by allegedly promoting Boeing while in office. GRAPHIC - Ethiopian Airlines crash and black boxes: https://tmsnrt.rs/2ChBW5M SOFTWARE UPGRADE Chicago-headquartered Boeing has promised a swift update of software, but regulators in Europe and Canada are shifting away from previous reliance on FAA vetting, saying they will now seek their own guarantees of the MAX planes' safety. Aviation experts suspect an automated system, meant to stop stalling by dipping the nose, may be involved in both cases, with pilots struggling to override it as their jets plunged downwards. But they stress neither investigation is complete and crew actions and training will also be closely scrutinized. As Ethiopian investigators pored over black box data from their crash, sources with knowledge of the doomed Lion Air cockpit voice recorder revealed how pilots searched a manual to figure out why they were hurtling down to sea. Investigators examining the Indonesian crash want to know how a computer ordered the plane to dive in response to data from a faulty sensor and whether pilots had enough training to respond appropriately. Communications showed that in the final moments, the captain tried in vain to find the right procedure in the handbook, while the first officer was unable to control the plane. At the end, the sources told Reuters, the Indian-born captain, 31, was quiet, while the Indonesian officer, 41, said "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest") - an Arabic phrase to express excitement, shock, praise or distress. The plane then hit water. Boeing has said there was a documented procedure to handle the problem. A different crew on the same plane the previous evening had the same situation but solved it after running through three checklists, though they did not pass on that information to the doomed Indonesian crew, a preliminary report in November said. Regulators want to be absolutely sure of Boeing's new automated control system, known as MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), and that pilots are fully prepared to handle it. MCAS is meant to prevent a loss of lift which can cause an aerodynamic stall and send the plane downwards in an uncontrolled way. Facing high-profile scrutiny, Boeing reshuffled executives in its commercial airplanes unit to focus on its response. The FAA said its "robust processes" and "full collaboration with the aviation community" were key to safety worldwide. As with the Indonesia flight, the Ethiopian crew radioed about control problems shortly after take-off and sought to turn back, struggling to get their plane on track before it hit a field. Ethiopia's civil aviation head Wosenyeleh Hunegnaw said he expected a report on the investigation within 30 days. For now, more than 350 MAX aircraft are grounded, and deliveries of nearly 5,000 more - worth more than $500 billion - are on hold. Development of the 737 MAX began in 2011 after the launch by its main rival of the Airbus A320neo. The MAX entered service in 2017. While some airlines are worried about the impact on profits, they have been able to keep services going, swapping MAX planes for others, or using partner carriers. GRAPHIC - Boeing 737 Max deliveries in question: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Hv2btC (Reporting by Maggie Fick and Jason Neely in Addis Ababa, David Shepardson in Washington, Tim Hepher in Paris, Jonathan Stempel in New York, David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Jamie Freed in Singapore, Cindy Silviana in Jakarta, Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Ben Klayman; Editing by Jon Boyle and Grant McCool) FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight from Los Angeles approaches for landing at Reagan National Airport shortly after an announcement was made by the FAA that the planes were being grounded by the United States in Washington, U.S. March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts By Eric M. Johnson SEATTLE (Reuters) - Boeing Co's commercial airplane division, facing its biggest crisis in years following deadly crashes of its flagship 737 MAX aircraft, has brought in a new vice president of engineering while dedicating another top executive to the aircraft investigations, a company email showed on Tuesday. The management reshuffle comes as Europe and Canada said they would seek their own guarantees over the safety of Boeing's 737 MAX, further complicating plans to get the aircraft flying worldwide after they were grounded in the wake of crashes that killed more than 300 people. John Hamilton, formerly both vice president and chief engineer in Boeing's Commercial Airplanes division, will focus solely on the role of chief engineer, the unit's Chief Executive Officer Kevin McAllister told employees on Tuesday in an email seen by Reuters. "This will allow him to fully dedicate his attention to the ongoing accident investigations," McAllister said, adding that the staffing changes were needed as "we prioritize and bring on additional resources for the ongoing accident investigations." Lynne Hopper - who previously led Test & Evaluation in Boeing's Engineering, Test & Technology group - has been named vice president of Engineering, McAllister said. A Boeing spokesman declined to comment but confirmed the authenticity of the email. The shakeup showed how the world's largest planemaker was freeing up engineering resources as it faces scrutiny during crash investigations while also maintaining production of its money-spinning 737 single-aisle aircrafts. Previously, Hamilton served as the vice president of engineering for Boeing Commercial Airplanes from April 2016 through March 2019, according to a biography on Boeing's website. From July 2013 through March 2016, Hamilton served as the vice president of Safety, Security and Compliance and oversaw the Commercial Airplanes Organization Designation Authorization - a program that takes on specific safety certification duties on behalf of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. Lawmakers and safety experts are questioning how thoroughly regulators vetted the MAX model and how well pilots were trained on new features. Story continues For now, global regulators have grounded the existing fleet of more than 300 MAX aircraft, and deliveries of nearly 5,000 more - worth well over $500 billion - are on hold. (Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Hv2btC) Boeing shares rose 0.3 percent on Tuesday, to close at $373.43. They are still down more than 11 percent since the crash in Ethiopia, wiping out over $25 billion off its market share. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) Pathways to Education to receive computers to support students in low-income communities across Canada in achieving educational success MONTREAL, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Computers for Success Canada Inc. (CFSC) is pleased to announce its partnership with Shaw Communications to donate computer equipment through the Government of Canadas Computers for Schools (CFS) program which has distributed more than $450 million worth of computers to schools, Indigenous communities, non-profits, and low-income families since 1993. To launch this partnership, Shaw and Computers for Schools will distribute more than 300 computers to Pathways to Education (Pathways) a national, charitable organization working to help youth in low-income communities to graduate from high school and successfully transition to post-secondary education, training, or employment. This important donation will help to level the playing field for Pathways students across Canada. The partnership between CFSC and Shaw also includes technology donations to the BC Technology for Learning Society for the CFS program in BC as a first step in a potential national partnership. Every child, no matter what their background is, deserves access to the essential equipment they need to get the most out of their education, said Chethan Lakshman, Vice President, External Affairs, Shaw Communications. This partnership with Computers for Success to support Pathways will help ensure that more kids in Canada have the opportunity to succeed in school now, and are set up for success in their future. "In committing to donate used computers, Shaw joins the many national brands that have contributed in this way to support access to economic development for all Canadians since the CFS programs launch, 25 years ago said Toby Harper-Merrett, Executive Director, CFSC-OPEC. "Furthermore, the program ensures computers are reused rather than recycled, and provides technical work experience for youth across Canada." On a yearly basis, the CFS program hires more than 300 youth interns. Story continues Many students do not have access to a computer or the internet to complete their homework. Access to digital learning tools are essential for high school students on their path to achieving educational success, says Sue Gillespie, President and CEO, Pathways to Education Canada. We are grateful for this partnership between Shaw and Computers for Success, making it possible for hundreds of Pathways students from coast to coast to develop 21st century skills and realize their true potential. I knew I wanted to go into IT when I was in Grade 9, says Abdul, a Pathways alumnus who graduated from high school in 2011. I didnt have a computer until I came to Canada, but as soon as I got one, I started to learn things about it, and doing all these cool things that I didnt know were possible. Thats what got me interested in technology. Now, Abdul is a graduate of Ryerson Universitys Business Technology Management program, and works at Pathways to Education Canada as a Program Support Analyst. Looking ahead, he dreams of becoming a Chief Technology Officer or creating his own startup company. Through their partnership, Shaw and Computers for Success Canada will make a significant impact in the lives of Canadas young people living in low-income communities, supporting the future success of young people like Abdul. About the CFS program Computers for Schools is a pan-Canadian program that refurbishes computers donated by government, businesses and individuals, for use by schools, registered not-for-profit organizations and low-income families. About CFSC-OPEC Computers for Success Canada Inc. | Ordinateurs pour lexcellence Canada Inc. (CFSC-OPEC) is a not-for-profit organization, established in 2005, supporting the impacts of Government of Canada digital inclusion and economic development programs. CFSC-OPECs services stand in four pillars - marketing and communications, partnership development, strategic planning, and project management. About Shaw Shaw Communications Inc. is a leading Canadian connectivity company. The Wireline division consists of Consumer and Business services. Consumer serves residential customers with broadband Internet, Shaw Go WiFi, video and digital phone. Business provides business customers with Internet, data, WiFi, digital phone and video services. The Wireless division provides wireless voice and LTE data services through an expanding and improving mobile wireless network infrastructure. Shaw is traded on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges and is included in the S&P/TSX 60 Index (Symbol: TSX - SJR.B, SJR.PR.A, SJR.PR.B, NYSE SJR, and TSXV SJR.A). For more information, please visit www.shaw.ca About Pathways to Education Pathways to Education is a national, charitable organization breaking the cycle of poverty through education. Its award-winning program is creating positive social change by supporting youth living in low-income communities to overcome barriers to education, graduate from high school, and build the foundation for a successful future. Through the collective power of partnerships, Pathways to Educations innovative program is preparing youth for tomorrow. To learn more, visit www.pathwaystoeducation.ca Investors in search of alpha as the U.S. stock market heads closer to a 10th year of growth may wonder whether any good buying opportunities remain. One area to consider is U.S. infrastructure, which stands to benefit significantly from the prospect of a trillion-dollar state and federal building program that could include work on roads, bridges, hospitals, airports and other structures around the country. According to a 2018 budget fact sheet published by the White House, President Donald Trump has proposed investing $1 trillion in infrastructure through new federal funding, incentivized non-federal spending that leverages private entities and newly prioritized and expedited projects. The infrastructure initiative would include projects to revitalize the air traffic control system, facilities for Veterans Affairs, investments in inland waterways, as well as work by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Furthermore, the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates there is currently a $1.4 trillion funding gap between now and 2025. This lack of investment is estimated to cost the average household $3,400 in lost income or time each year between 2016 and 2025. [See: 10 of the Best Stocks to Buy for 2019.] There is a bipartisan consensus that the nation's infrastructure requires wide-scale improvement in suburban and rural areas. A 2017 Gallup poll found that 76 percent of Americans support the president's proposal to boost federal infrastructure spending. And in July, U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, introduced a draft of an infrastructure plan that touches on how to fund projects. Clearly, there is a need and will for a significant push to renovate this nation's infrastructure. Given political will and high funding requirements, investors have legitimate reason to see promise for returns in infrastructure-related companies. Investors who wish to go further than holding a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund that represents the broadest possible basket of infrastructure stocks will need a strategy for picking a more selective grouping. One approach is "choke-point" investing, which looks for those special few firms that enjoy pricing power in a sector or on an offering that solves for a substantial customer goal. Story continues The strategy centers on the fact that although hundreds of entities may be involved in the supply chain for the production and delivery of crucial goods and services, only a handful of businesses have the proper combination of scale, expertise and networks -- not merely headcount, revenue or market share -- to capitalize on pricing power that should translate into earnings growth and thus stock gains that last long enough for investors to capture the theme. [10 Ways to Maximize Your Retirement Investments.] Choke-point investing allows you to exploit linkages in firms that operate in distinct but closely related sectors, since a supply chain by nature connects businesses that separately specialize in different fields. In the case of infrastructure-related companies, investors can look to materials, industrials and supplier operations. There are more than a dozen viable stocks across those three sectors, with a few standouts that merit highlighting. Here are three stocks to watch: CRH (ticker: CRH). CRH is an Ireland-based multinational operating in 32 countries that provides construction materials ranging from building foundations, framing and roofing to internal and external surroundings. Its products include crushed stone, cement, asphalt, concrete, glass, shutters and various retail home improvement products. CRH is the top building materials firm in North America, as well as the top supplier for repairing and maintaining highways in the U.S. Jacobs Engineering Group (JEC). Jacobs Engineering Group offers construction services encompassing engineering and architecture, operations and maintenance, as well as scientific and specialty consulting. The firm serves numerous fields such as transportation, buildings, natural resources and telecommunications. Jacobs is an active acquirer in an extremely fragmented industry, making more than 80 purchases over the last 20 years and, with its December 2017 acquisition of CH2M, is the largest engineering design firm by revenue worldwide and the second largest EPA contractor. United Rentals (URI). United Rentals is the single largest equipment rental company in the world. It has locations in 49 states, and accounts for 11 percent of the country's equipment rental market in the United States. This is an industry where scale and ease of access matter, and half of the revenue United Rentals generates is from customers serving the non-residential and infrastructure construction markets. Although you could theoretically buy stock in only these three companies as an infrastructure play, investors seeking a balance between that kind of concentration and the lesser focus of the 150-plus stocks in the iShares U.S. Infrastructure ETF ( IGF) may want to consider asking their financial advisor about exposure to an infrastructure-based unit investment trust or UIT. These vehicles can offer greater focus through a dozen or so carefully selected securities that are generally kept throughout the lifespan of the UIT, which often ranges from slightly more than a year to just over two years. UITs are typically created every quarter in order to accommodate new investors and portfolio adjustments. [See: How to Invest in Real Estate Without Buying Property.] Yet whether you decide to pursue UITs, traditional funds or individual stocks, the strategy of choke-point investing can help you refine the process of your search for returns. More From US News & World Report Cindy McCain tweeted an expletive-filled message someone sent her Wednesday calling her late husband John McCain traitorous and warmongering, just days after President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on the decorated Vietnam War veteran. I want to make sure all of you could see how kind and loving a stranger can be, McCain tweeted. Im posting her note for her family and friends could see. The message, which appears to have been sent through Facebook messenger, harshly condemns McCains husband, adding Im glad hes dead. It also attacks the appearance of McCains daughter, Meghan McCain, and says the sender hopes she chokes to death. The message comes just a day after Trump said, I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be and three days after the president condemned the late McCain for his connection to the Russia dossier and his opposition to repealing Obamacare. Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain. Ken Starr, Former Independent Counsel. He had far worse stains than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 16, 2019 In response to Trumps comments, Meghan McCain said on ABCs The View that her father would think its hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death as well. Some Republicans have voiced dissent to Trumps comments. Utah Senator Mitt Romney tweeted, I cant understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain. John McCain died in August at the age of 81 after a long battle with brain cancer. He served as a Republican Arizona senator for more than 30 years, earning respect from both sides of the aisle. Climate alarmism may derail the U.S. energy revolution as President Trumps America first energy policy is under attack. The U.S. energy revolution, spurred by the miraculous technology of hydraulic fracturing, has boosted the U.S. economy, created high-paying jobs, lowered energy costs, improved our national security and put us on a path toward energy independence. It has also led to lowered greenhouse gas emissions, as it has unlocked vast resources of natural gas that has replaced those old dirty burning coal plants and factories. Yet in what is being called a groundbreaking ruling, a federal judge is blocking new oil and gas drilling across public land in Wyoming on the basis that the U.S. government has not adequately considered the impact on climate change past, present and future. The ruling could open a Pandoras box that could spread to other states and be a risk to the shale revolution. It appears that plaintiffs WildEarth Guardians, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Western Environmental Law Center found a judge that shares their concerns regarding climate change. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, breaking with years of precedent, said in his ruling that the agency must consider the cumulative impact of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions generated by past, present and future BLM (the Bureau of Land Management) leases across the country. The ruling will create an almost impossible task for BLM to speculate on not only the environmental impact of certain projects, but to guess what the impact may be by fracking other wells, both private and public, in the future. It also wants the government agency to guess what the impact of global warming has been in the past, and how that will impact us in the future before they approve a drilling site. Trying to guess the impact in the future is almost impossible, when you consider the fact that scientists in the past have had a lousy track record predicting the warming trends over the last 30 years. Many of the wild doomsday climate predictions made in years past are almost laughable now. The predictions that polar bears would be extinct, or that the sea levels would rise to certain levels, or that crops in the Midwest would be wiped out because of drought have not happened. In fact, global crop production is better than it ever has been before. Story continues There were predictions that snow would be nonexistent in the winter and we would see summer year-round. I wish. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP If the scientists cant get it right, then how can we expect a government agency to get it right? Some believe that climate change is settled science and we have gone beyond the point where we can question it. In science of course, I thought you were supposed to question things, especially if your previous thesis proved to be incorrect. So, should we derail the entire energy industry that has brought a multitude of benefits for society because someone is telling us that the sky is falling? It is not good for the economy, nor the country, nor the planet when we react irrationally to fear-mongering. Phil Flynn is senior energy analyst at The PRICE Futures Group and a Fox Business Network contributor. He is one of the world's leading market analysts, providing individual investors, professional traders, and institutions with up-to-the-minute investment and risk management insight into global petroleum, gasoline, and energy markets. His precise and timely forecasts have come to be in great demand by industry and media worldwide and his impressive career goes back almost three decades, gaining attention with his market calls and energetic personality as writer of The Energy Report. You can contact Phil by phone at (888) 264-5665 or by email at pflynn@pricegroup.com. Related Articles Corning Advanced-Flow Reactor Technology Co., Ltd. to be headquartered in Changzhou CORNING, N.Y.; MARCH 21, 2019 . -- Corning Incorporated (GLW) announced today that its subsidiary, Corning Singapore Holdings Private Limited, signed an investment agreement with the Changzhou government in China to establish a new headquarters for Corning`s Advanced-Flow(TM) Reactors (AFR) business in Changzhou Science and Education Town. As part of the agreement, Corning received support to establish a headquarters and build the infrastructure for the business, including a technology development center and a manufacturing operation in the Changzhou region. Concurrently, Corning announced the establishment of Corning Advanced-Flow Reactor Technology Co., Ltd. to manage Corning`s global AFR business. Corning expects to complete the reactor manufacturing facility before the end of this year and have the new headquarters fully operational by late 2020. "This is a significant opportunity for us," said Dr. Yi Jiang, president and general manager, Corning Advanced-Flow Reactor Technology Co., Ltd. "Establishing our AFR business headquarters in Changzhou will enable us to operate more effectively in China, which is the leading global market for flow reactor application technologies. It will also position us to be near our customers in the region, give us the ability to focus more attention on customer value realization, and grow larger faster." Corning has had a presence in China for 38 years. The new entity will strengthen the company`s presence in the region. As a global leader in flow reactor technology, Corning has successfully promoted AFR innovation in China over the last eight years by investing in comprehensive marketing, building a technical demonstration center in Changzhou, collaborating with local universities, and focusing on the regional development of talent. Compared with traditional batch reactors, Corning`s reactors enable at least 100 times enhancement in mixing; 1,000 times improvement in heat transfer performance; and seamless, efficient scale-up from the lab to full-scale production of chemicals for the pharmaceutical, specialty, and fine chemical industries. Story continues "Corning`s AFR technology provides inherently safer chemical process solutions to China`s pharmaceutical and chemical industries, which have been growing quickly over the past few years," said Li Fang, president and general manager of Corning Greater China. "China has committed to high-quality development and inherently safer manufacturing practices in future economic and regulatory initiatives, and Corning is ready to help deliver on that commitment." Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995), which are based on current expectations and assumptions about Corning`s financial results and business operations, that involve substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include: the effects of acquisitions, dispositions and other similar transactions by the Company, the effect of global business, financial, economic and political conditions; tariffs and import duties; currency fluctuations between the U.S. dollar and other currencies, primarily the Japanese yen, New Taiwan dollar, euro, Chinese yuan, and South Korean won; product demand and industry capacity; competitive products and pricing; availability and costs of critical components and materials; new product development and commercialization; order activity and demand from major customers; the amount and timing of our cash flows and earnings and other conditions, which may affect our ability to pay our quarterly dividend at the planned level or to repurchase shares at planned levels; possible disruption in commercial activities due to terrorist activity, cyber-attack, armed conflict, political or financial instability, natural disasters, or major health concerns; unanticipated disruption to equipment, facilities, IT systems or operations; effect of regulatory and legal developments; ability to pace capital spending to anticipated levels of customer demand; rate of technology change; ability to enforce patents and protect intellectual property and trade secrets; adverse litigation; product and components performance issues; retention of key personnel; customer ability, most notably in the Display Technologies segment, to maintain profitable operations and obtain financing to fund their ongoing operations and manufacturing expansions and pay their receivables when due; loss of significant customers; changes in tax laws and regulations including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017; and the potential impact of legislation, government regulations, and other government action and investigations. For a complete listing of risks and other factors, please reference the risk factors and forward-looking statements described in our annual reports on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the day that they are made, and Corning undertakes no obligation to update them in light of new information or future events. Web Disclosure In accordance with guidance provided by the SEC regarding the use of company websites and social media channels to disclose material information, Corning Incorporated ("Corning") wishes to notify investors, media, and other interested parties that it uses its website (http://www.corning.com/worldwide/en/about-us/news-events.html) to publish important information about the company, including information that may be deemed material to investors, or supplemental to information contained in this or other press releases. The list of websites and social media channels that the company uses may be updated on Corning`s media and website from time to time. Corning encourages investors, media, and other interested parties to review the information Corning may publish through its website and social media channels as described above, in addition to the company`s SEC filings, press releases, conference calls, and webcasts. About Corning Incorporated Corning (www.corning.com) is one of the world`s leading innovators in materials science, with a more than 165-year track record of life-changing inventions. Corning applies its unparalleled expertise in glass science, ceramic science, and optical physics along with its deep manufacturing and engineering capabilities to develop category-defining products that transform industries and enhance people`s lives. Corning succeeds through sustained investment in RD&E, a unique combination of material and process innovation, and deep, trust-based relationships with customers who are global leaders in their industries. Corning`s capabilities are versatile and synergistic, which allows the company to evolve to meet changing market needs, while also helping our customers capture new opportunities in dynamic industries. Today, Corning`s markets include optical communications, mobile consumer electronics, display technology, automotive, and life sciences vessels. Corning`s industry-leading products include damage-resistant cover glass for mobile devices; precision glass for advanced displays; optical fiber, wireless technologies, and connectivity solutions for state-of-the-art communications networks; trusted products to accelerate drug discovery and delivery; and clean-air technologies for cars and trucks. Media Relations Contact: Pamela W. Porter (607) 974-9980 porterpw@corning.com Investor Relations Contact: Ann H.S. Nicholson (607) 974-6716 nicholsoas@corning.com Follow Corning: RSS Feeds | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube This announcement is distributed by West Corporation on behalf of West Corporation clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Corning Incorporated via GlobeNewswire HUG#2239124 Irony alert: The anonymous parody Twitter account Devin Nunes cow now has significantly more followersabout 541,000 at press time, up from 1,204 a few days agothan the real Devin Nunes, who has 395,000. Im starting to think that maybejust maybeit wasnt such a hot idea for the Republican Congressman from California to sue a fictional cow for defamation. As you may recall, Nunes in a suit filed Monday in Virginia state court named Twitter, @DevinCow and another anonymous parody account, Devin Nunes Mom (@DevinNunesMom), plus a political consultant. Claiming defamation, negligence and conspiracy, he wants $250 million in compensatory and punitive damages for what he calls an orchestrated defamation campaign of stunning breadth and scope, one that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life. The 40-page complaint cites tweets from the mom account including @DevinNunes your district is looking for you? Are you trying to obstruct a federal investigation again? You come home right this instant or no more Minecraft! and from the cow account calling him a treasonous cowpoke. Jenna Greene As my colleague Leigh Jones noted in a Q&A with defamation expert Libby Locke of Clare Locke, the suit does raise some valid questions about social media, parody and immunity that may be ripe for legal review. But its also subjected Nunes to a tremendous amount of ridiculethe very thing the suit was supposed to stop. Ooh how can the people on the Twitter say the bad things to me? The Daily Show Host Trevor Noah said in a mock baby voice. What a snowflake. Look man, I think its terrible when kids are bullied online, but as a grown man, this should not be a problem for you. Dont click on your mentions. On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert joked that Nunes and his lawyer came up with the $250 million in damages using a simple legal formula. You take the value of Devin Nunes reputation and you add $250 million. Colbert continued, In the lawsuit, Nunes claims Twitter is biased against conservatives. Oh come on. Twitter is biased against everyone. Its like the Mars of the internet. It is inhospitable to human life. He then touted a new Late Show Twitter account, Devin Nunes Skin (@DevinNunesSkin), with tweets such as Still thin. Meanwhile, Jimmy Kimmel imagined slights such as Devins mom refused to cut the crust off Devins peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which made Devin cry in front of the whole cafeteria. Kimmel noted that the mom account has been suspended, but that the cow remains active. We cant have livestock insulting our elected officials, Kimmel said. This Devin cow account obviously really bothers Devin Nunes, and its affecting his ability to work. So please, in the interests of civility, Im asking you please, dont follow @DevinCow. On the screen behind Kimmel, the Twitter handle appeared in giant letters. Thats Devin @DevinCow on Twitter, Kimmel said slowly and with exaggerated clarity. Indeed, it seems that the main result of the suit so far has been to amplify the voices Nunes ostensibly wanted to suppress. Here at the Lit Daily, my questionas alwaysis Who is the lawyer behind all this? Nunes is represented by Steven S. Biss, a Charlottesville, Virginia-based solo practitioner who did not respond to a request for comment. Virginia bar records show that Biss had his law license suspended for one year and one day, effective January 1, 2009. According to the bar, In a corporate and securities matter, he violated professional rules that govern competence, scope of representation, and misconduct that involves deliberately wrongful acts that reflect adversely on his fitness to practice. The Virginia State Bar Disciplinary Board later imposed an additional 30-day suspension. During a previous suspension of his law license, Mr. Biss continued to negotiate with an insurance company on behalf of a client in a personal injury matter, the bar said. In his LinkedIn profile, Biss writes that A primary focus of my practice is the litigation and trial of Defamation, Business Disparagement, Libel, Slander and Insulting Words claims. I represent both private individuals and public figures. According to Pacer records, Biss currently represents Dallas-based investor Ed Butowsky, who is suing NPR and reporter David Folkenflik for $57 million for defamation. The suit stems from coverage of the murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, including NPRs story about Butowsky headlined The Man Behind The Scenes In Fox News' Discredited Seth Rich Story. Court records show he also represents Robert David Steele and Earth Intelligence Network in a $15.35 million defamation suit in the Eastern District of Virginia against defendants who allegedly attacked them on social media. Steele made news in 2017 when he went on Alex Jones Infowars channel and said "We actually believe that there is a colony on Mars that is populated by children who were kidnapped and sent into space on a 20-year ride, so that once they get to Mars, they have no alternative but to be slaves on the Mars colony. Biss also represented Hanover County, Virginia Supervisor Sean Davis in a defamation suit against a local paper. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Stafford County Circuit Court Judge Michael Levy in 2017 threw out the case, telling Biss client, Youre required to have a thicker skin. Its a message that he might want to pass on to Devin Nunes as well. PARIS (Reuters) - Infighting at the top of EssilorLuxottica turned personal on Wednesday with the top shareholder and executive chairman accusing the Franco-Italian group's executive vice chairman of a power grab in a newspaper interview. France's Essilor and Italy's Luxottica merged last October, creating the world's largest eye-wear maker in a 54 billion euro ($61.73 billion) deal. The French and the Italian groups were supposed to have equal weighting in the combined company's leadership, but they now accuse each other of trying to gain the upper hand. Leonardo Del Vecchio, the founder of Luxottica who is now the largest shareholder and executive chairman, said Hubert Sagnieres, the executive vice chairman, would listen only to himself. "Hubert Sagnieres only accepts what he himself has proposed, he refuses a proposal from anyone else, we've had to accept everything he does," Del Vecchio told French newspaper Le Figaro. "As soon as the first general assembly of the new group on Nov. 29, he behaved as if Essilor had bought Luxottica. He broke the (merger) pact signed in 2017," Del Vecchio added. With the division of power unclear, analysts say tensions could undermine the integration process at the group, whose stock has fallen over 5 percent since the start of the year while the broader CAC-40 index has gained nearly 15 percent. Del Vecchio said that the 400 million-600 million euros in cost-savings the merger was expected to yield has fallen behind schedule, and is now expected over five years instead of three years as originally planned. Reacting to comments from Del Vecchio and his holding firm, Delfin, a source close to Essilor said: "We learned with surprise and consternation about Delfin's statement and Mr. Del Vecchio's comment." The source said further reaction would be given in coming days. Tensions have flared up after Del Vecchio appeared to indicate in November that he wanted his right-hand man Francesco Milleri to get the CEO job - a prospect that irked the French side. A spokesman for Del Vecchio said earlier this month that his comments should not be interpreted as an intention to appoint Milleri, but the bad blood remains. Story continues Earlier, Delfin threatened in a statement to take action if its interests were not respected. "Delfin reserves (the right) to take such actions as it will deem necessary or appropriate to protect its interest along with the interest of EssilorLuxottica and its stakeholders," it said, without elaborating. An EssilorLuxottica spokeswoman declined to comment. With the group's future leadership uncertain, it has recently started looking for a new chief executive who is to be appointed by the end of next year. ($1 = 0.8747 euros) (Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Addtional reporting by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Inti Landauro, Kirsten Donovan and Leslie Adler) Igor Ilnitckii/iStock(WELLINGTON, New Zealand) -- New Zealand's prime minister announced that assault rifles, such as the ones used last Friday in the massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, will be banned from the country once approved by the parliament. "Today I am announcing that New Zealand will ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons. We will also ban all assault rifles. We will also ban all high capacity magazines," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Wednesday. "We will ban all parts with the ability to convert semi-automatic or any other type of firearm into a military style semi-automatic weapon." Ardern said she expects the gun laws to be passed by the end of a "two-week sitting session" that concludes April 11. Ardern said sellers should halt the sales of the banned weapons immediately and warned shops to return their stockpiles to suppliers. She said they didn't have an estimate for the number of assault rifles or military-style semi-automatic weapons currently in the country. Residents caught with the banned guns will face the penalties, including fines of up to $4,000 and/or three years in prison, she said, noting that the new law could increase these penalties. The country will also establish a buy-back scheme, which could cost between $100 million to $200 million, "a price that we must pay for the safety of our community," Ardern said. Ardern said Cabinet ministers made an in-principle decision to tighten gun ownership laws in a meeting immediately after the shooting, which left 50 dead. The massacre marked the deadliest shooting in New Zealand history. The Australian white supremacist charged in the attack had not been flagged by intelligence officials before the well-planned shooting. Before the attack, New Zealand prided itself as one of the safest countries in the world -- a place where many police officers didnt even wear their guns in public. Chris Cahill, the president of the New Zealand Police Association, told ABC News that law enforcement officials might need to reconsider that officer gun policy now. He said the country plans to conduct a thorough investigation into how they responded to the attack. "We intend to learn some lessons from America as well," Cahill said in an interview Tuesday. "One is gun control can stop these and we will be having gun control in New Zealand and its a debate that America needs to have if the right people arent afraid. "When I think about the reaction after shootings in the United States, it has been amazing to see how many people in New Zealand are rallying behind the Prime Ministers push to strengthen the country's gun laws," Cahill added. Ardern promised more changes could be coming with gun laws, including surrounding licensing, registration and storage. Copyright 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FTI Consulting, Inc. (FCN) today announced the continued growth of its South African practice with the addition of a team of eight experts from Econex, a leading trade, competition and applied economics consultancy firm. The team will be led in Cape Town by Professor Nicola Theron, a Senior Managing Director who previously served as Econexs Managing Director. In addition, Dr Liberty Mncube, former Chief Economist at the Competition Commission and Professor of Economics at the University of Stellenbosch and the University of the Witwatersrand, will join as a Managing Director to lead the team in Johannesburg. The addition of these experts significantly strengthens the range of economic consulting services FTI Consulting offers clients across the region, including economic studies, competition analysis, regulatory reviews, public policy, valuations, damages assessment and expert witness appointments. They will also work closely alongside the firms experts in strategic communications, corporate finance, forensic technology and financial investigations to offer clients an unparalleled combination of advice and expertise. The team at Econex are highly regarded and experienced economists in South Africa, and I am delighted that they have agreed to join us, said Mark Bezant , a Senior Managing Director and Head of EMEA Economic & Financial Consulting at FTI Consulting. Petrus Marais , a Senior Managing Director and Head of FTI Consulting South Africa, added: The arrival of Professor Theron and her team represents a clear statement of our aspirations in this rapidly developing market and, combined with the diverse range of expertise we are now able to offer, will enable us to continue our strong growth across the region. Commenting on her appointment, Professor Theron said, I am delighted that we are joining with FTI Consulting and very excited by what the future holds. The business, legal and regulatory landscape in South Africa is evolving at pace, and companies require ever more sophisticated support and advice. Our combined services, allied with FTI Consultings large international network of offices and experts, will therefore enable us to provide the best possible service to our clients. Story continues About FTI Consulting FTI Consulting, Inc. is a global business advisory firm dedicated to helping organisations manage change, mitigate risk and resolve disputes: financial, legal, operational, political & regulatory, reputational and transactional. With more than 4,700 employees located in 28 countries, FTI Consulting professionals work closely with clients to anticipate, illuminate and overcome complex business challenges and make the most of opportunities. The Company generated $2.03 billion in revenues during fiscal year 2018. For more information, visit www.fticonsulting.com and connect with us on Twitter (@FTIConsulting) , Facebook and LinkedIn . FTI Consulting, Inc. 200 Aldersgate Aldersgate Street London EC1A 4HD Investor Contact: Mollie Hawkes +1.617.747.1791 mollie.hawkes@fticonsulting.com Media Contact: Michael Rosen +44 203727 1751 michael.rosen@fticonsulting.com TEL AVIV, Israel, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gazit Globe (GZT.TA), a leading global real estate company focused on the ownership, management and development of retail and mixed use properties in major urban markets in North America, Brazil, Israel, Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, announced on March 18, 2019 that it has commenced an issuer offer (the Tender Offer) to purchase up to NIS 290 million (approximately US $80.4 million) in value of its ordinary shares10 million shares at a purchase price of NIS 29 (approximately US $8.04) per share (The tender is for all or any of the tendered amount). The closing price of the ordinary shares on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on March 17, 2019, the last trading day prior to the launch, was NIS 28.01 (approximately US $7.77) per share. The shares subject to the Tender Offer constitute, as of the current time, 5.3% of Gazits issued and outstanding shares. Gazit will fund the purchase of shares in the Tender Offer with available cash. The last acceptance date of the Tender Offer will be on April 1, 2019. Gazit has retained American Stock Transfer & Trust Company as the Depositary for the Tender Offer. A copy of an English translation of the Israeli tender offer document (with appropriate additions to address U.S. shareholders of Gazit) has been furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission today as an exhibit to a Form CB. U.S. shareholders who are interested in tendering their shares to the Company or who have questions concerning the Tender Offer should contact Gazits Investor Relations department, at IR@gazitgroup.com or telephone number +972-3-694-8000, which will provide them with the documentation that is needed for the tender of their shares. None of Gazit, its Board of Directors, or the Depositary for the Tender Offer has made or will make any recommendations to shareholders as to whether to tender or refrain from tendering their shares in the Tender Offer. Shareholders must make their own decision as to whether, and how many shares, they will tender, if any. In so doing, shareholders should read and evaluate carefully the information in the English translation of the Israeli tender offer document. Story continues Important information regarding the Tender Offer This press release is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to buy or the solicitation of an offer to sell ordinary shares of Gazit. The Tender Offer described in this press release has not yet been consummated, and there can be no assurances that the Company will consummate the Tender Offer on the terms described in this press release or at all. The Tender Offer is being made only pursuant to the English translation of the Israeli Tender Offer document, which Gazit has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). Shareholders and investors should read carefully that document together with any related materials provided to them because they contain important information, including the various terms of, and conditions to, the Tender Offer, as well as any amendments or supplements to the Tender Offer documentation, when they become available. Shareholders and investors may obtain a free copy of the English translation of the Israeli Tender Offer document at the SECs website at www.sec.gov , at https://www.gazitglobe.com/investor-relations/ , or by calling Gazits Investor Relations department, at +972-3-694-8000. About Gazit Gazit Globe is a leading global real estate company focused on the ownership, management and development of retail and mixed use properties in North America, Brazil, Israel, northern, central and Eastern Europe, located in urban growth markets. Gazit Globe is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (GZT) and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (GZT.TA) and is included in the TA-35 index in Israel. As of September 30, 2018, Gazit Globe owns and operates 101 properties, with a gross leasable area of approximately 2.5 million square meters and a total value of approximately NIS 38.6 billion. In addition, as of September 30, 2018, Gazit Globe owned 31.3% of First Capital Realty Inc. ForwardLooking Statements * U.S. Fed forecasts no hikes in 2019 * UST yields hit 14-month lows, set tone for Europe * German Bund yield falls to just 0.034 pct * German yields set for biggest monthly fall since May * Euro zone periphery govt bond yields http://tmsnrt.rs/2ii2Bqr (Updates pricing, adds Deutsche Bank on no-deal Brexit) By Dhara Ranasinghe LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) - Germany's 10-year bond yield hurtled towards zero percent on Thursday, dropping to its lowest since late 2016, a day after the U.S. Federal Reserve abandoned its projections for any rate rises this year given signs of an economic slowdown. The Fed also said it would halt the steady contraction of its balance sheet in September, in what proved to be a more dovish-than-anticipated policy meeting on Wednesday. The news pushed U.S. 10-year Treasury yields to 14-month lows in the biggest one-day fall since Jan. 3. They touched new lows in European trade on Thursday, dragging European yields down with them. Germany's benchmark 10-year bond yield fell to a two-year low of just 0.034 percent, on track for its biggest one day fall since March 7 when the ECB surprised markets with its own more dovish stance. The U.S./German 10-year bond yield gap narrowed to its tightest since mid-January and was last around 247 bps . "The Fed couldn't have been more Treasury market friendly short of calling the next recession and signalling rate cuts," said John Davies, G10 rates strategist at Standard Chartered Bank in London. "It's fully understandable why we're back at these levels in German Bund yields given what has happened at the Fed and with Treasury yields." Across the euro zone, long-dated bond yields fell as much as six basis points on the day . "What the Fed did by shelving rate hike bets this year and ending the balance sheet reduction went further than what many had expected," said KBC rates strategist Mathias van der Jeugt. "More and more investors will take this as a signal that this is the end of the rate hiking cycle." The Fed's policy action provided fresh impetus to a sharp fall in government borrowing costs in the euro area which was sparked by the ECB's comments earlier this month. Story continues French and German 10-year bond yields are down around 14 bps this month and on track for their biggest monthly falls since March and May 2018 respectively, while Ireland's 10-year bond yield is down 18.5 percent and heading for its biggest monthly fall since February 2017. "Given how entrenched the downtrend in the Bund yield appears to be, hitting zero percent wouldn't be a surprise," Standard Chartered's Davies said. However, he added that by being as dovish as it has been, the Fed may create conditions for a turnaround in economic growth and sentiment that could ultimately push German yields higher from here. British 10-year yields tumbled over 10 bps to their lowest since September 2017 and were on track for their biggest monthly drop since February 2017 as fears the UK would leave the European Union without a deal rose again. Deutsche Bank on Thursday hiked its expectation of a no-deal Brexit to 20 percent - the highest level to date - from 10 percent, as a third attempt to get UK parliamentary approval for a divorce deal looms. British Prime Minister May has asked European Council President Donald Tusk to delay Brexit from March 29 until the end of June and said she was preparing for a third vote in the British parliament on the exit deal she arduously negotiated with the EU. Traders are increasingly worried that should her deal fail to get parliamentary approval next week, there are few outcomes which would be positive for markets in the short-term. Overall, banks' probability metrics for a no-deal Brexit remain low and haven't changed in recent days - Berenberg, for example, maintain their probability at a slim 15 percent. (Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe; additonal reporting by Virginia Furness, and Saikat Chatterjee Editing by Mark Heinrich and Kirsten Donovan) FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's Verdi labor union on Tuesday objected strongly to a possible merger between Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, arguing that the merged group would be a more attractive target for a hostile foreign takeover. The union also said in a statement to Reuters that Deutsche's problem investment bank, would not be helped by a tie-up with Commerzbank. A merger would put at least 10,000 jobs at risk, it added. "We reject a merger," said Jan Duscheck, head of Verdi's banking division. It wouldn't create a truly big bank in the European market, and the new entity would be "considerably more attractive for a hostile takeover, for example, by France," he said. "The merger would not result in a 'national champion'," he added. The union's reaction follows news over the weekend that Deutsche Bank's chief executive Christian Sewing had agreed to hold tentative talks with rival Commerzbank. Berlin, which has been worried about Deutsche's health, has pushed for a merger as Deutsche has struggled to generate sustainable profits since the 2008 financial crisis. On Monday, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz confirmed that the banks were exploring a possible merger after weeks of media speculation. Both banks declined to comment. Verdi is among Germany's largest unions, representing 2 million workers across a range of industries. The union is calling for a 6 percent wage increase for 200,000 workers that it represents in state and publicly-listed banks. The union has two seats on Deutsche's supervisory board and two seats on Commerzbank's board. Duscheck sits on Deutsche's board. Verdi had already flagged its opposition to a possible merger. Some major shareholders are also worried about a tie-up, doubting that such a combination would guarantee higher returns, people familiar with the matter said. Otto Fricke, a member of German parliament and the business-friendly FDP party, on Tuesday criticized Scholz for feeding merger speculation and increasing pressure on the two banks unnecessarily. Fricke, speaking to Reuters, said the decision should be left "to the companies as it should be in a social market economy." Shares of both banks rose sharply on Monday but lost ground on Tuesday, with Deutsche down 2.6 percent and Commerzbank 2.5 percent by early afternoon. (Reporting by Tom Sims in Frankfurt and Michael Nienaber in Berlin; editing by Louise Heavens/Riham Alkousaa/Jane Merriman) Implantations to Take Place by End of April with Initial Data Expected in June 2019 IRVINE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 21, 2019 / Hancock Jaffe Laboratories, Inc. (HJLI), a developer of medical devices that restore cardiac and vascular health, has enrolled four additional patients for its VenoValve first-in-human study in Bogota, Colombia. HJLI expects to implant VenoValves in the four additional patients by the end of April 2019. Robert Berman, Hancock Jaffe's Chief Executive Officer stated, ''We continue to make progress with our VenoValve first-in-human study and are excited to get these implantations underway so that we can continue to receive the feedback and accumulate the data that we need for our U.S. pivotal trial. Today's enrollment milestone represents the midpoint, as half of the first group of patients needed are now in our study.'' Following these implantations, five patients will have received VenoValves. The first-in-human Colombian study will initially include five to ten patients who suffer from severe, chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) of the deep vein system, a condition that occurs when the valves in the veins of the venous system of the leg are injured or destroyed, causing blood to flow backwards (reflux) and pool in the lower extremities, and resulting in increased venous pressure (venous hypertension). Severe CVI often results in significant disability which includes swelling, intense pain, and skin ulcerations that become ongoing, open wounds. Following implantations of the VenoValve, as part of the study patients undergo duplex scans, which are used to measure reflux time - the duration of reflux in the deep venous system. The VenoValve was developed to reduce or eliminate deep venous reflux, a major cause of CVI. The reduction or elimination of reflux would lower venous hypertension and result in greatly improved quality of lives for patients suffering from deep venous CVI. In addition to measuring reflux, endpoints for the first-in-human VenoValve study include VCSS measurements, VAS scores, and VEINES scores, three well known clinical assessments for venous disease and assessments of improvement in the patient's quality of life and reduction in pain. Story continues HJLI has had several Pre-FDA meetings to discuss the pre-clinical and clinical pathway for FDA approval for the VenoValve. Preclinical prototype testing, including in vivo animal studies, and in vitro hemodynamic studies, have demonstrated that the VenoValve mimics the function of a properly functioning native venous valve. Based upon feedback from the FDA, HJLI agreed to conduct a small first-in-human study in Colombia prior to the U.S. pivotal trial. The first-in-human study will provide HJLI with valuable feedback to make any necessary product modifications or adjustments to the surgical implantation procedures for the VenoValve. HJLI expects to release preliminary data on the first group of VenoValve recipients at the end of June of 2019 and will continue to follow the patients in Colombia for a period of six months. Approximately 2.4 million patients in the U.S. suffer from CVI due to reflux in the deep venous system, and there are currently no FDA approved treatments for the condition. About Hancock Jaffe Laboratories, Inc. Hancock Jaffe Laboratories (HJLI) specializes in developing and manufacturing bioprosthetic (tissue based) medical devices to establish improved standards of care for treating cardiac and vascular diseases. Hancock Jaffe currently has two lead product candidates: the VenoValve, a porcine based valve which is intended to be surgically implanted in the deep venous system of the leg to treat reflux associated with Chronic Venous Insufficiency; and the CoreoGraft, a bovine tissue based off the shelf conduit intended to be used for coronary artery bypass surgery. Hancock Jaffe has a third product candidate, which is a porcine tissue-based heart valve, which may be a candidate for pediatric aortic/mitral valve replacement. Hancock Jaffe has a 19-year history of developing and producing FDA approved medical devices that sustain or support life. The current management team at Hancock Jaffe has been associated with over 80 FDA or CE marked medical devices. For more information, please visit HancockJaffe.com. Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements This press release and any statements of stockholders, directors, employees, representatives and partners of Hancock Jaffe Laboratories, Inc. (the ''Company'') related thereto contain, or may contain, among other things, certain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties. Such statements may include, without limitation, statements identified by words such as "projects," "may," "will," "could," "would," "should," "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "estimates," "intends," "plans," "potential" or similar expressions. These statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of the Company's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results (including, without limitation, the performance of the new board members described herein) may differ significantly from those set forth or implied in the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that are subject to change based on various factors (many of which are beyond the Company's control). The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future presentations or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. HJLI Press Contacts: Amy Carmer Tel: 949-261-2900 Email: ACarmer@HancockJaffe.com Media & Investor Relations Contact: MZ North America Chris Tyson Managing Director (949) 491-8235 HJLI@mzgroup.us www.mzgroup.us SOURCE: Hancock Jaffe Laboratories, Inc. View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/539670/Hancock-Jaffe-Enrolls-Four-Additional-Patients-for-First-in-Human-VenoValve-Study View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/539670/Hancock-Jaffe-Enrolls-Four-Additional-Patients-for-First-in-Human-VenoValve-Study Harvard University Is Being Sued Over the Use of a Slave Photo A Connecticut woman is suing Harvard University for using a photo of her familys patriarch, an African slave. Tamara Lanier says the photo is an image of a slave named Renty and his daughter Delia and was commissioned by Harvard professor Louis Agassiz to help bolster his argument of white superiority, the Boston Globe reports. Historians think the image is one of the oldest in existence of slaves in the United States. Lanier, a former chief probation officer in Norwich, Conn., believes Renty is her great-great-great grandfather. Lanier says she has repeatedly asked Harvard to stop using the image since 2011, but the University has refused to stop. The photo was most recently used on the cover of a 2017 book called Universities and Slavery: Bound by History. In the suit, Lanier is asking Harvard to return the original images and cease to license the images to others, arguing that Harvard is profiting off of the suffering of Renty and Delia. A photo of Renty is currently on display on Harvards campus at the Center for Government and International Studies in an exhibit called Slavery in the Hands of Harvard. In 2016, student protests led to Harvard removing a shield that was used by its law school that included sheaves of golden wheat, which was a reference to a slaveholding donors coat of arms. We listen to local police and fire departments scanner traffic, but sometimes miss crimes, wrecks, fires or other incidents, especially if they happen overnight. If you know of something were not covering yet, please let Managing Editor Jeff Pownall know by emailing him at jpownall@lufkindailynews.com, or submit a news tip online by visiting lufkindailynews.com/tips. This photo of Renty, an enslaved African man, was taken in South Carolina in 1850 and is the subject of a lawsuit against Harvard University by Tamara Lanier, his direct descendant. Lanier is seeking possession of this photo and one other similar photo. This photo of Renty, an enslaved African man, was taken in South Carolina in 1850 and is the subject of a lawsuit against Harvard University by Tamara Lanier, his direct descendant. Lanier is seeking possession of this photo and one other similar picture. Courtesy photo. Two prominent attorneys from opposite ends of the East Coast have teamed to represent a descendant of a slave whose photos have become iconic at Harvard University. Josh Koskoff of Bridgeport, Connecticut-based Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder and Florida-based civil rights attorney Ben Crump are among nine litigators representing Tamara Lanier, the great-great-great-granddaughter of an enslaved African man identified as Renty in photos taken in South Carolina in 1850. The attorneys met through "Marshall," a movie about the life of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Koskoff's father, Michael, who also represents Lanier, wrote the screenplay. Crump had a small role in the movie, along with his clients, whose teenage son, Travyon Martin, was shot on his way from the store by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman. While attending a civil rights conference featuring Crump, their future client, Lanier, approached the attorney about her conflict with Harvard. Crump agreed to take the case, and reached out to Michael Koskoff's firm to work on the case. That led to Crump and the younger Koskoff holding a press conference on the lawsuit in New York City Wednesday. The attorneys filed suit Wednesday in Massachusetts Superior Court, accusing Harvard of wrongfully profiting from the photographs, which they say the university has refused to turn over to Lanier and her family. Both men have litigated high-profile cases. Koskoff has been in the news most recently for his representation of multiple families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. He had a victory in that case on March 14, when the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled the families' lawsuit against gun maker Remington could move forward. Koskoff also won a $25 million verdict from a Bridgeport jury for an 18-year-old woman whose lower leg was amputated due to poor medical care. Crump is the lead attorney at Ben Crump Law, which has offices in California, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. He is best known for representing the Martin family, but grabbed headlines this week for a case in South Florida involving alleged police brutality. Story continues In that case, Crump called on the Department of Justice to investigate the internal procedures of South Florida police departments following a number of incidents. He sent a letter to the DOJ in light of the March 12 death of Latasha Walton, who died after a Florida Highway Patrol trooper shot her during a traffic stop. Now the attorneys are turning their attention to the Ivy League school. According to Koskoff, Harvard's behavior toward the Lanier family had been "arrogant, dismissive and utterly shameful." At the center of the controversy are nearly 170-year-old photos of Renty and his daughter, Delia, who were both slaves. Renowned Harvard professor Louis Agassiz had commissioned the photos, which, according to the lawsuit, were used to support polygenism, a theory that Africans and African-Americans are inferior to whites. Agassiz worked for Harvard for 27 years, and the university still praises him to this date, the suit contends, adding that Harvard's website this week described Agassiz as "celebrated" and "charismatic." Now, Renty's descendants want to end the university's use of their ancestors' images. They say Renty's daughter was told to strip to her waist for the photo shoot, and that the pictures, taken without the consent of the two slaves, belong to the family. Harvard's "leading scientist commissioned this study by dragging this man and stripping him of his clothing to prove that blacks were inferior," Koskoff said. Echoing the lawsuit, Koskoff said Harvard has profited handsomely from the images. "They have licensed images of the photos for $600-$700," Koskoff said. "There is also merchandise in forms of alleged educational material for sale with Renty's image on the cover. Obviously, these images are extremely valuable and of historical importance." Neither Harvard's media relations department or Robert Iuliano, its general counsel, responded to requests for comment. The university, as of Thursday, had not assigned attorneys to the case. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages, and the photos' return to the Lanier family. Also representing Lanier in her lawsuit are: Sean McElligott and Katherine Mesner-Hage of the Koskoff law firm; Elizabeth Mulvey of Crowe & Mulvey; Scott Carruthers and Talley Kaleko of the Crump law firm; and Mark Marderosian of Cohen & Marderosian. LONDON (Reuters) - Iran will respond firmly to any Israeli naval action against its oil shipments, Iran's defence minister said on Wednesday, in comments that came a week after Israel's prime minister said its navy could act against Iranian oil "smuggling" to enforce U.S. sanctions. U.S. President Donald Trump last year quit a nuclear deal with Iran and reimposed some sanctions, aiming to cut Tehrans oil exports to zero. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told naval officers last week that Iran was still resorting to clandestine measures to ship fuel. Iran's Minister of Defense Amir Hatami was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA that Tehran had the military capabilities to confront any Israeli intervention, and said the international community would also not accept such action. Hatami said such confrontation would be considered as "piracy" and warned that "if it happens, we will firmly respond." "The Iranian armed forces have certainly the capabilities to protect the country's shipping lines in the best way against any possible threat, Hatami said. According to maritime experts, Iran has used a variety of measures to evade sanctions, including changing the names of ships or flag registries, switching off location transponders on ships and conducting ship-to-ship transfers offshore and away from large trade hubs. Irans navy has extended its reach in recent years, dispatching vessels to the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. They intervened on Friday to repel pirates who attacked an Iranian oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden. An Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander also said on Wednesday that enemies will regret any confrontation with the Islamic Republic. "We never welcome any war, but we are ready to respond to any invasion. We hope the aggressors do not need to understand this point by trying it and paying a high price," Major General Gholamali Rashid was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency. Story continues The Israeli navy, whose largest vessels are missile corvettes and a small submarine fleet, is mostly active in the Mediterranean and Red seas. Iran has one of the worlds biggest tanker fleets in the world. In November, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook called Iranian vessels a floating liability, saying the U.S. sanctions would bar them from international insurance markets, making them a risk for ports and canals which allow them access. Iranian officials have threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping route in the Gulf, if the United States attempts to stop the Islamic Republics oil exports. (Reporting by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin; Editing by Michael Perry and Simon Cameron-Moore) Lunaticoutpost.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program , anaffiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.Amazon, the Amazon logo, MYHABIT, and the MYHABIT logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.Don't be a pest to the forum.No profanity in thread-titles or usernamesNo excessive profanity in postsNo Racism, Antisemitism + HateNo calls for violence against anyone..This website exists for fun and discussion only. The reader is responsible for discerning the validity, factuality or implications of information posted here, be it fictional or based on real events. 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Consumers have been swapping out denim for athleisure, but women's jeans are expected see a resurgence in 2019, according to NPD's Future of Apparel Report. Levi is targeting women's jeans, online and China as potential places to grow sales. Levi Strauss & Co. is heading back into the public spotlight as a year of change kicks off for denim makers. The company, which has been private for more than three decades, is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. The move comes as Levi's next closest U.S. competitors, VF Corp and Gap Inc. GPS , plan corporate shake-ups of their own and customers shift their shopping habits. VF Corp VFC plans to spin off its jeanswear business, which includes Wrangler, Lee, Rock & Republic, into a new public company called Kontoor Brands sometime in the first half of 2019. VF's remaining brands, which include Vans, The North Face, Timberland and others, will remain under the VF Corp parent company. Gap Inc., meanwhile, is planning to spin off its Old Navy brand into its own publicly traded company , leaving the Gap brand, Banana Republic, Athleta, Intermix and Hill City under the parent company with a name still to be determined. But those aren't the only changes denim makers are facing. The category has been has been in flux as U.S. consumers shift from jeans to athleisure brands, and do more of their shopping online. Still, the U.S jeanswear market is forecast to improve though the pace of global denim sales are expected slow. As Levi Strauss goes public, it is looking at opportunities to sell more to women, and ring up more sales online and in China. Levi Strauss sells in 110 countries around the world, in more than 50,000 retail locations. Fifty-five percent of its revenue comes from the Americas, with the U.S. the largest market. Levi generates 28 percent of its revenue in Europe, and 16 percent in Asia. Story continues While overall domestic jean sales are expected to improve in the coming years, Euromonitor predicts the compound annual growth rate will be just 1 percent from 2018 to 2023. That's an improvement from down 2.3 percent between 2013 and 2018. Globally, the market research firm expects global jean sales to rise 2.1 percent from 2018 to 2023, a bit slower than the 3.3 percent pace between 2013 and 2018. Over the past decade, jean sales globally have grown at a 3.5 percent CAGR, slower than the growth rate of all apparel, according to Bernstein analyst Jamie Merriman. Consumers are buying less "premium" and "super premium" denim than mid- and lower-priced jeans, according to Bernstein research. While Levi sells in a broad price range, most of its merchandise falls below what is considered premium price points. Premium jean sales have been hurt by the rise of athleisure. "Instead of buying a new pair of designer jeans, many women have opted for more comfortable and less expensive yoga pants in recent years," Deborah Weinswig, Coresight Research CEO said in a note to clients. In the last five years, Nike NKE , Adidas, Lululemon LULU , Under Armour UAA and Athleta have gained apparel share in the U.S. as Levi, True Religion, Gap, J. Crew, Banana Republic and Ralph Lauren RL have lost ground, according to Bernstein. Around two-thirds of premium denim and more than 70 percent of super premium denim are purchased by women according to Bernstein's research. The data suggests those same women have been replacing their jeans with athleisure in recent years, but the trend may be turning. Women's jeans are expected see a resurgence in 2019, according to NPD's Future of Apparel Report, as "the social, fashion-forward shopper will be the primary investors in women's jeans as they seek comparable alternatives to their activewear." The growth of athleisure has likely been less of a pressure point for Levi, because its men's category is much larger than its women's. The men's business accounted for $4 billion of Levi's $5.6 billion 2018 revenue, or more than 70 percent. The denim maker says its men's jeans business had the top market share by retail sales in the U.S., France, Mexico and the United Kingdom, which are four of its top five markets. Levi targets women, China for growth Women's is a key growth target for Levi Strauss. Revenue in that segment grew by 25 percent from 2016 to 2017, and 29 percent from 2017 to 2018. One rival is American Eagle, which sold more than $1 billion of denim in the U.S. last year, directly to consumers through its stores and website. "American Eagle is the number one women's jeans brand in the U.S. and number two overall in the U.S., according to data from NPD," Chad Kessler, American Eagle global brand president said. "Our women's business is in the leading position and is growing rapidly. Our men's jeans business is the largest specialty jeans brand in the U.S." Kessler expects "significant growth to continue in both men's and women's jeans." "The scale of our business combined with selling directly to our customers allows us to provide a higher quality, more innovative jean at a more competitive price point than our main competitor," Kessler said without directly naming Levi. "A wholesale business model runs on a margin structure that supports both the wholesale brand and the retailers who carry it. This adds cost and reduces the value equation for the customer. Our direct model allows us to put more quality and innovation into our jeans for a similar or lower ticket price." For Levi Strauss, wholesale retail is its largest channel, with 57 percent of Levi's revenue coming from department stores, specialty retailers, e-commerce sites and franchisees. Levi notes in its prospectus that "despite recent challenges to chain retailers and department stores, primarily in the United States, net revenues from our top ten wholesale customers globally increased 8 percent year-over-year in fiscal year 2018." Still, if consumers shy away from higher-end denim as suggested by Bernstein data, that could be problematic as Levi aims to increase its presence in the segment. The denim maker states its expanding wholesale relationships "with a focus in the United States on growing premium accounts such as Nordstrom JWN and Bloomingdale's," both higher-end department stores. But Levi wants its reach to be across the price point spectrum. The company said it's also "targeting value-conscious consumers through our Signature by Levi Strauss & Co. and Denizen brands" carried by Walmart WMT and Target, respectively. Levi also is expanding online, where denim sales have been growing. Over the past year, 17 percent all online buyers have purchased jeans over the web, up from 15 percent in 2017, according to NPD's Checkout information. Levi e-commerce revenue on its 43 branded sites grew 18 percent in 2018, and 22 percent in 2017. The denim maker is selling more on Amazon AMZN too, with its own branded landing page meant to mimic the experience shoppers would find on its own e-commerce sites. The biggest opportunity for Levi could be with Chinese consumers, as only 3 percent of its revenue came from China in 2018. China accounts for a fifth of the global apparel market, which leaves opportunity to grow. Bernstein cites a 6 percent growth rate for jean sales in Asia over the last decade. MKM Partners analyst Roxanne Meyer estimates high-single digit sales growth for Levi in Asia, compared to low-single digit to mid-single digit growth in the Americas. "There is no shortage of sales growth opportunity by channel, geographies, gender, brand and by category," Meyer wrote in a note to clients. MKM Partners is not participating in the Levi IPO, nor is the firm making a recommendation. Still Meyer offers "we are bullish on the growth opportunity and position of this company." More From CNBC By Tatiana Bautzer and Carolina Mandl SAO PAULO, March 21 (Reuters) - Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht SA's efforts to sell petrochemical maker Braskem SA to LyondellBasell Industries NV may take months longer than expected because of issues linked to a delayed U.S. filing and a supply contract, three sources with knowledge of the matter said. The talks to sell Odebrecht's controlling stake are the first step in an $11 billion deal Lyondell aims to complete to create the world's largest petrochemical company and would also involve state oil company Petroleo Brasileiros SA, Braskem's other big shareholder. Lyondell will only be able to extend the offer to Petrobras, which owns a 36 percent stake in Braskem, once Odebrecht agrees to a deal. Odebrecht, which has been trying to restructure after being implicated in Brazil's sweeping "Car Wash" scandal, has been discussing the deal with Lyondell for a year and a half. Speculation about the transaction has helped boost Braskem shares by 16 percent over the last 12 months. Odebrecht is talking to Lyondell about a price for its shares as well as the overall structure of the deal, the sources added, asking for anonymity to disclose the private talks in recent days. Lyondell's board has already decided that it will not conclude the deal before Braskem files its 2017 20F annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, one source said. Braskem has not been able to file the document with the SEC yet due to its auditors' ongoing assessment of its internal controls. Braskem signed a leniency agreement with U.S., Brazilian and Swiss prosecutors in late 2016 to settle corruption charges also involving Odebrecht. The company's ADRs may be delisted by the New York Stock Exchange if it does not file the 20F by May 15. Another drag on the deal is the delay in the signing of a long-term supply contract of naphtha, a key raw material for Braskem, with Petrobras. Roberto Castello Branco, the oil company's new chief executive, has yet to signed a draft contract left by his predecessor Ivan Monteiro. Although Odebrecht initially intended to swap its full stake for LyondellBasell shares, the conglomerate's financial health has deteriorated and it will need some cash to meet the group's needs. Odebrecht declined to comment. LyondellBasell and Petrobras did not immediately respond to a request for comments. ($1 = 3.7711 reais) (Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Christian Plumb and Susan Thomas) Username: Password: or Register Back to Forum Reply to This post Post New Thread Thread Rating: 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average 1 2 3 4 5 Page: 1 2 "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas vs The MSM LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 494182 03-20-2019 10:19 PM Post: #1 "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas vs The MSM Advertisement "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas Versus The Media Spectacle https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-1...-spectacle "Paul Cochrane (PC): What were you doing in Venezuela, how long were you there and where did you go? Alan Gignoux (AG): We went in June 2018 for a month to shoot a documentary; I cant disclose what channels it will be on right now, but it should be on air soon. We visited the capital Caracas, Merida (in the Andes), Cumana (on the coast), and Ciudad Guayana (near the mouth of the Orinoco river). PC: How did being in Venezuela compare to what you were seeing in Western media? Carolina Graterol (CG): I am a journalist, I have family in Venezuela, and I knew the reality was very different from what the media is portraying, but still I was surprised. The first thing we noticed was the lack of poverty. Alan wanted to film homeless and poor people on the streets. I saw three people sleeping rough just this morning in London, but in Venezuela, we couldnt find any, in big cities or towns. We wanted to interview them, but we couldnt find them. It is because of multi disciplinary programmes run by the government, with social services working to get children off the streets, or returned to their families. The programme has been going on for a long time but I hadnt realized how effective it was...." READ THE INTERVIEW STOP THE LIES NOW U.S.!!! "Paul Cochrane (PC): What were you doing in Venezuela, how long were you there and where did you go?Alan Gignoux (AG): We went in June 2018 for a month to shoot a documentary; I cant disclose what channels it will be on right now, but it should be on air soon. We visited the capital Caracas, Merida (in the Andes), Cumana (on the coast), and Ciudad Guayana (near the mouth of the Orinoco river).PC: How did being in Venezuela compare to what you were seeing in Western media?Carolina Graterol (CG): I am a journalist, I have family in Venezuela, and I knew the reality was very different from what the media is portraying, but still I was surprised. The first thing we noticed was the lack of poverty. Alan wanted to film homeless and poor people on the streets. I saw three people sleeping rough just this morning in London, but in Venezuela, we couldnt find any, in big cities or towns. We wanted to interview them, but we couldnt find them. It is because of multi disciplinary programmes run by the government, with social services working to get children off the streets, or returned to their families. The programme has been going on for a long time but I hadnt realized how effective it was...."READ THE INTERVIEWSTOP THE LIES NOW U.S.!!! LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 494182 03-20-2019 10:28 PM Post: #2 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... A film director toured Venezuela for a month and this is what was found https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/309...ezuela-mes Translation for you... "Filmmaker Carolina Graterol and cameraman Alan Gignoux toured Venezuela for a month to shoot a documentary about the country's reality. After that experience, the director told the American financial blog ZeroHedge that "Juan Guaido is the most hated man in Venezuela." In dialogue with RT, he added that they were "in many cities" and traveled 5,000 kilometers within Venezuelan territory. "We did not find people sleeping on the street, we did not find people eating garbage, in fact we saw very clean cities," he said. However, he clarified that he could observe "a country hit by sanctions". "I really wanted to see what was happening, what the economic war is and how it is explained," said Graterol, noting that they sought to collect for the film "examples of how the economic war that the country suffers internally on behalf of a sector of the businessmen and also externally ". Regarding the Venezuelan people, he defined it with "a very large energy of enterprising people". And finally pointed out that something that caught his attention were "the houses of the Housing Mission", of which "2,500,000 have been built since 2011". "We saw them everywhere, we were very impressed with the quality," he concluded." Translation for you..."Filmmaker Carolina Graterol and cameraman Alan Gignoux toured Venezuela for a month to shoot a documentary about the country's reality. After that experience, the director told the American financial blog ZeroHedge that "Juan Guaido is the most hated man in Venezuela."In dialogue with RT, he added that they were "in many cities" and traveled 5,000 kilometers within Venezuelan territory. "We did not find people sleeping on the street, we did not find people eating garbage, in fact we saw very clean cities," he said.However, he clarified that he could observe "a country hit by sanctions". "I really wanted to see what was happening, what the economic war is and how it is explained," said Graterol, noting that they sought to collect for the film "examples of how the economic war that the country suffers internally on behalf of a sector of the businessmen and also externally ".Regarding the Venezuelan people, he defined it with "a very large energy of enterprising people". And finally pointed out that something that caught his attention were "the houses of the Housing Mission", of which "2,500,000 have been built since 2011". "We saw them everywhere, we were very impressed with the quality," he concluded." LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 494181 03-20-2019 10:31 PM Post: #3 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... guido is a plant. he's there to allow the US and Russia to steal the oil and gas. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 494182 03-20-2019 10:42 PM Post: #4 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 494182 03-20-2019 10:44 PM Post: #5 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... This time is clear in your face Shameful LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 429544 03-20-2019 10:49 PM Post: #6 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... LoP Guest Wrote: (03-20-2019 10:31 PM) guido is a plant. he's there to allow the US and Russia to steal the oil and gas. Russia :) Name me a country where Russia and the US both work in oil in together... Russia :)Name me a country where Russia and the US both work in oil in together... LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 494165 03-20-2019 11:06 PM Post: #7 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... it's like the eight years of obama hell...those on the street despised the filth while the lying trash media made his treason and worthlessness seem as though he was the Messiah ...the scum still do in fact, regardless of evidence[/Hide] Damnrod Pull my finger User ID: 196953 03-20-2019 11:08 PM Posts: 7,609 Post: #8 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... The left wing lamestream media are showing videos of exclusive stores the public cannot go to you are an idiot for talking this garbage Maduro is a criminal he loaded tons of venezuelan gold onto a Russian plane just a few weeks ago He knows he is out....he is goiing to take refuge in Russia Hide and watch btw The msm did not report on the missing gold and the Russian plane...you have to look for it to find it I have said all along they USA needs to stay out of this no matter what happens let Brazil and Columbia and their other neighbors handle it "I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery"...Thomas Jefferson "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it"...Thomas Jefferson (This post was last modified: 03-20-2019 11:09 PM by Damnrod .) LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 494185 03-20-2019 11:16 PM Post: #9 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... Manosteel Wrote: (03-20-2019 11:08 PM) The left wing lamestream media are showing videos of exclusive stores the public cannot go to you are an idiot for talking this garbage Maduro is a criminal he loaded tons of venezuelan gold onto a Russian plane just a few weeks ago He knows he is out....he is goiing to take refuge in Russia Hide and watch btw The msm did not report on the missing gold and the Russian plane...you have to look for it to find it I have said all along they USA needs to stay out of this no matter what happens let Brazil and Columbia and their other neighbors handle it ZEROHEDGE IDIOT IDIOT silversides The bare necessities of life User ID: 148291 03-21-2019 12:37 AM Posts: 32,007 Post: #10 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... Stalin was a Russian dictator that reeked havoc throughout the eastern world. Mele Kalikimaka LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 494191 03-21-2019 01:58 AM Post: #11 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... COWARDS So....YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH MURIKANS??COWARDS LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 494191 03-21-2019 02:00 AM Post: #12 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... LoP Guest Wrote: (03-21-2019 01:58 AM) So... .YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH, MURIKANS?? COWARDS Or...maybe you are simply....EVIL Or...maybe you are simply....EVIL LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 492995 03-21-2019 04:52 AM Post: #13 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... War Pigs are Evil. War Pigs are running the United States operation and Guaido is their willing slave bringing destruction to the people of Venezuela. A seemingly lucrative enterprise for the murder for profit Cult. Hopefully they will soon be destroyed. LoP Guest lop guest User ID: 469187 03-21-2019 07:26 AM Post: #14 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... LoP Guest Wrote: (03-20-2019 11:16 PM) Manosteel Wrote: (03-20-2019 11:08 PM) The left wing lamestream media are showing videos of exclusive stores the public cannot go to you are an idiot for talking this garbage Maduro is a criminal he loaded tons of venezuelan gold onto a Russian plane just a few weeks ago He knows he is out....he is goiing to take refuge in Russia Hide and watch btw The msm did not report on the missing gold and the Russian plane...you have to look for it to find it I have said all along they USA needs to stay out of this no matter what happens let Brazil and Columbia and their other neighbors handle it ZEROHEDGE IDIOT the right, stupid and reckless .... so many psyops f**ked their minds LOL they can't even read correctly zero critical thinking zero understanding of reality the right, stupid and reckless .... so many psyops f**ked their minds LOLthey can't even read correctlyzero critical thinkingzero understanding of reality Sultan of Wings Registered User User ID: 493952 03-21-2019 02:27 PM Posts: 4,923 Post: #15 RE: "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas v... LoP Guest Wrote: (03-20-2019 10:19 PM) "Guaido Is The Most-Hated Man In Venezuela" - On-The-Ground In Caracas Versus The Media Spectacle Gaydo is a self proclaimed fake President of Venezuela. He is not legit. Anyone in Venezuela can do the same as him and become self-named President. Maduro may be who he is and as he is but he was voted in during a legal electoral process. Gaydo is the Head of Parliament, maybe not even legit in that job, who knows? Gaydo is a self proclaimed fake President of Venezuela.He is not legit.Anyone in Venezuela can do the same as him and become self-named President.Maduro may be who he is and as he is but he was voted in during a legal electoral process.Gaydo is the Head of Parliament, maybe not even legit in that job, who knows? Advertisement Back to Forum Reply to This post Post New Thread Meghan and Harry leaving New Zealand House in London, where they signed the book of condolence for the victims of the Christchurch terror attack [Photo: PA] The Duke and Duchess of Sussex made an unannounced visit to New Zealand House in London today, to pay tribute to Christchurch terror attack victims. The visit was arranged on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen as the newlyweds were the last royals to visit New Zealand. The couple arrived carrying flowers, which they proceeded to lay with other bouquets at the buildings entrance. During their visit, the couple signed a book of condolence and spoke to staff. The Duchess of Sussex arrives at New Zealand House in London [Photo: Getty] Meghan wrote: Our deepest condolences. We are with you. Harry signed his name with Arohanui, Maori for with deep affection. READ MORE: The Queen and Kate are all smiles at joint engagement Following the attack on two mosques on Friday, numerous members of the Royal Family voiced their support for the victims and their families. The Queen was the first member of the monarchy to offer condolences, saying: I have been deeply saddened by the appalling events in Christchurch today. Prince Philip and I send our condolences to the families and friends of those who have lost their lives. The duchess gives the hongi, a traditional maori greeting as she arrives at New Zealand House [Photo: Getty] I also pay tribute to the emergency services and volunteers who are providing support to those who have been injured. At this tragic time, my thoughts and prayers are with all the New Zealanders. The Sussexes and the Cambridges sent a joint message, saying: Our hearts go out to the families and friends of the people who lost their lives in the devastating attack in Christchurch. We have all been fortunate to spend time in Christchurch and have felt the warm, open-hearted and generous spirit that is core to its remarkable people. READ MORE: Meghan Markles maternity wardrobe: 76 outfits and a combined cost of almost 500,000 Meghan, who is due to give birth to the couples first child next month, currently has no more scheduled public engagements until the baby arrives. Tomorrow, Harry will join schoolchildren as they take part in a tree planting project in support of The Queens Commonwealth Canopy initiative, together with the Woodland Trust. * Qatar calls on IAEA to create regional safety framework * UAE says plant is safe and built to highest standards * UAE delays Barakah start-up date for third time By Geert De Clercq PARIS/ABU DHABI, March 20 (Reuters) - The State of Qatar says the Barakah nuclear plant under construction in the United Arab Emirates poses a serious threat to regional stability and the environment and has called on the IAEA to create a framework for nuclear security in the Gulf. In a letter to International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano, seen by Reuters, the Foreign Affairs Ministry says that Qatar has "serious concerns regarding the operation of the nuclear power plant located at Barakah". "The State of Qatar believes that the lack of any international co-operation with neighbouring states regarding disaster planning, health and safety and the protection of the environment pose a serious treat to the stability of the region and its environment," the letter states. The UAE denied that there are safety issues with the plant, which is being built by Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) and will be operated by French utility EDF. "The United Arab Emirates ... adheres to its commitment to the highest standards of nuclear safety, security and non-proliferation," Ambassador Hamad Al Kaabi, UAE Permanent Representative to the IAEA said in a statement to Reuters. In the same statement, the UAE again delayed the start-up date for the plant, saying it was now expected to go into operation by 2020. The plant had been set to open in 2017 but startup has already been delayed twice due to problems with training operating staff. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain severed diplomatic, trade and transport ties with Qatar in June 2017 over allegations that it supports terrorism, a charge Doha denies. (Reporting by Geert De Clercq Additional reporting by Stanley Carvalho in Abu Dhabi; Editing by Kirsten Donovan) FILE PHOTO: The logo of Reliance Industries is pictured in a stall at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Trade Show at Gandhinagar FILE PHOTO: The logo of Reliance Industries is pictured in a stall at the Vibrant Gujarat Global Trade Show at Gandhinagar, India, January 17, 2019. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo By Nidhi Verma and Marianna Parraga NEW DELHI/MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - India's Reliance Industries, operator of the world's biggest refining complex, has turned to selling fuels to Venezuela from India and Europe to circumvent sanctions that bar U.S.-based companies from dealing with state-run PDVSA, according to trading sources and Refinitiv Eikon data. Reliance had been supplying alkylate, diluent naphtha, and other fuel to Venezuela though its U.S.-based subsidiary before Washington in late January imposed sanctions aimed at curbing the OPEC member's oil exports and ousting Socialist President Nicolas Maduro. At least three vessels chartered by the Indian conglomerate supplied refined products to Venezuela in recent weeks, and another vessel carrying gasoil is expected to set sail to the South American nation as well, according to the sources and data. Reliance, an Indian conglomerate controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has significant exposure to the financial system of the United States, where it operates subsidiaries linked to its oil and telecom businesses, among others. The Indian market is crucial for Venezuela's economy because it has historically been the second-largest cash-paying customer for the OPEC country's crude, behind the United States. Additional sanctions against Venezuela are possible in the future, as U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has not yet tried to prevent companies based outside the United States from buying Venezuelan oil, a strategy known as "secondary sanctions." Refinitiv Eikon trade data shows that Reliance shipped alkylate, a component for motor gasoline, to Venezuela on vessels Torm Mary and Torm Anabel in recent weeks. Those originated in India and passed through the Suez Canal. It also shipped a gasoline cargo using tanker Torm Troilus to Venezuela and is preparing to send 35,000 tonnes of gasoil in a vessel called Vukovar to the South American nation. Story continues "Reliance is also supplying some products from its Rotterdam storage," a source familiar with Reliance's operation said. Reliance did not respond to emails seeking comment. PDVSA did not reply to a request for comment. In a statement last week, Reliance said its U.S. unit has completely stopped all business with PDVSA. Reliance also halted all supply of diluents including heavy naphtha to Venezuela and does not plan to resume such sales until sanctions are lifted, according to the release. Venezuela has overall imported some 160,000 barrels per day of fuel and diluents for its extra heavy oil output since the U.S. measures were imposed, according to PDVSA and Refinitiv data, below levels prior to the sanctions but still enough to supply gas stations and power plants. Reliance is among the biggest buyers of Venezuelan oil, although the company has recently said it has not increased crude purchases from Venezuela. In 2012, Reliance signed a 15-year deal to buy between 300,000 to 400,000 bpd of heavy crude from PDVSA. Ship tracking data obtained by Reuters showed that Reliance's average purchases from Venezuela were less than 300,000 bpd in 2018 and in the first two months of this year. Venezuela has suspended its oil exports to India, its main cash market, Azerbaijan's energy ministry said on Tuesday, citing Manuel Quevedo, Venezuela's oil minister and PDVSA president. Quevedo met with the Azeri minister of Industry and Energy Parviz Shahbazov in Baku. But Venezuela's crude exports to India have not stopped. A very large crude carrier (VLCC) is anchored off Venezuela's Jose port waiting to load oil bound for India, and at least six other vessels of the same size are underway to India's Sikka and Vadinar ports, according to the Refinitiv data. PDVSA's second largest customer in India is Nayara Energy, partially owned by Russian energy firm Rosneft, one of PDVSA's primary allies. (Reporting by Nidhi Verma in New Delhi and Marianna Parraga in Mexico City; Editing by Phil Berlowitz) (Bloomberg) -- Rent the Runway Inc. is New Yorks most stylish unicorn. The fashion rental startup is now valued at $1 billion, the company said Thursday as it announced its latest funding round. Rent the Runway raised a fresh $125 million from investors co-led by Franklin Templeton Investments and Bain Capital Ventures. T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Hamilton Lane Advisors joined as new investors. Rent the Runway was started in 2009 by Jennifer Hyman and Jenny Fleiss as a way to rent designer dresses for events like weddings, galas and parties. The company has raised $337 million to date and each of its lead investors participated in the most recent round. Over the past few years, the company has refocused its efforts on a subscription business, asking customers to pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to its catalog of clothing, accessories and more. Subscriptions were up 160 percent year-over-year last fall and winter, though the company declined to share the total number of subscribers. "I have aspirations to create the Amazon Prime of rental," Hyman, chief executive officer of Rent the Runway, said in an interview. "We want their subscription to be as seamless as going to the closet and getting dressed." Hyman plans to use the new cash to grow Rent the Runways subscription service, broaden the assortment of inventory that can be rented and build supply-chain infrastructure. The company is expanding on many fronts. In coming months, Rent the Runway will open a new fulfillment center in Texas, a major store in San Francisco and a technology office in Ireland. Hyman plans to grow a network of drop boxes, which members use to return merchandise, to more than 100 by the end of the year. Rent the Runway will continue to seek out partnerships as well. The drop-box network started as a deal with office-space startup WeWork Cos. and has since been extended to corporate locations such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Earlier this month, the company entered a pact with Williams-Sonoma Inc.s West Elm unit to rent out home decor. Story continues Hyman went looking for more funding after securing a $200 million credit facility last summer, as she looked to further accelerate the growth of Rent the Runways subscription business. Though she would not comment on a timeline for a possible sale or initial public offering, Hyman said the funding puts her company in control of its "financial destiny." Franklin Templeton and T. Rowe Price are particularly valuable backers should Rent the Runway choose to IPO, she noted. These mutual fund giants often back later-stage startups before the companies sell shares to the public. "We have many strategic paths forward, obviously one of them is becoming a public company," said Hyman. "We wanted to build relationships early with key public investors because we want their guidance." (Updates with photo and new total funding number from company in third paragraph.) To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Bhasin in New York at kbhasin4@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anne Riley Moffat at ariley17@bloomberg.net, Alistair Barr, Kevin Miller For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com 2019 Bloomberg L.P. The media storm around Seann Walsh kissing his married Strictly Come Dancing partner Katya Jones was a result of people who overreacted, Katya and her husband have said six months on. The duo were pictured kissing during their time dancing together on the show, despite both being in relationships at the time. Read more: Katya Jones hints at Strictly signing Cheryl Katya is married to fellow Strictly professional Neil Jones, while Walsh was in a relationship with actress Rebecca Humphries, who split from the stand-up comedian after the scandal erupted. The 29-year-old dancer, who was born in Slovakia, told Lorraine Kelly: I didnt realise the scale it was going to be so sort of hyped up. It was quite shocking really. Seann Walsh and Katya Jones were embroiled in controversy during their time on Strictly Come Dancing in 2018. (Credit: BBC) It was really shocking, but I just tried not to look on the outside, we were just trying to keep it all together here. Kelly branded Katya a dafty for kissing the 33-year-old comedian and suggested to Neil that the scandal must have been really embarrassing. Neil said that he felt people overreacted to what had happened and said he was more worried for Katya than about anything else when the media attention intensified. Neil and Katya Jones are seen attending the opening night of Notre Dame de Paris at the London Coliseum in London. (Photo by Gary Mitchell/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) Katya added: Even the fact that were still talking about it. Its like, were over it, I think everyone else is over it, lets just move on. Read more: Neil Jones sparks Joe Sugg engagement rumours Katya and Walsh were eliminated in the sixth week of the show after performing a Viennese Waltz to I Put a Spell on You. She won the show in 2017 with Holby City actor Joe McFadden as her partner. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 21, 2019) - Silver One Resource Inc. (TSXV: SVE) (OTC Pink: SLVRF) (FSE: BRK1) ("Silver One") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an investor relations agreement with Strata-Star Group, LLC ("Strata-Star"). Strata-Star will provide investor relations services to Silver One including communicating with members of the financial community as well as shareholders. Strata-Star is a mining investor relations firm with experience in investor relations, commodities trading, and corporate development within the global mining industry. Under the terms of the investor relations agreement, Silver One has agreed to pay a monthly consulting fee of $7,500 per month and grant options to purchase 200,000 common shares of Silver One at a price of $0.22 per share. The options are subject to the vesting provisions and the terms and conditions of Silver One's stock option plan. Further, Silver One may grant an option to purchase an additional 200,000 common shares of Silver One at the market price plus $0.02 per share in the next three (3) months. The investor relations agreement is for a term of one (1) year, which may be extended by written agreement of the parties. Strata-Star is not related to Silver One, does not have any direct or indirect material interest in Silver One or its securities, other than the stock options as described above. All matters reported herein are subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval. About Silver One Silver One is focused on the exploration and development of quality silver projects. Silver One holds an option to acquire a 100%-interest in its flagship project, the past-producing Candelaria Mine located in Nevada. Potential reprocessing of silver from the historic leach pads at Candelaria provides an opportunity for possible near-term production. Additional opportunities lie in previously identified high-grade silver intercepts down-dip and potentially increasing the substantive silver mineralization along-strike from the two past-producing open pits. Silver One has staked 636 lode claims and entered into a Lease/Purchase Agreement to acquire five patented claims on its Cherokee project located in Lincoln County, Nevada, host to multiple silver-copper-gold vein systems, traced to date for over 11 km along-strike. In addition, Silver One also holds a 100% interest in three significant silver assets located in Mexico - Penasco Quemado, Sonora; La Frazada, Nayarit; and Pluton, Durango, acquired from First Mining Gold, one of the Company's largest shareholders. Story continues For more information, please contact: Silver One Resources Inc. Gary Lindsey Phone: (720) 273-6224 Email: gary@strata-star.com Forward-Looking Statements Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. Silver One cautions that all forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain, and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond Silver One's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to Silver One's limited operating history, ability to obtain sufficient financing to carry out its exploration and development objectives on the Candelaria Project, obtaining the necessary permits to carry out its activities and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Silver One undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. NEITHER TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. Corporate Logo To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43558 POWAY, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 21, 2019 / Solar Integrated Roofing Corporation (OTC PINK: SIRC) CEO David Massey announced the company has signed a definitive agreement to acquire one of South Orange County, California's most established re-roofing companies, Montross Roofing and Construction, which has been in business for more than 19 years. ''This deal is a perfect fit for us and the process was very smooth'', said Massey. ''Specializing in small commercial and HOA projects, Montross' management team has extensive experience putting systems in place to maximize profits and productivity. Having them joining our team will coordinate nicely with another pending acquisition we will soon be announcing. This is a win-win relationship for both parties. Montross is currently on track for $3 million in revenues, but by adding SIRC's residential roofing and solar components and marketing, we believe we can increase that to $5 million or more.'' The company has also decided to extend their audit through the end of their fiscal year, 2/28/2019. ''The audit was taking longer than we anticipated'', added Massey. ''After conferring with our auditors, it made prudent and economic sense to extend them through the end of the fiscal year. Our acquisitions and goals will not be impacted by this decision. We're moving forward with everything as planned and announced." About Solar Integrated Roofing Corporation Solar Integrated Roofing Corporation (SIRC) is an integrated solar and roofing installation company specializing in commercial and residential properties with a focus on acquisitions of like companies to build a footprint nationally. For more information, please visit: www.solarintegratedroofingcorp.com Forward-Looking Statements: Any statements made in this press release which are not historical facts contain certain forward-looking statements; as such term is defined in the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995, concerning potential developments affecting the business, prospects, financial condition and other aspects of the company to which this release pertains. The actual results of the specific items described in this release, and the company's operations generally, may differ materially from what is projected in such forward-looking statements. Although such statements are based upon the best judgments of management of the company as of the date of this release, significant deviations in magnitude, timing and other factors may result from business risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, the company's dependence on third parties, general market and economic conditions, technical factors, the availability of outside capital, receipt of revenues and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the company. The company disclaims any obligation to update information contained in any forward-looking statement. This press release shall not be deemed a general solicitation. Story continues Contact: Marlena LeBrun 760-566-9116 marlenalebrun@gmail.com SOURCE: GG Capital View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/539700/Solar-Integrated-Roofing-Corporation-Signs-Definitive-Acquisition-Agreement-Extends-Audit-to-Fiscal-Year-End WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Korean oil refiners S-Oil Corp and Hyundai Oilbank Co have agreed to settle criminal and civil charges of rigging bids to supply fuel to the U.S. military, the Justice Department said on Wednesday. The companies have agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges, the department said. Hyundai will pay $83.1 million in criminal and civil fines while S-Oil will pay $43.58 million (33 million) to settle the allegations, the Justice Department said. S-Oil said in a statement that it had reached a settlement with the Department of Justice and taken steps to prevent any further problems. "S-Oil vows to exert all possible efforts to ensure such misconduct does not repeat itself," the company said. Hyundai Oilbank did not have a comment on the matter, a company spokesman said. The indictment also names seven defendants, all South Koreans, who allegedly conspired to rig the bids. All seven live in South Korea. In addition to the antitrust charges, one of the seven, Hee-Soo Kim, is accused of witness tampering, the Justice Department said. The department settled last year with SK Energy Co Ltd; GS Caltex Corp, which is 50 percent-owned by Chevron; and Hanjin Transportation Co Ltd. They agreed to pay a total of $236 million in criminal fines and civil damages. Reuters reported in November that the Justice Department believed that S-Oil Corp, South Koreas No. 3 refiner, and Hyundai Oilbank also participated in a bid-rigging scheme that led to more than $100 million in overcharges to the U.S. military. The South Korea investigation is part of a Justice Department crackdown on companies that defraud the U.S. government on military contracts. The U.S. military had a budget of about $700 billion in the 2018 fiscal year, which ended on Sept. 30. A big chunk of the budget is spent in South Korea where the United States has kept a military presence on the divided peninsula since the 1950-1953 war. There are currently more than 28,000 troops in South Korea while Camp Humphreys, south of Seoul, is the largest U.S. overseas base with nearly 20,000 U.S. personnel. The Justice Department said the investigation began as a result of a tip telephoned into the Defense Logistics Agency Inspector General Hotline. Saudi Aramco is the biggest shareholder in S-Oil, with a 63.41 percent stake. It said in January that it planned to invest up to $1.6 billion for a nearly 20 percent stake in South Korean refiner Hyundai Oilbank. (Reporting by Diane Bartz; additional reporting by Jane Chung in SEOUL; Editing by Richard Chang, Leslie Adler and Richard Pullin) SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's antitrust regulator has lowered a decade-old penalty imposed on U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm Inc by 18 percent to $200 million, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said on Thursday. The reduction comes after the Supreme Court overturned in January one of several lower court rulings against the U.S. firm for abusing its dominant market position. In 2009, the KFTC fined Qualcomm 273 billion won ($242.6 million) for abusing its market power in CDMA modem and radio frequency chips, which were then used in handsets made by South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics Inc. The KFTC said it had reset the penalty to reflect the Supreme Court's ruling, adding however that a "monopolist enterprise's abuse of its market position cannot be tolerated". The fine is the latest in a series of antitrust rulings and investigations faced by Qualcomm from regulators across the globe. In a separate case, the South Korean regulator fined Qualcomm $854 million in 2016 for what it called unfair business practices in patent licensing and modem chip sales. Qualcomm declined to comment. (Reporting by Ju-min Park; additional reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Stephen Coates) Workers spread rice for drying at a rice mill on the outskirts of Kolkata, India, January 31, 2019.Picture taken January 31, 2019. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri/File Photo By Sethuraman N R (Reuters) - Rice export prices in India rose to their highest level in more than seven months as the rupee appreciated, denting demand, while trading companies in Vietnam increased domestic buying to fulfil new overseas deals. India's 5 percent broken parboiled variety was quoted around $392-$395 per tonne this week, up from $386-$389 last week. "Demand has been moderating due to the price rise. African buyers are not ready to pay higher prices," said an exporter based at Kakinada in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. The Indian rupee was trading near its highest level in seven months, trimming returns from overseas sales for traders in the world's largest rice exporter. In Vietnam, rates for 5 percent broken rice were in line with last week's $360 a tonne. "Demand for Vietnamese rice is seen rising, with key trading companies increasing their purchases from farmers for deals they have signed with customers from Malaysia, Philippines and Iraq," a trader based in Ho Chi Minh City said. Vietnam, the world's third largest rice exporter, has shipped more than 200,000 tonnes of rice to Malaysia so far this year, while clients from Iraq have placed orders for 120,000 tonnes, the trader said. A source with the Ministry of Industry and Trade said Egypt was seeking to buy 20,000 tonnes of 10-12 percent broken rice from Vietnam for delivery in June. Thai benchmark 5 percent broken rice prices were quoted at $390-$393, free on board Bangkok, on Thursday, up from $380-$385 last week. With demand little changed, traders attributed the price rise to fluctuations in the exchange rate between the baht and the U.S. dollar. On Tuesday, the Thai cabinet agreed to extend a rice trading agreement with the Philippines which expired in December for another two years. The agreement allows Thailand, the worlds second-largest rice exporter, to take part in tenders issued by the Philippines, stating that the two countries can trade up to 1 million tonnes of rice per year. Story continues Meanwhile, Bangladesh will give its farmers free fertiliser and seeds to boost cultivation of a type of rice that requires less irrigation, the country's agriculture minister said on Thursday. The stimulus package, worth nearly 402 million taka ($4.75 million), could help more than 459,000 farmers increase production of the Aus rice variety grown during the May-August season, Abdur Razzak, the minister, said. "We are encouraging farmers to grow more Aus rice as it matures during the monsoon. So it needs only a little irrigation to cultivate," Razzak told reporters. Bangladesh, usually the world's fourth biggest producer of rice, was forced to massively increase imports to shore up domestic reserves in 2017 after floods wrought havoc on local crops. (Reporting by Rajendra Jadhav in Mumbai, Patpicha Tanakasempipat in Bangkok, Khanh Vu in Vietnam, Ruma Paul in Dhaka; Editing by Kirsten Donovan) COSTA MESA, Calif., March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TTM Technologies, Inc. (TTMI), a leading global printed circuit board (PCB) and radio frequency (RF) components manufacturer, will be exhibiting at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress Experience 2019 (SAE WCX), booth 2234. The show produced by IEEE runs from April 9 - 11 and will be held at the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit, Michigan. As part of the exhibition, TTM Technologies will have sales and technical experts on-site to support customers with innovative digital and RF PCB product and component solutions to address their challenges and opportunities in the rapidly evolving automotive industry. This is our first time exhibiting at the SAE World Congress Experience and we look forward to this event, said Jon Pereira, TTM Technologies President of the Automotive, Medical, Industrial and Instrumentation Business Unit. As a PCB and RF components technology leader, TTM Technologies works collaboratively with our automotive customers to provide innovative product solutions to enhance reliability and provide product support from prototype through high-volume production. About SAE WCX World Congress Experience WCX World Congress Experience is the mobility industrys most-anticipated annual event for forward-thinking engineers, executives, OEMs, suppliers, decision-makers, disruptors and the entire spectrum of the mobility-engineering field. Experience three days of expert-led technical education, peer-to-peer networking, a technology-driven exhibit floor and global mobility solutions that are shifting the marketplace. From IoT, Big Data and connectivity to automated and unmanned vehicles, and from safety, blockchain and powertrain to sustainability and cybersecurity, WCX covers every corner of the industryright in the beating heart of The Motor City. Additional information can be found at https://www.sae.org/wcx About TTM Technologies, Inc. TTM Technologies, Inc. is a leading global printed circuit board manufacturer, focusing on quick-turn and volume production of technologically advanced PCBs, backplane assemblies and electro-mechanical solutions as well as a global designer and manufacturer of RF and microwave components and assemblies. TTM stands for time-to-market, representing how TTM's time-critical, one-stop manufacturing services enable customers to shorten the time required to develop new products and bring them to market. Additional information can be found at www.ttm.com . Story continues Contact: Winnie Ng Vice President, Corporate Marketing TTM Technologies, Inc. +852 2660 4287 winnie.ng@ttm.com Sameer Desai Senior Director, Corporate Development & Investor Relations TTM Technologies, Inc. +1 714 327 3050 sameer.desai@ttmtech.com Isabella Registered User User ID: 421592 03-21-2019 07:26 PM Posts: 27,476 Post: #11 RE: BREAKING: Trump Wants Israel's Sovereignty Over Golan Heights Isabella Wrote: (03-21-2019 07:07 PM) Bibi asked that this be so a few days ago. Israel wins Trump recognition of disputed Golan Heights "WASHINGTON Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has intensified a push for U.S. recognition of Israeli control over disputed territory with Syria, hoping that President Donald Trump will deliver a major diplomatic victory during his visit to Washington two weeks before his toughest election yet. Israel has sought international recognition of its sovereignty in the disputed Golan Heights for decades, but in the last three months has recruited powerful allies in a renewed campaign to influence Trump, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Together they are driving a Senate resolution introduced last month exclusively with Republican support that would declare it in the U.S. national security interest to ensure Israel retains control over the Golan Heights and out of the hands of Syrian President Bashar Assad and proxy forces from Iran. With strategic congressional backing, Netanyahu hopes for a public indication of movement from Trump during his visit to the White House on Monday and Tuesday. Trumps foreign policy team did not respond favorably to similar requests regarding the Golan Heights last year, expressing frustration with Israeli officials for pressuring them over a major policy change so shortly after the administration recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital. But senior Trump administration officials tell McClatchy that some aides to the president, including National Security Advisor John Bolton, now favor the move. There are certainly people here who say they agree, one U.S. official said. But I havent seen any movement. Netanyahu has privately pressed for recognition of Israels control over the Golan Heights with administration officials and members of Congress, and will raise the issue in his meetings with Trump as a top priority, according to Israeli sources. It was raised in their very first meeting, and has been raised with John Bolton, one source said. We are confident it will be raised this time. But the timing of Netanyahus visit to Washington his first since Trump announced the return of roughly 2,000 troops from the Syrian battlefield, neighboring the Golan has invigorated the prime minister to revive his request, and to present it with a new sense of relevancy. The White House decided last month to keep 400 troops on the ground amid protests from U.S. allies in the region. Netanyahus trip comes two weeks before Israels general elections on April 9, in which he faces a formidable opponent in Benny Gantz, a former chief of staff of the Israeli army, currently leading in his Blue and White Party in several Israeli polls" more https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politic...99599.html "WASHINGTON Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has intensified a push for U.S. recognition of Israeli control over disputed territory with Syria, hoping that President Donald Trump will deliver a major diplomatic victory during his visit to Washington two weeks before his toughest election yet.Israel has sought international recognition of its sovereignty in the disputed Golan Heights for decades, but in the last three months has recruited powerful allies in a renewed campaign to influence Trump, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.Together they are driving a Senate resolution introduced last month exclusively with Republican support that would declare it in the U.S. national security interest to ensure Israel retains control over the Golan Heights and out of the hands of Syrian President Bashar Assad and proxy forces from Iran.With strategic congressional backing, Netanyahu hopes for a public indication of movement from Trump during his visit to the White House on Monday and Tuesday.Trumps foreign policy team did not respond favorably to similar requests regarding the Golan Heights last year, expressing frustration with Israeli officials for pressuring them over a major policy change so shortly after the administration recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital.But senior Trump administration officials tell McClatchy that some aides to the president, including National Security Advisor John Bolton, now favor the move.There are certainly people here who say they agree, one U.S. official said. But I havent seen any movement.Netanyahu has privately pressed for recognition of Israels control over the Golan Heights with administration officials and members of Congress, and will raise the issue in his meetings with Trump as a top priority, according to Israeli sources. It was raised in their very first meeting, and has been raised with John Bolton, one source said. We are confident it will be raised this time.more (Adds Iran denial) ANKARA, March 20 (Reuters) - Turkey said on Wednesday Turkish and Iranian military commanders had agreed to continue "simultaneous and coordinated operations" against Kurdish militants, though Iran's armed forces later said there were no joint operations. Earlier this week Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey and Iran were carrying out a joint operation against Kurdish militants. He described it as the first of its kind, but an Iranian source said Iran's armed forces were not part of the operation. On Wednesday, the Turkish interior ministry said Turkish Gendarme Commander Arif Cetin and Iranian Border Forces Commander Qassem Rezai had agreed to continue "simultaneous and coordinated operations" for "some time" in a phone call. In a separate phone call, Turkish and Iranian deputy interior ministers welcomed the stage reached in the operations, according to the interior ministry. A spokesman for Iran's armed forces later said there were no joint operations against militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) between Turkey and Iran near the border. It was not clear where the operation was taking place or why the two countries were offering different accounts. The PKK, which has waged an insurgency for autonomy in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast since 1984, is deemed a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. (Reporting by Ece Toksabay and Bozorgmehr Saharafedin; Writing by Tuvan Gumrukcu Editing by Ali Kucukgocmen and Mark Heinrich) ADEN (Reuters) - The U.S. ambassador to Yemen blamed the Iran-aligned Houthi movement on Thursday for the hold-up to a U.N.-led peace deal in the main port of Hodeidah and said Houthi weapons pose a threat to other countries in the region. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government and the Houthis reached a ceasefire and troop pullout deal for Hodeidah, which is under Houthi control, at talks in Sweden in December. The pact was the first big breakthrough in efforts to end Yemen's four-year war. While the truce has largely held, the troop withdrawal by both parties has not materialized with each side blaming the other for lack of progress. The deal aimed to avert a full-scale assault on the port, a lifeline for millions of Yemenis. "We are greatly frustrated by what we see as delays and stalling on the part of the Houthis in implementing what they agreed to in Sweden, but I have great confidence in the UN envoy and what he is doing," Ambassador Matthew Tueller told a televised news conference in the southern port of Aden, where the internationally recognized government is based. "We are willing to work with others in order to try to implement these (Sweden) agreements and see whether the Houthis can in fact demonstrate a political maturity and start to serve the interests of Yemen rather than acting on behalf of those who seek to weaken and destroy Yemen," he said. Tueller said he had not given up hope that the deal would be implemented in Hodeidah, where thousands of Yemeni forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition are massed on the outskirts. The United States has sided with the Yemeni government against the Houthis and provides military support to the alliance led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, including help with targeting for Saudi air strikes. [nL1N2100MO] A Houthi politburo official, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, accused the Western-backed coalition of trying to undermine the accord. "America and its agents...only accepted a partial truce, in Hodeidah, due to international pressure over Khashoggi," he told Reuters, referring to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate last year. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war, which pits the Houthis against other Yemeni factions backed by the Saudi-led coalition and loyal to the government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Houthis ousted Hadi's government from power in the capital Sanaa in late 2014. The conflict is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Houthis, who control Sanaa and most population centers, deny being puppets of Tehran and say their revolution is against corruption. "SEVERE DANGER" TO REGION The Sunni Muslim coalition twice tried to seize the port last year in a bid to cut off the Houthis' main supply line. The United Nations fears a full-on offensive may disrupt operations at the port, which handles the bulk of Yemen's imports, and trigger mass starvation. The alliance accuses Iran of smuggling weapons, including missiles which have targeted Saudi cities, to the Houthis. The group and Tehran deny the accusations. Tueller said the United States was working with Yemeni authorities to prevent arms smuggling from Iran and to strengthen local institutions. "The fact that there are groups that have weapons, including heavy weapons and even weapons that can threaten neighboring countries, and those weapons are not under the control of the institutions of the state - this is a severe danger to the region as well as to Yemen," he said. The United States does not support groups that "seek to divide Yemen", Tueller said, in an apparent reference to southern separatists whose forces have been taking part in coalition operations under the leadership of the UAE. The complex war has revived old strains between North and South Yemen, formerly separate countries which united into a single state in 1990. A separatist leader warned this month that any peace deal that fails to address the souths wish for self-determination could trigger a new conflict. (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli and Ghaida Ghantous in Dubai, Reuters team in Sanaa; Writing by Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by Mark Heinrich) By Andrew Chung WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday put in jeopardy an $8.5 million settlement Google made with users to resolve a class action lawsuit accusing it of violating their privacy by sharing users' search queries with other websites. The justices, in an unsigned opinion, threw out a ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that had upheld the settlement, directing it to take a fresh look at whether the plaintiffs had the legal standing necessary to sue and whether they were even harmed by the search engine operator. Google, part of Alphabet Inc., was accused in the lawsuit of violating a 1986 law governing the privacy of stored electronic communications. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying the increasingly common type of settlement at the heart of the case was "unfair and unreasonable" and should not have been approved by the 9th Circuit. These so-called "cy pres" (pronounced "see pray") settlements are used in class action cases when it might be impractical to carve up low-value individual damages among a large number of plaintiffs. In endorsing the Google settlement in 2017, the 9th Circuit said each of the 129 million U.S. Google users who theoretically could have claimed part of it would have received "a paltry 4 cents in recovery." Proponents have said these settlements can put otherwise negligible awards per person to good use by benefiting groups that work for the public good or support underfunded entities. Critics have said they encourage frivolous lawsuits and excessive fees going to plaintiffs' lawyers. Google agreed in the settlement to disclose on its website how users' search terms are shared but was not required to change its behavior. The three main plaintiffs received $5,000 each for representing the class. Their attorneys received about $2.1 million. Under the settlement, much of the rest of the money would go to organizations or projects that promote internet privacy, including at Stanford University and AARP, a lobbying group for older Americans, but nothing to the millions of Google users who the plaintiffs were to have represented in the class action. Story continues A Google representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. The settlement was challenged by attorneys including Ted Frank of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, which advocates against what it considers abusive class action procedures. Following the ruling, Frank said he expects the lower courts to again find that the plaintiffs may sue and that the issue will soon be back before the high court. "The decision simply delays the day of reckoning for this unfair practice," Frank said. The case began when a California resident named Paloma Gaos filed a proposed class action lawsuit in 2010 in San Jose federal court. The plaintiffs said that their privacy was violated when their search terms were disseminated by Google to other sites. One searched for her own name, another for financial and health data, and a third for information related to his divorce proceedings. The Supreme Court may soon get another opportunity to clarify what is needed for plaintiffs to achieve the legal standing necessary to sue. The justices are considering whether to hear a pending appeal by online shoe retailer Zappos, a subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc, over whether customers are entitled to sue over a 2012 data breach. (Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham) (Bloomberg) -- Want the lowdown on European markets? In your inbox before the open, every day. Sign up here. Uber Technologies Inc. rival Bolt, formerly known as Taxify, is preparing to expand into the food-delivery market and utilize its existing network of drivers to do so quickly. Uber Eats doesnt operate in some parts of in eastern Europe and Africa, which Bolt considers key markets. This provides a good avenue for the company to pursue, Bolt Chief Executive Officer Markus Villig said. Anywhere we have the market-leading position is a good place for us to consider, as we can utilize the massive rider base, drivers and payment infrastructure we already have, he said in an interview. Estonia, Finland and South Africa have been picked as the first markets where Bolt will roll out the new service in the next few months, the company said Thursday in a statement. Bolts expansion follows significant consolidation of the food-delivery market in Western Europe, and escalating talk of further deals to come. Takeaway.com NV agreed to acquire the German businesses of Delivery Hero SE for approximately 930 million euros ($1 billion) in December, while Ubers bid for Deliveroo stalled over a disagreement on valuation. Britains Just Eat Plc, which has a market value of about $7 billion, recently saw investor Cat Rock Capital Management LP lobby for the company to merge with a rival. Villig said he doesnt see major competitors existing in the three countries Bolt plans to target first, despite all having existing food-delivery services such as Wolt in Estonia, Delivery Hero in Finland, and Uber Eats in South Africa. Bolt has 25 million registered users across the 30 countries where its active, and hundreds of thousands of drivers of its ride-hailing service, according to a spokesman. Villig said hes confident the market power the company has as a result will support his ambition. The company raised $175 million in May last year at a $1 billion valuation, in a deal led by Daimler AG. Story continues To contact the reporter on this story: Nate Lanxon in London at nlanxon@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at gturner35@bloomberg.net, Andrew Pollack, Mark Milian For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com 2019 Bloomberg L.P. FILE PHOTO: A logo of German energy utility company Uniper SE is pictured in the company's headquarter in Duesseldorf, Germany, March 8, 2018. REUTERS/Thilo Schmuelgen/File Photo By Stephen Jewkes and Christoph Steitz MILAN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's Uniper is in advanced talks with Australian fund First State Investments to sell its stake in a liquefied natural gas terminal in Italy, three sources said on Wednesday, in a move that is raising political eyebrows in Rome. "There's no final deal yet but First State is about to make a binding bid," one of the sources said, adding the deal valued the terminal at around 800 million euros ($909 million). Energy firm Uniper holds a 48.24 percent stake in the OLT LNG terminal, while Italian multi-utility Iren owns 49.07 percent. The two shareholders invested around 900 million euros to build the plant back in 2013. In a tweet on Wednesday, Italy's Foreign Office Junior Minister Guglielmo Picchi said the government should carry out a preventive review before any sale to protect national security. "More caution and sharing is needed before (strategic assets) are sold by Germans to Australians," he said. ($1 = 0.8803 euros) (Editing by Valentina Za) Germany's 5G spectrum auction began on Tuesday and the government has not excluded Huawei from providing networking equipment to the country's carriers. Other countries including Thailand and the U.K. have also not banned Huawei. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson claimed that Huawei is making it tough for European carriers to change equipment providers because the Chinese firm is an important part of existing 4G networks. Europe and the United States are clashing over Huawei's role in the future of 5G. While Donald Trump's administration has tried to pressure allied countries , including those in Europe, to ban the Chinese firm from being included in the rollout of the next generation of mobile networking technologies, nations including the United Kingdom and Germany aren't listening. Germany's 5G spectrum auction began on Tuesday a process in which carriers bid for certain radio frequencies in order to provide the new version of high-speed mobile internet. The U.S. alleges that Huawei's networking equipment could be used for espionage by the Chinese government. Huawei has repeatedly denied that it poses any risk and said it would never allow Beijing to get its hands on customer data. Experts are skeptical , however, about Huawei's assurances because Chinese national security laws appear to compel companies operating in the country to comply with all government requests for such info. What's at stake is control over what experts describe as one of the most important technologies in recent times. 5G is not just about making mobile internet faster: It will underpin other technology from driverless cars to so-called smart cities. The U.S. wants to be a leading player and so does China. Despite Washington's protests, Germany is not excluding Huawei from becoming part of its national 5G infrastructure. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said earlier this month that the country will define its own security standards . Story continues But its not just Germany that is defying the U.S. Italy government has said that it won't ban Huawei from its telecommunications industry, saying there is no proof of any security threat. And in the United Kingdom, intelligence officials said that any risks posed by Huawei can be mitigated, according to an FT report in February. Even individual carriers have expressed their concern over excluding Huawei from the 5G rollout. U.K.-headquartered carrier Vodafone VOD-GB said banning Huawei could cost it millions of pounds and slow the rollout of 5G. Experts say that while the American rollout of 5G would not be affected by a Huawei ban, Europe could suffer . Nikhil Batra, senior telecommunications research manager at IDC said European carriers' businesses have struggled compared to those in the U.S., so they want the cheapest possible deal for 5G equipment something that Huawei can provide. "When you look at the industry as small as network equipment providers, excluding Huawei will have a big impact on the industry. If I am going from three major vendors to two major vendors, competition decreases, prices will increase as a result. A lot of countries, including specific telcos, are looking at Huawei as a better-cost option," Batra told CNBC on Thursday. The two other major players for Europe are Nokia and Ericsson. "Traditionally, Huawei has been playing a lot on the cost in terms of being competitive versus the other two major players," Batra added. European countries, Batra said, have not seen hard evidence regarding the allegations made by the U.S. and that is one reason why they are not following America's lead. Critically, the U.S. argument is that Huawei's technology could allow for spying not specifically that the company has already performed intelligence gathering for Beijing. And it's not just European countries butting heads with the U.S. Thailand , a U.S. ally in Asia, launched a 5G test bed with Huawei in February. India , meanwhile, is looking for a way to exclude Huawei from some parts of its 5G infrastructure, but it is not seeking an entire ban, according to a report by the Nikkei Asian Review earlier this month. But the U.S. is not budging on its stance against Huawei and the country's networks are backing it. AT&T T CEO Randall Stephenson claimed on Wednesday that Huawei is making it tough for European carriers to drop Huawei as their supplier because the company is an important part of their existing 4G networks. "If you have deployed Huawei as your 4G network, Huawei is not allowing interoperability to 5G meaning if you are 4G, you are stuck with Huawei for 5G," Stephenson said . The AT&T chief said the U.S. government should better-explain its issue with Huawei. The biggest risk is not that the Chinese government might listen to conversations or mine data, it's that 5G will be such a critical infrastructure and governments should be cautious about who the vendors are, he said. "If that much of infrastructure will be attached to this kind of technology, do we want to be cautious about who is the underlying company behind that technology? We damn well better be," Stephenson said. Huawei declined to comment on Stephenson's remarks when contacted by CNBC. More From CNBC Twitter Facebook No, you're not being paranoid. Four individuals have been arrested for a scheme allegedly involving spy cams in 42 motel rooms across South Korea and the livestreaming of up to 1,600 unwitting guests. The intended audience, however, was much larger than just those four a website broadcast the videos to its over 4,000 members, at least some of whom paid for access. So reports the Korean Herald, which notes that the hidden IP cameras had 1-millimeter lenses and were installed in TVs, power outlets, and other seemingly innocuous hotel room fixtures. The paper adds that, according to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agencys cyber investigation unit, the scheme reached 30 different motels in 10 cities across the country. Read more... More about Privacy, Airbnb, South Korea, Livestreaming, and Tech Wall Street attention is fixated on what appears to be the final stages of U.S.-China trade talks, but for many American companies the ongoing negotiations are second to another priority: Getting Congress to approve the new trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Known as the USMCA, the White House and top business groups have launched an all-out assault on Congress to try to assuage concerns from lawmakers over the deals enforcement mechanisms and pharmaceutical protections, as well as educate new members on the intricate details of the update to the North American Free Trade Agreement. The White House has spoken to over 290 lawmakers and their staff on the specifics of the deal in the last two months alone. And in recent weeks, United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer held meetings with Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee, the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and the moderate Blue Dog Democrats. Earlier this month, he also was invited by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to speak at the House Democratic Caucus. On top of those efforts, the private sector is in the midst of its own blitz. The National Association of Manufacturers, for example, has conducted over 100 meetings on Capitol Hill since the start of 2019, largely with Democrats, according to Vice President of International Economic Affairs Policy Linda Dempsey. Certainly for manufacturers, this is our top trade priority bar none, she told FOX Business. That education process is really critical, needs to continue and thats where business is coming in. Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce the nations largest lobbying association has done over 200 meetings with members that are still undecided on the trade agreement, along with 70 meetings in districts with lawmakers. Alongside the Chamber and NAM, Fiat Chrysler, UPS, Citi and others have joined together to form the USMCA Coalition to push the agreement forward. Former White House deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn also recently launched a separate coalition to persuade Congress to approve the deal. Story continues The intense lobbying effort signals just how important the trading agreement is for corporate America. Nearly $821 million in goods flow from Mexico to the U.S. each day. Combined, the two countries purchase more U.S. goods than the next 11 trading partners put together. Driving fear is President Trumps repeated threats to completely withdraw from NAFTA. It also remains unclear when Congress could act on the USMCA. After two key milestones are reached in April, advocates are hoping for action before the traditional August recess. A study by the United States International Trade Commission due next month will kick off congressional work on the deal. And as part of the deal, Mexico agreed to update its labor law to comply with the agreement a pledge that Pelosi and other Democrats are requiring the country to meet before considering it. The Mexican ambassador to the U.S. recently reaffirmed the commitment to updating those statues, which is expected to occur in April. Among other things, the USMCA would effectively require Mexico to increase its pay for auto workers. The agreement mandates that 40 percent of vehicles are manufactured by individuals making at least $16 per hour. Democrats are also expected to seek to bolster the USMCAs enforcement provisions. Some experts have speculated that party leaders may try to strengthen provisions related to dispute settlement panels or the mechanism under which the three nations resolve trade skirmishes. Under the existing NAFTA agreement, one party to a dispute can opt against participating in the panel, effectively making enforcement toothless. Critics have also taken issue with the deals fortifications for new pharmaceutical treatments. As part of an effort to strengthen overall protections for U.S. intellectual property, the USCMA would give new, brand-name biologic drugs a minimum of 10 years of exclusivity in Canada and Mexico. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX BUSINESS APP One potential hurdle that the White House and businesses cant control is the 2020 election, particularly if work in Congress on the agreement slips into next year. Ahead of the 2016 elections, opposition from then-candidate Donald Trump and top Democrat candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to the Trans-Pacific Partnership helped to stymie the trade deal between the U.S. and 11 other nations from obtaining congressional approval. This cycle, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sanders both oppose the USMCA. Campaigns for several other Democratic candidates including Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Kristen Gillibrand of New York and Cory Booker of New Jersey did not respond to FOX Business requests for comment. Related Articles (Bloomberg) -- SenseTime Group Ltd., the worlds most valuable artificial intelligence startup, plans to sustain growth by expanding globally and diving deeper into arenas from autonomous cars to health care. The company counts education, self-driving vehicles as well as surgery and diagnostics among areas ripe for commercializing AI, Managing Director Esther Wong said. Its now actively seeking out investments in fellow startups that can benefit from its own technology, she told the Bloomberg Invest Asia forum in Hong Kong. Investors are handing billions of dollars to Chinese AI startups from SenseTime to Face++, hoping to ride a wave of support from a government intent on becoming the world leader in the technology by 2030. SenseTime, last valued at more than $4.5 billion, is said to be aiming to raise new funds this year. Wong declined to comment on that. The startup specializes in systems that analyze faces and images on an enormous scale and works with retailers and health-care researchers but not directly with the Chinese government, Wong said. The company has been profitable for two years and has grown to 3,000 people, of which a third work in research, she said. SenseTime is based in Hong Kong and China, with offices in Japan and Singapore and plans for more internationally. The topline has been growing at triple digits for the past four years. Now that we have a bigger base, it probably wont be as high going forward, Wong said. Even though were a startup, the founding team has been doing AI for almost three decades. The former dealmaker said SenseTimes 200 AI scientists will prove invaluable in spotting investment opportunities beyond the dozen or so startups its already backed. The companys over-arching goal is to get AI in front of a swathe of industries and as many people as possible, using data to generate the requisite algorithm via machine learning, she said. Wong also stressed that the startup doesnt own any of that information. That data belongs to its clients, she added. Story continues Most companies still dont have a proper AI strategy yet or they dont know how to monetize AI, she said. --With assistance from Shelly Banjo. To contact the reporter on this story: Lulu Yilun Chen in Hong Kong at ychen447@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Robert Fenner For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com 2019 Bloomberg L.P. Dover Fueling Solutions (DFS) has been awarded a five-year global contract with EG Group, which operates as Euro Garages in the UK, for the provision of its ClearView and Fairbanks wetstock management services. Sites within the EG Group global network including those in Germany, the USA, Australia, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy - will receive real-time monitoring and advanced wetstock investigation services, designed to help businesses lower operational costs and improve profit margins, while keeping them legally and environmentally compliant. EG Group will benefit from fuel loss identification services, determining losses caused by a variety of factors, including leakage, delivery shortages, spillage and evaporation, theft, fraud and meter drift. They will also have access to the Fairbanks Station Manager online web portal, which centralizes data from across the network, giving users greater insight into stock levels, pump and nozzle activity and alarm notifications, as well as access to many detailed reports which help to maintain forecourt efficiency and availability. The contract engages DFS as EG Groups global wetstock management partner for their current estate, but also for sites and networks they acquire during the term of the contract. EG Group already has a strong presence in the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, the USA and Australia and has grown significantly in recent years building a global network of around 4,700 sites. The contract is a significant success for DFS: "We are confident that the wet-stock management services from DFS will truly benefit the EG Group network," said Guy Bickerstaffe, EGs group director of development. Having a third-party monitoring service take care of our wetstock management gives us peace of mind, leaving us safe in the knowledge that even the smallest instances of fuel loss dont go unnoticed. Its a real cost-saving investment for us, with the added benefit of protecting the environment from the detrimental effects of leaks to ground. Andy Sullivan, business global wetstock business unit director, DFS, said: This contract builds upon the strong customer-centric focus that DFS has exercised whilet delivering its service to EG Group sites in the UK over the past eight years, resulting in a strong business relationship that both parties were keen to expand upon. DFS looks forward to continuing to nurture this partnership as the EG Group network grows. DFS is part of Dover Corporation that delivers advanced fuel dispensing equipment, electronic systems and payment, fleet systems, automatic tank gauging and wetstock management. Multiple explosions have killed at least six people and wounded 23 near a Shi'ite shrine in Kabul, Afghan officials say. The Islamic State (IS) militant group claimed responsibility for the March 21 attack, which took place during celebrations marking Norouz, the pre-Islamic Persian new year. Two children were among the wounded in the blasts, Kabul's Emergency Services director Muhammad Asim said. There were conflicting reports about the cause of the blasts near the Karti Sakhi Shi'ite shrine and cemetery in a western Kabul neighborhood that is heavily populated by Shi'ite Muslims. Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said an initial investigation indicated that three explosive devices had been remotely detonated, setting off the successive blasts as people gathered there to mark Norouz. But Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said on Twitter that three rockets had been fired at civilian homes and Norouz gatherings -- adding that security forces arrested the attackers and secured the area. President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack, saying on Twitter: "As we celebrate this auspicious day to bind us together our fellow citizens witnessed another devastating day in Kabul. "We lost peaceful citizens to a coward enemy that knows no bounds," Ghani added. Islamic State claimed responsibility, saying on the Telegram messaging service that "soldiers of the caliphate" detonated three explosive devices among a Shi'ite crowd near a shrine. IS claimed 50 people were killed and wounded in the attack. The extremist group considers Shi'ite Muslims to be heretics. All routes to the Shi'ite shrine were cordoned off by security forces, a local live TV broadcast showed. Traditionally, people hoist green flags at the shrine and honor the dead at the cemetery by placing food beside graves. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and dpa Human Rights Watch and eight other rights groups have urged the Tajik government to immediately release a gravely ill political activist who claims to have been tortured. During a visit on March 9, Muhammadali Hayit showed his wife "injuries on his forehead and stomach that he said were caused by beatings from prison officials to punish him for refusing to record videos denouncing Tajik opposition figures abroad," the groups said in a March 20 statement. The statement quoted Savrinisso Jurabekova as saying her husband had told her that "he was not getting adequate medical care, and they both fear he may die in prison as a result of the beatings." Hayit, 62, was arrested in September 2015 on what human rights activists called politically motivated charges and sentenced to life in prison in June 2016 following a closed trial. He had been deputy head of the banned Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). The political activist is currently being held at a detention center in the capital, Dushanbe. "We ask diplomatic representatives on the ground in Dushanbe to seek permission to visit Hayit and other prisoners of concern and press for their immediate release," according to Nadejda Atayeva, president of the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia. Marius Fossum, Central Asia representative of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, said that Tajikistan's human rights situation "has been spiraling downward rapidly, and Washington, Brussels, and all actors should consider enacting targeted punitive measures unless immediate human rights improvements are made." The other groups are the Association for Central Asian Migrants, Freedom House, Freedom Now, Global Advocates, Human Rights Vision Foundation, and International Partnership for Human Rights. The IRPT, long an influential party with representatives in the government and parliament of Tajikistan, was labeled a terrorist group and banned in 2015. Dozens of IRPT officials and supporters have been prosecuted and many of them imprisoned, drawing criticism from human rights groups. The party's founder, Umarali Quvatov, was assassinated in Istanbul in March 2015. Yes, I found a better job Yes, but I'm still looking for a new job Yes, I retired Yes, I started my own business No, I like my current job No, but I'm currently looking for a new job Vote View Results For those who might want to introduce their kids to fourteeners, here are five of the easier high peaks. The best resource for maps, directions and hike details is 14ers.com. 1. Mount Sherman - One of the closer fourteeners to Colorado Springs, about two hours drive, is also the most kid-friendly. The trail climbs 2,100 feet and is 5.25 miles round-trip. Several family-friendly campgrounds can be found along Park County Road 18 leading to the trailhead outside of Fairplay. 2. Mount Bierstadt - This gentle peak is off Guanella Pass, a scenic drive in its own right, south of Georgetown. In summer, any vehicle can drive to the pass at 11,669 feet, making for a climb of 2,850 feet and 7 miles to the summit. And your kids will have lots of company, as this is one of the more popular fourteeners due to its proximity to Denver. Drive up from the south, from U.S. Highway 285, and youll find lots of camping along the road to the pass. 3. Mount Antero - This huge, bulky mountain near Buena Vista is only kid-friendly if you have a high-clearance, 4-wheel-drive vehicle, as you can drive to nearly 12,000 feet. That makes for a 7-mile, round-trip hike with 2,400 feet of climbing, mostly on ATV trails. Dont bring the kids on this one in a sedan. The hike from the car parking lot is 15 miles round-trip. 4. Handies Peak - This lovely peak in the San Juan Mountains is near Lake City, a four-hour drive from Colorado Springs, but worth it if you want to introduce your kids to the rugged beauty of the San Juans. A high-clearance vehicle can get to 11,600 feet at the American Basin trailhead, which makes for a hike of 5.5 miles round-trip and 2,500 feet of climbing, passing lakes and other rocks formations sure to delight the kids. 5. Mount Democrat - Many people climb this peak near Alma in tandem with mounts Lincoln and Bross, which make a loop around Kite Lake. But Democrat on its own is a 4-mile, 2,150-foot adventure steep enough to test your kids mettle. If they do well and the weather is clear, you can take them on to the other two mountains. The thrill of climbing three fourteeners in a day will stay with them a long time. An former longtime public defender has been selected to fill a vacancy on the El Paso County District Court bench. Marcus Henson, of Colorado Springs, was appointed Tuesday by Gov. Jared Polis to succeed retired 4th Judicial District Judge Barbara Hughes, according to a news release from the Governor's Office. Henson, a county magistrate since 2017, was among three finalists chosen for the position by the 4th Judicial District Nominating Commission. The other two were Brien Cecil, a veteran county prosecutor, and William Moller, who has a private law practice in Woodland Park. Businessmen expressed concern over the water shortage in Metro Manila, saying it could affect the countrys economic competitiveness. The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the largest umbrella of business organizations in the country, called for urgent short- and long-term solutions to the water shortage. The shortage we are experiencing now is obviously a cause for alarm, PCCI president Alegria Sibal Limjoco said. She said the situation was not only hurting consumers but could also affect the countrys competitiveness because water is an important input to the industry. Limjoco said the country began seeing that the demand for clean water had exceeded the rate of replenishment from existing sources. And unless we develop other sources while slowing down our demand for water, we are faced with dire consequences that could have a negative impact on our goals to achieve industrialization and economic transformation, Limjoco said.PCCI welcomed the government efforts to mitigate the situation in Metro Manila by increasing the release of water supply from Angat Dam. It likewise acknowledged Manila Water for owning up to its shortcoming and commended the companys positive response to the call to immediately make more water available to consumers in its service areas. It takes great courage to admit such grave responsibility. The actions of Manila Water simply proved how much they value their stakeholders, Limjoco said. The association said these stop-gap initiatives should be complemented by long-term measures to effectively and efficiently manage and utilize the countrys water resources. It said that if no measures would be taken to address the current supply shortage, the water crisis experienced now could become a normal occurrence in the future. During a recent welding workshop, students created a personal art piece using various pre-made components. Blisss public art installation will include works donated by students in future classes. Photo courtesy of Bliss Studio and Gallery Check concentrate feeder accuracy WITH the cost of dairy cow concentrates rising farmers have been urged to check the accuracy of their feeders to ensure they are not overfeeding, or indeed underfeeding, their livestock. Globe Telecom Inc. asked enterprises to prepare for a mobile workforce to remain competitive. Peter Maquera, senior vice president for Globes enterprise group, said companies should be able to provide an environment that allows employees to collaborate and be productive anywhere in real time. Given the present-day realities of business, this kind of flexibility is not just desirable but is essential for the digital workforce to adapt easily to disruptive technology, Maquera said. Taking the digital leap means a more efficient and secure manner of doing tasks while being more cost-efficient and reliable, he said.The cloud-based software allows employees to easily work together on a project in real time even if they are in different locations. Members of the workforce can also access, edit and share their files wherever they may be. Maquera said the initial phase of rolling out new technology and convincing employees to embrace change was always the hardest challenge to hurdle which Globe experienced when it began the out-of-office initiative in 2013. " " HowStuffWorks Now: Magic, Hacking and Social Engineering HowStuffWorks Hackers have a special mystique. According to Hollywood, they might sit down at a computer, attempt to type in the password and get in by the third guess. Or maybe they have to navigate through a rendered three-dimensional computer world to discover secrets. The truth is, a lot of hackers don't need to go to such lengths they get valuable information from living, breathing people. It's called social engineering, and it's an effective way to get information or access without ever having to crunch any code. While it's important to have a strong security system, it's equally critical to train people how to use the system responsibly and recognize when someone is trying to pull a fast one. Advertisement A simple example of social engineering could be a hacker posing as an information technology consultant. She could gain access to a company's equipment just by contacting an employee, explaining that it's time to upgrade equipment and requesting the login information to complete the transition. If the employee hands over that login information, the hardest part of hacking into a system is over, and the hacker can begin snooping around. But hackers don't even need to talk to you to use social engineering. It's common for people to rely upon insecure passwords often the word password itself. Hackers know this and take advantage of it. Magicians do the same thing: They understand which behaviors are the most common and bet on the safe odds when performing a trick. Many magicians use patter to misdirect an audience, guiding its attention to a specific point in space at a specific time. Meanwhile, all the sneaky magic stuff is happening outside of the audience's focus. Playing along with magicians is fun we see the results and are entertained. But with a hacker, the result isn't nearly as amusing. We interviewed magician Brian Brushwood about social engineering while we were at South by Southwest. Check out the video above to see what he has to say about the tricks of the trade. " " "Physician, heal thyself," goes the biblical proverb. Does the same standard apply for surgeons who handle elective cosmetic procedures? Peter Dazeley/Getty Images At his San Diego office, Alex Roher, M.D., relaxes wrinkles and plumps deep lines one face at a time. For years, he's been administering vials of Botox and injectable fillers to patients eager to refresh their looks, but does the desire to look younger extend to industry professionals? Absolutely, Dr. Roher contends. "Most plastic surgeons have gone under the knife," says Roher. "The rate compared to the general public is much higher, from my experience." Advertisement Cosmetic vs. Plastic Surgery Before delving into the propensity of surgeons to undergo appearance-altering procedures, let's get a handle on the differences between cosmetic and plastic surgeons. Although "cosmetic" and "plastic" are terms often used interchangeably, they refer to two different levels of training. In general, surgeons who follow the training and certification process to become a board certified plastic surgeon are required to complete 150 cosmetic surgery cases as part of a rotation that includes surgical training for hands, reconstruction, trauma, congenital defects and other disorders. Plastic surgeons repair cleft palates and revise scars, as well as reconstruct limbs and breasts after surgery. However, plastic surgeons can perform surgical and noninvasive procedures that are strictly cosmetic, too. " " In the United States, plastic surgeons undergo cosmetic procedures at a higher rate than the general population, according to research. Innocenti/Cultura RF/Getty Images Cosmetic surgeons are focused on enhancing the appearance of a patient's face, neck or body with liposuction, tummy tucks, breast augmentations, facelifts and other cosmetic procedures. Cosmetic surgeries are considered elective, as are noninvasive procedures like laser resurfacing or Botox injections. To become board certified, cosmetic surgeons are required to complete 300 cosmetic surgery cases. Advertisement Surgery Rates Among Surgeons So, do most plastic or cosmetic surgeons elect to enhance their appearance? And, do they do so at a higher rate than the general public? "Yes and yes," says Grant Stevens, M.D., fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, and a clinical professor of plastic surgery at the University of Southern California. The results of a study published in the December 2009 Journal of Plastic Reconstructive Surgery seem to bear out this anecdotal evidence. The study found that, of the 276 plastic surgeons surveyed, a full one-third have had at least one type of cosmetic surgery, while Pew Research Center statistics show that of the general U.S. population, only 4 percent of adults say they've had cosmetic surgery. Of the surgeons who'd had surgery themselves, the most common surgical procedure (18.6 percent) was liposuction of the trunk and/or extremities. Interestingly, female plastic surgeons were less likely to have breast augmentation than the general population, but male plastic surgeons were more apt to have cosmetic procedures than men in the general population. It's a finding that holds true for Glenn Vallecillos, M.D., a board-certified plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills. "I continuously maintain and enhance my current features with the noninvasive treatments offered throughout my practice," says Dr. Vallecillos. "I will treat myself to a laser, yet other times I will ask one of my nurses to inject a little Botox." Like Dr. Vallecillos, 62 percent of the plastic surgeons in the 2009 study had undergone at least one type of minimally invasive cosmetic procedure, less serious than surgery. The most common procedure was Botox injections (31.5 percent), and female plastic surgeons had significantly more minimally invasive cosmetic procedures compared with male plastic surgeons (84.9 versus 57 percent). Advertisement The Selfie Effect In 2016, facial plastic surgeons reported an uptick in cosmetic surgeries by patients under 30, along with an increase in nonsurgical procedures, according to a member survey by the American Academy of Facial Plastics and Reconstructive Surgery. Fifty-one percent of AAFPRS members reported that more patients are seeking early intervention, with increasing numbers of men and women in their 20s and 30s opting for facial injectables. "The focus has shifted from correction to prevention," says Fred G. Fedok, M.D., president of the AAFPRS, in the report. "Even before the first signs of sagging, lines or volume loss, we are seeing patients adamant about stalling the aging process." Nearly all AAFPRS members 99 percent agreed that celebrity influence plays a big role. And so does social media. According to AAFPRS members, the top driver for cosmetic procedures is the impact of social media; of participating surgeons, 42 percent reported that patients are seeking cosmetic procedures to look better in selfies on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook Live and other social channels. The second-most reported motivating factor for patients was the desire to remain "relevant" and "competitive" at work. Advertisement Walking Billboards Many plastic surgeons are no different. They feel it's difficult to sell their services without looking like they've taken a dip in the fountain of youth themselves "One of the benefits of treating myself is I'm a walking billboard of my own work," plastic surgeon Lorrie Klein, M.D., said in a 2015 interview with Real Self magazine. "I'm proud of my artistry and like to show it off. What nature didn't give me or what age has taken away, I can frequently fix." Now That's Cool Where did the term "plastic surgery" originate? Ancient Greece, of course. The term comes from the Greek word "plastikos," which means to mold or to shape. The Supreme Court has affirmed the conviction of 53-year-old Irish national Eanna OCochlain who was caught in possession of two sticks of marijuana weighing less than a gram during a final security checkpoint at the Laoag City International Airport, Ilocos Norte in 2013. In a 36-page decision penned by Justice Diosdado Peralta, the SCs Third Division sustained the February 9, 2016 decision and the July 21, 2016 resolution of the Court of Appeals, which in turn upheld the November 22, 2013 decision of the Regional Trial Court, Branch 13, Laoag City, finding accused OCochlain guilty of violation of Republic Act 9165 or the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002. The tribunal ruled that failure to strictly comply with Section 21 (1) of R.A. No. 9165 does not necessarily render an accused persons arrest illegal or the items seized or confiscated from him inadmissible or render void and invalid such seizure. The SC said the most important factor was the preservation of the integrity and evidentiary value of the seized item. In this case, the Court held that there was substantial compliance with the chain of custody rule, noting that the prosecution was able to prove, through documentary and testimonial evidence, that the integrity and evidentiary value of the seized items were properly preserved in every step of the way. Citing People v. Del Monte, the Court held that non-compliance with the requirements of the law is not automatically fatal to the prosecutions case and the accused may still be held guilty of the offense charged. The Court also held that the chain of custody rule is a matter of evidence and a rule of procedure, it being ultimately anchored on the weight and admissibility of evidence which the courts have the exclusive prerogative to decide. Any missing link, gap, doubt, challenge, break, problem, defect or deficiency in the chain of custody goes to the weight of the evidence, not in its admissibility, it said.To assess an allegedly faulty chain of custody, the court looks for ample corroborative evidence as to the evidences acquisition and subsequent custody. The court need not rule out every possibility that the evidence underwent alteration; it needs only to find that the reasonable probability is that the evidence has not been altered in any material aspect, it said. The SC pointed out that, in this case, there was not a reasonable airport search but that OCochlain had waived his right against unreasonable searches when he gave his consent to the warrantless search. A search was made on OCochlain when airport authorities detected the smell of marijuana at the departure area. The high court stressed that an airport search is reasonable when limited in scope to the object of the Anti-Hijacking program, not the war on illegal drugs. Unlike a routine search where a prohibited drug was found by chance, a search on the person of the passenger or on his personal belongings in a deliberate and conscious effort to discover an illegal drug is not authorized under the exception to the warrant and probable cause requirement. The Court, however, held that there was a valid consented warrantless search in the case of OCochlain who readily agreed when the security screening officer (SSO) requested to conduct a pat-down search on him. It noted that the record is devoid of any evidence that OCochlain manifested objection or hesitation on the body search. A plan to create the nations largest research dairy advanced earlier this month with the Idaho State Board of Educations vote to allow the University of Idaho to buy land for the $45 million project. The University of Idaho and Idaho dairy industry-led effort will create the Idaho Center for Agriculture Food and the Environment, commonly referred to as CAFE. The project took a major step forward with the go-ahead to finalize purchase of land in Minidoka County near Rupert, Idaho. The University of Idaho and Idaho Dairymens Association (IDA) will jointly purchase 540 acres from members of the Whitesides family, who will in turn donate another parcel of land. The university will pay $2.5 million and IDA will pay $2 million toward the purchase. IDA members first began working with the University of Idaho 15 years ago on this project and dedicated funding to the project a decade ago. Since then, Idahos dairy industry grew dramatically to rank third nationally in milk production. Much of that growth took place in south central Idahos Magic Valley, principally in Jerome, Gooding, Twin Falls, Cassia, and Minidoka counties. Why is that important? University of Idaho economists project that milk sales in 2018 totaled $2.36 billion, a third of Idaho agricultures total cash receipts. Brandon Whitesides, who is selling the property with his sister Stacey Jackson and father Brent, said the familys goal is supporting the dairy industry. As a student at Brigham Young University, Brandon worked at the 500-cow university dairy there. BYU no longer operates that dairy, so the University of Idaho effort will fill a vital educational need at the state and local level. Far bigger plans In meetings with Idaho legislators last month, Michael Parrella, dean of the college of agriculture and life sciences at the University of Idaho, outlined plans for CAFE that reach beyond the new research dairy. Those plans include an outreach and education center near the Interstate 84 and U.S. Highway 93 interchange and greater focus on food processing through a partnership with the College of Southern Idaho and its existing facilities. In 2017, the Idaho Legislature appropriated $10 million from the states Permanent Building Fund to help finance the project with an additional $5 million investment anticipated as the project progresses. To comment, email your remarks to intel@hoards.com. (c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2019 March 18, 2019 " " The Bradford pear seemed perfect for suburban America: a nice, neat canopy shape; not too big; seemingly hardy and showy colors in spring and fall. But its invasiveness and smell has made it a tough one to love. PhotoviewPlus/Getty Images If the Bradford pear tree were a celebrity, it would no doubt be looking for a new publicist. It's pretty to look at, with its springtime blooms of puffy white flowers contrasted by crimson fall colors. And it was once the darling of subdivision planners across America. But it turns out the tree has a whole canopy of flaws (some of them sexual in nature) that are driving its reputation sorry for the extra metaphor here straight into the ground. Among them: its brittle build, its selfish ways, its poor self-care and let's be honest here the fact that it's awfully promiscuous. Also, and this is a flora-specific flaw: It's not even from here! According to The Washington Post, the tree is a "nightmare," "an environmental time bomb," and "an ecological marauder destined to continue its spread for decades." The New York Times simply calls it, "the most despised tree." And that's not even talking about the tree's smell, which most people in the world (except for, admittedly, this writer) find offensive. Haters, trolls and straight-up journalists say it smells like, like, like, "semen and rotting flesh," according to The Times. Or, like, "the private booths at an adult theater," according to someone on Reddit. Or, like, "slightly rotted fish." The last description is courtesy of Alex Beasley, the donor and public relations manager for Trees Atlanta, a nonprofit in the Georgia capital city with a mission to "protect and improve Atlanta's urban forest." Even he doesn't like the Bradford pear. "I have never personally heard anybody mention this tree scent as pleasant," Beasley says. "I think it's awful." Advertisement Wait, Aren't Trees Good? OK, OK, so the tree smells. But it's a tree. It gives us oxygen. In this dire world of obvious climate change extreme storms, drought and countless associated maladies don't we need all the trees we can get? Don't we need more tree huggers, and fewer tree haters? Well, yes, say Beasley (who is also a landscape architect) and countless other arborists and environmentalists. But the issues with the Bradford pear are motley and manifold. Its top offenses, aside from the smell, are that it's invasive to the United States. A version of it, the Callery pear, was brought over from Chinato the Northwest U.S. in the early 20th century, in an effort led in part by botanist David Fairchild, who is known as "the guy who helped bring the Japanese cherry blossoms" to Washington, D.C. The Callery was thought to be resistant to fire blight, a serious bacterial disease that affects other pear trees. The idea was to use the Callery "as a rootstock onto which varieties of the European pear could be grafted." Fast-forward to 1960: Tree scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Glenn Dale, Maryland, released the Bradford pear a cultivar of the Callery to the public. It didn't matter that it was pear-less, despite its name. "People went bonkers," in a good way, The New York Times noted. The tree seemed perfect for suburban America: a nice, neat canopy shape; not too big; seemingly hardy and showy colors in spring and fall. It became commonplace in the U.S., from north to south, east to west. "Much like a crape myrtle is today, for a time this was the hot tree for contractors and home builders to plant," says Beasley. "It was easily sourced, fast-growing ... and virtually indestructible." All was well in the world. And then it was not. " " The Bradford pear (Pyrus calleryana) is a beautiful, but invasive and highly destructive species, first introduced into the American landscape by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1960. Arthur Tilley/Getty Images Advertisement Here to Stay? Through the years and decades, problems with this pear tree emerged. The smell was one thing. But upon maturity, Bradford pears and their V-crotch of branches become structurally weak. "We've been cleaning up its storm damage" ever since, Beasley says. Once the tree put down its roots in North America, however, it wasn't going anywhere in part, because it so easily propagates. Six months after blooming, the Bradford offers clusters of seedy berries to birds, who then fly away, poop out the seeds and spread the tree to new forests. Further, the Bradford pears are greedy, tree experts say. Their roots soak up water so well, they have been known to negatively affect plants and trees around them. "If only people knew that when they plant one of these trees, they've possibly planted a hundred others, which have the power to ravage a forest's trees, which countless numbers of wildlife depend on," Beasley says. Advertisement Is It Too Late to Complain? The tree's invasive qualities certainly stand out, it cannot be denied. But, for a devil's advocate perspective, let's consider a counterpoint: The world is now filled with invasive species, thanks largely to what some argue is the most invasive species of all: us, Homo sapiens. As we have conquered the globe, we have helped spread untold numbers of plant and animal life, which have decimated untold numbers of previously "native" species around the world. With that in mind, does there come a time when "invasiveness" just becomes "reality"? Beasley answers unequivocally: The fight is still on. "Never replant with an invasive species," he says. "This is about as bad as intentionally planting English ivy in your yard. You're dooming your neighbors for generations. "When there is an opportunity to replant to help mend past damages to our urban forest, why not take it?" he asks. "Trade out crape myrtle for a native hornbeam. Trade out Leyland cypress for eastern red cedar. Trade out a Bradford pear for an oak. "I just do not know how it's legal to sell plants that we know are invasive," he continues. "[Ban them] for the same reason you can no longer smoke on airplanes it adversely affects others. How can we buy a plant that is so destructive to our forests and causes millions (if not billions) in tax dollar remediation?" Until then, what to do? It's spring. The Bradford pears are blooming. The next time you pass one, take a deep breath. If you don't like the smell, hold your nose, and perhaps complain about it online. And daydream. "If I only had a DeLorean," Beasley says, referencing the time-traveling automobile in the "Back to the Future" movie franchise. "Yes, I'd wipe this tree from the American landscape." Strong words. But not out of line with popular opinion. While it was briefly a celebrated member of the U.S. flora landscape, to be a Bradford pear tree these days really stinks. Now That's Interesting The native dogwood tree, like the Bradford pear, blooms white flowers in spring. But it's celebrated literally. Every year, a number of cities and towns hold festivals in its honor. Advertisement Originally Published: Mar 21, 2019 The key is to let nature lead the way, says Jean-Eric Paquet, the European Commission's Director General for Research and Innovation In a campaign stop at Tacloban, Leyte on Tuesday, broadcast journalist and senatorial candidate Jiggy Manicad vowed to end hunger for Filipinos if elected into the Senate as he recalled the food crisis and looting that happened in the city during his television coverage of the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda in 2013. My number one platform is food because I saw what we experienced here, not just in Tacloban, not just in Eastern Visayas [during Yolanda]. We got to a point where we had money in our pockets, but we could not buy any food, Manicad said in a speech in Filipino. There was looting. There were people who got food from the stores and went back to pay after the typhoon, but others were so hungry, they forgot to go back, he added. According to the veteran journalist, when areas experience a food crisis, chaos ensues. This has prompted him to tackle food security as one of his primary platforms. That is why my priority is to strengthen our agricultural sector by helping our farmers and giving them subsidies, especially for the diesel and gasoline that they use for their equipment, Manicad explained. The candidate also batted for benefits to boost the coconut industry and additional investments on irrigation in places with insufficient irrigation systems. The President is right to make irrigation free, but there are still places where there is not enough water, so we should really support this, Manicad said. The effect of all these reforms is that when we bring more supplies of food to the cities, they can be bought at cheaper prices, he added. In light of the climate change, Manicad said the Philippines must plan to sustain the sufficiency of its food supply, especially since even now many Filipinos are only eating once a day.Some Filipinos only eat rice. If there is no rice, they will just drink water. If there is salt, thats the only thing they will eat their rice. There are still many Filipinos who are hungry, Manicad pointed out. In a study made by the University of the Philippines School of Statistics, the incidence of self-rated hunger increased from 9.4% in the second quarter of 2018 to 13.3% in the third quarter of 2018. Manicad also recalled his coverage of Typhoon Yolanda. When I arrived here, it seemed like a reunion because you have become a part of my life and I have become part of yours, Manicad said. There are those who say that Im brave when it comes to covering the news, but here in Tacloban, I thought I was going to die. I made sure I was wearing my wedding ring because I thought that if they found my corpse, they can use it to identify me. Manicad also shared the ordeal he and his crew experienced in order to broadcast the news after the storm surge in Leyte, including having to climb trees and electricity cables, and walk for hours during their coverage. For his coverage of Typhoon Yolanda, Manicad earned the Sangyaw Award from the Tacloban local government and the Super Journalist Award from the SM Super Media Awards body. The coverage also became part of a GMA News and Public Affairs report compilation which led to a prestigious Peabody Award for the network in 2015. Dried porcini When I travel to a new city I always seek out the local farmers markets. My obsession is fueled by my fond memories of selling vegetables on the Old State Capitol Plaza with my grandfather-in-law during my summers off from college during the early 70s. If traveling by car, Ive been known to drive back home with a trunkful of fresh produce. When I travel by plane I have to be more restrained. I love fresh mushrooms, especially varieties that dont show up in local markets. My absolute favorite mushrooms are porcini (Boletus edulis), which Ive found in markets in Europe and the Pacific Northwest. Unfortunately, ordering porcini online costs $48 a pound plus about $20 for shipping. On a recent trip to Portland, Oregon, I traveled with minimal clothes and my biggest suitcase solely for the purpose of bringing back a whole case of my favorite mushrooms Several years ago, while visiting Paris, I bought a bagful of the most beautiful porcini I had ever laid my eyes on. Doubtful that Id be able to smuggle them through customs, I brought them with me to lunch at a small neighborhood bistro and asked if they could cook them for me. They obligingly agreed to. Simply sauteed in butter with a little fresh thyme, they were perhaps the most delicious mushrooms I had ever tasted. Later, back in the U.S., I reviewed my credit card bill and realized that I had been charged nearly $40 to have them cook my shrooms!When I travel in my bus, its always a hassle keeping things cold. Because my bus doesnt have a refrigerator or freezer and I have to use coolers, I try to stock nonperishable ingredients whenever possible. The flavor of porcini stands up well to being dehydrated. Dried porcini are full of umami and are an easy and convenient way to amp up flavors in my cooking. They add an earthy, meaty-like flavor to my dishes. Dried porcini can either be reconstituted or ground to a fine powder. Though some mushrooms like morels and hen of the woods plump back up to their original size and texture when reconstituted, rehydrated porcini tend to be limp and mushy, but they add intense flavor, especially when powdered.Dried porcini are available from Amazon.com, but I try to shop local whenever possible so I buy my dried mushrooms from the bulk containers at Springfields Food Fantasies. Stored well-covered and kept in a cool dry place, dried mushrooms should last well over a year.To reconstitute dried porcini, simply soak them in a bowl of warm water. They will increase in weight about 6 to 8 times. To maximize flavor, I like to soak them overnight. If I havent planned ahead and need to use them right away, Ill soak them in hot water for a minimum of 30 minutes. With a quick soak, however, the flavor wont be as intense. After reconstituting, squeeze out as much liquid as possible. The soaking liquid can be strained through a coffee filter to remove grit and then used as a mushroom stock. Reconstituted porcini can be chopped into smaller pieces and used in stews or risottos. Ill sometimes combine reconstituted dried porcini with less flavorful fresh white or crimini mushrooms; the fresh mushrooms have a better mouthfeel than the reconstituted mushrooms.Dried porcini can also be ground into a fine powder in a clean coffee grinder or food processor and used like a seasoning. After grinding, allow the powder to settle or you will release a cloud of mushroom powder when you open the lid. This mushroom powder can be used as a dry rub for meats and poultry, added to flour when making bread or pasta, sprinkled on to mashed or roasted potatoes, or used to thicken sauces.Ingredients2 cups warm water4 1/2 cups chicken stock, plus a little additional if needed1 cups dried porcini mushrooms (about 1 ounces)4 T. unsalted butter c. finely diced onion, NOT super-sweet1 tsp. kosher or sea salt2 cups Arborio or Carnaroli rice - 1 c. freshly grated Parmigianino Reggiano or aged Asiago cheeseFreshly ground pepper to tasteChopped flat-leaf parsley for garnishPreparationSoak dried porcini in the warm water overnight or in hot water for at least 30 minutes.Remove porcini and squeeze excess liquid back into bowl. Rinse well to remove any gritRough chop the reconstituted porcini.Strain mushroom soaking liquid through a coffee filter into a large saucepan, add the chicken stock, and heat to a bare simmer.In a large heavy pan, heat the butter over medium high heat and add the onion and 1 teaspoon salt. Saute, stirring frequently, until the onion is softened and translucent, but not browned, 3-5 minutes.Add the rice to the pan and cook a few minutes more until the rice has absorbed most of the butter and has become somewhat translucent.Reduce the heat to medium low and add enough of the stock mixture to cover the rice by about one inch. Cook at a very low simmer, stirring very frequently.As the liquid is absorbed, add additional stock to keep the rice covered. When the stock mixture has been absorbed, check the rice. It should be cooked through, but still firm to the tooth al dente. Total cooking time should be about 20-30 minutes.When the rice is cooked, add the porcini and heat through. Stir in the cheese and pepper and check for salt. Serve immediately, garnished with chopped parsley.Serves 4-6Ingredients oz dried porcini mushrooms, broken up (about cup)1 tablespoon kosher salt1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepperI teaspoon crushed red pepper1 teaspoon granulated garlic1 teaspoon sugarExtra-virgin olive oil2 bone-in rib-eye steaks (about 1 lb. each)PreparationPlace dried porcini in a clean coffee grinder or food processor and grind to a fine powder. Allow mushroom powder to settle before opening lid.Combine with the salt, black pepper, crushed red pepper, garlic and sugar.Coat steaks with olive oil and sprinkle liberally with the porcini rub.Wrap tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or at least 4 hours.Thirty minutes before cooking remove steaks from refrigerator.Heat large cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and heat to shimmering. Place steaks in hot pan and cook for 5 minutes, then turn over with tongs and cook 3-4 minutes more for medium-rare.Transfer to a cutting board. Tent with foil and let stand 5 minutes.Give me a home where the buffalo roam was never part of Peter Glatzs game plan but the opportunity to spend a year cooking in a highly touted restaurant in Oklahoma City was just too enticing to pass up. During his hiatus from Springfield he will continue to share his culinary adventures with IT readers. Tempura-battered bison testicles anyone? The Springfield and Central Illinois African American History Museum (AAHM) will host a grand opening for the exhibit The Middle Passage. The Middle Passage refers to the part of the slave trade where Africans were transported across the Atlantic to the West Indies under dire, crowded conditions. The exhibit includes a replica of a slave ship, with an interior atmosphere that imitates the cramped space of a slave ship, physical images representing slaves and an image of Mother Africa weeping and mourning over the capture of her children. It also includes narratives on the history of slavery and the Middle Passage in particular. This is a new type of exhibit for the AAHM because of its interactive, unique and innovative design. It will provide a visual, audio and sensory experience which is the first of its kind for the AAHM. The exhibit was designed and constructed by Jim Betts, an instructor at LLCC and retired scenic department head at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. The exhibit is sponsored by the Rotary Club of Springfield South, LLCC, ALPLM and the Springfield Arts Council. The Middle Passage March 23, 5:30 p.m. Sat. AAHM 1440 Monument Ave. 217-391-6323 Donations accepted Illinois Times has provided readers with independent journalism for more than 40 years, from news and politics to arts and culture. Now more than ever, were asking for your support to continue providing our community with real news that everyone can access, free of charge. Were also offering a home delivery option as an added convenience for friends of the paper. Click here to subscribe, or simply show your support for Illinois Times. A bunch of weak political arguments have been used so far against Gov. J.B. Pritzkers proposed constitutional amendment for a graduated income tax. But there is a clear path to killing it. My favorite argument was the complaint that the governor is trying to impose a millionaires tax. Thats precisely the sort of Wont everyone please think of the rich people? reaction Team Pritzker wants desperately to provoke. Another argument Im seeing developing is that Illinois is too broke to include the governors proposed tax cut for 97 percent of taxpayers, no matter how modest that cut may be. But in an age when the wealthy are receiving massive federal tax breaks and corporations are regularly handed taxpayer-financed gifts at the state and local levels, arguing against a smallish break for families earning $40,000 a year is political nonsense and also plays right into Pritzkers hand. The Illinois Policy Institute is trying to assert that the proposal doesnt raise nearly as much money as Gov. Pritzker is claiming -- anywhere from about a third to two-thirds less. But that argument makes it look like the Pritzker plan would take far less money away from the private sector than the governor has advertised. It seems counterintuitive. The claim also undermines the House Republicans argument that they stand strongly opposed to a $3.4 billion tax hike. The claim may be useful down the road in another context, however. Another argument is the tax hike wont bring in enough money to close the states massive structural deficit. But Pritzkers resistance to calls for even higher taxation will allow him to come off as a moderate, splitting the difference between the left and the right. Ideas Illinois, the dark money group fronted by former Illinois Manufacturers Association president Greg Baise, has probably the best argument right now against the Pritzker tax plan. The latest We Ask America poll found that only 23 percent of Illinois voters believe the state is heading in the right direction while 65 percent say its on the wrong track. The idea is to feed into that anger by telling people what they already know. We really cant trust J.B. Pritzker or the other Springfield politicians, the same people who in the last eight years have raised taxes twice, to really not take this as a blank check, Baise said on WGN Radio not long ago. In other words, this tax plan is just an attractive placeholder that will be replaced by a much more harmful plan as soon as House Speaker Michael Madigan can muster the votes. The truth is, income taxes are historically difficult to increase here. The tax has been raised just twice since 1989. And one of those increases was a partial restoration of an automatic tax cut. But some of that tax may not be so difficult to increase if a graduated tax is allowed by the Illinois Constitution. Temporary fiscal downturn? Pension payments rise? Just slap another percentage point or two of taxation on the rich people. This is the biggest reason why the wealthy are so opposed to a graduated income tax here. And its also why a graduated tax would likely protect the middle class from significantly higher rates, no matter what Baise says. However, because Illinois government is so thoroughly distrusted, the opponents may very well be able to convince enough of the electorate that while the governor may be urging them to vote to tax the rich, theyre really voting to give the hugely unpopular Mike Madigan carte blanche to raise taxes on the middle class. In that context, using the argument that the tax hike on the rich wont raise as much money as advertised and the claim that even if the tax hike brings in all the money Pritzker projects, it still wont be nearly enough to balance the states books would serve a useful end: Youre taxing the rich today, but, one way or another, youre taxing yourself tomorrow. I dont believe that prediction is true, but I do believe it could be a very potent argument. Photo byLindsey Salvatelli Angel Sides, District 186 substitute teacher, and family business owners Ward 4 Ald. John Fulgenzi and John Thomas, face off in the north end to represent Ward 4 on the city council. Ward 4 Alderman John Fulgenzi is used to having competition when it comes to politics and business. The alderman, whos seeking a second term on the city council, has two opponents who have both unsuccessfully run for elected office: John Thomas as a write-in mayoral candidate and Angel Sides for the 13th Congressional District. In addition to being the incumbent, Fulgenzi has the advantage of name recognition, due to his familys long political history in Springfield. His daughter-in-law, Annette Fulgenzi, was appointed to the Sangamon County Board in 2015 after Fulgenzi stepped down following his election to the city council. Fulgenzi had served on the county board since 2004, when he was appointed to fill a seat that had been vacated by his son, Jeff Fulgenzi, who is also an elected member of the Lincoln Land Community College board. The family business, Fulgenzis Pizza & Pasta on East Sangamon Avenue, has served as Fulgenzis office for hearing constituent complaints and meeting with other city officials. When Illinois Times scheduled a meeting with the alderman for this story, the interview had an audience as Mayor Jim Langfelder, corporation counsel Jim Zerkle and the citys communication director, Julia Frevert, finished their lunch with Fulgenzi. Whether it is a phone call or someone dropping in at the restaurant, Im available 24 hours a day, Fulgenzi said. Even his opponents, Sides and Thomas, have said Fulgenzi is a nice guy. I like him, I just think hes a little restricted on his ability to get out and see the problems in our ward, said Thomas, referring to Fulgenzis health issues. Fulgenzi, who has dealt with a stroke and kidney cancer in recent years, has said that while he may not be able to walk door-to-door throughout his ward, he can still respond to constituents and address matters that come before the council. Thomas, who now owns his familys business and works as a mechanic at E. E. Thomas Garage, thinks his ward needs someone who will be able to get out and assess the conditions of the ward without help. As president of the homeowners association in Twin Lakes, Thomas said Fulgenzi was absent when there were drainage issues with five roads in his subdivision. Thomas said he never called Fulgenzi about the two inches of ice that built up in cul-de-sacs after a heavy snowfall, but he thinks those are the type of problems Fulgenzi needs to be vigilant about and address proactively. Our alderman, he never came out and surveyed the problem or was aware of that, Thomas said. Sides, a substitute teacher for District 186, agrees with Thomas when it comes to Fulgenzi not being an effective leader. He seems like a nice guy, but he doesnt have the ability to represent the residents of Ward 4 when it comes to matters of liquor licensing, Sides said, referring to Fulgenzis decision to not vote on ordinances that deal with liquor or gaming since he has both licenses at his restaurant. Sides describes herself as a progressive candidate who is concerned about the environment, how to add more solar panels to the city as an energy source and advocates for a city-owned internet service and bank. Im not afraid of appearing too progressive, because in actuality, when people are polled they all want the same thing, Sides said. Despite their differences, the candidates and incumbent all agree that there are problems around the ward that need attention. However, most issues that concern residents are problems Fulgenzi says he cant solve since he is just one vote on the council. An alderman can only control so many things. Fulgenzi said. One issue Fulgenzi has been actively involved in is the creation of the citys newest TIF district along Peoria Road, a tool Fulgenzi thinks is necessary to restore the historic Route 66, where Fulgenzis restaurant sits. Fulgenzi also spoke positively about the recently city council supported $56 million downtown hotel project. Sides agrees with Fulgenzi that Springfield could benefit from additional tourism revenue, while Thomas takes another approach. He said residents on the east side of town should be relocated since most are living in unhealthy conditions, but he didnt offer specifics about how this could happen. Thomas said with the houses demolished, the open area could be sold to businesses that use Interstate 55 to transport goods to Chicago and St. Louis. Fulgenzi said he thinks economic development should be something left to the experts and the citys economic development commission. I dont pretend to know how to attract businesses. I leave those questions to the pros and make judgments on whats reported to the council, Fulgenzi said. Lindsey Salvatelli is an editorial intern with Illinois Times as part of the Public Affairs Reporting masters degree program at University of Illinois Springfield. Contact her at intern@illinoistimes.com. As of August 26th, 2021 Yahoo India will no longer be publishing content. Your Yahoo Account Mail and Search experiences will not be affected in any way and will operate as usual. We thank you for your support and readership. For more information on Yahoo India, please visit the FAQ The Bayan Muna Party-list has joined calls for the Supreme Court to invalidate several alleged sweetheart deals between Manila Electric Company and its affiliated power generating companies in 2016, which could result to high power rates for the next 20 years. In a 28-page petition-in-intervention, Bayan Muna chairman and opposition senatorial candidate Neri Javier Colmenares and Bayan Muna Party-list Representative Carlos Isagani Zarate asked the SC to immediately issue a temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction enjoining the Energy Regulatory Commission from approving the said power supply agreements. The original petition was filed by Alyansa Para sa Bagong Pilipinas, Inc. in 2017. Bayan Muna also sought to nullify ERC Resolution No. 1 Series of 2016, which reset the deadline for compliance with the competitive selection process (CSP) from Nov. 6, 2015 to April 30, 2016, thus, exempting the power supply agreements (PSA) from undergoing transparent and public bidding ordained in the CSP. The CSP rules requires power distributors to get at least two offers for supply of electricity before awarding a power supply agreement, ensuring the least cost for electricity consumers. There is no reason for the issuance of ERC Resolution No. 1 Series of 2016 other than to facilitate the approval of the several sweetheart and self-negotiated power supply agreements of Meralco and respondents generation compaies, and to circumvent and defeat the CSP Rules and the energy reform policy of the State, the petition stated. The petitioners alleged that the intention for the issuance of the said ERC resolution is to give more time to Meralco and respondent generation companies and other players to enter into self-negotiated PSAs in violation of the CSP policy of the State. According to the petitioners, by extending the CSP deadline from November 2015 to April 2016, the ERC allowed Meralco to enter into seven with its affiliated power generating companies, tying up 3,551 megawatts, or 90 percent of its supply, to 20-year contracts that would cost consumers P12.44 billion a year. They warned that historically, Meralcos negotiated contracts with its subsidiary companies were overpriced by as much as 20 percent compared to those of non-related generating companies.Obviously, the ERC knows the benefits of CSPensuring a level playing filed, procuring the best offer, ensuring transparency, provides another layer of screening for better price discovery, the group said. And yet, despite these avowed benefts of CSP, the ERC deferred the CSP implementation to a later date. The result of which allowed the biggest distribution utilities in the Philippines, Meralco, to dispose 90 percent of its energy requirement via self-negotiated contracts with affiliated companies; these contract run for 20 long years, it added. Besides, the petitioners said ERC violated the laws and its own rules of procedure when it allowed the questioned PSAs to be filed beyondthe extended deadline. The ERC circumvented the CSP mandate twice over first in extending its actual implementation via the assailed ERC resolution, and second in accommodating the late filers beyond office hours and beyond April 29, the petition read. Thus, the petitioners asked the Court to declare null and void the separate PSAs of Meralco with affiliated generation companies for their failure to comply with the CSP rules. We believe that some ERC officials bent backwards several times to accommodate these Meralco power deals. We repeat our vow to oppose these PSAs and hold officials who allow it accountable, the petitioners said. Aside from Meralco and the ERC, also named as respondents in the original petition were the Department of Energy, Central Luzon Premiere Power Corporation, St. Raphael Power Generation, Panay Energy Development Corporation, Mariveles Power Generation Corporation, Global Luzon Energy Development Corporation, Atimonan One Energy Inc., Redondo Peninsula Energy Inc., and Philippine Competition Commission. WFIU is south central Indianas source for news and classical and jazz music, broadcasting from the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington. WFIUs programming draws from a variety of internationally acclaimed academic and professional departments and we have a partnership with the Indiana Universitys Jacobs School of Music. 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The report provides an overview of the local content and services from WTIU and WFIU. View the stations Local Content And Service Reports . Privacy Policy Terms of Service Reports Closed Captioning All programming provided by WTIU Public Television (WTIU) complies with the closed captioning requirements established by the Federal Communications Commission as embodied in 47 C.F.R. 79.1, including regulations concerning closed captioning quality. Programming provided by WTIU complies with these regulations by either: (i) satisfying the caption quality standards set forth in 47 C.F.R. 79.1(j)(2); (ii) adopting and following the Video Programmer Best Practices set forth in 47 C.F.R. 79.1(k)(1); or (iii) being subject to one or more of the captioning exemptions set forth in 47 C.F.R. 79.1(d), including programming for which the audio is in a language other than English or Spanish and that is not scripted programming that can be captioned using the electronic news room technique; interstitial material, promotional announcements, and public service announcements that are 10 minutes or less in duration; and/or programming that consists primarily of non-vocal music. FOR FILIPINO FISHERMEN. Taking the cudgels for Filipinos and hundreds of thousands of persecuted and injured Filipino fishermen, former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario (left) and former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales (middle) have sued Chinese President Xi Jingping (right) of crimes against humanity for his actions in the South China Sea (pictured above) before the International Criminal Court on March 15just two days before the Philippines withdrew from the body. Former government officials accused Chinese President Xi Jingping of crimes against humanity for his actions in the South China Sea, bringing their complaint to the International Criminal Court on March 15, just two days before theIn their complaint, former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario and former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales accused Xi of crimes not only with Philippine territory but also in other states by carrying out a systematic plan to control the South China Sea. In a communication to ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, Del Rosario and Morales asked that Xi and other Chinese officials be investigated for crimes against humanity. The enclosed communication outlines how President Xi Jinping and other officials of China, in implementing Chinas systematic plan to control the South China Sea, have committed crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, the two former high-ranking Philippine officials said. Del Rosario and Morales said the atrocious actions of Chinese officials in the South China Sea and within Philippine territory constitute crimes against humanity that can be prosecuted by the ICC. Del Rosario served as secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs from 2011 to 2016 when the Philippines filed and won an arbitration case against China. The tribunal affirmed the Philippines exclusive sovereign rights over the West Philippine Sea and invalidated Chinas nine-dash line in the disputed South China Sea. Morales was ombudsman from 2011 to 2018, whose office bears the constitutional mandate of prosecuting corrupt officials in Philippine government. In their complaint, Del Rosario and Carpio said they were filing the case against Xi and other Chinese officials on behalf of Filipinos and the hundreds of thousands of Filipino fishermen persecuted and injured by atrocious actions of Chinese officials in the South China Sea and within Philippine territory. The former Philippine officials accused the Chinese officials of causing one of the most massive, near-permanent and devastating destruction of the environment in humanitys history, which has not only adversely affected and injured myriad groups of vulnerable fishermen, but present and future generations of people across nations. This has seriously undermined the food and energy security of the coastal states in the South China Sea, including the Philippines, said the communication, which was filed on March 15, two days before the effectivity of the Philippine withdrawal from Rome Statute on March 17. The complainants told the ICC chief prosecutor that the grave consequences of the Chinese actions justify the ICCs taking jurisdiction of their complaint, citing one of the tribunals principles that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished and their effective prosecution must be ensured.Though widely publicized, these atrocious actions of Chinese officials in the South China Sea and within Philippine territory remain unpunished, and it is only the ICC that can exact accountability on behalf of Filipinos and the international community, respecting the rule of law, the communication said. We urge you to initiate a preliminary examination on this matter, if only so the court can apprise itself of Chinese crimes committed not only against the Filipino people but also against people of other nations, which crimes are already known to the international community, Del Rosario and Morales added. We understand that the Court retains jurisdiction over crimes committed during the period the Philippines was a state party to the Rome Statute (1 November 2011 17 March 2019), the court exercises its jurisdiction over these crimes even after the effectivity of the Philippines withdrawal, they said, even as they vowed to supplement their communication with additional evidence against the respondents Chinese officials. Attached to the communication was a 17-page outline of how Xi and other Chinese officials committed crimes against humanity including testimonies of Filipino fishermen deprived of their livelihood. The complainant argued that the ICC can conduct preliminary examination because much of the evidence they presented was widespread, highly publicized incidents of Chinese incursions and included those that were already judicially vetted when the Philippines won the South China Sea arbitration against China at the United Nations Arbitral Tribunal in 2016. Besides Xi, also named as perpetrators were Chinese Foreign Minister and state councilor Wang Yi (as primary promoter of Chinas plan in the South China Sea, and as such he defends, promotes and facilitates the crimes) and Zhao Jinhua, Chinese ambassador to the Philippines. READ: Rody to kick out ICC probers Manila pullout from ICC in effect, UN tells members Updated May 29, 2014 Introduction; Consent to Terms Please read these Terms of Use before using indianapublicmedia.org or any features of this site, including, but not limited to Content Feeds, other syndicated distribution of content, Podcasts, widgets, social networking features (collectively, the Indiana Public Media Web Sites or the Service). By using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy. If you do not agree to these Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy, please exit the Service and do not use the Service or any of its features. We reserve the right, at our discretion, to modify, add or delete portions of these terms at any time by posting updated Terms of Use and/or an updated Privacy Policy on the Indiana Public Media Web Sites. Please check these Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy frequently for updates. 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Questions If you have any questions about the terms of use, please contact Indiana Public Media. WTIU is available to watch free over-the-air and online. It's also avaiable on various subscription services: cable, satellite, and YouTube TV. Over-the-Air Digital Ch. 30.1 WTIU HD Ch. 30.2 WTIU World Ch. 30.3 WTIU Create Ch. 30.4 WTIU Echo Ch. 30.5 WTIU Kids Comcast Cable (Bloomington) Ch. 5 WTIU Ch. 17 WTIU World Ch. 305 WTIU Create Ch. 355 WTIU Kids Ch. 1022 WTIU HD Satellite WTIU is available to Dish Network and DirecTV subscribers with the Indianapolis local stations package on Ch. 30 . Who should I contact about closed captioning problems? For captioning problems during non-emergency programming, you may file a written complaint with either the FCC or your video programming distributor (i.e., your cable or satellite TV service). If you do not pay for cable, satellite, or another subscription video service, WTIU viewers can receive informed assistance with an immediate closed captioning complaint by calling Television Master Control at (812) 855-9239, faxing to (812) 855-0729 or e-mailing to rtvtmc@indiana.edu. If the need is not immediate, or the WTIU viewer would prefer to send the comment via postal mail, letters can be sent to: Howard Lacer Assistant Chief Engineer 1229 East 7th Street Bloomington, IN 47405 Phone: (812) 855-2898; Fax: (812) 855-0729; E-mail: rtvtmc@indiana.edu The Federal Court of Canada [2019 C 29] recently saw a battle between two wax seal jewellery manufacturers: Pyrrha Design, and Plum & Posey. Pyrrha Design sued Plum & Posey for copyright infringement of the design of nine of its pieces of wax seal jewellery. : Pyrrha Design, and Plum & Posey. Pyrrha Design sued Plum & Posey for copyright infringement of the design of nine of its pieces of wax seal jewellery. The Federal Court of Canada, Phelan J., dismissed the claim of copyright infringement, stating that even if Pyrrha Design owned the copyright in the designs, Plum & Posey did not infringe it. The main questions raised by the Court in this case are the following: Does copyright subsist in any of the Pyrrha Designs because they are original artistic works? Are any of the works of the Plum & Posey that were similar to the nine designs so as to constitute copyright infringement? Facts Wax seals jewellery techniques have been around since the 1960s. Jewellery is created by transferring the image from a -existing wax seal tool to make metal jewellery. In this case, Design does not claim ownership of copyright in the process of making the wax seal jewellery but copyright in the Pyrrha Designs Creations significant creative work. The pieces were finished by a process of oxidisation and polishing. Pyrrha Design creations are available on line and in catalogues. Comparison of some of the alleged infringing jewellery Pyrrha Designs' creations were made between 2004 and 2012. Over this period 300-400 designs were manufactured based on antique wax seals and antique seal tools. The imagery in the wax seals used in the jewellery was not created nor modified, as the method of casting used (lost wax casting) did not involveThe pieces were finished by a process of oxidisation and polishing.Pyrrha Design creations are available on line and in catalogues. Plum & Posey Jewellery Plum & Posey's Jewellery was created between 2009 and 2013. The wax seal jewellery was made using Plum & Posey's own wax seals and wax seal tools, and no evidence was brought as to prove that the jewellery was made by copying Pyrrha Design's pieces. Overtime Plum & Posey's method of creating the jewellery changed but the source remained the same, i.e., the collection of wax seals. Plum & Posey mostly sells its merchandise through on line shop Etsy. Previous Litigation It is not the first time the two parties had faced each other in court: among other instances, in 2012 Pyrrha Designs filed for copyright and trade mark infringement against Plum & Posey for other pieces of jewellery compared to the ones at hand. This litigation resulted in the parites signing a Settlement Agreement in 2013, whereby Plum & Posey acknowledged Pyrrha's copyright on those wax-seal pieces of jewellery. Analysis Does copyright subsist in any of the Pyrrha Designs because they are original artistic works? The Federal Court answered "yes". In order to enjoy copyright protection under the Canadian Copyright Act [Paragraph 5(1), RSC 1985, c C-42], the work, wax seal jewellery in this case, must be (1) protected expressions of an idea and (2) original. According to Canadian case law, for copyright to subsist in a work, it must be a fixed expression of an idea. This means that it must be expressed in some material form, capable of identification and have permanent endurance. Therefore, ideas, concepts or methods are not protected by copyright in and of themselves. In this case, the Court found that the designs at issue were specific expressions of a certain seal image, thus they are a fixed expression, even if the method of creation belongs to the public domain. C CH Canadian Ltd v Law Society of Upper Canada, 2004 SCC 13 at para 16, [2004] 1 SCR 339, para 28): Pyrrha's cat wax seal design.... The Court also made reference to the 2013 Settlement Agreement, which according to Pyrrah was evidence of Plum & Posey's acknowledgement of the general existence of copyright in their designs. The Court found, first, that Posey's acknowledgment in that circumstance cannot confer copyright under the Copyright Act. Secondly, that acknowledgment related only to the specific pieces of jewellery under scrutiny in that case. The Court further noted that Pyrrah's decision to commence the litigation at hand shortly after the 2013 Settlement agreement constitutes evidence on the clear distinction between the two cases. Are any of the works of the Defendant similar to the nine designs at stake as to constitute copyright infringement? Furthermore, the Court found that Pyrrha's jewellery was original because it fulfilled the following three elements(i) the work originated from the author; (ii) the work was not copied; and (iii) the work was the product of the exercise of skill and judgment. Expanding on this last point, the Federal Court noted that Pyrrha's skill is expressed in the following ways: (i) the ability to work with wax to create the borders and finishing; (ii) in the selections of seals to be used; and (iii) in the expression of the seal's image in metal. Furthermore, the fact that Pyrrah used common techniques should not prevent the product from being eligible for copyright protection. The Federal Court also pointed out that the bar for establishing originality is low. The Federal Court answered "No". Under Canadian copyright law, in order to establish copyright infringement, the following needs to be established: direct proof of copying (which is not the case here) or two elements of infringement, namely similarity between the works and evidence of access to the work or connection between the two works. In the Cinar case ( Robinson, 2013 SCC 73, [2013] 3 S.C.R. 1168) ....and Plum & Posey's In undertaking the substantial similarity test, the judge examined pictures of the wax seal jewellery, and the items themselves. Given the simplicity of the jewellery, the bar for substantial similarity was set quite high. In adopting the holistic and qualitative approach, Phelan J. first singled out all the similarities and then determined whether those similarities represented "a substantial part of the author's skill and judgement". The similarities in the imagery did not form part of the author's skill and judgement as it is part of the public domain. Furthermore, the judge found that Plum & Posey's designs were not a "colourable imitation" of the Plaintiff's, as the similarities were more plausibly the result of using similar image sources and then choosing to modify the jewellery a little differently. Phelan J. further underlined how the original features of Pyrrha's designs relate to the skill and judgement performed in the process of oxidization by Pyrrha. However this process is commonly used in jewellery making and therefore, if held to be infringing, would be contrary to the purposes of the Act, which is to encourage creativity in using elements in the public domain. What can be protected is only "the specific way oxidization is used in each Pyrrha Design in combination with the rest of the features of the specific piece". As regards access , Phelan J.established that Plum & Posey had had access to the designs prior to creating its own jewellery but that access on its own does not establish infringement: They might have been inspired by Pyrrha in starting its wax seal jewellery designs but Pyrrha does not have copyright either in the idea of this type of jewellery neither on the process to create it. Therefore, no infringement was found. This Kat finds the approach adopted in this case very interesting, especially the function of the substantial similarity test, which has in fact the opposite function of finding similarities in trade mark confusion cases, as also underlined by the judge: the need is to assess whether a substantial part has been copied and not whether a layperson is able to recognise the similarities. The Federal Court answered "No".Under Canadian copyright law, in order to establish copyright infringement, the following needs to be established: direct proof of copying (which is not the case here) or two elements of infringement, namelybetween the works and evidence ofto the work or connection between the two works.In thecase ( Cinar Corporation v. it was established that an infringing work will be deemed to have copied a "substantial part" where "it has recreated a substantial part of the originality in the copyrighted work" and whether the similarities are "a substantial part of the author's skill and judgement". This exercise needs to be carried out looking holistically and qualitatively at the copyrighted work and at the alleged infringing work.In undertaking thetest, the judge examined pictures of the wax seal jewellery, and the items themselves. Given the simplicity of the jewellery, the bar for substantial similarity was set quite high. In adopting the holistic and qualitative approach, Phelan J. first singled out all the similarities and then determined whether those similarities represented "a substantial part of the author's skill and judgementThe similarities in the imagery did not form part of the author's skill and judgement as it is part of the public domain. Furthermore, the judge found that Plum & Posey's designs were not a "colourable imitation" of the Plaintiff's, as the similarities were more plausibly the result of using similar image sources and then choosing to modify the jewellery a little differently.Phelan J. further underlined how the original features of Pyrrha's designs relate to the skill and judgement performed in the process of oxidization by Pyrrha. However this process is commonly used in jewellery making and therefore, if held to be infringing, would be contrary to the purposes of the Act, which is to encourage creativity in using elements in the public domain. What can be protected is only "the specific way oxidization is used in each Pyrrha Design in combination with the rest of the features of the specific piece"As regards, Phelan J.established that Plum & Posey had had access to the designs prior to creating its own jewellery but that access on its own does not establish infringement: They might have been inspired by Pyrrha in starting its wax seal jewellery designs but Pyrrha does not have copyright either in the idea of this type of jewellery neither on the process to create it.Therefore, no infringement was found.This Kat finds the approach adopted in this case very interesting, especially the function of the substantial similarity test, which has in fact the opposite function of finding similarities in trade mark confusion cases, as also underlined by the judge: the need is to assess whether a substantial part has been copied and not whether a layperson is able to recognise the similarities. prePyrrha To illustrate this point, CNBC quoted Middle East analyst Jessica Leyland as saying, All the agreements enable an increased Iranian physical presence on Iraqi soil, part of the purpose of which is to use Iraq to connect [Irans] sphere of influences. In accordance with that goal, the Rouhani government secured a deal for the construction of a railway that will connect Iranian and Iraqi cities, and will presumably be extended thereafter to connect Iran directly to Damascus, Beirut, and the eastern Mediterranean. Furthermore, in the interest of guaranteeing that the Islamic Republic can utilize such transport routes, and Iraqi territory more generally, for its own ends, Irans actions are aimed at subverting Iraqi sovereignty and making Iraq dependent on Iran, according to a senior State Department official who spoke to CNBC. The report noted that such commentary is in keeping with Secretary of State Mike Pompeos assertion that Tehran wishes to make Iraq into a vassal state. More generally, it is also in keeping with the often repeated observation that Iran is intent on creating a Shiite crescent of regional influence, for the sake of positioning itself as the standard-bearer for Islamist unity in the Middle East and beyond. This is undoubtedly an outcome that the US, and particularly the administration of President Donald Trump, is intent on preventing. But in pursuing that effort, Washington may not be able to simply cut off Iraq from Iranian influence. Attempts to do so may in fact alienate a tentative partner in the region. The administrations need to tread lightly in this area was arguably underscored by the report that Washington would be extending a waiver to Iraq for 90 more days of sanctions-free purchasing of Iranian electricity. This follows the White House extending sanctions waivers to Iraq and seven other major importers of Iranian oil after re-imposing secondary sanctions on the Islamic Republic last November. This decision contrasted with the administrations former statements professing that it would exert maximum pressure on the Islamic Republic without any delay, but it reflected the realities of a situation in which even reliable partners of the US are at odds with the White House over the future of Iranian relations. But even though these political realities underscore the administrations need to apply pressure on its allies gradually and over the long term, there is nevertheless a growing sense of urgency around the issue of containing Irans regional ambitions. This sentiment has no doubt grown in recent days as Iran has been making more and more aggressive statements about its own commitment to countering Western regional influence and American interests in particular. On Monday, Iranian officials plainly demanded that the US withdraw its troops from Syria, where they have been supporting Kurdish forces and pro-democratic rebels in the midst of the nations civil war and the broader fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. At the same time, the Iran-backed government in Damascus threatened to attack the local Kurdish forces in a bid to reassert the Assad regimes control over the entirety of Syrian territory. Such threats are made possible in large part by the entrenched presence of both Iranian forces and Iran-backed militants. And according to Reuters, that entrenchment was on vivid display in both Syria and Iraq on Monday, with the chief of staff of the Iranian military declaring that all three countries were united and coordinating at a high level. At the same time, an Iraqi lieutenant general delivered remarks via Syria television that praised the notion of opening the borders among the three countries, potentially casting further doubt on the limits of Irans territorial control. Questions about those limits and about the implications of Iranian influence were underlined on Monday by Newsweek, in a report that suggested Iran has specifically brought Iraq and Syria together at a time when the U.S. is struggling to assert its foreign policy vision in the region. Part of that struggle is evident in lingering uncertainty about how many US troops will remain in Syria to defend US allies after the last pockets of ISIL control are eliminated. On one hand, the Trump administration has identified ISILs defeat as the sole mission in that country, but on the other hand it has also been vigorous in its opposition to Iranian imperialism. Now Syria seems poised to provide an outlet for that imperialism, with the nations defense minister declaring on Monday that there will be no negotiation or compromise with the Kudish-led Syrian Democratic Forces or any other opponents of the Iran-backed Assad regime. It remains for the US to pin down its long-term goals with respect to both Syria and Iraq, and specifically to reconcile those goals with its maximum pressure strategy for Iran. This project is seemingly complicated by the danger of either abandoning or alienating existing allies in the region. But the US may not be alone in facing this challenge. On Wednesday, Iranian state media reportedly contradicted reports by the Turkish government that both countries were undertaking a joint military operation against the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. While Reuters notes that the reason for the two contrasting statements was unclear, one possibility is that Iran is worried about the political consequences of acknowledging its personal contribution to action against a Kurdish group in any neighboring, especially after tacitly backing up Syrian threats against another. Tensions frequently flare between the Iranian government and the semi-autonomous Kurdish government in the northwest of that country. Additionally, Iraqi Kurds have shown some willingness to join with the Iraqi government and its Iranian allies after having previously fought ISIL on their own. Together, these groups represent both potential threats and potential opportunities as Iran strives to extend its regional influence. But as with American efforts to navigate among overlapping relations in the region, the ultimate outcome will surely depend on careful strategy and the competing efforts of political adversaries. Pompeos stop in Kuwait, in particular, was expected to provide the latest outlet for the Trump administrations ongoing salesmanship regarding a Middle East Strategic Alliance that would bring together Irans regional adversaries around this mission. As ABC News points out in its reporting, the Secretary of State is likely to encounter varied reactions at each of his three stops, with Kuwait falling somewhere in the middle between Israels warm embrace and Lebanons skeptical but pragmatic negotiations. After all, over roughly the past two years Kuwait has made an effort to function as a mediator in the persistent conflict between regional states over their contrasting approaches to Iranian affairs. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have led an effort to isolate Qatar over allegations that the small Arab country has grown too close to Iran and has supported terrorism in the region. The US has joined with Kuwait in advocating for the resolution of this conflict, but the US cannot reasonable be said to be a neutral party in the midst of its escalating war of words with Iran. For this reason, it is likely that Kuwait and the US will see eye-to-eye on the general issue of Arab unity following Pompeos visit, but may remain somewhat at odds over the specific implications of the MESA project. But Wednesdays outreach to Kuwait is only part of a large and varied American effort to build consensus around the issue of confronting and containing the Islamic Republic. The White House need not do much to promote this position in Israel, which has itself been a leading advocate for collective policies that may prevent Tehran from securing a permanent foothold in places like Syria. On the other hand, Pompeo will have his work cut out for him as he tries to secure buy-in from Lebanese politicians while striving to exclude Irans local militant proxy, Hezbollah, from contributing to the regimes influence in Syria and other parts of the region. The ABC News report explains that the administration planned to put pressure on Lebanese President Michel Aoun, among other officials, to disconnect from Hezbollah and its Iranian backers. This may be a difficult proposition, however, since many of those same officials helped to broker a deal that provided Hezbollah with an expanded role in government and a substantial share of political power. Pompeo reportedly provided no specific details about how the administration expected to convince Lebanese counterparts to act against this agreement. But the ABC report went on to note that the administration was also expected to put pressure on private entities in Lebanon and elsewhere to keep Hezbollah funds out of banks and to generally help enforce economic penalties on the groups Iranian sponsors. Although the Islamic Republic was made subject to widespread sanctions relief under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the White House pulled out of that agreement last year and re-imposed unilateral sanctions. Since then, the administrations strategy of maximum pressure has entailed appealing to various foreign partners to diminish or entirely halt their economic relations with Iranian entities. It remains to be seen whether Lebanons government or private sector offer a response that the White House deems adequate after Pompeos visit. But the White House has signaled general optimism on this matter through public statements that highlight apparent cooperation from other nations in preventing Irans illicit trade of oil, among other economic activities. Voice of America News reports that at least since August, the Islamic Republic has been working to circumvent US sanctions by switching off the transponders for its oil tankers, among other methods. But the same report quotes American officials as saying that they will effectively punish anyone who helps Iran to facilitate banned trade. We are closely tracking ship-to-ship transfers of [Iranian] oil to evade our oil sanctions, said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Counter Threat Finance and Sanctions David Peyman. And were working closely with foreign governments to ensure they are monitoring ship-to-ship transfers off their coasts. Peyman also stated that a number of countries have committed to preventing their flags from flying on Iranian tankers, thereby preventing them from falsely signaling that their oil can be traded lawfully. Even so, these measures will only go so far toward preventing that trade, as long as there are other nations that are willing to take the risk of helping Iran to evade US sanctions. And by all accounts, such willingness remains not only among Irans established partners and neighbors but also among European allies of the US. The European Union and its member states have been pulled in two directions. On the one hand, the desire for access to Iranian markets led the three European signatories to the Iran nuclear deal the United Kingdom, France, and Germany to jointly establish a barter-like trade mechanism for transactions with the Islamic Republic. This has come to be known as the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, or INSTEX, and according to the Voice of America report its function may still expand to include more than trade in food and humanitarian goods. On the other hand, the US has publicly reiterated its commitment to working against the payment system both on its own and in connection with global partners. And the potential effects of this pressure are increasingly amplified by European policymakers own awareness of persistent threats related to the Islamic Republic. Early this year, the EU moved to impose sanctions on Irans intelligence service and some of its known operatives, in response to recent terror threats including the June 2018 effort to bomb the international rally of Iranian expatriates that was organized near Paris by the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Related sanctions by the French government may have been the source of the announcement on Tuesday that Irans Mahan Airlines would no longer be flying to the European nation. Weeks earlier, Germany banned that same airline in a step that the foreign ministry described as being necessary to foreign and security policy interests. Mahan has long been accused of transporting weapons and personnel to Irans terrorist proxies and on behalf of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to AFP, a spokesperson for Mahan confirmed that the cancellation of French service was related to sanctions, although he did not elaborate. Whatever the exact nature of the sanctions, they presumably represent a threat to Frances status as a defender of Irans position regarding the 2015 nuclear deal and related issues. But this status was already under threat even before France became the prospective site of a major Iranian terrorism bombing. Amidst its advocacy for keeping the nuclear deal in place, the French government has also vigorously criticized the Iranian government for its ballistic missile activities. The persistence of these activities was a major justification for the White Houses withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Since then, the US has kept up pressure on that issue, no doubt expecting it to encourage criticism of Iran among other Middle Eastern nations as well as among the nations of Europe. Accordingly, Yleem Poblete, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, made a point of emphasizing Irans missile program before the United Nations just a day before Pompeos arrival in Kuwait. Speaking at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Poblete said, Irans missile program is a key contributor to increased tensions and destabilization in the region, increasing the risk of a regional arms race. She went on to emphasize the Iranian regimes role in transferring advanced weapons beyond its borders, particularly to terrorist groups like the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have fired ballistic missiles into Saudi Arabian territory as well as using them domestically in the civil war with Yemens internationally-recognized government. But while this messaging may help amplify American appeals to traditional allies and some of Irans neighbors, it is unlikely to have much impact on countries that already seem to have aligned with Iran against the West. Prominent among these is Russia, the role of which was highlighted on Wednesday by an article in EuroNews that described the dark money flows between the two countries. The article arguably lent support to efforts by Irans greatest critics, regarding the need for concerted, multilateral efforts to impede the Islamic Republic in its financing of terrorism and other destructive activities. Interestingly, though, the EuroNews piece concluded by emphasizing the persistent differences between American and European approaches to relevant issues. Specifically, it credited Europe with exerting meaningful pressure on Russia while disregarding Iran, while the US has been widely described as doing just the opposite. As long as this strategic incongruity continues, Iran and Russia may continue to exploit the situation to benefit their own partnerships. As EuroNews put it: Efforts by the leaders of both countries to become more closely associated are increasing as they expand financial, trading and military ties in an effort to decrease their reliance on Western trade while benefiting from it. In light of traditionally cooperative relations between Israel and Russia, Pompeos prospective visit to the Jewish state could be used to help address the above-mentioned incongruity. But so far, all indications are that US policy remains focused on encouraging partners to confront Iran directly and exert pressure on close partners to cut off trade, while Irans more distant partnerships remain, at best, a matter of secondary importance. READ: Palace dares Joma: Lets talk peace READ: Resumption of peace talks with Reds slimLorenzana And here are the skills & experience of an ideal candidate: A commitment to our goal of empowering people to create the change they want to see A great understanding of online and offline campaigning and how social movement intersects with technology and online communications platforms High-level strategic thinker, with a strong grasp of politics and power. You understand the pressure points in Thailand and are able to make strategic decisions in fast-moving, and sometimes complex situations. 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Experience in online community management or in using a variety of social media tools to engage an online audience Experience with analytics, metrics, email, experimentation, targeting and data-driven campaigning highly desirable Knowledge of the fundraising landscape or experience in digital fundraising in Thailand a plus At least 5 years experience working in a cross-cultural setting -- preferably in the media, advocacy, campaign, civic engagement, content creation, communications, or digital media -- but if you make up for lack of experience with passion and a willingness to learn quickly, you should still apply. Its important that you are driven and excited to join a collaborative work environment. Your co-workers are high-impact, low-ego, and have a true respect for our users and partners. We love serving our users, and we love our staff too. We show it through competitive salaries, five weeks annual leave, robust parental leave, and a supportive culture where you'll work alongside some of the world's leading campaign and communications experts. This position is based in Bangkok, and is often driven by a campaign cycle, so there are times that involve long hours and times that dont. Our culture recognises both the needs of campaigns and the need for our staff to have a life. We are an equal opportunity employer, which means we strongly encourage any interested parties to apply we dont discriminate on the basis of age, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or physical disability. If you are excited about the role and think you have the skill sets that match it, send us your application explaining why you are excited about this role and how you qualify - please apply to us directly here. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TWr1lcH0wwT6yNgvdve8f2hBRXw-GYYZ24sGakzD4zM/edit We will review applications on an ongoing basis, which means the position may be filled before the application closing date of 15th April. Thursday, March 21, 2019 With Legislative Session In The Rearview Mirror ABQ City Election Comes Into Focus, Plus: Optimists Beat Pessimists In State's Financial News 29 year old District Two takes in Barelas, Downtown, parts of the North Valley as well as neighborhoods near the UNM law school. Benton has already announced he is seeking another four term. He was first elected to the seat in 2005. Quintero says Benton's support of controversial transit projects like the ill-fated Central Avenue ART project will be a major issue as well as public safety. We'll have more on the race soon. There are three other seats up for election on the nine member council which is controlled by the Dems, 6-3. In District 4 in the NE Heights, Republican Brad Winter, the longest serving councilor, has not yet announced if he will seek another term. In District 6 Dem Pat Davis is expected to go for re-election and is heavily favored in the early going, although he is expected to have opposition. In District 8, incumbent Republican Trudy Jones has not yet made public her intentions. Candidates are now Speaking of the ABQ City Clerk, history buffs take note: Did you know the Office of the City Clerk maintains historical minutes of City Council meetings dating back to 1890? For the next month we will provide a weekly post on what was happening with #CABQ in the 19th and 20th centuries! Hey, maybe they have the crime stats from the 1890's? That might make us look pretty good today. NOT FOR PESSIMISTS For a change the pessimists must be grinding their teeth because the good news about NM's finances just keeps coming. The Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to reduce the cost of pumping oil in the Permian to about $15 a barrel, a level only seen in the giant oil fields of the Middle East. The scale of Exxons drilling means that it can spread its costs over such a big operation that the basin in Eastern New Mexico and West Texas will become competitive with almost anywhere in the world, Staale Gjervik, president of XTO Energy, the supermajors shale division, said in an interview. 15 bucks a barrel?? I mean, we're getting that thing down to the cost of a decent enchilada plate. And then there's this: The Feds look as though they are going to pump more money into the nuke programs here: The Trump federal We'll stop with the glad tidings while we're ahead. This is the home of New Mexico politics. Interested in reaching New Mexico's most informed audience? Advertise here. ( c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2019 Now that the legislative session is over the city of ABQ Nov. 5 election is starting to come into focus, with the first candidates surfacing. The latest news is that a strong challenge has developed to longtime Dem City Councilor Ike Benton.29 year old Zack Quintero , president of the NM Young Democrats, a NMSU grad and a current student at the UNM School of Law, says it's time for a "transition" from Benton and he is off and running with a formal announcement set for March 24.District Two takes in Barelas, Downtown, parts of the North Valley as well as neighborhoods near the UNM law school.Benton has already announced he is seeking another four term. He was first elected to the seat in 2005. Quintero says Benton's support of controversial transit projects like the ill-fated Central Avenue ART project will be a major issue as well as public safety. We'll have more on the race soon.There are three other seats up for election on the nine member council which is controlled by the Dems, 6-3.In District 4 in the NE Heights, Republican Brad Winter, the longest serving councilor, has not yet announced if he will seek another term. In District 6 Dem Pat Davis is expected to go for re-election and is heavily favored in the early going, although he is expected to have opposition. In District 8, incumbent Republican Trudy Jones has not yet made public her intentions.Candidates are now making declarations with the city clerk on whether they will seek public financing which both Benton and Quintero say they will do. In May candidates will begin collecting the necessary petition signatures to win a spot on the November ballot.Speaking of the ABQ City Clerk, history buffs take note:Hey, maybe they have the crime stats from the 1890's? That might make us look pretty good today.For a change the pessimists must be grinding their teeth because the good news about NM's finances just keeps coming. The price of oil touched $60 a barrel Wednesday for the first time in four months and then there's this jaw dropper 15 bucks a barrel?? I mean, we're getting that thing down to the cost of a decent enchilada plate.And then there's this: The Feds look as though they are going to pump more money into the nuke programs here: The Trump federal budget proposal provides for an ample increase for modernizing nuclear weapons and that means a budget increase for Los Alamos National Labs, with the money stimulating the northern economy. How much of an increase specific to New Mexico has not yet been stated.We'll stop with the glad tidings while we're ahead.This is the home of New Mexico politics. E-mail your news and comments. (jmonahan@ix.netcom.com) Links HOME E-MAIL ME About Joe Google News Real Clear Politics Huffington Post Drudge Report The Politico NM TV stations Gov. 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11/24/19 11/24/19 - 12/1/19 12/1/19 - 12/8/19 12/8/19 - 12/15/19 12/15/19 - 12/22/19 12/22/19 - 12/29/19 12/29/19 - 1/5/20 1/5/20 - 1/12/20 1/12/20 - 1/19/20 1/19/20 - 1/26/20 1/26/20 - 2/2/20 2/2/20 - 2/9/20 2/9/20 - 2/16/20 2/16/20 - 2/23/20 2/23/20 - 3/1/20 3/1/20 - 3/8/20 3/8/20 - 3/15/20 3/15/20 - 3/22/20 3/22/20 - 3/29/20 3/29/20 - 4/5/20 4/5/20 - 4/12/20 4/12/20 - 4/19/20 4/19/20 - 4/26/20 4/26/20 - 5/3/20 5/3/20 - 5/10/20 5/10/20 - 5/17/20 5/17/20 - 5/24/20 5/24/20 - 5/31/20 5/31/20 - 6/7/20 6/7/20 - 6/14/20 6/14/20 - 6/21/20 6/21/20 - 6/28/20 6/28/20 - 7/5/20 7/5/20 - 7/12/20 7/12/20 - 7/19/20 7/19/20 - 7/26/20 7/26/20 - 8/2/20 8/2/20 - 8/9/20 8/9/20 - 8/16/20 8/16/20 - 8/23/20 8/23/20 - 8/30/20 8/30/20 - 9/6/20 9/6/20 - 9/13/20 9/13/20 - 9/20/20 9/20/20 - 9/27/20 9/27/20 - 10/4/20 10/4/20 - 10/11/20 10/11/20 - 10/18/20 10/18/20 - 10/25/20 10/25/20 - 11/1/20 11/1/20 - 11/8/20 11/8/20 - 11/15/20 11/15/20 - 11/22/20 11/22/20 - 11/29/20 11/29/20 - 12/6/20 12/6/20 - 12/13/20 12/13/20 - 12/20/20 12/20/20 - 12/27/20 1/3/21 - 1/10/21 1/10/21 - 1/17/21 1/17/21 - 1/24/21 1/24/21 - 1/31/21 1/31/21 - 2/7/21 2/7/21 - 2/14/21 2/14/21 - 2/21/21 2/21/21 - 2/28/21 2/28/21 - 3/7/21 3/7/21 - 3/14/21 3/14/21 - 3/21/21 3/21/21 - 3/28/21 3/28/21 - 4/4/21 4/4/21 - 4/11/21 4/11/21 - 4/18/21 4/18/21 - 4/25/21 4/25/21 - 5/2/21 5/2/21 - 5/9/21 5/9/21 - 5/16/21 5/16/21 - 5/23/21 5/23/21 - 5/30/21 5/30/21 - 6/6/21 6/6/21 - 6/13/21 6/13/21 - 6/20/21 6/20/21 - 6/27/21 6/27/21 - 7/4/21 7/4/21 - 7/11/21 7/11/21 - 7/18/21 7/18/21 - 7/25/21 7/25/21 - 8/1/21 8/1/21 - 8/8/21 8/8/21 - 8/15/21 8/15/21 - 8/22/21 8/22/21 - 8/29/21 8/29/21 - 9/5/21 9/5/21 - 9/12/21 9/12/21 - 9/19/21 9/19/21 - 9/26/21 9/26/21 - 10/3/21 10/3/21 - 10/10/21 10/10/21 - 10/17/21 10/17/21 - 10/24/21 10/24/21 - 10/31/21 10/31/21 - 11/7/21 11/7/21 - 11/14/21 11/14/21 - 11/21/21 11/21/21 - 11/28/21 11/28/21 - 12/5/21 12/5/21 - 12/12/21 website design by website design by limwebdesign The government will fight back should Moro National Liberation Front leader Nur Misuari make good his threat to go to war over federalism, Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said Thursday. He dismissed Misuaris threat as a form of blackmail against the current administration, saying he was only expressing his disappointment because one of President Rodrigo Dutertes campaign promises was still not in place. In other developments: Opposition Senator Antonio Trillanes IV said he did not believe that Misuari made a threat to go to war if the government failed to pursue federalism. Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said if the threat to go to war is true, Misuari had provided the single most important argument against federalism. Senator Panfilo Lacson stressed the importance of keeping Misuari close or by the side of the President, or at least within close monitoring range of the military given the transition period of the BARMM. Senate President Vicente Sotto said he wondered if there was a law against threatening the government. In a press briefing, Panelo said the government will not take Misauris threat lightly, adding if you force us against the wall, this is what we will do. He said Duterte also made a counter-threat to Misuari that they would die together if the federalism initiative failed.But we will celebrate if we succeed. And as a response to going to war, then we will die fighting each other, Panelo said. But for now, Panelo said, the two sides want peace and would soon start the talks on the federalism initiative. He said the President had proposed that the two parties create their respective five-member panels to tackle the proposed shift to federalism and reminded Misuari that the final federalism proposal was still up to Congress. If he goes to war, then he will be fighting the government. So if he is fighting the government and the head of the government is the President, they would be fighting each other, Panelo said. He said Misuari was actually happy with the Presidents proposal for the federalism talks and expressed hope it could be attained within his term. He reminded the President that federalism was one of the promises he made to the electorate. And he is confident that within the three years remaining term of the President, federalism would fit in, Panelo said. Knowing the chairman who has been fighting for a peaceful solution in Mindanao, and knowing the deep relationship between the two leaders, I am confident that there will be an agreement, a modus vivendi between the two sides and we will have peace in Mindanao. - Maine Mendoza and Arjo Ataydes dates on different locations were caught on camera - One of the photos shows the stars spending time together in New York City - They were also photographed together at Star City in Pasay PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed Maine Mendoza and Arjo Atayde were caught on camera going on dates in two very different locations. KAMI learned that one of the photos shows the two stars dating in New York City. The next photos were taken in the Philippines, with Maine and Arjo spending quality time together at Star City in Pasay City. Swipe to the left to see the other photos in these IG posts: Netizens got giddy after seeing the sweet photos. Hopefully, fans of the onscreen love team between Maine and Alden Richards would not be outraged by the romantic photos. PAY ATTENTION: Using free basics app to access internet for free? Now you can read KAMI news there too. Use the search option to find us. Read KAMI news while saving your data! In a previous report by KAMI, Maines manager denied that the actress will transfer to ABS-CBN in order to be with Arjo. Maine Mendoza, or Nicomaine Dei Capili Mendoza in real life, is a Filipina actress, host, comedienne, and entrepreneur, born on March 3, 1995. She was hailed as the most googled female personality in the Philippines in 2015 and the most tweeted Filipino celebrity in the world in 2017. The Kapuso star is currently dating Arjo Atayde, an actor from the Kapamilya network. This caused some fans of Alden Richards to hate on her and Arjo. POPULAR: Read more news about Maine Mendoza! PAY ATTENTION: Power Couples Who Are Still Adored By The Public Decades After Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! Dugtungan Challenge: Who Will Win? DJ and TV producer Fernanne, singer Classica and singer March have joined our Dugtungan challenge. Enjoy their smart approach and beautiful voices! on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel! Source: Kami.com.ph - Heart Evangelista shares her sentiments as she bids goodbye to her darling - In a social media post, the Darling of the Philippines expresses her sadness as she lets go of someone special - Fans send their well-wishes to Heart and her darling as they part ways PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed! Recently, an Instagram post of Heart Evangelista caught the attention of the social media pips and KAMI as she shares her feelings of letting someone special go. The Darling of the Philippines expresses her sadness as she has to hand over her darling to a new owner. In the post, she shares a picture of her holding a pup and writes a caption along with it that explains why shes bidding her goodbyes to whom she calls darling, an Aspin dog. PAY ATTENTION: Using free basics app to access internet for free? Now you can read KAMI news there too. Use the search option to find us. Read KAMI news while saving your data! Heart expressed: The hardest part of fostering animals is having to let them go. (sad face) But my heart is okay knowing that you will go to a very loving home, where you will grow and become an even happier and healthier pup. (heart) Visit me soon, my darling. #AspinClub #AdoptDontShop Fans couldnt help but send their well-wishes to Hearts post. Thank you for using your platform on raising empathy for these poor souls. (dog) #adoptdontshop True...its hard to let go of the one you love. Same feeling here whenever I give my puppies away. I cannot let that face go. Previously, we shared about netizens expressing their opinions on Heart's new vlog entitled 'Reacting to your assumptions about me.' PAY ATTENTION: Power Couples Who Are Still Adored By The Public Decades After Heart Evangelista tied the knot with Senator Chiz Escudero at Balesin Island Club on February 15, 2015. Chiz has 2 children from his previous marriage to Christine Elizabeth Flores. Before Mother's Day, Heart announced her pregnancy on her Instagram account. She also revealed that they lost one of her twins due to "Vanishing Twin Syndrome." This occurs when a twin disappears from the uterus during the early stages of pregnancy. In her third month of pregnancy, she also lost the other baby. POPULAR: Read more news about Heart Evangelista here Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! As we celebrate International Womens Month, our team went out to the streets to give flowers to all beautiful, strong women. Get more exciting, fun, insightful, and inspiring videos by clicking here - HumanMeter YouTube channel Source: Kami.com.ph Senate President Vicente Sotto III said Thursday the Nationalist Peoples Coalition may endorse only 11 senatorial bets in the midterm elections in May. He said they will announce their senatorial candidates after the partys meeting, and that those running for the Senate will be invited by the party and will get their support. At the moment, he said, 11 candidates had been invited to attend the meeting. The party will hold a general meeting before the start of the campaign period for local posts on March 29, said Sotto, the acting chairman of the NPC. Meanwhile, the Commission on Elections on Thursday defended its move placing the entire Mindanao under its control, saying it wanted to ensure utmost responsiveness to whatever needs that might arise during the election period. Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said placing Mindanao under hot spot was the result of a consultation with local Comelec officials as well as the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines. While it cannot be gainsaid that there are areas within Mindanao that are relatively peaceful, the inescapable reality is that election-related violent incidents respect no municipal borders, and that the activities of armed groups and terror organizations are not always clearly demarcated, Jimenez said. Sotto declined to name the 11 candidates except for party members Senator JV Ejercito, returning Senator Lito Lapid and Senator Grace Poe, who is an adopted member of the NPC.Aside from Poe and Ejercito, the five other reelectionist senators are Sonny Angara, Nancy Binay, Cynthia Villar, Koko Pimentel and Bam Aquino. When asked if all seven reelectionist senators would be invited by the NPC, Sotto said: Most probably. I cant say yes. He said the party might not be able to come up with a 12-man slate as the party members could not agree on certain candidates. He said he would support all reelectionist senators, noting that they were part of the Senate, which is now one of the most trusted agencies of the government. Im definite about my support for the reelectionist senators, Sotto said. With the recall of the House of Representatives version of the 2019 General Appropriations Bill, the door is now open for a possible cure to the impasse. With Vito Barcelo - Fumiya Sankai is now making rounds on social media - This is because of the birthday surprise for him inside the Pinoy Big Brother house - A lot of netizens expressed their reactions to the funny reunion PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed Pinoy Big Brother (PBB) housemate Fumiya Sankai celebrated his 24th birthday inside the prominent house. KAMI learned that the occasion, as well as the surprise of the housemates and the owner of the house, went viral on social media. This is after the Japanese heartthrobs family flew to the Philippines just to see and greet him on his special day. Fumiya said that it has been six years since he last saw his family and he was really in disbelief upon seeing them enter the PBB house. It was evident in his reaction that he was enjoying the moment and that the surprise made him really happy.. The trending scene would not be possible without the help of the housemates, especially Yamyam who needed to undergo a challenge for the happiness of his spiritual brother. The video, which was uploaded on Facebook, already has more than 1 million views and 19 thousand shares just after 13 hours of being uploaded. PAY ATTENTION: Using free basics app to access internet for free? Now you can read KAMI news there too. Use the search option to find us. Read KAMI news while saving your data! Here are the reactions of netizens: Yung iba kapag bumisita, puro iyakan. Ito naman akala mo nasa comedy bar... Napaka-masayahin ni Fumiya kahit nung di pa sya pumapasok sa PBB. I like that they are not crying like a typical family reunion. It should be like this! Happy and fun. Ang cool ng tatay ni Fumiya nang hindi makapaniwala si Fumiya na nandito sila sa Pilipinas. Nakakatanggal ka ng pagod Fumiya! Sinuklian din ni Yamyam yung sakripisyo mo para sa kanya! Nagsakripisyo din siyang mapagtagumpayan ang task maging masaya ka lang sa kaarawan mo. Here is the video: In a previous article by , Fumiya got really emotional as he sacrificed his possible Big 4 slot for bestfriend Yamyam. Fumiya Sankai is a Japanese citizen who went to the Philippines to feature the Filipino culture in his vlogs. He aims to connect the Japanese to the Filipinos through his enlightening videos. Now, he is one of the adult housemates who is most favorite to win the title. POPULAR: Read more news about PBB Otso! PAY ATTENTION: 15 Memorable Photos From The Amazing Baby Shower Of Meghan Markle Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! Tricky Questions: What Is The English Of "Sinok? We have included one of the trickiest questions and interesting challenges in this channel. Do you enjoy watching street interviews and listening to different opinions? on HumanMeter! Source: Kami.com.ph - President Rodrigo Duterte expressed his weariness as he will be turning 74 this month - He added that he is just finding an excuse to finally rest and quit - The President also reiterated his threats to those who will destroy the Philippines PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed President Rodrigo Duterte will be turning 74 this month and he is the only septuagenarian chief executive the Philippines ever had. KAMI learned that as the President will be turning a year older, he is getting more exhausted. He expressed his feelings during the campaign rally of PDP-Laban in Marikina City. "Ako matanda na. Ngayong buwan na ito mag 74 na ako. P ina mo kasi pagod na ako sa inyo... Naghahanap lang ako talaga ng lusot na para makapagpahinga na. Pagod na rin ako kaya do not fk with me, the President said. In a report by the GMA News, President Duterte reiterated that all he wanted was to make the Philippines a much safer place. He instructed the police to kill criminals, especially those who molest women. In case a shooting happens and an investigation about the human rights arises, Duterte told the law enforcers to just mention his name and that it was his direct order. PAY ATTENTION: Pinoy Celebrities Whose Relationships Are Not So Well-Known PAY ATTENTION: Using free basics app to access internet for free? Now you can read KAMI news there too. Use the search option to find us. Read KAMI news while saving your data! According to a report by the Manila Bulletin (author Genalyn Kabiling), the President threatened the narco-politicians once again for being involved in drug operations. He also gave a warning to those who are planning to destroy the Philippines. President Duterte will be celebrating his 74th birthday on March 28. He used to be the Mayor of Davao City for a very long time and also served as the vice mayor to his daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio. It was in 2016 when Duterte assumed the role of being the countrys President. POPULAR: Read more news about President Rodrigo Duterte! Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! Tricky Questions: What Is The English Of "Sinok"? What is your favourite tricky question in this episode? Maybe about the province of smiles? Or the acronym? Or maybe about sinok? Check out all of our exciting videos on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel! Source: Kami.com.ph - Former Philippine officials and some fishermen filed an international court case against Chinese President Xi Jinping - Pres. Xi and other Chinese officials were accused of allegedly committing crimes against humanity - The communication was submitted just two days before PH officially left the ICC PAY ATTENTION: Click "See First" under the "Following" tab to see KAMI news on your News Feed Chinese President Xi Jinping is now facing an international court case filed by local fishermen and former Philippine officials before the International Criminal Court (ICC). KAMI learned that Xi and other Chinese officials were accused of committing crimes that resulted to inhumanity as Beijing implemented a plan in order to control the South China Sea. In a report by the ABS-CBN News, former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales and former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario have accompanied the fishermen to submit the communication against Xi. It read in the letterthat Xi and some officials allegedly persecuted and injured some local fishermen. PAY ATTENTION: 15 Memorable Photos From The Amazing Baby Shower Of Meghan Markle PAY ATTENTION: Using free basics app to access internet for free? Now you can read KAMI news there too. Use the search option to find us. Read KAMI news while saving your data! According to a report by Rappler (author Paterno Esmaquel II), the former government officials submitted the communication on March 15, just two days before the withdrawal of the Philippines from the ICC became effective. However, despite the Philippines withdraw, the international court said that they will be pursuing their investigation with regard to President Rodrigo Dutertes drug war. Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news! Tricky Questions: What Is The English Of "Sinok"? What is your favourite tricky question in this episode? Maybe about the province of smiles? Or the acronym? Or maybe about sinok? Check out all of our exciting videos on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel! Source: Kami.com.ph Your tax-deductible gift today powers our reporters and keeps us independent. We rely on you, our reader, not paywalls to stay funded because we believe important news and information should be freely accessible to all. Start your day with LAist Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe A magnitude 6.5 or higher earthquake on the Santa Susana Fault could damage dozens of active gas storage wells in the mountains above Porter Ranch, enough to cause a gas release, according to a long-awaited study, released on Tuesday. The amount of gas that might be released in such an earthquake is fairly small compared with the amount that's stored underground, said officials of Southern California Gas, which owns the field. However, it's enough of a threat that the utility may consider installing safety measures, such as installing automatic shutoff valves in the wells or injecting concrete between the wells and the soil around them. The study was conducted to assess the safety of the gas field after one of 114 then-active wells ruptured due to corrosion in 2015, producing the nation's largest-ever uncontrolled release of natural gas, about 109,000 metric tons to be exact. The leak took four months to halt, and about 8,000 families left the area, in part because of the rotten-egg smell. Some residents complained of illnesses like nosebleeds, stomach ailments and other symptoms they attributed to the gas. The Santa Susana Fault runs through the mountainous Aliso Canyon gas field the way frosting horizontally divides a layer cake. The gas wells punch through the surface, passing vertically through the fault, and extending 7,000 to 9,000 feet into the earth, where natural gas is stored in rock formations. The fear, as expressed in 2009 and again in 2017, in documents by a former manager of gas storage operations, as well as by Los Angeles County officials, was that a big earthquake on the Santa Susana Fault could shear the wells, allowing gas to reach the surface. The seismic study was designed to assess that risk. Independent experts designed and conducted the study on behalf of SoCal Gas. The draft of the study will be reviewed by the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (also known as DOGGR) and three national laboratories, and the findings will be used to recommend tactics to reduce the risk of a gas release, said Neil Navin, SoCal Gas vice president for gas transmission and storage. The study looked at three seismic-related risks: Landslides, shaking and ground displacement, (tectonic plates sliding against each other.) Displacement Displacement along the Santa Susana Fault during a magnitude 6.5 or higher earthquake presents the largest risk to the 66 wells scattered across the 3,600-acre gas storage field, said Harvard professor John Shaw, who advised SoCal Gas on the study. The study indicated that no gas would leak from the wells in a smaller earthquake. To reduce the potential that gas might escape post-earthquake up the wellbore (the industry term for the hole in the earth that a well occupies), SoCal Gas will confer with its regulating agency, DOGGR, and the national labs about putting automatic shutoff valves in the wells fairly close to the surface, about 100 to 1,000 feet down. Another step might be to inject concrete into gaps between the outer metal surface of the well and the soil or rock surrounding it. Shaking The analysis of shaking hazards from 150 faults, including the Santa Susana, did not reveal the potential for damage to wells resulting in a gas escape. "There are some extreme levels of ground shaking with that very rare, longer-term period events that could compromise the elements of some wells," Shaw said. "But this process has helped to identify which wells those are." Landslides Landslides could potentially cause two or three wells to leak gas to the surface, Shaw said. Those wells have been identified and steps are being taken to make them safer or shut them down. Your tax-deductible gift today powers our reporters and keeps us independent. We rely on you, our reader, not paywalls to stay funded because we believe important news and information should be freely accessible to all. Start your day with LAist Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe Once again, someone with measles has entered L.A. County through LAX. The County Department of Public Health issued a warning that the infected person flew in on United Airlines Flight 240 on March 5 and was in the airport's Terminal 7 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The next morning the individual was at Enterprise Rent-A-Car on Wilshire Blvd. in Santa Monica from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Anyone exposed to the virus is at risk of developing measles for up to 21 days. This is the second measles-infected traveler through LAX this year, and the third in the last three months. An infected person arrived on a China Eastern Flight at LAX's Tom Bradley International Terminal on Feb. 21 and had a layover in Terminal 3 before departing on a Delta flight. Anyone exposed to that individual is no longer considered at risk if they haven't developed symptoms by now. As of March 14, there have been 268 confirmed cases of measles in 15 states. As of March 7, California had eight of those cases and L.A. had one (travelers through the airport aren't counted as L.A. residents). California's last big measles outbreak started around Christmas 2014 at Disneyland. It ultimately led to 147 cases in seven states, Mexico and Canada. "If you're not immune, the virus will infect you and you will come down with the illness," said Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, chief medical officer at LA Public Health. He's referring to how infectious the measles virus is. For those who aren't vaccinated, 90 percent of those exposed will get sick. "The good news is most people are immunized," he said. WHAT'S THE RISK? he Duterte administration has proposed the creation of two separate water agencies to solve water crisis in Metro Manila and nearby provinces: one will focus on economic and financial aspects and the other for policy formulation and resource regulation. Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles said two draft bills had been endorsed for approval and submission to the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC), bills that would create two separate bodies involving water. One of the proposed agencies that will be formed will act as the apex body for the water resources sector. This agency will consolidate and reconcile water-related policy, planning, and programming mandates of the different agencies involved in water resource management. It will likewise ensure the efficient allocation of water resources across sectors, Nograles said. The second body will be an independent and quasi-judicial body for water supply and sanitation. The office will ensure quality performance of water concessionaires and ensure transparency and predictability in economic regulation of water service providers, he said. He said that there are currently 30 or so agencies involved in water resources management but the water problem could not be resolved. For example, there are four agencies involved in resource assessment, four involved in policy, seven in water supply, four in sanitation, five in water quality management, and six in watershed management, the Palace official said. And yet. there is no single repository of water data, and no regularly updated water availability data. This is an untenable situation, he said. Nograles also cited short-term measures that would be undertaken to address the water supply problems in Metro Manila by the standby deep wells designated for use during natural disasters. There are a total of 109 of these wells in NCR, and the National Water Resources Board will work with the MWSS to identify which wells can be tapped, and to ensure that water quality in these wells is evaluated and constantly monitored, Nograles said. There is a need for a government-led policy for the sustainable optimization of water resources. For instance, the water run-off used by hydropower plants to move their turbines, he said. Whats absurd is that the households near and along those rivers, they dont have water for domestic use. Aside from households, we should find a way to make use of run-off water from hydropower plants to water farms and industries, he added. In related developments: * House Minority Bloc Leader and Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez has offered several water sources in his province to help ease the shortage in Metro Manila. At a congressional hearing, the construction of at least one was reported to have been started but work was suspended due to an accident the resulted in the death of six workers. Suarez said the Sumag River Diversion Project shall supplement the water from Umiray River going to the Angat Reservoir, which shall increase the supply to the Maynilad Water Services and the Manila Water Co. * Farmers may tap some form of a lifeline in provinces severely hit by the dry spell as Senator Grace Poe urged local governments to implement a cash-for-work program as a temporary relief. In a radio interview in Quezon province, Poe said local government units had a huge role to play especially in extending assistance to farmers whose livelihood were at risk due to the ongoing El Nino. Crop damage due to El Nino has topped P1.3 billion across the country. According to the Agriculture department, 14 out of 17 regions have been affected, with 78,348 metric tons worth of farm output and 70,353 hectares of agricultural land damaged and 84,932 farmers reported losses. In North Cotabato alone, P670 million worth of agricultural products have been damaged. * The chief of the National Water Resources Board, along with other environmental and water experts, on Thursday, recommended the creation of a Department of Water and a Water Regulation Commission to address a shortage of water in the next few years.At a water summit press conference in Quezon City, NWRB executive director Sevillo David Jr. backed the proposal to create new agencies that would integrate all the functions of various departments involved in the management of water resources, such as the Department of Public Works and Highways and NWRB. Even Assistant Secretary Roderick Planta supported such integration of functions, duties, programs and projects in connection with water management of all government agencies. The creation of the two new agencies was the recommendation made by ex-environment secretary Elisea Gozun, ex-NWRB executive director Ramon Alikpala, David, Planta, and ex-agriculture secretary William Dar. But ex-environment secretary Heherson Alvarez rejected the proposal, saying rain harvesting or water preservation must be first instituted at the household level. In our province, houses are designed in such a way that there should be an inverted pyramid to catch rainwater. We cannot come up with a homogenous solution through this creation, he said. This is more complex, he added. Construction of the Sumag River Diversion Project in Quezon was halted in 2016 because of an accident that took the lives of six individuals who were working on the project, according to Suarez. The project was discussed when the House Committee on Public Accounts, which Suarez chairs, held a briefing on the performance of concerned agencies on water management, particularly in ensuring an uninterrupted and adequate supply and distribution of potable water. Suarez announced to the panel that he had also relayed to Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo that he had asked the lifting of the suspension of the diversion tunnels construction. The government should push through with the Sumag [River Diversion Project], and fix the defects that go with it. We are lifting the objection, so you may proceed with it, he said, directing the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System. At 70 percent completion, engineer Jose Dorado Jr. of the MWSS assured that if the project resumed now, the diversion tunnel would be finished before 2019 ends. In addition, Suarez also endorsed the Kanan River Bulk Water Proposal of Energy World Corporation to provide long-term solutions to the insufficiency of water resources in the country. He said this would be more beneficial for the government compared to the China-funded Kaliwa Dam, which he stressed will be funded on borrowed money. We have a private sector who is saying we can do the same with even better services and features. Instead of spending, the government will earn more revenues, said Suarez. So why are we going to compete with the private sector just because we have an offer from the Chinese who say we are willing to lend you money? he added. Suarez said besides supplying the country with clean water, the water project would also supply energy through hydropower. He directed the Land Bank of the Philippines and the Development Bank of the Philippines to set a meeting with Energy World, together with Maynilad and Manila Water, to further discuss this matter. Areas that have so far declared a state of calamity included Zamboanga City, Zamboanga Sibugay, Pagadian City, Kidapawan City, five towns in North Cotabato, and San Jose, Occidental Mindoro. Several provinces are poised to declare a state of calamity as the effect of El Nino is expected to worsen in the coming weeks. According to Poe, the calamity fund of LGUs might not be able to sufficiently sustain farmers livelihood. Poe said LGUs must also coordinate with concerned state agencies to ensure that irrigation systems reached farmlands. The cash-for-work aid, Poe said, could also augment the governments existing intervention programs for El Nino such as farmers loans, seed and fertilizer assistance, cloud seeding and crop insurance. Your tax-deductible gift today powers our reporters and keeps us independent. We rely on you, our reader, not paywalls to stay funded because we believe important news and information should be freely accessible to all. Start your day with LAist Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. Subscribe Nothing gets more scrutinized and yet less questioned in the world of law enforcement than an individual officer's decision to use deadly force. Cops rarely condemn a colleague's decision to kill or wound someone -- when it could have just as easily been them deciding to act to save their own life or someone else's. And local district attorneys almost never file criminal charges against an officer who pulls the trigger. DA's are guided by a legal standard that gives officers wide latitude when it comes to using deadly force. A bill co-authored by State Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego) and Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) would change that. AB 392 -- reintroduced after failing last year -- would curtail the circumstances under which police could legally use deadly force and make it easier for prosecutors to file charges against officers who shoot someone. CHANGING THE STANDARD FROM "REASONABLE" TO "NECESSARY" Under the bill, peace officers in California would only be allowed to use deadly force "when it is necessary to prevent imminent and serious bodily injury or death -- that is, if, given the totality of the circumstances, there was no reasonable alternative to using deadly force, including warnings, verbal persuasion, or other non-lethal methods of resolution or de-escalation." This stands in contrast to the "reasonableness standard" set out in the Supreme Court's landmark 1989 Graham v. Connor ruling, which allows prosecutors to focus solely on the shooting itself. That standard asks if an officer's use of force was motivated by a reasonable fear in the moment, given the officer's training and the circumstances at the time. The court also said "[the] 'reasonableness' of a particular use of force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight." That means that if an officer reasonably believes you were holding a gun as he was chasing you down an alley -- even though you were holding a cellphone -- his shooting you is legal. "The current law talks about what is reasonable ... and what we're saying is, what is absolutely necessary?" Weber told the Sacramento Observer. "We're changing the standard and the language from a 'reasonable' position to a 'necessary' position for the use of lethal force." AB 392 would also empower prosecutors to file criminal charges against an officer if they determine he didn't do enough to de-escalate a situation. KINDER, GENTLER POLICE LOBBYING? Police union leaders are alarmed by the bill. For one thing, they say putting officers in prison won't reduce officer shootings. "The punitive route is not the way to go," said Robert Harris, a leader of the Police Protective League, the union that represents the LAPD rank and file. Law enforcement groups also warn the bill could force peace officers to hesitate when confronting dangerous suspects and end up victims themselves. "They have to make a split second decision ... which is generally a survival decision," said Ron Hernandez, president of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. After failing last year to stop landmark legislation forcing police to give up long secret records related to shootings and other issues, 11 unions are taking what they're calling a "more holistic" approach in their effort to defeat AB 392. They've created a group called Protect California and are offering their own solutions to reducing police shootings. It might be described as a kinder, gentler form of lobbying. "We're taking a step back instead of just flat out defending law enforcement," said Hernandez. Protect California supports SB 230, competing legislation that seeks other ways to reduce police shootings, including providing more training to officers. The measure, introduced by State Sen. Anna Caballero (D-Salinas), would tweak state law with regard to when officers can use deadly force, but it would maintain the Graham ruling's "reasonableness standard." "THEY ARE ADAPTING" The Protect California strategy is a sign that things may be evolving in a state where law enforcement has played a powerful role in shaping policy. "Like any effective political force, they are adapting," said Raphe Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. Along with its lobbying on the competing bills, Protect California is proposing other measures that might help reduce officer shootings. Harris, who's also the coalition's president, wants legislators to budget $300 million for more training on de-escalation during confrontations, as well as how to interact with mentally ill people. SB 230 doesn't include a dollar amount for training. "Let's get the funding in place to make sure that all officers are receiving the training that they've been asking for," said Harris. Current training is a hodgepodge around the state, he said, adding that in some departments training to deal with mentally ill people amounts to just "checking a box," with requirements as basic as a 20-minute video. A recent LAPD report found that one in three instances of use of force by its officers involved someone with mental illness. Hernandez of the deputy sheriffs union said police are prepared to criticize other cops, but only if they're given more training to do their job. "If you want to hold officers accountable, then train them up to the point where even we as individuals will look at it and say, 'Yeah, that one was a big mistake," Hernandez told LAist. Along with calling for more training, Protect California is arguing that better economic opportunities can reduce police shootings and other uses of force. So it says it will advocate for things like more building trades apprenticeships and economic enterprise zones. A plumbers and steamfitters union in Northern California has joined the effort. The coalition also backs Attorney General Xavier Becerra's call for more funding to get confiscate guns from felons, the mentally ill and others who have been ordered to hand over their weapons. SO WHY THE PIVOT BY POLICE UNIONS? For decades, police unions wielded tremendous power in Sacramento. They contributed a lot of money and lawmakers who opposed their agenda faced the prospect of being labeled "soft on crime." That reality led to California -- known for its increasingly liberal politics -- becoming one of the most secretive states in the nation when it came to police accountability. The politics are different now. The crime rate is down. Voters approved a series of propositions reducing prison sentences, including Propositions 47 and 57. Then came last year's fatal shooting of an unarmed black man in Sacramento, which sparked widespread public outrage. In that case, Stephon Clark was chased into his grandparents' backyard and shot dead as he held a cellphone in his hand. Sacramento police pursued Clark because they suspected him of stealing things from cars. This month, local and state authorities said they would not press charges against the officers who killed Clark, sparking a new round of protests in Sacramento. Clark's killing, among a number of notable police shootings of unarmed black men, raised questions about whether the current standards for using deadly force are outdated. A MEDIA COALITION TO SECURE AND SHARE POLICE RECORDS The Clark killing also played a key role in the passing of the police transparency legislation, SB 1421. The new law requires the release of personnel records long kept from the public. The records now available under the law involve officers and deputies who shoot and use other serious force, commit sexual assault on the job and fabricate evidence. More than 20 police unions around the state have sued to challenge the scope of the law, arguing that records that predate the law going into effect should not be included. Judges in L.A. and Orange counties have ruled against the unions. In response to SB 1421, KPCC/LAist has joined with more than 30 newsrooms across the state to form the California Reporting Project, to share Public Records Act requests and the files we get in response. So far the project has filed more than 1,100 records requests with 675 agencies in all 58 California counties. Partners have received at least some records back from 134 agencies. SAVING FOR SCHOOL. In this photo taken on March 10, 2019, 13-year-old fifth grader Reymark Cavesirano paddles his borrowed makeshift craft made from styrofoam to fishing boats anchored at Manila Bay off Navotas City, helps the crew clean their nets, and in exchange collects leftover herring still tangled in the nets. After spending three hours in different boats he heads back to land, divides the catch for his familys consumption with the rest sold to neighbors, earning P150 which he saves to support his school expenses. AFP Reymark Cavesirano, 13, leaves before dawn each weekend day on a perilous trip out into Manila Bay to make enough to feed his family, one of millions of deeply poor Filipinos who face a daily struggle for survival.Aboard a raft pieced together from discarded wood and sheets of styrofoam, he uses his bare hands as paddles for the hour-long journey to the fishing boats where he works. About one in five of the Philippines 106-million people live in extreme poverty, getting by on less than $2 per day. Many, including children, work long hours as street vendors or laborers to make enough to feed themselves. Cavesirano, along with men at least twice his age, helps fishermen clean their nets by removing fish stuck in the gear. He keeps the fish as payment, paddles back to land and then sells them to buy food and medicine for his family. My back usually aches from paddling but I cannot stop. I have to continue because we need to eat, Cavesirano told AFP. The boy, who attends elementary school during the week, lives with his grandparents in a shelter pieced together from bamboo and plastic sheeting in a squatter community on the shore of Manila Bay. He is estranged from his mother.Cavesiranos grandmother Remedios Santos said she was against her grandson working because of the risks he faces on the water but he was persistent. I told him it is dangerous. But he said Mama, other people wont help us in life. So I will help you, said the 55-year-old Santos, who still works as a scavenger. On a good day, Cavesirano can bring home a kilo of rice, which is enough to feed his family for the day, and 300 to 400 pesos ($6 to $8). The money helps pay for his grandfathers tuberculosis medicine and cover his school allowance for the coming week. The boy, who started working on the boats at the age of 10 after his brother taught him how to swim, dreams of finishing school and providing a better life for his family. I want to reciprocate my grandparents kindness. I want them to have a three-story house made from concrete, Cavesirano said. In addition to the fact that limousine travel is very glamorous, it is also the most comfortable trip you can... HanoiVietnam police busted a massive meth ring in a Ho Chi Minh City mansion allegedly run by a Chinese national who used a textile company as a cover for the operation, police and state media reported Thursday. Police on Wednesday stormed the luxury property in Vietnams largest city, guarded with private security and outfitted with cameras during an hours-long raid which unearthed sacks of methamphetamine believed to have been smuggled in from Laos. Around 300 kilos of methamphetamine was seized, and images in the press later displayed dozens of bricks of drugs. Eleven people were arrested including eight Chinese and three Vietnamese, a police official from Binh Tan district where the bust took place told AFP Thursday, requesting anonymity. The primary suspect was a 56-year-old Chinese national, whose Vietnamese girlfriend was reportedly registered as the owner of a textile export business. The Chinese suspect allegedly ran the drugs operation under the guise of the textile export business. The confiscated drugs were likely transported from Laos, traveling through Kon Tum province for consumption in Ho Chi Minh City, the official Vietnam News Agency reported. The bust was part of a larger investigation across central Vietnam involving several provinces and further investigations are ongoing.Synthetic drug use is on the rise in the Southeast Asian country, especially among young people who prefer party drugs to opium and heroin popular among older users. Several large hauls of synthetics have been seized by police in recent months as officials try to wrestle control over the rising trade. The narcotics are often smuggled in from the Golden Trianglea lawless border zone that straddles Laos, Myanmar and Thailandthough police have also broken up domestic labs churning out meth and other synthetics. Last year seven people died at a rave in Hanoi from suspected overdoses in a case that stunned the conservative capital. Several were seen passed out and convulsing on the ground before being rushed to hospital, and authorities issued a blanket ban on music festivals after the accident, the deadliest drug-related incident in the citys recent history. Vietnam has some of the harshest drug laws in the world, and anyone caught with more than 600 grams (21 ounces) of heroin or more than 2.5 kilos of methamphetamine can face the death penalty. Arsenio Hall Talks Upcoming Stand-Up Show & Political Correctness Before January 3, 1989, white men dominated late night television shows. Audiences were familiar watching white musicians, comedians, and actors have their shot at performing in front of millions. Usually black artists were a dime in a dozen. But on that day, Hollywood finally gave birth to something it was missing. It marked the first episode of The Arsenio Hall Show. Unlike other talk shows, Arsenio Hall focused on providing black artists a shot of success. He gave artists such as Mariah Carey, Snoop Dogg, and Prince the freedom to express themselves on a large national platform. The show was cancelled in 1994 and later rebooted in 2013. ADVERTISEMENT Despite a good run initially, the reboot was cancelled only a year later. The ups and downs took a toll on Hall but like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the comedian isnt backing down. Hall is finally returning back to his stand-up roots. I had stop doing the thing that brought me to Hollywood and gave me visibility. I dont mean to be spiritual about it but Im so glad that God let me find it again, says Hall in an interview with the Los Angeles Sentinel Newspaper. Hall credits his friendship with comedian George Lopez that prompted his return. It happened in a strange way, says Hall. I was hanging with George Lopez feeling down in the dumps. It was after my show was cancelled. For a week, I didnt know what to do with myself. George had an upcoming show and said I should go on stage and do some time. What was originally a five-minute set became a twenty-minute dialogue according to Hall. The comic says he felt something familiar that night. ADVERTISEMENT I say that stand up saved my life that night but it was all about having good friends. I havent been off the stage since that night. Its cathartic, it gives me freedom, and it gives me substance. Sometimes you get caught up making money, and forget to feed your soul. Hall hasnt held his tongue on certain topics. He isnt afraid to acknowledge topics that some may deemed controversial. Weve had stories throughout history that teaches us that comedy is healing. Its just like medicine. Which is why I hate all the political correctness they are trying to throw on comedians, says Hall. He continues. Whether in music or comedy, there has always been a battle of censorship in our culture. Dont expect Hall to sway away from discussing our current political climate. He says no matter Republican or Democrat, he will never stop telling jokes even if someone disagrees. He recalls a conversation he had involving Donald Trump. One time somebody told me Amy Schumer is too nasty. But then they turn on CNN and watch Trump say anything. Comedians arent allowed the freedom but you let the orange moron say anything he wants. Lets scale it all back and look at the U.S. Constitution and obey the freedom it gives us. Free to listen, free to say it, free to go or not go, says Hall. Although comedians have recently gained national spotlight for their jokes, Hall believes comedy isnt going away anytime soon. I dont think comedy will ever die. Its getting stronger, says Hall. The reason is because comics have taken strong stances. Kevin Hart couldve easily cooperated but wrong or right he took a stance. And that strength is going to cause him to have his freedom with his comedy, says Hall. Audiences can expect something Hall couldnt do while on television. He can finally be himself without the corporate restrictions. Sometimes we want to make it just to please the numbers. Now you finally get to see me without anyone telling me what I can and cannot do or how I should think. Halls upcoming stand up will be held at The Comedy Union in Los Angeles on Friday, March 22. The show begins at 8 p.m. with another show at 10:30 p.m. For tickets, visit www.thecomedyunion.com or www.arseniohall.com. As Minister and Educator, Randall Displays Love of God The L.A. Sentinel Religion section continues to celebrate Womens History Month by highlighting Los Angeles-area Champions of Faith, which features ordinary people inspired by their faith to make a difference in the community. Rev. Joyce L. Randall, Associate Minister First AME Church and LAUSD Educator What is your ministry/profession? ADVERTISEMENT I have been an itinerant elder in the AME Church since 1995. I am in service at First AME, Los Angeles where the Rev. J. Edgar Boyd is the pastor. I am a career educator by profession and a teacher and program coordinator. What is the mission of this ministry? The mission of my service is to provide equitable access for a quality education regardless of your zip code. My goal is always to empower our future with a growth mindset so that they can achieve their dreams with diligent hard work. While it is my sacred responsibility to bring others to Christ, I do not evangelize at school. What role has God played in your ministry? ADVERTISEMENT God is the center of my joy. My love for God allows me to deflect the unkindness I experience. My love for God allows me to look beyond faults, teach to the need and serve the need. Being an educator in the public school system gives me multiple opportunities to be about what I praise about. Love drives my service delivery. What is a memorable moment during your ministry/profession? I have several including being ordained an itinerant elder, my mother sitting in the rain at my post-graduate graduation, former students achieving success in life, becoming a coordinator, a former student achieving greatness in the NBA, baptizing my first born grandson, delivering words of encouragement to guests at Weingart and Union Rescue Mission, raising reading scores from 2nd grade to 9th grade in three years and delivering food on Thanksgiving and Christmas to sick and shut-in. What are your future goals? I am working on becoming a magnet coordinator. How can others help or get involved in your efforts? Because of the need for positive and stable role models, go to your local school, and register as a volunteer. Take time with our future generation. The students are in need of validation of their student voice. Black Workers, Labor Unions and Justice For Black unionists, labor reforms, like those in education, law enforcement and politics, are more rhetoric than reality. They must understand that reform emanates from privileged conversations and closed door decisions by leaders who do not look like them. And given Blacks continuing low priority status in unions, its safe to conclude organized labors high-level decisions routinely do not take Black workers needs and concerns into proper consideration. Debate over the future of the AFL-CIO began in earnest about 15 years ago. Back then, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) started to focus on how to reverse the unions downward slide. Then, as now, Blacks were phantom participants in high-level decision-making or developing strategic alternatives to the status quo. (However, unified, Blacks in organized labor could, and should, be a significant force in determining the future of organized labor, thereby strengthening themselves and their unions. Several years ago, Bill Fletcher, president of TransAfrica Forum, campaigned to raise awareness in the U.S. about issues facing the nations and peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. This offered insightful perspectives on what he called organized labors train wreck. ADVERTISEMENT Fletcher cited SEIUs (then) main suggested proposals: mergers of national/international unions so that theres less competition and better use of resources while focusing unions on organizing workers in their core areas. He maintained that the greater challenges facing organized labor included: globalization; the manner in which the U.S. government had shifted more and more to the right and become increasingly hostile to workers; how unions should organize critical regions like the U.S. south and southwest; how to ally with African Americans and Latinos in these(and now) other regions, in order to be successful; how to engage in political action in such a way that working people can advance agendas that represent their interests and not simply those of unions or political parties; the continued relevance of fighting racism and sexism; how to work with and build mutual support with workers in other countries and the critical importance of joining with others to fight for real democracy. Fletcher contended labors fight often focused on arcane issues such as whether the AFL-CIO should give larger or smaller rebates to unions that are allegedly organizing and whether the AFL-CIO Executive Council should grow or shrink. This ignored more profound problems such as the way unions in the U.S. see themselves, their lack of a mission and strategy and blindness to the real features of the barbaric society unfolding before their eyes. He also felt the culture of the U.S. union movement generally precludes honest debate: Individual or groups who raise unpopular opinions critical of leadership often find themselves isolated or undermined. Fletcher found it amazing that some unions were threatening to leave the AFL-CIO and others threatening to drive others out of the body with so little discussionthe latter applied disproportionately to Blacks. Usually, no attempt was made by either side to bring the debate to the members. According to Fletcher, while the debate needed to take place, it should have been reframed in its entirety. He insisted it needed to be about a compelling vision for the future of workers in the US. and the rest of the world and include strategies that work in the face of dramatic changes in the economy and address how to stop using working people as cannon fodder in unjust imperialistic assertion of power. Fletcher concluded, I keep wondering whether it is too much to ask of our leaders to think about the needs of working people rather than focusing on the alleged profundity of their rhetoric and the seductiveness of their own publicity. (Like many other prominent Blacks, however, he did not emphasize the critical need for Blacks, in and outside of organized labor, to unite a pre-requisite for effectively working with other groups.) The split among and between labor unions actually affords Blacks and Latinos the opportunity together to craft reforms that unapologetically benefit their respective groups while also contributing to a stronger union movement. Did they avail themselves of the opportunity? The Los Angeles Black Workers Center, (BWC) has strengthened its base and is now playing a key role in protecting and expanding the future of Black workers in several areas, including construction. It is also partnering with community and organized labor groups like the Black Community, Clergy and Labor Alliance (BCCLA) and SEIU Security Workers West (SWW). ADVERTISEMENT However, Black external labor groups like the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) and AFRAM (SEIU African American Caucus) once provided invaluable support to Black workers and must again become the force they once were. Collectively, they represent critically needed pressure in support of BWC, Black unionists and Black workers generally. (Improving Black-Latino relations is no longer even a rhetorical priority for organized labor. But strengthening relations between the two groups would reduce tensions in schools, curb gang violence and expand equitable employment opportunities, especially for Black workers.) Justice for Black workers is still far from a reality and eliminating racial and ethnic injustice within its own ranks must become part of labor unions end game. However, in order to achieve justice, Black workers must have the courage to take a stand, stick together, and work with their allies and the Black community on mutually beneficial goals and objectives. Larry Aubry: e-mail [email protected] Girl Power: St. Joseph Center Celebrates Womens History Month with a Panel Discussion on Women Experiencing Homelessness On Wednesday, March 13, St. Joseph Center hosted a lunch panel discussion that included Jacqueline Waggoner (VP and Southern California Market Leader for Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. and Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) Commissioner); Molly Rysman (Housing and Homeless deputy to Supervisor Sheila Kuehl); Dhakshike Wickrema (assistant senior deputy for Homelessness and Mental Health); Amy Perkins (director of Interim Housing Strategies for the Office of Mayor Garcetti); Cheri Todoroff (director of Housing for Health with the L.A. County Department of Health Services); and Karen Elzy (St. Joseph center graphic designer and formerly homeless agency client). The panel was moderated by St. Joseph Center president & CEO Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum and the event was presented in conjunction with the Santa Monica Commission on the Status of Women. Responding to the communitys request for more dialogue about this pressing social issue, St. Joseph Center put together a panel of experts in the field who provided insight into how structural, cultural, and economic challenges have contributed to the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles and the specific issues that women experiencing homelessness deal with daily. More than 50 community members attended the Lunch & Learn, which was catered by St. Joseph Centers very own Culinary Training Program students. The panel was a well-rounded discussion showcasing perspectives ranging from a formerly homeless woman who shared her firsthand perspective to experts who explained larger factors that contribute to women falling into homelessness and described what community members can do to help. St. Joseph Centers Karen Elzy a single mother who experienced homelessness in 2010 told her story of how she struggled to find work after her business went under, despite having two Masters Degrees. Elzy said I left no stone unturned and did everything I could to find work and to provide shelter for my son. Elzy turned to Codetalk, St. Joseph Centers vocational program that provides low-income and previously homeless women with the opportunity to learn coding and web technology skills. She now proudly serves as St. Joseph Centers graphic designer. Elzys story was followed by a discussion about why women are especially vulnerable to becoming homeless. Assistant Senior Deputy Wickrema explained how systematic and cultural inequalities have led to homelessness disproportionately affecting Black, single women. She mentioned the average single woman on welfare makes $500/month well beneath what a person would need to cover the basic rent and necessities. Other panelists underscored how rent increases and an overwhelming lack of affordable housing contribute to the staggering increase in homelessness in L.A. of which a disproportionate number are people of color while 9% of the L.A. County population is Black, they make up 40% of the regions homeless population. Racism and pay inequality were common threads throughout the hour-long panel. ADVERTISEMENT The discussion ended with questions from the audience. Many asked how members of community can get involved and make a difference. Commissioner Waggoner gave the audience three things we, as a community, can do to advocate for our homeless neighbor One tell a friend about what they learned at the panel; two say yes to crisis housing and affordable housing projects in your neighborhood; and three live with compassion and empathy for our homeless neighbors With the knowledge of daily struggles homeless womenand all our homeless neighbors face, guests left with concrete knowledge that can help them create change in their own communities. Governor Gives Long Reprieve to States Death Row Inmates You cannot deny the racial inequities when it comes to the death penalty, said California Governor Gavin Newsom, which is why he recently announced a moratorium on the procedure here. As governor, Newsom said he could not in good conscience sign off on killing people, some of whom are undoubtedly innocent, as a result of a pre planned, pre meditated process. That is why, he told the press during a conference call on March 19, that the nearly 800 prisoners on death row will not face execution during his administration. Our death penalty has been a failure, Newsom told reporters. It consumes our court system. It costs billions of dollars that could be redirected, It has provided no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent. ADVERTISEMENT Newsom has already ordered the closure of the states gas chamber and the removal of its equipment. The next step will be the consideration of commuting sentences on a permanent basis, from death to life without the possibility of parole. Only California voters can actually repeal the death penalty, something Newsom intends to ask them to do via the next ballot in 2020. Californians rejected a ballot measure attempting to rule out the death penalty in 2016. In addition, they also voted for a measure that would speed up the process. But Newsom said that the states residents have entrusted him to do what hes doing by way of Californias constitution. I have been crystal clear about my opposition to the death penalty for four decades now, said Newsome. For those who have followed [my political career] I dont think it comes as a surprise. The constitution and the laws of this state afford me the right to do this. The law does not change; it will only change with voters or the Supreme Court. Proponents of victims rights and some lawmakers expressed chagrin toward Newsomes decision, one victims relative calling it Trumpian to override what voters decided and make a decision based on your own personal philosophy. But others have supported his decision wholeheartedly and some lawmakers are with Newsom in proposing a permanent dismantling of the death penalty on the next ballot. Almost ten years ago, a more than $850,000 upgrade to San Quentins execution chamber was completed. Since then, no execution has been carried out in the state. Newsom cited studies that he said showed overwhelming evidence that death sentences are handed out biasedly according to race. If you kill a White person you are more likely to be handed the death penalty, he explained. ADVERTISEMENT If you are Black and you kill a White person, your chances are significantly higher. Between 2014 and 2018 the majority of death sentences in California came out of two counties; L..A. and Riverside. It matters where you live when it comes to prosecution and the death penalty. To the victims, all I can say is, We owe you and we need to do more and do better, more broadly for victims in this state but we cannot advance the death penalty in an effort to try to soften the blow of what happened, Newsom said. Democratic presidential hopeful, Senator Kamala Harris supports Newsoms decision, she herself in support of a federal decision of the same manner. She called the process immoral, discriminatory, ineffective, and a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars. Like Newsom, she pointed to the fact that Black and Latino defendants were more likely to be executed than White defendants, as were poor defendants with poor legal representation versus wealthier defendants with good legal representation. The symbol of our justice system is a woman with a blindfold, she said. It is supposed to treat all equally, but the application of the death penalty a final and irreversible punishment has been proven to be unequally applied she said. Help Available for Los Angeles County Cigarette Smokers Wanting to Change Their Smoking Behavior Do you ever wonder how many people in Los Angeles decided that New Years Day would be the day of their last cigarette? How many made a resolution to stop smoking and again success eluded them? To those who tried without success, you are certainly not alone. Cigarette smoking is known to be the leading preventable cause of disability and death, in the United States and worldwide. While rates of cigarette smoking overall have declined in the United States, equal declines are not being experienced in every community. African American and very often Latino populations in under-resourced communities experience many illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes, stroke, and various types of cancer, at rates greater than the general population. This is what is called a disparity in the health science research field. Tobacco use disorder disproportionally impacts under resourced communities including African-Americans and those who are least educated, so smoking is a health disparity that may contribute to other health disparities. Did you know that cigarette smoking and secondhand smoke kill close to one-half million people in the U.S. each year? Even with this knowledge, just wanting to stop lighting up is extremely difficult. Recent research indicates that approximately 68% of U.S. smokers want to quit and approximately 55% of those smokers attempted to quit. However, of those, only about 7.5% were actually able to stop smoking. ADVERTISEMENT Why is this so? What makes it so hard to stop smoking, cut down or to quit using all types of tobacco-related products? The main culprit is nicotine, which is highly addictive. It causes physical, behavioral, and psychological dependence, and to be successful at stopping or decreasing use, all three of these areas must be addressed. In response to the large numbers of people with tobacco use disorder served by the Los Angeles County Health System (LACHA), a team of researchers is working within this system to develop and evaluate what might prove to be a best practice to help reduce illness and diseases directly related to tobacco use in L.A. County. The LACHA was formed by the Board of Supervisors in 2015 to better integrate the Departments of Health Services (DHS), Public Health (DPH) and Mental Health (DMH), with a mission to improve the health and wellness of L.A. County residents through provision of integrated, comprehensive, culturally-appropriate services, programs, and policies that promote healthy people living in healthy communities. The study team, led by Drs. Theodore Friedman and Brian Hurley, is comprised of a group of clinicians, administrators, researchers, patients and community members. In early 2018, the team began discussing the need for some type of health systems change that could help patients and their medical care teams in their quest to have better health outcomes and help to reduce overall disparities associated with tobacco use. The team decided to look at embedding smoking cessation services into DHS and DMH clinics, beginning with ten clinics scattered around the county. The team realizes that tobacco use disorder not only causes disease, but it is a disease itself. As of 2018, tobacco use disorder is fully recognized as a treatable condition by both medical and mental health professionals, and is classified alongside other types of addictive diseases. As with other addictions, supportive services have been shown to be beneficial to recovery efforts. Consequently, a three-year program that includes various types of medications to help relieve cravings for nicotine and group smoking cessation counseling was developed. The combination of medications and counseling is more likely to lead to smoking cessation, an idea that will be tested in this study. Scientific research is being conducted in, with, by, and for communities, with the purpose of achieving a better understanding of how we can improve our health. The patients and community advisory members are full partners in this research, and bring a different perspective to the work making it more patient and community friendly. ADVERTISEMENT This study is funded by the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program and was awarded to Friends Research Institute as the project administrator. In an effort to sustain the successful systems changes, LA County Department of Health Services, Department of Mental Health, and Department of Public Health are supporting the delivery of smoking cessation services for individuals with tobacco use disorder, and underscores the Los Angeles Health Agencys commitment to improving health of all the individuals Los Angeles County is privileged to serve. If you smoke cigarettes and receive services from Los Angeles County medical or mental health clinics, you may be eligible to receive services to help you change your smoking behavior. And if youre a smoker, your cigarette tax dollars are supporting this work to help people with their tobacco habit. Thats right. Its paid for by your tax dollars, so why not learn more and get involved? To do so, call 323-256-3811. Lets Clamp Down on Tobacco and Vaping Product Access for Young People Nearly half a million people die every year from complications from smoking. About a tenth of them never put a cigarette to their lips they die from exposure to second-hand smoke. Death from tobacco is, according to the Centers for Disease Control, the leading cause of preventable death. But too many people, enticed by advertising, think that smoking is so cool that they embrace it. And the tobacco industry spent more than $9 billion on smoking advertising, or about a million dollars an hour. For too many, cigarettes are a desperate addiction, encouraged by pernicious advertising. The addiction hits folks of color Black and Brown folks hardest. We are more likely to be exposed to heavy advertising, more likely to become addicted, and more likely to die from complications of smoking addiction. Public policy can help ameliorate this challenge, perhaps, by further restricting who can buy tobacco and when. Because addictions start early, public policy can help by supporting efforts underway to limit the sale of nicotine to those who are under 21. Instead, unfortunately, some would prefer to restrict the sale of vaping products in particular to keep them out of the hands of children. Why not just further limit the sale of all tobacco products? The companies that manufacture vaping products, like the market leader Juul, are to be commended for attempting to protect young people from the deleterious effects of their products. But their recently accelerated activism is only one small step toward ensuring that young people are protected from the harmful effects of smoking, and they cannot do it alone. ADVERTISEMENT Very recently, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, resigned for family reasons (dont you love it when white men suddenly discover their families when they are in hot water). At the same time, we learned that too many chains, like Walmart, Kroger and Walgreens, along with gas stations, are breaking the law by selling cigarettes and other nicotine products to young people. But heres the deal. It doesnt make sense to regulate the sale of nicotine products, like vaping, without looking at the sale of nicotine products, like cigarettes. Children (yes, despite their protests, I think of anyone under 21 as a child) shouldnt be purchasing alcohol or tobacco. Period. End of conversation. They arent grown. They are susceptible to addiction. The law should protect them and penalize those who make it easy for them to access these products. But the law does not protect. Instead, legislators selectively go after some products, while protecting others. If legislators understood the damage that nicotine and tobacco products do to people, especially young people, theyd be rushing to outlaw them. Instead, because tobacco is big business, the industry is protected. Furthermore, products that attempt to ameliorate the harmful sides of smoking, like vaping, are subjected to unreasonable scrutiny, even outlawed. To their credit, vaping companies are owning their role in possible addiction and standing for a ban on selling any nicotine products to children. Part of this is personal for me. Ive written before about my moms smoking addiction, which has led to her developing COPD and emphysema diseases in her ninth decade. But its more than the personal. Its about the ways that public policy can protect young people, even as they make poor choices. Follow the money, goes the trope. Who benefits from youngsters buying tobacco and nicotine products? Why do legislators protect them? Why would legislators crack down on vaping, but not cigarettes? Who benefits? If we follow the money, we have to monitor the lobby. Who has power in this game? We always need to follow the money when we look at the ways that some products are offered to the market and others are restricted. We always need to follow the money when we realize that there are always beneficiaries in a society that has predatory capitalism at its roots. We dont need more children being exposed to addiction. We shouldnt outlaw vaping products without outlawing the sale of tobacco to children. I appreciate some manufacturers for joining many others in standing up against companies like Walmart, Walgreens and the others that are making big dollars selling tobacco and nicotine products to children. It needs to stop. Now. Legislators need to step up and protect our children from this destructive addiction! ADVERTISEMENT Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist. Her latest book Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy is available via www.amazon.com for booking, wholesale inquiries or for more info visit www.juliannemalveaux.com Missing Black Girls and the Individuals and Organizations Trying to Help Have you seen Iniaya Wilson? Just 14, Iniaya has been missing from her Columbus, Ohio home since January 25. Shes African American, has brown hair and brown eyes; standing 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 120 pounds. ADVERTISEMENT Have you seen Skylar Mannie? From Lancaster, Calif., Skylar is also Black and just 13 years old. She was last seen on Feb. 14. She has black hair, brown eyes, stands 5 feet 5 inches and weighs 130 pounds. The two are among the estimated 64,000 Black girls and women across the United States that have gone missing. Iniaya and Skylar are also among an unfortunately growing number of young people listed in the critically missing section of the expansive database of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The list includes girls and women of all backgrounds, an important distinction because of the lack of media coverage of African Americans whove gone missing. That has spurred activists and some in Congress to action. ADVERTISEMENT In efforts to address the problem of missing Black children nationwide, Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.), Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), and Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY) initiated the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls in 2016. Through the caucus, they hope to create public policies that eliminate significant barriers and disparities experienced by Black women. According to BlackNews.com, members of the caucus believe that more federal assistance and collaboration is needed to further eliminate the problem. I feel like knocking on every attic, every garage to see where those girls are, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi said. Lets be an example to the world that we cant rest until these girls are found. Further, the nonprofit Black and Missing But Not Forgotten, also has focused its attention on spotlighting and finding missing African Americans. Since 2007, the organization has sought to develop relationships with media, government agencies and the public to ensure that missing African Americans receive prompt attention and concern to garner the best possible outcomes for each case. A 2010 study about the media coverage of missing children in the United States, discovered that only 20 percent of reported stories focused on missing Black children despite it corresponding to 33 percent of the overall missing children cases. The report revealed that missing Black youth especially Black girls are underreported in the news and it seems that many people dont even care. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children said that in 2018 alone, there were 424,066 reports of missing children made to law enforcement around the country. John and Reve Walsh and other child advocates founded the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as a private, non-profit organization to serve as the national clearinghouse and to provide a coordinated, national response to problems relating to missing and exploited children. Walsh, who formerly hosted Americas Most Wanted, now does similar work with his show, In Pursuit. The show, which airs on the Investigation Discovery network, has remained relentless in its pursuit of missing children. Im excited to see our co-founder John Walsh back doing what he does best catching fugitives and bringing justice to victims, John F. Clark, NCMECs president and CEO, said in a blog on the NCME website. So far, the nonprofit has helped law enforcement find more than 284,000 missing kids, and NCMECs 24/7 Call Center has handled more than 4.8 million phone calls and has access to 190 languages. Walsh founded NCMEC nearly 35 years ago after his 6-year-old son, Adam, was abducted and later found murdered. With the expanding power of social media, Walsh said people are more involved now than ever before. Call me. Contact me you tell me where the bad guy is, and well go get em, Walsh said on the blog. According to multiple reports, when Black girls go missing, its often unclear whether they have run away from home, were inflicted violence, abducted, sent into the sex industry, among others. Essentially, according to BlackNews.com, their safety and assurance to be brought back home was commonly ignored and not an utmost concern. That concern heightened when investigators in California announced that they were trying to identify the body of a young Black girl who was found dead inside a duffel bag in a suburb of Los Angeles. The girl was eventually identified as Trinity Love Jones. Investigators said the circumstances of her death are still being determined. The discovery combined with the lack of any new missing person reports that match the girls description shed further light on the plight of missing Black girls. Trinitys body was found near a hiking trail in Hacienda Heights but authorities said initially that they had little information to help identify her. She was found wearing a long pink shirt with the words Future Princess Hero and grey pants with panda prints. Because Hacienda Heights isnt far from Lancaster, where Skylar Mannie went missing. The Los Angeles Sheriff Department did release a statement clarifying that the body found did not belong to Skylar. LASD confirms the victim found in Hacienda Heights is not Skylar Mannie who was reported missing in Lancaster. Homicide investigators are working diligently to solve the case of the girl found in Hacienda Heights and we ask our residents to keep an eye out for Skylar, the sheriffs department said in the statement at the time. Weve detained two people of interest who may be connected to the case, a subsequent statement said. Taquesta Graham, 28, was questioned after being detained in Texas on an alleged parole violation but was expedited to Los Angeles, where, according to County officials, she expected to be charged a suspect in the death of her daughter Trinity Deputy Michelle Sanchez of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department Information Bureau said in a statement, Graham remains to be held in Los Angeles County custody on the unrelated warrant. Homicide investigators continue to vet community tips and follow up on additional evidence obtained during the investigation. The criminal case naming Taquesta Graham is being prepared for presentation to the District Attorneys Office on a later date. Grahams boyfriend, Emiel Lamar Hunt, 38, was initially charged with murder for the death of Trinity Love Jones. He is scheduled to appear in Los Angeles County Superior Court to enter a plea on April 26. Hunt served more than a decade in prison following a conviction for abusing his own son in San Diego County in 2005, according to sheriffs Detective Marc Boivert. New Antioch COGIC Celebrates Annual Seniors Day New Antioch Church of God in Christ invites the community to Annual Seniors Day on Sunday, March 24, at 11 a.m., in the edifice located at 7826 S. Vermont Ave., in Los Angeles. According to Pastor Jeffrey M. Lewis, the observance was established to honor, highlight and celebrate the senior worshipers of our congregation. The contributions of seniors are often overlooked and under-appreciated and as a church, it is important that we engage our seniors and tap into their incredible pool of knowledge and experience. Annual Seniors Day allows us to raise awareness of supporting our seniors and recognizing their achievements, said Lewis. ADVERTISEMENT You can learn a lot about a person and their life story by simply asking! Seniors offer a unique, yet deeply personal perspective on life based on their experiences and the events they have lived through, he continued. On March 24, you will discover that there are amazing stories and family legacies hidden within the heart of our beloved, experienced and faithful seniors. For information, call the church office at (323) 778-7965 or visit newantiochcogic.org. Rep. Bennie Thompson Wins Efforts to Make Medgar Evers Home National Monument On June 12, 1963, voting rights activist Medgar Evers was shot dead outside his home in Jackson Mississippi. Evers, who was a World War II veteran, was the NAACP field secretary in Mississippi. He was murdered by Byron de la Beckwith, a white supremacist, Klansman and member of the White Citizens Council. Evers killer would not be convicted until 1994, after an allwhite jury deadlocked in 1964 allowing de la Beckwith to roam unpunished for Evers murder for three decades. Because of the work of Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the Evers house at 2332 Margaret Walker Alexander Drive in Jackson, will now become a national historic landmark. The house where Medgar Evers was fatally shot was built in the first planned middle-class subdivision for African-Americans in Mississippi after World War II. Thompson has been working on the honor for Evers for over ten years. ADVERTISEMENT The home was owned by Tougaloo College and later restored for tours. In 2017, Edgars home was designated a National Historic Landmark. The John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, signed March 12, 2019, included language that designates Evers home as a national monument. On January 14, Rep. Thompson reintroduced the Medgar Evers Home National Monument Act. In my capacity as Congressman of the Second Congressional District of Mississippi, to author this legislation to honor the sacrifice of Civil Rights Icon Medgar Evers and his widow, Myrlie, by designating their home as a National Monument. This legislation is of great personal importance to me. I, like many others, was inspired by the magnitude of determination Mr. Evers showed by dedicating himself to others and fighting against adversity. The designation of his home is an everlasting tribute to his legacy. Evers worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi and end the segregation of public places. Ironically, the hospital that Evers was admitted to, after a delay, was the first time that an all-white hospital in Mississippi admitted an African American. In October 2009, then Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, announced that USNS Medgar Evers, a cargo ship, would be named in his honor. The ship was christened by his wife, Myrlie Evers-Williams on November 12, 2011. Medgar Evers, who served in the U.S. Army, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. "The Philippine government should really carefully study its options when considering loans from China.'' The New York Times ran a lengthy article in June last year entitled "How China got Sri Lanka to cough up a port." The port referred to is located in Hambantota, a sparsely populated area in Sri Lankas southeastern coast that's said to be still largely overrun by jungle. The Hambantota port was built by China Harbor Engineering Co. one of Beijing's largest state-owned enterprises, for $361 million, of which 85 percent was funded by the Chinese governments Export-Import Bank, or Exim. It opened on Nov. 18, 2010. The article reported that Sri Lanka struggled to make payments on the debt it had incurred. Under heavy pressure and after months of negotiations, the Sri Lankan government handed over to the Chinese in December the port and 15,000 acres of land around it for 99 years. The transfer gave China control of territory just a few hundred miles off the shores of a rival, India, and a strategic foothold along a critical commercial and military waterway, according to the report. This, it said, "is one of the most vivid examples of Chinas ambitious use of loans and aid to gain influence around the worldand of its willingness to play hardball to collect." In conclusion, the report said the Hambantota case underscores China's global investment and lending program amounting to "a debt trap for vulnerable countries around the world." That, however, is just one side of the story. Obviously in reaction to the NYT report, a spokesman of China's Foreign Ministry, Lu Kang, said later that China and Sri Lanka are committed to pushing forward cooperation on the Hambantota port project and realizing the goal of making Sri Lanka the logistics center of the Indian Ocean. "This is not only conducive to the economic development of Sri Lanka, but also conducive to regional interconnection and the common prosperity of regional countries," the spokesman said. "According to the needs of Sri Lanka, Chinese financial institutions have provided support to Sri Lanka in solving the financing gap. Later, the Chinese side made efforts to adjust relevant asset allocation according to the wishes of the Sri Lankan side," said Lu, noting that those arrangements will benefit business cooperation between the two sides. "If the fabricators of the so-called 'debt trap' can not give the developing countries real help, they can at least take a healthy attitude towards the sincere cooperation between other countries," said Lu. A news report in the China Daily on Aug. 28 last year acknowledged that while "the port has endured a relatively slow pace of growth and development in recent times", the joint venture agreement signed in July 2017 to begin operations at Hambantota port is nevertheless poised to show steady growth, with automobile transshipments constituting a major component of the facility's growing business.Under the JV agreement, China Merchants Port Holdings and Sri Lanka's Port Authority agreed to jointly operate the port via Hambantota International Port Group and Hambantota International Port Services. Automakers from Japan, South Korea and India have begun transshipping increasing numbers of vehicles through Hambantota, being drawn by its convenient location, deepwater berths and availability of storage space. In the past, automakers in East Asia and India have had to transfer their cargo ships in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, to unload for other destinations. However, with space limitations in Colombo, Hambantota wants to offer its facility for auto transshipments. According to the Hambantota International Port Group, 99 percent of employees are Sri Lankans, and many have been sent to Shenzhen to receive port-related technical training. With the cooperation between China and Sri Lanka, the port is now gearing up to become a leading port in the Indian Ocean region. The news report quoted Ravi Jayawickreme, CEO of the port facility, saying the two sides are making efforts to convert the facility into a multipurpose port that could provide a variety of services. "This area of Hambantota is one of the poorest per capita in the country. So a port like this on the rise is going to be a big boost for the people to raise their living standards," was quoted as saying. Hambantota is within 20 kilometers of one of the world's busiest shipping lanes where approximately 200 to 300 vessels daily carry two-thirds of global energy products and half of all containerized cargo. Hence, prospects are bright for the port facility to earn revenues and enable Sri Lanka to benefit from the joint venture with China. The Hambantota case is increasingly being cited by Western media to warn developing nations, including the Philippines, against contracting loans from China. But the Philippine government should really carefully study its options when considering loans from China, and for that matter, all other countries, and go over the terms and conditions with a fine-tooth comb, to see how these would benefit, first and foremost, the national interest and the Filipino people. [email protected] Congresswoman Maxine Waters (CA-43) issued the following statement after approximately 50 individuals were charged or indicted by federal prosecutors for engaging in widespread criminal fraud to buy students way into selective universities: I am heartbroken and disgusted by the lying and cheating of the ultra-rich parents and their allies who orchestrated an egregious college admissions scheme and robbed highly qualified students of the opportunity to attend elite universities. Millions of talented students particularly those from minority, low-income, and rural communities face nearly insurmountable odds before they even reach the point in their scholastic careers when they apply for college. Now, as a result of this latest $25 million fraudulent scheme to help unqualified and highly privileged students from wealthy families gain access to top universities, we have discovered that the plight of vulnerable students seeking admission into elite colleges is even worse than we previously understood. ADVERTISEMENT Minority, low-income, and rural community students often attend schools lacking in resources and have to take on part-time jobs, while maintaining good grades and balancing extra-curricular activities. Expensive tutoring programs and costly college preparatory courses are out of the question for students from families who are already struggling to make ends meet. Its also been well-documented that elite universities have a disturbing track record of prioritizing students from wealthy and privileged families over students from minority, low-income, and rural communities. These universities have instituted policies such as legacy admissions, which overlook talented students from diverse backgrounds who are often the first in their families to attend college. These universities have placed a premium on standardized test scores, but fail to consider the way in which students from wealthy households have access to expensive tutors and prep courses that students from working class and low-income families seldom can afford. As evidenced by recent protests from students at many top institutions, there is still a question of whether the leadership of these universities is not only diverse, but whether they have created a culture that is truly inclusivefrom the admissions office to the classroom. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that at the most competitive colleges in America, 70 percent of students come from the wealthiest quarter of families.[1] There are almost 40 elite schoolsincluding Yale, Princeton, and Brownwhich admit more students from the wealthiest 1 percent than those in the bottom 60 percent.[2] An often repeated, long held belief is that our public education system is a meritocracy, in which students are admitted into college based on their talent, hard work, potential, and achievements. This is a myth that is repeated in order to shield the education system from scrutiny. I applaud the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, federal prosecutors, and the nearly 200 federal agents nationwide who exposed the lies and toxic privilege leveraged by wealthy elites to buy their children admittance into selective colleges.[3] There should be no toll or tax on ones path to success besides hard work. I stand with students across this country particularly those from minority, low-income, and rural communities who have been unfairly denied admission to elite universities as well as the students who have filed a class action lawsuit against the schools named by federal prosecutors. I will not stop until we have an education system that is accessible, affordable, and equitable for all not some. Sen. Holly J. Mitchells Statement on Her Appointment to L.A. Coliseum Commission Sen. Holly J. Mitchell of Los Angeles issued the following statement after being appointed to the Los Angeles Coliseum Commission: As a third-generation Angeleno, I value the role the Los Angeles Coliseum plays in our community, Mitchell said after her appointment was approved by the Senate Rules Committee. It is my hope that the commission will continue to serve the community and keep working toward improvements that will help our community thrive. The Coliseum showcases the best L.A. has to offer and has a promising future. I am honored to be a commission member. ADVERTISEMENT Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins of San Diego said Mitchells background make her uniquely qualified to serve on the commission. Sen. Mitchells experience running Californias largest family and child-development organization and overseeing the passage of two consecutive state budgets of almost $200 billion each will help ensure stability at the Coliseum Commission, Atkins said about her nominee to the LACC. Sen. Mitchell has consistently demonstrated unwavering commitment to invest in ongoing improvements for her community. The Memorial Coliseum Commission meets monthly and is comprised of six voting members and two ex-officio, or non-voting members, of which Mitchell is one. There is no compensation. The Commission meets monthly and oversees the Coliseums lease agreement with the University of Southern California, which has day-to-day management and operation responsibilities for the 98,000-seat stadium. Located in Exposition Park, the stadium is adjacent to Mitchells District Office. USC recently began a $300 million project to renovate and improve the Coliseum. It is the first major upgrade of the stadium in 20 years. Construction is scheduled to be completed later this year. Speeding Cannabis Resentencing with Digital Technology Tens of thousands of Los Angeles County residents are eligible for reclassification or resentencing of minor cannabis convictions, but the lack of easy-to-use digital solutions has left far too many people in limbo, county officials said. Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas recommended leveraging technology to reach more people whose lives have been hampered by prior convictions for now-legal acts. ADVERTISEMENT The war on drugs led to decades-long racial disparities in cannabis- related arrests and convictions, Ridley-Thomas said. We have a responsibility to right these wrongs by utilizing the latest innovations in technology to ensure that people who have been disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs get the second chance they deserve. Fewer than 1,000 people have filed a petition for reclassification or resentencing, out of an estimated 60,000-100,000 eligible individuals, according to Ridley-Thomas. The people who have been charged with these crimes are disproportionately people of color, and their record severely impacts their ability to access housing, education, employment, and other necessities for stability all for convictions based on actions that the voters have declared are no longer crimes, said Supervisor Hilda Solis, who co-authored the motion. When voters approved Proposition 64 to legalize adult use of marijuana in November 2016, they also cleared the way for people convicted of possession, cultivation and sales or transport of cannabis to have their sentences reduced or their convictions dismissed. But the process is cumbersome and overly bureaucratic, according to advocates. And despite county outreach, including clinics to educate residents, only about 30 petitions are filed by the Public Defenders Office each month, according to the countys director of Consumer and Business Affairs. Ingrid Archie, who said she was the first person to petition for a felony reclassification after Prop 64 was passed, said automation is the key. When the law is broken, a person is automatically arrested. Its imperative that the same energy of automation is used to expunge the records of more than 100,000 individuals, said Archie, who is a civic engagement coordinator with the nonprofit organization A New Way Of Life. Taking a proactive approach by using innovative technology to assist in record clearance is the next step in continuing to clean up the collateral damage from the war on drugs that still exists in our communities. ADVERTISEMENT Ridley-Thomas said digital technology like that used by another nonprofit, Code for America, could evaluate thousands of convictions and automatically generate the appropriate court forms within minutes. Code for Americas Clear My Record initiative has worked with the San Francisco District Attorneys Office to identify more than 9,300 cases eligible for expungement. Clear My Record also offers online access to petitioners from several other counties. The board directed staffers to report back in 60 days on opportunities to use technology for resentencing and asked public defenders to come up with a plan to notify all their clients of the countys resentencing efforts. The Black Women Jailed for Stealing an Education, The Inequity of the Elite College Admissions Scam Actress Lori Loughlin was taken into custody by the FBI Wednesday in Los Angeles after she, fellow movie star Felicity Huffman and 48 others were charged in a $25 million college admissions scam that ABC News said has prompted repercussions from Hollywood to the boardrooms of major corporations. A former cast member on the ABC sitcom Full House, Loughlin and Oscar-nominated actress Huffman, are among 33 parents charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in the nationwide scam to get their children into elite colleges, including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown and the University of Southern California. Social media is abuzz over this case, and many are wondering whether anyone will spend time in jail for their crimes. ADVERTISEMENT For some, its another example of the difference between when the White elite are charged with crimes compared to poor people of color. Kelley Williams-Bolar and Tanya McDowell enrolled their children into Public School Districts in which they did not reside, one Twitter user with the handle @dlnodots wrote. They were both jailed for these crimes. Should Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin be held to that same standard? the user wrote. Others on social media concurred with @dlnodots. In 2011, Williams-Bolar, a black woman, was sentenced to 10 days in county jail, three years of probation and $30,000 in restitution for lying about her residency to get her daughters into a better school district in Ohio. For McDowell, the punishment was worse. ADVERTISEMENT [McDowell] got 12 years for sending her six-year-old son to Norwalk, Connecticuts Brookside Elementary School while she lived in Bridgeport, even though she was homeless, said Bishop Talbert Swan, an activist and pastor. She was convicted of 1st degree larceny for stealing an education, Swan said. When McDowell was sentenced in 2012, she vowed to continue to fight for a better education and life for her young son. Authorities said that her charges were compounded by the fact that she twice sold drugs to an undercover police officer. The convoluted case left some scratching their heads, while others who had previously supported McDowell began to step away when the drug charges surfaced. Some observers suspected that because of the stealing education case, the homeless woman was targeted and set up by authorities, including a relentless cold-hearted prosecutor. Who would have thought that wanting a good education for my son would put me in this predicament, McDowell, 34, said at her sentencing where she received 12 years in prison with seven years suspended. I have no regrets seeking a better education for him, I do regret my participation in this drug case, she said. Norm Pattis, a trial lawyer who said hes fighting for freedom one client at a time, recently wrote a sobering blog about the McDowell case. Pattis, who practices law in Connecticut, said the system owes McDowell. I hope Tanya McDowell will forgive us, someday, for our hypocrisy and cruelty. I hope her son will as well. But first she will have to serve her prison term. Her son will have to learn to get along without her, Pattis said. Experienced criminal defense lawyers know the charges faced by McDowell often go hand-in-hand with life circumstances: An addict has to steal, often, to support their habit, Pattis said. However, McDowell was no ordinary drug user, he said. She did not steal to support her habit. She stole an education from the City of Norwalk. Yeah, thats right. We now send people to prison for theft of an education, Pattis said. McDowell was living by her wits with her kindergarten-age son, spending time where she could, most often in Bridgeport at homeless shelters. Simply put, she wanted a better life for her son, so she enrolled him in the Norwalk public schools despite having no real ties to the city. When the city found out that it was spending its money educating her boy, it demanded that Ms. McDowell be charged with a crime, Pattis said. Norwalk prosecutors, known statewide for an unreasoning mean-streak, obliged. She was charged with first-degree larceny, he said. At that point, McDowell had become something of a folk heroine and public support rallied behind her. Then the undercover cops moved in. Just who sent them and why they targeted her is as yet unclear. She bought some narcotics, and was then charged as a drug user. Public support for her vanished, Pattis said. Why, the woman self-medicates? A homeless shelter isnt good enough for her? She struggles being a single mom? Maybe shes got mental health issues? And whats this about wanting a better life for her son? Lets warehouse her, he said. Pattis added that McDowell needed help, not a prison bed. But Norwalk prosecutors piled on. They would not negotiate a resolution of her separate and distinct cases. No, not these ministers of justice, Pattis said. A woman is sent to prison for wanting a better life for her children. She is doing time for using an illegal drug. Had she drunk herself to death it would be no crime. Or had she smoked four packs of cigarettes a day to sooth her jangled nerves, no one would care. But the wrong people are profiting from the drugs McDowell used, he said. Pattis continued: We imprison the sick and call it justice. Now we imprison the homeless looking for something better for their kids. Class war? You bet. Ms. McDowell just go sacrificed on the front lines. Trump Denies the Rise of White Nationalism Amid New Zealand Massacre Since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, there has been an ongoing nationwide conversation on the rise and the potential threat of White nationalism. Last Friday (March 8), during a White House press conference, a reporter asked Trump whether or not he believes the rise in White nationalism is a threat around the world. The question comes shortly after the massacre of 50 Muslim worshipers at two mosques in New Zealand. Trump responded: I dont really; I think its a small group of people that have very, very serious problems. I guess if you look at what happened in New Zealand, perhaps thats a case I dont know enough about it yet. Theyre just learning about it and the people involved but it is certainly a terrible thing. ADVERTISEMENT After making this statement, Trump began to receive major pushback from the Democratic Party, religious leaders, minority leaders and activists. One, in particular, was Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. White supremacists committed the largest # of extremist killings in 2017. What the President is saying here: if you engage in violent acts of white supremacy, I will look the other way, wrote Ocasio-Cortez in a Twitter post. Although Trump does not see an increase in White nationalism around the world, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) statistics on hate groups proves otherwise. In the Spring 2019 issue of SPLCs Intelligence Report, the center noted that Trump has opened the White House doors to extremism, not only consulting with hate groups on policies that erode our countrys civil rights protections, but also enabling the infiltration of extremist ideas into the administrations rhetoric and agenda. Two of the policies SPLC are referring to is the Trump administrations anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies. This information was released after SPLC conducted an investigation on hate crimes across the U.S. where they found a 50 percent increase in White nationalist hate groups between 2017 and 2018. During 2018, SPLC tracked 1,020 hate groups across the U.S. with California among the highest with 83 hate groups, followed by Florida with 75 and Texas with 73. The report also calls out the members of Congress who SPLC believes to be associated with White supremacists, anti-LGBT and other hate groups which are: Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, Rep. Kevin Kramer of North Dakota, Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Rep. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Rep. Greg Giaforte of Montana, Rep. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rep. Steve King of Iowa, and Rep. Mark Harris of North Carolina. ADVERTISEMENT The full hate group map can be viewed at https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map. To view the full Spring 2019 Intelligence Report please visit www.splcenter.org. Vigilance, Solidarity Urged for Houses of Worship In light of the horrendous mass shooting at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on March 15, faith leaders, law enforcement and elected officials issued a call for vigilance, security precautions and solidarity with the Muslim community to houses of worship. Fifty people were killed during the massacre. Two days after the shootings, alleged White supremacist Brenton Harris Tarrant, 28, is the only person in custody that has been linked to the attack. While no immediate threat to U.S. mosques has been identified, LAPD and the L.A. County Sheriffs Department provided additional patrols to Muslim worship centers in the Los Angeles area this past weekend. Also, the ecumenical community and several politicians condemned the shootings and racial intolerance. ADVERTISEMENT Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the The Simon Wiesenthal Center, issued the following statement: The Simon Wiesenthal Center expresses its outrage over the horrific attack against Muslims attending a mosque in New Zealand. The center condemns this act of terrorism We are committed to confront bigots and haters wherever they are. This kind of fanaticism cannot be tolerated irrespective of ones faith, creed or place or origin. We express our sincere condolences to the community and families of the victims. Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson also expressed sympathy for the victims. We are saddened and disgusted by the horrific acts committed in New Zealand, Wesson said. We in Los Angeles stand in solidarity with New Zealand and the Muslim Community in the face of hatred, cruelty, and blatant Islamophobia. American Muslims share the same values and freedoms that we all cherish, knowing that we are all in this together. All Americans deserve the right and freedom to worship in their own way, free of threats or violence, Arsalan Bukhari, spokesman for the Council on Islamic-American Relations L.A. Voter Suppression a Lasting Legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade Presidential elections and the voter experience have long been fraught for black people. From racist poll taxes to made-up literacy tests to the egregious rollback of voting rights over the past 50 years, American democracy has, at times, felt like a weird and failed social experiment. Patrisse Cullors Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. There is no reason which can excuse the denial of that right. There is no duty which weighs more heavily on us than the duty we have to ensure that right. It is wrongdeadly wrongto deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of states rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights. President Lyndon B. Johnson, fromThe Voting Rights Act Address New U.S. Census data projects that in in 2045 the United States will be minority white, and with several factors considered, The Progressive succinctly noted the implications: In thirty years, more potential voters will be non-white. ADVERTISEMENT Donald Trump continues to prime audiences with his racial fear-mongering and rhetoric of white nationalism and, nationwide, Republicans have gone out of their way to prevent non-white people from voting, as also noted in The Progressive. According to the Pew Research Center fewer than 3 percent of black people are registered as Republican and fewer than 15 percent of Latinos register Republican. Voter suppression, its totally clear, is about racial politics more than party politics. Its also clear that voter suppression is one of the many lingering and lasting effects of the 500-year-old Transatlantic Slave Trade. The whole idea of the slave trade was the disenfranchisement of our human rights, the Rev. Al Sharpton said in an interview with NNPA Newswire at the Rev. Jesse Jacksons recent Rainbow Push Coalition Wall Street Project. Voter suppression is the disenfranchisement of our human and civil rights and thats why our struggle must have continuity because were still fighting for justice and equality, Sharpton said. ADVERTISEMENT Jackson agreed. Clearly, disenfranchisement has been the theme from the time they brought our people over here on slave ships from Africa, Jackson said. What you see with voter suppression and disenfranchisement is a product of the slave trade for sure, he said. During the 2018 midterm elections, voter participation was more than 10 percentage points higher than it was in the 2014 midterm elections, demonstrating Americans demand for change and increased enthusiasm for exercising their civic duty to vote. That said, nearly 120 million eligible Americans did not participate in the November elections, according to a report from the Center for American Progress. The report noted that widespread voter suppression particularly against historically marginalized groups is a reoccurring problem in the United States. Each election cycle, untold numbers of eligible Americans are prevented from voting due to barriers in the voter registration process, restrictions on casting ballots, and discriminatory and partisan-rigged district maps. The report described some of the voter suppression measures and other Election Day problems that potentially kept millions of eligible Americans from participating in the 2018 midterm elections. Those included: Voter registration problems Voter purges Strict voter ID and ballot requirements Voter confusion Voter intimidation and harassment Poll closures and long lines Malfunctioning voting equipment Disenfranchisement of justice-involved individuals Gerrymandering Many, like Sharpton and Jackson, said the actions of voter suppression and disenfranchisement are remnants of the transatlantic slave trade. Africans came here with nothing and with no rights to anything, not even their children. They had to learn an entirely new language, said Janice Robinson-Celeste, a former nanny, early childhood specialist and one-time daycare owner who publishes SuccessfulBlackParenting.com. Today, too many red states have manipulated the system by redistricting voting areas, suppressing votes, using malfunctioning machines which create long lines and deter people, to requiring identification to vote, Robinson-Celeste said. We owe it to our ancestors from slavery to the Civil Rights era to vote in every election. The GOP wants to strip our rights away which is reminiscent of what the slave traders did when our people were kidnapped from Africa and at the least to the pre-civil rights movement. We have to fight for our rights, or we will gradually lose them in a slow boil, she said. Finally, Robinson-Celeste added: It doesnt matter what candidate you like or dont like at this point. It matters which will do the best for your children, for you and your family. Thats the one you vote for. The idea is to keep the worst one out of office. From the birthing pains of American Democracy came the racist deformity that remains a part of us today, said Maxim Thorne, an attorney and managing director of The Andrew Goodman Foundation, which supports youth leadership development, voting accessibility, and social justice initiatives on campuses across the country with mini-grants to select institutions of higher learning and other financial assistance to students. This is despite centuries of legal and legislative efforts to repair that core infection of the three-fifths clause that is embedded in the U.S. Constitution, Thorne said. In Federalist No. 54, James Madison wrote about the chief concern of the representation of slaves concerning taxation and representation, Thorne said. This federalist paper states that slaves are property as well as people, therefore requiring some, but not full, representation. Ultimately a decision was made to count every three out of five slaves through the creation of the Three-Fifths Compromise, he said. Whats more, white people, the economic and cultural beneficiaries of the plantocracy, have for centuries tried to maintain that same power structure, Thorne said. For many, especially in the American South, this notion has become a sought-after norm. Embedded deep in our racist culture, white citizens continue to undermine the African-American vote and that of other marginalized racial groups today, he said. All of that could be seen in the 2018 Midterm Election through the rebirth and escalation of voter suppression tactics throughout the country, Thorne further contends. He said since 2013 when the United States Supreme Court struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, many attempts have been made to recreate Jim Crow-era policies meant to disenfranchise minority voters. Thats why we see a resurgence of voter ID laws, purging of voter rolls, as well as threats and intimidation, Thorne said. This paradigm was never more glaring than in the 2018 Georgia Gubernatorial Race. Stacey Abrams, the first Black woman to be nominated for governor in the United States, had been surfacing as a viable candidate for the position since 2013, he said. Thorne continued: Like Obama, she electrified the African-American and progressive communities. It became clear however that the voting structure was rigged against her. The Georgia Secretary of State, Briana Kemp, who oversaw voting in the state, refused to step down from his position while running as her opponent. Mr. Kemp attempted to close polling stations in majority Black precincts. Malfunctioning voting machines in largely Black counties affected voting. Voters complained to the Georgia NAACP that the voting machines registered a vote for Kemp even when they selected Abrams. 53,000 voter registration applications were never processed, from predominantly Black districts, greater than the margin by which Stacey Abrams lost the election. Ultimately, Abrams conceded in a race that was sullied by suppression. Those nefarious and racist voter suppression activities fulfill the spirit of the three-fifths clause, Thorne said. The nation appears to have moved on from the Georgia election with many of the structural problems remaining intact and I expect there will be loud rumblings of unfairness in 2020 again but vested interests are only thinking in partisan patterns, not about real inclusive democracy, he said. This unquestioned acceptance of the denial of African-American voting rights is the current festering of the racist seed of our founding. Wednesday, March 20, 2019 In its recent opinion in McCoy v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment guarantees a defendant the right to choose the objective of his defense and to insist that his counsel refrain from admitting guilt, even when counsels experienced-based view is that confessing guilt offers the defendant the best chance to avoid the death penalty. As I recently taught my Criminal Adjudication students, in the wake of McCoy, there are interesting questions about the extent to which it prevents "lawyer override." One of these questions was raised in the recent opinion of the Ninth Circuit in United States v. Read, 2019 WL 1196654 (9th Cir. 2019). In Read, the Ninth Circuit addressed a question of first impression: "whether a criminal defendant has the Sixth Amendment right to demand that counsel not present an insanity defense." In the case, Jonathan Read was charged with one count each of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to do bodily harm, and assault with a deadly weapon resulting in serious bodily injury. Read was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and, after a tortured procedural history, appointed counsel. Over Read's objection, "[c]ounsel ably, but unsuccessfully, proceeded to present an insanity defense at trial. Read was convicted and sentenced to concurrent 82-month terms." In finding that a defendant can demand that his attorney not present an insanity defense, the Ninth Circuit extended McCoy's holding: McCoy's emphasis on the defendants autonomy strongly suggests that counsel cannot impose an insanity defense on a non-consenting defendant. An insanity defense is tantamount to a concession of guilt....Moreover, a defense of insanity, like a concession of guilt, carries grave personal consequences that go beyond the sphere of trial tactics. A defendant may not wish to plead insane because of a firmly held feeling that he was not mentally ill at the time of the crime....Just as conceding guilt might carry opprobrium that a defendant might wish to avoid, above all else,...a defendant, with good reason, may choose to avoid the stigma of insanity....A defendant may also prefer a remote chance of exoneration to the prospect of indefinite commitment to a state institution. -CM https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/evidenceprof/2019/03/in-its-recent-opinion-in-mccoy-v-louisiana-the-supreme-court-held-that-the-sixth-amendment-guarantees-a-defendant-the-right.html The Cuban government is set to launch major changes to its centrally planned, single-party political system. The new laws could reshape everything from criminal justice to the economy. Nearly a year of debate and discussion ended last month with the approval of Cubas first constitutional reform since 1976. Some observers see the new constitution as making minor changes, but nothing substantive. They say the new constitution is aimed at ensuring that one of the worlds last communist systems does not get any serious reforms for years to come. But others see the possibility for a slow-moving but deep change that will speed the modernization of Cubas government. Cuban legal experts say they expect the government to send the National Assembly between 60 and 80 proposed laws over the next two years. They told The Associated Press that these measures, when approved, would replace laws considered outdated. The assembly is almost sure to approve all government proposals, as it has for years. I expect to see big changes in Cuba with the new constitution, said Julio Antonio Fernandez, a law professor at the University of Havana. A new state structure, a transformed political system, led by the Communist Party, of course, but different and confronting big challenges, he added. One of the first changes will be in Cubas political system. In the next five months, the government is required to pass a new electoral law. The measure would split the duties of head of state and government between the current president and a new position of prime minister. Also, new governors will replace the Communist Party first secretaries as the highest official in Cubas 15 provinces. The Communist Party remains the only political group permitted in the country. However, the wording in the new constitution could give voters a choice among different Communist Party candidates instead of just voting yes or no for a single candidate chosen by the government. A new business law could create an official role or position for small- and medium-sized businesses. Until now, all private workers and employers are legally defined as self-employed. This means hundreds of thousands of self-employed Cubans go to work each day for the self-employed owners of restaurants and family-operated hotels. Business owners hope legal recognition will bring them new rights, including the ability to import and export. Such rights currently only exist for state-controlled businesses. A new family code is expected to deal with the issue of same sex marriage, which was struck from the new constitution after popular resistance. A new criminal code will, for the first time, require the government to fully explain a citizens detention. It will also give Cubans the right to know what information the government holds about them. Experts say the changes to criminal law could also include stronger measures against family violence, and greater environmental protections and animal rights. The changes could also create stronger punishments for corruption and wrongdoing by government officials. Cubas powerful military and intelligence ministries employ tens of thousands of agents and informants. They control much of the economy. And they are often thought to be outside of the rules that apply to the civilian parts of the government. It is not yet known whether the Interior Ministry and Revolutionary Armed Forces will be subject to the new limits in the legal reform. Cuba is in its fourth year of little or no economic growth. The government feels increasingly threatened by the United States. It is especially concerned over the U.S. support for the overthrow of Venezuelas Cuban-allied government. Cuba sees such efforts as the first step in an offensive against socialist governments across Latin America. Im Ashley Thompson. The Associated Press reported this story. Ashley Thompson adapted it for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor. Words in This Story confront - v. to deal with (something) in an honest and direct way challenge - n. a difficult task or problem : something that is hard to do province - n. any one of the large parts that some countries are divided into apply - v. to have an effect on someone or something code - n. a set of laws or regulations The United States has launched a campaign against the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies. The U.S. government wants to prevent Huawei from competing internationally in the launch of 5G mobile networking technology. 5G is the latest version of cellular technology. It is designed to increase the speed of wireless communications. U.S. officials have accused Huawei of working with Chinese intelligence services. The company denies the accusation. The U.S. effort has included officials from federal government agencies as well as President Donald Trump. The Trump administration has taken steps to contain Huaweis ability to operate within the United States. It has begun an unusual effort to persuade U.S. allies to bar the company from operating on their soil. Huawei has long been distrusted in some areas. The company has a documented history of industrial spying. Its competitiveness in the world has been helped by financial assistance from Chinas government. Huawei has been accused of many things for a very long time. This is nothing new, said Michael Murphree. He is with the University of South Carolinas Darla Moore School of Business. What is unique is the extent of the pressure campaign, Murphree added. For international technology competition, this is certainly a very strong effort against a specific firm. The effort to stop Huawei from playing a major part in the launch of 5G comes while U.S. and Chinese officials are in talks to end a trade war. The United States began the trade war last year when it ordered tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese exports. A spokesman for Huawei would not comment on the actions of the Trump Administration. The case against Huawei U.S. officials say they have many reasons to distrust Huawei. Since 2017, China has had a National Intelligence law that gives government intelligence services the power to demand the cooperation of businesses operating in China. U.S. officials argue that this creates a threat to American national security. In America, we cant even get Apple toopen an iPhone for the FBI, Florida Senator Marco Rubio said earlier this month. In China, Huawei has to give the Chinese anything they ask for. He added, They should not be in business in America. Huawei has strongly denied that it operates as part of Chinese intelligence. But two recent spying cases have involved people close to the company. In January, the Polish government arrested a Huawei official on charges of spying for China. The company itself has not been charged in the case. Huawei announced that the employee had been dismissed. The United States has one major concern about Huawei: the idea that the company could set up a secret way to gain entry to electronic devices. The equipment would enable the Chinese government to read sensitive communications. It might even give China power to suspend communications in another country. Ren Zhengfei, is Huaweis president and founder. He has said Chinas government would never make that request and, if it did, he would say no, he told the BBC. He added we (would) lose all our business. Im not going to take that risk. The public battle over Huawei's image The U.S. governments anti-Huawei campaign has developed on several fronts. There are accusations against Huaweis Chief Financial Officer, Meng Wanzhou. She is being held in Canada at the request of U.S. officials who say she violated American sanctions against Iran. The U.S. justice department wants her sent to New York to face legal action. There are separate federal charges that accuse the company of stealing trade secrets. President Trump has suggested he might use the charges against Meng to influence the trade talks. There have also been active efforts to persuade other countries to avoid business with Huawei. Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a warning to U.S. allies. He said that if they use Huawei telecom equipment, they will lose access to some intelligence collected by the United States. In addition, a law signed by President Trump last year bars the federal government from buying equipment from Huawei and a smaller Chinese telecom company, ZTE. Trump has additionally considered an executive order that would bar Huawei from taking part at all in U.S. 5G networks. Huawei is fighting back. It took the United States to court earlier this month. The case claims the company was unfairly banned from U.S. government computer networks. The lawsuit is likely also partly aimed at improving Huawei's image at a time when the company is under attack. The risk of pushback from China Some U.S. allies are showing real resistance to the American demands. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's reaction to the U.S. was simply that Germans would be "defining our standards for ourselves," The New York Times reported. Finally, there is always the possibility that China may take action against countries that follow the U.S. requests. And in China, that kind of action would likely have a lot of public support. Many Chinese believe that Huawei is a great company that has done extraordinary thingsand it is being unfairly treated, said Lester Ross of the U.S. law firm Wilmer Hale. VOAs Rob Garver reported this story. Susan Shand adapted it for VOA Learning English. George Grow was the editor. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story unique - adj. very special or unusual firm - n. a company or business tariffs - n. a tax on goods that are imported or exported FBI - n. The United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation sanctions - n. an action that is taken or an order that is given to force a country to obey international laws by limiting or stopping trade with that country, by not allowing economic aid for that country access - n. a way of getting near, at, or to something or someone standard - n. a level of quality, achievement, etc., that is considered acceptable or desirable "The scolded officials probably wished they could shower after a thorough soaping from the President." "The scolded officials probably wished they could shower after a thorough soaping from the President." Water officials themselves had a taste of the continuing water crisis. How, you ask? Well, President Rodrigo Duterte took them to task in a 40-minute tirade at Malacanang where he summoned them last Wednesday night. In other words (in Tagalog), sinabon. Officials of Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System and concessionaires Manila Water and Maynilad were not given the opportunity to explain their side and how they would address the water shortage problem affecting thousands of households in Metro Manila. After getting a thorough soaping by the President who undoubtedly did not mince any words in his trademark tirade, the water officials probably wish they could shower right then and there. They were probably able to do so when they got home as for sure they had water in their houses. Shape up or ship out was the stern message of the President, according to Palace sources who were at the Malacanang meeting. MWSS Administrator Reynaldo Velasco offered to resign as he took the blame seriously. In a House hearing the day before, Buhay Party-List Rep. Lito Atienza fumed and told Velasco its not enough to say sorry, tell us how you intend to solve the problem. The problem though has come to a head as President Duterte made known he intends to fire more MWSS officials. Moreover, the President threatened to withdraw and terminate the contract of concessionaires Manila Water and Maynilad. The question being asked is why Maynilad was included in the fallout when there is water in areas being serviced by the Manny Pangilinan company. Water officials of MWSS and Manila Water claim the water shortage can be traced to the burgeoning population in Metro Manila. This oft-used line of defense in explaining the water shortage is pure hogwash. Everyone knows that Metro Manilas population is increasing every year because of migration from the rural areas of people looking for jobs in the big city. It seems the water officials do not know the science of actuarial projections used by the insurance companies. While the President is in a termination mood, venting his ire on errant officials, perhaps he can also make restoring the death penalty a priority bill in Congress. There is a rising public clamor for capital punishment in light of the heinous and grisly murder of a 16-year-old girl in Lapu Lapu, Cebu. The girl who was raped was also mutilated, her face skinned by the crazed assailant. Her vital body organs were also removed, according to autopsy reports.Another girl, also a minor, was raped by seven men in Tondo this week. This is the kind of dastardly crime that must be meted the full measure of the law. Only President Duterte can help push the death penalty as he has no regard for the sentiments of the Church. Sad to say, these two barbaric crimes happened during the Month of Women paying tribute to their contribution to society. Four of the seven suspects have been arrested by the police. In a cellphone recovered from the suspects, the perpetrators were shown laughing while they were taking video of the victim and doing their abominable act. This crime deserves the death penalty like in the electric chair execution of the four accused convicted in actress Maggie de la Rivas kidnap-rape many years ago. I would even go as far as suggesting that the closest relative of the heinous crime victim be the one to push the switch to send the electric charge through the body of the guilty. Too cruel? But is it not more cruel to lose the life of a loved one to mindless men who have no regard for the law? Anyway, the Bible calls for an eye for an eye punishment. The pro-lifers will probably argue that some innocent accused could be executed. But then there is a protracted trial by the courts which determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. A proper court case filed is certainly better than shooting illegal drug suspects on the spot on the allegation they shot at arresting police operatives. Illegal drug trafficking is just as heinous a crime because the scourge destroys families and young lives. The death penalty, if restored, would put the fear of God on those who commit heinous crimes and deter others from following the same offenders. Do I hear a chorus of amen from people who are getting sick and tired of crimes being committed against them and their loved ones? Particularly during my sojourns in South Africa, it may not be possible for me to perform the moderation function speedily. I regret the necessity of moderation but it has been rendered inevitable by the behaviour of a particular commentator whose contributions will always and without exception be rejected. No correspondence will be entered into regarding moderation decisions. Readers are invited to comment on blog posts. All comments require to be pre-moderated by me, and I shall reject all (a) that are not related to the Lockerbie disaster or (b) that fail to meet my -- perhaps idiosyncratic -- standards of courtesy towards other contributors. Comments will not be rejected simply because I disagree with them or because I, or other contributors, find them irritating. But comments will be rejected if they distort or misrepresent the evidence; are defamatory; or if they risk embroiling me, as publisher, in defamation proceedings. I am perfectly relaxed about being sued in respect of material which I personally have posted -- but not in respect of material that others wish to post as comments and which, in any case, I often strongly disagree with. President Rodrigo Duterte has every reason to get mad at the top officials of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System and the two private concessionaires in Metro Manila. He has threatened to fire regulators for failing to anticipate and do something about the water supply problem in Metro Manila, and terminate the contracts of the two concessionaires in the capital region. Some 1.2-million households in the east zone of Metro Manila served by Manila Water Co. Inc. have suffered service interruptions for the last two weeks that the company blamed on low water levels at the La Mesa Dam as a result of the El Nino phenomenon. Customers of Maynilad Water Services Inc. in the west zone, in contrast, experienced no interruptions. President Duterte, perhaps, should start dismissing the key executives of the MWSS, which has taken the responsibility of providing new water sources to augment the supply from Angat and Ipo Dam in Norzagaray in Bulacan province. The government agency did nothing to correct the situation. It knew very well that relying on a single water system was risky and bad management. President Duterte must appoint more competent officials at the MWSS, preferably those with engineering and management backgrounds, to deal with the water deficit woes. MWSS administrator Reynaldo Velasco should be blamed for his inaction and failure to identify a new water source since taking over the chief post of the water agency.The MWSS chief has also shown his early bias for the China-funded Kaliwa Dam project over the proposal of a Japanese company. He readily declared that Kaliwa Dam would be cheaper than an alternative Japanese proposal, without acknowledging the social costs cited by the indigenous residents of General Nakar and Infanta towns in the province of Quezon. Local government units, in the meantime, should implement the Rainwater Collector and Springs Development Act of 1989, which requires the construction of rainwater collectors in every barangay to prevent flooding and ensure the supply of clean water during dry seasons. Rainwater harvesting is done successfully in other countries and there is no reason why the Philippines, which is visited by at least 20 typhoons every year, cannot do the same. Linda L. Berger and Eric Nystrom (University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law and Arizona State University) have posted A Rhetorical-Computational Analysis of Justice Antonin Scalia's 'Remarkable Influence': The Unexpected Importance of Deceptively Unanimous and Contested Majority Opinions (Journal of Appellate Practice and Process, Vol. 20, No. 2, 2020, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: What constitutes judicial influence and how should it be measured? Justice Antonin Scalia was known for his memorable phrasing (this wolf comes as a wolf, like a ghoul in a late-night horror movie) and for being cited at a rate twice that of his colleagues. Justice Elena Kagan gave him credit for transforming all of us into statutory textualists and constitutional originalists. After his death, critics gave mixed reviews of the extent of his influence on the Supreme Court, other judges, law students, and the general public. Curious about the broader role that rhetoric plays in judicial influence over time, we undertook a rhetorical-computational analysis of the 282 majority opinions written by Justice Scalia during his 30 years on the U.S. Supreme Court. Our analysis is the first to examine the full majority opinion output of a Supreme Court justice using a unique medium data approach that combines rhetorical coding with quantitative analysis relying on Shepards Citations and LexisNexis headnotes. The results suggest that the frequency of citations by later courts to Justice Scalias majority opinionsone of the most-often-used proxies for influencewas not solely the result of his efforts to be persuasive and to wield influence. Instead, we found that Justice Scalias deceptively unanimous and contested majority opinions were over-represented in later citation counts compared with his truly unanimous and strong majority opinions. This over-representation indicates that later courts citing those opinions continued to disagree about the meaning or the application of the rules established in the majority opinion and were continuing to cite both the majority and the concurrence or dissent. Our analysis further suggested that later courts appeared to select from among Justice Scalias statements in earlier opinions not only based on the rhetorical framing of the statement but also depending on the rhetorical context in which those later courts found themselves. Thus, federal appellate courts tended to discuss both rules and arguments more extensively while the lower federal courts and the state courts were somewhat more likely to simply follow the rules. Finally, our analysis indicated that higher citation counts over time coincided with rule statements that either created or contributed to lingering disputes about interpretation or application. That kind of sustained citation frequency likely is not the long-lasting influence Justice Scalia sought. Norwegian Air Shuttle ASAs reliance on the fuel- saving Boeing Co. 737 Max to underpin its ultra low-cost trans-Atlantic strategy has exposed the loss- making carrier as the most vulnerable in Europe to the worldwide grounding of the plane. Norwegian was among the earliest adopters of the new narrow-body, using its extra range to launch services on Europe-U.S. routes traditionally dominated by twin-aisle planes. But after the fatal crash in Ethiopia on March 10 put the Max out of action, the airline has had to scrap some flights and switch others to bigger aircraft, increasing costs and reducing competitiveness in an already cut-throat market. The 737 crisis has hit Norwegian at a time when it can least afford disruption. The carrier is already grappling with a cash squeeze from splurging on planes and was forced to raise fresh funds in a rights issue this month. The move came after British Airways parent IAG SA dropped a takeover approach, helping to send send the stock tumbling. The shares dropped as much as 4.8 percent yesterday, taking losses to 46 percent since the start of the year. The 737 grounding is costing Norwegian as much as 15 million kroner (USD1.8 million) a day, according to Ole Martin Westgaard at Oslo-based DNB bank. The carrier has said it is obvious that expenses should be reimbursed by Boeing, but the situation is unclear and the reduced market value of the Max could significantly hurt the companys sum-of-parts valuation, the analyst said. The discount carrier has 18 Max jets, making it the biggest operator of the model in Europe ahead of German holiday company TUI AG, which has 15. Norwegian usually deploys them on services from Scotland and Ireland to the U.S., and between Norway and the U.K. Bus trip While its now using older 737s on the latter routes, flights from Edinburgh to Stewart in upstate New York were terminated. Services from Dublin to Stewart and Providence, Rhode Island, were combined into a single flight to the New York town using a Boeing 787 sourced from Norwegians London Gatwick wide-body hub. People going to Providence have to complete their journey by bus. Passengers will be taken care of, Bjorn Kjos, the carriers co-founder and chief executive officer, said in a video message on its website. We are combining flights, reallocating aircraft and booking customers to other departures. Only a small part of our operation is affected. TUI is relying on other planes to cope with the Max grounding, which affects 10 percent of its 150-strong fleet, while leasing in one or two extra jets a day and more on weekends. It has also rerouted some flights, changed departure times and will postpone non-critical work, such as repainting, to maximize resources, a spokesman said. Software fix In the Middle East, FlyDubai, which has 13 Max planes representing 12 percent of total capacity, is canceling up to 15 flights a day. Customers are being given the option of re-booking with the airline, transferring to sister carrier Emirates, or receiving a refund. The 737 Max was grounded around the world amid concern the African tragedy that killed 157 people on board was caused by the same combination of malfunctioning sensors and a computer system that took over the plane that was blamed for a Lion Air crash last October. Boeing has said its finalizing software and pilot-training updates to address the issue, though the companys best-selling jet is expected to remain grounded at least through April. Norwegians use of the 737 Max and 787 allowed it to steal a march on bigger rivals by utilizing the improved efficiency of the new aircraft to offer trans- Atlantic fares they couldnt match. But problems with the planes have made the bet look like a bad one. The 787 fleet has already been affected by engine problems at Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc. Norwegian said in October that the 787 engine issues had already cost it 1 billion kroner, including customer claims after airports struggled to cope with a rented A380 superjumbo. Like other Northern Hemisphere airlines, the grounding has come during the low season for Norwegian, when part of the fleet typically stands idle, and could prove more disruptive once demand begins to climb toward summer. The carrier has already been slowing its capacity growth with the closing of four European bases and a slowdown in its long-haul expansion. The Edinburgh-Stewart route was earmarked to shut later in the year. Christopher Jasper & Irene Garcia Perez, Bloomberg Philippine authorities said yesterday that they have seized methamphetamine concealed in tea wrappers and biscuit cans in their second-largest drug haul this year in a sign of how the problem has persisted despite the presidents bloody anti- drug crackdown. Three Chinese nationals and a Chinese-Filipino interpreter were arrested late Tuesday in buy-bust raids in an upscale residential enclave and outside a shopping mall in Alabang village in the Manila metropolis, said Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency chief Aaron Aquino. The drugs, with a street value of USD20.7 million, were concealed similarly to seizures in Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar, indicating an international drug syndicate was behind the trafficking, Aquino said. Last month, anti-narcotics agents raided a house in Tanza town in Cavite province south of Manila, killing two suspected Chinese drug dealers in a gunbattle and seizing $36 million worth of methamphetamine, a powerful stimulant locally known as shabu, Aquino said. Aquino has called for the return of the death penalty in the Philippines for drug traffickers, better security along the archipelagos extensive coastlines and more extensive databases of foreign drug suspects for the immigration bureau to deter drug trafficking. Corruption also fosters the drug menace, he said. There are those who have been detained for drug offenses, for example, in China but they could still enter our country. We have arrested many of those identified foreign offenders here, Aquino told The Associated Press by telephone. The Chinese will never stop putting up drug laboratories because, firstly, there is no death penalty, and secondly, they can buy anybody, Aquino said. They can buy judges, they can buy prosecutors and eventually they can go home safely. Aquino has also sought legislation to make it easier to criminally charge owners of plush residences, condominium units and buildings, where he said drug traffickers have shifted their bases from more public areas and rural warehouses that have been raided by law enforcers. Tuesdays drug raid targeted a house that the Chinese suspects rented in posh part of Alabang village where prominent lawmakers, politicians and business executives live under tighter security. President Rodrigo Duterte has elevated drugs to a national security concern and launched a crackdown that has killed more than 5,000 mostly poor drug suspects in reported clashes with the police since he took office in mid-2016. The killings have alarmed Western governments, U.N. human rights experts and rights groups and sparked two complaints for crimes against humanity, which are being examined by the International Criminal Court. Dutertes move to withdraw the Philippines from the tribunal supposedly took effect on Sunday, but its prosecutor said she would continue examining the complaints. Duterte has denied condoning extrajudicial killings but has openly threatened drug traffickers with death. Last week, he drew fresh criticisms when he publicly named 46 government officials, including three congressmen, he alleged were involved in illegal drugs but have not been criminally charged. Critics have warned him against making such public announcements without solid evidence but Duterte said he trusted the government agencies that provided the information. Several of the politicians he named denied they were involved in the drug trade.Jim Gomez, Manila, AP Chinese economic analyst Su Yue, from the Economist Intelligence Unit, believes it will be very difficult for Chinese government officials to achieve the goals of the Outline of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) because the outline did not resolve the regulatory differences between Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China under the framework of the One country, Two systems policy, according to a report by the BBC. On the other hand, the Peoples Daily official overseas WeChat account revealed that Chinese political scientist Zheng Yongnian thinks that the Guangdong- Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area can follow the high standards and good practices of the European Union (EU), and that the area can also avoid a lack of coordination. When citing Zheng Yongnian, chairman of the academic committee of the Institute of Public Policy of the South China University of Technology, the report said that the EU is currently facing problems because there is no coordinating organization beyond the sovereign governments. The Chinese political scientist also said that the GBA cities are all part of China, and since it has the central government coordinating among them, it has the advantages of the EU model while avoiding its flaws. JZ Hong Kongs government plans to spend HKD624 billion ($80 billion), equivalent to half its fiscal reserves, to reclaim land for artificial islands thatll help ease its housing crunch. The price tag for the so-called Lantau Tomorrow Vision includes costs for reclamation, infrastructure and improving transportation, Michael Wong, secretary for development, said at a briefing Tuesday. More than a third, or HKD256 billion, will go toward building artificial islands spanning 1,000 hectares off Lantau Island. Since the proposal has been announced, there has been much concern in the community on whether building artificial islands and related infrastructure would drain government coffers and leave us broke, said Wong. We have looked into it and our conclusion is that it wont. The ambitious plan was first pitched by the citys Chief Executive Carrie Lam as part of her annual policy address last year, when she said the government would realize the vision within 20 to 30 years. Surrounded by water on three sides and mainland China on the other, Hong Kong faces a severe shortage of land supply that has pushed property prices to among the least affordable in the world. The government would be able to finance the project because costs would be spread out over a long period, Wong said. The Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors estimates that the sale of commercial and residential land in the artificial islands could yield HKD970 billion to HKD1.14 trillion of revenue. The administration had HKD1.2 trillion in fiscal reserves at the end of January. Hong Kong is stepping up its land reclamation efforts just as Macau is doubling down with its own artificial islands project. Macau has been a world leader in land reclamation since at least the early 20th century, presiding over a threefold increase in its total land area since 1912. But the last decade has seen an ambitious new leap, with work already underway on six new land zones and studies abound for an 85-square-kilometer sea jurisdiction expanded by the Central Government in 2015. The six new land reclamation zones, officially known as A, B, C, D, E1 and E2, will reclaim a total area of five square kilometers from the Pearl River, bringing the total dry land jurisdiction to 35.5 square kilometers. DB/Bloomberg The tender for the Ka Ho Reservoir expansion project in Coloane has opened, with the government calling on proposals for the expansion of the water reservoir, as well as the reconstruction of the dam and surrounding roads. A dispatch published in the Official Gazette by the Office for Infrastructure Development states that the maximum construction period permitted by the tender is 750 days. In order to intensify the sustainable urban development of Macau in terms of water supply, improve the water supply system and increase the storage capacity of the fresh water resource, the Government of Macau [will proceed with] the expansion of the Ka Ho Reservoir, notes the Office in the dispatch. Tenders for the project must be received by April 11. Last month, Sociedade de Turismo e Desenvolvimento Insular S.A. (STDI), a Macau company headed by influential businesswoman Pansy Ho, agreed to concede five parcels of land to the government for its Ka Ho Reservoir extension project in eastern Coloane. According to a dispatch published at the time, the return of the land was necessary to proceed with the expansion project for the Ka Ho Reservoir, but the firm would not receive compensation for relinquishing the five plots. It also stated that the arrangement entered into force immediately. The expansion and improvement work at the Ka Ho Reservoir was outlined in the Macau SARs Five-Year Development Plan, along with similar improvements to the facility at Seac Pai Van, which stated that the projects would increase the joint capacity of the reservoirs from about 300,000 cubic meters to 1.05 million. DB A proposal by lawmaker Sulu Sou calling the government to the Legislative Assembly (AL) to debate the negative influence of over-tourism on the population was voted down yesterday by the majority of lawmakers. The topic, the last in discussion during yesterdays extended session, received little debate with lawmaker Chan Chak Mo addressing the plenary to say that we cannot choose the tourists that visit us. Chan argued that is not possible to set a minimum spend for visitors or cherry-pick the ones that are most profitable for the SAR. We need to just get used to them. Holding the opposite perspective was lawmaker Au Kam San, who said he agreed that the topic should be debated. We should reduce the number of tourists, reducing also the pressure on society. I think its a good topic and we should debate it. Of course Im supporting it, Au said. After the voting shot down the topic for debate, several lawmakers decided to explain their vote in vote declarations. Ho Ion Sang, Ma Chi Seng and Wong Kit Cheng justified their vote of reprobation noting that the topic can, should and is already being addressed by several lawmakers through spoken and written enquiries. They said that some of the enquiries have been already delivered to the government and that soon the responsible officials would have to come to the AL to report on the administrations opinions and ideas. These lawmakers argued that to have another debate on the topic would be of no relevant interest and, as Ho noted, a waste of resources. In the meantime, lawmaker Agnes Lam, similar to what has occurred during the voting of several other bills and proposals, used her time of the vote declaration to criticize the way the topic had been proposed. She said that lawmakers should address topics of public interest and those related to government policies and measures, adding that, contrarily, this is more like an expression of a personal opinion on a topic by a lawmaker. Despite her stance on the debate proposal, Lam voted in favor. Taiwan independent commentator Ze-Yuan Chiu said that the introduction of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) entails the disappearance of Hong Kongs and Macaus subjectivity, referring to the unique identities and autonomy the two Special Administrative Regions enjoy. In his recent column, Chiu complimented the concept of the GBA for strengthening the economy in the Pearl River Delta. Nevertheless, the Taiwanese commentator expressed his opinion regarding the potential loss of Hong Kong and Macaus subjectivity. This is undoubtedly an important milestone in Chinas regional economic integration process. Will the relevant political and ideological freedoms and universal suffrage rights of Hong Kong and Macau also be integrated into the melting pot that is Greater China? Chiu questioned. Chiu further depicted the GBA plan as a hidden metaphor for One country, Two systems. One country, Two systems actually guarantees the subjectivity of Hong Kong and Macau. Nowadays, the concept of the GBA is to push Hong Kong and Macau from One country, Two systems to One China. There will be no Hong Kong SAR, but Hong Kong city under the Greater Bay Area. The subjectivity of Hong Kong will be lost, Chiu wrote. The subjectivity of Hong Kongs connection with the international community will disappear. If, in the future, Hong Kong is under the GBA, will Hong Kongs links with the outside world disappear, becoming controlled by Guangdong Province? Chiu questioned. If Hong Kong must be under the GBA decree system in the future, such financial squeeze and freedom will disappear. The Pearl of the Orient will be light and dusty. JZ The Vatican is greeting the visit to Italy of Chinese President Xi Jinping later this week with a new round of overtures and says the door is always open to dialogue. Italian media have been speculating for days about the possibility of a meeting between Xi and Pope Francis during Xis four-day visit starting today. But there has been no word from either side. China and the Holy See havent had diplomatic relations for more than a half-century. When asked Tuesday about Xis visit to Italy, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vaticans secretary of state, said: Our door is always open. But he noted that both sides would have to express a willingness to meet. At a briefing yesterday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Chao said the sides were working on improving relations based on constructive dialogue and building mutual trust. Wang gave no word about any meetings between Xi and the pope or any new agreements to be signed. The Vatican has been working across a variety of fronts to build on relations stemming from the historic provisional agreement reached in September between Beijing and the Holy See over bishop nominations. Chinas estimated 12 million Catholics are split between those belonging to the government-backed Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which is outside the popes authority, and an underground church loyal to the pope. Underground priests and parishioners are frequently detained and harassed. The September deal was aimed at uniting the flock, regularizing the status of seven bishops who werent recognized by Rome and thawing decades of estrangement between China and the Vatican. But it has led to deep reservations of some of Chinas underground faithful, for whom the deal represents a sell-out to the Communist government and betrayal of their decades of loyalty to the pope. In a preface to a new book on Vatican-China relations the publication of which was timed to coincide with Xis visit Parolin stressed that its time to remember the past and write together a new page for the future of the church in China. The Catholic Church in China is not a foreigner but an integral and active part of Chinese history and can contribute to the edification of a society that is more harmonious and respectful of all, he wrote. Today, the hope of Pope Francis is that, after so many difficulties, misunderstandings, and sufferings, the Catholic Community, too, can intone in the Middle Kingdom, through sincere dialogue, a hymn of faith and thanksgiving, enriched by authentically Chinese notes, he wrote. The book was just the latest initiative by the Vatican-affiliated Jesuit magazine, La Civilta Cattolica, to lay the intellectual and cultural foundations for improved Vatican-China ties. As part of that effort, the magazine recently teamed up with the Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington to launch an ongoing series of talks, the China Forum for Civilizational Dialogue. The issue of bishop nominations had been the main stumbling block to restoring diplomatic relations that were severed nearly seven decades ago when the Chinese communists came to power. Nicole Winfield, Vatican City, AP Chinese President Xi Jinping, brushing aside U.S. and European concerns ahead of his visit to Rome (more on p11), offered Italy a global strategic partnership stretching from building the new Silk Road together to boosting ties in sensitive sectors including telecoms and ports. Writing in daily Corriere della Sera, Xi invoked a new era in relations between China and Italy, where hell arrive today. The Chinese leader and his populist hosts are set to sign a controversial memorandum of understanding giving Italy a role in Beijings massive Belt and Road infrastructure project. We are ready, together with out Italian counterparts, to build Belt and Road together the new Silk Road, Xi wrote. He urged stronger cooperation in telecommunications, developing Italian ports, shipping, aeronautics, aerospace and pharmaceuticals. Italy will be the first Group of Seven country to sign a Belt and Road memorandum, fueling U.S. concerns about an open door for China into strategic sectors like telecoms and ports. European Union allies have also voiced disquiet about Italys bilateral approach, seen as deviating from the groups policy of dealing with China as a bloc. China is ready for closer ties at the highest levels and to reinforce cooperation at all levels between our governments, parliaments, parties and local authorities, Xi wrote yesterday. The Chinese leader also offered to reinforce coordination between China and Italy in international bodies from the United Nations to the G-20 and the World Trade Organization on issues from global governance to climate change. The president also paid homage to the history, lifestyle and art heritage of my dear Italian friends, recalling explorer Marco Polo who set off the first passion for China. John Follain, Bloomberg A cardiac muscle cell contains perhaps a hundred repeating structural subunits called sarcomeres, arranged one after another in a series. A sarcomere is composed of myosin-rich thick filaments alternating with parallel thin filaments made of actin. Closer inspection reveals that each thick filament is knitted from the bottom halves of myosin molecules tails. In response to electrical impulses traversing the heart, the myosin heads protruding from the thick filament chomp down on the nearest actin filament, then tug against it like sailors tugging in tandem on a rope, pulling the sarcomere walls closer together and making the muscle fiber contract, before relaxing again. Thats a heartbeat. And if those myosin sailors are tugging too hard on those actin ropes? Thats hypercontractility, the hallmark of HCM. But why would this happen? About 35 to 40 percent of all known HCM-inducing mutations are in cardiac myosin, making it an obvious candidate for intense scrutiny. But until about a dozen years ago, nobody could study the effects of cardiac myosin mutations, Spudich said, because the biotechnology for making significant amounts of it that would work didnt exist yet. Then one of his frequent collaborators at the University of Colorado figured out a way to pull it off. Spudich dropped everything else hed been doing and began systematically characterizing the effects of HCM-inducing mutations on the function of cardiac myosin molecules, asking: Why would so many diverse mutations all cause myosin to be hypercontractile? Most of these mutations pop up on the molecules head. Another big batch are in the top part of its tail. Spudich hypothesized that the mutations somehow made each individual cardiac-myosin molecule faster-moving or more forceful than normal. But in the many mutations we studied, neither molecular speed nor strength were accounting for mutation-induced hypercontractility, he said. We were missing something. Dreaming On Dec. 14, 2014, after many months of not getting expected results, Spudich lay awake in bed late at night wondering what clue hed been overlooking. For just one night, stop thinking about your work, Anna told him. She gave him a book she was sure he was going to like: The Haunted Mesa, by Louis LAmour. The books plot unfolded in the setting of a Southwestern mesa similar to many Spudich had spied from above during his airborne sojourns in the Southwest. He nodded off about 20 pages in, awakening hours later from a vivid dream in which the image of a mesa morphed into a myosin molecule. It was 5:30 a.m. Aflame with inspiration, Spudich jumped out of bed and beelined to his computer, a new hypothesis in his head. Protein molecules are born as linear sequences of chemical building blocks called amino acids, but that one-dimensionality doesn't last long. Almost as soon as each molecule gets produced in a cell, it folds up into a characteristic three-dimensional shape it will retain for the rest of its working life. With molecular-modeling software now widely available, researchers including Spudich can speedily rotate a molecule of interest in any of three dimensions onscreen. Viewed from the right perspective, one part of the myosin heads surface is a broad expanse, as flat as the mesa of the dream that had just awakened the sleeping scientist. Those who study myosin have known about this mesalike surface since 1993, Spudich said. But until now, nobody had given much thought to its significance. Every amino acid sequence of a protein molecule is specified by the gene encoding that particular protein. There are 20 different amino acid varieties to choose from, each with its own distinctive biochemical quirks: for example, a negative versus positive versus neutral electrical charge. One typical type of mutation results in the substitution of one amino acid for another. Spudichs team had previously generated computer models flagging points along cardiac myosins linear sequence where a mutated amino acid had been found to cause HCM. These mutations locations seemed to be scattered pretty randomly along the molecule. But viewed on the properly folded molecule, as Spudich was now doing, many of these mutations could be seen to fall somewhere on the mesalike surface of the head of myosin. Many others fell along the part of the tail against which the head rested when the molecule was assuming its sleeping position. All hands on deck Spudichs group had been studying 15 or so of the most common HCM-inducing cardiac myosin mutations. They knew that most of those mutations had the effect of changing or eliminating the electrical charge the amino acid in the unmutated molecule would have had. Now it hit him: Opposites attract. Surfaces with lots of positive charges on them are drawn to surfaces with lots of negative charges on them. Any mutation that reduces this charge opposition could result in the myosin heads spending less time tucked up against its tail and more time on duty tugging on its nearby actin filament. These mutations arent changing myosin molecules strength or speed; theyre just making more heads available to do the tugging. What Spudich and others had been overlooking was this: Most of the time, many of the myosin heads in the thick filament are on break at least in healthy heart muscle. Thick fibers normally host a huge reserve army of loafing myosin heads, which is a good thing; those loafing heads can be recruited by normal physiological responses when needed. But HCM mutations effectively nudge them back on the job, even when theyre not needed. Youve been thinking and thinking and thinking about something for such a long time. Then suddenly the dream solves the puzzle for you. A sarcomeres contractile force, Spudich reasoned, is proportional to the number of myosin heads that are grabbing onto the actin filament at any given moment. Normally, the mesalike surface of a cardiac myosin molecule spends much of its time in coordinated proximity with a portion of the tail section, sequestering the head so it cant grab the actin filament. Looking at the folded cardiac-myosin molecule on his computer screen, Spudich realized that by weakening the overall attraction between a myosin molecules head and tail, HCM-inducing mutations were freeing up myosin heads to grab onto a neighboring actin filament, increasing the number of myosin heads actually pulling their weight at any one time. Hence, the hypercontractile heart. Not quite proof, but a hypothesis with a bright future. Spudichs group has since shown that mutations at these suspect sites do actually alter cardiac myosins posture and put more heads in play. A 2018 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences co-authored by Spudich suggested that a drug called mavacamten, now in phase-3 clinical trials for HCM, may be successful in reversing the hypercontractility induced by a wide range of HCM-inducing mutations on the myosin mesa. All patients in two earlier trials of mavacamten showed significant improvement. These trials have been sponsored by a South San Francisco-based biotechnology company, MyoKardia Inc., that Spudich co-founded in 1998 to speed the translation of his findings into drugs that could be used in clinical practice to treat HCM. Mavacamten was the fruit of this discovery effort. The drug is pushing available heads into the unavailable state the opposite of what I believe most of these mutations are doing, Spudich said. In principle, this approach might apply to most HCM-causing mutations. As for The Haunted Mesa, Spudich eventually finished it and, he said, enjoyed it. But the thing that sticks with him was that image of a mesa and its prophetic power, as revealed in his dream that night. What if Spudichs wife hadnt given him that book to read that night? I think someone else would have stumbled on the same idea, he said. The dream just jump-started it, accelerating progress by a number of years. For this, all hail Morpheus. Sleep is amazing, Spudich said. Youve been thinking and thinking and thinking about something for such a long time. Then suddenly the dream solves the puzzle for you. InfraCo Africa, an infrastructure development facility has signed a $2.2 million convertible loan agreements with energy developer Gigawatt Global for the development of the Samburu Solar and Transmara Solar projects in Kenya. The financing committed by InfraCo Africa will enable these projects to complete development activities and secure the financing needed for construction. InfraCo Africa forms part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG), which is funded by the UK, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Earlier this month, UKs Minister for Africa, Harriett Baldwin has announced the commitment by InfraCo Africa to develop the two solar plants in Samburu and Transmara, each with a capacity of 10 MWAC, to give more people access to affordable, clean energy. Both projects will be developed in partnership with Gigawatt Global, building from their experience in Rwanda. The British Department for International Developments Transforming Energy Access program has already helped people and businesses across Africa cut 2 million tons of carbon emissions and improve the lives of 3.2 million low income people. Through the Samburu and Transmara projects, the alliance between Gigawatt Global and InfraCo Africa demonstrate how solar can act as an essential cornerstone to empower rural and under-served populations, said Gigawatt Globals CEO, Josef Abramowitz. Last year, the Government of Kenya reaffirmed its intention to achieve Universal Electricity Access by 2022 and to continue developing the power sector. Export to EU Down by 10.7% in January-February By Tea Mariamidze The National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat) reports that export from Georgia to the European Union reduced by 10.7% while it increased by 45% to the CIS countries.According to Geostat, in January-February 2019 the exports from Georgia to the EU countries amounted to $118.2 million (10.7 % lower compared to January-February 2018) and constituted 23.4 percent of total exports, while the imports amounted to $ 304.2 million (4.5 %lower) with 24.6 percent in total imports.The exports to the CIS countries stood at USD 254.8 million (45.7 percent higher compared to January-February 2018) and reached 50.4 percent of total exports, while the imports equaled USD 372.9 million (14.4 percent lower) with 30.2 percent in total import. The CIS countries accounted for 16.2 percent of the overall trade deficit in the corresponding period.As for the total merchandise trade of the mentioned period, it amounted to $1 739.8 million, 3.6 percent higher year-on-year.The total exports equaled $505.0 million (13.2 percent higher), while the imports stood at USD 1 234.8 million (0.1 percent higher). The negative trade balance was $ 729.8 million in January-February 2019 and its share in external trade turnover constituted 41.9 percent. The exports excluding re-exports amounted to USD 342.6 million, 5.2 percent higher year-on-year.In January-February 2019 the share of the top ten trading partners by exports in the total exports of Georgia amounted to 73.7 percent.The top export partners were Russia (USD 81.3 million), Azerbaijan (USD 58.4 million) and Turkey (USD 39.6 million).The top three countries are followed by Ukraine, Armenia, Bulgaria, Romania, China, the United States, and Germany.In January-February 2019 the share of the top ten trading partners by imports in the total imports of Georgia amounted to 69.6 percent. The top partners were Turkey (USD 194.0 million), China (USD 142.0 million) and Azerbaijan (USD 126.0 million). Introducing The Main Index There are now over 43,000 individual posts here on A Light In The Darkness. They have all been individually added into Main Index categories. To get the full experience out of A Light In The Darkness and its very extensive library of items, covering virtually all things paranormal, supernatural etc ... we recommend that you flick down the Main Index, which runs down the right hand side of the blog page ... to find the indexed category in which the subject matter you seek is located. Alternatively, why not use long search bar you will find towards the top of the blog page ... ENJOY Just over the transom from Kai Frederik Lorentzen: The French writer Pascal Bruckner, adding a historical dimension, traces the issue back not only to the Iranian revolution of 1979 but even to early Bolshevism: " ... And here is where the strangest factor in the whole Islamophobia controversy emerges: the enlistment of a part of the American and European Left in the defense of the most radical form of Islamwhat one might call the neo-Bolshevik bigotry of the lost believers of Marxism. Having lost everythingthe working class, the Third Worldthe Left clings to this illusion: Islam, rebaptized as the religion of the poor, becomes the last utopia, replacing those of Communism and decolonization for disenchanted militants. The Muslim takes the place of the proletarian. The baton seems to have been passed at about the time of the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, with the resulting rise to power of Islamist revolutionaries, which was the occasion for enthusiastic commentary by Michel Foucault, among others on the left. Gods return on historys stage had finally rendered Marxist and anticolonialist programs obsolete. The faith moved the masses better than the socialist hope. Now, it was the believer in the Koran who embodied the global hope for justice, who refused to conform to the order of things, who transcended borders and created a new international order, under the aegis of the Prophet: a green Comintern. Too bad for feminism, womens equality, salvific doubt, the critical spirit; in short, too bad for everything traditionally associated with a progressive position. This political attitude is manifest in progressives scrupulous idolatry of Muslim practices and rites, especially the Islamic veil: modest fashion is praised to the skies, so much so that, for certain leftist commentators, an unveiled Muslim woman who claims this right can only be a traitor, a turncoat, a woman for sale. The irony of this neocolonial solicitude for bearded men and veiled womenand for everything that suggests an oriental bazaaris that Morocco itself, whose king is the Commander of the Faithful, recently forbade the wearing, sale, and manufacture of the burka in his country. Shall we call the Cherifian monarchy Islamophobic? Shall we be more royalist than the king? Its worth considering this Islamo-leftism more closely, this hope nourished by a revolutionary fringe that Islam might spearhead a new uprising, a holy war against global capitalism, exactly as in Baku in 1920, when Bolshevik leaders, including Zinoviev, published a joint appeal with the pan-Islamists to unleash jihad against Western imperialism. It was an English Trotskyite, Chris Harman, leader of the Socialist Workers Party, who, in 1994, provided a theory for this alliance between militant revolutionaries and radical Muslim associations, arguing for their unity, in certain circumstances, against the common enemy of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Generations of leftists saw the working class as the messianic leaven of a radiant humanity; now, willing to flirt with the most obscurantist bigotry and to betray their own principles, they transferred their hopes to the Islamists ... " In autumn, Bruckner published a book where he elaborates the theses of his essay. I haven't read it yet, but the table of contents looks promising. While I have doubts that the political fight against the Sharia can still be won in Western Europe, things may take a turn for the better on your side of the big water. At least I hope so. Mit besten Wunschen! Kai https://www.city-journal.org/html/theres-no-such-thing-islamophobia-15324.html https://www.wiley.com/en-ax/An+Imaginary+Racism%3A+Islamophobia+and+Guilt-p-9781509530663 https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/03/what-explains-the-lefts-toleration-of-militant-islam.html Assistant Professor Marianne Kjelsvik believes the abortion debate lacks the voices of women who have faced the choice between terminating or completing their pregnancy. Credit: NTNU Almost half of all pregnancies are unplanned. In 2017, 12,733 abortions were carried out in Norway. The number of live births the same year was 56,600. In her doctoral work at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Alesund, Assistant Professor Marianne Kjelsvik interviewed 13 women between 18 and 36 who came to the hospital for an abortion, but who were so unsure about their choice that they went home again to think about it more. Between 10 and 20 per cent of women are still uncertain about whether they should have an abortion when they come in for the procedure. "The women said that they'd been very careful about whom they talked to about abortion. Some of them hadn't brought it up with the man they'd become pregnant by. They searched online to find stories about women who had been in the same situation. When I asked if there was anyone they would have like to talk to but were hesitant to, several said 'my mother,'" says Kjelsvik, who works in NTNU's Department of Health Sciences. Taboo over generations Among the women who had talked with their mothers, several mothers opened up and admitted that they'd had an abortion themselves. "When this is kept secret, even from the people you're closest to, it says something about how alone a woman can feel," says Kjelsvik. The Ph.D. candidate is a trained nurse and has extensive experience as a supervisor with the counselling service Amathea, an independent health service whose goal is for women to be able to live well with the decision that they've had time to think through. The voice we don't hear Kjelsvik finds that the abortion debate lacks the voices of women who have faced the choice between terminating or completing their pregnancy. "Ideally, a woman who wants to have an abortion should be sure of her choice, but many women aren't. They find themselves in a situation that isn't conducive to having a child, and at the same time they find it difficult to go through with an abortion. Then they end up making the final decision at the hospital." "Healthcare workers have busy schedules, and several mentioned that they hadn't received training on how to help women who were in doubt." Religion often enters into the abortion debate. However, the women in this study did not bring up religion when they talked about their values. "Women have their own values, and the women in the study were concerned with the fact that their decision involved a life. They considered the possibility of life with a child. Everyone has an opinion about abortion, but for the women who were in this situation, figuring out right and wrong became a complex question," says Kjelsvik. Difficult for health care workers The 13 women in the study were recruited from six different hospitals around the country. The women felt well received at the hospital when they came for the abortion. They felt respected. But at the same time, they wished that staff could have dealt better with their doubts. Not necessarily by giving advice, but by listening to them. The women really needed someone to talk to. Someone who could tell the women how difficult it had been for them. The health care workers, on the other hand, were very careful not to be judgmental or to influence the women in any way. "Health care workers have busy schedules, and several staff mentioned that they hadn't received training on how to help women who were in doubt. If several conflicted women come in on the same day, it can mess up the schedule completely," says Kjelsvik. She thinks more time should be allotted for these appointments and that it shouldn't be solely up to the individual nurse to help. "Everyone benefits when a woman is confident that she's made the right choice. For health care workers to avoid appearing judgmental or influencing the decision, I'd suggest an open introductory question like, 'What has it been like for you to make your decision about this abortion?' That kind of question signals caring rather than judgment," says Kjelsvik. Professor Berge Solberg believes that it is becoming less taboo to talk about have an abortion. Credit: NTNU Lingering doubt Even after the women in the study had made their final decision, they still had lingering doubts. Kjelsvik did follow-up interviews four weeks and twelve weeks after the women had made their decisions. Everyone was relieved to have come through a difficult time, but at the same time some women were still unsure about whether they had done the right thing. Those who had chosen to carry their pregnancies to term had mixed feelings. Some were troubled because they didn't enjoy being pregnant and worried whether they would be able to love the child. The reason they had considered abortion had not disappeared. Some of those who chose to get an abortion later thought that they could actually have gone through with the pregnancy. Taboos shrinking Berge Solberg, professor of medical ethics at NTNU, believes the scepticism towards involving the outside world in the question of abortion has many causes. "We're seeing a demystifying and 'de-tabooing' of abortion. More and more people are coming forward and talking about having had an abortion. But even though we're having these big social debates, the issue is perceived as very private for the person who finds herself in this situation. Even people who regard abortion as unproblematic and not ethically difficult know that people can have strong opinions in the opposite direction. So, you become cautious about bringing up the topic," says Solberg. He is the deputy chair of the Norwegian National Committee for Medicine and Health Research Ethics. Fully human at birth Norway's Abortion Act came after a long historical battle for women's rights. Norwegian abortion law is based on the idea that a woman has the right to control her own body, which applies without restriction until the end of the twelfth week of pregnancy. After twelve weeks, a panel makes the final decision and weighs the woman's interests against the foetus' right to life. This may result in a conflict of interest. The panels are required to pay close attention to the woman's point of view, and in most cases her choice is honoured. The requirements for granting abortion becomes increasingly strict as the women gets closer and closer to term. Norway does not give the foetus legal status before birth, but recognizes an individual's "full human dignity" at birth. "But even if the law were to be interpreted that the foetus has full moral status as a person before birth, it doesn't mean that abortion wouldn't be allowed. The woman's rights over her own body can trump the foetus's right to life," says Solberg. Temporary freeze The debate on foetal reductionaborting one foetus when a woman is carrying twinsbecame a hot topic after Norway's Ministry of Justice and Public Security interpreted the abortion law to mean that full self-determination also applied in these cases. The government's Granavolden platform, consisting of the Conservatives (H), the Progress party (Frp), the Liberals (V) and the Christian Democratic party (KrF), agreed to remove the possibility of self-determined foetal reduction and to temporarily freeze the Abortion Act and the Biotechnology Act. Professor Solberg believes that proposals to liberalize these two acts will be made when this period is over. "It's more likely that the Abortion and Biotechnology Acts will be liberalized than tightened. However, the support for today's Abortion Act is strong, and fights over it can contribute to sharper divisions," Solberg says. Abortion rate the same regardless of law According to the ethics professor, the number of abortions in practice is pretty consistent from country to country, even though legislation differs. Ireland had a ban on abortion until recently, but the consequence of the ban was that Irish women travelled to England get abortions. "We find that the legislation on the issue doesn't affect the choice of action. The consequence of a ban or very strict laws against abortion isn't fewer abortions, but far more dangerous abortions, and a lot of suffering. Unsafe abortions are a major global health problem," says Solberg. More information: Marianne Kjelsvik et al, Beyond autonomy and care: Experiences of ambivalent abortion seekers, Nursing Ethics (2019). Marianne Kjelsvik et al, Beyond autonomy and care: Experiences of ambivalent abortion seekers,(2019). DOI: 10.1177/0969733018819128 Marianne Kjelsvik et al. Walking on a tightrope-Caring for ambivalent women considering abortions in the first trimester, Journal of Clinical Nursing (2018). DOI: 10.1111/jocn.14612 Marianne Kjelsvik et al. Women's experiences when unsure about whether or not to have an abortion in the first trimester, Health Care for Women International (2018). DOI: 10.1080/07399332.2018.1465945 Journal information: Journal of Clinical Nursing African-Americans with severe depression are more likely to be misdiagnosed as having schizophrenia, according to a new Rutgers study. The study, which appeared online prior to being published in the February 2019 issue of the journal Psychiatric Services, examined the medical records of 1,657 people at a community behavioral health clinic that included screening for major depression as part of its assessment for schizophrenia in new patients. "By definition, schizophrenia is a diagnosis of exclusion: Clinicians must rule out other potential causes of symptoms, including mood disorders, before the diagnosis of schizophrenia is given," said Michael Gara, a professor of psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a faculty member at Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care. "However, there has been a tendency for clinicians to overemphasize the relevance of psychotic symptoms and overlook symptoms of major depression in African-Americans compared with other racial or ethnic groups. No studies show that African-Americans with schizophrenia are more likely to also have major depression." The study, which looked at 599 blacks and 1,058 non-Latino whites, found that clinicians failed to effectively weigh mood symptoms when diagnosing schizophrenia among African-Americans, suggesting that racial bias, whether conscious or subconscious, is one factor in the diagnosis of schizophrenia in this population. Other factors include genetics, poverty and discrimination, as well as symptoms caused by infections and malnutrition early in life. "Individuals from a racial minority group also might feel hopelessness or mistrust when being assessed by someone from a racial majority group, which could affect how they act and how the clinician interprets symptoms," Gara said. The findings suggest that clinicians put more emphasis on psychotic than depressive symptoms in African-Americans, which skews diagnoses toward schizophrenia even when these patients show similar depressive and manic symptoms as white patients. "Inaccurate diagnosis can have serious consequences," Gara said. "Mood disorder treatments differ from those for schizophrenia, and the prognosis for these conditions is typically more positive than for schizophrenia. These patients who may have major depression with psychotic features or bipolar disorder and who are misdiagnosed with schizophrenia do not receive the optimal treatment, putting them at risk for the worsening of the underlying disease process or for suicide. Also, the side effects of medication taken for schizophrenia, such as diabetes and weight gain, can be serious." The researchers recommend that screening for major depression be required when assessing black patients for schizophrenia. The study supports extensive previous research done by co-author Stephen Strakowski of Dell Medical School on how overemphasis of psychotic symptoms in African-Americans can contribute to misdiagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Explore further For patients with schizophrenia, some drug combinations may be more effective than others More information: Michael A. Gara et al, A Naturalistic Study of Racial Disparities in Diagnoses at an Outpatient Behavioral Health Clinic, Psychiatric Services (2018). Journal information: Psychiatric Services Michael A. Gara et al, A Naturalistic Study of Racial Disparities in Diagnoses at an Outpatient Behavioral Health Clinic,(2018). DOI: 10.1176/appi.ps.201800223 Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., senior author, first Sir Richard Doll Professor, and senior academic advisor in FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine, and collaborators, used data from the Multiple Cause of Death Files of the US National Center for Health Statistics. The listed causes of death were classified as accident, assault, suicide or undetermined. There were no deaths classified as terrorism. Credit: Florida Atlantic University Firearm-related deaths in school-age children are increasing at alarming rates in the United States where homicide rates are about 6- to 9-fold higher than those in comparably developed countries. This epidemic poses increasingly major clinical, public health and policy challenges. A study led by researchers at Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine explored temporal trends in deaths from firearms among U.S. schoolchildren by age and race from 1999 to 2017. Their report quantifies these recent epidemics using data from the Multiple Cause of Death Files of the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Results of the study, just published in the American Journal of Medicine, show that from 1999 to 2017, 38,942 firearm-related deaths occurred in 5 to 18 year olds. These included 6,464 deaths in children between the ages of 5 to 14 years old (average of 340 deaths per year), and 32,478 deaths in children between the ages of 15 to 18 years old (average of 2,050 deaths per year). "It is sobering that in 2017, there were 144 police officers who died in the line of duty and about 1,000 active duty military throughout the world who died, whereas 2,462 school-age children were killed by firearms," said Charles H. Hennekens, M.D., senior author, first Sir Richard Doll Professor, and senior academic advisor in FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine. Statistically significant increases in firearm-related deaths began in 2009, with the first epidemic among 5 to 14 year olds followed by a second epidemic that began in 2014 among 15 to 18 year olds. Each of these epidemics has continued through 2017, the most recent year for which U.S. mortality data are currently available. Percentages of all deaths due to firearms were 5.6 at ages 5 to 14 years old and 19.9 at ages 15 to 18 years old. Black children aged 5 to 14 years old experienced statistically significant increases in firearm-related deaths beginning in 2013. Between 2013 and 2017, racial inequalities in firearm-related deaths between blacks and whites increased significantly among 5 to 14 year olds as well as 15 to 18 year olds. The listed cause of deaths in the school-age children were, 61 percent due to assault; 32 percent due to suicide; 5 percent accidental; and 2 percent undetermined. Blacks accounted for 41 percent of overall deaths, and 86 percent of all deaths were in boys. Among the 5 to 14 year olds, cause of death was classified as accident, 12.8 percent (830 deaths); suicide, 29.6 percent (1,912 deaths); assault, 54.8 percent (3,545 deaths), and undetermined, 2.7 percent (177 deaths). Among the 15 to 18 year olds, cause of death was classified as accident, 3.5 percent (1,121 deaths); suicide, 32.9 percent (10,688 deaths); assault, 62.3 percent (20,247 deaths), and undetermined, 1.3 percent (422 deaths). There were no deaths classified as terrorism. Hennekens and study co-authors Alexandra Rubenstein, a second-year premedical student at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine; Sarah K. Wood, M.D., senior associate dean for medical education in FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine; and Robert S. Levine, M.D., an affiliate professor in FAU's Schmidt College of Medicine and a professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, believe that combatting the epidemic of mortality due to firearms among U.S. schoolchildren without addressing firearms is analogous to combatting the epidemic of mortality from lung cancer due to cigarettes without addressing cigarettes. Beware the ball pit. Ball pits used in children's physical therapysimilar to those made popular by restaurants catering to familiesmay contribute to germ transmission between patients, according to new research published in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC), the journal of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. The popularity of ball pits has increased since mainstream commercial restaurants installed them nationwide for children in the 1980s, and they are often found to be contaminated with visible dirt, vomit, feces, or urine, providing a permissive environment for contamination. Similar ball pits are commonly used in pediatric physical therapy to provide stimulation to children with sensory or motor impairments. According to the study, clinics may go days or even weeks between cleanings, allowing time for microorganisms to accumulate and grow to levels capable of giving children infections and making them sick. Investigators from the University of North Georgia examined six ball pits located in inpatient physical therapy clinics or outpatient clinics in the state of Georgia. Nine to 15 balls were randomly selected from different depths of each sampled ball pit. The study found considerable microbial colonization in ball pits that were tested, including eight bacteria and one yeast that could cause disease. Bacterial colonization was found to be as high as thousands of cells per ball, clearly demonstrating an increased potential for transmission of these organisms to patients and an increased possibility of infection. "We found considerable variation in the number of microorganisms between the different ball pit samples," said the study's lead researcher Mary Ellen Oesterle, EdD, PT, Department of Physical Therapy, University of North Georgia, Dahlonega, GA, USA. "This suggests that clinics utilize different protocols for cleaning and maintenance, potentially representing a broader need to clarify and establish standards that reduce the risk of transmission." Overall, researchers identified 31 bacterial species and one species of yeast. The human-associated bacteria found in the ball pits included: Enterococcus faecalis , which can cause endocarditis, septicemia, urinary tract infection, and meningitis; , which can cause endocarditis, septicemia, urinary tract infection, and meningitis; Staphylococcus hominis , a cause of bloodstream infections and reported as a cause of sepsis in a neonatal intensive care unit; , a cause of bloodstream infections and reported as a cause of sepsis in a neonatal intensive care unit; Streptococcus oralis , known to cause endocarditis, adult respiratory distress syndrome, and streptococcal shock; , known to cause endocarditis, adult respiratory distress syndrome, and streptococcal shock; Acinetobacter lwofii, which has been reported to cause septicemia, pneumonia, meningitis, and urinary tract and skin infections. "This research shows that ball pits may pose an infection hazard," said 2019 APIC President Karen Hoffmann, RN, MS, CIC, FSHEA, FAPIC. "Facilities should establish a program for regular cleaning to protect patients and healthcare workers from potential infection risks." Explore further A reservoir of bacteriasink drains next to toilets in patient rooms may harbor dangerous organisms More information: Mary Ellen Oesterle et al, Are ball pits located in physical therapy clinical settings a source of pathogenic microorganisms?, American Journal of Infection Control (2018). Journal information: American Journal of Infection Control Mary Ellen Oesterle et al, Are ball pits located in physical therapy clinical settings a source of pathogenic microorganisms?,(2018). DOI: 10.1016/j.ajic.2018.09.031 A photo of a Yucatec Maya mother and newborn is featured on the cover of the American Journal of Human Biology. Credit: Rosy Garibay The increase in cesarean sections is on the verge of a global epidemic. Though the World Health Organization recommends an optimal C-section rate of 10-15 percent, the United States' C-section rate is more than 30 percent. In many Latin American countries, the procedure is sky rocketing, reaching more than 50 percent in some. While C-sections are lifesaving in some cases, they are increasing beyond recommended rates with harmful consequences for children's health. Cesarean delivered children tend to be susceptible to infections, obesity, asthma and allergies. This occurs in part because many mothers are unable to successfully breastfeed them after a C-section. However, recent research shows that this may be culturally mediated. In some parts of the world, mothers are able to breastfeed successfully after C-section deliveries, and this practice may reduce their negative child health effects. Amanda Veile, an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University, and her team report that indigenous mothers in farming communities in Yucatan, Mexico, breastfeed for about 1.5 months longer following cesarean deliveries than they do following vaginal deliveries. Veile believes this is possible because the mothers live in an exceptionally supportive breastfeeding environment. Model of a human pelvis. Credit: Rebecca Wilcox "Moms living in this Mexican community don't have to hide in a bathroom to feed their child when they are in public," says Veile, a biological anthropologist who specializes in infant and child development. "Here, it is a cultural norm to breastfeed anytime, anywhere, and to sustain breastfeeding for longer than two years. And we think that prolonged breastfeeding offers protective benefits that reduces some of the health problems we often see in children delivered by C-section." Veile's research appears in the American Journal of Human Biology's special issue on the evolutionary and biocultural causes and consequences of rising cesarean delivery rates. Veile and collaborator Karen Rosenberg, a professor from the University of Delaware, are the guest editors for the special issue. It features 10 research articles written by anthropologists, biologists and healthcare practitioners, which are available open access through spring 2019. In Veile's study, she and her team compared breastfeeding durations and childhood infection rates based on how the child was born to Yucatec Maya farmers. Following 88 children from birth until age 5, the results show that those children born via C-sections were breastfed for about 2.7 years, whereas vaginally delivered children were breastfed for just over 2.5 years. There was no difference in infection rates between the two groups of children. "What a powerful message supporting breastfeeding," Veile says. "We need to continue studying this issue, but it seems that these mothers, perhaps subconsciously, increased their breastfeeding efforts post-cesarean." Veile says that Yucatec Maya women do experience post-cesarean challenges in the hospital environment, such as prolonged separation from their infants, latching issues and delayed milk let-down reflex. Still mothers overcome these challenges through determination, consumption of special foods, and the use of herbs and compresses. They also receive emotional support and breastfeeding advice from their family and friends. "Now that C-sections are becoming more universal, it is important to understand more about the consequences for children's health in a variety of settings," Veile said. "This includes very rural communities worldwide that are transitioning to increased health care access, while simultaneously experiencing poor community sanitation and the double burden of malnutrition." Explore further Indigenous group add to evidence tying cesarean birth to obesity More information: Amanda Veile et al. Birth mode, breastfeeding and childhood infectious morbidity in the Yucatec Maya, American Journal of Human Biology (2019). Journal information: American Journal of Human Biology Amanda Veile et al. Birth mode, breastfeeding and childhood infectious morbidity in the Yucatec Maya,(2019). DOI: 10.1002/ajhb.23218 Credit: CC0 Public Domain In a perspective published today in the journal Cell, researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reveal that genomic data extracted from population biobanks across the globe contain much less ethnic diversity than desirable. Of the nearly 5 million samples of DNA contributed to biobanks worldwide, 68 percent come from individuals of European ancestry. This lack of diversity not only limits researchers' ability to identify associations between genetic variants and disease, but may also contribute to widening ethnic disparities in health care, ultimately preventing underrepresented minorities from benefiting from the fruits of personalized medicine. Personalized medicine describes the emerging medical model in which clinicians use genomics and other advanced tools to determine the best strategy to care for each individual patient. This model stands in stark contrast to traditional medicine, which historically employs a one-size-fits-all approach, often offering the same treatment to every patient. Sequencing of the first human genome, completed in 2003, and the nationwide adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) starting in 2004, set the stage for personalized medicine, as the integration of genomic and clinical data aided clinicians in the prediction, prevention, and treatment of disease. Today, more than 95 percent of U.S. hospitals employ EHR technology and millions of human DNA samples have been sequenced. But even as the biomedical field advances, one prominent obstacle remains: a lack of diversity. A Mount Sinai-led global investigation of data from biobanks, which store biological samples often used in medical research, revealed that out of the millions of participants enrolled in biobanks across the globe, nearly two-thirds are of European ancestry, a group that makes up only about a quarter or less of the world's population. The underrepresentation of people with roots in Africa, Asia, and the Americas is a major pitfall for personalized medicine: diseases more commonly found in minority populations are understudied, as are diseases that strike all populations but have different progression and prognosis depending on ethnicity, such as chronic kidney disease. Thus, the diversity gap in biobanks may hinder our understanding of disease in some population groups, contributing to global health disparities, such as the significantly poorer health outcomes in blacks as compared to whites. Mount Sinai stands at the forefront of the effort to curtail narrow genetic sampling with the creation of its BioMe Biobank, one of the first biobanks in the United States to link DNA sequencing data to clinical information within EHRs. With more than 65 percent nonwhite participants, representative of population diversity in New York City, it is also one of the most diverse biobanks in the world. By targeting underrepresented populations, researchers at Mount Sinai were able to discover that a recessive genetic disease, Steel syndrome, is most commonly found in populations of Puerto Rican descent. This demonstrates that the next generation of personalized medicine will undoubtedly benefit from ethnic diversity in genomic sampling and research, which will help identify at-risk populations, improving population health on a global scale. "To propel personalized medicine of today into better medicine tomorrow, the embodiment of diversity at all levels of biomedical research is essential," said Eimear Kenny, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine and Genetics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Director of the Center for Genomic Health, and senior author of the publication. "The use of genomic data in clinical settings is fairly new, and there is much more to learn when it comes to the clinical interpretation of genomic data. Even so, the expansion of EHR-linked biobanks coupled with an industry-wide focus on increasing sample diversity could mean a brighter future for individualized care." Explore further Researchers discover kidney disease gene affects more populations than previously thought Mandatory military service in Georgia By Levan Abramishvili For much of modern history, forced enlistment (conscription) has been used widely to meet national demands for military personnel. Conscription is an involuntary removal of individuals from civilian society by compelling young men and sometimes women to become a part of the active duty armed forces for a specified duration.Over the past 45 years, a large number of countries have reduced the lengths of their compulsory military service obligations or moved entirely to an AVF (all-volunteer force). But in the past decade conscription has seen a sudden revival in some countries.In Georgia, conscription is enshrined in Article 101 of the 1995 Constitution. It is further regulated by subsequent laws.Russian military aggression, especially following the UkraineRussia conflict from 2014, acted as a motivation for reintroducing conscription in Lithuania, Sweden, and Georgia.Tina Khidasheli, who served as a minister of defense in the years 2015-2016, abolished military conscription, stating that forcing young men to serve in the military only worsened their social problems and weakened the defensive capabilities of the country. "The Georgian Armed Forces doesnt need servants who were forced to join it against their own will, said Khidasheli in defense of her decision.Khidashelis successor, Levan Izoria restored the compulsory military service after coming into power in 2016.With the reestablishment of conscription, came a few new initiatives, like the monthly remuneration of GEL 50 for conscripts, who would serve for 12 months.According to Georgian law, priests serving a religious organization are exempt from compulsory military service. Taking advantage of the loophole, a political party, Girchi, registered a religious order in 2017 called Christian Evangelical Protestant Biblical Freedom Church of Georgia and gained a state-recognized authority to issue a document stating that a person is a priest. Thus, helping young men avoid the draft.The establishment of the church hasnt gone unnoticed by the Georgian Armed Forces. It was clear to them that drafting conscripts would slowly become impossible if the precedent set by Girchi became a common practice.The ruling Georgian Dream party representative and the head of Parliaments Defence Committee, Irakli Sesiashvili, approved Izorias decision of reinstating conscription in 2016. And on March 13, 2019, he introduced an initiative that would ban members of non-Orthodox Christian churches to avoid drafting.The initiative was followed with a massive backlash from the public and Sesiashvili was accused of initiating a discriminative law. He clarified that he doesnt think the proposed law is discriminatory because it doesnt explicitly mention Orthodox priests.The Constitutional Agreement between the Georgian state and the Apostolic Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Georgia (Concordat), exempts clergymen of the Orthodox Georgian Church from the military service.The Law on Alternative Service entered into force in 1998. According to Article 4: "Those conscripts who according to the legislation must perform military service, but refuse to do so because military service of any sort is incompatible with their conscience, may be called up to perform civilian service in times of peace". This allowed people of various religious believes, Jehovah's Witnesses and Baptists especially, to avoid bearing arms.Concordat puts Orthodox priests to an unjust advantage and that became evident immediately after the announcement of the new law. Sesiashvili suggested continuing consultations concerning his proposition. Since theres a certain view in the public that my initiative might be discriminatory, I suggest to all political parties that we continue discussions regarding the subject said Sesiashvili.Patriarchate of Georgia issued a statement regarding the issue. They reaffirmed their support of allowing priests to avoid serving in the military but mentioned that there should be a mechanism that would prevent pseudo-religious groups to use this for their narrow interests, which is an apparent manipulation with religion and poses a threat to the country.The proposed initiative was specifically aimed towards Girchi and their established church. Even though the author of the proposed law is a member of the ruling party, Georgian Dream, one of the leaders of the opposition, Grigol Vashadze, also agrees that false religions became prevalent, but criticizes the ruling party for drafting a discriminatory law.In response to being accused of creating a false religion, political party Girchi published an exhaustive list of the children of deputies from current and previous Georgian Parliaments that avoided compulsory military service. According to the leader of Girchi, Zurab Japaridze, since its creation, Biblical Freedom Church of Georgia has saved more than 15 000 young men from having a ruined life and a mutilated body.Georgian experience as a developing and democratizing state creates the most challenging settings for developing a strong military personnel policy. Frequent changes to the army recruitment system could lead to the weakening of the countrys defensive capabilities.People in favor of conscription often call it a social contract between a state and a citizen and a moral obligation, especially for small countries like Georgia. Georgias aspiration to join NATO has also been used as a justification for the military conscription.It is noteworthy that conscripts can fill the military, but having professional armies is far more advantageous since they are generally better trained, more specialized and far more efficient. This is the reason why EU nations continue abolishing military conscription.Many say that in Georgia, conscription doesnt work as it should. Conscripts often dont get enough training and most of them are employed as guards for the government institution buildings, therefore it has become more of a way for the government to attain free labor than a definite practice of expanding the military capabilities.Conscription betrays the core values of democratic norms, such as liberty. Compulsory military service bonds citizens to states. Mandating service for months or years is a dangerous diversion from early adulthood that poses a threat to the citizens personal bonds, higher education, and employment.The discussion about conscription continues within the government and the society, but one thing remains clear the current system of drafting is not working as it should and needs to be changed or eliminated altogether in order to effectively increase Georgias defensive capabilities. Credit: CC0 Public Domain Early specialist palliative care treatment does not improve the quality of life for patients diagnosed with the rare cancer mesothelioma when compared to standard care alone, new research led by Curtin University has found. The research, published in this month's edition of Thorax, explored whether early specialist palliative care, which involves managing the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of care, soon after the diagnosis of malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) led to an improved quality of life and mood for patients and carers, compared to standard care alone. Co-author Professor Fraser Brims, from the Curtin Medical School at Curtin University, said malignant pleural mesothelioma was an uncommon cancer of the chest cavity and the lungs caused by exposure to asbestos fibres and affects more than 700 Australians each year. "The global burden of mesothelioma largely reflects the high use of asbestos throughout the last century, with Australia and the UK having the highest rates in the world. People diagnosed with mesothelioma experience significant symptoms, low quality of life and a low survival rate, and the treatment of mesothelioma remains a significant challenge," Professor Brims said. "Previous research has shown that patients diagnosed with other types of cancer may benefit from early specialist palliative care, in conjunction with other relevant treatments, but our research aimed to examine if this was also the case for patients with mesothelioma. "We found that the current level of standard care in Australia and the UK is adequately meeting the needs of patients early after the diagnosis of mesothelioma and specialist palliative care was only required on a case-by-case basis." Co-author Professor Anoop Chauhan, from Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, explained that the study was the largest randomised controlled trial to date to examine this question in patients with mesothelioma living in Australia and the UK. "Our findings may help health professionals, carers and family members to further understand the role of early specialist palliative care when treating mesothelioma and to recognise when it is required and when it is not," Professor Chauhan said. "Further research is needed to explore which patients and when in their disease trajectory, will most benefit from early specialist palliative care, but it should continue to play a key role in the treatment plan when patients' pain, symptoms, and psychological care are no longer met by standard care alone." The research, sponsored by Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and funded by the British Lung Foundation and Australian Communities Grant, was co-authored by researchers from Australia and the UK. The research paper is titled "Early specialist palliative care on quality of life for malignant pleural mesothelioma: a randomised controlled trial." Explore further Early palliative care provides no quality of life benefits for recently diagnosed MPM patients More information: Fraser Brims et al. Early specialist palliative care on quality of life for malignant pleural mesothelioma: a randomised controlled trial, Thorax (2019). Journal information: Thorax Fraser Brims et al. Early specialist palliative care on quality of life for malignant pleural mesothelioma: a randomised controlled trial,(2019). DOI: 10.1136/thoraxjnl-2018-212380 Credit: CC0 Public Domain Research led by the University of Birmingham has found that increased levels of hormones including testosterone could cause a brain condition that can lead to blindness in women. Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertensionalso known as IIHis caused by high pressure in the brain with consequences from blindness to incapacitating daily long-term headaches. IIH was originally identified over 100 years ago yet the cause of the condition has remained unknown although there has been much speculation about why more than 95 per cent of total incidence is in women with obesity. Once regarded as rare, incidence of IIH is now rising dramatically in line with the global rise in obesity and there has been a 150 per cent rise in incidence in last 10 years. Currently there are very limited treatment options. Scientists at the University of Birmingham carried out research, funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), the Medical Research Council UK, and Wellcome Trust and published today in JCI Insight, exploring the role of hormones known as androgens in the way IIH develops. The researchers examined the levels of androgens in blood and urine, as well as in brain fluid known as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), in 55 women with IIH aged 18 to 45. They then compared the results with the levels observed in women with obesity of the same age and body mass index (BMI), as well as a cohort of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). PCOS is a common condition and is classically associated with increased levels of specific types of androgens, which can cause excess hair and irregular periods. The researchers found that IIH patients had a very different profile of raised levels of androgens compared to women of a similar age with obesity and women with PCOS. Most notable were the high levels of the androgen 'testosterone' found in the blood in IIH women. Crucially, levels of androgens were uniquely increased in the brain fluid (CSF) of women with IIH. When the researchers, analysed human choroidal plexus tissue, which is the site in the brain where CSF is produced, they confirmed that androgens could increase the rate of CSF secretion, a potential driver for increased brain pressure. Corresponding and senior author Dr. Alex Sinclair, NIHR Clinician Scientist at the University of Birmingham, said: "For over 100 years the cause of IIH has been unknown. "These findings mark a key step forward; for the first time we have found a pattern of androgen dysregulation that is unique to IIH and potentially a driver of abnormal brain pressure in people with the condition. "Taken together this provides the first evidence that IIH may be a manifestation of female androgen excess." Lead author Dr. Michael O'Reilly, Hoffenberg Clinician Scientist in Endocrinology and Human Metabolism at the University of Birmingham, said: "These findings, for the first time, implicate androgens as a potential cause of IIH." Professor Wiebke Arlt, Director of the University of Birmingham's Institute of Metabolism and Systems Research, added: "These findings mark a significant step forward in a previously poorly understood disabling condition. "Understanding the cause of a disease is a vital step to ultimately refine treatments which improved patient care and outcomes." Michelle Williamson, Chair of the patient charity IIHUK, added: "The recent patient and doctor research Priority Setting Partnership identified that uncovering the cause of IIH was the number one priority for IIH. We are delighted by this discovery. It is vital for the patients to see that progress is being made." This latest study comes after experts led by the University of Birmingham recently produced the first internationally collaborative guidelines aimed at improving the treatment and diagnosis of IIH. Created by a group of specialists in neurology, neurosurgery, neuro-radiology, ophthalmology and neuroradiology, who have had expertise in managing IIH, the team envisage that the new guidelines, published last October in Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, will step change the treatment of the condition. Explore further Study finds new class of androgens play key role in polycystic ovary syndrome A typical example of improved housing beside a mosquito-producing rice field in rural Tanzania, constructed using bricks, timber and iron sheeting plus netting screens fitted over the windows. Credit: IHI In an article published in Lancet Planetary Health, a team from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), provides evidence that even window screens with no insecticide suppressed mosquito populations and dramatically reduced malaria prevalence in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam. Led by LSTM's Dr. Gerry Killeen, the study team has also worked with local and national government partners for over a decade to develop practical affordable implementation systems for community-based application of environmentally-friendly biological insecticides that selectively kill mosquito larvae in puddles, drains, river fringes, ponds and other sundry stagnant water bodies. Dr. Prosper Chaki, who co-led the study, said "We are pleased that our efforts over all these years have culminated in government-funded scale up of larviciding, first across all of Dar es Salaam, and then to all major urban centres in Tanzania. Also, our government has invested domestic treasury funding into construction of a manufacturing plant for biological control products in Kibaha, just outside the city, which is now fully operational." However, previous external analyses of the first large-scale pilot in Dar es Salaam indicated that larviciding only reduced malaria prevalence by 21%. Furthermore, this previous analysis provided no explanation for the much larger reductions of malaria prevelance that occurred over the study period, which steadily declined from >28% in 2004 to <2% by 2008. The LSTM and IHI team therefore re-assessed these epidemiological data to see how much of this remarkable 97% drop in malaria prevalence could be attributed to other factors. Only the coverage of complete window screening consistently increased to levels high enough to have any meaningful impact. While only 40% of houses had complete window screening at the start of the study in 2004, coverage had more than doubled to 86% by 2008. This surprisingly rapid scale up of window screening coverage was unplanned and spontaneous, implemented by households at their own expense, using flexible plastic screening which they found easy to install. This steady rise in window-screening coverage was statistically associated with a 92% reduction of malaria prevalence amongst residents, accounting for most of the spectacular overall decline in malaria prevalence. Mosquito biting rates were also reduced by as much as 92%, and impact was greatest for the most efficient malaria vector species that depend heavily on human blood. "People who live with mosquitoes protect themselves by taking advantage of any products they can access and afford." said Dr. Nicodem Govella, a co-author of the study, who continues "Here is an encouraging example from the citizens of Dar es Salaam, who spent millions of dollars of their own money to protect their houses and families, but also protected their neighbours by making life tougher for mosquitoes". In addition to revealing the remarkable contribution of window screens to this near-collapse of malaria transmission, this re-analysis also yielded a more encouraging estimate for the impact of regular larvicide application. Larviciding halved malaria prevalence by reducing malaria vector abundance, consistent with subsequent evaluations of scale up across the remainder of the city. In addition to demonstrating that mosquito-proofed window screening may have far greater impacts upon malaria than previously thought, these observations also challenge the view that it is too expensive and impractical for widespread use in poor countries. "While Dar es Salaam is a big city, we think our observations also have important implications for rural Africa", said Dr. Gerry Killeen. "Historically, most rural African houses have been made with mud and sticks for the walls and grass thatch for the roofs. Mosquitoes readily entered through the eave gaps between the wall and roof, which were left open for ventilation because these simple house designs lacked windows. However, Africa is changing faster than ever before, and that picture is rapidly becoming outdated across much of the continent. Houses ventilated by windows and built with bricks, timber and iron sheets are increasingly common even in rural Africa. The people who live with mosquitoes and malaria invest as much as they can in better houses, which are easier to protect with readily-available netting materials". "This study shows how the relatively simple intervention of installing window screens was taken up beyond a research study setting and led to a remarkable reduction in malaria infections in the wider community. These findings demonstrate that it can take more than a decade for research to have a real impact on the communities that need it most", says Branwen Hennig, Senior Portfolio Lead at the Wellcome Trust one of the major sponsors for the study. The authors also note that ongoing housing improvements across rural Africa are closely associated with declining malaria burden and that even bigger reductions may be possible if they could be treated with insecticides. Explore further Tanzania study reopens debate on targeting mosquito larvae to control malaria More information: Gerry F Killeen et al, Suppression of malaria vector densities and human infection prevalence associated with scale-up of mosquito-proofed housing in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: re-analysis of an observational series of parasitological and entomological surveys, The Lancet Planetary Health (2019). Gerry F Killeen et al, Suppression of malaria vector densities and human infection prevalence associated with scale-up of mosquito-proofed housing in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: re-analysis of an observational series of parasitological and entomological surveys,(2019). DOI: 10.1016/S2542-5196(19)30035-X In what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind systematic look at pregnancy frequency and outcomes among imprisoned U.S. women, researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine say almost 1,400 pregnant women were admitted to 22 US state and all federal prisons in a recent year. They also found that most of the prison pregnancies -- over 90 percent -- ended in live births with no maternal deaths. Credit: Johns Hopkins Medicine/Raigan Wheeler In what is believed to be a first-of-its-kind systematic look at pregnancy frequency and outcomes among imprisoned U.S. women, researchers from Johns Hopkins Medicine say almost 1,400 pregnant women were admitted to 22 U.S. state and all federal prisons in a recent year. They also found that most of the prison pregnanciesover 90 percentended in live births with no maternal deaths. Historically, say the researchers, these numbers have not been tracked by U.S. federal agencies or state prison systems, yet most of the women in American prisons are of reproductive age. And although this particular study didn't address how pregnancy care was provided, the researchers say gathering diverse, nationally representative data such as this is a much-needed first step toward developing consistent guidelines for tracking the numbers and improving maternity care in the U.S. prison system. "Currently, there are no mandatory standards for prenatal and pregnancy care for women in prisons," says Carolyn Sufrin, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study, an assistant professor in gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and author of Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars. "This study gives us insight into the actual numbers, which will help us better understand the scope of care needed by pregnant people behind bars. Having this information could also help inform policies to consider alternatives to incarceration for pregnant people." The findings of the new study, conducted by the researchers in collaboration with prison officials who reported information on a monthly basis for one year, were published online March 21 in the American Journal of Public Health. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), there were more than 110,000 women in federal and state prisons in the United States at year-end 2016, with 75 percent of these women being 18-44 years old. A 2004 BJS survey found that 3 percent of women in federal prisons and 4 percent of women in state prisons reported they were pregnant at intake. Until this new study, this BJS survey from 15 years ago, which only accounted for self-reported pregnancies, was the only data on pregnancy prevalence in prisons. Other and more current national health statistics databases exclude data from prisons, further contributing to the lack of maternal health and birth information about imprisoned populations. To help close the information gap, the Johns Hopkins researchers gathered data on pregnant women in 22 state systems and all federal prisons, and tracked pregnancy outcomes over a period of 12 months from 2016-2017. They did so by first contacting the prisons' custody and health care administrators via email or phone with an invitation to participate in the study. For federal prisons, approval of participation was granted by the acting director of the U.S. Department of Justice and administrators at the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The states' departments of corrections' policies allowed for participation of state prisons. The researchers then arranged for a designated "site reporter" in each prison to use a survey form to track outcomes on a monthly basis among the pregnant patients in their prisons, reporting data on miscarriages, live births, stillbirths, maternal deaths, preterm births and abortions. Site reporters could be wardens, prison research coordinators, women's programming coordinators, medical directors or other health care personnel. At the end of each month during the survey year, site reporters sent their findings to the Johns Hopkins researchers using a secure, web-based program, Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap). In a bid to keep the data-gathering as accurate as possible, the Johns Hopkins researchers interviewed nearly half of the site reporters (43 percent) midway through the study to better understand how they tracked the data and to ensure accuracy. Data were also reviewed by research staff monthly to assess and correct inaccuracies. All data errors were corrected by site reporters during the study period. From the data reported from each site, researchers determined that 1,396 already-pregnant women were admitted to the 22 state and all federal prisons in the study over the 12-month study period. These prisons house 57 percent of imprisoned women in the United States. For this study, no specific demographic information, such as race or age, was collected. Of the pregnancies that ended while women were in custody, 753 resulted in live births. Six percent of the live births were preterm, and 30 percent were delivered by cesarean section, but these numbers varied greatly by state. The national statistic for preterm births and C-section deliveries in the general population are 10 percent and 31.9 percent, respectively. Forty-six of the pregnancies ended in miscarriages, 11 ended in abortions, four ended in stillbirth and three newborns died. None of the mothers died. In the United States, there are more than 700 maternal deaths each year. "We can't know for sure that these numbers come from the same women who were admitted who also had pregnancies that ended in prison," says Sufrin. "They could have gotten released." The researchers said differences such as pre-incarceration health conditions, access to prenatal care, food, shelter and access to illegal drugs could account for the level of preterm birth rates in specific prisons that were higher or lower than the national average. In 2016, the national average for preterm births was 9.85 percent. The average for prisons in the study was 6 percent. Access to and quality of reproductive health care varies from prison to prison, the researchers note, so the findings cannot be generalized to states that did not participate in the study. The researchers also recorded large variations in pregnancy outcomes by state. For example, in Kansas, Vermont and Arizona, 20 or more percent of pregnancies ended in miscarriage. Additionally, Texas and Ohio had months with more than 50 pregnant women present in their prisons, while Maine and Rhode Island had some months with zero pregnant inmates. Sufrin says that the state-by-state differences could be attributed to state sentencing laws, prison health care policies, access to public reproductive health care or other factors not measured in this study. "We were very surprised by how willing and eager the prisons were to participate and to have better data to work with," says Sufrin. "With the collective help of the prisons, our research team was able to take the initial steps to gather more systematic and standardized information." She added: "We know there are pregnant people in prison, and until now, it wasn't clear whether or not people wanted to pay attention to this particular population or do the adequate research needed to advance the quality of reproductive health care in prisons." The researchers cautioned that the study had several limitations: It didn't assess how far along in pregnancy the women were at intake, the size of the prisons, the pregnancy testing policies of the prisons, the type of hospital in which imprisoned women deliver and the variability in prison living conditions. All of those factors may or may not have contributed to variations in outcomes. They also weren't able to collect pregnancy statistics from the other 28 state prison systems, including three large systems that declined participation (California, Florida and New York). In future studies, the researchers hope to collect more information on the individual experiences of the women by interviewing, collecting demographic data and assessing the quality of their maternity care. "Our hope is for these findings to be used to advance national standards of care for imprisoned pregnant women," says Sufrin, "and to support those who advocate for policies and laws that guarantee acceptable and safe pregnancy care and childbirth, that consider alternatives to incarceration for pregnant people, uphold reproductive justice, and encourage more attention to the reproductive health needs of marginalized women and their families." Sufrin has been researching reproductive health care in jails and prisons since 2005, and the pregnancy care of incarcerated women specifically, since 2009. She is also the author of Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars. Explore further Our research finds pregnant prisoners are giving birth without midwifery support Adopting stricter state gun laws is linked to a safer school experience for students, finds research published in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. Strengthening gun laws at state level was associated with teens being less likely to report being threatened or injured with a weapon at school, miss at least one day of school due to feeling unsafe, or to carry a weapon at any location. Among 1.3 million discipline incidents reported in US public schools during the 2013-2014 school year, 1 in 20 were related to weapon possession, write the authors. And a particularly dangerous part of school crime is gun violence, they add. Previous studies have explored the effect of youth-orientated gun laws on non-fatal injuries, suicide rates, deaths from unintentional shootings and firearm homicides among teens. But no conclusive evidence was found and little is known on the link between state-level gun laws and school safety. So to shed some light on this, researchers looked at the associations of stricter gun laws with students' weapon carrying and their perception of school safety. They used data from the Youth Risk Behaviors Surveys (YRBS) conducted between 1999-2015, which included information on 926,639 teens across 45 states, who were all in 9th to 12th grade. Students reported on weapon carrying at school, the number of times they experienced weapon threats or injuries at school, the number of school days missed due to feeling unsafe, and weapon carrying at any location. For each state and year, 133 gun laws were combined into an index of gun control strength, with higher scores corresponding to a stricter gun law environment. The researchers controlled for individual and state characteristics, as well as year and state fixed events. This included age, sex and race, as well as sociodemographic characteristics such as the unemployment rate, crime rates and state anti-bullying policy. During the study period, many states strengthened their prohibitions of high-risk guns, and introduced laws preventing individuals with a history of domestic violence from owning or buying guns. But 20 states allowed the use of a gun for self-defense without duty to retreat. Stronger gun control (i.e. a 15-point increase in the score) was associated with a 0.8-percentage point decrease in the probability of being threatened or injured with a weapon at school (overall prevalence 7%), a 1.9-percentage point decrease in the probability of carrying a weapon at any location (overall prevalence 16%), and a 1.1-percentage point decrease in the probability of missing school due to feeling unsafe (overall prevalence 6.1%). Overall, weapon carrying was more common among white students, compared with black and Hispanic students, while perceived threats were less common among white students compared with all other racial groups. And stricter gun laws were more strongly associated with lower rates of weapon carrying among male students compared with female students. Black students were more likely to carry weapons at school specifically in response to a strengthening in gun laws, but this may indicate a replacement for a firearm, say the authors. This is an observational study, and may not be representative of all states. What's more, the information from students was volunteered, and the authors write that teens "might misreport certain behaviors due to social desirability." But the research highlights that over the last two decades, 17 states experienced a weakening of gun control laws, which may facilitate teens' access to guns and increase levels of violence in schools, write the authors. "With the prevalence of weapon threats and fights at school decreasing only slightly, and the percentage of students who miss school on the rise, school safety represents a policy priority across the fields of health and education," they conclude. Explore further Bullied teens more likely to take weapons to school More information: Gun laws and school safety , Gun laws and school safety , DOI: 10.1136/jech-2018-211246 X-rays, CT scans or MRIs may be necessary to detect TB in organs other than the lungs. Credit: Shutterstock The world marks World Tuberculosis (TB) Day on March 24 every year. Most people assume that TB only affects the lungs but the disease can also attack other organs. The Conversation Africa's Ina Skosana spoke to Professor Nazir Ismail to find out more. Professor Ismail works and conducts his research in South Africa, one of the world's TB hot spots. What parts of the body does TB affect? TB most commonly affects the lungs what's known as the body's pulmonary system. But it affects other organs too, what's known as extrapulmonary TB. Other organs that can be affected include the lining covering the lungs (pleural TB); the central nervous system (TB meningitis); bone and joints (musculoskeletal system); lymph nodes; abdomen where the liver, spleen and the intestines can be affected (abdominal TB); kidney and bladder (urogenital TB); and blood. A study conducted in Johannesburg showed that the most common sites of extra pulmonary TB were the pleura (39.1%), lymph nodes (31.0%), blood (21.8%), central nervous system (7.3%), and abdomen (2.9%). Another study conducted in the KwaZulu-Natal province also showed pleural TB to be the most common form of extra pulmonary TB (36% of patients). How common is this form of TB? What causes it? According to the World Health Organisation's most recent TB report, extrapulmonary TB accounted for 14% of TB cases recorded globally in 2017. Across the African continent, extrapulmonary TB accounted for 16% of the 1 323 450 cases recorded. In South Africa it accounts for 11% of all TB cases reported. Importantly unlike pulmonary TB, which is spread through the air from person to person extrapulmonary TB is not infectious. A key risk factor for developing extrapulmonary TB is a compromised immune system which is why it is more common in patients infected with HIV. It can also occur in people with diabetes, cancer, low body weight and chronic kidney disease. Smoking and the use of drugs that can suppress the immune system also increase the risk of extrapulmonary TB. Global TB incidence. Credit: WHO Global TB report 2018 Though the risk factors differ, all types of TB develop in the same way. TB infection occurs when a person inhales droplet particles containing the TB bacterium. Once inhaled, the bacteria then heads for the lungs. If the immune system is fully functional, several mechanisms are put in place by the body's response to the foreign agent to contain the bacteria. The end result is usually a walled off "granuloma", preventing the TB bacteria from multiplying and making the person ill. In some patients, the TB escapes to another part of the body before the lungs can wall it off. In healthy people with strong immune systems, other organs or systems will put up a "barrier" that's similar to the lung's granuloma. But if this defence mechanism fails, the bacteria multiply and cause disease in that specific organ system. This is called primary TB and is usually seen in young children. Sometimes, a person can successfully wall off TB when they are healthy. But as their immune system weakens because of old age, or conditions like HIV and diabetes the wall can break down. If that happens, the bacteria can multiply and lead to active disease. How is extrapulmonary TB diagnosed and treated? Clinicians find it challenging to diagnose extrapulmonary TB. This is because the patient doesn't present with the typical signs and symptoms of pulmonary TB chronic cough, fever, loss of weight and night sweats. In some cases, the presenting signs and symptoms can be very vague and can mimic other conditions. All this means the clinician must have a strong suspicion that their patient has extrapulmonary TB to even start seeking this diagnosis. Investigations include X-rays, CT scans or MRIs and sending appropriate specimens to the laboratory to detect the TB bacterium. The type of specimen that should be sent depends on the organ system involved. For example, in the case of lymph node TB, a biopsy (tissue specimen) of the lymph node should be sent to the laboratory; in the case of pleural TB, pleural fluid should be sent for testing. It is important to note that in certain instances, even though the laboratory result might be negative, the clinician may still opt to treat for tuberculosis based on the high clinical suspicion, constellation of clinical signs and symptoms; and adjunct special investigations (biopsy, CT scans). The drugs used to treat extrapulmonary TB are the same as those used for the treatment of pulmonary TB. The only difference is that the duration of treatment for extrapulmonary TB is longer and depends on the organ system involved. Most extrapulmonary TB is treated for nine months but can sometimes be longer. Treatment is taken orally and is a combination tablet that is dosed based on a person's weight. Hospital admission is not required for treatment unless the patient is severely ill. Patients can continue to take their medication at home. How does a person know they've got it? The presentation of extrapulmonary TB depends on which organ is involved. An example is lymph node TB on a person's neck which would present as a noticeable growth or lump. There are multiple causes for such a growth, one of which is TB, which the doctor would know to investigate. Thus seeking medical advice early when you are unwell is an important starting point. Explore further Cochrane Review looks at accuracy of Xpert for the diagnosis of extrapulmonary tuberculosis This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Frontline homeless shelter workers are more likely to experience PTSD than firefighters, police and nurses, a recent social work study says. Credit: Jorge Lopez on Unsplash It's probably no surprise that many people who experience homelessness have experienced trauma in their lives. However, a new study led by the University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work shows that a surprisingly large number of individuals who work with people in homeless shelters also experience trauma on a regular basis. The study, by UCalgary social work researcher Dr. Jeannette Waegemakers Schiff, Ph.D., and Athabasca University researcher Dr. Annette M. Lane, Ph.D., found that 33 per cent of those who work in homeless shelters experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Large study looked at experience of 472 frontline homeless shelter workers The large study, recently published in the international Community Mental Health Journal, has looked at the experience of 472 individuals, in 23 different organizations, working in frontline positions in homeless shelters. "It's definitely traumatizing to hear about or witness some of the horrible things that frontline workers encounter, especially when they have a personal relationship, or are trying to help those involved," says Waegemakers Schiff. "When people have no outlet for their emotions, things build over time, and that creates traumatic stress. They can't take a mental health day, or take time off because its frowned upon. There aren't policies in any of these agencies that allow workers to take paid leave after a bad experiencethe way that police or firefighters would for example." Interestingly, the rate of PTSD experienced by those working in homeless shelters is much higher than other groups who routinely witness traumatic events. For example, studies show 10 to 14 per cent of police, firefighters and ambulance drivers, and 14 to 17 per cent of nurses may experience PTSD. 'Root-shift' needed in organizations to address trauma issue in shelters The research was conducted with Calgary and Edmonton agencies, and found working with clients who have trauma-related issues creates a "constellation of issues" for frontline staff including vicarious traumatization, compassion fatigue, and burnout. In fact, the study showed 24 per cent of respondents experienced burnout and vicarious traumatization at sufficiently elevated levels to suggest they should step back from their present responsibilities. Another 20 per cent had a seriously diminished sense of "compassion satisfaction," meaning they no longer felt any innate positive feelings from helping others. The study also captured a snapshot of working conditions within agencies working with those experiencing homelessness. Many workers are young, with minimal post-secondary education (over half have two or fewer years) even though they undertake complex role. Seventy-one per cent of workers in shelters earn less than $50,000 annually. Perhaps as a result, turnover in homeless-serving agencies is very high. Forty-three per cent of staff have been employed in the homeless sector for less than two years, and nearly three-quarters were in their position for less than five years. This could also mean that there is often very little support from experienced staff in supporting younger workers experiencing work-related trauma. The researchers hope that by shining a light on this issue, organizations may better understand the impact on staff who work in trauma-filled organizations. "I strongly advocate for organizations to develop trauma-informed practices going forward because of the significant impact it's going to have on their staff," says Waegemakers Schiff, who is currently working on a followup study. "We need a root-shift in organizational culture to realize that there are things an organization can do that will either exacerbate traumatic responses in staff and clients, or lessen them, depending on the way you go." Explore further Homeless on campus? New social work study examines student homelessness Many stories have been told about notorious Nairobi cons and fraudsters who prowl the Kenyan Capital preying on unsuspecting civilians and businesspeople. While not many city dwellers can admit to getting conned, statistics indicate that the average Nairobian has been swindled at least once in their lifetime. Every other day, a new con game is exposed on the internet in a bid to warn others before they become victims. While this usually helps, Nairobi cons are known to evolve with the times so it is always advisable to remain vigilant at all times. With that said, a solar panel dealer in Nairobi has narrated how he was almost conned of Sh18 million last month inside a bank. On Twitter, Karani Mutonga penned a thread revealing how he got suspicious when the clients and brokers he was dealing with mentioned something about selling diamonds. They also wanted him to go to an unnamed bank to collect his money and deposit it himself instead of them transferring it into his account. Karanis story comes in the wake of the fake billions case at Barclays Bank, Queensway Branch in Nairobi. Read below. ****************************************** In the wake of this fake money and Barclays Bank, it has now become clear what some conmen wanted to con me in the pretext of a good business deal. I got a call from a prospective referral namely Wangui who had a client who needed solar in South Sudan. That was four weeks ago. She gave me the number of the prospective client, Alice and I called her. I promised Wangui a commission if the sale is successful. We met with Alice a week after and she explains the nature of the contract. She said she used to work with the UN but quit in order to do business. Actually her Truecaller indicated Alicia United Nations. She explains that theres a South Sudan client interested. As we were having business lunch with Alice, she requested I allow her to call in her associate in the negotiations which I did. His name was Mutuku. We agreed on the best price of solar to be delivered at a warehouse in Wilson Airport. On that best price, they asked me to add 10k on each item as their commission. I agreed since prices were within market price. The contract sum was 18 million. Their commission was 3 million. So the price I should present to the South Sudan client would be 18M. A week later, I got a call from Alice saying the client is in the country. We agreed to meet the following day together with Mutuku early before we meet the client. And we met. In the afternoon we met the client, introduced as Frumence. I gave her the quotation and she complains its too high. I told her Alice and Mutuku already negotiated and thats the best. She agrees but will first purchase 100 pieces worth 6 million. What happened next disorganized everything. Frumence, the client doesnt have cash. Instead, she has 100-carat diamond which 10.5 million, underworld value but she quotes price as 7 million. Mutuku says he had organised a buyer. He texted me saying I agree because we can sell at 10.5 Million and make 3.5 on top of sales. At that point, Im no longer keen on the deal. I was already getting suspicious. I told them to sell diamonds and deposit money in my account and I will supply solar. They said we meet the following day they sell to a buyer who had agreed to buy. We agreed to meet the following day. They said that the diamond buyers agreed we meet inside their bank which we shared and they will withdraw and give me to deposit. Why not transfer? I ask. They said gemstones are dealt with in cash. At this point, Im silently out. The following day we met in the morning. I arrived 2 hours before time. I tagged a friend along. I also informed a friend in the security sector to stay in adjacent hotel. We took breakfast. I told my friend to stick around until they arrived and he excuse himself. 30 minutes to our meeting I get a call from a furious Mutuku. He demands to know why I am bringing a stranger in our deal. I told them its just another sale but hell excuse himself once they arrive. So Mutuku had sent some two spies. My friend stayed in the car. The informers were informing other guys of my movements. They wanted my friend to leave the area. He didnt. One hour after the time of our meeting, I told them I cant wait any longer. They told me the buyer doesnt have enough money. We postpone the closing of the deal. I call my other security guy in the adjacent hotel and we leave together. A car followed us up to Eastern bypass where we stopped to relax in a hotel owned by a friend working with NIS. I called the lady who introduced me to them. She acted surprised. My security friend told me to call them they lay a fresh dragnet. All their phones went off. I dont know what their end game was bt in the wake of this Barclays Bank saga, Im asking myself, were they to give me fake dollars inside the bank? They were very confident they would pay me inside a bank. Are our banks accomplices to fraud? This is Kenya. Impossible is possible. Mine Countermeasures vessels from eight NATO and ally navies are scheduled to gather in the Baltic Sea at the end of May to take part to the "Baltic Mine Countermeasures Squadron Exercise". Mine Countermeasures vessels from eight NATO and ally navies are scheduled to gather in the Baltic Sea at the end of May to take part to the "Baltic Mine Countermeasures Squadron Exercise". Eight navies will take part to the Baltic Mine Countermeasures Squadron Exercise (Picture source : German Navy) The Baltic Mine Countermeasures Squadron Exercise was conceived as part of the Baltic Commanders Conference, a union of navy commanders from Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Germany. Therefore, the eight navies to take part to the exercise are obviously Germany (taking the lead) along with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and EU partners Sweden, Denmark and Finland. The military drill is scheduled to take place from Monday 1st of April to Friday 12th of April, in the Baltic Sea, and will involve seamanship and mine neutralisation exercises.The German Navy's 3rd Mine Minesweeping Squadron that will host the event will deploy tender FGS Rhein and FGS Donau, and its minehunters FGS Weilheim and FGS Bad Rappenau. Emory students, faculty and staff gathered March 20 to honor those killed in attacks on two mosques in New Zealand and to show support for the Muslim community and all who have been victims of violence. Emory students, faculty and staff gathered Wednesday, March 20, to honor those killed and injured in the attacks on two mosques in New Zealand, sharing reflections, prayers and messages of support for the Muslim community and all who have been victims of violence and hate. The vigil, held in the covered area behind Cannon Chapel, was organized by Emorys Muslim Students Association and the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life. As students read the names of the 50 people killed in New Zealand, they lit candles for each, which formed a poignant line along the window ledge, then filled a table with glowing light. One after another, student speakers offered messages of resilience and hope, mourning those killed while vowing to remain strong in their faith and to come together across differences. Several noted that this was not the first time that the Emory community had united in mourning for victims of hate-fueled attacks, including a vigil in the same location last semester for those killed at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Standing here today, we remind each other that no one is ever alone, said sophomore Fizza Mahmood. We are in this chaos together, connected, and what we do today has an effect tomorrow. Lisa Garvin, acting dean of the chapel and spiritual life, introduced a series of interfaith prayers from students representing Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist and Christian traditions. Your presence here offers profound hope, not just to this community but to the world, she told vigil attendees. In the face of Islamophobia in this country and across the world, this community of rich religious diversity offers support for those who are hurting and stands as a symbol of what the world can be. As the sun began to set, Isam Vaid, Emorys religious life scholar for the Muslim faith, gave the call for the Muslim maghrib or sunset prayer. Those who wanted to pray then gathered in Cannon Chapel, where there was additional time to share feelings and thoughts about the New Zealand attacks. Support resources Below is information about resources for those who have been impacted by this tragedy, or who would like support dealing with other issues: Emory Helpline is an anonymous, peer counseling telephone service for students. It is open from 8:30 p.m. to 1 a.m., seven days a week, during the regular academic year (excluding major holidays). Students with non-urgent mental health situations may contact the Helpline at 404-727-4357 (HELP). Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) provides individual, group and couples counseling; stress management classes; and community outreach to provide support for students and assist them in negotiating emotional and interpersonal difficulties as they matriculate through Emory University. 404-727-7450. Student Intervention Services (SIS) assists students in times of crisis. It also offers impartial, judgment-free counsel for students seeking guidance and assistance through life's ongoing challenges. 404-430-1120. Student Health Services (SHS) offers free psychiatric services for all enrolled Emory students. Services include diagnostic psychiatric evaluations, medication evaluations, long-term management of psychiatric medications, and community referrals. Learn more information about reaching SHS after-hours emergencies or call 404-727-7551. Office of Spiritual and Religious Life is located in the Alumni Memorial University Center (AMUC 125) and Cannon Chapel (Suite 316). Services are available for students, faculty and staff. 404-727-6225. Faculty Staff Assistance Program (FSAP) provides support for employees, including daytime emergency appointments and on-call after-hours services. Visit the emergency services webpage or call 404-727-9355 (WELL). " " Independent contractors who provide services to business are considered self-employed. PhotoAlto/Laurence Mouton/ Getty Images Here's a news flash: You can work for a company or other organization without being considered an "employee." Yes, there is the subclass of worker often referred to as an "intern," best known for making copies and fetching coffee. There are also an increasing number of people -- freelancers, part-timers and contractors -- who do real work without the "employee" tag. That's mostly because employers don't want the legal and financial responsibility that comes with it. Perhaps the best way to know whether you're being treated as an employee or an "independent contractor" is to look at your taxes. If you receive a Form 1099 from your employer at the end of the year, instead of a W-2, the money that you were paid is considered nonemployee compensation. It's important to know the difference, in part because of the tax consequences that come with being labeled a "nonemployee" [source: IRS]. Advertisement First, the good news: You get paid everything up front. Employers don't withhold estimated taxes from paychecks issued to independent contractors. That means you can put the dough in the bank, shove it under your mattress, invest it in exotic low-yield bonds or bet it all on 21 at the roulette table in Vegas. The bad news, of course, is that you're probably going to have to pay some of it back to Uncle Sam at the end of the year. Depending on how much you make, you may even need to pay estimated taxes on a quarterly basis or risk being penalized come January [sources: IRS, IRS]. In fact, independent contractors are typically on the hook for more money than their traditional employee colleagues. The Internal Revenue Service considers nonemployee workers as self-employed, even if they don't actually own a business. As such, independent contractors pay both the employee and the employer share of Social Security and Medicare taxes on the money that they earn. " " Why does the hold music manipulate your mood? Will Ireland/Future Publishing via Getty Images If Dante were alive today, the tortured souls in the ninth circle of hell would suffer an eternity of being on hold listening to a brain-scrambling tune interrupted every 20 seconds by a robotic she-devil intoning, "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and a customer service representative will be with you shortly." No!!!!! As hard as companies make it to get a live human being on the phone, they do actually care about customer service. Angry customers who hang up after 27 minutes on hold are more likely to badmouth the company on Twitter or switch to a competitor. It's called the "economic cost of waiting." Which is why enterprising businessman Alfred Levy knew he was on to something back in 1962 when his factory's phone system accidentally picked up a local radio signal and played music when customers were put on hold. When callers were distracted by the music, Levy noticed, they were less likely to hang up, so he filed a patent for the world's first "music on hold" system. (Next time you're stuck on hold listening to a pan flute cover of Lionel Richie, you can thank Al.) Since then, there's been some eye-opening research into the psychology of waiting and what types of music and messaging make the on hold experience more or less excruciating. Besides hold music, the biggest innovations in waiting science have been the "estimated time" and "place in line" messages, techniques perfected by Disney theme parks, the waiting-est place on Earth. Advertisement The Best Strategy for Putting People on Hold According to a 2007 study comparing different types of on hold messages, the most effective trick for keeping people sane on hold was to tell them where they stood in line. In the experiment, 123 callers were put on hold for two minutes. A third listened to hold music, a third got music interrupted by messages apologizing for the wait, and the last group heard music punctuated by occasional status updates: "You are the 4th caller in line... You are the 3rd caller in line..., etc." Quizzed afterward about their experience, the people who received the status updates were the most satisfied. It wasn't necessarily that they perceived the wait to be shorter than the other groups, but that the sense of progress was comforting. "It is not an issue of time; it is an issue of obstacle," study author Anat Rafaeli told the American Psychological Association. "What makes me happy is when I realize that I am getting closer to removing this obstacle and getting what I wanted." Prior research posited three psychological explanations for the effectiveness of estimated time messages on hold: The resource allocation model: Callers only process that they're wasting time on hold if they consciously notice the passing of each "time unit." If callers believe that a computer is tracking time for them, they turn off their internal clock and perceive that less time has passed. The uncertainty reduction model : The sharing of wait time information reduces the stress of not knowing when, if ever, the darn customer service rep will pick up the line. The cognitive reappraisal model: Basically, if you know that you're going to be on hold for 10 minutes, you're less irritated by being on hold for 10 minutes. Even if you're ticked off at first, you get over it. Advertisement We Aren't the World But what about the hold music itself? Do different types of hold music affect callers differently? A 2014 study asked if pop songs with positive messages could improve the moods of callers waiting on a customer service hotline. It turned out that hearing "pro-social" music like Michael Jackson's "Heal the World" just made frustrated callers even more pissed. Then there's the question of whether popular songs are a better distraction than generic elevator music. Another study found that people subconsciously use background music as a "quasi clock," estimating the length of each song and adding them up to perceive total wait time. Since familiar pop songs are more "accessible to memory," the authors wrote, they're more closely tied to a time interval and wait times are perceived as longer than with unfamiliar songs. All of this research makes you wonder, though, why the on-hold experience delivered by so many companies is still so awful. No one should be subjected to ear-assaulting music like this when they're calling to report an issue with their gas bill. Not when we know so much about the psychology of waiting. For answers, we reached out to Rich Moncure, president of On Hold Marketing, a company that creates custom hold music and messaging for businesses that presumably like their callers. Moncure, also a professional musician, helps clients match their hold music with their caller profile and brand. While he doesn't consult research, per se, Moncure calculates average wait times to determine the right mix of music and messaging. "The goal of our industry is to make hold time seem shorter than it is," says Moncure, adding that variety is the key. "If it's music only, we switch it up every two minutes. If you let that music drone on, whatever the music is, that makes the whole time seem longer." And avoid repetition at all cost. "At a call center, if your average queue time is 10 minutes, then you never want any piece of music to repeat itself," says Moncure. "Because once callers start hearing a loop, their sense that they've been on hold is heightened." Advertisement Why Hold Music Is So Bad You don't need a Ph.D. in "waiting science" for this stuff to make sense, right? So what explains the low-quality, constantly looping music and lame messaging that passes for most on hold experiences? For Moncure, it basically comes down to laziness and one particular technological glitch. For starters, too many companies simply use the default hold music that comes with their phone system. Moncure calls it "canned" music, and while some people inexplicably love it, much of it is irritating and repeats ad infinitum. Like the example below: "That's a big problem in our industry," says Moncure. "Often canned music is on a very short loop and it drives people crazy." But even if a company goes the extra step to curate a reasonably inoffensive modern jazz playlist for their hold music, their phone system technology can still render it unlistenable. Most call centers, for example, rely on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone systems. These internet-based systems are designed to transmit the human voice across digital networks in discrete little packets of data. That works OK for voice calls but is a poor medium for music. Moncure says that the audio spectrum on VoIP calls is very narrow and concentrated in the mid-range, which explains why high and low tones come through as warbly and distorted. For customers with inexpensive VoIP systems, he has to write what he calls "thin music," single-note melodies within the same octave and a half range. "It's absolutely an artistic decision that we have to make, but there's also a technical element," says Moncure. "We need to make sure from a technical perspective that the hold music will actually fit within that tiny pipe that VoIP often gives us." Now That's Cool If you want to skip the hold experience entirely, try GetHuman. The website lets you look up direct customer service numbers for hundreds of companies and even offers its own call back service. Enter your phone number and GetHuman will call you when it gets a live agent on the line. Important stuff you won't get from the liberal media! We do the surfing so you can be informed AND have a life! Weeks after a UC Davis professors past comments about police officers stirred controversy, a resolution has been introduced in the California Legislature to call for his removal. But the UC administration says not much can be done. English professor Joshua Clover made headlines last month for reportedly tweeting years ago that he was thankful that every living cop will one day be dead. Clover also responded to an SF Weekly interview question in 2015 asking him what he believed was wrong with society. He replied, People think that cops need to be reformed. They need to be killed. When Clovers comments came to light last month, UC officials condemned them in a statement to The Sacramento Bee. But they said such public comments have strong protections under the First Amendment. The university said in a statement on its website in early March that it had fielded questions from the public about why Clover continued to work at UC Davis. Only the UC Board of Regents can dismiss a tenured faculty member, the statement said. This must be done by a vote of the board upon recommendation by the University of California president, following consultation with the chancellor. Chancellor Gary S. May has asked the campus legal team to review the professors conduct, according to the statement. Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, in late February started an online petition to pressure the UC system to fire Clover. He told The Bee on Wednesday he delivered more than 10,000 signatures to UC Davis last week. We are building the pressure on the university system to do the right thing, he said. Gallagher also introduced a resolution, HR 22, in the Legislature last week urging the UC Board of Regents to remove the tenured professor. The resolution states that Clovers statements are not protected speech under the First Amendment, because they incite violence. The measure has not been discussed or voted on. Gallagher said he expects it to go to the Assembly floor within two or three weeks. There should be no reason why anyone would oppose this resolution, Gallagher said. These comments are abhorrent, and they have no place in our UC system. He should be fired. If approved, the recommendation will be sent directly to the regents office. A resolution does not require Gov. Gavin Newsoms signature. The UC Davis professors comments received additional scrutiny because of the slaying of Davis police Officer Natalie Corona, who was killed Jan. 10 after responding to a traffic accident in downtown Davis. The gunman, Kevin Douglas Limbaugh, was later found dead inside a home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. For the second time in three years, a California Democrat is trying to force President Donald Trump to release his tax returns. Under Senate Bill 27, presidential candidates from all parties would need to publicly disclose the last five years of their tax returns if they want to have their name on the states primary ballot. Former Gov. Jerry Brown who didnt release his own tax returns vetoed the same proposal in 2017, warning it may not be constitutional and could set a slippery slope precedent. State Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, called Browns veto hogwash and is re-introducing the bill in hopes Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign it. Newsom has promised to be the first California governor to release his tax returns annually. McGuire will need two-thirds support from his colleagues, but is confident hell get it, given that it passed by similar margins in 2017. The proposal even received support from two former Republican Assembly members, one of whom is now a Democrat. If Hillary Clinton had done this, wed be having the same conversation right now, McGuire said. This bill is solely focused on providing voters the information they need to make an educated decision. Public opinion polls show the vast majority of people want to see Trumps tax returns. In the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, 74 percent of American likely voters, including 62 of Republicans, said in a Quinnipiac University poll that Trump should release the information. Nearly three-fourths of adults surveyed after the election in a Washington Post/ABC News poll agreed the president should disclose his tax records. Secretary of State Alex Padilla supports the proposal, saying in a statement it would write this vital norm of our democracy into state law. Candidates who are serious about holding the highest office in the nation should be transparent about their personal financial interests, Padilla added. The American people have a right to know about the commander-in-chiefs potential conflicts of interest. For years, candidates for president from both parties released their personal tax returns. Despite the publics desire for candidates to release their tax returns, it remains to be seen whether California can legally force Trumps hand. If the bill is signed into law in the coming months, McGuire said he would expect a legal challenge from Trump. On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly said hed release his tax returns after an IRS audit was completed, even though nothing precludes a president from releasing tax returns while under audit. Former President Richard Nixon disclosed the information as he was being audited when he was in office. Trumps tone has shifted bit now that hes in office, as hes suggested he wouldnt release the document during his presidency. In May 2017, he told The Economist, I might release (the tax returns) after Im out of office. State Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, called McGuires plan constitutionally dubious. He noted that it doesnt require the same of statewide California candidates. McGuire said it isnt necessary for California elected officials to release their tax records since they are already subject to California ethics laws, unlike the president. The Democratic lawmaker acknowledged California doesnt have the ability to dictate the terms of a general election, as the national political parties have that power. Still, hes adamant that states have the right to set the rules for candidates wishing to get their name on the states primary ballots. California would not be where were at today if the president would have upheld 40 years of tradition and released his tax returns, McGuire said. Were here today because the president has something to hide. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. A Napa hotel's security camera, a resident's tip and teamwork between three local law enforcement agencies resulted in the arrest Wednesday night of a Vallejo man suspected of a hotel burglary last weekend. The hotel on the 3500 block of Solano Avenue had maintenance and storage rooms broken into shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday. Tools and cable boxes worth over $1,000 were taken, Napa Police said. Napa Police shared images of male suspects entering the hotel on social media. The post was shared by American Canyon Police. On Wednesday night, American Canyon police received a tip from a citizen who said they had spotted a pickup truck matching the description of the suspects' vehicle, Napa Police Lt. Gary Pitkin said in a news release Thursday afternoon. Officers with American Canyon Police and the Napa Special Investigations Bureau staked out the truck that was parked near the American Canyon/Vallejo city limits. When the truck was driven off shortly after 9 p.m., officers stopped it for a Vehicle Code violation. The driver, Rick Raymond DeStefano, 25, of Vallejo, who had a warrant for his arrest, had heroin, police said. Pitkin said DeStefano admitted being one of the three men responsible for the burglary. He was booked into the Napa County jail for investigation of burglary. A new post stamped "Update" went up on Napa Police's Facebook page Thursday, showing the photo of the arrested suspect and requesting help with identifying the other two. Napa police are still trying to identify and arrest DeStefano's two partners. If you know who they are, contact Detective G.Smith at 707-257-9375 or GSmith@cityofnapa.org. The original posting had an incorrect address for the burglarized hotel. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. The Napa Police Department is looking to partner with local business owners to keep a closer eye on the downtown area. The surveillance project, dubbed Napa Cams, is still in the testing phase. The department seeks to expand its network of 15 to 20 cameras by tapping into live feeds of cameras in downtown Napa that have already been set up at businesses, churches or other places, with the owners permission, said Officer Aaron Medina, head of the project. The idea is to have a comprehensive camera network that allows police to monitor the downtown area without actually being there. The city used to rely on a patrolling security guard, but that didnt work because trouble would resume as soon as the officer left the area, Medina said. Surveillance cameras tend to cause crime to drop, he said. Its creating this safe environment where everybody can enjoy Napa, residents [and] business alike, Medina said. Napa Cams is just one more piece of that. Officers have already made an arrest for drug possession and at least two arrests of wanted people who had a warrant out for their arrest during the trial period, Medina said. The departments first opportunity to pilot the cameras during a public event was last years Lighted Art Festival, he said. Napa Police has been using surveillance cameras since 2010, when it began installing cameras in parks, parking lots and other public areas to combat vandalism, Medina said. Napa has its own unique challenges, from a law enforcement perspective its a place that sees millions of visitors from around the world and events such as BottleRock draw even more cars and people to the city, he said. Law enforcement agencies in places such as Detroit, Chicago, New York City and Atlanta already use such systems with success, he said. In Las Vegas where Chief Robert Plummer spent nearly 30 years of his career The Strip is lined with cameras. Napa Police may not have as large of a budget as those departments, but Medina said the city has a unique strength. What we do have is a great community that works well together, he said. Plummer has also expressed interest in setting up surveillance cameras along the Vine Trail, Medina said. In late January, Napa resident Douglas Davis Jr. was killed along a dark section of the path while riding his bike home from work. To those who may say that streets lined with live surveillance cameras sounds Orwellian, Medina says that everyone has a right to photograph or film public places. The cameras would be pointed only at public areas, not inside businesses, he said. Michael Holcomb, who owns several downtown properties, was an early adopter of Medinas vision. He mounted four cameras atop some of his downtown properties nearly a decade ago, he said. He hopes to be proactive, not reactive, in reducing downtown crime around his properties, he said. Holcomb said he believes other downtown businesses would be amenable to the idea. Cameras give business owners the ability to catch a possible intruder and keep the downtown area safer, he said. People come to drink in Napa, Holcomb said. Theres much more nightlife now than there was years ago and visitors might be more inclined to act in a way that they normally wouldnt while visiting the city, he said. Its our city, its our town, Holcomb said. I like our kids to come down here and feel safe. Anyone with questions about Napa Cams can contact napacams@cityofnapa.org. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. CALISTOGA The good news is, while the rest of the state isnt doing so well, tiny Calistoga gets high marks when it comes to providing housing. The not-so-good news is that the assessment process that sets the bar is flawed. A report that came out in February issued grades for Californias 539 cities and counties based on their progress toward meeting goals set out in the Regional Housing Needs Assessment (RHNA). RHNA is a statewide program that determines how much housing a local jurisdiction should create at four different income levels during a five- or eight-year cycle. In all, nine jurisdictions got an A-plus. In the Bay Area those included Calistoga, Mill Valley, Hillsborough, Healdsburg and unincorporated Sonoma County. Calistoga, with a population of about 5,300, scored well because it permitted 63 units through 2017, far surpassing its allotment of 27 units. It also drew the attention of the San Francisco Chronicle, which interviewed Calistogas planning and building director Lynn Goldberg for a piece about the study. The report, Missing the Mark, Examining the Shortcomings of Californias Housing Goals, (https://www.next10.org/sites/default/files/california-housing-goals-2019-3.pdf) was commissioned by San Francisco think tank Next 10 to address the states ongoing housing crisis. Beacon Economics, based in Los Angeles, created the report. Giving cities a grade is complicated for a number of reasons. Among them, A lot of regions have high grades because they have very low housing targets relative to their population, said Adam Fowler, Beacons research director as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle. The report also said it highlights how little progress the state as a whole is making. Only 26 percent of the targeted number of housing units statewide have been permitted across all income levels, Fowler stated on social media. Beacon gave Marin and Napa counties a B-plus, but their housing goals amounted to only 0.9 and 1.1 percent, respectively, of their 2017 populations. Those that scored a low grade, like San Francisco, averaged 3.3 units per 100 people, the report said. The RHNA allotment for the A-plus areas averaged only 0.7 units per 100 people. Thats not a very high bar, said Goldberg. (RHNA is) trying to get there, but I think this report is really showing the crazy methodology each of the regions use to allocate the units. Calistoga is so tiny they cant possibly have a good grasp of the job situation, like how many projected jobs were going to have. Calistogas housing progress The 30-unit senior housing project that opened last year on south Washington Street contributed to Calistogas high rating in the report. The city bought a piece of land and leased it for $1 a year to a nonprofit developer, the Corporation for Better Housing, that built the apartment building for very-low-income seniors. Also contributing to the high score were the 20 multi-million-dollar homes not yet completed, as part of the Four Seasons Resort on Silverado Trail. Those homes are selling from $3.5 million to $5.7 million. In December, the planning commission also approved a new 78-unit apartment project on Lincoln Avenue, which will go into the next RHNA filing. Fortunately, we have a city council thats very proactive. We dont care what our allocation is; we know we have a huge unmet need, Goldberg said. So it doesnt really matter, its great, we know were fulfilling the state obligation, but we know we have our own obligation at the local level. But Im always happy to see an A-plus. Yay us, but were going to keep plugging away. I dont think well ever get a high allocation but that doesnt mean were going to ignore the obvious needs that we have. Problems with the allotment process There are, and have been for some time, problems with the RHNA allotment process. The allocation of units finds itself misaligned with regard to the dynamics of the housing market namely population change and job growth projections, the report states. For example, RHNA fails to take into consideration the population of adults who live with their parents or with roommates. The process also relies on self-allocating of housing requirement numbers among regional councils of government. Many jurisdictions fail to submit an annual progress report to the state housing department. From 2013 2017, 100 jurisdictions failed for report how many units they permitted, the report states. Penalties for not meeting allotments Beacons report also notes that four bills have been passed in the last two years designed to impose consequences on cities that dont meet their goals, and to improve the goal-setting process when the state enters its next cycle. Its an excellent study I think its really going to open some eyes and lead to some reforms. I think the consequences of it could be interesting, Goldberg said. The state has been pretty lax reviewing the allocations. Up until now, if you havent met your allocation its kind of been, whatever. No one is scrutinizing how the jurisdictions are performing. Now, the state is stepping up. The governor is talking about tying transportation funding and other grants towards meeting housing goals. Once you start tying money to it, thatll get some of their attention. You can reach Cynthia Sweeney at csweeney@weeklycalistogan.com or 942-4035. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. I am an eighth grader enrolled in the Harvest Middle School, which is an International Baccalaureate (IB) school. Being an International Baccalaureate school means that Harvest Middle School is one of around 5,000 schools globally, that endorse the IB curriculum. The IB curriculum helps students develop their creativity, communication, and global understanding skills, along with their critical and reflective thinking skills that are all crucial for future development. At an International Baccalaureate school, completing a Community Project is a vital requirement for all eighth graders because it incorporates all the skills and traits students have been developing throughout their middle school years. Recently, it has come to my attention that Napa contains many volunteer organizations that are crucial to support our local community. I have personally involved myself with one such institution called The Table for my IB Community Project. Through my involvement, I have experienced the many incredible things this organization does for our local community, and I hope to share my experiences with you in this letter. The Table was founded after the devastation of the 1986 Napa River flood, with the shared goal of Providing a nutritious meal to anyone in need. From its establishment, The Table has been a nonprofit organization and all funding The Table receives is acquired through donations or grant proposals. In Napa, The Table and The Napa Food Bank are the primary components of the food program. Since hunger continues to be a critical issue, with an astounding 4,574,710 people grappling with hunger in the state of California alone, over 30 faith and civic groups in the local Napa community help out by volunteering, making The Table a valuable local community project. The local community groups show so much support that each group volunteers once a month on every weekday to provide a meal to those who are hungry, although in recent years The Table has not been able to serve meals on the weekends due to a lack of funding and volunteers. With hard work and dedication that this organization demonstrates, over 40,000 meals are able to be served to those who are hungry in our local community each year. As part of my involvement with The Table, I had the good fortune to be able to volunteer with a family friend who has been involved with the organization for over 30 years. Together, we volunteered with the Presbyterian Church faith group. While I volunteered, I experienced the incredible dedication and hard work the community members showed in their own volunteer work as they help feed those who were less fortunate. Along with the work ethic of the community group, I was also able to understand the pride they took in their work along with the respect and gratitude they felt from those receiving a meal. From my experiences with this organization, I have developed a new understanding and empathy for the people struggling with hunger and the people who dedicate their time to help their fellow human beings. I hope that my experiences will inspire more people to make a difference in the world and our local community. I also encourage you to visit The Tables website (napatable.org) where you can sign up to volunteer your time or donate to help those who are not as fortunate. If you are unable to, I hope you can at least help by sharing the information you have learned to advocate for the incredible things this organization does. Carlo DeIanni Napa The Terlato Wine Group has a long history under the Terlato familys leadership of bringing excellent wines to the U.S. market from around the world and principally, France and Italy. Through the generations, they have created the foundation of quality and regional character they strive to achieve for each wine in their portfolio. In addition to importing and distributing their many treasures from the Old World, the Terlatos also produce several wines in Napa Valley, Sonoma and the Central Coast. Among others from Napa Valley, you will recognize, Chimney Rock in the Stags Leap District and Rutherford Hill in Rutherford. You should also be aware of the limited- production Napa releases of Terlato Vineyards that are hand-crafted in a winery within a winery at Rutherford Hill. Earlier this month in San Francisco, John Terlato hosted a tightly focused tasting of five of their Burgundian labels with the winemakers and principles pouring for the trade and press. Demonstrating Burgundys diversity, the tasting featured 26 wines, including a few Regional and Villages selections, a rich representation of Premier (1er) Crus and several well-chosen Grand Crus (just 2 percent of Burgundys planted acreage). Both whites and reds were included from the highly acclaimed 2015 and 2016 vintages. 2015 was a warmer-than-normal vintage (some rain at harvest cooled things down) producing wines of greater opulence and weight with no indication of over-ripeness. 2016 began with cooler temperatures that morphed into a devastating spring frost, destroying about 50 percent of crop overall and far more in some cases. As summer approached, the climatic conditions returned to a more normal pattern, and the wines displayed elegance and precision overall. In the Old World tradition, I chose to taste through all the reds from Regional and Villages selections through 1er Cru and Grand Cru before embarking on my exploration of the whites in that same order. Red before white may differ from the normal order of service at the dinner table but is a well thought-out tasting regimen. The higher acidity of the whites, if tasted first, can enhance the tannins of the reds that follow, often providing a stilted impression of the wines. So reds are best tasted first, especially with the delicacy of Burgundy. Throughout the tasting, I found a profound expression of terroir between reds, whites, different appellations and most remarkably from different vineyards within the same appellation by the same producer. Domaine Michel Niellons selection of three 2016 1er Cru Chassagne-Montrachets could be seen as proof of terroirs existence to even the most ardent opponent. Les Champgains exhibited green apple and spice with intense minerality and acidity. Les Vergers was quite the opposite, displaying a supple richness with notes of pineapple and melon while the Clos St. Jean was somewhere in between, expressing with great appeal the spice of the former and melon of the latter. Ramonets 2016 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cur Boudriotte exemplified elegance and grace while the 2015 1er Cru Chassagne-Montrachet Les Ruchottes was emblematic of the bolder, deeper character of the vintage. The 2015 1er Cru Puligny-Montrachet Champs Canet was beautiful and the 2015 Grand Cru Batard-Montrachet was a show stopper. Domaine Roumiers selections were a classic example of Burgundys classification and appellation identity from the same vintage (2015) and representative of the Domaines heritage. The Villages Chambolle-Musigny was elegant but a bit simpler in its expression while the Morey-Saint-Denis 1er Cru Clos de La Bussiere was a significant step up in complexity. The Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Le Combottes moved the scales even higher and was the perfect introduction to the two 2015 Grand Crus that followed. Both the Charmes-Chambertin Aux Mazoyeres (so enticing, I felt drawn into the glass to experience the wines true spirit) and Bonnes-Mares showed great elegance in combination with the power one would expect from Burgundys top classification, time-honored vineyards and the skilled hands of Christophe Roumier. Domaine Pierre Labet provided an enlightening journey though the Regional and Villages wines of Bourgogne, Beaune, Mersault and Gevrey-Chambertin traversing to the 1er Cru of Beaune Coucherias. Also presented by Edouard Labet, were two very impressive 2015 Grand Crus of Chateau de La LatourClos Vougeot and Clos-Vougeot Vieilles-Vignes. Both were stunning with a nod to the Vieilles-Vignes. Most would agree that the wines of Burgundy represent not only the worlds finest expression of varietal character in both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir but also how each lives in harmony with its individual terroir, producing wines of elegance, depth , structure and monumental enjoyment. Looking back on these magnificent wines, I also reflected upon my recent tasting at the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, naturally comparing the two areas in my mind. Overall, both represent classic growing regions with a tradition of producing superb wines that demonstrate different stylistic impressions. Bordeaux may be a towering oak while Burgundy represents a beautiful and delicate flower. Share your experiences with other readers by commenting on this article with an e-mail to me at allenbalik@savorlifethroughwine.com. Allen Balik, a Napa resident, has been a wine collector, consultant, author, fundraiser and enthusiast for more than 35 years. There can be various ways to serve the people of a country and Prime Minister of Bhutan Lotay Tshering does so in two efficient ways. One, of course, is by being a worthy leader to the citizens and the other by being a skilled doctor that he is and lending much needed help to folks in need of medical attention, according a reports. A doctor-turned-politician, Tshering is highly qualified surgeon who had graduated from Mymensingh Medical College under the Dhaka University, Bangladesh. Tshering also studied Urology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, United States. Upon his return to Bhutan, he was the only practicing trained urologist in his country. Working as the Prime Minister on weekdays and performing surgeries on weekends as a freelance doctor, Tshering, currently, is considered one of the best surgeons in Bhutan. On Thursdays, Tshering can be found at Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital, the main hospital of Bhutan located in its capital Thimpu. One can see him making academic rounds between 7:30 am to 10 am, giving advice to trainees and would-be doctors. It may also be noted that healthcare in Bhutan is absolutely free for its citizens. Justin Worland, March 21, 2019 (Time Magazine) [E]nvironmental activists are being welcomed by Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill and, after years of quiet on climate change, leaders on both sides of the aisle are acknowledging the issue, despite White House denial. The] shift has been a long time coming. Scientists have understood for decades that climate change is happening and that humans are causing it[and] more than 70% of Americans now understand thatInto this new political reality came the Green New Dealequal parts policy proposal and battle cryThe response was mixedBut in D.C., where climate has long been relegated to third-tier status, lawmakers could no longer avoid the issueWithin weeks of the proposals release, Democrats competed to burnish their green credentials Nearly every Democratic candidate for the 2020 presidential nomination has endorsed the Green New Deal. Washington Governor Jay Inslee entered the race on a climate-themed campaignsomething unthinkable just a few years ago[Behind the scenes, Republicans are grasping] for a solutionLove the Green New Deal or hate it, the conversation it has unleashed represents a shift in the discussion surrounding climate policy[It may have created] an opportunity to push real legislationA carbon taxonce anathema to the rightis an unlikely beneficiary[M]ajor oil-and-gas companies would rather see a conservative approach [like a carbon tax] than a paradigm-shifting program like the Green New Deal[It would be easy to dismiss] climate activists as noisy but dreamy, idealists[But social movements, from civil rights to gay rights, look] naive until they come to look like instigators click here for more Tweet UK urges allies to seek alternatives to Russia natural gas 168.am: Armenia ex-police chief hospitalized NBC: US holds back additional military aid to Ukraine to avoid tension Person, 26, found dead in Armenia water pit Criminal case launched into killing of Armenia soldier Man found dead in Yerevan At least 2 killed from tornado in Arkansas Investigative Committee: Staff left combat positions and fled as a result of which adversary invaded Armenia territory Jill Biden comments on talks about US President's mental fitness Poland PM issues ultimatum to Russia 30 new cases of coronavirus reported in Artsakh Media: Islamic State takes responsibility for 2 blasts in Kabul France presidential candidate Eric Zemmour to visit Armenia US to sell 18mn barrels of oil from its strategic reserve Famous Armenia singer declared wanted Bright Armenia Party leader: ECtHR obliges Azerbaijan to pay 30,000 to Badalyan as moral damage compensation Psaki: US seeks diplomacy in context of situation between Russia and Ukraine 290 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Biden believes leaders of all other countries would like to be in his place Armenia PM: Internal patriots do not calm down because their foreign partners do not consider the mission over Peskov: Russia concerned about NATO military equipment transfer via Greece port Esplanade of Armenia opens in Paris Armenia soldier dies, 2 others wounded Newspaper: Bill that pampers Armenia banks to have very serious consequences Newspaper: What to expect from Armenia parliament special session next week? Boris Johnson threatened with resignation due to parties during pandemic Kopirkin: Russia is ready to make all efforts to contribute to normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations Armenia MFA: '3+3' platform needs to refrain from duplicating formats with mandate to settle conflicts RT: US may build facilities in Georgia and Armenia to support its 'defense activities' Armenia 2nd President: We will continue the struggle, all the phony cases will be crushed MFA: Armenia calls on Azerbaijan to refrain from provocative rhetoric Hero of 44-day Karabakh war Garik Hovakimyan's sister Mariam is born Republican Party of Armenia Executive Body holds session chaired by Serzh Sargsyan Iranian Embassy: Iran supports '3+3' platform during meeting held in Moscow Armenia ex-defense minister on Prosecutor General's Office imposing attachment on his assets Alen Simonyan: Armenia is in one of the most crucial stages in its history, and opposition is demanding my resignation PM: Armenia is committed to contributing to global mission of strengthening democracy, and we hope we're not alone Armenia MOD: Soldier who was injured from gunshot fired by fellow serviceman has regained consciousness Armenia Deputy PM: Omicron variant is not sufficiently explored First meeting within scope of '3+3' regional platform held in Moscow NEWS.am daily digest: 10.12.21 Armenia soldier killed while resisting Azerbaijanis' attack, 8 are injured, 6 of whom are in severe condition Armenia PM introduces new Head of State Supervision Service Romanos Petrosyan Armenia human rights activists: There were cases when POWs were brought to territory under Azerbaijan's control The book Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman was translated and published on the initiative of Ardshinbank Armenia regional governor, IFRC Secretary General discuss return of Armenian POWs originally from Shirak Province Armenia human rights activist: Number of Armenian POWs in Azerbaijan is 80 more than the confirmed one Pashinyan: Environmental sphere is of strategic importance for Armenia Armenia President: We must understand that we are entering completely different era for humanity Dollar goes up somewhat in Armenia Armenia State Revenue Committee chief meets with French Development Agency Regional Director Opposition 'Armenia' faction MPs Artur Sargsyan and Mkhitar Zakaryan released from penitentiary institution Head of Armenia's Norabak village: Azerbaijan has military post that is 2 km from us Armenia finance minister receives France Ambassador and French Development Agency Regional Director Armenia opposition MP Ishkhan Zakaryan leaving 'With Honor' faction Russian and Armenian Deputy FMs meet in Moscow Armenia PM highlights importance of speedy conclusion of full-format agreement between Iran and EEU Armenia opposition MPs Mkhitar Zakaryan and Artur Sargsyan to be released without court decision today Armenian opposition MP Armen Charchyan is released Armenia MOD: Armenian side has one casualty, few soldiers are injured, exchange of fire is over Armenias Pashinyan: High-tech component development also important in Eurasian integration context Armenia Deputy PM dismisses his two assistants Nazarbayev says Azerbaijan can become observer country in Eurasian Economic Union Head of Armenia village: The Azerbaijanis tried to advance in direction of Sotk, but our soldiers didn't let them Armenia MOD: Azerbaijan attacked in eastern direction of border Special court hearing underway on case of Armenia opposition lawmaker behind bars Artsakh officials visit Stepanakert memorial 2 more die of coronavirus in Karabakh Vardenis protesters dismiss Armenia MOD statement on obstructing car taking wounded soldier to Yerevan Armenia FM briefs Francophonie chief on regional security issues (PHOTOS) Armenia Police: 13 people apprehended near MFA building Armenia protesting residents reopen Martuni-Vardenis motorway due to border tension Armenia parliament passes changes to some laws Armenia MOD: Deputy commander was told in Vardenis that car taking wounded soldier to Yerevan would be obstructed 347 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia Armenia opposition movement staging protest inside MFA building Armenia has new environment minister Artsakh MFA: Referendum on independence is solid legal basis for statehood Special court session to be held on case of imprisoned Armenia opposition MP Biden promises Zelenskyy to punish Russia in case of invasion of Ukraine Newspaper: Armenia parliament recent fight case to have former ones fate Newspaper: What is reason for recent long visit to Armenia by ex-commander of Russia peacekeepers in Artsakh? Petition to arrest one of accused Armenia soldiers returned from Azerbaijan captivity is granted Russian Aerospace Forces consider practice of reconnaissance and strike UAVs during Karabakh conflict Investigative Committee: Motion filed for arrest of 5 of 10 POWs returned to Armenia on Dec. 4 Armenia State Revenue Committee chief hosts Iran Customs Administration head Armenia Shirak Province ex-deputy governor Boris Aleksanov dies Constitutional Court announces decision on release of arrested MPs of opposition 'Armenia' parliamentary faction Iran, Azerbaijan discuss cooperation in petrol and natural gas sectors Lavrov: We understand the complexity of the situation in Armenia, but it's not right to speculate Russia's role Cem Ozdemir who initiated adoption of Armenian Genocide resolution is Germany's first minister with migration history Armenia FM, France Secretary of State sign 'Roadmap for Armenian-French Economic Cooperation' Armenia PM scheduled to deliver speech at Summit for Democracy on Dec. 10 Zakharova says news about recall of Russia's Ambassador to Armenia is misinformation Opposition 'Armenia' Alliance: 3 deputies of parliamentary faction will be released Attorney: MP Armen Charchyan needs to be released immediately by virtue of Armenia Constitutional Court decision Armenia ex-environment minister Romanos Petrosyan appointed Head of State Supervision Service Armenia MOD: 2 Armenian soldiers receive slight firearm injuries as a result of Azerbaijanis' provocation NEWS.am daily digest: 09.12.21 Zakharova: Moscow hopes Armenia and Azerbaijan leaders reaffirm commitment to implementing agreements Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev did not consult with Russian President Vladimir Putin before making the decision on the successor's candidacy, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday, TASS reported. "No, Nursultan Abishuly did not consult, and, of course, this was out of the question. But he certainly considered it possible and necessary to inform the president of Russia about what became known to the public just a few hours after the conversation," Peskov told reporters when asked whether Nazarbayev consulted with Putin before deciding on resignation. The phone call was probably a tribute to the special allied and friendly relations of the two countries, as well as to the special personal relations between Nazarbayev and Putin, Peskov assumed. He also explained that the reason for the lack of information about the phone conversation between Putin and Nazarbayev on the Kremlin website before the Kazakh leader's resignation was special nature of the conversation, since Nazarbayev found it possible and necessary to notify Putin of his decision in advance, noted Urdu Point. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was sworn in as Kazakhstan's president on Wednesday, a day after longtime leader Nursultan Nazarbayev announced his surprise resignation. Tokayev, who had served as senate speaker, was the designated interim replacement according to the Kazakh constitution. He is expected to serve the rest of Nazarbayev's term until elections in April 2020. The Office of the Chief Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs will work in four directions, including repatriation and integration, preservation of the Armenian identity and support to communities, formation of the pan-Armenian agenda and engagement of the potential of Diaspora Armenians in the development of Armenia. This is what Acting Minister of Diaspora of the Republic of Armenia Babken DerGrigorian told Armenian News-NEWS.am. As far as the functions are concerned, the important things are the maintenance and strengthening of ties with Armenian communities, the development of a clear-cut strategy and the coordination of the programs of the 12 ministries of Armenia. So, were telling the Armenian Diaspora that now there will be 12 ministries that will deal with the Diasporas issues, not one ministry, he stated. According to DerGrigorian, the Office of the Chief Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs will have 20-25 employees and will help raise the level of relations between Armenia and the Diaspora to a new level. There will also be more business trips. When asked if the Ministry of Diaspora has tried to understand what Diaspora Armenians have to say about the Office, Babken DerGrigorian stated the following: The Diaspora is multilayered, and the opinions vary. I must say that there were negative opinions when the status of the ministry was being specified. Now when we talk about this new format with Diaspora Armenians and explain what we picture, they have different views. Talking about repatriation, the acting minister of Diaspora placed emphasis on quality, not quantity. He also stated that even though he hasnt received an offer to assume the office of the chief commissioner, he is ready to serve the Republic of Armenia the way the government sees fit. Pearl K. Dowe, noted political scientist and scholar, will join Emory University in fall 2019 as Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Political Science and African American Studies with a joint appointment between the universitys Oxford College and Emory College of Arts and Sciences. Dowe currently chairs the department of political science and is an affiliated faculty member of the African and African American Studies Program at the University of Arkansas. This Asa Griggs Candler professorship is an exciting and important addition to our faculty ranks, says Oxford College Dean Douglas A. Hicks. Welcoming a scholar of Pearl Dowes stature to Oxford and Emory will greatly strengthen our curriculum in African American studies and leadership education. Her expertise in African American political leadership will make a valuable and much-needed contribution to our curriculum and to faculty scholarship in service to American democracy. Dowes unique joint appointment will bridge Oxford and Emory colleges. With a home base for teaching and scholarship at Oxford, Dowe will liaise to the Department of African American Studies at Emory College, where she will teach a course each year and help expand the curriculum. At Oxford, her courses will have a thematic focus on understanding leadership. Throughout our search, the support and vision of Provost Dwight A. McBride have been essential, and the partnership with colleagues in Emory College made recruiting Dr. Dowe possible, says Hicks. Building a strong community of scholars who study race, inequality and resilience is one of our strategic priorities, and Pearl Dowe will help us to achieve that goal, says Michael A. Elliott, dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences. We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Dowe to the Emory community, says Dwight A. McBride, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. Dr. Dowes scholarship and teaching will contribute significantly to the innovative work taking place at both the Oxford and Atlanta campuses while also creating another connection between them. Dowes most recent research focuses on African American womens political ambition and public leadership. Her published writing includes co-authorship of Remaking the Democratic Party: Lyndon B. Johnson as Native-Son Presidential Candidate (University of Michigan Press: 2016) and editorship of African Americans in Georgia: A Reflection of Politics and Policy Reflection in the New South (Mercer University Press, 2010). She has published numerous articles and book chapters that have appeared in the Journal of African American Studies, Political Psychology, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Journal of Black Studies and Social Science Quarterly. Dowe has presented widely at professional conferences and given frequent news-media interviews about American political topics. She currently serves as parliamentarian for the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, is a member of several committees for the American Political Science Association and previously served on the executive council of the Southern Political Science Association. She is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy and the Race, Gender & Class Journal. The University of Arkansas recognized Dowe for her commitments to diversity and students, awarding her the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences Nudie E. Williams Diversity Award, the NAACP Faculty of the Year Award, and the University of Arkansas Greek Life's Order of Omega Faculty of the Year Award. Raised in Georgia, Dowe is a graduate of Savannah State University and holds an MA in political science from Georgia Southern University and a PhD in political science from Howard University. She joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas in 2008. In 2016 she was visiting scholar in residence at Howard Universitys Ronald Walters Center for Public Policy. Voters in Ukraine will head to the polls on March 31 for only the second time since the Maidan revolution. Starting this week, News.gallup.com will highlight Gallup's latest findings from its surveys in Ukraine. The results offer the latest glimpse into what may be on Ukrainians' minds as they cast their ballots for their next president. Now on News.gallup.com, you can read the first article, which digs into Ukrainians' confidence in the honesty of their elections and in their national government. Keep reading News.gallup.com in the coming week for more insights from Gallup and Ukraine experts. Today: Faith in government, honesty of elections in short supply in Ukraine Tuesday: Russia casts a long shadow over the election, Ukraine's future Wednesday: Economic troubles continue to plague Ukraine, affect Ukrainians' wellbeing Thursday: A Q&A with Ukraine expert Dr. Gwendolyn Sasse Story Highlights 9% of Ukrainians have confidence in their national government 91% in Ukraine say corruption is widespread in government WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the lead-up to the presidential election on March 31, Ukrainians go to the polls with less faith in their government than is true for any other electorate in the world. Just 9% of residents have confidence in the national government, the lowest confidence level in the world for the second straight year. This is far below the regional median for former Soviet states (48%) as well as the global average (56%) in 2018. Ukrainians have had little to feel confident about over the past decade. Incumbent President Petro Poroshenko's predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, was involved in a number of scandals and was ousted after the Maidan revolution in 2014. Yanukovych fled to Russia because he is wanted for high treason by the Ukrainian courts. During his presidency, confidence in national government was no higher than 24%. Early in Poroshenko's presidency, there were signs that the then-new president was starting to rebuild Ukrainians' shaky trust in their leadership -- 24% were confident in their government and 48% approved of Poroshenko's job performance. However, these hopes quickly faded as many Ukrainians saw the government failing to deliver on what protesters had demanded during the Maidan revolution. Since 2015, confidence has been no higher than 14%. Ukrainians Lose More Confidence in Honesty of Elections The current level of distrust extends to other agencies of the government as well, including those in charge of administering the election March 31. Just 12% of adults in Ukraine in 2018 said they have confidence in the honesty of elections, representing a decline from the 26% who held this sentiment in 2014, indicating growing distrust toward the electoral system in the country. Ukraine's next leader will be forced to confront this deep-rooted distrust. More concerning, officials in Ukraine have issued warnings that Russian hackers have increased their attacks in recent days, with targets including individual polling stations and the Central Elections Commission. Nearly All Ukrainians See Rife Corruption in Government These doubts are likely only further reinforced by the widespread corruption that most Ukrainians (91%) see throughout their own government. Among other allegations, Poroshenko is mired in a scandal relating to the sale of Russian components to the Ukrainian defense industry at inflated prices. This has been seized on by one of his rivals in the upcoming election, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, as well as members of parliament who have begun impeachment proceedings against him. Poroshenko's term has seen various other charges of corruption brought against him, including several instances of his company appearing in the infamous "Panama Papers" that detailed high-level tax evasion around the world. While these dismal views of corruption are especially pronounced this year, high levels of discontent with local and national authorities have persisted for the past decade in the country. Businesses in the country are viewed with similar suspicion, as 82% of adults in Ukraine say that corruption is widespread in them. Bottom Line Whoever wins the election will immediately be confronted with a society holding a deeply rooted distrust of many national and government institutions. Skepticism toward the government and perceptions of endemic corruption are almost universal among Ukrainians. The current field has narrowed down to three candidates taking the lead in the first round of elections to be held March 31. Currently in the lead -- according to other national polls in Ukraine -- is comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelensky, who is most widely known for playing the president of Ukraine in the popular television series "Servant of the People." Like his character on the show, Zelensky is campaigning largely on an anti-corruption platform -- which likely resonates with many voters. Incumbent Poroshenko is working to shift the focus off of the many scandals he has been accused of and is taking a hard-line stance, promising to join NATO and reclaim Crimea if he wins re-election. Tymoshenko initially led the large field of candidates but has fallen in the polls recently as rumors regarding her involvement in corrupt deals for natural gas have resurfaced. The new president will need to establish himself or herself as trustworthy and competent if they are going to begin to undo decades of decaying trust. However, national polls by several polling agencies, including IAP and PPI, in the country suggest that none of the top candidates are expected to win an absolute majority in the March 31 election, prompting a second round of voting to be held on April 21. For complete methodology and specific survey dates, please review Gallup's Country Data Set details. Learn more about how the Gallup World Poll works. The requested page is currently unavailable on this server. Back to [RTHK News Homepage] Chinese scientists have developed a robotic system inspired by a colony of ants that can collectively achieve complex tasks like gathering large prey. The study, published in the journal Science Robotics, described the nanorobots fleet that have demonstrated potential for in-body diagnosis and treatment at the cellular or even molecular level. A single robot is two micrometre in diameter, 40 times smaller than a hair, thus capable of running through blood capillaries, lead author Xie Hui, Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology in China, reported Xinhua. The peanut-shaped iron microrobots can be energised by an alternating magnetic field, offering high flexibility to collectively perform multiple tasks in a confined environment. By tuning the frequency of the rotating magnetic field and its polarisation in three-dimensional space, the researchers obtained a series of well-controlled, fast and reversible transformations, Xie said. Those formations include liquid, chain, vortex and ribbon. They can form narrow paths or channels to deliver heavy loads beyond a single robot's capability. Xie said the robotic swarm might be used to identify and attack pathological cells or even stay inside the body for health monitoring in the future, providing a new tool for early-stage detection and treatment. Read More News: Apple launches new AirPods with improved talk time AQ-aligned Hurras al-Deen Explains New Zealand Shootings as Demonstrating Endemic Hatred of "Disbelievers" for Muslims [March 21, 2019] Kyvos Insights Customers to Share Their Big Data Analytics Success Stories at San Francisco's Strata Data Conference SAN FRANCISCO, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Kyvos Insights , a big data analytics company, today announced it will be hosting two customer sessionsone with Verizon and one with Walgreensduring the Strata Data Conference, the leading event for data industry visionaries held in San Francisco, Calif., March 25 28. The first session on "Business transformation at Verizon with analytics solutions on real-time AI/ML and big data using Kyvos," will share thoughts from Syed Latheef, head of analytics at Verizon. The session will showcase how Verizon leverages Kyvos as a next-generation analytical platform that delivers real-time artificial intelligence, machine learning and business intelligence across the enterprise. Complete session details are below: What: Business Transformation at Verizon with Analytics solutions on Real-time AI/ML and Big data using Kyvos When: Wednesday, March 27, 201911:50 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time Where: Hall 2007 - Moscone Center - 747 Howard St., San Francisco, CA 94103 The second session on "How Walgreens transformed their supply chain management with Kyvos" will feature insights from Neerav Jain, technical architect and Anne Cruz, supply chain technology manager at Walgreens and Vikas Hardia, solutions engineer at Kyvos Insights. The session will highlight how Walgreens uses Kyvos and Tableau to analyze two years of historical data instantly and interactively to get deeper insights into its supply chain. Complete session details are below: What: How Walgreens transformed supply chain management with Kyvos, Tableau, and big data When: Thursday, March 28, 2019 at 3:50 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time Where: Hall 2007 - Moscone Center - 747 Howard St., San Francisco, CA 94103 Kyvos Insights is a sponsor of the Strata Data Conference. Attendees are also invited to learn more about Kyvos by visiting booth #1333. About Kyvos Insights Kyvos Insights is committed to unlocking the power of big data analytics with its unique "OLAP on Big Data" technology, both in the cloud and on premise. Backed by years of analytics expertise and a passion for big data, the company aims to revolutionize big data analytics by providing business users with the ability to visualize, explore and analyze big data interactively, working directly on Hadoop. Headquartered in Los Gatos, California, Kyvos Insights was formed by a team of veterans from Yahoo!, Impetus and Intellicus Technologies. The company has partnered with industry leaders in BI, Cloud, and Hadoop technologies. For more information, visit a www.kyvosinsights.com or connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Media contact Brianna Bruinsma LEWIS for Kyvos Insights kyvos@teamlewis.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kyvos-insights-customers-to-share-their-big-data-analytics-success-stories-at-san-franciscos-strata-data-conference-300816119.html SOURCE Kyvos Insights [ Back to the Next Generation Communications Community's Homepage ] (Adds details, background) BEIJING, March 21 (Reuters) - A U.S. trade delegation headed by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will visit China on March 28-29 for the next round of negotiations, China's commerce ministry said on Thursday. In return, Vice Premier Liu He will travel to the Washington in early April for more talks, according to ministry spokesman Gao Feng, as the world's two biggest economies try to hammer out a trade deal to end months of disputes. The face-to-face talks will be the first since President Donald Trump delayed a March 1 deadline to avert a rise in tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent from the current 10 percent. Trump warned on Wednesday that the United States may leave tariffs on Chinese goods for a "substantial period" to ensure that Beijing complies with any trade agreement, adding to uncertainty over the talks. (Reporting by Yawen Chen and Beijing Monitoing Desk; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore & Kim Coghill) * EU, once advocate of close China ties, shifts position * No decisions expected at EU heads' dinner in Brussels * April 9 EU-China summit to push for results * Italy diverges as it nears own trade deals with China * (Adds Merkel, Macron) By Robin Emmott and Philip Blenkinsop BRUSSELS, March 21 (Reuters) - The European Union will weigh a more defensive strategy on China on Thursday, signaling a possible end to the unfettered access Chinese business has enjoyed in Europe but which Beijing has failed to reciprocate. Caught between a new U.S.-Chinese rivalry for economic and military power, EU leaders will try to find an elusive middle path during a summit dinner in Brussels, the first time they have discussed at the highest level how to deal with Beijing. But despite the stance Brussels wants to foster, Italy -- where eurosceptics share power -- prepared to receive Chinese President Xi Jinping for a visit during which he was expected to sign major bilateral trade deals with Rome. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of a "European awakening" that China is seeking to produce sophisticated products that will compete with those made in Europe. The EU's trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom, a Swedish liberal, meanwhile argued that the international economic order had changed. "Since the beginning of my mandate I've been calling for a real awareness and for the defense of European sovereignty," Macron told reporters as he arrived for the summit. "I'd say that finally we have it for an issue as important as China." With China's Xi starting a tour of France and Italy, EU leaders -- who have often been divided over China -- want to present a united front ahead of an EU-China summit on April 9. According to a draft April summit statement seen by Reuters, the EU is seeking deadlines for China to make good on trade and investment pledges that have been repeatedly pushed back. That was the message delivered to State Councillor Wang Yi by EU foreign ministers on Monday. It marked a shift toward what EU diplomats say is a more "assertive and competitive mindset." Story continues "In the past, it has been extremely difficult for the EU to formulate a clear strategy on China, and past policy documents have not been strategically coherent," said Duncan Freeman at the EU-China Research Centre at the College of Europe. "There is now a clear effort to do that." U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign to warn against Huawei telecommunications equipment in next-generation wireless networks has also accelerated EU discussions about its position, although the bloc is keen to avoid protectionist measures. Malmstrom said Europe often agreed with the United States on what problems were, but not always on the cure -- including U.S. tariffs on EU imports and Washington's trade war with Beijing. "It is tempting to try to lock out China, to decouple rather than to discipline. That might work in the short term. But the long term requires a deeper fix, systemic reforms built to last," she said, urging transatlantic cooperation on the issue. The deepest tensions lie around China's slowness to open up its economy, Chinese takeovers in critical sectors in the EU and an impression that Beijing has not stood up for free trade. GERMANY IS KEY With over a billion euros a day in bilateral trade, the EU is China's top trading partner, while China is second only to the United States as a market for European goods and services. Chinese trade restrictions are more severe than EU barriers in almost every economic sector, according to research firm Rhodium Group and the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Unlike the United States, which has a naval fleet based in Japan to wield influence over the region, the EU lacks military power to confront China, so its approach is technical. Germany's views will be important as Berlin has at times pressed for a tougher answer to unfair competition from Chinese rivals but also championed a closer relationship with Beijing. Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Brussels that there was a need to discuss the EU's industrial strategy. But any new EU policies could be complicated to implement, as individual EU capitals continue to court Chinese investment. Italy plans to join China's multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road project, while free-traders Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands are wary of restrictions on commerce. France is pushing for a coordinated EU approach to the Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, an Elysee official said earlier on Thursday, implicitly criticizing Italy for indicating it would join the Chinese project. "As far as we're concerned, we are advocating a different approach and we hope to get the backing of the European Union," the official said, adding that France expected the Italian prime minister to explain his country's position later at the summit. One senior EU diplomat pleaded for a debate with "more subtlety," because any ban on Chinese goods could be costly. "We need to buy the best and cheapest for taxpayers," the diplomat said. (Reporting by Robin Emmott and Philip Blenkinsop; Additional reporting by Michel Rose in Paris; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Catherine Evans) (Adds quote, detail) By Parisa Hafezi DUBAI, March 21 (Reuters) - Iran is determined to boost its defense capabilities despite mounting pressure from the United States and its allies to curb its ballistic missile program, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday. "We need to take Iran to a point that enemy understand that they cannot threaten Iran ... America's sanctions will make Iran self-sufficient," Khamenei said in a speech broadcast live on state TV. President Donald Trump withdrew the United States last May from a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six major powers, saying it gave too much away to Iran, and reimposed far-reaching U.S. sanctions. The U.S. sanctions aim to force Iran to accept tougher restrictions on its nuclear work, drop its ballistic missile program and scale back support for militant proxies in Middle East conflicts from Yemen to Syria. Iran says its missile program is purely defensive and has rejected the curbs on it demanded by the United States. Tehran says it has missiles with a range of up to 2,000 km (1,250 miles), which puts Israel and U.S. military bases in the region within reach. The other signatories to the nuclear deal - Germany, France, Britain, the European Union, Russia and China - have remained committed to the agreement and have been trying to salvage the pact by a mechanism to circumvent Trumps sanctions. Khamenei, a hardliner who has the ultimate say on all major foreign and domestic policy in the Islamic Republic, said the European signatories of the deal had failed to maintain Iran's economic interests. "They have always stabbed Iran in the back ... The Western countries have proved they cannot be trusted," he said in the speech in the holy Shi'ite city of Mashhad. Iranian leaders have threatened to exit the nuclear deal unless the European powers enable Tehran to receive economic benefits. "This mechanism set by the Europeans is like a bitter joke," Khamenei said, referring to a channel opened by the European signatories of the deal for non-dollar trade with Iran to get around the U.S. sanction. (Writing by Parisa Hafezi Editing by Frances Kerry and Toby Chopra) (Adds U.S. embassy statement, context) By Andrew Osborn and Tom Balmforth MOSCOW, March 21 (Reuters) - The Kremlin on Thursday complained that flights by U.S. nuclear-capable B-52 strategic bombers across the Baltic Sea near Russia's borders were creating tensions in the region, but Washington said they were needed to deter potential adversaries. Russia's Defence Ministry said earlier on Thursday that it had scrambled two Sukhoi SU-27 fighter jets to intercept a U.S. B-52 strategic bomber which radar systems indicated was flying towards Russia's borders, albeit at a considerable distance. The ministry said the fighter jets had returned to base after the B-52 changed course and headed in the opposite direction. It did not say when the incident occurred. "In general, I will limit myself to only saying that of course such actions by the United States do not lead to a strengthening of an atmosphere of security and stability in the region that directly adjoins Russia's borders," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. "On the contrary, they create additional tensions." Relations between Russia and NATO have been acutely strained since Moscow's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and its backing for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Russia accuses the Western military alliance of an unjustified military build-up near its borders, while NATO has condemned Moscow for building up its own forces in Crimea and the Black Sea region. The U.S. embassy in Poland said that B-52 bombers had flown to Lithuania and Poland on Wednesday to conduct interoperability training with NATO forces. It said the planes, which were temporarily based in Britain, had carried out simulated bombing runs. "Operating out of forward locations enables collective defense capabilities ... needed to deter adversaries and assure our allies and partners," it said in a statement. Russian media reported that a B-52 bomber was spotted close to the border with Russia's European exclave of Kaliningrad and the Leningrad region on Monday. At one point, the RBC news portal reported, the U.S. plane, which had flown from Britain, was less than 200 km (124 miles) from St Petersburg. Another B-52 was spotted in the Baltic region on March 16, it added. Such flights, seen as a show of force designed to test response times and deter, are also carried out by Russia. Moscow sends its own nuclear-capable strategic bombers on similar missions, which NATO jets intercept in the same way. (Additional reporting by Alan Charlish in PolandWriting by Andrew Osborn Editing by William Maclean) (Adds comments from head of banking association, banker, paragraphs 4, 11) By Dave Graham and Stefanie Eschenbacher ACAPULCO, Mexico, March 21 (Reuters) - For two years, financiers at Mexico's biggest annual banking bash issued veiled warnings about the risk of veteran leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador taking power. Now he is president, they and industry bosses have changed tack, pledging support for the popular new leader and his plans to revive the economy from the bottom up. Bank bosses have used the run-up to the banking convention in Acapulco starting on Thursday to signal approval for Lopez Obrador's plans to tackle chronic inequality through welfare handouts, ramp up financial inclusion and lift economic growth. "What we expect in this banking convention is to be able to reinforce what we must and will be: remaining the best ally of the country and all governments in making Mexico grow," Marcos Martinez, head of the Mexican banking association (ABM), told a news conference at the start of the gathering. Martinez and other bankers hope the president will meet pledges to tackle corruption and gang violence in Latin America's No. 2 economy, buttressing growth with the rule of law. Still, skepticism about his economic credentials is widespread in business circles. So far executives reason they have more to gain by working with him than picking a fight with a president whose approval ratings run close to 80 percent. Lopez Obrador, who took office in December, wiped billions of the value of Mexican financial assets when he canceled a new Mexico City airport on Oct. 29. Proposals floated by his MORENA party in Congress to curb bank fees also spooked markets. Yet even as he rolls out welfare schemes across Mexico, he has promised to run a tight budget to protect the country's investment-grade credit rating, and says he can achieve average annual growth of 4 percent during his six-year term. Mexico's banks are likely to tell the president they will work with him to achieve his goals, said a senior financial industry source, speaking on condition of anonymity. Story continues That could unlock funds for Lopez Obrador's plan to create jobs via infrastructure spending, and complement the goal of employers' federation COPARMEX to lift the spending power of the lowest paid by tripling the minimum wage by 2024. "We have a lot of faith in Mexico," Emilio Romano, chief executive for Bank of America in Mexico, told reporters. "We're very committed to continuing to finance the big Mexican and foreign multinationals in Mexico, and the big projects." Cooperating with Lopez Obrador to encourage an expansion of the Mexican middle class could help drive growth and curb the president's worst instincts, a senior industrialist said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Stating Mexico had "more financial resources than there are projects," Mexico's powerful CCE business lobby said last month it would work to end extreme poverty under the government of Lopez Obrador, who is due to speak in Acapulco on Friday. By the end of his term, the ABM aims to get 30 million more people to use banking services - nearly three-quarters of those estimated to be without an account - and to support domestic demand by boosting lending to small businesses, homebuyers and families. However, for the president to make the most of the goodwill in boardrooms, he must work harder to undo the damage caused by poor decisions such as the scrapping of the airport, said Gustavo de Hoyos, head of employers' lobby COPARMEX. Business wanted to invest, but right now, the government scored only about "50 percent" on investor confidence, he added. "If the president and his team can take advantage of these strengths," de Hoyos told Reuters, "I think we could see really big progress in the course of this administration." (Reporting by Dave Graham and Stefanie Eschenbacher; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Grant McCool) (Updates with new gun laws announced) By Tom Westbrook and Charlotte Greenfield CHRISTCHURCH, March 21 (Reuters) - New Zealand will ban military style semi-automatic and assault rifles under tough new gun laws following the killing of 50 people in the country's worst mass shooting, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday. Ardern said she expects the new laws to be in place by April 11 and buy-back scheme will be established for banned weapons. "Now, six days after this attack, we are announcing a ban on all military style semi-automatics (MSSA) and assault rifles in New Zealand," Ardern said. Related parts used to convert these guns into MSSAs are also being banned, along with all high-capacity magazines." A lone gunman armed with semi-automatic rifles including an AR-15, last Friday killed 50 people in two mosque attacks in Christchurch. Australia banned semi-automatic weapons and launched a gun buy-back after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 in which 35 people were gunned down. The AR-15 was used at Port Arthur and has been used in a number of high-profile U.S. mass shootings. "On 15 March our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too. We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place," Ardern said. All semi-automatic weapons used during the terrorist attack on Friday 15 March will be banned." Ardern said that similar to Australia, the new gun laws will allow for strictly enforced exemptions for farmers to conduct pest control and animal welfare. "I strongly believe that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners in New Zealand will understand that these moves are in the national interest, and will take these changes in their stride." Federated Farmers, which represent thousands of farmers, said it supported the change. "This will not be popular among some of our members but after a week of intense debate and careful consideration by our elected representatives and staff, we believe this is the only practicable solution," Federated Farmers Rural Security spokesman Miles Anderson said in a statement. Story continues New Zealand, a country of less than 5 million people, has an estimated 1.2 to 1.5 million firearms, around 13,500 of them MSSA type weapons. The minimum legal age to own a gun in New Zealand is currently 16, or 18 for military-style semi-automatic weapons. MOSQUES TO REOPEN FOR FRIDAY PRAYERS The bullet-riddled Al Noor mosque in Christchurch was being repaired, painted and cleaned ahead of Friday prayers, as grieving families buried more victims. Ardern has announced that Friday's call to prayers for Muslims will be broadcast nationally and there will be a two minute silence. Armed police have been guarding mosques around New Zealand since the attacks. "We will have a heightened presence tomorrow in order to provide reassurance to people attending the Friday call for prayers," police said in a statement on Thursday. "Police have been working relentlessly, doing everything in our power to gather all appropriate evidence from what are active crime scenes so we can allow people to return to the mosques as quickly as possible." Both mosques attacked, the Al Noor and nearby Linwood mosque, plan to be reopened. Thousands of worshippers are expected at the Al Noor mosque, where the majority of victims died. Most victims were migrants or refugees from countries such as Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Somalia, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist who was living in Dunedin, on New Zealand's South Island, has been charged with murder following the attack. He was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5, when police said he was likely to face more charges. The first victims were buried on Wednesday and burials continued on Thursday, with the funeral of a school boy. Families of the victims have been frustrated by the delay as under Islam bodies are usually buried within 24 hours. A mass burial is expected to be held on Friday. Body washing will go on through the day and night to have the dead ready for burial, said one person involved in the process. Police have identified and release to the families the bodies of some 30 victims. Twenty nine people wounded in the attacks remained in hospital, eight still in intensive care. The gunman broadcast his attack live on Facebook and it was quickly distributed to other platforms, prompting Ardern and others to rebuke technology companies and call for greater efforts to stop violence and extremist views being aired on social media. (Reporting by Tom Westbrook and Charlotte Greenfield in CHRISTCHURCH, Praveen Menon in WELLINGTON. Editing by Michael Perry and Lincoln Feast) (New throughout, adds shelter in place for Galena Park, details from news conference) By Brendan O'Brien HOUSTON, March 21 (Reuters) - Residents of two Houston-area cities were told to stay indoors and schools in six communities were closed on Thursday due to air pollution by a cancer-causing chemical after a petrochemical plant fire. The three-day blaze at Mitsui unit Intercontinental Terminals Co (ITC) in Deer Park, Texas, was extinguished on Wednesday after it destroyed 11 giant fuel tanks. No injuries were reported. The City of Deer Park, 20 miles (32 km) east of Houston, issued a shelter-in-place advisory to its 34,000 residents after reports of high levels of benzene or other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) within city limits, the municipality said on its website. Residents were advised to remain indoors, turn off air conditioning and heating systems, and close doors and windows, making sure to plug any gaps, holes or cracks with wet towels or sheets. A state highway was closed in the city and the Deer Park Independent School District and five other nearby school systems canceled classes. The City of Galena Park, a community of 10,000 people to the east of Deer Park, also issued a shelter-in-place advisory, Mayor Esmeralda Moya said on Twitter. "Given our very conservative air quality standards we are at a level where out of an abundance of caution there should be a shelter in place," Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said during a news conference. She said officials have not seen any elevated air-quality readings outside the shelter-in-place area. "This is a dynamic situation," Hidalgo said. "That is why we have so many monitors in place." Inhaling benzene, a carcinogenic chemical with a pungent odor, can cause minor irritation to skin, eyes and the respiratory system, while severe exposure can harm the nervous system or lead to unconsciousness, according to experts. ITC said workers monitoring the scene of the fire had detected increased levels of benzene, but said these levels did not represent an immediate risk. A company spokeswoman could not say what levels were detected. Story continues Harris County's environmental public health division director, Michael Schaffer, said a reading of 1 part per million of benzene was detected at 2:55 a.m. local time on Thursday. Officials said they did not known when the shelter-in-place advisories will be lifted. The fire, which began on Sunday morning, destroyed 11 tanks holding up to 80,000 barrels of gasoline and other fuels. The cause of the blaze has yet to be determined. Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen said fire fighters have placed and continue to reapply a foam blanket on the burn area to stop the possible escape of dangerous fumes. It is unclear what caused the release of benzene, she said. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which is investigating the incident, estimated that on the first day of the fire, 6.2 million pounds of carbon monoxide and thousands of pounds of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and toluene were released. The regulator has cited ITC for violations of state air-emissions rules 39 times over the past 16 years. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is to test local waterways for possible contamination from the millions of gallons of water and foam dropped on the fire since Sunday. (Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; additional reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by Bernadette Baum) (Adds protests, details, background) By Khalid Abdelaziz KHARTOUM, March 21 (Reuters) - Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir banned hoarding of the Sudanese pound and "speculation" on the currency, a presidency statement said on Thursday, as anti-government protesters again clashed with security forces in several cities. Bashir has faced three months of persistent protests calling on him to step down, amid an economic crisis that has seen people queueing at ATMs and has caused sharp price rises. Police fired tear gas on Thursday at hundreds of anti-government protesters in Omdurman, across the Nile from the capital Khartoum, witnesses said. Police also used batons to disperse protesters in El-Obeid, capital of North Kordofan state, where hundreds demonstrated. Tear gas was used on dozens more in the south of Khartoum, where police chased demonstrators through side streets, and on Sitteen Street in the east of the capital, witnesses said. Under the new rules announced by Bashir's office, individuals are not allowed to store more than 1 million Sudanese pounds ($21,000) outside the banking system. Entities are banned from storing more than 5 million Sudanese pounds and are not allowed to store amounts "that are not commensurate with the scale of (their) activity," the statement said. Bashir's order, made in an emergency decree, also banned the counterfeiting of any currencies, as well as the possession, transportation or storage of counterfeit currencies and any tools used to produce counterfeit currencies. It further banned all providers of goods and services from accepting payments via bank cards or checks. Any violators of the decree, in addition to punishments in any other breached laws, would face a minimum of six months in prison and a maximum of 10 years, as well as a fine. ($1 = 47.4500 Sudanese pounds) (Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz Writing by Yousef Saba Editing by Gareth Jones) * Peace talks on Hodeidah bogged down for months * US envoy says Houthis stalling over Hodeidah withdrawal * Tueller says Houthi weapons pose severe danger to region * Hodeidah port is lifeline for millions of Yemenis (Adds Houthi comment) ADEN, March 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. ambassador to Yemen blamed the Iran-aligned Houthi movement on Thursday for the hold-up to a U.N.-led peace deal in the main port of Hodeidah and said Houthi weapons pose a threat to other countries in the region. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government and the Houthis reached a ceasefire and troop pullout deal for Hodeidah, which is under Houthi control, at talks in Sweden in December. The pact was the first big breakthrough in efforts to end Yemen's four-year war. While the truce has largely held, the troop withdrawal by both parties has not materialized with each side blaming the other for lack of progress. The deal aimed to avert a full-scale assault on the port, a lifeline for millions of Yemenis. "We are greatly frustrated by what we see as delays and stalling on the part of the Houthis in implementing what they agreed to in Sweden, but I have great confidence in the UN envoy and what he is doing," Ambassador Matthew Tueller told a televised news conference in the southern port of Aden, where the internationally recognized government is based. "We are willing to work with others in order to try to implement these (Sweden) agreements and see whether the Houthis can in fact demonstrate a political maturity and start to serve the interests of Yemen rather than acting on behalf of those who seek to weaken and destroy Yemen," he said. Tueller said he had not given up hope that the deal would be implemented in Hodeidah, where thousands of Yemeni forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition are massed on the outskirts. The United States has sided with the Yemeni government against the Houthis and provides military support to the alliance led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, including help with targeting for Saudi air strikes. Story continues A Houthi politburo official, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, accused the Western-backed coalition of trying to undermine the accord. "America and its agents...only accepted a partial truce, in Hodeidah, due to international pressure over Khashoggi," he told Reuters, referring to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate last year. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war, which pits the Houthis against other Yemeni factions backed by the Saudi-led coalition and loyal to the government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Houthis ousted Hadi's government from power in the capital Sanaa in late 2014. The conflict is widely seen in the region as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Houthis, who control Sanaa and most population centers, deny being puppets of Tehran and say their revolution is against corruption. "SEVERE DANGER" TO REGION The Sunni Muslim coalition twice tried to seize the port last year in a bid to cut off the Houthis' main supply line. The United Nations fears a full-on offensive may disrupt operations at the port, which handles the bulk of Yemen's imports, and trigger mass starvation. The alliance accuses Iran of smuggling weapons, including missiles which have targeted Saudi cities, to the Houthis. The group and Tehran deny the accusations. Tueller said the United States was working with Yemeni authorities to prevent arms smuggling from Iran and to strengthen local institutions. "The fact that there are groups that have weapons, including heavy weapons and even weapons that can threaten neighboring countries, and those weapons are not under the control of the institutions of the state - this is a severe danger to the region as well as to Yemen," he said. The United States does not support groups that "seek to divide Yemen," Tueller said, in an apparent reference to southern separatists whose forces have been taking part in coalition operations under the leadership of the UAE. The complex war has revived old strains between North and South Yemen, formerly separate countries which united into a single state in 1990. A separatist leader warned this month that any peace deal that fails to address the souths wish for self-determination could trigger a new conflict. (Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli and Ghaida Ghantous in Dubai, Reuters team in Sanaa Writing by Ghaida Ghantous Editing by Mark Heinrich) This was one unique Airbnb. You opened the front door and were greeted by a 5-foot-tall gorilla statue sitting quietly on a bench in the entry way. Then you walked into the living room that had a tree in the corner with branches and paper leaves that stretched across the ceiling. Two giraffe India - one of the fastest growing economy of the world and politically the largest democratic country of the world - is headed for parliamentary election during April May 2019. Apart from the political implications of this election, the most important fact is that this event is likely to become the most-expensive election worldwide. Despite the fact that it is an India election, especially concerning its people and political outfits, a few U.S. corporates are likely to gain significantly from this mega event, which according to some political analysts is the greatest show on the earth. Worlds Most-Expensive Election According to New Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies, which tracks money flow in Indian elections, the 2019 parliamentary election will cost around $7 billion, unprecedented in the world. As per Opensectrets.org, which tracks money in the U.S. elections, total expenditure for 2016 U.S. presidential election was $6.5 billion. Per Centre for Media Studies, nearly 50% of the estimated $7 billion expenditure in 2019 Indian election will be spend on social networking, advertising (especially online advertising) and traveling and transportation. Growing Tech Momentum in India India has the second-largest population after China with more than 1.2 billion population. Out of this, nearly 900 million individuals are eligible for casting mandate in 2019 election. Around 70% of the countrys population is below the age of 35 and extremely tech savvy. Currently, India is home to a young and tech savvy population, which represents strong growth prospects for tech majors. These millennials are the key drivers of growth for Internet-based applications, e-commerce and mobile-transaction related software. The millennials have a strong appetite for new technologies. As this group will comprise 75% of the workforce by 2025, India will surely emerge as a long-term investment bet for tech giants. Economic Momentum to Continue The World Bank has projected that Indias economy will grow by 7.3% for fiscal 2018-2019 (Indias fiscal year starts in April and ends in March of the next year) and 7.5% for fiscal 2019-2020. The IMF estimated that India will grow by 7.2% in fiscal 2018-2019, 7.5% in 2019-2020 and 7.7% in 2020-2021. The Moodys Investor Services forecast Indias GDP growth at 7.2% for 2018-2019 and 7.4% for 2019-2020. Moodys was optimistic that structural reforms undertaken by the Modi administration are likely to boost growth and reduce the debt burden. Moodys lifted Indias rating to Baa2 from Baa3 and changed its rating outlook to stable from positive as risks to its credit profile were broadly balance. Four Stocks to Watch We have been able to narrow down to four stocks each of which currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) but are poised to gain significantly from the upcoming election in India. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 (Strong Buy) Rank stocks here. Facebook Inc. FB: India is the largest overseas market for Facebook. The flagship Facebook social networking site and WhatsApp messaging platform are immensely popular in India. The company serves 300 million users in Facebook and another 200 million users in WhatsApp. Instagram now boasts 400 million daily users. Almost all political parties and political leaders have Facebook page in India. The stock has surged 23.2% year to date. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year has improved 2.2% over the last 60 days. The stock has provided an average positive earnings surprise of 13.5% in the last four reported quarters. Story continues Twitter Inc. TWTR: The microblogging site is expected to serve more than 100 million users in India by 2019. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has more than 46 million Twitter followers and opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has over 10 million Twitter followers. The stock has gained 8.8% year to date. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year has improved 2.4% over the last 60 days. The stock has provided an average positive earnings surprise of 26.8% in the last four reported quarters. Alphabet Inc. GOOGL: The companys flagship Google search engine, Google Earth and Youtube are the most-preferred Internet-based platforms for Indian millennials. At present, India has more than 560 Internet-users, almost all of whom use Alphabets online sites. As per the companys own study, India is adding 10 million active users per months, nearly all of whom are using Google sites. The stock has climbed 15% year to date. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year has improved 0.1% over the last 60 days. The stock has provided an average positive earnings surprise of 17.8% in the last four reported quarters. Snap Inc. SNAP: The companys flagship Snapchat online platform is gradually gaining ground in India. Snapchat now boasts around 191 million daily users in India. The company has formed partnership with a number of Indian online content providers to make its platform more attractive. The stock has jumped 92.9% year to date. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year has improved 14.7% over the last 60 days. The stock has provided an average positive earnings surprise of 20.5% in the last four reported quarters. This Could Be the Fastest Way to Grow Wealth in 2019 Research indicates one sector is poised to deliver a crop of the best-performing stocks you'll find anywhere in the market. Breaking news in this space frequently creates quick double- and triple-digit profit opportunities. These companies are changing the world and owning their stocks could transform your portfolio in 2019 and beyond. Recent trades from this sector have generated +98%, +119% and +164% gains in as little as 1 month. Click here to see these breakthrough stocks now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Facebook, Inc. (FB) : Free Stock Analysis Report Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Twitter, Inc. (TWTR) : Free Stock Analysis Report Snap Inc. (SNAP) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site. Consumer Reports has no financial relationship with advertisers on this site. The speedy 5G network service we've been hearing about hasn't yet swept the nation, but the footprint continues to grow. Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizonthree of the countrys four biggest wireless carriersare expanding their (admittedly very small) 5G networks for consumers. This week Sprint turned on service in parts of Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, and Washington, D.C. It had previously launched service in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, and Kansas City, Kan. That followed Verizon's push into parts of Atlanta, Detroit, Indianapolis, Phoenix and Washington, D.C., earlier this month. It had previously launched service in parts of Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Providence, R.I., and St. Paul, Minn. And in late June, T-Mobile launched its first 5G service, covering pockets of Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York. Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon are selling versions of the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G phone for use on their networks. Verizon and Sprint also offer the LG V50 ThinQ. And Verizons network exclusively works with the just-launched Samsung Galaxy Note10 5G, along with Motorolas Moto Z3 and Z4, which can be made 5G-compatible with a $350 attachment. Another new phone from OnePlus is on the way. But those amount to small first steps, with many more to follow. AT&T has been rolling out a 5G network, too, but only for select users and once again only in parts of a few big cities. According to telecommunications experts, 5G speedsfive times faster than 4G connections at peak performancewill eventually allow users to download a movie in just 5 seconds. Theyll also pave the way for the instantaneous response times required to safely perform robotic surgery and operate self-driving cars that communicate with other vehicles and road infrastructure. Story continues Heres a look at the broader 5G landscape, including which parts of the U.S. are getting 5G service first. 5G Networks Verizon The carriers 5G service has officially started in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta; Chicago; Denver; Detroit; Indianapolis; Minneapolis; Phoenix; Providence, R.I.; St. Paul, Minn.; and Washington, D.C., though its currently limited to a few neighborhoods and the areas surrounding flagship Verizon stores. The company says it plans to roll out 5G service to parts of more than 30 U.S. cities this year. They include include Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Cincinnati; Cleveland; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas; Des Moines, Iowa; Houston; Kansas City, Mo.; Little Rock, Ark.; Memphis, Tenn.; San Diego; and Salt Lake City. Additional cities will be announced later in the year. Accessing the Verizon 5G network will eventually cost $10 per device on top of the fees for its Play More, Do More, and Get More Unlimited plans. Verizon is currently waiving those charges for a limited time. The 5G service will be unlimited as well, and Verizon says there will be no throttling of data speeds, even when the network gets busy. Carriers, including Verizon, sometimes slow down data speeds to decrease network congestion. You can also tether your laptop to a 5G-enabled phone for use as a hot spot without paying an extra charge. Phone options: Verizon carries the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G and LG V50 ThinQ, along with the Motorola Moto Z3 and Z4. Its also the exclusive carrier for the Samsung Galaxy Note10+ 5G. Sprint Sprint officially rolled out its 5G service in the Atlanta; Dallas; Houston; and Kansas City, Kan., metropolitan areas in May. It added Chicago to the mix in July. And parts of the Los Angeles, New York City, Phoenix and Washington, D.C. markets got service in August. But like the other carriers, Sprint isnt providing coverage citywide, only in select spots. Sprint says it won't charge extra for 5G service, but youre required to sign up for the carriers Unlimited Premium plan, which at $85 for one line is the companys most expensive option. Phone options: The LG V50 ThinQ went on sale in May. The carrier has since added the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G to its lineup and says it will carry the Note10+ 5G at a later date. Sprint also says it will sell a new 5G phone from OnePlus. But device specifications, pricing, and exact timing have yet to be announced. AT&T This carrier has come under fire from other carriers for labeling its high-speed 4G service 5G Evolution, potentially misleading consumers into thinking its genuine 5G. It has so far rolled out real 5G service in parts of 21 U.S. cities; recently adding New York to the mix. But its not available to all consumers just yet, only for select businesses and others. AT&T says it expects to have a nationwide 5G network in place by early 2020. Phone options: AT&T started selling the Samsung Galaxy S10 5G earlier this month, but only to business customers. AT&T also plans to offer the Galaxy Note10+ 5G by the end of this year. T-Mobile T-Mobile, which recently received Department of Justice approval to merge with Sprint, launched its network in late June in parts of Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and New York. It also says it will have a nationwide network in place in 2020. Assuming its merger with Sprint takes place, it doesn't plan to charge extra for 5G service. Phone options: T-Mobile sells the Galaxy S10 5G online and in select stores in its first 5G markets. It also plans to start selling its own version of the Note10+ 5G in the fourth quarter of this year. 5G Phones Samsung The Galaxy S10 5G originally reached stores as a Verizon exclusive in May. AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile started selling it in June, but so far AT&T is selling it only to business customers. The S10 5G, which will come in both black and silver, starts at $1,300 for a version with 256 gigabytes of storage. Boosting the storage to 512GB will cost you $100 more. The S10 5Gs display, measuring 6.7 inches diagonally, is Samsungs biggest yet. The model has six cameras, including a 3D depth camera, and will be able to create videos in portrait mode. All that will be powered by a monster 4,500-milliamp-hour battery. The Note10+ 5G, which just went on sale, features a 6.8-inch display and the Note lines trademark stylus. It also starts at $1,300. Separately, the company has also pledged to produce a 5G version of the Galaxy Fold, a phone that opens up into a small tablet. But the launch of the 4G Fold has been indefinitely delayed following media reports of hardware malfunctions. Samsung now says that phone will start shipping in September, but theres no word yet on when the 5G model will follow. LG The LG V50 ThinQ first went on sale through Sprint, but now Verizon is selling it for $1,000, too. Like the V40 ThinQ before it, the V50 has five camerastwo on the front and three on the back. It also boasts a 4,000mAh battery, stereo boom-box speaker, and 6.4-inch OLED display. Motorola The Moto Z4, which went on sale through Verizon in June, works with the Mod attachments that make the existing Moto Z3 phone compatible with Verizons 5G network. The Mod retails for $350. The Z4, which retails for $500, boasts a 6.4-inch OLED display and a 3,600mAh battery, making it considerably bigger and more powerful than the Z3. That phone has a 6-inch display and a 2,000mAh battery. The Z3 currently sells for $480 at Verizon. Before the 5G launch, the Z3 did well in our testing, but just keep in mind that its a midpriced phone with midpriced features. More from Consumer Reports: Top pick tires for 2016 Best used cars for $25,000 and less 7 best mattresses for couples Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization that works side by side with consumers to create a fairer, safer, and healthier world. CR does not endorse products or services, and does not accept advertising. Copyright 2019, Consumer Reports, Inc. Abbott Laboratories ABT recently announced late-breaking results from the MOMENTUM 3 randomized control clinical trial. Data highlighted the favorable outcome of the HeartMate 3 left ventricular assist device (LVAD) in patients with advanced heart failure. MOMENTUM 3 data was reviewed across the complete 1028 patient cohort which showed that the device could efficiently extend life-term, improve the quality of life and reduce the incidence of adverse events in such patients. More on the Study Results Presented at the American College of Cardiology, the data testified that Abbotts HeartMate 3 is much superior compared to HeartMate II. The upgraded pump also helped 98.6% patients avoid thrombosis as compared to 86.1%, who used HeartMate II. Apart from confirming improved survival rates, data showed that complications of stroke, bleeding and the need for surgically removing erroneous pumps can be reduced with the use of the HeartMate 3 pump. The study also confirms that favorable patient outcome is dependent on the specific design of the pump and not the implant technique. Market Prospects Per Allied market research, the global ventricular assist devices market is projected toreach a worth of $1.78 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 11.8% during the 2017-2023 period. Abbott is gradually widening the offerings within its Cardiovascular and Neuromodulation arm. However, imminent threat from bigwigs like Medtronic plc MDT, Boston Scientific Corporation BSX and Stryker Corporation SYK is concerning. Meanwhile, the company aims to withstand competitive pressure banking on benefits from technological advantages of certain products. Other Researches By Abbott Abbottrecently announced favorable results from two distinctly-conducted analyses of the two-year long COAPT clinical trial, to demonstrate the additional benefits of the companys mitral valve repair device, MitraClip. In February 2019, Abbott announced real-world research findings that highlighted the global impact of its FreeStyle Libre flash glucose monitoring system on health outcomes for people affected with diabetes. Story continues In January 2019, Abbott presented study-based data which proved the benefits of BURSTDR spinal cord stimulation for treating chronic pain. In September 2018, real-world research proved that Abbotts Portico transcatheter aortic valve was equipped to treat severe aortic stenosis. In November 2018, Abbott started conducting studies to assess the efficacy of ablation in treating complex cardiac arrythmia patients. Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, wouldn't you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? From more than 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank, these 10 were picked by a process that consistently beats the market. Even during 2018 while the market dropped -5.2%, our Top 10s were up well into double-digits. And during bullish 2012 2017, they soared far above the market's +126.3%, reaching +181.9%. This year, the portfolio features a player that thrives on volatility, an AI comer, and a dynamic tech company that helps doctors deliver better patient outcomes at lower costs. See Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Abbott Laboratories (ABT) : Free Stock Analysis Report Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Stryker Corporation (SYK) : Free Stock Analysis Report Medtronic PLC (MDT) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research War-torn Afghanistan has delayed its presidential election until September 28, officials announced Wednesday, the second time the ballot has been put back and five months later than it was originally scheduled to be held. The announcement by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) comes after speculation that the vote would be postponed to create space for US-led efforts to end the 17-year war with the Taliban. The presidential ballot was originally scheduled for April 20, then delayed to July 20. Many observers had considered both dates unrealistic given the Independent Election Commission (IEC) is still finalising results of October's shambolic parliamentary elections. The IEC said in a statement Wednesday that the vote had faced "numerous problems and challenges ... therefore holding the elections based on the timelines previously announced is not possible". "In order to better implement the rule of election law, ensure transparency as well as voter registration, the presidential election, provincial council election as well as the parliamentary election of Ghazni province will be held on September 28," the statement said. The election should go ahead, it added, "provided all relevant sides, especially the government and the international community, provide the IEC with the required budget on time". A spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani, who plans to seek re-election, said the government respects the decision and is "fully prepared to cooperate with the IEC". The statement did not mention the ongoing talks between the US and the Taliban, which have caused unease in Kabul as Washington seeks a way out of its longest war. - Taliban talks - Afghan officials have voiced frustration at being sidelined in the process, complaining it undermines the legitimacy of the government in Kabul, which the Taliban dismisses as a puppet regime. Earlier this month a close Ghani aide sparked a diplomatic spat with Washington by criticising the talks. Story continues "We don't know what's going on. We don't have the kind of transparency that we should have," Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan's national security advisor, told media during a visit to Washington. "The last people to find out are us." US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who is leading the talks for Washington, said after the latest round ended in Doha earlier this month that "real strides" had been made but no agreement was reached on a timetable for a troop withdrawal. He spoke of an agreement "in draft" on the issues of counter-terrorism, assurances from the Taliban and troop withdrawal, and suggested the next phases would be intra-Afghan dialogue and a ceasefire, but stressed that nothing was finalised. Many Afghans are worried that Ghani's fragile unity government would collapse if US troops pulled out, enabling the Taliban to return to power and potentially sparking another bloody civil war. There also are concerns the presidential election, which will now be held nearer the Taliban's traditional fighting season, could unleash a wave of deadly violence as militants seek to disrupt the vote. Allegiant Travel Company ALGT has entered into a strategic long-term partnership with TPG Sixth Street Partners for financing the development of Sunseeker Resorts Charlotte Harbor. The resort, planned by Allegiant Air, is expected to be the largest and most unique resort in the Punta Gorda area in southwest Florida. Per the terms of the agreement, the initial commitment from TPG is $175 million for developing this waterfront resort. In fact, total investment under the partnership might increase up to $1 billion. The initial phase of this resort is expected to include around 510 hotel rooms, 189 extended-stay suite units, meeting and conference space apart from multiple restaurants, bars and retail outlets. Notably, the huge investment intended for this project is in line with Allegiants strategy to attract leisure travelers. Allegiant is responsible for transporting nearly 8 million leisure travelers in and out of Florida every year. The partnership apart, Allegiant was recently in news pertaining to the agreement in principle inked with International Brotherhood of Teamsters the union representing its 34 flight dispatchers. This provisional deal will now be voted upon. The ratification procedure is expected to take place by Apr 30, 2019. Southwest Airlines LUV too recently signed an agreement in principle with its aircraft mechanics. In fact, labor deals have been in vogue in the airline space for quite some time. Though positive on such deals, they tend to push up labor costs, thereby limiting bottom-line growth. Carriers like Alaska Air Group ALK and American Airlines AAL have seen an increase in labor costs due to deals with various labor groups. Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, wouldn't you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? From more than 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank, these 10 were picked by a process that consistently beats the market. Even during 2018 while the market dropped -5.2%, our Top 10s were up well into double-digits. And during bullish 2012 2017, they soared far above the market's +126.3%, reaching +181.9%. This year, the portfolio features a player that thrives on volatility, an AI comer, and a dynamic tech company that helps doctors deliver better patient outcomes at lower costs. See Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report American Airlines Group Inc. (AAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Alaska Air Group, Inc. (ALK) : Free Stock Analysis Report Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) : Free Stock Analysis Report Allegiant Travel Company (ALGT) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research The Daily Beast Bridgeport Police DepartmentThe remains of a Connecticut man were discovered buried five feet under a garage more than eight years after he vanished, and now the local landlord who led detectives to his body faces murder charges.Bridgeport police said on Thursday that strong evidence suggests the two men arrested in connection with the murder of 24-year-old Aryndel Castro had beaten and choked him to death on the night of Sept. 22, 2013. After murdering Castro, Shawn Gibson, 45, and Terrance B American Water Works Company Inc.s AWK subsidiary, Indiana American Water filed all-party Stipulation & Settlement Agreement regarding its rate request with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC). The agreement is subject to approval by the IURC. Indiana American Water has been consistently investing to provide high-quality and reliable water and/or wastewater services to nearly 1.3 million people in the state. Indiana American Water has invested more than $542 million in its water systems across the state and the said agreement includes a 7.9% overall increase in operating revenues, primarily based on that investment. New Utility Bills on Approval of Rates If the rate is approved by the commission without any changes, it will result in an increase in total water utility bills of customers consuming 4,000 gallons of water per month by $2.31 per month. The increases in water rates will be implemented in steps, with the first increase of 1.73% (15 cents per month) this summer and a second hike of 6.07% ($2.26 per month) in mid-2020. Without a doubt, rate hikes hurt customers. However, the U.S. water and wastewater infrastructure is aging, and requires ample investments for maintaining and upgrading the existing water and wastewater systems. Per an American Water Works Association (AWWA) report, the cost of restoring aging underground water pipelines in the United States will be at least $1 trillion in the next 25 years. Hence, rate hikes at regular intervals will ensure the flow of funds and enable the utilities to continue with their long-term investment plans. American Water has plans to invest within $8-$8.6 billion from 2019 through 2023, which will help improve earnings by 7-10% per year in the aforesaid period from a 2017 base. Water Space - the Way Ahead The water and wastewater infrastructure in the United States is aging, and gradually nearing the end of its effective life. At present, more than 53,000 water systems in the United States provide water solutions to customers. The highly fragmented water industry creates operational challenges in meeting the increasing water requirement. Hence, consolidation in this highly fragmented industry is crucial and of utmost importance. Large water companies are trying to acquire small water utilities and impart high-quality services. Apart from American Water, which is one of the most active players in the water space, water utilities like Global Water Resources, Inc. GWRS and Aqua America WTR have been pursuing acquisitions. Consolidation will help improve the quality of water and wastewater services provided to the companys expanding customer base. Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, wouldn't you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? From more than 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank, these 10 were picked by a process that consistently beats the market. Even during 2018 while the market dropped -5.2%, our Top 10s were up well into double-digits. And during bullish 2012 2017, they soared far above the market's +126.3%, reaching +181.9%. This year, the portfolio features a player that thrives on volatility, an AI comer, and a dynamic tech company that helps doctors deliver better patient outcomes at lower costs. See Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report American Water Works Company, Inc. (AWK) : Free Stock Analysis Report Aqua America, Inc. (WTR) : Free Stock Analysis Report Global Water Resources, Inc. (GWRS) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Theresa May grudgingly asked for an extension to Brexit yesterday and EU leaders are now agreeing on how it will play out. After European Council president Donald Tusk said that the delay would be granted as long as Parliament approved Mrs Mays deal, German chancellor Angela Merkel has also agreed to the caveat. Mrs Merkel told Germanys parliament in Berlin on Thursday that we can comply in principle with this request if we were to have a positive vote next week on the withdrawal documents in the British Parliament. Angela Merkel believes the EU will grant Theresa May a short Brexit delay next week (Getty) However, if the deal is not passed, Mrs Merkel said another EU summit may be needed. While the conditions seem to have re-energised no-deal enthusiasts, Mrs Merkel also said that she will work until the last hour to try and ensure that Britain does not leave the European Union without a deal. With Britain currently scheduled to leave next week with or without a deal, Mrs Merkel said Germany has put the most important emergency measures in place to deal with a no-deal Brexit. Read more: Petition to revoke Article 50 hits 600,000 Tony Blair says there is no point praying to God to solve Brexit Wifes shock at husbands 660 Brexit stockpiling food shop But she added: We will, despite these measures we have taken, work until the last day I will say until the last hour to ensure that this emergency planning doesnt come into effect. She added: We will do everything in the remaining, admittedly few, days to achieve an orderly, joint solution. Mrs Merkels comments come as Mrs Mayf aces a backlash from MPs as she heads to Brussels to appeal to EU leaders to grant her a delay to Brexit. Mrs Merkel has pledged to do everything to avoid a no-deal Brexit (Getty) Mrs May attacked MPs for not implementing the result of the EU referendum (Getty) The Prime Ministers Downing Street statement, in which she blamed MPs for failing to implement the result of the 2016 EU referendum and told frustrated voters I am on your side, was described as a low blow by one former Tory minister. But Jeremy Corbyn was also under fire after pulling out of a meeting between Mrs May and opposition party leaders because party defectors who are now members of the Independent Group turned up. Story continues The behaviour of the Labour leader, who was also heading to Brussels on Thursday to hold talks with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, was described by one of their number Chuka Umunna as juvenile at a time of national crisis. Mrs May is heading to Brussels to seek more time to sort Brexit (Getty) The key dates in the Article 50 extension (PA) With just eight days before the UK is due to leave the EU, the Prime Minister will make the case for extending the Article 50 withdrawal process to June 30 at a Brussels summit on Thursday. Mrs May formally made the request for an extension to June 30 in a letter to Mr Tusk on Wednesday. The Prime Minister had previously indicated she would seek a longer delay after her deal went down to a 149-vote defeat in last weeks second meaningful vote. Jeremy Corbyn is under fire after pulling out of a meeting between Mrs May and opposition party leaders because members of the Independent Group turned up (Getty) However, she reportedly backed down after the threat of Cabinet resignations by Brexiteer ministers, who feared it could spell the end of their hopes of leaving the EU. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Britain would be faced with three options if Mrs Mays deal is defeated again next week: revoke Article 50; leave without a deal; or, he said, a longer extension could be granted at an emergency EU summit, but with onerous conditions. He also defended the Prime Ministers statement, saying she was under extraordinary pressure and feels a sense of frustration and said MPs have a special responsibility in a hung Parliament. You've likely heard of beer-can chicken, and on St. Patrick's Day you may have even enjoyed corned beef that was marinated and cooked in Guinness beer. But Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: BUD) is trying to go one better by launching a line of Budweiser-infused pork products for the summer. The brewer has partnered with Coleman Natural Foods to produce smoked ribs, pulled pork, and bratwurst that are made with its beer in an attempt to lure millennial consumers back to the processed meat case. But how combining two products that millennials are separately spurning will benefit either one is a question that hasn't been answered. New Budweiser line of beer-infused pork products Image source: Anheuser-Busch InBev. A move to meatless meat Anheuser-Busch and Coleman note millennials represent over 80 million consumers and account for some $600 billion in annual spending, a portion of which they want to capture. "The processed meat department has been hungry for new innovations and new customers," Coleman general manager Bart Vittori said in the press release, affirming the two companies' belief that "the Budweiser and Coleman licensing agreement will drive sales in a flat category within this section of the store." That could be a hard sell. Plant-based foods are a growing trend being driven largely by millennials concerned about animal welfare, environmental impacts, and sourcing issues. It's led protein producer Tyson Foods to invest in Beyond Meat -- a producer of plant-based meat alternatives -- and the expansion of the horrible-sounding lab-grown meat business. According to the market researchers at Mintel, nearly 80% of millennials eat meat alternatives versus just over 50% of nonmillennials. And it's not any better over at Budweiser. The onetime King of Beers continues to fall out of favor, and is now ranked as the fifth most-popular beer based on dollar sales. Data compiled by IRI Worldwide shows Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite, and Michelob Ultra all sold more beer in the U.S. last year than did Budweiser. Story continues Although they're all made by Anheuser-Busch or Molson Coors, the former biggest beer in America is in serious decline, and many attribute it to millennials, who are drinking whiskey and wine in greater volume. Where craft beer was once the cause, it has also been the victim of a growing preference for hard liquor. Laying it on thick Without question, the Budweiser-branded Coleman pork products sound delicious. The five new items include St. Louis-style pork ribs (both full and half racks), pulled pork, jalapeno cheddar brats, and beer brats. The ribs and pulled pork are covered in a Budweiser sauce, while the brats are made with Budweiser lager. Using an alcohol-based sauce for meat, however, isn't breaking any new ground. Brown-Forman's Jack Daniel's whiskey, for example, has its own brand of barbecue sauce and marinades, and you can often find it on restaurant menus. But Budweiser's sauce may be the first beer-based sauce on a national brand. Anheuser-Busch has been trying to increase the transparency of the ingredients used in its beers, perhaps as a marketing tool to gain the attention of millennials. Bud Light recently started printing large "nutrition labels" on its packaging, which followed the voluntary guidelines established a few years ago by the industry's Beer Institute to disclose more information about what beer is made of. And it was Bud Light that infamously tried to troll Coors Light and Miller Lite during the Super Bowl with an ad saying it wasn't made with corn syrup. The implication, of course, what that the additive was bad, playing on the notoriety of high fructose corn syrup even though corn syrup is not the same thing and its purpose is only to feed the yeast during the brewing process. Missing the mark? Although the stated purpose of the beer-based pork products is to attract millennials, the line might have better success if it was marketed to those who actually drink Budweiser and eat meat. But the pork products will be in stores by the summer, and they will be available to any age group to try. More From The Motley Fool Rich Duprey has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Molson Coors Brewing. The Motley Fool recommends Anheuser-Busch InBev NV. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Hong Kong: Heritage photo contest set The Government will hold a revitalised historic buildings Instagram photography competition from April 5 to May 2. The competition will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Revitalising Historic Buildings Through Partnership Scheme. Participants can upload photos of any buildings from Batches I to III of the revitalisation scheme to their public Instagram accounts, along with a photo caption including the hashtags #RschemeHK and #CHO and the @builtheritage_photocompetition tag. These buildings include the Savannah College of Art & Design (Hong Kong), Tai O Heritage Hotel, Hong Kong Baptist University School of Chinese Medicine - Lui Seng Chun and others. The competition will have two award categories - Photos of the Week and Best 11 Photos Award. Photos of the Week will be awarded to the 10 most liked photographs among the entries submitted each week. Winners will receive a stamp gift bag. Prizes for winning the Best 11 Photos Award category will range from free accommodation, courses and workshops to cash coupons. Winners will also have the chance to participate in a photo exhibition. This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. Every 10 minutes or so, someone knocks on the big wooden door of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs office on Capitol Hill. The noise makes staffers stiffen. Its almost always a harmless fan, one of dozens who arrive each day, leaving neon-colored Post-it notes as devotional offerings. But in her first three months in Congress, aides say, enough people have threatened to murder Ocasio-Cortez that Capitol Police trained her staff to perform risk assessments of her visitors. This is the daily reality for Americas newest human Rorschach test. Wonder Woman of the left, Wicked Witch of the right, Ocasio-Cortez has become the second most talked-about politician in America, after the President of the United States. Since beating 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary to represent New Yorks 14th District last June, the 29-year-old former bartender has pressured 2020 presidential candidates into supporting her Green New Deal, made campaign-finance reform go viral and helped activists banish Amazon from Queens with a couple of tweets. No lawmaker in recent memory has translated so few votes into so much political and social capital so quickly. Her Twitter following has climbed from about 49,000 last summer to more than 3.5 million. Thousands of people tune in to watch her make black-bean soup or re-pot her houseplants on Instagram Live. Immediately after she tweeted the name of her signature red lipstickBeso, by Stilait sold out online. At the same time, shes a freshman legislator trying to get the hang of her first big full-time job. I miss being able to go outside in sweats, she says in her office one day in March, settling into a black leather chair after a long day of subcommittee hearings. Shes much smaller than she looks on TV, with a warm but cautious manner. I cant go anywhere in public and just be a person without a lot of people watching everything I do. Ocasio-Cortez represents one vision of the Democratic Partys future. Shes a young Hispanic woman, three cornerstones of the partys electoral coalition. Shes a democratic socialist at a time when confidence in capitalism is declining, especially among progressive millennials. The issues she ran ona Green New Deal, Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, abolishing ICEare animating a new generation of Democrats. Shes a political phenomenon: part activist, part legislator, arguably the best storyteller in the party since Barack Obama and perhaps the only Democrat right now with the star power to challenge President Donald Trumps. Story continues The woman everyone calls AOC is as much a villain to the right as she is a hero to the left. Shes replaced Hillary Clinton as the preferred punching bag of Fox News pundits and Republican lawmakers, and the hits are taking their toll. Public opinion of Ocasio-Cortez has soured as she becomes better known; according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, 31% of Americans overall have a favorable impression of her, against 41% unfavorablea 15-point swing since September. The same poll found that her popularity had increased with Democrats and nonwhites. Her Green New Deal proposal has driven policy debates on the left, but it has virtually no chance of becoming law anytime soon. Her allies plan to boost primary challengers to moderate and conservative Democrats, a push that OcasioCortez has distanced herself from but one that has earned her the enmity of some colleagues. Many House Democrats resent her celebrity and worry it overshadows efforts to reach the moderate voters who propelled the party to the majority. Privately, some admit theyre also a little afraid of her. Thats because Ocasio-Cortez threatens the status quo, bringing a youthful impatience to a set of policies popularized by Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign, like Medicare for All and tuition-free public college. Like Sanders, she seems more concerned with movements than elections; she doesnt talk about flipping seats and votes, but rather of winning hearts and minds. Hers is the politics of the possible, not the practical. By the time legislation actually gets through, it is five years from now, she says. So everything we introduce needs to have 2025 or our kids in mind. Shes not thinking about how to keep the Democratic majority for another two years; shes thinking about how to define the agenda for the next two decades. The Congresswoman takes a photo with education activist Maria Bautista, center, and New York state senator Jessica Ramos, left, during an education town hall in Jackson Heights, Queens. Its a big change in a party that spent the last 10 years following incrementalist leaders like Obama and Hillary Clinton. Its not just that Ocasio-Cortez is pushing for more progressive policies. Shes recast the division between left and center as a tug-of-war between the partys past and its future. Theres always this talk about division within the Democratic Party, ideological differences, she says in her office. But I actually think theyre generational differences. Because the America we grew up in is nothing like the America our parents or our grandparents grew up in. Ocasio-Cortez, sips a coffee on the way back to her district office in Jackson Heights. On Ocasio-Cortezs office bookshelf, near a picture of her late father and a photo of her with a local Girl Scout troop, two books nestle together in uneasy union. One is the Federalist papers, written mostly by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and published in 1788. The other is The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, written by journalist David Wallace-Wells 231 years later. Theres a picture of Wonder Woman leaning in one corner of the office and a giant cardboard cutout of Cardi Bs face in another. On her desk are handwritten crib sheets for a February hearing. (Im going to be the bad guy, she wrote in pencil.) More than 40 million people watched a subsequent NowThis News clip of her questioning a -government-accountability watchdog about campaign-finance laws. The staff and the boss meet in their Queens district office. Ocasio-Cortez was born in 1989, a few weeks before the Berlin Wall fell. George H.W. Bush was in his first year as President, Nancy Pelosi had just gotten to Congress, Sanders had already lost two Senate races, and Joe Biden had just bungled his first presidential bid. She was in elementary school during the financial prosperity of the 1990s, eating Dunkaroos while grownups clucked on television about Bill Clinton balancing the budget. An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity, she says. I have never seen that, or experienced it, really, in my adult life. She was born into a working-class family in the Parkchester section of the Bronx. Her dad owned a small architecture company; her Puerto Ricoborn mother cleaned houses. They were deeply rooted in the neighborhood but also wary of its limitations. Ocasio-Cortez has told friends she learned early on that wearing hoop earrings and nameplate necklaces was fine in the Bronx, but she wouldnt be taken seriously if she wore them to a job interview. The family moved to the prosperous Westchester County suburb of Yorktown Heights when she was about 5 so that she and her brother could go to better schools, but they returned frequently to see the rest of their family. Those 40-minute drives taught her how ZIP code determines destiny, she says. By the time she was in college, some of her cousins were already having kids. Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as a dorky kid who once asked for a micro-scope for her birthday. Her 2007 high school microbiology project, on the effects of antioxidants on the life span of roundworms, won second place in the microbiology category at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. She often joined her mom to clean the homes of neighbors, and she wrote her college-application essay about the two of them helping a man whod lost his wife the only way they couldby cleaning out his fridge. She took out student loans to enroll at Boston University, graduating in 2011 with a degree in economics and international relations. Her gregarious dad was her introduction to community organizing, she recalls. He died when she was in college. When Ocasio-Cortez was a teenager, her father was diagnosed with lung cancer. Just before she returned to Boston for her sophomore year, she went to see him in the hospital. I didnt know that it was going to be the last time that I talked to my dad, but toward the end of our interaction, I started to feel like it was, she says. I said goodbye, but I think he knew, and I knew. And so I started to leave, and he kind of hollered out, and I turned around in the doorframe, and he said, Hey, make me proud. He died about a week later, in the fall of 2008. The death plunged the family into financial trouble just as the economy was melting down; her mother picked up a job driving school buses to stave off foreclosure on their home. After graduation, Ocasio-Cortez moved back to the Bronx to work at an educational nonprofit, with a side gig as a bartender at a Manhattan taco joint. Most of her peers were piecing together two or three jobs to stay ahead of the bills. Spoiler alert: the gig economy is about not giving people full-time jobs, she says. So it should be no secret why millennials want to decouple your insurance status from your employment status. For most of her 20s, she lived paycheck to paycheck. She paid $200 a month for an Affordable Care Act health insurance plan with a huge deductible. Like 44 million other Americans, she had student-loan debt: about $25,000 worth, which meant $300 a month in payments. We have an entire generation that is delaying or forgoing purchasing houses, she says. Our entire economy is slowing down due to the student-loan crisis. Ocasio-Cortez had gotten her first taste of politics during college, as an intern in Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedys office. By the time -Bernie Sanders launched his 2016 campaign, she was hooked. She volunteered to knock on doors for his campaign across the Bronx and Queens. I had done grassroots organizing before, she says. But Sanders race was one of my first times where I crossed that bridge from grassroots community organizing to electoral organizing. She graduated from Boston University in 2011 with a degree in economics and international relations and $25,000 in student debt. When Trump won, Ocasio-Cortez was shocked but not surprised. In the weeks after the election, she and her friends piled into a borrowed 1998 Subaru and drove from New York City to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to join the Lakota Siouxs resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. They drove through the Midwest, stopping in Flint, Mich., on their way to the freezing plains of North Dakota. They had long bull sessions about whether Sanders would have beaten Trump and whether the media had been in the tank for Clinton. They sang TLCs No Scrubs and subsisted on Red Bull, Clif Bars and Hot Cheetos from gas stations. The Standing Rock trip was transformational for Ocasio-Cortez. She had visited a city poisoned by lead on her way to help a community fight the construction of a massive government-backed oil pipeline. The trip helped her connect a lot of different dots about how environmental degradation affects everybody, no matter where you live. I think the me that walked out of that, she says, was more galvanized and more open to taking risks. Then, as she was driving back to New York, she got a call she never expected. Someone wanted her to run for Congress. Once it became clear that Sanders wouldnt win the nomination, a few of his former staffers formed a group called Brand New Congress. The goal was to recruit progressives who werent wealthy, wellconnected white men to run for the House and Senate so that a future progressive President would have allies in the legislature. Saikat Chakrabarti, now Ocasio-Cortezs chief of staff, and Corbin Trent, now her communications director, began soliciting names of working-class leaders who might be willing to run. In the end, they got some 11,000 nominations from across the country. One of them was a letter from Gabriel Ocasio-Cortez, 26, touting his older sister Alexandria. She fit the mold exactly. We looked at the brother telling the story of a sister who wasnt a giant nonprofit executive, she didnt go work on the Hill for 10 years, recalls Alexandra Rojas, now executive director of Justice Democrats, an organization allied with Brand New Congress. She was someone who watched her family struggle through the financial crisis. The campaign was a long shot from the start. Everyone said, Shes really cute, but maybe next time, Ocasio-Cortez recalls. Crowley, the fourth-ranking House Democrat, was a prolific fundraiser who had been in Congress since 1999. Her campaign was mostly volunteers. Staffers wrote their job titles on Post-it notes above their desks in their small Queens office. Ever the activist, her campaign had an informal, flexible structure resembling leaderless social movements like the one she saw at Standing Rock. When a new progressive group solicited candidate nominations, her brother Gabriel (top) submitted her name. One of Ocasio-Cortezs first events was at the home of Jake DeGroot, a former theater lighting designer who had been involved in Occupy Wall Street. After hearing Ocasio-Cortez shout over the air conditioner in his living room to fewer than a dozen people, DeGroot joined her campaign, first as a volunteer and then as digital organizing director. Many of her top volunteers were former actors who had gotten involved with politics during the Sanders campaign and now saw organizing as a second career. (The 14th District contains parts of Astoria, Queens, which is nicknamed Actoria because so many actors live there.) That meant her campaign was infused with the imagination that animates all good drama, and a team that knew how to tell a story. -Theater and politics are very simpatico, says DeGroot. Theater done well is politics; politics done poorly is theater. More important, there was a shared sense among the young volunteers that they had been screwed. We were all children of the recession, say Waleed Shahid of Justice Democrats. Theres an overwhelming sense that the economic and political system in our country is rigged. Thats why young Americans have become increasingly attracted to democratic socialism, which aims to build a stronger social safety net through democratic elections. After Sanders rise in the 2016 Democratic primaries, membership in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) soared from fewer than 10,000 members in early 2016 to more than 55,000 by 2019. A 2018 Harvard poll found that 39% of young Americans favor democratic socialism, and even young Americans who dont identify with the movement overwhelmingly support ideas like Medicare for All, tuition-free public college and a Green New Deal. Every year, young people are ticking a couple points more left, says John Della Volpe of the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, who has been tracking youth political attitudes since 2000. On literally every single question theyre moving left. The DSA endorsed Ocasio-Cortez, and young, enthusiastic volunteers stormed her district in the weeks leading up to the election. In the end, she beat Crowley by about 4,000 votes. The upset made her the new face of the young progressive movement. Within weeks, she was traveling the country, speaking to packed rooms and standing ovations as she stumped for candidates in Kansas, Missouri and Michigan. She pointed to her own unlikely victory and Sanders insurgent campaign in the 2016 primaries as evidence that progressives could win across the country. She has this ability to understand a moment and then how to leverage it, says Rhiana Gunn-Wright, policy director for the left-wing policy shop New Consensus. She understands that she has a lot of shine right now. And yet most of the campaigns Ocasio-Cortez supported ended up losing. Of 78 candidates endorsed by Justice Democrats in 2018, only four nonincumbents won their seats, all replacing other Democrats in deep-blue districts. Organizers argue that losing isnt really losing, since progressive primary challengers often pull moderate nominees to the left. Still, America isnt her district, says Joel Benenson, a Democratic consultant who advised Obamas and Clintons presidential campaigns and argues that neither party can win if they dont win moderates. Democrats shouldnt take the bait. Ocasio-Cortez talks with a staff member's daughter near the office in Jackson Heights. But this is the paradox facing the Democrats: Ocasio-Cortez represents a merging of movement and electoral politics that hasnt permeated the rest of the party, let alone the rest of the country. The ideas generating the most enthusiasm among the partys very loud, very online left flank dont necessarily win elections. Which to some progressives is beside the point. The point of a message is not to win an electionits to change policy, to move things for people, to lead with your ideals, says Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, 34, who stumped with Ocasio-Cortez in his bid to become governor of Michigan. Who cares about winning elections? Indeed, he lost the Democratic nomination by more than 20 points. When she goes to meetings in her district, Ocasio-Cortez takes notes, hunched over a single-subject notebook as if she were in science class. As soon as she starts speaking, the room changes. In a hot and stuffy education meeting in the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights, the crowd stood up and cheered when she took the microphone, then swarmed her afterward to ask for hugs and selfies. At a community board meeting in an Astoria wedding venue, one older board member slept through the entire session, waking up only to click a few pictures of her on his cell-phone camera. Afterward, Ocasio-Cortez crouched to listen to a constituents concerns about the rise of anti-Semitism. Her beige heels, slightly scuffed, were a half size too big. The reception in Washington hasnt been quite as warm. Ocasio-Cortez is among the most visible of a group of young, left-wing freshman Democrats-including Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michiganwho have sparked controversy for their views on everything from impeachment to Israel. Some fellow first-term Democrats welcome the spotlight she brings. We have this really dynamic rock star who is getting a lot of attention, says Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan, a co-president of the freshman class. Why is that a bad thing? In person, Democratic sources say, Ocasio-Cortez is friendly and respectful, nothing like the firebrand who spars with -critics online. Shes quiet as a mouse in caucus meetings, says one congressional source. Yet the attention she gets has also prompted plenty of grumbling from colleagues. You could go a day without writing a story about AOC, groused Representative Mark Pocan, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. Many Democrats argue that proposals like the Green New Deala nonbinding resolution that wont become law with Republicans in control of the Senate and the White Houseput Democrats in purple districts in a tough spot. Ninety House Democrats have signed onto it. But others who care about climate change are wary of backing a document that contains provisionslike a jobs guaranteethat put off moderates and tee up GOP attacks. At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka dubbed the proposal a watermelon, because it was green on the outside, [and] deep, deep communist red on the inside. Freshman Democrats representing conservative districts, including Representatives Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Ben McAdams of Utahhave been asked about socialism at their town halls. A trip to a community board meeting in Astoria, Queens, allows a rare quiet moment. The old adage in Washington is that there are two types of members of Congress-: workhorses who revel in the details of legislating and constituent work, and show horses who crave the cameras. In interviews, a half dozen House Democratic aides described Ocasio-Cortez as the latter. (Her office says she attends more hearings than any of her colleagues.) Theres little question her first months in Congress have included some freshman blunders. Her office botched the rollout of the Green New Deal by inadvertently posting an unfinished version; she took two months longer than any other freshman Representative from New York to open a district office; and conservative groups have filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission alleging improper -campaign-finance arrangements. (Ocasio-Cortez has called the allegations bogus, and experts have suggested its unlikely her team committed significant campaign-finance violations.) She boosted the grassroots effort to block Amazons plan to establish a new hub in New York, but critics say the deals collapse cost the city jobs. She sometimes responds to tough coverageincluding media outlets pointing out errors shes madeby firing back at the press. I think that theres a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually and semantically correct than about being morally right, she told CNNs Anderson Cooper. As an activist, Ocasio-Cortez is used to focusing more on moral imperatives than on incremental policy wins. I dont think that we can compromise on transitioning to 100% renewable energy. We cannot compromise on saving our planet. We cant compromise on saving kids, she says. We have to do these things. If we want to do them in different ways, thats fine. But we cant not do them. Capitol Hills traditional emphasis on civility and compromise, she thinks, is merely a delay tactic. There are always these folks that will say, Youre not wrong, but she says, rolling her eyes. They avoid the political liability of disagreeing with you, but also they can stall you as much as possible to actually prevent the thing from happening. So evaluating Ocasio-Cortezs success depends on the time frame in which she is judged. Will she help deliver Medicare for All and a Green New Deal in the next two years? No. But having the debate is already making a difference in how D.C. does business. I used to be much more cynical about how much was up against us, she says. I think Ive changed my mind. Because I think that change is a lot closer than we think. With reporting by Alana Abramson/Washington Charlotte Alter is a National Correspondent at Time. Krisanne Johnson is a photographer based in New York City. WASHINGTON Former FBI Director James Comey said in an opinion piece on Thursday that he did not want President Donald Trump to be impeached from office, writing that forcing him from office would only deepen the divide in the nation. "I do have one hope that I should confess," Comey wrote in the New York Times. "I hope that Mr. Trump is not impeached and removed from office before the end of his term." Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017 from heading the FBI and overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, also wrote about what he hopes to see from the final report by special counsel Robert Mueller, appointed after Comey's firing, about Russia's role in the 2016 election. He wrote that he was not "rooting" for Mueller to show that Trump "is a criminal," adding "I'm also not rooting for Mr. Mueller to 'clear' the president." "I'm not rooting for anything at all, except that the special counsel be permitted to finish his work, charge whatever cases warrant charges and report on his work," Comey wrote. More: Exclusive: Nancy Pelosi pushes back on Democratic critics of her impeachment stance More: James Comey: Russia investigation started with four Americans with ties to Trump, Russia While not taking any position on Trump's fate within the report, Comey did take a stand against calls for his impeachment, writing that while he believes that "Trump is morally unfit to be president," an attempt to oust him from office would further divide the country. "If Mr. Trump were removed from office by Congress, a significant portion of this country would see this as a coup, and it would drive those people farther from the common center of American life, more deeply fracturing our country," he wrote. Since the 2018 midterm elections, where Democrats took control of the House, the issue of impeachment has been a focal point and something that has divided members, including many progressives who oppose the president. Story continues House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told USA TODAY on Monday that impeaching Trump would be "a gift to the president." "You're wasting your time, unless the evidence is so conclusive that the Republicans will understand," Pelosi, D-Calif., told USA TODAY. "Otherwise, it's a gift to the president. We take our eye off the ball." The speaker said, instead of impeachment, Democrats needed to stay united in pushing through legislation that they campaigned on, such as addressing rising health-care costs and creating jobs. Pelosi said some House progressives have "wanted to impeach the president since the day he got elected." Comey said that instead of impeachment, the American people should be the ones to say whether the president should no longer hold office. That, he said, should be left up to the 2020 election. "We need a resounding election result in 2020, where Americans of all stripes, divided as they may be about important policy issues immigration, guns, abortion, climate charges, regulation, taxes take a moment from their busy lives to show that they are united by something even more important: the belief that the president of the United States cannot be a chronic liar who repeatedly attacks the rule of law," Comey wrote. Comey and his firing have been a lightning rod of contention throughout the investigation, specifically over concerns whether his dismissal constitutes obstruction of justice by President Trump. Trump has continued to repeatedly criticize the former FBI head, most recently in a tweet Wednesday evening where he accused Comey of leaking information about the Russia investigation. Comey appeared in December before Congress in a closed-door session to testify about the Russia investigation and his decision not to prosecute former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server in 2016. Contributing: Eliza Collins and Kevin Johnson This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'This country would see this as a coup': James Comey doesn't want Trump impeached The 10-year-old girl suffered from persistent asthma, but the cause was unclear. Tests ruled out everything from pet hair to cockroaches. Then the girl's mother thought of a possible trigger. Her asthma does seem to get worse whenever her dad punches a hole in the wall," she told Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. "Do you think that could be related? Harris, a San Francisco pediatrician, includes the example in her new book, "The Deepest Well," to show the connection between what's known as "toxic stress" and physical health. Medical professionals and researchers have long studied the effect of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and lifelong mental health and addiction. Now awareness is growing of the link between childhood trauma on long-term physical health. The more ACEs a person suffers as a child divorce, domestic violence, family members with addiction the higher the risk of problems later in learning, mental and physical health, even early death. That's because people with ACEs are more likely to experience toxic stress repeated, extreme activation of their stress response. Toxic stress affects the developing brain, the immune system, the cardiovascular system and the metabolic regulatory system, says Al Race, deputy director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard. It dramatically increases the risk of hypertension, heart disease and diabetes, among other costly health conditions. Children with four or more ACEs are four times more likely to suffer from depression in their lifetimes, eight times more likely to become alcoholics and 20 times more likely to use intravenous drugs, research shows. Those who are exposed to very high doses of adversity without caring adults to help can have more than double the lifetime risk of heart disease and cancer and a nearly 20-year difference in life expectancy. "There's a huge body of science that shows the connection between the early years of life with a wide range of health problems later in life," Race says. "Toxic stress allows us to understand why that relationship exists and how it can get inside developing biological systems in the body." Story continues Given the stakes, researchers are scrambling to figure out how best to diagnose ACEs. Researchers at Harvard, the University of California-San Francisco and other institutions are working on screening tools to detect the biological markers of toxic stress in children so they can detect it earlier and help parents mitigate the effects. "There's no one accepted way to measure the effect of excessive stress activation," Race says. As with adults, he says, "every child reacts to stress differently." The Center for Youth Wellness, founded by Harris, has launched a social media campaign and the new Stress Health website to share the science with parents. The National Pediatric Practice Community, a network of nearly 600 doctors organized by the center, is screening for ACEs and sharing ways to reduce their influence on mental and physical health. Dr. Imelda Dacones is CEO of Northwest Permanente, the independent medical group that provides care to Kaiser Permanente members in the Northwest. "More people are clamoring for government policy and health care organizations to provide trauma-informed care because the data is out there," she says. "The sad thing about ACEs is we've known about them since 1997, but there's been a lag in translating it to create a system to actually do something about it." More than 20 million children have experienced three or more ACEs. Dr. Don Mordecai, the mental health leader for Kaiser Permanente, says children who experience multiple ACEs are at risk for toxic stress and the lifelong mental and physical health effects it can have. Kaiser Permanente worked with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to produce the original study on ACEs more than 20 years ago. About 25 percent of adults have experienced at least three or more ACEs. In her book, Harris describes physical and emotional abuse as common for both the diverse patients at her low-cost clinic and the wealthy people in her area. "I see it every day in my practice," Harris says. She sees children who experience frequent infections, failure to grow well and learning disabilities. The effect can start in infancy, Harris says, and is experienced by even sleeping babies who are in stressful environments. One of the key ways parents can protect their children, she says, is by nurturing healthy relationships outside the home, especially if they experienced their own traumatic childhoods. "All of the research is telling us that relationships are healing," Harris says. "Folks who have high levels of social support are more resistant to the flu and have better immune functioning." Sleep, good nutrition, mindfulness and exercise also help. Former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a primary-care physician, has made human connection for adults health his post-government priority. Harris and Murthy, who have been friends for more than two decades, agree that positive relationships help adults become better parents. When parents' friends are part of children's lives, Harris says, they can boost the child's "cumulative dose of therapeutic interaction." We can't "choose the homes in which we grew up," Murthy says, but relationships with family and others outside the home can help parents and others heal from early trauma. Murthy is writing a book on social isolation. "I worry we have come so far in terms of medicine, technology and economic advancement but seem to have a growing amount of emotional pain," he says. To help people heal from childhood or current trauma, he says, "one of the most powerful ways we can do that is by cultivating strong connections." More: Number of new heroin users drops dramatically, but meth, marijuana use up, survey says FDA declares youth vaping an epidemic, announces investigation, new enforcement More children are dying by suicide. Researchers are asking why The CDC is continuing the work it started with Kaiser Permanente by occasionally monitoring the health of the 17,000 people it began studying in 1995. The Northwest Permanente Medical Group is developing a health complexity score, incorporating medical complexity and social complexity scores, for children and families. The social complexity score will be based on information from the Oregon state health and human services agency, which will track ACEs as children and families move through services for food, housing, financial help, or correctional facilities. The scores will be used to help connect people with social organizations. Teen suicide is soaring. What's to blame? Here are common signs of toxic stress in school-age children, according to the Center for Youth Wellness: Poor coping skills. Behavior and learning difficulties. Mood swings. Sleep problems. Overeating and other compulsive behaviors. Fear and anxiety triggered by places or people that remind them of past trauma. Rahil Briggs is national director of HealthySteps, a pediatric program that works with parents and children to influence behavior to better prepare them for kindergarten, and founder of a pediatric psychology center at Montefiore Health System in New York. Montefiore is one of five medical sites working with Harvard on its biomarkers research. When Briggs thinks of toxic stress, she thinks of two children, ages 7 months and 2 years, who were home in 2006 when their father killed a third sibling. The infant couldn't sit up, and the toddler wouldn't speak at an age when kids should know 50 words and be able to string two together. Worse yet, they both cried inconsolably. The older child would crawl under furniture when he wanted to soothe himself. "This child was finely tuned to understand it's better just to retreat rather than to ask for help," Briggs says. When children don't gain enough weight, or lose too much, they can be diagnosed with "failure to thrive." Briggs says the diagnosis is most often "related to the environment the child is growing up in." Harris hopes her digital ad campaign will remind some parents of the danger their homes present for their children's long-term health. In the video ads, a boy puts an ice pack on his sleeping mother's eye and cleans up liquor bottles around his father, who is sleeping on a couch. He puts all the bottles into trash bags and stuffs them into an overflowing closet. He is shown opening the closet later in life. Jabeen Yusuf heads public health education at the Center for Youth Wellness. "For a lot of parents, they understand that if youre hitting your child, it's harmful to their child," she says. "But they will say, 'I didn't realize the things they are witnessing could be harmful to their health.'" Yusuf calls it the "myth of childhood amnesia." "We have to create safe, stable relationships and sometimes leaving a dangerous environment is whats going to be necessary," Harris says. "A lot of the times, moms in particular are willing to do for their children what they are not willing to do for themselves." Reporting for this article was supported by the Fund for Journalism on Child Well-Being, a program of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. If you are interested in connecting with people online who have overcome or are currently struggling with the health problems mentioned in this story, join USA TODAYs I Survived It Facebook support group. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Toxic stress' on children can harm their lifelong learning, mental and physical health WASHINGTON The father of Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and a key White House adviser, authored an opinion piece in the Washington Post pushing back against accusations of corruption and conflicts of interest. "Over the past two years, the news media have told a story about my family and our business with little regard for nuance, logic or even facts," Charles Kushner writes. "Though I am a private person and prefer to keep the details of my familys business as private as possible, I want to set the record straight." Charles Kushner, who founded Kushner Companies, took the rare step of speaking out after a book about his son and daughter-in-law, Ivanka Trump, was released on Tuesday that raised concerns about the pair's influence within the White House and made accusations that their positions stand to increase their personal wealth. The book, "Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump," details the rise of the couple and gives a behind-the-scenes look at their roles within the White House. It chronicles Kushner's role in the Middle East and the controversy surrounding how he obtained a top-secret security clearance. "I think that you can't underestimate the dangers of these two," Vicky Ward, the author of the book, told CNN on Wednesday, adding that the pair, who are often regarded as a voice of reason within the White House, are "absolutely not what they seem." Charles Kushner addressed the criticism head-on, writing about his father, a Holocaust survivor, teaching him the ropes of real estate. He writes that his son, now a senior adviser to President Donald Trump and a representative for the U.S. in Middle East peace negotiations, did the same and helped their business flourish over the years. "Jareds service to the country has brought unprecedented scrutiny of the Kushner Companies from the media and government investigators," he writes. "We are happy to assist with all inquiries, but I must note that we are already voluntarily adhering to the strictest standards to avoid even the appearance of conflicts." Story continues He wrote about scrutiny the company was under in regards to a building purchased in New York before the 2008 financial crisis, when some media outlets, including the New York Times, reported that to recoup from losses on the purchase, the company was seeking partners and financing from investors in the Middle East and China. 'Excellent student': College admissions scam rekindles scrutiny of Kushner's Harvard acceptance, $2.5M pledge No nepotism? Reports: Trump ordered son-in-law Jared Kushner be granted top-secret security clearance "Critics and media reports suggested that the Kushner Companies itself was somehow jeopardized by 666 Fifth Ave. and that the company had been forced to seek illicit or inappropriate foreign investors," Kushner wrote. "Both narratives are false." He continued, however, saying that a building like that in New York was a "trophy" asset, something that often appeals "to foreign investors," adding, "that's a legal and appropriate stream of funding." Charles Kushner says his son gave up all holdings within the company when he took a role within the White House, a decision that has affected the company's dealings. "We have passed up many business opportunities that we normally would have pursued," he writes. "That might not be as alluring as some of the crazy stuff I read about my family and our business. But it happens to be the truth." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'I want to set the record straight': Jared Kushner's father comes to his defense in op-ed By Jose Gallego Espina and Julio-Cesar Chavez SAN DIEGO/EL PASO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday questioned how the government would be able to properly attend to Central American asylum seekers forced to live in Mexico while their claims are processed, on the same day the government expanded the program to El Paso. The program is a key part of measures by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to curb the flow of mostly Central American migrants trying to enter the United States. Critics say it violates U.S. law and international norms as migrants are sent back to often dangerous towns in Mexico, where it is difficult to keep track of their U.S. court dates and to find legal help. On the second day of hearings under the program, known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), Judge Jonathan Simpson at a San Diego courthouse repeatedly asked the government's attorney how to handle cases of applicants told to wait for their U.S. court dates in Mexican border towns. "How does the court serve them if we do not have an address?" Simpson asked, after saying he was concerned whether the government could serve notices for court appearances to migrants in Mexico. "I don't have the answer," replied government attorney Robert Wetteis. Simpson on Wednesday heard petitions from 12 migrants, with two saying they were confused over appearance orders with conflicting dates. Applicant William Melendez said he received two orders to appear, each scheduled 10 days apart, and was unclear if both were valid. A Honduran migrant named Jorge C.N. was taken into Customs and Border Patrol custody overnight because he had been told to arrive at a port of entry for a court appearance the following day, his lawyer said. He withheld his full name to protect his privacy. Several other applicants did not have lawyers because they said it was hard to find attorneys to take cases in Mexico, and that even making phone calls to the United States posed a challenge. Four more people scheduled to appear did not show up at the border port of entry, where they had been told to meet officials to escort them to court. On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said it would begin next week to send asylum seekers back from El Paso, just north of Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, the third port of entry to do so after San Ysidro, a district across from Tijuana. The U.S. government in a court filing on Monday said that returns had also commenced through the Calexico port of entry, over the border from Mexicali. The three crossing points fringe Mexico's northern border zone that has witnessed extensive bloodshed over the past decade as a main battlefield of warring drug cartels. Texas Democratic Representative Veronica Escobar said she would stand up against the program's expansion to El Paso. "With this shameful policy, the administration is endangering lives, abandoning its obligation to bring forward smart solutions for our broken immigration system, and imposing on another country the task of solving our immigration challenges," she said in a statement. Immigration attorneys and activists said they feared the move would put further strain on the resources of Ciudad Juarez, where a surge of migrants arrived in February. (Corrects the number of ports where the policy has been applied in paragraph 12.) (Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Additional reporting and writing by Daina Beth Solomon in Mexico City; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) Bakkt, ICEs yet-to-launch crypto exchange, is being valued at around $740 million following a recent Series A round of funding, sources close to the project tell The Block. The exchange raised $182.5 million in its initial round, for which it hoped to attract institutions. Its approximate $740 million post-money valuation means ICE may have sold up to 25% of shares to external investors like Galaxy, Pantera, Microsoft and Starbucks the latter having contributed no capital in return. [related id="1"]Post-money valuation is a company's value after outside financing and/or capital injections are added to its balance sheet. In this instance, it also includes the equity allocated to Starbucks related to their partnership. Now, a key question is how investors will make their projected returns based on their $740 million post-Series A valuation given the current execution concerns and regulatory delays. Indeed, Bakkts proposed fee of $0.50 per contract is rather small, some equating it to less than 1 basis point. The next cheapest U.S. trading option is currently at 8 basis points. "From a cash-flow perspective, Bakkt will not be earning much based on their proposed contract fees, so they really need a lot of volume," said one source. As such, the source noted, execution post-launch will need to be near-flawless to cover its spending, particularly high in recruitment and following its first acquisition. A lot of things will need to line up for investors to receive returns that they would typically expect for a Series A." Investor "get-out" clause and future valuations Crucially, if Bakkt cannot deliver on its plan to garner institutional adoption or find other cash-flow sources investors have equity redemption rights provided by ICE, according to their SEC filing. Page 60 notes "non-ICE partners in Bakkt hold a put option to require us to repurchase their interests subject to certain terms." Delays in execution may allow investors to realise this exit and trigger their put. Story continues According to one source, such a valuation means Bakkt could feasibly increase its pre-money figure to $1 billion at its next raise. It could then sell a series of preferred shares at a reasonably similar price to the Series A without diluting itself much. However, investors will be looking at evidence Bakkt can match its share-price predictions. If I was looking to buy a piece in the emergent regulated US digital assets derivatives game today, I would look at cheaper alternatives which are further ahead in execution," one investor said. "Theyve paid too much." Bakkt declined to comment. BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed readiness on Thursday to back a short extension to Britain's planned exit from the European Union, suggesting that the June 30 date requested by Prime Minister Theresa May was problematic. May has asked European Council President Donald Tusk to delay Brexit from March 29 until the end of June and said she was preparing for a third vote in the British parliament on the exit deal she arduously negotiated with the European Union. Addressing the German lower house before a summit of EU leaders, Merkel appeared to share concerns by the European Commission that May's proposed delay means Britain would still be an EU member during European Parliament elections in May. "With regard to the date of June 30, we have to take into consideration that we have European elections in May," Merkel said "This means the future and legality of the European election must be respected. But we can surely talk positively about a short extension." A European Commission document seen by Reuters said the delay should either be several weeks shorter, to avoid a clash with the EU elections, or last at least until the end of the year, which would oblige Britain to take part in the vote. In her speech, Merkel echoed Tusk's position that it would be possible to grant Britain a short postponement if parliament backs May's proposed agreement next week, after voting it down twice before. Merkel said Germany would back May's request that EU leaders approve an agreement governing the Irish "backstop," which she described as the most difficult aspect of Brexit. The backstop is intended to prevent the return of a hard border between EU member Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland, if no trade agreement is reached that makes it unnecessary. May secured an agreement with the EU earlier this month that provides some guarantees that the bloc cannot use the backstop to trap the United Kingdom indefinitely in its customs union. "The second request was to delay the exit date to June 30. The leaders of the EU 27 will intensively discuss this request. In principal, we can meet this request if we have a positive vote in the British parliament next week about the exit document," Merkel said. (Reporting by Joseph Nasr and Michelle Martin; editing by Janet Lawrence, Larry King) Bernie Sanders has urged America to follow the lead of New Zealand in banning military style and semi-automatic weapons a measure taken by the authorities in Wellington within days of the mosque shooting that left 50 people dead. The Vermont senator, one of the early frontrunners of Democrats contesting for the partys 2020 presidential nomination, said New Zealand had set an example with the speed of its response. This is what real action to stop gun violence looks like, he said on Twitter. We must follow New Zealands lead, take on the NRA and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States. On Thursday, the government of New Zealand announced a ban on military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. The move by the administration of prime minister Jacinda Ardern, came just a week after the mosque attack, allegedly carried out by a white supremacist, and which rocked the small nation. The Associated Press said an immediate sales ban went into effect to prevent stockpiling, and that new laws were to be rushed through parliament that would impose a complete ban on the weapons. Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned, said Ms Ardern. The prohibition included semi-automatic guns or shotguns that can be used with a detachable magazine that holds more than five rounds. It also applies to accessories used to convert guns into what the government called military-style weapons, the news agency said. The rapid action by New Zealand has been seen in stark contrast to faltering efforts to ban such weapons in the US, where up to 35,000 died from guns in 2017. Activists had long pointed to the lobbying power of the gun industry group the National Rifle Association (NRA), which Mr Sanders referred to in his tweet. The group spends millions of dollars backing politicians who support its policies and threaten to fund challengers to those who do not fall into line. Figures show that in the 2016 election cycle, the NRA spent $55m on campaigns and adverts supporting candidates. Story continues By far the largest portion of that money, around $30m, went to backing the campaign of Donald Trump. The NRA did not immediately respond to enquiries on Thursday. A banner on its website claimed Nancy Pelosi wants a national emergency to confiscate your guns in 2020. Mr Sanders is not the only person to have seized on the example set by New Zealand. Kris Brown, president of the Brady campaign, which has long sought to regulate weapons in the US, said: This is a shining example of what can happen when our leaders take action, not sides. Prime Minister Ardern and her cabinet wasted no time in ensuring that the tragedy in Christchurch will not be repeated in their country, and they are providing a light for the world to follow. She added: Now, its time for our own leaders at home to do the same. March For Our Lives, the student-led group founded in the aftermath of the February 2018 Parkland school shooting, also spoke out over what happened in New Zealand. No community on earth should have to experience the intense loss that comes from gun violence, the group said, saying that it was helping to raise funds for the community in Christchurch. When hate tries to divide us, we will always respond with compassion and unity. Donald Trump renewed attacks on the late senator John McCain, stating he never liked the Arizona Republican and probably never will. The president faced widespread backlash for reviving his criticism of McCain, who died of brain cancer last year. Related: George Conway: why Kellyanne Conways husband is Trumps biggest critic While Trump shared a notoriously contentious relationship with McCain, Republicans balked at Trumps willingness to engage in posthumous attacks on the decorated war veteran. Some audience members in Ohio were members of the military. I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve, Trump said of McCain while touring a tank manufacturing plant in Lima, Ohio. I dont care about this. I didnt get a thank you, thats OK. Trump returned to broadsides against McCain seven months after his death, amid reports in conservative media outlets that McCain was allegedly responsible for leaking the infamous Russia dossier, compiled by the British ex-spy Christopher Steele. The dossier detailed Trumps ties to Moscow. In a tweet on Sunday, Trump criticised McCain for his role in the Russia investigation and voiced frustration with his deciding vote against the repeal of Obamacare in 2017. Trump also raised McCains healthcare vote during a joint appearance at the White House with the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, telling reporters he was very unhappy that [McCain] didnt repeal and replace Obamacare, as you know. They got to a vote, and he said thumbs down, Trump said. I think thats disgraceful. Related: John McCain sinks 'skinny repeal' of Obamacare health act McCains daughter, Meghan McCain, hit back on Wednesday on ABCs daytime talkshow The View, where she serves as a co-host. If I had told my dad: Seven months after youre dead youre going to be dominating the news and all over Twitter, he would think its hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death as well, she said. Story continues This is a new bizarre low. I will say attacking someone who isnt here is a bizarre low, she added. Trumps comments also drew backlash from Republicans in Congress, who defended McCain as a hero after initially remaining silent. I just want to lay it on the line, that the country deserves better, the McCain family deserves better. I dont care if hes president of United States, owns all the real estate in New York, or is building the greatest immigration system in the world, Senator Johnny Isakson, from Georgia, said in an interview. Nothing is more important than the integrity of the country and those who fought and risked their lives for all of us. Isakson called the comments deplorable. Senator Martha McSally, the Republican appointed to fill McCains seat following his death, tweeted: John McCain is an American hero and I am thankful for his life of service and legacy to our country and Arizona. Everyone should give him and his family the respect, admiration, and peace they deserve, she added. Senator Lindsey Graham, one of McCains closest friends who has also emerged as a vocal ally of Trumps, said his comments hurt him more than they hurt the legacy of Senator McCain. I cant understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God, the Utah senator Mitt Romney wrote on Twitter. Trump first feuded with McCain during the 2016 campaign, after he mocked the senator for being held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain, who faced re-election in the Senate the same year, declined to endorse Trump even after he became the Republican presidential nominee. Related: Trump sits alone 'sulking' as Washington pays its respects to John McCain McCain continued to speak out against Trump until his death, delivering a speech in which he decried half-baked, spurious nationalism in a thinly veiled reference to the president. Trump was not invited to McCains funeral last year, which featured speeches by former presidents, including George W Bush and Barack Obama. Trump was not mentioned by name, but a stark contrast was drawn to his brand of politics. McCains wife, Cindy McCain, later explained the familys decision to not invite Trump as a means of ensuring the ceremony would be conducted with dignity. Even though it was a very public funeral, we are still a family, McCain said in an interview with the BBC. It was important to me that we kept it respectful and calm and not politicize it. By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co will mandate a previously optional cockpit warning light as part of a forthcoming software update to the 737 MAX fleet that was grounded in the wake of two fatal crashes, two officials briefed on the matter said Thursday. Boeing previously offered the AOA DISAGREE alert, which warns pilots when the "angle of attack" (AOA) readings do not match, but it was not required by regulators. Boeing will now retrofit older planes with the light that did not initially receive it, the officials said. Boeing did not immediately comment Thursday. There has been a long-running industry debate about how much information should be displayed in the cockpit, notably about the angle at which the wing is slicing through the air. Federal prosecutors, the Transportation Department's inspector general and U.S. lawmakers are investigating the Federal Aviation Administration's certification of the 737 MAX. The FAA declined to comment on the software upgrade Thursday but said last week it planned to mandate "design changes" coming from Boeing in its software upgrade by April for the 737 MAX. Indonesia's Lion Air did not install the warning light. Lion Air Fight 610 crashed in October minutes after takeoff, killing all 189 onboard. The company told Reuters in November it did not install it because it was not required. The angle is a key flight parameter that must remain narrow enough to preserve lift and avoid an aerodynamic stall. A faulty AOA reading led the doomed Lion Air jets computer to believe it was stalled, prompting the planes anti-stall system, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), to repeatedly push down the plane's nose. The planemaker has come under fire in the wake of the Lion Air crash for not outlining the automated system, MCAS, in the flight manual for the 737 MAX. (Graphic: The grounded 737 Max fleet link: https://tmsnrt.rs/2u5sZYI) (Graphic: Ethiopian Airlines crash link: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Hn6V4k) (Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Sweta Singh in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Eric Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Nick Zieminski) People look at tributes at the Botanic Gardens in Christchurch on March 21, 2019, six days after the twin mosque shooting massacre that claimed the lives of fifty people. - New Zealand is banning the sale of assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons with almost immediate effect, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on March 21, rapidly making good on a pledge to tighten the country's gun laws. (Photo credit: WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images) Semi-automatic rifles will be included in an upcoming review of possible gun bans in Canada. The move by Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction Minister Bill Blair, comes as a direct result of last weeks attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a gunman used the firearm to kill 50 people. The government in that country was swift to ban the ownership of semi-automatic rifles in that country, coming to the agreement just three days after the tragic incident. There is no option that we will not consider, Blair was quoted as saying on Tuesday, when asked about a review of military-style rifles following the attack. I am prepared to examine every measure and to discuss with my prime minister and the cabinet and our government on any measure that can be effective in keeping Canadians safe. Here in Canada, members on both sides of the gun ownership debate feel the government is going about things in the wrong way when it comes to curbing gun violence. Blair Hagen, executive vice-president of National Firearms Association, says the current laws target people who are law abiding, and do nothing to stop someone whos determined to get a firearm. Theyll get them legally, theyll get them illegally, if theres no legal mean to it, he told Yahoo Canada. The demand is still going to be there, and thats still going to be fulfilled. Attacking the rights and property to law-abiding people is not the answer to this. Hagen describes the system as arbitrary, focused largely on firearm licenses that have expired, which is considered a criminal offence and will result in an investigation and seizure of the license-carriers property. The entire system is focused on that and its not focused on ways and means of preventing people who should not get firearms, from getting them, he says. Its entirely upfront on people who are law abiding and compliant. In order to tackle the issue of gun violence, a firearms act has to be written, says Hagen. This will take the emphasis off people who are law abiding, and comply with a reasonable system. Story continues Those resources have to be used instead to target the criminal misuse of firearms, he says. A lot of those resources could be used for background checks, because as it stands now, the background checks are only directed towards people who are currently involved in that system. Theyre onerous and confiscatory towards people who are law-abiding to the system. Canadians who legally own guns will be watching when Bill C 71, which intends to amend certain acts and regulations in relation to firearms, goes before the Senate this spring. This will attack firearms owners and their property, says Hagen. And were going to remember that come election day. Waiting for a consensus? For Louis March, founder of Toronto-based Zero Gun Violence Movement, the gun laws in Canada are reactive, circumstantial and not ahead of the curve. Hes concerned that were reacting to whats going on in other countries, when we have our own problems in Canada that arent being addressed. The access to guns, the brazen nature of the shootings, the total disregard for life has changed dramatically these days, he says. We have to review and assess whats really going on. When we see the shooting in the States or New Zealand, then we start running around to see what we can be doing or should be doing. Thats not going to help us. March says Blairs review of the system has been slow-moving, and wonders if hes stalling to come up with a plan in order to appease all sides. The pro-gun lobby people are already threatening them, saying anything to further regulate guns is going to be political suicide to them, he says. Theyve been stick-handling around trying to find some common ground while were seeing a record number of shootings in Toronto last year. Were not seeing that definitive action that were seeing in New Zealand. Thats concerning. Without political leadership, will and hard decisions that will offend some people, nothing is going to happen, says March. No one wants to take the lead in bringing the stakeholders to the table to get a clear picture of whats going on what and what can be done to prevent and avoid these types of situations, he says. Everyones working in their silos. Everyone has self-serving interests. We dont have that collective impact or strategy that speaks to a clear understanding of whats going on. Making changes to the system, March says, should start by addressing the issue of straw purchases - where one person without a license pays someone else with a license to buy multiple guns on their behalf. We need to do a better attempt at identifying whats going on here, he says. If someones buying five or 10 guns, there has to be a reassessment to insure that these are for legitimate purchases. You can do that without oversight. The focus of Zero Gun Violence Movement is the banning of poverty, instead of the banning of guns. March explains that the socioeconomic positions in certain communities in Toronto, for example, bet on violence as a means of survival. And when violence becomes a means of survival, people will get guns. Our intention is to close that gap so theres no need for people to use violence as a means of survival, he says. When people are saying its easier for them to get guns than it is to get jobs, we have a problem. Thats where all focus has been. Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Michel Temer on Thursday became the third former Brazilian president to fall foul of the law, which led his predecessors to be respectively jailed and impeached. A recap: - Lula: hefty jail term - Brazil's leftist icon Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who served two terms as head of state between 2003 and 2010, is serving two successive 12-year sentences after being found guilty of corruption when in office. Embroiled in "Car Wash," Brazil's wide-ranging anti-graft investigation, he became Brazil's first ex-president to be jailed as a criminal. He was found guilty in 2017 of corruption and money-laundering after accepting a luxury apartment as a bribe from a Brazilian construction company in return for contracts with state oil giant Petrobras. In 2019, he was found guilty again, this time for accepting renovation work by two construction companies on a farmhouse in exchange for ensuring they won contracts with Petrobras. He has been serving his time since April 2018 in the southern city of Curitiba. Under Lula's social programs, 29 million Brazilians emerged from poverty. The prison term ended his hopes of standing in the 2018 presidential election, which he had been favored to win. - Dilma Rousseff: kicked out - Lula's handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff, who became Brazil's first woman president in 2010, was impeached in May 2016 for alleged financial wrongdoing in office. She was accused of fiddling government accounts to mask fiscal problems ahead of her reelection in 2014. She denied the allegation, saying previous administrations did the same. She has not been prosecuted over the allegations. - Michel Temer: latest scalp - Michel Temer, who took over as a caretaker figure after Rousseff was ousted, was arrested on Thursday as part of the Car Wash probe. The federal prosecutor's office alleged he was the leader of a "criminal organization." Temer, Brazil's most unpopular leader ever, faced a number of corruption accusations when he left office in 2018. Story continues Congress, where many members are also facing corruption allegations, voted twice against putting him on trial. Among the charges were that he took millions of dollars in bribes from meatpacking giant JBS in return for legislative favors. He was also accused of obstruction of justice in the Car Wash probe, for authorizing payment of hush money to a former ally who is now in jail for corruption, Eduardo Cunha. Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Brazil's ex-president Michel Temer was arrested Thursday, an official said, as part of a sprawling anti-corruption probe that has already claimed dozens of political and corporate scalps. Police arrested Temer, the 78-year-old predecessor of current far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, in Sao Paulo, a spokesman for the federal prosecutor's office in Rio de Janeiro told AFP. Former mines and energy minister Moreira Franco was also detained along with six others, including business people, G1 reported. Temer, Brazil's most unpopular leader ever, faced a number of corruption accusations on leaving office last year. Launched in 2014, the Car Wash investigation uncovered a vast graft operation involving Petrobras and major construction companies and bribes to politicians of several parties. Temer is just the latest former president caught up in the probe that has rocked Brazil's business and political elites. The center-right politician took over as a caretaker figure after the last Workers Party president, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached and removed from office in 2016. Former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is serving a lengthy jail term after being found guilty in two corruption cases. Far-right leader Bolsonaro campaigned on a hard line against corruption and crime and his victory in October's election was in part attributed to the Car Wash investigation. Temer did not contest the ballot. Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Brazil's ex-president Michel Temer was the leader of a "criminal organization" involved in embezzlement and money laundering over decades, the federal prosecutor alleged Thursday, after the former leader was arrested as part of a sprawling anti-corruption probe. Police detained Temer, the 78-year-old predecessor of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, in Sao Paulo and transferred him to Rio de Janeiro -- the latest ex-leader of the Latin American country to be caught up in the so-called Car Wash investigation that has claimed scores of political and corporate scalps. The investigation into Temer had uncovered "the existence of a criminal organization in full operation, involved in concrete acts of clear gravity," the federal prosecutor's office said in a statement. Former mines and energy minister Moreira Franco was also arrested along with several others. Temer, Brazil's most unpopular leader ever, faced several corruption accusations on leaving office last year. Brazil's Congress voted to dismiss two allegations in 2017, cementing his reputation as the ultimate survivor in one of the world's messiest and scandal-ridden democracies. A third accusation was filed days before Bolsonaro's mandate started on January 1, leaving Congress no time to evaluate the charge. "Justice is for everyone and everyone answers for their actions," Bolsonaro told reporters in Chile, where he is on an official visit. The prosecutor's statement Thursday described a "sophisticated criminal system" which by the end of 2014 had made illicit payments of some one million reais (the equivalent of $500,000 at the time) in connection with the construction of a nuclear power plant that was never completed. Investigations suggest the group may have committed "various crimes" with public agencies and state-owned companies involving 1.8 billion reais ($470 million), the statement said. Story continues Starting as an investigation into money laundering at a car wash in the capital Brasilia in 2014, the probe expanded to uncover a vast graft operation involving state oil firm Petrobras and major construction companies and bribes to politicians of several parties. More than 150 people have been convicted and hundreds more charged. The scale of the corruption uncovered has stunned Brazilians weary of graft among their leaders. - Live coverage of arrests - Temer is just the latest former president caught up in the probe that has rocked Brazil's business and political elites. The center-right politician of the PMDB party took over as a caretaker figure after the last Workers Party president, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached and removed from office in 2016, accused of cooking the government's books. While Rousseff was not directly implicated in the Car Wash scandal, she was damaged by association, having chaired the board at Petrobras between 2003-2010, when much of the alleged corruption was flourishing. Former leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is serving a lengthy jail term after being convicted in two corruption cases. Far-right leader Bolsonaro campaigned on a hard line against corruption and crime and his victory in October's election was in part attributed to the Car Wash investigation. Temer did not contest the ballot. The probe was originally overseen by Brazil's current justice minister, former judge Sergio Moro, who jailed Lula. He has been replaced by Gabriela Hardt. Local TV channels broadcast live coverage of the latest arrests -- much to the delight of many ordinary Brazilians, who welcomed the detentions. "I think that is super right. In my opinion it took too long," Maria Celia de Castro, a retired history teacher in Brasilia, told AFP. As president, Temer was deeply unpopular. Whenever he spoke on television, horn honking and pot banging could be heard in major cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. He was booed loudly at Maracana stadium when he opened the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. PARIS (Reuters) - Britain's request for a delay to Brexit will be rejected by the EU if Prime Minister Theresa May cannot provide sufficient guarantees that her parliament will approve the divorce deal she negotiated, France's foreign minister said on Wednesday. The French stance was markedly tougher in tone than the public rhetoric out of Berlin, where Germany's foreign minister said only that an orderly British departure from the European Union would solve the Brexit turmoil. May asked for a three-month delay to Brexit on Wednesday to buy time to get her twice-rejected departure deal through parliament. Her request came just nine days before Britain is formally due to leave the EU, the latest twist in more than two years of negotiations that have left British politics in chaos. "A situation in which Mrs May was not able to present to the European Council sufficient guarantees of the credibility of her strategy would lead to the extension request being dismissed and opting for a no-deal exit," Jean-Yves Le Drian told the French National Assembly. A senior official in President Emmanuel Macron's office said May had requested a "technical extension". This suggested that approval would be conditional on the British parliament ratifying the withdrawal agreement negotiated by May. Any extension has to be approved by all 27 EU members remaining in the bloc. In recent weeks, Germany has appeared to adopt a more conciliatory stance. Paris and Berlin are discussing their response to May's delay request, a source familiar with the diplomatic effort said, with Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel due to meet on Thursday in Brussels, on the sidelines of an EU summit. Speaking in Berlin, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said he expected EU leaders to make a decision on how to proceed with May's request at that summit. "We'd like to know where it leads," Maas told a news conference in Berlin. "We've always said that if the (European) Council has to decide on a deadline extension for Britain, then we'd like to know why and what for." (Reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Richard Lough and Kevin Liffey) Bristol-Myers Squibb Company BMY is facing strong criticism from activist investors for the proposed acquisition of another large pharmaceutical company, Celgene Corporation CELG. Bristol-Myers investors have expressed multiple concerns related to growth of the company following the merger. We remind investors that Bristol-Myers announced in January that it will acquire Celgene for an equity value of approximately $74 billion or more than $90 billion including debt. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2019. Bristol-Myers stockholder, Starboard Value LP, has urged all shareholders to support its proposal to vote against the deal. Starboard Value has posted a presentation on its website detailing the reasons for its opposition. In late February, the investment firm had informed all shareholders of Bristol-Myers in a letter about its intention to oppose the mega acquisition. The investment firm has requested all shareholders to vote against the acquisition deal at the Special Meeting of Bristol-Myers scheduled to be held on Apr 12, 2019. Wellington Management Company, one of the top stakeholders, is also not supportive of the proposed acquisition and had informed the same to the board of Bristol-Myers in February. Bristol-Myers Expectations Bristol-Myers expects the combined entity to generate more than $45 billion in cash flow over the first three full years post-closing and cost synergies of approximately $2.5 billion by 2022. Moreover, Bristol-Myers expects the acquisition to be 40% accretive to the bottom line on a standalone basis in the first full year after closing. The company expects the merged entity to have a market leading oncology portfolio in both solid tumors and hematologic malignancies led by Opdivo and Yervoy along with Revlimid and Pomalyst. The cardiovascular, immunology and inflammation franchise will be strengthened with the presence of Eliquis, Orencia and Otezla, respectively. Moreover, the entity will also have a deep pipeline including six expected near-term product launches with potential sales of $15 billion. Story continues Starboards Argument Starboard Value believes that the deal is overpriced. The investment firm believes that the acquisition of Celgene will increase shareholders risk significantly without generating enough rewards. It believes that initiatives for cost management within the standalone Bristol-Myers will produce better returns than the proposed acquisition. Starboard Value stated that Celgene has produced only three blockbuster products in 15 years, which raises concerns about Bristol-Myers assumption of significantly higher number of new blockbuster products in lesser time from Celgenes current pipeline. Moreover, Celgenes major revenue generator drug, Revlimid, will lose patent protection in 2026, which is likely to dent its sales. The investment firm has also raised questions on Bristol-Myers current management as the companys share price has been on a decline over the past three years and it has underperformed other large pharmaceutical peers. Starboard Value believes that the abovementioned factors along with several others stated in the presentation makes the deal look bad. It also believes that there can be better alternatives than the proposed acquisition to fuel growth at Bristol-Myers. Our Take Bristol-Myers was on the lookout for an acquisition for quite some time now to bolster its portfolio. The companys top drug, Opdivo, has fallen behind Mercks MRK Keytruda in capturing market share in the anti PD-1/PD-L1 category. Moreover, competition is rising in the category with the presence of Roches RHHBY Tecentriq. Both Keytruda and Tecentriq are approved for first-line non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which has the largest patient population among all cancer indications. Meanwhile, Opdivo is yet to gain approval for the same indication, which is denting its prospects. In January, Bristol-Myers had withdrawn a label expansion application for Opdivo seeking its approval in combination with Yervoy in first-line NSCLC. However, sales of Opdivo grew substantially in 2018. Moreover, cardiovascular drug, Eliquis is witnessing strong growth. Sales growth of Celgenes Revlimid also remained impressive. While Revlimid generated global sales of $9.7 billion in 2018, Opdivo and Eliquis together recorded sales of $13.2 billion. Total product revenues of both the companies was $36.8 billion in 2018. The current product sales of both the companies and a strong growth rate of major drugs are positives that back the deal. However, successful development of pipeline into several blockbuster products will be necessary for long-term growth. Although the acquisition will enable Bristol-Myers to diversify its portfolio and looks positive prima facie, any acquisition of this magnitude comes with its own set of integration risks. The deal will also add considerable debt to Bristol-Myers balance sheet. With rising opposition from stakeholders the future of the deal is getting blurred. However, outcome of the Special Meeting is likely to provide a view of all shareholders, which will decide the future of the deal. Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, wouldn't you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? From more than 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank, these 10 were picked by a process that consistently beats the market. Even during 2018 while the market dropped -5.2%, our Top 10s were up well into double-digits. And during bullish 2012 2017, they soared far above the market's +126.3%, reaching +181.9%. This year, the portfolio features a player that thrives on volatility, an AI comer, and a dynamic tech company that helps doctors deliver better patient outcomes at lower costs. See Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMY) : Free Stock Analysis Report Roche Holding AG (RHHBY) : Free Stock Analysis Report Merck & Co., Inc. (MRK) : Free Stock Analysis Report Celgene Corporation (CELG) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research LONDON European Union leaders on Thursday granted the United Kingdom an extension to its departure from the bloc scheduled in eight days. Britain will be allowed to postpone Brexit until May 22 if Prime Minister Theresa May is able to get British lawmakers to approve her unpopular exit deal with the EU. If she can't, a shorter delay will be given, until April 12, to "indicate a way forward." Unanimous approval by the EU's 27 leaders (minus Britain) was needed for the delay and discussions at the EU's headquarters in Brussels ran late into the evening. European Council President Donald Tusk said the delay means "the cliff-edge date" on which Britain would tumble out of the bloc without agreement has been postponed. "What the decision today underlines is the importance of the House of Commons passing a Brexit deal next week so that we can bring an end to the uncertainty and leave in a smooth and orderly manner," May said in a statement. Still, Britain's Parliament has twice rejected May's EU deal, and polls show the British public, not just lawmakers, remain deeply divided over leaving the EU. "There is no single will of the people over Brexit," said Sara Hobolt, a professor of European politics at the London School of Economics. "The only thing people seem to agree on is that the government is doing a terrible job at handling it." May is expected to ask lawmakers to vote on her deal for a third time next week. She said in a short statement addressed to the British public on Wednesday night that a delay to Brexit was a "matter of great personal regret." "Of this I am absolutely sure. You, the public, have had enough," she said. "You just want us to get on with it and that is what I am determined to do." More: Brexit: Britain's Parliament votes to delay EU departure However, May faces a separate British parliamentary hurdle before she can do that: House Speaker John Bercow has ruled her EU deal would have to have changed significantly in order to justify asking lawmakers to vote for it a third time. Story continues Adding further pressure on May, the EU has said it is not willing to renegotiate that deal, which was the product of two years of back and forth discussions. Both sides are trying to avoid a "no-deal" Brexit, the default legal position if no arrangement is reached before March 29. Under a "no-deal" Brexit, EU legislation Britain adopted over decades covering a range of issues from transportation policy to workers' rights, from security to public health, would effectively evaporate overnight. Britain's military has activated a team in "very high readiness mode" in a nuclear-proof bunker under the Ministry of Defense in the event of a "no-deal" Brexit. A petition calling on May to unilaterally cancel Brexit by revoking Article 50, the domestic legislation that underpins it, has received more than a million signatures Thursday. The high volume crashed the Parliament's website. It also means lawmakers are required to formally debate the measure, although it is not legally binding. The outcome of Brexit negotiations and votes that take place over the next week could also determine whether May is ousted from power and if a general election called. Anand Menon, a professor of politics at King's College London, said if May is forced from office Britain "really would be in unstable, uncharted waters" in terms of next steps over Brexit, but also with respect to forming a viable new government. More: Trump: Brexit debate is tearing countries apart Activists pose with their faces painted in the British and EU colors during an anti-Brexit campaign stunt outside EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on March 21, 2019. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: With clock ticking, EU grants Britain Brexit delay BRUSSELS (Reuters) - There will be an extraordinary EU leaders meeting next week if the British parliament votes down for the third time the Brexit deal negotiated by Prime Minister Theresa May, the head of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said. "In the event the Withdrawal Agreement would not be approved by the House of Commons, we will have a second meeting of the European Council next week," Juncker told reporters on entering an EU summit in Brussels. (Reporting By Jan Strupczewski and Gabriela Baczynska) LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) - Theresa May will meet French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday ahead of a European Union summit where the British prime minister will ask to delay Brexit until June 30, her spokeswoman said on Thursday. On Wednesday, France threatened to reject May's request if she could not provide sufficient guarantees that Britain's parliament will approve her divorce deal. The spokeswoman also told reporters that she "flatly rejected" any suggestion that a speech given by May late on Wednesday would put lawmakers at risk after the prime minister said the public had become tired of political infighting and game playing. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan, Writing by Kate Holton; editing by Stephen Addison) The Senate. The Electoral College. The First Amendment. The Second Amendment. The Supreme Court. Is there a part of our constitutional order that the Democrats have not pledged to destroy? There are some Democrats out there in the sticks a lot of them, in fact who simply dont understand the constitutional order. They believe that the United States is a democracy, John Adams et al. be damned, and, in fact, they often are confused by the frankly anti-democratic features of the American order, because they have been taught (theirs is a pseudo-education consisting of buzzwords rather than an actual education) that democratic means good and undemocratic means bad. But the Democrats in Washington are a different story. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris went to law school. They understand the American constitutional order just fine. And they hate it. The American order is complex it is much more sophisticated than democracy, which assumes that nothing stands between the individual and the national state except aggregation, that might (defined as 50 percent + 1) makes right. The American order is based on the idea that the United States consists of many different kinds of people in many different kinds of communities, and that each of these has interests that are legitimate even when they conflict with the equally legitimate interests of other communities. The densely populous urban mode of life is not the only mode of life, and the people of the urban areas are not entitled by their greater numbers to dominate their fellow citizens in the less populous rural areas. The basic units of the United States are, as the name suggests, the several states. The states created the federal government, not the other way around. The states are not administrative subdivisions of the federal government, which is their instrument, not their master. In this, the United States is fundamentally different from countries such as the United Kingdom and Japan, which have unitary national governments under which provincial distinctions are largely irrelevant. Story continues In our system, the states matter. Under the Democrats vision, some states matter: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio, which, without the institutions of federalism, have among them the numbers and the power to effectively dominate the rest of the country. At the time of the Founding, the people of the smaller states did not desire to enter into a union in which they and their interests would be dominated by the larger ones. The people of the smaller states still do not wish to be politically dominated by the larger ones. For that reason, the interests of the states as such not mere aggregates of voters are taken into consideration. The Senate, as originally organized, existed to preserve the interests of the states as such against the opportunism and predation of the more populous House of Representatives and against the ambitions of the executive, too. Turning the Senate into an inflated version of the House was one of the progressives first great victories against the Constitution of the United States and an important step toward the sort of mass democracy that our constitutional order is explicitly designed to prevent. But the states have other protections as well, one of which is the Electoral College, which helps to ensure that the president the Founders were right to fear presidential ambition is not a mere tribune of the plebs, a rider upon the beast with many heads empowered by the mob at his back to abuse and dominate members of minority groups smaller states, religious minorities, political minorities, etc. The rights of minorities are further protected from democracy by the Constitutions limitations on the power of the federal government and specifically by the Bill of Rights, which places some considerations above democracy: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to security in ones home and papers, etc. One of the main constitutional functions of the Supreme Court is to see to it that the federal government does not violate the Bill of Rights, even when We the People demand that it does especially then, actually: Rights that enjoy wide popular support require very little constitutional protection. It is the unpopular rights that require protection. Of course there were blemishes and oversights. Even the enlightened minds of the 18th century were hostages of their time, and the interests of African Americans and women were not taken into consideration. Those defects were corrected, partly by the shedding of blood but to a great extent by constitutional amendments that abolished slavery, enfranchised women, and brought the American people at large more fully into the constitutional system. The preamble to the Constitution describes a more perfect union, which is not the same thing as a perfect union. The genius of leaders such as Susan B. Anthony and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was that their calls to radical change ran against the grain of American society at their time but were perfectly in tune with the American idea and the principles of the American order. The Democrats calls to radical change in 2019 are precisely the opposite: They are very much in keeping with the transient passions of the time but fundamentally opposed to the American constitutional order. The Electoral College ensures that the citizens in the less popular states are not reduced to serfdom by the greater numbers (and greater wealth) of the people in the more populous states. This balancing of minority rights with democratic processes is a fundamental part of the American order (properly understood, the value of plebiscitary democracy is not substantive majorities are at least as likely to be wicked and oppressive as virtuous and just but purely procedural), and the Electoral College is the instrument by which that principle is applied to the election of presidents. The Democrats desire to abolish the Electoral College for purely self-interested reasons of partisanship: They think that there would be more Democratic presidents under unmediated mass democracy. The First Amendment ensures that all Americans have the right to engage in political speech. Democrats wish to put political speech under heavy regulation, so that the people holding political power set the rules under which they may be criticized and debated. The Democrats have attempted to gut the First Amendment under the guise of campaign finance regulation, as though the right of free speech could be separated from the means of speech. It is worth bearing in mind that the Democrats latest attack on the First Amendment was occasioned by the desire of a political activist group to show a film critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the run-up to a presidential election a film whose circulation the Democrats sought to prohibit as a campaign finance matter. The Supreme Court stepped in to stop that, finding that the First Amendment means what it says. And now the Democrats propose to corrupt the Supreme Court, expanding the number of justices from nine to whatever number it takes for a future Democratic president to create a majority of Democratic partisans on the Court. They are counting on the same court-packing scheme to give them the power to effectively repeal the Second Amendment without having to bother to propose and ratify a constitutional amendment a political fight that the Democrats would surely lose. What the Democrats are proposing abolishing the constitutional protections afforded to smaller states and political minorities, perverting the Supreme Court, gutting the Bill of Rights amounts in sum to a revolution, replacing our government with a government of a very different character and structure. They are doing this mainly because the Constitution prevents them from achieving their immediate short-term political goals. And we should be clear about what those immediate political goals actually are: muzzling their political opponents and those with unpopular political views, disarming the citizenry, stripping minority groups of political power, and rigging the political system in favor of their own constituents. They would, if given the power, burn down the American constitutional order and replace it with something closer to ordinary mob rule, plain and unapologetic ochlocracy. The United States is not drifting into fascism or socialism it is drifting into anarchy. Thats quite a fit to throw over Mrs. Clinton being denied her tiara. The Republican party likes to position itself as the defender of the Constitution. But with a few exceptions (Senator Ben Sasse prominent among them), Republicans in elected office demonstrate very little appreciation for the actual stakes on the political table. For the moment, they are more concerned with defending the Trump administration which, whatever you think of it, is a short-term concern than with defending something that is far more important, far more precious, and, in all likelihood, impossible to replace. If 2016 taught us anything, it is that the Jeffersons and Madisons of this generation apparently are otherwise occupied, that our political leadership is for the time diminished, and that the institutions the Democrats propose to incinerate could not be rebuilt by contemporary Americans any more than modern Iraqis could successfully revive the Code of Hammurabi. More from National Review Prime minister Theresa May is meeting European Union leaders at a summit in Brussels to request a Brexit extension. Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images The UKs top business organisation has united with Britains leading union body to ask prime minister Theresa May to change her damaging Brexit approach. And they want an in-person meeting with her too. Our country is facing a national emergency, said the leaders from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in a public letter to May. We cannot overstate the gravity of this crisis for firms and working people. The letter which includes a three-point plan for May was released as the prime minister meets with European Union leaders at a summit in Brussels to request a short Brexit extension. The UK parliament recently voted to support a Brexit extension beyond the 29 March deadline, but a delay is not guaranteed. All 27 EU leaders must agree to an extension. Decisions of recent days have caused the risk of [a] no-deal [Brexit] to soar, warned the TUCs general secretary Frances OGrady and CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn. Firms and communities across the UK are not ready for this outcome. The shock to our economy would be felt by generations to come. OGrady and Fairbairn outlined their step-by-step plan: Avoid a no-deal Brexit Secure an extension to the divorce deadline Provide a Plan B that goes beyond the deal or no-deal threat READ MORE: Britain pioneers new way to help warn about economic shocks A Plan B must be found one that protects workers, the economy and an open Irish border, commands a parliamentary majority, and is negotiable with the EU, they said. The prime minister has walked us into a national emergency. @The_TUC and @CBItweets agree she needs to urgently change her Brexit approach and find a Plan B that protects jobs, rights and livelihoods. pic.twitter.com/qaIpQppLst Frances O'Grady (@FrancesOGrady) March 21, 2019 The TUC represents about 5.5 million workers in Britain who are members of dozens of different unions. The CBI represents 190,000 businesses across the country, which employ nearly 7 million people in total. Story continues The two organisations rarely unite to make joint statements, but have come together a few times to warn about the risks associated with Brexit. Are businesses ready for Brexit? The stark warnings from the CBI and TUC came out as the Bank of England published a new business survey indicating that more companies are feeling prepared for a potential no-deal Brexit. The March survey showed about 80% of companies considered themselves to be ready for a no-deal scenario, up from 50% in January. Nevertheless, many companies reported that there were limits to the degree of readiness that was feasible in the face of the range of possible outcomes, the central bank said, noting that issues like tariffs and border slowdowns were out of the control of businesses. But even those business leaders that felt prepared still expected output, employment and investment to be weaker under a no-deal scenario versus a situation where the UK and EU signed a formalised deal. What is a no-deal Brexit? At its most basic level, a no-deal Brexit would see the UK leave the EU without any new formalised arrangements covering crucial issues including trade, migration, border control and even flights across the English channel. This would lead to a so-called cliff edge for businesses, which would struggle to adapt to a new trading environment with the EU and other countries. In a no-deal scenario, the UK is expected to revert to World Trade Organization (WTO) trading rules, leading to a flurry of new customs checks, paperwork and tariffs at the borders, slowing down imports and exports of items including car parts, fresh food and smartphones. The UK would also be ejected from the EUs previously agreed free trade deals and treaties with outside nations, including the newly minted trade deals with Canada and Japan. Many consider this to be a worst-case scenario. The Bank of England warned in late 2018 that the UK economy could shrink by about 8% within a year if theres no deal and no transition period. That fall would be the worst the country has seen in roughly 100 years. The pound would crash, inflation would spike and house prices could drop by about one-third. Aerospace-Defense Aerospace and Defense are far from mature with innovation being the bedrock for this industry. I see only growth for those companies leading in this space. Over the past year, this industrys equity prices have been up and down ending up close to flat for the year. I think that this underperforming industry has an enormous amount of potential for growth in 2019 as trade tensions lighten. Defense contracts being a hefty portion of revenues gives investors in this space a bit more security as well. Boeing BA Boeing, the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, was recently devastated by two Boeing 737 MAX crashes within five months, with the most recent accident on March 10th causing a 15% drop in stock price. There is still litigation concerning these crashes underway that may have a material effect on the stock price (if the 15% drop didnt already price this in). This drop I believe has given investors a buying opportunity. Boeing has already made many steps to resolve any underlying issues with the aircraft and airlines like Southwest LUV, American AAL, and United UAL are still flying the 737 MAX, confident the problem isnt systemic. Over the last two years, BAs bottom line has risen 53% on a year over year average with increasing margins. In the Net Income BNRI (adjusted net income) graph below you can see that profits have never been higher. This lean operating company has also significantly grown its free cash flow to over $13 billion at the end of 2018 giving Boeing a considerable amount of financial flexibility for acquisition and internal innovation/growth. Boeing is currently trading at an 18.10 price to earnings ratio (P/E) which is a very reasonable valuation considering this multiple got as high as 30.63 in January of last year before trade tensions hit the fan (shown on the graph below). With Boeing being the US largest exporter its valuation got walloped when the trade war with China began. Every day the tensions seem to be diminishing, with a deal looming on the horizon I am confident that a resolution is near. Getting in before this multiple adjusts up to pre-trade war levels could turn out to be a very profitable trade. With lowered multiples and raising EPS, this has placed the continuously profitable company as Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). Story continues Lockheed-Martin LMT Lockheed Martin is Boeings biggest competitor for government aerospace contracts being the largest defense contractor in the world. LMT has a niche portfolio of military aircraft that has won them many government contracts; most notably their F-35 program which is considered their primary growth driver is 20% of total revenue and growing. The F-35 program is incredibly expensive though, and the US government is pressuring them to reduce costs which could negatively affect the bottom line. LMTs broader portfolio is under intense competition with almost all of their revenue coming from defense contracts. Meanwhile, competitors like Boeing who only have 22% of revenue relying on these contracts have a distinct diversification advantage. These concerns lead me to agree with Zacks Ranks #3 (Hold) for LMT. Textron TXT Textron is a multi-industry conglomerate that operates five segments: Bell, Textron Systems, Textron Aviation, Industrial and Finance. Over 60% of their revenue comes from their aerial transportation segments (Bell Helicopters and Textron Aviation). They have won a number of contracts this year most notably a $912 million order for 12 AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters to the Royal Bahraini Air Force. TXT is currently trading 28% below its 52 week high that it reached in September of last year (shown below). This drop is due to the systemic issues stemming from trade tensions as well as the overall market sell-off at the end of 2018. The company shows inconsistent top and bottom line growth because of the competitive nature of the space. There have been a few upwardly adjusted EPS estimates that have pushed the stock into a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) spot. With trade tension easing, a diverse portfolio, and EPS estimates on the rise, this buy ranking accurately reflects how I view a position in TXT. Conclusion Each of these three aerospace and defense stocks have a beta above 1 meaning that they will on average outperform a bull market and underperform a bear market. This high beta is a double-edged sword and should be considered before investing in any of these stocks. When a trade deal is finally made between the US and China, I am confident that these equities should all see a substantial rally because of how much each of these companies relies on exports. Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? Who wouldn't? Our annual Top 10s have beaten the market with amazing regularity. In 2018, while the market dropped -5.2%, the portfolio scored well into double-digits overall with individual stocks rising as high as +61.5%. And from 2012-2017, while the market boomed +126.3, Zacks' Top 10s reached an even more sensational +181.9%. See Latest Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report United Continental Holdings, Inc. (UAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Southwest Airlines Co. (LUV) : Free Stock Analysis Report American Airlines Group Inc. (AAL) : Free Stock Analysis Report Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMT) : Free Stock Analysis Report The Boeing Company (BA) : Free Stock Analysis Report Textron Inc. (TXT) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research The campaigner has spoken out against these police investigations. (FACEBOOK) A womens rights campaigner accused of transphobic comments has said criminal investigations into wrongly misgendering people are a waste of police time. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull hit out at police for investigating malicious communication after journalist Caroline Farrow was called in for questioning after using the wrong pronoun to describe a transgender girl. Ms Keen-Minshull, 44, was first interviewed by West Yorkshire Police last year on suspicion of malicious communication and by Wiltshire Police in January following two YouTube clips she posted. The campaigner was accused by Susie Green, whose child became the youngest in Britain to transition sex at the age of 16, of committing hate crime. Caroline Farrow is being questioned for comments she has made. (ITV) This comes as Catholic mum-of-five Mrs Farrow, 44, has been asked for an interview by Surrey Police for allegedly using the wrong pronoun to refer to Ms Greens transgender daughter. The campaigner, known as Posie Parker, said the police are wasting their time carrying out these investigations when they should be tackling problems facing the country, like knife crime. She said: We are in dangerous times when the police cant tackle knife crime, but they can interview people about these comments. Referring to her own investigation, Ms Keen-Minshull said: I have had no news whatsoever. I am waiting for them to decide whether or not they should charge me. Jackie Green is at the centre of the controversy. (YouTube) I cant see it is in the public interest. The campaigner described the police investigations as sinister and said she would hope the police are above such manipulation. The mother-of-four said it was abuse for such young people to be allowed to change their sex, she said: They will have no bodily sex functions as adults. It is disgusting, like Nazi Germany. I think once they are older, they should have 24 months of intensive therapy so they know what they are doing. Read More: Police investigation after journalist allegedly called a transgender woman a man Students claims civil rights violation after transgender students uses womens locker room Story continues We are committing grave harm, there is something very strange going on. With regards to Mrs Farrow being questioned, she said: There is a freedom of religious beliefs. It was bonified and fair. Mrs Farrow has said she is a Catholic journalist and it is her belief that a person cannot change sex. Ms Keen-Minshull said: It is ludicrous we are expected to go along with it. Does anyone have the right to tell me to go along with their ideology? A spokesman for Surrey Police, who are investigating Mrs Farrow, said they are carrying out a thorough investigation to establish whether any criminal offences have taken place. Ms Green has now withdrawn her complaint to Surrey Police over Mrs Farrows comments. A Media Officer for Wiltshire Police said: We can confirm that we are investigating an allegation of harassment. Weve submitted a file to the CPS and are awaiting their decision. As such, it would be inappropriate to comment any further at this time. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK Chicago (AFP) - The Catholic Church has failed to disclose more than 200 names of clergy accused of abuse in the US state of Illinois, a law firm claimed Wednesday. The firm Jeff Anderson & Associates has previously released names of accused clergy in other parts of the country based on information it compiled from public sources such as lawsuits. Its latest report outlined 395 Catholic clergy and laypersons in Illinois who have been accused of sexually assaulting children. The report includes names previously released by the six diocese in the midwestern state. But the firm said more than 200 of the names were not disclosed on church lists. "The lists, that they have disseminated publicly of the priests who are credibly accused, are underreported," attorney Jeff Anderson said at a news conference in Chicago. Survivor advocates have complained about church officials' reliance on the term "credibly accused" -- alleging that the church uses the distinction to limit disclosures. "The purpose of this report is to disclose the scope of the peril that the Catholic bishops have chosen not to disclose and keep secret," Anderson said. It was unclear how many of the accusations were new, however, because there was overlap with previous disclosures. The Illinois Attorney General's office revealed in December that its ongoing investigation had found at least 685 accused clergy. But, officials did not release any names. Attorneys on Wednesday said a majority of the people listed in their 185-page report were discovered through civil settlements. Two survivors who appeared at the news conference beside the attorneys said the disclosures were important, even if they were not new. "What it means to me is that we're finally holding them accountable," said self-identified survivor Joe Iacono, who struggled to hold back tears. "It gives me power to know that I'm not alone," he said. Story continues The Vatican in February held an historic summit to address the ongoing child sexual abuse crisis gripping the church. During the summit, a top German cardinal admitted that files on accused priests were destroyed or never drawn up. At its conclusion, Pope Francis promised an "all-out battle" against the scourge that has damaged the Church's reputation worldwide. China on Wednesday welcomed the new president of Kazakhstan as an "old friend" after the sudden resignation of veteran strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev. Nazarbayev, the only leader an independent Kazakhstan has ever known, shocked the nation on Tuesday with his resignation after nearly three decades in power. "China understands and supports President Nazarbayev's decision," said foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang. "Since we established diplomatic ties 27 years ago President Nazarbayev has been committed to friendly relations," Geng told reporters, noting the oil-rich nation will achieve new progress under the acting president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Observers widely expect Nazarbayev, 78, to retain control from behind the scenes. He came to power when Kazakhstan was still a Soviet republic. He passed the presidency to the chairman of the senate, loyalist Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, 65, a former prime minister and career diplomat who was sworn in on Wednesday. "The acting President Tokayev is an old friend and good friend of the Chinese people," Geng said. Kazakhstan, which shares a border with China's restive Xinjiang region, has been on diplomatic tiptoes since its major trading partner began to send ethnic Kazakhs to internment camps under its anti-extremism policy. Earlier this month authorities in Kazakhstan arrested a Xinjiang rights activist, who had campaigned for victims of China's security crackdown in the region, and charged him with inciting inter-ethnic hatred. The gunman screamed Ive got a bomb as police captured him. Source: 7 News The bravery displayed by the police officers who captured the Christchurch gunman has been heralded by the New Zealand police minister who revealed what the suspect shouted as he was taken to the ground. Police Minister Stuart Nash said the courage and response time from the officers involved almost certainly prevented the gunman from launching another attack, after he shot up two mosques during Friday morning prayer last week. Shortly after the gunman returned to his car following an attack on the second mosque, two police officers rammed the suspects car, forcing him off the road before dragging him from the drivers seat. It was there he yelled Ive got a bomb, Nash explained. These two guys pull this guy out but at the same time he was yelling, Ive got a bomb and shooting at the same time, so we overuse the word hero, but not in this case, he said. When quizzed if the officers heroism would be officially recognised, Nash said there arent too many more acts of bravery higher than that. Fifty people were killed and dozens more injured during the 36-minute reign of terror. Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, 28, was charged with murder one day after the attack. $10m raised for Christchurch families The outpouring of support continues with around 5m raised for the families of victims. The largest of a series of crowdfunding pages quickly set up following Fridays terror attack in Christchurch, run by the New Zealand Council of Victim Support Groups, had collected more than 3.8m by Thursday. Weve been overwhelmed with donations, more than we thought possible, organisers said of the 86,000 donations to the Givealittle page. Relatives and other people arrive to attend the burial ceremony of the victims of the mosque attacks, at the Memorial Park Cemetery. Source: Reuters Mourners break down at a memorial for the victims. Source: AP A second campaign, by the New Zealand Islamic Info Centre, had separately received about 1.2m for grieving families. No amount of money will bring back their loved ones, but we do hope to lessen their burden in some way, organisers on the LaunchGood page said. Victims also have access to New Zealands public insurance scheme, the Accident Compensation Corporation, which has offered assistance with funeral costs, grants to families and covers medical costs for those hurt, including visitors to the country. Story continues It was earlier reported A-list celebrities such as Madonna, Ben Stiller and Chris Rock had been donating to various charities following the event. Zaed Mustafa, in wheelchair, arrives at Memorial Park to farwell his loved ones who were killed in the massacre. Source: AP The donations come after the Melbourne teen, dubbed egg boy announced he would donate the money raised for him in a crowdfunding page to the victims. The 17-year-old was whacked in the face by disgraced Senator Fraser Anning and taken to the ground by his supporters after he slapped an egg on the independents head on Saturday. Will Connollys action came after the ultra-conservative Queensland senator said Muslim immigration contributed to the 50 deaths in the Christchurch massacres. The former owner of a Florida spa named in a human trafficking investigation refuted reports about selling access to President Donald Trump in her first interview. Speaking Wednesday night on "NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt," Li "Cindy" Yang defended herself two days after Democratic leaders released a letter requesting the FBI start counterintelligence and criminal investigations. Yang told the network she believes her ethnicity and political preference sparked allegations of her working as a spy. "I'm Republican and I'm Chinese," Yang said. "That's the reason the Democrats want to check me." After authorities charged New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and 24 other men with soliciting prostitution at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida, Yang came under scrutiny. Refresher: Who is Cindy Yang and how is she connected to Trump and the spa where Patriots owner was charged? What went down: How Florida police snared nearly 300 including Robert Kraft at spas used for sex trafficking Yang told NBC she sold the business about seven years ago, but she also runs a consulting business that, according to its website, offers to sell Chinese clients access to Trump. GY US Investments LLC describes itself as a firm that helps American businesses "expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace. In February, Yang posted a widely-circulated Facebook selfie with the president at a Super Bowl party at the Trump International Gold resort in Florida. "I love Americans," Yang told NBC, adding that she immigrated in 1999 and is now a U.S. citizen. "I love our president. I don't do anything wrong." While living in the states, Yang said she has not had any contact with members of the Chinese government. Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence and Judiciary committees requested the FBI investigate Yang in a letter dated March 15. They wrote that her business could allow adversary governments to gather blackmail material on politicians. Story continues Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, told NBC that someone like Yang probably came up on Chinese intelligence services' radar. Her proximity to power, Figliuzzi said, could mean she was an unwitting agent of the Chinese government. Yang denied those allegations on the show, saying she attended events at Mar-a-Lago to be social and donate to charity. As for the salon, Yang told NBC she is not involved in it and no prostitution took place while she owned it. "I sold to her in 2012 or 2013," Yang said. "How they do their business has nothing to do with me." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ex-spa owner Yang denies working as Chinese spy selling access to Trump in first interview By Mayela Armas and Corina Pons CARACAS, March 20 (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc plans to sell several tons of gold placed as collateral by Venezuela's central bank on a $1.6 billion loan after the deadline for repurchasing them expired this month, sources said, a setback for President Nicolas Maduro's efforts to hold onto the country's fast-shrinking reserves. Maduro's government has since 2014 used financial operations known as gold swaps to use its international reserves to gain access to cash after a slump in oil revenues left it struggling to obtain hard currency. In the past two years, however, it has struggled to recover its collateral. Under the terms of the 2015 deal with Citigroup's Citibank, Venezuela was due to repay $1.1 billion of the loan on March 11, according to four sources familiar with the situation. The remainder of the loan comes due next year. Citibank plans to sell the gold held as a guarantee - which has a market value of roughly $1.358 billion - to recover the first tranche of the loan and will deposit the excess of roughly $258 million in a bank account in New York, two of the sources said. The ability of Maduro's government to repay the loans have been complicated by the South American country's dire economic situation as well as financial sanctions imposed by the United States and some European nations. Most Western nations say that Maduro's re-election to a six-year term last year was marred by fraud and have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate president. Guaido invoked Venezuela's constitution to announce an interim presidency in January. However, Maduro retains control over state institutions in Venezuela and has the support of the powerful military. He has branded Guaido a U.S. puppet. With Washington's support, Guaido's team has taken control of state oil company PDVSA's U.S. refining subsidiary but its attempt to negotiate a 120-day extension of the repurchase deadline for the collateral was unsuccessful, the sources said. Story continues "Citibank was told that there was a force majeure event in Venezuela, so the grace period was necessary, but they did not grant it," said one of the sources, who belongs to Guaido's team. A Venezuelan government source familiar with the matter confirmed that the country's Central Bank did not transfer the money to Citibank this month. Citigroup declined to comment. The Venezuelan Central Bank did not immediately respond to a request for information. In a report presented to the U.S. securities regulator in February, Citibank said Venezuela's Central Bank had agreed four years ago to buy back in March 2019 a "significant volume of gold" as part of a contract signed to obtain some $1.6 billion. Citibank said that, following the transaction, it owned the gold. Guaido is attempting to freeze bank accounts and gold owned by Venezuela abroad, much of which remains in the Bank of England. At the end of 2018, the Central Bank paid investment bank Deutsche Bank AG about $700 million to recover ownership of a portion of gold used as collateral for a loan. However, the bullion remained in the custody of the Bank of England, despite the Central Bank's request to repatriate it. In light of that transaction, the sources said there was no incentive for the Central Bank to repay Citibank. RENEGOTIATE DEBT Guaido's team also began preparing this month for a possible debt restructuring in a bid to ease payments and stop any hostile action by creditors, said two sources who took part in the discussion. In meetings between members of Guaido's team with legal advisors in the United States, there were discussions of starting renegotiations soon not only with Venezuelan bondholders, but also with the Chinese and Russian governments and companies affected by a wave of nationalizations, said the sources. "We want to address the debt in a comprehensive way. We calculate that it totals $200 billion," said one of the sources. The Citgo refinery unit, Venezuela's main asset abroad, is under scrutiny because it serves as a guarantee for the issuance of a PDVSA bond and a loan from Russian oil company Rosneft. Guaido's advisers are also evaluating the payment in the coming weeks of around $72 million in interest coming due on PDVSA's 2020 bonds to avoid any action by creditors against Citgo. (Reporting by Corina Pons and Mayela Armas Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) By Mayela Armas and Corina Pons CARACAS (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc plans to sell several tons of gold placed as collateral by Venezuela's central bank on a $1.6 billion loan after the deadline for repurchasing them expired this month, sources said, a setback for President Nicolas Maduro's efforts to hold onto the country's fast-shrinking reserves. Maduro's government has since 2014 used financial operations known as gold swaps to use its international reserves to gain access to cash after a slump in oil revenues left it struggling to obtain hard currency. In the past two years, however, it has struggled to recover its collateral. Under the terms of the 2015 deal with Citigroup's Citibank, Venezuela was due to repay $1.1 billion of the loan on March 11, according to four sources familiar with the situation. The remainder of the loan comes due next year. Citibank plans to sell the gold held as a guarantee - which has a market value of roughly $1.358 billion - to recover the first tranche of the loan and will deposit the excess of roughly $258 million in a bank account in New York, two of the sources said. The ability of Maduro's government to repay the loans have been complicated by the South American country's dire economic situation as well as financial sanctions imposed by the United States and some European nations. Most Western nations say that Maduro's re-election to a six-year term last year was marred by fraud and have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate president. Guaido invoked Venezuela's constitution to announce an interim presidency in January. However, Maduro retains control over state institutions in Venezuela and has the support of the powerful military. He has branded Guaido a U.S. puppet. With Washington's support, Guaido's team has taken control of state oil company PDVSA's U.S. refining subsidiary but its attempt to negotiate a 120-day extension of the repurchase deadline for the collateral was unsuccessful, the sources said. "Citibank was told that there was a force majeure event in Venezuela, so the grace period was necessary, but they did not grant it," said one of the sources, who belongs to Guaido's team. A Venezuelan government source familiar with the matter confirmed that the country's Central Bank did not transfer the money to Citibank this month. Citigroup declined to comment. The Venezuelan Central Bank did not immediately respond to a request for information. In a report presented to the U.S. securities regulator in February, Citibank said Venezuela's Central Bank had agreed four years ago to buy back in March 2019 a "significant volume of gold" as part of a contract signed to obtain some $1.6 billion. Citibank said that, following the transaction, it owned the gold. Guaido is attempting to freeze bank accounts and gold owned by Venezuela abroad, much of which remains in the Bank of England. At the end of 2018, the Central Bank paid investment bank Deutsche Bank AG about $700 million to recover ownership of a portion of gold used as collateral for a loan. However, the bullion remained in the custody of the Bank of England, despite the Central Bank's request to repatriate it. In light of that transaction, the sources said there was no incentive for the Central Bank to repay Citibank. RENEGOTIATE DEBT Guaido's team also began preparing this month for a possible debt restructuring in a bid to ease payments and stop any hostile action by creditors, said two sources who took part in the discussion. In meetings between members of Guaido's team with legal advisors in the United States, there were discussions of starting renegotiations soon not only with Venezuelan bondholders, but also with the Chinese and Russian governments and companies affected by a wave of nationalizations, said the sources. "We want to address the debt in a comprehensive way. We calculate that it totals $200 billion," said one of the sources. The Citgo refinery unit, Venezuela's main asset abroad, is under scrutiny because it serves as a guarantee for the issuance of a PDVSA bond and a loan from Russian oil company Rosneft. Guaido's advisers are also evaluating the payment in the coming weeks of around $72 million in interest coming due on PDVSA's 2020 bonds to avoid any action by creditors against Citgo. (Reporting by Corina Pons and Mayela Armas; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) Clorox is taking a swipe at the maker of Lysol in a dirty spat over false advertising. The Clorox Company announced Wednesday in a statement that it filed a lawsuit against Reckitt Benckiser for its Lysol brand "in response to a wide-ranging false and deceptive advertising campaign." The lawsuit, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California, is asking for a court order to stop "the deceptive ads and requiring RB to surrender the profits it has earned as a result of them," Clorox said in a statement. Reckitt Benckiser, a British multinational consumer goods conglomerate, said in an email to USA TODAY Thursday that it stands "behind the claims we make in our advertising and take any accusations of this nature extremely seriously. The lawsuit says several of the television, internet and social media ads disparage Clorox products and compare them "unfavorably to Lysol products in terms of efficacy and durability." Costco next big product: Shoppers are spotting giant lobster claws at some stores Roundup week killer: Product was major factor in man's cancer, California jury determines Clorox, which calls itself "the top seller of bleach-based products," says in the lawsuit that the campaign has "injured Cloroxs standing with consumers and diverted sales and market share" to its competitor. "Consumers deserve truthful information, and advertising that can help them make the product choices that are best for their households," said Eric Reynolds, executive vice president-Cleaning and Burt's Bees in the Clorox statement. "We're not opposed to competitive advertising, but we are opposed to advertising designed to mislead." The lawsuit also requests corrective advertising, unspecified damages and attorneys' fees. "The egregious and misleading nature of their campaign compelled us to file this lawsuit," Reynolds said in the statement. "We owe it to our consumers, employees, customers and shareholders to hold RB accountable for attempting to gain unfair competitive advantage through these deceptive practices." Story continues Lysol's parent company said in its statement to USA TODAY that Lysol Spray is the No.1 disinfectant brand in the US with over 50 percent of households using Lysol products." We cannot comment on the Clorox statement or any other details related to ongoing litigation, but we can state that we would never mislead consumers, as a matter of principle, the company said. Pesticides in food: Strawberries, spinach, kale have the most residue, a new report finds Possible blackout coming: Will Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and Viacom go dark for AT&T's DirecTV subscribers? Follow Kelly Tyko on Twitter: @KellyTyko This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Clorox tells Lysol to clean up its act in false-advertising lawsuit Fitch Ratings says Canada's debt could make it more vulnerable during a recession (Getty) Fitch Ratings is showing concern over Canadas balance sheet. Canada's gross general government debt, combining federal and provincial fiscal accounts, is higher than other 'AAA' rated sovereigns, excepting the U.S, and remains close to a level that is incompatible with 'AAA' status. We continue to forecast the general government debt ratio to fall toward 85 per cent of GDP over the medium term. The credit rating agency says it is encouraged by efforts in the latest federal budget to reduce the debt burden. However, modest fiscal loosening and sustained deficits will increase the economy's exposure to a downturn, said Fitch Ratings in a research note. Fitch Ratings says its not sure Ottawa's plan to tighten the purse strings will work. Non-interest spending is now programmed at 14.6 per cent of GDP in 2018-2019 but is supposed to fall over the medium term to 13.8 per cent by 2023-2024, an assumption that may not bear out, said Fitch Ratings. The additional spending under the budget plan forecasts the federal deficit to return to close to $20 billion over the next two years with no plan to balance it. Fitch Ratings says its growth expectations are broadly in line with the federal governments. The Liberals revised GDP down to 1.8 per cent this year and 1.6 per cent the year after. Fitch Ratings forecasts 1.6 per cent this year, and 1.7 per cent in 2020. The credit rating agency isnt sounding the alarm just yet, but there could be trouble ahead. While the budget is broadly in line with earlier trends, the preference for continued deficits and increased program spending over fiscal consolidation could increase the vulnerability of public finances to a faster economic slowdown or sudden shock, said Fitch Ratings. This is not our base case, but disappointing 4Q18 growth numbers and weakening macroeconomic outlooks in major global economies including Europe, China and other major emerging markets point to downside risks for the Canadian economy. Subscribe now Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android. The Cooper Companies Inc. COO has been an active player in addressing the global epidemic of myopia disease. Recently, the company announced that its CooperVision unit is steadily taking multiple initiatives to increase adoption of its innovative MiSight 1 day product across major world markets. This apart, CooperVisions Eye care professional (ECP)-focused standards development and educational programs are gaining traction globally. CooperVisions Global Foothold Strong In Australia and New Zealand, ECP-focused programs have already started operating. Across Canada, CooperVision has launched multiple tools for ECPs. These include two recent webinars on myopia management and experts that drew nearly 2,000 attendees. In the United Kingdom, MiSight has been made available at Boots Opticians the eyecare subsidiary of Boots UK. Investors should notice that this development complements expanded access to MiSight 1 day at independent ECPs. In Spain, France and the BeNeLux region, MiSight 1 day Professional Services leads have been recently appointed for market expansion. They will train ECPs for pediatric myopia. A Sneak Peek at Specialty Lenses Portfolio Cooper Companies maintained its leading position in the markets of specialty lenses, supported by highly exclusive products like Biofinity and Clariti. In fact, the companys flagship silicone hydrogel lenses are also expected to deliver robust sales for in the coming quarters. The companys MyDay lenses are already available in Europe and have gained significant traction within a short span of time. Clariti lenses also hold solid prospects for the company. The CooperVision segment garnered revenues worth $470.1 million, up 8% on a pro-forma basis and 6% on a reported basis. Per management, the segment saw a noticeable uptick in the Single-use sphere lenses (28% of CooperVision), reflecting pro-forma growth of 17% driven by accelerating growth in both Clariti and MyDay. Story continues In January, CooperVision acquired Blanchard contact lenses, thereby strengthening its specialty segment. Further, CooperVision announced the nationwide availability of expanded parameters for its Avaira Vitality toric two-week contact lenses in the recent past. This now includes plus powers, high minus powers, and a -2.25D cylinder. In February, CooperVision contact lens manufacturing facility in Alajuela, Costa Rica has been awarded the prestigious LEED Silver certification for its environmentally-conscious design and operation. For fiscal 2019, revenues from CooperVision are expected between $1,968 and $1,995 million, higher than $1,940 million and $1,980 million anticipated earlier. This represents 3-6% year-over-year growth on a pro-forma basis. Market Prospects Rising prevalence of myopia and a geriatric population are the major growth drivers in the global contact lenses market. Per Research and Markets, the global contact lenses market is projected to reach a worth of $9.2 billion by 2023, multiplying at a CAGR of 4.9% (from 2018 to 2023). Considering the bountiful prospects in the niche markets, Copper Companies latest initiatives can be considered as well-timed. However, the company faces cutthroat competition from other healthcare behemoths like Johnson & Johnson JNJ, National Vision Holdings, Inc. EYE and Novartis AG NVS. Johnson & Johnson has been gaining traction in the contact-lenses space with unique solutions like Blink Contracts lubricating eyedrop, Blink-N-Clean Lens Drops, Blink Tears Preservative Free lubricating eyedrops and many more. Meanwhile, National Vision is a leading player in the U.S. optical retail industry. The company manages more than 200 Vision Centers that are located in Walmart, across the country. It is interesting to note that Novartis announced that its eye-care unit, Alcon, has acquired privately-held U.S.-based medical device development company PowerVision, Inc. Per the terms of the deal, Alcon paid $285 million to PowerVision at closing, with additional payments based on specified regulatory and commercial milestones starting 2023. PowerVision develops fluid-based accommodating intraocular lenses for cataract surgery patients. Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, wouldn't you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? From more than 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank, these 10 were picked by a process that consistently beats the market. Even during 2018 while the market dropped -5.2%, our Top 10s were up well into double-digits. And during bullish 2012 2017, they soared far above the market's +126.3%, reaching +181.9%. This year, the portfolio features a player that thrives on volatility, an AI comer, and a dynamic tech company that helps doctors deliver better patient outcomes at lower costs. See Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Novartis AG (NVS) : Free Stock Analysis Report Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) : Free Stock Analysis Report The Cooper Companies, Inc. (COO) : Free Stock Analysis Report National Vision Holdings, Inc. (EYE) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Five mosques in Birmingham had their windows smashed in with sledgehammers overnight on Thursday (SWNS) West Midlands Police has asked anyone with information on the attacks to come forward. A counter-terrorism investigation is under way after five Birmingham mosques had their windows smashed with sledgehammers overnight. Officers were called at 2.32am on Thursday after reports of an attack on a mosque on Birchfield Road in Birmingham, West Midlands Police said. Counter terrorism police have launched a probe into the attacks (SWNS) GV of Witton Islamic Centre in Birmingham was one of four mosques attacked with a sledghammer on March 21, 2019 (SWNS) Shortly after the incident, police were called to a second mosque attack on Slade Road in Erdington at 3.14am. Following the second report, patrols started in areas with mosques, before officers discovered further damage to a mosque on Witton Road, Aston and on Broadway, Perry Barr. Later on Thursday, pictures posted on social media showing smashed windows at the Mosque and Muslim Community Centre in Albert Road, Aston. Police said forensic officers are working to identify evidence, while CCTV is also being examined, The force also confirmed neighbourhood officers are working closely with mosques around the West Midlands on Thursday. Read more: Police step up UK mosque patrols in wake of New Zealand terror attack Isis leader calls for retaliatory attacks over New Zealand terror attack Christchurch mosque terror attacks: At least 50 killed in New Zealand massacre The attacks are being treated as linked. West Midlands Police and West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit are yet to establish the motive. The incidents follow news of the devastating mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, which claimed the lives of 50 people and left dozens seriously injured. Terror suspect Brenton Tarrant has been charged with murder and is due to reappear in court on April 5. Security has been tightened in areas with mosques across the West Midlands (PA) Members of the Birmingham Muslim community had already spoken of their fears following the New Zealand terror attack which left 50 people dead (SWNS) West Midlands Police Chief Constable Dave Thompson said: Since the tragic events in Christchurch, New Zealand, officers and staff from West Midlands Police have been working closely with our faith partners across the region to offer reassurance and support at mosques, churches and places of prayer. At the moment we dont know the motive for last nights attacks. Story continues The Mosque and Muslim Community Centre Aston on Albert Road suffered damage in the wave of attacks across Birmingham (SWNS) West Midlands Police have appealed for more information on the incidents, which are being treated as linked (Sky News) What I can say is that the force and the Counter Terrorism Unit are working side-by-side to find whoever is responsible. Mr Thompson added: At difficult times like this, it is incredibly important that everyone unites against those who seek to create discord, uncertainty and fear in our communities. My message following the attacks on Masjids in neighbouring Aston and Erdington neighbourhoods: pic.twitter.com/jyRaKZGLoj Waseem Zaffar (@WaseemZaffar) March 21, 2019 West Midlands Police has asked anyone with information on the attacks to come forward. You lose some, you win some. That seems to be the current trend among major crypto market makers, as UK firm B2C2 announced its expansion into the US Thursday amid glitches and major departures elsewhere. No doubt, it sniffs an opportunity for fresh meat, having already stretched into Tokyo and Europe. When it comes to the US, it is a market that in terms of regulation, you have to be careful, B2C2s CEO Max Boonen told The Block. It took us some time to get comfortable about the USIts a very big market for crypto. The stars have aligned. To lead the US front, it has hired Rob Catalanello an electrical engineer turned e-commerce guru, who served on New Yorks' Federal Reserve FX Market Committee for nine years. I was very impressed by B2C2s tech, and its business model, Catalanello said in a joint-interview, explaining his decision to head its US branch, which will be based in Jersey City. The firm will initially focus on cash trading against the US dollar, targeting wholesale institutional investors primarily, but did not rule out eventually introducing its main product of derivatives trading. Were not going to cut corners. FINRA, CFTC [regulatory bodies] those things are in playBut we want to make a success of cash trading in the US, and well follow demand if we need to start offering different products, Boonen said. The firm recently surpassed its 1 millionth electronic OTC trade in just over 3 years of operating. Im very optimistic based on the early response, Catalanello said, noting that B2C2s technological leadership and institutional-geared customer service would help differentiate it in the US OTC market, which is currently dominated by Circle and Cumberland. f Rahm Emmanuel (C), former White House Chief of Staff under US President Barack Obama believes cryptocurrencies are the future. | Source: REUTERS/Jim Young According to a report in Forbes, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel formerly Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama told one-time CCN writer Benjamin Pirus that the future for cryptocurrency is affirmative. The Trend Lines Are Affirmative Emmanuel spoke to the potential for cryptocurrency to play a serious role in debt markets as well as in third world countries, where currencies can be unreliable. Despite having a full grasp of how crypto works, Emmanuel feels positive that it will reshape the financial aspects of society. He said: The trend lines are affirmative for its future. I dont know if thats ten years, and I dont know if thats 20 years, but its affirmative. I dont know what it is. I know its an alternative way to trade, and therefore, I gotta learn about it, and I gotta be honest, as mayor, its not the top 100 things I would have to learn about. Emmanuel also said that nation-states are falling apart, while city-states are emerging. For the mayor of one of the largest cities in the US to speak in this manner is revealing. Chicago and other major cities have their own wage laws. Some of them even have their own income taxes. He added: One day, somebodys going to figure out whether thats Argentina, ten years from now, five years from now how to use cryptocurrencies to stay alive when theyre facing a financial crisis, and then youre going to find out that this moment has arrived. Is Crypto For the Next Generation? Personally, Emmanuel holds no cryptocurrency. He hinted that its really for the next generation, saying: Read the full story on CCN.com. BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders must show flexibility on Britain's Brexit plans given the "chaos" currently reigning in London, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said, adding that Britain would have to give a valid reason for the time extension it was seeking. As leader of the country that will be most directly affected if Britain leaves as scheduled on March 29 without a withdrawal agreement to regulate things, Varadkar's views carry considerable weight among his EU colleagues. "The situation in London is somewhat chaotic at the moment," he said ahead of a Brussels summit on Thursday that will deal primarily with Britain's departure from the EU. "We need to cut the entire British establishment a little bit of slack on this and support their request ... for a short extension. No deal will only ever be a British choice." With just days to go before Britain's scheduled departure, British Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday requested an extension to the so-called Article 50 period, which Varadkar said the EU was open to. "I think there is an openness to an extension across the board but we cant have a situation whereby we have a rolling cliff edge, where we just put off decisions and deadlines every couple of months," he said. "Brexit will require some very hard choices for the United Kingdom. It was never going to be all good and no bad." (Reporting by Robin Emmott and Alastair Macdonald, writing by Thomas Escritt, editing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Raissa Kasolowsky) On March 19, news broke that Democratic presidential candidates will participate in a special debate exclusively focused on LGBT issues in October, right as the election heats up. According to progressive gay-news site The Advocate, this forum will focus on on the lives and rights of LGBTQ people and offer a chance to educate the potential next president on the challenges still facing queer Americans. This might sound nice to some, but its a miserable idea. Like much of whats pushed by progressive LGBT advocates, this forum is a purely symbolic gesture that exemplifies the natural consequences of identity politics run amok. Pleasant buzzwords aside, an LGBT-only presidential debate is entirely pointless and only serves to distract from more pressing issues. Worse, it inflates the reputation of hyper-partisan gay-advocacy organizations that often do more harm than good. What exactly would be debated? Its hard to imagine any potential Democratic challenger offering a dissenting viewpoint on issues like gay marriage or transgender inclusion in the military. If anything, this debate will likely devolve into a revolving cycle of virtue-signaling agreement, with each candidate competing to sound more sympathetic to the gay plight than the others. Thats not productive its performative. Indulging such identitarian excesses would come at a cost. After all, there is a finite number of debates to be had during a limited campaign season. So any debate dedicated exclusively to LGBT issues is a debate not dedicated to the opioid crisis, poverty, the national debt, or any of the other countless maladies plaguing our society. In a time when gay-marriage rights are settled law, assigning entire news cycles and presidential forums to debate the less significant LGBT issues still in contention seems, well, nonsensical. Wouldnt it be more important for Democrats to debate how theyre going to pay for the $93 trillion in Green New Deal proposals that many of the candidates have signed on to? Or perhaps they should discuss the merits of the barbaric and wildly unpopular practice of late-term abortion, which several Democratic challengers have recently refused to condemn? The Democratic base is actually somewhat divided on these issues, and could benefit from a debate that would clarify where each candidate stands. Story continues Alas, such issues are certainly not what the party wants to draw attention to. Supporting this distraction disguised as an LGBT debate rewards that very misalignment of priorities that stresses identity politics over actual issues. In reality, American issues are gay issues, because the biggest problems facing most gay people are the same problems facing most Americans. Theres something fundamentally paternalistic about the notion that gay people need their own special debate, as if the issues everyone else cares about arent at the forefront of our lives as well. This isnt a precedent we want to set. Before long, well have separate Democratic debates for every identity group under the sun race, and gender, and so on. Will we eventually forgo talking about national issues altogether? The (self-proclaimed) gay-rights organization Human Rights Campaign (HRC) will co-sponsor this debate, so the forum will also have the consequence of further legitimizing an objectionable group. HRC claims to be a neutral advocate for gay rights and human rights a noble goal even describing itself as the largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans. But in reality, the Human Rights Campaign is a hyper-partisan propaganda outfit that deserves to be disregarded, not rewarded with prime-time coverage. The group certainly advocates for some laudable causes, such as an end to the anti-gay abuses in Chechnya, Russia, that have seen the death and detainment of dozens. Yet the HRC is essentially an arm of the left-wing movement, outrageously smearing congressional Republicans as anti-gay for their stances on completely unrelated issues such as Obamacare, immigration, and Planned Parenthood funding. Theyre so skewed that when the Trump administration unveiled its diplomatic initiative to fight the criminalization of homosexuality globally, the gay-rights group didnt celebrate the rare moment of bipartisan agreement on human rights they put out a Twitter thread slamming the president. Does that sound like an organization that will fairly host an unbiased debate? It doesnt seem like that was ever really the intention, anyway. The entire idea of an LGBT-exclusive presidential forum is essentially a PR stunt, meant to signal the partys supposed pro-gay bona fides without actually having to engage in meaningful debate. If Democrats were actually interested in meaningful conversation on LGBT issues, theyd reach across the aisle to conservative groups or perhaps even right-leaning gay people to sponsor a debate about the right way forward for a pluralistic society. Dont hold your breath waiting for that to happen. More from National Review Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Paul Sancya/AP, Steven Senne/AP, AP) Kirsten Gillibrand formally joined the presidential field this week, saying shes running because America deserves a leader who makes big, bold, brave choices. To prove the point, Gillibrand will kick off her campaign with a speech in front of the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan this weekend. Because nothing says bold like trolling a president who has pretty much zero approval among Democratic primary voters. To rephrase another, better-known New York senator, some see the world as it is and ask why. Gillibrand apparently sees the world as it is and asks why not make it into a photo op. Anyway, boldness seems to be the overarching theme of this early Democratic campaign. Just about every candidate is running on a gauzy platform of what were told are impossibly bold proposals. Elizabeth Warren wants a tax on assets and a breakup of the big tech companies. Bernie Sanders is back with free college and expanded Social Security. Pete Buttigieg and others have talked about expanding the number of liberal justices on the Supreme Court and eliminating the Electoral College. Several candidates have come out for government-run health care and embraced the Green New Deal that would transform the American economy, as well as reparations for slavery. Im not saying these are bad ideas; theres merit in many of them, and plenty thats worth debating. But we seem to be confusing this concept of boldness with its exact opposite. In politics, just because an idea is big doesnt make it courageous. And just declaring something bold doesnt make it so. Presumably, the current crop of Democratic candidates are harking back to the partys proud legacy of 20th century leaders, revered for their boldness. Theres a nostalgia for Franklin Roosevelts New Deal and Lyndon Johnsons Great Society, for the unabashed and lofty idealism of the Kennedys. What were seeing is a reaction to the last Democratic campaign, when the nominee embodied incrementalism and outsize caution and bombed in huge swaths of America. This time out, its passion first, practicality later. Story continues But you know, if being bold were that easy, everyone would do it. We dont remember Roosevelt as bold because he expanded government, although he did plenty of that. He was bold because he took on his aristocratic peers, and later the pacifists in his own party, at great political peril. (Roosevelts own court-packing scheme went nowhere, by the way, and is generally considered one of his least ennobling ideas.) Johnson wasnt bold just because he spent more on the social programs liberals championed; he was bold because he broke dramatically with his fellow Southerners, and in so doing risked the future of the Democratic Party, over the basic issue of human equality. Perhaps no Democratic candidate of the era displayed the kind of boldness that Robert Kennedy did. But thats not because he joined the antiwar marchers; its because he told people what he believed, whether they liked it or not. In an act of political courage none of todays candidates would dare to emulate, Kennedy went into rooms full of college students and told them he would end their draft deferments, because he didnt think it was fair to ask only the poor to bear the burden of war. Thats bold. Scoff if you want, but Bill Clinton was plenty bold in 1992, when he told his own partys interest groups that they needed to care as much about the middle class as they did about the poor. Howard Dean was bold in 2004, when he loudly opposed the war that virtually every other leading Democrat was too afraid to denounce. Contrast any of those examples with the current crop of candidates, who seem to think the hallmark of boldness is a willingness to tell reliable primary voters exactly what theyre desperate to hear, in the most dramatic terms possible. How bold is it to tell liberals you want to soak the rich and nationalize health care? That youd somehow change the rules to make it easier for Democrats to win elections and court rulings, when we cant even manage to keep the government open for more than a few months at a time? That we can live in a magical reality where government can spend as much as it wants, because apparently the newest economic thinking is that debt can be limitless and everything will be fine? I probably wont be moderating any debates this year, but if I did fair notice I would ask the candidates to name one thing they propose that isnt immediately popular with the primary electorate. The boldest stand to this point might belong to Cory Booker, who argues that nuclear power has to be a component of any serious energy plan. Thats not an easy position to take in Democratic politics. What else would actual boldness look like in 2019? It might be arguing that if youre going to expand a raft of social programs, you ought to be willing to reform those programs too, and at least make a stab at paying for them. And the only possible path to doing that not to mention making some of the investments in infrastructure we badly need is to scale back retirement benefits for the wealthy through means testing, rather than expanding them, and raising payroll taxes for everyone else. Boldness could be telling people straight up that there is no solution for climate change that doesnt include sacrifice. Or that Clintons admonition from 1992 is still true: You cant be a party that loves jobs and hates capital. Real boldness might lose, spectacularly. Then again, it might not. Because what Democrats are doing now, in this opening act of 2020, looks an awful lot like the mirror image of Trumps familiar, played-out con. Make America great again! Build a fantasy wall! Mexico will pay for it! Win, win, win, and all of that nonsense. Look at any decent poll for the last year, and you will find that a majority of Americans including the independents who tend to tip presidential campaigns are weary as hell of this total disconnect from governing reality. I guess its possible they just want the liberal version of Trumps little show, where everything is possible and we all get a free hat and a bunch of other fun stuff for nothing. But I tend to think the real contrast to Trump would be a candidate who tells people what can actually be done and what its going to cost them, because you cant change the trajectory of the country without leveling with voters first. Big, bold and brave sure is a nice, pithy slogan. Maybe weve all had enough of those. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: By Tom Sims and Andreas Framke FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank chief executive Christian Sewing believes there is a strong case for a merger with Commerzbank, a person with direct knowledge of his thinking said. Sewing's view sets the stage for a potential showdown with labor unions who fear as many as 30,000 job cuts in Germany's two biggest banks become one. He will also have to persuade some investors who are skeptical about the merits of a tie-up. The supervisory boards at both banks met separately on Thursday and discussed the proposed merger, but no decisions were taken by either. Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank declined to comment. Sewing sees a merger bringing multiple benefits, including "clear" dominance in the combined bank's German home market, scale, and shared technology costs, the person said before Thursday's Deutsche Bank supervisory board meeting. He also believes that a combined entity would improve the cost of funding, with "the best funding ever", the person said, adding that jobs will need to be cut with or without a merger. Deutsche Bank's CEO has urged investors to be patient in recent months, preferring to focus on an internal restructuring before taking on a big project, other people with knowledge of his thinking have said. Sewing's until now private view also contrasts with the more neutral tone set in a letter to employees on Sunday after both Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank confirmed talks. Sewing said then that many factors could still prevent a merger. And Deutsche Bank would not have entered talks if the bank expected negotiations to fail, a second person with knowledge of Sewing's thinking said. Deutsche Bank's supervisory board debated the merger for three hours, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said after the meeting. Sewing informed the board about the possible merger and said the bank was at the beginning of doing due diligence, said the person. Story continues At Commerzbank's supervisory board meeting, labor representatives voiced concerns about the merger, another person with direct knowledge of the matter said. The powerful Verdi labor union, which is on the supervisory boards of both banks, has voiced fierce objections to a merger, saying that as many as 30,000 jobs are at risk over the long term. Together, the banks employ 140,000 people worldwide. A Verdi spokeswoman said on Thursday that its position has not changed. RESERVATIONS At least three of Deutsche Bank's top investors have voiced reservations about a merger, three people with knowledge of the matter said. Two of them were awaiting details from Sewing and his colleagues at Thursday's meeting, two of the people said. Ratings agency Moody's said this week that a successful tie-up may lift the banks' profit, but earnings would remain below global competitors and a deal now would delay their overhauls. "We would view the impediments to execution on such a deal as very significant," Moody's said. Some German officials have pushed for a merger because they want a strong bank to compete with U.S. and Chinese players. However, euro zone banking watchdogs on Thursday said banks planning mergers should make sure they could be wound down in a crisis to avoid taxpayers having to foot the bill. "If a bank becomes too big, complex or interconnected... it needs to have additional capital," the ECB's top watchdog Andrea Enria said when asked in the European Parliament about a possible tie-up between Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank. Since the financial crisis a decade ago, European banks remain relatively weak compared with their U.S. counterparts, said John McFarlane, chairman of Barclays, and it will take a while for them to recover. "Even if you get consolidation in Europe, take Deutsche if that ever happens, it will still be less than 10 percent of JP Morgan's market cap(italization) and still be smaller than Royal Bank of Scotland," he said. (Reporting by Tom Sims, Andreas Framke, and Hans Seidenstuecker; Additional reporting by Huw Jones in London; Editing by Keith Weir/Elaine Hardcastle/Alexander Smith) A dog was found dead after it gasped for air in the cargo hold of an 11 hour long-haul flight (GETTY) A dog died in a passenger planes cargo hold after being starved of oxygen on an 11-hour flight. The animal, believed to be a husky, was found dead on-board an Air France-KLM Jetliner after landing at Los Angeles LAX Airport, following a non-stop flight from Amsterdam Schipol. An Air France employee told TMZ the dog had been incorrectly loaded into the cargo hold and was left unable to breathe during the 10 hour 45 minute flight. The website told how the canines owner picked up the pet from Air Frances LAX-based warehouse. An Air France employee said the husky like dog was incorrectly loaded onto the flight between Amsterdam and LAX (GETTY) TMZ said images of the dead dog were too disturbing to publish. According to Air France policy, passengers are allowed to keep a dog or a cat weighing no more than 17lbs in the cabin, as long as the pet is at least 10 weeks old and received all required shots. But company rules state larger pets weighing between 17lbs and 165.3lbs are required to travel in the aeroplanes hold. A spokesman for Air France said of the tragedy: The dogs owner has been notified and we express our condolences. In cooperation with the local health authority in the US, the CDC, the dog was initially examined to ensure there was no immediately obvious public health threat. Read more Dog dies after eating sausages thrown into garden laced with enough poison to kill an elephant Rescuers save thinnest dog ever who ate glass and old batteries to survive United Airlines accidentally ships dog to Japan after flight mix-up The dog was loaded correctly according to KLMs pet policy. The airline added it is awaiting an official autopsy report to determine the cause of death. A Peta spokesperson said: Tragedies like this one are exactly why airlines must require that animals travel in the main cabin only. Peta urges Air France-KLM to join airlines such as JetBlue and Southwest in prohibiting companion animals from being flown in the cargo hold, where they endure noise, extreme temperatures and sometimes inadequate pressurisation, before yet another sensitive animal suffers and dies, terrified and alone. Story continues Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK The death is the latest instance of a pet tragically passing away while aboard a commercial airliner. In March 2018, a dog was mistakenly placed in an overhead cabin locker on a United Airlines flight The French bulldog named Kokito died during a flight from Houston to New York and passed away from lack of oxygen. A United Airlines spokesman said at the time: This was a tragic accident that should never have happened. The judicial police of Tangiers seized 6,915 psychotropic tablets and about 80 g of cocaine, and arrested two individuals. The elements of the Police Service of Tangiers who carried out the operation on tips provided by the General Directorate of Territorial Surveillance (DGST), seized 6,915 psychotropic tablets and about 80 g of cocaine and arrested two individuals suspected of being involved in drug trafficking. The search operations enabled the seizure of a car, a large sum of money in dirhams, probably the drug trafficking revenue, as well as two swords, said the Directorate General of National Security (DGSN) in a statement. The defendants were placed in custody and will be interrogated under the supervision of the prosecutors office, in order to elucidate the ins and outs of this case, which is part of the increased efforts in the fight against drug trafficking, the statement said. Police services also seized on Wednesday around 1.881 ton of chira (cannabis resin). The drug was seized onboard a vehicle driving on a regional road linking the city of Mechraa Belksiri to the region of Dar Keddari (north), said the DGSN in another statement. Investigations are under way, under the supervision of the competent public prosecutors office, to identify all individuals involved in this criminal network and shed light on national ramifications and possible links with international drug trafficking networks, it said. Mr Netanyahu's opponents believe Mr Trump is trying to tilt the Israeli election in the prime minister's favour - AP Donald Trump has announced it is time for the US to recognise Israels annexation of the Golan Heights, handing Benjamin Netanyahu a major diplomatic victory less than three weeks before the Israeli elections. The US and all other Western nations have always refused to recognise Israeli sovereignty in the Golan, the strategic high ground which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed in 1981. Mr Trump cast that policy aside on Thursday with an announcement on Twitter. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! The Israeli prime minister responded minutes later with a Twitter post of his own. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! Like the decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, Mr Trumps announcement puts US policy at odds with the UK and other European allies, who consider the Golan Heights to be under Israeli occupation. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2019 The move will enrage the Syrian regime but also puts Americas Arab allies in an awkward diplomatic position, where they must be seen to oppose Israels annexation of Arab territory while avoiding directly criticising Mr Trump. There was no formal announcement from the White House and it was not clear if US policy was changing immediately or at a future date. Mr Netanyahus opponents in Blue & White, a centrist coalition, have feared for weeks that Mr Trump would try to tilt the election in the prime ministers favour by announcing the Golan decision shortly before voters head to the polls. Story continues Mr Netanyahu has made his close relationship with Mr Trump a centrepiece of his campaign for a fifth term in office. One of his campaign posters shows the two men grinning and shaking hands. An election campaign billboard shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and US President Donald Trump in Jerusalem Credit: AP Photo/Oded Balilty Mr Trump posted a picture of the poster on his own Instagram account in what was widely seen as an endorsement of Mr Netanyahus re-election bid. The two leaders will meet at the White House next week where Mr Trump is expected to further lavish praise of the Israeli leader. Polls show Mr Netanyahus Likud Party running even with Blue & White, with both forecast to win around 30 seats in the 120-member Israeli parliament. Israel captured the Golan Heights after defeating Syrian forces during the Six Day War in 1967. In 1999, Israel came close to returning the high ground to Syria during negotiations with Hafez al-Assad, the father of Bashar al-Assad, but the talks collapsed. Since the Syrian war broke out in 2011, public opinion in Israel has hardened on the issue and there is a broad political consensus in Israel that the Golan should never be returned to Syria. The Golan Heights is a strategic highground captured from Syria in 1967 Credit: BAZ RATNER/AFP/Getty Images The Israeli occupation of the Golan has been less controversial than the occupation of the West Bank partly because the Golan is sparsely populated. Around 27,000 members of the Druze sect, a small Arabic speaking minority, live in the Golan. Most are residents of Israel but not full citizens. Many of the Golan Druze continue to swear loyalty to Syria, partly out of fear that if the Golan were ever returned to Damascus they could face reprisals from the Assad regime if they were seen to have collaborated with Israel. But some younger Druze have accepted they are likely to live forever under Israeli control and have taken steps to learn Hebrew and integrate into Israeli society. Roughly 20,000 Israelis now also live in the Golan, enjoying dramatic mountain views and plentiful vineyards but also enduring occasional rocket fire from Syria or Lebanon. The US had offered several hints that a decision on the Golan may be coming. Last week, the State Department dropped a reference to the Golan being under Israeli occupation. The US ambassador also recently accompanied Mr Netanyahu on a visit to the area. Mr Trump made the announcement while Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, was in Jerusalem for meetings with the Israeli prime minister. Despite taking a series of pro-Israel moves, the White House insists that it is still able to broker peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The White House is expected to unveil a peace plan after Israels elections. Expectations for success are low, partly because the Palestinians have cut off all political contact with the US in protest at Mr Trumps decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israels capital. Donald Trump suggested Mr Conway is jealous of being in his wife's shadow - Getty Images Donald Trump launched a scathing attack on his senior aide Kellyanne Conway's husband, calling him a "stone cold loser and husband from hell". The US president accused George Conway of being "very jealous" of his wife's White House position. The Twitter feud came after Mr Conway questioned the president's mental fitness. Mr Trump issued a series of tweets over the weekend in which he attacked the late senator John McCain, Google and the Russia investigation, prompting Mr Conway to suggest the president had a narcissistic personality disorder. Mr Conway, a prominent conservative lawyer, has been a frequent critic of the president in recent months, even while his wife goes on television to defend her boss. But up until now Mr Trump has largely chosen not to respond to the attacks and suggesting he does not know Mr Conway. That all changed this week after Mr Conway did an interview with the Washington Post in which he said he tweets about Mr Trump in order to avoid taking his frustrations out on his wife. George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wifes success & angry that I, with her help, didnt give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2019 The tweeting is just the way to get it out of the way, so I can get it off my chest and move on with my life that day. Thats basically it. Frankly, its so I dont end up screaming at her about it, he told the newspaper. Mr Trump relied heavily on Mrs Conway, a longtime Republican pollster and strategist, to help steer his presidential campaign to victory in 2016. She is a trusted member of his White House inner circle. Story continues Mr Trump tweeted on Wednesday: "George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wifes success & angry that I, with her help, didnt give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!" Donald Trump suggested Mr Conway is jealous of being in his wife's shadow Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images Mr Conway has previously claimed he withdrew himself from consideration for a role at the Justice Department because he watched Mr Trump attack the departments leaders and then fire then FBI director James Comey in May 2017. The lawyer issued a speedy response on Wednesday on Twitter, sarcastically congratulating Mr Trump for drawing more attention to his original comments. "What really matters - who cares about me - is how many people have now reviewed the diagnostic criteria for Narcisisstic Personality Disorder," he wrote. "You. Are. Nuts." he said in another tweet. Mosul (Iraq) (AFP) - Almost 100 people, mostly women and children, died Thursday as a ferry packed with families celebrating Kurdish New Year sank in a swollen river in the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, in Iraq's worst accident in years. There was an outpouring of grief among residents who only this year resumed the annual festivities on the banks of the Tigris after the northern city's recapture from the Islamic State group. Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi decreed three days of national mourning as he visited the site of the tragedy. He ordered a swift investigation "to determine responsibilities". The vessel was crammed with men, women and children crossing the Tigris to go to a popular picnic area to celebrate Nowruz, the Kurdish New Year and a holiday across Iraq marking the start of spring. The accident, which struck as the overloaded vessel turned back, also coincided with Mother's Day in Iraq. The interior ministry, issuing a fresh toll, said 94 people had died and 55 were rescued, after its spokesman Saad Maan said at least 19 children were among the dead. The premier said 61 women had died in the accident. While war and jihadist attacks have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq in recent years, such accidents are relatively rare. "It's a disaster, no one expected that," said a young man who had just managed to reach the shore. "There were a lot of people on the boat, especially women and children," he told AFP. A Mosul security source said the high water levels and overcrowding on the boat, with well over 100 people on board, had been to blame for the disaster. "The boat sank because there were too many passengers on board," another security official based in Mosul told AFP. - Bloated river - Iraq's justice ministry said it had ordered the arrest of nine ferry company officials and banned the owners of the vessel and the tourist site from leaving the country. Story continues The authorities had warned people to be cautious after several days of heavy rains led to water being released through the Mosul dam, causing the river level to rise. Videos shared on social media showed a fast-flowing, bloated river and dozens of people floating in the water or trying to swim around the partly submerged boat. Search operations stretched far downstream from the site where the boat sank, according to an AFP journalist. Hundreds of people who had flocked to the forested area for the first days of spring gathered on the river banks as the disaster unfolded. Ambulances and police vehicles transported the dead and wounded to hospitals in the city of nearly two million people. Photos of victims, many of them women and children, were posted on the walls of a morgue for families unable to enter because of the large crowd who had gathered to identify their relatives. One man, scanning over the pictures, stopped abruptly at the image of a woman. In shock, he gasped: "It's my wife", before collapsing in tears. IS turned Mosul into their de facto Iraqi capital after the jihadists swept across much of the country's north in 2014. The city spent three years under the group's iron-fisted rule until it was recaptured by Iraqi troops backed by a US-led coalition in 2017. - Dead children in the water - Nawar, who had been aboard the craft, said it had capsized in mid-stream. "It was carrying too many passengers, so the water began to rush onboard and the ferry became heavier and overturned," he said. "With my own eyes I saw dead children in the water." As ambulances shuttled back and forth to the morgue, three young girls and a boy were huddled together in a blanket, in tears, waiting for news of their missing parents. "All we wanted was to celebrate the New Year and it turned into a catastrophe," a man passing the scene protested. Iraq's last major boat disaster was in March 2013 when a floating restaurant sank in Baghdad, killing five people. Several political leaders denounced the lack of safety at dilapidated leisure facilities in a country where the dismal state of public services was one of the triggers for widespread protests last year. Drivers continue to use phones when they are driving . (PA) Motorists are still using phones behind the wheel and are returning to their old ways despite tougher penalties, research says. The RAC has said drivers did change their behaviour after the punishment for illegal mobile use was doubled in 2017, but the latest figures reveal the habit has returned. RAC road safety spokesman Pete Williams said illegal use is now rocketing among some groups of drivers and warned the tougher penalties are less of a deterrent than they were. A man checking his messages at the wheel. (GETTY) The RAC Report on Motoring survey, which questioned 1,800 drivers, showed that 47% of drivers aged 25-84 make or receive phone calls with a handheld phone while they are behind the wheel. This is a seven percent increase on the year before. Almost a third, 29%, of motorists aged 35-44 admit to using a phone to send texts, post on social media or check emails while they are driving, which is an increase of 10 % on the year before. Read more from Yahoo News UK: One in seven drivers would hit and run another car UKs first self-driving bus begins trials Since March 2017, drivers caught using their handheld phone have faced getting six points on their licence and a 200 fine. Mr Williams said: While the introduction of tougher penalties for handheld phone use at the wheel was absolutely the right thing to do, we fear any benefits have run their course with this data showing illegal use is now rocketing among some groups of drivers. Following the introduction of stronger penalties in 2017, we saw a promising shift with some drivers changing their behaviour for the better and becoming compliant with the law. Sadly, that didnt signal the start of a longer-term trend with drivers now seemingly returning to their old ways and putting themselves and millions of other road users at risk. There is still a huge job to do in communicating to drivers the dangers of continuing to mix driving with illegally using a mobile phone. According to the Department for Transport figures, 43 people were killed and 135 were seriously injured on Britains roads in 2017 in accidents where mobiles contributed. Story continues Inspector Frazer Davey, of Avon and Somerset Police, said: The results of the survey are concerning. We know that driver distraction is a cause of collisions. As a road policing inspector I see the impact of driver distraction and people are losing their lives as a result of the use of mobile devices by drivers. The law is clear on the use of mobile devices in vehicles and police officers across the country will continue to prosecute drivers who choose to drive while distracted on their phones. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK * Prime Minister must seek outside support in Senate * Environmental party also books gains * Motive for Utrecht shooting still unknown By Toby Sterling AMSTERDAM, March 21 (Reuters) - An upstart populist party shocked the Dutch political establishment by winning the most votes in provincial elections after a preliminary count in the early hours of Thursday, boosted by a possible terrorist attack this week in the city of Utrecht. The result shows the enduring strength of far-right populism in the Netherlands, coming nearly two decades after the assassination of populist Pim Fortuyn in 2002 led to a similar upset in parliamentary elections. The most important short term impact is that Prime Minister Mark Rutte's center-right coalition will be forced to seek outside support to win Senate approval for laws passed by parliament. Provincial votes determine the composition in the Senate, where Rutte's government has lost its majority. The big winner in the vote was the Forum for Democracy party, led by 36-year-old Thierry Baudet, which holds just two seats in parliament after entering politics in 2016. On current projections it will have an equal number of seats in the Senate as Rutte's VVD. In a speech to supporters peppered with literary allusions, Baudet said the arrogance of the elites had been punished. "We are standing in the rubble of what was once the most beautiful civilization in the world," he said. Following the lead of U.S. President Donald Trump, Baudet opposes immigration and emphasizes "Dutch first" cultural and economic themes. He opposes the euro and thinks the Netherlands should leave the European Union. Baudet had continued campaigning when other parties stopped after Monday's attack in Utrecht, in which a gunman shot three people dead on a tram. Baudet blamed the incident on the government's lax immigration policies. A 37-year-old Turkish-born man has been arrested on suspicion of carrying out the shooting. Prosecutors have not determined a motive, though they say it may have been terrorism. Story continues Pollsters had for weeks predicted Rutte's center-right coalition would lose its Senate majority. But experts, including pollster Maurice de Hond, said the Utrecht attack boosted turnout most among opponents of immigration. The Dutch economy has been one of Europe's best performers under successive Rutte-led governments, but resentment over early 2010s austerity programs lingers. Recent debate has focused on funding the government's plans to meet international goals on climate change. GOING GREEN Left-leaning voters feel not enough is being done and supported the pro-environment Green Left party, which also booked big gains nationwide on Wednesday, including taking nearly a quarter of the vote in Amsterdam. Rutte is expected to look to the Green Left or Labour parties for outside support once the new Senate is seated in May, though there are other possibilities in the increasingly fragmented political landscape, which include religious parties and a party focused on voters older than 50. Rutte said he would be looking for support from "constructive" parties on either the left or the right. Baudet ruled out any cooperation. "This means drinking a lot of coffee and making even more phone calls" Rutte told supporters. "So I'm counting on it that the country will remain well manageable with this result." Parliamentary elections are due by March 2021. (Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Kim Coghill) March 20 (Reuters) - The United States is adding the border city of El Paso to the tally of locations from where it will return Central American asylum seekers to Mexico to wait out their application process, expanding a new policy criticized for putting migrants at risk. The program in El Paso, just north of Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, was rolled out on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said, adding that officials were expected to turn back the first group of Central American asylum seekers who arrived in El Paso to Mexico next week. The policy, known as Migration Protection Protocols, or MPP, was so far only in force in San Ysidro, where hearings began on Tuesday. The Mexican government said last week the U.S. would also send migrants back from Calexico, without specifying the start date. The program is part of the measures by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to curb the flow of mostly Central American migrants trying to enter the United States. Critics say it violates U.S. law and international norms because migrants are sent back to often dangerous towns in Mexico where it is difficult to keep track of their U.S. court dates and to find legal help. Ciudad Juarez, which saw a February surge of migrants, is among Mexico's northern border cities that suffered extensive bloodshed and disappearances since the federal government began using the military against drug cartels more than a decade ago. (Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Julio-Cesar Chavez in El Paso; Writing by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) From Prevention Emilia Clarke, known for her role as Daenerys Targaryen on HBOs Game of Thrones, revealed that she suffered two life-threatening brain aneurysms in an essay for The New Yorker. Clarke says she felt the excruciating pain of her first brain aneurysms while doing a plank: At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged. Learn what a brain aneurysm is and how to spot the symptoms. Emilia Clarke, most famous for her role as Daenerys Targaryen on HBOs Game of Thrones, recently revealed in an essay for The New Yorker that she experienced two life-threatening brain aneurysms after she finished filming the first season of the show. Clarke, 32, recalls her early symptoms in the essay: On the morning of February 11, 2011, I was getting dressed in the locker room of a gym in Crouch End, North London, when I started to feel a bad headache coming on. She continued: My trainer had me get into the plank position, and I immediately felt as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain. I tried to ignore the pain and push through it, but I just couldnt. I told my trainer I had to take a break. Somehow, almost crawling, I made it to the locker room. I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill. Meanwhile, the pain-shooting, stabbing, constricting pain-was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged. Clarke doesnt remember everything, since the events of that day became noisy and blurry, but she does recall the sound of a siren, someone saying her pulse was weak, and throwing up bile. Once she was at the hospital, she was sent for an MRI, where she received a swift diagnosis: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (aka, a life-threatening stroke). For the next three hours, surgeons went about repairing my brain. This would not be my last surgery, and it would not be the worst. I was twenty-four years old, Clarke wrote. She admitted the pain was unbearable after waking up, and she had no idea where she was-and yet, she went back to work to film season two. Story continues But Clarke still had a growth on the other side of her brain, which doubled in size by the time she finished filming season 3 of Game of Thrones. She was scheduled for a second emergency surgery, which was much more invasive (the doctors had to go through her skull). The procedure had failed. I had a massive bleed and the doctors made it plain that my chances of surviving were precarious if they didnt operate again. While she says the recovery was much worse than her first surgery, Clarke did survive even though she was convinced she wouldnt live. Now that shes fully healed, she wants others to be aware of her story. But what exactly is a brain aneurysm-and why are they so often deadly? Here are the symptoms you should never ignore. Related Video: Maria Menounos Reveals She and Mother Had Concurrent Brain Tumors What is a brain aneurysm, exactly? A brain aneurysm is a ballooning blood vessel in the brain, and if it bursts, it can cause bleeding, also known as a hemorrhagic stroke. Most brain aneurysms occur between the brain and the tissues covering it-also known as a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which is what Clarke was first diagnosed with. Think of it this way: An aneurysm a weakness in the wall of one of your brains blood vessels, Howard Riina, MD, a neurosurgeon with New York University's Langone Medical Center previously told Prevention. That weakness allows the blood vessel to push outward and form a bulge, much like an over-inflated balloon. Once it ruptures, the pressure and lack of blood can lead unconsciousness and death. Until a rupture or leak occurs, many people are walking around with an aneurysm and dont know it, Dr. Riina explained. Some data we have suggest 6 to 9 percent of the population have one. Its unclear why Clarke suffered her first aneurysm at 24. While the specific causes of a brain aneurysm arent known, some people are at higher risk than others, especially if they are older, smoke, have high blood pressure, or consume drugs and alcohol. If you have inherited connective tissue disorders, polycystic kidney disease, or a family history of brain aneurysms, youre also at an elevated risk. What are they symptoms of a brain aneurysm? A severe headache, which Clarke experienced during her workout with her trainer, is often the first sign of a subarachnoid hemorrhage. Often people describe it as the worst headache theyve ever had, similar to being struck by a bolt of lightening. Some of the other most common symptoms of a brain aneurysm include the following: Nausea Vomiting Stiff neck Sensitivity to light Blurred vision Seizure Drooping eyelid Brief loss of consciousness Confusion How is a brain aneurysm treated? There are two different treatment options for a brain aneurysm: surgical clipping and endovascular coiling. These two procedures have risk of bleeding in the brain and loss of blood flow to the brain. According to the Mayo Clinic, surgical clipping is a procedure in which a neurosurgeon removes a section of your skull to locate the blood vessel thats causing the aneurysm and then inserts a tiny metal clip on the neck of the aneurysm to stop it from leaking or bursting. Endovascular coiling is a less invasive surgery and involves placing a catheter into an artery, usually your groin, that leads to the aneurysm. Then, the neurosurgeon pushes a soft platinum wire through the catheter leading to the aneurysm. The wire coils up in the aneurysm to seal the aneurysm from the artery. Some other treatment options for ruptured brain aneurysms include pain relievers, calcium channel blockers, and anti-seizure medications. Toward the end of her essay, Clarke emphasizes that she is doing better than ever. In the years since my second surgery I have healed beyond my most unreasonable hopes. I am now at a hundred percent. Beyond my work as an actor, Ive decided to throw myself into a charity Ive helped develop in conjunction with partners in the U.K. and the U.S. It is called SameYou, and it aims to provide treatment for people recovering from brain injuries and stroke. I feel endless gratitude. ('You Might Also Like',) As the world was first falling for Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, she was secretly fighting for her life a battle that continued throughout her early years on the show. In an essay for the New Yorker, the British actress, 32, revealed that she suffered a health crisis after wrapping Season 1 of the megahit HBO series, based on George R. R. Martins books. The actress who plays Daenerys Targaryen on the show, going into its eighth and final season, suffered two brain aneurysms. A workout with a trainer in London on the morning of February 11, 2011 was more intense than usual, Clarke recalled. She suddenly developed a raging headache and felt fatigue but initially fought through it. However, getting into the plank position made her feel as though an elastic band were squeezing my brain, so she took a break in the locker room. There, I reached the toilet, sank to my knees, and proceeded to be violently, voluminously ill, she wrote. Meanwhile, the pain shooting, stabbing, constricting pain was getting worse. At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged. Clarke said to help fight off the pain and nausea and to keep her brain engaged she focused on, among other things, lines from Game of Thrones. A woman in the next stall realized she needed help and Clarke was soon raced to the hospital. She recalled the ambulance sirens, someone saying her pulse was weak, throwing up bile and someone using her cell phone to call her parents. At the hospital, doctors scrambled to figure out what was wrong and an MRI, a scan of the brain, finally gave answers, said Clarke, who had migraines as a teen and had gotten dizzy and passed out more than once but wasnt worried about it. The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain, Clarke wrote. Id had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture. As I later learned, about a third of SAH patients die immediately or soon thereafter. For the patients who do survive, urgent treatment is required to seal off the aneurysm, as there is a very high risk of a second, often fatal bleed. If I was to live and avoid terrible deficits, I would have to have urgent surgery. And, even then, there were no guarantees. Story continues After being transferred to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, she had brain surgery. Brain surgery? she recalled in disbelief. I was in the middle of my very busy life I had no time for brain surgery. But, finally, I settled down and signed. And then I was unconscious. For the next three hours, surgeons went about repairing my brain. This would not be my last surgery, and it would not be the worst. I was 24 years old. Emilia Clarke, the mother of dragons Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones, reveals she had two brain aneurysms during her run on the show. (Getty Images) While they didnt have to open her skull for the surgery to seal off the aneurysm and it was deemed a minimally invasive operation she recalled the pain after as unbearable. One of the post-op conditions she suffered was aphasia, an impairment of language, and she couldnt remember her name. In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug, Clarke said. I asked the medical staff to let me die. My job my entire dream of what my life would be centered on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost. Luckily, the aphasia passed a week later, and one month after being admitted, she was discharged. However, she had learned in the hospital that she had a second, smaller aneurysm on the other side of her brain, which could pop at any moment. So when she started doing press for GoT just weeks later and returned to the set for Season 2 soon after that, I was deeply unsure of myself. I was often so woozy, so weak, that I thought I was going to die. Though she didnt let that show at work. On the set, I didnt miss a beat. But Season 2 would be my worst. I didnt know what Daenerys was doing. If I am truly being honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die. While life resumed with her secret closely guarded from the press (though her GoT bosses were made aware) a routine scan in 2013, after finishing Season 3, showed that the other aneurysm had doubled in size and needed to be fixed immediately. She immediately underwent surgery in NYC, where she had been appearing on Broadway, and it was supposed to be a relatively simple operation, it wasnt the procedure failed. I had a massive bleed and the doctors made it plain that my chances of surviving were precarious if they didnt operate again, she detailed. So they did, but the old-fashioned way through my skull. The recovery, another full month in the hospital, was even worse than the first surgery and she said she looked worse for wear as though I had been through a war more gruesome than any that Daenerys experienced. She had a drain coming from her head and bits of my skull [replaced] by titanium. She has, but you cant see, a scar that curves from my scalp to my ear. During that recovery, I lost all hope at times, Clarke admitted. I couldnt look anyone in the eye. She had anxiety and panic attacks. I felt like a shell of myself. So much so that I now have a hard time remembering those dark days in much detail. My mind has blocked them out. But I do remember being convinced that I wasnt going to live. And, whats more, I was sure that the news of my illness would get out. And it did for a fleeting moment. Six weeks after the surgery, the National Enquirer ran a short story. A reporter asked me about it and I denied it. Clarke, who has healed beyond my most unreasonable hopes, went on to thank her parents, including her dad, who died in 2016, for supporting her throughout and all the medical professionals who helped save her life. I know that I am hardly unique, hardly alone, she wrote. Countless people have suffered far worse, and with nothing like the care I was so lucky to receive. She also announced a new charity SameYou, which provides treatment for people recovering from brain injuries and stroke. After Clarke shared her story, her GOT co-star Lena Headey posted a tribute calling her a warrior. Read more on Yahoo Entertainment: Want daily pop culture news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Entertainment & Lifestyles newsletter. The 52nd session of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) is convening in Marrakech from March 20 to 26 under the theme: fiscal policy, trade and the private sector in the digital era: a strategy for Africa. The event is an opportunity for African ministers to discuss the fiscal policies necessary for the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) within the frameworks of the 2030 Agenda & Agenda 2063 and the critical role of private sector in the era of the digital economy. The AfCFTA could soon reach the minimum required ratifications to come into effect since 19 countries have already ratified the agreement. With three additional signatures, the agreement could come into effect. In opening remarks, Executive Secretary, Vera Songwe, said the ability to increase revenue collection was key to the continents capacity to finance its development, in particular Agenda 2030 for sustainable development and Africas Agenda 2063. A typical economy on the continent, she stressed, collects just about 16 pc of GDP in taxes, with the exception of countries like Morocco, which collects at least 25 percent. The potential of Africa is, and has always been, promising. With a growing working-age population; abundant arable land and a multitude of other resources, the continent has all the pre-requisites for rapid economic transformation in the next decade, she said. However, ensuring the availability of adequate public resources and quality investments to drive structural change requires responsive policies that promote fiscal sustainability, optimize returns from economic activity, and enable economies to fully participate in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, underlined Mrs Vera Songwe. We are looking for how we can finance better, faster and more equitably our growth and how we can ensure that our young populations can participate in this growth that we are talking about. We can do that by ensuring that we have good fiscal policy. We would want to be like Morocco at 25 percent so we can actually power growth, she said. Speaking during the meeting, Zouhair Chorfi, Secretary General of Moroccos economic and finance Ministry, said digitization is a great opportunity for Africa. Our continent is ripe for transformation and Morocco is ready to play its part in making sure we optimize digital tools in Africa into real tools that can power the continents development, he said. Technology can transform Africa by increasing competitiveness, promoting strong integration, reducing the cost of doing business and strengthening trade, among other things but safeguards and a solid foundation needed to protect the continent and its people, added Mr. Zouhair Chorfi. The conference features plenary sessions on a series of sub-themes and at least 16 side events on various issues affecting African economies. The annual Adebayo Adedeji Lecture named after ECAs longest serving Executive Secretary, Professor Adebayo Adedeji, who passed away last April, is also on the cards with discussions involving experts from within and outside the continent. Prof. Adedeji, a scholar, thinker and activist who was passionate about Africas development, is greatly respected for his leadership and contribution to changing the discourse of Africas development agenda. By Carey L. Biron WASHINGTON, March 21 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Dozens of empty red dresses sway in the wind at the foot of Capitol Hill, reminding passersby of the thousands of native women recorded murdered or missing in the United States and Canada in recent decades. An art installation launched this month at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. spotlights the "epidemic" of violence against indigenous women and girls across the continent. "I hadn't really heard that this epidemic was so widespread until my teen years," said Jaime Black, the artist behind the REDress Project, adding that it aimed to fill "a space where there was a lot of silence." "These empty red dresses hang in public spaces so people can encounter the absence and violence against indigenous women and girls," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation ahead of the museum's first symposium on the topic on Thursday. More than four in five Native American women have experienced violence in their lifetime, according to the National Institute of Justice. In 2016, the U.S. National Crime Information Center reported 5,712 cases of missing native women. Similarly high rates are seen in Canada - where the REDress show originated - with a 2014 national report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police estimating 1,181 indigenous women disappeared or were murdered since 1980. The situation is a "silent crisis," U.S. Representative Deb Haaland, one of the first two Native American women elected to Congress, said last week during congressional testimony. Black, who is based in Winnipeg, Canada, created the project in 2009, and it has toured extensively throughout the country. This is its first showing in the United States, she said. Sarah Deer, a professor at the University of Kansas who studies gender issues, said "the movement (around recognition of missing native women) really started in Canada, but the story and the issues and histories and law are almost identical" in the United States. Story continues It was only in the late 1990s that the U.S. government began to collect data on murdered and missing indigenous women, Deer said, noting that non-native people commit the vast majority of violence against native women and girls. Poring over data is "a really dehumanizing way of discussing this problem," Deer said, "but it wasn't until the data came that we got a real foothold in the world of policymakers." Still, information collection remains poor, advocates say, and last year the Urban Indian Health Institute warned of an ongoing "nationwide data crisis" on the issue, particularly in cities. Legislative proposals in Congress would strengthen data collection and create national guidelines on how law enforcement should respond to cases of missing or murdered indigenous people. Black said she is less interested in government solutions than in the grassroots indigenous "revival" she has seen in the decade that she has been doing the REDress Project such as the Idle No More aboriginal protest movement. That initiative, she noted, was started by women. (Reporting by Carey L. Biron; Editing by Jason Fields and Zoe Tabary. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org) LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) - A London museum has handed back locks of hair cut from the corpse of an Ethiopian emperor during a British invasion 150 years ago, after a campaign by activists seeking the return of hundreds of pieces of colonial plunder. Ethiopians, many dressed in the national colors of red, gold and green, cheered as staff at the National Army Museum handed over the remains in a black leather box to Ethiopia's minister of culture, tourism and sport on Wednesday. Hirut Kassaw will take the hair back to Ethiopia at the weekend where it will eventually be buried at the grave of Emperor Tewodros II at at monastery in northern Ethiopia, an embassy official said. She thanked the museum for its "brave and principled" decision to hand over the hair, but called on it and other British institutions to return other items taken during the Victorian-era expedition. "For Ethiopians, these are not simply artifacts or treasures but constitute a fundamental part of the existential fabric of Ethiopia and its people," she said. There was no immediate response to her request or statement on the return from the museum. Successive emperors, governments and then activists have called for Britain to hand back crowns, religious regalia and illuminated manuscripts taken after the fight - in campaigns paralleled by Greece's demands for its Parthenon sculptures, and Nigeria's for the Benin Bronzes. The emperor claimed a bloodline dating back to the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Britain invaded his territory of then Abyssinia in 1867 to rescue a group of European missionaries, adventurers and officials - including the British consul - imprisoned by Tewodros after a series of diplomatic gaffes. They reached his mountain fortress of Magdala in April 1868, defeated his troops and freed the prisoners. The emperor shot himself as the invaders stormed his last stronghold. Journalists on the campaign described how soldiers descended on the emperor's body and tore off strips of his clothing as souvenirs. The museum's records suggest the hair was taken from Magdala by an artist on the British force. Story continues Institutions including the British Museum have resisted repatriation campaigns citing legislation preventing them from breaking up collections and arguing that they can preserve items and present them to an international audience. Campaigners have argued that a special case should be made for human remains. (Writing by George Obulutsa Editing by Andrew Heavens) By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - The United States could soon freeze preparations for delivering F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, officials told Reuters, in what would be the strongest signal yet by Washington that Ankara cannot have both the advanced aircraft and Russia's S-400 air defense system. The United States is nearing an inflection point in a years-long standoff with Turkey, a NATO ally, after so far failing to sway President Tayyip Erdogan that buying a Russian air defense system would compromise the security of F-35 aircraft. "The S-400 is a computer. The F-35 is a computer. You don't hook your computer to your adversary's computer and that's basically what we would be doing," Katie Wheelbarger, acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told Reuters. While no decision has been made yet, U.S. officials confirmed that Washington was considering halting steps now underway to ready Turkey to receive the F-35, which is built by Lockheed Martin Corp. "There (are) decisions that come up constantly about things being delivered in anticipation of them eventually taking custody of the planes," said Wheelbarger. "So there's a lot of things in train that can be paused to send signals to them (that we're serious)," she added, without detailing those steps. However, another U.S. official said one of the measures the United States was looking at was alternatives to an engine depot in Turkey, without giving more details. The official said any potential alternatives would likely be somewhere in Western Europe. Turkey is home to an F-35 engine overhaul depot in the western city of Eskisehir. If Turkey was removed from the F-35 program, it would be the most serious crisis in the relationship between the two allies in decades, according to Bulent Aliriza, director of the Turkey project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Story continues The strains on ties between Washington and Ankara already extend beyond the F-35 to include strategy in Syria, Iran sanctions and the detention of U.S. consular staff. "This (the F-35 standoff) is really a symptom, not a cause of the problem between the two countries," Aliriza said. Many U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, worry that Turkey is drifting away from NATO and watch improving relations between Ankara and Moscow with concern. The prospect of Russian contractors or officials on Turkish bases that also are home to the F-35 is unfathomable to many U.S. officials. The tensions could further escalate. If Ankara goes ahead with the Russian deal, Turkey also could face U.S. sanctions. ERDOGAN IMPASSE Despite U.S. hopes that Turkey may still forgo the S-400, experts say Erdogan may have already backed himself into a rhetorical corner. He has repeatedly said he would not reverse course on the S-400, saying earlier in March: "Nobody should ask us to lick up what we spat." A decision to drop Turkey from the F-35 program would have broader repercussions, since Ankara helps manufacture parts for the aircraft, including components of the landing gear, cockpit displays and aircraft engines. Wheelbarger acknowledged that the Pentagon, in light of the standoff, was looking "across the board" at potential alternate suppliers for F-35 parts, including in other NATO countries. "It's prudent program planning...to ensure that you have stability in your supply chain," she said, without speculating that Turkey might be dropped from the program. Washington has sought to persuade Turkey to purchase the American-made Raytheon Co Patriot defense system, instead of S-400s. Erdogan has said that Turkey was still open to buying Patriot systems from the United States but only if the conditions are suitable. Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon said that in addition to the Patriot air defense system, the American offer "includes significant government-to-government cooperation on advanced system development." Although Turkey has held out the prospect of buying both the S-400 and the Patriot system, the United States has warned Turkey it will take its offer of Patriots off the table unless it changes course. A Turkish S-400 purchase could also trigger a fight with the U.S. Congress, which has already blocked all major arms sales to Ankara while the S-400 deal is pending. Lawmakers could renew attempts to introduce legislation that would legally prohibit the Trump administration from allowing Turkey to have the F-35 if it secures the S-400s. (Reporting by Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle Editing by Mary Milliken and Alistair Bell) By Lamine Chikhi and Aidan Lewis ALGIERS/CAIRO, March 21 (Reuters) - Protests that brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets in Algeria over the past month led President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to scrap plans to run for a fifth term. He postponed an election originally set for April and announced that experts would oversee a transition to a "new system" in coming months. Protesters say this is not enough. WHAT CAUSED THE PROTESTS? The immediate cause was Bouteflika's candidacy. Calls for protests spread after it was confirmed on Feb. 10. Mass rallies began on Feb. 22, and numbers rose over the following two Fridays. After Bouteflika abandoned plans to stand but stopped short of stepping down -- raising the prospect that he would stay in power for the rest of the year -- the protests swelled. More broadly, protests drew on frustration among millions of Algerians who feel politically and economically excluded, and resentment against an aging and secretive elite that has controlled Algeria since independence from France in 1962. President since 1999, Bouteflika became a symbol of an independence generation that clung to power. He oversaw a return to stability after a civil war in the 1990s but in his second decade in power was incapacitated and mostly absent from public life, fueling a sense of drift and decline. Plans to diversify the economy away from oil stalled in a sclerotic system many saw as corrupt and riven with cronyism. HOW DID BOUTEFLIKA SURVIVE SO LONG? Major Islamist groups were discredited by the 1990s war and along with a liberal opposition were coopted or excluded when it ended. As the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) reasserted itself, political apathy set in and election turnouts dropped. When uprisings swept the region in 2011, Algeria used a heavy security and oil money to curtail demonstrations. There were frequent local protests, but these demanded state resources, not political change. Factional battles played out in the domestic media, relatively free by regional standards. Then, as now, neither ruling elite factions nor Bouteflika and his entourage appeared able to agree on a succession plan. Story continues WHO HAS BEEN RUNNING THE COUNTRY? Bouteflika has rarely been seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013, but by then he had already sidelined or outlived the generals who brought him to power. General Mohamed "Toufik" Mediene, head of military intelligence and the man widely seen to be the real center of power in Algeria, departed in 2015. While the army remained Algeria's most powerful institution, an informal clique around the presidency amassed more influence, including Bouteflika's younger brother Said. An emerging business elite profiting from surging oil income also benefited. WHAT ARE THE POSSIBLE SCENARIOS NOW? Bouteflika announced that an "independent and inclusive" national conference would draft and new constitution and set a date for elections, and should conclude its work by the end of the year. An interim, technocratic government is being formed. But this plan has been cast into doubt as Bouteflika's position has weakened. Protesters want him to step down when his five-year term ends in April and say their goal is sustain pressure and prevent infiltration from "Bouteflika's system." Chief of staff Gaed Salah has said the army should take responsibility for solving the crisis but so far it has been waiting in the wings. The army is more reluctant to intervene directly than in the past. Its decision to cancel parliamentary elections in 1992 that Islamists were poised to win triggered the conflict that left up to 200,000 people dead. Islamism is in decline, and a new leader may come from the political mainstream. Ahmed Benbitour, a former prime minister, and Mustapha Bouchachi, a rights activist and lawyer, are among those emerging as protest leaders. WHAT CHALLENGES DO PROTESTERS FACE? Protesters are trying to remain peaceful. From the start, they have worried that factions within the security forces may provoke violence to discredit protesters, or that demonstrations could turn violent when protesters' demands are not met. Another challenge is to find leaders with enough experience and broad support -- those who served under Bouteflika may be discredited in the eyes of protesters. Protesters fear that factions holding power and associated patronage networks will look to survive even as they abandon Bouteflika. Most observers believe that while Bouteflika and his clique will leave power, the system around them will remain. WHAT'S AT STAKE? Algeria is Africa's biggest country by landmass and has a population of more than 40 million. It is a major oil and gas producer and OPEC member, and a top supplier of gas to Europe. Western states see Algeria as a counter-terrorism partner. It is a significant military player in North Africa and the Sahel, and diplomatically involved in crises in Mali and Libya. Algeria also backs the Polisario Front independence movement in Western Sahara, in opposition to its neighbor Morocco. (Writing by Aidan Lewis, Editing by William Maclean) By Akram Walizada and Hameed Farzad KABUL (Reuters) - Several explosions in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Thursday killed six people and wounded 23 in an attack during celebrations to mark the Persian new year, government spokesmen said. The attacks came on Nowruz, an ancient Persian festival to mark the start of spring that is widely celebrated in Afghanistan but has also faced opposition from some hardline Islamists, who say it is un-Islamic. There were conflicting reports about of the cause of the blasts near the Kart-e Sakhi shrine, in a heavily Shi'ite Muslim area in the west of Kabul. An interior ministry spokesman said mortar bombs had been fired. The defense ministry said in a post on twitter that three rockets were fired at civilian homes and Nowruz gatherings. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the group's news agency AMAQ said, without providing evidence of its claim. Broken windows and collapsed walls were visible on homes and shops near the blast site. Blood stained the side of the road. "It was terrible," said Sayed Samim Sadit, a shopkeeper, who said he and his family were unhurt. "We were all sitting in our home and all the glass blew in on us." Elderly resident Haji Rajab Ali said he saw two explosions in front of him and later awoke to find himself in hospital. Afghanistan's defense ministry said police had arrested Thursday's attacker and secured the area. The attack happened two weeks after a mortar attack on a Shi'ite Muslim gathering in Kabul that killed 11 people. Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack. Shi'ites are a minority group in Afghanistan and they have been repeatedly attacked by Sunni Muslim militant groups. Violence has been relentless in Afghanistan even though Taliban militants are in talks with U.S. officials. The latest round of talks wrapped up this month, with both sides citing progress, but no agreement to end the 17-year war. The Taliban are fighting to expel foreign forces and to oust the Western-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani. (Additional reporting by Rod Nickel and Hamid Shalizi in Kabul, and Hesham Hajali in Cairo; Editing by Robert Birsel and Alison Williams) GUATEMALA CITY (AP) Presidential hopeful and former chief prosecutor Thelma Aldana will not immediately return to Guatemala after a warrant was issued for her arrest, she said in interviews with local media Thursday. Aldana, who has been in neighboring El Salvador since Monday, said in brief comments to Prensa Libre and Guatevision that she is not coming back Thursday as previously planned. Aldana, 63, also said her team was evaluating the situation and she intends to return soon. Calls from The Associated Press to Aldana were not answered. A Guatemalan court said Tuesday that the warrant had been issued over alleged embezzlement related to anomalies in a contract during her time in office, but authorities have not given details. That same day, Aldana was formally registered for the June election, which by law provides her immunity from criminal prosecution. Her future is not entirely clear, however, given different interpretations of Guatemalan law. Some lawyers believe she already enjoys legal protection. But Leopoldo Guerra, director of candidate registry, said there is still a period when other parties can challenge her registration and immunity would take effect only once that is over. As chief prosecutor, Aldana pressed a number of high-profile corruption investigations including cases against current President Jimmy Morales and some of his relatives and associates, as well as former President Otto Perez Molina, who remains in custody awaiting trial. Both have denied any wrongdoing, and Morales has not been charged. Attempts to have his immunity lifted have fallen short of approval by the judiciary or congress. Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart has said that as far as he's concerned, the arrest warrant is solid and police would carry it out if she returns to the country. Rotman Perez, Aldana's legal adviser, said Thursday that she will not be back in Guatemala until her security is guaranteed. "She is afraid for her safety, for her life," Perez said. "This has gone beyond the legal (arena). She does not rule out that someone could want to harm her." Story continues Aldana's legal team has requested various judicial measures for her safety. Aldana has accused political adversaries, including those she locked up for graft in her role as prosecutor, of being part of a "pact of the corrupt," which purportedly includes politicians, businesspeople, judges, prosecutors and private citizens implicated in corruption. There was no immediate public comment from Morales. The former prosecutor has a total of 18 complaints against her, most of them by the Foundation against Terrorism, an organization comprised of people who defend military figures convicted of human rights crimes and people accused of corruption. Morocco has joined the newly set up Arab group for cooperation in space and satellite technology and industry. The group also includes the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Algeria, Oman and Sudan. The announcement of the birth of the new Arab body was made this week in Abu Dhabi at the second edition of the Global Space Congress. Its first mission lies in developing an observation satellite that will monitor the Earths environment and climate in Arab countries. Funded by the UAE, the satellite, code-named 813 satellite, will monitor vegetation, soil, minerals and water sources, and measure greenhouse gases, pollution and dust levels as well. It will be designed and built over the next three years by Arab engineers from the 11 Arab member countries at UAE Universitys National Space Science and Technology Center in Al Ain. The satellites name refers to the date that marked the beginning of prosperity for the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. The House embraced scientists from throughout the region, translated and produced advanced sciences. Morocco has put in the orbit two earth observation satellites developed by a consortium comprising Thales Alenia Space and Airbus. The Mohammed VI-A & B satellites are complementary and designed to be used for mapping and land surveying, regional development, agricultural monitoring, the prevention and management of natural disasters, monitoring changes in the environment and desertification, and border and coastal surveillance. The Global Space Congress, organized by the UAE Space Agency, is the largest gathering of global space industry leaders in the Middle East and North Africa. By Ben Klayman DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co said on Wednesday it is adding production of a fully electric vehicle at a second North American plant as part of its $11 billion investment plan set last year. The No. 2 U.S. automaker said it is investing about $900 million in southeast Michigan and creating 900 jobs through 2023 as part of its electric vehicle push. That includes a plan to invest more than $850 million to expand production capacity at its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to build EVs. "When we were taking a look at our $11 billion investment in electrification, it became obvious to us that we were going to need a second plant in the not-too-distant future to add capacity for our battery electric vehicles," Joe Hinrichs, Ford's president of global operations, said in a telephone interview. Ford is negotiating an alliance with Germany's Volkswagen AG to work together on electric and autonomous vehicles. Hinrichs said those talks have been positive, but that there was nothing to announce. Ford in January 2018 said it would increase its planned investments in electric vehicles to $11 billion by 2022 and have 40 hybrid and fully electric vehicles in its model lineup. That investment figure was up from the previous target of $4.5 billion by 2020. Automakers have been boosting investment in the development of EVs in part because of pressure from regulators in China, Europe and California to slash carbon emissions from fossil fuels. They also are being pushed by electric carmakers like Tesla Inc. Of the 40 vehicles, Ford said at the time that 16 would be fully electric and the rest would be plug-in hybrids. The Flat Rock plant, which currently employs 3,400 people, builds the Ford Mustang and Lincoln Continental cars. The plant investment includes adding a second shift and funding to build the next-generation Mustang. "Companies are pouring back into the United States - they want to be where the action is!," President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday following Ford's announcement. Ford already was planning an all-electric sport utility vehicle in 2020 that will be built at its Cuautitlan, Mexico, plant. The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker also said on Wednesday that it will build its first self-driving vehicles for use by commercial customers at a new manufacturing center in southeast Michigan starting in 2021, and will build its next-generation North American Transit Connect commercial and passenger van in Mexico starting that same year. The next-generation Transit Connect small van will be built at Ford's Hermosillo, Mexico, plant and increases U.S. and Canadian vehicle content consistent with the proposed new North American trade agreement, the company said. The vehicle is now manufactured in Spain. Hinrichs said he is optimistic Congress will approve the proposed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). (Reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; additional reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Susan Thomas) (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co on Thursday named Amazon.com Inc veteran Tim Stone as chief financial officer, the automaker's first external hire for the role in seven decades. Stone, 52, replaces Bob Shanks, who will retire at the end of 2019 after serving the company for 42 years. Stone held various financial roles at Amazon for two decades, and was most recently CFO of Snapchat messaging app owner, Snap Inc. He decided to quit Snap less than a year after taking the job, becoming the second finance chief to leave the company in a year since the much-criticized redesign of the app. Stone will take over as CFO on June 1, Ford said. The No.2 U.S. carmaker said Shanks, 66, will work closely with Stone on the transition and then on special projects through the end of the year. The last time Ford named an outsider to the role of CFO was in 1949 when Theodore Yntema, previously a consulting economist to Ford, was hired for the position. Yntema mentored a group of young executives who came to be known as "the whiz kids". The group included Robert McNamara and Arjay Miller, both of whom later became Ford presidents. Stone will report to Chief Executive Jim Hackett. "Bob's leadership was integral to Ford's comeback during the great recession," Hackett said. The automaker also named Mark Ovenden to the role of president of International Markets Group, replacing Peter Fleet, who will retire. Fleet previously served as president of Asia Pacific - a region that reported the biggest loss during the fourth-quarter, hit by plummeting sales in China. Ford, which ended 2018 with $23.1 billion in cash, said its losses in China would narrow this year. Stuart Rowley, currently chief operating officer for Ford North America, was appointed as president, Ford of Europe, succeeding Steven Armstrong who is being named as chairman, Ford of Europe. Ford said last week it plans to cut more than 5,000 jobs in Germany and would also reduce its workforce in Britain as it seeks to return to profit in Europe. (Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru and Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by James Emmanuel) The former Prime Minister of Denmark has been appointed Strategic Advisor of the worlds first identity-validating, regulatory-compliant blockchain network. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was also Secretary General of NATO, has joined Swiss blockchain firm Concordium. Mr Rasmussen served three terms as Prime Minister of Denmark from 2001 until 2009 and previously held several other high-profile positions in the Danish government, including Minister for Taxation and Minister for Economic Affairs. Following his tenure as Prime Minister, he was elected as Secretary General of NATO, where he served for five years before stepping down in 2014. The former Danish PM is also the Founder and CEO of Rasmussen Global an international political consultancy dedicated to tackling issues on democracy, transatlantic relations, security policy, economic development, and the European Union. Democracy In 2017, he founded the Alliance of Democracies a non-profit organisation dealing with the advancement of democracy and free markets across the globe. Lars Seier Christensen, Chairman of Concordium, said bringing such a high-profile figure on board was a key appointment. Given the enormous scope and far-reaching potential of the Concordium Network, it is essential for the Concordium Foundation to harness the knowledge of those with invaluable in-depth strategic expertise, he said. Anders will play a pivotal role in our global expansion plans to move into areas that require a blockchain solution for secure and private communications, as well as liaising with governmental departments that will benefit from its implementation. Our network will support tamper-proof voting systems to protect the institutions of civil society, which are fundamental to the functioning of democracy. Trusted With Anders guidance, Concordium is better equipped to become a globally trusted network for secure transactions, most notably by improving the integrity of the voting process. Story continues Concordium Concordium The Concordium Foundation aims to create the worlds first ubiquitous, standardised, and fully-compliant blockchain network, designed to provide both a solid store of value and the global backbone for keeping track of the worlds transactions. Its network features a protocol-layer identity-validating mechanism, which will ensure that every user on the network is identified and every transaction involves provenance tracking. Speaking after being unveiled in Zug, Switzerland, as the companys Strategic Advisor, Anders Rasmussen said he was keen to apply blockchain technology to election processes. We are only beginning to see the benefits that blockchain technology will bring to our societies, including in our democratic processes, he said. Concordiums blockchain-based voting solution offers a means of voting that is trustworthy, quick, and cost-effective. I am pleased to be working with Concordium to make sure that every vote is counted. By Oliver Knight March 21, 2019 The post Former PM of Denmark unveiled as blockchain advisor appeared first on Coin Rivet. Former senior White House official Hope Hicks is said to have agreed to cooperate with a Democratic-led congressional investigation into Donald Trump. Ms Hicks, 30, who was considered one of the presidents closest confidantes and who served as White House communications director from the summer of 2017 to the spring of last year, has reportedly said she will provide documents to a congressional committee looking into possible obstruction of justice by Mr Trump. CNN said Democratic congressman Jerry Nadler, chair of the House of Representatives judiciary committee, wrote to Ms Hicks earlier this month, seeking documents on topics that ranged from former national security advisor Michael Flynns false statements to the FBI, the May 2017 firing of James Comey, and the drafting of a misleading media statement about Donald Trump Jrs 2016 meeting in Trump Tower. The request included documents from any personal or work diary, journal or other book containing notes, a record or a description of daily events about the president, his 2016 election campaign or the Trump Organisation, the network said. Mr Nadlers office did not immediately respond to enquiries on Wednesday. However, CNN said Daniel Schwarz, a spokesperson for the committee has confirmed Ms Hicks indicated she would cooperate. It said her lawyer has declined to comment. Mr Nadler, a congressman from New York, has set a Monday deadline for 81 individuals and entities to provide information to the panel as part of his investigation into possible abuses of power, corruption and obstruction of justice, the network said. Ms Hicks was widely considered to be among the most influential voices in the White House during the early days of Mr Trumps administration. When she left last year, the president posed with her outside the Oval Office before boarding the presidential helicopter. The president was on his way to Ohio. Hope is outstanding and has done great work for the last three years. She is as smart and thoughtful as they come, a truly great person, Mr Trump said. Story continues Ms Hicks said: There are no words to adequately express my gratitude to President Trump. I wish the president and his administration the very best as he continues to lead our country. The former communications director is not the only former White House official cooperating with Mr Nadlers committee; the former strategist Steve Bannon has already provided the committee with several thousands of pages of documents. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, said it would also comply with a request. Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich attempted to counter Senator Elizabeth Warrens call to discuss the injustices of slavery, and its lasting systemic impact on generations of African-Americans, by claiming that the United States does not get enough credit for ending slavery. While discussing reparations to descendents of enslaved people on Fox News "Outnumbered" on Tuesday, Ms Pavlich claimed that the US was the first country to abolish slavery. They keep blaming America for the sin of slavery but the truth is, throughout human history, slavery existed, and America came along as the first country to end it within 150 years, she said. And we get no credit for that to move forward and try to make good on that. That is simply not true. There are several countries who abolished slavery long before the US did in 1858 with the 13th Amendment. Some of those countries include Haiti in 1804, Spain in 1811, Sweden in 1813, the Netherlands 1814, the United Kingdom in 1833, Denmark in 1836, France in 1848, and Portugal in 1858. No @KatiePavlich US did NOT abolish slavery firstor in full. Slavery abolishment: Spain: 1811 Sweden: 1813 Netherlands: 1814 UK: 1833 Denmark: 1836 France: 1848 Portugal: 1858 USA: 186513th Amend only bans private slavery, prison slavery still allowedpic.twitter.com/me164f7yTJ Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@MuslimIQ) March 19, 2019 Despite all of this, Ms Pavlich continued to argue that giving reparations to African-Americans would worsen race relations in the country. If you want to inflame racial tension even more, start blaming people who have nothing to do with slavery for the sin of slavery, she added. That is not fair, thats not the American way, and we shouldnt be doing it. Story continues The Fox News contributors controversial comments prompted widespread backlash on social media. Journalist Soledad OBrien called Ms Pavlich a complete moron for her inaccurate remarks on slavery. Is it hard for @KatiePavlich to be a complete moron? The utter stupidity. https://t.co/X882Qvappc Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) March 19, 2019 Is it hard for [Katie Pavlich] to be a complete moron? Ms OBrien tweeted. The utter stupidity. The conservative firebrand shot back while also trying to retract her comments. Should have said one of* first countries, from the point of founding. My argument stands, but please @soledadobrien please continue name calling as your argument and the smearing of America as the originator of slavery, Ms Pavlich said. Your argument is factually inaccurate. Google when slavery started and ended if you dont want to be known for your ignorance. https://t.co/Oe32bN7zjV Soledad O'Brien (@soledadobrien) March 19, 2019 But Ms OBrien had the last word. The documentary journalist suggested Ms Pavlich research a little bit before making false historical claims. Your argument is factually inaccurate, she added. Google when slavery started and ended if you dont want to be known for your ignorance. PARIS, March 21 (Reuters) - France told Iran on Thursday that European efforts to keep a nuclear deal alive did not mean Tehran had a blank check to violate the human rights of its citizens, after lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh received a long prison sentence. An internationally renowned human rights lawyer jailed in Iran, Sotoudeh was handed a new sentence on Monday that her husband said was 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. "There has been global indignation over the case of Mrs Sotoudeh and this government shares this indignation fully," French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian told lawmakers. Sotoudeh has represented opposition activists including women prosecuted for removing their mandatory head scarf. She was arrested in June and charged with spying, spreading propaganda and insulting Iran's clerical supreme leader. "We have made considerable efforts with Iran to keep the nuclear accord (signed by Tehran and world powers) despite the American withdrawal," Le Drian said. "(But) our effort to keep the Vienna accord is not a blank check for Iran and certainly not with regard to human rights, and that's why France will do everything to secure Mrs Sotoudeh's freedom." She was originally jailed in 2010 for spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security - charges she denied. She was then released after serving half her six-year term. The European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov human rights prize. France rarely comments publicly on human rights issues in Iran. It has been working with Britain and Germany to save the 2015 agreement on Iran's nuclear program, which was thrown into disarray when U.S. President Donald Trump pulled out of the accord in May and reimposed economic sanctions on Iran. Even so, tensions between Paris and Tehran have grown in recent months as President Emmanuel Macron and his government have become increasingly frustrated with Iran's ballistic missile tests, and a foiled attack on an Iranian exile group in France, which Paris says Iranian intelligence was behind. Both countries only reappointed ambassadors to each other's capitals last month after more than six months without envoys. (Reporting by John Irish Editing by Mark Heinrich) Paris (AFP) - France on Thursday called for Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh to be released and warned Tehran that its adherence to a nuclear accord does not give it a blank cheque on human rights. "We will do all we can to secure the release of Mrs Sotoudeh", French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told the upper chamber Senate. "She was condemned under astonishing conditions," for "defending the rights of women, in particular those who contest the obligation to wear the Islamic veil," he added. Sotoudeh's husband Reza Khandan told AFP on Sunday that his wife had been sentenced to a total of 33 years in prison over a case with seven charges, but she is to only serve the longest sentence, 12 years imposed on Sunday for "encouraging corruption and debauchery". She has also been convicted of espionage. Sotoudeh has also been sentenced to a total of 148 lashes for appearing in court without the hijab Islamic head covering and for another offence. According to Khandan, Sotoudeh has refrained from choosing a lawyer as attorneys on her previous cases have faced prosecution for representing her. "We have been making considerable efforts in recent months to preserve the (Iranian) nuclear accord, despite America's withdrawal," said Le Drian. "We are doing so because we respect our signature, but Iran must also respect its obligations in particular those international agreements relating to civil and political rights," he added. Last month the UN atomic watchdog said that Iran has been adhering to its deal with world powers on limiting its nuclear programme, as diplomatic wrangling continues over the future of the accord. The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran was still complying with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with global powers under which Tehran drastically scaled back its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief. Story continues Last week, European nations rejected a call from US Vice President Mike Pence to follow the US lead in withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal. Le Drian said Thursday: "Our wish to preserve the Vienna accord does not grant carte-blanche to Iran and certainly not in the matter of human rights." Before her arrest, Sotoudeh, 55, had taken on the cases of several women arrested for appearing in public without headscarves in protest at the mandatory dress code in force in Iran. Sotoudeh won the European Parliament's prestigious Sakharov Prize in 2012 for her work on high-profile cases, including those of convicts on death row for offences committed as minors. She spent three years in prison after representing dissidents arrested during mass protests in 2009 against the disputed re-election of ultra-conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Paris (AFP) - The French Senate on Thursday called on prosecutors to investigate three top aides to Emmanuel Macron, who are suspected of trying to cover up a scandal involving the president's former bodyguard. The move threatens to trigger a political storm between the conservative-controlled Senate and Macron just as the centrist president is struggling to end four months of anti-government protests over his economic reforms. The Senate recommended that Macron's chief of staff, Patrick Strzoda, his presidential secretary Alexis Kohler, and security chief Lionel Lavergne be investigated over their testimony to a commission that held a seven-month inquiry into the so-called "Benalla affair". Alexandre Benalla, a presidential bodyguard, was fired last year after a video emerged of him roughing up protesters during a May Day demonstration in Paris. The affair shone an unflattering light on Macron's administration, since the president, who had promised an "exemplary republic", fired Benalla only after Le Monde newspaper broke the story. - 'Major flaws' - Drawing on its commission's findings, the Senate executive said Strzoda was suspected of possible perjury, while Kohler and Lavergne were suspected of not disclosing the full truth about the affair. The Senate also called for Benalla and his associate Vincent Crase, a former police officer who was also at the May Day protest, to be investigated for lying to the commission. Benalla has already been charged with roughing up a young man and woman at the May 1 rally, which he was supposedly attending only as an observer. Last month, the Senate investigating commission said it had found "major flaws" in the government's handling of the case, which it said affected both the president's security and "national interests". It suggested that Kohler and Lavergne "withheld significant truth", while Benalla, Crase and Strzoda lied to the commission, an offence punishable by up to five years in jail. Story continues The presidency, which had earlier dismissed the Senate commission's findings as "filled with untruths", on Thursday initially declined to comment on the case. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe refused to attend a question-and-answer session before the Senate, while a senior member of Macron's party, Stanislas Guerini, branded the Senate move a "political trial" designed to "damage the president of the republic". The Senate call for a judicial probe comes at a tough time for Macron, whose approval ratings have plunged as he battles to end the often violent violent "yellow vest" protests over his economic programme. Francois Patriat, who heads Macron's Republic on the Move lawmakers in the Senate, accused Socialists and conservatives of ganging up "to take their revenge for an electoral defeat they never accepted". Representative Max Rose apologized to his Jewish constituents this week for anti-Semitic comments from fellow freshman Democrat Ilhan Omar that drew bipartisan backlash. I was horrified and sad when she made the comments, Rose said at a town hall put on by the Council of Jewish Organizations of Staten Island, according to Jewish Insider. So horrified that as a freshman member of Congress I stepped in front of my partys leadership and I was the first member of the Democratic Party to criticize her. As a young congressman, Ive got to tell you Im sorry, the congressman said, whose district includes all of Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. You sent me to Congress to take responsibility. You sent me to Congress to have your back, he continued. And I failed you. Because I know that Congresswoman Ilhan Omars comments really caused you all a lot of pain by bringing up anti-Semitic tropes. Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, drew heavy criticism from her partys leadership when she suggested earlier this year that Jewish U.S. citizens pay allegiance to a foreign country. I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country, Omar said. I want to ask, why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the [National Rifle Association], of fossil-fuel industries, or Big Pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobby that is influencing policy? Her critics also noted a 2012 tweet in which Omar said Israel had hypnotized the world. Certainly as a Jewish combat veteran, I could tell you I dont have dual allegiance, Rose said on Tuesday. I have allegiance to the flag. I have allegiance to the United States of America. Republicans have pushed for Omar to be stripped from her spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee because of her comments, a move that Rose said he is not yet ready to embrace. Story continues We have got to show her that there is a pathway for her to do the right thing, and we have to be vigilant towards that. Believe me, she understands that thats a possibility, and nobody is taking that off the table, but we are not there yet, the congressman said. More from National Review The limbo in Algerian politics is throwing its weight on the oil and gas industry in the country, which represents 95% of the North African countrys revenues. After reports of strikes in some oil and gas field, ExxonMobile halted talks with Algerias hydrocarbon giant Sonatrach as protests continue to simmer across the country, Reuters reported. Protesters demand a step down of long ruling and ailing Bouteflika and a genuine reform of the opaque regime perceived as undemocratic, corrupt and inefficient. The Texas-based company had entered into negotiations with Sonatrach to develop a gas field in the Ahnet basin in southern Algeria. The US company fears that the ongoing purge against figures turning in the orbit of infirm Bouteflika may affect the CEO of Sonatrach Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour. His departure is very likely in case Bouteflika is ejected. According to estimates, the North African country will be a net gas importer of LNG in two decades, warned the former Algerian energy minister Nourdine Ait-Laoussine. In a lower production and higher domestic demand scenarios, Algeria will cease exporting all together, therefore importing gas beyond any such a point. Los Angeles (AFP) - "Game of Thrones" star Emilia Clarke suffered two nearly fatal brain aneurysms in the early years of filming the hit series, she said in an essay published Thursday. The British actress -- who plays Daenerys Targaryen on the blockbuster show about to enter its final season -- wrote that the first aneurysm rupture struck while she was at the gym in February 2011, just after filming the first season. "At some level, I knew what was happening: my brain was damaged," the 32-year-old wrote in The New Yorker magazine in her piece entitled "A Battle For My Life." "For a few moments, I tried to will away the pain and the nausea," she continued. "To keep my memory alive, I tried to recall, among other things, some lines from 'Game of Thrones.'" Clarke was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with a subarachnoid hemorrhage -- a form of stroke triggered by bleeding into areas that surround the brain, which kills about one third of the patients it strikes. She was 24 at the time of her first brain surgery, and said the recovery period in which she could not even recall her own name -- a condition called aphasia -- gave her "a sense of doom." "In my worst moments, I wanted to pull the plug. I asked the medical staff to let me die," Clarke said. "My job -- my entire dream of what my life would be -- centered on language, on communication. Without that, I was lost." The condition passed and Clarke left the hospital one month after her admission -- but doctors had found she had a second aneurysm that could rupture at any moment. "Even before we began filming Season 2, I was deeply unsure of myself. I was often so woozy, so weak, that I thought I was going to die," Clarke wrote, saying she took morphine between interviews while promoting the acclaimed show. During a routine brain scan doctors found her growth had doubled in size and decided to operate -- a seemingly simple procedure that resulted in major complications and another month in the hospital. Today, Clarke says she has "healed beyond my most unreasonable hopes," and helped develop a charity to offer treatment to patients recovering from stroke and brain injuries. "There is something gratifying, and beyond lucky, about coming to the end of 'Thrones,'" Clarke wrote. "I'm so happy to be here to see the end of this story and the beginning of whatever comes next." BERLIN (Reuters) - Delaying Britain's departure from the European Union is justifiable if there is a real chance of securing an orderly Brexit, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told Germany's Funke media group. British Prime Minister Theresa May has asked the EU to allow Britain to extend Brexit to June 30 and EU leaders are expected to discuss the matter at a summit on Thursday. The decision must be taken unanimously by all remaining 27 EU member states. "A postponement makes sense if it leads to an orderly Brexit," Maas said. "If there is a real chance, then I think a lap of honour is justifiable," he said of a delay. "There can only be a solution on the basis of the Withdrawal Agreement," Maas said of the divorce deal that British lawmakers have rejected twice. "But it is also clear that it is especially important to us that the European elections run properly." May's request has faced resistance from the EU which said any delay should either be until May 23, the date of European Parliament elections, or at least until the end of the year. The latter option would require Britain to take part in those elections, something May has opposed. (Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Mark Heinrich) BERLIN (Reuters) - German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Wednesday that he expected European leaders meeting at a summit in Brussels on Thursday to make a decision on how to proceed with British Prime Minister Theresa May's request for a three-month Brexit delay. "We'd like to know where that leads," Maas told a news conference in Berlin. "We've always said that if the (European) Council has to decide about a deadline extension for Britain, then we'd like to know why." He added that the remaining 27 EU countries would meet on Thursday to discuss whether the conditions were in place this week to make such a decision. (Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Joseph Nasr) Lagos (AFP) - An alarming rise in jihadist attacks in Burkina Faso is posing a mounting threat to security in three of its coastal neighbours, according to security sources and analysts. Benin, Ghana and Togo have so far been spared the Islamist violence that has hit their landlocked neighbour since 2015 -- a fallout from instability in Mali, a haven for groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State group. Yet the speed at which violence has spread in Burkina Faso has taken many by surprise. In recent months, attacks have occurred in the eastern region, which borders Benin and Togo, sparking fears that the jihadist bushfire in the Sahel is heading towards the coast. Security fears have increased since the killing of four Burkinabe customs officials and a Spanish priest who was returning from a meeting in Togo's capital, Lome. They were killed just after crossing the border. Bakary Sambe, the head of the Timbuktu Institute in Senegal's capital, Dakar, said the upsurge in violence "seems to indicate that Burkina Faso is the last obstacle that these groups want to get over to reach the coast". Northern Ghana, Togo and Benin could become "ideal staging points" for jihadists hiding in forested areas or isolated rural locations along the porous border, he added. "What's more, stretching their area of operations far from the current epicentre of jihadism could allow them access to the sea via west African ports" and possibly new networks for acquiring weapons, he told AFP. - Border activity - Ghana and Togo went on high alert against attacks after gunmen from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) killed 19 people in the Ivorian resort of Grand-Bassam in March 2016. In the W Regional Park, which straddles Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso, rising militant activity has been detected in recent years. The Thomas More Institute, a European think-tank, said this month that "fighters from Mali reportedly conducted a reconnaissance operation in 2014-2015 reaching as far as Benin". Story continues In December last year, four alleged jihadists from Burkina Faso, Mali and Ivory Coast were arrested in Mali on suspicion of preparing to attack New Year celebrations. Other sources point to "recent incursions of small groups" from Burkina Faso to villages in northern Togo and Benin, where locals have been asked to stop selling alcohol. Radical messages have also been preached in mosques, they added. Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo and Benin last year conducted joint operations against banditry and cross-border criminality, leading to the arrest of more than 200 people. Several were suspected of jihadist activities. - Real threat - One senior Togolese security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said military reinforcements had been sent to the north since the Spanish priest was killed. He gave no further details but said of the security situation in Burkina Faso: "The threat is real. Everyone is on the alert. "The Togolese and Beninese security forces are working in close collaboration with the Burkinabe. "Patrols have been organised regularly in recent times in border villages, especially at night-time." Ghana Army spokesman Colonel Eric Aggrey Quarshie said the military was "on top of" protecting the northern border. "Everything is under control," he added, without elaborating. But Ghana's National Disaster Management Organisation said it was beginning to see the effects of violence in Burkina Faso. In recent weeks, more than 300 people, including 176 children, have sought refuge in the Bawku area of northeast Ghana. - Breeding ground - Most attacks in Burkina Faso go unclaimed but are blamed on Ansarul Islam, the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (JNIM) or the Islamic State in the Greater Sahel (ISGS). Ansarul Islam emerged near the Mali border in December 2016. The JNIM has sworn allegiance to AQIM, while ISGS was behind the deadly ambush of US troops in western Niger in 2017. Rinaldo Depagne, West Africa project director at the International Crisis Group, said the exact nature of the relationship between these groups and others was unclear. But he said the militants were exploiting the "weak link" -- the government in Ouagadougou, which does not have the means to confront the problem on its own. "The increase in fronts allows them to avoid the military response from Western armies and forces of the G5 Sahel group (Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad)," he added. A wider geographical spread of militants is complicated further by the involvement of criminal groups which have long operated in border areas. They have joined the jihadists as cover for their activities such as weapons and drug smuggling or illegal gold mining. Several analysts said poverty, illiteracy and the geographical remoteness of the border areas could make them fertile breeding grounds for radical ideologies. The same factors helped the development of Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria. strs-cl/phz/ri Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump in the Oval Office on March 5, 2018. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP) Stepping again into the fraught territory of Middle Eastern politics, President Trump on Thursday reversed a long-standing American policy that treated Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights as temporary. Trump wrote on Twitter: After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2019 The precise legal significance of Trumps tweet was unclear, and its practical impact is limited. Israel has had military control of the territory for more than 50 years and extended its legal authority to it in 1981. But the tweets political meaning was clear to most observers, who saw it as a brazen effort on the part of the president to interfere in Israels election, to be held on April 9, putting his thumb on the scales in favor of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing a formidable challenge from his centrist political rivals. The tweet followed growing speculation in both countries about such a move, even as presidential adviser Jared Kushner is still working on a comprehensive Mideast peace plan. On the American side, Sen. Lindsey Graham expressed his support for U.S. recognition of Israels annexation of the territory during a recent visit to Israel earlier this month, and Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton have both advocated for legislation to formally recognize the territory as part of Israel. Recently the State Department has begun referring to the territory as Israeli-controlled rather than Israeli-occupied, as it has done in the past. Story continues On the Israeli side, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, heads of the centrist Blue and White party, Netanyahus chief rivals in the current election, have also recently expressed support of the United States recognizing Israeli control over the 500 square miles of the Golan Heights Israel conquered in the Six-Day War in 1967. And so too, of course, has Netanyahu himself, who has advocated for U.S. recognition of Israels ownership of the Golan for years, including during a visit to the United States in 2015. With Netanyahu facing multiple corruption investigations and at least one indictment, he faces in Lapid and Gantz the most serious threat to his reelection since he began his current decadelong tenure as prime minister. (He also served an earlier term from 1996 to 1999.) Netanyahu has run his reelection campaign largely on the message that he is indispensable to Israels security and to its position in the world, and he has made his close personal relationship with President Trump an integral part of his campaign including in videos on social media and on prominent billboards showing the two leaders shaking hands. U.S. recognition of what has been called Israels virtual annexation of the Golan Heights would be more evidence of Netanyahus ability to leverage his relationship with Trump to deliver on long-sought Israeli goals following Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and American withdrawal from the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, often referred to as the Iran deal. Trump has made little secret of his preference for Netanyahu, who will meet with the president at the White House next week during a visit to the United States to speak to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is currently in Israel, ostensibly to discuss U.S.-Israeli cooperation on Iran. After Trumps announcement today, Pompeo and Netanyahu held a joint press conference at the prime ministers residence in Jerusalem, where Netanyahu praised Trump for his announcement regarding the Golan: President Trump has just made history, I called him, I thanked him on behalf of the Israeli public. Hes done it again. In the press conference, Netanyahu called the announcement of recognition a Purim miracle, referring to the Jewish holiday that commemorates the foiling of a 5th century B.C. plot to murder the Jews in the Persian Empire. Netanyahu, center, Sen. Lindsey Graham, left, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman visit the border between Israel and Syria at the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on March 11. (Photo: Ronen Zvulun/AP) While U.S. recognition of the Golan Heights may raise concerns and objections from members of the international community in coming days, the territory also lacks the emotional significance that has made Israels occupation of Palestinian territories, such as the West Bank and Gaza, so explosive. Unlike those territories, which Israel also seized in the Six-Day War after an invasion by three Arab countries, the Golan is not central to the national identity of either Israelis or Palestinians, and so disputes over the territory lack the sharp ideological rifts that have defined disputes over the West Bank and Gaza. Israel prizes the region largely because its topography makes it important for national defense, and because of its fertile soil. With no end to the Syrian Civil War in sight, and with Syria remaining territorially divided, few expected that Israel would return the Golan to Syria anytime soon: Israel sees the territory as an important buffer that enables it to prevent the civil war from spilling across its own borders. In the 1990s, Syria and Israel nearly reached a land for peace deal, in which Israel would have returned the land to Syria in exchange for a formal peace deal, but the agreement fell through at the last moment over a disagreement over minute adjustments to the border. In a move that was widely condemned by the international community including both the United Nations and the United States Israel extended Israeli law over the Golan Heights in 1981, marking the lowest point in the history of U.S.-Israeli relations. Now American recognition of Israeli control over the same territory has become a touchstone of the closest relationship ever between leaders of the two countries. Ben Manson is an American journalist based in Israel and New York. _____ Read more from Yahoo News: Good Morning Britain faced backlash from its viewers on 21 March after it included a live debate about whether children should be taught about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues in schools. In response to the news that LGBTQ education classes have been suspended at a number of Birmingham institutions following parent protestation, presenters Ben Shephard and Kate Garraway discussed the subject with Christian mother Izzy Montague and gay father Tom Cox. Cox insisted that homophobia is taught and that an individual is never born feeling such prejudice. What you are born with is your sexual preference; you are gay or youre not, he continued. Izzy Montague and Tom Cox discuss whether schools should include LGBT classes on Good Morning Britain I dont dispute that it is a parents right to what [their child] goes to school for and how you raise them. But I think youre doing your child a disservice by not allowing them to see that families come in all different shapes and sizes. Montague interjected: I dont agree with that. I believe its a choice. I made a choice [regarding] what I believe is right or wrong, I dont remember ever thinking to myself am I gay or am I straight? Read more: More Birmingham schools ban the idea of LGBTQ classes Its something I have done based on my belief. So even if I was gay, I do believe based on my belief that I feel that a heterosexual relationship is a right course of action for me. 'It's not about living in a vacuum, it's about [parents giving kids their own] opinions of the world around us.' Mum Izzy Montague says it should be up to parents to teach children about subjects like LGBT rights, not schools. pic.twitter.com/T4VBVTVCt7 Good Morning Britain (@GMB) March 21, 2019 Addressing Cox directly, she added: No one has forced you to be in a gay relationship. This is a decision that you have made. Story continues Her comments upset viewers, with many taking to social media to share their confusion as to why such a matter should even be argued over in 2019. One Twitter user stated that they complained to Ofcom about GMB letting that controversial debate happen. Those saying this woman isnt homophobic: she said gay relationships arent right, she called being gay a lifestyle, she said LGBT people made a choice. Her rhetoric was clearly homophobic. Stop making excuses and call it what it is. #GMB #homophobia #ignorance Patricia Marques (@marquesp09) March 21, 2019 They also wrote: What that vile woman said is really offensive. Another noted that yesterday following Andrea Leadsoms comments about parents being able to choose when their child is exposed to LGBTQ-positive teachings they felt angry but today, theyre just broken. Read more: PM must condemn Andrea Leadsom over LGBT education comments, says Labour MP The irresponsibility of #GMB putting on a parent who thinks being gay really is a choice. Having been told to my face that a person chooses their sexuality is not something I wanted that parent to remind me of. Other users urged that we desperately need LGBTQ education in schools to combat viewpoints such as Montagues. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company GT plans to cut 1,100 jobs in Germany. This move is sync with its strategy to modernize its plant in Germany. This is likely to enhance the competitiveness of its manufacturing footprint and assist it in the production of large-rim-diameter premium tires. The Goodyear Dunlop Tires Germany GMbHs facilities in Hanau and Fulda are the targeted plants. As a result of this rationalization effort, this Akron, Ohio-based tire manufacturing company expects charges of $135 million, with $90 million likely to be incurred in first-quarter 2019. It anticipates this rationalization plan to be completed in 2022. Goodyear is one of the largest tire manufacturing companies in the world, selling under Goodyear, Kelly, Dunlop, Fulda, Debica, Sava and various other house brands (such as Lee, Kingstone, Douglas, Mohave and Republic) as well as private-label brands (namely Roadhandler, Star and Monarch). The company expects savings generated from this plan to raise the operating income for the Europe, Middle East and Africa business by $60-$70 million annually over period of 3 years, starting from 2020. Goodyear has an expected negative long-term growth rate of 4.9%. In fourth-quarter 2018, the companys earnings and revenues missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Moreover, the figures were lower on a year-over-year basis. A few other important stocks in the auto space are Ferrari N.V. RACE, Oshkosh Corp. OSK and Dana Incorporated DAN. Ferrari, Oshkosh and Dana have expected long-term growth rates of 18.5%, 11.3%. and 39.3%, respectively. Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, wouldn't you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? From more than 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank, these 10 were picked by a process that consistently beats the market. Even during 2018 while the market dropped -5.2%, our Top 10s were up well into double-digits. And during bullish 2012 2017, they soared far above the market's +126.3%, reaching +181.9%. This year, the portfolio features a player that thrives on volatility, an AI comer, and a dynamic tech company that helps doctors deliver better patient outcomes at lower costs. See Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Oshkosh Corporation (OSK) : Free Stock Analysis Report Ferrari N.V. (RACE) : Free Stock Analysis Report Dana Incorporated (DAN) : Free Stock Analysis Report The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (GT) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Republican representative Mark Green on Thursday introduced a constitutional amendment that would freeze the number of Supreme Court seats at nine, just as some Democrats look to add more seats to the Court. The temptation to create a Court of super-legislators must be resisted, read a statement from Green. Limiting the number of seats to the nine we have currently would help ensure the U.S. Supreme Court remains an impartial branch beholden to the Constitution and no political party. Schemes to pack the court are dangerous to the Founders vision of an independent judiciary that serves as a check on both the executive and legislative branches of government, Green said earlier this week when he announced his intention to introduce the constitutional amendment. Several Democratic presidential candidates have expressed a willingness to expand the number of justices on the Court, while some other Democratic lawmakers have indicated that they think the move is unnecessary. Senator Kamala Harris said everything is on the table to tackle the challenge of the crisis of confidence in the Supreme Court. Senator Elizabeth Warren, running against Harris for the Democratic nomination in 2020, said that, Its not just about expansion; its about depoliticizing the Supreme Court. Former representative Beto ORourke also said he was open to a more complicated system, with five justices selected by Democrats, five selected by Republicans, and five more independent justices picked by the first ten. Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, however, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has expressed skepticism, saying nine justices is appropriate. Two of President Trumps conservative picks Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have been confirmed to the Supreme Court since he took office. Democrats remain outraged that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to consider President Obamas nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. More from National Review A descendant of enslaved people has sued Harvard University, alleging that the Ivy League institution has shamelessly profited from photos of her ancestors. Tamara Lanier, of Norwich, Connecticut, claims that Harvard has ignored requests to surrender images of a man named Renty, whom she says is her great-great-great grandfather, and his daughter Delia. The images, which date back to the 19th century, show Renty and Delia, of South Carolina, shirtless. They are believed to be among the earliest known photos of enslaved people in America. Lanier is suing Harvard for wrongful seizure, possession and expropriation of the images, asking the university to return the photos to her, pay unspecified damages, and recognise her ancestry. A Harvard spokesman told the Associated Press that the institution has not yet been served, and with that is in no position to comment on this complaint. The images, also known as daguerreotypes, were taken as part of a study by Louis Agassiz, a Swiss-American Harvard biologist whose work was used to support slavery. A 1996 paper about Agassizs 1850 photos, published in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, a former academic journal and current online publication that reports on race and education in the US, states that Agassizs images served two purposes: one nominally scientific, and the other frankly political. They were designed to analyse the the physical differences between white people and black people, the article states, but at the same time they were meant to prove the superiority of the white race. Agassizs images are currently kept at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography at Harvards Cambridge, Massachusetts campus. To Agassiz, Renty and Delia were nothing more than research specimens, Laniers suit states. The violence of compelling them to participate in a degrading exercise designed to prove their own subhuman status would not have occurred to him, let alone mattered. Story continues The filing also alleges that by contesting Ms Laniers claim of lineage, Harvard is shamelessly capitalising on the intentional damage done to black Americans genealogy by a centurys worth of policies that forcibly separated families, erased slaves family names, withheld birth and death records, and criminalized literacy. Additional reporting by agencies Italian security authorities have expelled a Moroccan cleric officiating in the EU country over radical interpretation of the Quran and aggressive behavior. Houssam Din Rouzak was flown out of Milan to Casablanca on Monday, Corriere Torino, reported Wednesday. The Italian interior ministry reportedly told Corriere Torino that Rouzak has been deported on security grounds. The 36-year old man who was officiating in Verceil near Milan was legally settled in Italy. According to the interior ministry, he had been under the radar since 2012, the year he gave a radical interpretation of Islamic precepts. Since he was appointed to lead prayers in the Italian city in 2017, Rouzak has been taking extreme positions on relations between Muslims and Italians of other faiths. He reportedly criticized Muslims who have close relationships with non-Muslim Italians. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has welcomed on Twitter the expulsion noting that the Italian government will not allow radicalism. Zero tolerance for those who, in the name of a god, try to wage war with us at home, Salvini twitted. Some 21 people have been expelled from Italy so far this year for security reasons. The interior ministry sent 126 people back to their countries of origin last year. By Gabriella Borter (Reuters) - A descendant of an American slave on Wednesday sued Harvard University to gain possession of photos of her great-great-great grandfather that the school commissioned in 1850 on behalf of a professor trying to prove the inferiority of black people. The photos, depicting a black man named Renty and his daughter Delia, were taken as part of a study by Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz and are among the earliest known photos of American slaves. They are currently kept at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography at Harvard's Cambridge, Massachusetts campus. A representative for Harvard declined to comment and said the university had not yet been served with the complaint. Tamara Lanier of Norwich, Connecticut, who claims to be the great-great-great-granddaughter of Renty, accused Harvard of celebrating its former professor who studied "racist pseudoscience" and profiting from photos that were taken without Renty and his daughter's consent. "What I hope we're able to accomplish is to show the world who Renty is," Lanier said at a news conference in New York. "I think this case is important because it will test the moral climate of this country and force this country to reckon with its long history of racism." Agassiz encountered Renty and Delia when he was touring plantations in South Carolina for a research project sanctioned by Harvard that sought to support his view that black people were a different species, according to the lawsuit. Lanier, who filed the lawsuit in Middlesex County Superior Court in Massachusetts, established her relationship to the photographed slaves with family oral history and genealogical information, her lawyers said. She previously asked the university to give her the photos, but Harvard refused, she said. "By denying Ms. Lanier's superior claim to the daguerreotypes, Harvard is perpetuating the systematic subversion of black property rights that began during slavery and continued for a century thereafter," the complaint said, referring to an early form of photography. Story continues In addition to gaining possession of the photos, Lanier is seeking compensation for emotional distress and Harvard's acknowledgement that it was "complicit in perpetuating and justifying the institution of slavery." Harvard is the latest elite academic institution criticized for its failure to reckon with a racist past. In 2016, a member of Yale University's kitchen staff shattered a stained glass window depicting slaves in a field, drawing national attention and overwhelming support from students who took up his protest against what they said was Yale's implicit endorsement of a racist history. (Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Frank McGurty and Cynthia Osterman) BEIRUT, March 21 (Reuters) - U.S. sanctions on Hezbollah are harming Lebanon as a whole, President Michel Aoun said on Thursday ahead of a visit to the country by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The United States deems the heavily armed, Iran-backed Hezbollah group a terrorist organization and has been steadily increasing financial sanctions against it as part of efforts to counter Iran. Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah has a large armed militia that has helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his eight-year war against rebels, but it is also a political party in Lebanon with seats in the parliament and cabinet. "Lebanon is within the siege that has been imposed on others, particularly on Iran. And it is passing, as a result of that, through a big crisis," Aoun told Russian media in Lebanon, the Lebanese Presidency office said. Sanctions against Hezbollah introduced since 2016 raised fears among Lebanese that U.S. correspondent banks might deem Lebanese banks too risky to do business with, harming a major part of Lebanon's economy. However, Lebanon's Central Bank has repeatedly said that the banking sector is fully compliant with sanctions and that foreign institutions are satisfied with how it implements regulation. "We don't expect more measures against the banks," Aoun, a Hezbollah ally, said. But he said the "negative impact of the siege on Hezbollah afflicts all Lebanese, as it does the Lebanese banks." "Every Lebanese bank has uncertainty about dealing with a depositor, fearing that he has a link with Hezbollah ... This mutual fear does not build an economy and sound trade relations," he added. U.S. Secretary of State Pompeo is due to visit Lebanon on Friday and Saturday after trips to Kuwait and Israel. In Israel, Pompeo described Iran-backed Hezbollah as a risk to the Lebanese. Aoun is scheduled to visit Russia over March 25-26 after being invited by President Vladimir Putin, Aoun's office said. (Writing by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry Editing by David Goodman) Seoul (AFP) - More than 800 South Korean couples were livestreamed having sex in love motels, Seoul police said Thursday in one of the largest-scale and most intrusive examples yet of the country's spycam epidemic. The hyper-wired South has been battling the increasingly widespread proliferation of so-called "molka", or spycam videos, which largely involve men secretly filming women in schools and toilets, among other places. The latest case is unusual for involving couples and the livestreaming element. According to police, four men installed tiny cameras -- all of them with a lens just one millimetre wide -- in 42 rooms in 30 motels, hidden inside hairdryer holders, wall sockets and digital TV boxes. They then livestreamed the footage 24 hours a day to a subscription website with some 4,000 members, hosted on a server overseas. Some viewers also paid a 50,000 won ($44) monthly supplement for access to "exclusive" content -- edited highlights available on repeat. More than 800 couples were shown on the site over three months, mostly having sex, police said. "About 50 percent of the 1,600 victims are male," an official from the National Police Agency told AFP. The gang earned 7 million won from the scheme, he said, adding that two suspects had been arrested and two more were being investigated. More than 5,400 were arrested for spycam-related crimes in South Korea in 2017, but fewer than two percent were jailed. Last year, Seoul several times witnessed thousands of women protesting against spycam videos as part of the country's #MeToo movement. In South Korea, motels are a relatively affordable option for many travellers from home and overseas, and a popular destination for couples seeking privacy away from parents or other family members. But they have also long been associated with illicit sex business and crime. In response to the livestreaming case, a woman from Uruguay tweeted: "Now I won't feel safe, literally anywhere" in South Korea. By Gergely Szakacs BUDAPEST, March 21 (Reuters) - Around 1,000 people rallied outside the Hungarian Academy of Science (HAS) on Thursday to protest against government moves to overhaul the institution, which scientists say is the latest threat to academic independence. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who took power in 2010, has tightened controls over Hungarian public life, including the courts, the media and the economy, as well as education and now scientific research. The European Parliament's main center-right bloc voted on Wednesday to suspend Orban's Fidesz party amid concerns it has violated European Union principles on the rule of law. Some of the protesters on Thursday carried EU flags and waved banners saying "Thinking does not harm your health." "The Hungarian Academy of Science is a trustee of the preservation and development of Hungarian culture and science," the Forum of Academy Workers, a movement founded by HAS research staff, said on its Facebook page. "Yet, our nearly 200-year-old national institution is left fighting for its survival." OVERHAUL The second protest against Orban's reforms in as many months followed an accord between the ministry overseeing the overhaul and leaders of the academy to separate the science research network from the academy's teaching institutions. The research arm would be run by a new management body, with members selected by the government and the academy, according to a joint letter of intent signed early this month. But HAS staff said the accord, reached as a result of what they called government "blackmail," was unacceptable. The academy is solely funded by the government but self-managing, with a network of scientific research bodies employing about 5,000 people. The rally was due to march to the Innovations and Technology Ministry to wave red cards at minister Laszlo Palkovics, architect of the reform, which is due to take effect at the start of next year. Story continues Orban's government says the aim of the reform is to reap more economic benefits from scientific research. "My actions are driven solely by the desire to make the Academy and the entire Hungarian research ecosystem more efficient," Palkovics told private broadcaster atv.hu. The demonstrators rejected that argument. "This is a pretty dangerous tendency when we talk about the need for science to turn a profit immediately and manage scientific life solely according to economic interests," said 19-year-old student Milan Szabo. Concerns over the erosion of academic freedom and other democratic rights in Hungary have triggered several anti-government demonstrations in recent months. (Reporting by Gergely Szakacs Editing by Gareth Jones) Federal immigration agents under President Donald Trump have set a new record for arrests of undocumented immigrants who don't have a criminal record, according to data released Thursday. Under President Barack Obama, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents focused their efforts on arresting undocumented immigrants who had been convicted of crimes while living in the U.S. During Obama's final month in office, 82 percent of people arrested by ICE had a criminal record, meaning just 18 percent of all arrests were of people who were simply undocumented and had committed no other crimes. Trump campaigned on a promise to target "bad hombres" including murderers, violent criminals and gang members but after assuming office he ordered ICE to arrest all undocumented immigrants it encountered, no matter their criminal background. That has led to a consistent drop in the percentage of people arrested by ICE who have a criminal record. According to data released Thursday, that percentage fell to 63.5 percent in December, the lowest monthly figure since ICE started categorizing arrests in 2012. That means 36.5 percent of the arrests were simply undocumented with no criminal history. More: Divided Supreme Court makes it easier to detain noncitizens with criminal records Douglas Rivlin, communications director for America's Voice, a group that advocates for immigrants, said Congress provides ICE with only enough money to deport about 400,000 people a year. Using those limited resources on undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, he said, shows that Trump views the issue as more of a political issue than a law enforcement one. "We're wasting resources deporting a lot of people who are assets to their communities who have families and mortgages and careers and car notes, and we're going after them with the same vigor that we're going after kidnappers and murderers and bank robbers," Rivlin said. "That's not a smart approach to law enforcement." Story continues (article continues after chart) ICE officials say all undocumented immigrants have technically committed a crime, either by entering the U.S. illegally or by staying in the country after his or her visa expired. "One hundred percent of those arrested ... are immigration violators," Nathalie Asher, acting executive associate director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, said during a call with reporters on Thursday. The dramatic change in the way ICE arrests undocumented immigrants came following a February 2017 directive from the Department of Homeland Security that instructed all immigration agents to target all undocumented immigrants. Under Obama, ICE agents pursuing a specific undocumented immigrant with a criminal record were under orders not to round up everyone else they found along the way. That meant ICE agents raiding a house to find an undocumented immigrant with a violent criminal record, for example, were not supposed to question everyone else living there about their immigration status. Through a series of Homeland Security memos issued in February 2017, one month after Trump took office, those restrictions were removed. "Department personnel have full authority to arrest or apprehend an alien whom an immigration officer has probable cause to believe is in violation of the immigration laws," one memo read. "They also have full authority to initiate removal proceedings against any alien who is subject to removal under any provision of the (Immigration and Nationality Act)." ICE agents have followed through. They have arrested an average of 4,219 undocumented immigrants without a criminal record each month of the Trump administration. In the final two years under Obama, the agents averaged 1,352 such arrests a month. The new numbers released Thursday also show a drop in the overall number of arrests made by ICE agents. The 11,178 undocumented immigrants arrested in December mark the lowest monthly total of the Trump administration, which Asher said is a direct result of the migrant caravans that have been flooding the southwest border. Border Patrol agents and Customs officers are the ones who first come into contact with Central American families and unaccompanied minors that have been crossing the southern border in record numbers in recent months. But Asher said she's been forced to reassign ICE agents to help process those migrants for prosecution, detention, asylum interviews and deportation. "I have a finite number of officers," Asher said. "We are having to work lock-step with (Customs and Border Protection) redirecting countless numbers of deportation officers to address whats occurring on the border at this time." This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ICE sets record for arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian investigators said on Thursday that information from the cockpit voice recorder of a Lion Air jet that crashed in October was leaked to the media and they would hold a news conference at 0830 GMT. The investigation into the crash of a Boeing 737 MAX aircraft that killed all 189 on board has become more urgent after a second deadly accident in Ethiopia last week prompted regulators to ground the worldwide fleet of the aircraft. (Reporting by Cindy Silviana; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) JAKARTA (Reuters) - A coalition of political parties backing Indonesian President Joko Widodo is on course to win more than half of the votes in next month's elections, giving them control of parliament, according to a new survey released on Thursday. Indonesia is holding simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections on April 17. Ten political parties backing Widodo are expected to get 52.3 percent of votes, while the coalition backing his challenger, retired general Prabowo Subianto, trail with 29.5 percent, according to a survey by pollster Litbang Kompas. Nearly 20 percent of voters remain undecided, said the pollster, which is part of Indonesia's biggest newspaper Kompas. The survey was conducted between the end of February and early March. Widodo formed a minority government when elected in 2014, but Golkar, the country's second-biggest political party, jumped ship in early 2016 to support the president. The president has since held a majority in the house of representatives, making it easier for him to pass legislation. The survey showed that the two leading parties were benefiting from their association with the president and his opponent. The Democratic Party of Struggle, of which Widodo is a member, is likely to remain by far the largest party, but Prabowo's Greater Indonesia Movement is on course to grab second position from Golkar, the Kompas survey results showed. In the presidential race, Widodo's big lead over Prabowo has been cut to below 12 percentage points from around 20, according to another Kompas survey published this week. (Reporting by Gayatri Suroyo; Editing by Ed Davies and Michael Perry) Emir of the Jund al-Khilafah (Army of the Caliphate) Houssem Thelithi is among the three terrorists killed during the pre-emptive security operation carried out on Mount Salloum, governorate of Kasserine, on Tuesday evening, announced the Tunisian Ministry of the Interior on Wednesday. The two other killed terrorists are Mohamed Naceur Mbarki Mokni, better known under the name of Abu Suleiman and Mondher Gharsalli, aka Abu Mohamed, reported the Tunisian news agency TAP, adding that the Interior department said the slain terrorists were identified after carrying out fingerprint and genetic identification tests. According to the Ministry, the pre-emptive operation was conducted following reports that a group of terrorists, led by Houssem Thelithi Mokni, a fugitive terrorist known as Abu Moslem, was going back and forth to Hassi el-frid, governorate of Kasserine, for provisioning. The National Guards ambushed the group Tuesday night and killed the three terrorists in the locality of Sidi Mahmoud, more than 5 km south of Mount Salloum, outside the closed military zone, said the Ministry of the Interior. The three terrorists took part in the holdup of two bank branches in Kasserine and killed several persons, including soldier Said Ghozlani and his brother Khaled Ghozlani. Earlier Wednesday, spokesperson for the National Guard Houssem Jebabli had told TAP three firearms, ammunition and several detonators, grenades and explosive belts were seized during the operation. Mobile phones and infrared binoculars were also seized, the spokesperson added, noting that combing operations are continuing. Jund al-Khilafah, an affiliate of the ISIS terror group, is on the United States list of terror organizations. * Sweden, UK, U.S. among exporters of electric cars to Norway * Imported second-hand models bolster its electric car leadership * More than a third of new registrations are electric * Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2Hy4lsB By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO, March 21 (Reuters) - On the outskirts of Oslo, a row of Fiat 500es imported from California stand parked in the snow outside the Buddy Electric dealership, part of a global flow of pre-owned electric cars to Norway powered by green subsidies elsewhere in the world. The company's production manager, Tor Einar Hanssen, said it had sold about 110 in the past year and a half, making a small profit on the cars, most of which had been used for a few years by U.S. leasing companies. "They're surprisingly good in cold weather," he said. A gleaming blue Fiat 500e is on sale for 129,000 Norwegian crowns ($15,000) with 24,000 km (15,000 miles) on the clock. It costs about 20,000 crowns($2,300) to import and adapt each Fiat, Hanssen said. On U.S. used car websites, similar Fiats in California are advertised for about $10,000. Norway has the world's highest rate of electric car ownership in the world, partly thanks to long-term perks such as free or discounted road tolls, parking and charging points, which boost the appeal of second hand models unwanted elsewhere. The government also exempts electric vehicles from taxes on traditional vehicles that are very high in a country which does not have its own fossil fuel car industry to lobby against them. Rebates offered by other countries are another part of the equation. In California, residents who own a new battery electric car for at least 30 months can get a rebate of up to $4,500, said John Swanton, of the California Air Resources Board. The Fiats show how varying incentives around the world to promote electric cars, spurred by efforts to combat climate change and limit air pollution, can affect trade flows. Story continues They can also distort national goals for shifting from fossil fuels, although U.S. exports to Norway of 4,232 used electric cars in the past two years are tiny compared with U.S. sales. The state of California alone aims to have five million zero-emission vehicles on its roads by 2030. The issue has a bigger impact in some European countries, which may be over-estimating the greenness of their domestic car fleets due to exports to Norway, where top plug-in cars include Nissan Leafs, Volkswagens , BMW and Tesla. "We're getting a certain amount of vehicle electrification for free, paid by other countries," said Lasse Fridstroem, a senior research economist at the Norwegian Centre for Transport Research. "But perhaps it won't last," he said of the used e-car imports. He and some car dealers say demand for electric cars elsewhere in Europe is picking up, and that Norway could swing to be a net exporter of used electric cars in coming years. BOTTLENECK At the moment, long waiting lists for new electric cars in Norway mean that people who obtain a new model in high demand, such as a Tesla Model 3 or Hyundai Kona, can potentially re-sell it above list prices that are already higher than elsewhere. Part of the reason is a bottleneck in new e-car imports. This is caused, to some extent, by incentives for car makers to sell electric cars in the European Union, of which Norway is not a member, even if they are immediately exported to Norway. To tackle this issue, from January 2019, sales of new cars in Norway are included in a broader EU calculation of the greenness of each manufacturer's European-wide car fleets, a target the carmaker must meet to avoid large penalties. This could reduce Norway's demand for imports but may also mean its EU neighbors record fewer sales. Last year, plug-in electric cars accounted for 31.2 percent of new car registrations in Norway, the highest in the world, and the share rose to 34.2 percent when including second-hand imports, according to the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV). The two figures surged to 40.7 and 43.5 percent in February 2019. Statistics Norway said 11,913 used electric cars and vans were imported last year, up from 9,063 in 2017 when it started to compile data of the second-hand trade. They came from countries including Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Britain and South Korea, bringing some of the benefits of cleaner air and less noise intended for their citizens to Norway, where the environment is already far cleaner than in many other countries. Trod Sandven, a Jaguar Land Rover dealer in Bergen in west Norway, bought 250 new Kia Soul cars last year in countries including Germany. After registering them for a day so that they counted towards manufacturers' green goals under the EU rules, he exported them undriven to Norway to sell as "second hand." "They're brand new, with the plastic still on the seats. The only thing we do is the paperwork," said Sandven. He said he received no German subsidies, since that would require owning the cars for several months in Germany. "Now its changing again, now we are exporting cars to other countries," he said. "Norway is crowded with used electric cars and Europe is screaming for electric cars. It's changing every year." SWEDEN MOVES Stockholm tightened subsidy rules last July after finding that about 10 percent of all electric and plug-in hybrids were exported within five years. Eighty percent of those exports ended up over the border in Norway. "It is problematic that some of the used electric vehicles, that have been subsidized by Swedish tax payers, are exported," said Jakob Lundgren, spokesman for Sweden's Environment Minister Isabella Lovin. Under the new system from July 2018, Swedes have to own a new electric car for six months before receiving a 60,000 Swedish crowns ($6,398.50) rebate. Previously, they got a 40,000 crown discount on buying the car. Lundgren said there were no data yet to show if the rule change had made an impact. With just five million people, Norway bought 46,143 new battery electric cars in 2018, making it the biggest market in Europe ahead of Germany with 36,216 and France on 31,095, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association. EU rules in effect from 2020-21 will force new cars sold in Europe, including Norway, to average no more than 95 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer, with carmakers facing hundreds of millions of euros in potential fines for non-compliance. Other nations tend to hand out subsidies to make e-cars cheaper but lag in infrastructure, such as charging points. Norway wants all new cars to be zero emissions by 2025. Among other nations, Britain and France have similar goals for 2040. Electric cars depreciate less quickly in Norway than elsewhere, partly due to the ongoing benefits, which include low-cost ferry trips and use of bus lanes to avoid congestion. "Norway has become a magnet for the rest of Europe to ship used battery electric vehicles," Matthew Harrison, executive vice president Toyota Motor Europe, said at the Geneva motor show this month. "Frankly there is no used-car demand for battery electric vehicles" elsewhere in Europe, he said. Among sources of second hand imports, Fridstroem and other economists said they were baffled by those from Britain. Norway imported 2,147 electric cars from Britain in 2017, and 133 in 2018, according to Statistics Norway. The steering wheel in British cars is on the right, the wrong side for driving in mainland Europe, making them unattractive in Norway. A spokesperson for the British Department for Transport said the main conditions for plug-in car grants, of up to 3,500 pounds ($4,624.55), were that buyers have an address in Britain and register the vehicle in the country. The Department did not comment when asked if some dealers might be buying electric cars made in Britain but designed for mainland Europe. That might be a loophole allowing dealers to pocket the grant and export the car to Norway, although it was not clear why the number of exports had dropped. ($1 = 9.3772 Swedish crowns) ($1 = 8.6320 Norwegian crowns)($1 = 0.7568 pounds) (With extra reporting by Nichola Groom in Los Angeles and Laurence Frost in Geneva; graphic by Nerijus Adomaitis; editing by Philippa Fletcher) Tehran (AFP) - Iran's supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the economic difficulties of Iranians the main and most urgent problem of the country in a message aired Thursday on state TV. Iran has faced increased economic hardship in the last 12 months which was aggravated after US President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers last May. The renewal of American sanctions, which had been eased in exchange for curbs on Tehran's nuclear programme, sent shockwaves through Iran's economy. "Specially in recent months the difficulties for people's livelihoods has increased," Khamenei said in a prerecorded message aired to mark the beginning of the new Iranian year (21 March 2019 till 20 March 2010). "The economy is the country's urgent problem, it's the country's (most) serious and primary problem," he added, mentioning the devaluation of the national currency, the drop in purchasing power and the fall in production as symptoms of the issue. Khamenei said increasing production was the key to saving the economy and declared "national production" the motto of the new year. The IMF reported that the Iranian economy slumped into recession in 2018 and has forecast a 3.6 percent decline in GDP for 2019. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani also focused on the US sanctions in his new year message broadcast on state TV immediately after Khamenei's. "Some might ask till when will these sanctions and problems go on... these problems began with the oath-breakers and those who have recently reached power in Washington, but the (key to the) end is in our hands," he said sitting in front of a row of Iranian flags. "The more we are united, and the more the enemy realizes that with these sanctions our nation becomes more cohesive, the sooner they will despair and regret (sanctioning Iran)," Rouhani said calling on all branches of government, as well as the armed forces and Iranians from all walks of life, to put aside differences and share the burden of economic "problems and disorder". Rouhani had heavily counted on the 2015 nuclear deal to help save the floundering economy. But ever since the US withdrawal he has been under increasing criticism from his political opponents both for mismanagement of the economy as well as his perceived gullibility in trusting the US in the nuclear deal. Tehran (AFP) - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Thursday dismissed a trade mechanism launched by European countries to bypass renewed US sanctions as a "bitter joke" and said Europe could not be trusted. "This financial channel they recently set up resembles a joke, a bitter joke," Khamenei told a thousands-strong congregation in a televised address at a shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad, where he speaks every year to mark the Iranian New Year. Britain, France and Germany launched the special payment system called INSTEX -- Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges -- in late January after President Donald Trump abruptly quit the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers in May last year. The three countries were the European signatories to the deal, also signed by the US, Russia and China, that curbed Tehran's nuclear ambitions in return for sanctions relief. London, Paris and Berlin launched the device in the hope it will help save the deal by allowing Tehran to keep trading with European companies despite Washington reimposing sanctions. "The difference between what they are obligated to do and what they are proposing is as far as the earth is from the sky," Khamenei said. "We should completely forego (any hope) of help or cooperation from Westerners in strengthening our economy, we shouldn't wait for them," he said. "Once again the Europeans have stabbed us in the back, they have betrayed us," Khamenei said, cursing Western politicians as "savages". "They wear suits, they put on ties and eau de cologne and carry Samsonite briefcases but they are savages," Khamenei said. "What I am saying does not mean (Iran) should cut Western ties, not at all... there is no problem in having relations with them, but trusting them is a mistake, don't trust them," he said. Iran on Tuesday registered a parallel structure to INSTEX called the Special Trade and Finance Institute or STFI, the semi-official ISNA news agency reported. Story continues "With the registration of STFI, we expect that, in cooperation with INSTEX, it would facilitate trade between Iran and Europe and be influential in countering limitations caused by US sanctions," said Iran's central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati. Earlier on Thursday, Khamenei called the economic difficulties of Iranians the most urgent problem facing the country. "Specially in recent months the difficulties for people's livelihoods have increased," Khamenei said in a prerecorded message to mark the March 21 start of the New Year. "The economy is the country's urgent problem, it's the country's (most) serious and primary problem," he said, pointing to the rial's devaluation, decline in purchasing power and falling production. Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar. Photo: PA The Irish prime minister warned on Thursday that Ireland would need to hold a referendum following a Brexit extension if the UK decided not to elect representatives to the European Parliament. Prime minister Theresa May is in Brussels to attend a European leaders summit, during which she will make a case for a Brexit extension until 30 June. But the EU has warned that any extension that goes beyond 23 May the date of European elections would mean that the UK would be forced to elect new members to the blocs parliament. If the UK decides not to elect these members despite remaining a full member of the European Union, the bloc would be forced to change its treaties, Varadkar said. We all know how complicated that is. It would even require a referendum in Ireland, Varadkar said in Brussels. Treaty changes in the EU require the approval of every single member state, each of which have different procedures. In Ireland, this procedure involves a referendum. In most other countries, changes can be approved by national parliaments. The treaties that established the European Union say that European citizens have a right to be represented in the European Parliament, he said. So if the United Kingdom is still a member state, and British citizens are still European citizens, they have a right to representatives in the European Parliament. It cant be taken away from them. The Irish government famously held two votes on the approval of the EUs Lisbon treaty, after 53% of voters rejected it in a 2008 referendum. It was approved by more than 67% of votes in 2009. WASHINGTON Senior White House aide Jared Kushner uses the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp to conduct business and talk with foreign leaders, according to statements from his attorney released by Democrats on Thursday. Back in December, Kushner's attorney, Abbe Lowell, told Rep. Elijah Cummings and then-House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy that Kushner uses the app to communicate with foreign leaders in his official capacity as a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, according to a letter released by Cummings, D-Md., that was sent to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. It was the first time the revelations, and meeting, were made public. After the release of the letter, which also accused Kushner's wife, Ivanka Trump, and several high-profile members of the Trump administration of using private emails for business, Lowell responded by saying aspects of what Cummings said was "not completely accurate" and seemed to push back on allegations that Kushner used encrypted messaging to talk with foreign leaders, according to a letter Lowell sent to Cummings that was obtained by Politico. "I said he has used those communications with 'some people' and I did not specify who they were," Lowell wrote. He added that Kushner, the president's son-in-law, has "numerous friends and contacts abroad." Cummings, who chairs the Oversight Committee, accused the White House of obstructing the Oversight Committee's investigation by dragging its feet in turning over documents requested as part of a bipartisan investigation into the use of personal email accounts and other messaging software by White House staff. His letter also included a request for documents relating to the query by April 4 where he threatened to "consider alternative means" if the information was withheld. Cummings laid out the progress made since the investigation was started in 2017, when Republicans led the House, and the information the committee has learned since that time. He included aspects of Lowell's December interview regarding Kushner's use of encrypted messaging and Ivanka Trump's personal email account. Story continues "Specifically, when asked whether Mr. Kushner had ever used WhatsApp for official business, Mr. Lowell confirmed that Mr. Kushner has usedand continues to useWhatsApp as part of his official duties in the White House," Cummings' letter states. It continues, saying that when Lowell was asked whether Kushner had ever used the app to "communicate with foreign leaders, Mr. Lowell continued that Mr. Kushner "had communications with people outside the United States." The letter does not include a transcript or the exact words Lowell used in the interview, which was after multiple news outlets reported that Kushner had used WhatsApp to talk with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The reports surfaced as Saudi Arabia, specifically the crown prince, was under intense scrutiny for his role in the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Lowell, according to Cummings, did not say whether Kushner had talked about any classified material over the app, instead remarking "that's above my pay grade." More: Trump administration pushed for sale of nuclear plants to Saudi Arabia, Democrats say in report More: Jared Kushner's private emails: Here's what you need to know More: Ivanka Trump sent hundreds of messages from personal email account, according to report Lowell was also asked about Ivanka Trump's use of a personal email account to conduct business, something she was criticized for after news reports surfaced alleging that she had used a personal account to send hundreds of messages. The reports seemed to echo concerns made about Hillary Clinton's use of a private email during the 2016 election something her father, President Donald Trump, focused on during his campaign. Cummings wrote in his letter that Lowell said: "she continues to receive emails relating to official business on her personal email account and that she does not forward emails received through her personal account unless she responds to the email." In the letter, Cummings also said the committee has obtained documents showing that former White House strategist Steve Bannon and former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland used personal email accounts to discuss a plan relating to the sale of nuclear plants to Saudi Arabia. "These communications raise questions about whether these officials complied with the Presidential Records Act," Cummings wrote. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jared Kushner uses WhatsApp, encrypted messaging, to conduct 'official business,' Dems say Bridget McCain, the late Sen. Jon McCains youngest child, has publicly spoken out against President Donald Trumps repeated attacks on her father for the first time. The 27-year-old has typically kept herself out of the public eye, both before and after her father died last August, but she tweeted two messages Thursday in which she tagged the President. Everyone doesnt have to agree with my dad or like him, but I do ask you to be decent and respectful, she wrote. Reminding the President that he was not invited to McCains funeral, she said, Unfortunately, you could not be counted on to be courteous, as you are a child in the most important role the world knows. @realDonaldTrump Everyone doesnt have to agree with my dad or like him, but I do ask you to be decent and respectful. If you cant do those two things, be mindful. We only said goodbye to him almost 7 months ago. (1/2) Bridget???? (@bridgieleela) March 21, 2019 @realDonaldTrump Even if you were invited to my dads funeral, you would have only wanted to be there for the credit and not for any condolences. Unfortunately, you could not be counted on to be courteous, as you are a child in the most important role the world knows. (2/2) Bridget???? (@bridgieleela) March 21, 2019 It was a big moment for Bridget, her sister Meghan said on ABCs The View Thursday. Anyone who knows anything about political history can probably surmise why shes chosen to lead a very private life, she said of Bridget, who was adopted from Bangladesh by John and Cindy McCain. But she felt inclined to say and tweet this. McCain read her sisters tweets aloud. Story continues It was the second day in a row that Meghan McCain, a co-host on the show, stood up for her late father on the air. I dont like coming here every day and having to do this, as all of you know, she said during Thursdays episode. Its extremely emotionally exhausting. Bridget McCain and Meghan McCain, daughters of, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., watch as Cindy McCain lays a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial during a funeral procession to carry the casket of her husband from the U.S. Capitol to National Cathedral for a Memorial Service on September 1, 2018 in Washington, D.C. The comments from McCains daughters, two of the senators seven children, come after multiple days of attacks by Trump. Over the weekend, the President called the late senator last in his class McCain. (He was actually fifth from the bottom, something that he liked to jokingly boast about later in life.) So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) last in his class (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019 On Tuesday, the President told reporters in the Oval Office, I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be. The attacks continued Wednesday when the President visited an Ohio tank factory and criticized the McCain familys reaction to the senators funeral. I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president, I had to approve, he said. I didnt get a thank you, but thats OK. The President also claimed on Wednesday that McCain didnt get the job done in his advocacy for war veterans. Fact-checkers disputed Trumps assertion about McCains record on veterans. Meghan McCain, who also regularly defended her father on social media and on TV while he was alive, said she has been comforted by the support shes received amid the criticism from Trump. I dont expect decency and compassion from the Trump family, McCain said. I do want to thank the public for the decency and compassion theyre giving us. McCain also encouraged viewers to take this awful moment and do something positive by donating to organizations that support veterans. In 1986, millions of Americans were persuaded to hold hands and form a human chain of brotherhood across the country to create a vision of unity, love, and compassion called Hands Across America. Creepy, no? Its about time someone made a horror film about this. Step forward, Jordan Peele, the Oscar-winning writer-director of Get Out, the first horror movie since The Exorcist to win a major Academy Award. With his second film, Us, Peele hews more to the horror side than the Oscar side. The new one has a bit of the satiric nature of Get Out, but it isnt nearly as much fun, nor is its social subtext particularly deft. Moreover, those who were hoping that Peele would continue to offer mordant commentary on the state of race relations in America are going to be disappointed. For nearly an hour in the middle of the film, during endless scenes of chasing and screaming and killing of the kind weve all seen in dozens of stalker pictures and zombie epics, I kept looking at my watch and wondering when Peele would finally come to the point. When he did, it was sort of worth the wait, but only sort of. After an onscreen notice that there are thousands of miles of empty tunnels beneath our feet in the United States, a prologue takes place in 1986, when a little girl wanders away from her dad at a carnival in Santa Cruz and into a fun house on the beach, where the weird doings begin. In the present day, that girl is Adelaide (Lupita Nyongo), a more or less stable wife and mom who is nevertheless a little touchy about beaches and fun houses. On vacation with her husband Gabe (Winston Duke), son Jason (Evan Alex), and daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), she freaks out when Jason disappears for a few minutes in the vicinity of the same fun house, triggering memories of that 15-minute period in 1986 when she was separated from her family. Yet the experience of some friends who have a home nearby (Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker are the parents of teen daughters) suggests the scares endured by the first family arent unique. Soon all of these people are being confronted by their psychotic exact doubles, clad in red jumpsuits and brandishing scissors. Story continues Cue carnage, with all the usual horror-flick cliches. Person A is just about to kill the defenseless Person B, but . . . hurrah, Person C has, unseen by the audience until the last second, sneaked up behind A to cosh A in the skull. Michael Abelss intense score does much of the work here, if the theater plays it loud enough, but theres no getting around the triteness of this home-invasion stuff. Oh yeah, I said to myself, this is why I hardly ever bother with horror films any more. Peele would probably have been wiser to tighten things up and make this story into a one-hour episode of The Twilight Zone, the latest reboot of which he is producing for CBSs streaming service. Peele seems to have the same kind of preoccupation with shaping a movie around a big final twist that fueled the rise, then fall, of M. Night Shyamalan (though he later rebounded). Us (or is it U.S.? Think about that) pushes toward a long expository scene in which one character simply explains everything thats happened, but I didnt find any of it particularly engaging despite Peeles nudging us to attach some sociopolitical importance to developments. Were Americans! insist the red-jumpsuit zombie types. I dont think Us has a great deal to say about America, or even about Hands Across America, but it does have something to say about another mid-80s cultural milestone. Early in the film, theres a glimpse of an old TV with a stack of VHS video cassettes. One of them is C.H.U.D. It continues to disappoint me that so many talented filmmakers seem to have so little interest in history, literature, the world, life, etc., that their principal inspiration remains the popcorn movies they liked when they were kids. I suppose thats fine if you are willing to mentally wall off genre filmmaking from the more ambitious kind. Think of Us as C.H.U.D. with higher production values, and youll have an okay time. More from National Review MADISON, Wis. (AP) A judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Wisconsin Republicans' contentious lame-duck laws limiting the powers of new Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who immediately used his restored authority to pull the state out of a multistate challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess brushed aside GOP concerns that striking down the lame-duck laws would leave thousands of other statutes passed in so-called extraordinary sessions susceptible to challenge. Republican legislative leaders vowed to appeal and predicted the ruling would ultimately be overturned. Wisconsin's Supreme Court, which would have the final say, is controlled 4-3 by conservatives. "It truly is March Madness...disappointed, but not surprised that yet another Dane County judge has issued a partisan political ruling that will inevitably be overturned by a higher court," Republican Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke tweeted. Evers called the ruling a victory, saying Republicans went too far with the lame-duck laws. Lawmakers passed the lame-duck laws during a December extraordinary session, which is a previously unscheduled floor period initiated by majority party leaders. A coalition of groups headlined by the League of Women Voters sued in January, arguing the Legislature can't meet that way. The groups contend the Wisconsin Constitution allows lawmakers to convene only at times laid out in a law they pass at the beginning of each two-year session or at the governor's call. Attorneys for the Legislature said that argument is absurd. They warned the judge that invalidating the concept of extraordinary sessions could expose more than 3,000 pages of laws passed during such sessions to legal challenges. The Legislature's attorney, Misha Tseytlin, said during a hearing this week that such a scenario would be a "rolling disaster." Niess wrote in his order that he can't uphold the lame-duck session and remain true to the state constitution. The judge denied Tseytlin's request for a stay and called the lawyer's warning that an injunction would create legal chaos an "alarmist domino-theory." Story continues The lame-duck laws curtailed an array of Evers and Democratic Attorney Josh Kaul's powers. One of the most prominent revisions was prohibiting Evers from withdrawing the state from lawsuits without legislative approval. That language prevented him from delivering on a campaign promise to remove Wisconsin from a multistate lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act. Less than two hours after Niess blocked the laws Evers ordered Kaul to pull out of the lawsuit. Kaul had filed motions to withdraw by early Thursday afternoon. The governor told reporters he needs time to "digest" the ruling before taking other action. Among the lame-duck laws' other changes: Kaul must seek permission from lawmakers before settling any lawsuits. He also must deposit settlement awards in the state general fund rather than in state Department of Justice accounts. Lawmakers can intervene in lawsuits using their own attorneys rather than Kaul's DOJ attorneys. Democratic legislative leaders sent a letter to their Republican counterparts asking them to stop paying any attorneys hired under the lame-duck authority, including Tysetlyn. The Legislature is paying him $500 an hour to defend the laws. Municipalities can hold early in-person voting only during the two weeks before an election. In the past they could set their own hours. Republicans also used the lame-duck session to confirm 82 of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker's appointments, ensuring Evers couldn't immediately replace them when he took office. Niess' order vacated all those appointments. The lawsuit is one of four actions challenging the lame-duck laws. Five labor unions have sued in Dane County arguing that the laws steal power from the executive branch and transfer it to legislators, violating the separation of powers doctrine. The state Democratic Party has filed a federal lawsuit contending that the lame-duck statutes violate free speech and equal protection guarantees. Liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now challenged the early voting restrictions as part of a larger federal lawsuit challenging Republican-authored voting laws. U.S. District Judge James Peterson struck down the early voting limits in mid-January, but that decision has been folded into a larger appeal and could be overturned. ___ Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter at https://twitter.com/trichmond1 The UN Secretary-Generals Personal Envoy for the Sahara, Horst Kohler, expressed hope that the second roundtable discussions, that started this Thursday afternoon, would reinforce the positive momentum achieved at the previous meeting, held last December in Geneva, said the Geneva UN Office in a press release made public Thursday afternoon. The second roundtable meeting on the Sahara, which has just begun, will allow delegations to discuss the elements necessary for a solution, in accordance with Security Council resolution 2440, of regional issues and confidence-building measures, added the press release. Earlier Thursday, Horst Kohler had held separate meetings with the heads of the participating delegations, according to Moroccan news outlet le360. This second roundtable is held in accordance with the provisions of the latest Security Council resolution (2440), adopted on October 31, 2018, which calls upon the parties to demonstrate political will in order to advance the negotiations, emphasizing the importance of an enduring political solution based on compromise. The resolution also calls on the parties to engage constructively with the UN Personal Envoy. The second roundtable is held at Le Chateau Le Rosey in Bursins, near Geneva, March 21-22 with the participation of delegations from Morocco, Algeria, the Polisario, and Mauritania. The Moroccan delegation to the Geneva II roundtable is led by Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, and includes Moroccos Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, Omar Hilale; President of the Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra region, Sidi Hamdi Ould Errachid; President of the Dakhla-Oued Eddahab region, Yenja El Khattat; and member of the City Council of Smara and community activist Fatima El Adli. The Algerian delegation is led by newly appointed Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra. The Mauritanian team is led by Foreign Minister Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed. After CNN posted what many are calling a puff piece about White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, viewers on Twitter were quick to respond. Kellyanne Conways humble New Jersey roots laid the foundation for a long career in a male-dominated world of politics. Now, shes the one consistent figure in the otherwise revolving door of the Trump White House. #BadassWomenDC | @DanaBashCNN https://t.co/9KH5FyB3z6 pic.twitter.com/G6X271J2N0 CNN (@CNN) March 20, 2019 The video and post came with the hashtag #BadAssWomenDC as part of a series being done by CNNs Dana Bash, and many think Conway should not have been included. This is embarrassing, @CNN. Pure propaganda for a woman who is known to lie repeatedly on behalf of the president. This is an insult to actual "badass women of DC." HawaiiDelilah (@HawaiiDelilah) March 20, 2019 As a woman, I find it insulting that another woman thinks it's "badass" to lie, disinform & shill for one of the most corrupt men in government (the world?). Kellyanne is lining her pockets & reveling in her fame at the expense of her integrity. That ain't "badass," just bad. Lorraine Devon Wilke (@LorraineDWilke) March 20, 2019 This feels like satire but its not right? Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) March 21, 2019 Did she just buy CNN or something? Why is this here? lilykins (@lilykins50) March 20, 2019 Stop @DanaBashCNN. Just stop. Its no mystery: She leaks. She leaks all day every day. She leaks to you & every reporter who RTd your embarrassing portrayal of her as a survivor like its a Larry David spoof. Shes cunning. The most cunning of all. Youre celebrating deceit. https://t.co/xipeHb7w8I Philippe Reines (@PhilippeReines) March 20, 2019 And even though the video briefly mentioned her foray into alternative facts, scenes of Conway in her hometown and reminiscing about old times did not sit well with viewers. Story continues This is so insanely shameless. But you should feel ashamed for this trash. Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) March 20, 2019 Gross. Lyle Miller (@Lyle_Miller) March 21, 2019 Many are theorizing that CNN is trying to humanize Conway in an effort to hire her after shes done working for President Trump. Is CNN planning to hire Kellyanne Conway in the near future? Sure looks like it from all this build up. https://t.co/iJ2ITMk1zV drbc (@DBattistella) March 21, 2019 CNN... are you for real? Kellyanne Conway puts party before country every day. She lies almost every day. She supports and defends Trumps heinous, disgusting behavior. If you hire this partisan hack when she done with Trump... Im done with you. https://t.co/sRavRPneNz Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) March 20, 2019 I'm a fan of the CNN. But if they hire Conway, I'm boycotting it. Dolokhov (@Dolokhov15) March 21, 2019 @CNN cnn, if you hire Conway, I will NEVER watch or read anything produced by you EVER again. Lissy DB (@Liseds1) March 21, 2019 Dear @CNN, if you ever hire Kellyanne Conway, you will have millions of viewers who will never watch your network again. Teddy Tenenbaum (@teddyt) March 21, 2019 And some viewers even went so far as to compare Conway to Adolf Hitlers longtime associate Joseph Goebbles for her undying allegiance to Trump. .@DanaBashCNN Kellyanne does one thing consistently: LIE Shell survive until the very end of the most deceitful WH in history the way Goebbels survived until the very end: In the bunker, next to you know who. He a Badass of Berlin to be celebrated?https://t.co/lqWlZ8A9V5 Philippe Reines (@PhilippeReines) March 21, 2019 Do Goebbels next nate (@stalenate) March 21, 2019 Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, or leave your comments below. Want daily pop culture news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Entertainment & Lifestyles newsletter. Jerusalem (AFP) - A key witness in a high-profile corruption case implicating allies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been arrested after backing out of a deal to testify for the state, police said Wednesday. Michael Ganor was arrested on Tuesday after informing police of his intention to "change the version he gave during the investigation" into corruption suspicions around the purchase of submarines from Germany's ThyssenKrupp for Israel's navy, police said. Ganor was taken to court on Wednesday, where his remand was extended until Sunday. Police said in November there was evidence to press charges against a number of suspects, including Netanyahu's cousin and lawyer David Shimron. Netanyahu was questioned as a witness in the case and was not considered a suspect. Ganor, who had been ThyssenKrupp's local representative, had agreed to turn state's witness in return for serving a 12-month prison sentence for tax offences and paying a heavy fine. His change of heart came shortly after reports that Netanyahu had sold stock in a company that supplied services to ThyssenKrupp. Benny Gantz, Netanyahu's main challenger in the April 9 election, alleged the premier had gained 16 million shekels ($4.4 million) from his stock that rose due to a deal to buy an unnecessary submarine. On Wednesday, Netanyahu accused Gantz and his Blue and White running partner Yair Lapid of "forcefully trying to resuscitate" the submarine affair, despite it having already been investigated by police because of their "panic" over recent developments in the electoral campaign. Netanyahu is locked in a close battle with the centrist Blue and White political alliance while under threat of indictment for corruption in separate cases. In his comments on Wednesday, the premier referred to Gantz's phone having been hacked, allegedly by Iranian intelligence, a story that has made headlines in recent days. Story continues Netanyahu has made the phone hack a key part of his campaign against Gantz, suggesting his opponent could be blackmailed by Israel's main enemy if he were to become prime minister. Gantz says there was nothing sensitive on the phone and has suggested Netanyahu's camp was behind leaks that led to stories about the hack that he was informed about months ago. "This is not gossip, its a matter of the security of the state," Netanyahu said. NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) The Latest on the Ethiopian plane crash (all times local): 7:15 p.m. Ethiopian Airlines says its pilots went through all the extra training required by Boeing and the U.S. aviation regulator to fly the 737 Max 8 jet that crashed this month, killing all 157 passengers. CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said Thursday that the airline's pilots completed the training meant to help them shift from an older model to the newer 737 Max 8. He said the pilots were also made aware of an emergency directive issued by the U.S. regulator, the FAA, following the crash of a Boeing 737 Max 8 owned by Indonesia's Lion Air last year. As investigators look into the crashes, attention has turned to a new software in the jets that can push their nose down in some circumstances. The New York Times reported that the pilots of the Ethiopian plane never trained in a simulator for the plane. Gebremariam said that the 737 Max simulator is not designed to simulate problems in the new jet software. He declined, however, to say whether the pilots had trained on the simulator. ___ 6:50 p.m. The families of Kenyan victims of the Ethiopian plane crash are asking their government for legal assistance in pursuing compensation. In an emotional gathering Thursday in the capital of Nairobi, the victims' relatives asked for lawyers to help them pursue their case. One of them, Erick Mwangi, spoke of what could be an "expensive and tedious" legal battle. Kenya's foreign ministry is advising them to "come together as a group" as the attorney general takes up the matter. He said the government will assist in obtaining death certificates for the victims. Ethiopian Airlines on Thursday urged patience as an investigation into the March 10 crash of its Boeing Max 8 plane continues. Thirty-two Kenyans were among the 157 victims of the plane crash. The Boeing Max planes have since been grounded. LONDON (Reuters) - The British parliament should be given the opportunity to find an alternative way to leave the European Union and lawmakers would support a Norway-style post-Brexit relationship, Conservative lawmaker Oliver Letwin said on Thursday. "The idea is: if the prime minister doesn't get her deal across the line next week... we need to try to establish whether there is a cross-party majority for some alternative," said Letwin, a former cabinet minister in David Cameron's government, "The idea would be to have a day where members of parliament across the parties can bring forward alternative propositions and see whether, as I hope, and believe, it will be possible we can get a majority for some alternative." Letwin said he felt parliament would support a Norway-style relationship with the EU. "I believe that we will probably on that day be able to get a cross-party majority in favour of what is sometimes called Norway-way plus," which would involve staying in the EU's single market and a customs union, Letwin said. He warned that if May's deal fails again and parliament was not given indicative votes, then the United Kingdom faced a potential no-deal exit. "Then we are headed for a no-deal exit," he said. (Reporting by Andrew MacAskill; editing by Guy Faulconbridge) By Brendan Pierson NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Lithuanian man on Wednesday pleaded guilty to U.S. charges that he helped orchestrate a scheme to defraud Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google out of more than $100 million, federal prosecutors announced. Evaldas Rimasauskas, 50, entered his plea to one count of wire fraud before U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison at his sentencing, currently scheduled for July 24. Rimasauskas also agreed to forfeit about $49.7 million he personally obtained from the scheme, according to a court filing. Paul Petrus, a lawyer for Rimasauskas, said the plea spoke for itself and declined to comment further. Rimasauskas, originally from the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, was extradited to the United States from Lithuania in August 2017. U.S. prosecutors accused Rimasauskas and unnamed co-conspirators of bilking Google and Facebook out of more than $100 million by posing as an Asian hardware vendor and claiming that the companies owed the vendor money. The prosecutors did not name the companies, but Taiwan-based Quanta Computer Inc confirmed after Rimasauskas' arrest that it was the Asian vendor, and a Lithuanian court order in 2017 identified Google and Facebook as the victims. The scheme defrauded Google out of $23 million and Facebook out of $99 million, according to that order. Prosecutors said Rimasauskas contributed to the scheme by setting up a fake company and a bank account in Latvia. The scheme is an example of a growing type of fraud called "business email compromise," in which fraudsters ask for money using emails targeted at companies that work with foreign suppliers or regularly make wire transfers. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in February 2017 that losses from such scams since the agency began tracking them in 2013 totaled more than $3 billion. (Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler) Kids from the school gathered excitedly to catch a glimpse of the famous prince, however according to the Daily Mail, when he arrived, one little boy asked him: When is the real Prince Harry coming? Photo: Getty Images Hes one of the most well-known faces in the world, but one little boy still cant believe that he actually met with the real Prince Harry. The Duke of Sussex was visiting St Vincents Catholic Primary School in Acton to take part in a tree planting project in support of The Queens Commonwealth Canopy, when the incident occurred. Children from the school gathered excitedly to catch a glimpse of the famous prince, however when he arrived, one little boy reportedly asked him: When is the real Prince Harry coming? READ MORE: Meghan Markles former co-star reveals what shes like Prince Harry, who is a natural with children, quipped back, Im the real Harry. Ive just had my hair cut for the occasion. Prince Harry was given a baby onesie during the visit, which will no doubt come in handy next month, when the Duchess of Sussex is reportedly due to give birth to their first child. The Duke of Sussex was visiting St Vincents Catholic Primary School in Acton, London, to take part in a tree planting project in support of The Queens Commonwealth Canopy. [Photo: Getty Images] Prince Harry was also given a baby onesie on the trip, which will no doubt come in handy next month, when the Duchess of Sussex is reportedly due to give birth to their first child. [Photo: Getty Images] On Tuesday, Prince Harry was joined by Meghan Markle to honour the victims of the Christchurch shooting attack at New Zealand House in London. The 37-year-old pregnant Duchess of Sussex was pictured arriving with her 34-year-old husband. Both of them were carrying a bouquet of flowers to lay in front of the building and pay their respects. READ MORE: Meet the woman whos going to handle the Markles for Harry and Meghan Its believed the couple were asked to represent the royals by the Queen herself, because they were the last members of the family to visit New Zealand. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex toured New Zealand last October, where they visited hot spots like the iconic Maranui Cafe, and scenic Abel Tasman National Park. When an American man is reunited with a Dutch painting in a German town on Thursday, the international meeting will come after eight years of work to establish the proper ownership of the painting and eight decades after it was confiscated by the Gestapo. The work in question is Hollandisches Platzbild, often translated as View of a Dutch Square. Its a copy of a painting by the 17th century Dutch Baroque-era painter Jan van der Heyden; the original is held by the Louvre and the copy was perhaps made by the artist himself. Since 1963, it has hung in the building of the association for the Roman Catholic cathedral depicted in the painting, St. Victors, in the town of Xanten, in northwest Germany. The cathedral has an interesting link to the 20th century German past: Anti-Nazi German Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, whom the Nazis would accuse of sympathizing with the corrupters of our race, condemned Nazi racial laws in a 1936 speech there. But thats not the only link between the painting and that brutal chapter of history. John Graykowski, 65, grew up hearing about his great-grandparents Gottlieb and Mathilde Kraus, who were part of Viennas Jewish elite. Photographs show them traveling in a chauffeured black limo, and their daughter Marie Mitzi Kraus meeting the current Queen Elizabeth II in the 1950s. Graykowski, a D.C. lawyer, had also heard his great-grandparents collected art, but had no idea how much they owned. When the family fled Vienna in the run-up to the Holocaust, that collection was left behind. Though his great-aunt told him the family had tried to track down some of the collection in the 1960s, theyd given up after not hearing back from the German government. But around 2002, completely out of the blue, Graykowski and his uncle Alex Heingartner were contacted by an organization helping the Austrian government. Its mission was to implement a 1998 Austrian law that led to the creation of a commission for investigating the provenance of artworks owned the state and acquired during World War II. Six paintings that had been owned by Gottlieb and Mathilde Kraus had been recovered, they learned. Story continues All of a sudden, paintings that had been part of the mythology of the family are alive and theres hope. Theres a chance, Graykowski recalls feeling back then. Figuring there must be more, the family reached out in 2009 to a different organization, the London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe, for help. Sure enough, after years of research, a seventh painting was confirmed: the View of a Dutch Square. But the search for that painting would raise even bigger questions that, even as Graykowski takes ownership of the work of art, remain to be fully answered. View of a train boxcar, through the open door of which can be seen some of the art collection looted by the Nazis, near Berchtesgaden, Germany, 1945. The Looting Begins Gottlieb and Mathilde Kraus once owned so many paintings more than 160 that, in 1923, their apartment had been opened to the public as a museum. But after Austria became part of Nazi Germany in 1938, a union known as the Anschluss, the Kraus family fled, leaving everything behind. Everything included the paintings, one of which was View of a Dutch Square. They would ultimately end up in Washington, D.C.; meanwhile, the Gestapo inventoried their apartment in October of 1940, and the art was stored with a shipping company in Vienna before being officially confiscated the following June. About six months later, 12 of the familys paintings were photographed for consideration for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitlers planned museum in Linz, the Austrian city where he spent part of his childhood. But the painting View of a Dutch Square wasnt bound for a museum. Rather, sales records show that it was purchased in July 1942 for about $1,000 Reichsmarks by Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitlers photographer. The painting was photographed again after the Allied officers found the Hoffmann collection in May 1945, and sent it to be inventoried at the Munich Central Collecting Point in Bavaria, one of the biggest collecting points set up by the Monuments Men, a special Allied unit of art experts who sorted through art confiscated during the war. Between August 1945 and May 1951, the Munich Central Collecting Point returned 463,000 paintings to the countries from which they had been taken, according to the Commission for Looted Art in Europe. But the process didnt stop there. The U.S. military transferred custodianship of more than 2,500 works of art from the collections of various Nazi leaders and organizations to Bavaria by the early 1950s for the purpose of restitution, and about 800 works were transferred to the Bavarian State Paintings Collection between 1953 and 1977. The works in Hoffmanns collection, numbering 278, were among those transferred to the Bavarian State. So, when the Commission for Looted Art in Europe identified View of a Dutch Square as a work that had belonged to Gottlieb and Mathilde Kraus, they knew where to look for it: the Bavarian State Paintings Collection archives. When they went to look for it, however, the painting wasnt there. Lost and Found According to documentation received by the Commission in 2011, the Bavarian State Paintings Collection had sold the painting in 1962 for 300 German Deutsche Marks. The buyer? Henriette Hoffmann-von Schirach, Heinrich Hoffmanns daughter and the wife of Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Youth leader who became the Nazi governor of Vienna and oversaw the deportation of the citys Jews. Henriette, it turned out, had requested and was granted several works from her fathers collection. Her motivations for wanting to re-claim the painting are not clear. In fact, she has said that she stood up to Hitler about his persecution of the Jews at his home and was banned from his house. And yet the next thing known about its whereabouts is that the Xanten cathedrals building association paid 16,100 German Deutsche Marks (about $9,300 today) for the painting at an auction in Cologne in 1963. This wasnt a matter of just one painting. Between 2009 and 2011, the Commission for Looted Art in Europe discovered that Bavaria returned many paintings to the families of Nazi officials. Exactly how many remains unknown. At the very time that the Kraus family and many families who had survived the Holocaust were making claims for that property and being told that no one knew where their property was, Anne Webber, Founder and Co-Chair of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, tells TIME, their art was being handed back to the families of these Nazi war criminals. In 2011, Graykowski made an official claim on the painting. Five years later, the Commission frustrated, Webber says, by the difficulty of getting official answers on the return sales went public with the news, which was first reported by Suddeutsche Zeitung, one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany. (The Bavarian State Ministry for Education, Culture, Science and Arts and a descendant of Henriette Hoffmann-von Schirach did not return requests for comment, though in the past Bavarian officials have disagreed with suggestions that the state is not fully cooperating with restitution efforts.) Ronald Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, said at the time that the research was absolutely shocking and that If the allegations prove to be as severe as presented, it is one of the most scandalous incidents related to the subject to date. The German Lost Art Foundation, which receives funding from the German government, has a database that lists more than 70 works of art that were in the Bavarian State Paintings Collection that were returned to families of top Nazi leaders, including six paintings to the family of Heinrich Hoffmann. After a Bavarian Parliament committee called for a full report on artworks Bavaria may have sold back to Nazi families, a report published in October 2016 by the office of the Bavarian Culture Minister explained that provenance research had been going on since 2012 and that, as of July 2016, a little less than half of the 890 artworks transferred to Bavarian State Paintings had been researched. Of those, a little more than half had been marked as under suspicion of having been looted. The German Lost Art Foundation says it has helped the von Schirach family trace Henriette von Schirachs efforts to regain her fathers collection after the war, and found that she got 118 objects back by presenting sales records for them. Of those, 92 were simply given back to her, and 26 she bought back. Most of the cultural objects she resold later, in some cases with a large profit margin, the organization told TIME in a Mar. 21 statement. A full report on the findings, funded by the family, is due this spring. Victims of Nazi Theft Find Hope Awareness of the fact that Nazis stole art from Jewish families is high these days, thanks to Hollywood movies and headline-worthy finds, but the restitution process remains long and complicated. After an initial burst of returns around the time of the end of the war, media attention faded as many survivors made an effort to put the war behind them, says Lynn H. Nicholas, author of The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europes Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. With the Cold War shifting focus away from Germany toward Russia, and few global governments willing to make a big fuss over privately-owned art, the process essentially paused. An estimated 600,000 paintings are believed to have been stolen during the war and 100,000 remain missing, Stuart Eizenstat, an adviser to the U.S. Department of State on restitution issues, said recently. While a lieutenant checks his list (background), 7th Army soldiers carry three valuable paintings down the steps of Neunschwanstein Castle at Fussen, Germany, where they were a part of the collection looted by the Nazis from conquered countries. Several factors came together in the 1990s that reinvigorated the efforts to return Nazi-looted art, from the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II to the scandal over whether Swiss banks profited off Nazi-looted gold. Critically, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany led to the opening up of intelligence records that hadnt been previously available for other restitution issues. In 1998, 44 nations agreed to the non-binding Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art (more commonly known as the Washington Principles), vowing to identify artworks that might be looted, to publish lists so that families could recover them and to work toward just and fair solutions. A year later, Anne Webber, a British filmmaker whod made a documentary about looted art, founded the non-profit organization Commission for Looted Art in Europe, as a clearinghouse for information on the topic and home to a team of investigators who could help families negotiate restitution settlements. Since its establishment 20 years ago, the organization has recovered more than 3,500 objects on behalf of families. The Internet has also helped possible heirs find resources more easily, and has created more opportunities for these connections to be made. For example, the genealogy website MyHeritage told TIME that last fall it notified eight families that they are descendants of original owners of works of art that appear on a Dutch Museum Associations list of about 170 artworks considered likely to have been stolen, confiscated or sold under duress between 1933 and 1945. The families had no idea about the lists, and some didnt know they were even descendants of the owners of these works of art. In the case of the painting of the Xanten cathedral, Gestapo account books, combined with sales records for and photographs of the painting, proved that the artwork belonged to Graykowskis family. But because the Washington Principles are not legally binding, the laws about claiming art varies by country. Hans-Wilhelm Barking, chairman of the Dombauverein Xanten, the non-profit society for the Xanten cathedrals preservation, made that point in a joint press release published Thursday with the Commission for Looted Art, noting his organization was returning the painting voluntarily: I ask for your understanding that I have certain difficulties to speak of a return of the painting. This term may imply that the [cathedral society] may not have acquired the painting lawfully and may not have become the lawful owner. I therefore prefer the term surrender, which is done voluntarily in recognition of the Nazi injustice. The Painting Returned, Now What? Graykowski would agree that the subject of Nazi-looted art is not really a matter of whats legal. Restitution is about whats moral, he says. This was my familys property, he says. It was stolen. I want it back. A very simple construct. He believes the process would go faster if governments paid private individuals or organizations for returning looted art in their possession. But it isnt really about the money, either. A 2017 appraisal showed the painting of the Dutch square was worth about $5,000, but he says hes been looking into bringing things full circle by donating it to the Jewish museum in Vienna. And now its on to finding the other 160 paintings. I told my son, who is 29, he says, youll have to continue this. Lorraine Kelly will not have to pay a 1.2m tax sum she was billed in 2016, as a judge rules her a self-employed star Lorraine Kelly has avoided paying 1.2 million in tax, after a judge ruled shes performing the role of a friendly, chatty and fun personality during her morning appearances on ITV rather than appearing as herself. The breakfast TV presenter was hit with the bill which is reported to consist of nearly 900,000 in income tax and more than 300,000 in national insurance contributions back in 2016, with HMRC suggesting that she was an ITV employee. However, despite signing a contact to host Lorraine and Daybreak four years prior, Kelly insists shes a freelancer. Read more: GMBs Piers Morgan rows with fellow presenter Lorraine Kelly live Heard by the first-tier tax tribunal, Judge Jennifer Dean sided with the Scottish host, concluding that Kelly is a self-employed star and the contract was for services and not that of employer and employee. She also voiced that Kelly did not receive staff benefits such as holiday and sick pay and because she could technically be described as a theatrical artist, was well within her rights to deduct agent fees from her tax sum. We did not accept that Ms Kelly simply appeared as herself; we were satisfied that Ms Kelly presents a persona of herself, Dean stated during the hearing. We should make clear we do not doubt that Ms Kelly is an entertaining lady, but the point is that for the time Ms Kelly is contracted to perform live on air she is public Lorraine Kelly. She may not like the guest she interviews, she may not like the food she eats, she may not like the film she viewed but that is where the performance lies. Read more: Lorraine Kellys panned quiz show is axed Quite simply put, the programmes are entertaining, Ms Kelly is entertaining and the DNA referred to is the personality, performance, the Lorraine Kelly brand that is brought to the programmes. HMRC responded to the ruling, saying it was disappointed with the verdict and will carefully consider the outcome of the tribunal before deciding whether to appeal. As the boat of the Algerian regime sinks against the backdrop of unrelenting protests demanding a step down of infirm Bouteflika and a departure of the opaque regime, the ruling elites seek diversion by sending their foreign facade figure Ramtane Lamamra to the UN talks on the Sahara in Geneva, a move that shows that hostility to Morocco is a tenet of the autocratic and embattled establishment in Algiers. Ensuing diplomatic defeats one after the other at the African level and beyond, the Algerian regime sticks to the mirage of having an unviable state in the Sahara that turns in its orbit. Myopic to the significance of the protests and their aspirations to have open borders with Morocco and Tunisia, the Algerian regime sticks to obsolete stands born out of a cold war context. Lamamras participation in the UN-sponsored Geneva II roundtable on the Sahara at the head of the Algerian delegation shows that undermining Moroccos territorial integrity is more important for the Algerian regime than the threat it faces from the growing awareness of the Algerian youth regarding the untenability of the autocratic status quo. As protests grow, the Algerian regime is busy contributing with South Africa to hold yet another anti-Moroccan event on March 25 to show solidarity with the separatist Polisario entity. Protesters representing the vibe of the Algerian people are aware that the regime has used the Sahara issue to destroy the Maghreb integration and keep borders closed. It is worth noticing that in all protests in the Algerian capital no one hoisted the flag of the Polisario entity. Support for separatism in the Sahara is a cause of a regime perceived as aging, corrupt and inefficient. The cracks within the regime and the ensuing defections would probably give rise to a new elite that looks at the Maghreb as a win-win project breaking away with decades of hostile policies towards Morocco. Meanwhile, in its last days, the regime squanders its decreasing oil and gas mantra on the already lost cause of separatism at a moment where Morocco gathers support continentally and internationally for its territorial integrity. People walk in the sunshine on South Beach, Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales, Britain. Photo: Rebecca Naden/Reuters Just over half of Brits are considering a move abroad either now or in the future despite an impending Brexit, according to a poll by Sapio Research. The research, which was conducted on behalf of global relocation and moving services company Crown Relocations, surveyed 1,000 people in January 2019, across different demographic groups currently considering relocating abroad. It found that Europe was the number one destination for those looking to move abroad. The poll revealed that 50% of retirees considered Europe as the prime destination while 26% millennials considered the continent for relocation. Chart: Crown Relocations Despite the nation voting to leave the EU, we still consider it our closest neighbour and our number one destination for a move abroad especially if were looking to retire, said Andy Buckle, general manager at Crown Relocations. Post-Brexit it may not be as easy to relocate or emigrate to ex-member states and those considering a move will need to take expert advice. The safety in Europe is why a majority of Brits still eye the continent for relocation. In comparison, the US only gained 10% of the vote in the poll due to the level of gun crime. Some 46% said they would avoid the US because of president Donald Trump. Only 2% of those looking to relocate said that they wanted to move to the Middle East, while 13% said theyd opt for Asia. Prior to becoming a royal, Meghan Markle was best known for her role in US programme Suits. But the legal drama isnt the only acting role Meghans showreel boasts shes also starred in a number of films. The last movie the 37-year-old starred in was 2015s crime thriller Anti-Social. In the film, she played the girlfriend of a street artist, played by British actor Gregg Sulkin. The 26-year-old has spoken about his time acting alongside Meghan, during an interview on Fair Game with Kristine Leahy. When asked what she was like before she married Prince Harry, Sulkin said: Everybody does know her as a princess, but in real life, she genuinely is also like a princess. She is one of the classiest, the nicest, one of the most sincere and genuine people Ive ever met. Gregg Sulkin and Meghan starred in the 2015 crime film Anti-Social together [Photos: Getty] Sulkin, who is currently starring in Marvels TV series Runaways, also praised the duchess for the way shes handled the scrutiny of the media in recent months. He added: I just think the way shes handled it, obviously the press it hasnt been easy for her. I think shes stuck to her guns, which is when they go low, we go high sort of mentality and I think shes done that and I think shes been a class act. READ MORE: Meet the woman whos going to handle the Markles for Harry and Meghan Meghan retired from her acting career in 2017, having worked on Suits for six years. Shortly after her engagement in November 2017, she also shut down all of her social media accounts and her lifestyle website The Tig. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are just weeks away from welcoming their first child and Meghan has no other public engagements scheduled. She and husband Harry made an unannounced visit to New Zealand House on Tuesday to sign a book of condolence for the victims of the Christchurch terror attack. The Republican governor of Mississippi, Phil Bryant, signed a bill Thursday banning abortions past the point in pregnancy where a fetal heartbeat can be detected. During the signing ceremony, Bryant called the heartbeat the universal hallmark of life since mans very beginning. Were going to try to protect that child whenever we can, said the governor. We think that this is showing the profound respect and desire of Mississippians to protect the sanctity of that very unborn life whenever possible. The law, the latest in a string of similar bills in other states, is expected to face legal challenges from abortion-rights groups before July 1, when it is scheduled to go into effect. Such groups immediately blasted the bill, saying it infringes on a womans right to choose to obtain the procedure. The term heartbeat bill is a manipulative misnomer. These bills actually rob women of their choice to have an abortion before they even know theyre pregnant, said the Center for Reproductive Rights said, which has announced plans to sue the state over the new law. We will all answer to the good Lord one day. I will say in this instance, I fought for the lives of innocent babies, even under the threat of legal action, Bryant wrote in a tweeted response to the group. At least ten other red states are hoping that legal challenges to their own heartbeat bills will lead to a Supreme Court case that could overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion in the U.S. The governor of Iowa also signed such a bill into law last year, but it was dismantled by a state court. Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, Florida, and South Carolina are among the states considering similar bills. More from National Review JACKSON, Miss. (AP) Mississippi senators on Tuesday passed the final version of a bill that would ban most abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, about six weeks into pregnancy. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant promises he will sign the bill , which will give Mississippi one of the nation's most restrictive abortion laws. The 34-15 Senate vote was largely along party lines, with most Republicans voting yes and most Democrats voting no. "Thank you to the Mississippi Legislature for protecting the unborn by passing the Heartbeat Bill (SB 2116) and sending it to my desk for signature. I look forward to signing it very soon," Bryant wrote on Twitter. Felicia Brown-Williams, Mississippi director for Planned Parenthood Southeast Advocates, said women might not know they are pregnant before six weeks. "So, in effect, the Mississippi Legislature just outlawed abortion for most Mississippians," Brown-Williams said in a statement. Legislators in several states, including Georgia and Tennessee, are considering similar bills to ban abortion once a heartbeat is detected. Kentucky's Republican-controlled legislature passed the final version of a bill Thursday, Republican Gov. Matt Bevin signed it Friday and the American Civil Liberties Union challenged it that day in federal court in Louisville. Abortion-rights supporters are expected to sue to try to block such laws in other states, including Mississippi. Opponents of abortion are emboldened by a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court and are seeking a case that could challenge the high court's 1973 decision that legalized the procedure nationwide. Mississippi enacted a law last year to ban abortion after 15 weeks. The only abortion clinic in the state filed a lawsuit and a federal judge declared the law unconstitutional. The state has asked a federal appeals court to overturn the ruling. The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights represented the Mississippi clinic in the lawsuit over the 15-week abortion ban. It issued a letter Tuesday saying the new bill is unconstitutional. Story continues "It disregards women's fundamental right to determine when and whether to have children, poses a serious risk to women's health and creates harmful liabilities for physicians," said the letter signed by two attorneys for the center, Shivana Jorawar and Elisabeth Smith. The bill says a physician who performs an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected could face revocation of his or her medical license. The Mississippi bill also says abortions could be allowed after a fetal heartbeat is found if a pregnancy endangers a woman's life or one of her major bodily functions. The House and Senate both rejected efforts to allow exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. ___ Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus . There was once a day, or at least Louis Brandeis said there was, when the states were the laboratory of democracy. I cannot personally confirm that rumor. Over the course of my own life, the Ffederal government has been a 24-hour laboratory for mandates on the states, respectively, or on the people. In the economic realm, as just one example, Washington confiscates much of our wealth and then tells us what to do with the rest. Washington has even larger appetites for the regulatory state, of course, which is now moving briskly beyond the boundaries of behavior control into the vast new frontier of thought control. For Washington, its onward, always onward, if not discernibly upward. But if the states no longer serve as laboratories, they can still serve as breeding grounds for independent thought, which can give rise on occasion to enclaves of restive citizens aspiring atavistically to self-government. Accidents can happen. One such accident occurred in Florida last November. At the top of the ticket, the voters elected an accidental governor. A little-known congressman from north Florida, Ron DeSantis, ran, first, in the GOP primary against the prohibitive favorite, Adam Putnam, who not only had won statewide races before but had been reckoned by the party establishment to be next in line. An attractive and gregarious politician, Putnam had served in Congress, as agricultural commissioner (a position of considerable statewide clout), and as the warm and approachable member of Governor Rick Scotts cabinet. Putnam had the money, the ID, and support from the business community. A few months before the primary, he held a commanding lead in the polls. With little to lose, DeSantis gave Trump the full bear-hug. He went on Fox News, over and over, to defend Trump against the charge du jour TV appearances with no more than tenuous connection to issues even proximately Floridian. He featured Trump in almost every print piece, every TV spot. He accused Putnam of being less than ecstatic in his support for Trump (a serious charge in parts of the state), which Putnam, trying to keep his Jeb! supporters on side, clearly was. Story continues In a late-August primary, Trump, er, DeSantis won the GOP nomination in a night filled with surprises. On the Democratic side, the winner (who had been running third in late pre-primary polls) was Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum, a virtually unknown and ethically challenged student at the AOC School of Barstool Economics. It was the consensus of the political press that Andrew Gillum became that night Floridas least electable major-party candidate of the last half-century. In a rare victory for media consensus, Gillum lost the general election and returned to his previous obscurity. For Ron DeSantis, it was good to be the accidental governor. Most of the special interests, including even the mighty sugar lobby, had professed allegiance to Putnam. DeSantis owes them nothing. The voters had not bothered to extract commitments from what appeared to be an also-ran candidate. DeSantis thus has few campaign promises to redeem. And the legislators in Florida, a colorful and turf-conscious crew, many of whom had worked with Putnam for years had cut no deals. They are now introducing themselves to an incumbent governor armed with the line-item veto. DeSantis, a smart and self-confident 40-year-old, has thus arrived at the governors mansion with no baggage, only an overnight bag stuffed with fresh and mostly conservative ideas. Governor DeSantis is making a good first impression on the voters. While he was elected by a whisker, his approval ratings have now shot up to 60 percent, far exceeding the numbers for senators Scott and Marco Rubio. He and his photogenic young family seem to be everywhere in a state that is 447 miles long and 361 miles wide and spreads across two time zones. We may be witnessing, in fact, the birth of a new political paradigm, as DeSantis seems to be launching his campaign just after he has been sworn in. DeSantis is moving even more rapidly on the policy side. He has replaced three liberal justices on the Supreme Court with three conservatives and in doing so has consolidated a friendly majority. He has built on Scotts yeoman work with Puerto Rican immigrants in central Florida by managing the Venezuelan issue with great skill among Hispanic groups in south Florida. He has persuaded legislative grandees to think big on school choice. (At least the first two DeSantis budgets, I am reliably informed, will reflect that priority.) He will also give the aging economic boom here a boost with a tax cut. And he wont be accused of pandering to his base. One of his first executive actions was to support the use of smokable medical marijuana, which has proved to be broadly popular across party lines. Another was to go all in on a Teddy Rooseveltstyle environmental cleanup in areas ravaged, it has long been alleged, by the sugar barons, who for the first time in decades do not have an indebted friend in the governors mansion. I am just returned from two days in Tallahassee. On the long drive home, I found myself turning over the kind of question that engages the political junkie. Affix all of the obligatory qualifiers, if you like, but answer me this: As of this moment, who is more likely to be the Republican nominee in 2024 than the accidental governor of Florida? More from National Review Beira (Mozambique) (AFP) - Wet beds stand empty in water-logged wards, workers slosh through the corridors in rubber boots and a nauseating smell permeates the air: Beira's main hospital is stricken, just when it is needed most. The once-majestic main building of Mozambique's second largest hospital now lies shattered. Part of its roof is torn, rooms are flooded and the walls are cracked -- the terrible work of Tropical Cyclone Idai. The storm smashed into central Mozambique last Friday, packing winds of up to 194 kilometers (120-mile) per hour. Beira, a port city of half a million, lay in its path. And the vast hospital that is its pride lay less than 100 metres (yards) from the sapphire waters of the Indian Ocean. Roofs were ripped off many of the hospital's buildings and rooms on the ground floor were flooded to a depth of 30 centimetres (12 inches), forcing the evacuation of some wards. Communications and electricity were cut off, and roads linking Beira to the outside world were washed away or flooded. - Wrecked operating theatres - The hospital -- which services 2.2 million people in Sofala province -- is now operating at little more than a third of its capacity. "We have no choice. Either we send the sick people home or admit them under these conditions," hospital administrator Abu Julio told AFP walking down the corridor of the flooded hospital in gumboots. Clinical director Ana Tambo said that the hospital was still admitting new patients despite the wreckage. "We are receiving people injured from flooded areas. Yesterday we received 48 people from Buzi and today we expect to receive more. In five days we expect to receive more than 1,000 people," she said. One of the biggest headaches is surgery -- the block housing the operating theatres has been extensively damaged. "We are carrying out surgery only in very dangerous situations, only for pregnant women, Caesareans," said Marcos Quittino, one of the surgeons. Story continues "The risks of infection are high," he said. The nursery was evacuated before the cyclone struck. With all power pylons knocked down, the hospital is running on a generator -- and diesel supplies are dwindling. "Its very difficult dealing with it. Weve no electricity since the cyclone. Our diesel reserves are in the red. We need more to save lives," said Tambo. More than 60 percent of the hospital's buildings were totally or partially destroyed, according Julio. - Dwindling reserves - The hospital's blood bank was destroyed and there are very few units that are still fit for transfusion. "The hospital used to have about 500 units of blood in reserve -- it now has only about 100," said Tambo. The shortage poses a domino threat across the province, because smaller hospitals in the region normally draw their supplies from the central hospital. As a teaching hospital, it had more than 800 students undergoing training in nursing and other healthcare disciplines, but classes have been suspended. This, too, will have a ricochet effect. "Weve around 100 final year students due to graduate this July," Kizito Comissario, director of the training institute, said. "This is going to cause serious problems not only in Beira but in all the province as local hospitals are waiting for the health technicians were training here." Alex Gibney. Photo: FilmMagic I spoke last Thursday with Alex Gibney, director of The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, HBOs new documentary about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. The film follows Holmess path from dropping out of Stanford in 2004 to found Theranos, a company built on the bold promise of building small, in-home machines that could perform hundreds of blood tests on tiny, pinprick drops of blood; through her becoming the first female billionaire company founder in Silicon Valley and a global business celebrity; onward to Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrous disclosure in 2015 that Theranoss technology did not work as promised, and the companys subsequent implosion. Along the way, Theranos deployed ineffective blood-testing technology through testing centers at dozens of Walgreens stores, providing unreliable results that endangered patients health. And it raised (and spent most of) $900 million from investors, whom it misled about the effectiveness of its technology. My interview with Gibney has been condensed and edited for clarity. Intelligencer: How did you get the rights to all that internal Theranos footage: meetings, marketing materials, and that sort of thing? Gibney: I didnt. [Laughs.] Intelligencer: So, its fair use? Gibney: Fair use, yes. Intelligencer: How did you even obtain it? Gibney: It was leaked to me. Some of the material is licensed, because she appeared at gatherings. Like, the very beginning of the film, her against the white scrim: Thats an appearance she made at Conde Nast; it was a series of questions they asked a lot of executives. But a lot of the material showing company meetings, some of the direct-to-camera interviews with Elizabeth: That was material that was shot by Theranos as a way of chronicling its early genius. I think Elizabeth had this notion that it was going to be like having a camera with Woz and Steve Jobs in the garage. Intelligencer: I want to ask about the visualization of the disgusting interior of Theranoss Edison blood-testing machine. Was there a plan about how that would be maintained? Was the expectation that the consumer would have to clean that out by hand? [As Emily Yoshida wrote for Vulture, after seeing the film at the Sundance Film Festival, One of the most memorable images in any documentary this year will surely be that of a CGI recreation showing the disastrous insides of an Edison box, splattered with blood samples, broken pipettes, and roving, infected robotic needles, lying in wait for anyone who would dare stick their hand inside to fix something.] Gibney: Thats a good question. I think that the expectation was that there wouldnt be a lot of breakage, that there wouldnt be a lot of spillage. And obviously, at least initially, the plan was to put the machines in Walgreens, not into homes. Over time, the hope was that you could get them into homes. But yeah, that was a way of illustrating how far it was from reality. Intelligencer: Theres a narrative you sometimes hear about Theranos, and I think it can be read into your film, that Elizabeth Holmes was somebody who got carried away. That she had this big vision, and she thought she was faking it til she made it, and she didnt really understand that she didnt have a product. Is that your take on it, that she really, genuinely thought the whole way through that she was doing a wonderful thing for the world? Gibney: There was certain amount of a lot of cognitive dissonance going on. I think she knew that the machine had problems. But there was a kind of willful denial. I dont see that as the good news. I see that as the bad news. Thats very much the way Jeff Skilling thought of Enron. Even though they were loaded up with debt, with all these special-purpose vehicles, he had this grand vision of the company that he was unwilling to let go. And so he refused to admit to himself psychologically, except late at night, that they had edged way over into the terrain of fraud. You might think that the same thing happened with Elizabeth. She got desperate at a moment when they were running out of money and Walgreens was about to pull out. And they desperately needed Walgreens [even though they didnt have a blood-testing machine that was ready to be deployed to Walgreens stores]. So they came up with these kinds of screwy workarounds to keep Walgreens in. One was to do straight venous draws, which would then be analyzed with regular commercial machines. The other was to jury-rig the commercial machines to work with small quantities of blood. And thats where I think Elizabeths willful denial, you cant be so generous about that. You have to be hugely critical, because she was putting patients lives at risk. Intelligencer: Thats where they went from just defrauding investors to also defrauding the consumers. Gibney: Correct. And frankly, you have a machine that isnt working, and you have investors investing in research and development, you could properly say to them, Look, its just not working, but well get there. And investors can either decide to keep in, or not. But it is clear that they were doing demonstrations that were, you know, sometimes deceptive and sometimes outright fraudulent. Intelligencer: That was what struck me when I read John Carreyrous Bad Blood: The anecdote all the way back in 2006, with her making a fraudulent representation to investors, and the CFO telling her she couldnt do that, and her firing him for that. There was the shift they started misleading consumers much later in the companys life but thats what makes me feel like, from the beginning, she was just lying her ass off to everyone in a way that was not normal Silicon Valley puffery. Gibney: Youre quite right to point out that part in Johns book, and its very damning. But I do think she had her eyes on a noble mission. Elizabeth may have started cheating in 2006, but I think that is consistent with the noble cause corruption that [behavioral economist] Dan Ariely describes in his dice experiment. In the service of a good cause, people sometimes cheat more, and more effectively, because they dont feel they are doing anything wrong. The end justifies the means. For example, when Lance Armstrong would proclaim, in essence, how dare you say that I, as a cancer survivor, would ever use performance-enhancing drugs, he might believe it in the moment he said it, even though he might do [blood doping] the same day. What allows him that purposeful self-deception is belief that he was telling a lie that cancer patients for whom he was raising millions of dollars needed and wanted to hear. In the case of Elizabeth Holmes, this noble cause corruption is not an excuse for bad behavior. Its a diagnosis of a psychological mechanism that is designed to deceive both the person telling the lies and the people hearing them. The best liars are the ones who are convinced they are doing it for a good cause. Sometimes, they may even come to believe that they arent lying at all. I dont think she was like Bernie Madoff where, you know, he decided he couldnt make it, and so now he was going to run an outright scam. Youll recall that when they come and take Madoff away, hes sort of like its almost like, Ive been waiting for you. Im a crook. You know, Come take me. Intelligencer: Right. Gibney: When Elizabeth is outed by the Wall Street Journal, she doesnt say, You got me. She doubles down in a way thats almost messianic. And I think that testifies to this notion that she did have this vision of the goal she wanted to get to. But she was also young, and she was reckless, and she was apparently willing to cut corners from the beginning. I think its easy to imagine her and I think a lot of Silicon Valley likes to do this as somebody whos just a complete outlier, doesnt have anything to do with Silicon Valley. I just dont think thats true. I think shes an exaggeration of some flaws. Intelligencer: Did you find a lot of people expressing embarrassment about having been taken in? I mean, obviously, you got that from some of the journalists, but did you speak with investors or employees who really were sort of like, How the hell did I fall for this? Gibney: Well, I think they all did. Even [whistle-blower employees Tyler Schultz and Erika Cheung] would say that they fell for it at least initially. And then it took a while, even though they were seeing it up close and personal in the lab. And of course, Walgreens wouldnt even talk to me because theyre clearly so embarrassed about what happened. Even in the documents of the initial [WalgreensTheranos] lawsuit, before they settled, you can see how angry they were, and yet, they were clearly complicit in it. They were blinded to the facts of the matter by their exhilaration about doing something in tech, which I think they felt they needed to do, and they were completely steamrolled by the force of Elizabeths storytelling skills. So much so that they didnt even look inside the fucking box. But so like, [venture capital investor] Tim Draper is unapologetic to this day. Intelligencer: Why do you think that is? On some level its the job of both the journalists and the investors to get these things right, for different reasons. Gibney: I think theres a line of narration in the film, We like to think that investing is a balance of risk and reward you know, carefully calculated. But I think it has a lot more to do with emotion and subjectivity than we would like to think. And same thing with journalism. You like to believe that youre the rigorous, distant scientist, but there was a very compelling story. It was a story not only about a device that would allow people to take more control of their own health care. It was also a story about a young, female entrepreneur who could stick it to the male-dominated world of Silicon Valley and make a success. Thats part of what I was trying to get at in the film, even going back to Thomas Edison, the first guy who kind of made himself into a kind of celebrity businessman. There were a lot of things that Edison didnt do that he took credit for. But everybody was willing to invest in that idea because he created this mythic sense of the magical inventor, the Wizard of Menlo Park. And people liked that story. It was a story they wanted to tell. I think these things are powerful, more powerful than we think. Intelligencer: But Thomas Edison also had products. Gibney: He did have products, ultimately. But the incandescent light bulb didnt work when he said it did. And he was faking tests. Theres a wide difference between Elizabeth and Steve Jobs and Elizabeth and Thomas Edison, because her products didnt work. But Im also saying, if you think about the huge number of inventions that Edison effectively took credit for, you know, he wasnt the inventor, he was the storyteller. And same thing with Jobs. Thats what I think Elizabeth shares in common. The Hague (AFP) - A former academic with a love of classical allusions and naked poolside Instagram photos, Thierry Baudet has stunned the Dutch political world with his victory in provincial elections. The latest in a line of flamboyant Dutch populists, 36-year-old Baudet and his Forum for Democracy party have been on the scene for less than two years. He has used good looks and social media to soften the edges of a strong anti-immigration, anti-EU and climate change-sceptic message that echoes other right-wingers across Europe. But he also has a history of controversial utterances and alliances that have led critics to describe him as the telegenic European face of a Donald Trump-style alt-right politics. Baudet, who has a law doctorate, typically showed off his learning in his victory speech on Wednesday, declaring that the "owl of Minerva has descended", referring to the Roman god of wisdom. However his speech notably avoided the directly anti-Islam rhetoric used by his political rival, far-right leader Geert Wilders, who is set to lose seats in the senate after the vote. Pepijn Bergsen, a manager at the business advisory Flint Global, told AFP that Wilders' "one issue" message was "just not resonating as much as it has". "Baudet has been very good at widening that into a broader populist and nativist narrative," he said. More importantly, Baudet had been able to take votes off Prime Minister Mark Rutte's centre-right VVD party and its coalition partner, the left-leaning D66, Bergsen said. - 'Political dandy' - With his slicked back hair and gleaming teeth, Baudet burst into the spotlight in 2017 when his Forum for Democracy won two parliamentary seats. He was known before that for writing several books including one called "Oikophobia: The fear of home", a key theme in populism referring to the restoration of the nation state. On his Instagram and Twitter accounts, Baudet shows himself engaged in cultural pursuits such as playing the piano in his office or playing chess. Story continues Notoriously, in one picture he also posed naked at the edge of a swimming pool, his right hand covering his modesty, earning himself the moniker of "political dandy". But his social media presence also reveals a more controversial side. In one picture he poses with right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who was recently banned from Australia over comments made about the Christchurch mosque massacre. In others he can be seen with British Brexit supporter Boris Johnson, or with his "mentor" Roger Scruton, a British philosopher with outspoken views on Islam and a supporter of Hungary's populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Baudet has also made controversial comments on issues of gender -- saying that "women in general excel less in jobs and have less ambition" -- and multiculturalism. His victory speech was characteristic in that he raged against the "rubble of what was once the most beautiful civilisation" and accused Rutte of opening the door to mass immigration. He has also made headlines for calling for closer relations with Russia. - 'Populist rocket' - Despite his rhetoric, Baudet has hit a nerve within Dutch society. An elderly Dutch woman who asked not to be named said she was swayed after being robbed in her driveway five years ago by a man of Moroccan origin. "I dont have anything against Muslims, just about how they were integrated into our society. In fact, I am voting for Baudet because he is less aggressive against Muslim people than Wilders," said the woman, who lives Utrecht, the scene of a suspected terror attack on Monday. Bert Wagendorp, a columnist for De Volkskrant newspaper, placed Baudet firmly in a political tradition started by Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated 17 years ago. "Baudet is the third stage of the Dutch populist rocket launched by Pim Fortuyn in 2002, further boosted by Geert Wilders and now being sent to the moon by Baudet," he wrote. With Europe's eyes on the latest populist to emerge from the Netherlands, Bergsen pointed out that it was far from the first country to move to the right. "It's not just the Netherlands. It's just that the Netherlands has one of the most proportionate systems in the world that means these parties are able to get in with a limited amount of votes," he said. The Muslim call to prayer rang out across New Zealand on Friday followed by two minutes of nationwide silence to mark a week since a white supremacist gunned down 50 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch. As the call was broadcast around the country, thousands -- including Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and wounded survivors -- stood in a park opposite the mosque where the killing began, as the nation of 4.5 million came to a standstill. New Zealand is still in shock following the killings by alleged shooter Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian national who had hoped to foment an ethnic war with his attacks. But horrified Kiwis have responded with outpourings of love, with many embracing their Muslim neighbours on Friday in moving scenes across the country. A muezzin in white skullcap issued the call to regular Friday prayers at 1.30 pm (0030 GMT) with chants of "Allahu Akhbar" (God is greatest) as thousands listened in Christchurch's Hagley Park, across from the Al Noor Mosque. The country then fell silent for two minutes, with public gatherings in Auckland, Wellington and other cities. In neighbouring Australia, people stopped in the streets and in shops to mark the moment. Al Noor imam Gamal Fouda then took to the lectern at Hagley Park to denounce the "evil ideology of white supremacy" and praise Kiwis for their support. - Unbreakable - "I look out and I see the love and compassion in the eyes of thousands of fellow New Zealanders and human beings from across the globe," Fouda said. "This terrorist sought to tear our nation apart with an evil ideology... But, instead, we have shown that New Zealand is unbreakable." The Al Noor mosque remains closed as workers repair bullet-pocked walls and clean blood-spattered floors. But after Friday's prayers, the sombre mood outside lightened markedly as non-Muslims approached the mosque to lay flowers or embrace and take selfies with Muslims. Story continues Koro Tini, a 46-year-old Maori man with elaborate traditional facial tattoos and ceremonial native cloak, embraced and touched noses with a man who was among a group of Muslim worshippers. "We weren't meaning to pose for pictures but people wanted to do it after the prayers. Theres a sense of joy and rejoicing," Tini said. - 'Hate cannot win' - Many women across the country wore headscarves in solidarity with Muslims. "I can take my scarf off if I feel afraid. They cannot," said Kirsty Wilkinson, who came to Hagley Park with two friends, all in make-shift hijabs. "The message I want to send is that hate cannot win." Tarrant took advantage of relatively lax New Zealand gun laws to acquire military-style weapons that he used to mow down 50 men, women and children -- ranging in age from three years to 77 -- and leaving dozens injured in an attack live-streamed online. New Zealand police revealed on Friday that in October 2017 they met with Tarrant at his home and conducted a "security inspection" as part of the gun licence approval process. The "correct process" was followed and the licence was granted, a police statement said. Tarrant is in police custody and has been charged with murder. Ardern on Thursday announced an immediate ban on assault rifles and military-style semi-automatic weapons, making good on a pledge to rid the country of the kinds of weapons the gunman used. Police said that by Friday morning more than 1,000 people had contacted them about handing in firearms now in private possession, which are now outlawed and must be turned in under a government buyback scheme. - Prayers and pause - Major New Zealand newspapers published special tributes on Friday, with the front page of Christchurch daily The Press bearing the Arabic word "Salam" (Peace) and the names of the 50 killed. The national mourning and moment of silence were broadcast on television networks, radio and across multiple local media websites. "We are so happy that this prayer will be broadcast to the entire world so that everyone can be part of it," Mustafa Farouk, president of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand, said in a statement announcing the prayer session. Burials also resumed Friday in Christchurch, with 26 people expected to be laid to rest, ranging from three-year-old Mucaad Ibrahim to 77-year-old Muse Awale. Salwa Mustafa, who lost her husband Khalid and 15-year-old son Hamza in the massacre, had defiant words despite her devastating loss. "People say that... Muslims are terrorists. The whole world saw who is the terrorist," she said of the shooter. "Muslims are people of peace and love, not terrorists. And I hope the whole world now can understand the real Islam, the reality of Islam." Jerusalem (AFP) - Top US diplomat Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Wednesday to counter Iranian "aggression" as the two met in Jerusalem just weeks ahead of Israel's elections. Netanyahu said US President Donald Trump's pressure on Iran was already having an effect, referring to his withdrawal from the landmark 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers and the reimposition of sanctions. "We need to increase it, we need to expand it, and together the United States and Israel are working in close coordination to roll back Iranian aggression in the region and around the world," the premier told journalists after Pompeo arrived. Pompeo spoke of a Middle East conference in Warsaw last month that included Arab nations as well as Israel, saying the discussions involved efforts "to stop Iran's regional rampage" among other issues. The US secretary of state also noted Iranian calls for Israel's destruction. "With such threats a daily reality of Israeli life, we maintain our unparallelled commitment to Israel's security and firmly support your right to defend yourself," he said. Netanyahu reiterated his pledge to keep Iran from entrenching itself militarily in neighbouring Syria, where the Islamic republic backs President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes there against what it says are Iranian and Hezbollah targets. "There is no limitation to our freedom of action, and we appreciate very much the fact that the United States backs up our actions as we do them," Netanyahu said. The premier, facing a stiff challenge from a centrist alliance in April 9 polls, will also visit Washington next week and meet with Trump twice while there. Managua (AFP) - Nicaragua's government agreed on Wednesday to release opposition prisoners within 90 days in order to restart stalled peace talks aimed at ending an 11-month political crisis, a dialogue mediator said. Organization of American States special envoy Luis Angel Rosadilla said in a press conference that President Daniel Ortega's government had agreed to release "all the people detained in the context of the protests" that began in April last year, leaving over 700 people behind bars and 325 dead. The agreement includes a call on sanctions against Ortega's regime to be lifted. The number of prisoners due to be released was not given. On Monday, the opposition alliance suspended talks that had begun on February 27 after 100 protesters were temporarily detained on Saturday by police who used tear gas to prevent a protest against Ortega's government. The Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy (ACJD) had said on Tuesday it would not resume talks until all "political prisoners" are released and the repression of anti-regime protesters ends. Releases could begin this week and "there will be no-one held beyond those 90 days," said businessman Jose Aguerri, a Civic Alliance member. The International Committee of the Red Cross is due to monitor the process. The two parties have agreed on a six-point negotiation process to accompany the releases and have asked for international support in implementing the agreements reached, according to a statement issued by the presidency. "A call will be made to the international community to suspend sanctions to facilitate the right to the human, economic and social development of Nicaragua, favoring the most vulnerable sections of the population," said the statement. Nicaragua's government has been hit by US sanctions and the threat of more from the European Union since trouble broke out last year. The country has been mired in political crisis since protests broke out initially over a now-scrapped pension reform before snowballing into wider anger at Ortega's rule. Story continues Alongside his wife and vice president Rosario Murillo, he is accused of rights abuses and authoritarian leadership. One of the key opposition demands was for Ortega to step down and bring forward elections slated for 2021, something the 73-year-old former left-wing guerrilla has rejected out of hand. The Civic Alliance had also suspended the talks for three days last week until the government agreed to release some prisoners. Around 150 prisoners have been released since the talks began last month, although only to house arrest. The opposition has demanded their total liberation. The union of business leaders, part of the ACJD, said Saturday's crackdown showed that "we're faced with a police state that doesn't allow the expression of the fundamental constitutional rights of all Nicaraguans." Aldis new Local store in southwest London.Photo: Aldi Local The launch of the first Aldi Local store in south-west London this week has sparked inevitable speculation about the supermarket giants desire to conquer the convenience store market. The discount supermarket said its new brand could be rolled out to at least four other existing stores in Archway, Kilburn, Kingston and Tooting, which are also smaller than its average branches, if the trial is successful. The first store in Balham measures 6,000 sq ft, reported to be half the size of the average Aldi store, and does not have a car park. Aldi said the branch has 300 fewer products available than its larger stores, with the German firm cutting many larger pack sizes and its Special Buys. The Balham store has 1,500 products on sale, compared to 1,800 in an ordinary Aldi supermarket. The growth of the convenience store This is not a move into convenience retailing, an Aldi spokeswoman said in no uncertain terms today. She said the new name was intended to make shoppers aware of the difference between its smaller and larger stores, but pointed out the Balham store was still twice as large as the average convenience store. She told Yahoo Finance UK: The new brand is only being trialled at Balham and the trial will be evaluated before any decisions are made on whether to roll Aldi Local out more widely. The main difference is that it doesnt sell bulkier items that shoppers would have difficulty transporting without a car. READ MORE: Booze, food and tobacco push up UK prices as inflation hits 1.9% But the UK convenience sector, estimated at 33.6bn ($44.4bn) last year, is a growing market and it would be understandable if Aldi wanted a bigger slice of the pie. The consultancy Deloitte has highlighted supermarkets expansion into smaller conveniences stores in recent years, despite the rise of online shopping and the challenges facing many larger bricks-and-mortar stores. Deloittes 2019 retail trends report noted: In the grocery sector innovation has focused on small urban store formats where there is arguably more margin to play with and is redefining the nature of convenience around the customer experience and sustainability. Story continues A very real threat to major supermarkets Aldi sign. Photo: Kris Tripplaar/SIPA USA/PA Images Thomas Brereton, a retail analyst at GlobalData, said he was in no doubt the Balham store showed Aldis desire to expand into the convenience sector. The UKs discount supermarkets have already secured 8% of market share in the UKs convenience sector over the past decade, while major supermarkets have lost 7.7%. READ MORE: Brits would rather live next to Aldi than Waitrose or M&S For the Big Four, this represents a very real threat. While this is currently only a trial for Aldi, we believe it has a strong chance of success, engaging consumers on the key drivers of both price and convenience, Brereton said. He said the convenience market was outgrowing the wider food and groceries sector, with growth of 4.1% last year compared to 3.2% for the industry as a whole. Changing millennial shopping habits Some of the growth in the sector reflects the changing shopping habits of many millennials. Convenience growth remains largely driven by an increase in the number of consumers doing high frequency, low value food shops, particularly prevalent amid the 25-34 age group, Brereton said. But Brereton said it may not be easy for Aldi to imitate its well-oiled model in giant stores of highly precise store sizes, shelf locations and dedicated spaces for certain ranges in smaller branches. He also suggested the UKs discount chains were struggling to find locations that did not cannibalise their own sales elsewhere, slowing their ability to grow. READ MORE: Tesco says 9,000 roles at risk in huge shakeup of supermarket giant Amy Klobuchar, whos now drawing scrutiny for her record as County Attorney before joining the Senate. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images For many decades, Democrats concerned with their partys reputation for weakness were eager to recruit politicians who had proved their willingness to use the power of the state to smite the (ostensibly) wicked. Sometimes that involved highly symbolic acts, like Bill Clintons decision as governor of Arkansas to administer the death penalty to a mentally disabled African-American cop killer. But more generally it meant the Donkey Party prized ex-prosecutors and military veterans as candidates for office. This was doubly true for women, who, thanks to sexist stereotypes, had an additional need to show toughness in a world full of danger. So its not entirely surprising that not one but two women with backgrounds as prosecutors are in the 2020 Democratic presidential field. Kamala Harris has already gotten significant flak from progressives and civil libertarians for her record as both district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California. Even in that famously liberal city and state, Harris felt it necessary to depict herself as tough on crime, and embraced policies that are no longer fashionable (or in some cases even acceptable) among Democrats focused on the tragic phenomenon of mass incarceration and the abject failure of the war on drugs. Now its Amy Klobuchars turn for scrutiny of her record during two terms as Hennepin County (Minneapolis) Attorney from 1999 until her election to the Senate in 2006. A Washington Post report focused on her unwillingness to prosecute police officers who killed African-Americans, but found other concerns as well now that Klobuchar is running a national campaign in a party whose electorate is increasingly diverse and less interested in tough on crime rhetoric: When the 38-year-old corporate lawyer launched her 1998 campaign, the Twin Cities were recovering from a long wave of violent crime, and many communities were demanding help. Minneapolis had earned the nickname Murderapolis in 1995, when its homicide rate peaked. At the time, the ratio of African Americans to whites in state prison was among the worst in the country. During her campaign, Klobuchar vowed a zero-tolerance approach toward nonviolent crimes by young people, including petty theft and vandalism After beating her opponent by less than 1 percent, the new county attorney followed through on her campaign promises, adopting an aggressive approach to felony and juvenile prosecutions across dozens of police jurisdictions in and around Minneapolis. Her advocacy of the broken windows anti-crime strategy associated most prominently with New Yorks Rudy Giuliani and Bill Bratton was just part of a pattern of prosecutorial behavior that some Minnesota civil-rights activists still recall with bitterness: We even saw Hillary Clinton apologize for the use of the term super-predators, said [Nekima Levy] Armstrong, the former Minneapolis NAACP president. Weve not seen Amy Klobuchar take the same steps to apologize or reach out to our community to make amends. With racially motivated police misconduct now becoming an object of considerable attention, the fact that Klobuchar declined to bring charges in more than two dozen cases where people were killed in encounters with police is a serious problem for her, particularly as she campaigns in places like South Carolina and California, with their huge minority populations. Unlike Kamala Harris, of course, Klobuchar cannot fall back on her own racial identity as a signal that whatever she said and did for political reasons back in the day, she now gets it. The Minnesotan has touted her co-sponsorship of the First Step Act, the 2018 law that represented a small but significant criminal-justice-reform initiative. But theres only so much mileage you can get from Democrats for backing a law Donald Trump supported as well. And Klobuchar cant take too many compensatory positions to assuage critics of her record on racial issues so long as her narrow path to the Democratic nomination depends on a reputation as a moderate who is resisting the leftward wind blowing through her party. Its probably not a situation that would have occurred to Amy Klobuchar when she ran that first tough on crime campaign in 1998. Thanks to her very success, though, its a problem for her now, and it doesnt help that shes under heavy criticism for tough treatment of her own employees over the years which sometimes sounds pretty brutal. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is probably relieved that shes not the only ex-prosecutor in the race experiencing fresh scrutiny. By Stephanie Kelly NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. crude prices rose on Wednesday to a 4-month high above $60 a barrel after U.S. government data showed tightening domestic oil supplies, but gains were capped by concerns over global economic growth due to the ongoing U.S.-China trade war. The front-month U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures contract, which expired Wednesday, gained 80 cents, or 1.36 percent, to settle at $59.83 a barrel. It hit a session high of $60.12 a barrel, the highest since Nov. 12. The more-active second-month WTI benchmark gained 94 cents, or 1.6 percent, to settle at $60.23 a barrel. International Brent crude rose 89 cents, or 1.32 percent, to settle at $68.50 a barrel. Prices rose after the U.S. Energy Information Administration posted a large and unexpected drop in crude inventories due to strong export and refining demand. Stockpiles fell 9.6 million barrels last week, compared with analysts' expectations for an increase of 309,000 barrels. The draw was the largest since July 2018 and brought stockpiles to their lowest since January. Gasoline and distillate inventories both fell by more than expected. Gasoline stocks fell by 4.6 million barrels, while distillate inventories fell by 4.1 million barrels. "The report is bullish due to the large crude oil inventory drawdown, which was a function of low import levels and high export volumes," said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC in New York. "The across-the-board inventory declines in crude oil and refined products highlights the tightening market." Crude prices have risen almost a third this year, pushed up by supply cuts among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia, as well as U.S. sanctions against oil exporters Iran and Venezuela. The United Arab Emirates's energy minister said he expects OPEC to finalise the long-term cooperation charter with its non-OPEC partners in June. Story continues Rating agency S&P Global raised its Brent oil price assumptions back up to $60 a barrel on Wednesday, on the back of the production cuts by OPEC and Russia. However, an eight-month trade war between China and the United States has worried global markets already concerned by signs of a slowdown in economic growth this year. There have been mixed signals whether the standoff between the world's top two economies can soon be resolved. Washington announced that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin plans to travel to China next week for another round of trade talks with senior officials. "U.S.-China trade talks continue to present a binary risk for the oil market and other risky assets," BNP Paribas strategist Harry Tchilinguirian told the Reuters Global Oil Forum. Analysts said an economic slowdown could soon dent fuel consumption, holding back crude. Asian business confidence held near three-year lows in the first quarter as the U.S.-China trade war dragged on, pulling down a global economy that is already on a downward path, a Thomson Reuters/INSEAD survey found. (Reporting by Stephanie Kelly in New York; Additional reporting by Noah Browning in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Phil Berlowitz) Its going to take more than the filing of a lawsuit to make the owner of a house inspired by 60s primetime animated series The Flintstones remove the 15-foot dinosaur statues and a Yabba Dabba Do sign from her yard. The town of Hillsborough, California, is suing Florence Fang in California Superior Court in order to get some of the whimsical details taken down, alleging that she didnt obtain the necessary permits and approvals. Wilma and Fred Flintstone argue on The Flintstones. (Photo: ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images) The so-called Flintstone House was built in 1976, although it was only given its pop culture nickname after it was painted all orange in 2000, according to Atlas Obscura. Fang, the retired owner of the San Francisco Examiner, reportedly purchased the property for $2.8 million in 2017 and made some changes. In October, Fang was ordered to pay a $200 (151) fine to the city, as her home, which can be seen from the interstate, was deemed a highly visible eyesore. Longtime SF power broker and former Examiner publisher Florence Fang is not going to back down just because the tony Peninsula town of Hillsborough has decided to sue her. https://t.co/CN27FGo5hG SFist (@SFist) March 20, 2019 Fang responded to the lawsuit through a lawyer Wednesday. This is intolerance and elitist behaviour from the town of Hillsborough. Its unconstitutional and we will vigorously fight back in our answer and cross-complaint, Angela Alioto told SFist. Denying Ms. Fangs right to Due Process and the right to her own personal property is outrageous. The Flintstone house is a pure joy to many, and we will fight this lawsuit vigorously to restore Ms. Fangs freedom from this serious intolerance and overstepping by the town of Hillsborough and restore her rights to the full enjoyment of her property. Fangs yard decorations have included not just dinosaurs but a life-size statue of Fred Flintstone, a woolly mammoth and more. The lawsuit notes that Fang has also added stairs, a parking strip and other features, according to the New York Times. Story continues Read more: Bill & Ted 3 coming in 2020 The suit accuses Fang of all but ignoring citations that she needed additional permits for her changes to the property and violating the municipal code. A lawyer for the town, Mark D. Hudak, told the Times that residents are frustrated. It is one thing to spot this house when driving by on the freeway; you might find it amusing, he said. It is a different thing to be a neighbour and see it all day, every day. Reporting by Raechal Shewfelt, Yahoo TV US A Pakistani court sentenced a Czech national to over eight years in prison, more than a year after being arrested in the eastern city of Lahore for trafficking eight and a half kilograms of heroin. Tereza Hluskova -- a 22-year-old model -- has denied the charges and announced plans to file an appeal against the decision following the court's decision on Wednesday. "We will file an appeal against the decision because I am sure that she has a very strong case, and hopefully, god willing... she will be acquitted from the charge," her lawyer Sardar Asghar Dogar told AFP Thursday. Hluskova was arrested in Lahore last January, with footage released by Pakistani customs officials showing authorities uncovering drugs hidden in her suitcase as she was trying to board a flight headed for the United Arab Emirates. Footage from the court showed Hluskova breaking down and crying as her sentence was read. Drug trafficking is considered a serious offence in Pakistan and arrests at airports with such cases are not uncommon. Pakistan shares a long porous border with Afghanistan, which is the world's largest illicit opium producer despite a decade of costly multi-billion US and international counter-narcotics programmes. Heroin continues to be trafficked from Afghanistan through Pakistan into Europe and North America. The country is also part of the smuggling routes to Central Asian countries with the restive tribal areas on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan convenient routes for traffickers to smuggle in narcotics undetected. The Gulf has become an increasingly important market for illicit drugs in recent years, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says, with Pakistani traffickers frequently executed in Saudi Arabia for the crime. By Saad Sayeed ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan is set to sign deals worth $900 million in telecoms, information technology during a three day visit by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, a senior official said on Thursday. Pakistan, facing an economic crisis due to depleting foreign reserves and a widening current account deficit, has been searching for investment since the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan took office in August. Razak Dawood, the prime minister's advisor on commerce said a memoranda of understanding covering $800-$900 million worth of investments with Malaysian investors would be signed on Friday. "We believe Malaysia will be an opening for us to the ASEAN countries," he said, referring to the Association of South East Asian Nations. Mahathir is scheduled to arrive in Islamabad on Thursday evening and will be the chief guest at the Pakistan day parade on March 23. Pakistan has been seeking financial assistance and calling for investment from friendly countries, while also negotiating a bailout package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have each offered Islamabad loan packages of $3 billion. During a visit in February, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman signed investment agreements worth $20 billion with Islamabad, including a $10 billion refinery and petrochemicals complex in the southwestern port city of Gwadar. Pakistan has also been trying to get loans from neighbouring China, which has pledged nearly $60 billion for energy and road and rail infrastructure projects as part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), known as China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). In February the government said it was close to securing an IMF package, its 13th bailout since the late 1980s, but while talks between the two sides are ongoing no deal has been agreed. (Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore) Elon Musks Starship will begin testing soon (Getty) In the not-too-distant future, rocket flights which blast passengers briefly through space will start to replace long-haul flights, analysts have predicted. UBS predicts that by 2030, the market for high speed travel via space will be worth at least $20 billion and will seriously compete with long haul flights. The analysts pointed to plans from Elon Musks Space X to use the Starship rocket to fly up to 100 people from New York to Shanghai in 39 minutes or London to New York in 29. The analyst firm predicts that long-haul flights over 10 hours will be cannibalised by point-to-point rocket travel. UBS analysts Jarrod Castle and Myles Walton wrote, While space tourism is still at a nascent phase, we think that as technology becomes proven, and the cost falls due to technology and competition, space tourism will become more mainstream. SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the companys Crew Dragon spacecraft onboard takes off during the Demo-1 mission (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images) Space tourism could be the stepping stone for the development of long-haul travel on earth serviced by space. NASA is also investigating a quiet supersonic jet which could reignite supersonic travel. Read more from Yahoo News UK Angela Merkel says EU will approve PMs Brexit delay Tory MP accuses Nigel Farage of peddling racist nonsense Man charged with murder of French film-maker NASA has already conducted initial tests over the Texas Gulf Coast with two FA-18 jets climbed to 55,000 feet and diving to replicate the sonic thump. The Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST) design could hit supersonic speeds over land without people on the ground hearing a sonic boom. NASA hopes that this will allow it to establish an acceptable noise level and overturn regulations banning supersonic travel over land. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK Remainer campaigners in Westminster (PA) A petition calling for Brexit to be cancelled and for the government to revoke Article 50 has been signed by millions of people. The number signing the online petition soared throughout Thursday as Theresa May spent the day in Brussels trying to secure a Brexit delay until June 30. At several points, the government website crashed as it struggled to cope with more than 2,000 signatures every minute. The Petitions Committee confirmed the rate of signing was the highest it had ever had to deal with and they were struggling to keep the site stable. By 11pm on Thursday evening, more than two million people had signed the petition, which calls for support to remain in the EU. The petition passed a million signatures by 3pm on Thursday Momentum behind the petition grew as the Prime Minister made her way to Brussels on Thursday morning following a speech outside Downing Street on Wednesday night in which she admitted people were fed up with the negotiations. And late on Thursday night, European Council president Donald Tusk announced that the EU27 had agreed to an extension to Brexit to May 22 if MPs approve Theresa Mays Withdrawal Agreement next week. If it is voted down, the UK will be given until April 12 to declare its next steps, which could include a no deal exit. Mrs May claimed the plan outlined the importance of the House of Commons passing the Brexit deal next week so we can put an end to the uncertainty. When asked directly about the petition, she said: I do not believe we should be revoking Article 50. What next? Theresa May will now try and take her Withdrawal Agreement back to Parliament to get it passed by MPs at the third attempt. On Thursday, she was facing growing anger from MPs, who had taken issue with the PMs speech on Wednesday night in which she appeared to apportion blame on them for refusing to pass her deal. Conservative MP Nicky Morgan, who backed Remain and who supports compromise over a Brexit deal, said the speech was terribly misjudged and that she no longer held out hope the deal would win support. Story continues Conservative MP Ben Bradley, a Brexiteer who has previously backed Mrs Mays deal, also labelled her speech not helpful and suggested he might now vote against the deal himself. But Mrs May sought to strike a conciliatory tone on Thursday night, admitting that MPs were like her frustrated with the process. And to complicate issues even further, Jeremy Corbyn today twice declined to rule out the option of halting Brexit by revoking Article 50. Theresa May speaks to the media as she arrives for a two-day summit of European Union leaders on March 21. (Getty) Two million signatures and counting Article 50 is the mechanism by which Britain exits the EU. In December, the European Court of Justice ruled that the UK can unilaterally revoke it, which means the UK can stay in the EU without the consent of the 27 other EU countries. Celebrities and MPs also tweeted their support for the petition. Famous figures including actors Jennifer Saunders, TV presenter and author Caitlin Moran, physicist Brian Cox and former Labour press chief Alastair Campbell all urged their followers on social media to sign the petition. Another was actor Hugh Grant. Alongside the link, Grant wrote on Twitter: Ive signed. And it looks like every sane person in the country is signing too. National emergency. Ive signed. And it looks like every sane person in the country is signing too. National emergency. Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU. Petitions https://t.co/tPgkaz1soi Hugh Grant (@HackedOffHugh) March 20, 2019 It comes ahead of a planned march in London at the weekend by Remainers, calling for Britain to stay in the European Union. The petition, which was set live on February 21, reads: The Government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is the will of the people. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now for remaining in the EU. A Peoples Vote may not happen so vote now. Commons leader Andrea Leadsom said she had been made aware of technical problems with the site, but she dismissed the petition as not being on the same scale as the pro-Brexit vote in the 2016 referendum. Should it reach 17.4 million respondents then I am sure there will be a very clear case for taking action, she told MPs. JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accompanied Israel's prime minister on a visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City on Thursday in the first such gesture since Washington recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, angering Palestinians. The ancient Western Wall, the most sacred prayer site in Judaism, is located in the eastern part of the city that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Israel has long considered all of Jerusalem as its eternal, indivisible capital, while Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state they seek in territory Israel took in the June 1967 war. Shortly after entering office in January 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump visited the Western Wall, though without Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Later that year Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy and officially recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, though making clear that he was not prejudging a settlement on where the city's borders should be. Since that shift, the U.S. ambassador to Israel has paid visits to the Western Wall along with Netanyahu. Pompeo suggested that his own visit as the top U.S. diplomat in Netanyahu's presence was significant. "I think it's symbolic that a senior American official goes there with the prime minister of Israel," he told reporters prior to arriving in the walled Old City. The Western Wall is a remnant of the compound of a Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. The elevated plaza above it is the Noble Sanctuary, the third holiest site in Islam, containing the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Pompeo, Netanyahu and U.S. Ambassador David Friedman together approached the wall and each leaned against its massive stones with one hand. Pompeo then placed a prayer note in between the stones, as is customary. Before going to the wall, he visited the nearby Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed to be site of Jesus' crucifixion and burial. Pompeo, now on a Middle East tour, visited Kuwait before Israel and is due to proceed to Lebanon. His trip to Israel, three weeks before a closely contested election, was portrayed in local media as a Trump administration boost for the right-wing Netanyahu. (Reporting by Rami Amichay; Writing by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark Heinrich) Gillum holds his son Davis after casting his ballot in the 2018 midterm race. Photo: Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images Andrew Gillum might be the governor of Florida right now if the state had allowed people with felony convictions to vote. Its fitting, then, that his first postelection project will be to register new voters across the state. Politico reported on Wednesday that Gillum has launched a new organization, Bring It Home Florida, to register new voters; at the same time, the state Democratic Party has announced that it will invest $2 million to register 200,000 voters. As Politico notes, registered Democrats currently outnumber Republicans in Florida, but there are 3.6 million voters with no party registration at all. If the party could bring even a fraction of those voters into the fold, theyd be a formidable force at the polls. The passage of Amendment 4, which extended voting rights to most people with felony convictions, in November should also significantly expand the available pool of voters. Gillums project highlights a major midterm theme. Promising black Democrats like Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Gillum himself narrowly lost elections to white Republican candidates against a backdrop of voter suppression. The product of an old and endlessly adaptive white-supremacist impulse, voter suppression did not end with Election Night. Gillum and his party will have to work against state Republicans, who steadfastly seek new ways to keep likely Democrats away from the ballot box ahead of a pivotal presidential election. Republican intransigence doesnt just create obstacles for Gillum and other Democrats; it also lends fierce urgency to their work. Right now, Florida Republicans appear to be focusing their efforts on scaling back Amendment 4. Though the measure is self-implementing, and thus didnt require any specific action from state government, newly elected Governor Ron DeSantis has repeatedly insisted that the measure created a significant logistical problem for the state. After first threatening to delay enfranchisement, allegedly so they could determine how to implement the amendment, House Republicans advanced a bill on March 19 that would require this mostly black population to pay all court fees associated with their case before they can vote, even if a judge didnt sentence them to do so. According to the Miami Herald, the bill goes beyond what Amendment 4 actually stipulated, and critics have diagnosed it as resembling the poll taxes that once barred black voters from exercising the franchise. People with felony convictions are disproportionately likely to be low-income, the direct result of employment discrimination and restrictions on the sorts of welfare that theyre eligible to receive. There probably arent many who could afford to pay court fees. This new Republican bill wouldnt just limit the ability to vote to people who could afford to purchase it from the state; it would handily keep the vote away from many, if not most, of Amendment 4s intended beneficiaries. It is a familiar gesture the first American gesture, as far as the franchise goes to restrict the vote to white men of means. Though Gillums project doesnt focus specifically on Amendment 4, its a necessary, even subversive effort to expand the vote in the face of a centuries-old campaign to lock it away. * Top US diplomat on regional tour to push hard line on Iran * Pompeo gets Israeli warning of fresh Hezbollah threat * Israel hints at retaliation against all Lebanon if attacked * Pompeo also to visit Lebanon where Hezbollah in government By Dan Williams JERUSALEM, March 21 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described Hezbollah on Wednesday as a risk to Middle East stability and conferred with Israel about the heavily armed, Iranian-backed Lebanese group ahead of a trip to Beirut. Pompeo, who has been on a regional tour to promote the Trump administration's hard tack against Iran, received a warning from Israel which worries it may again be in the sights of Hezbollah forces winding down their intervention in Syria's war. Meeting Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem, Pompeo listed Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas and Yemen's Houthis - all recipients of Iranian support - as "entities that present risks to Middle East stability and to Israel." "They are determined to wipe this country off the face of the planet and we have a moral obligation and a political one to prevent that from happening. You should know that the United States is prepared to do that," Pompeo said in public remarks at the meeting. For its part, Israel has carried out repeated air strikes on Hezbollah in Syria, where the Shi'ite Muslim militia - along with Russian air power - helped President Bashar al-Assad turn the tables against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and militants. In a speech broadcast on the Persian new year on Thursday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Islamic Republic had successfully resisted "unprecedented, strong" U.S. sanctions. Iran has faced economic hardship since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew last year from the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers and reimposed sanctions. Focusing his remarks on Lebanon, Rivlin told Pompeo that its prime minister, Saad al-Hariri, "cannot say to anyone that Lebanon is separate from Hezbollah" - a reference to the group's political clout in Beirut where it has ministers in the government as well as lawmakers in parliament. Story continues "If some(thing) will happen from Lebanon toward Israel, we will hold Lebanon as the responsible (party)," Rivlin said, speaking in English. Washington also has been increasingly voicing concern at Hezbollah power, echoing Israel, whose forces were fought to a standstill by the militia in a 2006 Lebanon war. Pompeo's visit to Jerusalem was widely seen in Israel as a boost for Netanyahu, who enjoys a close relationship with Trump, just three weeks before a closely contested Israeli election. In a further signal of solidarity with Israel, Pompeo was later scheduled, accompanied by Netanyahu, to visit Judaism's Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City. In May 2017, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the wall, but did not ask Netanyahu to join him. Seven months later, Trump broke with decades of U.S. policy and recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, incensing Palestinians who claim the city's eastern sector as the capital of a future state they seek. Last May, Washington moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Pompeo also visited the embassy on Thursday. (Writing by Dan Williams Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark Heinrich) By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday described the heavily armed Hezbollah group as a risk to their fellow Lebanese and conferred with Israel about the Iranian-backed militia ahead of a trip to Beirut. Pompeo, who has been on a regional tour to promote the Trump administration's hard tack against Iran, received a warning from Israel, which worries it may again be in the sights of Hezbollah fighters winding down their intervention in Syria's civil war. Washington also has been increasingly voicing concern at Hezbollah power, echoing Israel, whose forces were fought to a standstill by the militia in a 2006 Lebanon war. Hosting Pompeo at his office, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri "cannot say to anyone that Lebanon is separate from Hezbollah" - a reference to the group's clout in Beirut where it has ministers in the coalition cabinet as well as lawmakers in parliament. "If some(thing) will happen from Lebanon toward Israel, we will hold Lebanon as the responsible (party)", Rivlin said. Asked what message he would take to Lebanon, his next stop, Pompeo told reporters: "We're going to be very clear about how America sees Hezbollah and our expectations about how Lebanon's success depends on the Lebanese people (demanding) that a terrorist organization not be in control of their government and not drive policies and create risk for their country as well." ELECTORAL FORCE In Lebanon's 2018 elections, parties and individuals who back Hezbollah's possession of a military arsenal won a majority of seats in parliament. President Michel Aoun called Hezbollah's arms "an essential part of defending Lebanon", though Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said its weapons were illegitimate. Pompeo also reinforced Rivlin's veiled warning that Israel could retaliate against Lebanon for any Hezbollah attack: "We all know the risk, right? Hezbollah does something inside of Lebanon, the risk of escalation is real. "The people of Lebanon don't want that. The people of Israel don't want that. The people of the United States of America don't want that." For its part, Israel has carried out repeated air strikes on Hezbollah in Syria, where the Shi'ite Muslim militia - along with Russian air power - helped President Bashar al-Assad turn the tables against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and militants. Iran has faced economic hardship since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew last year from the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers and reimposed sanctions. In a speech broadcast on the Persian New Year on Thursday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Islamic Republic had successfully resisted "unprecedented, strong" U.S. sanctions. Pompeo told Rivlin that Hezbollah, along with Palestinian Hamas and Yemen's Houthis - both also Iranian-backed - "are determined to wipe this country (Israel) off the face of the planet and we (the United States) have a moral obligation and a political one to prevent that from happening." Coming just three weeks before a closely contested Israeli election, Pompeo's trip to Jerusalem was widely seen in Israel as a boost for the prime minister, who enjoys a close relationship with Trump. (Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Beirut; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark Heinrich) Jerusalem (AFP) - US top diplomat Mike Pompeo planned to visit Jerusalem's Western Wall alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday in what would be a break with longstanding diplomatic practice. Two former US diplomats could not recall such a high-ranking US official visiting the site with an Israeli premier, which could be taken as tacit approval of Israel's sovereignty over the location in annexed east Jerusalem. The visit comes less than three weeks before Israeli elections in which Netanyahu is facing a tough challenge from a centrist alliance led by a former military chief of staff. "The trip to the wall is something that I've been talking with PM Netanyahu about doing some time ago. It's our first chance to go there together," Pompeo told journalists before the visit on Thursday. "I think it's important. I think it's symbolic that a senior American official go there with a PM of Israel," he added, calling it "a place that's important to many faiths." Donald Trump became the first sitting American president to visit the wall, the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray, during his trip in May 2017. US Vice President Mike Pence also visited the Western Wall during his visit in January 2018. Neither were accompanied by Israeli leaders during the hugely symbolic visits. Pompeo said he did not know why neither Trump nor Pence visited the site with Netanyahu, and declined to say whether it indicated a change in how the United States sees the status of the Western Wall. "I'm looking forward to going to the wall with the PM," he said. Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community. It considers the entire city its capital, while the Palestinians see the eastern sector as the capital of their future state. In 2017, Trump controversially recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital and announced the move of the US embassy there, breaking with decades of international consensus. Jerusalem (AFP) - US top diplomat Mike Pompeo became the first high-ranking American official to visit the Western Wall in annexed east Jerusalem with an Israeli prime minister on Thursday, giving another boost to Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election campaign. Two experienced former US diplomats could not recall such a senior American official visiting the site with an Israeli premier. It could be taken as tacit approval of Israel's sovereignty over the site, one of the holiest in Judaism and located in the city's mainly Palestinian eastern sector. The visit came less than three weeks before Israel's April 9 elections in which Netanyahu is facing a tough challenge from a centrist alliance led by a former military chief of staff, Benny Gantz. Netanyahu is also due to visit Washington and meet with his close ally US President Donald Trump twice next week. On Thursday afternoon, Netanyahu and Pompeo, along with US ambassador David Friedman, approached the wall together, placing a hand on it before depositing prayers on slips of paper, as is tradition. Before the visit, the US secretary of state told journalists "the trip to the wall is something that I've been talking with PM Netanyahu about doing ... It's our first chance to go there together." "I think it's important. I think it's symbolic that a senior American official go there with a PM of Israel," he added, calling it "a place that's important to many faiths." - 'Indispensable man' - It was the Trump administration's latest move in favour of Israel and Netanyahu's right-wing government, and word came later that another is on the way. Netanyahu has been pushing for the White House to recognise Israel's claim of sovereignty over the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, and Trump tweeted Thursday that "it is time" to do so. Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state now with the Wilson Center think-tank in Washington, said the Western Wall visit was "determined to drive home a singular point". Story continues "That this administration is the most pro-Israeli administration in the history of the US-Israeli relationship, and it's occurring barely three weeks before an Israeli election," he told AFP. "It doesn't require a brilliant scholar or analyst of Middle East politics to draw the conclusion that the administration is trying to do everything it can given Trump's popularity in Israel to demonstrate the fact that Netanyahu is the indispensable man." Trump became the first sitting American president to visit the wall, the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray, in May 2017. US Vice President Mike Pence also visited in January 2018, but neither were accompanied by Israeli leaders. Pompeo said he did not know why neither Trump nor Pence visited the site with Netanyahu, and declined to say whether it indicated a change in how the United States sees its status. Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat called it a "total change of US policy". "If continued it will be the classical recipe for conflict between Palestinians and Israelis for another century," he said. Israel also occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community. It considers the entire city its capital, while the Palestinians see the eastern sector as the capital of their future state. International consensus has been that the city's status must be negotiated between the two sides. But Trump broke with that in 2017 when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital and announced the transfer of the US embassy to the city. An enraged Palestinian leadership froze ties with the White House. - 'Poor prospects' - Trump has also cut some $500 million in Palestinian aid, a move he says is intended to force Palestinians back to the negotiating table, with the president expected to release his long-awaited peace deal sometime after the Israeli elections. The Palestinians see Trump's administration as blatantly biased in favour of Israel and say the cuts are intended to blackmail them into accepting a plan they believe will destroy their cause. Dan Shapiro, US ambassador to Israel under Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, said "recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and gestures like this visit to the Western Wall are reasonable on their own merits". "But they should be accompanied by statements that indicate the US also envisions the capital of a Palestinian state in Arab east Jerusalem emerging from eventual negotiations," he told AFP. "The fact that they are not contributes to the very poor prospects of any Trump peace plan." Israel's elections are expected to be close and Netanyahu is campaigning while facing the threat of indictment on corruption allegations. Pompeo's visit was part of a regional tour that had earlier taken him to Kuwait and which will continue on to Lebanon. He said ahead of his arrival that the visit was unrelated to Israel's domestic politics. Sinjar (Iraq) (AFP) - For decades, his land was his life. Now, like other Sunni Arab farmers in Iraq's diverse north, Mahdi Abu Enad is cut off from his fields, fearing reprisal attacks. He hails from the mountainous region of Sinjar, which borders Syria and is home to an array of communities -- Shiite and Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and Yazidis. That patchwork was ripped apart when the Islamic State group rampaged across the area in 2014, and has not reconciled even long after Iraqi forces ousted IS in 2017. Yazidis, whose men IS killed en masse and whose women and girls were enslaved by the group, say they have suffered the most. They accuse their Sunni Arab neighbours of granting the radical Sunni jihadists of IS a foothold in Sinjar. Displaced Sunni Arabs, on the other hand, slam the sweeping accusation as unfair and say looting and the threat of retaliatory violence have kept them from coming home. "We stand accused of belonging to IS because they settled in Sunni areas, but IS doesn't represent Sunnis," said Abu Enad, displaced from his hometown to Al-Baaj since 2014. "We all lost our livelihoods. It's been four years since we cultivated our land because we fear for our lives," he said. In 2017, Human Rights Watch said Yazidi armed groups reportedly abducted and executed 52 Sunni Arab civilians in retaliation for IS abuses. Fearing similar abuses, Abu Enad still lives about 10 kilometres (six miles) from his farm, and was only able to tend to it during planting season with a paramilitary escort. "We had to leave at 4:00 pm every day because the situation was not safe enough. So how could you come back with your family to resume farming and living here?" he said. - 'They betrayed the co-existence' - Across Iraq, around a third of the population relies on farming to survive, and the ratio was even higher in Sinjar. For centuries, the region's diverse farmers jointly sold their fig and wheat harvests in the provincial capital of Mosul, 120 kilometres (75 miles) to the east. Story continues But in the wake of IS, farming equipment was stolen, orchards burned, and rubble stuffed into irrigation wells. Now, the area's once-lush farming hamlets have been reduced to ruined ghost towns, with most Arab villages including Abu Enad's left flattened. A few kilometres to the north, the main town of Sinjar is also still rubble, with little power, water, or health services available. A few thousand Yazidi families have come back, but tens of thousands more are still stuck in displacement camps elsewhere in Iraq and Syria, while others fled to Europe. And more than 3,000 Yazidis remain missing, many of them believed to be women and girls taken as sex slaves. That has made it difficult for the community to forgive or forget the mass crimes against them. "The Arabs of Sinjar were involved in the abduction of our women," said Yazidi cleric Sheikh Fakher Khalaf. "They betrayed the co-existence we had, so they can no longer live among us," said Khalaf, who returned home to Sinjar after three years of displacement. "Those who have done nothing, we respect them. But those who have blood on their hands, they must face justice. Sinjar is not a place for them." - 'Fruits of our labour' - Several local initiatives have made minimal progress on reconciliation, but efforts have not gone far enough, said the Norwegian Refugee Council. "We are seeing plans to rebuild and rehabilitate some parts, but we're not seeing any concrete process towards reconciliations," spokesman Tom Peyre-Costa told AFP. He called for more dialogue between communities, transparent and fair trials, and accountability for all perpetrators of crimes. Iraqi courts have tried hundreds for belonging to IS, handing down at least 300 death sentences. "People who used to be able to live together are not able to do so anymore because of the tension between communities, so this is why reconciliation must be prioritised," he said. While the communal fissures in Sinjar are particularly deep, the challenge of rebuilding trust after IS is one faced across Iraqi society. Sunnis are a minority in Iraq, whose population is about 60 percent Shiite. Displaced Sunnis with perceived ties to IS undergo tough screening processes to return to their hometowns, where they sometimes face harassment. Abu Enad, the displaced farmer, still hopes that Sinjar can return to its harmonious past. "We Sunnis have been hurt by Daesh like Yazidis were hurt," he told AFP, using an Arabic acronym for IS. "We want to come back to our land so we can farm and live off the fruits of our labour alongside them." In his new book Doing Justice: A Prosecutors Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York reflects on his career in an office now investigating the President. Your old office is handling multiple investigations into Donald Trump. Should that worry him more than Robert Mueller? Yes. Unlike the special counsels office, the Southern District does not have any kind of circumscribed mandate. They are not limited to issues related to collusion or obstruction or interference with the election of 2016. They can look at everything. And that includes bank fraud, tax fraud, money laundering, you name it. What can the public expect to see when Muellers investigation ends? If the report is devastating to the President and there are people on earth who know, I dont see how you keep that from the public. If its not so damaging, I assume [Attorney General] Bill Barr and others would rush to disclose it. The problem will be if its a mixed bag. Expectations are set so high. Its almost going to be impossible to meet them unless there is a series of smoking guns. Is impeachment a real threat to Trumps presidency? There is still some reluctance on the part of Democrats, all the way up to Nancy Pelosi, in pursuing the I word. Impeachment, people tend to forget, is only the making of an allegation. Its not proving anything. The Senate as currently constituted is not going to end Donald Trumps presidency. Did the 2008 financial crisis contribute to the system is rigged political movement that helped elect Trump? A few things that Donald Trump said when he got elected are correct. He said some people have been forgotten. Hes right. He said theres a swamp. Hes right. He said a lot of the system is rigged. Hes right. My point of disagreement is how you combat those things. You didnt bring criminal cases against major executives for crimes that contributed to the financial crisis. Do you regret that? Story continues There was incredible frustration over the tanking of the economy. Everyone had every incentive to hold people accountable criminally. But you cant just charge people because youre angry. You cant bring a case unless you have the law and the facts on your side. And nobody in those circumstances found that to be so. You teach a class at New York University School of Law. What principles do you try to pass on to the next generation of lawyers? Good judgment. Part of the point of the class is the same as the book, which is you can have great laws, but if the people who are responsible for enforcing or interpreting them are bad people, they can find a million ways to cause miscarriages of justice. Now you host a podcast. What is your favorite part about podcasting vs. prosecuting? Theyre very different things. At the end of a prosecution, someone goes to prison. At the end of a podcast, I read an ad for ZipRecruiter. Was there anyone you were nervous to interview? Jason Goldfarb, the only person who has come on the podcast that my office prosecuted. He committed insider-trading offenses. It felt strange and unsettling to sit across the table from somebody whose indictment bore my name and went to prison. We can forget, and we shouldnt, that every defendant is a human being too. Who is on the top of your wish list to interview? Ill give you his first name: Bruce. Springsteen? Is there another Bruce? The highlight of my life [was when] he gave me a shout-out live at a concert. I almost fell off my chair. To this day, if Im down, Ill find the YouTube clip and play it and giggle like a child. President Donald Trump continued his streak of attacks on the late Sen. John McCain during a visit to an Ohio tank factory Wednesday. Speaking on a cavernous manufacturing floor with an M1 Abrams tank arranged behind him, Trump blasted McCains handling of veterans issues, his vote on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his role in the investigation into his campaigns ties to Russia. He even complained about McCains funeral. I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president, I had to approve, he said. I dont care about this. I didnt get a thank you, but thats OK. After McCains death in August, Trump waited two days to issue a standard proclamation of praise for him and ordered the flag above the White House to be lowered to half-staff long after it had been lowered elsewhere. The crowd at the Lima Army Tank Plant at the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima, Ohio, made up of about 800 workers, guests and local officials, remained silent as Trump railed against McCain. Some in the crowd did boo at a mention of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as Trump complained that McCain had given the FBI a copy of the so-called Steele dossier, which alleged that his campaign had ties to Russia, in December of 2017. John McCain received the fake and phony dossier. Did you hear about the dossier? It was paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton, right? he said. And John McCain got it. He got it. And what did he do? He didnt call me. He turned it over to the FBI hoping to put me in jeopardy. In recent days, Trump has criticized the Vietnam War hero and former Republican presidential nominee on Twitter and in remarks to the press while meeting with the Brazilian president at the White House. After McCains daughter, Meghan, fired back, Trump retweeted criticism of her as well, and McCains family seemed to be the target of his ire over the funeral. During the Ohio visit, Trump also argued that McCain didnt get the job done advocating for veterans as a senator and criticized him for providing the crucial vote against a Republican proposal to repeal Obamacare. John McCain campaigned for years to repeal and replace Obamacare when he finally had the chance to do it, he voted against, he said. WASHINGTON President Donald Trump said Thursday that the U.S. should recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a controversial move that critics said would further inflame tensions in the Middle East. Trump made the announcement in a tweet on Thursday, arguing that the disputed territory is critical to Israel's security. Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syrian control during the Six Day war in 1967. The move overturns decades of U.S. foreign policy and contradicts a United Nations resolution, which calls on Israel to end its occupation of the Golan Heights. Previous U.S. administrations have labeled the territory as "occupied" and declined to recognize Israel's annexation. "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Trump tweeted. Trump's decision comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is mired in a corruption scandal and in the midst of a bruising re-election campaign. Israel's attorney general announced last month that he would indict Netanyahu on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges pending a final hearing. That news has clouded Netanyahu's bid for another term, with Israelis set to vote on April 9 in the country's general elections. Trump's statement Thursday handed Netanyahu a major domestic-policy win that could help distract from the corruption case. Trump sent his tweet as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Jerusalem, meeting with the Israeli leader and visiting the Western Wall, among other sites. "Trump has just made history," Netanyahu told reporters as he prepared to have dinner with Pompeo at his residence. "I called him. I thanked him on behalf of the people of Israel. He did it again. Trump has made a series of policy decisions that favor Israel, most notably moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to to Jerusalem a city claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians as their capital. Story continues The message that President Trump has given the world is that America stands by Israel, Netanyahu declared. Saeb Erakat, a top official with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, blasted Trump's move, saying via Twitter that it was certain to bring "destabilisation and bloodshed in our region." Middle East experts said Trump's Golan Heights statement was essentially a gift to Netanyahu's campaign, which has emphasized his sharp foreign-policy skills. And some expressed fear that it would embolden Israel to annex the West Bank. "The U.S. position was always that the status (of the Golan Heights) would be determined in negotiations between Israel and its neighbors," said Daniel Byman, professor and senior associate dean at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. He said U.S. recognition of Israeli control over the Golan Heights is not as significant as Trump's other Israeli-related policy changes, particularly the U.S. Embassy move. But "it's a real shift" and will serve to remind Israeli voters of Netanyahu's close relationship with Trump, Byman said. The Israel Policy Forum, which is focused on building support in the U.S. for a two-state solution, said Trump's decision was the right one. But it questioned the timing and suggested it could be counterproductive. "Coming so close to Israels elections, this appears to be a thinly veiled attempt to bolster Prime Minister Netanyahus re-election efforts rather than a move whose timing is dictated by pure policy considerations," the group said in a statement. "Highlighting it now may actually be counterproductive, as it would bring attention to an issue that has been under the radar and would risk inflaming the situation in southern Syria by baiting Syrian forces or other pro-regime elements into carrying out a response." Trump denied he was trying to boost Netanyahu before Israel's April 9 election. "I wouldnt even know about that," Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday. "I dont know if hes doing great right now, but I hear hes doing OK." Trump said he's been considering the shift for a long time. "It's been a very hard decision for every president, no president has done it," he told Fox. "Every president has said 'do that,' Im the one that gets it done." Israel's control of the Golan Heights has given it a buffer on its northern border, strengthening its hand against hostile Iranian and Syrian forces. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2019 Others argued that it could bolster anti-Israel extremists and further imperil efforts to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians. "Trump's Twitter recognition of Israel's Golan Heights annexation does nothing to bolster Israeli security," Ori Nir, communications director at Americans for Peace Now, which advocates for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said in a statement. "It does, however, hinder its prospects to reach peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world. That is bad for Israeli and US national security." Nir said that previous peace initiatives have stipulated that Arab states would normalize relations and sign peace agreements with Israel if it settled its conflict with the Palestinians and its territorial dispute with Syria. Trump's move could also "further radicalize anti-Israel extremists in the region, fueling Iran-supported militias and terrorist groups to attack Israel," Nir argued. But Trump's move won praise from Republican foreign policy hawks. "The Golan was used by Syria in 2 wars of aggression against Israel," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tweeted after Trump's announcement. "Additionally Syria's Assad, Iran, & Hezbollah need to pay a price for dismembering Syria. To return the Golan Heights to Syria would be to reward aggression and put the Jewish State at perpetual risk." President Trumps decision to recognize the Golan as part of Israel is strategically wise and overall awesome. Well done, Mr. President! Now I, along with Senator @tedcruz, will try to get Congress to follow your lead. https://t.co/esjggBDawq Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 21, 2019 This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: President Trump says U.S. should recognize Israel's sovereignty over disputed Golan Heights WASHINGTON President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at ensuring colleges uphold free speech by threatening to withhold billions in research funding. Its not entirely clear how the order will work. Trump issued the order in response to concerns from conservatives, including those in his voting base, that college campuses have become too liberal. Colleges and their faculty have been leery of conservative speakers and have unfairly labeled some of their ideas as bigoted, conservatives say. Protests surrounding conservative speakers on campus have sometimes turned violent. My administration seeks to promote free and open debate on college and university campuses, the executive order reads. Free inquiry is an essential feature of our nations democracy. Another executive order? Trump attacked Obama for using executive powers, now plans to do the same thing At the signing, Trump said the executive order was just the first in a series of steps the administration would take to defend the free speech of students. He didnt say what those future steps would be. He was joined on stage by college students, who he said stood up to the forces of political indoctrination, because they loved their country. Now you have a president that is fighting for you, he said. I am with you all the way. Universities that want taxpayer dollars should promote free speech, not silence free speech. How much money is at stake? The presidents remarks didnt offer more clarity about how the program would work, but he did threaten to pull billions and billions of federal research funding from universities if they didnt comply with the concept of free speech. All of that money is now at stake, he said. Thats a lot of money. But is it? The order doesnt make clear, and neither did Trump's comments, what criteria would bar a university from getting federal money and how many colleges risk violating those criteria. Story continues The executive order would direct 12 federal agencies that give money to colleges via grants to build in conditions that direct universities to uphold free speech on their campuses. Those agencies include the Departments of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation. The order doesn't make clear how it differs from the protections already demanded of public universities by the First Amendment. A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the order Thursday morning did not offer more details about how the order would work. Rather, the official said the Office of Management and Budget would work with the agencies to figure how the program will work over the next few weeks and months. The free-speech order will not affect federal student loans or grants, another huge source of federal money that colleges receive. Education Sec. Betsy DeVos, who attended the signing, issued a statement Thursday saying the department would comply with accountability portions of the order. Students, she said, should be empowered to pursue truth through the free exchange of all ideas, especially ideas with which they may not agree. Punches, watch lists and protests on campus Trump has offered contradictory messages on free speech on college campuses. He threatened to pull federal money from the University of California-Berkeley in February 2017 after a protest turned violent over a scheduled speaker. Yet in March 2018, the president told Charlie Kirk, a conservative critic of college campuses, that he believed the free-speech crisis to be overblown. Kirk supports the executive order signed Thursday. But this month, in his latest speech touching on the topic, the president said that if universities wanted federal research money, they must allow free speech. He brought up Hayden Williams, a conservative activist who was punched at UC-Berkeley this month. "If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions, theyve got to allow people like Hayden ... to speak, Trump said. Some conservative speakers have had high-profile battles with colleges. Ben Shapiro, a conservative host of a popular podcast, regularly tours college campuses. He is often protested, and he and his fans have complained of campus censorship. So does Kirk. His organization even started "The Professor Watchlist," with the stated goal: "to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom." Many of the students involved in recent free-speech spats have been members of Kirk's group, Turning Point. When he was attorney general, Jeff Sessions accused higher-education institutions of raising a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes. The Justice Department has filed statements of interest in cases involving free speech on campuses. What about the First Amendment? At least one conservative lawmaker pushed back against the order. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn, said Thursday that he didnt see a need for Congress or the federal government to get involved in free speech on campuses. The U.S. Constitution guarantees free speech, Alexander said in a statement. Federal courts define and enforce it. The Department of Justice can weigh in. Conservatives dont like it when judges try to write laws, and conservatives should not like it when legislators and agencies try to rewrite the Constitution. University advocacy groups almost uniformly decried the executive order and said it was unnecessary. That's to be expected, as universities consider free speech and academic freedom among their core values. Robert Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago, said he was opposed to federal government interfering with university affairs. His concern: The mere threat of federal involvement could prevent people from exercising their free-speech rights. "Any action by the Executive Branch that interferes with the ability of higher education institutions to address this problem themselves is misguided and in fact sets a very problematic precedent, Zimmer said in a statement following the announcement that Trump would sign an executive order. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'I am with you': President Trump signs executive order on free speech at college campuses Elizabeth Warren. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images There are several qualified women running to take on President Trump in 2020. But with the trauma of 2016 still fresh in their minds, will voters be more hesitant than ever to cast a ballot for a candidate they fear might fall victim to prejudice? Intelligencer staffers Irin Carmon, Jonathan Chait, Benjamin Hart, Margaret Hartmann, Ed Kilgore, and Eric Levitz discuss. Ed: Somebody already flagged this Matt Yglesias piece on the women of the 2020 field. But let it be noted hes taken up the No Men Need Apply battle cry that Ive been threatening to utter for a while, and he goes to some trouble to refute the claim that HRC lost because of voter sexism. So do others here think Warren and Harris and Klobuchar are fatally weakened by Democratic fears that a piggy-piggy electorate will give Trump a second term rather than electing a woman? Ben: Ive certainly heard those fears voiced out loud. Jon: Its true that on gender as well as race, what we see as more lefty analytic arguments about the nature of the electorate become conservative arguments when translated into practical advice. The more fundamental you think racism and sexism are in the minds of voters, the more crucial avoiding those traps becomes to winning. Ben: To state the perhaps-obvious, I think the bar is set higher for women and minority candidates. Klobuchar is not very dynamic and is an angry boss; Warren is seen by some as professorial, and has the Native American baggage. These qualities are probably cast as fatal flaws more quickly than they would be with their white male counterparts. (I do think Harris has a better shot than those two.) Margaret: Yeah, me too. My personal sexist fears are focused mainly on Warren. Ed: What seems to have dropped out of the calculation is the possibility that frontlash can outweigh backlash, as it did in a lot of midterm and off-year elections. And it sure did with Obama in 2008. Eric: I dont think it has. The fact that Stacey Abrams dramatically outperformed her recent Democratic predecessors in Georgia is a huge part of why shes such a phenom. Progressives need to believe that the right candidates can make frontlash work, in order to reconcile the tension Jon just highlighted. Ed: So you agree that the problem may be in the heads of Democrats rather than the hearts of swing voters? Eric: I dont think we have enough data to know, but I dont think mobilizing the Dem base is going to be much of a problem when President Trump is on the ballot (as opposed to when sure-loser Trump was). Ed: I agree, but Im talking about the nominating contest. Ben: I think the hyperfocus on the industrial Midwest is part of the problem here. Eric: If swing voters in the Midwest are the primary concern (rather than base mobilization), then a Biden type does seem like the logical choice from a purely electoral perspective. Ed: Even those who have issues with Bidens age and background, and really want to see a woman elected president, might be tempted to endorse a Biden-Abrams ticket, particularly if it would reduce the odds of a protracted nominating contest. Irin: Anecdata: I just had breakfast with a bunch of Democrats in Trump-won coastal NC, supporters of Planned Parenthood who I spoke to about my book last night, and every single one was either Biden or Beto because we have to be pragmatic. Fear is driving this. Margaret: Interesting. I had a conversation yesterday that suggests I may have underestimated the American voter in my comments a few days ago. Person said Biden is No. 1 pick, would be even better with lady who delivered SOTU response as VP, Warren is No. 2 because she seems really smart. Beto is a joke who doesnt know policy. Sorry I misjudged you, mom. Ben: Haha. Irin: Lol. Ben: Its funny that Beto is seen as the pragmatic choice. Irin: Yes, that part is really telling. Jon: But the more racist and sexist you think the electorate is, the more that makes sense. Irin: One (white) woman was like, Everyone is asking whether we should focus on the South or the Midwest. Well, Ive lived in the South my whole life, and my answer is the Midwest. Ed: The Trump reelection panic Irin is talking about is what I wrote about here. Jon: I do think voters casually associate some traits with being liberal, and others with conservative, so a female/nonwhite/northern candidate will be seen as more liberal, and might have more pressure to move to the center, and the reverse for white/male/southern/military vet, etc. By the same token, Republican minorities and women can be seen as moderate without moderating their policies. Ben: I look forward to finding out in a few short months whether the 2020 electorate is really racist and sexist, or just very racist and sexist. * Poroshenko trails second in polls before March 31 vote * Leads in western Ukraine despite deaths in conflict * Region may enable him to win second round victory * Graphic: https://tmsnrt.rs/2EEQ22R By Natalia Zinets LVIV, Ukraine, March 21 (Reuters) - At a cemetery in western Ukraine, a tall, grey-haired man lights candles and kisses the gravestone of his 35-year-old brother Taras, whose death, he said, changed his mind about who should win this month's presidential election. Taras, a medical volunteer, was killed in 2015 rescuing wounded soldiers near Debaltseve during the government's five-year-old conflict in eastern Ukraine against Kremlin-backed rebels, his brother Ihor Konchevych said. He died for a free and independent Ukraine, something their grandfathers could only dream of in the Soviet era, he said, and President Petro Poroshenko is the best candidate to keep it on that path, even though he has not ended the war as he promised. "In 2014, I did not vote for him," said Ihor, a dermatologist whose teenage nephew and niece are now fatherless. "Now (I will) for one reason: he is pro-Ukraine, Russia does not support him." Such support could help Poroshenko, who has consistently trailed in opinion polls, scrape into the second round and potentially win a second term. It suggests that at least in western Ukraine, where Poroshenko's polling remains relatively robust, his opposition to Russia and championing of the army, the church and closer ties with Europe and the United States is getting through. It also suggests some people are willing to swallow whatever disappointment they might feel about his failure to end the war, lift living standards or thoroughly tackle corruption, because they see him as better than the alternatives. At stake in the election is the leadership of a country on the front line of the West's confrontation with Russia, five years after the Maidan street protests ousted Poroshenko's Russia-friendly predecessor Viktor Yanukovich and the Russian annexation of Crimea. Story continues It is a country still fighting a conflict in the eastern Donbass region that has killed 13,000 people despite a notional ceasefire, a shrunken state propped up by Western aid and sanctions against Moscow. The election has boiled down to a three-horse race between the confectionary magnate Poroshenko, comic actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, with Poroshenko second and Zelenskiy extending his lead thanks to his fresh face and strong anti-corruption message. HEARTLAND OF MAIDAN It is perhaps not surprising that Poroshenko's pro-Western messages resonate in Lviv, a picturesque city of cobblestone streets and central European charm that was under the Austrian empire until the First World War and is geographically closer to European Union countries than to Kiev. The region was a driving force behind successive revolutions, including the 2014 protests in Maidan: according to Reuters' calculations, around 50 of the more than 100 protesters killed during the Maidan protests were from the west, 19 of them from the Lviv region alone. The city is heavily Ukrainian-speaking compared to the Russian-speaking eastern regions. A survey by pollster SOCIS suggests voters in the west care more about the war and less about, for example, rising utility tariffs than the average Ukrainian. The brother of Lesya Senyk, a 51-year-old kindergarten director, was one of those killed on Maidan, a protest sparked by Yanukovich's decision to renege on signing a political and trade agreement with the EU after pressure from Moscow. Her brother's sacrifice, she said, means Ukraine has become a proper state with a stronger army and aspirations to join the European Union. Senyk did not vote for Poroshenko in 2014 but she will now. "I do not know who else could have saved the state in those difficult times, after the Maidan and during the war," she said. "Maybe he's not perfect. But we are not saints." NO COUNTRY FOR CLOWNS Poroshenko won an emphatic victory in the 2014 election but his popularity has fallen sharply. He can boast success: he secured visa-free travel for Ukrainians to the EU. There have been reforms and the government has stayed in an International Monetary Fund bailout program: a reassurance to investors. Poroshenko successfully lobbied for Ukraine to establish a national Orthodox church, independent from Russia. While he did not win the war, he did not lose it, and ramped up defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product from 3 percent under Yanukovich. A Poroshenko win is the worst-case scenario for Russia, which is a plus in some voters' eyes. But he has been forced to apologize for his pledge to win the war within weeks, and that is not enough for some. The parents of 22-year-old Yuriy Holub, who was killed in eastern Ukraine in 2014, will not vote for him. "He promised, promised," said Holub's father Hryhoriy, who is blind. "Why did you promise if you were not confident that you can fulfill your promise? If he were an honest man he would quit of his own accord." His wife Hanna, who holds pictures of her son close to her face due to her own failing sight, also said Poroshenko had let them down. "First he said everything would be over in two weeks ... But such heavy shelling happened and our child was killed," she said in a trembling voice. "There is no trust now." Their son is buried in Lviv's 18th century Lychakiv cemetery, along with about 70 others killed in the east. Nazar Paselsky lies buried in a grave near Holub. Paselsky was killed by shelling, aged 21, in the Luhansk region in August 2014. His mother Hanna and father Mykola adopted a boy after Nazar's death. Photos of Nazar, his diploma and his bravery award are on display on top of their cabinet. Hanna voted for Poroshenko last time "because he promised that everything will be over in three days. I wanted my child to come back home alive." Now she does not trust any candidate to guarantee a future for her adopted one-year-old, but thinks she might end up voting for Poroshenko in the second round. Twelve years younger than Poroshenko, Zelenskiy has tapped into disillusionment about Ukraine's progress since Maidan and the desire for new faces in politics. But some people, like Hryhoriy Zhalovaga, whose son Anatoliy died on Maidan, said a strong army was what was needed, not an entertainer with no political experience. Quoting another student during a commemoration ceremony for Maidan victims at the school his son attended, he said: "Those who will vote for Zelenskiy, what do they want, a country of clowns?" Lviv-based analyst Oleg Gryniv said such views mean Poroshenko will probably carry a majority in the western areas like Galicia, which contains Lviv, citing the example of Ukraine's first post-Soviet President Leonid Kravchuk. "When he traveled through the eastern regions, they asked him about the price of socks, whether gas prices would be lowered," he said. "And when he arrived in Galicia, there was only one question - whether the state would be kept intact." (Additional reporting Sergiy Karazy; writing by Matthias Williams; editing by Philippa Fletcher) Princess Eugenie and husband Jack Brooksbank have carried out their first royal engagement together at a place thats particularly poignant for her. The couple, alongside Eugenies father Prince Andrew, opened the redeveloped Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Stanmore Building. The hospital is where the 28-year-old princess underwent surgery to correct scoliosis at the age of 12. The operation took eight hours and surgeons inserted eight-inch titanium rods into each side of Eugenies spine and one-and-a-half inch screws at the top of her neck. Princess Eugenie and husband Jack Brooksbank at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital Stanmore Building [Photo: PA] She spent three days in intensive care, a week on a ward and six days in a wheelchair following the procedure, but she was walking again after that. Doctor Jan Lehovsky, who carried out the operation, was even invited to Eugenie and Jacks wedding last October. The bride, who wore a Peter Pilotto gown, asked for a low back design so she could proudly show off her scars from her childhood surgery. During the visit, the Duke of York (who is the hospitals Patron) and his daughter met staff and patients, who will benefit from the 50m redevelopment. The couple met staff and patients at the hospital [Photo: PA] Eugenie, who wore a cream tweed Maje dress for the hospital visit and carried a Chloe handbag, doesnt carry out a huge amount of public duties. The newlywed instead has a full-time job as a director at Mayfair art dealers, Hauser and Wirth. Neither Eugenie or her older sister Beatrice receive an allowance from the Privy Purse the Queens private income. Therefore, theyre not supported by the British tax payer. From time to time, they do carry out engagements, connected with the charities and organisations they support. Eugenie became Patron of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospitals Redevelopment Appeal in 2012. She and long-term boyfriend Jack announced their engagement last January. The pair were wed at St Georges Chapel in Windsor on October 12, 2018. Jack is a Brand Ambassador of Casamigos tequila, which was founded by George Clooney. Story continues FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) In a story March 17, The Associated Press reported that the deaths of six young men connected with the 2014 anti-police protests in Ferguson have drawn attention on social media and speculation in the activist community that something sinister is at play. The headline referred to the deaths as "puzzling" without providing attribution. This version of the story replaces the headline to focus on the fact that activists are unnerved by the deaths. The story with the new headline is below: Activists unnerved by deaths of men tied to Ferguson protests FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) Two young men were found dead inside torched cars. Three others died of apparent suicides. Another collapsed on a bus, his death ruled an overdose. Six deaths, all involving men with connections to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, drew attention on social media and speculation in the activist community that something sinister was at play. Police say there is no evidence the deaths have anything to do with the protests stemming from a white police officer's fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, and that only two were homicides with no known link to the protests. But some activists say their concerns about a possible connection arise out of a culture of fear that persists in Ferguson 4 years after Brown's death, citing threats mostly anonymous that protest leaders continue to receive. The Rev. Darryl Gray said he found a box inside his car. When the bomb squad arrived, no explosives were found but a 6-foot (1.8-meter) python was inside. "Everybody is on pins and needles," Gray said of his fellow activists. No arrests have been made in the two homicides. St. Louis County police spokesman Shawn McGuire said witnesses have simply refused to come forward, leaving detectives with no answers for why the men were targeted. "We don't believe either one was connected to each other," McGuire said, but adding, "It's tough to come up with a motive without a suspect." Story continues Ferguson erupted in protests in August 2014 after officer Darren Wilson fatally shot Brown during a street confrontation. Brown was unarmed, but Wilson said he fired in self-defense when the black teenager came at him menacingly. A grand jury declined to charge Wilson in November 2014, prompting one of the most violent nights of demonstrations, and one of the first activist deaths. Deandre Joshua's body was found inside a burned car blocks from the protest. The 20-year-old was shot in the head before the car was torched. Darren Seals, shown on video comforting Brown's mother that same night, met an almost identical fate two years later. The 29-year-old's bullet-riddled body was found inside a burning car in September 2016. Four others also died, three of them ruled suicides. MarShawn McCarrel of Columbus, Ohio, shot himself in February 2016 outside the front door of the Ohio Statehouse, police said. He had been active in Ferguson. Edward Crawford Jr., 27, fatally shot himself in May 2017 after telling acquaintances he had been distraught over personal issues, police said. A photo of Crawford firing a tear gas canister back at police during a Ferguson protest was part of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage. In October, 24-year-old Danye Jones was found hanging from a tree in the yard of his north St. Louis County home. His mother, Melissa McKinnies, was active in Ferguson and posted on Facebook after her son's death, "They lynched my baby." But the death was ruled a suicide. Bassem Masri, a 31-year-old Palestinian American who frequently livestreamed video of Ferguson demonstrations, was found unresponsive on a bus in November and couldn't be revived. Toxicology results released in February showed he died of an overdose of fentanyl. The Ferguson protests added momentum to the national Black Lives Matter movement, but they also generated resentment from people angered by TV footage of protesters hurling rocks and insults at police. Amid lingering anger, activists and observers say that while they see no clear connection between the deaths and the protests, they can't help but wonder about the thoroughness of the investigations. "These protesters and their deaths may not be a high priority for (police) since there is this antagonistic relationship," Washington University sociologist Odis Johnson said. "I think there is a need for them to have a greater sense of urgency." Activists say that in the years since the protests, they have been targeted in dangerous ways. "Something is happening," said Cori Bush, a frequent leader of the Ferguson protests. "I've been vocal about the things that I've experienced and still experience the harassment, the intimidation, the death threats, the death attempts." Bush said her car has been run off the road, her home has been vandalized, and in 2014 someone shot a bullet into her car, narrowly missing her daughter, who was 13 at the time. She suspects white supremacists or police sympathizers. Living under constant threat is exhausting, she said, but she won't give in. "They shut us up and they win," Bush said. It's unclear if residual stress from the protests or harassment contributed to the suicides, but Johnson said many activists feel a sense of hopelessness. "This has to have a big impact on their mental health," Johnson said. "For many, law enforcement is not a recourse. Many times law enforcement is not on their side." Experts say the deaths also are indicative of a concern at the core of the protests the underlying difficulty of life for young people of color. Five of the men who died were blacks in their 20s. Black St. Louis County residents are three times more likely than whites to be poor, often meaning they lack adequate health insurance that could allow them to better address not only physical ailments but mental health issues like depression and anxiety. They also tend to live in areas with higher crime rates. The 2010 U.S. census showed that while people who live in wealthy and mostly white western St. Louis County can expect to live well into their 80s, life expectancy in parts of mostly black north St. Louis County reaches only into the 60s. Life expectancy in Kinloch, a few miles from Ferguson, is 56. Forty-five of the county's 60 homicide victims last year were black in a county where less than a quarter of the population is black, according to police statistics. "Here in St. Louis, unfortunately, we have allowed the culture of crime and violence to morph into dimensions that anybody's at risk any day, any time," said James Clark of the nonprofit Better Family Life. Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship, by Richard Aldous (Norton, 352 pp., $27.95) Richard Aldous of Bard College has a newly relevant book sure to be of interest to readers of National Review. A history of the personal diplomacy between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship, published in 2012, argues against the idea of constant affection between these ideological brethren. Indeed, the two statesmen disagreed beginning in Reagans first year as president, and clashed regularly until his final year in office. Whats striking to a reader of this elegantly written history is the importance of their debates. President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher argued about national sovereignty. When the Argentine junta invaded the Falkland Islands in the spring of 1982, the Reagan administration did not want Thatchers government to retaliate militarily. The Argentines were a useful ally in Americas fight against Latin American Communism. Reaganites such as U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick did not want to lose an anti-Communist partner over a few islands in the South Atlantic. Thatcher, however, saw Argentinas aggression for what it was: a direct challenge to British sovereignty that could not be appeased. Britain recaptured the islands. Thatchers popularity spiked. A year later, when a Communist putsch overthrew the government of Grenada, sovereignty was the issue once more. The Reagan administration prepared an invasion and regime change to stop Cuba and the USSR from establishing a beachhead on the small Caribbean island. Thatcher was incensed, not least because Grenada is a realm of the British Commonwealth whose sovereign is Queen Elizabeth II. Reagan went ahead anyway solidifying his own political position and leading Thatcher to question just how much she could count on the United States. The two leaders had different conceptions of deterrence. When Reagan introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in the spring of 1983, Thatcher, who held a degree in chemistry from Oxford, was skeptical. She demanded technical briefings in the science of ballistic-missile defense. She also worried that SDI would overthrow the principle of mutual assured destruction, which had deterred the Soviet Union from using its conventional forces to cross Fulda Gap into Western Europe. Story continues Of course, ending the possibility of nuclear war was precisely why Reagan embraced SDI and the goal of nuclear zero. Later, when Reagan was tempted by Mikhail Gorbachevs offer at Reykjavik to stop the arms race, Thatcher was horrified. It would have handed the Soviets the advantage. In an irony of history, Reagans refusal to give up SDI led him to depart Iceland without an agreement. A policy Thatcher disliked saved the world from another policy she disliked even more. Reagan and Thatcher had different responses to terrorism. In early 1986 the Reagan administration sanctioned Libya in response to a terrorist attack against U.S. military personnel in Germany the previous Christmas. Thatcher was worried the sanctions were merely the prelude to military intervention. She opposed such action on the grounds that it violated international law and the Westphalian principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of nation-states. Once you start to go across borders, then I do not see an end to it and I uphold international law very firmly, she told the press at the time. Secretary of State George Shultz responded in a speech delivered at the National Defense University: There is substantial legal authority for the view that a state which supports terrorist or subversive attacks against another state, or which supports or encourages terrorist planning and other activities within its territory, is responsible for such attacks. No one had any question that Schultz was speaking to Thatcher. The prime minister was confronted with a decision the following month. Libyan terrorists had killed three Americans in a Berlin nightclub bombing. Would the U.K. assist the now inevitable U.S. response? After much back and forth, Thatcher reluctantly agreed to takeoff and over-flight rights for the U.S. bombers that struck Tripoli on April 14, 1986. The French, in a revealing contrast, denied America permission to use their airspace. British public opinion rebuked Thatcher temporarily for her stand with the Americans. Reagan rewarded her by pushing successfully for an updated U.S.U.K. extradition treaty. In the end, writes Aldous, the prime minister calculated that the potential damage to Anglo-American relations of withholding support for the attack on Libya was too great to risk. But it was no coincidence that immediately after the raid she used the Tokyo G7 summit in May to win acceptance of a firm British draft on terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism that brought the issue back into the fold of international cooperation rather than unilateral action. Sovereignty, deterrence, terrorism the contemporary world is no stranger to these concepts. Yet they have assumed a different character in the generation since Reagan and Thatcher departed elected office. Sovereignty is thought to be outdated, deterrence made obsolete by the irrational behavior of rogue states, terrorism a scourge to be combated wherever it emerges. Reading this book, I felt myself torn between Reagans strategic vision and Thatchers bracing intellect. Her logic was airtight; his grasp of the big picture was profound. I couldnt help wondering what each of them would make of the world they did so much to build. Then again, their actions changed historical conditions so profoundly that such a question is almost pointless. Maybe the best we can say is that the nature and framework of their arguments should inform our own. As we too pursue tirelessly the cause of human freedom. More from National Review By Gary McWilliams HOUSTON (Reuters) - Two Houston-area cities told residents to stay indoors and closed schools on Thursday due to air pollution from a petrochemical plant fire, then lifted the travel restrictions after airborne levels of the chemicals abated. The three-day blaze at Mitsui unit Intercontinental Terminals Co (ITC) in Deer Park, Texas, was extinguished on Wednesday after sending a plume of smoke over the area from 11 burning fuel tanks. No injuries were reported, but air monitors detected high levels of benzene, a toxic chemical linked to cancer. The cities of Deer Park and Galena Park, both east of Houston, had issued shelter-in-place advisories to residents after reports of high levels of benzene or other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were detected. Both orders were lifted by 2 p.m., officials said. Residents had been advised to remain indoors, turn off air conditioning and heating systems, and close doors and windows, making sure to plug any gaps, holes or cracks with wet towels or sheets. A state highway was closed in Deer Park. School districts in the two cities and four other nearby school systems canceled classes. "I'm not worried," said Lillie Patton, a resident of Pasadena, Texas, one of the communities that closed schools because of danger from benzene fumes. "They've taken the necessary precautions. I appreciate they are using their brains and common sense." The benzene fumes likely originated from giant tanks of gasoline that had been breached by the fire and exposed to the air. Workers on Thursday were removing fuels from the damaged tanks, which each can hold up to 80,000 barrels. An ITC spokeswoman declined to say when the work would be completed. Adam Adams, a U.S. Environmental Protection agency (EPA) official monitoring the site, estimated the effort could be finished on Thursday. The fire, which began on Sunday morning, destroyed 11 of the 242 giant tanks at ITC's terminal, capable of holding up to 13.1 million barrels of fuel. No one was injured during the fire, and a cause has yet to be determined. Story continues Benzene has a pungent odor, and inhaling it can irritate the skin, eyes and the respiratory system, while severe exposure can harm the nervous system or lead to unconsciousness, according to experts. The EPA classifies benzene as a carcinogen. The state's environmental regulator said monitors detected up to 190.68 parts per billion of benzene in Deer Park early Thursday, a level that can cause headaches and nausea. Deer Park sits on the Houston Ship Channel, an area with nine oil refineries and dozens of energy related facilities. Total Petrochemicals and Refining USA, a unit of France's Total SA, emptied several of its petrochemical tanks as a precaution, it reported to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The flaring released thousands of pounds of propene, a volatile organic compound, it said. Royal Dutch Shell on Wednesday had ordered employees to avoid an area at its facility where it had detected elevated levels of benzene. "Given our very conservative air quality standards we are at a level where out of an abundance of caution there should be a shelter in place," Lina Hidalgo, the chief executive of Harris County which encompasses Houston and its suburbs, said during a morning news conference. "This is a dynamic situation," Hidalgo said. Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen said firefighters have continued to apply a foam blanket on the burn area to stop the escape of dangerous fumes. TCEQ, one of the groups investigating the incident, estimated that on the first day of the fire, 6.2 million pounds of carbon monoxide and thousands of pounds of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and toluene were released. The regulator has cited ITC for violations of state air-emissions rules 39 times over the past 16 years. The EPA is to test local waterways for possible contamination from the millions of gallons of water and foam dropped on the fire since Sunday. (Reporting by Gary McWilliams, Erwin Seba and Jennifer Hiller in Houston; additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Bernadette Baum and David Gregorio) Chicago (AFP) - Residents of two suburbs near the US city of Houston were warned to "shelter in place" for much of Thursday morning after elevated levels of a volatile chemical were detected following an industrial plant fire. The Texas cities of Deer Park, where the Intercontinental Terminals Company (ITC) plant is located, and Galena Park both issued the alerts, which were lifted by early afternoon. "Early this morning, certain air quality readings were found to be above our very conservative air quality standards," said Lina Hidalgo, the chief executive of Harris County where Houston and its suburbs are located. "At this time, air quality readings that we are monitoring are at lower levels," she said in a statement. A fire, which ignited Sunday and was extinguished Wednesday, burned through several chemical storage tanks at the plant -- sending a giant plume of black smoke over much of the Houston area and panicking residents. Officials had insisted that air quality remained safe. But ITC said Thursday morning that responders at the site of the extinguished blaze detected increased levels of benzene, after foam used to seal the tank containing the chemical shifted. Crews worked to move the chemical to a different tank and reseal the damaged one. Deer Park placed a number of barricades on city streets and told alarmed residents to stay in their homes. School was canceled and local court business was rescheduled. Benzene is a quickly-evaporating chemical used in the manufacture of other chemicals and synthetic products, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) which warns that long-term exposure to high levels of benzene can cause cancer. Since the fire ignited over the weekend, the burning storage tanks filled with chemicals used in gasoline mixtures and paint thinners left many residents worried about exposure to fumes. Company and government officials had repeatedly reassured skeptical residents that testing showed air quality was below hazardous levels. Environmental Protection Agency official Adam Adams said Thursday that the agency had detected no "hazardous conditions that are continuous." There were no serious injuries reported from the fire. Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. Mitsui petrochemical unit probed after Texas fire rages for days State and local investigators have begun probing a petrochemical storage company outside Houston where a massive fire fed by giant tanks of fuel burned for days, darkening the skies with soot for dozens of miles, officials said. The blaze at Mitsui unit Intercontinental Terminals Co (ITC) in Deer Park, Texas, began on Sunday and was not extinguished until early Wednesday. It destroyed 11 tanks that can hold up to 80,000 barrels of gasoline and other fuels. Trump's border wall money may come at expense of schools for military kids The U.S. Department of Defense is proposing to pay for President Donald Trump's much-debated border wall by shifting funds away from projects that include $1.2 billion for schools, childcare centers and other facilities for military children, according to a list it has provided to lawmakers. The Pentagon gave Congress a list on Monday that included $12.8 billion of construction projects for which it said funds could be redirected. Around 10 percent of the list relates to educational establishments and includes school buildings for the children of service members in places like Germany, Japan, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. Ford adds production of electric vehicles at second North American site Ford Motor Co said on Wednesday it is adding production of a fully electric vehicle at a second North American plant as part of its $11 billion investment plan set last year. The No. 2 U.S. automaker said it is investing about $900 million in southeast Michigan and creating 900 jobs through 2023 as part of its electric vehicle push. That includes a plan to invest more than $850 million to expand production capacity at its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to build EVs. Texas fire destroyed 11 petrochemical storage tanks before extinguished: official A fire at a petrochemical storage site outside Houston destroyed 11 massive storage tanks before it was extinguished early Wednesday, Intercontinental Terminals Co officials said. The company, a subsidiary of Mitsui & Co, has not yet determined what caused the blaze, but officials said at a briefing Wednesday that investigations by local officials have begun. Smoke from the fire was visible for dozens of miles. Story continues In early campaigning, 2020 Democrats try out tactics for taking on Trump In the most polarized political environment in decades, Democratic voters want to know how their eventual nominee will match up against President Donald Trump in the November 2020 general election. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York appears willing to go the furthest yet, at least symbolically, in trying to prove she is ready to go toe-to-toe with the president. Missouri towns prepare for deluge as floods move downstream A string of small Missouri towns on Wednesday prepared for the next deluge along the snow-melt-swollen Missouri River after flooding wreaked nearly $1.5 billion in damage in Nebraska, killing at least four people and leaving another man missing. High water unleashed by last week's late-winter storm and swiftly melting snow this week has already inundated a large swath of Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa along the Missouri River, North America's longest river. States of emergency have been declared in all or parts of the three Midwestern farm states. U.S. farmers face devastation following Midwest floods Midwestern farmers have been gambling they could ride out the U.S.-China trade war by storing their corn and soybeans anywhere they could - in bins, plastic tubes, in barns or even outside. Now, the unthinkable has happened. Record floods have devastated a wide swath of the Farm Belt across Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and several other states. Early estimates of lost crops and livestock are approaching $1 billion in Nebraska alone. With more flooding expected, damages are expected to climb much higher for the region. Harvard sued by descendant of U.S. slave photographed in 19th century A descendant of an American slave on Wednesday sued Harvard University to gain possession of photos of her great-great-great grandfather that the school commissioned in 1850 on behalf of a professor trying to prove the inferiority of black people. The photos, depicting a black man named Renty and his daughter Delia, were taken as part of a study by Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz and are among the earliest known photos of American slaves. They are currently kept at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography at Harvard's Cambridge, Massachusetts campus. Justice Thomas speaks as U.S. top court confronts racial bias in jury selection U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared poised to side with a black Mississippi death row inmate put on trial six times for a 1996 quadruple murder who accused a prosecutor of repeatedly blocking black potential jurors, though the court's only black member sounded skeptical. Justice Clarence Thomas, who had not posed a question during an oral argument in three years, asked several in the case involving Curtis Flowers, 48, who has argued that his constitutional right to a fair trial was violated. Labrador retriever fetches top U.S. dog breed honor for record 28th year The loyal and dependable Labrador Retriever hung on for the 28th year in a row to the title of America's most popular dog in 2018, the American Kennel Club said on Wednesday. The top 10 dog breeds in the United States in 2018 remained unchanged from last year except for the rise of the German shorthaired pointer and the decline of the Yorkshire terrier, which swapped ninth and tenth ranks, said the AKC, the world's largest purebred dog registry, based in New York City. Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Palestinian killed in West Bank by Israeli gunfire: Palestinian medics A Palestinian was shot and killed in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday by what a Palestinian ambulance service said was Israeli army gunfire. The Israeli military said it was checking the report. NZ foreign minister headed to Turkey to 'confront' Erdogan's mosque shooting comments New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Wednesday Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Turkey to "confront" comments made by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on the killing of 50 people at mosques in Christchurch. Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday after a lone gunman opened fire at the two mosques during Friday prayers. Pompeo pays pre-election visit to Israel, cites close Trump-Netanyahu ties Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showcased his close relationship with the Trump administration on Wednesday, hosting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo three weeks before an Israeli election. Washington's announcement that President Donald Trump, a popular figure among Israelis, had invited Netanyahu to the White House for talks and a dinner two weeks ahead of the April 9 vote was also widely seen in Israel as a boost for the right-wing Likud party chief. Bolsonaro gets Trump's praise but few concessions, riling Brazilians Brazil's right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro won glowing praise and conditional promises from U.S. President Donald Trump on his visit to the White House this week, yet Brazilian negotiators came away grumbling about their hosts driving a hard bargain. Diplomats and other officials said Brazil got few immediate concessions in return for granting a unilateral visa waiver for U.S. visitors, a tariff-free quota for wheat imports and easier access for U.S. space launches from Brazil. In fresh blow to Canada PM Trudeau, lawmaker quits his caucus Story continues In a fresh blow to the embattled government of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a legislator quit his ruling Liberal Party to sit as an independent on Wednesday after defending a former minister at the center of a political scandal. Trudeau has been on the defensive since Feb. 7 over allegations top officials working for him leaned on former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to ensure construction firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc avoided a corruption trial. Iran vows to control prices, boost production despite U.S. sanctions Iranian leaders vowed on Thursday to control soaring prices, bring stability to the national currency and create jobs as the nation marked the end of a year of economic crisis fueled by renewed U.S. sanctions. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a new year speech that the Islamic Republic successfully resisted the U.S. sanctions, and called on the government to boost national production to face enemy pressures. Exclusive: Lion Air pilots scoured handbook in minutes before crash - sources The pilots of a doomed Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX scrambled through a handbook to understand why the jet was lurching downwards in the final minutes before it hit the water killing all 189 people on board, three people with knowledge of the cockpit voice recorder contents said. The investigation into the crash last October has taken on new relevance as the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators grounded the model last week after a second deadly accident in Ethiopia. Europe's center-right suspends Hungary's ruling party The European Parliament's main center-right grouping voted on Wednesday to suspend Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's ruling Fidesz Party until further notice amid concerns that it has violated EU principles on the rule of law. The decision by the European People's Party (EPP) came after calls both from allies, political opponents and rights groups for Orban's party to be disciplined over its anti-immigration campaigns and controversial changes to the judicial system. Mozambique starts three days of mourning after cyclone kills hundreds Mozambique started three days of national mourning on Wednesday after powerful cyclone winds and flooding killed hundreds of people and left a massive trail of destruction across swathes of southeast Africa. Cylone Idai, which hit Mozambique's port city of Beira on Thursday before moving inland, brought winds of up to 170 kph (105 mph) which flattened buildings and put the lives of millions of people at risk. EU readies short Brexit delay - if May wins parliament over European Union leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday to give Prime Minister Theresa May an offer to delay Brexit beyond March 29, on condition that she can finally win over her many opponents in parliament next week. Nearly three years after Britons narrowly voted in a referendum to leave the EU, May has been unable to unite her divided cabinet, parliament or nation behind her exit plan. Is Bernie Sanders the most electable Democratic presidential candidate? Photo: Kena Betancur/Corbis via Getty Images Its an article of faith among serious Bernie Sanders fans that he would have avoided Hillary Clintons loss to Donald Trump in 2016 had he been the Democratic nominee in other words, Bernie woulda won. Theres no way to know for sure, but theres certainly no empirical evidence that he would have done any worse than HRC, as many Democrats suspected earlier in the campaign cycle. Still, of all the reasons to vote for Bernie Sanders, you wouldnt expect hes the most electable candidate to rank all that high, as compared to his often-quite-popular policy positions like Medicare for All or free college. Yet there are signs his 2020 campaign will heavily emphasize the claim that hes the right candidate for those whose main concern is driving Trump out of office. Heres the Associated Press story on the subject: Bernie Sanders spent much of 2016 talking of revolution. In 2019, hes turned to a subject thats a bit more pragmatic: electability. As he revs up his second presidential campaign, the Vermont senator and his supporters are putting his case for winning the general election at the center of the argument. The emphasis is meant to aggressively confront the perception that Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, is too liberal to win over the coalition needed to win the White House. That question dogged Sanderss campaign for the Democratic nomination four years ago. This time he is trying to shake it early. Nate Silver took note as well: This is a weird one (1) Very interesting for Bernie to be running on electability (2) I guess we're going to have to live with candidates cherry-picking polls on Twitter, but oddly, (3) A lot of polls that show Bernie much *further* ahead of Trump, although some are out-of-date https://t.co/HV8qghKM0E Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 20, 2019 Nate was intrigued with Team Bernie hyping a poll that showed Sanders with a spare two-point lead over Trump (as compared to a ten-point lead for Joe Biden). But it may have demonstrated how committed the Sanders campaign is to an electability argument. So, what do we know about Sanderss electability? Its not an easy question. In 2016, his standing in trial heats against Trump was indeed consistently better than Clintons, and in the early stages of the current cycle, hes never trailed Trump in a 2020 poll and has often led him by double digits. But as has often been noted, Sanders has never had his long and sometimes controversial record exposed in the heat of a national general-election campaign. Given the preliminary Trump/GOP strategy of demonizing Democrats for association with socialism, they could be softening up Sanders, as a self-identified socialist, for a beating, even as they associate other Democrats with the S-word. And theres no question Sanders would, in a general election, have to deal with claims that in his long record hes not only identified with lefty domestic-policy proposals, but has aligned himself with a global left that includes Marxist authoritarian regimes. As a Democratic nominee, Sanders would attract a billion dollars or so of right-wing oppo research. But that could well be the case with any potential Democratic candidate. The question is whether Bernie has some compensatory general-election appeal. Theres a long-standing lefty theory that, in sharp contrast to the ancient belief that candidates closer to the political center are more electable, more explicitly progressive candidates can energize the party base without losing a significant share of swing voters. The current atmosphere of polarization, and the obvious problems Hillary Clinton had in maintaining her partys base in 2016, reinforces the idea that someone like Sanders can thread the needle between mobilization and persuasion strategies. But Sanders has a long way to go. In 2016, Clinton was loath to offend the People of the Bern; particularly late in the nominating contest, she was clearly winning and avoided attacks that might alienate Sanders supporters she needed in the general election. In the vast 2020 Democratic field, particularly if Bernie becomes the front-runner, its likely some rivals will hit him with some of the same attack lines he would experience in a fight with Trump. In the end its probably smart for Sanders supporters to endlessly promote his electability, which may increasingly preoccupy Democratic primary voters as 2020 grows near. But those who live by the electability sword could die by it as well, making Bernie vulnerable to the next poll coming across the transom showing some other Democratic candidate doing a lot better. Its probably a good idea for Sanders to publicize the better progressive bang for the buck that he can achieve by clearing Democratic rivals from the field and taking on Trump mano a mano. As we get closer to 2020, well find out if Democrats can ignore the unwashed members of the electorate, and decide how and whether to bring them home. At that point general-election polls could begin to matter a great deal, and how candidates and voters alike respond to electability questions will matter more than the assertions of any particular campaign. Bernie Sanders should listen up. Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) on Thursday praised New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern for immediately banning military-style semi-automatic weapons in response to the Christchurch mosque shootings, and suggested the executive action should serve as a blueprint for the U.S. This is what real action to stop gun violence looks like. We must follow New Zealand's lead, take on the NRA and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States. https://t.co/lSAisDG9Ur Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 21, 2019 The ban, which applies to semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that can be equipped with detachable magazines capable of holding more than five rounds, went into immediate effect Thursday to prevent stockpiling, and legislation codifying it is expected to pass Parliament in the coming days. Once the bill passes, New Zealanders will be granted a buyback period, after which they will be fined and jailed for up to three years if found in possession of a banned weapon. On 15 March, our history changed forever. Now, our laws will, too, Ardern said Thursday. We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place. Gun ownership is popular in New Zealand but there is no right to self defense codified in the countrys laws. The announcement comes just six days after a 28-year-old Australian man killed 50 people and injured 40 others while rampaging through two mosques in Christchurch. The second shooting, at the Linwood mosque, was interrupted after one congregant retrieved his firearm from his house and returned to confront the attacker. While the exact weapon used in the attack remains unknown, images of the weapon appear to show an AR-15, a widely available semi-automatic rifle. Story continues Prior to the attack, the shooter published an extensive manifesto online that was replete with white-nationalist propaganda and mentioned stirring controversy around the U.S. gun-control debate as one motive for the massacre. Sanders, who was criticized by Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primaries for being too moderate on the issue of gun control, has in recent years embraced the Democratic establishments insistence on banning assault rifles outright. Senator Chris Murphy (D., Conn.), who has helped lead Democrats gun-control efforts since the Sandy Hook massacre, also praised Arderns swift action in a Thursday tweet. More from National Review Beirut (AFP) - Saudi women held in detention for nearly a year have been charged following contact with foreign media and activists, Human Rights Watch said Thursday, after they went on trial for undermining national security. "After nearly a year of accusations... that these brave champions of women's rights are 'foreign agents', the actual charges against them appear to be simply a list of their efforts to promote women's rights," said Michael Page, HRW's Middle East deputy director. "This is hardly the act of a government that is carrying out reforms, as (Crown Prince) Mohammed bin Salman and his supporters keep claiming." The trial of at least 10 women opened in Riyadh's criminal court last week after they were detained in 2018 as part of a sweeping crackdown on activists, legal authorities said, without specifying the charges. HRW and Amnesty International put the number of women facing trial at 11. Some of them have allegedly faced torture and sexual harassment during interrogation in detention. Citing sources who reviewed the charge sheets, HRW said the women were indicted after establishing contact with fully accredited international journalists based in the kingdom as well as foreign diplomats and international human rights organisations. "If sharing information about women's rights with journalists and diplomats is illegal, then by that standard most of the Saudi leadership would be in prison right now," Page said. The charge sheets make no mention of contact with foreign spies, according to HRW. Earlier this month, the Saudi public prosecutor said the activists had been accused of "coordinated activity to undermine the security, stability and social harmony of the kingdom". State-backed media have branded them traitors and "agents of embassies". Saudi Arabia's media ministry and Riyadh's criminal court did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Story continues - 'Political influence' - Some of the women appealed for bail in their first court appearance, family members told AFP. The women were initially expected to appear in a court set up to handle terrorism-related cases. But just hours before their appearance, some relatives said they were informed the trial had been shifted to the criminal court, without being told why. The sudden change was highly uncommon and indicated "political influence over the court proceedings", HRW said. The move has also triggered speculation the trial could pave the way for the release of the women after the crackdown sparked international criticism against Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler. Some detainees, including prominent activist Loujain Hathloul, were recently made to sign letters in prison requesting a royal pardon from King Salman, family members told AFP. The next court hearing is on March 27, relatives and a Western official told AFP. Ahead of the hearing, some relatives said they were struggling to obtain official permission to meet the detainees at the Al-Ha'ir high-security prison outside Riyadh to prepare their defence against the charges. Saudi Arabia has also faced global outrage over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October. Christian Patterson beamed as she walked in a faux graduation ceremony for her father, Mark, at his hospice in Texas. (Photo: Lindale Independent School District via Facebook) A hospice patient in Tyler, Texas had one final wish: to see his daughter graduate from high school. But the dad was unsure hed be able to hold out until the May ceremony, so the school held an emotional mock graduation ceremony on Wednesday just for him. Mark Patterson was diagnosed with stage-four esophageal cancer in January, and though hed beaten the cancer once before, this time it had returned and metastasized to his lymph nodes, according to CBS 19. As his organs began to fail, Patterson was placed in hospice care. Want daily pop culture news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoos newsletter. His wife, Darla, soon asked him what his last wish would be. What is your goal?, she asked. For Patterson, the answer was clear. Through tears he told his wife, I just want to see my baby girl graduate. He was referring to the couples daughter, Christian, who is a senior at Lindale High School in nearby Lindale, Texas. . Before his illness, Patterson had been a school bus driver for the school districts depot, so when his former colleagues heard of his final request, they mobilized to make it happen. They couldnt guarantee Patterson would live to see the ceremony, they figured, but they could arrange to have the next best thing. So they spearheaded an effort to stage an early graduation ceremony at his hospice, and Lindale ISD obliged. On Wednesday, Christian proudly donned her royal blue cap and gown and marched down the aisle to the traditional graduation song, Pomp and Circumstance, as a crowd assembled outside Hospice of East Texas. In a heartfelt video shared on the school districts Facebook page, Christian meets her dad at his bedside, and theyre joined by her mother, who gives a speech about the adopted daughter they raised as if she were the couples own biological child. Ive never been loved in my life, even by my parents, like this precious baby is loved, Darla Patterson said. Eighteen years ago, we were blessed with a child that had to be raised by old people, she then joked. But shes amazing. Story continues Patterson managed to wave at his daughter as she stood beside him and posed for pictures. My dad is my rock, Christian told CBS 19. Even though I might break down once in a while, I know God has my back, and I want to stay strong for my family, as well. Darla Patterson thanked her husbands colleagues and Lindale ISD for making the magical moment a reality. The principal, the superintendents and Lindale let this happen, she said of the wish-granters. They let teachers come. They let students come. Those were her three best friends, the girls you saw her with, and theyve been her rock. The ceremony was a blessing for Christian, too. The graduation in May will be special, [because] I know I will be laughing more and be more outgoing since Ill be with my classmates, she told CBS 19. But I know this one will definitely be something in the books. She said she is also grateful that her dad had his wish granted. I was thinking about my dad a lot, thinking about him more than my feelings, she said. Because I want to put him first before me. Patterson, however, could not express his emotions outwardly, so his family confidently spoke on his behalf. Amazing. That would be his word, Darla told the station. Because all these people that love our family, they stepped up. They left their jobs. He would say amazing. Thats what he would say. I just know my dad is very caring and very loving, and that he thanks everyone that was a part of this, Christian added. And if he wasnt on medicine and everything, he would be crying right now. Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle: Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. Crema (Italy) (AFP) - "He let us on to the bus and immediately barricaded us in," a teaching assistant said, recounting how the school bus hijacking in Italy unfolded before 51 children escaped as the driver torched the vehicle. "I was a second away from death," Tiziana Magarini told AFPTV on Thursday, her eyes still red and her voice unsteady a day after the harrowing incident. On Wednesday, a 10-minute bus trip turned into a 40-minute nightmare for schoolchildren in Crema, east of Milan, after their driver hijacked the vehicle and tried to drive it to a Milan airport. Driver Ousseynou Sy was usually "very well behaved, normal," Magarini said. But on Wednesday, the Italian bus driver of Senegalese origin came to work with a knife and cans of petrol. Seeking to draw attention to migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, Sy tied the two teachers to the door and told Magarini to tie up the children, using electric cable. She said she "tied them up badly", so they could get free. When Sy collected everyone's mobile phone, "I managed to let some of the children know with my eyes to keep them," she added. Sy then asked her to finish pouring the petrol over seats and curtains, as the children panicked. "The screaming, I couldn't calm them down," Magarini said. "He was saying weird things, I didn't really understand. He was talking a lot about Linate airport. But he didn't say what he wanted to do. He said 'I don't want to hurt you' and then he threatened us." "No one is getting out of here alive," Sy reportedly told the students as he diverted from the route back to school and took the motorway to the airport. "He said repeatedly that so many people in Africa keep dying," said one girl. The bus stopped and started several times while children telephoned for help. One said they called police who didn't understand. They then called their father. Story continues - 'The driver wants to kill us' - Another boy exchanged voice messages with his mother. "Mum, we're on the bus, I don't know where they're taking us... the driver wants to kill us, he has a gun, call the police," the recorded message said, according to Italian media. Magarini discreetly called the school switchboard, where a colleague picked up and heard children screaming. As police cars converged on the bus to stop it, "the children were banging on the windows, calling for help," said policeman Roberto Manucci, one of the first on the scene. The driver crashed through a roadblock, taking out a car, before being trapped by others. Several police distracted him at the front of the hijacked bus while colleagues forced open the back door and smashed windows. "I heard an explosion at the back window and in two seconds an amazing team was there, they got them all out," said Magarini. Amateur video shows the terrifying moment as the children ran away screaming and crying. At the same time, Sy set fire to the petrol-soaked vehicle with a lighter before being subdued by police. Trapped next to the driver, Magarini was dragged to safety by a policeman just seconds away from death. "I was a second away from death," she said. Police carried out a hostage rescue operation "like you see in films about special forces", said Milan prosecutor Francesco Greco. Sen. Martha McSally defended the late Sen. John McCain in a private conversation she had with President Donald Trump on Wednesday after days of his tweets and statements renewing his rivalry with the veteran Arizona Republican who died last year. McSally, R-Ariz., on Thursday only sketched out some of her discussion with the president, but she said she spoke up for McCain, the six-term senator and presidential nominee whose seat she now holds. "I made it clear I love John McCain. John McCain is an American hero," McSally told reporters at Luke Air Force Base west of Phoenix. "This state reveres John McCain, and his family deserves respect by everybody. And so that's my message." Asked if Trump is showing respect to McCain and his family, McSally said: "Again, there is a lot of disrespect going on out there all the way around. I did talk to the president yesterday. I wanted to make sure he understood how I felt about Sen. McCain, and how Arizona felt about Sen. John McCain, and he heard me." As a member of Congress, McSally actually defended McCain against Trump in 2015, when Trump mocked McCain's POW war record. But running as a Trump-aligned Senate candidate in 2018, McSally came under heavy criticism for not speaking up for McCain as McCain was entering his final months battling deadly brain cancer. After her appointment to McCain's seat, which took effect in January, McSally has spoken warmly and reverently about McCain. The phone call to Trump is another sign of her intent to protect his legacy in some way. McSally faces Arizona voters again next year in her bid to finish the final two years of McCain's final six-year term. Trump also is up for re-election in 2020. McSally issued a rare, veiled rebuke to Trump with a tweet earlier this week in which she defended McCain, but didn't specifically criticize the president for rehashing his problems. "I am thankful for his life of service and legacy to our country and Arizona," McSally said at that time. "Everyone should give him and his family the respect, admiration, and peace they deserve." Story continues John McCain is an American hero and I am thankful for his life of service and legacy to our country and Arizona. Everyone should give him and his family the respect, admiration, and peace they deserve. Martha McSally (@SenMcSallyAZ) March 20, 2019 The timing of her call was unclear. The White House did not immediately comment about the phone call. On Wednesday, Trump escalated his attacks on McCain during an appearance in Ohio. Trump issued a series of broadsides against McCain starting last weekend, culminating in him telling reporters on Tuesday that he "was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be." Trump's attacks continued Wednesday during an appearance in Ohio, where he ripped McCain for being weak on veterans issues: "McCain didnt get the job done for our great vets at the VA and they knew it," he said. McCain was well-known as an advocate for veterans. He was, for example, the lead Republican negotiator on a 2014 VA reform bill that passed in the wake of a nationwide scandal about the manipulated wait-time records of veterans seeking health care. McCain's former colleagues and Republican peers have denounced the president's attacks in various ways. Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, called Trump's comments "deplorable," while Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said he was perplexed over Trump's motivation for the continued attacks on his friend. Republic reporter Ronald J. Hansen contributed to this report. Reach the reporter Yvonne Wingett at yvonne.wingett@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4712. Follow her on Twitter @yvonnewingett. Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sen. Martha McSally says she defended John McCain in talk with President Trump By Tom Westbrook and Praveen Menon MT SOMERS, New Zealand, March 21 (Reuters) - Mike Salvesen was working on his farm in the foothills of New Zealand's Southern Alps last Friday when his phone began pinging with news of a tragedy unfolding about 110 km (70 miles) away in Christchurch. A lone gunman, armed with two powerful semi-automatic rifles and other weapons, had entered two mosques, shooting dead 50 people and wounding 50 more. Six days later, Prime Minister Ardern announced New Zealand's gun laws - little altered for almost three decades and much less restrictive than neighboring Australia - would be overhauled to ban the type of semi-automatic weapons used in the attack. Ardern was applauded by many, but there was uncertainty about how the rural community that make up most of the country's quarter of a million gun owners, would react. "I'm fine with it," said Salvesen, who owns three guns but not of the type that will be banned. "I don't have a need for them and very few do." Salvesen said he admired Ardern's response since the tragedy. "She's come across confident when needed, sympathetic when needed and she's said pretty much what most people were thinking." Most farmers in New Zealand own guns, which they use for killing pests such as possums and rabbits, and for putting down injured stock. Recreational hunting of deer, pigs, and goats is popular for sport and food, while gun clubs and shooting ranges dot the country. The new laws allow for some exemptions for pest control. Shaun Moloney, who culls pests including goats and wallabies across the South Island, said there was "definitely a place" for semi-automatic weapons with larger magazines for jobs like his. "If you are having a very tightly controlled access to that style ... but it's still available, that is welcomed by several of my associates and myself," he said. Hunting - with the kinds of weapons excluded from the ban - was an important part of life for his family, Moloney said. Story continues "My daughter would go out and shoot rabbits, with a semi-auto, with me, and then we'd skin and gut it, she'd cook and eat it and then go to ballet," he said. WIDE SUPPORT New Zealand's main farm lobby group quickly came out in support of the new laws. "This will not be popular among some of our members but...we believe this is the only practicable solution," Federated Farmers Rural Security spokesman Miles Anderson said in a statement. "Christchurch, Friday March 15 has changed everything." The main opposition National Party, which draws strong support in rural New Zealand, also backed the plans. Under the changes, all military style semi-automatics (MSSA) and assault rifles will be banned, along with parts used to convert weapons into MSSAs and all high-capacity magazines. The changes exclude two general classes of firearms which are commonly used for hunting, pest control, stock management on farms, and duck shooting: small bore rifles with magazines of no more than 10 rounds, and pump action shotguns holding no more than five rounds. Bruce Plant, a rifle range club secretary in Oamaru, south of Christchurch, said there was little need for military-style weapons in New Zealand. If you are out hunting and cant hit an animal with one shot you are certainly not going to hit it with 20 shots." Experts say the changes don't go as far as Australia which toughened gun laws 12 days after the shooting of 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania in 1996. There all semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns are banned. There is also a restrictive system of licensing and ownership controls. HIGH GUN OWNERSHIP New Zealand has a lot of guns. With a population of just under 5 million, there are an estimated 1.5 million firearms. In 2017, it had the 17th highest rate of civilian firearm ownership in the world, with 26.3 guns per 100 residents, according to the Small Arms Survey. The United States tops the list with 120.5 guns per 100 residents. The last real change to New Zealand's Arms Act was made in 1992, following a shooting where 13 people were killed by a gunman with a semi-automatic weapon in Aramoana, a small South Island coastal settlement. A special E-category license, which requires tough checks, was added to cover MSSAs. Advocates say New Zealand's high gun ownership rates and low rates of gun violence are evidence of a system that works. Restrictions are certainly tighter than in the United States. However, individual weapons are not registered, meaning police have little oversight over how many guns people hold. Ardern said a further tranche of reforms will cover the firearm registry and licensing. John Hart, a farm owner and former Green Party candidate, surrendered his semi-automatic rifle to police after the shooting, one of 37 weapons police said had been voluntarily returned ahead of the new laws. "The time is right. I have spoken to many farmers who feel the same way. They have not given theirs (guns) back but they support the idea - although they won't do it until they have to." Noel Womersley, who slaughters cattle for small farmers around Christchurch, said he was happy to sell his AR-15 rifle into a government buyback expected to cost up to NZ$200 million ($138 million) "I'm using guns every day. I use them on the weekends, in my spare time, and I use them at work every day. But I don't need a semi-automatic military firearm." ($1 = 1.4461 New Zealand dollars) (Editing by Lincoln Feast) ALMATY (Reuters) - Nursultan Nazarbayev remains omnipresent in Kazakh politics days after his surprise resignation, hinting he will effectively retain a share of power with the loyalist parliament speaker who automatically stepped into his shoes. In stepping down on Tuesday, Nazarbayev, the only ruler Kazakhstan has known since the Soviet era almost three decades ago, formally elevated Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to the presidency -though Nazarbayev kept other senior decision-making posts. The arrangement might be reassuring to investors in the major energy-producing country who hope the 78-year-old Nazarbayev would oversee a smooth transition of power to a permanent successor - who has yet to be identified. On Thursday, Nazarbayev and Tokayev together spoke by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Putin's office said in a statement - an unusual move for the Kremlin leader who usually talks one-on-one with counterparts. Putin expressed confidence that Nazarbayev "will continue to actively take part in work aimed at strengthening the cooperation within the Eurasian Economic Union", a Moscow-led trade bloc of former Soviet republics. Putin and Tokayev also agreed the latter would visit Russia in the near future. In another display of closeness, Nazarbayev and Tokayev took part on Thursday in festivities in the capital Astana related to the Nowruz holiday celebrated on the spring equinox across Central Asia and parts of the Middle East. Astana itself is now being renamed Nur-Sultan on Tokayev's suggestion, despite some opposition from residents. Photographs published by the president's office showed Nazarbayev wearing a traditional Kazakh coat and fur hat and waving to onlookers, shaking hands with people and blessing newlyweds, with a smiling Tokayev by his side. Official media now routinely refer to Nazarbayev as Yelbasy, the national leader. Tokayev's first personnel decision was nominating Nazarbayev's eldest daughter Dariga for the Senate speaker position he had vacated, raising the likelihood that she would eventually take over as full-time president. Tokayev is set to serve for the rest of Nazarbayev's term, which ends in April 2020. No candidates have yet announced plans to run in elections then, but there is little doubt that the one who secures Nazarbayev's backing would win. (Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Mark Heinrich) New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Tuesday the man suspected of killing 50 people at two mosques in the city of Christchurch wants notoriety, and she refuses to give it to him. One thing I can assure you you wont hear me speak his name, she said. Ardern's comments reflect a growing body of research that shows elevating the identity of the perpetrator in mass shootings leads to copycats. ARDERN ACTS: New Zealand announces immediate ban of assault rifles "A lot of perpetrators want fame," said Adam Lankford, a criminal justice professor at the University of Alabama who studies mass shootings. "Simply reporting that this happened is not going to lead to a bunch of a copycat attacks. It's the coverage of individuals as de facto celebrities that is problematic." New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks to journalists during a press conference in Christchurch on March 20, 2019. In the Orlando, Florida, nightclub shooting in 2016, the shooter called a news station during his attack, then checked Facebook to see if he had gone viral. In a video made before the Parkland, Florida, shooting in 2018, the gunman bragged about the forthcoming attack and said, When you see me on the news, youll all know who I am. In New Zealand last week, a helmet-mounted camera captured footage of the killings that was streamed live on Facebook and posted on YouTube and Twitter. It has since been removed. Lankford conducted a study in 2017 that looked at seven mass killings during 20132017 and found the killers received more media coverage than professional athletes. He said he'll present a new study at the National Science Foundation next month showing that since 2010, there's been a more than 80 percent increase in highly lethal mass shooters that were influenced by a previous attacker. "When you're giving the Charleston church shooter as much attention as Tom Cruise or Kim Kardashian, why would you be surprised that a tiny percentage of people believe he is worthy of their worship and should be imitated?" Lankford said. Story continues Journalists report the details of mass shootings and name mass shooters as part of the public's right to know. Informing the public about warning signs could help prevent future incidents. But the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics states journalists should "balance the publics need for information against potential harm." Campaigns aim to educate the media and the public on the dangers of sensationalizing mass killers. The Don't Name Them campaign, sponsored by the FBI, and the No Notoriety campaign, started by family members of the victims of the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting, advocate downplaying the perpetrator's name and likeness, unless he or she is at large, and shifting the focus to victims and survivors. In February, David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting, criticized USA TODAY for its coverage of mass shootings, calling it "one of the best news organizations at making mass shooters famous in the first place. They always plaster the shooters face everywhere." USA TODAY issued a statement: "USA TODAY takes seriously its role as the nations newspaper. We also take seriously the concerns of our audiences. This is how we improve. Our newsrooms care deeply about how the news we report affects our local communities. We live in and are part of these communities. We also have grieved. We will continue to discuss how best to cover the ongoing tragedy of mass shootings." As mass shootings increase, media organizations and watchdogs issue guidance on how to cover them responsibly. In its list of best practices, the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school, says to "name the shooter infrequently and only when his name is critical to helping your audience understand what happened." Lankford presented at the conference of Investigative Reporters and Editors in 2018, where attendees were given tipsheets on how to cover mass shootings and encouraged to ask questions such as "How often does the public need to read/hear a mass shooters name in the news?" or "How often do they need to see a mass shooters face in the news?" News organizations have an obligation to "minimize harm," said Lynn Walsh, ethics chair at the Society of Professional Journalists. "We are constantly weighing whether or not the public's right to know outweighs the amount of harm that could be caused by publishing this information," she said. "While it is a journalist's responsibility to answer the who, what, where, when, why of any story they are covering, I think, when it comes to mass shootings, once the initial identity of the shooter has been made public, there is not much more benefit to the public to continue publishing [or] airing the individual's name, photos, etc. ... You have already fulfilled the public's right to know." The internet and social media complicate the issue. There is no limit to how many times users can share a gunman's name or photo. Shocking and graphic content from mass shootings frequently finds its way online. The onus is not only on news organizations and social media platforms to avoid glorifying killers but on private citizens, too. In a passionate speech to Parliament, Ardern said she hopes the public will avoid giving the gunman the fame he craves. "He obviously had a range of reasons for committing this atrocious terrorist attack," she said. "Lifting his profile was one of them. And thats something that we can absolutely deny him. You may also be interested in: This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A single decision by New Zealand's leader may prevent copycat killers Mexico City (AFP) - Slain Mexican journalist Javier Valdez's widow said Wednesday the government tried to spy on her after her husband's murder using Israeli-made spyware, the latest in a string of accusations of abusive espionage. Griselda Triana said she had received suspicious messages on her cell phone resembling those reported by prominent journalists and activists who say the government of former president Enrique Pena Nieto (2012-2018) targeted them with highly invasive spyware known as Pegasus. "What reason could there be to spy on me? My family and I aren't criminals, and I'm sure I don't represent a national security threat," Triana told a press conference. Valdez, a correspondent for Agence France-Presse and co-founder of the weekly newspaper Riodoce, was an award-winning expert on drug trafficking and organized crime. He was shot dead in broad daylight on May 15, 2017 outside Riodoce's offices in Culiacan, the capital of the violent western state of Sinaloa -- a crime that drew international condemnation. Triana said that in the days after the murder, she received text messages with eye-catching news headlines inviting her to click on a link to read the full story. Suspicious, she did not follow the links, she said. According to computer security experts at the press conference, clicking on them would in fact have installed Pegasus on her phone, giving access to her camera, microphone, photos, messages and other data. Since 2017, analysts have sounded the alarm over a string of similar cases targeting activists and journalists critical of the Pena Nieto administration and also a team of international experts investigating the suspected massacre of 43 students in 2014. Made by a secretive Israeli firm called NSO Group, Pegasus effectively turns a target's cell phone into a pocket spy. According to The New York Times, which first broke the story, at least three Mexican federal agencies have purchased some $80 million of spyware from NSO Group since 2011. In 2017, Pena Nieto denied spying on non-criminal targets and ordered an investigation. But activists say it has failed to produce results. "I call on the new government (of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador) to present a report on the acquisition and use of this malware, because all indications are that they are still using it," said Triana. Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images Yesterday, unconfirmed speculation circulated that Joe Biden might name Stacey Abrams as his vice-presidential selection at the start of his campaign. This morning, the New York Times and Mike Allen report that Bidens advisers are actively debating the idea. Naturally, a procession of skeptics is stepping forward to explain why this would be a stupid idea for Biden, or Abrams, or both. Its not. The unconventional BidenAbrams ticket makes tons of sense for both figures. 1. Most obviously, running with Abrams would help address Bidens cringe-inducing and sometimes ghastly history of retrograde positions on segregation and criminal justice. As my colleague Ed Kilgore correctly noted, Serving the protector of Bidens racial flank, on the other hand, might get a little old and a little limiting for Abrams. But that would be the wrong way to construct her role. The addition of Abrams would visibly signal that Biden is a bridge to a different kind of Democratic Party that has moved left on racial issues. Biden can say hes a different kind of politician with different policies than those he advocated in the 1970s and 1980s, but having Abrams as his partner and presumptive heir demonstrates the point. 2. Abrams would also obviously add an element of mobilization and inspiration to Bidens comfort and familiarity with the base. Balance is an overrated trope in vice-presidential selection, but candidates do have different qualities and the degree to which Abramss complements Bidens is very striking: old/young, white/black, male/female, North/South, experience/potential. Candidates who have the ability to mobilize voters with inspirational appeals often lack national name recognition and credibility. (Thats Beto ORourkes liability.) And candidates who begin with established credentials often have a longer record of compromises and feel like old news (Bidens problem, and also to a smaller extent a liability for Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders). A pairing with Abrams gives both a chance to take on each others assets and cover their own liabilities. 3. The pairing would make Bidens race feel more serious. Political reporters have approached a Biden race with the unstated assumption that his polling lead is an artifact of high name recognition. His best day will be his first, and he will slowly gaffe his way to irrelevance, as he has with every previous race. Paradoxically, he is a polling front-runner who needs to get the press corps to take him seriously. From that standpoint, its odd to see inevitability treated as an argument against joining early with Abrams. Naming an early running mate could help feed into an air of inevitability, one senior Democrat who admires Biden tells CNN, which might be problematic for his candidacy. So the campaign would appear inevitable, like Hillary Clinton? Or Mitt Romney? Or George W. Bush? Or Al Gore? Or other candidates who were treated as prohibitive front-runners from the beginning of the race and then won the primary? Thats bad? 4. Yes, by picking Abrams now, Biden would lock himself in very early. Matthew Yglesias argues that doing so would prevent him from having a more complete choice of running mates later in the process. And its true, by June of 2020, you can imagine a world where Biden would wish he could pick Warren or Kamala Harris or somebody else. But the thing is, the odds are that hes not going to be in that position at all. Maximizing his odds of winning the nomination seems far more important, from Bidens standpoint, than maximizing the potential for exploiting his vice-presidential selection. 5. The move would make just as much sense for Abrams. She currently finds herself in the frustrating position of having demonstrated strong political talent but lacking an obvious next step for her political ambitions. Abramss home state is trending purple but not quite there, and while she could run again in 2020, the political environment might not be much friendlier than it was in 2018, an anti-Trump wave election year. Abrams has said she wants to be president. A vice-presidential spot would fast-track her for consideration should a BidenAbrams ticket prevail in November, Abrams would immediately become the prohibitive front-runner whenever Biden retires. 6. Some of the logic that argues for her to join with Biden would also suggest she join Bernie Sanders, another high-polling old white guy. But even if Sanders would consider such a move, a prospect no reporting has suggested, it makes less sense for her. Abrams is not a socialist, and has a distinctly different worldview, as Rebecca Traisters profile points out, showing Abrams tell one crowd, Im not going to do class warfare; I want to be wealthy. Sanders has a different set of liabilities than Biden: chief among them, the Democratic Party elite thinks he would have trouble withstanding the attacks on his platform and his radical history that he would face in a general election (but which did not come up in the 2016 primary). Joining with Abrams wouldnt do much to ameliorate that. 7. Joining the race early makes Abrams a much more attractive vice-presidential selection than she would be in June of next year. Like ORourke, her talents offset a resume thats well short of the traditional qualifications for president (Abramss highest elected office is state assembly). Thats a weakness that might prevent Abrams or ORourke from being nominated as a vice-president next summer they would face questions about their qualifications and preparedness for office. Paradoxically, for a candidate with a borderline resume, vice-president is more of a reach than president. But its also a liability that can be addressed on the campaign trail, by demonstrating a command of policy to the media. Abrams, with her advanced degrees in both public policy and law, can answer any doubts. 8. Abrams doesnt close any options by running with Biden. Why in the world would Stacey Abrams lock herself into Bidens fortunes when she would be a top-tier running-mate option for several of these candidates? asks Republican operative Brendan Buck, who perhaps might not have Abramss best interests at heart. But why would running with Biden prevent her from joining a different campaign if he loses? Presidential candidates pick politicians who who ran against them for president to join their ticket all the time. Why would the fact that she ran on a different ticket as a vice-president disqualify her? 9. The biggest single argument against naming Abrams at the beginning is that it just hasnt been done before. The closest parallel is Ted Cruzs last-minute desperation gambit to name Carly Fiorina as his running mate in the closing stages of the 2016 primary. The fact that the combined charisma of Cruz and Fiorina was not enough to overcome Trumps big lead hardly proves it cant work. If anything, the lateness of the maneuver gave it a whiff of desperation. If Biden does wait, and his polling lead starts to melt, naming Abrams will have the same pitfall. The Cruz example argues for joining with Abrams on Day One. Sometimes theres a new idea that has not been done before for no good reason. Political brilliance is not a phrase I would normally associate with Joe Biden. But running with Stacey Abrams seems to qualify. SM Energy Company SM recently had a discussion with Carrizo Oil & Gas, Inc. CRZO about a merger, reported Bloomberg. Notably, the source didnt provide any additional information on the potential merger deal. Moreover, there are possibilities that this early stage of discussion will not convert into an accord, the source added. The intended deal of Carrizo to merge with SM Energy reflects the small upstream energy players focus to realize cost synergy amid intense competition in the prolific Permian basin, especially when the crude pricing scenario is extremely volatile. In the Delaware Basin portion of the broader Permian basin Carrizo has a footprint of over 46,000 net acreage, covering net undrilled locations of more than 1,400. Notably, in the Delaware Basin, SM Energy has estimated its proved reserves at 180 million barrels of oil equivalent (MMBoE) as of 2018-end. SM Energy also has a strong foothold in the Permian, where it reported roughly 97% production growth in 2018. The company is also planning to realize production growth of 20% through 2019. Importantly, SM Energy has decided to allocate 80% of its 2019 drilling and completion budget for the broader Permian. Investors should know that not only small energy players are focusing on the Permian, big energy majors are also looking to strengthen operations in the prolific basin. Energy giants like Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM and Chevron Corporation CVX recently decided to produce a combined daily output of roughly 2 million barrels in the coming years from the Permian. The flow of fresh American oil might weaken OPECs power to control oil prices, according to Bloomberg. Another energy major willing to strengthen position in the Permian is Royal Dutch Shell plc RDS.A. Shells strategy is, however, different from that of ExxonMobil and Chevron. Instead of organic growth, Shell is reportedly willing to acquire smaller drillers struggling to meet investors demand for higher return owing to significant cost pressure. Story continues Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, wouldn't you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? From more than 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank, these 10 were picked by a process that consistently beats the market. Even during 2018 while the market dropped -5.2%, our Top 10s were up well into double-digits. And during bullish 2012 2017, they soared far above the market's +126.3%, reaching +181.9%. This year, the portfolio features a player that thrives on volatility, an AI comer, and a dynamic tech company that helps doctors deliver better patient outcomes at lower costs. See Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDS.A) : Free Stock Analysis Report Chevron Corporation (CVX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM) : Free Stock Analysis Report SM Energy Company (SM) : Free Stock Analysis Report Carrizo Oil & Gas, Inc. (CRZO) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research By Valerie Volcovici and Nichola Groom WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES, March 21 (Reuters) - U.S. solar and wind power companies may have the most to gain from the Green New Deal, an ambitious proposal backed by several Democratic presidential candidates to end U.S. fossil fuel consumption within a decade. But do not expect the renewable energy firms to endorse it. Representatives of Americas clean energy companies are withholding their support for the climate-fighting plan, calling it unrealistic and too politically divisive for an industry keen to grow in both red and blue states. The cool reaction reflects the difficulty that progressive politicians vying for the White House may have in selling aggressive global-warming policy to the business community and more moderate voters. It also underscores a new reality for U.S. solar and wind power companies long associated with the environmental left: As they have improved technology and lowered prices, their growth is shifting from politically liberal coastal states to the more conservative heartland, where skepticism of climate change and government subsidies runs high. If you just broadly endorse the Green New Deal, you are liable to upset one side of the aisle or the other. And that's not constructive," said Tom Werner, the CEO of SunPower Corp , one of the nations biggest solar power companies. The idea that you could go 100 percent (clean energy) in 10 years would require a lot of things happening perfectly, simultaneously," he said. "You'd have to have bipartisan support, 52-state support." The Green New Deal was introduced last month by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat Congresswoman from New York, along with fellow Democrat Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts. It has since become the center of a renewed debate in Washington about how vigorously the government must act to address climate change. The Congressional resolution, which has no force of law, calls for the federal government to make investments to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in a decade by meeting 100 percent of America's power demand with clean, renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, or geothermal energy. Story continues It also calls for massive investments in green infrastructure projects like "smart grids" to improve efficiency, along with a guarantee of millions of high-wage jobs with paid vacations, medical leave and retirement security. The resolution does not get into detail about how subsequent legislation would achieve these goals. So far, at least eight Democratic presidential hopefuls including senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota have endorsed the plan as they seek to stand in stark opposition to the pro-drilling policies of President Donald Trump. Trump's fellow Republicans have widely panned the Green New Deal, saying it would cost trillions of dollars of taxpayer money, may be technically unfeasible, and smacks of radical socialism. Rhiana Gunn Wright, founder of the think tank New Consensus, which is drawing up Green New Deal policies, said her group will not estimate costs of the plan until it is more fully drafted next year. She said opponents' estimates are premature and do not account for the benefits of climate action and the costs of inaction. The feasibility of the proposal has been a source of concern for the clean energy industry, too. "We love the enthusiasm the Green New Deal has brought to the climate issue ... but we need to operate in political reality, said Dan Whitten, vice president of public affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association, the solar industrys main lobby group. Another concern is the fact that the plan extends beyond energy and climate policies to include guarantees of jobs, training and healthcare for communities affected by climate change, said Greg Wetstone, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, a non-profit organization promoting renewable energy industries. It creates controversy and complexity, tying this to issues that are not in our sphere," he said. Representatives of renewable energy firms Sunrun and Sunnova Energy said they were happy the Green New Deal was drawing so much attention to clean industry but stopped short of endorsing the plan. The Green New Deal has sparked an important conversation, and were excited to be part of it, said Alex McDonough, Vice President of Public Policy at Sunrun. INROADS IN TRUMP COUNTRY The U.S. solar and wind industries have expanded over the last decade, thanks to lucrative government subsidies, and now employ some 350,000 workers nationwide - more than four times more than the coal sector, according to the 2019 U.S. Energy and Employment Report released this month. While the growth began in liberal-leaning regions such as California and New England, it has more recently come in states that voted heavily for President Donald Trump in 2016, including Texas, North Carolina, Iowa and Florida, according to data from the American Wind Energy Association, Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables and SEIA. That has helped strengthen the industrys appeal to Republican lawmakers, allowing it to rebrand as a jobs engine in addition to a tool for combating global warming. And during the last election cycle in 2018, solar and wind companies contributed significantly more money to Republican candidates than to their traditional Democratic allies. "We have raised these industries above science experiments and feel-goodery, and we are now real businesses and cant just play to one half of the country," said one renewable sector lobbyist, who asked not to be named discussing the topic. "Staying out of the line of fire is the goal of most companies and trade associations," said another clean energy industry representative. There will be a real danger for our industry and companies if they are shouting out about the Green New Deal from the rooftops. The Sunrise Movement, a grassroots group that brought the Green New Deal into the national spotlight by holding demonstrations and confronting lawmakers on video, said it was aware of the reticence of green energy companies to back their proposal. Weve met with companies and industries who could have a lot to gain from the Green New Deal, but the politics at this stage are too difficult to navigate, Sunrise co-founder Evan Weber said. He said Sunrise had met with the SEIA and AWEA, along with other executives. Weber said industry support for the Green New Deal would be welcomed but is not vital: "We dont expect all of them to be a strong advocate for the Green New Deal until the politics shift." (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Nichola Groom Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Brian Thevenot) (Reuters) - Shares of semiconductor companies worldwide rose on Thursday, after U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology Inc predicted a recovery in a memory market saddled with oversupply as demand for mobile phones slows. Stocks in chipmakers have been pummelled in the last six months as demand for Apple's iPhones declined and prices for DRAM and NAND memory chips sank due to an oversupply, adding to concerns that a two-year-long semiconductor upswing was coming to a halt. Micron's remarks came as it reported quarterly earnings above analysts' estimates on Wednesday as cost-cutting helped offset falling demand and prices. A chip recovery will likely be fueled by fresh investments from data center customers and more memory content in phones, according to JPMorgan analysts. Micron's shares rose 8.7 percent on Thursday morning. Shares in Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Nvidia Corp rose 2 percent, while Qualcomm Inc and Intel Corp climbed 1 percent. SK Hynix, the world's second-biggest memory chip maker, saw its shares surge nearly 7 percent by 0330 GMT, while Samsung Electronics Co Ltd gained 4.3 percent. Both Samsung and SK Hynix said in January that they expected sales of memory products to revive in the second half of the year. Summit Insights Group analyst Kinngai Chan upgraded Micron's stock to a "buy" rating and predicted that the chipmaker's cost cuts would outpace price declines in the second half of 2019. Shares of European chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG rose 1 percent, while STMicroelectronics NV added 1.6 percent. Analysts have been wary about prospects for the memory chip market due to lower demand for smartphones and slumping investment from data center companies. "We see 2019 as an industry cycle bottom and what makes this interesting is that Micron will emerge from it without negative earnings," Rosenblatt Securities analyst Hans Mosesmann said, adding Micron could focus on returning at least half of its free cash flow to shareholders. Story continues Tech research firm TrendForce in a report on Wednesday said it expects a only a slight decline in NAND flash chip sales in the second quarter as demand recovers from smartphones, computers and servers. "Although it won't cause an immediate reversal of the oversupply situation, it will have a positive effect on the market environment," analyst Ben Yeh at DRAMeXchange, a Trendforce division, said in the report. U.S. chip equipment makers, which supply tools for chip making and designing, also edged higher on Thursday. Lam Research Corp rose 2.5 percent and Applied Materials Inc jumped about 3 percent. (Reporting by Sonam Rai in Bengaluru and Heekyong Yang in Seoul; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Sai Sachin Ravikumar) ASTANA (Reuters) - Kazakhstan took a step closer to a carefully choreographed dynastic succession on Wednesday as the daughter of its long-serving ruler was named to a post that put her in line for the presidency a day after her father stepped down. Nursultan Nazarbayev, the only ruler Kazakhstan has known since the Soviet era, resigned as president on Tuesday, automatically making his loyalist parliament speaker Kassym-Jomart Tokayev president in his place. But Nazarbayev kept other senior decision-making posts. And as his first act in office, new President Tokayev nominated the 78-year-old leader's 55-year-old daughter Dariga as speaker of the senate, meaning she would automatically become president if Tokayev were to leave office before an election next year. Her nomination was then unanimously confirmed by the Senate. Nazarbayev was the last Soviet-era communist boss still in power in a former Soviet state until his decision to step down this week. If his daughter eventually follows him into power, it would be only the second successful dynastic succession in an ex-Soviet state, after Ilham Aliyev followed his father Heydar into power in Azerbaijan. In an inauguration speech, the new president made clear he intended to continue to serve Nazarbayev, who retains posts including those of head of the powerful security council and leader of the ruling party. The capital Astana is to be renamed Nursultan in Nazarbayev's honor, Tokayev said. Nazarbayev's "opinion will have special, one might say priority, importance in developing and making strategic decisions". Tokayev, a 65-year-old career diplomat fluent in Russian, English and Chinese, now has a mandate to serve out the final year of Nazarbayev's term. The more permanent successor is then expected to be the candidate Nazarbayev selects to represent his Nur Otan party in an election in April next year. "The real contest will be fought inside the corridors of power rather in public," said Chris Weafer, senior partner the Moscow-based Macro-Advisory Ltd consultancy. "The candidate supported by the Nur Otan party and, presumably, endorsed by Nazarbayev, will win the election. There is no realistic possibility for surprise given the political structures in Kazakhstan." Nazarbayev praised Tokayev on Tuesday as "a man who can be trusted to lead Kazakhstan". Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Tokayev on Wednesday, praising his "big personal contribution to the strengthening of the ties of strategic partnership and alliance between our countries". KEY CANDIDATES Nazarbayev has been a close ally of Putin, while also maintaining warm relations with China and successful business ties with Western companies that have helped Kazakhstan exploit huge oil and gas resources, making it one of the most prosperous former Soviet states in terms of output per capita. While his rule has been firm and political opposition all but negligible, Kazakhstan has not faced the same degree of criticism over human rights as neighbors Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, or unrest that plagued Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. But critics say he should have done more to create a stable political system less dependent on the rule of a single man. His daughter Dariga Nazarbayeva has in the past led Kazakhstan's main television station and served as a deputy prime minister, while also devoting time to a passion for opera, which she has performed publicly. She made no mention of the upcoming elections in her brief speech on Wednesday accepting the speaker's post. While her elevation appears to increase the odds she will take over one day, she is not the only potential heir. Another extended family member, Nazarbayev's nephew Samat Abish, is also regarded as a candidate after his meteoric rise through the ranks of state security, where he has held the No. 2 post since 2015. Abish, however, keeps a low public profile. The head of state security, Karim Masimov, although not a family member, is also close to Nazarbayev, having served as chief of staff and twice as prime minister. The present prime minister, Askar Mamin, was Masimov's school classmate. Some analysts believe there could be a collective succession, a troika- or politburo-style arrangement, after Kazakhstan amended its constitution in 2017 to reduce presidential powers in favor of lawmakers and the cabinet. "What we expect to see in coming years and decades is a gradual transformation toward a system that is less reliant on one strong figurehead," said Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital. But there are doubts whether such a structure would be stable, given recent examples in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan where new leaders moved quickly to eliminate other key players. In any case, major concerns for investors will be uncertainty and a shift from long-term structural reforms toward populist policies, which began last year when the government unexpectedly froze utility tariffs, putting companies' long-term investment plans at risk. Last month, Nazarbayev ordered the cabinet to tap a rainy-day fund for $3.6 billion to boost public sector salaries and social aid payouts, and build homes and infrastructure. "There is obviously pressure on the regime to improve living standards... and to a certain extent they have some resources to do that," said Stuart Culverhouse, chief economist at emerging market investment bank Exotix. (Reporting by Tamara Vaal; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Peter Graff, Tom Balmforth and Catherine Evans) Khartoum (AFP) - Sudan summoned Egypt's ambassador to Khartoum on Thursday to protest Cairo's "illegal" call for oil and gas exploration bids in the Red Sea area of Halayeb, claimed by both countries. Egypt's control of the Halayeb triangle, which lies in a mineral-rich border region, has for decades been a bone of contention between Cairo and Khartoum, despite an overall improvement in ties since an October summit. On March 10, Egypt's state-owned South Valley Egyptian Petroleum Holding Company invited bids for 10 oil and gas exploration blocks in what it said were Egyptian territorial waters in the Red Sea. "The foreign ministry summoned the Egyptian ambassador Hossam Eissa on Thursday to protest against the tenders invited by the Egyptian oil ministry for areas under the sovereignty of Sudan," Sudan's foreign ministry said in a statement. "Sudan is asking Egypt to stop all procedures concerning the tenders given the situation about the Halayeb triangle." Sudan has regularly protested at Egypt's administration of Halayeb and the Shalatin border region near the Red Sea, saying they are part of its sovereign territory since shortly after independence in 1956. On Wednesday, Sudan had warned Egypt against its offer of exploration blocks. Sudanese minister of state for oil and gas Saad el-Deen el-Bushra said the move was "a direct intrusion" onto his ministry's authority to grant exploration licenses in the area. On Thursday, the foreign ministry summoned the Egyptian ambassador and urged international companies working in the area to not to submit bids for the blocks. "The government of Sudan can take measures to prevent any company from operating in this area," the ministry warned. It did however call on Cairo to resolve the situation "through peaceful means" to avoid damaging the improving ties between the two countries. Relations between Cairo and Khartoum had turned sour in early 2017, when Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir accused Egypt of supporting rebels in conflict zones, including Darfur in western Sudan. Story continues Sudan in May 2017 banned the import of animal and other agricultural products from its northern neighbour. But in October, it lifted the ban as ties improved following talks in Khartoum between Bashir and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Egypt has this year repeatedly called for stability in Sudan after protests erupted on December 19 against Bashir's three-decade rule. Demonstrations and deadly clashes erupted after a government decision to triple the price of bread. Bashir has remained defiant, imposing a nationwide state of emergency on February 22. Baghuz (Syria) (AFP) - Kurdish-led forces Thursday combed the banks of the Euphrates in eastern Syria to smoke out the last jihadists preventing the much-delayed announcement of the demise of the Islamic State's "caliphate". The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched an assault against the last IS bastion in the village of Baghouz on February 9. On Tuesday, they cornered diehard fighters into a few acres of farmland by the Euphrates River, after forcing them out of the main encampment where they had been confined. The six-month-old operation to wipe out the last vestige of IS's once-sprawling proto-state is close to reaching its inevitable outcome, but SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali on Thursday said a victory announcement would be premature. "Our force is still carrying out combing operations and searches" for hidden jihadists, he said. "As soon as we are done, we will announce the liberation" of Baghouz, the spokesman added. His comments came one day after US President Donald Trump said the jihadists' self-proclaimed "caliphate" would be "gone as of tonight". It also came in response to reports earlier on Thursday that the IS enclave had completely fallen. "The SDF media team has not announced this" victory, Bali said. The frontline was quiet on Thursday, for the second-day in a row, as the SDF paused its push to allow for more surrenders. The eerie silence that reigned over the battlefield was interrupted only by the whooshing of warplanes overhead. SDF fighters walked unarmed in a wasteland of mangled vehicles on the camp's outskirts. The flags of the Kurdish-led force dotted the area. - 'Chance to surrender'- SDF official Jiaker Amed said Thursday that several IS fighters were still in hiding. "We have discovered several (jihadist) hideouts," he told AFP. "We are monitoring these fighters and if they don't surrender we will launch a new operation against them," he said. Story continues While some fighters are refusing to surrender, other jihadists and their relatives are still turning themselves in, the SDF official said. "We are giving them a chance to surrender by slowing the military offensive," he said. Earlier on Wednesday, AFP correspondents saw trailer trucks carrying women and children exiting the jihadist redoubt. More than 66,000 people, mostly civilians, have quit the last IS redoubt since January 9, according to the SDF. They include 37,000 civilians, 5,000 jihadists and around 24,000 of their relatives. Thousands of people who have streamed out of the last IS stronghold now fill overcrowded camps and prisons run by the Kurds further north. Around 2000 women and children from Baghouz arrived on Wednesday night at the largest camp -- Al Hol. The camp is struggling to host 72,000 people, including more than 40,000 children, the International Rescue Committee said. "Up to 60 (of the latest) arrivals needed immediate hospitalisation and there were another 12 deaths recorded," the IRC said in a statement. "These women and children are in the worst condition we have seen since the crisis first began. "Many have been caught up in the fighting and dozens have been burnt or badly injured by shrapnel," Wendy Taeuber of the IRC was quoted as saying. At least 138 people, mostly children, have died en route to Al Hol or shortly after arriving at the camp since December, according to the IRC. "We are expecting another 3,000 to arrive soon and we are very worried that they may be in even worse shape," it said. - Final days - The "caliphate" which IS supremo Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed in 2014 once covered territory larger than the United Kingdom, straddling Syria and Iraq. It has crumbled under years of military operations in which Syrian and Iraqi forces backed by their international allies clawed back the land but left cities in ruins and populations homeless. The loss of Baghouz will mark the end of IS as a land-controlling force but not as a potent military player in the region. Many of its leaders and fighters in Iraq and Syria have long reverted to a guerrilla war, launching hit-and-run attacks from desert, mountain and other hideouts. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Wednesday that the "final defeat" of IS should be announced in a few days by the SDF or the US-led coalition. The battles in Baghouz are the last active front in the Syrian war that has killed more than 370,000 people since 2011. TAIPEI, March 21 (Reuters) - Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will visit Hawaii next week on a tour of diplomatic allies in the Pacific, official media said on Thursday, a move likely to anger China, which claims the self-ruled island as its own amid tension across the strait. China regards Taiwan as its sacred territory and regularly calls it the most sensitive and important issue in ties with the United States, complaining to Washington about transit stops by Taiwan presidents. Tsai will transit Hawaii next Wednesday on her way home from an eight-day visit to three diplomatic allies, the official Central News Agency said. Taiwan, which China deems ineligible for state-to-state relations, has formal ties with 17 countries, almost all small nations in Central America and the Pacific. The island battles to keep its allies from switching their allegiance to China, which last year persuaded Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador to forge relations with Beijing. (Reporting by Yimou Lee; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - China urged the United States on Thursday not to allow Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to stop over in Hawaii next week when she makes a tour of the island's diplomatic allies in the Pacific, adding another irritant to Beijing-Washington ties. China regards Taiwan as its sacred territory and regularly calls it the most sensitive and important issue in ties with the United States. It always complains about transit stops by Taiwan leaders in the United States. Tsai said she will transit via Hawaii on her way home from an eight-day visit to Palau, Nauru and the Marshall Islands, which began on Thursday. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China had lodged "stern representations" over Tsai's planned stopover in the United States. "We have consistently and resolutely opposed the United States or other countries which have diplomatic relations with China arranging this kind of transit," Geng told reporters in Beijing. China urged the United States not to send "Taiwan independence forces any wrong signal", he added. China views Taiwan as merely a wayward province, with no right to state-to-state relations. A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department said Tsai's transit was consistent with the unofficial nature of U.S. relations with Taiwan and was based on long-standing U.S. practice "out of consideration for the safety, comfort, convenience, and dignity of the traveler." She said Tsai's transits would be "private and unofficial" and she would be greeted in Hawaii by James Moriarty, chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, America's de facto embassy there. The United States, like most other countries, has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is the island's largest weapons supplier and most powerful international backer. The State Department declined to comment on a Bloomberg news report on Thursday that quoted unnamed sources as saying that the Trump administration has given tacit approval to a request by Taiwan to buy more than 60 F-16 fighter jets built by Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin did not respond to a request for comment. China and the United States are trying to end a bitter trade war and they also have differences over Chinese activity in the disputed South China Sea, as well as over human rights. Tsai's tour comes amid heightened tension between Taipei and Beijing, which has stepped up diplomatic and military pressure to assert its sovereignty over self-governed Taiwan. Taipei is battling to prevent its remaining 17 allies from switching allegiance to China. Tsai said in a statement before setting off on the tour that it was her duty to promote Taiwan internationally. "Letting the country advance down the right path, and letting Taiwan continue to shine on the world stage, are all things that must be done as president, and I will go all out," she said. Last year, China persuaded the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso and El Salvador to forge relations with Beijing in what Tsai called "increasingly out of control" behavior. Chinese President Xi Jinping said in January Beijing reserved the right to use force to bring Taiwan under its control but will strive to achieve peaceful "reunification", though democratic Taiwan has shown no interest in being run by Beijing. (Reporting by Yimou Lee and Twinnie Siu; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and David Brunnstrom and Mike Stone in WASHINGTON; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Robert Birsel and Sandra Maler) Aaron Campbell has finally admitted to raping and murdering Alesha MacPhail (Facebook/Police Scotland) A teenager who raped and murdered a six-year-old girl on the Isle of Bute said all he could think about was killing her once he saw her. Sixteen-year-old Aaron Campbell, who was convicted of raping and murdering Alesha MacPhail last month, finally admitted to his crimes before being sentenced to life today. Sentencing Campbell, who was told he must spend at least 27 years behind bars, Judge Lord Matthews said he was a cold and calculated individual who had shown not a flicker of remorse during the trial. He added that, at times during the trial, Campbell had to stop himself laughing. He said: You went into the house and then her bedroom, you removed her from there and took her to a secluded spot where you raped and murdered her in the most brutal fashion. Its difficult to imagine the distress her family must have suffered. Lord Matthews also revealed the contents of Campbells psychologists report: When you saw Alesha your reaction, according to you, was as follows: A moment of opportunity At any other time in life, murder wouldnt have been the conclusion. If I was a year younger I dont think I would have done it All I thought about was killing her once I saw her. After the sentence was read out family members shouted evil and beast as Campbell was led down to the cells. Aleshas mother, Georgina Lochrane, shouted at Campbell after he was sentenced: Disgusting, vile litle f****** rat. Aleshas body was found in woods on the Isle of Bute on July 2 last year (Facebook) Campbell, 16, who was unanimously found guilty by a jury at the High Court in Glasgow last month, admitted responsibility for the rape and murder of Alesha in background reports ordered by the judge. Brian McConnachie QC, representing 16-year-old Campbell, said: The most striking thing about these reports is that in the reports Mr Campbell has admitted to responsibility for the rape and murder of Alesha MacPhail. Mr McConnachie said the psychologists report found that Campbell presents with a range of traits on the psychopathy checklist and also has a wide range of factors present in relation to potential sexually harmful behaviour. Story continues He said that Campbells upbringing was less than ideal but that this was not a mitigating factor. Read more from Yahoo News UK Angela Merkel says EU will approve PMs Brexit delay Tory MP accuses Nigel Farage of peddling racist nonsense Man charged with murder of French film-maker Ahead of Campbells sentencing, he concluded: In dealing with this matter I would ask your Lordship to have regard to the fact that in imposing the punishment part at this stage it is a punishment part of a significant length undoubtedly which is being imposed upon a child. Aleshas body was found in woods on the Isle of Bute on July 2 last year, hours after she was reported missing from the house her father shared with his parents and partner on the island. Campbell, whose identity was revealed following his conviction, took Alesha from the bed where she was sleeping and inflicted horrific injuries before dumping her body in woodland. Pathologist John Williams told the trial that Alesha had 117 separate injuries, and a post-mortem examination he conducted indicated she had died from significant and forceful pressure to her neck and face. Georgina Lochrane, the mother of Alesha MacPhail, arrives at court for Campbells sentencing (PA) Campbell was convicted at the High Court in Glasgow last month where a jury found him guilty unanimously (Police Scotland) The court heard that Alesha was days into her summer holiday with father Robert MacPhail, 26, and grandparents Angela King and Calum MacPhail when she was snatched by Campbell, who tried to blame her fathers girlfriend for the crime. Prosecutor Iain McSporran said he hoped the guilty verdict would remove any doubt that she could have been involved. He referred to a victim impact statement from Aleshas paternal grandparents Angela King and Calum MacPhail. Robert MacPhail (centre), the father of Alesha MacPhail, arrives at the High Court in Glasgow with Aleshas grandparents Callum MacPhail and Angela King (PA) He said: They are utterly devastated and heartbroken. She was a beautiful, kind and thoughtful child who they miss every day. They are tortured and tormented by the circumstances of her murder. I think overwhelmed is an understatement. They do not see how they can live a normal life. Her future was taken and so was theirs. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK This story is published in conjunction with THE CITY, an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that gets results for the people of New York. Rikers Island Jail. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY The de Blasio administration intends to develop facilities outside of Rikers Island and the citys other jails that offer specialty care for inmates with mental-health issues, drug-related problems and complex medical needs, THE CITY has learned. The citys Correctional Health Services recently put out a call for prospective contractors to study the design and cost of creating what it calls therapeutic housing units. These locked facilities would be located in or near three to six existing city hospitals, according to the solicitation sent to nine preselected vendors on March 8. The specialized housing units would likely be operated by Correctional Health Services and the Department of Correction, according to the three-page document. Its unclear how many beds the new units would contain. Approximately 1,100 incarcerated people 16 percent of the entire jail population have been diagnosed with serious mental illness, according to Correctional Health Services, a division of the citys Health + Hospitals that oversees medical care for inmates. That share has risen in recent years as the overall jail population has declined. The move could anticipate a major shift from the original Rikers Island shutdown plan, which aims to place virtually all inmates including those with serious health and mental-health needs into four proposed new jails. The proposal emerges as the Department of Correction prepares to enter into what is likely to be a contentious land-use review process for the new lockups one planned for each borough except Staten Island and rising up to 50 stories high. Advocates for inmates with mental-health diagnoses have pressed the de Blasio administration to redirect that population out of Correction Department jurisdiction. In the absence of sufficient services, jails have become de facto psychiatric facilities nationally and in New York, Department of Correction acting warden John Gallagher told the Board of Correction last week. Until the country gets it together, builds hospitals, outpatient, this is the Band-Aid weve come up with, he said to the board, the jails oversight body. Retired Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman at a close-Rikers moment at City Hall with Mayor Bill de Blasio and CC Speaker Corey Johnson. Photo: John McCarten/NYC Council A shift to hospital-based facilities would not just affect inmates with mental-health issues. Jail officials have long struggled to care for inmates with serious health problems requiring frequent medical attention and grueling trips between jail and hospitals. Retired chief judge Jonathan Lippman, who led the blue-ribbon panel that recommended the city close Rikers jails, commended the health-facilities effort. I think its a good idea, said Lippman. One of the ways you can drive the jail population down is by getting people who need medical help the care that they need, he added. Often they committed criminal conduct because they have a (mental) problem. Advocates for steering criminal defendants with mental illness to treatment instead of jail have looked to Los Angeles, where the County Board of Supervisors voted last month to replace an old jail downtown with a mental-health treatment center. Some are concerned that New York is not going far enough. Cheryl Roberts, executive director of the Greenburger Center for Social and Criminal Justice, opposes having the Department of Correction staff at the therapeutic units. We have a chance right now to decouple the criminal-justice system from the mental-health system, said Roberts, whose group advocates for diversion of inmates with serious mental illness into treatment instead of jail. We should take it. The city jail system currently includes 17 mental-observation units comprised of 540 beds. An additional 181 beds are housed in specialized units called Clinical Alternative to Punitive Segregation and the Program for Accelerating Clinical Effectiveness. An additional 68 hospital forensic inpatient beds for inmates who require an acute, inpatient level of hospital care are set aside at Bellevue Hospital, along with another 14 at Elmhurst Hospital. THE CITY is coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter. Kenneth George had 27 tackles in 2017. He had just three tackles in four games in 2018. (Getty Images) Tennessee defensive back Kenneth George was arrested Thursday morning after he allegedly punched a police officer in Miami. George was in Florida because Tennessee is on spring break and the team does not have spring practice. According to police, he was belligerent after Miami Beach police saw him walking in a street. From the Tennesseean: As the officer exited his vehicle, George yelled profanities at him, the report states. George ignored the officer's commands and walked toward him. The officer steered George toward the sidewalk and away from officers who were attempting to arrest another individual, according to the report. George punched the officer in the head and knocked his radio from his hand, the report states. The officer tried to arrest George, but George fled, the report states. The officer and backup officers provided chase. Two officers stopped George and arrested him, after which the report states George said: "He hit me first. Why can't I hit him back?" George was arrested on charges of battery of a police officer, two counts of resisting arrest and one count of disorderly conduct. Tennessee said in a statement that its aware of Georges arrest and is gathering information. George had three tackles in four games in 2018 as a redshirt sophomore. The Lafayette, Louisiana, native had 27 tackles and two interceptions as a redshirt freshman in 2017. Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports. More from Yahoo Sports: Texas is full of great designers and makers, and new things are happening every day in the Lone Star State. To help you keep up with all the design news and goings-on in the area, AD PRO is here with what you need to know this week. Texas Design Week Houston Kicks Off Next Week All next week, top interior designers from around the country will be flocking to Houston for a series of talks, panel discussions, lectures, and shoppable markets for the Texas Design Week in Houston. From masterclasses with Jamie Drake and Caleb Anderson at Circa Lighting to the PaperCity Design Awards winners announcement, the week is going to be full of exciting events not to be missed. For tickets, visit the conferences website. Mark Gibson Named JLLs CEO of Capital Markets, Americas Jones Lang LaSalle announced it will purchase the Dallas-based commercial real estate capital firm HFF in a $2 billion deal. Mark Gibson, CEO of HFF, will join JLL as CEO for capital markets in the Americas and as cochair for the global capital markets board. The acquisition is part of JLLs plan to double the companys capital markets business. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2019. Parachute Opens Dallas Store Parachute, the millennial-favorite brand for minimalist bedding and bath essentials, has opened a pop-up shop at 4539 Travis Street, in Dallass Knox District. The Dallas outpost is Parachutes first in Texas. The spaces previous tenant was a pop-up for athleisure brand Outdoor Voices, which inhabited it from 2016 to 2018. Dwell with Dignity Begins Annual Fundraiser Dallas-based nonprofit Dwell with Dignity will open the annual Thrift Studio pop-up shop from April 5 to 27 to raise money for the charity. The opening-night party is scheduled for April 4 at the Dallas Design Center. The event, which provides a third of Dwell with Dignitys operating budget since 2011, will sell donated furniture, housewares, and high-end decor arranged in displays by leading designers, showrooms, and retailers. One hundred percent of sales from Thrift Studio will benefit Dwell with Dignitys mission to supply those in need with home furnishings to help combat poverty and homelessness. Story continues Allen Center Enters Next Phase of Renovations Brookfield Properties announced Phase II of the renovation plans for the Allen Center office complex in downtown Houston. Morrison Dilworth + Walls and PDR will serve as architects for Phase II of the project. Beginning in early April, the construction will bring redesigned, light-filled lobbies to Two and Three Allen Center, along with an outdoor terrace, updated retail units, and a sky bridge connecting the properties. More from AD PRO: Has Instagram Made Design Shows Better? Sign up for the AD PRO newsletter for all the design news you need to know Valle de Angeles (Honduras) (AFP) - Honduran conservationists are worried. A deadly insect that wiped out more than a quarter of the Central American country's conifers between 2013 and 2017 is back. The southern pine beetle -- or gorgojo, as it is known locally -- appears in large numbers during droughts brought on by El Nino, a climatic phenomenon that occurs every few years and can be a threat to agriculture and even drinking water sources. Cristel Castro from the state forest conservation institute (ICF) admitted officials were ill at ease. "But it's good to be worried because it keeps you alert," she said. Drought is a major problem in Central America's Dry Corridor, which extends from northwestern Costa Rica along the Pacific coast to Guatemala. The gorgojo's reappearance comes as the region is facing a dry spell that has ruined crops and forced drinking water to be rationed. It could be even further exacerbated by El Nino, which is characterized by a rise in the temperature of the ocean, subsequently displacing areas of rain and drought. The World Food Program said in a report that "after several months of flirting" with it, the Pacific Ocean and atmosphere now "seem to meet the criteria for the El Nino conditions." On the outskirts of the Honduras capital Tegucigalpa, traps have been placed around a woodland area to monitor the return of the insect. The gorgojo lives predominantly in the inner bark of pines and is an aggressive tree killer. Trees with low water reserves are particularly susceptible as they are unable to produce sufficient resin, a natural defense against attack. The problem was worrying enough for Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez to sound the alarm call in January. Between 2013 and 2017 the gorgojo destroyed more than half a million hectares of Honduran conifers, out of a total of 1.9 million hectares. In the United States, one report claimed it caused an estimated $900 million of damage to pine forests between 1960 and 1990. Story continues - Farming affected - Elsewhere in the region, drought is already taking its toll on crops and water sources. El Salvador is suffering from a repeat of last year's drought that ruined more than 20,000 hectares of plantations expected to produce 210 million kilograms of corn, some 13.35 percent of the projected production from the first harvest, according to an official report. Guatemala has reported losses of corn and bean crops this year "due to a lack of rainfall," Agriculture Minister Mario Mendez said. Some parts of Honduras, including the capital, are facing water shortages, with running water available only every fourth day due to the low level of two dams. Many people, particularly in poorer regions, are forced to buy water from tankers loaded onto trucks. Farmers in the north of Costa Rica have warned that their potato and fruit crops are at risk, while the country may need to import rice due to the reduction in planting areas. Some 300,000 Costa Ricans faced water shortages, a number that could increase according to Alex Solis, head of the national emergencies commission. - Risk of plagues - Costa Rica's agriculture ministry fears an infestation of insects that affects fruit plantations could return, as it has elsewhere in Central America. These plagues are a direct result of increased temperatures, experts say. That's the case with the gorgojo. Once it infests a tree, it has to be cut down to stop the spread of the plague, says Castro. She says the beetle has been detected in isolated pine trees in a 31 hectare area that has been quarantined to prevent further spread. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has announced a project to protect the livelihoods of the households most at risk from drought by "quickly identifying" the phenomenon and alerting rural populations, while also "promoting good sustainable farming practices." Environmentalist Ricardo Navarro, from El Salvador's Center for Appropriate Technology, says the issues won't be resolved any time soon because governments in the region do nothing to educate the people affected by drought on how to palliate their losses. "The most unfortunate thing is that the climate change phenomenon affects Central Americans who have no environmental education," said Navarro, who added that despite "the massive losses we encounter practically every year" nothing changes. LONDON (Reuters) - Assets worth around a trillion pounds are moving from London to hubs in the European Union ahead of Brexit, with the parallel shift in jobs likely to top 7,000, consultants EY said on Wednesday. Banks, asset managers and insurers in London are opening or expanding hubs in the EU to avoid disruption from Britain's departure from the European Union. Britain is legally due to leave next week, but the British government is asking Brussels for a delay. In its latest Brexit Tracker, EY said that 23 companies have announced the transfer of about a trillion pounds in assets, up from 800 billion pounds in the last quarter. Dublin remains the most popular destination for relocations, with 28 companies saying they have plans to set up shop there, but Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Paris are catching up, with between 21 and 18 firms. "As 29 March draws nearer, companies are reconfirming or revising the statements they have made about the extent of staff and operational changes they are making, but we are not seeing many last-minute surprises - firms are executing their plans as expected," EY said in a statement. (Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise) The oil market will soon swing into undersupply, supporting Brent crude above $75 a barrel, Morgan Stanley forecasts. The bank is now convinced that OPEC has the determination and capability to further tighten the market with output cuts. Morgan Stanley also sees sanctions on Iran tightening after a key deadline to extend import waivers in May. OPEC's supply cuts and U.S. sanctions against Iran and Venezuela will push the oil market into undersupply and boost the cost of crude in the coming months, Morgan Stanley forecasts. The investment bank previously said oil prices were more likely to fall after Brent crude topped $65 a barrel last month. But Morgan Stanley now sees the international benchmark for oil prices rising to $75 by the third quarter. Analysts at Morgan Stanley say they changed their minds after last week's CERAWeek by IHS Markit energy conference in Houston. They are now more convinced that OPEC has the determination and capability to drain oversupply from the oil market. "Conversations with several OPEC officials left us with the impression that Brent in the mid-$60s is not where the cartel would like to see it," Morgan Stanley global oil strategists Martijn Rats and Amy Sergeant wrote in a research note on Tuesday. "We assume that OPEC will extend or even deepen production cuts to support the oil market at the next meeting in June." OPEC and its partners aim to keep 1.2 million barrels per day off the market. On Monday, the alliance canceled an April meeting intended to review the supply deal, leaving the output cuts in place until the June gathering. Members of the pact believe the market will remain oversupplied through the first half of the year, making the April meeting unnecessary. Morgan Stanley also believes output disruptions from Venezuela will accelerate following this month's power outages and U.S. sanctions on state oil giant PDVSA. The bank cited estimates from oilfield services firm Schlumberger at CERAWeek that Venezuela's production might have plunged to roughly 600,000-700,000 barrels per day this month. Story continues Comments at CERAWeek from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. special representative for Iran, Brian Hook, also indicate that the U.S. will allow fewer Iranian barrels to hit the market , Morgan Stanley says. The Trump administration allowed eight countries to continue importing some Iranian oil when the U.S. restored sanctions on the Islamic Republic in November. Morgan Stanley expects the administration to roll over waivers for China, India and Turkey in May and tighten exemptions for Japan and South Korea. It forecasts the U.S. will allow 900,000 to 1 million bpd of Iranian exports under the waivers, compared with about 1.2 million bpd in November. On the demand side, Morgan Stanley says fears that oil consumption would slow sharply this year now appear to be overblown. That view also underpins Goldman Sachs' view that Brent will top $70 a barrel. Those dynamics will soon push the oil market into deficit, Morgan Stanley projects. The bank sees the market undersupplied by 500,000 bpd in the second quarter, with the deficit expanding to 800,000 bpd in the third quarter. That will support Brent crude at $75 a barrel in the third quarter. Watch: CNBC's exclusive CERAWeek interview with Mike Pompeo and Rick Perry More From CNBC Donald Trump has again attacked John McCain during a speech in which he complained he didnt get thank youd for approving the late senators state funeral. McCain, whom millions of Americans consider a war hero, died of brain cancer last summer, aged 81. Reportedly at the late Republican's request, Mr Trump was not invited to his funeral service at Washington National Cathedral. I endorsed him at his request, and I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which as president I had to approve, Mr Trump told an audience of workers at an Ohio tank factory on Wednesday. I dont care about this I didnt get thank youd, thats OK. We sent him on the way, but I wasnt a fan of John McCain. It is unclear who Mr Trump was seeking thanks from. The diatribe, which lasted almost five minutes and was largely met with silence, took in a range of perceived missteps by McCain, including his involvement in a dossier alleging links between Mr Trump and Russia and his vote against a Republican healthcare bill. So I have to be honest, Ive never liked him much, hasnt been for me, Ive really probably never will, but theres certain reasons for it and Ill tell you, and I do this to save a little time with the press later on, Mr Trump began. John McCain received a fake and phoney dossier, did you hear about the dossier? It was paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton, right? And John McCain got it, he got it, and what did he do? He didnt call me, he turned it over to the FBI hoping to put me in jeopardy, and thats not the nicest thing to do. The dossier into Mr Trumps connections to Russia, which was compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, was funded by a private intelligence firm on behalf of the Clinton campaign. McCain, who was made aware of the dossier days after Mr Trumps election in November 2016, passed its contents on a month later to then FBI chief James Comey. Mr Trump continued: John McCain campaigned for years to repeal and replace Obamacare when he finally had the chance to do it he voted against repeal and replace, he voted against at 2 oclock in the morning, remember thumbs down. We said What the hell happened? Story continues Mr Trumps thumbs down complaint is a reference to when McCain in 2017 defied Mr Trumps attempt to partially repeal former president Barack Obamas healthcare reforms. The senator voted against the bill, effectively killing the so-called skinny repeal, which would have resulted in 16 million people losing their health insurance. The president also falsely claimed McCain "didn't get the job done" on a healthcare programme for veterans called the Veteran's Choice Act. Mr Trump instead said, "I got it done", despite the fact McCain was the author of the bill, which came into law in 2014. Mr Trump was merely president when Congress last year passed a new version of the programme. His outburst is just the latest in a series of attacks against McCain in recent days. Earlier this week, the president described McCains Obamacare no-vote as disgraceful, and over the weekend falsely claimed on Twitter McCain finished last in his class at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) last in his class (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019 Although the pair repeatedly clashed during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr Trump's continued jibes even after death has drawn criticism from both lawmakers and McCains family. The late senators daughter, Meghan McCain, on Wednesday said of her father: He would think it was hilarious that our president was so jealous of him, that he was dominating the news cycle in death as well. Hope Hicks at the White House on February 21, 2018. Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images Earlier this month, the House Judiciary Committee requested that former White House communications director Hope Hicks turn over documents as part of the committees investigation into a potential obstruction of justice charge against the president. According to a report from CNN, Hicks will agree to hand over any personal or work diary, journal or other book containing notes, a record or a description of daily events. Though its unclear how extensive Hickss note-taking habits were during her year-and-change as White House communications director, its possible that the confidante of President Trump may have some enlightening details to share with the House. Hicks, who initially entered the Trump orbit doing PR for Ivankas clothing line, quickly shot up through the ranks due to a combination of ambition and loyalty, becoming a close adviser to Donald Trump by her late 20s. In a profile from last year, New Yorks Olivia Nuzzi described Hicks as a counterbalance to the president: Hicks acted almost as an embodiment of the faculties the Trump lacked like memory. Hell be talking, and then right in the middle hell be like, Hope, what was that thing? When the name of a senator or congressman or journalist came up, Trump would prompt Hicks to provide a history of their interactions, asking, Do we like him? And she fucking remembers Shes the only person he trusts, the second source continued. He doesnt trust any men and never has. In 2018, Hicks testified before the House Intelligence Committee when it was chaired by Republican Devin Nunes. In the closed-door hearing, Hicks reportedly answered questions about the campaign and transition team, but would not respond to queries about her time as White House communications director. In her eight-hour testimony, Hicks reportedly admitted that her job required her to tell white lies, but that she had not lied about any matters relevant to the Russia investigations. House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler has reportedly asked Hicks for documents relating to Michael Flynns false statements to the FBI, the firing of James Comey, and any involvement the president had with alleged payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Nadler also wants to explore an alleged conversation in 2017 regarding the notorious June 2016 Trump Tower meeting that could potentially put Hicks in obstruction of justice territory. According to the New York Times, Mark Corallo, a former spokesperson for Trumps legal team, has told the special counsel about a previously undisclosed call between Trump and Hicks: Mr. Corallo planned to tell investigators that Ms. Hicks said during the call that emails written by Donald Trump Jr. before the Trump Tower meeting in which the younger Mr. Trump said he was eager to receive political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians will never get out. That left Mr. Corallo with concerns that Ms. Hicks could be contemplating obstructing justice, the people said. Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump fired off one of his Twitter insults Tuesday to retaliate against a prominent lawyer -- married to one of his top aides -- accusing him of being mentally sick. "A total loser!" Trump tweeted about George Conway, who has taken to social media and The Washington Post to question Trump's mental state. The unseemly row is made unique by the fact that Conway's wife is Kellyanne Conway, a fiercely loyal advisor to Trump. A frequent guest on the television networks, where she promotes Trump's agenda and defends him in multiple controversies, Kellyanne Conway now finds herself also having to bat down questions about her outspoken husband. Trump's tweet came with a retweet of his election campaign manager Brad Parscale, who belittled George Conway as a jealous failure. "We all know that @realDonaldTrump turned down Mr. Kellyanne Conway for a job he desperately wanted," Parscale wrote. "Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success." Conway has posted symptoms -- which he says Trump matches -- for "Anti-social and Narcissistic Personality Disorder" and says that Americans should think "seriously" about the president's state. "No, I don't share those concerns," Kellyanne Conway said drily Monday. Donald Trump has claimed he is happy if Robert Mullers report into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia is made public, while delivering an angry attack on the special counsel. In the latest comments seemingly designed to undermine the credibility of the independent prosecutors investigation into Russias alleged interference in the 2016 election, the president claimed Mr Mueller was conflicted because of a nasty business transaction the president and he had been involved in. Yet amid mounting speculation the report could soon be completed, Mr Trump also said he did not mind if it was seen by the general public. Let it come out, let people see it, thats up to the attorney general....and well see what happens, he told reporters. In his comments to reporters as he left the White House to visit a tank production unit in Ohio, the president also claimed Mr Mueller best friend was James Comey, whose May 2017 firing by the president as head of the FBI triggered the appointment of the special counsel. He said Mr Comey was a bad cop. Reuters said Mr Mueller is preparing to submit his report to attorney general William Barr. Mr Trump has repeatedly denied that there as collusion with Moscow or that obstructed justice. Russia has itself denied interfering in the election. Mr Barr already is coming under pressure from legislators to make the entire document public quickly, though he has wide latitude in what to release, the news agency said. The House of Representatives voted 420-0 last week on a non-binding resolution calling for Mr Muellers report to be released both to Congress and to the public, but it is not clear how the measure will fare in the Senate. Answering questions from journalists at the White House, Trump said he had no idea when the report would be released, adding, no collusion, no collusion and well see if its fair. Donald Trump has resumed his attack on George Conway, the husband of White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway, after the latter questioned the presidents mental health. In response, Mr Trump called the lawyer a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell! Mr Trump has also been accused of punching at a person that cant fight back because hes dead over his feud with recently deceased Vietnam War hero and Republican senator John McCain. I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be, Mr Trump said yesterday during a press conference at the White House with Brazils Jair Bolsonaro, prompting the comment from CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on the disrespect being shown to a long-serving American public servant who passed away of brain cancer last August, aged 81. The ongoing attacks on the late senator has led many to express support for the famed Arizonan, even as the president has continued to double down on his criticism of the war hero. On Wednesday afternoon, Mr Trump took a trip to Lima, Ohio, where he visited a tank manufacturing plant and expressed admiration for the "patriotism" he said was on full display in the company. Before boarding his plane to leave Washington, Mr Trump told reporters that he expects special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election to be released publicly. Mr Mueller's report is expected any day now, with many reports indicating the investigation is winding down or already finished up. The report would first be sent to the Justice Department, at which point Attorney General William Barr would determine what form of a report he would pass along to Congress for further review. Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday it was time to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights that Israel seized from Syria in 1967, marking a dramatic shift in U.S. policy and giving a boost to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the middle of his re-election campaign. The disputed area was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in 1981 in a move not recognized internationally. Netanyahu has pressed the United States to recognize its claim and raised that possibility in his first White House meeting with Trump in February 2017. "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Trump wrote on Twitter. Trump's move appeared to be his most overt yet to help Netanyahu, who is locked in a closely contested race in the April 9 election while also fighting allegations of corruption, which he denies. Netanyahu arrives in Washington next week to meet with Trump and address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, lobbying group. Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network's "Mornings with Maria" that he did not intend his move as an explicit election boost for Netanyahu. "I hear hes doing okay. I dont know if hes doing great right now, but I hear hes doing okay. But I would imagine the other side, whoevers against him, is also in favor of what I just did," Trump said. Trump, whose decision last year to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv angered Palestinians, faced some criticism for his latest move. "Neither America nor Israel, neither Trump nor Netanyahu, will change the historical fact that the Golan lands are Syrian lands and they will remain Syrian lands," Ayman Abu Jabal, a member of the Druze community in the Israeli-occupied Golan, said by phone. Netanyahu thanked Trump for the Golan Heights gesture. "You've made history," Netanyahu told Trump in a phone call after the announcement, according to the prime minister's office. Netanyahu had been expected to raise the issue again with Trump during his visit to Washington, an Israeli official said. "At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! @realDonaldTrump," Netanyahu wrote in a tweet. Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said Trump's announcement was "completely beyond international law." "The Arab League stands fully behind the Syrian right to its occupied land," he said in a statement published by Egypt's state news agency MENA. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Twitter that Turkey "supports Syria's territorial integrity." He said Washington's "attempts to legitimize Israels illegal acts will only lead to more violence in the region." At the United Nations, a spokesman for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declined to comment. 'CYNICAL MOVE' The United States had foreshadowed the decision last week when the State Department issued its annual human rights report The report revised its usual description of the Golan Heights from Israeli-occupied to Israeli-controlled. A senior administration official said the president had been discussing his Golan move over the last few days with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House national security adviser John Bolton, senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt and U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman. Officials waved away any concerns about Israel's elections, the official said. "Every single person was supportive of the idea," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. There was no clarity from the White House on when formal paperwork would be issued confirming Trump's tweeted decision. Richard Haass, a former senior State Department official who is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on Twitter that he strongly disagreed with Trump's Golan decision. Haass said the move violates U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, "which rules out acquiring territory by war and serves Israel as it says all states have right 2 live in peace." The resolution, passed after the 1967 war, called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territories and guaranteed the right of countries in the region to live peacefully within secure and recognized borders. J Street, a liberal Jewish-American lobbying group, criticized Trump's action, saying that premature U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty of Golan is a needlessly provocative move that violates international law. "Its clear that this cynical move by Trump is not about the long-term interests of the U.S. or Israel, but rather about handing yet another political gift to Prime Minister Netanyahu in the hopes of boosting his chances for re-election next month," said J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami. Trumps announcement could complicate his administrations plans to roll out its long-delayed Middle East peace plan after Israels election. The plan, which has drawn widespread skepticism even before its unveiling, is intended not only to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table but also draw Israel closer to its U.S.-allied Arab neighbors. Those states, however, have long rejected Israels annexation of the Golan. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Additional reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara and Yousef Saba in Cairo; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool) Donald Trump has announced that the US will recognize Israels sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, in a dramatic move likely to bolster Benjamin Netanyahus hopes to win re-election, but which will also provoke international opposition. Previous US administrations have treated Golan Heights as occupied Syrian territory, in line with UN security council resolutions. Trump declared his break with that policy, in a tweet on Thursday. He said: After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! By defying a 52-year-old unanimously adopted UN resolution on inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war, Trump has also broken the postwar norm of refusing to recognise the forcible annexation of territory which has underpinned western and international opposition to the Russian annexation of Crimea. The United States relies on these core principles regarding peaceful dispute resolution and rejecting acquisition of territory by force, Tamara Cofman Wittes, the former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, wrote on Twitter. Wittes, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, added the move yanks the rug out from under US policy opposing Russias annexation of Crimea, as well as US views on other disputed territories. Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, quickly tweeted his gratitude for Trumps gesture. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the Israeli prime minister wrote. Thank you President Trump! The Syrian state news agency issued a statement saying Golan Heights remained Arabian and Syrian regardless of Trumps comments. The announcement came as Netanyahu was hosting the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, in Jerusalem. Story continues President Trump has just made history, Netanyahu said. I called him. I thanked him on behalf of the people of Israel. The message that President Trump has given the world is that America stands by Israel. Pompeo said: President Trump tonight made the decision to recognise that hard-fought real estate, that important place is proper to be sovereign part of the state of Israel. He added: The people of Israel should know that the battles they fought, the lives that they lost on that very ground, were worthy, meaningful and important for all time. The announcement marks a diplomatic coup for Netanyahu, less than three weeks before a close fought election, and four days before he is due to visit Washington. Trump denied his announcement was intended to help Netanyahu hold on to office, even suggesting he had been unaware the election was imminent. I wouldnt even know about that. I have no idea, Trump told Fox News. He said he had been thinking about recognising the Israeli annexation for a long time. This is sovereignty, this is security, this is about regional security, he said. Related: US alters Golan Heights designation from 'Israeli-occupied' to 'Israeli-controlled' Administration officials had previously rebuffed Netanyahus pressure for recognition of Israels possession of the strategic border area, pointing out that Trump had already handed the Israeli leader a significant political gift by moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Recognition of the Golan could pave the way for US recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Palestinian occupied territories. In a recent state department report on human rights, the administration changed its description of the West Bank and Gaza from occupied territories to Israeli-controlled territories. Robert Malley, a former Middle East adviser to Barack Obama and now head of the International Crisis Group, said: This decision is intensely political timed to boost Netanyahus electoral chances; gratuitous it will not alter in any way Israels control of the Golan Heights; in disregard of international law; and an ominous step at a time when voices in Israel calling for the annexation of the West Bank are growing louder. He added: It is of a piece with the administrations one-sided Mideast policy and confirms that its goal is not Arab-Israeli peace but a fundamental redrawing of the parameters that have governed its pursuit. Related: From the archive, 15 December 1981: Israelis vote to annex Golan Heights Israel advanced into the Golan Heights gradually in the years following the 1948 war Arab-Israeli war, and occupied it entirely in the 1967 war. That year, UN security council resolution 242 stressed the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every state in the area can live in security. A further resolution, supported by the Reagan administration in 1981, rejected as null and void a move to put the area under direct Israeli jurisdiction. Over the decades there have been a string of abortive attempts to negotiate a peaceful solution to the fate of the Golan Heights most recently in 2010 when the Obama administration and Netanyahu engaged in secret talks with the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, on a peace treaty involving Israeli withdrawal. But that effort foundered with the spread of the Arab Spring revolt to Syria, and Assads decision to crush the rebellion by massacring protesters in 2011. Frederic Hof, a former senior state department official involved in those negotiations, told the Guardian on Thursday that annexation would be an entirely gratuitous gesture with potential diplomatic downsides for Israel and for the security of Israelis. Hof said: It will be welcomed by Israels bitterest enemies Iran and Hezbollah who would see annexation as additional justification for terror operations. It would enable Syrias Assad regime to change the subject from its war crimes and crimes against humanity to Israels formal acquisition of territory in violation of UN security council resolution 242. It would do nothing whatsoever positive for Israels security. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Defense is proposing to pay for President Donald Trump's much-debated border wall by shifting funds away from projects that include $1.2 billion for schools, childcare centers and other facilities for military children, according to a list it has provided to lawmakers. The Pentagon gave Congress a list on Monday that included $12.8 billion of construction projects for which it said funds could be redirected. Around 10 percent of the list relates to educational establishments and includes school buildings for the children of service members in places like Germany, Japan, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. The move comes as a surprise given the Trump administration's oft-touted support for the sacrifices made by military families and suggests the White House's desire to build a wall on the border with Mexico outstrips nearly all other issues. However, of the $1.2 billion in projects related to education, approximately $800 million worth are far in the future, and those funds could readily be used for wall construction and replaced later. The Pentagon told Congress that just because a project was listed, it "does not mean that the project will, in fact, be used" as a funding source to build sections of the border wall. Trump earlier in March asked for $8.6 billion in his 2020 budget request to help pay for his promised wall on the U.S-Mexico border to combat illegal immigration and drug trafficking. It drew swift criticism from Democrats. Trump declared a national emergency in a bid to fund the wall without congressional approval, allowing his administration to use money from the military construction budget, if needed. In a tense Congressional hearing last week, Democratic senators demanded that they be provided a list of military funds that could be utilized to fund wall construction. Military officials have vowed that they would not use any funds from military housing. A recent Reuters investigation https://reut.rs/2t1Y2UA found thousands of U.S. military families were subjected to serious health and safety hazards in on-base housing, prompting moves from lawmakers to improve landlord controls. Story continues But elementary and middle schools on bases around the world serving military families are at risk of suffering from the funding diversion, as well as a new engineering building and parking garage at West Point, the Army's military academy in New York state. Joint Base Andrews, where the president's Air Force jet is based, was slated to receive $13 million for a "Child Development Center," but funding for that project is on the list. The base currently has three child development centers serving the 12,000 to 14,000 active and reserve military stationed there. The children of pilots for the F-35A jet, being made by Lockheed Martin at a cost of $89 million each, could be impacted. Alaska's Eielson Air Force Base is slated to get $22.5 million to build a school to enroll 240 additional children "in a remote arctic climate" when the jet begins operations there. The current school serves 108 and has an "extensive waiting list," according to Air Force budget documents which say that if a school is not built "children will be turned away," "directly impacting support of the F-35 mission, morale, and welfare." (Reporting by Mike Stone; Editing by Chris Sanders, Rosalba O'Brien and Leslie Adler) Turkey's president had already provoked outrage by using an image from the Christchurch gunman's live-stream video in a campaign message - Anadolu Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkeys president, has sparked a diplomatic confrontation with Australia and New Zealand over the Christchurch massacre by threatening that anti-Muslim Westerners would be sent home in coffins like those killed the Battle of Gallipoli. The Turkish leader has made the killings in New Zealand a centre-piece of his political campaign ahead of local elections at the end of the month and has been playing footage of the mass killing before crowds at his rallies. In a speech near the site where thousands of New Zealander and Australian troops were buried after the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli, Mr Erdogan said the Christchurch shooter and the First World War soldiers were both motivated by anti-Islamic sentiments. Your grandfathers came and saw that we're here. Then some of them walked back, while others left in coffins, Mr Erdogan said. If you come with the same intention, we'll be waiting for you. His comments were met with fury in Australia, where Scott Morrison, the prime minister, summoned Turkeys ambassador and demanded that Mr Erdogan retract his remarks. Remarks have been made by the Turkish President Erdogan that I consider highly offensive to Australians, and highly reckless in this very sensitive environment, Mr Morrison said. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he would consider 'all options' in reviewing ties Credit: Getty "I will wait to see what the response is from the Turkish government before taking further action, but I can tell you that all options are on the table. Mr Morrison said Australia was reviewing its travel advice for Turkey. Thousands of Australians and New Zealanders are expected in Turkey on April 25 to commemorate Anzac Day, marking the first landings in Gallipoli. Around 8,000 Australians and nearly 3,000 New Zealanders were killed during the disastrous year-long campaign against Ottoman forces, which was overseen by Winston Churchill. Around 130,000 were killed in total on both sides. Mr Morrison said Mr Erdogans comments violated a pledge made by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, who reportedly said after having lost their lives on this land [the fallen soldiers] have become our sons as well. Story continues Mr Erdogan had already been sharply rebuked by New Zealand for his comments and for using gruesome video shot by the Christchurch mosque gunman as an election campaign prop. New Zealands Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters protested on Monday that such politicisation of the massacre "imperils the future and safety of the New Zealand people and our people abroad, and its totally unfair". Mr Peters announced on Tuesday that he would be travelling to Turkey this week at Istanbuls request to attend a special meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Our deputy prime minister will be confronting those comments in Turkey, Ms Ardern told reporters in Christchurch. He is going there to set the record straight, face-to-face. Turkey's Vice-President Fuat Oktay (R) and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (C) speak to the media after visiting Al Noor mosque in Christchurch Credit: Getty Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand, said she was dispatching her deputy prime minister, Winston Peters, to Turkey to confront Mr Erdogans comments about the massacre which left 50 people dead at the hands of a white supremacist gunman. Our deputy prime minister will be confronting those comments in Turkey, Ms Ardern said in Christchurch. He is going there to set the record straight, face-to-face. Mr Erdogan earlier threatened that if If New Zealand fails to hold the attacker accountable, one way or another we will hold him to account. However, in a comment piece in the Washington Post, Mr Erdogan praised Ms Ardern for showing courage, leadership and sincerity. He called on all Western leaders to follow her example and "embrace Muslims living in their respective countries. He also said there was no difference between the hateful ideology of Brenton Tarrant, the mosque gunman, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). Mr Erdogan has made a habit of provoking fights with foreign governments ahead of elections as a way of whipping up his base of nationalist voters. Ahead of a referendum to change Turkeys constitution in 2017, Mr Erdogan accused Dutch and German ministers of being Nazis. He expelled Israels ambassador from Ankara a month before the 2018 presidential elections. Mr Erdogan often presents himself as a global champion of Muslims facing repression, from the occupied Palestinian territories to western China, where up to 1 million Uighur Muslims are believed to be detained by the Chinese government. Sign up for your essential, twice-daily briefing from The Telegraph with our free Front Page newsletter. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, will meet with Chinese, Russian and European Union diplomats on Afghanistan on Thursday as he tries to forge a peace deal with the Taliban to bring an end to America's longest war. "Discussion topics include international support for the Afghan peace process, the role each party can play in bringing an end to the war, and progress to date in peace talks," the State Department said in a statement. The meeting at the State Department will include Zamir Kabulov, Russia's presidential envoy to Afghanistan; Deng Xijun, his Chinese counterpart; and Roland Kobia, the EU's special envoy. Khalilzad will brief them on his recent talks in Doha, Qatar, with the Taliban, where the United States reported progress but no final deal on a withdrawal of U.S.-led international forces. The Taliban rejects direct negotiations with the Kabul government led by President Ashraf Ghani, accusing it of being a U.S. puppet. U.S. negotiators are pressing the Taliban to accept a ceasefire and talks on Afghanistan's political future with representatives of Afghan society, including Ghani's government. But the talks have primarily focussed on the Taliban's counter-terrorism assurances and a U.S. troop withdrawal. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Leslie Adler) By Mica Rosenberg (Reuters) - U.S. immigration arrests fell under President Donald Trump at the end of 2018 compared to the same period a year earlier, a drop authorities attributed to a growing need to deal with "alarming rates" of migrant families at the border. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said on Thursday that enforcement resources were stretched thin in the interior of the country as agents deal with an overflow of Central Americans seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. Immigration authorities said the agency arrested 34,546 people living in the country illegally in October through December of last year - the first quarter of the 2019 fiscal year. That was a 12 percent drop from the 39,328 people arrested during the same period a year earlier. "Our interior arrests have been affected because I have had to redirect" resources to address the "alarming rate" of arrivals at the border, said Nathalie Asher, executive associate director of ICE's enforcement and removal operations, on a conference call with reporters. Deportations rose slightly at the end of 2018 compared to the same period the previous year, but remained well below highs during the first term of President Barack Obama. Removals during the Trump administration so far have been around the same as levels seen during Obama's second term, statistics complied by Reuters show. (For a graphic of immigration data over time, see https://tmsnrt.rs/2Ohsa8s) Asher said the agency had to shift priorities to the border, in part because families come with minor children who can only be detained for limited periods. ICE has been processing and releasing families en masse in U.S. border towns for them to pursue claims for asylum in U.S. immigration courts. Those cases can drag on for years due to growing court backlogs, and while the proceedings are ongoing the migrants are shielded from deportation. In an attempt to try to curb the migrant flow, the Trump administration has implemented a controversial policy of sending some asylum seekers back to Mexico to wait out their court hearings, with more than 200 have been send back so far. Rights groups are challenging the policy in U.S. District Court in San Francisco and a hearing was due to be held there on Friday. Trump won the presidency on a platform of ramping up immigration enforcement and building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and has fought Congress to declare a national emergency to get the funding for his signature campaign promise. But historical data shows the Trump administration so far has been arresting and deporting fewer people than Obama's first years in office. Facing criticism, the Obama administration later shifted policy to prioritize enforcement against people with serious criminal backgrounds, as opposed to others seen as posing little security risk like parents of U.S. citizen children. In the 2018 fiscal year, ICE arrested 158,581 people, including convicted criminals and people with civil immigration violations or pending criminal charges. That is about 40 percent less than overall arrests in 2010. Deportations were also higher during Obama's first term. (Reporting by Mica Rosenberg; Editing by Tom Brown) This story is published in conjunction with THE CITY, an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that gets results for the people of New York. Eric Vassell stands at the intersection of Montgomery Street and Utica Avenue in Crown Heights, where his 34-year-old mentally-ill son, Saheed Vassell, was fatally shot by NYPD officers in April 2018. Photo: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY Calls to 911 reporting what the NYPD terms EDPs emotionally disturbed persons have nearly doubled over the last decade, rising every year and in every precinct. In the last three years alone, 14 mentally ill people have died at the hands of police, spurring calls for and moves toward reform. Yet, four years after the city promised to teach every cop how to better deal with the mentally ill, less than one-third of the force has undergone the training. And for three years, elite teams of mental health workers and cops that were formed to intervene with the emotionally disturbed havent been looped into 911 a decision officials are only now reconsidering. Those are among the findings of an investigation by THE CITY as New York Citys First Lady Chirlane McCray prepares to testify at a City Council hearing on Tuesday examining ThriveNYC the wide-ranging $250 million mental health initiative she spearheads. The program has already come under scrutiny amid questions about its transparency and effectiveness. The NYPD, meanwhile, struggles to keep up with a growing mental health crisis amid this troubling backdrop: EDP calls to 911 jumped from 97,000 in 2009 to almost 180,000 last year. In 2015, City Hall promised crisis intervention training for all cops to help them de-escalate interactions with the mentally ill. Today, just 11,970 of the NYPDs 36,753 uniformed cops have been trained and some may never be. Co-response teams of police and mental health workers formed three years ago were never connected to the 911 system. The police department acknowledges the teams wound up handling only a handful of cases generated by internal NYPD requests for assistance. The department is finally preparing to let these teams respond to 911 calls but only as a pilot program in one precinct. After inquiries from THE CITY earlier this week, City Hall announced Wednesday night plans for a public roundtable on co-response teams for Thursday morning. In 2014, City Hall announced plans to open within two years diversion centers staffed by trained mental health workers, where cops could bring the emotionally disturbed sparing already overburdened hospital emergency rooms and jails. No center has opened, though City Hall has finally picked sites and hopes theyll be ready by the end of this year. In most of the 14 deaths recorded in the last three years, cops on the scene were not trained in how to deal with the often erratic and unpredictable behavior of people experiencing a mental health crisis. In one case, the cop who fired the fatal bullet was the only responding officer who didnt undergo crisis intervention training. Some of those deaths Deborah Danner and Saheed Vassell, for example inspired headlines and protests. Other cases went virtually unnoticed by the public. Saheed Vassell, 34, who suffered from a bipolar disorder, was fatally shot by NYPD officers in Crown Heights in 2018 after he was seen on video acting erratically and pointing a metal pipe at people at the intersection of Montgomery Street and Utica Avenue. An Unacceptable Failure There is a serious problem in New York City in the manner in which the NYPD interacts with mentally ill people, said attorney Sanford Rubenstein, who is representing seven families whose mentally ill kin have been shot by police since 2016. The training of police officers with regard to that interaction is limited and the number of patrol officers who have been trained is small. That is unacceptable. Rubensteins most recent client is Michael Cordero, a 26-year-old schizophrenic shot in the hip by cops on March 5 during an encounter inside a Harlem apartment building hallway. The officers who responded believed Cordero had a gun when he pointed a wallet at them. When Eric Vassell read about the Cordero incident, it hit home: On April 4, 2018, his 34-year-old bipolar son, Saheed, was fatally shot by a team of cops responding to 911 calls about a man who looks like he is crazy and pointing what witnesses thought was a gun at passersby in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The gun was a piece of metal pipe. Vassell, 64, said his son was trained as a welder and liked to collect pieces of metal. He noted that the NYPD statement asserting cops had followed protocol during the shooting of Cordero mirrored the statement they made right after his son was shot. Its almost the same statement, he told THE CITY. Youre not coming with an intention of saving a life. Youre coming with an intention to take a life. No compassion. Vassells attorney, Robinson Iglesias, added, The real issue is: How can the NYPD get to a scene where theres a situation going on and not make it worse? An Endless Deluge of 911 Calls Meanwhile, the number of mental healthrelated 911 calls has grown to an average of nearly 500 a day. And no precinct is exempt. The Bronxs 44th Precinct, near Yankee Stadium, recorded nearly 5,000 EDP 911 calls last year, up 35 percent from 2014. Thats an average of 13 calls daily. In Manhattans Midtown South Precinct, which includes Times Square and Penn Station, the 911 EDP calls jumped to over 4,300 more than double what it was in 2014 averaging 12 calls a day. An analysis by THE CITY of precinct-level 911 calls, obtained via the Freedom of Information Law and demographic statistics compiled by John Jay College, shows that poorer, predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods consistently experience a higher volume of these calls. It is overwhelming in the neighborhoods that I represent, said Bronx councilmember Ritchie Torres. Whether it be Tremont or Fordham you can feel it and see it on the ground You see chemically addicted, mentally ill people, who either are languishing on the street or being cycled in and out of the criminal justice system. And Im wondering to myself, there has to be a better approach. This is insane. Poorer Neighborhoods Harder Hit Dr. Gary Belkin, the top city health official in charge of addressing the NYPDs interaction with the mentally ill, said precinct-specific data indicating large numbers of mental health 911 calls in poorer neighborhoods mirror data showing that poorer black and Hispanic neighborhoods register a higher number of psychiatric hospitalizations. The precinct-specific 911-call maps are similar to other maps, he said. I think the high psychiatric hospitalization rates in northern Manhattan, the South Bronx, Central and Eastern Brooklyn, are the result of, yes, increased burdens and exposures to risk factors but also less earlier [mental health care] options. Its a combination of the how the delivery systems service people in different places across the city. Susan Herman, the former NYPD deputy chief Mayor de Blasio reassigned in January to run the broad-reaching ThriveNYC plan to improve mental health services, noted that the stress of poverty can exacerbate mental health issues. Neighborhoods that have problems tend to have lots of problems, she said. Neighborhoods that are under-resourced and disadvantaged and have less access to health care generally probably have less access to mental health care. And things tend to reach a crisis point because there isnt any early intervention. She also noted the NYPD indicates that residents of lower-income neighborhoods rely on 911 to solve problems more than wealthier neighborhoods in general. Mayors Push for Change Stymied From the moment he arrived at City Hall in 2014, de Blasio vowed to steer the mentally ill away from hospital ERs and the police. He appointed his wife, Chirlane McCray, to oversee ThriveNYC. Three years in, the number of police interactions is way up and most of the time the mentally ill wind up in either hospital ERs or put into the criminal justice system, statistics show. As of last month, city officials estimated that 16 percent of inmates at Rikers Island have been diagnosed with serious mental illness, up from 10 percent a year ago. An NYPD analysis of 2017 calls obtained by THE CITY shows that most 911 calls involving the mentally ill result in transporting them to hospital emergency rooms: 94,000 ER visits, or 56 percent of the calls that year. Experts on mental health including those who work for the city agree ERs are not the ideal place to bring the mentally ill. Theyre not equipped to provide long-term treatment necessary to keep people from shuttling from ER to jail, and so on. Belkin told THE CITY that Health Department data indicate the subjects of these 911 calls who are transported to emergency rooms are often quickly discharged back to the street. And in 15 percent of those cases, these individuals then return to hospital ERs within 30 days. It gives us that general sense of the triage thats going at the street level isnt matching up to the need, he said. And by far, most of those hospital transports in 2017 71,905 calls or 75 percent required a police escort, which meant cops were tied up at the ER while patients were evaluated. The NYPD has set out to improve its interactions with people it encounters on potential mental health calls. Deputy Chief Theresa Tobin, whos in charge of the effort, said the department is trying to find a better option than handling cases when often a mental health worker would often be more appropriate. The police department would like the appropriate people to respond, so if a social service provider or NYCWell [worker] can talk to a person, that is really something to examine and look at, and we would affirmatively support that, she told THE CITY. I dont know if theres an algorithm to do that, she added a way of using technology to direct 911 calls to mental health response specialists. Theyre examining the calls to see which calls would be better sent elsewhere. Asked if shes an optimist about planned reforms going forward, she responded with a caveat: I am, but the volume [of calls] is really high. The pace of crisis intervention training, or CIT, has not kept up. In January 2017, the city Department of Investigation found gaps in CIT training, and as of this week, only one-third of the forces officers have received CIT. Tobin says the goal is to train every officer, but the rollout has been slow. The latest plan would train only 16,000 cops already in service by 2021 de Blasios last year in office. After that, only incoming police academy classes will get training. Steve Coe, CEO of Community Access, a member-driven organization advocating reforms of police interactions with people with mental illness, told THE CITY he sees this approach as inadequate. CIT training should continue until there is at least one trained officer at every mental healthrelated 911 call, said Coe. Establishing an artificial end date before you know what the need is doesnt make sense. Lack of training has surfaced as an issue in some deadly police encounters. In July 2017, Dwayne Jeune, a 32-year-old schizophrenic living with his parents in Brooklyn, was shot by Officer Miguel Gonzalez when, cops say, he charged at them with a knife. Three other cops at the scene had received CIT training. Gonzalez was the only who hadnt, the NYPD acknowledged. So why wasnt Gonzalez trained in CIT, considering that hed been involved in the prior shooting of Davonte Pressley, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, just nine months before he shot Jeune? Pressley survived; Jeune did not. It goes to the importance of training 100 percent of the officers, said attorney Rubenstein, whose suit against the NYPD on behalf of Jeunes family is pending in Brooklyn Supreme Court. City Falls Behind on Key Reform A crucial element to City Halls reforms is helping the NYPD steer the mentally ill to professionals who can provide proper care. Three years ago this month, the city formed co-response teams that pair a mental health clinician with two patrol officers to respond to requests for assistance for people in emotional distress. At the time the teams were launched, the NYPD and City Hall chose not to loop them into the 911 system, even though the number of 911 EDP calls had already increased by more than half from 2009 to 2016, reaching nearly 160,000. During the three years of the teams existence, the calls continued to rise, hitting nearly 180,000 last year. But because they werent connected to the 911 system, the teams have intervened with just 884 individuals through January, responding only to internal NYPD requests for assistance, police said. City Hall recently decided to reverse course: In December, a task force appointed by de Blasio following Vassells killing recommended allowing the teams to connect to 911. A pilot program in one precinct will be announced in the coming weeks, NYPD officials confirmed. Another signature reform thats run into problems: the proposed diversion centers. Instead of bringing emotionally disturbed persons accused of low-level nonviolent crimes first to hospital ERs and then to jail, cops would bring them to a center staffed by medical professionals who could work up a long-term plan for care. Announced in 2015, City Hall promised to open the first center by 2016. It was not to be. The city sought nonprofits to run these centers, requiring that the groups find an adequate location and create from whole cloth a plan to run them. Few groups responded and those that did said the requirements were impossible especially finding a suitable location. By 2017, city officials redrafted the proposal, taking on the task of finding locations themselves, and issued two ten-year contracts currently totaling $96 million. In December, de Blasio announced two locations for the centers, but as of last week, no building permits had been filed at one site, and the Department of Buildings had rejected the permits filed at the other. Asked when the centers will likely open, Belkin wouldnt commit to a specific date, stating, We believe that they are on pace for this calendar year. Belkin favors greatly expanding programs like diversion centers that increase the involvement of health professionals in responding to people experiencing a mental health crisis. Everyone would agree including the NYPD that the event should be matched by the response, he said. If the event is primarily a behavioral issue and theres no imminent danger, then there should be a preference to stack the deck in favor of a clinical team response. Its good for everyone. As they struggle to take control of this situation, city officials in charge of this reform arent sure exactly what is causing the alarming spike in these calls to 911. There could be any number of factors which could relate to housing issues, people are calling 911 as a response, Belkin said. There could also be potentially the fact that more people are seeking care, but this isnt the ideal pathway to get it. Additional reporting by Ese Olumhense THE CITY is coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter. By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) - Venezuelan security forces, backed by pro-government militias, have quashed peaceful protests with excessive use of force, killings and torture, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Wednesday. The country was plunged into a political crisis in January when Juan Guaido, head of the opposition-controlled congress, invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency, arguing Nicolas Maduro's 2018 re-election was not legitimate. Bachelet told the U.N. Human Rights Council that she had information, without elaborating, that the National Polices Special Actions Force (FAES) had executed 37 people in January in Caracas in illegal house raids in poor areas supporting the opposition. "... my office documented numerous human rights violations and abuses by security forces and pro-government armed groups, including excessive use of force, killings, arbitrary detentions, torture and ill-treatment in detention, and threats and intimidation," she said. Maduro, a socialist who says he is the victim of an attempted U.S.-led coup, retains the support of the armed forces and control of state functions. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that his administration had held in reserve what he called "the toughest of sanctions" to try to cut off revenues to Maduro. In January, Trump imposed sanctions on state-owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela PDVSA, the stiffest economic measure against Maduro and Venezuela to date. The United States is among countries that have recognized Guaido as the legitimate head of state. However, Bachelet, a former president of Chile, said the latest U.S. sanctions on financial transfers linked to the sale of Venezuelan oil in the United States "may contribute to aggravating the economic crisis". Venezuelan Ambassador Jorge Valero said that the real situation in the country had been "distorted by the baseless international media campaign". Peaceful protests were allowed, but not acts of vandalism and criminality that were being "promoted by a violent portion of the opposition, whipped up by foreign funding", he said. "The United States government has been pillaging our economic resources and denying Venezuela the possibility of acquiring the necessary food and medicines for our people," Valero said. He denounced measures including the blocking of $7 billion in shares of PDVSA's U.S. subsidiary Citgo Petroleum Corp. in January. Bachelet said that Venezuelan authorities had failed to acknowledge the extent and severity of a health and food crisis that has driven more than 3 million abroad since 2015. A team of experts from her office is in the country assessing conditions, a "positive first step", Bachelet said. "It is important that the team have completely unhindered access, with no reprisals against any person who has met, or sought to meet, with them," she added. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Miles and Alison Williams) By David Brunnstrom and Matt Spetalnick WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States imposed sanctions on Thursday on two Chinese shipping companies it says helped North Korea evade U.S. and international sanctions over its nuclear weapons program, the first such steps since U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's summit collapsed last month. The U.S. Treasury Department also issued an updated advisory that listed 67 vessels that it said had engaged in illicit transfers of refined petroleum with North Korean tankers or were believed to have exported North Korean coal. The department identified the newly sanctioned firms as Dalian Haibo International Freight Co Ltd and Liaoning Danxing International Forwarding Co Ltd, both based in China. The move prohibits U.S. dealings with the designated companies and freezes any assets they have in the United States. Washington announced the measures three weeks after a second meeting between Trump and Kim broke down over conflicting demands by North Korea for relief from sanctions and from the U.S. side for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. The United States has led international efforts to press North Korea through sanctions to give up its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. "The United States and our like-minded partners remain committed to achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea and believe that the full implementation of North Korea-related U.N. Security Council resolutions is crucial to a successful outcome," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. "Treasury will continue to enforce our sanctions, and we are making it explicitly clear that shipping companies employing deceptive tactics to mask illicit trade with North Korea expose themselves to great risk. The latest sanctions showed there was some leakage in North Korea sanctions enforcement by China, but Beijing was mostly abiding by U.N. resolutions, a senior U.S. official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity. The official said that financial as well as shipping companies risked U.S. action if they were found to be in violation of sanctions. The official insisted, however, that Thursday's announcement was meant to maintain sanctions enforcement on North Korea rather than intensify the pressure. While declining to say whether Washington was trying to send a post-summit message to Pyongyang, the official said Trump "has made clear that the door is wide open to continuing the dialogue with North Korea." LIMBO U.S.-North Korean engagement has appeared to be in limbo since the Feb. 27-28 summit in Hanoi, despite U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying on March 4 he was hopeful he could send a team to North Korea "in the next couple of weeks." Washington has said it aims to re-engage with Kim, but North Korea has warned it is considering suspending talks and may rethink a freeze on missile and nuclear tests in place since 2017 unless Washington makes concessions. On Monday, two senior U.S. senators called for the Trump administration to correct a slowing pace of American sanctions designations on North Korea, saying there had been a marked decline in such actions during the past year of U.S. diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang. They pointed to a 2019 U.N. report that found that North Korea continued to defy U.N. sanctions with an increase in smuggling of petroleum products and coal and violation of bans on arms sales. The Treasury statement said Dalian Haibo was targeted for dealings with Paeksol Trading Corp, a company previously designated by U.S. sanctions on North Korea. It said Dalian Haibo shipped cargo from Dalian, China, to Paeksol in Nampo, North Korea, in early 2018 aboard North Korean-flagged vessels. The statement said Liaoning Danxing had "routinely used deceptive practices" to enable the work of North Korean procurement officials based in the European Union. The Treasury statement said evasion tactics employed by North Korea included disabling or manipulating automated identification systems, physically altering vessels, transferring cargoes between ships and falsifying cargo documentation. It said ports visited by vessels involved in ship-to-ship transfers included those in Taiwan, China, Russia and South Korea. The Treasury Department said that in 2018, North Korean ports received at least 263 tanker deliveries of refined petroleum via U.N.-prohibited ship-to-ship transfers. It said that if the tankers were fully laden, North Korea would have imported 3.78 million barrels - more than 7-1/2 times the 500,000 barrels a year allowed under a U.N. resolution. (Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Matt Spetalnick and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Grant McCool and Peter Cooney) United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN Security Council travels to Mali and Burkina Faso this week for an up-close look at the worrisome Sahel region, where a jihadist insurgency is showing no signs of weakening and is driving mass displacement. Led by France, Germany and Ivory Coast, the visit will be the council's fourth to Mali since 2014 and second to Burkina Faso, and comes as the council is considering the future of the large peacekeeping force in Mali. World powers have been divided over how to confront the Islamist threat in the Sahel, with France at odds with the United States over UN funding for a five-nation regional force battling jihadists. Another Franco-US showdown is looming over the fate of MINUSMA, the 14,000-strong peacekeeping force set up in 2013 after the jihadist takeover of northern Mali was beaten back, diplomats say. The council faces a June deadline to decide on the mandate of MINUSMA and a key meeting is scheduled on March 29 to discuss the way forward. After it intervened militarily to drive out Al-Qaeda-linked extremists from northern Mali in 2013, France kept 2,700 troops in the region and has enlisted the United Nations in an effort to shore up the Bamako government. A peace deal was signed between Bamako and some armed groups in 2015, but large areas of Mali remain out of government control, despite the push to isolate the Islamists. French Ambassador Francois Delattre said the visit will "help expand the information of council members on the peace process in Mali, the surge of the G-5 Sahel force and the situation in Burkina Faso, which faces a security threat." France has hinted that it could once again ask the council to approve direct UN funding for the G5 force after the United States firmly rejected that proposal last year. - One voice - The United States has bilaterally contributed $111 million to the Sahel force made up of troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, but opposes regular annual funding through UN channels. Story continues President Donald Trump's administration is also cutting its financial contribution to UN peacekeeping and pushing for major cuts in blue helmet operations worldwide. "The Americans by and large, in all peacekeeping, they want to cut. They want to reduce. (They say) If it doesn't work, move out," said South African Ambassador Jerry Matjila, who will take part in the council trip. "They need to look at things differently." The visit "is to show solidarity, to show that the UN can talk with one voice on this issue," he added. The council will arrive in Bamako on Friday for meetings with Mali's leaders before heading to Ouagadougou on Sunday. Around 4.3 million people have been driven from their homes in the worsening violence that has engulfed the Sahel, including one million over the past year, according to UN humanitarian officials. In Burkina Faso, more than 100,000 people have been displaced, over half of them since the start of 2019. Jihadist groups have gained ground in central Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, while Chad is battling unrest on its borders. "Instead of paving the way for greater UN funding in the Sahel, the biggest impact of this visit might be in safeguarding the UN's already limited resources in Mali," said Jean-Herve Jezequel, director of the International Crisis Group's Sahel program. LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Casino company Las Vegas Sands has notified federal regulators that it settled a 15-year breach-of-contract battle with a Hong Kong businessman, without disclosing terms. A notice posted Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission says only that Round Square Co. headed by Richard Suen "released all claims" against Sands when the agreement was announced March 14 in Nevada state court. The notice says the settlement's terms are confidential. Sands spokesman Ron Reese and Suen attorney John O'Malley declined comment on Thursday. Sands twice appealed jury verdicts that Suen was due tens of millions of dollars for helping Sands open its first casino in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau in 2004. The settlement ended a third trial in Nevada that focused on establishing the amount Round Square should receive. Reverend David Parry says the bells of his church in Conwy, North Wales are keeping him awake at night (Wales News Service) A local vicar has appealed for the bells of his own church to be silenced because they are keeping him awake at night. The Reverend David Parry is calling for public support to silence the bells after dark at St Marys Church in Conwy, North Wales. Mr Parry is appealing to the Conwy council to switch the bells of the 19th century clock tower from midnight until 6.15am. The Reverend claims the bells, which chime every 15 minutes, are preventing him from gaining a full nights sleep as well as annoying neighbours, businesses and tourists. The vicar also claims the bells are annoying neighbours and warding off tourism in the area (Wales News Service) In response to his complaints, the council hand-delivered a questionnaire to the nearest 400 neighbours of the parish, asking for their views on the Mr Parrys appeal. Reverend Parry said of the dilemma: I think its reasonable to ask them to be switched off at night. If it was me in charge of the clock, I would have switched the chimes off overnight, as they arent necessary and do cause a disturbance to my family as we live very close by. Im also concerned as Conwy relies so much on tourism that if tourists cant sleep at night, they will not come back to the town. Read more from Yahoo News UK: Stunned walker finds 60-year-old plastic bottle washed on up beach Grandmother, 104, arrested by police to fulfill greatest wish after a life without crime Mouse proud! Helpful rodent filmed tidying up pensioners garden shed for weeks The clock was originally installed in the historic town so that seafarers would have an accurate source of time to aid them in their navigation. The point is the town is now very busy with stag and hen parties, and once awake its difficult to get back to sleep-the clock doesnt help. St Marys Church dates back to the 12th century, with the 19th century clock tower gifted to the town by Lord Penrhyn in 1857. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK The questionnaire asked locals if the chimes were annoying and unnecessary or were a part of the towns character and contributed to local business and tourism. Story continues Reverend Parry said he was pleased the town council had decided to canvass public opinion on silencing the bells until dawn. But the petition has caused alarm bells to ring for some neighbours, who want to keep the tradition of the ringing bells in the historic town. Audrey Barker said: The questionnaire is one of the most ridiculous things Ive ever see. I dont know anyone in the neighbourhood, living within the town walls or anyone that I know of is in favour of silencing the chimes during night-time hours. The clock tower was installed in the 19th century by Lord Pehnryn but Reverend Parry says its bells are a hindrance to the local economy (Wales News Service) Also, Im not sure what happens with Big Ben but Im pretty sure that they chime throughout the night. Conwy Town Councillor Natasha Flint confirmed 200 questionnaires have been returned and said she believed more than 95 per cent of people are in favour of the chimes as they are. Ms Flint said: Weve had around six or seven people against the chimes, but the vast majority are in favour. Weve also had a few very rude responses saying weve wasted tax payers money. Id like to tell them its cost us around 10 to do as we hand-delivered the letters and used photocopies. Vietnam police busted a massive meth ring in a Ho Chi Minh City mansion allegedly run by a Chinese national who used a textile company as a cover for the operation, police and state media reported Thursday. Police on Wednesday stormed the luxury property in Vietnam's largest city, guarded with private security and outfitted with cameras during an hours-long raid which unearthed sacs of methamphetamine believed to have been smuggled in from Laos. Around 300 kilos (660 pounds) of methamphetamine was seized, and images in the press later displayed dozens of bricks of drugs. "Eleven people were arrested including eight Chinese and three Vietnamese," a police official from Binh Tan district where the bust took place told AFP Thursday, requesting anonymity. The primary suspect was a 56-year-old Chinese national, whose Vietnamese girlfriend was reportedly registered as the owner of a textile export business. The Chinese suspect allegedly ran the drugs operation under the guise of the textile export business. The confiscated drugs were likely transported from Laos, travelling through Kon Tum province for "consumption in Ho Chi Minh City", the official Vietnam News Agency reported. The bust was part of a larger investigation across central Vietnam involving several provinces and further investigations are ongoing. Synthetic drug use is on the rise in the Southeast Asian country, especially among young people who prefer party drugs to opium and heroin popular among older users. Several large hauls of synthetics have been seized by police in recent months as officials try to wrestle control over the rising trade. The narcotics are often smuggled in from the "Golden Triangle" -- a lawless border zone that straddles Laos, Myanmar and Thailand -- though police have also broken up domestic labs churning out meth and other synthetics. Last year seven people died at a rave in Hanoi from suspected overdoses in a case that stunned the conservative capital. Several were seen passed out and convulsing on the ground before being rushed to hospital, and authorities issued a blanket ban on music festivals after the accident, the deadliest drug-related incident in the city's recent history. Vietnam has some of the harshest drug laws in the world, and anyone caught with more than 600 grams (21 ounces) of heroin or more than 2.5 kilos of methamphetamine can face the death penalty. A Vietnamese blogger who vanished in Thailand earlier this year is being held in a Hanoi prison, his friend and wife confirmed Thursday. Truong Duy Nhat wrote weekly posts about politics and current affairs for Radio Free Asia (RFA) and last posted about the prospects for change in Vietnam in light of major anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela. All independent media is banned in Vietnam and bloggers, activists and rights lawyers are routinely jailed. The one-party state has seen an uptick of arrests under a hardline leadership in charge since 2016, with nearly 60 put behind bars last year according to an AFP tally. Nhat, 55, fled to Thailand in January and applied for refugee status with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, according to RFA. His employer and family lost contact with him soon after and he has not been heard from since. The UN said it does not comment on individual cases. Nhat's friend Pham Xuan Nguyen said he visited Hanoi's T-16 jail on Wednesday and received confirmation Nhat was being held there. "I took Nhat's wife to the jail yesterday. I saw the book the jail gave to her to register future visits," he told AFP Thursday. "Inside the book, the date of his arrest was written January 28, 2019... it said that he was transferred to the jail the same day," the friend said, adding that they did not see Nhat. The blogger's wife Cao Thi Xuan Phuong confirmed the account to AFP, declining to comment further. His daughter Truong Thuc Doan, who lives in Canada, said she believes he was taken from Thailand against his will. "It's clear that my father did not voluntarily go back to Vietnam," she told RFA. The circumstances of Nhat's return have not been confirmed by Hanoi and he has not yet been formally charged. RFA spokesman Rohit Mahajan said Thursday the organisation remains "very concerned about our contributor and his treatment in detention". This is Nhat's second prison stint. He was jailed for two years in 2014 for "abusing democratic freedoms" after writing blogs critical of Vietnam's communist leadership. Hanoi has in the past forcibly returned corruption suspects, including a former state oil executive kidnapped by Vietnamese security agents from a Berlin park in 2017. Last year, a fugitive spy was sent back from Singapore to face trial for divulging state secrets. An Israeli flag on Mount Bental in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. Photo: JALAA MAREY/AFP/Getty Images After the Second World War, the international community decided that invading other countries in order to seize their territory was a lousy thing to do. So, in order to discourage that behavior, the great powers established laws and norms against recognizing a conquering powers sovereignty over lands gained through war. This prohibition is the legal basis for international opposition to Vladimir Putins invasion and annexation of Crimea. And Donald Trump just called on the United States to nullify it. On Thursday, the president tweeted, After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! In 1967, Israel invaded the Golan Heights, which lies within Syrias borders, during the Six-Day War. It effectively annexed the territory in 1981. But the United States has refused to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the area, in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolution 242, which reiterated the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in which every state in the area can live in security. Trumps tweet coincided with Secretary of State Mike Pompeos visit to Jerusalem, and comes two weeks before Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will face voters in his bid for reelection. If the presidents post is a genuine declaration of U.S. policy (far from a given), then it represents a major diplomatic victory for Netanyahu. As of this writing, the White House has refused to tell the public whether Trump was expressing a presidential order in his tweet, or merely a personal opinion. Regardless, the presidents sentiment contradicts decades of U.S. policy, undermines the legitimacy of American opposition to Putins annexation of Crimea, and will embolden right-wing forces in Israel who have been pushing for the annexation of the West Bank (a move that would ostensibly make Israel into a de jure apartheid state). It could also provide Hezbollah with a rationale for ramping up violent resistance to Israeli forces in Syria. But Trumps reckless words are nevertheless likely to boost Netanyahus prospects for reelection. And at the end of the day, thats (apparently) what really matters. This is the hilarious moment a cheeky koala decided to cool off in a mans car by hopping towards the air conditioning. Tim Whitrow was touring a vineyard 40km south of Adelaide when he turned back to his vehicle before spotting the marsupial chilling out on the back seat. The Australian had left the doors of his car open with the air con running, when the sneaky koala took full advantage of the cool conditions. The Koala jumped into Mr Whitrows car to cool down (CEN) The cheeky koala made himself comfortable by jumping in front seats of the car with Mr Whitrow (CEN) Mr Whitrow said: It took a fair bit of convincing to get the feisty little fellow out adding he offered the koala some water before encouraging it to get out of his car. Read more from Yahoo News UK: Vicar appeals for his own church bells to be switched off at night because he cant sleep Grandmother, 104, arrested by police to fulfill greatest wish after a life without crime Mouse proud! Helpful rodent filmed tidying up pensioners garden shed for weeks As seen in the footage, the cheeky chap then shot up a gum tree but not before leaving several gouge marks on the front seat and dashboard. Although cute and friendly to the eye, koalas a native species to Australia have a reputation for being dangerous due to their razor-sharp claws and teeth, which are used for defending against attacks from larger animals. Mr Whitlock even offered the koala a drink of water as it took full advantage of the cool surroundings (CEN) According to the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, Australias koala population are also riddled with a strain of chlamydia, which can reportedly be transmitted to humans. And any would-be petter should also be extra wary; in terms of temperament, it added, the koala is more vicious than a crocodile. A spokesperson for the Department for Environment and Water reminded residents to be careful when engaging with wild animals. In this type of situation, we recommend that the car doors be opened and that a rolled-up newspaper or umbrella or similar item be used to gently push the koala towards an open door. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK Over a year after WhatsApp's small business-oriented application launched on Android, WhatsApp Business finally starts rolling out on iOS. Tech news outlets across the world began reporting Thursday that WhatsApp Business has become available in their respective countries' App Stores. WABetaInfo confirmed that the app had arrived to Mexico's App Store, and others from France, Brazil, and Panama also noted that the app is now available. The application, launched on Android back in January of 2018, provides small businesses with a platform on which they can directly communicate with individual customers or clients. Business owners can create a profile for their brand that features information like the store hours, a link to the company website, and a short bio. Furthermore, you can program a series of quick replies and automated messages to help you send quick responses to customers, categorize and label customers, and access messaging statistics like how many of your messages have been read. Though WhatsApp Business for iOS is presently rolling out on a country by country basis, global availability is likely on the way as the Android version is available worldwide. Xerox Corporation XRX announced on Monday that it is exploring a potential deal for the customer financing business. The unit accounted for $3.4 billion or more than 65% of the companys total debt in 2018 and contributed 4% to total revenues. The announcement comes on the heels of the company unveiling its plan to reorganize its structure as a wholly-owned subsidiary of a new holding company. The potential sale is part of Xeroxs efforts to streamline its operations, which it believes will help it achieve gross savings of $640 million in 2019 and $1.5 billion by 2021. Xerox has been exploring options since it canceled its merger with Fujifilm Holdings due to strong opposition from activist investors Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason. Shares of the company have gained 61.3% year to date, substantially outperforming the 35.7% rally of the industry it belongs to. Our Take Selling the financing business will significantly reduce Xeroxs debt level. This in turn will enhance the companys risk profile and boost its capacity to obtain additional financing for investment in areas that exhibit potential. Xerox Corporation Debt to Equity Ratio (Quarterly) Xerox Corporation Debt to Equity Ratio (Quarterly) | Xerox Corporation Quote Notably, Xerox is undertaking a number of transformation efforts including "Project Own It" to increase productivity and operational efficiency, reduce costs and realign business to changing market conditions. It has an aggressive product development program in new high growth markets. Zacks Rank and Other Key Picks Currently, Xerox has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Some other similar-ranked stocks in the broader Zacks Business Services sector are Interpublic IPG, Omnicom OMC and Paychex PAYX, each carrying a Zacks Rank of 2. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Long-term expected EPS (three to five years) growth rate for Interpublic, Omnicom and Paychex is 2.7%, 4.7% and 8.8%, respectively. Story continues This Could Be the Fastest Way to Grow Wealth in 2019 Research indicates one sector is poised to deliver a crop of the best-performing stocks you'll find anywhere in the market. Breaking news in this space frequently creates quick double- and triple-digit profit opportunities. These companies are changing the world and owning their stocks could transform your portfolio in 2019 and beyond. Recent trades from this sector have generated +98%, +119% and +164% gains in as little as 1 month. Click here to see these breakthrough stocks now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (The) (IPG) : Free Stock Analysis Report Omnicom Group Inc. (OMC) : Free Stock Analysis Report Xerox Corporation (XRX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Paychex, Inc. (PAYX) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. The Williams Companies, Inc. WMB recently reported that it has inked a deal with the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) to create a joint venture (JV), in order to optimize the companys midstream operations in the western Marcellus and Utica basins. The $3.8-billion partnership incorporates Williams Ohio Valley Midstream and Utica East Ohio Midstream systems. Per the agreement, which is expected to be concluded within the next two quarters, CPPIB will acquire a 35% stake in the JV for around $1.34 billion. Williams is expected to retain the remaining interest in the partnership and act as the operator. Notably, the company acquired the remaining 38% stake in the Utica East Ohio Midstream from Momentum Midstream and included it in the JVs asset base. The midstream property processes and fractionates natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) in the prolific Utica shale play. The JV excludes assets like Williams interests in Laurel Mountain Midstream, wherein Chevron Corporation CVX is a partner. Williams had Morgan Stanley MS and CIBC Capital Markets as financial advisors for the transaction. Benefits Williams expects the formation of the JV to create cost synergies, and reduce operating and maintenance costs in the assets mentioned above. The move will create an opportunity for the company to invest in the Utica region in a more efficient manner and enable it to provide its clients with enhanced services. This, in turn, will strengthen the companys presence in the Northeast. The proceeds from the CPPIB are expected to lend support to Williams in various ways including offsetting Utica East Ohio Midstream acquisition price, reduction of debt burden and others. Notably, the company had $22.4 billion in long-term debt at the end of 2018, representing a debt-to-capitalization ratio of 60.5%. It will provide an updated 2019 financial guidance, incorporating the effects of the creation of the JV, with its first-quarter earnings release. Story continues As far as Canadas largest pension fund CPPIB is concerned, the JV will provide it with an additional exposure to the natural gas market of North America. Moreover, the move complements CPPIBs recent investment in Encino Acquisition Partners, which agreed to acquire Chesapeake Energy Corporations CHK Utica Shale oil and gas assets in Ohio for $2 billion in July 2018. Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, wouldn't you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? From more than 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank, these 10 were picked by a process that consistently beats the market. Even during 2018 while the market dropped -5.2%, our Top 10s were up well into double-digits. And during bullish 2012 2017, they soared far above the market's +126.3%, reaching +181.9%. This year, the portfolio features a player that thrives on volatility, an AI comer, and a dynamic tech company that helps doctors deliver better patient outcomes at lower costs. See Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Morgan Stanley (MS) : Free Stock Analysis Report Chevron Corporation (CVX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Williams Companies, Inc. (The) (WMB) : Free Stock Analysis Report Chesapeake Energy Corporation (CHK) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Yandex N.V. YNDX announced a partnership with Hyundai Mobis to aid in driving the autonomous vehicle revolution forward. The collaboration is basically aimed at developing a driverless prototype vehicle based on a standard Hyundai or Kia production model cars. Per the agreement, both the companies will develop control systems for Level 4 and 5 autonomous vehicles. In addition, they will jointly work on other aspects by integrating Yandex technologies. Going forward, the companies plan to build a new autonomous driving control system for car manufacturers, car sharing services and taxi fleets. The collaboration is likely to aid the company in rapidly penetrating the self-driving market. Autonomous Vehicles Hold Promise According to Research & Markets data, the global software market for autonomous cars is anticipated to witness a CAGR of 76.1% between 2017 and 2021. Also, per Technavio, the global autonomous vehicles market is expected to witness a CAGR of 41.61% during the 2018-2022 time frame. Further, a report from Zion Market Research indicates that this market is expected to hit $26.58 billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 25.7% between 2018 and 2024. Yandex seems to be well positioned to capitalize on the growing automotive market, which, even being a small fraction of the total market, is expected to see meaningful growth in a couple of years. Growing Competition The immense growth opportunities in this autonomous vehicle market are luring enough to attract other tech giants like Apple AAPL, Amazon AMZN and Baidu BIDU, which are also leaving no stone unturned to grab a piece of this market pie. The Chinese search company Baidu has added Apolong, an autonomous mini bus, to its Apollo autonomous driving platform. At CES, the company introduced Apollo Enterprise, which is a suite of customizable autonomous driving solutions for vehicle fleets. It also unveiled Apollo 3.5, the latest version of Apollo open source driverless car platform. Story continues Yandex has been making continuous efforts to accelerate the development of autonomous driving since 2017. The company launched its first fully autonomous taxi service in Europe in 2018. At CES 2019, the company expanded its self-driving internationally, which is testament to its efforts to boost footprint in this space. Yandex N.V. Price and Consensus Yandex N.V. Price and Consensus | Yandex N.V. Quote Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2019 In addition to the stocks discussed above, wouldn't you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-holds for the year? From more than 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank, these 10 were picked by a process that consistently beats the market. Even during 2018 while the market dropped -5.2%, our Top 10s were up well into double-digits. And during bullish 2012 2017, they soared far above the market's +126.3%, reaching +181.9%. This year, the portfolio features a player that thrives on volatility, an AI comer, and a dynamic tech company that helps doctors deliver better patient outcomes at lower costs. See Stocks Today >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) : Free Stock Analysis Report Yandex N.V. (YNDX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) : Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Efforts to vindicate minority voting rights stretch back to the 1860s, when ex-slaves temporarily won the opportunity to cast ballots. Illustration: The First Vote by Alfred R. Waud. Bettmann Archive/Getty Images The remarkable partisan polarization over HR1 House Democrats ambitious but hardly novel package of pro-democracy reforms, centered on voting rights shows that this issue, once a matter of bipartisan do-gooder sentiment, has now become a deadly serious point of contention in our politics. This has happened rather quickly as the two parties each came to recognize their future might depend on expanding or restricting ballot access. All 234 House Democrats present voted for HR1 while all 193 Republicans present voted against it. Thats remarkable given the bipartisan support voting rights (and even other features of the bill like campaign finance reform) had until very recently. To be sure, politicians in both parties still think ballot access is critically important. But Republicans, having placed their bets on an electoral base that is overwhelmingly white and significantly upscale, are becoming deeply invested in suppression of voting opportunities for those who are unlikely to join their coalition. A recent study showed that of 20 states identified as making it most difficult to vote, Trump carried 17. Hillary Clinton carried 12 of the 20 states where it is easiest to vote. The homeland of Republican voter suppression is in the South, where keeping African-Americans from the ballot box is an ancient tradition practiced mostly by Democrats in the long period from the emancipation of slaves until the end of Jim Crow. Now across the region the Republicans who control every state legislature in the former Confederacy are pursuing an ensemble of measures to restrict the franchise, from cutbacks in early voting, to aggressive voter purges, to voter-ID requirements, to reductions in polling places. This trend rapidly proliferated after the 2013 Supreme Court decision (supported by all five Republican-appointed Justices, with all four Democratic-appointed Justices dissenting) that killed the chief enforcement mechanism of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Without the requirement that states with a history of racial discrimination submit election system changes to the U.S. Justice Department for preclearance, its been open season on ballot access, particularly as racial polarization in partisan preferences has intensified. This is a sudden and dramatic development. As recently as 2006, President George W. Bush, without much controversy, signed an extension of the VRA, preclearance provisions and all. While one notable veteran Republican, James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, has supported efforts to bring back preclearance, he is increasingly isolated, and even he hasnt signed onto the latest legislative vehicle for restoring the VRA, a bill sponsored by African-American Democratic representative Terri Sewell (who represents Selma, Alabama, where violence against voting rights demonstrators in 1965 galvanized action to enact the VRA). As veteran political journalist Ron Brownstein has observed, the current split in Congress over HR 1 is just the beginning of an era in which one party supports and the other opposes voting rights: its a struggle that may determine political dominance in many states and nationally for years to come: Particularly in states across the Sun Belt from North Carolina, Florida and Georgia to Texas and Arizona the electoral competition is shaped by a stark demographic divide. In all of those states, Democrats are increasingly reliant on growing populations of younger and nonwhite voters. But in each of those states and others demographically similar to them, a Republican coalition almost entirely dependent on white voters especially older, blue-collar and non-urban whites still has the advantage, particularly in state elections. In each state the Republican majorities have used that power to approve either restrictions on voting such as tougher voter identification laws partisan gerrymanders or both, making it more difficult for that emerging nonwhite electorate to overturn their dominance. And so, as in the Reconstruction era after the Civil War, one party is committed to the use of federal power to vindicate voting rights, and the other is opposed. Todays Republicans dont openly tout white racial supremacy rationales the way many Democrats of the 19th century did, but they do similarly claim they are simply defending states rights to control elections, and warn of electoral fraud and corruption, and less vocally, of a partisan conspiracy whereby minority voters will use their political power to redistribute the wealth of virtuous tax-paying white folks. Southern opponents of the first Reconstruction resorted to terrorism along with less violent forms of intimidation aimed at black would-be voters and officeholders. But formal disenfranchisement was accomplished throughout the region by 1900, aided by Supreme Court rulings sharply limiting federal jurisdiction over elections. Now strategies for disenfranchisement are covert and partial. But like yesterdays Democrats, todays Republicans are acutely aware that their local and national power depends on holding back a tide of minority voting power than might submerge their party. These partisan dynamics are what separate todays climate from that of what many have called the Second Reconstruction, the civil-rights era that culminated with the successful implementation of school desegregation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The battle lines then were mostly regional rather than partisan, though the prominence of Democratic president Lyndon B. Johnson in the key landmark legislation initiated a partisan realignment of the South that led formerly Democratic white conservatives overwhelmingly into the GOP. That party was slowly but surely transformed into a militantly conservative bastion of support for states rights and property rights, and opposition to the kind of public spending that might disproportionately help minorities. The white conservative backlash to the First Reconstruction succeeded almost totally in the disenfranchisement of African-Americans and the imposition of a virtual apartheid regime at the end of the 19th century. The Second Reconstructions accomplishments have been undermined more subtly, via voter suppression measures in the states and recent illustrations of residual racism from redlining to efforts to drain public schools of resources to police misconduct aimed at minority citizens and undocumented immigrants. And so, arguably, we are seeing the first stages of a Third Reconstruction, again focused on (but not limited to) the South, with the goal of finally realizing the promise of equality extended in the so-called Reconstruction Amendments (the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which abolished slavery, mandated equal protection for all citizens, and banned discrimination in voting) enacted after the Civil War. Because the bipartisanship of the Second Reconstruction has been lost, the Third Reconstruction may be as bitterly divisive as the First, and could quickly grow to overshadow other political issues. And while this Third Reconstruction may extend to multiple issues touching on equality, it will almost certainly be rooted in the fight for voting rights, which will determine the balance of power in many states and nationally. Reverend William Barber II, the North Carolina pastor who founded that states Moral Mondays movement in opposition to a conservative takeover that made voter suppression prominent and explicit, titled his 2016 memoir/manifesto The Third Reconstruction. In it he accentuated the importance of voting rights as a threshold issue: Because political power is a democracys chief safeguard against injustice, we must continue to engage the voting rights issue after the U.S. Supreme Courts decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which removed protections against voter suppression in southern states that had been in place for half a century. This fight is, in many ways, bigger than Selma and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That expansion of voting rights fifty years ago was a concession to the civil rights movement. We didnt get all we were asking for. Now, fifty years later, were fighting to hold on to the compromise. What we really need is a constitutional amendment to guarantee the same voting rights in every state. This must be the cornerstone of the Third Reconstruction. Constitutional amendments in our system are very difficult to secure. But HR1 and Sewells legislation restoring the VRA together represent an effort to nationalize voting rights as much as the Constitution allows, as both its supporters and opponents acknowledge. HR1 takes a chainsaw to the thicket of voter-suppression techniques Republican-controlled states have contrived, which in intent echo the formal disenfranchisement the first Reconstruction fought and the poll taxes and literacy tests targeted by the second. And the restored voting rights enforcement mechanism in the Justice Department that Sewells bill would provide is aimed at rebuilding the federal governments oversight of state and local electoral procedures, giving the victims of voters suppression an ally as powerful as the Freedmens Bureau of the first Reconstruction. As in the first two Reconstructions, action in Washington will depend on the success of local grassroots pressure in the states where the battle against voter suppression rages. And that means todays voting rights push must become not merely an issue among issues, but a social movement with a sense of moral urgency. Its hard to identify a progressive priority, up to and including action on climate change, whose success may not ultimately require the emergence of a new popular majority and the curtailment of the ancient rebel yell of states rights. The Third Reconstruction may take shape very quickly. The United States, Australia and New Zealand share a historical heritage of frontier adventurism the kind that bred a familiarity with firearms as tools for putting food on the table, or later as a sporting pastime. But the similarity ends abruptly when the evildoers of those societies use semi-automatic weapons to commit slaughter as happened Friday in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a gunman killed 50 worshipers at two mosques. In the wake of that horror, the New Zealand government moved rapidly to announce that by next Monday, it will unveil plans for tightening gun laws that could potentially include a ban on military-style rifles and require registration of all guns. "As a Cabinet, we were absolutely unified and very clear," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday. "The time to act is now." A vigil in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 18, 2019. SECOND AMENDMENT FOUNDATION: Gun control laws don't deter madmen A similar resolute response happened in Australia after a gunman killed 35 people in 1996 with a semi-automatic rifle on the island of Tasmania. With the support of a conservative prime minister, Australia introduced gun licensing and registry, banned semi-automatic rifles, and enforced a firearm buyback that pulled 700,000 guns out of circulation. Gun-related suicides and homicides declined dramatically in the years that followed. In the meantime, Americans have lived through a litany of similar events where assault-style rifles were used in massacres at a high school in Parkland, Florida; a Baptist church in Texas; an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut; a nightclub in Orlando; and a concert in Las Vegas. With few exceptions, the default response by American politicians, particularly on the right, was to offer thoughts and prayers but no meaningful action. Substantive gun reform such as reinstating a ban on assault-style weapons that only seem useful for killing large numbers of people remains out of reach in America. Gun-control opponents argue that a fundamental difference between America and other nations is the Second Amendment right to bear arms. But as the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the 2008 Heller decision underscoring that right, it is "not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." Story continues The true difference for America is a powerful gun lobby keeping politicians in check. There's a gun-rights lobby in New Zealand, albeit less powerful. And there are pro-gun politicians who are not immune to change. "The reality is," said New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peter, a staunch opponent of gun control, "after 1 p.m. on the 15th of March (when the mosque shootings occurred), our world changed forever, and so will some of our laws." That display of leadership in the face of tragedy reflects another reality: Without easy access to high-powered weapons and high-capacity magazines, people like the Christchurch gunman are far more likely to remain racist losers, rather than become mass murderers. USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view a unique USA TODAY feature. To read more editorials, go to the Opinion front page or sign up for the daily Opinion email newsletter. To respond to this editorial, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com. If you can't see this reader poll, please refresh your page. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New Zealand attacks unite government on gun control. America stands divided. Washington (AFP) - New Zealand's swift ban on semi-automatic weapons after the Christchurch massacre showed how political courage can spur change, but in gun-obsessed America, lawmakers and activists desperate to curb firearm violence looked on with both admiration -- and bitterness. "Not thoughts. Not prayers. Action," urged Ted Deutch, a Democratic congressman from Florida where a deadly school shooting last year galvanized a youth gun control movement, but produced no tangible change to federal laws. The speed of New Zealand's response -- days after a white supremacist slaughtered 50 people at two mosques -- stood in stark contrast to the congressional inaction that has followed a string of horrific mass shootings in the United States in recent years. Nearly 40,000 people were killed by firearms in the United States in 2017 -- two thirds of them suicides -- the highest annual toll in five decades, according to government figures. The numbers suggest Americans should be scrambling to clear the hurdles to combatting gun violence. Why aren't they? It's complicated. "The role of guns in our society is very, very different. It goes way back as part of our culture, unfortunately," Democratic congressman John Yarmouth told CNN Thursday. The United States has more firearms than people. Frontier culture and a form of rugged individualism, forged in the 19th century American settlement westward, persist. Citizens can legally carry firearms in some state capitols. Gun control efforts have always proved divisive, and Republican lawmakers have been highly successful at preventing what they describe as an assault on their right to bear arms under the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. - Sandy Hook... then nothing - Little has been done at the federal level to rein in gun sales, broaden background checks, or prevent people who may pose a threat from acquiring guns. Incremental action can take years, and even the most shocking of massacres can fail to move the needle, partly due to the high threshold in the 100-member US Senate, where 60 votes are needed to advance legislation. Story continues After a gunman slaughtered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, congressional Democrats introduced an expansion of background checks. It failed in the Senate. Today, a similar background checks bill has passed the Democrat-led House, in the wake of several recent mass shootings including last year's killing of 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue. But it languishes in the Senate despite an overwhelming majority of Americans supporting tightening such checks. Democratic congressman David Cicilline offered a bleak rationale for why New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern could act so decisively, while Americans appear unable to reduce gun violence. "Their politicians aren't bought and paid for by the gun lobby," Cicilline tweeted. US civilian gun ownership has been a hotly debated, constitutionally protected right for more than two centuries. Leading the charge to preserve gun rights is the National Rifle Association lobbying group beloved and reviled by opposing cultural forces. - 'Inalienable right' - NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch appeared to dismiss Ardern's action as antithetical to America. "The US isn't NZ. While they do not have an inalienable right to bear arms and to self defense, we do," Loesch wrote. Gun control advocates say the NRA exerts powerful influence on US lawmakers by donating millions to their campaigns and giving letter-grade ratings on gun issues. "The @NRA is already exploiting the New Zealand tragedy and subsequent legislative actions to try and juice gun sales in the US," warned Shannon Watts, founder of gun safety group Moms Demand Action. Senator Bernie Sanders -- one of several 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls who spoke out in praise of Ardern -- called for Americans to stand up to the gun lobby. "We must follow New Zealand's lead, take on the NRA and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States," Sanders tweeted. President Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban in 1994, but it came with a 10-year sunset, and renewal efforts failed. Republican Donald Trump had initially appeared ready to challenge the NRA after the Parkland shooting claimed 17 lives in Florida last year, supporting a rise in the minimum age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21, and more expansive background checks. But the president -- who championed gun rights during his campaign -- subsequently backed away from federal action on either front, and three months later appeared on stage before a cheering crowd at the NRA's annual conference. Still, advocates believe progress is possible. The March for Our Lives movement that emerged after Parkland is galvanizing youths and changing American attitudes. Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said she and others are inspired by New Zealand's response. "Most Americans are looking at New Zealand and saying 'Why can't we do this in the US as well?'" she told AFP, adding that US politicians are aware of the revived interest in taking action. "The NRA's stranglehold on lawmakers is weakening," she said. New Zealand is banning all assault rifles, high-capacity magazines and military-style semi-automatic rifles in response to the nation's deadliest massacre in history, the country's prime minister announced Thursday. Jacinda Ardern said the ban goes into effect immediately and would be followed by legislation next month. New Zealand's citizens should make arrangements to turn in weapons banned under the new laws, Ardern told the nation in a live television announcement. "On March 15, the nation witnessed a terrorist attack that demonstrated the weakness of New Zealand's gun laws," Ardern said. "The guns used in this attack had the power to shoot continuously. The times for the easy availability of these weapons must end. And today, they will." Start the day smarter: Get USA TODAY's Daily Briefing in your inbox She added, "We just want the guns back. ... It's about all of us. It's in the national interest, and it's about safety." Ardern says the alleged shooter in Friday's attacks at two Christchurch mosques killed most of the 50 people with two legally purchased semi-automatic rifles modified with 30-plus round magazines, "essentially turning them into military-style semi-automatic weapons." Made in the USA? New Zealand mosque shootings: Some rights leaders say US is exporting extremism She said an amnesty will be put in place for weapons to be handed in by citizens. The New Zealand cabinet will also implement a buyback plan for banned weapons, and there will be "tightly regulated" exemptions for some owners such as hunters and farmers. "I strongly believe that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners in New Zealand will understand that these moves are in the national interest, and will take these changes in their stride," she said. She also noted that gun ownership is "a privilege and not a right" in New Zealand. Story continues Her words were already being put into effect across the nation: The New Zealand government immediately began asking all owners of assault weapons or now-banned attachments to report them to the government in the next two days before turning them in. Since the attacks, Ardern has led a nation trying to grieve and work through the news of the killings, which, in total, rival the annual number of murders in New Zealand. On Tuesday, Ardern had told New Zealand's Parliament that tough gun laws were coming. She also said she would deny the man responsible for the nation's worst terror attack in modern history the one thing he likely craved: fame. "He is a terrorist, he is a criminal, he is an extremist, but he will, when I speak, be nameless, and to others I implore you: Speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them. He may have sought notoriety but we in New Zealand will give him nothing not even his name." Ardern opened her speech to lawmakers in New Zealand by using the Arabic greeting "As-salamu alaykum." In English, this translates as "Peace be upon you." "You may have chosen us," Ardern said, the anger rising in her voice as she condemned the suspect in the attacks. "But we utterly reject and condemn you." New Zealand has fewer restrictions on rifles or shotguns than many countries. Handguns are more tightly controlled. About 1.5 million firearms are owned legally and illegally by civilians in New Zealand, according to police data tracked by GunPolicy.org, a website run in conjunction with the University of Sydney. This equates to about 30 firearms per 100 people. In the United States, the rate is approximately 120 firearms per 100 people, according to the site. All gun owners in New Zealand must have a license, which they can get from age 16 (age 18 for semiautomatic weapons) but the weapon itself does not need to be registered with authorities, according to the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners, a New Zealand lobby group. Ardern said the suspect in Friday's attacks had a license and owned five guns. The majority of firearms owners in New Zealand are farmers or hunters. According to GunPolicy.org, New Zealand is among a handful of countries where police officers are routinely unarmed when they are on patrol. Officers in Britain, Ireland, Norway and Iceland also carry firearms only in special circumstances. Christchurch mosque attacks: Jacinda Ardern leads New Zealand in aftermath of killings police say could have been worse Related: Syrian father, son remembered as New Zealand holds first funerals for shooting victims Australia and Britain both changed their gun laws in response to mass shootings. The Australian government overhauled its guns laws in 1996 after 35 people were murdered during a shooting spree in Tasmania. Australia banned all semi-automatic weapons and restricted certain handguns. It offered to buy back prohibited firearms. A 2016 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that Australia hadn't had a fatal mass shooting one in which five or more people are killed since the 1996 shooting. In the 18 years prior to the new laws, there were 13. The turning point for Britain came in 1996, when a man used a legally owned handgun to kill 16 young children and a teacher at a school in Dunblane, Scotland. In the aftermath, all private ownership of handguns was banned. Since then, there has been one mass shooting, in 2010, in Britain. The death toll in the attack at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques rose to 50 people Saturday; victims range in age from 2 to over 60. Services for the victims were held at churches across the country Sunday, and people laid flowers at memorial sites. A group of bikers performed the haka a traditional ceremonial dance of New Zealand's Maori people at the memorial in Christchurch. Thirty-nine people remain in the hospital, and 11 were in intensive care in critical condition. Contributing: Kim Hjelmgaard, USA TODAY; Associated Press This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'We just want the guns back': New Zealand announces immediate ban of assault rifles New Zealands sweeping new ban on a range of semi-automatic rifles and large ammunition magazines, which came just six days after a mass shooting in Christchurch, has been hailed as the fastest response ever by a government after a tragedy. Related: Christchurch attacks: New Zealand brings in sweeping gun-law changes In the US, where conservative politicians have blocked even moderate gun control for 25 years, New Zealands swift action was greeted as a powerful inspiration and a reminder of how far behind the country is. Sandy Hook happened six years ago and we cant even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman, wrote on Twitter, referring to the 2012 shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 20 children and six educators dead. Sandy Hook happened 6 years ago and we cant even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks w/ #HR8. Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market. This is what leadership looks like https://t.co/TcdR63anBt Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019 This is what leadership looks like, David Hogg, one of the students from Parkland, Florida, who founded the March for Our Lives movement for gun control after a shooting at their school last February, tweeted, sharing a video of the announcement by New Zealands prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. Some Democratic presidential candidates have already pledged to support a ban on assault weapons though one that would probably be much more limited that New Zealands. We must follow New Zealands lead, take on the NRA and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States, tweeted the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who has been attacked for his mixed record on gun control in the past. Story continues We had an assault weapons ban once, and we should have it again, Senator Kamala Harris of California, tweeted a few days after the Christchurch attacks. These weapons of war do not belong on our streets, in our schools, or at our houses of worship. This is a fight I will take on as president. Pro-gun activists in the United States said that New Zealands aggressive action to ban ownership of previously legal guns, and enact a mandatory buyback, would never be viable in the United States. The US isnt New Zealand, Dana Loesch, a prominent gun rights activist and National Rifle Association spokeswoman, tweeted. They do not have an inalienable right to bear arms and to self-defense, we do. In another tweet, she wrote: To follow these examples the US would need to repeal the Second Amendment, ban all semi-auto, force gun stores to show all purchases to govt, and spend $200 million taxpayer dollars to confiscate firearms. I sure see a lot of people who like to say "nobody is coming for your guns" celebrating this confiscation effort. https://t.co/e3quZ8v7gi Stephen Gutowski (@StephenGutowski) March 21, 2019 Rebecca Peters, who helped lead the successful campaign to reform Australias gun laws in the 1990s, said she believed New Zealands government action was the fastest response ever by government officials after a mass shooting. It took the British government seven months after the massacre of 16 children in Dunblane, Scotland, in March 1996, to announce a partial ban on handguns, which parents of the children had demanded as part of the Snowdrop Campaign. It took the Australian government 10 days after the Port Arthur massacre in April 1996 to announce the National Firearms Agreement. New Zealand announced the new ban on military-style weapons one with broad support from the prime minister and the opposition after only six days. Its a small parliament. Its a small country. And obviously, they have very high support for it, Peters said. Related: Explainer: how are New Zealand's gun laws changing? In a press conference on Thursday, Ardern promised increased penalties for continued ownership of the banned weapons. New Zealands minister of police said police were gearing up to enable military-style weapons to be taken out of circulation. Police will be supported by the New Zealand defense force, he said, and would consult gun licensing records. Ardern promised the country would continue to consider broader gun control measures on Monday, including issues such as licensing, registration and storage. New Zealands swift action is a stark contrast to the political stalemate in the US, where conservative politicians have blocked any substantial gun control laws for 25 years, despite frequent high-casualty mass shootings. The USs last substantial action on gun control, in 1994, was a federal ban on military-style assault weapons. But the ban was written to expire in 10 years, and did not require Americans who already owned military-style guns to give up their weapons it simply tried to regulate the manufacture and sale of new guns. When it expired in 2004, an in-depth evaluation of the loophole-ridden legislation found that it could not be clearly credited with any of the nations drop in violence. The consensus among Democratic politicians was that the ban had backfired politically against their party, and that gun control was not a winning issue for the American left. They largely abandoned the issue for more than a decade. Since the ban lifted, military-style rifles have become popular high-end acquisitions for American gun owners, and have become popular for target shooting, even as they have become infamous as the mass shooters weapon of choice. Some gun rights advocates argue that military-style rifles are necessary for self-defense, including self-defense in the home. While there are restrictions on assault weapons in some parts of the US, in many places today, Americans can buy an AR-15-style rifle before they are legally allowed to buy a beer. Home | News | General | APCs victory will be short-lived - Saraki - Bukola Saraki condemned the role of the military in the presidential election - The Senate president said APC's win is a loss for the country - Saraki expressed optimism that PDP will win in the rerun elections Senate president, Bukola Saraki, has described the victory of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the presidential election as a loss to the nation saying it will be short-lived. Premium Times reports that Saraki spoke on Wednesday, March 20 at an emergency National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Abuja. READ ALSO: Atiku releases his own state by state result of presidential election (Full Report) The Senate president condemned the role played by the military in the election saying it has made the country a laughing stock. He said: This victory that the other party has seen is going to be short lived. If anybody believes that it is a loss to PDP, it is a loss to the country that history will not forgive. We said it many times here, that the worst to do is to do an election that as a country Nigeria will not be proud of. We have done an election that no doubt anybody and even those that think they have won are ashamed of the kind of election that we did. I think it is a shame to the country and to those that were given that responsibility to do. They have Saturday as their last opportunity to try as much as possible to reclaim part of their embarrassment to the country. How can a country like Nigeria, as the speaker said, Ghana has done it, even Congo, even Zimbabwe have done elections. And we say we do elections, with seven inconclusive. We did elections before, in 2015, we did it in 2011, 1999 and after so many years, this is what we can produce. It is not a loss to the PDP, it is to the country. It just shows the level of desperation. I have confidence that this will be shortlived and as such let us ensure on Saturday, that these five states that are ours remain within the PDP and INEC should for once do what is right. We have a great future ahead and I believe we will start that on Saturday to make sure that we defend those five states that are declared inconclusive. Peter Obi who is the vice presidential candidate said the military should not only be blamed but those directing them. He said: As for me, while we blame the INEC and the security agencies, the biggest shame goes to those who are directing them to do the wrong thing. If you choose to be a leader, especially with APC that claims integrity, the biggest corruption and the biggest show of a government that does not believe in integrity is to rig election. Because the process through which you come into office, is far more fundamental than what you do there after. I think we should hold them responsible for what is happening in this country now. The examples we are setting for the young ones, I dont know what they will tell a young man who is cheating in an exam in this country after seeing the ways our elections are conducted. I dont know what they will tell those who are robbing banks and kidnapping people, because we have seen the biggest of it by this election where people are happy after robbing the nation and their states. Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has reacted to the Peoples Democratic Partys claim that they won the presidential election by 1.6 million votes. The APC in a statement signed by its national publicity secretary, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, on Wednesday, March 20 said the claim by the PDP showed the party and its casndidate, Atiku Abubakar, have slipped into post-election depression. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better. Nigerians set 2nd term agenda for President Buhari | Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | Fayose: Drama, as judge, EFCC lawyer tango By Innocent Anaba LagosFour prosecution witnesses, yesterday, testified before a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, at the resumed trial of immediate past Governor of Ekiti State, Mr. Ayo Fayose, who is being prosecuted alongside a company Spotless Investment Ltd on an 11 counts charge of fraud, by Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC. Fayose Fayose pleaded not guilty to the charge. Meanwhile, there was drama midway into the hearing between the trial judge, Justice Mojisola Olatoregun and EFCC counsel, Mr Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, when the judge raised concern over the failure of the prosecution to tender the complete three pages of the statement of one of the witnesses. Noting that the prosecution, was not doing a good job, the judge said, Mr Jacobs, you dare not, you are not competent to look into my ruling, to evaluate my ruling, you are totally incompetent, whether you are a Senior Advocate or not. Jacob: I was not referring to Your Lordships ruling. Judge: You are going beyond your bounds. Do not let me trash your practice. Listen to me, if you re-evaluate my rulings in this court, youll get into trouble. You can only go on appeal, Mr Jacobs. Your mode of advocacy, I do not understand it, it looks like what do they call it? Jankara market. You stand here to re-evaluate my ruling, you are incompetent to do that. You do not stand there with impetus and re-evaluate my ruling. I have ruled, relying on two sections of the Evidence Act, if you have an objection, you go on appeal. You have no competence, carrying your wig with arrogance and we have a lot of young lawyers here. What are you teaching them. You stand up to a judge, re-evaluating the ruling of a judge. It will not happen in my court! Your re-examine your witness; if you are not re-examining, then close your case. Jacob: My Lord, I never said a word about Your Lordships ruling. Judge: I do not take tangential comments here. You are fond of doing that. You are an extremely rude, senior advocate. If you are a senior advocate, you are not older than me at the Bar and you are not older than me in age. In Yoruba land, we respect age. And in this job, we have what they call professional ethics and respect for each other. Jacob: I have respect for you My Lord. Judge: You have never offered it. Jacob: For My Lord to say that I am Jankara practice lawyer Judge: Yes, I am saying it, if we finish here, you can write a petition to the NJC. Jacob: No court has ever told me I engage in Jankara practice. Judge: I have said it: go and do whatever you like. Jacob: My Lord, Ive been on this job for a while. Judge: I do not want to know. Jacob: No judge has ever called me a Jankara lawyer. Judge: How many years have you spent? Jacob: I take exception to that word, Jankara. No judge can tell me that I am involved in Jankara practice. Judge: Now, are you re-examining your witness? Jacob: Yes, I am. But I take exception to that word, Jankara practice. I take full exception to it. I do my job according to my conscience; I will never pervert the course of justice; I will never call any witness to come here and lie against another person. I fear God . Earlier, three other witnesses, all Lebanese Goshen Joseph; Joseph Mechleb and Maroun Mechleb, who are working in Nigeria as building and construction engineers, also gave their evidence. Mechleb, who is the Chief Executive Officer of a construction firm, Samchase Nigeria Limited, which is based in Akure, the Ondo State capital, while being led in evidence by the prosecuting counsel for the EFCC, Jacobs, told the court that he had done various jobs for both the Federal Government and some states, including Ekiti State. He said he did jobs for Ekiti State in 2006, 2014, 2015 and 2016 when Fayose was governor of the state. Mechleb told the court that the jobs he did for Ekiti State were facilitated by Abiodun Agbele, an aide to Fayose. He said there was an agreement that he would appreciate Agbele for every contract he facilitated for Samchase Nigeria Limited. Mechleb said though the appreciation was not specified, it was usually about 10 per cent of the contract sum. The Lebanese, who told the court that he could neither write nor read English language fluently, said the scope of the contracts was usually communicated verbally, saying, We agreed that when he got jobs for me, I will appreciate him. We did not specify but its around 10 per cent. Mechleb told the court that he once lied to the EFCC about owning a property on Agbeles instructions. He said he falsely claimed ownership of the property in order to help Agbele, whom he described as a friend. The Lebanese had been asked by Jacobs if he knew of a company, JJ Technical Services Limited, to which he replied that the firm belongs to his younger brother and brother-in-law, Maroun Mechleb and Joseph Mechleb, respectively. He said his brother once approached him to help get some jobs for JJ Technical Services Limited, because since the company was incorporated in 2007, it has never got a job. Mechleb said he collected the firms documents and gave to Agbele to find job for it, but Agbele did not. The Lebanese said at a time, Agbele approached him and asked if he had a company which could be used to get a contract. He said he then nominated JJ Technical Services Limited. The Lebanese said Agbele later bought a property in the name of JJ Technical Services Limited and brought the deed of assignment for him to sign. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | PDP, Atiku in post-election trauma, depression APC PDPs prayers at tribunal at best hollow, ridiculous APC They didnt have a Plan B, just wanted to rig the election KEYAMO Well reclaim our stolen mandate through the courts PDP By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor, Dirisu Yakubu & Omezia Ajayi ABUJA The All Progressives Congress, APC, yesterday, launched a blistering attack on the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, describing their claim of having won last months presidential poll as the hallucinatory outcome of a post-election depression. Members of the PDP The APCs claim was backed by the Muhammadu Buhari Presidential Campaign Organisation, which also charged the PDP of being steeped in post-election trauma. The claims were, however, robustly rebuffed by the PDP which accused President Buhari of standing on a stolen mandate even as the party affirmed that it was the clear winner in the six states where run-off governorship elections are to be conducted this weekend. The APCs attack on the PDP followed revelations in the court affidavit attached to Atikus petition at the Presidential Election Tribunal where it was deposed that the PDP candidate won the election by 1.6 million votes. The PDP had claimed that the figure could be verified by data in custody of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. Responding to the claim yesterday, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, the APC said: Following the outcome of the Presidential election, during which a vast majority of Nigerians reaffirmed their unshaken belief in President Buhari to continue to steer the affairs of the country for another four years, we have watched in disbelief and utter amusement how the opposition PDP and its Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, have engaged in series of circus shows to cheer up their crestfallen and disillusioned members. PDP in post-defeat depression APC While the APC is not oblivious of the PDPs antics to discredit the credible presidential electoral process, acknowledged by local and international observers, we sympathise with Atiku for the crushing defeat handed him by President Buhari through the votes of Nigerians. Voter Apathy: Are Nigerians turning against democracy? Judging by Atiku and PDPs recent utterances and actions, it is now clear that they have slipped into severe depression and post-defeat hallucination that have left many Nigerians questioning their current state of mind. After weeks of dilly-dallying, the PDP has woken up to the stark reality of its electoral defeat and decided to follow the constitutional path of filing a petition at the Election Tribunal. However, of all the prayers of Atiku before the Election Tribunal, which are at best hollow, the most ridiculous is his claim that the server of the INEC, indicated he won the Presidential election by 1.6million votes. A few questions would suffice: Is this phantom figure of 1.6million votes Dubai-invented? Was the result sold to Atiku by his numerous marabouts, who we understand, had assured him that the last election was a done deal for him? Most importantly, we note Atikus consistent reference to the INEC server as if he is the custodian of that platform. Indeed, Atikus constant reference to the INEC server should raise concerns as it is becoming apparent that he and the PDP are up for some dastard activities that are targeted at jeopardizing the INEC database and internal storage system. We recall the widespread reported cases of several programmed card readers that were retrieved from some PDP agents and their failed attempt to hack the INEC database in the lead-up to the then postponed presidential election. We remind the Atiku and PDP that Nigerians saw through the devious schemes aimed at thwarting their will. Consequently, majority of the voters handed them a harsh verdict that verdict remains sacrosanct. We call on the INEC and the security agencies to be on red alert to ensure that Atiku and the other desperate characters in the PDP are not able to execute their evil plans. Where did PDP get its 1.6m votes margin from, asks Keyamo The assertions of the APC were backed up by the Buhari Campaign which speaking through its spokesman, Mr. Festus Keyamo said: It is contradictory to their earlier claim that they needed access to INEC server and data base but given that the court refused their plea the big question is that where did they get this phantom figure from? The PDP did not have a Plan B and their plan was to rig the election. They should learn to move on from this post-election trauma and prepare for 2023. Just as they never recovered They should not be trapped in this trauma, because these figures can only be coming from a mind that is hallucinating. Well reclaim our stolen mandate through the courts PDP Responding to the charges against it, the PDP speaking through its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondinyan vowed that the party would reclaim what it described as its stolen mandate through the courts. What did they mean by PDP slipping into depression and hallucination? We are telling them that we will retrieve our stolen mandate whether they like it or not. We will go the whole hog to take our states which they declared inconclusive. They know that we won those states and come Saturday, we will claim those states. We dont want to say much about the Presidential election because Nigerians knew what happened. They should not grandstand because at the end of the day, we are confident of victory. No matter how far a lie travels, truth will eventually catch up with it. Rivers: As INEC rolls out plan, APC calls for redeployment of REC CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | FG orders closure of borders in 3 states ahead of supplementary elections - Land borders in Adamawa, Benue and Sokoto states are to be closed due to supplementary elections holding on Saturday, March 23 - The minister of interior, retired Lt.-Gen Abdulrahman Dambazau, says the closure of the borders is with effect from Friday noon, March 22, to Sunday noon, March 24 - Dambazau notes that the aim is to restrict movements across the borders of the affected states during the election The federal government has ordered the closure of land borders in Adamawa, Benue and Sokoto states ahead of Saturday, March 23 supplementary poll in some states. The minister of interior, retired Lt.-Gen. Abdulrahman Dambazau made the disclosure in a statement signed by Comptroller-General, Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) Muhammad Babandede, in Abuja on Thursday, March 21. READ ALSO: Atiku releases his own state by state result of presidential election (Full Report) According to him, the closure of the borders is with effect from Friday noon, March 22, to Sunday noon, March 24, The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports. He said the aim is to restrict movements across the borders of the affected states during the election. The public is to take note and ensure compliance, he said. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has fixed March 23 for supplementary elections in Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kano, Plateau and Sokoto state because governorship election in those states was declared inconclusive. Meanwhile, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has vowed to proceed with its plan to conduct the supplementary elections in Bauchi on Saturday, March 23, despite an earlier court order barring it from doing so. Premium Times reports that the electoral commission made the disclosure on Thursday, March 21, at a press briefing by its spokesperson, Festus Okoye, in Abuja. Commenting on the commission's readiness for the Saturday's election, Okoye disclosed that the decision to proceed with the Bauchi rerun election was informed by the fact that the judgement only applied to Tafawa Balewa local government area in Bauchi state. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have upgraded to serve you better. Nigerians set 2nd term agenda for President Buhari | Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | I have facts that APC paid some Nigerians to beg Atiku not to challenge Buhari's victory - Galadima - Buba Galadima, the spokesperson of Atiku Abubakar campaign organisation, has alleged that APC paid some Nigerians to stop the former vice president from challenging Buhari's victory - Abubakar, who was PDP's presidential candidate in the Saturday, February 23, presidential election, had told the election petition tribunal to declare him the winner of the election - Galadima, however, said the INEC colluded with the APC to rob Abubakar of his victory The spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)'s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar campaign organisation, Buba Galadima, has alleged that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) sponsored and paid some highly placed Nigerians to beg Atiku not to challenge President Muhammadu Buhari's victory at the election petition tribunal. Vanguard reports that Galadima made the allegation while featuring on Channel Television on Wednesday, March 20, saying that every Nigerian knew that the Saturday, February 23, presidential election was rigged by APC. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda Legit.ng gathered that the former APC chieftain said the ruling party used the military to intimidate people and rig the election. He said: Of course every Nigerian, everybody in the world who had followed the contemporary Nigerian election of 2019 knew that there was rigging, massive intimidation, in fact, there was robbery by the APC by using the security agencies especially the military to rig the election. ''If it is an allegation, go and ask a host of places in Benue, Plateau, Borno, Yobe and Zamfara. Let them go to court, Ill substantiate it. You know it is a fact that one month to the election, the military had declared what you called Python Dance across the 36 states of the federation. ''That is preparatory to their engagement during the election and they used it effectively to intimidate voters, to harass voters to kill voters and write results for the APC. ''Is that an allegation? Did you not see what happened in records available to us show that our candidate had won this election and that is why we had gone to court. ''APC has insisted, sponsored even demonstrated and sponsored some highly placed Nigerians, paid them handsomely to appeal to Atiku not to go to court. ''What is their business? Didnt their candidate in 2003, 2007 and 2011 go to court to challenge results? Did he ever congratulate those that were declared to have won those elections? Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that the All Progressives Congress (APC) was accused by Buba Galadima, a spokesperson for the Atiku Campaign Organisation, of using the military to intimidate voters and rig the 2019 elections. Galadima leveled the accusation on Wednesday, March 20, during an interview on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme. READ ALSO: Breaking: INEC fixes April to resume collation of results, announcement of winners in Rivers NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng Same great journalism, upgraded for better service! 2019 Election: Atiku may win and Buhari will be declared winner - on Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | Presidency reacts to speculations that TraderMoni scheme is no longer in operation - The federal government said contrary to speculations, TraderMoni scheme and other social investment programmes still very much in operation - Laolu Akande, a senior special assistant on media & publicity to the president, said a target of 30,000 minimum beneficiaries per state has been achieved since after the elections - Akande said with repayments, some have started collecting 2nd (improved) loans of N15, 000 The senior special assistant on media & publicity to the president (office of the vice president), Laolu Akande, has reacted to the speculations that TraderMoni scheme is no longer in operation. The TraderMoni scheme and other GEEP micro-credit products (MarketMoni and FarmerMoni) are components of the Buhari administrations Social Investment Programme. Akande said contrary to the speculations in some quarters, the TraderMoni scheme and other care still very much in operation. READ ALSO: APCs victory is a loss for the country - Saraki The presidential aide disclosed this in a progress report on the GEEP micro-credit products (TraderMoni, MarketMoni, and FarmerMoni). He said: So far, a target of 30,000 minimum beneficiaries per state has been achieved in majority of the 36 states and FCT since after the national and state polls." Akande added that "what the implementing agency has been doing since the last phase of disbursements is generating the balance of program funding while ramping up on the states with shortages." Consequently, disbursements have continued to happen in the states; for instance, we have had over 28,000 disbursements across 10 states since after the elections. Our priority is ramping up these numbers in the balance of states before we move to phase two of the program after detailed reviews and structural enhancements for larger scale. Under the Next Level agenda, Trader Moni loans will target ten million petty traders, a significant ramp up from the initial target of two million beneficiaries. The presidential aide said the Ministry for Industry, Trade and Investment is actively involved in the implementation of the scheme, adding that ministry is, in fact the oversighting Ministry of Bank of Industry, which is the deploying agency. The office of the minister executes the GEEP program via the Bank of Industry. The governance structure of GEEP includes the office of the Vice President (National Social Investment Office), The Ministry of Trade and Investment, and the Bank of Industry. Speaking on measures adopted to enhance repayments, the presidential aide said GEEP has pioneered innovative solutions to drive repayment compliance. Working with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and the Nigerian Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), we successfully piloted the concept of the BVN as digital collateral; and we saw repayment go up significantly on the MarketMoni and FarmerMoni loans. For TraderMoni, beneficiaries can pay back at any commercial bank in the country just like a NEPA or WAEC bill; all they need to provide the bank teller with is their phone number. We also developed and successfully piloted scratch cards as a repayment option for beneficiaries who stay kilometres away from the nearest banks in their community. The cards are loaded the same way Telco recharge cards are loaded, thus requiring no new learning curve. This improved repayment received compliance to the extent that in January, the Bank of Industry began second level disbursements - disbursements of N15,000 - to beneficiaries in Lagos, Borno, Ogun and Oyo states for trader who had successfully paid back their first N10,000 loans, Akande disclosed. According to him, GEEP's vision (in the long term) remains to empower the over 30 million MSMEs in Nigeria with interest-free, collateral-free loans. The GEEP programme, a component of the Buhari administrations Social Investment Programme (SIP), started about two years ago. Under the Trader Moni scheme, an initial N10,000 loan is given to petty traders and once they repay within six months, they can receive a new N15,000 loan and when they repay that they can get another N20,000 loan until they get as much as N100,000. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo dismissed repeated insinuations suggesting the TraderMoni scheme is a form of vote buying. Osinbajo said this in response to Odilim Enweagbara, an economist and entrepreneur, who insisted the scheme was to curry support from Nigerians for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) towards the 2019 general election. The vice president noted that the scheme was geared towards empowering over 30 million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) with interest-free, collateral-free loans. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng: Same great journalism, upgraded for better service! Vice President Yemi Osinbajo casts his vote, boasts of APC victory | Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General India's Reliance Industries, operator of the world's biggest refining complex, has turned to selling fuels to Venezuela from India and Europe to circumvent sanctions that bar US-based companies from dealing with state-run PDVSA, according to trading sources and Refinitiv Eikon data. Reliance had been supplying alkylate, diluent naphtha, and other fuel to Venezuela through its U.S.-based subsidiary before Washington in late January imposed sanctions aimed at curbing the OPEC member's oil exports and ousting Socialist President Nicolas Maduro. At least three vessels chartered by the Indian conglomerate supplied refined products to Venezuela in recent weeks, and another vessel carrying gasoil is expected to set sail to the South American nation as well, according to the sources and data. Reliance, an Indian conglomerate controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has significant exposure to the financial system of the United States, where it operates subsidiaries linked to its oil and telecom businesses, among others. The Indian market is crucial for Venezuela's economy because it has historically been the second-largest cash-paying customer for the OPEC country's crude, behind the United States. Additional sanctions against Venezuela are possible in the future, as U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has not yet tried to prevent companies based outside the United States from buying Venezuelan oil, a strategy known as "secondary sanctions." Refinitiv Eikon trade data shows that Reliance shipped alkylate, a component for motor gasoline, to Venezuela on vessels Torm Mary and Torm Anabel in recent weeks. Those originated in India and passed through the Suez Canal. Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries biggest gainer in market cap in FY19 It also shipped a gasoline cargo using tanker Torm Troilus to Venezuela and is preparing to send 35,000 tonnes of gasoil in a vessel called Vukovar to the South American nation. "Reliance is also supplying some products from its Rotterdam storage," a source familiar with Reliance's operation said. Reliance did not respond to emails seeking comment. PDVSA did not reply to a request for comment. In a statement last week, Reliance said its U.S. unit has completely stopped all business with PDVSA. Reliance also halted all supply of diluents including heavy naphtha to Venezuela and does not plan to resume such sales until sanctions are lifted, according to the release. Venezuela has overall imported some 160,000 barrels per day of fuel and diluents for its extra heavy oil output since the U.S. measures were imposed, according to PDVSA and Refinitiv data, below levels prior to the sanctions but still enough to supply gas stations and power plants. Reliance is among the biggest buyers of Venezuelan oil, although the company has recently said it has not increased crude purchases from Venezuela. In 2012, Reliance signed a 15-year deal to buy between 300,000 to 400,000 bpd of heavy crude from PDVSA. Ship tracking data obtained by Reuters showed that Reliance's average purchases from Venezuela were less than 300,000 bpd in 2018 and in the first two months of this year. Venezuela has suspended its oil exports to India, its main cash market, Azerbaijan's energy ministry said on Tuesday, citing Manuel Quevedo, Venezuela's oil minister and PDVSA president. Quevedo met with the Azeri minister of Industry and Energy Parviz Shahbazov in Baku. But Venezuela's crude exports to India have not stopped. A very large crude carrier (VLCC) is anchored off Venezuela's Jose port waiting to load oil bound for India, and at least six other vessels of the same size are underway to India's Sikka and Vadinar ports, according to the Refinitiv data. PDVSA's second largest customer in India is Nayara Energy, partially owned by Russian energy firm Rosneft, one of PDVSA's primary allies. Mukesh Ambani's brotherly gesture is a ray of hope for Anil Ambani Home | News | General | UPDATE: Ethiopian Airlines dismisses reports captain of crashed Ethiopian flight was not trained on 737 MAX simulator The Ethiopian Airlines has dismissed reports that the pilot of the Boeing 737 MAX that crashed on Sunday, March 10, killing all 157 people on board, was not trained on new simulator for the aircraft. Recall that a source, disclosed that the captain of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight did not practise on a new simulator for the Boeing 737 MAX 8 before the plane went down, killing everyone on board. According to Reuters, the pilot identified as Yared Getachew, was due for refresher training at the end of March. Legit.ng gathers that the Boeing 737 MAX, which is a narrow-body aircraft series, is designed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. READ ALSO: Off-duty pilot saved Lion Air 737 from crashing day before deadly crash in Indonesia It has a new automated system called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System). The feature is meant to prevent loss of lift which can cause an aerodynamic stall sending the plane downwards in an uncontrolled way. The source, who is also Ethiopian Airlines pilot, said: Boeing did not send manuals on MCAS. Actually we know more about the MCAS system from the media than from Boeing. In a tweet on its official Twitter page, the Ethiopian Airlines said: "Ethiopian Airlines said its pilot completed the Boeing recommended and FAA approved differences training from the B-737 NG aircraft to the B-737-8 MAX fleet to the Ethiopian operation and before they start flying the B-737-8 MAX." See tweet below: According to Boeing Commercial Airplanes, airlines were given guidance on how to respond to the activation of MCAS software. Legit.ng previously reported that Ethiopian Airlines flight en-route to Nairobi from Addis Ababa, went down with more than 140 passengers on board. The ill-fated aircraft crashed on the morning of Sunday, March 10, at around Bishoftu (Debre Zeit). Confirming the fatal accident, the Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, expressed their deepest condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives in the Sunday morning crash. A statement shared on the PM's official Twitter page read: "The Office of the PM, on behalf of the Government and people of Ethiopia, would like to express its deepest condolences to the families of those that have lost their loved ones on Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 on regular scheduled flight to Nairobi, Kenya this morning." In another previous report by Legit.ng, the Senate during its plenary on Tuesday, March 19, took some moments to mourn the two Nigerians who lost their lives in the Ethiopian Airlines crash. The motion to mourn the late nationals was moved by Senator Gbenga Ashafa of the All Progressives Congress (APC). PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app In his motion, Ashafa said: "Both Nigerians that lost their lives in this unfortunate air disaster, are individuals that have distinguished themselves in their fields and till their deaths remained worthy ambassadors of the country in the Diaspora." NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have updated to serve you better NAF buries pilot who died in Kaduna helicopter crash | Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | FG closes case against suspended CJN Walter Onnoghen - The federal government leaves out three witnesses as it closes its case against the suspended chief justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen - Aliyu Umar, counsel to the government, says the three witnesses left out could still be called to the stand if the defence wants to cross-examine them - However, Adeboyega Awomolo, counsel to Onnoghen, ruled out the possibility of calling the governments other three witnesses to the stand The federal government on Thursday, March 21, told the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) that it was closing its case against the suspended chief justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, after calling three witnesses to the stand. The government had had initially listed six witnesses in the case, but Aliyu Umar, counsel to the government told the tribunal that the other three witnesses could still be called to the stand if the defence wants to cross-examine them, The Cable reports. READ ALSO: Atiku releases his own state by state result of presidential election (Full Report) I have called three witnesses. If the defence needs them, I can call the other three, the lawyer said. But the CCT chairman, Danladi Umar overruled Aliyu Umar's statement. This is the case of the prosecution. If it feels that it is satisfied with evidence of the three witnesses, then so be it," the CCT Chairman held. In his response, Adeboyega Awomolo, counsel to Onnoghen, ruled out the possibility of calling the governments other three witnesses, saying: I dont want them, I dont want them. He then told the tribunal that he intends to file a no-case submission no case submission with respect to all the allegations federal government levelled against his client, but would need time to write an address. READ ALSO: CCT trial: Onnoghen owns only 5 houses, not 55 - Witness We intend to take advantage of section 303 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015 on no-case submission, he said. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app If your lordship permits me to write a written address. Im praying to be given proceedings of 18th and today. The CCT chairman, Danladi Umar, ordered Awomolo to serve his address on the prosecution and fixed March 29 as the day counsels would adopt their addresses. Meanwhile, the chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), Danladi Umar, has threatened to send journalists who distort facts from proceedings in the ongoing trial of suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria Walter Onnoghen, to jail. Umar who disclosed this on Thursday, March 21, was reacting to some newspaper headlines from proceedings on the last adjourned date, The Cable report The judge warned that he will not hesitate to deal decisively with any journalist distorting facts about the case. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better. Onnoghen's Trial is Politically Motivated - APRJ | Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | Armed bandits reportedly attack Zamfara mining site, kill policeman, abduct 4 of his colleagues - Gunmen reportedly attacked some policemen at a mining site in Zamfara state - The gunmen killed one mobile policeman and abducted four of his colleagues - The chairman of Anka local government area in Zamfara confirms the attack Some unidentified bandits have reportedly attacked a mining site in Anka local government area of Zamfara, killing one of the six mobile policemen on guard and abducting four of his colleagues. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that one of those who witnessed the incident, Salisu Lawali, said the bandits invaded the site situated in Sunke village. After shooting sporadically, they allegedly disarmed the policemen, killing one of them in the process. Lawali explained that the gunmen abducted the policemen to an unknown destination and released the following day without their guns. He said: I dont think there was any negotiation, because the abducted policemen just returned to the site unhurt, the only thing missing were their guns which they said were in the custody of their abductors. The chairman of Anka local government area, Alhaji Mustapha Gado, confirmed the attack saying that policemen were deployed to man the site. The divisional police officer of the local government told me that the officers were released but their rifles were still in the custody of the bandits. We have earlier ordered for the closure of all the goldmines, but the foreign expatriates can still be found because their machineries are stationed at the sites. We consulted the relevant authorities on the need to close down the sites and we got approval, we served them with quit notice but those operating the sites sourced for security operatives to man the sites for them, he added. The report said the police command in the state could not be reached for comments on the matter. Legit.ng earlier reported that Governor Abdulaziz Yari of Zamfara state on Tuesday, March 19, in Abuja raised alarm over stock piling of arms by bandits operating in the state. Yari made this known while speaking with State House correspondents after he had updated President Muhammadu Buhari on the socio-political and security developments in the state. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better. Lagos School Collapse: Pregnant woman, children among those affected - Residents | Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | Atiku has no reason to challenge result of presidential election in court - Sani-Bello - Governor Sani Bello of Niger state describes the 2019 presidential election as a free and fair contest - Bello says people urging Atiku to challenge outcome of the presidential election in court are doing so to get money from him - The governor notes that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and security agencies did very well during the elections Governor Sani Bello of Niger state has said the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar has no reason to challenge the result of the 2019 presidential election in court because the election was free and fair. Bello made the statement on Thursday, March 21, when speaking with reporters in Abuja shortly after he paid President Muhammadu Buhari a visit at the state house, The Nation report. The governor said the people urging Atiku to challenge outcome of the presidential election in court were doing so to get money from him. READ ALSO: FG closes case against Walter Onnoghen It could be that you think you won or it could be that someone is telling you that you have won or it could be that someone is telling you some miracles can happen," Bello said. It could also be that someone wants to get money off you. So there is no reason why after free and fair elections had been conducted and it is clear in the eyes of the world one still believes that there are shoddy dealings. Anyone who feels dissatisfied is free to approach a court of law. It is a free world. Everyone is entitled to his opinion. But honestly, from what I saw in Niger, this election has been the fairest election we have conducted so far. Bello said the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and security agencies did very well during the elections. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app I think INEC did extremely well, the security agencies did very well as well. It is not unusual when you hold elections in a country like Nigeria where you have so many units to have issues with one or two units," he said. If you look at the number of polling units, compare to the ones that have issues, probably, its less two or five percent. But generally, the elections went well. Meanwhile, the spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)'s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar campaign organisation, Buba Galadima, has alleged that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) sponsored and paid some highly placed Nigerians to beg Atiku not to challenge President Muhammadu Buhari's victory at the election petition tribunal. Galadima made the allegation while featuring on a Channels Television programme on Wednesday, March 20, saying that every Nigerian knew that the Saturday, February 23, presidential election was rigged by APC. Legit.ng gathered that the former APC chieftain said the ruling party used the military to intimidate people and rig the election. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng Same great journalism, upgraded for better service! 2019 Election: Atiku may win and Buhari will be declared winner - on Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | Just in: You lied against our anti-corruption war - EFCC hits back at the United States The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) late Thursday, March 21, hit back at the United States of America saying the country misled the public with false information about Nigerias anti-corruption war. In a lengthy statement it released with details of its activities so far, the EFCC said it had secured 943 convictions between 2015 and 2018 and recovered billions of naira as well as foreign currencies and properties. It lamented that the US department of bureau of democracy, human rights and labour had fed the public with misleading information and falsehood over its anti-graft fight as reported on March 17. Read the full statement below: The attention of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been drawn to a misleading report of the United States Department of Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour over Nigerias anti-graft war, published in ThisDay Newspaper of March 17, 2019 entitled: Nigeria: Massive, Pervasive Corruption At All Levels of Govt - US Report. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda The report, among other things, said that there is a climate of impunity in the President Muhammadu Buhari government that allows officials to engage in corrupt practices with a sense of exemption from punishment." The bureau, in its country reports on human rights practices for 2018, said Nigeria had made little progress in efforts to limit corruption in its public service. This report is not only outdated and false but misleading. The report is unfounded on the grounds of Nigeria's remarkable achievements in the last four years as the war against corruption is on course. The EFCCs commitment to the fight against corruption in the last four years is not in doubt to any discerning and genuinely concerned observer. This commitment is bench-marked by the unprecedented record of convictions, non-conviction based forfeiture and stolen assets recovery. We are surprised that the US report could ignore or downplay our convictions in such a brazen manner when it claimed that the EFCC secured only 13 convictions in 2016. That is false and far from the truth. Remarkable convictions For the avoidance of doubt, the EFCC has secured 943 convictions since 2015 till date. The agency recorded 103 convictions in 2015, secured 195 convictions in 2016, got 189 convictions in 2017. It is important to state that the EFCC secured 314 convictions in 2018 including two former state governors who were sentenced to 14 years imprisonment without option of fine. It is instructive to note that the two former governors serving their jail terms in prison are members of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC). The commission has so far recorded 142 convictions as at March 19, this year. These are verifiable facts. We wish to state unequivocally that these convictions being celebrated included high profile persons among who were top ranking military personnel and other politically exposed persons. It is instructive to state that no other agency in Africa has this record of convictions and recovery of stolen assets which were achieved in spite of great encumbrances faced by the commission in the discharge of its assignment as it has come to be known that when you fight corruption, corruption fights back. Assets recovery and forfeitures As a quick reminder, the Supreme Court of Nigeria had on Friday, March 8, 2019, in a unanimous judgement, dismissed the appeal of a former first lady and wife of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Patience, against the interim forfeiture order of a Federal High Court, Lagos, for $8, 400, 000 (eight million, four hundred dollars) traced to her by the EFCC and believed to be proceeds of illegal activities. Subsequently, on March 14, 2019, the Supreme Court dismissed another application by Mrs Jonathan, seeking to upturn the interim forfeiture order by a Federal High Court, Lagos placed on the sum of N2.4 billion linked to her. Also of interest is the fact that the former Chief of Defence Staff, the late Alex Badeh, forfeited six choice properties and $1, 000,000 (one million dollars) to the federal government, few days ago on the order of Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja. It could also be recalled that the EFCC on Friday, March 1, 2019, secured the final forfeiture of the sum N732.85 million being proceed of fraud perpetuated by 17 individuals in the Presidential Amnesty Programme Office. These are no rhetoric, but hard facts! We further wish to state that in the area of convictions, Air Vice Marshall Tony Omenyi (retd), was jailed by Justice Nnamdi Dimgba of a Federal High Court, Abuja, on Thursday, February 28, 2019. He was found guilty of the amended three-count charge brought against him by the EFCC and was sentenced to seven years imprisonment without an option of fine. Justice Dimgba, also ordered Huzee Nigeria Limited, a concern owned by Omenyi being a corporate entity to forfeit N60, 000, 000 (sixty million naira) to the federal government. Indeed, the EFCC has revolutionized the process of assets tracing and recovery. From the available records, the commission recovered assets worth several billions of naira and different foreign currencies between 2015 and 2017. Breakdown of the recoveries for the three year period (2015- 2017) show that N676, 522, 889, 647.05; $254, 563, 877.27; 486, 736.82 Pound; Euro 8, 136, 071.13; 80, 931, 500 CFA; 3, 729.50 RMB/YUAN; 452, 175 DIRHAM; 90, 956SR; 117, 004 CAD$; 120, 141.50 YEN; 5, 000Francs and 2, 000 Ruppies. In 2018 alone, various sums amounting to billions in Naira and other foreign currencies were also forfeited to the federal government through the unrelenting efforts of the EFCC. The sums are: N171, 131, 700, 541.17; $14, 490, 174.49; 873, 278. 09 pounds; 298, 055; 391, 838 and 10, 135 Dirham. These recoveries are unprecedented as no other agency can boast of such record. Judging by the dexterity with which the commission has prosecuted its cases from the high court to Court of Appeal up to the Supreme Court, the commission is by far the major contributor to case law and jurisprudence in Nigeria. The major law reports are replete with successfully concluded cases by the commission. Again, these facts are verifiable! Burden of proof now resides with defendant Until recently, the practice has been that the burden of proof in criminal prosecution resides with the prosecution. But that was overturned in FRN v. YAHAYA which was decided on January 25, 2019. SC.645/2014. This was a case in which the Supreme Court upheld the argument of the EFCC that the burden of proof had now been shifted from the prosecution to the defendant in terms of ill gotten wealth. The apex court further held that the defendant would have to show that his income was in tandem with what he acquired otherwise such ill gotten wealth and properties would be forfeited to the federal government. This is a landmark decision with potential to improve the fight against corruption in Nigeria. It is regrettable that this feat failed to impress the United States Departments Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour. Worrisome report with inaccuracies Indeed, the US report's portrayal of the work of the EFCC which is replete with inaccurate information is worrisome considering the close relationship between the commission and some US entities. Agencies of the US government, especially the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), US Securities and exchange commission, Post and Telecommunications Department and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) have very strong collaboration with the EFCC in the delicate task of tracing and seizing assets stolen but stashed abroad by rogue Nigerian officials. We also have FBI agent domiciled in the EFCC. Even as many of those assets are still stashed in US financial and property markets, these US agencies are familiar with the determination and passion with which the commission is going about the fight against corruption. 10 different countries seek mutual legal assistance from EFCC Unfortunately, the US report does not reflect this deep knowledge of the EFCC and its work, which is enough reason to be suspicious about the motives behind the publication. To underscore the important role which EFCC is playing in the fight against economic and financial crimes, no fewer than 10 countries on Monday, March 18, 2019, requested for Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) with the commission. This is unprecedented in the history of any agency in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular. Malabus case The prowess of the EFCCs investigative power is worthy of note in the celebrated Malabus case. The historic trial of prominent major oil companies - Shell and ENI in Milan, Italy by the public prosecutor was made possible by the political will of President Muhammadu Buhari and dexterity of the EFCC. The comprehensive investigation of the commission and evidence generated in prosecuting the corrupt deal formed part of documents used in prosecuting the criminal aspects of the notorious deal by the Milan prosecutor. The EFCC recorded another first in Africa with its prosecutor appearing in the Milan trial as a witness, the first of such to happen in Italian prosecution. Some individuals including an Italian, Gianlura Di Nardo and a Nigerian, Emeka Obi, were last year convicted in the matter while the Dutch prosecutor just recently notified Shell of his readiness to prosecute the oil giant over the controversial deal. US report, a disservice to EFCC From the foregoing, it is clear that the report authored by the American agency has done a great disservice to the work of the EFCC in particular and the fight against corruption under the leadership of President Buhari, an administration that is globally acknowledged for the enormous political will it has brought to the fight against corruption in Nigeria. We are conscious of our past with previous government officials involvement in corrupt practices with impunity but that history is being re-written by this government and the commission. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app The rest of Africa appreciate the administrations work in terms of fighting corruption in Nigeria which was the impetus behind the designation of President Buhari as the anti-corruption champion early last year by the African Union (AU). In that capacity, President Buhari is saddled with the responsibility of leading the rest of Africa out of the corruption quagmire. At the level of the EFCC, the acting chairman of the commission, Mr Ibrahim Magu, attained the leadership of the Heads of Anti- Corruption Agencies in Commonwealth Africa (HACACA) in May 2018. This was based on his antecedents and acknowledged track records in the fight against corruption. There can be no greater validation of the revolutionary impact of the fight against corruption in Nigeria in the last four years than these milestones achievements. But for those who cannot see any good in what Nigeria is doing, it is better to leave the country alone than distract it with bogus reports. Legit.ng earlier reported how Ibrahim Magu called for concerted efforts to combat illegal oil bunkering and theft in the south-south by applying stiffer penalties. EFCC spokesman, Tony Orilade, said in statement on Wednesday, March 20 that Magu stated this when he visited the commander, Nigeria Navy Ship Pathfinder (NNS Pathfinder) Cmdr S. Bura in Port Harcourt. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better. Angry Nigerian says he needs Atiku to become president and sell the country| Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | Breaking: Buharis finance minister gets foreign appointment Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed, the finance minister of Nigeria, was on Thursday, March 21, appointed by the Africa Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as the chairperson of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of its peace fund. This Day reports that the board is made of five members drawn from each region of the continent. The board also has non-African members (United Nations and European Union) as international partners. According to the report, the finance minister represents the Western African sub-region on the board. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda The report quoted a statement by the special adviser to the minister on media and communications, Paul Ella Abechi, as saying Ahmed expressed appreciation and commitment towards achieving the agenda of the special fund. Accordingly, it was learnt that the protocol relating to the African Union Peace and Security Council (PSC) provides for the establishment of a special fund to be known as the peace fund. This fund comes with the objective of providing the necessary financial resources for peace support missions and other operational activities related to it in Africa. According to the report, the peace fund is meant for the prevention and management of conflicts, and the promotion of peace in Africa. It also said the board of trustees was established by the assembly of the union in July 2016, to ensure strategic coherence, enhanced governance, financial and administrative oversight of the peace fund. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Legit.ng earlier reported that Zainab Ahmed, in September 2018, assumed duty 72 hours after President Muhammadu Buhari picked her to oversee the ministry following the resignation of Kemi Adeosun on, September 14. Until her appointment, Ahmed was the minister of state, budget and national planning. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better. Nigerians set 2nd term agenda for President Buhari | Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | Fertility doctor sires 48 children after using own gametes to impregnate women A rogue doctor from the US has been accused of using his sperm to sire 48 kids instead of using specimen provided by donors. Dr Donald Cline, a fertility specialist, artificially inseminated women with his gametes repeatedly without notifying any of them. According to DailyMail, 33-year-old Heather Woock, who happens to be one of the doctors illegitimate children, found out the identity of her real dad after reading a report by The Atlantic. READ ALSO: Personal letter from the Editor-in-Chief of Legit.ng (former NAIJ.com) 33-year-old Heather Woock, who happens to be one of the doctors illegitimate children, found out the identity of her real dad after reading a report by The Atlantic. Photo: Heather Woock READ ALSO: 5-year-old girl named 'most beautiful in the world' becomes international model According to Heather, a stranger constantly contacted her claiming they were siblings but she refused to believe anything she heard. A rogue doctor from the US has been accused of using his sperm to sire 48 kids instead of using specimen provided by donors. Photo: The Atlantic PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News on Legit.ng News App What raised an alarm was when the lady's alleged sibling mentioned the name of Cline who happened to be the fertility doctor Heather's mum saw when she wanted to get pregnant. Heather's folks were in the dark on who donated sperm for insemination back when they were trying to get a baby. The doctor's daughter had earlier taken a DNA test and sent it to Ancestry.com, a website that helps determine people's genealogy, in a bid to discover her real father. PAY ATTENTION: Get the hottest gist on Africa Love Aid Her half siblings who were also a product of Cline's antics then used the results of Heather's test to track her down via Facebook after which most of them tried to contact her. Now, the Cline flock keep tabs on each other through a Facebook group as they brace themselves to discover more of their siblings during the holiday seasons. HELLO! NAIJ.com (naija.ng) upgrades to Legit.ng We keep evolving to serve our readers better. Meanwhile, In a video that recently surfaced online, two female thieves were sighted stealing from a kiddies boutique while using a baby as a means of guise. Top 3 Worst Blunders In Africa | Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | News | General | Just in: Former senate president writes open letter to Donald Trump over US report on Nigeria Editor's note: A former president of the Senate has written an open letter to the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump. Ameh Ebute in this piece said he believes that certain assumptions as contained in the "2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" on Nigeria did not reflect the reality in our country under the President Muhammadu Buhari's administration. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Legit.ng. Your own opinion articles are welcome at info@corp.legit.ng drop an email telling us what you want to write about and why. More details in Legit.ngs step-by-step guide for guest contributors. Contact us if you have any feedback, suggestions, complaints or compliments. We are also available on Twitter. Read the open letter to President Trump from Ameh Ebute below: March 20, 2019 His Excellency, President Donald Trump, The President, United States of America, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20500. Your Excellency, Sir, Time To Break off The Disintegration Of Nigeria: An Open Letter. Permit me to extend special compliments to you; the Government and people of the United States of America (USA) in the spirit of the Christian season of Lent. I am encouraged as an elder citizen and leader in Nigeria to write you this open letter in order to correct certain erroneous impressions and strengthen the records on the punchy assault on the human rights direction of the incumbent leadership of the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) under President Muhammadu Buhari, and the Nigerian Military, especially the Nigerian Army. My motivation for this open epistle is energized by a report recently released through the US Department of State titled, 2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. In the report, the American Government accused the FGN and state agents, particularly, the Nigerian Army of arbitrary and unlawful killings and an array of other sundry crimes bothering on human rights violations allegedly perpetrated in our country in the year under review. First, let me commend the friendly interest of the US Government in the affairs of Nigeria. It is a demonstration of the finest pursuit of the global agenda of upholding human dignity, peace, unity and security of nations of the world. I dare say, Nigeria relishes the good and smooth diplomatic ties with America in the last few years and believe it will further deepen in the years ahead. I accept in totality that the US 2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, is one of the many ways the American Government keeps independent nations around the world on their toes, foster global communism, respect for human dignity and the fundamental human rights of all races of the world. READ ALSO: Breaking: INEC fixes April to resume collation of results, announcement of winners in Rivers However, I believe certain assumptions as contained in the report on Nigeria, which hinged on human rights violations by the Nigerian Army did not reflect the reality in our country under the Buhari Presidency. We must first acknowledge that Nigeria is facing one of its toughest times in history, since independence. With an array of threatening insecurity issues ranging from Boko Haram terrorism to other insurrectional uprisings and near senseless agitations, our country has been on the cliffhanger to say the least. It is glaring to all Nigerians that the veiled and open plots to destabilize Nigeria and possibly cause its disintegration spearheaded by internal actors is actively backed by foreign forces. The gang-up against Nigeria to cause its break-up is strong, thick, scary and penetrative, as reflected in the barrage of existing and emerging insecurity threats across the country. Our military, especially the Nigerian Army are overstretched in efforts to contain the pervading terrorism and insurrections. But the Nigerian Army under the able leadership of the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Lieutenant General Tukur Yusufu Buratai, who also doubles as the leader of the counter-insurgency operations in Nigeria have been the saving grace and they have never flinched. It is needless to chronicle the steadfastness and sacrifices the Army as an institution and our soldiers have made in the last three years to anchor the relative peace and security we savour today in the country. We are proud of them for repressing our foes. We owe them a debt of gratitude; Nigerian soldiers deserve our collective applause for the wonderful outings, especially against Boko Haram insurgency. However, external enemies of Nigeria in league with devious internal allies are saddened by the unbreakable patriotism, loyalty and commitment of our troops to the cause of the emancipation of Nigeria, by mounting an effective, impenetrable and strong bulwark against these dark agents of destabilization and break-up of Nigeria. Therefore, it is common knowledge that they have conspired to break the resolve of the Nigerian Army in winning the war against terror and insurrections. They have deployed various antics, including, but not restricted to false accusations of the Army on human rights violations, smear campaigns and outright vilification of the institution of the Nigerian Army to dampen the fighting spirit of soldiers and weaken their morale. But these gimmicks have failed to post the results the detractors expect. A portion of the US report interested me; It said, There were several reports the government or its agents committed arbitrary and unlawful killings. The national police, army, and other security services used lethal and excessive force to disperse protesters and apprehend criminals and suspects and committed other extrajudicial killings. But this is not factual and indeed, inaccurate as it concerns the Nigerian Army. READ ALSO: Atiku releases his own state by state result of presidential election (Full Report) The Nigerian Army under the leadership of General Buratai has always held itself accountable to the people and government of Nigeria. In all operations of soldiers, especially in the Northeast, the Army leadership has always ensured compliance with international best practices in observing human rights obligations and rules of engagement. Your Excellency, it may interest you to know that the Nigerian Army under the leadership of Gen. Buratai has set up the Human Rights Desk in Army Headquarters, Abuja. It is the first of its kind since the establishment of the Nigerian Army. And its mandate is to pry into cases of alleged human rights violations of Nigerians by Army personnel. The Human Rights Desk is replicated in all Army Divisions in the country for ease of access. An Army leadership with such disposition cannot be adjudged as courting human rights abuses. And truly, no innocent Nigerian citizen has been killed by either the military or any other security agencies without the appropriate sanctions. And for the first time since the inception of the Nigerian Army, court summons are served soldiers by aggrieved litigants and the Army appears in court to defend allegations against their personnel. It is a remarkable departure from the tradition of the past, known to us, when soldiers were untouchable or never submitted themselves to lawful institutions for public trial. When Amnesty International (AI) released its 2017 report on human rights abuses titled, Stars on their shoulder, blood on their hands, in which they elaborately accused soldiers fighting insurgency in the Northeast of various human rights abuses, the first reaction of the Army was to set up a Military Panel of inquiry to ascertain the veracity of the claims and possibly punish culprits. Furthermore, the Presidency also constituted a Presidential Panel of Inquiry to probe the same allegations and or, review compliance of the armed forces with human rights obligations and rules of engagement. It was chaired by a distinguished jurist, Justice Biobele A. Georgewill. I attended one of the sittings of the panel in Abuja, I found it strange, the discovery that Amnesty Internationals published the report on alleged rights abuses against soldiers in the Nigerias northeast without visiting Maiduiguri, the epicenter of the reported human rights violations. Notwithstanding, the appalling reality, the Presidential Panel submitted its report in 2018. It is still being processed by the relevant authorities and a white paper would soon be issued. I believe based on the disposition of Mr. President, no one found guilty or complicit in the alleged crimes against humanity will be spared. The Buhari Presidency has zero tolerance for impunity and corruption, which shielding the probe panels report would amount to a self-indictment of his administration which has earned the trust and confidence of Nigerians on confronting these malaises. I have no doubt that President Buhari has placed the security of lives and property of Nigeria paramount on his list of priorities and monitors security agents over rights abuses of Nigerians. And despite the overwhelming presence of soldiers drafted to assist civil security in virtually all the 36 states of the federation, there are fewer reported cases of human rights violations or undignified treatment of civilians by soldiers on special assignments. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android and read best news on Nigerias #1 news app And Nigerians can testify to several instances where the Army leadership penalized soldiers found to have indulged in professional misconducts and human rights abuses of Nigerians. Sir, it is my firm conviction that the contents of the US Department of State titled, 2018 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, are misplaced. I believe strongly that the researchers were misled into crafting the report based on speculative assumptions to erode the credibility of the FGN, the Nigerian Army and other security agencies. I submit that the contents were not fair, truthful and completely in dissonance with the reality in Nigeria. I urge the US Government to investigate the researchers who packaged the report and apply appropriate sanctions on them for official ineptitude as advertised by the poor job. Thank You for your kind audience. And may God bless the United States of America. Yours Sincerely Senator Ameh Ebute, Former President of the Senate, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Abuja NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better. INEC announces Buhari as 2019 election winner, Nigerians react | Legit TV [embedded content] CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: General Home | World | Africa | Climate change: Africa confronts global warming New IPCC report projects greater temperature increases in the region than elsewhere Record global greenhouse gas emissions are putting the world on a path toward unacceptable warming, with serious implications for development prospects in Africa. "Limiting warming to 1.5 C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics, but doing so would require unprecedented changes," said Jim Skea, cochair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group III. But IPCC, the world's foremost authority for assessing the science of climate change, says it is still possible to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 Cif, and only if, there are "rapid and far-reaching transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities." For sub-Saharan Africa, which has experienced more frequent and more intense climate extremes over the past decades, the ramifications of the world's warming by more than 1.5 C would be profound. Temperature increases in the region are projected to be higher than the global mean temperature increase; regions in Africa within 15 degrees of the equator are projected to experience an increase in hot nights as well as longer and more frequent heat waves. The odds are long but not impossible, says the IPCC. And the benefits of limiting climate change to 1.5 C are enormous, with the report detailing the difference in the consequences between a 1.5 C increase and a 2 C increase. Every bit of additional warming adds greater risks for Africa in the form of greater droughts, more heat waves and more potential crop failures. Recognizing the increasing threat of climate change, many countries came together in 2015 to adopt the historic Paris Agreement, committing themselves to limiting climate change to well below 2 C. Some 184 countries have formally joined the agreement, including almost every African nation, with only Angola, Eritrea and South Sudan yet to join. The agreement entered into force in November 2016. In December 2018 countries met in Katowice, Poland, for the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) - known as COP24 - to finalise the rules for implementation of the agreement's work programme. As part of the Paris Agreement, countries made national commitments to take steps to reduce emissions and build resilience. The treaty also called for increased financial support from developed countries to assist the climate action efforts of developing countries. But even at the time that the Paris Agreement was adopted, it was recognized that the commitments on the table would not be enough. Even if the countries did everything they promised, global temperatures would rise by 3 C this century. According to the IPCC, projections show that the western Sahel region will experience the strongest drying, with a significant increase in the maximum length of dry spells. The IPCC expects Central Africa to see a decrease in the length of wet spells and a slight increase in heavy rainfall. West Africa has been identified as a climate-change hotspot, with climate change likely to lessen crop yields and production, with resultant impacts on food security. Southern Africa will also be affected. The western part of Southern Africa is set to become drier, with increasing drought frequency and number of heat waves toward the end of the 21st century. A warming world will have implications for precipitation. At 1.5 C, less rain would fall over the Limpopo basin and areas of the Zambezi basin in Zambia, as well as parts of Western Cape in South Africa. But at 2 C, Southern Africa is projected to face a decrease in precipitation of about 20% and increases in the number of consecutive dry days in Namibia, Botswana, northern Zimbabwe and southern Zambia. This will cause reductions in the volume of the Zambezi basin projected at 5% to 10%. If the global mean temperature reaches 2 C of global warming, it will cause significant changes in the occurrence and intensity of temperature extremes in all sub-Saharan regions. West and Central Africa will see particularly large increases in the number of hot days at both 1.5 C and 2 C. Over Southern Africa, temperatures are expected to rise faster at 2 C, and areas of the southwestern region, especially in South Africa and parts of Namibia and Botswana, are expected to experience the greatest increases in temperature. Perhaps no region in the world has been affected as much as the Sahel, which is experiencing rapid population growth, estimated at 2.8% per year, in an environment of shrinking natural resources, including land and water resources. Inga Rhonda King, president of the UN Economic and Social Council, a UN principal organ that coordinates the economic and social work of UN agencies, told a special meeting at the UN that the region is also one of the most environmentally degraded in the world, with temperature increases projected to be 1.5 times higher than in the rest of the world. Largely dependent on rain-fed agriculture, the Sahel is regularly hit by droughts and floods, with enormous consequences to people's food security. As a result of armed conflict, violence and military operations, some 4.9 million people have been displaced this year, a threefold increase in less than three years, while 24 million people require humanitarian assistance throughout the region. Climate change is already considered a threat multiplier, exacerbating existing problems, including conflicts. Ibrahim Thiaw, special adviser of the UN secretary-general for the Sahel, says the Sahel region is particularly vulnerable to climate change, with 300 million people affected. Drought, desertification and scarcity of resources have led to heightened conflicts between crop farmers and cattle herders, and weak governance has led to social breakdowns, says Mr. Thiaw. The shrinking of Lake Chad is leading to economic marginalization and providing a breeding ground for recruitment by terrorist groups as social values and moral authority evaporate. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM: Africa Emerging unverified reports of corrupt people who are said to be 'helping' themselves with the donations towards relief efforts for Cyclone Idai victims in Manicaland and Masvingo provinces cannot go unchallenged as it goes against the spirit ubuntu/hunhu. It doesn't matter which political party you belong to or social standing in society, this kind of behaviour is despicable and should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves. Zimbabweans from all corners of the country presented a united front to render assistance to stricken villagers following a deadly storm that engulfed Chimanimani and some parts of Masvingo. People rallied together to fundraise and donate various goods such as blankets, food stuffs, water, clothing, mattresses, medicine, cooking utensils and cash donations to help the victims. Various friendly countries such as United Arab Emirates, China, South Africa, Botswana and Tanzania, among others also responded positively, providing humanitarian emergency aid in this time of need. It is against this good gesture that some unscrupulous people are said to be plotting to reap where they did not sow.' If the reports of some individuals in the distribution chain diverting some of the donations intended for the disaster victims are true, then this shameful behaviour is unacceptable and must stop forthwith. Any would be offender that will be possessed by this diabolic spirit should take heed of President Mnangagwa's strong warning that he would not spare anyone who will be caught trying to divert the donations meant for the disaster victims. Speaking on arrival in Manicaland Province on Tuesday to spearhead rescue and relief efforts in communities ravaged by Cyclone Idai, President Mnangagwa warned, "materials have been donated all over and we have agreed on how these materials will be distributed and we satisfy ourselves that they have reached the intended beneficiaries. I will not spare anyone who wants to take advantage of the situation and be corrupt. I have no doubt that all of us who have contributed want to see them reach the communities." Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Permanent Secretary, Mr Ndavaningi Mangwana echoed the similar sentiments saying "donations should reach intended beneficiaries, government will account so should private organisations." In May 2014, victims of the Tugwi-Mukosi Dam floods in Masvingo made sensational claims that the vanquished G40 member and former provincial affairs minister Kudakwashe Bhasikiti and other top government officials looted donated goods, diverting them to their private businesses that were dotted around that province. It is against this background that Government should implement robust measures to curtail any form of pilferage and embezzlement of donated funds. So far, Government through the District Administrator's office must be applauded for introducing a well-co-ordinated and centralised system for donations as this ensures accountability and transparency. I urge that every delivery to that office should demand a receipt of acknowledgement of the donations. In as much as some of our innovative and tech savvy people put forward their personal Ecocash platform numbers to solicit for cash donations, I challenge everyone who collected the cash donations on behalf of the victims to do the right thing. These individuals should make sure they forward the collected funds to the responsible authorities for onward transfers to the intended beneficiaries. Fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, arrested by Scotland Yard on behalf of the Indian authorities, will be held at a prison in south-west London considered one of England's most overcrowded jails. The 48-year-old, who appeared in the dock at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London on Wednesday in a sombre white shirt and trousers, was taken to Her Majesty's Prison (HMP) Wandsworth after he was remanded in custody until March 29 by District Judge Marie Mallon. While in custody and until the first hearing in his extradition case next week, Modi is likely to be held in a separate cell but may also have to share a cell with other prisoners given the overcrowding pressures. Modi, who was living in a plush apartment in Centre Point in the West End until his arrest on Tuesday, was sent to prison on the eve of Holi. In the prison in south London, Modi's inmates will include the likes of alleged Dawood henchman Pakistani-origin Jabir Moti, currently undergoing extradition proceedings to the US. HMP Wandsworth is classed as a Category B prison, where criminals are held if not deemed to be of a high level of security risk. According to a March 2018 inspection report by the UK's Chief Inspector of Prisons, it holds 1,428 men and remains "one of the most overcrowded prisons in England and Wales. Nirav Modi denied bail by UK court, to remain in custody till March 29 "There were too many prisoners, many with drug-related or mental health issues, and with not enough to do, noted the inspection report. Cells designed for one prisoner were occupied by two, with poorly screened lavatories and the prisoners confined in them for far too long each day In common with many other prisons of this type, prisoners at Wandsworth had far too little time out of their cells," the report added. The Wandsworth Prison building was originally built in 1851 and the UK Justice Department claims that extensive refurbishment and modernisation of the wings, including in-cell sanitation, privacy screens for cells occupied by more than one prisoner and installation of in-cell electricity, have taken place since 1989. Modi will be lodged at the prison until he appears for his first case management hearing on March 29, which is expected to be presided over by Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot the same judge who ordered the extradition of former Kingfisher Airlines boss Vijay Mallya to India last December. That case is now in the High Court as part of Mallya's application seeking leave to appeal against Arbuthnot's ruling. Modi was arrested from a Metro Bank branch in London by uniformed officers Tuesday, when he went there to open a new bank account. He and his uncle, Mehul Choksi, are the main accused in the PNB scam and they both left India before the details of the fraud came to light in January 2018. Modi is one of India's richest men, worth an estimated USD 1.75 billion, according to Forbes. He launched his own eponymous brand in 2010 and he soon had stores across India, as well as in New York, London and Hong Kong. Modi arrested: What's the legal process ahead for extradition? PNB fraud case: ED gets permission to sell 173 paintings, auction 11 cars of Nirav Modi Dear Newsie Readers, Newsie has now permanently ceased it's services as of Friday 20th December 2019. Newsie has been an owner-funded operation since day one. Coming up to three years old, while we still firmly believe Newsie has a place in the New Zealand media landscape, the cost in both time and money has become too burdensome for the owners to continue alongside other ventures. With the current government looking to restructure public broadcasting, and seemingly supporting NZME buying a ring-fenced Stuff, the time seems right to call it a day. Should it happen, the combination of NZME and Stuff will ensure New Zealands national media will die a death by a thousand opinion-based articles. Newsie has always tried to stick to balanced news, to inform readers of the facts of a situation, amid being largely ignored by government. Hopefully, one day someone else will take up the challenge to fight the good fight. The good news, however, is that there were no job losses as a result of Newsie closing. Thanks to careful structuring, everyone involved in Newsie will retain their current positions. We hope you all have a happy Christmas and new year. Stay safe, and stay out of the news. The team at Newsie Scientists One, Superbug Zero Personal Quest Resurrects Phage Therapy in Infection Fight Photo: Marleen Van Den Neste At one life-or-death moment, Dr. Tom Patterson was a snake. In November 2015, he and wife Dr. Steffanie Strathdee were merely two scientists on holiday. The couple had been vacationing on a cruise in Egypt. After a day of pyramid probing and an evening meal aboard ship, Patterson fell ill. Food poisoning, he surmised. A dose of routine antibiotics, they thought, and hed be shipshape by morning. Only he wasnt. Sicker and sicker he grew, as symptom after symptom occurred. Vomiting, abdominal pain, then a back ache. He was diagnosed with gallstone pancreatitis, but that was the least of their problems. That he had some kind of serious infection eventually became clear, but precisely what was wrongand how to fix itremained a mystery that would confound physicians and scientists, and inevitably force Patterson to make medical history. At Lister Hill Auditorium on Mar. 1 to discuss their harrowing adventure, the erstwhile touristsshe, associate dean of global health sciences at the University of California, San Diego, and he, psychiatry professor in residence there, and both current NIH granteesare on a mission now, some 3 years after facing down a deadly superbug. Now completely recovered, Patterson and Strathdee feel compelled to tell how they wonwith considerable help from the global village of scientists via social media and PubMed, the online collection of 29 million biomedical literature citations. We decided that we needed to tell our story because total strangers stepped up to help us, said Strathdee, and we want to pay it forward. Wrong Valley Strathdee and Patterson were supposed to be exploring the Valley of the Kings, the burial grounds of pharaohs, along the Nile in Luxor. Instead, he was skirting the valley of the shadow of death, and she was scrambling for answers, courtesy of something no one could seem to pinpoint. Photo: Marleen Van Den Neste Days turned into weeks; weeks became months. Doctors had exhausted all antibiotic treatment options and Patterson was dying, comatose with organs failing. At hospital bedside, Strathdee knew time was short. He was too weak to take much more. With his life in the balance, she wondered, could she even get through to him for the ultimate decision? Honey I know youre trying very hard to fight this thing, she said to him. The doctors dont have any antibiotics left and I need to know if you want to live. If you want to let go, Ill understand, but I want to grow old with you. I love you very much. So if you want to live, please squeeze my hand and I will leave no stone unturned. Patterson heard her through his addled mind but understood. However, amid all his medical issues, he was also dealing with a practical problem, one of evolution and anatomy. I was actually a snake, he recalled, describing one of several particularly vivid hallucinations he endured throughout his health crisis. I mean in my mind, what you need to understand is this isnt like, I kind of remember being a snake. In my memory there is this place where I was a snake. So when Steff asked me to squeeze her hand if I wanted to live, it was a challenge because snakes dont have hands. I had to figure out how to wrap my body around her hand and squeeze, and I didnt know my own strength as a snake, so I squeezed too hard. By the Numbers Six bacterial pathogens make up the so-called ESKAPE superbugs that can resist most commonly used antibiotics. Each letter in the acronym stands for a deadly organism; Pattersons foe proved to be a strain of the AAcinetobacter baumannii. The hardy bacteria, known to thrive in hospitals, can survive multiple temperatures, conditions and environments. It had taken two medevacs via Lear jets and 7 ambulances over 3 continents and several countries to get Patterson back home to San Diego. Still, familiar surroundings hadnt presented a cure. Photo: Marleen Van Den Neste Countless championsand myriad fortuitous circumstancesfactored into Strathdees quest to save her husband. Thats partially why the couple documented their story in their new book, The Perfect Predator, and why theyre heralding the international scientific community at large. If it wasnt for PubMed, our university hospital at UC San Diego and a global village of researchers from around the worldlike Dr. Chip Schooley and other renowned NIH-funded researchershe would be dead and I would be holding an urn instead of his hand. Strathdee had rejoiced when she felt Pattersons clasp, which meant he wanted to continue the battle. It also meant she had to deliver on what seemed an impossibly complex and circuitous search for something to arrest the infection that was by then throughout Pattersons body. About a century and 3 decadesrespectively, thats the period since Western medicine has seriously considered using bacteriophage (phage for short) to eat infections like Pattersons, and the time that has elapsed since Strathdee was a microbiology undergrad familiar with this field of science. Search Every Sewer? The rise and success of antibiotics relegated phage therapy research to the back burners of science, particularly in the U.S. Phages are notoriously finicky and ESKAPE infections are just as fussy. For this last-ditch therapy to work, bacteria eater would have to be precisely matched to superbug. Photo: Marleen Van Den Neste Also, speaking of ditches, where does one look for organisms that feast on bacteria? Yep, the sewer is home to both culprit and cure. Fortunately for Patterson, several research labs studying the pathogens have assembled libraries of sample phages. The phage would also have to be purified before being infused to Patterson. So now it was up to me, Strathdee said. How am I going to find phages that are going to match Toms organism? And the reading I did showed that theres 10 to the power of 31 phages on the planetthats 10 million trillion trillion phages. I was so overwhelmed by this. I thought its worse than a needle in a haystack. She did what anyone else might do in a desperate medical dilemma: She Googled. She also enlisted all her scientist contacts in the phage hunt. She posted pleas to social media, complete with images of Patterson bedridden in a coma. She called in every favor and was gratified by the response of folks who didnt know her or her husband. Phage experts from around the globe took up the challenge. The Navy Medical Research Center in Frederick, Md., also joined the hunt along with phage researchers from Texas A&M University. I realized that my husband was becoming somewhat of a poster child for this dystopian future of the superbug crisis, Strathdee quipped. In March 2016, Patterson became the first person in the U.S. to receive intravenous phage therapy for a systemic multidrug-resistant infection. He awoke from the coma 3 days later. In all, he survived 7 cases of septic shock, untold organ system shutdowns and dozens of hallucinations over 9 months. He was lucky, but so many more people are not, Strathdee pointed out. Opportunities, Moving Forward In addition to an enormous sense of gratitude toward their large network of colleagues and the wide range of information and other resources made available to them in record time, the couple has a public health message. 1.5 million people are dying every year globally due to superbugs, she noted, and thats estimated to grow to 10 million a year, or 1 person every 3 seconds by the year 2050unless urgent action is taken. And a lot of our governments are actually doing the wrong thing and promoting policies that are misusing and overusing antibiotics, especially in livestock and agriculture. The couples ordeal also presented opportunities for future scientific research, particularly in the areas of global health, alternative therapies and precision medicine. In fact, Strathdee and one of the scientists who helped battle the bacteria, Schooley, launched and now codirect a Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics at UCSD, the first dedicated phage therapy center in North America. Theyre hoping to launch two clinical trials in 2019. Photo: Marleen Van Den Neste Scientists are often very removed from the public. We see ourselves as NIH-funded researchers who are supported with taxpayer dollars, Strathdee concluded. We feel its our obligation to share our story with the public so that people can see that scientists are peopleWe want to make this kind of research accessibleThrough our book, we hope that well be able to take this story globally and make a difference in the global superbug crisis. There is a growing interest in reducing the working week usually expressed as a four-day week. Numerous ad hoc examples of private and public sector companies and agencies appear in the media while, here in Ireland, Forsa recently held a conference dedicated to reducing the working week. The arguments for a shorter working week range from greater work/life balance, productivity, stress reduction, preparing for the impact of automation, etc. As part of that debate below is some information on how many hours per year people work in Ireland in comparison with our EU peer group (other high-income economies). This data focuses on full-time employees but it should be noted that full-time is defined as approximately 30 hours by the CSO with possible different definitions in other countries. Further, this looks at the private sector as this is where the introduction of a shorter working week on the same rate of pay will be the most challenging. The Private Sector Economy Irish employees work more hours than most other peer group countries. The UK and the Netherlands report higher annual working hours. The Netherlands is an interesting case. It has the highest level of part-time workers with 50 percent of all employees working part-time compared to an average of less than 25 percent in other countries. Annual working hours can be reduced in many ways not just a though a shorter working week. For instance, public holidays, statutory annual holidays and additional holiday hours resulting from collective agreements in the workplace can reduce annual hours worked. In total, Irish employees work the equivalent of 2.7 weeks more than our peer-group average, assuming a basic 39-hour working week (the UK is not included in our EU peer group for obvious reasons; Eurostat is already removing the UK from EU averages). We dont work the most, but we work more than most in our peer group. Working Hours by Sector The following looks at sectoral breakdowns. Lets start with the high working-hour sectors. Irish construction employees work more hours than any other sector, and 15 percent more than our peer group average - 248 hours annually, or the equivalent of 6.4 weeks more per year. A possible contributor to this high level of working could be the emerging labour shortage in the sector. Irish manufacturing employees work 11 percent more than our peer group 175 hours annually, or the equivalent of 4.5 weeks more per year. Turning to medium-high working-hour sectors we find the following. Irish transport employees work 8 percent more than our peer group 132 hours annually, or the equivalent of 3.4 weeks more per year. Irish wholesale/retail employees work 6 percent more than our peer group 106 hours annually, or the equivalent of 2.7 weeks more per year. Irish communication and information employees work 2 percent more than our peer group 37 hours annually, or the equivalent of nearly one week per year. Irish financial services employees work 5 percent more than our peer group 76 hours annually, or the equivalent of nearly two weeks per year. Finally, lets look at relatively low working-hour sectors. Irish professional and technical employees work 1 percent more than our peer group 11 hours annually, or the equivalent of less than two days per year. Irish administrative service employees work marginally less than our peer group less than half-a-day per year. Irish hospitality employees work 3 percent less than our peer group 53 hours less, or the equivalent of 1.4 weeks per year. It should be noted that the hospitality sector is likely to have high levels of precariousness. The problem here may be that full-time employees dont get enough work. Its bad enough that we are over-worked compared to our peer group. But we also get fewer paid days off. Annually, Irish workers get 88 fewer hours paid without working than our peer group average. Thats the equivalent of 2.3 weeks fewer paid public holidays, annual holiday leave, etc. Some might say this is the price we must pay to have a strong economy. However, other economies with far fewer working days and more paid days off have just as strong economies. Belgium, which has the lowest annual hours worked and the highest number of paid days off, has the highest GDP per person employed (factoring in living costs). On the other hand, the UK has the highest working hours and the fewest paid days off. Yet they are at the bottom. Ireland, while ranking third, is clumped together with a number of other countries which have fewer working hours and more paid days off. In short, working more doesnt guarantee higher output. Hopefully the debate over the future of the working week will gather pace. But one thing is for sure. Irish workers are already over-worked. What we need is fewer working hours and more paid time off. Now. It may soon be an end of the road for cash-strapped Jet Airways, as it fails to come out of the existing financial crises. After reports that Etihad was more interested in exiting the company than helping it revive, state-owned State Bank of India (SBI) has now said it would be in everybody's interest that Jet Airways continues to fly. The bank has asked Naresh Goyal and three other company directors to step down from the Jet Airways board. SBI has, however, not shown much enthusiasm in buying 24 per cent stake reportedly offered by Jet's UAE-based partner Etihad. The Gulf carrier, a jittery participant in recent bailout discussions, signalled its decision to exit Jet after a meeting between its CEO Tony Douglas and SBI Chief Rajnish Kumar. The Bank-led Resolution Plan (BLRP), approved by Jet's shareholders in February, is being piloted by SBI. Despite deep financial crunch and its declining fleet of aircraft, the airline can be brought back into life provided instant cash is pumped into it, said a government official, as quoted in the Economic Times. While the SBI is bending the RBI rules to save the troubled Jet Airways, its efforts can only fructify if Naresh Goyal agrees to accept the terms and conditions put forth by the bank. So as per the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Jet, lenders and Ehitad, Naresh Goyal along with his wife Anita Goyal, Executive Director Gaurang Shetty and Independent Director Nasim Zaidi will need to quit the Jet Airways board to become eligible for fresh funding. However, if Goyal sticks to his earlier stance of leaving an option open for making a comeback in future, the matter will complicate further as non-payment of salaries and rental for lessors are becoming a continuous headache for Jet. Resolution for Jet Airways is futile; send it for insolvency If the situation persists, the company is staring at another payment default of $109 million by March 28. Jet Airways has to pay $109 million of total $140 million loan it had taken from HSBC Bank Middle East, in which Etihad was a guarantor. Jet had also defaulted on its earlier payment of $31 million to HSBC as part of its external commercial borrowings. With the SBI-led resolution plan yet to see the light of the day, Jet Airways is likely to default to another tranche. Though experts suggest filing for bankruptcy would be a lasting solution of Jet Airways' woes, many also believe the government would unlikely allow this to happen at a time when the General Elections 2019 are around the corner. Jet going for bankruptcy would mean thousands of job losses, and it would send the aviation sector into a tailspin. For an election-bound government, saving Jet is crucial because no government would want a trained workforce of 16,000-odd people to lose jobs overnight, they believe. Jet Airways engineers' union flags flight safety concerns; Suresh Prabhu calls for emergency meetings The harried pilots of Jet Airways are approaching rival airlines like SpiceJet and IndiGo for employment. Jet Airways pilots had earlier been wooed by IndiGo with compensation for their pending salaries and other benefits, leading to murmurs of protests from its own pilots. The salaries of Jet Airways pilots, engineers and senior officials have been pending for over three months now. They have warned they will stop flying from April 1 if the management failed to provide clarity on the revival plan along with a deadline to clear their salary dues by March 31. The Naresh Goyal-led company owes over Rs 8,500 to a consortium of banks led by the SBI. The troubles for the airline started last year when its pending payments due to cancelled flights swelled up to Rs 3,500 crore. Since then there has been a continuous delay in disbursement of its employees' salaries, and the airline's fleet has also reduced to 35 from 119 due to the non-payment of rentals to lessors. Jet Airways now operates 150 flights a day, a sharp decline from 450 when it used to fly with full capacity. Edited by Manoj Sharma Jet Airways crisis: Banks may infuse funds provided major shareholders pledge shares Jet Airways lenders led by SBI to get a board seat Jet Airways lenders keep options open to engage with turnaround specialists The harried pilots of Jet Airways, which is on the brink of shuttering operations, have now approached SpiceJet seeking employment. Jet Airways pilots had earlier been wooed by IndiGo with compensation for their pending salaries and other benefits, leading to murmurs of protests from its own pilots. The largest airline has been facing acute shortage of cockpit crew, leading to cancellation of hundreds of its flights last month. Jet pilots along with engineers and senior management have not been paid for more than three months now as the airline is facing its worst existential crisis since its inception a quarter of a century ago. The Gurugram-based SpiceJet, which has all its 12 Boeing Max planes grounded following the crash of an Ethiopian Airline plane early this month, is looking to hire pilots for its expansion plans, and has also conducted walk-in interviews here, Wednesday. "As many as 260 Jet pilots, including 150 captains, appeared for the interviews in Mumbai today," a SpiceJet source said. Unlike IndiGo, which flies majorly Airbus 320s, SpiceJet has Boeing 737s in the fleet. On the other hand it can be noted that majority Jet Airways pilots are trained and type-rated for Boeing planes, the source said. Jet Airways lenders keep options open to engage with turnaround specialists IndiGo is offering jobs to Jet pilots along with compensation for overdue salaries from the full service airline. It can be noted that pilots at full-service carriers get higher pay and other benefits. With no assurance on the payment of their pending salaries, Jet pilots had Tuesday warned that they would stop flying from April 1 if the management failed to provide clarity on the revival plan along with a deadline to clear their salary dues by March 31. According to IndiGo, all job offers are in line with its current terms and conditions. But its own pilots have termed the move as "injustice" and "unacceptable". "They are taking us lightly. Offer to Jet Airways pilots is sheer injustice to us as they're being offered a two-month bonus along with same designation-salary," argued an IndiGo source. Jet Airways engineers' union flags flight safety concerns; Suresh Prabhu calls for emergency meeting Moreover, they have also been allowed to choose their operational base, which is unacceptable to the IndiGo pilots, the source added. Questions sent to IndiGo chief operating officer Wolfgang Prock-Schauer as also to its spokesperson did not elicit any response. "The management is saying it is not bonus but it is compensation for their (Jet pilots) delayed salaries. Are we also not entitled to similar bonuses?" the source asked. Also, Jet pilots are joining with designation protection. So, basically if a non-type-rated examiner is joining us, she/he will be joining with a pay protection of the IndiGo examiner, pointed out the source. Alleging that the IndiGo pilots have not been given a hike since the last three-four years, the source also pointed out that after joining, the Jet pilots will again get a hike when Indigo revises the salaries of its existing pilots. Resolution for Jet Airways is futile; send it for insolvency Listen to our latest podcast Download this podcast Transcript HOST: This is the NOAA Ocean Podcast. Im Abby Reid. What follows are excerpts of a conversation I had with Cindy Among-Serrao, the coordinator of the Sanctuary Ocean Count at Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. Each winter, from approximately December to May, a portion of the North Pacific humpback whale population migrates from their feeding grounds in Alaska to the warm waters of Hawaii to breed, give birth, and nurse their young. The Sanctuary Ocean Count is a fun and important citizen science project that was initiated to provide whale-watchers with the opportunity to observe humpback whales in their breeding grounds, and conduct a yearly shore-based count during the peak breeding season, which is in January, February, and March. But Ill let Cindy tell you about it. Cindy Among-Serrao, the coordinator of the Sanctuary Ocean Count at Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, scuba diving at one of her favorite dive spots, Honokohau Harbor on Hawaii Island. CINDY AMONG-SERRAO: Aloha everyone. So, Let me start off, Im a local girl born and raised in Hawaii. And I always loved being in the ocean. I was always a water baby and loved doing anything ocean-related, whether its surfing, snorkeling, scuba, and just other ocean-related activities. And I guess from that my love and respect for the ocean was derived. Here I am now with the NOAA Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary as the Ocean Count Coordinator. So the Sanctuary Ocean Count is a signature outreach and Citizen Science project that the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary hosts annually. Ocean Count serves to promote public awareness about humpback whales, the sanctuary, and shore-based whale-watching opportunities in the Hawaiian islands. It also offers the community a chance to document and tally humpback whales from the shoreline. Its held on the last Saturday of January, February, and March each year, which is considered the peak of whale season in Hawaii. Not only has Ocean Count proven to be a fun volunteer activity for residents and visitors, but it also helps to provide important information like an increase or decrease in observed numbers of humpback whales around the Hawaiian islands from year to year. The value of the ocean count also lies in its 23 years of continuous anecdotal data, and now may be used by sanctuary researchers to correlate with other research happening in the sanctuary and in the islands, including with their acoustic studies. So our project has over 60 designated Ocean Count sites that are all across the islands of Oahu, Hawaii, and Kauai. And there is a similar effort that is also done on the island of Maui with the Pacific Whale Foundation. HOST: This sounded like a real whale of a project, so I asked her what a typical day for a volunteer is like, and who is involved in making it happen. CINDY AMONG-SERRAO: So first, all of the volunteers register online. Registration is found online at oceancount.org. Super user-friendly website, as well as a registration form to sign up. And then within a week of the event date our site leaders actually contact all of their volunteers registered for their site to give them a heads up at what time theyre meeting on the day of the Count, if they need any samples of things to bring to make them comfortable on that day, and just any other necessary information about that site they volunteered at. Sanctuary Ocean Count volunteers pose with a whale tail banner at Maili Point on the island of Oahu during the Sanctuary Ocean Count. Credit: Lisa Peralta And so on the day of the event, data collection runs from 8 to 12 noon. And then once 8am hits thats when the data collection starts. So Im the primary coordinator, but I do have a lot of help and support from fellow staff. Also, usually a University of Hawaii at Manoa Marine Option Program intern also helps out. And then definitely a lot of help from the, my site leader volunteers. The site leaders are basically head volunteers that guide all the other volunteers at each designated Ocean Count site, just providing them information on what to expect on the event day, as well as provide the data sheets that they will be utilizing to notate the number of whales seen, as well as their surface sea surface behaviors. They really help make this project a success. And as for participants, we have participants from near and far that come to volunteer for our Ocean Count events. It is a family-friendly event and we welcome all to come and participate and count some whales. HOST: Up to this point wed been talking a lot about whales. So I asked her if other marine life is tallied during the Count, too. CINDY AMONG-SERRAO: Right, so, it is called the Sanctuary Ocean Count. So we definitely want to get an array of what other marine species or species seen at the shoreline that our volunteers do see. Some people are lucky enough to see Hawaiian monk seals, theyre just either lounging on the beach near them. Very commonly visitors or volunteers see the Hawaiian green sea turtle. And then other people are so good at identifying seabirds, and just a variety of different marine life. I know some people are in great areas where they actually are able to see, I think, sting rays in the near water. And one time people even notated they saw a bunch of flying fish. You may not always see whales at your sight, so it does help if theres other marine life that you can kind of notate down. HOST: As the interview began to wind down, Cindy shared a Hawaiian phrase that summed up the essence of the Count. CINDY AMONG-SERRAO: I do love this phrase: Its a kakou thing." So kakou means pretty much everybody, inclusive. And basically its just that it takes everybody to get one idea to move forward. Its not just a one-person job, its for everybody. And issues like humpback whales getting research protection, and just, supporting and reducing their threats is definitely a bigger picture involving a lot of people and not just one person Its a kakou thing. [Laughter.] HOST: It was obvious that the Ocean Count meant a great deal to Cindy on a personal level. So I asked her what coordinating the Count meant to her. CINDY AMONG-SERRAO: Its important to me because it allows me to encourage ocean stewardship among the residents of Hawaii and of course its visitors. We do get a lot of visitors, so its important to do that as well. I also do it for the love of whales and the many enthusiastic volunteers who help us count these magnificent marine mammals. Theres just something so rewarding when you see volunteers on the day of the event just get really excited after theyve seen their first humpback whale. Or maybe even when they see a whale breach, which is what everyone wants to see or hopes to see. Its that happiness about helping people be more aware of humpback whales in our Hawaiian waters that really encourages me to keep coordinating on. HOST: To learn more about the Sanctuary Ocean Count, or any ocean-related subject, visit our website at oceanservice.noaa.gov. And subscribe to our podcast in your podcast player of choice. And please, leave us a review on iTunes. It will really help us reach more listeners. the way she was acting like she actually has something offer and as if she were actually making a difference i mean girl you know you lying ive been on such a theranos binge i loved the dropout podcast and i really want to watch the abc documentary but idk where to find it. i also havent read the book yet cause its not available in my library. this documentary was good but i think the podcast was better. she better go to jail for a long time like she really is twisted. i mean she is so up her own like every time she talks about herself like she actually made herself believe all this shit like how special she was... i couldn't the appaling treatment of gibbons' death was next level here's the trailer for the abc documentary btw https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/video/dropout-rise-fall-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-60563113 i cant wait for the jenlaw movie too Edited at 2019-03-21 12:05 pm (UTC) omg i just watched this and she's crazy! like they need to do a psychiatric evaluationthe way she was acting like she actually has something offer and as if she were actually making a difference i mean girl you know you lyingive been on such a theranos binge i loved the dropout podcast and i really want to watch the abc documentary but idk where to find it. i also havent read the book yet cause its not available in my library. this documentary was good but i think the podcast was better.she better go to jail for a long time like she really is twisted. i mean she is so up her own like every time she talks about herself like she actually made herself believe all this shit like how special she was... i couldn'tthe appaling treatment of gibbons' death was next levelhere's the trailer for the abc documentary btwi cant wait for the jenlaw movie too Reply Thread Link The abc doc was on 20/20. If you have Hulu, 20/20 is on there. Reply Parent Thread Link what's the name of the documentary? for some reason i thought it wasn't out yet and couldnt find it Reply Parent Thread Expand Link The book was much better and more detailed than the podcast. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link You really need to read the book, Bad Blood. It goes so in depth and I couldn't put it down. Reply Parent Thread Link It's on YouTube and only like, 4 parts, 10 minutes each. Just search "the dropout" and you'll see it. I literally just watched it because of this post. Never heard of her before but whew chillay, she is wacko. Edited at 2019-03-21 04:37 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link Omg I was waiting for someone to post about this. Thanks op! Watched the HBO doc.. INSANE! Reply Thread Link I got u. Reply Parent Thread Link Havent seen this yet but listened to the drop out and devoured bad blood! I really really loved the book. It was almost like a thriller. And then John (the reporter who broke the story) wrote the book and when he switched to the first person I was like YESSS SIS GET THIS BLOOD FRAUD! Reply Thread Link lol same Reply Parent Thread Link I finished Bad Blood last week so I need to see this - the wardrobe thing is great because everyone insisted that she wore frumpy almost like the Zuckerberg uniform before she learned about the Issey Miyake turtlenecks The Ian Gibbons story is heartbreaking- especially to think he had all these patents in his career and it essentially ended with him just doing HR shit. Her sending that email like she was out of the office when she was the hall. Sunny possibly creeping on her when she was 18 and having shady connections to circumvent regulations so the Edison could be tested. It was crazy to me that so many smart people were swayed by her at Theranos when her one drop philosophy is clearly impossible to execute and all the tests. Shit Im no engineering student (well she wasnt either) and I could tell you all the ways all those tests in a small machine could go haywire. And what the fuck at running the Edison on a three machines each giving two results, so you had a total of six and these people were told to take the median number as the final. Reply Thread Link Yeah - this story is fascinating but the most insane part to me is how she was able to fool SO MANY people, from investors to journalists, etc. She makes the Fyre fraud look like small potatoes in comparison. Reply Parent Thread Link It was weird because she was so young too. Like...she was still a teenager. Youre telling me all these grown investors, scientists and engineers bought into a relatively suspicious idea by some newly high-school-graduated kid with no formal education? Lol Reply Parent Thread Link I know of a biotech startup that is picking up steam using a similar idea (also droplets) and IDK how people 1. don't know it's impossible 2. didn't learn anything from Theranos???? Reply Parent Thread Link IDK, during a podcast Jon Lovett said he met her at a party once and she cornered him and afterwards he was convinced she was either deeply maligned or a total psychopath. People like that are really convincing and a lot of the people she convinced didn't have medical backgrounds. Reply Parent Thread Link I'm reading it, halfway through right now. The HBO doc and 20/20 episode don't even touch how horrible both Sunny and Elizabeth are to anybody and everybody, even that military official who told her she can't circumvent the FDA! They deserve long prison sentences. I hope they lose everything. They deserve to suffer forever. And I'm still cackling that one of the Fuisz' sons said he was not to allow her to have another company under his watch and he's going to use his ability to file patents and fuck with her until she dies. Reply Parent Thread Link this is what drove me insane about this whole thing. i did the same degree she dropped out of and if she had waited even a semester or two, she would've taken classes that could've given her enough knowledge to know that this would never work. like i am a mediocre engineer and even i am sitting here like ???? how the fuck did a stanford professor in engineering back this up? this isn't like what bill gates, mark zuckerberg or steve wozniak did. it's easier to learn code on your own. would it be better to have a computer science/math degree? sure. but you can learn without it and make a product. i believe coding can be a natural born talent to an extent. medicine? not so much. that is something you have to train in and go through all the education in order to pull something off like this. she had no science or medical background. she's just a nice looking blond hair, blue eyed white girl and they trusted her for it. i was thinking if i tried to pull shenanigans like this as a indian woman, there is no way anyone would believe me. i would've been labelled crazy. hell i have a hard enough time getting my male colleagues to believe me even with copious amounts of documentation to back me up. this whole thing makes me so mad and i know she's going to skate on by and not go to jail and that makes me angrier. she could've seriously harmed someone, she's lucky she didn't. she belongs in jail Reply Parent Thread Link Its annoying how big of a pathological liar she is. You cant trust anything that comes out of her mouth. Also the fact that her family is lying for her is hilarious. Reply Thread Link I've only watched the 20/20 documentary, but when people kept describing her as charming... I'm like, where?! And her damn fake-ass voice! I can't imagine knowing her irl or having to work for her because her presence on film alone gave me the creeps. Reply Thread Link The concentration and dedication it must take to speak in a fake voice all the time. Reply Parent Thread Link damn, looks like we gotta give Paris and Ariana some credit then lmao Reply Parent Thread Link I am also very shocked by any charming descriptors. Literally everything about her sets off alarm bells in my brain. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I can explain that to you. I know someone who is a higher up for an NGO, and shes probably the messiest person I know. But don't you dare say anything about her, though because people will be quick to shut you down. She has helped a lot of people get jobs, and she has been a connection for networking et al. People like that get more leeway in everything. They manipulate the narrative and environment so that anyone who questions their motives looks like a bitch. She couldn't possibly be anything but good, she works for an NGO, she gave blah blah a job. You see what I mean. Doesn't stop her circle from gossiping, of course... Reply Parent Thread Expand Link she's scary and bullish i wouldnt call that charming Reply Parent Thread Link Charming has lost all meaning. Reply Parent Thread Link ikr? Those big creepy eyes too Reply Parent Thread Link I was waiting for her to be charming and... I absolutely, did not, and cannot, fathom what they were talking about. The entire time she was staring at the camera, I was thinking about how much she looked like that Miley Cyrus blue eyes meme, but so much more creepier. Reply Parent Thread Link Im think about this a lot because I had a similar response. The only time she seemed sort of charming was when she was complimented by that gushing Arizona representative (spare me, dude) and she did that little flirty smile - look away - smile oh gosh thing that made her seem very young. Which, of course, was probably very calculated, considering. But beyond that? The raggled hair? The ill-fitting clothes? Her terrible make-up? It all gives me a serious case of the her?s Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Charming? She was off-putting the second she came on screen. Reply Parent Thread Link seriously. if there was ever compelling evidence that the judgement of "powerful" men cannot and should not be trusted is their unanimous assertion that this creepy void of a person was charismatic in any way. Reply Parent Thread Link I feel like im going crazy. she doesnt even SAY anything compelling, much less the way she says it. she speaks so slow and deliberately (in order to maintain the voice I suspect) and what she chooses to say or explain is. not. compelling. there is not one aspect of her aesthetic, choices, or being that in any way sways me or charms me so I am truly puzzled how these men (and a few women) fell for her shit? like...I get men think with their boners but what about ANY of this did even that? Reply Parent Thread Link Lmao of all the criticisms, the family is most offended about the voice Reply Thread Link I got to know more about this new boyfriend/fiance because oh no baby what is you doing? - was he mentioned in the doc? Is he investing in her new company? Do they share green juices? Reply Thread Link Her fiance is from some rich family that owns hotels. They go to Burning Man and he wears a MAGA hat, so.......yeah. (Sorry you have to click on the Daily Fail) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6756663/Elizabeth-Holmes-engaged-hotel-heir-Billy-Evans-works-driverless-car-start-up.html Reply Parent Thread Link I listened to the audio book for Bad Blood and I find the case absolutely fascinating, but I haven't managed to hype myself up to watch/listen/read any of the other stuff that's come out. I might try this though. Reply Thread Link Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ Reply Thread Link Haven't seen the HBO doc but have watched every news video etc since yesterday on this issue. I've been on a Theranos binge. I never noticed her in the height of her fame so to see the shoe drop I keep wondering "Where was I when this new media darling broke? Maybe I would have been able to see through the bullshit!" I surprisingly know a female founder/CEO in Nigeria who is just like her and probably is mirroring her style exactly, Iron-fist, tough, 'I have lots of ideas in tech to change the world' type persona. This is just as big as the Madoff thing. Reply Thread Link Im just so confused how this lady with crazy eyes and fried ass hair and permanent marker makeup was able to scam so many old white men. Is it really that easy for a white woman? Reply Thread Link Yeah it's wild to me that so many board members have admitted they had no idea what was really going on at Theranos. They had no experts on the board so she was able to convince them that everything was running smoothly... just by sounding convincing, I guess. Reply Parent Thread Link https://theoutline.com/post/4821/anna-delvey-elizabeth-holmes-grifter-hair OMG, this article about Holmes' hair is fascinating: Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Grifter hair is my new favorite descriptor. Reply Parent Thread Link this is a great article, totally fascianting Reply Parent Thread Link See, I'd argue a lot of women with money have shitty hair lol. Reply Parent Thread Link That is fascinating! Reply Parent Thread Link Omg grifter hair! I also think there's a certain type of carefully overplucked eyebrows that are a sign of a psycho. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Yeah the power of white women is really difficult for me to comprehend. But when I see them getting more and more attention and praise while I get ignored or bullied just makes it more blatant. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link able to scam so many old white men. You just answered your own question. they were dumb and easily swayed Reply Parent Thread Expand Link All they heard was "I can make you rich." Of course they thought she was amazing. Reply Parent Thread Link Right?? People on Twitter were saying its definitely bc shes a WW because if a black woman with dry, fried ass hair tried to do this, she wouldnt have even made it Stanford tbh. Reply Parent Thread Link I mean, it's a bit disingenuous to say that about any woman working in tech because no matter their race at the end of the day they're still women. white women are obviously going to have an easier time but Silicon Valley at large is still super stacked against them, Elizabeth Holmes just knew how to game it perfectly Reply Parent Thread Expand Link The voice thing is wild bc in the doc you can sort of hear what I would assume was her real voice sometimes and its not like she sounded like Mindy Kaling or anything. Its still a lower pitched voice for a woman but then she like, pushes all the bass in her voice forward and ends up sounding like a weirdo. And I was dying to give her a deep conditioning treatment the whole time, her hair was crazy fried. Edited at 2019-03-21 12:42 pm (UTC) Reply Thread Link her on purpose bad hair.................................... .......... Reply Thread Link every single old horny white dude was throwing money at her while exclaiming "THERE'S JUST SOMETHING ABOUT HER!" "SHE HAD A COMMANDING PRESENCE AND A CERTAIN SOMETHING!" "SHE WAS MAGNETIC, A REAL INNOVATOR!!!" in the podcast there was that old guy who, even when confronted by his grandson about how fraudulent she is, refused to speak to his grandson and still believed in her. if any of them had stopped for two minutes to really examine her claims... Reply Thread Link I don't believe that most of them believe she was magnetic, they just saw dollar signs. Reply Parent Thread Link i know it was so wild!!! the way every man described her was like.... dude if you had seen your exact words written in a romance novel then you would get it. theranos funding was like 90% driven by horniness Reply Parent Thread Link But like... her? I'm really not trying to be mean, but I think she is less attractive than average. Lawd I should become a scammer. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I think it's the proportion of her face - there's a psychological term for it which according to the Wikipedia article on "cuteness" is 'baby schema' (Kindchenschema). I find the proportions creepy but I can see how horny old men would find them attractive. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I felt so sorry for his grandson. When they described how he went over to just talk to his granddad and he was like "SURPRISE here are 2 lawyers" it was awful. Also I laughed so hard at the statement the granddad gave to The Dropout podcast where he didn't actually admit any wrongdoing just talked about how proud he was of his grandson. Reply Parent Thread Link they thought they would get rich and have a connection to a major technological breakthrough. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link - This comes on the back of crude imports dropping by 255kbpd to 6.7mbpd and exports falling by 257kbpd to 2.5mbpd, whilst aggregate refinery - US Commercial crude inventories dropped somewhat unexpectedly by 3.9MMbbl to 449.1MMbbl during the week ended March 08, proving right the American Petroleum Institutes draw estimate. Despite the somewhat comforting news from Baku, oil reacted primarily to a reported impasse in the US-Chinese trade talks, increasing the risk of seeing the negotiations delayed well into summer season. As of Wednesday afternoon, Brent traded at approximately 67 USD per barrel interval, whilst WTI hovered around 58.5-59 USD per barrel mark. This weeks OPEC joint ministerial monitoring committee (JMMC) meeting in Baku sent a powerful signal to the oil markets OPEC does not see any fundamental changes taking place in the upcoming two months, calling off the April JMMC meeting altogether. That is not to say that OPEC became complacent on the contrary, it intends to act upon the United States policy course vis-a-vis Iran and Venezuela. The waivers granted by the Trump Administration to eight nations are coming to an end on May 4th and so far there has been little to no information on Washingtons future decision, despite China, India, South Korea and Japan already indicating their interest in seeing the waivers prolonged. This weeks OPEC joint ministerial monitoring committee (JMMC) meeting in Baku sent a powerful signal to the oil markets OPEC does not see any fundamental changes taking place in the upcoming two months, calling off the April JMMC meeting altogether. That is not to say that OPEC became complacent on the contrary, it intends to act upon the United States policy course vis-a-vis Iran and Venezuela. The waivers granted by the Trump Administration to eight nations are coming to an end on May 4th and so far there has been little to no information on Washingtons future decision, despite China, India, South Korea and Japan already indicating their interest in seeing the waivers prolonged. Despite the somewhat comforting news from Baku, oil reacted primarily to a reported impasse in the US-Chinese trade talks, increasing the risk of seeing the negotiations delayed well into summer season. As of Wednesday afternoon, Brent traded at approximately 67 USD per barrel interval, whilst WTI hovered around 58.5-59 USD per barrel mark. 1. US Crude Drops Back After Last Weeks Build - US Commercial crude inventories dropped somewhat unexpectedly by 3.9MMbbl to 449.1MMbbl during the week ended March 08, proving right the American Petroleum Institutes draw estimate. - This comes on the back of crude imports dropping by 255kbpd to 6.7mbpd and exports falling by 257kbpd to 2.5mbpd, whilst aggregate refinery input saw only a modest 30kbpd increase week-on-week. - The week ended March 15 highlights once again the difficulty of forecasting stock changes, with the API predicting a 2.1MMbbl draw, whilst the S&P Platts analyst survey indicated a 1MMbbl build over the given period. - Gasoline stocks decreased for the fifth consecutive week, by 4.6MMbbl to 246.1MMbbl on the week ended March 08, which still places it some 6MMbbl above the 5-year average. - Distillate fuel stocks incrased modestly, by 0.4MMbbl to 136.4MMbbl, largely due to a palpable week-on-week decline in exports, down 0.28mbpd to 1.1mbpd. 2. Iraq Cuts Output for Now, Still Seen as Key OPEC Growth Factor - Iraq has claimed that from March onwards it will comply with its OPEC/OPEC+ production cuts after months of underperformance. - Even though Baghdad agreed to a 4.51mbpd production cap, some 0.14mbpd below its October 2018 baseline level, it has produced 4.63mbpd in the first two months of 2019. - Oil minister Thamir Ghadhban now promises stricter adherence to Iraqs own commitments, stating that it would lower exports by 0.25mbpd in the upcoming weeks. - At the same time, the IEA sees Iraq as OPECs leading member in oil production capacity growth, increasing almost 1mbpd to 5.8mbpd by 2024. - Yet there is a catch to it even if output capacity grows, Iraqs underinvestment in export capacity might hinder development. - Despite having a nominal export capacity of 4.6mbpd, only 3.7mbpd are actually utilizable as the Khor al-Amaya export terminal remains out-of-use due to its decrepit state. - Hence, it seems most probable that Iraq will prioritize the modernization of its refinery assets, the 350kbpd Baiji and the 210kbpd Basrah refinery, which would take in a significant part of any output increase. 3. Colombia Struggles With Fuel Shortages - The Colombian government has asked for emergency fuel supplies from neighboring Ecuador as it struggles with fuel shortages in its southwestern regions. - Colombia has been asking the Ecuadorian national oil company PetroEcuador for prompt supplies of 150 000 USG per day of diesel, 235 000 USG per day of gasoline and 140 000 USG per day of LPG. - PetroEcuador consented Tuesday to bring in 705k USG of gasoline, 450k USG of Diesel and 420k USG of LPG. - For more than one week indigenous groups have blocking the Pan-American highway (denouncing the governments treatment of them), making it impossible for the Colombian state oil company Ecopetrol to reach distant regions on the Pacific coast. - As Colombian President Ivan Duque has refused to travel to the affected regions until the blockages are cleared, it remains to be seen when the force majeure will end. 4. Water Cuts Undercut Brazils Export Appeal - Rising salinity levels in one of Brazils flagship export crude grades Lula have compelled Chinese refiners to slightly alter their intake of it and buy more Russian ESPO instead. - Chinas share in Lula exports dropped to a 6-month low of 68 percent in February 2019, dropping a massive 20 percent month-on-month. - According to Argus, salinity levels in Lula crude as measured by Shandong refiners grew almost fivefold to 150-200ppm. - Water cuts in Lula reached an all-time high of 3 percent this January, according to Brazils energy agency ANP. - The quality deterioration seems to have coincided with the installation of new water treatment filters at Lulas FPSO units. - Lulas March export data are showing a rebound in Chinas appetite for the Brazilian crude, with almost 90 percent of all volumes sailing to Chinese refiners. 5. Kuwait OSPs Reflect Saudi Aramco - Kuwait has mirrored Saudi Aramcos decision to hike Asia Pacific prices, whilst cutting its official selling prices (OSP) to European destinations. - The Kuwaiti state oil company KPC set the April-loading OSP for its flagship Kuwait Export Crude (KEC) at a 0.55 USD per barrel premium to the average Oman/Dubai. - The Arab Medium-KEC differential remained unchanged at a 30 cent per barrel, quite a narrow margin historically that it first reached in January 2019 (unchanged since that). - KEC prices to Europe and Mediterranean were dropped by 20 cents and 70 cents per barrel, respectively, whilst the US exports witnessed a 10 cents per barrel hike against the Argus Sour Crude Index. - KEPs latest addition to its grade portfolio, the Kuwaiti Super Light (KSLC), was set at a 1.65 per barrel premium to the Oman-Dubai average, with the KSLC-AXL differential widening to 20 US cents per barrel. 6. Angolan Loadings Bounce Back in May 2019 - Having reached the lowest loading level in 12 years, Angolas preliminary crude loadings for May foresee a substantial rebound from Aprils 1.28mbpd. - The preliminary schedule sees 48 cargoes sailing off Angola in May, 8 more than in April, with export volumes estimated at 1.49mbpd. - As Angolan production gradually declines, trading windows in which one can buy Dalia or Cabinda cargoes are getting shorter and shorter. - The latest Angolan crude grade Gindungo will see 3 cargoes loaded in May at a 92kbpd rate, up from Aprils two. - China alone accounts for 70 percent of all Angolan exports, with India taking in around 8-10 percent, and the United States, Uruguay and Spain importing 1-2MMbbl per month. - Largely thanks to the disastrous April, Angolas adherence to its OPEC production cut commitment of 1.48mbpd was beyond reproach so far in 2019 it averaged 1.4mbpd. 7. ENI Strikes Oil in Angola Again - Four months after announcing its 200 MMbbl Afoxe discovery in Angolas offshore, the Italian oil major ENI reported a new discovery in the 15/06 Block it operates. - The Agogo-1 wildcat was drilled to a total depth of 4.5km in 1.6km of water depth, hitting 120 meters of net oil pay that is estimated to contain 450-650 MMbbl of crude. - The quality of the Agogo field is somewhat lower than that of previous discoveries Afoxe and Kalimba, falling within the medium sweet category at 31 degrees API. - ENI indicates preliminary production capacity at 20kbpd, yet with Block 15/06 output combined from the recent finds will be significantly higher. - The joint venture assessing Block 15/06 comprises also Sonangol (36.84 percent, just as ENI) and SSI Fifteen (26.32 percent). The significance of firms like Huawei and Xiaomi is not the security concerns they may or may not represent, but the technological challenge they pose. Most worryingly for many Western observers, they have emerged from a state-led economy in which innovation is not supposed to thrive. Nowhere else but China does the development of climate change solutions have such immediacy, owing to local air pollution and traffic congestion, resulting from the countrys rapid urbanisation and dependence on coal-fired power generation. Nowhere else is as well positioned to take advantage, owing to its powerful manufacturing base, increasing capacity to innovate and need to move into higher-value industries. But there is method in the apparent madness. The policies are in fact complimentary. Both are part of the governments approach to energy security, which is itself bound up with key industrial goals. Chinas continued expansion of its oil refining sector and its environmental policies often appear contradictory. On the one hand, it is the worlds leader in electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing and deployment, but on the other it continues to invest heavily in domestic refining capacity to produce the fuels that power EVs internal engine combustion competitors. Chinas push into EVs risks stranding assets built today well before the end of their natural lifespans. Chinas continued expansion of its oil refining sector and its environmental policies often appear contradictory. On the one hand, it is the worlds leader in electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing and deployment, but on the other it continues to invest heavily in domestic refining capacity to produce the fuels that power EVs internal engine combustion competitors. Chinas push into EVs risks stranding assets built today well before the end of their natural lifespans. But there is method in the apparent madness. The policies are in fact complimentary. Both are part of the governments approach to energy security, which is itself bound up with key industrial goals. Nowhere else but China does the development of climate change solutions have such immediacy, owing to local air pollution and traffic congestion, resulting from the countrys rapid urbanisation and dependence on coal-fired power generation. Nowhere else is as well positioned to take advantage, owing to its powerful manufacturing base, increasing capacity to innovate and need to move into higher-value industries. The significance of firms like Huawei and Xiaomi is not the security concerns they may or may not represent, but the technological challenge they pose. Most worryingly for many Western observers, they have emerged from a state-led economy in which innovation is not supposed to thrive. They serve to emphasis the stark differences between laissez faire and state-led approaches to industrial policy. In the US, EVs so far have largely been the idiosyncratic brain children of innovative companies like Tesla with a large appetite for risk. The car majors have followed rather than led. The expansion of US shale and lack of federal interest in climate change policy under the current administration have reinforced the economic benefits of combined oil production and oil-based transportation. Oil is no longer an energy security problem and industrial policy is largely concentrated around the defence sector. China is different. It is the US pre-shale, where the reality of high and growing oil import dependency provides a serious incentive to find new paths of development. Even more so as it does not have the US international reach to protect its supply chains, relying instead on soft power. Nor does it have the backstop of expanding its own domestic oil sector, where output has fallen in recent years as the industry struggles to sustain output in the face of the aging decline of its largest fields. As a result, Beijing has employed two strategies in order to weaken its dependence on imported oil. The first is conventional, the second highly disruptive. The first route has been to invest abroad and build good relations with oil producing countries, in general taking on a higher level of risk than western oil majors would be prepared to. This is a state- backed policy taken to extremes with the high level of debt afforded to Venezuela in return for oil. Domestically, the aim has been to grab at least some of the oil value chain by hugely expanding domestic refining capacity, which by nameplate at least already exceeds domestic oil product demand by some margin. Constantly rising demand has made this a continual process in which expansion has been overcome by the need for modernisation as the product slate demanded by the domestic economy changes and older refining assets reach redundancy. This year China will bring on-stream three new refineries totalling 1 million b/d of new capacity, all of which are coastal, integrated petrochemicals developments, two of which are privately owned -- Hengli Groups 400,000 b/d complex at Dalian in Liaoning province and Zhejiang Petrochemical Corp.s 400,000 b/d project in Zhejiang province. The remaining 200,000 b/d will be added by Zhanjiang Petrochemical, part of state oil and chemicals groups Sinopec. They are expected to be followed by more integrated petrochemicals developments built on the countrys east coast over the next five years by Chinese state and private companies, as well as foreign investors such as US major ExxonMobil and Germanys BASF. This will add a new layer of complexity to US/Chinese energy trade and competition. While US petrochemicals have targeted ethane as their feedstock, a by-product of natural gas processing, Chinese importers will seek light, sweet US crude to supplement Middle Eastern grades, using naphtha as the main feedstock for petrochemicals production. Each will use the fruits of US shale in different ways, yet all will target growing Asian petrochemicals demand. The second strategy is potentially much more significant and combines heavy investment in a number of areas such as EVs, artificial intelligence and telecommunications. A key area of manufacturing that has eluded China is foreign car exports, where it has had to compete against well-established brands with strong technological leads. Its experience in the emergent solar industry was far different. Here it has become the worlds dominant force, and companies such as Trina Solar have shown the capacity to lead not just in terms of manufacturing but in new product innovation. EVs offer the same opportunity. China has the manufacturing capacity and high levels of state and provincial government support for industries deemed strategic. It has the possibility to establish a technological lead in an emergent industry where brand loyalties are weak backed by the industrial scale provided by state-supported domestic demand. Its branding capacity in rapidly evolving sectors have been proven by Huawei and Xiaomi. Its ability to establish a sufficient technological lead and combine it with low manufacturing costs to capture foreign markets has been demonstrated by its successful export of electric buses. There is a significant departure from Chinas solar success, which was built first on subsidised European demand and foreign innovation then supported by the domestic market. EVs are progressing the other way around, based on domestically-developed technology and demand with the aim of then exporting, which suggests growing domestic confidence in Chinas innovative capacities. The impact on oil markets of these strategies can already be seen in terms of rising Chinese oil product exports, which benefit from both dampened domestic demand growth as a result of EVs displacing oil product demand and surplus refining capacity the two strategies combining to offset the crude oil import bill. Chinas crude imports will rise strongly this year, owing to the start up of the new refinery complexes, but so too will diesel and gasoline exports, albeit from low levels. CNPCs Research Institute of Economics and Technology (ETRI) forecasts a 32.8% rise in diesel exports in 2019 to 23.1 million tons and a 15.0% jump in gasoline exports to 14.6 million tons. In the longer term, the first strategy limits Chinas dependence on crude oil imports as far as is possible into the future. The second strategy seeks to turn oil dependency on its head by providing and benefiting from an alternative. Both seek to address Chinas weakness in energy security and are thus complimentary rather than contradictory. The Venezuelan opposition presented its vision of Venezuelas future in the post-Maduro era, which should appeal to anyone advocating free trade. The comprehensive oil reform draft created in the recent days sets out the creation of an independent hydrocarbon management agency that would kick off a Mexico-styled Round Zero during which PDVSA, about to remain in state hands, would pick the upstream assets it wishes to retain. Most notably the oil bill would allow foreign oil majors to fully own an asset on Venezuelan soil, be it an upstream or downstream one, thus opening up the country for foreign investment. The proposal, however, comes with a seemingly innocent flexibility There has been a remarkable lull over Venezuela the country as a whole is still unsure what step to take next, the international community has tired a bit of the issue, whilst mainstream media switched over to the prospects of Boeing and the botched Brexit campaign. Yet Venezuelas national oil company PDVSA finds itself in an increasingly complex situation, seeing its list of potential counterparties narrow by the day, its finances wane and its operations exacerbated by a week-long blackout. Whatever your political backgrounds and preferences, you should look out for President Nicolas Maduros actions as he approaches the last months of his tenure. Maduros ouster now seems as certain as death and taxes, however, his departure will not make life easier for anyone. There has been a remarkable lull over Venezuela the country as a whole is still unsure what step to take next, the international community has tired a bit of the issue, whilst mainstream media switched over to the prospects of Boeing and the botched Brexit campaign. Yet Venezuelas national oil company PDVSA finds itself in an increasingly complex situation, seeing its list of potential counterparties narrow by the day, its finances wane and its operations exacerbated by a week-long blackout. Whatever your political backgrounds and preferences, you should look out for President Nicolas Maduros actions as he approaches the last months of his tenure. Maduros ouster now seems as certain as death and taxes, however, his departure will not make life easier for anyone. The Venezuelan opposition presented its vision of Venezuelas future in the post-Maduro era, which should appeal to anyone advocating free trade. The comprehensive oil reform draft created in the recent days sets out the creation of an independent hydrocarbon management agency that would kick off a Mexico-styled Round Zero during which PDVSA, about to remain in state hands, would pick the upstream assets it wishes to retain. Most notably the oil bill would allow foreign oil majors to fully own an asset on Venezuelan soil, be it an upstream or downstream one, thus opening up the country for foreign investment. The proposal, however, comes with a seemingly innocent flexibility clause even if Maduro is ousted tomorrow, the oil reform would only see light by 2024-2025, i.e. by the time when nothing is left from todays opposition. The oppositions attempts to establish themselves as advocates for a free and uninhibited access to Venezuelas oil sector comes at a very difficult time to PDVSA. The blackout has resulted in the nations main oil port, the Jose export terminal, being out of operation between March 06 and March 12. The overwhelming majority of cargoes after exports started flowing out again was bound for China, with India-bound volumes on a palpable decrease month-on-month from Februarys 0.41mbpd loading level. Unsurprisingly, so far there has been no cargo in March that would sail towards the United States as American refiners take extra precaution not to see themselves sanctioned. Head of PDVSA Manuel Quevedo confirmed during his recent visit to Baku, Azerbaijan, that India is no longer a primary market outlet for Venezuelan crude and that his company is seeing China and Russia as two main export markets. Reliance used to take up almost 90 percent of Indias aggregate Venezuelan imports but now seems to be intent on ensuring full compliance (as per the companys spokesperson) with US sanctions. The Indian firm still buys Venezuelan crude at a reduced rate of 0.2mbpd previously it bought 0.3-0.4mbpd as its highly sophisticated Jamnagar complex allows it to extract maximum value from the bituminous Orinoco crudes and will most likely use its Venezuelan purchases as a bargaining chip with the US Administration. The thing is India now finds itself in a peculiar situation, whereby two main sources of imported crude, Iran and Venezuela, are finding themselves under US sanctions that significantly narrow its maneuvering space. Thus it should not come as a surprise if India contrives a plan whereby it would be allowed to import more Iranian crude in return for its full compliance on Venezuelan issues. Saying India, this would include all the state-owned companies like ONGC Videsh or Oil India, as well as large private refiners like Reliance, with one notable exception Nayara Energy, previously known as Essar Oil, now under the control of Rosneft, the Russian national oil company of sorts. As PDVSA still owes Rosneft more than $2 billion, to be returned in crude, Nayara Energy will most likely continue to bring in its Venezuelan favorite, Merey, despite State Secretary Pompeos urges not to do so. By all estimates, the Trump Administration has counted on a quicker meltdown in Venezuela and least of all did it expect the current breathing space period. This uneasy edginess can be seen whenever high-ranking officials from the US Administration comment on Venezuela look no further as Francis Fannon, assistant secretary for the State Departments Bureau of Energy Resources, claiming US sanctions were designed to prevent damage to Venezuelas oil industry. A ridiculous claim amidst terminals going offstream after a week-long blackout, crude upgrading unit suddenly bursting into fire before that and pumping stations in the Orinoco belt burning down to the ground. Despite all the roadblocks ahead, trade in Venezuelan crude still continues as some suppliers still export refined products to the Latin American nation for dilution purposes. Shipowners were the first to sense the immediate risks of US sanctions as freight rates to Venezuela have climbed to unprecedented heights, with recent gasoline cargoes heading to PDVSA reported to have been fixed at Worldscale rates of 270-280 points, roughly 100 points above regular market activity. However, even if PDVSA gets to dilute the crude, there is no guarantee that the DCO would be ultimately marketed. Currently some 6 million barrels of Venezuelan crude loaded in February seems to be anchored either in Venezuelan territorial waters or close to them, waiting for a final destination to discharge the volumes. Against such a background the Trump Administration is getting together a second round of sanctions, aimed at clearing all the deficiencies of the initial round. Elliott Abrams, the State Departments special representative on Venezuela, indicated the US would expand the sanctions net so as to among others include all entities that facilitated refined product trading with PDVSA, effectively aiming for all the European and North African entities that did supply gasoline and naphtha to Venezuela. With the traditional supplier of diluents for its Orinoco crudes, the United States, put out of the way, PDVSA had to compensate somehow for the lost volumes of the feedstock. This would effectively liquidate the last lifeline the Maduro-era PDVSA had of not seeing its export volumes dwindle. In a stark contrast to the 1990s and even (who wouldve thought at that point) the seemingly evident lowpoint of the 2000s with the military operation against Iraq, geopolitics is taking over the crude market. What State Secretary Pompeo describes as pushing bad actors off the target, effectively using US energy-related instruments to facilitate regime change abroad, will work in the end with Venezuela. President Maduro has left a very weak legacy behind, lacks the personal charisma of Hugo Chavez and will go down as one of Venezuelas weakest leaders. Just as Americas military intervention in Iraq did not bring about a large-scale investment spree from US oil majors (only US services company, Dick Cheneys Halliburton and Baker Hughes, profited from the war), the treatment the Trump Administration prescribed to Venezuela will not lead to any massive business opportunities. There are three things which will make it very difficult for anyone after President Maduro to sort out the Venezuelan oil quagmire. First, any repetition of the 1990s apertura is a straight-out political suicide, even if differently labelled and presented to the general public the oil sectors opening should be gradual so as not to make the Venezuelans feel as if it were a firesale. Second, todays Venezuelan populace is much more nationalistic than it used to be 20 years ago and anyone advocating a direct US intervention into Venezuela (like Guaido did) might feel the love of the public wane quickly. Third, the opposition is united as long as they do not have access to real political power the distribution of roles and responsibilities of any future government would inevitably compel the ones that were left out to trounce the current entente. Brazilian state-held oil firm Petrobras is re-evaluating a preliminary deal with China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to build an oil refinery in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian economic newspaper Valor Economico reported on Thursday, citing a source from Petrobras management. Petrobras signed in October an agreement with CNPCs subsidiary China National Oil and Gas Exploration and Development Company (CNODC) to carry out a feasibility study to assess the investment case for the COMPERJ refinery in Brazil. Once the study is completed, the companies plan to create a joint venture to complete the construction and operate the refinery. Petrobras will have an 80 percent stake in the joint venture, and CNPC will own the remaining 20 percent. However, according to Valor Economicos source, the oil refinery partnershipwhich was struck during the previous top management of Petrobrasclashes with the ideas of new chief executive Roberto Castello Branco, who is pushing for divestments at Petrobras, including in the oil refinery business. China, via CNPC and its various subsidiaries, has been forming partnerships around the world lately and has been investing in the oil industries of countries like Venezuela and South Sudan. China has also extended loans to Venezuela and South Sudan, in exchange for future repayment in crude oil. Meanwhile, CNPCs listed arm PetroChina said on Thursday that it would be pursuing deeper cooperation with the U.S. energy sector, hoping that it could help the worlds two biggest economies to resolve their trade dispute. Through this cooperation we can improve [the countries] trade structure, which is conducive for the diversification of our energy import sources, PetroChinas president Hou Qijun said at the firms 2018 results release, as carried by South China Morning Post. The progress in the U.S.-China trade talks has made PetroChina more confident in seeking to expand its energy cooperation with the United States, which has the capability to become a top natural gas exporter at a time when Chinas natural gas needs and imports are growing fast, according to PetroChinas president. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads from Oilprice.com: Canadas federal government does not consider the Albertan oil industry a priority despite its central importance to the provincial economy, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said after Ottawa released its 2019 budget. "They're recognizing that the investment levels are down, they're recognizing that prices are down and that unemployment is up, and yet they're not really taking any meaningful action to support our industry," the groups vice-president of oilsands, Ben Brunnen, said as quoted by CBC. "The reality is, when we see those indicators all facing down, from an oil and gas perspective, and no recognition from the government of a willingness to support our industry, it's a pretty strong message towards our industry that we're not a priority for this government, and that's disappointing," Brunnen added. The budget includes funds for retraining initiatives that could help with Albertas high unemployment problem, but according to CAPP, this is not enough. Albertas oil industry may not be a priority for Ottawa, but it certainly is a priority for everyone running in this years elections, scheduled for April 16. The Canadian Press reported this week that oil and gas investments and carbon tax were central topics on the campaign trail. Incumbent Premier Rachel Notley has promised to increase local oil and gas processing capacity while her rival from the United Conservative party, Jason Kenney, focused on the carbon tax approved by the Notley government. Notleys plan aims to reduce the amount of crude oil Alberta exports, therefore reducing the need for transportation capacity including pipelinesnowhere in sightand oil trains. It should bring in tens of billions of dollars in fresh investments. Kenney, on the other hand, promised his first order of business would be to repeal the carbon tax that is punishing Albertans. This, he said, would save the province more than US$1billion (C$1.4 billion) every year in one fell swoop. By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Middle Eastern oil producer Oman denied on Wednesday that it was part of an oil refinery project worth US$3.85 billion in Sri Lanka, announced by Sri Lanka officials on Tuesday. No one on this side of the panel is aware of this investment in Sri Lanka, Reuters quoted Salim al-Aufi, undersecretary of Omans ministry of oil and gas, as saying at a news conference on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Sri Lankan officials told reporters that the oil and gas ministry of the Sultanate of Oman would control 30 percent in the oil refinery project in Sri Lanka, while the majority holder would be Indian privately held Accord Group via Singapore-based investment vehicle Silver Park International Private Limited. This is the biggest foreign investment in the countrys history, the Associated Press quoted Sri Lankas deputy minister of international trade, Nalin Bandara, as saying on Tuesday at the announcement of the project. Yet, it appears that Oman was neither involved in this investment nor was it aware of it, because al-Aufi said on Wednesday, It came as news to me, as carried by Reuters. The project is for the construction of an oil refinery with a processing capacity of 200,000 bpd. Construction is expected to start within days and complete in 44 months, according to the Sri Lankan officials. Most of the refined oil products are expected to be exported from the Hambantota port, which is controlled by a Chinese company. Growing Chinese influence in Sri Lanka has been a concern for India, which views the Indian Ocean as its strategic and historic area of influence. China, for its part, was on track until recently to be the largest investor in Sri Lanka, so a large-scale Indian investment would be a challenge to its investment ambitions, Reuters notes. Amid all of this, it appears that Omanone of the smaller Middle Eastern oil producers and not a member of OPECwasnt aware that it was involved in plans to invest in a refinery in Sri Lanka. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The U.S. Administration has renewed for another 90 days a sanctions waiver for Iraq to continue importing energy from neighboring Iran despite the American sanctions on Tehran, an official with the U.S. State Department told Reuters on Wednesday. Iraq was granted a 90-day waiver to purchase energy imports from Iran, the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. This is the third waiver for Iraqwhich depends on Iranian electricity and natural gas imports for part of its energy needsthat the United States has granted since it re-imposed sanctions on Irans oil, energy, and shipping industries in early November 2018. At the end of last year, the U.S. granted Iraq a 90-day extension to the initial 45-day waiver allowing Baghdad to continue imports of electricity from Iran after the U.S. sanctions on Tehran returned. Major Iraqi power plants are dependent on Iranian natural gas supply, while Iraq also imports electricity from Iran, as Baghdads power generation is not enough to ensure domestic supply. Iraq has argued that it needs more time to find alternative sources of electricity supply if it is to avoid more and more power outages, which is one of the main reasons for protest rallies in the heart of Iraqs oil region in the southern city of Basra last summer. The United States, for its part, has been urging Iraq to become energy independent, at least energy independent from Iran. Related: Trumps Last Chance To Subdue Gasoline Prices At his keynote address at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the U.S. is encouraging countries to partner with the U.S. for their energy security. Were reminding them that were simply better to do business with than Russia, China, or Iran, Pompeo said, calling out Iran for the energy influence it exerts over Iraq. Perhaps theres no clearer example than in Iran. Iran uses its energy exports to exert undue influence all across the Middle East, most particularly today on Iraq. While the United States is working to develop an independent, sovereign Iraq, Iran is using its energy to create a vassal state, Secretary Pompeo said. By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Lee Berthiaume of the Canadian Press reports military veterans detail fight with feds to overhaul disability supports: When his son was nearly killed by an anti-personnel mine in Afghanistan in 2010, Jim Scott had no idea he was about to embark on a multi-year legal battle with the federal government on behalf of his son and thousands of other modern-day veterans. The battle took the form of a class-action lawsuit over a major overhaul of the benefits and services available to ill and injured veterans in 2006 that provided todays ex-soldiers less in support and compensation than those in previous generations. For Scotts son Dan, that meant a one-time, $41,000 payment from Ottawa as compensation for having lost his kidney, spleen and part of his pancreas from the explosion rather than the lifelong pension provided to similarly disabled veterans since the First World War. And my son said to me: You know, were all getting these letters for really small amounts and we hav " " Inmates at California's Chino State Prison in December 2010 in a gymnasium that was modified to house prisoners. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images A new study by researchers at the Public Policy Institute of California shows that a recent move to reduce the Golden State's prison population has had little impact on crime rates across the state. Those findings could bolster efforts to reduce overcrowding behind bars throughout the country. "I think probably the most important takeaway is that states can look at a major change like prison realignment," says University of California, Irvine criminology professor Charis Kubrin, co-editor of the publication that included the study, "and not be worried that it's going to impact public safety in a major way." Advertisement "We've seen no appreciable uptick in assaults, rapes or murders that can be connected to the prisoners who were released." Charis Kubrin, UC Irvine criminology professor Kubrin and fellow criminology professor Carroll Serron edited a recent issue of the journal Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science dedicated to studying the impact of a 2011 law that trimmed the population in state-run prisons by more than 20 percent over two years. The law was a response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in which the high court said the state's prisons were so overcrowded that the conditions violated prisoners' constitutional rights. In response, California legislators moved to shift 33,000 non-violent inmates from prisons to county jails, probation, into monitored home-release programs, rehab facilities and into a reformed parole system. "We've seen no appreciable uptick in assaults, rapes or murders that can be connected to the prisoners who were released under realignment," says Kubrin. "This is not surprising, of course, because these offenders were eligible for release precisely because of the nonviolent nature of their crimes." The research compared crime rates over time to find little or no impact on violent offenses across the state. While the data did reveal a small uptick in car thefts and other property crimes, the researchers determined that the costs of those crimes were outweighed by savings related to decarceration. The research found that while one year behind bars for one inmate prevents 1.2 auto thefts per year and saves $11,783 in crime-related costs (acknowledging the impact on the individual victim), it costs the society and California taxpayers $51,889 per year to incarcerate a prisoner and that doesn't even account for the further cost ripple in the economy due to hardships experienced by the inmate's family. " " A recent UC Irvine study examined the ramifications of California's 2011-2013 state prisoner "realignment." Al Selb/Getty Images The case for criminal justice reform is getting a whole lotta love these days. A wide variety of folks say something needs to be done about heavy-handed punishments for non-violent offenders and the prison-industrial complex that's sprung up as a result. There are many reasons behind the idea that long stretches behind bars might not be the best way to fight lower-level crime. Prisons are expensive, overcrowded and sometimes not in the best of shape. Many relatively minor offenders taking up space behind bars are eventually going to be back on the street, and holing them up like hamsters in a cage might not necessarily help the transition into the real world. Still, not everyone is hip to the idea of opening up the prison doors and throwing out the keys. You do the crime, you do the time, as they say. That's not to mention the notion that the most certain way to keep someone who has shown a proclivity for law breaking from doing it again is to keep him incarcerated. This recent research, however, may go a long way in tamping down fears about letting convicts out of the stripey hole at little earlier than expected. Of course, this California experiment isn't without its critics, who say prison officials are simply shifting the burden from state budget sheets to swelling local jails. But Kubrin argues that something has to be done to combat the incarceration state. "It's time to start thinking outside of the box and start trimming away at these crazy prison population rates," she says. Now That's Interesting With 867 prisoners for every 100,000 residents, Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the United States. " " Two Cherokee Native American dancers pose for pictures along the highway on Oct. 22, 2016, in Cherokee, North Carolina. Located near the entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, this area is home to the Cherokee Nation. George Rose/Getty Images In response to mocking accusations from President Donald Trump that she has lied about her Cherokee heritage, Sen. Elizabeth Warren released the results of a DNA test in October 2018, indicating that she indeed had a Native American ancestor six to 10 generations back. In a campaign-style video released with the results (Warren, a Democrat, is running for president in 2020), she clarified that she's not enrolled in a tribe and that "only tribes determine tribal citizenship." "I understand and respect that distinction," Warren says in the video, "but my family history is my family history." Warren asserts that she has never claimed Native American status when applying to school or a job, though she had changed her ethnicity from white to Native American during her time teaching at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her DNA announcement was met with disappointment and anger by many Native Americans, including Chuck Hoskin Jr., secretary of state of the Cherokee Nation. "Using a DNA test to lay claim to any connection to the Cherokee Nation or any tribal nation, even vaguely, is inappropriate and wrong," Hoskin wrote in a statement. "Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage." Also check out Cultural Appropriation or Appreciation? Sometimes the Line Is Blurry. Warren is far from alone in claiming a family connection to a Native American tribe. Many Americans proudly pass down oral histories of a great-great-grandma who was one-quarter Cherokee or Chippewa, explaining, as Warren did, the origin of the family's distinctive "high cheekbones." What frustrates Native American tribal members about these vague genealogical claims is that they make it seem like anyone with a neat family story or even a DNA test is automatically part of a tribe. David Cornsilk is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, the largest of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes in the United States, as well as a Cherokee historian and genealogist. When presented with a case like Warren's, Cornsilk likes to quote a popular Native American aphorism: "It's not about what you claim, it's about who claims you." Advertisement Becoming Part of the Cherokee Nation As Warren mentioned in her video, there's a difference between Native American ancestry and tribal citizenship. Anyone can claim Native American ancestry, but only the tribe and its sovereign government can accept an individual as a tribal citizen. The application process is different for each of the 573 federally recognized Native American tribes, but in the Cherokee Nation, tribal membership hinges on two sets of U.S. government documents drawn up more than 100 years ago. The Dawes Rolls are late 19th-/early 20th-century census lists that include Cherokee tribespeople who were forcibly resettled in Oklahoma after being driven from states like Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee along the infamous Trail of Tears. To apply for citizenship in the Cherokee Nation, you must be able to trace your direct lineage to an individual on the Dawes Rolls. This is done by providing original birth certificates for each link in the family tree. The Freedmen Rolls are separate lists of names that include the descendants of freed Cherokee slaves (yes, some Cherokee owned slaves). Following the "one drop rule" of Plessy v. Ferguson, a Cherokee with even a single "negro" ancestor was placed on the Freedmen Rolls, even if the rest of their lineage was full-blooded Cherokee. Sadly, descendants of people on the Freedmen Rolls were denied full citizenship in the Cherokee Nation and several other tribes from the 1980s until 2017, when a court ruling restored their rightful claims. According to the Cherokee Nation, if you can successfully trace and document your lineage back to individuals on either of those rolls, you can apply for citizenship. You can also apply for citizenship if you marry a tribal member. Any other "proof" of belonging family trees, photographs of relatives in feathered headdresses, DNA tests simply won't be considered. (Other tribes have their own requirements for membership, but they're usually along similar lines.) "We expect people to give deference to our institutions in determining who can claim to be a Cherokee," says Cornsilk. "It's not about descent from someone who abandoned the tribe 150 years ago. It's not about DNA tests that might only represent some statistical noise. And it's not about family oral histories, that like a game of telephone are often fraught with changes that make them very unreliable." Advertisement What Citizenship Means Citizenship in a federally recognized tribe makes you eligible for certain health care and housing programs available through the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and the tribes themselves. But the Cherokee Nation website makes it clear that tribal members do not receive monthly payments from casino earnings, they still pay U.S. taxes, and tribal citizenship does not mean a free college education. Warren's DNA test is particularly troubling to Cornsilk for two reasons. First, current DNA testing technology can only confirm that someone in your family was indigenous to either North or South America, not that they were clearly American Indian. Second, DNA tests reinforce the erroneous idea that citizenship in Cherokee Nation has always been based solely on blood lineage. Cornsilk explains that back in the mid-19th century, the Cherokee Nation had a naturalization process for new citizens that had nothing to do with the applicant's family lineage. Many white people, for example, were welcomed into the tribe. The issue of blood lineage only arose after Native American tribes surrendered to the U.S. government and were forcibly relocated to places like Oklahoma. As part of these treaties, the federal government promised restitution payments and land allotments to members of each tribe. The question was, who was a true member? "When the federal government created the dependency which the Cherokee Nation has experienced over the last 100 years, it didn't want to give money to people who had no Indian blood," says Cornsilk. Over the ensuing century, Native American tribes were given the sovereign authority to draft their own citizenship rules. Tribal members like Cornsilk want to move away from the idea that Cherokee identity is written in blood or DNA. Instead, he promotes the view that Cherokee Nation and other Native American tribes are independent political entities which, like the United States or Canada, can decide who is and is not a citizen regardless of bloodlines or race. In fact, race is an increasingly problematic issue for Native American tribes. As long as blood lineage is synonymous with tribal identity, it leaves tribes open to lawsuits alleging racial discrimination. Just last month, a federal court in Texas struck down the Indian Child Welfare Act, a 1978 law passed to prevent Native American babies from being adopted away from the tribe and losing their heritage. The judge ruled that the law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by making adoption decisions based on race. Now That's Just Wrong Some ethically challenged folks, like the brother-in-law of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, claim membership in non-recognized Native American tribes to receive no-bid contracts reserved for minority-owned businesses. Advertisement Originally Published: Nov 5, 2018 " " Once luggage has been checked with an airline, it's subject to search either through scanning or more physical means. Scott Olson/Getty Images When passengers travel by plane in the United States and check their luggage, they give the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) implicit permission to search their bags. But can the TSA search the data of electronic devices they find inside bags they open? On March 21, 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced what it called an "aviation security enhancement" that would be imposed on travelers departing for the U.S. from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries. People on flights out of those places which include major air travel hubs such as Dubai International Airport and Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul can no longer bring any electronic devices bigger than a smartphone with them as carry-on items in the plane's main cabin. Instead, laptop computers, tablets and other gadgets would have to be checked as baggage at the counter or the gate, and transported in the aircraft's cargo hold. The United Kingdom instituted similar, though less broad, restrictions. Advertisement DHS has been coy about the nature of the terrorist threat that led to the change of policy. An unnamed U.S. intelligence official told CNN that an Al Qaeda affiliate has been looking for a way to hide explosives in the batteries or battery compartments of devices such as laptops. But a security expert told the Washington Post that the measure didn't make much sense, because a terrorist still could use a smartphone to set off a laptop bomb stored in the belly of the plane. A lot of travelers are worried about letting their laptops out of their sight, since that increases the possibility of theft. Others worry that the laptop rule might have a hidden purpose to separate travelers from their devices so that someone can surreptitiously gain access to them. "Once you let the device out of your sight, anyone with access to it could search your data, try to install malware, or otherwise tamper with your sensitive information," says Nate Wessler, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. The U.S. government denies that it's using the laptop rule as an excuse to spy. "DHS is not looking at anybody's data as a result of this enhanced security measure," says Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson for the TSA. And neither TSA, which conducts security checks at U.S. airports, nor DHS has staff screening baggage in foreign airports, she said. " " A Libyan traveler packs his laptop in his suitcase before boarding his flight for London at Tunis-Carthage International Airport on March 25, 2017. Fethi Belaid/AFP/Getty Images But all this attention to laptops-in-baggage may be obscuring what to privacy advocates is a bigger issue. Once travelers arrive at a port of entry on U.S. soil, all of the devices that they bring along including their phones are subject to search by officials of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is a branch of DHS. According to this ACLU analysis of the issue, CBP agents can ask travelers for their passwords, and visa holders and tourists from countries with visa waivers can be refused admittance to the U.S. unless they comply. U.S. citizens don't face that risk, but they can still be temporarily detained, and agents can confiscate their devices and hold onto them for months afterward. Here's a 2009 directive that spells out CBP's procedures for searches of electronics. The number of searches of cell phones by border agents has mushroomed from 5,000 in 2015 to 25,000 last year, and indications so far are that 2017 might break that record easily, according to CNBC. So far, federal courts have found that the government's searches at ports of entry don't violate the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure. But the courts have imposed a few limitations. In 2013, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that agents are entitled to give your phone or laptop a cursory perusal without having to justify themselves. But they need to have a reasonable suspicion that you've committed a crime to conduct a heavy-duty forensic search, which might include using high-powered search algorithms to comb through your data for clues, scrutinizing metadata for files, or restoring files that have been deleted "Stuff that most computer users don't even know is there," says Wessler. " " In the United States, the Transportation Security Administration handles airport security, and can open checked luggage for closer inspection. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images But the ACLU argues that those powers still give agents too much leeway. "Even cursory searches can reveal large quantities of sensitive information," says Wessler. Sen. Ron Wyden recently sent a letter to DHS asking for information about its policies, and said he plans to introduce legislation that would require agents to get a warrant before looking through the contents of anyone's phone or laptop. In the meantime, the ACLU advises travelers to take as few devices and as little personal data with them as possible when they're traveling into the U.S. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, another privacy advocacy group, offers this detailed guide for travelers on how to protect their devices and information. Now That's Interesting The Dubai-based airline Emirates is offering to make things a little easier for travelers by packing their electronic devices in special protective boxes, which will be unloaded from the plane before the rest of the baggage. At least two other Middle East carriers are providing loaner laptops and iPads to business-class passengers. THE National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) has removed over 650,000 campaign materials all over Metro Manila.NCRPO Director Major General Guillermo Eleazar urged the candidates to also do their FOUR Cebu mayors are among the 45 charged by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) for their failure to create the Anti-Drugs Abuse Council (Adac) in their respective localities. DILG Cebu Director Jerome Gonzales told SunStar Cebu that he doesnt know the identity of the four mayors, as he has not yet received official communication from their central office in Manila. Gonzales theorized that the basis in filing cases against the mayors was an audit done last year where some local government units(LGU) were found to have lapses in the creation of Adacs. However, Gonzales said they started the audit for 2018, which will be completed next month. He said that last year, all the LGUs had complied with the requirements in the creation of ADAC and he expects charges against Cebu mayors will be dismissed. DILG Secretary Eduardo Ano also filed the charges against 15 mayors from Bicol, particularly in Albay, Camarines Sur, Catanduanes, Masbate and Sorsogon provinces, seven from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Barmm), specifically in the provinces of Basilan, Tawi-Tawi, and Lanao del Sur, five from the provinces of Abra and Ifugao in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), and in the province of Palawan, three mayors from Agusan del Norte, Laguna and Quezon provinces, two from Cagayan and Nueva Vizcaya, and one from Eastern Samar before the Office of the Ombudsman. They are facing charges of misconduct and dereliction of duty in relation to Section 60, or grounds for disciplinary action, under the Local Government Code. Ano said 20 mayors were charged on March 14, and charges for the 25 others were filed Wednesday, March 20. DILG Assistant Secretary Ricojudge Janvier Echiverri said they will file charges against 35 more mayors over zero functionality Adacs in the coming days. He said 800 more will face similar complaints for low functionality Adacs. The list includes the 46 government-elected officials who were recently named by President Rodrigo Duterte due to their alleged involvement in illegal drugs. Story continues The 46 narco-politicians named by Duterte were charged before the Office of the Ombudsman with grave misconduct, conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service, conduct unbecoming of a public officer and gross neglect of duty. Despite several directives from the DILG and the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB), the concerned mayors still failed or refused to comply with the said orders and their towns are among those that are without an organized and functional Adac, said Ano. Earlier, Ano said local Adacs play a critical role in coordination and proper monitoring of drug-related incidents within the jurisdiction of the local government unit, especially the barangays. The DILG said that Adac, particularly in the barangay level, is the first line of defense in the governments war on drugs, as barangay officials are more aware of the activities and people in their communities. (Third Anne Peralta- Malonzo of SunStar Philippines, EOB) AT LEAST 45 mayors are facing administrative charges for their failure to create the Anti-Illegal Drugs Abuse Council (Adac) in their respective localities.Department of the Interior and Local Government AT LEAST 45 mayors are facing administrative charges for their failure to create the Anti-Illegal Drugs Abuse Council (Adac) in their respective localities. Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Secretary Eduardo Ano filed the charges against 15 mayors from Bicol, particularly in Albay, Camarines Sur, Catanduanes, Masbate and Sorsogon provinces; seven from the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Barmm), specifically in the provinces of Basilan, Tawi-Tawi, and Lanao del Sur; five from the provinces of Abra and Ifugao in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), and in the province of Palawan; and four from Cebu. Three mayors from Agusan del Norte, Laguna and Quezon provinces, two from Cagayan and Nueva Vizcaya, and one from Eastern Samar have also been charged before the Office of the Ombudsman. They are facing charges of misconduct and dereliction of duty in relation to Section 60, or grounds for disciplinary action, under the Local Government Code. Ano said 20 mayors were charged on March 14, and charges for the 25 others were filed Wednesday, March 20. DILG Assistant Secretary Ricojudge Janvier Echiverri said they will file charges against 35 more mayors over zero functionality Adacs in the coming days. He said 800 more will face similar complaints for low functionality Adacs. The list includes the 46 government-elected officials who were recently named by President Rodrigo Duterte due to their alleged involvement in illegal drugs. The 46 narco-politicians named by Duterte were charged before the Office of the Ombudsman with grave misconduct, conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service, conduct unbecoming of a public officer, and gross neglect of duty. Despite several directives from the DILG and the Dangerous Drugs Board (DDB), the concerned mayors still failed or refused to comply with the said orders and their towns are among those that are without an organized and functional Adac, said Ano. Earlier, Ano said local Adacs play a critical role in coordination and proper monitoring of drug-related incidents within the jurisdiction of the local government unit, especially the barangays. The DILG said that Adac, particularly in the barangay level, is the first line of defense of the governments war on drugs, as barangay officials are more aware of the activities and people in their communities. (SunStar Philippines) China on Thursday protested Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's stopover in the United States after a visit to three Pacific nations, calling on Washington to block her transit. Following a trip to Palau, Nauru and the Marshall Islands, Tsai is scheduled to transit through Hawaii on March 27. Taiwan is typically low-key in announcing its leader's specific itineraries, fearing China will use its power to disrupt her visits. "Any attempt to create... 'one China, one Taiwan' will be opposed by all Chinese people," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a regular press briefing. "China has already repeatedly stated its position and has also made solemn representations to the US," he added, calling on Washington to block Tsai's entry. During the Taiwanese leader's last US visit, China lodged an official protest after she gave a speech in Los Angeles -- the first time in 15 years that a Taiwanese leader spoke publicly on American soil. Beijing also protested when Tsai transitted through Hawaii and the US territory of Guam during her first official visit to the Pacific in 2017. Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 but has remained Taiwan's most powerful unofficial ally and biggest arms supplier. China sees the self-ruling island as part of its territory awaiting reunification and bristles at any moves by countries that might lend Taiwan diplomatic support or legitimacy. It sees the territory as a renegade province that needs to be retaken by force if necessary. Beijing has stepped up diplomatic pressure on Taiwan since Tsai took office in 2016, as she has refused to acknowledge its "one China" policy. Five countries have switched official recognition to Beijing since Tsai became president, leaving Taipei with only 17 diplomatic allies, including six in the Pacific. Almost 100 people, mostly women and children, died Thursday as a ferry packed with families celebrating Kurdish New Year sank in a swollen river in the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, in Iraq's worst accident in years. There was an outpouring of grief among residents who only this year resumed the annual festivities on the banks of the Tigris after the northern city's recapture from the Islamic State group. Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi decreed three days of national mourning as he visited the site of the tragedy. He ordered a swift investigation "to determine responsibilities". The vessel was crammed with men, women and children crossing the Tigris to go to a popular picnic area to celebrate Nowruz, the Kurdish New Year and a holiday across Iraq marking the start of spring. The accident, which struck as the overloaded vessel turned back, also coincided with Mother's Day in Iraq. The interior ministry, issuing a fresh toll, said 94 people had died and 55 were rescued, after its spokesman Saad Maan said at least 19 children were among the dead. The premier said 61 women had died in the accident. While war and jihadist attacks have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq in recent years, such accidents are relatively rare. "It's a disaster, no one expected that," said a young man who had just managed to reach the shore. "There were a lot of people on the boat, especially women and children," he told AFP. A Mosul security source said the high water levels and overcrowding on the boat, with well over 100 people on board, had been to blame for the disaster. "The boat sank because there were too many passengers on board," another security official based in Mosul told AFP. - Bloated river - Iraq's justice ministry said it had ordered the arrest of nine ferry company officials and banned the owners of the vessel and the tourist site from leaving the country. The authorities had warned people to be cautious after several days of heavy rains led to water being released through the Mosul dam, causing the river level to rise. Videos shared on social media showed a fast-flowing, bloated river and dozens of people floating in the water or trying to swim around the partly submerged boat. Search operations stretched far downstream from the site where the boat sank, according to an AFP journalist. Hundreds of people who had flocked to the forested area for the first days of spring gathered on the river banks as the disaster unfolded. Ambulances and police vehicles transported the dead and wounded to hospitals in the city of nearly two million people. Photos of victims, many of them women and children, were posted on the walls of a morgue for families unable to enter because of the large crowd who had gathered to identify their relatives. One man, scanning over the pictures, stopped abruptly at the image of a woman. In shock, he gasped: "It's my wife", before collapsing in tears. IS turned Mosul into their de facto Iraqi capital after the jihadists swept across much of the country's north in 2014. The city spent three years under the group's iron-fisted rule until it was recaptured by Iraqi troops backed by a US-led coalition in 2017. - Dead children in the water - Nawar, who had been aboard the craft, said it had capsized in mid-stream. "It was carrying too many passengers, so the water began to rush onboard and the ferry became heavier and overturned," he said. "With my own eyes I saw dead children in the water." As ambulances shuttled back and forth to the morgue, three young girls and a boy were huddled together in a blanket, in tears, waiting for news of their missing parents. "All we wanted was to celebrate the New Year and it turned into a catastrophe," a man passing the scene protested. Iraq's last major boat disaster was in March 2013 when a floating restaurant sank in Baghdad, killing five people. Several political leaders denounced the lack of safety at dilapidated leisure facilities in a country where the dismal state of public services was one of the triggers for widespread protests last year. PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has called out a former Bacolod City mayor who is seeking a congressional seat for supposedly altering a video to make it appear that incumbent Bacolod City Mayor Evelio Leonardia PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has called out a former Bacolod City mayor who is seeking a congressional seat for supposedly altering a video to make it appear that incumbent Bacolod City Mayor Evelio Leonardia was among the "narco-politicians." Duterte, in a video uploaded on Facebook on Thursday, March 21, made it clear that he "never mentioned" Leonardia's name as among the politicians who have supposed links to illegal drug trade. The President issued the remark, upon learning that his speeches were allegedly "twisted" by former mayor Monico Puentevella to tag Leonardia in the narcotics trade. Puntevella is eyeing a seat at the House of Representatives, while Leonardia is seeking a reelection in the May 13, 2019 polls. Duterte clarified that he never named Leonardia nor Puentevella as among government officials who are included in the so-called narco-list. "'Yung sinabi ni Mayor Monico na pinangalanan ko si Leonardia as one of the... Hindi totoo yun. I was purposely and intentionally, binaliktad yung salita. Hindi naman fair 'yan (Monico's claim that I named Leonardia as one of the narco-politicians is not true. I was purposely and intentionally misquoted. My words were twisted. That's unfair)," the President said. "My advice kay Mayor Monico is huwag ganoon. Tapos gamitin mo pangalan ko. Tapos 'yung mga speeches ko ini-splice ninyo, tapos dinagdagan ninyo ng ibang -- pinaghahalo-halo ninyo, lumalabas na si Leonardia ang nasa droga. Mali po 'yun. Pati si Monico wala. His name does not appear there, neither yung pangalan ni Leonardia," he added. (My advice to Mayor Monico, don't do that. You're using my name. You splice my speeches, embellish them, and jumble them to make it appear that Leonardia in involved in illegal drugs. That's wrong. Monico is not included there. His name does not appear there, neither the name of Leonardia.) Leonardia earlier said he was planning to file criminal charges against Puentevella for the alleged tampering of Duterte's video. Story continues Puentevella, however, denied the accusation that he altered the President's video to taint the Bacolod City mayor's reputation. Duterte said he merely mentioned Leonardia's name during the March 8 event at the Victorias City Coliseum, when he was recalling the time he summoned the mayor to Malacanan Palace in 2016. During the campaign rally of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan in Bacolod, Duterte asked Leonardia, who joined his on stage, about the mayor's meeting, which happened in 2016, or the year when his war against illegal drugs was heightened. Duterte also stressed that he was even in fact supporting Leonardia's reelection bid. "I am supporting Leonardia for the mayorship of Bacolod City. I think the better guy is the more direct and honest. Siya ang gusto kong maging mayor, I am supporting him," he said. "Just a statement, a simple statement that I am supporting him. Because to me he is the better candidate for mayorship," Duterte added. (SunStar Philippines) Courtesy : PCOO President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (right) chats with Moro National Liberation Front Founding Chairman Nur Misuari (left) at a meeting at the Malacanan Palace on March 19, 2019. MANILA, Philippines Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) Founding Chairman Nur Misuari has threatened to go to war against the government if the proposed shift to federalism is rejected, President Rodrigo Duterte revealed on Wednesday. Duterte met with Misuari in Malacanang on Tuesday night upon the latters return from his trip to Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. This was already their second meeting in less than a month since the formal ratification of the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL). The BOL was the result of the governments negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which was established by former MNLF members. Sabi ni Misuari kagabi (Misuari told me last night), if you do not give it [federalism] to me, let me be very honest. I will go to war, Duterte said during a campaign sortie of the PDP-Laban in Marikina City on Wednesday. The President said he assured Misuari that he understands his stand but the approval of the proposal as well as the type of the federal system to be used depends on Congress. The 1987 Philippine Constitution would also have to be amended to enable the shift to federalism. Duterte also said that a panel will be formed between the government and MNLF for the negotiations. Lets form a panel because you have to inform the people. We cannot negotiate secretly here. Sabi ko, (I told him) day-to-day they will be briefed kung ano ang outcome (about the outcome). How gusto mong ma-apply yang federal system sa gusto mo (how do you want the federal system to be applied). Will it be like the BOL or a different type? he said. Malacanang, meanwhile, denied allegations that Dutertes move to reveal Misuaris warning is meant to influence the Congress and the public to approve the proposed federalism. Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the President only wanted to let the public know about the importance of the bill. He responded to that and said, if it fails, we will be dying together. Ibig sabihin, lalabanan kita, yun ang ibig sabihin ni President, lalabanan mo gobyerno, eh di lalabanan din kita, (it means, I will fight against you, that was what the President meant. If you go against the government then I will also fight you.) Panelo said. Story continues Although the MNLFs threat is serious, Panelo said that Misuari has also expressed hope that federalism will be realized during Dutertes term. The shift to federalism is one of Dutertes campaign promises. The House of Representatives had passed its version of the proposed Charter Amendment while the Senate has yet to tackle the bill. Robie de Guzman (with details from Rosalie Coz) The post Duterte: Misuari to wage war if push for federalism fails appeared first on UNTV News. CJ constituted bench to determine definition of terrorism ISLAMABAD: Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa Wednesday constituted a seven-member bench to determine the definition of terrorism, and the cases that fall under the category. The newly constituted bench will be headed by Chief Justice Khosa. Cases that fall under terrorism charges have remained ambiguous since 1997. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court released its detailed judgement over the legal status of false testimony, ordering legal proceedings under perjury against any witness found to have resorted to deliberate falsehood. The order, penned by Chief Justice Asif Saeed Khosa in reference to a case of false testimony of Assistant Sub-Inspector Khizar Hayat, rejected false testimony by a witness and declared that the rule falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (false in one thing, false in everything) will henceforth be an integral part of jurisprudence in criminal cases. The apex court in its judgement ordered courts not to allow any leniency against those resorting to false testimonies and reject testimonies if even a part of them is based on lies. A judicial system which permits deliberate falsehood is doomed to fail and a society which tolerates it is destined to self-destruct. Truth is the foundation of Criminal Miscellaneous Application No 200 of 2019. Justice and justice is the core and bedrock of a civilized society and, thus, any compromise on truth amounts to a compromise on a societys future as a just, fair and civilized society, the order read. Our judicial system has suffered a lot as a consequence of the above mentioned permissible deviation from the truth and it is about time that such a colossal wrong may be rectified in all earnestness. Therefore, in light of the discussion made above, we declare that the rule falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus shall henceforth be an integral part of our jurisprudence in criminal cases and the same shall be given effect to, followed and applied by all the courts in the country in its letter and spirit, it continued. Gabonese President Ali Bongo, who is convalescing in Morocco after suffering a stroke five months ago, will return home this weekend for the third time since he fell ill, his office said on Thursday. Bongo "will leave Morocco to return to Gabon on Saturday March 23," presidential spokesman Ike Ngouoni said in a statement. "(He) is delighted to return to his fellow countrymen... and wishes to give his warmest thanks... to the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, for his excellent welcome and incomparable support throughout his stay." Bongo, 60, was taken ill on October 24 while visiting Saudi Arabia. He has returned only twice since then, staying less than 48 hours each time, although the government has insisted that he is in good shape. In late February, Bongo led a cabinet meeting during which a raft of appointments were announced and several close aides were dismissed, although no media were on hand for the event. His prolonged absence has stoked concern about a vacuum of power, apparently sparking a brief attempted coup by renegade soldiers on January 7. It has also sparked rumours that he has a body double for public appearances -- a scenario that the president's office vigorously dismissed on March 7. Bongo took office after an election in 2009 that followed the death of his father, former president Omar Bongo, who took office in 1967. THE National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) has removed over 650,000 campaign materials all over Metro Manila.NCRPO Director Major General Guillermo Eleazar urged the candidates to also do their PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday, March 21, refused to render early judgment on the water scarcity in Metro Manila. In a chance interview in Taguig City, Duterte said he would give the government's water regulator and two private water concessionaires until April 15 to look for ways to provide sufficient water supply to consumers in Metro Manila and nearby provinces. He made the remark after threatening to fire officials of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) and terminate the contracts of Manila Water and Maynilad Water Service, if they fail to address the low supply of water. The President said he wants to know who must be held accountable for the water crisis. "I will not make a prejudgment. I asked them -- everybody concerned -- to submit a report by April 10 and I will decide before April 15," he said. "Anong nangyari (What happened)? Who was responsible for it? Was there negligence or was there really something which is beyond the competence of the MWSS to control," he added. Duterte on Thursday, March 21, met with the officials of the MWSS, Manila Water, and Maynilad amid the water shortage. During the meeting, Duterte engaged in a "presidential monologue," telling them to "shape up or ship out" for failure to address the lack of water supply in the past weeks. The President also directed them to submit a report on April 10 so he can decide on their fate. On Wednesday, March 20, the MWSS vowed to take "immediate" action to end the water crisis. (SunStar Philippines) PHILIPPINE troops are geared up for possible armed conflict with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) should the shift to federalism fail to prosper, Malacanang said on Thursday, March 21.That was PHILIPPINE troops are geared up for possible armed conflict with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) should the shift to federalism fail to prosper, Malacanang said on Thursday, March 21. That was President Rodrigo Duterte's "counter-threat," after MNLF founding chairperson Nur Misuari warned of potential war against the state forces in the event that the proposed federalism falls through, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said. "He (Misuari) was saying that if federalism fails, 'I will go to war and assert our independence.' That is tantamount to fighting the government," the Palace official said in a press briefing with Palace reporters. "If he (Misuari) goes to war, he will be fighting the government. So if he's fighting the government and the head of the government is the President, he would be [waging a war as well]. They would be fighting with each other. That is what he (Duterte) meant," he added. On Wednesday, March 20, Duterte revealed that Misuari has threatened to launch a war, if the government fails to pass the proposed federalism. Adopting a federal type of government is one of Duterte's campaign promises, in an effort to provide for the better distribution of public services, as well as to promote peace and order in besieged Mindanao. Misuari made the threat during his meeting with Duterte at Malacanan Palace on Tuesday, March 19. Panelo said that while Duterte understands the Moro leader's sentiments, the Chief Executive also warned that his administration is willing to "die together" with the MNLF, should a war ensue. "He (Duterte) said that he understood where the chairman was coming from and he reminded him that federalism issue would be up to Congress," he said. "May response naman siya (Duterte's response was): 'And then we celebrate if we will succeed. And as a response to that going to war, we will die fighting each other.' The President's response is also a threat. Kung you consider that as a threat, that's a counter-threat. Ibig sabihin, lalabanan kita (That means we will also fight you)," he added. Story continues Panelo, nevertheless, was optimistic that the two leaders' resolve to seek peace in Mindanao and their "deep friendship" would prevail over their inclination to engage in an armed struggle. He added that Misuari's threat should be considered an "advantage" on the part of the government, since the MNLF founder was "telegraphing his plans at this early." He also believed that Misuari was merely expressing "disappointment" over failure to adopt a federal form of government. "I don't think so. I think he just wants to express his disappointment that until now, federalism is not still in place," Panelo said, when asked if Misuari's warning could be deemed as a "real threat." "Knowing the chairman who has been fighting for a peaceful solution in Mindanao and knowing the deep friendly relationship between the two leaders, I'm confident that there will be an agreement between two sides. And we will have peace in Mindanao," he added. (SunStar Philippines) A KILO of a substance believed to be methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) was seized Thursday morning, March 21, in an abandoned vehicle along Bypass Road in Bustos, Bulacan.Bulacan Police Provincial A KILO of a substance believed to be methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) was seized Thursday morning, March 21, in an abandoned vehicle along Bypass Road in Bustos, Bulacan. Bulacan Police Provincial Office Chief Chito Bersaluna said a concerned citizen reported around 9 a.m. Thursday that a black Sedan car was abandoned along Bypass Road, Barangay Camachilihan in Bustos, Bulacan. Policemen responded to the area and found the vehicle with its back door open. Cops found inside the vehicle a kilo of "shabu" placed in a green plastic container. The packaging is similar to the P1.1 billion worth of shabu recovered by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in a drug raid in Ayala Alabang, Muntinlupa City on Tuesday evening, March 19. Investigators are trying to find who left the vehicle in the area, saying they could have links to the four Chinese nationals who were arrested in Muntinlupa. (SunStar Philippines) Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's regime defied the US on Thursday to arrest a top aide of opposition leader Juan Guaido, whom Washington recognizes as the crisis-hit country's interim leader. Interior Minister Nestor Reverol accused the aide, Roberto Marrero, a 49-year-old lawyer who serves as Guaido's chief of staff, of leading a "terrorist cell" bent on attacking the government's leadership with the help of Colombian and Central American mercenaries as well as "acts of sabotage on public services to create chaos." He said weapons and foreign cash were found in a predawn raid on Marrero's home. He added that Marrero's 34-year-old bodyguard, Luis Paez, was also arrested and faced the same charges and a search was on for "identified" collaborators. Later, President Nicolas Maduro said he would "not be afraid to fight terrorist groups to put them in jail." The development triggered alarm internationally. The United States, the European Union, and a grouping of Latin American nations plus Canada all denounced Marrero's arrest and demanded his immediate release. The United States has repeatedly warned Maduro's government against arresting Guaido or his close aides, saying it would face unspecified repercussions. US President Donald Trump reiterated this week he was considering "all options" at his disposal to see Maduro dislodged and Guaido installed in power, implying military action if he deemed it necessary. A UN spokesman Thursday expressed "concern" at the arrest, urging "all actors in Venezuela to take immediate steps to lower tensions and refrain from any action that could lead to further escalation." - 'Vulgar kidnapping' - The arrest was denounced earlier Thursday by Guaido as a "vile, vulgar kidnapping." He said "we won't be intimidated." One opposition lawmaker who is a neighbor of Marrero's and whose home was also searched, Sergio Vergara, told reporters that Marrero had yelled out during his arrest that SEBIN intelligence officers had planted two assault rifles and a grenade in his place as a pretext. "The United States condemns raids by Maduro's security services and detention of Roberto Marrero, Chief of Staff to Interim President @jguaido. We call for his immediate release. We will hold accountable those involved," US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter. "Maduro has made another big mistake. The illegitimate arrest of Roberto Marrero, Interim President Juan Guaido's aide, will not go unanswered. He should be released immediately and his safety guaranteed," added National Security Advisor John Bolton. Maduro and Guaido both claim to be Venezuela's legitimate leader but Maduro, 56, retains the loyalty of the military brass and has control of state apparatus. Guaido, 35, declared himself interim president on January 23 and has the backing of the US and more than 50 other countries. So far their power struggle has hit an impasse, with Maduro railing daily about the US "imperialists" trying to dislodge him and Guaido touring the country to rally supporters and pledging he'll be taking over "very soon." Maduro's forces have reinforced obstacles blocking a border bridge linking Venezuela and Colombia to prevent Guaido's supporters trucking in US aid. Extra shipping containers and concrete blocks have been moved into place on the bridge. - 'Ransacked' home - Vergara said Thursday's raid, which occurred around 2:00 am (0600 GMT), was carried out by around 15 officers of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service, or SEBIN. He said he was thrown to the floor and his own place "ransacked" for around two hours before the officers went a short distance to bang on Marrero's door and enter his apartment. "The dictatorship is abducting citizens," Vergara said. The Lima Group, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Peru, issued a statement "calling for Nicolas Maduro's illegitimate and dictatorial regime to immediately release Mr. Marrero" and leave Vergara alone. "We demand the end of harassment of Venezuelans upholding democracy and the systematic practice of arbitrary detention and torture in Venezuela," said the statement issued by Peru's foreign ministry. - US warning - The United States has cautioned Maduro against laying a finger on Guaido or National Assembly deputies, threatening unspecified repercussions. In January, Bolton tweeted: "Any violence and intimidation against US diplomatic personnel, Venezuela's democratic leader, Juan Guaido, or the National Assembly itself would represent a grave assault on the rule of law and will be met with a significant response." The United States this month withdrew all its diplomats from Venezuela. In just over a month, on April 28, increasingly harsh US sanctions on Venezuela will intensify to a critical level with a ban on all oil sales to the United States, Venezuela's main crude buyer. The step is expected to worsen already dire economic conditions ravaging Venezuela, a once-wealthy South American nation that has become impoverished under Maduro. Credit: Janson George/Shutterstock Your lipstick and foundation will be less likely to come at the expense of animal welfare, thanks to Commonwealth legislation that passed in recent weeks. The legislation, which will come into play on July 1, 2020, follows a commitment the Coalition government made during the 2016 election campaign to introduce a ban on cosmetic testing on animals, backed by strong public support. The RSPCA asserts 85% of Australians oppose testing cosmetics on animals. The legislation was a long time coming it was first introduced in June 2017 and is a step in the right direction, but it doesn't go far enough. Animals are sentient creatures they feel pain and distress just as humans do. Given the increasing recognition of the extent of animal sentience, reflected by various international laws, it is well and truly time to rethink our approach to testing on animals for any reason. Cosmetics are often tested on rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, rats and mice. It commonly involves applying chemicals to the shaved skin or eyes of rabbits, force feeding, and testing to determine what dose of chemical will cause death. Such testing causes significant pain and distress for the animals involved and most animals are killed following an experiment. According to Humane Society International, around 100,000 to 200,000 animals suffer and die for cosmetics around the world each year. The federal ban will impact a wide range of products. The legislation defines "cosmetic" as "a substance or preparation intended for placement in contact with any external part of the human body" with the aim of altering odour, changing appearance, cleansing, maintaining, perfuming or protecting it. Make-up, facial cleansers, soap, deodorant, perfume and moisturisers are all included under this definition. But only chemicals intended for use in cosmetics will be affected. Chemicals in household cleaning products, for instance, are found in many cosmetics, and will not be impacted by the new legislation. This is a significant loophole, as most chemicals using animal test data are used for a variety of purposes. The international trend Australia is not alone in banning the testing of cosmetics on animals, and the recent legislation shows our effort to join the international trend. The European Union banned cosmetics testing on animals in 2009 and extended the ban to imports in 2013. The European Union also called for a global ban on animal testing for cosmetics and proposed drafting an international convention. Bans have been introduced in Israel, India, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Turkey, Taiwan, parts of Brazil, Switzerland and Guatemala. Last year, California became the first state in America to ban the sale of animal tested cosmetics. Non-cosmetic animal testing When discussing the new legislation in parliament, then Assistant Minister for Health, David Gillespie, said: "Australia is moving away from the use of animal test data for other purposes, so that animal test data, like in the EU, would be used as a last resort where science has not yet developed valid alternatives that can assure continued protections for human health, worker safety and the environment." The RSPCA estimates between 4 and 5 million animals are used to help develop medicines, test the harmfulness of chemicals and drugs, and for education and training each year. Animals are also commonly used in ways that aren't directed at saving lives. Agricultural research, for instance, might be aimed at increasing the productivity of animals used for the production of human food. Animals are also often used in high school and university science classes. The dissection of frogs, for instance, helps students understand anatomy. But most of the time, these classes aren't associated with training students for veterinary or medical practice, according to Animals Australia. For non-cosmetic animal testing, the internationally accepted approach to better animal welfare follows "The 3Rs". Replacement: using alternative means to animal testing Reduction: using fewer animals in testing Refinement: using methods that reduce potential pain and suffering of animals subject to testing The 3Rs are incorporated in the Australian Code for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes. Other jurisdictions incorporating these principles include a European Union directive on the protection of animals, the UK's Animal (Scientific) Procedures Act and in Japan via The Law for the Human Treatment and Management of Animals 2005. To progress further down the path of banning all animal testing, it is critical to develop and authorise alternatives to animals in testing, such as the use of computer models, cell cultures and human tissues. As the RSPCA advocates, Australia should ensure there is dedicated government funding for developing these alternatives, implement a national strategy to reduce animal use and establish a national centre to implement the 3Rs. Explore further Australia will finally ban cosmetic testing on animals This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Rice University scientists have built a model to predict how long, on average, it takes to eradicate bacterial infections like those caused by shigella, above, with antibiotics. The model could help doctors fight resistance by prescribing antibiotics that neither over- or under-dose a patient. Credit: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention If an antibiotic doesn't kill all the bacteria that infects a patient, the surviving bugs may be particularly adept at timing their resurgence. Theoretical scientists at Rice University have proposed a better way to understand how to prescribe antibiotics to kill every last bacterium or at least discourage them from developing resistance Anatoly Kolomeisky, a Rice professor of chemistry and chemical and biomolecular engineering, considers antibiotic resistance "the most serious problem of the 21st century." A new study by Kolomeisky and postdoctoral researcher Hamid Teimouri shows that fluctuating growth rates of bacteria can increase the time it takes for a bacterial colony to die out and give it a better shot at developing resistance. "Our calculations suggest this fluctuation, which bacteria can easily do, might help them bide their time and try different mutations," Kolomeisky said. "We think this is the possible first step in antibiotic resistance." Their theory appears in the Royal Society journal Interface. The researchers show that there is no correlation between the bacterial extinction probabilities widely used to determine antibiotic doses and actual extinction times. "There is huge abuse of antibiotics in the world, and especially in this country," Kolomeisky said. "In the last five years, there's been a 4 percent increase in antibiotic prescriptions. Essentially, a huge amount of antibiotics is given to people when it's not needed." The researchers argued it should someday be possible to prescribe a more accurate dose by knowing the size of an infecting colony and the average time it will take to completely eradicate it. They present a preliminary model, from which the pharmaceutical companies might learn how to develop better strategies to improve treatment of infections. Rice University researchers Anatoly Kolomeisky, left, and Hamid Teimouri have built a theoretical model to predict how long, on average, it takes to eradicate a bacterial infection with antibiotics. The model could help doctors fight resistance by prescribing antibiotics that neither over- or under-dose a patient. Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University Bacterial population dynamics are key to the study, Kolomeisky said. "Now, when doctors calculate how much antibiotic you should get, they treat everyone equally," he said. "That's already a huge mistake: They assume you have a huge amount of bacteria in your body and use a very simple deterministic model to prescribe the minimal concentration of antibiotic. Below that threshold, they say you will not be cured, and above it, you will always be cured. "So everyone is getting exactly one tablet per day, and it doesn't matter whether you're a kid or an adult," he said. That one-size-fits-all strategy doesn't account for fluctuations in the growth rate of bacteria, Kolomeisky said. The new model incorporates these random fluctuations when averaging the amount of time it takes a population to die. "The problem comes when the antibiotics are working and you come to where there's almost no bacteria," he said. "When there's almost none or the numbers are relatively small, so-called stochastic (random) effects become important. We know that it's enough to have as few as 10 salmonella or shigella bacteria for the infection to start again." Kolomeisky said current models only tell doctors the probability that a course of antibiotics will cure a patient. "We care much more about the average time to be cured, not the probability," he said. "This will give doctors a much clearer description of what should be done." The study has implications for agriculture, Kolomeisky said. "Food supplies 75 percent of antibiotics," he said. "We need to optimize antibiotic activities there as well, to lower the levels of antibiotics getting to people. "This is a very long way from real applications, but it should give industry some ideas of what to do next and how to couple it with biochemical studies," Kolomeisky said. "It's not enough to investigate only the biochemical and genetic parts of bacterial infection. Knowing the population dynamics aspects of the antibiotic action can clarify a lot of issues." Explore further Antibiotic resistance can be caused by small amounts of antibiotics More information: Hamid Teimouri et al, Theoretical investigation of stochastic clearance of bacteria: first-passage analysis, Journal of The Royal Society Interface (2019). Journal information: Journal of the Royal Society Interface Hamid Teimouri et al, Theoretical investigation of stochastic clearance of bacteria: first-passage analysis,(2019). DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2018.0765 Cashless payment systems are not socially neutral. They discriminate against the unbanked. Credit: Shutterstock After recreational cannabis use became legal in Canada last October, research shows the number of bank notes in circulation fell sharply. Before, marijuana buyers used cash to keep their transactions anonymous. After, there was a massive switch to the convenience of cashless payments. It's a prime example of what makes a cashless society so attractive to law makers and enforcers wanting to put the squeeze on the "black economy" that can't be tracked or taxed. But not everyone clinging to cash has illicit motivations. This month Philadelphia became the first major US city requiring all merchants to accept cash. This week the state of New Jersey followed suit. Other US cities and states are considering the same. The chief concern is that cashless payment systems discriminate against the "unbanked" those without a bank account making life harder for those already on the margins. "It's really a fairness issue," said the councillor who sponsored the ban. "Equal access is what we're trying to get." So as nations make plans to become cashless societies, and automated teller machines start to go the way of telephone booths, it's timely to consider the pros and cons of cashless payments. We need ensure our enthusiastic march to the future does not trample over people or leave them behind. Counting the unbanked A national survey by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation shows about 8.4 million US households or 6.5% of all households were unbanked in 2017. Philadelphia's new law is primarily to protect such people. The fall in October was particularly large and contrasts with average monthly gains of 0.4 per cent over the previous five years. Credit: Bank of Canada Taking effect on July 1, the law requires most stores to accept cash, and forbids them charging a surcharge for paying with cash. New York, Washington and Chicago are among the cities investigating similar measures. In Britain a review of cash accessibility headed by former chief financial ombudsman Natalie Ceeney has urged financial regulators to stop the country "sleepwalking" into a cashless society. Its report, published this month, recommends a national guarantee that consumers will be able to access and use cash for as long as they need it. About 17% of the British population over 8 million adults would struggle to cope in a cashless society, the report says: "While most of society recognises the benefits of digital payments, our research shows the technology doesn't yet work for everyone." The tip of the iceberg is the decline in bank branches and ATMs. Two-thirds of bank branches have closed in the past three decades, and the rate of closure in accelerating. Cashpoints are disappearing at a rate of nearly 500 a month. Learning from Sweden But this is simply the most obvious symptom, according to the Ceeney report, with evidence from other countries demonstrating the issue of merchants accepting cash is more important. "Sweden, the most cashless society in the world, outlines the dangers of sleepwalking into a cashless society: millions of people could potentially be left out of the economy," it says, "and face increased risks of isolation, exploitation, debt and rising costs." About 85% of transactions in Sweden are now digital. Half the nation's retailers expect to stop accepting cash before 2025. Percentage of Swedes that used cash for their most recent purchase. Credit: The Riksbank The nation is now counting the societal costs. The Riksbank, Sweden's Central Bank, is asking all banks to keep providing and accepting cash while government works out how best to protect those who most rely on cash such as those aged 65 or more, those living in rural areas, those with disabilities and recent immigrants. An estimated 1 million Swedes are not comfortable with using a computer or smart phone to do their banking. Immigrants often do not have a bank account or credit history to get a payment card. Considering consequences "If cash disappears that would be a big change, with major implications for society and the economy," Mats Dillen, the head of the Swedish Parliament Committee studying the issue, has said. "We need to pause and think about whether this is good or bad and not just sit back and let it happen." The New York City Council member pushing the bill to ban cashless-only stores, Ritchie Torres, agrees. He is particularly concerned about the issues of class and ethnic discrimination. "I started coming across coffee shops and cafes that were exclusively cashless and I thought: but what if I was a low-income New Yorker who has no access to a card?" Ritchie Torres has explained. "I thought about it more and realised that even if a policy seems neutral in theory it can be racially exclusionary in practice. "In some ways making a payment card a requirement for consumption is analogous to making identification a requirement for voting. The effect is the same: it disempowers communities of colour." These are timely reminders that we should never assume that technological change is value-free, or necessarily an improvement. All revolutions have their hidden costs. We need to ensure those costs are shared equitably, and that no one is accidentally disadvantaged by them. Explore further Philadelphia says no to totally cashless future This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. What came first all-seeing Gods or complex societies? Credit: God the Father and Angel, Guercino Giovan Francesco Barbieri via Wikimedia Commons When you think of religion, you probably think of a god who rewards the good and punishes the wicked. But the idea of morally concerned gods is by no means universal. Social scientists have long known that small-scale traditional societies the kind missionaries used to dismiss as "pagan" envisaged a spirit world that cared little about the morality of human behaviour. Their concern was less about whether humans behaved nicely towards one another and more about whether they carried out their obligations to the spirits and displayed suitable deference to them. Nevertheless, the world religions we know today, and their myriad variants, either demand belief in all-seeing punitive deities or at least postulate some kind of broader mechanism such as karma for rewarding the virtuous and punishing the wicked. In recent years, researchers have debated how and why these moralising religions came into being. Now, thanks to our massive new database of world history, known as Seshat (named after the Egyptian goddess of record keeping), we're starting to get some answers. Eye in the sky One popular theory has argued that moralising gods were necessary for the rise of large-scale societies. Small societies, so the argument goes, were like fish bowls. It was almost impossible to engage in antisocial behaviour without being caught and punished whether by acts of collective violence, retaliation or long-term reputational damage and risk of ostracism. But as societies grew larger and interactions between relative strangers became more commonplace, would-be transgressors could hope to evade detection under the cloak of anonymity. For cooperation to be possible under such conditions, some system of surveillance was required. The global distribution and timing of beliefs in moralising gods shows that big gods appear in big societies. Credit: Whitehouse, Francois Savage et al. Nature., Author provided What better than to come up with a supernatural "eye in the sky" a god who can see inside people's minds and issue punishments and rewards accordingly. Believing in such a god might make people think twice about stealing or reneging on deals, even in relatively anonymous interactions. Maybe it would also increase trust among traders. If you believe that I believe in an omniscient moralising deity, you might be more likely to do business with me, than somebody whose religiosity is unknown to you. Simply wearing insignia such as body markings or jewellery alluding to belief in such a god might have helped ambitious people prosper and garner popularity as society grew larger and more complex. Nevertheless, early efforts to investigate the link between religion and morality provided mixed results. And while supernatural punishment appears to have preceded the rise of chiefdoms among Pacific Island peoples, in Eurasia studies suggested that social complexity emerged first and moralising gods followed. These regional studies, however, were limited in scope and used quite crude measures of both moralising religion and of social complexity. Sifting through history Seshat is changing all that. Efforts to build the database began nearly a decade ago, attracting contributions from more than 100 scholars at a cost of millions of pounds. The database uses a sample of the world's historical societies, going back in a continuous time series up to 10,000 years before the present, to analyse hundreds of variables relating to social complexity, religion, warfare, agriculture and other features of human culture and society that vary over time and space. Now that the database is finally ready for analysis, we are poised to test a long list of theories about global history. One of the earliest questions we're testing is whether morally concerned deities drove the rise of complex societies. We analysed data on 414 societies from 30 world regions, using 51 measures of social complexity and four measures of supernatural enforcement of moral norms to get to the bottom of the matter. New research we've just published in the journal Nature reveals that moralising gods come later than many people thought, well after the sharpest rises in social complexity in world history. In other words, gods who care about whether we are good or bad did not drive the initial rise of civilisations but came later. Social complexity tends to increase more rapidly before the appearance of moralising gods, not after. Credit: Whitehouse, Francois Savage et al. Nature., Author provided As part of our research we created a map of where big gods appeared around the world. In the map below, the size of the circle represents the size of the society: bigger circles represent larger and more complex societies. The numbers in the circle represent the number of thousand years ago we find the first evidence of belief in moralising gods. For example, Emperor Ashoka adopted Buddhism 2,300 years ago after he had already established a large and complex South Asian empire known as the Mauryan Empire. Our statistical analysis showed that beliefs in supernatural punishment tend to appear only when societies make the transition from simple to complex, around the time when the overall population exceed about a million individuals. We are now looking to other factors that may have driven the rise of the first large civilisation. For example, Seshat data suggests that daily or weekly collective rituals the equivalent of today's Sunday services or Friday prayers appear early in the rise of social complexity and we're looking further at their impact. If the original function of moralising gods in world history was to hold together fragile, ethnically diverse coalitions, what might declining belief in such deities mean for the future of societies today? Could modern secularisation, for example, contribute to the unravelling of efforts to cooperate regionally such as the European Union? If beliefs in big gods decline, what will that mean for cooperation across ethnic groups in the face of migration, warfare, or the spread of xenophobia? Can the functions of moralising gods simply be replaced by other forms of surveillance? Even if Seshat cannot provide easy answers to all these questions, it could provide a more reliable way of estimating the probabilities of different futures. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Credit: NIOO-KNAW Leaf-eating caterpillars greatly enrich their intestinal flora by eating soil. Even effects of plants that previously grew in that soil can be found back in bacteria and fungi in caterpillars. Researchers from the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Leiden University write about this discovery in Nature Communications. Do caterpillars play doctor? Perhaps. In any case, they do display similarities with human children. "Children sometimes put soil in their mouths. It is assumed that this helps their immune system. It now seems that caterpillars do the same," says Martijn Bezemer, Professor of Ecology of Plant-Microbe-Insect Interactions at Leiden University and researcher at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW). Plant telephones and voicemails Earlier research by NIOO indicated that plants, acting much like telephones, transmit information between insects above and below ground. In addition, soil can also store these messages, like voicemails which can later be listened again. In a new study, a team of four ecologists have now discovered that above-ground insects such as caterpillars can retrieve this voicemail from the ground themselves, without the intervention of plants. Bezemer and NIOO colleagues Emilia Hannula, Feng Zhu, Robin Heinen studied the microbiological composition, or the microbiome: a layer of micro-organisms that lives on almost every surface, from grains of sand and roots to leaves, teeth and intestines. Microbial ecologist Hannula explains: "We found that the composition of the microbiome in the caterpillar intestines is astonishingly similar to that of the soil: there was a 75% overlap." That was a surprise, she adds; she had expected that the microbiome on the plant would be most related to that in the herbivorous insect. Credit: NIOO-KNAW The soil used in the study was retrieved from field trials in the Veluwe, containing different types of herbs and grasses. Differences in growth type and speed between these plants also appeared to cause differences in soil bacteria and fungi, which was conformed in a greenhouse experiment. The researchers state that is the first evidence that such 'inheritances' in the soil can affect the microbiome of insects in this way. "If they get the chance, caterpillars search the ground for food," Heinen observed. If the caterpillars only received cut leaves of one single species (dandelions) as a meal and were not able to search the the ground, their gut flora turned out much simpler and three times less diverse. In fact, its composition much more resembled the micro-organisms on the leaves. "I think this is very important knowledge for farmers and growers," says Bezemer. "Soil history can be found not only in plants, but also in insect life. For example, in controlling pests you will have to take in account the soil in which you work." If in good condition, the biodiverse soil life can contribute greatly to pest control and food for healthy crops and species-rich nature. Explore further Voicemail discovered in nature: Insects receive soil messages from the past More information: Foliar-feeding insects acquire microbiomes from the soil rather than the host plant, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09284-w , Foliar-feeding insects acquire microbiomes from the soil rather than the host plant, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09284-w , www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09284-w Dr Mahathir to visit Pakistan from March 21-23 ISLAMABAD: Malaysias Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad will visit Pakistan on March 21-23, the Foreign Office confirmed on Wednesday. During his stay, Prime Minister Mahathir will be the guest of honour at the Pakistan Day parade on March 23, the FO said in a statement. Dr Mahathir, who is visiting Pakistan at the invitation of Prime Minister Imran Khan, will be accompanied by a high-level delegation including leading businessmen. His bilateral engagements include call on President Dr Arif Alvi and one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Khan followed by delegation-level talks. The two prime ministers are scheduled to speak at the roundtable meeting of the chief executive officers of industries, who desire to invest in Pakistans automobile and telecommunication sectors. It will require specialized equipment and in-depth engineering research to stabilize offshore wind farms on the United States east- and west coasts, says Jerome Hajjar, CDM Professor and chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern. Credit: Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University When it comes to wind energy, the United States is sitting on a gold mine, so to speak. "To me, this is like when oil was first discovered in the U.S.," says Jerome Hajjar, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University. It's a moment of untapped potential that, if harnessed properly, could transform the way the U.S. uses energy, he says. Like oil, wind energy can be harvested to power the country. Unlike oil, wind energywhich is captured and transformed into electricity by giant fan-like structures called wind turbinesis totally renewable. These wind turbines can be installed in groups, either on land or at sea, to create a power plant known as a wind farm. The country's coasts are rich with potential for wind farms, but much of these coastal waters are undeveloped. There's one fixed-bottom wind farm (a wind farm with turbines attached to the soil beneath the ocean, not floating on top of it) on the East Coast, Hajjar says, off the coast of Block Island in Rhode Island. So, why aren't more energy companies capitalizing on the offshore wind energy potential of Massachusetts and its coastal cohorts? Part of it has to do with another key East Coast feature: hurricanes. It will require specialized equipment and in-depth engineering research to stabilize offshore wind farms on the United States coasts, Hajjar says. And that's where he, and his Northeastern colleagues Andrew Myers, Luca Caracoglia, Jennie Stephens, and others come in. "We're dedicated to trying to help spur this industry here," Hajjar says. "We can do the research that's needed to help the industry build safe and effective wind farms and in turn create a whole new workforce." That research is already underway. This week, Hajjar and his colleagues put their heads together with industry leaders, public officials, and other academics from the U.S. and France in a conference called the French-American Innovation Day. The conference was co-chaired by Myers, who is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. Organized by the Office for Science & Technology of the Embassy of France in the United States, Northeastern University, and the University of Nantes, the conference, held this year at Northeastern, converged some of the leading thinkers and doers around wind energy to trade knowledge and collaborate on building the future of wind energy. At the end of 2018, Hajjar and his colleagues teamed up with the Partnership for Offshore Wind Energy Research to release a report that outlined a blueprint for developing comprehensive wind energy infrastructure in the United States. Massive wind farms can be found throughout the U.S., particularly in southern California and in the middle of the country where high wind speeds create prime conditions. But the coastal waters just off the country's eastern seaboard are also ripe with potential. They could be transformed into wind farms that provide enough energy to power the entire United States, Hajjar says. The waters off Massachusetts in particular, says Hajjar, are like "the Saudi Arabia of offshore wind." That is to say, coastal Massachusetts has the natural resources to be a global leader in wind energy production, the way Saudi Arabia has one of the largest oil reserves in the world. The East Coast has "supreme wind conditions" in both shallow and deep water, Hajjar says. Massachusetts in particular, which has shallow water further from the coast than other states, is prime real estate for ocean wind turbines. "The capacity is out there," Hajjar says. "We just need to work together to build it." Explore further Largest US offshore wind farm gets green light MRSA, pictured here, has developed resistance to certain antibiotic treatments. Credit: National Institutes of Health (NIH) Superbugs, also known as Gram-negative bacteria, are causing a global health crisis. Each year in the United States, at least two million people contract an antibiotic-resistant infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Of those, 23,000 people die. One way to stymie this crisis is to avoid contraction. But no one goes looking for bacterial infections. So, while health care professionals and food industries work to constrict the spread of E. coli, staph, and the deadly C. difficile infections, researchers are looking for new ways to skirt the impressive Gram-negative defense system. Daniel Kahne, the Higgins Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and his lab are dedicated to determining how Gram-negative bacteria work. In the last decade, he and his team discovered an integral machine that builds each bacterium's powerful protection, an outer membrane constructed with a beefy molecule called lipopolysaccharide (LPS). "Because there are no antibiotics for some Gram-negative infections, learning how the outer membrane is assembled and how to interfere with assembly has major medical implications," Kahne says. Construction isn't simple. The bulky LPS is made inside the bacteria's cytoplasm, which is separated from the outer membrane by two additional barriers. Within the cytoplasm, the molecule ATP provides enough energy to produce the LPS building blocks and move them around the cell, like microscopic construction workers. But these workers (ATP) cannot cross the membrane barriers to transport LPS to the outer membrane work site. Graduate student Tristan Owens decided to solve this mystery. In 2013, after spending a year teaching in Qatar, Owens returned to the United States to join the Kahne lab. That Fall, he told Kahne he planned to figure out how LPS gets to the outer membrane, a problem that scientists have been working on since the early 1970s. "As advisors often do, I assured him this would be possible," says Kahne. To tackle the mystery, Owens would have to answer two major questions. First, if those tiny construction workers cannot follow LPS through the bacterial membranes, what pushes the molecule where it needs to go? He and the Kahne lab already discovered that a protein bridge guides the LPS across. But, without any energy to push the building blocks through, they should just fall back into the cytoplasm like so many apples thrown into the air. For the second question, Owens would have to determine how LPS gets onto the protein bridge in the first place: How does the bacterial machinery distinguish LPS from the other molecules floating around in the cytoplasm? "It was estimated in the 1970s that it would be necessary to move about three million LPS molecules every five minutes per cell to make the outer membrane," Kahne says. The bacterial machines had to be efficient. Now, six years and a dissertation later, Owens can explain how they run their well-organized operation. In a paper published in Nature, first author Owens identifies two crystal structures responsible for extracting LPS from the cytoplasm and moving the molecule onto the protein bridge. Previous research proposed that LPS gets to the bridge via multiple pathways, but Owens' work determined that ATP shuttles the molecule along just one path. Owens also discovered how the LPS continues to move through the bridge without help from the ATP construction workers. Like a Pez machine, the protein bridge opens and closes gates that keep the LPS moving up toward the outer membrane. "The gate provides an explanation for unidirectional transport," Kahne says, "because gate closure prevents backflow." The more scientists know about how Gram-negative bacteria build their outer membrane, the closer they get to dismantling their powerful defenses. Now, with this decades-old mystery solved, researchers can start to develop new drugs that slow the bacteria's efficiency, hobble their machinery, and make them vulnerable to our antibiotics once again. More information: Tristan W. Owens et al, Structural basis of unidirectional export of lipopolysaccharide to the cell surface, Nature (2019). Journal information: Nature Tristan W. Owens et al, Structural basis of unidirectional export of lipopolysaccharide to the cell surface,(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1039-0 Luke Frishkoff, University of Texas at Arlington assistant professor of biology, explores how human land use expedites biodiversity loss in a paper recently published in Nature Ecology and Evolution. Credit: UT Arlington Luke Frishkoff, University of Texas at Arlington assistant professor of biology, explores how human land use expedites biodiversity loss in a paper recently published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. For a study conducted at the University of Toronto, Frishkoff, as a postdoctoral fellow, and his collaborators traveled to the Dominican Republic to take a census of the region's Anolis lizard species along an elevation gradient affected by deforestation. The species is a common group of tropical lizards that are a model system in ecology and evolutionary biology. "This work uses elevation as a lens to understand the potential implications of climate change," Frishkoff said. "Temperature changes along an elevation gradient, and general climate temperatures are expected to continue warming. By comparing the highlands to the lowlands, we can, in some sense, get a picture of how these biological communities might look in the future." The lowlands along the gradient are warmer than the highlands due to altitude, and a forest canopy blocks direct sunlight making the vegetation-dense areas cooler than their agricultural surroundings at any elevation. The study determined elevation plays a major role in which species survive as humans modify the habitat. "The takeaway message is that the lizard communities in the lowlands are pretty good at coping with habitat conversionthey lose abundance, but don't go extinct," Frishkoff said. "When the forest is cut down in the highlands and the habitat warms, the pastures become filled with species from the warmer lowlands. Unlike the lowland species, the locally adapted forest lizards unique to the region's mountaintops cannot survive when the forest is cut down." Frishkoff points out that biodiverse animals in any habitat act as "ecological players" to balance the ecosystem and often provide services that benefit humans in a variety of different ways. In order to get the most benefit from these ecological players, humans need to understand and have mechanisms to predict which species will survive as the climate warms and human land use changes, and Frishkoff's research indicates the effects of habitat conversion can change radically with elevation. The Dominican Republic study is part of a larger project, Frishkoff said. Since coming to UTA in September 2018, he has begun looking at lizard populations throughout Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Central America and Texas to understand the rules that govern species survival in a variety of different climates and conditions. "We need to be able to predict what species are going to do well in what environmental contexts," Frishkoff said. "The broader goal is to lay that foundation to predict biological communities across climates, across land uses. So that eventually policymakers can use that information eventually to make decisions that integrate human wellbeing and biological wellbeing." In his research, Frishkoff focuses mainly on reptiles and amphibians. He said the placement of UTA offers a great wealth of biological diversity to support his research, which is enriched by the university's Amphibian and Reptile Diversity Research Center. The ARDRC is home to the largest herpetology collection in Texas with more than 200,000 specimens. Using the collection, Frishkoff's lab is beginning to study morphological differences between species to understand whether certain body shapes allow various species to do better in urban environments like the one UTA lies at the center of. "Luke's ongoing and developing research endeavors to address critical issues facing our global environment and support a sustainable urban communitytwo driving themes of our university's strategic plan," said Clay Clark, professor and chair of the Department of Biology. "He will make contributions to our growing footprint as a research enterprise." Explore further Elevation matters when it comes to climate change, deforestation and species survival More information: Luke O. Frishkoff et al. Elevation shapes the reassembly of Anthropocene lizard communities, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2019). Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution Luke O. Frishkoff et al. Elevation shapes the reassembly of Anthropocene lizard communities,(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-019-0819-0 Seychelles warbler wearing colored rings for identification Credit: Martijn Hammers Female birds age more slowly and live longer when they have help raising their offspring, according to new research from the University of Sheffield. Researchers studied the relationship between ageing and offspring rearing patterns in the Seychelles warbler, and found that females who had assistance from other female helpers benefitted from a longer, healthier lifespan. The findings help explain why social species, such as humans, which live in groups and cooperate to raise offspring, often have longer lifespans. The study was led by researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, in collaboration with the universities of Sheffield, Leeds and Wageningen, and with Nature Seychelles. Professor Terry Burke, from the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, said: "It is well understood that one of the benefits of having relatives' help to raise offspring is that this improves the survival of the young. We have now shown that as parents age they decline in their ability to care for their offspring, but having helpers compensates for this effect, allowing the parents to continue to reproduce successfully into old age. This result helps to answer the question of why some animals assist others to reproduce, instead of raising their own offspring." Professor David S Richardson, from UEA's School of Biological Sciences, said: "There is huge variation in lifespan between different species, and also between individuals within a species. But we know very little about what causes one individual to live a long healthy life, and another to die young. Or indeed, why individuals in one species live much longer than individuals in another similar species. "Finding out more about what causes biological ageing is really important. And, until now, there has been very little known about the relationship between sociality and ageing within species." Many species have cooperative breeding systemsin which offspring are cared for not only by their parents, but also by other adult members of the group called 'helpers'. These helpers are oftenbut not alwaysgrown-up offspring from previous years. Female birds age more slowly and live longer when they have help raising their offspring, according to new research. Researchers studied the relationship between ageing and offspring rearing patterns in the Seychelles warbler, and found that females who had assistance from other female helpers benefitted from a longer, healthier lifespan. The findings help explain why social species, such as humans, which live in groups and cooperate to raise offspring, often have longer lifespans. Credit: University of East Anglia The research team used more than 15 years of data on the breeding patterns of Seychelles warblers living on the small island of Cousin, in the Seychelles, to study associations between cooperative care giving and ageing. As well as studying how quickly individuals' chances of dying increased as they grow older, the team also used the length of the birds' telomeres as a measure of their condition. Telomeres are found at the end of chromosomes and act as protective caps to stop genes close to the end of the chromosome being damagedlike the hard plastic ends of a bootlace. Professor Richardson said: "Our previous work has shown that telomere length can be a good indicator of an individual's biological condition relative to its actual agea measure of an individual's biological age so to speak. So we can use it to measure how quickly different birds are ageing. "In the Seychelles warbler the majority of helpers are femaleand they assist with incubating the eggs and providing food for the chicks. This means that the parents don't need to do as much work when they have help. "We found that older dominant females really benefit from having female helpersthey lose less of their telomeres and are less likely to die in the near future. This shows they are ageing slower than females without helpers. Interestingly, these older female mothers were also more likely to have female helpers. "Meanwhile the survival of elderly birds who were not assisted by helpers declined rapidly with age. "The birds only need one female helper to show the effect of delayed ageing, and indeed most only have either one or no helpers. Very few may have two or three helpers, but there were not enough of those to determine whether there would be a greater benefit in having more helpers." Dr. Martijn Hammers, from the University of Groningen, said: "Our results suggest that for the older mothers, there are real benefits to cooperative breeding. Biologically speaking they stay 'younger' for longer, and they are more likely to live longer. "These findings may help to explain why social species often have longer lifespans. "What we don't know yet is why some older individuals have helpers, which enable them to live longer, and some don't despite the obvious benefits. Further research is needed to confirm the causality of the associations we have found." 'Breeders that receive help age more slowly in a cooperatively breeding bird' is published in the journal Nature Communications on March 21, 2019. More information: Breeders that receive help age more slowly in a cooperatively breeding bird, Nature Communications (2019). Journal information: Nature Communications Breeders that receive help age more slowly in a cooperatively breeding bird,(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09229-3 Credit: NASA/CXC/Pontifical Catholic Univ. of Chile /C.Russell et al. Want to take a trip to the center of the Milky Way? Check out a new immersive, ultra-high-definition visualization. This 360-movie offers an unparalleled opportunity to look around the center of the galaxy, from the vantage point of the central supermassive black hole, in any direction the user chooses. By combining NASA Ames supercomputer simulations with data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, this visualization provides a new perspective of what is happening in and around the center of the Milky Way. It shows the effects of dozens of massive stellar giants with fierce winds blowing off their surfaces in the region a few light years away from the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short). These winds provide a buffet of material for the supermassive black hole to potentially feed upon. As in a previous visualization, the viewer can observe dense clumps of material streaming toward Sgr A*. These clumps formed when winds from the massive stars near Sgr A* collide. Along with watching the motion of these clumps, viewers can watch as relatively low-density gas falls toward Sgr A*. In this new visualization, the blue and cyan colors represent X-ray emission from hot gas, with temperatures of tens of millions of degrees; red shows moderately dense regions of cooler gas, with temperatures of tens of thousands of degrees; and yellow shows of the cooler gas with the highest densities. A collection of X-ray-emitting gas is seen to move slowly when it is far away from Sgr A*, and then pick up speed and whip around the viewer as it comes inwards. Sometimes clumps of gas will collide with gas ejected by other stars, resulting in a flash of X-rays when the gas is heated up, and then it quickly cools down. Farther away from the viewer, the movie also shows collisions of fast stellar winds producing X-rays. These collisions are thought to provide the dominant source of hot gas that is seen by Chandra. When an outburst occurs from gas very near the black hole, the ejected gas collides with material flowing away from the massive stars in winds, pushing this material backwards and causing it to glow in X-rays. When the outburst dies down the winds return to normal and the X-rays fade. The 360-degree video of the Galactic Center is ideally viewed through virtual reality (VR) goggles, such as Samsung Gear VR or Google Cardboard. The video can also be viewed on smartphones using the YouTube app. Moving the phone around reveals a different portion of the movie, mimicking the effect in the VR goggles. Finally, most browsers on a computer also allow 360-degree videos to be shown on YouTube. To look around, either click and drag the video, or click the direction pad in the corner. Dr. Christopher Russell of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (Pontifical Catholic University) presented the new visualization at the 17th meeting of the High-Energy Astrophysics (HEAD) of the American Astronomical Society held in Monterey, Calif. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations. Explore further Scientists take viewers to the center of the Milky Way Unconventional gas wells are being approved in their thousands across Australia. Credit: AAP Image/Dean Lewins Australia, like its competitors Qatar, Canada and the United States, aspires to become the world's largest exporter of gas, arguing this helps importing nations reduce their greenhouse emissions by replacing coal. Yes, burning gas emits less carbon dioxide than burning coal. Yet the "fugitive emissions" the methane that escapes, often unmeasured, during production, distribution and combustion of gas is a much more potent short-term greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. A special report issued by the World Health Organisation after the 2018 Katowice climate summit urged governments to take "specific commitments to reduce emissions of short-lived climate pollutants" such as methane, so as to boost the chances of staying with the Paris Agreement's ambitious 1.5 global warming limit. Current gas expansion plans in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland, where another 2,500 coal seam gas wells have been approved, reveal little impetus to deliver on this. Harvesting all of WA's gas reserves would emit about 4.4 times more carbon dioxide equivalent than Australia's total domestic energy-related emissions budget. Gas as a cause of local ill-health There are not only global, but also significant local and regional risks to health and well-being associated with unconventional gas mining. Our comprehensive review examines the current state of the evidence. Since our previous reviews (see here, here and here), more than 1,400 further peer-reviewed articles have been published, helping to clarify how expanding unconventional gas production across Australia risks our health, well-being, climate, water and food security. This research has been possible because, since 2010, 17.6 million US citizens' homes have been within a mile (1.6km) of gas wells and fracking operations. Furthermore, some US research funding is independent of the gas industry, whereas much of Australia's comparatively small budget for research in this area is channelled through an industry-funded CSIRO research hub. Key medical findings There is evidence that living close to unconventional gas mining activities is linked to a wide range of health conditions, including psychological and social problems. The US literature now consistently reports higher frequencies of low birth weight, extreme premature births, higher-risk pregnancies and some birth defects, in pregnancies spent closer to unconventional gas mining activities, compared with pregnancies further away. No parallel studies have so far been published in Australia. US studies have found increased indicators of cardiovascular disease, higher rates of sinus disorders, fatigue and migraines, and hospitalisations for asthma, heart, neurological, kidney and urinary tract conditions, and childhood blood cancer near shale gas operations. Exploratory studies in Queensland found higher rates of hospitalisation for circulatory, immune system and respiratory disorders in children and adults in the Darling Downs region where coal seam gas mining is concentrated. Water exposure Chemicals found in gas mining wastewater include volatile organic compounds such as benzene, phenols and polyaromatic hydrocarbons, as well as heavy metals, radioactive materials, and endocrine-disrupting substances compounds that can affect the body's hormones. This wastewater can find its way into aquifers and surface water through spillage, injection procedures, and leakage from wastewater ponds. The environmental safety of treated wastewater and the vast quantities of crystalline salt produced is unclear, raising questions about cumulative long-term impacts on soil productivity and drinking water security. Concern about the unconventional gas industry's use of large quantities of water has increased since 2013. Particularly relevant to Australian agriculture and remote communities is research showing an unexpected but consistent increase in the "water footprint" of gas wells across all six major shale oil and gas mining regions of the US from 2011 to 2016. Maximum increases in water use per well (7.7-fold higher, Permian deposits, New Mexico and Texas) and wastewater production per well (14-fold, Eagle Ford deposits, Texas) occurred where water stress is very high. The drop in water efficiency was tied to a drop in gas prices. Air exposure Research on the potentially harmful substances emitted into the atmosphere during water removal, gas production and processing, wastewater handling and transport has expanded. These substances include fine particulate pollutants, ground-level ozone, volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, hydrogen sulfide, formaldehyde, diesel exhaust and endocrine-disrupting chemicals. Measuring concentrations and human exposures to these pollutants is complicated, as they vary widely and unpredictably in both time and location. This makes it difficult to prove a definitive causal link to human health impacts, despite the mounting circumstantial evidence. Our review found substantially more evidence of what we suspected in 2013: that gas mining poses significant threats to the global climate, to food and water supplies, and to health and well-being. On this basis, Doctors for the Environment Australia (DEA) has reinforced its position that no new gas developments should occur in Australia, and that governments should increase monitoring, regulation and management of existing wells and gas production and transport infrastructure. Explore further Water use for fracking has risen by up to 770 percent since 2011 This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. There is concern that climate change is happening too fast for forests to adapt, so scientists are giving them a helping hand. Credit: Mehdi Pringarbe/INRA Avignon, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Forests have a special magic for many of us. Steeped in folklore and fantasy, they are places for enchantments, mythical creatures and outlaws. But if they are to survive into the future, they may also need a helping hand from science. Globally, forests are having a tough time. Industrial logging, wildfires and deforestation for agriculture has seen swathes of trees, and their associated habitat, destroyed. Europe, however, is one of the few parts of the world where forested and wooded areas are actually increasing, thanks to careful forest management. The EU has around 182 million hectares of forest and other wooded land - accounting for 43% of its total land area and 5% of the world's forests. But the dramatic environmental changes brought by global warming are now threatening these flourishing forests. Scientists hope that by mapping the genetic diversity hidden within forests, they can identify traits to allow wooded areas to thrive under changing conditions. "There are concerns that climate change is happening too fast for forests to adapt to what is happening around them," explained Dr. Barbara Vinceti, a scientist at agricultural research organisation Bioversity International, in Rome, Italy. Pests and diseases are also a growing threat as global trade and climate change makes it easier for them to spread. The Chalara fungus, for example, has devastated up to 90% of ash trees populations in some countries in just a few years after seemingly arriving in Europe from Asia. Dutch Elm Disease, a fungus spread by elm bark beetles, caused similar destruction of elm trees across Europe in the 20th century. "The key is to identify and preserve the diversity we have in our forests so they can deal with future threats and risks," said Dr. Vinceti. "It's about maximising the options to meet future challenges." She is part of the GenTree project that is attempting to build up a record of forest genetic resources in commercially and ecologically important tree species in Europe. The idea is to use this to help inform breeding projects and forest management schemes. Wood samples The team have been travelling around Europe collecting wood samples from 12 different tree species at more than 120 different sites. Alongside this they are logging data about the size, shape and nutrient levels in the leaves, the quality of the wood, along with soil and water samples. This information is being compared to the genetic information in an attempt to identify genetic adaptations or physical traits that could help tree populations deal with more extreme conditions such as drought, changing soil acidity, rising temperatures or extreme frosts. They are also looking for trees that may carry unusual levels of resistance to disease or fire resilience. "We are looking for genes that might be responsible for the timing of bud bursting, for example," said Dr. Vinceti. "We want to look at the diversity that exists (in populations of the same species) and understand the scale. These are very complex studies and a lot of data is being gathered." Wood cores taken from species including black poplar, taken from 120 sites around Europe, are helping researchers build up a library of genetic information. Image credits (L-R) - Marc Villar/INRA, France & L.Mateju/WSL, licensed under There is concern that climate change is happening too fast for forests to adapt, so scientists are giving them a helping hand. Credit: Mehdi Pringarbe/INRA Avignon, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Cuttings from trees with the right special qualities that adapt them to future conditions could then be moved to environments where these challenges are already or expected to take hold and allow them to help native forests adapt, or they could be used in breeding programmes that aim to replant entire swathes of woodland. Among the tree species the project is looking at are the European black poplar (Populus nigra) and the Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) that are important for helping to maintain soil conditions and support wildlife. They are also examining commercially important varieties like the Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris), the maritime pine (Pinus pinaster), European beech (Fagus sylvatica), and the Norway spruce (Picea abies). Income The forest industry generates billions of euros of income every year. In Germany alone, forestry and logging contributed nearly 9 billion to the economy in 2015, while in France and Poland the industry contributed more than 6.5 billion and 5 billion respectively. Around half a million people are employed in the forestry and logging sector across Europe. But it's not all about money. As well as assisting forests to adapt to climate change, maintaining healthy forests will also help to maximise trees' ability to pull greenhouse gases out of the air and lock it away in their tissues as they grow a process known as carbon sequestration. "If we are going to start doing something in earnest about climate change, forests are expected to have a very important role in terms of carbon sequestration," said Professor Ljusk Ola Eriksson, an economist with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). He coordinates the ALTERFOR project, which is using computer modelling to examine how current forest management techniques in nine different European countries can be optimised to help forests not only survive the changes expected from climate change but also help to reduce its impact. The idea is to see what might happen to a variety of different landscapes should other species of tree be planted or different forest management approaches applied under varying climate change scenarios. Solutions are likely to vary from country to country. "The methods in Ireland, for example, might not be applicable in somewhere like Portugal where there is a growing risk of forest fires," said Prof. Eriksson. He says that Portugal tends to grow a lot of eucalyptus trees, which are highly susceptible to fire and are least desirable species in terms of biodiversity, and suggests that they might need to think about using more oak, for instance, instead. But Dr. Villis Brukas, an associate professor of forest policy at SLU and ALTERFOR's scientific coordinator, said that we shouldn't limit forest management to the smaller groups of trees known as stands within woodland itself. "We need to scale how forests can be managed at a landscape level all the way up to whole continents," he said. "Our countries are not isolated and by working together we can make sure our forests have the best chance possible." Explore further Low elevation forests finding it more difficult to regrow after fires due to climate change Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2018), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Captured just yesterday, 19 March, at 17:11 GMT (18:11 CET) by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, this image shows the oil spill from the Grande America vessel. The Italian container ship, carrying 2200 tonnes of heavy fuel, caught fire and sank in the Atlantic, about 300 km off the French coast on 12 March. Copernicus Sentinel-1 acquired this radar image of the oil slick, the large, dark patch visible in the centre of the image, stretching about 50 km. Marine vessels are identifiable as smaller white points, which could be those assisting in the clean-up process. Oil is still emerging from the ship now lying at a depth of around 4500 metres. French authorities trying to reduce the impact of pollution along the coast. Sentinel-1 is a two-satellite constellation built for the European Commission's Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. The identical satellites each carry an advanced radar instrument that can 'see' through the dark and through clouds. Satellite radar is particularly useful for monitoring the progression of oil spills because the presence of oil on the sea surface dampens down wave motion. Since radar basically measures surface texture, oil slicks show up well as black smears on a grey background. Explore further Image: Mediterranean slick Set-up of a low-cost and energy efficient wireless audio recorder. Credit: C.M. Leung Ph.D., University of Brisith Columbia An international team of researchers has built a new sensor network that can monitor two crucial activities, namely biodiversity, or the variety of life, in a particular habitat or ecosystem, and identification of possible illegal activities such as logging or poaching in protected areas. This wireless recording network is capable of recording an ecosystem's sounds with the same quality as devices that have been used to date, but it is significantly more energy-efficient and cost-effective. This network is composed of edge computing recorders, or devices that sample and process data at the recording location, with power savings of up to 280%. It promises to significantly streamline the monitoring process of biodiversity and addresses the urgent global need for new assessment methods necessary to maintain the world's biodiversity balance. "In this paper, we propose a low cost solution for an audio recorder with onboard audio processing, as part of a wireless sensor network. The developed audio recorder can be used in several different use cases for which no cost effective, scalable biodiversity monitoring solution currently exists, such as to monitor pollinating insects, or to assess the condition of tropical forests by observing vocal animals," says Victor C. M. Leung, Ph.D., corresponding author and Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia. "Our tests demonstrate that a collection of acoustic sounds recorded in 1 minute can arrive at the server only 30 seconds after the recording has finished, affording near real-time performance which could be of great value in tracking endangered species, or identifying illegal activity such as logging or poaching in protected areas," Professor Leung adds. The study was published in IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica in January 2019. Critical to understanding an ecosystem's structure and function and predicting future changes is knowing what species inhabit an ecosystem, and how many of each kind there are. A balanced ecosystem has healthy biodiversity levels and is therefore strong enough to withstand stresses such as climate change and predators. Ensuring the ecosystem's equilibrium is therefore vital to its survival. One way to track biodiversity and ensure its balance is by monitoring the sounds that animals emit as they communicate within their environment. This is also called passive acoustic monitoring, and it has emerged as a powerful method for preserving an ecosystem's survival. However, the amount of data that is collected requires automated methods that are capable of sampling the sounds across time and space and relaying the data to an accessible storage location. As this requires a lot of power, it remains a technical challenge. As such, there is currently an urgent need for new assessment methods that are both energy efficient as well as cost effective. "Traditional biodiversity survey methods involve the identification and logging of species, by experts at the recording location, based on what they see and hear at locations of interest. This implies several disadvantages like the vast amount of time and money to get constant results over a long period of time and a wide geographical distance, lack of reliability due to human error. Based on the growing recognition of the ecological significance of the acoustic environment, passive acoustic monitoring is emerging as a promising solution to the urgent, global need for new biodiversity assessment methods," Professor Leung adds. In the future, the researchers aim to optimize the system's versatility as well as efficiency. They also plan to increase battery life by implementing a system sleep mode as well as integrating solar as a second power source for a long-lasting operation. Furthermore, their aims are to improve the audio quality, further reduce costs, increase the number of nodes and install antennas between them so that they can cover a larger network. "A detailed analysis to identify the balance between range and power consumption might be an interesting topic for future enhancements of the wireless recorders," Professor Leung comments. Explore further Forest soundscapes monitor conservation efforts inexpensively, effectively More information: Zhengguo Sheng et al, Wireless acoustic sensor networks and edge computing for rapid acoustic monitoring, IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica (2019). Zhengguo Sheng et al, Wireless acoustic sensor networks and edge computing for rapid acoustic monitoring,(2019). DOI: 10.1109/JAS.2019.1911324 Provided by Chinese Association of Automation Credit: CC0 Public Domain Michigan was a major force in the early Space Age, when Chrysler made rockets that carried astronauts and General Motors built the electric buggies they used to explore the moon. Now, a few visionaries are planning the state's return to space with an ambitious proposal to build a private launch site for commercial satellites in Northern Michigan. The Michigan Aerospace Manufacturers Association has been corralling investors and seeking federal permitting for the proposed spaceportdubbed the Michigan Launch Initiativethat would do vertical launches and also handle the takeoff and landing of airplanes that drop rockets that shoot into space. The group has yet to pick a location for the $80-million-plus launch site, which unlike most other spaceport projects, would be financed almost entirely by private investment. One caveat is the project's request for $2 million in state grant funds to survey potential locations for the launch site and related command center. The site must be relatively remote and situated next to a Great Lake, so rockets wouldn't fly over populated areas. The potential loss of that state fundingalbeit a sliver of the initiative's overall coststhreatens to delay or even ground the project. Booming launch business There recently has been a rush by several states and countries to build commercial launch sites, also known as spaceports, in hopes of capturing some of the anticipated growth in the satellite launch business and even space tourism. There also has been a flurry of private companies trying to build new rockets, similar to what entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX accomplished. Worldwide, there were about 300 satellite launches between 2016 and the end of 2018. That number is projected to grow to 400 to 500 launches over the next three-year period, according to Houston-based venture capital firm SpaceFund. "As far as demand goes, it is growing very rapidly and you see a lot of investment in the launch and spaceport infrastructure side right now," said Meagan Crawford, managing partner at SpaceFund. Yet even with the expected growth, Crawford questions whether there would be enough business to support all of the many proposed new launch sites and new rockets. "My supposition is there is over-investment at the moment," she said. "There is definitely some potential there, but it is going to be a crowded marketplace." Polar orbit If the Michigan launch site gets built, its rockets would carry small commercial satellites in a northbound direction and into a low-earth orbit, specifically a polar orbit where objects pass from the North Pole to the South Pole. Polar orbit is different from equatorial orbits, which are better reached using launch pads nearer the Earth's equator.. Satellites in polar orbit are particularly good for observing Earth and are valuable for commercial activities such as monitoring pipelines, agriculture yields and tracking ships, said Chad Anderson, CEO of Space Angels, a New York-based firm that invests in space companies. The proposed Michigan site would cost upwards of $80 million to build and be financed with private-sector investment, said Gavin Brown, executive director of the aerospace manufacturers' association and chief organizer of the Michigan Launch Initiative. The site could launch as many as 25 rockets a year, generating an estimated $15 million in revenue per launch, Brown said. The rockets could soar as early as 2022, depending on the site's Federal Aviation Administration approval as a commercial launch site. A cluster of rocket, aerospace and other high-tech firms could take shape near the site, Brown said. What's more, there are plans to produce biofuels for rockets on site to make it a "green" spaceport, Brown said. Achieving such a busy launch calendar could be tough for Michigan. Crawford, the SpaceFund managing partner, said there are likely enough existing launch sites to meet demand over the next four to five years for new polar orbit satellites. But by the mid-2020s, there could possibly be room in the market for more polar orbit spaceports. "There is business to gain," Crawford said, "but Michigan would have to offer something better than Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg (Air Force Base)." Privately financed Michigan's spaceport would be different than the $220 million publicly financed spaceport in New Mexico that is derided by critics as a boondoggle. Opened in 2011 to handle space tourism as well as satellite launches, the New Mexico site failed to meet initial expectations and continues to lean on that state's taxpayers to fill its budget gaps. "Unlike theirs, ours is going to be privately financed and have a very specific focus; they wanted to be everything to everybody," Brown said. However, Michigan Launch Initiative is seeking $2 million in state grant funds to conduct a survey of potential locations for the launch site and related command center. 'Drafting errors' The Michigan Launch Initiative was one of 74 pet projects tucked into a $1.3 billion spending bill that passed the Michigan Legislature in late December and was signed by outgoing Gov. Rick Snyder. But the launch site's funds have since been disapproved because of "drafting errors" in the legislation, such as the additional $500,000 that was tacked onto the grant for an unrelated project involving Willow Run Airport, a spokesman for the Department of Technology, Management and Budget said last week. Now new legislation would be required for the spaceport grant to happen, the spokesman, Kurt Weiss, said. Yet the launch initiative's proponents insist that the drafting issues will not doom their project. Brown said he is in discussions with state officials and still believes that the grant money could be released. Even though the project has financial commitments from private investors for construction, the $2 million is still necessary for the location survey, he said. "We have them lined up," Brown said of his private investors, "but they want to make sure this is going forward and that this is something the state wants to have happen." Familiar names Brown said he cannot yet disclose most of the project's financial backers. "But some of the names mentioned will be very familiar to Michiganders. These are people who are looking forward to investing in Michigan's future and have in the past," he said. The one investor to publicly step forward has been Greener Earth Advisory Services, a small firm that is based in Naples, Florida, and has a Troy office. The firm's President Michelle Maltese said in a phone interview that the launch site doesn't hang on the state grant. "That isn't an absolute necessary component for us to fund the project," she said. "It would be nice if he gets it, but there are other ways to do this project without that $2 million." Launch locations The launch site's location could be decided as early as June if the state funds come through, Brown said. The potential launch sites include Rogers City and Michigan's three former Strategic Air Command bases in Marquette County, Chippewa County and Iosco County, where the long runways could accommodate big satellite-launching aircraft, according to Brown. Macomb County is the leading candidate for the launch site's command center. "The command center can go anywhere; think of Houston servicing Cape Canaveral," Brown said. Smaller rockets The types of vertical rockets that would leave Michigan's spaceport would be owned by private companies and would be much smaller in size than the reusable Falcon 9 rockets made by California-based SpaceX. Those rockets can lift big satellites into high orbits. Yet the rockets would still be bigger than the tiny rockets that soared from 1964 to 1971 from the long-retired Keweenaw Rocket Range at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the U.P. Those rockets were used for meteorological research and didn't carry payloads to orbit. Most U.S. launch sites including Cape Canaveral, Vandenberg, Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska can do polar orbit launches. There is also a dedicated polar launch site reportedly under consideration in Maine. Distance to launch site is among challenges One potential challenge to launching rockets in Michigan is convincing rocket companiesnone of which are nearbyto haul their vehicles' components to the state, possibly all the way to the U.P. The hassles of travel could be why the newly refurbished Kodiak site in Alaska, which is theoretically ideal for polar orbit launches because it is near the North Pole, has yet to do much business. "It's just hard to get your rocket up to Alaska," Crawford said. Another possible problem for Michigan: the close proximity to Ontario and Canadian airspace, especially because the rockets would fly north. But according to Brown, the project's organizer, a Michigan-launched rocket would likely hit outer space before it does Canadian airspace. Still, he has informed Canadian officials of the plans. "We've already engaged the Canadians to have them as partners," he said, "so this would be an international spaceport." Explore further Canada to get its own spaceport 2019 Detroit Free Press Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Four Iranian soldiers recovered from Chagai: ISPR Four abducted Iranian soldiers were recovered from a "transitioning hideout" during an operation in Balochistan's Chagai district, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement on Wednesday. According to the statement, security forces conducted a successful intelligence-based operation (IBO) at Amori in Chagai district, about 3-4 kilometres away from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. "Terrorists of proscribed organisation were reported to have entered Pakistan from Afghanistan side along with abducted Iranian soldiers," the military's media wing said. "After [an] exchange of fire, 4 Iranian soldiers [were] recovered from a transitioning hideout," it said, adding that the soldiers are being handed over to Iranian authorities. In November last year, Pakistani security forces had safely recovered five of the 12 Iranian border guards who were abducted by militants the previous month from Lulakdan area near the Pak-Iran border. Jaish al-Adl, a terrorist group operating in the region, had claimed responsibility for their kidnapping. Following the abduction, Irans top military commander Maj Gen Mohammad Hossein Bagheri had phoned Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa and requested him to intensify efforts for search and rescue of the kidnapped Iranian border guards. The Foreign Office had pledged to offer all possible assistance to locate the missing Iranian security personnel. "Both militaries, under a joint mechanism established since last year, are working to ascertain the whereabouts of the [missing] Iranian guards. The Director Generals Military Operations from the two sides are coordinating actions in this regard," read the FO statement. Details were sketchy at the time of the abduction and Iran has since twice revised the number of the abducted border force, including some from Iran's vaunted Revolutionary Guard. Credit: CC0 Public Domain While perceptions of computing majors among high school students suggest that the geek stereotype is on the way out, a Penn State Lehigh Valley researcher said that universities may want to reach out to parents, particularly parents of female students and ones from lower-income households, to boost support of computer majors. In a study of how incoming first-year college students perceive computing and computer majors and who influences those perceptions, most students had positive feelings about computing and computer-related majors and jobs. However, gender and socioeconomic status seemed to play a role in whether parents shaped those perceptions, according to the study's author, Jeffrey Stone, assistant professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State Lehigh Valley, and an affiliate of the Institute for CyberScience. "There's still a gender difference, which is a bit of a disappointment," said Stone. "Males were significantly more likely to agree that their parents stressed that computing skills were important. Females were less likely to agree that parents were stressing the importance of computer skills." Students from households with income less than $50,000 also were less likely to agree that their parents stressed the importance of computing compared to students from households with incomes between $50,000-$99,000, according to Stone, who presented his findings in a recent issue of the Journal of Computing Sciences and Colleges. Stone suggests that universities should take a broader approach at whom they target for outreach and recruitment programs for computer majors. He added that universities already offer programs to recruit and encourage high school students to consider computer majors, but they may want to design outreach programs about computers specifically for parents. "The problem we're encountering now is that, though students coming into the university may or may not have the skills that we expect them to have, they often have more skills and experience with computers than their parents," said Stone. "How do we get past that? I think over time, that will change a bit. But, right now, I think the best thing a university can do is provide outreach programs to educate parents about different programs and different careers in the computing field." High school counselors seem to be doing a good job at encouraging computer majors, Stone said. About 47 percent of the students agreed that high school teachers and guidance counselors stressed the importance of computing skills, he added. Failing to promote computer majors among high school students, not only hurts the students' chances of landing high-paying jobs, but it could negatively affect the computer industry itself. According to Stone, computer industry experts expect that there will be more jobs than qualified computer and technology applicants in the future, which could stall the rapid growth of one of the United States' leading industries. Stone said the survey may show that some stereotypes about students in computer majors are improving. "The perceptions about computing majors, which in the past has been looked at as, for the lack of a better word, the male-dominated geek stereotype, or the nerd stereotype, seem to be waning, at least in this particular sample," said Stone. Stone recruited 161 students who took part in a university summer orientation session. The questionnaire asked basic demographic questions and asked them to respond to a series of questions, including ones about their use of computer technology, perceptions on computing and computing majors and the influence of their parents and educators. Stone cautioned that the sample size is small and that more work is needed to determine the robustness of the study. "It would be beneficial to expand that to a much larger pool, which is something I would hope to do in the future," said Stone. Explore further 'Nerdy' mold needs breaking to recruit women into computer science Credit: CC0 Public Domain A periodic table chart discovered at the University of St Andrews is officially recognised as the oldest in the world by the Guinness World Records. The chart of elements, dating from 1885, was discovered in the University's School of Chemistry by Dr. Alan Aitken during a clear out. Now, following international media coverage of the find, the periodic table chart has been officially certified as the world's oldest by the Guinness World Records. Following the discovery in 2014, the periodic table chart was subsequently sent for authentication and to be preserved for future generations. Marking the International Year of the periodic table, the fully restored chart was unveiled at a special event at the European Parliament to celebrate 150 years of the periodic table in January 2019, hosted by former St Andrews Rector, Catherine Stihler MEP. Mendeleev made his famous disclosure on periodicity in 1869; the newly unearthed table was rather similar, but not identical to Mendeleev's second table of 1871. The table is annotated in German, and an inscription at the bottom left, 'Verlag v. Lenoir & Forster, Wien', which identifies a scientific printer who operated in Vienna between 1875 and 1888. Another inscription, 'Lith. von Ant. Hartinger & Sohn, Wien', identifies the chart's lithographer, who died in 1890. Working with the University's Special Collections team, the University sought advice from a series of international experts to accurately date the chart. Following further investigations, no earlier lecture chart of the table appears to exist. Professor Eric Scerri, an expert on the history of the periodic table from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), dated the table to between 1879 and 1886 based on the represented elements. For example, both gallium and scandium, discovered in 1875 and 1879 respectively, are present, while germanium, discovered in 1886, is not. The University's Special Collections team was awarded a funding grant from the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust (NMCT) for the conservation of the chart in collaboration with private conservator Richard Hawkes (Artworks Conservation). The funding also allowed production of a full-size facsimile which is now on display in the School of Chemistry. The original periodic table has been rehoused in conservation grade material and is held in Special Collections' climate-controlled stores in the University. Professor David O'Hagan, recent ex-Head of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews, said: "When I took over as Head of Chemistry in 2014 I was asked by the University to clear a large storage area under a lecture theatre. It was densely packed with chemicals and laboratory equipment left by professors who had retired over the years. Alan's eye was caught by a bundle of old rolled up teaching charts which were buried deep and he was astute enough to notice this periodic table which was battered and worn. It was clearly an early example and we had it assessed by experts. It emerged to be unique, the earliest example of a display Table. It was a wonderful find which has caught the attention of science enthusiasts around the world.'' Gabriel Sewell, Head of Special Collections, University of St Andrews, added: "We are delighted that we now know when the oldest known periodic table chart came to St Andrews to be used in teaching. To be officially recognised by the Guinness World Records is a wonderful achievement. Thanks to the generosity of the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust, the table has been preserved for current and future generations to enjoy and we look forward to making it accessible to all." The Periodic Table and Us: Its History, Meaning and Element Scarcity, hosted by former University of St Andrews Rector Catherine Stihler MEP took place at the European Parliament in January 2019. The event also unveiled a new periodic table showing the scarcity of elements used in everyday devices. Explore further World's oldest periodic table chart found in St Andrews Researchers Yan Zhou (left) and Sahan Salpage (right) perform a photochemical separation of ruthenium and iron using blue and red light, respectively. Credit: US Department of Energy A flick of a switch. An LED light shines on a liquid-filled beaker. Another flick. It goes dark. This unassuming pulse of light illuminates one of the toughest challenges at two former nuclear weapons sites. The light could lead to a better way to pull a troubling element, americium, out of a soup of similar elements. "Such separation is vital for various reasons, such as treating nuclear waste, dismantling nuclear weapons, or purifying americium for smoke detectors," said Kenneth Hanson, who leads a light-driven americium separation project at the Center for Actinide Science & Technology (CAST) Energy Frontier Research Center and is an assistant professor at Florida State University. The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science funds the center. Americium is just one of the elements that scientists must deal with to clean up sites where the nation's nuclear arsenals were built. Managing these elements means uncovering scientific secrets about highly radioactive troublemakers in the 93 million gallons of waste stored in Washington State and South Carolina. "It is on a scale that is sometimes hard to fathom," said Thomas Albrecht-Schmitt, a professor at Florida State University and CAST director. "It is staggering." The waste treatment plan calls for vitrification, a high-heat process that traps radioactive elements in solid "logs." Easily removing americium, which generates unwanted heat, and storing it separately from the logs or reusing it could simplify waste treatment. Hanson and his colleagues' research relies on a stringy molecule that bonds to all the elements in the beaker. Light excites just the americium and causes the strings to permanently change. It makes the troublemaker stand out and easier to separate from uranium, plutonium, and all the other heavy elements at the bottom of the Periodic Table. "They are in an exotic area of the Periodic Table," said Stosh Kozimor, a CAST scientist at DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory. Known as actinides, these elements are enigmatic because they're extremely difficult to extract, compared to more common elements such as nickel or iron, and the amount of planning, safety precautions, and cost differs wildly. Dossiers for radioactive troublemakers. Because these enigmatic elements are difficult to study and cause such concerns in nuclear waste treatment, the team is building detailed descriptions of the heavy elements through lab experiments, computer simulations, and calculations focused, specifically, on the arrangement of the electrons. Heavy elements have the most electrons compared to other elements on the Periodic Table. Swirling around the atom's core, electrons influence how an element bonds to the other elements around it. Weak bonds mean elements could leach from the glass logs. Strong bonds keep troublemakers in. This matters when examining alternatives that could be made using less energy. "The logs are really stable, but we need 2000 degrees [Fahrenheit] of heat to make them," said Albrecht-Schmitt. "We are trying to make materials that are just as stablethat bind heavy elementsbut under much milder conditionssay temperatures around that needed to boil water." Finding experts and friends. Uncovering the mysteries of heavy elements requires a team with diverse perspectives. "This center," said Hanson, "is about bringing in people with different expertise and that can build collaborative bridges between their areas and come up with something new and interesting." For example, Hanson, a photochemist, focuses on solar cells. "Basically, I came from the perspective that light can solve all the world's problems," said Hanson. "Tom [Albrecht-Schmitt] knows all about the heavy elements. Together, we can solve problems." Another aspect of diversity at CAST is experience working with radioactive materials at user facilities. Kozimor is quick to credit the user support team at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where he works with synchrotrons. "SLAC has an outstanding safety group and a whole team of beamline scientists and engineers that want to work on radioactive samples," said Kozimor. A team as diverse as CAST only works if people are willing to share ideas and work together. "Finding people that you can trust to share ideas with and be creative with is big," said Kozimor. "At CAST, we have those people." "I'm delighted with how things are going," said Albrecht-Schmitt. Navigating through the challenges, the team is making the long journey to discover how heavy elements behave to light the way to fine tuning nuclear waste treatment. Explore further Researchers use photons to separate metal ions Students are far more understanding of their religious peers if they attend classes about religious diversity. Credit: shutterstock.com Around 80% of secondary school students who had classes about diverse religions claim to have positive views of Muslims. This compares to around 70% who had not attended such classes. Our national study of Australian Generation Z teens (those born around the mid-1990s to mid-2000s) showed teens who had been exposed to education about diverse religions and worldviews were more tolerant of religious minorities, including Muslims and Hindus, than those who hadn't. General religious education is distinct from religious instruction, which is taught by teachers or volunteers from religious communities. Religious instruction focuses on faith formation in a particular religion. Teachers provide classes in diverse worldviews and religions, which include learning about major faith traditions and other worldviews, such as humanism and rationalism. Such classes are often a distinct subject in Catholic and other religious schools in Australia. But government schools don't typically provide opportunities to study diverse worldviews. They may provide limited content in some humanities subjects, such as history. Teaching children about the diversity of cultures and viewpoints in their social environment may help counteract the religious prejudice seen in the media. Religious and worldview education Religion in schools, and particularly whether it should be taught in a secular context, is a controversial topic in Australia and internationally. Debates persist about how content on religion should be included in curricula and whether education about diverse worldviews can play a role in social cohesion and preventing violent extremism. In the mid-2000s Australia's public secular schools had few opportunities to provide teaching about diverse worldviews and general religious education. Victoria prohibited teaching about religion until 2006 but allowed volunteers to deliver special religious instruction in school hours until 2015. Schools in New South Wales, Western Australia, Northern Territory and Tasmania still offer special religious instruction. NSW students can elect to do a secular ethics option instead of a religious one. The national Australian Curriculum began to be developed in the 2000s. It now contains some limited content on diverse religions and worldviews. Victoria's 2015 iteration of the new curriculum included for the first time two dedicated sections on learning about worldviews and religions in humanities and ethical capability. The emphasis is on Australia's major faith traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Judaism and secular humanism and rationalism. Credit: The Conversation The Generation Z study The Generation Z study ran between 2016 and 2018. To inform education policy, it aimed to investigate how teens make sense of the world and religious issues. The study explored teens' views on religious, spiritual, non-religious, cultural and sexual diversity in 21st-century Australia. The study comprised 11 focus groups in three states with almost 100 students in Years 9 and 10 (ages 15-16). It also included a nationally representative phone survey of 1,200 people aged 13-18, and 30 in-depth follow-up interviews with survey participants. We have already published the findings that Australian teens fall into six spiritually types, including a range of non-religious, spiritual and religious young Australians. Our findings also showed Gen Z teens are open to and accepting of religious diversity. More than 90% agreed having many different faiths in Australia makes it a better place to live. But views toward religious minorities were mixed. We found 74% hold positive attitudes towards Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism; 21% hold moderate to neutral views; and 5% hold negative views. Around 85% of teens think people of different faiths experience discrimination or abuse because of their religion. In focus groups, some students of minority faiths raised concerns about anti-Semitism and a relative lack of understanding of Hinduism and Buddhism, compared to the Abrahamic faiths in Australian society. Our pre-survey focus groups also revealed Australian teens have moderate levels of religious literacy. While their knowledge is quite broad, it is relatively shallow. Many students could easily recognise a number of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Yoga images, including of the Dalai Lama. But only one student from a state selective school knew what his actual title meant and why he was so significant to Tibetans. In our survey, 56% of students attending government secondary schools and 42% of those attending independent private secondary schools said they hadn't had any diverse religion education or instruction in religious traditions. By comparison, 81% of students in Catholic secondary schools had received both. Our data suggest education about diverse religions is associated with reduced negative perceptions of religious minorities. Students who had received this type of education had the most positive views towards Australia's religious minorities. Students who hadn't were about twice as likely to hold negative or neutral views. This still holds when controlling for factors such as age, gender, school type, socio-economic status and religious identity. Gen Z teens who have had education about diverse religions overwhelmingly thought it helped them understand other people's religions (93%), that it helped make them more tolerant of other people's religions (86%), and that it was important to study these (82%). Of those who hadn't participated in such programs, 69% wanted to learn more about the world's religions, and 67% wanted more lessons on non-religious worldviews. We recommend the Australian Curriculum includes more education about diverse religious and non-religious worldviews in state, religious and independent schools. This would increase religious literacy and promote inter-religious understanding and respect among Australia's diverse religious and non-religious population. Explore further Religious education contributes to community cohesion This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Glaciers are a critical source of water in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, which supplies water for approximately 25 percent of the world's population. Credit: Chris Scott Christopher Scott grew up in the mountain region of India, where, as a child, he used to go hiking in the town of Tehri, India, situated at the confluence of the Bhagirathi and Bhilangna rivers. Today, the town of Tehri, founded in the early 1800s, is underwater. Construction of the Tehri Dam, one of the highest dams in the world, submerged the ancient town in a reservoir that not only provides irrigation and municipal drinking water, but also fuels a massive hydropower facility. The fragile mountain ecosystem that Scott has worked steadfastly to protect, both as a resident and as a scientist, is undergoing massive change as a result of the construction of facilities like the Tehri Dam. While he now calls Tucson home, Scott continues to research the Himalayan region, both as a professor in the University of Arizona's School of Geography and Development and as director of the UA's Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. One of his recent projects was contributing to the inaugural Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme, or HIMAP. Modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, HIMAP was led by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, or ICIMOD, an intergovernmental learning and knowledge-sharing group made up of the eight countries of the Hindu Kush Himalaya: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan. The UA is one of only two U.S. members of the Himalayan Universities Consortium, led by ICIMOD. Credit: University of Arizona "My training and background are in physical hydrology, but I have always been interested in human impacts on the environment and watersheds and natural resource use," said Scott, who was a coordinating lead author for the HIMAP chapter on water, along with Aditi Mukherji from India and Fan Zhang from China. "I was very pleased to lead the water chapter, because in a way, everything comes back to water. It is the thread that unifies most facets of the environment and society agriculture, energy, urban growth, water supply, the climate's impact on the glacier system, ecosystem services. A whole range of things are tied to water." The report, released in early February, is the first of its kind to comprehensively assess the current state of knowledge of the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, which extends over 2,175 miles (3,500 kilometers), is home to soaring peaks such as Mount Everest and K2, and is the source of 10 large Asian river systems. Together, the basins of those rivers provide water to nearly 2 billion people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population. "These are all parts of the oldest civilizations on earth. Humans have been living both in the mountain region and especially downstream in the river valley civilizations for thousands and thousands of years," Scott said. "Two-hundred-fifty million people live in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, but when you get downstream to where these rivers let out to the ocean, you have 2 billion people, which is why it's a huge environmental threat that the mountains and the glaciers in the mountain region are suffering." The assessment found that global warming of 1.5 degrees by the end of the century would lead to a 2.1-degree spike in temperatures and the melting of one-third of the region's glaciers, a critical water source. If global climate mitigation efforts fail, the study warns that current emissions would lead to five degrees in warming and a loss of two-thirds of the region's glaciers by 2100. The Hindu Kush Himalaya is commonly described as the "water tower of Asia." In the HIMAP chapter on water, Scott and his co-authors wrote that the mountains "provide two billion people a vital regional lifeline via water for food, water for energy, and water for ecosystem services." Credit: Chris Scott "The indications of the trends are already evident, though the degree of change was more extreme and more alarming than we expected," Scott said. Similar to the Southwestern U.S., the Hindu Kush Himalaya region relies on winter precipitation and summer monsoons for water accumulation. Summer monsoons reach the eastern parts of the Himalayas first before moving toward the northwest, which relies more heavily on winter snowfall that contributes to glacial storage and subsequent melt. "The months of April, most of May and into the first part of June are going to be critical water scarcity periods," Scott said. "That raises the question of whether upstream and downstream neighbors that have water sharing agreements are now going to try to change those agreements or not be able to meet those agreements? "Pakistan and India actually have a fairly durable water treaty. It was hammered out and has withstood several wars; They were still allocating the waters the way they agreed to," he added. "What are the elements that went into an agreement like that, such that you might be able to reproduce not the agreement, but the process to get to an agreement between two countries who were nuclear-armed neighbors at war?" Similar to the Himalaya region, winter precipitation is an important source of water for the Southwestern U.S. Recent snowfall and rain resulted in water flowing over the Sabino Dam in March, creating a seasonal reservoir above Sabino Creek. Credit: Bob Demers/UANews In addition to compiling data and sharing information, the HIMAP assessment was designed to address contemporary policy questions such as water-sharing agreements. The authors have called for a coordinated regional response to the water challenges the countries are facing, and they are hoping to bring the various governments together on initiatives like a region-wide flood-warning system, for example. "The overall process was to invite more data and studies. Science and policy dialogues are something we've worked on a lot here at the Udall Center. It is not just a release mechanism, but more of the engagement as you're going into the studies. You work with the partners and stakeholders some of them could be scientific, some of them could be from civil society, nongovernmental organizations, environmental groups. Everybody has a voice because everybody has a stake because everybody has something to contribute to the solution or the steps going forward." Scientific reports like the Hindu Kush Himalayan Assessment and the U.S. National Climate Assessment point to water scarcity as a growing concern around the world. But Scott doesn't see the solution as a strictly scientific one. Everyone, he says, should be involved in planning for the future. "A lot of these kinds of briefs are being published in local languages and being put out on websites and on different kinds of social media to get this information into the hands of as many people in society as we can," he said. "And then if there's a demand from residents and inhabitants and voters, that will count for a lot more pressure to change policy and to put in place programs that may help mitigate some of this or even reduce the severity of the processes much more so than will a group of international or even local academics and researchers saying, 'Be careful, we told you so.' You have to address it from all fronts." More information: The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. Springer. The Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. Springer. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92288-1 Mature female sun bear in Malaysia. Credit: Daniela Hartmann The world's smallest bears can exactly mimic another bear's facial expressions, casting doubt on humans and other primates' supremacy at this subtle form of communication. It is the first time such exact facial mimicry has been seen outside of humans and gorillas. The research, by Dr. Marina Davila-Ross and Ph.D. candidate Derry Taylor, both at the University of Portsmouth, is published in Scientific Reports. The researchers studied sun bearsa solitary species in the wild, but also surprisingly playfulfor more than two years. They found bears can use facial expressions to communicate with others in a similar way to humans and apes, strongly suggesting other mammals might also be masters of this complex social skill and, in addition, have a degree of social sensitivity. Dr. Davila-Ross said: "Mimicking the facial expressions of others in exact ways is one of the pillars of human communication. Other primates and dogs are known to mimic each other, but only great apes and humans, and now sun bears, were previously known to show such complexity in their facial mimicry. "Because sun bears appear to have facial communication of such complexity and because they have no special evolutionary link to humans like monkeys are apes, nor are they domesticated animals like dogs, we are confident that this more advanced form of mimicry is present in various other species. This, however, needs to be further investigated. "What's most surprising is the sun bear is not a social animal. In the wild, it's a relatively solitary animal, so this suggests the ability to communicate via complex facial expressions could be a pervasive trait in mammals, allowing them to navigate their societies." Facial mimicry is when an animal responds to another's facial expression with the same or similar expression. Mr Taylor coded the facial expressions of 22 sun bears in spontaneous social play sessions. The bears, aged 2-12, were housed in Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre in Malaysia in which enclosures were large enough to allow bears to choose whether to interact or not. Despite the bears' preference in the wild for a solitary life, the bears in this study took part in hundreds of play bouts, with more than twice as many gentle play sessions compared to rough play. During these encounters, the research team coded two distinct expressionsone involving a display of the upper incisor teeth, and one without. The bears were most likely to show precise facial mimicry during gentle play. Mr Taylor said such subtle mimicking could be to help two bears signal that they are ready to play more roughly, or to strengthen social bonds. He said: "It is widely believed that we only find complex forms of communication in species with complex social systems. As sun bears are a largely solitary species, our study of their facial communication questions this belief, because it shows a complex form of facial communication that until now was known only in more social species. "Sun bears are an elusive species in the wild and so very little is known about them. We know they live in tropical rainforests, eat almost everything, and that outside of the mating season adults have little to do with one another. "That's what makes these results so fascinatingthey are a non-social species who when face to face can communicate subtly and precisely." Sun bears, also known as honey bears, stand at 120-150 cm tall and weigh up to 80kg. They are endangered and live in the tropical forests of south-east Asia. Social sophistication aside, sun bear numbers are dwindling due to deforestation, poaching and being killed by farmers for eating crops. Increasingly, new mother bears are killed so their cub can be taken and raised as a pet or kept in captivity as 'bile bears' where their bile is harvested for use in some Chinese medicines. The field research was funded by the Royal Society and the Leakey Foundation. Previous research at the University of Portsmouth showed dogs alter their facial expressions if they know someone is looking at them. Explore further Ancient extinct cave bear DNA found in modern bears More information: Facial Complexity in Sun Bears: Exact Facial Mimicry and Social Sensitivity, Scientific Reports (2019). www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-39932-6 Journal information: Scientific Reports Facial Complexity in Sun Bears: Exact Facial Mimicry and Social Sensitivity,(2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-39932-6 KP govt offered dialogue to PTM The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government on Wednesday formally threw dialogue offer to the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) for redressal of the grievances of the tribal people and resolution of all outstanding social, political, administrative and development issues through talks. A meeting of the advisory committee constituted by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and comprising parliamentarians belonging to different political parties from erstwhile FATA was held here at the CM House. KP Chief Minister Mehmood Khan chaired the meeting, while Senate members Haji Momin Khan Afridi, Hadayatullah, Mirza Muhammad Afridi, Sajjad Hussain Toori, Shamim Afridi and National Assembly members Gul Zafar Khan, Iqbal Khan, Munir Khan Orakzai, Sajid Hussain Toori, Jawad Hussain and Mufti Abdul Shakoor attended. Advisory committee comprising senators and MNAs from erstwhile FATA have unanimously decided to hold talks with the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement leadership and find an amicable solution of the issues facing the Pashtun community through a jirga, Advisor to Chief Minister for Merged Tribal Districts Ajmal Wazir said at a news conference after the meeting. A jirga has been arranged at the Civil Officers Mess in Peshawar at 11am on March 26. We formally invite the leadership of the PTM to the jirga so that a strategy to find out a sustainable solution to all local and collective issues of the Pashtun community could be devised, he continued. We hope that the PTM leadership will accept the talks offer and ensure participation in the jirga, he added. Wazir said participation of representatives of all the political parties in the advisory committee meeting proves that they are on the same page vis-a-vis resolution of the issues facing the Pashtun community as well as development of the merged tribal districts to bring them on a par with other developed areas of the country. We want peace, stability and development in the tribal areas so that grievances and deprivation of the people of the region for the past over 70 years could be removed, he said. And to achieve this objective, we will have to forge unity among our ranks, he added. Speaking on the occasion, MNA Munir Orakzai said the advisory committee will do its best to find an amicable solution of all the outstanding issues and legal demands in coordination with the PTM leadership. Our message is peace and reconciliation. We are here with a positive mindset. We want stability and development in the region. Hence, we have decided to engage our brothers from the PTM so that a workable solution of the issues could be reached, he added. Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) MNA Sajid Toori said to realise the dream of development in the merged tribal districts, peace and stability is the foremost prerequisite. Tribal areas will be receiving Rs 100 billion every year for the development projects. New infrastructure, administrative set-up and courts will be established. But for all this to happen, peace is the first and foremost requirement. Our offer to PTM to come and sit with us is the first step towards ensuring a sustainable peace in the region, he added. Paktribune wishes its readers a very happy Nauroz Prime Minister Imran Khan has extended felicitation on the occasion of Nowruz festival being celebrated today. Nowruz is the spring festival celebrated in Iran, Afghanistan, the Central Asian states and parts of Pakistan. It marks the first day of the Persian New Year. 5 hours ago 3 Dependable Dow Stocks to Buy in December Dow Jones Stocks Can Offer Dependable Long-Term Returns Adding components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average to your investing strategy certainly comes with its fair share of positives. Since the companies that make up this widely-recognized stock market index are some of the worlds best businesses, investors know they are getting quality by focusing on the Dow. Read Article An RFE/RL correspondent in Kazakhstan has been fined after being detained for the third time in weeks in the restive city of Zhanaozen, where she has been covering ongoing rallies. A court in the southwestern city found Sania Toiken guilty of refusal to follow police orders and fined her 50,500 tenges ($135) after a lengthy hearing on March 12. Toiken rejected the charge, saying the case was politically motivated and was aimed to create obstacles to her reporting. Her lawyer, Tanatar Isekeshev, said the court's ruling will be appealed. Toiken was detained near a cafe late on March 11 and spent the night in a police station. She has been covering ongoing protests by residents in the oil-industry town who are demanding jobs. The previous two detainments were brief, with police questioning her over her coverage of the protests. Civil right activist Ghalym Agheleuov tweeted on March 12 that a number of protesters were rallying in front of the Zhanaozen police headquarters, demanding the immediate release of Toiken and several protesters who were detained in the morning. On March 11, the protesters issued a video statement urging President Nursultan Nazarbaev to intervene on their behalf. Kazakh authorities have been cautious when dealing with protests in Zhanaozen for years, after police fatally shot at least 16 people while dispersing protesting oil workers in December 2011. Toiken is a recipient of the 2017 Courage in Journalism Award of the International Women's Media Foundation. About Me Scott Because prophetic scriptures are found throughout the bible, it is obvious that a comprehensive, systematic approach would be useful, if not necessary, for the understanding of prophecy. Past prophecies have been fulfilled in a literal manner, as confirmed by the dating of these writings and historical records of confirmation. These past prophecies also serve as a model of how to interpret future prophecies. A literal view of prophecy clearly indicates a certain sequence of events will occur within a single generation, concluding with the Tribulation and Second Advent and these events will be obvious. The prophetic signs appear to be present in this generation and we believe these signs are revealed in the news from around the world. View my complete profile Government says it considers the successful issuance of the 3 billion Dollars Eurobond at record rates as a vote of confidence in the Ghanaian economic resurgence. Ghana on Tuesday successfully issued 3 billion dollars in a single transaction of three tranches. At the close of a road show in London, the appetite for the 2019 sovereign bond had swelled resulting in orders totaling 21billion dollars, about seven times more than the amount expected. Addressing Journalists in Accra, Minister of Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said the governments consideration that it is a vote of confidence is founded on three pillars which include the growing global confidence in the Ghanaian economys resilience. The global investor community has by this over subscription to this magnitude signaled their faith in Ghanas new ability to churn out strong returns on investments and consequently service its obligations. Additionally it reflects a robust investor confidence in Ghanas future economic outlook. During the process, bids submitted exceeded US$21 billion compared to over US$8 billion in bids recorded in 2018. At US$21 billion, this is the highest ever order-book for bonds issued in Sub-Saharan Africa he said. The Minister said such high success at this time when Ghana is exiting the IMF ECF program is evidence that the global investor community is confident that the managers of the Ghanaian economy are on an irreversible track of stability. This we believe is driven strongly by the Akufo-Addo administrations success at introducing legislations such as Fiscal responsibility act, the establishment of the fiscal council and financial stability council all designed to anchor the regained status and remove the endemic risks to macro stability he added. Mr. Nkrumah said this landmark issuance recognizes the credibility of the economic management team, which has led Ghana to the successful completion of the IMF ECF Programme that derailed under the erstwhile NDC government. It also confirms the confidence of the international investor community in the strength of Ghanas economic outlook. The competitively priced 31-year bond has the longest-ever tenor for bonds issued by an African sovereign, exemplifying investors confidence in Ghanas long-term prospects. He said going forward, government is committed to continuing to entrench structural irreversibilities to sustain and anchor the macroeconomic gains, including strict enforcement of the Public Financial Management Act, implementation of the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the establishment of the Fiscal Responsibility and Financial Stability Councils to monitor fiscal/debt sustainability and financial stability respectively. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Ada West District Police Command has arrested five persons suspected to be drug peddlers at Sege with a quantity of dry leaves suspected to be India hemp. The Ada West District Police Commander DSP George Aboagye gave the names of the suspected drug peddlers as Emmanuel Sorgbojor, 68, Iddrisu Hamid, 25, Emmanuel Amenyo, 20, David Amartey, 19, and Evans Doku, 21. DSP Aboagye told the Ghana News Agency that the suspects would be arraigned while the dry leaves would be sent to the Police Forensic Laboratory for confirmation. He said the Police are continuing with their investigations. DSP Aboagye called for more logistics for the district to combat crime. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Vice President Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia will lead an economic management team town hall meeting with stakeholders on the economy on April 3 in Accra. Minister for Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah who disclosed this at a Press Briefing in Accra said the vice President who is also the head of the Economic Management Team will be speaking on the theme our progress, our status, our future. He said the Town Hall Meetings are designed to bring government closer to the people and shall therefore see State actors give an account to the people who also have an opportunity to ask questions and make contributions to the local and national development process. The Meetings represent a major shift in Governments policy to make information easily accessible and usable to the public here in and outside Ghana. This is guided by the Governments desire to create a very inclusive and participatory society in ensuring that the citizenry here in Ghana and abroad are not only consumers of the development process but are creators and generators of the process he said. The Minister said the platform reflects governments belief that, the lasting benefits of policies, plans and programs will only be derived through constant engagement with the beneficiaries far and near. The much anticipated engagement will be attended by civil society groups, economic think tanks, trade unions and stakeholders in the financial sector. Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/ Twitter: @Washman5/ Instagram: Ambrose_wash Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Zambian authorities have banned an energy drink after it was discovered that it contains an ingredient that's used in the anti-impotence drug Viagra. At the end of last year, a consumer in Uganda complained of a prolonged erection after drinking Power Natural High Energy Drink SX, which is manufactured in Zambia. The Ugandan health authorities investigated and found that it contained Sildenafil Citrata - the active ingredient in Viagra. Zambia said it would also investigate. "Results from both Zimbabwe and South Africa correlated with those obtained from the Foods and Drugs Laboratory that indicated a positive presence of Sildenafil Citrate," a statement from the Zambian authorities quoted by Reuters said. The manufacturer, Revin Zambia, has not commented. In January, the company's General Manager, Vikas Kapoor, told the BBC's Newsday programme that to the best of his knowledge the energy drink does not contain any drugs. Source: BBC Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The United States military launched nuclear-capable B-52H Stratofortress bombers over the heavily disputed South China Sea last week, where they conducted routine training. In these contested waters, the Chinese government has claimed ownership over reserves containing trillions of dollars worth of oil and gas. The South China Sea is one of the most heavily trafficked maritime routes in the entire world. However, the conditions that make it so valuable--its location on the coasts of a considerable number of Asian countries--have also led to major regional tensions over ownership. Vast, overlapping swaths of this valuable body of water are currently being claimed by Brunei, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. China, which has staked the largest claims to the South China Sea and has been the most aggressive in its position with an ever-expanding military presence on the waters, has stirred up a large amount of political discontent in the region. While China has been bolstering its military presence in and around the South China Sea, its positioning doesnt come close to competing with the vast military presence of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region, where the Pentagon already holds an estimated and unrivalled 279 bases. The U.S. hasnt been keeping idly by, either. This latest B-52 flyover is just one more military exercise of many, all of which are in open defiance of Chinese policy and warnings to the international community. In a statement to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, a spokesperson for the Pacific Air Force said that "two B-52H Stratofortress bombers took off from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, and conducted routine training in the vicinity of the South China Sea on March 13, before returning to base." In the same statement the spokesperson added that the launch was nothing out of the ordinary and that, "U.S. aircraft regularly operate in the South China Sea in support of allies, partners and a free and open Indo-Pacific." Concurrently with the flyover of the B-52s on Wednesday, the Seventh Fleet flagship USS Blue Ridge amphibious command ship sailed directly through the South China Seas contested waters before anchoring in the Philippines. Related: Champagne Sales Slow As European Economic Worries Grow Louder This display of U.S. military might came just one day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decried Beijing for what he said was "illegal island-building in international waterways" with the purpose of cutting off rival claimants to the South China Sea "from accessing more than $2.5 trillion in recoverable energy reserves." In response to these comments, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang shot back on Wednesday that "it serves the interests of regional countries that those countries can manage and handle differences in their own way, and jointly uphold regional peace, stability, development and prosperity," adding an additional jab that "Meanwhile, some non-regional country has repeatedly stirred up troubles in an attempt to ruin the harmony. Such attempts are irresponsible to regional countries." The military exercise came also just about a week after a separate pair of U.S. B-52s flew over South China Sea islands claimed by China as a part of the COPE North 2019 exercise. COPE is a long-standing exercise...designed to enhance multilateral air operations among the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, Koku Jieitai (Japan Air Self-Defense Force) and Royal Australian air force (RAAF). When it comes to the South China Sea, the one thing that the U.S. and the Chinese definitely agree upon is its massive geopolitical value. According to a February 2013 report by the U.S. Environmental Information Agency, "the South China Sea contains approximately 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in proved and probable reserves." Meanwhile, according to the same 2013 report, the official Chinese National Offshore Oil Company "estimated the area holds around 125 billion barrels of oil and 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in undiscovered resources." With these numbers, its safe to say that the South China Sea wont be fading from the headlines any time soon. By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Safehaven.com: Pwn2Own 2019 hacking competition is started and participants hacked Apple Safari browser, Oracle VirtualBox and VMware Workstation on the first day. As you know I always cover results obtained by white hat hackers at hacking competitions, for this reason, today Ill share with you the results of the first day of the Pwn2Own 2019. Pwn2Own 2019 is the hacking competition organized by Trend Micros Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) that is taking place in Vancouver, Canada, alongside the CanSecWest conference. This edition includes a novelty, for the first time in its history participants have been invited to hack a Tesla Model 3, the organization is offering up to $300,000 and a car for. The overall prize pool is greater than $1 million and participants are very enthusiastic to take part in the competition. On the first day, they were able to hack into Apples Safari web browser and the Oracle VirtualBox and VMware Workstation virtualization products earning a total of $240,000 in cash. Amat Cama and Richard Zhu of team Fluoroacetate earned $55,000, and 5 points towards Master of Pwn, for an exploit targeting the Safari web browser. The security duo chained an integer overflow in the browser and a heap overflow that allowed them to escape the sandbox. The experts finally used a brute-force technique to escape the sandbox. They successfully exploited the browser and escaped the sandbox by using an integer overflow in the browser and a heap overflow to escape the sandbox. The attempt nearly took the entire allowed time because they used a brute force technique during the sandbox escape. reads the official page of the Pwn2Own 2019 competition. The code would fail then try again until it succeeded. The demonstration earned them $55,000 USD and 5 points towards Master of Pwn . The same experts also earned $35,000 for hacking Oracle VirtualBox by triggering on the second attempt an integer underflow and a race condition to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code. Amat Cama and Richard Zhu also earned $70,000 for escaping a VMware Workstation virtual machine and executing code on the underlying host operating system. It was a great day for the Fluoroacetate team that earned a total of $160,000 in just one day. On the first day, another experts of STAR Labs who uses the handle anhdaden earned $35,000 for hacking Oracle VirtualBox by exploiting an integer underflow to escalate privileges and execute code on the underlying host. The integer overflow issue exploited by the expert is differed than the one discovered by Fluoroacetate. The day one close with the Phoenhex & Qwerty team that earned $45,000 for a complete system compromise via an Apple Safari exploit with a kernel elevation. In order to exploit the flaw, the attackers need to trick victims into visiting a malicious website. By browsing to their website, they triggered a JIT bug followed by a heap out-of-bounds (OOB) read used twice then pivoted from root to kernel via a Time-of-Check-Time-of-Use (TOCTOU) bug. Unfortunately, it was only a partial win since Apple already know of one of the bugs used in the demo. Still, they earned themselves $45,000 USD and 4 points towards Master of Pwn . reads ZDI. If you want to receive news on the ongoing Pwn2Own 2019 competition stay tuned. Pierluigi Paganini ( SecurityAffairs Pwn2Own 2019, hacking) Share this... Linkedin Share this: Twitter Print LinkedIn Facebook More Tumblr Pocket Share On Post-Johnson litigation creates intricate procedural debates in Eleventh Circuit | Main | Might the US Sentencing Commission provide some real-time updates on the implementation of the FIRST STEP Act? March 21, 2019 "Death by Numbers: Why Evolving Standards Compel Extending Ropers Categorical Ban Against Executing Juveniles From 18 to 21" The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper authored by John Blume, Hannah Freedman, Lindsey Vann and Amelia Hritz. Here is its abstract: Nearly fifteen years ago, the Supreme Court held in Roper v. Simmons that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of people who were under 18 at the time of their offenses. The Court justified the line it drew based on legislative enactments, jury verdicts, and neuroscience. In the intervening years, however, much has changed in juvenile sentencing jurisprudence, the legal treatment of young people, and neuroscience. These changes beg the question: Why 18? Is the bright-line rule that the Court announced in Roper still constitutionally valid or do the changes since 2005 now point to a new cutoff at 21? To answer those questions, this Article considers post-Roper developments in the relevant domains to make the case that the 18-year-old constitutional line should be extended to age 21. It does so by applying the Supreme Courts evolving-standards-of-decency methodology. Specifically, the Article examines all death sentences and executions imposed in the United States post-Roper and looks at the current state of neuroscientific research that the Court found compelling when it decided Roper. Two predominant trends emerge. First, there is a national consensus against executing people under 21. This consensus comports with what new developments in neuroscience have made clear: people under 21 have brains that look and behave like the brains of younger teenagers, not like adult brains. Second, young people of color are disproportionately sentenced to die even more so than adult capital defendants. The role of race is amplified when the victim is white. These trends confirm that the logic that compelled the Court to ban executions of people under 18 extends to people under 21. March 21, 2019 at 08:34 AM | Permalink Comments We have one of these cases pending in Fayette Circuit Court in Lexington, Kentucky, Commonwealth v. Travis Bredhold. Bredhold is white, not black. In December 2015, at the age of 18 years, 5 months, Bredhold killed a gas station - convenience store clerk (53 years old, with a wife and 2 children) in cold blood during an armed robbery. The Clerk had opened the cash register at gun point and was giving Bredhold the money when he was shot and killed. Bredhold then walked behind the counter to pick up the money and left the Clerk on the floor, to bleed to death. There is reportedly a security camera video of the entire crime for prosecutors to show the jury. Under Kentucky law, killing someone during an armed robbery is an aggravating factor that justifies the death penalty. There are only 33 people on death row in Kentucky, which has executed only 5 people since 1953. Based upon a psychiatric evaluation by state DOC psychiatrists (at KCPC), Judge Ernesto Scorsone (a former State Senator, before becoming a Circuit Judge) took the death penalty off the table in this case, and the Commonwealth is now appealing that issue before trial. The psych report says that Bredhold's mind functions like that of a 14 year old, not that of an adult. Bredhold and his twin brother (who was already in state prison at the time Bredhold killed he Clerk) had been raised in Kentucky's foster care system. He had had serious behavioral and disciplinary problems in the public school system, so he had been sent to and graduated from Fayette County's alternative high school, the Martin Luther King Academy. Not counting his trip to KCPC for his psych eval., Bredhold is now the longest serving inmate at the Fayette County Detention Center. If you Google Travis Bredhold's name, you can read all of the details, including Judge Scorsone's Order about the death penalty being inapplicable in this case, at the Death Penalty Information Center's web site. Bredhold was also a member of the gang, the Dirty White Boys at the time of the robbery and murder. He was arrested within days at the largest mall, Fayette Mall, a few days before Christmas of 2015. He had over $600 cash (the proceeds from the robbery) in his pocket, along with a .380 pistol. He was spending the money at the Mall to buy Christmas presents for his family and friends. Posted by: Jim Gormley | Mar 21, 2019 9:13:17 AM I checked a newspaper article after I posted my comment above. My memory of the date for the robbery and murder was incorrect. The crimes actually occurred in December 2013, not December 2015, as I wrote above. Thus, Travis Bredholt has now been a pre-trial detainee at the Fayette County Detention Center for more than 5 years (including the months he spent at KCPC, getting his psych eval). Posted by: James Gormley | Mar 21, 2019 9:20:15 AM When I began reading the academic article attached to Professor Doug Berman's post above, I discovered that Judge Scorsone's 2017 Order taking the death penalty off the table in the Travis Bredhold case is referred to in footnote #11 to the article. Posted by: Jim Gormley | Mar 21, 2019 9:29:08 AM So if you cant execute persons until 21 because of their mental fragility ...I sure hope those supporters also advocate for not allowing these same underdeveloped persons to vote since they can form logical thoughts and be responsible for their actions. Liberal logic say lower the age to vote to 16; and raise the age for executions to 21. Liberalism IS truly a mental disorder Posted by: DeanO | Mar 22, 2019 1:52:20 PM I think there is a logical flaw in the use of sentencing data in this case. Most states, probably reflecting the natural tendencies of juries, include youth as a mitigating factor. If we tell jurors that they should rarely impose the death penalty on young offenders, it should not be a surprise that the number of death sentences imposed on young offenders is small. I know that I have personally been involved in several cases as a prosecutor in which the possibility of seeking the death sentence against a 20 year-old was considered. In the vast majority, the conclusion was that there was not enough evidence in aggravation to overcome the mitigating factor. So the law already gives some protection to the 20 year-old murderer. If a mitigating factor is working the way that it should, death sentences for offenders who clearly have that mitigating factor (as several mitigating factors require the jury to decide what conflicting evidence is true) should be rarer than death sentences for offenders with no mitigating factors. To use the fact that a mitigating factor is working the way that it should as justification for making that mitigating factor a categorical constitutional rule would discourage states from officially recognizing mitigating factors in their statutes and instructions. That seems to be a bad idea both practically and legally. Posted by: tmm | Mar 25, 2019 10:30:30 AM Post a comment By Donny Kwok and Clare Jim HONG KONG, March 21 (Reuters) - CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd , the ports-to-telecoms arm of retired billionaire Li Ka-shing, said it does not feel Chinese companies are being barred from M&A opportunities in the global markets, even though its bid in Australia was blocked. In November, CK Group terminated an $9.5 billion agreement to acquire Australia's biggest gas pipeline company APA Group after Australia blocked the takeover bid, citing national interest. "We're an international company; Hong Kong is our root, but in other global markets we don't see any rejection," group chairman Victor Li told an earnings conference. "We just successfully made an acquisition in Italy; they welcomed us," he added. "No, it's not true, how can the whole world not like to do business with Chinese?" CK Hutchison posted an 11 percent rise in 2018 profit on Thursday to HK$39 billion ($4.97 billion), its highest since 2015, in line with analyst forecasts. Hong Kong's richest man, Li Ka-shing, retired in May as chairman of CK Hutchison and real estate arm CK Asset, passing the mantle to his eldest son, who was named successor several years ago. Chairing his first earnings conference as chairman, Victor Li said the companies will not change their strategies under his leadership. "I'm still doing the job of a managing director even though I have an additional title now. Mr. Li (Ka-shing) is still an adviser (in the group) advising us." CK Hutchison said it has no plan to sell its stake in beauty and health retailer A.S. Watson or float its shares, adding it is a very profitable business, but it would support Temasek Holdings' plans to offload a part of its stake. Singapore state investor Temasek, which invested about $5.7 billion in the company in 2014, is in talks to sell a small portion of its 24.9 percent stake in A.S. Watson, a source said in January. Story continues "Temasek and we have a very good relationship; we're supportive in their intention to sell a part of its stake, we will help them to do due diligence," said group co-managing director Canning Fok. Temasek has previously declined to comment on any A.S. Watson stake sale. Sister company CK Asset, a major property developer in Hong Kong, reported on Thursday a forecast-beating 33.2 percent rise in 2018 net profit to HK$40.12 billion. Li declined to give his outlook on the property market, saying there are too many external uncertainties that could offset housing demand in Hong Kong. (Reporting by Clare Jim and Donny Kwok; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman) Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and his Guinean counterpart, Ibrahima Kassory Fofana, yesterday discussed how to join hands in the bauxite sector to benefit mutually. The two countries are blessed with the worlds largest deposits of the resource. The bilateral arrangement, which the Vice President said would be akin to the recent partnership between Ivory Coast and Ghana on cocoa, would be to the advantage of the two countries. Dr Bawumia disclosed this to the media after a meeting with his Guinean counterpart on the sidelines of the just concluded Export-Import (EXIM) Bank conclave in New Delhi. He added that with Guinea having the largest deposit of the resource in the world and Ghana blessed with close to a billion metric tonnes of the resource, the two are set to control 70-80 per cent of the worlds bauxite resources. The two countries can take mutually beneficial decisions if they work in tandem. The Ghana Integrated Aluminium Development Corporation, which was established by an Act of Parliament, is in its formative stage and further details are due for announcement in the not-too-distant future, DAILY GUIDE has learnt. Ghana could be earning an export value of $350 billion from refined bauxite, something the President and his Vice are keen in realizing. At the end of the conclave yesterday, the Vice President joined Ibrahima Kassory Fofana and the Deputy Prime Minister of Lesotho to pay a courtesy call on the Indian Vice President Venkaiah Naidu. The African leaders discussed partnership between India and Africa. Source: Daily Guide Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The first Whitepaper on China Best Managed Companies, released same day, indicates private companies in China can learn from leading management practices Strategy, capabilities, commitment and financial strength are the four cornerstones of management excellence SHENZHEN, CHINA - Media OutReach - 21 March 2019 - Deloitte China, withBank of Singapore, the Business School of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology(HKUST), Harvard Business Review Chinaand the Federation of Shenzhen Commerce, launched the Best Managed Companies(BMC) program in August last year, the first program of its kind in China toidentify and recognize private companies based on their management systems. The BMC review panel comprised morethan 40 experts from Deloitte and Bank of Singapore. After six months of rigorousreviews, interviews and specialist research, 23 private companies from citiesincluding Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Changsha, andHangzhou were named the first China Best Managed Companies winners. Beijing andShenzhen outperformed other cities with six and five winners respectively.Today, executives from private companies from China and around the globegathered in Shenzhen for the BestManaged Companies Forum 2019 andBest Managed Companies Awards Ceremony 2019. Bank of Singapore is one ofthe proud sponsors of the Deloitte Best Managed Companies Awards in China. Derrick Tan, Global Market Head, GreaterChina and North Asia and Chief Executive, Hong Kong Branch, Bank of Singapore said,"The BestManaged Companies Awards puts a timely and well-deserved spotlight onChinese-owned companies and entrepreneurs that are operating at the highestlevels of performance, have a strong commitment to growing their business anddeveloping leaders of the future. While the winners cover a wide range ofbusiness, what is constant is their drive to do better and to be better. TheseChinese-owned companies have set the benchmark for excellence and will drivethe entrepreneurial culture in China in the years to come. Heartiest congratulationsto the 23 winners and I wish them continued success. Story continues "AtBank of Singapore, many of our clients are entrepreneurs running familybusinesses. We understand how important it is to keep the flames ofentrepreneurism burning. We are committed to supporting entrepreneurs inGreater China, whether it is by protecting and growing their wealth through ourprivate banking and wealth management expertise, or supporting their businessexpansion plans as they take on the world through the corporate and commercialbanking network of our parent, OCBC Bank." China has made incredible advancesin developing its economy over more than 40 years of reform and opening up,with total GNP having grown by 22,400%. Private companies in particular havecontributed significantly to China's economic development. The Deloitte China Whitepaper on China Best Managed Companies(the Whitepaper), outlines the significance of private companies to China'seconomy -- the private economy has contributed more than 50% of state revenue;over 60% of GDP, fixed-asset investment, and foreign direct investment; inexcess of 70% of enterprise innovation and new products; more than 80% of urbanjobs and more 90% of new jobs. The Whitepaper includes Deloitte's analysis ofthe overall development of private companies in China and a samplequestionnaire on their management, case studies on the first BMC winners and insightsand opinions on the management of China's private companies. "By launching the first BMCprogram in China, Deloitte worked with partners in various sectors to nominatecandidates, review candidates' information, organize Best Managed CEO Lab on-sitereview and mentorship, and arrange reviews by an Independent Review Committee.The final list of 23 of winners shows management excellence across differentsectors. As we all know, multiple factors are driving the rapid growth of the privateeconomy, especially policy incentives and institutional innovation, and institutionalreform and innovation at the state level. But at last, the sustainability of acompany relies on its own competence. We hope that the BMC program will graduallyrealize our vision, which is identifying and witnessing companies excelling incorporate governance to sustainably grow with their outstanding management standards," says Zhao Jian, leadpartner of the BMC Program. "Since its entry into the WTO,China has been accelerating exchanges between domestic and foreign enterprisesand enhancing enterprise management in both theory and practice, " adds Liu Xiao, co-publisher of Harvard Business Review China. "Inaddition, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship play a key role in promotingprivate economic growth, with three generations of entrepreneurs witnessing thesurging development of China's private economy since reform and opening up.This gives the introduction of the BMC program in China by Deloitte profoundsignificance. Great entrepreneurship deserves broad recognition." With support from HKUST BusinessSchool, Deloitte China conducted a nation-wide survey on the enterprisemanagement and operation of private companies across different industries to betterunderstand and analyze the overall management and operational status of privatecompanies in China. The survey focused on questions about the strategy,capability and commitment of private companies. Its results show that privatecompanies in China are well aware of their own management strengths and painpoints. Based on feedback from interviews, the Whitepaper also summarizes threemanagement strengths and five management pain points of China's privatecompanies: Three strengths Five pain points Dean of HKUST Business School Professor Tam Kar Yan said, "Chinese private enterprises have made far-reachingcontributions to the economic and societal development on the Mainland andacross the world. It is our honor to be the knowledge partner of the DeloitteBMC Program, through which we can harness our professional knowledge to selectand recognize some of the best managed companies in China, and thus promotebest management practices. "There are many outstanding andhigh growth private enterprises in Shenzhen, including a number of FortuneGlobal 500 companies and other leading corporates in specific market segments.Shenzhen has introduced various initiatives to protect and support privateenterprises with the right services," says LinHui, memberof the Standing Committee of Shenzhen Municipal People's Congress, andexecutive president of Federation of Shenzhen Commerce and Shenzhen GeneralChamber of Commerce. "In the future, Shenzhen should continue to empower privatecompanies, which will play the role of driving the development of a level playingmarket. It should seek to create a market environment with fair competition,build a peaceful business ecosystem, simplify its business policies, and reduceburden on businesses. It should also introduce policies to propel thedevelopment of a high quality economy, reduce tax burden, facilitate capitalraising and support targeted business segments and industries. It should alsoestablish business platforms that cater to the needs of companies, focus ondeveloping the platform for shared infrastructure, and speed up the connectionwithin the industry value chain. Shenzhen would also need to create platformsfor royalty transaction, government services and the sharing of corporatecredit information." "Strategy, capabilities,commitment and financial strength are the four cornerstones of enterprise frameworksfor management excellence. Generally, private companies in China have focusedmore on business than management and pursued rapid business growth rather thansustainability. When a company grows big enough, it should take into fullaccount 'sustainable' profitability and growth as well as its socialresponsibilities," concludes WilliamChou, vice chair of Deloitte China and leader of Deloitte Private. "Companiesneed to address several emerging issues amid uncertainties in the future globaleconomy. In addition to the good number of successful private companies emergingfrom China's reform and opening up, there remain more hidden champions withexcellent management performance to be discovered. Through our BMC program, wehope to encourage more outstanding private companies to learn from best managedcompanies in other countries and improve management capabilities while pursuingtheir own business growth. Deloitte aims to work with partners and build aplatform to facilitate the development of private companies, an essentialpillar of China's economy." By analyzing the stories of thefirst BMC winners in China, Deloitte proposes the following solutions forChinese private companies to achieve management excellence: Develop long-term strategic planning as earlyas possible, focusing on future perspectives with clearly defined long-termvision, medium-term strategies and short-term plans; Do not innovate for innovation's sake. Builda clear innovation management and planning system to pursue targeted technologyand model innovations, and allocate sufficient resources and talent; Think globally and enhance internationalinfluence by integrating into local communities and value systems allowingcompanies to grow into "global organizations"; Adhere to people-oriented principles to continuouslyinvest in talent development, sustain and develop corporate culture andentrepreneurship, and establish a sound social responsibility management systemto inspire teams' commitment to shared vision; Lastly, be proactive and prepare forchanges. Be flexible and responsive in the face of external changes, displayingnot only an ability to survive and withstand risks, but also managementexcellence. Such risk management and response capabilities become even moreimportant in the context of macro-economic downturns and intensifying de-globalization. About the Deloitte Best Managed Companies program As a unique global initiative toprovide a full range of evaluations on private company management, DeloitteBest Managed Companies (BMC) program has been introduced to many countriessince its establishment in Canada in 1993. In 2018, building on Deloitte's25-year experience of running the BMC program in other countries, DeloitteChina leveraged global resources to study the management styles of over onethousand companies across the globe, and boiled down to four cornerstones ofmanagement excellence and relevant criteria for private companies. Byintroducing BMC in China, Deloitte aims to identify and recognize China's privatecompanies with advanced management ideas and excellent business performance,and help them develop into best managed companies with "industry leadership,global thinking, long-term strategy, innovative development and people-oriented"that are set to achieve solid long-term performance and robust growth. Winners of 2019 China Best Managed CompaniesInalphabetical order by Chinese Pinyin of the company names iKang Healthcare Group, Inc Better Life Commercial Chain Share Co., Ltd. Skyworth Group Co., Ltd Daqo Group Co., Ltd. Tunghsu Group Co. Ltd. Kidswant Children Products Co., Ltd Haidilao International Holding Ltd. Hengan International Group Co. Ltd. Jack Sewing Machine Co. Ltd 9F Group Inc. K11 Group Ltd Longfor Group Holdings Limited Shandong Weigao Group Medical Polymer Company Limited Shanying International Holding Co., Ltd Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics Co. Ltd Shenzhen Absen Optoelectronic Co. Ltd Shenzhen Inovance Technology Co., Ltd. Tempus Global Business Service Group Holdings Ltd Topchoice Medical Investment Co.,Inc New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. Yantai Jereh Oilfield Services Group Co. Ltd. China Education Group Holdings Limited Sunpower Group Ltd. About Deloitte Deloitterefers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited ("DTTL"), its globalnetwork of member firms, and their related entities. DTTL (also referred to as"Deloitte Global") and each of its member firms and their affiliated entitiesare legally separate and independent entities. DTTL does not provide servicesto clients. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more. DeloitteAsia Pacific Limited is a company limited by guarantee and a member firm ofDTTL. Members of Deloitte Asia Pacific Limited and their related entitiesprovide services in Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, East Timor, FederatedStates of Micronesia, Guam, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia,Myanmar, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Thailand, TheMarshall Islands, The Northern Mariana Islands, The People's Republic of China(incl. Hong Kong SAR and Macau SAR), The Philippines and Vietnam, in each ofwhich operations are conducted by separate and independent legal entities. TheDeloitte brand entered the China market in 1917 with the opening of an officein Shanghai. Today, Deloitte China delivers a comprehensive range of audit& assurance, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory and tax servicesto local, multinational and growth enterprise clients in China. Deloitte Chinahas also made--and continues to make--substantial contributions to the developmentof China's accounting standards, taxation system and professional expertise. Tolearn more about how Deloitte makes an Impact that Matters in China, pleaseconnect with our social media platforms atwww2.deloitte.com/cn/en/social-media. 2019. For information,contact Deloitte China. FILE PHOTO: Public and private housing blocks are seen in Hong Kong October 6, 2016. REUTERS/Bobby Yip/File Photo By Kane Wu and Julie Zhu HONG KONG (Reuters) - Global investment powerhouse KKR & Co Inc is raising its first Asia-focused real estate fund, targeting $1.5 billion (1.14 billion) as it looks to deepen its real estate portfolio in the region, said people with knowledge of the matter. The New York-headquartered private equity firm is moving towards first-close of the fund late in the second quarter, the people said, declining to be named as the information is confidential. The firm itself will commit about $250 million in capital, and potential investors - also known as limited partners - include sovereign funds and pension funds, they said. KKR declined to comment. The fundraising comes as private equity firms globally have expanded from a model of buying out companies to turn around and sell for profit. They now invest through a range of alternative asset management products, including infrastructure, real estate, hedge funds and credit. Investment firms raised $18.6 billion in 26 Asia-focused real estate funds last year, the highest since 2008, according to data provider Preqin. KKR's U.S.-based rival Blackstone Group raised the region's biggest real estate fund last year at $7.1 billion. Like its peers, KKR has been building out new capabilities outside traditional private equity investments in Asia. It has committed about $2 billion in equity and debt across nearly 50 real estate transactions in the region including South Korea, Australia, China and India since 2011, the firm has said. Late last year, it teamed up with two Korean partners to acquire a mixed-use real estate project under development in Seoul's Gangnam business district for about $1.9 billion. It also invested in The-K Twin Towers, a commercial property in Seoul in 2014 with a Hong Kong-based hedge fund in a deal which South Korean media valued at 500 billion won (370.76 million). The property was sold to Samsung SRA at a premium last year. Story continues The firm has also been an active financing provider in India through its real estate-focused non-bank finance firm KKR India Asset Finance Ltd. KKR has a dedicated team of about 20 real estate professionals based in Asia Pacific spanning both the equity and credit deals. Last May, it hired John Pattar, former chief executive of CLSA Real Estate, to head its Asia real estate team. Pattar ran CLSA's real estate funds for almost 15 years before joining KKR. It has also hired new heads of infrastructure and credit for Asia and is separately considering launching an Asia-focused infrastructure fund, Reuters has reported. Earlier this month, it announced the hiring of Kate Richdale, former Asia investment banking chief of Goldman Sachs, in a newly created role as Asia-Pacific head of strategy and business development. (Reporting by Kane Wu and Julie Zhu; Editing by Stephen Coates) The companys projects in Sentul, Cheras and Bangi are mainly built for the affordable housing segment, specifically the middle 40 percent income group (M40). Mah Sing Group Bhd eyes to launch RM2.2 billion worth of projects aimed at middle-income buyers this year, reported The Malaysian Reserve. In fact, the companys projects in Sentul, Cheras and Bangi are mainly built for the affordable housing segment, specifically the middle 40 percent income group (M40). We are not doing the B40 group because I think the government is taking care of that part, said MAH Sing Group Bhd Executive Director Datuk Steven Ng Poh Seng during the Invest Malaysia 2019 event on Tuesday (19 March). Mah Sing achieved RM1.5 billion in property sales last year, 83 percent of which came from residential units priced below RM700,000. For this year, the property developer will have much lower sales target than the RM3.4 billion achieved in 2014. READ ALSO: What To Expect When Making Your First Downpayment We are being very conservative at a RM1.5 billion sales target, stated Ng. The target reflects todays property market which is plagued by an acute overhang, especially in Johor, Penang and Klang Valley. Even Mah Sing has a high number of unsold completed units. Despite this, the group was in a net cash position in 2018, with RM1.22 billion in cash and bank balances as at 31 December 2018. With this, Mah Sing plans to expand its landbank, especially in the Klang Valley, and will target niche developments that can immediately be developed. The developer currently owns 2,105 acres (851.86ha) of land in Malaysia, with RM25.7 billion in gross development value and unbilled sales. Meanwhile, Ng viewed the governments mandate to reduce government-linked companies exposure to public-listed firms as not across the board. Surely, (local institutional investors) still want to invest in assets that give them good returns. It is the same for us, he said. Local institutions own about 41 percent combined interest in Mah Sing, with the largest stake held by Permodalan Nasional Bhd at about 17 percent. Image source from Southville City Let us help you find the right property to purchase with our comprehensive property comparison page! Click here. SINGAPORE (Mar 20): Goh Hin Calm, the treasurer for 2013 penny stock crash masterminds John Soh Chee Wen and Quah Su Ling, has been sentenced to serve three years in prison for aiding and abetting the duo in what is the largest-ever market manipulation case seen in Singapore. Goh, who was interim CEO of IPCO International (now known as Renaissance United), pleaded guilty to two charges pertaining to his involvement in the scandal, which wiped out $8 billion in market value. In delivering the sentence, Justice See Kee Oon said there is evidence of extensive losses at unprecedented levels, which has led to an adverse reaction and injured the confidence and reputation of the country. He ruled that Goh played an integral role in the scheme. He had autonomy, and [I] cannot accept that his role is peripheral. [He was] entrusted with some authority and some powers of oversight because he is trusted and loyal, said See. See: Two stock market manipulation precedents invoked as prosecutors call for 3-year sentence for Goh Hin Calm See also: Banks, brokerages incurred over $350 million in losses from penny stock crash Goh, who was calm when the sentence was read out to him in court on Wednesday, had acted as the treasurer for Soh and Quah. He managed payments for the numerous trading accounts controlled by the duo and kept track of the shareholding schedules of those accounts. He also gave Quah and Soh control of trading accounts held in his and his wifes name. The trading accounts were used to manipulate shares in Asiasons Capital (now known as Attilan Group), Blumont Group and LionGold Corp. Deputy Public Prosecutor Nicholas Tan submitted that Gohs role as Soh and Quahs finance manager was instrumental to the extensive damage of the scheme hatched by the duo to rig the markets, and to the misrepresentation of the stocks in Asiasons, Blumont and LionGold. His role in managing the finances of the scheme was substantial, egregious and instrumental to a scheme of this nature, Tan said. He was no mere automaton, he had autonomy as he liaised directly with brokers and facilitated payments without seeking permission from Soh and Quah. Story continues Tan also argued that Goh was indispensable to Quah, with whom he had a good working relationship, and that he was motivated by the need to keep that relationship due to opportunities afforded him by Quah. The accused was a senior accountant and director, and was well qualified to appreciate the importance of what he was doing, said Tan. Defense counsel Adrian Wee, Director, Characterist LLC, in his submission argued that Gohs role was peripheral and he had no part in conducting, strategising, nor formulating any of the trades which were part of the scheme to manipulate the shares. He did [as he was told by Quah] out of a misguided sense of loyalty. He was, if I may use the analogy, part of backroom operations. Not only is his function peripheral, but his discretion in respect to the performance of his function was limited, Wee said. However, Tan objected to the idea of Goh merely being a "backroom boy," given that he was managing payments of over $30 million to the various accounts. Goh, through Wee, expressed remorse for his participation in the scheme and for the injuries caused to the shareholders and parties who suffered losses due to the scheme. Justice See sentenced Goh to 36 months in prison on each of the two proceeded charges, with the sentences to be run concurrently. Goh will proceed to serve his sentence immediately. The trial of Soh and Quah, who face 189 and 178 charges, respectively, will begin on March 25. Following is a summary of current world news briefs. Venezuela's Guaido says intelligence agents seize his chief of staff Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said on Thursday intelligence agents had arrested his chief of staff following a pre-dawn raid, signaling that President Nicolas Maduro may be cracking down on the opposition's challenge to his rule. Guaido invoked the constitution in January to assume the interim presidency after declaring Maduro's 2018 re-election a fraud, and has been recognized by dozens of Western nations as the country's legitimate leader. Ethiopian crash captain untrained on 737 MAX simulator: source The captain of a doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight did not practice on a new simulator for the Boeing 737 MAX 8 before he died in a crash with 157 others, a pilot colleague said. Yared Getachew, 29, was due for refresher training at the end of March, his colleague told Reuters, two months after Ethiopian Airlines had received one of the first such simulators being distributed. Special Report: Forgotten victims - The children of Islamic State The hallways of the Rusafa Central Criminal Court in Baghdad teemed with anxious toddlers on the days their mothers were on trial. Then they vanished again, into the women's prison, where they have lived for the past year and a half. They sleep on thin mattresses in crowded cells, bored, hungry and often sick. They are the foreign children of Islamic State. Among them is Obaida, the two-year-old son of a Chechen woman, Laila Gazieva. Gazieva was detained in late 2017 while fleeing the Islamic State stronghold of Tal Afar in northern Iraq, and convicted six months later for belonging to the militant Islamist group. On the day Gazieva was sentenced to life in prison, so too were at least a dozen other young women, court records show. Prosecutors: Utrecht gunman had terrorist intent, other possible motives under investigation A suspected gunman arrested for killing three people on a Dutch tram this week is believed to have acted with terrorist intent, and authorities are also investigating whether he had other personal motives, prosecutors said on Thursday. Prosecutors said they believe the suspect, 37-year-old Turkish-born Gokmen Tanis, acted alone in the shooting in the city of Utrecht, but the investigation is still ongoing. Story continues Islamic State defeated at final enclave: Syrian Kurdish media The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have seized all of Islamic State's final enclave at Baghouz, Syrian Kurdish news outlet Hawar reported on Thursday, defeating the jihadists after a weeks-long battle. Citing its correspondents, Hawar said the SDF had "liberated all of Baghouz from the Daesh mercenaries" and with that the campaign had "ended with the defeat of Daesh and the victory of the SDF." Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. Ethiopians cheer as London museum returns plundered royal hair A London museum has handed back locks of hair cut from the corpse of an Ethiopian emperor during a British invasion 150 years ago, after a campaign by activists seeking the return of hundreds of pieces of colonial plunder. Ethiopians, many dressed in the national colors of red, gold and green, cheered as staff at the National Army Museum handed over the remains in a black leather box to Ethiopia's minister of culture, tourism and sport on Wednesday. Special Report - Shattered sanctuary: In Christchurch, an imam seeks to rebuild Ibrahim Abdelhalim was at his mosque last week in the Linwood neighborhood of Christchurch, New Zealand, delivering a prayer as he usually does on Friday afternoons. The 67-year-old grandfather had already spoken about "tasting the sweetness of faith" as a Muslim obedient to God and willing to serve humanity. He heard a pop-pop-pop in the distance. New Zealand bans military type semi-automatic weapons used in mosque massacre New Zealand will ban military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles under tough new gun laws following the killing of 50 people in its worst mass shooting, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday. In the immediate aftermath of last Friday's shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch, Ardern labeled the attack as terrorism and said New Zealand's gun laws would change. Pilots searched for right checklist before Lion Air crash: investigators Indonesian investigators said on Thursday the cockpit voice recorder from a crashed Lion Air Boeing Co 737 MAX 8 jet showed pilots were searching for the right checklist in their handbooks and were experiencing airspeed and altitude issues. The details revealed at a press conference corroborated a Reuters report on Wednesday that was based on three sources with knowledge of the cockpit voice recorder's contents. EU readies short Brexit delay - if May wins parliament over European Union leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday to give Prime Minister Theresa May an offer to delay Brexit beyond March 29, on condition that she can finally win over her many opponents in parliament next week. Nearly three years after Britons narrowly voted in a referendum to leave the EU, May has been unable to unite her divided cabinet, parliament or nation behind her exit plan. SINGAPORE (Mar 21): ST Engineering has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with BYD to include the Chinese automobile manufacturers electric buses in its Land Systems arms portfolio of autonomous bus platforms. This comes as part of ST Engineerings plans to form a consortium, in response to the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB)s call for collaboration (CFC) for a pilot deployment of autonomous buses in Punggol, Tengah and the Jurong Innovation District. In its announcement on Wednesday, the group says it intends to integrate its autonomous vehicle (AV) kit onto BYDs buses. Both ST Engineering and BYD intend to look at marketing this joint platform internationally, it adds. This partnership is the beginning of our quest for the CFC, and we are excited that a leading OEM of electric vehicles such as BYD has agreed to be part of our consortium, says Lee Shiang Long, president of Land Systems, ST Engineering. We continue to explore partnerships with like-minded companies and incorporate their capabilities into a proposal that offers a sustainable and scalable transportation solution for Singapore, he adds. ST Engineering and BYD have previously worked together on developing the formers STROBO range of adaptable and scalable autonomous material handling equipment for the warehouse, airport, seaport and manufacturing industries. Shares in the group closed 3 cents lower at $3.76 on Wednesday. SINGAPORE (Mar 21): Singapore-based private equity firm Tembusu Partners announced it will be launching several investment funds totalling about RMB 1.0 billion ($205.6 million) after securing the first Qualified Foreign Limited Partner (QFLP) status awarded to a foreign fund management firm in Chinas Guizhou Province. Meanwhile, the firm also announced that Lim Ming Yan, former CEO of Capitaland, will be appointed as chairman of its China Advisory Board as Tembusu seeks to increase its investments in China. This is a part of the central governments efforts to liberalise the economy and promote innovation. Tembusu entered into an 80-20 joint venture with a Guizhou state-owned entity and is the first in the southwestern province to obtain the QFLP license. The state-owned entity allows investors to enjoy an express lane for regulatory approval and taxation, without the issue of foreign currency convertibility. By shortening transaction time and investment process, foreigners can make multiple direct investments in Chinese companies more easily. The funds that Tembusu launches will mainly invest in technology, infrastructure, healthcare, tourism and impact related projects in China. Through the funds, investee companies will also be eligible for financial incentive schemes from the Chinese government. Through a strategic partnership with the Guizhou government, Tembusu will receive first-hand access to deal flow. Andy Lim, founder and chairman of Tembusu, says, The funds we intend to launch will enable Tembusu to bridge the investment communities of China, Southeast Asia and the rest of the world through accelerated deal flows. As China continues to open up and connect with the world, the funds will pave the way for more to participate starting from Guizhou. I am honoured that Ming Yan has agreed to spearhead our China Advisory Board and am confident that he will open up new opportunities as we seek to participate in the growth of some of Chinas most promising companies. Lim says, I am delighted to join Tembusus China Advisory Board. Tembusu is a well-regarded Singapore homegrown private equity specialist which has helped fund and nurture a number of emerging Asian companies. I hope to bring my experience and understanding of China to assist Tembusu in its China initiatives. Christian professionals have been urged to allow their faith to manifest in their professional life in order to help shape society. "As Christians, your faith must reflect in your daily and professional lives, anything less than that is not christianity" A board member of the Public Utility Regulation Commission (PURC), Mr. Ishmael Edjekumhene made the call while addressing the Madina Area Church of Pentecost Professional Ladies (PPL) during a seminar at Dome a suburb of Accra. "Every Christian is an ambassador for Christ. As an ambassador your core mandate is to fight for the interest of your brand. Ghanas ambassador in a country will not be promoting the interest of another country but the interest of Ghana. Being a Christian is no different as you have to promote the interest of Christ. As professional ladies you should let Christ magnify in your life". The programme was under the theme "possessing the nation via our Professions ". Mr. Edjeikumhene who is also an Elder of the Church of Pentecost commended, the Madina Area executives and the Madina Pentecost Professional Ladys executives for putting together such a wonderful seminar to impact professional of various fields. Delivering a paper on professional excellence, Professor Mary Boadu, Director of Radiological and Medical Sciences Research Institute of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, encouraged members of the Pentecost Professional ladies to stop thinking that a Christian professional lady cannot achieve professional excellence. She further indicated that in order to attain professional excellence there are some key thematic areas to focus on. These areas according to Prof. Boadu include capacity building, believing in your ability, having the passion, regular practice, being courageous and being focused. "In order to achieve professional excellence, you should also possess some soft skills such as taking responsibility, being teachable, ability to work in a team and being flexible. This is not to say that you have to compromise on standards she added". The professor said in order to open the door of professional excellence you must have three keys which are, one must have the vision key, the value key and the character key. All these three keys combined will open the door according to Prof. Boadu. The Founder and Executive Director of Speakwrite, Miss Helena Awuah-Amoako who was part of the speakers touched on the importance of literacy as a tool for evangelism. She stated that the church will do away with a lot of challenges if many of its members could read and write. "If you can read and understand the scripture, it will be very difficult for others to deceive you on what the scripture says". She also added that literacy is the heartbeat of Christ as it is the fasters way of expanding the gospel business. "We cannot possess the nation if majority of the people cannot read, write and understand what is being written or said to them". Literacy is not limited to the ability to read and write the English language. You can be literate in both international and local languages. These include French, Spanish, Twi, Kasin, Ga, Hausa and many other languages she explained Other dignitaries present where the former presiding elder, Eder Owura Sarfo, current presiding elder, Elder Evans Ayim, Mrs. Jennet Ahenkra, PPL Madina Area Leader and her Executives, Mrs. Charlotte Amegatcher, Area Women Ministry and her Executives, Mrs. Mary Tobbin Osei and Mrs. Lydia Hayford, Municipal Secretary(GNAT) for Yilo Krobo Somanya District. Source: Peacefmonline.com Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video An Australian man was sentenced to two years in prison in Washington Thursday for exporting restricted aviation equipment to Iranian buyers in violation of US restrictions. Seven years after he was charged, David Levick, 57, from Cherrybrook, Australia, was ordered to prison after pleading guilty to four counts of violating the US International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which places tight restrictions on sales of sensitive equipment to Iran. The exports took place in 2007-2008. At the time Levick was general manager of ICM Components, Inc., located in Thornleigh, Australia. US authorities say he ordered the restricted materials on behalf of an Iranian company for transshipment to Iran. When he was first charged, US authorities accused Levick of selling Iran US components of missiles, drones and torpedoes. But the Justice Department statement Thursday made no mention of those. Instead, he admitted to selling "precision pressure transducers," sensor devices with many applications, including in the avionics industry. He also sold the Iranians emergency flotation system kits and assemblies for mounting lights on aircraft. Levick was extradited from Australia in December 2018. Levick was also ordered to forfeit nearly $200,000, the value of the goods involved in the Iran deals. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday welcomed some "moderation" in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's comments in the wake of the Christchurch massacre. Trying to take the sting out of a diplomatic row that has threatened relations between Australia, New Zealand and Turkey, Morrison pointed to a recent Erdogan column in the Washington Post as progress. "Overnight, progress has been made on this issue and overnight we've already seen a moderation of the president's views," Morrison said, citing the article in which Erdogan stepped away from direct criticism of New Zealand. The Turkish leader -- who is in full campaign mode ahead of local elections -- still used the article to accuse Western countries of meeting Islamophobia with "silence". But Morrison took it as a diplomatic off-ramp nonetheless. Morrison -- who is also in full campaign mode, ahead of a general election -- had on Wednesday pilloried Erdogan for his comments in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, describing them as "reckless" and "highly offensive." Erdogan has repeatedly used video footage of the massacre shot by the attacker who killed 50 people and painted the attack it as part of an assault on Turkey and Islam. He had also warned that anti-Muslim Australians and New Zealanders would be "sent back in coffins" like their grandfathers at Gallipoli, a blood-drenched WWI battle. His office on Wednesday said the remarks were taken out of context. More than 8,000 Australians died fighting Turkish forces at Gallipoli, which has a prominent place in Australia's collective memory. Morrison had summoned the Turkish ambassador over the comments, dismissing the "excuses" offered and warning that relations were under review. "I am expecting, and I have asked, for these comments to be clarified, to be withdrawn," he said. - 'Context' - The gunman's so-called "manifesto" -- a 70-plus page rambling question and answer -- mentions Turkey and the minarets of Istanbul's famed Hagia Sophia, now a museum, that was once a church before becoming a mosque during the Ottoman empire. Three Turkish nationals were wounded in the rampage that killed 50 worshippers at the mosques in the southern New Zealand city. "President #Erdogan's words were unfortunately taken out of context," Fahrettin Altun, communications director for the Turkish presidency, claimed on Twitter. Altun said Erdogan's comments were in "a historical context of attacks against Turkey, past and present." "Turks have always been the most welcoming & gracious hosts to their #Anzac visitors," he added, referring to Australian and New Zealand veterans and families who are expected to travel there for the anniversary on April 25. Erdogan has built his political base on being a champion of Muslim Turks. For most of the last century, the country's government has been avowedly secular. Like leaders in Iran and Russia, Erdogan has also played on a sense that Turkey -- the inheritor of the once-mighty Ottoman Empire -- has not been given enough respect on the international stage. - 'Totally unfair' - Erdogan had earlier been sharply rebuked by New Zealand for his comments and for using gruesome video shot by the Christchurch mosque gunman as an election campaign prop. New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters protested on Monday that such politicisation of the massacre "imperils the future and safety of the New Zealand people and our people abroad, and it's totally unfair". New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has sent Peters to Istanbul to meet with Turkish leaders on the issue this week. In the Washington Post article Erdogan praised Ardern's "courage, leadership and sincerity" in handling the crisis. After Spain ordered Catalonia to remove pro-independence symbols from public buildings, Catalan president Quim Torra responded Thursday by replacing a banner with a yellow ribbon outside the regional government's headquarters with another one. Since coming to power in June 2018 a large banner has hung on the Barcelona building featuring a yellow ribbon -- a symbol of protest against the imprisonment and trial of separatist leaders for their role in a failed attempt to declare independence in 2017 -- along with the message, "Free political prisoners and exiles". But earlier this month Spain's election board ordered the Catalan government to remove yellow ribbons and other pro-independence symbols from government buildings ahead of a general election on April 28, arguing they were partisan. After ignoring two deadlines imposed by the board, the Catalan government finally decided to remove the symbols on Thursday. Workers covered the original banner at the Catalan government headquarters with another with the exact same message. But the yellow ribbon has been replaced with a white one with a diagonal red stripe -- still a subtle nod to separatism as it was used in the past by a grassroots pro-independence group. In a statement issued on Wednesday night, Torra said he would not obey the election board but instead follow the advice of Catalonia's regional ombudsman, which had also recommended that the symbols be removed. Torra faces a possible fine, or even disobedience charges if he failed to comply with the election board's order to remove the symbols. Speaking to reporters as he arrived in Brussels for a European Union leaders summit, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the Catalan government needed to "respect the neutrality" of public institutions which belong to "everyone". The election board will meet later on Thursday to decide on possible sanctions against the Catalan government. Dutch anti-immigration populists shocked Prime Minister Mark Rutte to become the largest party in the senate Thursday following elections that took place just days after a suspected terror attack. Thierry Baudet's Forum for Democracy party, which also backs a "Nexit" from the EU, came from nowhere to win most votes in Wednesday's provincial elections, with more than 98 percent of ballots counted, the NOS broadcaster said. The result will ring alarm bells across Europe where populists are expected to make big gains in European Parliament elections in May. Baudet, 36, a former academic with a history of controversial comments about women and immigration who backs closer relations with Russia, accused Rutte of "arrogance and stupidity". "We stand here in the rubble of what was once the most beautiful civilisation," he told a cheering crowd late Wednesday in a speech laced with classical references. - 'Mega-win' - The party, which only launched two years ago, will now be the largest in the upper house of parliament with 13 seats, followed by Rutte's party with 12 seats, the Dutch news agency ANP said. The final shape of the 75-seat senate will be determined in May by the 570 representatives elected to the country's 12 provinces in Wednesday's election. Turnout was 56 percent, up from 48 percent in 2015. Dutch newspapers reacted with astonishment to the results. Algemeen Dagblad said "Baudet grabs mega-win" while De Telegraaf said simply: "Landslide". Rutte, an influential figure in Europe's negotiations with London over Britain's departure from the EU, will now have to rely on other parties to get laws through the senate. The coalition led by Rutte's centre-right VVD party -- set up after a 2017 general election to keep far-right leader Geert Wilders out of power after he too won a surge in votes -- is set to collapse from 38 to 31 seats. "We are going to have to get to work," Rutte told supporters. "We have to talk with other parties so we can continue to lead this country well." - 'Borders wide open' - Rutte said he may have to work with leftist parties including the ecological party GroenLinks (Green Left) party led by Jesse Klaver, which had a good night and is set to double its seats from four to eight. But Rutte said he was not discarding the possibility of working with Baudet, saying he was looking forward to contacting him "to see how we can get to sensible majorities." "What I hope is that the Forum for Democracy, now that it has become so large, is ready to consolidate the basis of political management in the Netherlands," he told reporters on Thursday before heading to Brussels for an EU summit. Baudet has previously called for the Netherlands to immediately leave the EU but has recently softened his rhetoric due to the chaos over Brexit. However he kept up his fiery tone on multiculturalism and immigration, and made references in his speech to the shooting on a tram in the city of Utrecht on Monday in which three people died. A Turkish-born man is to be charged with "terrorist" murder or manslaughter over the attack. The populist faced criticism after failing to stop campaigning on the day of the shooting. "We are being destroyed by the people who are supposed to be protecting us," he said Wednesday night. "Successive Rutte governments have left our borders wide open, letting in hundreds of thousands of people with cultures completely different to ours." Baudet is also known for controversial statements such as "women in general excel less in jobs and have less ambition". Baudet seemed to have taken votes from Wilders, whose anti-Islam Freedom Party is set to win five seats, down from nine, amid signs that his fierce rhetoric is alienating voters. The Netherlands has had a long line of flamboyant populist leaders dating back to Pim Fortuyn, the gay anti-immigration politician who was assassinated in 2002 by an animal activist. But populists have also made ground across Europe in recent years, from Italy to France and Britain, analysts said. "The terrorist attack in Utrecht could have been a factor boosting the votes of this party," Anais Voy Gillis, a specialist on the far-right from France's Institute for Geopolitics, told AFP. "But in the European context it's a logical follow-on from what we've seen before," said Gillis, adding that Baudet was "very reminiscent" of Austria's right-wing chancellor Sebastian Kurz. The Road Board is dead. Thanks to President Rodrigo Duterte, he has already signed its demise into law with Republic Act No. 11239. Republic Act No. 11239, which dissolves the Road Board under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), is transferring its PHP45 billion Motor Vehicle Users Charge (MVUC) fund back to the National Treasury. All monies collected under this Act shall be remitted to the National Treasury under a special account in the General Fund to be earmarked solely for the construction upgrading, repair, and rehabilitation of roads, bridges, and road drainage to be included in the annual General Appropriations Act, the law said. Meanwhile, a committee composed of five members from the House of Representatives and five senators will be in charge of monitoring the use of the MVUC fund. Graft and Corruption The Road Board is notorious for its corruption, and has been rife with controversies over the years. Talks of its abolishment has been in the works since the last quarter of 2018, with President Duterte one of its main antagonists. Ive always been wary about this office because it has been the milking cow of people who are corrupt in government, Duterte said, and noted its functions should be returned to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). Ever since, Ive really questioned the existence of this office. Its nothing but a depository of money and for corruption, he added. The Road Board is in charge of collecting the funds from the Motor Vehicle Users Charge (MVUC), which is to be used solely for road maintenance and drainage improvement, the installation of traffic lights and road safety devices, and monitoring air pollution. Currently, the funds collected are at PHP45 billion. The post Duterte Scraps Road Board for Good appeared first on Carmudi Philippines. By Robin Emmott and Philip Blenkinsop BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union will weigh a more defensive strategy on China on Thursday, signalling a possible end to the unfettered access Chinese business has enjoyed in Europe but which Beijing has failed to reciprocate. Caught between a new U.S.-Chinese rivalry for economic and military power, EU leaders will try to find an elusive middle path during a summit dinner in Brussels, the first time they have discussed at the highest level how to deal with Beijing. But despite the stance Brussels wants to foster, Italy -- where eurosceptics share power -- prepared to receive Chinese President Xi Jinping for a visit during which he was expected to sign major bilateral trade deals with Rome. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of a "European awakening" that China is seeking to produce sophisticated products that will compete with those made in Europe. The EU's trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom, a Swedish liberal, meanwhile argued that the international economic order had changed. "Since the beginning of my mandate I've been calling for a real awareness and for the defence of European sovereignty," Macron told reporters as he arrived for the summit. "I'd say that finally we have it for an issue as important as China." With China's Xi starting a tour of France and Italy, EU leaders -- who have often been divided over China -- want to present a united front ahead of an EU-China summit on April 9. According to a draft April summit statement seen by Reuters, the EU is seeking deadlines for China to make good on trade and investment pledges that have been repeatedly pushed back. That was the message delivered to State Councillor Wang Yi by EU foreign ministers on Monday. It marked a shift toward what EU diplomats say is a more "assertive and competitive mindset". "In the past, it has been extremely difficult for the EU to formulate a clear strategy on China, and past policy documents have not been strategically coherent," said Duncan Freeman at the EU-China Research Centre at the College of Europe. "There is now a clear effort to do that." Story continues U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign to warn against Huawei telecommunications equipment in next-generation wireless networks has also accelerated EU discussions about its position, although the bloc is keen to avoid protectionist measures. Malmstrom said Europe often agreed with the United States on what problems were, but not always on the cure -- including U.S. tariffs on EU imports and Washington's trade war with Beijing. "It is tempting to try to lock out China, to decouple rather than to discipline. That might work in the short term. But the long term requires a deeper fix, systemic reforms built to last," she said, urging transatlantic cooperation on the issue. The deepest tensions lie around China's slowness to open up its economy, Chinese takeovers in critical sectors in the EU and an impression that Beijing has not stood up for free trade. GERMANY IS KEY With over a billion euros a day in bilateral trade, the EU is China's top trading partner, while China is second only to the United States as a market for European goods and services. Chinese trade restrictions are more severe than EU barriers in almost every economic sector, according to research firm Rhodium Group and the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Unlike the United States, which has a naval fleet based in Japan to wield influence over the region, the EU lacks military power to confront China, so its approach is technical. Germany's views will be important as Berlin has at times pressed for a tougher answer to unfair competition from Chinese rivals but also championed a closer relationship with Beijing. Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Brussels that there was a need to discuss the EU's industrial strategy. But any new EU policies could be complicated to implement, as individual EU capitals continue to court Chinese investment. Italy plans to join China's multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road project, while free-traders Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands are wary of restrictions on commerce. France is pushing for a coordinated EU approach to the Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, an Elysee official said earlier on Thursday, implicitly criticising Italy for indicating it would join the Chinese project. "As far as we're concerned, we are advocating a different approach and we hope to get the backing of the European Union," the official said, adding that France expected the Italian prime minister to explain his country's position later at the summit. One senior EU diplomat pleaded for a debate with "more subtlety," because any ban on Chinese goods could be costly. "We need to buy the best and cheapest for taxpayers," the diplomat said. (Reporting by Robin Emmott and Philip Blenkinsop; Additional reporting by Michel Rose in Paris; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Catherine Evans) Malaysias Foreign Ministry confirmed this morning that the teen national, classified as missing following the Christchurch mosque terrorist attack, is dead. The Government of Malaysia conveys its heartfelt condolences to the family of Allahyarham Mohammad Haziq bin Mohd Tarmizi. The High Commission of Malaysia will render its assistance to the family in the burial process. It went on to detail that Dr Mujahid bin Yusof Rawa, a Minister at the Prime Ministers Department, will also be flying to Christchurch today, representing the government, and offering support to Malaysians affected by the tragic incident. Earlier in the week, two officials from the teens home state of Penang were sent to New Zealand to accompany his mother and brother following the tragic attack. Both state government representatives have since returned to the island. The funeral for the late Mohammad Haziq will be held at the Memorial Park Cemetery Bromley after zohor, one of the representatives told media outlets via text message. He asked that Malaysians living in the area attend the ceremony, if possible. Wisma Putra has asked for the public and media to respect the feelings of the family members at this time. The boys father, Mohd Tarmizi Shuib, was injured in the attacks, after being shot in the back. He has since had the bullet fragments removed and is reportedly in stable condition in hospital, awake and able to speak Last weeks massacre left two other Malaysians injured all three are making steady progress in hospital according to reports. In what Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called New Zealands darkest day, 51 individuals lost their lives, and dozens more were injured, after a man opened fire in two mosques in the southern city of Christchurch last Friday morning. This article, Foreign Ministry confirms that Malaysian teen died in New Zealand terrorist attack, originally appeared on Coconuts, Asia's leading alternative media company. Want more Coconuts? Sign up for our newsletters! The Human Rights Advocacy Centre (HRAC) is calling on the Ghana Police Service to provide its office with details of the whereabouts of the commercial bus driver and his conductor, who allegedly assaulted a police officer at Weija on 16 March 2019, to enable the centre grant the accused persons legal representation. Mr Francis Buabeng, and his assistant, Albert Ansah, were arrested by the police for assaulting an officer and were arraigned on 18 March 2019. In a statement released by the HRAC and signed by its Executive Director Cynthia Ampredu-Nimo on Thursday, 21 March 2019, the centre explained that the driver and his mate did not have legal representation during the court proceedings and have been put on remand for two weeks to reappear before the court on 1 April 2019. Representatives of HRAC, on 20 March 2019, together with the Car Dealers Association and Committed Drivers Association, visited the Odorkor District Police Station to visit the accused persons and provide them with legal representation in accordance with their right to fair trial under Article 19 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana. An Investigator at the station, Officer Jonas, however, informed us that the accused persons had been transferred to the Police Headquarters. The representatives of the Human Rights Advocacy Centre proceeded to the Police Headquarters to make enquiries and were informed that the Police Headquarters did not maintain holding cells for remanded persons and that the accused persons could not be in their custody, the statement noted. It continued: We are, by this statement, bringing to the attention of the general public that we do not know the whereabouts of the two accused persons. The Ghana Police Service has failed and refused to inform us of their whereabouts and have denied us access to the accused persons despite the fact that they were in the custody of the police as of 18 March when they were arraigned in Weija. This is an obvious violation of their right to legal representation and contrary to the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana. The centre said it is, therefore, calling on the Ghana Police Service to immediately provide the Human Rights Advocacy Centre with information on the place of detention of the two accused persons as requested in our letter to the Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department, Police Headquarters, copied to the Inspector General of the Ghana Police Service and the Commander of the Odorkor District Police Station, dated 21 March 2019, and also demanding immediate access to the accused persons to enable the HRAC provide them with legal representation. The group added that with the support of the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers, Ghana and lawyers Martin Kpebu and Augustin Gyamfi, the centre will ensure that the accused persons receive legal representation and a fair trial. Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Haiti's President Jovenel Moise on Thursday named a new acting prime minister, Jean-Michel Lapin, after lawmakers voted to censure his predecessor's six month old government. Lapin, the culture and communications minister, was charged with running Haiti's day-to-day affairs pending the formation of a new government. The Chamber of Deputies voted Monday to censure the government led by Jean-Henry Ceant, which had been the target of deadly street protests. In February, thousands of people took to the streets across the country -- one of the world's poorest -- to demand better living conditions and the departure of the head of state. For about 11 days, all activities ground to a halt in Port-au-Prince and across most of the Caribbean country's cities. Lawmakers, by an overwhelming majority, voted Monday for Ceant's resignation, saying he had failed to improve conditions in the six months since he took over at the head of government. "To avoid a constitutional embroglio in the country, which needs peace so much, I give you my resignation," Ceant said earlier Thursday in a letter to Moise. In the coming days, Moise will consult with lawmakers about who to ask to form a new government. As scrutiny over unfair Chinese business practices intensifies amid drawn out U.S.-China trade discussions, investors are debating another contentious issue: minority American shareholders squeezed out by U.S.-listed Chinese companies. The companies all follow the same playbook: After tapping into U.S. capital through a public listing, management turns around and takes the company private at a significantly cheaper valuation. That same management then relists the company back home in China, at a much higher valuation, leaving executives with a big windfall and average retail investors with the biggest losses. Theyre just trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of U.S. shareholders and then go on and relist and do a new IPO in Chinese markets for three times or five times the transaction price in the U.S, Peter Halesworth, manager for Heng Ren Partners, who has invested in some of these companies and wrote a white paper on the privatization trend, told Yahoo Finance. Its the ultimate insult at the end of the process. Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Monday, Dec. 10, 2018. (Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images) More than 60 U.S.-listed Chinese companies have gone private since 2013. "While it's 'America First' when it comes to trade with China, Americans' rights are not the priority in the stock markets, Halesworth said. Here foreign issuers have unusual privileges, and many Chinese companies have abused these privileges and disadvantaged and damaged American shareholders' wealth and retirement funds." Consider internet security firm Qihoo 360 Technology. In July 2016, the company announced a privatization offer that valued shares held by U.S. investors at $77, reflecting a valuation of $9.3 billion. Two years later, it relisted on the Shanghai Stock Exchange for a $62 billion valuation, a return of more than 550%. Medical Device company Mindray Medical listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange three years after going private at $3.3 billion in the U.S., a significant discount to its IPO valuation. Its market cap in China within three months? More than $22 billion. Story continues In December 2015, Wuxi PharmaTech was taken private at an equity value of $3.3 billion. The company has since relisted as 2 separate entities one in Hong Kong and one in Shanghai with a combined market cap of $21.6 billion. Wuxi and Qihoo both now face separate class action lawsuits filed by U.S. investors, claiming the companies provided misleading statements to undervalue the companies. A sign advertising the Qihoo 360 Technology Co Ltd is hung with the U.S. and Chinese flags outside of the New York Stock Exchange before the company's Initial Public Offering (IPO) in New York in this March 30, 2011 file photo. (Reuters) Minority shareholders Corporations have done that, in part by exploiting a cross-border legal loophole. While the companies are listed in the U.S., they are classified as Foreign Private Insurers (FPIs), subject to regulation by their home countrys exchange. FPIs are also exempt from corporate governance practices by which most publicly listed domestic firms must comply, including a requirement to host annual shareholder meetings. Further complicating the issue is the controlling share structure of the companies, which allows founders to retain voting control. Minority investors, who own less than a 50% stake in the company, have little say in the direction of the company and are left powerless to contest a low-ball buyout offer. While that itself is not unique to Chinese firms, they have largely escaped shareholder repercussions because they are domiciled in the Cayman Islands, where minority investors have less protection than in Delaware, where most U.S. companies are registered, according to Harvard Law Professor Jesse Fried. The problem from the perspective of minority shareholders is the fact that all the defendants, the assets, the records, are all in the Peoples Republic of China, which makes them unavailable, Fried says. It also drives up the cost of litigation. 2018 saw a spike in Chinese companies going public in the U.S. Class-action lawsuits Still, investors are fighting back. Just last month, U.S. shareholders for Wuxi PharmaTech filed a class action lawsuit seeking damages in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs allege company executives violated federal securities laws, when they issued false and misleading statements aimed to undervalue the company and lied about its intentions to spinoff the companys assets and relist shares in China. Tony Heaver-Wren, a partner at offshore law firm Appleby, says minority shareholders have successfully found recourse by using a provision in the Cayman Islands legal code that entitles them to seek appraisals and claim the fair value of their holdings. One case, which involves Chinas Shanda Games and Hong Kong hedge fund Maso Capital Investments, led to a payout to shareholders that was 80% higher than the initial price accepted, according to the Wall Street Journal. Maso has now appealed that ruling to a top U.K. court, seeking a higher premium, a decision that Heaver-Wren says will likely have wide implications for similar cases that are pending. But Heaver-Wren says an overwhelming majority of the disputes have ended in settlement. Out of 25 lawsuits that have been filed in Cayman courts, only four have gone to trial. The reality is that these companies capitulate. They dont believe in their story so much that they see it through and win, Heaver-Wren says, adding that dissenting shareholders have won every case that has gone to trial, with the Court ruling that fair value payout be higher than that advocated by the company. US President Donald Trump pauses as he speaks during the 2019 White House business session with governors in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC on February 25, 2019. (Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) The environment of the trade war is encouraging this The political winds may be shifting too. Last December, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued a joint statement, that singled China out for limiting the access of U.S. regulators, investigating the financial reporting of companies traded on U.S. exchanges. Since then, Congressman Mike Conaway (R - TX, 11th District) has introduced a bill that would delist for three years any U.S.-traded Chinese companies that dont disclose their auditors. Senator Marco Rubio (R - FLA) has publicly pushed for more scrutiny as well. I think, in part, the environment of the trade war is encouraging this, says Paul Gillis, a professor at Peking University, who testified before Congress last month. I have also learned that these things just seem to take a long time to gain traction. The pressure has yet to deter Chinese companies from listing on American exchanges. Thirty-three went public in the U.S. last year double the number from the previous year. And in 2018, Chinese companies accounted for 17% of all U.S. IPOs. NOTE: A version of this story was first published on March 18, 2019. Akiko Fujita is an anchor and reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @AkikoFujita More from Akiko: Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Flipboard, LinkedIn, YouTube, and reddit. Kargo co-founding team included the former Country General Manager of Uber Indonesia and Western China Indonesia-based logistics startup Kargo today announced that they have raised a US$7.6 million seed funding round led by Sequoia Capital India. Travis Kalanicks 10100 fund; Pandu Sjahrirs Agaeti Ventures; Patrick Walujo, co-founder of Northstar Group; Intudo Ventures; Zhenfund; ATM Capital; and Innoven Capital also participated in the funding round. The company plans to use the new funding round to invest further in its infrastructure and technology. It also plans to speed up talent acquisitions in the Indonesian market. Kargo was founded in 2018 by CEO Tiger Fang, who launched Ubers operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and scaled operations in Indonesia and Western China, serving as General Manager. He was also part of the founding management team at Lazada Thailand and Vietnam. Also Read: Online trucking logistics company Kargo receives over US$130K from Yoma Bank The companys co-founder also included CTO Yodi Aditya, who had experiences in building platform solutions across the logistics, airline and finance industries in both Indonesia and Singapore. Kargos team also included alumni from Uber global team and Indonesias leading tech startups. According to Kargo, trucks delivering goods from urban production centres often make the return trip empty with drivers for day-to-day trucking gigs being typically sourced through multiple phone calls and Whatsapp groups. Contracts for the drivers are often handwritten and payments sometimes made months after the driver finishes delivery. The company aims to make freight logistics industry more efficient, transparent, and accountable by using a platform that enables shippers, transporters, and truckers to connect, transact, and track shipments. Also Read: Delivered: B2B logistics startup Kargo gets seed funding from East Ventures, angel investor Kargos platform is designed to solve the problem of unreliable availability, opaque pricing and lack of trust with payment cycles with an easy-to-use mobile app, said Fang. Story continues The idea is to drive efficiencies for both shippers and transporters in a way that creates greater utility of available trucks. Shippers and transporters can strike deals transparently with the comfort of knowing that they are dealing with verified, trusted, high-quality partners. This framework will go a long way in raising the earning potential of truck drivers, and making sure that not a single truck will ever hit the road empty again, he added. Image Credit: Kargo The post Indonesian logistics startup Kargo raises US$7.6M in seed funding round appeared first on e27. FILE PHOTO: Smoke rises from the last besieged neighborhood in the village of Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria, March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo BAGHOUZ, Syria (Reuters) - U.S.-backed Syrian forces were sweeping on Thursday through the final enclave that had been held by Islamic State fighters, and said they would declare the group defeated once a search for hidden mines and jihadist holdouts was complete. "Our forces are still conducting combing and search operations and as soon as they are finished we will announce the liberation," Mustafa Bali, spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, said in a note to journalists. Bali told Reuters the operation included sweeping for mines and combing for fighters still hidden in trenches and tunnels dug beneath Baghouz, the last patch of Islamic State territory. The last clashes reported by the SDF were on Tuesday, indicating that major fighting is over in the last big battle of a five year international campaign against a self-proclaimed caliphate that once comprised a third of both Iraq and Syria. The SDF, backed by U.S. air power, swept on Tuesday into a camp where hundreds of fighters had been making their last stand with thousands of civilians, many their own wives and children. The situation in Baghouz appeared calm for a second consecutive day, a Reuters journalist in Baghouz said. Warplanes with the U.S.-led coalition, including drones, could be seen overhead. A news outlet with close ties to the Syrian Kurdish-led authorities, Hawar, reported that the operation was now finished and Islamic State defeated. But an SDF denial swiftly made clear it was not quite prepared to declare victory yet. A propaganda video carrying the mark of an Islamic State news outlet and distributed among online followers of the group on Thursday showed footage from inside Baghouz and a fighter calling for Muslims in Western countries to stage attacks. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said another 2,000 women and children had arrived late on Wednesday at the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria that has received tens of thousands of people who have poured out of the shrinking Islamic State territory. Story continues "These women and children are in the worst condition we have seen since the crisis first began. Many have been caught up in the fighting and dozens have been burnt or badly injured by shrapnel," Wendy Taeuber, IRCs Iraq and northeast Syria country director, said in a statement. "We are expecting another 3,000 to arrive soon and we are very worried that they may be in even worse shape." A report issued by the United Nations' population fund, the UNFPA, on Thursday said "it is estimated that around 7,000 people are still inside" Baghouz, without elaborating. The al-Hol camp is now holding more than 72,000 people, including more than 40,000 children, IRC said. The total number of deaths on the way to it or shortly after arriving now stood at 138, the overwhelming number of them babies and infants. Of the 1,248 pregnant women and girls in the camp, up to 15 percent were younger than 18, the UNFPA said. Though the defeat of Islamic State at Baghouz ends its grip over populated territory, it remains a threat, with fighters operating in remote territory elsewhere and capable of mounting insurgent attacks. The U.S. military has warned that Islamic State may still count tens of thousands of fighters, dispersed throughout Iraq and Syria, with enough leaders and resources to present a menacing insurgency. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on a visit to Jerusalem, told reporters victory was "close". He was proud of "the work that the United States did, the Department of Defense did, that the folks fighting down in the Euphrates river valley did", he said. "The threat from radical Islamic terrorism remains. We need to finish out the last few square metres there, in Syria. Still work to do." The Pentagon's internal watchdog released a report last month saying Islamic State remained an active insurgent group and was regenerating functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria. The group could resurge in Syria within 6-12 months and regain limited territory without sustained pressure. The United States believes Iraq is the location of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who stood at the pulpit of the great medieval mosque in Mosul in 2014 to declare himself caliph, sovereign over all Muslims. (Additional reporting by Rodi Said in Qamishli and a Reuters journalist in Baghouz, Syria; Writing by Tom Perry in Beirut; Editing by Peter Graff and Alison Williams) As the PUV modernization is making headway nationwide, the Isuzu modern PUVs can now also be of service in the city of Tarlac. Isuzu Philippines Corporation (IPC) turned over 20 units of their PUV units to one of Pasang Masdas umbrella organization, the Paniqui Gerona Tarlac Transport Services Cooperative (PGT Transeco) on March 15, 2019 in Paniqui, Tarlac. This is in cooperation with the Department of Transportation (DOTr), Land Transportation Office (LTO), and the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB). Also present during the turn-over were LTRFRB Chairman Martin B. Delgra III, Almazora President Conrad Almazora, INTECO CEO and President Raymond Jarina, and IPC Sales Division Head Joseph Bautista. The purchase partnership between IPC and PGT Transeco was facilitated by the Isuzu Quezon Avenue dealership. IPCs modernized PUVs have been assembled using the Isuzu QKR77 platform and the rear body designed and manufactured by Almazora Motors Corp. These are air-conditioned Class 2 vehicles with a side-facing seat configuration. The Isuzu QKR platform is assembled in the Philippines and is equipped with the Euro IV-compliant 4JH1-TC diesel engine that delivers better fuel economy and cleaner emissions than jeepneys. The new PUV body is compliant with Philippine National Standards (PNS 2126:2017), all geared for passengers safety and added convenience in fare collection. The new PUVs warranty coverages for cab and chassis is three years or 150,000 km, whichever comes first, and separate warranty for body, aircon, and accessories, options not available for old jeepneys. LTFRB Chairman Atty. Martin B Delgra III commended IPC for their continuous support of the PUV Modernization Program. Automakers like Isuzu Philippines Corporation play a key role in the modernization program since they provide the units that we need to make this program move forward, said Delgra. This modernization program actually addresses not simply replacing old units with new ones, but also replacing old practices with new modern systems that will make the transport system more efficient, more affordable, and predictable. This is what the President has been saying Lets give the Filipino a comfortable life, added Delgra. Story continues The March 15 turnover is seen as IPCs headway into the largely untapped modernized PUV market in the province, and the leading Japanese truck manufacturers clear show of support for the governments ongoing Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP). We are very honored to be providing them their modern PUVs as PGT Transeco leads the PUV modernization program rolled out by the local government here in Paniqui, Tarlac, said Joseph Bautista, Division Head of Sales at IPC. We are confident that these units will be able to provide them a more durable, comfortable and safe transport solution to the riding public, added Bautista. The PUVMP is envisioned to replace some 250,000 jeepneys nationwide with new, safe, and environment-friendly, secure, convenient and comfortable PUVs. For more information, log on to www.isuzuphil.com. The post Isuzu PH Turns Over 20 Modernized PUVs to PGT Transeco appeared first on Carmudi Philippines. A festival featuring 10 right-wing Malay power bands scheduled to take place in the northern Malaysian city of Ipoh next month has been cancelled amid protests. The Rebellion Fest was due to feature bands from the countrys notorious Malay power scene with names such as Xenophobia, Spiderwar and Total Distrust. The Malay power movement is made up of neo-Nazi bands who want to rid Malaysia of everyone who is not ethnically Malay and stop immigration to the country. But this week, anti-fascist activists in Ipoh said that after applying pressure on Ladyboss Studio, where the Rebellion Fest was due to be held on April 13, the event was cancelled. One of the activists told the Hong Kong-based Unite Asia punk and hardcore music website: I explained to [the venue] the connection between their racist ideologies and the vile human being who attacked the mosques in New Zealand last week. [The owner] said he never knew about any of this and if I didnt tell him then he would never have found out. He agreed to cancel the show and return the deposit. On Wednesday, posters appeared online for another Malay power festival titled Death to Antifa, supposedly to be held at the Black Box venue in Kuala Lumpur on April 6. But a spokesman for developer UEM Sunrise, which operates the shopping mall where Black Box is located, denied the event was taking place. No authorisation has been given for such an event to take place. UEM Sunrise wishes to dismiss any association with Death to Antifa as well as all performers related to the said event, and will not hesitate to initiate legal action against individuals or groups who organise events using [our] brand without authorisation, the spokesman told the South China Morning Post. Boot Axe, one of the most prominent Malay power bands, were due to perform at the Ipoh event. In an interview with pop culture website Vice, a band member named Slay said the Malay power movement was concerned about keeping a pure Malay community all over the Malay Archipelago. Story continues Malaysia is home to people from China, India, and foreign immigrants from Bangladesh, Africa, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Burma [Myanmar], Slay told Vice. The government cant control the entry of immigrants, and we get so many of them. There are so many protests against the government about this issue, but they havent done anything tangible to improve the situation. Malays fall prey to criminals who come from abroad and sell drugs and commit murder, rape, robbery, and so on. The lesson that we can learn from Nazism is that we can take extreme racist action if the position of the Malays is affected by these factors. Asked how Asians could identify with an ideology that promoted white supremacy, Slay said: Most worldwide organisations say that Nazism is just for whites. And yes, we are not members of the blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan race our community is brown-skinned, brown-eyed, and dark-haired. Weve just adopted the spirit associated with Nazism as a symbol for the Malay races response if its threatened by racial issues. Additional reporting by Tashny Sukumaran More from South China Morning Post: This article Malay power neo-Nazi band festival cancelled in Malaysias Ipoh city first appeared on South China Morning Post For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2019. Most people would agree that being on top or ahead of the competition feels great. The view from up there is nice but reaching that spot is no easy task you must work for it, strive for it, and eventually claim it. Being the best and reaching the top did not come easy for legends like Michael Jordan, Manny Pacquiao, and Michael Schumacher. They all strived to be the greatest and put in a lot of work to be successful in their respective fields. The level of competition that Jordan, Pacquiao, and Schumacher endured can somehow be equated to how tough the Philippine automotive industry is. It is a battle royale out there as car brands fight to claim the number one spot. However, theres a specific brand that has been reigning supreme in the PhilippinesToyota. For years, Toyota has been the top car brand in the Philippines, capturing more than 35 percent of the market last 2018. As such, we decided to look into our data to find out which are the five most-inquired Toyota cars in Carmudi Philippines platform. #5: HILUX The Hilux is the fifth most-inquired Toyota vehicle in Carmudi. It managed to get more inquiries as compared to the Fortuner and the Hiace. One reason for this can be attributed to the Hiluxs price which starts at PHP929,000 for the 42 2.4-liter J variant. To put things in perspective, the said Hilux variant is priced PHP166,000 lower than the top-of-the-line Vios G Prime variant. You also have to remember that pickup trucks are exempted from the excise tax under Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law. #4: AVANZA The fourth most-inquired Toyota vehicle in Carmudi goes to the Avanza. The said Toyota vehicle falls under the Multi-Purpose Vehicle (MPV) segment and it can accommodate up to seven occupants, which could be the reason why it is the fourth most-inquired Toyota in Carmudi. It has a starting price of PHP721,000 for the 1.3-liter J variant. Of note, the said variant can only seat up to five occupants. The seven-seater Avanza starts at PHP848,000, which is the 1.3-liter E M/T variant. Story continues #3: INNOVA The Innova enters the list as the third most-inquired Toyota vehicle in Carmudi. Toyota Motor Philippines is offering up to 10 Innova variants with a starting price of PHP1,015,000 for the 2.0-liter J Gas M/T variant. The Innova has a seating capacity of seven or eight occupants, depending on the variant. The top-of-the-line Innova 2.8-liter V Diesel A/T variant is priced at PHP1,669,000 and it delivers 169 hp and 360 Nm of torque. #2: WIGO The Wigo is the second most-inquired Toyota vehicle in Carmudi. The price of the said vehicle is a big factor on why it managed to land in the number two spot. The Wigo is among the brand-new vehicles in the Philippines priced at less than PHP600,000, which is a significant reason why it is popular among the individuals who visit Carmudi. The starting price of Toyotas mini subcompact hatchback is PHP547,000a price tag thats attractive for first-time brand-new car buyers. #1: VIOS The Vios is the most-inquired Toyota vehicle in Carmudi platform, which proves its supremacy in the Philippine automotive industry. To give you a bit of a background, the Toyota Vios claimed the number one spot in the ten most-inquired sedans in Carmudi Philippines last 2018. The brand-new 2019 Vios is available in seven variants with a starting price of PHP659,000. It is powered by a 1.3-liter or a 1.5-liter gasoline engine, depending on the variant. For more information about Toyota, visit Carmudi Philippines New Cars Brand Page. You may also check our website to view the wide range of brand-new and used cars for sale. The post Most Inquired Toyota Cars in Carmudi Philippines appeared first on Carmudi Philippines. Akwasi Addai, aka Odike, the Founder of United Progressive Party (UPP), has vowed to stop former President John Dramani Mahama from leading Ghana again. According to him, Mr. Mahama has not changed after he was booted out of political office in 2016 so he cant be president again. I will not allow Mr. Mahama to be the president of Ghana again because he is still the same Mahama we all know. After the 2016 defeat, I was expecting Mr. Mahama to change before he seeks the presidential throne again. But sadly, Mr. Mahama has not changed. He only accuses the government without providing solutions, he pointed out. Speaking on radio, Odike said Mr. Mahamas Ghana is hard slogan is not enough to capture power from the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Mr. Mahama should start providing solutions to our problems and rather stop attacking the government, he added. Odike said Mr. Mahamas constant attacks on the NPP over the depreciation of the Ghana cedi against major foreign currencies would not help him to become president again. The Ghana Cedi currency also depreciated significantly against major foreign currencies when the NDC was also in political office for eight years. He should stop throwing dust into our eyes and rather offer solutions to our problems or else I will personally stop him, Odike said. The UPP leader also debunked assertions that Ghanaians have started missing the NDC after two years in opposition. It is not true, nobody misses the NDC after their poor leadership, which imposed hardship on the citizenry, he indicated. Source: Daily Guide Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Nicaragua's opposition alliance suspended its participation in peace talks with Daniel Ortega's government Monday in protest over the regime's "violence and repression" of demonstrators. Riot police used tear gas against opposition demonstrators and reporters on Saturday while temporarily detaining more than 100 people after they attempted to protest for the release of political prisoners. The government accused the opposition of staging a "provocation." The United States condemned Ortega's government over the detentions. "We call on the Ortega regime to release immediately and unconditionally all arbitrarily detained persons, respect Nicaraguans' freedom of assembly and expression and commit to electoral reforms and to holding free and fair elections early," State Department deputy spokesman Robert Palladino said. The local Civic Alliance for Justice rights group "energetically condemned" the government crackdown on dissent. In a statement, it said the government "is holding more than 700 political prisoners simply for defending their citizens' rights." "It has in its hands the power to free them, (to grant them) the absolute respect of their rights and the end to repression," the group added. "What happened on Saturday adds to the desperation felt by hundreds of homes that continue to see family members unfairly detained, and to the pain we all feel for the dead and disappeared." The alliance said that peace talks had so far failed to produce hoped for "legitimate results." Early elections, currently slated for 2021, is one demand Ortega has steadfastly refused to contemplate. A previous round of peace talks broke down in June over his refusal to countenance such a move. "Now is the time for swift, just solutions and proof of good faith," said Palladino. "Nicaraguans deserve to have a government that listens to their voices and respects their human rights and fundamental freedoms." - Brutal crackdown - Talks between the two sides began on February 27 but were suspended for three days last week until the government gave in to an opposition demand to release prisoners. Around 50 prisoners were released to house arrest Thursday on top of 100 released under the same conditions on the day talks began. More than 700 people were arrested between April and October last year during protests that also left 325 dead after a brutal crack down by security services. The government acknowledges 199 deaths but says most of those were members and supporters of the security services. The protests initially erupted in opposition to a since scrapped pension reform before morphing into general dissatisfaction with Ortega's 12-year rule. The former left-wing guerrilla leader and his wife Vice President Rosario Murillo have been accused of rights abuses and authoritarian rule. Two members of the opposition alliance were detained on Saturday, but all those arrested were released a few hours later following mediation from Vatican envoy Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag. The government said the opposition's participation in a demonstration was "inconceivable, contradictory and unusual," describing it as "a provocation and disturbance of public order." Managua disputes the opposition's figures for detained political prisoners and has ordered a report by the penitentiary system on the number of such detainees. Thailand holds its first election in eight years on Sunday under rules concocted by a junta to keep it in power, but with the appeal of both old foes and the new millennial vote posing an unpredictable challenge. The junta seized power in 2014, vowing to rescue the country from a treadmill of coups, short-lived civilian governments, and protests. But the kingdom goes to the polls on March 24 as divided as ever. The arch-royalist army has no intention of leaving politics and has scripted a constitution that gifts it a foothold in power for a generation. Standing in its way are supporters of its nemesis, ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who has dominated Thai politics since his first election win in 2001. He was toppled by an earlier coup in 2006, but his affiliated Pheu Thai party taps a deep seam of loyalty from the poor but populous rural north and northeast. Thousands of rice farmers gathered in a school yard earlier this week for a Pheu Thai rally in rural Chaiyaphum, applauding promises of better times ahead under an elected government and whistling disapproval at every mention of the junta. "We still love Thaksin... we want him to come back," 65-year-old Lamoon Moosorping told AFP. Shinawatra-allied parties hope to win a comfortable majority of the 500 elected seats up for grabs across a country wearied by junta rule. But Sunday's vote is the first under new rules that mean winning the popular vote does not automatically translate into leading a government, or choosing the next prime minister. Instead, 250 junta-appointed senators are poised to play a key role in shaping the next administration. With the senate onside, the junta-linked party needs just 126 elected seats to secure a parliamentary majority -- setting up a potential collision over a denied mandate. "Forming a government and governing will be different," warns Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientists at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University. "We will probably see some kind of deadlock... that will lead to some kind of constitutional crisis." - Heart over head - With days to go, election fever has gripped much of a country starved for nearly five years of political expression. Advance voting last Sunday saw a near 90 percent turnout, while acerbic commentary, memes and satirical swipes are pinballing across social media. More than seven million millennials are eligible to vote for the first time, most unencumbered by old political loyalties -- injecting uncertainty into the outcome. Sunday's poll will essentially be a "vote on the military" said Thailand expert and historian Chris Baker. With much of the country viscerally opposed either to the junta or to Thaksin, the ballot will be "more emotional than rational," he added. The junta's affiliated party Phalang Pracharart is hoping an unspectacular campaign does not translate into a humiliation at the polls. Its figurehead, army chief-turned-premier Prayut Chan-O-Cha has undergone a last-ditch Instagram makeover in a bid to strike a softer pose and return as a civilian premier, a cause aided by senators whose jobs will be owed to him. - Rivals old and new - There are 68 candidates running for prime minister, a collage of seasoned politicians, newcomers and political chameleons like Anutin Charnvirakul, whose Bumjaithai party is heavily tipped for a major post-election role. But among Prayut's many rivals, it is 40-year-old billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit who has tapped into the aspirations of millennials who are tired of the polarisation and inequality under the conservative junta. Articulate and telegenic, Thanathorn blames the junta for bending the economy to big business, straitjacketing Thai democracy and plunging the kingdom into an outmoded authoritarianism. He is unlikely to emerge as premier, but analysts are keenly watching his fortunes for signs of the emergence of a new political force. "We need change, Thanathorn is a light to take us away from all this darkness," said Panitaluck Manokhan, 30, at recent campaign stop. But it is a familiar face who looms largest over the election -- Thaksin Shinawatra. The ex-cop turned billionaire telecoms mogul, has been in self-exile since 2008 to avoid a jail term on corruption charges. He still sits at the heart of Thailand's political breakdown -- despised by the army and its Bangkok elite allies but adored by the rural poor for farm subsidies and welfare schemes. Yet a decade after he left Thailand, fortune is not on his side. Earlier this month the dissolution of one of his parties -- Thai Raksa Chart -- left the Shinawatra faction winded. The party had proposed Princess Ubolratana as its candidate for premier, but the Thai monarchy is nominally above the political fray and King Maha Vajiralongkorn struck down the move to draft in his elder sister. The miscalculation took out a key pillar in the Shinawatra election strategy, leaving it with its other party Pheu Thai running in just 250 of a possible 350 constituencies. Calling for voters to upset the odds with a "landslide victory", Pheu Thai figurehead Sudarat Keyuraphan has appealed to anti-junta sentiment. "You have to ask yourselves... can you live like this for another five years?" she asked at a rally this week. burs-apj/sls The Myanmar-based service plans to use the Unsecured SME financing to implement same-day payments to truck drivers Burmese online truck shipment service Kargo has announced that it has inked an SME financing agreement with Yoma Bank, Myanmars commercial bank, since March 11, 2019. Also Read: PropertyGuru goes beta with nifty augmented reality feature The partnership will see Kargo receive an initial loan of approximately US$130,000. Through the banks Unsecured SME Financing, Kargo plans to facilitate same-day payments to its truck drivers, boost its ability to grow its customer base, and manage all invoices. Kargo was founded in 2016 with focusses in the countrys logistics and supply chain industry. Bootstrapped at first, what it does is it connects independent truck drivers, fleet owners, third-party logistics (3PL) companies, and commercial logistics providers directly with businesses that can get access to trackable distribution and delivery of their goods across the country. Kargo claims that to date, the company has connected almost 2,000 truck drivers in Myanmar. When we first envisioned Kargo, we were starting out in an extremely fragmented market that had a very opaque pricing system. Now, our virtual fleet has become the largest one in Myanmar and completing over 5,000 deliveries to date, said Alex Wicks, the Founder and CEO of Kargo. Prior to this agreement, Kargo has raised a seed round from Singapore-based SEED Myanmar in 2017 as well as a six-figure grant in February 2018. Kargo was the Best Logistics and Supply Chain Startup at the Echelon Top 100 Start-up Competition, Kargo received US$50,000 prize from the Singapore government. Furthermore, in its Pre-Series A round, it managed to raise a seven-figure sum from Singapores Cocoon Capital and another private venture capital firm. Kargo is the first company that Yoma Bank has offered this loan to since the Central Bank of Myanmar approved the disbursement of unsecured lending. Story continues Also Read: E-commerce marketplace rgo47 secures funding from Daiwa PI Partners Unsecured financing is solely based on the cash flow of the business and is a progressive way of supporting smaller enterprises. This financing is the first of many and we look forward to seeing innovative and tech-driven SMEs such as Kargo thrive in this market, said the CEO of Yoma Bank, Hal Bosher. Yoma Banks Unsecured SME Financing is a move by the bank to support the growth of Myanmars SMEs; which typically faces the problem of cash flow management. Photo by Rhys Moult on Unsplash The post Online trucking logistics company Kargo receives over US$130K from Yoma Bank appeared first on e27. AFPTV Residents of Lalibela, a city in northern Ethiopia home to storied medieval rock-hewn churches, describe life during the recent occupation by the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) insurgent group. Over four months of deprivation and violence, the rebels looted homes and health facilities, while residents lost touch with the outside world due to cuts in transportation, electricity, banking and communications. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife Susan stand next to U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman at a ceremony commemorating the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, in the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem March 21, 2019. REUTERS/Ammar Awad By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday described the heavily armed Hezbollah group as a risk to their fellow Lebanese and conferred with Israel about the Iranian-backed militia ahead of a trip to Beirut. Pompeo, who has been on a regional tour to promote the Trump administration's hard tack against Iran, received a warning from Israel, which worries it may again be in the sights of Hezbollah fighters winding down their intervention in Syria's civil war. Washington also has been increasingly voicing concern at Hezbollah power, echoing Israel, whose forces were fought to a standstill by the militia in a 2006 Lebanon war. Hosting Pompeo at his office, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri "cannot say to anyone that Lebanon is separate from Hezbollah" - a reference to the group's clout in Beirut where it has ministers in the coalition cabinet as well as lawmakers in parliament. "If some(thing) will happen from Lebanon toward Israel, we will hold Lebanon as the responsible (party)", Rivlin said. Asked what message he would take to Lebanon, his next stop, Pompeo told reporters: "We're going to be very clear about how America sees Hezbollah and our expectations about how Lebanon's success depends on the Lebanese people (demanding) that a terrorist organisation not be in control of their government and not drive policies and create risk for their country as well." ELECTORAL FORCE In Lebanon's 2018 elections, parties and individuals who back Hezbollah's possession of a military arsenal won a majority of seats in parliament. President Michel Aoun called Hezbollah's arms "an essential part of defending Lebanon", though Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said its weapons were illegitimate. Pompeo also reinforced Rivlin's veiled warning that Israel could retaliate against Lebanon for any Hezbollah attack: "We all know the risk, right? Hezbollah does something inside of Lebanon, the risk of escalation is real. Story continues "The people of Lebanon don't want that. The people of Israel don't want that. The people of the United States of America don't want that." For its part, Israel has carried out repeated air strikes on Hezbollah in Syria, where the Shi'ite Muslim militia - along with Russian air power - helped President Bashar al-Assad turn the tables against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and militants. Iran has faced economic hardship since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew last year from the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers and reimposed sanctions. In a speech broadcast on the Persian New Year on Thursday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the Islamic Republic had successfully resisted "unprecedented, strong" U.S. sanctions. Pompeo told Rivlin that Hezbollah, along with Palestinian Hamas and Yemen's Houthis - both also Iranian-backed - "are determined to wipe this country (Israel) off the face of the planet and we (the United States) have a moral obligation and a political one to prevent that from happening." Coming just three weeks before a closely contested Israeli election, Pompeo's trip to Jerusalem was widely seen in Israel as a boost for the prime minister, who enjoys a close relationship with Trump. (Additional reporting by Angus McDowall in Beirut; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mark Heinrich) US top diplomat Mike Pompeo became the first high-ranking American official to visit the Western Wall in annexed east Jerusalem with an Israeli prime minister on Thursday, giving another boost to Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election campaign. Two experienced former US diplomats could not recall such a senior American official visiting the site with an Israeli premier. It could be taken as tacit approval of Israel's sovereignty over the site, one of the holiest in Judaism and located in the city's mainly Palestinian eastern sector. The visit came less than three weeks before Israel's April 9 elections in which Netanyahu is facing a tough challenge from a centrist alliance led by a former military chief of staff, Benny Gantz. Netanyahu is also due to visit Washington and meet with his close ally US President Donald Trump twice next week. On Thursday afternoon, Netanyahu and Pompeo, along with US ambassador David Friedman, approached the wall together, placing a hand on it before depositing prayers on slips of paper, as is tradition. Before the visit, the US secretary of state told journalists "the trip to the wall is something that I've been talking with PM Netanyahu about doing ... It's our first chance to go there together." "I think it's important. I think it's symbolic that a senior American official go there with a PM of Israel," he added, calling it "a place that's important to many faiths." - 'Indispensable man' - It was the Trump administration's latest move in favour of Israel and Netanyahu's right-wing government, and word came later that another is on the way. Netanyahu has been pushing for the White House to recognise Israel's claim of sovereignty over the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, and Trump tweeted Thursday that "it is time" to do so. Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state now with the Wilson Center think-tank in Washington, said the Western Wall visit was "determined to drive home a singular point". "That this administration is the most pro-Israeli administration in the history of the US-Israeli relationship, and it's occurring barely three weeks before an Israeli election," he told AFP. "It doesn't require a brilliant scholar or analyst of Middle East politics to draw the conclusion that the administration is trying to do everything it can given Trump's popularity in Israel to demonstrate the fact that Netanyahu is the indispensable man." Trump became the first sitting American president to visit the wall, the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray, in May 2017. US Vice President Mike Pence also visited in January 2018, but neither were accompanied by Israeli leaders. Pompeo said he did not know why neither Trump nor Pence visited the site with Netanyahu, and declined to say whether it indicated a change in how the United States sees its status. Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat called it a "total change of US policy". "If continued it will be the classical recipe for conflict between Palestinians and Israelis for another century," he said. Israel also occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the international community. It considers the entire city its capital, while the Palestinians see the eastern sector as the capital of their future state. International consensus has been that the city's status must be negotiated between the two sides. But Trump broke with that in 2017 when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel's capital and announced the transfer of the US embassy to the city. An enraged Palestinian leadership froze ties with the White House. - 'Poor prospects' - Trump has also cut some $500 million in Palestinian aid, a move he says is intended to force Palestinians back to the negotiating table, with the president expected to release his long-awaited peace deal sometime after the Israeli elections. The Palestinians see Trump's administration as blatantly biased in favour of Israel and say the cuts are intended to blackmail them into accepting a plan they believe will destroy their cause. Dan Shapiro, US ambassador to Israel under Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, said "recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and gestures like this visit to the Western Wall are reasonable on their own merits". "But they should be accompanied by statements that indicate the US also envisions the capital of a Palestinian state in Arab east Jerusalem emerging from eventual negotiations," he told AFP. "The fact that they are not contributes to the very poor prospects of any Trump peace plan." Israel's elections are expected to be close and Netanyahu is campaigning while facing the threat of indictment on corruption allegations. Pompeo's visit was part of a regional tour that had earlier taken him to Kuwait and which will continue on to Lebanon. He said ahead of his arrival that the visit was unrelated to Israel's domestic politics. Britain's Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, attend a reception at the Prime Minister's official residence, in Kingstown, St Vincent and Grenadines, March 20, 2019. Jane Barlow/Pool via REUTERS By Marc Frank HAVANA (Reuters) - Prince Charles and his wife Camilla arrive in Cuba on Sunday as part of a Caribbean tour, the first British royals to visit the Communist-run nation even as ally the United States seeks to isolate the country. The royal couple were asked by the UK government to add Cuba to their tour of former and current British territories in hopes of boosting commercial relations and political influence. The plans were made before the Trump administration intensified efforts this year to end what it views as Latin Americas troika of tyranny: the socialist governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. It has warned foreign companies away from doing business with Cuba, continuing its reversal of Trump predecessor Barack Obama's detente with the island. "The visit shows a fresh willingness by the UK to engage with Cuba in the Diaz-Canel era," said Paul Hare, a former British ambassador to Cuba who lectures at Boston Universitys Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. "The UK has long seen the U.S. trade embargo as the wrong way to produce greater openness and tolerance of new ideas in Cuba," he said. The visit will be welcomed on the island, which has seen a decline in high-profile visits since the likes of Pope Francis, then-U.S. President Obama and the Rolling Stones graced its shores just a few years ago. "This visit means a lot because it shows the world that Cuba is a safe country and at the same time, in spite of economic and political adversities, it continues as a country of social interest," culture ministry employee Mariela Gonzalez, 42, said on the streets of Havana. The royal couple will dine with Cubas new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, who succeeded Raul Castro a year ago. They first met last November on Prince Charles 70th birthday, when the Cuban president was visiting London. There are no plans for Charles to meet Raul Castro, who remains head of the Communist Party, though that could change, according to Britain's embassy. Story continues The royals' schedule through Wednesday, when they depart for the Cayman Islands, includes a tour of Havana's restored colonial district, visits to community and green energy projects, a meeting with young entrepreneurs, reviewing a parade of antique British cars, and various cultural activities. Former Royal Ballet star Carlos Acosta, who returned to his native land in 2015 to start a dance company, termed the visit "great" and said he hoped it would strengthen relations. "I was formed here and for many years I was in the UK and built my career, so these two nations are very important to me," said the world-renowned Acosta, who will take over direction of England's Birmingham Royal Ballet next year. BREXIT AND TRUMP Britain has worked through its embassies worldwide to strengthen bilateral commercial relations since a referendum three years ago to exit the European Union. Plans for high-level officials to accompany the Prince of Wales were scuttled by the political drama playing out in London over how best to leave the EU before a March 29 deadline. [nL8N2181V3] British trade with Cuba was less than $100 million last year. However, some 200,000 British tourists vacation there annually. Insurer Lloyds of London and British-based accounting firm Ernst and Young do a brisk business on the island, as do lubricants manufacturer Castrol and Aberdeen Standard Investments, which manages Cuba-focused real estate firm CEIBA Investments Ltd A handful of well-known British corporations have investments in Cuba through subsidiaries, for example Imperial Brands Plc , British-American Tobacco Plc and Unilever. These and other British companies may eventually become targets of lawsuits by Cuban-Americans if Washington presses ahead with a tougher stance on foreign investment. The Trump administration has threatened to activate a dormant law as soon as next month that allows American citizens to go to court against foreign companies "trafficking" in their nationalized and confiscated properties taken at the time of Cuba's 1959 Revolution. [nL1N20R0I7] (Reporting by Marc Frank; additional reporting by Nelson Acosta; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Jonathan Oatis) Lens allows people to point-and-shoot at physical buildings and learn more about the listings inside the complex One of my most enjoyable/depressing pastimes is to look around neighbourhoods I enjoy and imagine living in various apartments in the area. Typically, I convince myself the apartments are unaffordable, sigh deeply, and go back to my avocado toast and kombucha. Normal people search for apartments is by combing through the internet. They try and find a place that fits both budget and lifestyle. One reality of this search strategy is that it will inevitably require a tour of the flat with the property owner or agent. This can be a burden for people in the early stages of finding a place to live. The process will involve a full-tour of the complex, even if the person knows almost immediately the place wont work. Plus, if you get a bad agentooftaenjoy zoning-out during the 2-hour sales pitch. For people still in this hunting part of the process, PropertyGuru has introduced a new product that helps people mix the online and offline. For Hari V. Krishnan, the CEO of PropertyGuru, it came down to a theory that most of our technology is filtered through our cameras. While smartphones are great, it is the cameras that transformed smartphones from a tech-upgrade to a fundamentally life-altering tool. So, as the boss of PropertyGuru, it would make sense that his company also looked towards the camera. Why wouldnt you use a camera as a discovery-maker as well? Wouldnt it be great to take out our camera, point it at a building that you are interested in and discover the listings that are inside? he asked during the demo. Also Read: This Filipino startup turns your traffic stress into money Called Lens, the product is an augmented reality feature that allows people to move their phone camera around a given area and see what apartments are available. e27 took the tool for a spin (it is in beta mode) and the word that came to mind was nifty. I cant call Lens an app (because it is a feature within the PropertyGuru app), but it is minimal and functional, unobtrusive and playful, specific in its use but weirdly addicting. Story continues It is remarkably fun to stand on a street corner in Singapore and started moving the phone around, checking out the gossip of what properties are vacant and which require a waiting list. As I hovered over buildings that looked particularly intriguing, a little home would appear that would show the number of units that were available (some buildings had a shockingly hight amount of vacancies). Then, if I clicked the home, I could get more details about the specific units, like the asking price. Here is the PropertyGuru advertisement video to help visualise the product: The hope of Lens is to minimise or eliminate a common process: Person visits friends apartment. Person asks about pricing, neighbourhood and amenities. Person then goes online and types in various search terms to pinpoint the property. Person then sees if they can afford a place. With Lens, a person can just point their phone camera at a building they like and see if they want to pursue it further. Going Beta PropertyGuru Lens is currently in an invite-only beta launch phase. The plan is launching to the Singapore public in the near future. While Lens showed a lot of potential, it was definitely a beta product. The tech was a bit clunky at times and the loading process was not instant. Occasionally it felt as if Lens was, bumping into bugs while I was using it. During the demo, PropertyGuru was aware that Lens was not perfect, and released it to a bunch of journalists anyways. Krishnan actually made the beta-phase a talking-point for a good chunk of the demo. The logic was to encourage a culture whereby Southeast Asian tech companies start releasing beta products fairly often. By launching beta versions of features, it allows users to stress test the product, test load management and discover unforeseen bugs. It also facilitates a corporate culture and customer expectation that experimentation is part of what happens in a given company. If nothing gets released before it is perfect, bugs will get hyper-criticised by the user-base. But, if a company consistently releases beta products, customers will understand it is a tool to play with and will be a lot better 6 months after the beta. Plus, it is just fun to play around with a product that is not fully actualised. It is a nice change of pace. According to a PropertyGuru spokesperson, PropertyGuru has received positive feedback from Lens and is learning so much more, which is point of the launch strategy.\ The final imperfection that has to be mentioned is that the AR does not show the specific location of the flat (aka the floor). This wont change in the future as privacy concerns outweigh convenience in this instance. Overall, the bugs never overwhelmed what is a delightful product. Lens wont alter the trajectory of PropertyGuru, but it will bring smiles to the faces of its customers. Also Read: Bangkok TOP100 champion is bringing smiles across Thailand The post PropertyGuru goes beta with nifty augmented reality feature appeared first on e27. A former Central Regional Chairman of the National Democratic Congress [NDC], Mr Bernard Allotey Jacobs, says his party will not miss Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumias Town Hall meeting to discuss Ghanas economy for anything. According to him, they will ask and demand answers from the Vice President and his economic management team after lauding governments decision to interact with Ghanaians on the state economy. Beautiful idea, we [NDC] will go and ask questions, he said on Asempa FMs political program Vice President Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia is expected to lead an economic management team town hall meeting with stakeholders on the economy on April 3 in Accra. Minister for Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah who disclosed this at a Press Briefing in Accra said the vice President who is also the head of the Economic Management Team will be speaking on the theme our progress, our status, our future. He said the Town Hall Meetings are designed to bring government closer to the people and shall therefore see State actors give an account to the people who also have an opportunity to ask questions and make contributions to the local and national development process. Source: King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/ Twitter: @Washman5/ Instagram: Washman007 Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Our general cheeriness has neither improved nor worsened from last year, according to this years World Happiness Report, where Singapore retains its rank as the 34th happiest country globally. Though the city-state didnt make it as the happiest country in Asia a title joyfully held by Taiwan Singapore is still considered the most content Southeast Asian nation, well above the regional likes of Thailand (#52), Philippines (#69), Malaysia (#80) and Indonesia (#92). Released by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations on the International Day of Happiness (yeah we didnt know that, too) yesterday, the annual list analyzes data from various surveys across 156 countries, logging in details such as life expectancy, freedom, social support, income, and generosity. Based on those variables, Nordic nations came up tops in being the happiest bunch. Finland holds steady at the top of the list, followed by Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand Canada and Austria making it to the top 10. Its true that last year all Finns were happier than rest of the countries residents, but their immigrants were also happiest immigrants in the world, said the reports co-editor and professor emeritus of economics at the University of British Columbia John Helliwell told CNN. He pointed out that its citizens trust their government and pay high taxes for a social safety net, on top of being generous with each other. Thats the kind of place people want to live. The report also studied the prospects of alternative sources of information to improve predictions of well-being, including digital footprints on social media and facial-detection technology, of which Singapore and China are highlighted as having spent billions of dollars in. Singapore, of course, is not shying away from making public its plans to install lamp posts that are smart enough to carry out facial matching against databases. Though its a serious concern for privacy matters in an already highly-monitored country, the majority of Singaporeans arent that bothered by it. Story continues The report also pointed out that the United States is less happy this year, having dropped a spot since 2018 and a total of five spots since 2017. Its not just them though overall world happiness has fallen over the past couple of years. Its a no brainer, but the countries that occupy the bottom of the World Happiness Index are nations ravaged by unrest and war. South Sudan is found to be the unhappiest country in the world, with the Central African Republic, Afghanistan, Tanzania, Rwanda and Yemen trailing behind. This article, Singapore retains 34th spot in World Happiness Index; still the happiest country in Southeast Asia, originally appeared on Coconuts, Asia's leading alternative media company. Want more Coconuts? Sign up for our newsletters! (Getty Images file photo) A 30-year-old Singaporean man believed to have faked his own kidnapping overseas for money has been arrested, said the police. In a statement issued on Thursday (21 March), the police said that they had received a report on 27 February at about 10.35pm about the man being kidnapped in Vietnam. The man had informed his relatives that he was kidnapped and requested for a ransom amount of US$15,000 (S$20,223) to be transferred to his bank account to ensure his release. Through investigations and with the assistance rendered by the Vietnamese police, it was established that the man was not kidnapped, and was safe and well in Vietnam, said the police. Preliminary investigations by the police revealed that the man came up with the ruse so that his relatives would send money to him. He was arrested in Changi Airport upon his return to Singapore on Wednesday at about 12.05am. Investigations are ongoing. If found guilty of cheating, the man could face a maximum jail term of 10 years and a fine. Other Singapore stories: Babysitter jailed six weeks for slapping infant, lodging false police report Maid convicted of stealing more than $30,000 of items from Changi Airport Group chairmans family Man, 25, arrested for impersonating police officer in attempt to enter victims home The Singapore-headquartered startup that targets off-grid households in Myanmar raises follow-on equity funding from the existing Singaporean investment company SolarHome, a solar energy startup that focusses on serving households in Myanmar, has announced that it has secured another US$1 million for equity from Trirec, an investment company that supports energy tech companies. Trirec is an existing investor in SolarHome, which makes this funding a follow-on financing thats a part of SolarHomes Series A round, as reported by Deal Street Asia. Also Read: Indonesian logistics startup Kargo raises US$7.6M in seed funding round Trirec was joined by Insitor Impact Asia, Beenext, and a group of Singapore-based family offices early last year when it invested US$4.2 million in SolarHome on a convertible note. SolarHome was launched in 2017 seeded by fintech venture builder FORUM. With core operation in Myanmar, the company says that it has installed over 30,000 solar home systems in the country. SolarHome is known for its Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) solar installation for off-grid homes in Southeast Asia. Just a few days prior to funding announcement, SolarHome announced the appointment of Greg Krasnov, the chairman and founder of SolarHome, and CEO of FORUM as the companys CEO, succeeding Ted Martynov. It also appointed Geert-Jan ten Hoonte, a senior adviser, board member, and angel investor in SolarHome as president and COO of the company. Just in December last year, SolarHome raised an additional US$10 million debt financing from investors including Japan-based cross border crowdfunding platform Trine. Also Read: Indonesian auto platform Mobilkamu raises Series A funding round The company said it aims to reach up to 100,000 home installations by the end of 2019. Photo by Jason Blackeye on Unsplash The post Solar energy startup SolarHome secures additional US$1M from Trirec appeared first on e27. More than 10,000 people marched silently on Thursday through the New Zealand city where the alleged shooter in last week's massacre had lived, as the country paid its respects to the 50 victims of the tragedy. Marchers made their way through Dunedin to a rugby stadium where a total of about 15,000 people eventually gathered for a sombre vigil, New Zealand media reported. The accused killer, Australian-born 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, had lived for the past two years in the city on New Zealand's South Island before carrying out last Friday's slaughter in Christchurch, about 350 kilometres (220 miles) to the north. A self-avowed white supremacist, Tarrant took advantage of New Zealand's relatively lax gun laws to acquire military-style semi-automatic weapons that he used to gun down worshippers at two Christchurch mosques. The Otago Daily Times said the march began at the University of Otago, about 20 minutes walk away from Forsyth Barr Stadium. The marchers were joined by thousands more who had made their way there for ceremonies that included Maori incantations and Muslim prayers. Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull called on New Zealanders to come together in support of those left bereft by the tragedy. "We need to examine what needs to change so that this does not happen again," he said, according to the newspaper. "To my Muslim brothers and sisters... you are a precious part of us and we embrace you." Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday announced an immediate ban on the military-style semi-automatic weapons used in the slayings. Also on Thursday, hundreds of mourners turned out in Christchurch for a second straight day for the funerals of those killed. Ardern has said a national remembrance ceremony would be held soon but a date has not yet been given. FILE PHOTO: India's Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers patrol along the fenced border with Pakistan in Ranbir Singh Pura sector near Jammu February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Mukesh Gupta/File Photo By Jonathan Landay WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States remains concerned about India-Pakistan tensions as the nuclear-armed countries' militaries remain on alert nearly three weeks after their most dangerous confrontation in decades, a senior U.S. administration official said on Wednesday. The official also indicated that the Trump administration does not think Pakistan has adequately cracked down on the Islamist extremists who claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on Indian security forces that triggered last month's crisis. "If there is an additional terrorist attack without Pakistan having made a sustained sincere effort against these groups, it will be extremely problematic for Pakistan and it would cause a re-escalation in tensions," the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. The official's comments underscored the Trump administration's view that Pakistan's harbouring of extremist groups lies at the heart of the latest upsurge in tensions. The crisis erupted with a Feb. 14 suicide bombing on India's side of the disputed Kashmir region that killed 40 paramilitary officers and was claimed by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a militant group that U.S. officials charge is harboured by Pakistan. Islamabad denies the allegation. On Feb. 26, India launched its first-ever airstrikes on an alleged extremist training camp in Pakistan. The following day, Pakistani aircraft retaliated against targets inside India-controlled Kashmir, triggering a dogfight. In their first such clash since a 1971 war, Pakistan downed an Indian plane and captured its pilot after he ejected. The Trump administration, backed by other powers, pressed the sides to avert further violence amid fears of an all-out war that could go nuclear. While the sides have taken steps to de-escalate tensions, including Pakistan's return of the Indian pilot, the U.S. official said that Washington remains concerned. "We do still see the militaries on alert and so we realize if there, God forbid, would be another terrorist attack, then you could quickly see escalation in the situation once again," the official said. "We are making clear that any additional military action by either side runs an unacceptably high risk for both countries and for the region." Story continues Pakistan says it arrested dozens of extremists and seized their assets. But the official indicated that Washington does not believe the crackdown has been sufficient. "I think we will need to see irreversible sustained action. It's early to make a full assessment," the official said. Competing claims to Kashmir by India and Pakistan make the area one of the world's most dangerous flashpoints. (Reporting by Jonathan Landay; writing by Doina Chiacu; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker) Drivers in Singapore can sign up with FastGo from 1 April and users will be able to start booking rides from 30 April. FastGo, a Vietnamese ride-hailing application will launch in Singapore next month as it looks to expand in South-east Asia. Drivers can register with FastGo from April 1 and customers will be able to book rides from 30 April, the company said in a statement on Wednesday (20 March). Singapore is the third country for FastGo after Vietnam and Myanmar. The company plans to enter Indonesia next via Jakarta, followed by Thailand and the Philippines. FastGo aims to be in the six South-east Asian nations by this year. FastGo, part of technology start-up NextTech Group, began its ride-hailing service in Vietnam in June last year after Uber withdrew from the region. It has nearly 60,000 driver-partners in Vietnam. Six months later it entered Yangon, Myanmar, with Asia Sun Group. Unlike some ride-hailing apps, FastGo will charge its driver-partners a fixed daily subscription fee instead of collecting commission fees. It expects to charge a fee of below US$5 (S$6.80) if a drivers income exceeds US$30 a day, and there will be no fees if the driver makes less than US$30. Despite being a follower, FastGos model brings the best economic benefit to the drivers and customers, said Nguyen Huu Tuat, FastGos founder and chairman. FastGo received Series A investment from VinaCapital Ventures last August. The company is aiming to raise more funds in its Series B investments for expansion. Related stories: Grab vs. Go-Jek: Inside Asias Battle of the Super Apps Gojek extends services in beta phase for users to sign up across Singapore Grab Financial to offer consumer credit, expand lending services Swedish black metal band Watain. (Getty Images file photo) The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) said on Thursday (21 March) that it will reach a decision soon on the claim by the organiser behind the banned concert by Swedish black metal band Watain for compensation. In response to media queries by Yahoo News Singapore, an IMDA spokesperson said, The IMDA has been engaging Ravage Records on the reimbursement arising from the cancellation of the concert. The IMDA is currently reviewing Ravage Records claim and will reach a decision soon. Yahoo News Singapore has reached out to Ravage Records for comment. The Watain Live in Singapore concert was cancelled by the IMDA hours before the band were scheduled to perform at the EBX Live Space on 7 March, following advice by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). In response to the last-minute cancellation, Ravage Records said in a lengthy Facebook post on 9 March, At this moment, what we can do is to minimise our damages and without a doubt, most importantly, work towards a possible reimbursement (if any) for our dear supporters. Everything has been paid for, from the flights to accommodation, to transportation, equipments and venue rental, and even band fees and we will not get a single cent back, it added. Right now, we, at Ravage Records, can only wait with bated breath for the authorities answer for a compensation. The concert limited to 200 or so attendees was initially allowed to take place with a rating of Restricted 18 (R18) with stringent requirements in place, including the removal of religiously offensive songs, references to religion or using religious symbols, and ritualistic acts on stage. Speaking to reporters at a doorstop interview held at the Ministry of Law on 7 March, Shanmugam said allowing the band to have their concert in Singapore will be against public order interest and affect our religious and social harmony. And if you look at the band, they do have a history very offensive towards Christians, Jews, supportive of violence, including encouraging the burning of churches, he added. Story continues The last-minute cancellation came after the creation of a petition calling for Watain and Swedish death metal band Soilwork to be banned from performing here. The petition received more than 19,000 signatories as of 21 March. Soilwork are still scheduled to perform in Singapore on 29 October, said the event organiser Street Noise SG, despite the petition. Addressing it to the Ministry of Culture, Community, and Youth, its creator, Rachel Chan, wrote, These heavy metal bands do not represent the culture which we want in our youths. Their subliminal messages in their songs include death and suicide. Other Singapore stories: COMMENT: Watain concert ban stokes burning questions National Council of Churches of Singapore relieved to hear of MHAs decision on Watain concert ban Watain Singapore concert ban: Our fans can decide for themselves about our music, says band vocalist Allowing metal band Watain to hold Singapore concert can affect religious and social harmony: Shanmugam The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has asked the National Peace Council to choose a date and venue for the proposed party militia disbandment talks between the main opposition party and the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) as proposed by President Nana Akufo-Addo during his third state of the nation address. In a response to the NPPs official invitation to the talks, the NDC, in a letter signed by General Secretary Johnson Asiedu Nketia, said: We write to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 15 March 2019 and wish to thank you for the contents therein. We are gratified that you have, in agreement with our view, confirmed our position that this discussion has to be a multi-stakeholder engagement. In furtherance of this, we have taken the liberty to request the National Peace Council to kindly exercise its statutory mandate and assume the role of mediator in the deliberations on the above subject (disbandment of party vigilante groups). We hold ourselves ready to meet your good selves at any venue and date the National Peace Council may propose. We also take this opportunity to bring to your attention, a copy of our most recent correspondence with His Excellency the president, as it reaffirms our earlier position on the matter. The NPP had said in its invitation letter to the NDC that it was open to a proposal by its opposite number for the inclusion of neutral third parties in their discussions toward disbanding militia groups affiliated to the two parties. President Nana Akufo-Addo first proposed the meeting in February following the gun violence that marred the Ayawaso West Wuogon by-election on Thursday, 31 January 2019. The NDC, however, wrote to the president, through its National Chairman, Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, suggesting that the National Peace Council be made to be part of such a meeting as a neutral interlocutor along with other stakeholders. The president responded to that letter insisting the two parties were capable of meeting at the table to deal with the problem themselves without involving outsiders. The NDC replied the president in a second letter in which the party insisted on having neutral third parties such as the UN, AU, and ECOWAS at such a meeting to mediate the talks. In his second reply to the NDC, the president said he had ordered his Attorney General to start drafting legislation toward outlawing party militarism without prejudice to any meeting the two parties may subsequently have over the same matter. The NPPs invitation letter, written by its General Secretary, Mr John Boadu addressed to Mr Ofosu-Ampofo for the meeting on the subject matter, said he was pleased, on behalf of the party, to officially invite you [the NDC] to a meeting to discuss the menace of political vigilantism, which has gained notoriety in the country, and explore ways of permanently disbanding the various vigilante groups associated with Ghanas two major political parties. The invitation, Mr Boadu said, has been necessitated not only by the presidents call during the 2019 state of the nation address, but also by the legitimate concerns expressed by overwhelming Ghanaians about this menace, and the need for the two political parties to do the needful in the interest of the nation. Mr Boadu told the NDC Chairman in the letter that: Youll recall that since the president made this call, our National Chairman, Freddie Blay, has been engaging your good self in telephone conversations on the subject. We think that time is now ripe for the parties to hold this crucial meeting, which the whole nation has been looking forward to. We have also taken notice of your request to expand the scope of the engagement to include multiple stakeholders and wish to assure you that the NPP avails itself of this consideration at the meeting, which will afford the two parties the opportunity to agree on the various stakeholders to be invited to the subsequent engagements. The NPP proposes that this crucial meeting comes off during this week at a venue convenient to you and, so, we entreat you to, as soon as possible, get in touch with the party when you find a suitable venue for this meeting. Source: Class News Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Five Feet Apart stars Haley Lu Richardson as Stella, a teenager with cystic fibrosis who falls for Will, a dour fellow patient played by Cole Sprouse. Set mostly inside a hospital ward, the new movie is the latest entry in a growing genre of terminally ill teen weepies known as sick flicks, the most famous of which, like The Fault in Our Stars, have been centered around cancer. But cystic fibrosis, also called CF, affects just below 0.01 percent of the U.S. population, a much less familiar diseaseand one that rarely gets the spotlight in pop culture. Advertisement Directed by Jane the Virgins Justin Baldoni, Five Feet Apart is apparently meant to serve as something of a corrective for this absence, raising awareness about the disease while offering those afflicted a chance to see aspects of their experience faithfully depicted on-screen. The movie aligned with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in fundraising efforts, but within the CF community itself, Five Feet Apart has grown into a divisive cultural event, denounced and boycotted by some even while being celebrated by others. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Five Feet Apart centers around a rule specific to the disease: In order to prevent cross-infection, CF patients must remain at a safe six-foot distance from one another. This presents a fundamental problem for Stella, our high-strung heroine, and her crush-to-be Will, a hunky newcomer to the ward who scans as classic teen rebel. (His filtering Vogmask, which has menacing skull teeth printed across it, is the medical equivalent of a motorcycle.) The physical obstacle to their budding romance is made more critical by Wills infection with B. cepacia, a bacteria thats particularly dangerous for other CF patientsand makes physical contact even more risky. The couple eventually decides to breach the guideline by one foot, hence the movies title. Advertisement Advertisement Despite the rarity of its central disorder, Five Feet Apart hews closely to well-trodden sick flick tropes. Stella wears overalls and keeps a bucket list, just like A Walk to Remembers Jamie, while Will is a cheeky bad boy neglecting his medical regimen. With Stellas saintly nudging, he transforms into an affectionate boyfriend equipped to care for himself. As for the six-foot twist: In an icky, opportunistic way, the rule feels ready-made for a teen melodrama, taking that hearty romantic perennial, the star-crossed lovers, and pushing it to a grave extreme. If the two touchto say nothing of kissthey could literally die. The movie is, in essence, a tragic love story, with the six-foot safety regulation repurposed as a heart-tugging plot device. Advertisement Get Slate Culture in Your Inbox We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Please enable javascript to use form. Email address: Send me updates about Slate special offers. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Sign Up Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. For Gunnar Esiason, who serves as director of patient outreach at the Boomer Esiason Foundation and has written about the movie on his blog, that plot device was a deal-breaker. Sprouses character felt like a prop, he said. His character was designed to make a villain out of the wrong thing. Cystic fibrosis should have been the antagonist, not the contact precautions between them. Advertisement Advertisement Were there more than a handful of depictions of cystic fibrosis in pop culture, the stakes for Five Feet Apart might not be quite so high. But given how little screen time the disease gets, Esiason wasnt the only one in the CF community on alert. In a blog post, a CF activist named Elsie Tellier called for a boycott of the film for its inherent ableism, writing that terminally ill people are not alive just to make healthy people appreciate their lives more. The heated atmosphere surrounding the films release was aggravated by a botched influencer marketing campaign that had popular Instagram users who dont have CF post tributes to faraway loved ones, comparing long-distance relationships to the six-foot rule. Backlash was swift, and all the posts were promptly deleted, though the movies marketing and production teams did not offer an official apology. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The controversies come even as the project has been careful to show a link to the cystic fibrosis community at every stage. During production, Baldoni and the movies two leads consulted with CF activist and video blogger Claire Wineland, who died in September and to whom the film is dedicated. The team also enlisted the help of a retired CF nurse, who joined the set as an adviser. Leading up to its release, the movies marketing campaign included CF community screenings and video clips from patients Baldoni amplified on Instagram. While doing press, Sprouse similarly emphasized the CF-centric messaging, declaring in one interview, The people that I care the most about are the people within the cystic fibrosis community, because thats who we made the movie for. Advertisement The real-life knowledge gleaned from this research does lend the story a measure of authenticity, according to Aimee Lecointre, another advocate in the CF community, especially when it comes to Stellas feeding tube, treatments, and time at the hospital. When they mentioned all the stuff she brings, my husband elbowed me. People with CF are kind of notorious for packing up for a good two-week stay, she said. Most importantly, the movie touches on an underexplored topic: how cystic fibrosis can affect mental health. Advertisement Advertisement People with cystic fibrosis are two to three times more likely to experience depression, according to an international study. Stella, who lost her sister in a freak accident, is beset with survivors guiltdeclaring that she has a duty to stay alive because she isnt sure how her parents would cope if they lost her, too. That sense of guilt is something that really goes un-talked about in CF, said Esiason, who has blogged his communitys need for better mental health testing and resources. One of the things that were really trying to emphasize these days is the mental aspect of living with CF, and Haley Lu Richardsons character was hitting the nail on the head. Advertisement The real-life knowledge gleaned from this research does lend the story a measure of authenticity. The death of Stellas friend Poe (Moises Arias) exacerbates her emotional turmoil in a sequence that Lecointre, who lost a close friend to CF, said was the most difficult for her to watch. When my friend passed away, she was in the hospital as well, so [watching] that kind of felt like a gut punchbut not necessarily in a bad way, she said. For her, the movie brought up a lot of really important conversations with people who had no idea that was something I dealt with. Advertisement Advertisement Esiason, who was largely frustrated with Five Feet Apart, still finished the film grateful for the conversations raised by Stellas emotional struggle. A lot of people with CF go through years and years and years of what I call medical trauma, he said. Our mental health symptoms arent a textbook case of something that would show in a patient. Were dealing with some pretty specific issues and also a number of different triggers. Stella also refers to her obsessive-compulsive disorder, controlling her treatment and her environment even when she cant control her health. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement While Stellas mental health is only one detail in the grand scheme of the movieits more consumed with its Romeo-and-Juliet love story and ice-skating melodramait does breathe some authentic life into a tired genre. If the sick flick doesnt want to sputter out completely, filmmakers listening closely to the communities they depict would be a good start. I would be happy to go back and watch a movie with Haley Lu Richardson playing someone with cystic fibrosis and talking about the guilt associated with living with illness, said Esiason. That is a great movie in my perspective. Its interesting, and its a mature topic. That was the most powerful part. In a tweet about Elizabeth Warrens entry into the presidential race last month, President Donald Trump referred to the Massachusetts senator with his favored epithet, Pocahontas. But he ended his tweet with a more common nickname: Liz. Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2019 Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement It is fair to assume there was no warm, friendly Please, call me Liz moment between Warren and Trump. He seems to have intended Liz dismissively, and conservative media has taken his cue. What initially reads as a harmless nickname actually brings up more than a few questions: Can it be a dig to call someone her own name? Does Liz lack the gravitas of Elizabeth? Is it a nickname Warren herself ever uses? And if it was intended as a slight, what does that mean for the many adult women who do prefer Liz? The Liz/Elizabeth question is one that every Elizabeth must eventually confront (to say nothing of Beth, Lilibet, Betty, Libby, and so on). I consulted several Elizabeths and Lizzes for this article, all of whom had carefully considered opinions on the matter. I dont think you should give someone with the name Elizabeth a nickname unless they are comfortable with it, offered Liz Dueweke, who lives in the D.C. area. It could be very personal to call her Liz, like it is when people call me Lizzy. Elizabeth Weingarten, a stalwart Elizabeth, told me via email that she bristles when anyone tries to Liz her: I think this is inconsiderate, because Liz and Elizabeth are two very different names, and I dont go by Liz with anyone. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Warrens campaign confirmed to me that some friends and people in Warrens life are indeed on a Liz basis with the senator, though in all professional and official contexts, shes always been Elizabeth. Then again, its certainly not unprecedented in politics to call someone something other than what she calls herselfremember Slick Willie? As Liz B., a New Yorkbased Liz who didnt want to use her full name to protect her internet privacy, told me, I dont think famous people, including political leaders, really get to say what people call them. Advertisement Advertisement Not to cry fake news, but some of that can be blamed on the press: Journalists make a sport of inserting puns and playful language into their headlines and proseNew York Post headlines are a genre unto themselves, and Hollywood trade publications have whole dictionaries for their slang termsso of course they would claim Liz privileges. And as nicknames go, Liz seems pretty neutral. (My friend Liz Davis, of New York, deemed it the least polarizing of the Elizabeth nicknames.) Its maybe a hair less automatic as calling a Timothy Tim or a Jennifer Jen, but on the whole uncontroversial, right? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement So far, though, the news outlets that have used Liz in their headlines have mostly shared one thing in common. According to a Google News search, the outlets to run Liz pieces most recently have included the Daily Caller, the Washington Examiner, PJ Media, and Townhallall of which are conservative sources. (To be fair, Liz Warren use is fairly common on Twitter, across ideological lines.) And then there was the Trump tweet, with Liz side by side with Pocahontas. If Liz isnt necessarily a sneer, why do some outlets and figures treat it like one? Why is a nickname a dirty secret? The tone is reminiscent of the glee conservatives took in dressing down Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez as Sandy earlier this year. Using a diminutive can be a way of talking down to someone, and when that someone is a woman, the gender component cant be set aside. Sandy and Liz become code for little girl and all the immaturity and frivolity that implies. Are they using it to make her seem less serious? Accomplished? asked Liz B., comparing Liz use to the way honey and sweetie are employed to condescend. Advertisement Advertisement Snickers be damned, some of the Elizabeths I spoke to think Warren should reclaim Liz. I think its ultimately in Liz Warrens best interest to embrace Liz, Elizabeth Weingarten said. A nickname could enhance the perception of her as relatable, friendly, and openwhereas an insistence on Elizabeth could come across as needlessly rigid and aloof. According to Liz Davis, Liz could be as presidential as anything. On the other hand, she said, Elizabeth does sound v. British royalty. Monarchial. Liz Stevenson, from New York, pointed out that Lizzes are an uncommonly diverse group: Ive met many black, Asian, Latina Lizzes. Ive met rich and poor Lizzes. And Lizzes of every age. (Has Warren considered the Liz constituency? Make America Liz Again!) My only valid fear is people using Liz as in lizard and attaching her to internet conspiracy theories about lizard people, said Liz B., before adding that, all in all, shed enjoy sharing a name with the president. In my humble opinion, Elizabeth is the greatest name. Boeing jets that crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia in recent months lacked two safety features, in part because Boeing charged extra for their installation, the New York Times reported Thursday. Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines opted not to install an angle of attack indicator or an angle of attack disagree light onto the jets involved. The angle of attack indicator detects the degree to which the jets nose is tilted, and the angle of attack disagree light alerts pilots if the jets sensors are sending contradictory signals. While the cause of the accidents involving the two 737 Max 8 jets is not known, investigators are reportedly examining a stall-prevention software system and faulty data sensors. If a system malfunction stemming from faulty sensors caused the Lion Air crash, its possible those two optional safety features would have prevented the disaster. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement According to the Times, those two features are not expensive, but Boeing makes much of its profit by hiking the prices for these add-ons. Many are for comfort, but some, such as additional fire extinguishers and navigation features, have more to do with safety. Boeing will now include the disagree light in all new 737 Max jets, but the indicator will remain an optional feature. The Federal Aviation Administration, which is Boeings main regulator, did not mandate either safety feature as part of its certification for the Boeing jets. Ethiopian Airlines has said its pilots followed FAA and Boeing guidance. On Wednesday, the Times reported that the pilot for the Lion Air flight had not trained on a 737 Max 8 simulator, possibly because Boeing had said that pilots did not need much training for the new jet. The Times also reported that the black box recording revealed the pilots had struggled to figure out how to handle the malfunction. Little information has yet been released about the Ethiopian Airlines crash. Advertisement Advertisement On Tuesday, the Department of Transportation announced it had launched an audit into the FAAs certification process. Boeing maintains that it had met all of the FAAs regulatory requirements. And on Thursday, the FBI joined the criminal investigation by federal prosecutors from the Justice Department into the FAAs certification of the jets. Advertisement Investigators have also asked Boeing for information about training manuals for pilots, as well as other safety procedures and the data it shared with the FAA. They are also examining the ways the company marketed the jets. On Wednesday, Boeing said it had developed a software patch and pilot training program to address the issues identified from the Lion Air crash. All Boeing 737 Max jets worldwide have been grounded for an indefinite period. Boeing is still building the jets, which are the companys most important product, according to CNN. Initially, Boeing and the FAA had insisted the jets were safe and that pilots with proper training could overcome any system malfunctions. The Lion Air crash in October killed 189 people. The Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10 killed 157. The proximate cause of two 737 Max airplane crashes in fewer than five months appears to have been a single malfunctioning sensoran angle-of-attack vane whose incorrect data caused an automated flight system called MCAS to engage repeatedly, which confused and disoriented the pilots, who couldnt stop these brand-new, $100 million planes from plunging, killing everyone aboard. The ultimate cause, however, was a malfunctioning culture that allowed a plane to go into service with such a glaring safety vulnerability in the first place. That culture did not develop overnight; it has been growing for decades in plain sight, and fixing it will take a good deal more effort and resolve than replacing a faulty angle-of-attack vane. Advertisement For four decades, American politics and industry have been increasingly captivated by the idea that government regulation of business is generally a bad thing, and that the people best situated to set and enforce the rules are the people to whom they are applied. These few hundred deaths are a reminder of why the public is ill-served by calls to cut oversight of potentially dangerous businesses. And the as-yet-untallied cost to Boeing in reputation, reparations, and lost sales should be a reminder to businesses that they are ill-served too. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The good news is that the American aviation industry knows how to be better. Historically, the United States has been a leader in airplane safety. It is now common for years to go by without a single commercial aviation fatality in this countrya magnificent feat. How did flying, which in 1960 had an accident rate 50 times higher than today, become so safe? The answer is exceedingly boring: rules. Lots and lots and lots of rules. For many years, every time a significant accident occurred, investigators would arrive on the scene, figure out what happened, and then issue a rule. Over time, there grew to be a mountain of regulations, directives, circulars, notices, and advisories. They cover things like the time interval between inspections of a particular part, the vertical distance that a plane can fly from its assigned altitude, the age at which pilots must get physicals every two years instead of every three. To read any one of these rules is an excruciatingly boring task, and there are millions of them. Yet each is there for a reason. If any one of them were erased, lives could be put at risk. Advertisement Advertisement In the interests of short-term profitability, Boeing lobbied for looser regulation, and an American government inclined to strip away the rules complied. The urgency of a safety-first mindset is steeped into every facet of aviation. Pilots tend to be meticulous, dot-the-i-and-cross-the-t kind of people. The type who got their homework in on time, and enjoyed doing so. They understand the paradox of freedom: that you can only soar carefree above the clouds if youve been anal enough to check the fuel-tank sump and know that water wont clog your fuel line. Advertisement The problem is: Regulation has gone out of fashion. As well as being tedious, regulations are also expensive. They require the commitment of money, material, and labor. One can easily imagine a struggling aviation company for which the expense of complying with regulations can mean the difference between survival and bankruptcy. If lives are at stake, so are livelihoods. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement President Donald Trump is famously opposed to regulations (and indeed rules and norms generally). One of his first acts upon taking office was to declare that his administration would cut two regulations for every new one implemented. The project has been carried out with gusto. But the drive to reduce regulations was underway long before he entered the White House. The idea that regulations hurt the economy first entered the modern political mainstream with Ronald Reagan, who ran for president in 1980 in the wake of a small recession that had brought the unemployment rate up to nearly 8 percent. Reagan blamed the Carter administrations continuing devotion to job-killing regulation. In the decades that followed, the phrase job-killing regulation became a frequent rallying cry among the trickle-down set, who argued that red tape was stifling innovation and cutting into profits. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement This was primarily a Republican project, but not exclusively; even the Clinton administration, which strengthened environmental and consumer-safety regulations, passed legislation that made it easier for pharmaceutical companies to introduce new drugs. Proponents of appropriate regulations, meanwhile, struggled in a more challenging messaging environment. The benefits of stripping away regulations were immediate and obvious. The costs often come later, and are more uncertain and widely dispersed, so opposition is weaker and more diffuse. This has had a profound effect on the airline industry. After years of strict oversight, the Federal Aviation Administration changed course. For the past decade, the FAA has embraced a policy of letting aircraft manufacturers like Boeing self-certify that their systems meet safety requirements. According to Seattle Times aerospace reporter Dominic Gates, the FAA delegated the certification of the 737 Maxs MCAS system to Boeing itself. The companys own engineers, authorized to work on behalf of the FAA, conducted the safety analysis of the system, Gates writes, and concluded that the system complied with all applicable FAA regulations. Advertisement Advertisement Four years after the engineers wrote that opinion, the system failed twice, killing more than 300 people. Its tempting to imagine, when its profitable to do so, that the rules are an unnecessary burden. That you dont need to wear the seat belt, that you dont need to enforce mortgage lending rules, that pharmaceuticals can be released to the public without a whole lot of fuss. Things usually work out for the best, after all. But when the partiers swinging from the chandelier bring that fixture crashing down, the party tends to end rather ignominiously. For Boeing, that moment has arrived. In the interests of short-term profitability, it lobbied for looser regulation, and an American government inclined to strip away the rules complied. Now that laxity has bit Boeing in the ass, it has been reminded that it was boring rule following that got it the world-class reputation it once had. Whether or not it can regain a safety-first culture, and the reputation it engenders, remains to be seen. It will probably require a change of leadership, and a renewed appreciation for the importance of rules. Last month after attending the House Judiciary Committees hearing for thenacting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, I lambasted the proceedings as basically pointless. On Tuesday, committee chairman Jerrold Nadler got a bit closer to the point. After a follow-up meeting with Whitaker and Office of Legal Counsel attorney Steven A. Engel last week, Nadler sent Engel a series of questions that the former AG has refused to answer, having cited the potential that President Donald Trump might assert executive privilege. Advertisement Nadlers request is simple: Is the president asserting executive privilege, or not? If the answer is no, Whitaker should be compelled to answer the questions. If the answer is yes, thenas Nadler noted in his letterthat privilege can be challenged on the grounds that it was being invoked to conceal evidence of misconduct. The case could eventually make it to court. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The questions focus on whether or not after Whitakers appointment as acting attorney general, Trump ever discussed the legal cases against his former attorney Michael Cohenin which the president has been directly implicated in a felonywith Whitaker. Nadler also said that his committee had reason to believe that Trump had spoken with Whitaker about potentially getting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey S. Berman to unrecuse himself from that case. Whitaker refused to answer questions about what he and Trump may have discussed regarding Bermans recusal, and Nadler is asking the White House to state definitively whether it is invoking executive privilege or not. He gave Engel a March 29 deadline to answer. Advertisement Advertisement These question are important, as Nadler notes, because they directly implicate whether Trump attempted to interfere on his own behalf in an investigation in which he is in the best-case scenario [] an unindicted co-conspirator. The Judiciary Committees bailiwick includes potential impeachment proceedings against the president. Determining to what extent Trump may have sought to obstruct justice is clearly part of that constitutional responsibilitythe impeachment charges against both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton included obstruction of justice. Advertisement My frustration last month had to do with the circus atmosphere around Whitakers hearing, which seemed to only be fostered by Nadler threatening to use a subpoena against Whitaker and then quietly backing down after the then-attorney general threatened to cancel his appearance. Advertisement Ultimately, Nadler appears to now be playing this one correctly. He also seems to have walked the White House to the point where it may actually be forced to respond to executive privilege queries that it has stonewalled Democrats on for nearly two years. In the letter, Nadler said that he had extracted a promise from Engel to to take a narrowly focused set of questions to the White House for review as government policy requires. Nadler also noted that, in threatening to withdraw Whitakers appearance last month, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd suggested that the White House and Congress work together in a joint effort by the Committee and the Department to negotiate a mutually acceptable accommodation. Advertisement Advertisement Now Nadler is taking Boyd up on that offer. Accepting the proposal to attempt to reach a mutual accommodation is precisely what Nadler needed to do in order to be able to argue that he tried every possible alternative before beginning a messy subpoena fight. But if the White House refuses to reach a privilege determination and Whitaker continues to stonewall, Nadler will now be on firmer ground if the case is tested in the courts. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement While this Whitaker skirmish feels like a small one, it is actually quite important. As Ive noted since 2017, the White House has used a phony non-assertion of executive privilege as a shield to seek to protect the president from valid questions about potential abuses of power. Nadler is now using his committee to challenge that. This was by no means the only important action Nadlers committee has taken in recent days. Earlier this month, the Judiciary Committee sent document requeststhe precursor to any subpoenasto 81 individuals and entities in Trumps orbit. On Monday, the committee announced that it had received a large number of documents from many of the individuals approached. On Tuesday, Republican staffers confirmed to Politico that document total was more than 8,000, many of which came from Steve Bannon and Tom Barrack. Advertisement Meanwhile, the parent company of the National Enquirer, AMIwhich was at the center of the Cohen hush money casealso agreed to cooperate with the committee. So did former national security advisor and current federal cooperating witness, Michael Flynn. And on Wednesday, Politico reported that Rick Gates would be open to assisting the probe in the coming months, but could not at the moment because of his own ongoing cooperation with prosecutors. Finally, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the committee is planning to send a second wave of document requests, including to Cohen, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and former top Trump economic advisor Gary Cohn. While everyone in politics continues to wait for Muellers report, Nadler is wasting no time setting the groundwork for a full-scale probe of how the president may have sought to corrupt the DOJ for his own personal gain. Great Show please have Richard Spencer on: The Joe Rogan Experience is one of the most popular podcasts in the worldand an important node in the Intellectual Dark Web where alt-right trolls feel safe to attack the politically correct left. In interviews with such luminaries as Alex Jones and Jordan Peterson, the former Fear Factor host offers a platform for snake oil salesmen of all stripes under the guise of just asking questions. Justin Peters explores the show and its freethinking ethos: Listening to the show is sort of like crashing an intense, intimate dinner party in which the only courses are whiskey and weed. Advertisement Double trouble: Us, Jordan Peeles new horror film about a family held hostage by its doppelgangers, is much more elusive than Get Out: Its moral ambiguities and incomplete catharses dont map onto a known horror template, Dana Stevens writes in her review. And according to Slates Scaredy Scaleour highly scientific system for determining whether new movies are too scary for youits also significantly scarier. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Im from the government, and Im here to help: The two Boeing 737 Max crashes may have occurred because of a technical error, but Jeff Wise argues theyre a symptom of a larger issue: Americas fervor for corporate deregulation, a lasting ideal from the Reagan era. To prevent more such tragedies, we need regulationsno matter how bureaucratic or boring they may be. Not close enough: The new teen weepy Five Feet Apart is causing some controversy in the cystic fibrosis community. But, Natalia Winkelman writes, the YA rom-com does do one thing well: depicting the strain this disorder places on the mental health of those living with CF, a topic often overlooked in media about chronic illness. For fun: Some advice for Robert Mueller on finishing his big writing assignment. Burying the lede, Vicky While hes likely to be indicted on corruption charges soon and trails his main rival in the latest polls, it would be foolish to consider Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu anything but the favorite heading into Israels April 9 elections. Bibis main rival, Benny Gantz, is running as a moderate reformer. But Israels electorate has shifted dramatically to the right in recent years, and right-wing parties are still likely to receive more overall votes than the center-left, meaning that Netanyahu will be able to form a coalition government even if his Likud party receives fewer votes than Gantzs Blue and White alliance. (Its worth noting that Israeli polls are notoriously unreliable, so take all predictions with a grain of salt.) Also working in Bibis favor: recent events including a thwarted Hamas rocket attack on Tel Aviv and the stabbing of an Israeli settler. Basically anything that highlights Israels security concerns helps Netanyahu, who paints Gantz as an irresponsible leftist despite his military pedigree. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Gantz, a former army chief who is running as a clean alternative to Netanyahu, has had to contend with a scandal of his own in recent days after Israels domestic security service Shin Bet reported that Iranian intelligence had hacked his cellphone, leading to speculation about what compromising information might have been obtained. But Netanyahus biggest advantage in the closing days of the election is the Trump administration. Trump has already delivered for Netanyahu, by pulling out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalemmoves that alarmed many U.S. allies but were very popular in Israel. Netanyahu has played up his close relationship with Trump, most dramatically in the form of a massive billboard showing the two leaders over one of the main highways leading into Tel Aviv. Advertisement Advertisement The Trump administration is now pulling out all the stops to boost Netanyahu down the stretch. This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Israel where he pledged U.S. support for Israel against Iran. Next week, Netanyahu will travel to Washingtonwhere he will meet with Trump on Monday and have dinner with him on Tuesday. (To be fair, it will only be a working dinner, somewhat less grand than the state dinner that Ambassador Ron Dermer was reportedly hoping to arrange.) Advertisement Netanyahu will also address AIPACs 2019 policy conference along with officials including Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. AIPAC issued some rare mild criticism of Netanyahu last month after he moved to include the overtly racist Otzma Yehudit Party in his coalition, but the conference is still his old stomping grounds and hes likely to get a rapturous reception. Gantz is addressing AIPAC as well, though Netanyahus meeting with Trump is scheduled for the same time, which does not seem like a coincidence. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In another welcome development for the prime minister, Trump indicated on Twitter on Thursday that he would recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights: After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2019 Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Israel captured this area from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967 and has been controlling it ever since, but it is considered internationally to be occupied territory. Its not yet clear if this constitutes an official policy change, but legitimizing Israels annexation of the Golan Heights would be a major show of support for one of Israels most internationally controversial policies, and its a move Netanyahu has been lobbying for. The administration has also helpfully delayed the released of Jared Kushners long-awaited Mideast peace plan until some time after the election. The plan has been pre-emptively denounced by Netanyahus right-wing rival Naftali Bennett, who accused the prime minister of working with Trump to create a Palestinian state and divide Jerusalem. Better for Netanyahu if voters dont see it. Advertisement Trump is not the first president to try to tip the scales in an Israeli election. Bill Clinton admitted that he worked, unsuccessfully, to try to boost Shimon Peres when he was running against Netanyahu in 1996. But its still rare to see two leaders so in lockstep. Advertisement Netanyahu will need all the help he can get, as he needs to not only win reelection, but win it big. He wants to pass a French Law, which would shield the prime minister from prosecution while in office, something even many of his right-wing allies might be reluctant to support unless he commands an overwhelming mandate. If the law doesnt pass, Israels attorney general is expected to indict Netanyahu on corruption charges after a hearing that can take place no later than July 10. Technically, Netanyahu could stay in power through a trial and possible appeals process that would drag on for years, but realistically, pressure would grow for him to resign. Next months election could prove to only be Round 1 of Netanyahus fight for political survival, and Trump might not be able to bail him out in Round 2. Welcome, everyone. On 15 March, the nation witnessed a terrorist attack that demonstrated the weakness of New Zealands gun laws. New Zealands regulation of arms primarily dates back to 1983. Sadly, since that time, the most substantive changes to our laws came following the Aramoana shootings. Those changes, however, did not go far enough. Successive attempts have been made, and failed, to change our laws since then. Those attempts were in 1999, 2005, 2012, and more recently though a select committee inquiry in early 2017. And still, none of the changes that have been made in the past dealt with one of the most glaring issues we have that sets New Zealand apart from many other nations: the availability of military-style semi-automatic weapons. The attacker on 15 March took a significant number of lives using primarily two guns. They were assault rifles, and they were purchased legally on an A category gun license, the standard license held by gun owners in New Zealand. The capacity of these assault rifles was then enhanced using 30+ round magazines, essentially turning them into military-style semi-automatic weapons. While the modification of these guns was illegal, it was done easily, through a simple online purchase. The guns in this terrorist attack had important distinguishing features. First, the capacity, and also, the delivery. They had the power to shoot continuously, but they also had large-capacity magazines. I absolutely believe there will be a common view amongst New Zealanders, those who use guns for legitimate purposes, and those who have never touched one, that the time for the mass and easy availability of these weapons must end. And today, they will. Today I am announcing that New Zealand will ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons. We will also ban all assault rifles. We will ban all high-capacity magazines. We will ban all parts with the ability to convert semi-automatic or any other type of firearm into a military-style semi-automatic weapon. We will ban parts that cause a firearm to generate semi-automatic, automatic, or close-to-automatic gunfire. In short, every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country. These changes will require legislation. That legislation is now being drafted and will be introduced under urgency. A short and select committee process will apply, so I encourage all those who wish to submit to start now. My expectation is that the law will be in place by the end of the next two-week sitting session, which is by the 11th of April. As a government, however, we did not wish to allow a situation where irresponsible dealers continue to sell weapons that will be banned within a few weeks. That is why we have taken an interim measure. As at 3 p.m. today, an order-in-council took effect. These changes to our regulations will ensure virtually all of the weapons I have announced as being banned will be categorized as weapons that require an E-Class endorsement. The effect of this will mean that no one will be able to buy these weapons without a permit to procure from the police. I can assure people that there is no point in applying for such a permit. This is an interim measure to ensure the trade of these weapons ceases from 3 p.m. today. As a government, we acknowledge that there will be gun owners who have legitimately purchased weapons we have now moved to ban. Some, for instance, will use them for large scale culling, such as dog. We will as a cabinet work through legalized exemptions for these purposes, but they will be tightly-regulated. For others, these guns will now come out of circulation. I acknowledge and thank those retailers who have voluntarily ceased to sell military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles. You have seen the collective issues we face as a country and I thank you for that. For other dealers, sales should essentially now cease. My expectation is that these weapons will be returned to their suppliers, and never enter into the New Zealand market again. For current owners of the weapons we have moved to ban, I acknowledge that many of you will have acted within the law. In recognition of that, and to incentivize their return, we will be establishing a buy-back scheme. The details of the scheme are being developed in parallel to the drafting of the legislation to enforce the ban. In the meantime, we are asking all current holders of military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles to visit www.police.govt.nz. There they will find details of the weapons included in this ban. In the next 48 hours, a form will be available on this site that we are asking these gun owners to complete, identifying what banned guns they hold. The police will then arrange for these weapons to be handed over, and eventually destroyed. Details of the weapons handed back by owners that are covered by the ban will also be taken to ensure that fair and reasonable compensation is paid once the buyback is in place. If owners are unable to complete the online form, they are able to contact the police on the phone to arrange the handover of these now-banned guns. I do want to emphasize, to manage the flow of information to the police, online is the best way to arrange the return of your weapons. Do not arrive at the police station unannounced with these weapons in your possession. As the legislation is developed, we will determine the time available for the return of military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles, and the duration of the buyback scheme. I can assure people that there will be time for the returns to be made, and that they will not be criminalized overnight. After a reasonable period for returns, those who continue to possess these guns will be in contravention of the law. Currently, the penalties for this range from fines of up to $4,000 and or three years in prison. The draft legislation will look to increase these penalties. I want to acknowledge that the weapons available in New Zealand are only part of the problem, and loopholes with our current law continue to exist. On Monday, Cabinet will receive and consider further amendment to our gun laws. These proposals will however go through a more fulsome process. But be assured, this is just the beginning of the work we need to do. Finally, I want to repeat a message I have consistently shared since announcing our laws would change. We do have guns in New Zealand that are used for legitimate purposes by responsible owners every single day, and that includes our rural community. They manage pests, theyre used for animal welfare, and also for recreation. Ive been steadfast in my belief that the vast majority of these owners will support what we are doing here today, because its about all of us, its in the national interest, and its about safety. I will work hard to retain that support as we work on the remaining tranches of reform that we must make to prevent an act of terror happening in our country ever again. I will now hand over to the Minister of Police. Way back in the second-to-last week of February, a few outlets reported that Robert Mueller was on the verge of submitting a summary of his Trump-Russia investigation to Attorney General William Barr. (It would then be up to Barr to decide what should be released publicly.) Now, were in the second-to-last week of March and there still isnt a Mueller report. Mother Jones Tim Murphy speculated on Thursday that this might be a matter of procrastination: Advertisement I've been in Robert Mueller's position before and let me tell you, he has not written shit Tim Murphy (@timothypmurphy) March 21, 2019 Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Here at Slate, we have all been there, looking at the computer on Friday afternoon at the end of a week in which we begged off of regular posting duties to finally make some progress on a big feature, wondering how it is possible that weve added only 247 words to our Google Doc over the course of five days, four of those words being LEAD/THESIS GOES HERE. Advertisement Advertisement In the end, though, weve all managed to power through and finish the job, and with that in mind, we put together some advice for Mueller as he races to file a draft to his impatient boss and/or makes a last desperate attempt to redeem the rule of law and the viability of democracy in the United States. Our pointers: Skip the lede and come back to it once you have a better sense of where the rest of the draft is going. Try talking to a friend or deputy attorney general over a beer about what youve been working onexplaining your project from the start will clarify your thoughts. See if you can capture your idea in a single sentence. Honing an elevator pitch might seem reductive, but even complicated information is best presented in the context of simple, high-level themes. (For your purposes, we might suggest something like The pee tape is real.) Advertisement Advertisement Close your Twitter tab. Close Slack. Close the Slack and Twitter apps on your phone. Stop obsessing over individual turns of phrase. Your editor will tell you if More like no no collusion scans or not. If you cant figure out what order to put everything in, just go chronological. If possible, close the Twitter app on the presidents phone as well. If youre not sure whether to keep something or cut it, ask yourself: Does this develop the larger themes of the piece? Does it tell the reader something she didnt already know? Does it help avert a constitutional crisis? Above all, just remember: You can do this. You did the research; you have the authority; youve done it before. Youre Robert Mueller! Kicker TK. Listen to Slates The Gist: Get More of The Gist Slate Plus members get extended, ad-free versions of our podcastsand much more. Sign up today. Join Slate Plus Subscribe to The Gist Copy this link and add it in your podcast app. copy link copied! For detailed instructions, see our Slate Plus podcasts page. Listen to The Gist via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. On The Gist, have you heard about the mob hit that took place a few weeks ago? In the interview, journalist Sarah Kliff joins us to discuss maternal mortality rates in the United States, what California has done to fix it, and what the rest of the country should learn from them. Kliff is the host of Voxs The Impact. In the Spiel, Donald Trump on John McCains funeral. Join Slate Plus! Members get bonus segments, exclusive member-only podcasts, and more. Sign up for a free trial today at Slate.com/gistplus. Join the discussion of this episode on Facebook. Email: thegist@slate.com Twitter: @slategist Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Pierre Bienaime. To listen to the discussion, use the player below: Get More of the Political Gabfest Slate Plus members get extended, ad-free versions of our podcastsand much more. Sign up today. Join Slate Plus Subscribe to the Political Gabfest Copy this link and add it in your podcast app. copy link copied! For detailed instructions, see our Slate Plus podcasts page. Listen to Slates Political Gabfest via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play. On this weeks Slate Political Gabfest, Emily Bazelon, David Plotz, and guest host Jamelle Bouie discuss the Christchurch massacre; why Democratic presidential candidates who are straight, white, and male are dominating the news coverage; and whether the Electoral College should be abolished. Here are some of the links and references from this weeks show: Advertisement Jamelle Bouie for the New York Times: The March of White Supremacy, From Oklahoma City to Christchurch Charlie Warzel for the New York Times: Were Asking the Wrong Questions of YouTube and Facebook After New Zealand Ryan Broderick and Ellie Hall for BuzzFeed News: Tech Platforms Obliterated ISIS Online. They Could Use The Same Tools on White Nationalism. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Nitasha Tiku for Wired: Why Tech Platforms Dont Treat All Terrorism the Same AntiSemite and Jew: An Examination of the Etiology of Hate by Jean-Paul Sartre Jamelle Bouie for the New York Times: The Trouble With Biden Jill Filipovic for CNN: Elizabeth Warren Nailed It Linda Hirschman for the Washington Post: The Electability Trap Jamelle Bouie for the New York Times: The Electoral College Is the Greatest Threat to Our Democracy Advertisement Advertisement Here are this weeks cocktail chatters: Emily: Karen Zraick for the New York Times: Florida Republicans Push to Make Ex-Felons Pay Fees Before They Can Vote Jamelle: The Three Body Problem series by Cixin Liu David: The Power of the Dog series by Don Winslow Listener chatter from Dough Pahl: Chip Read for CBS News: How Two of President John Tylers Grandsons Are Still Alive, 174 Years Later For this weeks Slate Plus bonus segment Emily, David, and Jamelle discuss traveling through Americas South. Topic ideas for next week? You can tweet suggestions, links, and questions to @SlateGabfest. Tweet us your cocktail chatter using #cocktailchatter or post it to our Facebook page. (Messages may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Become a fan of the Political Gabfest on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @SlateGabfest. The email address for the Political Gabfest is gabfest@slate.com. (Email may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Jocelyn Frank. Research and show notes by Bridgette Dunlap. Shortly after Wisconsin voters replaced Republican Gov. Scott Walker with Democrat Tony Evers in 2018, GOP lawmakers scrambled to strip the incoming governor of power. In a special session, Republicans revoked Evers ability to make dozens of appointments throughout the executive branch, reducing his authority over state commissions. They hobbled incoming Democratic Attorney General Josh Kauls ability to represent the state in litigation. And they slashed early voting across the state in violation of a federal court order. Walker approved the power grab weeks before leaving office. Advertisement On Thursday, Circuit Judge Richard G. Niess blocked every single law the Republican legislature passed in late 2018. In his ruling, Niess held that the session was convened in violation of the state constitution, rendering the bills it produced unlawful and void. The decision vacates 82 of Walkers last-minute appointments, restores Evers oversight over the executive branch, and allows Kaul to represent Wisconsin in court. But Republicans are certain to appeal the decision, where a 43 conservative majority may well reverse it.* Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Wisconsin Republicans lame-duck legislative coup is, by now, a familiar story. Faced with a Democratic governor, GOP legislators decided to hobble the executive branch theyd spent years empowering under Walker. They passed a fusillade of laws that allowed Walker to make midnight appointments and barred Evers control over multiple state commissions. These measures transferred appointment power from the governor to the state Assembly, allowing legislators to appoint members to the Department of Corrections, the Department of Transportation, the Group Insurance Board (which oversees state benefits), the Department of Administration (which creates the state budget), and more. They also curbed executive agencies ability to pass regulations regarding taxes, education, elections, and health care. Advertisement Advertisement GOP lawmakers also took aim at Kauls office, abolishing the Office of the Solicitor General and restricting Kauls involvement in a lawsuit brought by and against Wisconsin. Historically, the attorney general represents the state in litigation, but the new laws authorized legislative leadership to defend state lawsusing private lawyers paid for by taxpayersinstead. They also forbade the attorney general from settling or withdrawing from litigation without legislative consent. This rule was designed to maintain Wisconsins participation in a lawsuit to kneecap the Affordable Care Act. (An additional measure curtailing early voting has already been blocked by a federal court.) The legislature requires express permission from either a statute or the governor to call a special session. It received neither. Evers, along with a group of civil rights advocates, filed suit in state court, alleging that the special sessionand, by extension, the legislation it producedwas illegal. Niess agreed in a sharply worded opinion. Before statehood, Niess explained, colonists had very real grievances with irregular legislative sessions. To constrain legislative overreach and safeguard the peoples liberty from irregular, capricious, precipitous, and unpredictable meetings of the Legislature, the framers of the Wisconsin constitution adopted a check on the Legislatures otherwise unfettered discretion. Under that constitution, the Assembly may only meet at such time as shall be provided by statute, or unless convened by the governor in special session. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement But no statute permitted the Assembly to meet in December 2018. And for whatever reason, Walker failed to exercise his constitutional authority to call a special session. Rather, a majority of two legislative committees voted to convene the full Assembly. In total, just eight lawmakersfive representatives and three senators, all Republicansvoted to convene the December special session. The legislature then passed three sweeping bills and appointed Walkers 82 midnight appointments. To justify their maneuver, GOP legislators cite a statute that allows the legislature to develop a work schedule for its own session. By convening the Assembly, Republicans argue, lawmakers merely exercised their authority to modify their work schedule, calling back legislators for unfinished business. Niess disagreed. This coiled reasoning, he wrote, cannot mask the fact the legislature convened a session not at a time set by law, but by just a few legislators on short notice. Republicans cannot short-circuit the constitution by creat[ing] its own authority to meet any time at all. The legislature requires express permission from either a statute or the governor to call a special session. It received neither, and so the actions it took ran afoul of the constitution. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Niess decision is hard to quibble with, but the Wisconsin Supreme Courts current far-right majority will probably overturn itif it gets the chance. In April, Wisconsin voters will replace an outgoing Democratic justice with either Brian Hagedorn, a controversial conservative, or Lisa Neubauer, a progressive. If Neubauer wins, the courts 43 conservative majority will remainthough a Republican justices seat is up in 2020, giving Democrats a chance to finally flip the court.* Unless Evers can delay the appeal until after the 2020 election, which is unlikely, the current GOP majority seems poised to reverse Niess. The story was originally published by the Guardian and has been republished here with permission from Climate Desk. The climate crisis that is driving sea level rises and more extreme rainfall is making deadly storms like the one that hit southern Africa more severe, according to experts. Cyclone Idai, the tropical storm that ravaged Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, has been described as the worst weather-related disaster to hit the Southern Hemisphere, and the U.N. says more than 2 million people have been affected. Storm-surge floods of up to 6 meters have caused widespread devastation. Advertisement Experts said it was too early to draw specific conclusions from Cyclone Idai, but the rapidly changing climate means the destructive power of such storms is only going to increase in the future. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Friederike Otto, of Oxford Universitys Environmental Change Institute, said, There are three factors with storms like this: rainfall, storm surge, and wind. Rainfall levels are on the increase because of climate change, and storm surges are more severe because of sea level rises. Otto said it was important to help communities in the worst-hit areas become more resilient to storms: The standard of housing, the size of the population, and effectiveness of the early warning systems these are the sorts of things we need to think about as we move into a world where these events become more severe. Advertisement Advertisement Paulo Ceppi, of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, agreed it was inevitable that climate change would lead to more severe storms: There is a direct link between global warming and cyclone intensity. We need to make every effort to follow the Paris Agreement target of remaining below 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming in order to minimize future increases in the severity of tropical storms, [and] to achieve the Paris goal we need to start reducing global carbon emissions now. Rebecca Emerton, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading, said her team was working with experts in the area hit by Cyclone Idai to try to improve forecasting and warning systems. Advertisement It has been an active cyclone season in the Indian Ocean this year with seven intense cyclones already, compared to an average usually of three, Emerton said. She added that Idai was the biggest storm in the area since 2000. Advertisement We are working with partners there to see how good the forecasting is now and what can be done to improve it. That will be crucial if we are to try and mitigate the damage these storms do, Emerton said. Advertisement Advertisement Mel Evans, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace U.K., said the storm was further proof that the people least responsible for the climate crisis were suffering the most: The average CO 2 emissions of a citizen of Mozambique, Malawi, or Zimbabwe is a tiny fraction of a Europeans or an Americans. The people who have done the least to cause climate change are at the front of the queue to receive its impacts and have far fewer resources to prepare for the storm or repair the damage. Evans said the disaster should be a wake-up call to governments everywhere to urgently deliver on their climate goals. BY REUTERS BRUSSELS, March 20: Google was fined 1.49 billion euros ($1.7 billion) on Wednesday for blocking rival online search advertisers, the third large European Union antitrust penalty for the Alphabet business in two only years. The European Commission, which said the fine accounted for 1.29 percent of Googles turnover in 2018, said in a statement that the anti-competitive practices had lasted a decade. Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites, European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said. The case concerned websites, such as of newspaper or travel sites, with a search function that produces search results and search adverts. Googles AdSense for Search provided such search adverts. The misconduct included stopping publishers from placing any search adverts from competitors on their search results pages, forcing them to reserve the most profitable space on their search results pages for Googles adverts and a requirement to seek written approval from Google before making changes to the way in which any rival adverts were displayed. The AdSense advertising case was triggered by a complaint from Microsoft in 2010. Both companies subsequently dropped complaints against each other in 2016. Last year, Vestager imposed a record 4.34 billion euro fine on Google for using its popular Android mobile operating system to block rivals. This followed a 2.42 billion euro fine in June 2017 for hindering rivals of shopping comparison webstes. Google is now trying to comply with the order to ensure a level playing field with proposals to boost price comparison rivals and prompt Android users to choose their preferred browsers and search apps. Critics however are still not happy. As most of the internet knows by now, Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, is suing Twitter and three of its users for defamation. The suit, filed March 18 in Virginia, demands $250,350,000 in damages: $350,000 in punitive and $250 million in compensatory damages. What sets this lawsuit apart is not only the huge damages sought by a member of the House of Representatives, but the identities of several of its defendants. Theyre anonymous Twitter users named Devin Nunes Mom (@DevinNunesMom) and Devin Nunes cow (@DevinCow). The Mom account has been suspended, but @DevinCow continues to grow. It boasts close to 600,000 followersup from a mere 1,204 as noted in the complaint, and more than Nunes official account, which has 397,000. (Thats a major Streisand effect!) And additional parody accounts are multiplying, including @cow_nunes (Devin Nunes Cows Lawyer) and @NunesAlt (Devin Nunes Alt-Mom). Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Other legal commentators have already dissected the merits of Nunes libel claims, including Alan Dershowitz, the reliably conservative Fox News legal analyst. Most of them, including Dershowitz, think that Nunes has slim to no chance of winning. @DevinCows feed is filled with dairy puns. And although the tweets reprinted in the complaint from @DevinNunesMom may be mean-spirited and sometimes profane, they probably dont rise to the level of knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth that would constitute actual malice. Thats the legal standard that Nunes, as a public official, would have to prove to win his libel suit under the current standard, established in 1964 in New York Times v. Sullivan. But theres another element to this case that almost no ones discussingand thats the Twitter rules allowing parody accounts and protecting parody in general. Nunes complaint makes full use of Twitters terms of service, quoting liberally from the abusive behavior section. But aside from a brief mention of the fact that parody accounts can exist, the complaint doesnt engage on that issueprobably because its another potential nail in the suits coffin. Advertisement Advertisement Maybe its not about winning a libel suit for Devin Nunes. The parody section of the terms of service is clear: Twitter allows these accounts if the bio and account name (not the @ handle) clearly indicate that the user isnt affiliated with the parodied subject. This nonaffiliation can be accomplished with the use of words like fake or fan, but those words dont have to be included. It just has to be done in a way that can be understood by the intended audience. Because the @DevinNunesMom account is suspended, its hard to say whether the bio was clear enough at the time of suspension to be considered a parodyalthough the tweets would be understood by the intended audience to be satirical. However, a Wayback Machine archived version of the bio captured in February does make the accounts parody status clear. The @DevinCow account is easier: Cows dont tweet. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Parody and satire are highly protected speech forms in the United States. The lead Supreme Court case is Hustler v. Falwell, handed down in 1988. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, displeased with a satirical ad published in Hustler that described him getting drunk on Campari in an outhouse and then having sex with his mother there, sued the magazine for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The justices were having none of it. Writing for the court, Chief Justice William Rehnquist extolled the importance of parody in the the political process, listing George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as among those satirized by their political foes. Ill will, said Rehnquist, isnt enough to recover damages here. Satirical speech aimed at public officials may be offensive and intended to inflict emotional harm, but the First Amendment will protect it when its clear that it couldnt reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts about its target. Advertisement Advertisement Nunes isnt the first political figure to be parodied on Twitter. Prior to the 2011 Chicago mayoral election, an account bearing the handle @MayorEmanuel emerged. This account parodied former White House chief of staff and then mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel with a profane but still humorous stream of tweets, and he took it in stride. Rather than suing or demanding that the account be suspended, the real Emanuel pledged $5,000 to a charity of the parodists choosing if the person came forward, which he did shortly after Emanuels election win. Advertisement Advertisement Contrast Emanuels response with that of his mayoral neighbor, Jim Ardis of Peoria, Illinois. In 2014, Ardis discovered that he had a parodist tweeting nasty things about his sexual proclivities under the handle @peoriamayor. Emails obtained through an Illinois Freedom of Information Act request showed that the mayor and the police chief tried unsuccessfully to get Twitter to shut the account down, then turned to an Illinois false impersonation lawand obtained a search warrant. The parodist had earlier brought the @peoriamayor account into compliance with Twitter parody policy, but Twitter suspended the account after Ardis threatened the company with an injunction to shut the account down under the false impersonation law. Public outcry resulted in no charges filed, while the parodist sued Ardis and the city and won a $125,000 settlement. Here too, additional parody accounts sprang up as news of the emails, search warrant, and subsequent raid on the parodists house made local and national news. (Trevor Noah even did a Daily Show segment on it.) Advertisement Advertisement Twitter also enjoys additional safeguards under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Passed in 1996, Section 230 virtually immunizes interactive computer services like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube from liability for third-party posts on their sites. Section 230 isnt perfect, and there have been calls to get rid of it or debate how it could be improved. However, both public discourse and companies from Amazon to Yelp benefit from Section 230s liability protections that allow third parties to engage in discussions on their sites. Add these defenses to the weak defamation case and the strong parody protections, and Nunes suit appears doomed to fail. Advertisement So why sue at all? Maybe its not about winning a libel suit for Devin Nunes. Maybe, given the large damage awards hes seeking, hes trying to intimidate his critics into leaving him alone on Twitter, into abandoning their parody accounts or not starting them. If thats his goal, he failed. But also in the complaint are accusations of shadow banning, a practice alleged by Republicans in which Twitter hides their posts from everyone but themselves, and in a way that they dont know its happening. Twitter claims that it doesnt do this, but the allegation plays into a larger conservative narrative that technology companies are trying to silence their voices. If thats Nunes game, hes certainly won: His voice is now quite loud online, although perhaps not in the way he intended. Or maybe, like Ardis, he just has a thin skin. Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Kyle did not know about the database. Not when he was staying up all night spray-painting elaborate graffiti across Imperial Beach, a little San Diego suburb just north of Tijuana, Mexico. Not when he would sit, watching from afar, as public works employees painted over his work. Not even when he was getting booked in San Diego County Jail. He had started tagging in his early teens as part of learning to cope with a severe case of depression. Graffiti was fun and it was expressive and it made him feel better. Hed practice on planks in his backyard, and as he got older, he began tagging buildings more and more. This was his first time getting caught, and while he felt like an idiot, he wasnt all that worried. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement He had friends who had been caught tagging before, and none of them spent more than a couple days in jail. Worst-case scenario, he thought, Ill get a couple weeks and some community service. Then he went into court and learned the charges: I just went totally numb, he told me. The county was not charging Kyle with one count of vandalism. They were charging him with 218. He faced multiple years in prison. Unbeknownst to Kyle, the sheriff had been keeping tabs on him and every other tagger in the city. It was 2010, and the San Diego County Sheriffs Department had recently rolled out a database called GraffitiTrackersoftware also used by police departments in Denver and Los Angeles Countyand over the previous year, they had accumulated a massive set of images that included a couple hundred photos with his moniker. Painting over all Kyles handiwork, prosecutors claimed, had cost the county almost $100,000, and that sort of damage came with life-changing consequences. Ultimately, he made a plea deal: one year of incarceration, five years of probation, and more than $87,000 in restitution. Advertisement Advertisement Criticism of police technology often gets mired in the complexities of the algorithms involvedthe obscurity of machine learning, the feedback loops, the potentials for racial bias and error. But GraffitiTracker can tell us a lot about data-driven policing in part because the concept is so simple. Whenever a public works crew goes to clean up graffiti, before they paint over it, they take a photo and put it in the county database. Since taggers tend to paint the same moniker over and over, now whenever someone is caught for vandalism, police can search the database for their pseudonym and get evidence of all the graffiti theyve ever done. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement In San Diego County, this has radically changed the way that graffiti is prosecuted and has pumped up the punishment for taggersmany of whom are minorsto levels otherwise unthinkable. The results have been lucrative. In 2011, the first year San Diego started using GraffitiTracker countywide (a few San Diego jurisdictions already had it in place), the amount of restitution received for graffiti jumped from about $170,000 to almost $800,000. Roughly $300,000 of that came from juvenile cases. For the jurisdictions that werent already using GraffitiTracker, the jump was even more stark: The annual total went from $45,000 to nearly $400,000. In these cities, the average restitution ordered in adult cases went from $1,281 to $5,620, and at the same time, the number of cases resulting in restitution tripled. (San Diego has said it makes prosecuting vandalism easier.) Advertisement Almost a decade later, San Diego County and other jurisdictions are still using GraffitiTracker, yet its received very little media attention, despite the startling consequences for vandalism prosecution. But its implications extend far beyond tagging. GraffitiTracker presaged a deeper problem with law enforcements ability to use technology to connect people to crimes that, as Deputy District Attorney Melissa Ocampo put it to me, they thought they got away with. Advertisement Advertisement Many cities already have automatic license plate readers attached to traffic cameras, letting police track vehicles whereabouts. According to the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology, as of 2016, at least five major American police departments either claimed to run real-time face recognition off of street cameras, bought technology that can do so, or expressed a written interest in buying it. Advertisement Advertisement With each new tracking technology comes untold possibilities for creative startups like GraffitiTracker to connect people to their past actions and in the process, to silently raise the punishment that can be expected for petty crimes. Without much discussion, the semi-intended consequence of a bureaucratic IT project, law enforcement databases can act as legislation by another name. We must reckon now with what it means when technology, not law, can dictate the relationship between crime and punishment. Advertisement GraffitiTracker radically changed the relationship between the crime and the punishment. According to a list of recent Graffiti Tracker successes given to a few San Diego city councilmembers in 2010, the police searched one minors home as part of a separate case and found the word SLAY written over and over on his bedroom walls. Using GraffitiTracker, they were able to link him to 132 paintings with SLAY in them, and the court ordered the child and his family to pay the city almost $60,000. Advertisement Advertisement Another juveniles car was searched during a routine contact, and while looking through his notebook, police found sketches that linked him to 28 incidents of graffiti. That was enough to seek $10,000 in restitution. For comparison, $10,000 is also the maximum fine allowed by California law for crimes that include robbery and rape. So it seems hard to imagine that lawmakers would choose for an $87,000 fine to be the possible consequence of a first-time graffiti arrest. But lawmakers didnt have to choose. Without any change to the law, and without any of the democratic processes that a change in the law would entail, the typical punishment for vandalism in San Diego County suddenly grew to draconian proportions. Advertisement By erasing the distinction between being caught once for vandalism and being caught many times, GraffitiTracker radically changed the relationship between the crime and the punishment. In that sense, its as if the next time you were pulled over for speeding, the officer downloaded your cars GPS history and gave you tickets and points on your license for all the times youve sped in the past year. And this happened without anyone even knowing that the rules have changedwithout the kids painting on walls in San Diego knowing that they are now risking punishment they will not easily recover from. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Its been almost 10 years since Kyle was arrested. Hes still paying off the last of the loans he had to take out to pay the fineshis parents took a huge hit but were able to help a lot, thank Godbut after a lot of work, hes managed to turn graffiti art into a career. He laughed as we talked about his cushy new job: Big corporations love his graffiti, and he gets paid to make murals for places like Microsoft and Adidas. Bouncing back from his sentence has been a long, slow process though. In order to survive behind bars, he had to transform: Somebody talked to me funny, I had to punch them. Somebody cuts me in line, I had to jump them. A guys getting stabbed, its whateverI didnt care. I never thought I would be that person. Advertisement Parole wasnt much easier. Even once he got out, he was under heavy surveillance by the Gang Supervision Unit, which Kyle says would sometimes confiscate his art supplies and even his school notebooks if they contained doodles. After he was released, he says, It was five or six years before I really felt OK. Back when he was a kid, running around with his paint cans, hed always worried about getting caughthe didnt want to get in trouble. But the thought of how much trouble Id get intonot at all. I had no idea. Advertisement Is it wishful thinking to imagine this all going down differently? San Diegos laws were designed in a world where when someone was arrested in the act of tagging, it was impossible to know if they did it all the time or, less likely, had bad luck on their first night out. When San Diego law enforcement first acquired GraffitiTracker, that changed. Maybe sentences like Kyles were the goal all along, but maybe the laws could have changed with the circumstances. Could new punishments take the database into account, without first-time graffiti arrests suddenly going from a wake-up call to a life-shattering event? But GraffitiTracker was adopted independently of the law: All that followed is a testament to the whats wrong with that independence. So long as we let technology lead while the law follows behind, who knows where well end up. Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. German Wikipedia has gone dark for 24 hours on Thursday in protest of proposed changes to the EU copyright law, known as the Copyright Directive. When users try to access the site, theyre confronted with a black screen and a message that reads, This is our last chance. Help us to modernize copyright in Europe. German Wikipedia is not alone. Major sites like Reddit, Pornhub, and Twitch are displaying protest banners on their homepages for European users and on social media with a hashtag #saveyourinternet. More than 5 million Europeans have also signed a petition against new amendments to the Copyright Directive, which the European Parliament will vote on next week. In addition, 130 European businesses and websites, led by the file storage service NextCloud, submitted a letter to the Parliament, specifically condemning Articles 11 and 13 of the new measure. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement The problem with the Copyright Directive, according to the letter, is that it gives too much power to news publishers and content-hosting platforms. Article 11 allows publishers to charge any platform that links to their stories, which NextCloud says will create a completely new intellectual property right for press publishers and stifle innovation by putting any startup offering services based on aggregated online information out of business. Article 13 makes platforms legally responsible for any copyrighted materials users may upload. This means sites will need to screen content before its published, requiring expensive content filtering mechanisms and making platforms determine the legality of user-generated content. According to a video posted on Wikipedias Twitter account, Article 13 would hurt free expression, and threaten posts like comedy, parody, illustrations, and criticism. Advertisement Advertisement This online protest is not the first of its kind. In 2014, many sites in the U.S. participated in an Internet Slowdown Day to show support for net neutrality when the Federal Communications Commission was in the process of drafting new rules. On Sept. 10 of that year, sites displayed a loading symbol, also known as the spinning wheel of death, to symbolize what could happen if companies were allowed to reduce internet speed for users based on how much they pay. Also in 2014, more than 5,000 websites in the U.S. participated in The Day We Fight Back by displaying banners that urged users to push for congressional reform against NSA surveillance. The EU protest against the Copyright Direction will not be limited to the internet, however. Advocacy group Save Your Internet also called on Europeans to march against copyright reform on March 23 to pressure lawmakers not to adapt the proposed measures. Diego Naranjo, a senior policy adviser at the digital rights group EDRi, told the Verge that the EU scheduled the vote as early as possible, signaling that theyre trying to avoid public pressure. But the public may be applying some pressure anyway. Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. By Frosty Wooldridge Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist. ~ Enoch Powell ~ Samuel P. Huntington, in his book, Clash of Civilizations, made the cogent point that mixing cultures leads to violent clashes among different religions, ethnic groups and languages. Last week, an angry Australian in New Zealand massacred Muslims in two different mosques with the vengeance of a jihadist right out of the playbook from the Paris, France massacres, along with the Brussels, Belgium explosions and Nice, France killings along with Charlie Hebdo executions. With clashing cultures and incompatible religions being imported into Canada, America and Australialittle wonder that more such violent reactions dont occur more often. Fact: Islam intends to dominate the world. Their Quran mandates violence in that pursuit. In America, our leaders imported 3.5 million Muslims, which led to San Bernardino Christmas killings, Orlando, Florida gay nightclub massacre, Fort Lauderdale killings, St. Cloud, Minnesota stabbings, 3,000 deaths at 9/11 site in New York City, along with an average of 25 honor killings annually of Muslim women in the USA and the insane assault and battery of over 500,000 women subjected to the brutality of female genital mutilation. (Source: Asst District Attorney Ed OCallihan, DHS, Feb 2, 2018, press briefing) In other words, when you mix a 6th century brutal and violent religion into first world countries, at some point, you force a response. Remark on social media: Along with building too many Mosques in Western Host countries & forcing their Kill-Joy Islam & their boring way of life upon host countries & proposing of barbaric Sharia, contribute further to Muslim hatred & also they never ever assimilate. See, Muslims run away from their Islamic Shit-Holes, to western countries, for a good life.but when they settle down, they try to convert their Western host countries into the same Islamic Hell-Holes, they ran away from in the first place! Because of 9/11, most Americans feel queasy when they see a woman in a head scarf or a man in a white dress and cap. It brings them back to that brutal day in New York City when Muslim jihadists killed 3,000 people in the Twin Towers. Additionally, Americans become a bit nervous, if not outraged when they hear Islamic leaders proclaim: Illinois: Muslim Leader: Everything We Represent Goes in Total Contradiction to What the West Represents My dear brothers and sisters, this idea of fitting in we need to eliminate this from our vocabulary. Again, we are to stand out. We are a unique nation with a unique set of solutions. We are not to fit in. Other Muslim leaders proclaim, Islam isnt in America to be equal to any faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth. Omar Ahmed, director of Council on American Islamic Relations. Historian Andre Servier said, Islam was not a torch, but an extinguisher. Conceived in a barbarous brain for the use by a barbarous people, it was, and it remains, incapable of adapting itself to civilization. Whatever it has dominated, it has broken the impulse toward progress and checked the evolution of society. In other words, Muslims themselves tell Western countries their intentions to conquer. Historians give greater understandings of the intentions of the Quran, but Western leaders fail to comprehend the point-blank intentions of Muslims in their countries. Thus, you see the devolvement and destruction of European, Canadian, American, New Zealand and Australia civilizations. Our freedom of speech faces censoring by Muslims. Last week, Judge Jeanine Pirro suffered censoring because CAIR didnt like the judges pointing out that House Member Muslim Omar remains vehemently anti-Jewish and wears a hijab mandated by the Quran that she swore on to become a member of the US House of Representatives. Unfortunately, everything in the Quran counters everything in U.S. Constitutional Law. Additionally, the Quran mandates destruction of America, thus, Omar should be tried for treason and deported back to Somalia. While New Zealands leaders imported Muslims, they saw an uptick in honor killings, female genital mutilation, religious confrontations and severe unease among the Kiwi populace. Ive traveled extensively over there. Nobody wants, likes or needs Muslim immigrants. Huntington made it very clear as to the violence of mixing cultures and incompatible religions, It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future. As Western countries import more Moslems, their leaders guarantee more religious, linguistic and cultural confrontations, especially from Islam and Sharia Law. Moslems NEVER integrate into host countries. Take a trip to Detroit, Michigan or Minneapolis, Minnesota or Miami, Florida. Those cities morphed into foreign countries with no intention of ever assimilating into America. One reader from Florida wrote me, This is why they dont complain about immigration in south Florida: In Miami there is less than 5% White Americans and the native born African-American population has mostly fled as well. In Miami, you dont hear much complaining about immigration because there is no one left to complain. Native Floridians get it and have fled to other parts of the State. The recent hurricanes hitting Puerto Rico combined with their bond default has brought 3 million of them to the central Florida area. So the new line is now Ocala. You have to move North of Ocala to find anyone that speaks English at a 7-11. John E. Thats why, as America adds another 140 million people from all over the world by 2050it signs its own death warrant as an intact, peaceful, cohesive and thriving civilization. Instead, America faces more San Bernardinos, Orlandos, St. Clouds, Fort Hoods, beheadings, be-handings, honor killings, Sharia Law, female genital mutilation, gay killings, fatwas and a host of Quran related violence. Violence remains the nature of Islam as it gallops toward dominance wherever it exists. Only viable solution: immediate cessation of all immigration into the United States and Canada. ## The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless. The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well. By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism. Subclub, previously the U.Club, is expected to close due to new borough development. News: Receive favorite authors articles by email. Try the new feature and turn on the subscription. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled The End is Near, announces the iconic music club Subclub located in the former anti-nuclear bunker below Bratislava Castle on its Facebook profile. While the club is continuing with its normal operation for now, it expects that construction work on the new Vydrica borough will close it down. We are ending, but we do not known when. Even the investor does not know, Robert Koristek of Subclub told HNstyle, adding that the only thing that is for certain is that the operation of the club will be interrupted. Read also: Read also: Blog: Exploring 20th century military sites in Bratislava Read more Whether the club will re-open after the new development is completed is questionable as future dwellers of the luxurious apartments to be built there may object to the presence of a music club close to their new homes, according to Koristek. For now, the parking space for the club is closed due to the start of preparatory construction work. Some history Read also: Read also: Cult Bratislava clubs: Who owns them and how are they doing? Read more The club, originally called the U.Club, celebrated its 26th anniversary in mid March. It is one of the most popular music clubs in the city. The club, with a capacity of 700 people, was first opened in 1993 under the name the U.Club and was commonly known as Ucko. It is popular mostly because of the electronic music, techno and drumnbass featured here. It underwent reconstruction in 2005 and changed its name to Subclub. New Vydrica For the time being, the developer Lucron is preparing the land below the castle for the construction of a new development named after the former village known for its pubs and prostitution, which used to be there Vydrica. It was torn down dozens of years ago when the SNP Bridge over the Danube was being built. Lucron specialises in residential projects and integrated urban units. For Vydrica, it is promising that the new borough will live up to all the standards of modern urban development and that it will be a quality public space. NGOs refuse accusations of non-transparent financing. News: Receive favorite authors articles by email. Try the new feature and turn on the subscription. The new register of non-profit and similar organisations may lead to better synergy. (Source: Sme) Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled Non-governmental, non-profit, and similar organisations will get a new register. It will replace existing smaller and scattered registers and function similarly to the Business Register, providing information about the statutory bodies, members, seats and scope of activities of organisations. The public, as well as representatives of individual non-governmental organisations, will have much more information about the who, what and where of the public sector at their disposal, Marcel Zajac, chairperson of the Chamber of Non-profit Organisations, told The Slovak Spectator. The state needs this information, in particular, for supervision, but I expect that the collected information would lead to various organisations carrying out their activities in better synergy. For the Interior Ministry, an added benefit of the new register is that NGOs will not have to submit documents and data to third parties in any legal situation. Data they submit during the registration of the organisation will be further used as a credible source, the Interior Ministry wrote to The Slovak Spectator. Thus, non-profit organisations will get rid of this bureaucratic burden. The Pontis Foundation, one of the biggest foundations in Slovakia, considers the creation of the register, which involved the input of non-profit and non-governmental organisations, a good step. It is also our goal that the data of various organisations is up-to-date and searchable, said Michal Kissa, programme director of the Pontis Foundation. We provide more than 1,000 grants annually, so it is a positive feature to have a reliable source of information. The Interior Ministry will make the register, which will be divided into public and non-public parts, accessible on January 1, 2021. Its preparation and creation will cost 4.56 million and will be covered by the state budget and EU funds. Zsuzsova has been charged in connection with the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak. News: Receive favorite authors articles by email. Try the new feature and turn on the subscription. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled Following his decision to leave the post of deputy general prosecutor for the non-criminal division in mid-January, Rene Vanek has decided to resign as a prosecutor. Rene Vanek was dismissed on March 14 at his own request, said Andrea Predajnova, spokesperson for the General Prosecutors Office, as quoted by the TASR newswire. Vanek had to leave his deputy general prosecutor post following the decision of General Prosecutor Jaromir Ciznar in mid-January, after the media reported his communications with Alena Zsuzsova, whom the police suspect of paying for the murder of investigative reporter Jan Kuciak. He communicated with Zsuzsova Read also: Read also: Deputy parliamentary speaker sent selfies to Alena Zs. Read more Ciznar stated that Vaneks communication was incompatible with his position as deputy. "I am sorry," said Vanek in mid-January, as quoted by TASR. "It was a big mistake, which I have paid for. It is a mistake to chat with somebody unknown." He should have reported it He also regretted that years of dutiful work have been erased by such a mistake. Several sources later confirmed that his work was professional and honest. However, they admitted that after he found out who the woman was, he should have told his boss about it. Read also: Read also: Alena Zsuzsova: The woman charged with three murders Read more Moreover, he should not have communicated with an unknown person at all, because he had gone through security screenings and had been informed how to behave, TASR wrote. Vanek admitted that an unknown woman contacted him via Messenger in 2013. They texted once in a while about simple private issues, he explained. She had the nickname Ali Ajuska and I never knew her surname, or who she was in contact with, Vanek claimed, as quoted by TASR. I never met her in person. The chairman of the strongest ruling party launched another series of attacks against the media. News: Receive favorite authors articles by email. Try the new feature and turn on the subscription. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled Smer chairman Robert Fico continued attacking the Slovak media at his press conference on March 21. "I have no respect for you, I do not fear you at all," he told the journalists who attended the briefing. Later during the press conference he continued in an aggressive tone and reproached several journalists who attempted to ask him questions that he did not intend to take. Fico accused the media of leading an open war against his Smer party and promised to use "all legal and legitimate means to fight the media, until the situation returns to normal". He linked his threats to the attempts of his government to amend the Press Code, a step that has been much criticised in international journalistic circles. Fico insists that the media publish "absurdities" and therefore natural and legal persons must have the right to reply. Read also: Read also: Publishers: The amendment to the Press Code displays Smers egoism Read more Fico repeatedly said that he expects journalists to apologise to him. The Smer chairman launched his most recent attack on the media one day before, at another press conference. He then said that a legal team, which will monitor the behaviour of journalists and eventually file criminal complaints against them, has been set up. On March 21, he particularly targeted the Sme daily for the illustration they used on the front page of Saturday's edition. It depicted an illustration of the voting ballot. Maros Sefcovic and now also Fico complained that it could have misled voters since it featured a different number of candidates than on the actual ballots. Sme apologised for the illustration on the day it was published. The former prime minister, who has been known for his thorny relationships with the media and who has in the past called journalists names like anti-Slovak prostitutes or slimy snakes, threatened to sue the daily and its editor-in-chief, Beata Balogova, for her statements in an interview that the Austrian daily Kurier published on March 16. Fico accused Balogova of calling him the "central figure of the mafia in Slovakia" in the interview. Read also: Read also: Media zombies are soft on the powerful Read more Fico apparently referred to an article published by the Kurier, a report from Slovakia, rather than the interview with Balogova. The International Press Institute, of which Balogova is a vice-chair, condemned Fico's attacks as "unacceptable for any political figure". Biratnagar, Nepal, March 21, 2019: Holi is being celebrated in the Tarai districts including some adjoining hilly districts with much more fanfare today. On the auspicious occasion of Holi, people from different walks of life regardless of different casts and creeds used to celebrate the festival with much more fanfare exchanging greetings, happiness and harmony among the family members, relatives and neighbors. What was once a building on the verge of destruction is now home to flourishing new Portland destinationa landmark new hotel with undeniably good coffee. Since launching in 2014, Portlands Good Coffee has grown into one of the citys leading reputable coffee companies, with an emphasis on hospitality and creative coffee concoctions. Founders (and brothers) Nick and Sam Purvis now manage a staff of 27 people across four locations throughout the city. Their latest, at the beautiful new Woodlark Hotel, is part of the wider hospitality work happening under the banner of The House of Welcome, which includes a packed new restaurant (Bullard), pre-Prohibition cocktail lounge (Abigail Hall), and the hotel itself, a completely redesigned 150 room boutique that started life as the Cornelius Hotel in 1908. Good Coffees outpost here is a classic lobby coffee bar, with a primary focus on guests of the hotel who visit the space. As a city thats become an attraction for foodies and coffee drinkers alike, Portland has seen an increase in tourism, and thats led to a hotel boomnew offerings from local brands (Jupiter Next) and international concerns (The Hoxton) have opened over the last six months. Co-founder Sam Purvis estimates that 75% of the customers at his new cafe are visitors to the city, which places a high bar on hospitality for his team. Our belief is that we provide affection through sustenance, we want everyone to feel welcome as we serve them, Sam Purvis tells me. One of the ways in which Good Coffee looks to demonstrate their hospitality is through the concept of lobby culture. This culture goes further than a trendy aesthetic; it is centered around the comfort of the space for the citys residents and guests. This creates a sense of community within the lobby. As Good Coffee moved into their new digs, it was important to keep their brand identity while blending in with the restaurant and bar that also inhabit the space. The interior design project for the Woodlark was executed by Atlanta-based firm Smith Hanes. Woodlark tasked them to create a seamless blend between all entities in the lobby, while allowing Good Coffee to stay on brand. We wanted to make sure we stayed true to our identity and aesthetic, Sam Purvis says. The marble countertops, the plants, we wanted to have consistency within our shops collectively. The Woodlark building is now majority-owned and operated by women, which makes for an intriguing tieback to the buildings history. Abigail Scott Duniway, a writer and a womens rights advocate, was rumored to hold meetings in the building in the early 1900s. Nick and Sam wanted to honor Duniway by naming a drink after her, The Activist, which is seen on The Founder Series menu. Just around the corner of Goods coffee bar, the aforementioned Abigail Hall draws heavily on Duniways history as an organizer and agitator for suffrage. Elsewhere on the Founders Series menu guests can try The Visionary, which is named after part-owner Lauren Noecker Robert, as well as The Actuator, named after Jen Quist. Quist is part-owner of Abigail Hall and Bullard, whose small-town-Texas-meets-downtown-Portland food vibe carries over into the food menu at Good, which features breakfast burritos, overnight oats, and a range of kolaches (traditional Czech pastries, much loved throughout Texas). All of its made in-house by the team at Bullard. While the lush array of plants and velvet furniture may initially catch your eye, one of the more interesting pieces in the lobby is behind the coffee bar. Good is currently working with a fully-restored La Marzocco Linea Classic, which includes its classic (and discontinued) European buttons and digital shot counter. Gear here is rounded out by a FETCO Extractor Series batch brewer and a pair of Mahlkonig K30s and a Mahlkonig Guatemala grinder. The coffee bar being placed right next to the front desk of the hotel speaks volumes about the importance of coffee to this whole operation. Most importantly, this allows Good Coffee to be on the forefront of hospitality as guests enter the 11-story space. You can literally order an espresso while you wait for your room keythe coffee bar and check-in desk are just that close. Giovanni Fillari is Brand Marketing Specialist at Nike and the publisher of @coffeefeedpdx. He is the honorable mention Sprudgie Award recipient for Social Media in 2018. Read more Giovanni Fillari for Sprudge. Were still a year and a half away from the Democratic clown car pulling into the big top, and let me just tell you, it is already getting full. Just when you think it has reached capacity, that 1971 VW Beetle finds room in the glove box to squeeze in an extra Hickenlooper or two. Its safe to say that the opposition party could shed a few hopefuls and no one would really notice. At this point, I dont really care who. My suggestion is nixing Cory Booker. Why, you ask? Has he misused government funding? Are there rumors of some nefarious dealings in the back of a pizza shop? Im afraid its even worse: Cory Booker tweeted a bad coffee joke. Repeatedly. Over the course of a decade. The bad joke, proffered repeatedly and without remorse, was first brought to light by Twitter user Anna Fitzpatrick: "Sleep" and I broke up a few nights ago. I'm dating "Coffee" now. She's Hot! Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) May 29, 2009 Its a bad joke. No one is saying its a good joke. And as Fitzpatrick notes, its unfair to discount a presidential candidate simply because of a bad joke a decade ago: we should vet every presidential candidate but digging up their tweets from 2009 is a low blow. every tweet from 2009 is bad. Anna Fitzpatrick (fox still sucks) (@bananafitz) March 18, 2019 if it were only just one instance. In her threaded post, Fitzgerald uncovers 11 other instances of Booker making this same joke since 2009. Like this one: Had a another fight with "sleep" tonight. I left her & I'm hanging out with my smoldering love "coffee" & tonight she is smoking hot Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) November 30, 2009 And this one: Sleep and I broke up again. I'm back with coffee. She is hot. RT @jmryan2010: You just never sleep, do you, sir?? Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) February 2, 2013 And this one: Sleep and I broke up tonight. I'm now dating coffee. She is hot RT @ellesep I have a date with my bed tonight. Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) April 20, 2012 Booker makes this same joke as late as 2017, which means he probably due for another one soon: I broke up with sleep last night and Im dating coffee this morning. . . I appreciate her warmth and stimulating company. https://t.co/UgQw3IUbWt Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) December 2, 2017 You get the picture. Im not going to add them all here, because quite honestly, Im not sure which ones I added already. Twitter, being Twitter, has responded as you would expect Twitter to: To be fair to Booker, he isnt the only other Democratic nominee repeating the same coffee catchphrases on Twitter. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, doesnt think you are capable of staying up past 11:00PM without coffee: Drink a cup of coffee or set your DVR: Tonight I'll be talking with @LateNightSeth! Tune in. pic.twitter.com/KOG2CKsjgr Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) August 14, 2018 Put on a pot of coffee or set your DVR: Tonight I'll be on @LateNightSeth. Tune in! #LNSM pic.twitter.com/w7mgcLxTso Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 11, 2014 And Kirsten Gillibrand, god bless her, uses the cost of coffee to help elucidate how the US could institute paid leave. But the tip of that coffee spear has become blunted with use: For appx the cost of 1 cup of coffee/week we can institute #paidFMLAup to 12 weeks w/partial pay no matter size of employer. #FAMILYAct Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) October 7, 2013 The #FAMILYAct would create a national #PaidFMLA program for every US worker for less than the cost of a cup of coffee a week. Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) December 30, 2013 #FAMILYAct would give workers up to 3 months paid leave to take care of newborn or sick loved one, for less than cost of cup of coffee a wk. Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) January 14, 2014 #FAMILYAct would give workers up to 3 months paid leave to take care of newborn or sick loved one, for less than cost of cup of coffee a wk. Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) January 14, 2014 The #FAMILYAct would implement a natl #paidleave program for all US workers for less than the cost of a cup of coffee a week. #paidFMLA Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) July 7, 2014 We'll re-intro the #FAMILYAct this week to create #paidleave fund for every US worker for about cost of cup of coffee a week. #TimeforFamily Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) March 17, 2015 For around the cost of a cup of coffee a wk for employee & employer, every workerPT & FTwill get up to 12 weeks #paidleave. #FortuneLive Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) August 17, 2015 My #FAMILYAct would create a national #paidleave program for every US workerPT & FTfor around the cost of a cup of coffee a week. Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) November 21, 2015 No, comprehensive #paidleave proposals are not too expensive. #FAMILYAct would provide #paidleave for all for about cost of cup of coffee/wk Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) August 12, 2016 The #FAMILYAct would create #paidleave program for all U.S. workersPT and FTfor around the cost of a cup of coffee a week. Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) October 6, 2016 The #FAMILYAct would allow every American worker up to 12 weeks of #paidleave to care for a new child, a sick family member, or a personal medical emergency. The best part? Through shared responsibility, itd cost workers and employers the price of a cup of coffee a week. #FMLA25 Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) February 5, 2018 Universal paid leave isnt unaffordable or unattainable. The #FAMILYAct would create a national insurance program, giving workers 12 weeks of paid leave to care for a new child, sick family member or their own health issuesall for about the cost of a cup of coffee a week. Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) March 4, 2019 Now, no one is saying a presidential candidate should be based solely on their coffee Twitter joke platformbecause if so, JacksonBey 2020but if you need a way to cut through the noise and narrow the focus just a bit, that seems as good an arbitrary designator as any. Besides, none of this is going to matter when Howard Schultzs ego trip delivers another win for old Trump. Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge. It has been announced that Standardbred owner/horseman Maurice William Brooks passed away at West Oak Village Long Term Care Facility in Oakville, Ont. on Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at the age of 85. Predeceased by his wife Margaret, loved father to Marilyn, John (Nancy), Maurice Jr. (Diane), Jeff (Sue). Dear brother of June Butler (John) and Lawrence (Sue). Grandfather to Jaclyn, Scott, Ryan, Colin, Joel, Taylor, Hailey and Laura. Great grandfather to Violet, Gabriella, Jordan, Hazel and Rylee. He will be dearly missed by his many nieces, nephews and friends. Maurice, who was born in Hanham, Bristol, England on October, 26, 1933, served in the British Army, stationed in Malta, where he met and married his wife Margaret. Maurice and Margaret immigrated to Canada with their children in 1960. It was here that he pursued his lifelong passion with horses where he became actively involved in the harness racing industry as an owner, trainer and driver. Thank you to the staff at West Oak Village (Howell House) and Homestead Oakville for their care and support over the past six years. A special thank you to our dear family friend Florence for her kindness, love, and support. There will be a celebration of life at Adams Funeral Home (445 St. Vincent Street Barrie,) on Saturday, March 23, 2019 at 2 p.m. with visitation one hour prior. Interment St. Marys Cemetery. A reception will follow. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Alzheimers Society of Canada in memory of Maurice Brooks Senior are welcomed. Messages of condolence may be forwarded through adamsfuneralhome.ca. Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Maurice Brooks. Standardbred horseman Wilbur D. Kirkwood, 86, of Townsend, Delaware, passed away peacefully on Monday, March 18, 2019. Kirkwood or Will, as he preferred to be called was born on August 15, 1932 in Bel Air, Maryland. He graduated from Dublin School in 1949 and enlisted in the Navy in 1951. He served aboard the Midway Ship, which is now docked and a museum in San Diego. After an honourable discharge from the Navy in 1954, Kirkwood moved to Delaware where he worked at Delaware Power and Light at the Edgemoor and Delaware City power plants for 12 years. He sold insurance for Mass Mutual and Sun Life and worked in real estate with Nick Gentile. Never wanting to be bored with life, Kirkwood began training and driving harness horses in the early 1970s, racing at Dover Downs as well as Harrington, Ocean City, Rosecroft, and Liberty Bell Raceways. For 10 years, Kirkwood worked for St. Andrews School teaching students how to build sets for school productions. He found his greatest joy working on the family horse farm, Wilchar Farm. Throughout his life, Kirkwood was a tireless and selfless volunteer in many organizations. He was the president of the Middletown Jaycees and served as the Delaware State president. During his term as state president in 1968, he led the Delaware Jaycees to fifth in the nation. In 1972, he founded the Middletown Chamber of Commerce and served as the charter president for many years. The chamber honours him each year by awarding a deserving member the Will Kirkwood Presidents Award. During the 1970s and 80s, Kirkwood was very active in the Middletown Pony Club where his daughters rode and showed horses. He helped organize and announce horse shows and helped with building jumps and fences for riding competitions. As a longtime member of the Middletown-Odessa-Townsend Rotary Club, Kirkwood served as the president from 1979-1980 and held many other roles within the organization. He was a member of the Sergeant William Lloyd Nelson VFW Post 3792 and served as Quartermaster and then Commander for six years. In the early 1990s, Kirkwood joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary and served as Flotilla Captain. He served as a board member for many years for the MOT Senior Center and the Everett Theatre. He was very active in ACT, Inc., which was the group responsible for revitalizing the theater in the early 1980s. Kirkwood served as the master of ceremonies for many groups and shared his humour with everyone. As a horseman, he was a member of the United States Trotting Association. Kirkwood is survived by his loving wife of 54 years, Charlotte J. Kirkwood; his children, Sharon (Bob) Wyatt, Stephanie (Doug) Wright, and Rene Nolan; his grandchildren, Sharon (Ramon), Amy (Drew) Lyndsey (Nate), Alison (Chris), Samantha, Sara, Jena, and Zach; his great-grandchildren, Alex, Matthew, Weston, Cody, and Paxton; and his brother, Edwin L. Kirkwood, Jr. He was preceded in death by his parents Edwin L. and Estelle M. Kirkwood, his sister Laura Jane Morone, and his daughter Natalie. Known as a devoted family man, Kirkwood was known as a man with a strong sense of humour. He loved taking long driving trips with Charlotte and Natalie. He never met a stranger. Visitation will be Friday (March 22) from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Daniels & Hutchison Funeral Home, 212 North Broad Street, Middletown, DE. A service will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday (March 23) at the funeral home. Burial will follow in Massey, MD. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations be made in remembrance of Mr. Kirkwoods daughter Natalie to Easterseals, Camp Fairlee Manor, 61 Corporate Circle, New Castle, DE, 19720. Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Will Kirkwood. (USTA) Clemson University MBA students at Clemson University can choose from several options, including full- and part-time corporate programs, an online MBA program, and MBAs focused on analytics or entrepreneurship. Students can finish the 49-credit, full-time corporate program in less than 18 months. The curriculum includes core classes in communications, organizational behavior, and operations management as well as three electives. Students can use these electives to create a focus area, such as marketing analysis and supply chain management. Clemson's MBA programs on entrepreneurship and analytics give students a chance to focus on these specific aspects of business and are offered in flexible formats allowing for part-time completion or weekend class meetings. Charleston Southern University Students in Charleston Southern University's MBA program complete a series of core courses and choose an area of emphasis. Core classes cover finance, marketing, business law, and ethics. Coursework in the management, finance, leadership, and information systems specializations can be completed online, and accounting and human resource concentrations are available with some in-person classes required. Students can choose how many courses to take each semester and have the option to complete the program in approximately 17 months. Prior to graduating, students also complete a capstone course and an exit assessment. The Citadel The Citadel's MBA program prepares students for management careers through a series of courses totaling 36 credit hours. The curriculum includes classes in accounting, finance, information technology, and operations management. In addition to core courses, MBA students complete two electives and one capstone course. The electives can focus on a particular area of interest, like entrepreneurship or personal finance. Students have the option of taking evening classes or completing the program online. College of Charleston The MBA program at the College of Charleston is offered as a full-time program with several components. Students begin by taking online preliminary classes. Then, with their cohort, they complete a series of classes in areas including finance, marketing, and operations management. After finishing these courses, students engage in a required international experience by traveling to a major global market. Upon their return, students complete another series of courses and then choose an area of focus: finance, marketing, or hospitality revenue management. Students can complete the program in about a year. South Carolina State University South Carolina State University offers an accelerated MBA program that can be completed in as little as one year. Students pursuing this general MBA degree complete 30 hours of coursework in accounting, economics, global business, marketing, and information systems. Students can also choose to complete additional courses in a specialization. South Carolina State offers concentrations in agribusiness, healthcare management, and entrepreneurship. The program also includes internship opportunities. Classes are offered in a variety of formats, including hybrid and online, and in-person classes have evening or weekend meeting times. Oklahoma Christian University Students may be interested in the MBA program offered at Oklahoma Christian University, which can be completed entirely online in 12-16 months if students take two courses at a time. Depending on a student's academic background, they may be able to immediately begin the core curriculum courses if they have previously taken undergraduate business courses. Students who come from other disciplines will likely first have to take a number of preparatory business courses before beginning the core courses. Once core and fundamental courses, if necessary, are completed, students can then take additional coursework according to the specialization area they select. There are nine specialization options, including international business, human resources, and project management. Southeastern Oklahoma State University In the online MBA program at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, students have a large number of options, as there are 13 emphasis areas that students can choose to pursue, as well as a general alternative. Some of these options include aerospace logistics, entrepreneurship, Native American leadership, strategic communication, and management, among others. Regardless of the emphasis area, all of these options require the completion of 36 credit hours, 30 of which are completed through the core curriculum with the remaining six fulfilled by courses as determined by the emphasis area. Oklahoma State University Oklahoma State University offers an online MBA program that is available to students who wish to enroll in the program on a part-time basis. In this program, students will complete a total of 42 credit hours, 30 of which are part of the required core curriculum and cover topics in marketing analytics and management, economics, organizational theory, and financial reporting. Students will then complete an additional 12 credits of elective courses. Depending on the electives selected, either a general MBA can be pursued or an MBA with a concentration. Online students can choose from nine different concentration options, including nonprofit management, entrepreneurship, data science, and business sustainability, among others. University of Oklahoma Working professionals in the energy field may want to consider the University of Oklahoma's online Executive MBA program in Energy. This program is unique in that it students will still learn many of the fundamental business concepts that are traditionally taught in MBA programs while also taking courses focused specifically in topics related to energy. Some examples of course topics include energy economics, energy law, and energy trading. Students who enroll in this program must complete a total of 36 credit hours, which can be taken over the course of 15 months. While the majority of this program can be completed online, there are three week-long immersions that enrolled students must participate in, two of which take place on the university's main campus in Norman, Oklahoma while the third takes place abroad. Northeastern State University The online MBA program at Northeastern State University is comprised of 36 credits, which may be completed in two years. Twenty-four of these credits are part of the required core curriculum, which covers topics in managerial accounting, finance, supply chain management, and logistics. Students are then able to select one of eight concentration options, which determines what choices they have in elective courses. Some of these options include long term care, Native American enterprise, health informatics, and healthcare administration. Kathmandu, Nepal, March 21: The Nepal Army (NA) has expressed its serious concerns over the news related to the NA. Issuing a press statement, the Nepal Army has said on Thursday that some handful media were spreading false news of the institution by quoting confidential government sources. The NA is aware of fictitious comments and misleading information in the past few days, reads the statement. In the statement, the Nepal Army has also stated that NA operates as per the constitution, Army Act and as per the governments order, the NA has stated urging it soldiers not to be affected from false news. Though the NA has not specified about the false news it is believed that the news related to the attempts to put the NA under the preview of the Prime Minister would have FoodLab Sydney, an innovative project aimed at creating a vibrant network of small food businesses through training and employment, launched at Redfern Town Hall on Friday 1 February. Led by the University of Sydneys Sydney Environment Institute, in collaboration with the City of Sydney, UNSW Canberra, TAFE NSW and FoodLab Detroit in the US, the program centres on a custom-designed training course that will support residents with ideas for food businesses or social enterprises. What is FoodLab Sydney? "Our vision is to increase everyone's access to healthy and affordable food by enabling all residents to dictate the terms of their inclusion in our rapidly growing city through voice and participation," said Dr Alana Mann from the Sydney Environment Institute and Chair of the Department of Media and Communications. A new report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights has said that the International Coalition responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians, including over 900 children. Since its intervention in Syria, the International Coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS) has killed more than 3,000 civilians, including more than 900 children. The Syrian Network for Human Rights said in a report regarding the matter that 3,035 civilians, including 924 children and 656 women, had been killed by the US-led International Coalition forces since their military intervention in Syria began up to March. The report added that 976 of these civilians were killed under former President Barack Obama while 2,059 of them were killed under President Donald Trump. The report said that the largest number of victims were in Raqqa province, followed by Aleppo and Deir ez-Zor in north and northeastern Syria. It documented at least 172 massacres carried out by International Coalition forces, and 181 attacks on civilian centers, including 25 attacks on schools, 16 on medical facilities, and four on markets, within the same time period. During the coalitions attacks, at least 560,000 people were displaced, most of them forced to live in camps established by the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (of which the PYD organization is the backbone), where they were detained, their identity papers were confiscated, and they were prevented from traveling. The monitoring and evaluation carried out by the Syrian Network for Human Rights since the International Coalition began its military operations in Syria on Sept. 23, 2014, until the day this report was issued, show that violations by the International Coalition have followed a broad and repetitive pattern in a number of cities and towns in Syria. This undermines the credibility of these forces despite them declaring a noble goal of helping the Syrian people and the world be rid of terrorist groups and the threats they pose. These forces have also been more than a year late in eliminating ISIS in some areas, and have been late to begin reconstruction processes and compensation for victims, as well as setting up real local elections that could lead to real stability in northeastern Syria, which have had a major impact on the declared goals and aims. No country participating in the International Coalition in Syria except the United States has issued reports or investigations into the incidents that have killed civilians. This has made it impossible for us to know which countries have carried out the attacks that led to these human losses. All we can do is refer to the International Coalition as a whole. Based on that, all countries in the coalition should issue periodic reports if their forces are responsible for incidents which result in human or material losses, and they should face up to their legal and human rights responsibilities and review their methods so as to avoid future violations. Killing Escalates Under Trump The report said that during the Obama era the International Coalition had killed at least 976 civilians, including 194 children and 294 women, or about 32 percent of the total victims, and that there were 32 massacres and 61 attacks on civilian targets. In the Trump era, killing has escalated greatly, with the number of civilians killed rising to about 2,059, including 730 children and 362 women, or about 68 percent of the total victims killed by the International Coalition. The report said that the disproportionate and indiscriminate bombardments carried out by coalition forces was a clear breach of international humanitarian law. It also said that, serious violations of customary rules of humanitarian law amount to war crimes, including the targeting of civilians and civilian targets. The report called on the joint command of the International Coalition to increase the team working in following up and investigating the incidents and to make greater efforts in this area, and to make a data map of the areas most affected by airstrikes and to begin to address the economic and moral fallout of these attacks. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. Ever since they attacked the city of Afrin and the surrounding area, the Turkish regime and their mercenaries have tormented and looted from the local population writes SANA. A year ago, Turkish regime forces and their mercenaries from terrorist groups swept into the city of Afrin. Local residents have attested to the scale of the tragedy, with those who are still in the towns and villages continuing to suffer. More than 50 terrorist organizations, most of which adopted the mentality and ideology of al-Qaeda, spread across the city abducting civilians, looting houses and displacing the locals by means of force and threat. The scenes of aggression in Afrin brings to mind what the Zionist enemy did in the liberated city of Quneitra, when it wreaked havoc across the city destroying all the churches, mosques, houses, hospitals and all facilities. The massacres committed by the Turkish regime and its mercenaries are part of the hostile close-minded policy which is based on the black Takfiri mentality that serves the agendas of the new Ottoman regime, which aims at expanding its control and imposing the policy of fait accompli on the independent states that are engaged in a relentless war on terrorism. Launching attacks and breaching international laws and conventions is normal for the Turkish regime whose limitless support for terrorist organizations has become very clear. Erdogans regime has intentionally destroyed archaeological and historical sites, such as the archaeological site of Brad, which embraces St. Marons tomb in northern Aleppo, which has been on the UNESCO World Archaeological List since 2011. The Turkish regimes mercenaries have committed many crimes against the civilian population. Sources affirmed that last February, terrorist groups uprooted about 1050 olive, cherry and almond trees in the town of Qurna, north of Afrin city, before transporting them to the Turkish territories. Terrorist groups have also set fires in many areas. More than 20,000 fruit trees and tens of hectares of coniferous forests and bushes have been burnt under the pretext of opening the roads that link Afrin area with the usurped Liwa Iskenderun through the village of Hamam, 25 km west of the city, to allow the passage of trucks carrying olives and other materials from Syria, which represents a robbery of the Syrias national resources and properties in broad daylight. The relation between Erdogans regime and the Takfiri mentality is clear to see. They have increased logistical support to ensure the arrival of more terrorists through the Turkish territories to northern Syria in order to prolong the hostile war, while Syria is fighting terrorism on behalf of the world. The final word will come when every inch of the countrys soil is cleared of terrorism and the illegal presence of foreign forces is ended. The Syrian Arab Army will defeat of the terrorists and break the projects of their backers and sponsors. This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. The UN Special Envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, visited the city of Homs, where he met with the mayor of the city and other workers from the UN writes The Syrian National Coalition. The Syrian Negotiations Commission criticized the visit of the UN Special Envoy, Geir Pedersen, to the city of Homs, stressing that his primary task is to, bring the negotiating parties together and force Assad to sit at the negotiating table in Geneva. Pedersen visited the city of Homs during his second official visit to Syria since he took over his role as the UN Special Envoy in January. Pedersen met with the mayor of Homs and the UN team in the region, as well as a shelter for displaced Syrian men, women and children. Mr. Pedersen should focus on his main task, namely to reconcile the parties into negotiations and force Assad to sit at the negotiating table in Geneva to find a solution instead of boasting about visiting the ruins of a city that was destroyed by Assad and his supporters by brutal bombardments in which they used various types of weapons, including chemical weapons, the Syrian Negotiations Commission said in comments on Twitter on Wednesday. Member of the Commission, Ibrahim al-Jibbawi, said that Pedersens visit to Homs and his meeting with its mayor was a provocation to the feelings of the Syrians who had their city reduced to rubble and were forced out of their homes by the sectarian regime, to camps that lack the basic necessities of life. Does Mr. Pederson know that the Assad regime is blocking the UN humanitarian aid to these people and sending it to mercenaries and the militias that are killing the Syrian people, al-Jibbawi said. Did Mr. Pedersen visit an IDP camp in northern Syria or a refugee camp in a neighboring countries? al-Jibbawi asked A number of Arab countries have started to rebuild diplomatic relations with Syria, following their suspension from the Arab League writes Hurriya Press. On Wednesday, Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry announced that his country was not placing conditions on the Assad regime returning to its frozen seat in the Arab League. Shoukry said that, Egypt doesnt have any conditions for Syria (the Assad regime) returning to the Arab League. He added that, Cairo and Damascus have strong ties. The Egyptian minister added, In recent years I have called for the crisis to be contained and for Syria and its people to be spared from the scourge of war, destruction and threats related to the operations of terrorist groups in Syria. Shoukry previously said in a media statement in January that, the failure of the regime government to take the necessary steps (not specified) to maintain security and stability and sovereignty and proceed on the political path to get out of the crisis have made the situation as it is. The Secretary-General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in February that he had not observed the consensus that would lead to foreign ministers agreeing to call for the Assad regime to return to the Arab League. The Arab League halted the Assad regimes membership in November 2011 due to pressure from some Arab countries, especially in the Gulf, after the Assad regimes repression of peaceful protests. Since the Syrian revolution broke out, Arab countries closed a number of their embassies in Damascus, and downgraded their relations with the Assad regime. But a few have called in recent months for the resumption of relations and to restore the regimes membership to the Arab League. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. While President Assad has granted an amnesty to the prisoners, it is dependent on them complete military service reports Alsouria Net. On Wednesday, the Bashar al-Assad regime released about 46 prisoners from the Hama Central Prison in exchange for them agreeing to perform military service and fight alongside the Assad regime, within a month of their release. In a statement to the Russian Sputnik agency, Major General Khalid Halal, the head of police in Hama province, said, The release of this batch of prisoners comes after an amnesty issued by Bashar al-Assad. He said that, those released will return to their families and relatives to participate in the defense of their nation and its interests, because Syria is everyones country, and they must defend it. The public prosecutor for Hama province, Jihad Murad, said that the release of the prisoners comes after they pledged to become, loyal recruits in the defense of the country and its sovereignty. According to an unofficial source, those whose status was settled by presidential pardon will perform compulsory or reserve service in Assads forces within a month of the date of their release. There were 106 prisoners included in the pardon, some of them released a few days ago, after the rulings previously issued against them by field and terrorism courts were amended, with the last batch released today. In recent years, the Hama prison has seen movements by prisoners, most famously the revolt in 2016, when they protested that their right to be released was not being met. They held the prisoner director and city police chief in a rebellion the second of its kind within a month. This prison is the biggest civil prison in Syria, and prisoners there have been able to get their voices into the world after obtaining cell phones in exchange for money. This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. At least 12 Syrians have died overnight at the al-Hol refugee camp homing the families of ISIS fighters reports Al-Araby al-Jadeed. Twelve people died at a Syrian refugee camp housing family members of Islamic State group overnight Wednesday, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has said, as the humanitarian situation in Baghouz worsens. Last night, another 2,000 women and children arrived at al-Hol camp in northeast Syria from Baghouz. Up to 60 arrivals needed immediate hospitalisation and there were another 12 deaths recorded, IRC said in a statement on Thursday. Al-Hol was made famous in the UK after it was revealed to be the location of a British woman Shamima Begum who moved to Islamic State group territories in 2015, with her baby dying shortly after being hospitalised outside the camp. Footage from the camp has shown women and children forced to sleep in the open, despite the bitter cold. Al-Hol is said to be home to 72,000 people, including 40,000 children. Wendy Taeuber, IRCs Iraq and northeast Syria country director, said some of the refugees in the camp are suffering from injuries sustained during the Syrian Democratic Forces battle to take Baghouz camp city. These women and children are in the worst condition we have seen since the crisis first began. Many have been caught up in the fighting and dozens have been burnt or badly injured by shrapnel, she said in the statement. There have now been at least 138 deaths on the way to al-Hol or soon after arriving at the camp since early December. The deaths have overwhelmingly been of babies and infants, IRC said. Thousands of civilians left Baghouz after the SDF surrounded the tent village, which is the last redoubt of IS in eastern Syria. Baghouz has been now been captured by the SDF, who have said they will announce the liberation of the camp once the area has been fully secured. SDF fighters are combing the area for the booby traps and the last IS fighters, who might be holding out in tunnels and trenches around the village on the River Euphrates. Our forces are still conducting combing and search operations and as soon as they are finished we will announce the liberation, Mustafa Bali, spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, said according to Reuters. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author. SNc Channels: Search About Salem-News.com Mar-20-2019 23:16 TweetFollow @OregonNews Letter to Chinese Government Asking for Release of 40 Workers As of today, more than 40 people are still under criminal detention for simply "gathering together". (YORK, UK) - Mr. Li Keqiang, Prime Minister of the Peoples Republic of China, The State Council of the People's Republic of China No. 8, Yuetan South Street, Xicheng District, Beijing Peoples Republic of China 100017 Email: english@mail.gov.cn Dear Prime Minister Li, I am William Gomes, Human Rights defender and Freelance journalist. I am writing to you and your government on behalf of Salem-News.com to strongly condemn the arrests and criminal detentions of some 40 workers, labour rights activists, and their supporters from 2018 to 2019. In the summer of 2018, workers from Jasic Technology, a welding equipment manufacturing factory in Southern China, were dismissed by the company for organizing their own trade union and were later criminally detained by government officials on charges of "Gathering a Crowd to Disturb Social Order". As of today, more than 40 people are still under criminal detention, including workers, while many of them are denied access to lawyers and contact with their families. We would like to express our deep concern to their current conditions and query the legitimacy of their respective arrests, as we deem such arbitrary arrests, detention and subsequent treatment are blatant violations of their basic labour and civil rights. The right to freedom of association is protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 20). And according to Article 2 of International Labour Organization Convention No. 87, workers shall have the right to establish and to join organizations of their own choosing without previous authorization. As a member of the United Nations and ILO, the Peoples Republic of China is obliged to respect and observe the basic principles of freedom of association. Regrettably, your governments recent exercise of state power to suppress the aforementioned workers to organize their own union in accordance with the law and instructions from the upper-level union demonstrated a contrary to such principles. Moreover, we regard Article 9, 10, & 11 of the 1992 China Trade Union Law is in itself a violation of freedom of association. Under such stipulations, trade unions are impossible to be organized independently in accordance to the principles as laid down by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ILO Convention No. 87. Under such circumstances, we would like to call on the Chinese Government to: Immediately release and drop charges against all workers, labour rights activists, and their supporters who are criminally detained for exercising their basic rights to freedom of association; Put an end to the repression and harassment of all labour rights activists and their supporters; Bring all relevant laws of the country in line with international standards and comply with the ILO fundamental principles of freedom of association. Sincerely, William Gomes Journalist and Human Rights Activist York, United Kingdom Twitter: wnicholasgomes Email: william@williamnicholasgomes.com Facebook: facebook.com/williamnicholasgomes2u _________________________________________ Human-rights | Prison | China | Most Commented on Articles for March 20, 2019 | Articles for March 21, 2019 The Undead Archives I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world. The Northern Forest Center has reached its initial goal of raising $1 million in investments for its Millinocket Housing Initiative Fund and has put the money to work directly in the community. The Center created the Millinocket Housing Initiative Fund, its first social and economic impact investment fund, to create quality homes for people who want to make a future in Millinocket. Only two years after the launch of the fund, the Center has purchased six buildings and renovated five, turning dilapidated downtown properties into comfortable, high quality homes. We owe our success to the generous investors who stand with us in supporting the future of Millinocket, said Center President Rob Riley. Were seeing great enthusiasm by individuals and foundations who want to make impact investments to advance the revitalization of our rural communities. Three of the completed renovations were extensive, reconfiguring the living spaces, replacing all windows and insulation, and replacing a roof. In February, the Center began a top-to-bottom renovation on the sixth property at 100 Katahdin Avenue, a grand but long-abandoned home on Veterans Park within an easy walk to downtown stores, the elementary school and the library. The renovation the Centers most ambitious Millinocket renovation project to date will reconfigure the building from five apartments to three. McLaughlin Builders of Medway, Maine, is heading up reconstruction of the building and expects to complete work by August. Its almost impossible to overstate the impact of what the Northern Forest Center has done, said Cody McEwen, chair of the Town Council. The sheer investment in house purchases and subsequent payroll for local labor is huge to a town like Millinocket. Seeing a new roof go on or new siding go up on a building that was an eyesore is a great boost for everyone who passes by it. Housing is one piece of the Centers broader strategy to support a strong and diversified economic future. "The Center weaves together philanthropy, impact investments, and tax credits to complete community revitalization projects, said Celina Adams of Kittery, Maine, who serves as vice president of the Centers Board of directors. As someone who works in philanthropy, I know working with a broad range of capital is unusual and quite powerful. In Millinocket, the Center has combined philanthropy and impact capital for its Housing Initiative and will bring its tax credit expertise to the Memorial Library renovation and Our Katahdin's mill site redevelopment effort. Its amazing what a unified capital approach can accomplish, and it provides so many more entry points for supporters to get involved," said Adams. In addition to the financial resources, the Center is supporting development and improvement of recreational trails, managing building renovations, and helping convert buildings to wood pellet heat, all programs supported by donations and grants. Living in Millinocket has been a wonderful move for me both personally and professionally, said Mike Smith, who lives in one of the Centers renovated homes. Its incredible to be part of a community working so hard to reinvent itself and think creatively about the future. You cant beat the back yard here either, with endless adventure at my doorstep, added Smith, who is program director and COO of the Outdoor Sport Institute. Having this beautiful rental home available from the Center made my transition easy, and its made it easy for my friends and colleagues to experience the area as well. Everyone whos stayed with me has left saying this is awesome, maybe we should be looking at places here too, he said. The Fund has enabled the Center to fill a critical need in Millinocket, but were nowhere near done, said Riley, who announced that the Center is developing a Phase 2 fund for Millinocket that focuses on commercial real estate redevelopment. The Center is also raising a similar fund for community investment in Lancaster, N.H. The Center is paying interest to investors in the funds and will repay the capital at the end of the investment term. The Center welcomes inquiries from people who would like to support Millinockets revitalization efforts. Please contact Lila Trowbridge for more information, or make a donation via the Centers website (https://northernforest.org/donate)or by mail to 18 N. Main Street, Concord, NH 03301. Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship. Luxembourg may be miniscule in size but, let us assure you, its sceneries are worthy of the big screen. Here are some movies that you maybe didnt know were (partly) filmed in the Grand Duchy Luxembourg? Only banks and fields there, right? At least in the movies I mean, a particularly quick-witted acquaintance recently remarked. Admittedly, this furrow-browed assessment of Luxembourgs portrayal within the filmic medium holds true to a certain extent the recent success of Bad Banks or the sporadic references to Luxembourgs allegedly unscrupulous financial establishments in crime series like Noah Hawleys Fargo seem to attest to this view. Even though film crews often flock to the Grand Duchy specifically to capture images of its cityscape and office buildings, there are refreshing exceptions to the rule. Let's take a trip down memory lane. Remember... ...when Emma Watson went skinny-dipping in Mullerthal? In 2014, some of the creme de la creme of international actors made their way to the Grand Duchy. Among others, Britains Emma Watson and German actor Daniel Bruhl filmed several scenes for the historical thriller Colonia. Luxembourgish actress Vicky Krieps, now best known for her role in Oscar-nominated Phantom Thread (2017), also scooped a secondary role in the film. Colonia (2015) Set against the backdrop of the 1973 military coup in Chile, the film recounts the story of Daniel and Lena (Bruhl and Watson), a German couple falling prey to Chiles tumultuous political climate. When Daniel is abducted by Pinochets secret police, Lena is set to rescue her boyfriend. The desperate quest ultimately brings her to the Colonia Dignidad, a sealed-off sect with a diabolical leader. The film received financial support from Film Fund Luxembourg and principal photography began, you guessed it, in Luxembourg. Filming locations in the Grand Duchy include the scenic Little Switzerland Mullerthal region, complete with its iconic Schiessentumpel waterfall (see gallery below). Another notable location is an ancient slate quarry in Haut-Martelange, which currently hosts a slate museum. Watson against Mullerthal backdrop. / Colonia (2015) Luxembourgish actress Vicky Krieps as Ursel. / Majestic / Ricardo Vaz Palma Ever went for a hike here? / Colonia (2015) Colonia (2015) The photos published on this site are subject to copyright and may not be copied, modified, or sold without the prior permission of the owner of the site in question. when Al Pacino and Scarlett Johansson came to Esch aka Venice-sur-Alzette? Quick question: what do the two blockbusters The Merchant of Venice (2004) starring Al Pacino and Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) starring Scarlett Johansson have in common? Even though the two movies vastly differ in content and style, both works feature several scenes that were shot in a miniature version of Venice in Luxembourg! Back in 2001, Italys floating city was rebuilt in a former industrial site in Esch for Bosnian director Ademir Kenovics Secret Passage. Miniature Venice in Luxembourg. / culture.luxembourg.public.lu / SIP The directors of The Merchant of Venice and Girl with a Pearl Earring later reappropriated the same set for their own works. In other words, Al Pacino did not travel to Venice but to the south of Luxembourg to assume the role of Shakespeares Shylock. Al Pacino on set in Esch. / culture.luxembourg.public.lu / Delux Productions The case of Girl with a Pearl Earring is even trickier. How is it possible that a movie that is set in Delft, Holland was filmed in a recreated version of Venice in Luxembourg? On the eve of the film release, novelist Tracy Chevalier shed light on this question in an article for the Guardian: suddenly I was on a plane to visit the set in Luxembourg. Luxembourg? That was one of many surprises about film-making. [] There was a pre-built set in Luxembourg which had been used for a film set in Venice, and with a change of window shape and brick replacing Venetian stone it looked quite Dutch. ...when musketeers and gutsy stuntmen invaded Vianden castle? Film-wise, 2001 was also an eventful year in the north of the Grand Duchy. Vianden castle became one of the main filming locations for Peter Hyamss action film The Musketeer, Luxembourgish film critic Jean-Pierre Thilges tells me. Not everyone was happy at the time, they almost tore down the castle during the film works. Former Vianden mayor Victor Abens was not amused at all, Thilges recalls. Can you spot Vianden's iconic castle in the film trailer? ...when an Oscar-nominated movie was shot in Fond-de-Gras railway park in the south of Luxembourg? Dutch director Ben Sombogaarts 2002 film Twin Sisters recounts the divergent fates of two sisters after they are separated at the tender age of 6. The movie received largely positive reviews and was even nominated for best foreign film at the Oscars in 2004. Once again, the producers decided to shoot several scenes at another iconic location in Luxembourg: the Minett Park Fond-de-Gras near Differdange. Historically, the Fond-de-Gras was one of Luxembourgs most significant mining centers. Even though the last mine closed in 1964, several historic buildings such as the railway station (featuring in Twin Sisters) have been preserved and the site functions as an open-air museum today. A visit is highly recommended! minettpark.lu The list of film locations in Luxembourg goes on. Did you for instance know that a French movie (Laddition) was shot at Schrassig prison before it became operational? And that the producers of An American Werewolf in Paris (1997) actually rebuilt the platform of the Eiffel Tower in an abandoned factory in Wecker? What can we say... small country, big film locations! --- Special thanks to Jean-Pierre Thilges for sharing his broad cinematic knowledge! As publicised by the Ministry of State last week, Luxembourg's newspapers received around 7 million in financial aid from the state in 2018. Online press sources also received around 1 million in financial aid. According to the Ministry of State, press funding is calculated proportionally based on the number of pages produced in a year and has the purpose of supporting the diversity of the Luxembourgish press. The Tageblatt and Luxemburger Wort received the highest amount of funding in 2018, as both papers had the highest number of pages produced in the year. Both received around 1.4 million each. Conversely, the multilingual weekly paper Woxx received the smallest amount of funding at 270,000. As detailed by the ministry, press sources must fill a number of conditions before requesting financial aid. First of all, the newspaper in question must employ at least journalists with permanent contracts and its main language must be Luxembourgish, French, or German. In 2018, ten media sources fulfilled these conditions and correspondingly received financial aid from the state. The print media receives further indirect support through significantly reduced tariffs offered by POST Luxembourg to send and distribute the papers. Papers also receive funding in publishing official notices. Online media sources have been able to apply for state funding as of two years ago. The team requirements are much lower, corresponding to lower amounts of funding. Online media sources only require teams of at least two journalists in order to be eligible for funding. Each year, the state pays out a maximum of 100,000 per online media source. In 2018, 13 pages were able to profit from the funding. The state paid around 1 million in funding last year. Audiovisual media does not fall under the umbrella of press funding according to the legislation. In that sense, RTL does not receive any financial support from the state, but does have a concession agreement in place. The agreement details that the parent company produces television programmes in Luxembourgish and in return does not have to pay the state for the use of radio and television frequencies. Radio 100,7 is completely funded by the state as a public broadcaster and receives around 6 million per year to cover costs. In a parliamentary question to Minister of Health, Etienne Schneider, CSV MP Francoise Hetto-Gaasch queried whether the number of suicides and attempted suicides had risen in recent years in Luxembourg. Schneider responded that the authorities were unable to note that the issue of suicide had risen in Luxembourg. Instead, statistics suggest the trend had dropped. The last available statistics are from 2016 and reveal that 45 individuals killed themselves three years ago. In these 45 cases, the authorities were clearly able to confirm the cause of death was suicide. In a further 16 cases, the cause of death may have been suicide. Compared to the prior year, the statistics reveal that suicide has become a decreasing phenomenon: in 2015, between 64 and 90 individuals took their own lives. However, Dr Franz D'Onghia from the suicide prevention line cautioned against conclusively claiming the tendency has dropped. As Dr D'Onghia explained, the statistics for 2016 are certainly promising, but only reveal as much about the year itself. He went on to say that Luxembourg experiences fluctuations in terms of suicide statistics and the authorities must wait for statistics from 2017 and 2018 before reaching any conclusions. Once those statistics are published, and if they reveal a lower tendency, then the country can conclude that suicide is decreasing. Hetto-Gaasch's parliamentary question also queried the frequency of suicide depending on generations. The minister responded that the fluctuations amongst young people are too large for the authorities to conclusively discuss any tendencies. In 2016, two individuals between the ages of 20 and 29 committed suicides. In the two years before, seven young people killed themselves each year. Dr D'Onghia echoed the minister's sentiment, claiming that suicide is not frequent amongst people aged 25 and under. Instead, the demographic with the highest number of suicides is the group of people aged 75 and above. Statistics from the years 2000 to 2016 reveal that the risk of suicide is five to six times higher amongst seniors than amongst young people under the age of 20. There are 32 suicides per 100,000 residents in the senior demographic, compared to 5 per 100,000 in the demographic of 15 to 19 year olds. However, suicide and suicidal thoughts remain an issue amongst young people. As Dr D'Onghia explains, even if younger people do not commit suicide, they can still be suicide. Further to that, many younger people do attempt to commit suicide. In 2015, the LIGUE (Ligue Luxembourgeoise dHygiene Mentale - Luxembourgish League for Mental Health) launched a new national suicide prevention plan, which consisted of 33 activities, including first aid courses for mental health issues and guidance to talk individuals out of attempting suicide. With an emphasis on prevention, the LIGUE has also organised sessions and guides for schools, to explain how to deal with the topic. The plan was approved by the government council in July 2015, but according to Dr D'Onghia, without the statistics from more recent years, it is difficult to conclude the success rate of the plan. If you are having suicidal thoughts or know anybody struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can access help by contacting Prevention Suicide, SOS Detresse (45 45 45), or the Children and Youth phone line (116 111). On Wednesday, the trial against a 62-year-old father accused of raping his three daughters on multiple occasions continued. Two of the daughters testified in tears on Wednesday as their father's lawyer questioned their accounts. The defendant stands accused of having raped three of his children on multiple occasions between August 2006 and April 2012. The two daughters testifying on Wednesday tearfully told the court how their father raped them both in the Philippines and in Luxembourg. Just over 13 years ago, the four children - three daughters and a son - joined their father in Luxembourg for a better life. As a now 32-year-old victim told the court, everything had been fine at the beginning, although they did not get on with their father as it had been a long time since they had lived with him. The 32-year-old woman was 19 when she says that she was raped by her father. In August 2006, the father had asked his children and stepchildren to sleep in the living room. The victim told how she woke up, as she felt that she was being touched in intimate places. Initially, she thought she had been dreaming up until the defendant penetrated her. She told the court how she then asked him why he had touched her, and he simply shrugged the whole incident off. That same evening, he raped her again, threatening her to comply. According to the victim's testimony, she was shocked, as this was her father abusing her. The defendant went to great lengths to ensure the assault would occur when the house was empty and put on a front to the world as if she was his favourite daughter. As she told the court previously, she had attempted suicide, become pregnant, and aborted the foetus according to his wishes. He then sent her to the Philippines for her studies, but continued to rape her when he visited her. The main victim told the court that she filed charges against her father, as her two sisters said he had done "terrible things" to them and her rape continued until 2012. Her youngest sister, now aged 24, told the court her assault began in 2008. When she was first raped, the father used a condom and threatened her. She had been ill at home and had screamed for help, but nobody had been home. The second victim told the court she tried to suppress some of her memories and that the defendant had attempted to rape her in the Philippines too. As he began assaulting the third sister, the two vowed to leave the home. The defendant's lawyer, Roby Schons, questioned the two sisters' testimonies at court. The trial continues on Thursday afternoon. Seguin, TX (78155) Today Cloudy and windy this morning, becoming partly cloudy this afternoon. High near 60F. Winds NNE at 20 to 30 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.. Tonight Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 34F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang's Regular Press Conference on March 21, 2019 2019/03/21 Q: Tsai Ing-wen will "stop over" in Hawaii on her "diplomatic tour" next week. Has China already complained to the US about this? A: The one-China principle is a universal consensus of the international community. Any attempt to create "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan" will be opposed by all Chinese people. As to the so-called "stopover" issue of the Taiwan leader in the US, China has stated its position repeatedly and lodged stern representations with the US side. We firmly oppose the arrangement of such "stopovers" by the US or any other country having diplomatic ties with China. This position is clear and resolute. We urge the US to abide by the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, not to allow Tsai Ing-wen to "stop over", refrain from sending out any wrong signal to Taiwan-independence forces, and to uphold China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits through concrete actions. Q: US Department of State said that the US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation will host his Russian, Chinese and EU counterparts for talks on the Afghan reconciliation issue in Washington D.C. from March 21 to 22. It is said that the Special Envoy for Afghan Affairs of the Chinese Foreign Ministry Deng Xijun will attend the talks. Do you have more details? A: I don't know any more than you do. (The journalist laughed.) The Chinese Foreign Ministry's Special Envoy for Afghan Affairs Deng Xijun will attend the meeting on the Afghan issue in the US. China supports Afghanistan in advancing the peace and reconciliation process and achieving lasting peace, reconstruction and development of the nation at an early date. We stay in close communication with the US, Russia and other relevant parties on theis issue. We will release the readout regarding Special Envoy Deng Xijun's attendance at the meeting in a timely manner. Q: Mozambique recently has been hit by tropical cyclone Idai. Considering the good relations between the two countries, is China sending any assistance or any help? Are there any Chinese among the victims? A: The recent tropical cyclone has caused great casualties and property loss in Mozambique. China expresses its sympathy over this and condolences to the victims. We hope that the injured will recover and the displaced could return to their homes at an early date. President Xi Jinping has sent the message of condolences to President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique. Mozambique is China's traditional friend and comprehensive strategic partner for cooperation in Africa. The Chinese government stands ready to do its best to support and assist in Mozambique's disaster relief efforts in accordance with their needs. You asked about how the Chinese citizens have been affected. So far, we have not received any information of Chinese citizens injured or killed in the disaster. Q: An Indian company is going to spend 3.85 billion dollars on an oil refinery in southern Sri Lanka near to Hambantota, which is a huge investment for Sri Lanka. The Hambantota port is an important cooperation project of the Belt and Road. Does this represent a challenge to Chinese investments in the country by India? Is there a strategic competition between India and China in Sri Lanka at the moment? A: Thank you for your keen interest in China's foreign affairs. You seem always busy worrying for us. I am not yet aware of the information you mentioned and will need to check whether it is true. I would like to say though that, China and Sri Lanka have conducted extensive and deep cooperation in various fields under the Belt and Road Initiative with fruitful results. The Hambantota project you mentioned is a good case in point. Through such mutually beneficial cooperation, China has been helping with Sri Lanka's economic and social development. Sri Lanka appreciates and commends what China has done. At the same time, China adopts an open attitude toward the mutually beneficial cooperation between Sri Lanka and India as well as other parties. China stands ready to work with India and other relevant sides to help boost Sri Lanka's development. In foreign relations, China is more broad-minded than you might have imagined. Q: Russian Foreign Ministry yesterday in a published statement said that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mr. Bogdanov met with Special Representative of the Chinese Government on the Syrian Issue Xie Xiaoyan. I wonder if you could give us more details on the meeting? Also, Russian Foreign Minister expressed satisfaction with the coordination with China on Syria. I wonder what is your comment on that? A: I happen to know a little bit more than you do on this issue. (The journalist laughed.) China and Russia, as permanent members of the UN Security Council and comprehensive strategic partners of coordination, maintain close communication and coordination on international and regional affairs, which has contributed significantly to world peace, stability and development. The Syrian issue has seen some major developments, bringing new opportunities for political settlement. A few days ago, Special Representative of the Chinese Government on the Syrian Issue Xie Xiaoyan attended the "Supporting the Future of Syria and the Region" Brussels III Conference and visited Jordan and Russia afterwards. He met with Russian Presidential Special Representative for the Middle East and Africa and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin, had in-depth exchange of views on facilitating the political settlement in light of the new circumstances of the Syrian issue and reached wide-ranging consensus. On the Syrian issue, China and Russia stand for upholding Syria's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and believe that the future of Syria must be determined independently by the Syrian people. Both call on all parties concerned to engage in inclusive political dialogue to seek a solution that is consistent with Syria's reality and accommodates all sides' concerns. China stands ready to work with Russia and other relevant parties of the international community to play an active and constructive role in the early and proper settlement of this issue. Q: Chinese President Xi Jinping met with the President of Harvard University Lawrence Bacow in Beijing yesterday afternoon. We noticed that recently, Chinese leaders have met with many guests from US companies, think tanks and academic institutions. What is your take on the current people-to-people and cultural exchanges between China and the US? A: Yesterday, President Xi Jinping met with President of Harvard University Lawrence Bacow. The two sides exchanged views on China-US relations and exchanges and cooperation in education and other people-to-people and cultural fields. President Xi Jinping commended Mr. Bacow choosing China as the destination of his first overseas visit after taking office, and said that education exchanges and cooperation are an important part of China-US relations that help enhance the public opinion of the bilateral friendship. President Xi Jinping said that China is willing to conduct more extensive exchanges and cooperation with US educational and research institutions such as Harvard University. Mr. Bacow said he was visiting not only as the President of Harvard University but also as a representative of US universities to promote education exchanges with China. He said maintaining and deepening exchanges and cooperation between the two countries' education and cultural institutions is crucial to promoting US-China relations in the long run. We appreciate these remarks by Mr. Bacow. Friendship between two countries is rooted in the people and is fostered through exchanges. For a long time, commercial, educational, cultural and academic institutions on the two sides keep close exchanges and cooperation, and people from all walks of life in China and the US keep frequent exchanges, with over five million visits made between the two sides each year. According to my information, many US business leaders and prominent scholars will attend the China Development Forum in Beijing this Saturday. Later, many former US government officials, business leaders and think tank scholars will come to China for the Boao Forum for Asia and the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. We welcome them all. China and the US should work together to create favorable conditions for and facilitate bilateral people-to-people and cultural exchanges, enhance mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples and the public opinion for the steady development of China-US relations. Q: US President Trump said that they are not talking about removing tariffs on China, but leaving them for a substantial period of time. They have to make sure that if they make the deal with China, China will live by it. What's your comment? A: We hope that the economic and trade teams of the two sides will follow the important instructions of the two heads of state, accelerate the talks and reach a mutually beneficial agreement on the basis of mutual respect. In fact, the consultations have made substantive progress. I would like to refer you to the Ministry of Commerce for the specifics. Q: We have seen a recent report that says several EU diplomats have been invited to Xinjiang. Can we know how many have accepted the invitation and when is this visit going to be? A: Is that a report from Reuters? China is planning on inviting European diplomats posted in China to visit Xinjiang soon with a view to offering a clearer picture of Xinjiang's economic and social development and facilitating China-Europe exchange and cooperation. The exact dates and itinerary are still being worked out. We hope that the visit will give European diplomats a first-hand experience of how people of various ethnic groups in Xinjiang work and live together in tranquility and prosperity. Q: I asked earlier in the week about the strict testing regime for coal coming into China. Do you have more details? Is there a plan by China to extend the testing regime to other minerals coming into China? A: You have been closely following Australia's coal export to China for a while. You asked about this issue the other day and I gave you my reply. With a responsible attitude, we have reached out to the relevant authorities for specifics after the press conference. Let me share with you some authoritative information from the General Administration of Customs. In order to effectively curb the imports of inferior coal, the Chinese customs has conducted radioactive detection, foreign inclusion inspection and the testing for eight environmental standards on all imported coal and return all those fail to meet the environmental standards in accordance with the requirements of a series of technical regulations, rules and standards in the Interim Measures for the Administration of Commercial Coal Quality, the Measures on the Administration of Import and Export Coal Inspections, the Activity Concentration For Material Not Requiring Radiological Regulation and the Technical Regulation on the Control and Supervision of Foreign Inclusion in Imported Coal. The inspection and quarantine standards applied to imported coal by the Chinese customs is unified and compliant with relevant regulations. Q: According to reports, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said before meeting with Israeli Prime Minister that he would talk with Israel about joining hands to counter Iran, Russia and China. What's your comment? A: China and Israel have established innovative comprehensive partnership. In recent years, the relationship between China and Israel has been developing with sound momentum as evidenced by frequent high-level visits and steady progress in the practical cooperation across the board. The development of China-Israel relations does not target any third party, nor will it affect the cooperation between Israel and other countries. This is also what we hope the US will do. We hope it will abandon the cold-war mentality and the zero-sum mindset and develop relations with other countries for win-win cooperation. Bethany Gallagher, a freshman at Florida Atlantic University, came out right before she graduated high school. Because of the timing, she went through all four years without joining an LGBT club or organization. But that changed when she arrived at FAU when its first LGBT-centered and gender-neutral Greek life organization, Lambda Alpha Lambda (LAL), was created. After coming to college, I can really embrace this and present myself how I want to be and how I want to identify myself, Gallagher said. ... I wasnt out to my family and didnt have an outlet to meet like-minded people and be able to talk about certain things. USA Today. Founder and President Gabby Miernik started the organization last August for students like Gallagher, now the director of finance, who were looking for an accepting club on campus. Theres a variety of [LGBT-focused Greek organizations] out there, but some are just for gay men, some for lesbian women, some for transgender and non-binary people, Miernik said. But I felt like starting out here at FAU, I had to create one that was inclusive to all. Because of the organizations inclusivity to more than one gender, theyre called a diaternity rather than a fraternity or a sorority. Some of the few things they have in common with traditional Greek organizations are their community service and philanthropy. Since their community service is LGBT-based, theyve volunteered for Human Rights Campaign, Equality Florida, Poverello, and more. Last semester, they also raised roughly $500 for The Trevor Project. This years philanthropy project will be fundraising for the National Center for Transgender Equality. Vice President Savannah Havens favorite part of the diaternity is everybodys passion for volunteering. Were so tight-knit and one of the main things that bind us together is that we all want to be active in our community, Havens said. [LAL] gives me an outlet to be active in the community, to be part of something bigger than myself. Theres only about ten members, which is miniscule compared to other FAU fraternities and sororities participation in the dozens, but Miernik said this helps meet the needs of each member and creates a more intimate family. By giving more people access to Greek life, Gallagher said this leads to more diversity which is a good thing. I feel like sororities and fraternities are like carbon copies of the same person, she said. For some of us, the only similar thing about us is that we all identify as LGBTQ. Another thing the diaternity is proud of is its all-female executive board, or leadership team, which they agreed gives women more representation. Were making campus a better place, Miernik said, and giving everybody a spot. HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT The Consulate General of India has recently organized an event to boost Indian tourism in Ho Chi Minh City, with the participation of Vietnamese and Indian companies and officials. The diplomatic body held the Visit Incredible India in 2019 B2B meeting at Sofitel Saigon Plaza in District 1 on Wednesday, it said in a press release the same day. The event was intended to invite Vietnamese visitors to experience the different flavors of Indian culture, cuisine, bountiful nature, and religious pilgrimages while imploring the travel industry to boost the bilateral people-to-people exchange in line with the guidance given by the leaders of Vietnam and India. The B2B meetings between Indian and Vietnamese tour operators started the proceedings, as about 35 Vietnamese companies interacted with 15 major tour operators from India. While Nguyen Thi Anh Hoa, deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Department represented the local government, whereas Tran Hung Viet, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Tourism Association, and Most Venerable Dr. Thich Thien Tam, vice-president of the Executive Council of the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha (VBS) also spoke at the event. Officials from the tourism departments of several provinces from southern Vietnam participated in the Visit Incredible India in 2019 as well. Impressive classical Indian cultural and yoga performances dotted the event. Dr. K Srikar Reddy, Consul General of India, highlighted the historical and civilizational links between the two countries. There has been a regular exchange of bilateral high-level visits between Vietnam and India. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Vietnam in September 2016; Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc paid an official visit to India in January 2018 to participate in the ASEAN-India commemorative summit in New Delhi; Tran Dai Quang, late president of Vietnam, paid a state visit to India in March 2018; and Indian President Ram Nath Kovind was on a business trip in Vietnam from November 18 to 20, 2018. Leaders of both countries have seen close tourism cooperation and people-to-people relations as a key element of Vietnam and Indias comprehensive strategic partnership, established in September 2016. Indian Minister for Tourism Shri. K. J. Alphons visited Vietnam and attended the Seventh Meeting of Tourism Ministers of ASEAN and India in Ha Long City on January 18, 2019. During the meeting, the ministers launched the ASEAN-India Tourism Cooperation Year 2019, and looked forward to enhancing cooperation with a view to increasing two-way tourist visits and promoting greater people-to-people exchanges between the grouping and India. India is renowned for its cultural, historical, religious, and natural heritage and offers unique experiences to visitors. The South Asian country offers geographical diversity, attractive beaches, 37 World Heritage Sites, and 25 bio-geographic zones. Indias diverse traditions, lifestyles, colorful fairs, and festivals promise a vast variety of choices for tourists. In 2017, foreign tourist arrivals in India topped 10 million, a year-on-year growth rate of 14 percent, while its foreign exchange earnings (FEEs) through tourism were worth US$27.31 billion. In 2018, there were 31,408 Vietnamese visits to India, up 32 percent against 2017. Although the number of visitors for tourism purposes between both countries has shown a considerable increase in recent years, it is still well below the potential. More than 23.94 million Indian tourists traveled abroad in 2017 and about two million Indians visited other ASEAN countries the same year. Vietnamese and Indian businesses meet at the Visit Incredible India in 2019 event in Ho Chi Minh City on March 20, 2019. Photo: Consulate General of India According to the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), outbound Indian tourists will have reached 50 million by 2020. A Euromonitor report put the number of Vietnamese traveling abroad at 7.5 million in 2017. These significant numbers of outbound tourists both from India and Vietnam are an indicator of the untapped market. Hoa, the tourism deputy director, said that India ranks 11th among Ho Chi Minh City's top 20 tourist source markets. By the end of 2018, the number of Indian visitors to Ho Chi Minh City had surpassed 103,000, a rise of nearly 81 percent compared to 2017 and accounting for about 50 percent of the total number of Indians visiting Vietnam. Sudeshna Ramkumar, assistant director of the Indian Tourism Office in Singapore, gave a presentation on various touristic sites, including ancient Buddhist heritage locations associated with the life of Lord Buddha, Indias temples, palaces and forts. The Indian Buddhist Heritage is of great interest to the followers of Buddhism the world over. India is also the land of yoga and Ayurveda and a sought-after destination for wellness and healthcare travel. The country climbed from 7th in 2017 to 3rd in 2018 in the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) Power and Performance index. Ramkumar said that the government of India values the safety and security of both domestic and international tourists traveling in India as its topmost priority. A 24/7 toll-free tourist helpline in 12 international languages has been launched in India. This helpline is available at the existing toll-free number 1800-11-1363 or at the short code 1363 for dialling in India. The Indian Ministry of Tourism has also taken steps to sensitize drivers, guides and other stakeholders to highlight the theme of Atithi Devo Bhava, which means Guest is God. The liberalized visa regime provides easy access for visitors. Vietnamese tourists are increasingly using the e-visa facility and this will maintain its upward swing. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (Petrovietnam) and Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas held a Head of Agreement (HOA) signing ceremony for the sale and purchase of gas to the Ca Mau - Vietnam area on March 15. Attending the ceremony were representatives of Vietnams Government Office, the State Capital Management Committee, and the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Petrovietnam was represented by Tran Sy Thanh, member of the companys Party Committee and chairman of the board of directors. He was joined by other members of the board of directors and the executive management board, and heads of different divisions and the administration office. The attendees also included heads of such Petrovietnam units as Petrovietnam Power Corporation (PV Power), PetroVietnam Ca Mau Fertilizer Joint Stock Company (PVCFC), and PV Gas. Petronas was represented by vice president Maliki Kamal Yasin, Muhammad Zamri Jusoh, vice director of the Petroleum Operations Management Committee, and some heads of division. Nguyen Quoc Thap, vice president of Petrovietnam, delivers a speech at the event. Representatives of Petrovietnam and Petronas signed the Head of Agreement in the presence of the two sides leaders. In 2001, the Vietnamese government decided to invest in the construction of the Ca Mau Gas - Power - Fertilizer Complex in Khanh An Commune, U Minh District, Ca Mau Province to meet a demand for gas consumption of 2.2 billion cubic meters a year. The Ca Mau Gas - Power - Fertilizer Complex uses natural gas from Block PM3CAA in the overlapping area offshore Vietnam and Malaysia. From 2007 to now, the gas supply to this area includes the amount received under Petrovietnam's exploitation rights and the amount received from Petronas as per the Contract for Division of Products of Block PM3CAA (PSC PM3CAA). Thanks to Petronas' close cooperation in the implementation of the gas sales contract, Petrovietnam is always given priority to maximize gas demand during the dry season and the Vietnamese company will receive support from its Malaysian partner to deal with excess gas in the dry season. Therefore, during the past time, this modern complex in Ca Mau has operated safely and stably, bringing not only efficiency to Petrovietnams operations but also the economic and social significance for Vietnams Mekong Delta in the southwestern region. Maliki Kamal Yasin, vice president of Petronas, delivers a speech at the event. It is expected that from late 2019 and early 2020, the Ca Mau Gas - Power - Fertilizer Complex will only be supplied with gas sourced as per Vietnams exploitation rights in the area, resulting in a supply shortage of more than one million cubic meters a year. Therefore, it is necessary to have additional gas sources for the Ca Mau Gas - Power Fertilizer Complex to ensure energy security of the region in general and the economic efficiency of the facility in particular. Under the close guidance of the Vietnamese government, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, and relevant ministries and sectors, Petrovietnam and Petronas agreed to sign an HOA for additional gas sales for the Ca Mau - Vietnam area, with supplies from the amount Petronas has the right to exploit in the area, and from other sources in Malaysia. Under the agreement, both sides will continue to negotiate the Gas Sales Contract to supply additional gas for Ca Mau Gas - Electricity Fertilizer Complex to continue stable and efficient operations. The HOA signing not only reflects the vital meaning of Ca Mau Gas - Electricity - Fertilizer Complex but also ensures the socio-economic development of the southwestern region and plays an important part in ensuring national energy security. The signing ceremony marks a new development in Petrovietnam and Petronas relations Speaking at the signing ceremony, Petrovietnam vice president Nguyen Quoc Thap thanked Petronas leaders, relevant agencies of Malaysia, as well as the agencies of Vietnam and the two sides' negotiation teams for their effort to have worked for months to reach the final signature. He affirmed that it was an important event that contributed to realizing and demonstrating the effective cooperation between Petrovietnam and Petronas. The HOA closing was also an important ground for the two sides to continue to complete the full contract for additional gas sale and purchase to serve the operation of Ca Mau Gas - Power - Fertilizer Complex. With the tradition of good cooperation as well as the results achieved in the HOA negotiation process, Petrovietnam wished that the full agreement will soon be signed, preferably by the end of 2019 to pave the way for the implementation in early 2020. Petronas vice president Maliki Kamal Yasin also thanked the negotiation team and the leaders of the two countries. He confirmed the signing was a good first step for the two parties to ink the next contracts. Nguyen Anh Phong, a 41-year-old Ho Chi Minh City resident, has spent the last seven years of his life helping HIV patients in the citys Cu Chi District cope with the fear and social stigma of living with the disease. Phong first got involved with HIV patient outreach in 2008, when he joined a 15-member group whose primary goal was to limit the disease from spreading between high-risk individuals, such as sex workers and drug users, by collecting used syringes and handing out condoms. When he became the groups leader two years later, he redrew their approach to HIV outreach to include better organized activities and cooperative programs with the Ho Chi Minh City governments HIV prevention agency. Though busy with the small office supplies firm he operates to support himself and his mother, Phong still finds the time to fundraise and offer counseling for the organization both of which often lead him to situations that would dispirit even the most enthusiastic works. Once, a family went so far as to sue him after their son, an HIV patient, committed suicide the same night Phong had met with him to offer counseling on the importance of using HIV medications. According to Phong, the most difficult aspect of HIV counseling is building trust in infected patients, many of whom are very guarded due to the social stigma of living with the disease. Once I convince them to sit down and listen, they usually take my advice and come to the realization that they are able to live relatively normal lives, he explained. Most HIV patients really just need someone to talk to. We sit together, hold hands, and drink water. Those simple acts can bring them great happiness. Phong says his ultimate goal is to generate a positive outlook and provide encouragement to those living with HIV. Ive met too many people living with HIV who are despondent. They act as if the sky were going to fall and refuse to take their medicine. What they need is a lifeline, and its important to throw them one, he said. And Phong has been successful in throwing lifelines. Phong shared the story of a male prostitute in Ho Chi Minh City who, in an act of revenge, attempted to transmit the HIV virus to as many sexual partners as possible because he himself had contracted the disease from a partner. But with Phongs intervention, the man realized how important it was to inform his victims and suggest that they get tested. In another case, Phong convinced a retired doctor to cover the medical expenses of a family of three who all had been diagnosed with HIV. They now live very happily, like any other family, he shared. For Phong, offering free counseling is an essential part of life, and his service is not lost on the community. Last year, he was recognized as a hero by the Asia Pacific Coalition for Male Sexual Health. But even with his success, Phong says society is still far from tearing down the walls of discrimination which surround Vietnams HIV-positive community. Its exceedingly difficult to change social opinions. I can only do my best and hope that everyone around me develops sympathy for those living with HIV. "Being supportive and doing good deeds can help remove the stigma. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! BRUSSELS -- The European Union will discuss a more defensive strategy on China on Thursday, potentially signaling an end to the unfettered access that Chinese business has enjoyed in Europe but which Beijing has failed to reciprocate. Caught between a new U.S.-Chinese rivalry for economic and military power, EU leaders will try to find a middle path during a summit dinner in Brussels, the first time they have discussed at the highest level how to deal with Beijing. We are fully open, European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen said of the EUs economy. China is not, and it raises lots of questions, Katainen told Reuters, arguing that the worlds second-largest economy could no longer claim special status as a developing country. Meeting as Chinese President Xi Jinping starts a tour of France and Italy, EU leaders - who have often been divided over China - want to present a united front ahead of an EU-China summit on April 9. According to a draft April summit statement seen by Reuters, the EU is seeking to set deadlines for China to make good on trade and investment pledges that have been repeatedly pushed back, although Beijing must still agree to the final text. That was a message delivered to State Councillor Wang Yi by EU foreign ministers on Monday. It marked a shift toward what EU diplomats say is a more assertive and competitive mindset. In the past, it has been extremely difficult for the EU to formulate a clear strategy on China, and past policy documents have not been strategically coherent, said Duncan Freeman at the EU-China Research Centre at the College of Europe. There is now a clear effort to do that. In a document to prepare the EU summit, the European Commission called China a systemic rival. U.S. President Donald Trumps campaign to warn against Huawei telecommunications equipment in next-generation wireless networks has accelerated EU discussions about its position. The deepest tensions lie around Chinas slowness to open up its economy, a surge of Chinese takeovers in critical sectors and an impression that Beijing has not stood up for free trade. Germany is key With over a billion euros a day in bilateral trade, the EU is Chinas top trading partner, while China is second only to the United States as a market for European goods and services. Chinese trade restrictions are more severe than EU barriers in almost every economic sector, according to research firm Rhodium Group and the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Unlike the United States, which has a naval fleet based in Japan to wield influence over the region, the EU lacks any military power to confront China, so its approach is technical. But any new EU policies could prove complicated to implement, as EU capitals continue to court Chinese investment. Italy plans to join Chinas multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure project, while free-traders Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands are wary of any restrictions on commerce. Germanys views will be important as Berlin has at times pressed for a tougher response to unfair competition from Chinese rivals but also championed a closer relationship with Beijing. Their position needs to stabilize. At the moment it changes on almost every day of the week, the senior envoy said. TOKYO -- When a young Vietnamese woman found out late last year that she was pregnant after arriving in Japan on a technical trainee visa, she was given a stark choice: Have an abortion or go back to Vietnam. But returning home would leave her unable to pay back the $10,000 she borrowed to pay recruiters there. She needs to stay to pay back her debts, said Shiro Sasaki, secretary general of the Zentoitsu (All United) Workers Union, who has advocated on her behalf and said such threats were common. Buoyed by hopes of higher wages but burdened by loans, Vietnamese youth - the fastest-growing group of foreign workers in Japan - will be among those most affected by a new scheme to let in more blue-collar workers that kicks off in April. Trainees from China have been declining as wages there rise with economic growth, while in Vietnam, unemployment is high for youth with high education levels, so many young people want to go abroad to work, said Futaba Ishizuka, a research fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies, a think tank. The technical trainee program is widely known as a back door for blue-collar labor in immigration-shy Japan. Reported abuses in Japan include low and unpaid wages, excessive hours, violence and sexual harassment. In Vietnam, unscrupulous recruiters and brokers often charge trainees exorbitant fees. Such problems will persist and could worsen under the new system, aimed at easing a historic labor shortage, according to interviews with activists, academics, unionists and trainees. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose conservative base fears a rise in crime and a threat to the countrys social fabric, has insisted that the new law, enacted in December, does not constitute an immigration policy. That worries critics. In fact, Japan is already a country of immigrants. But because they say it is not an immigration policy and the premise is that people will not stay, they only take temporary steps, said Japan Civil Liberties Union director Akira Hatate. The needs of society are not met, and the needs of the workers are not met. Growing numbers The trainees system began in 1993 with the aim of transferring skills to workers from developing countries. But persistent abuses developed early on, experts say. Those issues were spotlighted last year during debate over the new law. Among the high-profile cases was that of four companies using trainees for decontamination work in areas affected by radiation after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Two firms, also accused of not paying appropriate wages, were banned from employing trainees for five years; the others got warnings from the justice ministry. A labor ministry survey published in June showed more than 70 percent of trainee employers had violated labor rules, with excessive hours and safety problems most common. That compared to 66 percent for employers overall. The Organization for Technical Intern Training (OTIT), a watchdog group, was set up in 2017. This month, it issued a reminder to employers that trainees are covered by Japanese labor law. It specifically banned unfair treatment of pregnant workers. Harsh conditions led more than 7,000 trainees to quit in 2017, experts say, many lured by shady brokers promising fake documentation and higher-paying jobs. Almost half were from Vietnam. Because trainees are not permitted to switch employers, leaving their jobs usually means losing legal visa status. A few go to shelters run by non-profit groups or get help from unionists; many disappear into a labor black market. The situation is completely different from what they were told back home, said Shigeru Yamashita, managing director of the Vietnam Mutual Aid Association in Japan. They have debts they cannot repay with their salaries at home, so the only option is to flee into the black market for labor. Addressing shortages The new law will allow about 345,000 blue-collar workers to enter Japan over five years in 14 sectors such as construction and nursing care, which face acute labor shortages. One category of specified skilled workers can stay up to five years but cannot bring families. A second category of visas - currently limited to the construction and shipbuilding industries - allows workers to bring families and be eligible to stay longer. Nguyen Thi Thuy Phuong, 29, left her husband and elementary-school-age child home in Vietnam to work as a trainee in a knitwear factory in Mitsuke City in northern Japan. The textile industry was not included in the new visa program after coming under fire for the high number of labor violations in its trainee programs. Now she wishes she could bring her family and stay longer than three years. Life in Japan is convenient, and the air is clean, she told Reuters in careful Japanese during a break from work. For-profit employment agencies and individuals can register as liaisons between recruiters and employers. These registered support organizations will not need licenses. Immigration authorities will provide oversight of the new foreign workers; the labor ministrys immigration bureau will become an agency on April 1, a bureaucratic distinction that gives it more clout. On Friday, the justice ministry issued fresh rules for the new system, including a requirement that foreign workers be paid at least as much as Japanese employees. But Sasaki said the agencys focus would be residence status, not labor conditions. Some companies have woken up to the risk of losing investors if they or their suppliers violate workers rights, said Japan Civil Liberties Unions Hatate. But the rush to implement the new law has left local authorities worried that too little has been done to support and integrate more foreigners. If there is not a proper framework to accept them and they are thought of as purely a way to fill the labor shortage, for certain there will be major problems, Yuji Kuroiwa, governor of Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo, told Reuters. Takashi Takayama, whose Vietnamese name is Cao Son Quy, left Vietnam in 1979. He recalled how foreigners were laid off in droves after the 2008 global financial crisis and fears a similar scenario when demand for labor eases after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. When the Olympics are over, I think a tragic event will occur, Takayama said at a Vietnamese New Year celebration at a Catholic church outside Tokyo. I dont want to see that. Several unique paintings and multimedia installations created by American artist Mark Cooper and French-Vietnamese artist Vu Trong Thuan are on display in the central city of Da Nang from now until late April. The exhibition entitled Bridge is being held in conjunction with the Da Nang Fine Arts Museum until April 20 and features 35 multimedia artworks which highlight a harmonious interaction between installation techniques, materials, cultural imprints, and the artists ideas. The main idea behind the works is to emphasize each individual pieces role in forming a larger artwork, according to Mark Cooper. This is a metaphor that if we work together, great things can happen, the American artist said of the exhibition that kicked off on Wednesday. Alongside Cooper, Vietnamese artist Thuan is debuting newly-created pieces at the event, including Moon," Storm," and Boat." Cooper, who currently lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts, in the U.S., is known worldwide for his large-scale installations. His work has been displayed in exhibitions around the world, including in Vietnam, China, England, France, and Austria. Vu Trong Thuan spent many years in France before returning to Vietnam to fulfill his passion for art. Thuan is credited as a major contributor to Da Nangs art scene and is known for his large-scale abstract paintings in lacquer and mixed acrylic materials. Below are some photos from the ongoing exhibition in Da Nang: A ceramic pot installation by Mark Cooper. Photo: Doan Nhan / Tuoi Tre Paintings and installations are on display at the Da Nang Fine Arts Museum. Photo: Doan Nhan / Tuoi Tre A synthetic-paper lotus installation by Mark Cooper. Photo: Doan Nhan / Tuoi Tre Paintings and installations are on display at the Da Nang Fine Arts Museum. Photo: Doan Nhan / Tuoi Tre Paintings and installations are on display at the Da Nang Fine Arts Museum. Photo: Doan Nhan / Tuoi Tre Paintings and installations are on display at the Da Nang Fine Arts Museum. Photo: Doan Nhan / Tuoi Tre The acrylic painting Summer Noon by Vu Trong Thuan The acrylic painting Moon by Vu Trong Thuan The acrylic painting Boat by Vu Trong Thuan The acrylic painting Storm by Vu Trong Thuan Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Police in Vietnam have just seized approximately 300 kilograms of crystal meth and arrested several suspects in their bust on a large-scale drug ring comprised of Vietnamese, Chinese, and Laotian nationals. Officers caught the suspects transporting the crystal meth on a pickup truck in Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday afternoon a serious breakthrough in their months-long investigation. The bust was the result of a joint effort by officers under the Ministry of Public Security, the anti-smuggling unit of the General Department of Vietnam Customs, and other police departments in Ho Chi Minh City, the Central Highlands province of Dak Nong, and Tay Ninh and Bing Duong Provinces in southern Vietnam. The same day, law enforcement also inspected five warehouses in Ho Chi Minh City and Dak Nong which they suspected were connected to the ring. A total of 11 suspects, including eight Chinese nationals and three Vietnamese, were apprehended in the raid. According to officers, the ring members have been smuggling narcotics from Laos into Vietnam via the Bo Y Border Gate in the Central Highlands province of Kon Tum. The group purchased the products from Laotian individuals and brought them into Vietnam to either distribute domestically or to ship to a third country. Police are continuing their investigation into the case. Vietnam enforces a very harsh drug law, as anyone caught with over 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kilos of methamphetamine can face the death penalty. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A woman identified as being of U.S. nationality climbed on top of an overpass near Hanoi-based Noi Bai International Airport, going naked and dived off it to death on Thursday morning. The incident happened at around 10:20 am along the overpass on Vo Nguyen Giap Street near the airport. The foreign woman was showing some abnormal signs and appeared to be high on drugs when she climbed on the railing of the overpass, according to eyewitnesses. She then took off her clothes and threw herself off the structure. The woman was found unconscious after the fall, with her head severely bleeding. A traffic police unit and district-level officers quickly arrived at the scene and rushed her to the hospital, but she was pronounced dead on arrival. The victim left behind her clothes and personal documents, which showed that she was a 32-year-old American citizen. Local authorities are continuing their investigation into the case. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A locomotive was forced to wait nearly an hour for a parked car to be removed from the track near the train station in Da Nang on Wednesday. The car, registered in the neighboring province of Quang Nam, was found parked on the two-kilometer railway line used by locomotives to reverse directions before pulling up at the platform in the citys Thanh Khe District. The car owner was booked for a penalty although the parking posed no danger, the head of the Da Nang train terminal Nguyen Nhan told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper. A locomotive stops as a car is parked on the railway in Da Nang, central Vietnam, March 20, 2019. Photo: Ha Chau / Tuoi Tre The railway, built by France during the colonial era, is used several times each month, Nhan said, adding that railroad employees work hard to remove objects blocking the track before locomotives meander through at five kilometers per hour. If an object cannot be cleared, the locomotive just backtracks because the engine is often utilized the day after it is reversed, he said. As the line is not part of the national railway system, locals living along it are advised against blocking the track, and most follow the regulations. Occasionally, however, strangers to the area assume the track is not in use and park their vehicles right over it. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Pundits in Vietnam are calling for legal revisions to be made to the countrys sexual assault laws after a Hanoi man was fined a mere VND200,000 (US$8.6) for forcefully kissing a young woman in an apartment elevator. Police in Thanh Xuan District on Monday imposed the penalty on Do Manh Hung, 47, for offensive words and actions toward another person, in accordance with Article 5 under Decree No. 167. The administrative fine for such a violation ranges from VND100,000 ($4) to VND300,000 ($13). On March 4, security cameras caught Hung cornering V., a 20-year-old university student, in an elevator at the Golden Palm Apartment Complex in Nhan Chinh Ward, Thanh Xuan District, Hanoi. In the released CCTV footage, Hung can be seen backing the girl into a corner of the empty elevator, grabbing her, and kissing her. Police gave Hung two opportunities to publically apologize to the victim, but he failed to show up. In his absence, police officers announced that he would be fined. Despite her disappointment at the decision, the V. chose not to lodge an appeal, explaining that she was exhausted from all the drama. According to one judge in Ho Chi Minh City, the fine was just a slap on the wrist an opinion shared by many legal experts from around the country. Tran Ngoc Nu, a member of the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association, asserted that the man should be charged with molestation because he touched the victim's sensitive areas. The lips are considered a sensitive area. Plus, the victim definitely suffered from being attacked by a stranger in a public space, Nu stated. Under current laws, however, perpetrators can only be charged with molestation if the victim is under 16 years old. The punishment for molestation ranges from six months to 12 years in prison. There are currently no laws protecting victims over the age of 16. The law needs to be changed and there needs to be more specific regulations, Nu stressed. Pham Cong Hung, a former Supreme Peoples Court judge, explained that the correct term for Hungs offense is sexual assault.' The Penal Code does not have any promulgation on this violation, so adjustments must be made to deal with future similar cases, Hung elaborated. The VND200,000 fine is indeed very lenient, but it is difficult charge the man under the current law, the ex-judge said. I believe that there should be a harsher fine and that the mans workplace should also impose suitable disciplinary actions for his offense, he added. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! A famous pagoda in the northern Vietnamese province of Quang Ninh is under inspection after media reports exposed it for collecting money from followers to perform rituals which it claims remove "bad karma" from ones previous life. Three times each month, the Ba Vang Pagoda in Uong Bi City, Quang Ninh holds a grand ceremony for thousands of followers to participate in rituals performed by monks to summon wandering souls and remove bad karma for those willing to pay for the service, according to a series of investigative reports published by Hanoi-based Lao Dong (Labor) newspaper. According to the pagodas teachings, the illnesses and bad luck that a person encounters in this incarnation are caused by vengeful spirits to whom that person was indebted in their previous life. In a controversial viral video, a Ba Vang Pagoda missionary can be seen telling a young audience that the recent cold-blooded rape and murder of a college student by a group of five men in northern Vietnam was the direct result of the young womans bad deeds in her previous life. She also told them that homosexuality could be cured by paying more attention to people of the opposite sex. In order for the audience members to rid themselves of similar bad karma," they were asked to pay millions of Vietnamese dong as merit money to the pagoda to repay their debts. (VND1 million = US$45) The pagoda even has a bank account it uses to receive donations electronically and asks donors to text the abbot their information after making a money transfer, according to the pagodas official website. According to Lao Dong, the practice has been going on for years, with the Ba Vang Pagoda raking in more than VND100 billion ($4.33 million) annually., The Ba Vang Pagoda in Quang Ninh Province in northern Vietnam. Photo: Nguyen The Luong / Tuoi Tre The Ba Vang Pagoda, built in the 1700s at an elevation of 340 meters from sea level, is a popular religious attraction in northern Vietnam, It recently underwent a major renovation that transformed it into one of the biggest Buddhist temple complexes in the country. Le Thi Hanh, director of Quang Ninhs Department of Internal Affairs, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Wednesday that a joint delegation of officials from Uong Bi City and Quang Ninh Province would be inspecting the pagoda to verify information about the karma removal service reported by the media. The administration of Quang Ninh also issued an official dispatch on Wednesday afternoon asking the administration of Uong Bi to investigate the case and put a stop to violations at the pagoda, if any are found. Meanwhile, a Ba Vang Pagoda representative said the same day that pagoda administrators were planning on holding a press conference of their own to provide an official response to recent media reports. These reports contained some pieces of formation that are inaccurate," he said without clarifying. The date and venue of the press conference have not been decided on, he added. The Ba Vang Pagoda in Quang Ninh Province in northern Vietnam. Photo: Nguyen The Luong / Tuoi Tre Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! "President Donald Trump on Thursday overturned longstanding US policy regarding the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, announcing "it is time" for the US to "fully recognize Israel's sovereignty" over the region. "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability," Trump tweeted." CNN _______ This sounds like the Mustachioed Menace (Bolton) and his All Star team at work. 1. Help Bibi. 2. Weaken the Syrian government. 3. Demonstrate to the Lebanese that parts of their strange little country could experience something similar in the south. 4. Show everyone that the US is in charge of - everything. State sovereignty means nothing to these people. The post-Westphalia international system means nothing to them. Trump does not have a clue about the ME but Ivanka and Jared are pleased I am sure. pl https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/politics/trump-golan-heights-tweet/index.html Hold the phone. Netflix has released a magical trailer for the David Attenborough series Our Planet. The 8 part series is accompanied by Behind-the-Scenes content. Screening in 4K this will be immaculate television. Netflix invites viewers to share the wonder of the extraordinary place we all call home with the release of the extended trailer for the ground-breaking original documentary series Our Planet, launching globally on April 5. From the creator of Planet Earth, the eight-part series features never-before-seen footage of wildlife and their habitats while also revealing why the natural world matters to us all and what steps must be taken to preserve it. The ambitious four-year project has been filmed in 50 countries across all the continents of the world, with over 600 crew members, and focuses on the remarkable diversity of habitats around the world, from the remote Arctic wilderness and mysterious deep oceans to the vast landscapes of Africa and diverse jungles of South America. In the first episode, One Planet, viewers will travel from the Brazilian rainforest to Norways Svalbard archipelago, discovering how each fragile habitat is connected and why they are all essential for life to thrive on this planet. Subsequent episodes capture Earths key biomes, or habitats: the icy frozen worlds, jungles, coastal seas, deserts and grasslands, high seas, freshwater regions and forests. Thanks to an extensive team that includes some of the worlds best wildlife cinematographers, researchers and scientists and the latest in 4K camera technology each episode features several stunning sequences that have never been filmed before. Unprecedented in scope and ambition, Our Planet will entertain and captivate a global audience of all ages. More importantly, the series will help start an important conversation about the home we all share at a crucial moment when the world needs to act. Viewers will marvel at the diverse landscapes and precious and rare wildlife, but theyll also discover what steps need to be taken to protect the natural world. All across our planet, crucial connections are being disrupted, Sir David Attenborough notes. What we do in the next 20 years will determine the future for all life on Earth. Our Planet is produced by Silverback Films, Ltd in partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Series producers are Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey. Friday April 5 on Netflix. A Sunday Night report into African Gangs has breached the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice for inaccuracy. The July report stated there has been a considerable increase in crime by African gangs and that they were responsible for an alarming surge in violent crime in Victoria. But the Australian Communications and Media Authority found that while an increase in crime was correct, the comment that they were responsible for the surge was not supported. Viewers deserve to know that news and current affairs programs contain factual statements that are accurate. It is unacceptable for news and current affairs programs to broadcast statements that may mislead audiences, said ACMA Chair Nerida OLoughlin. In July Melbournes African communities staged a protest outside Seven Docklands headquarters. At the time a Seven spokesperson said, Sunday Night stands by every element of the report broadcast last week. It was a fair and factual report that gave context to an ongoing and important issue in Melbourne. While ACMA says it is unacceptable, it has only instructed Seven to bring the breach to the attention of its news staff, and include it as an example in training courses Regulators in the European Union have hit search giant Google with a 1.49 billion fine (around 1.28 billion) for antitrust practices. Passing the verdict, EU officials have stated that the firm has abused its dominant market position by blocking access to third-party ad providers on websites. Google makes a very large proportion of its money from advertising revenue. In the third quarter of 2018, US$24.1 billion of its US$27.77 billion earnings were made this way. In this case, Google has been accused of aggressively asserting its market dominance by including a clause in AdSense contracts that block third-party search results. A large number of sites include an in-built search function, which displays sponsored hits alongside regular search results. Google's EU fine follows inclusion of restrictive AdSense clauses It was discovered that Google had breached EU law by including restrictive agreements which meant that its rivals such as Microsoft and Yahoo were prevented from appearing on AdSense results. Where websites use in-built search functions, Googles own sponsored content would be the only results shown. European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager stated, "Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites. This is illegal under EU antitrust rules." In 2017, Google was issued a 2.42 billion fine related to its shopping search results. In 2018, it received another penalty for 4.34 billion, this time for unfairly promoting itself through its presence on Android systems. Google continues to post huge ad profits Given Googles enormous advertising profits and the number of fines it has received in quick succession, the company would appear to be undeterred in continuing to assert its dominance. Taking its third-quarter ad revenues from 2018, the latest fine is only about 1/14 of those particular profits. The third @Google case: @Google is fined 1,49bn for illegal practices in search advertising brokering to cement its dominant market position. They shouldnt do that - it denied consumers choice, innovative products and fair prices. Margrethe Vestager (@vestager) March 20, 2019 Kent Walker, Googles Senior Vice President for Global Affairs, has stated, Weve already made a wide range of changes to our products to address the commissions concerns. Over the next few months, well be making further updates to give more visibility to rivals in Europe." Google remains by far the worlds most popular search engine. In January 2019, Statista put Google at an 89.95 percent rate of the global market share from desktop computer searches. Microsofts search engine Bing came second at 3.99 percent, followed by Yahoo at 2.84 percent and then Chinese firm Baidu at 0.56 percent. Huge fines for global tech corporations have been frequent in the past few years. In 2016, Google was heavily fined by UK tax authorities. In 2017, Facebook received a penalty of $122 million after accusations of misleading practices relating to its purchase of WhatsApp. As the chaos in parliament continues, a petition was launched on the parliamentary petition website to revoke article 50 and stop Brexit from happening. The petition began receiving signatures on Wednesday evening following Theresa Mays criticism of MPs who refuse to approve her latest Brexit deal. Remainers have reportedly had enough of being ignored, while parliament and the prime minister go back and forth, unable to agree with each other. Petitions site overloaded As reported by the BBC, at one point, the petition was receiving 1,500 signatures each minute, causing the parliaments website to crash Thursday on a number of occasions. At that stage, there were around 600,000 signatures, but at the time of writing there are 1,096,568 signatures and the number grows by the minute. When the site went down, a message informed users that it was down for maintenance, prompting people to try again later. #Brexit petition reaches 1M (approx.) signatures but government need to 'maintain' it. So, we have a voice, can't use it. Good one pic.twitter.com/t2tSFEs3gE ToxSic (@H_O_R_R_O_R) March 21, 2019 The Guardian quotes a spokesperson for the House of Commons as saying the petitions site had been experiencing technical difficulties and added they were working at getting it up and running again as soon as possible. The spokesperson said the problem was a large and sustained load on the petitions system. Normally a petition only requires 100,000 to receive a possible debate in parliament. This petition has gone way over the mark and keeps on going. Whether it will be debated is another story, but at least it shows the other side of opinion on Brexit. Mays cliff-edge ultimatum succeeds in sending hundreds of thousands to #RevokeA50 petition, as the scale of her catastrophe becomes impossible to hide. There are NO good Brexits. #StopBrexit https://t.co/NZ07MnmzlC Tom Brake MP (@thomasbrake) March 21, 2019 Parliamentary petition still overloaded At the time of writing, some problems are still being experienced with the petition site, including 502 errors. However, when persevering, the signature does go through. Signers are then asked to wait for an email, with which to confirm their email address. I personally am still waiting for that email, as it is obviously backed up somewhere. Petition to cancel Brexit quickly blows past 1 million signatures and crashes UK Parliaments website https://t.co/axa14Eaai9 Eric W. Dolan (@EWDolan) March 21, 2019 The petition itself In the petition, signers call on the government to cancel Brexit by revoking article 50 and keeping Britain within the EU. It states that the UK government keeps claiming that the exit from the EU is exercising "the will of the people." However, signers disagree, saying a stop must be put to this claim by showing the strength of public support with the petition. Many remainers living elsewhere in the world have been out of the country for more than 15 years. For this reason, likely hundreds of thousands of people were unable to voice their will. As the idea of a peoples vote appears to be out of the question, the petition is the only way forward. Sign petition to Stop Brexit 700,000 signed at this pointhttps://t.co/v6JIC00Qsy pic.twitter.com/Gaa1hP1z9g Dylan Eli Ton (@pesherofchrist) March 21, 2019 According to the Guardian, many celebrities are in support of the petition, including Jennifer Saunders, Brian Cox and Hugh Grant. On Thursday morning, Fabian Picardo, chief minister of Gibraltar, surprisingly also backed the cause. In an interview with Sky News, Picardo had said that should MPs not back the withdrawal agreement on Tuesday, the only way forward was for the UK to take back control of the Brexit process. The only way to go forward is to revoke article 50. Naturally, Gibraltar's position, surrounded by Spain is a big worry for residents. Tom Forth, who is the head of data at Open Data Institute in Leeds, told the media that the signature distribution on the petition was uneven across the country. He said signatures were very concentrated in a few places. This was especially so in areas that voted to remain in Europe. No doubt many expats spread across Europe are also signing the petition with haste. Having checked the latest number of signatures I found the petitions site down again. Anyone wishing to sign the petition must be patient as the website is obviously overloaded. As reported by the Korea Herald, around 1,600 guests, staying in hotels in 10 cities in South Korea, fell victim to an illicit video camera scheme. They were secretly recorded by tiny cameras, hidden strategically around their hotel rooms and the video footage was then live-streamed to subscribers on an adult site. Some of these subscribers pay monthly fees for the privilege of watching the illegal content. CNN quotes Seoul police as saying that this isnt the first time cameras were secretly installed, capturing people in sensitive positions and then shared live on the Internet. Two arrests on Wednesday in hidden camera scheme The Korea Herald noted that two suspects were arrested on Wednesday and are accused of illegally videoing and then live-streaming guests activities at 30 hotels across 10 cities in South Korea. The spy cameras were reportedly found in wall sockets, hairdryer holders and digital TV boxes in 42 of the hotel rooms. Around 1,600 people have been secretly filmed in hotel rooms in South Korea, with the footage live-streamed online for paying customers to watch, police there say https://t.co/XKPsqPPNw4 pic.twitter.com/Eo083i93nx CNN (@CNN) March 20, 2019 Two other persons were reportedly arrested on Wednesday, who allegedly set up the spy cameras in the hotel. While they were booked, they were not detained by police. According to police, there is no indication the hotels themselves were involved in the operation or knew anything about it. Said hotels included hotels, smaller inns and motels. Illicit footage streamed on paid adult site According to the CNN report, the illicit footage gathered by the hidden cameras was streamed live on a website which launched in November last year. The website has approximately 4,100 members, of which almost a hundred paid a $44.95 (34) monthly subscription fee, which gave them access to extra features including the ability to play a variety of illicit live-streamed videos. Spy cameras secretly live-streamed 1,600 hotel guests for subscribers. Then police caught on https://t.co/1cIBkKfVik pic.twitter.com/y3V7mGhkLF National Post (@nationalpost) March 21, 2019 According to police, those involved in the scheme earned around $6,200 (4,720) from those paying subscribers. Should they be convicted, they could possibly face up to five years behind bars, as well as huge fines. South Korea and its spy cam epidemic The latest case is adding to a number of situations where spy cameras have recorded illicit scenes in the country. According to a report by the New York Times last year, around 30,000 cases of this kind have been reported across the country since 2013. GD travel NEWS - Arrests made over hotel spy cams in South Korea that filmed 1,600 hotel guests - cameras were set up in hairdryer holders, plug sockets and digital boxes in 42 rooms in 30 hotels across 10 cities. The (live) footage was shared across the internet for a charge pic.twitter.com/zPcxziMGwL GD travel (@GDTraveltips) March 21, 2019 Police officials in Seoul have now pledged to make regular checks in 20,554 public toilets in that city for hidden spy cameras. The Times wrote that women in the country now fear cameras could be placed anywhere in public spaces, including inside a toilet bowl, rolled in a plastic bag on a rubbish bin or disguised as a smoke detector in fitting rooms in ladies fashion shops. Women in South Korea have been protesting, with banners stating My life is not your porn." FILE PHOTO: The new logo of Italy's biggest utility Enel is seen inside its flagship store in downtown Milan, Italy, May 4, 2018. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini MILAN (Reuters) - Enel, Europe's biggest utility, pledged to grow its green energy and grids business in Italy and the Americas on Thursday as it reported a rise in profits and dividends and stuck to its targets for 2019. The Italian state-controlled utility said its net ordinary profit last year rose 9.5 percent to 4.06 billion euros (3.52 billion pounds), broadly in line with consensus. Enel, which controls Spanish energy group Endesa, is targeting net ordinary income this year of about 4.8 billion euros and a minimum dividend per share of 0.32 euros. The company, which gave preliminary results in February, said it would pay a dividend for 2018 of 0.28 euros per share, 18 percent higher than the previous year. "In 2019 we envisage an acceleration in renewable projects, mainly in North America, with continued investments in grids in Italy and South America," Enel's chief executive Francesco Starace said in a statement. The world's largest private renewables player has earmarked around 80 percent of a planned 27 billion euro capex programme over the next three years for green operations and grids. It said 49 percent of its power production last year was emission-free, rising to more than 50 percent if managed generation capacity is included. Italy's populist 5-Star Movement, which took office with coalition partner the League last June, has placed green energy and digital technology at the heart of its industrial policy. (Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Alexander Smith) Bank of Montreal is one of Canadas big five banks. Photo: Reuters Bank of Montreal, one of Canadas largest banks, has chosen its Irish unit as its post-Brexit European hub. Bank of Montreal Ireland (BMI) will become instrumental to the groups strategic operations in Europe, according to Standard and Poors, which revealed its latest rating of the division on Wednesday. As part of the banks contingency plans, the Irish unit will be used to grant the group the required passporting rights to provide banking services across the European Union. It will also give it access to European Central Bank funding. Bank of Montreal Irelands main purpose, the rating agency said, is to serve the groups clients. It thus does not expect the units share of the groups global revenues to expand substantially more than the less than 1% it contributed in 2017. We expect BMI to continue to expand its existing set of product offerings across debt and equity capital markets, structured products, and corporate banking to new and existing BMO clients in Europe, S&P said in its summary. Bank of Montreal is one of Canadas traditional big five banks and one of the largest banks in the world. Dublin has emerged as the top choice for firms looking to shore up their post-Brexit European operations, according to leading consultancy firm EY. READ MORE: Why Dublin is winning a bulk of Brexit-fuelled relocations Assets worth about 1tn ($1.3tn) and over 7,000 positions are thought to have been shifted out of London as part of Brexit-related contingency planning, EY warned on Wednesday. Barclays and Bank of America are two firms that have chosen Dublin as their new European hubs. FILE PHOTO: Rescue worker reacts during a demonstration in honor of victims of the collapse of a dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA, in Brumadinho FILE PHOTO: A rescue worker reacts during a demonstration in honor of victims of the collapse of a dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA, in Brumadinho, Brazil February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Washington Alves/File Photo SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Executives at Vale SA, the world's largest iron ore miner, quashed efforts by Brazilian authorities to audit one of the company's mining dams months before it collapsed and killed over 300 people, a state prosecutor was quoted as saying by news website G1 on Wednesday. William Garcia, a prosecutor in Minas Gerais where the January disaster occurred, told G1 his office had filed subpoenas with Vale last June to review safety documents regarding Vale's dam. But Vale's lawyers responded in November arguing they had received positive reviews of the dam by an auditor the firm had hired, the German firm Tuv Sud, Garcia said. Tuv Sud "was used to make it more difficult for prosecutors to investigate and hide from public view the state of that dam, which was so critical that less than two months later it broke," Garcia said at an anti-corruption event in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais. In a statement, Vale said it had asked for the prosecutor's inquiries to be dismissed because it "fully trusted" that Tuv Sud's reports and the company's broader safety measures "proved the stability of the dam in accordance with the law." Tuv Sud declined to comment. Garcia did not respond to a request for comment. Investigators have been scrutinizing the relationship between Vale and Tuv Sud, which had certified the dam as safe, including allegations made by prosecutors that the auditor was hired after another firm declined to certify the structures as safe. The tailings dam at Vale's Corrego do Feijao iron ore mine burst on Jan. 25, releasing a torrent of mining waste that buried workers and local residents in the nearby town of Brumadinho. Vale has set up a three-person committee to carry out its own investigation into what caused the dam to break. On Wednesday, the company said it had appointed Manuel Martins to the committee to replace Jean-Pierre Remy, who was previously a consultant to prosecutors who investigated an earlier collapse of a Vale dam in 2015. Story continues Vale also said on Wednesday that an investment fund controlled by U.S.-based Capital Group had increased its stake to 5 percent of the company's common shares. Shares in Vale closed 2.58 percent lower in Sao Paulo on Wednesday. (Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Rosalba O'Brien) As Chinese President Xi Jinping begins a visit to Italy, Monaco and France, the European Union is considering a more defensive commercial strategy with regard to China.Caught between a new US-Chinese rivalry for economic and military dominance, EU leaders will try to find an elusive middle-path during dinner at their Brussels summit on Thursday evening. It will be the first time the European leaders have discussed the issue of commercial relations with Beijing.Despite the desire in Brussels to forge a common stance, Italy - where eurosceptics share power in a populist coalition \- is expected to sign major bilateral trade deals during Xi's visit.European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told a conference on transatlantic relations earlier on Thursday that the international economic order has changed."China has risen to become an economic and geopolitical competitor, and a systemic competitor," she said before EU leaders met for talks on both Brexit and European relations with China, the world's second largest economy. * Is China's Belt and Road Initiative an attack on European unity? * Trumps optimism on China deal hides deepening rift A united frontWith China's Xi starting a tour of France and Italy, EU leaders - who have often been divided over China - want to present a united front ahead of an EU-China summit scheduled to take place on 9 April.According to a draft April summit statement, the EU is seeking to set deadlines for China to make good on trade and investment pledges that have been repeatedly pushed back.That was the message delivered to State Councillor Wang Yi by EU foreign ministers on Monday. It marked a shift toward what EU diplomats say is a more "assertive and competitive mindset"."In the past, it has been extremely difficult for the EU to formulate a clear strategy on China, and past policy documents have not been strategically coherent," according to Duncan Freeman at the EU-China Research Centre at the College of Europe. "There is now a clear effort to do that."US President Donald Trump's campaign to warn against Huawei telecommunications equipment in next-generation wireless networks has also accelerated EU discussions about its position.Malmstrom said Europe very often agreed with the United States on what global problems were, but not always on the cure - including US tariffs on EU imports and Washington's trade war with Beijing."It is tempting to try to lock out China, to decouple rather than to discipline. That might work in the short term. But the long term requires a deeper fix, systemic reforms built to last," she said, urging transatlantic cooperation on the issue.The deepest tensions centre on China's slowness to open up its economy, a surge of Chinese takeovers in critical sectors in the EU and an impression that Beijing has not stood up for free trade.Germany is the keyWith over a billion euros every day in bilateral trade, the EU is China's top trading partner, while China is second only to the United States as a market for European goods and services.Chinese trade restrictions are more severe than EU barriers in almost every economic sector, according to research firm Rhodium Group and the Mercator Institute for China Studies.Any new EU policies will be complicated to implement, as individual EU capitals continue to court Chinese investment.Italy plans to join China's multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure project, while free traders Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands are wary of any restrictions on commerce.Germany's views will be important as Berlin has at times pressed for a tougher answer to unfair competition from Chinese rivals but has also championed a closer relationship with Beijing."Their position needs to stabilise. At the moment it changes almost every day of the week," according to State Councillor Wang Yi.(with AFP) As Chinese President Xi Jinping begins a visit to Italy, Monaco and France, the European Union is considering a more defensive commercial strategy with regard to China. Caught between a new US-Chinese rivalry for economic and military dominance, EU leaders will try to find an elusive middle-path during dinner at their Brussels summit on Thursday evening. It will be the first time the European leaders have discussed the issue of commercial relations with Beijing. Despite the desire in Brussels to forge a common stance, Italy - where eurosceptics share power in a populist coalition - is expected to sign major bilateral trade deals during Xi's visit. European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told a conference on transatlantic relations earlier on Thursday that the international economic order has changed. "China has risen to become an economic and geopolitical competitor, and a systemic competitor," she said before EU leaders met for talks on both Brexit and European relations with China, the world's second largest economy. A united front With China's Xi starting a tour of France and Italy, EU leaders - who have often been divided over China - want to present a united front ahead of an EU-China summit scheduled to take place on 9 April. According to a draft April summit statement, the EU is seeking to set deadlines for China to make good on trade and investment pledges that have been repeatedly pushed back. That was the message delivered to State Councillor Wang Yi by EU foreign ministers on Monday. It marked a shift toward what EU diplomats say is a more "assertive and competitive mindset". "In the past, it has been extremely difficult for the EU to formulate a clear strategy on China, and past policy documents have not been strategically coherent," according to Duncan Freeman at the EU-China Research Centre at the College of Europe. "There is now a clear effort to do that." Story continues US President Donald Trump's campaign to warn against Huawei telecommunications equipment in next-generation wireless networks has also accelerated EU discussions about its position. Malmstrom said Europe very often agreed with the United States on what global problems were, but not always on the cure - including US tariffs on EU imports and Washington's trade war with Beijing. "It is tempting to try to lock out China, to decouple rather than to discipline. That might work in the short term. But the long term requires a deeper fix, systemic reforms built to last," she said, urging transatlantic cooperation on the issue. The deepest tensions centre on China's slowness to open up its economy, a surge of Chinese takeovers in critical sectors in the EU and an impression that Beijing has not stood up for free trade. Germany is the key With over a billion euros every day in bilateral trade, the EU is China's top trading partner, while China is second only to the United States as a market for European goods and services. Chinese trade restrictions are more severe than EU barriers in almost every economic sector, according to research firm Rhodium Group and the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Any new EU policies will be complicated to implement, as individual EU capitals continue to court Chinese investment. Italy plans to join China's multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure project, while free traders Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands are wary of any restrictions on commerce. Germany's views will be important as Berlin has at times pressed for a tougher answer to unfair competition from Chinese rivals but has also championed a closer relationship with Beijing. "Their position needs to stabilise. At the moment it changes almost every day of the week," according to State Councillor Wang Yi. (with AFP) France is often criticised for its ex-colonial influence in Africa. But the head of the group of French-speaking nations, la Francophonie, says she wants to work for human rights and peace. "I believe that the mission of the Francophonie organisation is to accompany countries and ensure that all member states share its values of democracy and human rights," Louise Mushikiwabo, the head of La Francophonie, told RFI's French service.The mission of the 88-member group is laid out in its 1997 charter, in which it vows to promote dialogue among French speakers, some 274 million worldwide."That is part of my mandate," continued Mushikiwabo, who entered into her new role in early January, replacing the Canadian Michaelle Jean.Spreading peace "is something the organisation does already. I have just arrived but the institution has been around for a long time, and this work is continuing," she said.Mushikiwabo is not the first leader to try to weave politics into her role. Former secretary general Abdou Diouf won credit for his subtle but strong diplomacy skills, notably in mediating crises in Burkina Faso, Mali, and the Central African Republic.There is no shortage of conflicts to resolve on the African continent right now, and Mushikiwabo, a former Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs, will have her first dose of that when she visits the Democratic Republic of Congo later this week, following last year's controversial presidential election.Her organisation has come under criticism for its relative silence on the issue, and Mushikiwabo has said herself that she will not bring up the election results when she meets with President Felix Tshisekedi.Bulwark against Trump"I think it is time to defuse the situation," she said, adding that she was "happy to be celebrating Francophonie Week in Kinshasa, one of the largest capitals of French speakers," in the world with roughly 80 million citizens."So at the start of my mandate, it is an obligation for me to go there."Elsewhere, critics like Walid Arbid, who heads an association of universities in Lebanon, reckons the Francophonie organisation can be "a factor of peace.""It brings together populations from the North and South all under one community," he told RFI. "It is also a bulwark against the cynicism of countries like the United States which shun values of humanism."Those values are ripe for the African continent.The seeds were sown in a 1990 speech by former French President Francois Mitterrand in La Baule [West France] he reckons, referring to the ex-leader's "call for democracy to be strengthened in Africa," that would later be tied to development aid."Africa will be the canvass on which this peace will be built," said Arbid. France is often criticised for its ex-colonial influence in Africa. But the head of the group of French-speaking nations, la Francophonie, says she wants to work for human rights and peace. "I believe that the mission of the Francophonie organisation is to accompany countries and ensure that all member states share its values of democracy and human rights," Louise Mushikiwabo, the head of La Francophonie, told RFI's French service. The mission of the 88-member group is laid out in its 1997 charter, in which it vows to promote dialogue among French speakers, some 274 million worldwide. "That is part of my mandate," continued Mushikiwabo, who entered into her new role in early January, replacing the Canadian Michaelle Jean. Spreading peace "is something the organisation does already. I have just arrived but the institution has been around for a long time, and this work is continuing," she said. Mushikiwabo is not the first leader to try to weave politics into her role. Former secretary general Abdou Diouf won credit for his subtle but strong diplomacy skills, notably in mediating crises in Burkina Faso, Mali, and the Central African Republic. There is no shortage of conflicts to resolve on the African continent right now, and Mushikiwabo, a former Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs, will have her first dose of that when she visits the Democratic Republic of Congo later this week, following last year's controversial presidential election. Her organisation has come under criticism for its relative silence on the issue, and Mushikiwabo has said herself that she will not bring up the election results when she meets with President Felix Tshisekedi. Bulwark against Trump "I think it is time to defuse the situation," she said, adding that she was "happy to be celebrating Francophonie Week in Kinshasa, one of the largest capitals of French speakers," in the world with roughly 80 million citizens. Story continues "So at the start of my mandate, it is an obligation for me to go there." Elsewhere, critics like Walid Arbid, who heads an association of universities in Lebanon, reckons the Francophonie organisation can be "a factor of peace." "It brings together populations from the North and South all under one community," he told RFI. "It is also a bulwark against the cynicism of countries like the United States which shun values of humanism." Those values are ripe for the African continent. The seeds were sown in a 1990 speech by former French President Francois Mitterrand in La Baule [West France] he reckons, referring to the ex-leader's "call for democracy to be strengthened in Africa," that would later be tied to development aid. "Africa will be the canvass on which this peace will be built," said Arbid. One of the only openly gay world leaders and his partner met Vice President Mike Pence, who is notorious for creating legislation that hurts the LGBT community. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and his partner Matt Barrett met Pence at his home for breakfast, according to the Washington Post. Varadkar said when theyd met previously, Pence said they spoke about LGBT issues, and that the couple would be welcome in his home. They were very well briefed, Varadkar said, according to the Post. They knew about my personal story, that my partner was living in Chicago, and they said both Matt and I would be very welcome to visit their home in future. Second Lady Karen Pence couldnt make it to the breakfast, as she was visiting the United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is criminalized, according to the advocate. Hundreds of people joined hands, held a two-minute silence and sang the New Zealand national anthem in London to pay tribute to the victims of the Christchurch terror attack. The Stand For Solidarity With New Zealand Peace vigil, organised by Kiwi Community London, a community for New Zealanders in London, was held in Trafalgar Square, on Thursday evening. Members of the public, families of victims, Muslims, New Zealand expats all gathered to remember the 50 people who died in the attack on two mosques a week ago. People attend a vigil in Trafalgar Square, London (Dominic Lipinski/PA) Carrie Lawrence, 37, a Kiwi who has lived in London for 10 years, said: As a New Zealander living in London, I wanted to pay my respects to the Muslim community that live here. You usually feel quite proud of being from New Zealand, but one of my automatic responses was whether I could hold my head high again. Seeing what has happened in New Zealand really hurts people everywhere, it is not just limited to those in New Zealand. There was an unavoidable sense guilt about what has happened. High Commissioner for New Zealand Sir Jerry Mateparae (Dominic Lipinski/PA) However, as the days have gone on, we have seen how the prime minister (Jacinda Ardern) has acted and the response of people from New Zealand have been great, but the forgiving nature of the Muslim community has been a real inspiration to me. Faiths Forum For London, a charity which empowers religious communities to work together towards a better London, was one of the many organisations that supported the multi-faith vigil. Mustafa Field, 38, the charitys director, said: Last weeks terror attack was devastating for many communities. There has been a lot of dehumanisation, and the world is moving to a place where we are unable to tolerate each other. Throughout England different cities have embraced different cultures, which has enriched our society. But for us in the Muslim community, we have been very fearful of attacks like this, we even saw four attacks in Birmingham over the weekend, so we are clearly seeing hate crime on the rise. Story continues This is a very reactive event but it shows that love is far more stronger. Hate has manifested in bringing out all this love that we have seen tonight. We want to correct and challenge those who fear living with difference, change and progress. The French government is to deploy its military anti-terror force as reinforcement during Act 19 of Saturday Yellow Vest protests.The decision by President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, came after violence marred last weekend's protests, spiking to levels not seen since December.Many targets by the movement in Paris and other cities included known landmarks and stores or places seen as elitist, such as the Parisian restaurant Le Fouquet's on the Champs Elysees.Following the terrorist attacks at Charlie Hebdo in 2015, military officers have been patrolling the streets across the country as part of Operation Sentinel.Now, they will be dedicated to ensuring security at the next round of Yellow Vest demonstrations, which have been held every Saturday for the past 18 weeks.But last weeks demonstrations, which some Yellow Vest leaders had suggested may be their last, turned into some of the most violent to date.After the weekend, the French government sacked the top police official in Paris, 66-year-old Michel Delpuech, for failure to keep the protests in the capital from spiralling out of control.Damage doneIn addition to the landmark restaurant in Paris, more than 100 other businesses were damaged along the Champs-Elysees.At its outset, the movement was not intended to be violent but it has increasingly attracted many far-right and far-left agitators who have been held responsible for much of the violence.And the story isnt repeated in just Paris alone.Major cities dealing from the movement include Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Nantes and Nice, to name a few.New restrictions in NiceThe capital of the French Riviera, Nice is home to many luxury stores and is often the symbol of the elite in the south.The mayor of the southern French city, Christian Estrosi, announced on Wednesday Yellow Vest protesters this coming Saturday will be permitted to demonstrate in a marked area.On Sunday, Chinas President Xi Jinping will start his visit to France with a stop in Cote dAzur beginning with Nice and Monaco.Speaking to AFP, the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes region said a defined perimetre will be announced by the Minister of Interior, Christophe Castaner.Although protesters have been relatively calm in Nice, after the damage in Paris last week, officials do not want to take any risks.Prohibition to protestOn Monday, following last weekend's violence, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced that protesting will be prohibited whenever it is necessary in the neighbourhoods the most affected, as soon as we have knowledge of such extreme elements and their will to inflict damage.For the upcoming protest this week, which will mark the 19th week, calls on social media have singled out Nice, Toulouse and Montpellier. The French government is to deploy its military anti-terror force as reinforcement during Act 19 of Saturday Yellow Vest protests. The decision by President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, came after violence marred last weekend's protests, spiking to levels not seen since December. Many targets by the movement in Paris and other cities included known landmarks and stores or places seen as elitist, such as the Parisian restaurant Le Fouquet's on the Champs Elysees. Following the terrorist attacks at Charlie Hebdo in 2015, military officers have been patrolling the streets across the country as part of Operation Sentinel. Now, they will be dedicated to ensuring security at the next round of Yellow Vest demonstrations, which have been held every Saturday for the past 18 weeks. But last weeks demonstrations, which some Yellow Vest leaders had suggested may be their last, turned into some of the most violent to date. After the weekend, the French government sacked the top police official in Paris, 66-year-old Michel Delpuech, for failure to keep the protests in the capital from spiralling out of control. Damage done In addition to the landmark restaurant in Paris, more than 100 other businesses were damaged along the Champs-Elysees. At its outset, the movement was not intended to be violent but it has increasingly attracted many far-right and far-left agitators who have been held responsible for much of the violence. And the story isnt repeated in just Paris alone. Major cities dealing from the movement include Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Nantes and Nice, to name a few. New restrictions in Nice The capital of the French Riviera, Nice is home to many luxury stores and is often the symbol of the elite in the south. The mayor of the southern French city, Christian Estrosi, announced on Wednesday Yellow Vest protesters this coming Saturday will be permitted to demonstrate in a marked area. On Sunday, Chinas President Xi Jinping will start his visit to France with a stop in Cote dAzur beginning with Nice and Monaco. Story continues Speaking to AFP, the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes region said a defined perimetre will be announced by the Minister of Interior, Christophe Castaner. Although protesters have been relatively calm in Nice, after the damage in Paris last week, officials do not want to take any risks. Prohibition to protest On Monday, following last weekend's violence, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced that protesting will be prohibited whenever it is necessary in the neighbourhoods the most affected, as soon as we have knowledge of such extreme elements and their will to inflict damage. For the upcoming protest this week, which will mark the 19th week, calls on social media have singled out Nice, Toulouse and Montpellier. The royal family has expressed sympathy will all those affected by Cyclone Idai. It is feared more than 1,000 people may have died in the disaster, which has brought heavy rain and flooding to parts of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. The Queen, who has made a private donation to the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal, said she and the Duke of Edinburgh are deeply saddened. Her Majesty The Queen has sent messages to Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe countries which have been affected by Cyclone Idai. Read the messages in full here: https://t.co/6eeUUxtWpe The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) March 21, 2019 In messages to the presidents of the three countries, the Queen said the thoughts and prayers of her and Philip are with all those affected. The Prince of Wales, who also made a donation to the appeal, sent the greatest possible sympathy and special prayers from himself and the Duchess of Cornwall. He wrote: However inadequate this may be in the face of such dreadfully tragic circumstances, our hearts go out to all those who have been so cruelly bereaved or injured and to those whose homes have been destroyed. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said they are hugely saddened. In a message to the people of the three countries, they said: Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who have been affected by the devastating impact of Cyclone Idai across Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. We are hugely saddened to hear of the loss of life and destruction it has caused, and our hearts go out to all those who have lost their loved ones, homes and livelihoods. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have sent a message to the people of Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe countries which have been affected by Cyclone Idai.https://t.co/oH9k9ZC0aP Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) March 21, 2019 The UK has already announced a total aid package of 18 million for the region but pledged to add another 2 million to match public donations to the DEC appeal. Story continues The cyclone, which hit the southern African region a week ago, prompted a national state of emergency to be declared in Mozambique, where around 400,000 people are internally displaced. Close to 1,000 homes have been destroyed in Zimbabwe while it is estimated more than 82,500 people have been forced from their homes in Malawi. More than 200 people have been confirmed dead in Mozambique, more than 100 in Zimbabwe and around 60 in Malawi, while hundreds are injured and many more are unaccounted for, according to the United Nations. Travellers who set up an illegal encampment on a green were given a nasty surprise when the army showed up to turf them out. Kent Police arrived to find caravans and cars parked up on a green, but was soon joined by soldiers, because the land they were parked on belonged to the Ministry of Defence. It is understood the land claimed by travellers on Tuesday in Folkstone, Kent is owned by the MoD. A Kent Police spokesperson said: Assisting our colleagues the British Army and MoD Police in the removal of an Unauthorised Encampment in Queens Ave, Folkestone. Travellers were surprised when the army arrived to move them on from land in Folkestone, Kent, on Tuesday. (SWNS) Travellers were surprised when the army arrived to move them on from land in Folkestone, Kent, on Tuesday. (SWNS) Working closely with partners in your community. Read more from Yahoo News UK: Mother of nine-year-old girl dumped in a duffle bag charged with murder A British Army spokesman confirmed there was no Explosive Ordnance Disposal activity in the area, and their presence was part of the work to move on travellers. Folkestone and Hythe District Council have also been contacted for comment. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK President Donald Trump speaks at the Joint Systems Manufacturing Centre in Ohio. (GETTY) Donald Trump said he didnt get a thank you for organising the state funeral of former senator John McCain, in his latest attack on the late war hero. The US President reignited a long-running feud by continuing to criticise the late Vietnam War veteran, who died of brain cancer last August at the age of 81. Speaking at a visit to an Ohio tank factory on Wednesday, President Trump said: We sent him on the way, but I wasnt a fan of John McCain. Mr Trump criticised Mr McCain in his Ohio speech. (GETTY) I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I dont care about this, I didnt get a thank you. Thats ok. McCain has been attacked by Trump. (PA) Although the US President did approve the military flight of Mr McCains remains from Arizona to Washington, it was Congress that granted him the honour of lying in state. This comes after the President brought up the argument between the former senator and himself at the weekend by tweeting Mr McCain had supported the Steele dossier. Read more: Donald Trump donates $100,000 of salary to Homeland Security Cindy and Meghan McCain trolled over Trump feud The funeral of John McCain, the six-term senator. (GETTY) This dossier was an unverified 2016 document, which was written by former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele and claimed ties between Mr Trump and the Kremlin. The clash between the president and Mr McCain began in the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign when Mr Trump said the senator was not a war hero as he liked people who werent captured. The late senator has been attacked by Donald Trump. (PA) Mr McCain had been held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.The former Arizona Senator also criticised Mr Trump for claiming Mexico was sending rapists into the United States. Mr Trump also said in his speech: Not my kind of guy. But some people like him and I think thats great. Mr Trump blasted the late senator for refusing to repeal Obamacare, claiming he didnt get the job done for our great vets and the VA. Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK FILE PHOTO: Houthi militants ride on the back of a truck as they withdraw, part of a U.N.-sponsored peace agreement signed in Sweden earlier this month, from the Red Sea city of Hodeidah, Yemen December 29, 2018. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad (Reuters) - Yemen's warring parties have failed to leave the main port city of Hodeidah three months after agreeing to a breakthrough U.N.-led truce deal as part of efforts to end a four-year-old war that has pushed the country to the brink of famine. The following is a timeline of the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country's slide into violence and how the conflict has developed. * 1990. Unification of north and south Yemen to form a single state under president Ali Abdullah Saleh. * 1994. Civil war in which Saleh prevents south, angered by what it sees as its lower status, from splitting with north. * 2003-09. Houthi group in north protests marginalisation of the local Zaydi Shi'ite Muslim sect and fights six wars with Saleh's forces and one with Saudi Arabia. * 2011. Arab Spring protests undermine Saleh's rule, lead to splits in the army and allow al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to seize swathes of territory in the east. * 2012. Saleh steps down in a political transition plan backed by Gulf states. Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi becomes interim president and oversees a "national dialogue" to draft a more inclusive, federal constitution. * 2013. AQAP survives military onslaught and drone strikes, staging attacks across the country while retaining a persistent presence. Saleh and his allies undermine the political transition. * 2014. The Houthis rapidly advance south from Saadeh and seize Sanaa on September 21 with help from Saleh. They demand a share in power. * 2015. Hadi tries to announce a new federal constitution opposed by the Iran-aligned Houthis and Saleh, who arrest him. He escapes, pursued by the Houthis, triggering Saudi intervention in March along with a hastily assembled Arab military coalition. Months later the coalition, aiming to restore Hadi's ousted government, drives the Houthis and Saleh loyalists from Aden in south Yemen and Marib, northeast of Sanaa, but the front lines solidify, setting up years of stalemate. Story continues * 2016. AQAP takes advantage of the chaos to establish a mini-state around Mukalla in east Yemen, raising fears the war will lead to a new surge in jihadist activity. The UAE backs local forces in a battle that ends the group's rule there. Hunger grows as the coalition imposes a partial blockade on Yemen, accusing Iran of smuggling missiles to the Houthis through Hodeidah alongside food imports, something it denies. Coalition air strikes that kill civilians prompt warnings from rights groups, but Western support for the military campaign continues. * 2017. The Houthis launch a growing number of missiles deep into Saudi Arabia, including at Riyadh. Seeing a chance to regain power for his family by reneging on his Houthi allies, Saleh switches sides, but is killed trying to escape them. Friction also develops between fighters in Aden backed by Saudi Arabia, and those backed by its Emirati coalition partners. * 2018. Coalition-backed forces, including some flying the southern separatist flag, advance up the Red Sea coast against the Houthis, aiming to take the port of Hodeidah. Hodeidah handles the bulk of Yemen's commercial and aid imports and is critical for feeding the population of 30 million. Military stalemate ensues: the Houthis control the port and coalition-backed Yemeni forces mass on the outskirts. In the first major breakthrough in peace efforts, the warring parties agree at December talks in Sweden, the first in two years, on a ceasefire and troop withdrawal from Hodeidah. Work on a prisoner swap also begins. *2019. The Stockholm Hodeidah truce largely holds but the withdrawal has yet to materialise amid deep mistrust between the Houthi movement, which controls Hodeidah, and the Saudi-led coalition massed on its outskirts. Violence continues in parts of Yemen outside Hodeidah. For a picture essay on hunger in Yemen, click on https://reut.rs/2Y7lBtz (Compiled by Angus McDowall and Lisa Barrington; Editing by William Maclean) Daniel "JungleMan" Cates Visits Tokyo & Roasts Dan Bilzerian March 21 2019 Eric Mertens It's been an interesting couple of weeks for Daniel "junglemandan" Cates. The American high roller garnered some attention for a variety of reasons, starting with a prop bet gone awry at Triton Jeju. And while Cates doesn't usually share much in the way of personal adventures or get entangled in twitter battles, last week was an exception as he had time on his hands in Tokyo. High Costs for Side Bet Before his trip to Tokyo, Cates visited Jeju to compete in the Triton Poker Series. During one of the events, Cates got a bit distracted with a side bet idea that affected his play in a pretty significant way. Watch the action unfold below: Well that side bet didn't go according to plan for the @junglemandan ## Come back to the table please Daniel Cate https://t.co/q4TZCXsTUd Triton Poker (@tritonpoker) Following Jeju, Cates took a trip to Tokyo, evidently to sample some food, animals and culture. He shares photos from his trip via Instagram. Roasting Bilzerian While in Tokyo, Cates saw an opportunity to needle Dan Bilzerian on Twitter. @DanBilzerian Wasn't it because of social media that you became famous in the first place? Daniel Cates (@junglemandan) Sarcasm breeds sarcasm, and Sam Panzica added his two cents. @bestindabiz51 @DanBilzerian Lol, not at all... but he is exceptional in other ways Daniel Cates (@junglemandan) Bilzerian returned fire and Cates ended things on an agreeable note, albeit a sardonic one. @DanBilzerian @bestindabiz51 Doubt there are many at all who are winning more at poker or at life than you (including myself) really Daniel Cates (@junglemandan) Sam Grafton Runner-Up in the MILLIONS South America Rio for $113K March 21 2019 Matthew Pitt Sam Grafton narrowly missed out on a partypoker LIVE MILLIONS title when he finished second in the MILLIONS South America Rio Open event in Rio de Janeiro. MILLIONS South America Rio Open Final Table Results Place Player Country Prize 1 Enio Bozzano Brazil $187,200 2 Sam Grafton United Kingdom $113,776 3 Peter Chien Canada $78,000 4 Nazar Buhaiov Ukraine $52,000 5 Alejandro Lococo Argentina $36,400 6 Anton Morgenstern Malta $26,000 7 Mario Fernandez Argentina $18,200 8 Thiago Crema Brazil $13,520 Grafton was one of 886 entries in the tournament. Some 282 players navigated their way through to Day 2 and the field was whittled further with only 38 players returning on Day 3, the final days play. The money bubble burst on Day 2 when a short-stacked Gabriel Sborz open-shoved with ace-four and was looked up by Peter Chien and his pocket tens. The board ran out safe for the tens, busting Sborz in 120th place. Chien would go on to finish third overall. Some of those who navigated their way into the money places included Dean Hutchison, Team partypokers Renato Nomura, Waheed Ashraf, the legendary Mike Sexton, Jeff Gross, Tom Middleton, and Rainer Kempe. Each of the eight players at the final table locked up $13,520 for their troubles, the sum Thiago Crema collected after his three-bet all-in with pocket sevens was called by Enio Bozzano and his pocket deuces. A deuce on the flop was enough to send Crema to the rail. Mario Fernandez busted almost immediately after Crema after losing a coinflip with king-jack against the pocket eights in the hand of Grafton before the final table became a little less shark infested when Anton Morgenstern was sent packing by Bozzano. With blinds at 1,250,000/2,500,000 and a big blind ante of 2,500,000, Bozzano raised to 5,200,000 with jack-three of clubs from the cutoff and Morgenstern called in the big blind with -nine-eight. A jack-queen-ten flop gifted Morgenstern a straight and he check called a 5,500,000 bet from Bozzano. Morgenstern checked again on the queen of hearts turn, Bozzano bet 8,200,000 then eventually called when Morgenstern check-raised all-in for 38,000,000. Morgenstern was a substantial favourite to double up, but another queen landed on the river, improving Bozzano to a full house, and sending Morgenstern to the cashiers desk. Alejandro Lococo was then eliminated after making a move with seven-six suited, a move that saw him four-bet jam 81,700,000 over the top of an opening raise, three-bet and cold call! It was ill-timed as Bozzano tossed in the extra chips from his initial three-bet and his pocket tens beat Lococo; he even improved to an unnecessary full house on the river. Ukraines Nazar Buhaiovs ace-queen lost in to Bozzanos pocket kings in a huge pot that saw Bozzanos stack swell to almost 390,000,000 chips. Peter Chien crashed out in third-place after he called an all-in bet from Grafton with top pair only for Grafton to turn over two pair. Grafton held a 776,500,000 to 109,000,000 chip lead over Bozzano but Bozzano clawed his way back level before taking the lead for himself. The chip lead exchanged hand a few times before Bozzano moved all-in with king-seven and Grafton called off his last 9.25 big blinds with ten-eight of sapdes. Both players missed the flop, Bozzano paired his seven on the turn and when the river came a deuce it was game over for Grafton. This latest score took Grafton to almost $1.5 million in live poker tournament winnings, a total he will surpass should he cash in any of the remaining MILLIONS South America events, especially the $5 million guaranteed Main Event that the top 15 finishers in the Rio Open received for free. Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next. LGBT Malaysians marched alongside local feminist groups to end child marriages and gender discrimination. The Malaysian government may try making it harder to have these types of protests. The Peaceful Assembly Act, the law that allows public gatherings, could be revised to allow authorities to turn down requests for protests, according to Queerty. The Malaysian home minister hasnt revealed when this will happen, but the Deputy Home Minister Datuk Mohd Azis Jamman doesnt approve of the march. As I have said before this, the government is very firm that LGBTQ practices will not be accepted at all in this country, Jamman wrote on Facebook. How is it possible that we recognize an act that is wrong in law? Home Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin hasnt clarified how the plans will play out yet. Wayne Rooney in an interview with ESPN talked about the latest news surrounding the MLS assuring that Pogba would be a great addition to the league if he decided to make a move. The English star was questioned about the probable arrival of Chicharito Hernandez to the American league. Rooney, who plays with D.C. United, believes the MLS is growing in terms of quality and that soon there will be several cases such as the one of Miguel Almiron who make the from Atlanta United to the Premier League with Newcastle. "There is a lot of quality in the league, and there are many players who could play in the Premier League, soon there will be more players like Miguel Almiron." Wayne Rooney is also sure about which payer he would bring to the MLS: "There are a lot of players who could come over and could be very successful here. Obviously, players, I have played with like Paul Pogba or Marcus Rashford. I know Pogba loves coming to the States, his brother is here, so I'm sure he'd be a great signing for anyone." But the former Manchester United striker also said that if Paul Pogba considered a move to the United States one day, "it would be an appropriate end to his career." MLS Chicharito's rumors Wayne Rooney was asked about the rumors that have Chicharito Hernandez arriving at the American league to which he replied: "Chicha's a fantastic player... he is a great person, thought the 33-year-old player didn't confirm if the Mexican will reach the MLS. But he assured that if Javier Hernandez did arrive at the MLS, he wants him as a teammate: "If Chicharito comes to the MLS, of course, I want him on my team," Rooney concluded. In a shocking (or not so shocking) update, the upcoming Atari VCS console has once again been pushed back. It's now scheduled for launch in late 2019 due to further hardware revisions. According to The Indiegogo Atari page and the Atari blog on Medium, the Atari VCS is being retooled with new specifications in mind. Initially, the Atari console was revealed to be a Linux-based gaming PC for the living room. The console would be built around an AMD brand chip that featured Radeon R7 graphics and the overall capabilities were comparable to that of a mid-range PC. Here we go again with Atari delays However, Atari revealed the company was no longer satisfied with these specs and the development team would be upgrading the console to run on a more powerful chip in the form of an AMD Bristol Ridge processor. It's a chip that made it's debut back as 2016. This would afford the console modern visual capabilities including 4K resolution output, HDR and frame rates of up to 60 FPS. Now, Atari is reporting that their engineers have once again returned to the drawing board are upgrading the console to run on one of the latest AMD Ryzen processors. The new chip will be a 14nm model, sporting the high performance of two Zen cores and Radeon Vega graphics. Not only will the new chip aim to provide the same graphical fidelity as the previous choice but will deliver a "cooler and quieter performance." It will also run much cooler in comparison. Atari plans to fulfill its promise to deliver the console to its crowdfunders on Indiegogo at the end of 2019, followed by a commercial launch in 2020. The Atari blog states, "AMDs all-new Ryzen embedded chip will be faster, cooler, and more efficient, allowing the VCS to benefit from a simpler and more effective power architecture and thermal solution...The new processor includes built-in Ethernet, Native 4K video with modern HDCP, and a secure frame buffer that fully-supports DRM video (Netflix, HBO, etc.)." A development hell Initially teased back in June 2017, the console was presented as a mystery gaming platform of sorts; titled as the 'Ataribox.' The buzz around a potential successor for the defunct Atari console line had incited much anticipation and speculation among journalists and consumers alike. Discuss this news on Eunomia In March 2018, the platform received its official name which is a call back to the classic Atari 2600. However, between the time of its announcement and now, the Atari VCS has become a recurring joke due to constant delays and an ambiguous presentation. The company has failed to settle on the actual specs for the console, trading its chips in for more powerful ones from AMD. Also, the company has failed to show actual gameplay footage from the console, which sparked trending concerns that the company might be out to scam its Indiegogo backers. Hopefully, the company will have some tangible evidence to show soon. The news media is ripe with predictions of new indictments being announced by Mueller this Friday. President Trumps Twitter tirades and the request for a delay by Mueller team the next few days because of immediate demands for their time. By James DiGeorgia Whos going to be indicted by Robert Mueller next? Could the next indictment(s) come as early as Friday? Special counsel, Robert Mueller's team, asked a federal judge to give them until April 1 to respond to the court about a request from The Washington Post to unseal records in Paul Manafort's criminal case. Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben and prosecutor Adam Jed on Tuesday cited the "press of other work" in asking a judge in a two-page filing "Counsel responsible for preparing the response to face the press of other work and requires additional time to consult within the government." A response to the Press request to make the information public did not detail the nature of the pressing work. The Washington Post has filed motions with the Federal Court that objected to the abundance of sealed and redacted records in Manafort's Washington case and petitioned the judge in his case, Amy Berman Jackson, to open them to public view. The Post filed its motions requesting the document release the night before Manafort's recent sentencings in the District of Columbia and Virginia, citing "the profound public interest in these proceedings," and arguing for the release of the documents because the integrity of the country's elections "goes to the core of the interests protected by the First Amendment." Mueller's team once made up of 17 lawyers, will soon only have ten on staff. Both Zainab Ahmad's work has ended, and Andrew Weissmann will soon be leaving the Mueller team for a private sector position. Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone was the last person the Mueller team indicted for allegedly lying to Congress in January. However, speculation is at a fever over the possibility that others including Donald Trump Jr. are likely the next to be indicted. Democrats in Congress and the Senate are trying to do everything they can to urge the Justice Department to make Robert Mueller's report public. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives last week voted overwhelmingly to call the Justice Department to publicly release Mueller's entire report, with 420-0 Democrats and Republicans supporting the measure. Special: Imagine an options trading service that has delivered over 4,872% in winning trade recommendations over 11 years. That's 442% a year in winning trade recommendations. Check it out! Just $49 for the first 60 days! The Washington Post has asked that Judge Amy Berman Jackson to require prosecutors to notify the court within seven days once any related pending investigation ends to consider further unsealing of materials, and that prosecutors tell the court every four weeks their justifications for continuing to keep remaining material sealed. Prosecutors in their filing said attorneys for The Washington Post did not oppose the request for an extension beyond the original March 21 deadline. The explosion of more than 50 Tweets and re-Tweets unleashed by President Trump since last Friday is typical of his behavior before nasty and unpleasant news is about to break. So far little of this has affected the financial markets, something that could quickly change (as early as this Friday) if President Trump and other members of his family and administration are indicted. One fall out so far in recent days has been Chinese backsliding on concessions made in negotiations in talks to end the trade war. The Chinese may be recognizing Trumps growing political weakness and the opportunity to get a much better deal to end the trade war. Observations using the Very Large Array (orange) reveal the needle-like trail of pulsar J0002+6216 outside the shell of its supernova remnant, shown in image from the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey. The pulsar escaped the remnant some 5,000 years after the supernova explosion. Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have found a pulsar speeding away from its presumed birthplace at nearly 700 miles per second, with its trail pointing directly back at the center of a shell of debris from the supernova explosion that created it The discovery is providing important insights into how pulsars -- superdense neutron stars left over after a massive star explodes -- can get a "kick" of speed from the explosion. "This pulsar has completely escaped the remnant of debris from the supernova explosion," said Frank Schinzel, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). "It's very rare for a pulsar to get enough of a kick for us to see this," he added. The pulsar, dubbed PSR J0002+6216, about 6,500 light-years from Earth, was discovered in 2017 by a citizen-science project called Einstein@Home. That project uses computer time donated by volunteers to analyze data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. So far, using more than 10,000 years of computing time, the project has discovered a total of 23 pulsars. Radio observations with the VLA clearly show the pulsar outside the supernova remnant, with a tail of shocked particles and magnetic energy some 13 light-years long behind it. The tail points back toward the center of the supernova remnant. "Measuring the pulsar's motion and tracing it backwards shows that it was born at the center of the remnant, where the supernova explosion occurred," said Matthew Kerr, of the Naval Research Laboratory. The pulsar now is 53 light-years from the remnant's center. "The explosion debris in the supernova remnant originally expanded faster than the pulsar's motion," said Dale Frail, of NRAO. "However, the debris was slowed by its encounter with the tenuous material in interstellar space, so the pulsar was able to catch up and overtake it," he added. The astronomers said that the pulsar apparently caught up with the shell about 5,000 years after the explosion. The system now is seen about 10,000 years after the explosion. The pulsar's speed of nearly 700 miles per second is unusual, the scientists said, with the average pulsar speed only about 150 miles per second. "This pulsar is moving fast enough that it eventually will escape our Milky Way Galaxy," Frail said. Astronomers have long known that pulsars get a kick when born in supernova explosions, but still are unsure how that happens. "Numerous mechanisms for producing the kick have been proposed. What we see in PSR J0002+6216 supports the idea that hydrodynamic instabilities in the supernova explosion are responsible for the high velocity of this pulsar," Frail said. "We have more work to do to fully understand what's going on with this pulsar, and it's providing an excellent opportunity to improve our knowledge of supernova explosions and pulsars," Schinzel said. ### Schinzel, Kerr, and Frail worked with Urvashi Rau and Sanjay Bhatnagar, both of NRAO. The scientists are reporting their results at the High Energy Astrophysics Division meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Monterey, California, and have submitted a paper to the Astrophysical Journal Letters. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Fermi was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden and the United States. Einstein@Home is a World Year of Physics 2005 and an International Year of Astronomy 2009 project. It is supported by the American Physical Society (APS), the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the Max Planck Society (MPG), and a number of international organizations. 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(1) The center of our galaxy is a frenzy of activity. A behemoth black hole -- 4 million times as massive as the Sun -- blasts out energy as it chows down on interstellar detritus while neighboring stars burst to life and subsequently explode. Now, an international team of astronomers has discovered two exhaust channels -- dubbed "galactic center chimneys" -- that appear to funnel matter and energy away from the cosmic fireworks in the Milky Way's center, about 28,000 light-years from Earth. Mark Morris, a UCLA professor of astronomy and astrophysics, contributed to the research, which will be published March 21 in the journal Nature. "We hypothesize that these chimneys are exhaust vents for all the energy released at the center of the galaxy," Morris said. All galaxies are giant star-forming factories, but their productivity can vary widely -- from one galaxy to the next and even over the course of each galaxy's lifetime. One mechanism for throttling the rate of star production is the fountain of matter and energy whipped up by the heavyweight black hole that lurks at a galaxy's center. "Star formation determines the character of a galaxy," Morris said. "And that's something we care about because stars produce the heavy elements out of which planets -- and life -- are made." To better understand what becomes of that outflow of energy, Morris and his colleagues pointed the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite, which detects cosmic X-rays, toward the center of the Milky Way. Because X-rays are emitted by extremely hot gas, they are especially useful for mapping energetic environments in space. In images they collected from 2016 to 2018 and in 2012, the researchers found two plumes of X-rays -- the galactic center chimneys -- stretching in opposite directions from the central hub of the galaxy. Each plume originates within about 160 light-years of the supermassive black hole and spans over 500 light-years. The chimneys hook up to two gargantuan structures known as the Fermi bubbles, cavities carved out of the gas that envelops the galaxy. The bubbles, which are filled with high-speed particles, straddle the center of the galaxy and stretch for 25,000 light-years in either direction. Some astronomers suspect that the Fermi bubbles are relics of massive eruptions from the supermassive black hole, while others think the bubbles are blown out by hordes of newly born stars. Either way, the chimneys could be the conduits through which high-speed particles get there. Understanding how energy makes its way from a galaxy's center to its outer limits could provide insights into why some galaxies are bursting with star formation whereas others are dormant. "In extreme cases, that fountain of energy can either trigger or shut off star formation in the galaxy," Morris said. Our galaxy isn't quite that extreme -- other galaxies have fountains powered by central black holes weighing a thousand times more than ours -- but the Milky Way's center provides an up-close look at what might be happening in galaxies that are more energetic. "We know that outflows and winds of material and energy emanating from a galaxy are crucial in sculpting and altering that galaxy's shape over time -- they're key players in how galaxies, and other structures, form and evolve throughout the cosmos," said lead author Gabriele Ponti of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. "Luckily, our galaxy gives us a nearby laboratory to explore this in detail, and probe how material flows out into the space around us." Morris said the centers of the nearest galaxies are hundreds to thousands of times farther away than our own. "The amount of energy coming out of the center of our galaxy is limited, but it's a really good example of a galactic center that we can observe and try to understand," he said. Reference: "An X-ray Chimney Extending Hundreds of Parsecs Above and Below the Galactic Centre," G. Ponti et al., 2019 Mar. 20, Nature [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1009-6]. Nine authors from five countries contributed to the study. The research was funded by NASA, the French National Center for Space Studies, the French National Agency for Research, the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the German Aerospace Center and the Max Planck Society. Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook. Suresh Naidu, Dani Rodrik, and Gabriel Zucman in the Boston Review: The tools of economics are critical to developing a policy framework for what we call inclusive prosperity. While prosperity is the traditional concern of economists, the inclusive modifier demands both that we consider the whole distribution of outcomes, not simply the average (the middle class), and that we consider human prosperity broadly, including non-pecuniary sources of well-being, from health to climate change to political rights. To improve the quality of public discussion around inclusive prosperity, we have organized a group of economiststhe Economics for Inclusive Prosperity(EfIP) networkto make policy recommendations across a wide range of topics, including labor markets, public finance, international trade, and finance. The purpose of this nascent collective effort is not simply to offer a list of prescriptions for different domains of policy, but to provide an overall vision for economic policy that stands as a genuine alternative to the market fundamentalism that is oftenand wronglyidentified with economics. More here. Kim Thornton routinely rents cars but one costly incident a few years ago changed the way she handles her rentals. A few days after she returned the vehicle, the rental company hit her with a $500 charge for dents on the passenger side. I didnt inspect the car carefully when I picked it up, so there was no way I could prove I didnt do the damage, she says. And because she hadnt filed a police report when the dings allegedly occurred, her own auto insurance and her credit card coverage didnt kick in. Since then, she says, I do a careful inspection and take photos of every possible thing so I have a record of what it looked like when I got it. Unfortunately, Thorntons story isnt all that unusual. The car-rental market notched a new revenue record in 2018, passing the $30 billion mark for the first time, according to research by the trade publication Auto Rental News. That means there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong and for people to be charged for things that go wrong. Today, profit margins have been squeezed, so rental companies are much more diligent about finding damage done by renters to protect their assets, says Neil Abrams, the founder of the Abrams Consulting Group, a car rental consulting and travel market research organization. It isnt unheard of for an individual to get a charge on their credit card weeks or even months later. Here are ways to protect yourself from unjust charges. Check your insurance coverage before you rent Before buying additional insurance while youre standing at the rental counter collision damage waivers can add up to $30 a day to the cost make a quick inventory of your benefits. Many credit cards provide damage coverage; if yours does, you can use that credit card to make your rental. Find out, too, if your regular auto insurance includes rental car damages, although keep in mind that if you do file a claim with your insurance company, thats considered a chargeable accident and may affect your future insurance rates. Rating: R Run time: 1 hours 56 minutes Stars: Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Lupita Nyong'o Director: Jordan Peele Is anybody hotter than Jordan Peele right now? He produced BlacKkKlansman, leads the CBS April 1 reboot of The Twilight Zone, and won a 2018 writing Oscar (plus best picture and director nominations) for his directing debut Get Out. Us his second horror film for smart people who dont like excessive gore got a 99 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating, one point shy of Get Outs perfect score, and may boost his film grosses over $400 million. Not bad for a 40-year-old directorial newcomer. Peele also won a 2016 Emmy for comedy, and Us exemplifies Quentin Tarantinos idea that funny and scary are two great tastes that taste great together. There are plenty of chuckles in Uss lampoon of the all-American family of Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyongo), whose kids (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex) join her in rolling their eyes over the sitcom-worthy antics of their dad, Gabe (Black Panthers Winston Duke), a somewhat dumb, lovable big lug. Dumber and funnier still are their bickering, boozy, smugly entitled white best friends the Tylers (Tim Heidecker and Mad Mens Elisabeth Moss), who have a summer place near the Wilsons in Santa Cruz, Calif. But the laughs are strictly subservient to the scares Peele orchestrates with Hitchcockesque skill. Adelaide has a bad feeling about their Santa Cruz vacation, because as a child, she had a mysterious, traumatizing experience at the ominous old beachside boardwalk carnival there. Her misgivings prove prescient when four people dressed in red and carrying golden scissors appear in their driveway. Worse, each is an evil replica of a Wilson family member (an actors dream to play, and the cast makes the dual roles a nightmare to remember). They grunt like beasts, except for Adelaides doppelganger Red, who speaks in a strangulated rasp and moves like a giant, jittery cockroach. If you wonder why shes so uniquely articulate for a monster, youll find out in due course. En espanol | Add measles to the list of things to consider before traveling abroad. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), international travelers are behind recent measles outbreaks across the country, which occur when susceptible people contract the virus abroad and spread it upon returning home. So far this year, the CDC has reported 268 cases of measles in 15 states, including California, New York and Texas. The good news, according to William Schaffner, medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, is that the vast majority of older adults need not worry about contracting (or spreading) the virus. Anyone born in the United States prior to 1957 is considered immune to measles, because almost everyone in that age group was exposed to the virus before a vaccine was available. People born after 1957 who were properly vaccinated, or who contracted measles, are also protected. That leaves a minuscule percentage of older adults who may be susceptible, Schaffner says. If you were born after 1957 and were neither vaccinated nor had measles, ask your health care provider for a dose of the MMR vaccine, which is 93 percent effective at stopping the virus. The same rule applies if youre not sure for example, you were born after 1957, dont remember whether you had measles, and dont know if you were vaccinated. When in doubt, Schaffner says, immunize. If you were hit with a large tax bill, or any tax bill, for 2018, and youre still smarting, start planning for 2019. You might want or need to adjust your tax withholding, but theres still time to make those changes for this year, even though were three months into the year. Its too late for 2018, says Raphael Tulino, an Internal Revenue Service spokesman. For 2019, going forward, while taxes are on your mind, do some tax planning so you dont have the surprise in 2020. Because the 2018 tax year was the first affected by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, figuring out the correct withholding for your salaried income, your quarterly estimated tax payments or a combination of the two was sometimes difficult. Whether you handle your taxes yourself or pay a tax preparer, its worth taking a close look at the amount of withholding for 2019 so you arent stuck paying more when you file next year. The IRS will sponsor free webinars on Thursday, March 28 one in English, one in Spanish to help taxpayers who want to check their withholding for 2019. The webinar in Spanish begins at 11 a.m. ET; in English, at 2 p.m. ET. To register in Spanish, go to Spanish webinar; in English, go to English webinar. The information is designed to help people complete a "paycheck checkup." That means checking tax withholding by using the IRS Withholding Calculator and making changes so that more funds are withheld from your regular paycheck or less are withheld if you prefer. Its an effort to help taxpayers bring the taxes we pay close to what we owe for each individual situation, Tulino says. Each of the 60-minute webinars will include a Q-and-A session. Topics to be covered include the basics of using the online IRS Withholding Calculator as well as situations that might require taxpayers to adjust their withholdings. These might apply if you: I just want to race as much as possible. Any chances that come up, Im going to take them. I like the thrill of driving. It never gets old, winning a race. Thats all you want to do. Its a feeling that never goes away. You just always want to get to it again....read on Police: 3 arrested, 1 sought after botched drug deal, burglary Three people have been arrested and another is sought after a burglary that resulted from a botched drug deal, according to Watertown police. WASHINGTON Top U.S. trade and economic officials will visit China late next week for another round of negotiations, a White House official said Tuesday. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer will lead the delegation, Trump administration officials said. The sources spoke on background because they werent authorized to comment publicly. The scheduled talks suggest the two sides believe they can make at least some progress. President Trump said Thursday at the White House that, Talks with China are going very well. But the negotiations are also taking place in late March, a period when administration officials had previously hoped to sign an agreement at Mar-a-Lago, the presidents Florida resort. Business lobbyists say an agreement now probably wont be reached until late April. I would say perhaps the month of April, Larry Kudlow, the top White House economic adviser, said on C-Span Friday. Its not in cement. The trade dispute began last year after the U.S. listed a number of complaints, including that China engaged in outright theft of U.S. trade secrets and forced companies to transfer technology in exchange for access to its market. Trump imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports, about half what the United States buys from that country. China retaliated with tariffs on about $110 billion of U.S. items. Administration officials say they speak with their Chinese counterparts on a nearly daily basis. Business lobbyists say that a key sticking point is what type of enforcement mechanism will be included in the agreement. The Trump administration, they say, wants to have the option to impose tariffs on Chinese goods if China doesnt abide by the terms of the pact. The U.S. also wants China to promise not to retaliate against those tariffs. Still, business groups say the talks are making progress. We are cautiously optimistic that the two sides are going to get there, said Jeremie Waterman, president of the U.S. Chamber China Center. Theyre clearly whittling the number of outstanding issues down. A report released Friday estimated that the trade war will likely damage the U.S. economy. Analysts at the Rhodium Group, in conjunction with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, estimated that the tariffs, if they remained in place, could cost the United States a cumulative $1 trillion in economic output over the next decade. Even if the tariffs are soon lifted, the report estimates that they will shave $50 billion, or 0.3 percent, off this years economic output. The duties would also not bring back production of information technology hardware to the United States, the report found. ___ AP Writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report. SANTA FE Prosecutors want Marvin Archuleta, a former priest recently charged with raping a boy decades ago, thrown back in jail pending trial after he recently violated his house arrest by making trips to an Albuquerque Walmart store. An assistant attorney general argued in a court filing that Archuleta, 81, had willfully disregarded terms for house arrest and electronic monitoring set by Santa Fe District Judge Matthew Wilson. But defense attorneys for Archuleta say he didnt intentionally violate conditions of release and did so as a lapse in his memory and the result of his age-impaired mental faculties. Like many 81-year-old individuals, his mental faculties are not always there, says the defense response. Last month, Archuleta was indicted on one count each of criminal sexual penetration of a minor and kidnapping, both first-degree felonies. The former priest allegedly raped a 6-year-old boy at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Santa Cruz, near Espanola, in either 1986 or 1987. He was arrested at his Albuquerque apartment on Feb. 8. Archuleta maintains he wasnt in Santa Cruz at the time of the alleged rape. He fled to Mexico after allegations that hed committed sexual abuse surfaced in the 1990s. At a detention hearing on Feb. 15, Judge Wilson ruled that the state Attorney Generals Office hadnt proved that Archuleta is currently a danger to the community and released him on house arrest at his apartment near Albuquerques Big I. Archuleta is not allowed to go within 100 yards of a school or anywhere else where children may be, including church services. Court records show that a Santa Fe County electronic monitoring supervisor reported that on March 19, Archuleta had permission to got to a doctors appointment for two hours. But afterward Archuleta stopped off at a Walmart on Carlisle and then a post office before returning home, exceeding his two-hour limit by a half-hour. Neither the Walmart or the post office were on his permitted schedule. After returning home, Archuleta went right back to the Walmart and spent a couple of hours there, according to the EM supervisors report. The defense response says Archuleta now understands he cant make other stops when he has only been authorized for one trip. His attorneys argued for just verbal counseling of Archuleta or adjustments to his conditions of release. While incarcerated pending his detention hearing he experienced threats from other inmates based on the nature of the charges alone, the filing says. The defense also filed a separate motion saying Archuleta is moving to a new residence because his current landlord wouldnt renew his lease and asking that Archuleta be allowed to have social visitors. Hes now limited visits from immediate family. Archuleta has no family in Albuquerque and needs assistance with many activities of daily living, the motion states. It says the lack of social interaction and the fact Archuleta isnt allowed to go to church is negatively impacting his mental health. Among potential visitors are those who can give him religious services in his home, according to the motion. BC-AFMozambique-Cyclone Eds: Updates with U.N. allocating $20 million, adds AP Graphic. AP Video. With AP Photos. With BC-AFMozambique-Cyclone-The Latest. There is death all over: Cyclone Idai toll rises above 300 BC-AFMozambique-Cyclone Eds: Updates with U.N. allocating $20 million, adds AP Graphic. AP Video. With AP Photos. With BC-AFMozambique-Cyclone-The Latest. There is death all over: Cyclone Idai toll rises above 300 CHIMANIMANI, Zimbabwe Mozambique began three days of national mourning on Wednesday for more than 200 victims of Cyclone Idai, while the death toll in neighboring Zimbabwe rose to more than 100 from one of the most destructive storms to strike southern Africa in decades. Torrential rains were expected to continue into Thursday and floodwaters were still rising, according to aid groups trying to get food, water and clothing to desperate survivors. It will be days before Mozambiques inundated plains drain toward the Indian Ocean and even longer before the full scale of the devastation is known. People have been clinging to trees and huddling on rooftops since the cyclone roared in over the weekend, and aid groups were desperately trying to rescue as many as they can. The United Nations humanitarian office said the town of Buzi, with some 200,000 people, was at risk of becoming at least partially submerged. Floodwaters are predicted to rise significantly in the coming days and 350,000 people are at risk, the U.N. office said. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa received a somber welcome in the hard-hit mountain community of Chimanimani near the border with Mozambique. Zimbabwean officials have said some 350 people may have died. We do not want to hear that anyone has died of hunger, Mnangagwa said. Clutching a bag of his few remaining possessions, Amos Makunduwa described the devastation with one stark sentence. There is death all over, he said. It is beginning to smell really bad, he added. The whole area is like one big body of water, huge rocks and mud. There are no houses, as if no one ever stayed here. The force of the flood waters swept some victims from Zimbabwe down the mountainside into Mozambique, officials said. Some of the peasants in Mozambique were calling some of our people to say, We see bodies, we believe those bodies are coming from Zimbabwe,' said a local government minister, July Moyo. Entire villages were swept away, said Gen. Joe Muzvidziwa, who was leading the militarys rescue efforts in Zimbabwe. Some people had been out at beer halls when the cyclone hit and came home to find nothing left. Mozambiques President Filipe Nyusi said late Tuesday that more than 200 people were confirmed dead in his country. After flying over the affected region on Monday, he said he expected the death toll to be more than 1,000. Aid workers were shocked as they arrived in the Mozambique port city of Beira, estimated to be 90 percent destroyed. The 500,000 residents of the city, which has some neighborhoods that are below sea level, were scrambling for food, fuel and medicine. The power of the cyclone is visible everywhere, with shipping containers moved like little Lego blocks, said Marc Nosbach, Mozambique country director for the aid group CARE. In footage shot by South African broadcaster eNCA, food and other supplies were dropped from a helicopter to a survivor standing waist-deep in water outside Beira. Another man clinging to a tree branch was hoisted to safety. Rescuers cradled small children, keeping them warm. Meanwhile, international aid started trickling in. Everyone is doubling, tripling, quadrupling whatever they were planning in terms of aid, said Caroline Haga of the Red Cross in Beira. Its much larger than anyone could ever anticipate. The United Arab Emirates pledged $4.9 million to Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, the Emirates News Agency reported, citing the Emirates Red Crescent. Norway said it was providing $700,000. The chairman of the African Union Commission said it would provide $350,000 in immediate support to the countries, and the United Nations allocated $20 million. The European Union released $3.9 million in emergency aid, and Britain pledged up to $7.9 million. Tanzanias military has sent 238 tons of food and medicine, and three Indian naval ships have been diverted to Beira to help with evacuations and other efforts. Sacha Myers of the nonprofit Save the Children described overflowing rivers and dams, and said getting in aid was difficult, with roads and bridges washed away or submerged in the region. Hunger and illness were growing concerns, with crops destroyed and waterborne diseases likely to spread. There are large areas where people are really finding it difficult to find sources of clean water, said Gert Verdonck, the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Beira. On top of all of that, theres the issue of how to treat people who fall sick, with so many health centers damaged or destroyed. ___ Associated Press writers Andrew Meldrum and Cara Anna in Johannesburg and Matt Sedensky in New York contributed to this report. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa Prosecutors are seeking to keep a former priest locked up as he awaits trial on allegations that he sexually abused a young altar server over a period of around two years. Sabine Griego, 81, will remain in the county jail at least until a detention hearing in state District Court, which has not yet been scheduled. He made his first appearance in Metropolitan Court on Wednesday before Judge Linda Rogers. Griego, wearing bright orange jail scrubs, appeared from the jail via video conference and stood quietly beside a public defense lawyer. Although Griegos criminal case centers on charges involving only one child, prosecutors say he has been credibly accused of sexually abusing more than three dozen children. He was removed from the priesthood in 2005. Griegos criminal case involves allegations that he violently raped the girl multiple times, beginning in the late 1980s when she was a 7-year-old second-grader at Queen of Heaven Catholic School. On one occasion, court documents say, Griego slammed her face into a table, breaking her nose. He continued to rape her as she bled profusely, prosecutors allege. Griego is also accused of telling the child that he would kill her, cut out her tongue or hurt her mother if she ever told. A DNA match from a rape kit that was finally tested led Albuquerque police to arrest a man who they say raped a woman at gunpoint almost four years ago. That same man was already charged in two similar rapes in the past year. Albuquerque police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said detectives arrested Nicolas Williams, 26, Wednesday for the second time this month. Todays arrest was based on DNA evidence that matched a 2015 rape case, he said. Williams face one count of kidnapping and five counts of criminal sexual penetration in the spring 2015 rape of a woman at gunpoint. This is the third rape Williams has been charged with. He was indicted on Monday for criminal sexual penetration and kidnapping in connection with the armed rape of a woman outside a park in the southeast Albuquerque. Williams was also charged in the December rape of a woman at knife point but prosecutors dismissed the case with the ability to re-file because they werent able to reach the victim. Second Judicial District Attorneys Office spokesman Michael Patrick said there is a strong indication that there is a fourth victim. Our investigation has been leading to the fact that there might be four or more out there, he said. The most recent charges stem from a case that is much older. According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, a woman called police to report being raped in late March 2015. The woman told police she was working as a prostitute near Central and Wyoming when Williams picked her up in a tan SUV. Police say the woman asked if she was safe with him, and he said that she was before driving her to Route 66 Bingo, near Juan Tabo and Central. The woman told police Williams put a gun to her head and said I do this all the time, I cannot orgasm without raping before raping her repeatedly. Afterward police say she filed a report. DNA was collected, and the rape kit was sent to the crime lab. Fast forward almost four years, and police say the testing of that rape kit came back as a match for Williams. Detectives tracked down the woman and she identified Williams as her rapist. She immediately recognized the man and she began to cry when she saw his picture, a detective wrote. The woman also told them she saw Williams in recent news reports and on the Bad Guy List, distributed by Street Safe New Mexico, which lists men who are known to be abusive to women. Christine Barber, Director of Street Safe New Mexico, said Williams profile has been popping up on the list as far back as 2015, with at least ten women reported having been raped by him. Weve known about him for a long time, she said. Hes a serial rapist, hes one of many. Barber said they currently have six serial rapists on the Bad Guy List but is relieved that some of them, like Williams and Timothy Bachicha, are being caught. Before that they never got arrested, they just went away, she said. Holly Holm and the UFC have agreed to terms on a new six-fight contract for the Albuquerque MMA fighter, Holms manager said Wednesday evening. Lenny Fresquez said the new contract virtually assures that Holm, 37, will finish her combat-sports career with the UFC. Thats what we wanted for Holly, he said. Financial terms were not disclosed. Holm (12-4 overall, 5-4 UFC) initially signed with MMAs most powerful promotional organization in 2014. She signed a contract extension after her monumental upset of Ronda Rousey for the UFC bantamweight title in November 2015. She had two fights remaining on her current contract, which Fresquez said is superseded by the new agreement. While negotiating a new contract, Fresquez also had been seeking to land a fight for Holm against current UFC bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes. But Fresquez resisted a proposal that would have matched Holm against Nunes in May in Brazil, Nunes home country. Nunes, however, later told the Brazilian MMA website Combate that she did not intend to fight until later in the year because she had personal matters that needed attending. Wednesday, Fresquez said he was not insisting that a fight with Nunes be next for Holm. Well talk with (the UFC) and decide whats the best fight for Holly, he said. After her victory over Rousey by second-round TKO in Melbourne, Australia, Holm lost the title to Miesha Tate by fifth-round submission (rear naked choke). Holm then lost a non-title fight by unanimous decision to Valentina Shevchenko and lost a bid for the inaugural UFC womens featherweight title by unanimous (though disputed) decision to Germaine de Randamie. Holm bounced back with a victory by third-round TKO (head kick and strikes) over Bethe Correia, then lost by unanimous decision to Cristiane Cyborg Justino in another bid for the featherweight title. In her most recent fight, Holm defeated Megan Anderson by unanimous decision. If youre winning every battle, then youre not taking on tough enough battles. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham The governors observation in Sundays Journal might have been about the mixed outcome of her ambitious first-year agenda following the 2019 legislative session. But the spirit of hammering out compromise was the tone legislators set this year as they approved a record number of bills 310 without having to go into a special session. As a result, New Mexicans have plenty to celebrate. Among lawmakers accomplishments this year: The state tackled climate change with passage of a bill aiming for a carbon-free electric grid in 26 years, which earned the support of industry friends and foes. Lujan Grisham has signed common-sense gun-purchase background check requirements. Lawmakers found middle ground on the mechanics of a voter-approved ethics commission, eliminating anti-transparency elements in early blueprints. Legislators also compromised on a minimum wage bill to lift the statewide entry-level salary from $7.50 per hour to $12 per hour by 2022 giving low-wage workers a financial boost and businesses time to adjust, and avoiding the pitfall of marrying New Mexico payrolls to national economic indicators. Lujan Grisham has OKd a Cabinet-level department to house the states many early childhood education programs under a single roof. Hopefully, consolidation of the preschool patchwork will lead to accountability and best practices. Legislators also finally passed a ban on coyote-killing contests, a barbaric sport with no value. Alleged incapacitated people and those who care about them get a greater voice in the legal process that can turn over management of their lives and finances to court-appointed guardians/conservators. And voters will get to weigh in on a constitutional amendment designed to improve qualifications on the Public Regulation Commission, which rules on complex consumer issues, including utility rates. Some legislation that didnt deserve the go-ahead rightfully fell by the wayside, particularly a raid on the Land Grant Permanent Fund while the state has a billion-dollar-plus surplus; a bill that would have allowed government entities to hide the identities of applicants for high-paying public service jobs; a proposed four-year fracking permit ban that would have crippled New Mexicos vital oil and gas industries; and a not-ready-for-primetime legalization of recreational marijuana. And yet, it wasnt all good news in Santa Fe this year. A few efforts didnt pass that should have, including shedding much-needed light on hundreds of millions of dollars in capital projects; banning trapping on public lands; assessing a modest fee to pet-food manufacturers to fund spay/neuter programs; seizing guns from someone considered an immediate safety threat via a temporary court order; and giving some terminally ill people access to life-ending medication. And then theres the grimmest list of all: bills that did pass that could harm our state and the people who live here. We hope the governor will consider unintended consequences often hidden by political rhetoric and use her veto pen on the two most damaging. HB 370, the Criminal Record Expungement Act, aims to give reformed offenders and wrongfully accused people a new lease on life by creating a way for some crimes and arrests to be wiped from the public record a worthy goal. But as written, people convicted of crimes like armed robbery, drug trafficking and some domestic violence offenses are eligible, as are those arrested for, but not convicted of, sex crimes, crimes against children, DWI and all first-degree felonies. Its worth noting that an overtaxed court system has led to many charges being dropped, even against those implicated in multiple crimes. As written, this bill presents a huge risk to public safety. The other measure the governor should stop in its tracks is HB 55, the Agreement to Elect President By Popular Vote, which would yoke New Mexicos electoral votes to the national popular vote a clear backlash to 2016 when then-candidate Donald Trump lost voter volume to Hillary Clinton, but eked out enough electoral votes to win the White House. Feelings about Trump aside, Lujan Grisham should recognize this short-sighted revenge plot that disregards New Mexicans votes in favor of what everybody else wants. This is not how you address concerns with the Electoral College, could easily backfire on Democrats down the road and gives away what influence New Mexico does have. All in all, tough battles were undertaken; not all were won and, by and large, compromise ruled the day. Our citizen lawmakers deserve a tip of the hat, round of applause and well-earned return to their day-to-day lives. The 2020 session starts Jan. 21. This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers. RIO RANCHO Retired Army Spc. Jason Thompson fought back tears as he and his family were given a tour of their new home Wednesday on Agua Dulce Drive. The Afghanistan War veteran said hes usually not an emotional person. But it was hard for him to fight the emotions in describing his feelings about receiving the house as a gift for his service through a partnership of U.S. Bank and Freedom Alliance, a charity providing support to service members and military families. He was presented with a key to the home in a ceremony that included U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull and officials from U.S. Bank and Freedom Alliance. Its such an amazing gift, Thompson said. Theres no words I can say about how I feel. Thompson, his wife, Michaela, and sons Joshua, 3, Caleb, 15, and Jared, 16, were living on base at Fort Campbell, Ky., when they found out about the home offer. Jason Thompson medically retired in June because of injuries he suffered in Afghanistan, and the family was scheduled to move out on March 15. We really didnt have a place to go after March 15, Thompson said. Fort Campbell Wounded Warrior Advocate Nadlyn Snape said she received an email looking for a candidate for the home in New Mexico. She felt Thompson was ideal. He was awarded the Purple Heart and a Combat Infantry Badge, Snape said. Once she told us about it, everything fell right into place, Thompson said. Im excited; I like change. Being in the military, you move around a lot. Having a place to call home and not having to move in another three years, thats a big plus for my family. The Thompson family visited New Mexico in February to check out the area. They were also able to look at the house, which was being remodeled at the time. If you would have asked me a few years ago if I was going to move to New Mexico, I would have laughed, not knowing when I came here how gorgeous it is here, said Thompson, an Ohio native. Michaela Thompson said she Googled hiking trails when she found out about the possibility of the move to New Mexico. She was pleased that the house was spacious enough for their sons. She and her husband were also impressed with what they heard about Rio Rancho schools. Hull, the Thompsons backyard neighbor, said having a mortgage-free home will allow Jason to focus on recovery and focus on building a family. Thompson said he appreciated having a home where he wouldnt have to worry about my family if something were to happen to me. I still have some health issues I have to get through, Thompson said. During his service in Afghanistan, he experienced five mortar and rocket fire blasts, leaving him with a traumatic brain injury. He enlisted in the Army in 2009. He was stationed in Germany in 2010 before deploying to Afghanistan. The United States owes a great debt to returning veterans, including Army Spc. Jason Thompson. I am incredibly proud to welcome him to the Rio Rancho community, and thank him and his family for their service and sacrifice for our country, Lujan said. He also said he thought the family would be an asset to the community. Lujan said he encouraged them to take advantage of the outdoor opportunities that come with living in New Mexico. The home is the 18th donated by U.S. Bank through its Housing Opportunities after Military Engagement, or H.O.M.E., program, in conjunction with Freedom Alliance. It is the second home donated in New Mexico, Lujan said. The other is in Las Cruces. We welcome suggestions for the daily Bright Spot. Send to newsroom@abqjournal.com. Agents arrested an Albuquerque foster parent Wednesday after he allegedly agreed to trade drugs and cash for sex with a 13-year-old girl during an undercover sting, according to the Attorney Generals Office. Joshua Saavedra, 45, is charged with child solicitation by electronic communication device, trafficking controlled substances and sexual exploitation of children by prostitution. Special agents conducted an undercover chat operation, in which an agent posed as a mother offering her fictional child for sex, AG spokesman David Carl said. Saavedra met at a predetermined location, where he was apprehended and taken into custody. After his arrest, Saavedra told agents he met the mother and daughter in an attempt to rescue the child from an abusive situation as he is a foster parent himself. Agents discovered he has fostered 18 children over the past decade, and currently has three children, and one foster child, between the ages of 2 and 10 years old. New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department spokesman Tripp Stelnicki could confirm the arrest, but no other details. He said CYFD has removed the children from Saavedras home and is working with the AGs office in the investigation. According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court, on March 13, the AGs Office started an undercover chat operation to target child predators on the website MeetMe.com. Agents say an undercover agent posed as a mother selling her 13-year-old daughter, and Saavedra contacted them soon after asking about prices and possible services. According to the complaint, Saavedra asked for the girls stats and said he was okay with her age depending on how she looks. After hearing of the girls description, agents say Saavedra texted back sounds very nice! before detailing various sexual acts he wished to do with the girl and talking over prices. According to the complaint, on Wednesday, Saavedra agreed to pay $20 and drugs before arranging to meet at the Econolodge Hotel, near Central and Interstate 25. When Saavedra arrived, agents arrested him, and found the cash and pills painkillers and uppers in his pocket. Saavedra told agents he did not plan on having sex with the girl and was planning to report the abuse to CYFD. When asked why he didnt call law enforcement, Saavedra said he needed to see it for himself. Saavedra stated he knew the signs of abuse because he is a foster parent and has had several girls who have been sexually abused stay with him, an agent wrote. Almost a year after a 12-year-old girl was hit and killed as she crossed the street outside her middle school, the driver has been charged with careless driving, a traffic code misdemeanor. A grand jury handed up the indictment on Monday, charging 76-year-old Revi Pexa in the crash that took the life of Eliza Almuina outside Cleveland Middle School on March 22. Court records state that Pexa drove in a careless, inattentive or imprudent manner at the time of the crash. If found guilty, he could face a fine of up to $300, imprisonment for not more than 90 days or both. In what police called a tragic accident, Pexa hit Almuina as she crossed Louisiana with a friend. A vehicle paused at the crosswalk to allow the girls to pass and Pexa, who was in the right lane, didnt see them and hit Almuina as she passed the stopped car. It ends up being a careless driving, horrible accident, but it wasnt reckless, said Michael Patrick of the 2nd Judicial District Attorneys Office. He wasnt doing it with intent. He said, through a lengthy investigation, it was discovered Pexa was going 2 mph over the 35 mph speed limit when he swerved into the right lane to avoid hitting a car stopped in the left lane. Patrick said the case went to a grand jury due to Almuinas death. The fatal crash prompted the city to redesign the crosswalk in hopes of preventing future collisions, while pushing the City Council to take a closer look at other school crosswalks. It also resulted in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Almuinas family. Copyright 2019 Albuquerque Journal SANTA FE Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver on Thursday rejected a petition aimed at repealing New Mexicos new background check law for gun sales. The petition, filed by Republican lawmakers in the state House, sought to put the legislation before voters through a rarely used referendum process. No law has been repealed by referendum in New Mexico since 1930, according to legislative staff. Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, said Thursday that the state Constitution prohibits petitions for the repeal of laws providing for the preservation of the public peace, health, and safety a finding thats been repeatedly upheld by the courts, she said. House Minority Leader James Townsend, R-Artesia, said Thursday that he and other opponents of the law are considering their options, including the possibility of legal action. We have had overwhelming input from Republicans, Democrats and independents who have urged us to continue this battle, Townsend said in an interview. Apparently, it has hit a nerve. People want their input considered. At issue is legislation expanding New Mexicos background check requirement for gun sales. Under Senate Bill 8, the state will require background checks before nearly any firearm sale in the state, including transactions between private individuals. It goes into effect in July. Licensed dealers already must complete the checks. The legislation ignited opposition in rural parts of the state, as many counties declared themselves a Second Amendment Sanctuary. Toulouse Oliver said she consulted with the state Attorney Generals Office on how to handle the referendum petition. In a letter to Townsend, she said the petition had a number of technical deficiencies, in addition to the constitutional exemption that bars repeal of laws on public safety. Supporters of the legislation, she noted, repeatedly argued that it was aimed at promoting public safety and saving lives. Testimony and debate during the legislative session, Toulouse Oliver said, demonstrated that the law bears a valid, reasonable relationship to the preservation of public peace, health or safety, and it was clearly enacted by the legislature for those purposes. Townsend and other opponents of the bill argued that it would do nothing to protect people from violence. Criminals obtain guns by stealing them or buying them on the black market, they said, and the background checks requirement would simply interfere with the rights of regular citizens. In launching the petition, House Republicans said the wave of counties and sheriffs opposed to the law showed the Legislature had failed to listen to the will of the public. The state Constitution allows people to suspend or annul laws passed by the Legislature, but with some exceptions. Legislation establishing the state budget, for example, is exempt, as are laws on public peace, health or safety. To secure a spot on the ballot, opponents would have to gather a certain number of signatures in counties throughout New Mexico. Before the petition is circulated, however, the secretary of state must agree that it meets the legal requirements for a referendum. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, signed the background checks bill into law two weeks ago. She had highlighted the proposal as part of her first State of the State speech shortly after taking office in January. We all have a constitutional right to be safe in our homes and communities, Lujan Grisham said this month as she approved the legislation. Sen. Richard Martinez, an Espanola Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill, said at the signing ceremony that the legislation has nothing to do with the Second Amendment its all about saving lives. The bill requires background checks to ensure the person isnt a felon or otherwise prohibited by law from having a gun. The legislation allows exceptions for sales between two close family members or sales between law enforcement officers. Gifts and loans are also exempt from the requirement for a background check. Supporters of the legislation said people who want to sell a gun would arrange to meet the buyer at, say, a licensed firearms dealer, who would do the background check. The dealer could charge up to $35. A retired U.S. Army specialist was given the gift of a lifetime last week in the form of a newly renovated mortgage-free home. Spc. Jason Thompson and his family were awestruck as they shook hands with dignitaries and members of the media on their way up the driveway to their new home. A yellow ribbon tied to a tree on the right side of the front yard signified the service and the sacrifice Thompson and his family have given throughout the years. During his service in Afghanistan, Thompson experienced five mortar and rocket blasts, leaving him with traumatic brain injury. After receiving medical treatment, he returned to active duty for three years until medically retiring last June. During the presentation of the home, Thompson expressed gratitude to people gathered for their kindness and gave thanks to God for his blessings. We love everybody who has been involved with this process; you guys will always have a place in our hearts, he said with a tear in his eye. According to a press release, Thompson received multiple awards for his service, including a Combat Infantry Badge and a Purple Heart. Thomas Kilgannon, president of the non-profit Freedom Alliance, said his organization was inspired by Thompsons service and proud to give an American hero the American Dream of homeownership. Many of our soldiers, those who have come home, suffer physical wounds, spiritual wounds and emotional wounds, Kilgannon said. What we do at Freedom Alliance is help them overcome those injuries and help them receive the most complete rehabilitation they can get. One such program repairs existing properties to give to veterans so they can begin the rehabilitation process. Thompsons home, a five-bedroom, three-bathroom, two-story house in the Cabezon neighborhood, is just one in a series Freedom Alliance and U.S. Bank have teamed up to give away to worthy veterans. This is the 12th home that we will do now with U.S. Bank, Kilgannon said. A project like this cant just be done. You cant just wake up and say, We are going to give a home to somebody; you have to have great partners. Thompson and his wife, Michaela, are moving from Fort Campbell, Ky., with their three sons, ages 3, 14, and 16. Thompson will work as a heating and air-conditioning specialist, and Michaela will continue her career as a professional photographer. BEIRA, Mozambique A week after Cyclone Idai lashed southern Africa, flooding still raged Thursday as torrential rains caused a dam to overflow in Zimbabwe, threatening riverside populations. The confirmed death toll in Zimbabwe, neighboring Mozambique and Malawi surpassed 500, with hundreds more feared dead in towns and villages that were completely submerged. Aid agencies and several governments continued to step up their deployments, with helicopters in short supply for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the cyclone. Spokesman Herve Verhoosel of the World Food Program told reporters in Geneva of the alarming news that the Marowanyati dam in Zimbabwe was hit by heavy rains overnight, putting populations in the region at risk. Zimbabwes defense minister said more than 120 bodies had been washed into neighboring Mozambique, where residents there buried them, and more bodies were still being recovered in rivers, raising the official death toll in the country to at least 259. Most of the bodies were washed into Mozambique and because they were in a really bad state, they could not keep the bodies, Defense Minister Oppah Muchinguri said, speaking in the eastern city of Mutare. So they ended up burying them. Mozambiques environment minister, Celso Correia, who is heading up the government response team, said in Beira Thursday evening that the confirmed death toll in his country was 242, with at least 142 injured and an untold number still missing. Dont create panic, Correia urged other government officials as more updates on the devastation trickled in. He said some 65,000 people had been saved by rescue workers who plucked them from rooftops and trees, and 182,000 had been affected by the flooding. Obviously all numbers are preliminary. They are changing every day, every moment, Correia said, adding that the most worrying issue now was health, with cholera a major concern. He said a much bigger rescue and recovery mission must be launched in the region of some 350,000 people, where many remain marooned on islands created by the floodwaters. It will be days before Mozambiques inundated plains drain toward the Indian Ocean and even longer before the full scale of the disaster is known. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi has said as many as 1,000 people could have died in his country alone, but even that huge number is likely to pale in comparison to reality, aid workers said. Now that the water is receding, we fear that we will see even more, than 1,000, as far more bodies are discovered, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Elhadj As Sy, told The Associated Press. Homes, villages and entire towns were submerged across central Mozambique, where flooding created a muddy inland ocean 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide. The U.N. food aid agency said 400,000 people were displaced and in urgent need of life-saving assistance in Mozambiques coastal city of Beira and flooded areas along the Pungue and Buzi rivers. The persistent rains lifted in some areas on Thursday, and floodwaters began to recede in Beira, the worst-hit city, and in the countryside, according to a Mozambican government report. Yesterday, 910 people were rescued by the humanitarian community, said Caroline Haga of the International Federation of the Red Cross in Beira. She said 210 were rescued by five helicopters and 700 were saved by boats. Aid groups were continuing to work non-stop to rescue families desperately clinging to tree branches and rooftops for safety from the surging waters. A family saw their brick house swept away from them. When they went to another house for safety, the roof collapsed, Machiel Pouw, Save the Childrens response team leader in Mozambique, said in a statement. Another family fled for safety in a tree. There are tens of thousands of heartbreaking stories like this, lives shattered over the past days. In Malawi, where at least 56 people died, the government reported more than 920,000 people were displaced by the floods, the WFP said. In Zimbabwe, 90 percent of the district of Chimanimani the countrys hardest-hit was significantly damaged, the agency said, estimating that 200,000 people would need food assistance over the next three months. Zimbabwes President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared two days of mourning starting Saturday for the victims, saying he witnessed unmitigated despair during a tour of the area on Wednesday. Government officials say as many as 350 Zimbabweans may have died in the flooding. Aid has been slow to reach affected villagers due to collapsed infrastructure, although the military has been handing out small packets of cooking oil, maize meal and beans. In Chimanimani, Philemon Dada began rebuilding his life in what was once a picturesque town. With a machete and a hoe, he salvaged poles from the mud to construct a hut to shelter his family, a first step in what he sees as a long and backbreaking journey to rebuild a life shattered by Cyclone Idai. He is one of many villagers trying to pick up the pieces in Chimanimani after losing homes, livestock and, in many instances, family members. Some have been taken in by neighbors and others are sheltering with church pastors. I can say I am a bit lucky. My wife and son are still here with me but for everything else, I have to start from scratch, he said. Dada had a few food items handed out by the Zimbabwe military, but he knew that wouldnt last long and he was eager to start growing crops again. Like many people here, he survives on agriculture. My bean crop was ready for harvesting before the cyclone, the maize was close. I am back to zero, he said. He is particularly pained by his two prized bulls that did the heavy work of drawing the plow for his field. They died in the floods. It may take a year, maybe even more years just to get back on my feet, he said. ___ Mutsaka reported from Chimanimani, Zimbabwe. Associated Press writers Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa The board of beWellnm, New Mexicos health insurance exchange created through the Affordable Care Act, has opted not to extend CEO Cheryl Gardners two-year employment contract. Gardner will serve in her position through the end of March while working with board Chairman Dr. J.R. Damron on a transition plan, according to an email from beWellnm spokesman Tom Garrity. In response to a request for comment sent to Gardner and other beWellnm officials, Garrity said that Damron will work with existing beWellnm leaders to ensure Special Enrollment and other current projects continue as scheduled. Additionally, the board plans to call a special meeting next week to name an interim CEO, establish a search committee for the new CEO and discuss items related to the current CEOs employment agreement, according to Garrity. The board voted against extending Gardners contract during its meeting on March 15 in a voice vote: one cast by estimating the relative strength of the ayes and the nays. It was not clear Thursday who had cast the lone dissenting vote, as several beWellnm board members called into the meeting remotely. The states exchange has had four leaders in the six years since its creation in 2013. Mike Nunez of the New Mexico Health Insurance Alliance served as interim CEO until 2014, when he was replaced by Amy Dowd, the executive director for Idahos exchange. In 2016, Dowd left for a position with Molina Healthcare, after which the exchanges then-director of communications and outreach, Linda Weeden, served as interim CEO. Gardner, previously the executive director of Arkansas exchange, replaced Weeden in 2017. Gardners tenure overlapped with what may have been the most tumultuous period for beWellnm in the organizations short history. In 2017, the Trump administration began implementing policies aimed at undermining the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Those policies included shrinking the enrollment period, cutting the consumer outreach budget by 90 percent, and repealing the mandate that required Americans to have health insurance or face a fine. Last year, 45,001 New Mexicans signed up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act for the 2019 enrollment period, according to a December news release from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The year prior, that number was 49,792; two years prior, it was 54,653. Meghan Mahowald, known professionally as MEGG, said she hopes to make the event an annual tradition, with proceeds going to a different local foundation every year. UPDATE 5/3/19: Oroville police have arrested a suspect for the murder of Greta Putnam. Learn more here. OROVILLE, Calif. - New information has been released on the murder investigation of 86-year-old grandmother Greta Putnam, of Oroville. Putnam was found dead on Nov. 8, 2018, inside her Cottonwood Estates mobile home by Oroville Police, the same day the Camp Fire began. Action News Now sat down with Putnam's grandsons, Donnie Rhodes and Ron Rhodes, and Detective Raymond Stott, the investigator on the case. Detective Stott confirmed that Putnam was stabbed to death. A kitchen knife that matched other knives inside Putnam's home is believed to be the murder weapon. That evidence, along with other items gathered at the scene, is now in the hands of the Department of Justice for testing. Stott said he could not speak to how much evidence the department has been able to process, but that his team performs regular check-ins on progress. "We are actively pursuing leads and contacting potential witnesses, not necessarily to when [the murder] occurred but where people were and what they were doing at the time," Stott said. It has now been four months since the Oroville Police Department discovered Putnam's body, and three months since Action News Now first began reporting on this story. Despite what the family believes to be a slow investigation, Stott said the department still considers this their top priority case. "I understand [the family's] frustration and I am frustrated as well," Stott said. "It's a disturbing case and I'd like to get it solved." Stott added that there is no statute of limitations on the case. The Rhodes expressed frustration over the progress of the investigation but are appreciative of police work on the case. "Its sad," Donnie said. "I feel guilty that Im not pushing harder to get justice." The Rhodes described Greta Putnam as the "backbone" to the family. "She was always there for us, picked up where other people couldnt," Donnie said. "She just taught us how to work, taught us how to forgive, get over stuff, and to love." The Rhodes spoke candidly to what they know about the murder scene. "Im not afraid to say it. They cut her throat. She was in her bed," Donnie said. "She was woken up, and she fought," Ron said. "I lose sleep at night [over this]. Did she know the person? Did she recognize them? How come nobody heard her scream?" "She's little, 90 pounds. [The murderer] was super aggressive," Donnie added. He said the killer covered Putnam back up with a sheet after the murder. The family is asking the public for help to get the word out about the investigation and bring justice for their grandmother. The Rhodes say they are offering a $5,000 reward to anyone with information that can lead to the suspect's arrest. Anyone with information is asked to call the Oroville Police Department at (530) 538-2448. One of Greta Putnam's young relatives vanished around the same time as Putnam's murder. Plumas County Sheriff investigators are looking for 21-year-old Dominic Potts. Oroville police say they do not have information linking Potts to the crime but would like to know where he is. To watch more from Action News Now's interview with Putnam's family members, see below: For more on what we learned from investigators and the family on Dominic Potts, please click here. For more on our prior reporting of Greta Putnam's murder investigation, click here. UPDATE 2:51 p.m. Thursday, March 21, 2019 - The Shasta County Sheriff's Office found Howard Albrecker safe. --- REDDING, Calif. - The Redding Police Department is searching for a man that is missing and also considered at risk. Authorities say Howard Albrecker left his home in Redding on Wednesday, March 20, to go to the local post office. He never returned. Albrecker was last seen on surveillance video Thursday morning at a gas station in Red Bluff. Police say he has stomach cancer and is possibly suffering from early onset dementia. Howard is 72-years-old, 5'7", 120 pounds with white hair and blue eyes. He is driving a red 2015 Toyota RAV 4, with California License 7NDX624. Anyone with information is asked to call the Redding Police Department at (530) 225-4200. No Parent Ever Complained to the GMC: a Public Statement from the Lancet Families Supports The MMR3 (Dr. Wakefield, Prof. Murch, Prof. Walker-Smith.) "All of the investigations were carried out without distress to our children, many of whom made great improvements on treatment so that for the first time in years they were finally pain free." One fact often lost in the media frenzy over the MMR 3 is that the accusations against the three doctors came entirely from the medical industry and their hired guns, never from the parents of the patients who were served. Most of the parents of the 12 children in the original case series published in The Lancet (now retracted for no reason that anyone involved in the frenzy can explain coherently and support with evidence) made a decision to go public Last May, we posted a letter from the parents of 8 of the 12 children in which they express their support for Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues. We thought it was important enough to post again today. An Open Letter To Whom It May Concern We are writing to you as parents of the children who, because of their symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease and associated autism, were seen at the Royal Free Hospital Paediatric Gastroenterology Unit by Professor Walker-Smith and Dr. Simon Murch with the involvement of Dr Andrew Wakefield on the research side of their investigations. Our children became the subjects of a paper published in The Lancet in 1998. We know these three doctors are being investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC) on the basis of allegations made to them by a freelance reporter. Among the many allegations made are the suggestions that the doctors acted inappropriately regarding our children, that Dr. Wakefield solicited them for research purposes and that our children had not been referred in the usual way by their own GPs. It is also claimed that our children were given unnecessary and invasive investigations for the purpose of research, and not in their interest. We know this was not so. All of our children were referred to Professor Walker-Smith in the proper way in order that their severe, long-standing and distressing gastroenterological symptoms could be fully investigated and treated by the foremost paediatric gastroenterologists in the UK. Many of us had been to several other doctors in our quest to get help for our children but not until we saw Professor Walker-Smith and his colleagues were full investigations undertaken. We were all treated with utmost professionalism and respect by all three of these doctors. Throughout our childrens care at the Royal Free Hospital we were kept fully informed about the investigations recommended and the treatment plans which evolved. All of the investigations were carried out without distress to our children, many of whom made great improvements on treatment so that for the first time in years they were finally pain free. We have been following the GMC hearings with distress as we, the parents, have had no opportunity to refute these allegations. For the most part we have been excluded from giving evidence to support these doctors whom we all hold in very high regard. It is for this reason we are writing to the GMC and to all concerned to be absolutely clear that the complaint that is being brought against these three caring and compassionate physicians does not in any way reflect our perception of the treatment offered to our sick children at the Royal Free. We are appalled that these doctors have been the subject of this protracted enquiry in the absence of any complaint from any parent about any of the children who were reported in the Lancet paper. J. Ahier P. Aitken D. Hill R. Hill R. Kessick R. Poulter R. Sleat I. Thomas I. T. Thomas Two point five percent of the United States children are exempt from one or more vaccines, and one percent of children across the country have never been vaccinated at all, but citizens, and governments alike seek to shrink this number. Proponents of vaccine mandates argue that everyone should be vaccinated to protect the community as a whole, and that the benefit of the immunization outweighs the risk of the vaccine. While some people believe that vaccinations should be mandatory, people should actually have the right to make an informed decision about vaccinating their child because the theory of artificial herd immunity is fraudulent, the government shouldnt have control over such personal choices, and vaccines are not indisputably safe. This is a reality of many parents across the United States today. Legislation has been, and is currently being proposed to take away the choice around vaccinating their children. As you can imagine, taking away this choice has angered many parents across the nation. The concept of vaccines is based on that of natural immunity: when you get a disease, you wont get it again because your body knows how to fight it. Vaccinations are injections that expose ones immune system to a virus. This activates ones immune system, creating a memory of that virus, but not actually getting them sick. Then, when the virus actually attacks, the body is theoretically immune to it. What could it be? What could have caused your child to regress so dramatically, and suddenly? Then it hits you: it was the vaccine. How could you have done this to such an innocent child? Your child? You get a blood test done, the vaccine didnt even immunize your child. It did more harm than good. You vow to never vaccinate them again. As a mother-to-be, the question of whether to vaccinate your new baby against deadly diseases, or take the risk of them getting sick looms over you. There is pressure from your doctor, your friends, and your family to do it, even though you have heard otherwise. Finally, you have made up your mind; you want to protect your child and everyone who they interact with. You vaccinate your newborn. Note: The following was written by a young person, well under the age of 18 for a school assignment. She is also the artist who created the graphic. She is EXEMPT from having to declare a name here at Age of Autism. The author has tested in the top 1% of her state for both reading and math. This student would not be allowed to go to school if vaccine exemption rights were to be revoked. Please consider the writer's tender age when commenting. Thank you. ### Initially, vaccines should not be mandated because the concept of artificial herd immunity is a falsity. Although some would say that everyone should be vaccinated to protect the herd for the greater good, herd immunity from vaccines has never actually been proven. The concept of herd immunity is that if a certain majority of the population has been immunized against the disease, then the rest of the population would be protected. This, however, has only been conceptualized, never actually documented, with vaccines. One article from the informational online publication, The Vaccine Reaction, explains that Dr. Arthur W. Hedrich, a health officer in Chicago, Illinois was the first to document the idea of herd immunity. He observed that, during 1900-1930, outbreaks of measles in Boston, MA appeared to be suppressed when 68 percent of the children contracted the virus. Later in the 1930s, Hedrich observed that after 55 percent of the child population in Baltimore, MD contracted measles the rest of the citys population appeared to be immune to the disease. Furthermore, another article from that website describes, Numerous outbreaks of pertussis have occurred in the U.S. in recent years in communities where 80 to 90 percent of those infected had been vaccinated. The theory of herd immunity, as it relates to vaccinated populations, has been repeatedly shown to be false. These instances prove that herd immunity supposedly provided by vaccines doesnt work. Dr. Hedrich initially conceptualized herd immunity before the widespread use of vaccines. He observed that this natural phenomenon worked when, at maximum, sixty-eight percent of the population had contracted the disease. Only sixty-eight percent. Currently, mandating vaccines for the two point five percent of the population who dare to question vaccines would be pointless, according to Hedrich. With the largely recognized 90-95% of the population being vaccinated for herd immunity to work, the country as a whole should be safe. So, why should more mandates beimplemented if the immunization rate for the country has already exceeded both the initial conceptualization, and the current threshold? Furthermore, natural herd immunity was observed regarding the measles. How can this observation of the natural spread of one virus logically be applied to artificial immunity against so many other communicable diseases? Moreover, vaccines do not always provide immunity to a singular vaccinated person. As The Vaccine Reaction mentions, those who have been vaccinated are still able to get the disease that they have been supposedly immunized against, depending on how their body reacts to it. If vaccines cant keep one person immunized against an illness, then how would they prevent an outbreak from unleashing on an already mostly vaccinated population? In sum, vaccination mandates would not actually protect those who cant get vaccinated, but they would infringe on personal freedoms. Moving on, vaccine mandates put very personal choices into the hands of the government. Expounding, each persons body is completely and drastically unique. Although the opposition would argue that the government knows best, as this is a public safety issue, each person knows their body and their childrens body better than any government could. The government cannot possibly know what is better for you or your children than you can. "If the State can tag, track down and force citizens against their will to be injected with biological products of known and unknown toxicity today, there will be no limit on which individual freedoms the State can take away in the name of the greater good tomorrow." Says National Vaccine Information Center President, Barbara Loe Fisher. To continue, Colorados Democratic governor, Jared Polis, states, Its important that parents vaccinate their children, but you cant do that at the point of a gun. When the government tries to force parents to do this, it creates distrust in both vaccinations and distrust in government. Books such as Aldous Huxleys Brave New World , George Orwells 1984 , and Lois Lowrys The Giver exemplify possible situations in which the government has total control over peoples bodies and minds. Unlike the brainwashed citizens in these fictional dystopias, people today are still capable of individual thoughts. As Fisher and Polis mention, too much control does not solve the problem, it creates more of them. People today are expected to blindly put their faith in the government, however, the protagonists of these novels are the ones who question society, the ones who decide it is best to make personal choices for themselves. Citizens today should retain the right to make personal choices and look into the safety of what goes in their bodies. Last, but most definitely not least, vaccines are not unequivocally safe. Despite the popular opinion that there is little to no risk when getting vaccinated, vaccines do pose risks. For instance, there are many commonly cited side effects of numerous vaccines. The Human Resources and Service Administration (HRSA) has, to date, paid over $4 billion in compensation to thousands of people for vaccine injuries. Additionally, not all of the ingredients -- or vaccines, for that matter -- have been safety tested. It is not even possible to test all ingredients and vaccines for safety and effectiveness. HRSA cites all of the filed vaccine injuries on their website. Common injuries include everything from pain at the injection site and fainting to more extreme reactions like anaphylaxis, encephalopathy, and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, some of which cant be cured Furthermore, David Kirby, a New York Times investigative journalist, and award-winning author, states that when only a singular vaccine ingredient and a singular vaccine have been tested, ...It is illogical to exonerate all vaccines, all vaccine ingredients, and the total US vaccine program as a whole, based solely on a handful of epidemiological studies of just one vaccine and one vaccine ingredient. It is akin to claiming that every form of animal protein is beneficial to people when all you have studied is fish. It can be observed that vaccines, however beneficial, can and often do cause suffering, and permanent damage. Although some would argue that vaccines shouldnt be administered to those who are allergic to the ingredients, for many, it is too late to know if they are allergic until after the damage has been done. Whats more, is that there have never been clinical or true placebo tests, as there should be. Only one ingredient, thimerosal, has been tested, and yet the general consensus is that vaccines are miraculously one-hundred percent safe, or at least safe enough. How is it even possible, logically and scientifically, to test the safety of all vaccines when there are so many variables? To ensure the safety of vaccines about 1.6 * 1016 tests would have to be run. This number is the product of the mean number of ingredients in a given type of vaccine times the number of recommended doses of that vaccine, times that of all the other recommended vaccines administered from ages zero to eighteen. These experiments would test the safety of each ingredient, by itself, in each possible dosage of it, and its effect in relationship to each and every other ingredient. This is a simplified version of the number of tests that need to be run in order for ensured definite safety in vaccines. As soon as a double dose is administered, as soon as a different type of flu shot is developed, as soon as ONE ingredient in one vaccine changes, then most of the tests would need to be run again. This doesnt factor in the minor biological, anatomical, and genetic discrepancies between each person either. Would the effect of a given ingredient on a 75 pound ten year-old differ from that of a 125 pound one? Some might say that the epidemiological studies prove that vaccines are safe enough, but they are merely statistical analyses. The vaccinated population, the children of the future, become the guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industrys tests. Furthermore, the scientific method has extremely specific procedures. When conducting an experiment, one has a singular dependent variable (that which is being measured), a singular independent variable (that which is being changed on purpose), and a control group (that which remains constant). In this instance of testing vaccine safety, when there are 1.6 * 1016things that need to be measured, each relying on one another to be measured accurately, and having no control group since every body is different, how can any progress towards an accurate answer be made? When applying this strict method to the statistical, and epidemiological studies that are often referenced, the constant group would be the unvaccinated population. If vaccines were mandated, there would be no way to test the effects of new vaccines against a control group, since the control group would be eliminated. How could safety studies be continued if the control group is eliminated, and there are too many variables to measure? How are these safety studies safely conducted when children are the test subjects? Thus, the current vaccine program is illogical and inhumane due to the lack safety testing. To conclude, some people believe that mandating vaccinations is the right thing to do. But, the public should have the right to maintain their freedom regarding vaccinating their children because conceptual artificial herd immunity is deceptive, government doesnt need to be so draconian, and vaccines are not guaranteed to be safe. Although, the supposed crazy anti-vaxxers are anti-science, vaccination safety, and artificial herd immunity in and of themselves have not been clinically tested, studied, or proven to an irrefutable standard. The ever tempting conformity, the becoming of blind devotees to government and to society, draws so many people so close. Yet, in literary and historical examples the questioners and the rebels are the heroes. There are few people in todays society who are actually questioning the popular and predominant vaccine paradigm, but, paradoxically they are also the ones being shunned by society. Dont take what you are told for granted. Be the hero of YOUR story. Question what is known because questions, not answers, are the basis of science. Bibliography The American Photography Open 2019 contest is now officially underway. (Please go here for information on how to enter!) As we get ready to view submissions from around the world, we will be profiling finalists from the contest's inaugural 2018 edition. Today we launch the series with a profile of Mauro De Bettio. Mauro De Bettio was born and raised in a little village in the Italian Alps, but he is now based in Barcelona, Spain. His passion for telling stories about people and cultures as a documentary photographer has taken him around the world. In Bucharest, Romania, for instance, he photographed a man who lives below ground, in the citys railway tunnels. In Nepal he captured the lives of honey gatherers. In Bangladesh he shot portraits of victims of gender-based acid attacks. Two of his images were chosen as finalists in the American Photography Open 2018 competition a photograph made at the Ursul bear dance festival Romania, a ritual that symbolizes the death and rebirth of time; and a photograph of ship breakers in Bangladesh. De Bettio, who was also named a winner of the National Geographic Italia photography contest in 2018, has had work published by National Geographic, LensCulture, Dodho magazine, Lens Magazine, Edge of Humanity magazine, and other publications. How did you get into photography, and how long have you been at it? I felt from a young age the desire to tell stories. I discovered that the camera was the right tool for me, the eye through which I could speak to the world. It was an instrument that began to walk by my side towards a long journey of discovery. Definitely, to grow by myself, without the influence of schools, courses and lessons, has slowed down the process of technical knowledge, but because of this I learned my own way of seeing. Ive been formed and shaped by the environment and the people who surrounded me in my long travels. Although it is difficult to express, I think that the photograph represents my way of speaking, and what I try to do through my language is to capture the sense of what I breathe and touch with my hands. Not only in appearance but also, and especially, in the essence; trying to express nuances and subtleties contained in a single frame. I think thats part of my personality and my work fully expresses what I am. My story, my soul. Do you do photography professionally? At the moment this is not my main profession, but my goal is, of course, to be able to make photography a constant part of my life. From your Instagram page, it seems that travel is a focus of yours. Is that right? Its true that Im traveling a lot, but the focus of my photography is actually on different cultures, people and their stories. You had not one, but two photographs selected as finalists int he American Photography Open 2018 competition. Lets talk about them first, your image Chasing Spirits. This was taken at a festival on New Years Eve in the north of Romania. I remember this as a thrilling moment, where groups of enormous bears pour out from the back of old vans. They lined up one after another and started marching and dancing. The people dressed as the bears roar loudly, mimicking the sound of bears, swinging their enormous heads, imitating their gait and movements. I was very impressed with this ritual. It is an ancient ritual that brings together the whole community as they gather to watch the performance. Tradition holds it close to their hearts. I had the great opportunity to make incredible portraits. How did you come to make the picture on New Years Eve in Romania? When I choose a project I always start a long research first. As the ritual is held at the end of the year, I had to spend Christmas and New Years Eve traveling alone. The small village is a day trip by train north of the Romania's capital, Bucharest, and temperatures there are very low. Not easy, but when I'm in the field I forget everything around me. I become one with the place and the people I'm portraying. Lets talk about your research. What preparations did you take to photograph the bear festival? To choose a project is always a long task. I try to discover rare or untold realities around the world. I want to tell a story and create an image that will incite emotions. When I first saw a picture of this festival in which people wear bearskins, I immediately realized that there was a big potential. It took for me a while to be able to understand where to go, when to go and the gear I needed. But that is what it cost to be able to capture something new and original. Lets turn to your other finalist photograph from the AP Open contest. Its titled Rust and Sweat, and it features ship breakers at the port of Dhaka, Bangladesh people who demolish old ships in order to salvage scrap and raw materials. The ship breaking is a challenging processthe work is hard and dangerous. I wanted to be able to catch a moment like this, which contains in a single frame the enormous effort that these incredible souls make to be able to feed their families. How did you go about photographing them? To take this picture, first I was observing the ship breakers, sitting on a pier by the Sadar Ghat, the port of Dhaka. After a while I went deeper into this graveyard of ships, and into the lives of these people. I looked closely at the giant skeletons of the ships submerged with tireless workers. What camera and lens did you shoot the photos with? I am very loyal to Canon. I have been using their equipment for years and I must say that it has never betrayed me. For the bear festival I shot with a Canon 5D Mark IV and a variety of lenses the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM II, the Canon EF 85mm f/1.4 L IS USM; and the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM II. How did you hear about the American Photography Open competition? A friend who is also a photographer recommended this competition to me. After taking a closer look at it, I was very excited to take part. I saw this as an great opportunity. I believe competitions are there to enable you to grow and learn, and to reach more people with your images and the stories you tell. Besides that, you get to know other great photographers. It is an honor to be now one of the finalists. ___________________________ At top: From Mauro De Bettios series on Romanias Ursul festival See Mauro De Bettio's work at his website and Instagram. Smithsonian magazine has announced the 60 finalists in its 16th annual photo contest, selected from more than 48,000 entries from 207 countries and territories. The contests six categories include The Natural World, The American Experience, Travel, People, Altered Images, and (times being what they are) Mobile. Among the finalists: Patrizia Riccis photo of an Arctic fox with a morsel of caribou in Wapusk National Park, in Canada. See all the finalists at the contest website and vote for your favorite. Would you like to receive breaking news notifications from The Post and Courier? Sign up to receive news and updates from this site directly to your desktop. Breaking News Columbia Breaking News Greenville Breaking News Myrtle Beach Breaking News Aiken Breaking News N Augusta Breaking News Click on the bell icon to manage your notifications at any time. Success! Please click the 'Allow' button in the 'Show Notifcations' alert in your browser if one is available. Thank you for signing up! Please enable notifications in your browser and reload the page. U.S. Reps. Joe Wilson from South Carolina and Rick Allen from Georgia held a joint press conference Thursday morning near the riverfront to talk about the fish passage project and the New Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam and what needs to be done to maintain the rivers pool level. Ive never seen the community come together like weve come together on this issue. Allen said. This is a two-state, bicameral bipartisan issue, he said. +2 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers addresses Lock and Dam situation at workshop Residents and leaders from both sides of the Savannah River had a chance to speak with the U Allen mentioned Wilson has had a meeting with Mark Esper, Secretary of the Army, and said after the public comment period they would meet with the Corps to come up with an agreement. We delivered a letter to the Secretary of the Army expressing our concern about the process and the fact that, you know, the Corps needs to listen to the community. So we went right to the top, Allen said. Wilson said that he, Allen and U.S. Senators from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, have all indicated support for the Water Infrastructure Improvement for the Nation (WIIN) Act, which required that the pool be maintained. Thats what we believe, that the law should be followed, which provides that there will be a pool, that there will be a proper level of water for this extraordinary community, whether it be for recreation, navigation, water use of all kind, Wilson said. Wilson said they support Alternative 1-1, which would retain the dam and provide fish passage on the Georgia side of the river. Since the WIIN Act deauthorized the Lock and Dam, Allen said there would have to be legislation that would repurpose and reauthorize the dam. Allen and Wilson also held the press conference Thursday to encourage the public to attend a meeting at the Augusta Commission chambers Thursday afternoon that will allow people to make comments on the issue. The hearing will be held from 5-7 p.m. at the Augusta Commission chambers at 535 Telfair Street in Augusta. GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip The Gaza Strip Interior Ministry said in its March 14 statement that the movement is following up on the Gaza rockets that were fired in defiance of a national consensus against them, and stressed that measures will be taken against the violators. For the first time since 2014, two rockets were fired toward Tel Aviv on March 14, despite the Egypt-brokered truce agreements between Hamas and Israel. Although the military wings of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad denied responsibility for the rockets fired, Israel shelled dozens of military targets belonging to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip without causing casualties. This is the first time that the Interior Ministry explicitly declared that rocket operatives, in a time of truce, will be prosecuted. The ministry and Hamas are committed to a media silence when it comes to holding accountable those who fire rockets toward Israel, although it does so discreetly. Holding them accountable publicly would consist of a violation of Hamas' principle of resisting Israel until the liberation of Palestine. Israeli news sites reported March 15 the arrest of Hamas members who reportedly fired the rockets accidentally, as they were setting them up for any future battle. The reports indicated that the Egyptian delegation told Israel that the movement is very embarrassed, that the operation was not planned and took the movement by surprise. Nevertheless, Israeli estimates and analyses concluded that Hamas deliberately fired the rockets in order to pressure Israel to ease the siege on Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the Knessets March 17 meeting that truce talks with Hamas were renewed in order to reach understandings that would calm down the security situation in the Gaza Strip, following the recent escalation. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem told Al-Monitor that it is the Interior Ministrys job to hold accountable whoever violates the instructions of the factions joint operating room, considering such actions to be against the national consensus. He refused to make any comments on the incident. Al-Monitor could not obtain comment from the Interior Ministry. Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a political analyst and director of the Youth Media Center, Hamas' media wing, told Al-Monitor that he perceives the firing of the rockets to be a matter of pressure and counter-pressure, be it in the Gaza Strip or the internal Israeli landscape. This is why some Israeli parties viewed the rockets as a message to negotiate more than anything else, he added. He said the rockets type and accuracy raise a question mark when it comes to the rockets' being accidentally fired. He emphasized that Hamas does not seek any confrontation as it insists on the lifting of the siege. Still, a round of escalation is possible in case the blockade is not lifted and an implosion is possible in the Palestinian arena, he added. He said the Interior Ministrys position is a smart political stance intended to ward off a large-scale Israeli reaction, in addition to being an attempt to save Palestinian civilians from being targeted and to prevent parties from dragging the Gaza Strip into an uncalculated escalation. He said this could mean that it is a message to curb any Israeli reaction rather than to pursue and hold accountable the operatives who fired the rockets. The joint operating room is still considering the incident and inquiring into the rocket-firing mechanism since it does not want the same incident to be repeated. All parties would rather go for understandings to control the situation on the ground and enhance the humanitarian situation, he said. He noted the Interior Ministry opted for a tactical stance in coordination with the Palestinian factions, contrary to the Palestinian Authority position that is hostile to all forms of armed resistance. He said Hamas is now harnessing all means of resistance, including the mobilization of masses, to the service of its vision for the struggle. Mamoun Abu Amer, an expert in Israeli affairs and lecturer at Ummah Open University in the Gaza Strip, told Al-Monitor that the Israeli response to the shelling has been balanced, adding that the Israeli leadership, for political considerations, does not want the situation to explode or escalate. According to the Israeli military intelligence appraisal, dealing Hamas a harsh blow will not serve Israel, which is heading toward general elections next month, he noted. He said that at first, Israel thought Islamic Jihad was behind the shelling. Yet later Israeli assessments indicated that Hamas members had launched the rockets by mistake. It [Hamas] does not stand behind them, or at least, the rockets were not fired upon the directives of its leadership, he said. He added that Israel wants to be persuaded by Hamas explanation because it falls in line with Israel's present policy toward Gaza, which is to avoid confrontation. He said Israeli news reports on an internal Hamas inquiry to investigate the circumstances of the rocket firings and the cancellation of the March 15 Friday protests of the Great March of Return, for the first time since they started in March 2018, have alleviated the situation. The Interior Ministrys statement is a message to reassure the Israeli side that Hamas will not tolerate breaking the truce and that the violators, even though they were its own members, will be held accountable. Moreover, this was the first time rockets were fired at Tel Aviv since 2014, which could have possibly dragged the Gaza Strip into a war if there were any victims among Israelis. This is why the Hamas-led Interior Ministry was quick to contain the risks of a confrontation. Mustafa al-Sawaf, a political analyst close to Hamas and former editor-in-chief of the local Felesteen newspaper, told Al-Monitor that regardless of whether the rockets were fired by mistake or there was an official decision to fire them, the Israeli response would not have escalated further as there was no loss of lives. Netanyahus objective is to win the election. He does not seek a war against Hamas, Sawaf said. Sawaf added that the Interior Ministrys warning to hold accountable those involved stems from the priority it accords to national interest. It was a warning that whoever takes a unilateral decision to violate the truce will be held accountable, and he stressed that the statement was directed at Gazans. Its statement does not imply being against the resistance, but rather against whoever breaks the directives of the joint operating room, which is who decides when and how the confrontation shall take off, he said. Hassan Abdo, a political analyst close to Islamic Jihad, told Al-Monitor that the Interior Ministry and Hamas military wing statements point to Hamas attempt to contain the situation and alleviate the Israeli response following Israeli media reports accusing Islamic Jihad of being behind the shelling. For Abdo, the rockets were more likely fired by mistake. It is an isolated incident that occurred in the absence of any decision from the central command, he said, ruling out the possibility that Hamas was using the firing to deliver a message to Israel. "Mahan Air will have to halt its Paris flights as of April 1. They notified me in an email," tweeted an Iranian passenger who had booked a flight to the French capital. Airline officials have confirmed the cancellations, saying French government sanctions forced the ban. Mahan is Iran's second-largest carrier with its Paris schedule covering four flights on a weekly basis. The airline has already suffered similar bans, including one imposed by Germany in January. German officials cited security reasons amid allegations about Iran's involvement in assassination plots on European soil, an accusation Tehran has vehemently denied. Earlier in March, Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi expressed his country's dissatisfaction with the decision, stressing "the necessity for a reconsideration." But the ban still remains in place. After Iran and major world powers inked the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015, hopes were reinvigorated that the lifting of sanctions will herald better days for Iran's crumbling aviation industry affected by decades-long punitive measures. As the accord began to be implemented, Iran restlessly pushed to cover the lagging sector, signing multibillion-dollar purchase deals with Boeing, Airbus and ATR. But reinstated sanctions following the US departure from the pact in May 2018 promoted cancellations. No Boeing aircraft was delivered while Airbus and ATR offered only three and 13 planes, respectively. The reinstated sanctions have also brought about peculiar situations. Earlier this year, a Norwegian Air Shuttle had to make an emergency landing at an airport in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz en route from Dubai to Oslo. But not everything went as smoothly as expected. The plane remained stranded for nearly 70 days because delivering a replacement engine to Iran would have been a violation of US sanctions that prohibited any export of plane parts to the country. Iranian authorities and social media users cited the case as a clear example of how US sanctions could well go beyond the scope of ordinary Iranian citizens. Western sanctions limiting business with Iran have also scared several leading international airlines away from Iran, among them British Airways, Air France and the Netherlands' KLM. What has further mounted pressure on the Iranian aviation industry are the refueling restrictions. Many European airports are now refusing to provide fuel to Iranian airlines. As an example, a regular flight between Tehran and Hamburg operated by Iran's Qeshm Air is denied fuel in the destination. It has to land in Belgrade middle way and stretch the flight time for two hours to get its tank filled in the Serbian capital. The refueling issue also sparked controversy last year after a flight set to carry Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif from Munich to Moscow had to be stranded for several hours before the fuel delivery was worked out. Sanctions have also tremendously affected Iran's ability to overhaul its aging fleet. Reports of a variety of flight-related problems over technical failures have become regular news in Iran. In January, a military cargo plane's emergency landing outside the capital city of Tehran killed 15 people out of 16 onboard. The latest lucky escape involved passengers bound to Tehran from the southern resort Island of Kish on March 19. The captain of the Fokker 100 flight, belonging to the country's leading airline, Iran Air, made an emergency landing on the plane's body at Mehrabad Airport after a hydraulic fault locked the tires. Amateur videos showed safe but panicked passengers leaving the aircraft surrounded by emergency workers and firefighters. Media praised the "skilled" pilot for the successful landing. It was not the first time passengers' lives were saved by a skilled pilot. In 2011, Houshang Shahbazi handled a failed wheel carriage, using the landing gear under the plane's wings to miraculously take passengers to safety. The reimposition of secondary US sanctions and the consequent hesitation of international banks, European export credit agencies and enterprises to engage Iran have severely undermined the potential for Iran-EU trade. The establishment of the Instrument to Support Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) can be seen as a positive step forward, but it is yet to become operational. In the meantime, opportunities are missed on all sides without a comprehensive strategy among governments and business associations. As such, there is a need for a road map to sustain segments of Iran-EU trade and investment ties that can contribute to the crucial political relations between the two sides. Per Fischer, the German CEO of INSTEX, traveled to Tehran on March 12 to meet with business and political leaders in order to clarify the ambiguities about the payment mechanism. There are still a lot of questions about how INSTEX will work, but it is designed to essentially act as a trustee and administrator of funds related to Iranian exports that would be used for Iranian purchases of goods and services in Europe. Now, all stakeholders are awaiting the operationalization of this entity to assess its impact. At the same time, it is valid to argue that INSTEX has fallen short of Irans initial expectations. Nonetheless, both sides wish to sustain the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and also the overall relationship, despite existing tensions and bottlenecks. Indeed, on March 12, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini underlined once more that the EU is still striving to preserve the economic interests of Iran from the pact. However, in the absence of trade, investments and technology transfers to Iran by large European companies, Tehran will not enjoy the expected economic interests that Mogherini is referring to. The withdrawal of the French multinational Total from a signed contract and the cancellation of the agreement with Airbus are both symbolic of that reality. So, step one would be for both sides to accept the new reality in which Iran will at best attract small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from Europe, mainly those that have no or limited exposure to the US market. As Al-Monitor has argued before, such SMEs could offer Iran the needed technologies; however, SMEs will be overwhelmed by some of the risks and challenges in Iran business. They also need the clarity that when EU officials refer to legitimate trade, it means legitimacy according to EU laws and not US laws. In fact, many European companies still perceive that legitimate trade means the food sector and pharmaceuticals, while within EU laws, the scope is much larger. Therefore, step two would create the needed clarity as well as business climate in which these SMEs can engage Iranian opportunities. An average SME would require legal protection in case of US sanctions, and trade financing and market entry strategies on the Iranian side, including an assessment of various risks and an understanding of the EU sanctions regime on entities such as companies linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. What interested SMEs are facing is the fact that the main European export credit agencies are not financing Iran business, there are too many ambiguities with regard to sanctions and the business climate in Iran and on top of everything else, the majority of European banks dont even want to hear the word Iran. This is why INSTEX and other governmental entities in Europe will have to go beyond being a payment platform and will have to offer legal and risk-management advice to European SMEs to pave the way for greater engagement. This does not mean that INSTEX will have to create a huge bureaucracy, but rather that it will have to develop a list of trusted service providers who can help interested SMEs. Furthermore, INSTEX will have to become an instrument to facilitate the function of export credit agencies, which are the prerequisite of future European exports to Iran. In addition to technology, the Iranian economy will require investments. Not all the needed capital will have to come from Europe, but the EU can help the countrys development by paving the way for the needed structures to attract longer-term investments in Iranian projects. As such, step three would be a strategy on how to create a mechanism to channel existing capital into funds that can invest in relevant projects. For example, INSTEX could become a platform for creating some Eurobonds for existing or future Iranian projects. Such Eurobonds could include Iranian and international capital, but they need to be protected from any sanctions or confiscation attempts by the US side a factor that has led to hesitation on the Iranian side to use such mechanisms. Step four in the process would have to be developed in conjunction with both sides. In order to secure a smooth process of collaboration between European SMEs and the Iranian private sector, one needs to think of all the diverse capabilities within the EU and move away from the established patterns of trade. In other words, Iran has to think of SMEs, but also of smaller European member states that have much to offer and are less scrutinized by US authorities. To achieve that, the Iranian side should draft a comprehensive strategy on the technologies that are required and then clearly identify which SMEs of which EU members are capable of providing the needed technologies. Such a diversified approach would enhance opportunities and also make the emerging trade relations more sustainable in light of potential political shifts in Europe. Assuming that the above four steps are initiated successfully by both sides, one key issue that would remain is the major imbalance in the trade volume between Iran and the EU in the absence of Iranian oil and petrochemicals exports to Europe. The consequence of the imbalance would be that Iranian exports to the EU wouldnt generate enough funds to compensate for European exports to Iran. Therefore, step five of the roadmap would be to involve third countries in the process. This step could involve diverse routes: On the one hand, the inclusion of a third country such as India could generate some needed inflow into INSTEX, if, for example, segments of Irans petroleum sector exports to India flow into the European payment mechanism. On the other hand, the involvement of a country such as Iraq could pave the way for using some of the Iranian trade surplus with Iraq to offset the payment imbalances. Interestingly, Abdolnasser Hemmati, governor of Irans central bank, seemed to hint at such a plan when he recently discussed the countrys new trade policy. The impact of the process would be that many imports into Iran would go through Iraq and then be re-exported to Iran. Step six in the process would be to create more space for new areas of cooperation. Iran has a very diverse economy and there are important developments that could connect well to European markets. For example, health tourism or opportunities emerging from Iranian information technology start-ups are good examples where a closer cooperation between the two sides could consolidate relations and generate interests that could compensate for the lack of initially expected benefits. All of the above steps are feasible, but they would require greater proactivity and creativity on both sides. They would also be concrete steps toward a potential future trade and cooperation agreement that could act as another component in a process of deepening Iran-EU relations. In fact, negotiations for a nonpreferential trade and cooperation agreement took place between 2002 and 2005 but then were put on hold due to the nuclear standoff. Perhaps it is time to reconsider that path, taking into account new political and economic realities. As more factions within Iraqs Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) are being designated as terrorists by the US administration on account of their close ties with the Iranian side, Tehran is moving toward pulling the Iraqi file from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and leaving it with the Foreign Ministry, local reports say. This reported shift in Iranian policy would seek to address a number of critical concerns none more important, perhaps, than protecting the PMU, which is striving to repurpose itself as a fully-fledged security institution, especially after Washington explicitly told Iranian authorities that supporting militias in Iraq must come to end as part of 12 requirements outlined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in November for the lifting of US sanctions. Ever since, Irans fundamentalist and reformist spectrums have clashed over the causes and pathways out of the sanctions crisis. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarifs Feb. 25 resignation announcement could be read as his way of protesting the apparatus of the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist (Irans Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) and its overwhelming influence over Irans foreign relations, whereas his agreeing to continue in his post was the result of Khamenei having the IRGC cede control of the very same file in favor of Iranian President Hassan Rouhanis government, who was afforded wider powers with respect to handling and developing Tehrans foreign relations. This, seemingly, was to the liking of Iraqs highest Shiite authority, Ali al-Sistani, who agreed to meet Rouhani at his home in Najaf after refusing to meet with the IRGC's Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani on numerous occasions. In his March 11-13 visit to Iraq, Rouhani made sure to meet with the majority of the Iraqi leadership, including PMU commanders who enjoy cordial relations with Soleimani. Those included, most notably, Falih Alfayyadh, chairman of the PMU, and his aide Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. The PMU serves a critical role in bolstering Iraqs national solidarity, Rouhani stressed. He also hailed "the PMUs gallantry and sacrifices on the path of combating terrorism and establishing security and stability in Iraq, adding that combating terrorists in Iraq has become a reality thanks to the gallantry of the Iraqi people, who were a source of pride for Muslims and the Islamic world. Meanwhile, Alfayyadh described Rouhanis visit to Iraq as significant and coming "in the context of serving the interests of the peoples of both countries, noting that improving bilateral relationships between Iran and Iraq sets the stage for major developments in the region. Additionally, the Alghad press quoted a high-ranking source as saying IRGC Quds Force commander "Qasem Soleimani accompanied President Hassan Rouhani on his Iraq visit, where Soleimani met with political leaders and implored them to hasten the process of forming the government of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and avoid getting dragged into a Shiite-Shiite conflict that only serves the plans of the US. Alghad also reported, Solemani informed the Shiite political forces of an endeavor in the form of an US-Israeli-Arabic lobby to weaken the PMU and the Islamic resistance factions ahead of labelling them as criminals. However, Soleimani stressed that Tehran will not let the PMU be dismantled, disbanded, weakened or criminalized, no matter the cost. Al-Monitor has attempted to find out the details of the Rouhani-Alfayyadh meeting in light of anticipated developments in the relations between Baghdad and Tehran. A well-informed source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Al-Monitor, Irans delegation, which was led by President Hassan Rouhani, had no special messages to impart to the PMU leaders, saying, It was simply a by-the-book meeting that included no secret talks. The same source confirmed Soleimani's presence in Iraq during Rouhanis visit to Baghdad, saying, Soleimani has provided plenty of support for the Iraqi forces in its war on IS terrorism. The source stressed that only the Iraqi government can dictate the format of support and cooperation with neighboring countries. Nonetheless, the statement released by Sistani in the aftermath of the meeting with Rouhani said a discussion over the future of the armed factions in Iraq took place with the Iranian delegation. Sistani, according to the statement, told Rouhani that the most important challenges Iraq faces are combating corruption, improving public services and liming arms possession to the state and its security apparatuses; the ayatollah also expressed hope that the Iraqi government will make acceptable progress on those fronts. Sistani issued a fatwa in 2014 that came to be known as the Al-Jihad al-Kifaie (call to arms) to fend off the Islamic State (IS), which had stormed Mosul. The fatwa was the grounds for the establishment of the PMU, even though Sistani didnt use the term popular mobilization to refer to the individuals who responded to his fatwa; he called them volunteers over the years. Some Shiite figures speculate that Sistani is prepared to issue another fatwa to end the jihad as the country has been liberated from IS. No matter the actual implications of such a fatwa on the future of the PMU, or even of Rouhanis goals in his visits with Sistani and other Iraqi leaders, Iran is not expected to abandon its allies in the region most notably the PMU and any pro-Iran factions at a time when Washington is endeavoring to undermine Tehran before dragging the Iranians to a new round of nuclear talks. Even if the Iraqi file may have been taken from the hands of Khamenei (represented by the IRGC) and given to Foreign Ministry, the state of affairs as it concerns Iraqi-Iranian relations will remain unchanged. US sanctions have been the main cause of the dispute between Irans fundamentalist and Reformist spectrums, as the latter sees the fundamentalists as responsible for Washingtons decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal and reinstate sanctions as a direct result of the military aspect taking center stage in Irans relations with its neighboring countries, especially Iraq. Meanwhile, Iran is trying to replace this archetypical image of its regional relations, even in part, in the hopes of leaving a positive impression on its global perception and eventually finding a way around the economic sanctions. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has declared the upcoming Iranian New Year Pickup in Production. This means at the very least that future speeches and slogans will have a heightened focus on the state of the economy, which is currently struggling in part due to US sanctions that were reimposed after the Donald Trump administrations withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal signed between Iran and six world powers in 2015. We put behind us an adventurous year, Khamenei said in a video message aired on Iranian state television March 21, adding that "the enemy had plans for Iran, [but] the strength and wisdom of the people and the efforts of the youth neutralized the plans of the enemy. Khamenei said, Against severe sanctions that in their own words were unprecedented, the Iranian nation both in the political field and the economic field showed a strong and powerful reaction. Khamenei continued, The fundamental problem of the country is economic problems especially in recent months, the livelihood problems of the people have increased. He added, Some of this is related to inadequate management of economic issues. Two of the economic problems, according to Khamenei, are the issues of the decrease in the value of the national currency and the drop of purchasing power, and the slowing down of production and sometimes closing down of factories. According to economic experts who have been advising Khamenei, the solution is the development of national production. Regarding last years slogan of Supporting Iranian products, Khamenei said, I cannot say that this slogan was completely carried out, but it could be said that this slogan was paid attention to on a wide scale and on a number of issues; this slogan was welcomed by people and acted upon, and this certainly will have an influence. He added that production can solve many of the economic problems in Iran, including employment and currency issues, and can also protect the country in the face of foreign enemies. Khameneis focus on domestic production should not be a surprise. In a later speech in the northeastern city of Mashhad, Khamenei accused foreign countries of waging economic war against Iran and emphasized a need for economic deterrence. In a dig at President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarifs outreach to Western countries, particularly on the nuclear deal, Khamenei also said its good that officials have come to the conclusion that they cant trust the West. Khamenei also lamented Europes efforts to carry out commitments under the nuclear deal, saying that the trade vehicle INSTEX is more of a joke, albeit a bitter joke. President Rouhani also addressed economic issues in his New Year address, which was broadcast immediately after that of Khamenei. From the viewpoint of livelihood, people encountered many difficulties, Rouhani said. In order to address these issues, Rouhani stressed the need for unity among everyone in the country, including the different branches of the government, the armed forces, the universities, farmers and producers. Making a primary issue secondary and making the secondary issue primary is one of the biggest strategic mistakes in life, Rouhani said. He added, The basis of our turmoil and problems have come from those outside of our borders. Rouhani conceded to structural problems, some of which are related to previous years and even before the [1979 Islamic] revolution. He said there are even weaknesses in management that add to economic problems. However, he stressed that we must not forget the primary issue, which, according to him, is the enemy. He warned that in the upcoming year Iran must recognize that the enemy is in front of us, [and] if we attack to our left and right, we are inflicting damages on our own forces. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarifs New Year message also struck a similar tone. We are under no illusion that the path ahead is easy, Zarif said in the video message. But I will remind those who wish us harm that Iranians have celebrated more than 3,000 New Days, and we will celebrate countless more before submitting to outside diktats. The decades-old rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has re-emerged at a difficult time, with Tehran in economic crisis due to US sanctions. The recent friction started with a tussle over oil pricing. Riyadh offered the world cheaper oil to attract consumers facing any disruption in the Iranian oil supply. The second phase of US sanctions have had a devastating impact on Irans oil exports, shipping and banks, hitting the core of the Iranian economy. Irans oil exports have dropped nearly 1 million barrels a day, slashing its main source of revenue. More than 100 big international oil companies, major banks and oil exporters have reportedly pulled operations out of Iran. Meanwhile, Riyadh has boosted its oil production to ensure stable energy supplies and capture a bigger share of the market. Iran, reverting to decade-old prices to retain its foothold in Asian markets and compete with Saudi oil, has tried to maintain trade. Banking on big-time clients like China and India, Iran could survive the economic crisis, as China can take US pressure and has US waivers allowing it to buy Iranian oil until June. China, which requires one-third of the global supply of hydrocarbons to keep its economic growth on firm footing, could well be the lifeline Iran needs but Beijing cant afford any delays in its oil supply. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Saudi Arabia decisively filled any void left by Iran. Asia is a prized next-generation market for oil and will remain so even as the West finds alternate energy solutions. Countries like China, India and Pakistan are expected to represent the main oil-export markets for the next couple of decades. Furthering a new economic strategy, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman recently paid visits to Islamabad, New Delhi and Beijing. By investing in refineries and related projects there, Riyadh has become an important stakeholder. Saudi Arabia especially benefits from Pakistans port city of Gwadar, the focal port of Chinas flagship China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Gwadar, which can provide transport to mainland China in just seven days, is poised to become the main base station for Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and Africa. Though it is a near win-win situation, there is a catch. As Saudi Arabia is depriving Tehran of a good chunk of the Asian oil market, Iran might not be eager to have its rival in its immediate proximity. Pakistan shares a long desert border with Iran, and Gwadar lies just 175 miles from the Iranian port of Chabahar, which Iran shares with India. To make matters worse, Iran and Saudi Arabia are on opposite sides of the fence in proxy conflicts in Syria and Yemen. Considering these edgy bilateral ties, Pakistan faces tough times ahead keeping a balance between Riyadh and Tehran. Crafting a foreign policy to suit both has never been easy. In the recent past, having opted to remain neutral on the Yemen issue, Pakistan faced a deterioration of ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Likewise, in 2015, when Saudi Arabia formed the Islamic Military Alliance to fight Terrorism excluding Iran, Iraq and Syria and chose retired Pakistani Gen. Raheel Sharif to lead it, Iran wanted an explanation. Until now, Chabahar was never considered a threat to Gwadar. With the flourishing port of Bandar Abbas on Irans southern coast, Chabahar was just one option for Iran. It seemed likely that it would wind up as a sister port of Gwadar if Iran joined CPEC or even the Shanghai Co-operation Organization. But this possibility seems remote now, and Iran is bound to bring up Chabahar as a contender due to the Saudi presence in Gwadar. Sharing similar fears recently, former Pakistani Minister for Ports and Shipping Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjohas warned, "Gwadar is close to Iran's Chabahar port and the Reko Diq project close to Zahedan, which is the capital of Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province. Sunni militants [who subscribe to the Saudi Wahhabi ideology] are active in the area. Why would Tehran not be disturbed by Saudi Arabia's investment in Gwadar? There have been problems in the past in the volatile Sistan-Baluchestan province, and Pakistan helped capture Sunni rebel leader Abdol Malek Rigi for Iran in 2010. But if theres any trouble now, Iran might hold Saudi Arabia responsible and Chabahar could turn into a security challenge for the Gwadar port. To avoid such a situation, Pakistan will have to maintain strict neutrality and seek rapprochement between the countries. Consequently, resetting Saudi-Iran relations is the best option for all the stakeholders, even though there are hard-liners on both sides. As an important country for both Riyadh and Tehran, Pakistan is influential enough to soothe their misunderstandings. Being a Muslim nuclear power, Pakistan is important for the Saudi security equation. Iran has special interests in Pakistan, and the latters large Shiite population is second only to Irans. Recognizing the need for such mediation as soon as he was elected last year, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan stressed, Our aim will be that whatever we can do for conciliation in the Middle East, we want to play that role. Wishing for stronger ties with the new government, Iran responded positively. It was one of the first countries to congratulate Khan on assuming office, followed up with a visit from Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javed Zarif. Last year, Iran even celebrated Pakistans Independence Day for the very first time. However, the Pakistani prime ministers first foreign trip was to Saudi Arabia, even though Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had extended an invitation first. Khan requested economic assistance from Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Understandably, approaching Iran for the same was out of the question, with Iran in economic crisis due to the US sanctions. Islamic State will be wiped off map imminently, says Trump A bullish US President Donald Trump predicted Wednesday that the Islamic State group would be wiped off the map within hours, as he unfurled printouts showing the jihadists' shrinking presence in Iraq and Syria. Trump claimed American forces have inflicted significant casualties on the battlefield in the past month. He has signaled the group's imminent demise on several previous occasions, although IS, also known as ISIS, has yet to wave the white flag of surrender. In one map shown by Trump to reporters in Washington and then again at a rally to workers at a military tank factory in Lima, Ohio, IS territory marked in red extends over large areas. A second map, he said, shows the extremist organization about to be wiped out. "There is no red. In fact, there's actually a tiny spot which will be gone by tonight," he said at the White House. Later in Ohio, standing by M1A2 Abrams tanks painted in camouflage in front of a huge American flag, Trump again used his map props to highlight the military gains against the jihadists. "When I took over it was a mess, they were all over the place, all over Syria and Iraq," he said of IS, pointing at the red territory. "And now you look at it, and there's no red," he crowed as workers cheered. "As of today, this is ISIS, there's none. The caliphate is gone as of tonight." After sweeping across swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, the IS jihadists' cross-border caliphate has been whittled down by multiple offensives to the tiny embattled enclave in Baghouz, Syria. Fighting continued in Baghouz Wednesday, with the IS jihadists surrounded and under heavy fire from a US-led coalition of Kurds, Syrians and others. Trump claimed US forces in the last month "have killed the terrorists responsible for the attack in Syria that killed four Americans." On Tuesday a US-backed force in Syria said it arrested the jihadists suspected of involvement in that January attack, the deadliest on US troops since they deployed in the war-torn country in 2014. Trump also said US forces have killed those who attacked the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, and who orchestrated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole which left 17 American servicemen dead. "We killed them all," Trump said. "We killed them all." In January the US military said that Al-Qaeda operative Jamal al-Badawi, an architect of the bombing, was believed to have been killed in a precision strike in Yemen. After sweeping across swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, the IS jihadists' cross-border caliphate has been whittled down by multiple offensives to the tiny embattled enclave in Baghouz, Syria. Fighting continued in Baghouz Wednesday, with the IS jihadists surrounded and under heavy fire from a US-led coalition of Kurds, Syrians and others. Trump claimed US forces in the last month "have killed the terrorists responsible for the attack in Syria that killed four Americans." On Tuesday a US-backed force in Syria said it arrested the jihadists suspected of involvement in that January attack, the deadliest on US troops since they deployed in the war-torn country in 2014. Trump also said US forces have killed those who attacked the Bataclan theater in Paris in 2015, and who orchestrated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole which left 17 American servicemen dead. "We killed them all," Trump said. "We killed them all." In January the US military said that Al-Qaeda operative Jamal al-Badawi, an architect of the bombing, was believed to have been killed in a precision strike in Yemen. The chief suspect in the USS Cole attack, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is being held in the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, testifying before Congress on March 14, indicated that the United States is considering reducing the number of US troops in Iraq, a move that would be in coordination with the Iraqi government, depending on the level of threat posed by a resurgence from the remnants of Islamic State (IS). Military commanders of the Iraqi army have been clear in their view regarding the support received from the coalition forces. In a phone call March 18 between US Vice President Mike Pence and Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who also serves as commander in chief of his country's armed forces, the Iraqi leader requested that Washington continue supporting Iraq in combating IS. Abdul Mahdi also met with a US congressional delegation, during which he repeated his request that the United States continue to help Iraq in removing IS from the country. Iraqi officials are aware that their capabilities by themselves are not sufficient with a renewed threat from IS. Iraq needs further bolstering of its troop capabilities, as well as the intelligence and air cover provided by the United States. The commanders at the Ministry of Defense as well as the elite anti-terrorism force have been making rounds to meet with the political leadership as well as the three presidencies, and have made it crystal clear what the current status of troops is and the level of threat posed by IS and its fighters. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently estimated that there are around 5,000 American troops in Iraq. Iraqi Security analyst Hisham al-Hashimi told Al-Monitor that he estimates the number of IS fighters in Iraq to be around 10,000, among them 2,000 as active fighters and the rest as members of sleeper cells providing logistical support. The current locations of IS fighters are in the deserts of Jazeera and Anbar, the strip of mountains between Kirkuk and Diyala. Among those is a new generation of fighters known as Ashbal Al-Khilafa or the Caliphate Cubs, who are typically 11- to 16-year-old fighters who have been engaged in recent fighting and have received combat training, including how to make improvised explosive devices. Estimates place their number at 500 to 1,500 fighters. Many expect the total number of IS fighters to increase, with some estimates placing the figure as high as 20,000 after the collapse of IS in Syria. Meanwhile, the noise coming from the Iraqi Council of Representatives this week was muted in regard to a bill expected to be introduced soon that would force US troops out. This silence came partly because the parliament was in recess, in addition to representatives being busy with the visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. The agenda of the past four sessions did not include any item related to the troops matter. Both the Sairoon and Fatah parliamentary blocs have been working on draft legislation to regulate and perhaps prevent the presence of foreign troops on Iraqi soil. However, the legislators of the two blocs are not sure about the right approach to take with regard to the presence of foreign troops and it seems the blocs are divided into three groups with different approaches. The first group wants all foreign troops out in accordance to a timetable set by the government. The second group wants to give US troops a period of two years to get their troops out. The third group wants to have the number of US and other foreign troops reduced, and as part of that a reduction in foreign troops' role involving combat. This would limit foreign troops to providing logistical support, training and intelligence, all of which would be regulated and managed by the commander in chief of the armed forces, the prime minister. The third approach is very much in par with what Dunford told Congress regarding the reduction of US troops. It could be something the government of Iraq can work out with the Iraqi political leadership. This new approach fits the bill for both Iraq and the United States. On the one hand, Iraq continues to receive the support needed from the international coalition, while also calming down the fears of those who are suspecting that long-term foreign military bases are being established inside the country or that Iraqi soil would be used for an attack on neighboring countries. Despite the fact that the political groups have varying motives about the subject of foreign troops, and have such wide-ranging approaches, there is an unspoken agreement among them that the government is the only legitimate body that can and should make the decision about the presence of foreign troops. Some of them also believe that parliament shouldn't push through legislation that can pose a threat to the country. For that reason, it is expected that the issue of the troop withdrawal or departure timetable would fall to the government, but that the parliamentary blocs would be fully briefed as to the government's intention on this matter. The government of Israel scored another victory in its struggle against Palestinian Muslims on March 17 when the Jerusalem Magistrates court issued a temporary closure order against the contested site known as Bab al-Rahma (Gate of Mercy) on the Temple Mount compound. It is now up to Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan to instruct police to reseal the site the court shut down in 2003. Given the sensitive nature of the area, revered by both Muslims and Jews, this hot potato will likely end up on the desk of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A decision to enforce the court order could ignite flames in Jerusalem and the West Bank and spark a crisis in relations with Jordan. However, a stay of the order and acceptance of the Muslim decision last month to reopen the site and use it as a mosque would play into the hands of the political right vying with Netanyahus Likud for every vote in the April 9 elections. Chair of the Muslim Waqf in Jerusalem Sheikh Abdelazeem Salhab on Feb. 18 warned, The mosque is a red line. He added, No Muslim would give up a single grain of its sand. Salhab also said the Waqf, the custodian of the site, planned to renovate the structure and reopen it as a mosque and as offices. Following the latest court order, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry announced that it does not recognize the authority of an Israeli court over East Jerusalem, including Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which it views as territory unlawfully occupied by Israel since 1967. On the other side, the New Right party announced March 6, Allowing the Waqf to revamp the Gate of Mercy site is a capitulation to terrorist thuggery. The party urged Netanyahu not to surrender to terrorism." Laws are enforced with an iron fist not by giving in to a gang of hooligans that identifies weakness and abuses it, said the party. The last time Netanyahu decided to flex his muscles on the Temple Mount, giving in to similar political pressure in July 2017 and going along with police recommendations to place metal detectors at the gates of the compound, violent protests erupted in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In a March 7 article on the Ynet website, lead researcher of the left-wing Ir Amim nonprofit Aviv Tatarsky recalled that at the time, police assured those opposed to the metal detectors that the Palestinians will simply have to get used to them. No sentence refutes more clearly the accepted assumption that as an alternative to ending its occupation and conflict with the Palestinians, Israel had opted to manage the conflict. In fact, the precise definition of Israels policy is fanning the conflict, and nowhere does this policy fuel the flames higher than on the Temple Mount. The Jerusalem syndrome is not confined to the walled Old City. The right-wing government aims to bury the 1993 Oslo Accord with the Palestinians and use it as a tool to dig the grave of the two-state solution a solution not feasible in any way absent a change in the current legal status of East Jerusalem. At the end of January, by virtue of the 1995 interim agreement with the Palestinians (known as Oslo II), Erdan signed a periodic injunction banning the Palestinian Authority (PA) from opening, operating a representative office, holding a meeting or any activity within Israels territory. The order limits the activity of the Orient House, which served as the headquarters of the PLO in East Jerusalem, and of other institutions, including the East Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce, the Supreme Council for the Arab Tourism Industry, the Palestinian Prisoners Club, the Center for Palestinian Studies, and the Office for Social and Statistical Studies. In signing the order, Erdan said, Extending the closure of the Palestinian institutions is a message to the PA and the residents of East Jerusalem that the State of Israel does not intend to relinquish its sovereignty in East Jerusalem and will not allow any [other] foothold there. Erdan based his statement on the 1967 decision by the Israeli government to apply Israeli law on east Jerusalem a decision later anchored in Israeli law. This decision contradicts international law and the stances of UN member states, including the United States. Those states do not recognize the unification of the city. It seems that Erdan had forgotten (or maybe he relies on peoples short memory) the April 2003 Road Map for Peace in the Middle East, approved by the Sharon-Netanyahu government and unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council. The document, as it appears on the Knesset and Foreign Ministry websites, stipulates that as a first stage and by the end of that year, Israel would reopen the East Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce and other closed Palestinian institutions in the east of the city. The reopening was to be conditioned on these institutions operating only in accordance with previous agreements between the sides. Israel has not implemented a single line of that clause. Rather, the government has been trying to push out the Palestinian presence from the eastern part of the city, especially from the Old City Basin. The Gate of Mercy/Bab al-Rahma conflict is a typical example of the use Israel makes of the Jewish narrative about Jerusalem while denying the Muslim narrative. Indeed, Muslim worshipers were the ones to break into the Bab al-Rahma building last month, but it was Israel that locked it 16 years ago. Ran Bar-Yaakov, a Jerusalem researcher of Bab al-Rahma, refuted this week prevailing Israeli-right claims that the site was never used as a Muslim prayer house. Writing in Haaretz, he noted that Bab al-Rahma served as a separate mosque in both the early Arab and Mamluk periods. In his 2014 book, Eretz Israel in Medieval Arabic Sources (634-1517)," researcher Uri Tal cites the impressions of an 11th-century traveler to Jerusalem who described a handsome mosque decorated with all types of carpets, with an allocation of servants, into which many people come to pray. The first episode of a documentary series by filmmaker Roni Koban titled The Exceptions, which aired on March 17 on the Kan public broadcasting channel, provides a peek at individuals and groups plotting to demolish Al-Aqsa and other mosques on the Temple Mount to make way for a third Jewish temple. These religious zealots operate unhindered and even enjoy the support of prominent public figures, chief among them the popular ultra-right candidate running for the Knesset, former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin, and Likud Knesset member Yehuda Glick. As far as they are concerned, the Muslims are foreign invaders who should have no part of Jerusalem. Such victories in the war over competing narratives, closure orders of worship sites in Jerusalem and bans on the activity of civil society bring to mind the saying, Any more victories of this kind and we are doomed. Throughout history, Jews, Muslims and Christians lived peacefully in the Old City as good neighbors. Jerusalem is far too dear to be abandoned in the hands of politicians and far too volatile to be left in the hands of religious zealots, who would set it on fire. President Donald Trump announced today that it is time for the United States to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. Now Republican lawmakers are scrambling to lock in the directive as permanent US policy. We applaud the president for formally recognizing Israels sovereignty over the Golan Heights, an acknowledgment that enhances the national security of both Israel and the United States, Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said in a statement. At a time when Israels border is threatened by Iranian forces and their proxies in Lebanon and Syria, including by Hezbollahs rockets, armed drones and newly discovered terror tunnels, this recognition will be great news for our ally and its right to self-defense. They called on Congress to pass legislation that would formally recognize Israels sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Identical bills in the Senate and House introduced by Cruz and Gallagher would also include the Golan Heights as part of Israel in any spending and trade bills while greenlighting joint scientific, industrial and agricultural projects in the occupied territory. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a lead co-sponsor of the Cruz bill, also urged Senate leadership to take up the legislation. The senator vowed to push Trump on the issue after a photo op with Netanyahu in the Golan Heights earlier this month. I hope and believe there is widespread bipartisan support for this proposal, Graham said in an emailed statement. Congressional passage would reinforce President Trumps decision as United States policy. Trump announced the shift during Secretary of State Mike Pompeos visit to Jerusalem. President Trump has just made history. I called him. I thanked him on behalf of the people of Israel. He did it again, Netanyahu said during a meeting with Pompeo. The message that President Trump has given the world is that America stands by Israel. Israel captured the territory from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967 and formally annexed it in 1981. Trump announced the new policy by tweet. He is expected to formally recognize the Golan Heights as part of Israel next week, when he hosts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. Still, a future president could always reverse the policy. Now we need Congress to codify this policy, Neil Strauss, the digital director for the Republican Jewish Coalition, told Al-Monitor. To do so shows American strength and adds certainty to the issue. We must make sure that future administrations cant easily throw Israels safety into flux. Strauss said the Republican Jewish Coalition is working closely with Cruz, Cotton, Gallagher and the bills other co-sponsors to make sure this bill gets passed. If Democrats are committed to bipartisan support for Israel, as they claim, they will get behind this effort, he said. For now, the legislation remains a partisan endeavor. The Senate bill has seven co-sponsors and the House bill 23, all of them Republicans. After Netanyahu began lobbying Trump on the issue last year, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee held a hearing urging the president to declare the Golan Heights part of Israel. Democrats on the panel argued that they supported Israeli control over the occupied territory, but that declaring formal Israeli sovereignty would undermine prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Still, at least one key Democratic leader has already offered his support for Trumps decision. I think that Golan Heights is part of Israel and should remain part of Israel for strategic purposes, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., told Jewish Insider in January. Christians United for Israel also praised Trumps decision, as well as Cruz and Gallagher for introducing the legislation. Its now clear that the consensus among Israels allies in Washington is that the US should recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and we look forward to that consensus being reflected in US policy, Sandra Parker, chairwoman of Christians United for Israel, said in a statement. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) did not lobby on this issue last year when the bills were first introduced, according to the latest accessible lobbying filings. Still, the influential pro-Israel lobby endorsed Trumps announcement, calling it a dramatic change in American policy and praising his leadership on this issue. Netanyahu will address AIPACs annual conference during his visit to Washington next week. The four-year-old war in Yemen is an expensive albatross for Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is bogged down in a quagmire that is damaging the countrys reputation. The Houthi rebels show little sign of wanting an end to the conflict no matter how much misery it brings to the Yemeni people. The war is alienating the US Congress and media from the Saudi leadership, with potentially dangerous consequences for the long-term future of US-Saudi relations. Saudi Arabia intervened in the conflict between the elected administration of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and the Houthis four years ago this month. The battle lines have changed little in the last three years, after the Saudi-led coalition gained control of most of South Yemen. Despite a huge advantage in the air and billions spent on its military, the Saudis and their allies have been unable to dislodge the rebels from their strongholds in the north or advance to Sanaa. The Royal Saudi Air Force is accused of frequent bombings of civilian targets and war crimes. In parts of the south, the Saudis have taken fairly strong control, like in al-Mahra province along the Omani border, where they are rumored to be considering building an oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean. They have brought in Wahhabi clerics. In other areas, like Aden, the Saudis have taken a back seat to Abu Dhabi, which has built a network of local militias more loyal to the emirate than to Hadi. Hadi is in poor health and spends most of his time in Riyadh. He was never very popular in the country and is widely seen as ineffectual. The Hadi government exercises little influence on the ground in the areas under the coalitions control. Last December, the United Nations negotiated an agreement in Stockholm to try to begin a process to de-escalate the war, beginning with a cease-fire in the northern port of Hodeidah. The port is the main entrance for 70% of the food and medicine for the country. According to the UN, 80% of Yemens 24 million people need humanitarian assistance and 10 million are close to starvation. Under the Stockholm agreement, a cease-fire in Hodeidah was to lead to the Houthis' withdrawal from the port. It was vague about who would take charge. The UN is still pressing for a withdrawal, starting with two smaller ports nearby. The Houthis have not budged. Their leadership says the rebels will not turn the ports over to the coalitions control. Instead, the Houthis have reiterated their threats to attack Riyadh and Abu Dhabi with missiles. The Iranians have provided the technology for the Houthis' missilery. In addition to the long-range missiles, the Houthis fire short-range rockets, mortars and drones across the Saudi border. Riyadh said this week over 70,000 projectiles have struck the kingdom in the last four years. The Houthis have successfully portrayed themselves as the defenders of Yemeni national rights against foreign intervention led by Yemens traditional enemy, Saudi Arabia, which has gobbled up pieces of Yemeni territory since the 1930s. The Saudis have proven as inept in the propaganda war as they are on the battlefield. But the Saudis have American support, at least from the Donald Trump administration. The White House has stuck behind the Saudis' war and especially its commander, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Despite reports that he has been using a hit squad to liquidate his enemies for years, including Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration is firmly behind the crown prince. The administration provides crucial diplomatic support and, most importantly, the critical supply of spare parts, munitions and technology to the Saudi air force. The American media and much of Congress has soured on the kingdom and its crown prince. Among the Saudis' harshest critics are the two Muslim freshmen congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who have in turn been sharply attacked by the Saudi media. Omar has called the Saudi war a crime against humanity and said the United States should stop colluding in war crimes. Congress is going to pass legislation cutting down American support for the Saudi war but lacks the numbers to override a Trump veto. Nonetheless, the symbolism of the Hill opposing the war is enormous and should be a wake-up call in Riyadh. As Al-Monitor has reported, more Democrats are also coming out in favor of rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran if they win in 2020. That would be a stunning rebuke for the Saudis. The crown prince has made opposition to Irans policies in the region the touchstone of Saudi foreign policy in close coordination with the Trump administration. The Saudis have traditionally sought to ensure bipartisan support for their relationship with Washington and to encourage a friendly media. Even in the days after 9/11, the Saudis worked to keep ties with both Democrats and Republicans. The prudent course is for the Saudis to press unilaterally to end the war in Yemen and ease the humanitarian crisis quickly. The crown prince cant ever remove the stain of Khashoggis murder but he can take steps to de-escalate the war dramatically. A complete halt to airstrikes or, even better, a total unilateral cease-fire without conditions would help isolate the Houthis, ease the pressure on the Hill and perhaps start to change the kingdoms image. But it probably wont be getting the help of the administration. Mahdi al-Daman has been on the move for five years, fleeing from one place to another. He bought a small plot of land in the town of New Karnaz recently, where he pitched a tent. He hopes to build a house, however, that would shelter him and his family from the cold. Daman, from the town of Karnaz in the northern countryside of Hama, fled his hometown when the Syrian regime took control of it in 2013. He took flight in one of the camps for internally displaced persons along the border with Turkey. Daman has now returned to settle in New Karnaz, a newly built town that is akin to his hometown. The town is one of several villages in southern Idlib countryside that is built by the displaced. Since the beginning of 2016, eight new small towns have been established in the countryside of Idlib, inhabited by the displaced from Hama and Rif Dimashq, which is currently under the control of the Syrian regime. The area has a population of nearly 8,000 people, according to nonofficial figures from activists there and heads of local councils. Some of the newly founded villages bear the same names as the original ones, while others are named after Syrian cities with similar geographical features. Three years ago, a group of displaced residents from Karnaz bought a plot of land from landlords in the southern countryside of Idlib. They built New Karnaz and named it after their hometown that was taken by the regime forces, according to Hussein al-Warda, head of Karnaz local council. He told Al-Monitor that the price of 100 square meters (1,076 square feet) of land is about 150,000 Syrian pounds (roughly $291) in the area. New Karnaz is governed by a local council that is affiliated with the Syrian Salvation Government, which took over the entire area a few weeks ago. The Syrian Salvation Government is seen as the political wing of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The town is gradually getting bigger with small and medium-sized houses that require a construction license. The new residents hire construction workers and acquire raw materials from opposition-held areas. About 100 families live in New Karnaz currently. But some, like Daman, have bought a small plot of land but still cannot afford to build a house. Near New Karnaz, another small town, Mazraat Bloudan, has been built in a mountainous area by the displaced from the villages in the countryside of Hama and al-Ghab Plain. Our newly built town is located in a mountainous area akin to the Syrian village of Bloudan northwest of Damascus, in the Rif Dimashq governorate. Right now 1,050 people live here, Mufid Chaiban, head of the Mazraat Bloudan community, told Al-Monitor. Most of the residents had taken refuge in the camps along the Turkish border. We bought the land and built our own houses as we can no longer live in the dire conditions of the refugee camps. Construction in the town takes place rather randomnly. There is no urban planning to create main services such as a sewage system, electricity or water grid, Chaiban said. New Karnaz, on the other hand, is regarded as one of the most organized new communities, with residents paving roads, creating streets, digging a water well and building a mosque. In addition, a school building is under construction. Warda said that the residents who have the financial means are paying for all this themselves after having lost hope to get assistance from the authorities or relief organizations. Hafez al-Hamawi, who left his hometown of Qabr Fiddah in al-Ghab Plain and settled in Mazraat Bloudan, told Al-Monitor, The biggest problem we face in our new community is the long distance from other cities and the center of Idlib countryside. We have to travel long distances to have access to basic services. The nearest school for Damans children is 3 kilometers (2 miles) away in the village of Abdin in the countryside of Idlib, and residents of New Karnaz have to travel 6 kilometers (4 miles) to reach the nearest medical center. Nafie al-Barazi, head of Hama governorate of the interim government, told Al-Monitor, Although the new residents hail from Hama, the new towns are under the local councils governance. Therefore it is the responsibility of their local councils to provide services, since the governorate council and local council operate within their administrative limits only. As for civil services such as civil registrations, they fall under the responsibility of the council of Hama governorate. Barazi said that they had plans to coordinate with the council of Hama governorate and the local councils there in a bid to improve the situation of these new communities. However, the Syrian Salvation Government took over the entire opposition-held area in the countryside of Hama and Idlib in the past few weeks. We no longer have any say either in Hama or Idlib because we follow the interim government, Barazi said. Diaa Haj Ahmad, head of the local council of Maar Hurmah in Idlib countryside, told Al-Monitor, These residential communities are randomly built, lacking urban planning and basic services. We appealed to human rights organizations to improve the living conditions of the people there in terms of sanitation and the provision of drinking water and electricity." Despite the poor services in these new villages, Abu Hamza, from the town of Karnaz, is ready to buy a small plot of land in New Karnaz where his relatives already live. "New Karnaz may not have all the necessary basic services, but it is a much better choice than being on the move all the time with no place to settle and call home. The residents are the people of my city that is now occupied. We have the same memories, he told Al-Monitor. Even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warmly welcomed the step, former US diplomats and peace process veterans say they saw little near-term security benefit, and possible risks, from US President Donald Trumps decision announced in a tweet today for the United States to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Trump tweeted. President Trump has just made history. I called him. I thanked him on behalf of the people of Israel. He did it again, Netanyahu gushed, at a meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today. The message that President Trump has given the world is that America stands by Israel. Trumps decision, universally seen as intended to try to boost Netanyahu politically ahead of Israeli elections next month, was taken without evident sign of much serious internal US policy debate. The State Department referred questions about any policy review to the White House. A White House official declined to comment, indicating there was nothing to add to the presidents tweet. Former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said the status quo of no one talking about Israeli control of the Golan may be preferable to focusing attention on it. No one is talking about changing the status quo, and that is the advantage: No one is talking about it, Shapiro told Al-Monitor by phone from Israel. So this decision has the potential to place it much more squarely on the international agenda than it has been in many years. And that could invite all kind of responses from Russia in the Syrian arena, or elsewhere, such as Ukraine, Shapiro said. At the UN from Arab states, that realistically or otherwise maintain a reference to the Golan Heights in the Arab Peace Initiative. From Hezbollah and a whole range of actors. The Syrian opposition now have to take it up. Its basically upending the status quo that has served US and Israeli interests for a long time for obvious, transparent, political reasons, without any evidence of a [policy vetting] process that weighed the pros and cons of how our interests and Israels interests could be affected, Shapiro said. The decision helps Netanyahu politically, but it could imperil the Trump administration peace plan, especially with Arab governments, said veteran Middle East peace negotiator Dennis Ross. Politically, it helps Bibi, but comes at the cost to the administrations own peace plan, Ross, now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Al-Monitor. It will make it harder for Arab leaders to respond favorably to it. They will not want to look like they are acquiescing in the surrender of what they see as Arab land. Ironically, no Arab leader, other than Assad, has any interest in seeing the Israelis leave the Golan Heights but the presidents statement will create an issue where none existed, Ross said. The decision could strengthen Irans position with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, give Hezbollah and Iran a propaganda boost and makes US diplomatic efforts to try to find a postwar political solution for Syria harder, said former Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi. It gives more support for Hezbollah and the Iranians, saying we have to fight for the occupied Golan, Barabandi, now with the Syrian opposition, said. It empowers Iran within Syria. It will affect the whole [US Syria envoy Jim] Jeffrey effort for Syria, Barabandi added. Syrians will say, how can they trust the Americans or deal with the Americans. From a legitimacy perspective, if you give certain parts of Syria to the Israelis, it makes everyone unbalanced, Barabandi said, noting the US pushback on Turkish requests for a big buffer zone inside Syria. Why is the US telling Turkey no? It makes Jeffreys position and that of the US Syria team very tricky. The decision has two big downsides, said Ilan Goldenberg, a former Obama administration Pentagon and State Department Middle East official. The first big downside is that Israel is managing a very difficult sort of game in the Golan area, and in Syria, Goldenberg, now with the Center for New American Security, told Al-Monitor. It is balancing this very delicate game with striking the Iranians [in Syria], and dealing with the Russians. The bottom line is this makes things harder for Israel in Syria by focusing on an issue that is not an issue. And politically, poking the Russians and Iranians and in ways that give them the high ground, Goldenberg said. The other big thing is the precedent it sets when the US is still arguing with the Russians over Crimea, Goldenberg said. It is legitimizing the acquisition of territory by annexation." A US official said he was unaware if this would have an impact on the Shebaa Farms issue, which involves a disputed piece of land at the border between Syria, Lebanon and the Golan Heights. Pompeo will travel to Lebanon from Israel this week on the third leg of his Mideast trip. Hussein Ibish agreed the decision sets a precedent that could have a more far-reaching and corrosive impact on the postwar international order the United States has tried to uphold. It is the ultimate triumph of politics over policy, Ibish, with the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told Al-Monitor. The decision wont achieve anything for any national interest, not Israeli, not American. What it does only is achieve political results for Trump and for his buddy Bibi. This is a death blow to the post-World War II international order; it completely repudiates the basis of the UN charter [that states cant seize territory of other states], the whole bedrock principle of the postwar order, Ibish said. In that sense, he said, it is one of the most significant diplomatic things the Trump administration has done. But former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford foresaw a more limited impact. The American decision wont really affect the status of the Golan itself, Ford told Al-Monitor. The Syrian government will not relinquish its claim. And I dont think the American announcement will change the status of the Golan in terms of international law. I think it will make it more difficult for subsequent American administrations to play a role on Israel-Syrian peace, such as the Obama administration was trying to do in 2010, Ford said. But that was a long time ago. American relations with Damascus since 2011 are quite poor. The odds of the Americans being able to pick up a mediation role are low. I dont think it is a particularly big deal one way or other. The campaign of President Recep Tayyip Erdogans government for the March 31 local elections will go down in history as the most polarizing campaign with the most virulent and offensive rhetoric that Turkey has seen under the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In no election before has the government employed religion and religion-based polarization so blatantly. The campaign has been marked also by unprecedented threats to opposition leaders and candidates as well as an apparent intent to not accept election results. Government spokesmen have virtually competed to delegitimize the opposition, seeking to keep their base intact by scaring voters with a demonized portrait of political opponents. The main cause of this extraordinary political syndrome is Turkeys plunge into economic recession, which, coupled with a rising cost of living and growing unemployment, has raised the specter of the AKP losing the elections in big cities. The syndrome climaxed after the March 15 mosque massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand, marking the coarsest exploitation of religion and religion-based polarization that Turkey has ever seen in electioneering. Addressing a rally in the northwestern city of Tekirdag a day after the massacre, Erdogan pointed to the giant screen erected at the venue, saying, Lets watch this. Its important. What followed was footage from the mosque attacks, which the assailant himself had livestreamed. Coming up next on the screen was Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the Republican Peoples Party (CHP), the main opposition party and the senior partner in the Nation Alliance, which is the ruling partys main challenger in the elections. Kilicdaroglu had already condemned the massacre the day it happened. A grave terrorist crime has been committed against humanity. We call on Western countries to do their duties, he told a gathering in Yalova March 15. Yet, Erdogans audience in Tekirdag was shown only a cherry-picked snippet from Kilicdaroglus speech, in which he was saying, Certainly, one has to look at the Muslim world as well. We need to acknowledge how people are slaughtering each other over Islam. The terrorism originating from the Muslim world At that point Erdogan chimed in, roaring, Look at this insolent man! Terrorism originating from the Muslim world, he says!" The audience was able to hear Kilicdaroglu saying the Muslim world, too, should sit down and think before Erdogan continued to bash the main opposition leader. Look at this! What is the world coming to? A person who has so far lost himself as to claim that the Muslim world is the source of terrorism is doing politics in this country. Mr. Kemal, you have neither the authority nor the competence to claim the Muslim world is the source of terrorism, Erdogan said, adding, We need to understand what a big sin it is to even vote for this man who puts the ummah at the source of terrorism. He will be called to account on March 31. Thats how Erdogan used the bloodbath in New Zealand as a religious justification to urge voters to shun the Nation Alliance. The persistent use of religion in electioneering has gone to extremes on the local level, with some AKP members claiming that voting for Erdogan will open the gates of heaven. In the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, a conservative stronghold, Mustafa Goktas, an AKP aspirant for the mayoral race in the district of Eyyubiye, told an election gathering March 16, Vote for the AKP and Erdogan on March 31. Once you vote for Erdogan, youll have the key to heaven in your pocket. You should know that. In another election gathering in the same province March 3, AKP lawmaker Mehmet Kasim Gulpinar told his audience that Allah will ask no questions to AKP voters on Judgment Day. Erdogan has used also threatening language against leading opposition figures while dropping strong hints that he is inclined to not recognize election results that are not to his liking. The CHPs Mansur Yavas, the Nation Alliance candidate for metropolitan mayor in Ankara who is ahead in all opinion polls, has been one of Erdogans prime targets. First, reports in pro-government media claimed March 8 that Yavas had been sued over a forged promissory note in 2015 and had lost the case. In a television program 10 days later, Erdogan was asked to comment on the issue. The documents that have emerged and the judiciarys decision regarding Mr. Yavas are not something that can be ignored, he said. Although [Yavas] has been able to run in the elections, those things will come to the nations attention after the elections, and then he will not only pay a hefty price but will make Ankaras residents pay a price as well. Erdogans remarks can hardly be understood as anything else but an intimation that even if Yavas wins, he would be removed from office by law over the forgery conviction and replaced with a government-appointed trustee. Meanwhile, Meral Aksener, the chairwoman of the Good Party, the junior partner of the Nation Alliance, was threatened with jail by the president. Some are currently spending time in prison. You could meet the same fate, Erdogan said March 9, referring to Aksener. The menacing language is not limited to Erdogan, spreading down to the AKPs provincial branches. Take, for instance, the remarks of the AKPs provincial chairman in Kutahya, which not only vilify and threaten opposition voters but also condone violence against the opposition. The evil alliance, the malign alliance or whoever come together doing politics against the values of this nation on March 31 will have no chance of walking those streets and neighborhoods, Ali Cetinbas told AKP supporters March 10. To offset the growing pressure of the economic crisis, government members have sought to portray the opposition as allies with terrorist groups. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, for instance, claimed in a March 11 speech in Aydin that if the AKP-led Peoples Alliance emerged weaker from the elections, They will give arms [even] to innocent 6-year-olds and ransack government buildings the next morning on April 1. He urged voters to "not let Kilicdaroglu step into [local municipalities] with victory cries because he is coming here as a Trojan horse, bringing in representatives of the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party]." Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, for his part, claimed that Nation Alliance candidates included supporters of terrorist organizations ranging from the PKK to radical leftist groups. You are in alliance with the PKK, the FETO, the DHKP-C, the TIKKO and all sorts of terrorists, separatists and traitors out there. Is this nationalism? he asked March 4 in Hatay province at the Syrian border. The minister also claimed the opposition supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, adding, They have nothing to do with nationalism and the nation. All those examples show that despite its undisputed control over the media, public funds and the entire state establishment, especially the judiciary, the government is gripped by the panic of losing big cities under the bruising impact of the economic crisis, with the anxiety bringing out the oppressive propensity of its political culture like never before. ISTANBUL Turkeys Kurds rang in their traditional new year on Thursday while bracing for a critical election this month that the regions biggest party hopes will deliver a clear rebuke against the governments crackdown on its political movement. The leftist Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), whose base is overwhelmingly Kurdish, is seeking to recapture control of cities across the predominately Kurdish southeast in the March 31 poll after the government removed 94 of its 102 mayors from their offices beginning in 2016 and replaced them with government-appointed trustees. Beyond the southeast, the HDP has decided against fielding mayoral candidates in several cities, hoping its supporters will instead back the main opposition bloc to help it wrest control of municipalities like Istanbul and the capital Ankara, which has been dominated by President Recep Tayyip Erdogans Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its predecessor since the mid-1990s. The AKP has formed an alliance with the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The HDP strategy comes as thousands of its party activists and elected officials sit in jail on charges of aiding Kurdish militants in the wake of the governments failed peace process to end a three-decade insurgency. With the end of talks in 2015, Turkey was thrust into one of its most violent periods, with almost 3,000 people killed in clashes between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Turkish security forces. With relative peace restored, tens of thousands of people gathered in a field on the outskirts of Diyarbakir, the largest city in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, to celebrate Newroz, which marks the arrival of spring on March 21. Despite a large security presence, the atmosphere was jovial as groups of teenagers danced in circles while the traditional Newroz bonfire was lit, a witness told Al-Monitor. In a speech to the crowd, Pervin Buldan, the HDPs joint chairwoman, called on Erdogan to respond to their call for peace. We are telling you that these people will not abandon peace or democracy, she said. We are going into these elections opposed to those who do not recognize the will of the people, who try to usurp that will with trustees. But Erdogan has already warned that he will remove elected mayors and appoint trustees to run cities if elected officials are found to be aiding militants. If my citizens give you the opportunity to take back these municipalities and you send the resources the state provides to these cities to Qandil or use them for terrorism, I will immediately once again appoint trustees without hesitation, Erdogan told a campaign rally last month. Qandil is the mountainous region in northern Iraq used as a base by the outlawed PKK, which has waged a decades-long armed campaign for autonomy within Turkey. The HDP rejects charges it has links with the PKK and argues it is seeking greater cultural rights for Turkeys estimated 16 million Kurds and a negotiated resolution of the conflict. But it does not call the PKK a terrorist group, despite Turkeys official stance, and acknowledges that it shares some of the same base with the militants. The government tapped the HDP to help it negotiate peace with the PKK, and in 2013, Newroz in Diyarbakir was the scene of a historic cease-fire declaration by the PKK. The two-year lull in violence helped bolster the HDPs popularity beyond Kurdish voters and by 2015, it became the second-biggest opposition party in parliament. The HDPs decision to tacitly support the opposition coalition comprised of the center-left Republican Peoples Party (CHP) and the nationalist Good Party could help push the bloc to victory in tight races in cities with large Kurdish populations. Istanbul is home to two million Kurds, by some estimates. The alliance is a veiled one, with the CHP and Good careful not to advertise it and risk alienating nationalist supporters who view the HDP with suspicion. Bloomberg News reported that the HDP is seeking seats on municipal councils in return for its support. Still, the CHP and Good face accusations from Erdogan that they are partnering with those who want to divide our country. It also marks a break, for the time being, in the HDPs strategy to expand its support beyond Kurds and attract leftist voters from across the country with its progressive platform on gender equality, environmental protection and respect for minority rights. The HDPs decision not to run candidates in some areas was a smart tactical move. It doesnt indicate the party is abandoning its goal of being a Turkey-wide party. What it shows is that the HDP views AKP as such a threat to Turkeys democracy and as a block to Kurdish rights that the goal of weakening the AKPs hold nationwide is a priority for HDP, said Aliza Marcus, the author of Blood and Belief, a history of the PKK. The HDP has also sounded an alarm about electoral irregularities in the southeast, including voter registries with fake names, and says that thousands of security officers sent to the southeast could intimidate voters. This week, authorities raided an HDP campaign office in the town of Adana near the Mediterranean coast and arrested 12 party officials on suspicion of financial improprieties. Amid all of the pressure we face and the attacks on us, we are aware this is not a fair election campaign, Buldan told a news conference last month. We have two aims in this election. The first is to win back the cities where trustees have been appointed Secondly, the goal before us is to help force the loss of the AKP-MHP bloc in Turkeys west. Selahattin Demirtas, the HDPs popular former chairman who has been in prison for more than two years despite a European Court of Human Rights judgment he must be freed, has also urged supporters to rein in the AKP and MHP. Eight other HDP lawmakers, 68 mayors and as many as 7,000 HDP activists are in prison on charges of abetting terrorism. Human Rights Watch has said the removal of democratically elected officials in the southeast is counter to Turkeys responsibilities under international and regional human rights law, including the right to political participation, the right to free elections, the right to freedom of expression and the rights to freedom of association and assembly. Now, the HDP hopes to clinch cities like Diyarbakir with a wide enough margin to discourage the central government from taking over the municipalities again. Marcus said the election could even offer Erdogan a chance to work with the new mayors to repair relations with disaffected Kurds. At this point, based on his behavior and speech, it seems more likely he will look for ways to remove the mayors, and he doesnt need the excuse of violence to do this. There will be always something he can use against them in the polarized atmosphere that exists in Turkey today, its very easy for the state to find some reason to accuse a Kurdish politician of a crime, she said. Some voters in the southeast believe that Erdogans threat to kick out newly elected HDP officials will probably backfire if he hopes it would cool support for the party. Its an effort to frighten voters, but by singling out the HDP, Erdogan has made it a victim and that encourages even its critics support it, Sidki Zalan, a lawyer and conservative activist in Diyarbakir, told Al-Monitor. Normally, Zalan might not vote for the HDP over differences in philosophy and policy. This time he will, he said, because Diyarbakir should remain in Kurdish hands. Turkey is determined to increase the pressure on Saudi Arabia over the killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, even if hopes for justice, in this case, remain elusive. Continuing calls by the United Nations, the US Congress, the European Parliament and international human rights watchdog groups on Riyadh to come clean over this murder are, nevertheless, encouraging for Ankara. Ankaras commitment to tightening the screws on Riyadh appears to be providing some results, too, despite its frustration over what it sees as insufficient international action against Saudi Arabia. The Turkish Ministry of Justice announced March 14 that Interpol had issued red notices, on Ankaras request, for a total of 20 Saudi citizens suspected of involvement in the murder. The ministry said it had requested red notices for 18 people Nov. 15 and for two persons Dec. 21. The Saudi Consul General, who was in the building at the time of the murder and later fled the country, is said to be among those Turkey is seeking. Given Interpols complex procedures, the red notices do not mean that those arrested will remain in detention or be automatically transferred to Turkey. The notices, which represent a fresh headache for Riyadh, will, nevertheless, make it harder for those being sought by Turkey to travel abroad. Turkey also continues to insist on an international investigation into the Khashoggi murder. The call for a UN inquiry by 36 countries including all 28 EU members during the UN Human Rights Councils meeting in Geneva March 14 was, therefore, welcomed by Ankara. However, Bandar bin Mohammed al-Aiban, the president of Saudi Arabias Human Rights Commission, told the council that attempts to internationalize the Khashoggi affair amounted to interference in the kingdoms affairs, and rejected this call. "We have taken those measures required for us to resolve this heinous crime," Aiban said, adding that the case against the accused was continuing in Saudi Arabia and that three hearings had already been held. Saudi Arabias public prosecutor had previously announced that death sentences were being sought against 11 suspects and that another 21 people were being investigated in connection with this crime. Riyadh has not named the suspects or given details about their cases. Turkish officials remain skeptical about Riyadhs sincerity in pursuing these cases. Aibans rejection of a UN inquiry into Khashoggis murder has also been met with incredulity in Ankara. "We find it difficult to understand why an official working in the area of human rights would possibly be unsettled by efforts to shed light on all aspects of the Khashoggi murder, which received a global response," Fahrettin Altun, the communications director of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in a March 14 statement. We urge Saudi Arabia to tell the world which individuals are currently on trial [and] on what charge(s) in order not to raise any questions about the sincerity of the judicial proceedings in the kingdom in the international communitys mind, Altun added. Erdogans past remarks show that he believes that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, is somehow involved in this murder. During a joint television interview Feb. 23, he said the names of all the members of the hit-team sent to kill Khashoggi had been established. The one who gave the order is obvious, Erdogan said, referring to reports that some of the accused were close to MBS. Ankaras desire to see a UN inquiry into the Khashoggi murder is unlikely to be satisfied, though, given that the United States, Russia and China are likely to veto such an inquiry, albeit for different reasons. Rather than pinning its hopes on immediate results, Ankara seems to have chosen a policy of attrition in the hope that developments will eventually force the kingdom to reveal who is ultimately guilty for Khashoggis killing. It was Ankaras persistence in this regard that forced Riyadh to admit after initial denials that Khashoggi had been killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in a rogue operation by security officials. The case has become a matter of prestige for Erdogan, who is always loath to give the impression of climbing down on any topic that he has openly vowed to pursue. Erdogan is determined to win local elections planned for the end of this month, in order to consolidate his power, and also needs to show the electorate that he has international clout. His interest in the case, however, is motivated more by a sense of solidarity among Islamists than any commitment to human rights. Turkeys own human rights record, which also involves inconclusive cases of extrajudicial killings of journalists and rights activists, undermines claims by Ankara that its pursuit of the Khashoggi case is being driven by its support for human rights or press freedom. Khashoggi reportedly had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that Erdogan supports. Saudi Arabia has listed the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, and Ankaras support for the group is a source of contention between the two countries. Ankara is, nevertheless, relying on Western calls for justice for Khashoggi to boost its own demands in this regard and keep the pressure on Riyadh. Retired Ambassador Oguz Celikkol believes that the pressure being applied to Saudi Arabia is not going to waste, despite the support Riyadh is getting from Washington and other capitals due to the vast economic power it wields with its oil wealth. We see that the pressure on Saudi Arabia is increasing and drawing international attention, not just because of the Khashoggi case, but because of Saudi Arabias human rights violations generally, Celikkol wrote in an article for daily Hurriyet. Riyadh, however, is also playing for time and hoping that the greater interests of the West in its dealings with Saudi Arabia will eventually ensure that the Khashoggi case is put on the back burner. This expectation is not totally unfounded given the support MBS has received from key governments in the West and East since the Khashoggi murder. Erdogans adviser, Yasin Aktay, who blew the whistle when his close friend Khashoggi disappeared in Istanbul, believes time is on Turkeys side in this affair. Khashoggis murderers and their superiors may be relying on time to free them of these accusations and to cover up what they did but time is also exposing all the details of their crime, Aktay wrote in the pro-government daily Yeni Safak. Mehmet Barlas, the principal commentator for the pro-government daily Sabah, cited sources close to the crown prince, which he did not name, and quoted them as saying that MBS was not perturbed by Turkeys stance. One such source indicated that what is important for the crown prince is to have America and President Trump in particular stand by him in the Khashoggi case, while Russia and China remain on the sidelines as mere onlookers. According to another source quoted by Barlas, MBS believes that Ankara is only pursuing this case in order to squeeze money out of Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the strictly controlled Saudi press is maintaining its vitriolic campaign against Erdogan and Turkey, which it unleashed after the Khashoggi murder. It has even been using the attack against the mosques in New Zealand to strike out at Erdogan. Writing in the Saudi daily Okaz, commentator Mohammed al-Saad pointed out that the perpetrator of the attacks in New Zealand had spent time in Turkey. He went on to ask in a loaded manner what this person was doing in the new capital of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamoud Abu Taleb, another commentator for Okaz, pointed to Erdogans harsh rhetoric after the attack in New Zealand, and accused him of opportunistically using this tragedy to give the impression that he is the only Muslim leader who cares about Muslim issues. The Khashoggi affair is set to remain a source of tension in Turkish-Saudi relations until Ankara decides to tone down its rhetoric or Riyadh decides to come clean over this murder. Neither scenario appears possible in the foreseeable future, so the hostility between Ankara and Riyadh is set to increase, with negative implications for Turkeys relations with other Arab regimes. The first feminist night march in Turkey was held on International Womens Day 2003 in Taksim. Irem Afsin, a journalist and civil rights activist, has attended all 17 of the annual marches. She told Al-Monitor, Initially we were a small group. But over the years our numbers grew. Hatice, another activist and a banker, told Al-Monitor, We like to claim the streets at night when the 'good women' are expected to stay at home. That's why we march after sunset. Both Hatice and Irem were at the feminist gathering the evening of March 8. Irem said she brought a whistle from home; Hatice got one from a friend. Whistles are a favorite noisemaker used at the marches. Women are being silenced at all places, explained Hatice. "That's why we make noise; that's why we chant and wont be quiet. When we are wronged, when we are abused, when we witness harassment, we are expected to be the good wife, mother figure, well-behaved girl. We are here tonight, one night in the year, for ourselves only. That is why our husbands, boyfriends or sons cannot join us. We want to be with other women in solidarity to share our emotions and to misbehave on purpose. As Turkey has become more autocratic in recent years, gradually all gatherings and protests have been banned. International Womens Day marches were the only exception. Even during the two-year state of emergency after the July 2016 coup attempt, women gathered peacefully in Taksim. They sang, screamed, whistled, danced and held provocative placards. Some of the statements on these signs have drawn anger and laughter over the years. Hatice explained they are our way of turning the tables." "They are satirical statements of what we suffer all year living in a highly patriarchal society. So if it says, At least three orgasms a week,' it doesn't mean women have a high sex drive, nor is it a way to mock our own lives: Many of us have suffered marital rape. Our husbands, partners don't take no for an answer. We don't expect men to understand us. This is a womens gathering. We write in code for women. And yes, we are political," she said. Indeed, there were some signs criticizing the government and videos in which women chant slogans against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This link shows a group of women dancing and singing, Tayyip run, run women are coming. This year, the March 8 womens march in Taksim was banned at the last minute. Police announced the ban the day of the gathering and attacked women with tear gas, plastic bullets, batons and police dogs. The attack was reckless, as not only women but also the police dogs were victimized. Hatice said, The police tried to beat us after the gas attack. They were directing the dogs to attack us as well, but the dogs had a hard time breathing and seeing. It's not easy to survive as a woman in Turkey. Between 2002 and 2009, womens murders increased 1,400%. Between 2010 and 2017, a private group named Womens Murders, which collects numbers from media outlets, reported that 1,964 women were murdered. Official numbers can no longer be trusted. As the public was debating why the peaceful womens march was banned, on March 9 a journalist from the pro-government Yeni Safak daily shared a video on his Twitter account. He wrote, Last night at Taksim during the azan [call to prayer] these despicable people tried to protest in their own way. A 96-second video attached to this tweet was shot from a tall building right across from the mosque at Taksim during azan, and the womens gathering below can be seen and heard with their screams and whistles. Within a few days, the video was viewed more than a million times, and pro-government news promptly reported it. In the video, the azan can be heard loud and clear, but all the women on the street said they had not heard it at all. In different videos recorded at street level at the exact time of the azan, the call was not at all audible. The marchers weren't protesting any religion, and indeed there were hundreds of Muslim women among them as well. Zehra, a woman in her late 50s, is married with three sons. Zehra told Al-Monitor, I have worked for [the Justice and Development Party (AKP)] womens branch since 2004. The march is about womens rights and here there is no party affiliation. We organize independently. Over the years, more and more women with headscarves joined the movement. We're not immune from patriarchy because of our piety." She continued, "When I saw the college student [wearing a headscarf] who was sexually assaulted by the police while being arrested, and the AKP ministers defense of the police, I understood once more this government has no respect for poor women. It doesn't matter if you are a Muslim or not. If you don't have political power, you are open to abuse by the government. I screamed all my anger on March 8. I do my daily prayers, and that evening was an exception of course I knew the azan was to be called, but I didnt hear it being called. We screamed against the police brutality and whistled in solidarity with our friends. I have seen several AKP men continue talking during azan; why are they now making up lies? Why did they ban the gathering? Why did they attack us? These are the questions to be discussed. Several videos of AKP officials carrying on with their tasks during azan emerged on social media. Yet Erdogan has been referring, at every opportunity, to the rally and the azan. According to him, a group "under the guise of women's day whistled at our azan." He said the women were led by two opposition parties, the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) and the Republican Peoples Party (CHP). He said, "They chanted slogans. Their only alliance is the enmity toward azan and the flag." Erdogan said this was a matter of honor and pledged war against the enemies of azan, flag and the nation. Within hours of Erdogan's speech a group of men from the Ismailaga Religious Order converged in Taksim, calling takbeer (God is great) and chanting, "Break the hands that attack our azan." Carrying Turkish and Ottoman flags, these men attacked nearby taverns, then marched into the HDP headquarters in the district. Huda Kaya, an HDP legislator who wears a headscarf herself, was in front of the building that night and said of the attack, The truth will come out. Kaya reminded the public that during the Gezi Park protests in 2013, the government lied about protesters attacking a headscarfed woman, and now the lie is about azan. Kaya also shared a video from her Instagram account in which police were spraying water on women in freezing temperatures because they were praying in public in the majority-Kurdish town in 2013. Is that showing respect for azan? Several Islamist conservative and pro-AKP figures cautioned against provocative statements involving the azan or the flag, as they feared it could quickly turn violent. With the election coming March 31, why would Erdogan want to alienate women, who make up half of the eligible voters? AKP elites are generating drama to agitate the hatred, anger and bigotry of young paramilitaries. This serves the purpose of keeping the unemployed youth engaged, said a junior female employee of the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Services. Zehra and Hatice agreed with her. They confirmed that pious womens involvement in feminist movements has generated resentment among the AKP base. Muslim women are disillusioned by the AKP," Zehra said. A headscarf doesn't protect us from police or male brutality. Now, in the recession, women are the first to be laid off from work. Most jobs the AKP government allowed women to work were in the black market anyway, and there is no job security. Women are responsible for feeding the family, and 20% [of the Turkish population] lives under the official poverty line. Erdogan knows well that women who have supported him in the last two decades here in Istanbul are exhausted. There is no more hope. If [men] acted according to genuine Islamic laws there would be no need for feminism, because women would not be oppressed. Claims about offenses of the sacred values are not likely to stop anytime soon. On March 11, Diyanet-Sen (the syndicate for employees of the Religious Affairs Directorate) issued a statement saying, Intolerance toward the azan is not acceptable. The headline of the statement read, There can be neither independence nor a future without the azan. They have demanded that the government open an official investigation and asked the women who attended the march to apologize to the Turkish and Muslim public. KISHOREGANJ: Md Mashrukur Rahman Khaled BPM (Bar) SP, Kishoreganj speaking at a special law and order meeting for upcoming 3rd phase of Upazila election at his Conference Room as Chief Guest on Wednesday. Brian Hilson still isnt revealing anything about his next step, but he seems excited about it. Ive got a unique opportunity to do something Ive always had in the back of my mind, he said. The opportunity came along, and Im really excited about it. Earlier this month Hilson, the outgoing president and CEO of the Birmingham Business Alliance, announced he is stepping down from his post effective March 29 to take another economic development position in the state. Details about it should be coming soon, he said. But work in economic development is not a stretch for Hilson, who has spent almost four decades in that field. Beginning in 1980, Hilson has worked with the Birmingham Chamber and, briefly, Mobiles. He served as a vice president of the Birmingham Metropolitan Development Board and was president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County prior to coming to Birmingham in 2011. Hilson said he is leaving the BBA with a strong sense of accomplishment, optimistic about Birminghams future in much the same way he was when he left Huntsville eight years ago. And he has a unique perspective on the states long-term economic health, having been a player in both of Alabamas biggest metro areas. He said its difficult to compare the two, as both have different economies based on different industries. Huntsville has advantages Birmingham doesnt, and vice versa. When Hilson arrived in Birmingham, the Magic City and the surrounding area was still feeling the effects of the 2008 recession, with manufacturing and tech sectors still feeling the effects years later. The first few years were challenging, Hilson said, as the area needed an economic growth strategy that would be sustainable. How is Birmingham different now? Over the last eight years, the area has seen $5 billion in capital investment. An emphasis on attracting manufacturing has solid results. Autocar opened a $120 million manufacturing plant in Birmingham last year. There have been three expansions at Mercedes-Benz, including $1 billion for electric car production and spare parts and logistics hubs in Bibb County. There are other additions outside manufacturing, such as a $325 million fulfillment center from Amazon, a $785 million Birmingham data center from DC BLOX. Last year, the Birmingham metro area saw $1 billion in investment, and more than 4,500 jobs. By concentrating on manufacturing, Hilson said Birmingham will be better positioned for the inevitable next economic downturn. When asked where he might have done things differently, Hilson said he would have concentrated more marketing activity around life sciences and medical technology companies, a natural area for expansion given the presence of UAB and Southern Research, as well as the associated talent from both entities. Weve made a number of adjustments before I leave in those areas, he said. I think its clear some of our best opportunities still lie ahead there. Beyond big announcements, Birmingham has seen a revitalization of its downtown sector over the last eight years, with several high profile housing and office developments, making it one of the hottest real estate markets in the state. Theres also the startup economy. Hilson said the organic momentum among the citys young tech companies and the culture around them, which doesnt necessarily rely on traditional business recruitment, can be a source of optimism and renewal going forward. Still, part of the BBAs work has been in securing funding for those companies, he said. To show how Birmingham is different, Hilson gives the example of taking a seat at Regions Field, which gives the picture of an amphitheater on what is happening in the city. Looking beyond the fence on one side, youll see the states largest employer, UAB. On the other side, youve got the financial heart of the state. In between are incremental development projects, construction and new activity, You build those quality of life amenities one at a time, he said. Birmingham has leveraged a lot of things occurring downtown. People who live here understand it better. Better job opportunities should lead to further population growth, And we can prove an advantage in those areas, especially where costs are concerned." And Hilson said the future should be better. Thats why he says whoever follows him should aim high. Compared to 2011, Hilson said Birmingham is more realistic about where it is among Americas metro areas, but that transparency needs to continue. You have to have goals, and they have to be measurable, he said. You have to be accountable to stakeholders, and you have to be transparent about the process, not just in the deals, but in the progress the community is showing. It starts with understanding where you were, and thinking realistically about comparing yourself with other places. I think Birmingham understands its position in the competitive market, much better than it did before, and what it needs to do," he said. Toyota is an economic powerhouse in Alabama, promising yet more hundreds of millions in new investment. Donald Trump is a political darling among Alabama conservatives, and a heavy favorite to again win this deep red state in 2020. But these two titans could be on a collision course if uncertainty over a potential 25 percent tariff on foreign automobiles and auto parts isnt resolved soon. If that happens, Alabama Republicans might find themselves caught in a vise and having to choose sides: The company thats a jobs-generating jewel, or the president whom they adore. Some Alabama lawmakers are already urging patience in the aftermath of Toyota North American executive Jim Lentzs warning last week that the company could reconsider its planned $750 million investments in five Southern states if the tariff threats become reality. Lentzs bracing words come as automakers around the U.S. continue to deal with last years 25 percent tariff on imported steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum. Those tariffs have cost Ford and General Motors $1 billion each, and one analyst predicts Ohio would go into a recession if auto tariffs are added. Supporters of Trumps tariff policies believe they are necessary to show U.S. resolve and cause China to retool unfair trade practices and monetary maneuvers. Growth in U.S. manufacturing is fueling the presidents argument that tariffs are having a positive effect. U.S. Steels Fairfield Works is the latest plant flexing new muscle. The company wants to resume a $215 million expansion project it suspended in 2015, and its Pittsburgh executives are crediting Trumps economic policies. I think well see major progress made in our trade talks over the next several weeks, said U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Fairhope. What Ive told all the automotive interests across Alabama is, Look, lets continue to be patient and work with the Trump administration. I think well all end up in a better place. Solid investment On Thursday of last week, Toyota announced plans for a $288 million addition to its 17-year-old engine-making plant in Huntsville. The project will bring around 450 jobs, the largest single wave of hiring since the plant opened in 2003. Toyota also plans expansions at plants in Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri and Virginia. All told, the company investment is worth $750 million. Toyota is also frying an even bigger fish in Alabama: Joined by partner Mazda, its building a $1.6 billion car-making plant in Limestone County. Delighted politicians believe that the mega-plant and its 4,000 jobs will be a transformative presence for north Alabama once it opens in 2021. Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle is, obviously, very attuned to Toyotas wants and needs. I think they are, from the conversations we had last week, they are satisfied on the local level that we are doing all we can to provide for them in being a good neighbor and a good corporate citizen, he said. Gov. Kay Iveys administration has stated for months that it is engaging the Trump administration about the tariffs. Iveys commerce secretary, Greg Canfield, has been the point man for the discussions on the states end. On the other end have been such notables as U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Trade Representative Todd Lighthizer. Canfield said his offices goal is to raise awareness of the potential negative impact on the Alabama automotive sector if the U.S. slaps tariffs on foreign-made vehicles and components. As the U.S.s No. 3 exporter of vehicles and transportation equipment, Alabama knows the value of fair and flowing trade, said Canfield. It supports Alabama jobs and Alabama families. Indeed, statistics show the auto industrys economic importance in Alabama. According to data compiled by Washington, D.C.-based Global Automakers, the industry delivered an overall economic impact on Alabama of $11.5 billion in 2017. International automakers like Toyota, Hyundai, Honda and Mercedes-Benz all with plants in Alabama -- helped generate $747 million in state and local tax receipts, produced 968,982 vehicles within the states boundaries and supported more than 13,000 direct jobs the equivalent of the population of Muscle Shoals or Saraland. More telling: Without the operations of international automakers and auto dealers, the jobless rate in Alabama would be 7.9 percent, more than double the actual 3.8 percent. Not all of those automotive jobs pay sky-high salaries. Assemblers, who comprise 33 percent of overall automotive jobs representing parts manufacturers, make an average mean salary of $34,092 annually. In Mobile, home to the State Docks, the automotive industry is an active importer of auto parts. Hyundai is probably the most internationally sourced, said Jimmy Lyons, CEO of the Alabama State Port Authority, referencing a company with a manufacturing plant south of Montgomery. The Port Authoritys planned $400 million enlargement of its ship channel will enjoy a substantial slice of funding from the Legislatures newly approved Rebuild Alabama package that increases the states fuel tax by 10 cents per gallon to pay for roads and bridges. Lyons said its yet to be determined how much of an impact a growing automotive sector in Huntsville will have on the port. But Lyons makes very clear his concern about the tariffs. Im nervous about it, he said. The disruption could be unbelievable if it goes to the extreme. I hope a lot of this is just posturing on both sides and a reasonable agreement with be forged. At the top When it comes to the tariffs, Trump remains in control and there may be little anyone in Alabama can do about it, according to political experts. The presidents remarks have long stoked nervousness about auto tariffs, particularly late last year when he angrily reacted to General Motors announcement that it would shutter assembly plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland. The president, at the time, warned of a 25 percent tariff on imported cars as a retaliation. My sense is that this tariff decision will be made at the top, and lower-level federal or state officials are not in a position to make any guarantees, public or private, said Steve Livingston, associate director of the Business and Economic Research Center at Middle Tennessee State University, who authored a much-read report in that state analyzing the effects of possible tariffs on all sectors of the Tennessee economy. In other words, they can only hope. Their actual influence on tariff questions has thus far been pretty limited. Also unknown is whether Trump considers certain imports a threat to national security. The president recently received a classified report about the issue as part of an investigation he requested last May on auto imports. Car industry and automobile manufacturers have howled their disapproval. The Center of Automotive Research, for example, predicted last year that a 25 percent tariff on automakers could lead to a loss of 715,000 jobs. Among those who have received an earful from the auto industry is Alabamas Democratic senator, Doug Jones. Alabama automakers testified at the field hearing on tariffs I hosted in Mobile last fall that these auto tariffs are a threat to their businesses, Jones said in a statement to AL.com. Even the uncertainty of the threat of tariffs is harmful. Jones urged to take industry leaders at their word and have a sense of urgency about resolving the issues. The issue could also be part of Senate politics in the coming year. Byrne has announced he will run for the Senate seat Jones won during a special Senate election in 2017. Said Jones, While others sit around and wait for the administration to make a decision, I refuse to sit on the sidelines. Republicans, in the recent past, have made public statements opposing tariffs. U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Hoover, said in August that tariffs could undo progress in manufacturing and U.S. Rep. Roger Aderholt, R-Haleyville, expressed concerns last year about tariffs on Canadian paper. Others, such as U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Saks, have argued in support of Trumps trade policies. Battle, a Republican who ran for governor last year, believes a resolution with the auto tariffs is needed soon. Battle said he believes Lentzs comments were based on his concerns about the global economy and political structure, which includes plenty of unknowns about Brexit in Europe, and the revised version of NAFTA called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. From what weve seen, patience is part of the answer, said Battle. But we also need to be preaching the uncertainty affects our markets. The uncertainty affects our total global market here in Huntsville and, as we work through this, we need to work on a resolution at some point. Political realities Political experts believe that if the tariffs were pitched by a Democratic administration, the reaction would be different among the states GOP. There is no doubt that the political conversation would be different under a Democratic administration, said Jeffrey Kucik, an assistant professor in the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona, who has written about the politics of tariffs. Under those conditions, the narrative would be Democrats ignore the interests of working-class Americans, he added. There would be much more talk about how tariffs are, at the end of the day, taxes. Trump has been careful to skirt that term. Wed hear it a lot more often if the tables were turned. Trumps net approval rating in Alabama is 26 points, which is tied with Wyoming for the highest in the country, according to Morning Consult. Three other states with Toyota expansion plans looming West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee are also strong pro-Trump states. Politicians tend to trust leaders who agree with them ideologically, so it is no surprise that GOP leaders would be especially willing to defer to the presidents negotiating strategy, said Stephen Voss, associate professor of political sciences at the University of Kentucky. Public support gives a president greater influence over other elected officials. President Trump naturally will have an easier time with, and receive more support from, politicians in states where he remains popular with the voters. Livingston, at Middle Tennessee State University, said partisan politics doesnt matter with the current tariff disputes, and that its difficult to speculate what the reaction might be if similar tariffs were pitched by a Democratic administration. Since no president in closing in on a hundred years has made this kind of threat, its hard to know how it would have been received had President Obama, or anyone else, made a threat like this, said Livingston. Its just something that would not have happened. He added, I have no doubt, though, that Republican economic development officials are worried, just like Democratic ones, even if all they can do is hope for the best. Politics aside, Kucik said that Alabama may be experiencing a vivid immersion into Trumps economic policies. U.S. Steels recent announcement to restart production outside of Birmingham was an important political victory for Trump, he said. It seemed to suggest the tariffs are doing exactly what they are supposed to do -- that is, bolster production in an ailing domestic industry. He added, However, those steel jobs have to be balanced against Toyotas comments. Alabama is seeing firsthand the pros and cons of trade protection. Gaining in steel, losing on cars. A man who killed two Mobile County sheriffs deputies more than 40 years ago was denied parole, the Mobile County district attorneys office said Wednesday. Jerre Chatom, who is serving two life sentences for the 1975 killings of Deputies David Beck and Robert Stolz, was denied parole by the state Department of Pardons and Parole, which followed the recommendation of the state and the victims families. Chatom, who is either 65 or 66 according to Corrections Department records, led then-Mobile County Sheriff Ronald Kelso on a high-speed chase before pulling out a shotgun and firing at Kelsos vehicle. When the sheriff called for backup, Chatom and another man in the vehicle, David Wilson, fled into a swamp near the Mississippi border and tried to escape on foot. As Beck and Stolz pursued the pair, Chatom again fired his shotgun, killing the sheriffs deputies. Chatom will next be eligible for parole in 2024. Jerry Sager has been working at Christian bookstores for 31 years, at Lifeway for 18 years, most recently at the Lifeway Christian Store in Trussville for the past 13 years. Hes seen a lot of change in the business. Lifeway was the last of the big Christian retailers left, Sager said. Lifeway Christian Resources announced today it will close all 170 of its stores this year. The Nashville-based Lifeway, affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, called the decision a strategic shift of resources to a dynamic digital strategy. It will continue to sell books and other products through its website and a toll-free customer service number. The chain, which has operated since 1891, offers Bibles, Christian media, Bible studies, childrens products, gifts and church supplies, as well as other services. Lifeway has 10 locations in Alabama, in Trussville, Hoover, Oxford, Tuscaloosa, Mobile, Montgomery, Huntsville, Florence, Dothan and Decatur. It will be hard on a lot of customers, Sager said. Weve got a lot of seniors who dont have the internet, Sager said. Theres a personal touch to buying Bibles and Christian touch that will also be lost. Every person Ive ever sold a Bible to, everybody wants to look at and hold a Bible before they buy one, Sager said. Theyll come in and look at five or six different Bibles before they buy one. There is a majority of customers who like to hold a Bible or a book before they buy it. The Lifeway bookstores in Trussville, Hoover, Oxford and Tuscaloosa also have a history of hosting events to promote Christian books and movies. It will hurt the authors, Sager said. But time marches on, and customers make choices every time they buy. If you dont support your local places, they wont be around anymore and all youll end up with is Amazon and Walmart, Sager said. You lose that personal side. When Sager got into the Christian book business 31 years ago, working for a chain called Joshuas in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the nation had plenty of small family-owned Christian bookstores. Back when I started there were tons of mom and pop stores and they saw us as the villain, Sager said. They couldnt compete with the big chain retail stores. Joshuas was bought out in 1998 by Family Christian Stores, including two Joshuas stores in the Birmingham area, in the Roebuck Plaza and on U.S. 31 in Hoover, Sager recalled. In 2017, Family Christian Stores announced it was closing all 240 of its stores nationwide, blaming a changing consumer behavior and declining sales. That chain had been in business 85 years. First the Mom and Pop stores disappeared, then Joshuas, then Family Christian Stores, Sager said. Now, we disappeared. But not quite yet. The Trussville Lifeway store will begin liquidation sales on March 28 and close by the end of May. The stores in Oxford and Hoover will also begin liquidation sales and close by mid-June, depending on how fast the shelves clear. The Hoover store will begin liquidation later and stay open until the end of November, Sager said. All Lifeway stores in the country will be closed by the end of 2019. Sager said hes known this was coming since January, and hes ready to embark on a new career. Hes becoming a real estate agent for Keller-Williams. Its sad but itll be fun to do something new, he said. This is an opinion cartoon. Lotteries $uck. Just look around. Were surrounded by states with lotteries sucking up our money: Florida, Georgia, Tennessee. And Mississippi, already taking Alabama money at their casinos, will add a lottery later this year. Alabama is one of only five states without a lottery. The idea of a lottery is to take money from as many outsiders as possible, not just your own. Alabama is late to the party. We will only have our own. If we get to vote on and possibly pass a lottery now, itll be kind of a 'whatever moment. Itll help, but weve already missed the big boat. Were settling for life rafts. But were Alabama. We could use those life rafts. Hey, we could use water wings. We will also be the last to capitalize on the other lean green money machine: Marijuana. Medicinal or otherwise. Alabama politicians would rather ram through a regressive gas tax without a vote from the people than discuss real world progressive solutions. Why? Because almost any politician who wins an election in Alabama has reason to believe the voters who elected them cant be trusted to make good decisions or discuss real world progressive solutions. Will we ever prove them wrong? Check out more cartoons by JD Crowe The Alabama Senate has passed a bill that would require the state Board of Education and state Department of Education to adopt new learning standards to replace the Common Core standards the state has used for about eight years. The bill is sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, who unveiled it in a social media video on Tuesday, causing alarm for education officials who did not know it was coming and said it would be disruptive. In its original form, Marshs bill would have repealed the Common Core standards immediately. It would have reinstated standards that were used until Common Core standards were implemented in 2011 and 2012 until new standards could be developed. The Senate added an amendment today saying that the Common Core standards would stay in place until the 2021-22 school year, when they would be replaced by new standards to be developed. Marsh said that was to avoid disruption. It was also aimed to address what others said were unintended consequences in the legislation that could have affected far more than just the Common Core standards. The amendment to keep the current math and English standards in place is a victory for teachers and others who feared a rollback to old courses of study would be a return to less rigorous standards. We firmly believe in rigorous standards and high expectations for our students and anything less than that is totally unacceptable, said Ryan Hollingsworth, director of the state superintendents association. Im elated, Alabama Superintendent Eric Mackey told AL.com Thursday afternoon. Mackey said his concerns about consequences of the way the bill was originally written were addressed in the amendment. Mackey said there is still work to do as the bill makes its way through the House of Representatives after lawmakers return from spring break in two weeks. Mackey said he appreciated how teachers who took their time to share their thoughts with lawmakers. Senators passed the bill by a vote of 23-7 along party lines, with most Republicans supporting it and and most Democrats voting no. The vote to pass it came after another vote, also 23-7, to cut off debate. Democratic senators were speaking in opposition to the bill until then. The amendment also specified that national assessments like Advanced Placement, the ACT college entrance exam, and tests related to workforce credentialing will be allowed to be used, easing concerns about language in the original bill. The Common Core standards are a list of learning benchmarks children are expected to meet at each grade level. They are designed to put schools across the country on the same page academically. The National Governors Association developed Common Core to equalize classroom expectations across states. The Alabama Board of Education first voted to adopt them in 2010 and they are incorporated into what are called Alabamas College and Career Ready Standards. They apply to math and English language arts. Marsh cited the states low rankings on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading and math as evidence that the Common Core standards arent working. We have got to set a deadline to get this done," Marsh said. This is clearing the playing field, Marsh said. Its step one. Get this out of the way and lets move forward together to create better standards for Alabama for our children to give them a better chance. Democratic senators who oppose the bill say the state doesnt adequately fund education. Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, said Marsh was using the issue to raise his name recognition for a possible run for the U.S. Senate next year. Marsh has said he is considering that race but said that is not why he brought the bill. Sen. Malika Sanders-Fortier, who voted against the bill, said she was concerned about the lack of time to analyze it and try to determine if the Common Core standards were a factor in the low NAEP scores. The bill was introduced on Tuesday and approved in committee without a public hearing on Wednesday, setting it up for todays vote. Perhaps if we had done some work as a body to really determine is this the cause of the test scores, or is it not, if we had some actual factual information, it may have been different," Sanders-Fortier said. "But my concern is it was rushed. I didnt feel like we really took the concerns of students and teachers and parents and administrators and even the state school board into consideration in the process. The bill moves to the House, where it will be considered first in the Education Policy Committee. Committee Chairwoman Terri Collins, R-Decatur, said Thursday afternoon she had not seen the amended bill yet. Ill look at that and well see where we go from there, Collins said. "I know that there were what appeared to be a lot of unintended consequences.And we certainly want to make sure that we address all that. So, Ill be looking into it." Asked if she believes Alabama standards need to be changed, Collins said she believes the standards are high and are reviewed on a regular basis. She said she did not think the standards are causing the low NAEP rankings. She said local school systems are responsible for the curriculum used try to meet the standards. Can anything be looked at and improved? Collins said. Always. And I support that. But well have to see. I dont think a set of standards is the reason that the children are not doing well on NAEP. Collins said shes been working for two years on a plan to improve reading in grades K-3, aimed at addressing the low NAEP scores and improving learning overall. Teaching the foundations of reading. Good professional development. Good ways that we screen and make sure where our children are. Good ways to help our children be successful, not only on the NAEP scores, but in life. Those are the ways that I want us to proceed to try to address the NAEP scores, Collins said. AL.com reporter Trisha Powell Crain contributed to this story. This is an opinion column. A few years after my mom died, my great aunt fixed my dad up with her next-door neighbor in Spartanburg, S.C. It was a long distance romance, but after more than a year of expensive phone bills and rendezvous between here and there, they decided to get married and my stepmother and her two sons moved to be with us in Alabama. Which is when my new stepbrothers enrolled in Alabama public schools, and when a funny thing happened the math and science classes they were assigned were the same classes theyd taken the year before in South Carolina. I think now about what might have happened had we gone the other way had my dad and I moved to Spartanburg instead. Would I have been held behind a year? Would my parents have had to pay for tutors? Would I have been thrown into the deep end and expected to swim? And I think, too, of what that meant was happening in Alabama: A whole state of children was a year behind students not in radical California nor uppity Massachusettes, but South Carolina, a state as demographically similar to Alabama as about any other. It has to be hard to teach at grade level when your curriculum is a grade level behind everybody else. This is the simple problem the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers set out to solve with Common Core. It wasnt a conspiracy to make our children dumber. It wasnt an Illuminati plot to indoctrinate students into a particular way of thinking. Rather, it was a plan to make life easier on students whose circumstances require them to move between schools and across state lines. Parents and children throughout our county deserved a solution. (My wife, an Army brat, had it way worse than anyone in my family, and this problem particularly harms families of our Armed Service members.) Alabama, with a fair amount of choking and gagging, swallowed the medicine, adopting Common Core under the somewhat disingenuous name Alabama College and Career Ready Standards. Now Alabama Senate Pro Tem Del Marsh wants to undo the whole thing. Today I filed a bill to repeal common core in Alabama. Our kids deserve better. #alpolitics pic.twitter.com/l8CuqHoEf4 Del Marsh (@SenatorDelMarsh) March 19, 2019 In a video on Twitter this week, Marsh announced he would drop a bill to repeal Common Core, and he threw school administrators, business leaders and everyone whose job it is to teach children into confusion and potentially chaos. This isnt the first time Marsh has pulled a surprise attack on education. In 2013, he championed a the Alabama Accountability Act, which a conference committee transformed literally in the dark of night into a program to divert public school funding to private schools. That program, as Marsh sold it, was to benefit students in failing schools, but reality has proven to be something different, with most of the diversions affecting non-failing school districts. In recent years, Marshs Republican colleagues have grown skeptical of the Accountability Act, rebuffing his attempts to divert even more tax dollars from public schools. The transition to Common Core has been rough on Alabama, and Marsh wants to blame the politically unpopular program for stagnating test scores. Theres just one problem with that more than 40 other states use the same curriculum without the same dire results. The Alabama Superintendents Association and the Alabama School Boards Association have already called for a more deliberate approach, and the A-Plus Education Partnership pointed out Marshs bill could make Advanced Placement courses illegal and stop teachers from pursuing national certifications. Marsh has said hes going to amend his bill to fix all that (which he could have avoided had he shown his bill to professionals to begin with). He insists none of that was his intention. OK, then. So what was it? Because, curiously, when it came to Common Core, Marsh has been one of its biggest defenders in the Legislature. Until now, that is, and theres no wonder why. Go back and look at Marshs Twitter feed. Two years ago, he was boasting about the humdrum thankless grunt work that makes government run. Not sexy, but honest, respectable stuff. However, in the last year, Marshs messaging has tried to out-Roy Moore Roy Moore to transform his reputation as a silk stocking Republican and his record as a business-first elitist into the kind of politician Donald Trump would like in the Senate. Marsh has already denied his U-turn on Common Core has anything with a possible campaign for the United States Senate next year. Uh, huh. It must be hard convincing people youre not a swamp creature when your name is Marsh. We see you senator, and we see who youve been someone who desperately needs to burnish his conservative bona fides a week after raising taxes on Alabamians. Weve heard what you said before (and we have the tapes). Dont be a phony. Just be yourself and let Alabamians decide whether youre who they want. And dont play political games with our kids. Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group. Want access to the best analysis and in-depth reporting about Alabama each week? Sign up for the weekly Reckon Report newsletter and follow Reckon on Facebook and Twitter. Follow Whitmire on Twitter and Facebook, too. And Instagram. A Lauderdale County inmate who escaped this morning from a job site in Florence has been recaptured, authorities said. Glen Marvin Hanback, 43, was recaptured in Tuscumbia, said Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton. Hanback escaped around 6 a.m. from the Florence Industrial Park, authorities said. Hes a jail kitchen worker who was supposed to pick up bread for the jail, Singleton said. Instead, according to the sheriff, Hanback ran from the job site. Hanback was jailed on a parole violation, according to jail records. The violation stemmed from convictions for possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia, records show. Singleton said Hanback has been a jail worker in the past. We never had any kind of issues with him before, the sheriff said. Hanback is expected to face an escape charge. Further details werent immediately available. Updated at 11:20 a.m. to show the inmate has been recaptured. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Wednesday released proposals for the 2020 state budgets that reflect growth in tax revenues and priorities on how to allocate the additional dollars. Finance Director Kelly Butler briefed reporters on the plans today. The Legislature will make changes as it develops the budgets over the next few months. Iveys proposed General Fund budget calls for spending $2.15 billion in fiscal year 2020, $91 million more than this year, a 4 percent increase. Since the Great Recession the Legislature has resorted to borrowing and one-time funding sources to prop up the General Fund, but that is not necessary this year, Butler said. Growth in the General Fund is partly the result of the economy and partly the result of relatively new tax sources for the General Fund, including the Simplified Sellers Use Tax, which applies to internet sales. One of the largest increases would go to the Alabama Department of Corrections. The ADOC would get $40 million more than this year, an 8 percent increase. About $30 million of the increase would go to hire 500 additional correctional officers and increase the pay for correctional staff. Most of the rest would go to increases in health care costs for inmates and hiring additional mental health workers. The ADOC is under federal court orders to hire additional correctional officers and is embroiled in a federal lawsuit over the quality of mental health care. The ADOC says prisons have about half the number of officers they need. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is slated for an increase of about $6 million, an 11 percent boost. Most of that is intended to hire, train, equip and provide vehicles for 50 additional state troopers. Iveys budget allocates $4 million from the General Fund to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, up from $575,000 this year. Butler said ADEM has resorted to raising fees on the entities it regulates to support its budget and obtain matching funds for federal dollars. We believe that theyve gone to the well as much as they should on those fee increases, Butler said. The budget plan includes a 2 percent cost of living raise for state employees at a total cost to the General Fund of $12 million annually. Butler said the budget plan was written to leave a balance of $105 million to carry into the 2021 fiscal year. Part of that is to cover an increase in the states share of the Childrens Health Insurance Program, called ALL Kids. Ivey had previously outlined some of her budget priorities in her State of the State address on March 5. Iveys proposed education budget calls for spending $7.1 billion from the Education Trust Fund in fiscal year 2020, an increase of almost $500 million from this year. That would be the first time spending from the ETF topped $7 billion. Theres more money available mostly because of the growth in individual income tax revenue, the largest source of education dollars. Employment levels in Alabama are at record highs. Ivey is proposing a 4 percent cost of living raise for education employees from pre-kindergarten through the two-year college system. The governor is proposing a $28 million increase in the Department of Early Childhood Education, mostly to support an expansion of the states First Class prekindergarten program. The increase would allow the addition of 193 classrooms serving 3,480 students, the governors office said. The expansion would mean that the program, which has won recognition for its quality standards for more than a decade, is available to 40 percent of the states 4-year-olds. Universities would get increases in the range of 5.5 percent to 6 percent, Butler said. State Rep. Mike Ball, a Republican from Huntsville who is a former ABI agent, on Wednesday introduced House Bill 243 that would legalize medical marijuana in Alabama. This is about helping sick people, said Ball, who sponsored bills that became Lenis Law and Carlys Law for CBD oil use. He said both those laws need to be extended. Carlys law expires, and we need to extend that, Ball said. There need to be clarifications on Lenis Law. Carlys Law, passed in 2014, authorized a UAB study on using cannabidiol, or CBD oil, to treat seizure disorders. That law expires July 1, 2019. The bill would extend Carlys Law until Jan. 1, 2021. The research is paying off, Ball said. Some of the doctors want to do a medical card procedure. Im doing one bill that will take care of that. The law would create an exemption from the crime of marijuana possession for people with medical conditions who qualify for a valid medical cannabis card for the medical use of cannabis, or marijuana. We want to give doctors latitude on this, Ball said. In 2016, Alabama passed Lenis Law, allowing patients who suffer seizure disorders or other debilitating medical conditions to use a product that comes from the marijuana plant. HB 243 also revises Lenis Law, and authorizes those over age 19 diagnosed with a qualifying condition to obtain a medical cannabis card, authorizing the use of cannabis for medical purposes. The bill would establish the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission and require the commission to establish and administer a patient registry system that registers patients with qualifying medical conditions. The commission would issue medical cannabis cards and licenses for the cultivation, processing, transportation, manufacturing and sale of cannabis in the state. Weve got to have a legitimate way of regulating cannabis, Ball said. This will be strictly regulating it. The bi-partisan bill has 20 other co-sponsors, including Democrats Rep. John Rogers and Rep. Juandalynn Givan, and Republican House Speaker Mac McCutcheon. The speakers always been supportive on this, Ball said. Some are worried about the political risk of supporting any legislation related to marijuana, Ball said. Fear is one of our biggest enemies, he said. We dont need to let fear stop us from helping people. Its a shame it has taken this long to unlock what this can do medically. People worried about drug abusers dont understand that drug abusers already have access to illegal marijuana, he said. If people want to abuse, they can go out and buy a bag of dope, Ball said. The only people were hurting is people who have legitimate medical needs. Before the passage of Lenis Law and Carlys Law, people with seizures that could be calmed with marijuana treatment suffered, he said. There were people suffering because they could not get it, Ball said. They were not criminals and should not be prosecuted. BARISHAL: A human chain was formed by Jatiya Imam Parishad, Barishal District Unit protesting killing in mosque in New Zealand recently. A 16-year-old immigrant from Guatemala who is allegedly in the county illegally has been charged with homicide in Mobile County after being involved in a head-on collision Monday. Domingo Francisco Marcos was traveling westbound on US 98 when he is alleged to have crossed the center turn lane, which resulted in a head on collision with victim Sonya Jones, 49. Jones died as a result of the incident. Marcos attempted to flee but to due to his injuries, collapsed and was taken to USA Womens and Childrens Hospital for surgery, according to the Mobile District Attorneys office. Marcos, according to the D.A., was first apprehended in Arizona in 2017 and was in the process of being deported back to Guatemala when he claimed asylum and was released. U.S. House Representative Bradley Byrne, who is running for a Senate seat in 2020, said the incident highlighted a need for action against illegal immigration. Yet again we have someone who is in our country illegally taking the life of an American citizen," said Byrne in an email to AL.com. How many more Americans have to die before we take action to crack down on illegal immigration, secure the border, and keep the American people safe? Enough is enough!" He was given a court date to appear on his claim of asylum and subsequently failed to appear. His asylum application was denied and Marcos was given a final order of deportation. The next contact he had with law enforcement was at the scene of the crash on Monday. Marcos is charged with homicide by vehicle and leaving the scene of an accident with injuries. He was taken into custody for these charges on Wednesday. If Marcos is convicted he faces up to five years in jail and a $2,000 fine. However, Marcos could be considered a juvenile in the eyes of the law and may face lesser charges. A bond hearing will be held on Friday in front of Judge Joe Basenberg at 9 a.m. The state will be requesting no bond in order to keep the defendant in custody. Gail Spann of Winfield, mother of the Mike Spann, the first American killed in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, appeared at the Alabama State House today to express opposition to the early release from prison of John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban. The Alabama House and Senate this morning passed a resolution in honor of Mike Spann, a Marine and CIA agent, and condemning the scheduled release of Lindh in May, about three years before the end of his 20-year sentence. Gail Spann said she felt compelled to speak out about Lindhs planned release. I do not want him out. I would like for him to spend the rest of his life in prison, but thats not possible, Spann said. In November 2001, Mike Spann, working as a CIA officer, interviewed Lindh at a detention facility after Lindh was captured with other Taliban fighters. Hours later, Mike Spann died in an uprising by those detained at the facility. Gail Spann said Lindh could have told her son that the uprising was coming and saved his life. John Walker Lindh had the opportunity to tell Mike right there, youre an American, Im an American, Gail Spann said. Weve got weapons in this building and were going to overtake this fort. He chose not to because he was a Taliban. Hes a traitor to our country. He could have had an opportunity to save a great man that actually saved a lot of lives that day. Gail Spann said she appreciated lawmakers giving her a forum today and passing the resolution sponsored by Rep. Tracy Estes, R-Winfield, and Sen. Larry Stutts, R-Sheffield. She said recognition of her loss and her sons service is not unusual but she does not generally seek publicity. They have wanted to make movies about Mike and write books about Mike and people have written things that weve not agreed to but weve never agreed to do that because thats our son, we dont want to see all this on a big screen TV and his daughters dont need to see it, she said. This is not something that I take lightly and I dont go around and talk about it all the time, Gail Spann added. I live a normal life in Winfield, Alabama. Try to live a very normal life." The things that are important to me are the same things that were important to Mike. Americas the greatest country in the world. Two public polls released in recent weeks indicate that U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks would be the Republican to beat in Alabamas Senate race next year for the seat held by Democrat Sen. Doug Jones. Except Brooks is not in the race. And there is no signal from the Huntsville Republican congressman that he plans to join the race any time soon. The only candidate who is in the race so far, U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Fairhope, would trail Brooks by 11 points, according to the poll released Thursday by Club For Growth a conservative Washington D.C. group that advocates full repeal of Obamacare, limited government and cutting income taxes. The group endorsed Brooks when he ran for the Senate in 2017 and finished third in the GOP primary behind Roy Moore and Luther Strange. Last week, a Club For Growth poll conducted by WPAi showed Brooks would finish 20 points ahead of Moore in a head-to-head battle. Moore has said he is seriously considering running again for the Senate. "Alabama voters trust that Mo Brooks is the conservative champion who will support President Trumps America First agenda, David McIntosh, Club For Growth president, said in a press release announcing the poll results Thursday. But if Brooks is not in the race, what's the point of these polls not only putting him in the race but saying he would be the favorite? There are conservative groups who are trying to persuade me to run for the United States Senate, Brooks told AL.com on Thursday. "So far, these various groups have presented me with five different polls, all of which say that if I run, Im starting out in first place. "Various conservative groups have shown me these polls in an effort to persuade me to be the conservative candidate in the Republican primary." In addition to Club For Growth, Brooks also cited the Senate Conservatives Fund as another group encouraging him to run. They have also pledged, so far, $3.7 million in support if I will get into the Republican primary, Brooks said of the conservative groups. And I am considering the polling data and the strong offers of financial support but so far, they have not been sufficient to persuade me to run for the Senate. But I havent made a final decision. It appears, though, that Club For Growth is more anti-Byrne than anything. The organization released a poll last moth that had U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Hoover, tied with Byrne with 27 percent of the vote each in a head-to-head matchup with 46 percent of those polled undecided. That poll was conducted up to 10 days before Byrne formally announced his long-expected candidacy. Perhaps most telling, however, was the quote from McIntosh that accompanied that poll release, which described Palmer as "the strongest candidate" to win the GOP nomination. Both Brooks and Palmer are members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. Brooks was endorsed by President Trump last year as he campaigned for a fifth term in Congress. Alabama Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, has proposed getting rid of Common Core education standards in the state. Common Core is a set of academic benchmarks designed to keep schools around the nation on the same pace academically. It includes benchmarks for math and English, outlining what skills children should master by which grade. The National Governors Association developed Common Core to equalize classroom expectations across states. Marshs proposal to rid Alabama of all things Common Core is making its way through the legislature. Both sides have been vocal. Business leaders across the state announced their opposition to repealing Common Core standards for public schools, saying they feared a dumbing down of the states schools if it is repealed. Others have been against it because they felt the federal government under the Obama Administration interfered in how states educate their children. The National Space Council meeting chaired by Vice President Mike Pence next week in Huntsville wont be open to the general public, according to a council spokesperson, but it will be live streamed on NASA TV. Pence is coming to the city Tuesday to host the fifth meeting of the high-level advisory panel to the White House on space policy. The meeting will be at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in the giant hall housing an Apollo crew capsule and one of the few remaining Saturn V rockets from Americas Apollo moon program. Previous meetings of the council have taken place at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; Cape Canaveral, Fla, The White House and the National War College in Washington D.C.. "Huntsville is proud to host the National Space Council at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, the perfect backdrop for a meeting of this caliber," Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle said today. "It's fitting this instrumental group of space policy leaders and influencers will be in the Rocket City at the same time as the U.S. Army's AUSA Global Force Symposium and Exposition. Both groups work to ensure America's leadership in defense and space exploration, and both groups always have a home in Huntsville, Alabama." The Rocket City is the natural summit for the National Space Council, said Dr. Deborah Barnhart, CEO and executive director of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. The scions of the space industry craft our exploration vision. The Rocket Center is honored with their presence, and our Space Camp alumni worldwide are eager to fulfill our destiny in space. What isnt clear yet is whether Pences schedule will include time for touring either NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center or the top-secret defense programs under way at the Armys Redstone Arsenal. Support for Donald Trump among white evangelical Protestants has dropped by 9 percentage points since 2017, according to a Pew Research Center poll. In February 2017, Trumps approval rating among white evangelicals was 78 percent. By last month, that support had fallen to 69 percent, a drop thats the biggest among the racial and religious demographic groups included in the survey. Despite the decline, white evangelical Protestants still give the president the highest level of support of any religious group. White evangelicals support for the president has been consistently high, and many prominent evangelical leaders, such as Jerry Falwell Jr. the president of Liberty University have steadfastly stood with the president, Pew noted. Among all Protestants, 50 percent support Trump; among black Protestants that figure falls to 12 percent. Thirty-six percent of Catholics support the president, a figure that breaks down into 44 percent of white Catholics compared to 26 percent of nonwhite Catholics. Trumps support among nonwhite Catholics has grown, up from 13 percent in 2017. Among white evangelical protestants who attend church weekly, Trumps approval rating was 70 percent, a drop of 9 percentage points from 2017. Those who attend church less often gave Trump an approval rating of 65 percent. Fifty-two percent of white Catholics who attend church weekly said they support the president compared to 45 percent who reported attending church less than once a week. Twenty percent of those who identify as religiously unaffiliated support Trump. Common Core. Seems like everybody has an opinion about what it is and what it isnt. One thing is for sure, though. State Republican Senators want it gone. Like now. Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, R-Anniston, until now a supporter of leaving education standards alone, surprised Alabama on Tuesday afternoon when he posted a 31-second video on Facebook and Twitter announcing he would rid the state of the Common Core. It was a "shot over the bow," he told AL.com, to force educators to do something to improve test scores so Alabama's educational reputation would stop suffering. Gov. Kay Ivey, who serves as president of the Alabama Board of Education, supported Marsh in his "efforts to ensure that headlines about Alabama ranking last or close to last in education become things of the past." Marshs proposal to rid Alabama of all things Common Core sailed through a Senate committee less than 24 hours after he filed the bill. There wasnt even time to call a public hearing. And with 22 co-sponsors in the Senate, the bill could sail through full passage, too. Some are likening Marshs urgent push to repeal the Common Core to the recent gas tax Republicans pushed through in a hastily-called special session of the legislature last week. Pushing politics aside, AL.com took a look at that thing called Common Core and what it is, and what it isn't. Tell us what you think in the comments. First, what will dropping Common Core cost us? According to the bill Marsh filed, it will cost the Alabama State Department of Education $10.9 million to drop the Common Core. That doesn't include the tens of millions of dollars already spent over the years to train teachers, purchase textbooks and other materials in both state and local tax dollars. But that isn't all it may cost us. Alabama State Superintendent Eric Mackey, in a statement to AL.com, wrote that Marsh's bill has "a lot of implications and could produce a host of unintended consequences." According to Mackey, the ban Marsh proposes on adopting national standards could cost students, too. The way Marshs bill is currently written, Mackey warns, builds a wall, prohibiting all national tests, including familiar college entrance exams, such as the ACT and the SAT, as well as the career technical certifications and national standards for computer science. Those new tests Alabama agreed to create, the ones starting this spring? They're not happening, either, if Marsh's bill wins approval of state lawmakers. Alabama's taxpayers have already spent millions of dollars developing the new tests (driven in part by those unhappy with results of national test showing too few of Alabama's students were on grade level), and any change now, according to Mackey, could cost millions of dollars. Who is on whose side? Business leaders in Alabama clearly support keeping Alabamas learning standards in place. Alabamas current standards (which include Common Core) set a higher bar for students than the previous ones did, they said. And by providing a national set of benchmarks, the standards make it easier for families to relocate between states. Social media posts show teachers in Alabama are vocal in their support of current standards. The Alabama Education Association said in a statement to AL.com that their membership is split on the issue, but their numbers are unknown. However, many more conservative members of the GOP opposed the standards, arguing that education is a local issue and the national standards could cause teachers to select the same texts and use the same teaching methods nationwide. The issue divided the state school board and defined many political races in Alabama in 2014 but had died down in recent years. What is Common Core? Its a black-and-white list of standards children are expected to meet, at each grade level, while theyre in school. The curriculum -- the actual books and lessons -- needed to meet those standards is a local matter. Heres a link to read math standards for yourself (start on page 22). Reading standards are here. Why is Common Core so controversial? Because former President Obamas Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, thought they were good standards and gave states extra points if they adopted them in math and English in a grant competition called Race to the Top. (Alabama never received Race to the Top funding.] In a sense, then, Obama co-opted the standards, and some confused his approval of the standards with the idea he had a hand in creating them. But the standards were developed by states through the National Governors Association in 2008. They set a higher bar for students than were in place in many states. Some, including state board members, argued that Alabama's standards were already high and didn't need to change. But, using the same measures Marsh used (test scores), children in Alabama were not posting high scores prior to 2010. Sure, some districts (the wealthy ones) were, but most were not. The way math is being taught and the way students are expected to learn it has also caused a lot of parents to become frustrated. It isnt just memorizing multiplication tables like it was when they were growing up. Students are now expected to think mathematically, meaning they need to understand the math and not just repeat a formula. Why can't Alabama just drop Common Core? Technically, lawmakers can drop the Common Core. What Marshs bill calls for, though, is an immediate stop to teaching what theyre teaching now. That means teachers in Alabamas 1,400 schools will have to teach math and English in a different way beginning in August when school starts. Marsh's bill requires teachers to go back to the way it was taught before Alabama adopted Common Core in 2010. That means going back to math and English from the early 2000s. While some think that's a great idea, others question whether those old ways will get students ready for college and beyond. The change will start a whole lot of dominoes falling, and those dominoes will make it tough for Alabamas students and teachers who will be expected to work from three different set of standards in math and English over a three-year period: current standards through the end of this school year, old standards in 2019-20, and a newly-developed set of standards in 2020-21. Those old standards that will be used next year? Theyre from nearly 20 years ago. And what test will they use to measure what students have learned? All of that changing of standards will also make it hard for schools to stay true to other reforms Republican lawmakers have championed in the past (like showing progress on yearly report cards). And it will force teachers to use a set of learning standards from nearly 20 years ago to teach math and English at all grade levels. A new math course of study, developed by a committee of Alabama teacers was scheduled for a vote on March 14, but Gov. Ivey stepped in, asking Mackey to postpone the vote to study other states standards. The new standards would have been implemented in 2020, but Iveys delay cost students another year. Marsh said something about Alabama ranking low on tests. Did we rank better before we adopted Common Core? No. Marsh said the Common Core hadn't worked to raise test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. That's a fair statement, according to data, but standards teachers were using before adopting Common Core weren't doing much to impact test scores, either. And let's not forget the Great Recession. Researchers are just beginning to measure how the Recession, and the drastic reduction in school spending, affected student learning. One study, in 2017, found the impact, though modest, was real. Matthew Steinberg and Kenneth Shores, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, after studying a huge dataset of test scores, found the following: The adverse effects of the recession were concentrated among school districts serving higher concentrations of low-income and minority students. The Great Recession exacerbated the inequality of student achievement outcomes. In plain-speak, that means in places like Alabama, the Recession had a larger negative impact on test scores and learning than in places where the majority of students were white or whose families had higher incomes. From 2003 until 2017, Alabama's students held their low ranking in 4th and 8th-grade math and in 8th-grade reading. Fourth-grade reading is a different story---the hero, if you will. It's the one ranking Alabama can be proud of, climbing from 46th in 2005 to 34th in 2011. At the time, credit was given to schools' dedication to the Alabama Reading Initiative, or ARI as it's called in education circles. As the Recession took its toll, funding declined for the ARI. It's hard to draw conclusions as to what came first where test scores are concerned, but by 2015, NAEP results for Alabama's 4th-graders dropped to 46th, results Marsh quoted in his social media video. But guess what? Scores climbed a little since. By 2017, Alabama was ranked 40th in 4th grade reading. Do other Common Core states do as poorly on the NAEP as Alabama does? No. Most do not. Alabama is, and has been, at the bottom of the NAEP rankings since students in all states began taking the test in 2003. So is the problem really Common Core? The six states that never adopted the Common Core rank in the range from number 3 Minnesota to number 46 Oklahoma in 4th grade math. The range of 8th-grade math results are similar. Minnesota lands in the number one spot, while Oklahoma hits 44th. The rank in reading scores are just as wide. Rankings in 4th and 8th-grade reading range from 7th (Minnesota, again) to 44th (South Carolina). Could there be some other reason why Alabama students do so poorly on the NAEP? Teachers and administrators say Alabama just hasnt taken the NAEP seriously. The NAEP was barely mentioned in Alabama until Massachusetts native Michael Sentance raised the issue in late 2016. Sentance understood that some in business and industry were using the NAEP to scope out where they wanted to locate. And Alabama was at the bottom in 2015 in 8th-grade math, ranked dead last. That was also that time in 2016 former Gov. Robert Bentley declared, "Our education system sucks." Bentley was reacting to the NAEP rankings. State Superintendent Eric Mackey said more effort has been put into preparation for the NAEP and the state department has been helping schools chosen to give the test. Now, for the basics. Did Alabama adopt Common Core? Yes, the Alabama Board of Education, in 2010, formally adopted the Common Core State Standards by passing a resolution. The Common Core standards in math and English were incorporated into Alabamas courses of study. Didn't Alabama drop the Common Core in 2013? Not really. But state education officials, reading the political climate of the time, had to prove that Alabama was in charge of its own standard-setting process and rescinded the agreement it had with the national group behind the Common Core, passing a state board resolution to do just that. And a process was put in place to allow a yearly review of math and English standards for the next few years, tweaking the standards just a bit here and thereenough to say Alabamians gave their stamp of approval. And they penned a new name for it all: the Alabama College and Career Ready Standards. What's next? As of Thursday morning, when this article was published, the Alabama Senate was set to consider Marshs bill for a vote. Marsh said his bill has broad support in the House, which will consider the bill when lawmakers return from spring break, which is next week. The Gadsden Water Works and Sewer Board announced Wednesday it has completed a $5 million filtration system to remove man-made chemical contaminants from its drinking water. The utility was one of eight Alabama water systems that learned in a 2016 Environmental Protection Agency health advisory that their drinking water systems contained levels of two common industrial chemicals that could be associated with birth defects, kidney problems, and cancers. With the health advisory, the EPA lowered the recommended drinking water limit from 400 parts per trillion for PFOS and 200 parts per trillion for PFOA to 70 parts per trillion for the two chemicals combined. The health advisory warned that long-term consumption of drinking water at 70 ppt or above was linked to health impacts. Gadsden Water Works General Manager Chad Hare said in a news release that the utility was blindsided by the 2016 health advisory, but that tests show the new granular activated carbon filter system is reducing concentrations of those chemicals well below the new EPA health advisory limit for lifetime exposure. The last couple years have been difficult to say the least, but I am proud to announce the completion of this project, Hare said. I would not want to go through any of it again, but I am extremely proud of our response. PFOA and PFOS are two of the most common chemicals in a class called PFAS, or per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances. The chemicals are used in a number of manufacturing processes, often to create non-stick or stain-resistant coatings on consumer products like cookware, waterproof clothing, fabrics and carpets. Gadsden Water Works has filed a lawsuit against 30 carpet and textile businesses in Dalton, Ga., upstream of the city on the Coosa River, alleging that those companies are contributing to the high levels of PFAS chemicals in the Coosa, which the Water Works uses as its source of drinking water. The lawsuit was not something we wanted to pursue, but it is necessary to hold those who are allowing PFASs to be in the water accountable for the cost of removing them, Hare said. Simply put, we do not believe the customers of the GWW&SB should be responsible for paying for the removal of these substances because they had nothing to do with them being there in the first place. Water samples taken from the utility show that the finished drinking water often hovered near or just above the 70 parts per trillion advisory threshold going back to 2016, but has not gone above 34 parts per trillion since the filter was completed in December 2018. The full sampling data are available on the utilitys web site. Hare said the initial costs of completing the system are between $4.8 and $5 million. Maintaining the filters will cost an extra $200,000 or so per year, as the activated carbon in the filter becomes less effective and has to be replaced periodically. The actual maintenance costs will depend on the concentrations of the pollutants in the source water and how much water goes through the system. While the system has the Gadsden Water Works within the 2016 advisory limits, that may not be the end of the story for drinking water utilities dealing with PFAS. The EPA has begun the process of setting a maximum contaminant level for the substances. The current health advisory is only a guideline, not a binding regulation. The agency has the option of setting a hard limit on how much PFAS can be contained in drinking water and that limit could be lower than the current health advisory. PFAS chemicals are often referred to as emerging contaminants because scientific studies are still ongoing to try to document health impacts associated with the chemicals. According to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, the two primary areas of Alabama that deal with PFAS contamination are along the Coosa River, downstream from Dalton, Ga., and along the Tennessee River, downstream from the 3M facility in Decatur. The West Morgan East Lawrence Water and Sewer Authority (WMEL) installed a similar granular activated carbon filter last year after dealing with high concentrations of PFAS in its source water. WMEL has filed a lawsuit against 3M and other entities over contamination of the Tennessee River, seeking to force the chemical giant to pay for the additional filtration systems. A former Birmingham police officer arrested more than four years ago on allegations he sexually abused a child and raped an adult woman has been sentenced to serve six months in the Shelby County Jail. Joshua Herbinger, now 33, surrendered to the jail on Tuesday to begin serving his sentence. He pleaded guilty last week to one count of attempted sexual abuse of a child less than 12 years old and one count of first-degree rape. Herbinger, a former crime scene technician, was first arrested in October 2014 and charged with four counts of sexual abuse of a child less than 12 years old. Alabaster Police Chief Curtis Rigney at the time said the young female victim reported the abuse to the School Resource Officer at her school and police immediately launched their investigation which led to the felony warrants against him. The chief said the victim was not related to Herbinger. The abuse, police said, is reported to have happened over the two to three years before his arrest. About two weeks later, Herbinger, of Pleasant Grove, was arrested again, this time on the first-degree rape charge. Rigney said at the time that the victim was not in any kind of domestic relationship with the officer. He was fired from the Birmingham Police Department shortly after his arrests. As part of his plea, the other child sex abuse charges were dismissed with conditions. He is required to register as a sex offender and avoid contact with the victims and their families. On the rape charge, Shelby County Circuit Judge William H. Bostick sentenced Herbinger to 10 years in prison with six months to serve in the jail. On the child sex abuse charge, Herbinger was sentenced to 60 months in prison with six months to serve in the county jail. He is to serve the two sentences concurrently. The remainder of the prison sentences will be suspended as long as Herbinger does not violate the terms of the plea agreement. Court records stated the victims and their families were in agreement with the terms of the plea agreement. A birthday celebration ended in horror for a Birmingham woman who was shot five times in the parking lot of a gas station. And if that wasnt bad enough, 33-year-old Jamie Davis would soon learn she had nearly been killed as part of a seemingly random series of crimes. According to police and court records, the man police say shot her, Michael Damon Daniels, went on to shoot two more people fatally - that Sunday morning. Daniels, a 25-year-old convicted felon, left a trail of carnage in a relatively short period of time, court records contend. So far, he has been charged with 18 violent felony crimes involving eight different victims. Some of the crimes happened in the days leading up to March 10, but some of the most violent crimes happened in just a span of hours that day. Court records indicate Daniels does not currently have an attorney. He is charged with capital murder in the shooting deaths of Octavia Dortch, a 45-year-old mother and grandmother who was slain when she showed up to work at Arlington Rehabilitation Center and HealthCare Center on Tuscaloosa Avenue about 7 a.m. that morning. Daniels also is charged with capital murder in the shooting death less than two hours later of 28-year-old Gregory Snodgress, who had stopped to make a quick purchase at the BP service station on Montevallo Road S.W. Police said the victims did not know each other, and police say there is no indication Daniels knew either of them. Both killings are believed to have been captured on surveillance video, as was the shooting of Davis. Additionally, charging documents state, three young women were also victims of Daniels that day. All three were held against their will at gunpoint in a southwest Birmingham home invasion, and one of them was sexually assaulted. His alleged reign of terror ended by days end when the Center Point man was arrested following a police chase through the eastern part of the city. This has changed my life, said Davis, a mother of three. Still recovering from her gunshot wounds, Davis chronicled her ordeal for AL.com. There was so much blood. For Davis, her encounter with Daniels began Saturday night while she was out celebrating her birthday. She went to visit relatives at a Norwood apartment complex when she met Daniels in the parking lot. She visited with him and another man whom she recognized and said she wanted to go to a club. Daniels offered to go with her, and Davis was hesitant. However, the other man vouched for him so off they went. It got real weird real fast, Davis said. He was talking crazy, like we were boyfriend and girlfriend or something. When they left the club, Davis said her misgivings about Daniels heightened and she wanted him out of her car. I told him I was going to call him a cab. I told him I would pay for it, she said. I was trying my best to be nice. He kept saying, I dont mean no harm, she said. I told him he was scaring me. They stopped at a Chevron service station in the 400 block of 10th Street North, and thats when chaos erupted. Somehow, Davis got Daniels out of her car and locked the door. He got mad when I locked the door, she said. Then I heard Boom. Daniels, she said, had pulled a gun and began to fire on her. She was shot in the groin area, the abdomen and her arm. She got out of her Lincoln Town Car and ran to the store for help. I was running to the store and he kept shooting, she said. I got shot in the back. She would be hit again and grazed two more times before she sought refuge in the store. The door was locked but the clerk let her in after she screamed, He shot me, and then locked the door behind her. Daniels jumped in Davis car, she said. He turned around like was going to finish me, she said. Daniels eventually left the scene in her car. Davis said Daniels stole her money and cell phone, and later dumped her Lincoln in Norwood. Davis was transported to UAB Hospitals Trauma Center. There was so much blood, she said. I felt everything. One of the bullets broke Davis pelvis. She underwent surgery and was hospitalized for six days. She said she cant remember if it was that Sunday or the following day that she learned about the deaths of Dortch and Snodgress. My sister loved everyone. Birmingham police say the crime spree began Wednesday, March 6, in the 700 block of Sunhill Road. Daniels is charged with first-degree robbery, kidnapping and discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle, being a felon in possession of a firearm all in relation to the March 6 incident. Investigators have not released details of that incident. Two days later on Friday, March 8, police say Daniels carried out a robbery in the 7600 block of Third Avenue South. He is charged with first-degree robbery in that incident. Davis, police said, was Daniels first known victim on Sunday, March 10. It was 5:54 a.m. when police were dispatched to the Chevron and found Davis seriously injured. Just over an hour later at 7:17 a.m. - Birmingham officers responded to 1000 block of Tuscaloosa Avenue after ShotSpotter, the citys gunfire detection system, indicated shots were fired in that area. While officers were in the area, they received a call about a person down in the same location. They found Dortch unresponsive in her vehicle. She was pronounced dead on the scene. Dortch had worked at the rehabilitation facility for six years as a certified nursing assistant. My sister loved everyone on the job and off, said her twin sister Latevia Dortch. Dortch had two daughters and two grandchildren. Her family is devastated by the loss. She didnt bother nobody, her sister said. Whoever did this took an innocent life. Daniels is charged with capital murder in Dortchs death. Records state she was killed in the course of the theft of a wallet and/or cell phone. Next, police say, Daniels carried out a home invasion in the 2600 block of Tempest Drive at 7:45 a.m. Three women were at the home at the time, and all were robbed. One of them was sexually assaulted. In that case, Daniels is charged with first-degree burglary, three counts of first-degree robbery, three counts of second-degree kidnapping, and first-degree sexual abuse. Wounded man dragged from his car, killed Less than one hour later, officers responded just after 8:30 a.m. to the BP service station on Montevallo Road S.W. on a report of gunfire. Once on the scene, they found Snodgress unresponsive in his vehicle. According to witnesses and evidence, Daniels pulled up behind Snodgress at the store, blocking him in. He walked in front of Snodgresss vehicle and stared at him the entire time. Snodgress had already gone into the store and gotten back in his vehicle. When Daniels came back outside, Snodgress got back out of his vehicle and the two exchanged words for about 20 seconds, at which point Snodgress got back into his vehicle. At that point, according to store surveillance video of the incident, Daniels ran to the drivers side of the vehicle and fired multiple times through the window. He then backed up a few steps, and approached Snodgresss vehicle, reaching his arm in through the window. He then fired several more shots at Snodgress, paused and fired again. He started to head back to his vehicle, then turn around and opened the door to Snodgresss vehicle, reaching in through the window again to open the door. He pulled the wounded Snodgress out of the vehicle, which was apparently in gear because Snodgress was trying to leave. The vehicle then rolled into a car that was parked in front of it. Snodgress was seen reaching up toward Daniels, and it appeared Daniels reloaded his gun before shooting Snodgress several more times. Daniels then walked back to his vehicle, taking his time before he eventually left the store parking lot. At one point during the shooting, a customer pumping gas pulled off with the nozzle still in the gas tank. Several customers inside the store were visibly alarmed by the gunfire just feet away. Daniels is also charged with capital murder in the killing of Snodgress. Court records say Daniels stole a pistol from Snodgress during the shooting. He planned who he was going to shoot. Daniels was just released from prison last year. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison with three to serve as part of guilty plea in 2016 to charges of theft of property and burglary in Jefferson County. He sentenced ended on March 7, 2018. Those convictions were in connection with a home invasion that led to a chase with Jefferson County sheriffs deputies in 2015. Daniels was initially charged with first-degree robbery, first-degree burglary, second-degree burglary, first degree theft of property, third-degree burglary, second-degree assault, resisting arrest, reckless endangerment and attempting to elude. More than half were dismissed through the plea agreement. In addition to the 18 felony warrants against him, Daniels is also charged with five counts of probation violation. At least one of those warrants was issued two weeks prior to the crime spree after, according to a report from his probation officer, Daniels probation on the 2016 charges wasnt set to end until March 7, 2021. He failed to show up for his scheduled meetings with his probation officer in in November and December of 2018, as well as January and February 2019. Letters mailed to his Center Point home went unanswered, and his relatives would later tell authorities he no longer lived there The report on Daniels probation delinquency noted that he was referred to the JBS (Jefferson, Blount, St. Clair) Mental Health Authority for evaluation but he did not show up for his appointment. Davis said she was horrified when she was told about the deaths. It was shocking and unbelievable, she said. I was like, What in the world? Who did I meet? Never would I have thought this would happen to me, she said, adding that she believes his plan all along was to victimize her. He tricked me. He planned. Thats how I know hes not crazy. Hes evil. He planned who he was going to shoot next and he did it, she said. It was wicked, lowdown and dirty. Davis said she cant work for at least six months, has trouble moving around and still is receiving medical treatment. She has emotional injuries in addition to those physical injuries. I know not to get in the car with strangers, but he seemed OK, she said. You can never teach nobody about a monster. He was a smiling snake. Now Im scared, she said, and I dont trust nobody. Davis said she knows she is the lucky one, and her heart aches for the families whose loved ones didnt survive. Thank God, I know that for sure, she said. She awaits justice for herself, and the other victims that day. I hope he sees us every day, like a bad dream, she said. A nightmare. Director General of the International Rice Research Institute Dr. Matthew Morell paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the latter\'s office on Thursday. BSS photo A man who owns a mobile car detailing business was shot Thursday afternoon on the top floor of a parking deck outside a Birmingham law firm. The shooting happened about noon in the parking deck of Sirote & Permutt on Southsides Highland Avenue. The victim is the owner of Mobile Detailing and Pressure Washing. One of the companys employees, 27-year-old Calandas Harris, said they always park at the top of the deck on Thursday and nearby workers bring them their vehicles to wash while they are at work. He said some kind of dispute erupted between one of his co-workers and their boss. The employee pulled out a gun and fired multiple times. Harris said he did not know the nature of the argument. I just tried to get out of the way because a bullet aint got no names, he said. The dude shot three or four times. He said his boss was struck in the back. Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service radio traffic indicated he was shot in the mouth as well, but that has not been confirmed. The victim was alert and conscious when he was transported to the hospital. Harris took his boss his cell phone and his boss told him he was going to be OK. "It didnt have to escalate to this,'' Harris said. A businessman was on the top of the parking deck when the shooting happened. He said he heard multiple shots, and then called 911. The Birmingham Police Departments K9 Unit was brought to the scene to try to track down the suspect. The cleared the area, but South Precinct Capt. Ron Sellers said they have good identity on the suspect. "The suspect knows who he is. He knows he shot someone. Its best you come froward and tell your story,'' Sellers said. A nearby school - Saint Rose Academy - was briefly put on lockdown while police searched for the suspect. Doug Jones is not worried about tamping down his political affiliation during his re-election campaign, the Alabama senator said Wednesday during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Colbert pointed out that Jones, who was the first Democrat in 25 years to win a Senate seat in Alabama during the 2017 special election, is just one of two Democrats running for re-election in 2020 in states carried by President Trump in 2016. When the late night talk show host asked Jones whether he felt any pressure to tamp down his Democratic bona fides," Jones said he would be authentic during the campaign, pointing out that he gets criticized on both sides of the aisle. I think theres always a pressure that way, but I dont succumb to that pressure . I get hit from the right, I get hit from the left. People ask me if Im a moderate, if Im a progressive, if Im a conservative, Democrat, whatever, he said. I just say Im a Doug Democrat because Im going to do what I do, and Im going to do it with the same authenticity I did during the [2017] campaign. Asked by Colbert where he would place himself on the political spectrum, Jones said, Im as close to in the middle as you can possibly get -- thats just where we are I think as a party in the South. Im extremely, I call it the radical middle. While Jones conceded that Alabama Republicans are licking their chops at the chance of facing off against him in 2020, Alabamas junior senator said hes not concerned with who his GOP challenger may be, including Jeff Sessions, his predecessor and former U.S. attorney general who resigned from the Trump administration while facing Trumps wrath. Jones suggested that if Sessions were to run, he would have a difficult time in the Republican primary. The senator hinted that the presidents angry tweets on Sessions would make an appearance during the race to remind GOP voters of how unpopular the ex-attorney general was with the president. A lot of those tweets that were about Jeff would probably be seen on billboards around the state of Alabama during the campaign, Sessions said. Somebody might make that happen. The senator was on the late night show to plug his book, Bending Toward Justice, about the successful prosecution of the last living 16th Street Baptist Church bombers. I believe this story needs to be told, but I also think its really relevant today because were still battling civil rights battles, Jones said. Its not just black and white anymore. It involves religion, it involves, race, it involves gender, you name it. And we got to stand up. He drew parallels between Alabama leaders whom Jones said enabled violence during the Civil Rights Era to Trump emboldening white supremacists, including the gunman who opened fire in two mosques in New Zealand last week. Part of this story is that the Klan felt empowered because politicians like George Wallace and Bull Connor gave them that power. They gave them the green light to do things. Wallace or Connor did not condone that violence, but they gave them what could be called like a dog whistle-type signal to say its O.K.and you can get away with it. And we are still seeing that, Jones said. We are seeing such hate in this country now, and it seems like were exporting it across the globe. Instead of staying silent, Trump should use his stature to lead the country away from hate, Jones said. Theres a part of his base thats very active and very engaged with him but he needs to do more, the senator said. "The flip side of that is the president has such a following .. .He could really lead us into a better place and thats what he needs to do and not worry about those jacklegs that are spewing this hate and this white supremacy. Lead us into a better place in this country. Hes got that opportunity if he would take it. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam As Ho Chi Minh Citys French colonial architecture recedes into the background and the number of shiny skyscrapers grows in the Southeast Asian megacity there is one man who might be the last vestige of Vietnams colonial past. Duong Van Ngo is the only remaining public writer and still pens letters from the grand 19th century Saigon Central Post Office in this city of 13 million people, built when Vietnam was still a part of French Indochina. Saigon was the capital of South Vietnam before the war but the named changed to Ho Chi Minh City after North Vietnam overtook the city in 1975. Many Vietnamese, especially in the south and foreigners still refer to the city as Saigon. Duong Van Ngo held various jobs at the post office before becoming a letter writer. I began to work for the post office when I was only 16, in 1946, the 89-year-old told Al Jazeera. Every morning, he tapes a piece of paper with the words Public Writer in French, Vietnamese and English on a panel near his wooden table, completing his makeshift office at the Saigon Central Post Office. A large painting of Ho Chi Minh hangs on a nearby wall. The Saigon Central Post Office remains one of the most famous landmarks in Ho Chi Minh City and a symbol of French colonial architecture in the city [Valerie Plesch/Al Jazeera] Ngo has written letters for hundreds of people in Vietnamese, English and French in the past 28 years. There were three other public writers when he joined, but they have since all passed away. He learned French when he was seven years old, which was normal growing up under French colonial rule. English came later, when he was 36 and taught by American instructors. As he approaches 90, he still travels to work every day on his bicycle. Going to work, I feel more joyous than to stay at home, Ngo said. I still can serve the public, serve the society. But he realises that his profession as a translator and letter writer is becoming redundant given the internet. There are many places to make translations but they do not work directly [with people]. Here, I work directly with the people. The interior of the Saigon Central Post Office. The building was completed in 1891 when Vietnam was part of French Indochina [Valerie Plesch/Al Jazeera] At 8am every morning, he unpacks his black leather bag, placing a magnifying glass and weathered copies of English-Vietnamese dictionaries on his table. Inside the dictionaries, he has scribbled notes marking his own expressions and meanings next to the words. He also sells postcards to visitors who want him to write something on the spot for 5,000 dong (around 22 cents). He doesnt charge for his writing, though most customers give him a generous tip. Most of his visitors are tourists. But a few people who have known him for 40 years still come to see him at work, such as 60-year-old Mai Dang Guesdon. Chao Chu, she says, the polite way to address an older man in Vietnamese that is akin to uncle. Guesdon was on holiday from France, where she has made her home. Duong Van Ngo writes a postcard for a tourist at the Saigon Central Post Office [Valerie Plesch/Al Jazeera] She used Ngos services in the 1990s to write love letters to her French boyfriend, who she had met in Vietnam while working as a tour guide . She didnt speak any French and relied on Ngo to communicate with her now-husband. She still keeps the letters written at her home in France. It was him who translated for me for many years, she said. He works with all his heart He likes to work; he likes words and letters He loves French words. When asked about writing love letters, Ngo laughed and said: I only translate them. I do not write them myself. During the day, curious tourists come to chat to Ngo. Some ask him to write letters or postcards for friends and family back in their home countries. Kim Liong, 40, from Malaysia, said: Its like back to the 60s, the olden days. That is how I feel and I love it. If you look at the handwriting, its beautiful. You can see that he trained a lot. Duong Van Ngo prepares his writing desk early in the morning inside the Saigon Central Post Office [Valerie Plesch/Al Jazeera] Chi Pham, 32, is a tour guide and brings visitors to meet Ngo. Every time I take people to the post office, I always try to find him. Hes 89 years old already, and I dont know how many more times we can see him, she said. As a tour guide, I talk to the people about the city. If theres something I dont know, I can ask him, he will explain to me. Under Vietnams economic and political reforms under Doi Moi in the mid-1980s, Ho Chi Minh City went through a major facelift as foreign investment poured into the city. Hes like a witness of Saigon, the one who got the French education during the French era and then before 1975, the democratic time in Saigon or in South Vietnam, said Pham. And now, he still appears here in the modern post office. He is the one from the past who still exists here, so its very special. When asked how much longer he plans on working at the post office office, Ngo said: I do not know. That depends on God. Millions of Hindus across India and other South Asian countries are celebrating Holi the festival of colours to mark the arrival of spring. Celebrants daub themselves in brightly coloured powder, or gulal, to celebrate the victory of good over evil, fertility and love. The festival, observed for centuries, holds mythological importance. It is also associated with the eternal love of Lord Krishna and Radha. People from all classes and age groups come together during the festival to play with colours, dance and sing, and distribute sweets. In Australia, support grows for Muslim communities after New Zealand shooting. Australians are still struggling to understand what happened in neighbouring New Zealand. People are coming together to offer support for those grieving in Christchurch. Al Jazeeras Rob McBride reports from one such community in Sydney. Dispute flared over Erdogans comments after last Fridays NZ gun rampage that killed 50 people in two mosques. A diplomatic spat between Turkey and Australia over the mosque mass shootings in New Zealand appeared to ease on Thursday after controversial comments by the Turkish leader were said to be taken out of context. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said tensions between his country and Turkey had ebbed after President Recep Tayyip Erdogans office addressed his statements surrounding the deadly attack. The dispute flared over Erdogans comments in the wake of last Fridays gun massacre, in which 50 people were killed at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. An Australian white supremacist has been charged with murder. Speaking while campaigning for local elections, Erdogan warned Australians and New Zealanders going to Turkey with anti-Muslim views would return home in coffins, like their ancestors who fought at Gallipoli in World War I. The 1915 Gallipoli campaign, marked by heavy casualties on both sides, was a disastrous defeat for the allies against the-then Ottoman Empire. Although the battle later helped cement friendship among the three countries, it remains a highly sensitive subject in Australia and New Zealand. Morrison slammed the comments as highly offensive, and on Wednesday summoned the Turkish Ambassador to Australia, Korhan Karakoc, to explain the remarks. Australia also placed under review its travel advisory for its citizens visiting Turkey, which was already set at exercise a high degree of caution because of the threat of terrorism. But on Thursday, Morrison said progress had been made on mending bilateral ties after a spokesman for Erdogan said the presidents words were taken out of context. Responding to the terrorist Fahrettin Altun, director of communications for the Turkish presidency, said Erdogan was in fact responding to the manifesto posted online by the man arrested in the mosque attacks. Altun also said Erdogan had made his remarks in a historical context relating to attacks past and present against Turkey, a move partly inspired, he said, by the fact the president was speaking near commemorative sites near the Gallipoli battlefields. Within the context of what I explained below, here is the translation of what @RT_Erdogan actually said: pic.twitter.com/rlQXqgUlOD Fahrettin Altun (@fahrettinaltun) March 20, 2019 President Erdogans words were unfortunately taken out of context, Altun said on Twitter. He was responding to the so-called manifesto of the terrorist who killed 50 innocent Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand. Turks have always been the most welcoming & gracious hosts to their Anzac [Australia and New Zealand] visitors. The terrorists manifesto not only targeted Erdogan himself but also the Turkish people and the Turkish state. As he was giving the speech at the Canakkale [Gallipoli] commemoration, he framed his remarks in a historical context of attacks against Turkey, past and present. Morrison on Thursday welcomed what he called a moderation of Erdogans views, which followed a series of high-level bilateral diplomatic communications on the matter. Overnight, progress has been made on this issue and overnight weve already seen a moderation of the presidents views, Morrison told reporters in Melbourne. Its my intention to break any cycle of recklessness, to work through these issues practically, to register in the strongest and clearest of terms the offence that was taken I believe rightly by those comments yesterday, but now to work constructively, he added. Australia and Turkey, the peoples of both countries, have a tremendous relationship, built up over generations. Thursdays developments came as New Zealand Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters were en route to Turkey to meet Erdogan and seek clarification over his comments. In campaign mode Erdogan has also sparked outrage abroad by showing video excerpts at his campaign rallies of the footage broadcast by the Christchurch gunman, to denounce what he has called rising hatred and prejudice against Islam. Three Turkish citizens were among the dozens wounded in the attack. 190319104526942 The Turkish leader who is in full campaign mode before local elections wrote a column in the Washington Post on Tuesday accusing Western countries of meeting Islamophobia with silence. Erdogan also praised New Zealand Prime Ministers Jacinda Arderns courage, leadership and sincerity in handling the crisis. The gunmans manifesto mentions Turkey and the minarets of Istanbuls famed Hagia Sophia, now a museum, that was once a church before becoming a mosque during the Ottoman Empire. The attacks came on Nowruz, a Persian festival to mark the start of spring celebrated in many parts of Afghanistan. At least six people were killed by blasts in a Shia part of Afghanistans capital during Persian New Year celebrations, officials said. Twenty-three were wounded and six people were martyred (killed) in todays explosions in Kabul, Ministry of Public Health Spokesman Wahidullah Mayar told AFP news agency, with the interior ministry confirming the toll. The Taliban denied responsibility for Thursdays attack, which police said had been caused by three remote-controlled explosives one placed in the washroom of a mosque, one behind a hospital, and one in an electricity meter. 190313155343638 The blasts were near Kabul University and the Shia Karte Sakhi shrine, where many Afghans gather every year to mark Nowruz, which is the traditional Persian New Year holiday. As we celebrate this auspicious day to bind us together our fellow citizens witnessed another devastating day in #Kabul, President Ashraf Ghani wrote on Twitter. We lost peaceful citizens to a coward enemy that knows no bounds. Kabul police spokesman Basir Mujahid said a fourth explosive was defused near Kabul University, and that authorities were searching for any others that may have been placed in the area. But he added that the explosives were far from the main site of the celebrations. Exactly one year ago, a blast near a crowd celebrating at the shrine killed 33 people in an attack claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) group. ISIL, which regularly targets Shia communities in Sunni-majority Afghanistan, has also attacked the shrine once before, in October 2016, when its gunmen killed 18 people gathered there to mark Ashoura, a particularly important period of mourning for Shia Muslims, as it marks the anniversary of the 7th century Battle of Karbala in present-day Iraq, when Imam Hussein, grandson of Prophet Muhammad, was killed. Michel Temer detained in Rio as part of the anti-corruption investigation known as Car Wash. Sao Paulo Brazils former President Michel Temer was arrested on Thursday as part of the sweeping anti-corruption investigation known as Car Wash, police said. According to the Federal Police office in Rio de Janeiro, authorities carried out 10 arrest warrants, including that of Michel Temer, as well as 26 additional search warrants on Thursday. Local media reported the former president was arrested in his house in Sao Paulo and flown to the Federal Police office in Rio. Temer, who was president from 2016 to 2018, was hit with corruption charges during his presidency regarding management contracts of several ports in Sao Paulo. Those charges were blocked by his allies in Congress. His arrest was imminent, however, after he left office because he was no longer afforded certain legal protections. Police said on Thursday that Temers arrest stems from new charges related to crimes of corruption, criminal organisations and money laundry in the management of a nuclear plant in Rio. Temer has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Im certain [Temers] lawyers will file a habeas corpus request so he can continue to answer to authorities in freedom, lawyer Luiz Felipe Panelli told Al Jazeera. 190207092441344 Panelli said the judge could have decided to keep Temer under house arrest or other forms of custody. This type of arrest only happens when theres immediate danger the suspect can flee or that he is still committing the crime, he added. Since launching in March 2014, the Car Wash investigation has led to the jailing of top businessmen and politicians, including ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. 181023095033241 An arrest warrant for Moreira Franco, the former minister for mines and energy, was also issued on Thursday. Francos lawyer told Al Jazeera the warrant was unnecessary because the former minister has told authorities of his whereabouts, and has said, He is available [to help] the ongoing investigations, has provided testimonials and has defended himself in writing when necessary. Local media reported that Temers party, Brazilian Democratic Movement, said in a statement that it regrets the Justice [system] is moving forward with an inquiry in which it has been demonstrated there are no irregularities by the former president and former minister. MDB did not immediately respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment. Four mosques in Birmingham vandalised Dawn.com : A man with a sledgehammer allegedly vandalised at least four mosques in Birmingham early on Thursday morning, BBC reported. Police said they had received reports of a man "smashing windows with the tool" on Birchfield Road at 2:30am, according to BBC. Approximately 45 minutes after the first report, police officers were informed of a similar incident taking place on Slade Road, Erdington. West Midlands Police said the incidents were being linked to attacks on mosques in Birmingham's Aston and Perry Bar areas, the report said. The Birmingham Council of Mosques said that at least five mosques had been damaged. "We were deeply horrified to hear a number of mosques were vandalised during the early hours of this morning. Birmingham's mosques are a place of worship, serenity and a source of peace and tranquillity. We are appalled by such acts of hate/terror," the council's statement quoted by BBC said. Police have yet to ascertain the motive of the suspect. The Counter-Terrorism Unit is investigating the incident. Home Secretary Sajid Javid said it was "deeply concerning and distressing to see a number of mosques have been vandalised in Birmingham overnight". Police are investigating the motive behind the attacks, he stated. "Let me be clear, hateful behaviour has absolutely no place in our society and will never be accepted." Labour Councillor for Bromford and Hodge Hill Majid Mahmood said that the Witton Road Islamic Centre in Aston had been attacked overnight. The attacker used a sledgehammer to smash its windows, he added. "I said last week that Muslims were afraid after the terrorist attacks in Christchurch," he said. "We need support in Brum." BBC cited a spokesperson for the Islamic centre saying that CCTV footage showed a man vandalising the building at around 1:30am, "The whole of the front windows, about six, were smashed," he said, adding: "Because of the force he used it's gone through the windows and into the mosque itself." Additionally, Chief Constable Dave Thompson said police have not determined the motive behind last night's incidents. "What I can say is that the force and the Counter-Terrorism Unit are working side by side to find whoever is responsible," Thompson said. "Since the tragic events in Christchurch, New Zealand, officers and staff from West Midlands Police have been working closely with our faith partners across the region to offer reassurance and support at mosques, churches and places of prayer," he said. The attacks on mosques in Birmingham come nearly a week after a suspected white supremacist armed with semi-automatic weapons rampaged through two mosques in the quiet New Zealand city of Christchurch during afternoon prayers on Friday killing 50 worshippers. The head of the President Abdelaziz Bouteflikas own National Liberation Front has said that the party now supports the popular movement in Algeria. The head of the President Abdelaziz Bouteflikas own National Liberation Front has said that the party now supports the popular movement in Algeria. The 82-year-old leader had bowed to demonstrators last week by reversing a decision to stand for a fifth term, but he postponed polls due in April until the implementation of political reforms. More than a dozen of Algerias most influential trade unions have turned down an invitation by the newly appointed prime minister to hold talks aimed at forming a new government and ending a crisis. Many protesters ironically noted that they had asked for elections without Bouteflika, but had been offered Bouteflika, but not elections. Al Jazeeras Mohammed Jamjoom reports. President convalescing in Morocco will return this weekend for third time since suffering a stroke five months ago. Gabonese President Ali Bongo, who is convalescing in Morocco after suffering a stroke five months ago, will return home this weekend for the third time since he fell ill, his office has said. Bongo will leave Morocco to return to Gabon on Saturday March 23, presidential spokesman Ike Ngouoni said in a statement on Thursday. [He] is delighted to return to his fellow countrymen and wishes to give his warmest thanks to the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, for his excellent welcome and incomparable support throughout his stay. Bongo, 60, was taken ill on October 24 while visiting Saudi Arabia. He has returned to Gabon only twice since then, staying less than 48 hours each time, although the government has insisted that he is in good shape. In late February, Bongo led a cabinet meeting during which a raft of appointments was announced and several close aides were dismissed, although no media were on hand for the event. His prolonged absence has stoked concern about a vacuum of power, apparently sparking a brief attempted coup by renegade soldiers on January 7. It has also sparked rumours that he has a body double for public appearances a scenario that the presidents office vigorously dismissed on March 7. Bongo took office after an election in 2009 that followed the death of his father, former president Omar Bongo, who took office in 1967. The Mississippi law bans most abortions once a foetal heartbeat can be detected, about six weeks into pregnancy. The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights has pledged to sue over a new law introducing the strictest abortion laws in the United States. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant on Thursday signed the law, which bans most abortions once a foetal heartbeat can be detected, about six weeks into pregnancy. The centre called the new measure cruel and clearly unconstitutional and said it would sue Mississippi to try to block the law from taking effect on July 1. Bryants action came despite a federal judges decision last year striking down a less-restrictive law limiting abortions in the state. After a bill signing ceremony at the state Capitol, Bryant told reporters that he was not worried about lawsuits. They dont have to sue us. Its up to them, Bryant said. If they do not believe in the sanctity of life, these that are in organisations like Planned Parenthood, we will have to fight that fight. But it is worth it, he added. Mississippi is one of several states that have considered bills this year to ban abortions once a foetal heartbeat is found. Abortion opponents are emboldened by new conservatives on the Supreme Court and are seeking cases to challenge the courts 1973 ruling that legalised abortion nationwide. {articleGUID} A federal judge in 2018 struck down a Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, saying it was unconstitutional. Lawmakers didnt get the message, Hillary Schneller, staff lawyer for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement on Thursday. They are determined to rob Mississippians of the right to abortion, and they are doing it at the expense of womens health and taxpayer money. This ban just like the 15-week ban the governor signed a year ago is cruel and clearly unconstitutional, she added. Heartbeat law The law that Bryant signed on Thursday says a physician who performs an abortion after a foetal heartbeat is detected could face revocation of his or her Mississippi medical licence. It also says abortions could be allowed after a foetal heartbeat is found if a pregnancy endangers a womans life or one of her major bodily functions. {articleGUID} The House of Representatives and Senate both rejected efforts to allow exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. Georgia and Tennessee are among the states considering similar bills. Kentuckys law banning abortion after the detection of a heartbeat was immediately challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union when Republican Governor Matt Bevin signed it on March 14, and a federal judge temporarily blocked it. A federal judge on Wednesday also blocked another Kentucky law that would ban abortion for women seeking to end their pregnancies because of the gender, race or disability of the foetus. Ahmad Manasras death marks the fourth Palestinian killed by the Israeli army in 24 hours in the occupied West Bank. A Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli gunfire in the occupied West Bank, marking the fourth Palestinian killed in 24 hours. The Palestinian Red Crescent said one of its crew treated a man with two bullet wounds at an Israeli military checkpoint near the city of Bethlehem on Wednesday and that Israeli forces had shot him. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man as 26-year-old Ahmad Manasra from the village of Wadi Fuqin near Bethlehem. Manasra, the ministry said, was shot in the chest, shoulder and hand by the al-Nashash checkpoint at the southern entrance of al-Khader village. Another Palestinian had also been shot and critically wounded. According to eyewitnesses, Israeli forces stationed at the checkpoint fired live bullets at a Palestinian mans car, who was with his wife and children. The man, identified as Alaa Ghayatha from the village of Nahalin, was shot in the abdomen. Manasra, who was driving the vehicle directly behind Ghayatha, got out of his car to help Ghayatha who was admitted to the al-Yamama Hospital in critical condition. As Manasra returned to his car, Israeli soldiers shot at him directly. Kamel Hamid, the governor of Bethlehem, later told Palestinian local news that what happened was a direct execution of a young man, and called on the international community to intervene to put an end to the Israeli occupation. Israeli army reviewing incident Hours later, the Israeli military issued a statement saying a soldier stationed at a post near Bethlehem had identified rocks being thrown at Israeli vehicles [and] in response, he fired his weapon. The statement did not identify the soldiers intended target and some Israeli media reports said warning shots were fired in the air. A report was received regarding injured Palestinians, the military said. Details regarding the incident are being reviewed and the incident will be examined. Manasras death marks the fourth Palestinian killed in 24 hours in the occupied West Bank. On Tuesday night, Israeli forces killed the alleged assailant who had killed an Israeli soldier and a rabbi in a stabbing and shooting attack on Sunday. Omar Abu Leila, 19, was killed near the West Bank city of Ramallah after he opened fire at troops who had come to arrest him, Israels Shin Bet security service said. In a separate incident on Tuesday, two other Palestinians, Raed Hamdan, 21 and Zaid Nouri, 20 were killed by Israeli forces as they were driving their car near the West Bank city of Nablus. More than 70 people die as the vessel packed with families celebrating Nowruz capsizes in Tigris River. Dozens of people have died after a ferry carrying about 200 people celebrating the Nowruz holiday capsized in the Tigris River near the Iraqi city of Mosul. Many of the dead were women and children who could be seen struggling to swim against a strong current, their heads bobbing in the water opposite restaurants and an amusement park where people had been celebrating minutes earlier. In a visit to the site of the accident on Thursday, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi ordered an inquiry and said those responsible would be held accountable. Major-General Saad Maan, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said at least 71 people were killed in the accident. The AP news agency cited an Iraqi health official as putting the number of fatalities at 83. At least 55 people, including 19 children, were rescued, officials said. I was standing near the river bank when suddenly the ferry started to tilt left and right, and passengers began screaming before it capsized, Mohamed Masoud, a local civil servant, told Reuters news agency. I saw women and children waving with their hands begging for help but no one was there to rescue them. I dont know how to swim. I couldnt help. I feel guilty. I watched people drown. The boat had been ferrying people to a small island nearby. Al Jazeeras Natasha Ghoneim, reporting from the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, said footage posted on social media showed a very distressing picture at what appeared to be a theme park. We are seeing the video of what appears to be a ferry upside down people jumping into the Tigris River in an attempt to rescue others. We can hear people along the banks screaming and we can see several people swimming furiously in what appears to be a rather swift current. Hussam Khalil, head of the civil defence in the northern Nineveh province, told AP the vessel had sunk due to a technical problem. Nowruz, which marks the Kurdish new year and the arrival of spring, is celebrated across territories that once made up the ancient Persian empire, stretching from the Middle East to Central Asia. The holiday is celebrated as the Persian New Year in Iran. The usually tame Tigris is running high this time of year, fed by snowmelt from mountains in Turkey. The river swelled further after a rainy season that brought more precipitation than in previous years. Agnes Taylor, the ex-wife of former President Charles Taylor, denies string of torture offences, which date back to 1989-1991. Liberias former first lady is set to appear in court in Britain accused of a string of torture offences and human rights violations. Agnes Taylor, the ex-wife of former President Charles Taylor, has denied all the charges, which date back to Liberias civil war almost 20 years ago. In 2012, her former husband was sentenced by The Hague to 50 years in prison for aiding rebels who committed atrocities in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Al Jazeeras Catherine Stancl has the latest. Al Jazeera spoke to journalist Bette Dam, whose book says Mullah Omar was in Afghanistan until his death, not Pakistan. A new book on the elusive former leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, revealed that the one-eyed rebel chief has not been hiding in Pakistan, as US officials and many in Afghanistan and beyond had said. Omar, instead, lived near a US base in Afghanistan for years, Bette Dam, author of the book, Op Zoek Naar De Vijand (Searching for an Enemy), wrote. The revelation has prompted a barrage of scrutiny from incredulous Afghan officials who denied that they had any part in a failure of intelligence gathering surrounding the whereabouts of the famous rebel leader. The Afghan president, via his spokesperson, strongly rejected the claim, saying there was sufficient evidence that Omar lived and died in Pakistan, but they did not share any of that. Dam spent five years interviewing sources close to Omar and other Taliban members to write the book, in which she states that Omar hid just 4.8km from a US military base in the Afghan province of Zabul. In 2015, the Taliban officially confirmed Omars death, saying he had been dead for more than two years. His eldest son, Mohammad Yaqoob, said that his father died in Afghanistan after suffering from hepatitis C. Dams revelations came at a time when US envoys are holding peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar in a bid to end the 17-year war in Afghanistan. Al Jazeera asked Bette Dam about her research methods, the US governments silence, and the rejection of the report by Afghan officials. Al Jazeera: What was your methodology for researching this book? Bette Dam: Since 2006, I have reported solely on Afghanistan, lived there, travelled around without the military, and invested in contacts. News about Taliban attacks and responses by the Afghan and US forces is always black and white, the Taliban being the bad side and the US and Afghan forces being the good. But as an unembedded journalist, I saw that reality was dirtier, murkier, and more complex than that. Dams revelations came at a time when US envoys are holding peace talks with the Taliban [Chantal Ariens/Al Jazeera] I started wondering about the Taliban when I wrote my first book on Hamid Karzai. They were utterly weak after they were toppled; leaders sat at home in the first years while foreign troops were doubled in Afghanistan. Especially in the early years, unrest was also created by the sitting government [of Hamid Karzai] who contained warlords who misled the US forces to kill their rivals in the framework of the war on terror and said the men who were killed were Taliban. Because the situation in the field was so different, I found it very important to write about the Taliban, simply because we needed a better picture of the enemy. I sometimes wonder why no other journalist has picked up this subject. Writing about the terrorist does not mean you are with them. Al Jazeera: How did you come across the story on Mullah Omar? Dam: During my research for my first book, on former President Hamid Karzai, I came across Mullah Omars house where he spent his youth, and thats where I slowly started. I wanted to get to know this mysterious man, so I could understand the post-9/11 situation better. The Taliban were giving interviews but refused to speak about his life after 9/11 until he was declared dead in 2015. Now, I understand why: They were hiding his death. 190315191933901 I found out a little bit more at a time. The fact that I am unarmed, female, and that I come back again and again made it possible for me to sit with the highest level of Taliban ranks. Some of my sources were also in contact with the CIA, who invited these Taliban to their camps. One businessman, who knows every Taliban member, was invited by the CIA, but when he arrived he was blindfolded, thrown in a car and interviewed in a dark room. I spoke at least 10 times to him, in his house in central Kandahar. He told me during the early stages of my research: Look at Zabul. I didnt believe him. I thought Mullah Omar was in Pakistan. Al Jazeera: When, during your research, did you find out that Mullah Omar was not in Pakistan but in Afghanistan? Dam: The US, the Afghan government and the Taliban portrayed Mullah Omar as a strong insurgency leader, but there was a staggering lack of evidence for that. The Taliban bragged about many cassettes, recordings, letters on Mullah Omar; but when I sat down with, for example, the Mullah Omars assistant, Mullah Yaqoub, in Dubai, there was nothing to share. I interviewed officials from The National Directorate of Security (NDS), and I found a similar situation: They pointed at Pakistan but didnt have much to back that up. They suggested sources to interview, but they came up empty, it didnt go anywhere. 190206095855091 Also, from reading internal US intelligence community documents, I found their knowledge was nothing more than what could be found on Wikipedia. The Americans didnt know Mullah Omar was dead for two years. Slowly, I came to the conclusion that there was not much on Mullah Omar that proved his political power. I was coming to the conclusion that Mullah Omar wasnt much involved in the insurgency any more. Another indication came from my research on him before 9/11. My book has many new insights, but one is that I found out that Mullah Omar was actually apprehensive of outside political intervention, and of Pakistan. He accepted Pakistans aid, and Pashtun fighters who crossed the border, but Islamabad did not direct him politically. In that sense, he was not Pakistans puppet. Looking at these outcomes, I thought: He could be in Afghanistan. After his death, many agreed that his grave was in Zabul. Jabbar Omari was on my list for years: Taliban but also NDS. Local journalists like Sami Yousoufzai agreed that Omari was with Mullah Omar as his bodyguard. Omari was from Zabul, as were Mullah Omar, his father and grandfather, from the same Hotak tribe. Al Jazeera: Sceptics in Kabul say that you interviewed people who have a biased narrative on the topic. Dam: I understand the sentiment. In Kabul, the narrative was strong: Mullah Omar was in Pakistan. And now, I oppose this; it creates emotional responses. I dont feel the urge to defend myself. My report is very transparent and I use the names of the sources. Institutions, the US government and Kabul, who claim Mullah Omar was in Pakistan, never shared anything credible, or something to cross-check. 190313103359463 We should have been asking the US and the Afghan government these questions as well over the last 18 years: Arent your sources biased? Show us proof. But we didnt. The story of Mullah Omar being in Zabul was not hidden any more after they declared his death in 2015. The driver, Samad Ostaz, and Mullah Omars bodyguard Omari were living for a while in Zabul and felt free to talk since their leader had died. The story was out there, it was just that no journalist was asking for it. I happened to know Omari he was put on my list a long time ago by my sources as the man who was with Mullah Omar till the end. I was able to ask for him. Since 2001, the NDS has also been very well aware of the role of Omari in Mullah Omars life. An article was published in Pashto that they had arrested Omari in 2015; it described him as the man who had always been with Mullah Omar. Also, it was the NDS that granted me access to Omari. I think that the NDS officials in Kabul also thought: Mullah Omar is old news, let her write a history book about the man. After the news came out, some former NDS officials are opposing the outcomes of what Omari said, simply because it doesnt fit in the narrative they have always communicated. Al Jazeera: One former NDS official is Amrullah Saleh. He says that he has enough evidence to prove that Mullah Omar was in Pakistan. Why did you not interview him for this research? Dam: I was looking for field officers, eyewitnesses, people who were not political, but who were in the field, directly responsible for the case. Zabul intelligence was informed of Mullah Omars whereabouts. I think its also important to see Salehs comments in the larger context of Kabuls distrust towards Islamabad, and vice versa. That is nothing new. Also, Pakistan does host 90 percent of the Taliban, so the Taliban is, in that sense, a Pakistan proxy; they are there on the other side of the border. But as I said in my book, not Mullah Omar. Al Jazeera: If Mullah Omar decided to stay in Afghanistan and that is where he died as well, why did the other Taliban not follow his footsteps? Dam: I think there are plenty of possibilities for Taliban members to hide in Pakistan, sometimes with the knowledge of Islamabad, sometimes not. Mullah Omar was advised by Omari to do the same: Lets have a better life in Pakistan, Omari had told him. Knowing Omari, he loves a more luxurious life. But Mullah Omar refused. He decided to live among his tribe, loyal men. He basically lived in the hamlet, in a small house his driver, Abdul Samad Ostaz, build for him. The area was very much pro-Taliban. The reason that the American base, FOB Wolverine, opened its doors shortly after Mullah Omar came to this district was first to build a better road in that area in the hope that the growing insurgency would be controlled. But they didnt manage, and the insurgency against them and the government grew. They were not looking for Mullah Omar, because they were busy surviving and, at the same time, interviews with soldiers from FOB Wolverine gave me the impression that they suffered from tunnel vision by maintaining that Mullah Omar was in Pakistan. Al Jazeera: Does the grave of Mullah Omar still exist? Dam: Until now, I have not been able to travel to the hamlet where Mullah Omar lived for eight years and eventually died. Its unfortunate, but thats what it is. There is only one road to the place, which means if I take it and walk around in the village, people who may want to do me harm know I would have to take that same road back. It was too risky, according to my Afghan colleagues. Thats why I didnt go. Local police commander Razeq told the Zabul authorities to find the grave because the Kandahar government wanted to make a shrine for Mullah Omar, because he was a good mujahed, as Razeq said. But Omari refused to share the details, and also the villagers are silent. They dont trust the government, and think they will demolish the grave, and throw the body in the streets. But I wouldnt be surprised to see pictures if the grave surface soon, now the story is out. Al Jazeera: Did the US respond to your research? Dam: I tried, but they refused to comment. The US government knew they didnt know much about Mullah Omar, but refused to change their style of communication, saying Mullah Omar was the main enemy. With that, they kept parts of the war going, which I find problematic. I would suggest that journalists keep on asking the questions during the coming press conferences in Washington, DC, let them explain. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Opposition prisoners to be released within 90 days in order to restart stalled peace talks, according to a mediator. Nicaraguas government has agreed to release opposition prisoners within 90 days in order to restart stalled peace talks aimed at ending an 11-month political crisis, according to a dialogue mediator. Luis Angel Rosadilla, the special envoy of the Organisation of American States (OAS), said at a press conference on Wednesday that President Daniel Ortegas government had agreed to release all the people detained in the context of the protests that began in April last year, leaving more than 700 people behind bars and 325 dead. The exact number of prisoners due to be released was not given. Rosadilla laid out six points, agreed by the government and opposition, which will be in the peace talks agenda. These include strengthening citizens rights and electoral reforms. Once all the points discussed at the negotiating table are agreed upon, the international community will be asked to suspend sanctions to facilitate Nicaraguas right to human, economic and social development, he said. The opposition umbrella group Civic Alliance said that they would contact the Red Cross on Thursday to put together a release schedule for the prisoners, newspaper La Prensa reported. Rosadilla (L) did not give the exact number of prisoners due to be released [Maynor Valenzuela/AFP] Government talks resumed with the opposition last month after a first attempt at agreement fell apart, but broke down again when the opposition made talks conditional on the release of political prisoners. Nicaraguas government has been hit by US sanctions and the threat of more from the European Union since trouble broke out last year. The country has been mired in political crisis since protests broke out initially over a now-scrapped pension reform before snowballing into wider anger at Ortegas rule. Alongside his wife and vice president Rosario Murillo, he is accused of rights abuses and authoritarian leadership. One of the key opposition demands was for Ortega to step down and bring forward elections slated for 2021, something the 73-year-old former left-wing guerrilla has rejected out of hand. Trump touts his achievements in creating manufacturing jobs, but the situation in the car industry is looking shaky. US President Donald Trump has been visiting the armys battle tank factory, in the city of Lima, Ohio. Trumps increases in defence spending have been good news for the plant. But steel tariffs and job cuts by automakers like General Motors are some of the challenges that make this official trip more like a campaign stop. Al Jazeeras John Hendren reports from Lima, Ohio. Mashal Khan, 23, was killed by a mob in a university campus in Mardan, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province two years ago. A Pakistani anti-terrorism court sentenced two men, including a local government official, to life in prison on Thursday for their role in the brutal campus lynching two years ago of a university student accused of blasphemy. Mashal Khan, 23, was attacked and killed by a mob on the campus of a university in Mardan, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, following a dormitory debate about religion. In February last year, the court convicted 31 people, sentencing one person to death, while acquitting 26 others. 181102195242761 A joint investigation team had later found the blasphemy allegations against Mashal Khan to be false. Outrage over the killing raised concerns about the misuse of Pakistans draconian blasphemy laws, which stipulate the death sentence for insulting Islam or the Prophet Muhammad. On Thursday the court sentenced two more men to life imprisonment, while acquitting two others. Arif Khan, a local government official who had been a member of Prime Minister Imran Khans ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, was convicted for provoking and participating in the lynch mob. The court ruling noted two videos in which Khan is seen torturing Mashal and congratulating his co-accused for committing the murder. Khans grave continues to be guarded by police, due to fears that it will be defaced by religious hardliners despite his name being cleared of blasphemy. 190128101320722 In a separate case in the eastern city of Bahawalpur, a college student was arrested and charged on Wednesday for stabbing his English professor to death. Police said the student was angered by a farewell party that the professor was organising, believing it was un-Islamic as women would attend. In a video of his pre-interrogation released on social media, the student confessed to stabbing his professor Khalid Hameed, saying he spoke against Islam and that its a good thing he died. He said he had not reported his professor to the authorities because the law protects blasphemers. Political divisions are deepening in Albania as the opposition steps up demonstrations against the Socialist government of Prime Minister Edi Rama, which it accuses of using drug money to control the country. The opposition Democratic Party left parliament last month and began a series of protests outside Ramas office. On Thursday, it is inaugurating a new practice of demonstrating outside Parliament every time there is a debate. The perception that Edi Ramas socialist government has embraced special interests, and especially the illegal drug trade, is widespread in Albania. Two interior ministers have resigned under suspicion of taking bribes from organised crime. Democratic Party leader Lulzim Basha believes the Socialists have used drug money to buy votes and party leaders and organised crime have effected state capture complete control of the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, which does not pursue high-profile corruption cases. Essentially ignored He is calling on Rama to step down and allow a transitional government to pave the way for an early general election in the autumn. 180526193520758 The opposition said it stopped working in the legislature because it was essentially ignored. Amendments we proposed were voted down without discussion. Whenever ministers were called to report before parliamentary commissions, they declined, Basha told Al Jazeera. He said investigative committees didnt work either because contrary to the law they (the Socialist Party) refused to submit evidence of investigations we initiated of collusion between organised crime and senior ministers. Basha has said the government rigged the 2017 election that re-elected Rama. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which helps monitor Albanian elections, said there had been signs of voter intimidation, double ballot-casting and fraud in the vote. But all parties accepted the result and the European Union did not question it. Why are they complaining about vote-rigging two years later, and just before local elections? said Socialist chief whip Taulant Balla and urged the opposition to return to Parliament. They need to resume their seats. In representative democracy, if you dont represent, you lose your authority. The political turmoil comes as the EU is to announce whether it will start membership talks with Albania in June. A key criterion is whether Ramas government will complete a judicial reform to root out corrupt judges and provide a balance to executive power. Transit country for hard drugs Even the European Commission, which supports opening talks now, makes this conditional on judicial reforms that will put more serious criminals in jail, especially those involved in the drug trade. Albania remains the main source of cannabis herb trafficked to the European Union, and, is also considered a transit country for hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine, the Commissions latest report said. While there is an increasing number of offenders being arrested for drug trafficking, the number of final convictions remains negligible, it said. If anything, crime figures suggest that the drug problem is worsening. Four years ago, more than half of serious crimes related to the production and cultivation of narcotics. That rose to two-thirds in 2016 and almost three quarters in 2017. Judicial reform was one of the campaign issues that propelled Rama to victory in 2013, but he did not seriously address it for several years. Balla said, in 2016, the Socialists ended a practice that allowed politicians to appoint judges who will investigate and imprison politicians. So, there is no control from Parliament or the government over the justice system, he said. A key part of the Socialists reform was checking judges wealth against earnings. At least 17 senior judges did not pass the test. Some resigned when they received their summons to the vetting committee. This has left Albania without a functioning Constitutional Court or a Supreme Court. Even though the Socialists vow to rectify this by June, some question whether the delay was deliberate, as it gave the government a year-long window of unchallenged rule. 170628084112840 During this time, it has issued executive orders without parliamentary or presidential approval. The most controversial of these placed 137 hectares of prime beachfront property under eminent domain, allowing the government to expropriate it for a fraction of its estimated $800m-$1.5bn value. The government says it is verifying the titles of hundreds of owners, mostly ethnic Greeks, who have come forth. Their legal challenges remain stuck in the semi-functional court system. But in the meantime, the government has started handing the land to contractors. Our main challenge remains the development of tourism, said Balla. Big companies, from Germany, from Italy cannot come to invest in Albania [if] they are not guaranteed property titles, he said. Basha said this is another example of the partisan economy. What we have is a government that is plotting on a daily basis to take away private and public property and give it to a handful of oligarchs which are, effectively, predatory cronies of the government. High unemployment In June, the Socialists also face a test of their popularity in local elections. They are plowing public money into large infrastructure works including roads, schools and hospitals. But there are signs that these are failing to impress people who cannot find a job. Official unemployment stands at 13 percent despite four-percent growth on paper. Per capita earnings, at under $5,000 a year, stand at 29 percent of the EU average. Albanians who went abroad send $1.25bn home in remittances 10 percent of GDP and many more are trying to leave, legally or illegally, rather than remain in a job market they consider politically slanted. Factional capture of the economy is not unique to Albania. If anything, it is the Balkan norm, ensuring that at any given moment, at least half of society suffers from discrimination by the state and by private interests under state pressure. But the Socialist Party may have breached the tacit understanding that it will not entirely disenfranchise the opposition economically and politically. All parties support EU membership, but they are divided on Albanias chances of success. We know the EU will not open negotiations with a country that many European media call the Colombia of Europe,' says Basha. Socialist Taulant Balla takes the optimistic view. As things are now, it is almost sure that with the continuation of these reforms we will get another positive report from the Commission. Sudan has summoned Egypts ambassador to Khartoum to protest Cairos illegal call for oil and gas exploration bids in the Red Sea area of Halayeb, claimed by both countries. In a statement on Thursday, Sudans foreign ministry said it summoned Hossam Eissa over tenders invited by the Egyptian oil ministry for areas under the sovereignty of Sudan. Sudan is asking Egypt to stop all procedures concerning the tenders given the situation about the Halayeb triangle. It also warned oil and gas exploration companies against submitting any bids. Egypts South Valley Egyptian Petroleum Holding Co has offered 10 oil and gas exploration blocks in the Red Sea for sale through a tender on March 10, with bids due to close on August 1. The Halayeb triangle, which is controlled by Egypt, has been claimed by Sudan since the 1950s. Cairo says it is Egyptian territory and it has long been a source of contention between the two neighbours. Badreddin Abdullah, undersecretary at the Sudanese foreign ministry, expressed Khartoums protest at the offer and called on Egypt not to proceed in this direction that contradicts the legal status of the Halayeb triangle, the ministry said in a statement. On Wednesday, Saad al-Deen Hussein al-Bishri, minister of state at Khartoums Oil Ministry, said the move was a direct intrusion onto his ministrys authority to grant exploration licenses in the area. Relations between Cairo and Khartoum had turned sour in early 2017, when Sudans President Omar al-Bashir accused Egypt of supporting rebels in conflict zones, including Darfur in western Sudan. Sudan in May 2017 banned the import of animal and other agricultural products from its northern neighbour. But in October, it lifted the ban as ties improved following talks in Khartoum between Bashir and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Egypt has this year repeatedly called for stability in Sudan after protests erupted on December 19 against Bashirs three-decade rule. Demonstrations and deadly clashes erupted after a government decision to triple the price of bread. Bashir has remained defiant, imposing a nationwide state of emergency on February 22. How millions of young first-time voters could make a difference in Thailands election. Almost 52 million eligible voters in Thailand head to the polls on Sunday for the countrys much-delayed general election. Millions of young people will be voting for the first time since the last election eight years ago. Many of them say a desire for change has made them politically active, something a new party is hoping to capitalise on. Al Jazeeras Scott Heidler reports from Bangkok, Thailand. Trump makes announcement about the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Twitter as Mike Pompeo visits Jerusalem. US President Donald Trump said on Thursday it was time to back Israeli sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, an announcement that signals a shift in US policy and comes before the Israeli prime ministers planned visit next week to the White House. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Trump tweeted, without providing any other details. His tweet came as US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Jerusalem. When asked about Trumps tweet, Pompeo declined to comment. Israel seized much of the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War and then effectively annexed it in 1981, a move that was never recognised by the international community. Minutes after Trump made the announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted his appreciation. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! He added that Trump made history with his announcement. In addition to its policies towards the Palestinians, the United States has taken a hard line on Iran, much to Netanyahus delight. You could imagine what would have happened if Israel were not in the Golan, the Israeli prime minister said. You would have Iran on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Richard Haass, a former senior State Department official who is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a tweet he strongly disagreed with Trumps Golan decision. He said the move violates UN Security Council resolution 242, which rules out acquiring territory by war and serves Israel as it says all states have right 2 live in peace. Pompeo visit During his visit, Pompeo lauded warm ties with Israel and promised to step up pressure on Iran. Pompeos words gave a public boost to the Israeli leader at the height of a tight re-election campaign. Although previous secretaries of state have traditionally met Palestinian leaders when visiting the region, Pompeo has no such talks planned. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Pompeos visit added additional obstacles to peace hopes. While they are claiming to be trying to solve the conflict, such acts only make it more difficult to resolve, he said. Earlier this month, a senior US administration official told reporters in Washington that there was no change in [US] outlook or our policy vis-a-vis these territories and the need for a negotiated settlement there. {articleGUID} The official was responding to questions about why the US changed its description of the Golan Heights in its latest annual human rights report in which the area was referred to as Israeli-controlled, not Israeli-occupied as it was previously stated. Trump, who has shown robust support for his countrys close ally Israel, recognised Jerusalem as the countrys capital in 2017, defying international consensus and angering Palestinian leaders, who view Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Last month, US Senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Congressman Mike Gallagher introduced legislation in the House of Representatives and the Senate to recognise Israels sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights. The meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to be held in Istanbul in the wake of Christchurch massacre. Turkey has called an emergency meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to discuss the New Zealand mosque attacks and increasing violence based on Islamophobia. The countrys foreign ministry said in a statement published on Thursday that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu would chair the meeting held in Istanbul on Friday. Turkey, as the OIC Summit Chair, has called upon holding an emergency meeting for discussing the increasing violence based on Islamophobia, racism and xenophobia, in particular the terrorist attack that targeted two mosques in New Zealand on 15 March 2019, the statement said. It also said that apart from the OIC members, the representatives of the United Nations, the European Union and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) were also invited to the meeting. On Wednesday, the Labour party in the United Kingdom has officially adopted the definition of Islamophobia, saying it was important to to build a common understanding of its causes and consequences, and express solidarity with Muslim communities. The definition states: Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness. Erdogans comments Turkeys announcement came a week after New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said last Wednesday that her foreign minister would travel to Turkey to confront comments made by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the Christchurch mosque shootings that killed 50 people. Erdogan, while campaigning for March 31 local elections, said on Tuesday that Turkey would make the suspected attacker pay if New Zealand did not. He presented the attack as part of an assault on Turkey and Islam and warned anti-Muslim Australians would be sent back in coffins like their grandfathers at Gallipoli a blood-drenched World War I battle. More than 8,000 Australians died fighting Turkish forces at Gallipoli, which has a prominent place in Australias collective memory. Erdogans comments included video footage of the shootings, which the alleged gunman had broadcast on Facebook. The Australian gunman, a self-avowed white supremacist from Australia, live-streamed much of the attack and spread a manifesto on social media claiming it was an attack against Muslim invaders. The manifesto referenced Turkey and the minarets of Istanbuls famed Hagia Sophia, now a museum, which was once a church before becoming a mosque during the Ottoman Empire. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday summoned the Turkish ambassador over Erdogans speech but dismissed the excuses offered. Remarks have been made by Turkish President Erdogan that I consider highly offensive to Australians and highly reckless in this very sensitive environment, Morrison said. In fiery remarks, Morrison accused Erdogan of betraying the promise of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk the father of the modern Turkish state and a revered figure in the country- to forge peace between the two countries. Three Turkish nationals were wounded in the attacks that killed 50 worshippers at two mosques in the southern New Zealand city on Friday. Four mosques in Birmingham, England were damaged overnight with a man seen smashing windows with a sledgehammer. Four mosques in the English city of Birmingham were damaged overnight, police said on Thursday, in the latest in a spate of Islamophobic attacks in Britain since the murder of 50 people by a white supremacist at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. West Midlands Police said detectives and counterterrorism officers are investigating after windows were smashed at four mosques in Birmingham. The force said in a statement the incidents are being treated as linked. Officers responded after reports in the early hours of Thursday of a man seen shattering windows with a sledgehammer at one mosque, the police said. 190316092902959 Neighbourhood officers are working closely with mosques around the West Midlands today, the force said. Since the tragic events in Christchurch, New Zealand, officers and staff from West Midlands Police have been working closely with our faith partners across the region to offer reassurance and support at mosques, churches and places of prayer, West Midlands Police Chief Constable Dave Thompson said in a statement. At the moment, we dont know the motive for last nights attacks, Thompson added. At difficult times like this, it is incredibly important that everyone unites against those who seek to create discord, uncertainty and fear in our communities, he said. Deeply horrified Forensics experts are working to identify evidence at the scenes of the four attacks, while CCTV is also being examined. Shabana Mahmood, a member of parliament for Birmingham, said the reported attacks were truly terrible. I would urge all residents to remain calm and call [the police] with any info you may have, Mahmood tweeted. A statement from the Birmingham Council of Mosques said: We were deeply horrified to hear a number of mosques were vandalised during the early hours of this morning. Birminghams mosques are a place of worship, serenity and a source of peace and tranquillity. We are appalled by such acts of hate/terror. In August last year, Birmingham mosques were attacked with catapults during evening prayers. Far-right extremism is growing The city, in the Midlands, is home to a large Muslim community. I think that all religious institutions do need access to a high security budget [from the government], in light of the fact that far-right extremists have been left for too long, Kamran Hussain, general manager at Birminghams Green Lane Mosque and Community Centre, told Al Jazeera. Far-right extremism is now in Eastern Europe, it is in America, and it has been left unchangelled in many aspects. We havent addressed it in the media or even at government level. Hussains mosque was not targeted, but is close to those that were, such as the Witton Islamic Centre. The risk from Islamophobia has been on the rise for many years now, said a Witton Islamic Centre spokesperson. This form of hate has fallen under the radar in many aspects, including some parts of the media and our intelligence and security services. The tragic events from last weeks attacks in Christchurch have caused great concern among the Muslim community. Saddique Hussain, trustee at the Central Jamia Mosque Ghamkol Sharif, said it was impossible to fully secure a mosque. Trying to secure a building of this nature and calibre is extremely difficult, and not possible to do, he said. A mosque needs to be an open place of worship. For example, we cant lock our doors when the prayers start because some people [are] late for prayers. To secure a place where the door is constantly open? You cant. Worshipper Ali, 26, said: People see what is going on in the world because of social media and they get annoyed. They kind of believe it and take it the wrong way. If I die in the mosque, I would be blessed. So, I think there should be no security and the doors should remain open. Additional reporting by Fadumo Abdulqadir in Birmingham: @fadumoabdul More than 200 million people in US are at risk for some kind of flooding in the coming weeks, forecasters say. The stage is set for unprecedented major flooding this spring for most of the nation, US weather officials said on Thursday. More than 200 million people in the United States are at risk of some kind of flooding, with 13 million of them at risk of major inundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its spring weather outlook. About 41 million people are at risk of moderate flooding. The major flooding now occurring in Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri and other Midwestern states is a preview of an all-too-wet and dangerous spring, said Mary Erickson, deputy director of the National Weather Service. In fact, we expect the flooding to get worse and more widespread, Erickson said. This years flooding could be worse than anything weve seen in recent years, even worse than the historic floods of 1993 and 2011, she said. Those floods caused billions of dollars in damage, and officials said this years damage in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota has already passed the billion-dollar mark. {articleGUID} Flooding from a storm last week has already caused nearly $1.5bn in damage in Nebraska alone and killed at least four people with another missing. Extensive road damage following flooding in north-central and northeastern Nebraska [Handout: State Patrol/Reuters] Forecasters said the biggest risks include all three Mississippi River basins, the Red River of the North, the Great Lakes, plus the basins of the eastern Missouri River, lower Ohio River, lower Cumberland River and the Tennessee River. This is the broadest expanse of area in the United States that weve projected with an elevated risk that I can remember, said Thomas Graziano, a 20-year weather service veteran and director of the Office of Water Prediction. Is this the perfect storm? I dont know. A lot depends on how much rain falls in the next couple of months, Graziano said, but forecasters say it will be more than average. The Missouri River has already set records with historic flood marks measured in 30 places in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota, Kansas City, forecaster Kevin Lao said. A flooded parcel of land along the Platte River is pictured in this aerial photograph at La Platte, south of Omaha, Nebraska [Drone Base/ Reuters] Flooding in the South Major flooding is already occurring this week on the Mississippi River near several Southern cities including Arkansas City, Arkansas; Natchez, Mississippi and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to river gauges and data from NOAA. The swollen river has been flooding some unprotected western Mississippi communities since last month. One Mississippi region protected by levees is also flooding. The smaller rivers there cannot drain into the Mississippi River as normal, because a floodgate that protects the region from even worse flooding by the big river has been closed since February 15. Residents around Rolling Fork, Mississippi, first noticed water rising from swamps in late February. The water eventually invaded some homes in that community, about 40 miles (65km) north of Vicksburg. Its too early for scientists to make the complex calculations to see if human-caused climate change played a role in the flooding. However, scientists said the conditions are consistent with what they expect from global warming. For almost a decade, women have been encouraging their parliament to pass a law that would criminalise domestic violence and they hope this year will be different. Domestic violence has been on the rise in Iraq, with womens groups blaming instability and the break down of law and order. However, there has been a growing awareness of the issue at the highest levels of government and the womens rights groups are hopeful that the legislature will finally pass a law criminalising what they see as a national crisis. The penal code currently has a provision allowing husbands to discipline their wives and does not criminalise domestic violence. Al Jazeeras Natasha Ghoneim reports from Baghdad. Weapons ban aims to prevent an act of terror from ever happening again in our country, prime minister says. Christchurch, New Zealand New Zealand has banned the sale of assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons after the countrys worst-ever attack that killed 50 Muslims in two mosques. Be assured this is just the beginning of the work well be doing, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told a news conference on Thursday. Its in the national interest and its about safety to prevent an act of terror from ever happening again in our country, she said of the ban. Ardern said she expects the new law to be in place by April 11 and buy-back schemes will be established for banned weapons. Now, six days after this attack, we are announcing a ban on all military-style semi-automatics (MSSA) and assault rifles in New Zealand, Ardern said. She said the gunman arrested in the attacks on two Christchurch mosques had purchased his weapons legally and enhanced their capacity by using 30-round magazines done easily through a simple online purchase. Related parts used to convert these guns into MSSAs are also being banned, along with all high-capacity magazines, she said. In short, every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country. Ardern said the interim measures announced on Thursday will stop a rush of purchases before legislation on the measures takes effect next month. She added there would be some limited exemptions for New Zealands farmers, many of whom require firearms for pest control and management of their livestock. White supremacist suspect Arderns move came six days after a gunman entered the Al Noor and Linwood mosques and killed 50 people in an indiscriminate shooting spree. Police confirmed on Thursday that all 50 victims of the Christchurch attacks had been identified by coroners, while funerals continued to take place as relatives collected their loved ones bodies from authorities. I can say that, as of a few minutes ago, the identification process and to all 50 victims has been completed and all of the next of kin have been advised, Police Commissioner Mike Bush said at a press conference in Wellington. That is a landmark for this process, he added. Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a white supremacist who was living in Dunedin, on New Zealands South Island, has been charged with murder following the mosque attacks on Friday. However, police said in a statement on Thursday that the person he was formally accused of killing had been wrongly declared dead, adding Tarrants charge sheet would be updated when he next appeared in court on April 5. Tarrant, who was remanded without a plea in his initial court appearance on Saturday, is expected to face more charges then. The scale of the attack he is suspected to have carried out has caused global revulsion, including for his use of social media to livestream the carnage in real-time. In a rambling manifesto, Tarrant said he was motivated partly by a desire to stoke religious conflict between Islam and the West by targetting invaders. Well-considered and overdue Analysts welcomed the prime ministers move on weapons legislation in response to the massacre, saying despite the nations outpouring of grief over the incident, thoughts and prayers dont make much difference but actions do. What we are seeing at the moment is not political populism, or politicians taking advantage of a terrible situation, its actually highlighting political inertia from the past, Jarrod Gilbert, a senior lecturer on crime and justice at the New Zealand-based University of Canterbury, told Al Jazeera. Ardern had previously cited Australias decision to change its gun laws 12 days after the countrys 1996 Port Arthur massacre, in which 35 people were killed, as a blueprint for amending New Zealands laws, saying we will do it in less. Previous governments failed to implement recommendations made by Justice Thomas Thorp in his government-backed 1997 review of gun control in New Zealand. Thorps review culminated in a call for all weapons to be individually registered to their owners, tighter vetting procedures for those seeking to buy weapons and a ban on military-style semi-automatics. This isnt kneejerk by any stretch, these measures have been well considered and overdue, Gilbert said. Nobody is saying that New Zealanders cant have a firearm New Zealand is a country that requires firearms, but no one needs a military-style semi-automatic weapon, he added, citing the example of farmers. We allow people to drive cars in New Zealand we dont allow people to drive tanks, thats the equivalence The time for these measures isnt now, its actually long passed. Following Arderns announcement, Police Commissioner Bush said there would be an amnesty to allow people to hand in now illegal weapons to police. For many people, you will now be in unlawful possession of your firearm, Bush said in a statement. New Zealand police directed people with questions about gun laws or the ban to their website. There is clear information on our website around what firearms are affected by the change and what to do if your firearm if affected https://t.co/9eLHzDdGIM New Zealand Police (@nzpolice) March 21, 2019 The countrys foremost hunting body, Fish and Game NZ, said on Wednesday it would support a ban and buy-back of military-style semi-automatic weapons and restrictions on high-capacity magazines. I feel much safer Outside a makeshift memorial for the victims of last weeks mosque attacks at the entrance to Christchurchs Botanic Gardens, passersby and mourners said they supported the governments move on Thursday. Father-of-two Teurai Chikura said it showed good, strong and decisive leadership. I cant see a place for semi-automatic weapons in everyday civilian society, Chikura told Al Jazeera. 190318125443038 Being in a minority group in New Zealand it [the ban] makes me feel much safer, there isnt the potential anymore for someone to just walk down the road with a military-style weapon that they could unleash on defenceless, unarmed civilians, he added. Anna Walker agreed that the ban was a positive move and suggested other countries with similar gun laws should now follow New Zealands lead. I firmly believe that guns dont kill people, people kill people, however I think that the ban is good because it takes the opportunity away for people who have that mind set, she said. [But] Its horrible that its come to this, that this [Fridays attack] is the reason theyve made this ban it wasnt done before and yes, it probably should have been done before. Asmar al-Bahr says he saw scores of bodies strewn across ISILs last encampment in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz and stockpiles of weapons. However, it was the suffocating smell of death that he worries he may never forget. Bahr is a photographer with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US-backed group fighting ISIL in Baghouz. He says he went to the village on Tuesday, hours after fierce fighting the night before. I talked to several Daesh fighters, he told Al Jazeera on the phone, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS). There were Russians, Swedish, Germans [and others], Bahr said on Thursday. Many of them told me that they never surrendered and will come back for the heads of the infidels; some of them said they regretted joining Daesh but just couldnt leave easily so they stayed. On February 9, the SDF began an operation to wipe out the remnants of ISIL from Baghouz in Deir Az Zor province, the groups final holdout on the Syria-Iraq border. Since then, ISIL has been said to be near to defeat at any moment, any day, any hour. The operation undertaken this week has pushed ISIL fighters to the tiniest part of the sliver of territory it has been holding on to, SDF says. Hiding in caves According to maps posted on Twitter by SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali, the remaining ISIL fighters and their family members are squeezed in a few hundred metres along a stretch of the Euphrates River. However, Bali urged caution against a premature declaration. SDF is in control of Daesh encampment area in Baghouz, he wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. This is not a victory announcement, but a significant progress in the fight against Daesh. Clashes are continuing as a group of ISIS terrorists who are confined into a tiny area still fight back. A day later, US President Donald Trump appeared ready to declare for the second time victory over ISIL the first being in December last year. Those left, he said on Wednesday, would be gone by tonight. Ahmad Sultan Abu Araj, deputy commander of Jaish al-Thwar, the Arab contingent with the Kurdish-dominated SDF, said on Thursday that Trumps comments came too early. The US president has said the same thing before and no liberation was announced, Abu Araj said. In the commanders estimation, there were still obstacles to cross and sometime before victory was announced. The declaration would be by the end of March or the beginning of April, if nothing unexpected happened, after we make sure that Daesh is completely over, Abu Araj said. Still Daesh fighters may be hiding in the caves at the Euphrates bank east of Baghouz and near the camp. Those caves might be linked to the desert of Iraq or Deir Az Zor via tunnels, we dont know. We are about 500-1,000 metres away from them. Remaining cautious Asmar, the photographer, argued that there will be no announcement for Baghouzs liberation before the full transfer of weapons and before SDF clears the area. There are lots of trucks in Baghouz to clear the dead bodies, he said. Since the operation began, at least 60,000 people, mostly women and children, have left Baghouz and are now in the al-Hol camp in Hasakah in northeastern Syria. Thousands of ISIL fighters have been detained in makeshift prisons by the SDF. Those remaining in Baghouz are believed to be die-hard ISIL fighters, along with family members unwilling to surrender. 190320140536453 The SDF has said its operation was slowed down to avoid harming women and children. According to interviews of SDF leaders previously reported on Al Jazeera, the delay has also been a result of negotiations between SDF and ISIL over the release of hostages Westerners, Kurds and Arabs. But they have largely seemed to fail. Ahmad Sultan Abu Araj, the SDFs Arab commander, said that there was no confirmed information about the hostages. We havent had any information about the hostages, but if they were still alive then they would be used to apply pressure in the future. We still dont know where they are. Maybe they are being held by ISIS leaders in the desert, or maybe they are dead, Abu Araj said. Richwood, TX (77531) Today Cloudy and windy with periods of rain ending for the afternoon. High 72F. Winds N at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.. Tonight Some clouds. Low 43F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. On World Refugee Day, Al Jazeera looks at the painful journeys refugees were forced on in 2020 despite global pandemic. Israel to release two prisoners one of whom was convicted of spying for Syria as part of a deal brokered by Russia. Don Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy and GOP candidate for West Virginias U.S. Senate seat last year, filed a massive defamation lawsuit against several mainstream media outlets this past Friday. In the lawsuit, Blankenship alleges that these news organizations (among them CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and even Breitbart) knowingly and willfully misreported him as a felon instead of a misdemeanant. Blankenship, a former CEO of Massey Energy, was acquitted on three felonies but convicted of a misdemeanor for conspiring to violate safety regulations, after a deadly 2010 mining disaster. Blankenship alleges that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who backed Blankenships primary challenger and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, was behind the coordinated effort to falsely smear him as a felon. Whatever one thinks of Blankenship, one cant deny the chilling effect his being wrongly libeled has one other candidates willing to take up President Trumps rallying-cry to drain the swamp. Blankenship cast himself as firmly anti-establishment and anti-McConnell, dubbing the longtime U.S. senator Cocaine Mitch, and even declaring himself Trumpier than Trump even after the president told West Virginians to reject the controversial candidate. He ran on a firmly populist platform which included many Trumpian policies, including eliminating [environmental] regulations every month until the economy is growing like Chinas, working to end the opioid epidemic, and building a wall along the U.S.s southern border. But swamp-bought media hitjobs such as the one perpetrated against Blankenship prevent anti-establishment candidates from taking office and discourage them from running. Can we say with certainty that now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh would have dared accept his nomination by President Trump had he known in advance the flurry of irresponsible reporting on unsubstantiated sexual misconduct allegations to come? And our concern shouldnt be limited just to these cases: consider the reckless endangerment of the very lives and careers of the Covington Catholic children by the mainstream media. Prominent celebrities with huge online followings called for the names, addresses, and deaths of these young boys, based on the easily-disproven narrative that they shouted abuse and even smirked at a defenseless Native-American elder and Vietnam War veteran. How can a white male Christian American feel safe attending political events in public -- in this case, the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. -- without worrying about the mainstream media completely distorting their actions and directing a violent mob their way, howling for their blood online and in real life? What Blankenship and the Covington Catholic boys respective sagas prove is that the mainstream media -- particularly legacy media such as the Washington Post and CNN -- hold an inordinate amount of power in our society: the power to decide what constitutes reality and what constitutes fantasy. We accordingly have few places to turn when the colossus that is the mainstream media decides to pass off fiction as fact, for by controlling the flow of information to the public, they also control the political narrative minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. The average American is always at the mercy of these once-trustworthy institutions, what some still archaically call the Fourth Estate of American society. The answer to such a flagrant abuse of power by these gatekeepers is obvious: the civil court system. In fact, Blankenship and the Covington Catholic boys are fulfilling President Trumps promise on the campaign trail back in 2016: to open up the libel laws, as he put it. Although the president has yet to change the libel laws themselves, Blankenship and the Covington Catholic boys -- one of whom, Nick Sandmann, has recently sued the Washington Post and CNN for defamation -- can achieve the same ends by working within the existing system. Because they were so egregiously and repeatedly libeled and slandered by the mainstream media, it would take no stretch of the imagination to convince a judge that a stiff, financially painful award of punitive damages are warranted in these instances. While these two lawsuits are unlikely to yield any legal precedent, they are likely to strike fear in the hearts of dishonest journalists and looking to sensationalize a story at the expense of the lives and wellbeing of conservatives. The only way to rein in the excesses of fake news media is to hit them where it hurts: their pocketbooks. Words do have consequences, and no constitutional guarantee of free speech should guarantee journalists and establishment politicians the right to ruin the lives and political aspirations of the people they hate. Mitch McConnell and company should be forced to play fair and fight their enemies with the truth rather than attempting to destroy their reputations on willful distortions of the facts. The only way to do this is to sue the mainstream media into compliance -- or oblivion. On March 13, California governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order granting a reprieve to all 737 convicted murderers awaiting execution in the Golden State. The death penalty, Newsom said, has discriminated against mentally ill defendants and people of color. The San Francisco Democrat also contended that the death penalty has not made the state safer and has wasted billions of dollars. Gov. Newsom also cited the possibility that an innocent person could be sentenced to death, and that gives Californians something to ponder. All 737 reprieved death-row inmates had been found guilty of murder by a jury of their peers, beyond any reasonable doubt. The convicted murderers had also exhausted all the possibilities of the appeal process, which in the California criminal justice system is quite extensive. Gavin Newsom is not an attorney and not a judge. The governor did not attend the trials and produced no new exculpatory evidence in any of the cases. Those awaiting execution include Richard Allen Davis, who kidnapped and killed twelve-year-old Polly Klaas, and Tool Box Killer Lawrence Bittaker, who raped and killed five teen girls in 1979 after torturing them with pliers and screwdrivers. Newsoms reprieve also included Luis Bracamontes, a previously deported Mexican national who in Sacramento in 2014 gunned down police officers Danny Oliver and Michael Davis. At his trial, Bracamontes used the N-word for witness Anthony Holmes, whom he shot during an attempted carjacking. Bracamontes also said he wished he had killed more of the m-fers, that is, police officers. The murderer also shouted black lives dont matterat African-American family members of the victims, including Danny Olivers wife Susan. The governor solved the problem by giving a reprieve to all 737 murderers, whose victims were far more numerous. Californians could be forgiven for believing that the governor cant sort out guilt and innocence, and doesnt give a rip about crime victims. His other reasons for the reprieve are also bogus. Criminal suspects are only arrested and tried in the proportion in which they commit crimes. Statistical disparities are the rule, not the exception, and the courts do not pursue cases based on racial or ethnic quotas. In 2016, Californians approved Proposition 66, which sped up the process for executions and rejected Proposition 62, which would have eliminated the death penalty. By ignoring both, Gov. Newsom elevates himself above the law, in the style of Jerry Browns Chief Justice Rose Bird. She heard 64 capital cases and never voted to uphold a death sentence. Bird overturned the death sentence of Theodore Frank, convicted of torturing, raping, and murdering two-year-old Amy Sue Seitz in 1978. Theodore Frank died in prison of a heart attack in 2001. Perhaps the states most prolific murderer, Juan Corona, passed away at 85 on March 4, outliving fellow Corcoran inmate Charles Manson. The previously deported Corona was twice convicted of murdering and mutilating 25 victims, possibly more, but he never received the death penalty. And the life sentences for the serial killer came with possibility of parole. According to Californias Legislative Analyst, it costs $81,203 to house a prison inmate for one year. Convicted murder Corona, in prison since 1973, rang up quite a bill for California taxpayers, with no complaint from Gavin Newsom. In the Golden State, murderers can kill as many victims as they want and keep their own lives. If the murderers draw a death sentence, Governor Gavin Newsom has their back. Lloyd Billingsley is a Policy Fellow at the Oakland-based Independent Institute On March 5, 2019, Democrats and their mainstream media allies tried to deploy yet another tactic in their endless efforts to disrupt the internal working of the Trump administration. This time, it was over the matter of security clearances. National security in the White House is a strange issue for Democrats to pursue now, given the recent history of the Obama administration. For just one stunning example among several, Huma Abedin not long ago had a high-level security clearance in the Obama White House. As Hillary Clinton's longtime assistant, Huma held that clearance while working as a top aide to Hillary Obama's secretary of state. That clearance continued despite warnings from five members of Congress, who as early as 2012 alleged that Abedin had "immediate family connections to foreign extremist organizations," which they said were "potentially disqualifying conditions for obtaining a security clearance." But now Democrats are pretending to be intensely concerned about potential threats to American security by scrutinizing the current president's own close family members. Huma is not just any random Muslim from just any nominally Muslim family. In fact, the ties of her family to dangerous operatives of the Muslim Brotherhood should terrify you. Curiously, while Huma was a George Washington University student in 1996, she began working as an intern in the White House. Well, there are a lot of interns who come and go. So that part is not necessarily so scary. But Huma did not stop there. Right away, she somehow became assigned to thenfirst lady Hillary Clinton. Gaining that key job was a stunning jump for a 19-year-old Muslim student, who moved directly into close association with the top levels of power in America. She held that close position over the next two decades. Any fair look at the chain of those events has to make us wonder: how could it all be coincidence? Is it not reasonable to presume that Muslim Brotherhood agents played a part in placing Huma there? Back then, Democrats could not be bothered by such questions. In fact, they even went out of their way to disparage the people who were daring to ask them. So now that the Trump administration is in power, what can we make of the Left's newfound concerns about security clearances in the White House? Let's take a look and see if it adds up to more than noise. On May 23, 2018, it was reported that President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, had been granted his permanent security clearance. This action, at the request of the president, followed months after Kushner's interim security clearance had been downgraded, amid new rules issued by thenWhite House chief of staff John Kelly. Kushner had previously held an interim security clearance until late February 2018, when Kelly set a deadline for halting access to top-secret information by anyone in the Trump administration whose applications had been languishing so far. So, in the aftermath effect of Kelly's decision, Kushner's temporary clearance was downgraded from "interim top secret" to "interim secret." Kushner had been working in the administration without a permanent security clearance for almost a year. That long delay was evidently just one among an apparent backlog of multiple people who were all waiting for approval. So the first logical question might be, who or what was systematically delaying that approval process? The White House had already faced scrutiny for its security clearance handling after former staffer Rob Porter was accused of domestic abuse by his two ex-wives. He had also worked for a year with only an interim clearance. In that case, Trump agreed that Porter was not fit for a clearance and sent Porter packing in February 2018. For obvious reasons, no one wants such political baggage, let along charges of a wife-abuser within the security ranks of the White House, no matter how competent a staffer he might be. The FBI has now finished its file on Kushner and delivered it to the White House personnel security office. Kushner attorney Abbe Lowell said, "Mr. Kushner's application was properly submitted, reviewed by career officials, and went through the normal process. Having completed these processes, Mr. Kushner is looking forward to continuing the work the President has asked him to do." So, in the process, the delays and the Porter debacle give the appearance that, even if well intentioned, it was bad strategy for Trump to hire John Kelly, a former Marine Corps general, as White House chief of staff. The intent had perhaps been to show the public that the White House would be run efficiently, like a military operation. But Kelly soon wore out his welcome and was also dismissed this past December. These dismissals and delays and this intense scrutiny have been political, not criminal. No laws were broken in the process of White House work. Kushner is uniquely qualified to manage many aspects of Trump's policies, from prison reform to negotiating plans that might bring American strength, if not peace, to the Middle East. Let the guy do his job. Unlike Huma Abedin, who was seemingly placed in power by the actual enemy, Kushner is not any security threat. Instead, here we are, almost a year later, after Porter is gone, and now Kelly is gone. But the issue that is still supposed to matter, according to a CNN report published recently, is that Trump "pressured" thenchief of staff John Kelly to grant the clearances so it wouldn't look as if the president was inappropriately influencing the process. Kelly refused to comply on Trump's timeline, and so Trump then granted the security clearances himself, which he has the right to do. The Democrats pounced: "We are deeply disturbed by recent reports that President Trump ordered his Chief of Staff, John Kelly, to grant Jared Kushner a security clearance, overruling intelligence officials who raised concerns about the clear national security risks of doing so," Democrat lawmakers wrote in an early March 2019 letter to Attorney General William Barr. The Democrats are pushing past the boundaries of reason and strategy by presuming to uphold strict standards of security, while, effectively, they just want to block Trump from doing his job. First of all, Trump's security critics have no legal leg to stand on, especially when dealing with Attorney General Barr, who is unlikely to cave to their pressure. Secondly, the public does not care about paying such close attention to these security clearances, as proven by their recent indifference to ones held by the likes of Huma Abedin, a seeming Muslim Brotherhood proxy, who almost became a top presidential aide under Hillary. The public is probably content to let Trump have final say about whom he trusts and wants to work with, including members of his own family. But public opinion will not stop the Left's obstructionists from making so much noise out of all of it. The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has deeply offended the citizenry of Australia and managed to unite the governing party and its principal opposition with his angry response to the mosque massacre in Christchurch, allegedly perpetrated by an Australian citizen. SBS News from Australia reports: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has demanded Turkish president Tayipp Erdogan withdraw his comments threatening to send visitors from Australia and New Zealand back "in coffins". The Turkish strongman made references to the death of Anzac troops during the WWI Gallipoli campaign as he ramped up rhetoric in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks. Gallipoli was and remains a traumatic event and an open wound in the history of Australia and New Zealand, as well as Turkey. The Associated Press explains the context: The tragedy of the Gallipoli campaign in World War I is etched deep into the identities of Australia and New Zealand, as well as Turkey. More than a century on from the carnage that saw around 44,000 Allied soldiers killed and an estimated 250,000 Turkish casualties, memories of the Gallipoli campaign have resurfaced[.] ... The Gallipoli campaign, which lasted some eight months, was a shattering defeat for the allies with costly losses of British, Irish, Australian and New Zealander troops. Toiling in terrible conditions, with disease rampant, allied soldiers were often gunned down close to the coast where they were under siege. In proportion to the small populations of Australia and New Zealand at the time, the casualties suffered were enormous. To this day, the commemoration of the battle on ANZAC Day in both countries is the most solemn holiday of the year, surpassing Armistice Day. ANZAC Day in Melbourne, 2015 (photo credit). Erdogan aspires to restore the glory of the Ottoman Empire, which was dismembered at the conclusion of World War I. By recalling the Ottoman victory at Gallipoli, he is signaling that Turkey is thinking about defeating its infidel enemies again, and restoring itself to leadership in the Islamic world. Erdogan also is deliberately aggravating the infidel-led governments of the antipodean nations. Incidentally, Turkish immigration to Australia has been significant, with an estimated 150,00 to 200,000 Turkish citizens resident there, and another 40,00060,000 Turkish Cypriots also resident, out of a population of 25 million, or roughly one percent. The dispute may well escalate. SBS reports: Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison summoned the Turkish ambassador over the comments on Wednesday. Speaking with reporters after the meeitng, Mr Morrison said he rejected "excuses" from the Turkish ambassador to Australia offered during the meeting at Parliament House this morning. "I was just deeply offended, as any Australian would be. The first thing that came to my mind was the promise of (Mustafa Kemal) Ataturk Ataturk sought to transform his country into a modern nation and, an embracing nation, and I think these comments are at odds with that spirit and the promise that was made to Australians," Mr Morrison said. Because Erdogan is seeking to reverse the secularization under Ataturk, Morrison is pushing a button for Erdogan. Erdogan's remarks also targeted New Zealand and made the demand that the death penalty be restored there (which is known as interfering in the domestic affairs of another country): In the same speech, Mr Erdogan also called on New Zealand to restore the death penalty for the gunman who killed 50 people at two Christchurch mosques, warning that Turkey would make the attacker pay for his act if New Zealand did not. "Your grandparents came here... and they returned in coffins. Have no doubt we will send you back like your grandfathers," Mr Erdogan told an election rally of thousands in northern Turkey on Tuesday. "You heinously killed 50 of our siblings. You will pay for this. If New Zealand doesn't make you, we know how to make you pay one way or another," Mr Erdogan. New Zealand's prime minister has announced a ban on semi-automatic weapons, but apparently that is not enough for the vengeance-seeking neo-Ottoman Erdogan. This dispute could get increasingly ugly. Hat tip: John McMahon President Trump was paid a visit by Brazil's conservative new president, Jair Bolsonaro, and the Left is panicking. Here's what PanAmPost's Vanessa Vallejo, in an article that appears in Spanish, observed: Yesterday the two great leaders of the right in the continent met: Donald Trump, president of the United States, received Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, in the Oval Office. The media were dispatched with headlines such as El Pais: "Trump and Bolsonaro exhibit their populist alliance and inflame the fear of socialism." In social networks the leftists gave their apocalyptic predictions according to which Trump and Bolsonaro will even end the environment. She didn't get the half of it. There's more of this stuff going on, and all over. Here's the Guardian's headline and tease: Trump joy over Bolsonaro suggests new rightwing axis in Americas and beyond US president says he will 'work closely together' with Brazil's new hard-right leader while world's far-right politicians share delight There's also this, not from the op-ed page, but from the news section, buried on page A10 -- by Maggie Haberman and a coeval -- from the New York Times: WASHINGTON President Trump hosted Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president, at the White House on Tuesday, and it was something like looking in the mirror. Like other authoritarian leaders Mr. Trump has embraced since taking office, Mr. Bolsonaro is an echo of the American president: a brash nationalist whose populist appeal comes partly from his use of Twitter and his history of making crude statements about women, gay people and indigenous groups. Or this, from Politico's item headlined "Right-wing movements merge as Bolsonaro visits Trump," in graf two: Unofficially, the visit marks a milestone for what some see as an emerging new world order of strongmen backed by right-wing insurgencies. Supporters of both presidents are using the occasion to stitch together the populist movements that propelled each man into office. Here's the Associated Press, in the version that ran in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: President Donald Trump welcomed Brazil's new far-right leader to the White House Tuesday and made clear that flattery pays. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro the "Trump of the Tropics" ran an unabashedly pro-Trump, pro-American campaign last year, emulating Trump in tone and style. It seems to have paid off for Bolsonaro on his first official trip to Washington. Here's CNN's shallow report. Anyone see this kind of treatment back when President Obama fell all over himself to suck up to Brazil's last socialist president, the former leftwing socialist guerrilla Dilma Rousseff? (Notice also the gleefully doofus-ignorant pronunciation of the president of Brazil's first name by Jim Acosta. Memo to Jim: Getting the Brazilian guy's name right is your job.) When talk emerged last autumn of a "Trump of the Tropics" running for president in Brazil, the actual US President Donald Trump took keen interest. On Tuesday, the man who adopted Trump's combative persona in person and on Twitter brought his fawning to the White House, where he decried "fake news" and predicted Trump's re-election during his first official visit overseas. And here's the HuffPo headline and tease, you probably don't need to read any farther: The Unbearable Machismo Of Trump And Bolsonaro's Bromance The twin presidents of the United States and Brazil are linked most closely by the insecure, tough-guy grievance politics that fuel them both. So you get the flavor. There was even crazier stuff from Congress, starting with the likes of Rep. Ilhan Omar: Brazilian President Bolsonaro has: -Praised torture -Called refugees "scum of the world" -Compared same-sex adoption to pedophilia -Expressed admiration for Brazils military dictatorship -Called for extrajudicial killings We must call out human rights abuses worldwide. https://t.co/VaVGFFxS4K Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 19, 2019 Or this, from some other congressional backbencher: Here we have one from New Mexico playing the Indian grievance card, with another pol in Brazil: Two Indigenous women -- Joenia Wapichana from Brazil and US Rep. Deb Haaland -- write about the vicious attacks on land and Indigenous sovereignty by evil twins of destruction, Trump and Bolsonaro.https://t.co/8AA0QY0A4m ndnviewpoint (@mahtowin1) March 19, 2019 And here's a left-wing activist pressuring the embarrassed silence of Bernie Sanders, who, yes, I looked, didn't want to say anything about that meeting, given the condemnations of socialism that came out of it: Those awaiting condemnation of the Bolsonaro/ Trump endorsed coup d'etat campaign by Senator Sanders may be waiting a while https://t.co/MngaGv0xAf Tiocfaidh ar la (@OwenRBroadhurst) January 24, 2019 Panic? Yup. The Left is panicking. Image credit: VOA via YouTube screen grab. Democrats may regret their years of hyperventilation over allegations of foreign "collusion" to influence a presidential election. In what amounts to slow-motion political jujitsu, the nefarious acts attributed to the Trump campaign may end up being applied to the Obama administration and Hillary campaign. A formal criminal investigation already is being launched overseas, making an American counterpart investigation awkward to suppress. Anyone who has paid attention to the genesis of the Mueller investigation understands that it was opposition research paid for by the Democratic Party and Hillary presidential campaign and corrupt senior officials at the FBI that sparked the appointment of the special counsel. But new information developed by John Solomon of The Hill suggests that there was indeed an effort by a foreign government to influence the 2016 election, and that it was the government of Ukraine attempting to sway voters in Hillary's favor. Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko (Hill TV screen grab). Ukraine's top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his country's law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton. The leak of the so-called "black ledger" files to U.S. media prompted Manafort's resignation from the Trump campaign and gave rise to one of the key allegations in the Russia collusion probe that has dogged Trump for the last two and a half years. Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko's probe was prompted by a Ukrainian parliamentarian's release of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton's campaign. The parliamentarian also secured a court ruling that the leak amounted to "an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign," Lutsenko told me. Lutsenko said the tape recording is a serious enough allegation to warrant opening a probe, and one of his concerns is that the Ukrainian law enforcement agency involved had frequent contact with the Obama administration's U.S. embassy in Kiev at the time. "Today we will launch a criminal investigation about this and we will give legal assessment of this information," Lutsenko told me. Solomon's article is long and detailed, and it includes disturbing information about the U.S. embassy in Kiev, which has, at a minimum, a lot of explaining to do. But a second version of Pandora's box related to Ukraine is also open at this moment, thanks to the prosecution of Paul Manafort for failing to register as an agent of the Ukraine government under FARA, the Foreign Agent Registration Act. That rarely enforced law now may be turned against others in the Democrats' camp, who also lobbied for Ukraine, including Clinton White House counsel and Washington, D.C. power lawyer Greg Craig. Greg Re of Fox News reports: Former Obama White House Counsel and Clinton-linked attorney Greg Craig may soon be charged by the Justice Department for engaging in illegal unregistered overseas lobbying, in a case initially probed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller a development that would make him the first Democrat to face prosecution amid the long-running Russia investigation. The case centers on lobbying work that Craig performed in 2012 for the Russian-backed president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, while Craig was a partner at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Craig allegedly never registered as a foreign agent under a U.S. law known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires lobbyists to declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders, governments or their political parties. FARA violations were only rarely prosecuted until Mueller took aim at Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, for his lobbying work in Ukraine[.] Keep in mind that there are many other potential sources of evidence for turning the Democrats' efforts to rid themselves of President Trump by investigation against them. President Trump can de-classify and release the FISA warrants that appear to have concealed relevant facts from the Court a criminal offense and other information about the corruption at the FBI. My assumption all along has been that as the most successful reality TV producer in the history of the medium, Donald Trump is managing the "story arc" for maximum effect on the 2020 electorate. Finally, at long last, we may be seeing the third act of this drama begin. As the caravans keep rolling in, and Congress does its darnedest to prevent the construction of a border wall, journalists who follow the money can find some striking news. The Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard has a good one on U.S. remittances to the three Central American countries whose nationals are leading the surge across our unguarded southern border. He writes: Immigrants from the three Central American nation's sourcing many illegal border crossers sent a record amount of money home last year, bringing the total this decade to $120 billion. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador all said that natives in the United States sent over $17 billion home last year alone. Bedard's bar chart shows just how that number has risen: Image credit: By permission from the Washington Examiner. Obviously, that's the effect of a border surge that began to sharply accelerate beginning in 2014. I wrote about that for Investor's Business Daily back in 2014, describing just the projections for a rise from Central America, and that's what we see now from this chart above. What's more, the Wikipedia entry on the 2014 surge includes the standard argument of the Left that border apprehensions were down in the years that followed to suggest that the numbers of illegal arrivals was also falling. Here is its chart. Bedard's piece suggests otherwise. The money figures shown above in the chart and in the Bedard report signal that the border flow was actually rising, apprehensions or not. So the Left's current "narrative" about a declining apprehension rate falls apart with Bedard's report. Apprehensions may have been down, but against this surging remittance number, the most likely explanation now is that the Obama administration just quit apprehending to get the numbers down. If apprehensions were down as the result of fewer people migrating here illegally, we wouldn't see the steepening arc of money in Bedard's chart. Unless we're getting a lot of doctors and lawyers immigrating illegally from Central America now, with doctor and lawyer salaries the reason for the higher remittances. Color me skeptical on that one. Actually that isn't quite speculation. This screen grab of a Google chart on the economies shows someone no one in the press has reported much given their narrative of poverty and oppression driving the surge. That the Central American economies have actually been booming: Life is good for doctors and lawyers and other people with decent education in places such as El Salvador. Bedard points out that these countries took in more than $17 billion in remittances in the last year alone (and almost $16 billion in 2017), while the chart shows that their economies together in 2017 total more than $123 billion. He says remittances amount to about 20% of their economies (and the data supplying his rough estimate is probably different from mine). I see around 14%, putting the 2017 remittance figure over the 2017 GDP. It's the same ballpark. This means a heckuva lot of the economic growth in these places isn't from remittances; it's from their booming economies, which are likely linked to their free trade pacts with the U.S., as well as, in El Salvador's case, its official (and the other two's unofficial) use of the U.S. dollar in trade transactions. The press is reporting that these places are economic disaster areas and the impoverished border-surgers' choice to emigrate to the U.S. illegally can be only because they are escaping poverty. What baloney. The data show that border-surgers are actually fleeing booming economies, not Venezuelan-style hellholes, and are beefing their home countries' economies up further with their surging remittances, signaling more to come. Big dollar surges into a country can very well propel lots of money for investment and consumption, as well as prop up the tax base of these countries, bolstering these governments. That would explain why so many of the previous caravan border-surgers had such new-looking clothes and lifestyles of the rich and famous Instagrams, as well as some spectacular ingratitude. Hellholes these place are not they've got a lot of money out there to pay for their poor, from both remittances and their booming economies at home and they don't do it. Worse still, that $17 billion they took in last year, tax-free, and the $120 billion they took over the decade, tax free, subtracts that much money from U.S. GNP. What a gift these places have been getting. Forget not that they are also the largest recipients of U.S. aid. With Bedard's report of the remittance surge, the case for building a wall and taxing remittances grows. President Trump is right to do something about this scam, the left stands exposed for its phony narratives once again. Image credit: The Washington Examiner with thanks! Germany did not and will not give in to political pressure from the United States over Huaweis wireless business, Chancellor Angela Merkel said this week, clarifying that Berlin reached no final conclusions over the Chinese companys telecommunications technologies and its ambition to provide network operators on the old continent with 5G infrastructure and related solutions. There are two things I dont believe in; first, to discuss these very sensitive security questions publicly, and second, to exclude a company just because its from a certain country, Merkel said in the German capital on Tuesday. 5G(eopolitics) Advertisement Germany has been under significant pressure from Washington over its 5G plans in recent months; even outside of diplomatic endeavors, German companies have been made aware of the U.S. stance on Chinese telecom tech in no uncertain terms. Washington-Berlin relations took a turn for the worse earlier this month precisely because of Huawei after U.S. envoy threatened Europes strongest economy over its continued use of Chinese telecom tech. Despite Chancellor Merkels latest remarks on the matter, the U.S. already scored one major win in its efforts to cripple Huawei by having Deutsche Telekom agree to drop its equipment in favor of accelerating an all-encompassing review of its subsidiary T-Mobiles merger proposal launched with SoftBanks Sprint. That particular development, announced in December, surprised some industry watchers as not everyone expected DT to fold so easily when it comes to Huawei, though it also didnt stop all critics from continuing to demand the stateside carriers provide the general public with written assurances they wont use Huawei technologies in their future 5G networks. Advertisement While the Chinese conglomerates wireless equipment is largely matched by solutions from Ericsson and Nokia, whats unprecedented is its scale, especially in terms of in-house manufacture. Coupled with the low cost of labor in China relative to most other parts of the world, especially those with the technical know-how necessary for flow-producing such devices, and the reason why Huawei is the worlds largest telecom equipment manufacturer becomes clear no one can match its prices and survive long enough to tell the tale. Its solutions are hence an extremely attractive proposition for every wireless business on the planet as no one wants to lose money or e.g. explain to investors why some deployment cost an X amount of money if Huawei offered a 10-percent cheaper alternative. Thats also why the U.S. had difficulties with convincing its allies to drop Huawei gear as the tensions between Washington and Beijing continued to rise in previous months, reaching a new level of hostility around the turn of the year after the stateside Justice Department had Canadian authorities arrest Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou under suspicion of various financial crimes as part of one of the most bizarre diplomatic incidents in recent memory. To date, only Australia truly did what the U.S. is asking for outlawed any possibility of Huawei-made or other Chinese tech being used in its incoming 5G deployment efforts. The likes of Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Germany have all been reported to be considering banning Huawei equipment in the past but none have yet pulled the trigger on the decision that would likely spike their medium-term infrastructure costs by hundreds of millions of dollars. Advertisement At the same time, the U.S. remains adamant that installing Huaweis solutions means inviting China to spy on you in your backyard, arguing the Shenzen-based firm has no hope legal or otherwise of resisting any kind of foreign customer information requests, no matter how broad or unjustified they are. Huawei TVs are apparently close to release after a Chinese news outlet reported an unnamed Huawei TV supply chain executive confirming the company is planning on unveiling its first TVs in April. Although this will see Huawei expanding into a new product area, the suggestion is the company has high expectations of success as it is currently targeting ten million units sold annually. For a company yet to establish itself in this sector, thats a big ask and if achieved will only further add to the rise of Huawei narrative. The same unnamed source has also apparently confirmed the TVs wont be just a TVs, but more of a hub due to the products arriving with a focus on gaming and social features. This in addition to the inclusion of dual cameras. Advertisement The last point is an interesting one as it remains to be seen how receptive consumers will be to TVs equipped with cameras. On the one side, this offers up additional ways to broadcast yourself and is likely to be highly beneficial for video chatting with family and friends. On the other hand, privacy has become an increasingly important and promoted quality and products that are suddenly having cameras attached to them are coming under greater scrutiny from consumers. For example, Facebook has received a fair amount of criticism for its camera-touting smart displays, and the company is also rumored to be working on its own TV equipped with cameras. Of course, Facebook has been at the center of many privacy-related scandals and debates recently which does add to the heightened level of skepticism, but so has Huawei. Advertisement More widely speaking, Huaweis move into the TV space seems to only further highlight what is clearly now becoming a trend with many non-traditional TV makers now looking to make gains in the TV world. Besides the old guard of makers, and of course Huawei and Facebook, OnePlus is also keen on a move to the TV market. One of the likely reasons for this newfound interest in the home TV market by these companies is the growing importance of the TV in general. Not only is it now a display for video content, but these units are becoming increasingly more competent as central command units for the entire home. This is in part due to the expansion of the TVs interface over the last couple of years and the ability for that interface to be a greater ecosystem in its own right. Facebook, Huawei, and OnePlus are all very much interested in software ecosystems and the services related to them, so this only acts as further motivation for these companies to branch off in this way. Advertisement According to the latest information, when Huawei does unveil its new TVs, the lineup will be limited to begin with only 55 and 65-inch options are set to be announced. The two sizes are understood to be drawing on different producers for the display, BOE and Shenzhen China Star Optoelectronics, respectively. Towards the end of 2018, Huawei was spotted looking to protect the Huawei AI Window name. A name that at the time appeared to be related to to the smart TV sector. Leading to the suggesting this might be what the companys TV products arrive branded as. Marysville, CA (95901) Today Partly cloudy this morning, then becoming cloudy during the afternoon. High 53F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Periods of rain. Low 46F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch. In autumn of 2017 the Guardia Civil came to Catalonia to save Spain with their batons. Now they have been summoned to the Supreme Court to finish the job: at present the only thread holding together the charges of rebellion are the reports and statements by Guardia Civil officers. Their statements contradict those by other witnesses and would have been exposed by video footage of the events, had the court allowed it to be shown in order to contrast their version of events. You get the feeling that the State is using the Guardia Civil to speahead an operation aimed at wiping out the leadership of Catalonias independence movement. However, if we are to believe the testimonies of the former members of the PP administration who, once on the witness stand, knew and recalled nothing and Perez de los Cobos himself (1), not only is the Guardia Civil spearheading the operation, but it might also be the driving force behind it. The fact that an armed force, military in nature, should have such a high profile is bad news for the reputation of Spains democracy. The fact that the Guardia Civil is the main actor in a political conflict, that the evidence provided by the prosecution is based almost entirely on their words, is not exactly what you would expect from a dynamic democracy. And after the testimonies we have heard in Spains Supreme Court, we might ask: who runs the show in Spain? ________ Translators note: (1) Guardia Civil Col. Perez de los Cobos was appointed to coordinate the efforts of the Spanish police, Guardia Civil and Catalan police during the Catalan referendum on independence in 2017. On Tuesday several Spanish Guardia Civil officers took the witness stand in the Supreme Courts trial of twelve Catalan independence leaders. They went to a lot of trouble to support the narrative of violence espoused by the Prosecutor and the private plaintiff far-right party Vox which sustains the charges of rebellion. Also on Tuesday the defence teams excelled at exposing the contradictions in the testimonies of the witnesses by contrasting their accounts dotted with words like terror and siege with the actual events, which were far less epic. The strategy followed by the Spanish police in court is nearly always the same: they try to overstate specific events, such as being thrown a few bottles of water which was described as a barrage, and to interpret the peoples intent, like when they claimed that the crowd [gathered outside the Finance Ministrys HQ on September 20, 2017] looked as if they might storm the building while it was being searched by court officials and Guardia Civil officers. The truth, though, is that no building was ever stormed and not one officer required medical attention. In other instances the witnesses exaggerated or blatantly lied about specific events, such as when they stated that the Catalan police did not lift a finger to help the officials safely leave the Foreign Ministry on Barcelonas Via Laietana, The defence attempted to show footage which clearly proved that the Mossos dEsquadra had set up a cordon to escort the court officials out of the ministry safely. The same video showed how there was no tension between the two police forces at any point. Needless to say, the Guardia Civil officers could argue that they found themselves in an unprecedented situation: a massive protest outside a government building where a police search was underway. But they should themselves admit that the overall situation was completely exceptional. Never before had a police force been ordered by a court to impede a referendum and investigate alleged state structures. Never before in Spains democracy had a police operation prompted such a wave of indignation and such a large-scale protest. Likewise, riot police had never before been sent to seize ballot boxes and ballot slips at polling stations occupied by peaceful people. To portray those demonstrations as riots intended to prevent the searches and to present the citizens non-violent resistance as an orgy of violence against the law enforcement officers requires a massive leap of imagination. Ultimately, we should expect the court to disregard the views expressed by the witnesses as well as the adjectives they used to colour their individual experiences and stick to the facts. In other words, the evidence. It is precisely the footage taken on the day that will show what truly happened. It will also allow us to say whether the actions by the Spanish police were consistent with the courts instructions which stressed the need to preserve peaceful coexistence or they were a shambles. The Guardia Civil officers who will take the witness stand all this week will parrot out the same spiel. But even they ought to admit that it is totally unheard of impossible, even that not one officer was taken off duty for medical reasons as a consequence of the alleged violent uprising by a mob. In contrast there is, indeed, one member of the public (Roger Espanol) who can prove that he lost an eye [to a rubber bullet fired by Spains riot police on October 1 2017] on the day. The product was developed by Airbus with the cooperation of an insurance consortium consisting of several highly-rated insurance companies to address the need of new products in the aircraft financing market. Turkish Airlines successfully combined a French lease advantage in this 12-year transaction together with insurance cover, leading to an innovative and cost-effective product that contributed significantly to the overall competitiveness of its aircraft financing portfolio. BNP Paribas, a leading bank in aircraft financing with an international reach and a long-term financing partner of Turkish Airlines, committed a financing amount of up to 225 million USD for five A321 NEO aircraft to be delivered in 2019. In managing a large number of stakeholders and under various roles, BNP Paribas played an instrumental role in handling this first-of-a-kind transaction on behalf of Turkish Airlines. Turkish Airlines has had very innovative and first-of-a-kind financing models rewarded by Jane's Transport Finance, Global Transport Finance, Airline Economics, Airfinance Journal, and Bonds, Loans & Sukuk Turkey in respect of its financing models put in practice since 2008. Turkish Airlines has crowned its success in this regard, as having won 23 international aircraft finance awards in the last ten years for its successful financing performance amounting to 15 billion USD. The announcement of the new satellite followed on from the signing of the charter for the establishment of the "Arab Space Coordination Group" at the second edition of the Global Space Congress, held in Abu Dhabi. The new satellite will be designed and manufactured by a number of Arab engineers from countries that have signed the charter for the launch of the first group of its kind in the Arab world. The eleven countries are the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Morocco and Egypt. The member countries of the Group voted for the UAE to lead the new organization. The new satellite 813 is named in reference to the date that marked the beginning of prosperity for the House of Wisdom in Baghdad under the reign of Al-Ma'mun. Representing the region, the House embraced scientists, translated notable texts and produced scientific capabilities. The multi-spectral satellite will monitor the Earth and measure the environmental and climatic elements in a number of Arab countries, as well as vegetation, soil types, minerals and water sources, measuring greenhouse gases, pollution and dust levels as well. The new satellite will be funded by the UAE Space Agency and will be developed by Arab engineers at the state-of-the-art facilities at the National Space Science and Technology Center at the United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, the only research space center of its kind in the Middle East. The development of the satellite will take three full years and will have a lifespan of about five years. It will also have a polar orbit of 600 kilometers. The data will be sent to a ground station in the UAE and receiving stations in some Arab countries for the benefit of a number of environmental authorities, municipalities and institutions concerned with the agricultural sector and urban planning industry. There is of course a long history of interaction between the British and Irish theatres, and this looks certain to continue into the future however Britains relationship with the EU (and thus with Ireland) evolves in the years ahead. Clyde Fitch Report Alaa Al-Aswany (The Yacoubian Building) is accused in the suit of insulting the president, the Armed Forces, and judicial institutions in a set of articles he wrote for the Arabic service of Deutsche Welle, Germanys equivalent of the BBC World Service. Al-Aswany, who currently lives in New York, responded that the lawsuit is a clear violation of article 65 of the Egyptian constitution, which states, Freedom of thought and opinion is guaranteed.' Melville House Three grandchildren of Greta Moll, the muse depicted in the portrait, had argued that the painting was taken in violation of international law and demanded that the National Gallery pay $30 million in compensation for the painting or return it. But last September, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York affirmed a lower-court decision that the National Gallery and Britain were immune from the jurisdiction of US courts, and the Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal. The Art Newspaper Do it yourself if you can We accept in principle that private equity can deliver (somewhat) excess returns over most other asset classes. But there are a lot of qualifications attached to that, and most of them are very relevant to whether and how pension funds should invest in private equity. Fridge Full of Beer Found After Flood by Nebraska Residents Men Say Magic Fridge Was a Gift From the Heavens In the aftermath of devastating floods which have plagued Nebraska residents over the past month, leaving at least two dead with others forced to evacuate, two men uncovered something that managed to lift their spirits a bit. RELATED: What Your Favorite Beer Says About You According to the Lincoln Journal Star, local Kyle Simpson told the Lincoln Journal Star about his attempt to clear debris and mud from his property with friend Gayland Stouffer when they stumbled upon something buried in the muck After spotting something approximately 50 yards away from the remnants of a nearby road, Stouffer headed over to take a look. Simpson remained unconvinced that it was anything worth further examination, but his friend seems to have a much better eye. As it turns out, the mini-fridge was filled to the brim with ice cold beer. The Lincoln Journal Star quotes Simpson as saying the treasure was a gift from the heavens. He says, Hey, this is a refrigerator. And he opens it up and says, Its full of beer. recalls Simpson. I said, Yeah, right.' And he reaches in and says, Its ice cold. For those curious, the cans inside were a mixture of Busch Light and Bud Light, two American staples. The two men immediately cracked a few cold ones to commemorate their hard work, as well as the unlikely find. The occasion was so momentous for Simpson that he took the opportunity to stage an impromptu selfie, too. And whats actually the most amusing part of this story? The original owner of this magical beer fridge recognized his missing appliance once Simpson's story went viral across social media. Fellow Nebraskan Brian Healy was able to name the beer brands, noting the Bud was for his father, and the Busch was for the rest of his family. After judging the proximity from where the fridge was with the location of his family's cottage in Linwood, Healy pieced the puzzle together. It turns out this isnt even the first time Healys fridge has taken a major beating. Before being swept away by the flooding, the same fridge survived a blazing house fire in 2007. Though the tough kitchen appliance made it through the flames, the smoky scent it carried since then was the reason it was moved to the cottage in Linwood. Its just a summer cabin, no heat to it, Healy said. But it had a full beer fridge; you always got to have one of those. You Might Also Dig: The best bang for your buck! This option enables you to purchase online 24/7 access and receive the Sunday, Tuesday & Thursday print edition at no additional cost * Print edition only available in our carrier delivery area. Allow up to 72 hours for delivery of your print edition to begin. Print edition not available for Day Pass option. Piper Alderman has strengthened its real estate team in Brisbane with the appointment of a new partner. Judd Last has joined the firm from ClarkeKann Lawyers in the Queensland capital. He was also previously at Gadens. Last adds to the firm extensive experience in property and commercial transactions, including a particular focus on retirement living, aged-care facilities, and manufactured-home parks in the commercial and not-for-profit sectors. Cliff's Auto Body & RV recently opened the doors to its new 6,000-square-foot auto body repair shop after 54 years in West Chicago, IL. Now located next to the Sycamore Speedway in the old location of Bob-Jo's Cycle at 50W112 Old State Road, Cliff's Auto Body & RV is eager to serve the new community. Cliff's specializes in collision repair, RV services and award-winning restorations. The shop also does early model metric motorcycles, Harley Davidsons and current metric motorcycles. Cliff's is able to do 100 percent restoration, body work and mechanical jobs. Owner Zach Zylinski, an Elburn native, bought the shop from his father, Jerry Zylinski, in 2014. Jerry purchased Cliff's in 1987 from the original owner, who started in 1964. Zach started the move from their West Chicago shop in mid-November. After 54 years in business, Zach said the move seemed like the right direction to help his business continue to grow. "Our main reason for moving was growth due to the economic upturn in the last three years; the extra room in the shop will really help us reach our full potential. There are a lot of capabilities we have, but the old shop was holding us back a little," Zach said. "The main focus with the new shop is ... collision repair, RV service, roof repair and award-winning restorations." With more than 60 years of experience combined, the team at Cliff's services more than 250 vehicles a year. A particular project the team reflects on was a full restoration of a RX-7, which was displayed at the 2016 Chicago Auto Show. Zach is excited to be in the new location. "The difference with us is we really treat our customers like family, he said. We want the community to feel welcome here. Hopefully we can even sponsor some T-ball teams come springtime." Cliffs Auto Body & RV can be found at www.facebook.com/cliffsautorv/. We thank Daily Herald for reprint permission. Theres no pricing information available for the Gladiator at this moment, but we do know the trim levels start with the Sport. Given the spacious cabin and practicality of the bed, were expecting the newcomer to start at more than $31,445, the asking price for the cheapest Wrangler Unlimited available to order.The Sport S, Overland, and Rubicon round off the list, and depending on configuration, maximum towing is rated at 7,650 pounds. Best-in-class accolades include maximum payload (1,600 pounds) and the most off-road capable mid-size truck ever. In the case of the latter, the heavy-duty Dana 44 front and rear axles are complemented by a 4x4 system with high and low range, an electronic disconnecting sway bar up front, FOX shock absorbers, and 33-inch tires developed for all-terrain driving.The devil is in the details, and if you were wondering, the Gladiator is the only open-air pickup in the industry. The Freedom Top three-piece hard top in the bodyworks color comes standard. Customers who want to experience the most out of the Gladiator can opt for the Sunrider soft top.As for the oily bits, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles offers the 3.6-liter Pentastar V6 as standard with ESS, 285 horsepower, and 260 pound-feet of torque. The six-speed manual can be swapped with an eight-speed automatic transmission. Not long now, the 3.0-liter EcoDiesel V6 will be added to the lineup, featuring more low-end torque than the gasoline engine.Being a mid-size pickup with know-how from Ram, the 2020 Jeep Gladiator will have to take on the Ford Ranger , Chevrolet Colorado, GMC Canyon, Toyota Tacoma, Honda Ridgeline, and Nissan Frontier. Coincidence or not, FCA will have the highest starting price in the segment given the Jeep badge up front and go-anywhere promise of the Gladiator. Katie Meredith, the mother of 9-year-old John, tells the Daily Mail that she had paid extra money so John could fly from Brisbane to Sydney alone. The extra charge means that she was offered guarantees by the airline company that John would be permanently supervised on the flight, from the moment his she parted with him at boarding to the moment his grandmother would pick him at the airport upon landing.At the same time, she should have received constant notifications from the staff, as to how the boy was doing. That never happened: when the plane had to be diverted to Melbourne, John ended up spending the night with 2 other kids at the airport, in a storeroom, sleeping on the floor. Katie never heard a peep from the company about the detour, let alone about the conditions her son was in.Let's not forget we are talking about a nine-year-old boy, who last month had a heart operation. I would never agree to have him sleep on the floor at an airport, Katie tells the publication. His godmother lives in Melbourne, she would have picked him up if I had the opportunity to know he wasn't going to a hotel.The grandmother, who was listed as guardian, did receive a notification that the flight had to be grounded in Melbourne, that it would take off again in the morning, and that John had been fed McDonalds. However, when she asked about the hotel he was staying at for the night, she got no reply.The airline company is blaming the entire situation on a miscommunication.We take the utmost care when transporting unaccompanied minors and aim to ensure their nominated guardians are aware of any developments as they arise, Virgin Australia says in a statement. We apologize for any breakdown in communication between our team and the child's guardian during the course of the evening. This is less dramatic than that, but its still something you should keep an eye out for. Police are urging residents not to open their door to strangers, after an incident that took place in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. One man came knocking and asking for help with his car, and once inside, he stole a purse and left.It should be noted that Tyler Towsley, 18, did have car trouble, as the Iowa County Sheriffs Office says on its official Facebook page. He was driving when his car broke down, so he went asking for help. Sure, youd expect a young man in this day and age to have a cellphone that he could use to call a towing company, but this one didnt.One resident opened their door to Towsley, not even questioning the lack of a cellphone on his person. While they were calling for assistance, Towsley noticed a purse, grabbed it and ran away. So much for showing gratitude ! Police say he went back to his broken-down car, which is where they found him some minutes later, purse and all.Towsley was arrested shortly after at the broke down vehicle and booked into Iowa County Jail on theft less than $2500.00, operating while revoked, 2 counts misdemeanor bail jumping, and 3 counts of felony bail jumping, the Sheriffs Office says.If someone is knocking on your door and you dont know them, please do not let them in. Give us a call if you dont feel comfortable and we will send some one out to assist, the post further says. Image: Lion Air New reports claim that conversations captured by the Lion Air Flight 610 cockpit voice recorder (CVR) confirm that the pilots were unable to diagnose the control issues encountered in the minutes before the accident that claimed the lives of all 189 people onboard on Oct. 29, 2018. Although a complete transcript of the CVR recording has not been released, Reuters reported that its staff had spoken with three peoplewhose identities were kept anonymousfamiliar with the CVRs contents. The information shared implies that the pilots were focused on discrepancies between the captains and first officers displays along with the planes airspeed. They didnt seem to know the trim was moving down, one of the sources told Reuters. They thought only about airspeed and altitude. That was the only thing they talked about. They also said that the captain asked the first officer to check the quick reference handbook. The cockpit voice recorder was recovered in January, more than two months after the crash. The preliminary accident report was released before the CVR was recovered. Pilots on the 737 MAXs previous flight experienced similar control issues. It was recently reported by Bloomberg that a pilot jump-seating on that flight diagnosed the problem and told the crew how to disable [the] malfunctioning flight-control system. That flight landed safely, which provides some anecdotal evidence for claims by U.S.-based airlines American and Southwest that even if similar problems did arise with their 737 MAXs, their pilots are trained to safely address such issues. Both airlines also told The Wall Street Journal that the data they had gathered from their fleets of 737 MAXs did not support immediately grounding their aircraft after the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. As previously reported by AVweb, similarities between the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents led to the grounding of all 737 MAXs in the U.S.and most of the rest of the worldlast week. Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has asked the DOTs Inspector General to audit the FAAs approval of the Boeing 737 MAX and it is now being reported that the FBI has joined the investigation. On Monday, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement that the company will soon release a software update and related pilot training for the 737 MAX that will address concerns discovered in the aftermath of the Lion Air Flight 610 accident. Marriott International said it has joined hands with Saudi-based Dur Hospitality, a specialist in developing and operating a wide portfolio of hotels and residential compounds in the kingdom, for the opening of two new hotels - Riyadh Marriott Hotel Diplomatic Quarter and Marriott Executive Apartments Riyadh, Diplomatic Quarter - in the kingdom's capital. The complex is strategically located in the heart of one of the most sought-after areas in the city with easy access to key embassies and major corporate headquarters, just a 30-minute drive from King Khalid International Airport. We are delighted to enhance our footprint in Saudi Arabia with the opening of two strategically important hotels that not only complement each other but also deliver very distinct brand experiences. Saudi Arabia continues to be one of our key markets and we are delighted to further strengthen our partnership with Dur Hospitality, said Alex Kyriakidis, president and managing director, Middle East & Africa, Marriott International. The hotel is inspired by the scenic and fertile Wadi Hanifa, a beautiful desert oasis running through Riyadh. The low-rise hotel resembles the smooth, dry canyon walls that make for a dramatic arrival experience. Once you step inside, the waterways guide the way into the heart of the building, ushering guests through the arrival court into the palm-dotted oasis in the heart of the hotels lush courtyard. Planted cacti, flowering vines, plentiful blooming desert flora and native date palm trees create a soothingly calming ambience, providing shaded secluded areas from the scorching desert sun. Here, life happens against a scenic lush backdrop in one of the restaurants and cafes. The complex is the first five-star full-service hotel in the Diplomatic Quarter and features 80 spacious modern rooms, and 140 fully equipped apartments. The deluxe rooms feature modern decor and ample workspace, allowing guests to stay connected with in-room technology including high-speed WiFi and bedside USB outlets. Guests staying in one of the six Premium Suites or the Presidential Suite can enrich their experience in the M Club Lounge offering an international buffet, hors doeuvre and local specialties 24 hours a day. Sparking brilliance through spaces that seamlessly blend work and play with state-of-the-art business facilities and innovative spaces such as The Greatroom, the hotel caters for the needs of both business and leisure travellers. Guests can enjoy an elevated experience through the Mobile Guest Services, delivered with the warm and professional service for which the brand is globally renowned. Riyadh Marriott Hotel Diplomatic Quarter houses three dining venues: Gojia Kitchen a sophisticated all-day dining destination, a la carte restaurant Mesquite and Agave Cafe located in the lobby. The hotel offers multiple recreational areas surrounded by lush greenery. An open-air swimming pool serves as an ideal spot to unwind after a long day. Other facilities include 24-hour fitness centres for both men and women and a sublime Saray Spa featuring a Turkish Hammam and female and male treatment rooms. Meeting the highest standards for energy and environments, namely the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold Certification requirements, the hotel site creates a protected micro-climate and maximises on environmental impacts. By amplifying useful daylight via a complex reflection process, the hotel can decrease its illumination needs during the day. Plentiful shaded areas and the buildings structure allow for natural ventilation, reducing the need for air conditioning and additional cooling. The opening of Riyadh Marriott Hotel Diplomatic Quarter and Marriott Executive Apartments Riyadh, Diplomatic Quarter marks the fifth collaboration between Marriott International and Dur Hospitality following Riyadh Marriott Airport, Marriott Executive Apartments Riyadh Convention Center, Courtyard by Marriott Riyadh Diplomatic Quarter and Riyadh Marriott Hotel.- TradeArabia News Service More than 4,500 people attended Women in Aviation Internationals (WAI) 30th Annual International Women in Aviation Conference last week. Southwest Airlines captain and former F/A-18 Hornet pilot Tammi Jo Shults, SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell and tactical mission lead on the Mars Curiosity Rover at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory Nagin Cox were among the conferences keynote speakers. Representatives from 33 countries were present and the exhibit hall hosted 170 separate companies and organizations at the three-day event, which took place in Long Beach, California. In addition to educational sessions, workshops and Girls in Aviation Day, the conference saw new inductions into WAIs International Pioneer Hall of Fame. This years inductees included Leanne Caret, president and CEO of Boeings Defense, Space and Security unit; Mary Golda Ross, the first known Native American female engineer, first female engineer at Lockheed and one of the 40 founding engineers of companys Skunk Works; and the U.S. Coast Guards First Women Aviators and Aviation-Related Enlisted Women, a group of three officers and six enlisted women who opened the door for future generations of women to pursue their military aviation dreams. 156 scholarships totaling $875,065 were also distributed at the conference to WAI members for academic use, lifestyle enhancement and flight training. The 2019 scholarships put the total money awarded since 1995 at more than $12 million. Next years conference will be held March 5-7, 2020, at Disneys Coronado Springs Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Close advisers to former Vice President Joe Biden are debating the idea of packaging his presidential campaign announcement with a pledge to choose Stacey Abrams as his vice president. Why it matters: The popular Georgia Democrat, who at age 45 is 31 years younger than Biden, would bring diversity and excitement to the ticket showing voters, in the words of a close source, that Biden "isn't just another old white guy." But the decision poses considerable risk, and some advisers are flatly opposed. Some have pointed out that in a Democratic debate, he could be asked why no one on the stage would be a worthy running mate. poses considerable risk, and some advisers are flatly opposed. Some have pointed out that in a Democratic debate, he could be asked why no one on the stage would be a worthy running mate. Advisers also know that the move would be perceived as a gimmick. Biden's position on the issue couldn't be learned we were just told about the advisers' debate. Biden has discussed selecting a running mate early, a move that one senior Democrat said could hurt him by feeding "an air of inevitability," CNN reported. selecting a running mate early, a move that one senior Democrat said could hurt him by feeding "an air of inevitability," CNN reported. Biden's office declined to comment. Abrams met Biden in Washington last week to discuss her next political steps, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Biden requested the lunchtime meeting, per AP. Abrams narrowly lost her race for Georgia governor last November, but has remained a political star: She delivered Democrats' response to President Trump's State of the Union address in January, and she has been mentioned as a possible candidate for U.S. Senate. The big picture: The debate shows some lack of confidence among the Biden team about withstanding attacks for being out of step with the times, and for past positions that are now unpopular in the party. The Rev. Al Sharpton, who stays in close touch with the 2020 race, told me the Abrams move could help Biden by mitigating objections to his treatment of Anita Hill during Justice Clarence Thomas' confirmation. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, author of "Presidents of War," said that no successful modern non-incumbent presidential candidate has ever announced a VP choice long before the primary process. "If Biden were to name his running mate long in advance of the Milwaukee convention, it might be very good politics," Beschloss told me. "It also might ultimately provide good government. Voters in the primary process deserve to know as much as possible about the future they are opting for." Go deeper: Attorneys representing clergy sex abuse victims released the names of 395 Roman Catholic priests and laypeople on Wednesday in Illinois, all who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing children, with some cases stretching back more than half a century. The big picture The disclosure of the names, assignment histories and photographs of the clergy members in the 182-page report comes as the Catholic Church grapples with backlash over the growing number of child sex abuse scandals around the globe. Details: "[The] most shocking among the discoveries is that some perpetrators were intentionally transferred and retained in trusted positions with direct access to children even after they were known to sexually abuse children ... but until full transparency and accountability exist, children remain in grave danger," the report stated. Many of the accused were already identified in news reports and court records, but weren't listed on the dioceses official lists, per the Chicago Tribune. A large number of those on the list are dead or no longer in the ministry. Only 1 name remains active. The other side: The dioceses in Chicago, Springfield and Joliet, Ill., have defended their handling of clergy abuse allegations, the AP reports. The Diocese of Springfield also cast doubt on the report's accuracy "because it said the whereabouts of several diocese priests were unknown, even though the diocese has confirmed their deaths," per the Tribune. Go deeper: The stunning scale of the global Catholic sex abuse crisis Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Wednesday condemned anti-Semitism along with House Democratic leadership who planned to vote on a resolution rebuking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) over her recent comments about the influence of pro-Israel lobbying groups. The big picture: Omar's remarks, characterized as anti-Semitic, have triggered a clash between House Democratic leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers who believe the Minnesota freshman was unfairly singled out. The internal backlash forced leadership to postpone Wednesday's vote, as the language of the resolution which does not specifically reference Omar would likely be broadened to reject other forms of bigotry, including Islamophobia. What theyre saying: "Anti-Semitism is a hateful and dangerous ideology which must be vigorously opposed in the United States and around the world. We must not, however, equate anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of the right-wing, Netanyahu government in Israel. Rather, we must develop an even-handed Middle East policy which brings Israelis and Palestinians together for lasting peace." Sanders, who is Jewish, in a statement "We all have a responsibility to speak out against anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and all forms of hatred and bigotry, especially as we see a spike in hate crimes in America. But like some of my colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus, I am concerned that the spotlight being put on Congresswoman Omar may put her at risk. We should be having a sound, respectful discussion about policy. You can both support Israel and be loyal to our country. I also believe there is a difference between criticism of policy or political leaders, and anti-Semitism. At the end of the day, we need a two-state solution and a commitment to peace, human rights, and democracy by all leaders in the region and a commitment by our country to help achieve that." Harris said in a statement. "We have a moral duty to combat hateful ideologies in our country and around the world and that included both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. In a democracy, we can and should have an open, respectful debate about the Middle East that focuses on policy. Branding criticism of Israel as automatically anti-Semitic has a chilling effect on our public discourse and makes it harder to achieve a peaceful solution between Israelis and Palestinians. Threats of violence like those made against Rep. Omar are never acceptable." Warren said in a statement Go deeper: Omar reignites anti-Semitism controversy in exchange with top House Dem Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told me today that if Israel does not limit its ties with China, the U.S. could reduce intelligence sharing and security cooperation. Why it matters: The U.S. has raised the topic of Chinese influence with Israel several times in the last months, but this is the most public stance that the Trump administration has taken on the issue. In the last few years, Prime Minister Netanyahu has led a diplomatic initiative to dramatically enhance trade with China. China has won several big infrastructure contracts in Israel, including one for a new sea port in Haifa where the U.S. Navy currently operates. Pompeo told me in an interview in Jerusalem Thursday that China presents economic opportunities for Israel, but also threats. "When China engages in spying through its commercial state-owned enterprises and presents risks through its technology systems, companies like Huawei, which present real risk to the people of Israel When those things happen, we want make sure that countries know about it, know the risks and then countries will make their own sovereign decisions." Pompeo said he raised the issue with Netanyahu and added he wanted to make sure Israel is wide-eyed about the threat from China. He stressed to Netanyahu: "If certain systems go in certain places, then America's efforts to work alongside you will be more difficult and in some cases we wont be able to do so." 2. Jay Inslee shows more cards in climate run Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee, who is running a climate-focused White House campaign, is sharing more of his thinking about his platform and approach as the Democratic primary race heats up. Why it matters: The Democratic party is debating the best method of tackling human-caused global warming and other climate problems, including whether to embrace the Green New Deal resolution fully or partially. Inslee also is signalling the ways in which he's closer to Sen. Elizabeth Warren's reformist view of capitalism than to the democratic socialism of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Where it stands: Inslee shared more of his thinking about his platform with reporters yesterday while in Washington, D.C., for an American Council on Renewable Energy event. He said a detailed platform is still weeks away, but offered some clues. 1. Inslee offered hints that his climate and energy platform won't be constructed around a single big idea analogous to Medicare for All. Instead look for a constellation of policies. 2. His comments on the filibuster suggest a lot of his platform will require legislation, not just administrative action. I dont believe you can really be serious about saying you are going to defeat climate change unless you realize that we need to have the filibuster go the way of history, he told reporters. 3. Inslee's basic jobs message is that what he's calling for is already happening the country just needs more of it. Ive got a shiny blue General Motors all-electric Bolt charging in my driveway made by American workers in Michigan. That is a pretty good vision for the United States, he said at the event. 4. Inslee places more emphasis on the role of the private sector than some advocates of the GND, although he praises the concept. My thought bubble: That sounds a lot like the rationale for policies like clean power targets that lots of states have imposed and federal lawmakers like Inslee, a former congressman who's worked on climate problems for decades have unsuccessfully pushed nationally. Go deeper New Zealand Police inadvertently charged the mosque terrorist attacks suspect with the murder of a person who is still alive, Kiwi news outlet Stuff first reported Thursday. Details: Police confirmed to Axios an error was made in the charging document prepared for the first court appearance of Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 28, the man charged with murder in relation to the Christchurch terrorist attacks, caused an incorrect victim name included in the charging document. What they're saying: "We have spoken with the person incorrectly named on the charging document and apologised," the police said to Axios in a statement. "The charge sheet will be amended. New Zealand Police regret this error and apologies for any harm caused by the mistake." Xi Jinping arrived in Italy today to sign a memorandum of understanding for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a development that has already drawn criticism from the U.S. The big picture: Washingtons frustration is understandable, but it plays right into Beijings hand. Publicly criticizing Italys decision gives unwarranted weight to vague documents that, like the BRI itself, overpromise and underdeliver. If anything, these memorandums of understanding (MOUs) highlight some of the BRIs biggest flaws: Weak terms : As Italys draft document notes: This Memorandum of Understanding does not constitute an international agreement which may lead to rights and obligations under international law. No provision of this Memorandum is to be understood and performed as a legal or financial obligation or commitment of the Parties. : As Italys draft document notes: This Memorandum of Understanding does not constitute an international agreement which may lead to rights and obligations under international law. No provision of this Memorandum is to be understood and performed as a legal or financial obligation or commitment of the Parties. Vague and generic promises: Chinese officials make a point of claiming that the BRI will be tailored to promote local development goals, but the MOUs use boilerplate language. Occasionally, a mention is made to link or align the BRI with a partners development plan, but how that will happen is not spelled out. Chinese officials make a point of claiming that the BRI will be tailored to promote local development goals, but the MOUs use boilerplate language. Occasionally, a mention is made to link or align the BRI with a partners development plan, but how that will happen is not spelled out. Narrow, typically bilateral scope: China is pushing to give the BRI a multilateral sheen, but in practice, it is a sea of bilateral deals. That way Beijing always gets to be the big party at the negotiating table. China is pushing to give the BRI a multilateral sheen, but in practice, it is a sea of bilateral deals. That way Beijing always gets to be the big party at the negotiating table. Diluted value: Chinese state media claim that cooperation documents have been signed with over 150 countries and international organizations, but participation is no guarantee of investment. The longer the list of BRI cooperation documents grows, the less signing them means. Between the lines: Rather than inflate the importance of these documents, U.S. officials should continue to focus on the BRIs specific failings. There are plenty to highlight lack of transparency, contributions to corruption, unsustainable debt, environmental damage, bias toward Chinese firms and many countries that have signed BRI cooperation documents have found the experience disappointing, even painful. The bottom line: Ultimately, nothing speaks louder than better alternatives. Consider the difference between a BRI MOU and a high-standard regional trade deal. The former is weak, vague and bilateral. The latter is legally binding, specific, multilateral and conspicuously absent from the U.S. economic playbook. Jonathan Hillman is director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The only president Kazakhstan has known since independence is stepping aside, though not really down. Expand chart Data: Axios research; Chart: Chris Canipe/Axios Nursultan Nazarbayev carved out a powerful position for himself, set in motion a transition that should protect his familys interests, and even had the capital city renamed in his honor a model exit for any aspiring autocrat. The big picture: With Nazarbayevs surprise announcement, Algerias Abdelaziz Bouteflika ending his re-election bid, and Sudans Omar al-Bashir wobbling in the face of mass protests, the time feels ripe to take a look at the current world leaders whove held power the longest. The 20 longest-serving leaders all represent countries considered not free by Freedom House. all represent countries considered not free by Freedom House. The top 23 are all men. It isnt until number 24 that we hit a free country, or a female leader Germanys Angela Merkel. It isnt until number 24 that we hit a free country, or a female leader Germanys Angela Merkel. Worth noting: Just below Putin in the rankings are Rwandas Paul Kagame (18 years), Syrias Bashar al-Assad (18) and Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan (16). Between the lines: As regular readers may have picked up on, Im fascinated by what Putins next move might be when he runs up against constitutional term limits in 2024. Theres speculation he might form a union with Belarus (whose president, Alexander Lukashenko, is also high on this list) and place himself in charge. Nazarbayev offers a different path, and one Putin will surely be watching closely. Simply ceding power wasn't an attractive option but, as Carnegie Moscow's Alexander Gabuev points out, "if you want to keep your loved ones free, alive and wealthy, dying in office isn't an option." Instead, Nazarbayev weakened the presidency and empowered the security council, which he still leads, then elevated his daughter to a powerful post second in line to the presidency. Gabuev cites Singapore's former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, as Nazarbayev's model. He made way for his son, Lee Hsien Loong, who is now 21st on our list after 14 years in power. In the Russian case, Alina Polyakova of Brookings argued recently that there is likely no successor who could guarantee the safety of Putin, his family and his assets. She expects some testing of public opinion through state TV ahead of whatever Putin's next move may be. Keir Giles of Chatham House thinks Putin almost certainly has a succession plan in mind already and predicts that Putinism will long outlast Putin. He warns: "Change in Russia is not always change, and it's certainly not always positive." Meanwhile, Africa is home to half of the 24 longest-serving leaders and 5 of the top 7. There are two major reasons Africas longtime leaders have been able to retain power, according to Council on Foreign Relations analysis: Military coups were once common as a means to seize power, with both [Equatorial Guinea's] Mbasogo and [Uganda's Yoweri] Museveni entering their presidencies this way. ... [T]here were 27 successful coups from 1970 to 1982, but only 12 from 2000 to 2012, and just the one against [Zimbabwes Robert] Mugabe since then. were once common as a means to seize power, with both [Equatorial Guinea's] Mbasogo and [Uganda's Yoweri] Museveni entering their presidencies this way. ... [T]here were 27 successful coups from 1970 to 1982, but only 12 from 2000 to 2012, and just the one against [Zimbabwes Robert] Mugabe since then. Leaders are increasingly securing longer terms through constitutional coups that allow for additional terms in office. This practice grew more frequent after 2000. Since then, at least 17 heads of state have tried to remain in power by tweaking their countries constitutions. Flashback: Eight years ago, before the Arab Spring, this would have been a considerably different list. Since then, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali have fallen not to mention Mugabe, Cuba's Fidel Castro and Angola's Jose Eduardo dos Santos. What to watch: There are a number of leaders not currently on our list who are working to ensure they join it. Notes on the list The Ethics Committee for High-Ranking Officials has found that the head of a supervisory body subordinate to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has violated rules of ethics set out in Armenias law on public service. In a statement this week the Committee said that by his activities Davit Sanasarian, the head of the State Oversight Service, did not contribute to the credibility of and respect towards his office and the body he represents. The Committee conducted a probe based on the application submitted by Yerevan State University Rector Aram Simonian, who insisted that Sanasarian made public statements that resulted in grave breaches of ethics rules. Sanasarian earlier stated that misappropriations worth over 800 million drams (about $1.6 million) had been found at the university headed by Simonian. A criminal case was launched last year in connection with alleged misappropriations. Simonian has been under pressure to resign since the change of government last year. He claims he is targeted because of his political affiliation as a member of the former ruling Republican Party of Armenia. The Ethics Committee for High-Ranking Officials found that Sanasarians public statement and social media post can be reasonably perceived and interpreted as a display of biased attitude and demonstration of force. State Oversight Service head Sanasarian told reporters after a government session on Thursday that he does not accept the Ethics Committees ruling and will appeal it in court. This probe should not have been launched in the first place, and secondly, there are no grounds for such a ruling, he said. With more than 1,700 projects worth $1 trillion, Chinas ambitious Belt and Road Initiative aims to positively impact 4.4 billion people, or 65 per cent of the worlds population that equals to 40 per cent of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Spanning across 70 countries in Asia, Europe, Africa, and Oceania region, the Belt and Road Initiative has been allocated over $340 billion in construction contracts secured by Chinese companies, said a report released ahead of Annual Investment Meeting (AIM), a premier international foreign direct investment-focused platform. This year's forum, which will be held from April 8 to 10 in Dubai, will focus on Mapping the Future of FDI: Enriching World Economies through Digital Globalisation'. It will put a spotlight on Chinas ambitious initiative through a full-day special forum, which will be held on the second day of the event. The AIM will provide participating high-ranking Chinese officials with an international platform to present the plans for the Belt and Road Initiative and to strengthen investor confidence on the same. In addition, the workshop will brief the business community worldwide with various investment opportunities running around the mega project. "The Belt and Road Initiative will pave the way for a stronger trade ties within Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. Targeted to be completed by 2049, the landmark project will bring about inclusive growth, spur unprecedented development, and enhance cooperation, trade, and investment worldwide," remarked Dawood Al Shezawi, CEO of Annual Investment Organising Committee. "AIM is founded based on these objectives too, thereby prompting us at the organising committee to host this special event this year to keep with our commitment to highlight investment opportunities around the world under the support of respective governments," stated Shezawi. During the forum, renowned keynote speakers will tackle various fundamental aspects of the project, he added. Shezawi said there will be four sessions which will focus on infrastructure development, new technologies, renewable energy, and agriculture and food security. While the Belt and Road Initiative will be a key topic at the upcoming AIM, it will also offer high-ranking policy makers, business leaders, regional and international investors, successful entrepreneurs, leading academics, and celebrated financial experts an opportunity to discuss best practices and economic issues of global importance.-TradeArabia News Service A parliament deputy who was until recently Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) leader Gagik Tsarukians chief bodyguard went on trial on Thursday on charges of violent assault. Eduard Babayan was arrested in July last year hours after a 50-year-old man in Yerevan was hospitalized with serious injuries. The latter claimed to have been beaten up at a compound of Armenias National Olympic Committee headed by Tsarukian. He said he was hit by Tsarukian before being repeatedly kicked and punched by Babayan and another person. Both Tsarukian and Babayan strongly denied the allegation. The burly bodyguard was charged even though his alleged victim, Vyacheslav Harutiunian, later retracted his incriminating testimony. Babayan was freed on bail in August. He was elected to the Armenian parliament on the BHK ticket in December. At the beginning of the trial Harutiunian again said that he did not consider himself to be a victim in the case. And Babayan again pleaded not guilty. I wasnt involved in any beating. I was not in that room. I was upstairs together with Tsarukian, he said. During the break in the court hearing Harutiunian told RFE/RLs Armenian Service that Babayan did not beat him. I am on very good terms with him Mr. Tsarukian and Eduard Babayan were not physically present [during the incident]. We had no argument, we are good friends, said Harutiunian, adding that he received his injuries after slipping and falling down. One of the witnesses in the case, a police officer who served at the National Olympic Committee compound, said that he did not see Babayan at that day despite his preliminary testimony read out by the prosecuting attorney in which he said that he saw Tsarukian enter the building together with his bodyguard. Armenian media have repeatedly implicated Tsarukians bodyguards -- and Babayan in particular -- in violence, including against opponents of former governments, in the past. The BHK leader, who is also one of the countrys richest men, always denied those claims. In a police video released in July, Babayans alleged victim said that he was attacked after imploring Tsarukian to help ensure that Armenian law-enforcement authorities withdraw an international arrest warrant issued for his son accused of draft evasion. The young man is a boxer and Russian national who was told to serve in Armenias armed forces after receiving Armenian citizenship in order to compete for the South Caucasus country in international tournaments. By Trend President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has met with President of Montenegro Milo Dukanovic. The Montenegrin President thanked President Ilham Aliyev for inviting him to the 7th Global Baku Forum, and the excellent organization of the event. He described the event as one of the important platforms for discussing international issues. The Montenegrin President hailed relations with Azerbaijan, saying the jointly implemented projects are indicative of the development of bilateral ties between the two countries. President Ilham Aliyev underlined very close political and economic relations, and praised the successful implementation of joint projects between Azerbaijan and Montenegro. The head of state hailed Montenegros participation in the meeting of the Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council, saying that this project will bring the two countries closer to each other. President Ilham Aliyev also pointed to the implementation of various transport projects in Azerbaijan. The head of state noted that coordination of Azerbaijans transport system with European countries and particularly the launch of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway also create ample opportunities for cooperation between the two countries. The President pointed out great potential and prospects for the development of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Montenegro in tourism, gas and transport areas. President Milo Dukanovic noted that Montenegro considers Azerbaijan as a friendly country, and hails President Ilham Aliyevs support for the development of relations between the two countries. President Ilham Aliyev also expressed Azerbaijans great respect for Montenegro, saying the country attaches great importance to its relations with Montenegro. The sides also discussed the strengthening of the legal and treaty base, and development of other areas between the two countries. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Trend: President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on March 20 sent a congratulatory letter to President of Kazakhstan Kasym-Jomart Tokayev, Trend reports with reference to the press service of the head of state. Trend: The Azerbaijani President`s Assistant for Public and Political Affairs Ali Hasanov has described Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan as the fraternal countries that share common history, culture and traditions. After independence was gained these traditional relations were maintained and even developed through efforts of national leader of the Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev and leader of the Kazakh people Nursultan Nazarbayev, Ali Hasanov told the special correspondent of Kazinform news agency, Trend reported. We can say unambiguously that Nursultan Nazarbayev has played a decisive role in all positive changes in the public, political, socio-economic and cultural life of Kazakhstan in the past 30 years. It is thanks to his wise policy that Kazakhstan has grown into an influential player of international politics and an industrial state aiming to become one of the world`s rapidly developing and leading economies. Nursultan Nazarbayev`s entire activity is dedicated to ensuring his people`s well-being. He is an outstanding political figure of not only the Kazakh people, but also the Turkic-Muslim world. So we are confident that Nursultan Nazarbayev`s decision will be a positive step in the fate of the Kazakh people. Azerbaijan believes that this will ensure prosperous future of the Kazakh people. The Azerbaijani government will certainly remain committed to its path of friendship and partnership with Kazakhstan and its newly-forming official bodies, Ali Hasanov added. Trend: Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship of the Republic of Argentine Jorge Faurie within his visit to Argentine, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. Minister Elmar Mammadyarov expressing congratulations to his counterpart for successfully hosting the UN High-level Conference on South-South Cooperation in Buenos-Aires stressed the importance that Azerbaijan attaches to the cooperation within this platform. Minister Mammadyarov noted that the developing countries face with the similar development problems and therefore, this platform contributes to sharing and discussing the common views, experiences and methods of national development strategies and priorities. At the meeting, exchange of views was held on the current situation of the Azerbaijan-Argentine bilateral relations and the issues of the cooperation agenda. Noting the existing wide prospects for cooperation in the fields of agriculture, energy, transport, health and tourism, common intention for strengthening the joint efforts were expressed. Noting that he was following the prominent achievements of Azerbaijan in the socio-economic sphere after the restoration of its independence, Minister Faurie expressed his willingness to visit Azerbaijan. By Leman Mammadova Azerbaijan and Algeria, two hydrocarbon rich countries, will explore opportunities for cooperation in the field of energy. SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev met with a delegation led by the Executive Director of the Algerian Sonatrach Oil and Gas Company, Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour on March 16. At the meeting, it was noted that the activities of SOCAR and Sonatrach in the international scale create the basis for closer cooperation between the two companies. SOCAR, the global brand of Azerbaijan, carries out operations and investment projects for the whole value chain of the oil and gas industry in different parts of the world. Sonatrach recently expanded its international operations and invested in various countries, including the Mediterranean basin, and intends to further expand its operations in international markets. Thus, both companies will explore the potential for cooperation in various fields of activity, including production, trade, research and development, as well as training highly-qualified specialists. The State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) is one of the world's 50 largest oil companies. SOCAR's mission is to ensure the energy security of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Established in 1992, SOCAR aimed at manage Azerbaijan's oil resources on the basis of a single state policy, to improve the management structure of the oil industry and to ensure the development of fuel and energy complex. Three production divisions, one oil refineries and one gas processing plant, a deep water platform fabrication yard, two trusts, one institution, and 23 subdivisions are operating as corporate entities under SOCAR. SOCAR has a significant position in a number of regional and international energy projects. Currently, SOCAR is the only producer of oil products in the country, and also operates more than 370 filling stations in Switzerland, Georgia, Romania and Ukraine. Sonatrach is an Algerian government-owned company formed to explore the hydrocarbon resources of the country. It has some concessions in Libya, Mauritania, Peru, Yemen and Venezuela. Its diversified activities cover all aspects of production: exploration, extraction, transport, and refining. It has diversified into petrochemistry and the desalination of seawater. Azerbaijan-Algeria relations are successfully developing, and both countries cooperate effectively within a variety of international organizations. There are good opportunities for development of bilateral relationship in all spheres in the future. Algeria recognized independence of Azerbaijan in1991. Diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Algeria were established in April 1994. Algerias diplomatic mission has been operating in Baku since 2015. An agreement on extradition has been signed during Algerias Minister of Justice Tayeb Louhs visit to Azerbaijan in July and it is considered the first intergovernmental agreement between the two states. --- Leman Mammadova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @leman_888 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz Trend: Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR is welcome to take part in construction of Albanian gas infrastructure, Albanian Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy told Trend. In this regard, the ministry said that the Master Plan on the Gasification of Albania was approved by the Council of Ministers by Decision no. 87, dated 14.02.2018. "In accordance with this Master Plan several gas infrastructure projects are developing. Among the important projects is also the gas pipeline project that will link the TAP project with TPP Vlora," said the ministry, adding that companies that will apply for the concession reconstruction and operation of TEC Vlora, are expected to show interest in financing this project. Based on the application of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy in the 20th round of the WBIF, a grant of 1.1 million euro was approved for the preparation of the detailed technical design for the pipeline connecting the TAP project with TPP in Vlora, said the ministry. "Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR is welcome to participate in the construction and operation of gas infrastructure, as well as in the gas supply of the various sectors of the Albanian economy," said the ministry. Based on the Gas Master Plan, as well as on the "National Energy Strategy for the period 2018-2030", the development of the gas sector will be a strategic priority, according to Albanian ministry. Head of SOCAR Balkan Murad Heydarov earlier told Trend that SOCAR is considering various forms of participation in Albanias gasification. "Albanian government has approved the results of the feasibility study of the master plan for this countrys gasification. The process of contractor selection will begin soon. SOCAR Balkan is considering different forms of participation in this process," he said. Heydarov added that at the same time, the company plans to carry out a detailed engineering design of the pipeline between the cities of Fier (Trans Adriatic Pipeline compressor Station (TAP) in Albania) and Vlora. --- Trend: The number of tours from Russia to Azerbaijan in 2018 increased by two percent, the Analytical Agency TurStat told Trend. According to the report, the number of tours increased to 748 thousand. According to the rating of countries visited by Russian tourists in 2018, presented by the agency, Azerbaijan ranked 17th among foreign countries. Khalil Al Hashimi the pioneer in sculpture and the winner of the Merit Award at the first Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs Exhibition in Bahrain, is joining the artists at On the Wall 2019, a dedicated event to promote Bahrain Artists to a wider audience which is being held as part of this year's Interiors Expo. The biggest integrated business-to-business showcase for the interiors sector in the Northern Gulf region, Interiors Expo 2019 will be held under the patronage of HRH Prince Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bahrain from April 23 to 25 at the Bahrain International Exhibition Centre, said the event organisers Hilal Conferences and Exhibitions (HCE). Al Hashimi holds a Master degree in Sculpture from the Academy of fine arts, Leningrad, Russia. His works have been exhibited internationally and across the Gulf region. His career spanning more than three decades has earned him several awards, leading to the GCC presenting him with a recognition award for his great contribution towards the visual arts, said the organisers. Al Hashimi's vision seems to transform the nonphysical into the physical, which often includes being able to reduce an idea to its bare elements. He is known for doing this with his iconic bird sculptures, transporting us from the material to the ethereal. The elegance of composition and superior craftsmanship make his works seem graceful and almost floating, despite being made of heavy materials like stone or metal, it stated. Along with Khalil Al Hashimi there will be 30 other artists from Bahrain and the GCC; who will be on display at On the Wall 2. The Art show will have artists displaying their talents across a variety of mediums, including painting, photography and sculpture. Some of the Artists will run a series of workshops on Calligraphy and Live Painting and Creativity sessions, said the HCE in its statement. Interiors Expo is strategically sponsored by Hempel Paints and Tamkeen serves as the supporting organisation for the event, it added.-TradeArabia News Service Saudi International Petrochemical Company (Sipchem) has sponsored the 5th Al Ahsa Investment Forum 2019, which highlighted Al Ahsa region's investment opportunities. The two-day event concluded today (March 21) at the Al Ahsa InterContinental, Al-Hofuf. The forum was held under the patronage of HRH Prince Saud bin Naif bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Governor of eastern region, and with the attendance of a number of ministers headed by the Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources and the Minister of Commerce and Investment in addition to the Governor of the Saudi Arabian General Investment (Sagia) and many decision makers, academics and Saudi and foreign businessmen. The forum is considered as a platform for dialogue, interaction and cooperation between the political and economic decision makers on one hand and the private sectors pioneers, exerts and academics on the other. The event was aimed at shedding the light on the comparative features of Al Ahsa investment environment by highlighting its outstanding success elements with a summary of the various investment opportunities in the public and private sectors. Engineer Abdullah Al-Sadoun, president of shared services in Sipchem, said: Our sponsorship of this forum is reflecting its realisation of its role in encouraging all aspects of investments; industrial, touristic or cultural. Al Ahsa is one of the important and featured regions because of its distinguished geographic location, and young and creative well-trained workforce, he added. The forum this year is distinguished by holding seven dialogue sessions and workshops. The first day is dedicated to shed the light on the investment opportunities and privatization in the field of energy, the future career opportunities in Saudi Arabia and major promising projects in the kingdom. The second day held a special sessions on the evaluation and assessment of innovation followed by other sessions on the industrial revolution, the investment environment and the most encouraging investment elements in addition to discussing ideas and initiatives in the agricultural field and selecting Al Ahsa as the capital of Arabian tourism for the year 2019, and finally the future of the international economy, it stated. TradeArabia News Service Images Sorry, there are no recent results for popular images. John Cox can be reached at 661-395-7404. Follow him on Twitter: @TheThirdGraf. Sign up at Bakersfield.com for free newsletters about local business. Iveco, a top Italian industrial vehicle manufacturing company with a major presence in the region, said it has appointed Koray Kursunoglu as the head of the high growth markets of Asia, Middle East and Africa (MEA). The company based in Turin, Italy, is a brand of CNH Industrial NV, a global leader in Capital Goods. Iveco designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of light, medium and heavy commercial vehicles, off-road trucks, and vehicles for applications such as off-road missions. Kursunoglu has been assigned responsibility for High Growth Markets Asia, Middle East & Africa (AMEA) for the Iveco Brand. This is a new role created as a result of parent Company CNH Industrials launch of a new organisational structure. It is aimed at becoming more customer centric, entrepreneurial, lean, agile and innovative. He brings with him an extensive experience gained in the Asia Pacific region to his new post. This includes his previous role as Iveco Business Director for South East Asia, Pakistan and Japan, held since 2014. Prior to this, he held the position of head of sales for Turkey, responsible for light, medium and heavy commercial vehicles as well as after sales. Kursunoglu joined CNH Industrial in 2007 in the Iveco Business Development and New Markets function bringing a breadth of experience in sales and marketing. In the following years, he covered different roles of increasing responsibility for operations in Russia and CIS countries, including sales and after sales. I am looking forward to the challenge of strengthening Ivecos brand presence in the region and growing our commercial vehicles business in these highly dynamic markets, stated Kursunoglu. The brands wide range of products include the Daily, a vehicle that covers the 3.3 7.2 ton vehicle weight segment, the Eurocargo from 6 19 tons, the Trakker (dedicated to off-road missions) and the Stralis, both over 16 tonne. In addition, the Iveco Astra brand builds off-road trucks, rigid and articulated dumpers as well as special vehicles.-TradeArabia News Service Lots of Whales, Gooey Waves, Glowing Beaches, Glass Floats: Oregon Coast Spring Break 2019 Published 03/19/2019 at 8:13 PM PDT By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff (Oregon Coast) This spring break is chock full of action along the Oregon coast, with some gnarly monster waves starting things off, the SOLVE Oregon Beach Cleanup on Saturday, Whale Watch Week, and some other trippy things to look for. Its a week full of surprises awaiting the spring breaker. Oregon Coast Whales Report: Stellar weather means mucho whale sightings, and theres been plenty of that lately. Whale sightings have been high along the coastline, according to experts and the online reports of sightings have been abuzz. The beginning of the spring break wont be good for whales, however. Large waves roll in on Friday and Saturday, sometimes as high as nearly 20 feet. This hides them from view. Wave height and inclement weather backs off starting Sunday, which should mean good whale watching over the weekdays of spring break. Something to keep an eye out for is the presence of Orcas. Theyd been spotted a few times a little over a week ago, and the general consensus among scientists is that they were headed for the mouth of the Columbia River. They have not been spotted there yet, it seems. However, gray whale sightings around Astoria have been astounding lately. Glowing Sand. Last week there were lots of reports lately of extremely foamy waves on the coast, which is often a sign of enormous blooms of phytoplankton. If theres lots of phytoplankton, theres a good chance youll get the kind that glows too, creating a thing referred to as glowing sand. Locals in Rockaway Beach refer to it as star stompin. What youll see are tiny, bluish-green sparks in the wet sand when youre walking on it. Youll need an extremely dark beach with no light interference from lights or from the moon, and rub your feet backwards in the wet sand near the tideline. Much of the time its incredibly faint. It shows up maybe about a quarter of the time. All this comes from a form of phytoplankton called dinoflagellates part of the family of microscopic plants that form the bottom of the food chain for marine life. These dinoflagellates are bioluminescent, meaning they give off a glow when disturbed or bumped, just like fireflies. Its sometimes referred to as phosphorescence but that is not correct. Thats a purely chemical thing from inanimate objects: bioluminescence works inside living creatures and is biochemical. When a lot of brown waves or sea foam shows up, this is a signal they could well be around. Weird Brown Waves of Seaside. With lots of rain coming, this could well be spotted over spring break. It tends to alarm people, but the globby, brown and even sometimes sludgy-looking waves are just an excess of diatoms, another form of phytoplankton. Its actually a good thing a sign of a very healthy ocean. Its freaky-looking, but its cool when you know what it is. 300 Extra Glass Floats in Lincoln City. If you love a treasure hunt, Lincoln City has quite the challenge. For the spring break weeks from March 23 through April 7 they will be dropping 300 extra glass floats. These are hidden away in the early morning, usually closer to the vegetation line. See oregoncoast.org for more. For Lodging: Make your reservations now. Many hotels and rental agencies are already booked up. Oregon Coast Beach Connection will publish an availability report for the crossover weekend between the two spring breaks at the end of the month, which is the busiest weekend. Oregon Coast Lodgings for this event - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours Below: microscope view of a glowing dinoflagellate. More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted Golden Gate (GG Developers SPC), a growing real estate development company in Bahrain, has acquired the necessary licences for its operations following its compliance with the standards set by the kingdoms Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA). Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, chief executive officer of RERA, said that the authority is continuing to issue the necessary licences to developers of off-plan sales developments based on Law 27 of 2017. RERA is assisting developers and other key stakeholders in the real estate sector to ensure compliance with the law. Speaking at the presentation of the off-plan sale development licence to Golden Gate board members, he said: I would like to congratulate all the parties involved in the Golden Gate project which represents a significant new chapter of collaboration between Bahrain and India and will stimulate further foreign investment in the kingdom. We welcome such international partnerships and wish you every success with this major project. RERA has granted Golden Gate two licences: a RERA developers licence, which is required for auditing and qualifying developers, and a RERA off-plan sale development licence, which allows the companys (Golden Gate) project at Bahrain Bay to be developed. Golden Gate, a 140,000-sq-m project in the heart of Bahrain Bay, has 746 apartments spread over two 53-storey and 45-storey towers. The project is expected to be the tallest residential structure in the kingdom. It offers parking spaces for 999 cars spread over seven floors. Chairman and board member of Golden Gate Ishaq Al-Kooheji explained that the award of these two licences together is a result of the cooperation between the company and RERA. We are keen on continuing to work with RERA in order to achieve our common goals and make strides in the development of the kingdoms real estate sector and to promote economic growth and investment in Bahrain, stated Al Kooheji. Golden Gate has met the requirements for these two licences as a result of its full compliance with the new standards set by RERA which are in line with international best practice in the field of real estate development. The company is committed to implementing all laws and regulations related to real estate development, said board members from Ajmera and Mayfair, two well-known real estate developers from India, who are joint venture partners with Golden Gate. Vice president of sales and marketing, Eman Al Mannai, pointed out that the project has met the requirements of establishing the off-plan sales register which enables the developer to sell the units before the completion of construction. This includes the right of the buyer to register their name in the off-plan sale register which is maintained by SLRB. The register will list additional information such as the area of the unit, its value and the number of stage payments, she explained. The Golden Gate project has been receiving keen interest from local and international investors. Golden Gate aims to further enhance its presence in the kingdoms real estate market, move ahead with the Golden Gate project, and meet the expectations of RERA and partners, she said. - TradeArabia News Service CHICAGO Youve had beer. Maybe even enjoyed it. But you havent indulged in beer until youve indulged in beer: a 98-degree bath filled with hops, yeast, herbs and, yes, beer. The beer soak, as it is called at Piva Beer Spa, is a transcendental moment in a day of beer-fueled relaxation. It dazzles every sense: the warmth of the water, the wafting herbal-floral aroma, the cool 16 ounces of Pilsner Urquell sitting at your side, providing a refreshing counterpoint to the soak. Piva Beer Spa piva means beer in many Slavic languages offers an array of treatments, from facials to massage to a salt chamber meant to vitalize the respiratory system. But the highlight is undoubtedly the beer soak. It happens in one of eight larch wood tubs in the basement of the spa that opened late last year in Noble Square. The soak is included in four different packages, available for singles and couples, ranging in price from $155 to $550. Father-and-son founders Edin and Dino Sarancic launched Piva Beer Spa based simply on what they perceived as a hole in the market for a concept not uncommon in Europe. A handful of American spas claim to do beer treatments, usually invoking beer as an ingredient in a scrub or a facial. Piva is one of the few to go all in, just as youd find in, say, Prague. Beer purportedly lends hydration and acts as an antioxidant for skin and hair. But mostly, its a novel getaway in the middle of Chicago. Piva Beer Spa Where: 1052 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago Cost: Packages, available for singles and couples, range in price from $155 to $550. Salt room is $35 for 45 minutes and massage ranges between $45 and $120, depending on length; available a la carte. Information: 773-570-9280, pivabeerspa.com See More Collapse I booked a platinum package at Piva Beer Spa one chilly Monday afternoon. It was supposed to last three hours and 15 minutes but stretched closer to four hours (at no extra charge). Dino Sarancic, burly and with a shaved head, greeted me from behind the counter as sounds of plucked acoustic guitar filled the spa. Its not a large space, but enough has been squeezed in for a getaway: a gleaming new steam room, a handsome sauna, a couple of rooms for massage, four soaking rooms (two tubs in each) and small changing rooms. Sarancic pointed to a sliding wood door. Behind it, he said, I would begin my day in the halotherapy room. He slid the door open to reveal a long narrow room, all white, but tinged violet from lights in the ceiling. A handful of reclining chairs were lined up on top of a couple inches of salt spread across the floor. A machine on the wall pumped light, salty mist into the air. After a quick change from street clothes into Pivas spa gear a blue cotton waffle robe and plastic shower shoes it was off to that salt chamber for 45 minutes. My busy 21st-century brain defaulted to the obvious question: Should I bring my phone? What will I do for 45 minutes if not checking Twitter?! I resisted the impulse. (Sarancic said many people dont resist, and he doesnt judge. Its whatever you want to do, he said.) The salt room was warm and comforting and only modestly salty. As I reclined in the violet haze, I could feel a light saltiness on my lips. The most memorable sensation was squishing my feet in the salt spilled across the floor like sand, but cleaner and finer. I closed my eyes and nearly dozed off amid the gentle hum of the salt machine. I didnt miss my phone for a moment. Next was the steam room for 15 minutes. Then the sauna for another 15. Then the highlight: the beer soak. Piva Beer Spa doesnt say exactly how much beer is mixed into the tub a six-pack? 12-pack? A case? but Sarancic pegs it as about 15 to 20 percent of the warm mixture. So, no, its not a pure beer bath. Its a fine balance between having the hydrating and antioxidant component, but not enough to make people feel sticky and nasty when they leave here, Sarancic said. The beer? That he will reveal. Although father and son investigated partnering with a brewery from Chicagos booming craft beer industry, they wound up aiming to replicate the Czech experience by employing that countrys most famous export: Pilsner Urquell. The spa technician led me to the lower level, where the CTAs Blue Line rumbled by every 10 or so minutes on the other side of the wall a reminder that the city continued to stir. The soaking tub waited on the other side of the wood door, filled with gray-green water where hops floated on the surface. Beside the tub was a plate of nibbles: apple slices, two kinds of cheese (asiago and brie), dark rye bread and green olives. It was a delightful surprise, but the most delightful surprise of all was that glass of Pilsner Urquell, in a wood mug imported from Europe. I slid in and deeply inhaled the herbal-floral mix. Then sipped the beer and nibbled the cheese. And repeat. The 45 minutes ended far too soon. Next it was back upstairs for the relaxation room and application of a beer mask. The bed, oddly enough, was a wooden slat covered in hay similar to what youd find in Eastern Europe, Dino Sarancic said. It was blissfully comfortable rustic, yet cozy. The spa technician covered my eyes and began dabbing a paste on my face made in the Czech Republic that, sure enough, features beer in the mix. Finally came the full body massage. It was Edin Sarancic who had the idea to create a beer spa in Chicago after experiencing one in Prague. Father and son spent three years creating it, during which it seemed all the more appropriate as Chicago grew into one of the nations brewing capitals. That was kind of a plus and a validation for us, Dino Sarancic said. After nearly four hours at Piva Beer Spa, I had no idea how much of a difference the beer made in the experience: the soak, the mask, the 16 ounces. But I left with unmistakable satisfaction warm, loose and a touch woozy and quite pleased to be at that warm intersection of deep-muscle relaxation and beer. The Southeast Texas Regional Planning Commission wants your household hazardous waste and scrap tires. The group is planning a free collection event from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Silsbee High School parking lot at 1575 Highway 96 North. "It's not acceptable to throw batteries, paint or other hazardous waste in a trash can," SETRPC Executive Director Shanna Burke said in a news release from the commission. "Once these items get to the landfill they release pollutants which can contribute to poor air quality." Items the commission is accepting include paints, cleaners, antifreeze, car batteries, used oil, insecticides and swimming pool chemicals. Scrap tires will also be collected during the event, but only participants' first eight are free. After that, each tire will cost $1 and oversized tires aren't accepted. For more information, contact Bob Dickinson at 409-899-8444 ext. 7520. Behind the forced expropriations the army has adduced national security issues. However, more than half of the land has been used to develop settlements or roads for the benefit of Jewish settlers over time. The owners have never been compensated. The Netanyahu government has accelerated the expansion policy. Jerusalem (AsiaNews) - In the last 50 years, Israel has expropriated over 10 thousand hectares of land originally belonging to the Palestinians, claiming issues related to national security; however, almost half of the land was granted to Jewish settlers in the West Bank. This is what emerges from a report recently published by Kerem Navot, an Israeli non-governmental organization that monitored the growth of settlements and the expropriation operations promoted by the government in the West Bank between 1969 and 2014. According to activists, about 47% of the land requisitioned using laws and regulations that fall under the category of "urgent military needs" are used today for settlements or as access roads to settlements. Some of these, at first, were used for military infrastructure or army depots. Over the years, buildings and land were granted in usufruct to settlers. The settlements are communities inhabited by Israeli civilians and military and built in the territories conquered by Israel after the Six-Day War of June 1967, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip. In 1979, Israel withdrew from settlements in Sinai after signing the peace agreement with Egypt, and in 2005 the then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the dismantling of 17 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. Currently the colonies - illegal under international law - are located in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. According to data from the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, those recognized in the West Bank are at least 133 - in addition to a hundred outposts - and host about 500,000 people. In East Jerusalem there are about 300,000 Israelis and 20,000 in the Golan Heights. Interviewed by the AFP, Israeli military leaders say they are not aware of the report, but that it "will be studied by the competent authorities". The author of the research, Dror Etkes, explains that the first wave of settlements took place under a Labor-led government, considered moderate, between 1967 and 1977. At that time, the researcher added,"the concept of land seizure" which then went to the settlers began to gain ground. The peak would have occurred between 1979 and 1983, with the Likud [current ruling party] in power in the country. International and humanitarian law provides that these land expropriations are temporary and that the owners are adequately compensated. None of this has ever happened and the practice has continued to be used over time, undergoing a further acceleration in the last period. In fact, under the Netanyahu government, there has been a considerable increase. In recent years the number has increased by 20%, a consequence also of the interruption of peace talks in 2014 and the subsequent escalation of violence, before which the inertia (or impotence) of the international community has proved increasingly evident. Wood has been awarded a $34 million contract from RH energytrans to construct 28 miles of new pipeline designed to carry natural gas from Pennsylvania to Ohio. Awarded through a competitive tender process, Woods scope also includes the construction of the North Kingsville meter station in Ashtabula County, Ohio. The project is underway and is expected to be completed in Summer 2019. Andrew Stewart, CEO of Woods Asset Solutions Americas business, said: Were delighted to be playing a key role in this strategic project, helping to support the supply of domestic energy to Northeast Ohio communities and industries who have had limited access to natural gas sources. This award strengthens our leading position in the North America market, where we have the largest and most vertically integrated pipeline project offering. We will fully leverage our broad capability to deliver this project, bringing together the strength of Woods expertise to maximize value for our customer. Wood provided the initial technical, environmental consulting and engineering services on this project. We now look forward to progressing that support to the construction phase. The Risberg pipeline will connect to approximately 32 miles of existing pipeline, originating in the Meadville, Pennsylvania area, extending in a northwest direction and terminating at the North Kingsville Meter Station. Approximately 16 miles of new pipeline will be installed in Pennsylvania and 12 miles in Ohio. - TradeArabia News Service President Trump has a point when he complains that he is the victim of "presidential harassment" or even, "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!" "After more than two years of Presidential Harassment, the only things that have been proven is that Democrats and others broke the law," Trump tweeted on March 3. "Presidential Harassment by 'crazed' Democrats at the highest level in the history of our Country," he added later. "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT! It should never be allowed to happen again!" he tweeted Feb. 7. Trump's adversaries, of course, dismiss his protests as self-interested whining. But he is in fact the target of an extraordinary combination of not just federal law enforcement and congressional probes, but a long list of less-discussed but potentially consequential investigations by state and local prosecutors and regulators. > > INTRODUCTION: Meet Byron York Together, it adds up to a pile-on of unprecedented proportions by and large the work of blue-state Democrats who stand to gain politically if their investigations succeed in crippling the president. Recently the New York State Department of Financial Services, the agency that regulates the insurance business, issued what The New York Times called an "expansive subpoena" to Aon, the insurance broker for the president's companies. The agency leaped into action after former Trump fixer Michael Cohen told the House that Trump had at some point inflated his assets to an insurance company. Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress and faces questions about the truthfulness of his latest testimony, supplied no details. Overkill None were needed. "The subpoena that was served on Aon contains no indication that the company or any of its employees engaged in misconduct," the Times reported. "Nor does it specify any possible wrongdoing that is the focus of the inquiry by state regulators." The subpoena demanded "a broad range of materials" related to Trump's dealings with Aon going back a decade, the Times said. Also in New York, the State Department of Taxation and Finance announced last October that it is investigating Trump's taxes going back at least 20 years. Speaking of state law enforcement, the recent New York attorney general race was virtually acontest to see which candidate could vow to go after Trump the most aggressively. In her victory speech, new AG Letitia James said of Trump, "I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn." Outside of New York, the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia are suing Trump, accusing him of violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Then there is the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, based in Manhattan. Prosecutors there are said to be investigating the Trump Organization's finances, the funding of the Trump inauguration, and the funding of the Trump super PAC Rebuilding America Now. The SDNY investigations hold a large place in the hopes of Trump opponents who fear Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller might deliver an underwhelming report that does not make the case that Trump colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election or that he obstructed justice in the aftermath. Does there seem something odd about that? In a recent email exchange, I asked Andrew Coan, a University of Arizona law professor, who is the author of the book "Prosecuting the President," whether there is precedent for a U.S. attorney's office conducting a wide-ranging, open-ended investigation of a sitting president. "The short answer is no," Coan responded. "I am aware of no comparable prior investigation." More obsession On Capitol Hill, Democrats have long viewed Trump's tax returns his refusal to release them broke 40 years of precedent as a sort of Holy Grail of Trump investigations. The House Ways and Means Committee will reportedly ask the Treasury Department to turn over the returns. Beyond that, there is the House Judiciary Committee's recent decision to demand documents from 81 people associated with Trump a request so wide-ranging that even some Democrats worry that their party's investigators have overreached. The point is, the scrutiny directed at the president from all sides not oversight of his administration or even investigations into his election so far exceeds anything in the past that it could well qualify as presidential harassment. Democrats would no doubt respond that Trump is singularly corrupt, or that he brought it all on himself. He did not. What has happened is that Democrats, in Congress and in some key blue states, saw investigation as a way to weaken a president they never thought would be elected and want to ensure is not re-elected in 2020. And Trump, with the most extensive business history ever brought to the presidency, presented a lot of avenues of investigation. When he complains about harassment, he has a legitimate case to make. Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner. His future columns will run on Fridays in The Enterprise. There are several players in the outpatient surgery space interested in ASCs. "For many years we saw buying almost exclusively by national ASC management companies that would partner with independent physicians who had created significant value in their ASCs," wrote Jon Vick, President of ASCs Inc., in a recent Becker's ASC Review article. "Today we see strong demand also coming from private equity (PE) firms, as well as payers and healthcare systems that recognize the value that surgery centers can add to their businesses." Six trends in ASC mergers and acquisitions: 1. ASC companies are expanding their portfolios. Around 72 percent of the 5,500 ASCs in the U.S. are independent or physician-owned, according to the VMG Health Intellimarker. ASC companies including AmSurg, United Surgical Partners International, Surgical Care Affiliates, Surgery Partners and SurgCenter Development, along with other chains, have around 1,550 centers and many plan additional acquisitions over the next year. For example, Surgery Partners disclosed it has $80 million to $100 million budgeted for acquisitions in 2019. SurgCenter Development has also been active, adding five de novo facilities this year so far, and the company reported 16 ASCs in development earlier this month. 2. In January 2018, Medical Facilities Corp. entered into a joint venture with NueHealth and acquired seven ASCs from Meridian Surgical Partners for $46.5 million. MFC owns the majority of the joint venture company, called MFC Nueterra Holding Company. Other recent consolidation in the industry includes Surgery Partners' acquisition of National Surgical Healthcare in 2017 from Irving Place Capital for around $760 million. At the same time, Bain Capital Private Equity purchased 54 percent stake in Surgery Partners. 3. Private equity is moving into the space, both acquiring ASC companies such as KKR's acquisition of Envision / AmSurg for $9.9 billion and individual centers. In 2016, Kelso & Company also acquired Physicians Endoscopy, a company with more than 60 GI centers and 600-plus partnering gastroenterologists, from Pamlico Capital. 4. Private equity firms are also acquiring specialty physician practices and ASCs, with a focus on ophthalmology, gastroenterology and orthopedics. Recent transactions and partnerships include Frazier Healthcare Partners acquiring Atlanta Gastroenterology and forming United Digestive in December. The month before, Waud Capital partnered with Digestive Disease Consultants and created The GI Alliance, a gastroenterology practice management company. "To realize the maximum value, centers must meet each individual buyer's criteria, which usually includes being in-network with the major payers for most cases, having multiple younger physician-partners, or partners close to retirement with succession plans in place, and growth opportunities," wrote Mr. Vick. "Strong acquisition candidates should have well-documented growth strategies, be in a desirable geographic location, have a facility that is in excellent physical condition, and that have resolved major operational or legal issues before going to market." 5. Specialty chains are also making key acquisitions, according to information compiled by Physicians First Healthcare Partners. The transactions include CEI Vision Partners' recent acquisition of several ophthalmology practices in Ohio and Virginia Eye Consultants this year, which includes 11 ophthalmologists and four clinical locations in addition to an ASC. CEI Vision Partners is backed by Revelstoke Capital Partners. Other firms have followed similar trajectories, including Waud Capital Partners-backed Unifeye Vision Partners, which operates a network of 51 ophthalmology and optometry providers. Founded in 2017, the company has made three acquisitions and includes centers in Minnesota and California. One more example is Century Vision Global, a long-term investor focused on eye practices and ASCs. Although not a private equity firm, CVG's parent company is Eli Global and it seeks to grow organically and through acquisitions. 6. Payers are also acquiring centers and partnering with ASC companies. OptumCare, a UnitedHealthcare company, acquired Surgical Care Affiliates and its 210 surgical facilities in 2017 for $2.3 billion. Surgery Partners also sees payer partnerships in the future, as CEO Wayne DeVeydt reported the company is in talks with a "named payer" that could lead to a joint venture facility; the company has begun recruiting physicians for potential de novo centers as part of the partnership. Although not an acquisition, SurgCenter Development partnered with Humana earlier this year for 100 of its centers to join the payer's national provider network. The partnership will include access to outpatient total joint replacements at SurgCenter Development facilities. Messe Frankfurt Middle East, the regional arm of international trade show and conference organiser Messe Frankfurt, has announced plans to launch a new exhibition targeting the wider Middle East, African, and Central Asian markets. Interior Lifestyle Middle East will debut in March 2020 in Dubai, offering a holistic platform for exhibitors to showcase mid to high-end consumer goods, specifically oriented toward the giving and dining segments, and targeting thousands of retail and corporate buyers across the region. The annual three-day event will run alongside the Messe Frankfurt Middle East-organised Paperworld Middle East, the regions premier trade platform for paper, stationery and office supplies. The two shows will take place at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. Simon Mellor, the CEO of Messe Frankfurt Middle East, said Interior Lifestyle Middle East will leverage the existing synergies of Paperworld Middle East, where around a quarter of the 7,000 plus visitors expressed an interest in purchasing gift articles already in 2018. Interior Lifestyle Middle East will cater to a vital niche in the market for mid to high-end consumer and lifestyle goods, especially gift articles and dining products and accessories, said Mellor. With a considerable segment of Paperworld Middle East trade buyers also on the lookout for gift articles, Interior Lifestyle Middle East will run concurrently with Paperworld Middle East in order to meet their requirements and build on common synergies of the two shows. Interior Lifestyle Middle East 2020 will make its debut in a Middle East and African (MEA) market where demand for dining items such as glassware, tableware and household utensils, continues to rise. According to analysts Euromonitor International (EMI), the retail value of the MEA dining market was $1.8 billion in 2018, comprising beverageware ($719 million), cutlery ($620 million), and dinnerware ($473 million). This figure will rise to be worth nearly $2.5 billion by 2022, growing at a compound annual growth rate of eight per cent. Exhibitors in Interior Lifestyle Middle Easts Dining segment will line up an assortment of items such as table decoration and accessories; decorative objects; crystal ware; porcelain, glass and ceramics; metal, gold and silver items; small electric appliances; designer plastic; and storage items. The annual showcase will also shine the spotlight under the Giving umbrella on the key product groups of corporate gifts; trendy designer and classic gifts; souvenirs; beauty gifts; gourmet gifts; decorative gifts and accessories; photo frames and candles; bags, travel and fashion accessories; and leather goods. - TradeArabia News Service Here are six legislative updates with implications for surgery centers: A Florida House of Representatives committee approved a bill that would require hospitals and ASCs to poll staff members about patient safety. A recurring bill that would allow patients to stay at ASCs for up to 48 hours after surgery advanced through its first Florida House Committee. A bill filed in the Florida House of Representatives entails several mandates, including the requirement that physicians disclose more details of an injured worker's treatment plan to payers. A North Carolina House Health Committee approved a bill that would establish new employment standards for hospitals and ASCs. The Vermont Senate introduced a bill that would establish an independent ASC licensing and regulatory agency. Georgia's House of Representatives failed to pass a bill that would have significantly reformed the state's certificate of need laws, but the legislator could consider components from the bill in the future. Four impending retirements at Aurora Health Care's East Mequon (Wis.) Surgery Center reflect a shortage of operating nurses that seems to be getting worse, according to local news affiliate WTMJ-TV Milwaukee. Four insights: 1. Christine McCann, East Mequon Surgery Center's nursing supervisor, is one of four nurses planning to retire from the surgery center in the next three years. She has been an operating room nurse since 1978. "I'm tired. I can't be on my feet eight and nine hours a day anymore. I can't be moving these heavy beds," Ms. McCann said. 2. It took the ASC nearly a year to fill a recent opening, and the center has another open position it has yet to fill. OR nurses are getting older and more replacements are needed, but Aurora is in "a very hard-to-hire area," according to Sharon Chappy, dean of Concordia University's nursing school in Mequon. 3. Aurora, which is based in Milwaukee, partnered with several Wisconsin schools to address the shortage of OR nurses by allowing nursing students to spend a semester in the OR. The program includes students from: Concordia University Alverno College in Milwaukee Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee Marquette University in Milwaukee Milwaukee School of Engineering University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Carroll University in Waukesha, Wis. 4. Aurora has already hired several students from the program but told WTMJ-TV it couldn't say how many OR nurses the system still needs. Becker's ASC Review reported on three orthopedic and spine-focused ASC openings or announcements in February and March: Albany Medical Center, Saratoga Hospital and Capital Region North are teaming up to build an outpatient surgery center primarily devoted to joint surgeries. Albany Medical Center and Capital Region North are based in Albany, N.Y. Tampa, Fla.-based BioSpine Institute expanded its minimally invasive spine surgery practice to Orlando, Fla. BioSpine Institute's new Orlando facility includes medical offices and a surgery center. Canton, Ohio-based Omni Orthopaedics plans to build a surgery center in 2019 in Jackson Township, Ohio. Beaumont Health and Henry Ford Health System each want to build a new hospital in Oxford, Mich., but state regulators will allow only one hospital to be built. Southfield, Mich.-based Beaumont Health submitted a certificate of need application with the state, seeking to build a 117-bed hospital in Oxford. Beaumont said the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services will decide by July whether to approve the $140 million project. Henry Ford Health System is also interested in building a hospital in Oxford. The Detroit-based health system submitted a plan to the state to build a $160 million, 116-bed hospital, according to the Detroit Free Press. Only one of the systems will be allowed to build a hospital in Oxford due to a decision last year by the 11-member Michigan Certificate of Need Commission. The commission said Oxford is a "limited access area" that needs an additional 117 hospital beds to meet local residents' healthcare needs. "So if Beaumont is approved for 117 beds, then there will not be any more need for beds at that time," a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services told the Detroit Free Press. The spokesperson said Henry Ford Health System failed to submit an application that complied with certificate of need rules by the Feb. 1 deadline. However, the health system disputed that claim. "We did in fact submit a [certificate of need] application by the Feb. 1 deadline, and are confident that the state will have strong interest in our approach to meeting the needs of the community," a spokesperson for Henry Ford Health System told the Detroit Free Press. More articles on facilities management: Sutter opens 274-bed hospital in San Francisco Advocate Aurora Health Care wins rezoning OK for $228M hospital OSU Wexner Medical Center looks to suburbs for outpatient expansion North Carolina, Montana and Oregon are among the states that have begun to use Medicare reimbursement rates to adjust how much their state employee health plans pay hospitals, according to NPR. Five things to know: 1. Traditionally, employers and insurers negotiate rates behind closed doors. Hospital charges are often many times what Medicare would pay, even with agreed upon discounts between employers and hospitals. 2. In an attempt to lower state healthcare costs, North Carolina Treasurer Dale Folwell revealed plans for the state's employee plan to begin paying most hospitals at Medicare rates plus 82 percent. Mr. Folwell projected the plan would save the state $258 million each year, according to NPR. 3. North Carolina's hospital association disputed the plan when it was introduced, stating it would disproportionately affect rural hospitals and lower hospital revenue statewide by about $460 million. 4. Mr. Folwell agreed in mid-March to a 20 percent payment boost to rural hospitals. Rural hospitals in North Carolina are expected to get another $52 million annually under the increase, while getting paid an average 218 percent of Medicare. 5. Montana shifted its state employee health plan program to use Medicare rates two years ago, and Oregon will transition to the strategy this fall. Additionally, Delaware is considering the change to lower spending. As NPR notes, while still at the state level, "If the gamble pays off, more private-sector employers could start doing the same thing." More articles on healthcare finance: Cleveland Clinic's annual net income drops 91% on heavy investment losses New York hospital settles with Cerner over billing problems: 5 things to know Quorum aims to shed up to 9 hospitals Eleven health information technology notes: 1. Amazon is getting into the skin care market with the launch of an exclusive brand of skin care products that aims to help users with such issues as acne, dehydration and dark spots. 2. One Drop, a digital health company focused on diabetes care management, will offer its diabetes therapy services as part of Amazon's at-home medical devices brand Choice. 3. Mississippi is preparing an antitrust case against Google over the tech giant's control of consumer data and the privacy practices it uses to protect it. 4. IBM has released its Blockchain World Wire, a real-time global payments network for regulated financial institutions. 5. With a black mark on their resumes, some former Theranos employees report having trouble finding new work. 6. Signify Health, a healthcare technology company that provides in-home care and management services, has acquired technology platform TAVHealth to enhance its social determinants of health initiatives. 7. Johnson & Johnson will test the Apple Watch's ability to perform early detection and diagnosis of atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular heartbeat that can signal a stroke. 8. Change Healthcare submitted a filing March 15 to the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed $100 million initial public offering. 9. Apple unveiled a TV campaign to highlight the tech giant's data privacy initiatives. 10. Oracle reported earnings results for the third quarter of its 2019 fiscal year on March 13, posting a 1 percent decrease in total revenue. 11. Facebook is under criminal investigation for sharing personal user data with at least two large smartphone device companies. Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh missed several public appearances March 20 amid criticism over a $500,000 book deal she had with the University of Maryland Medical System while sitting on the Baltimore-based system's board of directors, according to CBS Baltimore. Five things to know: 1. A city employee sat in for the mayor during one public appearance after Ms. Pugh called in sick and canceled her weekly news conference. 2. Ms. Pugh is facing criticism for engaging in a $500,000 deal with UMMS through which the health system agreed to purchase and distribute her children's book series to city schools. A spokesperson for the mayor told CBS Baltimore that Ms. Pugh has returned $100,000 of her profit and that the books are sitting in a district warehouse. 3. Ms. Pugh and two other individuals resigned from UMMS' board of directors earlier this week after news reports surfaced of their business deals with the health system. Four other board members took a voluntary leave of absence. 4. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said he was "shocked, outraged and appalled" over UMMS board members' deals with the system, and he held a meeting March 20 with legislative and UMMS leaders. His office released the following statement after the meeting: "It was a productive meeting where Governor Hogan clearly and emphatically expressed his concerns about conflicts of interest on the board of UMMS. He underlined the importance of addressing the public outcry, and the leaders of UMMS expressed their commitment to act. We will work closely with the legislature on measures to improve oversight and accountability on the board." 5. Stephen Burch, chairman of UMMS' board of directors, said during a news conference after the meeting that the board will meet March 21 about the institution's next steps. "We are more concerned about the institution and its reputation than we are about people and the board," he said, according to the Ctpost. Stephen Klasko, MD, president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health, signed another five-year contract with the Philadelphia-based health system, a spokesperson told Becker's Hospital Review March 20. Five things to know about the contract and Dr. Klasko's first five years with Jefferson: 1. Dr. Klasko, who began leading the health system in 2013, will serve as president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health through 2024. 2. Under Dr. Klasko, Jefferson has grown from three to 14 hospitals. Jefferson's growth has largely taken place by merging boards across regions. The system has pending deals with Philadelphia-based Einstein Healthcare Network and Temple University's Fox Chase Cancer Center, also in Philadelphia. 3. At the same time, Jefferson Health has gone from a $1.5 billion system to a more than $5 billion system, generating more than $100 million in savings and efficiencies. 4. New philanthropic initiatives led to the Sidney Kimmel Foundation in Philadelphia donating $110 million to Jefferson Medical College in 2014, representing the largest gift in its history. The college was renamed the Sidney Kimmel Medical College that same year. 5. Under Dr. Klasko's leadership, Thomas Jefferson University now hosts design curriculum for medical students and operates the No. 3 fashion school in the country. More articles on leadership: 3 board members resign from U of Maryland Medical System, 4 others on leave of absence: 5 things to know Wisconsin hospital lays off CEO amid affiliation 50 Northwestern Memorial Hospital employees fired for accessing Jussie Smollett's records Panola Medical Center, a 112-bed hospital in Batesville, Miss., has had three different owners since 2017. Clinton, Tenn.-based Curae Health acquired Panola Medical Center, previously called Merit Health Batesville, from Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems on May 1, 2017. Curae entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2018, creating an uncertain future for the hospital. On March 20, Vizion Health announced it had acquired Panola Medical Center. The Charlotte, N.C.-based company partnered with Progressive Medical Management of Batesville, Whitwell Holdings and Java Medical Group on the acquisition. With the acquisition of Panola Medical Center, Vizion's portfolio includes four healthcare facilities. In addition to the medical center, the company owns a psychiatric hospital and a residential treatment center in Miami, Okla., and a behavioral health facility in Fort Worth, Texas. More articles on healthcare industry transactions: Ascension buys Florida hospital, plans $47M investment 7 hospital mergers called off in past year Rennova acquires Tennessee hospital A Connecticut physician was sentenced March 18 to more than seven years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of healthcare fraud and one count of money laundering in September 2018, according to the Department of Justice. According to court documents, Ramil Mansourov, MD, billed Medicaid for medical treatment that was never provided. Between 2014 and November 2016, he submitted claims to Medicaid totaling nearly $5 million for home, nursing home and office visits that never occurred. In addition to the prison term, Dr. Mansourov was ordered to pay $5 million in restitution, forfeit $50,000 and surrender his federal controlled substances registration to the Drug Enforcement Administration. More articles on legal and regulatory issues: CHI Franciscan settles antitrust case: 5 things to know Ex-CEO of Louisiana hospital's fundraising arm allegedly embezzled $810K 10 latest healthcare industry lawsuits, settlements The Ritz-Carlton, Doha will be featuring the first Unknown Concert in Qatar, which will feature a lineup of 12 to 16 local DJs and two bands on at one venue. The event will be spread across three different stages at three unique locations on The Ritz-Carlton, Doha property on March 29. Each location and DJ will provide a unique vibe to concert-goers and will surely become the talk of the town. Event planners are expecting a large turnout from the community for the three-staged concert, which will host a variety of music from House, EDM, Hip-Hop, RnB with Afrobeats and Reggae that will play simultaneously from 4 pm to 12 am. The Unknown Concert comes as an enormous team effort by various event organisers throughout the local community to deliver a one-of-a-kind music-experience for all music-lovers within Qatar. Pedro Fonseca, assistant director of food and beverage at The Ritz-Carlton, Doha, said: This event has been curated by the community for the community. We believe that showcasing and celebrating the best DJs in town, who have successfully entertained us for years, on a single night will create an unforgettable experience. With over 20 influencers onboard, an active social media campaign and committed sponsors such as Doha Gossip, Futad Advertising, Careem and more, The Unknown Concert will undoubtedly create buzz and excitement throughout Qatar. Check out the The Unknown Concert event page on Facebook for all relevant updates and details. Tickets are priced at QR100 ($27.3) per person and individuals must be 21+ with valid ID. Tickets can be purchased on eventbrite, Q Tickets or at the entrance of the concert. Concert-goers can also book a ride with Careem on the day and avail 50 per cent savings to and from The Ritz-Carlton, Doha. - TradeArabia News Service About 21 percent of Catholic hospitals don't disclose information about their religious affiliation online, according to a study published March 19 in JAMA. Researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora conducted the study. Between July 2017 and January 2018, researchers reviewed the websites of 653 hospitals listed in the Catholic Health Care Directory for mentions of Catholic affiliations and associated care restrictions. Four study findings: 1. Of 646 hospitals included in the analysis, 507 disclosed their Catholic identity online. 2. Among the 139 hospitals that did not disclose their affiliation, 107 used religious terms on their websites. 3. About 24 percent of all hospitals cited ethical and religious directives that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops expects all Catholic facilities to follow. Ninety-five hospital websites offered a direct link to these directives. 4. Of the 494 hospitals that didn't cite the directives, 28 mentioned care restrictions and specifically cited end-of-life care restrictions. Only eight hospitals mentioned reproductive care restrictions. "Many patients do not anticipate religious healthcare restrictions yet often face conflicts in care," senior author Maryam Guiahi, MD, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Colorado's School of Medicine, told Reuters. "Like any restriction on healthcare, this often has the biggest impact on those who face systemic barriers to care, such as women with low incomes, people of color, LGBTQIA people, young people and people in rural areas." Emergency response dispatchers in Rhode Island seldom instruct callers on how to perform CPR, which could save hundreds more cardiac arrest victims annually, according to ProPublica. Rhode Island's Operations and Procedures Manual for 911 centers "highly recommends" dispatchers stay on calls to provide medical instruction, although they are not specially trained to share CPR instructions via phone, according to the report. Every other state in New England has certified emergency medical dispatchers handle calls involving cardiac arrests and other medical emergencies. These dispatchers receive training and scripted instructions for how to walk a caller through performing CPR over the phone. In 2018, Rhode Island EMS agencies treated nearly 1,200 people experiencing cardiac arrest outside the hospital, according to health department data cited by ProPublica. About 1 in 10 people who experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survive in Rhode Island. Health experts told ProPublica this figure could double or triple if dispatchers received more training to help bystanders administer CPR sooner. To view ProPublica's full report, click here. Springfield (Vt.) Hospital will shutter its childbirth center June 1 because it was a "financial strain" on the hospital, officials told the VTDigger. The hospital's interim CEO, Mike Halstead, told the publication the center cost Springfield $600,000 each year. The hospital's board voted March 19 to shutter the center after 105 years of service due to decreasing deliveries. In 2018, 152 babies were delivered, compared to 172 the year prior. The change comes after Springfield Hospital lost roughly $14 million in two years. In January of this year, the hospital nearly closed before it obtained an $800,000 loan from Vermont. It also terminated 27 positions in February and lowered salaries to save $3 million, according to the VTDigger. The nearest birthing centers are close to an hour drive away from Springfield at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., Brattleboro (Vt.) Memorial Hospital and Rutland (Vt.) Regional Medical Center. Humana plans to extend its senior-focused primary care network to more cities, according to Forbes contributor Bruce Japsen. Humana made the statement March 19 during its annual investor day presentation. To date, Humana has 233 owned, joint venture and aligned clinics. Some operate under its Conviva brand in Florida and Texas and others in its Walgreens-partnered Partners in Primary Care Clinics in Missouri. The success of the centers, which serve 8 percent of Humana's individual Medicare Advantage enrollees across 30 markets, has led the health insurer to expand to new markets. These include Charleston, S.C., Houston and Memphis, Tenn., according to Forbes. More articles on payers: Fake health insurer still charging members millions, FTC says Judge grants Aetna's motion to dismiss disability benefits lawsuit Christus hospitals out of network with Cigna Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health reached a new agreement with Anthem Blue Cross of California, the companies said March 20. Under the agreement, Sutter will provide Anthem Blue Cross members access to health services at in-network rates through Dec. 31, 2022. Sutter operates 24 hospitals, five medical foundations and 36 outpatient surgery centers for more than 3 million patients. "Sutter Health is pleased that we have reached a multiyear agreement with Anthem Blue Cross that provides patients with access to Sutter Health's high-quality integrated network while keeping care affordable," Sutter Health President and CEO Sarah Krevans said in a prepared statement. "We value the relationship we have with our patients and the ability to continue to serve them." Sutter and Anthem Blue Cross hit a contract snare in January over rates. More articles on payers: Aetna to close another prescription delivery hub, cut 138 jobs Fake health insurer still charging members millions, FTC says Judge grants Aetna's motion to dismiss disability benefits lawsuit National and New Hampshire-based organizations sued the Trump administration to stop the state's move to implement Medicaid work requirements, according to the Concord Monitor. The filing, submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia March 20, argues the requirements violate parts of the Medicaid Act. Under the regulation, New Hampshire would require Medicaid recipients to work 100 hours a month to get coverage, which plaintiffs argue would unfairly take insurance away from low-income beneficiaries. The lawsuit comes after patient advocates and organizations from Kentucky and Arkansas aimed to block Medicaid work requirements in those states. A spokesperson for New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told the Concord Monitor his office saw the lawsuit as an attempt "to undo a bipartisan agreement by New Hampshire lawmakers" and said that "intervening in this lawsuit is on the table." State HHS Commissioner Jeff Meyers told the publication the department is working to ensure Medicaid recipients aren't unlawfully being kicked off the program. Working while sick with influenza-like illness may be common in training programs at hospitals, according to a study published in the American Journal of Infection Control. Researchers conducted the study at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. They polled internal medicine and subspecialty house staff and program directors via an anonymous electronic survey between April 23 and June 15, 2018. Forty-nine percent of 200 house staff members and 59 percent of 39 program directors participated in the survey. Researchers found: Fifty-four percent of trainees and 26 percent of program leaders reported working while sick with flu-like illness in the past year. More than 90 percent of trainees and program leaders reported that working while sick with flu-like illness places others at risk. However, only 9 percent of program leaders accurately estimated the prevalence of trainees working while sick. Both trainees and program directors cited "not wanting to burden colleagues" as the top reason for working while sick with flu-like illness. Additionally, most trainees did not correctly answer flu knowledge questions. University of Illinois at Chicago has publicly denied its failure to oversee a troubled clinical trial involving adolescents, but newly obtained documents show the university did acknowledge some shortfalls to federal investigators, according to an investigative report from ProPublica Illinois. Five things to know: 1. Mani Pavuluri, MD, a former child psychiatrist at UIC, launched the study in 2009 to assess the use of lithium to treat adolescents with bipolar disorder. The clinical trial was shut down in 2013 after federal officials discovered Dr. Pavuluri violated numerous research rules, such as enrolling children who were too young for the trial or failing to alert parents of the study's risks. Her actions required UIC to pay a $3.1 million fine to the federal government, according to ProPublica Illinois. 2. While UIC downplayed its failure to identify and respond to issues with the clinical trial, documents obtained by ProPublica Illinois show the organization acknowledged shortcomings with its Institutional Review Board to federal officials. The IRB is a committee responsible for protecting clinical trial participants at UIC. 3. In the documents, UIC said its IRB improperly fast-tracked Dr. Pavuluri's trial, failed to catch major omissions from parental consent forms, and allowed 89 ineligible children to enroll in the study, according to the report. 4. A UIC spokesperson told ProPublica Illinois the university did not discipline any employees for the IRB issues. Researchers are "responsible for the ethical and professional conduct" of their studies and "internal safeguards did not fail," UIC said. 5. The university also noted it took appropriate actions after discovering issues with Dr. Pavuluri's study. UIC notified federal agencies, suspended the study and ordered Dr. Pavuluri to retract journal articles. She retired in June 2018, according to a separate ProPublica Illinois report. More articles on clinical leadership and infection control: Undiagnosed, untreated HIV patients responsible for 81% of new transmissions Electronic prescribing systems could increase medication error risk Employee engagement crucial for patient-centered care, says Press Ganey Three spine surgeons weigh in on the challenges of shifting to value-based care. Ask Spine Surgeons is a weekly series of questions posed to spine surgeons around the country about clinical, business and policy issues affecting spine care. We invite all spine surgeon and specialist responses. Next week's question: What devices currently on the market do you think have the most potential to improve spine care? Please send responses to Anuja Vaidya at avaidya@beckershealthcare.com by Wednesday, March 27, at 5 p.m. CST. Question: What do you see as the biggest roadblock to value-based care in spine? Leo Spector, MD. Chief Quality Officer of OrthoCarolina (Charlotte, N.C.): I believe the biggest roadblock to value-based care in spine, and orthopedics in general, is a fundamental resistance to change. As Mark Twain said, 'I'm in favor of progress, it's change I don't like.' In general, the people that deliver the care (providers and hospital systems), pay for the care (federal and private insurers) and receive the care (patients) are creatures of habit. Proper incentives are needed to create an environment where individuals and organizations are willing to transform their behavior. The patient experience is central to this transformation. We need to recognize and begin treating patients like consumers, similar to any other business that is selling goods and services. Informed and invested consumers will begin to make decisions in their best interest as defined by them. Only then will they begin to demand the change that needs to occur. Ultimately, until all stakeholders within the healthcare ecosystem are rewarded for value-based care, change will be slow and sporadic. Brian R. Gantwerker, MD. Founder of the Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles: There is a fundamental problem with value-based care. The erroneous assumption is that you can get the best care for 'cheap.' First, it depends on what you mean by 'cheap.' In this case, it is a relative term. Now, if one place charges $15,000 for a microdiscectomy versus a place that charges $10,000 to most people that is still a whole heap of money. We still don't have any idea what a 'reasonable' cost is. We have never established this, and the error promulgates from there. It turns out, those prices are actually fairly low, if they are an 'all-in' price. So right there, we have to adjust our expectations. We then started asking questions about what it means to have 'quality.' Lots of people have tried to sell their idea of what quality means. We still don't have consensus. The answer is 'depends on who you ask.' What hospitals and insurance companies define as quality is very likely not what the layperson, and more importantly, patients, would define as quality. Again, there is dissonance. We have to adjust our thought processes and get to what a patient would define as quality and stop there. Finally, and most importantly, [value-based care] assumes that 'the cheapest is the best.' And that is the most dangerous and fallacious assumption in this process. Much like the EMR debacle when it started 10 years ago, doctors are the canaries in the coal mine and twittering: 'this does not make things better!' Fact: you cannot get a Maserati at a Yugo price. If you want quality, you must pay for it. Issada Thongtrangan, MD. Orthopedic Spine and Neurosurgeon at Minimally Invasive Spine (Phoenix): Value-based care is the balance between outcomes and cost. The advanced technology in spine will come with cost, and it will need validation to prove that it can impact patient outcomes. Currently, there is no consensus on what measurements or data are 'the benchmarks' either among the surgeons or the payers. It also will be difficult to implement in a solo or an independent practice because it will need more resources and infrastructure to gather the data, and this adds on expenses for the practice. By Auqib Javeed, TwoCircles.net Srinagar: A cartoon by the legendary cartoonist of Kashmir Valley, Bashir Ahmad Bashir, in a local daily is an apt representation of what an inquiry means when it comes to probing any killing by the hands of Armed forces in this restive state. The cartoon shows inquiry report being buried in the grave along the body of a local teacher, who was allegedly killed inside Police custody by the Special Operations Group (SOG) of Jammu and Kashmir police on Tuesday. Support TwoCircles Rizwan Asad Pandit, 30, a resident of Awantipora in south Kashmirs Pulwama district was picked up by J&K Police in late March 17 during a raid at his family home. He was shifted to Cargo-a counter-insurgency police camp located in Srinagar, where he was allegedly killed. According to a report compiled by International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in collaboration with Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), a copy of which lies with TwoCircle.net shows that between January 2008 and December 2018, 107 enquiries were ordered by the Jammu & Kashmir government. The highest numbers of enquiries were ordered in 2009. Out of 107 inquiries, no one has been prosecuted or held accountable. Human rights experts say Kashmir is the history of unfinished probes and hollow enquiries where justice continuous to be a causality owning the special powers to government forces. Ordering probe after the killing has become a joke now. In the last three decades, hundreds of probes were ordered to enquiry the killings and disappearance but the recent report of the US has made it clear that not a single soldier has been punished, said Kashmir based human rights lawyer Parvez Imroz. While referring to the killing of the teacher in custody Imroz says, these types of killing happen because nobody in the past held accountable and punished for their crimes. Not a single soldier has been punished from last 3 decades, if the action would have been taken against the perpetrators then yesterdays incident wouldnt have happened, he says. According to data, on Nov 22, 2008, two teenagers were killed and seven injured in north Kashmirs Baramulla when a Personal Security Officer (PSO) of a Congress candidate and CRPF men opened fire at people protesting against the elections process in the State. The then Deputy Commissioner Baramulla Baseer Ahmad Khan ordered a magisterial inquiry into the firing incidents but 11 years have passed no one has been punished. On Dec 3, 2008, a 13-yr old in Kokernag area of South Kashmir was allegedly gang-raped by troopers of 33 Rashtriya Rifles of Indian Army. On next days, the additional deputy commissioner, Anantnag, Bashir Ahmed Khan said that administration has ordered a magisterial probe into the incident and have asked the concerned Tehsildar to investigate the matter and submit his report within three days but in this case also, more than a decade has passed no one was punished. On May 18, 2009, a youth, Manzoor Ahmad Beigh from AluchiBagh, Srinagar city was killed in custody personals of SoG of J& K police. After few days Deputy Commissioner ordered an inquiry into the killing but that too are on papers only. Parvez believes that Government of India is not serious about these gave human rights violations. He says the government orders probe just to divert the attention of public anger. People here have lost faith on the probe as they dont have credibility now, he added. Parvez says Govt knows there will be some other incident after some days and that incident will overshadow their incident, medias attention towards a particular case is always not there. So this is a continuous process from years and it will continue, nothing will happen, he added. A PhD scholar from the University of Kashmir argues that laws like Armed forces special power act (AFSPA) made for the Indian security forces have given complete impunity to soldiers to do whatever they want. You see a young man is being picked up from his home and you say he dies in the custody. For Gods sake, how can he die, until you didnt torture him? asked Arshad Hussain. For the family members of Rizwan, they are added in the list of those who are waiting for the justice of the kins. Like others, they have no hope on Police and their inquiry. What kind of inquiry are you talking? Should we expect justice from those who picked-up and then killed our brother in the custody,? questioned Zulkarnain Asad, while talking of TwoCircles.net on Phone. Zulkarnain further added that they dont expect any justice because it was never served in Kashmir. Irfan Mehraj, a researcher with JKCCS is of the view that inquiries in Kashmir are been ordered as a pre-emptive measure to cool down public anger against human rights violations. He says not a single enquiry has lead to the prosecution of perpetrators and some like ML Kouls report on civilian killings in 2010 agitation have not even been made public. It seems enquiries too have been used as a tool to further deny justice to Kashmiri victims of human rights abuses, Irfan said. It is pertinent to mention that the custodial killing of the Rizwan came at a time when the US Department of State released a report on the human rights situation in Kashmir, saying that no prosecution of accused soldiers has been allowed for 28 years. According to a report, GoI failed to prosecute any soldiers as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) has been present in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Noted Human rights defender Khurram Parvez says India has repeatedly failed to deliver justice for the last 28 years in all the cases here and that is why people are asking for International intervention and enquiry to probe all the cases. Even United Nations (UN) last year in its first-ever report asked Govt to appoint a commission of enquiry to probe the human rights violations, Khurram says. Regarding Rizwans case, Khurram says a magisterial probe has been initiated under section 176 of the CrPC but apparently the Police didnt file an FIR for murder under Section 302. Click to read the full list of the probes ordered: Probes ordered in human rights violations since year 2008 (1) Strathroy Dairy has said a surge in demand for butter saw a spike in its revenues last year. The Co Tyrone firm also indicated it believed its all-Ireland structure could shield it from the impact of the Government's no-deal tariff proposals. The latest accounts for the family-owned Omagh milk business revealed revenues rose 17% to 77.4m in the year to July 31. There was also a slight increase in pre-tax profits, which rose to 531,063. Strathroy employs around 150 people at its processing facility in Tyrone, with a further 50 working across six distribution hubs in the South. The company processes 100 million litres of milk from farms in the Republic every year and the same volume again from Northern Ireland farmers. Some 70% of its dairy products are sold in the Republic, with most of them rebranded and sold by supermarkets such as Lidl, Aldi, Spar and Londis. Strathroy said its earnings shot up on the back of a so-called 'butter bubble'. Growing global demand for butter saw prices hit a 7,000 per tonne high in 2017, remaining inflated throughout 2018, reaching 6,100 per tonne in June. Prices have now returned to around 4,000 per tonne. "That has been driving the huge increase in the price of butter and that is reflected then in our company accounts," said a spokesman. Like most firms, the Co Tyrone dairy is planning for the worst Brexit outcome while at the same time hoping for the best. "We're an all-island company, which is why Brexit is a headache. We have milk travelling in both directions 24 hours a day," said a senior figure at the firm yesterday. With a concentration of farm suppliers on the south and east coast of Ireland, the company's preferred position is to remain within the EU - something which it currently considers to be a long shot. But the senior figure said he believes Northern Ireland could benefit under Theresa May's deal by having a foot in both the UK and EU. Despite its concerns, the dairy said its business structure should shield it from the impact other food processors could face under the Government's cross-border tariff proposals in the event of a no-deal exit. Those proposals would place no tariffs on goods coming north but could see businesses here hit by tariffs in the other direction. Strathroy Dairy believes it should still be able to transport milk sourced in the Republic to its Omagh processing plant and send the product back across the border for distribution, even in a no-deal scenario. That would require the firm to transfer ownership of its business to its entity in the Republic and would be dependent on the UK being granted third-country status by the EU. "While there would be pain, it's pain we could stomach," a spokesman said. Describing the current status of the negotiations as "a shambles", the spokesman added the entire Brexit episode had been "a complete waste of time" for businesses. "Regardless if you're selling potatoes (or) farming sheep, it has distracted everybody from the bottom to the top for the last three years," he said. "Everybody has been trying to grow with one hand tied behind their backs for the past three years." Belfast's Europa Hotel has unveiled the results of a 500,000 renovation. The lobby bar at the Great Victoria Street hotel, which is part of the Hastings group, has been updated, while its piano restaurant has been fitted with new seating. The grand ballroom has also been revamped to include mirrored panelling. General manager James McGinn said the changes to the lobby bar meant it could now accommodate up to 120 guests. Hastings Hotels operates seven hotels in Northern Ireland. Last year it opened the Grand Central Hotel in Bedford Street in Belfast. Dear Donald, The UK Government's policy remains to leave the European Union in an orderly manner on the basis of the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration agreed in November, complemented by the Joint Instrument and supplement to the Political Declaration President Juncker and I agreed on 11 March. You will be aware that before the House of Commons rejected the deal for a second time on 12 March, I warned in a speech in Grimsby that the consequences of failing to endorse the deal were unpredictable and potentially deeply unpalatable. The House of Commons did not vote in favour of the deal. The following day it voted against leaving the EU without a negotiated deal. The day after that it supported a Government motion that proposed a short extension to the Article 50 period if the House supported a meaningful vote before this week's European Council. The motion also made clear that if this had not happened, a longer extension would oblige the UK to call elections to the European Parliament. I do not believe that it would be in either of our interests for the UK to hold European Parliament elections. I had intended to bring the vote back to the House of Commons this week. The Speaker of the House of Commons said on Monday that in order for a further meaningful vote to be brought back to the House of Commons, the agreement would have to be "fundamentally different - not different in terms of wording, but different in terms of substance". Some Members of Parliament have interpreted that this means a further change to the deal. This position has made it impossible in practice to call a further vote in advance of the European Council. However, it remains my intention to bring the deal back to the House. In advance of that vote, I would be grateful if the European Council could therefore approve the supplementary documents that President Juncker and I agreed in Strasbourg, putting the Government in a position to bring these agreements to the House and confirming the changes to the Government's proposition to Parliament. I also intend to bring forward further domestic proposals that confirm my previous commitments to protect our internal market, given the concerns expressed about the backstop. On this basis, and in the light of the outcome of the European Council, I intend to put forward a motion as soon as possible under section 13 of the Withdrawal Act 2018 and make the argument for the orderly withdrawal and strong future partnership the UK economy, its citizens' security and the continent's future demands. If the motion is passed, I am confident that Parliament will proceed to ratify the deal constructively. But this will clearly not be completed before 29 March 2019. In our legal system, the Government will need to take a Bill through both Houses of Parliament to enact our commitments under the Withdrawal Agreement into domestic law. While we will consult with the Opposition in the usual way to plan the passage of the Bill as quickly and smoothly as possible, the timetable for this is inevitably uncertain at this stage. I am therefore writing to inform the European Council that the UK is seeking an extension to the Article 50 period under Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union, including as applied by Article 106a of the Euratom Treaty, until 30 June 2019. I would be grateful for the opportunity to set out this position to our colleagues on Thursday. Yours ever, Theresa May A professor at Belfast's Union Theological College (UTC) has been fired due to comments he made on a radio show. Reverend Professor Laurence Kirkpatrick, who worked at UTC for 22 years, was found guilty of "gross misconduct" by a disciplinary panel of the Presbyterian Church, who run the college, the BBC reports. In June 2018, Prof Kirkpatrick featured on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback show to discuss the Presbyterian Church's decision to loosen its ties to the Church of Scotland, because of the latter's more liberal attitude to same-sex relationships. Read More During the show, the Professor of Church History said he would be "horrified" if students were taught that same-sex relationships were sinful. He was subsequently suspended by the Presbyterian Church and now it has emerged he six charges laid against him have been upheld by the disciplinary panel, resulting in his dismissal. Expand Close The Union Theological College in Belfast / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The Union Theological College in Belfast Two of the charges relating to his radio comments were judged to constitute "gross misconduct", according to Prof Kirkpatrick's dismissal letter. "Your contribution to the Talkback programme on 13 June 2018 brought Union Theological College and by association, your employer, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland into disrepute," the letter read. "Your comments on the Talkback programme had a significant and material adverse impact on PCI's relationship with Queen's University Belfast and caused hurt and damage to the faculty's relationship and cohesion." "You stated that you would be 'horrified', using that word twice, if a student at Union Theological College was taught that a same-sex, sexually active relationship was sinful, knowing full well that was the doctrinal position of your employer." The letter also stated he had made no attempt to defend UTC when another guest questioned its link to Queen's University. In December 2018, it emerged that Queen's would not admit any new students to UTC following a critical review by the univeristy. A Queen's spokesperson said it had concerns about the "breadth and diversity" of the teaching and curriculum being delivered. THOUSANDS of Orange Order members will be rerouted during this year's Twelfth of July parade in Belfast due to restrictions caused by the Primark fire, it has emerged. The County Grand Orange Lodge of Belfast made the decision following discussions with Belfast City Centre Management, the PSNI and other bodies, and members are understood to be content with the new arrangements. Primark's historic Bank Buildings store at Castle Junction - which has been in the heart of Belfast since 1787 - was gutted by a major blaze almost eight months ago, when more than 100 firefighters were called upon to battle the fire for over six hours. The inferno, which burned for three days, was a major blow to the city centre, badly hitting businesses, and it was described as the biggest crisis the city has faced since the Troubles. A number of retailers who were forced to close have since reopened and a partially covered walkway has helped bring shoppers back. The cause of the August 28 fire, which ripped through the five-storey outlet, has yet to be made public and the investigation is ongoing. In terms of shifting the safety cordon, the next milestone will be the end of this month when the footpath from the corner of Zara on Donegall Place to the corner of Fountain Street, where City Picnic is, will reopen. Redevelopment work is currently ongoing at the site, which has placed restrictions on pedestrians - meaning a change of plans to this year's Twelfth parade. Rather than walking the traditional route along Royal Avenue, Orange lodges and bands will proceed from Clifton Street, along Donegall Street, Waring Street, Bridge Street, High Street, Victoria Street and Chichester Street to Belfast City Hall. Following the annual Act of Remembrance, the large parade will then follow its familiar route to the field at Barnett's Demesne. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. Marlene and Kyle Drummond pictured as the parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. Sophia Williams pictured as the parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. Hubert Scullion and Ian McClean pictured as the parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. Pacemaker Press Belfast 12-07-2018: Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. Tens of thousands are expected to attend the events marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne. William III - the Dutch-born Protestant better known as William of Orange or King Billy - defeated the Catholic King James II in County Meath in July 1690. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. The parade passes through Ballymena town. Picture By: Arthur Allison. A spokesman said the alternative route will be for one year only. "We are advertising this amended 2019 route early so our faithful supporters who line Royal Avenue and Donegall Place can plan an alternative viewing spot to enjoy the parade," he said. "This change is made due to the extraordinary circumstances brought about by the Primark fire and we look forward to returning to our traditional Royal Avenue route in 2020." Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Brent Crawford enjoys his day during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Kathleen Hynds from Ballykelly pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Peter Watson, Johnny Armstrong, Adam Rankin, Mark Graham and Steven Spence from the Invisable True Blues, Coleraine, pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Darrell Barr from Canada and David Allen pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Ernest McCay and Jack McGarrigle pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Members of Curryfree LOL 1060, pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 David Lindsay, Ivan Montgomery and Alan Lindsay pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Wavimg to a friend in the crowd as a member of the Loyal Orders makes his way across the Craigavon Bridge during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Members of Dungiven LOL 2036 pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Brent Crawford enjoys his day during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 The Hamilton Flute Band pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 David Brewster pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Members of the Ballyquin Flute Band cross the Craigavon Bridge during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Members of the Orange Order cross the Craigavon Bridge during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Members of the Orange Order cross the Craigavon Bridge during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Cousins Leah Campbell, Marie Woods, jack Campbell and Kayla Woods from Coleraine pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Chloe Neely, left and her niece Samara Neely pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 William Wray pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 William Moore, Robin Irwin and Sam Hunter from Limavady pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Sammi and Billie Wray with Hannah Smallwoods pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 William Callaghan, Ben Callaghan and Tommy Baxter pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Dean Irwin, Ryan Irwin, Dessie Bell, Andy Craig, Gareth Mc Roberts and Mark Irwin from Coleraine pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Mal Ritchie and Derek Borland pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 City Grand Master Maurice Devenney with Norman Boyd, Michael Thomas from Canada, Grand Secretary Ontario West and James Hetherington pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Bro. Maurice Devenny, City Grandmaster, right with from left Donald Eakin, Iain McNie, Tom Kelly from Yorkshire and Graham Watton, pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Alderman Maurice Devenny, City Grandmaster, pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Rev Mervyn Lindsay; Deputy City Grand Chaplain with David McKeegan pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Alan Moore, Jim Armstrong, Robert Starrett and Edwin Robinson pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Derek Hood from Tullintrain and Melvyn Nixon fromn Kldoag pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Mark Doherty, Adrian Eakin, Brad Campbell, Ivan South, Graeme Reilly, Samuel Reilly ,Wesley Haslett, pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 Donna Best, Kay Miller, Ann McElwee, James McElwee, Diane Hamilton, Gladys McIlhatton and Natlay witherow pictured during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Brent Crawford enjoys his day during the Twelfth demonstration in Londonderry. Picture Martin McKeown. Inpresspics.com. 12.07.18 As part of the new arrangements, West Belfast No 9 District and Ballynafeigh No 10 District will join the parade at the junction of Royal Avenue/Donegall Street. Ballymacarrett No 6 District will join the main procession at the junction of Ann Street/Victoria Street. Another change has been made to the homeward parade, which will travel along Great Victoria Street, Wellington Place, and through the city centre, following the same earlier route back towards Clifton Street. The change has been made to address crowd congestion at Sandy Row and Shaftesbury Square. This change will be kept under review. A former Northern Ireland Secretary has questioned the merit of "endless" prosecutorial investigations into Northern Ireland's past. Lord Hain also said a 150m package earmarked for dealing with the legacy of the Troubles would be better spent funding the needs of those bereaved and survivors, rather than pursuing convictions. He suggested using some of the money to fund a pension for 500 people who were severely injured during the Troubles. His comments come in the wake of the decision to prosecute a former Paratrooper over Bloody Sunday. The Army veteran, known only as Soldier F, will stand trial for the murders of James Wray and William McKinney. He has also been charged with four attempted murders. Thirteen people were killed and 15 people wounded after members of the Army's Parachute Regiment opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in the Bogside on January 30, 1972. A 14th later died in hospital. Lord Hain, who served as Secretary of State for two years from 2005 to 2007, said the case raised "fundamental" questions about how we deal with the past. In an article for Parliament's The House magazine, he asked: "Where is this process of endless prosecutorial investigation into Northern Ireland's past leading?" The Labour peer referred to figures which show that from 2006 to 2014, the Historical Enquiries Team completed work on 1,615 cases involving more than 2,000 deaths. Only 17 were referred to the PPS and only three resulted in prosecutions and convictions for murder - just 0.2%. A proposed new Historical Investigations Unit would have a case load of about 1,700 Troubles-related deaths and aim to complete its work in five years. Lord Hain, however, is sceptical about its merits. He wrote: "Why should it be more successful after the extra passage of time - stretching back up to 50 years including the death from natural causes of people who were in one way or another involved? "Is the 150m the government has now promised really the best possible use of that money? "Surely there are much more effective ways of helping victims and discovering information to explain the loss of loved ones? "Indeed, Bloody Sunday victims welcomed the apology by David Cameron in 2010 after the exhaustive Saville report had trenchantly criticised the state and the security forces. "As the Bloody Sunday investigation shows, prosecutions are being considered for former members of the armed forces - perhaps because records and information are more readily available, unlike for former paramilitaries." Earlier this month Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said the Ministry of Defence is working "to drive through a new package of safeguards to ensure our armed forces are not unfairly treated". However, Lord Hain said it was "essential" to treat past cases in "an absolutely even-handed manner". "But that also means former military personnel cannot be exempt - as some, including it seems Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, are suggesting -while other former combatants, either loyalist or republican, are pursued," he said. "Where will all this end?" Lord Hain said there was a massive diversion of resources into investigating old crimes with no prospect of a successful outcome. He said government funding set aside for dealing with the past should be put to better use. "The priority is surely now to use the 150m the government is offering to resource victims, not prosecutions that have little or no likelihood of delivering satisfactory closure," he added. "A good start would be to fund the pension for the nearly 500 severely injured demanded by the Wave Trauma Centre, and backed across all the benches in the Lords, costing just 5m." A Co Antrim man allegedly used Instagram for sexually explicit contact with two 10-year-old boys in England, the High Court has heard. Michael McCollum, 20, is accused of using the social networking service to send messages and videos. Prosecutors said he claimed his intention was to chat about gaming before his "weaknesses" surfaced. McCollum, of Curragh Hill in Carnlough, faces two charges of breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO). Lancashire Constabulary contacted police in Ballymena earlier this month about alleged contact with the schoolboys during January and February this year. The court was told the children had received a series of sexually graphic cartoon-style pictures and messages via Instagram. During an application for bail a Crown lawyer contended that the man involved performed a sex act during a video chat with one of the boys. "This male also actively encouraged both boys to carry out sexual acts on themselves so that he could watch," she added. Inquiries carried out by Lancashire police and Instagram revealed an account with the name 'Almost there 2019', according to the prosecution. Further checks on an IP address for the account were said to have established contact with the boys was made from McCollum's home. Police searched that location and seized 19 electronic devices, the court heard. McCollum was arrested and interviewed, initially making no comment to questions asked. However, the prosecutor said he then told police he went onto Instragram and similar sites because he had no friends or support at home. "He further advised that he has befriended the two boys who he believed were 12 years old or younger," she continued. "He said his intention as to talk to them about gaming, but he said that soon his weaknesses would show and he would then send sexually explicit messages and request video chats where masturbation may take place. "He described these incidents as episodes and appeared remorseful for his actions." Under the terms of the SOPO McCollum is prohibited from any unsupervised contact with young persons under the age of 16. He is also being investigated over suspected sexual communication with a child and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity. Defence barrister Mark Farrell stressed McCollum is not being prosecuted for those offences. "At this stage there must be insufficient evidence to charge the applicant with anything other than the two offences presently before the court," he argued. Mr Farrell confirmed his client made full admissions to the alleged breaches, "expressing regret and remorse for his behaviour". But amid uncertainty over where McCollum would be living, Mr Justice Maguire adjourned the bail application. The judge stressed the need for controls and developed proposals on any accommodation put forward. The head of the investigation into the deaths of three teenagers at a hotel disco has refused to apologise after the hotel owner was arrested on suspicion of drugs offences, only to be "de-arrested" a short time later. On Wednesday, police said they had arrested Greenvale Hotel owner Michael McElhatton (52) after seizing suspected Class A drugs during a search of his house in Moneymore on Tuesday. But Mr McElhatton was de-arrested following a fast-track forensic examination of the white powder substance and later released a statement accusing the police of "blackening" his name. Read More During a press conference on Thursday morning, Chief Superintendent Raymond Murray was asked if he would apologise for the events. "No, I'm not going to apologise," he said. "Everything that happened in relation to that arrest and seizure is what we would normally do. If you start at the point where you know the end result and look back, it's actually not a very helpful place to start. "You have to start looking through the eyes of the officer at the front end, on the ground, who made the discovery. "I have seen images of the discovery and we're talking about white powder, in an unmarked, unbranded, clear plastic bag and around that are a number of individual tinfoil pieces which are scrunched up and look like wraps. "So the police officer sees that, and that is the threshold in law and we don't have the luxury of time, and reasonable suspects that this is drugs." Chief Superintendent Murray said that as soon as the package was found not to contain drugs, correct procedures were followed and the de-arrest was conveyed to the media. He added: "I know there's a lot of press speculation about blackening a person's name - that's not what we're about." On Sunday night, Lauren Bullock (17) from Donaghmore, and Morgan Barnard (17) and Connor Currie (16), both from Dungannon, died following the crush at the hotel door as crowds of young people waited to gain entry. Chief Superintendent Murray said they have identified 400 people who were at the event and have interviewed 82 of those, with a further 106 interviews scheduled in the next few days. He also read out a statement on behalf of the families of the three victims. "The three families would like to extend their heartfelt thanks to the community for their support following the tragic events of Sunday night," he said. "They are grateful for all those who have came forward to the PSNI so far and would appeal for anyone who witnessed the terrible event to come forward and give their account to police. "Morgan's family will remember him for loving the simple things in life. He volunteered for a number of groups, including volunteering at the local Cancer research shop. He would brighten up the classroom with his humour. "Connor's family want to thank Antrim Area Hospital staff, paramedics, ambulance staff, PSNI and members of the public who came to Connor's assistance. "Lauren's family will remember her as a very caring and thoughtful young girl who was outgoing and full of life." In the wake of the tragedy, Michael McElhatton and a 40-year-old doorman were arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. Mr McElhatton has since been released on bail, while the other man remains in police custody. The owner of a hotel in Cookstown has been released on police bail after three teenagers died at his premises on St Patrick's Day. Michael McElhatton (52) was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter on Tuesday following the deaths of the teenagers at the Greenvale Hotel. Police confirmed he had been released on bail to return for further questioning at a later date. On Wednesday police said they had seized suspected Class A drugs following a search at a house in Moneymore on Tuesday. But Mr McElhatton was de-arrested following fast-track forensic examination of the white powder substance and tin foil found during the search. Read More In a statement Mr McElhatton said that he had "nothing whatsoever" to do with drugs. "While I wished to respect the ongoing investigation by the police into the tragic deaths of the three young people at the Greenvale Hotel on St Patrick's night, I have no choice but to make it completely clear that I have nothing whatsoever to do with drugs," the statement read. "I can assure everyone that whatever any suspicions the police have raised about me in relation to anything to do with drugs is totally without any basis." Mr McElhatton said the powdery substance was taken by police from the laundry. "I am shocked and horrified that the powdery substance taken by police from the laundry in my house could be drugs," he said. Expand Close Morgan Barnard, Lauren Bullock and Connor Currie. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Morgan Barnard, Lauren Bullock and Connor Currie. Following the "de-arrest" police released a clarification confirming that there was "no suspicion of any crime relating to misuse of drugs on behalf of the person who still remains in custody". Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton said that the action taken by police was in "good faith and in line with procedure". "We will continue to carry out a rigorous investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of these three young people and we are deeply grateful for the huge assistance we are receiving from the community and we hope that people will continue to come forward and assist us with this enquiry, he said. A spokesperson for Mr McElhatton had confirmed on Tuesday evening that he had been arrested in connection with the manslaughter charge. A 40-year-old man was also arrested on suspicion of manslaughter on Tuesday. He remains in police custody. Lauren Bullock (17) from Donaghmore, and Morgan Barnard (17) and Connor Currie (16), both from Dungannon, died following a crush at the hotel door as crowds of young people waited to gain entry. Their funerals will take place on Friday. Around 400 people were trying to get into the venue after being dropped off by buses on Sunday night. Police said a crush at the door resulted in some people falling. Officers said people struggled to get off the ground and there was confusion in the immediate aftermath between 9pm and 10pm. A major police investigation into the deaths was launched on Monday. The owner of the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown where three teenagers died queuing up for a St Patrick's Night party has accused police of trying to blacken his name as he denied having any involvement in drugs. Michael McElhatton (52) had been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter following the tragedy on Sunday. He has been released on bail and will return for "further questioning at a future date", police said. Yesterday he was re-arrested on suspicion of possessing class A drugs with intent to supply following a search at his home. But just 127 minutes later a statement was issued by the PSNI saying Mr McElhatton had been "de-arrested" over drugs offences, as the investigation descended into a farce. Mr McElhatton said police had removed a "powdery substance" from the laundry room at his home, leading to speculation that the PSNI had seized washing powder. "While I wish to respect the ongoing investigation by the police into the tragic deaths of the three young people at the Greenvale Hotel on St Patrick's night, I have no choice but to make it completely clear that I have nothing whatsoever to do with drugs," Mr McElhatton said. "I can assure everyone that, whatever suspicions the police have raised about me in relation to anything to do with drugs, this is totally without any basis. "I'm shocked and horrified that the powdery substance taken by police from the laundry in my house could be drugs. "Despite there being no basis to these suspicions, they have blackened my name and caused so much upset for so many people, especially those who are grieving and distressed over the events at the Greenvale Hotel." Read More Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton said: "As a consequence of the arrest of a person on suspicion of manslaughter a search was carried out at the home of the suspect. The search discovered a medium size clear polythene bag containing an amount of a white powdery substance and pieces of tin foil. "This discovery led to the suspicion that the substance was a class A drug. In line with normal procedure the suspect was arrested on suspicion of possession of a class A drug with intent to supply. This arrest was communicated to the media in line with procedure. "Given the gravity of the investigation, the examination of the bag was carried out urgently. "Once opened by the Forensic Science Agency for Northern Ireland the substance inside the bag was ascertained to be an innocent substance. The suspect was then de-arrested in respect of the drugs offence and a communication made to the media. "The PSNI would like to make it clear that there is no suspicion of any crime relating to misuse of drugs on behalf of the person who still remains in custody. "The actions taken were in good faith and in line with procedure. We will continue to carry out a rigorous investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of these three young people and we are deeply grateful for the huge assistance we are receiving from the community and we hope that people will continue to come forward and assist us with this enquiry." A 40-year-old hotel doorman remains in custody for questioning on the suspicion of manslaughter following the deaths of Lauren Bullock (17) from Donaghmore, and Morgan Barnard (17) and Connor Currie (16), both from Dungannon. The teenagers died following a crush at the hotel door as crowds of young people waited to gain entry. On Monday an emotional Mr McElhatton expressed his sympathies to their families at the scene of the tragedy. The prominent Co Tyrone businessman had been praised for his role in the aftermath of the tragedy when he performed CPR on one of the teenagers in an attempt to save his life. Around 400 people were trying to get into the venue after being dropped off by buses outside the popular night spot. A police investigation into the deaths was launched on Monday. The PSNI is urging all those who were at the venue on Sunday to come forward to help with the investigation. What does it mean to be de-arrested? A 'De-arrest' occurs when an arrested person is released before being processed at a police station. If an arrest is valid, that person is interviewed and then potentially released within 24 hours, unless a 12-hour extension is sought. But if at any point before that processing stage it becomes apparent there is no case to answer, it will be a 'de-arrest' rather than a release without charge. For an arrest to be lawful, it must adhere to the conditions laid out in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. An arresting officer must hold an "honest and reasonable" suspicion that a criminal act has been carried out. If at any point the facts of the original arrest change, an officer has to question whether he or she still maintains that honest suspicion. Reasons may include mistaken identity or other exonerating evidence coming to light. If a case is dropped after the suspect is processed, the terminology would be 'released without charge'. The new plans will see routine surgeries transferred away from hospital theatres The Department of Health has announced radical plans for day surgery hubs across Northern Ireland in a bid to tackle waiting list times. Last October, day case surgery hubs were put in place to handle all cataract and varicose vein procedures. The hubs, or elective care centres, are used to perform routine surgeries that would otherwise be carried out in hospital theatres. As emergency cases are dealt with in hospital theatres, patients scheduled for routine operations can often face long waiting lists. Read More The new day surgery approach was one of a number of recommendations made in the 2016 Bengoa report, aimed at transforming Northern Ireland's healthcare system. Now it will applied to a range of specialities, including general surgery, urology, paediatrics and neurology, with preferred sites to be selected for each. The model will be the subject of a public consultation before the end of the year. By December 2020, the Department of Health aims to transfer more than 100,000 day cases, 25,000 endoscopies and 8,000 paediatric procedures to the new model. The department's permanent secretary, Richard Pengelly, said the new centres are a priority and a key part of tackling hospital waiting times. "All too often at present, routine surgery has to be postponed because hospital theatres are needed for urgent and emergency cases," he said. "By creating day surgery hubs on standalone sites away from 24 hour Emergency Departments, we can make our system more productive for the benefit of patients. "A key issue will be the location of the centres. This will inevitably mean that some people will have to travel a bit further for their day surgery, but we will achieve significant and sustainable reductions in the waiting times for the procedures. "Previous work suggests service users accept this trade off." Tom Black of the British Medical Association Northern Ireland welcomed the plans, stating they were "almost inevitable" as there has been no positive change to waiting list times over the last year. "Hopefully these plans will be developed in consultation with our members, and will make a real difference in tackling the pressure on acute services and address waiting times for patients," he added. "We know our members are frustrated when procedures are cancelled and their patients are let down, with this reorganisation treatment will be better planned and managed and this can only have a positive effect for everyone." The SDLP's health spokesperson, Mark H Durkan, said: "As these new centres move to specialise in specific areas through an elective care pathway in line with the Bengoa report, other locations will be free to provide the best treatment in other specific areas, should it be orthopaedics or dermatology for example. "Whilst these new changes mean that patients may have to travel further to receive treatment, it will nonetheless significantly reduce waiting times and allow for specialists to move through waiting lists at a much faster pace." DUP deputy leader leader Nigel Dodds has called on Secretary of State Karen Bradley to bring the Assembly together for a vote on returning to Stormont. Mr Dodds was speaking after Mrs Bradley confirmed in the House of Commons on Thursday that the legal power to suspend Northern Ireland's Assembly was being extended until at least the end of August. Northern Ireland has been without an executive since January 2017 when power-sharing between Sinn Fein and the DUP broke down. Mr Dodds said the decision to push back any election was the "right thing to do in the circumstances, regrettable though it is". "Could I suggest to her to do something a bit more radical, to take the initiative - what about calling the Assembly together? What about putting it up to the parties, who is prepared to go into the government now and who wants to sit outside?," the North Belfast MP said. "Because my understanding is that four out of the five parties in Northern Ireland would go into government tomorrow. "Instead of all the talk about wanting devolution, let's see who will actually vote for it." Read More Mrs Bradley said that she was working to bring the parties together, along with laying the groundwork for an eventual election. "I am looking at what we can do over the next few weeks to get the parties together to start the dialogue to make sure when a talks process does start that it has the best possible opportunity of succeeding," she said. Speaking on Wednesday, Sinn Fein deputy leader Michelle O'Neill said her party would not give ground on an aborted power-sharing deal with the DUP agreed last February. Clearly we are not going to negotiate down from a position that you achieved last February," the Mid Ulster MLA said. But the issues that caused the collapse remain, the issues in terms of the delivery of rights remain, we need to see those delivered in order for it to be successful. We cant have something that papers over the cracks, we have to have something that is real, thats meaningful, thats built on strong foundations and allows us to actually move forward and serve all of the people well on an equal basis, that actually deals with the fact that there is a lack of confidence now in these institutions and their ability to deliver. Expand Close Tony Lloyd MP / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Tony Lloyd MP In the House of Commons on Thursday, DUP Strangford MP Jim Shannon also raised concerns over budgets in Northern Ireland and asked what steps Ms Bradley would take to enable "financial restrictions to be eased, including the confidence and supply monies that this party secured with your party". Ms Bradley said the Treasury was releasing confidence and supply cash "as appropriate". Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Tony Lloyd warned Mrs Bradley that she risks becoming "part of the problem" around Northern Ireland's political deadlock. Mr Lloyd asked Ms Bradley to spell out how she plans to bring the parties back together, given there have been calls on her to resign after comments about killings by security forces during the Troubles. He told the Commons the minister "has to be a figure of trust and authority". "If she is not part of the solution she becomes part of the problem," Mr Lloyd said. "I don't ever like to personalise politics but I've got to say to the Secretary of State that she's seen a massive haemorrhaging of trust in her role in recent weeks and months because of the inadvertent remarks that she uttered. "But also because of the lack of energy in bringing the five parties together. "Does she honestly believe she can regain the confidence of the five parties and the people of Northern Ireland to drive Northern Ireland forward?" Ms Bradley hit back, saying she was very disappointed by his "tone" and she would continue to lay the work for elections to be held to Stormont, despite being forced into extending its suspension. The Cabinet minister also criticised Mr Lloyd for being in favour of devolution but "he consistently undermines that position by demanding decisions are taken in Westminster". A Dungannon school has revealed how it is helping pupils and staff deal with their grief after two pupils were killed in a crush at a disco on St Patrick's Day. Lauren Bullock (17) from Donaghmore, Morgan Barnard (17) and Connor Currie (16), both from Dungannon, died following the crush at the Greenvale Hotel as crowds of young people waited to gain entry to the venue on Sunday night. Connor and Morgan were students at St Patrick's Academy in Dungannon, while Lauren attended St Patrick's College. St Patrick's Academy opened their doors to the BBC to show how students are being offered help and support in the wake of their classmate's deaths. Teachers are speaking out about their feelings and memories of Connor and Morgan in an attempt to encourage their pupils to do the same. Read More English teacher Robert Devlin taught Connor Currie and shared his memories of him with other pupils. "Small moments like his daily routine of simply saying 'thanks Sir' as he walked out the door and he never missed. A small and seemingly insignificant couple of words, but ones that meant so much to this teacher," he told pupils Expand Close Students from Holy Trinity College leave floral tributes outside The Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, in Northern Ireland following the deaths of three teenagers, Lauren Bullock, Connor Currie, and Morgan Barnard, at a St Patricks Day party. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Students from Holy Trinity College leave floral tributes outside The Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone, in Northern Ireland following the deaths of three teenagers, Lauren Bullock, Connor Currie, and Morgan Barnard, at a St Patricks Day party. "A couple of weeks ago he stated casually on his way out the door 'if the UK had Lady Macbeth instead of Theresa May they would have had Brexit sorted out months ago'." "I loved that about him, very clever, small moments that shone a light on his individuality." Morgan Barnard's Irish teacher Mary Coyle said he had been a pleasure to teach. "Morgan had a big heart and he had a big smile and he loved Irish, and that made my job very pleasant," she told the BBC. "He had catchphrases, one of them was 'fadhb ar bith' (no problem), I'll always think of Morgan when I think of that phrase. Nothing was a problem to Morgan." Mrs Coyle said that pupils were still coming to terms with their loss. Expand Close The remains of Morgan Barnard are returned to the family home in Springdale, Dungannon, yesterday Photopress / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The remains of Morgan Barnard are returned to the family home in Springdale, Dungannon, yesterday "A lot of our Year 12 and Year 13 students were actually at the event and they are reliving the event," she said. "They all felt incredibly lucky, if that's the right word to say, that it wasn't them, and also feeling severe grief for the loss of their friends. "I think it was pretty harrowing what they saw and they are just having to talk through that." Counselling is also being provided to pupils at the school through group and one to one sessions. Art psychotherapist Jean Gascoigne said it was important that students dealt with their trauma and grief. "We're still in the early stages of trauma, we are experiencing a number of students who are just totally frozen," she said. "If we don't help the students at this point, with this level of truama and it gets pasted over, these students will potentially have long-term health difficulties." Funerals for Connor and Morgan will take place in their native Dungannon on Friday. A funeral for Morgan Barnard will be held at his home in Dungannon followed by Requiem Mass at St Patrick's Church in Dungannon for 10am. He will be buried in Carland Road cemetery. The funeral of Connor Currie will also be held in his Dungannon home followed by Requiem Mass at 2pm at St Malachy's Church in Edendork before burial in the adjoining graveyard. Lauren Bullock will be laid to rest after a funeral from her late residence in Donaghmore at 10.30am, followed by Mass in St Patrick's Church in Donaghmore at 11am. Police have arrested two men on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the teenager's deaths. Greenvale Hotel owner Michael McElhatton was released on police bail on Wednesday pending further questioning. A 40-year-old man remains in police custody. The Led By Donkeys poster featuring a quote from Nigel Farage placed on the Falls Road, Belfast Billboard depicting "damning" political quotes have been placed in locations across Northern Ireland by anti-Brexit campaign group Led By Donkeys. The group was formed by four friends in England to highlight what they see as the double standards of politicians on Brexit. The "guerrilla advertising" campaign is designed to embarrass pro-Brexit politicians by using past claims and predictions. In January they erected the first featuring ex-Prime Minister David Cameron's May 2015 tweet in which he promised "stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband". While the posters don't always depict tweets, they're all real quotes from key political figures. After putting eight up in the dead of night featuring Brexiteers David Davis, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson and others, it set up a crowdfunding page, which has raised more than 250,000. Ten weeks later the group is paying for adverts across the UK and its @ByDonkeys Twitter account boasts 100,000 followers. Five billboards are here - three in Belfast, one in Lisburn and another in Armagh. They feature quotes from Secretary of State Karen Bradley, and Brexiteers Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage and Nigel Lawson. Mrs Bradley's admission last September that she knew little of local politics before taking the job has been immortalised in the adverts. In a magazine interview Mrs Bradley said: "I didn't understand things like when elections are fought for example in Northern Ireland, people who are nationalists don't vote for unionist parties and vice-versa." Those remarks feature on billboards at Yorkgate in Belfast and Prince William Road in Lisburn. The NIO declined to comment. One of those behind the secretive campaign is Richard (44), who did not want to be fully named. He said: "We had initially been focusing on parts of the UK that voted Leave but we were then asked to put some up in Northern Ireland. "We put out a tweet earlier this month asking local people for their suggestions of what should we put on our posters. There was a lot of enthusiasm for us to use Karen Bradley's remarks. It was unforgiveable that a Cabinet minister with such an important portfolio should admit to such a thing. "We felt it was pretty extraordinary and deserved pride of place on a billboard. We had considered using remarks from the likes of the DUP, which would be rich pickings for a political satire group like ours. "However, we are conscious that all four of us are English so we didn't want to wade into the politics of Northern Ireland and cause offence. "Given the response on social media and to our fundraising, it's clear that people like what we're doing." EU leaders have offered the UK a plan which would delay Brexit from March 29 to May 22, on condition that MPs approve Theresa Mays withdrawal deal in a vote next week. If the deal is rejected in its third meaningful vote in the Commons, the UK would be given until April 12 to come to the European Council with its proposals for the way forward. The possibility would be open for a further extension of several months if the UK agreed to take part in European Parliament elections in May. European Council president Donald Tusk said that the response to Britains request for an extension to the Article 50 withdrawal process was agreed unanimously by leaders of the other 27 member-states. EU27 responds to UK requests in a positive spirit and: agrees to Art. 50 extension until 22 May if Withdrawal Agreement approved next week if not agreed next week then extension until 12 April approves Strasbourg Agreement continues no-deal preparations Charles Michel (@eucopresident) March 21, 2019 He went straight into a one-on-one meeting with Mrs May who has agreed to the plan. Mr Tusk said that April 12 was a key date for the UK because if it decided not to participate in the European Parliament elections then a long extension would become impossible. He said: April 12 is a key date in terms of the UK wondering whether to hold European Parliament elections. If it is not decided do so by then the option of a long extension will immediately become impossible. Expand Close European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (left) and European Council president Donald Tusk making a statement on Brexit in Brussels. Photo credit: ec.europa.eu/PA Wire PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (left) and European Council president Donald Tusk making a statement on Brexit in Brussels. Photo credit: ec.europa.eu/PA Wire Asked how long the long extension eventually on offer to the UK could be, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker replied: Until the very end. Mr Juncker said: Since the day of the referendum the position of the 27 members of the European Commission has been united and unequivocal. We have worked tirelessly to negotiate the Withdrawal Agreement. We have done everything we could to get it over the finishing line. We were asked for clarifications in December, we gave it to them. We were asked for assurances in January, we gave it to them. I was asked for further reassurances last Monday in Strasbourg, notably with regard to the backstop, I gave it to them. So I have to welcome that today, the 27 leaders endorsed the legally bonding clarifications and assurances that Prime Minister May and I agreed in Strasbourg. This closes and completes the full package. There is no more that we can have. I hope we can all agree that we are now at the moment of decision and I will make every effort to make sure we can leave with a deal and move our country forward. Theresa May Speaking at a Brussels press conference after the announcement Mrs May said: "Firstly I welcome the Council's approval of the legally-binding assurances in relation to the Northern Ireland backstop, which I negotiated with President Juncker last week. "This should give extra assurance to Parliament that in the unlikely event that the backstop is ever used it will only be temporary and that the UK and EU will begin work immediately to replace the backstop with alternative arrangements by the end of December 2020." Mrs May said if Parliament does not pass her deal next week the European Council will extend Article 50 to April 12 when the UK would have the choice of no deal or to put forward an alternative plan. She said if this involved another extension then the country will have to take part in the European Parliament elections. Mrs May added: "I believe strongly it would be wrong to ask people in the UK to participate in these elections three years after voting to leave the EU." Mrs May said she would be doing her utmost to ensure her deal was passed next week. "What the decision today underlines is the importance of the House of Commons passing a Brexit deal next week so that we can bring an end to the uncertainty and leave in a smooth and orderly manner," she said. "Tomorrow morning I will be returning to the UK and working hard to build support for getting the deal through." The so-called flextension plan was drawn up in a meeting stretching over eight hours at an EU summit in Brussels, as EU27 leaders wrangled over possible final cut-off dates for Brexit. The format increases pressure on Leave-backing MPs to row in behind Mrs Mays deal, for fear that if it falls the UK could find itself electing new MEPs and remaining for month or years within the EU. But it also creates a breathing space of a fortnight if Mrs May reaches the end of next week without securing agreement for her package or if Speaker John Bercow prevents her from tabling a motion which he regards as a repeat of those already defeated by 230 votes in January and 149 votes last week. Parliament could use that time to try to take control of the process and force Mrs May towards a softer Brexit stance or second referendum. The bulk of the meeting took place behind closed doors in Mrs Mays absence, after her plea for a longer extension to June 30 fell on deaf ears. Mrs May had to leave the room after making her case in a 90-minute presentation to her European counterparts. The Prime Minister was reportedly pressed on what she will do if MPs reject her deal for a third time but did not commit herself to a Plan B or rule out a no-deal Brexit. A former British soldier turned best-selling writer has attacked the decision to charge a Bloody Sunday paratrooper with two murders. Yorkshire-born Ken Wharton (68), who did two tours of Northern Ireland in the 1970s and has written 10 books about the Troubles, said that when he heard about the charges, he felt "rage and a massive sense of injustice". However, he welcomed the decision not to bring charges against 16 other soldiers. Mr Wharton stressed he would "always argue that the paratroopers, under extreme provocation, returned IRA gunfire". "There are those of the view that gunmen of the Official IRA, egged on by leaders of the Provisional IRA, fired at the troops and they, under the rules of engagement, returned that fire," the former soldier said. "It was a war situation and the soldiers were returning fire to preserve their own lives and the lives of their comrades, as they had been trained to do." Mr Wharton, who lives in Australia, accepted it was an "utter tragedy" that 14 people lost their lives as a result of the violence. One in five school staff here are assaulted once a week, a survey has revealed. (PA) One in five school staff here are assaulted once a week, a survey has revealed. The Northern Ireland Committee of the Irish Committee of Trade Unions (ICTU) Education Group released the findings of a major survey of teachers and support staff today. It also found that one in three education workers experience physical abuse annually, 83% have been verbally abused in the classroom, and 45% have been verbally abused by parents. The results also show some education workers receive far more abuse than others, and that there is not adequate support for those assaulted. Some 88% of special education teachers have received verbal or physical abuse, while 95% of support staff, such as classroom assistants, have been assaulted. The survey, carried out by nine trade unions in October 2018, was conducted in response to concerns raised by members in relation to levels of violence in schools, and unions say lack of funding is compounding the problem. The chair of the NIC-ICTU Education Group, Denise Walker (GMB), said that it is not unreasonable to expect schools should be safe places to protect both pupils and staff. "Everyone expects and is entitled to go to work free from the threat of physical violence but if you work in one of Northern Ireland's schools in a support role, you could be one of the 51% who have been subjected to a physical incident at work," she said. "Forty-three per cent of whom reported having been a victim of physical violence weekly. "With only 34% of victims receiving any form of support and action taken in only 22% of incidents, our support staff are feeling exposed and unsupported. "Classroom assistants and support staff work in schools helping some of the most vulnerable pupils, yet they receive little or no support when they need it most. "Over 54% of teaching staff felt supported after reporting similar incidents and while this is still too low, it demonstrates that the support structures are just not being applied adequately or equally. This is totally unacceptable. "The Education Authority and Department of Education must act now to eradicate the threat of violence in our schools." Devastation at the scene of the fatal IRA bomb blast at the Mulberry Bush pub in Birmingham on November 21, 1974. Ten of the 21 people who died in the notorious pub bombings were at this venue The victims of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings were "accidental deaths" in an "IRA operation that went badly wrong", its former intelligence chief told an inquest. Kieran Conway from Dublin said the attacks were "not sanctioned" by the IRA and public outrage at the attacks "nearly destroyed" the group. Following what he called the "disaster in Birmingham" on the night of November 21 by a provisional IRA active service unit, "the dip in public support was extraordinary". Mr Conway, who robbed banks for the IRA in the 1970s, added: "The IRA was only saved by the subsequent (ceasefire) talks with the British Government." The blasts at the Mulberry Bush in the base of the city's iconic Rotunda and the basement Tavern in the Town in nearby New Street killed 21 people and injured 220 more. Bereaved families have waited 44 years for fresh inquests, which are now in their fourth week. Asked who bore responsibility for the attacks, Mr Conway said: "I accept everybody collectively involved in the IRA at that time bears a full and awesome responsibility for what happened at Birmingham and for the deaths of all those people." Mr Conway, speaking over a video link from a secure location, was also asked if he knew the identities of the bombers. He said he knew only from "third-hand" reports in newspapers, books and TV documentaries that were in the public domain. In any case he added he would not name any "IRA men" who were still alive. Expand Close The 30lb bomb planted at the Tavern In The Town detonated with such force it blew out the floor above, as pictured here (PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The 30lb bomb planted at the Tavern In The Town detonated with such force it blew out the floor above, as pictured here (PA) Barrister Kevin Morgan, asking questions on behalf of the bereaved victims' families, asked: "Would you agree that the killings in Birmingham on November 21 1974 constituted murder?" Mr Conway, who was convicted of handling explosives in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in the 1970s, replied: "No I don't agree. I believe it was an IRA operation that went wrong. "Had the IRA deliberately targeted that pub with the intention of killing civilians then that would have been murder, yes. "But in the circumstances, as I have been told, I don't accept that it was murder. "I say that it was an IRA operation that went badly wrong." Asked how he would have described the deaths, he added: "I understand perfectly that this is unacceptable to the British people but I would categorise them as accidental." Expand Close The Mulberry Bush pub (PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The Mulberry Bush pub (PA) During a statement about the bombings he gave to An Garda Siochana on behalf of West Midlands Police in January 2016, Mr Conway referred to the killings as "being murders", jurors were told. Mr Conway, who is a criminal defence solicitor in Ireland, told the inquest he used "the wrong word" in that interview. After the attacks, an internal IRA court of inquiry, convened in Ireland, cleared those involved in the bombings, Mr Conway added. He said IRA chiefs agreed with the "initial explanation" the "atrocity" was down to the delay in calling in the coded warning because the chosen phone box was out of order. "No court martial ever took place," he added, and no IRA members were ever internally disciplined over the attacks. Coroner Sir Peter Thornton QC asked Mr Conway if the the faulty phone box story could have been a "well-orchestrated and convenient lie" for the bungling bomb team to tell their superiors and escape punishment. Mr Conway agreed it could have been but denied the leadership would have "looked for an excuse" as well. He said the IRA Army Council chairman David O'Connell was "lying" when, just weeks after the bombings, he claimed the IRA was still investigating if its men were to blame. "Essentially he was lying, he knew perfectly well what had happened," said Mr Conway, who earlier described O'Connell as an "honourable man". Mr Conway said, at the time of the bombings, IRA operations in England were carried out by active service units "autonomous" of the organisation's command in Ireland, and were picking bombing targets themselves. He said nobody in the IRA's Army Council, which ran military operations, or the organisation's commanders in England had any idea the pubs were to be targeted. Speaking of his own feelings on the bombings, he added: "The bombings had been careless if not downright incompetent." Mr Conway told jurors O'Connell had personally told him the attack "was not sanctioned by them". He added the stated policy of the IRA - which he described as being "at war" with the British state at the time - was civilian targets were "strictly and loudly forbidden". He added: "Those targets ought never to have happened. I have said that many times. "The volunteers who carried it out, the person who commanded them, either didn't know that or ignored it. They were not legitimate targets. "It was a civilian pub, there was no question of it being a pub with which soldiers commonly drank - and it was not. It was not a permissible target." The inquests continue. An ice cream van was "ransacked" police said. Police have issued an appeal for information after a gang of youths "ransacked" an ice cream van in west Belfast. The incident occurred in the Lagmore Area on Saturday March 9. Police are appealing for any witnesses or anyone with any information to contact them on 101 quoting Police Ref 1120 of 9/3/19 An innovative new tool for quickly diagnosing often deadly auto-immune infections will save lives, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock said (Niall Carson/PA) An innovative new tool for quickly diagnosing often deadly auto-immune infections will save lives, the Health Secretary said. At least a third of those with sepsis die at present. Every hour that patients are not diagnosed increases the chance of death by 8%, a developer of the test said. Randox medical diagnostics company is almost ready to release a new bedside test aimed at slashing the 24 hours usually taken to identify the correct antibiotic. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: Instead of having to give people huge amounts of antibiotics across the board, which causes other problems, both medical and problems with resistance and super bugs, instead we will be able to work out exactly what the right treatment is for that individual person and do it fast enough to get the treatment in to save lives. Every 7 minutes someone will have a heart attack (Heart UK). We offer the Cardiac Risk Prediction Array providing simultaneous genotyping of 20 SNPs identified from a GWAS study. To find out more contact us on: info@randoxbiosciences.com#HeartMonth #HeartHealth pic.twitter.com/XppskFPIQm randoxbio (@randoxbio) February 8, 2019 He toured Randoxs premises in Antrim in Northern Ireland on Thursday. He added: I can see a very clear application across the health service for how we can use the technology that is being developed here in Northern Ireland, both across the UK and indeed around the world. Sepsis can develop from infections caused by a simple cut or the use of invasive medical devices like catheters. The bodys white blood cells fight the infection but the reaction can become overblown and damage healthy tissue and organs. Many who survive face amputations because of damage to the limbs, Randoxs molecular diagnostics manager Dr Martin Crockard said. He said the traditional method of sending blood samples to laboratories for testing was taking too long. Randoxs new technology would allow clinicians in hospital emergency departments to check multiple samples at the press of a few buttons on a smart pad. Currently doctors are initially prescribing broad spectrum antibiotics which are not specific enough for individual patients, encouraging resistant strains. Mr Crockard said it was important to quickly begin treatment with the most appropriate antibiotic. He said: We can deal with the exact organism causing the problem in less than four hours, allowing you to tailor the treatment for that individual patient very quickly. If youve recently had sepsis and are surprised by how you feel. You are not alone. As many as 40% of those who survive sepsis may encounter new physical, cognitive or psychological problems during their recovery. The UK Sepsis Trust is here to support you 0808 800 0029 pic.twitter.com/LuPYcZnoaM The UK Sepsis Trust (@UKSepsisTrust) March 5, 2019 Around 52,000 people die every year in the UK. The UK Sepsis Trusts chief executive Ron Daniels said: Randox is leading the way around molecular technologies. No other system brings this so close to the clinician on the shop floor. Colonel Des Bergin, representing the Irish Embassy, and Lieutenant Colonel Retd Dominic Hancock, of the British Embassy, lay wreaths at the graveside Two burial services have been held for four Irish soldiers killed during the First World War. The first was at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Messines Ridge British Cemetery near Ypres, Belgium, on Tuesday. It saw a soldier of the Royal Irish Rifles and an unknown soldier laid to rest. The second service was held at Guillemont Road Cemetery on the Somme in France. Both of the burials were conducted by Rev Nathan King, chaplain to 1st Battalion The Royal Irish Regiment. The bearer party at each service was composed of members of 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment. They were organised by the MoD's Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre (JCCC). Despite research, it was not possible for the JCCC to identify any of the soldiers due to the high numbers of casualties. The JCCC's Rosie Barron said: "It has been a privilege to organise these services and to work with the Royal Irish Regiment to ensure these Irish soldiers have had the burial they deserve. "Although their identities remain unknown, they are at rest alongside comrades and their sacrifices will not be forgotten." The remains of two of the soldiers were discovered during work to widen a ditch south-west of the town of Wijtschate. Research suggests they were most likely killed in either June 1917, during the Battle of Messines, or in April 1918, during the Battle of the Lys. The second burial service was held for a soldier of the Connaught Rangers and an unknown soldier of an unknown regiment. The remains of these two soldiers were uncovered during work on a wind turbine project near Guillemont. They are believed to have been killed in September 1916. Rev King said: "Although soldiers die, some of them unknown, their lives are celebrated here and their souls offered to God. People are never forgotten. Their lives are honoured." CCTV footage of the suspected gunman behind the murder of Jim Donegan (PSNI/PA) Detectives investigating the murder of a father outside a school in Belfast have linked the killing to the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). Jim Donegan, 43, was shot dead as he waited to collect his 13-year-old son from St Marys Christian Brothers Grammar School in west Belfast in December. Detectives said the same killer had been waiting for his victim at the scene five days earlier but Mr Donegan did not pick up his son that day. Detective Chief Inspector Pete Montgomery says on @BBCCrimewatch that he believes the INLA were responsible for murdering Jim Donegan as he sat in his car waiting to collect his son from school in December last year pic.twitter.com/2l73okm0tz Police Service NI (@PoliceServiceNI) March 21, 2019 CCTV images showing the man waiting at the school five days prior to the murder have been broadcast on the BBCs Crimewatch Roadshow Live programme. Mr Donegan was gunned down in front of schoolchildren and parents on Tuesday December 4. PSNI Detective Superintendent Jason Murphy said police originally believed the murder was the work of dissident republicans, but further inquiries had identified the INLA as the perpetrators. He said: At this stage we believe it was the INLA that was involved, although we dont have a closed mind in terms of anybody else who may have been involved in the murder. Mr Murphy said Mr Donegan was shot eight times with a semi-automatic handgun. The detective said police do not yet know whether the gunman acted alone. Expand Close An image of how the gunman may look (PSNI/PA) Press Association Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp An image of how the gunman may look (PSNI/PA) Asked if there was a drugs link to the murder, Mr Murphy said he was not prepared to speculate on the motive. The officer said detectives had received good co-operation from the community in west Belfast. He added: The public response both in west Belfast and more broadly has been really positive, this was a community left absolutely horrified and quite rightly so. The community in west Belfast have been very engaged with police, but we do understand that communities continue to live in fear when these things happen on their doorsteps. The INLA was a small but active republican paramilitary grouping during the Troubles. It killed Margaret Thatchers Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave in 1979, and leading loyalist Billy Wright in 1997. Expand Close Police at the scene where Mr Donegan was shot dead in December (Niall Carson/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Police at the scene where Mr Donegan was shot dead in December (Niall Carson/PA) It was also behind one of Northern Irelands bloodiest atrocities when it killed 17 people in a bombing at the Droppin Well pub in Ballykelly, Co Londonderry, in 1982. The armed group said it had decommissioned weapons almost a decade ago but independent monitors have said it remains deeply involved in serious crime. Detective Chief Inspector Peter Montgomery said the suspect in Mr Donegans shooting may be aged in his late 30s to early 40s, approximately 5ft 8in, and may walk with a limp or have an existing medical condition which affects his gait. He added: Jim was a husband, a brother, a father to two sons and a stepfather, and over three months have passed since his cold-blooded murder. Jims family deserve to have answers and this dangerous gunman needs to be removed from our streets, but I need the publics help to do this. I am releasing new CCTV footage which I believe shows the gunman, five days before Jims death, waiting for him to arrive to collect his son with hundreds of innocent children nearby. The PSNI released an image last month of what the suspected gunman may look like. Expand Close Mr Donegan was shot dead while picking up his son from school (Niall Carson/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mr Donegan was shot dead while picking up his son from school (Niall Carson/PA) Mr Montgomery said: My investigation into the callous execution of Mr Donegan continues to progress and a republican element is a main line of inquiry, specifically the INLA, but I really need the publics help to remove this dangerous man from our streets. This is someone who thought it was acceptable to put the lives of countless children at risk and murder Jim please help me put him before the courts. He added: On the day of Jims murder, I believe the gunman emerged from Clonelly Avenue on to Glen Road around 3.10pm. He then walked past numerous children at around 3.15pm, calmly activated the pedestrian crossing, crossed the road and walked up to Jims car, firing his weapon eight times before fleeing the scene. He was wearing a high-vis, hip-length yellow jacket with security on the back, dark bottoms with a grey-coloured hat or hood and was carrying a dark bag over his shoulder, which I believe contained the gun. I want to hear from you if you were in the area at the time. Did you see the gunman? The family have been left devastated and hundreds of children and families who witnessed the murder have also been left traumatised. Irish premier Leo Varadkar and Prime Minister Theresa May have held a short bilateral meeting in Brussels. An Irish Government spokesman confirmed the two leaders met on Thursday afternoon ahead of a meeting of EU leaders at a summit in the Belgian capital. They discussed how matters may unfold over the next few days including this evenings European Council meeting, the spokesman said. Earlier Mr Varadkar said the EU needs to ensure Brexit does not end up becoming a rolling cliff-edge scenario. Speaking at a European Peoples Party (EPP) meeting in Brussels, Mr Varadkar said there was an openness to an extension across the board among EU leaders. Expand Close (PA Graphics) Press Association Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp (PA Graphics) Everyone wants to avoid a no deal but we cant have a situation whereby we have a rolling cliff-edge, where we just put off decisions and deadlines every couple of months, he said. Brexit was never going to be clean. Brexit would always require some very hard choices for the United Kingdom to make. It was never going to be all good and no bad. And those decisions now need to be made. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Theresa May formally requested a short extension, which would delay the withdrawal date from March 29 to June 30, in a letter to EU Council president Donald Tusk. She is meeting Mr Tusk in Brussels on Thursday afternoon. Mr Tusk said he believed a short extension was possible but only if Westminster endorses the EU Withdrawal Agreement. Mr Varadkar said the Irish Government was willing to cut the British Government some slack on their request for a short extension, and when it came to the request that the Strasbourg Agreement be ratified formally. Asked whether he was in favour of a long extension, Mr Varadkar said now was not the time to consider it. He said: There hasnt been a request for a long extension so I dont think we can consider that at this stage. The Taoiseach said Ireland did not want the UK to crash out of the EU and it was up to the UK to revoke Article 50 if it chose to. No deal can only ever be a British choice, he said. Lets not forget the March 29 deadline was set by the UK in the first place. Its always up to them, even at the last moment, to revoke Article 50 unilaterally. Meeting with my colleagues from the Nordic Baltic Group of EU leaders to discuss #Brexit and this weeks @EUCouncil meeting. Its good to meet up with Irelands partners again in these challenging times pic.twitter.com/9oASYuGVSR Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) March 21, 2019 They do not need permission to do that so no deal, if it happens, will be a British choice and a British decision. Brexit is not a problem of our creation. We do need to see resolution, I think, sooner rather than later. I dont think this can drag on for months and years. Speaking in Brussels, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said he believed it would be very difficult for Mrs May to get her deal through but he wouldnt rule it out. Theres a very clear choice facing Brexiteers in particular, that on the one hand they may say that the ultras will go for the no-deal scenario but on the other hand I dont think a no-deal will be tolerated by the remainder of the Parliament, he said. Mr Martin said MPs had a choice whether they want a Brexit of some sort or the potential of a no-deal Brexit because he said there was a likelihood that an extension could be a long one. Mockery has its place. No one in public life, whether in journalism, the creative arts or politics, has ever been spared it. So those who say that the current Led By Donkeys billboard campaign is unkind or unwarranted, as Lembit Opik argued on the Nolan Show, are taking a novel and, to my mind, bizarre position. The campaign selects the statements of politicians and recreates them in the format of tweets on huge posters in town centres. The targets include Karen Bradley, our unfortunate Secretary of State, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Theresa May and more to come. I hope. For nothing lifts the spirits more in dull political times than for the earnest failures to be held up to public ridicule. In this campaign, the criticism is unusual for a magnificent piece of public satire. Usually satire exaggerates the foibles and absurdities of the targets. Led By Donkeys simply restates them in the words of the politicians themselves. David Cameron really did say that the choice available to us was strong and stable government or the sort of chaos Ed Milliband would bring. And that's funny because Cameron excelled himself in the degree of chaos that could be triggered by a single decision. Political life in Westminster, within the parties, between the parties and between the Government and its partner governments in the European Union, is a shambles. No one knows how the conundrum is to be resolved and how the choice that Cameron offered us is to be realised. We voted on whether to stay in the European Union or to leave it on the assumption that leaving was a realistic prospect. Yet political life is at a halt and the media are distracted by the hand-wringing and head-scratching over how the leave decision that was voted for could actually be delivered. You'd think a leader who offered stability over chaos would have thought that through. Yet he could hardly have done more damage to Parliament, democracy and international relations short of declaring war on France or the Irish Republic. Usually politicians do not make it so easy to ridicule them. Nigel Farage is a twitter joke this week as drones follow his Leave March trying to find him at the head of it, or even at the back of it. And tweeters relish the fantastic buffoonery of the man, the self-inflicted humiliation of summoning the people to his cause and not being there to lead them. Karen Bradley gets quoted saying that she hadn't realised that unionists don't vote for nationalists. Hilarious. But she did say it. In the usual tradition of satire, cartoonists and the sketch writers amplify the characteristics or the positions of those they invite us to laugh at. So Spitting Image depicted former Labour deputy leader Roy Hattersley spitting at his audiences. This was deeply unkind. The man's lisp was hardly a personal failing. Hattersley himself was one of the most intelligent and humane politicians we have had, perhaps the last in a generation that produced people who had a compassionate imagination informed by a real education, before the wide boys and the chancers came in. Ken Clarke strikes me as one of that type, somebody you could have a conversation with. David Steele, a co-founder of the Liberal Democratic Party, was always depicted as sitting in the top pocket of David Owen, a slight not only on his apparent secondary position but also on his size. Tony Blair has been depicted by Steve Bell, the Guardian cartoonist, with a dead staring eye. John Major was always represented as wearing Y-front underpants over his trousers. Compared to this kind of humour, merely reminding us of the daft and incongruous things that people said amounts almost to respect. My fear is that we don't have enough of this scoffing at our politicians. The viewers and listeners are left to provide it themselves. When Karen Bradley said that killings by soldiers were not crimes, the BBC responded by inviting that old criminal, Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly, onto Evening Extra. If you can't find something to scoff at in a gunman being given a platform to sneer at the justification of murder, the very art in which he himself excels, then you are a dull person indeed. Seamus McKee asked Kelly if killings by the IRA had been crimes and Kelly conceded after much evasion that they had been against the law of the land at the time. The hoots of derision in thousands of homes and cars passed unheard by the audience. There are arguments which are so bad and so immorally grounded that they aren't worth being engaged with rationally. The only thing an insult to your intelligence warrants is an insult in return. But there is a genuine feeling abroad that the media don't have the stomach for really tearing down the humbug and hokum of a Gerry Kelly. The danger is always that the argument will get tangled up in whataboutery and other distractions. So the job of ripping into republican smugness falls to the blogger and the commentator. Shane Paul O'Doherty, a former bomber himself, provides the most trenchant criticism of the IRA in any forum today. He is scathing and uncompromising and goes so far as to outrage readers by posting photographs of dead bodies, of people shot and dumped as informers on the border. He is pounding away at the Provos, week after week, reminding us of the hypocrisy of those who justified murder while presenting themselves as concerned with equality and human rights. And what better target might we have today than Ian Paisley? Should he not have a travel programme? Websites like Ulster Fry, Waterford Whispers, Tyrone Tribulations, LAD and a host of other creative sneerers are circulating parodies of Paisley, Arlene Foster and others, entertaining us and catering for a public appetite for pillorying those who have let us down. Is this cruel? Yes, often it is, but if it is genuinely funny, that's okay. In Northern Ireland, scoffing is the due riposte of genuine cynicism in a political culture which privileges fanaticism, preening and self regard, which takes the most extreme exponents of deadlock, the absolvers of murder, places them at the centre, and attempts to put them in charge. If the people sidelined by the elevation of bigotry and lies aren't entitled to laugh, then they have nothing left but their anger, and we maybe don't want to see that. Floral tributes to the dead teenagers outside The Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown, Co Tyrone (Liam McBurney/PA) A man arrested over the deaths of three teenagers outside a hotel disco has failed in a High Court bid to secure an immediate release from custody. The 40-year-old is being detained on suspicion of manslaughter by police investigating the St Patrick's Day tragedy in Cookstown, Co Tyrone. Lauren Bullock, 17, Morgan Barnard, 17, and Connor Currie, 16, died after a crush developed in the queue at the Greenvale Hotel. The man, granted anonymity and referred to as XX, was arrested on Tuesday. Under the Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) legislation he can only be held for a limited time before detectives must seek extensions. The court heard that since being detained XX has been taken to hospital twice for psychiatric assessments - trips accounting for a combined period in excess of 17 hours. It meant that by the time the legal challenge started he had only been subjected to a maximum of 60 minutes of interviews. Lawyers for XX claimed a psychiatric assessment does not count as medical treatment which enables to clock to be stopped on the detention period. Seeking an application for a writ of habeas corpus, they contended that the time he can be lawfully held ran out earlier on Thursday. But Mr Justice McCloskey, sitting with Mr Justice Huddleston, said there was "a fundamental frailty" in the argument. "We harbour no doubt that the words medical treatment must include, in the context of this challenge, psychiatric assessment or evaluation or examination," he held. Dismissing the application, the judge confirmed: "We are in no doubt that there's no merit in the applicant's challenge." With the three teenagers' funerals due to be held on Friday, Mr Justice McCloskey also offered condolences to the bereaved. He said: "This was a quite appalling tragedy, and the court's sincere sympathies are extended to all of the circle of family members, friends and others who are suffering the aftermath of this truly dreadful loss of life." Having ruled Kazakhstan with an authoritarian grip since the 1980s, President Nursultan Nazarbaev shocked many when he unexpectedly announced his resignation on March 19. Eurasia Review reports in its article President Nazarbaev Resigns, But Is He Really Leaving? that though leaving the presidential post, Nazarbaev will retain many other influential positions in the Kazakh government, leaving many to wonder if hes really giving up power. Still Holding The Reins? Nazarbaev, 78, will continue to head Kazakhstans powerful Security Council, the ruling Nur Otan political party that he founded, and the countrys Constitutional Council. The last Soviet-era president to leave office, Nazarbaev noted during his announcement that he was also granted the lifetime status of Elbasy, or leader of the nation, by parliament in 2010. So, I am staying with you, Nazarbaev said. The concerns of the country and the people remain my concerns. He isnt leaving the scene but when a new president is installed, he will lose some of his power, Paul Goble, a longtime analyst of Russian and post-Soviet affairs, told RFE/RL. I think we are in the midst of a transition that will likely take a year or more but that wont have the discontinuities which might have occurred had he left by dying. Erica Marat, an associate professor at Washingtons National Defense University, thinks Nazarbaevs presence will be felt in Kazakhstan for some time. He will remain a central political figure until the end of his days, she told RFE/RL. His cult is likely to live for decades as well, with future leaders building their legitimacy on the notion they continue building on the legacy of Nazarbaev. Nazarbaev announced that veteran politician and diplomat Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, currently the speaker of the Kazakh Senate, would take over presidential duties as of March 20 and serve until the scheduled presidential election in 2020. As head of Nur Otan, Nazarbaev would likely select that partys candidate for next years presidential election. And his position as head of the Security Council, which he noted in his resignation address has serious authority, would allow him to control the countrys foreign policy. Timing Is Everything Nazarbaevs resignation comes just two days before Norouz, the springtime new years holiday that is celebrated in many predominantly Muslim countries. The timing could be seen by many as symbolic of a new beginning and give people in Kazakhstan time over the holiday to discuss and digest the big political change taking place in their country. While certainly a surprise announcement for many Kazakhs, others saw it coming. It was both long anticipated and an abrupt change at the same time, Marat said. Nazarbaev has been considering various options for power transition and has chosen one that will allow him to oversee the succession process and normalize the idea that Kazakhstan can also be ruled by a leader other than himself. The longtime leader had shown his hand about resigning, Goble said. Nazarbaev signaled that he wanted to resign by asking Kazakhstans highest court to clarify the conditions under which a president could leave office, he said. He clearly wants to leave but to manage the transition to a new generation rather than serving until his death with unpredictable consequences thereafter. Jonathan Peden and his new bride Roisin before the fatal accident at work just weeks later A Northern Ireland company has been fined 50,000 after an employee died when a two tonne pallet fell on top of him. Alan little Ltd, based in Lurgan, pleaded guilty after Jonathan Peden suffered fatal injuries during an unloading operation. Mr Peden died after he was struck by a palletised load which fell from the forks of a telescopic handler during the operation. The driver of the lorry also sustained relatively minor injuries when he was impacted by the load as it fell. The telescopic handler, which was on hire, was being operated by an untrained member of staff. The palletised load weighing over two tonnes consisted of a robot and an electrical control box. Neither were secured to the pallet and during the lifting operation to remove the pallet from the lorry, the robot became unstable and toppled over, striking Mr Peden as it fell. Health and Safety Executive NI Inspector Kyle Carrick said: Our thoughts are with the Peden family today. Jonathans tragic death could have been avoided if his employer had properly considered the risks associated with this unloading activity. Careful consideration of the risks is vital to ensure practical and often simple measures are put in place to prevent such incidents from occurring. Load stability and security are important factors to consider, as is operator training, which is a legal requirement for anyone operating lift trucks, including telescopic handlers. Pedestrians and other people who are not directly involved in loading or unloading operations should always be kept clear of dangerous lifting activities. The firm was fined for breaches of the Health and Safety at Work Order 1978. Messages of sympathy have poured in for the family of a young Belfast mother who will be buried in the wedding dress she never got to wear following a tragic drowning accident. Ruth Maguire, who was due to marry her partner of 12 years in August, went missing overnight on Saturday in Carlingford, Co Louth, after becoming separated from her friends at a hen party. Read More The body of the 30-year-old mum-of-three, who lived in Newcastle, was recovered from the water by divers on Monday afternoon following an extensive search and rescue operation. Gardai have said they are treating the incident as "a tragic accident". Mrs Maguire's heartbroken family are now preparing to say their final goodbyes at her funeral in Belfast this weekend. Her heartbroken older sister, Rachel Wilkinson, said Ruth would be buried in her wedding dress at Carnmoney Cemetery following a funeral Mass on Saturday morning at St Vincent de Paul church in Ligoniel. She added: "She was getting married on August 8. Everything was ready. We are going to let her wear her wedding dress in her coffin." Ms Wilkinson said she believed her sister lost her bearings on Saturday night when she became separated from her 32-strong group of friends after leaving a bar. Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Ruth and James with children Tyler (10), Lydia (7) and Oliver (5) Ruth with sister Rachel Wilkinson Some of the women who were with Ruth on the hen party / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ruth and James with children Tyler (10), Lydia (7) and Oliver (5) They had all travelled to Carlingford, where they were staying to celebrate a friend's forthcoming wedding, and the alarm was raised by friends when they realised Ms Maguire had not returned after midnight. Gardai said they were investigating Ms Maguire's sudden death and confirmed they were preparing a file for the coroner. "There is nothing to say this is anything other than a tragic accident," a spokesman for the force added. Ruth's devastated fiance, James Griffin (35), dad to their kids Tyler (10), Lydia (7) and Oliver (5), wrote on Facebook: "Ruth wasn't just my partner, she was my soulmate. Stay safe, love always James and your three beautiful children." Sister Rachel's heartbreaking tribute in yesterday's Belfast Telegraph prompted an outpouring of love and solidarity for the family of the beautiful young woman, who had everything to live for. Hundreds of online messages have been sent to Ruth's partner, children, sister, brothers Raymond Worthington (32) and Ryan Maguire (46), and parents Geraldine Worthington and Malachy Maguire. Expand Close Ruth Maguire / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ruth Maguire They said their thoughts and prayers were with Ruth's family and all her friends. Some described the St Patrick's weekend tragedy as both "absolutely heartbreaking" and "unbearably sad". Writing on the Belfast Telegraph Facebook page, Gail Brownlee said: "This is one of the worst tragedies and I am heartbroken for this beautiful girl and her family. Sympathies to all of them. I just can't get it out of my mind." In another post, Denise Jamison wrote: "Taken too soon RIP, thoughts and prayers are with your family." Ruth Morrison added: "How absolutely devastating for this family. Thoughts and prayers are with her children, partner, family and friends." Likewise, Joanne McNulty said: "No words. So, so heartbreaking. Expand Close Ruth Maguire with son Tyler (10), daughter Lydia (7) and son Oliver (5) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ruth Maguire with son Tyler (10), daughter Lydia (7) and son Oliver (5) "Thinking of all her beautiful family and friends at this devastating time. May she rest in peace." Responding to the article, Paul Sloan said: "So, so sad. One can only hope and pray the family and friends find the strength and love to overcome this tragic event. RIP Ruth. God bless your fiance, children, your families and friends x." John Sadlier added: "Thinking about you and your poor family. RIP." Edward McMahon wrote: "So, so sad for the husband to be and the three kids too." Also commenting, William Cully said: "Absolutely heartbreaking." And Samuel Preshur wrote: "So sad. Thoughts with all the family." Police believe Republican paramilitaries from the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) were behind the murder of West Belfast man Jim Donegan outside a school last year (Niall Carson/PA) Republican paramilitaries from the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) were behind the murder of a west Belfast man outside a school last year, police believe. Jim Donegan, 43, was gunned down in a hail of bullets in December as he sat in his car waiting to collect his teenage son. Detectives said the same killer had been waiting for his victim at the scene five days earlier but Mr Donegan did not pick up his 13-year-old that day. They blamed the INLA for the killing. I believe the gunman tried to murder Jim Donegan on Thursday, November 29th - five days before he was shot outside his sons school on December 4 says Detective Chief Inspector Pete Montgomery as he unveils new CCTV footage on @BBCCrimewatch Police Service NI (@PoliceServiceNI) March 21, 2019 Detective Chief Inspector Pete Montgomery said: Today I am releasing new CCTV footage which I believe shows the gunman, five days before Jims death, waiting for him to arrive to collect his 13-year-old son with hundreds of innocent children nearby. Jim was not collecting his son that day but I believe that, if he had appeared, he would have been murdered at this point. My investigation into the callous execution of Jim Donegan continues to progress and a republican element is a main line of inquiry, specifically the INLA, but I really need the publics help to remove this dangerous man from our streets. The INLA was a small but active republican paramilitary grouping during the Troubles. It killed Margaret Thatchers Northern Ireland spokesman, Airey Neave, in 1979 and leading loyalist Billy Wright in 1997. It was behind one of Northern Irelands bloodiest atrocities when it killed 17 people in a bombing at the Droppin Well pub in Ballykelly, County Londonderry. The armed group said it had decommissioned weapons almost a decade ago but independent monitors have said it remains deeply involved in serious crime. The family have been left devastated and hundreds of children and families who witnessed the murder have also been left traumatisedPSNI Detective Chief Inspector Pete Montgomery Mr Montgomery said the suspect in Mr Donegans shooting may be in his late 30s to early 40s, approximately 5ft 8in, and may walk with a limp or may have an existing medical condition which affects his gait. He added: This is someone who thought it was acceptable to put the lives of countless children at risk and murder Jim please help me put him before the courts. On the day of the murder, Tuesday December 4, police said the gunman emerged from Clonelly Avenue on to Glen Road in Belfast at around 3.10pm. He then walked past numerous children at around 3.15pm, calmly activated the pedestrian crossing, crossed the road and walked up the victims car, firing his weapon eight times before fleeing the scene, police said. He was wearing a high-visibility hip-length yellow jacket with Security written on the back, dark trousers, and a grey-coloured hat or hood. He was carrying a dark bag over his shoulder which detectives believe contained the gun. Investigators have appealed for anyone in the area at the time to tell them what they saw or give them any footage. Mr Montgomery added: The family have been left devastated and hundreds of children and families who witnessed the murder have also been left traumatised. The callous actions of the gunman will have catastrophic psychological effects on them all. A banner at the centre of an anti-English controversy involving Sinn Feins president was about ending partition not xenophobia, Michelle ONeill has insisted. Mrs ONeill rejected the suggestion that Mary Lou McDonald was endorsing bigotry when she posed with the sign reading England Get Out of Ireland in New Yorks St Patricks Day parade. Mrs McDonald was roundly criticised by political rivals after Sinn Fein posted the image on Twitter at the weekend, along with the comment no explanation needed. Wishing you all a very happy St Patrick's Day! Today I'm going green for a United Ireland #green4unity #time4unity #ta32 #GoGreen pic.twitter.com/9Zc6WtO10S Mary Lou McDonald (@MaryLouMcDonald) March 17, 2019 Irelands Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney accused Mrs McDonald of poor leadership, claiming she was an embarrassment. Mrs ONeill defended her party leader. It is important that everybody looks at all of these things in context, she said. Mary Lou was walking in a St Patricks Day parade in New York, she was walking behind a banner that has been carried for many decades. I think from the 40s that banner has been carried. It's about the end of partition in Ireland and, as Irish republicans, that is what we are about - ending partition, partition has failedMichelle O'Neill You also have to remember what is that banner about? Its about the end of partition in Ireland and, as Irish republicans, that is what we are about ending partition, partition has failed. I think some of our opponents have tried to spin this and turn it into that its about individuals or people with a British identity, or people who are English, its not about that, its about the relationship between Britain and Ireland. And I dont think it should be a surprise to anyone that the president of Sinn Fein, a republican party, would stand behind a banner that actually says that we want to end partition. DUP MP Emma Little Pengelly branded Mrs McDonald gaffe-prone and an embarrassment to her party. It is regrettable that Michelle ONeill defends the New York photograph, she said. Such a comment about any other people group would be deemed as highly offensive and racist. Not the actions of a party committed to equality and respect. Not much respect for unionists or the English as Mary Lou calls us. Traffic passing close to the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (Liam McBurney/PA) A restored executive cannot have any veto over the working of the border backstop, Sinn Feins Stormont leader has said. Michelle ONeill made clear that Sinn Fein would reject any move to bolster the powers of the devolved administration in relation to the backstops operation. Devolution in Northern Ireland can only be resurrected if both of the main parties, Sinn Fein and the DUP, agree to enter another powersharing coalition. There will not be any situation where there will be a veto handed to this Assembly, said Mrs ONeill. Mrs ONeills comments came in response to speculation that the Government may move to strengthen the role of the Assembly in domestic law in order to win DUP support for the Brexit withdrawal treaty. Expand Close Sinn Fein deputy leader Michelle ONeill (Liam McBurney/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sinn Fein deputy leader Michelle ONeill (Liam McBurney/PA) Assembly structures mean the DUP could, with the assistance of a small number of like-minded MLAs, wield a veto on backstop matters by triggering the petition of concern voting mechanism. Under the terms of the proposal withdrawal deal, the backstop would come into effect if a wider trade deal fails to materialise before the end of the Brexit implementation period. If would tie the whole UK to a customs union and see Northern Ireland adhere to single market rules on goods in order to keep the Irish border free flowing. The Government has already committed to giving Stormont a consultative role before a decision is made to either enter the backstop or extend the implementation period. This is a desperate situation, this is chaos, this is catastrophic, and I believe the DUP and British government are taking a hatchet and sledgehammer to our local economy and the needs of people here, so there can't be a situation where there would be a veto handed to the AssemblyMichelle O'Neill And, if the backstop does come into effect, the Stormont Assembly and Executive would be given a role in its operation, with the legislature being asked to consent to any new or amended EU laws applying to the region. Mrs ONeill said: Of course there can be a consultative role, that was set out in the withdrawal agreement as it stands, but there cannot be any veto afforded to the DUP or anybody else in this situation. This is a desperate situation, this is chaos, this is catastrophic, and I believe the DUP and British government are taking a hatchet and sledgehammer to our local economy and the needs of people here, so there cant be a situation where there would be a veto handed to the Assembly. The EU have been clear about that, because thats not whats in the withdrawal agreement, and I have spoken to the Tanaiste (Simon Coveney) this week and he also gave the same assurance that there would be no veto handed to an Assembly, that obviously doesnt exist at this moment in time. Just one non-Catholic school has secured a top 10 place in Northern Ireland's A-level league table this year Just one non-Catholic school has secured a top 10 place in Northern Ireland's A-level league table this year. Today, the Belfast Telegraph publishes its annual performance guide for every post-secondary school in which pupils undertake A-levels. The statistics relate to the 2017/18 academic year. While Catholic schools held all top 10 places in the A-level league table last year, this year's results show one non-Catholic school - Friends' School Lisburn - made the top 10. The Quaker school moved up four places from last year to eighth place, with 89.2% of pupils achieving three or more A-level A*-C grades. Read More The top-performing grammar school was St Louis Grammar School in Ballymena, a voluntary Catholic grammar where 95.4% of pupils achieved three or more top grades. The best-performing non-grammar was St Brigid's College in Londonderry, which came third overall with 92.3% of pupils clinching three or more top grades. The co-educational Catholic maintained secondary school, where nearly 69% of pupils are entitled to free school meals, made a major leap up the table compared with last year, when it ranked joint 43rd. Principal of St Louis Grammar Sean Rafferty, whose school also topped last year's league table, said he was "delighted". Expand Close St Louis Grammar Schools principal Sean Rafferty / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp St Louis Grammar Schools principal Sean Rafferty "It's down to the hard work of the young people, the guidance and direction of our staff and the support of parents to make those type of results a reality," he said. "The consistency and the work ethic that the school has cultivated is very pleasing to make sure we're not a one-hit wonder, and that year-on-year we can deliver for the young people and hopefully allow them to meet their career aspirations as a result." Mr Rafferty said there was "no secret" to the school's success, "just hard work". "It's continuously looking at new teaching and learning strategies and implementing those, making sure that we treat every young person in a personalised way," he added. "We see early intervention, areas of their development and academic progress that are not where they should be, and in a non-intimidatory way we try to make sure we make that young person have the self-belief that they can achieve." Reflecting on the faith-based ethos of the top 10 schools, Mr Rafferty said there is a "certain essence to a faith-based education". "There is a sense of collegiate responsibility there that maybe doesn't exist in more secular models," he added. "It's proven, tried and tested across the world that the faith-based models are the most successful, and I think there's something there that people have to take on board. "We're not only successful academically, but I would argue that our success is in delivering a holistic education profile to young people so they are well equipped for the world of work, university or contribution to society." Mr Rafferty hit out at the pressures on school budgets here. "I think there needs to be a root-and-branch reform of the way that schools are funded," he said. "The results are fantastic and we have consolidated our position. This means that teachers are working twice as hard with less resources, and it's just a very unfair playing field that educationalists are working in at the moment. "Every year we seem to be asked to do more with less. Our government needs to look at how it can continue to expect high outcomes while putting in the minimum amount of money." St Dominic's in west Belfast, a Catholic voluntary grammar school for girls, was second in the A-level league table with 94.5% of pupils achieving three or more A*-C grades. Principal Carol McCann said their results "reflect the hard work of the staff and the pupils" and the partnership with parents. She said the school had "great support from the community, and that students' parents very much value the importance of getting a good education in a very competitive market for jobs". "There is a long tradition of doing your very best. The big focus in our school is on values, shared values, and doing what is right and the whole idea that they have a God-given talent and it's up to them to make the best and for us to bring out the best in the children," she said. "In our school we have a big focus on girl power, that if you work hard enough you can be whatever you want to be." The Department of Education said that the information contained in the table relating to A-level results "does not provide a valid basis for comparing performance between schools, since it takes no account of intakes of the schools or of any other factors that may affect pupil performance". It added: "No single measurement can constitute a fair or accurate evaluation of a school, and the figures should be considered in the context of other information about schools and their pupils." The Belfast Telegraph obtained data from the Department of Education for A-levels sat in the 2017/18 academic year and compiled the figures into easy-to-read tables, ordered top to bottom. It shows the percentage of pupils achieving three or more A-levels at grades A*-C. Irish premier Leo Varadkar has said the European Union needs to ensure Brexit does not end up becoming a rolling cliff-edge scenario. Speaking at a European Peoples Party (EPP) meeting in Brussels ahead of the EU summit, Mr Varadkar said there was an openness to an extension across the board among EU leaders. Expand Close (PA Graphics) Press Association Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp (PA Graphics) Everyone wants to avoid a no deal but we cant have a situation whereby we have a rolling cliff-edge, where we just put off decisions and deadlines every couple of months, he said. Brexit was never going to be clean. Brexit would always require some very hard choices for the United Kingdom to make. It was never going to be all good and no bad. And those decisions now need to be made. On Wednesday British Prime Minister Theresa May formally requested a short extension, which would delay the withdrawal date from March 29 to June 30, in a letter to EU Council president Donald Tusk. She is meeting Mr Tusk in Brussels on Thursday afternoon. Mr Tusk said he believed a short extension was possible, but only if Westminster endorses the EU Withdrawal Agreement. Mr Varadkar said the Irish Government was willing to cut the British Government some slack on their request for a short extension, and when it came to the request that the Strasbourg Agreement be ratified formally. Asked whether he was in favour of a long extension, Mr Varadkar said now was not the time to consider it. He said: There hasnt been a request for a long extension so I dont think we can consider that at this stage. The Taoiseach said Ireland did not want the UK to crash out of the EU and it was up to the UK to revoke Article 50 if it chose to. No deal can only ever be a British choice, he said. Lets not forget the March 29 deadline was set by the UK in the first place. Its always up to them, even at the last moment, to revoke Article 50 unilaterally. Meeting with my colleagues from the Nordic Baltic Group of EU leaders to discuss #Brexit and this weeks @EUCouncil meeting. Its good to meet up with Irelands partners again in these challenging times pic.twitter.com/9oASYuGVSR Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) March 21, 2019 They do not need permission to do that so no deal, if it happens, will be a British choice and a British decision. Brexit is not a problem of our creation. We do need to see resolution, I think, sooner rather than later. I dont think this can drag on for months and years. Speaking in Brussels, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said he believed it would be very difficult for Mrs May to get her deal through but he wouldnt rule it out. Theres a very clear choice facing Brexiteers in particular, that on the one hand they may say that the ultras will go for the no-deal scenario but on the other hand I dont think a no-deal will be tolerated by the remainder of the parliament, he said. Mr Martin said MPs had a choice whether they want a Brexit of some sort or the potential of no-deal Brexit because he said there was a likelihood that an extension could be a long one. The leader of Irelands main opposition party has said he will continue to prop up the government for the rest of the year. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin ruled out calling for a general election in 2019. Mr Martin said it would have been reckless and irresponsible if a general election had been called in the first few months, adding that Fianna Fail has given the Irish government space without having to look over their shoulder. I made it clear before Christmas that Brexit, and the instability around Brexit, made it, in my view, essential to avoid a general election.Micheal Martin Last year Fianna Fail re-entered their confidence and supply arrangement with Fine Gael to ensure the continuation of the minority government ahead of Brexit. Mr Martin said the Irish opposition had taken an approach, which was unusual due to the adversarial nature of politics, to put the country first to avoid a general election in Ireland in the midst of Brexit. He said his decision had been proven right and that Fianna Fail would continue with the confidence and supply arrangement with Fine Gael throughout 2019. Speaking in Brussels, he said: I made it clear before Christmas that Brexit, and the instability around Brexit, made it, in my view, essential to avoid a general election. Its important to continue with the confidence and supply and to give 2019, to give the year if you like, to facilitate all of that. I think Ive been proven right. Turning to Brexit, Mr Martin said he believed it would be very difficult for Prime Minister Theresa May to get her deal through but added that he would not rule it out. Theres a very clear choice facing Brexiteers in particular that on the one hand they may say that the ultras will go for the no-deal scenario but on the other hand I dont think a no-deal will be tolerated by the remainder of the Parliament, he said. Mr Martin said MPs had a choice whether they want a Brexit of some sort or the potential of no Brexit because he said there was a likelihood that an extension could be a long one. MSPs have been considering legislation which would remove the defence of justifiable assault in Scots law (Jon Challicom/NSPCC) The introduction of a ban on smacking children in Ireland was a lightbulb moment, a politician behind the move has told MSPs as Scotland considers adopting similar legislation. Jillian van Turnhout, a former Irish senator, had campaigned to remove the defence of reasonable chastisement in Irish law which had remained in place following the repeal in 2000 of a law which allowed force to be used against children. The campaign was a success, leading to the ban being brought in in December 2015. MSPs in Scotland are currently considering taking similar action which would remove the defence of justifiable assault in Scots law. When we changed the law in Ireland, we realised that it was the law catching up with how parents were parenting their children today, said Ms van Turnhout, speaking at the Scottish Parliaments Equalties and Human Rights Committee on Thursday. The day I walked into the chamber (in Irelands national parliament), I didnt know if I had a single colleague with me in the change of law. But I went in knowing that even if I was the only person who said it is not ok to hit a child, children in Ireland would know that somebody believed it is not ok for them to be hit. Much to my surprise, every single member of the Irish Parliament chose to support the law by not calling for a vote at any stage on it. For me, it was really a collectively powerful moment. .@JillianvT has given powerful testimony on #EqualProtectionSP right now in the Scottish Parliament. As a senator in Ireland when Equal Protection became law in 2015, her experience is one of real and positive change.@BarnardosScot @children1st @NSPCC_Scotland @ScotParents pic.twitter.com/FTsqnFgjzF Children and Young People's Commissioner Scotland (@CYPCS) March 21, 2019 Ms van Turnhout said the process was not easy, with some members of Parliament, as well as some civil society organisations and members of the public, telling her the time was not right for a change in the law. She added: What was fascinating for me, it was really a lightbulb moment the second we changed our law, the same colleagues looked me in the face without any irony and said: Why didnt we do this years ago? This makes so much sense. Dr Lucy Reynolds, a consultant paediatrician speaking in support of a ban, said that violence against children had the potential to cause harm in the long-term. She said: If you hit children, you are teaching them to expect either to dominate or to be dominated through physical violence and I dont want our children to be taught that. Critics of the proposals say a ban on smacking would be an invasion of family life and could lead to an increase in the number of parents being prosecuted. However, Police Scotland chief superintendent John McKenzie said there was no evidence of a rise in the number of prosecutions following legislation being brought in across other countries. He said: The evidence seems to suggest that there is no indication that it results in increased prosecutions. There is a suggestion that it results in increased reporting. The bill is a removal of a statutory defence of justifiable assault. So I cannot see how that then in itself would criminalise parents. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall (Jane Barlow/PA) The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall received a welcome of pomp and ceremony when they arrived in St Kitts and Nevis. A guard of honour was waiting to greet Charles and Camilla as they began the latest leg of their Caribbean tour with a handshake from the Queens representative, Governor General Sir S W Tapley Seaton. Expand Close The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall take the salute on their arrival in St Kitts and Nevis (Jane Barlow/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall take the salute on their arrival in St Kitts and Nevis (Jane Barlow/PA) Following tradition, the heir to the throne inspected the waiting troops passing along their lines in the shadow of RAF Voyager, the UK ministerial jet the couple are using. Later Charles will launch a project to give Commonwealth students the chance to study subjects at Cambridge University he has deeply cared about for decades. Scholarships under Charles name will be offered in global issues he has championed like climate change, sustainability and the blue economy to mark the 70th anniversary of the family of nations and the prince turning 70 last year. Thank you St. Vincent and the Grenadines for a fantastic visit yesterday - catch up on #RoyalVisitStVincent: https://t.co/7uuEEunD3c Today The Prince and The Duchess will visit St. Kitts and Nevis. Follow #RoyalVisitStKitts for updates. pic.twitter.com/qpS04W60xY The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (@ClarenceHouse) March 21, 2019 The prince will make the announcement at a reception hosted in honour of the royal couple by the Governor General. Before heading off to the capital Basseterre, Timothy Harris, the prime minister of St Kitts and Nevis, introduced the couple to his cabinet. After President Nursultan Nazarbayevs resignation, Kazakhstan has been set in motion. Senate Speaker Kassym-Jomart Tokayev became president, and his vacant seat was taken by the daughter of the leader of the nation, Dariga Nazarbayeva. Prior to that, she served as the Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs, Defense and Security of the Upper Chamber of Parliament. Now Dariga is the second person in the state, which once again sparked a discussion about the successor to the leader of the nation. Dariga Nazarbayeva is no stranger to politics and power. In 2003, she founded the Asar Party, which in 2006 joined the pro-government party Nur Otan. She was working in the government and in the parliament, and in 2016, headed the Senate Committee on International Affairs, Defense and Security. In addition, Dariga has launched a number of initiatives that have been ambiguously met in the community. In particular, she proposed to limit the powers of the president, expand the powers of the parliament and form a government on the basis of a parliamentary majority. Dariga also supports journalists by defending their rights. A number of experts believe that Dariga Nazarbayeva may become the successor of her father as president. Another thing is that her popularity among the Kazakh elite is not too high. However, the appointment of the head of the Senate increases her chances of becoming the third president of the republic. According to the Constitution of Kazakhstan, in the event of early resignation or removal of the president from the office, as well as in case of his death, the powers for the remaining term are transferred to the Speaker of the Senate; if it is impossible for the chairman of the Senate to assume the powers of the president - to the chairman of the Majlis of the parliament; if the chairman of the Majlis cannot become the president - to the prime minister of the republic. A person who has assumed the authority of the president of the republic withdraws his powers. Thus, Senate Speaker Kassym-Jomart Tokayev became President of Kazakhstan, albeit for a transitional period - until the next elections to be held in 2020. The exact date will be determined by the CEC of Kazakhstan. Experts believe Tokayevs chances of gaining power are high. As for Dariga Nazarbayeva, then, according to Kazakhstan political analyst Talgat Kaliev, the post of Speaker of the Senate can become a direct and shortest path to the presidential chair. But it is not worth making unambiguous and hasty conclusions. In his opinion, "the new architecture of the government does not allow the emergence of absolute dominants." "In this model, the country will be governed by the collegial principle. In accordance with it, the power will be dispersed among several centers. In such a design, the shareholders of the government are Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Karim Masimov, Askar Mamin, Nurlan Nigmatulin and, now officially, Dariga Nazarbayeva. "Her mission, it seems, is to strengthen the guarantees and control over the continuity of the first president's course, in case any of the shareholders has harmful illusions, "the political scientist wrote in his telegram channel. According to Kaliev, for Dariga Nursultanovna herself, the chair of the Senates Speaker might be much preferable to the presidential one, since it gives sufficient authority and influence. The appointment of Dariga Nazarbayeva as head of the Senate is part of the project of the leader of the nation (Elbasy) - this status has been retained by Nursultan Nazarbayev - called the transit of power. But the situation can change radically when Nazarbayev leaves the political scene completely, Director of the Risk Assessment Group Dosym Satpayev told Vestnik Kavkaza. On the one hand, this is due to an attempt to secure this operation. The Senate, security forces and business elites are now under the familys control. The National Security Committee is formally headed by Karim Masimov, but his first deputy is the Presidents nephew, Samat Abish. The business is under Timir Kulibayevs control, who is the son-in-law of the president and the husband of his middle daughter. He heads the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of Kazakhstan. "Nazarbayev has placed his family members at key positions, and the representative of the old guard is taken to a higher level of the acting president. Thus, Kazakhstan forms a family-gerontocratic system of power, in which the president relied on the family members and representatives of the old guard. Although Nazarbayev himself repeatedly said that he needed to give way to the youth. Perhaps, he was disappointed in the new generation of young managers, due to the numerous scandals in which they are involved, Satpayev said. On the other hand, according to the expert, the successors that were designated under the ex-president will be supported by the elite as long as they stay under the influence of the Elbasy's authority. But when he is gone, they will be left alone. Will they endure this test? Now we are witnessing a political performance, where the director is Nursultan Nazarbayev. But the performance will end sooner or later, then there will be a reality, for which the country is not ready, Satpayev said. The Prince of Wales tries out a drum (Jane Barlow/PA) The Prince of Wales got into the Caribbean spirit when he tried his hand at some West Indies folk drumming during a trip to a picturesque island. Charles could not resist showing he can beat out a rhythm when he joined the Combined Schools Masquerade group for an impromptu performance during a visit to St Kitts and Nevis. As Colin Stapleton, who leads the group held his snare drum, the future king banged away with a smile on his face and then said I need a bit more practice as he ended his performance. Expand Close The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall watch local dancers at the house of the Governor-General on Nevis (Jane Barlow/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall watch local dancers at the house of the Governor-General on Nevis (Jane Barlow/PA) He was at the official residence of St Kitts and Neviss deputy governor general Hyleta Liburd, with his wife, and met prominent locals. Later the duchess was offered the classic Caribbean drink rum punch when she visited the historic Hermitage Plantation House on Nevis, and said I couldnt say no. Richard Lupinacci, who runs the estate which dates from the 1670s as a plantation inn for tourists, said their recipe was hundreds of years old and was made from One of sour, two sweet, three strong and four weak its a cure all. Expand Close The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are welcomed at Charlestown Pier, Nevis (Arthur Edwards/The Sun/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are welcomed at Charlestown Pier, Nevis (Arthur Edwards/The Sun/PA) After taking a sip the duchess, who on Wednesday had tried some 40% proof rum, said: Thats delicious and packs a punch its really alcoholic. Expand Close The Duchess of Cornwall samples rum punch (Arthur Edwards/The Sun/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The Duchess of Cornwall samples rum punch (Arthur Edwards/The Sun/PA) Charles and Camilla watched the Combined Schools Masquerade group give a performance in the grounds of the Governor Generals home in Nevis. Mr Stapleton said about the princes playing: It was nice he could have a place with us, with a bit more practice. At the deputy Governor Generals reception Charles chatted to a group of returnees, Caribbeans who have returned home after living in the UK, at the open-air event. He joked with Violet Kelsey, 77, originally from Nevis who returned home with her English-born husband John in 2004. The prince said: As the blood got thinner, it takes time to acclimatise when coming out this time of year from the UK. A fantastic welcome is waiting for The Prince and The Duchess as TRH arrive on Nevis from St Kitts by boat! Colourful masquerade performers greet Their Royal Highnesses. #RoyalVisitStKitts pic.twitter.com/iixatlvcmq The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (@ClarenceHouse) March 21, 2019 Charles was introduced to a group of schoolgirls from Nevis Sixth Form College who had just won an international debating award. He asked the girls: Is it just a natural talent? What were you debating and do you get to choose your subjects? The girls told him that they had been debating LGBTQ issues. He commended them and added jokingly that he hoped it would not get in the way of their work and exams. At the National Museum in Basseterre, TRH learn more about the history of St Kitts and Nevis. The museum is housed in the 125-year-old Old Treasury Building and TRH are invited to sign a plaque to mark the Royal visit and the buildings 125th anniversary. #RoyalVisitStKitts pic.twitter.com/95lXNQfBoh The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (@ClarenceHouse) March 21, 2019 One young fan very eager to meet the prince was Junior Persaud, who turned nine today. Thoughtful aides noticed his special birthday badge and nudged the prince in his direction. Charles wished him happy birthday and asked how old he was. He asked: Will you be having a birthday cake? Whats your favourite kind of cake? Junior replied that it was Red Velvet, to which Charles nodded approvingly. The DUP has urged the Prime Minister to seek changes to the withdrawal agreement as she heads to Brussels today to ask for a short Brexit delay. Mrs May will make a formal request for a three-month extension of Article 50. She is expected to bring her Brexit plan to the House of Commons for a third vote next week. Read More In an address from Downing Street last night, she blamed MPs for failing to implement the result of the EU referendum and told voters who want Brexit to be over: "I am on your side." Earlier she met the Westminster leaders of the Opposition parties, including the DUP's Nigel Dodds. Mr Dodds said: "It was a useful opportunity to be briefed by the Prime Minister. She is well aware of the concerns that we have outlined about the withdrawal agreement. "We have always indicated that we stand ready to support a sensible deal which works for all parts of the UK. The referendum result must be respected and there must be no attempt to undermine the democratic will of the people." Read More In her televised message directed at voters, Mrs May said it was a matter of "deep personal regret" that she was asking the EU for a Brexit delay. MPs - who rejected her deal by 230 votes in January and 149 last week - had been "unable to agree on a way to implement the UK's withdrawal", she stressed. "Of this, I am absolutely sure - you the public have had enough," the Prime Minister said. "You are tired of the infighting, you're tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows. Tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our children's schools, our National Health Service, knife crime. "You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide." The Prime Minister said MPs had so far done "everything possible" to avoid making a decision on the way forward. She warned that an extended delay would mean staging "bitter and divisive" elections to the European Parliament at a time when the country needed bringing back together. "I passionately hope MPs will find a way to back the deal I have negotiated with the EU," she said. "I will continue to work night and day to secure the support of my colleagues, the DUP and others for this deal. But I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than June 30." Earlier, European Council president Donald Tusk said he believed a short delay "would be possible" after he spoke to the Prime Minister by phone. But he said an extension, which must be agreed unanimously by the EU27, was likely to be conditional on Mrs May succeeding in forcing her twice rejected Brexit deal through Parliament. He appeared to acknowledge the difficulties facing her, describing the hopes of success as "frail, even illusory". He continued: "Although Brexit fatigue is increasingly visible and justified, we cannot give up seeking until the very last moment a positive solution. "We have reacted with patience and goodwill to numerous turns of events and I am confident that also now we will not lack the same patience and goodwill at this most critical point in this process." If the delay is approved by EU leaders, Mrs May will rush legislation through both Houses of Parliament next week to remove the March 29 leaving date from Brexit laws. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn pulled out of last night's Opposition parties talks with the Prime Minister after members of the breakaway Independent Group turned up at the meeting. Independent Group spokesman Chuka Umunna branded it "extraordinary behaviour in a national crisis". And Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said: "Jeremy Corbyn's kinder, gentler politics was found wanting this evening as he stomped out of the meeting with the Prime Minister before it began." Speaking in the Commons earlier, Mr Corbyn accused Mrs May of not offering "the leadership the country needs". Bringing back her twice rejected deal to Parliament without significant changes while "threatening a no deal outcome ruled out by MPs is unacceptable and reckless", he said. Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry said: "After well over 33 months being available to agree and ratify the terms for Brexit, it is simply stunning, reckless and irresponsible that no formal way forward has been agreed with barely over nine days to go. "Some people, including the Prime Minister, seem willing to gamble the future cohesion and economic prosperity of the UK through a game of chicken, taking this right to the wire. "But businesses and others have every right to know what their relationship with the EU is going to be in just over 200 hours' time. People's jobs, opportunities and livelihoods are at stake. "It is inevitable now (that Brexit) must be delayed to avoid that cliff edge. No deal is unthinkable, yet no extension can be taken for granted." Police are urging anyone with information to come forward (Joe Giddens/PA) A man is in hospital after being stabbed in an attack police are treating as attempted murder. The 46 year-old was assaulted by two men in the common close of a block of flats at Riverview Place, in the Tradeston area of Glasgow, on Wednesday night. The victim was taken to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital with stab wounds. Staff say he is in a serious condition. Police Scotland, who were called to the flats at around 10pm, said they are carrying out extensive enquiries and treating the incident as a murder bid. Detective Inspector Lynsey Watters said: The two men responsible for this violent attack must be traced as soon as possible. Officers are currently carrying out inquiries at the scene, speaking to people in the local area, and gathering CCTV footage to find out more information on the circumstances surrounding this incident and find the two men responsible. One of the men was wearing a black top or jacket with a green hat. Police have appealed for people to contact them if they witnessed the incident or saw two men acting suspiciously around the time of the attack. Twitter users have been venting their frustrations on the hashtag #NotOnMySide after Prime Minister Theresa May said she would seek to extend the Brexit negotiation process, telling voters I am on your side (Jonathan Brady/PA) The UK may be divided over the best policy for Brexit but the Prime Ministers speech on Wednesday appears to have brought the country together in opposition to Theresa May herself. Thousands of Twitter users have been venting their frustrations on the hashtag #NotOnMySide following the PMs announcement that she would seek to extend the negotiation process, telling voters I am on your side. But the assertion appears to have fallen on deaf ears as leading figures on both the Remain and Leave sides opposed her statement. Pro-Brexit radio host Julia Hartley-Brewer Shes #NotOnMySide. I voted for Brexit, while anti-Brexit campaigner Femi Oluwole called it almost laughable. He tweeted: Its almost laughable. Theresa May is trying to force a Brexit deal on the country that both remainers and leavers hate, because it trashes UK sovereignty AND takes us out of the EU and shes claiming to be on the side of the people? #NotOnMySide It's almost laughable. Theresa May is trying to force a Brexit deal on the country that both remainers and leavers hate, because it trashes UK sovereignty AND takes us out of the EU and she's claiming to be on the side of the people?#NotOnMySide Femi (@Femi_Sorry) March 20, 2019 One angry pro-Brexit user said Mrs May had a lack of dignity and a head full of delusion following the speech. They tweeted: My job requires me to deliver results. If I didnt deliver or felt I couldnt do it Id be promptly sacked or Id leave to save myself the embarrassment of failure. Mays had 2 long years to prove herself & she hasnt. A lack of dignity and a head full of delusion. #NotOnMySide Another Leave voter wrote: Sorry @theresa_may but you are #NotOnMySide. I voted leave, not this rubbish deal that will leave us worse off than before. Elsewhere, an anonymous user who called themselves British European wrote: I felt so incensed by @theresa_may and her truly awful statement tonight that I signed up to Twitter just so I can say: #NotOnMySide I felt so incensed by @theresa_may and her truly awful statement tonight that I signed up to Twitter just so I can say: #NotOnMySide British European (@BritishEuropea1) March 20, 2019 Mrs Mays speech largely blamed MPs for the stalemate in Parliament, leaving many politicians furious. Tory MP Sam Gyimah tweeted: Resorting to the blame game as the PM is doing is a low blow. Democracy loses when a PM who has set herself against the HoC then blames MPs for doing their job. Distracts from Art 50 extension, all part of her strategy to run down the clock and rule out other options. Toxic. Resorting to the 'blame game' as the PM is doing is a low blow. Democracy loses when a PM who has set herself against the HoC then blames MPs for doing their job. Distracts from Art 50 extension, all part of her strategy to run down the clock and rule out other options. Toxic. Sam Gyimah (@SamGyimah) March 20, 2019 And Labours David Lammy called the speech sinister. He wrote: Theresa Mays attempt to put Parliament against the people on #Brexit tonight is sinister. It is the populism of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. History will judge her brutally. Our country deserves so much better than this. Theresa May's attempt to put Parliament against the people on #Brexit tonight is sinister. It is the populism of Steve Bannon and Donald Trump. History will judge her brutally. Our country deserves so much better than this. David Lammy (@DavidLammy) March 20, 2019 With just eight days to go before the UK is due to leave the EU, the Prime Minister travelled to Brussels on Thursday morning with hopes of persuading European leaders to extend the Article 50 withdrawal process. Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, on December 21, 1988 (PA) Prosecutors in Scotland are reportedly investigating retired Stasi agents over the Lockerbie bombing. The Times Scotland says officials from the Crown Office are examining the possible role of the East German intelligence service in the 1988 bombing and former agents have been questioned in Germany at their request. The bombing of Pan Am flight 103, travelling from London to New York four days before Christmas, killed 259 people on board. Eleven residents of the Dumfries and Galloway town also died after the plane crashed into their homes in Britains biggest terrorist atrocity. Former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted of the bombing, died in 2012 after being released from prison early on compassionate grounds. Expand Close Megrahi is the only person convicted of the bombing (Crown Office/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Megrahi is the only person convicted of the bombing (Crown Office/PA) Investigators do not believe Megrahi acted alone but others, including relatives of some of the victims, believe he was wrongly convicted and his family are seeking legal permission for a fresh appeal against his conviction. A Crown Office spokesman said: Prosecutors and police, working with UK Government and US colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with Al Megrahi to justice. As this is a live criminal investigation, it would not be appropriate to comment. The royal family has expressed sympathy will all those affected by Cyclone Idai. It is feared more than 1,000 people may have died in the disaster, which has brought heavy rain and flooding to parts of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. The Queen, who has made a private donation to the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal, said she and the Duke of Edinburgh are deeply saddened. Her Majesty The Queen has sent messages to Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe - countries which have been affected by Cyclone Idai. Read the messages in full here: https://t.co/6eeUUxtWpe The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) March 21, 2019 In messages to the presidents of the three countries, the Queen said the thoughts and prayers of her and Philip are with all those affected. The Prince of Wales, who also made a donation to the appeal, sent the greatest possible sympathy and special prayers from himself and the Duchess of Cornwall. He wrote: However inadequate this may be in the face of such dreadfully tragic circumstances, our hearts go out to all those who have been so cruelly bereaved or injured and to those whose homes have been destroyed. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said they are hugely saddened. In a message to the people of the three countries, they said: Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who have been affected by the devastating impact of Cyclone Idai across Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. We are hugely saddened to hear of the loss of life and destruction it has caused, and our hearts go out to all those who have lost their loved ones, homes and livelihoods. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have sent a message to the people of Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe - countries which have been affected by Cyclone Idai.https://t.co/oH9k9ZC0aP The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (@KensingtonRoyal) March 21, 2019 The UK has already announced a total aid package of 18 million for the region but pledged to add another 2 million to match public donations to the DEC appeal. The cyclone, which hit the southern African region a week ago, prompted a national state of emergency to be declared in Mozambique, where around 400,000 people are internally displaced. Close to 1,000 homes have been destroyed in Zimbabwe while it is estimated more than 82,500 people have been forced from their homes in Malawi. More than 200 people have been confirmed dead in Mozambique, more than 100 in Zimbabwe and around 60 in Malawi, while hundreds are injured and many more are unaccounted for, according to the United Nations. Shamima Begum, 19, in a Syrian refugee camp, being shown a copy of the Home Office letter which stripped her of her British citizenship (ITV) The family of Islamic State bride Shamima Begum are reported to have begun legal proceedings to review the decision to strip her of British citizenship. Ms Begum was one of three schoolgirls to leave Bethnal Green to join the terror cult in 2015 and resurfaced at a Syrian refugee camp last month. Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked the teenagers British citizenship in a move only permissible under international law if it does not leave the individual stateless. Expand Close Sajid Javid announced Ms Begum would be stripped of her citizenship last month (Kirsty OConnor/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sajid Javid announced Ms Begum would be stripped of her citizenship last month (Kirsty OConnor/PA) It was speculated that Ms Begum, who is of Bangladeshi heritage, may have citizenship there but Bangladeshs minister of state for foreign affairs Shahriar Alam denied this. The Guardian reports that appeals against this decision have been made with the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. The decision is wrong because it renders Begum stateless, it puts her life at risk and breaches her right to family life Tasnime Akunjee, who represents Ms Begums family, questioned how the removal of citizenship could be proportionate when people who have actively fought for Islamic State have not faced the same treatment. He told the paper: The decision is wrong because it renders Begum stateless, it puts her life at risk and breaches her right to family life. The government have accepted that 400 people have picked up a gun and actively fought for Isis and they been allowed back to Britain. So how can it be proportionate for a 19-year-old girl who had a child not to be allowed to return, when the others have been allowed to return? Lawyers acting for a former solider accused of killing a man at a border checkpoint more than 30 years ago are to challenge the evidence of nine Public Prosecution Service witnesses, as well as the investigating police officer. David Jonathon Holden (49), whose address was given as his solicitor's office in Victoria Street, Belfast, stands charged with unlawfully killing Aidan McAnespie on February 21 1988. The victim was shot dead as he walked through an Army checkpoint in Aughnacloy, having been struck by one of three bullets fired from a machine-gun. Defence counsel Iain Turkington had told Dungannon Magistrates Court last month a preliminary investigation (PI) was likely, and on return yesterday, confirmed this would be the position. District Judge John Meehan laid out the requirements for a PI within the jurisdiction including a requirement for him to be informed of the witnesses whose evidence is to be challenged and the availability of a court venue. A lawyer appearing for the Public Prosecution Service said: "As we are now armed with the information on contentious witnesses, we can work to identify a date and court venue for the PI. We are advised it is likely to last three to five days." The case has been adjourned for an update on the progress of fixing the PI date. Holden, a former Grenadier Guardsman, who was 18 at the time of the incident, resides in England and last month the court was told defence counsel were to travel to consult with him. He did not appear in court then or yesterday, having been excused. Some of Mr McAnespie's friends and family were present in court. Yesterday, the Jewish community of Russia began to celebrate the most cheerful holiday in Judaism - Purim, dedicated to miraculous salvation of Jewish people from Persian slavery. On the eve of this holiday, the Rambam Theater, the world's only Mountain-Jewish theater, performed a special holiday play Moscow. History of this theater began in 1930s in Derbent, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it settled in the Israeli Heder. This is it's first tour to Russia. Premiere was held in Theater Center at the Strastnoy Boulevard. There is a tradition to make perform on Purim, which is called Purim spiel in Yiddish. Purim spiel has centuries-old history, like the Greek classical theater or Italian street theater, Yuri Kanner, president of the Russian Jewish Congress, told Vestnik Kavkaza. Guests of the evening were able to enjoy traditional sweets in the lobby of the theater: fried dough with poppy seeds, called gomentash, and wine, which is also considered an integral part of the celebration. Azerbaijani musicians performed national melodies, also characteristic for Mountain Jews, who lived side by side with the Land of Fire in the Red Sloboda village for centuries. This village is the only place of Mountain Jews' residence in the entire post-Soviet space. Rambam is a union of non-professional actors. Among them are teachers, engineers, doctors and representatives of other professions. All plays are performed in Juuri - the language of Mountain Jews - with translation in Russian. "We want to preserve this language. My granddaughter already speaks and sings in our language. We don't it to cease to exist. We perform our plays in all cities of Israel," the Rambam Theater's head, Eva Schalver, told Vestnik Kavkaza. Rambam brought musical comedy of playwrighter Hizgil Avshalumov Sash of Childlessness to Moscow. Traditionally, Mountain Jews believed that fathers who had no sons were childless, even if they have many daughters. Hizgil Avshalumov is Soviet poet, novelist and playwrighter. He was born in Dagestan in a peasant family. His work is distinguished by accuracy of ethnographic details, humor and expressiveness of his language. A view of signage for the Ministry of Defence (Kirsty OConnor/PA) The armed forces have set up a command centre in an underground bunker as part of contingency plans for the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal. Under Operation Redfold, the Ministry of Defence said it has committed to holding 3,500 troops at readiness to help the government with any disruption following a no-deal departure from the EU. The plans are part of the Governments Operation Yellowhammer preparations for the UK leaving without a deal. It is understood the underground command centre will act as a base of operations to deal with requests for MoD support from other departments as well as directing the troops. Expand Close Lorries queue on the A20 to enter the Port of Dover in Kent (Gareth Fuller/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Lorries queue on the A20 to enter the Port of Dover in Kent (Gareth Fuller/PA) It is the same operations centre which was used by the MoD as a base for the London 2012 Olympics response. A MoD spokesman said: We are always willing to support wider government planning for any scenario, and we have committed to holding 3,500 troops at readiness to aid contingency plans. We will consider any requests from other government departments if they feel defence capability could contribute to their no-deal planning. The MoD said requests for support will be considered under the Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA) principles. Under these rules the military can be authorised to provide aid when there is a definite need to act, the armed forces are being set clear tasks and other options including mutual aid and commercial alternatives have been discounted. The civil authority asking for aid must also either lack the capability or have some of the capability but not to the required scale, and the urgency of the task must require rapid MoD support. But the principles add: Notwithstanding the above, under exceptional circumstances, agreed usually at ministerial level, it may be necessary to waive temporarily the above criteria. Expand Close The UK is leaving the EU (Kirsty OConnor/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The UK is leaving the EU (Kirsty OConnor/PA) The MoDs plan comes as teachers in Kent have been warned they may have to suspend classes or act in a carer role in the event of a no-deal Brexit, it has been reported. In papers seen by the Guardian, Kent County Council advised schools to check on food supplies and warned that public transport and coaches could be affected due to people panic-buying fuel. Teachers have been warned they may have to consider looking after stranded children after school if parents are caught in gridlock, the paper said. Highways England confirmed that Operation Brock, a scheme to ease congestion in the county if traffic is brought to a standstill, will be ready to be implemented from Monday. The preparations come amid fears Whitehall could be overwhelmed by a no-deal Brexit, according to leaked papers reported on earlier this month. The Times said the Government made the admission in a document seen by its reporters that formed part of a contingency plan called Operation Yellowhammer. It reportedly states that in the wake of Britain crashing out of the EU without a deal, for months after, the Government may have to engage in a 24/7 emergency approach. And that priorities in the event of a no-deal will be welfare, health, transport and security of UK citizens at home and abroad, and the economic stability of the UK. A series of round-the-clock operation centres will come into play in the event of a no-deal Brexit, which will report into the Cabinet Office, the Times reported. They were due to go live on Monday March 18, less than two weeks before the UK is due to leave the bloc on March 29, and after a practice run at the end of February. A tram passes flowers at the site of a shooting incident in a tram in Utrecht, Netherlands (Peter Dejong/AP) The main suspect in a deadly tram shooting in the Dutch city of Utrecht will be charged with offences including multiple murder or manslaughter with a terrorist intent, prosecutors said. Investigations so far into Mondays shooting that left three dead and three seriously injured indicate that the shooter acted alone, prosecutors said in a written statement. The main suspect, identified by police as Gokmen Tanis, a 37-year-old man of Turkish descent, also faces charges of attempted murder or manslaughter and making threats with a terrorist intent. The prosecution office statement adds that investigations are continuing into whether the suspects actions flowed from personal problems combined with a radicalised ideology. Expand Close Construction workers who witnessed Mondays shooting incident put flowers at the site in Utrecht (Peter Dejong/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Construction workers who witnessed Mondays shooting incident put flowers at the site in Utrecht (Peter Dejong/AP) The team investigating the shooting will ask a forensic psychiatry and psychology institute to carry out a personality test on the suspect. Tanis is to appear before an investigating judge on Friday. Such hearings are held behind closed doors. A 40-year-old man detained on Tuesday afternoon is still under investigation to establish if he possibly had a supporting role, outside the shooting incident, prosecutors said. Two men and a woman were killed when a shooter opened fire on a tram in Utrecht. Authorities put the Netherlands fourth largest city in lockdown for hours amid fears that more than one shooter was active at different locations. Expand Close Dutch counter-terrorism police after the shooting (Peter Dejong/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dutch counter-terrorism police after the shooting (Peter Dejong/AP) The terror alert level was also raised from four to the maximum five while police hunted for the shooter. It was dropped to four once the suspect was detained. Prosecutors have said they were focused on a possible terrorist motive because of the nature of the shooting they say none of the victims was known to the alleged shooter and because of a note found in a getaway car. They have not disclosed what was written in the note. A silent march is planned for Friday evening in Utrecht to commemorate the victims. Santiago Abascal, the national president of Vox, applauds during a rally (Manu Fernandez/AP) A far-right party is making political waves in Spain by advocating looser gun control laws and recruiting retired military officers as candidates in a parliamentary election next month. Vox party leader Santiago Abascal said Spaniards should be allowed to keep firearms at home and to use them in real life-threatening situations without fear of legal consequences. Spain currently allows civilians to possess guns only for sporting purposes. Our laws treat criminals like victims and honest citizens like criminals, Mr Abascal told armas.es, a website specialising in weapons, in an interview. Expand Close General Francos tomb (Andrea Comas/AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp General Francos tomb (Andrea Comas/AP) Mr Abascal, 42, has bragged about carrying a handgun himself. The politician was born and raised in the northern Basque region, where his family was for years a target of separatist militant group Eta. He has a special gun licence given on a case-by-case basis for professional or personal safety. Public opinion polls are predicting Vox will win a significant number of seats in the House of Deputies, the lower chamber in Spains parliament. The party said this week it had enlisted at least five former army generals to run in the April 28 election. Two of the candidates signed a petition last year opposing moves by Spains Socialist government to remove the body of General Francisco Franco from a mausoleum where the 20th century dictator is honoured. Those who fear the rise of the far right in Spain say Vox is trying to attract votes with fear-mongering and by reviving the ghosts of Francos 1939-1975 dictatorship. The partys campaign message is high on Spanish nationalism and what are regarded as traditional values, while its positions include opposing unauthorised migration and the demands of feminists. Expand Close General Franco (PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp General Franco (PA) But Vox faces an uphill battle to stir the arms debate in a country with lower homicide and burglary rates than most of its European neighbours. Some Vox members have linked violence against women and other crimes to the arrival in Spain of large numbers of migrants, though they have not offered statistical evidence to back the claims. Laws in Spain are strict in requiring military staff to be politically neutral, but they face no limitations once they retire. The anti-austerity Podemos party had a former head of the armed forces, Julio Rodriguez, run for parliament in 2015, but he was not elected. One Vox candidate, Alberto Asarta, is a decorated general with a long career in international missions, including a two-year stint leading the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. Last year, Mr Asarta and another general who is now running under the Vox banner joined nearly 200 military reservists in signing a public petition defending Francos legacy. Their manifesto justified the dictators 1936 uprising, which triggered a bloody three-year Civil War. It also criticised Spains centre-left government for ordering Francos remains to be exhumed and relocated from the glorifying Valley of the Fallen mausoleum to a more discrete location. The government has ordered the exhumation to be carried out on June 10. The Spanish Supreme Court is considering appeals filed by Francos relatives and the abbot charged with guarding his tomb. Donald Trumps tweet came as secretary of state Mike Pompeo was in Jerusalem (Michael Conroy/AP) President Donald Trump has said it is time for the United States to recognise Israels control over the disputed Golan Heights. The announcement signals a shift in US policy and comes ahead of the Israeli prime ministers planned visit next week to the White House. The administration has been considering recognising Israels sovereignty over the Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. Last week, in its annual human rights report, the State Department dropped the phrase Israeli-occupied from the Golan Heights section, instead calling it Israeli-controlled. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Mr Trump tweeted. Minutes later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted his appreciation. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! In addition to its policies towards the Palestinians, the US has taken a hard line towards Iran, much to Mr Netanyahus delight. Mr Trumps announcement came as secretary of state Mike Pompeo is in Jerusalem, lauding warm ties with Israel and promising to step up pressure on Iran. Mr Pompeos words gave a public boost to the Israeli leader at the height of a tight re-election campaign. Mr Netanyahu is to be in Washington for two days next week two weeks before Israels April 9 ballot. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! @realDonaldTrump Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) March 21, 2019 Standing together in Jerusalem, neither Mr Netanyahu nor Mr Pompeo mentioned the heated Israeli election campaign. But Mr Netanyahu, facing a tough challenge from a popular former military chief and reeling from a series of corruption allegations, has repeatedly sought to focus attention on his foreign policy record and strong ties with Mr Trump. Mr Pompeo has said his trip has nothing to do with politics. Mr Netanyahu thanked Mr Pompeo for the Trump administrations strong stance against Iran, which Israel regards as an existential threat. Mr Netanyahu has accused Iran of attempting to set up a terrorist network to target Israel from the Golan Heights, using the incident to repeat his goal of international recognition for Israels claim on the area. You could imagine what would have happened if Israel were not in the Golan, he said. You would have Iran on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Mr Pompeo paid a solemn visit to Jerusalems Western Wall along with Mr Netanyahu in an apparent sign of support for Israels control of the contested city. Mr Pompeo is the highest-ranking American official to tour the holy site with any Israeli leader. His visit was likely to further infuriate the Palestinians, who have already severed ties with the US over its Jerusalem policies. Expand Close Benjamin Netanyahu, Mike Pompeo and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman visit the Western Wall Tunnels in Jerusalems Old City (Jim Young/Pool Image via AP) AP/PA Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Benjamin Netanyahu, Mike Pompeo and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman visit the Western Wall Tunnels in Jerusalems Old City (Jim Young/Pool Image via AP) Mr Pompeo and Mr Netanyahu prayed at the wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, before depositing written prayers in its crevices and then touring nearby tunnels and a synagogue. Neither made any public comment at the site. The secretary said he thought it was important to visit the wall with the Israeli leader as a show of support for Israel. I think its symbolic that a senior American official go there with a prime minister of Israel, he said before making the trip. Its a place thats important to many faiths and Im looking forward to it. I think it will be very special. Israel captured east Jerusalem and the Old City in the 1967 Middle East war, and for decades US officials refrained from visiting the Western Wall with Israeli leaders to avoid the appearance of recognising Israeli sovereignty over the citys most sensitive holy sites. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. But the Trump administration has upended the longstanding policy, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem last year after recognising the city as Israels capital. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital. Senior US officials, including Mr Trump and numerous predecessors, have visited the wall privately in the past, but never with an Israeli leader. The Old City is home to Jerusalems most sensitive holy sites, including the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where tradition says Jesus was entombed and resurrected. Mr Pompeo, a devout Christian, also stopped at the church. Next to the Western Wall is a hilltop compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The spot, which once housed the biblical Temples, is the holiest site in Judaism and today is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. The competing claims to the site are a frequent source of tension and lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When Mr Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital, he said it did not determine the citys final borders. But the gesture was perceived as unfairly siding with Israel and prompted the Palestinians to sever ties with the US. The Palestinians have already rejected a planned Middle East peace initiative by the administration. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Mr Pompeos visit added additional obstacles to peace hopes. While they are claiming to be trying to solve the conflict, such acts only make it more difficult to resolve, he said. While previous secretaries of state have traditionally met with the Palestinians when visiting the region, Mr Pompeo has no such talks planned. The Israelis and Palestinians live side-by-side. We need to help them figure out how to do that, Mr Pompeo said. Its a fact, and this administration wishes well for the Palestinian people. In addition to the Jerusalem recognition, the administration has also cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians, helping fuel a financial crisis for Mr Abbass Palestinian Authority. At a meeting with Mr Pompeo, Israels President Reuven Rivlin expressed his deep concern about the Palestinians, both in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and under the internationally backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. If the Palestinian Authority will collapse, we will have to take care about what is going on, he said. The far-Right terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15 left 50 people dead and many others injured. The victims included men, women and children and it was a bloody and brutal attack that shocked the world. Since then much has been said and written about what happened in Christchurch, but one of the most insightful commentaries came from Stan Grant, a global affairs analyst with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and professor of global affairs at Griffith University in Queensland. He said: When you look at radicalised groups, they drink from the same poisoned well of vengeance and grievance and resentment. It is an identity that is rooted in some form of historical wrong, fear and anxiety. Grant went on to say: Listen to the language that is used by political leaders today. Xi Jinping in China talking constantly about the 100 years of humiliation of China by foreign powers. Vladimir Putin lamenting the end of the Soviet empire as the great catastrophe of the 20th century. Listen to (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan in Turkey talk about reviving the Ottoman Empire. Islamic State talking about reviving the caliphate, the neo-Nazi groups harking back to the fascism of the Thirties. These are people who imagine some pristine golden age; they imagine wrong and they seek vengeance for the wrong and they identify themselves around that idea of vengeance. It was a short, two-minute interview, but Professor Grant provided a beautifully clear analysis of something that is happening around the world. There is a common thread that runs through each of these situations and it is a thread, or narrative, of a pristine golden age, a wrong and then anger and vengeance. However, we do not need to look abroad to China or Russia or any other country to see that common thread. We have seen it here in Northern Ireland, especially in relation to radical Irish republicanism. President Xi Jinping in China may talk constantly about 100 years of humiliation, but how often have we heard Irish republicans complain of 800 years of British occupation and oppression. If you have 105 to spare, you can buy an 800 years of struggle bodhran in the Sinn Fein bookshop, with its depictions of an ancient Irish warrior, an Irish rebel and a masked IRA an with a sub-machine-gun. Alternatively, you can turn up at a Wolfe Tones concert and sing along with Go On Home British Soldiers Go On Home and how for 800 years we've fought you and well fight you for 800 more. As Professor Grant said: When you look at radicalised groups, they drink from the same poisoned well of vengeance and grievance and resentment. That thread of Irish republican ideology starts with an imaginary pristine golden era. It starts with a sanitised and glamorised image of an ancient Ireland that was pure and perfect and Gaelic and free. The Irish republican narrative then continues with 800 years of occupation and oppression and a mindset that blames the Brits for everything that has happened in Ireland since the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century. We have seen the outworking of that divisive narrative of grievance in a series of republican terrorist campaigns, from the Fenian dynamite campaign of the 1880s in England through a series of shorter IRA campaigns and, ultimately, to the 30-year terrorist campaign of the Provisional IRA, which murdered more than 1,700 people. Against that background, I think we would do well to reflect on the words of Professor Grant. Sinn Fein is still very much in the business of manufacturing grievances and deepening divisions and, while that radicalisation is currently directed into building up Sinn Fein politically, it can very easily spill over into something more. The bloodshed on the streets of Christchurch should serve as a reminder of what can happen when people drink from the poisoned well, but sadly I doubt if Sinn Fein will heed it. That picture of Mary Lou McDonald in New York with an England Get Out Of Ireland banner suggests that the message of Christchurch will fall on deaf ears. In this newspaper today we carry the stories of three remarkable young people who were born with Down's syndrome. The youngest is doing well at her school, another has just won the lead in a BBC TV drama and the third is addressing the UN in Geneva to demonstrate the employability of people with her condition. Theirs are truly astounding stories that all have one thing in common: when they were born, medical experts prepared their parents for the worst and indicated that they might never talk, walk or have a meaningful life. It has to be borne in mind that medical professionals will often outline the worst-case scenario when talking about any condition so that relatives know what could happen but might never do so. What these young people are doing, with the unstinting encouragement of their parents, is fulfilling their potential, just like any other young person. Their struggles with learning difficulties or any other obstacles they encountered may have been more difficult to overcome than those of their peers, but their determination was equally greater. Of course, they are not unique. There are parents throughout Northern Ireland who can tell the stories of how children with Down's syndrome have succeeded against the odds. Sadly, society is often unable to see the potential in people with any kind of disability. People can even be cruel without really meaning to be. One of the three people featured saw only one person turn up for her 16th birthday, something that must have hurt. But the positive message to come out of these stories today on World Down's Syndrome Day is that parents who accept that children born with a disability are just the same as any other babies play a vital role in the development of those children. It is understandable that some parents may find it difficult to come to terms with the condition, but if they can recognise the joy that any child brings, rather than dwelling on the problems that may arise, their burden will become immeasurably lighter. Even today there is a large degree of ignorance about the condition and its impact, and some of the negative conversations which surround news that the child in the womb may have Down's syndrome only add to the anxiety of the mother. Better that they learn from the example of young people like those featured today. Flowers and flags of New Zealand and Malaysia are seen outside the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, at the memorial site for the victims of the shooting on Friday, March 19, 2019. A 17-year-old Malaysian boy was among the 50 people killed in last Fridays gun attacks at two mosques in New Zealands second largest city, the Malaysian foreign ministry said Thursday. The confirmation came days after Bangladeshi and Indonesian authorities had identified the victims of New Zealands worst mass shooting. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had labeled the attack in Christchurch as terrorism carried out by a suspected Australian white supremacist. With deep sorrow and with consent from the family, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wishes to confirm that Muhammad Haziq bin Mohd Tarmizi, 17, was among the 50 victims who lost their lives in the tragic shooting incident in Christchurch, the ministry said in a statement. Muhammad Haziqs father, Mohd Tarmizi Shuib, as well as two other Malaysians Muhammad Nazril Hisham Omar and Rahimi Ahmad were wounded in the shootings, the statement added. The confirmation on Muhammad Haziqs death came three days after Bangladesh identified its five citizens who were killed in the shootings: Mojammel Hoq, 30, Mohammed Omar Faruk, 35, Muhammed Abdusi Samad, 66, Zakaria Bhuiya, 36 and Hosne Ara, 42. Three Bangladeshis were wounded and one was still missing, authorities said. On Saturday, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi confirmed that Lilik Abdul Hamid, a 50-year-old aircraft engineer for Air New Zealand who was previously thought to be missing, was among the fatalities. She said two other Indonesians remain hospitalized but in stable condition. New Zealand police said most of victims were immigrants or refugees from countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Turkey, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. All of the dead have been identified, New Zealand police said Thursday. Twenty-eight of the 50 people who were wounded remain in hospital, including six in intensive care, authorities said. In the aftermath of the shootings, Adern announced that New Zealand would ban military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles under new gun laws. We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place, Ardern told a news conference. All semi-automatic weapons used during the terrorist attack on Friday 15 March will be banned. Australian Brenton Tarrant, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, has been initially charged with one murder and was expected to face further charges. But police acknowledged on Thursday that the person named on the charged sheet as the murdered victim is actually alive. The error would not affect the case, authorities said. The gunman, armed with a shotgun and semi-automatic rifles, including an AR-15, allegedly livestreamed his attack on social media. New Zealand police estimated in 2016 that there were 1.2 million legal firearms owned by civilians around one for every four people in the country where police officers rarely carried guns. As of June 2018, there were 246,952 active firearms licenses, officials said. Before Fridays attack, New Zealand's worst mass shooting was in 1990 in the small seaside town of Aramoana on the South Island, in which 13 people were killed following a dispute with a neighbor, authorities said. Moro National Liberation Front leader Nur Misuari (center) speaks to reporters while under heavy security in his mountainous base on the southern Philippine island of Jolo, May 29, 2016. Former Muslim guerrilla leader Nur Misuari threatened to go to war again if the Philippines does not change its system of government to federalism rather than the current presidential form, officials said Thursday. President Rodrigo Duterte told a political party rally in Marikina, a suburb of Manila, that Misuari issued the threat during their meeting Tuesday at the presidential palace in the nations capital. He said Misuari emphasized that Muslim rebels had been seeking a federal form of government. Misuari told me last night, If you do not give it to me, let me be very honest, I will go to war,' Duterte said Wednesday. I told him, I understand that, Nur, so this is what we will do: Lets form a panel because we have to inform the people. We cannot negotiate secretly, Duterte said, according to transcripts distributed to reporters by the presidential palace. Misuari, 80, was the founder of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the forerunner of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a separatist guerrilla force that signed a peace deal with the Manila government five years ago. As part of that peace accord, the 12,000-strong MILF dropped its bid for self-rule and settled for an autonomous region in the south. Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo on Thursday said the government was prepared to fight back, but emphasized that he believed it would not reach that point. He said Duterte made a subtle counter-threat to Misuari by replying, We will die fighting each other. It means he is ready to fight, Panelo said, referring to Duterte. Thats what the president meant if you fight the government, I will fight back. He said Duterte suggested that the two parties create their respective five-member panels to tackle the proposed shift to federalism. The MILF split with the MNLF in the 1970s. After the MNLF signed a peace deal with the government in 1996, Misuari became governor of a Muslim region. But, according to analysts, Misuari failed to uplift the lives of the poor and allegations of corruption plagued his administration. Six years ago, Misuari led dozens of his followers in taking over the southern city of Zamboanga. Three weeks of clashes with security forces killed 223 people, most of them MNLF fighters. Thousands of homes were burned and Misuari went on the lam. In 2016, Duterte ordered the dropping of charges against Misuari related to the Zamboanga siege, as the president worked on the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL), which paved the way for the creation of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). The Bangsamoro law, which Misuari had quietly opposed, gives the south an expanded autonomous area, offering self-determination to four million Filipino Muslims by empowering them to elect their own parliament. But it also appears to have sidelined Misuari as many local government functions are now led by the MILF. Senators: What kind of federalism? Meanwhile, senators slammed Misuaris threats, warning that he could potentially face sedition or rebellion charges by issuing such remarks. I wonder if theres a law against threatening the government. Second, does he even know what kind of federalism he wants? Its not that easy. We need to study that, Sen. Vicente Sotto told reporters. I hope that he does not violate any laws by inciting to sedition, inciting to rebellion or what have you, Sotto said. Duterte had earlier said he would back a change in government, but said the debate should go through Congress. He had argued that shifting to a parliamentary form of government would allow the decentralization of wealth and spread growth to the countryside. The proposal, however, has not taken off the ground, and has been met with strong opposition from politicians wary of tinkering with the Constitution. UK police said they were investigating attacks on five mosques in Birmingham that had their windows smashed overnight. The police were first called at 2.32am to a mosque on Birchfield Road, Perry Barr, where a man was reported to be breaking windows with a sledgehammer. Officers who arrived there found that the attack had happened some time earlier, the Guardian reported. They were next alerted at 3.14am to an attack on another mosque, in Slade Road, Erdington. Following confirmation of that incident, a decision was taken to check on other mosques, and similar damage was found at buildings in Witton Road, Aston, and on The Broadway, Perry Barr. On this morning police discovered that a mosque on Albert Road had also had its windows smashed, and they are treating this attack as linked to the earlier incidents. Police and the West Midlands counter-terrorism unit are investigating the incidents and forensic teams were gathering evidence at the scenes. Two former Philippine officials have brought a complaint against China to the International Criminal Court (ICC) accusing Chinese President Xi Jinping of implementing a systematic plan to control the South China Sea and endangering local fishermen. The complaint, filed last week by former Foreign Minister Albert del Rosario and ex-ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales and made available to the media on Thursday, includes a 17-page outline of how Xi and other Chinese officials allegedly committed crimes against humanity by seeking to control the mineral-rich sea region. Along with Xi, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jinhua were named in the complaint. Del Rosario and Morales said they filed the complaint on behalf of thousands of Filipino fishermen persecuted and injured by Chinas aggressive occupation of South China Sea islands, pointing to the construction of military installations they claimed were destructive to marine life. This has seriously undermined the food and energy security of the coastal states in the South China Sea, including the Philippines, they said in the complaint, a copy of which was received by BenarNews. Though widely publicized, these atrocious actions of Chinese officials in the South China Sea and within Philippine territory remain unpunished, and it is only the ICC that can exact accountability on behalf of Filipinos and the international community, respecting the rule of law, they stressed. It was not clear if the case would prosper, considering that the Philippines withdrew from the court amid an investigation into President Rodrigo Dutertes deadly drug war. China is not a signatory to The Hague-based body. Speaking to reporters in Manila, Duterte said the former officials had the right to file the complaint. The Philippines is a democratic country and anybody can bring a suit against anybody. But whether or not it would prosper or whether or not we have the jurisdiction, thats something else, Duterte said. They think they have a good case and I would say that the ICC has no jurisdiction over this country and China. Situation is unique and relevant The complaint urged the court to initiate a preliminary examination and appraise itself of Chinese crimes committed not only against the Filipino people but also against people of other nations, which crimes are already known to the international community. It stressed that in pushing for Chinas alleged systematic plan to take over the mineral-rich sea region Xi committed crimes within the jurisdiction of the court which involve massive, near permanent and devastating environmental damage across nations. The situation presented is both unique and relevant in that it presents one of the most massive, near permanent and devastating destruction of the environment in humanitys history, which has not only adversely affected and injured myriad groups of vulnerable fishermen, but present and future generations of people across nations, the complaint said. Spokesmen for the Chinese Embassy in Manila were not immediately available for comment. News of the ICC case came as Philippine Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin was winding down a visit to Beijing where he met with his counterpart, Wang Yi. The two had a friendly, candid and in-depth discussion on a range of issues including political-security cooperation, according to the Philippine foreign ministry. Both ministers reaffirmed their respective countries shared commitment to sustaining the positive momentum of relations on the basis of mutual respect and sincerity, according to a Philippine statement. China claims most of the mineral-rich South China Sea, including areas that reach the shores of its smaller neighbors. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims to the region. In 2012, the Chinese seized the Scarborough Shoal, a traditional fishing ground within the 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone of the Philippines, after a two-month standoff with the Philippine Navy. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines over China, saying there was no legal basis for Beijing to claim historical rights in the sea region. Beijing rejected the ruling and launched a building spree in territories it controls in the sea. Updated at 2:37 p.m. ET on 2019-03-21 Hiding in Thailand, Vietnamese human rights campaigner Bach Hong Quyen fears hes in the cross-hairs of two nations: Vietnam, which he fled two years ago to escape arrest for his activism, and Thailand, where he had hoped to get sanctuary. Quyen was instrumental in helping Radio Free Asia (RFA) blogger Truong Duy Nhat, who disappeared in Bangkok in late January, make an ill-fated bid for political asylum. Suspicions that Nhat was abducted by Vietnamese agents with Thai cooperation only deepened after RFAs Vietnamese Service confirmed Wednesday that the blogger was in jail in Hanoi. That confirmation, provided by Nhats daughter, was the first word on his fate since he went missing nearly two months ago. BenarNews is affiliated with Radio Free Asia, a U.S.-funded broadcaster. Nhats case has further eroded Thailands long-standing reputation as a haven for refugees in Southeast Asia. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Busadee Santipaks declined to comment Thursday on the latest news on Nhat, beyond saying that the Thai police were handling the matter. I am at the moment very worried for my safety and my familys safety, Quyen, 29, a husband and father of three young children, told RFA in an exclusive interview. Although he has U.N. refugee status, which should protect him from arrest and deportation, he says he now lives in hiding, separated from his family to escape detection. If the Thai government arrested me, they will definitely give me to Vietnam, he said. His fears are rooted in what happened to Nhat, a prominent critic of the Vietnamese government whom, rights activists suspect, was detained by Thai authorities at a shopping mall on the outskirts of Bangkok and handed to Vietnamese agents. He was a weekly contributor to the Vietnamese Service of RFA. Bui Thanh Hieu, a popular Vietnamese blogger who lives in exile in Germany, alleged in a March 10 posting on Facebook that Thai police had taken Nhat to a bar outside Bangkok, where Vietnamese personnel bundled him into a vehicle and drugged him an account that was repeated by two rights activists who are familiar with Nhats case. RFA could not immediately verify the details of that account. Thailands government says they are still investigating the case, which has drawn strong expressions of concerns from U.S. congressmen. The response from the Trump administration, however, has been muted. The administration has generally steered clear of tough criticism of the human rights record of Asian allies like Thailand and Vietnam, which last month hosted a U.S.-North Korea summit. Thais want to erase all evidence For his part, Quyen says he feels like a marked man because of his inside knowledge of Nhats disappearance. He said he helped him find accommodation in Bangkok and submit his application for asylum with the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in the Thai capital on Jan. 25 the day before Nhat vanished and has some insight into what compelled the prominent writer and well-connected government critic to flee Vietnam in the first place. Nhats daughter, Canada-based Thuc Doan Truong, said that prison authorities had informed her mother and Nhats wife, Cao Thi Xuan Phuong, that Vietnam had Nhat on Jan. 28 two days after his disappearance in Bangkok. He is now being held at Hanois T16 detention center. Phuong has not yet been allowed to visit him. Its clear that my father did not voluntarily go back to Vietnam, Truong said. Reacting to the news that Nhat was now in Vietnamese custody back home, global rights watchdog Amnesty International on Thursday called on the Hanoi and Bangkok governments to be transparent about his disappearance from Thailand. Amnesty said Nhat disappeared shortly after he put in his asylum claim and following growing harassment by Vietnamese police. Reports that Nhat is now in a Hanoi prison are extremely worrying, and we are calling on the Vietnamese authorities to confirm whether he is in their custody and disclose his whereabouts at once, Joanne Mariner, Amnestys senior crisis adviser said in a statement. The Vietnamese and Thai authorities need to come clean about why and how Nhat returned to Viet Nam so soon after he applied for asylum in Bangkok. There is a strong possibility that he was transferred to Vietnamese custody despite the real risk of serious human rights violations, she added. Later on Thursday, a leading international press freedom advocacy group called for Hanoi to free Nhat at once. Vietnamese authorities should immediately and unconditionally release blogger Truong Duy Nhat and allow him to travel freely outside of Vietnam, Shawn Crispin, the senior Southeast Asia representative for the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement. Authorities in Vietnam and Thailand should investigate the circumstances around Nhats apparent abduction in Thailand and hold those responsible to account under the fullest extent allowable under local laws. Quyen: I cant live with my family In Thailand, Quyen articulated his own fears related to this high-profile case in chilling terms alleging that Thai police and Vietnam want to erase all evidence in Nhats case to cover up what happened. He cites concerns expressed by human rights activists that the governments of Vietnam and Thailand which holds its first elections this weekend since a 2014 military coup may exchange dissidents each are reportedly seeking in the other country. At the moment, I cant live with my family because I know the Thai government is following my wife to trace me, Quyen said in the interview, which took place before word on Nhats fate emerged. RFA agreed not to disclose the time and location of the interview because of Quyens concerns for his safety. We have not lived together for about 10 days. My wife yesterday told me that some policemen parked their car near the building where my family stays. Yesterday evening, someone knocked on the door and went in to check if I was in but they could not find me so they left. They told my wife that they were building security but they did not wear uniform, they wore plain clothes, said Quyen. He is seeking urgent resettlement in Canada, which has emerged as the leading destination for asylum seekers as the United States has drastically reduced the numbers of refugees it accepts. Quyens March 2 appeal for asylum to the Canadian government, a copy of which was obtained by RFA, pleads: I am currently in an extremely dangerous situation. RFA called the number listed on the website of Vietnams embassy in Bangkok to seek comment on Quyens allegations that Vietnam wanted him deported. The number did not appear to be functioning. Thailands immigration authorities denied any knowledge of any efforts to deport Quyen. He had originally fled to Thailand in May 2017 because of an arrest warrant issued by Vietnamese police the previous month for disturbing public order after he organized a march to mark the anniversary of a 2016 waste spill that polluted the coast of central Vietnam. The environmental disaster sparked major protests. We dont have this Bach Hong Quyen in our system. He was not received here, Pol. Col. Tatpong Sanawarangkoon, the supervisor of the deporting section of the Immigration Bureau, told BenarNews. He said he could not comment on Quyens claim that Vietnam had sought Thai police help to go after him. Traditional hub for refugees Although Thailand is not a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, it has been traditionally been viewed as a hub for refugees fleeing war and oppression in neighboring countries. Instances of refoulement or the forcible deportation of refugees or asylum seekers with a legitimate fear of persecution have in fact been relatively rare from Thailand since it sent more than 100 Uyghur Muslims back to China in 2015, sparking an international outcry. But refugees still face a precarious situation. Nearly 10 percent of the more than 5,000 U.N.-registered persons of concern in Thailand are currently languishing in immigration detention. Rights group Reporters Without Borders last week said that following a raid on Quyens home on March 1, it feared Thai authorities could allow Vietnamese agents to abduct him. We urge the Thai government to respect the status of Bach Hong Quyen and his family as refugees and to stop intimidating Quyen in any way, said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSFs Asia-Pacific desk. Aside from the obligation to respect the fundamental rights of an individual whose only crime was to have informed his compatriots, Thailands credibility on the international stage is at stake, he said. Quyen has been living in Thailand with his wife, Bui Huong Giang, and their daughters Bach Yen Nhi, 6, and Bach Gia Han, 3, and 6-month old son Bach Joseph, who was born in Thailand. He says he has no regret for assisting Nhat, who told Quyen he had fled Vietnam because he feared he would soon be arrested. Nhat had also confided that he was privy to insider information that could have proved damaging to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong information that he had intended to publish once he found asylum in another country. Quyen explained that he was no stranger to harassment for his activism in Vietnam. When I was in danger, many people had helped me, said Quyen. When Truong Duy Nhat told me that he was in danger, its normal as a Vietnamese and an activist to help a friend who used to be jailed for what he wrote in his blog and now is in danger. I dont regret what I have done, Quyen added. Im in danger but at least Im still free. For Immediate Release, March 21, 2019 Contacts: John Weisheit, Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper, (435) 260-2590, john@livingrivers.org Robin Silver, Center for Biological Diversity, (602) 799-3275, rsilver@biologicaldiversity.org Zachary Frankel, Utah Rivers Council, (801) 699-1856, zach@utahrivers.org Lawsuit Challenges Utah's New Green River Water Contract Trump Administration Failed to Consider Other Water Deals, Climate Change WASHINGTON Conservation groups sued the Trump administration today to challenge the Interior Departments decision allowing additional water to be taken from the Green River below Utahs Flaming Gorge Dam. The decision was made without a full accounting of reduced Colorado River basin flows or how the regions persistent drought and climate change could harm endangered species and recreation. Todays lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., says Interiors Bureau of Reclamation failed to consider other pending water contracts, including the Lake Powell Pipeline, which could further deplete the Green and Colorado rivers. The agency claimed in its environmental assessment that the new Green River Water Rights Exchange contract, signed Wednesday, would have no significant environmental impact. But it did not consider climate change, drought or over-allocation of water. The water resources of the Colorado River Basin are already headed toward irretrievable decline in both quantity and quality, said John Weisheit of Living Rivers and Colorado Riverkeeper. The environmental review ignored the reality of declining river flows in the Green River and the rest of the Colorado basin and the connected impacts of this contract and the proposed Lake Powell Pipeline water contract. This review was appalling. The Green and Colorado river systems need a full accounting, said Robin Silver, a cofounder of the Center for Biological Diversity. Drought, climate change and over-allocation are sucking the Colorado River basin dry right in front of our eyes. But officials ignored declining river flows, pretended this new Green River contract stands alone and ignored multiple proposed water projects like the Lake Powell Pipeline. Well fight to defend these spectacular rivers. Four endangered fish could be harmed by changes to water flows and timing contemplated under the Green River Water Rights Exchange contract and other pending water deals. Changes to Flaming Gorge Dam operations necessary to accommodate the water contracts and drought-contingency planning could be devastating for these fish and other species. Endangered species at risk include the Colorado pikeminnow, razorback sucker, humpback chub and bonytail chub. The river includes fragile riparian areas and wetlands, as well as breathtaking canyons popular with rafters. It winds through Browns Park National Wildlife Refuge, Dinosaur National Monument, Ouray National Wildlife Refuge and Canyonlands National Park before joining up with the Colorado River. The Bureaus Green River Block environmental review is a disingenuous facade that ignores the agencys own climate change warnings and myriad scientific studies about water-supply shortfalls to advance the largest new proposed diversion of the Colorado River, the Lake Powell Pipeline, said Zach Frankel, executive director of Utah Rivers Council. The groups are represented by attorneys from the Center for Biological Diversity. Mount Sinai and IBM researchers uncover key to greater efficacy in cancer treatment New York, NY (March 21, 2019) -- Researchers from Mount Sinai and IBM have discovered a novel clue in explaining how cancer cells with identical genomes can respond differently to the same therapy. In a Nature Communications paper published today, researchers reveal for the first time that the number of mitochondria in a cell is, in great part, associated with how the cancer responds to drug therapy. Cancer is the second-leading cause of mortality worldwide, with approximately one in six deaths across the globe attributed to the disease. While treatments for cancer continue to improve as technology advances, researchers and clinicians have been unsuccessful in explaining the diversity of responses in cancer cells to treatments of oncological disease. In many cases, cancer cells with matching genetic makeup will respond differently to the same treatment. Mount Sinai and IBM researchers combined computational and biological methods to uncover a clue to this behavior. Cells die when met with bacteria, malnourishment, or viruses. But also, to promote normal function, our bodies eliminate billions of cells each day--a process known as "programmed cell death" or apoptosis. Mitochondria, often referred to as the powerhouse of the cell because of their ability to produce cellular energy, can also act as a catalyst in the activation of programmed cell death, and certain anti-cancer drugs work by activating this process. This function encouraged researchers to explore the hypothesis that cancer cells with identical genetic makeup, but different quantities of mitochondria, may have varying susceptibility to death if exposed to the same drugs that promote apoptosis. In exposing various types of cells to six concentrations of a pro-apoptotic drug and measuring the abundance of mitochondria within the surviving cells, Mount Sinai and IBM researchers discovered that surviving cells had a greater amount of mitochondria than untreated cells. This strongly suggests that cells with fewer mitochondria are more likely to respond to certain drug treatments. To analyze this data, researchers used a mathematical framework called DEPICTIVE (an acronym for DEtermining Parameter Influence on Cell-to-cell variability Through the Inference of Variance Explained) to quantify variability in the survival or death of cells due to mitochondrial abundance. Overall, the framework determined that the variability of mitochondria explained up to 30 percent of the varying responses to the pro-apoptotic drug. "Enhancing our understanding of the relationship between mitochondria variability and drug response may lead to more effective targeted cancer treatments, allowing us to find new ways to tackle the problem of drug resistance," said Pablo Meyer, PhD, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Team Leader of Translational Systems Biology at IBM Research, and co-corresponding author of the publication. "The outcomes of this study were truly multidisciplinary, and only made possible by the strong scientific collaboration established between Mount Sinai and IBM." ### About the Mount Sinai Health System The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City's largest integrated delivery system, encompassing eight hospitals, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. Mount Sinai's vision is to produce the safest care, the highest quality, the highest satisfaction, the best access and the best value of any health system in the nation. The Health System includes approximately 7,480 primary and specialty care physicians; 11 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 410 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. The Icahn School of Medicine is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report's "Best Medical Schools", aligned with a U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" Hospital, No. 12 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding, and among the top 10 most innovative research institutions as ranked by the journal Nature in its Nature Innovation Index. This reflects a special level of excellence in education, clinical practice, and research. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 18 on U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" of top U.S. hospitals; it is one of the nation's top 20 hospitals in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Geriatrics, Nephrology, and Neurology/Neurosurgery, and in the top 50 in six other specialties in the 2018-2019 "Best Hospitals" issue. Mount Sinai's Kravis Children's Hospital also is ranked nationally in five out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report. The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked 11th nationally for Ophthalmology and 44th for Ear, Nose, and Throat. Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Mount Sinai St. Luke's, Mount Sinai West, and South Nassau Communities Hospital are ranked regionally. For more information, visit http://www. mountsinai. org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. About IBM Research For more than seven decades, IBM Research has defined the future of information technology with more than 3,000 researchers in 12 labs located across six continents. Scientists from IBM Research have produced six Nobel Laureates, 10 U.S. National Medals of Technology, five U.S. National Medals of Science, six Turing Awards, 19 inductees in the National Academy of Sciences and 23 inductees into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. For more information about IBM Research, visit http://www. ibm. com/ research . This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Jaguar Land Rover Group has installed at its Gaydon engineering center the UK's largest smart charging station for employees. In total, 166 smart charging outlets each 7 kW AC are available and connected to the broader NewMotion charging network. In the future, the facility will get even more charging stations in the visitors' car park for guests. Jaguar Land Rover points out that EV owners, which are able to charge at work (only about 25% of all EV owners), on average are charging at work 40% of the time. At 7 kW, cars like Jaguar I-PACE can replenish up to 176 miles (283 km) of range within an eight-hour shift. In the future, JLR intends to install charging stations at additional sites in UK. The stations are cloud-connected and integrated with the NewMotion public charging network, so employees can charge at stations across Europe using a single card. Users can also monitor and track charging throughout the day with a smartphone app. The charge points will offer both financial and environmental benefits for PHEV and BEV drivers alike, while providing a convenient and sustainable solution for employees who can't charge at home. Jaguar Land Rover sources 100 per cent renewable electricity generated from natural resources including solar and wind energy for its UK facilities, which will be used to power the infrastructure, providing carbon-free commuting to employees. Jaguar Land Rover's electricity supply is backed by Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO), meaning a proportion of EDF Energy's renewable energy is ring-fenced for the company. In this case, the REGO scheme certifies that Jaguar Land Rover's entire supply comes from renewable generation. Mick Cameron, Head of e-Mobility at Jaguar Land Rover, said: Every new Jaguar and Land Rover model line will be electrified from 2020, giving our customers even more choice. We have already introduced a portfolio of electrified products across our model ranges, including fully electric (BEV), plug-in hybrid (PHEV) and mild hybrid (MHEV) vehicles. The Jaguar I-PACE, Jaguar's first premium battery electric vehicle, arrived in showrooms in March 2018 and has since won 55 international awards including European Car of the Year 2019. We hope that by providing a network of electric charging points to staff and visitors at our Gaydon engineering centre we can help encourage the uptake of alternative fuels amongst our employees. It's all part of our commitment to acting more sustainably our UK facilities are already powered by 100 per cent renewable electricity and we believe the new charging points will help our employees to tread lightly on their daily commute. Sytse Zuidema, CEO of NewMotion, said: As leading provider of smart charging solutions in Europe, our data shows when EV drivers are charging their car, 40 per cent of the time this happens at work. For the best possible charging experience for companies and individuals, NewMotion offers a range of services to ensure charging is readily available for EV drivers at home, at work and on the go. Converting the parking spaces at Gaydon into the largest single site with smart charging locations provides that workplace charging opportunity to Jaguar Land Rover's employees while our NewMotion charge card gives them access to the largest roaming charging network in Europe. Media Advisory, March 21, 2019 Contacts: Alex Gutierrez, local fisherman, (409) 443-7299, AlexGH53@yahoo.com Steve Jones, Center for Biological Diversity, (415) 305-3866, sjones@biologicaldiversity.org Nancy Bui, (512) 844-9417, Justice for Formosa Victims, nancy@vietnameseamerican.org Travis London, Rise St. James, (225) 264-9527, travislondonsr@yahoo.com Kayak Tour, Civil Trial to Focus on Formosa Plastics' Pollution of Texas Waterways POINT COMFORT, Texas Citizen-activists who exposed Formosa Plastics rampant pollution of Texas waterways with plastic pellets and debris and will lead a kayak tour to its Point Comfort plant on Saturday, and supporters will hold a press conference before Mondays opening arguments in the companys civil trial. Both are open to the media. Lead plaintiff Diane Wilson, a local former shrimper, and co-plaintiffs from San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper are being supported by allies from Texas, California and Louisiana, where the company is now seeking permits to build another massive plastics plant in St. James Parish. Local Vietnamese-American activists will also raise concerns about Formosa Plastics pollution here and abroad. Formosa must be held accountable for polluting our waterways with plastic over so many years. This companys disregard for marine life, fisheries and coastal communities cant go unpunished, said Alex Gutierrez, an oysterman familiar with plastic pollution in Lavaca Bay. The rampant plastic pollution here is a warning to other communities considering approving these large plastics plants. Saturday What: Kayak tour of waterways surrounding the Formosa Plastics plant When: Saturday, March 23, 11:30 a.m. Where: Cox Creek boat launch, Highway 35, Point Comfort, Texas (Google Map coordinates here) For Media: Members of the media can contact Steve Jones to participate in the kayak tour or receive images or video from the event. Monday What: Civil trial of Formosa Plastics for illegally discharging plastic pellets and debris from its Point Comfort plant into Lavaca Bay. Opening arguments will be preceded by press conference outside the courthouse with media availability during lunch break. When: Monday, March 25, 8 a.m. press conference; trial starts at 8:30 a.m., media availability at noon. Where: Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Building, 312 S. Main, Victoria, Texas Images and video: Images of plastic pollution documented by Wilson and her group are available here. Video and photos from the kayak tour available upon request. Who: Groups supporting San Antonio Estuarine Waterkeeper and its Texas RioGrande Legal Aid lawsuit against Formosa Plastics include Vietnamese-American communities along the Gulf Coast, the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthworks, 350 New Orleans, Sierra Club, Rise St. James and Louisiana Bucket Brigade. Background In January Texas officials fined Formosa Plastics about $122,000 for illegally discharging plastic pellets and debris into Lavaca Bay and nearby waterways. That fine covered just six incidents and was largely based on evidence that Wilson and her group began collecting in 2016 after finding plastic pellets littering local shorelines. Wilson and her co-plaintiffs, represented by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, filed a citizen lawsuit seeking to have Formosa fined as much as $184 million, the maximum Clean Water Act fine for the 1,121 days of pollution events they documented. Federal law prohibits the discharge of floating solids into waterways. Plastic waste in waterways and oceans doesnt break down for decades, attaching itself to environmental toxins as it travels throughout the food web, often infesting seafood. Local Vietnamese communities are concerned about Formosas impact on Gulf Coast fisheries and a 2016 chemical spill from Formosas steel plant in Vietnam that poisoned marine life over about 125 miles of coastline. Formosa and other petrochemical companies plan to increase plastic production by 40 percent over the next decade, proposing dozens of new plants along the Gulf Coast and in the Rust Belt. That increase is driven by an oversupply of fracked natural gas, the feedstock for ethane cracker and other plastic-producing plants. In St. James Parish, La., Formosa Plastics is proposing to build a $9.4 billion plastics plant along the Mississippi River. The site is adjacent to an African-American community sometimes called Cancer Alley because of high rates of industrial pollution and disease. Rise St. James and other community groups have organized strong opposition to the project and have organized a march there April 4 through April 8. They join a growing national movement concerned about the plastic pollution crisis and its connection to climate change, ocean plastic pollution, water contaminated by fracking, environmental justice and other issues. Whys BioPharma BREAKING R&D SHACKLES? The Indian industry bore witness to biotech companies collaborating with vaccine manufacturers, vaccine technologies being transferred, licenses to manufacture several drugs granted to pharma companies, among other notable developments. These collaborations and partnerships have furthered R&D, commercialisation and distribution of several critical drugs throughout 2021. However, key barriers to R&D-based innovation still persist in the Indian pharma market that needs to be sorted out soon. We shall take a closer look at the industry quest to realise even more, swift innovations and fewer hindrances. When the leader of Armenia's 'velvet revolution', Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan came to power, he has began to block peace talks on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan at every possible way, editor-in-chief of 'National Defense' magazine Igor Korotchenko told the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza. "Pashinyan demonstrates an absolutely non-flexible policy, whereby Yerevan does not want to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He puts forward requirements that are inappropriate to the norms of international law - that the 'NKR' delegation should be present at the talks. Persistent Pashinyans persistent demands are, in fact, derailing the negotiation process as such. Pashinyan does this consciously, he cannot but understand that the requirement to put a third party at the negotiating table blocks the entire settlement," he stressed "Under international law, we must state that the regions of Azerbaijan are occupied by Armenian military forces. Nobody, including Armenia, contests the status of these territories as occupied. Therefore, as a gesture of goodwill and assistance to the negotiation process, first of all Yerevan should transfer five occupied areas to Azerbaijan, for example, under the guarantee of the CSTO troops entry into the demilitarized zone through the contact line, which would ensure the non-resumption of hostilities. Next is the transfer of two more regions to Azerbaijan under guarantees of the deployment of the CSTO peacekeeping contingent and Baku's guarantees to preserve the transit of non-military goods through these territories to link Armenia with Karabakh," Igor Korotchenko suggested. "Then, when the population returns to the de-occupied areas, Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced persons should be returned to the territory of Karabakh with the CSTO peacekeeping contingent providing a peaceful coexistence of the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities there. Next is the creation of a joint Armenian-Azerbaijani police force to ensure law and order and maintain security in the territory. Then the parliamentary elections should be held under international supervision, and Nagorno-Karabakh's fate should be decided with the basic principle that it is the territory of Azerbaijan, but perhaps with a particular interim status," the military expert explained. "If Pashinyan was to proceed in this manner, the new Yerevan's desire to bring peace to the region would be visible - but so far its position is unconstructive. Most importantly, sooner or later the problem of returning the occupied territories will have to be solved, because there are economic restrictions imposed on Armenia by Azerbaijan and Turkey. If the process is unblocked, both Yerevan and Nagorno-Karabakh will be able to receive substantial preferences, since Azerbaijan possesses the necessary resources and is able to make lives of all those living in the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh more stable, calm and prosperous. But practical actions are needed from Yerevan, but Nikol Pashinyan rather make statements, so the negotiations are being hampered," Igor Korotchenko concluded. PR Newswire TOKYO, March 20, 2019 TOKYO, March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, leaders representing G20 nations convened at the second annual Alzheimer's Scientific Roundtable to call on Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to act decisively and make the global Alzheimer's crisis a primary focus of this year's G20 summit agenda. The global consortium of researchers, academics, government officials, and private-sector leaders was convened at the University of Tokyo by Eisai Co., Ltd., ResearchersAgainstAlzheimer's (a network of UsAgainstAlzheimer's), the Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer's Disease, the University of Tokyo, and the Health and Global Policy Institute. "Alzheimer's disease and related dementias are the defining global public health crises of the 21st century. There are 50 million people suffering from this disease worldwide, and that number will balloon to 82 million by 2030 unless we act now," said George Vradenburg, Chairman, UsAgainstAlzheimer's and convener of The Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer's Disease. "The good news is, we know so much more about Alzheimer's than we did just a year ago and we are hopeful for the future. There is an emerging scientific consensus that we all can take proactive, preventative actions to improve brain health across the lifespan. Given this knowledge, we must renew and redouble our efforts to combat this disease," said Vradenburg. "An estimated 5 million people a year are currently dying from causes related to Alzheimer's and dementia, and the majority of those deaths are in G20 countries outside the G7. The need for urgency and global collaboration is great. The time is now for the G20 to embrace the goal of stopping the disease by 2025," finished Vradenburg. "The latest science demonstrates that Alzheimer's is no longer thought to be an inevitability of old age. Over the course of a lifetime, a person's overall health has a marked impact on their brain health. Preventative measures taken at every stage of one's life will benefit their brain health later in life, delay cognitive decline, and minimize the risk of developing Alzheimer's," said Takeshi Iwatsubo, Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Tokyo. "It is more important than ever to expand the global conversation around Alzheimer's to include brain health. Prime Minister Abe, as this year's global G20 host, is in the perfect position to accomplish this." Roundtable organizers also stressed the need for a global infrastructure to link clinical trial sites. "Working in silos will not bring us closer to curing this disease by 2025. We need an international network of clinical trial sites that can create partnerships and build global support networks for clinical research," said Kiyoshi Kurokawa, Chairman of the Health and Global Policy Institute. "At a time when researchers are beginning to understand the underlying pathophysiology of the disease, inter-disciplinary collaboration is more critical than ever. Given this, Prime Minister Abe must recognize his opportunity to lead on this issue at the global level not just at the G20 in 2019, but for years to come." The drug development pipeline for Alzheimer's is robust, with more than 100 promising therapies in development. However, more investment and innovation are needed to move drugs through clinical trials, particularly from phase 2 into phase 3, and bring new medicines more rapidly to market. Participants at the conference agree that to expedite drug development efforts, we also must work concurrently to increase development in Alzheimer's biomarkers, which will improve rates of timely and accurate detection and diagnosis globally and speed adoption of innovative treatments. "I have no doubt we will find a cure for Alzheimer's, but developing pharmacological treatments has been more complex than predicted," said Ivan Cheung, President, Neurology Business Group at Eisai Co., Ltd. "Biomarkers are an important way we can spur the drug development pipeline and increase clinical trial participation. At the G20 summit this year, Prime Minister Abe should underscore the importance biomarkers and innovative trial design will play in future clinical trials." Addressing the global Alzheimer's crisis at the G20 is a crucial next step to build on the increasingly coordinated global effort to combat Alzheimer's disease over the past decade. "We look forward to continuing our work with the G20 and G7 health ministers, the U.S. government, and Japanese officials as we strive to find solutions to this global public health crisis," added Vradenburg. "UsAgainstAlzheimer's and our partners collectively represent tens of millions of people impacted by this horrific disease. We will continue to insist that global leaders prioritize Alzheimer's and brain health at this year's G20 summit in Osaka and beyond." Contact Melissa Green: 202.429.4940 | [email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-opinion-leaders-from-g20-nations-urge-japanese-prime-minister-shinzo-abe-to-establish-aging-lifelong-brain-health-and-dementia-as-central-pillars-of-g20-agenda-300816105.html SOURCE UsAgainstAlzheimer's PR Newswire BOSTON, March 21, 2019 BOSTON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first time, there's a shakeup at the top of BCG's annual list of the most innovative companies. In this year's global survey of more than 2,500 senior innovation leaders, longtime leader Apple ranks third, and Google (or its parent company, Alphabet) and Amazon move up to first and second place, respectively. Microsoft and Samsung round out the top five. Although tech companies hold nine of the top ten places, traditional industries are account for more than half of the top 50 list. Adidas (#10), Boeing (#11), BASF (#12), Johnson & Johnson (#14), and DowDuPont (#15) rank in the top 15. T-Mobile (#13), DowDuPont, Vale (#19), Stryker (#35), and Rio Tinto (#49) join the list for the first time. The rising importance of digital technology continues to be an overarching megatrend for innovators. In particular, BCG's new report, The Most Innovative Companies 2019: The Rise of AI, Platforms, and Ecosystems, finds that innovators are increasingly embracing AI as a way to develop new products and services and improve internal innovation. In addition, innovators are embracing technology platforms and their cousin, ecosystems, to tap into sources of external innovation and differentiation. "Digital technology and external innovation have become watchwords," said Ramon Baeza, a BCG senior partner and report coauthor. "All of the top ten companiesand many in the top 50use AI, platforms, and ecosystems to enable themselves and others to pursue new products, services, and ways of working." AI Gains TractionAmong survey respondents, 90% reported that their companies are investing in AI. More than 30% expect AI to be among the innovation areas with the highest impact on their businesses in the next three to five years. Almost 30% are actively targeting AI in their innovation programs. A skills gap is evident with respect to AI. More than 65% of self-described strong innovators rate themselves as above average on AI, versus just 2% of weak innovators. Just under 20% of all respondents see their organizations as both strong innovators and above average on AI (a group the report calls AI leaders). Among AI leaders, 94% see AI as important to their organizations' future growth, versus 56% of AI laggards (respondents who rate their organization's AI capabilities as below average). "AI will have a significant impact on business processes, but its biggest potential lies in developing new products and services that can yield major revenue streams over time," said Michael Ringel, a BCG senior partner and report coauthor. "AI leaders are already blazing a trail," he said, noting that leaders reported much higher percentages of sales driven by AI-enhanced products or services introduced in the past three years. Among AI leaders, 46% say AI-enhanced products and services represented 16% or more of sales, versus 10% for laggards. And AI leaders and laggards see AI playing a larger role in the future, with 54% of leaders and 22% of laggards expecting more than 16% of sales to come from AI-enhanced products and services in the next five years. Strong Innovators Access Outside Resources Rising use of AI is one factor driving increased interest in platforms and ecosystems. AI leaders say they are more likely to use external vendors for AI projects, with 36% relying entirely on external vendors and another 48% using mostly external services or a mix or internal and outside capabilities. This approach may be helping leaders climb the AI curve quickly, since expertise is still in short supply. This year's report shows organizations increasingly looking beyond their own walls for new ideas. Partnership models are on the rise: from 2015 to 2018, more strong innovators are using incubators (rising from 59% to 75%), academic partnerships (rising from 60% to 81%), and company partnerships (rising from 65% to 83%). "Digital technologies enable collaboration platforms, and collaboration platforms enable ecosystems that bring together a group of organizations to build a new capability or product or service offering, or to push forward a new field of science or technology," said Florian Grassl, a BCG partner and report coauthor. "Not all ecosystems are alike, however. They have different types of glue that bind their participants. Money is one type, of course, but knowledge, data, skills, and community can be equally important." Some ecosystems are expansions of traditional ways of organizing and doing business. They tend to have an orchestrator at the center, with which all the other participants interact, and established hierarchies and structures. Other ecosystems, including many of those that are involved in the early research phase of research and development, tend to be more dynamic. They rely less on a central orchestrator and more on multifaceted interactions among participants. BCG has surveyed senior innovation executivesacross a wide range of countries and industries13 times since 2004 to cast light on the state of innovation in business. A copy of the firm's latest report can be downloaded here. To arrange an interview with one of the authors, please contact Eric Gregoire at +1 617 850 3783 or [email protected] About Boston Consulting GroupBoston Consulting Group (BCG) is a global management consulting firm and the world's leading advisor on business strategy. We partner with clients from the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors in all regions to identify their highest-value opportunities, address their most critical challenges, and transform their enterprises. Our customized approach combines deep insight into the dynamics of companies and markets with close collaboration at all levels of the client organization. This ensures that our clients achieve sustainable competitive advantage, build more capable organizations, and secure lasting results. Founded in 1963, BCG is a private company with offices in more than 90 cities in 50 countries. For more information, please visit bcg.com. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/google-tops-bcgs-list-of-50-most-innovative-companies-for-first-time-300815995.html SOURCE Boston Consulting Group (BCG) PR Newswire SEATTLE, March 20, 2019 SEATTLE, March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary of health at the US Department of Health & Human Services, and Bloodworks Northwest president & CEO Dr. James P. AuBuchon will address lawmakers and the largest network of nonprofit community blood centers in the country about the chronic shortages America's blood centers are facing at America's Blood Centers Annual Meeting, March 2326 in Washington, DC. Shortages due to the current donor base aging out are making the maintenance of an adequate blood supply impossible, creating a national public health issue that is arguably on par with the opioid crisis. On March 25, Dr. Giroir will speak to these issues and also the efforts that are being made to reach younger donors, such as Bloodworks Northwest's mobile app, which now has over 11,000 downloads, mostly millennials and first-time donors. Later that day, Dr. AuBuchon will receive the Bill Coenen President's Award for lifetime achievement from America's Blood Centers. The following day on Capitol Hill, Dr. AuBuchon will be part of team from Bloodworks Northwest bringing Washington State congressional leaders up to speed on challenges that need to be addressed in the US blood supply. Dr. AuBuchon has served as a member of the Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability of the US Department of Health and Human Services and has chaired the Biomedical Excellence for Safer Transfusion Collaborative, an international research group dedicated to improving transfusion. He is a past president of the AABB (formerly known as the American Association of Blood Banks). Later this year, after ten years heading Bloodworks Northwest, Dr. AuBuchon is retiring. Dr. AuBuchon and Mark Gilman from Degree37, the Western Washington-based company that developed the Bloodworks app, will be in Washington, DC and available for interviews March 21-26. About Bloodworks NorthwestBloodworks (formerly Puget Sound Blood Center) is backed by 75 years of Northwest history and 250,000 donors. It is local, nonprofit, independent, volunteer-supported and community-based. A recognized leader in transfusion medicine, Bloodworks serves patients in more than 90 hospitals in Washington, Oregon and Alaska partnering closely with local hospitals to deliver the highest level of patient care. Comprehensive services include blood components, complex cross-matching, specialized lab services for organ transplants, care for patients with blood disorders, and collection of cord blood stem cells for cancer treatment. Bloodworks Research Institute performs leading-edge research in blood biology, transfusion medicine, blood storage and treatment of blood disorders. Patients with traumatic injuries, undergoing surgeries or organ transplantation, or receiving treatment for cancer and blood disorders all depend on our services, expertise, laboratories and research. For more information, visit bloodworksnw.org Contact information: John Yeager Senior Media Content Strategist 425-765-9845 [email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/is-the-nations-blood-supply-as-important-as-the-opioid-crisis-top-federal-health-officials-and-blood-banking-leaders-say-yes-300816101.html SOURCE Bloodworks Northwest Reciba en su email: noticias de ultima hora, analisis tecnicos o el cierre de mercado Email no valido Nombre requerido Recibira las informaciones mas relevantes del dia en tiempo real Que informacion desea recibir? Noticias de Ultima hora Boletin Cierre de Mercado Boletin analisis tecnico Boletin Fundsnews Debe seleccionar un tipo de boletin Acepto la Politica de privacidad Debe aceptar la politica de privacidad Responsable EMPRESAS DEL GRUPO WEB FINANCIAL GROUP Finalidad La remision de informacion, novedades y promociones Establecimiento o mantenimiento de Relaciones Comerciales. Legitimacion Consentimiento del interesado. Interes legitimo en el desarrollo de la relacion comercial Destinatario Empresas del Grupo WEB FINANCIAL GROUP Derechos Acceso, rectificacion, supresion, limitacion, oposicion y portabilidad Informacion adicional Politica de Privacidad de nuestra pagina Web + INFORMACION More than 70 people are reported to have died after a ferry sank in the Tigris river in Iraq's city of Mosul, BBC reports. Most of the passengers on board could not swim, the head of Mosul's civil defence agency said. Reports suggest more than 100 people were on board. The ferry was said to be heading towards a tourist island as part of Kurdish New Year celebrations. Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi has ordered an investigation "to determine responsibilities". In a statement Mr Mahdi said he was following the story "with pain and sadness", and ordered "all state efforts" to find survivors and treat victims. Dozens of people have been rescued so far, according to security sources. Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq, called it a "terrible tragedy". "Our hearts go out to the families and relatives of the victims," she wrote. Turkish police detained an ISIS member (the terrorist group banned in Russia) plotting a terrorist attack in Turkey in a counterterrorism operation in Istanbul, security sources said. The terrorist was caught by the Istanbul Security Directorate's Counterterrorism Branch in a raid on a house located in Saryer's Maslak district of Istanbul on March 17. Documents belonging to the terror group were also seized by the police while the terrorist, identified as Turkish national, was issued an arrest warrant by a local court, Daily Sabah reported. Ukraine has imposed sanctions on Speaker of Russia's State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, the Russian parliament's lower house reported on Facebook. "The Ukrainian authorities have imposed sanctions on Chairman of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin," the report reads. According to the statement, the decision to slap sanctions on Volodin stems from his statements and the State Dumas decision to set up a working group to analyze Ukraines damage to Crimea and Sevastopol for 23 years." Yesterday, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko put into effect the decision by Ukraines National Security and Defense Council on sanctions against 294 legal entities and 848 individuals involved in the construction of the Crimean Bridge and the elections in the Donbass republics. Kiev also blacklisted those who, according to the Ukrainian authorities, are allegedly involved in the distribution of printed materials with "anti-Ukrainian content.". Turkmenistan's president Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov has ordered the release of 2028 prisoners as part of a mass amnesty to mark Novruz holiday. The General Prosecutors Office was instructed to implement the measures necessary so that all those pardoned were released from prison and returned to their families. The local administration will have to provide employment for those pardoned. Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to Iraqi counterpart Barham Ahmed Salih over the death of dozens of people in a ferry accident in the Tigris River, Urdu Point reports. A tourist ferry with dozens of people aboard capsized in the Tigris River in Mosul earlier on Thursday. According to preliminary data, the accident claimed over 70 lives and might have been caused by the excessive number of passengers. The second possible cause for the accident is the increased water level in the Tigris River provoked by the opening of floodgates in the Mosul Dam. "Dear Mr. President, please accept my deep condolences over the tragic consequences of the ferry crash in the Tigris River - the deaths of dozens of passengers, including many children and women," the telegram on the Kremlin website reads. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has discussed with heads of United Nations agencies in Geneva how to achieve sustainable development goals, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry's website. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and Director-General of the UN Office at Geneva Michael Meller attended the working lunch with the Russian foreign minister. The Russian Foreign Ministry noted that they held a keen and meaningful conversation on a wide range of issues concerning Russias collaboration with the above mentioned United Nations bodies and multilateral cooperation within those international organizations with the aim to solve practical issues in compliance with their mandates in the context of implementing the sustainable development agenda until the year 2030. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) came into force on January 1, 2016. The 17 SDGs were set before the counties to wipe out poverty and hunger, improve health and ensure quality education. FREDERICTON - As the opioid crisis continues across Canada, New Brunswick's chief medical officer is warning the public about furanyl-fentanyl following a recent death. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. An OPP officer displays bags containing fentanyl as Ontario Provincial Police host a news conference in Vaughan, Ont., on February 23, 2017. New Brunswick's chief medical officer is warning the public about the presence of furanyl fentanyl in the province. A news release says a toxicology report revealed furanyl fentanyl was found in the system of a person who died recently in northern New Brunswick. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young FREDERICTON - As the opioid crisis continues across Canada, New Brunswick's chief medical officer is warning the public about furanyl-fentanyl following a recent death. Dr. Jennifer Russell says a toxicology report revealed furanyl-fentanyl was found in the system of a person who died recently in northern New Brunswick. "We are concerned that this most recent death may be an early indicator that furanyl-fentanyl is available in New Brunswick," said Russell. "Furanyl-fentanyl is much more toxic than morphine. With only a quarter milligram dose resulting in fatalities and no way for the user to detect its presence, the presence of this drug in the province is very dangerous, she said. Russell would not say exactly where or when the death occurred, or provide any information on the individual. "One death is too many. We just want people to be aware. We want to reduce the stigma around our conversations around this issue. We want people to be more comfortable getting access to treatment and having conversations around opioid issues and substance abuse disorders," she said. Russell said furanyl-fentanyl was also linked to two deaths in 2017 in New Brunswick, among 36 apparent opioid deaths in the province. In September 2017, the RCMP seized pills containing furanyl-fentanyl during an investigation near Hartland in western New Brunswick. The government says there were six apparent opioid deaths in the province in the first quarter of 2018, five of which were accidental or with "pending intent." Health Canada reports there were more than 9,000 deaths across Canada between January 2016 and June 2018 related to opioids. It says that in just the first six months of last year, 72 per cent of the apparent opioid related deaths involved fentanyl or fentanyl analogs. While British Columbia has seen the worst of the crisis, numbers are increasing across the country. OTTAWA - The president of Davie Shipbuilding says he is confident the Quebec-based shipyard will be tapped to build two new ferries included in this week's federal budget. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. An overall view of the Davie shipyard is sshown on Friday, December 14, 2018 in Levis Que. The president of Davie Shipbuilding says he is confident the Quebec-based shipyard will be tapped to build two new ferries included in this week's federal budget. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot OTTAWA - The president of Davie Shipbuilding says he is confident the Quebec-based shipyard will be tapped to build two new ferries included in this week's federal budget. But James Davies says it is time the federal government stop rewarding other shipyards for failing to deliver new vessels to the navy and coast guard, and officially admit his company into the multibillion-dollar national shipbuilding plan. The comment came late Wednesday as top officials from Davie and its two bitter rivals, Vancouver-based Seaspan Shipyards and Halifax-based Irving Shipbuilding, appeared one after the other before the Senate finance committee. Seaspan and Irving were selected through the shipbuilding strategy in 2011 as the two shipyards responsible for building what at the time was estimated to be $35 billion worth of new vessels for the navy and coast guard. Davie also competed but was passed over and has since been forced to fight for scraps outside the plan. That includes the provision of an interim resupply vessel for the navy and three second-hand icebreakers for the coast guard. Davies also told the committee he did not think any other shipyard could provide the two new ferries included in the budget. They will replace two existing ferries, one of which operates between Quebec and Prince Edward Island and the other between Nova Scotia and P.E.I. The budget does not provide any further details, including cost or when they will be built. Despite his sunny view of his company's capability, Davies was clearly focused on getting his shipyard admitted into the national shipbuilding plan. He noted that, seven years after it was launched, both Seaspan and Irving are continuing to get work despite not having delivered a ship, and the plan's overall costs have doubled. "A deal with no consequence of failure is toothless," Davies said. "Consequence means that in the light of such failure, the government needs the ability to choose an alternative supplier for future contracts." That includes potentially breaking up the work that, under the current arrangement, is almost entirely the purview of the other two yards, he said, and contracts not yet awarded. Davies specifically mentioned 10 large coast guard vessels that were promised to Seaspan in 2013 at an estimated cost of $3.3 billion, but construction of which won't realistically start until sometime in the mid- to late-2020s. During his own appearance, Irving Shipbuilding president Kevin McCoy defended his shipyard's work to date, telling the committee that the first of 21 vessels Irving has been tasked to build, an Arctic patrol ship for the navy, will be delivered this summer. Progress is also being made on five others, McCoy said, as well as the navy's new, $60-billion warship fleet, which will be built in the coming decade. The original cost of those warships was estimated at $26.2 billion, while the first Arctic ship was initially expected in 2015, but McCoy nonetheless said there has been a lot of false information and rhetoric about the state of the plan and of Irving. Seaspan chief executive officer Mark Lamarre similarly said a short time later that work is advancing on the West Coast as three fisheries science vessels for the coast guard are near completion after several delays, some of which were caused by faulty welding. Steel has also started to be cut on the first of two long-overdue resupply vessels for the navy, he said. Lamarre admitted Seaspan has faced challenges, but he said difficulties were inevitable given that it had been a generation since the government and shipbuilding industry launched such a massive project. Both sides have learned some hard lessons over the years that are now being applied, he added. While they didn't mention Davie, the Seaspan and Irving officials also both pushed back against any suggestions of opening up or otherwise changing the national shipbuilding strategy, saying a fair competition was held in 2011. James Irving, co-chief executive officer of J.D. Irving Ltd., which owns the Halifax yard, said his company invested $450 million of its own money with the "good faith" understanding the strategy would not be changed. Follow @leeberthiaume on Twitter. A national not-for-profit land trust is launching a campaign to expand a conservation area on Cockburn Island, west of Manitoulin Island in Ontario. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A national not-for-profit land trust is launching a campaign to expand a conservation area on Cockburn Island, west of Manitoulin Island in Ontario. The Nature Conservancy of Canada says it's already protected more than 60 per cent of the island about 25,000 acres along with nearly 50 kilometres of undeveloped shoreline. The organization says it now wants to add another 1,400 acres to the conservation lands. The conservancy says it needs to raise $100,000 by May to complete the project, which aims to protect an important portion of the island's interior forests. It says Cockburn Island is one of the few undeveloped islands in Lake Huron and is accessible primarily by boat. The island provides important stopover and breeding habitat for migrating songbirds and waterfowl, and supports a wide range of mammals, while its waterways host both resident and migratory fish species. "In 20 years, a project of this scale will be unimaginable," the organization's regional vice-president for Ontario, Mike Hendren, said in a statement. "NCC has an extraordinary opportunity to conserve this remarkable piece of Canada's natural history, before it's too late." FORT ELLIS, N.S. - Alton Gas says protesters were expected to remove their belongings from its Nova Scotia property Thursday evening as a temporary injunction imposed Monday is finalized over the next few days. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. An unidentified man sits outside a Mi'kmaq camp at the entrance to an Alton Gas work site along the Shubenacadie River, in Fort Ellis, N.S. on Monday, March 18, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan FORT ELLIS, N.S. - Alton Gas says protesters were expected to remove their belongings from its Nova Scotia property Thursday evening as a temporary injunction imposed Monday is finalized over the next few days. The company is planning to store natural gas in huge underground caverns north of Halifax a project that has prompted protesters to occupy a two-storey hut at one of its facilities near the Shubenacadie River. Lori MacLean, a spokeswoman for the firm, said it was expected the remaining protesters would move their belongings away from the site by 5 p.m. She said this is an "informal agreement" by the lawyers for two protesters Dale Poulette and his partner Rachael Greenland-Smith and the company on the meaning of a temporary injunction against the occupation of the site. However, MacLean said the company "isn't planning on any immediate return to the river" before the injunction's final wording is finished. Earlier this week, a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge ruled that Poulette, Greenland-Smith and others must stop occupying the makeshift structure that blocks the main access road to the company's pumphouse and control centre. However, Justice Gerald Moir also said that the protesters should be given an alternate site on the company property where they can still be seen by the public. He left the details of that site to be discussed and agreed upon by Alton's lawyer and James Gunvaldsen Klaassen, the lawyer representing Poulette and Greenland-Smith. Gunvaldsen Klaassen confirmed in an interview that the parties have submitted a document to the judge in which most details are now confirmed, but he must resolve a "small point of difference." He said his clients are no longer at the site and intend to abide by the terms of the judge's order and the informal agreement as the details continue to be worked out. He said it's expected the wording on where protesters can move to on the work site will be "probably be finished early next week," after the court has finished its work. Dorene Bernard, one of the protesters at the site on Thursday evening, said in a telephone interview that people were removing some of their property during the evening. She said a ceremony was planned for 10 a.m. on Friday. Alton Gas is a subsidiary of Calgary-based AltaGas. It had initially planned to have construction completed between 2013 and 2018. However, the company recently asked the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board to extend its cavern construction permit to Sept. 1, 2023 PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. - A judge has dismissed charges against one of the founders of the Indigenous Idle No More protest movement who was accused of living illegally on Saskatchewan park land. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. - A judge has dismissed charges against one of the founders of the Indigenous Idle No More protest movement who was accused of living illegally on Saskatchewan park land. Sylvia McAdam and her brother Kurtis were to stand trial for failing to comply with a provincial government order to vacate land in the Zig Zag Bay area near the community of Big River. The Crown has 30 days to appeal the decision. Court heard that Sylvia McAdam was living on the land for two years before she was ordered to leave early in 2017. She argued her family had been at Zig Zag Bay for generations and she had a Treaty right to live on the land. McAdam says the court ruling is a relief. "My family has always lived there," McAdam said outside court in Prince Albert Wednesday. "For the province to come and create a park there without our consent, in violation of Treaty 6, is problematic." Her lawyer, Larry Kowalchuk, says the family hopes to work out an agreement with the government for use of the land. McAdam says she hopes to be able to live back on the property some day. "That's where I grew up," she said. Idle No More says it was formed in 2012 as a protest against the introduction of a bill by the former Conservative government to change legislation, including the Indian Act, Navigable Waters Protection Act and Environmental Assessment Act. The group argued that the changes diminished the rights and authority of Indigenous communities while making it easier for governments and businesses to push through projects without strict environmental assessment. (CKBI, The Canadian Press) OTTAWA - An independent Canadian senator has proposed a bill that would allow the government to take the frozen assets of dictators and their cronies to help refugees forced to flee their tyranny. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Recently-appointed Senator Rosemary Moodie (centre) poses for a photograph with Senator Ratna Omidvar (left)and Senator Peter Harder (left)outside the Senate Chamber in Ottawa on Tuesday February 19, 2019. Omidvar has proposed a private member's bill that would allow the government to repurpose the frozen assets of dictators and their cronies to help refugees forced to flee their tyranny. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand OTTAWA - An independent Canadian senator has proposed a bill that would allow the government to take the frozen assets of dictators and their cronies to help refugees forced to flee their tyranny. Sen. Ratna Omidvar tabled the Frozen Assets Repurposing Act on Thursday with the support of Allan Rock, the former Liberal attorney general and justice minister who also served as a United Nations ambassador. The bill builds on the recommendation and research of the World Refugee Council, an initiative of the Ontario-based Centre for International Governance Innovation, to put to constructive use the estimated $20 billion to $40 billion seized annually from corrupt officials around the world. The council, formed in May 2017, is chaired by former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, and its two dozen members include former world leaders, ministers, peace activists, as well as leading business, civil society and human-rights figures. The new bill would build on Canada's current Magnitsky Act sanctions that target human-rights abusers, and it comes just after Canadian sanctions against politicians and business people in Russia and Venezuela. Omidvar said her bill goes one step further than the act because it calls for the confiscation of seized assets so they can be used to help victims of rights abuses, including those forced to flee their homes. "This will increase accountability in two ways A, by eliminating the impunity by which corrupt kleptocrats hide their money in safe havens and B, by redirecting their purloined wealth back to those harmed by their misrule," Omidvar told a press conference on Parliament Hill. The bill would give Canadian courts the authority to confiscate the frozen assets and repurpose them for the benefit of victims. The bill proposes doing this through an application by the attorney general of Canada, the cabinet post Rock held in the former Liberal government of Jean Chretien. "The bill she is tabling, if passed, would make Canada a global leader in holding bad leaders accountable for their crimes against the forcibly displaced," said Fen Hampson, the executive director of the refugee council. In the case of the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, Hampson said the billions in frozen assets seized from the country's dictator Nicolas Maduro could be used to pay for the refugee crisis that has forced more than three million people to flee their homes because of the country's economic and political meltdown. Canada has imposed sanctions on 70 people associated with Maduro, while the United States has targeted Venezuela's state-owned oil company with sanctions. Last week, Canada imposed additional sanctions on 129 people, companies and organizations over Russia's treatment of Ukraine. Canada said the measures were a response to the ongoing Russian occupation of Crimea and the arrests of 24 Ukrainian sailors in the Black Sea last November. Sakrebulo and parliamentary by-elections will be held in Georgia on May 19, the corresponding desision was made at Georgia's Central Election Commission meeting. The by-elections will be held because the former majoritarian representative, Salome Zurabishvili, was elected as Georgia's fifth President, Agenda.ge reported. March 23 is the deadline for political parties or initiative groups to apply to the CEC to register their candidates. However, initiative groups need to provide the signature of at least 439 voters. The organisations and media outlets that want to observe and cover the election process can also apply to the CEC for accreditation. VANCOUVER - A transgender woman whose case against Canada's oldest rape crisis centre was dismissed by the courts says she hopes the City of Vancouver's decision to refuse the shelter funding will help change policies. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Kimberly Nixon poses in this undated handout photo. Kimberly Nixon is a transgender woman who was rejected by a rape crisis centre in the 1990s when she tried to volunteer as a peer counsellor. She's now hoping the City of Vancouver's decision to cut funding to the group will lead to policy changes. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, Kimberly Nixon *MANDATORY CREDIT* VANCOUVER - A transgender woman whose case against Canada's oldest rape crisis centre was dismissed by the courts says she hopes the City of Vancouver's decision to refuse the shelter funding will help change policies. Kimberly Nixon, 61, filed a human rights complaint against Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter in 1995 after she was refused training to work as a volunteer peer counsellor on the basis she did not share the life experience of someone born female. "The organization is not bad," said Nixon. "It just means that attitudes have to change." Nixon's complaint was upheld by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal with a $7,500 reward from Rape Relief, but the B.C. Supreme Court found discrimination had not occurred. The B.C. Court of Appeal dismissed Nixon's appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed her request to appeal that decision in 2007. The City of Vancouver announced last week that, starting next year, it will no longer provide Rape Relief with a nearly $34,000 annual grant, saying the charitable group does not meet its trans equality and inclusion criteria, adopted in 2016. "While (Vancouver Rape Relief Society) services have been and are very important, staff identified concerns about the organization's position on trans women in relation to the full intent of grant criteria," the city said in a statement. Hilla Kerner, spokeswoman for Rape Relief, said women who are born female and socialized to submit to male domination want comfort and support from women who share the same life experience and understand rape, forced pregnancy and violence in that context. "More often than not, being born female still means we are born as an oppressed class. We haven't achieved liberation for women yet," she said. Rape Relief does not turn transgender women away and often connects them to other services, Kerner said. She said the group is no different from other organizations that serve people with specific needs, including those who are Indigenous, disabled or migrants. Morgane Oger, who chairs the Trans Alliance Society, said she has been advocating since 2013 for Rape Relief's municipal funding to be stopped. "Vancouver Rape Relief and other organizations that are publicly funded are responsible for keeping up the highest standard of inclusion," Oger said, adding the group helps only a subset of women. Adrienne Smith, a human rights lawyer in Vancouver, said all of Smith's clients are transgender and some of them have said they have been turned away from Rape Relief after a sexual assault. "Rape Relief takes the position that transgender women are men in dresses and that there's something inauthentic about them," Smith said. "Their followers repeat this messaging and it's fundamentally hurtful to my clients and to trans and non-binary people." Smith said Rape Relief has stuck to the same message even as society has changed. Trans women are sexually assaulted at four times the rate of non-trans women, often by other women, Smith said. "The Nixon case was wrongly decided and I think it would be decided very differently if it were argued today because decision makers have a much more clear understanding that transgender women are women," Smith said. British Columbia provides about $600,000 in annual funding to Rape Relief, which has a budget of about $1.1 million and opened its doors in 1973. Nixon said provincial funding should also be reconsidered. "If the province continues to fund them they are basically enabling their treatment of trans women, or trans people in general," said Nixon, who recently spoke at an International Women's Day event at Ryerson University in Toronto. "I hope the society's reached a point where they can recognize what is right and what is wrong. So this is just another opportunity for them to make the necessary change." Follow @CamilleBains1 on Twitter. Update: The search for a woman missing from her home on Inis Oirr since early yesterday has now been stood down. A body was located and recovered from the sea this afternoon about a mile off the Galway coast. The body was spotted by the helicopter crew, recovered by Doolin Coast Guard and transported ashore at Rossaveal by the RNLI. The 70-year-old woman was reported missing early yesterday and a search was mounted soon afterwards. Earlier: Air, land and sea search for woman missing from her Inis Oirr home Naval divers have joined the search for a woman missing from her home on one of the Aran Islands since early yesterday. The woman, understood to be from Inis Oirr and aged 70, was reported missing early yesterday and a search was mounted soon afterwards. The Aran Islands RNLI lifeboat, based at Kilronan on Inis Mor, launched at around 9am yesterday and searched for most of the day often in poor visibility. The Doolin unit of the Irish Coast Guard joined the search around lunchtime yesterday. Coast Guard volunteers based on Inis Oirr have also been carrying out shoreline searches around the island. The RNLI lifeboat launched again this morning and has been conducting searches in the vicinity of the Islands. Doolin Coast Guard have also re-joined the search while members of the Naval Diving Section have also arrived in Co Clare to assist in the operation. They launched their search boat from Doolin. The Shannon-based search and rescue helicopter, Rescue 115, has also been taking part the search this afternoon. The operation is being coordinated by watch officers at the Irish Coast Guards marine rescue sub-centre on Valentia Island in Kerry. A grandmother has made an online appeal for information to help Gardai find four men who were travelling in a car that allegedly drove her and her grandson off a main road after they smashed into the back of the womans jeep. The alleged hit and run incident happened on the N21, Limerick to Newcastle West road, around 5.30pm last Thursday, March 14. The woman, who was driving a black coloured Toyota Rav 4 jeep, said she was about to turn off the road when a black Ford Mondeo smashed into her from behind. Gardai said four males travelling in a Ford Mondeo, which was fitted with UK registration plates, fled the scene. Gardai said they are still searching for the men so they can speak to them in connection with the serious collision. Appealing for information in a Facebook post, the woman stated: Hi folks this is my story. I had just collected my 20-month-old infant grandson, I was driving home on Thursday evening and about to turn, when a black Ford Mondeo came speeding behind me. I saw them in my rear view mirror and honestly thought they would go inside me and pass me out. Instead, they rammed my jeep and drove me across the main N21 road. It was the luck of God that there wasn't a vehicle coming against me or I wouldn't be telling my story. I am begging people to come forward to the Guards with anything that can get these scumbags caught. It was an English reg car. I saw them run away but was too distraught to be able to identify them. Thank God my little (grandson) will be ok but honestly I will never be able to sleep until they are caught. The womans post, which appears beneath a photograph of her mangled jeep, has been shared over 1,000 times. Please help. This is what's left of my car, the woman added. Another woman who read the appeal posted stated she was involved in a similar incident last year: This has happened to me last August crashed into me and my two boys age (sic) two and four at the time drove me off the road. Back window in on top of my kids air bags went off everywhere I will never forget it my car was wrote off. Guards said they got a finger print off the car and that it is gone off to be checked ..since then and still not back, there was (sic) two fellas and just ran off. Another person posted: How awful for you and little (sic) (grandson). Sending you lots of love and get well wishes. Thank God you both walked away...Some impact to destroy a jeep like that...Get well soon. Thank god you are both alive, another stated. Appealing for information, Sergeant Ber Leetch of Henry Street garda station said: Last Thursday the 14th of March at approximately 5.30 in the evening a black jeep was stopped and waiting to turn right off the N21. Suddenly it was rear-ended by a black car. This car had four people in it all of whom jumped from the car and ran off, none of them have been located by Gardai to date. Last Thursday was the day before the St Patricks bank holiday weekend, and at that time the roads were very busy. Im sure there were witnesses to this accident so please, contact investigating Gardai in Rathkeale on 069-63222. A garda source said no arrests had yet been made. The grandmother was taken to hospital for treatment for minor injuries and the infant male was not injured, they added. The European Parliament's president has warned that the Brexit divorce day deadline cannot be pushed past April 18 because doing so would cause havoc to plans for the imminent MEP elections, writes Fiachra O Cionnaith in Brussels. Antonio Tajani gave the latest cliff-edge deadline suggestion during a briefing with reporters this afternoon - causing yet more confusion over the already proposed May 23 and June 30 EU and UK delay proposals. Speaking on the outskirts of the EU summit in Brussels with just eight days to go until the still official Friday March 29 Brexit divorce date, Mr Tajani said from a European parliament perspective any extension cannot go further than April 18. The Italian politician said this is because April 18 is "the last day possible" for member states - including Britain - to clarify their plans for the MEP elections and that any delay past this date would cause havoc to the ballot. I requested that any extension be as brief as possible, and no later than the 18 of April, which will be the last day possible for the UK to organise the European parliament elections. "Secondly, for the European Parliament an extension would only make sense if next week there would be an agreement in the House of Commons on the withdrawal agreement, otherwise it would make no sense for a withdrawal extension," Mr Tajani told the briefing. The European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Council have been known to disagree on issues due to their differing priorities. However, Mr Tajani's latest Brexit delay date proposal has muddied the already murky Brexit waters even further. This is because, with just eight days to go before the still official and legally binding Friday March 29 Brexit divorce date, there are several potential cliff-edges for when a decision must be made. They include: March 29 - the still official Brexit date unless an agreement for a deal or an extension can be found April 18 - Mr Tajani's proposal in order to prevent any damage being caused to the MEP elections May 23 - the European Commission's proposed extension date, to be discussed by the EU summit on Thursday evening, which is based on the strict condition the House of Commons finally backs the Brexit deal at the third attempt next week and June 30 - the extension date proposed by British prime minister Theresa May Meanwhile, French president Emmanuel Macron has warned British prime minister Theresa May she will be facing a "no deal" crash out Brexit if the House of Commons rejects her deal next week. In a message on Twitter during the first day of the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, Mr Macron doubled down on his insistence a Brexit deadline extension should not be assumed. Sur le Brexit, il nous faut etre clairs, vis-a-vis de nous-memes, de nos amis britanniques et de nos peuples. Laccord de retrait ne peut pas etre renegocie. En cas de vote negatif britannique, nous irions vers un no-deal. Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) March 21, 2019 Writing in French, he said: "On Brexit, we need to be clear about ourselves, our British friends and our people. The withdrawal agreement cannot be renegotiated. In case of negative British vote, we would go to a no-deal." Mr Macron's comments came after he had earlier told reporters as he arrived for the EU summit that, 1,001 days on from the June 2016 Brexit referendum vote, now is the time a decision must be made. "We have to be clear. we can discuss and agree a technical extension in case of a yes vote. In case of no, it will guide to a no deal. For sure. This is it. We are ready," he said. Supporters of directly-elected mayors for Cork, Limerick and Waterford have called on the government to flesh out their vision for the office. The Cork Mayoral Campaign welcomed Cabinet approval of the proposed powers for the office but said it was disappointed that the only specifics seemed to be in relation to the near 130,000 annual salary. We need more details about what we will be voting for on May 24, said Oliver Moran, spokesman for the cross-party campaign. Local election candidates are knocking on doors now and we are being asked questions about this proposal and we cant answer the questions. People need answers now," he said. Dr Aodh Quinlivan, the director of the Centre for Local and Regional Governance at University College Cork, also welcomed the initial detail: Its coming a little bit late in the day but its better late than never, he said. We need more details though. The salary got the headlines but I dont see that as a big a deal when you consider the job will combine the political head of a local authority with major executive functions - it is a serious job, with a large staff and a large budget. He said it was important the Minister of State for Local Government, John Paul Phelan, follow through on his pledge to hold town hall-style meetings before the plebiscite and repeated concerns the creation of a directly elected mayor as a standalone reform will not achieve much without wider local government reform. Plebiscites on the issue will take place in the three cities on May 24, the same day as the local and European elections. In Dublin, the proposal is being put to a citizens assembly. If approved, its hoped the first mayors could be elected in 2022. The new mayors would replace council chief executives in preparing policies in housing, planning and roads, and replace the current council head as the person responsible for ensuring all decisions of the elected council are lawful. Chief executives, however, will retain powers to allocate social housing, grant licences or permits, and to deal with enforcement matters such as planning. Mayors will serve a five-year term and be restricted to a maximum of two terms, but the initial term will be for two-and-a-half years to allow for transfers of power. The council would have oversight of the mayors performance and would also have the power, in certain circumstances, to remove the mayor from the role. Tanaiste Simon Coveney said the Cork mayor would be the most powerful politician outside Cabinet. The CEO of Dublin Port has defended the companys proposal to limit cruise liner traffic because of capacity issues. Eamonn OReilly told RTE radios Morning Ireland that the plan is to reduce the number of cruise ships allowed into Dublin from 160 this year to 80 in 2021 because of the need for increased capacity for container traffic when the UK leaves the EU. It is necessary to ration available capacity, he explained given the competition for berth spaces. Mr OReilly said Dublin Port company had a long discussion with the Minister for Transport Shane Ross this week during which they discussed Brexit, borrowing and cruise berths. The Minister expressed his concern and we explained our rationale. He said there was a choice to either satisfy the demands of the cruise industry or the capacity to import. Cruise ships use Alexandria Basin into which a new ro/ro (roll on/roll off) operator will be moving, he added, this will handle twice the volume of freight business that currently passes through Rosslare Harbour. Among the items being imported through this new service will be animal feed, cars and freight, all of which will be impacted by Brexit, he said. When asked if the Port is ready in case of a no deal Brexit, Mr OReilly said they are as ready as we can be. Eight hectares of land in the Port has been given over to it and new border posts will be ready for March 29. The victims of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings were "accidental deaths" in an "IRA operation that went badly wrong", its former intelligence chief told an inquest. Kieran Conway from Dublin said the attacks were "not sanctioned" by the IRA and public outrage at the attacks "nearly destroyed" the group. Following what he called the "disaster in Birmingham" on the night of November 21 by a provisional IRA active service unit, "the dip in public support was extraordinary". Mr Conway, who robbed banks for the IRA in the 1970s, added: "The IRA was only saved by the subsequent (ceasefire) talks with the British Government." The blasts at the Mulberry Bush in the base of the city's iconic Rotunda and the basement Tavern in the Town in nearby New Street killed 21 people and injured 220 more. Bereaved families have waited 44 years for fresh inquests, which are now in their fourth week. Asked who bore responsibility for the attacks, Mr Conway said: "I accept everybody collectively involved in the IRA at that time bears a full and awesome responsibility for what happened at Birmingham and for the deaths of all those people." Mr Conway, speaking over a video link from a secure location, was also asked if he knew the identities of the bombers. He said he knew only from "third-hand" reports in newspapers, books and TV documentaries that were in the public domain. In any case he added he would not name any "IRA men" who were still alive. Barrister Kevin Morgan, asking questions on behalf of the bereaved victims' families, asked: "Would you agree that the killings in Birmingham on November 21 1974 constituted murder?" Mr Conway, who was convicted of handling explosives in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in the 1970s, replied: "No I don't agree. I believe it was an IRA operation that went wrong. "Had the IRA deliberately targeted that pub with the intention of killing civilians then that would have been murder, yes. "But in the circumstances, as I have been told, I don't accept that it was murder. I say that it was an IRA operation that went badly wrong. Asked how he would have described the deaths, he added: "I understand perfectly that this is unacceptable to the British people but I would categorise them as accidental." During a statement about the bombings he gave to An Garda Siochana on behalf of West Midlands Police in January 2016, Mr Conway referred to the killings as "being murders", jurors were told. Mr Conway, who is a criminal defence solicitor in Ireland, told the inquest he used "the wrong word" in that interview. After the attacks, an internal IRA court of inquiry, convened in Ireland, cleared those involved in the bombings, Mr Conway added. He said IRA chiefs agreed with the "initial explanation" the "atrocity" was down to the delay in calling in the coded warning because the chosen phone box was out of order. "No court martial ever took place," he added, and no IRA members were ever internally disciplined over the attacks. Coroner Peter Thornton QC asked Mr Conway if the the faulty phone box story could have been a "well-orchestrated and convenient lie" for the bungling bomb team to tell their superiors and escape punishment. Mr Conway agreed it could have been but denied the leadership would have "looked for an excuse" as well. He said the IRA Army Council chairman David O'Connell was "lying" when, just weeks after the bombings, he claimed the IRA was still investigating if its men were to blame. "Essentially he was lying, he knew perfectly well what had happened," said Mr Conway, who earlier described O'Connell as an "honourable man". Mr Conway said, at the time of the bombings, IRA operations in England were carried out by active service units "autonomous" of the organisation's command in Ireland, and were picking bombing targets themselves. He said nobody in the IRA's Army Council, which ran military operations, or the organisation's commanders in England had any idea the pubs were to be targeted. Speaking of his own feelings on the bombings, he added: "The bombings had been careless if not downright incompetent." Mr Conway told jurors O'Connell had personally told him the attack "was not sanctioned by them". He added the stated policy of the IRA - which he described as being "at war" with the British state at the time - was civilian targets were "strictly and loudly forbidden". He added: "Those targets ought never to have happened. I have said that many times. The volunteers who carried it out, the person who commanded them, either didn't know that or ignored it. They were not legitimate targets. "It was a civilian pub, there was no question of it being a pub with which soldiers commonly drank - and it was not. It was not a permissible target." The inquests continue. PA Former mining company executive Donal Kinsella will have to repay 250,000 of a 500,000 payment he received so that a record 10m libel award to him against the company could be appealed, the Court of Appeal has ruled. Last month, that 10m award to the former Kenmare Resources deputy chairman was cut to 250,000 by the Court of Appeal. The case was back before the Appeal Court today to deal with costs and the question of the 500,000 payment imposed on Kenmare in order that it could bring the appeal more than eight years ago. Paul Gallagher SC, for Kenmare, argued Mr Kinsella should be required to pay the 250,000 in excess of the 250,000 the Court of Appeal awarded him. It would be "entirely unjust" if Mr Kinsella was allowed to keep another 250,000, he said. Eoin McCullough SC, for Mr Kinsella, said there should be no order in relation to the 500,000 payment which was made more than eight years ago. There would be no particular injustice in making no order in the circumstances of the time and of a previous similar case, he said. Ms Justice Mary Irvine, on behalf of the three-judge Court of Appeal said the court was satisfied there would be a grave injustice to Kenmare and she directed the repayment of the 250,000. Mr Kinsella had the benefit of the entire 500,000 for more than eight years, she said. The Court of Appeal said there would be a stay on the repayment order to allow Mr Kinsella consider whether he wants to seek an appeal against the repayment decision to the Supreme Court. The Appeal Court also awarded the costs of the appeal to Kenmare and its chairman, Charles Carvill, who was also sued, but limited it to one day's hearing costs. Mr Kinsella was entitled to his costs in relation to his successful cross-appeal over the High Court finding that the press release was published on an occasion of qualified privilege. The 10m award - made up of 9m for general damage and 1m for aggravated damages - was made in 2010 after a jury found Mr Kinsella was defamed in a company press release issued on July 10, 2007. The press release concerned an incident in Mozambique in May 2007, where a company board meeting was being held, when Mr Kinsella sleep-walked naked to the bedroom door of company secretary Deirdre Corcoran. The press release referred to an incident and said Mr Kinsella was being asked to resign from the companys audit committee. An investigation by an independent solicitor on behalf of the company had found there was no conscious attempt on Mr Kinsellas part to enter Ms Corcorans room and no improper motive in opening her door. Mr Kinsella was prone to sleep-walking. Mr Kinsella sued the company and its chairman, Mr Carvill. Update - March 22 8.40am: Stephen Furey has been found safe and well. The gardai have thanked the public for their assistance in finding Stephen. Earlier: Gardai are seeking the public's assistance in locating a 16-year-old boy who is missing in Galway. Stephen Furey was last seen in Galway city on March 14. He is described as being 5' 8" in height, of slight build with short black hair and brown eyes. He has braces and has his ear pierced. When last seen, he was wearing a matching black tracksuit with white stripes, black gloves and black Nike runners. Anyone who has seen Stephen or who can assist in tracing his whereabouts is asked to contact Galway Garda Station on 091 538000, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will arrive in Georgia on March 25, Georgian Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze said during the live broadcast on Facebook. "His visit is another confirmation that Georgia-NATO relations have never been at such a high level before," Novosti-Georgia cited the PM as saying. Bakhtadze did not specify the purpose of the visit, however, Stoltenberg is expected to monitor the progress of the NATO-Georgia Exercise at the Krtsanisi National Training Center near Tbilisi. A google search for "human body decomposition timeline" was carried out on a computer that was seized from murder accused Patrick Quirke's premises, the Central Criminal Court has heard. The internet search took place in December 2012, 18 months after Bobby Ryan went missing and four months before his body was discovered on land then leased by the accused man. Following the search the user clicked on a link to a website, forensics4ficiton.com which, when looked at by a forensic examiner, contained an article called: "The five stages of decomposition." Detective Garda Paul Fitzpatrick of the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau told prosecution counsel Michael Bowman SC that he examined computers, a thumb drive, an iPad, and a hard drive that were seized by gardai during a search of Mr Quirke's property in 2013. Using forensic software called Encase he searched the contents of one of the computers which had no make or model and was registered to a "user" but not to any particular name. On December 3, 2012 there was a search on that computer for "human body decomposition timeline" and later another search for "rate of human decomposition". Following the searches Google returned a number of pages and Gda Fitzpatrick said there was evidence the user clicked on pages on websites environmentalgraffiti.com, forensics4fiction.com and suite101.com. When Det Gda Fitzpatrick looked at those pages he found articles headed: "The five stages of decomposition," and "How the human body decomposes after death." Around the same time he said there was evidence of links to three Youtube videos but he couldn't say if they had been watched. When Gda Fitzpatrick looked at the videos one was titled "Body Farm and Beyond" and the text associated with it stated: "Takes you on a tour of the body farm, which shows and discusses human remains, skin slippage and DNA analysis." The second Youtube video also related to the Body Farm and when Det Gda Fitzpatrick looked at it it was described as "a study of decomposition on real corpses" and contained the note, "you will never forget the smell." The third video had been removed. Mr Quirke (50) of Breanshamore, Co Tipperary has pleaded not guilty to the murder of part-time DJ Bobby Ryan. Mr Ryan went missing on June 3, 2011 after leaving his girlfriend Mary Lowry's home at about 6.30am. His body was found in an underground run-off tank on the farm owned by Ms Lowry and leased by the accused at Fawnagown, Tipperary 22 months later in April 2013. The prosecution claims Mr Quirke murdered Mr Ryan so he could rekindle an affair with Ms Lowry (52). The trial continues in front of Justice Eileen Creedon and a jury of six men and six women. Five men have been found guilty in Britain for conspiring to import 1.4 tonnes of cocaine on a yacht that was under surveillance by the Irish Navy and Air Corps as it travelled across 200 miles of Irish waters last August. The agencies were tasked by the EU's Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre Narcotics (MAOC-N) on foot of intelligence gathered by the British National Crime Agency. A member of the Hutch family living in fear for his safety has been jailed for breaking into the Offices of the Revenue Commissioners and assaulting a man who tried to prevent him leaving. Alan Hutch (36) was confronted by a staff member who found him in his office as he returned from a tea break. The man was punched several times by Hutch during violent scuffles as he tried to prevent him (Hutch) leaving with a stolen mobile phone. Gardai were alerted and all property recovered. The prosecuting garda told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court the Hutch name had been involved in a feud in the Dublin area. It's an understatement, to put it mildly, that people are aware of the Hutch name, said Derek Cooney BL, defending. He said there had been an orchestrated targeting of people bearing the Hutch name. He said his client did not like to hear the phrase dead man walking but said it was something all members of the Hutch family had been faced with and it was something Hutch had to live with. He outlined that Hutch's father, taxi driver Eddie Hutch, had been killed on the doorstep of his family home. Hutch received the news of his father's murder through a phone call while in custody. Hutch, of Portland Place, Dublin has 73 previous convictions including assault, robbery, burglary, threats to kill, endangerment, obstruction, production of article and road traffic offences. Hutch pleaded guilty to burglary and assault causing harm to Karl Higgins at the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, Hammam buildings, Upper O'Connell Street on March 7, 2018. Judge Melanie Greally noted the burglary had developed into a violent struggle when Hutch was interrupted and his escape prevented. Mr Higgins suffered a number of blows during two scuffles. Two of Mr Higgins colleagues came to his assistance and subdued Hutch until gardai arrived. Judge Greally noted Hutch has been in custody since the date of his arrest and is very isolated in prison, where he has become paranoid in relation to others including prison staff. She said he is extremely fearful for his own safety and has substantial cause for that fear. She took into account his drug addiction and efforts to deal with it, as well as a psychological report which outlined he had been exposed to violence and criminality from a very young age. The judge noted his guilty pleas were valuable as witnesses may have been fearful if required to give evidence in a case against him. She noted the circumstances associated with the current feud and said it was an unimaginable situation for anyone to be living with on an ongoing basis. Judge Greally imposed a four-year sentence and suspended the final 18 months on strict conditions. She backdated the sentence to the date of the offence when he went into custody. During the sentence hearing, Mr Cooney said Hutch was on protection in custody in a single cell and had formed certain views that the prison authorities were contaminating his food and water. He handed a psychological report into court outlining his family circumstances. His upbringing was described as challenging, with Hutch witnessing violence inflicted on his mother, brothers and himself by his father. He said that despite this Hutch described missing his father and wishing he was around to steady the ship and get him back on the right path. Mr Cooney said his client began using cannabis at a young age, later progressing to heroin. He also became involved with criminality from a young age. Counsel said Hutch has been addressing his addiction while in custody and when he gets out of prison he wants to assist his mother who cares for a younger brother with special needs. He said that Hutch's release will in effect be a house arrest as he cannot go out and walk the streets of Dublin. A father-of-one has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering a fellow drug dealer, who had threatened his family over a 100 debt. He chased him across a busy street and stabbed him to death in broad daylight. The Central Criminal Court heard that Rihards Lavickis (26) admitted that he went out with a knife on November 1, 2016 to get Akadiusz Arik Czajkowski for threatening his family and breaking their windows. The Latvian native with an address at Annaly court in Longford pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty to the manslaughter of the Polish father-of-two outside Longford Shopping Centre at Rue Noyal Chatillon, Townspark in the town. The trial heard that both men had become friendly while neighbours in Annaly Court. However, the deceased had set a number of bins on fire, causing an electricity outage lasting several days in a number of apartments. The deceased had moved elsewhere in the town by the time Lavickis bought 300 worth of drugs off him on tic. However, the money wasnt paid on the day the deceased wanted. So, he went with an associate to the home Lavickis shared with his partner, her mother and sister and their three young children, and attacked him with a knuckle duster. Although Lavickis reported the attack to the gardai, he decided not to press charges, and the drug debt was reduced to 100 as a result. However, the trouble continued between the two men, with Lavickis holding the deceased responsible for his familys windows being broken on up to five different occasions. During one of these incidents, his sister-in-laws friend was sleeping in the room under attack. The night before the killing was Halloween and Lavickis was out and about with two friends. The jury saw CCTV footage of the three men standing behind a wall before a car pulled up and the deceased and two other men getting out. The footage then showed the first three men running away. One of Lavickiss friends, Michael Godla, told the court that the deceased had shouted at Lavickis: Where is the money? and that Lavickis had replied: I give you nothing because you beat me with a knuckle duster. Mr Godla testified that the deceased had warned that he would get out of the car and give Lavickis a beating. Then another guy got out of the back of the car so we run away all of us, he said, explaining that they were afraid. They were big guys, like both bodybuilders. There were three people inside. He said they were hiding for 15 minutes as the men in the car drove up and down looking for them. Mr Godla said that he was awoken by glass breaking around 3am the following morning and saw that Lavickiss window had been broken. He later told Lavickis what he had seen. Gardai testified that Lavickis called them to report the broken window that morning. File image They went to his home and he nominated the deceased as a suspect, telling the officers that he would get him. They had warned him not to, that they would deal with it. However, he had gone out with a knife looking for the deceased. He later saw him walking down the street, hid in a gap in a wall and gave chase as he passed by. The jury saw CCTV footage of him chasing him with a knife raised, and heard that hed stabbed him three times just seconds later. The stabbing wasnt caught on camera. A post-mortem exam found that the victim died of a single stab wound to the heart. The other two wounds were not fatal, with one to his finger classed as defensive. The defence had argued that he did not have the intent necessary for murder when he stabbed the deceased. His barrister also said that, if the jury found he had the intent, it could then find that he had been provoked by the deceased. Both defences could reduce murder to manslaughter. However, the prosecution argued that the natural and probable consequences of sticking a knife into someones chest was death or serious injury, either of which could lead to a conviction of murder. The jury spent just over three hours deliberating and found him guilty of murder by unanimous verdict. Mr Justice Michael White thanked the jury of eight men and four women and imposed the mandatory life sentence on Lavickis. Victim's mother: 'He had a big heart' Sergeant Aisling Flynn then read a victim impact statement prepared by the deceased mans mother, Halina Czajkowska, who said her son had a big heart. He was a lovely, caring, thoughtful boy, who loved me unconditionally, she said of her son as a child. She said he had never given her any trouble, was very talented, played musical instruments and loved the guitar. She said that they had both moved to Sweden years earlier, that he had learned the language in a few months and got a job in a factory there, helping her financially. He had a big heart, she said. She said he had heard how good Ireland was, and decided to move here, falling in love and having his two children in Northern Ireland. I do know that he had faults, she admitted. I dont know how he got involved with alcohol and drugs to such an extent He was my beautiful boy. She said that his murder had done irreversible psychological damage to her. I cant believe that I will never see him again, hug him again or hear him say I love you at the end of a phone call, she said. 'I don't know how I will cope' She said that she now suffered from depression and felt suicidal at times. Over the last phone calls, he did not seem himself... He was always looking for money, she said. He would never ask for money from me. It was usually Arik giving the money to help me. She said that she had been planning to bring him home to either Poland or Sweden. I will never forgive myself for not doing this, she said. She stated that while she received no support from the police in Poland, she received support from the people of Longford and the local gardai, whom she described as quick and professional. She also praised the victim support services at court, whom she described as angels, and her sons undertaker in Longford. He got my boys remains back to Poland, she said. My baby boy is gone forever, she concluded. I will never see him get married. His sister will never see him again. His children will never see him again I dont know how I will cope. Mr Justice White then imposed the mandatory life sentence on Lavickis, who waved at his own mother as he was led away. A young keyboard player from Waterford band Chimpanbee died from head injuries following an assault, his inquest has heard. Cork Coroner's Court heard that Damien OBrien (28) from Kilmacow, Co Kilkenny incurred serious head injuries after he was assaulted at the junction of John Street and the Manor in Waterford on July 7, 2018. He died at Cork University Hospital (CUH) on July 13 having been transferred on site from University Hospital Waterford. Coroner Philip Comyn was told that Assistant State Pathologist, Dr Linda Mulligan conducted a post-mortem examination on the late musician at CUH. The cause of death was recorded as brain stem haemorrhage due to cerebral oedema and traumatic brain injury due to blunt force trauma to the head. Insp Conor Dillon told the inquest that a man was currently before the courts in relation to the death. Inspector Dillon applied for an adjournment to allow the criminal proceedings to conclude. The inquest was adjourned for mention until September 26. Last month, Craig McGrath (25) from Rathfaddan Park in Waterford city pleaded guilty at Waterford Circuit Criminal Court to the manslaughter of Mr OBrien in Waterford on July 7, 2018. He will be sentenced on May 24. Following the death, Mr OBriens bandmates posted a tribute on Facebook where they spoke of their love for their brother, friend and prodigal son behind the keys. Thank you for the music, brother. Rest in peace now. " The chair of the Public Accounts Committee is calling for a criminal investigation into what he called a cover-up of deaths at Portlaoise Hospital. It comes as Roisin Molloy, the mother of a baby who died at the hospital, says her family is being excluded from a review into avoidable deaths there. Latest: Fianna Fail spokesperson on Equality, Immigration and Integration Fiona OLoughlin has said that the Governments direct provision system is flawed and that a better system that offers dignity to asylum seekers is required, writes Vivienne Clarke. While Ireland is obliged to help asylum seekers this needs to be done in a different way with greater consultation of local communities and ensuring there are sufficient places in local schools and in local general practices, she added. Ms OLoughlin told RTE radios News at One she was very concerned at the decision by the Department of Justice to provide an accommodation centre for asylum seekers at a disused hotel in Rooskey, Co Leitrim, will not now go ahead. Fiona OLoughlin An issue over the lease of the property, which was damaged in two arson attacks in the last three months, was the reason given the reason not to proceed. In a statement, the department said it regretted the decision but it was taken after legal advice from the Chief State Solicitors Office, "which found difficulties with the lease agreement between the owners of the hotel, and the operator renting it, which made proceeding with the proposed centre unviable". The department said it is committed to sourcing suitable accommodation for asylum seekers and a "regional procurement process" is under way. Ms OLoughlin said: This sends the wrong message to the perpetrators (of the two fires on the premises) that they have gotten their way on this. Direct provision was brought in as a temporary measure and it is now time for it to end, she said. Ms OLoughlin said that her office in Newbridge was beside a direct provision centre and it was heartbreaking the lack of dignity that they go through day by day. Irish people have shown their willingness to support asylum seekers, she said. But there has to be proper consultation to ensure that we get it right. Meanwhile, Leitrim and Roscommon United Against Racism has said that "nobody apart from the Government thought it was a good idea to house 80 asylum seekers in Rooskey". In a statement released in response to today's decision the group said: "However, it is regretful that the government appear to have backed down in the face of racist arson attacks and a vocal hard-right minority in this area. "This will be portrayed by the far-right minority in our communities as a victory for them. "The legal issues surrounding the use of the Hotel as a DP centre should have been tested fully in court. This decision may very well have a negative impact on the ability of the state to house asylum seekers elsewhere. "It is time to stand up to the nasty undercurrent of racism in our society and to stand up to those public figures who are fuelling it. "The Prison like Direct Provision system is a flawed system. It pits communities against asylum seekers. "It is time for to to end. Asylum seekers should be housed in communities and allowed to work." Additional reporting by Digital Desk. Decision not to house asylum seekers in Rooskey hotel not related to fires, says Dept Update 1pm: Plans have been dropped to move 80 asylum seekers into a disused hotel in Rooskey, Co Leitrim. The Department of Justice has said that it has nothing to do with the two arson attacks at the hotel in the last four months. They say it is because of difficulties over the lease agreement between the company renting the hotel, who wanted to turn it into a tourist spot, and the owners. "The decision not to proceed was taken solely in relation to the difficulties with the lease," the department said. "There are investors there who want to drive this forward and hopefully after all this debacle things can go forward and Rooskey moves onwards and upwards," said local Independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice. Michael Fitzmaurice Efforts are now underway to find alternative accommodation for the asylum seekers. Nick Henderson, CEO of the Irish Refugee Council, says private contractors have been relied on for too long. "This highlights the need to shift to a longer-term strategic approach to asylum accommodation," said Mr Henderson. The department says a regional procurement process is underway to find a place for the asylum seekers to go. Plans to house asylum seekers in Rooskey hotel abandoned Earlier: The government has abandoned plans to accommodate asylum seekers at a hotel in Rooskey, Co Leitrim. The Shannon Key West Hotel had been earmarked as an accommodation centre for 80 people. However, the Department of Justice has confirmed that following legal advice that the plans have now been dropped. It is because of difficulties over the lease agreement between the company renting the hotel - who wanted to turn it into a tourist spot - and the owners. The hotel was damaged in two arson attacks in the last four months. In a statement, the department said the decision was taken after legal advice from the Chief State Solicitors Office, "which found difficulties with the lease agreement between the owners of the hotel, and the operator renting it, which made proceeding with the proposed centre unviable". The department said it is committed to sourcing suitable accommodation for asylum seekers and a "regional procurement process" is under way. Birthday wishes Call 281-422-8302 or email david.bloom@baytownsun.com to wish someone a happy birthday. We will print your birthday wish on Page 2 of The Sun. Happy Birthday Wishes Iran warned the United Nations Security Council that it will not hesitate to exercise its right to self-defense if Israel proceeds with its threats of blocking Iranian oil shipments. Irans permanent mission to the UN asserted in a letter to the UNSC that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus remarks amounted to an open threat of using of force in clear violation of the United Nations Charter. Iran would mount a swift response to defend itself against any hostile moves, a right enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter, the letter reads. According to the letter, Netanyahu was trying to imply that Irans oil industry was subjected to a universal ban while no such sanctions ever existed against Tehran, not even in the the councils now-canceled resolutions, Press TV reported. The Supreme Court has cleared the way for Fianna Fail activist Brian Mohan to pursue a challenge to the constitutionality of a law linking State funding of political parties to their meeting gender quota targets when selecting general election candidates. The five-judge court's unanimous decision today means Mr Mohan's challenge will be heard later in the High Court. Mr Mohan claimed, as a FF member, candidate and citizen, he was and still is adversely affected by the Electoral (Political Funding) Act 2012. The relevant provision is Section 17.4.b of the Electoral Act 1997, as inserted by Section 42.c of the 2012 Act. Giving the court's judgment, Mr Justice Donal O'Donnell ruled Mr Mohan has shown "sufficient" effect upon him to be entitled to challenge the measure. That decision related only to the preliminary issue of legal standing and did not address the substantive issue, the constitutionality of the law, in any way, he stressed. The provision is a sophisticated piece of legislation which pursues an "evidently important social goal" but sought to do so by a form of positive discrimination on gender grounds and through a mechanism of controlling funding for political parties, both areas of "constitutional sensitivity", he noted. Both the High Court and Court of Appeal had ruled Mr Mohan lacked legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of the provision. They held he was not directly affected by the legislation and not entitled to rely on the right of any political party to challenge it when his own party had not. The Supreme Court later agreed to hear a further appeal. In its judgment, Mr Justice O'Donnell said the suggestion the indirect nature of the impact of the provision on Mr Mohan deprives him of standing represented a "serious error" by both the High Court and Court of Appeal. The provision is not directed towards regulating the funding of political parties but seeks to utilise the existence of that funding, and the possibility of removing that, to achieve one of the objectives of the 2012 Act, a more gender-balanced field of election candidates, he said. Mr Mohan's interest, both in the broad sense of his being selected as a candidate and his interest in participating in the nomination process, and the more specific sense of the rights of equality and freedom of association, would appear, at least prima facie, to be affected, he said. While Fianna Fail could have challenged the law, that did not necessarily mean Mr Mohan lacks standing. There were "clear difficulties" in concluding a political party had standing to the exclusion of Mr Mohan or any other person, for reasons including a political party is not a separate legal entity from its members. The party and Mr Mohan were also "in different positions" and therefore have different, if overlapping, claims. Membership of an association does not preclude an individual asserting that legislation directed towards the internal working of that association is an "impermissible interference" with his freedom of association, the judge said. The indirect effect of the disputed provision is "fully intended" and, indeed, is the objective of the legislation, he said. The true objective of the legislation is to "influence the candidate selection process", the very process Mr Mohan was engaged in and the indirect nature of the impact on Mr Mohan is not a basis to deny him standing, he held. The argument that, simply because the Act operates indirectly, no individual so affected can challenge it is "misconceived and contrary to both legal authority and principle". The 2012 Act provides that a party that fails to have at least 30 % male candidates and 30 % female candidates in the next general election after 2012 would have its funding halved. From 2023 onwards, the funding cut would apply to parties that fail to have at least 40 % male and 40 % female candidates. Women comprise about 22 % of the current Dail. The 2016 general election was the first election to which the 2012 Act was applicable. Mr Mohan was nominated for selection as a candidate at the October 2015 Dublin Central constituency candidate selection convention but, prior to that, FFs National Constituencies Committee directed only one candidate, who must be female, should be selected at the convention. By summer 2015, there were ten women among 47 FF candidates chosen in 31 constituencies. Mary Fitzpatrick was ultimately selected for Dublin Central. MPs in Westminister must decide what they do want from Brexit instead of what they dont if they are to avoid a hard Brexit, Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has said. Mr Coveney made the remarks at an event to mark World Down Syndrome Day in Cork, where he was asked if an extension to Article 50 is possible, given the EU will only grant it in the event of the UK parliament backing the Withdrawal Agreement. However, Speaker of the House of Commons John Bercow has ruled that British Prime Minister Theresa May cannot present the same question on the Withdrawal Agreement to Parliament for another vote given it has already been rejected by MPs. I think there are ways to get around the Speaker's concerns, Mr Coveney said. There are a number of ways of doing that, the parliament could choose to vote to set aside that particular standing order, [or] because the European Council will be passing or endorsing the documents that were agreed in Strasbourg a couple of weeks ago, you could make the argument that by endorsing those documents, it is a new proposition next week, and there are other ways as well, he said. But the real issue is, can the Prime Minister put a majority together to support the withdrawal agreement next week? The honest answer is we don't know yet, Mr Coveney said. I think there will be a lot of manoeuvring and a lot of political discussion over the weekend. "And what the European Council has said is that they recognize that even if the withdrawal agreement is ratified next week, there will be time needed to pass all the legislation linked to that. That's the context within which they're considering a short extension. If the British Parliament can't ratify anything next week, then I think there will probably be, or there may well be, an emergency council meeting next week, to try to forge a way forward. But I think the crisis and the division really is in Westminster, the European Union is very unified in terms of what they're trying to achieve, which is ratification for a balanced, fair deal that involves compromises all around. But unfortunately, the internal party divisions in Westminster, and the cross party divisions are deep. So far, we've only seen a majority in Westminster telling us what they don't want, rather than what they actually do want, and that has to change in the next seven days. So let's wait and see how that progresses. In the meantime, we will continue to prepare for a no deal, which will be a lose situation for everybody. But we have been preparing for many months now, both from a legislative point of view, of a financial point of view, and obviously, preparing within government departments and government agencies working with different sectors of the Irish economy that would be very significantly impacted by a no deal, to try to make sure that we have a plan in place that can provide support through that disruption. But look, my job and the job of the Taoiseach is to try to find a way of ensuring that a no deal doesn't happen, and working through the collective EU negotiating team, which is through the Barnier task force, Mr Coveney said. Trinity College Dublin has launched an investigation after a college paper admitted secretly recording students for an article. There are calls for funding to be pulled from The University Times after it reported the details of an initiation ceremony for an all-male, invite-only, sporting society. The President of Trinity's Student Union, Shane De Ris, says it could take an independent body to decide what, if any, action should be taken. The University Times has formally requested that the Board of Trustees of TCDSU convenes the Oversight Board of the newspaper https://t.co/g4IdD6dliS The University Times (@universitytimes) March 19, 2019 "It will be up to the college to decide if it is breaching college policy and ultimately it might be a case for somebody beyond college to decide if it should or should not have been done," said Mr De Ris. On Tuesday, a statement released by the newspaper said that it would welcome "a full and fair investigation of our reporting methods by the Oversight Board". The Editor of the student paper that broke the story hopes it helps bring an end to initiations. Eleanor O'Mahony from The University Times has defended secretly recording members for the article. "It's just horrible that these practices are taking place on Irish campuses, and that young people are being put under pressure to participate in them," she said. "Sometimes members will participate willingly but it was all influenced by peer pressure and the cultures within these societies and I think it's really important that we expose this." Actor Colin Farrell will lead the Late Late Show lineup this friday and will chat to host Ryan Tubridy on what fans can expect from the live action remake of Disney film 'Dumbo', where he plays war veteran Holt Farrier. Colin will also be joined by some Special Olympics medal holders to celebrate their achievements at the World Games in Abu Dhabi. Former Georgian President and former Governor of Ukraines Odessa Region Mikhail Saakashvili will not return to Ukraine after the first round of the presidential election scheduled to take place on March 31, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on TV, TASS reports. Ukrainian State Border Service Speaker Oleg Slobodyan, in turn, said that border guards would not allow Saakashvili to enter Ukraine the day after the presidential election. "This individual is not a Ukrainian citizen and there is no reason for him to enter Ukraine until 2021," Slobodyan said. Israeli soldiers have shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian who was trying to aid another man, according to the governor of the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Kamel Hmeid said troops in the nearby village of al-Khader fired at a car and wounded the driver late on Wednesday. He said Ahmad Manasra was in the car behind and got out of his vehicle to help the wounded man, who had been shot in the abdomen. As Mr Manasra was returning to his car, the soldiers shot him, Mr Hmeid said. "This is a summary execution and Israel bears the full responsibility for this crime," Mr Hmeid added. The Israeli military said a soldier stationed at a military post near Bethlehem identified rocks being thrown at Israeli vehicles and fired his weapon. The military said it was investigating the incident, which comes amid heightened tensions in the West Bank. Wabeb Manasrah, a cousin of the man who died, confirmed the governor's account. He said they were trying to help the wounded man and his cousin was going to drive his wife and children away when he was gunned down. "There were no clashes, no stone throwing, nothing at all," he said. "I don't know why they shot him." On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it shot and killed two Palestinians who had attacked troops in the West Bank city of Nablus. This followed the killing of a Palestinian suspected of carrying out a weekend stabbing and shooting attack that left two Israelis dead near a West Bank settlement. The military said 19-year-old Omar Abu Leila was shot when he opened fire on soldiers trying to arrest him after a two-day manhunt. The rise in West Bank violence comes with Israel in the midst of an election campaign and Egypt trying to broker a long-term truce between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers. Since 2015, Palestinians have killed more than 50 Israelis in stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks in the West Bank. Israeli forces have killed more than 260 Palestinians in the same period. Israel has described most of the Palestinians killed as attackers, but clashes between protesters and soldiers have also turned deadly. An investigation involving counter-terrorism officers has been launched after five mosques were vandalised in an abhorrent, despicable act. Officers were called early on Thursday morning after four mosques in Birmingham had their windows broken with a sledgehammer overnight. The mosque and community centre on Albert Road in Birmingham where a police forensic team are at work after it had its windows smashed with a sledgehammer (Aaron Chown/PA) West Midlands Police said they received reports of an attack on a mosque in Birchfield Road at 2.32am. Officers then attended a second mosque attack in Slade Road, Erdington, at 3.14am. The Witton Islamic Centre on Witton Road, Birmingham which has had its windows smashed with a sledgehammer (Aaron Chown/PA) The force said forensic officers are working to identify evidence and CCTV is being examined. The attacks are being treated as linked and West Midlands Police and West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit are yet to establish a motive. Home Secretary Sajid Javid tweeted: Deeply concerning & distressing to see number of mosques have been vandalised in Birmingham overnight. @WMPolice are investigating motive but let me be clear hateful behaviour has absolutely no place in our society & will never be accepted. Outside the mosque on Albert Road on Thursday, Deputy Chief Constable Louisa Rolfe said: This is an abhorrent, despicable act that is clearly designed to create fear in our communities who are actually cherished in Birmingham. My message to them would be, come on, hand yourself in, what a cowardly thing to do and if you have extreme views and things you want to say, come and speak to police about it. West Midlands Police Chief Constable Dave Thompson said: Since the tragic events in Christchurch, New Zealand, officers and staff from West Midlands Police have been working closely with our faith partners across the region to offer reassurance and support at mosques, churches and places of prayer. At the moment we dont know the motive for last nights attacks. What I can say is that the force and the counter terrorism unit are working side by side to find whoever is responsible. Mr Thompson added: At difficult times like this, it is incredibly important that everyone unites against those who seek to create discord, uncertainty and fear in our communities.- Press Association Windows smashed at fifth Birmingham mosque UK Police are investigating reports of vandalism at a fifth mosque in Birmingham after pictures were circulated on social media of smashed windows at the Mosque and Muslim Community Centre Aston. An investigation involving counter-terrorism officers was launched on Thursday morning after four mosques had their windows broken with a sledgehammer overnight. Officers were called at 2.32am on Thursday after reports of an attack on a mosque in Birchfield Road in Birmingham, West Midlands Police said. Officers also attended a second mosque attack in Slade Road, Erdington, at 3.14am. Patrols then started in areas with mosques and officers came across further damage in Witton Road, Aston, and on Broadway in Perry Barr. #UPDATE | At 10.04am today police were called to a mosque on Albert Road following reports that a window had just been smashed. At this stage, it is being treated as linked to the earlier incidents: https://t.co/C6bR5TNQUL pic.twitter.com/FrbCiJ7Plq West Midlands Police (@WMPolice) March 21, 2019 The force said forensic officers are working to identify evidence and CCTV is being examined. Local councillors condemned the incidents on social media as shocking and disturbing. Labour councillor Jayne Francis tweeted: Really disturbing to learn of Birmingham mosques being subject to attack. This city is built on tolerance and mutual respect lets not lose sight of that. And Birmingham City Council cabinet member Waseem Jaffar wrote: Deeply shocking and concerning to learn about the attacks on Masjids (sic) in neighbouring Aston and Erdington neighbourhoods We will not let a very small minority divide our neighbourhood, the city and society and will fight back against any hate and division with love, peace and harmony. My message following the attacks on Masjids in neighbouring Aston and Erdington neighbourhoods: pic.twitter.com/jyRaKZGLoj Waseem Zaffar MBE (@WaseemZaffar) March 21, 2019 Footage posted online by councillor Majid Mahmood showed large holes in every ground-level window on the front of the Witton Road Islamic Centre in the north of the city. Local community members in Islamic dress swept the broken glass from the pavement as the sun rose on Thursday. Neighbourhood officers are working closely with mosques around the West Midlands, police said. The attacks are being treated as linked and West Midlands Police and West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit are yet to establish a motive. At difficult times like this, it is incredibly important that everyone unites against those who seek to create discord, uncertainty and fear in our communities West Midlands Police Chief Constable Dave Thompson said: Since the tragic events in Christchurch, New Zealand, officers and staff from West Midlands Police have been working closely with our faith partners across the region to offer reassurance and support at mosques, churches and places of prayer. At the moment we dont know the motive for last nights attacks. What I can say is that the force and the Counter Terrorism Unit are working side by side to find whoever is responsible. Mr Thompson added: At difficult times like this, it is incredibly important that everyone unites against those who seek to create discord, uncertainty and fear in our communities. The force has asked anyone with information to come forward.- Press Association Investigation launched after four Birmingham mosques have windows smashed An investigation involving counter-terrorism officers has been launched after four mosques had their windows smashed with a sledgehammer overnight. Officers were called at 2.32am on Thursday after reports of an attack on a mosque on Birchfield Road in Birmingham in the UK, West Midlands Police said. Police were then called to a second mosque attack on Slade Road in Erdington at 3.14am. Patrols were then started in areas with mosques and officers came across further damage on Witton Road, Aston, and on Broadway, Perry Barr. The force said forensic officers are working to identify evidence and CCTV is being examined. Neighbourhood officers are working closely with mosques around the West Midlands today, police added. The attacks are being treated as linked and West Midlands Police and West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit are yet to establish the motive. The Birmingham Jame Masjid mosque on Birchfield Road in Birmingham which has had its windows smashed with a sledgehammer. An investigation involving counter-terrorism officers has been launched after four mosques in the Birmingham area were attacked overnight. (Aaron Chown/PA Wire) West Midlands Police Chief Constable Dave Thompson said: "Since the tragic events in Christchurch, New Zealand, officers and staff from West Midlands Police have been working closely with our faith partners across the region to offer reassurance and support at mosques, churches and places of prayer. "At the moment we don't know the motive for last night's attacks. "What I can say is that the force and the Counter Terrorism Unit are working side-by-side to find whoever is responsible." Mr Thompson added: "At difficult times like this, it is incredibly important that everyone unites against those who seek to create discord, uncertainty and fear in our communities." The force have asked anyone with information to come forward. PA Navitas has entered into a binding agreement to be acquired by private equity firm BGH Capital and the nation's biggest super fund, AustralianSuper, in a cash deal valuing the global education group at $2.1 billion. The deal will see another consortium member, Navitas founder Rod Jones, return as chairman of the privatised company. Navitas chairman, Tracey Horton. Credit:Philip Gostelow "BGH and I have a shared vision for Navitas which is centred around quality, student experiences, student outcomes and developing very deep, trusted relationships with our university partners," Mr Jones said in a prepared statement. The consortium had been conducting due diligence since January, when it returned to the table with a sweetened offer for Navitas. Australia's homegrown children's stationery juggernaut, Smiggle, has put its hand up as the latest victim of Brexit chaos, saying the consumer slump in Britain has dented its global growth aspirations. Despite trouble in the UK, Smiggle's owner, Premier Investments, was able to deliver a record first-half profit and dividend, after its apparel brands - Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Portmans, Jacqui E and Dotti - defied the prevailing retail sentiment to post strong sales growth. Premier reported sales growth across all its brands. Credit:Adam McLean Sales at Smiggle, which sells colourful pens, pencils and school equipment, grew at their slowest rate in 10 years, ticking up just 4.6 per cent in the first half to $179 million. Premier put that down to the Brexit-induced retail slowdown in the UK, which is home to 141 of its 356 stores, especially during the crucial Christmas sales period. A "Make America Great Again" hat from Trump's election campaign: Early on, Trump's ability to direct outrage at companies appeared to work. That's no longer the case. Credit:Bloomberg But increasingly, "companies are balancing political pressure against their own return requirements," said Philippe Houchois, an automobile sector analyst at Jefferies. "I don't think they are being swayed." Despite Trump's efforts to compel companies to build and hire, they appear to be increasingly prioritising their balance sheets over political backlash. 'Shock to the system' "I don't think there's as much fear," said Gene Grabowski, who specialises in crisis communications for the public relations firm kglobal. "At first it was a shock to the system, but now we've all adjusted. We take it in stride, and I think that's what the business community is doing." Early on, Trump's ability to direct outrage at companies appeared to work. Before Trump even took office, Carrier agreed to keep 1,000 jobs in Indiana that it had been planning to move to Mexico. At first it was a shock to the system, but now we've all adjusted. We take it in stride, and I think that's what the business community is doing. Crisis PR specialist Gene Grabowski In 2017, Ford cancelled plans to build a new factory in Mexico and increased its investment in a self-driving car plant in Michigan. Last year, Pfizer delayed drug price increases at Trump's request after he threatened, vaguely, to take action against the industry's pricing policies. Ephemeral annoyances More recently that influence has waned. The president's scattershot attention span has diminished his power to persuade the business world to bend to his will, corporate communications experts say, as once fearsome tweet storms have devolved into ephemeral annoyances. At the start of the Trump administration, big companies hired firms like Grabowski's to develop response strategies in the event they were targeted by Trump. His team would scour social media to understand the trajectory of Trump's tweets and how much damage they could do to a brand. In the beginning, his tweets would actually hurt stock prices and companies were going into tailspins [...] Now is there is tantrum congestion. Corporate damage control specialist Eric Dezenhall Ultimately, the public relations problems usually proved to be short-lived. "In the beginning, his tweets would actually hurt stock prices and companies were going into tailspins," said Eric Dezenhall, a Washington-based expert in corporate damage control. "There is a clinical difference between what was happening in the beginning and what is happening now." He added: "What's happening now is there is tantrum congestion." Just a bit of noise That congestion has been on display this week, as Trump assailed Facebook, Google, Twitter and "Saturday Night Live," saying they are biased against Republicans. Those outbursts on Twitter were interspersed with attacks on political opponents, the Russia investigation and Senator John McCain, who died last year. While a tweet from Trump used to sink a company's stock price, analysts say that these days a missive from the president's Twitter feed merely injects a bit of noise into the market. Musings from Trump about the prospect of a trade deal with China or the Federal Reserve continue to rattle investors. Responding with restraint has been something of a reorientation for the public relations industry. The traditional playbook often entails responding directly, quickly and forcefully to bad publicity. However, when it comes to Trump, experts say an understated response that does not further agitate the president tends to be more effective. Attacks on Harley, Amazon Trump's power over companies started to show signs of slipping last year. After Harley-Davidson announced plans to move some of its production overseas in response to Trump's trade war, the president repeatedly blasted the company as disloyal and urged his supporters many of whom ride motorcycles to consider a boycott. Loading Harley-Davidson executives acknowledged the president's disappointment, but pressed ahead with their plans. Another frequent target, Amazon and its chief executive, Jeff Bezos, have largely met his criticism with silence. In 2018, the president accused Amazon of pulling a "scam" on the US Postal Service and convened a task force to come up with ways to overhaul the Postal Service business model that would allow it to charge higher rates. The task force's report, which was released nearly eight months after the complaints, found that commercial package delivery for Amazon and other e-commerce retailers was actually profitable for the Postal Service and was not costing the United States "massive amounts of money," as Trump had suggested in his tweets. Since then, the president has focused his attention on Bezos' marital problems. In other cases, delay has been the path of least resistance. The drugs don't work Pfizer agreed last summer to put off planned price increases after its chief executive, Ian Read, had an "extensive" call with Trump, who had said on Twitter that drug companies were taking advantage of the poor. In January, however, Pfizer moved forward with price increases on 41 drugs. Trump lamented on Twitter that month that drug companies were not living up to their commitments on pricing, but has not taken any action against the industry. Trump's deal with Carrier has also been a bit less than advertised. While United Technologies, its parent company, agreed to maintain its Indianapolis factory in 2016, it still cut more than 500 manufacturing jobs in 2017 and 2018. Many of those were shifted to Mexico. So far, Trump has been mum. And Ford won plaudits from Trump for investing in Michigan, but after the spotlight moved on it had second thoughts about abandoning its Mexico investment. Instead of cancelling plans to set up shop south of the border, the company said it would assemble electric cars there, in addition to its Michigan investment. No lasting damage Despite Trump's vast media presence and his popularity among Republicans, he has not demonstrated the ability to do lasting damage to a corporate brand that crosses him. Houchois, the Jefferies analyst, said he was not surprised that GM was sticking to its plan despite Trump's displeasure. Broader economic forces, such as lower petrol prices and falling demand for small cars, compelled the company to abandon the Lordstown plant. And Trump's metals tariffs, combined with the possibility of more levies on automobiles, have been a drag on the industry and made car companies less inclined to do the president any favours. "The administration, to some extent, has made their life more difficult," Houchois said. The United States is ready to cooperate with Kazakhstan's acting President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and aslutes his predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, State Department spokesperson Robert Palladino said in a statement on Thursday, Urdu Point reported. "We congratulate Kazakhstan's new interim President. .. and look forward to continue working with him to deepen our enhanced strategic partnership and advance our longstanding mutual interests in economic development, trade and investment, and safeguarding regional and global security," Palladino said. Tokayev, who was the Kazakh Senate speaker, assumed the post of the country's acting president on Wednesday after Nazarbayev announced his resignation a day prior. Palladino underscored his country's gratitude for Nazarbayev's efforts to establish and promote a dynamic relationship between the United States and Kazakhstan. "At this historic moment in Kazakhstan, we salute Nazarbayev's role as the father of today's modern, sovereign, and prosperous Kazakhstan, and acknowledge the example he sets for responsible regional and global leadership," the State Department spokesperson said. He also noted what he called Nazarbayev's "significant efforts" in the areas of nonproliferation and denuclearization. The Victorian Department of Health and Human Services is investigating hospital operators over reports in The Age of public hospitals adopting aggressive tactics to pressure patients to use their private health insurance. Hundreds of readers have contacted this newspaper over the past fortnight with disturbing stories of being deliberately targeted at their most vulnerable moments. Health Minister Jenny Mikakos last week told The Age that if this alleged behaviour was occurring, well be asking the Department of Health and Human Services to crack down on those who flout the rules. Credit:Paul Jeffers I can advise the Minister for Health has instructed the department to have discussions with the health services named in the media. These discussions are occurring, a spokesman for the DHHS said on Thursday. In one of the reports, scouts leader and fitness instructor Lea Young claims she was pressured to use her private health insurance in January after an administration officer said her surgery had been delayed indefinitely. A key investor in coal company New Hope Corp has blamed an overreaction from minority shareholders spooked by news of Chinese push-back on Australian coal for wiping $1 billion off the miner's value. New Hopes market value has plummeted $1 billion since Monday, as its share price has fallen from $4.40 to $3.20 at the close on Thursday. China slowing its imports of Australian coal may have spooked the market but analysts say disappointing results drove New Hope's share slump faster. Credit:Reuters Contact Asset Management's portfolio manager, Tom Millner, said the main driver for the plummeting share price was China's apparent widening of its crackdown on Australian imports. In a complicated corporate structure, Contact is part-owned by listed investment manager, Washington H Soul Pattinson. Mr Millner is a director of Washington H Soul Pattinson and his family controls the company, which also owns more than half of New Hope. So, who to believe? Bill Shorten has declared the upcoming federal election a "referendum on wages". Credit:AAP In reality, theres not much separating the two major parties on IR, according to economist Stephen Kirchner, of the University of Sydneys United States Studies Centre. Kirchner says that, despite the sound and fury: "Youre hard pressed to find significant differences between Labor and the Coalition on industrial relations." Youre hard pressed to find significant differences between Labor and the Coalition on industrial relations. In their wildest dreams, both parties might fantasise about different worlds in which labour and bosses have differing powers than they do today. But in reality, neither party is planning to change much, he says. They probably do have different preferences. But in terms of what theyre doing and what theyre planning to be doing, youre hard pressed to find major differences. Other than Labors living wage policy, theyre both fairly similarly committed to the same fundamental system." But amid tepid wages growth, there does seem to be growing voter disquiet about whether that fundamental system is broken. Consumer prices rose 1.8 per cent last year but wages just 2.3 per cent, giving workers a 0.5 per cent real wage rise for the year. The Reserve Bank has expressed repeated disappointment that wages are not picking up as they would expect. So, are the fat cats stealing all the cream, while the little people suffer? Are bosses failing to pass onto workers their rightful share of the fruits of their higher productivity? A casual glance at a graph showing the share of national income accruing to companies in profits versus workers in pay packets reveals a clear trend, over the past few decades, of a rising share going to the owners of capital. Thats not to say that wages havent been rising they have but that the income going to the owners of capital has risen faster, leading to a rising capital share. Loading Unions, as you would expect, claim labours declining share is due to falling unionisation rates, leading to reduced worker bargaining power. Others point to the impact of new technologies and global markets for reducing domestic workers' ability to claim wage rises. Kirchner has looked into the issue in a new paper released this week, but found that, despite some recent softness, the nexus between rising productivity and wages remains unbroken. Real wages have somewhat lagged productivity in recent years, Kirchner finds. But: The link between productivity and compensation in Australia remains robust under existing institutional arrangements. "There is no reason to abandon the competitive model of wage determination based on the relationship between worker compensation and productivity." As for workers' declining share of income, Kirchner says there are several confounding factors in play. There are an increasing number of people who have little cash for discretionary spending. Credit:Rob Homer The mining boom skews the figures, as the economy became more capital intensive, with new mines and equipment to take advantage of sky high export prices. But theres also another, less visible, reason behind the rising share of capital. And thats housing. Rapidly rising rents, along with home prices, have increased the returns to investment in housing. If you own an investment home, that income is classed as capital income, not labour income. The housing market is also affecting workers' ability to afford to live close to and get the jobs where they can best use their skills and be most productive, dampening potential pay packets. Kirchner concludes scaremongering about 'fat cats' and declining worker power is a distraction from the main game: finding ways to both boost housing supply and boost the nations flagging productivity performance the two being interrelated. If the compensation-productivity nexus is thought to be broken based on inappropriate measures of compensation, this may lead policymakers to neglect policies that raise productivity in the belief this will not help typical workers. Instead, policymakers may focus too much on redistributive policies at the expense of productivity-enhancing policies. Simply put, the main driver of weaker wages growth has not been horrible bosses, but the nations flagging productivity performance. The Australian Law Reform Commission should investigate how to include wage theft as an anti-competitive practice under consumer law, according to a new report. Maurice Blackburn Lawyers commissioned Labor-aligned think tank The McKell Institute to examine ways to end wage theft in the Australian workforce. The institute has called for new consumer laws to protect businesses that pay staff legal wages from being at a competitive disadvantage. It says wage theft harms businesses, particularly in the hospitality industry, "who play by the rules and try to do the right thing". "These businesses may lose customers, tenders and government contracts to businesses that commit wage theft and are able to offer lower prices," it says. While many teachers baulk at the isolation of a rural school placement, for Abha Singhal it has been rewarding because of the opportunities to make positive changes in young people's lives. Singhal, who teaches mathematics at Bourke High School, says the school environment can sometimes be "challenging". Abha Singhal is passionate about teaching in rural NSW. Credit: The key to overcoming the challenges of classroom behaviour management, she says, is to consistently offer students support, care and belief in their ability to grow and improve. Only then will they listen to you and be ready to learn. Emigrating to Australia from India in 1998, Singhal was already equipped with a masters of science in mathematics, a PhD and bachelor of education in mathematics, physics and chemistry. Inspired by her father, a teacher, she always wanted to make a difference through education. Singhal's experiences of racism in Australia, particularly those faced by her young son and daughter, gave her an opportunity to see how a school could handle such problems with support and respect. She says she found the principal of her children's primary school to be "very supportive" of new migrants, respecting their values and feelings within the school community. "I will never be able to thank enough one of the kindergarten teachers at this school who encouraged us to keep communicating in Hindi at our home so we did not lose our culture and pride," she says. "My husband and I decided to give my kids the confidence they needed by sending them to karate lessons and by giving them the best education we could." With her young children at school, Singhal began to teach on a casual basis. In 2017, after the children were older and more independent, she decided to explore the rural teaching environment and had her first appointment, at Griffith High School. "I loved the ambience, environment and relationships at Griffith," she says. Returning to Sydney for family reasons, she found she missed the connection with students and other staff. After sending off applications to rural schools, a 2019 temporary position for one year at Bourke High School was offered. A selective Sydney high school is at the centre of a $200 million battle over 140 hectares of prime real estate in one of Sydney's fastest-growing areas ahead of the state election. The government plans to move Hurlstone Agricultural High to Richmond, turn the existing buildings into a selective school called Roy Watts High and sell the sprawling school farm for development. Students milking cows at Hurlstone Agricultural High school. Credit:Steve Christo But Labor's MP for Macquarie Fields, Anoulack Chanthivong said on Thursday plans to sell the land would be scrapped if Labor wins the election. The sale which was also supported by the previous Labor government would have paid for the relocation of the agricultural high school to Richmond, so Labor would need to find alternative funding for the plan. Former Canberra hunger striker Isa Islam has had his short-lived parole revoked after he barricaded himself in a room at the Canberra Hospital on Wednesday afternoon, forcing the intervention of police negotiators. Islam, who had his 46th birthday while refusing food in hospital, may now face fresh charges after police were called to the hospital after 3.30pm yesterday. Isa Islam, pictured here last month on the 79th day of his hunger strike, recovered sufficiently to barricade himself in a Canberra hospital room on Wednesday. Credit:Karleen Minney Specialist police negotiators spent several hours talking to Islam on Wednesday until a peaceful settlement was negotiated about 7.10pm. At a bedside hearing in Canberra hospital on Thursday morning, a reportedly calm Islam did not apply for bail and was remanded in custody. The principal of a Canberra school at the centre of recent debate about schoolyard attacks is leaving the school, as parents continue to call for an independent inquiry into school violence territory-wide. On Thursday, Theodore Primary principal Kerri Clark wrote to families announcing her decision to accept a role within the ACT education directorate. Research shows witnessing violence can impact teens as badly as bullying. "With deep sadness, I must let you know that ... Friday will be my last day at Theodore," she wrote. "I have accepted a principal role in the curriculum branch of the directorate. I feel truly grateful for all the opportunities to get to know the students, staff and parents ... Deb Martens will continue as acting principal of the school until further notice." First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on March 23, 1959 File photo of Major C. Morton in 1957, preparing shells that army ammunition experts collected in Sydney during an appeal for residents to hand in any military ammunition and explosive "souvenirs" in their homes. Credit:Fairfax Archive An Army officer nursed a dangerous shell on his knees on a 25-mile [40 kilometre] truck journey to Holsworthy military camp last night. The shell - a 1914-18 war relic, weighing about 25lb [11 kilograms] - was found in Ibrox Park, Leichhardt, yesterday afternoon. The officer who nursed it is Major C. Morton, senior ammunition officer attached to headquarters, Eastern Command. Almost all loggerhead turtles washing up dead on Australian east coast's beaches have plastic in their stomachs, researchers say. The World Science Festival held in Brisbane this week features a baby loggerhead turtle hatchery to highlight conservation efforts focused on the species, which is listed as vulnerable by wildlife and environmental conservation organisation WWF. World Science Festival Brian Green and co-founder Tracy Day inspect the baby turtles. Queensland Museum senior vertebrae curator Patrick Couper said the turtles, especially babies, were geared to feed on the surface, which made them high-risk for ingesting plastics. These little turtles, at their size theyre feeding on the surface, riding the ocean currents, and theres a lot of small bits of plastic out there, Mr Couper said. Famous Russian director, head of the directing department at the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography, Vladimir Khotinenko, said that he's really looking forward to his trip to Baku in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza. I hope I'll be in Baku in a couple of weeks. Were celebrating our Institute's 100th anniversary, and we're going to visit our graduates. Me and my wife will depart for Baku on April 8, and I really look forward to it. I have never been there and I dream of visiting this wonderful city," he said. I have a lot of acquaintances and students from Baku. When I studied at the Advanced Courses of Directors and Scriptwriters, I studied together with people from Baku. So I'm really looking forward to visiting to the capital of Azerbaijan for this five-day business trip, Vladimir Khotinenko said. He also spoke about harmonization of interethnic relations. Peace and harmony must be maintained, and this requires, above all, patience. Patience is the key to everything," he noted. Mourners will gather in Brisbane's city centre on Friday night, marking one week since the slaying of 50 people in a shooting at two New Zealand mosques. A vigil will be held at King George Square from 5pm to allow people to pay respects to the victims of the mass shooting in Christchurch. In New Zealand, families of victims returned for the first time to the scene of the attacks, Christchurch's Masjid al Noor and the Linwood mosques, for prayers on Friday. The 1.30pm Call to Prayer was broadcast on television and radio in New Zealand. An extremely sick Queensland mum who took her two daughters to Somalia for painful genital mutilation will go to prison as a deterrent to others. The woman, who cannot be named to protect the identities of her children, was found guilty of taking her daughters, then aged 10 and 13, to her birth country in April 2015 for the procedure. The girls were not sedated Brisbane District Court Justice Leanne Clare described the mutilation as child abuse and said the mother, 45, had taken them to Africa for the purpose of having it done. "In this case, a woman of unknown ability used a sharp implement to excise the clitoral hood of each girl," Justice Clare said during sentencing on Thursday. Two boaties must have had a sinking feeling when they looked back and noticed something missing from their trailer in Port Douglas earlier this week. The pair were towing a five-metre vessel in the far north Queensland tourist haven on Tuesday when the poorly tied down boat slid off the trailer as they turned a corner. Police described the boat as a "fishy" discovery. Credit:Queensland Police Service In a pun-filled online post, Constable Matt Cornish said officers set about moving the obstacle. "Police could knot [sic] believe what they were seaing [sic]," he wrote. Brisbane commuters will be able to catch a bullet train to either the Sunshine Coast or Melbourne depending on who wins the next federal election. Labor has reignited the decades-long dream to build a high-speed train from Brisbane to Melbourne, promising to appoint a High Speed Rail Authority if elected. Labor has indicated it would create a rail authority and start buying the land. Credit:AP The authority would be in charge of securing land along the proposed corridor, at a cost of $2.8 billion. "High speed rail would revolutionise interstate travel, allowing people to travel between capital cities in as little as three hours at speeds of up to 350km/h," Labor infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese said. A toddler has been rushed to hospital after falling from a window in south-east Brisbane. The girl suffered serious injuries when she tumbled out of the window about 3.5 metres above the ground. Paramedics raced to the Carindale home about 6.20am on Friday. She was taken to the Queensland Children's Hospital in a serious condition. One of my first tasks as an intern with the Northern Land Council was to source an interpreter for the Timber Creek native title case of the Ngaliwurru and Nungali Peoples. As English is not their first language, they needed an interpreter to communicate their connection to country to the judge, and help the claimants and the legal system to understand one another. Michael Murrimal of Timber Creek at the Gregory National Park in the Victoria River Region in the Northern Territory. Credit:Glenn Campbell Fourteen years on (20 since the native title claim was first lodged), the High Court of Australia has not only understood and recognised the native title rights of the Ngaliwurru and Nungali peoples, it has found an elegant way to understand the impact of the extinguishment of those rights, and to put a dollar figure on it. It has valued native title rights and translated the loss of connection caused by extinguishment into financial compensation. A parliamentary committee has laid out safeguards for voluntary euthanasia in the ACT, should federal laws be changed to allow territories to legalise it in future. But the end-of-life choices inquiry made no explicit recommendation to introduce assisted dying, in recognition that the territory has no legal power to enact a scheme. Members of the end-of-life choices inquiry from left: Elizabeth Kikkert, Caroline Le Couteur, Tara Cheyne, Vicki Dunne and Bec Cody. Credit:Dion Georgopoulos The inquiry - which received 488 submissions, held 10 hearings and listened to 87 witnesses over the past 16 months - was tasked with looking at the options currently available to dying Canberrans and to consider what an assisted dying scheme in the ACT would look like. It was convened in November 2017 amid a push in federal parliament to revoke Andrews Bill, which prevents the ACT and Northern Territory from making laws about euthanasia. Australians are being told they are not to blame for the terror attack in Christchurch after airing their grief and guilt to New Zealands top diplomat in Canberra over the actions of the Australian gunman accused of the massacres. The New Zealand High Commissioner to Australia, Dame Annette King, said she was being approached by Australians telling her they felt guilty for the deaths allegedly at the hands of a man born in the NSW town of Grafton. New Zealand High Commissioner Dame Annette King. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Australias not to blame and New Zealands not to blame, she said. This is a terrorist, an individual who has caused this grief and death. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has confirmed he raised the subject of anti-Muslim sentiment at a highly controversial Coalition meeting in 2010, but vehemently denied ever suggesting such sentiment should be exploited for votes. In a tense and at-times awkward interview with The Project's Waleed Aly on Thursday night, Mr Morrison also acknowledged Islamophobia was a problem in Australia and implied the problem could extend to some individuals in the Liberal Party. The half-hour, commercial-free TV interview between Scott Morrison and Waleed Aly was tense and awkward at times. Credit:Network 10 However, he would not commit to placing Pauline Hanson's One Nation below Labor and the Greens on Liberal how-to-vote cards at the upcoming election, saying it would be decided by party operatives at a later date. For the first time, Mr Morrison gave an account of an infamous shadow cabinet discussion in which he was accused of urging colleagues to exploit concerns about Islam eight years ago. Tucked away in an old building at Callan Park in Rozelle is a busy centre for film and television production that is barely known to anyone outside the industry. Rebel Wilson was there trying on costumes for the coming ABC drama series Les Norton this week as the Stan comedy The Other Guy took over from the new ABC-Netflix children's series The Unlisted. In six years, Gordon Andersen's Callan Park Film Production Services has provided offices and workshops for more than 30 productions including Doctor Doctor, Janet King, Redfern Now, Secret City, the Nicole Kidman film Strangerland and the Adrien Brody film Backtrack. Mr Andersen estimates $150 million worth of production has gone through the centre since he started operating in a rundown building on a peppercorn rental agreement with the former Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority. As most readers will be aware, July 16th 24th, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the first landing of human beings on the lunar surface. As such, many aviation museums will be taking part in celebrations focusing on this seminal moment in world history. On April 13th, the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington will be opening a major exhibit on the moon landings, which will actually include the Apollo 11 Command Module, Columbia. The historic space capsule actually belongs to the Smithsonians National Air & Space Museum (NASM) and is normally on display in Washington, DC however, as NASMs DC campus is undergoing a major, multimillion dollar refit, Columbia has been on a national tour, giving other parts of the USA a chance to host this singularly important aerospace artifact. The Museum of Flight is making the most of this momentous opportunity, and will be opening their new exhibit, Destination Moon, in less than a month, although some of the display features, including the space suit gloves that Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin Buzz Aldrin wore as he stepped onto the moon, are already on show. The following press release gives additional details about just what you can expect, and it will doubtless be a world-class experience! Destination Moon opens April 13! The spacecraft flown on humankinds first journey to the Moon is the centerpiece of the Museums special exhibition. Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission, presented in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution, celebrates that historic flight. The challenge of putting the first steps on the Moon moved a nation during the 1960s, Apollos legacy now inspires todays spaceflight adventurers. The exhibition takes you back with original Apollo 11-flown objects, interactives and unique artifacts from the Space Race. Only here will you experience them during Apollo 11s 50th anniversary. And along the way, you too will feel reason to celebrate the beginning of todays New Space Age. In its only West Coast appearance Destination Moon will be on view April 13 to September 2, and will feature special programs throughout the run of the exhibition, plus a weekend festival during the July 20 50th anniversary of the giant leap for humanity. The exhibition includes more that 20, one-of-a-kind artifacts from the Smithsonian, many flown on the historic mission, plus dozens of NASA and Russian spaceflight additions from the Museums renowned collection. Highlighting the exhibition is the historic NASA Apollo 11 command module, Columbia. Visitors can see the spaceship up close like never before, and can explore its intricate interior with an interactive 3-D tour created from the Smithsonians high-resolution scans. The Smithsonians Destination Moon exhibition is enhanced with The Museum of Flights own Space Race displays with rare objects like a Soviet Sputnik satellite, early cosmonaut spacesuit and the worlds only display of the remains of the rocket engines that boosted Apollo missions to the Moon. Also unique is a gallery about the legacy of Seattle-area industry, astronauts and engineers to the space program. Family experiences include spaceflight interactives and an indoor playground with a full-scale, hands-on command module. The Museum is the final location for Destination Moon, capping a two-year tour to four museums by the National Air and Space Museum and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. This Destination Moon tour marks the first time the Apollo 11 command module Columbia has left the National Air and Space Museum since the museum opened to the public in 1976. Before entering the collection, the command module traveled on a 50-state tour throughout 1970 and 1971 covering more than 26,000 miles. It then went on display in the Smithsonians Arts and Industries Building before the current National Air and Space Museum was built on the National Mall. Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission is organized by the National Air and Space Museum and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. The exhibition is made possible by the support of Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos, Joe Clark, Bruce R. McCaw Family Foundation, the Charles and Lisa Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, John and Susann Norton, and Gregory D. and Jennifer Walston Johnson. Transportation services for Destination Moon are provided by FedEx.Museu Christchurch: An Islamic Call to Prayer won't be answered by 50 people slain in two New Zealand mosques a week ago but it will be heard around the world. Families and the community are expected to return to the scene of the terror attacks on Christchurch's Masjid al Noor and the Linwood mosque for the first time for prayers on Friday. Funerals for the 50 victims of the mosque shootings in Christchurch continue. Credit:Jason South Police and contractors raced to prepare it in time for Islam's sacred day of worship, which will include a memorial for the dead. But earlier plans to open the mosques have been abandoned as police are still finishing their work. Latest News ANZ makes another rate hike New highest fixed among Big Four as 40pts added to 4 and 5 year rates UBank sets cheapest ever advertised variable rate Despite widespread rises, digital lender slashes 20pts for lowest ever advertised variable rate A leading non-bank lender hosted an event in Sydney yesterday afternoon to clarify its position on the royal commission recommendations, as well as to speak to whats ahead for the company. Resimac GM of third party distribution, Daniel Carde, highlighted the benefit of being a non-bank lender with the ability to react to industry changes more nimbly than a larger, more traditional institution. He reminded the attendees of Resimacs 30 years of history, including having successfully navigated the global financial crisis, and spoke of the future with confidence. Carde told the industry leaders in attendance that the mortgage provider strongly supports the current lender-pays remuneration model, and is only open to future post-election changes that would lead to better consumer outcomes. Anything that diminishes competition or reduces consumer access to a wide range of mortgage options would be detrimental to ordinary Australians, said Carde. The Resimac leader went on to point out the obvious: consumers dont like suddenly being expected to pay for something they didnt have to previously. He reiterated that a borrower-pays model would undoubtedly cause a great deal of damage to the industry. However, Carde did communicate that Resimac agrees with the underlying theme of the reform, to achieve better consumer outcomes and improved standards of conduct. Over the longer term, this will further strengthen the broker proposition, ensuring consumers continue to benefit from strong industry competition and greater choice when accessing finance, he said. According to Carde, some of the recommendations like the proposed best interest duty will leave respectable brokers free to continue operating as they were, but will weed the few bad apples from the industry as a whole. Resimac has hosted similar events in Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane, and has another scheduled in Melbourne on 26 March. The lender was one of the earliest supporters of the nationwide Dont Kill Competition campaign launched by the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia (MFAA) to oppose the proposed ban on all mortgage broker commissions paid by lenders to brokers. Carde concluded, Brokers provide consumers with access to loans from the big banks as well as smaller lenders without a branch network and accordingly stimulate competition within the lending market. The health of the broking sector is vital to achieving the best outcomes for home loan borrowers. Sign up for our PoliticsNY newsletter for the latest coverage and to stay informed about the 2021 elections in your district and across NYC Call it bleating the odds! A lost lamb police rescued from the Gowanus Expressway this month will live out her days munching grass and rubbing hooves at a farm with other four-legged escape artists, according to the kind-hearted benefactor who took the baby sheep in after her trot through traffic. Shes doing great, said Mike Stura, who runs the Skylands Animal Sanctuary in bucolic New Jersey. Stura, who named the lamb Palmer after one of his faithful farmhands, built a reputation as the go-to guy for city Animal Care and Control officials looking to hand off wayward critters, after offering refuge to other beasts pulled from city streets including a young bull that cops corralled at the Prospect Park Parade Ground in 2017. Indeed, the rescuer said his farm was the first place officials from Animal Control called, after officers with the Police Departments Highway Patrol nabbed the cloven-foot commuter on March 13, near the 38th Street exit on the highways Queens-bound side. Palmer was most likely on the run from certain death at the hands of a butcher when motorists spotted her strolling among passing cars on the expressway, but due to liability and public relations concerns her former owners are unlikely to come forward demanding her return, Stura said. Nobody will step forward looking for the animal, because theyre afraid of liability issues, he said. If the animal causes an accident, and shes your animal, youre liable for it. And Palmer wont only share her lush new digs about an hours drive from the city with the bovine shell spend her days frolicking with other sheep, goats, pigs, turkeys, ducks, and a goose named Ted, some of whom also escaped area slaughterhouses for the greener pasture. Skylands Animal Sanctuary is currently closed to visitors for the winter, but Stura expects to reopen the grounds in May which may still be too soon for guests to nuzzle up to the fuzzball, according to her new guardian, who said she still has some growing up to do. Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance. We, however, have a request. As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed. Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard. Digital Editor A little girl pedals her way down the road, calling out to her friends to play Holi. Water balloons fly thick and fast and she's soaked in colour. The kids however soon run out of stock. It is the moment she's been waiting for. She gives the green signal to a boy standing around the corner. He hops on to her bicycle as they make their way to the nearest mosque. There's not a stain on his clothes. Hes happy and so is she. Hindustan Unilever's latest commercial for detergent brand Surf Excel has evoked sharp reactions on social mediasome have liked it, some ... India's Reliance Industries, operator of the world's biggest refining complex, has turned to selling fuels to Venezuela from India and Europe to circumvent sanctions that bar U.S.-based companies from dealing with state-run PDVSA, according to trading sources and Refinitiv Eikon data. Reliance had been supplying alkylate, diluent naphtha, and other fuel to Venezuela through its U.S.-based subsidiary before Washington in late January imposed sanctions aimed at curbing the OPEC member's oil exports and ousting Socialist President Nicolas Maduro. At least three vessels ... Tata Steel will likely offer parts of its European packaging activities in a bid to seek regulatory approval for a planned joint venture with Germany's Thyssenkrupp, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Offering some packaging steel assets would address one of the areas that have been singled out by the European Commission in its review. Both firms would own about half of the European packaging steel market, industry sources have said. No final decisions have been made and remedy proposals could still change or be amended before a new April 1 deadline, the ... Some of Unilever's biggest investors in the UK are planning to put renewed pressure on the consumer goods giant to abandon the idea of ditching its dual headquarters in favour of the Netherlands. The maker of products such as Dove soap and Ben & Jerrys ice cream backed down in the face of a rebellion by UK investors in October, but said in January it was still considering ditching its Anglo-Dutch structure. The company had said that becoming a single legal entity would simplify its operations and facilitate deal-making. Many UK shareholders oppose the move that would see ... If there is a state where the electoral picture is completely blurred, it is Maharashtra. With 48 seats (50 if you count the two in Goa) this western state is carved into so many enclaves, feudal principalities and caste interests that it is hard to predict if the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-Shiv Sena (SS) combine will do well or not. In 2019, the two had contested together and had won 42 out of 48 seats (23+18). In the assembly elections, they contested separately. The Senas animus against the BJP, leading up to present day when the two have teamed up again, is no ... President Donald Trump said hell keep tariffs on China until hes sure Beijing is complying with any trade deal, refuting expectations that the two nations will agree to roll back duties as part of a lasting truce to their trade war. Were not talking about removing them, were talking about leaving them for a substantial period of time, because we have to make sure that if we do the deal with China that China lives by the deal, Trump told reporters at the White House Wednesday before leaving for Ohio. Theyve had a lot of problems ... Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance. We, however, have a request. As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed. Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard. Digital Editor A special CBI court has issued notice to the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) for non-compliance of the order cancelling the Look Out Circular (LoC) against Shivani Saxena, an accused in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland money-laundering case. Special CBI Judge Arvind Kumar on Wednesday directed the FRRO to authorise an officer from the department to appear before the court on the next date of hearing on March 26. The court also asked the FRRO to file a compliance report in connection with the order. Shivani Saxena's counsel Shivani Lohiya Luthra and Prateek Yadav had approached the court against the FRRO for non-compliance of the order of March 6 cancelling the LoC against their client. They argued that despite the court order, FRRO officials allegedly harassed Shivani Saxena at the IGI airport here while she was on her way home in Dubai. On March 6, the special judge had said, "The LoC is not sustainable in the eyes of the law and liable to be cancelled." Shivani Saxena is the wife of AgustaWestland deal accused Rajiv Saxena who recently moved a plea to turn approver in the case. She is the director of two Dubai-based firms M/s UHY Saxena and M/s Matrix Holdings and is currently on regular bail with the condition to take prior permission from the court if she wants to travel abroad. On Tuesday, the special judge had directed the Tihar jail authorities to move alleged middlemen Christian Michel in the deal out of solitary confinement. Michel, who was extradited from the UAE in December last year, is currently lodged in the prison in connection with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) cases against him. In 2014, India had cancelled the contract with Finmeccanica's subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW-101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of kickbacks in the deal. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A convoy of Pakistan army came under a deadly ambush in Dasht region of Balochistan on Thursday, when the troops were on their way to carry out a search operation in the area. Local sources confirmed that heavy gunfire and loud explosions were heard in the region where the convoy was attacked. Helicopters reached the attack site to take wounded and dead to the hospital. Sources in the civil hospital at Turbat confirmed that at least 9 troops were killed and about a dozen were gravely injured. Meanwhile, Balochistan's most deadly and well-disciplined armed group the Baloch Republican Army spokesman Sarbaaz Baloch called media offices from an undisclosed location and claimed the responsibility for the attack. Sarbaaz Baloch also vowed to continue attacking the Pakistani forces until the freedom of Balochistan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bajaj Auto International Holdings BV is in talks to offload its 48 per cent stake in Austria-based KTM AG to its parent company KTM Industries AG, which is Europe's biggest sport motorcycles producer. "KTM Industries AG was informed by Pierer Industrie AG and Bajaj that they have started discussions on assessing the possibility of transferring Bajaj's 48 per cent stake in KTM AG to KTM Industries AG, with Austrian industrial investment group Pierer Group continuing to retain the controlling majority over KTM Industries AG," Bajaj Auto informed Indian stock exchanges on Thursday in regulatory filings. At present, Pierer Industrie holds about 62 per cent of shares in KTM Industries, which holds nearly 51.7 per cent of shares in KTM AG. Bajaj holds the rest 48 per cent of KTM shares. The talks come after Volkswagen's plan to sell the iconic Ducati brand following the recent diesel-gate scandal. However, following opposition from the labour union, the company cannot go ahead with the sale. Industry experts say that these issues are expected to be sorted soon and Bajaj could later in 2019 be the owner of Ducati, considered as 'the Ferrari of the motorcycle industry.' Pierer Industrie plans on making KTM the third largest motorcycle brand worldwide by 2020 after Honda and Yamaha. The company sold 2.7 lakh motorcycles last year, up from 2.4 lakh units in 2017. "Pierer Industrie and Bajaj will now evaluate the proposals in detail. The transaction decision is targeted to be made in the second quarter of 2019," said Bajaj Auto. KTM's concentration on emergent markets like India could ensure better profitability. Bajaj is a dominant player in the country with a vast dealership network. Experts say the introduction of several homologation rules in the near future will make all manufacturers look to new markets to make a profit. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two civilians were taken hostage by terrorists during an encounter in Hajin locality of north Kashmir's Bandipora district, Jammu and Kashmir Police said on Thursday. One of the two has been rescued safely and efforts are underway to rescue the other hostage, reportedly a minor police added. The rescue was conducted with the assistance of security forces and community members, police said. As many as three terrorists are still trapped in the area. The encounter between security forces and terrorists in Mir Mohalla area of Hajjin, started around 10 am on Thursday is still continuing and further details are awaited. The contingent of security forces comprises units of Army's 13 Rashtriya Rifles, CRPF's 45 Battalion and SOG. Apart from this, on Tuesday morning, terrorists lobbed a grenade at the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp in Baramulla district's Sopore. Two policemen including a Station House Officer (SHO) were injured in the grenade attack by terrorists. The injured were shifted to Srinagar hospital. In another case, an Army rifleman was killed on Thursday after Pakistan violated ceasefire along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district. The soldier identified as 24-year-old Indian Army rifleman Yash Paul lost his life in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Sunderbani sector, officials said. Meanwhile, the ceasefire violations in Sunderbani, Akhnoor and Nowshera have been stopped at around 4:45 pm. Pakistan had used artillery guns for shelling. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The nomination papers of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will be filed on Friday from Kuppam Assembly constituency from where he has won the polls six times in the past. Naidu's wife Nara Bhuvaneshwari will submit the nomination papers on his behalf, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) sources said on Thursday. Naidu is going to contest from the Kuppam seat in Chittoor district for the seventh consecutive time. He had contested from the seat for the first time in 1989. The elections to the 175-member Andhra Pradesh Assembly are scheduled to be held on April 11 simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls. The counting of votes for both will take place on May 23. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An explosion took place at Chenjiagang Tianjiayi chemical plant here on Thursday afternoon. According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), several people have been reported injured and residential building, schools and vehicles in the vicinity of the plant were damaged. An earthquake of magnitude 3.0 on the Richter scale was also reported and it is speculated that it occurred from the impact of the blast. Firefighters and rescue personnel are on the site, said the local authorities. SCMP quoted a report by Yangtse Evening Post, stating that the explosion took place at the Chenjiagang Tianjiayi chemical plant, which produces pesticides. The pesticide plant has received six administrative punishments for failures regarding solid waste management, environmental impact assessment and air pollution. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China and the United States will hold the eighth round of high-level economic and trade consultations here from March 28 to 29. Xinhua quoted Gao Feng, spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce as saying that US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were invited to visit China for the talks. Addressing a press conference, Gao said that Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chief of the Chinese side of the China-US comprehensive economic dialogue, was invited also to visit Washington DC for the ninth round of talks in early April. He further divulged that the two nations have recently held several rounds of talks on phone on economic and trade issues and agreed on holding the eighth and ninth rounds of high-level talks in March and April. A Trump administrative official on Wednesday had also stated that Beijing and Washington will resume trade talks next week after a pause in negotiations. Quoting the official, CNN reported that Mnuchin and Lighthizer will be travelling to Beijing for discussions, aimed at finalising a trade deal between the two countries. Subsequently, a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier Liu He will then visit Washington for the next round of talks. Following the previous round of talks, negotiations were put on hold after the two sides broached disagreements regarding the enforcement mechanisms in the final deal, according to CNN. "China's going very well. China talks going very well," US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday during a joint press conference here with his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro. Both Beijing and Washington are engaged in intense negotiations in the wake of a trade dispute, which would've originally seen the United States substantively increase tariffs on Chinese goods from March 1. Trump has since withheld the tariff increase as talks between the two sides have been promising. The two countries now hope to reach a final trade deal which will be signed during a late-April summit at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, the official added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Gujarat Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) Jignesh Mevani on Thursday attacked the BJP-led Central government for its "anti-Dalit attitude". "The government which claims 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas' and the Gujarat State Police have not been able to deliver a strong message to the society that atrocities against Dalits will not be tolerated. The attitude of the government is against Dalits and in favour of casteism," he told ANI. His statement came after a minor Dalit boy was allegedly kidnapped, tied to a tree and beaten up mercilessly by a group of people when he was coming back from a school in Mehsana district. "This time, on the festival of Holi, they (BJP) played with the blood of Dalits. He was almost paralyzed and not able to utter a single word. He was even scared to file a complaint against them. Those casteist elements who mercilessly beat him up had a doubt that he was in an affair with a girl of their family. It doesn't matter if someone has an affair," Mevani said. He threatened to launch a protest if the accused are not arrested in the next 48 hours. "We will protest and announce to close north Gujarat. No leader from the BJP will be able to garland the statue of Baba Saheb Ambedkar on April 14," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An Italian bus driver of Senegalese origin on Wednesday tried to set fire to a bus here with 51 people on board. He has since been arrested, Sputnik reported while quoting local media. The driver has been identified as 47-year-old Ousseynou Sy and it has been established that he has a criminal record. No injuries have been reported, as local authorities revealed that most of the passengers were children, who were evacuated safely. However, 12 children and two adults were rushed to the hospital with symptoms of smoke poisoning. The arrested driver was taking the school children back home from outdoor activities in Crema when he changed the bus' route. He announced that he wanted to kill himself to "stop deaths in the Mediterranean Sea" before threatening the passengers with a knife. Reports suggest that one of the children managed to call their parents, following which emergency services and the police were alerted. The driver tried to ram into the roadblocks set up by the police but failed after which the bus came to a halt. Sy then went on to douse the insides of the bus with gasoline before igniting it. The passengers were rescued through the windows and the back door. Further information is awaited. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A former US intelligence official said in the wake of the Hanoi summit breakdown, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may visit Russia in order to boost ties. Andrew Kim, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Korea Mission Center, made these comments on Wednesday at a lecture, according to Yonhap News Agency. Speculations have been rife regarding Kim's visit to Russia, especially after three senior North Korean officials made back-to-back visits to Russia this month. The second summit between North Korea and USA ended abruptly in Hanoi, Vietnam last month without any agreement regarding further steps in the denuclearisation process. Many have perceived the Hanoi summit to be a failure, even as US President Donald Trump maintains that the relationship between the two states continues to be good in the wake of the meeting. Pyongyang sought a partial relief in sanctions during last month's summit, according to North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho - a demand which was allegedly turned down by the United States which reiterated its stand on easing sanctions only when complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula is achieved. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least five people including a police officer were killed in a road accident here on Thursday. The accident occurred at NH93 near Sadabad village when a team of Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and local police were cleaning up the road after a minor accident," Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Siddharth Verma told reporters. "While the cleaning work was on, a roadways bus crushed these officials. One police officer from the Sadabad police station also lost his life in the incident," the senior official added. The District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police also reached the spot. Further investigation in the matter is underway. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Hyderabad-based businessman, P Venkata Shashidar, was among the five people who died in an accident in Ethiopia. Ramakrishna, a business associate and friend of Shashidar, told ANI, "Venkata Shashidar had been to Ethiopia for business. For the last one-and-half-year, he has been frequently visiting Ethiopia. On March 9, he went to Ethiopia with a Japanese team for mining purpose. On Tuesday morning, they were on their way to a mining spot when a blast took place and killed all five who were in the vehicle. We don't have exact information yet." He added, "In the incident, five people were travelling and all of them died. On Wednesday morning, the Indian Embassy said some accident occurred and they said we are trying to identify what exactly happened." Contrary to this, several media reports claimed that a person carrying a gun had killed the five persons in Ethiopia on Tuesday while they were travelling to a mining site. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Indian Coast Guard successfully evacuated a critically ill British off the coast of Goa. The 67-year-old had suffered a cardiac arrest on his voyage to Abu Dhabi onboard RMS MV Queen Mary 2, a transatlantic ocean liner which departed from Kochi. At around 5:00 PM on Thursday, the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) Mumbai was alerted by M/s Carnival Maritime Hamburg about the medical emergency onboard the Bermuda-flagged passenger ship. The passenger was critically ill and was in need of immediate medical attention. Indian Coast Guard C-158, an interceptor boat, was launched and Indian Coast Guard ship ICGS Amal on surveillance mission was also immediately diverted to attend to the matter. In a speedy mission, Indian Coast Guard Boat reached the ocean liner and the passenger was evacuated off Goa. He was then admitted to Manipal Hospital. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Overturning longstanding US policy on the Golan Heights, US President Donald Trump on Thursday (local time) stated that it is time for the United States to recognise Israel's sovereignty over the territory. "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Trump tweeted. The statement comes just a few days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet Trump at the White House, according to CNN. Israel formally annexed the territory in 1981 after capturing the region from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967. The Israeli annexation has long been decried by the community, who regard Golan Heights as occupied territory and Israeli settlements there as illegal as per international law. "At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you, President Trump! @realDonaldTrump," Netanyahu tweeted in response. Experts say that Trump's statement could majorly impact the outcome of the impending Israeli elections. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The fervour of Holi has now hit Hollywood! So much so that actor Josh Brolin, popularly known for playing Thanos in Marvel's Avengers film series sent out wishes to his fans with a colour-soaked picture, which shows him going all out to celebrate the fun festival. The actor took to his Instagram account to share a throwback picture which features him along with writer Gregory David Roberts. The duo can be seen drenched in colours, posing for a happy picture. The photo is from Brolin's trip to India in 2013 when he had witnessed the festival of colours first hand. He captioned the post as, "Happy Holi Day! India 2013. #withshantaram." Fans seemed super-excited about Brolin's Holi throwback photo and couldn't stop gushing over it. The comment section is full of Thanos references and people wishing the actor on the occasion of Holi. With little over a month to go for 'Avengers: Endgame' to hit the big screens, the excitement for the film has amped up. Especially, after Marvel Studios released a brand new trailer of the upcoming film on March 14. The latest trailer features almost every superhero that the fans were eagerly waiting to see, including Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Iron Man, Hawkeye and Ant Man. The trailer gives a solemn recap of the earliest days of the franchise to show just how far the heroes have come, which is enough to give the fans some real 'End Game' vibes. 'Avengers: Endgame' will feature a stellar star cast which includes, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Josh Brolin, and Chris Pratt. The film also marks the final film within the Marvel Cinematic Universe's current generation, which comprises 22 films, including 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' and the upcoming Captain Marvel. It will also be the last Marvel movie for some of the key actors, including Chris Evans as Captain America. The film is all set to hit the theatres on April 26, this year. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Washington next week on an invitation extended by President Donald Trump, CNN quoted White House press secretary Sarah Sanders as saying on Wednesday (local time). Netanyahu's visit comes just two weeks before the upcoming Parliamentary elections in Israel, scheduled to take place on April 9. The visit has been further scheduled when the Israeli Prime Minister is facing corruption charges in his country. The Prime Minister, however, last year had clearly stated that he would not resign even if he is indicted by the attorney general under one or any of the corruption charges against him. Denying the three corruption charges against him, Netanyahu cited legal procedure while asserting that the law doesn't require him to step aside before any hearing. Netanyahu is facing a tough challenge over the upcoming general elections, which will determine whether Netanyahu stays in power or not. Al Jazeera reported that the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who travelled Jerusalem on Wednesday, hailed strong ties with Netanyahu and vowed to counter the Iranian "aggression". Netanyahu, who is also scheduled to attend the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), next week, will be meeting Trump twice. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan, on Wednesday, conveyed concerns regarding the acquittal of the four suspects in the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast case to other countries through its Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua. Janjua invited members of diplomatic corps to the Foreign Office and briefed them on the "historic injustice done to the forty-four Pakistanis killed in the Samjhauta Express terrorist attack in 2007 in India," according to The Express Tribune. A special NIA court had acquitted the four suspects - Swami Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajinder Chaudhary - in the case on March 20. "Pakistan has already registered a strong demarche with the Indian High Commissioner on March 20 against the acquittal of the perpetrators of Samjhauta terror attacks," the Foreign Secretary said. On February 18, 2007, explosions hit the India-Pakistan trans-border Samjhauta Express in Panipat area of Haryana and 68 people died in the blast, including scores of Pakistanis. Out of the deceased, 33 were male, 19 female and 16 children. Later, two unexploded bombs were also found from the site, India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) had said.The Indian side has earlier rejected Pakistan's assertions, after its High Commissioner to Pakistan was summoned following the March 20 decision. It was put forth that due process of law was followed by the Indian courts and judicial system in a transparent manner, according to sources. In fact, the High Commissioner called out the lack of cooperation from Pakistan government, including in serving court summons to Pakistan witnesses in the Samjhauta blast case. The summons were returned by Pakistan's Foreign Office and not served, sources said. The High Commissioner asked for an expeditious trial in 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in which detailed evidence has been given to Pakistan. He expressed disappointment that progress in these trials is held up and the perpetrators and prime accused continue to roam freely in Pakistan, sources further said. He shared India's concerns at the lack of progress in investigations in Pathankot airbase terror attack even when JIT visit was arranged to India and detailed evidence shared, they added. It was also pointed out that Pakistan is yet to take credible and irreversible steps against Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) other terror entities and individuals, despite a detailed dossier having been shared after Pulwama attack, sources said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) State-owned Power Finance Corporation (PFC) has signed a share purchase agreement to acquire all 52.63 per cent shares of the government in Rural Electrification Corporation (REC) for about Rs 14,500 crore. Both PFC and REC are navratna central public sector enterprises with combined annual revenues of about Rs 50,000 crore. The acquisition is a step towards consolidation of companies operating in the same space, PFC said in regulatory filings at stock exchanges late on Wednesday. "PFC will acquire 103.94 crore equity shares of Rs 10 of REC from the President constituting 52.63 per cent of the paid-up share capital. This is a major milestone achieved by PFC which is now slated to become a promoter and the holding company of REC." PFC has already arranged funds for the acquisition which will be complete by March 28. It is in pursuance to the in-principle approval of December 6 last year from the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. "The acquisition will enable increased efficiencies in lending processes and policies across both institutions, and create public value by offering better loan products to the power sector," PFC said in the statement. "The convergence between the entities as combined group entities will help the power sector reap benefits from a decentralised outreach of REC and a professional project finance expertise of PFC." Further, the ensuing diversification of assets of the group, as well as portfolio risk will help in resolution of stressed power sector assets of the group in a better and coordinated manner, said PFC. . (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Crime Branch-CID of the Tamil Nadu police, probing the Pollachi sexual assault case, has summoned Congress leader Mayura Jayakumar, asking him to appear before March 25. "Yesterday, I received a summon from the CB-CID to be present before March 25. I was told that during the incident, Tirunavukkarasu (an accused in the case) had said he was not in Pollachi and had come to Coimbatore with his father and greeted me at the Congress district office," Jayakumar told ANI. "The CB-CID wanted to know if the criminal was at the Congress district office on the particular date. They didn't ask any questions beyond this. I have given my statement in writing. I am ready to furnish any information whenever the authorities call me," he said. Jayakumar said that he did not have any links with the accused persons. "I am not connected to this incident. I have mentioned very clearly (to the police) that I have no links with the accused persons. My stand is clear," he said. In the Pollachi sex scandal, more than 50 women were allegedly lured and sexually harassed by a gang of four and the acts were filmed. Four accused persons identified as Sabarirajan, Sathish, Thirunavukarasu and Vasan Kumar were arrested in the case. They have been arrested under Section 392, 354 (A), 354 (B) of the Indian Penal Code and 66A of the Information Technology Act. On March 15, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court seeking a court-monitored probe into the sex scandal. The case was transferred to the CB-CID which initiated an inquiry into the matter on March 13 after receiving requisite documents from the local police. The Crime Branch had last week registered an FIR against DMK president MK Stalin's son-in-law, Sabareesan, for allegedly spreading rumours in connection with the case. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday greeted people on the occasion of Holi festival. The President tweeted, "Greetings and best wishes to fellow citizens in India and abroad on the auspicious occasion of Holi. The festival of colours, Holi is a celebration of spring and fraternity in our society. May it bring peace, joy and prosperity to everyone's lives." "Best wishes to all the people of Holi's festival. This festival of joy and joy will deepen the color of our unity and goodwill," the Prime Minister tweeted. Vice President of India M. Venkaiah Naidu also took to Twitter to convey his greetings to citizens on Holi. "I convey my warm greetings and good wishes to the people of our country on the auspicious occasion of Holi. It is a festival of colours. Celebrated with traditional fervour and enthusiasm, the colourful festival celebrates change of season," he tweeted. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday informed that the diplomatic spat between Australia and Turkey, which had escalated over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's remarks on New Zealand terror attack, has eased. The development came after Turkish Presidential Office dubbed Erdogan's remark to be "out of context". During a campaign for local elections, scheduled to be held on March 31, Erdogan on March 19, warned that anybody (apparently referring to Australians and New Zealanders), who visited Turkey with anti-muslim sentiments would be "sent back in coffins," like their grandfathers were, at Gallipoli, during War 1, Al Jazeera reported. The Turkish Presidential Office on Wednesday said that President's statements were in response to the "manifesto" posted online by the accused, who killed 50 attendees of the weekly Friday's prayers in two mosques in Christchurch on March 10. "President Erdogan's words were unfortunately taken out of context. He was responding to the so-called 'manifesto' of the terrorist who killed 50 innocent Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand. Turks have always been the most welcoming & gracious hosts to their Anzac visitors," Turkish Presidential Communication Director, Fahrettin Altun tweeted. "The terrorist's manifesto not only targeted Erdogan himself but also the Turkish people and the Turkish state. As he was giving the speech at the Canakkale (Gallipoli) commemoration, he framed his remarks in a historical context of attacks against Turkey, past and present," he added. New Zealand's Foreign Minister Winston Peters is expected to visit Turkey to confront Erdogan and seek a clarification in the connection. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least six people were killed and 23 others wounded after three blasts hit New Year celebrations near a shrine in the Afghan capital Kabul on Thursday, officials said. "Twenty-three people were wounded and six people were martyred in the explosions," government official Wahidullah Mayar was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency. The devastation happened in Police District 3 where thousands of Afghan citizens attended an event to mark Nawroz Festival celebrations falling on Thursday, which marks the Afghan New Year. "The first blast occurred at a main square in Jamal Mina neighbourhood at 9.30 a.m. The initial blast was followed by two consecutive explosions at the area, which is called Kart-e-Sakhi," eyewitness Mohammad Jafar told Xinhua. The blasts occurred as a large crowd was walking toward the Sakhi Shrine for the New Year festival, he said. The bomb attacks came even as Afghan security forces beefed up security across the country for Nawroz celebrations. The shrine has been hit by terror attacks in the past. The nature of the blasts was not known at this point. However, an official of the Ministry of Interior Affairs told the media that the blasts were caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted in multiple locations. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Kabul, with a population of nearly 5 million, has been hit by series of terror attacks over the past years. On March 7, 11 civilians were killed and 95 wounded after a mortar attack targeted a gathering at an open area in Dashti Barchi in Kabul. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Madras High Court's Madurai bench on Thursday sentenced, to life imprisonment, nine people convicted in the 2007 Dinakaran newspaper burning case which left three persons dead. The court also sentenced seven other accused to five-year jail terms. The High Court's verdict came on an appeal filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as the lower court acquitted all the accused. The High Court also ordered the state government to pay a compensation of Rs 500,000 to the families of the three employees of Dinakaran daily - Gopinath, Vinod and Muthuramalingan - who were killed in the attack. Amongst the accused sentenced for life is V.P. Pandi also known as 'Attack Pandi', a supporter of former Union Minister M.K. Alagiri, who was expelled from the DMK some years back. In 2007, the Dinakaran daily published a survey report on who would be the preferred successor for late DMK President M.Karunanidhi. As per the survey, Alagiri was ranked below Stalin which angered the supporters of the former and they attacked the daily's office in Madurai with petrol bombs, resulting in fire and death of three employees. --IANS vj/oeb/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A legislator of Uttar Pradesh's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was shot and injured by unidentified men during Holi festivities at the district party office in Lakhimpur-Kheri district on Thursday, police said. Yogesh Verma, who sustained a bullet injury in his leg, is being treated at a medical facility and is out of danger, a police official said. A brief altercation between Verma, who represents Lakhimpur Sadar, and some people preceded the incident. "A case has been registered and investigation is underway," Superintendent of Police Poonam said. The armed personal security officer of the MLA has since been suspended. --IANS md/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actress Soundarya Sharma says Bollywood films are patriarchal but times are changing as women-centric films are now taking over. Talking about films being male dominated, Soundarya told IANS here: "Of course, yes. I have only done one film. In my movie, I was the lead and the hero but, yes, if you see all over the film (industry) it is the hero who is leading. That is in the mindset." Soundarya, who made her debut in the Hindi film industry with Anupam Kher starrer "Ranchi Diaries", says women-centric films have been a game-changer. "But in today's time, with content driven and women-centric films taking over, I think the time is changing..." she added. The actress was here to walk for designer Charu Parashar at the Lotus Make-up India Fashion Week. --IANS dc/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rome, March 22 (IANS/AKI) Italy's Premier Giuseppe Conte said he and France's President Emmanuel Macron will on Friday discuss a planned 8.6 billion euro high-speed train link between Turin and Lyon. "Tomorrow I have a bilateral meeting with Macron - that is news," Conte told reporters on the sidelines of a European Union summit in Brussels. Conte earlier this month helped draft a legal document to allow tenders for the delayed project to be launched by a March 11 deadline to avoid the loss of 300 million euros of European Commission funding. The legal letter sent to TELT, the Franco-Italian company in charge of the Tav, was described as a piece of "legal acrobacy" as it gives Italy and France another six months to reassess the project while keeping its European Union funding on track until any final decision is taken. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right League party, is a strong supporter of the Tav, while Luigi Di Maio, head of the grassroots 5-Star Movement - the League's coalition partner - opposes it. The project has been stalled for months due to 5-Star's opposition to it. France and the EU - which is paying for 40 percent of the tunnel - could seek damages from Italy if the project is binned. --IANS/AKI vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In the first case of fratricidal firing in Jammu and Kashmir this year, a CRPF trooper shot dead three colleagues and then shot and seriously wounded himself in Udhampur district in Jammu and Kashmir, police said on Thursday. Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) Constable Ajit Singh opened fire at Head Constables Umeed Singh, Yogendra Sharma and Pokarmal inside their camp in Battal Ballian area on Wednesday night after a heated exchange of words, killing all three, a police officer said. He then turned his gun on himself, but only succeeded in injuring himself. The incident occurred around 10.40 p.m. What triggered the heated argument was not known. Ajit Singh belongs to Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur, while Umeed Singh belonged to Haryana's Rewari, Sharma to Delhi and Pokarmal to Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu. Sporadic incidents of fratricidal firing have been seen among security forces, especially among those personnel posted in conflict zones like Jammu and Kashmir or Maoist-hit areas. Security forces have in the past engaged counsellors to address the problem which have been attributed to long duty hours in hostile environment, separation from families, lack of recreational activities and a weak command and control structure. Better command and control, frequent leave facilities to join families and adequate recreational facilities are some of the remedial measures suggested by counsellors to address the problem. --IANS sq/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) trooper shot dead three colleagues and then shot and seriously wounded himself in Udhampur district in Jammu and Kashmir, police said on Thursday. CRPF Constable Ajit Singh fired shot dead the three colleagues inside a camp in Battal Ballian area on Wednesday night after a heated exchange of words, a police officer said. The incident occurred around 10.40 p.m. Ajit Singh belongs to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh. The deceased were identified as Head Constables Umeed Singh of Rewari (Haryana), Yogendra Sharma (Delhi) and Pokarmal of Jhunjhunu (Rajasthan). This is the first fratricidal incident of this year in Jammu and Kashmir. Security forces have in the past engaged counsellors to address the problem which have been attributed to long duty hours in hostile environment, separation from families, lack of recreational activities and a weak command and control structure. Better command and control, frequent leave facilities to join families and adequate recreational facilities are some of the remedial measures suggested by counsellors to address the problem. --IANS sq/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The gleeful 'Holi hai (Its Holi) filled the air as smiling young children and elders played Holi with complete abandon. The entire city looked joyous and intoxicated with a celebratory fervour. People enjoyed with families and friends the festival of colours. They smeared each other with dry gulal and colours with full fervor. Children were happy to generously use their spray guns -- something that is a no-no otherwise -- and pichkaris (water guns). They were also seen on by-lanes of their residential areas and on top of their buildings throwing water-filled balloons and shouting "bura na maano Holi hai" (Don't mind, it is Holi). Nobody mind the liberty friends and even casual acquaintances take with one on Holi. That is the spirit of the Hindu spring festival, also called the festival of colours. Dressed unusually and with coloured faces and funny headgears, people were seen roaming around in groups. Some were also dancing to the beats of drums and Bollywood songs. The busy roads of the national capital were nearly empty. THe Delhi Police had increased the security across the city to control any incident of hooliganism during the celebrations and ensure a happy festival. The police had requested people to obey rules for safe celebration and had put up pickets at various points to keep check traffic rules violations. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal extended his greetings on the occasion of Holi. "A very Happy Holi", the Chief Minister tweeted, though he stayed away from the celebrations as a mark of respect to the CRPF troopers who were killed in the Pulwama terror attack. Holi, an ancient Hindu spring festival originating from the Indian subcontinent, is celebrated predominantly in India but has also spread to other areas of Asia and parts of the Western world through the diaspora from the Indian subcontinent. The festival of colours also signifies the victory of good over evil, the beginning of spring season, end of winter bringing in the air the fragrance of flowers and aura of warmth, gaiety and joy. --IANS akk/mak/oeb/pcj (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) West Bengal joined the rest of the nation in celebrating the festival of Holi - or Dol Jatra as it is called in this part of the country - with colours, song and prayers, amid stepped-up security on Thursday. Thousands of people from various parts of India and abroad congregated at Santiniketan - in Bolpur of Birbhum district, about 180 km from Kolkata - where Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore had reintroduced Dol Jatra as Basantotsav or spring festival in the Visva Bharati university he founded. The Santiniketan campus oozed mirth and gaiety as people jived on the streets to the tune of Tagore songs that exhorted everyone to mingle in joy. Early in the morning, the darkness of the night was dispelled with girls and boys of Visva-Bharati, accompanied by their teachers, going around the campus singing "Ore Grihabasi, khol dwar khol, laglo je dol (Oh dwellers! Open your doors, it is Dol)". The girls, resplendent in saffron sarees and garlands of fragrant flowers, and boys in traditional kurta-punjabi, then took part in a song and dance routine at the Ashram Math (main university ground). The function ended with everyone smearing the other with 'abir'. The curtains came down on the festivities in the evening, with the rendering of Tagore's dance drama "Shyama" by the university students. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) celebrated the day as the 533rd birth anniversary of Vaishnav saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu at its global headquarters in Nadia district's Mayapur, about 130 km from here. A joyful spectacle of global harmony was visible as devotees belonging to 300 ethnicities from over 95 countries, converged to celebrate the occasion through devotional songs and cultural programmes and discourses about the life and teachings of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The excitement of the devotees was palpable as they gleefully breaking the shackles of colour, creed, region, caste, and country rubbed shoulder to shoulder ib bliss. The festival was a blend of north Indian and Bengali traditions in the eastern metropolis. While those from north India celebrated it in their traditional style, rubbing and sprinkling colours on each other, the Bengalis exchanged sweets and pleasantries. As the morning progressed, the youngsters moved around their neighbourhoods in groups, throwing water missiles and smearing coloured powder on one another. In parts of the state, the festival is marked by placing the idols of Krishna and Radha on a picturesquely decorated palanquin, which is carried by the devotees around the town. People dance around and sing hymns in joy, and spray coloured water and smear gulal on each other. --IANS ssp/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Delhi Police, which had made adequate security arrangements to ensure peaceful Holi celebrations on Thursday, said it issued over 13,000 traffic violations tickets including for drunk driving and fielded over 4,000 calls reporting quarrels. According to Delhi Police's Additional PRO, Anil Mittal, the Police Control Room (PCR) received over 4,000 calls of quarrel-related incidents on Holi. "Total challans (tickets) issued today for traffic violations are 13,219 that including 431 for interception and 1,591 for drunken driving. Drunken driving cases reduced by about 300 this year," he said. Last year as per the Delhi Police data, over 9,300 people were challaned and 1,900 were booked for drunken driving. Adequate arrangements were made by the joint team of local districts and traffic police to ensure safety and security of people and teams with alcometers were deployed at major intersections and vulnerable points to detect and prosecute traffic violators, the officer added. --IANS sp/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress-led UDF in Kerala on Thursday denied the CPI-M's charge of an "unholy nexus" between the Congress and the BJP and asserted that it was going to win all 20 Lok Sabha seats in the state. Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala told the media that CPI-M state Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan had made the statement after knowing the "stark reality" as to what would happen to the Left Front in the polls. "They have now realised that it's going to be pretty tough for them as it's going to be 20 out of 20 for the UDF. Balakrishnan's statement is nothing but taking anticipatory bail," said Chennithala. Kerala goes to the polls on April 23 to elect 20 Lok Sabha members. The Congress-led UDF won 12 seats in 2014 and the CPI-M-led LDF eight. On Wednesday, Balakrishnan alleged that an "unholy alliance" between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had surfaced and that the BJP was contemplating putting up weak candidates in five Lok Sabha constituencies to favour the Congress. "None who takes rice as the staple food in Kerala is going to buy this theory of the CPI-M. Across the country, it's the Congress which is taking on the BJP/RSS combine and the CPI-M says we are hand in glove. It's an absurd theory," added Chennithala. "The whole of India knows that the fight is between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi and the people here realise that every vote for the CPI-M in Kerala is going to help Modi." --IANS sg/mr/arm (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rome, March 22 (IANS/AKI) Italy's far-right Interior Minister and Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini said that he will not attend a lunch in Rome with China's President Xi Jinping during his visit to Italy on Friday and Saturday. "I won't be attending the lunch with Chinese President Xi Jinping as I will be (campaigning) in Basilicata," Salvini told Radio 24 on Thursday. "League party representatives will be there," he added. A centre-right alliance including Salvini's League party hopes to triumph in regional polls being held on Sunday in the southern Basilicata region, following centre-right victories in Sardinia and Abruzzo last month. --IANS/AKI vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Rome, March 20 (IANS/AKI) Italian authorities "continue to follow" the case of 23-year-old Italian aid worker Silvia Romano, who was kidnapped in southern Kenya in November "but haven't yet got to the bottom of it", Premier Giuseppe Conte said on Wednesday. "We are following the case," Conte told a group of students during a meeting with them at Rome's private Luiss university. "There was a moment when we seemed close to solving it. But unfortunately, we haven't yet got to the bottom of it," he added. The search for Romano took a new twist last month after Kenyan media reports cited police as saying they believed she was involved in the lucrative ivory trafficking business and may have been abducted after she failed to pay for ivory pieces supplied to her by one of the suspected kidnappers. Romano was seized from her accommodation in an armed attack on November 20 in a coastal area of Kilifi County, 80 km from Malindi. She was working as a volunteer for the Africa Milele NGO based in Torno in Italy's eastern March region. Initial lines of enquiry followed by Kenyan investigators included Roman's kidnapping by a local gang aiming to get a ransom for her release or by militants from Islamist militant group al-Shabab. President Sergio Mattarella mentioned Romano in a Christmas address, saying the country hoped she would be returning home "soon" and that volunteers like her were "a source of pride for Italy". --IANS/AKI vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Yokohama (Japan), March 22 (IANS/AKI) Japan has donated 69 million dollars to the United Nations World Food Programme to provide vital aid to 28 countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, with the biggest shares of the money earmarked for Yemen and Iraq, WFP said Thursday in a statement. "We are very grateful for the generous support from the government and people of Japan, which contributes to our work transitioning from humanitarian emergencies to longer-term development," said Naoe Yakiya, Director of WFP Japan's Office. "Today, we are facing a rise in the number of hungry people globally, reaching 821 million people...without peace and stability, we will not achieve our long-term goal of Zero Hunger," he added. The Japanese funding will go towards food, nutrition and initiatives to build resilience in vulnerable populations, the statement said. $18 million will be used to give continued support needy families in war-wracked Yemen where over 20 million people are struggling to get enough to eat each day, the statement noted. Japan continues to support the Sahel where conflict and climate change have left millions facing hunger and malnutrition, and the funds will also be used to promote children's full growth and the health of pregnant and breastfeeding women, in order to help change lives and break the cycle of poverty, said the WFP statement said. A total of $3.5 million of life-saving assistance will be given to Malian refugees in Mauritania and to people who have fled their homes due to conflict and food shortages in Mali. Host communities sheltering the Malian refugees and internally displaced persons will also receive aid, the statement added. Japan is one of WFP's top donors and has contributed $$958 million to the UN agency since 2014, said the statement. --IANS/AKI vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Lok Sabha elections in Kerala could see two prominent persons entering the poll fray -- the state's senior most Director General of Police Jacob Thomas and leading businessman Kochouseph Chittilappilly. The state will vote in the third phase on April 23. A source in the know of things told IANS talks have been initiated in this regard by Twenty20 Kizhakkambalam, a corporate social responsibility initiative of the Rs 1,500 crore Anna-Kitex group of companies, based near here. "Sabu M. Jacob, Managing Director of Anna-Kitex, is speaking to Thomas and Chittilappilly, and one of them could be fielded from the Chalakudy Lok Sabha seat in the Thrissur district," the source said. The seat was represented in the outgoing Lok Sabha by CPI-M-backed independent and ace comedian Innocent. He has been retained by the party. Taking on him is senior Congress leader and United Democratic Front (UDF) convenor Benny Behanan. Incidentally, 19 members of Twenty20 contested the Kizhakkambalam panchayat elections in 2015 as independents, where the company is based, and 17 of them won. "They have a support base of close to 30,000 voters in their area, which helped them win the local body polls," said the source. Thomas was once the blue-eyed boy of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The day Vijayan assumed office as the Chief Minister in May 2016, Thomas was given the plum post of the state vigilance chief. However, he was moved out next year and was later suspended in 2017 by Vijayan for violation of the All India Service Rules. Thomas continues to be under suspension. Thomas will retire from the service in 2020, but will have to quit if he wants to contest the elections. Chittilappilly is a leading businessman and Managing Director of V Guard Industries Ltd with interests in electronic appliances, amusement parks and textiles. He has been in the news for conducting business in an upright manner. In 2011, Chittilappilly famously donated one kidney to a stranger, a truck driver, and started an organ donor chain. --IANS sg/arm/pcj (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) "Game of Thrones" star Kit Harington has compared US President Donald Trump to the fantasy show's 'mad boy-king' Joffrey Baratheon. He said that if people had paid attention to the HBO hit, they could have avoiding living in a "Thrones-like world". "I think it's always been about two things for me," variety.com quoted Harington as saying. He added: "About dysfunctional families -- or families in general, always where the best drama is -- and the everlasting idea that people who seek power are very often the last people who should have it. Unfortunately, we're leaving 'Thrones' with a Joffrey as the President of the United States of America." Joffrey is the mad boy-king who was killed in the fourth season of the show, which is aired in India on Star World. "I'm deeply sad of the state of the world as 'Thrones' ends. Because if it was prophetic, you'd hope that people would have watched 'Thrones' and tried to avoid some of the situations these characters find themselves in, and I feel like we are living in a more 'Thrones'-like world." Harington also addressed the degree to which the show could be controversial, raising questions over time about, for instance, its depiction of female characters and the degree of violence and assault. "I think it's an amazing fantasy because it deals with incredibly difficult and varied, very human characters. It has incredibly complex female and male characters in it. It was controversial, very controversial at times, but it asks questions of its audience and it asks questions of its viewership," he said. "And so in that way it did what dramas should do, and it raised the idea of what fantasy could be. That could seem less important than other things, but it's always been sneered upon, the fantasy genre, as being less important. But I think it's an amazing genre and a genre with endless scope." --IANS sug/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) NASA is inviting applications from start-ups to take part in a three-month pilot programme to develop new technologies for space. Applications will be accepted till April 7 and a total of 10 companies will be selected for the programme, the US space agency said. The accelerator programme will focus on technologies that can be applied to space -- including geospatial analytics, digital design coupled to advanced manufacturing, autonomous systems, applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). "We want to assist these companies in developing their own technologies and becoming commercial successes. NASA will also benefit by collaborating with these companies," said Tom Cwik, Manager of the Space Technology Office at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Based in Los Angeles, the accelerator programme begins on July 15. After developing their concepts and business plans over a three-month period, the teams will then pitch their results to the NASA community, co-sponsors and private investors at a demo day in October, NASA said. "Industry is developing new technologies rapidly, using new tools and methods in software development and other areas," said Cwik. "It's incumbent upon us to learn from developments in industry and contribute our vast expertise in technology as we prepare to use them in our future missions," Cwik added. --IANS gb/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday announced new gun laws banning all military-style semi-automatic and assault The announcement follows the terror attack on two mosques in the southern city of Christchurch on March 15 that left at least 50 persons dead and another 50 injured, reports Efe news. The government of New Zealand will amend the gun laws with Prime Minister Adern expecting to have the new legislation in place by April 11 and take measures to prevent the spread of hate messages on social media. New Zealand Police published on Thursday a list of almost 30 victims of the terror attack perpetrated against the two mosques. The list, which contains the names of 29 people, follows the first list with the names of five victims, which was published on Wednesday. One victim was identified as Mucaad Ibrahim, who, at the age of 3, is the youngest of all those killed. The second list includes Sayyad Milne, a 14-year-old New Zealand student who was buried on Thursday in the Memorial Park Cemetery in Christchurch as well as Muhammad Haziq Mohd-Tarmizi, a 17-year-old Malaysian whose disappearance had earlier been reported. A public burial is planned for Haji-Daoud Nabi, a 71-year-old Afghan who migrated to New Zealand in the 1970s and who saved some lives during the armed attack at the Al Noor mosque. Abdul Azis, who has become a "hero" of the tragedy by throwing a automatic teller machine at the attacker in the Linwood mosque driving him away, received a spontaneous tribute from New Zealanders. Flowers were placed in front of his store, while the community continues to collect money to help him and his family, according to Radio New Zealand. Out of a total of 50 people injured, 29 are still hospitalized, of which nine remain in serious condition, including a 4-year-old girl who was transferred to Auckland on the North Island earlier this week. New Zealand is preparing to pay tribute to the victims on Friday, one week after the attack by Australian Brenton Tarrant, aged 28, while the mosques of Al Noor and Linwood will open their doors for their usual Friday prayers. Tarrant, the only suspect in the massacre, will appear on April 5 before the New Zealand High Court facing a charge of murder and likely more charges. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday announced a ban on all military-style semi-automatics and assault rifles, six days after a terror attack on two mosques in Christchurch left 50 people dead. "On March 15, our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too," Ardern said, Efe news reported. "Six days after this attack, we are announcing a ban on all military style semi-automatics (MSSA) and assault rifles in New Zealand. "Related parts used to convert these guns into MSSAs are also being banned, along with all high-capacity magazines," she added. An amnesty will be enacted for weapons to be handed in and officials are developing a buyback scheme. The new legislation is expected to be in place by April 11. Police Minister Stuart Nash said the bill will include narrow exemptions for legitimate business use, including professional pest control, as well as for police and defence forces, while issues such as access for mainstream international sporting competitions were being worked through. "We have also acknowledged that some guns serve legitimate purposes in our farming communities, and have therefore set out exemptions for 0.22 caliber rifles and shotguns commonly used for duck hunting," Nash said. At 3 p.m. on Thursday, an order under section 74A(c) of the Arms Act - signed by the Governor-General to reclassify a wider range of semi-automatic weapons under the act - went into effect in the interim while legislation is drafted. Police Commissioner Mike Bush said Thursday that "the detail means that people who were prior to 3 p.m. lawfully in possession of firearms such as semi-automatic assault rifles are no longer lawfully in possession of those firearms due to the change in categorization. "We'll be working with everyone to ensure we give them every assistance to take those firearms off them, get them out of circulation and into a place of safekeeping so those firearms can never be used again in an act of violence so horrific as we saw last Friday," he said. Bush also said police had completed the identification of all 50 victims. "It is a landmark for this process. Over 120 people - forensic experts, police, international experts, coroners, pathologists - have been involved working as best as humanly possible to make that happen out of respect for the families of those victims," he said. The police list of victims includes Mucaad Ibrahim, who at the age of three is the youngest of those killed. A public burial is planned for later Thursday for Haji-Daoud Nabi, a 71-year-old Afghan who migrated to New Zealand in the late 1970s and who saved lives by shielding people during the shooting at Al Noor mosque. Abdul Azis, who has become a hero of the tragedy after driving the attacker away by throwing an electronic payment transaction machine and a gun at him outside the Linwood mosque, received tributes from New Zealanders. Flowers were placed in front of his store while the community continued to collect money to help him and his family, according to Radio New Zealand. Out of a total of 50 people injured, 29 are still hospitalized, of which nine remain in critical condition, including a 4-year-old girl who was transferred to Auckland's Starship hospital. On Friday, one week after the terror attack by a white supremacist, New Zealand will pay tribute to the victims with the call to prayer broadcast nationally at 1.30pm, followed by two minutes of silence. The 28-year-old Australian sole suspect in the massacre will appear in court on April 5 charged with murder. It is likely he will face further charges. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Military-style semi-automatics and assault rifles will be banned under stronger new gun laws announced by the New Zealand government on Thursday. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the gun law reforms at a press conference, New Zealand Herald reported. The government has banned the weapons less than a week after a shooter opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, killing 50 people, and injuring 50 others. The country's rules around guns have been in the spotlight since last Friday's mosque shootings in Christchurch. Attorney-General David Parker said over the weekend that semi-automatic guns would be banned and 70,000 people have signed a petition against these types of weapons. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Military style semi-automatic weapons (MSSA) and assault rifles are to be banned in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Thursday, a week after 50 people were massacred in two mosques by an Australian man. The New Zealand government has also moved to ban a number of accessories which can take lower capacity semi-automatic firearms to weapons of greater killing might, Xinhua news agency reported Related parts used to convert those guns into MSSAs are also being banned, along with all high-capacity magazines. Ardern would not rule out a gun register system in the longer-term tranche of changes into gun laws. The ban began at 3 p.m. local time on Thursday, said Ardern, who is confident that the vast majority of New Zealanders will support the changes. The opposition National Party has endorsed the ban on MSSAs. Leader Simon Bridges agreed that the public doesn't need access to military style semi-automatic weapons. The total number of firearms in New Zealand is estimated to range between 1.2 million and 1.5 million. It is understood that an amnesty period will apply and a buy-back scheme will be detailed soon. The announcement follows the terror attack on two mosques in the southern city of Christchurch on March 15 that left at least 50 persons dead and another 50 injured. The government will also take measures to prevent the spread of hate messages on social media, Efe news reported. New Zealand Police published on Thursday a list of almost 30 victims of the terror attack perpetrated against the two mosques. The list, which contains the names of 29 people, follows the first list with the names of five victims, which was published on Wednesday. One victim was identified as Mucaad Ibrahim, who, at the age of 3, is the youngest of all those killed. The second list includes Sayyad Milne, a 14-year-old New Zealand student who was buried on Thursday in the Memorial Park Cemetery in Christchurch as well as Muhammad Haziq Mohd-Tarmizi, a 17-year-old Malaysian whose disappearance had earlier been reported. A public burial is planned for Haji-Daoud Nabi, a 71-year-old Afghan who migrated to New Zealand in the 1970s and who saved some lives during the armed attack at the Al Noor mosque. Abdul Azis, who has become a "hero" of the tragedy by throwing a automatic teller machine at the attacker in the Linwood mosque driving him away, received a spontaneous tribute from New Zealanders. Flowers were placed in front of his store, while the community continues to collect money to help him and his family, according to Radio New Zealand. Out of a total of 50 people injured, 29 are still hospitalized, of which nine remain in serious condition, including a 4-year-old girl who was transferred to Auckland on the North Island earlier this week. New Zealand is preparing to pay tribute to the victims on Friday, one week after the attack by Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, while the mosques of Al Noor and Linwood will open their doors for their usual Friday prayers. Tarrant, the only suspect in the massacre, will appear on April 5 before the New Zealand High Court facing a charge of murder and likely more charges. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Bihar on Thursday celebrated Holi with fervour. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar celebrated only with dry colours but there were no festivities at the residence of RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his wife Rabri Devi. Drenched in different colours, people in large numbers took to the streets since morning, splashing water and colour on one another. Many sang traditional Holi songs. It was a low key affair at the Chief Minister's residence. Nitish Kumar met Janata Dal-United (JD-U) leaders and workers besides urging the people of the state to celebrate Holi with a spirit of love and brotherhood. The Lalu Prasad family did not celebrate Holi in memory of the 40 CRPF troopers killed by a suicide bomber in Pulwama. Lalu Prasad is undergoing treatment at a hospital in Ranchi. Last year too, his family did not celebrate Holi in his absence. The RJD chief's younger son Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday that his family and the party won't celebrate Holi in view of the Pulwama attack of February 14. --IANS ik/arm/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Samsung on Thursday said it will release its first 5G smartphone in the first week of April in South Korea, making it the world's first mobile device with the next-generation network capability. The South Korean tech giant said Galaxy S10's 5G model will go on sale on April 5, without a pre-order programme, Yonhap news agency reported. Though Samsung did not disclose the price, it is expected to cost around 1.5 million won ($1,332) in the domestic market, according to industry sources. On Monday, the state-run National Radio Research Agency said Galaxy S10's 5G model has passed signal verification test, giving the green light for its launch in the South Korean market. South Korea's three mobile carriers have been preparing to roll out their commercial 5G service for Samsung's smartphone built for the high-speed network. Samsung's schedule is about a week earlier than the US carrier Verizon's plan to launch its first 5G smartphone service on Motorola's MotoZ3, essentially a 4G phone with a special attachment that gives it 5G capability, in Chicago and Minneapolis on April 11. --IANS gb/pcj (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A court has ordered Saudi Arabian Airlines or Saudia to compenstate a passenger and his family with about $16,430 because their flight from Jeddah to New York was delayed by 21 hours. The Court of Appeals in Riyadh upheld a ruling issued by the Administrative Court and said that the airline had also changed the seat numbers of the passengers on the return flight, the Saudi Gazette reported. The court awarded the passenger compensation for psychological and financial harm he had sustained, in addition to legal expenses. Mohamed Abdullah Al-Shidi, the passenger, expressed happiness over the court ruling, the daily said. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Hospitals will soon be able to monitor patients with congestive heart failure in the comfort of their own homes, thanks to a new type of toilet-seats that can measure biometrics during "natural" processes. The toilet seats are equipped to measure the electrical and mechanical activity of the heart, and can monitor heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygenation levels, and the patient's weight and stroke volume, which is the amount of blood pumped out of the heart at every beat. Created by a team of researchers from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, the toilet seats will be brought through the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance process by the researchers' company Heart Health Intelligence, the institute said in a statement on Wednesday. The toilet seats would be purchased by hospitals and issued to heart failure patients after discharge, it added. Algorithms in the seats will analyse the data, and with further development warn of deteriorating condition. The system will pick up deteriorating conditions before the patients even realise they are symptomatic, said Nicholas Conn, a postdoctoral fellow at RIT and founder and CEO of Heart Health Intelligence. --IANS gb/pcj (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An Indian soldier was killed in Pakistan firing on the Line of Control (LoC) on Thursday in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district, leading to heavy firing exchanges as the Indian side retaliated, an official said. "Rifleman Yash Pal, who was injured in an unprovoked Pakistan ceasefire violation in Sunderbani sector of the LoC, succumbed to critical injuries," Defence Ministry spokesman, Lt Col Devender Anand said. He said that Pakistan violated the ceasefire violation in Sunderbani and Nowshera sectors of the LoC in Rajouri. While Pakistan opened fire with mortars and small arms in Sunderbani sector since the morning, the ceasefire violation in Nowshera began at about 2.45 p.m., he said. "It is still going on and the Indian Army is retaliating befittingly at both these places," Lt Col Anand said. --IANS sq/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actors Sushant Singh Rajput and Tushar Pandey, who have a connection with Delhi, have been bonding over the city while shooting for their film "Chhichhore" here. "We have so much fun on and off sets. Sushant and I have spoken so much about books as he too is an avid reader. Delhi is one of the most talked about topics," Tushar said in a statement. "Sushant is an absolutely wonderful person and a brilliant co-actor. He has an extremely positive energy and is always there to help," he added. "Chhichhore", directed by Nitesh Tiwari, also stars Shraddha Kapoor. It will release in August 2019. --IANS nn/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Tens of thousands of devotees converged in the Sikh holy town Anandpur Sahib on Thursday to offer prayers at Gurdwara Keshgarh Sahib during 'Hola Mohalla celebrations that coincides with Holi festival. Anandpur Sahib is home to the second most important Sikh shrine after Harmandar Sahib, popularly known as Golden Temple, in Amritsar. "Thousands of people have arrived here from across the region to participate in the Hola Mohalla celebrations," priest Davinder Singh told IANS over telephone. Wearing traditional dresses and carrying weapons, hundreds of Nihang Sikhs assembled for the celebrations and showed their mastery of the Gatka martial art, a treat to the visitors. The three-day celebrations coincide with the Hindu festival Holi. Anandpur Sahib town and shrine, located about 85 km from Chandigarh, are famous. It was here in 1699 that the 10th Guru, Gobind Singh, baptized five men and founded the Khalsa Panth, which is the modern day Sikh Chief Minister Amarinder Singh greeted the people with a call for celebrating the traditional Indian festival with the colours of unity, tolerance, brotherhood and compassion. In a message, he urged people to celebrate the festival in harmony, brotherhood and amity. Elsewhere in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh, the festival of Holi was celebrated with a lot of enthusiasm. More than 1,000 police personnel and officials were deployed at various places in Chandigarh to manage rowdy crowds. --IANS vg/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A militant was killed and two policemen and a civilian injured on Thursday as security forces and militants battled each other in three places in the Kashmir Valley, authorities said. While the first gunfight erupted in Sopore town, two gun battles were reported later from Bandipora and Baramulla districts. Police said one militant was killed in the exchange of fire between security forces and the militants in Mir Mohalla of Hajin area in Bandipora. "One militant has been killed so far. Another militant is still holed up inside a house where a 12-year-old boy is also believed to be stuck. Another civilian was safely evacuated from the house during the operation," a police officer said. According to a tweet by the police, the two civilians were being held hostage by the hiding militants. While one was rescued safely with the assistance of security forces and community members, the other, reportedly a minor, was still trapped. Police said security forces started a cordon and search operation in Hajin - once considered a zone "liberated" from militant control - following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there. The militants who were in hiding opened fire at the security forces in Mir Mohalla, sparking off the gunfight. Another gunfight started in Kandi area of Baramulla after security forces resumed on Thursday morning a search operation which was suspended due to darkness on Wednesday evening. "As the search operation was resumed, militants fired at the security forces, triggering an encounter in Kandi," the officer said. Two policemen - a Station House Officer (SHO) and his security guard - and a civilian were injured earlier on Thursday when militants hurled a grenade at security forces in Warpora area of Sopore town and then opened fire. "Both the policemen have been shifted to Srinagar for specialized treatment. The operation against the militants is going on," a police officer said. A civilian sustained bullet injury in his leg in the Sopore gunfight. He too was shifted to hospital and his condition was stated to be stable. As a precaution, authorities suspended mobile Internet service in Sopore town. --IANS sq/vd (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two policemen and a civilian were injured on Thursday as security forces and militants battled each other in three places in the Kashmir Valley, authorities said. While the first gunfight erupted in Sopore town, two gun battles were reported later from Bandipora and Baramulla districts. Police said security forces started a cordon and search operation in Hajin area in Bandipora district following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there. The militants who were in hiding opened fire at the security forces in Mir Mohalla. "Security forces are carrying out the operation with caution as two civilians are reportedly inside the house from where the militants are firing at the security forces," a police officer said. Hajin was once considered a zone "liberated" from militant control. Another gunfight started in Kandi area of Baramulla district after security forces resumed on Thursday morning a search operation which was suspended due to darkness on Wednesday evening. "As the search operation was resumed, militants fired at the security forces, triggering an encounter in Kandi," the officer said. Two policemen - a Station House Officer (SHO) and his security guard - and a civilian were injured earlier on Thursday when militants hurled a grenade at security forces in Warpora area of Sopore town. "Both the policemen have been shifted to Srinagar for specialized treatment. The operation against the militants is going on," a police officer said. A civilian sustained bullet injury in his leg in the Sopore gunfight. He too was shifted to hospital and his condition was stated to be stable. As a precaution, authorities suspended mobile Internet service in Sopore town. --IANS sq/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) British Prime Minister Theresa May has told the public she is "on their side", laying the blame for the delay to Brexit squarely with MPs. Speaking from Downing Street, May said people were "tired of infighting and political games" and it was "high time" politicians made a decision on the next steps, the BBC reported on Wednesday. Earlier, May wrote to EU Council President Donald Tusk requesting to delay Brexit until June 30. She said the postponement was a "matter of great personal regret". The Prime Minister reiterated she would not be willing to extend Brexit any further than that date -- despite appeals from some MPs for a longer extension to give time for a change in direction. The UK is set to leave the EU next Friday, on March 29, unless the law is changed. All other 27 EU members would have to agree any extension beyond that date. Tusk said he believed the EU would agree to a short extension, but only if the withdrawal deal negotiated by Theresa May is signed off by MPs next week. It has already been overwhelmingly rejected twice. In her statement, May said: "Of this I am absolutely sure. You the public have had enough. "You are tired of the infighting, tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our children's schools, our National Health Service, knife crime. "You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side." She said it was "now time for MPs to decide" whether they wanted to leave with her deal, no deal or whether they chose not to leave at all - the latter she warned could cause "irreparable damage to public trust" in politicians. "So far Parliament has done everything possible to avoid making a choice," said May. "Motion after motion and amendment after amendment has been tabled without Parliament ever deciding what it wants. All MPs have been willing to say is what they do not want." She made a final appeal to MPs to back her deal and told the public: "You just want us to get on with it and that is what I am determined to do." --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US President Donald Trump has attacked the late Senator John McCain, complaining that he "didn't get a thank you" for his state funeral. "We sent him on the way, but I wasn't a fan of John McCain," the President said during a visit to an Ohio tank factory, the BBC reported on Wednesday. Trump has repeatedly assailed the late Arizona senator in recent days, reigniting a feud that dates back to before his presidency. The Vietnam War veteran died of brain cancer last August at the age of 81. During his visit on Wednesday to the tank factory in Lima, Ohio, the president renewed his assault on McCain. "I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve," he told workers at the factory. "I don't care about this, I didn't get a thank you. That's OK." Trump approved the military flight of McCain's remains from Arizona to Washington, but it was Congress that accorded the late senator the honour of lying in state. The US president said McCain "didn't get the job done for our great vets and the VA" by refusing to repeal Obamacare and attacked him for "a war in the Middle East", in reference to the senator's support for the Iraq War. "Not my kind of guy," the president said. "But some people like him and I think that's great." The president revived his spat with McCain on Saturday by tweeting that the late senator had backed the so-called Steele dossier, an unverified 2016 document by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, claiming ties between Trump and the Kremlin. On Sunday, Trump went after McCain again, saying the "last in his class" senator had sent "the Fake Dossier to the FBI". Asked by a reporter about his attacks while hosting the Brazilian president at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said: "I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be." Trump has regularly clashed with McCain going back to his presidential campaign. --IANS pgh/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two policemen were injured on Thursday in an ongoing gunfight between security forces and militants in Jammu and Kashmir's Sopore town. Police said a Station House Officer (SHO) and his security guard were injured when militants holed up in a house hurled a grenade at the security forces during a cordon and search operation in Warpora area. "Both the policemen have been shifted to Srinagar for specialized treatment. The operation against the militants is going on," a police officer said. When the security personnel were encircling the militant hideout, the militants opened fire at the security forces, triggering a gun battle. As a precaution, authorities have suspended mobile Internet service in Sopore town. --IANS sq/mr (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Thursday sentenced two more people to life imprisonment over the 2017 lynching of a university student accused of posting blasphemous content on Facebook. Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old mass communications student at Mardan's Abdul Wali Khan University, was beaten and shot dead on April 13, 2017 by a mob that accused him of posting blasphemous content online, reports Efe news. "Judge Mehmoodul Hassan Khattak sentenced Asad Katling and Arif Khan to life imprisonment, while two other suspects, Sabir Mayar and Izhar Ullah, were acquitted due to lack of evidence," said Muhammad Zubair, a spokesperson for the anti-terrorism court in Peshwar. Katling and Khan, a Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf councilor, were found guilty on March 12 but the sentence had been reserved by the judge until Thursday. Mashal Khan's lynching took place on the university campus and was captured on video, which was later circulated on social media. In June 2017, a joint investigation team released a report which said it had found no evidence regarding allegations of blasphemy against Khan. Khan had been outspoken about student rights at the university. "A total of 61 accused were arrested in the case. In February 2018, an anti-terrorism court in Haripur issued its verdict and awarded different sentences to 31 accused and 26 others were acquitted," Zubair said. "The four remaining accused were declared absconders whom the police arrested later and a trial began in the anti-terrorism court in Peshawar," he added. The Pakistani anti-blasphemy law was established in the British colonial era to avoid religious clashes, but in the 1980s several reforms promoted by the dictator Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq led to abuse of the law. Since 1987, there have been more than 1,300 accusations of blasphemy, a crime that in Pakistan can lead to capital punishment, although nobody has ever been executed for it so far. Asia Bibi has become the face of those accused of blasphemy when she was sentenced to death in 2010 after being accused by two women of making offensive comments against the Prophet Muhammad. In January, an appeal against her October 2018 acquittal was rejected by the Supreme Court, which led to protests across the country. --IANS mr/ (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Too many cooks? The Congress party on Tuesday identified three agencies that would manage its digital and social media campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Some more would be hired in the coming days and assigned other tasks. The publicity committee of the party is headed by party leader Anand Sharma. But there was much disgruntlement in the team some members complained to Congress President Rahul Gandhi that they were not being kept in the loop. The Congress chief first asked senior leader Jairam Ramesh to take part in the meetings, and when that alone did not help, ... The banking industry hasnt given many reasons to celebrate. The country has stumbled from crisis to crisis, as it fought a rearguard action against the European Unions rules for handling failing lenders. This week, EU judges gave Rome a rare moment of joy. The blocs general court, its second-highest tribunal, ruled on Tuesday that the 2014 rescue of Banca Tercas SpA by the Italian deposit guarantee scheme didnt break the law. Italian politicians and regulators feel vindicated. Theyve long argued that deposit insurance funds should be used not just to compensate savers, but also to help struggling banks a position the has opposed. The case has implications that go well beyond a tiny lender in Abruzzo, one of Italys smallest regions. Many in Rome believe they could have acted faster to save other struggling banks by using this tool for example, the four small banks that were resolved in 2015. Antonio Patuelli, the head of Italys banking association, said EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager should resign. Enzo Moavero Milanesi, the countrys foreign minister, wouldnt rule out seeking damages from the EU. The Commission can now appeal to the European Court of Justice, the EUs highest legal authority. But even if the judgment stands, it will be a Pyrrhic victory for the Italians. Creative use of the deposit guarantee scheme doesnt magically solve the problems of a rescued bank. It simply forces healthier lenders (which contribute to the fund) to share the burden. Any such rescue depletes the scheme, which cannot fulfil its primary mission: To guarantee deposits of up to ^100,000. That makes it more likely that taxpayers will have to step in. A short history of Italys recent banking troubles illustrates this point. After the EU blocked them, the Italian authorities found an imaginative way to let the guarantee fund intervene anyway in saving Tercas: They used a voluntary scheme that doesnt count as state aid. But Banca Popolare di Bari SCpA, which rescued its rival with the help of the fund, now finds itself in need of a new capital injection. Italys banking system has also chipped in to contribute to a separate rescue fund, Atlante, which took over Banca Popolare di Vicenza SpA and Veneto Banca SpA. Atlante failed to turn around the banks, which were eventually liquidated. Finally, the deposit scheme has now intervened to rescue Banca Carige, another troubled lender, by investing in a subordinated bond. Several participating banks, including Intesa Sanpaolo SpA have already written off the investment. This sequence shows that asking industry funds to support troubled banks is not a free lunch. In fact, it rewards bondholders who have lent money to a mismanaged lender, at the expense of shareholders whove invested in a healthier rival. Thats hardly fair. The banking system will also seek to recoup some of costs from its customers, via higher charges. Plus the bigger the burden you place on healthier rivals, the higher the risk of contagion. Letting regulators do what they want with national deposit guarantee schemes may give the authorities an extra degree of freedom in dealing with crises, but it wont solve the fundamental problems. These have to do with the quality of the loan-books of certain banks and, most important, their ability to generate profit in a challenging economic and technological environment. When a bank cant compete, far better to manage its orderly exit than chuck more money at it. Indeed, broader use of these schemes would probably hinder a much-needed reform for European banks: Setting up a joint deposit guarantee across the eurozone. Several countries, including Germany, are opposed to that because they dont want to subsidise weaker banks. But this looks a little rich. As the mooted merger between and Commerzbank AG shows, German lenders are as disaster-prone as anyone else. Ironically, more expansive use of national guarantee funds by or whomever would only make Berlin even more suspicious of setting up a joint one (something coveted by the Italians). Rome should be careful what it wishes for. The writer is an economics columnist for La Repubblica and was a member of the editorial board of Financial Times Bloomberg Ten suspected cattle smugglers were arrested with 130 animals following a raid on Jharkhand-Odisha border in West Singhbhum district on Thursday, a senior police officer said. A police team led by Chaibasa Sub-Divisional Police Officer (Sadar) Amar Kumar Pandey conducted the raid. Around 130 cattle have been recovered from them, the police officer said, adding they were being taken to Odisha's Mayurbhanj district. An inter-state gang was involved in the illegal trade, he said, adding that the gang had a plan to transport the cattle to West Bengal, Bangladesh and various parts of Odisha. The gang was involved in this trade for the last few years, Pandey said. He said some smugglers managed to escape under the cover of jungle. The smugglers treated the cattle cruelly as majority of them bore bruises of red hot iron rod on their bodies, he said. The police said further investigation was on to identify other members of the gang. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An 18-month-old child fell into a 60-feet-deep borewell in Haryana's Balsamand village on Thursday and a massive operation is underway to rescue him, officials said. The child is safe, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) in Hisar, Joginder Singh, said. Oxygen tubes have been dropped to help the child breathe, the officials said, adding that biscuits and juices have also been sent down the borewell. Nadim, fell into the borewell when he was playing with his friends outside his house, according to a villager. "The rescue operations are on. NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) personnel and experts from the army, assisted by local authorities are on the job. As of now, the child is safe," he said. Earthmovers and other equipment have been pressed into service to rescue the child, and a medical team is also at the site, the officials said. On how long could it take to rescue the boy, the DSP said,"Massive operation is on, but these are technical issues and hence, no definite time-line can be given". Police were informed about the incident by the boy's family members and villagers.The child's father is a labourer. Hisar Deputy Commissioner Ashok Kumar Meenasaid legal action will be taken against the person who dug the borewell without taking permission from the department concerned. The accident has again brought to the fore the dangers posed by uncovered borewells, which have turned into death traps for children. In 2006, a massive operation was launched to rescue five-year-old Prince, who had fallen into a borewell in a village in Kurukshetra. He was pulled out safely nearly 48 hours later. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A one-and-a-half year boy fell into a 60-feet borewell in a village in Haryana's Hisar district on Wednesday and a massive operation has been launched to rescue him, officials said. A villager said the incident occurred when Nadim was playing outside his house. A team of experts from the National Disaster Response Force and the Army, assisted by civil and police authorities, has launched a operation rescue him. Earthmoving equipment have been pressed into service to rescue the child and oxygen tubes have been dropped inside the well to help him breathe. A medical team is also present at the site. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two terrorists were killed and three Army personnel, including an officer, were injured in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's in Baramulla district on Thursday, a defence spokesman said. "Two terrorists have been eliminated in Nambalnar operation in Kalantara area of Baramulla," Srinagar-based Defence Spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said. He said the encounter was in progress. Colonel Kalia said an officer and two soldiers were injured in the operation. The injured personnel have been sent to the Army's 92 Base Hospital at Badamibagh Cantonment here. Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in the area earlier in the day based on information on the presence of terrorists here. The terrorists had opened fire on the security forces, who retaliated, triggering a gun battle, he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A powerful explosion ripped through an industrial park in eastern China on Thursday, killing at least six people and injuring over 30 others as it knocked down factory buildings, local officials said. The explosion occurred at about 2:48 pm (local time) following a fire in a fertilizer factory in a chemical industrial park in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, according to the government of Xiangshui county. Eye-witnesses said several workers were trapped after buildings were knocked down by the shockwave stated to be a mild tremor caused by the blast which took place in a pesticide plant. The blast also shattered windows of nearby residential houses. They said many workers were seen running out of the factory covered in blood after the blast, which also shattered windows of many nearby residential houses and damaged cars in the vicinity. At least six people were killed. Thirty people were seriously injured, state run China Daily reported. State-run Xinhua agency reported that 12 people have been rescued after the explosion. The firefighter brigade of Jiangsu said they had mobilized 86 fire trucks to join the rescue mission. Yancheng's education department said school students were among those injured in the explosion. Online maps of the area indicate that there are at least 10 schools close to the site. Beijing Youth Daily reported that the explosion was caused by benzene and occurred in a production area of the plant. Production at other plants in the area were not affected, the report said. A witness surnamed Xie living about 1.5-km from the plant told Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post that all her windows were shattered by the blast. Jiangsu Tianjiayi Chemical Company, which owns the plant, was established in 2007. Its business includes the manufacture of chemical products such as hydroxybenzoic acid. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : The Election Commission has deployed 79 expenditure observers for the April 18 Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu, with three of them for a particular constituency in the city, a senior official said Thursday. A special observer for expenditure has also been appointed for the state, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Satyabrata Sahoo told reporters here. "A total of 76 expenditure observers have been appointed for 38 constituencies, making it two per Parliamentary segment. But three persons have been appointed for Chennai Central," he said. The EC has appointed three expenditure observers for the Chennai-central segment accommodating factors like "expenditure sensitivity and previous history," he said. Therefore, a total of 79 expenditure observers has been deployed in the state and retired IRS officer Madhu Mahajan has been appointed as the special observer for expenditure, he said. Detailing on the implementation of the model code of conduct (MCC), Sahoo said Rs 13.90 crore in cash has been recovered so far and the flying squad teams and static surveillance teams were carrying out "strict implementation" of the MCC. Banks have been informed on instructions of the RBI and EC on cash movement, including the documents to be carried for cash to be filled in ATMs. Of the nearly 22,000 licenced arms in the state, about 18,800 have been deposited while there were some exemptions, he said. Further, nearly three lakh defacements of public and private property have been removed and over 300 cases filed, Sahoo said. Further, as of Wednesday, 30 nominations, including that of a woman, have been received for the Parliamentary polls. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Acting US Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan is being investigated by the Pentagon's inspector general for alleged bias in acquisitions toward his former employer, Boeing, the inspector general has said. "We have informed him that we have initiated this investigation," Dwrena Allen, a spokeswoman for the inspector generals' office, said Wednesday. Investigators are seeking to see if Shanahan, as deputy defense secretary, had violated ethics rules by disparaging Boeing rival Lockheed Martin in meetings at the Pentagon. Government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) last week submitted a complaint to the inspector general, citing several media reports that alleged the 30-year Boeing veteran cast aspersions on Lockheed's F-35 fighter while pushing Boeing's F-15X. "Mr. Shanahan reportedly praised Boeing in discussions about government contracts, said that Boeing would have done much better than its competitor Lockheed Martin had it been awarded a fighter jet contract, and repeatedly 'dumped on' the jet Lockheed produced," CREW said. "Through his conduct and comments, Acting Secretary Shanahan may have violated (Pentagon) ethics rules," it said. A Pentagon spokesman, Tom Crosson, said in a statement that Shanahan "welcomes" the probe. "Acting Secretary Shanahan has at all times remained committed to upholding his ethics agreement," Crosson said. "This agreement ensures any matters pertaining to Boeing are handled by appropriate officials within the Pentagon to eliminate any perceived or actual conflict-of-interest issues with Boeing." Shanahan was the Pentagon's number two until Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, a former Marine Corps general, quit in December after disagreeing with President Donald Trump's Syria withdrawal decision. Trump has yet to nominate a permanent replacement, and it remains unclear if he wants Shanahan to remain in the job. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ruling AIADMK MLA R Kanagaraj died of a massive heart attack at his residence here Thursday, party sources said. He was 64 and is survived by his wife, son and a daughter. Kanagaraj who represented Sulur Assembly constituency in the district, was reading a newspaper when he suddenly collapsed, party sources said. A doctor who rushed to the MLA's house from the neighbourhood declared him dead, the sources added. The body has been kept at his residence in Sultanpet to enable the public pay homage. Kanagaraj worked from the grass-root level for the party for the last 30 years and rose to become a Panahcyat president and was elected MLA in 2016, defeating Congress candidate VM Manoharan by over 36,000 votes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) New Zealand police on Thursday said that all 50 victims of last week's terror attack in Christchurch had now been identified, allowing burials to take place. "I can say that as of a few minutes ago the identification process and to all 50 victims has been completed and all of the next of kin have been advised," said commissioner Mike Bush. "That is a landmark for this process. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The government should appeal against Swami Aseemanand's acquittal in the Samjhauta blast case if Prime Minister Narendra Modi was really the "chowkidar" of the country, AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi has said. Attacking Modi's "main bhi chowkidar" (I too a watchman) campaign, Owaisi at an election rally late last night said, "What kind of a chowkidar are you? 25 Indians are also among the dead in that (Samjhauta blast). Bomb blast is a terrorist offence. How are you a chowkidar?" A special court in Haryana's Panchkula Wednesday acquitted Aseemanand and three others in the Samjhauta Express blast case which had left 68 people, mostly Pakistanis, dead in 2007. "If Modi was really a 'chowkidar' he should immediately announce that the government would appeal against the court verdict," Owaisi said. The blast in the India-Pakistan train took place near Panipat in Haryana on February 18, 2007, when it was on its way to Attari in Amritsar, the last station on the Indian side. "What kind of a chowkidar are you? Why are you afraid of Aseemanand? Why this love? came to know that Aseemanand was associated with RSS at one point of time," the Hyderabad lawmaker said. Referring to the attacks in Pulwama, Uri and the Air Force base in Pathankot, Owaisi sought to know what kind of "chowkidar" was Modi. "This country does not need a chowkidar. This country needs an honest prime minister," Owaisi, who is seeking reelection from the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat, said. "The country needs a person who understands the Constitution, whose spirit is secularism, justice, fraternity and liberty," he added. Owaisi reiterated that China blocking a UN resolution to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar as global terrorist was a failure of the NDA government's "jhoola (swing) diplomacy". He was referring to Chinese president Xi Jinping and Modi sitting in a swing during their visit to Ahmedabad. He slammed BJP chief Amit Shah and some Union ministers for allegedly giving different figures on the number of dead in the Balakot air strikes. Accusing RSS of seeking to weaken the country's composite culture, he said the Hyderabad parliament seat "fights to shatter that". Owaisi said he knew Modi spent 25-30 years of his life in the RSS. "The books written by RSS veterans indicate that they were against the composite culture of the country," he claimed. "In his first speech, Narendra Modi stood up and said in Parliament that we got authority after 1,200 years of slavery. "An MP was sitting next to me, may be from the Congress, he asked me Owaisi saab, what is this 1,200 years. I said he (Modi) was referring to the time when Muslims were rulers of Delhi. The prime minister said that (period) was also a phase of slavery," he said. Owaisi asked if the period when Taj Mahal and the Red Fort were built was also a phase of slavery. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The BJP Thursday announced names of its candidates for 99 of the 147 Assembly seats in Odisha which will go for a simultaneous polls along with Lok Sabha in four phases beginning from April 11. The list was released by the party following the BJP's Central Election Committee meeting in New Delhi. Earlier, the party had announced names of its candidates for Odisha's 10 of the 21 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP, which has set a 120-plus mission for Odisha, has fielded many new entrants who joined the BJP after resigning either from the ruling BJD headed by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik or the Congress. The prominent BJD leaders who recently joined the party and given ticket are Damodar Rout (Balikuda-Ersama) and Kusum Tete (Sundergarh). Congress MLA from Salipur Prakash Behera, who too joined the BJP recently, has been named as the party's candidate from his own constituency. The party has also nominated its senior leaders to contest from different assembly segments. While former minister Samir Dey has been named as the BJP candidate from Cuttack-Barabati assembly segment, former minister Jaynarayan Mishra will contest from Sambalpur seat. BJP's state general secretary Prithviraj Harichandan will contest from Chilika assembly segment, while Padmapur MLA Pradeep Purohit has been re-nominated from the seat. Leader of the BJP Legislature Party K V Singhdeo will contest from his Patnagarh assembly segment, while his wife Sangeeta has been named as a BJP candidate to contest from Bolangir Lok Sabha seat. The BJP's Brajrajnagar MLA Radharani Panda has been named as the party candidate from her own seat. Remuna MLA Gobind Das has also been made a candidate from his constituency. BJP Mahila Morcha president will contest from Nimapara assembly segment, while former minister Surama Padhi will contest from Ranpur. Irani Ray and Bharati Behera will contest from Nayagarh and Khalikote assembly seats respectively. In the first list, the BJP fielded nine women. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress Thursday took a swipe at the BJP for fielding Amit Shah from Gandhinagar in place of Lal Krishna Advani, alleging that first the party veteran was "forcefully" sent to the 'margdarshak mandal' and now his parliamentary constituency has been snatched away. The BJP Thursday announced its first list of 184 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, fielding Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi. The saffron party fielded its president Shah from Gandhinagar in place of 91-year-old Advani, who has won from the seat six times. "First Shri Lal Krishna Advani was forcefully sent to 'Marg Darshak Mandal and now his parliamentary constituency has been snatched," Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said. Advani was made a member of the 'margdarshak mandal' (group of mentors) after the BJP came to power in 2014. "When Modi Ji does not respect elders.Then why will he respect the people's trust? Get rid of BJP, save the country," Surejwala said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Kicking off his campaign in this tourist town, former Union Telecom minister A Raja Thursday claimed that the BJP would be thrown out of power after the elections. There was need to oust both the "dictatorial" government at the Centre and "corrupt" government in Tamil Nadu, Raja, the DMK candidate for the Nilgiris Lok sabha constituency, said. Later talking to reporters, Raja said efforts would be taken to set up a medical college on the premises of Hindustan Photo Films, which, he alleged, was closed by the BJP government. He also alleged that public sector institutions like the BSNL were being handed over to private entrepreneurs by the NDA goverment at the Centre. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Britain's defence ministry has started up a no-deal Brexit operations centre in a nuclear-bomb-proof bunker in central London, a spokesman told AFP on Thursday. "It's a team that's ready to support any action if it becomes necessary," the spokesman said, adding that the new centre has "all the right infrastructure". "As we get closer to a theoretical or possible no-deal, this is the place where the response could be co-ordinated", the spokesman said. Britain is due to leave the European Union on March 29 without a deal, unless one can be agreed in time or an Brexit extension is implemented. The defence ministry in December said 3,500 military personnel would be on stand-by to help government departments for "any contingencies" in case of a no-deal outcome. The spokesman said those troops were now "at readiness". The military's crisis management operation for a no-deal Brexit, which is dubbed "Operation Redfold", was activated at the beginning of this week. The bunker is underneath the Ministry of Defence's main building in Whitehall and is the facility used in times of national emergency, British media reported. Military personnel could be used to help transport food, fuel and other goods into and around the country in case of delays at the border, the reports said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Three teenage schoolgirls in Burundi have been sent to prison to await trial for scribbling on a picture of President Pierre Nkurunziza in textbooks, activists said Thursday. The girls, aged 15, 16 and 17, face up to five years in prison for insulting the head of state if found guilty. Judges said the three girls should be "prosecuted for contempt of the head of state", and ordered them to a juvenile section of a prison in the north of Burundi at Ngozi to await trial, said FENADEB, a civil society umbrella group of 48 organisations. The trio has been in custody since March 12, when they were arrested with three other schoolgirls and a 13-year old boy. The boy was released immediately because he was below the age of criminal responsibility, while the three girls were released without charge. The girls are accused of defacing photographs of Nkurunziza in five textbooks belonging to their school, but teachers pointed out that the books are shared among all the pupils as there are not enough for everyone to have their own. A judicial source, who called the case "very sensitive" and said it was overseen directly by the Attorney General, reported that the girls arrived at the prison on Wednesday afternoon. It was not clear when they might face trial, but the father of one of the girls said they were already "too scared to eat", according to Lewis Mudge, from Human Rights Watch (HRW). In 2016, several schoolchildren were handed prison sentences for similar scribbles on the president's face, and hundreds of pupils expelled, sparking an international outcry. Burundi has been in turmoil since Nkurunziza in April 2015 sought a fiercely-contested third term in office. The violence has claimed at least 1,200 lives and displaced more than 400,000 people between April 2015 and May 2017, according to estimates by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has opened an investigation. "With so many real crimes being committed in Burundi, it's tragic that children are the ones being prosecuted for harmless scribbles," HRW's Mudge added. "Authorities should focus on holding perpetrators of serious rights violations to account instead of jailing schoolchildren for doodles. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The government of the Central African Republic and armed groups that had joined it in a peace deal have reached an agreement to form an "inclusive government," the African Union has said. "The Central African authorities and the 14 armed groups (that) signed the peace accord negotiated in early February in Khartoum agreed to an 'inclusive government' in Addis Ababa," the AU said Wednesday. The deal is the eighth attempt to bring peace to the conflict-wracked, impoverished state since 2012. Signed in the CAR capital Bangui on February 6 after negotiations in Sudan, it brings together the CAR government and 14 armed groups who control most of the country. The agreement called for a series of confidence-building measures, such as establishing joint patrols and the creation of a truth and justice commission within 90 days. Under the peace accord's provisions, President Faustin-Archange Touadera agreed to form an "inclusive" government. But within weeks, the deal was under strain -- five militia groups either pulled out of the new government or rejected its makeup. On Tuesday, 11 of the 14 groups demanded that Prime Minister Firmin Ngrebada step down, calling for a "government of national unity" and direct talks with President Faustin-Archange Touadera. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China has a responsibility not to shield Pakistan, a senior Trump administration official has said, expressing deep disappointment over Beijing's decision to block a bid in the UN to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief as a "global terrorist". Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) led by Azhar claimed responsibility for the February 14 terrorist attack in Kashmir's Pulwama district which killed 40 Indian security personnel. "We think China has a responsibility to also not shield Pakistan and join the community in calling on Pakistan to take action against terrorists operating on its soil," the senior Trump administration official said on Wednesday. After the Pulwama attack, the US, France and Britain moved a resolution in the UN Sanctions Committee of the Security Council to designate Azhar as a "global terrorist". The move suffered a setback as China put a "technical hold" on the proposal for the forth time, a move India termed as disappointing. "We believe that China and the US share a mutual interest in achieving regional stability and peace. And that any failure on the Security Council as part to designate as a terrorist would run counter to this mutual goal that China and the United States have," the official said. "We don't really understand this. China should not be shielding Pakistan's support for known terrorist organisations. So, we're hoping that we can work together on a mutual goal in terms of countering terrorism and upholding our security council responsibility," the official said. The Trump administration's view on China's decision on Azhar came as Germany initiated a move at the European Union to list the JeM leader as a global terrorist. Noting that it was not the first time the JeM attacked India, the official said this was the reason the Trump administration thinks now is the time for Pakistan to crackdown on the terror group. This has been made very clear to the leadership of Pakistan, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. This same group was responsible for other attacks in India like the 2001 Parliament attack, which resulted in a six-month India-Pakistan mobilisation, the official said. The US is also working at the United Nations, urging Pakistan to uphold its responsibilities pursuant to its UN Security Council commitments to deny safe haven and support to terrorists and to freeze the funds and financial assets of entities on the UN Security Council 1267 sanctions list. China has a responsibility not to shield Pakistan and should urge Islamabad to take action against terrorists, a senior Trump administration official has said, expressing deep disappointment over Beijing's decision to block a bid in the UN to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist". Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) led by Azhar claimed responsibility for the February 14 terrorist attack in Kashmir's Pulwama district which killed 40 Indian security personnel. "We think China has a responsibility to not shield Pakistan and join the international community in calling on Pakistan to take action against terrorists operating on its soil," the senior Trump administration official said on Wednesday. After the Pulwama attack, the US, France and Britain moved a resolution in the UN Sanctions Committee of the Security Council to designate Azhar as a "global terrorist". The move suffered a setback as China put a "technical hold" on the proposal for the forth time, a move India termed as disappointing. "We believe that China and the US share a mutual interest in achieving regional stability and peace. And that any failure on the Security Council as part to designate Masood Azhar as a terrorist would run counter to this mutual goal that China and the United States have," the official said. "We don't really understand this. China should not be shielding Pakistan's support for known terrorist organisations. So, we're hoping that we can work together on a mutual goal in terms of countering terrorism and upholding our security council responsibility," the official said. The Trump administration's view on China's decision on Azhar came as Germany initiated a move at the European Union to list the JeM leader as a global terrorist. Noting that it was not the first time the JeM attacked India, the official said this was the reason the Trump administration thinks now is the time for Pakistan to crackdown on the terror group. This has been made very clear to the leadership of Pakistan, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. This same group was responsible for other attacks in India like the 2001 Parliament attack, which resulted in a six-month India-Pakistan mobilisation, the official said. The US is also working at the United Nations, urging Pakistan to uphold its responsibilities pursuant to its UN Security Council commitments to deny safe haven and support to terrorists and to freeze the funds and financial assets of entities on the UN Security Council 1267 sanctions list. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) China said Thursday it had invited European diplomats to visit the restive northwest region of Xinjiang, where Beijing is accused of rights abuses against the ethnic Uighur Muslims. "In order to enhance the understanding of the achievements of Xinjiang's economic and social development in Europe... the Chinese side invited the diplomatic envoys of European countries to visit Xinjiang," foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters. The dates of the visit and other arrangements were under discussion, he said, hoping the trip would allow the diplomats to "experience the stability and harmony of Xinjiang, and the real situation of people of all nationalities living and working in peace and contentment". As many as one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are being held in internment camps in Xinjiang, according to a group of experts cited last year by the United Nations. Beijing claims the camps are "vocational training centres" that help steer people who may be drawn to extremism away from terrorism and reintegrate them into society in a region plagued by violence blamed on Uighur separatists or Islamists. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) People in several states across the country smeared each other with colours, exchanged greetings and savoured sweets to celebrate Holi. Revellers hit the streets, danced to popular songs and to the beat of drums as children ran with sprinklers and water balloons to celebrate the festival of colours. "Holi hai!" rent the air as revellers zoomed their motorcycles across the streets and danced to popular songs. Colours of all hues and the smell of 'gulal' pervaded the streets as people of all ages celebrated the festival. The famous Holi fair in Sujanpur town of Himachal Pradesh's Hamirpur district was cut to a three-day affair instead of four days due to the one-day national mourning after the demise of former Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar. President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi wished the people. "Greetings and best wishes to fellow citizens in India and abroad on the auspicious occasion of Holi. The festival of colours, Holi is a celebration of spring and fraternity in our society. May it bring peace, joy and prosperity to everyone's lives," the official handle of the President tweeted. "Holi is a celebration of the victory of good over evil. It is a festival that expresses joy and camaraderie," Naidu said. Modi hoped that the festival of colours would bring peace, harmony, prosperity and happiness in the people's lives. West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi said the festival of colours was to strengthen the secular fabric of the country and spirit of friendship-fraternity among all sections of the society. Leaders of various political parties wished the people on the auspicious occasion. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she would not be celebrating Holi this year in memory of the CRPF soldiers killed in the Pulwama attack. Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur celebrated Holi at his residence in Shimla. Congress leader and former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, Aam Aadmi Party leaders Sanjay Singh and Gopal Rai wished the people on Holi. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Communist leader and former MLA Balwant Singh died on Thursday here after a brief illness. The 82-year-old was also former Punjab secretary of the CPI(M). Chief minister Amarinder Singh expressed grief over demise of the professor. In his condolence message, the chief minister described Balwant Singh as a leader of masses, who worked throughout his life for the cause of disadvantaged sections of the society, especially to safeguard the interests of industrial workers. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Congress Lok Sabha candidate from Mahabubnagar in Telangana Ch Vamsichand Reddy Thursday sought the support of CPI in the election. Vamsichand Reddy met CPI state secretary Chada Venkat Reddy and sought the cooperation of the Communist party to defeat the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi and the BJP which are allegedly following "undemocratic" and "anti-people" policies, Congress sources said. Venkat Reddy told the Congress nominee that his party would convey its decision after discussing the matter within the party, they said. Vamsichand Reddy is the second Congress candidate to seek the support of CPI. Earlier, state Congress working president A Revanth Reddy, who is the party LS nominee from Malkajgiri here, requested the support of CPI and also Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS). The Congress, CPI, TJS and also TDP were partners in the "grand alliance" against the TRS in the Assembly polls in December last. The "grand alliance" fared poorly at the hustings. The four parties made no efforts to forge an alliance in the Lok Sabha elections. CPI had earlier indicated that it would contest a few seats in Telangana in Lok Sabha polls in alliance with the CPI(M). Andhra Pradesh, which has 25 Lok Sabha segments, goes to the polls in the first phase on April 11. Both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections are being held simultaneously. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Congress Thursday alleged that 3.2 crore casual labourers lost their employment under the Modi government and said the people of India will rise up and defeat the BJP for this "treachery". The Congress' attack on the government came after an English daily cited a National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) report to claim that an estimated 3.2 crore casual labourers lost their jobs in rural India between 2011-12 and 2017-18. Of these, almost 3 crore were those working on farms, the daily said. "BJP robs India's Jobs! 3.2 cr casual labourers lost their employment under Modi government. 3 Cr are farm Labourers!" Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said in a tweet, tagging the media report. "Also, 4.7 crore youth became jobless! This is stark reality that PM Modi is hiding from India. People of India will rise up and defeat the BJP for this treachery," he said. On Wednesday, in a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue of jobs, Congress president Rahul Gandhi alleged that his policies destroyed one crore jobs last year and said "India's PM is a joke". Gandhi's criticism of Modi came over a media report which claimed that the actual size of India's male workforce, or men who are working, has shrunk for the first time since 1993-94. "I thought India was producing 450 jobs a day. Turns out Modi's policies destroyed 1 crore jobs in 2018. That's 27,000 jobs lost every single day of 2018. India's PM is a joke," he has tweeted. Addressing a rally in Manipur earlier in the day, Gandhi had said: "In 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi destroyed one crore jobs in the country. This is the scale of his incompetence. It is absurd and ridiculous that the PM promises giving two crore jobs." Slamming the government over the issue of "job losses", Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala had Wednesday alleged that the country's "chowkidar" is responsible for "stealing" jobs with 4.7 crore youth losing employment. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Five mosques in the central British city of Birmingham have been attacked overnight, prompting the Counter-Terrorism Unit officers and local police to launch an investigation. The attacks are believed to be linked after West Midlands Police were called to reports of a man smashing windows with a sledgehammer at the Jame Masjid in Birchfield Road and then soon after to a mosque in Erdington area of the city with reports of a similar attack. The force began patrols in areas with mosques and came across further damage at similar Islamic places of worship in other areas. In the wake of the terrorist attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, last Friday that claimed 50 lives, West Midlands Police said it was working alongside counter-terrorism officers to uncover the motive behind the incidents. "What I can say is that the force and the Counter Terrorism Unit are working side-by-side to find whoever is responsible," said West Midlands Police Chief Constable Dave Thompson. "Since the tragic events in Christchurch, New Zealand, officers and staff from West Midlands Police have been working closely with our faith partners across the region to offer reassurance and support at mosques, churches and places of prayer, he said. "Attacks of this nature have no place in our community and will not be tolerated. I want to reassure people that West Midlands Police is doing all it can to bring the perpetrators to justice," added West Midlands Police and Crime Commisioner David Jamieson: The police said that its forensic officers are working to identify evidence and CCTV is being examined, while neighbourhood officers are carrying out proactive patrols and working closely with mosques around the West Midlands region of England. UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid said in a Twitter statement: "Deeply concerning & distressing to see number of mosques have been vandalised in Birmingham overnight. "@WMPolice [West Midlands Police] are investigating motive but let me be clear hateful behaviour has absolutely no place in our society & will never be accepted." The Birmingham Council of Mosques said in a statement that the community was deeply horrified by the mosques being vandalised. "Birmingham's mosques are a place of worship, serenity and a source of peace and tranquillity. We are appalled by such acts of hate/terror," the statement noted. The UK government had enhanced its Places of Worship Fund earlier this week to offer places of worship the chance to apply for additional security related investment. With more than a third of the grants under the scheme being awarded to mosques, the additional GBP 1.6-million boost is expected to benefit even more mosques around the UK. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Element of Spirit and Reptiles Nile Crocodile: One of the most well-known of crocodiles is the Nile crocodile of Africa, who is a fearsome predator of animals and people. Ancient Egyptians saw the Nile crocodile as their fearsome God Sobek. An aggressive God, Sobek represented the power of the Pharaoh. However, He was also their God of fertility and protection. A link to the deep past, the Nile crocodile is respected and feared. As Sobek, the Nile crocodile is a part of the primal strength of nature. Aesculapian Snake: Found throughout Europe, the Aesculapian snake (Zamenis longissimus) was believed to be introduced in various areas by the Romans. After transporting this snake in earthenware containers, the Romans released him around their baths and temples. For them, the Aesculapian snake was a representative of their God of Healing Aesculapius. How the Romans associated this snake with Aesculapius is explained one of their myths. During a plague, they went to Greece to ask for his aid. Then the God came aboard their boat as a Snake. When the Romans entered the Tiber River, the Snake left the boat and stayed on an island. There, the Romans built a temple to Aesculapius to thank Him for his help. Afterward for the Romans, the Aesculapian snake became synonymous with healing. European Adder (Northern Viper): Known for his mating dance, the European adder does ritual combat with other males. Facing his rival, he will lift the front of his body off the ground. Swaying from side to side, the two adders wrap themselves around the other. In a snake version of arm wrestling, each snake tries to force the other to the ground. This ritualized combat became known as Adder Dancing. According to British folklore, on Mays eve, European adders met for a battle royal. Writhing and hissing, the multitude of fighting snakes covered the battleground with the froth from their battle. Lying in the midst of the battlefield is the Adder Stone. The name of this round pale green stone is the Glain Neidr (the Glass of the Serpents). Since this stone contains great power, the possessor of it will be victorious over their enemies. Monitor Lizard Sub-Family: Called Goannas in Australia and Leguaans in Africa, monitor lizards (Varanidae) are well known to people. Living in urban areas, monitor lizards have a long history with the peoples of Africa, Asia, and Australia. In fact, Ancient Egyptians call them Monitors, since they warned people of the presence of crocodiles. Monitor lizards have inspired much of peoples mythology such as dragons, which often resemble these lizards. Because of monitor lizards aggressive natures, peoples of Borneo put images of them on their shields to strike dread in the hearts of their opponents. In Thailand during the full moon, some unfortunate people became were-monitors prowling about for victims. Ancient Egyptians excluded monitor lizards from their afterlife since they preyed on young crocodiles, who represented the Egyptians God Sobek. Meanwhile in Australia, stories abound of industrious goannas inventing bark canoes for traveling. Cyprus wants access to the European Union's security intelligence network so it can screen arriving migrants more thoroughly for signs of radicalization by extremist groups, the Mediterranean island nation's interior minister said Thursday. Rising numbers of migrants enter ethnically divided Cyprus on its breakaway Turkish side to seek asylum in the internationally recognized Greek side in the south, creating a situation that Interior Minister called "more disconcerting" and "very difficult to manage." Petrides said monthly asylum applications have surpassed 1,000 so far this year. According to Cyprus' Asylum Service, one-quarter of arriving migrants are from Syria, but significant numbers come from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Cameroon. Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004, but only the south enjoys full membership benefits. EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said after talks with Petrides on Thursday that Cypriot officials shed light on issues that he hadn't known about, such as migrants using northern Cyprus as an entry point. Officials from Europol, the EU's asylum agency, and border and coast guard services will meet with authorities soon to determine how best to assist, Avramopoulos said "Yes, Cyprus is coming under great pressure recently, but again I'd like to say that it's not alone," he said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A week after Cyclone Idai lashed southern Africa, flooding still raged Thursday as torrential rains caused a dam to overflow in Zimbabwe, threatening riverside populations. The confirmed death toll in Zimbabwe, neighboring Mozambique and Malawi surpassed 500, with hundreds more feared dead in towns and villages that were completely submerged. Aid agencies and several governments continued to step up their deployments, with helicopters in short supply for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the cyclone. Spokesman Herve Verhoosel of the World Food Program told reporters in Geneva of the "alarming news" that the Marowanyati dam in Zimbabwe was hit by heavy rains overnight, putting populations in the region at risk. Zimbabwe's defense minister said more than 120 bodies had been washed into neighboring Mozambique, where residents there buried them, and more bodies were still being recovered in rivers, raising the official death toll in the country to 259. "Most of the bodies were washed into Mozambique and because they were in a really bad state, they could not keep the bodies," Defense Minister Oppah Muchinguri said, speaking in the eastern city of Mutare. "So they ended up burying them." Meanwhile, the confirmed death toll in Mozambique rose to 217, the Portuguese agency Lusa reported, and in Malawi, at least 56 people were killed. But that was sure to rise. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi has estimated that 1,000 people could have been killed in his country alone. Zimbabwean officials have said some 350 people may have died in their country. Homes, villages and entire towns were submerged across central Mozambique, where flooding created a muddy inland ocean 30 miles (50 kilometers) wide. The U.N. food aid agency said 400,000 people were displaced and "in urgent need of life-saving assistance" in Mozambique's coastal city of Beira and flooded areas along the Pungue and Buzi rivers. The persistent rains lifted in some areas on Thursday, and floodwaters began to recede in Beira, the worst-hit city, and in the countryside, according to a Mozambican government report. "Yesterday, 910 people were rescued by the humanitarian community," said Caroline Haga of the International Federation of the Red Cross in Beira. She said 210 were rescued by five helicopters and 700 were saved by boats. Aid groups were continuing to work non-stop to rescue families desperately clinging to tree branches and rooftops for safety from the surging waters. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Delhi Police received over 4,000 calls of quarrel-related incidents on Holi and issued more than 13,000 challans for violation of traffic rules, including drunk driving, officials said. The number of challans issued by the police increased this year by around 4,000 but the total number of drunken drive cases reduced by 300, a senior traffic police officer said. He said 13,219 challans, including 431 for interception and 1,591 for drunken driving, were issued for violations of traffic rules on Thursday. In 2018, over 9,300 people were challaned and 1,900 were booked for drunken driving. This Holi, among 4,026 calls of quarrel, 2,440 were reported for the use of colour against his/her will, the officer said, adding no fatal incident has been reported so far, police said. Earlier, the Delhi Traffic Police had urged people to follow the traffic rules and advised motorists not to drink and drive, observe speed limits, obey traffic signals and two-wheeler riders to wear helmets and avoid triple riding to make the festival safe and secure. Elaborate arrangements were made to ensure safety and security of people and teams with alcometers deployed at major intersections and vulnerable points to detect and prosecute traffic violators. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager Thursday announced her candidacy to be the next head of the European Commisssion, in an interview with a Danish newspaper. "I'm in," she told the daily Politiken, Denmark's newspaper of record, in reference to a bid to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker. The European parliament's liberal group ALDE is expected to announce later Thursday its team to lead the campaign for the European elections in May with Vestager in line to be its candidate for European Commission president. "Up until the elections, I will take part (in the debate) by recalling what we have accomplished in the past five years," Vestager told Politiken. Denmark however has not confirmed that she will be a candidate for a commission post. Vestager, 50, was a minister in the Danish government before taking up her current post in 2014. Her tough stance towards US firms earned her the ire of President Donald Trump, who has labelled her the "tax lady. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) At least 77 people died as a ferry packed with families celebrating Kurdish New Year sank in a swollen river in the former jihadist stronghold of Mosul, in Iraq's worst accident in years. There was an outpouring of grief among residents who only this year resumed the annual festivities on the banks of the Tigris after the northern city's recapture from the Islamic State group. The vessel was crammed with men, women and children crossing the Tigris to go to a popular picnic area to celebrate Nowruz, the Kurdish New Year and a holiday across Iraq marking the start of spring. While war and jihadist attacks have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq in recent years, such accidents are relatively rare. "It's a disaster, no one expected that," said a young man who had just managed to reach the shore. "There were a lot of people on the boat, especially women and children," he told AFP. A Mosul security source said the high water levels and overcrowding on the boat, with well over 100 people on board, had been to blame for the disaster. The health ministry put the death toll at 77, after the interior ministry's spokesman Saad Maan said the victims included 19 children, with 55 people rescued. "The boat sank because there were too many passengers on board," another security official based in Mosul told AFP. The health ministry said earlier that 33 women were among those who drowned. Iraq's justice ministry said it had ordered the arrest of nine ferry company officials and banned the owners of the vessel and the tourist site from leaving the country. The authorities had warned people to be cautious after several days of heavy rains led to water being released through the Mosul dam, causing the river level to rise. Videos shared on social media showed a fast-flowing, bloated river and dozens of people in the water floating in the water or trying to swim around the partly submerged boat. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Naxals exchanged fire with police in a forest in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra Thursday morning, an official release said. The encounter broke out around 5.20 am in Vasamundi jungle in Etapalli area when a team of Quick Response Team of Gadchiroli Police was carrying out an anti-Naxal operation, the release said. Naxals opened fire on the police team and fled when the latter retaliated, it added. While there were no reports of casualties on either side, a 2.5 kg Improvised Explosive Device (IED), one kg of gunpowder, two live detonators and Naxal literature were seized from the place, the police release said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A college student was arrested here Thursday for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao in the social media, police said. Vilasagaram Sai Kumar (21), a B Tech student, posted a selfie-video in which he purportedly made derogatory comments against the Chief Minister for his speech at a meeting on March 17, they said. Assistant police commissioner P Ashok said based on the video, a case was registered against the accused under various sections of the IPC, including 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace). Kumar has been remanded in judicial custody, he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ethiopian Airlines said Thursday that its pilots went through all the extra training required by Boeing and the US aviation regulators to fly the 737 Max 8 jet that crashed this month, killing all 157 passengers. CEO Tewolde Gebremariam said that the airline's pilots completed the training meant to help them shift from an older model to the newer 737 Max 8. He said in a statement the pilots were also made aware of an emergency directive issued by the U.S. regulator, the FAA, following the crash of a Boeing 737 Max 8 owned by Indonesia's Lion Air in October. As investigators look into the crashes, attention has turned to a new software in the jets that can push their nose down in some circumstances, for example when the sensors suggest the plane may be stalling. The US Federal Aviation Administration has said satellite-based tracking data showed that the movements of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 were similar to those of Lion Air Flight 610, which killed 189 people. The New York Times reported that the pilots of the Ethiopian plane never trained in a simulator for the plane. Gebremariam said that the 737 Max simulator is not designed to simulate problems in the new jet software. He declined, however, to say whether the pilots had trained on the simulator. The Ethiopian Airlines jetliner, on a regularly scheduled flight from Ethiopia to neighboring Kenya, carried people from 35 countries when it crashed on March 10 shortly after takeoff from the capital Addis Ababa. The Boeing Max planes have since been grounded around the world as authorities try to identify the problem and Boeing issues an update to its aviation software. Meanwhile, the families of Kenyan victims of the Ethiopian plane crash are asking their government for legal assistance in pursuing compensation. In an emotional gathering Thursday in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, the victims' relatives asked for lawyers to help them pursue their case. "If we are left alone, clearly we can't move," said Merciline Ndegwa, one of the relatives seeking compensation. "It's been a difficult time reaching out to the airline and even Ethiopia's government. So, as we move forward, it is our wish to have help from the government in that front." Another, Erick Mwangi, spoke of what could be an "expensive and tedious" legal battle. Macharia Kamau, principal secretary of Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, advised the families to "come together as a group" as the country's attorney general takes up the matter. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The EU could approve Britain's request for a short delay to Brexit but only if UK MPs next week vote through the withdrawal deal they have twice rejected, European Council president Donald Tusk has said. With nine days to go before Britain is due to leave the bloc, the country is gripped by uncertainty with little consensus how to proceed and Tusk's statement was received as an ultimatum to encourage lawmakers to get behind May's deal. "I believe a short extension will be possible but it will be conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons," Tusk told reporters Wednesday. May told her country in a televised address from Downing Street late Wednesday that she was still "determined" to deliver Brexit and pull Britain through its worst political crisis in a generation. "You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with this. I agree. I am on your side," May said, adding that she was requesting a delay until June 30 with "great personal regret". Lawmakers have twice resoundingly rejected May's agreement, and a third vote the premier hoped to hold this week was cancelled by the House of Commons speaker on the grounds that the same vote could not be held again. May now heads to Brussels for an EU leaders summit Thursday and Friday, where she will hope to secure a possible addition to her agreement that will let her put it to a vote next week. The pound fell sharply against the euro during the day, reflecting fears that Britain could crash out without any agreement at all. Exactly 1,000 days on from Britain's seismic 2016 referendum vote to split from the other 27 EU nations, the country unclear about the path ahead. May said any postponement beyond the end of June would undermine voters' trust. "It is high time we made a decision" on leaving, May said in her address. However, the European Commission advised EU leaders that it would be preferable to either have a shorter delay to May 23 -- when voting begins in European Parliament elections -- or a much longer one, until at least the end of 2019. A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed London's "clear request" and said she would "make every effort" to bring about an agreement at the Brussels summit. But her foreign minister Heiko Maas of the junior coalition partner Social Democrats said May's letter "only pushes the solution further down the road". And in Paris, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian had a tough message. "A situation in which Mrs May is unable to deliver sufficient guarantees on the credibility of her strategy at the European Council meeting would lead to the request being refused and a preference for a no deal," he told parliament. The British parliament has been deadlocked for months over Brexit, with MPs unable to decide how to implement the referendum result, and voters themselves are also sharply divided. But Britain is now in crisis, facing the potentially catastrophic prospect of leaving its biggest trading partner after 46 years with no arrangements in place. May had reluctantly accepted that a delay to Brexit was needed, and told MPs Wednesday she had written to Tusk. "Some argue that I am making the wrong choice and I should ask for a longer extension to the end of the year or beyond, to give more time for politicians to argue over the way forward," May told Britons in her special message. "That would mean asking you to vote in European elections nearly three years after our country voted to leave. What kind of message would that send?" Elections for the European Parliament will be held at the end of May. In her letter, May said she intended to bring her deal back to the Commons "as soon as possible", arguing that if it passed, she would need the delay to implement the treaty. If the text is rejected a third time, May told lawmakers earlier on Wednesday that parliament would have to decide what happened next. "As prime minister, I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than June 30," she told lawmakers, in comments interpreted as a hint about her own future. May's team will try to engage senior members of the main opposition Labour party, hoping to bring enough of its members on side to pull her deal through. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) European leaders piled the pressure on British MPs Thursday to back a divorce deal they have negotiated with Prime Minister Theresa May, warning that the alternative was a cliff-edge exit from the EU next week. May has asked EU leaders for a three-month delay to Brexit to allow her to try one more time to get her withdrawal agreement through parliament, and the bloc has indicated it could postpone exit day to May 22. But as they arrived at a two-day summit in Brussels dominated by Britain's deep political crisis, the other 27 leaders warned that this would be possible only if MPs approve next week the deal they have already resoundingly rejected twice. "In the case of a negative British vote then we'd be heading to a no deal," French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters. "We all know it. And it's essential to be clear in these days and moments." Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he expected his fellow European leaders to agree in principle on Thursday to May's request for a delay. But they would then "put it fairly and squarely at the door of the British parliament to make that call", adding: "In case they say no, I'm not going to speculate." European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that May "has to make sure that the British parliament agrees to the withdrawal deal". If that does not happen early next week, "everything will be more difficult", he said, adding that EU leaders would have to meet again before Brexit day -- currently just eight days away on March 29. German Chancellor Angela Merkel added: "We should do everything we can until the last moment to make an orderly Brexit possible." The embattled May also refused to rule out the possibility that Britain severs its 46-year relationship with the EU next week with no new arrangements in place. "What matters is that we recognise that Brexit is the decision of the British people and we need to deliver on that," she said as she arrived in Brussels. She added: "I sincerely hope we can do that with a deal." A "no deal" next week risks huge economic disruption on both sides of the Channel. In a joint open letter to May on Thursday, British business and union leaders warned: "Our country is facing a national emergency." May wrote to EU Council president and summit host Donald Tusk on Wednesday to ask to delay Brexit until June 30, to ratify her deal if it is agreed by parliament. But EU diplomats said the consensus was that Britain would either have to leave before the May 23 European election or take part in the vote and stay in the bloc until at least the end of the year. May has insisted that she will not oversee a long delay, which would increase pressure at home for a general election or for a second Brexit referendum that might reverse the decision to leave. She repeated on Thursday that requesting even a short delay was a matter of "personal regret". She continues to work to persuade her MPs to support the deal, but appeared to have undermined that effort with a speech to the nation on Wednesday when she blamed parliament for the Brexit deadlock. "All MPs have been willing to say is what they do not want," she complained, in a televised address that infuriated lawmakers on all sides. Tusk admitted that European leaders are suffering "Brexit fatigue". He said he feared his hopes for an orderly Brexit agreement with the agreed plan in place may prove "frail, even illusory." British lawmakers have twice resoundingly rejected May's agreement, and a third vote the premier hoped to hold this week was cancelled by the parliament speaker using a 400-year-old precedent. Nevertheless, Tusk was clear that Europe wants May to try again, saying "a short extension will be possible but it will be conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons". The British parliament has been deadlocked for months over Brexit, with MPs unable to decide how to implement the result of the 2016 referendum, and voters themselves are also sharply divided. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The authorisation programme initiative by The Pensions Regulator follows a period of significant growth in the master trust market. Many trusts were initially established to service the large number of employees now saving for retirement through auto enrolment. Master trusts have become the preference for many employers as they seek to move away from the costs of providing single-employer trust-based schemes while retaining a similar level of governance. Authorisation will raise master trust standards in a fast growing area of the workplace pension market by a thorough examination of schemes capabilities in areas such as their systems and processes and financial sustainability. In future all master trusts will need to have business plans, continuity strategies and access to ring-fenced assets to protect members benefits should a trust be wound up. Aegons master trust was acquired as part of the acquisition of BlackRocks Defined Contribution business which also came with Own Trust and Investment Only capabilities. The master trust formally became Aegon Master Trust (AMT) in July 2018 and is a growing part Aegons workplace business. In February total assets under management (AUM) in the Aegon Master Trust reached 1bn. Kate Smith, Head of Master Trust at Aegon UK is responsible for leading the development of Aegons master trust proposition including the authorisation process. She said: Working closely with the Trustees, weve developed a high quality authorisation submission. Its taken a lot of time and commitment, reflecting the regulators desire to really understand how master trusts are operating and the governance they have in place as well as their plans for the future. We are confident that we will be authorised and look forward to further engagement with The Pensions Regulator. Theyve raised the bar for the master trust market and we welcome the initiative as it means greater protection for members of all master trusts, and will act as a driver to raise standards. This form of pension scheme has grown quickly in recent years and its only right that the regulator is examining the capabilities of providers to meet the needs of their members and ensure theyre able to support their long term savings goals. Ian Pittaway, Chair of Aegon Master Trust said: Master Trusts are going to be a long term feature of the pension scene in the UK, providing benefits for many members. The Trustees of the Aegon Master Trust welcome the new authorisation regime as it will create a robust, and improved, framework to facilitate better outcomes for members. : Toy manufacturer Funskool India promoted by the MRF Group, has commenced operation of its second manufacturing facility at Ranipet near here giving a boost to exports, according to a top official. The plant, spread across 61,000 sq ft land is located at the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) complex in Ranipet, about 120 kms from here. According to the CEO, John Baby, the company would focus more on serving the overseas markets from the facility given the accessibility to Chennai port and other infrastructure availability. "With an investment of Rs 25 crore in the plant and equipment, the new facility is focused on automation and is ergonomically designed and equipped with special features like heat resistant roof...," he said. Noting that the company has been making exports from its facility at Goa, he said the logistics cost from Goa was quite high. "The new factory is focused on exports. Ranipet is about three hours from the Chennai port and Chennai port does not have congestion and other issues. It is advantage for our exports business," he told PTI. To a query on the investments made, Baby said investments currently were made for land and building was about Rs 10 crore and another Rs 15 crore on the equipment. "We may need to spend another Rs 15 crore in two-three months for additional equipment. So, totally Rs 40 crore will be for investments...," he added. The company for the first time would be using some robots in the manufacturing process, Baby said, adding the facility would have manpower of about 250 people by September. "Maybe, by October we will add 150 people and that is 400 people by December 2019. In Goa, we have direct employment of 500...," he said. The large shop floor at the Ranipet facility was structured in such a way, that right from the intake of the raw materials to the packaging of the final product, all processes are completed on the same floor, making it more efficient, he said. On the need for a facility to serve overseas market, he said, the exports for the company was growing at 50 per cent while the domestic was recording a single digit growth. "Goa facility is more of domestic and exports. But our exports business is growing at a fast pace. Our exports (figures) last year was Rs 40 crore. This year we may end up Rs 60 crore for 2018-19," he said. On export revenues, he said, for 2018-19, the contribution from overseas would be 30 per cent. "For next two financial years (2019-20) and 2020-21, 50 per cent will be from export and 50 per cent from domestic," he said. To another query, he said, the company was already serving Europe, the United States, Asia and African markets. "From the new plant we will be sending to a few companies and they are based in Canada. They have big operations in the United States and European markets. First consignment will be going to Canada in June 2019 and other European markets," Baby said. MRF Ltd, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Arun Mammen said, "Funskool has always been dear to MRF Ltd and we are proud to inaugurate our third factory in India and the second factory in Ranipet." This new facility has been constructed keeping in mind the growing demand in the sector", he added. Funskool India has been expanding presence across the globe with its own brands like Giggles, Fundough, Handycrafts. The company is also a major OEM player in Europe and the US for companies like Hasbro, SpinMaster, ELC and Flair among others. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Wikipedia's German-language page has been blacked out in protest of a proposal to change European Union copyright rules. Visitors to the online encyclopedia's German section were greeted Thursday with a statement from Wikipedia authors urging them to contact EU lawmakers to try to stop the bill. The most controversial section would require companies such as YouTube and Facebook to take responsibility for copyrighted material that's uploaded to their platforms. Proponents say the new rules will help ensure that authors, artists and journalists are paid for their work. Opponents claim they could restrict freedom of speech, hamper online creativity and force websites to install filters that prevent uploading of copyrighted work. The European Parliament is due to vote on the bill March 26. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Defying US warnings, President Nicolas Maduro's regime on Thursday arrested a top aide of opposition leader Juan Guaido, who Washington recognizes as Venezuela's interim leader. Guaido and the opposition-ruled National Assembly denounced the arrest of Roberto Marrero, charging on Twitter that he was taken from his home during a pre-dawn raid by intelligence officers. The United States has repeatedly warned Venezuelan Maduro against arresting Guaido or his aides. The United States and a grouping of Latin American nations plus Canada vigorously condemned the arrest and demanded Marrero's release. "They have grabbed Roberto Marrero, my chief of staff. He yelled out that they planted two rifles and a grenade" as a pretext for the arrest, Guaido tweeted. "The raid happened at around 2:00 am (0600 GMT). We don't know his whereabouts. He must be released immediately." He later told a conference that "we won't be intimidated" by the "vile, vulgar kidnapping." Maduro and Guaido both claim to be Venezuela's legitimate leaders but Maduro, 56, retains the loyalty of the military brass and has control of state apparatus. Guaido, 35, declared himself interim president on January 23 and has the backing of the US and more than 50 other countries, mostly in Latin America and the US. "The United States condemns raids by Maduro's security services and detention of Roberto Marrero, Chief of Staff to Interim President @jguaido. We call for his immediate release. We will hold accountable those involved," Pompeo said on Twitter. US President Donald Trump has said, as recently as Tuesday, that "all options" remain on the table in his drive to bring down Maduro, implying military action if he deemed it necessary. So far, however, the power struggle in Venezuela has bogged down in an impasse, with Maduro railing daily about the US "imperialists" trying to dislodge him and Guaido touring the country to rally supporters and pledging he'll be taking over "very soon." Maduro's forces have reinforced obstacles blocking a border bridge linking Venezuela and Colombia to prevent Guaido's supporters trucking in US aid. Extra shipping containers and concrete blocks have been moved into place on the bridge. In addition to seizing Marrero early Thursday, officers of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service, or SEBIN, raided the home in the same building of an opposition lawmaker, Sergio Vergara. Vergara was not arrested. He told reporters that he saw Marrero bundled off into the street. He said around 15 SEBIN officers threw him to the floor and "ransacked" his own home for around two hours, while asking where to find Marrero, a lawyer who works in the National Assembly. "They started to bash on the door of Roberto Marrero's place, which is a few meters (yards) from my door, until they were able to get inside," he said. "The dictatorship is abducting citizens," he added. According to a human rights NGO, Foro Penal, Venezuelan authorities are holding 866 people on political grounds, most of them without trial. The Lima Group, a grouping that includes Argentina, Brasil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Peru, issued a statement "calling for Nicolas Maduro's illegitimate and dictatorial regime to immediately release Mr. Marrero" and leave Vergara alone. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Bombay High Court has restrained industrialist Vijaypat Singhania from releasing his autobiography "The Incomplete Man" till March 25. In an order earlier this week, Justice Sandeep Shinde also directed a civil court in Thane to take up for final hearing a suit and other applications filed by Raymond Limited seeking to stop the book's release. "...I deem it appropriate to request the civil judge of Thane to hear the suit and all applications filed therein seeking interim reliefs on March 25," Justice Shinde said. The high court was hearing an application filed by Vijaypat Singhania, praying that the suit filed by the company in Thane court be shifted to a civil court in Mumbai, where a similar suit has been filed by his son Gautam Singhania, current Chairman and Managing Director of Raymond. Raymond's lawyer Kartik Nayar said the high court has restrained Vijaypat Singhania from publishing his book till March 25. "The high court has directed the Thane civil court to decide the suit filed by Raymond as expeditiously as possible," he said. The company, in September 2018, moved the Thane court alleging that the book's contents were defamatory and it should not be allowed to be published. Vijaypat Singhania then approached the high court seeking transfer of the matter to a Mumbai court, citing inconvenience. The Singhania senior and his son Gautam are also locked in a legal battle over a duplex apartment in the 36-storey redeveloped J K House building in south Mumbai. In a petition filed in the high court in 2016, Vijaypat Singhania claimed that his son was refusing to honour an arbitration order which awarded the duplex to him. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Madras High Court Thursday sought to know from the Centre and the Tamil government whether diabetic students can be allowed to carry required medicines like insulin while appearing for public exams. Justices N Kirubakaran and S S Sundar of the Madurai Bench also asked if the governments had a proposal to include Type I Diabetes as a disability under the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act. The bench was hearing a PIL seeking to direct the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and the state education department officials to issue a circular enabling the Type I diabetic students to take tablets, chocolates, candy, fruits and insulin pump. Besides, the petition also wanted the diabetic students to be permitted to attend natural calls as and when required while writing examinations. Dr E subbiah, the head of the department of diabetology, and Dr S Rajakumar, chief civil surgeon in ESI hospital, who appeared in the court on the direction of the judges, agreed that the PIL prayer was important. They said it was most important for the Type I diabetes students to carry insulin and also snacks in the examination hall. The doctors said a sizeable population in the country was affected with Type I diabetes. The judges posted the case for hearing on April 4 after asking the government to reply to a series of questions, including why not it come with a draft regulation to permit such students to carry tablets, sandwich, among others. They also asked whether required number of diabetologists were available, if they were appointed in taluk level hospitals, or any camp had been conducted to identify Type I diabetes. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Madras High Court Thursday convicted nine people to life imprisonment in a case related to the attack on the office of Tamil daily 'Dinakaran' here in 2007 in which three men were killed. Gopinath, Vinoth and Muthuramalingam were killed in the attack on May 5, 2007. On December 9, 2009, all the 17 people arrested in the case were acquitted of murder charges by a CBI special court. Later, the CBI, which investigated the case, and Vinoth's mother filed an appeal. A bench of justices P N Prakash and B Pugalendi of the high court's Madurai bench sentenced 'Attack' Pandi, Vijaya Pandi, Kandasamy, Ramaiah Pandian, Prabhu, V Sudhakar, Thirumurgan, Ruban and Malik Batcha to three terms of life imprisonment. Cases were filed against them under the Explosives Act and charges of causing damage to properties and murders. The judges also sentenced them to five years of rigorous imprisonment under under the act. The sentences would be run concurrently. 'Attack' Pandi is, at present, lodged at the Palayamkottai Central Jail for the murder of 'Pottu' Suresh. The judges directed that the eight others should be arrested immediately and sent to jail. They also directed that Rs 5 lakh each should be given as compensation to families of the three deceased people. The court has decided that a DSP, Rajaram, was also an accused in the case, and directed him to appear before the court on March 25, the bench said. Saravanamuthu, another accused, died during the trial. Regarding the seven others, the bench said they would undergo five years of imprisonment under the Explosives Act and on charges of causing damage to properties and murders. Three employees of the daily were killed in the attack on the office following the publication of a survey which gave an edge to the then deputy chief minister and DMK president late M Karunanidhi's son M K Stalin over his brother and then Union minister M K Alagiri to succeed their father. The CBI, after a long delay of over four years, had filed the revision petition in 2014. Of the 17 convicts acquitted by the district and sessions court here in December 2009, 11 had been arrested after the bench issued non-bailable warrants as they failed to appear for hearing of the appeal. Another convict, Dayamuthu, is absconding and stated to be staying somewhere in Malaysia, while the others have obtained bail. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Fidesz party of firebrand Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been suspended from the European People's Party, the EU's biggest and most influential political grouping, the EPP said. A spokesman Wednesday said 190 party members voted in favour of the suspension, with only three against, after reports of long and often heated discussions with Orban at a meeting in Brussels. Fidesz had faced expulsion from the EPP after running a controversial billboard campaign that accused European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and liberal US billionaire George Soros, a bete-noire of Orban, of plotting to flood Europe with migrants. The campaign has since been dropped and Orban has apologised for insulting partners from the EPP -- the mainstream conservative group of MEPs -- though the party leadership had warned this was not enough. A statement said the suspension was a joint decision by Fidesz and the EPP in a last minute re-wording intended to stop Orban from slamming the door on the group forever. Sanctioning Orban has split the EPP, amid concern that the Hungarian leader will team up with Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy's anti-immigrant Northern League, to create a rival group in the European Parliament. Faced with tough EU elections in May, some EPP members are also worried that punishing Orban will cost them support from anti-immigrant voters who back Orban's tough line. But others believe Orban crosses a dangerous line into xenophobia, anti-semitism and racism that is not suitable for the EPP mainstream grouping. All smiles at a press conference after the EPP decision, Orban said it was "not possible to expel, or to suspend us, we have won four elections, so we decided to suspend ourselves unilaterally." The sanction against Orban, 55, has no end date, but party sources said senior party members would evaluate the situation and recommend next steps "probably in the autumn". "Exclusion is not off the table, it is on the table," said the EPP's Manfred Weber, who will be leading the party in European elections in May. The EPP brings together the EU's main centre-right parties, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU or the Republicans in France, the party of former French leaders Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac. In an interview on Wednesday, Juncker, who won the EU's top office for the EPP in 2014, once again called for Fidesz to be excluded. "For years (Orban's party) has been moving away from Christian Democratic values," Juncker told German radio Deutschlandfunk. Therefore "his place is outside the EPP". Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the European parliament's liberal ALDE group said the compromise deal between the EPP and Fidesz, which avoided the Hungarian ruling party being kicked out altogether, was a "political ruse". "The EPP has lost the moral authority to lead Europe," he added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday called his New Zealand counterpart Jacinda Ardern and condemned the terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch that killed 50 people. Khan also expressed his admiration for the "humane handling" of the situation. He appreciated the quick response of the local authorities and the high level of respect shown by Prime Minister Ardern for Muslims. "Prime Minister Ardern has shown the way to other leaders in the face of rising Islamophobia and global extremism," Khan said, according to a statement issued by his office here. Khan said that he was calling Prime Minister Ardern on behalf of the people of Pakistan to thank her for her compassion, leadership and decisions that won her many admirers in Pakistan. He conveyed condolences on the loss of 50 precious lives, saying that Pakistan was a victim of terrorism and lost more than 70,000 innocent lives. "Pakistan stands by the government and people of New Zealand in this hour of grief," he said. Ardern said that New Zealand was in shock and informed Khan of immediate actions taken after the attack including the banning of all military style semi and automatic guns and assault rifles. She also acknowledged the sacrifices of Pakistanis in the attack, particularly the bravery and valour of Naeem Rasheed. Prime Minister Khan invited Ardern to visit Pakistan. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Top US diplomat Mike Pompeo has issued a thinly veiled jab at US Democrats over anti-Semitism, following controversial comments by a Muslim congresswoman over American support for Israel. Speaking from Jerusalem on Wednesday during a Middle East tour largely focused on countering Iran, Pompeo told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "All nations, especially those in the West, must go to the barricades against bigotry." He noted the "dark wave of anti-Semitism" in Europe and the US. "Sadly, we in the United States have seen anti-Semitic language even in the great halls of our own capital," he said. His remarks came after Muslim Democratic congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, last month suggested that supporters of Israel are urging lawmakers to have "allegiance to a foreign country." She also suggested that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying group was paying US politicians to support Israel. Both Pompeo and Netanyahu are scheduled to speak at AIPAC's annual conference in Washington next week. Following outrage over Omar's remarks, Congress passed a measure opposing hate speech in general. The resolution was originally intended to deliver a direct rebuke of anti-Semitism, but it was revised to broadly condemn discrimination against Muslims and other minorities as well after blowback from progressives. US President Donald Trump seized on the shift and accused the Democrats of becoming an "anti-Israel" and "anti-Jewish" party. Some Democrats had expressed anger that Omar could be facing an implicit rebuke, while racist statements by Trump and other Republicans go largely unchallenged. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Prominent Indian-American lawyer Neomi Jehangir Rao (45) has been sworn in as US Circuit Judge for the powerful District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, replacing the controversial Justice Joined by her husband Alan Lefkowitz, Rao was sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Tuesday. She took the oath on a Bible. According to a White House schedule, President had participated in the swearing-in ceremony. Born in Detroit to Parsi physicians from India Zerin Rao and Jehangir Narioshang Rao Neomi Rao is the second Indian-American after Sri Srinivasan to be part of the powerful court said to be next only to the US Supreme Court. Nominated by President last November, Rao was confirmed by the Senate last week by 53-46 votes. In her previous role as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) of the Office of Management and Budget, she played a key role in regulatory reform. Rao's confirmation and her swearing-in for the prestigious court has been a low key affair for the Indian-American community. This is in stark contrast to the nationwide celebration by when Srinivasan was confirmed and sworn in as US Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit. Prior to her service as OIRA Administrator, Rao was a professor of structural constitutional law, administrative law, and legislation and statutory interpretation at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. She founded the Law School's Center for the Study of the Administrative State and focused her scholarship on the political and constitutional accountability of administrative agencies and the role of Congress. She has served in all three branches of government, including Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to President George W. Bush. She also served as counsel to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she was responsible for judicial nominations and constitutional law issues. In between government service, Rao practised in the London office of Clifford Chance LLP, specialising in law and commercial arbitration. I was surprised to enter a world that seems a gateway to the middle Ages. Combining tradition with modern amenities, Scotland made its way to my heart. The Highlands are a destination to treasure in your memory forever. Ill tell you why. These are the five reasons returning to Scotland became one of my life goals # 1 Harry Potters land The saga that makes you want to go back to your twelve to watch it without having to find a nephew or a small sister to justify it, was filmed in Scotland. In this opportunity, my son was the perfect excuse to hire the four-day tour that took us along the sceneries of the young trainee magician. Edinburgh, The Elephant House (the cafeteria that gave birth to Harry Potter), West End in Glasgow and the Jacobite (the steam train that rides over West Highland and shows the scenery of several films) were vital part of such tour. # 2 Castles taken from a dream Its nothing new telling you that Scotland is the land of the best castles in the world. However, experiencing the magic from inside Brodie, Drummond, Dunrobin, Kelburn and Dirleton castles is something very different. I could help feeling an authentic highlander when the tour guide told us the story of the Maclean clan inside the wall of their ancestral home. # 3 Legends that youll want to hear over and over again Everybody heard about the legend of Loch Ness Monster, but not many people talk about Wee Annie. This little girl is said to still be crying for her favorite doll, from who she was obliged to be separated from when the plague reached Scotland in the XVII century. Inside, (yes, not in, I really mean inside) Mary King alley, we were told her story. Hers is not a tragedy that happened exclusively to Annie, but she is the most famous ghost of the Scottish underworld that still claims for what was taken away from her: her doll and her life. The authorities of the plague struck Scotland, in a desperate attempt to save the people who werent infected yet, decided to bury several people alive. The place is now a tourist attraction where you can expect to have your sleeves pulled by the anonymous souls who were tragically condemned to an eternity of cries and anguish. Come on! Who would believe all that? I thought before my little girl started crying in the middle of the tour claiming that a freezing cold hand took her and asked her about a doll. # 4 The land of pubs Yes, I had already tried Guinness at home in front of the TV. And I thought I was the queen of the world for that until I discovered the flavor of a real Guinness. This sensory experience took place in Last Drop, a wonderful pub that hides a dark past. Its name was inherited from the times in which the people condemned to death enjoyed their last gulp of a spirituous drink before become exactly that: a spirit after the rope broke their necks due to having committed high treason, or not. # 5 Festivals you wont want to miss Yes! Not everything is wrapped in legends that allude to death and ghosts in Scotland. There are some incredible festivals that involve carnival or the celebration of a special saint for the country. As we visited it in July, we could enjoy the best moment of the Highland games , which involve plenty of outdoor games. Anyway, there are a lot of festivals all the year round, such as Hogmanay (the end of the year) or the West End Festival, which is the second largest carnival in Great Britain. An Indian-origin owner of a restaurant franchise has been accused of sexually harassing women employees. The accused, Manish Patel, is the owner and general manager of Swami Pancake, a franchise of an American pancake restaurant chain in Florida, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said in a statement. The agency alleged that Patel frequently asked female servers to go out on dates with him, made crude sexual comments at them and touched them inappropriately. The EEOC filed a lawsuit saying that the restaurant franchise violated federal laws when its owner and general manager subjected a class of female employees to sexual harassment. It said such conduct violates the provisions of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex. The EEOC filed the suit in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process. The agency seeks back pay, compensatory and punitive damages for the discrimination meted out to the victims as well as injunctive relief. Regional attorney for the EEOC's Miami District Office Robert Weisberg said the agency will continue to fight against sexual harassment, including in the restaurant industry, where the menace continues to be so pervasive. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India's budget carrier has launched its flight on the Delhi-Istanbul sector and announced to use its expanding fleet of A320neo and A321neo aircraft to connect more Indian cities to countries such as China, Vietnam, England, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia. William Boulter, Chief Commercial Officer of said Wednesday here, "We are looking very seriously into other points in South East Asia, notably the obvious ones of Vietnam and Myanmar. We also want to operate shortly to Saudi Arabia on the west side". "We are seriously interested in getting in China as soon as we can. We are still selecting precise destinations," he said. "India operates only five flights from here to China per week, whereas China operates 42 flights to India per week. It's basically time that we start readdressing that balance. I am convinced that there is a huge amount of traffic in India-China axis. We have not yet tapped that," Boulter said. The airline plans to add 125 A321neo aircraft in its fleet over number of years. In 2019, it will receive 20-25 of these aircraft from Airbus, he said. India's largest airline has around 40 per cent domestic passenger market share. Boulter said, "Once we get more A321s, we will do more longer routes." A321neo aircraft has the capacity to carry around 230 passengers while A320 neo carries around 180 passengers. While Delhi-Istanbul flight is being operated in A321neo aircraft having 222 seats, Boulter clarified that the flights to China would be based on A320neos. Talking about IndiGo's plan to connect Delhi to London, he said, "We are still hoping to operating to London this year. We haven't chosen yet what the mid point is going to be whether Baku or Tsblisi or Istanbul." "We had some slots in Gatwick airport last winter but they have lapsed. So, we are again looking at which airport we can operate to in the UK. It's not yet confirmed. We are very keen to get into the UK market this year. "We also have a plan to put A321 aircraft domestically because in slot limited airports in Delhi and Mumbai and increasingly, other airports too, A321 gives you that additional capacity," Boulter said. The Delhi-Istanbul flight plans to connect 20 forward destinations using the codeshare pact that was signed between India's largest airline and Turkish Airlines on December 21 last year. Codeshare pact allows passengers to travel on a single ticket on flights operated by the partner carrier. Boulter said that Delhi-Istanbul is a "strategic route" and the permission for six forward destinations have already been received by the respective countries' governments. "We have got six in place but we expect the others to be approved over the next few weeks. And they will be in your system for sales as IndiGo destinations. "Once the Pakistan issues are gone away, which we hope they will, then this Delhi-Istanbul flight would be our longest flight operated by A321 aircraft," he said. Pakistan has closed its airspace since the Indian Air Force carried air-strikes on a terrorist camp in Balakot in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack. IndiGo's Delhi-Istanbul flight was supposed to be direct with around 7-hour journey. However, as Pakistan airspace remains closed, it halted at Doha for refuelling, increasing the total journey time to around 11 hours. Boulter said that whenever Pakistan opens its airspace, Delhi-Istanbul will start operating as a direct flight. He also clarified that he can't comment in detail on how the Delhi-Istanbul flight would be different from the domestic flights when it comes to passenger amenities. "We are not in the position to announce what would be the product changes. But there will be a number of changes - in terms of food, drinks and some comfort related opportunities. "We are looking for some changes in our product (flights) to cope with the longer sectors. But there won't be anything like a separate class. We are not going to put a premium class," he said. "We still believe that what we stand for is the on-time performance, courteous and hassle free service. Our most important point of low prices would stand us in good stead even as we extend the range," Boulter added. Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy Thursday ordered a magisterial inquiry into the Dharwad building collapse, as the toll rose to 12 with five more bodies being pulled out from the debris. Police also arrested the building's design engineer Vivek Pawar while four other accused are at large including the relative of former Karnataka minister Vinay Kulkarni, police sources said. On the third day of rescue operation, bodies of five people, including that of eight-year-old Divya Unakal, Dakshayini (45) and Sangamesh (42), were retrieved from the rubble, police said. Kumaraswamy said at least 12 people had lost their lives and 54 people had been rescued, with fears that 14 more were still trapped. "A magisterial inquiry has been ordered. If required, government is ready for high level inquiry," Kumaraswamy told reporters after visiting the spot and speaking to the relatives of the victims and injured. Kumaraswamy said he cannot announce any compensation since the model code of conduct for Lok Sabha polls was in place but he has entrusted the chief secretary to announce adequate compensation to the next to the kin of the deceased and injured. Anger and frustration were palpable as more bodies were retrieved from the accident site with loud wails of relatives. Locals sought to know how the civic agencies turned a blind eye to sub-standard materials being used for the construction, though everybody was apprehensive about the strength of the four-storey building. Earlier the BJP MLA from Hubballi-Dharwad central and former Karnataka chief minister Jagadish Shettar visited the spot and took the stock of the situation. He had demanded Rs 10 lakh to the families of the victims. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Days after a school teacher was killed by the Naxals in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district, the rebels have issued a letter calling it a mistake, the police claimed Thursday. Yogendra Meshram was killed because he was suspected to be a policeman but he was "innocent", the purported letter said. Meshram, teacher at a municipal school at Korchi, was shot dead by Naxals at Kombda Bajar on March 12. Local people had protested the killing vehemently, said Shailesh Balkawade, District Superintendent of Police, 'Pawan', who is a divisional commander of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), issued an apology letter which was circulated Wednesday, he said. The letter, addressed to Meshram's family, said Maoists killed him as he was wrongly thought to be a policeman due to "intelligence failure", the SP said. Maoists apologised to the family for the killing, the letter added. Balkawade said the police were gaining the upper hand against the Maoists. The rebels were under pressure and therefore targeting innocent persons, he said. On March 8, over 12,000 women took part in an anti-Naxal rally in the district, he claimed. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) After the defection of Ranjitsinh Mohite Patil, another NCP leader is set to join the BJP in Maharashtra. Bharati Pawar, who had contested the Lok Sabha election from Dindori in 2014, said she would be joining the saffron party in the presence of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis here Friday. Pawar, as NCP candidate, had lost to the BJP's Harishchandra Chavan in 2014. This time, the NCP has denied her ticket, fielding Dhanraj Mahale from the seat instead. She is currently a vice president of the state NCP unit. Earlier this week, Ranjitsinh, son of NCP stalwart and former deputy chief minister Vijaysinh Mohite Patil, joined the BJP. Before that, Sujay Vikhe Patil, son of Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, had joined the BJP. As media reports speculated about other opposition leaders who could be on their way to the BJP, former Union minister of state for coal Pratik Patil denied that he was among them. "I will continue to be with the Congress," Patil told reporters at Sangli. Another Congress leader and former state cooperation minister Harshvardhan Patil also rubbished similar reports. "I am a hardcore Congress worker and will continue to work for the Congress," the leader from Pune district said. BJP leader and revenue minister Chandrakant Patil said that prominent political families in the state are flocking to the BJP as they feel they have no future in the Congress or NCP. "The coming week will have more such developments," he claimed. The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance had won 42 out of 48 seats in Maharashtra in 2014. The NCP took potshots at the BJP Thursday over the latter throwing its doors open to young generation opposition leaders. "When will you have your own children? How many kids you are going to steal?" said hoardings put up by the NCP in Mumbai. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday welcomed US President Donald Trump's "historic" pledge to recognise Israel's disputed annexation of the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967. "At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognises Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights," he wrote on his personal Twitter account. "Thank you President Trump!" Trump's statement of intent on the strategic plateau Israel seized in the Six-Day War came after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Jerusalem and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Netanyahu at the Western Wall in the city's Israeli-annexed eastern sector. It was the first time such a high-ranking US official had visited the highly sensitive site in the Old City, part of the mainly Palestinian east of Jerusalem, alongside an Israeli premier. Both US gestures serve to boost Netanyahu's campaign for a fifth term, less than three weeks before Israel's April 9 elections. Netanyahu's office said he had spoken to Trump by phone and thanked him personally for his decision, telling him: "You made history." Netanyahu has been pushing for the White House to recognise Israel's sovereignty over the Golan, and Trump tweeted Thursday that "it is time" to do so. Pompeo's visit with the premier to the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, could be taken as tacit approval of Israel's sovereignty over the city's eastern sector, which is claimed by the Palestinians. Israel sees the entire city as its undivided capital. Although the Palestinians make no territorial claim to the Golan, senior official Saeb Erekat slammed Israel's rule over the 1,200 square kilometre (460 square mile) swathe it took from Syria. "(Trump's) policy does not change international law, which considers the Golan and all of the Palestinian land occupied in 1967 to be occupied Arab land," he told AFP. "It will stay like that despite all the attempts of the (Israeli) occupation and the American support for it. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A National Security Guard (NSG) commando from Maharashtra was killed in a road accident at the NSG centre at Manesar in Haryana Thursday, officials said. An army official told PTI that Gopinath Ramchandra Borgad, 28, was killed as his motorcycle skidded and dashed against a tree in the afternoon. He fell into a nullah and succumbed to serious head injuries. Borgad, native of Telgaon-Aral in Hingoli district, was married last year. Borgad's body will be flown to Aurangabad around 8 pm Friday and will be taken early Saturday by road to his native place for last rites, the official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An artiste must venture into films in different languages to catch the pulse of the country, especially the interiors, believes actor-producer Akshay Kumar. The actor, who has produced movies in Hindi, Marathi and Punjabi, said he is open to backing more films in the same space. "I think best content comes from Marathi cinema... I have made two Marathi films and both of them have won awards. I have also made a Punjabi film. I think to reach into the core of India you have to get into the regional cinema," Akshay said in an interview here. The actor said he wants to make Bhojpuri and Tamil films. "I have tried making a Telugu film but we couldn't complete the script," he added. Akshay, 51, may have worked in a string of patriotic and issue-based films recently, but he said he wants to continue doing films in different genres. In his 28 years of acting career, Akshay has managed to successfully switch to different genres from action to romance and comedies to socially relevant cinema recently. The actor said he is doing so to keep reinventing himself. "If I am changing my image, it is because I am having fun with it. It is not that I have to prove anything to anyone. I want to enjoy my work so I keep doing different things. "Initially in my career I was only doing action films and no one would offer me to do any other kind of work. I am glad I got the opportunity to keep changing my image with every film," he said. The actor was recently roped in for Amazon Prime Video's action thriller series, tentatively titled "The End". Akshay, who rose to fame as an action star with the "Khiladi" series in the 1990s, said he would want to continue doing stunts for the next five years. "I am 51, I think I can do action till the age of 56. God knows after that. If I am able to maintain myself, I will continue. Otherwise, there are other things one can do." The actor's latest release "Kesari" released Wednesday. Akshay also has "Housefull 4", "Good News", "Sooryavanshi" and "Mission Mangal" in the pipeline. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan has claimed to have rescued four kidnapped Iranian soldiers from terrorists in the restive Balochistan province bordering Afghanistan. The Pakistan Army said that forces carried out an operation following a tip-off that extremists from a banned outfit had brought soldiers from Afghanistan to a "transitional hideout" in Amori area of Chaghai district of the province. "After an exchange of fire, four Iranian soldiers were rescued," it said on Wednesday. At least 12 Iranian security personnel, including members of the Revolutionary Guards, were kidnapped near the Pakistan border in October last year. Jaish al-Adl, an anti-Shiite and anti-Iran terrorist group, had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. The kidnapping led to a public spat between Pakistan and Iran, which accused extremists hiding in Pakistan of carrying out attacks inside Iran. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Pakistan has "strongly protested" the acquittal of all four accused in the 2007 Samjhauta train blast case, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said Thursday. The blast in Samjhauta Express occurred near Panipat in Haryana on February 18, 2007, when the train was on its way to Attari, the last railway station on the Indian side. The blast killed 68 people, mostly Pakistanis. A special court in Panchkula in Haryana acquitted main accused Swami Aseemanand and three others in the case on Wednesday. "The decision by India's National Investigation Court has shaken the people. The four accused were acquitted after 11 years, including Swami Aseemanand, who had already confessed his crime," Qureshi said. "Pakistan strongly protested on this development and gave a demarche to India," he told the media in Islamabad. He said Pakistan was studying the Samjhuta train verdict and weighing its options. The minister said India blamed Pakistan for the deadly Pulwama attack without any proof but no one accepted the Indian narrative. "I am saying this after talking to several world leadersIndia was trying to link it with Pakistan but it failed," he claimed. He also said India's reaction to the Christchurch attack "demonstrates New Delhi's double standards as it did not even mention the words Muslims or mosques while coneming the attack", state-run Radio Pakistan reported. Qureshi who returned from China on Thursday after attending the first strategic bilateral dialogue heaped praise on Beijing, terming it as "confidante". "We take each other into confidence on all issues. Sometime they guide us and sometimes they change their policy after listening to us," he said. Qureshi said he also discussed the issue of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar with China, which used its right of technical hold to stop a move against at the UN level. China for the fourth time blocked a bid in the United Nations (UN) Security Council to designate Azhar as a "global terrorist" by putting a technical hold on the proposal, a move India termed as disappointing. The JeM has claimed responsibility for the February 14 Pulwama attack that left 40 CRPF personnel dead and raised tensions between India and Pakistan. "As you know, China despite a lot of pressure used the right of technical hold in order to collect more information on the issueWe talked what US, China and UK were thinking about it," Qureshi said. He said the two sides held discussion on the Sanction Committee but refused to share details. He said Pakistan was aware what the world wanted on the issue of Azhar. "We are aware. We know what the world wants, what we should do, what are our interests, and what should be our policy. It (issue of Azhar) should be seen in larger context It should be seen in the context of money laundering and what FATF is saying because it is all linked, he said. Qureshi further said that discussion with China on the issue of Azhar will continue. He also said that Pakistan was analyzing the contents of the dossier given by India on Pulwama. "We are serious about it and are analysing the dossier and present our findings to you (media) and to the world, he said. He said Pakistan was committed to address militancy and eliminate it completely. Talking about the recently held strategic dialogue with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, he said that its objective was to upgrade political consultations. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A Palestinian was shot dead late Wednesday in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian medical sources said, with the Israeli army saying a soldier opened fire after Israeli cars were stoned. The Palestinian health ministry said Ahmed Manasara, 26, was shot dead near a checkpoint close to Bethlehem without providing further details. The Israeli military said that a soldier had "opened fire after identifying rocks being thrown at Israeli vehicles. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Election Commission is the sole authority to decide election dates and courts have no jurisdiction to interfere with it, the poll body submitted in the Madras High Court on Thursday. State Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo stated this in a counter affidavit filed before a bench of Justices S Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad on petitions seeking rescheduling of April 18 Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu citing religious festivals and events. He said the Supreme Court in its various judgments had held that the framing of schedule or calendar for election was in the exclusive domain of the Election Commission (EC). The occurrence of a religious festival or season is common in the country and elections cannot be deferred solely on this ground, the counter said, seeking dismissal of the petitions. After hearing the arguments by the counsels for the EC and the petitioners, the bench reserved its order for Friday. The court had on Tuesday directed the EC to file the counter after its counsel informed that a representation by the archbishop had already been rejected by the poll body. A Madurai-based advocate in his PIL has sought change in the polling date, saying it clashed with the famous 'Chitirai' festival there that draws lakhs of devotees from five southern districts of Tamil Nadu and hence, would affect polling percentage. Archbishop Antony Pappusamy, president of the Tamil Nadu Bishops Council, and S Inigo Irudayaraj, Managing Trustee of a Christian forum here, have also sought rescheduling of the election date, citing it fell during the 'Easter Triduum', a key religious event for Christians. The CEO in the counter said based on the assessment of the Madurai district administration, it was ideal to proceed with the election as scheduled with additional deployment of security personnel and extended polling hours. He had earlier this week proposed to extend the polling in Madurai till 8 pm in view of the festival. The counter pointed out that the apex court had also ruled that plenary powers of the EC cannot be taken away by law framed by the Parliament. It had also held that the ultimate decision on holding elections at any given point of time must rest with the EC and jurisdiction of courts would not extend to issuing directions to the Commission for the conduct of particular polls on particular dates independently of the poll body's perception, as to their feasibility and practicability, the CEO added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) US top diplomat Mike Pompeo became the first high-ranking American official to visit the Western Wall with an Israeli prime minister on Thursday, providing another boost to Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election campaign. Two experienced former US diplomats could not recall such a senior US official visiting the site with an Israeli premier. It could be taken as tacit approval of Israel's sovereignty over the site, one of the holiest in Judaism and located in mainly Palestinian east Jerusalem. The visit comes less than three weeks before Israel's April 9 elections in which Netanyahu is facing a tough challenge from a centrist alliance led by a former military chief of staff, Benny Gantz. Netanyahu is also due to visit Washington and meet with his close ally US President Donald Trump twice next week. On Thursday afternoon, Netanyahu and Pompeo, along with US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, approached the wall together, placing a hand on it before depositing prayers on slips of paper, as is tradition. Before the visit, the US secretary of state told journalists "the trip to the wall is something that I've been talking with PM Netanyahu about doing ... It's our first chance to go there together." "I think it's important. I think it's symbolic that a senior American official go there with a PM of Israel," he added, calling it "a place that's important to many faiths." - 'Indispensable man' It was the Trump administration's latest move in favour of Israel and Netanyahu's right-wing government, and word came later that another is on the way. Netanyahu has been pushing for the White House to recognise Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, and Trump tweeted Thursday that "it is time" to do so. Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state now with the Wilson Center think tank in Washington, said the Western Wall visit was "determined to drive home a singular point." "That this administration is the most pro-Israeli administration in the history of the US-Israeli relationship, and it's occurring barely three weeks before an Israeli election," he told AFP. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte looks set to lose his senate majority after upstart populists surged in provincial elections just two days after a suspected terror attack in Utrecht. Controversial eurosceptic Thierry Baudet's Forum for Democracy (FvD) party came from nowhere to be the second biggest in parliament's upper house, an exit poll by leading broadcaster NOS said. The blow for Rutte -- who painstakingly formed his ruling coalition to freeze out the far-right after general elections in 2017 -- will be closely watched abroad ahead of European Parliament elections in May. After eight years in power, Rutte is an influential figure in Europe, including in its Brexit negotiations, but the result leaves him vulnerable at home and needing to rely on other parties to pass legislation. The elections came two days after a Turkish man was arrested for shooting three people dead on a tram in the central city of Utrecht, an attack which right-wing parties have seized on to push their anti-migrant agenda. The coalition led by Rutte's centre-right VVD party is set to collapse from 38 to 31 seats in the 75-seat senate, which passes legislation approved by the lower house. Rutte's VVD is set to drop from 13 to 12 but the other coalition partners took a hammering with the left-leaning progressive D66 falling from 10 to 7 and the Christian Democrat CDA from 12 to 8, although ChristenUnie rises from 3 to 4. Baudet -- known for controversial statements such as "women in general excel less in jobs and have less ambition" -- led his party to win 10 seats, just behind Rutte's party, the exit poll said. The anti-Islam Freedom Party led by far-right politician Geert Wilders is set to win six seats, down from nine, but could be influential if it teams up with Baudet. Long a standard bearer for the far right in the Netherlands and more widely across Europe, the bleach-blonde Wilders appeared to have lost seats to the newer figure of Baudet. Rutte could now be left to rely on opposition parties to pass legislation, including the GroenLinks (Green Left) party led by Jesse Klaver, which is set to double its seats from four to eight. Senate members will officially be decided in May by the 570 representatives elected to the country's 12 provinces in Wednesday's election. The young and telegenic Baudet faced criticism for his refusal to follow the lead of other parties and stop campaigning on Monday after the attack. At a rally in The Hague's seaside resort of Scheveningen, Baudet accused Rutte's government of "naive" immigration policies and told the crowd that a "change of course is needed, otherwise this is going to happen more often in the Netherlands". Baudet's refusal to stop campaigning on Monday drew bitter condemnation from various MPs including D66 leader and coalition parter Rob Jetten calling the action "disgusting." The head of the Dutch socialist party had called the vote a "Rutte referendum", although Rutte has said he will not step down if his coalition loses its majority and therefore needs help to drive through laws. However, after nearly a decade in power, Rutte has been widely tipped to take up a top EU post in Brussels when the current set-up led by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker steps down later this year. Exit polls also suggested a good night for GroenLinks -- the leftist ecological party led by Jesse Klaver, a politician best known abroad for his strong resemblance to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Previously seen as something of a rubber-stamp body, the Senate in recent years has become a political battleground as it has the final say whether to pass laws formulated by MPs in the lower house. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) In the dark and isolating days after Hurricane Maria, people across Puerto Rico invented new ways to communicate: Elderly couples in need of food or water would raise a flag at their home. Neighbors created amateur security systems, banging on pots for a minute each night to mark the start of a curfew after which any human noise would be considered a call for help. With telephone service blown away by the Category 4 hurricane, the governor took to the only radio station still operating and asked listeners to tell the mayors of all 78 municipalities to drive to the capital and update authorities about their needs in person. Access to devastated areas was impossible, and police, firefighters and emergency responders were unable to talk to each other for days. "The biggest crisis after Maria was communication," said Nazario Lugo, president of Puerto Rico's Association of Emergency Managers. "That unleashed an endless number of problems." Now several groups of young tech developers are trying to prevent that from happening the next time a major disaster strikes. They are roving Puerto Rico with laptops, transmitters and drones to test new systems that could help survivors communicate with authorities and speed up response times to minimize the number of deaths. Puerto Rico is considered an ideal site to test and refine these inventions due to the Sept. 20, 2017, storm and its aftermath that claimed an estimated 2,975 lives. Technology is also lagging on an island where police and firefighters lack an interoperable system to communicate with each other. One team of developers backed by IBM is sticking transmitters to trees with Velcro as part of a hardware and software system they invented called Project OWL, which stands for Organization, Whereabouts, and Logistics. It won a $200,000 prize at a Call for Code competition late last year in which 100,000 developers from 156 nations participated an event focused on natural disaster preparedness and relief. "We were thinking, 'How can we make this in a way so stupidly simple to be used that you don't even have to think about it?'" said Project OWL team leader Bryan Knouse. "It's really hard to tell people who have been through a disaster, 'Download this app or go to this website.' Not gonna happen." The tiny transmitter boxes emit a low-frequency Wi-Fi connection that users can link to via smartphones. Once connected, a pop-up box in English and Spanish automatically appears and people can enter information including name, location, number of pets, medical needs and hazards such as fallen trees, downed power lines, fires or blocked roads. The information is relayed back through the network and eventually to emergency officials. The team recently made its first large-area test of system in the northwest coastal town of Isabela. One group got into a car and stopped repeatedly to affix transmitters around a 1 square-mile area while another group led by Knouse stayed at the home base, which that day consisted of the roof of a barbecue joint that provided enough height to collect the signals. Further boosting the signal were two large cream-colored balloons bought at Party City fitted with a transmitter. The transmitters are powered by batteries and maybe eventually solar power, and the team envisions the system working in places from the U.S. mainland to India to Japan. Every couple of minutes, Knouse's computer dinged with messages that included names, location and details of the roving group that popped up on a map with messages such as "Help me please!" and "NEED WATER!!!" The team later met with members of a local Boys and Girls Club to introduce the technology to young users in hopes they could teach and share it with their neighbors. Isabela's mayor, Carlos Delgado, said he was impressed by the project and wishes it was invented before Maria shredded the island's telecommunications system. He lamented how city officials had to walk to dozens of neighborhoods to learn about people's needs after the hurricane, which delayed the delivery of food, water and medicine. "It was a bit like going back to the start of humanity: everything was done on foot," he said. Another project is led by Pedro Cruz, a self-taught Puerto Rican tech developer who recently won a local hackathon with a project called DroneAid. He recalled seeing messages such as "SOS" and "WE NEED FOOD" scrawled in big letters on roads so they could be seen from the air after Maria. He envisions before a storm giving people 5-foot-long mats with standardized symbols indicating needs such as food, water or medical care that could be spread out on flat surfaces. Programmed drones could fly overhead, read the symbols and process them into data about needs and locations for emergency responders. The idea came to him when he was physically unable to reach his grandmother after Maria. He could not communicate with her and worried about her respiratory and heart conditions. So he flew his drone to her house, and she waved through the window. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) : Former Union Minister Daggubati Purandeswari and BJP state unit president Kanna Lakshminarayana are the only two candidates whose names the Bharatiya Janata Party announced in its first list Thursday for the April 11 Lok Sabha election in Andhra Pradesh. BJPs two sitting MPs - Kambhampati Haribabu (Visakhapatnam) and Gokaraju Ganga Raju (Narsapuram) - have not been re-nominated as they chose not to contest the elections again, according to party sources. Purandeswari will contest from Visakhapatnam, a seat she won in 2009 as a Congress nominee, while Kanna will be contesting the Lok Sabha poll for the first time from Narsaraopeta. Though his name has not been officially announced, former state minister P Manikyala Rao is getting ready to file his nomination from Narsapuram parliamentary constituency on Friday. As there are practically two more days left for filing of nominations, its not clear whether or not the BJP will name its candidates for the other seats in the state. Purandeswari won for the first time from Bapatla in 2004 and shifted to Visakhapatnam in 2009 after her seat was reserved for the Scheduled Caste in the delimitation. In 2014, she quit the Congress and joined the BJP. The party fielded her from Rajampet in Kadapa district, much against her wishes, and she lost. With Haribabu opting out, line became clear for her to return to her favourite seat. A five-time Congress MLA, Kanna Lakshminarayana joined the BJP after losing the 2014 election. Last year, he was made the party state president. This time, he preferred to contest the parliamentary election and accordingly chose Narsaraopet. He will face his bte noire Rayapati Sambasiva Rao of the TDP, the sitting MP. Manikyala Rao was elected to the state Assembly for the first time from Tadepalligudem. He reportedly did not show interest to contest the 2019 general election but with Ganga Raju opting out, the party reportedly chose Rao for the Narsapuram contest. In 2014, the BJP contested five out of 25 Lok Sabha seats in the Andhra Pradesh in alliance with the TDP and won two. This time, it is fighting the election on its own as the alliance broke a year ago. The names of the candidates for Andhra Pradesh were part of the first list of 184 nominees for Lok Sabha polls announced by senior BJP leader J P Nadda in Delhi Thursday evening. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Election Commission Thursday said Congress President Rahul Gandhi's interaction with students at a women's college here did not violate the model code of conduct, though it has sought a report on his speech. Tamil Nadu's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Satyabrata Sahoo said local election officials have reported that there was no violation in terms of permission obtained by Stella Maris College for Women to host the interaction on March 13. He said the District Electoral Officer (DEO) has informed him that "there was permission" for Gandhi's event. "So, there is no violation of MCC." However, Sahoo has sought "further information" on Gandhi's speech. "Have sought further information on what kind of speech was given... have asked the DEO to give report based on the speech content," Sahoo said. Earlier, the Tamil Nadu government had ordered an inquiry as to how the college gave its approval for Gandhi to interact with its students when the model code for elections was in force. The Director of Collegiate Education, R Sarumathi, had directed a subordinate official to inquire into the matter. In his interaction with the students, the Congress president had promised 33 per cent reservation in government jobs for women and answered several of their questions. He had also brought up the issue of the Rafale deal and reiterated his allegations about the pricing of the aircraft and the process. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Revellers hit the streets with sprinklers and threw 'gulal' in the air to the beating of drums chanting 'Holi Hain' as the festival of colours was celebrated with fervour across West Bengal Thursday. Groups of youths took to the roads in different localities since the morning hours and threw coloured water and smeared gulal on the faces of others to the accompaniment of chartbuster Holi songs like 'Rang Baroshe' and 'Khelbo Holi Rang Debona.' Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who wished the people of the state on the occasion, said in a tweet, "In memory of slain jawan in #PulwamaAttack % other brave martyrs, I have decided not to participate in Holi festivities this year." The day was also celebrated in Mayapur, global headquarters of International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) where devotees from other countries converged danced merrily to the chanting of 'Hare Krishna'. Holi, better known as Doljatra in West Bengal, was also being celebrated by the Gaudiya Vaishnavites at temple town Nabadwip. In Shantiniketan, the abode of Rabindranath Tagore, ashramites of Visva Bharati - students and teachers - took part in Basanto utsab, to herald Spring as Tagore song 'Ore Grihobasi' rent the air. Processions were taken out in different localities in the morning where people, donning traditional attire, walked along singing and reciting Tagore poems on Spring and smeared each other's face with 'gulal.' Actors from tinsel town from Indrani Halder to Rituparna Sengupta celebrated the day and wished their fans on the occasion. Bengali superstar Prosenjit Chatterjee tweeted, "Best wishes to everyone on the colourful day of Subho Doljatra. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A ferry overloaded with people celebrating the Kurdish new year and Mother's Day capsized in the Tigris River near the Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday, killing at least 83 people, including families, officials said. Many of the dead were women and children who could be seen struggling to swim against a strong current, their heads bobbing in the water opposite restaurants and an amusement park where people had been celebrating minutes earlier. The death toll from the accident, which residents said was the worst in recent memory, was expected to rise as people waited on the banks of the Tigris for of loved ones. Col Hussam Khalil, head of the Civil Defense in Iraq's northern Nineveh province, told The Associated Press the accident occurred as scores of people were out in the tourist area, known as Ghabat, celebrating Nowruz, which marks the Kurdish new year and the arrival of spring. The boat had been ferrying people to a small island nearby. Abdulrazzaq Falih, a rescuer with the river police of Mosul, said he pulled more than 20 bodies from the water. "Children, women, and young, what can I tell you? It was a difficult situation," he said. A man who identified himself as Abdul-Jabbar al-Jbouri appealed for the police to look for his wife and children. "My wife and three daughters are in the water!" he screamed. Mosul was devastated by the war against the Islamic State group, which occupied the city for three years. Iraqi forces drove the militants from Mosul in 2017 after a grueling campaign that left entire neighborhoods in ruins, and residents are still struggling to rebuild. Videos of the ferry disaster posted online showed people struggling against the strong current. Young men who had been lunching on the banks jumped into the water with their clothes on to try and save people. The usually tame Tigris is running high this time of year, fed by snowmelt from mountains in Turkey. The river swelled further after a rainy season that brought more precipitation than in previous years. Falah al-Taii, director of Nineveh health department, said the number of victims that arrived at the forensic department and in the hospitals in Mosul is more than 60, the majority of them women and children. "There is a large number of fathers and mothers who are looking for their children until now," he added. Khalil said the ferry sank because of a technical problem, and that there weren't many boats in the area to rescue people. He said more than 80 people were on the ferry when it sank. Others said the number of people on the boat was much higher. Saudi Aziz, a 23-year-old Kurd, said he was on another ferry crossing the river. He said the stricken ferry was overloaded with around 150 people when it capsized. He said it wasn't long before he saw people drowning, their heads bobbing up and "sliding away across the water like plastic bags." He said he jumped in the water and managed to save a 20-year-old girl. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Actors Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki have boarded the cast of Christopher Nolan's next directorial venture. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the two actors join "BlacKkKlansman" star John David Washington in the project, which is being described as an "event film". Pattinson is currently awaiting the release of Claire Denis' "High Life", while Debicki most recently featured in Steve McQueen-directed heist film "Widows". Nolan is also producing the new project along with his partner Emma Thomas. The plot details and the film's title are currently under wraps. Warner Bros earlier announced that Nolan's upcoming untitled film will open in IMAX on July 17, 2020. Nolan's last release was World War II drama "Dunkirk", which won three Academy Awards and earned the filmmaker his first best director Oscar nod. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) A cash assistance announced by the Tamil Nadu government for below poverty line and poor families has been stopped in view of the model code of conduct coming into force ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the state dispensation informed the Madras High Court Thursday. Making the submission before a bench comprising justices S Manikumar and Subramonium Prasad on two petitions challenging the scheme, State Advocate General Vijay Narayan said the enumeration of beneficiaries had also been stopped. Recording it, the bench adjourned the petitions to April 29. Chief Minister K Palaniswami had on February 11 announced the special assistance of Rs 2,000 each to about 60 lakh below poverty line and poor families across the state, keeping in mind the impact of Gaja cyclone as well as the prevailing drought. In their petitions, M Karunanidhi and M Murugesan have contended that the cash assistance of Rs 2,000 each should be given only to the people belonging to the below poverty line, as per a government order of January 9, 2007, on such welfare measures. However, the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj department issued an order on February 13 stating that the one time special assistance of Rs 2,000 would be given to the poor families living in rural and urban areas, particularly agricultural labourers and families of poor labourers engaged in various trades in the state. The petitioners claimed there was no proper identification of the beneficiaries under the scheme and tax payers money would be utilised in extending the benefit to families, which are not below the poverty line. This would amount to abuse of government funds for garnering votes at the cost of the state exchequer, they contended and sought to quash the government order. Polling for 39 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state will be held on April 18. The model code of conduct came into force on March 10 with the announcement of the schedule for the Lok Sabha elections by the Election Commission. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Saudi women held in detention for nearly a year have been charged following contact with foreign media and activists, Human Rights Watch said Thursday, after they went on trial for undermining national security. "After nearly a year of accusations... that these brave champions of women's rights are 'foreign agents', the actual charges against them appear to be simply a list of their efforts to promote women's rights," said Michael Page, HRW's Middle East deputy director. "This is hardly the act of a government that is carrying out reforms, as (Crown Prince) Mohammed bin Salman and his supporters keep claiming." The trial of at least 10 women opened in Riyadh's criminal court last week after they were detained in 2018 as part of a sweeping crackdown on activists, legal authorities said, without specifying the charges. HRW and Amnesty International put the number of women facing trial at 11. Some of them have allegedly faced torture and sexual harassment during interrogation in detention. Citing sources who reviewed the charge sheets, HRW said the women were indicted after establishing contact with fully accredited international journalists based in the kingdom as well as foreign diplomats and international human rights organisations. "If sharing information about women's rights with journalists and diplomats is illegal, then by that standard most of the Saudi leadership would be in prison right now," Page said. The charge sheets make no mention of contact with foreign spies, according to HRW. Earlier this month, the Saudi public prosecutor said the activists had been accused of "coordinated activity to undermine the security, stability and social harmony of the kingdom". State-backed media have branded them traitors and "agents of embassies". Saudi Arabia's media ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The women were initially expected to appear for trial in a court set up to handle terror-related cases. But just hours before their first court appearance, their relatives said they were informed the trial had been shifted to the criminal court, without being told why. The move has triggered speculation the trial could pave the way for the release of the women after the crackdown sparked international criticism against Prince Mohammed, the kingdom's de facto ruler. Some detainees, including prominent activist Loujain Hathloul, were recently made to sign letters in prison requesting a royal pardon from King Salman, family members told AFP. Prince Mohammed's much-trumpeted drive to modernise the conservative kingdom has been dented by the detentions, part of a wider crackdown by Saudi authorities on dissent. Saudi Arabia has also faced global outrage over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last October. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Various scholars from India and Nepal on Thursday called for the preservation and promotion of Sanskrit language and literature for their common benefit and establishing a study centre for the language with a joint governing board. The scholars, who took part in a three-day-long International Sanskrit Conference that concluded on Thursday, called for the set up of Indo-Nepal Centre for Sanskrit Studies with a joint governing board with necessary facilities in Kathmandu. Titled "Sanskrit a common treasure of Nepal and India", the conference was jointly organised by the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, India's Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Balmiki campus of Nepal Sanskrit University. More than 45 working papers on different aspects of Sanskrit language, literature and philosophy were presented by the scholars during the conference, according to an official statement. During the conference India was also urged to provide scholarships through its embassy in Kathmandu to Nepalese students for higher studies in yoga and Ayurveda, noted the declaration. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Senators have called for the United States to slap sanctions on Myanmar's army chief, saying more needed to be done to bring accountability over the campaign against the Rohingya. In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the four senators Wednesday said Myanmar has shown "no credible signs of progress" despite widespread international condemnation of the killings and sexual violence against members of the mostly Muslim minority. Senators including Dick Durbin, the number-two Democrat, said that sanctions against Myanmar's army chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, as well as other top officers would demonstrate "US intolerance for behavior that contravenes fundamental human rights." "The Trump administration has taken no action against these senior officials even though sanctions designations would send a strong message that the United States supports accountability for those perpetrating well-documented human rights abuses against the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities," wrote the group that also included Republican Senator Todd Young of Indiana, which has become a hub for refugees from Myanmar. The Treasury Department in August imposed sanctions on four commanders accused of orchestrating massacres, but the senators said the move was insufficient. They urged sanctions against Min Aung Hlaing under the Magnitsky Act, a US law named after a Russian accountant who died in prison that lays out the seizure of assets and a US travel ban for foreign officials who violate human rights. Around 740,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh in 2017 in a military campaign that the UN called ethnic cleansing. In a rare foreign media interview last month, Min Aung Hlaing told Japan's Asahi Shimbun that there was "no certain proof" the army had persecuted the Rohingya. The military shares power with a civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, a former heroine in the West when she was under house arrest who has been widely condemned for not speaking up on behalf of the Rohingya. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The head of 'Ayya Vazhi', a reformist spiritual sect that has a significant following in southern Tamil Nadu, has raised the demand for separate religion status ahead of Lok Sabha polls. Since a chunk of Hindu Nadars, who form the core of Ayya Vazhi, have traditionally supported the BJP in elections here, there is speculation if this stand of the sect could affect the saffron party's electoral prospects in Kanyakumari, the sole Lok Sabha constituency it won in in 2014. Ayya Vazhi has a significant following, especially in the southern districts of Kanyakumari, Tuticorin and Tirunelveli. Sporting a tilak and headgear, the sect has distinctive features in terms of offering prayers and conducting rituals and call their places of worship 'pathi.' The head of the sect, Balaprajapathi Adigalar said their demand for a separate religion was only to guard the "unique nature" of their denomination. "How can we lose our uniqueness,? We are firm on our demand. It is our appeal to the parties that they accept our demand," he told PTI. The Ayya Vazhi chief said they do not want "intervention" from Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department. He said the devotees were "only making spiritual services while the department wanted to administer other affairs" at Swamithope, the sect's principal place of worship near here. Department officials were not available for comment. "We are unique. Be it culture, practices, or prayers, everything is different from the organised Hindu faith," Adigalar said. Adigalar, 72, claimed that even senior BJP leader and Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan had assured support to protect the uniqueness of the denomination and "ward off intervention" from the H R and C E department. Despite repeated attempts made to reach a host of BJP leaders, none of them came forward to comment on the matter. The head of the sect commands immense respect not only from the followers, but also from other sections of society. No political leader has missed an opportunity to visit Swamithope, which attracts followers from several parts of During the early 1980s when the district witnessed a series of communal clashes between the Christians and in several villages, including the Mandaikadu riots, Adigalar worked towards restoring peace and foster harmony, his followers recalled. General Secretary, Nadar Mahajana Sangam, G Karikolraj, however said, "It is the leadership which is making this demand. The common Hindu Nadars of Kanyakumari district are not very keen about it." Congress Committee President K S Alagiri said their demand will be taken up with the high command, but declined to elaborate further. Hindutva ideologue B R Gauthaman claimed that this demand will have "zero impact" among the electorate. "Adigalar will be singled out by the community for making this demand since Ayya Vazhi is rooted in Hindu ideals and there are umpteen references to Hindu deities in the sacred text Akilathirattu," the right wing activist said. Verses of the sacred text end with "Sivaney Ayya," which means Shiva the Lord, he said. Citing poll data, he said in the 1984 elections- Hindu Munnani (a Sangh Parivar outfit) supported independent candidate V Balachandran was elected to the Assembly. Other Right wing candidates like M R Gandhi and Mohandoss lost the polls that year by wafer thin margins, he recalled. "During those days too, Adigalar was not on our side," he said and added that after 1984 elections too, poll data reveals the BJP's significant hold in Kanyakumari district. Even in the 1996 Assembly election, when the DMK combine had a landslide win in the wake of a popular wave against late J Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, BJP candidate C Velayuthan won in Padmanabhapuram in Kanyakumari, defeating Adigalar's brother and DMK nominee Bala Janathipathi, he recalled. "Ponnar Anna (elder brother and BJP leader Pon Radhakrishnan) winning the polls in 1999 and 2014 is well known from Kanyakumari," he said. Opposing the demand, Hindu Makkal Katchi chief Arjun Sampath said it cannot swing the decision of the electorate. The reformist sect founded by "the highly venerated Ayya Vaikundar over 200 years ago was to staunchly oppose religious conversions and to uphold equality and fraternity," Sampath said. The Hindu outfit leader said Ayya Vazhi is a "reformist Hindu denomination that upholds the key Hindu ideals and beliefs and this could be understood by a study of the sect's sacred scripture of Akilathirattu." Hindu Tamizhar Katchi leader Rama Ravikumar concurred with Sampath, saying it is a "non-issue". Police arrested several people in Kazakhstan's capital Thursday protesting a decision to rename the city in honour of Nursultan Nazarbayev who stepped down as president after three decades in office. Career diplomat and political loyalist Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was sworn into office Wednesday less than 24 hours after Nursultan Nazarbayev, the only leader an independent Kazakhstan had ever known, suddenly announced he was stepping down. Tokayev immediately proposed changing the name of the Central Asian nation's capital from Astana to Nursultan, or "Sultan of Light" in Kazakh, and parliament approved the change within hours. On Thursday at least a dozen demonstrators protesting the name change close to the capital's mayoral office were arrested by police, one of the protesters told AFP. They were subsequently released. "There were around a dozen of us," Askhat Akhmedyarov, who is an artist, told AFP. "They put us in a police van and took us to the police station where they checked our phones. They wanted to know if we had any ties to (the opposition)," he said. "I am at home now," he confirmed, adding that he had not been fined by police. The interior ministry did not comment on the arrests. Public gatherings in Kazakhstan are illegal unless they receive permission from local authorities, which is almost never provided in the case of political demonstrations. Akhmedyarov said he was protesting a name change that "showed Nazarbayev's insecurity." "This is a person who has looted the country and left millions in poverty. Now he has named the capital after himself and put a puppet president in charge. Next he will probably try to put his daughter (in the presidency)," Akhmedyarov said. "As a citizen I have the right to have my voice heard on these issues." Kazakhs have also been showing their opposition at the name change online. One online petition against the name change had gathered close over 36,000 signatures as of Wednesday despite the petition website appearing to be blocked in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan's senate on Wednesday also appointed Nazarbayev's eldest daughter Dariga Nazarbayeva as speaker, setting her up as a potential contender to succeed her father. Tokayev, 65, will serve out the rest of Nazarbayev's mandate until elections due next year, though the former president retains significant powers in the country he ruled for nearly three decades. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) For BJP patriarch L K Advani, it appears to be the end of road in electoral as his name did not figure in the first list of party candidates for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP chose to field its president Amit Shah from Gandhinagar, the seat held by Advani so far. Naranpura, from where Shah had won the Assembly election in 2012 before he became Rajya Sabha member, is located in Ahmedabad city, but falls in Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency. The BJP's state unit had demanded that either Prime Minister Narendra Modi or Shah should contest Lok Sabha election from the state this time. State BJP leaders had also demanded that Shah contest from Gandhinagar, a BJP bastion. The BJP had sent observers on March 16 to seek opinion of party workers and leaders in Gandhinagar, and most of them favoured Shah, party observer Nimaben Acharya had said. Workers felt that as the seat had been held by a national leader (Advani), someone among the party's central leadership should contest from there, another party observer Prithviraj Patel had said. "Neither has the party approached him nor has he approached the party so far," Advani's personal secretary Deepak Chopra told PTI when asked if the BJP had urged Advani to contest from Gandhinagar yet again. Advani, 91, who has served as Union home minister and deputy prime minister, has won from Gandhinagar six times. Credited for orchestrating the BJP's rise to a pre-eminent position in the late 80s and 90s along with Atal Bihari Vajpayee after it won only two Lok Sabha seats in 1984. Advani was moved out of the BJP's highest decision-making body, Parliamentary Board, in 2014 after Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the party to victory and Shah was made its president. He was made a member of Margdarshak Mandal (group of mentors), a body which has never met. He did not make any representation to stake claim for Gandhinagar seat before the BJP observers. The BJP veteran won from Gandhinagar for the first time in 1991, and retained the constituency in 1998, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014. In 1996 he did not contest, citing the Babri Masjid demolition case against him. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Singapore's trade minister has that he was hopeful that an Asia-wide trade pact, which is backed by China and excludes the United States, could be sealed by the end of the year. On a visit to Washington, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing Wednesday said that a clearer picture would emerge on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in May after elections in four countries that are part of it -- India, Australia, Indonesia and Thailand. "I think the gaps are narrowing and I think we have a fair chance to get it done this year," Chan told the US-ASEAN Business Council. He said that RCEP, which would be the world's largest trading pact, had both economic and geostrategic benefits as it would mark a strong statement that "we all continue to believe in a rule-based, open trading system." Singapore, as chairman last year of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, had pushed hard for the conclusion of RCEP which linking nearly half the world's population including China, India, Japan and Southeast Asia. But China pushed back the timeline for the 16-member pact to this year amid sticking points over market access and particular resistance in India to opening its borders to a raft of duty-free Chinese goods. China has championed RCEP amid its prolonged trade showdown with US President Donald Trump, a protectionist who has imposed billions of dollars' worth of tariffs as he accuses China of scamming the United States. RCEP gathered steam after Trump on taking office pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact advocated by his predecessor Barack Obama that did not include China and, unlike RCEP, established labor and environmental standards. The trade minister of Singapore -- a major commercial hub that is a longtime US ally -- appealed for the United States to maintain a strong leadership role in the world. "What makes America great is not just a set of trade numbers. What makes America great is the innovation that is present in this economy, fuelled by the free flow of talent and ideas," Chan said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Slain YSR Congress leader Y S Vivekananda Reddy's daughter Sunita Reddy Thursday demanded that the real culprits in the murder case be brought to book. Sunita Reddy told reporters she met the Andhra Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer Gopal Krishna Dwivedi at the Secretariat here and submitted a representation urging that the Election Commission ensure a fair investigation into the murder case. She wanted the probe by the Special Investigation Team to be conducted in a transparent manner. She said she submitted newspaper clips to the CEO on statements made by various leaders on her father's murder. Sunita Reddy alleged that the remarks being made by Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu might influence the SIT probing the case. Meanwhile, the SIT continued to question some close aides of the former minister as well as some possible suspects in connection with the murder, police sources said. The sources said SIT officials were gathering clues not only from Pulivendula but also in places like Bengaluru to unravel the mystery behind the murder that happened on March 15. Vivekananda Reddy, former minister and younger brother of former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister M Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, was found dead at his house. Police initially registered a case under Section 174 CrPC (unnatural death) when Reddy's body was found by his staff early in the morning. After post-mortem in the local government hospital, police confirmed the case was altered to Section 302 IPC that relates to murder. The killing, however, triggered a war of words between the TDP and the YSRC in the ongoing campaign for the April 11 general elections in the state. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An Army soldier was killed when Pakistan violated ceasefire by heavily shelling forward areas and posts with mortar bombs along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district Thursday, officials said. Pakistani troops violated ceasefire in Keri belt of Sunderbani sector this morning, they said. One soldier was was killed in Pakistani firing, they added. Pakistani troops have violated the ceasefire over 110 times along the LoC since January. On Monday night, Pakistan army initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation by resorting to shelling with mortar bombs and firing of small arms along the LoC in Akhnoor and Sunderbani sectors, a defence spokesman had said. An Army soldier was killed and four others were injured Monday when Pakistan Army violated the ceasefire by resorting to heavy mortar shelling and firing along the LoC in Rajouri district. "Rifleman Karamjeet Singh was critically injured and later succumbed to injuries," the spokesman had said. The border skirmishes witnessed a spurt after India's air strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp in Balakot, Pakistan, on February 26 in response to the February 14 Pulwama attack that killed 40 CRPF personnel. The year 2018 witnessed the highest number of ceasefire violations -- 2,936 -- by Pakistani troops in the last 15 years along the Indo-Pak border. Pakistan continues to violate the 2003 ceasefire agreement with India despite repeated calls for restraint and adherence to the pact during flag meetings between the two sides. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An Army soldier was killed when Pakistan violated the ceasefire by heavily shelling forward areas and posts along the Line of Control with mortar bombs in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district Thursday, officials said. Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire in Keri belt of Sunderbani sector this morning, they said. One soldier was was killed in Pakistani firing, they added. Pakistani troops have violated the ceasefire over 110 times along the LoC since January. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Stade Pierre-Mauroy has emerged as a fitting venue for the Coupe de la Ligue final later this month, with the home of LOSC Lille having become used to staging showcase events in recent years. RC Strasbourg Alsace and EA Guingamp go head to head in this season's final on Saturday, March 30 with the aim of succeeding Paris Saint-Germain winners in each of the last five years - on the roll of honour. Fans of both clubs will flock to Villeneuve-d'Ascq on the outskirts of Lille for the match, ensuring that there should be a sell-out crowd for the occasion at the 50,083-capacity ground. The Stade Pierre-Mauroy will be the latest stadium to host the final of the competition since the decision was taken to move it away from the Stade de France. PSG beat AS Monaco at the Groupama Stadium, home of Olympique Lyonnais, in 2017 and then defeated the same opponents at the Matmut Atlantique in Bordeaux 12 months ago. Like those venues, and the Allianz Riviera in Nice, the Stade Pierre-Mauroy is part of the new wave of grounds to have opened in France in this decade. It has been home to LOSC since 2012, when Les Dogues finally ended an exile of eight years spent playing at the nearby Stadium Lille Mtropole. They even staged certain gala fixtures - league meetings with Lyon and UEFA Champions League group games in the 2005-06 season - at the Stade de France. The club had left their old home in Lille, the Stade Grimonprez-Jooris, in 2004, never to return. "The arrival of a stadium of this stature in the Lille area constitutes a revolution," said Michel Seydoux, Lille's president at the time. "Of course this is a big thing for France, but also for Europe as well, because this stadium has been conceived to shine beyond our borders." A crowd of more than 44,000 watched LOSC play their first game in their new home, a 1-1 draw against AS Nancy Lorraine in August 2012. In six and a half years, the northern side have had ups and downs at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy, which is named after a former French Prime Minister and long-serving mayor of Lille. LOSC have hosted the likes of Bayern Munich and Valencia in the Champions League there, finished third in Ligue 1 in 2014 and are currently flying high in second under Christophe Galtier, having been beaten just once all season in front of their own fans. Their average gate this season of 31,400 is the fourth-highest in Ligue 1 Conforama. The prospect of Lille hosting European games next season is very real, but the Stade Pierre-Mauroy has already staged a wide range of major sporting events. One of the main reasons for that is geography, as touched on by Seydoux, with Lille handily located between Paris, London and Brussels. But the stadium itself is state of the art, and uniquely for France it has a retractable roof to protect the pitch from the potentially bitter winter weather. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, former MP Nama Nageswara Rao, who quit the TDP this week, joined the ruling TRS in Telangana on Thursday. Nageswara Rao, who was a member of TDP's polit bureau, was welcomed into the Telangana Rashtra Samithi fold by its working president K T Rama Rao here, TRS sources said. Nageswara Rao, who was Lok Sabha member from Khammam in Telangana, had sent a letter to Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, claiming that the survival of TDP in Telangana has become a question in spite of his best efforts. Speculation has been rife that Nageswara Rao would be the TRS' nominee from Khammam in the Lok Sabha elections. Nageswara Rao, an industrialist, had unsuccessfully contested from Khammam as TDP nominee in the Telangana Assembly elections in December last. The TDP had alliance with the Congress and others in the Assembly polls. A number of opposition leaders at various levels, including several MLAs of main opposition Congress, have switched over to the TRS during this month. Telangana, which has 17 Lok Sabha segments, goes to the polls in the first phase on April 11. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Who really gets under Donald Trump's skin? A man who has been dead since last year and another whom the president says he hardly knows. At least that's the bizarre picture painted by Trump this week in angry rants at the late senator John McCain and a Washington lawyer called George Conway. Trump lashed out yet again Wednesday at the broadly popular McCain, saying "I've never liked him much. I really probably never will." This followed a series of tweets and other statements in the last few days raging at the former senator's politics, role in the Russia collusion probe, and personal intelligence. As for Conway, "he's a whack job," Trump told journalists Wednesday. "A stone cold LOSER," he wrote on Twitter a few hours earlier. The venom of the attacks was not unusual for a president who revels in put-downs. The targets of his ire, though, raised eyebrows. McCain is widely remembered by Americans as a hero for his courage during six years of often brutal captivity in Hanoi during the Vietnam war. More to the point, he died in August at 81. While he fell out over policy several times with his fellow Republican Trump, he's been buried for seven months. No less curious is the Conway obsession. A prominent lawyer in Washington circles but a nobody to ordinary Americans, Conway burst into the public eye because he is married to a senior White House aide and has begun loudly questioning Trump's mental stability on Twitter. In both cases, Trump could have avoided controversy. McCain, after all, can never clash with him again and Conway poses no real threat -- other than, perhaps, to the stability of his marriage to senior Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway. Even Trump says, "I barely know him." Backing off from a fight, however, wouldn't be Trump: his entire presidency is based on being combative. Or, as Kellyanne Conway, told Politico: "he's a counter-puncher." "His base sees this as classic Trump behavior," said Rich Hanley, who teaches on and the media at Quinnipiac University. "They expect Trump to swing at everybody, even ghosts."Trump enjoys landing pithy, sometimes humorous, sometimes what many would call poor taste verbal blows. And Twitter, where he has more than 59 million followers, is his principal weapon. The Twitter president has largely dispensed with formal briefings, finding that a tweet alone can get everyone talking -- without giving them much chance for questioning. Trump defended this method of communication on Wednesday as an antidote to what he calls the "corrupt" and "fake" media. By that, he means most standard organisations. "It's a way that I can get honesty out," he said. It's a way where Trump typically gets to punch first and punch hard, thereby dominating the agenda. George Conway, however, has broken the mold. Leveraging his position as husband to a Trump aide and posting outrage-seeking tweets that claim to diagnose personality disorders, he effectively out-trolled the troller in chief. Trump's "not used to that. He's used to being the aggressor, the bully, the one who controls," Hanley said. "Now he's finding that there are characters like Conway... who are more aggressive than he is and he doesn't know how to handle it." In a different sense, the same applies to McCain. He's gone, but memory of the maverick senator, who was not afraid to break with Republican ranks or to hide his dislike for a president who ridiculed his capture in Vietnam yet never served himself, remains fresh. Clearly much too fresh for Trump, who has talked so much this week about his disagreements with McCain that it sounds as if they had been locking horns only hours ago. Trump just can't let go. "My dad... would think it was so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death," McCain's daughter Meghan said on ABC television Wednesday, demonstrating some put-down skills of her own. With Trump soon starting his 2020 reelection campaign and Democrats launching their own nomination battle, the ugly back and forth is set to intensify. But Mark Rom, a professor at Georgetown University, predicted that Democratic candidates will get surrogates to do the dirty work while they try to keep above it all. Their mantra, he said, will be modelled on the icily dismissive approach taken by the House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi: "I'll just ignore that little man. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) has prioritised peace efforts in Afghanistan and his special envoy has initiated direct talks with the Taliban, but the US President will not accept a "bad deal" on efforts to end America's longest war, the White House has said. According to a senior Trump administration official, America has "contingency" plans, which might involve "military options" if the peace talks fail to yield desired results. As part of his efforts to garner support for ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad will hold talks with counterparts from Russia, China and the European Union on Thursday and Friday. Khalilzad has held three round of talks with the Afghan Taliban in order to reach a settlement that would allow the US to withdraw its army and end the 17-year-old Afghan war, America's longest. "We are certainly prioritising peace efforts in Afghanistan. But as with all negotiations that involve vital US national security interests, we have contingency plans. The president has indicated he hopes for the best in these peace talks, but he will also not accept a bad deal," the official told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. The official explained that the US was hoping for the success with the peace process. "But it's not the only route that we are looking at in terms of protecting vital US national security interests in Afghanistan," the official said. The contingencies being talked about might involve "military options", the official said. Noting that the US still faces terrorist threats in Afghanistan, the official said America will continue to do what is necessary to protect its interests. The US has a lot of options, the official said, adding that while no decision has been taken on withdrawal of troops, president Trump would like to bring the troops back. "He also recognises that we have vital terrorism interests in Afghanistan and he certainly is focused on keeping American safe. So we will do what we have to do to ensure those vital national security interests are protected," the official said. The Trump administration, also recognises that for "any peace agreement to be sustainable the Taliban would have to sit down with the Afghan government" and other Afghan stakeholders to discuss political way forward, the official said. The US will not sacrifice the key gains of the last 18 years, including on human rights, particularly women's rights, at the negotiating table, said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We won't sacrifice those gains," the official insisted. Khalilzad is working hard to establish an inter-Afghan dialogue with the Taliban, sitting down with the government officials and other stakeholders, the official said. The top American diplomat believes that he is getting closer to that goal, the official noted. Referring to the State of the Union Address by President Trump early this year, the official said as the US makes progress in the negotiations, America would be able to look at reducing its troop presence and focusing more on counterterrorism mission. "The president said he didn't know if we would be successful in these negotiations, but it was certainly worth trying," the official said. Last week, the White House cancelled the meeting of its National Security Council with Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib, who launched a personal attack against Khalilzad. Responding to questions on outburst by Mohib against Khalilzad, which has resulted in tension between US and Afghanistan, the official said the administration has strong objection to the personal attacks by the Afghan national security advisor. The official, however, said that the issue was not going to affect the strong bilateral ties between the US and Afghanistan. "We deeply value this relationship. We are fighting shoulder to shoulder on the battleground with Afghan security forces, we are working to stabilise the country and defeat terrorists' threats there together," the official said. "But, they are a reflection of the Afghan frustration that they're not in room in these talks between the US and the Taliban. So it's, urgent that we convince the Taliban to sit down with the Afghan government and other Afghans and engage in a political process," the official said. The official reiterated that any settlement simply won't be sustainable unless the Taliban agrees to sit down with other Afghan stakeholders and work out a political settlement. "The Taliban must sit down with the Afghan government as well as other Afghans to work these issues out. I think it pointed up the need to put urgency on that aspect of the peace process," the official said. The White House official asserted that the US will be consulting closely with the Afghan government in with regard to the peace talks with the Taliban. "We can look at ways to improve the communication between our two governments," the official said, adding that the US will be looking at ways to enhance its coordination and cooperation moving forward. The world can eradicate tuberculosis by 2045 if the fight against the killer disease is properly funded, an international team of experts has said. Warning of the immense economic and social costs of inaction, they said that better screening, treatments and public awareness were needed to reduce the more than 10 million cases recorded every year. A chronic lung disease which is preventable and largely treatable if caught in time, tuberculosis is the top infectious killer of our time, causing over 1.6 million deaths each year. "That is huge and the economic burden of that to both developing and developed nations is staggering," Eric Goosby, the United Nations' special envoy for the disease, told AFP Wednesday. "It's not rocket science, it's really common sense. We need to initiate a new prevention strategy." Tuberculosis has existed for millenia and is latent in around a quarter of the world's population. Despite killing nearly as many people each year as HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, there has not been a new, commercially available tuberculosis vaccine in a century. The disease currently receives only around 10 percent of the research funding allocated for AIDS. A team of experts from 13 nations, writing in The Lancet, said that funding for research and development would need to quadruple to around USD 3 billion per year if the disease is to be properly tackled. In India alone, where one in three global tuberculosis deaths occur, providing better access to treatment and targeting at-risk communities for screening could cut deaths by nearly a third with an annually outlay of USD290 million. That compares to the USD 32 billion each year in economic losses -- including treatment costs and lost productivity -- attributed to tuberculosis. "The real key is that we are going to need much more new research and new tools," said Paula Fujiwara, scientific director at The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. "Even if we use the tools we have today it's not going to be enough. The goal is to end tuberculosis but the current decline is only 1.5-2.0 percent a year," she told AFP. The Lancet study says that even if currently available treatments were given to 90 percent of tuberculosis sufferers, 800,000 people would still die given their inefficacy and the gaps in diagnosis. A series of breakthroughs in recent months have provided some hope to patients. In October, a new treatment for drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis cured 80 percent of sufferers in Belarus. The treatment has since been repeated in other high-incidence nations, with similar results. A month earlier drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline unveiled a study showing that a new vaccine was effective in 54 percent of trial participants. In parallel, doctors say a new testing method could help reduce the 240,000 deaths of children under five that tuberculosis causes each year. Goosby said trials needed to continue to drive a production line of new treatments against the disease. "The inevitability is that we will need new drugs as the disease evolves," he said. "We should -- as a global health response -- anticipate and expect (drug) resistance and continue the work." The Lancet study said reducing tuberculosis deaths to less than 200,000 a year would cost around USD 10 billion annually. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two persons were drowned Thursday in Kharkhai river in Jharkhand's Seraikela Kharsawan district, police said. A teenager identified as Rishabh had gone to the river to take bath after celebrating Holi when he was swept away by the strong current of water, officer-in-charge of the RIT police station R N Singh said. An ex-Navyman, Sanjeev Kumar, who was currently posted as a senior security officer at a national bank in industrial township of Adityapur, rushed to rescue the boy but he too drowned. Later, the local residents with the help of divers recovered the bodies and rushed them to Tata Main Hospital here, where they were declared dead, Singh added. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Two policemen, including an officer, were injured in a grenade attack by militants in Sopore township of Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, police said. Militants lobbed a grenade at a security forces party at Main Chowk Sopore in the north Kashmir district, a police official said. He said two policemen, including the station house officer of Dangiwacha police station, sustained minor injuries in the explosion.The injured have been hospitalised. Security forces have cordoned off the area and a search has been launched to nab the attackers, the official said. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Britain faces a "national emergency" as the risk of a no-deal Brexit rises, business and union leaders warned in an open letter to embattled Prime Minister Theresa May. The heads of Britain's biggest employers' grouping, the Confederation of British Industry, and union umbrella organisation the Trades Union Congress, urged May to change tack and find a "Plan B" to avert the country leaving the European Union without a deal. "Our country is facing a national emergency.Decisions of recent days have caused the risk of no-deal to soar," read the letter from CBI director-general Carolyn Fairbairn and TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady. "Firms and communities across the UK are not ready for this outcome. The shock to our economy would be felt by generations to come," added the pair, who have demanded an "urgent meeting" with May. The grim warning, contained in a rare coming together of two organisations usually at odds with one another, comes as May meets the other 27 EU leaders in a Brussels summit to plead for a three-month postponement to Brexit. The premier has already asked EU President and summit host Donald Tusk for the withdrawal date to be moved to June 30 from March 29. However, EU leaders are likely to refuse her request, leaving Britain vulnerable to departing from the bloc with no trade deal in place. May's Brexit deal has twice been resoundingly rejected by British lawmakers, and a third vote the premier hoped to hold this week was cancelled by the House of Commons speaker on procedural grounds. "The current deal-or-no-deal must not be the only choice," added Fairbairn and O'Grady in their joint letter. "A 'Plan B' must be found -- one that protects workers, the economy and an open Irish border, commands a parliamentary majority, and is negotiable with the EU. "A new approach is needed to secure this -- whether through indicative votes or another mechanism for compromise," they added. "We cannot overstate the gravity of this crisis for firms and working people. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) UK companies have ratcheted up their preparations for a disorderly "no-deal" Brexit as best they can over the past couple of months, the Bank of England said Thursday. With the prospect of a chaotic Brexit potentially eight days away, a survey by the central bank's agents showed that around 80 per cent of companies "judged themselves ready" for such a scenario, in which the country crashes out of the European Union with no deal and no transition to new trading arrangements with the bloc. That's up from around 50 per cent in an equivalent survey in January. For decades, trading with the rest of the EU has been seamless. A disorderly Brexit could see the return of tariffs and other restrictions on trade with the EU, Britain's main export destination. To prepare, some firms have moved jobs and operations to the EU to continue to benefit from its seamless trade. Many have had to learn how to file customs declarations and adjust labels on goods. Exporters of animals are learning about health checks they will need to comply with. According to the bank's survey, however, many of those companies preparing for a "no-deal" Brexit said "there were limits to the degree of readiness that was feasible in the face of the range of possible outcomes in that scenario." There's only so much companies can do, for example, to prepare for new tariffs and exchange rate movements. Britain appears headed for a "no-deal" Brexit on March 29 if Prime Minister Theresa May fails to win parliamentary support for her withdrawal agreement with the EU. She is meeting EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday in an attempt to get support for a delay to the country's departure date to June 30. EU leaders have said a short extension would have to be conditional on her Brexit plan getting parliamentary backing and have indicated they would only be willing to back a delay to May 22, the day before elections to the European Parliament. After two heavy rejections in parliament, there are doubts as to whether she will be able to get parliamentary approval. What would happen next is uncertain. The Bank of England warned in November that the British economy could shrink by a massive 8 percent within months, though Governor Mark Carney has indicated the recession will be less savage, partly because of heightened preparedness. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) As part of his efforts to garner international support for ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad will hold talks with counterparts from Russia, China and the European Union on Thursday and Friday. "Discussion topics include: international support for the Afghan peace process, the role each party can play in bringing an end to the war, and progress to date in peace talks," the US State Department said in a statement. Khalilzad will host his counterparts Presidential Special Representative Ambassador Zamir Kabulov of Russia, Special Envoy Ambassador Deng Xijun of China and Special Envoy Ambassador Roland Kobia of the European Union at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department on Thursday and Friday. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Senior US officials will visit Beijing for a new round of trade war talks on March 28-29, followed by a trip to the by China's top negotiator in April, the Chinese commerce ministry said Thursday. The back-to-back trips come as Washington and Beijing battle over the final shape of a trade deal, with American officials demanding profound changes to Chinese industrial policy. US Trade Representative and Treasury Secretary are returning to the Chinese capital next week, commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng said at a weekly briefing. After their visit, Chinese Vice Premier Liu He will head to the in April to continue the negotiations, Gao said. President Donald Trump warned Wednesday that US tariffs on Chinese imports could remain in place for a "substantial period", dampening hopes that an agreement would see them lifted soon. Over the last eight months, the and China have slapped tariffs on more than $360 billion in two-way goods trade, weighing on the manufacturing sectors in both countries. On Friday, China's rubber-stamp parliament approved a foreign investment law to strengthen protections for intellectual property -- a central US grievance -- but critics said the bill was rammed through without sufficient time for input from businesses. The law was adopted barely three months after a first draft was debated, an unusually quick turnaround for the legislature, which meets once a year. Beijing has also expressed willingness to increase purchases of American commodities such as energy and soybeans. But analysts say Chinese officials will be reluctant to accede to demands that could weaken the Communist Party's hold on power -- such as fully exposing state enterprises to market forces. Trump initially said he expected to seal any final bargain at a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this month but that deadline has been pushed back as momentum in the talks has slowed. US negotiators have insisted that any agreement have teeth -- including the ability to impose tariffs unilaterally should China backslide on any commitments to end alleged unfair trade practices. "We have to make sure that if we do the deal with China, that China lives by the deal," Trump told reporters at the Wednesday. He also said the talks with Beijing were "coming along nicely". Despite Trump's trade wars, the US trade deficit with China last year hit a record, as American consumers drew in foreign-made goods while weakened US sales of agricultural commodities weighed on American exports. A large group of villagers allegedly ransacked the range forest office at Vasai in Palghar district of Maharashtra, in which three forest staffers were injured, police said on Thursday. The incident took place on Wednesday morning, police said. According to a police official, residents of Belkadi village ransacked the office after some youths from their village were caught by the forest department on the suspicion of triggering a forest fire at Tungareshwar hills. "A mob of about 150 villagers ransacked the range forest office at Vasai in which at least three forest staffers were injured," senior inspector Vilas Chowgule of Valiv police station said. The members of the group were later booked under IPC sections 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 427 (mischief causing damage) of the IPC and also sections of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act,1984. In his police complaint, a forest official alleged that a team of forest staffers was on a patrolling duty at Tungareshwar hills on Tuesday night, where they spotted the five youths. "A forest fire was on there at that time and the forest officials suspected that the youths were responsible for it. The five youths were detained and taken to the forest office," Chowgule said. The youths belonged to Belkadi village. When their family members and other villagers learnt about their detention, they came to the forest office and damaged its furniture, windows, doors and computers, police said. "The three forest personnel injured in the incident were later hospitalised," Chowgule said. The incident of the mob ransacking the forest office went viral on the social media. Meanwhile, the detained youths alleged that they had gone to the forest area just to collect woods for Holi, when the forest personnel held and thrashed them. The youths also lodged a counter-complaint against the forest staffers alleging that they were manhandled for no fault of theirs. Further investigation into the case is on. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Superstar Salman Khan said if he ever produces content for digital medium, he would make sure it caters to the family audience. The 53-year-old actor said he has been approached for producing content for web. "Web series is fine but the content should be clean. I don't like all that rubbish that is going on. "I have been approached and I have not said no. I will produce web content but it is going to be 'Hum Aapke Hai Kaun' type," Salman said in a group interview here. There were reports that the actor will be producing a web series for children, but he did not confirm working on the project. Salman is currently busy promoting his upcoming home production "Notebook", which marks the debut of actor Mohnish Bahl's daughter Pranutan and Zaheer Iqbal. It releases on March 29. His next acting venture is "Bharat" and Salman said the trailer of the film, which is scheduled to release on Eid, will be out soon. Directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, the film also features Katrina Kaif, Tabu, Disha Patani and Sunil Grover. Apart from this, Salman is set to collaborate with Sanjay Leela Bhansali after close to two decades. Titled "Inshallah", the film is a love story and features Alia Bhatt as the female lead. The "Sultan" star refrained from sharing any details on the project. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Lyft Inc's initial public offering (IPO) is oversubscribed based on commitments made so far by investors, making it more likely that the ride-hailing startup will fetch or even exceed the $23 billion valuation it is seeking, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. The development indicates that many investors are willing to overlook uncertainty over Lyft's path to profitability and its strategy for autonomous driving, for fear of missing out on the biggest and most high-profile technology IPO since Snap Inc in 2017. Lyft started its IPO road show on Monday ... U.S. and Canadian airlines that fly the roughly 175-seat aircraft face a logistical challenge: which flights to cancel and which to cover with other planes following the global grounding of Boeing Co's 737 MAX jets. Southwest Airlines Co and American Airlines Group Inc, the two largest MAX operators in the United States, said they have bolstered their reservation and operations teams to figure out how to spread flight cancellations across their networks, not just on MAX flights. American Airlines, for example, had most of its 24 MAX jets flying in and out of Miami, where load ... The Congress on Thursday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for using the Balakot air strikes to woo voters ahead of Lok Sabha elections, saying his "snide remarks" reflect the bankruptcy of political discourse on his part. Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala also accused the Prime Minister of being a "habitual offender" in seeking credit for the valour and bravery of the security forces after having failed to deliver on key issues of jobs, agrarian and economic crisis and corruption. "Such snide remarks only reflect the bankruptcy of political discourse on part of a Prime Minister staring at defeat in 2019," he said. "Modiji is a habitual offender in credit seeking for the valour and sacrifice of our armed forces," he alleged. Surjewala said after having "scored a zero" on delivery on jobs, agrarian crisis, slump in economic indices, he is "politicising the bravery of our jawans". "Yet he fails to admit that Pulwama terror attack was a gross national security and intelligence failure as PM was busy shooting movies like a Bollywood star even hours after the attack," he alleged. The remarks come in the wake of Modi making a mention of the Balakot air strike in Pakistan to woo voters while interacting with watchmen. Modi's remarks came days after the Election Commission said parties should not make use of national security issues in elections. In Wednesday's interaction, Modi also attacked opposition parties over its response to the Indian Air Force's strikes on terrorist camps in Pakistan following the Pulwama terror attack, saying bombs were dropped in the neighbouring country but they were screaming in India. "Every Indian is proud, but people are sad and perplexed at the response of opposition parties. In fact, those supporting 'tukde tukde gang' are not able to digest that how our armed forced rained bombs on Pakistan," he said while addressing watchmen. Modi was apparently referring to Gandhi's visit to the JNU campus in support of students, some of whom were accused by police of raising anti-India slogans. PM Modi slams Congress, says India's institutions biggest casualty of 'dynastic politics' PM Modi tears into opposition, says 'Chowkidar Chor Hai' jibe an insult to the nation The SCO's new Secretary-General Vladimir Norov has said that issues between India and Pakistan should be resolved bilaterally and their participation in the security grouping could become "impossible" without a commitment for an "unconditional" fight against terrorism and separatism. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) was established in Shanghai in 2001 with China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as founding members. It was expanded in 2017 with the inclusion of India and Pakistan. Addressing his first press conference here on Wednesday after assuming charge, Norov said that the Pulwama terror attack was a "direct provocation" by the opponents of peace between India and Pakistan. Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after a suicide bomber of Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed killed 40 CRPF personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district in February 14. "The recent situation between India and Pakistan, which has resulted in human casualties, I would like to note that there has been a direct provocation by the opponents of the Indo-Pakistani accord and peace," Norov, who was the former Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan, said in response to questions. Asked how the SCO mechanism could be used to resolve the recent tensions between India and Pakistan, he said: "before joining the SCO as full members, India and Pakistan committed themselves to strictly implement all the provisions of the legal framework that has been developed by the Member States of the Organisation". "One of the such fundamental obligation is not to bring bilateral contradictions and disagreements to the SCO family, as the SCO is not engaged in the settlement of disputable bilateral issues, whether border, water or other topics in relations between individual Member States," he said. These issues must be resolved and are being resolved through bilateral consultations and dialogue, goodwill and mutual reasonable compromises, he said. "The most important condition for participation in a multi-disciplinary cooperation within the SCO is the commitment to unconditional and consistent struggle against terrorism, separatism and extremism. Otherwise, it would be impossible for the two states to participate in the SCO," Norov said. The whole world has heard clear signals from the parties not to escalate relations and their readiness to fully understand and follow the principles established within the organisation, he said. "In addition, to offer mediation of the member states of the organization as there is an intention to resolve the differences in a bilateral format," Norov said. After joining the SCO, India and Pakistan have common ground and are ready to work in the SCO format to ensure regional security, joint counteraction to complex challenges and threats, sustainable socio-economic development, he said. This was stated by the leaders of India and Pakistan at last year's SCO summit in Qingdao in particular their intention to play an active and constructive role in the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group as peace and stability in Afghanistan is a matter of common concern for all the SCO countries, he said. Both India and Pakistan participated in the activities of the SCO as observers for 12 years and their accession to the SCO was preceded by a fairly long preparatory stage, he said. At present, representatives of India and Pakistan are actively working in two permanent bodies of the organisation which included the SCO Secretariat and the Executive Committee of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), Norov said, adding that the Indian and Pakistani sides also take part in the activities of all 29 SCO working mechanisms of the SCO. Also over 300 military personnel of India and Pakistan took part in the international anti-terrorist exercises "Peace Mission-2018", which took place at the at Chelyabinsk region of Russia last year. This "testifies to the joint and effective work of these two countries within the SCO," Norov said. The counter-terrorism exercises are due to be held this year again. The SCO will hold its summit in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, in June this year. Norov said the admission into the SCO of the "two large and influential states of South Asia" is of particular importance for the organisation and for the Eurasian region, as well to India and Pakistan themselves. "Being at the same negotiating table, and on a regular basis and in different formats, India and Pakistan are now in the process of a permanent dialogue on all issues which are currently in the agenda of the SCO," he said. He said that with the admission of India and Pakistan, the SCO has acquired a trans-regional character and in terms of its aggregate potential, the total population, territory, reserves of natural resources, GDP, it has become the largest organisation not only in the region, but also in the world. Many experts note that the SCO should be among the main "supporting structures" of the future world order, he said. Norov said that the SCO Charter defines joint counteraction to terrorism, separatism and extremism in all their manifestations as one of the important tasks. Countering terrorism, separatism and extremism in particular in identifying, preventing and suppressing the manifestations of these "three forces of evil" in the territories of the SCO member states has become a major work of the organisation, he added. ALSO READ: US warns Pakistan, says another terrorist attack in India would be extremely problematic The United States has asked Pakistan to take sustained, verifiable and irreversible action against the perpetrators of terrorism, while warning the country that another terror attack on India will prove to be "extremely problematic". "We need to see Pakistan taking concrete and sustained action to reign in the terrorist groups, mainly the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba in order to ensure that we don't have re-escalation (of tension) in the region," a senior administration official told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. "And, if there's any additional terrorist attack without Pakistan having made a sustained, sincere effort against these groups, it would be extremely problematic for Pakistan and it would cause re-escalation of tensions, which is dangerous for both countries," the official said on the condition of anonymity. Asked about the steps being taken by Pakistan in the aftermath of the Balakot air strike by Indian fighter jets, the official said the US and the international community needed to see "irreversible and sustained" action against the terror groups. IAF Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman to go on a three-week sick leave before he joins duty "It's early to make a full assessment," the official said. In the recent days, the official said Pakistan has taken some "initial" actions. They have frozen the assets of some terrorist groups and made some arrests. They have taken administrative control of some of the JeM facilities, the official added. "But we clearly need to see more. We need to see irreversible action because in the past, what we've seen is they made some arrests and then a few months later, they released these individuals. The terrorist leaders are sometimes still allowed to travel around the country, hold rallies," the official said. Reiterating that the United States is looking for "irreversible action", the official said America is working with its international partners to increase pressure on Pakistan. "Because it has been too long that these groups have been able to operate." Observing that Pakistan has economic concerns as well, the official said the Financial Action Tasks Force (FATF) is one area which demonstrates the need for them to take these actions against terror groups. "Otherwise, they're at risk within the system and the FATF to be grey-listed," the official said. Pakistan needs to decide if it wants to be viewed as a responsible international player and have access to all the financial mechanisms that are available or is it going to continue to fail to take the steps necessary against these terrorist groups and see itself further isolated. "The choice is Pakistan's," the senior administration official asserted. While the situation between the two south Asian neighbours have de-escalated, the two armies are still on high alert and that concerns the US, the official said. "So, we realize that if there, God forbid, would be another terrorist attack that you could quickly see the escalation in the situation once again. So that's why, we're making clear that any additional military action by either side runs an unacceptably high risk, for both countries and for the region," the official said. Indian Air Force shoots down Pakistan F-16 fighter jet The Trump Administration, the official said, has taken sort of a "zero tolerance policy" on the issue of safe havens to terrorists. "The terror terrorist attack on February 14th on India was a demonstration that Pakistan's continuing provision of sanctuary for any terrorist group is not acceptable," the official said. During the height of the crisis -- February 26-28 -- the United States was in continuous contact with Indian and Pakistani officials, both on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad. "They were working the phones continuously and were deeply engaged in seeking to deescalate what was a very dangerous moment in India-Pakistan relations," the official said. The United States has also reached out to influential countries to have them help deescalate the situation, the senior administration official said. Some of these countries are China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and Australia. A no-deal Brexit would significantly harm the European Union and a deal on financial services between Britain and the EU is likely whatever form Brexit takes, Barclays Chairman John McFarlane said on Thursday. "In the event of a no-deal Brexit, it would hurt the EU very significantly," McFarlane told a Brexit conference. He said the EU and euro zone appear as if they are becoming a "closed system" in financial services, while London has developed as a global financial center by being open, he said. "London was never designed, it evolved," McFarlane said. He expected that trade would continue between the financial sector in London and the EU after Brexit. "In the end there is going to be a deal, however it transpires." (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie The Northern Ireland party that props up British Prime Minister Theresa May's government is not yet any closer to backing her Brexit divorce agreement as talks between the sides continue, its Brexit spokesman said on Thursday. "No, we're not yet. We will however continue to talk to the prime minister because we think it is our duty to try and undo some of the damage included in the withdrawal agreement," the Democratic Unionist Party's Sammy Wilson told RTE when asked if they were any closer to backing the deal. "But we have made it quite clear that unless there is a legal means by which Northern Ireland would not be treated differently from the United Kingdom, not just assurances or promises but acting legislation, we will not be supporting the withdrawal agreement." (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie Prime Minister Theresa May made an impassioned appeal to British lawmakers to support her on Wednesday after the European Union said it could only grant her request to delay Brexit for three months if parliament next week backed her plans for leaving. May had earlier asked the EU to let Britain delay its departure date from March 29 to June 30, a question that leaders of the remaining 27 member states will discuss at a summit on Thursday. European Council President Donald Tusk said it would be possible to grant Britain a short postponement if parliament next week backs May's divorce agreement, which it has already voted down twice. Should that happen, Tusk said no extraordinary EU summit would be needed next week before the current Brexit date. Otherwise, he said he might convene the leaders again. "I believe that a short extension will be possible, but it will be conditional on a positive vote on the Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons," Tusk told journalists. He did not comment on the possibility - which he himself has suggested - that another option such as a longer delay might be offered to avoid a painful no-deal exit if May's deal was voted down again. May said British lawmakers had spent long enough saying what they did not want from Brexit, and that people were tired of their infighting, political games and arcane procedural rows. "I passionately hope MPs (lawmakers) will find a way to back the deal I have negotiated with the EU," May said in a televised address. She said lawmakers had a choice: leave the EU with a deal, leave without a deal, or not leave at all. "It is high time we made a decision," May said, telling Britons: "I am on your side." Earlier, she had told a rowdy session of parliament that she could not countenance the prospect of a long delay - which could give time for notional alternative approaches to emerge, but would infuriate Brexit supporters in her own party. "As prime minister, I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than the 30th of June," she said. May did not say when the next vote on her deal would happen. If she cannot win over enough reluctant lawmakers next week, Britain faces the choice of requesting a longer delay or leaving the EU as planned on March 29 - without a deal to cushion the economic upheaval. Some EU states, including Germany, had given a largely positive response to May's well-flagged request. But French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said May would need to make her case before EU leaders. "Our position is to send the British a clear and simple message. As Theresa May has repeatedly said herself, there are only two options to get out of the EU: ratify the Withdrawal Agreement or exit without a deal," he told the French parliament. May's initiative was the latest twist in more than two years of negotiations that have left British politics in chaos and her authority in tatters. After the defeats in parliament opened up the possibility of Britain leaving the EU without a deal, May told parliament on Wednesday that she remained committed to leaving "in an orderly manner." Her announcement that she was asking for a three-month delay caused uproar in the chamber. The opposition Labour Party accused her of "blackmail, bullying and bribery" in her attempts to force her deal through, and one prominent Brexit supporter in her own Conservative Party said seeking a delay was "betraying the British people." Britain voted in 2016 to leave the EU by 52 percent to 48 - a decision that has split the country, opening up divisive debates over the future of the economy, Britain's place in the world and the nature of Britishness itself. A European Commission document seen by Reuters said the delay should either be several weeks shorter, to avoid a clash with European Parliament elections in May, or last at least until the end of the year, which would oblige Britain to take part in the elections. May asked in her statement what kind of message this would send to those who voted for Brexit. The pound fell on the uncertainty surrounding the potential delay and the fact that a no-deal Brexit remained possible, but recovered ground late in the evening. Nearly three years after the referendum, there is still no clarity over how, when or even whether the world's fifth largest economy should leave the bloc it joined in 1973. When May set the March 29 exit date two years ago, she declared there would be "no turning back." But parliament's refusal to ratify the withdrawal deal she agreed with the EU has thrust her divided government into crisis. The Labour Party said that, by choosing a short delay, May was forcing lawmakers to decide between accepting a deal they have already rejected or leaving without a deal. Many pro-Brexit members of May's Conservative Party are opposed to a longer delay because they fear it could mean Brexit might never happen. They argue that Britain can do well outside the European Union - even though an abrupt departure would cause short-term pain. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie * The 91-year-old tycoon behind one of Hong Kongs leading real estate developers is planning to pass the reins of his empire over to his two sons * An expert in family businesses said that Lee Shau-kee may be aiming to see how his sons perform before making his final decision, but that this is a risky strategy that may pose challenges to handling business deals (Beijing) Lee Shau-kee, one of Hong Kongs most notable business tycoons and the architect behind one of its leading real estate developers, is considering passing his empire on to his sons as old age catches up with the 91-year old. Lee is considering stepping down as chairman and managing director of Henderson Land Development Co. Ltd., in favor of his sons, Peter Lee Ka-kit and Martin Lee Ka-shing, according to a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange this week. The elder Lee is considering appointing his sons as joint chairmen and managing directors, the filing said, with a decision to be announced at a general meeting on May 28. The same arrangement would also be considered at Henderson Lands two subsidiaries, Hong Kong and China Gas Co. Ltd., (commonly known as Towngas), as well as Henderson Investment Ltd., according to separate filings in Hong Kong. If and when Lee Shau-kee steps down, Lee will become the latest of Hong Kongs big four property tycoons to pass the baton to the next generation. The special administrative regions richest man, Li Ka-shing handed the reins of CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd. to his son last March, while Henry Cheng succeeded his father Cheng Yu-tung at the helm of property developer New World Development Co. Ltd. and jewelry company Chow Tai Fook Jewelry Group Ltd. in 2016. Yet Lees suggestion that his sons will jointly manage the three companies has drawn worrying comparisons with the Kwoks, the fourth of Hong Kongs big real estate families. Kwok Tak-seng died in 1990, with eldest son Walter running the company until 2008, when a family falling-out led to his replacement by younger brothers Raymond and Thomas, who was released from jail today after being jailed in 2014 for bribery. Thomas Kwoks three years in prison he was bailed pending appeal in July 2016 and re-jailed 13 months later after losing the appeal left brother Raymond at the helm of the company that owns Hong Kongs tallest building, the 118-story International Commerce Centre. The founders of many of Hong Kongs leading business empires have erred by failing to enact proper mechanisms for succession and end up working to their last, said Gao Hao, an expert on family businesses at Tsinghua University. Gao believes Lee has deliberately left the management of the company vague in order to observe how both sons perform before making his final decision. This could prove a high-risk strategy, he says, as internecine rivalry and unclear boundaries of authority may make handling business deals problematic. Contact reporter David Kirton (davidkirton@caixin.com) The CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets logo is displayed on a door at the company's offices in Hong Kong in July 2012. Photo: VCG Hong Kong-based brokerage CLSA Ltd. has lost its second senior executive in as many months, while a third is said to be considering his position. Jonathan Slone, CLSA CEO, submitted his resignation in mid-March after three decades with the company, Caixin understands. Its the second senior resignation at the 33-year-old firm after Chairman Tang Zhenyi left in February, and comes amid an ongoing management reshuffle that has raised concerns in the market about friction between the Hong Kong company and its Beijing-based parent. CLSA is owned by Citic Securities Co. Ltd. Chinas largest securities firm by assets which acquired it for $1.25 billion in 2013 as part of an overseas expansion bid. Citic Securities Chairman Zhang Youjun, who succeeded Tang as CLSA chairman, had tried to retain Slone by offering him a promotion to CLSA co-chairman and a position on the executive committee at Citic Securities, Caixin understands, but he declined. It remains unclear who will succeed him. CLSAs Chief Operating Officer Nigel Beattie, who joined the company in March 2014, is also considering leaving his job, a source told Caixin on condition of anonymity. The same source said Beattie was in discussions about taking over as CEO. Caixins attempts to contact Beattie failed. We had a good start, after the integration. But due to all kinds of complexities, I suddenly found out, with great pain, that I myself had become a block, or even a negative asset, on the path for CLSAs future growth, Tang said to CLSA employees on the eve of his resignation in a letter seen by Caixin. Tang said he chose to resign for the greater good of the company, and would let those who can better align the minds and thoughts across the platforms lead the institution. Before joining CLSA in 2017, Tang worked for the Ministry of Finance, the World Bank Group, and the state-owned Citic Group Corp. Ltd., a major shareholder of Citic Securities. How to view the cultural conflicts depends on whose side you are taking, a person close to CLSA told Caixin. In overseas investment banks, Chinese employees can rise to the level of country or regional head, and its very hard for them to advance further. Foreign employees in Chinese investment banks feel the same. Caixin was unable to reach Jonathan Slone for comment. CLSA was founded in Hong Kong by former reporters Jim Walker and Gary Coull in 1986 and provides security brokerage and investment banking services. This story has been updated to replace Tang's translated quotes with those from his original statement in English. Contact reporter Liu Jiefei (jiefeiliu@caixin.com) news, latest-news Shooting unarmed men, women and little children in their place of worship is the ultimate expression of cowardice. Outside the defence forces, police forces, and a necessary requirement for some farmers, guns have only three purposes. The first is to kill, the second is to maim, and the third is to intimidate. I have often wondered if there is another dimension to those wanting to own such high-powered automatic weapons. Do they have a psychological need to compensate for some form of inadequacy, either physical, psychological or intellectual, in their lives? Perhaps there is a correlation? Is it a case of the greater the inadequacy, the bigger the gun? I have seen what high-powered automatic weapons can do. There is no need, or place, for them in a peaceful and democratic community. In addition to banning such weapons, perhaps we should also confront the causes of violence and hate. Hate, and the violence it often generates, comes in many forms. Its expression is not necessarily overt. It can be incited, propagated and encouraged by inference and innuendo. We should hold to account, before the fact, those voices who deceitfully, slyly, and cowardly hide behind our democratic right to free speech. This includes sensational journalism driven by economic imperatives and shabby political opportunism. The right to speak comes with a responsibility to exercise it wisely and to be accountable for what is said. Dreadful events such as Christchurch do not occur in a vacuum. There is such a thing as "cause and effect". Mike Flanagan, Canberra The Christchurch murders will likely rekindle the sentiment of horror and shock we experienced after the Port Arthur murders in 1996. There is no good to be found in either crime but we can get closer by building a joint campaign for serious gun reform. The Port Arthur murders were an opportunity to achieve a constitutional reform to provide that there is no right to bear arms. Now New Zealanders have suffered a similar event with 50 or more killed, they would be wise to seek a similar strong threshold: no right to bear arms other than for prescribed purposes. The reasons to tolerate guns in the community are limited: military purposes, police, veterinarians and farmers, sporting shooter clubs, others approved by a parliamentary majority. All Australia achieved out of the murder of 35 citizens at Port Arthur was to pay grossly inflated values to people who surrendered weapons, many of those guns were already incapable of firing bullets. The rich reward, paid out of a special levy (increased Medicare surcharge) is said to have allowed many to upgrade to a modern weapon. The number of unregistered guns in Australia and unregistered shooters in New Zealand (perhaps all holding weapons?) can only be guessed at. Why do citizens, outside the limited classes noted, need to have powerful weapons in their house, even in locked gun cabinets? Warwick Davis, Isaacs I disagree with Keith Binns (Letters, March 19) that "the perpetrators of the NZ shooting are terrorists" and "dont you dare call them anything else". There was only one perpetrator and I refuse to call him a "terrorist". To me he is a "murderer" and nothing else. He was seeking notoriety for his act of "murder" against helpless and innocent citizens and we should not allow him to have that notoriety by falsely labelling him as a "terrorist". He acted alone and his intention was to murder innocent people of a certain religious faith and to seek notoriety by filming it. Furthermore, I completely agree with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern that we should "never mention his name" and that he "will be nameless" when speaking of what he did. We should only speak the names of those who were lost, rather than the name of the "murderer" who took them. Tony Falla, Ngunnawal I subscribe fully to A Nelsons credo, "Our nation must change" (Letters, March 19). My Jewish teachings are similar to those expressed by D Roseby, a Muslim [ibid]: "God created humanity in a state of purity and innocence, with an innate inclination towards faith, compassion, and beauty. Evil is an aberration, and we should always see it as such." And M Shaikh so rightly asserts: "I will not glorify this as Christian terrorism because this defies the teachings and message of Jesus Christ." Words written, spoken, sung, Twitter-ed can and do kill, as weve seen most recently in Christchurch. Words may not take lives directly, but behind horrific deeds like those of Christchurch, there are words. Sharp and hate-filled words. Blaming, accusing, judging words. We have the right to free speech and the concomitant responsibility to use that right honourably and respectfully. We who write letters must begin in this space. People read what we write; we bear responsibility for the seeds of love or hatred we plant in others. Lets not write words about others that would be hurtful to us. Judy Bamberger, OConnor I feel a great sense of gratitude that Turkey has allowed Australia and New Zealand to celebrate Anzac Day at Gallipoli for so many years. I feel Australians and New Zealanders visiting Gallipoli always feel great respect for the courage of the Turkish soldiers. For many years now, Turkish, Australian and New Zealand people have shared a deep sadness about the deaths of those youngsters in World War I. We have also felt very comforted and inspired by the magnificently generous words usually attributed to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who said: "Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country." I feel that those noble words could also express our loving grief for those people who needlessly died in New Zealand. Those Muslims lie in the bosom of a loving nation, New Zealand, who we Australians deeply admire for the caring, respectful way that they are trying to help families cope with their immeasurable grief. I would like to apologise from the depth of my heart that it was apparently an Australian who caused that wretched tragedy. The outrage that has been expressed is very understandable. I wish I could be sure that we would care for our racist and mentally ill citizens better in future so that tragedies like this would cease forever. Rosemary Walters, Palmerston Senior ACT public servants were recently given significant pay rises. I believe that those who pay these salaries, the residents of Canberra, have the right to expect these people to perform at a high level. This does not always appear to be the case. We seem to lurch from one stuff-up to another.Research shows that the greatest danger to hospital patients comes from the level of co-operation between different levels of staff. Yet we are constantly told that bullying is widespread in the Canberra Hospital and that it has been very hard to address. The highly expensive light rail should have been built for maximum patronage. Unlike in Melbourne, where the government really cares about their older people, the ACT has a step from pavement to the carriage. This makes access difficult for older people, the disabled, those in wheelchairs and parents with prams. These constitute a significant section of the population. There is a ramp but this means going to the front of the carriage, asking the driver to lower the ramp situated at the middle door, then walking, embarrassingly, back to it. Meanwhile the rest of the passengers have to wait. Exiting will presumably will be the reverse process. To me outcomes like this should be addressed before there is any talk of pay rises. Audrey Guy, Ngunnawal As I slip, splash, trip and stumble along Canberra footpaths I look across with envy at the road alongside. Smooth and wide, drained and swept, the roads receive quick attention for maintenance and any obstruction is dealt with very quickly. Would it be possible for the budget that supplies the insatiable demand for more roads be stopped just for one year and the funds be spent on footpaths? Ray Barnett, Ainslie Mary Brock of Kaleen seeks to excuse the killing of Mimosa, a gentle pet alpaca who often visited Canberra Hospital, by a un-leashed black staffie, whose owner filmed the cruel attack while it took place. The ACT appears to hold the record for vicious dog attacks, on both people and animals, that reached a peak in the last two years. Incidents have included one an attack on a pregnant woman, and several that have resulted in the deaths of smaller dogs. Mary seems to think that "stupidity" on the dog owners part, in filming the attack, is to blame. Sorry Mary, this man, according to Mimosas owner, kept filming, did not call off his dog or seek to assist in any way, and disappeared like a coward. Mimosa was left torn and bleeding and with both front legs broken. Police and the RSPCA believe it is the responsibility of DAS (Domestic Animal Services) to find and charge the owner of this dog. That animal will, in all likelihood, attack a child or elderly person next. If nothing is done we, as a community, will lose confidence in DAS for dog control. It is up to the head of ranger services, Eva Cawthorne, to take responsibility. This happened on her watch. This matter cannot, and should not, be swept under the table. Sadly, this cannot bring Mimosa back. Christina Faulk, Swinger Hill I recently drove some 355 kilometres to Griffith, where I filled up with Shell 98 for $1.539 per litre. On my return to Canberra I filled up with Coles Shell 98 at $1.689 per litre. There is no economic rationale for the $0.16/litre difference we Canberrans pay for petrol, other than "market differentiation" i.e. "rip-off". Even after incurring additional freight charges service stations in rural NSW make a profit at lower prices than are charged in the ACT. To add insult to the additional $0.16/litre, I noted (and complained) that the four cents/litre discount on the Coles voucher I submitted had not been applied to my transaction. I was informed that as I had offered my Flybuys card, I had been given additional Flybuys points/litre in lieu of the cash discount.\ Despite the protests of the cashier, I demanded that the transaction be cancelled and the entitled cash discount be applied. At a cash conversion rate of $10 for 2000 points ($0.005/point) the additional four Flybuys points represented a discount of two cents/litre, 50 per cent of the docket value. What a sneaky way to rip off customers. And not a good economic decision by Coles Shell stations as a four-car family, after four decades as Shell customers, we now buy our fuel elsewhere. When is the ACT government going to do something to regulate fuel in Canberra? The prices we are charged for electricity, gas, water and sewerage are set by a regulator, but not so for petrol, an equally essential commodity. Why not? Ken Keeling, Bruce Thank goodness someone, at long last, has come up with the idea of attracting migrants to regional centres. A long time overdue and an idea which, if handled right, could result in expansion of the population away from the already overcrowded capital cities. Well done, Mr Morrison. I never thought Id hear myself saying that, but credit where credit is due. If the infrastructure is formulated correctly and housing, schools and medical facilities are expanded where required, it could be a win-win situation. It would be a chance for newcomers to our wonderful country to assimilate in a more peaceful and friendly atmosphere, get to know our customs and language and settle their children into less crowded schools. In turn, they will hopefully bring their many skills to benefit the areas in which they settle. At the end of the three years visa residence requirement, they are then in the position of either remaining or moving on. It is to be hoped that Labor will back the current governments proposal, and not shilly-shally around trying to score points. Patricia Watson, Red Hill HEROES OR COWARDS Re Dave Jeffrey (Letters, March 20). While I dont condone offensive violence of any form, including egging, to describe the slightly built teenager who broke an egg on the head of a much bigger man as a coward is a bit much. What was nasty was the group of large men who fell upon the teenager and dragged him away. The real coward was the man who could be seen kicking the teenager while he was being held down. Rod Holesgrove, OConnor CALLING OUT BIGOTRY So, Mr Morrison, it is all right to be a bigot, but its bad and wrong to call out that bigotry? Jennifer Bradley, Cook ATTACK ON MANKIND "Whosoever killed a person, it shall be as if he had killed all of mankind; and whoso saved a life, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind." (Koran 5:33). Sincere prayers and thoughts for all those impacted by this incident. Terrorism does not discriminate; we must stand up and call out all forms of hate and racism. Bushra Nasir, Darling Heights DALEYS GAFFE Michael Daley should be awarded a doctorate for his skill in inserting his foot into his mouth. T. Puckett, Ashgrove, Qld CONDEMN ALL VIOLENCE It is heartbreaking to hear about the shootings on the tram in Utrecht, Holland. My heartfelt prayers are with the victims and their families and friends. We must condemn all such heinous acts of violence and discourage violence in the name of religion. D. Hughes, South Melbourne, Vic FREE RIDES COST $1.2B All Canberrans should take advantage of the free Easter tram rides. After all, it has only cost us $1.2 billion. Graeme Rankin, Holder SCARED OF THE FAR RIGHT The tragic events in New Zealand should alert our Prime Minister to the fact his attempted scare campaign is ill-directed. It should be the far right that voters are really scared of. Theres enough of them in his government to make us all scared. Brian Smith, Conder DONT STIR THE IRISH Take care with your language, Adrian Jackson ("St Pat a pom", Letters, March 21). You might make Ireland snakey again. Colin Samundsett, Farrer MORRISON APES TRUMP When Morrison says it is both extreme left and right of politics who are indulging in "hate speech" he is singing from the same hymn book Donald Trump used after the incident in Charlottesville. It appears Morrison learns nothing and knows nothing. E. Moffat, Weston Email: letters.editor@canberratimes.com.au. Send from the message eld, not as an attached le. Fax: 6280 2282. Mail: Letters to the Editor, The Canberra Times, PO Box 7155, Canberra Mail Centre, ACT 2610. Keep your letter to 250 or fewer words. References to Canberra Times reports should include the date and page number. Letters may be edited. Provide phone number and full home address (suburb only published). /images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/0cde16e6-81bd-4e6d-b1ea-afd373d541e9/r0_295_5568_3441_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact. Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here. Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing. You are our people. You Care. We Care2. Institute of Technology Carlow has partnered with the UCD Centre for Humanitarian Action, Concern Worldwide, Future Analytics and Wolaita Sodo University (WSU) in Ethiopia as part of a European-funded Horizon 2020 project which aims to Build Resistance Through Education (BRTE). The BRTE programme sees academia working with established relief and development agencies to transform the livelihoods of communities around the world as part of the global effort to meet the commitments to the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future and they address global challenges, including those related to poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, peace and justice. BRTE has its origins in an evaluation of the impact of Concern Worldwides 25-year engagement in the Wolaita Zone of Ethiopia which was conducted by University College Dublins Centre for Humanitarian Action in collaboration with Wolaita Sodo University, an important element of building partnership. It found that, despite significant improvements in communities capacities to both absorb recurring disasters and to adapt their livelihoods based on experience of recent disasters, they remain extremely vulnerable to recurring climatic stresses. The BRTE programme focuses on the power of education and innovation to generate transformative change and will work towards building the capacity of WSU to radically transform the livelihoods of the regional population in Sodo and the wider Wolaita Zone. Institute of Technology Carlow has an established and widely recognised record of accomplishment in knowledge transfer and delivering innovation solutions, and is committed to promoting innovation, entrepreneurship, start-up businesses and transferring technology and know-how for socio-economic development. The Institute provides a structured suite of specialised integrated supports, training and advice through which companies and other groups may engage with facilities, staff and networks to develop their enterprises. The model includes solving close-to-market needs, maximising the impact of research led intellectual property, assisting entrepreneurs and start-ups and delivering inter-regional and sustainable benefits. This pragmatic model, which has been the Institutes primary role in the BRTE project, will be studied to see how it can best be adapted and implemented in the Ethiopian context. Through the BRTE programme, Institute of Technology Carlow staff will work closely with partners in Ethiopia to share knowledge and expertise in areas such as innovation, entrepreneurship and in supporting regional socio-economic development. Dr Pat Gibbons, Director, UCD Centre for Humanitarian Action at UCD, and the co-ordinator of the BRTE project said: Due to the protracted and recurring nature of climatic shocks and stresses in that area, there is a need for a paradigm shift in the way aid is delivered to meet immediate life-saving assistance while working towards the UNs Sustainable Development Goals. "Humanitarian action and development stakeholders need to seek new ways to engage with vulnerable African communities to achieve greater societal transformation and work towards a more equitable agenda for humanity. He added: The BRTE partnership has identified education as a key factor in bringing about this transformative change and over the next 4-years the partnership aims to build local agency by supporting the education, research and innovation capacity of the Wolaita region. Institute of Technology Carlow is a key partner in the BRTE process. "Scholars from WSU will see at first hand the rich contribution that IT Carlow is making to promote enterprise and innovation in the South East and beyond. "Irelands contribution to developments in disaster prone areas like Wolaita will be elevated from charity in the 1980s to shared learning and mutual gain through economic development in the 21st century." Speaking during a visit by representatives from WSU and UCD to Carlow last week, Dr David Ryan, Director of Planning and Research at Institute of Technology Carlow said: We are a globally engaged organisation and recognise our responsibility as educators to ensure sustainable development. "Our new Strategic Plan prioritises our role in working towards strengthening the capacity of individuals, communities and countries to make judgements and choices in favour of creating a sustainable and resource efficient economy, founded on a fair and just society, which respects ecological limits. "We look forward to working with our project partners and to honouring our commitments to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to Irelands International Development Policy." The current decline in TB incidence is insufficient to eliminate TB in the United States in the 21st century. TB elimination will require enhanced surveillance, detection, and treatment. Focusing on populations that are at increased risk for latent TB infection will be important in achieving TB elimination. In 2018, a total of 9,029 new tuberculosis (TB) cases were reported in the United States, representing a 0.7% decrease from 2017.* The U.S. TB incidence in 2018 (2.8 per 100,000 persons) represented a 1.3% decrease from 2017; the rate among nonU.S.-born persons was >14 times that in U.S.-born persons. This report summarizes provisional TB surveillance data reported to CDCs National Tuberculosis Surveillance System (NTSS) through 2018. Although the total number of cases and incidence are the lowest ever reported in the United States, a recent model predicted that the U.S. TB elimination goal (annual incidence of <1 case per 1 million persons) will not be attained in the 21st century without greatly increased investment in detection and treatment of latent TB infection (LTBI) (1). Programs to identify, test, and treat populations at high risk for TB remain important to eliminating TB in the United States. Health departments in the 50 states and District of Columbia (DC) electronically report provisional case data that meet the national TB surveillance case definition to CDC. Data reported include demographic information (e.g., birth date, sex, self-reported race/ethnicity, and country of birth), clinical information (e.g., reason for TB evaluation, anatomic site of disease, test results, and therapy administered), and information on TB risk factors (e.g., human immunodeficiency virus [HIV] infection status, history of homelessness, and residence in a congregate setting). According to U.S. Census Bureau definitions, a U.S.-born person is classified as one born in the United States or a U.S. territory or born abroad to a U.S. citizen parent. Race/ethnicity data are collected and reported using federal classification standards; Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race, and all other reported race categories are non-Hispanic/Latino. CDC derived the denominators used to calculate national and state TB incidence from July 2018 U.S. Census Bureau population estimates (2) and the denominators used to calculate TB incidence by national origin and race/ethnicity from July 2018 Current Population Survey data (3). The number of reported TB cases and TB incidence (cases per 100,000 persons) for 2017 and 2018, as well as the percent changes from 2017 to 2018, were calculated for the 50 states and DC and for each U.S. Census Bureau division. The numbers of TB cases and TB incidence per 100,000 persons were calculated by national origin and race/ethnicity for 20152018. TB incidence declined 1.3% from 2017 to 2018 and an average of 1.6% per year during the last 4 years (20142018), a slower pace of decline than the 4.7% annual decline during 20102014. State-specific TB incidence for 2018 ranged from 0.2 per 100,000 in Wyoming to 8.5 in Alaska, with a median rate of 1.9 (Table 1). Ten states (Alaska, California, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Texas) and DC reported TB incidence above the national rate. As has been the case for over 2 decades, four states (California, Florida, New York, and Texas) accounted for approximately half of the reported cases of TB in the United States. Among the 9,029 TB cases reported in the United States in 2018, approximately two thirds (6,276 [69.5%]) occurred in nonU.S.-born persons, whereas 2,662 (29.5%) occurred in U.S.-born persons; 91 (1.0%) cases occurred in persons for whom no national origin was documented (Table 2). This distribution is similar to that in 2017, when 6,392 (70.3%) cases occurred in nonU.S.-born persons, 2,693 (29.6%) occurred in U.S.-born persons, and 9 (0.1%) occurred in persons for whom no national origin was documented. TB incidence among nonU.S.-born persons (14.2 cases per 100,000) decreased by 3.8% from 2017 to 2018, and the incidence among U.S.-born persons (1.0 cases per 100,000) decreased by 1.8% (Figure). Among nonU.S.-born persons with TB, incidence in 2018 was highest among Asians, followed by Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, non-Hispanic blacks (blacks), Hispanics, and American Indian/Alaska Natives, and was lowest among non-Hispanic whites (whites) (Table 2). Among TB cases in nonU.S.-born persons, incidence decreased from 2017 to 2018 among Asians, blacks, and whites, but increased in Hispanics. The top five countries of birth of nonU.S.-born persons with TB were Mexico (1,195 cases; 19.0% of all nonU.S.-born cases), Philippines (781; 12.4%), India (616; 9.8%), Vietnam (503; 8.0%), and China (374; 6.0%). Among TB cases in nonU.S.-born persons, 2,905 (46.3%) were diagnosed 10 years after the patient first arrived in the United States. The highest TB incidence for U.S.-born persons occurred among Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, followed by American Indians/Alaska Natives, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, and was lowest in whites (Table 2). Among U.S.-born persons, TB incidence decreased from 2017 to 2018 among blacks, but remained stable among Asians, Hispanics, and whites. During 2018, 4.1% of TB cases were reported among persons who experienced homelessness within the year preceding diagnosis, 3.3% among residents of a correctional facility at the time of diagnosis, and 1.6% among residents of a long-term care facility at the time of diagnosis.** Among cases diagnosed in persons who experienced homelessness and among residents of long-term care facilities, 60.8% and 56.8%, respectively, were in persons who were U.S.-born, whereas among residents of a correctional facility, only 33.6% were U.S.-born. HIV status was known for 85.3% of TB cases reported in 2018. Overall, 5.3% of TB patients with known HIV status were coinfected with HIV, including 8.6% among persons aged 2544 years. Initial drug-susceptibility testing for at least isoniazid and rifampin was performed for 73.5% of all TB cases (and 93.8% of culture-confirmed cases) in 2017, the most recent year for which complete data are available. Among the 6,684 TB cases reported in 2017 with available drug-susceptibility testing results, 128 (1.9%) were multidrug-resistant TB. Of these multidrug-resistant TB cases, 110 (85.9%) were in nonU.S.-born persons; 26 (20.3%) multidrug-resistant TB patients reported a previous episode of TB. Three cases of extensively drug-resistant TB were reported, all of which occurred in nonU.S.-born persons. PPC Zimbabwe calls on government to protect local cement production ICR Newsroom By 21 March 2019 Zimbabwes largest cement producer, PPC Zimbabwe, has called on the government to pass legislation to protect domestically-produced cement from imports. Last year, the government lifted a two-year import bank on some basic commodities, including cement, to reduce the shortages that drove the public into panic buying. This has had a negative impact on local cement producer competitiveness, according to PPC Zimbabwes Managing Director, Kelibone Masiyane. What really has rendered us uncompetitive initially was the opening of the flood gates and then pricing became another issue. Definitely the price of imported cement is much lower than ours and we cannot compete because of high cost of production, Mr Masiyane said. At the PPC Zimbabwe Bulawayo plant, a minimum of 100 bags of cement are being sold at RTGS$30/bag or US$7.50, according to Nehanda Radio. In addition, a quick poll by by Business Chronicle in Bulawayo has shown that most of the hardware shops do not have imported cement but locally-produced cement, which is selling for between RTGS$28 and RTGS$36 per 50kg. The price in US$ ranges between US$6.50 and US$8. Published under Qassim Cement to export 120,000t of cement to Kuwait 21 March 2019 Saudi Arabias Qassim Cement Co has signed an agreement with Kuwait-based Al-Arada Building Materials Co to export 120,000t of cement. While no value for the deal has been released, the related financial impact is expected to show later in the year. The deal came into effect on 1 March and will be valid until the end of 2019, according to a bourse statement. Published under Titan Group records turnover of EUR1.4bn in FY18 21 March 2019 Titan Group recorded consolidated turnover for 2018 at EUR1490.1m, recording a marginal one per cent decline compared to 2017. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by five per cent to EUR259.7m. Group net profit after minority interests and the provision for taxes reached EUR53.8m, posting a 26 per cent increase compared to 2017. In 4Q18 group turnover increased by 7.5 per cent reaching EUR388.2m and EBITDA increased by 6.6 per cent to EUR62.8m. Group net profit after minority interests and the provision for taxes reached EUR3.6m, against EUR9.6m in 2017. USA In 2018 the US market was the main profit generator for the group with turnover rising by three per cent to US$1015m. Improvements in Florida counter balanced the lower profitability of the mid-Atlantic region, which was affected by protracted inclement weather and increased competition in the border New York area. Greece and western Europe Building activity in Greece remained low and operating margins came under pressure in 2018. Cement exports were close to 2017 levels, with the USA the leading destination. Total turnover for Greece and western Europe amounted to EUR237.1m, a 4.7 per cent fall compared to 2017. EBITDA stood at EUR10.9m compared to EUR18.3m in 2017. Southern Europe Southern Europe recorded an increase in building activity although energy costs rose. Turnover in 2018 increased by 5.7 per cent reaching EUR238.6m and EBITDA improved by 4.9 per cent to EUR59.7m. Eastern Mediterranean Egypt and Turkey saw turnover decline to EUR154.3m down 2.5 per cnet on 2017, while EBITDA stood at EUR11.4m, 13.8 per cent down on 2017. In Egypt cement consumption is estimated to have dropped by six per cent and the 12Mt Beni Suef plant entered the market. Profitability was wiped away with overcapacity, lower utilisation of Titan Cement Egypt and the inability to pass on steep rises in electricity prices as well as the imposition of levies per tonne of cement produced. The subsidiary in Turkey also had a difficult year with the contraction in construction activity in 2H18 and a 38 per cent fall in the value of the Turkish lira. Group turnover in Turkey in 9M18 was a loss of EUR2.9m against a EUR0.5m profit in 2017. Brazil Brazil's market stabilised after four years of decline. However, the Cimentos Apodi joint venture contributed a loss of EUR2.6m against a loss of EUR9.5m in 2017. Group capex stood at EUR119m in 2018, EUR4m less than in 2017 and half of the amount was directed to improvements in the USA. In October 2018 Titan Group agreed with Cem Sak Group to acquire 75 per cent of Adocim Cimento Beton Sanayi ve Ticaret which own the 1.5Mta integrated Tokat cement plant and three ready-mix plants. Group operating cash flow stood at EUR148m, up by EUR30m compared to 2017. Group net debt stood at EUR772m up by EUR49m. Outlook The USA has a favourable outlook with the PCA forecasting a cement consumption increase of 2.3 per cent in 2019 and by 1.6 per cent per annum between 2019-23. In Greece the restart of major construction projects are anticipated in 2H19. In southeastern Europe continuing economic growth is expected to drive construction activity, while in Egypt demand levels will remain similar to those in 2018. Operating results will be challenged by limited pricing power. In Turkey there is expected to be a reduction in cement demand in the short term, but longer-term prospects are attractive. Finally, in Brazil political stability increases the expectations of a new growth cycle in the cement market. Cement demand in the northeast is driven by demographic growth and private building activity in particular. Published under Over 160 women of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the greater Chattanooga area participated in 18 different service projects throughout the community on March 9. The women offered support to the Chambliss Center for Children, McKamey Animal Center, the Chattanooga Community Kitchen, Cleveland Summit Apartments, the Humane Educational Society, the Chattanooga Zoo, the Chattanooga Room in the Inn, Make-A-Wish East Tennessee, Signal Centers Adult Services, Childrens Hospital at Erlanger, Erlanger Health System, NICU Helping Hands, Morning Pointe of Collegedale at Greenbriar Cove, East Ridge Cares 4Kids, the Family Crisis Center of Walker, Dade, Catoosa and Chattanooga Counties and other charitable organizations.From making blankets for hospitalized children to helping at shelters, organizing clothing closets or delivering homemade cards and lemon cookies to the elderly, to filling 4,750 eggs for the Chattanooga Zoo, making PICC line covers for those going through difficult medical situations, to serving lunch, cleaning, cutting hair, playing with animals, making tug toys, stamping over 1,000 postcards for the McKamey Animal Center, reading, painting and assembling new toys for the Chambliss Center for Children and making paper chain countdowns to make wishes come true at Make-A-Wish East Tennessee, the day of service had far-reaching effects.The women who participated were deeply moved by their experiences. One said, We cant fix lives, but we can share our smiles, love and good service. Another said, I am grateful I was able to help in a small way to hopefully bring a feeling of peace and well-being to someone else. The volunteers praised the staff of the organizations for serving on a daily basis, day in and day out.Another volunteer said, Service is not gender or age specific. A group of young men of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints got in on the action and served at the Tennessee Baptist Childrens Homes. Celeste Ward, president of the Chattanooga womens organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, expressed thanks to the volunteers and especially the organizations in the community who are blessing the lives of others in fulfillment of the great commandment to love thy neighbor as thyself.Jesus Christ is the perfect example of service and love, Mrs.Ward said. Jesus went about doing good, always. The Church of Jesus Christ teaches that we should do the same. The Church also teaches that Christs crowning expression of charity was His infinite Atonement. Through His Atonement, He overcame death and sin. Jesus Christ lives. He is the Savior and Redeemer of all mankind.' In 1950 there were 12 urban areas in the United States that had one million or more citizens. In 2010, 41 had more than one million in population and this number is projected to grow to 53 by 2030 (Source: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division). And currently more than 85 percent of our population is clustered into cities. Of the ten most populated metropolitan regions touching seven or eight states, all went overwhelmingly for the Democrat in the 2016 presidential election. Now Senator Elizabeth Warren is hopping around saying almost anything to distinguish her candidacy from the profusion of others running for president. Sandwiched between her promises of trillion dollar giveaways is a clever ruse to abolish the electoral college. It will always draw rousing cheers from her audiences. That is because a few know it would mean Democrats would be elected president into the next millennium. People like Rep Steve Cohen say by selecting the president by popular vote it would be more democratic, but what he really means is it would elect more Democrats. Meanwhile the majority of those wanting to eliminate the electoral college dont have a clue why we have it and how it protects the minority from dominance by a few regions. This is who they are counting on to back their crafty scheme. We have the electoral college because we are a representative republic of fifty separate states that work symbiotically together to form a union. We have the Senate for the same reason. Recently Ive also heard Democrats questioning the makeup of the Senate complaining that California has the same number of senators as Wyoming. Well, wake up and smell the Skinny Latte Californians, a representative republic is what we were given so tyrants would have an almost impossible path to power. Today that includes an equal obstacle for dominance by one political party. But, like the Eloi in the Time Machine, when Warren sounds the siren, her supporters fall in lockstep with whatever silly thing she tosses out. The Founding Fathers experienced the persecution of tyrants. Their parents and grandparents experienced even more of the evils of absolute power living in Europe. They were subject to forced military service to fight the tyrants never ending wars over territory, excessive taxation and even confiscation of their land and livestock. They knew how nearly impossible it was to stop them. So they gave the new nation the electoral college as a way to elect temporary leaders. And its worked just fine since 1788. We only hear whining when some sore losers campaign failed to take into account the electoral college. Do we want the big cities deciding who will be our president? Look at the disasters many of those cities are in: violent crime, failed schools, potential bankruptcy. What party has controlled them for the last half century or more? These people make grand promises of prosperity but often deliver poverty just like Venezuela. And doing away with the electoral college would allow those Democrat controlled big cities to dominate the presidential elections. Dont let anyone tell you the electoral college is unconstitutional-a tool they often employ. What the constitution clearly permits is not unconstitutional. Cohen knows that and thats why he tries to link the electoral college with racism. He hopes to make those defending the electoral college appear to be defending racism. Dont be fooled by that one. Do we want leaders who trick people into supporting a sinister plan to abandon something that has helped make this nation great? Tell Elizabeth Warren and Steve Cohen we know what they are up to and we dont want any part of it. Ralph Miller * * * I'm afraid I have a different view than my good friend Ralph Miller in regards to the Electoral College. As an independent voter, I have no ax to grind regarding the last presidential election or any previous presidential election for that matter. I've heard many people explain how the Electoral College was created to prevent large states from controlling elections. However, they are thinking of something commonly referred to as the "Great Compromise". This was the agreement to establish our bicameral legislature where representation in the House of Representatives is based on the population of each state, and representation in the Senate is two senators per state. This was a method to make sure that small states' interests where equally represented and not merely cast aside by the large states' representatives. The Electoral College was established because the framers of the Constitution simply did not trust the American electorate of the late eighteenth century! There was good reason for them having this attitude. The American public as a whole in the late 1700's were poorly educated and usually unaware of how government worked and the important issues of the day. The electors of that day could vote for any person receiving votes when the Electoral College voted in January following a presidential election. Currently, over 20 states have passed laws requiring electors to vote for the candidate receiving the majority of the popular vote in their state. The Electoral College was a last ditch body that could override the election of, for lack of a better term, an "American Hitler". In addition, the founding fathers further restricted the ability of the common man to vote. To qualify in most states a voter had to be white, male, at least 25, and own land. An additional restriction was created by establishing the voting day as Tuesday. Most workers in those days couldn't afford to give up wages to go vote. Today, no other western civilized country votes during the week. Voting is conducted usually on Saturday, or Saturday and Sunday because most people don't have to lose a day's work to vote. The President of the United States is the only office elected nationally. It is also the only indirect election we have where people vote then another group actually decides who wins the election. Additionally, why should our votes here in Tennessee count less than people's votes in other states? Tennessee has 11 electoral votes, two senators and nine representatives, and a population of just over 6,000,000. Each elector represents 600,000 citizens. Wyoming has three electors, two senators and one representative, and a population of 600,000. Each elector represents only 200,000 citizens. Why should our Tennessee votes only count 1/3 as much as someone voting in Wyoming? The basic question is do we believe in the concept of one person one vote? I always have! Ken Barker * * * I think we should give every county in this country a vote, I think that would make us all equal. There are 3,141 counties including parishes, organized boroughs, census areas, independent cities and the District of Columbia. If you are wondering about the last election Donald Trump won 3,084 counties and Clinton won 57. This country is over 3.7 million square miles and the 57 counties that voted for Clinton are 319 square miles. Does that really seem like a majority of our country voted for Clinton? Damon Sledge * * * In response to Mr. Sledge, the numbers quoted on counties are entirely incorrect. According to fact-check.org, Clinton won at least 487 counties. In fact, Clinton won 27 counties in Texas and 31 in Georgia, which exceeds the quoted number of 57. The idea that the 57 quoted counties totaled 319 square miles is absurd because that would mean that these counties each averaged only 5.6 square miles. Los Angeles County alone covers 4,751 square miles with a population of over 10 million, which is more than 41 states. I think the Electoral College serves a purpose because it does decide the presidential election when no one gets a majority of the popular vote, which happens often due to third party candidates. If elections required a majority of the popular vote we would often be in a run-off situation, which would be difficult to implement for many reasons. However, I struggle with the idea that the vote of people in populous states, like Democratic California and Republican Texas count proportionally less than a voter in a less populous state. Also, with the Electoral College, a Democratic voter here in Tennessee must feel like his or her vote doesnt count in a presidential election because the state is overwhelmingly Republican and its winner take all on the electoral votes. The same thing must hold true for a Republican voter in a state like California, which votes heavily Democratic. Perhaps electoral votes should be voted in same proportions that the state voted. I dont have all of the answers, but it sure seems like a problem that in two of the last three presidential elections with no incumbent, the winner got fewer votes from Americans than the loser. How can someone get the most votes and lose? Im not advocating for a Republican or Democratic position, just thinking about it from a common sense standpoint. David Groves The East Ridge Police Department is rolling out a new program to assist both law enforcement and the citys residents. The Take Me Home Program will be used when an officer encounters someone who cannot communicate with them such as an individual with dementia or autism. Police Chief Stan Allen said it allows a relative to enroll the person in the program, which is a database with ... (click for more) Dr. Anthony Hodges spoke to the Chief John Ross Chapter, NSDAR, during a meeting focused on Historical Preservation. Dr. Hodges highlighted the recent efforts by local preservationists to secure funding for the historic Browns Tavern and the continued work to maintain the Browns Ferry site. Hodges is serving his second term as president of the board of the Friends of Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park and also serves as vice president of the board of the Tennessee Civil War Preservation Association in Nashville. Additionally, he serves on the boards of the East Tennessee Historical Society, Museum of East Tennessee History in Knoxville and the Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center in Chattanooga. Browns Tavern, built in 1803 and generally considered the oldest house in Hamilton County, was built for John Brown, owner of the equally historic Browns Ferry, located on the border between the Cherokee Nation and the United States. The Tavern was the site for the marriage of John Ross and his wife, Quatie and served as a trading post for those traveling through the region. John Brown was removed from his property and, along with hundreds of other members of the Cherokee Nation, began his Trail of Tears from his own ferry property. Brown was allowed to return to Lookout Valley in the 1840s and is presumed to be buried on the property. Dr. Hodges stressed the historic significance of the properties and the need for preservation. Not only is the property recognized by the Cherokee Trail of Tears Association, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Civil War Heritage Trail. Many local citizens have heard of the Trail of Tears connection but few understand significance of the site, relative to Civil War history. In 1863 during the long siege of Chattanooga, Union General Ulysses S. Grant ordered US Brigadier General William Smith to open a Union supply line opposite the Confederate position at the bottom of Lookout Mountain. William Hazens elite Union troops seized Browns Ferry and constructed a pontoon bridge across Moccasin Bend to the Union defensive sites in the city. The supply line helped contribute to the Unions success in a series of significant battles, including Missionary Ridge. The Chief John Ross Chapter membership was fascinated by the stories and significant people connected to the historic properties and the efforts to preserve significant elements of our national heritage as educational tools. Dr. Anthony Hodges, graduated from the University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences with a D.D.S. degree in 1981. He is married to a dental school classmate, Dr. Jill Prichard Hodges, and they have three grown children. They reside on Elder Mountain, near the historic sites. Dr. Hodges recently retired from dentistry after 33 years of practice. He became interested in early American and Civil War history as a young child due to oral family history passed down to him by elderly relatives. He began to collect Civil War artifacts as a young boy and items from his collection have been displayed in national parks and museums across the South. He served as a National Park Service living history interpreter for nearly forty years. Dr. Hodges began to study Civil War medicine in dental school and has lectured on the topic for over thirty years. He assisted Dr. Bud Robertson of Virginia Tech in the re-printing of the U.S. Armys official twelve volume medical account of the Civil War, The Medical and Surgical History of the Civil War. He wrote numerous Civil War historical articles for the Chattanooga Times-Free Press during the wars 150thanniversary. If you are interested in historic preservation and would like to know more about the Chief John Ross Chapter, NSDAR, email localhistorycounts@gmail.com Shawn E. Williams, 30, is charged with possession of marijuana for resale and THC vapes for resale. Chattanooga Police Department narcotics investigators arrested Williams while he was attempting to smuggle nearly three pounds of marijuana, hundreds of THC oil vials and drug paraphernalia while traveling through the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport.On Tuesday, CPD narcotics investigators were contacted by another law enforcement agency with intelligence they received about a suspect transporting a significant amount of THC oil into Chattanooga. CPD Investigators coordinated with Chattanooga Airport Police to set up surveillance for the suspect. A CPD K9 hit on the suspect's checked bags and the suspect was detained after retrieving his bags from the conveyor belt.The suspect gave consent for officers to search his bags. Inside a suitcase, investigators found 399 THC oil vials (11.9 lbs.) with approximately 90 percent THC in each and 2.7 lbs. of marijuana packaged in vacuum sealed bags. During a search of the suspect's car a vacuum sealer and vacuum bags were also found.Williams was transported and booked into the Hamilton County Jail. He is scheduled to appear in Hamilton County Sessions Court on April 3. During the first Statewide Outstanding Achievement Recognition (SOAR) event held Wednesday night in Nashville, the College System of Tennessee honored Cleveland State as College of the Year taking home the gleaming new College Cup. CSCC was the first to have its name engraved on the Cup that it will display on campus until next years SOAR awards.More than 300 students, faculty, presidents and staff from the systems 13 Community Colleges and 27 Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology, state legislators, public officials, philanthropists and other guests attended the event at the DoubleTree Hotel Downtown Nashville.Accepting the award for Cleveland State was President Bill Seymour who stated, Awards like this dont just happen.Our faculty and staff have worked tirelessly for years. Dedication to pathways and college completion have permeated our campus for years. We have changed our culture to make sure we are totally focused on student success. This award goes to over 300 people back in Cleveland, Tennessee.TBR Chancellor Flora Tydings, who presented the award to Cleveland State President Bill Seymour, said the college has not only grown its enrollment, but has also had significant improvements in retention and graduation rates, particularly for minority students, helping to close equity gaps. The college increased the number of Associate degrees and certificates awarded by 10 percent.Ms. Tydings stated, Notably, CSCC has grown its Honors program from 14 to 100 students in three years and is the only TBR college with an Honors articulation agreement with the University of Tennessee Knoxville.The other two College of the Year finalists were Pellissippi State Community College and Tennessee College of Applied Technology Elizabethton. All three colleges advanced through a review of institutional data on three key metrics: performance improvement, overcoming obstacles and program expansion. Logans Roadhouse is completing its remodel at the Northgate location. There will be a ribbon-cutting with the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday, April 3, at 10:45 a.m. following the official re-opening Saturday, March 30. Officials said, "The 2019 transformation revamps Logans Roadhouse look and feel throughout the restaurant, paying tribute to its brand heritage for being The Real American Roadhouse. Upgrades include unique art fixtures, freshly painted interior and exterior, larger TVs in the bar, new chairs, booths, wall art and highlight an oversized American Flag made up of over 400 beer cans. "The Chattanooga location will feature a renovated private dining room perfect for any occasion from business meetings to birthday parties." We are excited to reveal the new look of Logans Roadhouse in the Chattanooga community, said Tim Kaliher, brand president of Logans Roadhouse. Since 1991, we have had the pleasure of serving our guests an authentic roadhouse atmosphere with a vibrant bar, laid back attitude and quality menu at affordable prices. With this renovation, we are thrilled to welcome loyal and new guests into our doors for decades to come. Beginning at 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, April 3, Logans Roadhouse and the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce will welcome the Chattanooga community to the revitalized restaurant with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Following the ceremony, guests are invited to stay for lunch to experience the refreshed space. The Chattanooga Logans Roadhouse store is located at 504 A Northgate Mall. Twenty-seven Bryan students and four faculty and staff returned from spending their spring break on various missions trips in the U.S. and Central America. This year, each trip was sponsored by an academic department or a student organization on campus to further build on the skills and interests of individual student groups. The engineering department took an inaugural trip to Belize to assist H.O.P.E. Mission for Belize with multiple engineering projects, both onsite and at a local school. SSTOP (Students Stopping the Trafficking of Persons) visited the YMCA in Houston, Tx. to learn about immigration policy, refugee work, and anti-human trafficking efforts. The education department continued their annual tradition of partnering with Hope for Opelousas in Louisiana to work with local youth in achieving important life milestones. Finally, the Christian Studies department traveled to Costa Rica to help ESEPA Seminary and a local summer camp, where they focused on community evangelism and construction. A fifth trip to Grand Goave, Haiti was cancelled due to political unrest. The trip has been rescheduled for next spring break. Michaela Thomas, graduate assistant for Short-Term Missions, said, All of the teams accomplished their specific goals, each of which fulfilled a specific need in the communities they went to serve. It was a great experience for them to get off the Hill and put into practice what they are learning in classrooms and at Bryan. Four more international trips are scheduled for the summer to the Bahamas, Jamaica, India, and Germany. For more information regarding short-term missions opportunities at Bryan, contact mthomas9328@bryan.edu. After 10 intensive weeks of professional study courses, along with extensive physical training, Cleveland Police Departments Captain Robert Harbison has successfully completed and graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigations National Academy (FBINA) Session 275 in Quantico, Va. This distinguished honor has only been made available to less than 1% of all law enforcement leaders worldwide. The FBINA is a professional course of study for U.S. and international law enforcement high level managers, who are nominated by their agency directors due to demonstrated leadership qualities. The 10-week program provides course work in intelligence theory, terrorist mindsets, management science, law, behavioral science, law enforcement communication and forensic science. The National Academy serves to improve the administration of justice in public safety agencies globally and to raise law enforcement standards, knowledge, and cooperation worldwide. The training received at the FBINA is recognized for its academic excellence and highly regarded as the worlds most prestigious law enforcement leadership network. To include physical discipline, along with academic strengthening, the academy students participate in daily physical strength training to prepare them for their final physical challenge, the Yellow Brick Road. This challenge consists of a grueling 6.1 mile run through a hilly, wooded trail. Throughout the course, participants climb walls, run through creeks, jump through windows, scale rock faces with ropes, crawl under barbed wire in muddy water and maneuver across a cargo net. If the students can complete this difficult test, they are given a yellow brick (pictured), to memorialize their great achievement. Not only did Captain Harbison earn his yellow brick, he completed this challenge in first place. The last Cleveland police officer to attend the FBINA was Chief Mark Gibson, who graduated in December of 2011, Session 247. We are so proud of how well our department and the City of Cleveland was represented by Captain Robert Harbison in Quantico, Virginia at the FBI National Academy, said Chief Mark Gibson. Our department, as well as our community, should be equally proud of Captain Harbisons commitment and the invaluable training he received and will incorporate into his day-to-day decision making. Headmaster Lee Burns 87 presented the 2019 Walker Casey Award to senior Daniel Cui during Chapel on Wednesday. The award is named in memory of Walker Casey '47 and is one of the most prestigious honors McCallie bestows to a senior student. Voted upon by the schools faculty and student members of Keo-Kio, the Student Council and the Senate, the award recognizes the senior who most profoundly exhibits the strong Christian beliefs and standards exemplified by Walker Casey. While there are other important awards at McCallie, the Walker Casey Award clearly speaks to the very soul of McCallie, Headmaster Burns said. This award seeks to recognize strength of character and the power of positive influence. As a student at McCallie, Daniel has lived up to the legacy of Walker Casey. A boarding student from Dalian, China, Daniel is an active member of Keo-Kio, the Missionary Committee, the National Honor Society and is a Resident Advisor in Founders dorm. He has been active in Young Life and has taken photos at McCallie events for the school yearbook and other publications. In nominating him for the 2019 Walker Casey Award, faculty members described Daniel as an caring and compassionate young man. He shows up, and is a mainstay of Young Life and on-campus Christian activities, one faculty member said of Daniel. He is courageous about his faith, having overcome language and culture to develop into the young man of remarkable character that he has become. Another faculty member said of Daniel, This is the guy in the dorm that I know will help others stay on task and do the right thing. He sees problems and fixes them before they have time to develop into a full-blown disaster. I have know of few boarding students and no other foreign student who has been involved in as many things and who has worked in the Chattanooga community as much as he has. He is, very simply, an extrovert who is driven by a true desire to serve others. Walker Casey died from a brain tumor in 1947, six weeks before his scheduled graduation date at McCallie. He was inducted into Keo-Kio, the senior leadership organization, before his passing. The award, established by his parents and the school, is presented each year around Walker Caseys birthday. Chattanooga State Community College recently received approval from the TBR College System of Tennessee to offer a new Spanish course, HUM-1110 Latino Cultures in the U.S., as a general education course beginning with the fall 2019 semester. The class will qualify to fulfill the humanities and/or fine arts requirement that all colleges in the state of Tennessee demand. Assistant Professor of Spanish, Juan Antonio Alonso, was the driving force behind the creation of this new course. After years of advising foreign language majors, Alonso said students would ask about a humanities class that would go well with their degree. Discovering that there was nothing offered about Latino culture, he designed a new special topics course at Chattanooga State and was surprised to have 35 students enroll in it over a two-semester period, which convinced Alonso and the academics division that there was strong student demand for a class of this sort. Many of the more than 50 million Latinos in the U.S. today speak English. This implies that, even though learning Spanish continues to be an important tool to approach this community, learning about their history, culture, communication style is as important, if not more. Taking this class is an opportunity to have a more holistic, complete vision of the history, and the current cultural and social reality of the United States, shares Alonso. Students who enroll in HUM-1110 will benefit by fulfilling a transfer and/or graduation requirement. Latino students will get an opportunity to learn more about the history and context of their presence in this country, helping them integrate their personal experience into that of their community. Non-Latino students will get an opportunity to take a first step towards becoming experts in one of the key elements in the fabric that makes our country what it is today, explains Alonso. HUM-1110 will be divided into four blocks: Latino history in the United States, Latino diversity, intercultural communication, and Latino art and literature in the U.S. Several experts in their respective fields will collaborate with the class, so students will have access to a different array of highly qualified instructors. Class materials are available for free, so students don't have to worry about that extra expense. During previous special topic offerings, classes took trips and collaborated in small projects with local entities. For more information about HUM-1110 Latino Cultures in the U.S., which will meet at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays this fall, contact Juan Antonio Alonso at (423) 697-2505 or email juan.alonso@chattanoogastate.edu. Chattanooga State Community College will host its spring Open House on Saturday, April 6 from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. beginning at the Amphitheater on the main campus, 4501 Amnicola Hwy. This event caters to students of all ages. With a wide array of high school programs designed to offer students an accelerated career path; one-to two-year technical and career programs that will open doors to prompt employment; or for the student who wishes to pursue a baccalaureate degree and beyond Chattanooga State is a great starting point. The Open House gives both students and their parents the opportunity to meet with administrators, faculty, staff, and students to learn more about Chattanooga State programs. Information about admissions, financial aid and scholarships including the Pell Grant which is now available year-round, career planning, student activities, and campus organizations will be available. Student Life will hold their annual Family Egg Hunt with prizes and light refreshments also will be served. 2019 graduating high school seniors using the Tennessee Promise scholarship who are planning to attend Chattanooga State this fall may wish to use this time to apply for admission. Student Affairs representatives will assist students during this event to answer any questions. Adult students can learn more about Tennessee Reconnect, a last-dollar scholarship that allows Tennessee adults who qualify and have not earned an associate or bachelors degree to attend Chattanooga State free of tuition and mandatory fees while attending at least part-time. To find out more about TN Reconnect, attend one of three information sessions offered at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., or noon in the Student Support Center, room 124 of the IMC Building (Library). To help visitors navigate the campus, locate the IMC at #7 on the Campus Map link. Recruiting Services at Chattanooga State sponsors this Open House. RSVP here. For more information, call 423-697-2689. Its no secret that George Clooney and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, are very classy people. They hob-nob with some of the biggest dignitaries and most high-powered celebrities around the world. Amal Clooney, in particular, has friends in very high places and counts some members of the royal family among her closest friends. Read on to get the lowdown on Amal Clooneys royal connection. Amal Clooneys friendship with Meghan Markle Amal Clooneys relationship with Meghan Markle can be traced back to well before Markle tied the knot with Prince Harry. The two reportedly double-dated a few times before the wedding, getting to know each other well away from the glare of the tabloid cameras. Of course, no one can forget the moment when George and Amal Clooney arrived at Markle and Prince Harrys wedding in May 2018, with Amal Clooney wearing a stunning yellow dress and matching yellow hat. Since the wedding, Amal Clooney has grown even closer to the royal pair and threw a fabulous baby shower for Markle in February. When Markle and Prince Harry want to get away from it all, they head to the Clooneys incredible villa in Italy. Of course, Amal Clooneys husband, renowned actor George Clooney, endeared himself to the royal family when he publicly defended Meghan Markle, calling out the media for their irresponsibility in printing harsh stories about her. As Clooney and Markles friendship has deepened, it seems as though she has gone on to forge bonds with other royal family members as well. How well does Amal Clooney know Prince Charles? We are delighted that world renowned human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has accepted our invitation to support a global female empowerment campaign. @ClarenceHouse pic.twitter.com/xOTuRdTUwc Prince's Trust Int. (@PrincesTrustInt) March 16, 2019 While its certain that Amal Clooney would have met Meghan Markles father-in-law some time ago, most likely at the big royal wedding, she made headlines recently when she worked with the Prince for a very special cause. In mid-March, Prince Charles announced that he had worked with Amal Clooney to develop a brand-new award within his charity, the Princes Trust International. The award, designed by Prince Charles and Amal Clooney, is called the Amal Clooney Award, and will be presented in the year 2020 to a young woman between the age of 11 and 30 who has made an outstanding and lasting difference in her community. The recipient of the award will be hand-chosen by Amal Clooney herself. Reportedly, Clooney worked for a long time with Prince Charles to organize and structure the award, as well as the criteria for selection and had many dinners at Buckingham Palace over the past several months. Clooney also made a statement in conjunction with Prince Charles, saying that shes honored to participate in the process of selecting the winner and that it is a privilege to be able to draw attention to young women who are determined to make a difference in the world. Clooney herself is no stranger to making a difference. Her work as a human rights lawyer has drawn international acclaim, defending on behalf of neglected and exploited groups of people, as well as former government leaders who have gone to prison. Prince Charles loves that Clooney supports Markle The @PrincesTrustInt has launched the #AmalClooneyAward to celebrate the achievements of young women. It is a privilege to play a part in a project that will draw attention to incredible young women who are the future leaders of our world, she says.https://t.co/ziTBqJqsd4 Omid Scobie (@scobie) March 16, 2019 It is clear that Prince Charles has a special affection for his daughter-in-law, Meghan Markle. There wasnt a dry eye in the house when he walked her down the aisle on her wedding day, handing her off to his son, Prince Harry. It is likely that over the past year, as Amal Clooney and Meghan Markle have grown even closer, Prince Charles has been watching approvingly from the sidelines. The support and love that Clooney has been giving Meghan Markle, even during difficult days, surely endears Clooney even more to Prince Charles. It seems that now, in addition to being friendly, they are partners in philanthropy as well. Cameran Eubanks from Southern Charm took to Instagram to share some disturbing information a friend recently shared. Im absolutely appalled Im having to talk about this subject, Eubanks shared. She continues by saying this is an issue that impacts parents and children, especially those living in South Carolina.If you are a mother or a father, please listen, Eubanks continues. Especially if you live in the state of South Carolina. Cameran Eubanks | Photo by Charles Sykes/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images This is the issue Eubanks says, Apparently there is a huge gap in our law that allows a predator to lure a child into a car, a business or home. There is currently no child luring law present in the state of South Carolina as it is in many other states. For example, it is a second-degree crime to lure a child into a car or any other area in New Jersey. This includes luring a child via electronic means too. Now we already know that South Carolina has the reputation for being a backward-assed state, Eubanks continues. And this just adds to that way of thinking. Eubanks is shocked The fact that there is not a law in place blows my mind, Eubanks continues. I dont understand it, it makes no sense to me, she says. And I want our local representatives in South Carolina to hear this, hear us, mothers, hear us rational thinking human beings. She adds this should be a law. Eubanks added to her story a request to her followers. She suggests posting to Facebook. Dear Representative McCoy and Representative Murphy, I feel strongly that the Child Luring Law be heard ASAP to protect our children. There is no excuse to further delay this hearing. There have been three attempted luring incidents in Mt. Pleasant alone within 18 months. The crime is terrifying A local South Carolina television station reported on a recent scary incident. A man allegedly tried to lure a womans children into his van, but charges were dropped. It really was shocking because there is this huge gaping hole in our system to protect our children, Jenni Hester told Live 5 WCSC.So I was floored that there was nothing that could be done. This isnt an issue of our policemen not doing their job its an issue of them not having a law to prosecute with. Our aim is to give our police officers the support that they need. Some movement is occurring in South Carolina. Last month Representative Nancy Mace and Representative Lee Hewitt introduced bill, H. 5006 to make child luring a crime in South Carolina. The legislation is in response to concerns from Mount Pleasant residents and law enforcement officials about attempted efforts by adults to lure children into cars or vans, sometimes using puppies as lures, and the inability to charge the person with a crime, Hewitt posted on Facebook. Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook! Does Jill Duggars husband Derick Dillard have a future as an advice columnist? The former Counting On star shared some thoughts on relationships in a recent post on his familys blog that had some fans nodding their heads in agreement. Getting over analysis paralysis Jill Duggar Dillard and Derick Dillard | D Dipasupil/Getty Images for Extra In the post, titled Confessions of a Christ-Seeking Millennial, Dillard talked candidly about the analysis paralysis he suffered earlier in his life and how his Christian faith helped him get over the fear of risk and making the wrong decisions. [O]ne thing Ive learned is that I dont always have to have all the answers, but I do need to trust my God who does, he wrote. Dillard talked about some of the risks hes taken in his life, including trying out for and ultimate winning the job of Pistol Pete, the mascot at Oklahoma State University, moving to Nepal for two years after college, having children, and deciding to go to law school. The risk of waiting for the one Dillard also talked about embarking on a relationship with his wife Jill Duggar. One of the riskiest moves he ever made was falling in love and marrying my best friend when neither of us knew whether my mom would be alive when we arrived back from our honeymoon, he wrote in the post. The dad of two explained that if he had let his analysis paralysis take over, he and Jill may never have gotten married. And he says that he sees many young people in the same position, waiting to get married until they are 100% sure they have found the one. [O]ne myth I hear going around in the Christian millennial world is this notion of the one. Young singles expect to see the clouds part and hear the hallelujah chorus when they meet their soul mate, and if that hasnt happened, then they believe that they must continue waiting for the one, he wrote. But waiting for the one could backfire in a big way, Dillard says. If you arent married, dont wait for a perfect person because youll just die single, he wrote. [Y]ou are never going to feel as ready as you think you need to be before embarking on the next adventure, whether that be with your career, starting a family, or otherwise, he added. Was the post a subtle dig at Jill? Jill Dillard shared her husbands post on Instagram, where many followers shared notes of support. There is no magical the one. The perfect one is your spouse who brings you closer to God, wrote one person. Even Dillards mom chimed in. Wow! SO proud of my son, and his wife!! she wrote. But at least one person interpreted Dillards words as a sign that he wasnt totally happy in his marriage. Wrote one person: [I] hope derick tells/shows his love for you and treats you like a princess, because it sounds like from this writing youre not the love of his life but an adequate choice of spouse. Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook! Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla Parker Bowles recently kicked off their 13-day tour of the Caribbean. The future King of England and his wife will make stops on ten different islands and take part in 50 separate engagements. Despite their hectic schedule the London natives took some time to soak up some much-needed time in the sun. On Monday, March 18, 2019, while they were in Barbados the prince and duchess relaxed on the beach. Unfortunately the pair were caught by the paparazzi. These beach photos of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles are causing controversy During the off time on a Barbados beach Parker Bowles and Prince Charles were snapped walking on the beach in their swimwear carrying beach towels. The paparazzi also took photos of the Prince of Wales enjoying a swim in the ocean. Now that the pictures have been made public, they are causing an uproar. According to the Press Association, a source said the pictures were taken during a brief off-duty moment on a major international tour on behalf of the Government, in circumstances where the couple would have a reasonable expectation of privacy during private down time. Additionally, the princes solicitor has reportedly sent a letter to various press organizations who ran the photographs highlighting his reasonable expectation to privacy. Hopefully, these photos wont derail the prince and duchess plans. Inside Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles Caribbean royal tour During their Caribbean royal tour, The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will be the first members of the British Royal Family in over 50 years to visit Cuba. No member of the royal family has stepped foot on the island since it came under communist rule. The whirlwind royal tour will last from March 17-29, 2019 and will include six different countries and one overseas territory. The royal pair will make stops in St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Cuba, and the Cayman Island and they will also take part in more than 50 engagements while on their tour. They should be back in the U.K. just in time to see Prince Harry and Meghan Markle welcome their first child into the world. Are Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla Parker Bowles nervous about visiting Cuba? Prince Charles adores traveling, and trying new foods, but the Duchess of Cornwall is a homebody and she actually has a pretty bad fear of flying. In 2018, the duchess pulled out of a trip to accompany Prince Charles to Australia at the last minute. A spokesperson for Clarence House told Express U.K., She decided a few weeks ago to firm up her plans. We were always looking at the Duchess coming. There are no health reasons. She is as fit as a flea. The Duchess does not like flying, but I think she sometimes has to embrace that fear and get on with it. However, the duchess fear of flying isnt the only reason why shes nervous about visiting Cuba. Apparently, shes also a bit apprehensive about the food. Baroness Hale told Daily Mail, She did make a remark about she wasnt so sure about the food. Check out The Cheat Sheet on Facebook! Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, and Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex will have been married a year come May 19, 2019. The royal family fever continues with the arrival of Baby Sussex in late April. We know when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle told the royal family they were expecting Baby Sussex. But when did they tell them they were engaged to be married? Keep reading to find out. When did Kate Middleton and Prince William announce their engagement? To answer this question, we have to go back to when Prince William and Kate Middleton got engaged. William proposed to Kate while they were on a trip to Kenya in October of 2010. Per royal protocol, any royal sixth in line to the throne or closer must be granted permission to marry from Queen Elizabeth II. Prince William and Kate Middleton|Samir Hussein One might think the royal family finds out when one of their own gets engaged much earlier than the public but that is not always the case. With William and Kate, the queen didnt find out they were engaged until mere hours before they made their public announcement on November 10, 2010. Baby Sussex announcement The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced they were expecting a child on October 15, 2018. They reportedly told the royal family their happy news three days earlier at the wedding of Harrys cousin, Princess Eugenie. When did Prince Harry and Meghan Markle tell the royal family they were engaged? Based on when Queen Elizabeth II learned of Prince William and Kate Middletons engagement, and how Prince Harry and Meghan Markle told the royal family they were expecting a baby, we can assume the Duke and Duchess of Sussex told the royal family anywhere from a few hours to a few days before they made the public announcement in October 2018. When did the queen approve the marriages? As we mentioned earlier, the queen has to approve of marriages involving the six royals in line to the throne. That means she had to approve of both Prince William and Prince Harrys marriages to Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle. What is customary in marriage approvals is for the queen to release a letter of consent. She did just that a little more than two months before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex married in May 2018. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle | Karwai Tang/WireImage The letter read, My Lords, I declare My Consent to a Contract of Matrimony between My Most Dearly Beloved Grandson Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales and Rachel Meghan Markle, which Consent I am causing to be signified under the Great Seal and to be entered in the Books of the Privy Council. Prince William and Kate Middletons letter of consent from the queen had different wording which some royal watchers thought was her way of throwing shade at Markle. Turns out, the wording was because of royal protocol. The queen wrote referred to Middleton as Our Trusty and Well-beloved Catherine Elizabeth Middleton, in her and Prince Williams marriage consent letter. That term is only used for citizens of Britain or the Queens overseas Realms. Meghan is not yet a British citizen, Emily Nash, a royal reporter tweeted, according to Town & Country. With Prince Harry and Meghan Markle getting ready to welcome their first child soon, royal fans are getting more excited with each passing day! The baby hasnt even been born yet, and it is constantly being speculated as to who the godparents will be, how Meghan and Harry will raise Baby Sussex, and whether Meghans mother, Doria Ragland, will live with the Duke and Duchess in their new home in order to help out with her first grandchild. There is so much anticipation, and fans cant help but wonder if Baby Sussex will be an even bigger celebrity than the children of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Kate was low-key about each one of her pregnancies Fans will recall that each time Kate was pregnant, it took her quite some time to make the happy announcement to the world. She went to great lengths to keep each pregnancy a secret for as long as possible, using tactics to divert everyones attention, such as changing up her hairstyle. It seemed that with each child, Kate covered up her blossoming baby bump until she simply could not hide it anymore. Even after the announcement was made, Kate never went out of her way to call attention to the fact that she was expecting a child, and she and Prince William never seemed to talk about it with anyone. Kate did not have a baby shower It is well-known that baby showers are actually more of an American tradition, and Kate did not have one. While she may have had a small, quiet gathering with close friends and family behind palace doors, it certainly did not garner nearly as much attention as the star-studded New York City shower that was held in Meghans honor. This is just another one of the ways that Kate kept her pregnancy a little more low-key. Meghans family drama is bringing more attention to the upcoming baby With all of the family drama that Meghan is experiencing, it is calling more attention to the fact that she and Harry are expecting their first child. Everyone is wondering if her sister, Samantha Markle, will continue the drama after the baby arrives and if Meghans father will have a relationship with the child. Kates family did not speak publicly about the arrival of any of the Cambridge children. Meghan has fans in America and in England While all of America certainly loves Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle lived quite the fairy tale when she moved to London to marry her Prince! Having already made a name for herself in America as a successful actress, Meghan has fans in both countries waiting on the edge of their seats for the arrival of Baby Sussex. Since Meghan has ties to the United States, it may be that the anticipation is running just a little deeper. The world will be watching when the baby is born Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex | Samir Hussein/Samir Hussein/WireImage The amount of attention that Baby Sussex will receive when he or she arrives is sure to be quite overwhelming. Fans around the world will be waiting to catch a glimpse of the new royal baby, and the attention is sure to last for a while. Everyone will want to learn as many details as they can about the child of Meghan and Harry. However, with the couple planning to move to Windsor, outside of London, their baby will be living a much quieter life outside of the spotlight. He or she probably wont be photographed or watched nearly as much as the Cambridge children. While the entire world will absolutely have equal amounts of love for the Cambridges as well as baby Sussex, it is highly unlikely that Meghan and Harrys child will live a celebrity-style life! (RNS) If Donald Trump were the pope or another Christian leader, the majority of U.S. Christians likely wouldnt have minded that he signed a Bible. Only 39 percent of Christians in the U.S. think it would be inappropriate for a pastor, priest or Christian leader to sign the cover of a Bible. Similarly, 35 percent think it would be inappropriate for the pope to do the same. But a Morning Consult poll released Monday (March 18) shows nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Christians in the U.S. found it inappropriate when Trump signed the covers of at least two Bibles earlier this month at a Southern Baptist church in Alabama while visiting a community recovering from a deadly tornado outbreak. The poll comes after videos posted online showed people holding out their Bibles to the president and first lady Melania Trump to sign. Slate reported that a 12-year-old boy was the first to ask Trump to autograph his Bible. Other photos show the presidents signature scrawled in large writing across the covers of a pair of Bibles. Two-thirds (64 percent) of all U.S. adults, including non-Christians, view that action as inappropriate, according to Morning Consult. More white evangelical Protestants in the U.S. who overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2016 and continue to largely support the president, according to the same poll found it inappropriate (45 percent) than appropriate (35 percent). But Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College near Chicago, said signing Bibles is not unheard of in some Baptist circles in the South. In fact, Stetzer said, hes been asked to sign many Bibles when hes appeared as a guest speaker. He generally tries to demur, and he wouldnt ask someone to sign his Bible, he said, though he also is conscious not to commit a cultural faux pas when visiting places where it may be more common. Its worth noting that sometimes there are regional customs that people follow, and that doesnt make them hillbillies or hicks, he said. Stetzer tweeted at the time that the outcry over Trump signing Bibles was a made up controversy. And a report from The Associated Press noted that presidents including Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt also signed Bibles, though those Bibles were inscribed privately with spiritual messages as gifts. Historians told Morning Consult that what made Trumps actions different from previous presidents was white evangelicals embrace of God and country, including Trump. And most U.S. Christians said it would be inappropriate for any president (62 percent) or politician (71 percent) to sign the cover of a Bible, according to the poll. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of respondents in the South found Trump signing the covers of Bibles in Alabama to be inappropriate, it said. Trump voters were the least likely to report they found the current president signing Bible covers to be inappropriate, almost evenly split between 43 percent who approved the action and 42 percent who disapproved, it said. The poll surveyed 2,201 adults March 12-15 in the U.S., according to Morning Consult. It had a margin of error of 2 percentage points. READ THIS STORY AT RELIGIONNEWS.COM Article originally published by Religion News Service. Used with permission. Photo courtesy: RNS/AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster Recently, archaeologists working in northern Peru made a discovery they called disturbing and disquieting. Digging in the outskirts of the pre-Columbian city of Chan-Chan, they found the remains of about 140 children and 200 animals, mostly llamas. The condition of the childrens remains made it clear that they had been sacrificed along with the animals, perhaps in response to some emergency or dire threat. According to the Washington Post, its the site of the largest known child sacrifice in the world. While this is a very unpleasant subject, it serves as a gruesome reminder of how biblical religion, especially Christianity, changed the course of human history. Chan-Chan was the capital of the Chimu empire. Before their disturbing find, the archaeologists were not aware that this ancient people practiced child sacrifice. Their hypothesis is that the sacrifices were in response to a severe weather event, perhaps a strong El Nino, which caused catastrophic flooding. Whatever precipitated the child sacrifice, the Chimu were far from alone in their attempts to placate the gods by slaughtering their children. Their conquerors, the Incan Empire, also practiced child sacrifice in times of emergency. In the Old World, the Carthaginians, who were descended from the biblical city of Tyre, sacrificed children to their gods at shrines the Hebrew Bible called tophets. The Romans made a big deal out of this fact in their anti-Carthaginian propaganda, conveniently omitting the fact that they did the same in response to the Carthaginian general Hannibals invasion of Italy. The Carthaginians werent the only ancient people who emulated Canaanite child sacrifice. Pre-exilic Israel practiced this demonic rite, as well. In Jeremiah 7, the Lord denounces the high place of Topheth where the people burn their sons and daughters in the fire. On account of this abomination, the Lord said that I cause to cease from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride; for the land shall become a waste. Then, of course, theres that one specific example cited by the Washington Post in its article about the find in Peru: the Binding of Isaac in Genesis 22. While parts of this story are perplexing and even troubling, its inclusion along with the other examples misses a crucial point: There was never a chance Isaac would be sacrificed. If Abraham, to quote Bob Dylans paraphrase, had replied to God Man, you must be putting me on, Isaac lives. If, as actually happened, Abraham was willing to be fully obedient to Gods instruction, Isaac lives because God prevents the sacrifice. Jewish Rabbis have long taught that this story of Abraham and Isaac condemns the practice of child sacrifice, especially in light of the repeated subsequent condemnations of the practice throughout the Old Testament. It was part of Abrahams coming to understand that the God whod called him to leave his homeland was a very different God than the gods he left behind. This God, as Christianity would later teach the world, doesnt demand our children as a sacrifice, but rather sacrificed His own Son on our behalf. In fact, early Christians took the Jewish prohibition on child sacrifice and extended it to cover contemporary Roman practices such as abortion and infanticide. Ultimately, its because of Christianitys clarity on the killing of children that we find the discovery at Chan-Chan so chilling today, despite our own cultures embrace of moral relativism. Chilled or not, we still fail to see the obvious parallels between what happened at Chan-Chan and recently-enacted laws that permit the killing of infants who could easily survive outside the womb. Just as biblical religion made the world a far safer place for young children, the decline of Christian influence over our culture threatens to reverse the moral progress weve made since the ancient world. It may be that future archaeologists, as they dig through the remains of our civilization, will find themselves disturbed and disquieted, too. BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on todays news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions. John Stonestreet, the host of The Point, a daily national radio program, provides thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview. Publication date: March 21, 2019 Photo courtesy: Kylli Kittus/Unsplash President Donald Trump declared Israels sovereignty over the Golan Heights in a simple, but direct tweet Thursday. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! the president said in the tweet. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2019 According to the Jerusalem Post, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted in kind, using the social media platform to announce that at a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you, President Trump! The presidents tweet came as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Israel, just weeks before Netanyahus contentious re-election bid. During his visit, Pompeo and Netanyahu took aim at Iranian aggression in the region. "The Ayatollah has declared that the annihilation and destruction of Israel is his primary goal. With such threats a daily reality of Israeli life, we maintain our unparalleled commitment to Israel's security and firmly support your right to defend yourself, Pompeo said Wednesday, according to a report by CBN News. Netanyahu acknowledged the pairs meeting focused on working out effective strategies to combat the Iranian threat. The secretary and I just spent the first part of our meetings discussing how to do that, and I think that there are ways that will intensify the pressure even more, said Netanyahu, who also brought up the volatility of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. The conservative media outlet Newsmax reported that the Israeli leader accused Iran of attempting to set up a terrorist network to target Israel from the Golan Heights. "You could imagine what would have happened if Israel were not in the Golan," Netanyahu said. "You would have Iran on the shores of the Sea of Galilee." Pompeo did not discuss the issue of the Golan Heights publicly, but there was speculation that an announcement on U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan could come as early as next week when Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Washington. Trumps tweet could signal something official is on the horizon. Also on the visit, Pompeo visited the new American embassy in Jerusalem. President Trump issued an executive order in late 2017 moving it from Tel Aviv. It opened in May of last year, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. The relocation has wide support among Israelis. In addition to Israel, Pompeos trip included stops to Kuwait and Lebanon. The secretary also met with leaders from Greece and Cyprus in an effort to develop new energy sources that will strengthen both countries, while trying to minimize Irans influence. The issue of an alleged corruption scandal involving Netanyahu did not surface during their public appearances. Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Handout A frequently challenging part of Scripture for many Christians is the Old Testament prophets. Sometimes, understanding their message can be a little confusing. Especially, when that message might apply (or is applied) to the New Testament. When the prophets do look into the future that God revealed to them, what do their words refer to? I find it helpful to think of three major possible horizons of their vision. That is to say, as the prophets launch their words into the future, we can see three places where their words land, three places where their words are relevant and fulfilledor still will be. Horizon one: The Old Testament era This is the horizon of the prophets own time or the wider Old Testament era as a whole. Most of what they predict happens either in their own lifetimes or at some point within the history of Old Testament Israel. For example, many prophets warn that God will send Israel, and then Judah, into exile because they persistently break the covenant and rebel against him. That is fulfilled, as we have seen, within the Old Testament period itself, in 721 BC for the northern kingdom of Israel, and in 587 BC for the southern kingdom of Judah. Those prophecies are fulfilled at horizon one. Some of the prophets also predict that God will bring the exiles of Judah back to their land. He will bring their exile to an end. The covenant will be renewed, and they will rebuild the temple. Those prophecies are also fulfilled within the Old Testament period. After the edict of Cyrus, king of Persia, in 538 BC, several waves of exiles return to Jerusalem, and the temple is rebuilt by 515 BC. Fulfillment at horizon one. However, sometimes we will find that an Old Testament prediction that is made and fulfilled at horizon one can also carry forward and have even more significant fulfillment later. A good example is Isaiahs sign to Ahaz in Isaiah 7. Since it is a sign (something that is supposed to be meaningful for Ahaz), we have to assume that a child is indeed conceived and born soon afterward and that what Isaiah predicts about the defeat of Israels enemies does indeed come true within approximately nine monthsall at horizon one. God is indeed with them (Immanuel) and delivers them from their enemies. However, we also know, of course, that Matthew finds an even greater level of fulfillment of that Immanuel prophecy in the birth of Jesus. That brings us to horizon two. Horizon two: The New Testament era There are some passages in the prophets that speak in terms that we now know could only ultimately be true in and through Jesus Christ and the gospel of salvation through his death and resurrection. Sometimes this is called messianic prophecy, though the word messiah (anointed one) itself does not often occur. The prophets do not only speak about a coming person, but rather they describe things that can only be perfectly true through Jesus. For example, when Jeremiah speaks about God making a new covenant (Jer. 31:3133), much of what he says is similar in principle to the Sinai covenant. But when he says that part of that new relationship will include the complete forgiveness of sins, then we know that is accomplished only by Jesus Christ. Similarly, when Isaiah speaks about the Servant of the Lord, there are several things said about the Servant that are also said about Israel (chosen and loved by God, given as a light for the nations). But when Isaiah speaks about how the Servant will bear the sins of many and die vicariously for us (Isa. 53), then we can only see such words fully embodied in the Lord Jesus. Thus we need to be alert to a possible gospel horizon in the words of the prophets. Please understand that this does not mean that we have to find Jesus in every verse of the prophets (or the Old Testament as a whole). Rather, it means we should be aware that these texts are all part of a great historical and scriptural journey that leads to Christ. Article continues below Horizon three: The new creation There are times when prophets speak of a future that is described in terms that go way beyond anything we have experienced, in the past or the present. For example, we know that the prophets speak about God judging Israel and also other foreign nations. But sometimes they describe Gods judgment engulfing the whole earth and all nations in cataclysmic destruction of all that is wicked and evil (for example, Isa. 24). Such a universal vision takes us to the ultimate horizon, of the second coming of Christ and the final judgment. Thankfully, however, the prophets more often have such long-term visions in relation to Gods future blessing. Their words about the world of the future are filled with immense joy and excitement. We find ourselves imagining a world in which everything is perfect. Nature is full of abundance. The earth itself rejoices in its Creator. Human life is safe and fulfilling and free from violence, injustice, hunger, and danger. War and violence are no more. People and animals live in harmony and peace. People never again turn away from God in disobedience. People from all over the world and all nations reject their false gods and turn to the living God and worship him with joy and gifts (for example, Isa. 25:69; 35; 65:1725; Jer. 32:3741; 33:69; Joel 3:1718). That kind of vision is certainly not fulfilled at horizon one. The Israelites do return to their land (as well see in a moment). But they are still sinful and far from perfectas books like Nehemiah, Ezra, and Malachi show. What about horizon two? Well, of course we know that Christ accomplished the redemption of the world in his death and resurrection, but we have not yet seen the fulfillment of all that the prophets describe, a world of perfect peace and justice. We have to take such passages on to the ultimate horizon threeor the eschatological horizon, to use technical terms. By horizon three, I am referring to the picture of the new creation we see in Revelation 2122. The whole scene in those chapters very deliberately echoes many of the themes in the prophets (the whole book of Revelation is saturated with Old Testament allusions). Read Isaiah 60 and 65:1725 and then immediately read Revelation 2122, and youll see what I mean. The ultimate vision of the prophets will only be fulfilled when Christ returns and the earth is cleansed and renewed to be the dwelling place of God with us. There are some passages in the prophets that seem to include all three horizons, and this may feel confusing at first. But remember that the prophets are looking into a future that, as far as they can see, is all one single vision. They do not (could not) know that it will be centuries before horizon two comes along, and unknown centuries further before horizon three will come (it still lies ahead). We, with our perspective, can now see that their words have stretched out over a vast period of time. They saw things from the front and saw things near and far as if they were all part of one big, single picture. Bringing Good News Isaiah 52:710 is a very good example of all three horizons. Take a look. Basically, this text is good news. That is what the running messenger of the beautiful feet announces. This is Old Testament gospel. It is good news at all three horizons. How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, Your God reigns! Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God. Article continues below Good news for the exiles: Horizon one. The messengers words are to encourage the exiles to get ready to go home to Jerusalem. Yahweh has won the victory (God reigns), and God is already returning to his city and taking them with him. As at the exodus, God is redeeming his people. They can rejoice and go home. Indeed, that does happen. The prophecy is fulfilled at horizon one. Good news in Christ: Horizon two. There are three aspects of the good news in these verses that are also true in Jesus Christ. Isaiah 52:7 speaks of the God who reigns. Isaiah 52:8 speaks of the God who returns. Isaiah 52:9 speaks of the God who redeems. All of those are true in Christ and the gospel. He preaches the kingdom of God. He goes to the temple (to which God promised to return). He is the Redeemer and Savior, through his death and resurrection. Jesus is God reigning, God returning, and God redeeming. Jesus adds a level of fulfillment to the messengers words at the gospel horizon two. Good news for the world: Horizon three. In Isaiah 52:10 the prophet moves to the global stage, to all the nations and all the ends of the earth. This is the Abrahamic promise again. Through the mission of the church, the gospel of the salvation of our God is indeed going to the ends of the earth. The ultimate vision of the prophecy lies at horizon three. It will be finally fulfilled when the Lord Jesus Christ returns to reign over all the earth and to redeem his people from every tribe and people and language. Gods plan for the nations Through all these horizons, there is a missional dimension to the prophets vision of hope for the future. They see that, because Gods promise to Abraham always envisaged Gods blessing extending to all nations, there must come a day when people from other nations beyond Israel will be gathered in to be part of Gods covenant people. That is exactly what the apostle Paul realizes had to happen, now that Messiah Jesus has come and fulfilled Gods promised salvation through his death and resurrection. At the climax of Romans, as he prepares to use the church in Rome as his base for missionary work further west in Spain, he puts it like this: For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of Gods truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed and, moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for hismercy (Rom. 15:89; my italics). Then he immediately supports that point with four quotations from the Old Testament. We dont know what other scriptural texts Paul must have used in explaining his missionary commitment to take the good news to the Gentiles, but perhaps some like these, which envisage people from many nations being registered in Gods city (Ps. 87:36); coming to bring God worship (Ps. 86:8); being blessed with Gods salvation, even as former enemies (Isa. 19:2025); being called by Gods name (Amos 9:1112); and being joined with Gods people in Zion (Zech. 2:1011). That is where the story has to goto the nationsand Paul will take it there. The apostolic mission has its roots in the Old Testament. Christopher J. H. Wright is international ministries director of the Langham Partnership and an ordained priest in the Church of England. This article is an excerpt adapted from his forthcoming book The Old Testament in Seven Sentences: A Short Introduction to a Vast Topic (IVP, May 2019). Excerpt taken from The Old Testament in Seven Sentences by Christopher J. H. Wright. 2019 by Christopher J. H. Wright. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com. Yes, its beginning to look a lot like Christmaswhich, for many of us, feels like a rush into chaos. Celebrating Advent during this season slows us down and helps our hearts and minds be reoriented around the coming of Christ.Yes, its beginning to look a lot like Christmaswhich, for many of us, feels like a rush into chaos. Celebrating Advent during this season slows us down and helps our hearts and minds be reoriented around the coming of Christ. The British government has been using the Bible against Christians seeking asylum after converting from Islammost recently, citing verses from Leviticus, Exodus, and Revelation as evidence that the faith was not more peaceful, as one Iranian convert claimed in his application. Anglican leaders and other advocates for refugees condemned the immigration departments decision to deny the Iranians 2016 petition for asylum this week. The letter sent Tuesday from the Home Office declared that Christianity was not a peaceful religion, bringing up imagery of revenge, destruction, death, and violence in Revelation and the line You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you from Leviticus 26:7. These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a peaceful religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge, the government official ... 1 Appeals court saves clergy tax-free housing allowance Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled Friday that a law giving clergy an exemption from paying income taxes on their housing allowance is constitutional. The ruling protects religious leaders nationwide from having to pay nearly $1 billion more each year in taxes. The courts unanimous decision in the case Gaylorv. Mnuchin reversed a district courts ruling in 2017 in favor of the atheist legal group Freedom From Religion Foundation, which argued that excluding pastors housing allowance from their taxable income was unconstitutional. A group of clergy who rely on the housing allowance appealed that decision to the Seventh Circuit and were represented by the law firm Becket. The tax code treats ministers the same as hundreds of thousands of nonreligious workers who receive tax-exempt housing for their jobs thats not special treatment, its equal treatment, said Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, which defends religious rights. The court rightly recognized that striking down the parsonage allowance would devastate small, low-income houses of worship in our neediest neighborhoods and would cause needless conflict between church and state, he added. Pastor Chris Butler of the Chicago Embassy Church, a predominantly African-American congregation, says his church cant afford to pay him a full salary, but it offers him a small housing allowance so he can afford to live near his church. This ruling is a victory not just for my church but for the needy South Side Chicago community we serve our youth, our single mothers, our homeless, our addicted, and our victims of gang violence, Butler said. I am grateful that I can continue serving them and living side by side with them to make our neighborhood a safer, more peaceful place." In a previous interview with The Christian Post, Joe Davis, counsel at Becket, said the estimate of $1 billion per year in additional taxes comes in part from a report by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which "estimates the housing allowance at $0.97 billion for 2018, and expects that it will actually exceed $1 billion this year." "Congressional estimates for instance the Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures for Fiscal Years 20162020, prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation likewise estimate the allowance at nearly a billion dollars annually," Davis said. Judge Michael Brennan wrote in his opinion Friday that Congress has enacted federal tax exemptions for religious organizations as far back as 1802. And dismissed FFRFs claim that a tax code exemption for clergy housing violated the Establishment Clause. FFRF claims [that the tax code exemption for religious housing] renders unto God that which is Caesars. But this tax provision falls into the play between the joints of the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause: neither commanded by the former, nor proscribed by the latter. We conclude [the tax code] is constitutional. The judgment of the district court is REVERSED, Brennan added in the opinion. In response to the Seventh Circuits ruling, FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor, one of the plaintiffs, said, The housing allowance is so clearly a handout to churches and clergy, and it so clearly shows preferential treatment and discriminating in favor of ministers. The co-plaintiffs with Gaylor were FFRF Co-President Dan Barker (a former pastor-turned-atheist) and Ian Gaylor. The clergy allowance is not a tax deduction, but an exemption allowing housing allowances paid as part of clergy salary to be subtracted from taxable income. The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has reported that the exemption amounts to $700 million a year in lost revenue, FFRF said in a statement Friday. Clergy may use the housing allowance not just for rent or mortgage, but for home improvements, including maintenance, repairs, dishwashers, cable TV and phone fees even personal computers and bank fees," FFRF added in its statement. "The subsidy extends to churches, which can pay clergy less, as tax-free salaries go further. In 2011, the FFRF filed a lawsuit against the tax code exemption for religious housing, a law passed in 1954 that gave clergy a tax exemption for their housing allowance. In 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Crabb for the Western District of Wisconsin ruled in favor of the FFRF, only to have the decision overturned in November 2014 by a three judge panel of the Seventh Circuit. According to the panel, FFRF lacked the standing to sue because the atheist group had never asked for the exemption and thus had not been denied it. In April 2016, the FFRF refiled their lawsuit after following the panel's order on standing, with Crabb ruling in October 2017 that the tax allowance was unconstitutional. In her opinion Crabb wrote that the tax exemption "violates the Establishment Clause because it eliminates the burden for a group made up of solely religious employees but maintains it for nearly everyone else." Actress Taraji P Henson says Christians must model Jesus Christ, combat hate with love Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment NEW YORK Academy Award nominee Taraji P. Henson stars in the upcoming film The Best of Enemies, and like her character, Ann Atwater, she believes true followers of Christ are to display unconditional love, even to those who are hateful. The Best of Enemies tells the true story of an unlikely relationship between Ann Atwater (Henson), an outspoken civil rights activist, and C.P. Ellis, the president of the Durham chapter of United Klans of America (played by Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell). The pair unwittingly co-chaired a community summit in Durham, North Carolina, in the summer of 1971, just months after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to desegregate schools. What followed would change Durham and the lives of Atwater and Ellis forever, as the two formed a friendship that lasted a lifetime up until Ellis' death in 2005. When asked about finding resolutions to racial tensions, Henson told CP that a Christian's role is to work to defuse the conflict that's around them. "If you're a person of Christ, and if you are a Christian, then that's what you do, that's what Jesus did. Jesus was nailed to a cross by people who hated Him, resurrected, and still loved those same people. So you have to tap into that if you are truly a Christian, she told The Christian Post. The love Atwater showed Ellis despite his innate hatred of black people as a KKK leader eventually broke through his contempt, and Henson describes that as a reflection of Gods heart. "When we talk about love, we talk about God's love. It's unconditional and love is the search for understanding, Henson said. So even the person you hate, if you want change you can't match it with hate or else nothing's going to change. Someone has to rise above and tap into love. And that's when she (Atwater) was able to get change." "It changed C.P.," Hensons co-star, Sam Rockwell, added. In the film, Ellis and Atwater talk about what helps them fight their battles. While Ellis says his gun does his fighting for him, Atwater replies that her Bible does her fighting for her. Rockwell claimed "acting" does his fighting for him. While Henson agreed, she admitted it goes a little further for her. Henson added: "But then, on a higher level, because we're all still just humans, I believe in a higher power because humans gonna hurt you. Your mother, your father, we're humans that's what we do, right? So I have a higher power. You call it whatever you want, I call it God and that's who fights my battles. Because some situations, I shouldn't have walked away from. So it had to be something bigger than me." Both Henson and Rockwell give award-worthy performances in The Best of Enemies. They truly embodied their characters' revolutionary roles and honored Atwater's and Ellis memories. "Because these are real people it was very important for both of us that we got it right," Henson said. "Even though they're not alive, they have family members that love them very much and we wanted it to do them a service. This story is very important and if we don't handle it well, then their lives were in vain. And we can't have that because their stories are too important. "I was scared to death to portray this, but I don't take roles if they don't scare me. Because if I'm not scared, I'm not going to transform. And if I don't transform, how's the audience going to transform? So she (Atwater) scared me because she was a real person, she continued. The Empire star said she loves to be challenged in the roles she takes on and Atwater, the sassy southern activist, was just that. "I'm a character actress, so the more I don't look like myself, the better. It was fun. I love playing different characters. Then when Sam signed on, I was like, 'This is gonna be so much fun,' because he's a character actor too. He disappears in all of his roles, Henson gushed. Henson further revealed that shes always looking to work with people who will inspire her to raise the bar. Rockwell likewise praised Henson, saying, "I probably wouldn't have done the film if it wasn't for Taraji. Taraji was the main reason. I'd played a racist before, I wasn't looking to play a racist again. But I was like, 'Well, this is an interesting character, it's an interesting story, and a chance to work with Taraji. And it's about change and love that it's an important story,' The Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri actor concluded. The Best of Enemies STXfilms hits theaters on April 5. For more information visit the movies website. Film: Ray Comfort convinces pro-choice advocates to change mind on abortion Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Is abortion moral? Is current U.S. law too permissive? Are there circumstances that make terminating a pregnancy an ethical choice? These are just a few of the loaded questions at the heart of the ever-contentious abortion debate. Theyre also topics that are creatively grappled within filmmaker Ray Comforts riveting new film 7 Reasons. The movie, which released on March 15 at 7ReasonsMovie.com, will challenge viewers to think deeper about the abortion debate, as Comfort asks a variety of men and women about their beliefs on abortion and whether it really is truly a womans right to choose. READ ALSO: 5 Real Life Stories of Abortion Survivors I feel like its a womans right to choose, one interviewee responds. We have rights over our own body. Others are seen agreeing with this conclusion. Those featured in 7 Reasons give a variety of justifications for why they believe abortion should be permissible. From the inconvenience of pregnancy to parental incompetence, the circumstances offered up were sweeping. Some argued that fetuses simply arent babies or that some women seeking abortions are justified in doing so, as they arent ready for the responsibility of being a parent. People who dont have money cant pay for themselves, one person says, citing financial barriers. Watch the 7 Reasons trailer: But Comfort patiently questions each person and, before long, its easy to see the house of cards come tumbling down, with hearts and minds changing in the process. Youd sacrifice willingly because Gods given you an instinct to love your offspring, Comfort told one woman, encouraging her to reject abortion as a moral option and turn to God. God can grant everlasting life as a free gift. READ ALSO: 12 Heartwarming Family Movies About Adoption As the conversations unfold, something fascinating happens in 7 Reasons: people start to realize the true gravity of their perspectives. You can watch the film starting on March 15 at 7 Reasons. This article was originally published on Pure Flix Insider. Visit Pure Flix for access to thousands of faith and family-friendly movies and TV shows. You can get a free, one-month trial here. Billy Hallowell, author of "The Armageddon Code," has contributed to TheBlaze, the Washington Post, Human Events, the Daily Caller, Mediaite, and the Huffington Post, among other news sites. Through journalism, media, public speaking appearances, and the blogosphere, Hallowell has worked as a journalist and commentator for more than a decade. Franklin Graham meets sanctioned Russian official, says VP Pence approved of his trip Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Leading American evangelical Franklin Graham recently met with a Russian official sanctioned by the U.S. government during a trip to Moscow that he says Vice President Mike Pence wholeheartedly supported. At the beginning of March, the 66-year-old Graham, the chair of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, visited with religious and political leaders in Moscow. In addition to a meeting he had with Russian Orthodox Bishop Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and evangelical leaders, Graham also met with the leader of the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. As reported by the left-leaning news site Think Progress, Volodin is among seven Russian government officials sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2014 on grounds that Russian leadership failed to take concrete steps to deescalate the situation of Russias unlawful actions in Ukraine. The sanctions came weeks after Russia annexed the Ukranian territory of Crimea. The Treasury Department stated that Putins decision to move into Crimea is believed to have been based on consultations with his closest advisers, including Volodin. At the time, Volodin was the first deputy chief of staff of the Presidential Executive Office. According to a picture of the meeting posted by the State Duma Instagram page on March 4, Graham and Volodin talked about their views on the state of U.S.-Russia relations and the implementation of humanitarian projects. Additionally, they discussed the possibility of intensifying contacts between the State Duma and the U.S. Congress. In his own Instagram post from March 6, Graham said it was an honor to meet Volodin and called him a gracious man. Graham explained that Volodin told him his grandfather was a priest who was killed by communists for baptizing children in the river. Remember to keep him in your prayers, Graham asked his followers. The Christian Post asked Graham for a comment on his meeting with Volodin but was informed that he is traveling to a remote part of Alaska and is unable to provide comment at this time. In an interview with a Russian state-operated news outlet, Graham, who is also head of the evangelical humanitarian organization Samaritans Purse, explained that he was not dissuaded from going on the trip. Graham has been a vocal supporter of the Trump administration and has on occasion participated in events for evangelical leaders at the White House. Although the trip comes at a time in which many questions still surround Russias and other countries' interference in the 2016 presidential election, and allegations by Democrats that the Trump campaign was involved in collusion, Graham explained that he talked with Vice President Mike Pence personally about his trip before leaving. [B]efore I left home, I called up with Vice President Mike Pence to inform him that I was going to Moscow, Graham was quoted as saying. He was very happy to hear this news. And he admitted that he wholeheartedly supported my decision. Grahams trips to Russia come as American evangelicals have been working build ties with religious leaders in Russia for some time. Grahams trip earlier this month was not the the first time he has traveled to Russia or has met with high-profile Russian government officials. In 2015, Graham met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to one of Grahams social media posts from 2017. In October of that year, Graham traveled to Moscow and met with Patriarch Kirill to discuss Christian persecution worldwide, the global refugee crisis and the need to reach the younger generation brought up in secular schools and secular culture. As a result of that visit, Graham announced in 2016 that the BGEAs World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians will be held in Moscow. But later that year, Graham and BGEA moved the summit out of Russia to Washington, D.C. because Putin signed a law severely limiting religious liberties and legal evangelism. Critics feared the law is unfair for evangelicals and other believers who were not part of Orthodox Christianity. Even though the event was not held in Moscow, a delegation from the Russian Orthodox Church was invited to take part in the D.C. Summit. In Grahams meeting with Kirill this month, the two again discussed how the Russian youth can be reached with the Gospel. Graham took part in a ceremony organized by the Russian Orthodox Church launching a book it published containing 50 of Billy Grahams (Grahams father) sermons. I appreciate his strong stand with biblical truth on issues such as abortion. In a world where many church leaders are losing their moral voice, @PatriarchKirill is refreshing, Graham wrote. Graham added that he also met with evangelical leaders in the country while he was there. Im meeting with the Russian churches on how we can share with more young people about faith in Jesus Christ! Graham wrote in a March 3 Instagram post. Thats not collusion, but it is collaboration for the sake of souls. Trump has reportedly met with Putin on different occasions since taking office and has taken heat from media over the fact that the meetings were done in private and were not recorded. Upon his first meeting with Putin in 2018, Graham praised Trump. Nothing would be easier politically than to refuse to meet, to refuse to engage, but that would not accomplish anything, Graham wrote in a social media post last July. I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics." Opposition to reparations for slavery is of the devil, prominent SBC pastor says Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Prominent Southern Baptist Pastor Thabiti Anyabwile said conservative opposition to the idea of reparations for slavery is of the devil. In a series of tweets last Friday, Anyabwile, who leads Anacostia River Church in Washington D.C., argued that conservatives who believe the broadly unpopular idea of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow is about blacks who want to steal whites money appeared more concerned about the idolatry of money instead of righteousness. Im sad for folks who hear the word reparations, w/o any specific proposal attached, who start exclaiming, Blacks just want to steal whites money! Its a retort that reveals possible idolization of mammon and willful blindness to 250 years of stealing Black ppl themselves, Anyabwile began. And the hypocrisy of some self-professed conservatives who argue all day long that a person should be able to control their labor but who do not think any recompense is owed for CENTURIES of stolen labor is mind-blowing. Its a glaring inconsistency, he argued. Democrat presidential candidates, like former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, have expressed their support for reparations for slavery. They have yet to offer specific proposals. And, there is a debate among them about whether reparations means direct cash payments or can be broader policy programs, such as financial aid, aimed at reducing the racial wealth gap. Warren has also suggested that native Americans should be included. Anyabwile continued that Christians who argue that supporting reparations will only further divide the church is simply a continuation of gospel escapism that will do nothing for racial reconciliation. Then there are those who rush to tell us, Reparations wont bring reconciliation and will only further the divide. What omniscience! And as if the burying of our heads, refusing to acknowledge wrongdoing, and gospel escapism the church has been practicing is healing the divide, he said. The Anacostia River Church leader suggested that the refusal of Christians to even consider reparations as an effort to right the wrongs of slavery reflects a stronghold that is not of God. There are so many excuses tossed about and rejections even before an actual idea is offered that there appear to be strongholds at work. Perhaps the strategy should be to go back to some basic questions: 1. Was a wrong committed? 2. Is it right to right the wrong? Those are admittedly basic questions but it seems to be where a few Christians are stuck. If a *Christian* cannot answer an unequivocal yes to those questions then far more than debate about reparations is going on. More serious soul work is needed, Anyabwile argued. And if we cannot bear to entertain a third basic question3. What does God in His word require of me to right the wrong?then, as I said, Im sad for those Christians. These are the ABCs of moral reasoning. Nothing fancy. But is costly to follow Jesus. Thats cross carrying, he continued. More than money however, Anyabwile said he wants Christians to be free from historical and personal guilt over slavery. In the final analysis I want something much more profound than the countrys money. I want its moral and spiritual rectitude. I want Christians to follow the Way more fully with a glad heart. I want your freedom from guiltboth historical and where applicable personal, he said. The stronghold says you cant have these things or the cost is too high or the task too difficult or its unfair. But where does that reasoning come from when the topic is pursuing righteousness? Hint: it does not come from God or His word. Its the world, the flesh or the devil. I would have you walk in victory over the enemies Christ has defeated. I would have you walk in that faith which is our victory. I would have you walk in the obedience that comes from faith. But I would not coddle you. Following Jesus is costly. Itll cost more than your money, he added. John Carpenter, pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Yanceyville, North Carolina shot back on Twitter however that: This is the kind of argument that creates social Justice Contras. When Anyabwile responded with three question marks however Carpenter took the opportunity to elaborate. Obviously taking money from one group of people none of whom actually participated in the wrong doing and many of whom dont have any ancestors who did to distribute it to others is divisive and sure to inflame racism. It doesnt take omniscience to reality (sic) that, Carpenter wrote. Anyabwile pushed back against Carpenters response by arguing that American society in general has benefited from slavery. I see. Yeah, except that enslavement, Jim Crow, discrimination policies were never solely individual acts. All of them were enshrined in law and policy, making them society wide practices and giving them sanction. The country benefited as is, therefore, guilty, he replied. If that stirs social justice Contras, so be it. Its the historical, legal and social facts. The monetary benefit to the country *as a whole* have been studied and documented. Im not buying into the overly individualized view that allows people to ignore these realities. Jeff Maples of Reformation Charlotte, an apologetics publication, argued that Anyabwiles reasoning is spiritually poisonous. The reality is, Thabiti has introduced and continues to push one of the most sinister of spiritual poisons not only that Christs sacrifice is insufficient to atone for sins, but that people of a certain skin color are guilty by that very virtue of generational sins, he wrote. During a CNN town hall in Mississippi Monday, Sen. Warren argued that she supports a serious national conversation of reparations because African Americans continue to suffer from the effects of slavery today. America was founded on principles of liberty and freedom and on the backs of slave labor. This is a stain on America. And were not going to fix that, were not going to change that, until we address it head-on, directly. And its not just the original founding. Its whats happened generation after generation, she said. The impact of discrimination handed down from one to the next means that today in America because of housing discrimination, because of employment discrimination, if the average white family has $100, the average black family has about $5. So I believe its time to start the national full-blown conversation about reparations in this country. And that means I support the bill in the House to appoint a congressional panel of experts, of people who are studying this, who talk about different ways we may be able to do it, and to make a report back to Congress so that we can as a nation do whats right and begin to heal, she added. Jason Riley, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and Fox News commentator, criticized both Warren and Harris support for reparations. Sen. Elizabeth Warren told a town-hall audience in Jackson, Miss., Monday that its time to start the national, full-blown conversation about slavery reparations for blacks. Come again? Compensating black Americans for past oppression has been a subject of discussion for decades. The senators problem is that large majorities of the public have consistently opposed reparations, not that we dont talk about it, Riley wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Pro-life activists win right to protest outside Ohio abortion clinic Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A district court judge ruled that two pro-life activists, a father and a daughter, have the right to protest outside of an Ohio-based abortion clinic. Last August, Calvin Zastrow and his daughter, Corrie, filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio against the city of Toledo, its police chief and two officers over being stopped from holding demonstrations outside an abortion clinic. Judge James G. Carr issued a consent judgment and order on Tuesday in favor of the Zastrow family, concluding that the pro-life activists can engage in non-obstructive, expressive activity when demonstrating against the clinic. The parties agree that the term non-obstructive, expressive activity means activity protected by the First Amendment that does not physically prevent a pedestrian from using a public sidewalk or other public way or that does not physically impede a vehicle from traveling on a public road or street, wrote Judge Carr. This does not mean that the person or persons engaging in the First Amendment activity must be moving all the time. Additionally, the First Amendment activity is not obstructive because a pedestrian might have to walk around the person engaging in the expressive activity. As part of the order, the defendants will also pay the American Freedom Law Center, which represented the Zastrow family, $7,500 in attorneys fees and costs. AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel Robert Muise said in a statement released Wednesday that the order was yet another victory for the First Amendment. As this court order demonstrates, the Constitution protects our clients pro-life activity from such abuse, stated Muise. The government has no authority to silence our clients speech simply because they are preaching the Gospel on a public sidewalk next to an abortion center. In August of last year, the Zastrows filed suit over multiple incidents in which Toledo police forced them to stop holding religious pro-life protests on the public sidewalk across the street from the Capital Care Network. For example, one incident that took place on Oct. 3, 2017 involved Calvin being arrested for reading the Bible and preaching as he stood across the street from the abortion provider. "At no time prior to his arrest, did Plaintiff Calvin Zastrow enter upon the property of the Capital Care abortion center nor did he impede or block anyone from entering the abortion center. He remained on the public sidewalk. At no time did Plaintiff Calvin Zastrow engage in any violence," explained the lawsuit filed last year. "At no time did Plaintiff Calvin Zastrow employ any sound amplification device. He only used his voice and the spoken word. At no time did Plaintiff Calvin Zastrow physically block anyone from using the public sidewalk the sidewalk is large enough to permit several people to walk on it at one time, as ... photographs ... demonstrate." Vancouver city council defunds rape crisis center for barring males who identify as female Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The Vancouver city council has voted to cut public funding from Canada's oldest rape crisis center because they refuse to allow trans-identified males into spaces specifically reserved for female victims. Vancouver Rape Relief, which was founded in 1973, was defunded because they were "supporting transphobia," according to city council member Christine Boyle, who in a March 13 tweet explained that she was voting to strip the organization of public funds because she could not support an organization that was not "inclusive" of transwomen and sex workers. Transgender advocates celebrated the vote as they have long considered the nonprofit group as a hub of bigotry toward persons who identify as transgender. The rape crisis center said in an statement online that they were the victims of discrimination masked as "inclusion" and said the city government was attempting to "coerce us to change our position" of barring males and only offering services to females, the National Post reported earlier this week. "Our services are available to all women who have experienced male violence. We provide assistance to women and girls in prostitution who have been assaulted by johns, pimps or men pressuring them into prostitution. We provide assistance to women who are currently being prostituted, women who are trying to escape prostitution, and women who have been trafficked into prostitution," VRR explained. "Being girls and women in this world often impacts both how we look and how we act in private and in public; what we are allowed to do, encouraged to do and rewarded for; and also what we are discouraged from doing, prohibited to do or punished for." The Christian Post reached out to VRR for comment on this article and was referred to their online statement. "In the last few days we have received many messages of solidarity and donations from around the world. We are encouraged and grateful for this tremendous support," the group said in part. VRR has long maintained that forcing females particularly those recovering from rape and other forms of male violence to share intimate spaces with males, even if they present as female, is disrespectful of the victims and often serves to re-traumatize them. The move to bar VRR from government resources was led in large part by Morgane Oger, a trans-identified male who has long accused this group of discrimination and bigotry. Oger is also the vice president of the British Columbia New Democratic Party. "Tax-funded @VanRapeRelief pushes prejudice in an indignant online rant about discrimination despite a one-year grace period to catch up to Canada's discrimination laws by @CityofVancouver," Oger said in a March 17 tweet in response to VRR's statement. The City of Vancouver funds represents only $33,972 of Vancouver Rape Reliefs over $1 million annual budget, the majority of which is provided by the Province of British Columbia, the National Post reported Monday. VRR said the city funds were used for educational outreach programs which were free and accessible and available to everyone, including those who identify as transgender. Rape Relief is strong enough and principled enough and has enough supporters in the community ... we will say no to that kind of money, VRR spokesperson Hilla Kerner told Star Vancouver in a March 14 phone interview before the city council vote took place. Meghan Murphy, the Vancouver-based founder and editor Feminist Current and longtime advocate for VRR's work, said the city government's action against them was "disgusting." "I will never understand the drive to lie about and smear those who support and fight for women," Murphy said, noting it was especially hard to see young women do so. "We live in such a sad, confused time." Elizabeth Warren says words of Jesus, judgement of sheep and goats, is driving force in her life Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke about her Christian faith during a CNN town hall in Mississippi Monday. With the cadence of a contemporary megachurch preacher and her experience as a Sunday school teacher, Warren explained why the pending judgement of the nations by Jesus, who will divide people into sheep and goats, is a driving force in her life. Responding to a question about what role does faith play in her life, Warren, during the hour-long town hall at Jackson State University, a historically black college in the states capital, first revealed to the audience that she was once a Sunday school teacher. I was a fifth grade Sunday School teacher. All I can say is nobody got hurt, she quipped to laughter in a recording of her response posted on Twitter. It was a low bar for being a fifth grade Sunday school teacher at our church and I raised my children in a Methodist church. What it is for me is the importance of the lessons we learn when we remember our values, when we remember our faith, she continued before delving into the judgement story. The story for me is Matthew 26 and Im sure some of you, a lot of you know this story, she said incorrectly referencing the lesson of the judgement that comes in Matthew 25. You know this is the one where the Shepherd is dividing the world into the sheep and the goats. And as we all know, sheep are going to heaven, goats theyre not. And the sheep asked Him, why us? Why us Lord? We look like those guys. And the Shepherd, the Lord answers back and says, I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me water, I was in prison and you visited me. Naked and you clothed me. And as much as you have done it to one of these, the least of thy brethren, you have done it unto me. And what I hear in that is two things that guide me every day, Warren said. The first is there is God, there is value in every single human being, the senator said to applause. And the second is that we are called to action. That passage is not about you had a good thought and held on to it. You sat back and just thought about things. It does not say you just didnt hurt anybody and thats good enough. It says you saw something wrong. You saw somebody who was thirsty. You saw somebody who was in prison. You saw their face. You saw somebody who was hungry and it moved you to act. I believe we are called on to act, she ended in the clip to applause. Warren, a former Harvard law professor who launched her presidential campaign last month currently trails other Democrats such as Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Warren, who discussed a raft of policy ideas along with her faith, also said for the first time that she would support replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote. Other issues she highlighted included the future of health care in America and a plan to break up tech giants like Amazon and Facebook. She also addressed a question about her claims to Native American heritage and the backlash from the claim. VP Pence gets ovation at Hispanic evangelical summit; new 'Life Manifesto' unveiled Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Vice President Mike Pence gave a closed-door address and received a standing ovation last Thursday before a gathering of the largest Hispanic evangelical coalition in the United States. Over 300 faith leaders gathered for the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conferences annual Justice Summit hosted at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. Capping off the event were remarks by the 59-year-old vice president. According to a press release, Pence received a prolonged standing ovation. In his remarks, Pence reportedly declared that once the southern border is secure, the Trump Administration is going to fix this broken immigration system. NHCLC has over 40,000 member congregations and is headed by California megachurch pastor Samuel Rodriguez, an evangelical born to Puerto Rican parents. Rodriguez was one of a few religious leaders who prayed at Trumps inauguration in January 2017. He has also attended dinners hosted by the Trump White House, including last years state-like dinner for evangelical leaders and their wives. Rodriguez, however, has also voiced concern on different occasions with some of the administration's immigration policies, including the historically low limit placed on refugee resettlement into the United States. We are very grateful to Vice President Pence for joining us and honoring all Hispanic Americans and Americans of faith by doing so, Rodriguez said in a statement. Pences speech comes as the Trump administration has been called the most anti-Latino administration in US history by critics. However, others have argued that Hispanics in the United States have benefited from Trumps policies. The summit also saw the unveiling of the NHCLCs new Life Manifesto. The document is essentially a declaration on how to apply biblical justice to issues of immigration reform, racial reconciliation, education equality and sanctity of life. Regardless of ethnicity or background, when you gather that many men and women of God all in one space, you should expect God to move, and thats exactly what happened, Rodriguez, an Assemblies of God pastor, said. We devoted ourselves and our ministries to addressing, seriously, issues of life, racial reconciliation and immigration reform. Rodriguez added that those social issues are ones that the Hispanic-American pastors present at the conference are uniquely positioned to bind up the wounds of this country. The manifesto reads: 1. We believe and affirm that God created men and women in his image and that every human being, without exception, bears the imprint of God, the imago Dei. (Genesis 1: 26-28) 2. We believe in the sanctity and dignity of every human life from conception to natural death. 3. We commit to speaking up for those who cant speak for themselves (Proverbs 31:8), including unborn children, their mothers, and all vulnerable people whose lives are at risk from violence, preventable disease and anti-life public policy such as abortion and euthanasia. 4. We stand in support of women facing unexpected pregnancies with word and deed at the local and national levels, through our churches and in our public policy. We affirm the bipartisan efforts to provide paid family leave so that pregnant mothers can choose life for their babies and so that parents and children will have the time necessary for family flourishing as family is the foundation of society. 5. We affirm that as to all these things, through the love of the Father, in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, we will not grow weary in well doing (Galatians 6:9) Other speakers at the summit included Steve Strang, the founder of Charisma Media; Rod Parsley, the senior pastor of World Harvest Church in Canal Winchester Ohio, Kelly Rosati, the CEO of KMR Consulting on Child Advocacy and Adoption; Maryland Bishop Harry Jackson, the Presiding Bishop of the International Communion of Evangelical Churches; and Alfonso Aguilar, who directs the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles at the Alliance Defending Freedom. The event also included Daniel Garza, a former George W. Bush administration official who launched Libre Initiative, an organization that tries to convince the Hispanic community in the U.S. to support principles of limited government and rule of law. NHCLC Executive Vice President Rev. Tony Suarez, who emceed the event, said he believes the manifesto could be an inflection point for the church. When leaders like Bishop Harry Jackson admonishes the church to lead the way in racial reconciliation, you cant help but be galvanized and inspired by his unique authority on the topic, Suarez said in a statement. When Kelly Rosati tells you that if just one-third of American churches adopted a child, there would be no more orphans, you realize all over again how we are the solution the country needs. Thats what the Justice Summit and the manifesto is all about. Its better than social justice. Its biblical justice. White evangelical support for Trump drops 9 points; largest of any surveyed religious group Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment White evangelical Protestant support for President Donald Trump has declined by 9 points since 2017, the largest of any surveyed racial religious demographic, while nonwhite Catholics have doubled their support for the president. In February 2017, white evangelicals gave President Trump a 78 percent approval rating. However, by last month, this had decreased to 69 percent, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center of multiple surveys that was published Monday. This 9 percent decline represents the largest drop in support of any of the religious groups that Pew surveyed for their report, with the second largest being among white Catholics, which went from 52 percent in 2017 to 44 percent in 2019. Meanwhile, while overall Catholic support for the president remained at 36 percent during the same time period, nonwhite Catholic approval doubled from 13 percent in February 2017 to 26 percent in February 2019. Pew noted in its analysis that while Trump has long had strong support among self-identified evangelicals, this support has not been without some reservation. An August 2018 survey found that roughly half of white evangelicals do not think that Trump has set a high moral standard for the presidency since taking office, explained Pew. Some prominent evangelical leaders, such as Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, have expressed ambivalence about Trump and concern about some of his policies. Others, such as Beth Moore, founder of Living Proof Ministries, openly oppose the president. Pew also found that the lowest levels of support for Trump came from religiously unaffiliated Americans, who gave the president a 24 percent approval in February 2017 and 20 percent approval in February 2019. Religiously unaffiliated Americans consistently express among the lowest levels of approval of Trumps performance, ranging from 17% to 27% across the polls the Center has conducted since the president assumed office, added Pew. The Pew analysis comes amid recent findings indicating that a plurality of white evangelicals disapproved of Trump signing Bibles while visiting victims of the tornadoes in Alabama. According to a Morning Consult poll conducted last week whose findings were reported on Monday, 45 percent of white evangelical respondents said that it was inappropriate for the president to sign the Bibles, versus 35 percent who said it was appropriate. Based upon a survey conducted Mar.12-15 with a sample space of 2,201 adults and a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent, the Morning Consult survey also found that 65 percent of all Christian respondents found it inappropriate, while 24 percent considered it appropriate. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Lately, wishing someone your thoughts and prayers has become supposedly meaningless---as if it is a substitute for actually doing something positive. After last weeks horrific shooting in a mosque in New Zealand, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) sent out a tweet: "At 1st I thought of saying, 'Imagine being told your house of faith isnt safe anymore.' But I couldnt say 'imagine.' Because of Charleston. Pittsburgh. Sutherland Springs. What good are your thoughts & prayers when they dont even keep the pews safe?" The condemnation of thoughts and prayers is not unique to AOC. Some of the Parkland school victims were also down on thoughts and prayers---if viewed as a substitute for action (which usually translates to strict gun control laws in an effort to turn the rest of the world into Chicago). Christian actor Chris Pratt was attacked by the politically correct crowd for asking for prayers for the health of a movie director who suffered a heart attack. After living through a shooting in a newspaper in the greater Washington, D.C. area and hearing that the president and first lady said their thoughts and prayers were with the victims, one survivor used the f-word to say she resented such prayers if not accompanied by action. It reminds me of what Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals and one of the key intellectual mentors of President Obama and Hillary Clinton, once said this about prayer: [When someone] doesnt do a d--- thing but pray for mankindwhen that person comes up for judgmentthe judge is gonna sit there and sayYou cruddy b-----d. Of course, this is a straw man argument. Studies have shown that religious conservatives are actually also the first to act---doing the most charitable giving in Americaand far more than secular liberals. But beyond that, who would ever have thought that prayer---communicating with our Creator---would be so the object of such crude vitriol? And apart from the expletives, is there a valid point in the criticism? Are thoughts and prayers per se just meaningless? Especially prayers? If they mean by it that prayer is no substitute for actionas if its an either/or---then I understand. But why is it viewed as an either/or? Prayer is deep in the American tradition---even praying as a nation. During the trying days of the American War for Independence, the Continental Congress set aside several days of fasting and prayer, such as May 17, 1776---which was a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer. On that day, the Congress prayed, that we may with united hearts confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life appease God's righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ obtain His pardon and forgiveness. And they felt God answered those prayers. Abraham Lincoln said of prayer: I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. Ben Franklin asked for prayer at the Constitutional Convention on June 28, 1787, and the founders adopted a variation of his request by meeting together for prayer at a local church service. Said Franklin, I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth---that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? Are prayers a substitute for action? I think prayers are very important---and can make a huge difference. The Bible, such as the Gospels, is filled with all kinds of amazing things that happened in answer to prayer. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This may be a cliche, but this motto applies here: Pray like it all depends on God and act like it all depends on you. In a prayer breakfast in Dallas on August 23, 1984, Ronald Reagan remarked, Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under. As a believer in the power of prayer, I do not understand this modern mantra against thoughts and prayers. Those who protest prayer seem to be shaking their fists at God Himself. The Bible reminds us, The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is an on-air host/senior producer for D. James Kennedy Ministries. He has written/co-written 28 books, e.g., The Unstoppable Jesus Christ, Doubting Thomas (w/ Mark Beliles, on Jefferson), and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (w/ D. James Kennedy) & the bestseller, George Washington's Sacred Fire (w/ Peter Lillback) djkm.org @newcombejerry www.jerrynewcombe.com Islamic militants kill 6 Christians in Congo, 470 families flee violence: report Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Six Christians, including a 9-year-old child, were reportedly killed in a recent attack in a predominantly Christian village in the northeast Democratic Republic of Congo. Open Doors USA, a Christian persecution watchdog nonprofit active in 60 countries, reports that nearly 500 families fled from their homes when rebel forces attacked the largely Christian village of Kalau near the city of Beni in DRCs North Kivu province. The attack reportedly lasted about four hours and is believed to have been perpetrated by the Allied Democratic Forces, a militant group active in the North Kivu province of the DRC and Uganda. Launched in the mid-1990s by Ugandan Muslim rebels forced out of Uganda, the ADF has become the conflict-stricken DRCs most active and violent rebel group over the past two years. Sources with knowledge of the attack in Kalau told the charity that the attackers pretended to be security agents when they arrived in the village. The imposters reached the village center before there was any suspicion that they werent who they said they were. By that point, the rebels began firing their weapons at the villagers. Among those killed in the attack are the 9-year-old child and at least three women. A nurse in the Nyankunde hospital in Beni told Open Doors by phone that the attackers then proceeded toward the house of the village head, the Open Doors report states. When they shot dead the guard dogs, the gunfire sent people running. Two villagers attempting to flee were killed. Pastor Gilbert Kambale, who operates a civil society organization based in Beni, told Open Doors that 470 Congo families fled to Beni following the incident. Many of the families were sheltered by host families or were given refuge inside of schools in Benis Beu Commune. The Beni area is no stranger to violence caused by the ADF as hundreds of civilians have been killed in the area over the past five years. According to Open Doors, ADF is believed to have killed at least 700 civilians and more than 20 United Nations peacekeepers In August 2016, ADF was blamed for carrying out what is known as the Beni massacre, where at least 64 were hacked to death. Open Doors expects that more violence is likely to come in the future. We have heard the rebels saying they worked for long in the domains of kidnapping and killings, but now they want to move to the stage of occupying the territory, a local community leader told Open Doors. They want to occupy the area they claim as theirs. The North Kivu province is also in the midst of an eight-month Ebola outbreak. ADF forces are blamed for hampering Ebola relief efforts and attacks against Ebola treatment centers. At least one clinic was burned down. According to Eleanor Beevor from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, ADF is thought to be responsible for the killings of at least 249 people in 2018. According to the Congo Research Group at New York University, an ADF member posted at least 35 videos on private social media channels that either mentioned or showed militant attacks, contained Quranic readings, and images of indoctrination and propaganda messages, between 2016 and 2017. Conflict has plagued Africa's second largest nation for decades. According to the Christian humanitarian organization World Vision, at least 2.1 million people in DRC were newly displaced in 2017 and 2018. With about 4.5 million displaced, DRC has the highest number of internally displaced people in Africa. Parents of autistic child threatened with removal of custody after rejecting puberty blockers Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The parents of an autistic teen in England say they were threatened that their son would be removed from their custody following their objections about giving him puberty blockers. According to the Daily Mail Saturday, the parents of the teen, who spoke to the outlet on condition of anonymity, feared the potential side-effects of the drugs, and stopped him from going to a gender clinic as they suspected his sudden decision to pursue gender transition was due to his autism. Doctors at the National Health Service clinic had recommended he take puberty blockers to suppress his puberty after he declared that he was female. When the teenager told the school he had been forbidden from obtaining the drugs, a teacher told his parents that they should find alternative accommodation for their son or else he would be put into temporary foster care, the Mail reported. The school reported the couple to child services for being "emotionally abusive" to their son by not supporting his wish to go forward with these treatments. The local authorities placed him one month later "in a child protection after social workers said he was likely to suffer 'significant harm' under his parents' care." The mother recounted to the Mail the pain it caused their family. "Im absolutely devastated. When I saw the report that social services wrote about us and saw the words 'emotional abuse,' I just broke down," she said. "All we were doing was trying to get him to pause and think about his actions. My biggest worry as a mum is my child gets pushed down this route, becomes a woman, goes through the surgery, then gets to 25 and says, 'Ive made a mistake. The teen boy was struggling to cope with school pressures starting in 2015 as a result of Asperger's and autism. He began self-harming and his parents asked his doctor to refer him to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. Although he had never said so before, during an appointment with a child psychotherapist the boy announced he believed he was female. His parents thought the idea of him being the opposite sex may have been an autistic obsession and ultimately agreed for him to be referred on to the Leeds branch of the Tavistock Clinic the only NHS service for gender-confused youth under the age of 18. But the professionals there never adequately understood their son's autism, the parents maintained. The couple removed the boy from Tavistock in 2017, when he was about to turn 15, upon seeing a report recommending puberty blockers for him. They had read about the risks of these hormone suppressants and their effects on brain development are were alarmed. It was six months later when the school reported them to authorities. "The school and social workers took what our child said as gospel. But considering he has autism, his perception of social scenarios is seen through an autism lens," the boy's mother said. "I cannot bear the thought of other families going through what weve been through. It has been horrendous." The family is now back together. The ordeal is but the latest episode to appear in the headlines as courts and Western government bodies increasingly rule in favor of transgender medicalization. As The Christian Post reported earlier this month, a trans-identifying 14-year-old girl was to be injected with testosterone despite her father's objections, a judge on the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled. The father's refusal to comply, the judge said, was tantamount to "family violence." In the United States, in February of 2018, Judge Sylvia Hendon in Hamilton County, Ohio, ruled that a 17-year-old should be removed from the custody of her parents due to their objections to transgender medicine. Brexit, loyalty and the politics of the playground My now five-year-old son dropped a bit of a bombshell last week. 'Daddy, I'm now the leader of reception class.' He is blessed with his mother's unmistakeable integrity and his father's unshakeable confidence so it can sometimes be hard to separate fact from expertly delivered fiction. But I was sucked into the story. 'Oh, really? I didn't know the class had a leader.' 'Yes daddy, and it's me.' I thought long and hard about what to say next. We hadn't heard about a school council election. There had been no note in the book bag suggesting our children were about to be given their first taste of democracy. We don't know everything that goes on day to day but I was fairly sure this type of activity would warrant at least an A5 sheet of paper and a few questions on the parent's WhatsApp group. 'How did you find out you were the leader?' 'Because 18 people wanted me to be it,' he said, almost exasperated that I'd question his popularity. I had to know more. 'So, 18 people wanted you to be the leader?' 'Yes, daddy. Two people didn't care and three didn't want me to be the leader.' I didn't ask who they were, but he quickly told me their names. One of them surprised me, it was a boy who my son is good friends with and most mornings will run around the playground with before school starts. 'Why didn't he want you to be the leader?' 'I wasn't sure what to expect. Maybe some policy disagreement. A deeply held conviction about the state of the paintbrushes that, while not friendship-ending, means they can never support another politically. 'Oh, he was just being selfish that day.' It turned out he hadn't asked why. He didn't want to know, it was a 'yes or no' scenario. 'With me or against me' and this particular friend had been particularly disloyal in his decision. Loyalty is a funny thing. With the ability to bind and blind in, quite possibly, equal measure. As a binding force it can unite families and friends. Whole communities and whole nations. It can inspire great victories and bring about huge change. As a blinding force it can make us shift our values in an instant. Take an example from this week. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was invited to a meeting of opposition leaders to discuss Brexit (what else?) with the prime minister. According to reports, he got up and left the meeting when he realised Chukka Umunna, the official spokesperson for The Independent Group had also been invited. I have some sympathy for Jeremy Corbyn. He's a man pushed into leadership by forces I'm not sure even he can name or control. He's also a man who clearly and passionately believes in what he believes in. That's why I'm saddened when pictures of him attending funerals I might have avoided or sitting with leaders of groups I might not align myself are used in an attempt to smear him or somehow undermine his integrity. But I have very little sympathy with 'loyal' supporters who, just months ago, suggested that meeting with those people was somehow the only path to peace or a better future and, this morning, are suggesting to sit with an elected British MP who speaks for a block of other elected British MPs is somehow beneath him. I have even less sympathy for those suggesting semantically that somehow because Mr Umunna is not a 'leader' and TIG is not a 'party' Mr Corbyn was left with no other option but to pack up his things and walk out. Loyalty is a funny thing. A few years ago, a wise friend told me that real loyalty isn't just following what someone else does, it's living up to their values even when they can't. I wonder if those most loyal to Mr Corbyn might have displayed it better by, rather than performing semantic gymnastics in an attempt to make his decision 'right' might have better displayed their loyalty to him by pointing out that he might have been 'right' in the first place. That by being present, engaging in dialogue, sitting at the table with those he disagrees with or even questions their groups legitimacy is often a way to break down barriers and make real progress. I wonder if those most 'loyal' to Mr Corbyn aren't those who blindly tweet, comment and write in defence of his actions, but instead defend his values even when he's struggling to live up to them. I wonder what real loyalty looks like? You see, if the future of politics (and, you might have guessed, it's not just politics) is nothing more than a game of 'follow the leader', then I fear loyalty might become the blindfold that allows us to be led off all sorts of cliffs. If loyalty becomes nothing more than an entrance exam for finding out who's 'in' and who's 'out' or worse, who's 'in' and who's 'got a few questions', then I fear what we're loyal to isn't an idea, a set of values, a party or a community. What we're loyal to is whatever that person or people decide in that particular moment, in all their human frailty and ego. Because, when all is said and done, if loyalty is judged on nothing more than who will support you no matter what you say or how you behave: If loyalty is nothing more than a list of names 'yes' and 'no', 'in' and 'out': It might have more place in the playground than anywhere else. Matt White is a Northern Irish TV producer living in Essex and working in London. Follow him on Twitter @mattgwhite Cambridge University withdraws offer of visiting fellowship for Jordan Peterson Cambridge University has rescinded its offer of a visiting fellowship to academic Jordan Peterson after students and staff complained about his views. Dr Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has faced backlash for refusing to address transgender people by their preferred pronouns. The '12 Rules for Life' author had been planning to spend time at Cambridge University's Faculty of Divinity later this year to research Exodus in preparation for a series of talks after several lectures on Genesis garnered millions of views on YouTube. But after an initial offer, the Faculty of Divinity has changed its mind. It said in a brief statement: "Jordan Peterson requested a visiting fellowship at the Faculty of Divinity, and an initial offer has been rescinded after a further review." The decision was supported by the Cambridge University Students' Union, which said in a statement to the Guardian: "We are relieved to hear that Jordan Peterson's request for a visiting fellowship to Cambridge's faculty of divinity has been rescinded following further review. "It is a political act to associate the University with an academic's work through offers which legitimise figures such as Peterson. "His work and views are not representative of the student body and as such we do not see his visit as a valuable contribution to the University, but one that works in opposition to the principles of the University." It then added a clarification on Facebook: "When we refer to Peterson's views not being representative of the student body, we refer directly to his history of actively espousing discriminatory views towards minority groups, not to academic freedom." In his own response, Dr Peterson said he had not been given a reason for the withdrawal of his visiting fellowship. However, he said the Faculty of Divinity had made a "serious error of judgment" in rescinding the offer and that going public with the decision "could hardly have been more narcissistic, self-congratulatory and devious". "I believed (and still believe) that collaborating with the Faculty of Divinity on such a project would constitute an opportunity of clear mutual benefit," he said. "Finally, I thought that making myself more knowledgeable about relevant Biblical matters by working with the experts there would be of substantive benefit to the public audience who would eventually receive the resultant lectures. "Now the Divinity school has decided that signaling their solidarity with the diversity-inclusivity-equity mob trumps that opportunity." Christians praying for the nation and its leaders as clock ticks down on Brexit With just over a week to go before Britain's scheduled departure from the European Union, Christians across the nation are praying for the country's leaders and its future. The Presidents of Churches Together in England (CTE) and its partners Churches Together in Britain and Ireland have called on Christians to pray especially from Wednesday 28 March to Sunday 31 March. Churches are being urged to keep their buildings open in order to provide a space where members of the community can come and pray or spend time in quiet reflection. In particular, churches are being invited to host their own prayer gatherings to coincide with a prayer meeting of the Presidents of Churches Together in England and other church leaders taking place at 10.30am on Saturday 30 March in central London. "Churches Together in England supports every opportunity for local churches to pray together and urges Churches Together Groups and other expressions of Christian unity to take hold of this moment to pray together for our nations," said Rev Dr Paul Goodliff, General Secretary of Churches Together in England. The Baptist Union of Great Britain has asked its members to write letters to MPs to assure them of their prayers as they work to find a way through the impasse. The BUGB said that whatever the outcome, its churches would "continue to offer spaces which foster community and conversation and where all are welcome". "As Christians, we do not have to agree with those who represent us to pray and to care for them (1 Tim 2:1-2). We think this is especially important as the tone of conversation in our current political climate has also become personally vitriolic," it said. "We know that MPs are receiving high numbers of hate mail, which can only have a negative effect on them and their staff in an already stressful environment. We value our democratic processes, and to have officials we have elected and can call to account. There is, we believe, a way to do this without aggression or intimidation." The BUGB has issued a prayer for Brexit: God of love, We pray for our divided country in this time of uncertainty and confusion. We hold before you our prime minister, MPs and all in parliament, that together they might seek a future where the 'other' is privileged and listening is prioritised. Help us to be ambassadors of your compassion. United in the hope and name of Jesus, we dare to pray, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen. Earlier this week, the Church of England asked its churches to host informal cafe-style prayer meetings for Brexit over the weekend of 30 March in which locals can come in for prayer and a chat over a cup of tea. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said: "As followers of Jesus Christ we are called to demonstrate that love for God and for each other, along with compassion, solidarity and care for the poorest, are our defining values. These values have been the bedrock of our national life for many centuries. They are not simply our history: they are also our best hope for the future. "For this reason, a century from now the Church will be remembered for how it responded at this crucial moment in the life of our nation and country. Will we be those who worked to defuse tension and hostility? Will we be those who called for civility and respect in how we speak about, and treat, each other? Will we be those who never stopped praying with urgency and hope for our country, our communities and our political leaders and for a way forward that allows every person, family and community to flourish? "This is an opportunity for the Church of England to join together in prayer for God's kingdom to come, and for the good of all in society. I hope that each of us will take hold of these resources to help us pray for our country at this critical time." Despite the Brexit deadline being just days away, Parliament and the nation remain as divided as ever over Britain's withdrawal from the EU. A petition calling for Article 50 to be revoked has gone viral, amassing over half a million signatures in the last few hours - well over the 100,000-signature threshold for it to be considered for debate in Parliament. The creator of the petition, Margaret Anne Newsome Georgiadou said: "The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is 'the will of the people'. "We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People's Vote may not happen so vote now." The chaos has continued after a divisive speech by Theresa May in which she ruled out another referendum and blamed MPs for failing to see through the result of the 2016 vote. The Prime Minister is in Brussels on Thursday to argue the case for Britain to leave the EU on June 30 instead of March 29. A Brexit prayer from the Evangelical Alliance: Sovereign Lord, in the midst of chaos we look to you, our sure and certain hope. Give our leaders wisdom, grace and clarity as they meet, talk and consider their decisions today. Help them to lead the people in the UK in the ways of grace and hope. CofE bishop slams Home Office over extraordinary letter to Christian asylum seeker The Bishop of Durham has slammed the Home Office over an extraordinary letter rejecting an Iranian Christian's request for asylum. The letter was posted on Twitter by Nathan Stevens, who describes himself as an Immigration Caseworker specialising in immigration and asylum applications and appeals. Excerpt from a home office reasons for refusal letter for a convert to Christianity. Ive seen a lot over the years, but even I was genuinely shocked to read this unbelievably offensive diatribe being used to justify a refusal of asylum. pic.twitter.com/R1wA1HMNwH Nathan Stevens (@nathestevens) March 19, 2019 The claimant says: 'In Islam there is violence and revenge. In Christianity in the contrary it is talking about peace, forgiveness and kindness.' The reply quotes a number of Bible verses including Matthew 10:34 where Jesus says 'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword.' It says, 'Similarly, the book of Revelation is filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence', citing chapter 2 verses 22-23 and chapter 9 verses 3-6. It says: 'These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a "peaceful" religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence rage and revenge.' The letter was met by outrage on social media, with comments expressing astonishment that it could form part of an official response to a request for asylum. Rt Rev Paul Butler said: 'I am extremely concerned that a Government department could determine the future of another human being based on such a profound misunderstanding of the texts and practices of faith communities. To use extracts from the Book of Revelation to argue that Christianity is a violent religion is like arguing that a Government report on the impact of Climate Change is advocating drought and flooding. 'It is good that the Home Office has recognised that this decision is inconsistent with its policies and that its staff need better training, but the fact that these comments were made at all suggests that the problem goes deeper than a lack of religious literacy among individual civil servants and indicates that the management structures and ethos of the Home Office, when dealing with cases with a religious dimension, need serious overhaul. 'I look forward to hearing what changes in training and practice follow from this worrying example. 'The Church of England has regularly raised the issue of the religious literacy of staff at all levels within the Home Office. This fresh case shows just how radically the Home Office needs to change in its understanding of all religious beliefs.' A Home Office statement said: 'This letter is not in accordance with our policy approach to claims based on religious persecution, including conversions to a particular faith. 'We continue to work closely with key partners, including the APPG [All Party Parliamentary Group] on International Freedom of Religion and a range of faith groups, to improve our policy guidance and training provided to asylum decision-makers so that we approach claims involving religious conversion in the appropriate way.' Exegesis and #MeToo: The unlikely combo primed for a positive impact 'Exegesis can significantly enhance our engagement with the #MeToo movement.' In a game of 'two truths and one lie', you would be easily forgiven for thinking that this statement was the lie every single time. I mean let's face it, theology and cutting-edge social movements fighting sexual harassment seem to be worlds apart and the church hardly has a sparkling record when it comes to women's issues in recent times anyway. But perhaps this is a genuine way in which theology illuminates a contemporary issue. Exegisis can be of untold value as we (Christian or not) seek to comprehend and contribute to the #MeToo movement. Here are some of our tools. 1. Exegesis It may seem a scary word. Yet it is a fundamental task for theologians and indeed for all Christians. Just before his 1935 expulsion from Germany, Karl Barth addressed his students in a farewell speech: 'And now the end has come. So listen to my final piece of advice: exegesis, exegesis and yet more exegesis.' Exegesis is important. Without exegesis, it is nearly impossible to handle the word of God correctly. Like archaeologists in search of artefacts, those involved in exegesis quarry the scriptures (or other texts) in search of their intended meaning. Exegesis is the jackhammer (or feather duster, if you prefer a more delicate example) we use to uncover the initial contexts of our materials from which we may conclude what they originally communicated. 2. Hermeneutics This makes exegesis the cornerstone of something far bigger than itself: hermeneutics. Equally as intimidating to the outsider as exegesis, 'hermeneutics' actually explains something we all do every day. It is the process of interpretation. Each of us has our own way of interpreting things our own hermeneutic and quite often we don't even notice. Our hermeneutic is the prism through which we make sense of the world. This prism is often intensely personal, shaped by our own learning, prejudices and experiences. Quite naturally and unwittingly, we all engage in hermeneutics every day. Each time we read the news, our minds are furiously formulating opinions based on our pre-conceived ideas and dispositions. Whether we react to issues, and how we react to them, all depends on our hermeneutics. They bear untold influence on our lives. 3. Sitz im Leben Any DIY expert might tell you that to do a job well, you need all the right tools. That's why we need to introduce ourselves to one final term (and it's a fun one because it's German): 'Sitz im Leben'. Literally this means 'seat in life', and it refers to our social location. The essential idea is that we are influenced by our social surroundings. So, for example, if you grew up in Cornwall then you are not likely to believe that all pasties are created equal (the Cornish ones are best, apparently). More often than not, this Sitz im Leben deeply informs our understandings of the world and its events. It is the task of the interpreter to firstly be aware of the trappings of their own social location, and secondly to try and work out the Sitz im Leben of the author of their text, determining how great a significance this Sitz bears. The application Don't be fooled at this point into thinking that this is all just theological mumbo-jumbo. The complexities of interpretation are deeply embedded into our everyday lives and can devastatingly influence the way that we engage with the world. If we consider the #MeToo movement for a moment, we may quickly note that its flames of incendiary impatience with injustice are stoked by painfully personal testimonies. As these flames have surged into a rampant wildfire, the movement has had increasingly divisive effects. From a Christian perspective, this can make the movement very intimidating to engage with. Thankfully with our tools of exegesis, hermeneutics and Sitz im Leben, we, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, can be thrown into the fire of the #MeToodiscussion and emerge unscathed. Not only that, but we may return with precious insights formed and refined by these flames. Here's how: 1. Engaging exegetically Imagine how rubbish the Parable of the Lost Coin would be if the woman who lost the coin just sat about doing nothing. If you want to investigate anything then you typically have to get out of your chair and get busy. When it comes to #MeToo, we need to do the same. The stories emerging from this movement are intensely personal, deeply distressing and they demand to be taken seriously. One way to do this is by engaging with them exegetically. We detach ourselves from our own pre-conceptions and situations and consider the accounts as freely as we possible can. We consider them for what they are (not what we think they are), seeking to understand them from the perspectives of the people and positions they are coming from. When we do this, we give proper attention to the victims' stories and let them speak powerfully on their own terms. 2. Re-seating ourselves If we have done this right, then when we re-seat ourselves in our own lives, we will do so changed (in some way or other). With our impressions from #MeTooaccounts newly embedded in our minds, we may reconsider our own views and situations. How does what we now know affect us? Does it re-shape our hermeneutic or change our convictions? Are there areas in our lives where fresh action is needed? 3. Toned vocals Of course, exegetically engaging with an issue is not the same as actually experiencing it. We cannot even begin to entertain that notion. The voices of victims must be heard first and foremost. But nonetheless, having so strenuously inquired of #MeToo's stories, we may tentatively foray into discussion of the movement. In all humility we can enter the conversation with confident assurance that what we say is toned by an honest engagement with the topic at hand. People might not listen to us, but what is important is that we engage with integrity, having made full and impartial evaluations before presenting our points of view. 4. Weighing in the light of Scripture All Christian reflection ultimately centres on the Word of God. So we take what we have learned and examine it under the penetrating light of Scripture. How do these stories fit with what God says? Is there are a corporate and/or personal response that these considerations are calling us to? Might the Body of Christ be mobilised to Godly action in this critical issue? Having done all of our hard excavatory work, we should be better equipped to answer these questions and respond with vigour. Although we have been dealing in some technical terms, this is not at all an academic exercise. Sexual harassment is as serious as an issue can be, and our approach needs to reflect that. #MeToo gives a much-needed voice to sufferers at the hands of sexual abuse. We would do well to listen to these voices and to listen well. Hopefully some of these tools will help enable that. Archie Catchpole is a student at London School of Theology. Salisbury Cathedral up for museum award after powerful art installation makes an impression A powerful art installation symbolising reconciliation and peace at Salisbury Cathedral has caught the eye of the Museum and Heritage Awards. Salisbury Cathedral provided the impressive setting for Michael Pendry's Les Colombes and the accompanying community project #SalisburyCityofDoves. The origami paper doves were originally installed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One but took on a powerful new meaning after the Salisbury poisonings last year. The exhibition has secured a nomination for the cathedral in the Temporary or Touring Exhibition category of the Museum and Heritage Awards. It is going up against the Science Museum for its Tim Peake Spacecraft Tour and Liverpool Museum for its special exhibition on China's First Emporer and the Terracotta Warriors. Others on the shortlist are the Museum of London, The Foundling Museum and The Florence Nightingale Museum, although they will have to wait until the awards ceremony in London May 15 to find out who has won. The Dean of Salisbury, the Very Rev Nicholas Papadopulos said: "It is amazing to be in such illustrious company and we are delighted. Les Colombes is a powerful installation with a universal message. "From the World War One Centenary, which the doves were originally intended to mark, to the shocking events in Salisbury in 2018, the message of reconciliation, peace, and resilience embodied in the doves is potent." It has been a good week for England's cathedrals after Lichfield Cathedral picked up two awards in the local Staffordshire What's On Tourism Awards. It was crowned the Tourist Attraction of the Year for the second year in a row and also picked up Event of the Year for a third year running after putting on a light and sound projection piece called Cathedral Illuminated in partnership with the Luxmuralis artist group. Lincoln Cathedral also won Visitor Attraction of the Year at the Lincolnshire Tourism Excellence Awards while Wells Cathedral was awarded bronze in the South West Tourism Excellence Awards in the Access and Inclusivity category. Say Something Nice: How we can celebrate Christ-like speech At a time of fake news and soaring verbal bombast at the highest levels of government, churches have an opportunity to sow seeds of harmony. June 2 is the 13th annual Say Something Nice Sunday, a time to make our language more Christ-like. Church goers are being urged to say something nice about fellow Christians and non-Christians, or at least to refrain from saying things that are negative and hurtful. The program began in the United States at First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina. The church's first pastor in 1682, William Screven was a native of Summerton, England. The church covenant of 1751 states: 'We will be careful to conduct ourselves with uprightness and integrity, and in a peaceful and friendly manner, toward mankind in general, and toward Christians of all descriptions, in particular.' Say Something Nice Sunday is a continuation of the spirit of that covenant. The current pastor and past president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, Rev R Marshall Blalock, is an enthusiastic supporter of the movement which has spread across the US and to the UK. Churches of many denominations now join the celebration including Baptists, Catholic, Disciples of Christ, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodists and Presbyterian. Roman Catholic Cardinal Dolan of New York stated, 'How wonderful it would be if all churches and their members decided to say something positive about other Christians and Christian groups at least one Sunday per year in recognition of our common belief in Christ.' Why have a Say Something Nice Sunday? The simple answer is that words are powerful. Words have the power to build up or to tear down. Words have the power to heal or to wound. With our words we can build up the community of faith. It is a way to combat the influence of the negative environment in which the church finds itself today. Nowhere are words more important than in the church. 'The word became flesh and dwelt among us.' Words take on a life unto themselves. Once they are given life they are on their way for good or evil. There is no way to call them back or to un-speak them. This special day is an opportunity to build up the community of faith, strengthen relationships and heal old wounds. Even in the Christian community our communication is far from Christ-like. In Philippians 1:27 we read, 'Let you communication be as it becometh the gospel of Christ.' This is a day to say thank you to those who make our lives better just by being a part of them. It is an opportunity to recognize those who contribute to our lives in specific ways. It offers us an opportunity to apologize for words spoken in anger, hurt, frustration or disappointment. All communities of faith and all individuals are encouraged to join in the celebration. Free materials are available at www.fbcharleston.org. Click on Messages/Resources at the top of the page and then scroll down to Say Something Nice Sunday. 'We are with you' - the Archbishop of Canterbury's message to Muslims after New Zealand mosque attack The Archbishop of Canterbury has vowed to stand with Muslims following the horrific mosque shooting in New Zealand last week. At an interfaith gathering at Regent's Park Mosque in London on Monday, Archbishop Justin Welby called the attack "monstrous" as he promised that he and Church of England bishops would be looking at ways to be "more effective in visible signs of togetherness" with Muslims. This would include, he said, renewing the teaching of its 'Near Neighbours' scheme across Church of England schools, which provide education to a million children. He also denounced anti-Muslim rhetoric and said an attack on Muslims was an attack on all people. "Those who attack Muslims in this country or elsewhere attack every human being. You are not 'the other', you are us. Those who act out of hate for Muslims act out of hate for all here. Those who acted or supported the actions in New Zealand attack all of us," he said. "For British Muslims who are feeling under threat, we are with you. Hatred of Muslims denies and blasphemes Christ. Those who co-opt Christian language and history for hatred commit blasphemy." He went on to call the attack in Christchurch a "wake-up call to renew civilised discourse in public life and on social media" as he committed to "listening more and putting this higher up the agenda in my own actions and words". He said "faith and obedience to God are part of the solution to the challenges of extremism", as well as working together with faith communities. "It's shown by the fact that people from so many faiths are standing together here in solidarity. The attacker wanted to create a war against Islam; he generated human unity," he said. The Archbishop concluded by drawing on the teaching of Jesus to his followers to be peacemakers as he urged all people to listen to others and be moved "in love" to see beyond cultural, ethnic, religious and political differences. "Hate crimes against those who are different have no place before God," he said. "We stand together for you are us, and we are you, together in the hands of the creator and judge of every person. May God protect and strengthen you." Carlos Osorio/STF The Houston Launch Pad, a Veterans' employment services program, was awarded a grant by the Texas Workforce Commission to help 150 people transition into the workforce. The TWC awarded the program a $311,828 grant from the Self Sufficiency Fund that will help provide training for technical and trade-skill jobs, such as drywall installer or carpenter. WASHINGTON - Oil companies are piling into the Gulf of Mexico once again, according to federal leasing data. An offshore lease sale held in New Orleans Wednesday drew $244.3 million in winning bids, almost double what a similar lease sale in March 2018 drew. We dont find out our protagonists name for quite some time in The Mustang, the feature debut of French writer-director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. All we know at first is what we see and what Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts projects. A psychologist played by Connie Britton, in a brief but impactful role, tries to get a sense of his mental state having been in and out of solitary confinement in a rural Nevada penitentiary a number of times, but hes not interested in playing along, or even trying. Im not good with people, Schoenaerts growls as he hits her panic button to end the session. REVIEW ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: 'Us' a freaky family feud Schoenaerts is a commanding presence, and usually a quite empathetic one in films such as Rust and Bone and A Bigger Splash, but here with a shaved head and a rage simmering beneath his nearly dead eyes, hes downright terrifying. His identity, you realize, is that of a prisoner. He doesnt think about his past, his future or his needs. He merely exists. He even rebuffs the young pregnant woman (Gideon Adlon) who comes to visit. (Its his daughter, you discover, but even that is left ambiguous for a moment). Its not until hes assigned to manure duty as part of the correctional centers wild-horse-training program that a light even starts to come back on, partly because the head of the program, Myles (Bruce Dern), treats the inmates like human employees, not criminals. He even asks our protagonist his name: Roman Coleman. The significance of naming will come back in this brief, gorgeous film about untamed and forgotten outcasts. Its probably worth mentioning here that the themes arent exactly subtle, but that doesnt make them any less effective. This is a real program in which inmates, many with no equine experience, tame wild horses for eventual adoption and sale to the public. The Mustang Rated R: for strong language, some violence, drug content Running time: 96 minutes Where: Regal Edwards Greenway Grand Palace 24, Houston; Cinemark Market Street 5, The Woodlands. **** (out of 5) See More Collapse Roman, of course, takes to the craziest horse. Perhaps its the first time hes actually felt smaller or less powerful than a living creature. And with the encouragement of a fellow inmate, Henry (the always compelling Jason Mitchell), he starts the long process of gentling the horse. Hell eventually even give it a name Marquis, which he sees in a contraband equestrian magazine he traded for in the prison, but which he pronounces Marcus. Theres a sin in his past thats never even alluded to, of course. Its why hes in there after all. Does no one know, you wonder? Or perhaps its too horrific for words. Its revealed eventually, late in the film and not unlike that pivotal revelation in Paris, Texas. NEW FILMS: New Films: 'Us,' 'The Dirt' 'Gloria Bell' Even with its unusually restrained running time, "The Mustang" is a powerful and emotional journey framed by gorgeous sun-soaked shots of the stark Nevada landscape. I just wish there was a little more character development for the supporting players, including Myles and Henry, and the prison's rotten apple Dan (Josh Stewart), who feels more like a lazy screenwriting construct than an actual part of the world we've gotten to know. But Clermont-Tonnerre has established herself as a filmmaker to watch with "The Mustang," and has also made the most compelling case yet that Schoenaerts can not only handle an American accent but excel with it, too. PREVIEW: Get experts picks for concerts, kids stuff, fine arts, movies and more delivered to your inbox weekly. A 19-year-old Houston man has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting earlier this month of Carlos Cabeiales, also 19. Andrew Alexander Reyes was charged Tuesday in the March 2 slaying. A town hall meeting is slated for Saturday for Deer Park residents wanting to discuss the legal ramifications of the Intercontinental Terminal Company's series of plant fires that send black plume into Houston's sky for several days. "The meeting is being held to discuss the legal ramifications stemming from the recent ITC industrial fire as well as the need for compensation to local residents," wrote Bill Ogden, a lawyer with Farrar & Ball LLP, and Chance McMillan, founding partner of the McMillan Law Firm. Days after a mass shooting at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, Houston-area students organized a vigil to honor those slain and show unity with those affected. Dozens of students representing diverse faiths and ethnic backgrounds at Houston ISDs Carnegie Vanguard High School quietly gathered during lunch on Wednesday, March 20, at the school. During the vigil, students presented thoughts about individual victims and the significance of their lives and deaths. To date, 50 people have died in the attack. More than 50 others were injured. Carnegie students lit 51 candles in remembrance of those who died. The students also made signs with the last words of one of the victims, an Afghan refugee, who reportedly told the suspect, Hello Brother. The vigil was spearheaded by students of various religions who reportedly at the beginning of the year founded the Islamic Student Forum. The forum explores issues affecting the Islamic world and combats stereotypes. In the days since the attack, New Zealand has moved to ban assault rifles. "On 15 March our history changed forever, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Thursday at a news conference in Wellington, New Zealane. Now our laws will too. We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place. "Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terror attack on Friday will be banned. This legislation will be drafted and introduced in urgency." Ardern said she hoped the law would be in place by April 11. rkent@hcnonline.com Prom season is upon us. That means young women will need their dresses to dance the night away. The 5th Annual Dress Extravaganza by the 27 Dresses Project will be held at the Fellowship Hall of First United Methodist Church in Cleveland on March 29-30. The Extravaganza will be from 3-6 p.m. on March 29 and from 9 a.m.- 5p.m. on March 30. The purpose of the event is to provide area families with a low-cost alternative to traditional prom dress shopping. During college, Tarkington natives Emily Cook and Hannah Taylor organized a prom sale to raise funds for their groups pregnant and parenting student scholarship fund. After returning back to Liberty county, Cook and Taylor decided to organize an event that would be an asset to local families in the community. All dresses are $50 or less and all proceeds benefit scholarships for local seniors and contributions to local nonprofits. To donate a stylish gown, drop offs are being taken at Texan Mattress in Cleveland and Once Loved in Liberty. Bella Bridesmaids in Cypress has made donations and the extravaganza will have bridesmaid dresses as well. If you would like to volunteer or want more information email 27 Dresses Project at the27dressesproject@gmail.com, or contact Emily Cook and Hannah Taylor at 281-622-7268. You can also check the Facebook page. marcus.gutierrez@chron.com NEW YORK Novelist Tommy Orange keeps winning awards. PEN America announced Tuesday that the author of There There, the most honored literary debut of 2018, has received the PEN/Hemingway award for distinguished new novel. Orange's previous awards included a prize from the National Book Critics Circle for best new book and the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction. There There is set in the Bay Area, its story of a loosely connected community of Native Americans culminating unforgettably at the Big Oakland Pow Wow. Orange, an Oakland native, is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. PEN/Hemingway judges Cristina Garcia, Dinaw Mengestu and Scott Simon called There There a devastatingly beautiful novel, as acutely attuned to our current cultural and political condition as it is to the indelible legacy of violence that brought us here. For the PEN/Hemingway award, Orange receives $25,000, along with a month-long fellowship at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. Ernest Hemingway's grandson Sean Hemingway will present the award to Orange at an April 7 ceremony at Boston's John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, where the late author's archives are stored. Previous winners include Colson Whitehead, Jhumpa Lahiri and George Saunders. Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater and Ling Mas Severance were runners-up for this year's award. Phil Collins cut one of the weirdest paths through popular music: A guy who drummed in a prog rock band, turned into an unavoidable pop star, then later a punchline and eventually a cultural touchstone in films, all while becoming a notable collector of memorabilia from the Alamo. Name somebody else who has done that? Don't say Ozzy. His Alamo renown was more about depositing than collecting. Collins hasn't released an album since 2010, hasn't released an album of new songs since 2003 and hasn't released an album of new songs unrelated to an animated film since 2002. So it's been a bit. Reasons can be found in his 2016 memoir, "Not Dead Yet." FOR HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Mudhoney sees 'Digital Garbage' in our digital age But he appears to have found again his joy for the music. And he's on tour, and that tour is going to start in Texas this year. The tour's first show will be Sept. 23 in Dallas, and then one night later, Collins will hit the Toyota Center in Houston. I've scrounged around through our digital archives and can't find reference to a Collins show in Houston more recently than 1994. So, again, it's been a bit. "Not Dead Yet: The Memoir" chronicled the entirety of his career while also painting a rather dark portrait of his career after the 1980s, a period pocked by cultural ridicule, some gnarly medical issues and addiction. But it was a memoir rather than a posthumous biography, a good thing, because Collins came out the other side of it alive, well, and with a new vigor for music. And his son is a pretty great drummer. So Collins tiptoed back into performing, and his Still Not Dead Yet, Live! tour occurred, and then gradually expanded. Which brings him to Texas. This one feels like the return of a beloved relative for me. But enough of that. Here are the relevant dates/data things. Citi card holders have access to a presale that begins 10 a.m. March 26. Verified fans can buy tickets starting at 10 a.m. March 29. General onsale begins 10 a.m. March 30. PREVIEW: Get experts picks for concerts, kids stuff, fine arts, movies and more delivered to your inbox weekly. Montrose bar Anvil celebrates its 10-year anniversary this week. Although it's hard to say what that means in "bar years," given the industry's highly competitive nature. The hospitality field can be a fickle business with destinations cropping up all the time. New establishments face tough odds of survival, especially in Houston, a city touted for its "emerging food scene" as some national outlets have taken to describing it. That was true too, when Anvil opened in 2009, though owner Bobby Heugel explained they faced special circumstances when launching this inner-Loop outpost. REMEMBER THIS: J. Alexander's restaurant brand coming back to Houston, on HoustonChronicle.com "We're proud of what (Anvil) has achieved as a cocktail bar, but we're more proud of how it was a restaurant-bar business that was opened by a young group of independents," he told the Houston Chronicle Thursday. "It showed it was possible for younger independents to make it in this city, in a town that was dominated by corporate entities or established money." Heugel who has amassed an impressive collection of local establishments since debuting this Montrose bar a decade ago said Anvil will always be his favorite because it was the toughest to start up. "I don't come from money at all; I had $21 left when it opened," he shares, adding that he was just 25 years old when Anvil began operating. "We built it ourselves, everything. It was so hard, and we really didn't know what we were doing construction-wise. It was exhausting." He credits early investor Steve Flippo with helping to get the award-winning bar off the ground: "I don't think Anvil or I would be where I am without him." In the years since its debut, Anvil has earned multiple James Beard Award nominations in the Outstanding Bar Program category, and it's become a training hub of sorts for those who want to learn the industry. It's also spawned several high-profile bars and restaurants: craft-beer bar Hay Merchant; coffee shop Blacksmith; cocktail-bars Pastry War, Julep, Tongue-Cut Sparrow; charity bar OKRA and music-venue/bar Nightingale Room. When it comes to founding businesses where both drinks and entrees are central, Heugel has partnered with James Beard Award winners Chris Shepherd and Justin Yu. Among the longest running Anvil siblings was the now-defunct Underbelly, which opened with celebrity chef Shepherd at the kitchen's helm. "I met (Shepherd) across the bar top, we planned Underbelly on a bar napkin," Heugel recalls. (Shepherd has since transformed Underbelly into steakhouse Georgia James.) HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Montrose cafe and bar going up in former Etro space With Yu of Theodore Rex fame he's already operating Heights bar Better Luck Tomorrow. They have also teamed up for upcoming restaurant Squable at the former Southern Goods address, 6323 W. 19th Street. That spot will feature Houston culture-influenced dishes, Houston Chronicle food editor Greg Morago explains. Also in the works for the prolific bar owner: Montrose's Penny Quarter, a cafe that will set up shop next door to Anvil, in the space formerly occupied by longtime Houston nightclub Etro. When asked what he would've done differently in those early years now that he's working on his umpteenth outpost Heugel shares some thoughts that might be helpful for aspiring restaurateurs. "I would've tried to develop relationships with mentors more than what we did so I'd have better insight into the unforeseen because that's really what hurts you: the challenges you don't see coming," he said. "Mentors and friends help you see that." NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. Now that the Deer Park fire has been extinguished and the plume of black smoke is dissipating, one early verdict is in: there was no great impact on people's immediate health. An informal survey of Houston area hospitals and clinics, including those in Pasadena and Baytown, found none reporting visits by patients experiencing respiratory or other symptoms related to the three days of smoke. The Harris County Precinct 5 Constable's Office is seeking the public's help in locating a pair of suspects who allegedly stole phones from a T-Mobile store in west Harris County. According to Constable Ted Heap's Office, the two men stole four expensive phones from a T-Mobile store about 7:20 p.m. Wednesday, March 13, in the 9200 block of Fry Road. "The two males pulled out a cutting tool and severed the cords holding the phones in place," according to the Constable's Office. "When an employee confronted them, one of the suspects told him to leave them alone." At that point, the suspects "then took four phones and left in a maroon Mazda Crossover SUV." The Constable's Office describes the suspects as two black males. NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. The first suspect is reportedly 6 feet to 6-feet 5 inches tall, weighing 250 to 300 pounds. He was wearing a gray shirt with a blue Puma logo on the front, a blue Patriots cap with a red bill, blue jeans and red Nike slides. The second suspect is 5 feet 7 inches to 5 feet 9 inches tall with a thin build. He was wearing a gray T-shirt, dark pants and a gray cap. Anyone who recognizes these suspects or who has any information which may help with the investigation of this theft is asked to contact Investigator Jose Romero at jose.romero@cn5.hctx.net or submit a tip here. rkent@hcnonline.com Former Harris County sheriff candidate Carl Pittman died Wednesday. No cause of death was initially reported. At the time of his death, Pittman was president and CEO at The Poker Club at West Houston at 22233 Katy Freeway in Katy and president and managing broker at Pittman Premier Properties. Pittman was born, Aug. 5, 1963, in Fulshear. He was a member of the class of 1981 at Lamar Consolidated High School. Fort Bend County Precinct 3 Constable Wayne Thompson said on Facebook that he was with Pittman at the time of his death. He was among the first responders who answered the call to aid Pittman. Thompson posted a picture of the former sheriffs deputy and said: This is a pic of Carl Pittman. Father. Husband. Marine. Retired Deputy Sheriff and former candidate for Harris County Sheriff. Thats the back of my head sitting next to him. This was at a candidate forum in the Katy area. Today, I responded to a call more on a whim than anything. I heard a possible medical issue at a nearby area being dispatched and I responded. EMS disregarded LE as it turned out to be a medical call. Something inside told me to continue to the scene. So I did. I dont really know why. Upon arrival I realized it was Carl. He recognized me and I recognized him, both by name. Carl was in terrible distress and he asked me not to leave him. I contacted his family and followed the ambulance to the ER. Although talking upon our arrival to the ER, Carl confided he was in bad shape and he did not want to be alone. I wouldnt have left him anyway. Ill spare the other details but he died within 30 minutes. I stood by him during this time. He was not alone. I am thankful that I was there as terrible as it was. Pittman was an unabashed conservative. In his book The Personal Journey of a Black Common Sense Conservative, he said: Mama could not read, could barely write her name, and struggled for most of her fifty years on this earth, but always told us that being poor didnt mean you had to be a thief, because you could work, nor be dirty, because soap was cheap, he said. He also attacked racism in the book. We will only move beyond racism when we ALL stop participating in it. Pittman ran for sheriff in 2012 and 2016, failing to get the Republican nomination both times. When running for sheriff in the GOP primary in 2016, Pittman said: We have a serious threat of terrorism the country. Houston, being an international city, we have to be prepared to deal with those threats and address them in every way we can locally. We also have to take actions against the crime we see occurring as a result of illegal immigration whether its human trafficking, the sex trade industry or other problems that come with parts of that industry including the illegal drug business. He had served as a U.S. Marine, patrol officer, traffic investigator, gang and violence detective, sergeant, patrol supervisor, assistant commander in the field, certified jailer and was formerly a criminal investigator at the Harris County Sheriffs Office. No services have yet been announced. rkent@hcnonline.com Brazos Valley Schools Credit Union, in partnership with Katy ISD, will honor outstanding teachers from each campus who have demonstrated excellence and leadership among their peers and in their classrooms at the 2019 Teacher of the Year luncheon on April 18 at the Merrell Center. This event will offer sponsors an opportunity to showcase their business to the community as we continue the long-standing tradition of honoring the Teacher of the Year winners from all 68 KISD campuses. The number of people who die by suicide in Fort Bend County is on the rise, according to the Fort Bend County Sheriffs Office. I believe that the No. 1 issue we face in this county as well as this state and this nation is mental illness, said Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls at a Katy Area Chamber of Commerce business leaders breakfast on Tuesday. The number of people that attempt to take away their lives and then those that are successful is mind-boggling to me. Nehls did not provide statistics but said that almost every day, Fort Bend County deputies respond to incidents where someone is attempting or has died by suicide. Two Fort Bend County residents took their own lives on Sunday, he said. Thirty-nine years old, had an argument with his wife, Nehls said. The kids were sleeping, thank goodness. It happens too often. It doesnt discriminate and doesnt matter your socioeconomic class. ON THE BALLOT: Former HPD officer to run for Fort Bend County sheriff in 2020 About 800,000 people die each year due to suicide, according to a 2018 World Health Organization report. For every one suicide, many more people attempt to take their own lives, according to the report. According to the Texas Department of Health and Human Services, individuals with severe mental illness die at higher rates and on average 25 years earlier than those without mental illness. The suicide death rate in Texas has steadily risen over the past two decades. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among those between the age of 15 and 29, the WHO report said. Four months ago, Fort Bend County Sheriffs Office deputies responded to a scene where an 11-year-old had taken his own life, Nehls said. We just have to do better for humanitys sake, Nehls said. HOMETOWN HERO: Sugar Land Boy Scout saves life of 87-year-old neighbor Nehls referred to the recent shooting at two New Zealand mosques, as well as the 2017 Sutherland Springs, Texas, shooting where a 26-year-old gunman shot and killed 26 people during church service. The shooter then turned the gun on himself, according to reports. Nehls said the stigma behind depression can be isolating for many people. He said that in many cases, people mix depression medications with drugs and alcohol to mask the pain, which creates a recipe for disaster. Other issues in Fort Bend County: Nehls also addressed the crime across Fort Bend County. Recent U.S. Census data shows that Fort Bend County is home to roughly 760,000 residents, most of which live in unincorporated parts of the county, but that number has exploded in recent years as roughly 25,000 to 30,000 people move to the county each year, Nehls said. How do we make you feel safe and secure in your home and when traveling around Fort Bend County? Nehls asked the three dozen people in the room. We do that with about $78 million and 819 employees. Since 2012 when Nehls took office residential burglaries have dropped, going from 1,672 to 578 in 2018, Nehls said. Nehls also said the county is in a holding pattern for a $4.7 million, 18,000 square-foot Katy-area stand-alone sheriffs facility, which would house about 60 patrol deputies and 12 detectives. The funds were part of bond approved by voters in 2015. The Katy facility would complement the recently finished, brand-new sheriffs office, which houses administration staff. michelle.iracheta@chron.com 3 1 of 3 Craig Moseley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Craig Moseley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer Show More Show Less 3 of 3 Katy ISD officials took caution Thursday morning by conducting all student outdoor activities inside due to benzene vapor released in Deer Park after a chemical fire. In a letter to parents, officials said they made the decision to hold all student activities indoors out of an abundance of caution. Parents say they feel they were unfairly singled out recently in a scathing editorial by Fort Bend ISD trustee Kristin Tassin. In a March 12 editorial titled Bullying Tactics Used in Attempt to Force FBISD Trustees to Cower to the Will of One Community, Tassin blasted a group of residents from the Sugar Land-area Riverstone development for harassing and bullying trustees in opposition to plans to re-zone two nearby middle schools. Tassin called the parents loud and angry and criticized them for filing multiple open records requests for trustees texts and emails. Related: Fort Bend ISD trustee Kristin Tassin says parents bullying boards members with excessive open record requests Radhika Iyer is a soft-spoken mother of two Fort Bend ISD students who says she feels betrayed by Tassin. She and other Riverstone residents say they feel their community has been unfairly singled out for re-zoning and question if the proposal is a pre-election political maneuver. I think this last minute re-zoning is absolutely politically motivated. Otherwise, the process would be a more transparent and organized process, Iyer said. I think we need to have a larger conversation and careful planning before trustees consider these rushed, last-minute plans for re-zoning just before the election coming up in May. Iyer said she and other parents were shocked during the Feb. 18 board meeting when trustees proposed re-drawing enrollment boundaries to move several hundred kids from Fort Settlement Middle School, which is expected to have near 100 percent enrollment to First Colony Middle School, which consultants predict will drop to roughly 62 percent enrollment. Iyer questioned if board members were focused on the needs of students or if winning re-election for two incumbent board members next May was the bigger motivation. I think some of the board members are looking at this as a political win, she said. Iyer and others in the group who oppose re-zoning argue the board has not applied policy rules fairly. In terms of overcrowding and campuses with lower enrollment, the board has set their own guidelines. Any school that has less than 80 percent of its enrollment capacity is considered under-utilized and any school over 120 percent is considered overcrowded. But, they dont stick to that rulebook when it comes to different communities. They need to work on building trust within the community and this is not the way to do that, she said. Tassins criticism came after several dozen Riverstone parents protested outside the Feb. 18 trustee meeting. Led by former TV reporter turned media consultant, Wayne Dolcefino, the parent group stood outside the meeting holding handmade signs as they talked with reporters. Related: Fort Bend ISD parents protest proposed middle school re-zoning The next day, the group responded to Tassins social media post turned-editorial by sending reporters a press release demanding Tassin apologize and then resign. Instead, parents say they got the cold shoulder not only from Tassin, but also from board president Jason Burdine and other trustees who have ignored calls and emails from irate parents. In her editorial, Tassin wrote Members of this community, which is a small portion of the Riverstone development, are acting like they are the only community that matters. Tassin went on to accuse parents of trying to dominate and usurp district time and money and urged board members and parents in the district to stand together against the bullying tactics employed by these individuals. Riverstone parents then launched an online petition to voice opposition to re-zoning that garnered more than 650 signatures as of Wednesday, March 20. Despite opposition, district administrators are quickly organizing plans for the re-zoning. Last week, parents say a large group of Riverstone students came home upset or crying after a field trip to Fort Settlement was cancelled without notice. Students who were looking forward to visiting what they expected would be their new middle school, came away from the experience confused and unsettled, according to Iyer. After the abrupt change of plans, parents received an update from superintendent Charles Dupre about plans to re-zone with limited time for community input. Iyer volunteered and was selected to serve as a member of the recently formed steering committee organized to provide feedback. I feel it is kind of a futile exercise because it appears the decision is already pre-determined. Why even have the sham of having the community meeting? Regardless, Iyer said she would participate and offer her feedback on the districts rezoning proposal. Moving from elementary school to middle school is a very important transition and as a community many of us would like to see all our elementary school children go to the same middle school. Of course, I realize that may not be possible. But, I think we need to have a proper conversation about that before jumping into re-zoning in a very rushed manner, she said. In addition, Iyer argued the vote to approve re-zoning should be delayed because the board is currently short one member after trustee KP George won elected to Fort Bend County Judge last November. Some Riverstone parents speculate trustees targeted their development because Judge George nurtured a special friendship with many Riverstone residents when he was a trustee. Perhaps some board members and parents thought George had given Riverstone parents special treatment and it created resentments, parents said as they try to piece together a possible reason for the current hostility focused on their communty. Iyer said she felt Tassin had damaged her relationship with many parents in the Riverstone community as well as other parts of the district as well. I think if I were living in another part of the district and I read Mrs. Tassins statement saying negative things about a community, basically resorting to name-calling and calling for the rest of the district to stand with her against Riverstone, I would question her judgement and would be hesitant to trust this elected official, Iyer said. But, trustees have many supporters among Fort Settlement parent of students who are expected to remain at the campus. With enrollment next year expected to be near full capacity, many parents favored plans to move some students to a less crowded campus. However, Baylor College of Medicine faculty member and educator Uma Ramamurthy is not among those who support re-zoning. A Riverstone resident for eight years, she worries her grandchildren attending Fort Bend ISD elementary schools will be uprooted by the proposed rezoning. She said she was disappointed in Tassins criticism toward parents for making open records requests. Her reaction to our open record requests shouldnt be trying to shame parents and calling us irresponsible and making accusations she is being bullied, because that is not based on facts, she said. Riverstone parent Sapna Singh, parent to two Fort Bend ISD students, also questioned Tassins accusations that requests for information were harassment. If records are requested, there is a state law that protects the public in terms of knowing how decisions are made. If she disagrees with that she has to take that opinion up with the Texas Attorney General, not the people who requested the records. We have a right to request the records just like a person who lives in Aliana, or Quail Valley or Sienna Plantation. Any resident of the district is allowed to request records under Texas state law. But, if her reaction to that is to single out a community and speak negatively about them, I think that mars the trust the community will have in how she is making decisions. As a voter, you want to be able to trust your public officials and trust the process by which they make decisions is fair and consistent. We do not have to agree with all the decisions made by the board, but we do want to believe they are made in a fair, just and legal manner, she said. In her editorial, Tassin claims open records requests made by Riverstone parents will draw funding from other educational programs. The district will likely be required to expend thousands of taxpayer dollars to assemble, redact and produce personal records for dozens of personnel. Thousands more in taxpayer dollars could be wasted as FBISD must now consider whether to issue trustees and staff phones and computers in order to protect personal information on personal devices, Tassin wrote. This takes resources, money and focus away from educating students. This is especially damaging at a time when we struggle to find funding for technology in our classrooms, a literacy center that helps at-risk children read, an early intervention center that helps students with disabilities prepare for the classroom, and new early college and P-Tech programs at our more struggling high schools. This is where our money and focus should be, she wrote. However, according to state law the district can charge requestors for costs for copies and employee time needed to redact personal information from open record request documents and multiple open record requests should have no financial impact. One question that remains unanswered is the process that led trustees to discuss re-balancing enrollment between the two middle schools at the Feb. 18 meeting. The agenda included no mention of a proposed re-zoning measure as required by Texas Open Meeting Laws for trustees to take action. Joseph R. Larsen, an attorney who specializes in media and public records law from the Houston law firm Gregor Cassidy, PLLC, commented by phone Wednesday, March 20, that it was possible trustees violated the state open meetings laws. Its troublesome that the district has already taken concrete steps in the re-zoning process such as sending emails to parents and gathering community input from a steering committee as they are just now going to vote in an upcoming meeting as to whether or not it should be done in the first place, he said. Larsen said he was also concerned by Tassins complaints trustees were being harassed via requests for public information. The re-branding of requests for information underlying this decision as bulling is a sure sign the process is less than transparent, Larsen said. Tassin, board president Jason Burdine and others were contacted via email Wednesday, March 20, to allow the opportunity to clarify information or respond to parents questions and concerns. Trustees have so far declined to comment. Trustees are expected to vote for final approval to re-balance enrollment and accept new attendance boundaries at the upcoming March 25 board meeting. One of four men on trial for charges stemming from violent 2016 attacks on armored truck couriers was dragged from a Houston federal courtroom by U.S. marshals in front of jurors Wednesday after he began ranting about an incident involving his wife. The dispute began out of earshot of the jury when U.S. District Judge David Hittner announced that the wife of defendant Marc Anthony Hill was caught by a deputy marshal trying to sneak a razor blade to another defendant. The judge showed X-ray images of what officials said was a 2-inch razor blade tucked into a loafer intended for Hills nephew, co-defendant Nelson Alexander Polk. BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: Get your Houston breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox Hittner said the woman, Varfeeta Sirleaf, would not be allowed in the courthouse for the remainder of the trial. Sirleaf is identified on the social media site LinkedIn as an owner of a gourmet popcorn business co-owned by her husband, Hill. Polk shook his head. He and Hill both rose to address the judge at various points. The judge instructed both men to sit and told Polk, who was originally representing himself, to remain seated and silent that his lawyer could speak for him if needed. Polk had previously been removed from the courtroom, with no jurors present, for a verbal spat with the judge. After Hittner assigned his backup lawyer to step in, Polk was ultimately allowed to return to the courtroom. Hill, who had opted to represent himself at trial, addressed the judge after the news about his wife, saying hed like to know which deputy reportedly found the blade. When he did not get a response from the judge or any of the deputies posted in the room, Hill persisted. RELATED: Conroe man sentenced to life in prison for severely abusing, burning his two young children I need an answer. Is everybody denying to give me an answer? That shouldnt be too hard. The judge told him to move on. I cant move on, Hill said, raising his voice. Its simple, all you got to do is answer who checked the clothes. Lower your voice, the judge said. Hill said he already had his fresh clothes a half hour earlier and that the story about the razor blade concealed in his nephews clothes didnt make sense. The judge tried to move the case along again. Both Polk and Hill began yelling at the judge. The nephew and uncle are the only ones among the four defendants who are charged with aiding in the robbery and slaying of an armored truck courier, 25-year-old David Guzman, as he stocked an ATM at a Wells Fargo branch on Aug. 29, 2016. This is some b.s. racist [expletive], Polk said, listing a number of constitutional amendments that he said the court had violated. Hittner warned Hill against outbursts, as well as the limits of being his own lawyer as a federal detainee. Then defense lawyer George Michael DeGeurin, Jr., who represents a third defendant, John Edward Scott, conferred briefly with Hill. DeGeurin could be overheard softly informing Hill about the law and how to enter an objection to a ruling. The judge called the jury into the room to resume hearing testimony from an FBI agent about a sting operation on Dec. 7, 2016 that led to the arrests of the four and the death of suspected ringleader Redrick Batiste during a shootout with law enforcement officers. The crew was allegedly trying to rob an ATM at an Amegy Bank of Texas branch when they were surprised by officers in an armored Brinks truck. All four face charges arising from this alleged robbery attempt; the fourth man on trial in the case is Bennie Charles Phillips, Jr. Moments after jurors took their seats, Hill began speaking unprompted into his microphone. Id like to make a statement to the jury, Hill said. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury Mr. Hill, dont do this in front of the jury, the judge said, explaining that he would have a chance to talk about the matter in his closing argument. Hill continued speaking: Why theyre not all out Hittner ordered marshals to move in and take Hill to a downstairs room where he could monitor the rest of the trial via a video feed. His backup counsel would have to take over, the judge said. A deputy marshal bear-hugged Hill, as several others surrounded him in a tight circle. The deputy began pulling him out of a side exit. With the door still ajar, Hill could be heard yelling, Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! in pain, and Stop! Youre assaulting me. All four defendants were wearing shackles and shock belts, although it was not clear if a deputy activated Hills. That aint necessary, Polk muttered, but he remained seated. The judge instructed Hills stand-in lawyer, Neal Davis III, that he would be taking over Hills defense. The jury was able to see Hill briefly on a video screen from a downstairs room standing behind his chair in handcuffs. The judge said he could monitor the trial from there and Davis could confer with his client later. Then the lead FBI agent on the case, Jeffrey Coughlin, resumed testimony. The prosecutor played a series of tapped phone calls that the agent said were between various defendants and Batiste, who is suspected of fatally shooting Guzman and security courier Melvin Moore, 32, in heists prior to the failed Dec. 7, 2016 robbery. The jury also watched secretly recorded videos of Batiste. The agent identified Batiste as the man seen inside a stolen Jeep Cherokee, aiming a rifle at an armored truck set up by police, and then exiting the vehicle. The government also showed the jury video taken from various angles at the time of the heist from pole cameras and surveillance cameras. Another angle showed an armored truck filled with police officers, the agent said bashing repeatedly into the side of a parked Toyota 4Runner, from which two men emerged and ran. With the frame frozen one-by-one on the two runners, the agent on the case identified the person exiting the drivers seat as Polk and the man stepping out of the rear of the car as Trayvees Duncan-Bush. The prosecution believes the plan was for Batiste to shoot the armored truck courier, then for Polk to drive up and for Duncan-Bush to grab the bags of cash from the armored vehicle. Duncan-Bush previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to rob the truck and aiding and abetting in the robbery. He may be called as a witness at trial. During a break in testimony, DeGeurin, the attorney for Scott, moved for a mistrial and to sever his client. The judge denied the requests. Then a smiling Hill was escorted back into the courtroom. A deputy marshal removed his handcuffs and he sat at counsel table. The judge said he would give Hill one more chance, but that he could no longer serve as his own lawyer. Hittner also said he would consider a request for the jurors to be questioned about whether they believed they could maintain the presumption of innocence for all four defendants following the outburst. After lunch, Davis said he needed more time to confer with his client, Hill. He also asked to sever his client from the group. Hittner denied both requests. Hittner then reminded jurors of their oath to remain fair and impartial and only consider the evidence rendered at trial. If theres any juror who cant follow this instruction, please let me know, Hittner said. He waited a beat. I dont see any hands, he said. And testimony resumed. The trial is expected to continue into next week. gabrielle.banks@chron.com NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. A unit from the National Guard has been assisting Harris County officials around Deer Park facility, but they aren't setting up a perimeter around the area, as some media outlets have reported. The Harris County Office of Emergency Management said one National Guard unit the 6th Civil Support Team has been helping air monitoring operations in the area. The Deer Park chemical fire was burning into a fourth day before it was extinguished early Wednesday morning. Since it started Sunday at the Intercontinental Terminals Co. in Deer Park, officials have been relaying information about the burning chemicals and the huge plume of smoke visible for miles. However, we still don't know how the fire started or potential long-term impacts to the environment. Lone Star College Police Captain Sandra Joachim spoke calmly to the young man holding a knife to his own throat in the woods beside the Tomball library. Joachims actions that day in November 2018 merited the LSC Police Medal of Valor, which she received during the LSC board meeting in March. The 20-year-old man wasnt an LSC student, but was in the public library at LSCs Tomball campus when he told his grandmother he would commit suicide. He stormed out of the library and into the nearby woods. Our patrol officers went looking for him, said LSC Chief of Police Paul Willingham. It took about 10 or 15 minutes before they tracked him down. The uniformed patrol officers attempted to approach him through the dense foliage. Each time they tried, the young man became more aggravated. BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: Get your Houston breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox He already had a knife to his throat and hed press the knife a little deeper, Willingham said. He became very agitated to the point where the officers would back off. In the end, all we could do was try to talk him down, but he didnt really want to talk to anybody because everyone was in uniform. Joachim was at the LSC Police Department central headquarters on the University Park campus when she heard the call come in and started heading toward Tomball. She arrived at the scene in plain clothes, tucked her badge into her pocket and handed her equipment to Willingham. She said, Here, hold this, Willingham said. So, I think from the very beginning, she was like, I can do this. She had the confidence to reach out to him. After about 10 to 15 minutes of talking to the man from the outskirts of the woods, he was willing to let her approach him to talk face to face. The way she described it to me was she just spoke like how a mother would speak, Willingham said. She decided to take an empathetic approach and earn his trust. She said she was willing to sit there and talk to him for as long as it took, even if it took hours. The young man finally abandoned the knife and exited the woods, escorted by Joachim. During the Lone Star College board meeting in March, LSC Police Chief Paul Willingham presented Joachim with the LSC Police Medal of Valor, which recognizes brave, purposeful action in a unique and potentially dangerous situation. RELATED: Alleged lookout man in ATM heist dragged from federal courtroom following outburst Joachims daughter traveled from out of town to attend the ceremony as a surprise to her mother. This was the first time since 2013 that an LSC Police Medal of Valor had been bestowed upon an officer. The Medal of Valor aspect comes in because in our citation, you have to have a risk of harm to yourself, Willingham said. She walked in there without her gun, without any other weapons or tools or body armor and basically sat next to a man armed with a knife to try to talk him down. He could have easily turned that knife on her. But her role in the situation didnt end when the man let go of the knife, or when they emerged safely from the woods. Joachim boarded an ambulance with the young man and his mother and accompanied them to HCA Houston Healthcare Tomball where he could receive a mental health evaluation. Willingham said the man had been diagnosed as bipolar and was not on medication. Joachim not only took it upon herself to go with the family to the hospital, but she has kept in touch. In fact, she spoke with the family just a few days before the commendation, Willingham said. Shes trying to help him out long-term as well, which Im pretty impressed with. Willingham said the young man is now on a medication plan and seems to be responding well. Joachim has been encouraging him to consider enrolling as a student at LSC. College officials have discussed possible financial assistance if he decides to enroll. Were going to try to work some scholarship money for him to at least get some help paying for his school here if hes ready to come, Willingham said. Willingham has decades of policing experience in the higher education setting and says that mental health crises can begin to manifest for the first time in peoples late teens and early 20s. Physiological development coupled with the stressors of college life; perhaps youre not living at home anymore and youre on your own for the first time, Willingham said. Due to the prevalence of mental health crises among young adults, Willingham said college and university police departments put a lot of focus on training to deal with these situations. The situation outside of the Tomball library will be used as a learning experience. Were going to continue to train on it and were even using some of the lessons learned to go back and say, what are some of our training and policies we can add to, based on what we just experienced in this situation? Willingham said. As Willingham points out in the Medal of Valor Citation he read to trustees during the March board meeting, Joachim went above and beyond the call of duty that day. She sacrificed her own well-being to care for another, Willingham told trustees. Her concern, kindness, and courage made a difference in that young mans life, possibly even saving it. Joachim has 32 years of policing experience. She retired from Jersey Village Police Department in 2013 and has been a captain at the LSC Police Department for over six years. Shes worked as the commanding officer of the University Park campus and last year became the departments chief of staff. For the past two years, her department of about 190 people has voted her Supervisor of the Year. Shes got that kind of personality that she can talk to people very well and she can develop an instant rapport with people, Willingham said. Just by talking to her, you would instantly understand how she was able to talk to the young man. Shes a uniquely special person. mfeuk@hcnonline.com NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. Editors Note: For more on the risks of realistic active-shooter drills, see Education Weeks March 25 article: I Felt More Traumatized Than Trained': Active-Shooter Drills Take Toll on Teachers By Madeline Will and Evie Blad In an active-shooter training, Indiana elementary teachers were asked to kneel down and face a classroom wall before being shot, execution-style, with plastic pellets by local law enforcement. Terrified teachers were screaming during the exercise, which left them with welts and bruises, according to the Indiana State Teachers Association, which testified about the experience to lawmakers this week. State legislators are considering a school-safety bill that, among other things, would require schools to conduct at least one active-shooter drill each school year. The bill has already passed the state House, and is now being considered by the Senate. While union leaders support the bill, they want safeguards put in place so that teachers and students are not inadvertently harmed during active-shooter trainings. No one in education takes these drills lightly. The risk of harming someone far outweighs whatever added realism one is trying to convey here. ISTA requests an amendment in bill so that more reasonable limits are placed on these drills. -- Indiana State Teachers Association (@ISTAmembers) March 20, 2019 One of the teachers involved in the January incident told the Indianapolis Star that police officers said to the teachers, This is what happens if you just cower and do nothing. The training was voluntary, but teachers said they didnt know they were going to be shot by an airsoft gun. Many states have mandated active-shooter drills or increased existing requirements in response to mass school shootings last year in Parkland, Fla. , and Santa Fe, Texas . The new Indiana requirement was among the governors post-Parkland school-safety regulations. Active-shooter drills vary widely. Some entail school lockdowns, which can be used in a wider variety of situations. In recent years, more states and districts have pushed for drills like ALICE (Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate) or run, hide, fight drills that teach students and teachers a variety of ways to respond to an intruder. Those drills dont always involve simulated gunfire, but they generally include instructions on climbing out of windows to escape and throwing classrooms objects, such as books, to distract intruders. The Indiana teachers who were shot with plastic pellets were receiving ALICE training, according to the Indianapolis Star. The proposed bill does not mandate a specific type of training program. See also: Do Schools Active-Shooter Drills Prepare or Frighten? Many school-safety consultants who work with districts pan efforts to make drills more realistic. Some local law enforcement have used sounds of simulated gunfire, fake blood, and weapons. In some cases, those simulations involved students. Some safety researchers and school psychologists have said those types of drills unnecessarily traumatize children and may actually make them less safe if they act dramatically in a real crisis situation. Outspoken school-safety consultant Kenneth Trump says ALICE training is not supported by evidence and preys on the emotions of todays active shooter frenzy that is spreading across the nation. The Indiana State Teachers Association is looking for a legislator to introduce an amendment to the school-safety bill that would prohibit the actual firing of any type of projectile toward an employee or a student, said Keith Gambill, the vice president of the state teachers union. He said the teachers in January were called four at a time to go into a small room, where they were fired upon with a semi-automatic type of weapon that shoots soft pellets. The teachers were each shot three to four times and were told not to tell any of their colleagues who hadnt yet been called into the room. While the ISTA understands the need for active-shooter trainings, Gambill said, the union wants to make sure that such an extreme situation doesnt happen again. We just think that as these trainings are developed and rolled out, that we use our common sense and not do anything in which we would be firing projectiles at any student or staff members, Gambill said. On Twitter, many responded to the ISTAs tweets about the active-shooter drill with shock and outrage. The teachers who were sprayed with plastic pellets could experience post-traumatic stress, people said. All lockdown drills force teachers to envision the worst-case scenario , educators say, and these simulations can take it a step farther. Some active-shooter drills even ask teachers to review emotional video and security footage from previous school shootings. Teachers have criticized that as unnecessary. They work with students every day and they dont need an emotional appeal to take their safety seriously, they say. Amanda Klinger, who trains schools in safety procedures as co-founder of the Educators School Safety Network, agrees. Inconsistent and unproven methods in safety drills have not only scared teachers, theyve also led to an increase in workers compensation claims for related injuries, she said. Thats in part because many school safety grant programs focus on security hardware and equipment, rather than research-based practices to prepare school personnel for a broad range of safety concerns, she said. So cash-strapped schools work with local law enforcement to design and carry out drills, which can sometimes include swapping war stories and fear, Klinger said. If a law enforcement official comes in and says the training should be scary, people just kind of accept it, she said. We can provide educators with the skills and the capability that they need, and we can absolutely do it in a way that is not scary, and aggressive, and intimidating. Image: Helena Wolfe-Wilder, a 5th grade teacher at Forest Hills Community Learning Center, instructs her students to keep still while she secures a door. The Akron, Ohio, school recently organized a drill to prepare students and staff for how to respond to a gunman on campus. Angelo Merendino for Education Week (ANSA) - Padua, March 21 - Thousands of people attended an anti-mafia march organised by the Libera and Avviso Pubblico organisations in Padua on Thursday. Marchers from all over Italy, including very many young people, marched through the centre of town bearing flags and banners. The march was led by the relatives of mafia victims, holding the victims' photos, and by the founder and president of Libera, Father Luigi Ciotti. Also attending were Prefect Renato Franceschelli, Mayor Sergio Giordani, and National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho. There were other events across Italy marking the 23rd Day of Memory for Innocent Mafia Victims, including a big event in Palermo. President Sergio Mattarella said "we must free Italian society from the mafia" City officials advised Deer Park and Galena Park residents to shelter-in-place Thursday morning after elevated benzene levels were detected following the days long chemical plant burn at Intercontinental Terminals Co. in Deer Park, according to a news release. To find out how to shelter-in-place correctly, click through the photos above for all the necessary steps you should take. Officials said the benzene levels "are below those that represent an immediate risk," according to a previous Chronicle article, but residents are still advised to take shelter. "Residents are advised to remain indoors and to close all doors, windows and other sources of outside air," the city said. "Turn off air conditioning or heating systems and close the fireplace damper to keep chemical vapors from entering. Please continue to monitor City outlets for updated information." WHAT IS BENZENE? What you need to know about the chemicals in the Deer Park plant fire The order to shelter-in-place requires that residents take several measures to ensure they are safe from any hazardous chemicals. According to the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, residents advised to shelter-in-place should first and foremost make sure they move indoors, bring loved ones, emergency supplies and pets and stay put until officials advise it is safe to leave. HOUSTON CHRONICLE EXCLUSIVE: Deer Park company battling fire accused of intentionally polluting water during Harvey The Chronicle previously reported specific areas impacted include south of Tidal Road, east of Beltway 8, west of Underwood Road and north of Pasadena Boulevard. State Highway 225 has been closed from Beltway 8 to Highway 146. HOW TO FILE A CLAIM: ITC sets up hotline to cover damages of Deer Park fire To find out how to shelter-in-place correctly, click through the photos above for all the necessary steps you should take. Rebecca Hennes covers community news. Read her on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | rebecca.hennes@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message The driver accused of crashing into a Lyft car and killing its passenger is out on bond, records show. Erik De Leon, 21, is facing two felony charges relating to the deadly March 1 crash, which left 40-year-old passenger Billy Satterfield dead and the driver, 29-year-old Ezatullah Safi, in critical condition. De Leon told Houston police officers on scene that he had downed several tequila shots at a bar before allegedly T-boning the car near the intersection of Galveston Road and Pineloch Drive. De Leon was hospitalized for some time after the crash and was never booked in jail, according to the Houston Police Department. Instead, he was released Wednesday from the hospital on a total $32,500 bond amount. He is barred from driving and must submit monthly urinalyses. He is allowed to travel in Nueces and San Patricia counties, which is where he lives, according to court records. He had a reported blood-alcohol content of .210 at the time of the crash, prosecutors said, which is more than twice the legal limit of .08. While the suspect initially told Houston police officers he was at a bar called Bombshells before the crash, Sean Teare, head of the Harris County District Attorney's Office Vehicular Crimes Division, said his office confirmed De Leon never set foot in the nearby Bombshells or Studio 80, a rebranded bar that locals call Bombshells. Company officials also confirmed that information, saying they worked closely with investigators. "We extend our deepest condolences to the victims of this tragic incident," the company said in a press release. However, Teare said prosecutors believe they know of two bars where De Leon was drinking immediately before the crash and are working to determine whether bartenders and employees followed proper procedures. De Leon is facing up to 20 years in prison, if convicted. Jay R. Jordan covers breaking news in the Houston area. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com | Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan | Email him at jay.jordan@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message GALVESTON Families of people killed in the 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School were told in a private meeting with federal officials that it is unlikely federal charges will be filed against the alleged shooter, participants in the meeting said Wednesday. During the meeting Tuesday in the FBI field office in Texas City, U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick and FBI officials said they had enough evidence to charge the alleged shooter in connection with unexploded pipe bombs found at the school, the meeting participants said. But the officials reported that the Justice Department was unwilling to move forward on those charges for now. Dimitrios Pagourtzis, an 18-year-old former student at Santa Fe High School, has been charged by state prosecutors with capital murder and aggravated assault against a peace officer in the May 18 shooting rampage at the school that left 10 people dead and 13 wounded. If convicted, Pagourtzis faces life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. SUSPECT IN COURT: Accused shooter makes first public appearance since arrest Victims families hoped that a federal conviction for Pagourtzis, combined with a conviction in state court, would keep him behind bars for the rest of his life. Several of the families gave emotional testimony at the Texas Capitol on Mar. 13, raising concerns that a bill allowing inmates convicted as juveniles to get out of prison earlier could reduce the amount of time Pagourtzis will spend behind bars. Our local agencies are ready and willing to push forward but their hands are being tied by whomever in Washington, D.C., as far as moving forward, said Pamela Stanich, who attented the meeting and whose son, Jared Black, was killed during the shooting. So we need to untie those hands. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney confirmed the meeting but declined to comment on whether Patrick discussed not bringing federal charges. We fully support the Galveston DA and his prosecution of the individual charged in the case, the spokeswoman said. An FBI spokeswoman confirmed that bureau officials attended the meeting. The Houston Chronicle previously reported that the Justice Department considered filing charges against Pagourtzis after some of the explosive devices found on him when he was arrested at the high school CO2 canisters wrapped with duct tape were found to be functional. Families said that in the Tuesday meeting, Patrick told them that there was enough evidence to proceed with charges of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction, a charge that carries a life sentence, but had been told to stand down by superiors at the Justice Department. Patrick added that federal charges could still be an option if the state fails to convict Pagourtzis, the family members said. Charges would have to be filed before Pagourtzis turns 21 because he was 17, considered a juvenile, when the shooting occurred. Federal authorities could also petition a federal court to transfer him for trial as an adult. (Patrick) has a boss that he reports to and his bosses are telling him not to prosecute at this point, said John Barnes, a Santa Fe School District police officer wounded during the shooting, who was at the Tuesday meeting. Other attendees said Patrick told them he planned to meet with William Barr, the recently confirmed U.S. attorney general, in the coming weeks to discuss the Santa Fe case. Nick Poehl, Pagourtzis defense attorney, said he has not been informed of any decision not to bring federal charges against his client. He declined further comment. The families came away distraught by the news from Patrick, perplexed as to why no federal charges would be filed if there is evidence to do so. They plan to hold a news conference next week to raise awareness about the lack of federal charges. Its upsetting as hell to me, because quite frankly I expect better from my government, especially because Im a police officer, Barnes said. Youd expect theyre always going to do the best they can to prosecute and all that stuff and its just flat-out shocking to me that they are balking on federal charges. Steve Perkins, whose wife, Ann, was a substitute teacher killed during the shooting, said he and other families were committed to lobbying for legislative changes that might ensure Pagourtzis a life sentence. Perkins testified in Austin last week against a proposed bill that would give those sentenced to life in prison for juvenile crimes a chance to petition parole boards for release 20 years after being convicted; the law now requires them to wait 40 years. If I can get them to change the law federally that (Pagourtzis) acted as an adult, he was tried as an adult in Texasand see if they wont change the laws to where we can actually put this guy away, I think thats our only hope, Perkins said. Stanich said she would like to see federal law changed so that school shootings could be prosecuted as an act of terrorism. She said she has written letters to President Donald Trump and would keep doing so until federal action is taken. Stanich said she was offended that Patrick could not be more specific about who in the Department of Justice was resisting federal prosecution. I felt that it was unacceptable to not file federal charges and I wanted to know who to contact, and they were not able to give us that information, so I didnt push it, Stanich said. I just told them we will find out who to contact. Staff writer Shelby Webb contributed reporting. nick.powell@chron.com NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. (ANSA) - Vercelli, March 21 - A youth worker was arrested Thursday on suspicion of sexually abusing two 'fragile' girls aged 17 and 11 at home in and near Vercelli. The 36-year-old man, of Somalia origin, was stopped on board a bus heading for Paris with a one-way ticket in his possession. The man is accused of abusing his role to take advantage of struggling minors. If you live in Harris County, you've just got to assume some risks. The fires and on-going situation at the Intercontinental Terminals Co. facility in Deer Park is only the latest example that has citizens concerned for their health and well-being. RELATED: Here are the steps to file a claim for illness or smoke damage after Deer Park fire Over the years, severe weather conditions, many of which occur as a result of the area's proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, have severely impacted the area and the people who live there, too. But is Harris County the most weather-threatened county in Texas? Allstate has a partial answer. The insurance company just released its 'List of Stormiest Counties in Texas of the Last 10 Years.' In a press release, the company said "Allstate tallied the top 25 Texas counties affected by severe weather, identifying areas with the highest number of wind-, lightning- and hail-related property damage claims from 2008 through 2018." Allstate collected the data by measuring "the frequency of hail, wind and lightning homeowner property claims from 2008- 2018 to tally the top 25 counties, which all had at least 3,500 Allstate policies." Above you can click through to see where Harris County and other counties in the area landed on the list. The images above are all from cities and towns in those counties. Peter Dawson is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | Peter.Dawson@chron.com | NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner on Wednesday said he would put a proposed garbage fee on next weeks city council agenda, but will not vote for it. Turner agreed to put the idea promoted by Councilman Dwight Boykins as a way to to offset the cost of firefighter raises mandated by Proposition B to a council vote, even as he called it regressive and said it would hurt low-income Houstonians. I will put it on the council agenda next week to let council members have their say, but I will not vote to impose this fee on the people of Houston, he said on Twitter. Under Houstons strong-mayor format, Turner decides what goes on the council agenda. Boykins first pitched the idea of a monthly garbage fee of $25 to $40 to help cover the cost of the firefighter raises in December. At the time, he estimated the fee could raise as much as $172 million a year that would go into a special revenue fund for Houstons Solid Waste Management, thereby freeing up other monies to pay for the firefighter raises. The raises, which the Turner administration has estimated will cost about $100 million a year, are required under the Prop B charter amendment approved by voters last November. The pay-parity measure requires the city to pay firefighters the same as police officers of equal rank and experience. Boykins original proposal largely fell flat among his council colleagues, some of whom said the fees were far too high. Boykins since has floated lower rates, and said Wednesday that he would call for fees between $19 and $27 a month when council votes. In a statement Wednesday, Boykins said he was the only member of City Council to put forth a proposal that creates a steady revenue stream while preventing massive and destructive layoffs. My proposal is an alternative that secures public safety while saving the jobs of up to 500 firefighters, 200 police officers and up to 300 city employees, Boykins said. Its an opportunity for city leaders to lead, and I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this measure. Turner earlier this week announced his administration has begun the process of implementing the raises, a plan that includes the layoff of about 400 firefighters and another 100 municipal employees. No police are included in the layoffs. Asked if the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association supports Boykins' idea, President Marty Lancton said Thursday, "Houston firefighters have taken no position on any of the proposed budgeting solutions to properly resource the Houston Fire Department and equally pay police and fire personnel in compliance with Prop. B. We are encouraged that responsible city leaders are considering a wide range of options." The mayors agreement to put the garbage fee proposal to a council vote came in the second week of Boykins delaying dozens of items on the council agenda in protest of what he says is unfair treatment of Houston Fire Department cadets. The cadets graduated from training earlier this year, but Turner has refused to swear them in, saying it would be wrong to promote them during a citywide hiring freeze he implemented last fallwhen it became clear Prop B could pass. He did, however, swear in more than 60 Houston Police Department cadets this month. Two weeks ago, Boykins blocked 33 of 39 agenda items. He similarly delayed most of the Councils agenda on Wednesday, drawing criticism from Turner and other council members. Mayor Pro-Tem Ellen Cohen said Boykins behavior makes a mockery of the council, adding the tactic is intended to give members time to further study proposals and not to hold hostage city business. "There are no political games here on the part of this administration," Turner said before accusing Boykins of playing his own political games. Other council members said they supported Boykins use of the parliamentary maneuver and voted against several attempts to override his tags. Even those votes were not without argument, however. At one point, Boykins tried to allow a handful of agenda items to go to vote, prompting backlash from other council members who said tags need to be used consistently, or not at all. Youre either all-in or all-out, Council member Brenda Stardig said after one such vote. Boykins later defended his actions, citing the frustrations expressed to him when hes met with firefighters. Tagging the agenda is not something Im proud of doing, he said. Im just doing it because I think its the right thing to do. I dont look forward to doing this every time. Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Marty Lancton, the head of the firefighters' union, said the union supports the garbage fee idea. The story has been updated with a comment from Lancton on Thursday. robert.downen@chron.com twitter.com/robdownenchron The city of Deer Park has lifted its shelter-in-place order after air quality readings showed lower benzene levels near a petrochemical storage facility where several holding tanks burned for days, according to Harris County officials. Emergency crews were still working to attack the source of the benzene exposure, which is believed to have escaped from one tank at the Intercontinental Terminals Co. facility in Deer Park, officials said during an Thursday. NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. The city of Deer Park previously issued a shelter-in-place alert after elevated benzene levels were detected in the chemical storage facility earlier Thursday, officials said. Around 4 a.m., benzene readings peaked at levels that could be cause for health concern, according to data supplied by ITC. Benzene levels dropped dramatically as the morning continued, ITC said. As of 11:40 a.m., county officials received consistent readings of benzene levels "below the actionable limit." Galena Park, northwest of Deer Park, has also lifted their shelter-in-place order. The orders came after a massive fire burned through the chemical storage facility for three days in the city and wafted a miles-long plume of black smoke in the air. The fire was extinguished Wednesday. WHAT IS BENZENE? What you need to know about the chemicals in the Deer Park plant fire, on HoustonChronicle.com At an 11 a.m. news conference, ITC spokeswoman Alice Richardson declined to say whether residents near the burn site were safe and urged the public to heed warnings from safety officials. She said the elevated benzene readings early Thursday could have been caused by a shifting of flame-retardant foam that is covering the burned tanks. "ITC members are actively working to reduce the cause of what may be responsible for the elevated levels," Richardson said. Richardson said crews are attempting to siphon around 40,000 barrels of pygas, which is used to make gasoline, remaining in a tank. The roof and chemical sealant of the tank was destroyed by the fire, and only a layer of foam separates the volatile organic compound from the atmosphere. The tank is designed to contain up to 80,000 barrels. "This tank was compromised quite a bit," she said, adding she was unsure when the burned area would be safe enough for Harris County investigators to visit. HOUSTON CHRONICLE EXCLUSIVE: Dangerous chemicals create hidden dangers in Houston Richardson also declined to comment on risks posed to the public during the fire, when chemicals stored at the facility burned into the atmosphere, versus now, when un-ignited petroleum products are capped only with layers of foam. As she has in previous appearances before reporters, Richardson grew emotional as she answered questions. "ITC cares. We care a lot," she said through tears. "We have been good stewards. We have been good neighbors." Unlike previous news conferences, which were held at ITC offices in Pasadena, Thursday morning's event was held at the Marriott hotel near Hobby Airport, 12 miles away. ITC spokesman Dale Samuelson said the venue change came at the request of television stations and was unrelated to shelter-in-place in Deer Park. Health officials emphasized that only the area around the chemical plant had been affected by the benzene leak. Low wind speeds are keeping the vapors contained to the area, meteorologists said. The specific area impacted was south of Tidal Road, east of Beltway 8, west of Underwood Road and north of Pasadena Boulevard. Harris County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen said vapors could be released as the foam shifts over the next 24 hours. "As that foam separates, you're going to see some of those vapors come up," she said. "They're going to continue putting that blanket back together and continuing covering it with foam ... and we're going to see this probably over the next 24 hours that smothering effect of that foam. As it breaks down were going to cover it." Public health officials added that benzene readings are expected to change throughout the day. Also, authorities will reopened Texas 225, which had been closed from Beltway 8 to Highway 146. RELATED: Deer Park plant fire may have been sparked by a overheated storage tank, worker says Several school districts have announced closures because of the environmental concerns. Channelview ISD Pasadena ISD Deer Park ISD La Porte ISD Sheldon ISD Galena Park ISD All San Jacinto College campuses and the district offices Clear Horizons Early College High School (a Clear Creek ISD school) YES Prep East End and Southeast campuses. KIPP Northeast, East End and South East campuses (KIPP Legacy, KIPP Polaris, KIPP Voyage, KIPP Northeast College prep, KIPP Intrepid, KIPP Explore, KIPP Climb and KIPP Prime) Pasadena ISD officials released this statement this morning: The Deer Park Fire is a very dynamic situation. This morning at 5 a.m., we were notified that the City of Deer Park is being put in a shelter-in-place. We have been advised by our own City Officials to cancel school today. Therefore, Pasadena ISD will be closed today, March 21, 2019. Houston ISD schools will remain open, according to the district. Schools near the Deer Park plant will hold all activities indoors. The district said that out of an abundance of caution, they have hired outside contractors to test indoor and outdoor air quality at our campuses in eastern Harris County. The Environmental Defense Fund on Thursday commended authorities for issuing the shelter in place, but added the action was no surprise. "We have expected this type of situation since the start of the International Terminals Company fire," said Elena Craft, senior director for Climate and Health. "Officials must be diligent in tracking air pollution and protecting people's health. "Harris County, state, and federal officials sometimes failed to acknowledge the potential risk this week while trying to reassure the public that air quality was 'normal.' No one should accept polluted air as normal." Julian Gill is a digital reporter in Houston. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | julian.gill@chron.com | NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. UPDATE: Shelter-in-place alert issued for Deer Park after high benzene levels detected After fire crews extinguished the chemical blaze at the Intercontinental Terminals Co. in Deer Park early Wednesday, the Harris County Fire Marshals Office prepared to send investigators to the smoldering site as state and local officials pledged to closely monitor pollution from the accident. We will investigate the cause and origin of this fire. We will investigate all aspects of it, County Fire Marshal Laurie Christensen said. At the site of the three-day blaze Wednesday afternoon, firefighters put out a flare-up that briefly hurled a fireball into the air. Crews will remain on the scene to ensure the fire does not re-ignite, the company said. The massive conflagration burned for more than 60 hours at the petroleum storage facility on the Houston Ship Channel before firefighters using flame retardant foam were able to put it out. Flames damaged 11 of 15 80,000-gallon tanks on the southern edge of the plant. Two were empty, while nine contained gasoline blends, base oils, xylene, pyrolysis gasoline and naptha. Christensen said several key questions remain unanswered, such as how and where the fire started, and precisely what volume of chemicals burned. Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia said he would like to know why ITC only brought in an additional, specialized firefighting team from Baton Rouge, La. on Tuesday, the third day of the blaze. Its just hyper-coincidental that you bring in these resources from Louisiana, and less than one day later, you have no more fire, Garcia said. An ITC spokeswoman said that when the fire began, the company believed local firefighters could extinguish it. When the fire continued to grow Monday, ITC decided to hire additional personnel from US Fire Pump in Baton Rouge. HOUSTON CHRONICLE EXCLUSIVE: Deer Park company battling fire accused of intentionally polluting water during Harvey Layers of flame retardant foam that cap the burn area prevented investigators from visiting the burn site Wednesday, Christensen said. In the meantime, she said the fire marshals office has begun interviewing ITC employees and photographing the scene. Christensen said estimating the length of the probe was impossible, but said its findings would be turned over to other county departments, including the county attorney and district attorney, for possible action. Deer Park Mayor Jerry Mouton Jr., who said the blaze was the largest tank fire he had ever seen in the small Harris County city, said the incident was personal for many residents. He described visiting the scene Tuesday and seeing many Deer Park residents participating as firefighters and support personnel. In most cases, every one of these individuals are people that live in our communities, Mouton said. Theyre volunteer, in most cases, firemen that were taking their turn to go in and fight for our community. The ash plume that soared above Houston and spread to at least five adjacent counties largely had dissipated by midday Wednesday. Despite its ominous appearance, officials said the dark smoke posed no health risk to residents. Still, they promised to continue publishing air quality readings from near the fire and throughout Harris County. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said the county pollution control department had created a strike team to take air quality measurements, which are published on a new website dedicated to the Deer Park fire. We brought in additional equipment for real-time processing of data, Hidalgo said. We brought in mobile devices supplemented by the city of Houstons mobile lab. Harris County Flood Control District Meteorologist Jeff Lindner said the clear, calm conditions during the three-day fire helped lessen the pollution risk to residents. The plume ranged from hundreds to thousands of feet in the air, far above most human activity. With the fire out, Lindner said only residents near the ITC plant are at potential risk for exposure to pollutants from the site. Most of what is being emitted is very localized to that vicinity, Lindner said. No longer are you going to see this big, black cloud throughout the area. A leak at a different plant in Deer Park Wednesday afternoon offered a reminder of how frequent unplanned chemical releases happen in the Houston area. Shell ordered a shelter-in-place for employees after low levels of benzene, a carcinogen, were detected at its plant four miles east of the ITC facility. A 2017 Houston Chronicle investigation found hazardous chemical discharges are a common occurrence in Harris County, the heart of the nations petrochemical industry. Despite the outcry of concern from the public over the health impacts of the Deer Park fire and the smoke plume it produced, air quality in the Houston area was relatively normal. The Environmental Protection Agencys daily Air Quality Index data showed good or moderate ratings for particulate matter and ozone Sunday through Tuesday. HOW TO FILE A CLAIM: ITC sets up hotline to cover damages of Deer Park fire From 2018 through Tuesday, there were 38 days with air quality ratings of unhealthy or very unhealthy for ozone or small particulate matter. During the same time period, the greater Houston area has seen 54 days with worse ozone ratings than during the Deer Park fire. It has seen 30 days with worse small particulate matter ratings. The EPA is conducting air and water quality tests at the fire site and in the plume, on-site coordinator Adam Adams said. The most concerning materials are particulates and "volatile organic compounds," but no hazardous levels have been found. WHAT IS BENZENE: What you need to know about the chemicals in Deer Park fire "Had we gotten some significant results that were hazardous, we would share that information with our stakeholders in the community as soon as possible to take action," Adams said at a news conference Wednesday morning at ITC's Pasadena plant. The EPA is also looking into the potential impact at the Houston Ship Channel, he said. Water quality tests there have not yet been returned, determining what chemicals may have infiltrated the runoff. Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith said Wednesday that some residents in parts of Katy and Brookshire reported seeing some ash in the area or particles on their vehicles. Theres been some limited observation of, obviously, the cloud and ash, said Smith. Just small reports of that. Greg Goedecker, Emergency Management Coordinator for Katy, said his office had not received any calls about observations of ash. The smoke caused more health concerns than actual ailments. A top official at Kelsey-Seybolds Pasadena clinic said they had received an uptick of phone calls from people worried about the ominous-looking smoke. Texas Childrens Hospital Wednesday afternoon posted a doctors blog entry on its website emphasizing the fire can create problems for anyone with heart or lung disease and trigger asthma attacks and heart attacks in susceptible people. An informal survey of Houston area hospitals and clinics, including those in Pasadena and Baytown, found none reporting any visits by patients experiencing respiratory or other symptoms related to the three days of smoke. "More than anything, people have questions," said Dr. Victor Simms, managing physician of Kelsey-Seybolds Pasadena clinic. "Will it affect my health, will it affect my babys health, what should I do different? People dont know what to expect. Wednesday also was the end of school disruptions in communities near the ship channel. Deer Park, Pasadena, La Porte, Sheldon, Channelview, Galena Park independent school districts, as well as San Jacinto College, announced they would reopen Thursday. Staff writers Matt Dempsey, Brooke Lewis, Nicole Hensley and Todd Ackerman contributed reporting. zach.despart@chron.com samantha.ketterer@chron.com NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. (ANSA) - Rome, March 21 - Italian police have seized some 30 million euros in assets from the Casamonica Roman crime family and members of clans in the Calabria-based 'Ndrangheta mafia, judicial sources said Thursday. The seizure, made in May 2017, became an official confiscation on Thursday, the sources said. Among the assets seized are 10 properties in Calabria, Rome and Ardea near Rome; 21 companies and businesses; 25 company buildings and 24 motor vehicles, including luxury cars. A Croatian big game hunter was preparing to shoot a lion during a hunting expedition in South Africa when he himself was shot and killed. Pero Jelinic, whose friends say had "hunted everything that could be hunted in Europe," had already killed one lion and was sighting in a second Saturday at a remote lodge near Setiagole, according to Total Croatia News. (ANSA) - Milan, March 21 - The father of a 13-year-old Egyptian boy who phoned police aboard a school bus hijacked and later torched by a Senegalese bus driver angry at kids' migrant deaths on Thursday said he would like to see his son get Italian citizenship. "My son did his duty, it would be nice if he could now get Italian citizenship," said Khalid Shehata, father of Ramy, who managed to hide his cellphone and make the first call to emergency services on board the terror bus near Milan Wednesday. "We're Egyptians, I arrived in Italy in 2001, my son was born here in 2005 but we're still waiting for the official document. We would really like to stay in this country." Who says a health committee has to be all about insurance premiums? Halfway through City & States interview with New York City Councilman Mark Levine, the health committee chairman said it was the most fun interview hes ever done: Youre hitting all these cool issues. But thats just because in his role, Levine has been hitting some of the most interesting issues of the day, such as marijuana, e-cigarettes and a measles outbreak in Brooklyn. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It seems like every small business in New York City is advertising some form of cannabidiol, or CBD oil. But the city is planning to ban it this year, citing federal regulations. Youre saying dont ban it, so are you asking the city to stand up to the Food and Drug Administration? Yes. I dont think it should be banned. It is legal in many states. And theres no concrete evidence that its harmful. Its been on sale in New York City for years, and we are potentially about to legalize recreational marijuana, and I dont think that prohibiting CBD is consistent or warranted by the science. The federal guidelines on this are actually a little bit murky. Because one thing was approved as a treatment for seizures by the FDA, its now considered an active ingredient and therefore, according to the FDA, shouldnt be added to foods. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan in January to expand health care coverage for city residents. Has City Hall been doing enough to sell the program so far? There is enormous misunderstanding about what the program is. Many people think that we passed single-payer in New York City. The truth is, this is a continuation of one of the most important things we do as a city, which is provide medical care through public hospitals, regardless of ability to pay. There is an important new program which will help undocumented New Yorkers get access to primary care, which I strongly support. We want to strengthen and expand it so that the wonderful network of nonprofit community health providers outside of New York City Health + Hospitals are included because these are organizations which have the greatest competency in working in immigrant communities with language abilities and cultural sensitivity and are located in immigrant neighborhoods. Would that have to be done legislatively? It could possibly be done legislatively. I think were certainly exploring what kind of role the council could have in helping to make sure that every New Yorker who needs it is reached, and this is the best program it could be. But rollout is supposed to begin in August in the Bronx, so this is happening pretty fast. Some state lawmakers are proposing an end to the religious exemption for vaccination amid a measles outbreak of more than 120 cases in Brooklyn. You tweeted positive things about vaccines, but do you think theres a legislative fix here? The challenge in Williamsburg and Borough Park is not that people are citing religious law in seeking these exemptions. It really is emerging from unwarranted fears or underestimating the risks. And I think that by strengthening education and outreach and making sure that schools themselves have really tight systems for ensuring as many kids as possible are vaccinated, that we can improve this. I dont know whether the Supreme Court would allow us to strike down the religious exemption, but Im certainly open to discussing it with my colleagues in Albany. Gov. Andrew Cuomo supported raising the smoking age statewide to 21 and banning certain flavors of e-cigarette liquid completely. You have introduced a bill to ban similar liquids in the city. Are you moving forward with that, or waiting to see if the state will act? Vaping has become epidemic among teens in New York. This is a highly addictive chemical, nicotine, that can hook kids for life. And theyre being lured in by fruity, candy-ish sounding flavors that are clearly designed to appeal to kids, from cherry crush to chocolate mint to watermelon twist. I think that New York needs to follow the lead of other jurisdictions that have banned flavors as a means of reducing the allure for young people.We had a major hearing on this issue weeks ago and we definitely heard pushback from adult smokers for whom e-cigarettes have been a vehicle for leaving traditional smoking and they cited flavors as being important for that. So were not unmindful of that consideration. But the truth is that an estimated 27 percent of New York high-schoolers are using e-cigarettes. I very much hope that we will continue to move forward on the bill whatever New York state does. Theres always criticism that e-scooters and e-bikes are dangerous, that emergency rooms are full of victims. Do you see them as a public health issue? Giving people new ways of getting around that doesnt pollute, that reduces congestion on the streets, is a win for everybody. Obviously safety is paramount, no matter what kind of vehicle youre on, whether its a car, a bike, a motorcycle or a scooter, youve got to follow all the traffic laws. Adults cant ride bikes on sidewalks and people cant go against traffic. But the right response is to give people options and ensure that they adhere to traffic safety laws not to simply ban outright entire modes of transportation, which have already proven to be popular and overwhelmingly safe in other cities, which are ahead of New York. And look, theres a health impact of breaking our addiction to the automobile as well, which is emitting fumes that contribute to asthma and global warming. And cars themselves are leading to hundreds of fatalities a year in New York. I think its unfair to brand scooters and e-bikes as being particularly dangerous. As state budget negotiations reach a fever pitch ahead of an April 1 deadline, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is going off script. During a press conference on Tuesday, the governor raised the possibility of ending the states Film Tax Credit Program which he has long supported if the state Senate would cut some of the pricey measures included in its budget proposal. Inherent in Cuomos remarks was the suggestion that lawmakers who opposed tax breaks offered to Amazon for its now-cancelled headquarters ought to also oppose the film tax credits, as the two are based on the same principle. The Senates position was very clear on Amazon, We are against tax incentives to bring business to New York. Thats why Amazon is gone, Cuomo said on Tuesday. The governors comments could just be a last-minute jab at lawmakers he still bears some resentment towards over the fallout of the canceled Amazon HQ2 agreement, but they merit a deeper look at the states film tax credits and what exactly they do for the industry in New York. What is the Film Tax Credit Program? First introduced in 2004, New Yorks tax credit program for film and television productions aimed to give producers a break to encourage some of Hollywoods business to move east. When it started, the production film tax credit cost the state $25 million, but today, the program has ballooned to $420 million, prompting the question from critics: Are these tax credits actually bringing more productions to New York? Under the current version of the program, qualifying productions films, television shows, television pilots and films for television, mostly can receive a 30 percent credit for every dollar spent on production and post-production costs in New York. In most cases, this amounts to a 30 cent refund for every dollar spent on below the line costs, which include salaries for film crews, caterers and other jobs that exclude some of the higher-billed employees like actors, directors and screenwriters. Productions in Onondaga County and in other areas outside of New York City receive a credit of 40 cents for every dollar spent. In 2017, the state Legislature voted to extend the program through 2022. Are these credits really comparable to tax breaks offered to Amazon? Cuomo drew a parallel between the film tax credit and the nearly $3 billion in tax breaks and subsidies from New York City and state that were part of the bid to win Amazons new headquarters. Ultimately, plans for Amazons HQ2 failed in New York, after local lawmakers, labor unions and community groups railed against both the massive subsidies and the company itself. But the comparison between Amazons tax breaks and ones for studios like Eye Production Studios and Warner Brothers is not an entirely apples to apples. The film tax credit is not a tax break, it's a cash gift, said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a good government organization. By comparison, $420 million is spent on the film tax credit per year, while the Amazon credits totaled as much as $3 billion. Much of that calculation was based on up to $1.2 billion offered through the states Excelsior Jobs Program, which consists of fully refundable tax credits as a percentage of gross wages for new full-time jobs created. The Amazon deal also included a $505 million discretionary capital grant. While the tax credits differ somewhat logistically and in value general opposition to corporate incentives is what the governor appeared to allude to on Tuesday. An article in the New York Post described the governors remarks as a shot at state. Sen. Michael Gianaris, who vehemently opposed the Amazon deal but whose Long Island City district also includes a film and television studio that benefits from more in-state production. Whats the argument for the film tax credit? The $420 million spent on production tax credits per year is associated with an estimated $22.7 billion in spending and 1.4 million new hires by film and production studios in New York since 2011. Both production companies and the studios in-state benefit from the program. But most proponents of the tax credits will point to those below-the-line hires who make up production crews as the real beneficiaries. I've been a prop man in (the Motion Picture Studio Mechanics Local 52) since 1978 and prior to the tax credit, there was never any full-time work. We had a couple of movies a year and one or two television shows, and that was it, said John Ford, now president of MPSM Local 52, IATSE. The tax credit has been in place since 2004, and we've pretty much been at full employment since then. Fords union represents employees working in sound and video, set construction and special effects, among other jobs. He estimates that the jobs included in the union represent 40 percent of a film crew. Every person that's in the union or is applying to be in the union is out working, probably making $70,000 per year or more, he said. Full medical benefits, and they're entitled to retirement benefits. Is Cuomo serious about his suggestion to end the program? The governor did not include a proposal to ditch the Film Tax Credit Program in either his original budget proposal or his 30-day amendments, suggesting that his brief remarks this week were more rhetorical than realistic. The tax credits have had their critics in both chambers of the state Legislature, including some Republicans who argue that it benefits New York City more than anywhere else in the state. But the Democratic-controlled state Legislature has not raised the film tax credits as a central issue this session. Representatives for Cuomo, the state Senate and the Assembly did not respond to requests for comment. Would film and TV productions leave New York if the program were ended? Ford is certain that film and TV productions would leave the state if the tax credits ended. He recalled a time before the introduction of the program when most shows set in New York like Seinfeld were filmed in Hollywood. They would come here for two weeks in the spring and maybe a week in the winter time, and then shoot all the interiors in California, Ford said. If the tax credit program ended, productions would revert back that schedule, he said. (Productions will still) come here, but instead of coming here for eight months, they'll come here for two weeks. LeRoy mostly disagreed, saying that New York is an attraction in itself. It always has been an attractive place to do productions because it's got an enormous amount of talent, it's got all kinds of gorgeous settings, he said. Obviously, when you're trying to attract a market, it's the biggest city in the country so it's got the biggest installed viewer base. Still, LeRoy admits that ending the Film Tax Credit Program could have some effects on the margins, if companies engage in rent-seeking by shopping around states or localities with more excessive production tax credits. It could happen, he said of the possibility of some productions leaving New York. I dont want to deny that. OHCHR Moldova: Apel deschis pentru aplicatii din partea OSC-urilor pentru a beneficia de suport in desfasurarea activitatilor de advocacy la nivel international in contextul celui de-al treilea ciclu de EPU a R. Moldova (ANSA) - Crema, March 21 - Oussenyou Sy, the man who hijacked a bus with around 50 schoolchildren on board and set light to it on Wednesday, has definitive conviction for harassing a minor, sources said on Thursday. Sy, a 47-year-old from Senegal who has Italian citizenship, was handed a definitive one-year suspended prison term in 2018 in relation to harassment of a 17-year-old girl that took place in 2010. The man was also convicted for drink driving in 2007, the sources said. He managed to hide the conviction from his employers - Autoguidovie, the company that operated the school bus - by going on sick leave during his ban from driving, according to investigative sources. The terror of the children from a middle school in the northern province of Cremona lasted for almost 40 minutes as the man, angry at government migrant policy, confiscated their phones and said no one would survive. But one boy, 13-year-old Rahmi, managed to keep hold of his phone and call the police. After being stopped by police, Sy got off the bus and set it alight, having poured petrol inside. But the Carabinieri managed to get the children out by smashing windows at the back. Investigators are trying to track down a video that Sy recorded before the hijacking, giving his reasons for it, and which he sent to acquaintances in Italy and Senegal. He mentioned the video during questioning late on Wednesday, sources said. In the wake of last Fridays shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, a wave of celebration hit Chinese social media. On WeiboChinas Twitter equivalent, with 446 million monthly active users, 120 million more than Twittermainstream coverage of the attacks was barraged with comments that expressed anti-Muslim rhetoric and support for the shooter. The top comment under a video clip posted by Peoples Daily likens Muslims to cancer cells and asks the Chinese government to avoid making the same mistakes as New Zealand. Peoples Daily is Chinas largest news outlet and the official state paper, and its comments section is heavily censored. Yet at the time of writing this comment is in the highest position of visibility and has been liked by more than 400 people. Such comments arent representative of the Chinese population. Many Weibo users posted emphatic rebuttals, and some wrote articles decrying anti-Muslim sentiment. But again and again, the most-liked comments under mainstream media posts on Weibo are filled with hate speech. Islamophobic speech on Chinese social media only comes from a small group of people. But there has been a drastic rise since 2016, Kecheng Fang, a veteran Chinese journalist and media researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, tells me, noting the influence of the US presidential election. ICYMI: The White House released a troubling video last week attacking Washington Post One of Chinas largest digital newspapers, ThePaper.cn, published fourteen news posts about the massacre to its 16 million followers. Under those posts, seven top comments made statements that were explicitly anti-Muslim or in support of the shooter. Together they have been liked 1,590 times. Only two comments condemning the massacre made it to the top of the pile. The same pattern can be observed on the feeds of The Beijing News, Global Times, and other mainstream Chinese news outlets. (The public discussions taking place under the posts of political commentators and individuals are even more unhinged.) WeChat, the worlds third-largest social media app at 1 billion users, is no exception. An article titled The names on the gunmans magazines reflect the deep anxiety of European white men that described the attacks as heroic revenge quickly surpassed 100,000 views (WeChats view count limit). The article included a poll: 10,881 readers who participated, or 76 percent, responded that they were very or somewhat sympathetic to the shooter. Another post, entitled New Zealand massacre is not a terrorist attack, quotes at length from the gunmans manifesto and was shared in screenshots across WeChat groups. On Zhihu, Chinas Quora-like Q&A platform, inaccurate translations of parts of the manifesto also spread widely. Sign up for CJR 's daily email Hours after the gunman streamed the shooting live, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter raced to scrub their sites of the video. (Facebook removed 1.5 million copies of the video in the 24 hours after the attack.) Weibo and WeChat followed suit, but under much less scrutiny. The video has been removed, but the shooters manifesto can be easily found on both platforms, alongside its Chinese translation. Chinas intricate and omnipresent censorship mechanism does not pay much attention to extremism or hate speech. Instead, it focuses strictly on the expression of anti-government opinions and calls for offline protest. The very concept of controlling hate speech against ethnic groups or minorities has never been widely accepted or understood, and the Western idea of being politically correct tends to be dismissedbut topics like Taiwanese or Tibetan independence are treated with great caution. Writing about the government re-education camps for Western Chinas Uighur minority is also extremely sensitive and would prompt severe punishment like the deletion of the user account altogether, but Chinese conservative discourse usually doesnt touch those issues; inside the country theres very little information available. Instead, ideas are recycled from Western right-wing news and repackaged to highlight the perceived problems of Western societies. This angle has always been relatively safe from government intervention. Online discussion of feminism, LGBTQ rights, and other progressive causes, on the other hand, are considered to touch on domestic issues and are scrutinized closely by censors. The architecture of Weibo and WeChat also dramatically amplifies extremist voices. I have been analyzing hate speech on Chinese social media since 2013, as a media researcher at the University of Hong Kong. Weibo, like Twitter, is a thread-based microblog platform that was inspired by the Bulletin Board System, but it has an important difference: it places the most liked or commented reply directly below the original post. This function turns controversy into visibility. The platform also provides little context for conversations, steering users toward polarization rather than nuance. WeChat, whose subscription function publishes articles from institutional and individual channels, is a highly segregated space. As a Tow Center report from 2018 notes, information sharing and discovery on WeChat almost exclusively occur within a users personal network. The space is dominated by a monoethnic media that is asymmetrically polarized, with the right leading in volume, reach, and skewed issue agenda. Weibo and WeChat are a source of daily information in China, and many individuals and small groups called Ying Xiao Hao (, marketing accounts) run grassroots media channels as small businesses. Because they depend on ads, branded content, and patronage from viewers, a larger audience means higher income, and they dont have the oversight or accountability of a traditional media institution. Many Ying Xiao Hao take advantage of peoples fear and hate, says a member of No Melon Group (), an all-volunteer team that fact-checks news on social media. And they keep repeating this formula to produce fake stories about Muslims, black people, women, and LGBTQ communities. It feeds them. The enormous power of Chinese social media platforms is enabling the global circulation of extremist and alt-right discoursesand Chinas Great Firewall might, counterintuitively, be helping the circulation. In China, there are volunteers downloading PragerUs alt-right explainer videos from YouTube, adding Chinese subtitles, and uploading them to Weibo. But the same audience cant directly access the abundant rebuttals published on YouTube, and its impractical to translate and share those rebuttals in anticipation. Once misinformation starts to spread, then, because of Chinas firewall, it takes much more effort to rein in. The Christchurch shootings arent the first or even the most discussed recent events to reveal the spread of Islamophobia in Chinese cyberspace. Two months ago, on Chinese New Year, CCTV was accused of surrendering to halal rules by intentionally omitting the image of a pig in an illustration for the Year of the Pig. Early last year, Reyizha Alimjan, a Chinese actress of Kazakh descent, posted on Weibo that she didnt celebrate the lunar new year. The post was interpreted as a hostile gesture against Han Chinese and Alimjan was bombarded with insults and threats, prompting her to leave Weibo entirely. Other controversiesoften protests against halal food being served on airlines or sold in storesoccur periodically. To Western eyes, anti-Muslim rhetoric in China takes a somewhat familiar form: it traffics in stereotypes and lapses in causality, equating Islam to terrorism and non-white immigration to the extinction of ethnic majorities. Two violent incidents continue to fuel resentment and suspicion against the entire Muslim community: in July 2009, a Uyghur protest in Urumqi turned violent, leaving nearly 200 people dead and thousands injured, most of them Han Chinese. And in 2014, four Uyghurs stabbed dozens of people in a train station in Kunming, Yunnan. Mengyang Zhao, a media researcher from the University of Pennsylvania with a focus on the alt-right, tells me that she noticed an uptick in anti-Muslim speech as early as 2013, when she was interviewing Chinese feminist activists. The activists were targeted by rumors that claimed they were being funded by Saudi Arabia; previously, they had been vilified with accusations of having connections to Western influences like the Ford Foundation and Hillary Clinton. Words like baizuo (, meaning white leftists) and shengmu (, holy mother) are used to dismiss those who hold progressive views. The narrative about the troubles and decline of Western liberal democracy and the strength of Chinas authoritarian regime is attractive to many nationalists, even though they do not really hold strong views aboutor have any knowledge ofrefugees and left-wing Westerners, says Chenchen Zhang, a researcher based in Brussels who studies right-wing discourse on Chinese social media. In 2018, Zhang analyzed 1,038 posts on Zhihu, the Q&A website. She found that conservative discourse is influenced by the vocabulary and arguments of right-wing populism in Western politics, along with pre-existing nationalist and racist views. American extremists have started taking notice of the opportunity for an audience in China. The term baizuo has been adopted on a small scale. A prominent alt-right news site opened a Weibo account last year, although it attracted very little attention. It is somewhat ironic if you think about it, says Kecheng Fang. In the aftermath of 9/11, a small group of nationalists in China cheered for Osama bin Laden. After eighteen years, some people cheered for the white terrorist instead. He adds: It could have been the same group of people. What changed is who they define as enemies in a globalized world. Chang Liu contributed to the reporting. ICYMI: In China, an entire generation is growing up with censored internet Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Tony Lin is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, author, and media researcher. On Tuesday, The Washington Post published an op-ed reflecting on the Christchurch mosque shooters references to Turkeya historic bridge between the West and the Middle Eastin the screed he posted online shortly before the massacre. The op-ed argued that there is absolutely no difference between the far-right Christchurch terrorist and ISISboth have said they want to claim Turkish land, including Istanbul, for Christianity and Islam, respectively. There was nothing immediately objectionable about the message. The messenger, by contrast, was controversial. The op-ed was authored by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkeys authoritarian president. The measured, conciliatory tone of Erdogans op-ed stands in stark contrast to his behavior on the campaign trail ahead of local elections in Turkey later this month. Erdoganwhose conservative party is projected to lose control of the countrys capitalhas repeatedly politicized the Christchurch massacre in them-against-us terms. During at least eight of his rallies, Erdogan has incited crowds by playing clips from the shooters video, including blurred images featuring live gunfire. He has accused the West of preparing the shooters writing and handing it to him, among other inflammatory remarks. On Monday, the day before his Post op-ed was published, Erdogan talked about Gallipoli, a World War I military campaign that saw the Ottoman Empire repel troops from Australia and New Zealand. Each year, thousands of people from those countries visit Turkey to commemorate Anzac Day. This year, Erdogan warned, anti-Muslim visitors would go home in coffins, like their grandfathers. The governments of Australia and New Zealand reacted furiously to the remarks. In his Post op-ed, Erdogan was the picture of diplomatic innocence. All Western leaders must learn from the courage, leadership, and sincerity of New Zealands prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, he wrote. ICYMI: The White House released a troubling video last week Tuesday wasnt the first time Erdogan used an op-ed in a major newspaper to score political points. Last November, the Post gave him space to demand answers from Saudi Arabia over its killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Post contributor, in an Istanbul consulate. Again, it was a fine message, but again, it was disingenuous: more journalists are in jail in Turkey than in any other country worldwide. It was a similar story in January, when The New York Times let Erdogan argue in its pages that Donald Trump was right to announce a troop withdrawal from Syria; Turkey, Erdogan wrote, would be more than capable of defeating ISIS and other terrorist groups, and of starting to reconstruct Syria, on its own. Erdogan had, of course, recently promised an offensive against US-backed Kurdish militias in northern Syria. Both the Post and the Times have explored Erdogans true motives, and held him to account, many times on both the news and opinion sides of their papersthe Post editorial board, for instance, called out his hypocrisy three days after publishing his Khashoggi op-ed. The Posts position on Erdogans jailing of journalists is no mystery, and publishing him is not an endorsement, Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor at the Post, tells me in an email. But we also believe our op-ed page should be a forum for a wide range of views, he says. We think that is the best way to serve our readerswho we believe are more than capable of evaluating for themselves what they read. The most troubling aspect of the Erdogan op-eds, however, does not concern the boundaries of legitimate speech as much as their lack of context. The internet age has disaggregated newspapers and their opinion sections, spinning op-eds into standalone pieces as they circulate around the web. On those terms, Erdogans Christchurch op-ed, for example, looks innocuous to all who lack prior knowledge of his latest electioneering tacticsa story, its safe to say, that has not penetrated the US news cycle. Sign up for CJR 's daily email The problem of disaggregation demands more thoughtful answers than just dont publish propagandistic op-eds. The Post and others have worked to add context: using artificial intelligence, for example, to serve up links and opposing viewpoints. But the Erdogan piece didnt serve up a rebuttal, at least not to me. And links arent enough, in cases like this, to adequately contextualize a tyrants untrammeled message about a sensitive topic during a campaign season. Let him propagandize at his rallies, not in the pages of The Washington Post. Below, more on Erdogan and the opinion piece: Jailing journalists: The Committee to Protect Journalists offers fuller data on journalist imprisonment around the world in 2018. For the third year running, Turkey, China, and Egypt between them were responsible for more than half of the total. Also last year, Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 157th, out of 180 countries, in its World Press Freedom Index, citing Erdogans massive purge of critics in the media. That purge has included a clampdown on Cumhuriyet, a rare independent newsroom in the country. Last year, Shawn Carrie and Asmaa Omar profiled that paper for CJR. The Committee to Protect Journalists offers fuller data on journalist imprisonment around the world in 2018. For the third year running, Turkey, China, and Egypt between them were responsible for more than half of the total. Also last year, Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 157th, out of 180 countries, in its World Press Freedom Index, citing Erdogans massive purge of critics in the media. That purge has included a clampdown on Cumhuriyet, a rare independent newsroom in the country. Last year, Shawn Carrie and Asmaa Omar profiled that paper for CJR. A similar defense: In 2013, the Timess public editor (remember them?) addressed reader concerns over the decision to give Vladimir Putin space to write in the paper. From my point of view, The Timess publishing the Putin Op-Ed was completely legitimate. Whether you agree with it or not, whether you approve of Mr. Putin or not, it could hardly be more newsworthy or interesting, Margaret Sullivan, who now works for the Post, wrote. In 2013, the Timess public editor (remember them?) addressed reader concerns over the decision to give Vladimir Putin space to write in the paper. From my point of view, The Timess publishing the Putin Op-Ed was completely legitimate. Whether you agree with it or not, whether you approve of Mr. Putin or not, it could hardly be more newsworthy or interesting, Margaret Sullivan, who now works for the Post, wrote. The ghostwriter: Last year, James Rose reflected for CJR on his career ghostwriting op-eds for politicians around the world, then placing them in major newspapers. Because I was generally at some remove from my clients, I had to get up to speed on events related to them quickly. It was also vitally important to establish my clients voice, he wrote. Other notable stories: ICYMI: WSJ reporter explains why he was fired Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop. Heres 4 Geppettos for your contested Pinocchios, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted at Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler on January 24. The politician mocked Kesslers fairy tale-based fact-checking system and scolded him for using a paper by Jason Furman called Wal-Mart: A progressive success story in a fact-checking article. Who, Ocasio-Cortez wanted to know, watches the watchmen? Everybody wants news they can trust, but no one is sure what trust means. How would journalists, platforms, or institutions create a concrete theoretical model for credibility, which is a key component of news quality? We would have to provide a framework for distinguishing between different approaches to evaluating credibility and lay the groundwork for a practical approach to measuring credibility at significant scale. Its important to note that there is a wide variety of approaches that can be used to evaluate credibility, as well as a variety of organizations and research projects tackling the issue, each through its own particular lens. Some approaches consider content to be less credible if it contains logical fallacies, while others look for underhanded advertising tactics, and others still evaluate whether initial promoters of the content are carrying out some kind of deception, like Twitter accounts that pretend to be grassroots users. Each of these approaches has its merits. What is credibility? This projects ultimate goal is to determine what is worthy of trustto identify the signals of the credibility. For this purpose, we define credibility as the likelihood that something informsor, at least, avoids misleading. Further, we define inform as to improve ones model of the worldthat is, to form accurate beliefs and which can be used to make decisions. Conversely, to mislead is to harm ones model of the world. So, put holistically, credibility is the likelihood that something enables a person to form accurate beliefs and use them to make effective decisions, especially ones relevant to their livesor at least avoids decreasing the accuracy of someones beliefs or the efficacy of their decisions, for example, what medicine to buy or who to vote for. This definition also has an important caveat: the question of whether or not something actually informs is both interpreter-dependent (dependent on how the consumer of information interprets it) and context-dependent (dependent on the context in which the information is presented). We cant fully measure the credibility of content or a news source in isolationwe must know about the consumer and their context. Sign up for CJR 's daily email For our purposes, this definition provides a framework for tackling a key question: What should we investigate if we want to determine whether something is credible? Goals for a credibility assessment system There are several goals that an ideal credibility assessment system would achieve: A method of providing classifications or scores that provide a meaningful measure of credibility as defined above (or the ability to work within a system that will provide a classification or score) The trust of as much of the relevant population as possible Applicability across platforms and media Utility in any language/country Implicit in the first goal is resilience against being co-opted by authoritarian regimes and other malicious or self-serving actors (as is also true for any reputable news organization). Credibility Assessment Model Credibility signals derive from two underlying approaches used to describe the evaluation of credibilitythe evidence chain and the reputation network. These approaches are implicitly used by those attempting to assess the credibility of a claim. We call this the Credibility Assessment Model. The evidence chain frame takes a claim and looks for other claims that either support or contradict it based on observation or analysis. This is the sort of process that might be explicitly carried out by a fact checker to verify a claim. It is an explicit tool, using a chain of links to directly source observation or in-depth analysis and thus assess the credibility of a particular statement. An example of an element in a credibility chain might be X is true because I saw it or X is true according to this economic analysis. The reputation network, on the other hand, evaluates claims based on a gestalt of reputation. Its more similar in function to how an ordinary consumer decides whether to trust an article or a claim they see online: A statement is believed by a consumer if it is from an author the consumer trusts, a website they respect, an institution they believe in, or some combination of the three. The site, author, and institution that each source comes from are not judged independently; they are interdependently linked in a web of trust that determines how credible each individual believes the information to bethe reputation impacts, in other words, go both ways. This is also similar to how PageRank worked to rank Google search results. The evidence chain is explicit, made of statements like Xs analysis contains mistakes, or X often lies, while the reputation relationship network is implicit and structural, dependent on relationships like X is associated with Y to evaluate credibility. The evidence chain and the reputation network can also interact. One might factor reputation characteristics in alongside direct evidence when deciding whether or not to trust a claimresearcher X hasnt made obvious mistakes and has a good reputation, but his work is now hosted by the Y Institute, which has published lies about the topic of his research. When deciding whether or not a specific person, news organization, or institution is trustworthy, one might evaluate them using a separate evidence chain. And there is at least one further complicationother things affect the reputation network beyond the direct creators. These might include, for example, association with a country that has the ability to influence content for its own geo-political motivations, the use and reputation of a particular ad-tech provider or tag that is found on other sites, or the known influence of a particular twitter botnet on someone who might be acting in good faith. A sophisticated analysis of credibility might incorporate a number influencing entities that can impact the incentives, properties, or capabilities of the creators, including monetizers, nation-states, and distribution platforms. In summary, the answer to the question What should we investigate if we want to determine whether something is credible? is that we need to investigate reputation information, claims with evidence, or some combination of the two. Credibility Signal properties With the credibility assessment model in mind, we can now describe a framework for distinguishing between different categories of credibility signal. Each credibility signal has a subjectthe specific aspect of whatever is being evaluated about which it provides information. The signal itself is derived using information from some location(s). That information may be either controlled or not by the creator of the target. Subject The subject of a credibility signal refers to what the signal specifically evaluates. This can be the target itself (the contente.g. the argument and facts stated about Walmart in the paper), the entity who originated the content (the creatore.g. the papers author Jason Furman, or the conference that the paper was written for), or a reference to the content (e.g. the link to the paper in Kennys article, which Ocasio-Cortez said tainted it). The content, for example, could be evaluated for logical fallacies. The twitter propagation of the link (a reference) can be evaluated for particular characteristics, and age of the site (a creator) can also be a useful signal. Location The location of a signal refers to the place that the evidence or reputation information is collected from. Location directly affects which processes we can use to extract the data; often different environments and platforms make differing types of data available. Evaluating a signal can also sometimes require getting and corroborating data from multiple locations. For example, a system that evaluates whether an article is repeating previously debunked claims requires the evaluator to collect a set of claims that are known to be false (from a directory of fact checkers) and compare that to the article text (found on the creators site) to search for those claims. Control Control of a signal can either be internalcontrolled by the creatoror externalcontrolled by some other process or entity. For example, if there are logical fallacies in an article, that would be an internal signal, since the creator chooses the content they select for the article. A debunk by a fact checker or even by an anonymous blogger, on the other hand, would be an external signal since it is on a website outside of the creators direct control. That said, the lines here are not always fully clear-cutsome information, like website registration dates, can be managed by the creator given enough forethought, but are often not fully in their controlthey cant change the date, or go back in time to choose an earlier date. Control may also be unknowne.g. it may not be clear if a botnet promoting a story is under the control of the content creator. There are many potential signals that one can use this framework to interpret; the map below shows just some of the potential credibility signals that might be incorporated in a credibility assessment system in order to make a score. Credibility measurement in practice Creation Standards In the last few years, several standards have emerged to attempt to support the creation of credibility signals. The Claim Review schema, for example, provides a way for third parties to make claims about the accuracy of statement on other sitesit provides a mechanism for an external entity (control), anywhere on the open web (location), to share information about a claim and related (subject). The Trust Project, complementary to that, provides a way for a publisher (subject), to, on their own site (location, control), share reasons and evidence on why they should be trusted. The Credibility Coalition and now the Credible Web Community Group have been exploring the development of standards for third parties (control) to share credibility signals about articles (subject; the author is also affiliated with this effort). Evaluation Efforts These standards, and other similar projects, fall into three main categories of evaluation efforts: those focused on helping news consumers directly, those focused on research, and those focused on providing data to platforms and advertisers. Fact checking organizations like those part of International Fact Checking Network provide information to ordinary consumers, based on manual human reporting, and generally focusing on the content of a specific claim or article. Source lists like Media Bias Fact Check and Open Sources attempt a similar type of evaluation for news sites. Research over the past few years has also explored a variety of different signals and sets of signals to evaluate credibility as discussed in the related work section. There has also been a recent profusion of entities focused on providing a credibility score of sorts to third parties, including the Global Disinformation Index and NewsGuard. Challenges and potential solutions The ultimate goal of many of these research projects and organizations is to automatically provide meaningful credibility assessments. This would enable any consumer or platform or advertiser to easily get an evaluation of whether or not something is credible. However, there are clearly significant challenges with this in practice. Human necessity : True fact checking is difficult, human, and expensiveit requires that someone or something follow an evidence chain and discover reputation signals and forms of influence. When the full cost is considered, prominent fact-checking organizations spend hundreds of dollars on a single fact check. : True fact checking is difficult, human, and expensiveit requires that someone or something follow an evidence chain and discover reputation signals and forms of influence. When the full cost is considered, prominent fact-checking organizations spend hundreds of dollars on a single fact check. Insufficient data : Most automated methods require training a machine learning system with many ground truth examples, called training data, and this can be very expensive to create as it also generally involves human labor. : Most automated methods require training a machine learning system with many ground truth examples, called training data, and this can be very expensive to create as it also generally involves human labor. Gaming: Once a system can collect signals, and is trained to evaluate those signalsnon-credible agents will adapt. This becomes a game of evolving cats-and-mice game. That said, there are ways to address the problems above and still create assessments that are good enough. We can involve a combination of humans and automation working together, with the aim of significant scale as opposed to complete coverage. The worst of low-credibility news, which doesnt even attempt to create a brand or promote a destination, can be largely caught through primarily automated means such as behavioral analysis and use of shared identifiers. Addressing the lowest credibility news is most similar to the battle against spam. The remaining news can be triaged. This would mean that not everything is checked, but the news receiving the most attention can get meaningful evaluations. A system can collect as much information as possible about the news being evaluated, and, based on that information, feed questions to people with appropriate levels of training or representative knowledge. At the lowest level of training (and for the lowest cost), this is somewhat similar to Mechanical Turk tasks, or Facebooks survey on trusted news sources. At the upper end, this looks similar to an editor giving an assignment to a trained fact checkerexcept that this fact checker is given a suite of tools to speed up their research. A framework for thinking about credibility signals may not give us the one true answer on complex cases such whether Glenn Kessler gave AOC an appropriate Pinocchio ratingbut it can help us sort through the complexity. Even more importantly, it provides a model for building and understanding systems that combine humans and computers to evaluate credibility at scalesomething particularly useful on the open internet, where humans and bots can blend together. 1.This definition evolved from one originally developed to help explore credibility signals in 2016. This version was recently updated based off correspondences with Sandro Hawke around the development of web standards relating to credibility. 2. For simplicitys sake, in this report we primarily assume a universal interpreter and universal context, but caution that this assumption will often fail in specific circumstances, and is worth ongoing consideration. An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the relationship between Glenn Kessler and Jason Furman. Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today Aviv Ovadya is the founder of the Thoughtful Technology Project, a San Francisco based non-profit launching soon, and is also a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy. Aviv was also a founding member of the Credibility Coalition, has consulted for Snopes, and was a Knight News Innovation Fellow at the Tow Center at Columbia University. ALBANY, N.Y The Democrat-controlled state Legislature has passed legislation aimed at improving pedestrian safety in New York City school zones by adding hundreds of traffic surveillance cameras designed to catch speeders. The Assembly and Senate on Tuesday easily passed legislation that approves a major expansion of the citys current school zone speed cameras program, along with a separate bill that would establish a demonstration program for school zones in Buffalo, home to upstate New Yorks largest public school district. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, of the Bronx, and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, of Yonkers, held a news conference before the votes with fellow Democratic lawmakers, New York Citys transportation commissioner and advocates, including parents who lost children to pedestrian traffic accidents. Supporters of the speed cameras say they make school zones safer and save lives by forcing drivers to slow down. Officials said the citys DOT has found a 60 percent drop in speeding infractions in school zones where speed cameras have been installed. ``The numbers don't lie. Speed cameras work.'' -- Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins The numbers dont lie. Speed cameras work, Stewart-Cousins said. Gov. Andrew Cuomo reiterated his support of speed cameras during a news conference on other subjects Tuesday at the state Capitol. The Democrat has proposed nearly doubling the number of school zones with speed cameras to 290. The newly approved legislation would go far beyond that number. New York City DOT Commissioner Polly Trottenberg said cameras are currently installed in about 160 school zones in the five boroughs. Under the Legislatures measure, in two or three years some 750 of the citys schools _ including all elementary schools _ could have speed cameras monitoring traffic, Trottenberg said. Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, a Manhattan Democrat who sponsored the Assembly bill, initially introduced the legislation that established the citys school zone cameras as a five-year demonstration program starting in 2013. The program expired last summer when Republicans who then controlled the Senate wouldnt approve an extension. An executive order signed by Cuomo and action by the New York City Council reactivated the cameras in time for the current school year. The program not only saves lives, Glick said, but it also saves a family from going through the pain and agony that will be with them forever if a loved one is killed in an accident. Under Buffalos pilot program, 20 cameras will be installed near schools, according to legislation sponsored by two Democrats from the city, Sen. Tim Kennedy, chairman of the Senate transportation committee, and Crystal D. Peoples-Stokes, the Assembly majority leader and a former teacher. The cameras record license plate and registration information of vehicles that break the speed limit. The info can then be used to issue speeding tickets. Signs posted near schools inform drivers that speed cameras are in use. Several people at the news conference lost children to pedestrian traffic accidents in New York City, including Amy Cohen, whose 12-year-old son Sammy was struck and killed by a van in 2012. Cohen, a member of Families for Safe Streets, held up a photo of her son while thanking lawmakers and fellow advocates for supporting the measures. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Tesla Inc filed a lawsuit on Thursday against a former engineer at the company, claiming he copied the source code for its Autopilot technology before joining a Chinese self-driving car startup in January. The engineer, Guangzhi Cao, copied more than 300,000 files related to Autopilot source code as he prepared to join Chinas Xiaopeng Motors Technology Company Ltd, the Silicon Valley carmaker said in the lawsuit filed in a California court. Separately, Tesla lawyers on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against four former employees and U.S. self-driving car startup Zoox Inc, alleging the employees stole proprietary information and trade secrets for developing warehousing, logistics and inventory control operations. Cao, Xiaopeng and Zoox could not be immediately reached for comment. Tesla is building a vehicle assembly facility in Shanghai, putting it in direct competition with Xiaopeng and other Chinese companies in the worlds largest electric vehicle market. Its Autopilot is a driver assistance system that handles some driving tasks and allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel, although the company stresses it still requires driver supervision and does not make the vehicle autonomous. Caos LinkedIn profile shows he has been working with Xiaopeng since January as head of perception. Xiaopeng, which debuted an electric car in Las Vegas last year, counts Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Foxconn Technology Co Ltd among its investors. The company, also known as Xpeng Motors, employs at least five former Tesla employees, the U.S. carmaker alleged in the lawsuit. Apple Inc last year accused one former employee of stealing trade secrets related to self-driving cars and joining Xiaopengs U.S. subsidiary. Several companies are racing to develop the technology required to make cars drive on their own and lawsuits against former employees have become common as firms strive to keep proprietary information in-house. Alphabet Incs Waymo self-driving vehicle unit took Uber Technologies to court after a former employee stole thousands of confidential documents and became chief of Ubers self-driving car project. Uber later paid $245 million to settle the case. Federal and local investigators are weighing a probe of the Houston chemical blaze as hazardous compounds waft near the burned-out site. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is following up on the incident and should be making a decision to send an investigator shortly, spokeswoman Hillary Cohen said in an emailed statement on Wednesday. Hours earlier, firefighters extinguished the last of the fires at Intercontinental Terminals Co.s petrochemical complex that menaced the fourth-largest U.S. city for almost four days. Prosecutors in Harris County, which encompasses Houston, also said they were mulling an investigation and would decide once environmental agencies have made their assessments. At a nearby facility in the refining and chemical row east of downtown Houston, Royal Dutch Shell Plc alerted workers that it detected benzene a cancer-causing oil byproduct. The company issued a so-called shelter-in-place order out of an abundance of caution and operations continued uninterrupted. The notice was later lifted. Shell noted the benzene emerged from sources outside the plant, which is less than 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the ITC property. Root-Cause Analysis The CSB, a Washington-based panel formally known as the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, launched extensive probes into the BP Plc refinery disaster in nearby Texas City that killed 15 people in 2005, as well as the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that killed 11 in 2010. No one died or was injured in ITCs incident. A federal investigation will be akin to what FAA does when a plane crashes, said Jonathan Baughman, a partner who chairs the oil and gas practice at McGinnis Lochridge in Houston. Theyll be doing root-cause analysis as well as looking to see if there were any deficiencies with the procedures in place. Reuters reported earlier Wednesday that both the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and Harris County district attorneys office were looking into the fire. ITC officials warned that smoke and steam may still be visible from the area, and firefighting crews will continue to spray foam and water on the tanks to prevent re-ignition. Schools had already been ordered closed before the fire was extinguished, after shifting weather patterns sparked concern that the plume of smoke might sink to ground level, making breathing hazardous. Current readings show no hazardous concentrations of particulates or volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs, according to Adam Adams, an official with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency is in the process of taking water samples, with results expected Friday, he said. Weather Protecting Houston Houston has been lucky so far. Every night since a petrochemical storage site erupted in flames on Sunday, a lid of warm air 400 feet to 600 feet (120-180 meters) over the city hasnt been stout enough to halt the ascent of a super-heated torrent of inky smoke rumbling out of the destroyed tanks. That means residents and wildlife at ground level have been spared the worst of the choking, toxic cloud. The heat is creating enough warmth to rise rather vigorously to push through the warm layer, said Charles Roeseler, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Houston. All things considered, we have been lucky. Normally temperatures get cooler the higher into the sky you go. With nightly inversions such as those in place since the weekend, though, there is a layer of warmer air that creates a lid, Roeseler said. He likened it to a covered pot of boiling water: The steam stays trapped under the lid. If Houston were the pot, its lid is too flimsy to hold back the steam. Houston is also catching a break because the inversion has been between 400 to 600 feet, which means even if the smoke did get trapped it would still be off the sidewalks. If the nights had been foggy, typical of this time of year, the inversion would have been closer to the ground. In spring, in southeast Texas and in the Houston area that hasnt happened, Roeseler said. We have been fairly fortunate. Air-crash experts are gathering in Ethiopia to analyze black-box data from a Boeing Co. 737 Max jetliner as controversy over the models safety intensifies following two fatal disasters in less than five months. Ethiopian Airlines said Thursday that the planes pilots completed training recommended by the manufacturer and approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration before the Max fleet was phased in. While a flight simulator for the aircraft isnt designed to mimic problems with an anti-stall system at the center of probes, pilots were made aware and well briefed on a directive issued by the FAA following a 737 Max crash in Indonesia last October, the airline said in a statement on Twitter. The Ethiopian jet came down shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing 157 people. In the Indonesia incident, a Max operated by Lion Air plunged into the Java Sea, claiming 189 lives. Ethiopian, U.S. and Canadian authorities say there are clear similarities between the disasters. Attention is focused on a stall-prevention system thought to have taken over the Lion Air flight amid erroneous sensor readings, and which the pilots couldnt turn off. While Ethiopia is leading the investigation, a spokesman for Frances Bureau dEnquetes et dAnalyses safety authority said three of its experts were due to arrive in the African nation on Thursday after the agency downloaded the flight-data and cockpit-audio recordings in Paris. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, FAA and Boeing have also been invited, he said. Indonesias National Transportation Safety Committee has also offered to aid Ethiopian authorities, Chairman Soerjanto Tjahjono said at a press briefing in Jakarta on developments in its investigation into the Lion Air crash. With pressure mounting on Boeing over the troubled jets certification process, establishing the cause of the Ethiopian tragedy has become critical. Airlines and aviation regulators around the world have grounded Max fleets, leaving the immediate future of the planemakers best-selling aircraft in the balance. Ethiopian Airs comments on pilot training came after the New York Times reported that the pilot of the downed 737 hadnt used a simulator that the carrier installed in January. Boeing has said that experienced 737 pilots need little training for the new aircraft, the newspaper reported. In the case of the doomed Lion Air jet, the same aircraft was saved from disaster the previous day only when an off-duty pilot told the crew how to disable the stall-prevention software, know as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, Bloomberg has said. Indonesia confirmed that a third airman was in the cockpit. The U.S. Transportation Department has meanwhile ordered a full audit of the Maxs 2017 certification. The Justice Department is also using a grand jury to help gather information. Investigators representing the two departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation began digging into a range of matters related to MCAS within weeks of the Lion Air loss, Bloomberg reported. Boeing has said it will soon release a software update and further pilot training guidelines for the Max that will address concerns. The New York Times said the manufacturer will stop charging for a safety feature called the disagree light, activated if a planes sensors which can trigger the MCAS are at odds. Read More: Black Box Shows Similarities in Lion Air, Ethiopian Crashes (4) Boeing Had Too Much Sway in Vetting Own Jets, FAA Was Told (1) Off-Duty Pilot Saved Doomed 737 Max on Its Next-to-Last FlightEthiopian Airlines had said the initial decision to send the black boxes to France for decoding was strategic after the FAA was left isolated in the days after the crash, arguing that the Max should continue flying after other authorities had already grounded it. The French BEA has handled other major disasters in the past, including Air France Flight 447, which was lost in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, and Germanwings Flight 9525, flown into the mountain in 2015 by its co-pilot. (ANSA) - Rome, March 21 - Finance police in Rome and Naples have arrested four people after uncovering a scam in which organized crime gangs, in particular Casalesi clans in Campania, converted reserves of money held in lira into euros. The Mafia gangs had around 20 billion lira made from illegal activities held in Italy's former currency, sources said. The scam, which allegedly the complicity of intermediaries, could have raised around 3.3 million euros for the gangsters. CLEVELAND, Ohio If the Cleveland Orchestras prospects in China were a peony, that flower would be in full blossom. Between the 21 years since the groups last trip to China and Chinas explosive growth as a musical nation in the meanwhile, the time for a Cleveland Orchestra tour of the region has never been riper. I think its really important that we be there, said Andre Gremillet, the orchestras president and chief executive. The country has changed tremendously. Its now one of the most important [musical] markets in the world. Gremillet isnt just saying that, or simply spouting prevailing wisdom. The president and his team have been to the places theyre about to take the orchestra and music director Franz Welser-Most later this month and the first half of next. Theyve seen firsthand the rail lines, skyscrapers, and performing arts centers China has been on a tear building since the groups last visit in 1998. Theyve attended performances in the countrys many new world-class concert halls. More importantly, theyve seen the crowds major American orchestras and other performers now attract, the enormous size and potential of Chinas audience for Western classical music. Millions of young people have been playing instruments, and theyve developed a real love for music, Gremillet said. Youll see long lines of people waiting to meet the conductor or soloist. Its quite remarkable. China isnt the only entity thats changed over the last 20 years, either. The Cleveland Orchestra of today also looks and sounds much different than it did in the 1990s, and that, too, is a valid reason to visit China and its neighbors, Macao and Taiwan. Some might even say the need is urgent. Given that other major American orchestras recently have completed or currently are planning tours in China, artists and administrators here said they feel a rather pressing duty to remind listeners in China of Clevelands place in the musical world. Four cities Macao, Shenzhen, Wuhan and Nanjing will be hosting the Cleveland Orchestra for the first time, while the others Beijing, Shanghai, and Taipei havent heard the group since the 1980s or 90s, during the tenure of Christoph von Dohnanyi. People there havent heard us for so many years, said violinist Yu Yuan, a native of Beijing. A lot of people dont even remember us. I feel like I want to show us off and show people that this is what theyre missing. We definitely have something other places dont. The Cleveland Orchestras hopes in that regard rest on four pieces, four works representing four distinct areas of the musical canon. As they travel on their third tour in Asia and 19th journey together overseas, Welser-Most and the orchestra will mix and match from Tchaikovskys Symphony No. 5, Prokofievs Symphony No. 3, Strausss Ein Heldenleben, and Beethovens Emperor Piano Concerto No. 5, with Cleveland-trained pianist Daniil Trifonov. Several members of the orchestra who are on the faculty at the Cleveland Institute of Music also will conduct master-classes. While others practice or take in the sights, theyll work one-on-one with students at the Shenzhen Arts School, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Academy, Wuhan Conservatory, and China Conservatory of Music in Beijing. The idea is to showcase how much this orchestra has evolved, and we think this repertoire will show that, Gremillet said. We want to be an important ambassador for this region. We take our role as ambassadors in a very important way. This is no ordinary tour for the Chinese members of the orchestra, either. For those who grew up and trained in China, and still have family there, the journey represents a homecoming and a rare chance to share their talents with their former communities. Yu Yuan can already attest to the dramatic changes China has undergone. On a recent trip to visit her parents in Beijing, she was awed by the new National Centre for the Performing Arts, commonly known as The Egg, and by the number of cars clogging streets she recalls as nearly empty. Then again, she also cant help but think about her past, about the fact that her father, an accomplished conductor, kept his classical recordings hidden, or how at first she regarded the violin as an obligation, a way to avoid otherwise mandatory farm work in the countryside. Still, if theres one emotion Yuan harbors, its gratitude. Gratitude for her parents, who copied out by hand the music she needed to learn for an audition in the U.S. Gratitude for the friends and colleagues who supported her studies at the China Conservatory and later, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the Peabody Conservatory. Now, all she feels is excitement. Soon, shell be in her homeland again with her children, as a member of the Cleveland Orchestra, playing for listeners experienced enough to value what a great ensemble has to offer. I think theyll be surprised, Yuan said, referring to audiences. Now China is ready to have that finesse. Theyre really into classical music. I want them to know this passion that we have. Violinist Wei-Fang Gu has returned to his native Shanghai only twice since he left in 1987 to study at the University of Southern California. He said hes curious this time to see how his homeland has changed, and hopes he feels the same as he did when he last visited in 2010. All of a sudden, it felt really different, he recalled. I felt like I really belonged there. Id never felt that before. And no wonder. Gu left China at a time when Western classical music was frowned upon, in hopes of a career in music beyond the military band into which hed been drafted at age 11. He succeeded, of course, and then some. Not long after his arrival in the U.S., Gu landed a seat in the Sacramento Symphony, becoming one of the first Chinese members of an American orchestra. He then went to Minnesotas St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and from there, in 1990, to Cleveland. Now hes looking forward not only to seeing parts of China he hasnt seen since his youth, if ever, and serving with his Taiwanese wife as an unofficial tour guide, but also to visiting a China that strongly embraces and appreciates the music he worked so hard to master and cares about so deeply. Nowadays in China, Gu said, People come for the music. Theyre more educated. The standard of living is much higher. I believe theyll really love this music and this orchestra. Its something theyll remember. THE CLEVELAND ORCHESTRAS 2019 ASIA TOUR Thursday and Friday, March 28 and 29 Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, National Concert Hall, Taipei Sunday, March 31 Macao Culture Centre, Special Administrative Region of China Tuesday and Wednesday, April 2 and 3 Shenzhen Concert Hall, Shenzhen, China Saturday and Sunday, April 6 and 7 Shanghai Symphony Hall, Shanghai, China Monday, April 8 Nanjing Poly Grand Theatre, Nanjing, China Wednesday, April 10 Qintai Grand Theatre, Wuhan, China Friday and Saturday, April 12 and 13 National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing, China (These concerts will be broadcast live online, at ncpa-classic.cntv.cn/live. AKRON, Ohio -- An effort by FirstEnergy Solutions to coordinate a publicly-funded bailout of its nuclear plants with its emergence from bankruptcy has hit a snag -- U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Alan Koschik. After presiding over a full day of arguments, the judge this week refused to approve a complicated disclosure statement the company must send to its creditors who will then have the right to approve or reject the companys plan to re-organize itself, after which the court will still have the final say. FES reorganization plan calls for major creditors to own the company. Unsecured creditors would get cash, but only a fraction of what they are owed. But creditors wont be able to vote on the plan until the court is satisfied with the companys disclosure statement. Koschik also refused to approve an accelerated schedule proposed by FES that would have allowed a vote on the reorganization plan by creditors in April and a hearing on the vote in May. In bankruptcy reorganization cases, the disclosure statement is supposed to disclose possible problems that could derail the plan. But the FES statement doesnt do that, and there are a lot of potential problems, insisted lawyers for the unions representing nuclear plant workers and lawyers representing environmental groups and a number of U.S. attorneys representing federal regulatory agencies, including the NRC, EPA, FERC and the SEC, and lawyers representing state environmental agencies in Ohio and Pennsylvania. At the heart of the dispute about the FES Disclosure Statement is the assumption that parent corporation FirstEnergy is free and clear of any responsibility for environmental or other problems associated with the power plants, including old coal ash landfills and the nuclear plants if they are shutdown by 2021 as the company has stated it will do. Without the power plants, FES would simply be a retailer of electricity, buying it on the grid to re-sell to customers, at narrow profit margins. Lawyers representing regulatory agencies and environmental groups said FirstEnergy as well as FES should be held responsible for costly environmental problems. If the reorganization plan is approved as now written, FE would be let off the hook, they said, leaving the bill only for FES. That caused Koschik to question whether he even has the jurisdiction to approve such an arrangement. Joyce Goldstein, a labor lawyer representing the power plant unions, complained that the disclosure statement, though cleverly written, does not reveal that FES is ignoring contract provisions it agreed to that require new plant owners to accept the contracts that FES and FirstEnergy negotiated. She said that unless FES revises the disclosure statement to make it clear that the current contracts will remain in place, she would be back in court to file an administrative claim, which under bankruptcy law, would allow the unions to collect damages before creditors are paid. Koschik said he would give the critics more time to challenge the companys disclosure statement and set a new hearing for April 2. There is a history here," Koschik said. "At some point these assets were owned by FirstEnergy. What happens if a claim arises [in the future]. Does this document release [reject] those claims? he asked the FES legal team. Is that permissible under the law? Scott Alberino, one of the lawyers with New York-based Akin Gump which represents FES, replied. This is the language we were asked to deliver. When Koschik replied that his own question was a fair one, Alberino replied we want to move as quickly as possible. If you want to deal with it now, I will. But I dont know that we have to wait until next week. Koschik said he was thinking it might take a month. Or at least two weeks. Alan Tennebaum, a lawyer representing the U.S. EPA, interjected: The question you have been asking, we have been asking for months. And could not get answered. Though the company had been amending the disclosure statement as late as midnight before the hearing to answer critics, Alberino and his associates were clearly disappointed that Koschik would not approve it from the bench. In an earlier exchange with the judge, this time in an effort to persuade him to approve another document, an agreement between the major creditors preventing them from squabbling, Brad Kahn, another Akin Gump partner on the FES legal team, indicated that the nuclear plants might not be closed as scheduled. The fact that we are here today...with a plan on file [that] talks about a reorganized [company] where,... with help from our state legislators maybe there is even hope for these units past the announced deactivation [dates], Kahn told the court. His reference to help from our state legislators to help the company could keep the plants running past 2021 was the first time a bailout had been mentioned in court. Koschik said he would authorize the company to enter into the agreement, known as the Restructuring Support Agreement, but he withheld giving it the courts imprimatur. The reference to a bailout, presumably by Ohio and Pennsylvania lawmakers, prompted a reaction later from the Ohio Consumers Counsel. Ohioans should not have to pay for FirstEnergys failed business, said Jon Blackwood, a spokesman for Consumers Counsel Bruce Weston. "As the case has evolved, we have become increasingly concerned about the potential impact on Ohioans electric bills. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Northeast Ohio is the third-largest region in the Midwest for total healthcare investment. Nearly $294 million was invested in 71 companies last year, according to the 2018 Midwest Healthcare Growth Capital Report, which tracks capital investments made in biomedical companies across in Midwestern states in medical device, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and health IT sectors. The report, released Thursday, is published annually by BioEnterprise, which promotes and helps healthcare and bioscience companies. Click here to read the entire report. https://www.bioenterprise.com/2018-midwest-healthcare-growth-capital-report/ The $294 million invested here is the second largest in the history of the Midwest Healthcare Growth Capital Report, and the 71 companies receiving funding is the highest ever, according to the report. Over the last decade, investment in Ohios biomedical industry has nearly tripled, rising from $189.1 million in 2008. There is a lot more national investment attention on Cleveland, said Aram Nerpouni, president and CEO of BioEnterprise. When you put a dollar to work in Cleveland, it goes much farther. The five Midwestern regions attracting the most investment dollars were Minneapolis ($664 million), Chicago ($551 million), Cleveland ($294 million), Columbus ($163 million) and Detroit-Ann Arbor ($125 million). Nerpouni pointed out that Chicago and Minneapolis, which rank above Cleveland in healthcare investments, have larger populations than Northeast Ohio. It feels good to be punching above our weight, he said. In order to continue growing the healthcare sector, this region needs a workforce trained in IT and data science, with a pipeline that starts in middle and high school, he said. The regions goal of continued growth in healthcare investments can be achieved, he said. Its no longer aspirational to see an average of 75 deals and $300 million in investments over the next three years, Nerpouni said. In terms of top-performing Midwest states, Minnesota led the Midwestern states in the amount of investment dollars attracted in 2018 with $690 million, followed by Ohio with $561 million and Illinois with $560 million. Ohio led the pack with 121 companies receiving funding in 2018, followed by Minnesota with 89 and Illinois with 56. Biomedical investment in Northeast Ohio was led by a handful of big deals. A $59.1 million investment in ViewRay, located in Oakwood, was the second-largest medical device deal in the Midwest. A $21 million investment in Athersys also ranked high. ViewRay designs and manufactures an advanced radiation therapy system. The biotech company Athersys, headquartered in Cleveland, is developing stem cell therapies for neurological, cardiovascular and inflammatory and immune diseases. Two confidential deals, for $40 million and $32 million respectively, also were top biomedical investments regionally. Among Ohio cities, Cleveland ranked first for both number of companies and total number of deals, with Columbus bringing in $163 million (29 deals) and Cincinnati totaling $82 million (15 deals). In Northeast Ohio in 2018, 49 percent of investments were made in medical devices, 31 percent were in health IT/software and services and 20 percent were in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. To see all sectors hitting on all cylinders is really exciting, Nerpouni said. AKRON, Ohio - The Ohio Marijuana Expo is coming to Akron on Saturday, and organizers say they expect about 1,600 attendees interested in interacting with dispensaries, cultivators and other holistic and marijuana centric vendors. The event is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the John S. Knight Center. The nearly sold-out event, hosted by Ohio Marijuana Card, is the second event the company has held so far this year. The first one in Cleveland attracted about 1,500 people in January. The series moves to Cincinnati in June and Columbus in August. We are so excited to welcome our 1,600 attendees and 40 vendors to the second event in our Marijuana Expo series, event coordinator Amanda Ferdig said in a statement. We have interesting speakers talking about this new industry, as well as an appearance by award-winning reggae band Seefari. Event organizers say they hope to attract people who are either looking to get into the industry, learn more about medical marijuana, or just want to shop for health and wellness alternatives. The event will include representatives from an array of alternative medicines, healing products and services as well as noted sponsors, industry insiders, physicians and retailers. Vendors are expected to connect with guests and play a role in educating attendees about the cannabis industry and whats necessary to qualify for a medical marijuana card in Ohio. "This event is a celebration of medical marijuana finally coming to Ohio," Ohio Marijuana Card President Connor Shore, said in a statement. "Our goal is to bring a face to the cannabis industry as well as the cannabis movement, from advocates to health professionals. That is why we have amassed a great collection of speakers, vendors and amazing sponsors, so there's a little something for everyone." The companys second expo is adding something different with plans to have speaking rooms in addition to a vendor showroom. Coordinators want to give advocates and patients an opportunity to share their passion for marijuana with testimonials in a video booth. The goal is to find stories about how marijuana either changed their life or the life of someone they know. Our last event had a sold-out crowd, so we wanted this one to be bigger and better, Ferdig said. Event Details: Date: Saturday, March 23 Event Time: 11 a.m. 5 p.m. Location: John S. Knight Center at 77 E. Mill St. Tickets: Available on Eventbrite. Lisa Tyler, co-founder of Cleveland Holistic Collab, explains the benefits and uses for several types of herbal teas with visitors at the Ohio Marijuana Expo: Cleveland in January. (Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer) The Plain Dealer SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio -- If a business or broker seeking new space in one local community cant find exactly what they want, they will have easy access to what is available in five other neighboring cities, thanks to the addition of a new database on the Heights-Hillcrest Regional Chamber of Commerce website. The database is a comprehensive listing of available commercial properties within our region, HHRC Executive Director Karen Schaefer, said in a news release announcing the database. Were so proud to partner with our cities. The database, which also includes available industrial properties, features sites in the six cities HHRC serves -- South Euclid, Lyndhurst, University Heights, Shaker Heights, Cleveland Heights and Richmond Heights. The chamber of commerce began work on the project several years ago in its Civic Involvement/Economic Development Committee, when the HHRC was headed by then-executive director Angie Pohlman, who stepped down from that position in 2016. "HHRC is a natural venue for collaboration between the cities it serves," said Pohlman, who still participates as a committee member. "It is so gratifying to see this project come to fruition under Karen's direction." The committee is also made up of mayors and economic development directors from the six communities, as well as members of the chambers board. First Energy introduced the chamber to LOIS, the web-based software that allows all of the chambers communities to maintain a comprehensive listing of their available properties. First Energy support allows LOIS to be provided to member cities at no cost. Commercial brokers and businesses can access the database for information about the physical property, demographics and the appropriate city representatives contact information. "It's easily accessible online," said South Euclid Economic Development Director Michael Love, who chairs the chamber's committee. "In some of our cities, the only marketing some property owners do is put a sign in the window saying that space is available." Love said each individual member citys website will carry information about available property in its own city, and that the chamber website will contain all six cities information. Here is the connection to each of the citys economic development web pages where information about available properties can be found. Richmond Heights can be found here; Shaker Heights, here; Cleveland Heights, here; South Euclid, here; Lyndhurst, here; and University Heights, here. The HHRC database for all six cities can be found here. This story was updated in August 2020 to remove identifying information, per cleveland.coms Right to be Forgotten policy. CLEVELAND, Ohio Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budishs administration fired a recently hired manager in the Human Resources Department on Thursday after cleveland.com asked about her 2018 conviction on a charge of inducing panic. Budish spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan confirmed the termination of the manager, but declined to give the reason for the termination or disclose whether the county knew of the managers criminal conviction before hiring her. Madigan reported only that the manager had been hired earlier this month as an $80,000-a-year talent acquisition and employment manager who reported to Chief Talent Officer Douglas Dykes, whose department reviews background checks for new hires. A Google search shows a news account of the managers arrest last year on charges that she falsely told Westlake police that a stranger had tried to abduct her 1-year-old son from a play area at a Crocker Park bookstore. Court records show that the manager, 31, was found guilty in November 2018 of a first-degree misdemeanor charge of inducing panic and was ordered to serve six months of probation, pay a $250 fine and continue to see her psychologist. Police reports state that the manager eventually admitted to lying about the attempted abduction of her child in an attempt to bring awareness to people about watching their children. Cleveland.com has requested county records related to the manager, including her application and resume, as well as any documents showing whether she was subjected to a background check and whether she met the minimum qualifications for the job. The county did not immediately provide copies of the document and did not provide answers to questions which were submitted Thursday afternoon in writing. (A list of the questions is at the bottom of this story.) The controversy comes as the Budish administration is the focus of an ongoing public corruption investigation that has so far resulted in the indictment of three county officials, including Dykes. Dykes faces a felony theft in office charge among three other counts. The charges stem from a $15,000 bonus paid to then-Deputy Chief Information Officer Jim Hay in 2017. Dykes has pleaded not guilty, and Budish has allowed him to remain on the job. County Councilman Michael Gallagher last month objected to Budishs decision to allow Dykes to continue to oversee the HR Department and render decisions on personnel matters while indicted. Budish in a letter said he respectfully disagreed. The fried manager succeeded Jonathan Zerulik in the job of talent acquisition and employment manager, according to Madigan. Madigan first said Zerulik had reported to Director of Employee and Labor Relations Egdillo Morales and not Dykes, but later said that Zerulik also reported to Dykes. Morales has announced that he will be leaving his county job this summer. The fired manager could not be reached Thursday for comment. Here are the questions cleveland.com posed to the county, which the county did not immediately respond to: Why was the manager terminated? Who terminated her? Who decided to hire her? Did she pass a background check? Was a background check done? Did she disclose her criminal conviction? Did she apply for the job? When did she apply for the job? Did anyone issue letters of recommendation for her? Was her resume accurate? Did HR check to see if it was? Her recent criminal conduct was easily Google-able. Did HR check this? If so, did it not factor into the hiring decision? She would have been approving the background checks and hiring process of other county applicants, correct? Does HR regularly hire people without background checks? What is the countys policy on hiring people with criminal records? Did she meet the qualifications for the job? How many other people applied for the job? CLEVELAND, Ohio Phil Collen knows the value of timing. Oh, not just keeping up with the beat supplied by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Def Leppards drummer, Rick Allen. Its more being at the right place at the right time. As in 1982. I did a band called Girl, said the British-born Collen in a call from his California home to talk about the bands induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Friday, March 29, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. It was a postpunk glam rock band, but glam had kind of ended five or six years before. The band was struggling in that environment, and his old friends Joe Elliott, Rick Savage and Steve Clark, stepped up. I knew Joe and Sav and Steve, he said. They used to come down and stay on me mums couch, so we had this friendship going, and it went from there. When Pete Willis [the original guitarist] was not doing great, Joe asked if Id like to help out, Collen said. I came down literally to play the odd solo on Pyromania. That album was released in 1983. Willis was ousted over his drinking he played in several other bands afterward, but now is out of music and runs a property management business in England and Collen was in. Of course, because he was there in the beginning, Willis will be among the inductees for Def Leppard in those ceremonies in Brooklyn. From the get-go, it clicked between Collen and the band, he said. When I first joined the band, thats what I wanted to do take this further, he said. His first full album with the group, 1987s Hysteria, was an example of that. Hysteria had this rocket African drum vibe, all these new guitar textures from the Fixx, the Police, Billy Idol, the Prince stuff, Michael Jackson, Run-DMC all of that, he said. Pour Some Sugar on Me was based on a hip-hop rap vocal meter. The genius behind that was producer Robert John Mutt Lange, who later transformed his then-wife, Shania Twain, into a country star with his production skills. This was back in the 80s, and he [Lange] would go out in his car and listen to a George Jones cassette, Collen recalled. We sing with an American accent, said Collen, and this resonated with Lange, who told the band, You kind of sound like an American art form. I kind of learned my vocal form from Mick Jagger, but I remember getting goose bumps listening to Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin, he said in his thick English accent that hasnt been tempered much at all by living for years in California. We wouldnt sing it like we spoke it, but we didnt realize we were learning [that Americanized sound], he said. Thats your ground, Lange told the group. Thats where you come from. We listened to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and Thin Lizzy, Collen said. But the Def Leppard way was to emphasize those lush vocals, a la bands like Journey, Styx and Foreigner, he said. They were beautifully sung lyrics, but we added a kind of pissed-off Sex Pistols thing to it, he said. Its a very working-class kind of attitude that lets a lot of tension off. I never had teenaged angst as a kid, because I had this rock thing, he said, only half-joking. The violent tendencies escaped through that. Americanized or not, Def Leppard had one thing at its roots, Collen said. We are first and foremost a rock band, he said. I think the real trick is to be open-minded. Thats why whatever the band members political views are, Def Leppard works to keep to them in check and undercover. We let people come in and see a show, Collen said. We have strong political opinions, but we dont air them. Were all about letting people escape. And they do that by keeping on keeping on in the face of both victory and defeat. We played [lousy] clubs, he said. Even in the 90s, after massive success with Pyromania and Hysteria, we were out there playing to half- and third-empty buildings. We just stuck at it. The band used those low points to rally their own spirits, which is why Def Leppard is still playing. A European tour this summer will be followed by a residency in Las Vegas. Can you deal with failure after youve had success? Collen said. We absolutely do. Drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm in a car accident in 1984. Guitarist Steve Clark died of a mixture of prescription drugs and alcohol in 1991. And still the band persevered. Ricks accident still affects him, but its amazing what he does, Collen said. Steve was my best friend, and he lost his life while we were writing songs for Adrenalize. We just keep going at it, he said, perhaps drawing on family strength infused in his DNA. Nothing compares to what our families went through, Collen said. My mum and dad, with the Nazis coming in and blowing up London? I cant even comprehend that kind of thing. Paying your dues is just something we do. And like most musicians, its not really a choice. The first time I ever got drunk I havent had a drink in 31 years I was about 16 and went out to this really rough dancehall place, the Tottenham Royal, he said. I remember seeing this guy, a couple of years older than me, and he was the resident guitar player, Collen said. I thought, This guy does this for a living! I left school, went to work in a factory and was making deliveries on a motorcycle, he said. I was waiting for any excuse [to quit work]. I really liked driving around London on a motorcycle or in a van, learning the whole place. But that moment, that instant, it all changed. I was waiting for any excuse, he said. I remember the last week I was working. Id done gigs the night before and I was driving the band and fell asleep at a stop light. That awakening began the career that has seen him and the surviving members of the band, including guitarist Vivian Campbell and former member Willis, invited to the Barclays Center for the induction ceremony. Thats much to the delight of the bands devout fan base, which saw Def Leppard lead the Rock Halls fan voting in the groups first year on the ballot, despite having been eligible since 2005. Its the Oscars and Golden Globes, said a resigned Collen. Its not about the band. Its a political thing that goes on. . . . . Thats why it never really bothered me. But it IS a big deal, and it actually does make a difference, and not just because your fee goes up, he said. Especially its a big deal for our fans. They would tear up and get all road-ragey and stuff. Its more for them. For him, the induction is just one aspect of the bands legacy. Were just musicians, Collen said. Martin Luther King, Gandhi, THEY have a legacy. Its not as important. Were musicians. Its something that Mutt Lange really pushed us to do, he said. He taught us the difference between ordinary and a level of excellence, and showed a good band how to be great. And they did it together. Its more than a team, Collen said. Weve been there for each other through deaths, births, marriages and divorces. Ive been with Joe Elliott more than with me mum. You dont need to pour any sugar on that to make it sweet. CLEVELAND, Ohio Dr. Nadine Burke Harris first noticed the effects of toxic stress more than a decade ago among the many children with behavioral and learning issues she treated in San Franciscos low-income Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, the pediatrician and current California Surgeon General this morning told a standing-room only crowd attending University Hospitals Arthur and Edwina Burns endowed lecture in diversity. While the most common diagnosis for kids with attention and behavior issues is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, Burke Harris found that many of the kids who might normally receive this label had experienced high levels of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, from extreme poverty and exposure to violence, to neglect or living with a parent who suffered from addiction to drugs or alcohol. For me, that really lit a spark and it got me diving into the research about how these experiences of adversity were affecting the development of my patients brains and bodies, Burke Harris said. Research on ACEs, which began in the mid-1990s, has shown that the more ACEs children experience, the higher the risk of experiencing poor health outcomes throughout life, linking the traumas to failure to thrive, attention and behavior problems, chronic illness in childhood, and heart disease, headaches, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and obesity in adulthood. Exposure to ACEs is widespread: Almost half of U.S. children have been exposed to traumatic experiences, and a 2014 report released by Child Trends showed these children are more likely to bully, repeat grades in school and have learning problems. In that report, exposure to abuse of alcohol or drugs, exposure to neighborhood violence and mental illness were among the most commonly-reported adverse childhood experiences in every state. In Ohio, about 1 in 7 kids has been exposed to more than three of these traumatic experiences and in Cleveland, about 4 in 10 children have experienced two or more ACEs, the most common of which is extreme economic hardship. About 73 percent of children attending the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) received the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps) during the 2017-2018 school year. Treating the problem To identity and combat the impact of these traumatic experiences, which lead to the development of chronic, toxic stress in kids, Burke Harris, a pediatrician and former chief executive of the San Francisco-based Center for Youth Wellness, created a screening tool for trauma in childhood and implemented it in her practice. She found that only 3 percent of children in her practice experienced behavior and learning problems when they had no exposure to trauma. This taught her that even in her low-income, primarily minority community, our children are not broken," she said. These kids behavior was a direct result of toxic doses of adversity they were experiencing, she said. There are many ways to mitigate the effects of toxic stress on children, including meditation, regular exercise, good nutrition and supportive relationships with adult mentors or parents. One thing that science shows us unequivocally is that the earlier we start, the better, Burke Harris said. Skin-to-skin contact between caregivers and infants, for example, can help reduce stress and promote healthy brain development in babies. Buffering stress for women during pregnancy can also have an impact on how a mother and child fare, and even improve the chances of a babys survival, Burke Harris said. When were thinking about factors to improve pregnancy outcomes if were not thinking about ACEs and how to mitigate the impacts of toxic stress, then were not doing all that we could, she said. The doctor called for increased awareness of and screening for ACEs among pediatricians. Of the 33,000 U.S. pediatricians, 11 percent are aware of the research and only 4 percent are screening for these childhood traumas according to a 2016 study. I believe this has to change, she said. In California, a bill passed in 2017 will require that all children receiving healthcare through that states Medicaid program receive a trauma screening starting in 2020. A community response The cure for toxic stress cant be delivered by doctors and the healthcare system alone, Burke Harris said, and requires a community-level response. This understanding needs to be infusing every aspect of our community and culture, she said. In schools, for example, meditation has been shown to reduce school violence, increase test scores and improve rates of depression, anxiety and anger among students. There is no one program that will fix these problems, she said. She believes we will only see significant progress when we are implementing solutions in schools, faith communities, after-school programs and in the care of adults. The solution also has to come from changing the environment that children grow up in, including exposure to toxins such as lead and air pollution, she said. We need to be changing the public health system and structures to remove those... or minimize those as much as possible. Communities dont have to eliminate all adversity for every child in order to have an impact, though. Any actions, whether on an individual or community-wide level, that mitigate or buffer the impacts of trauma in children and families will improve the futures of children, even if they are still exposed to adversity, Burke Harris said. When kids get these safe, stable and nurturing relationships and environments, exposure to traumatic experiences are much less likely to lead to lasting harm. Burke Harris will also speak today at The City Club of Cleveland at 12 p.m. Tickets are sold out, but her speech will be live-streamed at cityclub.org. OXFORD, Ohio Police say one of two 12-year-old boys ignited a modified pyrotechnic device that injured both of them, one critically, on Tuesday. Family members tell WLWT Channel 5 the two boys are not to blame, saying the boys found the device in an alley near the Miami University campus and that someone else is responsible. They just didnt deserve this, the mother of one of the boys tells WLWT. This was innocent kids playing. They were riding their bikes and seen something shiny. One of the boys remains in Cincinnati Childrens Hospital with severe injuries that include the loss of his left hand, the Dayton Daily News reports. The second boy was treated for minor injuries at McCullough-Hyde Hospital and was also treated at Childrens Hospital. The Daily News reports that police were told that the boys say they saw a cardboard box in the alley and that it ignited when they hit it with their bikes. However, police say they determined this didnt happen because there was no damage to the bikes. Instead, authorities believe one of the boys ignited a modified device. This was not your everyday Black Cat firecracker or lady finger, it had been modified, Specialist Mike Grimes, commander of the bomb squad, tells the Daily News. Police are continuing to investigate the incident, according to reports. To comment on this story, visit Wednesdays crime and courts comment section. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Michael Symon is caught up in a Las Vegas labor dispute. Why? Symon runs a spin-off of his East 4th Street Mabels BBQ at the Palms Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. Workers at the Palms say the casino and resort has dismissed their vote to unionize. So the union is organizing pickets across the country outside of businesses and restaurants with ties to the Palms, including the Cleveland location of Symons Mabels BBQ. The Cleveland picket is scheduled for dinnertime on Wednesday. Read more from the original report below: US 'to recognise Israeli sovereignty over Golan Heights' Netanyahu urged move at Wailing Wall with Pompeo (ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, MARCH 21 - The US may announce the recognition of Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights next week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to be received at the White House by US president Donald Trump. Several media reported the news, citing unnamed US and Israeli sources. On Wednesday, in receiving US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Netanyahu renewed his appeal to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, noting that Israel had recently revealed the presence and actions carried out by the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah - backed by Iran - along the Syrian border of the Golan Heights. Netanyahu has repeatedly warned that if Israel were not in the Golan Heights, ''we would have Iran on the beaches of the Sea of Galilee''. Two-thirds of the Golan Heights were taken over by Israel in the Six Days' War of 1967 with Syria and annexed with a 1981 law that has never been recognized by the international community, which considers it ''occupied territory''. On Thursday afternoon, Pompeo visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, accompanied by PM Netanyahu and US ambassador David Friedman. The visit was the first by a US government official to the place - located in East Jerusalem, considered ''occupied'' by the international community - in the company of an Israeli political representative. On his last visit to Israel, Trump had visited the Wailing Wall alone. Media reported that the gesture could be interpreted as a tacit recognition by the US of Israeli sovereignty over the place. Photos published by the media show both Pompeo and Netanyahu sliding thank-you notes between the stones of the Wailing Wall, in line with a longstanding tradition. (ANSAmed). CLEVELAND, Ohio Native Americans and others are planning to demonstrate outside Progressive Field at the Cleveland Indians home opener on April 1. This will be the 27th year that Native Americans have gathered on Opening Day to protest the teams name and logo, which they say are demeaning. The team announced more than a year ago that it would no longer feature the red-faced, buck-toothed and hook-nosed Chief Wahoo on its uniforms beginning in the 2019 season. The team will still sell merchandise featuring Chief Wahoo. Phil Yenyo, an Aztec Indian and frequent participant in the demonstrations, says changing the name of the team is as important as dumping Chief Wahoo. In a post online promoting this years demonstration, the Committee of 500 Years of Dignity and Resistance, which has sponsored the demonstration for years, is urging participants to stay on the topic of racism against the indigenous people. The post also asks participants to be respectful of fans and refrain from using vulgar language and any attempts to harass fans. The protest begins at around 2 p.m. on the Ontario Avenue side of the ballfield. You can read more about the issue and demonstration in the link below. CLEVELAND, Ohio Secretary of the Army Mark Esper visited the mayors office today as part of the Armys new efforts to ramp up recruiting in Americas big cities. Esper said during a press conference that the visit resulted from revamping their entire recruiting system after the Army fell short of its 2018 recruiting goal for the first time since 2005. One of the most important things we did, which is why Im here today in Cleveland, is we want to also pivot, maintain our core base of recruiting, but also pivot more and focus more on Americas 22 largest cities, Cleveland being one of them, he said. We go out there and reach kids where they are, he added. Other cities Esper has visited on this campaign include Seattle, Pittsburgh, Boston, Los Angeles and Denver. Esper said he spoke to officials in the mayors office about possible recruiting events the Army might sponsor in the city. These could include an Army Week with a large recruit sign-up and oath-taking at a Browns game. We might sponsor other activities where we could really raise the profile of the Army, either by ourselves or in conjunction with things that the city sponsors on an annual basis, Esper said. He also said the emphasis also could include recruiting for the National Guard and Army Reserve units that provide an opportunity for young men and women who want to do more, who want to serve, who want to learn some skills, but dont want to leave the area because of family, friends. Its just another great path for young kids in this area to serve their country and benefit themselves at the same time, he added. Esper was also asked about the possible impact on Ohio military installations of President Donald Trumps plan to use military funds to build a border wall on the Mexican border. Well, well see. Nothings been taken yet, Esper said. I know we have a national emergency declaration. And so were going to fully support the commander in chief. He added that if Congress approves the Armys fiscal year 2020 budget, Im confident . . . the Army will be fine in terms of readiness and modernization. Part of that modernization includes $714 million the Army plans to pump into production of the M1 Abrams tank at Ohios Lima Army Tank Plant, where Trump visited Wednesday. Esper said the Army is changing its focus to address a possible big fight scenario with such strategic competitors as China and Russia. So whats really happening down in Lima is really the production and upgrade of the Armys main battle tank, which will be crucial to how we fight in the future, Esper said. He added that the Army is undergoing a complete renaissance in how we fight, how we man, how we organize, how we train and equip the force, and its all focused on getting back to that core mission of fighting, winning those big fights. COLUMBUS, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Thursday called for additional transparency from JobsOhio, including calling on the the states private economic development arm to more promptly share its employee salaries. Theres no reason that cannot be made public immediately, DeWine told reporters, elaborating slightly on comments he made during a meeting of JobsOhios board of directors, the first board meeting hes attended since becoming governor in January. As it stands, JobsOhio, which was created in 2011 by former Gov. John Kasich and Republican state lawmakers as a private organization, is exempt from state public-records laws and most ethics laws. But, lawmakers required it to disclose its employee titles and corresponding salaries but not their actual names once a year. It also reports salaries for its top employees to the IRS in public filings, but that information lags a year behind. They should not only be willing to do that once per year. It has no impact really on JobsOhios ability to carry out negotiations or do any kinds of deals. And thats just a small example, DeWine said. He didnt spell out exactly what he wants to see beyond that, but said he thinks JobsOhio will be able to make the changes he wants without changing the law that created the organization and dictates what it can do. I dont think theres legislation really needed. I think that JobsOhio if they use the criteria that I have just set out in my talk with them, they can find a good pathway here that accommodates both the need for private business negotiations and transparency, DeWine said. JobsOhio drew some criticism from state Attorney General Dave Yost and others recently after its annual filing showed its outgoing CEO, John Minor, made $621,322.62 in total compensation last year. It still has not said how much it will pay its new CEO, JP Nauseef, whom DeWine and JobsOhio board members selected to replace Minor last month. A JobsOhio spokesman did not immediately comment on DeWines remarks. During the JobsOhio board meeting, DeWine praised the work the organization has done since Gov. John Kasich and state lawmakers created it in 2011, but told board members hed like to see the organization continue to evolve. Lt. Gov. Jon Husted also attended and addressed board members. DeWine called for two things. First, he said he supports the design of JobsOhio as being able to keep some information secret while negotiating with businesses, but believes the organization can do more to be transparent and promote public confidence in its operations. I think its very important that JobsOhio has the ability to keep quiet on negotiations for deals that are in the making. But its also important for the public to have confidence in what goes on at JobsOhio, DeWine said. And those are not inconsistent. Second, he said hed like to see JobsOhio work more with TourismOhio, the state governments tourism agency. (JobsOhio was created to largely replace the Ohio Department of Development, which oversees TourismOhio.) He said he thinks the mission of promoting Ohio as a place to live or visit is related to promoting Ohio as a place for companies to locate. DeWine, who was under the weather on Thursday, joked hes getting sick of seeing Michigan tourism ads on TV. I jokingly say, if I see one more Pure Michigan ad, Ill throw up, DeWine said. COLUMBUS, Ohio As the new director of the Ohio Department of Medicaid, Maureen Corcoran said she has heard plenty of criticism that state health care officials under former Gov. John Kasich were not straightforward and transparent. There was a perception is a perception that maybe in the past, things were presented in a way that was a little bit more rosy than reflecting some of the real difficulties that go along with managing the Medicaid program, Corcoran said. In January, shortly before he was sworn in, Gov. Mike DeWine named Corcoran as the new Medicaid director. Speaking Wednesday at a Columbus heath care forum hosted by the Center for Community Solutions, Corcoran made promises to be direct and provide data. She repeated the same remarks earlier in the day at a budget hearing in an Ohio House committee. She said the criticism has come from everyone including lawmakers and providers. Sen. Bill Coley, a Cincinnati-area Republican, sometimes got into rounds of arguments with Ohio Medicaid administrators in committee meetings. He said Wednesday he remembers sometimes feeling he was being deceived -- or that the deputy directors were misinformed when they were testifying. I think Director Corcoran understands the frustrations I and other lawmakers had with her department," he said, adding that he believes she will be terrific in the role. Were going to put out more information, we have different kinds of dashboards were going to begin to make public, she said. Barbara Sears --who was the last Medicaid director under Kasich and before that, a Republican legislator who sponsored bills for Medicaid expansion -- said her department worked to be transparent. We worked very diligently to get that information out in the manner (lawmakers) were requesting it," she said Thursday morning. There were occasions -- and I know there were -- when they were requesting something that we simply werent able to produce. When the data didnt exist in the form lawmakers requested, Sears said her team met with them and tried to drill down on what they were looking for and found answers. During Sears time at Medicaid, the department undertook several initiatives. Among them, foster children were put under Medicaid managed care insurance companies, the department upgraded the Medicaid eligibility system to work more efficiently with county job and family service agencies that assist people applying for Medicaid, and behavioral health providers began billing managed care organizations -- which required new billing codes and computer systems. She ordered studies of Medicaid expansion to provide the state data on its successes, she said. These topics are very, very complex, she said. Corcoran said her background as a nurse was science-intensive and she wants to provide more data. I promised (state lawmakers) that it was important to me that they understand I cant come up and tell them everything is perfect, she said. There is no a health care system in the world that is perfect. "And by trying to give them a realistic picture of where I saw some of the strengths and weaknesses, that was not a criticism, but it was important that they understand it. COLUMBUS, Ohio A federal judge improperly praised Ohio Gov. Mike DeWines decision to delay an execution based on the judges scathing critique of the states lethal injection method, the state attorney general said. In a court filing earlier this week, Attorney General David Yost said Magistrate Judge Michael Merz' remarks were an improper use of the judge's position. At issue is a series of execution delays ordered by DeWine, a Republican, after Merz raised concerns about Ohio's lethal injection method. After the governor issued his first delay - of the February execution of death row inmate Warren Henness - Merz said that decision "embodies excellent public policy." The judge also said he was "deeply gratified" by DeWine's expression of trust in Merz' lethal injection ruling. "The Court fully expects that the Governor will do whatever is needed legally to keep the public commitment he has made, the important first step being the reprieve of Warren Henness," Merz wrote last month. The attorney general said judges "are not supposed to use the federal bench as a bully pulpit to influence state policy." The judge's "statements needlessly (and perhaps unintentionally) entangle the federal judiciary in a policy dispute on a hot-button issue," Yost said. Merz declined to comment Wednesday. DeWine has ordered the prisons department to come up with a new lethal injection method, a process that could take months or years. Yost says that wouldn't prevent the state from carrying out executions earlier with its current system. The governor "has announced his intention to develop a new protocol, but he has never suggested that he would deny death-row inmates the choice to use the current protocol," Yost said. Ohio could still use the current method if a federal appeals court rejects Merz' criticism of Ohio's method or if the state can't come up with a new method, Yost said. Merz said on Jan. 14 that Ohio's system could cause inmates severe pain because the first drug, the sedative midazolam, doesn't render them deeply enough unconscious. He suggested inmates could experience a sensation similar to waterboarding. But Merz stopped short of halting executions, saying attorneys for Henness hadn't shown that viable execution alternatives exist in Ohio. Afterward, the governor postponed Henness' execution until September and then three more executions into the fall and then 2020. "Ohio's not going to execute someone under my watch when a federal judge has found it to be cruel and unusual punishment," DeWine said in January. A DeWine spokesman confirmed that executions could resume if Merz' order was overturned by a higher court, or if the state created a new lethal injection method that was found constitutional. "If the court decision was overturned on the basis of fact, the governor would certainly look if situation has changed," press secretary Dan Tierney said Tuesday. Henness was sentenced to death for killing 51-year-old Richard Myers in Columbus in 1992. Myers had been helping Henness find a drug treatment for his wife, authorities said. CLEVELAND -- Gov. Mike DeWine wants to save Lake Erie. President Donald Trump wants to wreck it. Numbers make the case. DeWines budget proposal would set aside $900 million for state investments in the health of Lake Erie and Ohios fragile waterways, an investment designed to achieve real solutions to protect Ohios water. Our morally bankrupt liar-in-chiefs budget would slash federal funding to keep the Great Lakes clean from $300 million in fiscal 2019 to $30 million in fiscal 2020 - cuts so steep few would fail to grasp the devastation they could cause. This marks the third straight budget in which Trump has tried to obliterate programs aimed at preserving the worlds largest surface body of fresh water. Perhaps hes forgotten the Great Lakes also border the all-important swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trumps sycophants and the fact Ohio is infected with so many of them helps explain the states dramatic decline would argue his effort to pollute Lake Erie isnt worth all the drama, as his cuts to Great Lakes funding will be largely, or entirely, restored by Congress. Its a specious claim. A budget describes an elected officials priorities. It is statement of what a president wants to happen. DeWines budget is compelling evidence he understands Lake Eries importance to Ohios economy. And it is evidence of a vision that reaches beyond his time in office. Trumps budget is compelling evidence he does not care about the Great Lakes states. If drinking water for Greater Clevelanders and millions of others becomes impaired, so be it. Ironically, the last time Trump visited Northeast Ohio was Nov. 5, in an IX Center rally held, in large part, to boost DeWines candidacy for governor. Moments after lumbering onto the stage, Trump began his litany of lies with, I love Ohio. The facts argue otherwise. More than 11 million people drink Lake Eries water. Yet recent years have seen serious and spreading blooms of toxic algae. And this is just one of the gathering threats that would pollute the water, harm tourism and put the fishing industry at risk. In the wake off Trumps annual attempt to turn the Great Lakes into the planets largest cesspool, Sen. Rob Portman, a Cincinnati Republican, promised to lead the effort to block Trumps assault on the Rust Belt. Portman has been instrumental in protecting Great Lakes funding in the past, so its reasonable to expect hell succeed. For the past few years, no matter whether it was a Republican or Democratic-led administration, there have been attempts to cut or eliminate funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, said Portman, in a statement released by his office. What Portman conveniently failed to mention in this they-all-do-it explanation was this: Former President Barack Obama was the one who created the Great Lakes Restoration Fund that Trump wants to cut, although Obama then unwisely sought a 16.6 percent reduction in that cleanup funding. Perhaps that was because Portman knows the person now seeking a 90 percent cut is President Trump, the same president Portman has unconscionably endorsed for re-election. Republican senators must tread lightly with their unstable leader, a man who falls in love with murderous foreign leaders, but spent last weekend belittling an American hero dead seven months. Back in Ohio, DeWines unprecedented investment in saving Lake Erie still requires more details on where the money will come from and approval from the Republican-run legislature, a group already showing signs of continuing the long Ohio tradition of putting their own political needs ahead of the states. A professed love affair with guns he doesnt truly believe, and some deeply troubling positions on social issues notwithstanding, DeWines first 70 days as governor have exceeded every expectation. He has shown more understanding and vision about Lake Eries importance to this region than any elected official from Cleveland or Cuyahoga County has in decades. And the new governor wants to move decisively to expand quality preschool programs for poor families, and wage war against two of Clevelands most dreadful problems lead paint poisoning and alarming infant mortality rates. DeWine seems to understand perfectly what so many of our own elected officials understand not at all: that Greater Cleveland is in trouble. He should run for mayor. Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealers editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009. To reach Brent Larkin: blarkin@cleveland.com Have something to say about this topic? Use the comments to share your thoughts. Then, stay informed when readers reply to your comments by using the Follow option at the top of the comments, and look for updates via the small blue bell in the lower right as you look at more stories on cleveland.com. CLEVELAND -- As the 2020 Democratic presidential field continues to fill to overflowing, those of us on the right have a hard truth to face and the sooner we face it and stop fooling ourselves, the better: Donald Trump is not going to win any more national elections. Period. That was proven last November in the 2018 midterms, when the Democrats took back the House for one reason and one reason only: A backlash by women and independents against Trumps boorish behavior and bullying style. After he was elected president, Trump did much of what he was elected to do. He nominated and saw confirmed conservative justices and judges who would follow the role carved out for them by the Constitution. He took a strong stand against illegal immigration, despite being opposed at every turn by cherry-picked liberal judges. He took the bureaucratic foot off the necks of the business community, eliminating many of the regulations that were strangling growth. He pushed back against international tariffs that were unfair to U.S. businesses. Those things, plus the sweeping tax reform, helped spark a reborn economy that has the stock market, job growth and GDP numbers at levels few economists thought likely, or even possible. With all those things going for it, the GOP should have been set in 2018 to cruise to an even larger congressional cushion than they had going in. The reason they didnt was Trump. Despite the good things that happened in the first two years of his watch, his unpresidential behavior and his blundering administrative style, faithfully chronicled in a constant drumbeat of criticism from the major national media outlets, were so off-putting that even people who agreed with his decisions and were better off as a result allowed themselves to become part of the mini-Blue Wave at the polls. There is no reason to believe that things will be any different in 2020. After 20 more months of investigations and subpoenas, there is every reason to think they will be worse. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tacitly acknowledged as much with her recent pronouncement that she would not seek impeachment. It wasnt a statesmanlike decision for the good of the country. She was simply in step with the wisdom of former Ohio Gov. James A. Rhodes, who said, when asked why he didnt fire a member of his staff who was embarrassing himself daily: You dont take the punching bag out of the gym. Trump will be the Democrats best weapon in 2020. So the Republicans have two choices: They can scan the list of announced liberal/socialist candidates on the D side and pick the one they think they can live with. Or, they can begin making plans to replace Trump at the top of the ticket in 2020. Here is what the country is facing: Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar; U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard; former U.S. Reps. Beto ORourke and John Delaney; former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper; Washington Gov. Jay Inslee; former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro; businessman Andrew Yang and author Marianne Williamson. Former Vice President Joe Biden seems to have inadvertently stumbled into the race over the weekend, and soon to join will be South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Look over that list. If you are a conservative, or even an independent, is there anyone in there you want to see in the White House for four years, abetting a solidly Democratic House and maybe even Senate? Do you want any of them replacing two or three Supreme Court justices, undoing the economic decisions that have been successful, and setting immigration policy? Warren, at a town hall meeting Monday in Jackson, Mississippi, and in a tweet, vowed to lead an effort to give slavery reparations to blacks. Slavery is a stain on America & we need to address it head on, she tweeted. I believe its time to start a national, full-blown conversation about reparations. Slavery is a stain on America & we need to address it head on. I believe its time to start a national, full-blown conversation about reparations. I support the bill in the House to support a congressional panel of experts so that our nation can do whats right & begin to heal. Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 19, 2019 Time? It is a stain that hundreds of thousands of American soldiers died trying to erase 150 years ago, but that wont get Warren any votes in 2020. Harris has also spoken in favor of reparations, as has Castro. Many of the Democrat candidates, including Warren, Harris and Gillibrand, Buttigieg and ORourke, say they havent ruled out solving the conservative tilt of the Supreme Court by expanding it and adding as many as six more (we can assume) liberal justices if they take power in 2020, taking a page from Franklin D. Roosevelts court-packing book. Several, including Warren and Buttigieg, also are advocating for getting rid of the Electoral College, and others, such as Harris and ORourke, say theyre open to the idea. It would have the effect of allowing the large coastal states and cities to have their way with national elections forevermore. Yang suggests a Freedom Dividend that would give each American $1,000 a month. Hell get the money from a value-added tax on companies that benefit from automation, such as Amazon and Google. Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist who seemed far out on the radical left fringe only three years ago now seems almost a sensible centrist. One of those people, if Trump is the GOP nominee in 2020, will be your president come Jan. 20, 2021. Mitt Romney, time to man up and jump in. Nikki Haley, time to woman up and take on the challenge. John Kasich, maybe your time is now. Somebody had better do it. I shudder to think of the alternative. Ted Diadiun is a member of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. To reach Ted Diadiun: tdiadiun@cleveland.com Have something to say about this topic? Use the comments to share your thoughts. Then, stay informed when readers reply to your comments by using the Follow option at the top of the comments, and look for updates via the small blue bell in the lower right as you look at more stories on cleveland.com. LIMA, Ohio Republican President Donald Trump, during a trip to Ohio Wednesday, again laid the blame for the idling of the General Motors plant in Lordstown on the more than 1,400 now-laid off workers. Along with the workers, Trump also attacked U.S. Sen. John McCain and went on a tirade about renewable energy during his appearance at the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center the site where the M1 Abrams tank is built. In his speech to the around 1,000 employees, Trump said the workers at the Lordstown GM factory, which up until its recent shuttering produced the Chevy Cruze, didnt try to save the facility. GM announced the Lordstown plants shutdown in November as part of a plan to lay off more than 14,000 workers in the United States and Canada. They couldve kept that gorgeous plant, Trump said. Lower your dues. Lower your dues. His statements about union dues are curious. Union dues are paid by employees, not by the company. Regardless of the accuracy of his statements, Trumps comments were clearly intended to blame the union workers for the plants demise in the latest bit of a feud that has at times approached the bizarre. Presidents rarely tell bargaining units how to operate. It all started over the weekend when Trump attacked UAW Local 1112 President Dave Green, head of the union that represents Lordstown workers, apparently in a fit of rage over a brief appearance by Green on Fox News. Trump tweeted that Green needed to get his act together and stop complaining. Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce. G.M. let our Country down, but other much better car companies are coming into the U.S. in droves. I want action on Lordstown fast. Stop complaining and get the job done! 3.8% Unemployment! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2019 Ohio Democrats were quick to defend Green and the union. Democratic presidential hopeful Beto ORourke even traveled to Lordstown personally to meet with Green on Monday. The attack on the UAW workers was part of a larger criticism Trump leveled at union leaders during his Wednesday speech. Mostly, he criticized them for supporting Democrats. Green did not respond to a request for comment. Trump may not have taken into account that there were efforts to save the factory. Bernie Moreno, who owns a string of successful car dealerships in Northeast Ohio, tried negotiating a deal to buy between 150,000 and 180,000 Chevy Cruzes for a ride-hailing business venture, which would have kept the plant open at least temporarily, according to reports. Earlier in his speech, Trump said GM CEO Mary Barra was moving too slowly in getting the Lordstown plant operational again either through new production or selling it to another manufacturer. Republicans sat by Trumps side at the Lima tank plant while he went after the auto workers. Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, U.S. Sen. Rob Portman and U.S. Reps. Mike Turner, Warren Davidson and Jim Jordan were all in attendance. Husted even seemed to make a joke about Trumps attacks on Green during his opening remarks. President Trump keeps us in his thoughts and in his mind and on the minds of others and in his plans and sometimes even in his tweets, Husted said. A spokesman for Husted later clarified that he was talking about Trumps penchant for tweeting about Ohio, not specifically about Green. Trumps rhetoric at the Lima plant was a clear contrast to the situation in Lordstown less than 200 miles away. For most of the speech, he boasted about how well the economy was doing, even bringing along charts and graphs to point to over the course of 40 minutes. He even delivered some good news to workers at the Lima plant, which faced closure under Democratic President Barack Obama as the need for M1 Abrams tanks has declined. I am very proud to report that 400 new jobs are coming in here to Lima, Trump said. Compared to just a few years ago we are doubling the size of the workforce. The presidents celebration of jobs at the Lima facility and his declaration of his commitment to funding the military left out some crucial details about his proposed border wall which, in a rare move for Trump, he didnt bring up. If Trumps declaration of a national emergency holds up in court, his proposed border wall would siphon off more than $100 million from Ohio, though the Lima plant would be unaffected. He repeated a similar line to one he delivered in Youngstown in 2017 about manufacturing jobs, saying they were all coming back. At times, though, the president veered off into rants. One particularly noticeable target was McCain, an Arizona Republican, former prisoner of war and foil of Trumps who died last year and was honored as a hero. Trump went on a tangent about how he did not like the longtime senator and former Republican presidential candidate, saying McCain did nothing for veterans and calling McCain a hypocrite for his last-minute vote to torpedo the GOPs effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which, as president, I had to approve, Trump said. I dont care about this, but I didnt get a thank you. And he went on a tear against renewable energy as well, claiming that people who live next to wind turbines see their property values decrease significantly. Wind turbines are not typically found in residential neighborhoods and instead are clustered on farms in the country, including outside Lima. But Wednesdays appearance wasnt supposed to be a political event and it often showed. His attacks were often met with only half-hearted enthusiasm and even outright silence from the audience, a far cry from his campaign rallies where throngs of supporters praise his every word. Meanwhile, in Canton, Democrats held a counter-rally criticizing Trump for not helping the workers in Lordstown. U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, a Youngstown-area Democrat whose district includes Lordstown, said in a statement it was clear the president cared little about the workers. Northeast Ohio is set to lose more than $3 billion in economic activity, and what is the President doing to help? He attacked union leaders like Dave Green, who are fighting hard to save this plant and standing up for its employees, said Ryan, who is considering a run for president. His disrespect toward Dave is disgraceful. After Trump left Lima, he traveled to North Canton for a high-dollar fundraiser. Tickets started at $2,800 for the reception. A picture with Trump cost $15,000, while dinner cost $50,000 per person. One Democrat noted that the $50,000 price for dinner is only about $3,000 less than the median household income of Lordstown. This story has been updated with a clarification from Husteds office. CLEVELAND, Ohio U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge said Thursday that she didnt think a far-left candidate could beat Republican President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Fudge, a Warrensville Heights Democrat, said during an interview with the cleveland.com/Plain Dealer editorial board that she thought three or four candidates could win out of the field of more than a dozen. The congresswoman also touched on a number of other subjects, from her new position as chair of the subcommittee evaluating voting rights to her aborted challenge of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. I believe in winning, said Fudge, who has been a vocal critic of Trump. Im not sure somebody far left can win. I might be wrong. Im about as liberal as they come, but Im also pragmatic and understand how government runs too. I would love it if a far left liberal could win, but I dont think thats going to happen. Fudge said she planned to stay out of the presidential race for the time being, but did say there were several candidates who she liked, both personally and professionally. She did not elaborate on everyone she thought could win, but said former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris -- who will headline a Cuyahoga County Democratic Party dinner in April -- were contenders. I dont think Bernie (Sanders) has a big shot of winning. I really dont, Fudge said. I know hes up there because of the name recognition and his last race but I talk to a lot of people and I talk to a lot of young people. And the young people who were with him last time are not with him this time. I dont see him having the same kind of support he had from last time. I could be really, really wrong. Fudge, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, gained national attention after the 2018 election when she announced her intention to challenge Pelosi for the speaker position. Eventually, a deal was reached to give Pelosi who will headline the Ohio Democratic Partys annual dinner in May the gavel in exchange for a transition plan to the next speaker and including more people of color in party leadership and influential committees. Fudge said she was happy with the way everything turned out and thought Pelosi was doing a good job as speaker. My run was more that we have to be at the table, but the other thing that I think is important to understand is that I couldve come really close to winning, Fudge said. Thats what made me a person that they didnt want in that race. As part of the deal, Fudge was chosen as chair of the subcommittee tasked with gathering information on voting rights and voter suppression across the country. Shes traveled to several states, including Georgia and Texas, to examine efforts to circumvent the Voting Rights Act of 1965, portions of which were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court for relying on old voter data. Were talking about a democracy in Venezuela, in Syria, in Iran and we stop our own people from voting, Fudge said. Its just the height of hypocrisy. Its just awful. A committee hearing will also be held in Ohio, she said. Here are some other key points from the interview with Fudge: -Fudge said Republicans in Congress are mostly okay with Trumps policies, they just dont like his brash style. Most people think that he is the idiot that he is, Fudge said. They dont like how he does things, but they like what he does. Most of the GOP are afraid of Trump, she said. The other thing is, hes a bully, Fudge said. One of them put it this way to me: Marcia, we dont want to wake up one day and be the subject of one of his tweets. Thats how they think. -She said she supports both automatic voter registration and vote by mail. She thinks early voting sites in Ohio need to be expanded from just one spot per county. -Fudge thought Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democrat, would have won her 2018 election had it not been for voter suppression. -Fudge said Supreme Court justices should be term-limited, possibly at 12 years, though she doesnt see a need to expand the court from nine members. -Fudge said she wants poverty and race to be key issues in the 2020 election, noting that neither of the subjects were broached during the Republican debates in 2016. I dont recall one question coming from the commentators about poverty, about race, Fudge said. Think about it. We have to ask them the question and put them on record so we can then continue the conversation. But we dont do it. If youre going to have a conversation with people who are running for office in a country that is becoming more black and brown every day, we ought to hold these people accountable for asking those questions that people want to hear. -Fudge was particularly critical of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District and Eric Gordon, its chief executive officer. We thought turning it over to the mayor was the great be-all, end-all, and theyre just as bad or worse as they were before, she said. Somebody has to say, You know what, Cleveland Municipal School District, youre failing and were going to hold you accountable. We talk about it, but nobody holds anybody accountable in this town. I dont have anything personal against Eric Gordon, I just think hes doing a horrible job. Nothing is changing. And if we continue with the status quo, we are never going to get better. She was unimpressed by the recent upgrade for CMSD on the state report card from an F-grade to a D-grade. Were just at a D. Something is wrong, Fudge said. I dont know what the answer is but somebody needs to find out what it is. Look at it. Not just accept a D. If I came home with a D, my mother would put me on punishment. They get a D and an F every year and nobody does anything. We talk about it when the report card comes out, and then everybody lets it go and we talk about something else. Gordon responded in a statement: "While I have not recently spoken with Representative Fudge about our progress, I would be the first to say while we are not yet where we want to be, we have made significant improvement over the past several years. "On our most recent report card, we outpaced 113 other Ohio school districts on K-3 literacy improvement, posted test score gains that grew at twice the state average, have posted a 22.4 percentage point gain on graduation rates over the past seven years (the third fastest growing of Ohios 610 school districts) and eliminated the gaps in graduation rates for African-American and Hispanic students in Cleveland compared to their peers state-wide. "Weve also brought financial stability to the district and addressed what was rapidly declining enrollment while working hard to restore public trust. Congresswoman Fudge is absolutely correct that we have a lot more to do to achieve at the levels our kids and community deserve, and my team and I continue to work hard on that core responsibility today. I respect the Congresswomans concerns and welcome her support in advocating for the policies, resources, and supports that CMSD and urban districts across Northeast Ohio all want and need. This story has been updated with a response from Eric Gordon. COLUMBUS, OhioMetroHealth System in Cleveland would get the rights to discoveries and patents made by its researchers, under legislation passed by the Ohio House this week. House Bill 50, which now heads to the Ohio Senate for consideration, seeks to give MetroHealth, which receives county support, the same benefits as hospitals affiliated with public colleges and universities in the state. HB 50 hasnt been controversial at least not in the House, which passed the measure 93-0 on Wednesday. Similar legislation was voted out of a Senate committee late last year, but the legislative session ended before the full Senate could give final approval. State Rep. Dave Greenspan, a Westlake Republican, said he introduced the bill not to address an existing dispute at MetroHealth, but rather to forestall any potential fights in the future over inventions developed there. "They just want to make sure they would have the same protections as OSU Medical Center, Greenspan said of MetroHealth. Laura McBride, MetroHealths deputy general counsel, testified last month before the House Civil Justice Committee that HB 50 would also give MetroHealth the power to commercialize any discoveries made at its facilities. Developments in health care, including reimbursement challenges and increased competition on all fronts, have made it abundantly clear to us that we need well-defined statutory protections and guidance in terms of these matters, McBride said in her written remarks. Competition has increased and the ability to support innovation is very important for recruiting and retaining the professionals -- doctors, scientists, nurses, and others -- who are looking to lead such innovation. (ANSAmed) - CREMA, MARCH 21 - Ousseynou Sy, the man who hijacked a bus with around 50 schoolchildren on board and set light to it on Wednesday, has definitive conviction for harassing a minor, sources said on Thursday. Sy, a 47-year-old from Senegal who has Italian citizenship, was handed a definitive one-year suspended prison term in 2018 in relation to harassment of a 17-year-old girl that took place in 2010. The man was also convicted for drink driving in 2007, the sources said. He managed to hide the conviction from his employers - Autoguidovie, the company that operated the school bus - by going on sick leave during his ban from driving, according to investigative sources. The terror of the children from a middle school in the northern province of Cremona lasted for almost 40 minutes as the man, angry at government migrant policy, confiscated their phones and said no one would survive. But one boy, 13-year-old Rahmi, managed to keep hold of his phone and call the police. After being stopped by police, Sy got off the bus and set it alight, having poured petrol inside. But the Carabinieri managed to get the children out by smashing windows at the back. Investigators are trying to track down a video that Sy recorded before the hijacking, giving his reasons for it, and which he sent to acquaintances in Italy and Senegal. He mentioned the video during questioning late on Wednesday, sources said.(ANSAmed). CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A crash on Interstate 90 near Dead Mans Curve has backed up traffic during the Thursday morning commute. The Ohio Department of Transportation reported the crash shortly before 7:30 a.m. on Interstate 90 in the westbound right lanes, ODOT says. The lanes are closed and drivers should expect delays around this area. Police have not said if anyone was hurt in the crash or released any details about the cause of the crash. Turkish and Greek defense chiefs to meet, tension in Aegean Announcement by Ministers Katrougalos and Cavusoglu in Antalya (ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, MARCH 21 - The defense chiefs of Turkey and Greece may meet soon to draw up measures for mutual trust expected to attenuate tension that has arisen over disputes concerning sovereignty in the Aegean Sea. The announcement was made by Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in a joint press conference with his Greek counterpart Georgios Katrougalos in the Turkish city of Antalya. The visit aimed to reduce tension after recent trading of accusations between the two countries. Katrougalos underscored the desire to push forward with a ''positive agenda'' even on other issues, such as that of Cyprus and control over energy resources off the island. ''We know that Turkey has some rights over energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Greek minister said. (ANSAmed). 12 civilians die in Syria's Al Hol refugee camp About 2,000 more have arrived in recent hours (ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, MARCH 21 - (ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, MARCH 21 - Twelve civilians, including women and children, have died in recent hours in eastern Syria after arriving in a severely overcrowded refugee camp near the border with Iraq. The camp is filled with people leaving an area of conflict between the Islamic State (ISIS) and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Reports were from Arab media, which quoted a statement for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a British NGO. On Wednesday, the UN said that there are over 70,000 civilians in the camp, mostly minors and women, while IRC said that there are 72,000, with 2,000 having arrived in recent hours. Since February, 138 people including many infants have died in fleeing from eastern Syria, where the SDF are fighting ISIS in the Baghouz area, towards al-Hol. (ANSAmed). CNBC's Jim Cramer on Wednesday told a caller he likes to look for stocks that will perform well despite the ongoing trade discussions between the United States and China. "I like companies that I think will do well either way," the "Mad Money" host said. "Maybe take a look at Nike. Big, big in China. Stock's going down. I think it reports a good quarter." Trust issues (R-L) Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and other Trump Administration officials sit down with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He (L), Central Bank Governor Yi Gang (2nd L) and other Chinese vice ministers and senior officials for negotiations in the Diplomatic Room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building January 30, 2019 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images Trade negotiations between the United States and China have boiled down to whether President Donald Trump can trust the Chinese or not, Cramer said. And history is playing a huge role in the discussion. "It's not about the trade gap, people. It's about the trust gap," the host said. "Until investors realize that's what's driving these negotiations, we'll forever be playing this game of 'deal or no deal,' and the market will get hammered every time people realize that we're a long way from reaching a big kind of deal with any kind of accommodation with China." The U.S. goods deficit with China rose nearly 13 percent to $79.5 billion in December. Get Cramer's full insight here Caring for pets Cord Christensen, CEO, PetIQ Scott Mlyn | CNBC PetIQ, which makes health and wellness products for dogs and cats, is necessary because 50 percent of pets in America don't have health care, CEO Cord Christensen told Cramer. The company educates pet owners to address concerns about cost and convenience, he said. "As we continue to provide access and education, we just think we can continue to close that gap and, ultimately, end up with healthier pets, they'll live a lot longer, they provide you that joy that you're looking for and why you're really making that pet a member of your family," Christensen said. Watch the discussion here Muting Musk Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk stands on the podium as he attends a forum on startups in Hong Kong, China. Bobby Yip | Reuters Cramer said he thinks a federal judge should put a "special master" on Tesla's board of directors to make CEO Elon Musk comply with a court-approved deal between him and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk has been under pressure for his practice of relaying important business information about Tesla through Twitter. "At this stage, I think a special master would be a win for shareholders. Everything else, a loss," the "Mad Money" host said. "However, it's not Judge Nathan's job to protect Tesla's stock, it's her job to protect the justice system," he said referring to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan who is overseeing the settlement case between Tesla and the SEC. Cramer said he doesn't know how Musk, who he called a genius, can weasel his way out of this predicament. Read more here Healthier mothers Jeff Jonas, CEO of Sage Therapeutics. Adam Jeffery | CNBC The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Zulresso, the first postpartum depression drug. The product was developed by Sage Therapeutics. CEO Jeff Jonas told Cramer that the condition is the most common medical complication of pregnancy and that suicide is the leading cause of death for women after pregnancy. "If you think about the standard of care today, you're talking about standard antidepressants, which can take weeks to work, or psycho therapy," he said. "Despite that fact, there has never been an approved therapy specifically for postpartum depression, which is what Zulresso is targeting." Catch the full interview here Technology for saving and investing Packages containing a Green Dot Corp. prepaid Mastercard Inc. debit card and Visa Inc. debit card, left, are arranged for a photograph in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018. Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images Cramer brought on Green Dot CEO Steven Streit and Stash CEO Brandon Krieg to learn how the respective public and private companies are working together to put more money in users' pockets by spending money at places such as Chipotle, McDonald's, or the local deli. "You take your Stash debit card, you put it in the machine, you pay, and immediately you get stock," said Krieg, who heads the financial technology app. "The point is to make investing automatic as you live your life." Find out how the firms are partnering here Cramer's lightning round: A 'great' cloud strategy U.S. President Donald Trump (R) sits with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House on February 15, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harrer - Pool/Getty Images) U.S. President Donald Trump will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House next Monday and Tuesday, the White House said, reaffirming the two leaders' close ties. The announcement came shortly after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and planned to deliver remarks alongside Netanyahu. "The president and the prime minister will discuss their countries shared interests and actions in the Middle East during a working meeting on March 25," the White House said in a statement. Trump will host Netanyahu at a dinner on Tuesday night. The Israeli prime minister planned to visit Washington next week to address the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, two weeks before the Israeli election on April 9. "Relations with the United States have never been this strong," Netanyahu said in a speech earlier Wednesday. Israel's attorney general said on February 28 he plans to indict Netanyahu in three corruption cases. Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing, will have the chance to persuade the attorney-general to scrap the charges at a hearing expected after the election. (ANSAmed) - BEIRUT, MARCH 21 - About 200 fighters from the Islamic State (ISIS) and their families, mostly women and children, were reportedly killed over the night between Tuesday and Wednesday by airstrikes conducted by the US-led anti-ISIS coalition. Reports were from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which noted that the victims' bodies were buried in mass graves in the Baghouz plain. SOHR cited sources on the ground and said that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and US forces are not allowing the media to verify independently what has happened in the past 24 hours in the ISIS camp in Baghouz, which was officially reported as having been cleared on Tuesday. (ANSAmed). When it comes to the world of Young Adult (YA) literature, author Angie Thomas has made a name for herself. Two novels in and both have been picked up to be adapted on-screen, with her debut novel, "The Hate U Give", becoming a hit on the New York Times' best-seller list and in theaters. Yet the critically-acclaimed author recently admitted that if she could offer her younger self any advice, it would be to "not be as fearful" and not be afraid to pursue her ambitions. "For many of us, we let fear determine so many aspects of our life, and then we also let the opinions of others determine so many aspects of our life," the author said at a Southbank Centre event last week in London. "So, I would tell myself to stop worrying about what other people think. I would tell myself that what other people think of you, is not your business," Thomas explained during the Q&A session of the "Angie Thomas: On the Come Up" talk. "I would tell myself, don't be afraid to go after your dreams. Don't be afraid to simply speak up for yourself. Don't be afraid to look people in the eye, know who you are and decide that you are going to define yourself and not let fear do it for you." Beau Jessup is just like any other British teenager, except for one thing she's making hundreds of thousands of dollars and funding her way through college by naming Chinese babies. The 19-year-old has made a name for herself as founder and CEO of Special Name, a website designed to provide Chinese parents with culturally appropriate English names for their babies. Jessup was inspired to start the business in 2015, when she was just 15. Six months later, she had made more than $60,000 naming 200,000 babies. Since then, she has named a total of 677,900 (and counting) and racked up estimated revenues of over $400,000. But the whole thing was the result of a "chance encounter," the young entrepreneur told CNBC Make It. A total name changer At the time, Jessup was traveling with her father in China, when one of his business associates, a Mrs. Wang, asked for help in naming her three-year-old daughter. "I was honored and surprised," said Jessup. "It seemed like a really important thing to do." Wanting to choose an "appropriate" name, Jessup asked Wang to share a little more about her hopes for her daughter. Most of all, said Wang, she wanted people to be surprised by the things her daughter could achieve. So, after careful thought, Jessup suggested "Eliza," inspired by the fictionalized heroine from "My Fair Lady," Eliza Doolittle. I thought it might be profitable to help. Beau Jessup founder and CEO of Special Name Wang was "delighted," said Jessup, and went on to explain the significance for Chinese people of having an English name. In China, all babies are given a Chinese name consisting of two to three characters with a carefully constructed meaning. However, many Chinese people find it easier to interact with native English-speakers if they also have a Western name. Traditionally, those names would be self-assigned or given by teachers. But, due to language barriers and internet censorship in China, the ability to research them can be limited, often resulting in unfortunate and sometimes comical selections, Jessup noted, highlighting examples like "Rolex Wang" and "Gandalf Wu" in a 2017 Ted Talk. "It occurred to me that if Mrs. Wang needed this service, then maybe other parents would as well," said Jessup. 2015 marked the end of China's decades-long "one-child policy," which limited many families to just one child. By 2016, the country's birthrate rose 7.9 percent to 17.86 million, according to China's National Health and Family Planning Commission. "I thought it might be profitable to help," said Jessup. And so, Special Name was born. Beau Jessup, founder and CEO of Special Name Beau Jessup The birth of a business To scale up her idea, Jessup decided to launch a Chinese-language website that could replicate her selection process for numerous people simultaneously. So, on returning to the U.K. to start her A-levels, Jessup borrowed 1,500 (around $1,980) from her father and hired a freelance web developer to build the website. Meanwhile, she, in her spare time, set to work filling its database with more than 4,000 boys and girls names, attributing to each five characteristics she felt best represent that name, such as honest and optimistic. Jessup said that process was "labor-intensive" initially, but algorithms have taken away much of the heavy lifting of baby naming. A lot of people ask me how I have time to name all these babies Beau Jessup founder and CEO of Special Name "A lot of people ask me how I have time to name all these babies," said Jessup. "Much like Google has time to find everything for everyone all at once, I use an algorithm." The website works by asking users to choose five characteristics from a list of 12 that they would most like their child to embody. An algorithm then selects three gender-specific names matched to those five characteristics. Users are then encouraged to share the three suggestions with their friends and family there's a direct link to Chinese messaging app WeChat on the site to help them settle on their favorite and avoid any "cultural mistakes." Presidential hopeful Beto O'Rourke said Wednesday he'd rather see Big Tech regulated than broken up. The comments take a slightly different tack than Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her proposal to dismantle some of Silicon Valley's giants, but ultimately pit another Democratic 2020 candidate against the likes of Facebook and Google. "I'm not sure if having five more Facebooks if you broke up Facebook into five component parts, or any of these other large social media or technology companies makes as much sense as regulating them, given the power they have [and] the way in which they can be used, wittingly or not, to undermine our democracy and affect the outcomes of our elections," O'Rourke said at a meet and greet in New Hampshire, according to the CNN reporter who asked the question of the candidate. CNN tweet Facebook, Google and Twitter have faced something of a reckoning in recent years, in light of revelations around foreign disinformation campaigns on the platforms. Each company has since removed accounts and posts that purported to be U.S. citizens and stoked debate around divisive political and social issues. Warren's proposal to break up tech giants which also included Amazon and Apple stemmed more from concerns around competition, while O'Rourke appears to be focusing on user privacy and abuse of ad-based business models. "I think the best way to approach the fact that people have become the products on these platforms that our privacy has been violated; that we're confronted with 37-page user agreements ... is to regulate them more seriously, and perhaps to treat them a little bit more like a utility," O'Rourke said. WATCH: Why this expert says Sen. Warren's call to break up big tech needs work SINGAPORE | MALAYSIA, 19 March 2019 CNBC, the world's number one business and financial news network, today announced it will bring its flagship feature show, Managing Asia, hosted by award-winning anchor Christine Tan, to Sunway City Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, March 21st 2019 for a special event focusing on sustainability. Managing Asia: Sustainable Entrepreneurship will include a discussion on social and environmental sustainability for businesses with Sunny George Verghese, Chairman of World Business Council for Sustainable Development & Co-founder and Group CEO of Olam International, Dr Delman Lee, President & Chief Technology Officer of TAL Group and Member of the Founding Circle, Sustainable Apparel Coalition and Nanette-Medved-Po, Founder of Generation Hope & Friends of Hope. Christine Tan will also be speaking to Tan Sri Dr Jeffrey Cheah AO, Founder and Chairman at Sunway Group, one of Malaysia's largest conglomerates. He will be sharing Sunway's efforts in advancing the sustainable development agenda in the region. The invite-only event, held in partnership with Sunway Group, will be held at Sunway Resort Hotel & Spa. Malaysian government officials including Minister of Finance YB Tuan Lim Guan Eng, Minister of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment & Climate Change YB Yeo Bee Yin, Minister of International Trade and Industry YB Datuk Ignatius Darell Leiking and Minister of Water, Land and Natural Resources YB Dr Xavier Jayakumar are also set to attend. Christine Tan, host of CNBC's Managing Asia said: "Businesses are increasingly recognizing the imperative of a sustainable strategy for future growth and ultimately, for humanity. By bringing CEOs to the table, we plan to examine real life scenarios, insights and possible solutions companies are exploring to help alleviate some of the social and environmental problems industries face every day. I'm excited to be in Malaysia to discuss this important topic." Tan Sri Dr Jeffrey Cheah AO, Founder and Chairman at Sunway Group said: "We are very pleased to host this flagship show of CNBC at Sunway City Kuala Lumpur. We hope this will serve as a platform for like-minded individuals and organizations to share insights on sustainable entrepreneurship. I strongly believe that sustainability and profitability can go hand in hand, and that we can all do well by doing good." "At Sunway, we acknowledge that realizing the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is not the sole responsibility of Governments alone. It requires the commitment and collective effort of all sectors of society, the private sector, academia, civil society, and, of course, every single individual. We are all in this together." Managing Asia is CNBC's longest running feature show and celebrated its 21st anniversary in 2018. A special episode from the event will air on Friday, April 5 at 5.30pm with repeats on Saturday, April 6 at 7pm and Sunday, April 7 at 6pm (SIN/HK) For the latest news and updates on Managing Asia: Sustainable Entrepreneurship, follow @CNBCiPR or #MASustainability on Twitter. - End - Notes to Editors: Christine Tan's bio: https://www.cnbc.com/christine-tan/ If you are interested in covering the event, please contact: Clarence Chen Communications Manager, APAC CNBC International Clarence.Chen@CNBC.com D: +65 6326 1123 M: +65 9852 8630 About CNBC CNBC International is the leading international business and financial news network. Its mission is to help the influential and aspirational to make astute decisions to get ahead. With international headquarters in London, Singapore and Abu Dhabi, CNBC International provides consumers with a 24-hour global business briefing. In addition to its global TV channel, available in more than 410 million homes worldwide, CNBC.com provides users with video, real-time market analysis, web-exclusive live video and analytical financial tools. CNBC International's award winning content can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. CNBC International is a division of NBCUniversal. For more information, visit www.cnbc.com Levi Strauss & Co, the maker of Levi's jeans, kicked off the IPO frenzy by going public and making investors a lot of money, but the stock is now too high to buy, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Thursday. Shares of the jean company, which was founded in antebellum America, rocketed more than 30 percent during the session after listing at $17, as much as $3 higher than its expected offering. The stock closed at $22.41 in its return to public markets after spending more than three decades as a private company. The "Mad Money" host noted that it's a high-quality brand, which includes Dockers and Denizen under its belt, and CEO Chip Bergh has turned the company around since taking over in 2011. But he warned that investors should not buy into the iconic name at just any price because there is no guarantee that Levi's will keep delivering rapid earnings growth. This is an apparel stock and it's important to do security analysis, Cramer said. "Levi's has been doing a great job in a tough business, but at the end of the day, I hate to chase a stock that's up big, and this one's already up enormously after its first day of trading," he said. "As much as I like Levi's the business ... Levi's the stock is too rich for me at these levels." Get Cramer's full insight here Slow growth? No problem Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell testifies before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on February 26, 2019. Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Images Investors need not worry that the Federal Reserve induced a market "sea change" by calling off interest rate increases this year and adjust their game plan to make money, Cramer said. The major averages all rose higher during the session on the agency's monetary policy reversal, he said. "This is a dramatic shiftwe don't need to worry about more rate hikesand that's why it's causing a sea change in the stock market right now because we're in a low growth environment again," the host said. Although Chairman Jerome Powell and the central bank reduced the forecast on GDP growth and inflation, there are more stocks that can perform well in low-growth rather than high-growth conditions, he added. As a guideline, Cramer suggests picking stocks whose sales won't get knocked down by an easing economy, focusing on high-yielding dividend stocks, buying the fastest-growing names while inflation is near flat, and loading up on companies that do a lot of business overseas, including those impacted by the trade war with China, because the dollar is getting weaker. See Cramer's playbook here Billions with a 'b' Larry Merlo Cameron Costa | CNBC The health care industry has reached $3.5 trillion and is "growing at an unsustainable rate," CVS CEO Larry Merlo told Cramer. The chief pointed out an estimated quarter of health care spending is wasteful and reducible and his company, in collaboration with Aetna, has a plan to reduce costs and boost the company's earnings. "Percentage points are going to matter here," he said. "Being able to reduce those unnecessary costs, you know, the value created is going to start with a 'b' as in billion. That's the opportunity that's in front of us." Read more here Don't sleep on these three Zs Zendesk co-founder and CEO Mikkel Svane Eric Piermont | AFP | Getty Images Cramer said tech is once again leading the market and the sector has even more importance now that it's stuck between the bulls' praising of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy and the bears' warning of the trade war with China. The host said that three tech names that could be ready soar, according to his TheStreet.com colleague and Explosive Options founder Bob Lang's interpretation of the charts. Those stocks are Zscaler, Zendesk, and Zebra Technologies. Find out what the charts are showing here Apple crossing A view of Apple Store at Festival Walk shopping mall in Mong Kok District on August 15 2018 in Hong Kong, Hong Kong. S3studio | Getty Images Apple is becoming more and more ingrained in people's day-to-day lives and its customers can't get enough of its must-have services. Cramer suggested that this is a name to own and not trade, even if the stock drops. Ahead of its much-anticipated TV announcement, the host explained how the iPhone maker can avoid a "serious beat down" next week. "Simple, the company needs to care about more than handsets, and its investors need to do the same," he said. "This is the Apple that, at last, ignores what Wall Street tech analysts wantmore iPhone salestalks about how customer satisfaction, how ubiquity, how indispensability will create greater sales for the service businesses over time." Hear more here Cramer's lightning round: Microsoft has been 'unbelievable,' but should you buy it here? Boeing jets in Ethiopia and Indonesia lacked two safety features in their cockpits because the company charged extra to install them. The features could have helped pilots detect erroneous readings, which some experts believe might be connected to the planes' failures, The New York Times reports. Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which crashed within five months of each other, were brand new but were not equipped with an angle of attack indicator or an angle of attack disagree light, the paper said. The angle of attack indicator determines how much the plane's nose is tilted, and the disagree light is activated if the jet's sensors are giving contradictory signals. Boeing will now make the disagree light free of charge on all new 737 Max planes, after the deadly crashes caused all the Max planes to be grounded, according to the Times. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can purchase, the report said. The company is also planning a new software update. Neither safety feature was mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration, but experts say it is key to flight safety. "They're critical, and cost almost nothing for the airlines to install," Bjorn Fehrm, an analyst at aviation consultancy Leeham, told the Times. "Boeing charges for them because it can. But they're vital for safety." Boeing did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. Ethiopian Airlines said in a statement Thursday that its pilots had been following FAA and Boeing guidance. "Ethiopian Airlines pilots completed the Boeing recommended and FAA approved differences training from the B-737 NG aircraft to the B-737 MAX aircraft before the phase in of the B-737-8 MAX fleet to the Ethiopian operation and before they start flying the B-737-8 MAX," the airline said in a statement. "We urge all concerned to refrain from making such uninformed, incorrect, irresponsible and misleading statements during the period of the accident investigation. International regulations require all stakeholders to wait patiently for the result of the investigation," it said. It's still unclear what caused the crashes. Investigators are looking into whether a new software system added to combat stalls in Boeing's 737 Max series might have been a trigger, as well as faulty data from sensors on the Lion Air plane that might have caused a system malfunction. Dennis A. Muilenburg, Boeing's CEO, said the company was working on making the 737 Max safer. "As part of our standard practice following any accident, we examine our aircraft design and operation, and when appropriate, institute product updates to further improve safety," he said in a statement Sunday. An email sent to Lion Air, outside regular business hours, was not immediately answered. The full New York Times story can be found on its website. British Prime Minister Theresa May arrives for the European Union leaders summit at the European Council on December 14, 2017 in Brussels. European leaders are meeting on Thursday to decide whether to grant the U.K. an extension to its Brexit due on March 29. U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is in Brussels Thursday to seek support from the bloc's 27 leaders for an extension to Brexit date that would mean a departure takes place on June 30th. At her arrival in the Belgian capital, May said that it is important is that U.K. parliament delivers on the result of the June 2016 referendum. She also said she regretted having to ask for more time for her country to leave the EU. The move comes after U.K. lawmakers rejected May's Brexit deal with the EU for a second time earlier this month but also rejected the idea of leaving the bloc without a deal. May requested the extension on Wednesday in a letter to the EU and said she intended to try to put the Brexit deal before Parliament a third time next week. Whether she can do so or not is another matter, as House Speaker John Bercow said the deal would have to have changed significantly in order to justify putting it before MPs a third time. Meanwhile at the European Council summit on Thursday, EU leaders will have to agree unanimously to a delay. If they don't, the U.K. could exit the bloc abruptly on March 29 with no deal in other words, the infamous "cliff-edge" scenario where no agreements are in place related to Britain and the EU's future relationship. "My assumption is that today we will vote 'yes', in principle (on the request for an extension," Mark Rutte, Dutch Prime Minister, said in Brussels. He also told reporters that he hopes the fast approaching departure date will pressure U.K. lawmakers to approve the deal. In the meantime, Ireland's Prime Minister described the situation in London as "somewhat chaotic". On Wednesday, European Council President Donald Tusk signaled a willingness to grant an extension, only if the U.K. Parliament backs May's deal (formally as the "withdrawal agreement'). He also said that "the question remains open as to the duration of such an extension." The European Union agreed to postpone the United Kingdom's exit from the bloc, but the length of the delay will depend on whether or not the British parliament accepts the previously negotiated withdrawal agreement. European Council President Donald Tusk said the bloc would grant an extension until May 22 if Prime Minister Theresa May is able to convince the British parliament to accept the existing Brexit deal. If May is unable to convince parliament, which has previously rejected the deal, then Britain would face a disorderly exit from the European Union on April 12. Tusk Tweet: EU27 responds to UK requests in a positive spirit and: agrees to Art. 50 extension until 22 May if Withdrawal Agreement approved next week if not agreed next week then extension until 12 April approves 'Strasbourg Agreement' continues no-deal preparations May had asked Brussels for the March 29 Brexit date to be delayed three months until at least June 30. The British parliament has twice rejected the withdrawal agreement that she had negotiated with the European Union, which has raised the prospect of a disorderly and economically damaging exit from the European Union. Speaking to reporters, May said she believed the U.K. will absolutely eventually leave the EU. "Yes, we will be leaving the European Union, and I absolutely fervently believe that it is the duty of Parliament to deliver on that result of the referendum," she said in response to a question about whether Brexit could be delayed further. "I also believe that it is better for the U.K. if we can do that with a negotiated deal, do that in a smooth and orderly manner. That's what tonight's decision from the Council enables us to do." An attendee uses a mobile phone while standing in front of the Huawei Technologies Co. booth at the Mobile World Congress Shanghai in Shanghai, China, on Thursday, June 28, 2018. The exhibition runs through June 29. Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images But its not just Germany that is defying the U.S. Italy's government has said that it won't ban Huawei from its telecommunications industry, saying there is no proof of any security threat. And in the United Kingdom, intelligence officials said that any risks posed by Huawei can be mitigated, according to an FT report in February. Even individual carriers have expressed their concern over excluding Huawei from the 5G rollout. U.K.-headquartered carrier Vodafone said banning Huawei could cost it millions of pounds and slow the rollout of 5G. Experts say that while the American rollout of 5G would not be affected by a Huawei ban, Europe could suffer. Nikhil Batra, senior telecommunications research manager at IDC said European carriers' businesses have struggled compared to those in the U.S., so they want the cheapest possible deal for 5G equipment something that Huawei can provide. "When you look at the industry as small as network equipment providers, excluding Huawei will have a big impact on the industry. If I am going from three major vendors to two major vendors, competition decreases, prices will increase as a result. A lot of countries, including specific telcos, are looking at Huawei as a better-cost option," Batra told CNBC on Thursday. The two other major players for Europe are Nokia and Ericsson. "Traditionally, Huawei has been playing a lot on the cost in terms of being competitive versus the other two major players," Batra added. European countries, Batra said, have not seen hard evidence regarding the allegations made by the U.S. and that is one reason why they are not following America's lead. Critically, the U.S. argument is that Huawei's technology could allow for spying not specifically that the company has already performed intelligence gathering for Beijing. And it's not just European countries butting heads with the U.S. Thailand, a U.S. ally in Asia, launched a 5G test bed with Huawei in February. India, meanwhile, is looking for a way to exclude Huawei from some parts of its 5G infrastructure, but it is not seeking an entire ban, according to a report by the Nikkei Asian Review earlier this month. Digital payment is becoming increasingly popular in Indonesia yet 99 percent of transactions by volume are carried out using cash, according to management consultancy McKinsey and Company. To tap the massive potential of Indonesia's electronic payment market, Go-Pay the mobile wallet of ride-hailing app Go-Jek is planning to "strengthen and deepen" its position in that space, according to Go-Pay CEO Aldi Haryopratomo. "The real competition is how do we move people away from cash? Once you have people moving away from cash, there is so many things that you can do," Haryopratomo told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" on Wednesday. According to Haryopratomo, Go-Pay is currently the country's market leader in the e-wallet space, where online credits can be used for in-app purchases of goods and services or with partner merchants. Fintech or financial technology, which can be broadly defined as digital innovation in financial services has been gaining traction in Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy. The country's e-wallet market is set to be the fastest-growing fintech segment in the country, according to India-based management consultancy Redseer. A recent Redseer report said the sector is projected to grow from $1.5 billion in 2018 to $25 billion in 2023. ANSAmed - Tomorrow's events in the Mediterranean (ANSAmed) - ROMA, MARCH 21 - These are the main events scheduled for tomorrow in the Euro-Mediterranean area: VARIOUS CITIES - World Water Day. BRUSSELS - bilateral meeting between Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte and French president Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the European Council. NAPLES - EU, visit by Commissioner Christos Stylianides to participate in a dialogue for citizens and the "EU Saves Lives" roadshow. EL JEM (TUNISIA) - The 4th edition of 'Thysdrus, Roman Days of El Jem' kicks off. The cultural and tourism event will be hosted in the Roman amphitheatre of El Jem to showcase the heritage left in the region by the Roman Empire (until 24/3). MADRID - Casa Araba - Exhibition '10's of 1000's' organized by Amnesty International and dedicated to the tens of thousands of people who have gone missing since the beginning of the war in Syria (through 21/4). REGGIO CALABRIA - The 'Dodonaios. The Oracle of Zeus and the Magna Graecia' exhibition continues (through 9/6). ABU DHABI - 'Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age', first 2019 exhibition at the Louvre Abu Dhabi (through 18/5). ROME - Instituto Cervantes Dali Room. Collective show 'Las Formas Del Alma' (Shapes of the Soul) continues (through 30/3). (ANSAmed). US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (2nd L), Democrat of New York, holds a press conference with fellow members of Congress to announce Green New Deal legislation to promote clean energy programs outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, February 7, 2019. LOS ANGELES Republicans are already plotting to retake some of the California congressional seats they lost in 2018 to Democrats, and one of the hot-button issues they're talking about is the Green New Deal. "These California Democrats can't run on rhetoric anymore, they have to run on their record," said National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Torunn Sinclair. "Supporting socialist policies like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All with no regard for cost or the impact it will have on Californians is irresponsible, and will ultimately cost them their reelection." Last November, Democrats won a clean sweep of all seven GOP-held congressional districts in California that Democrat Hillary Clinton carried in the 2016 presidential election. The win included four GOP-held seats in Orange County, a traditionally conservative Republican bastion in the southern part of the state. "Orange County is no longer a 'red' county," said Fred Smoller, a Chapman University political science professor. "That's a tremendous change because of the youth and the Latinos who now make up such a large percentage of the population." As of this week, at least three Republican congressional candidates have announced plans to unseat California Democrats who flipped GOP House seats in 2018. The state's 2020 primary election will be held in March on Super Tuesday. Democrats targeted include two U.S. House members from Orange County: Mike Levin of San Juan Capistrano and Katie Porter of Irvine. And GOP challengers are believed to be close to announcing runs in other districts, too. In February, Levin threw his support behind the Green New Deal, the plan by Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to tackle climate change. "Climate change is the defining issue of our generation, and we must act now to address this crisis before it is too late," Levin said in February after joining a group of House Democrats in introducing the Green New Deal resolution. Levin, a former environmental attorney, declined an interview request for this story. "Mike is very much about the government being the answer to every problem and every challenge," said Republican Brian Maryott, mayor of San Juan Capistrano and a GOP candidate running to unseat Levin in California's 49th Congressional District. "He has voted for the Green New Deal, which is preposterous. And he clearly supports and voted for a nationalized health care system something I think would be a huge, huge mistake." Maryott said he's raised almost $100,000 since announcing his candidacy March 5, adding, "we have a long way to go. Ultimately, it's going to take $2.5 million to $3 million to be competitive with Mike next year." Among other things, the Green New Deal sets a target of "net-zero" greenhouse gases in 10 years. "The Green New Deal certainly doesn't reflect our community," said Republican Don Sedgwick, a Laguna Hills city council member and small business owner who is running to unseat Porter in California's 45th Congressional District. "I expect that Katie Porter will embrace the Green New Deal, because she's a protege of Elizabeth Warren and very close with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kamala Harris and all those folks are proponents of the plan." Porter's campaign didn't respond to a request for comment. At a town hall held Feb. 19, though, Porter fielded a question about the Green New Deal resolution. She stopped short of a full endorsement but agreed that "climate change is an urgent issue and requires bold action." Prior to entering Congress, Porter was a law professor at University of California at Irvine. Sedgwick, who describes himself as a "family-values" candidate, said he launched his bid for the 45th District a few weeks ago and is confident "we will be able to fund a strong campaign." Up in the state's agriculture-laden Central Valley, meantime, a Republican who finished third in the 2018 primary has entered the 2020 race to challenge freshman Democratic Congressman Josh Harder in California's 10th Congressional District. "Here in our district, Josh Harder is very quickly earning the reputation of being the 'AOC of the West Coast,' " said Ted Howze, a Republican challenging Harder in 2020. "That's because he is the face of Medicare for All, socialized medicine, and the Green New Deal." Howze, a veterinarian who works in the dairy industry, describes the Green New Deal proposal as "an economic killer" and is critical of its message to agriculture about the industry being a climate polluter. According to the Republican, "California farmers are already on the cutting edge of environmental technology." For his part, Harder has focused more on health-care reform and not the climate issue. The former venture capitalist joined a group of colleagues last month in introducing legislation for Medicare for All. Harder wasn't available for an interview. Casting aside rare censure from Republican lawmakers, President Donald Trump aimed new blasts of invective at the late John McCain, even claiming credit for the senator's moving Washington funeral and complaining he was never properly thanked. By the time the president began his anti-McCain tirade in Ohio on Wednesday, several leading Republicans had signaled a new willingness to defy Trump by defending the Vietnam War veteran as a hero seven months after he died of brain cancer. One GOP senator called Trump's remarks "deplorable." Trump then launched a lengthy rant in which he claimed without citing evidence that McCain had pushed for a war and failed America's veterans. "I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted," Trump told reporters at a campaign-style rally in Lima, Ohio. "I didn't get (a) thank you but that's OK." President Donald Trump Kevin Lamarque | Reuters In fact, McCain's family made clear that Trump was not welcome during the week-long, cross-country ceremonies that the senator had planned himself. Instead, McCain invited former Presidents George W. Bush, who defeated McCain during the 2000 GOP nomination fight, and Barack Obama, who defeated him in 2008, to deliver eulogies on the value of pursuing goals greater than oneself. Trump signed off on the military transport of McCain's body, went golfing and was uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter during the Washington events. Trump's publicly nursed grudge against McCain has not appeared to alienate core supporters, some of whom had soured on the senator by the time of his death. Aware of this, GOP lawmakers until now have stayed subdued or silent though Trump sometimes infuriated them with his comments on their late colleague. McCain's allies suggested it was time for that to change. "I hope (Trump's) indecency to John's memory and to the McCain family will convince more officeholders that they can't ignore the damage Trump is doing to politics and to the country's well-being or remain silent despite their concerns," said Mark Salter, McCain's biographer. "They must speak up." Trump has said for years that he doesn't think McCain is a hero because the senator was captured in Vietnam. McCain was tortured and held prisoner for more than five years. New crash tests show pickups with some of the oldest designs could struggle to protect passengers riding in the front seat. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) tested 11 mid-size and full-size pickups and found mixed results. "In general, the pickup truck class of vehicles is not doing as good a job protecting right front passengers as other classes of vehicles," said David Zuby, IIHS' chief research officer. Among the full-size pickups, the Ford F-150, the Ram 1500 and Nissan's Titan received the best possible rating of "good" one grade above the Honda Ridgeline which was rated "acceptable." By comparison, the IIHS said the Chevy Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra provided "marginal" protection for passengers in the front seat when the right front corner of their truck slams into another vehicle or an object at 40 mph. Dan Flores, a spokesperson for General Motors said the automaker is continually working to improve the safety of it trucks. "GM designs our vehicles to protect the occupants in a broad range of crashes including front, offset, angle, side and rear impacts," he said. The IIHS gave a "poor" rating the lowest possible to the Toyota Tundra. A spokesperson for Toyota told CNBC that "safety and reliability of its vehicles is a top priority." He added: "We'll continue to look for ways to improve in an effort to exceed customers' expectations particularly in new testing such as IIHS' passenger-side front small overlap (tests) for pickup trucks." Six women accused New York billionaire Michael Steinhardt of sexual harassment in a New York Times report published Thursday. The Times report, which also cited a lawsuit filed by another woman, alleged that the former hedge fund founder made sexual requests when the women sought support from the philanthropist. The Times also reported that Steinhardt appeared in two sexual harassment lawsuits, but was not named as a defendant in either case. The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life called the Times report "intentionally defamatory." In a statement on its website, the foundation said, however, Steinhardt's "sense of humor can be insensitive, and he has apologized for the unintended bad feelings his remarks have caused." The website includes a statement from the billionaire, who denies ever trying to touch anyone inappropriately. Following the Times report, New York University said in a statement to CNBC it is reviewing Steinhardt's interactions with its community members. NYU said it has appreciated his generous support, but found the allegations in the Times "troubling and out-of-step with appropriate standards of conduct." Steinhardt also serves as the chairman of the board of WisdomTree Investments. The firm said it is monitoring the situation and "will take appropriate actions as we see fit," citing its "policies in place focused on ensuring a safe, respectful work environment." Below is Steinhardt's full statement in response to the Times report: "In my nearly 80 years on earth I have never tried to touch any woman or man inappropriately. As I have said before, I deeply regret cavalierly making comments in professional settings that were boorish, disrespectful and just plain dumb. They were part of my shtick since before I had a penny to my name, and I unequivocally meant them in jest. I fully understand why they were inappropriate. I am sorry. I never intended to cause any embarrassment, discomfort or pain." "There's no dispute that my attempts at humor could be provocative. As an example, it's well known that I would often say at events with young people, 'Look around, if any of you who are here now marry each other I will give you a free honeymoon on a Caribbean Island.' And I gave 30 or 40 honeymoons. It was a conspicuous pattern. I hope my inappropriate banter, which was always meant in a lighthearted way, does not now become twisted into being something it is not." Read the full story from the New York Times. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an immediate ban Thursday on sales of "military-style" semi-automatic and automatic weapons like the ones used in the attacks on two mosques in Christchurch that killed 50 worshippers. The man charged in the attack had purchased his weapons legally using a standard firearms license and enhanced their capacity by using 30-round magazines "done easily through a simple online purchase," she said. "Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned," she said. Ardern's announcement comes less than a week after the killings, as more of the dead were being buried. At least six funerals took place Thursday, including for a teenager, a youth soccer coach and a Muslim convert who loved connecting with other women at the mosque. One of New Zealand's largest gun retailers, Hunting & Fishing New Zealand, said it supports "any government measure to permanently ban such weapons." "While we have sold them in the past to a small number of customers, last week's events have forced a reconsideration that has led us to believe such weapons of war have no place in our business -- or our country," CEO Darren Jacobs said in a statement. Regardless of the ban, the company would no longer stock any assault-style firearms of any category and would also stop selling firearms online, he said. Polly Collins, 64, of Christchurch, was thrilled to hear of Ardern's announcement as she visited a flower memorial for the victims. "The prime minister is amazing," she said. "It's not like in America, where they have all these things and then they go `Oh yeah, we'll deal with the gun laws,' and nothing's done." At the cemetery, solemn farewells continued for Cashmere High School student Sayyad Ahmad Milne, 14, who was known as an outgoing boy and the school's futsal goalkeeper. Tariq Rashid Omar, 24, graduated from the same school, played soccer in the summer and was a beloved coach of several youth teams and was also buried Thursday. In a post on Facebook, Christchurch United Football Club Academy Director Colin Williamson described Omar as "a beautiful human being with a tremendous heart and love for coaching." Linda Armstrong, 64, a third-generation New Zealander who converted to Islam in her 50s, was also buried, as were Hussein Mohamed Khalil Moustafa, 70, Matiullah Safi, 55, and Haji Mohammed Daoud Nabi. Families of those killed had been awaiting word on when they could bury their loved ones. Police Commissioner Mike Bush said authorities have formally identified and released the remains of 21 victims. Islamic tradition calls for bodies to be cleansed and buried as soon as possible. An Australian white supremacist, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, was run off the road and arrested by police while he was believed to be on his way to a third target. He had livestreamed the attack on Facebook and said in his manifesto he planned to attack three mosques. Tarrant, 28, is next scheduled to appear in court on April 5. Police have said they are certain Tarrant was the only gunman but are still investigating whether he had support. Meanwhile, preparations were underway for a massive Friday prayer service to be led by the imam of one of the two New Zealand mosques where worshippers were killed. Imam Gamal Fouda said he is expecting 3,000 to 4,000 people at Friday's prayer service, including many who have come from abroad. He expects it will take place in Hagley Park, a city landmark across from Al Noor mosque with members of the Linwood mosque also attending. Al Noor workers have been trying feverishly to repair the destruction at the mosque, Fouda said. "They will bury the carpet," he said. "Because it is full of blood, and it's contaminated." Fouda said that he expects the mosque to be ready to open again by next week and that some skilled workers had offered their services for free. "The support we have been getting from New Zealand and the community has been amazing," he said. As the investigation continues into the attack, Ardern has also said an inquiry would look into intelligence and security services' failures to detect the risk from the attacker or his plans. Ardern said Thursday the government is working on a large-scale buy-back plan to encourage owners of now-banned weapons to surrender them. She did not say what would happen to those who violate the law. She also said she and the Cabinet would work through legal exemptions to the ban, such as for farmers needing to cull their herds but said any exemptions would be "tightly regulated." "For other dealers, sales should essentially now cease. My expectation is that these weapons will now be returned to your suppliers and never enter into the New Zealand market again," she said. WATCH: Here's how to buy a gun in these five countries Lanni Bailey and a team from Muddy Paws Second Chance Rescue enter a flooded house to pull out several cats during the flooding of the Missouri River near Glenwood, Iowa, March 18. The federal government's spring weather outlook issued Thursday shows flooding risk will remain high through May for 25 states, as Midwestern states are still coping with the disastrous effects of last week's "bomb cyclone" storm. "Nearly two-thirds of the Lower 48 states face an elevated risk for flooding through May, with the potential for major or moderate flooding in 25 states," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its spring outlook report issued Thursday. "The majority of the country is favored to experience above-average precipitation this spring, increasing the flood risk." The forecast comes as communities in the Midwest cope with historic flooding caused by rapidly melting snow and storms that has led to at least three fatalities. The hardest-hit states include Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, South Dakota and Minnesota. In Nebraska, flooding has caused estimated damage of nearly $1.5 billion, according to state officials. President Donald Trump approved a disaster declaration Thursday for Nebraska that makes federal emergency funding available to the affected areas. The severe weather last week included what meteorologists call a "bomb cyclone," or bombogenesis. The event is caused "when a storm rapidly intensifies over a 24-hour period," according to NOAA. "We expect the flooding will get worse and become more widespread," said Mary Erickson, deputy director of the National Weather Service. "The flooding this year could be worse than anything we've seen in recent years, even worse than the historic floods of 1993 and 2011." According to NOAA's outlook, "additional rain and melting snow will prolong and expand flooding, especially in the central and southern U.S. As this excess water flows downstream through the river basins, the flood threat will become worse and geography more widespread." Officials estimated the flooding risk is in areas where more than 200 million people live. Of the total, about 41 million people are at risk for moderate flooding and 14 million more people for major flooding, according to Ed Clark, director of NOAA's National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. "This is potentially an unprecedented flood season," Clark said. "The flooding we have seen in the past two weeks will continue into May and may become more dire in the coming weeks as these waters flow downstream." Areas with the highest risk for moderate to major flooding include the upper, middle and lower Mississippi River basins and northern Red River areas. In addition, the area at risk includes the Great Lakes, eastern Missouri River, lower Ohio, along with the Cumberland and Tennessee River basins. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One for travel to New York from Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S. July 28, 2017. Jonathan Ernst | Reuters Trouble at the pump Rising oil prices are starting to hit Trump where it hurts: the gasoline pump. U.S. gasoline futures are outpacing the oil price rally, surging 44 percent this year. Analysts say there are several reasons for that, but the bottom line is Americans are paying more to fill up their gas tanks. The national average gas price has risen 35 cents since January and now sits at $2.58 per gallon, according to GasBuddy. The run-up has been particularly pronounced in the Midwest, with Michigan's price surging 75 cents and costs in Ohio and Illinois up more than 60 cents. "It's been nothing short of madness at the pumps since early January with retail gasoline prices on a tear, especially in the Great Lakes," Patrick DeHaan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said in a briefing on Wednesday. "The news doesn't get much better either. Motorists can expect the jumps at the pump to continue into April, and perhaps even lasting up to Memorial Day, when the transition to summer gasoline and refinery maintenance have generally wrapped up." OPEC pushes back As gasoline prices bubble up, Trump's opportunities to influence OPEC policy suddenly narrowed this week. On Monday, a committee of OPEC members and their allies canceled an April meeting meant to review their deal to keep 1.2 million barrels per day off the market. The move leaves the output curbs in place until June, when the full group next meets. Meanwhile, OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo has been trying to improve the group's image among Americans, including by pushing back on a bill meant to hobble the organization at last week's CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston. The No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act, or NOPEC, would allow the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for coordinating production, the group's primarily lever for adjusting oil supply and prices. "Not only is OPEC showing a willingness to ignore the White House's renewed call to open the taps, but the messaging from the organization is more assertive in saying that US shale producers would be a prime casualty of the NOPEC bill that is being considered by Congress," Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said in a research note on Wednesday. "In our view, economic self-interest will continue to trump satisfying Washington and thus, we do not see any extraordinary OPEC production policy changes in the immediate offing." Anti Brexit demonstrators gather outside the Houses of Parliament holding placards, London on March 14, 2019. Prime minister Theresa May will make a third attempt to get her EU withdrawal deal through Parliament in the next week. NurPhoto | NurPhoto | Getty Images The U.K. Parliament's petitions website crashed on Thursday as calls to revoke Article 50 and overturn Brexit quickly exceeded 2 million signatures. The petition began gaining traction on Wednesday evening, after British Prime Minister Theresa May formally requested a delay to the U.K.'s departure from the EU. British newspaper The Guardian reported that at one point, it was growing at a rate of 1,500 signatures a minute. The House of Commons Petitions Committee tweeted on Thursday that it was the highest rate of signing any petition on its site had ever seen, adding that changes had been made to its website to deal with the traffic influx. According to the Parliament website, lawmakers would consider the petition for debate if it surpassed 100,000 signatures. On Thursday morning, the petition generated so much traffic that the site crashed, displaying a message that told would-be signatories to "try again later." Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom said there would be a case for action if the petition reached 17.4 million respondents. Just before midnight in London, the petition had already surpassed 2.1 million signatures. Subscriptions have become popular across industries from New York Mets tickets to exercise bikes as a lucrative way to build brand loyalty. For Burger King, its new $5 monthly coffee subscription is a way to get customers into their stores in the morning to check out their other breakfast offerings. Restaurant Brands International CEO Jose Cil said Thursday that the subscription should get customers to notice its recently overhauled breakfast offerings. "We thought the coffee subscription would be a good way to bring people in, raise some excitement at Burger King," he said on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." The battle between fast food restaurants, from McDonald's to Dunkin', to get customers through their doors in the early morning has been ramping up over the last few years, but Burger King is the first to turn to subscriptions. The burger chain also just introduced the Burger King Cafe brand, following the lead of rival McDonald's McCafe. Cil took the reins of Burger King's parent company in January amid a series of management series. Prior to becoming chief executive, he had served as president of Burger King since 2014. The company has also been investing in digital across all of its portfolio. Another company in Restaurant Brands' portfolio, Canadian coffee chain Tim Horton's, just launched a loyalty program Wednesday in an effort to sell 8 out of every 10 cups of coffee in Canada at its stores. It already sells 7 out of every 10 in the country. Padua - Thousands of people attended an anti-mafia march organised by the Libera and Avviso Pubblico organisations in Padua on Thursday. Marchers from all over Italy, including very many young people, marched through the centre of town bearing flags and banners. The march was led by the relatives of mafia victims, holding the victims' photos, and by the founder and president of Libera, Father Luigi Ciotti. Also attending were Prefect Renato Franceschelli, Mayor Sergio Giordani, and National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho. There were other events across Italy marking the 23rd Day of Memory for Innocent Mafia Victims, including a big event in Palermo. President Sergio Mattarella said "we must free Italian society from the mafia" San Francisco is considering a ban on cashless Amazon stores as it weighs a bill that would make it one of a growing list of cities forbidding cashless retailers. Just this week, New Jersey followed Philadelphia's lead in signing into law a cashless store ban. Lawmakers argue that cashless stores can effectively discriminate against low-income consumers, who may not have a bank account or credit card. But businesses say going cashless is good for consumers and reduces the risk of robbery and the ability to evade taxes. In San Francisco, District Five Supervisor Vallie Brown introduced a bill in late February that aims to ban cashless retailers. At a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, Brown expanded the proposal to include Amazon Go stores, which were originally excluded because they are automated and do not have employees that would handle cash, according to a report from Curbed. Amazon Go stores let customers walk in, grab what they want and leave without having to check out at a cashier station. The stores are equipped with cameras that track the items a customer takes and automatically charges their Amazon account when they leave the store. There are only a small number of Amazon Go stores in operation today, but Bloomberg reported in September that the company may be planning to open as many as 3,000 locations by 2021. "Millions of Americans do not hold bank accounts, or otherwise fall outside the non-cash financial system," the proposal says. "Some stand apart by choice, because they are concerned about privacy and do not want their every financial transaction recorded by banks and credit card companies; physical cash remains the most accessible anonymous medium of exchange in this country. Others may not be well situated to participate in the formal banking system, or may be excluded from that system against their will. In short, denying the ability to use cash as a payment method means excluding too many people." If history is a guide, Amazon will likely play an active roll in lobbying officials about the proposed bill. Amazon warned Philadelphia officials it could pull its plans to open Amazon Go stores in the city if the ban went into effect and even tried to carve out a legal workaround for its own stores in both Philadelphia and New Jersey, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on the proposed legislation in San Francisco and how the measures in Philadelphia and New Jersey will affect its plans for Amazon Go stores. Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube. Watch: Amazon automated grocery store finally launches Several top Democratic donors have told former Vice President Joe Biden that they won't help him raise funds in the early stages of the party's 2020 presidential primary, CNBC has learned. Their reason: skepticism that Biden actually can win the Democratic primary. Biden, who has yet to announce whether he will run, has reached out to leading financiers over the past week to see whether they will help him raise money for a presidential run. His pitch: He will need their assistance to compete against candidates, such as Beto O'Rourke and Bernie Sanders, who have raised millions of dollars over the first 24 hours of their campaigns, according to people familiar with the deliberations. However, during those calls, some high-profile donors told Biden that they will not commit to bundling for him, at least in the early stages of the primary, said the people, who declined to be named. The donors told Biden they're not yet convinced he can overtake the younger, more diverse and progressive field, and that they are going to wait to see how he competes in the race, the people added. The donors did tell Biden that they're willing to write the $2,700 checks for his campaign, which is the most an individual can give directly to a candidate in an election cycle, according to the people. "I told him, 'I can donate but I don't think I can raise you money today.' The sense we're getting [from other donors] is yes, he's a good guy and everybody knows him, but he has run for president a couple times and it didn't always work out," said a billionaire financier who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "I think with Biden there's a feeling of 'I like him, he's a really good guy, but he'd be running at a moment in time that a 76-year-old white guy may not be what voters want.' I don't want to give chits today for Joe. What's my benefit?" Other donors who spoke to CNBC say they're aware that Biden has received similar messages from fellow party financiers. Their skepticism comes at a time some donors are pledging their support to candidates such as O'Rourke. That doesn't mean Biden, who represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate for more than three decades, won't have high-profile support. Famed short-seller Jim Chanos told CNBC he plans to support Biden if he runs for president. Prominent Democratic donor and business executive Dennis Mehiel is also looking to back Biden, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The development comes amid recent speculation about how Biden is going to appeal to young voters as his advisors reportedly discuss ways to signal to voters that his age will not be a factor if he becomes president. The New York Times reported Biden's team has been actively debating whether to announce an early vice presidential candidate, with former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams being one of the names under consideration. Meanwhile, Biden continues to reiterate to his allies that he's leaning toward running for president and is looking at the start of April to roll out his campaign if he decides he wants to enter the race, people close to him said. Biden's spokesman declined to comment. Political fundraisers, also sometimes known as bundlers, have been critical components in helping candidates raise millions of dollars behind the scenes. Bundlers persuade high-dollar financiers to back a particular candidate, and a few are already committing to one of Biden's potential opponents. Louis Susman, former U.S. ambassador to the U.K. and a lead bundler for Barack Obama's 2008 White House run, has publicly acknowledged that he will be helping O'Rourke, the three-term former congressman from Texas. Susman told CNBC he's been speaking with "family and friends" about backing him for president. Mark Gallogly, the co-founder of investment firm Centerbridge Partners and another Obama fundraiser, has been indicating to friends that he's likely to support O'Rourke as well, CNBC reported Thursday. O'Rourke raked in $6.1 million through the first day of campaigning, while Sanders brought in $5.9 million over the course of his first 24 hours. Obama received a lot of help from high-end bundlers, including film executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, who in 2012 assisted in raising at least $500,000 for his re-election campaign, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The securities and investment industry bundled $22 million for Obama that year. (ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, MARCH 21 - The defense chiefs of Turkey and Greece may meet soon to draw up measures for mutual trust expected to attenuate tension that has arisen over disputes concerning sovereignty in the Aegean Sea. The announcement was made by Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in a joint press conference with his Greek counterpart Georgios Katrougalos in the Turkish city of Antalya. The visit aimed to reduce tension after recent trading of accusations between the two countries. Katrougalos underscored the desire to push forward with a ''positive agenda'' even on other issues, such as that of Cyprus and control over energy resources off the island. ''We know that Turkey has some rights over energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Greek minister said. (ANSAmed). Roger Stone, departs following a status hearing in the criminal case against him brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller at U.S. District Court in Washington, U.S., March 14, 2019. The online legal defense fund for President Donald Trump's longtime confidant Roger Stone met its $100,000 target in March, even after a strict gag order in Stone's criminal case halted the Republican operative's campaign of criticism against special counsel Robert Mueller. As Stone's Nov. 5 trial approaches, former Trump political advisor Michael Caputo told CNBC that he plans to organize another crowdfunding page for his friend. Stone is charged with lying to Congress and obstructing a House investigation. The legal fund was launched in December, after Stone, 66, was praised by Trump for vowing never to "testify against" the president as part of Mueller's investigation of Russian meddling and potential Trump campaign collusion during the 2016 election. Trump has denied any wrongdoing. "Nice to know that some people still have 'guts!'" Trump tweeted in response on Dec. 3. Trump TWEET "I will never testify against Trump." This statement was recently made by Roger Stone, essentially stating that he will not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about "President Trump." Nice to know that some people still have "guts!" Stone's "Guts Fund" was launched that same day, on fundraising website GoFundMe. Less than four months later, the goal to raise $100,000 toward Stone's legal bills had been achieved, Caputo said Thursday. Caputo said in emails to CNBC that the GoFundMe page was pulled after hitting its goal March 15. "I will mount another campaign in the future as Roger's trial approaches," Caputo said. Stone did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment about the fund. Caputo, who himself was interviewed as part of a House probe into Russian election meddling, has been a vocal advocate for Stone even before federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson slapped the self-described political dirty trickster with a near-total gag order in his Washington, D.C., district court case on charges lodged by Mueller. Stone's lawyers had argued in court that muzzling their client would hurt him since his work largely involves discussing politics in writing and in interviews. Yet Caputo said the gag order "inspired a steady rain of support" for the legal fund. "Donations are driven by bursts of publicity, even bad news," Caputo said. He said that most of the donations to Stone's page came after Stone was arrested in a predawn raid at his Florida home by armed FBI agents in late January, "like some kingpin of a drug cartel." "It was a cloudburst," Caputo said. In a follow-up email after this report was published, Caputo said: "It's important to note that my GoFundMe effort was only one small push. Roger must raise over $2 million to be able to fight the charges and he's busily doing that on his own. He is still fundraising aggressively." Mueller has said Stone lied to Congress about his alleged efforts to have WikiLeaks release material hacked by Russian agents from Democrats, including Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, during the 2016 campaign. Stone has pleaded not guilty, and had railed against Mueller and the judge herself in a deluge of interviews and other public remarks immediately after his arrest. Stone was given a partial gag order by Jackson on Feb. 15, barring him and his lawyers from making statements to the media and in public that risk prejudicing the case against him. But after Stone posted a photo on Instagram showing Jackson's face next to what looked like a rifle scope's cross hair, Jackson ordered him back to court, where he apologized for the "stupid" mistake. Jackson strengthened the gag order on Stone at that Feb. 21 hearing, forbidding him from making any public statements about his criminal case with the caveat that he can still publicly ask for donations to his legal defense fund. In early March, Stone once again tested the bounds of his court-ordered restriction, when Jackson discovered that a rerelease of Stone's book "The Myth of Russian Collusion" with a newly written introduction was put on sale. CNBC reported that two of Stone's websites, which were used in part to raise funds for his defense against Mueller, have recently been deleted. Earlier Thursday, The Daily Caller reported that Stone is refusing to comply with a request for documents sent by the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee as part of its sweeping probe investigating dozens of Trump-related figures and entities. The GoFundMe page deposited money directly into the Roger Stone Legal Defense Fund, which is administered by Tampa, Florida, accounting firm Robert Watkins & Co. That firm did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. Caputo told CNBC that "while I've not communicated with Roger since his arrest, I'm hopeful we've been helpful." "Like all his friends, I will step up again soon." An Israeli soldier stands next to signs pointing out distances to different cities, on Mount Bental, an observation post in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that overlooks the Syrian side of the Quneitra crossing, Israel May 10, 2018. President Donald Trump said on Thursday it was time to back Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967, providing a boost to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the middle of his re-election campaign. "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Trump wrote on Twitter. The recognition of the disputed area, seized by Israel in the Middle East war of 1967, would mark a major shift in U.S. policy a week before Netanyahu arrives in Washington to meet with Trump and address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. It was the most overt move made yet by Trump to help Netanyahu, who faces an April 9 election. Trump remains popular in Israel, and his advisors have been developing a Middle East peace proposal for release sometime after the Israeli elections. Netanyahu has been pressing for the United States to recognize its claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights. He thanked Trump for the gesture. The prime minister had been expected to raise the issue with Trump during his visit to Washington next week, an Israeli official said. "At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! @realDonaldTrump," Netanyahu wrote in a tweet. Israel's annexation of much of the Golan was not endorsed internationally. Netanyahu raised the possibility of U.S. recognition in his first White House meeting with Trump in February 2017. Netanyahu had tried to take White House national security advisor John Bolton to see the region during a January visit, but bad weather forced cancellation of the trip. The Golan announcement could help Trump improve his standing in America's pro-Israel camp, especially among his base of evangelical Christians, just ahead of next week's annual convention in Washington of AIPAC, the nation's most influential pro-Israel lobbying group. In this handout image provided by the California High-Speed Rail Authority, Construction of the Cedar Viaduct seen from the Golden State Boulevard to west of State Route 99 on July 13, 2017 in Fresno, California. Two House bills introduced this month by Republicans from California seek to redirect federal funds from the state's high-speed rail project and use the money for other purposes. The Trump administration in February demanded funds back from the controversial project, which has been plagued by cost overruns and delays. A bill introduced by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy would "repurpose" about $3.5 billion worth of federal funds for the rail system to water infrastructure projects to help the state cope with future droughts. A second piece of legislation, dubbed the "High-Speed Refund Act" and introduced by Rep. Doug LaMalfa, requires that any funds the Transportation Department provided to the high-speed rail development go instead to "important freight and highway projects." "The California high-speed rail project is a boondoggle that California and American taxpayers must move on from," McCarthy said earlier this month. "Since its inception, the project's costs have ballooned while oversight and accountability within the California High-Speed Rail Authority has been nonexistent." Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom during his State of the State address said construction of the planned high-speed rail from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles will "cost too much and take too long." Yet Newsom in the Feb. 12 remarks stopped short of calling for a full halt of the massive project, saying: "I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump." The governor ordered "new transparency measures" on the rail project and approved going ahead with part of the rail link a 119-mile stretch in the Central Valley between Merced and Bakersfield. Wasting little time, President Donald Trump weighed in on Newsom's reduction of the high-speed rail project in a tweet Feb. 13: "We want that money back now," the president wrote, calling the planned bullet train "a 'green' disaster!" https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1095857587344551936?lang=en The Trump administration formally notified the state last month that the Federal Railway Administration is seeking return of $2.5 billion in funds for what it termed "this now-defunct project." The U.S. government also announced it intends to terminate the grant of another $929 million in funding, claiming the state's high-speed rail agency failed to stay in compliance under terms of the Obama-era grant agreement. Earlier this month, California sent a letter to FRA and rebutted the federal government's assertion that the state was out of compliance. "We have not heard back from the federal government yet," Melissa Figueroa, a spokesperson for the California State Transportation Agency, told CNBC on Thursday. Bazaar Corporate Radar | Feb 22, 2021, 12:00 AM IST Bazaar Corporate Radar Bazaar Corporate Radar is your window into the minds of top CEOs, Boardrooms, global economists, fund managers and sector analysts. If it?s making news, you?ll find it on Bazaar Corporate Radar. Colorado Politics is published both in print and online. Our website features subscriber-only news stories daily, designed for public policy arena professionals. Member subscribers also receive the weekly print edition of our award-winning newspaper, containing outstanding features and news stories, in their mailboxes every Saturday. The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form I'm currently on the graphics desk. I've also been an assistant city editor and a reporter on the community and education beats. You can reach me by email at oliviagarrett@mail.missouri.edu or on Twitter @_oliviagarrett. Follow this search Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today It's rare for a piece of tech news to truly catch me off-guard these days to actually make me open my eyes wide, mutter something along the lines of "crikey," and then scratch my gorilla-head as I try to make sense of what happened. Well, lemme tell ya, my fellow primate: That very thing went down last week when word broke that Google was moving dozens of employees off its laptop/tablet hardware team and into other roles within the company. The news got a bit buried amidst all the Android Q beta brouhaha, but as first noted by Business Insider, the shift affects both hardware engineers and program managers whose pending projects have been called off. It's part of a broader series of hardware-related "road-map cutbacks," the site's sources reported, and is seen as being a first step in Google's plan to "pare down" its product lineup. Crikey right? For a company that's been working hard to reinvent itself as a serious hardware player and swearing up and down that it's approaching this whole device-making thing as a long-term investment with long-term goals scaling back ambitions this soon sure seems like a strange move to make, at least at first glance. But as is often the case with this kind of thing, there's more to the story than what we see on the surface. My own sources close to the situation (who also spoke to this only on the condition of anonymity, as sources in these sorts of scenarios tend to do) corroborated the "dozens" estimate but emphasized that we're unlikely to see any immediate effect from this that the current product road-map remains unchanged, that Google is still actively invested in the laptop and tablet area, and, critically, that Google is not eliminating any product lines or stepping away from any product categories. The pace of related launches shouldn't even be affected, in fact, according to their information but rather, the idea seems to be that in the longer term, some previously planned expansions to Google's laptop and tablet product realms won't end up seeing the light of day. [Get fresh tips and insight in your inbox every Friday with JR's Android Intelligence newsletter. Exclusive extras await!] And remember: The shift is specific to the laptop/tablet wing of Google's hardware-making efforts. It has nothing to do with the company's other hardware projects, including the Pixel phone or any of the Google Home items. And you know what? Once you start wrapping your head around that reality and thinking through it further, the possibility doesn't actually seem so shocking. Think through it with me, and you'll see what I mean. First: Grasping Google's hardware goals To get at the real meaning of a cutback to Google's hardware road-map, we first have to step back and zoom out for a moment. Remember, the main point of Google's hardware program this current version, headed by former Motorola CEO Rick Osterloh and initiated with the launch of the first Pixel phone in 2016 is to gain greater control of the end-to-end user experience in order to provide the type of experience Google wants to provide. Osterloh himself has said as much, quite plainly and numerous times. Specifically, what that means is that Google wants to make sure its services are front and center and positioned in a way that (a) makes them shine as much as possible and (b) makes them as prominent and appealing as can be to users of the products. More than anything, that goal ultimately seems to revolve around the Google Assistant and for good reason, as we've discussed before. To quote an excerpt from an interview with Osterloh published around the time of Google's big hardware coming-out party in 2016: Fundamentally, we believe that a lot of the innovation that we want to do now ends up requiring controlling the end-to-end user experience. ... We needed to build a system that actually ran [Assistant] perfectly ... Our aim is to give our users the best possible experience. Now, with that context in mind, let's return to the revelation about this hardware pivot. We've established that Google started making its own hardware to claim control over the user experience and make sure its services most importantly Assistant were positioned for optimal success. With Android, that makes a heck of a lot of sense, given the way companies like Samsung restructure Google's software in manners that often de-emphasize Google services and instead promote competing alternatives (hi, Bixby!). On the Google Home front, it's not entirely surprising, either. The smart speaker category is still relatively new and rapidly growing, and Google wanted to get in on the ground floor and make sure to offer something that hit the nail on the head right away something that was consistent with the rest of its ecosystem and would be poised for success. With Chromebooks, though, the situation is different. Chrome OS is well-established at this point and, despite what some folks somehow still think, is actually quite successful. And as anyone who's spent much time with Chromebooks knows, the user experience from one Chromebook to the next in terms of the software and on-screen interface is remarkably consistent. Unlike on Android, device-makers aren't able to change much of anything about the Chrome OS setup. Google controls every element of the operating system (which, yes, is a big part of why upgrades on Chrome OS are such a different story than upgrades on Android). Google decides where and how to present its various services, including the all-important Google Assistant. And the way it's positioning Assistant on Chrome OS may not be entirely unrelated to what's happening with this hardware shake-up. Next: Considering the Chrome OS disconnect Thus far, despite lots of talk about Assistant coming to all Chromebooks (and plenty of under-the-hood work to prepare for such a rollout to happen), Assistant is still readily available on just two Chrome OS devices: Google's own Pixelbook and Pixel Slate. I personally own the Pixelbook, which has had Assistant present since its launch, and lemme tell ya: Having Assistant on the device isn't such an incredible thing. In fact, it's more odd and at times annoying than anything. Allow me to explain: On a Pixelbook, the Assistant is accessible via a dedicated hardware button a special key on the keyboard, located between Ctrl and Alt on the left side, that causes its box to pop up on the screen. And pretty much the only time I press the key is by accident, when I'm aiming for Ctrl or Alt or maybe using muscle memory and trying to hit the area where the Windows key (which serves as a Search key when a Windows keyboard is connected to a Chrome OS device) typically resides. I'm not the only one in fact, enough people have complained about accidentally hitting the Assistant key and never actually wanting to activate Assistant that Google is now looking at the possibility of allowing users to remap the key to an unrelated function. So why is Assistant so impractical in its current Chromebook implementation? That's a good question, Gertrude. For me, it's partially the fact that when I'm sitting in front of a keyboard, I'm accustomed to typing whatever I need directly into Chrome's address bar. It's just much faster and more natural for me to open up a browser tab and type in "weather" than it is to hit the Assistant key and type (or say) "what's the weather" there, for example. The same is true for switching over to my Gmail window and hammering out an email as opposed to hitting the Assistant key, typing (or saying) "send an email," and then following the prompts there to do the same thing. Even with something like a reminder, I'm far more likely to open a new tab and type "remind me to [do whatever] tomorrow at 2pm" than to do that via the Assistant key, even though I'd get the same result from either path. Beyond that, though, when you do use the Assistant on a Chromebook, it's often an awkward and incomplete-feeling experience like the Assistant doesn't quite know it's on a laptop all of the time. When you ask Assistant what it can do on a Chromebook, for instance, it pulls up suggestions for tasks like sending messages or making calls but if you try either of those options, it then tells you that it can't actually do those things on your device. Um, right. JR There's certainly a fair amount of stuff Assistant can do in that environment finding answers, looking up info, performing translations or calculations, and so on but it just never feels like the most natural or direct way to accomplish those tasks. And while there's certainly something to be said for the cross-platform and cross-device consistency having Assistant on a Chromebook provides, I've never quite figured out how to incorporate it into my own personal workflow in any particularly beneficial way. From the looks of it, Google is well aware of this problem: The company is currently testing a revamp of the very way Assistant is presented in Chrome OS one that would ax the current configuration and instead integrate Assistant directly into the Chromebook launcher. The under-development presentation is already live and available in the rough-around-the-edges Canary version of the operating system, in fact and early attempts at activating it show Assistant essentially taking over the launcher's search function and acting as an all-in-one command prompt for anything you want to do. And that brings us to the final assembly of this complicated, lots-of-moving-pieces puzzle. Finally: Processing the big-picture puzzle All right so let's put the pieces together: Google makes its own hardware because it wants to control the user experience and emphasize its services, especially Google Assistant. Chromebooks already have a consistent software experience and the company's initial approach of offering Assistant on them via a dedicated hardware key, which only its own self-made devices currently offer, hasn't exactly panned out or reached any level of critical mass as of yet. And now, Google is looking at a totally different method of integrating Assistant into Chromebooks that'd make it entirely software-based and a core part of the actual operating system on any Chrome OS device, regardless of its hardware specifics. Given all of that and the fact that, by most signs, Google's self-made Chromebooks have remained low-volume, niche-oriented products why would Google devote resources to expanding the product line further with additional price points or styles? Unlike on the Android and Google Home fronts, trying to claim a large chunk of the market with its own products isn't serving the company's primary goals and seems fairly unnecessary, all considered. Really, at this point, building and selling more self-made Chromebook models would offer minimal value when it comes to the goal of providing a uniquely optimal user experience in which Google services can shine because hardware niceties notwithstanding, the same exact thing can be accomplished on any Chromebook, especially once the pending Assistant revamp makes its way across the ecosystem. To be clear, as I mentioned in passing at the start of this story, this doesn't mean that Google is giving up on the Pixelbook entirely. The report that sparked this whole discussion explicitly noted that "there is no indication that Google plans to abandon the Pixelbook" a sentiment my own sources echoed and that, further, the staffing changes mostly suggest the company is "unlikely to flesh out its in-house line of Chromebooks with a wider variety of products and prices." (I did reach out to Google for comment on all of this, by the way, but the company declined to provide a statement for this story.) On the surface and with lots of wild and completely unsubstantiated conclusion-jumping involved, the headlines surrounding that initial news seemed outright shocking but when you step back and carefully think through the whole situation, it suddenly doesn't seem like such a crazy surprise. If anything, it seems sensible and a far cry from any of the doom-and-gloom interpretations some drive-by analyzers spewed out with minimal thought or perspective. It's amazing what a little careful consideration can do, isn't it? Sign up for my weekly newsletter to get more practical tips, personal recommendations, and plain-English perspective on the news that matters. [Android Intelligence videos at Computerworld] Vietnam's FastGo to enter Singapore ride-hailing market next month As part of its expansion plan in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese ride-hailing firm FastGo will be launching in Singapore next month. From April 1, drivers here may register on the FastGo mobile application. Customers will be able to book rides from April 30 onwards, according to news reports. After Singapore, which is FastGo's third market after Vietnam and Myanmar, the company also intends to enter Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand this year. Photo courtesy: FastGo Details on fares for riders have not yet been released, but FastGo founder and chairman Nguyen Huu Tuat said that any FastGo ride will always be cheaper than the others. There will be no surcharges during peak hours and, customers will have the option of leaving tips for drivers when booking a ride, or opt for priority services. For its drivers, FastGo will be charging a fixed daily subscription fee instead of collecting commission fees. The expected fee is below USD5 (SGD6.80) if a drivers income exceeds USD30 a day. The firm explained that this strategy will allow it to attract driver-partners and customers at a low cost. FastGo claims to be one of the top two ride-hailing services in Vietnam with close to 60,000 drivers. The company received an undisclosed sum in a Series A investment from venture capital platform VinaCapital Ventures in August last year, and is aiming to raise another USD50 million in its Series B investment round over the next few months. Brexit 1) Mays broadcast attempts to rouse voters against MPs Speech provokes fury amongst parliamentarians Daily Mail The Prime Minister finally made a decision Daily Telegraph She tells voters: Im on your side The Sun Brexiteers brand extension bid a humiliation Daily Express Theresa May last night tried to turn voters anger on to MPs who are opposing her deal before an EU summit today where leaders will decide whether to allow a Brexit delay. You the public have had enough, she said in an address from Downing Street designed to deflect blame for the crisis on to parliament She blamed MPs for thwarting Britains EU exit on Friday next week, saying that the looming delay was a matter of great personal regret. Hours earlier she had written to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, to ask for a three-month extension to the Article 50 process. That length of delay had been described last week by David Lidington, her de facto deputy, as downright reckless. The Times More: UK to step up no-deal planning FT Over 3,500 troops will be on standby The Sun Analysis: May positions herself as the peoples champion Francis Elliott, The Times >Today: Brexit 2) She appears to be trying to scare up Labour votes with no-deal threat Cabinet ministers on both sides of the Brexit debate are increasingly pessimistic about her chances of winning the vote next week. Pro-European Cabinet ministers were furious after the Prime Minister rejected calls for a long extension, with one saying she had given Eurosceptics an incentive to vote against her deal. One told The Telegraph: She has done a complete 360 degree turn. She is clearly trying to win over Labour MPs. It wont work, she is losing ERG support. They are pursuing a strategy that is guaranteed to see MV3 fail. On Monday a cross-party group of MPs pushing for a soft Brexit will attempt to seize control of the process with a series of votes in the Commons. Daily Telegraph A dangerous volte-face FT Tickets were sold on Graylings no-deal ferries The Sun More: Soft-Brexit MPs prepare yet another attempt to seize control of the timetable The Times Corbyn meets with Tory Remainers The Sun Hague warns that Parliament could cancel Brexit next week Daily Express Tories condemn toxic blame game Daily Mail Comment: Time is tight, the votes are tighter still Nikki da Costa, Times Red Box Battle is on between no deal and no Brexit Andrew Lilico, Daily Telegraph >Today: Alex Mortons column: Riots, looting, pillaging, yellow vests. France shows what Britain could face if Brexit is blocked. >Yesterday: Video: WATCH: Bercow grants emergency debate on Brexit. Rumour of May statement at 20.00. Brexit 3) but is the Prime Minister really prepared to countenance no deal? Why Eurosceptics now believe they can secure a no-deal exit FT How Brexiteer pizza club ambushed May Daily Mail At PMQs she made her U-turn public with a hint that delaying Brexit beyond June would trigger her departure. I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than June 30, she told MPs. She was not flanked by David Lidington, her Remain-supporting deputy who suggested only last week that the government would embrace alternative Brexit options if parliament voted for them Later, in private meetings, she made her views clearer, leading two senior Tories to conclude independently that she was hardening in favour of a no-deal Brexit as the price of saving her premiership. She reassured more than a dozen Brexit-supporting cabinet minsters after lunch that even if Brexit were delayed until June, there would be no alternative options and she was serious about no-deal. She also told them she had no intention of resigning. The Times >Yesterday: Brexit 4) If the deal is defeated again, might May resign? Theresa May has today hinted she will QUIT as Prime Minister if MPs dont back her Brexit deal next week. She confirmed she will bring her defeated agreement back for a THIRD vote next week as she begged the EU for a three-month delay to Brexit. In a sign that the PM is determined to get her deal pushed through this time, she said shes not prepared to put off our EU exit beyond June 30 and she could go if shes made to by Parliament or Brussels. And in a fiery rallying cry she blasted Brexiteers and Remainers for blocking her Brexit deal for weeks on end. The Sun Brexiteers condemn shameful leadership Daily Telegraph Comment: If she loses again, the Prime Minister is finished Peter Oborne, Daily Mail >Yesterday: Video: WATCH: As Prime Minister, I could not consider a delay beyond 30th June Brexit 5) What the EU says about extension: fears of chaos Member States prepared to veto if May doesnt convince Daily Telegraph Frustration rises as talks enter final hours FT Merkel tells Britain to pass the deal or leave Daily Express European Union leaders will reject the idea of delaying Brexit unless MPs first ratify the withdrawal agreement amid fears it could lead to the unravelling of the blocs decision-making process. In a carefully worded response to Theresa Mays request, Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, tried to maximise the chance of the deal being passed by MPs next week while minimising disruption in the EU. In the light of the consultations that I have conducted over the past days I believe that a short extension will be possible but to be conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons, he said. The Times Analysis: EU leaders give up hope Peter Foster, Daily Telegraph What did May ask for and how did Brussels respond? Oliver Wright and Henry Zeffman, The Times The EUs enemy within: Eurosceptic Remainers Simon Kuper, FT Magazine >Yesterday: Brexit 6) Corbyn walks out of key meeting because Umunna was there Jeremy Corbyn walked out of a cross-party meeting with the Prime Minister because Chuka Umunna was included. The Labour leader was called juvenile after refusing to join the meeting when he saw the Independent Group MP there. Mr Umunna was invited as the spokesman of the Independent Group, which was formed last month by seven breakaway Labour MPs. Mr Corbyn is understood to have said Mr Umunna is not a real party leader before walking out. Sir Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat leader, said it was rather a strange way to behave in a national crisis. He added: Jeremy Corbyns kinder, gentler politics was found wanting as he stomped out of the meeting before it began rather than breathe the same air as Chuka Umunna. Daily Telegraph Labour bosses fear electoral price for being party of remain The Sun Comment: The Labour leader could yet decide the future of Brexit Tom Harris, Daily Telegraph Brexit 7) The Spectator: The Conservatives will bear the most blame for this mess Screeching u-turn makes May unfit to lead Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian Four decades after Callaghans collapse, history is repeating Philip Cowley, Times Red Box With an extension, MPs must finally make a decision Nick Timothy, Daily Telegraph Mays big gamble risks a no-deal exit Robert Shrimsley, FT Rudderless Britain lurches towards no-deal Iain Martin, The Times May is the Remainers greatest asset now Allister Heath, Daily Telegraph We need Europe to dig us out of this hole Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian After a reckless gamble on an early election, May lost her majority, then lost her nerve. Calamitously, she agreed to the EUs sequencing of talks: that we would discuss a trade deal only after wed agreed how much money we would hand over and what we would do about the Irish border. Then she lost control over her government, allowing those opposed to Brexit to make sure there was no proper no-deal plan. This all led to the shameful mess before us now. What has gone wrong will be studied by politicians for years, and will keep historians occupied for much longer. Lord North is one of the few beneficiaries of the May premiership: he is now no longer the worst prime minister in our history. The Spectator Editorial: Tories are close to handing power to Corbyn The Sun Trust running out for procrastinating Prime Minister Daily Telegraph National humiliation The Times >Yesterday: Daniel Hannan MEPs column: The EUs anti-democratic culture. First it corrupted other countries. Now it is corrupting Britain. Mercer calls for changes to Party leadership rules A rising star Tory MP calls for major rule changes to leadership contests to stop a Westminster stitch up. Johnny Mercer wants Conservative MPs to pick four candidates for the partys wider membership to pick from, not just the current two. Todays limit allows grandees to fix the outcome and it will chain it to years more Brexit obsessing, the Army officer-turned-MP argues In an article today for the Conservative Home website, he added: With two candidates the whole contest will be about Brexit. Far too many of our members have become frustrated with this all-pervasive process, and will remain desperately uninspired. Instead there is a huge opportunity coming shortly to have a genuine and engaging public discussion of what modern Conservatism actually looks like beyond Brexit. The Sun Tory despair over leadership deepens The Guardian >Today: Johnny Mercer MP in Comment: Reform the leadership rules. MPs should present members with a final four candidates, not two. Ministers 1) Hinds says truancy, not exclusion, is key to surge in knife crime Troubled Families programme could be renamed, hints Brokenshire The Guardian Truancy, not exclusion, is a key reason for rising knife crime, says the Education Secretary, as he admitted efforts to reduce the number of pupils persistently absent from school have stalled. Damian Hinds challenged those such as London mayor Sadiq Khan who have claimed the rise in exclusions is behind the surge in knife attacks, saying the reality was more complex. A much bigger concern is the number of young people who are persistently absent from school, said Mr Hinds, citing research that showed four-fifths of young knife crime offenders had regularly truanted in one of the five years prior to the offence. Around one in 10 children are persistently absent while overall unauthorised absence has increased from 1% in 2006 to 1.3% in 2016/17, according to official datas. The same trends are expected to be confirmed by figures today. Daily Telegraph Comment: Expelling pupils is not the cause Damian Hinds, Daily Telegraph Ministers 2) Men warned to ignore Hancock on genetics Men have been urged not to follow the example of Matt Hancock, the health secretary, who was criticised by experts for a ridiculous claim that a genetic test may have saved his life. Mr Hancock shrugged off accusations of wasting NHS time after he said that he was seeing his GP for a blood test because a commercial DNA test had told him he was at a 50 per cent higher risk of prostate cancer. In a speech to the Royal Society he called for more sharing of DNA data to boost research, and said that more use of such predictive genetic tests would prevent illness and save lives. Ive already booked a blood test and obviously Ill be on alert as I get older. Im going to make certain I dont miss any screening appointments in the future, he said, adding that the test may have saved his life. The Times NHS doctor shortages cannot be filled, think-tank warns FT Activists plot against Momentums Jewish leader Shamed Labour MP sent solidarity to comrade expelled over antisemitism The Times Corbyns party is institutionally racist, report claims The Sun Party adopts formal definition of Islamophobia The Guardian as Labour threatens new tax on motorists Ex-Labour activists who have been accused of anti-Semitism are plotting to force out Momentums Jewish leader. Suspended Labour member Jackie Walker and ex-Labour activist Tony Greenstein are campaigning for the grassroots organisation to ditch Jon Lansman. Ms Walker, who its understood is still subject to an ongoing investigation over anti-Semitism allegations, called on her followers to sign a petition calling for him to resign immediately or call for him to be removed because the group has lost its way. The petition, which has got almost 1,000 signatures so far, demands a new pro-Corbyn campaign group be set up instead. The Sun Labour would whack a 9billion tax on motorists by hiking fuel duty, the partys transport boss indicated yesterday. Andy McDonald said the Governments nine-year fuel duty freeze is not a sensible approach when bus and rail fares are increasing. In a speech to the Institute for Government he also signalled Labour would increase Air Passenger Duty (APD) hiking the cost of holidays. Fuel duty is charged at 57.95p per litre of fuel sold making it around half the cost of filling up and raises 30 billion a year for the Treasury But later a Labour spokesman contradicted Mr McDonalds comments, saying: Labour is not pledging to increase fuel duty. The Sun Row after Watson refuses to surrender phone at meeting The Times News in Brief: Corbyn wont attend a meeting with Umunna. But heres who he will meet. Jeremy Corbyns decision to walk out of the meeting between the Prime Minister and opposition party leaders yesterday was somewhat surprising. Apparently the Labour leader was unwilling to attend a meeting with Chuka Umunna, the de facto leader of The Independent Group. That he doesnt like the former Labour MP isnt a shock, but Corbyn has peculiar standards for who we will and will not talk to. For comparison, heres a reminder of some of the other people he has been willing to deal with, and his given reason. Nicolas Maduro whom Corbyn phoned live on Venezuelan TV in order to congratulate him on gaining power. Bashar al Assad to pay tribute to Syria for accommodating Palestinian refugees. The PLO when he took part in a wreath-laying ceremony honouring dead terrorists. Hamas whom he infamously called his friends at a Parliamentary event, some of whose leaders were also in attendance at the conference during which the wreath-laying took place. He justified meeting the terrorist group in the pursuit of dialogue. Hezbollah another group of friends, Corbyn recently criticised the Governments decision to proscribe the political subdivision of the terrorist organisation. Iran he not only met with but worked for the propaganda arm of the mass-murdering, gay-hanging dictatorship, Press TV, for several years. He claimed he spoke about human rights and justice on the channel, though he continued to do work for them after they broadcast a confession from a tortured journalist from his cell. The IRA Among many incidents, Corbyn invited IRA terrorists to Parliament for tea, shortly after the Brighton bombing, and took part in commemorations to honour dead IRA terrorists. All justified by the claim that he was pursuing peace and dialogue. Czech diplomats At the height of the Cold War, Corbyn was allegedly content to meet and chat to extremely curious and conversational diplomats from at least one hostile totalitarian state, Czechoslovakia. Readers might like or dislike and trust or distrust his given reasons for meeting all those people. But is it really consistent to refuse to meet a fellow Westminster MP, while being willing to engage with all of the rotters and wronguns listed above? Rupert Matthews is an MEP for the East Midlands and the Conservative candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner for the Leicestershire and Rutland Force area. Earlier this month, I was deeply honoured that Conservative Party members in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland placed their faith in me to become our Partys prospective candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner for the Leicestershire and Rutland Force area. I make no bones about the fact that the police officers, staff, and volunteers in our area are second to none and do a magnificent job. Their dedication is not in doubt, nor is their professionalism. But the role of the PCC is to represent the public and to hold the Chief Constable to account. The PCC also has significant direct responsibilities, such as victim support. It is here that a Conservative can make a real difference for the better across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. Our area, like others in the UK, has an issue of rising knife crime, so I am already talking to PCCs in other areas to see how we can bring best practice to our area. The PCC can invest in preventative programmes too. For example, the Ben Kinsella Trust does magnificent work in educating our younger generation on the dangers of carrying knives. Working with charities and establishing preventative education programmes would be a priority for me. And yes, targeted use of stop-and-search is a vital tool in preventing knife crime. We must move away from a mentality where police are afraid to stop those who they feel are suspicious. As PCC, I would create an atmosphere where our officers are trusted to use their instinct. Of course, knife crime predominantly occurs in urban areas, but the Leicestershire and Rutland Force area is extremely diverse. As well as the large city of Leicester, it also includes rural areas. However, we should not make the mistake that these areas are without their own specific issues. In Leicestershire, we have had issues where church roofs have been targeted by thieves for their lead, causing thousands of pounds of damage. Livestock have been slaughtered by thugs, damaging the livelihoods of farmers. I was amazed that Leicestershire Police has not adopted a specific rural crime strategy. As PCC, I would ensure that a specific policy is put in place to address rural crimes. But regardless of where a crime is committed, whether it be in a small village, large town, or major city, I realise the importance of taking EVERY crime seriously. The key to this is responding to all crimes in a timely fashion. Obviously the most serious crimes should receive an immediate response. But I have heard of cases where car owners who have their vehicles damaged by vandals have not been interviewed for three weeks. Every crime is important, no matter how big or small they are. A crime is a crime after all. Victims waiting for weeks for a police response is clearly not acceptable. Therefore, I believe that all crimes should receive a response within 24 hours of it being committed. An important part of a PCCs role is supporting the victims of crime. In Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland we have a specific service set up by the last Conservative PCC called Victim First. The service aims to provide a tailored support package for victims of crime with named support workers allocated to those victims. However, this service has been allowed to stagnate the website hasnt been updated since its launch. As PCC, I will put in a renewed effort to support the victims of crime. Finally, as a Conservative I want to see efficient use of public funds. Of course, I will be lobbying for additional Government funds we get 169 per head from central government as opposed to the national average of 207 but we must spend money more wisely too. Utilising new technologies can help with this. Using drones to track down criminals on the run is more cost-effective than sending a police helicopter, and I am looking into more extensive use of Smart CCTV. We can achieve more with less, but rest assured I will be lobbying central Government for our fair share of the budget. I am under no illusion about the task ahead. While I am clear about the changes I want to introduce to make our communities safer, we must first win this seat back from Labour who dramatically took it from us in 2016. There is a very well-oiled Labour Party machine in Leicester, and they will throw the kitchen sink at this election they will not want to lose. My commitment, and that of the Party members in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, to win is absolute. The Leicestershire and Rutland Force area is a wonderful place to live and work. We have many diverse communities covering a large and varied area. Policing in our area needs to reflect this and requires a PCC who understands the differing needs of our city and two counties. I understand these needs. I cant wait to get started. I will give my all to become the Conservative Party Police and Crime Commissioner for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. Alex Morton is Director of Policy at the Centre for Policy Studies, and was a member of David Camerons Downing Street Policy Unit. In nine days, we are due to leave the European Union with no deal. Parliament has twice voted down the proposed deal. The Cabinet is divided. Party discipline has broken down. The Speaker is effectively campaigning for Remain. And Emmanuel Macron is threatening to veto any extension to Article 50. Mention of Frances President reminds us of the country he governs which is apposite, because a new book from France casts light on Britain, and reminds us all what is at stake. Twilight of the Elites by Christophe Guilluy is a more pessimistic French equivalent of David Goodharts The Road to Somewhere. Written in 2016, before the country was wracked by riots, protests and violence, it argues that France is suffering from a fatal maybe terminal division between the people and elites. The failure of the French elite Guilluy, a geographer, argues that his country has seen: Social dislocation and unhappiness. Economic stagnation. A rise in insecurity in every level both economic in terms of ownership, pensions, jobs, but also cultural in terms of rapid ethnic and cultural change, terror attacks, and crime. The ruling class of France has failed to create a stable and prosperous country, and has morphed into an Establishment whose rule is difficult to justify on conventional metrics of success. His main charge against this elite which may have a familiar ring to British ears is their hypocrisy. Their bastion, Paris, lectures the rest of the country on being open, yet is a city where the average square metre in housing costs more than 8,000 euros, way beyond most peoples budgets. He also hits out at Frances equality agenda, arguing that it is designed to allow the children of the rich, whatever their gender, to retain control while feeling virtuous about the open society. There is far less attention paid to slowing social mobility beyond those educated at elite universities, or to the stagnant economy. This elite condemn those who express concerns over immigration or multiculturalism yet even more than in Britain, they themselves live far away from areas of low skill migration, Parisian suburbs like Aubervilliers and La Courneuve where nearly eight in ten children are from a migrant background. Even where the elite and migrants live close to each other, they are educated separately. The divide between metropolis and periphery Guilluys most explosive argument is that all this is a deliberate strategy, created to ignore the more important divide between the 40 per cent living in the largest metropolitan areas and the 60 per cent living in what he terms the periphery, the France of rural areas and small cities, towns and villages. The political system, he claims, is designed to ignore the fact that the countrys limited economic gains accrue to the top 10 to 20 percent within the large metropolitan areas. This allows the elite to effectively pretend that the large cities are France, and France is the large cities so communities that are poor, white, old, outside major urban areas, or any combination thereof, simply do not exist. However, even within the metropolitan areas, Guilluy notes there is increasing marginalisation for those who do not have the right connections, attend the right schools, or capture one of the professional jobs in the citys core. He notes for all the talk of diversity, those who live in the sensitive urban zones predominantly poor migrants alongside the remains of the white working class were hit most by the global financial crisis, with unemployment rising in these areas from 16.7 per cent to 24.2 per cent, compared to 7.6 per cent to 9.1 per cent across urban areas as a whole. He also notes that the last thing those who live in these areas, whether white working class or the children of previous migrants, want or benefit from is more migration. The collapse of the old politics The result of all this is an incompetent, self-selecting, hereditary and deeply out-of-touch ruling class which is unable to cope with the political challenges France faces. The last desperate claim of those in charge is that they are all that stand between power and the bogeyman of the National Front. Yet Guilluy argues that it is their own failures that have created both the National Front and rising Islamism among alienated migrant youth. Guilluy does not believe this argument will be enough to save the system, and events appear to be vindicating him. He published his book in 2016, before the old parties of left and right came a humiliated third and fifth in the 2017 Presidential elections, beaten by Macron, Le Pen, and in the case of the Left, by a Corbynite socialist. The most recent polls for 2022 have Le Pen scoring in the mid-forties. The book cites polling showing that nearly nine out of ten French people believe both that government takes no interest in people like them, and politicians are only concerned with their own advantage. He notes that those who rail against divisive politics are themselves prone to portraying those on the periphery as bigoted and stupid, or to pitting different groups against each other along gender or racial lines. The lesson for Britain Brexit has been a huge political convulsion. But it is striking in comparison to France and other European countries that the turmoil has not spilled out on to the streets. In France, the Champs-Elysees has been looted and pillaged. Thousands of demonstrators in their yellow vests regularly confront the security forces, and each other. The far right are on the march. The coming days and weeks in Britain are sure to be dramatic. And probably traumatic. Britains elites need to bear in mind the lessons from France. Almost all of the points Guilluy makes about France could arguably be applied here too. There is a disconnection between the metropolis and periphery or in our case, between London and the affluent university towns and the rest. And our Establishment is not exactly performing brilliantly under pressure. Brexit is complex but not impossible and people expect politicians to solve complex problems. Abandoning or reversing Brexit would be the best possible way to make all of these problems worse to confirm to the millions on Britains periphery that they do not matter. And to push us down the dangerous path that France appears to be locked into. Fury of Tory MPs as soldier charged over Bloody Sunday The decision by Northern Irish prosecutors to lay charges against one of the soldiers implicated in the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings has attracted an angry response, the Sun reports. Conservative MPs Johnny Mercer and Leo Docherty, who had been campaigning to protect ex-servicemen, led the charge. Contrasts were drawn between the treatment of Soldier F and the many IRA terrorists who were granted immunity from prosecution by Tony Blairs notorious comfort letters programme. Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, has announced that the Government will cover Soldier Fs legal fees, and reiterated his position that the system for investigating legacy issues needs to be overhauled. However there was anger from the other direction too, with families of those killed upset that prosecutions will not be brought against more former soldiers, with 16 other elderly veterans who were probed facing no action due to insufficient evidence. Newport West by-election candidates announced The parties have unveiled their candidates to succeed Paul Flynn, the veteran Labour MP who represented the constituency since 1987 and it looks like quite the circus. No fewer than 11 candidates are putting their names forward, with representatives of the major parties competing with challenges from such varied sources as Abolish the Welsh Assembly, centrist party Renew, far-right For Britain, the continuity SDP, and whatever Democrats & Veterans is. You can read interviews with all of them on Wales Online. Whilst most of these obviously have no chance of success, it will be interesting to see what impact some of them have on the other parties. One particular thing to watch will be whether Abolish the Assembly manage to make a dent in the Conservative vote with their strong unionist message. As for the seat itself, Flynn bequeaths his successor a majority of over 5,000. However the Tories managed to cut it to around 3,500 in both 2010 and 2015, and with the unwinding of his personal vote, plus an estimated Leave vote of over 50 per cent, they may be able to put on a strong showing. Trimble hints that backstop changes may be enough One of the architects of the Belfast Agreement, and a staunch critic of Theresa Mays approach to Brexit, has suggested that she has managed to meaningfully reduce the threat posed by the Irish backstop, according to the Daily Express. Writing for policy exchange Lord Trimble, who launched a legal challenge against the Withdrawal Agreement on the grounds that it breached the Belfast Agreement, wrote: A widespread war weariness on all sides is a significant factor. But the Government has succeeded in securing substantive changes that will affect and limit the impact of the Irish backstop, if it is ever put in place at the end of the transitional period. His co-author was Lord Bew, a life peer and Professor of Irish Politics at Queens University Belfast. This comes in the same week that ministers are reportedly pulling out all the stops to secure the Democratic Unionists support for the Prime Ministers deal. Amongst the inducements reportedly on offer is the scrapping of Air Passenger Duty on flights from Northern Ireland, whilst the DUP are demanding that their MPs be deeply involved in the next round of negotiations with Brussels over the future relationship along with the obvious extra cash. However, despite rumours that a deal might be close earlier this week, MPs such as Jim Shannon have been quick to reiterate that they arent there yet, saying that: We will not sell our soul for a deal that threatens the Union. Scottish MP preparing tilt at Liberal Democrat leadership Jo Swinson, the Member of Parliament for East Dunbartonshire, is reportedly one of three Lib Dem legislators preparing to run to succeed Sir Vince Cable as leader when he steps down in May. A business minister during the Coalition, she lost her seat in partys 2015 wipe-out before regaining it two years later. She as built a profile campaigning on equality issues, and was at the centre of last years controversy over pairing. She will be squaring off against Sir Ed Davey, the former Energy Secretary and MP for Kingston, and possibly Layla Moran, the newly-elected MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. Books have been written about how Alastair Campbell, as Tony Blairs Head of Communications, tabloidised the entire culture of government. At the heart of the sweeping-away of old restraints and conventions was a feral instinct. When in trouble, dont admit error; dont accept responsibility: instead, blame someone else. If Theresa Mays broadcast this evening proved anything, it is that Campbells legacy of spin is alive and twitching. Downing Street will have studied the polling. As James Frayne has suggested on this site, its overall findings are ambiguous, but there is clearly frustration with the state of Brexit and recognition among both Leave and Remain voters that it is not being delivered on time. The Prime Minister thus sought to frame the debate, in the jargon of the trade. So you, unhappy voter, are baffled, even angry? Well, dont blame me. Blame those MPs! Blame the politicians! One might almost not have known from that she is herself an MP and the most senior politician in the land. I am on your side, she declared, just in case viewers were too obtuse to get her point. But May herself is playing as much of a game as any other of her 649 colleagues. It is same-old-same-old: her chicken game. Vote for my deal or there will be No Brexit. Vote for my deal or there will be No Deal (depending on the need of the moment). Her aim is to mobilise voters against the Commons. Perhaps she will succeed. Maybe her broadcast wowed the public though we doubt it. Either way, there is one group of people among whom her gambit will have gone down with like a lorryroad of lukewarm vomit: her own colleagues. It is a measure of the Prime Ministers desperation that she no longer seems to care. Who was it who used to say that politics is not a game? Buckle up, folks. The online travel agency business is about to experience some possible turbulence. Anyone whos surfed the web looking for vacation ideas knows all too well that theres plenty of companies waiting for the consumers mouse-click to go in their favor. Airlines, hotels, bed and breakfasts, cruise lines, automobile rental companies, and others are at each others throats trying to lure their share of the nearly 600 million consumers who book some sort of travel-related aspect online. Why? Because the grass is very green on the travel playing field. Expedia -- which owns Hotels.com, Orbitz, CheapTickets, Travelocity, Hotwire and others -- pulled in $11 billion in 2018. Bookings.com -- the umbrella for Kayak, Priceline, and others -- also posted $11 billion last year. Now, the most feared elephant in any online business room -- Google -- has entered the vacation rental fray. On Wednesday, the company announced that it, too, is launching a platform where consumers can see and book vacation rentals as part of Google Hotel Search. You can narrow your search with price and amenity filters, plus browse photos, read reviews and see rates and availability of the vacation rental property, wrote Pratip Banerji, Googles Travel Product Manager. Here we go! It's game-on in the alternative accommodations market, Dennis Schaal, the executive editor at travel news and research site Skift told ConsumerAffairs. Google will certainly be on the rise in the sector, and because of its footprint, could definitely take market share away from Airbnb, which is apparently seeing its growth already slow in some of its biggest markets. If Schaal is right, Googles entrance will either make Airbnb stronger or force it to find a vacation rental pocket that Google doesnt have its hand in, yet. Nonetheless, the goal of taking market share away from Airbnb can have a handsome payoff for Google. Since Airbnb started up some 10 years ago, its notched 500 million guest arrivals and a market valuation of over $30 billion. Going for the win-win If youre asking if Airbnb will take a hit, wont others in the sector like HomeAway and VRBO take one, too? Yes and no. Google knows it could be foolhardy to take this on solo, so its setting its sights on being a friendly elephant in the room by taking the aggregator route, where it will partner with other travel planning stalwarts like Expedia, HomeAway, Hotels.com, NextPax, RedAwning, Rentals United, TripAdvisor, and VRBO. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats. Google will make a tidy commission off of getting consumers to those sites and, in turn, those sites will presumably be happy about cutting Google in on the action for doing that. Plus, on the marketing end, Googles partners arent really losing much, if anything. When a traveler clicks Book, theyre transported to the travel partners page to complete their transaction, and all property information and bookings are provided and done by those travel partners. Schaal says not to rush to judgment on Airbnbs place in the food chain. Although Airbnb isn't participating yet in Google's new vacation rentals' offering, Airbnb certainly could choose to participate in the future, bidding for placement like (Googles other partners) in Google's vacation rentals' product, he said. Preparing for a shakeout A shift this seismic will certainly produce changes and adjustments consumers will notice when making travel plans. Expedia, for another, also had a big announcement on Wednesday. Its VRBO (Vacation Rentals by Owner) brand rolled out two sizeable changes. One is that the company wants to now be known as Vrbo -- as if its ver-boh. The second is a new collaborative tool that allows travelers to create their own Trip Boards to like and save their favorite properties in one place. This will let consumers share travel plans with others in their travel group, ask for feedback, and vote on the ones they like best. Seems like a smart move. According to Vrbo data, 86 percent of U.S. travelers ask others for advice when planning a trip. With app push notifications, each person can choose to be notified about votes or comments right away, making it easier and faster to choose the best place for everyone, the company said in a news release. Virtual tours are another way technology helps Vrbo customers find a perfect match. Currently,15,000 360-degree virtual walkthroughs bring homes to life for travelers before they book, with more tours quickly being added. Schaal predicts consumers might also see some movement from Booking.com as it maneuvers the playing field, trying to maintain its connection with 1,334,878 active properties in 225 countries. Don't count out Booking.com in this discussion of Google versus Airbnb, he said. Booking.com is a very capable company and offers nearly as many alternative accommodations as Airbnb although Booking.com, which is the dominant online travel agency player in Europe, often gets left out of the conversation. You will be hearing a lot more about Booking.com in this sector. 100% Website humanizar.es uses latest and advanced technologies. It supports HTTPS and GZIP compression. The main html page has a size of 156584 bytes (152.91 kb uncompressed) and 18797 bytes (18.36 kb compressed). This CoolSocial report was updated on 2021-07-24, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. 99% Website news.meta.ua uses latest and advanced technologies like: Boostrap. It supports HTTPS and GZIP compression. The main html page has a size of 58534 bytes (57.16 kb uncompressed) and 18849 bytes (18.41 kb compressed). This CoolSocial report was updated on 2021-10-25, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. 100% Website nzdf.mil.nz uses latest and advanced technologies. It supports HTTPS. The main html page has a size of 20031 bytes (19.56 kb uncompressed). This CoolSocial report was updated on 2019-09-25, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. 80% Website powerhomepages.com uses latest and advanced technologies like: Php. It supports HTTPS and GZIP compression. The main html page has a size of 30641 bytes (29.92 kb uncompressed) and 3922 bytes (3.83 kb compressed). This CoolSocial report was updated on 2021-02-13, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. 60% Website snn100.com uses latest and advanced technologies. It supports HTTPS. The main html page has a size of 53517 bytes (52.26 kb uncompressed). This CoolSocial report was updated on 2021-09-01, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. 100% Website t-shirtforums.com uses latest and advanced technologies. It is very popular on the web, it's within the 1 million most visited websites of the world at position 86621 by Alexa. It supports HTTPS and GZIP compression. The main html page has a size of 52155 bytes (50.93 kb uncompressed) and 13461 bytes (13.15 kb compressed). This CoolSocial report was updated on 2021-12-08, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want. Continue Reading Below Advertisement And if we really want to journey down the brain-numbing rabbit hole of over-analysis, the trailer is set to a remixed version of The Who's "Baba O'Riley" -- a song partly named after Indian mystic Meher Baba, who was once quoted as saying "Russia holds the key." Of course, he was talking about World War II, not a bunch of preteens battling interdimensional monsters, but still. The rest of the riddle reads: "A trip to China sounds nice, if you tread lightly." As seen in the trailer, some kind of dramatic confrontation seemingly goes down in the mall food court, and we know there's an Imperial Panda there. Could the Chinese eatery hold some special significance? Let's just say yes and get back to basking in the joys of the real world. Continue Reading Below Advertisement You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter! Support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you. For more, check out Google's New Game System Might Have A Huge Stupid Downside and Toy Story 4 Looks As Existentially Terrifying As We Thought. Also, we'd love to know more about you and your interesting lives, dear readers. If you spend your days doing cool stuff, drop us a line at iDoCoolStuff at Cracked dot com, and maybe we can share your story with the entire internet. Follow us on Facebook. Because we said so. Palm Sunday Will Be on March 28, 2021 Many churches celebrate Palm Sunday, which is always the Sunday before Easter (April 4). Maybe your church has children waving palm branches to help them connect to the story. But while this is a triumphal entry, it is Jesus first step toward His death. Matthew 21:4 tells us: This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying, "Say to the daughter of Zion, 'Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.'" *The prophecy is cited from Zechariah 9:9 and Isaiah 62:11. Jesus had become somewhat of a celebrity among people who had heard of the miraculous raising of Lazarus from the dead, and they wanted to see Him and treat Him like a king. But Jesus wasnt arriving to be their king on account of Lazarus; the story of Lazarus would have had the religious leaders in even more of an uproar and determined to put an end to His life, which He knew . . . Jesus glory would be greater than that of a local king. Palm Sunday is the start of the Holy Week which contains: Palm Sunday, March 28 Maundy Thursday, April 1 Good Friday, April 2 Holy Saturday, April 3 Easter Sunday, April 4 What Is Palm Sunday? Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter that begins the Holy Week. It is the day that we remember and celebrate the day Jesus entered into Jerusalem as Savior and King. As Jesus rode a donkey into the town of Jerusalem a large crowd gathered and laid palm branches and their cloaks across the road, giving Jesus royal treatment. The hundreds of people shouted Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven! -Excerpted from 5 Things about Palm Sunday that Remind Us Christ is King Get your FREE 8-Day Prayer and Scripture Guide - Praying Through the Holy Week HERE. Print your own copy for a beautiful daily devotional leading up to Easter. When is Palm Sunday 2022? Next year Palm Sunday will fall on April 10, with Easter a week later on April 17. Palm Sunday is a moveable Christian holiday based upon the date of Easter - which is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after March 21 - the spring vernal equinox. 5 Quick Things to Know about Palm Sunday Everything about the scene is important (John 12:12-19, Mark 1:1-11, Matthew 21:1-11, Luke 19:28-44) Jesus fulfills the prophecy of the Messiah in Zechariah 9 There is meaning behind the lowly donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem Palm Sunday marks Jesus humble and triumphant journey toward His sacrifice and the cross The people hailed Jesus as King and called out Hosanna, which means save us Why a Triumphal Entry on a Donkey? In the ancient Middle Eastern world, leaders rode horses if they rode to war, but donkeys if they came in peace. First Kings 1:33 mentions Solomon riding a donkey on the day he was recognized as the new king of Israel. Other instances of leaders riding donkeys are Judges 5:10; 10:4; 12:14; and 2 Samuel 16:2. The mention of a donkey in Zechariah 9:9-10 fits the description of a king who would be righteous and having salvation, gentle. Rather than riding to conquer, this king would enter in peace. Isaac, a type of Christ, rides a donkey to be slain by his father Abraham on the altar ( Genesis 49:10-12). -Excerpted from 8 Things Most Christians Dont Understand about Jesus Triumphal Entry by Dr. Roger Barrier. Read more at the link. Why Do Christians Celebrate Palm Sunday? Hindsight is always 20/20. Yet while we are in a particular situation, we tend to make things out to be what they arent and infer wrong meanings. We kick ourselves, thinking If only I had known then what I know now! Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem must have been one of those moments for His disciples. It had appeared to be such a wonderful day for themand it was, but for different reasons than they realized. They thought the Messiah had come to reestablish Israels power in the world. But God had something else in mind. The disciples werent the only ones who had misconceptions about the Messiah. Many Jews of the day expected Him to be an earthly king. When the crowds heard Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, they cheered, Hosanna! which means, Save now! They saw Him as their new King, come to bring salvation from political and societal oppression. He raised the deadno doubt he could also restore the kingdom of David and free them from Roman rule. Seated upon a donkey, Jesus resembled a ruler returning to his city in peacetime, loyal subjects lining his path with coats and palm fronds. Even the Pharisees were there watching in indignation, saying, Look, the world has gone after Him ( John 12:19). This week, think back to those times when circumstances looked one way but turned out to be something else entirely. Remember when you realized God was different than you imagined and saw His will unfold in surprising ways. Look for an opportunity to share your insight with a friend or loved one. (excerpted from our InTouch devotional) *Used with permission from In Touch Ministries, Inc. 2016 All Rights Reserved. A Short Prayer for Palm Sunday Lord God, I give you thanks, for you are good, and your mercy is endless. Here I stand, at the start of this holy week, This week in which your church remembers Jesus passion and death, And I am distracted by many things. Turn my eyes now to the One who comes in your name The one who opens the gates of righteousness The one who answers when we call. I bless you, Lord, for shining your light upon me, And for sending your son to us, in human frailty. To walk the road we walk. Open my eyes that I may see him coming, And may praise him with a pure heart. And may walk in the way of his suffering, And share also in his resurrection. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen. -Excerpted from 8 Prayers to Pray Each Week of Holy Week by Rachel Marie Stone Future Palm Sunday Dates April 10, 2022 April 2, 2023 Match 24, 2024 April 13, 2025 March 29, 2026 Photo credit: GettyImages/SidneydeAlmeida This article is part of our larger Holy Week and Easter resource library centered around the events leading up to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We hope these articles help you understand the meaning and story behind important Christian holidays and dates and encourage you as you take time to reflect on all that God has done for us through his son Jesus Christ! What is the Holy Week? What Is Palm Sunday? What is Maundy Thursday? What Is Good Friday? What Is Easter? Easter Prayers At Easter, the Son of God took on the worlds sin and defeated the devil, death, and grave. How is it, then, that historys most glorious moment is surrounded by fearful fishermen, despised tax collectors, marginalized women, feeble politicians, and traitorous friends? In The Characters of Easter, youll become acquainted with the unlikely collection of ordinary people who witnessed the miracle of Christs death and resurrection. This FREE podcast provides a fresh approach to the Lenten season and can be used as a devotional or study for both individuals and groups. Valletta Cruise Port has welcomed the MSC Bellissima on her maiden call to Malta. Following the arrival into Vallettas Grand Harbour the ship and its guests and crew were welcomed ashore by a traditional village band performing local favorites, along with international pieces. A ceremony was held aboard the ship in the presence of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, members of the cabinet of Malta, local authorities, as well as business and industry leaders. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat highlighted the significant collaboration between Malta and MSC. I am proud, but not surprised, to see us collaborating with a company featuring another magnificent ship with such diverse, international and advanced technological features. Pierfrancesco Vago, MSC Cruises executive chairman added that, Malta has always been important to MSC Cruises and our partnership started many years ago. Since our first ships first called here in the late 1990s, Valletta has prominently figured on our Mediterranean itineraries, year round. Last year alone our cruise ships made 75 calls to Malta, bringing over 300,000 of our passengers, helping to generate a meaningful benefit for the local economy. Today, MSC Bellissima is our fourth cruise ship to have Valletta as her port of registry, and our newest ships all proudly fly the Maltese flag around the world. We are proud to welcome MSC Bellissima on her maiden call to Valletta Cruise Port, and to be welcoming her on 33 other occasions in our historic port, throughout her inaugural season in the Mediterranean this summer. Valletta has positioned itself on the cruise map through close collaboration with all key players, and a drive for excellence. On behalf of both Valletta Cruise Port and Global Ports Holding, we congratulate MSC Cruises on their achievements and look forward to many more years of fruitful joint cooperation and partnerships, commented Valletta Cruise Ports CEO and Global Ports Holding COO, Stephen Xuereb. The ships maiden call marks the start of a regular cruise schedule in the Mediterranean with weekly port calls in Valletta until November 2019. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH) today announced plans for the development and construction of the Norwegian Cruise Line Center of Excellence, a new shipboard seafarer training facility near Manila in the Philippines. NCLH said that the 200,000-square-foot facility will serve both new and existing shipboard team members across the company and will provide training for various onboard service areas. The training campus will enable the company to fully immerse trainees in their coursework, reduce onboard training time and further improve upon service levels. The facilities have been designed to provide trainees with realistic work and living experiences aboard a cruise ship, which will include replicas of staterooms, galley, casino floor, full service bar as well as safety and security training areas. Slated for 2020 completion, the center will provide annual training for as many as 8,000 shipboard team members each year. As the company continues to grow and execute on our disciplined newbuild pipeline with eleven ships on order through 2027, the Center of Excellence will enable us to train and develop shipboard staff to meet the growing demand for top talent and to provide our guests with the high level of service and best-in-class vacation experience they have come to expect, said Frank Del Rio, president and CEO, in a prepared statement. NCLH has secured a 7.2 acre parcel of land near Manila, where it plans to develop the center. Construction is scheduled to begin this year with the facility slated to open its doors in late 2020. The companys three cruise brands currently source approximately 65 percent of their shipboard talent from Southeast Asia and anticipates an even higher demand for personnel from the region in the coming years. The central location of the Philippines, as well as its high percentage of multi-lingual citizens, has proven to be an ideal location for the training and development facility, NCLH stated. SoftNAS users should upgrade their virtual appliance immediately following the discovery of a security issue in the product's session management. Texas pen-testing outfit Digital Defense discovered the vulnerability during an engagement and coordinated disclosure with SoftNAS. Version 4.2.2 contains the relevant security patch. "SoftNAS Cloud Enterprise 4.2.0 is vulnerable to an authenticated bypass that could be leveraged to gain access to the webadmin interface without valid user credentials," the Digital Defense advisory says. "The vulnerability potentially allows an attacker to create new users or execute arbitrary commands with administrative privileges, compromising both the platform and data." Typically, a SoftNAS appliance is not deployed internet-facing, mitigating the risk for users. However, an intruder already in an enterprise network would find the SoftNAS appliance a softer target than many end points and rich with backup data to exfiltrate. "A lot of times when we're in security assessments, we tend to take a very hard look at backup and network-attached storage systems," Mike Cotton, vice president of research and development at Digital Defense, tells CSO. "They house a lot of critical information from hundreds of systems potentially." If you have one of these appliances, I would move it to the top of the [patching] list. "If you have one of these appliances, I would move it to the top of the [patching] list," he adds. Proper SoftNAS setup mitigates risk For their part, SoftNAS emphasized that customers should not be exposing their SoftNAS appliance to the wilds of the open internet. "If [customers] set this up correctly, there would be no threat from the outside of the corporate environment or data center," Jeff Russo, senior vice president of products, says. The vulnerability was introduced in SoftNAS version 4.2.0, Russo explains, when the company integrated nginx support, ironically to improve the security of the product. "The footprint of nginx is smaller, the performance is better," Russo says, "there are fewer security issues with nginx." Digital Defense was surprised to find such a significant vulnerability in SoftNAS's product. "We were expecting more robust session management, which is typically what we see on these devices," Cotton tells CSO. "We've worked with other high-profile vendors on flaws like this." The SoftNAS appliance currently only offers password-based authentication, but Russo says plans are in the works to introduce two-factor authentication soon. SoftNAS customers rely on their software appliances for primary, secondary, and archive storage, according to Russo. The killer feature for SoftNAS customers has been the ability to migrate on-premises applications to the cloud without having to rewrite those applications. The vulnerability has not yet been assigned a CVE. STAMFORD A Congressional committee is investigating members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma and have been sued by Connecticut and Massachusetts for their alleged role in the opioid crisis. In a letter Thursday to Purdue CEO and President Craig Landau, Democratic leaders of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform requested documents related to the lawsuits allegations that the Sacklers who control Purdue fueled the epidemic of opioid abuse through deceptive marketing of pain drugs such as OxyContin and also sought to move into the market for anti-addiction medications. The U.S. is in the midst of its greatest public-health crisis in decades, committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, and committee member Mark DeSaulnier, D-California, wrote in the letter. Due, in part, to the aggressive over-prescribing of opioids like OxyContin, millions of Americans are in the grip of addiction. In a statement, Purdue said that it looks forward to responding to the chairmans letter. The challenges posed by the opioid crisis are substantial, and we are committed to doing our part to help find and achieve solutions. Cummings and DeSaulnier also cited concerns tied to a recent CBS 60 minutes report that Purdue allegedly pressured the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to expand in 2001 the designation on OxyContins labeling to cover daily, around-the-clock, long-term use. Purdue disputes the CBS report and said the 2001 changes narrowed the intended uses for OxyContin, with a black box warning. Originally filed last June and then re-submitted in January in an unredacted 275-page version, Massachusetts lawsuit has attracted nationwide attention. Purdue filed earlier this month a motion to dismiss the litigation. Massachusetts was the first state to name not only Purdue, but also Sackler members as defendants. Connecticut, which filed its complaint last December, was the second state to sue the Sacklers. Eight family members, who control a majority of the companys board seats, have led an aggressive campaign to push sales of Purdue opioids, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. The Sacklers allegedly orchestrated thousands of sales-representative visits to doctors that distorted the drugs risks and benefits and encouraged dangerous dosages. OxyContin generates most of Purdues annual sales, which have been estimated at more than $3 billion in recent years. The Sackler defendants have paid themselves and their family billions of dollars from those opioid revenues, Massachusetts lawsuit said. Purdue denies those allegations. It also challenges the complaints central accusation that it was responsible for a decade-long course of misconduct in Massachusetts that involved hundreds of deaths. The amended complaint ignores this crucial context that the opioid-abuse crisis is a complex, multifactorial societal issue and instead sets forth a misleading narrative in an attempt to litigate this case in the court of public opinion, the motion said, in part. Last January, a Connecticut Superior Court judge dismissed a similar group of lawsuits that included complaints filed by the municipal governments of Bridgeport, New Haven, New Britain and Waterbury. Bridgeport, New Haven and Waterbury are challenging the decision in the states Appellate Court. pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott HARTFORD Eleven people died flu-associated deaths last week, bringing the number of people that have passed away from issues related to the virus this season to 55. The departments weekly look at the current flu season, which began August 26, was released Thursday. The percentage of emergency room visits in Connecticut attributed to a combination of flu and fever rose from 7.8 percent for the week ending March 9 to 7.9 percent for the week ending March 16, according to DPH. A total of 2,480 people have been hospitalized with confirmed cases of the flu this year, including 177 in the past week, according to DPH. A total of 7,355 influenza cases have been reported in Connecticut during the flu season, including 2,207 in New Haven County, 1,686 in Fairfield County, 445 in Litchfield County and 427 in Middlesex County. Of the 55 people who have died from the flu this year, 35 were 65 or older, 15 were between 50 and 64 years old, four were between 25 and 49, and one was between 5 and 17. DPH officials noted that those interested can still go get a flu shot. There is still time for you and your family to obtain your flu vaccine and take steps to prevent influenza-related illness and hospitalization, officials said. william.lambert@hearstmediact.com A 12-year-old boy mauled by a pack of six dogs in Mississippi played dead in the hopes that the dogs would leave him alone, a family member said. Aden Green was attacked Friday in Winona while he was riding his bike. The dogs dragged him into a ditch, where he was spotted by another boy and his father who were passing by, Montgomery County Sheriff Bubba Nix said. They used boards and hammers to get the dogs away from Green, Nix said. Net neutrality is not dead -- yet. The Save the Internet Act, unveiled in both houses of Congress on March 6th, 2019, aims to overturn the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) December 2017 decision to repeal net neutrality. The obvious question is: What if it doesn't pass? The not-so-obvious answer is: the bill can help win the net neutrality battle even if it doesnt pass. Before we examine the impact of this bill, let's go over a few background facts. Related: 3 Ways the Net Neutrality Repeal Can Damage Your Business What is net neutrality? The net neutrality rules of 2015 prohibited Internet Service Providers (ISP) from blocking, throttling or slowing down lawful content on any websites or apps, or creating "fast" lanes for preferred content and "slow" lanes for everyone else. However, the net neutrality repeal of December 2017 allowed ISPs such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and others to do two things: Slow down or block websites and apps of organizations unless they pay ISPs higher tariffs Ask consumers to pay more to access certain websites or groups of sites. Startups and small businesses are the most vulnerable in a world without net neutrality. They simply don't have the means to pay huge fees to ISPs to ensure that their websites or apps are not slowed down. Net neutrality violations after the 2017 repeal. After the 2017 repeal, there have been several incidents of speed throttling and site blocking. Here are a few notable violations during 2018. The California fire incident: In August 2018, during the largest known fire in California history, Verizon throttled the internet speed of the fire department in Santa Clara County to 0.5 percent of its original speed. Fire officials stated that this severely impacted their rescue operations. AT&Ts WatchTV: The absence of net neutrality rules allows ISPs to use Zero-rating to give their own services a significant edge over other competing services. Zero-rating means that any data used towards consuming AT&Ts services, such as WatchTV will not count towards consumers monthly data caps. Ryan Singel, a media and strategy fellow at Stanford Law Schools Center for Internet and Society and founder at Contextly, told me in an email interview that, AT&T continues its policy of zero-rating its own video services, while not zero-rating competing services. With its acquisition of Time-Warner, it has even more reason to continue this unfair practice. Sprint throttling Skype: A study conducted by Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts found that Sprint has been selectively throttling Skype -- the popular video chat tool from Microsoft. The researchers stated that the reason is because Skype competes with Sprints own calling service. Related: With Net Neutrality Repealed ISPs Now Have the Censoring Power of an Authoritarian Government How will Save the Internet Act help? The Save The Internet Act aims to do three things: Reverse the FCCs December 2017 repeal. Prohibit the FCC from enacting a similar repeal again. Restore the 2015 order. Singel said, What this highlights is that the 2015 Order was comprehensive and careful, blocking known loopholes and giving the FCC clear authority to protect public safety and investigate new potential violations, such as zero-rating or egregious data caps, and to act accordingly. Can the new bill become law? The bill has to pass both houses of Congress and then get President Trumps signature before it becomes a law and restores net neutrality. The bill is expected to pass the Democrat-controlled House. However, a House hearing on March 12th indicated that Republicans are not keen to support this bill. Therefore, there is a slim chance that it will pass the Republican-held Senate. Even if it does, President Trump still has the power to veto it. Related: Facebook's Data Scandal and Europe's New Data Privacy Rule Have Massive Implications for U.S. Entrepreneurs What happens if the bill doesnt pass? The bill has value even if it does not pass the Senate or get President Trumps nod. The Save The Internet Act can influence future events in several ways: Impact current lawsuits: There are several lawsuits challenging the FCCs 2017 net neutrality repeal. The most prominent one is before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. This is led by Mozilla (the company behind the Firefox browser) and supported by 22 state attorneys general. Another notable lawsuit is the Justice Departments fight against Californias new law that protects net neutrality. Even if the bill passes only the House, the vote could be interpreted by the courts as the will of the people and would influence judgments. Encourage state-level actions: California passed its net neutrality protection bill in 2018 and governors of New York, New Jersey and Montana have announced measures to not sign contracts with ISPs that violate net neutrality. Any bill passed in the House would encourage more states to come up with their own measures to prevent ISPs from enacting further violations. Galvanize public support: Finally, the bill will keep the issue of net neutrality alive in peoples minds. Henry C. Su, a partner at the law firm Constantine Cannon LLP and a former trial attorney for the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), told me in an email interview, From the standpoint of ISPs, Im not sure if you characterize the bills themselves as a deterrent, especially if they have a slim chance of passing. The deterrent, if it exists, comes from the galvanizing of voters and the press around an issue that is clearly not going away. Singel also pointed out, At the least, this keeps the issue in the news, which increases the likelihood that ISPs refrain from repeating their behavior from 2013-15 around interconnection. Keeps a leash on ISPs: ISPs havent gone all out with violations because of a simple reason. The intense public scrutiny, lawsuits, state-level actions and political pressure have created a substantial amount of uncertainty. As you know, any business hates to execute too many changes in the face of uncertainty. Su said, ISPs, no differently than other companies, have developed business models that they believe to be successful and profitable. They arent going to turn on a dime and do something different just because they now can under the current regulatory environment. Related: What Protecting Democracy and Saving Net Neutrality Have in Common Keep the discussion alive The Save the Internet Act may or may not become a law. However, it will certainly support dozens of ongoing battles on multiple fronts to restore net neutrality. You can also contribute to the fight to restore net neutrality by writing about it, talking about it in social media, business events or in your neighborhood. The key is to keep the issue alive in peoples minds. As long as people demand their right to a free and fair internet, net neutrality will remain alive. Related: Net neutrality: Will Congress Save Internet Freedom? Supreme Court Declines to Hear Net Neutrality Challenge The Trump Administration Is Fighting California's Tough Net Neutrality Law Copyright 2019 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Toll bills passed their first major hurdle while the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport faces a $3.55 million bill to repay victims of sexual abuse by priests these stories and more are the top headlines in Connecticut. Read on for more. AP Photo /Elise Amendola / AP The state legislature has taken its first step toward tolling on all of Connecticut's major roadways. Three bills passed through the transportation committee with the vote going down party lines. For the United States' NATO military allies, a good day is a day when President Donald Trump forgets that they exist. On bad days, he calls the alliance "as bad as NAFTA," ponders whether its existence could result in World War III and raises questions over its future. Tuesday would likely fall into the category of bad days for NATO, too. Once again, Trump showed that he either doesn't understand the alliance - or in case he does, at least ignores everything he knows about it. During a news conference with right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Trump said: "I also intend to designate Brazil as a major non-NATO ally, or even possibly - if you start thinking about it - maybe a NATO ally. I have to talk to a lot of people, but maybe a NATO ally." This might be an interesting suggestion - if Brazil was located somewhere between Greece and Britain. NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization and is a European-North American alliance, which is in many ways tailored to the two regions. To add Brazil, Trump wouldn't just have to "talk to a lot of people," but he would also need to get all NATO member states to agree to change Article 10 of the alliance's 1949 founding treaty, which states that only European countries can join, besides Canada and the United States. To be fair, others have similarly suggested that it might be time to modify that part of the treaty and open the alliance up to new members, such as Australia, Japan and New Zealand. More than a decade ago, Council on Foreign Relations fellow James Goldgeier wrote that adding new countries from outside Europe could be beneficial, "especially at a time when Europeans are having trouble meeting their own defense commitments." But unlike Trump, advocates of changing the founding treaty were arguing in favor of a stronger and emboldened NATO. The U.S. president has often appeared interested in achieving the opposite. While Trump frequently lashes out at European NATO members for not spending enough on defense, granting membership to Brazil would not be seen as a way to correct the balance sheet - but instead as yet another attempt by Trump to disrupt the alliance. Some of Trump's prior remarks have raised doubts over the core principles that underpin the alliance's mechanisms, and any Trump suggestion would be approached with caution by members. "Unlike every president since 1949, President Trump has been inconsistent and unpredictable regarding his commitment to NATO, leaving allies in doubt. So, suggesting offhand a change that would require American leadership to gain consensus to revise the treaty seems a reach," said Douglas Lute, who was the U.S. permanent representative to NATO between 2013 and 2017. Even if the founding treaty were changed in Trump's favor, the United States would not be able to add countries by itself, but would need the approval of all other members. Nations such as Germany and France would likely have objections to welcoming a right-wing president who has been accused of attacking democratic institutions and whose polices may violate NATO accession rules. NATO responded to a request for comment by referring all queries to "U.S. authorities." Since Trump's inauguration, the alliance has dealt more with questions of financing than with concerns over the state of democracy among its members. In March 2017, Trump set a tense tone for future NATO discussions by accusing Germany of owing the United States "vast sums of money" for NATO, because it spends far less per capita on defense than other allies do. Experts and government representatives swiftly rejected the criticism, with German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen saying that "NATO does not have a debt account." Unlike what Trump suggested, member states do not pay NATO except for a small logistical budget. Instead, member states commit to independently spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense and agree to intervene should any of their allies be attacked. Many NATO members do not currently meet that threshold. Neither does Brazil. - - - The Washington Post's Michael Birnbaum in Brussels contributed to this report. WEST HAVEN After moving here from New York three years ago, Martha Lojano and her family couldnt find enough healthful places to eat out. So she took control and opened her own place, where the vegetables are cut fresh daily and only olive oil is used for cooking. Lojano, who lives in West Haven with her husband, Carlos Buestan, and three boys, ages 8-17, hails from Ecuador. But she made her Chiquita Queen restaurant at 215 Saw Mill Road in a small plaza authentic Mexican, bringing in a Mexican chef to come up with the menu because she thought Mexican food would be more popular than Ecuadorian, she said. Lojano said through a translator that she Gives thanks to God that I continue to work, and shes so happy she didnt give in to people who said she couldnt do it and listened instead to the encouraging words of her husband. While someone else does the cooking and the menu is Mexican tacos of beef, chicken and lamb and burritos, quesadillas, fajitas Lojano offers some specialty Ecuadorian dishes on weekends that she learned to cook from mom, including, Guatita, an Ecuadorian tripe stew, ribs, roast pork; Morocho, a spiced corn pudding and more. Her sons are trying to get her to offer more Ecuadorian food, Lojano said. She worked in a Mexican restaurant in New York. The homey restaurant with mostly Mexican music playing comfortably in the background opens at 9 a.m. because they offer many breakfast dishes American and Mexican, the latter including eggs with rice and beans, chorizo, a type of pork sausage. I like it when the customers are happy with their food, she said through a translator. I want them to feel satisfied. Shes been open a year and has lots of regulars, taking that as a good business sign. The business has received glowing reviews on various Facebook and other social media sites. I like the food. I come on my day off, said lunch customer Picante Wallace. The family had lots of ideas for names, but her 8-year-old had good reasoning in coming up with Chiquita Queen, she said: Chiquita means small and Lojano is tiny and the Queen comes from her being the only woman in the household, and therefore queen. Her husband, Buestan, whom she met as a child in Ecuador, is in the demolition field in New York. They chose to live in West Haven rather than stay in New York because the cost of living is more manageable, she said. The atmosphere in the restaurant is bright and cheerful with papel picado brightly colored cutout designs on plastic and paper strung across the ceiling. The designs, considered Mexican folk art, are in yellow, purple, pink, green, blue, white. There are also lots of sombreros and Mexican shawls around. Lojan, who speaks little English, said some people discouraged her from opening, saying it would be tough and indeed she almost gave up during the frustrating red tape stage of opening. She had a Mexican chef devise the dishes and always in the forefront for her is that food is healthful and fresh. The vegetables are cut the day theyre used many restaurants prep days ahead . Her husband whom she describes as great husband and father and their three boys help on weekends, with her oldest taking a shining to cooking. The former senior director of The Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition, Mary Pat Healy, unceremoniously resigned from her post at LifeBridge Community Services earlier this month, citing differences of opinion as it relates to leadership, respect and integrity with existing executive management. As a community, we have not only lost a person of monumental integrity, but we have also lost a true advocate for the children of Bridgeport and a voice for our disenfranchised families. During her tenure, Mary Pat was able to bring together community leaders and key stakeholders to the table to advocate for school funding equity, early childhood care and education, special education, and access to affordable, quality health care, to name just a few. Through her leadership and collective vision, Mary Pat built a financially strong and enduring program that through a recent merger was destined to enhance LifeBridges community research and advocacy efforts. Unfortunately, Mary Pats abrupt departure leaves a huge void in our community along with questions regarding the stability and continuity of BCAC within LifeBridge Community Services as four major initiatives remain in jeopardy. The State of the Child, an annual compilation of data that measures the well-being of children, youth and families in Bridgeport, has been used by countless agencies, city government, the Board of Education, corporations and real estate people to measure the quality of life in Bridgeport. Every time a grant is written by a nonprofit agency or government to benefit children and families, data from the State of the Child is utilized to strengthen the possibility Bridgeport will receive more resources to deal with its neediest cases. The State of the Child is also one of the most effective tools in fighting for resources for Bridgeports citizens. The Parent Leadership Training Institute has been a mainstay in Bridgeport, training countless parents in how to support their childrens education but also training them as advocates for effective public education in the city. PLTI is a national model that has proven effective throughout Connecticut and in many sites across the United States. Any major changes to this program would jeopardize the futures of many parents in Bridgeport and would have a negative effect on the quality of education in our city. Over the past six years, social and emotional learning has been embedded in the Bridgeport Public Schools. Building from the nationally acclaimed RULER program from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, BCAC has expanded the program to include training in restorative practices and trained numerous teachers, administrators and students at every school in Bridgeport in nonpunitive techniques of working with children and helping students begin and end their days on a positive note dedicated to positive learning opportunities. This training have resulted in major reductions in school arrests, out-of-school and in-school suspensions, and expulsions. Finally, BCAC throughout its history has been the premier local child advocacy organization in the country effectively advocating for state laws and local statutes that improve the physical and behavioral health of our citizens, securing welfare and housing benefits, working with other organizations to improve the way young people are treated in the juvenile justice system, and improving public education. BCACs watchdog efforts have served to keep our legislators and public officials alert looking out for the most vulnerable citizens in Bridgeport. Without BCACs continuous monitoring of conditions for young people, it is feared that no one will be watching out for them. As former board members of BCAC and community leaders, we want to thank Mary Pat Healy for her vision and leadership over the past decade. Moreover, we implore LifeBridge Community Services to support the enduring and impactful work that BCAC engaged in for the past 35 years. Respectfully submitted, Scott Wilderman, Marge Hiller, Sal Hanaif, Bob Francis, Edie Cassidy, Maria Geigel, Nadine Nevins, Sal Mollica and Diane Crawford-Tyner. Nearly every one of us is a frequent flyer member with an airline of choice. In addition, a majority of us may also have the branded credit card of the airline to maximize our benefits. Those of us falling in that category should not be receiving offers to open said credit card, but in the past have, leading us to wonder why the airline did not know that we already have the card. That happened in the past because the systems managing the memberships were not sharing information amongst themselves, leading to a bad customer experience. With the ubiquity of mobile devices and social platforms, it is very easy these days for individuals to share their experiences, good and bad, with a large number of people. Today most people look at these reviews/experiences when making a decision to buy a brand or product. Recently, United Airlines and Wells Fargo, two well-known and respected brands, took a hit to their reputation because of the bad experience their customers had with them. United Airlines because of the video of a passenger being dragged from one its planes went viral, and Wells Fargo for pressuring personal bankers and tellers into selling more accounts to customers than they needed, which ended up in unauthorized accounts being opened in their names. On the other hand, you have companies like Amazon, Uber, and Netflix, to name a few, that retain their customers and continue to grow their base without direct sales people and purely based on the experience that people have interacting with the brand which does not differ regardless of the device or point of interaction. The World Council of Credit Unions urged the Basel Committee in Banking Supervision to provide flexibility when it comes to leverage ratio disclosures. The Basel Committee is the primary global standard setter for the prudential regulation of banks The committee is seeking input on its consultative document Revisions to Leverage Ratio Disclosure Requirements and it seeking to address the issue of window dressing. This occurs with internationally active, publicly traded banks reduce their balance sheets for end-quarter and end-year disclosure purposes that have macroeconomic effects and can provide misleading information to investors. Our members are cooperative depository institutions that are not publicly traded, rarely operate on a cross-border basis and do not typically engage in the window dressing behavior that this proposal seeks to address, the letter reads. We are concerned that mandating the use of daily averages in disclosures issued by community-based depository institutions following standardized risk-based capital approaches may result in disproportionate reporting burdens on noncomplex institutions. AI Will Not Replace Soldiers Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to change the character of the future battlefield and the pace of threats faced in todays security environment. However, AI will not replace US warriors, says a DoD summary of its AI strategy published recently. Soldiers in the US armed forces remain our enduring source of strength; we will use AI-enabled information, tools, and systems to empower, not replace, those who serve. The Strategy states that other nations, particularly China and Russia, are making significant investments in AI for military purposes, including in applications that raise questions regarding international norms and human rights. The departments strategic approach to AI emphasises its rapid, iterative, and responsible delivery and then the use of lessons learned to create repeatable and scalable processes and systems that will improve functions and missions across the department. Examples of AIs potential use Include Improving situational awareness and decision-making. AI applied to perception tasks such as imagery analysis can extract useful information from raw data and equip leaders with increased situational awareness. Increasing safety of operating equipment. AI has the potential to enhance the safety of operating aircraft, ships and vehicles in complex, rapidly changing situations by alerting operators to hidden dangers. Implementing predictive maintenance and supply. AI will be used to predict the failure of critical parts, automate diagnostics and plan maintenance based on data and equipment condition. Similar technology will be used to guide provisioning of spare parts and optimise inventory levels. The DOD will continue funding research and development for explainable AI so users can understand the basis of AI outputs and therefore understand, appropriately trust and effectively manage AI systems. The DOD plans to engage with the open source community by contributing data, challenges, research, and technologies as a vehicle for attracting talent and identifying and advancing new AI technologies. I-HLS: You Might Also Read: The Pentagon Doesnt Want To Use Real AI: Pine Grill Classic a special start to high school boys basketball The Pine Grill Roundball Classic is in its 10th edition after a year hiatus because of COVID. A great local tournament opens the HS basketball season. The Congress president had promised 33 per cent reservation in government jobs for women and answered several of their questions. Chennai: The Election Commission Thursday said Congress President Rahul Gandhi's interaction with students at a women's college here did not violate the model code of conduct, though it has sought a report on his speech. Tamil Nadu's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Satyabrata Sahoo said local election officials have reported that there was no violation in terms of permission obtained by Stella Maris College for Women to host the interaction on March 13. He said the District Electoral Officer (DEO) has informed him that "there was permission" for Gandhi's event. "So, there is no violation of MCC." However, Sahoo has sought "further information" on Gandhi's speech. "Have sought further information on what kind of speech was given... have asked the DEO to give report based on the speech content," Sahoo said. Earlier, the Tamil Nadu government had ordered an inquiry as to how the college gave its approval for Gandhi to interact with its students when the model code for elections was in force. The Director of Collegiate Education, R Sarumathi, had directed a subordinate official to inquire into the matter. In his interaction with the students, the Congress president had promised 33 per cent reservation in government jobs for women and answered several of their questions. He had also brought up the issue of the Rafale deal and reiterated his allegations about the pricing of the aircraft and the process. The Dalit leader added it would not be a problem if there is a need for her to enter Parliament later. BSP chief Mayawati on Wednesday announced she will not contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, but stressed it was not necessary to be an MP to become a minister or a prime minister. (Photo: File) Lucknow: BSP chief Mayawati on Wednesday announced she will not contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, but stressed it was not necessary to be an MP to become a minister or a prime minister. The statement announcing her decision pointedly mentioned that a minister or a prime minister has six months to become a member of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha. The Bahujan Samaj Party chief has in the past indicated that she is not averse to becoming the country's prime minister and posters put up by her supporters in Uttar Pradesh have pitched her for the position. In view of the present circumstances and the need of the country and the interests of the party, the movement and the public, it is the need of the hour that I do not contest the Lok Sabha polls, Mayawati said. The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister asked party workers to not get disheartened with her decision. When I became UP Chief Minister the first time in 1995, I was not a member of either the UP Assembly or the Council, she said. It is a similar provision at the Centre, where a person has to become a Lok Sabha or a Rajya Sabha member within six months of holding office of a minister or the prime minister, she added. Don't get disheartened by my decision to not contest the Lok Sabha polls now," she tweeted. When I became UP CM first time in 1995 I was not member of either UP Assembly or Council. Similarly is provision at the Centre where a person have to be a LS/RS member within 6 months of holding office of minister/PM. Don't disheartened from my decision not to contest LS poll now Mayawati (@Mayawati) March 20, 2019 The Dalit leader added it would not be a problem if there is a need for her to enter Parliament later. "If it so happens that I have to get elected to the Lok Sabha later, I can contest from any seat by getting it vacated and becoming an MP. I will not face any problem," she said. Mayawati claimed that all she has to do is to file the nomination papers and her party workers will ensure her victory. The BSP chief suggested that if she contests now, party workers will focus on her seat even if she forbids them, affecting the campaign in other constituencies. "Hence, winning each and every Lok Sabha seat is more important than my personal victory," she added. The BSP, Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal have entered into an alliance in Uttar Pradesh for the April-May Lok Sabha polls. The Congress is not part of this pact, but the alliance has said it will not field candidates in Amethi and Raebareli, the two seats that are now with Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. The Congress, in turn, said it will leave seven UP seats for the SP-BSP-RLD alliance, an offer that was spurned by Mayawati. The court said that the commissioner did not state what he would do if any officer failed to take action against noise violations. Mumbai: The Bombay high court has expressed displeasure at the affidavit filed by the Mumbai police commissioner on noise pollution. At last hearing, the court asked the commissioner to file an affidavit, seeking explanation about not taking action against Ganesh mandals that were creating noise pollution during the immersion process and Muharram processions. The court said that the commissioner did not state what he would do if any officer failed to take action against noise violations during the festive season. Thereafter, the public prosecutor accepted his mistake and sought time to file an affidavit. A bench of Justices A.S. Oka and A.S. Gadkari was hearing a public interest litigation filed by the Awaaz Foundation about violation of noise rules. The police had filed two affidavits in compliance with a previous HC order over noise violation at Girgaum Chowpatty during the immersion of Ganesh idols in September last year, and at Khar during Eid celebrations in November last year. At last hearing, an affidavit filed by IPS officer Manjunath Shinge informed the bench that officials had refrained from taking any strict action, such as confiscating the loudspeakers or music systems, as they anticipated law and order problems. At this, the bench expressed surprise and asked how the police, whose job it was to maintain law and order, could claim helplessness and refrain from taking action in the name of law and order? The court Wednesday refused to accept the affidavit file by the police commissioner. The court said the commissioner was not inclined to take action against police officers who allowed violations at Girgaum Chowpatty and Mahim. The court then gave one more opportunity to the police commissioner to file his say. The court also asked the commissioner what action he would take against any person if such an incident occurred in future? Embattled state Sen. Daylin Leach, D-17 of Lower Merion, has joined forces with state Sen. Sharif Street, D-3 of Philadelphia, to offer a bill that would ultimately legalize cannabis for adult use in Pennsylvania. Weve had a cruel, irrational and expensive policy on cannabis for more than 80 years, Leach stated in a release. Prohibition has destroyed countless lives and has cost our taxpayers millions of dollars. Its time we walk into the bright sunshine of enlightenment and stop arresting our kids and funding violent drug cartels. The proposal would permit adults 21 years and older to consume cannabis and allow for home delivery. Users would also be allowed to grow up to six plants for personal consumption, but would not be allowed to sell any of those plants. The bill additionally provides for automatic expungement of prior criminal convictions for cannabis-related offenses, including possession and delivery of less than 1 ounce, as well as commutations of sentences resulting from those convictions. More than 25,000 Pennsylvanians, disproportionately people of color, are put into the criminal justice system every year due to cannabis-related crimes at an annual cost of more than $500 million, according to the release. An end to the prohibition of cannabis is overdue, said Street. It is time for us to join the emerging cannabis economy with the legalization of the adult use of cannabis in Pennsylvania, which should not be a crime when responsibly used by adults, nor mandate medical oversight. The economic imperatives are too great. We also have a moral mandate to correct the damage that disparate enforcement of our marijuana laws has done and is still doing to communities across the commonwealth. Under the proposal, the majority of tax revenue from sales would be used for public education, with individual school districts choosing proportions to put toward the new funding formula and property tax relief. A memo on the bill began circulating Monday, allowing other state senators to sign on if they wish. Following the co-sponsorship period, the bill will be formally introduced and assigned to a committee for consideration. Nearly 60 percent of Pennsylvanians support ending the prohibition against cannabis use, according to the release. Ten states and Washington, D.C., have already legalized cannabis for adult use and 33 states have legalized medical marijuana, including Pennsylvania. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman has been on a listening tour across the state over the past several weeks to address the issue. He has so far made 18 stops in 17 counties, with another 50-plus stops planned through June. Gov. Tom Wolf has reported receiving more than 21,000 responses to the tour in an online feedback form, more than any other topic has generated since he took office in 2015. This will be a tough battle, but so was passing medical marijuana, said Leach, a longtime proponent of legalizing cannabis use. We did that, and we will do this. The stakes are too high for us to fail. Leach remains the subject of a state Senate investigation following allegations that he forced himself on a 17-year-old girl in 1991. Cara Taylor, now 44, circulated a private criminal complaint to 40 lawmakers earlier this year accusing Leach of forcing her to perform oral sex on him while he was defending her mother on attempted murder charges. Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin has indicated the accusations in Taylors complaint fall outside a statute of limitations and are too old to prosecute, but Senate Democrats have nonetheless contacted a law firm to conduct an outside investigation. There was no update on that investigation Wednesday. Leach, a former state representative who has served in the Senate since 2009, has called the allegations completely false and filed a defamation suit against Taylor and two other women in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. Earlier last year, the court had issued a show cause notice to Mr Patel for contempt over the January 2018 incident. Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Wednesday directed a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporator to pay Rs 24 lakh in compensation in connection with an attack on a civic squad for removing illegal hoardings put up by him and his associates in January 2018. A bench of Justices A.S. Oka and M.S. Sanklecha directed Murji Patel, the corporator from K (East) ward in suburban Andheri, to deposit the amount with the court within two months. The bench also asked the civic body to use this money for the injured staff and public purposes. On Wednesday, Mr Patel, through his lawyer P. Dhakephalkar, submitted an affidavit tendering his unconditional apology and offering to pay the amount within two months. The high court then directed Mr Patel to remove the hoardings from the said area and told him to register a complaint with the BMC commissioner about any other illegal hoardings. Earlier last year, the court had issued a show cause notice to Mr Patel for contempt over the assault. Jivanjyoti Pratishthan, an organisation run by Mr Patel and his wife had put up the said hoardings on a municipal ground and a footpath. At the time of the incident, the BMC was conducting a drive against all illegal hoardings and banners, in compliance with a previous high court order. In an order issued on January 31, 2017, the high court had directed all corporations in Maharashtra to remove illegal hoardings. A separate case was filed by the BMC against Mr Patel and others for assault, which is being heard in a lower court. The high court deferred the hearing on the contempt notices issued to the remaining BJP members till the disposal of the related case against them in the lower court. Five years ago, most of us wouldn't have understood transgender politics. Now there is a growing movement, few in number, perhaps, but very loud in voice, whose members are apt to grab their opponents and give them a good shake. For example, the Open University has just reportedly cancelled a prison reform conference after pressure from transgender activists. They took exception to the organiser's advice on transgender prisoners. These activists object to the notion that 'trans women' (people who were born men but have 'transitioned') pose a threat to 'real women' in prison. Some feminists think they might. There is a ferocious debate. Well, to be accurate there isn't much of a debate at all but an awful lot of name-calling and general lobbing of grenades. Transgender politics make the convulsions over Brexit look like an amiable stroll in the park. After an encounter during which there wasn't much meeting of minds, the two ladies took to Twitter to continue their quarrel. In a flurry of exchanges, Mrs Farrow (right) angered Ms Green (left) by using the wrong pronoun to describe her daughter The latest acrimonious stand-off concerns Caroline Farrow, a Catholic commentator, and Susie Green, a transgender-rights activist. It is significant because it illuminates the nature of a conflict which in this case and not for the first time is soaking up a lot of police time. The two crossed swords after appearing together last September on ITV's Good Morning Britain following a decision by Girlguiding to dismiss two leaders who refused to apply the organisation's policy not to inform parents when a transgender child joins. After an encounter during which there wasn't much meeting of minds, the two ladies took to Twitter to continue their quarrel. In a flurry of exchanges, Mrs Farrow angered Ms Green by using the wrong pronoun to describe her daughter. I should explain that this daughter (who is now grown-up) was taken to Thailand by Ms Green aged 16 (when he was a boy) and had an operation for gender reassignment. Such a procedure was, and remains, illegal at that age in Britain, and has since become so in Thailand. In a spirit of fairness, I should point out that the daughter, who is now called Jackie, aged 24 and living in Italy, is entirely supportive of what was done to her. She evidently does not see herself in any sense a victim. To return to those tweets: offended by having had her daughter referred to as her 'son', and possibly by the belligerent tone of Mrs Farrow's outpourings, Ms Green lodged a complaint with Surrey police, who began to investigate a 'hate crime'. Caroline Farrow said that Ms Green 'had mutilated [her son] by having him castrated and rendered sterile while still a child This is the same police force, I should say, which declared several years ago that it would stop investigating some minor crimes after being forced to make 25 million of cuts over four years and losing 250 staff. Some of Mrs Farrow's tweets were undoubtedly aggressive. For example, she wrote that Ms Green 'had mutilated [her son] by having him castrated and rendered sterile while still a child'. Rude, yes, and possibly wrongly implying coercion. But a crime? I very much doubt it. Let me add that this is not the first time that Ms Green (who apart from being a mother is chief executive of Mermaid UK, the country's largest charity supporting transgender children) has turned to the boys in blue for a helping hand. Last year she objected to a string of tweets from someone called Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, who wrote, rather bluntly one must say, that Ms Green 'took her 16-year-old to Thailand and got him castrated'. Keen-Minshull was interviewed by Yorkshire police under caution. Isn't this all roaring nonsense? The police never tire of telling us how over-stretched they are, and yet find the time to interrogate two women for writing nothing more than provocative online communication to someone who holds the top position in a large charity, and must surely have learned how to take it. Far be it from me to suggest that Ms Green was trying to gain publicity by referring these two matters to the police! And far be it from me to suggest that she recently asked Surrey police to cease their inquiry because she fears being embarrassed by this idiocy. The fact is that many alleged hate crimes aren't worth investigating, either because they are impossible to prove or no crime has occurred. According to recent figures, nearly half of investigations into hate crimes in some parts of the country are being closed without police identifying a suspect. All the same, hate crimes are in many ways much more agreeable for the police to look into than cases of alleged assault or armed robbery or burglary, where in many places the clear-up rate is close to zero. Might there be another factor, though? Is it possible that politically sensitive police chiefs are anxious not to be accused of that most heinous of modern crimes 'transphobia' as a result of not taking complaints from people such as Susie Green seriously? Almost everybody except pugnacious characters possibly yearning for the limelight, such as Caroline Farrow and Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull is terrified of the transgender lobby. Yesterday, Cambridge University rescinded an offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson, a Canadian professor who has been critical of the transgender lobby, following a backlash from Left-wing activists and academics. How pusillanimous! How utterly supine! Mr Peterson is a famous intellectual with an impressive array of ideas, which is why Cambridge invited him in the first place. But the institution is plainly is frightened of being targeted by extremists. Yesterday, Cambridge University rescinded an offer of a visiting fellowship to Jordan Peterson (pictured speaking last month in Sydney) The reason I don't much respect transgender activists as a breed is not so much on account of their beliefs, though I don't share many of them, as because of the bullying tactics they employ to silence those with whom they disagree. The feminist Germaine Greer has been repeatedly no-platformed as a result of her stated belief that transgender women are 'not women'. (She means that a male cannot become female in a complete sense.) Many other feminists who would have once seen themselves as radicals have suffered similar treatment. Reasonable people can see how awful it must be to be 'trapped in the wrong body'. But shouldn't the decision to do something irrevocable about it be left until adulthood? The feminist Germaine Greer has been repeatedly no-platformed as a result of her stated belief that transgender women are 'not women' However happy Ms Green's daughter is that she had a sex-change operation aged 16, I am shocked her mother let her undergo such a procedure when she was still a child. I also suspect that most parents are queasy about the idea that children as young as 12 might be subjected to evangelising teachers when compulsory lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) sex education is introduced in schools next year. Which is why I am sympathetic to the suggestion yesterday by Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom that parents should have a right to stop their children being 'exposed' to LGBT rights. Why not, if they fear their offspring might be indoctrinated by teachers with an agenda? God knows, growing up seems to be more of an angst-ridden process than ever. Under a barrage of propaganda from committed activists, susceptible teenagers might be persuaded to take an irreversible path they could later regret. Does it constitute a hate crime in the minds of Surrey police to say that? Possibly. Will I be no-platformed? Who cares? These, I believe, are the thoughts of millions of people who may feel intimidated by extremists in a transgender lobby shutting down debate. The Queen addresses the nation once a year on Christmas Day. Otherwise, it's considered distinctly un-British for national leaders to go on TV and directly address the population. Dictators such as Vladimir Putin do it all the time. So do American presidents. Donald Trump, needless to say, does it a lot. He's keen to share his opinions with voters. But this sort of thing doesn't normally happen in this country outside of general elections. British prime ministers usually only appear on the airwaves at primetime when there's a national emergency. For example, Neville Chamberlain announcing the declaration of war over the wireless on September 3, 1939. Tony Blair did it on the eve of the Iraq War. Britain, he said, 'has never been a nation to hide at the back'. Prime Minister Theresa May making a statement about Brexit in Downing Street last night. She confirmed Britain will not be leaving the EU on March 29 and Mrs May will seek an extension on the the UK's Brexit withdrawal until June 30 Brutal Mrs May last night made her own exception to this rule appearing on the nation's TV screens as Britons were happily watching Coronation Street or Holby City. The rumours that something unusual was in the offing began to circulate early in the afternoon. Not long after, it was an open secret that Mrs May was going to play what in brutal truth was one of her very last cards. Remember that Mrs May's premiership is hanging by a thread. She's exhausted. Having been repeatedly humiliated, she is fighting for her political life. But at least she's still afloat, just about, and last night she went over the heads of the nation's MPs. We may not be used to this sort of conduct in a parliamentary democracy. But Mrs May is a desperate politician trapped in the Last Chance Saloon. Her Brexit withdrawal plan has been voted down twice by Parliament, each time by a massive majority. Mrs May knows that her plan will be dead and she finished if it fails again next week. She framed the country's do-or-die Brexit dilemma as a war between Parliament and the voters. And, crucially, she told voters: 'I am on your side.' In the Commons at PMQs yesterday (pictured) Theresa May condemned MPs for 'navel gazing' over Europe and said their refusal to pass the deal was to blame for delay Which begged the question which voters? Those 17.4 million who made it clear 1,001 days ago that they wanted Britain to leave the EU? Or Remainers still appalled by the idea of us leaving the biggest trading bloc in the world? Or those increasing in number, I'd wager caught somewhere in between? Certainly, the PM appealed to a widespread feeling across the nation that wishes Brexit will just go away. Let's get it done. Let's get it over with. Let's get on with the real business of government. It's overshadowed all our lives for much, much too long. And she was also sending out the strongest possible signal to the Right-wing rebels in her own party: vote for my deal or risk losing Brexit altogether. Will her performance be enough? Mrs May is making the calculation that her televised appeal will put pressure on the hardcore of European Research Group MPs to abandon their principled opposition to her deal. Maybe her gamble will pay off. It's worth assessing what is most likely to happen over the next few days. Mrs May flies to meet other European leaders in Brussels today to seek approval for a short extension of Article 50 until June 30. Perhaps the curmudgeons will agree. Whatever the case, Brussels has Britain over a barrel. The Prime Minister is stuck in a horrible Catch 22. European Council President Donald Tusk warned yesterday that Britain could delay departure but only if Parliament agrees Mrs May's Withdrawal Agreement. Donald Tusk made a short speech in Brussels yesterday after speaking to Theresa May by telephone and following talks with EU leaders over the past week But Commons Speaker John Bercow won't allow another vote unless the Withdrawal Agreement is changed. Facing this nightmare, it's no wonder she made her desperate plea in front of the cameras. Successful in her mission to Brussels or not, Mrs May would then have to return to London for an intense weekend of lobbying the Tory Brexiteer rebels. These wily folk know Mrs May has almost run out of rope. Within minutes of her TV address, many were fulminating about her performance and making it clear that they will continue to block her. Yesterday, she was forced into yet another U-turn when she reneged on her promise (made 108 times) that Britain will leave the EU on March 29. Worrying Her reputation for flip-flops is becoming worrying. She ruled out holding a General Election in 2017. Then called one. She promised to put her withdrawal deal to MPs last December. Then delayed it. Many of her own MPs fear she can no longer be relied on to keep her word. This puts her Cabinet colleagues in an awkward position. Take, for example, her loyal 'deputy', David Lidington. Last week he said 'a short, one-off extension' would be 'downright reckless'. Yesterday, he was left gasping as he watched his boss ask for one. Meanwhile, there were briefings on Monday that the PM was ready to dump her close Brexit adviser Olly Robbins. Those, too, were deeply unedifying and, so far, that has not happened. I am guessing that Bercow will agree next week to allow Parliament to vote one last time on the 'meaningful vote'. Despite his guidance on Monday that he was minded not to allow her to come back for a third vote, he can hardly turn her down now. Chaos She will have achieved a substantial change that Bercow demanded. Think of the latest developments like this: you're ready to exchange contracts on a house on March 29 and you change the date at the last minute to June. Is that a substantial change? You bet it is. Even rabid Europhile Bercow can surely spot that. So, at last, there is a chance that Mrs May will prevail and that Britain will finally exit the EU. If not, I fear Britain would enter a further period of chaos. As matters stand, there are three potential Brexit options. First, Speaker allows a third Brexit vote next week, and the Commons votes in support of the Prime Minister's withdrawal deal. If so, Brexit would take place in May. If not, Britain heads towards the second scenario a No Deal Brexit. Finally, the House of Commons could seize control at the very last moment. In 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock, a measure that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our own world. The clock is currently set at two minutes to midnight. Time is very nearly up. That's exactly how Brexit feels. We are at two minutes to midnight. No wonder she chose to address the nation. Now let's see how MPs respond. A woman has revealed how she was married off to her 24-year-old boyfriend when she got pregnant at 15, so that he could avoid charges of statutory rape. Keri, now 21, from South Carolina, was 'forced' to marry Paul with her father's consent in accordance with the law in the southeastern state. She appears in the upcoming BBC Three documentary America's Child Brides, which explores 'legal loopholes' in the 17 states in which there is no lower age limit for marriage. Speaking to journalist Ellie Flynn, Keri, whose surname has not been revealed, explains that she and Paul found out he was being investigated by the police after she discovered she was pregnant at the tender age of 15. Scroll down for video Keri, from South Carolina, has revealed how she was 'forced' to marry her then-24-year-old boyfriend Paul at the age of 15 when she got pregnant with his child The now-21-year-old Keri married Paul with her parents' consent in accordance with the law in her home state, and was so young at the time that she still had braces (pictured) In a new BBC Three documentary, Keri explains that her father 'traded' her for a case of beer, which Paul brought her dad in order to convince him to sign the marriage certificate She was living with her father, and met Paul through her cousin while celebrating her 15th birthday at a house party. They had a one night stand and she fell pregnant. 'It was basically my birthday weekend, hanging out and drinking. And then I got pregnant,' she reveals. The legal age of consent in South Carolina is 16, although teenagers as young as 14 are able to consent to sex as long as the partner is 18 or younger. When Keri and Paul discovered police were investigating him, with the possibility of bringing charges for statutory rape, he decided to explore what's often referred to as the 'marry your rapist' loophole. He discovered that marrying Keri 'might make the investigation go away', so he decided to pop the question. Keri wasn't keen to get married, but said that her dad was 'a drunk' and that Paul bought him a case of beer in order to convince him to give his permission. Paul, who is nine years older than Keri, married his teenage girlfriend in order to avoid charges of statutory rape, a move that some call the 'marry-your-rapist' loophole Shortly after she fell pregnant, Paul was advised that marrying Keri might make police charges 'go away' so he decided to propose. He says he believed she was 18 when they first had sex Keri, who says her father was 'a drunk' was desperate to leave her family home, and so accepted her dad's decision to allow her to get married She explains: 'If my dad had wanted to, he could have pressed charges. Paul talked my dad into signing the marriage license for us.' Keri was left angry, but admits she was also eager to leave home as she 'couldn't handle' living with her father anymore. The states where there is no lower age limit for marriage As of January 2019, 48 out of 50 states have exceptions in their laws which allow children under the age of 18 to marry in certain circumstances such as parental consent, judicial consent or pregnancy. The minimum age varies from state to state; in most, the lower limit is 16 but it drops as low as 14 in Alaska, and 15 in a number of states including Maryland and Kansas. In 2018, Delaware and New Jersey ruled out child marriage under any circumstance. There are 17 states with no lower age limit for children to marry when judicial exceptions such as parental consent are taken into account: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming. Advertisement So, she accepted her father's decision to approve the marriage in order to escape the house, choosing instead to gamble on a new life with Paul. For his part, Paul insists that Keri had a 'very convincing' fake ID, and that he thought she was 18 when they had sex. Paul went on to wed Keri - who was still wearing braces at the time - and the threat of charges 'went away'. But he insists that he had been in love with Keri, and that the pair had followed their hearts when they married, despite their age gap. When asked whether he remembers things in a more positive light than Keri, Paul asks: 'Wouldn't you want somebody there to help you [with bringing up the baby], or would you rather have nobody help you at all?' He concedes that some people would brand him a pedophile, but he believes the term applies to people who have sex with children '10 years old or younger'. 'That's taking advantage of people, and completely wrong,' he says. The marriage lasted roughly two years, but fell apart when Keri was 17. She explains: 'I wanted to go to school and work, and he treated me like he was his maid. 'I wish I would have finished school. I can't do the jobs that I want to do.' Paul said he considered pedophilia as 'having sex with children 10 years or younger' but said he was following his heart when he married 15 year old Keri Keri, who is now 21, has three kids and says she wishes she had been able to finish high school BBC Three presenter Ellie Flynn (pictured left) spoke to Paul, now 30, who said that he exchanged a crate of beer in return for Keri's father's permission to marry her Keri appears in BBC Three documentary America's Child Brides, which explores 'legal loopholes' in the 17 US states where there is no lower age limit for marriage The documentary explores the US states where men are free marry girls under the age of 16. With many states poised to reconsider these laws, it asks how child marriages affect the girls signed over to their grooms by their parents. South Carolina is considering closing its legal 'marry-your-rapist' loophole, which allows girls under 16 to marry if they are pregnant and have a parent's consent. Presenter Ellie visits the record office in Spartanburg County to see if she can find evidence of children being married to men who are old enough to be charged with statutory rape for impregnating a minor. She finds 16 child marriages in the county in the last decade alone - and in 10 cases, the groom could have been prosecuted for statutory rape. America's Child Brides airs on BBC3 on 22 March. Many expectant mothers try not to splash out too much on maternity clothes that they might not wear again for a long time, if ever, but when you're royal then you need a wardrobe to match the job. And the Duchess of Sussex, 37, has certainly made sure her bump was well dressed throughout her first pregnancy, with her maternity outfits totting up to an eye-watering 514,000 ($675,000). Researchers from fashion comparison website lovethesales.com totted up the cost of 75 outfits Meghan has worn between early in her pregnancy in August to her final engagement before maternity leave at Westminster Abbey last week. The calculations include estimates for some of the bespoke creations she has worn over recent months but not all, meaning the actual value could be much higher. Items not estimated include the black one shoulder gown she wore to the British Fashion Awards or the green Erdem coat she wore for a visit to Canada House last week. And as Meghan is a fan of re-wearing jewellery, each piece has only been added to the overall total once, although they might contribute to the value of several outfits. Meghan's most expensive outfit came early in her pregnancy, during the royal's trip to Tonga. Her evening look came to a total of 84,660.36 ($111,496), with her white Theia dress (pictured) costing 750 ($984), black clutch 1,499 ($1,969), shoes 565 ($741) and her ring worth a staggering 74,893 ($98,420) Some of the most expensive outfits over the past eight months have included evening wear worn during royal tours of Morocco, Australia and Oceania during her pregnancy. And she rarely wears the same outfits twice, selecting new outfits from favourite designers such as Givenchy and Victoria Beckham on almost every appearance. Her maternity wardrobe is further boosted by decadent jewellery, which adds financial value to several of her outfits. At Princess Eugenie's wedding, she accessorised her navy Givenchy coat with rings worth thousands, perhaps to distract from speculation she might be expecting. Meghan's evening outfit during her tour of Fiji was worth an estimated 22,882 ($30,070). Pictured, a SAFiYAA 'Ginkgo' cape dress: 1,095 ($1,439); Butani Diamond drop earrings: 21,326 ($28,024); Manolo Blahnik BB navy stilettos: 471 ($619) Unlike thrifty Kate, who is known for reworking and wearing outfits again, Meghan has worn few items more than once over the past eight months. The only item that's been a true wardrobe stalwart for Meghan is an 892 ($1,172) Amanda Wakeley Sculpted Coat, which she's sported three times. Meghan also owns a variety of pumps in different colours from shoe brand Aquazzura and, although she rarely repeats an outfit, these have been seen on multiple outings. Meghan tends to wear designer dresses and expensive jewellery for evening events - such as this outfit in Morocco. Pictured: a Carolina Herrera custom dress: approx 2,252 ($2,959); Gianvito Rossi satin pumps: approx 510 ($670); Dior D-Bee Gold Satin Clutch: 1,389.84 ($1827); Earrings: 12,430 ($16,337); Rings: 4,510 ($5,928) While she often borrows decadent jewelry from the royal family, she also loves Pippa Small, and is often photographed wearing the Canadian designer's studs and bangles. But she does have expensive tastes, with her priciest maternity outfit worn early on in her pregnancy, during the royal tour in Tonga. Meghan wore a stunning white Theia gown for the final evening, and paired it with a black clutch and pumps, as well as glittering jewelry. The outfit totted up to over 84,660 ($111,496), thanks largely to the addition of the late Princess Diana's aquamarine ring. This outfit from the recent Commonwealth Service was estimated to be worth over 12,000 ($15,769) in total. Pictured: Victoria Beckham Printed Crepe Long Sleeve Midi dress: 1,668 ($2,192); Victoria Beckham clutch: 1,499 ($1,969); Victoria Beckham shoes: 565 ($742). Amanda Wakeley Sculpted Coat: 892 ($1,172) The ring, believed to be worth 74,893 ($98,420), was teamed with her glittering Birks Snowstorm diamond earrings, costing 7,137.36 ($9,393). And it's not just evening wear that's pushed up the value of Meghan's wardrobe. The pieces she has worn for formal royal occasions have also proved pricey. Most recently, a Victoria Beckham outfit worn for the Commonwealth Service was worth an estimated 12,175 ($16,023) in total. Meghan is expected to give birth in the spring, and is now thought to be on maternity leave from her royal duties. Last week Kensington Palace said she would continue to take meetings and may take part in further engagements, but confirmed there was nothing scheduled. This week she and Prince Harry paid a visit to New Zealand House in London to sign a book of condolence for victims of the Christchurch Terror Attack. Women have revealed the most shocking cases of fragile masculinity they have ever come across in a viral thread on Reddit. The post kicked off when one user asked fellow users on the online forum what the worst case of fragile masculinity they've ever dealt with was on Saturday, March 16. And it wasn't long before the results began rolling in, as almost 1,000 people have revealed the shocking and bizarre scenarios they have found themselves in. Hot topic! People on Reddit have been discussing the 'worst' case of fragile masculinity they have ever experience before (stock image) Bizarre! Almost 1,000 users on Reddit have revealed the 'worst' cases of fragile masculinity they have ever experienced in a viral thread that began on Saturday, March 16 One user on the platform revealed that she has a friend whose boyfriend won't hold his son's hand because he finds it strange. User PrettyInteraction62 wrote: 'I know someone whose boyfriend won't hold their 3 year old son's hand because that's "gay and weird".' Replying to the comment, one user said they felt sorry for the 'poor' child. Another similar situation was revealed by user fantastic_watermelon, who said: 'My brother in law has a friend that doesn't let his infant son suck his thumb because it leads to being gay.' In response to the comment, user Lethal-Muscle said: 'Wow, imagine being so insecure in your masculinity that you sexualize your toddler.' Another bizarre story surrounding fragile masculinity came from user PasionatelyRational who revealed an incident that occurred between to of their friends at university. They said: 'Friends from uni were a couple and in the same class. She got a better grade than him by 0.5 and he threw a tantrum in front of everyone about how she constantly wanted to humiliate him. 'Then looked over to me and other classmates that couldnt help to stare (because he was making a scene) and screamed at us "yeah Im dumber than my girlfriend, hope youre enjoying it!" And left. 'She broke up with him after that and he dropped the class. But it was such a wtf moment that I still remember it,' they added. Similarly, another user revealed a college-related story that involved two boys becoming annoyed after they realized Luna bars 'were originally made for women'. Crazy: Hundreds of responses rolled in under the post, as people revealed bizarre stories, including one user whose ex-partner wouldn't eat a 'popsicle' or a 'chocolate covered banana' The user, VirginWhales, explained: 'Went to college with two brothers. They were complete opposites. The older (OB) was the epitome of toxic/fragile masculinity. He was the typical 6ft2in, buff jock, who was a total tool. 'The younger (YB), was a total goofball, always making people laugh, just an all around genuinely good guy. 'Their mother used to buy them Luna Bars, which were originally made for women. When OB found this out he was furious, which is stupid itself, but it gets better. 'YB decided to f**k with him and tell them there was estrogen in the bars. OB had a full on meltdown and even went to the mirror to check if he had started developing boobs,' they added. One user said an ex-boyfriend had a problem with her hanging out with her best friend, as he said the friend was 'too seductive'. When her boyfriend was referencing the 'seductive' behavior, he was referring to his girlfriend 'dancing' with her best friend. The user, MadameStrumpet, explained: 'My ex had an issue with any time I spent with my best friend. His words "she is too seductive" and "you're too close" meanwhile she's happily married and pregnant. '"Too seductive" was dancing together at a club (before pregnancy) because he wouldn't and that meant she had "dirty" fun that he didn't have first,' she added. One woman said her ex-boyfriend would refer to the men she was intimate with previously as her 'dirty past'. Ludicrous: Another response to the thread included one from a Reddit user who had an ex-boyfriend who didn't like her 'dancing' with her best friend because he said it was 'dirty' fun The same woman said her ex-boyfriend 'couldn't handle' when she told him she thought a celebrity was 'hot'. User falkoressa explained: 'He kept referring to the fact that I had sex with a couple of men before him as my "dirty past" and randomly get moody and all hurt because it crossed my mind. It was completely infuriating! 'He also couldnt handle me saying that a celebrity is hot!! Very fragile indeed...' she added. Another user revealed that a man she once went out with wouldn't eat churros or a chocolate-covered banana, because they are 'phallic'. The user, Jbsbm, said: 'A guy I went out with wouldn't eat a popsicle or a chocolate covered banana or churros or whatever with me at Knotts because it's phallic and he doesn't want a gay guy to see and make him feel gross. 'Yeah, I didn't see him after that,' they added. Similarly, someone detailed that one of her ex-boyfriend's refused to use straws, and called them 'sissy sticks'. Another bizarre story came from user trixkzy who saw another post on the social forum, in which it was revealed that a man once asked his partner to eat less so that he could look more manly. 'A post in another subreddit right now. This guy is wondering if he's an a**hole for asking his wife to eat less food because he feels emasculated when she eats more then him. 'Imagine asking your partner in life to go hungry because of your ego,' they added. A mother-of-two whose twins have autism spectrum disorder was once told by a paediatrician that her children's speech and socialisation struggles were the result of 'bad parenting'. Anastasia Simnos, from Sydney, became a mum for the first time aged 41 and her twins, Vassili and Lola, were born in 2009. 'Life after the babies arrived was a hectic blur - I was thrown into the deep end and it never stopped,' Mrs Simnos told FEMAIL. She said she wasn't aware that her twins were on the autism spectrum during the first year of their lives although says when she looks back at that time she can identify the signs. Anastasia Simnos (pictured with her twins, Lola, left and Vassili, right) became a first time mum aged 41 'At the time I just didn't connect the dots,' she said. When the twins turned one she started noticing changes in their behaviour that didn't align with typical developmental milestones. 'Vassili wouldn't turn his head when he was called. We spoke to his birth paediatrician when he went for his one-year-old developmental milestone check and were told boys could be a bit slower,' she said. Her daughter Lola had also started to 'toe-walk' and was covering her ears with her hands. Mrs Simnos said it wasn't clear from the outset her children had autism, however, looking back its likely there were signs What is autism spectrum disorder? * In Australia, it's estimated that roughly one in 70 people are on the Autism Spectrum * Autism is a life-long developmental disability that affects how people communicate and relate to others * It also affects how people perceive the world around them * Things people take for granted like body language and metaphors can be confusing and alienating for people with autism * Autism is a spectrum condition meaning while there are certain shared difficulties, autism affects people in different ways Source: The National Autism Society The mum-of-two said although she drew attention to her son's developmental problems when he was aged one, specialists didn't believe there was cause for concern Advertisement 'The problem when it comes to recognising the signs of autism is that it can appear like immature behaviour,' she said. 'In Lola's case, we put what she was doing down to her being too close to the TV or thought maybe she just liked being on her tippy toes.' When her kids turned two, Mrs Simnos noticed that Lola and Vassili's speech development was also delayed. 'Lola was super smart but her speech wasn't forming - she was very quiet and wouldn't even babble to herself - and my son would babble incessantly but he wouldn't get past that,' she said. 'The problem when it comes to recognising the signs of autism is that it can appear like immature behaviour,' Mrs Simnos said 'We went to a speech therapist when the kids were two years and 10 months old and she didn't pick up signs of autism.' The twins had also started to display changes in their socialisation. Lola made it clear that she preferred to play by herself while Vassili, who loved people, would struggle to engage with others or would play in a way that was obsessive and repetitive. 'I know now that the manner in which kids play can be an indicator of autism,' Mrs Simnos said. Early indications there were developmental problems included her son not turning his head to respond when Mrs Simnos or her husband called his name Mrs Simnos and her husband didn't ignore their observations but instead assumed the behaviour was 'normal' as Mrs Simnos' father, a twin himself, said the behaviour was 'normal'. 'We were kind of a little bit blind to what was going on,' she said. 'Being older parents we didn't have any close friends who had newborns so we didn't have any comparisons.' Shortly before the twins' third birthday, Mrs Simnos enrolled the pair at a local community pre-school and on orientation day a teacher with special needs experience suggested that the pair be assessed by a developmental paediatrician. She took the children to a specialist and said she was told their behaviour was a result of 'bad parenting' and not a diagnosis. When the twins were three, Mrs Simnos took them to see a developmental paediatrician who said their problems were the result of 'bad parenting' 'I was told they were attention-seeking and badly behaved and that I needed to be tougher with them,' she said. 'I started to cry in his office, and I just couldn't stop. 'Everybody who knows me, knows I am tough on my kids. I am strict and behaviour has always been a very important part of my and my husband's parenting.' After seeing a second expert, however, the children were diagnosed with autism when they were three-and-a-half. Lola was assessed first at a developmental clinic where it was revealed she was on the autism spectrum 'without a shadow of a doubt'. As did Vassili. 'It was so overwhelming but I felt a weight had lifted off my shoulders because I felt as if I had something to deal with,' she said. 'We took some comfort in the fact that now we had a diagnosis we could find others to get some support from and that there would be things we could do.' Mrs Simnos said her husband's reaction to the kids' diagnosis was different - more because he knew how challenging their lives could potentially be How do Aspect schools work? * Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect) offers a specialised education program, operating through nine schools * Class sizes are small with a high teacher to student ratio * All classes include a teacher and a teacher's aide * Each child has an independent learning program Source: Autismspectrum.org.au Advertisement Mrs Simnos said she 'threw herself into it' and did all she could to help her kids grow up to be independent and happy. Her husband decided he'd do the same - stepping away from a 28-year career in the corporate world to help her. 'Huge self-sacrifice on his part, and as a result he's completely out of that industry and has started a family business,' she said. 'Our lives have changed so dramatically.' When the kids were five, the pair were enrolled into an Aspect School. These schools are specially tailored learning environments for children with autism. 'Aspect was an absolute Godsend. It was Like winning the lottery,' Mrs Simnos said. Lola and Vassili are now at an Aspect School where teaching is tailored to their individual needs 'There are a lot of kids with autism and not every kid is going to get a placement. 'These schools are for kids which require the most assistance and my kids were very, very lucky to be accepted into an Aspect school. Every person on the spectrum is a completely unique individual as we all are 'Each child has an independent learning program and my kids have just thrived.' The twins are now nine and Mrs Simnos remains committed to doing all she can to make sure her kids feel supported while they grow and learn. 'Every person on the spectrum is a completely unique individual as we all are,' she said. 'I am always looking for ways to help them because it's all about my kids' independence and we want them to live as independent adults. While the family work through challenges as they come, they remain committed to ensure their twins continue to grow and develop healthy self-esteem 'For them to have self-esteem, be confident and be happy is all about them having employment, so for us, it's all about making sure we can do everything we can to get our kids to that point. 'I am constantly looking for things to assist them, I am constantly working with them and I work really closely with the school. The teachers and I have a really close relationship.' As well as doing what she can to help her kids, Mrs Simnos, who is an ambassador for Walk for Autism, also believes that speaking about autism widely helps debunk negative stereotypes. 'Maturity is a huge thing for people with autism because it allows for a greater ability to understand the world a bit better and not feel so trapped inside bodies that don't respond the way they want them to respond,' she said. 'For my twins, I've noticed the more they learn and the more they embrace life and society, the better they become at doing things. 'At the end of the day life and learning is all about experience.' Walk for Autism runs between 31 March - 7 April. To find out more please visit WalkforAutism.org.au Fashion lovers are raving about a $35 trench coat from Kmart that looks just like expensive high-end pieces. The popular trench, which comes in a neutral colour, was launched in-store and online just a few days ago, but it's already causing a stir among shoppers. Discount style lover and blogger Helen James first drew attention to the coat by posting on her Instagram page about how 'converted' she is to the trench coat. Fashion lovers are raving about a $35 trench coat from Kmart, with many comparing the style to options more than three times the price (pictured: fashion blogger Helen James) The popular trench, which comes in a neutral colour, was launched in-store and online just a few days ago, but it's already causing a stir among shoppers (pictured: Lia from Mumma Life) 'Trench coats... they remind me of two things, Inspector Gadget and flashers,' Helen wrote. 'So, needless to say I was dubious when Kmart Australia sent me their new trench to review.' However, she said she has become a fan of the classic style and wrote: 'Me likey [sic] a lot'. 'I've been converted,' Helen said, while shoppers underneath wrote how much they 'loved' and were 'obsessed' with the new product. 'How good does this look?,' one wrote. Another said: 'I love this jacket' and that it's 'super flattering'. The style is flying off the racks and has been scooped up by the likes of blogger, Kmart Girl (left) - shoppers have said they 'love' and are 'obsessed with the jacket (right) It's not only Helen who has got her hands on the trench coat. The style is flying off the racks and has been scooped up by the likes of blogger, Kmart Girl, and Lia from Mumma Life. 'Anyone else spend most of their days looking like a Kmart mannequin?,' Lia posted. 'I have been lately and I'm loving it. I'm totally obsessed with the ladies' clothes they have been bringing out. 'They are so nice and, as usual, super affordable. I'm eyeing off so many pieces right now. I wonder what will end up in my wardrobe next.' Jenna from Kmart Girl wrote: 'Love the new Kmart trench coat!'. The coat is currently still available online. However, many commenters have said they have found it difficult to get their hands on one in-store. Tina recently paired a sellout Kmart dress with her own affordable take on the trench coat - a $59 style from Target (pictured) Earlier this month, Kmart experienced another sartorial hit when fashion lover and blogger Tina Abeysekara, 33, highlighted a burnt orange polka dot dress, which went on to sell out. 'I can see this $25 Kmart frock flying off the rack,' Tina wrote, adding that she is wearing a size 10 and the dress comes in a generous fit. How can you find a good bargain in a cheap store? * Sign up to the store's newsletters, so you know when they're going to have their sales and events. * Invest in classic colour palettes which will always look more expensive. * Be prepared that something might look better in the flesh than it did online. * Pay attention to shop layouts. Often, when stores change the floor plan, it can indicate a sale is coming. * Remember in places like Kmart and Target that the good stuff is going to be at the front. 50 - 60 per cent of their stock they keep all year around. * Know your body shape, the size you are in each store and what sorts of styles suit you. This will save you time and money. Advertisement 'Feels fab, stretch waist and breastfeeding friendly - what's not to love? Teamed with $8 sneakers. I'll be restyling for work so keep an eye out,' she wrote. Tina's page was quickly flooded with other people's comments, about how much they loved the dress but also how difficult it has been to find. Tina recently paired the dress with her own affordable take on the trench coat - a $59 style from Target. Tina Abeysekara, from Sydney, makes a point of styling up affordable items from the likes of Kmart and Target to make them look expensive. Speaking previously to FEMAIL, she revealed that the most important things for snapping up a bargain is knowing what size you are in different shops and holding out for the sales. 'When it comes to Kmart and Target, they have 50 to 60 per cent of their stock all year round - and you'll never find much good,' she said. 'But it's all about heading straight to the front section, where they'll put the newer, more fashion-focused items which are replaced roughly once every three weeks.' Tina also recommends checking out a few different stores from the same shop: 'I think it pays to go to different places if you have the time,' she said An Australian mother is now living as an amputee after a sprained ankle left her in such unbearable pain she begged doctors to 'take off' her leg. Anita Carden, 51, from Byron Bay, New South Wales, was hiking the hills in New Zealand in 2015 when she rolled her ankle. 'It was very insignificant and at the time didn't bother me but the next morning when I woke up my ankle was black and blue and yellow and swollen. I couldn't bear weight on it,' she said. Days later she returned to Australia and visited her GP who took X-rays and a doppler test (ultrasound) but there was no break found. 'Over the next couple of weeks my ankle worsened instead of getting better and I saw a different GP. He offered no diagnosis either and said the same as the first, it will get better in a few weeks with rest,' she said. Scroll down for video An Australian mother is now living as an amputee after a sprained ankle left her in such unbearable pain she begged doctors to 'take off' her leg Anita Carden, 51, from Byron Bay, New South Wales, was hiking the hills in New Zealand in 2015 when she rolled her ankle (pictured) What is suicide disease (CRPS)? * CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome) is a chronic pain condition that most often affects one limb (arm, leg, hand, or foot) usually after an injury * CRPS is believed to be caused by damage to, or malfunction of, the peripheral and central nervous systems * CRPS is characterised by prolonged or excessive pain and changes in skin color, temperature, and/or swelling in the affected area * It is regarded as 'the most painful condition in the medical world' Source: National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Advertisement In a bid to try and find out what was wrong, Ms Carden visited several other doctors without much success. In 2017, she saw a rheumatologist after a previous visit to a doctor had left her with a misdiagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. It was this specialist who suggested that she had Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). This is a poorly understood condition where a person experiences persistent severe and debilitating pain and is also known as 'suicide disease'. The name is due to suicidal thoughts being more common in patients due to the severity of the pain they're experiencing. 'At the appointment with the Rheumatologist, he diagnosed me with CRPS. By this time, it had been eighteen months since the initial injury,' she said. Ms Carden said she spent years attempting to get a diagnosis from doctors to explain why she was in such severe pain In 2018 she was sent to a pain clinic where she spent the next six months trying to treat her condition which had spread all the way above her knee. During this time she underwent two unsuccessful procedures and the pain became so severe she fought doctors to get her leg amputated to alleviate her symptoms. 'After these procedures failed, I had an above knee amputation in June 2018. I requested it and had to fight for it,' she said. 'Doctors don't want to amputate a limb, so they let people who are at their wits end with this disease just suffer. 'I pushed and pushed and fought to get them to take my leg off, it was dead and bleeding all the time. The day a surgeon said he'd do it was the best day of my life.' 'I pushed and pushed and fought to get them to take my leg off, it was dead and bleeding all the time,' Ms Carden said While Ms Carden is relieved to no longer be living in extreme pain she has had to learn to walk again with the use of a prosthesis She had surgery to remove her leg in June 2018 and her first appointment with prosthetics in August 2018. 'I was in hospital for ten days and recovered quickly after that,' she said. My life had come to a standstill with CRPS, but amputation gave me my life back. Her new body means she has had to learn how to walk again which has been difficult, as she has a hydraulic leg rather than a bionic one. 'My pain is gone completely, and I have my life back. I'm learning to walk on a prosthesis, and I have my mobility back,' she said. 'I don't have a bionic leg, it's only a hydraulic. A bionic has microprocessor in the knee that makes walking much easier. 'I'm hoping to be approved for a bionic this year but the process of learning to walk again is not easy but I'm putting the effort in so I'm now mobile again.' The 51-year-old mum said she wanted to share her story to show other amputees is is possible to get your life back after a life-changing surgery Ms Carden is now focusing on the future and becoming active as she hopes to hike again. She wants to show other amputees that it is possible to get your life back after a life-changing surgery. 'I wanted to share my story soon after because I felt so liberated after my leg was gone. My life had come to a standstill with CRPS, but amputation gave me my life back,' she said. 'I wanted to help others with the disease see that life after limb loss can be wonderful. The most difficult thing to overcome was dealing with doctors who wouldn't listen to me when I requested amputation. 'My life had come to a standstill with CRPS, but amputation gave me my life back,' she said 'My leg was so bad, I couldn't live with it, but no one listened to me for some time. To be honest, after I lost my leg my life has been so much easier. She said although it was a difficult choice the amputation has benefited her personal life more than she can explain: 'Not to have to carry a dead limb around is liberating and I have my freedom back. 'I feel great about myself; I'm not ashamed to be seen in public with my prosthetic and I'm not embarrassed to go out in shorts or swimmers. I want to help other amputees see that we don't have to hide. Embracing positivity has helped the mum to see that the loss of a limb hasn't mean the end of her life 'There are things I'm much more aware of now that I was unaware of before losing my leg. I've broadened emotionally and have more empathy for others, I wouldn't swap that for the world. 'I plan to get back to my active life that I had before CRPS. I love hiking and walking and being active, I love being busy with my family. I believe life after amputation can be all those things and more.' Ms Carden urges those who may be struggling following an amputation to embrace the notion that a loss of a limb doesn't mean the end of life. 'My advice to someone in my position would be to never give up. Prosthetics these days are great, and amputation doesn't mean that life is over. 'In fact, it can open doors that never would have been opened if limb loss hadn't happened, it depends on the way someone looks at it, it depends on their attitude.' For 24/7 crisis support or suicide prevention services, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 Seconds after walking into a party, my friend rushed over to give me a hug and a peck on the cheek. 'Wait a minute, is that real?' she asked, stroking my arm as if I were a dog. 'Goodness, you're brave.' Either that or just incredibly stupid, because when you wear a real fur coat in public, you need to prepare yourself for an evening of snippy comments and, worse, hand-wringing moralising. It makes you feel like the only meat-eater at a vegan convention. Which is a shame, really, because I love my fur coat. It was a hand-me-down from my grandmother and, even though it's just a bit of old rabbit, it has a lustrous, chocolatey sheen, a huge collar I can wrap around my neck and is so warm it's like wearing central heating. In so many ways it ticks the 'politically correct' box. It is a 100 per cent sustainable, renewable and biodegradable piece of vintage clothing that has been mended, reconditioned and recycled through three generations possibly even a fourth when I offer it to my daughters. Fiona McIntosh in her grandmother's fur coat. She says it is a 100 per cent sustainable, renewable and biodegradable piece of vintage clothing that has been mended, reconditioned and recycled through three generations When it finally gives up the ghost, it will not clog landfills or poison our oceans with plastic, but decompose naturally, as fur has always done. Yet, despite its eco-friendly credentials, my old fur coat is so socially unacceptable I never dare wear it in daylight. It is the pariah of the fashion world. Although no one has ever openly abused me for wearing fur, I have been subjected to funny looks, raised eyebrows and the odd sarcastic comment: 'Look at Madam in her fur!' Champion of reconditioned furs Pip Chawner, who runs vintage fur retailer Philippa London, argues the material is so versatile it can last for decades. She buys furs from the Seventies and Eighties and refashions them into jackets, gilets, throws and cushions, which gives them an even longer life. 'There was a time, about ten years ago, when we saw fur creep back into the mainstream, and fashion designers started using it again,' says Pip. 'But in the past couple of years that has changed again. 'Celebrities and pressure groups, such as PETA, have become much more vocal about it on social media, which coincided with the rise of veganism.' This pressure resulted in the biggest names in fashion, including Gucci, Versace, Burberry and Armani, announcing that their collections would be fur-free from this year. But while a ban on new skins is laudable, is it right that we tar old furs with the same brush, relegating them to a dark cupboard just because they have fallen foul of Twitter? 'What annoys me is there seems to be no distinction between furs, regardless of whether they are vintage, new or from certain animals the blanket message is that all furs are bad,' says Pip. If, as I did, you lived through the Nineties when fur activism was at its peak, you will probably already have an uneasy relationship with the material. Fiona's grandmother, the original owner of the rabbit fur coat, I would draw the line at ever buying and wearing a new fur coat. It would feel wrong and look wrong. Besides, extravagant, exotic furs have a whiff of the Russian escort about them, and that is certainly not the look I'm going for. But my old rabbit coat is not new, nor made from an exotic or endangered animal, and I would argue that it is an infinitely more responsible piece of clothing than any fake furs on the High Street. The same people who are nibbling on trendy vegan burgers and wearing 'guilt-free' vegan shoes to promote animal-friendly fashion and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, also choose fake fur over a real, vintage fur. This winter, our High Street stores were full of these big, colourful 'faux furs' or 'teddy coats', all cute nicknames for what is essentially a giant cluster of man-made micro-fibres. In fact, according to a parliamentary inquiry into the fashion industry, it would be far more accurate to call them 'plastic fur coats', to make us realise exactly what we are buying. At the last count, John Lewis was selling around 120 coats or jackets made from faux fur or with a faux fur trim, Zara 78, and Asos a whopping 310. That's an awful lot of unbiodegradable polyester fibres that will eventually end up in landfill or be flushed into our oceans, endangering marine life. Hardly what you would call 'animal-friendly'. That's an awful lot of unbiodegradable polyester fibres that will eventually end up in landfill or be flushed into our oceans, endangering marine life. Hardly what you would call 'animal-friendly'. I believe I am doing more for the environment by wearing granny's trusty old fur and resisting buying the faux plastic stuff. It makes as much sense to me as avoiding plastic packaging at the supermarket. It is also deliciously warm, as soft as a cloud and remarkably, when it rains, you simply shake off the water. Even better, every time I put it on it reminds me of my rather formidable and glamorous grandmother. It was her 'coming into town' coat, worn with a silk Dior scarf, a hat and gloves. Years later, in the Seventies, my mother would get it out of mothballs to wear over a long dress for a wedding or a formal dinner dance. I remember her wafting into my room in a cloud of Aramis and fur to give me a goodnight kiss and, in my mind, the coat has never lost that whiff of quiet glamour. Cost is also a compelling argument in favour of vintage fur. You can pick up a vintage fur coat at a street market or a charity shop for as little as 50, the same price, or even less, than a fake fur from the High Street. At the luxury end of the market, Givenchy is selling a faux fur coat designed to look like a genuine mink fur for 2,895. Yet you can pick up a reconditioned mink jacket for a tenth of the price. So I will soldier on and wear my granny's fur coat with pride. But only after dark and only when accessorised with a tin hat. Coles customers based in five Sydney locations can now have their groceries delivered in minutes via UberEats. In late January the grocer announced plans to trial home delivery through the app, using the Pagewood store in southern Sydney as a test store. But they have quietly added more stores to that rotation, including Bondi Junction, Leichhardt, North Sydney and World Square outlets. Scroll down for video Coles customers based in five Sydney locations can now have their groceries delivered in minutes via UberEats They have quietly added more stores to the app, including Bondi Junction (pictured), Leichhardt, North Sydney and World Square outlets Customers who live close to any of these supermarkets can choose a 'bundle' - which includes dairy products, 'absolute essentials', desserts, deli items and even 'Netflix and Chill' snacks - and they will be delivered to your door within the hour. There are also options for single-serve items like a banana for $1, a bottle of Powerade for $4 and two litre A2 full cream milk bottles for $5.70. The $5 UberEats delivery charge, will likely not deter shoppers who are always looking for a last minute and convenient way to get their groceries. If you live close to any of these Sydney-based supermarkets you can choose a 'bundle' Although Coles does already run a successful home delivery service, this food will arrive much faster There are over 100 products on offer including Sara Lee ice cream ($12.00 for one litre), kombucha ($4.20), Tasmanian Heritage Camembert ($14.80), Red Rock Deli chips (5.40) and a whole chicken ($11) available at the click of a button. Although Coles does already run a successful home delivery service, this menu system is far easier to navigate and will arrive much faster than if you were to order through the store. 'We believe this trial will complement the current Coles Online offering by delivering meals in an average of less than 30 minutes, which can be tracked in the UberEats app from the time of order to drop-off,' Uber Eats regional general manager Jodie Auster said in a statement. 'Coles will be the first supermarket to partner with UberEats in Australia, giving our customers healthy choices at competitive prices delivered right to their door,' Coles Director of Fresh Food Alex Freudmann said. It's not known whether UberEats will expand its Coles' service to other suburbs or states. Woolworths offers on-demand grocery delivery in under two hours from more than 30 stores across Sydney and Melbourne, but does not operate through the UberEats app. 'We've seen strong customer demand for our Woolworths Express delivery service since launching our first trials in Sydney back in 2017,' a Woolworths spokesperson said. 'On average, Woolworths customers have their on-demand shops delivered in less than 70 minutes and can follow their delivery on a GPS map.' Over the next few months, Google will be making further updates to give more visibility to rivals in Europe. Google has always agreed that healthy, thriving markets are in everyones interest. Google has made and will make a number of changes to address EU antitrust regulators concerns that it unfairly promoted its shopping service and hindered rivals of its Android smartphone operating system, a senior executive said on Wednesday. Weve always agreed that healthy, thriving markets are in everyones interest. Weve already made a wide range of changes to our products to address the Commissions concerns, Kent Walker, senior vice-president of global affairs, said in a statement. Over the next few months, well be making further updates to give more visibility to rivals in Europe, he continued. He did not comment specifically on the European Commissions 1.49-billion-euro (USD 1.7 billion) fine handed down earlier on Wednesday for blocking rival online advertisers. A pregnant mother has visited three separate factory outlets to buy 70 meals worth of meat to help to feed her family while she's on maternity leave. The woman, who is from Queensland, went to the Hans factory shop in Wacol, P&L Fresh Meats butcher in Oxley and to the Golden Circle factory outlet in Capalaba. She also mentioned in an online Facebook group that the Ingham's factory outlet was somewhere she would recommend others shop for bulk meats. A pregnant mother has visited three separate factory outlets to buy 70 meals worth of meat to feed her family while she's on maternity leave 'First time poster here and I want to thank you all for sharing about the factory outlets,' she wrote online. 'Spent the day going around Brisbane to a few different places to stock up on meat so I have one less thing to worry about while on maternity leave.' The woman shared images of perfectly organised meats in zip lock bags, sectioned out into individual portions with the name of the produce and its use-by date on the front. The woman, who is from Queensland, went to the Hans factory shop in Wacol, P&L Fresh Meats butcher in Oxley and to the Golden Circle factory outlet in Capalaba She also mentioned in an online Facebook group that the Ingham's factory outlet was somewhere she would recommend others shop for bulk meats 'All this for around $160,' she said. 'Approximately 60-70 meals worth of meat! Can't believe I didn't know about this sooner.' One woman commented on her post saying she had spotted her at the discount warehouses. 'Oh I think I saw you today. I did the same thing. First time at Ingham's then went to Golden Circle,' she said. 'Spent the day going around Brisbane to a few different places to stock up on meat so I have one less thing to worry about while on maternity leave,' she said 'Had to stock up before giving birth and now I'm in hospital getting ready. All the best!'. Other members of the group encouraged her to follow the individual factory outlets on their separate Facebook accounts to see when they were doing major deals. There are a number of outlets nationwide, including a Steggles in Melbourne and Perth and Ingham's in Sydney. Marks and Spencer shoppers were shocked to see this season's Easter bunnies striking a rather 'suggestive' pose. With its backside stuck up high into the air flaunting its milk chocolate tail, the 'yoga bunny' has hit the shelves in the run-up to April 21. But while the supermarket titan has insisted the rabbit is performing the 'downwards-facing dog' yoga position, a flashing glance might conjure up a completely different scenario in your mind. Marks and Spencer shoppers were shocked to see this season's Easter bunnies striking a rather 'suggestive' pose The supermarket titan has insisted the rabbit is performing the 'downwards-facing dog' yoga position And some mischievous buyers took to social media to share their interpretations as to what the bunny may be doing. One user, called Christian, tweeted: 'It seems Jessica Rabbit's gone a bit suggestive for Easter!' To which M&S replied: 'Suggestive? It's merely a bunny in the downward-facing dog yoga position, Christian!' Yet more startled customers piled in and also pointed out what they believed was the bunny's naughty pose. Mike wrote: 'The M&S Yoga Bunny Easter egg is very 'door's on the latch find me upstairs'. So while chocolate lovers around the country usually spend the day guzzling down Easter eggs, some may struggle working out how to begin eating this particular treat. These alternative interpretations come after the brand's Valentine's Day 'Love Sausage', which also caused a stir among shoppers. An unvaccinated primary school student and male backpacker have contracted the deadly measles virus causing NSW Health to issue an alert. The young girl attends Bonnyrigg Heights Primary School, 37km west of Sydney's CBD, and the man is believed to be in his 20s and had been staying at the Central Perk Backpackers hostel in Haymarket. Doctors confirmed the pupil was not vaccinated at the time she contracted measles and the man was immunised as a child, The Daily Telegraph reported. An unvaccinated primary school student and male backpacker have contracted the deadly measles virus causing NSW Health to issue an alert to all schools Officials from the state's health department are urging all parents of school-aged children and the broader public to be vigilant when looking for symptoms of the highly infectious disease. 'Students who haven't had two doses of the measles vaccine should stay away from school until April 2,' a statement said. While Sydney health officials begin contacting people the girl might have been in contact with in the last seven days, they have also released details about her movements during that time. She visited Russel's Barber Shop on Wilson Rd in Green Valley between 11am and 12.30pm last Thursday. Four days later the girl walking into the Edensor Road Family Medical Centre, in Edensor Park, between 11am and 11.45am. Once she was diagnosed with the virus, which presents itself as red spots all over the body, she was rushed to the emergency department of Fairfield Hospital, where she stayed from 12.35pm to 1.45pm. Anyone who has come into contact with her at the medical centre or hospital should watch for potential signs they also have the disease. Guests at the hostel the male backpacker stayed at have been given 'preventative injections' and advice if they present symptoms. The man moved around Sydney's CBD while he was infected. Guests at the hostel the male backpacker stayed at have been given 'preventative injections' and advice if they present symptoms Between March 9 and 18 he visited World Square shopping centre, on George Street, and more specifically the Coles supermarket there. He also walked through a variety of shops surrounding the centre. The man went through the emergency department at St Vincent's Hospital, in Sydney's eastern suburbs, on March 18, between 2.45pm and 3.30pm where he sought medical treatment. NSW Health communicable diseases director Dr Vicky Sheppeard reminded the broader public about the importance of being vaccinated in a further statement. 'These two cases highlight how easily the measles virus can spread among unvaccinated people following importation of the disease from overseas,' she said. The measles-mumps-rubella vaccine is free for any person born during or after 1966 who hasn't already had the necessary two doses. It's safe to have another if you're not sure. This case will bring the number of people in NSW affected by measles to 25 since December last year, with 19 of those cases brought from overseas. Literature lovers across the country have taken to social media to mock the idea that books are the latest trend to take the fashion world by storm. The amusing thread initiated from an article published by the New York Post which was titled: 'Bella and Gigi Hadid make books the hot new accessory of 2019.' Taking to Twitter to discuss the photographs of the supermodels at Milan and Paris fashion week clutching The Stranger by Albert Camus and The Outsider by Stephen King, James Corden, 40, scoffed at the latest fashion craze claim. 'Oh please,' he wrote, followed by an eye-rolling emoji. And he wasn't the only one who had something to say about hardbacks being dubbed the latest on-trend fashion statement. 'Man Ive been accessorizing since I was like five without knowing it,' wrote one book worm, while another joked: 'OMG they are the first people to read books EVER?!? What trendsetters.' Social media users took to Twitter after seeing The New York post article which was titled: 'Bella and Gigi Hadid make books the hot new accessory of 2019.' Pictured, Gigi Hadid on day two of Milan Fashion Week Autumn/Winter on February 21 holding The Stranger by Albert Camus Pictured, Bella Hadid is seen outside Haider Ackermann on day six of Paris Fashion Week Autumn/Winter 2019/20 on March 2 holding The Outsider by Stephen King Many bookworms took to social media to mock the apparent new fashion statement, with one writing: 'Man I've been accessorizing since I was five without knowing it' A third amused by the comparison of a book to an accessory commented: 'I do think it is hilarious that the article said "hot NEW accessory." A book... I have been carrying books for ages... I have been fashion forward for decades! The presenter's post has been liked 17k times, with many joking they'd been trendy for years without even realising. 'Finally I'm ahead of a fashion trend!! #trendyatlast,' penned one, while a second commented: 'Haha yes very fashionista of you.' Others joked they'd soon be jumping on the bandwagon. 'Watch me carry a library,' said one, while another questioned: 'Will I be sexier if it's a stack bookshelf and not just one book?' TV presenter James Corden reposted the article regarding the new fashion accessory and penned: 'Oh please,' followed by a rolling eye emoji Others who have been reading books for years couldn't believe they were finally bang-on-trend. One amused social media user penned: 'Finally I'm ahead of a fashion trend!' And the comments continued with one amused book lover, who slowly videoed their precious collection, writing: 'I am going to be so trendy.' 'Oh amazing! I can finally start reading again...couldnt possibly when it wasnt considered "cool", said another, while a third added: 'Maybe I should start taking my books to college for fashion instead of studying hmm.' Meanwhile, a further who took the whole idea way more seriously slammed the new fashion statement. 'How about that true intelligence from really reading those books being the latest accessory. That accessory lasts forever and gets you a lot further in life.' Others saw the opportunity to inundate the feed with puns. One commented: 'It's a new chapter in fashion,' while a second joked: 'Wouldn't read too much into it' Other witty social media users took to Twitter after seeing the accessory suggestion as an opportunity to crack a few puns. 'Don't read too much into it' wrote one, while another penned: 'It's a new chapter in fashion.' Meanwhile One Direction fans were out in force and claimed that Harry Styles is the real trendsetter after being pictured carrying a book 'way back.' 'Harry's been carrying books for years now and somehow didn't get the credit he deserves,' wrote one, while another said: 'Harry did it first - thank you, next.' One Direction band member Harry Styles was pictured at LAX airport back in September 2014 - leading many to believe he started the trend Meghan Markle's former co-star Gregg Sulkin has praised the Duchess as a 'true princess and superstar'. The 26-year-old British actor, who starred alongside Meghan in 2015 film Anti Social, described the former American actress as one of the 'classiest and most genuine people' he had met. Speaking during an appearance on American chat show 'Fair Game with Kristine Leahy', Gregg also defended Meghan, 37, amid the backlash over her family dramas and rumours of a feud with Kate, applauding Prince Harry's wife for remaining dignified. Gregg's interview comes just weeks before Meghan is due to give birth to her first child with Harry, 34. Scroll down for video Meghan Markle's former co-star has praised the Duchess as a 'true princess and superstar'. She is pictured attending Commonwealth Day with Prince Harry at Westminster Abbey last week Speaking to host Christine about their time filming together, Gregg said: 'Everybody does know her as a princess, but in real life, she genuinely is also like a princess. 'She is one of the classiest, the nicest, one of the most sincere and genuine people I've ever met.' And referring to his own British roots, he continued: 'She was a superstar. To me, I'm so proud of the fact that she's part of my country's history in all honesty, aside from obviously having a personal relationship with her.' Addressing the negative attention Meghan has received, he added: 'I just think the way she's handling it obviously the press- you know, it hasn't been easy for her. 'And she's stuck to her guns, which is, you know, 'when they go low, we go high' sort of mentality, and I think she's done that. I think she's been a class act.' Gregg Sulkin, a 26-year-old British actor who starred alongside Meghan in 2015 film Anti Social, described the former American actress as one of the 'classiest and most genuine people' he had met. He is seen at a pre-SAG party in January Meghan has been at the centre of rumours of a rift between the Cambridges and the Sussexes. Last November the palace confirmed that Harry and Meghan would be moving out of their Kensington Palace cottage to the grounds of Windsor, to avoid their first child- due in spring 2019, growing up 'in a goldfish bowl'. However further reports soon claimed the move could be due to a rift between Kate Middleton and Meghan. Additionally Meghan has had to endure regular public outbursts from her half-sister Samantha Markle, and her father Thomas. Gregg Sulkin starred alongside Meghan in 2015 film Anti Social, seen, defended Meghan, 37, against criticism she has received, applauding Prince Harry's wife for rising above the backlash and remaining dignified Meghan and Gregg are seen together in the 2015 film 'Anti Social', where Gregg got to know the actress and described her as 'the nicest, one of the most sincere people' and a 'class act' In December An insider told Us Weekly the pregnant duchess was finding it 'frustrating and stressful' having 'no voice' - and finds the constraints of royal life 'debilitating'. Once an outspoken feminist who gave speeches at United Nations forums, Meghan has since shut down her social media accounts as part of her transition from actress to duchess. However, royal insiders have insisted that there has been no falling out between the Cambridges and the Sussexes, but admitted the pair are 'very different people'. A source previously told the Daily Mail's Rebecca English: 'While there are some tensions behind the scenes, Kate is pretty unflappable and nothing has become bad enough to make Harry and Meghan want to move out. 'People are genuinely pleased to see them so happy. The truth is that there simply isn't enough room at Kensington Palace for them and I know they have been looking at Windsor as a possibility since before the wedding.' Meghan has been plagued with rumours that her move away from Kensington Palace with Harry is due to a rift with Kate Middleton, seen with Prinec William at Westminster Abbey last week A blogger who teaches women how to date billionaires and be accepted into high society circles has shared her top three tips to standing out from the crowd. London-based Anna Bey, 32, who goes by the moniker 'JetSetBabe' online, highlighted the importance of confidence, elegance and femininity, and blasted the current trend of oversexualisation. Swedish-born Anna, who has appeared on This Morning and whose theories have helped her land a banker boyfriend, shares her glamorous lifestyle with her 35,000 Instagram followers. And in her latest vlog entry on her 'School of Affluence' site, Anna explained that confidence can 'turn anyone into a Kate or Meghan', and argued that men would always choose Italian actress Monica Bellucci over reality star Kim Kardashian. Scroll down for video London-based Anna Bey, 32, who goes by the moniker 'JetSetBabe' online and teaches women how to date billionaires, has has shared her top three tips to standing out from the crowd Beginning her 10-minute video entry, Anna began by explaining that less is more and will land you the 'right' kind of attention. She said: 'Sadly today there is this trend of 'more is more', with girls thinking that if you apply more make-up, if you put in more hair extensions and show more skin it will get you noticed.' She continued: 'You won't get the right kind of attention with this method. There are two types of women that men want- one qualifies for a long term relationship and the other is just for pleasure seeking.' Listing the first method to getting the right attention, she said: 'Number one is confidence. 'You don't want to appear too confident as that can appear masculine and put people off. You also don't want your confidence to come off as though you are a diva. Anna, seen on holiday, shared her insight into what wealthy men prefer in potential wives, explaining that confidence can 'turn anyone into a Kate or Meghan' 'However a total lack of confidence can make you appear like a grey mouse. 'Confidence is a key point that'll make people believe you are an affluent person, that you are who you claim you are.' She added: 'Men will notice you thanks to your confidence- walk into the room like you own it, but not like you're better than everyone else. 'Confidence is free of charge, once you have that you can convince people of anything.' Moving onto her next point, she continued: 'Number two, be elegant. Beauty is accessible and is everywhere nowadays and accessible to every class due to surgery and fillers- competition is tough.' Slamming the current culture of oversexuality, Anna said: 'There are many beautiful and sexy women out there but elegant women are a rarity in the Kim Kardashian era. Anna explained that confidence can 'turn anyone into a Kate or Meghan', seen - left and right- above at Westminster Abbey last week Swedish-born Anna, who has appeared on This Morning and whose theories have helped her land a banker boyfriend, highlighted the importance of confidence, elegance and femininity 'Unfortunately casual and nineties fashion is everywhere, so it's your chance to stand out by being elegant- you don't have to be Kate or Meghan to achieve this. 'Give men the full elegant package and you will shine.' Finishing with her final point, she continued: 'Number three is be feminine- sex is everywhere today and is overplayed, it's become boring. 'Men aren't impressed by sexuality as much as before when it was restricted. Dressing sexily is so unoriginal, it really doesn't make a person stand out today'. Explaining why women should preserve their modesty, Anna concluded: 'I teach others the value of being a high value woman, not selling your soul to be noticed or making desperate attempts. 'We want men of high caliber, and such men tend not to seek out skimpy looking girls. Being feminine is what will make men notice you. 'Who do you think men will approach in a room- Kim Kardashian or Monica Belucci? That is the difference between sexy and feminine. I've heard so many people raving about Monica, but how many say that about Kim?'. Anna, pictured in London, also explained why men would always choose Italian actress Monica Bellucci over reality star Kim Kardashian- highlighting the difference between sexy and feminine In her latest vlog entry on her 'School of Affluence' site, Anna urged women to go against the grain and not conform to the current culture of oversexualisation Anna appeared on This Morning in October, and explained how she became hooked on the jet-set lifestyle after leaving Sweden at the age of 18, and meeting a wealthy man in Italy. 'He introduced me to this affluent lifestyle of his. Once you've tried a luxurious lifestyle, it's hard to go back,' Anna explained. 'I've managed to maintain this luxurious lifestyle through the men I've been with - and I'm not ashamed that.' Anna explained how she had transformed her looks in order to fit into high society, including undergoing cosmetic surgery. 'You need to be on the level of the high society. There are unwritten rules we have to adopt,' she said. 'This usually means you have to transform yourself, your looks, your behaviour. I've lost weight I've lost about 15kg. 'I've done a nose jobs, I have fillers in my cheekbones.' She added: 'Many [rich men] want a high-caliber women. We have to be honest with the fact we live in a very superficial world.' This Morning viewers were left heartbroken over the story of a dog that was shot 17 times before being rescued from Lebanon. Five-year-old Maggie was found in horrific condition: tied to a box with her eyes shot out, her ear cut off, her jaw broken and bullet wounds all over her body. But just six months ago, after an online campaign was started to get her out of the Middle East, Maggie found a new home in Brighton with dog lover Kasey Carlin. She is now being trained as a therapy dog. Today Maggie, who is blind, and Kasey appeared on This Morning - and viewers were left 'in tears' over the dog's emotional journey. Maggie, a five year old dog, was shot 17 times in Lebanon, before she was transported to the UK and rescued by Kasey Carlin, from Brighton. Maggie and Kasey both appeared on This Morning today, pictured, winning over Phillip, Holly - and the viewers at home Five-year-old Maggie was found in horrific condition: tied to a box with her eyes shot out, her ear cut off, her jaw broken and bullet wounds all over her body. Pictured, Maggie in the UK Today Maggie, who is blind, and Kasey appeared on This Morning - and viewers were left 'in tears' over the dog's emotional journey, pictured One tweeted: 'How can people be so cruel?' Another posted: 'No dog deserves to be treated like that.' A third posted: 'I can't believe the horrors she's endured. Many viewers said Maggie's story made them 'sad and angry,' while other said they 'wanted to cry.' Ms Carlin, 25, heard about Maggie's story through the animal welfare group Wild At Heart Foundation and knew she wanted to take her home. Maggie had surgery before leaving Lebanon. After having her eyes sewn up to prevent further damage, Maggie was well enough to travel to the UK to meet her new family. Viewers were really touched by Maggie's story and said she did not deserved to be shot. They also said that Maggie was brave and an inspiration, pictured 'I was in tears when I met her at the airport,' Ms Carlin said. 'I got in touch with some blind rescue dog charities and asked what to do.' She continued: 'I did not know much about her. Other than that she was abused and that she would be quite afraid. 'But that was completely wrong. She's just a love bug. She sees with her heart.' The dog has not only recovered from her wounds and learnt to deal with her blindness, she also became a 'dogfluencer' in the process and boasts an impressive 36.400 thousand followers. Maggie pictured before she was rescued by Kasey. The poor dog was blinded and vets found four bullets in her eyes Maggie is an Instagram 'doginfluencer' and has 36,000 followers. Kasey shares pictures of the dog's daily life on her own account, pictured Since she was rescued, 'love bug' Maggie, pictured in an Instagram snap, became an Instagram star and is now training to be a therapy dog She is training as a therapy dog and currently visits a care home and Sussex University. Training is hard on Maggie, who has to work twice as hard as a normal dog to get up to speed. Kasey fought back tears as she discussed the dog's therapy job. 'She gets tired easily mentally, but we're working slowly,' the proud owner said. 'And she goes to a care home and has her favourite.' Ms Carlin has said that she often gets asked why Maggie has not been put down and some question her quality of life. Maggie, pictured on This Morning, is still loving and trusting despite her past treatment Owner Kasey Carlin, 25, pictured, choked up as she talked about her dog's charity work, saying the dog was just a 'love bug' and 'demanded to be loved' by everyone But she said once people met Maggie in the flesh and saw her run and play, their opinions changed. She said: 'I've never met a dog like Maggie. She's just brilliant. She's so energetic and bubbly. She walks off the lead and follows me around. 'She must have been in agony with all she's been through, but she never hurt anyone and she's so loving.' Actress Joey King opened up about a time she was recently told she wasn't 'pretty enough' during an audition as she admits the negative feedback in the industry 'hurts'. The 19-year-old actress launched into the public eye after appearing in Netfllix's The Kissing Booth, which was reportedly the most re-watched movie of 2018 for the streaming site. After starring in the teenage romcom, Joey did a complete 180 with her dramatic role as Gypsy Rose Blanchard in Hulu's The Act. Despite all of her recent success in Hollywood, Joey confessed to getting turned down for roles recently because of the way she looked. On the rise: Joey King, 19, stars in Hulu's drama series The Act after launching into the spotlight for her role in Netflix's The Kissing Booth. Pictured is Joey at The Act premiere Upsetting: The Neflix movie gave her notoriety, but Joey (pictured in The Act) admitted to being turned down for a role because she wasn't 'pretty enough' for the part Change: The actress decided to shave her head to play Gypsy Rose Blanchard in Hulu's The Act 'You start to get discouraging feedback, the stuff that you dont want to hear,' Joey told Refinery 29. 'I got that Im not pretty enough, pretty recently actually. Thats just really f***ed up.' Joey admitted to feeling discouraged and hurt by the feedback at the auditions as she battled to get the role. But she ultimately decided it was not the job for her. 'It kind of hurts, but I didnt cry when I heard that,' she said. 'I was like, well thats stupid. I just kept going because I know its an unrealistic expectation. I dont want to work for the person that thinks Im not pretty enough. I have no desire to work for them, ever.' Although the industry has its setbacks, Joey has found a way to thrive by transforming herself from a child actress she previously starred in Crazy, Stupid, Love and Ramona and Beezus to earning prominent roles on TV. Her latest character in Hulu's The Act offered Joey the ability to showcase a new side to her acting. The series is based off of the real story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her mom Dee Dee, played by Patricia Arquette, and their toxic relationship that ultimately led to the daughter killing her mom. For the role, Joey decided to shave her head to get into the character of Gypsy after some hesitation. 'When [The Act] came about, I had a little bit of hesitation, like, I dont know, man, do I really want to do [shave my head] again?' Joey said about her image transformation for the role. 'But then I took a second, and I was like, I want this job so badly that I would do anything. And I meant it.' Touching: Joey revealed shaving her head had an emotional reason behind it after her mom battled with cancer when the actress was 11 years old Inspired: 'I think women should see that you dont have to hide behind your hair,' Joey said about her reasoning behind shaving her head for a third time Joey has shaved her head a total of three times, all for professional roles. She first decided to shave her head for her role in a Dark Knight Rises before also shaving it for Wish I Was Here and now The Act. Shaving her head carries emotional sentiments for Joey, though, because of what her mom went through while battling cancer. Love: Joey will continue her reign on streaming sites when starring in Neflix's The Kissing Booth 2, which is set to premiere in January 2020 'When [my mom] got diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 11, she was very adamant about not losing her hair,' Joey revealed. 'It scared her. She felt like she would have been like less of a woman if she lost her hair.' She continued: 'I think women should see that you dont have to hide behind your hair. Whether you lose it for something creative, or you lose it for something tragic, you should be able to feel beautiful.' The first two episodes of The Act premiered on Hulu on Wednesday and have already received rave reviews from critics. But Joey cared most about what her family thought of the new series. 'I always get really pumped when my mom cries...So, she cried,' Joey said after she held a screening for her family in her home. Joey will continue her reign on streaming sites when starring in Neflix's The Kissing Booth 2, which is set to premiere in January 2020. The actress notably started dating co-star Jacob Elordi after the pair played love interests in the first movie and were open about their relationship on social media. But the couple have since split. 'All you can really do at that point is shut your phone off and crawl into your sister's bed and watch Friends with her, because when you're going through something and the world wants to go through it with you or [wants] to get every piece of detail from you about it, it's really difficult,' Joey said about the public breakup. 'Some of these things are just meant for you,' she said. She and Jacob are still set to star alongside each other for the sequel to their popular romcom, and filming starts in the summer. Embattled Prime Minister Theresa May put on an impressive display of bravado today as she greeted other European leaders in Brussels, according to a body language expert. Earlier today Mrs May issued a call for Parliament to deliver on the decision of the British people and take the UK out of the European Union. As she arrived in Brussels for an EU summit at which she hopes to be granted a three-month extension to the UK's Brexit deadline, the Prime Minister said she 'sincerely hopes' Britain will be able to leave with a deal. Mrs May is under intense pressure after a poor reception from some of her own MPs to her Downing Street statement on Wednesday, when she blamed MPs for failing to implement the result of the 2016 EU referendum and told frustrated voters 'I am on your side'. This afternoon, as she greeted other European leaders, body language expert and author Judi James revealed that the PM's main emotion appeared to be relief that she was met with a sympathetic reception after a rocky 24 hours in the UK. Relieved and full of bravado Relieved and full of bravado: Theresa May seemed to be relieved as she was greeted by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte 'Stepping off the grim House of Commons stage, May's arrival in the chamber today made her look unusually upbeat and dare I say it popular, plus full of what looked like bravado,' says James. 'She seemed to be riding on a wave of empathy and good humour with most of the leaders she met, but with one glaring exception. 'There was an air of relief about her body language here. Having seen her attacked from all sides in her own parliament she appeared to be welcoming the good-natured and sympathetic-looking small-talk.' The knowing eye-roll The knowing eye-roll: During this conversation Mrs May appeared to roll her eyes and held her palm up, pictured, before nodding fast. This suggests agreement and that she was receiving some 'empathy' 'Her first eye-roll looked like a tie-sign - as though the leader she was chatting to was sympathizing with her plight. 'Her hand came up with the palm facing upward and she performed a mouth-slew followed by a small shudder and some fast nodding. 'Accelerated nodding at this rate suggests agreement and acknowledgment, suggesting she was getting an empathetic approach. 'However her gestures also implied she was keen to recognize, but also diminish or even shrug off. her problems at home.' May's whole-hearted embrace May's whole-hearted embrace: The Prime Minister was 'genuinely' happy when she greeted Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel and she laughed, pictured, before kissing him on the cheek 'Her biggest 'hello' came next when another leader rose to offer an empty embrace, with both arms held out wide to signal the offer of a virtual hug. 'May was clearly genuinely friendly with this leader as she laughed before kissing him twice on the cheek. 'The two-kiss approach is a common European greeting ritual but their closeness was emphasized by the way they touched heads as they kissed and retained close proximity and eye contact after the kiss. 'Keeping their hands on one another's arms he squeezed May's upper arm and she responded in a reciprocal gesture that would have signaled authentic rapport. A deliberately frosty introduction A deliberately frosty introduction: Mrs May's face dropped when she saw European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, pictured, and she became 'frosty' towards him 'May turned from this emphatic display of camaraderie to Juncker and her face literally dropped the second she clapped eyes on him. 'The flip from warmth and jollity to deadpan and frosty was so instant it must have been deliberate. 'The pair placed hands on one another's upper shoulders in a gesture of mutual desire to control as they kissed and there was a wide space between their faces as they performed their greeting ritual. The moment it was over they parted straight away.' Juncker's cold shoulder Juncker's cold shoulder: Mr Juncker blocked Mrs May when he leaned across her to embrace the Dutch Prime Minister 'May's face dropped again and Juncker cold-shouldered her by pulling someone else in front of her for another greeting. 'As May worked the room she also seemed to be very alert in terms of studying other leaders. 'As she spoke to one woman she performed a US presidential-style double-bagging greeting by nodding quickly in a metronomic gesture of impatience as the woman spoke and allowing her eyes to dart around the room before waving to someone else as she listened to the woman. In a group chat she performed the kind of 'bravado' shoulder-shrug that could suggest acknowledgment for all the challenge she's facing and which hinted she was again on the receiving end of some upbeat-looking sympathy. Mrs May, pictured talking to Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, stayed 'very alert' as she worked the room in Brussels today and 'studied other leaders' A mother-of-seven who had her right areola, nipple, and implant removed after a disastrous 'mommy makeover' proudly showed off her new breasts following a much-needed corrective surgery. Sonya, 34, from California, appeared on Wednesday night's episode of the E! reality series Botched, revealing that the discount Florida doctor who performed her surgeries told her to 'put ice' on her nipple when it started to turn black. 'I went in for a mommy makeover and came out a hot mess,' she told the cameras during her testimonial. Scroll down for video Before and after: Sonya, 34, from California, had her deformed breasts and stomach fixed on Wednesday night's episode of Botched Disaster: The mother-of-seven said that she 'went in for a mommy makeover and came out a hot mess' Sonya said she was an outgoing kid who loved being the center of attention. By the time she was a pre-teen, she was wearing a size DD bra. 'It got me lots of attention probably the wrong attention but I liked my boobs. Actually, I loved them,' she said, looking back. The mom said she went on a 'hot date' when she was 16 and ended up getting pregnant after having sex for the first time. Over the next 15 years, she had seven children. Sonya explained that having so many kids caused her weight to fluctuate. After she had her twins in 2016, she reached her highest weight of 307 pounds. 'I felt like an Oompa Loompa,' she admitted. Growing up: Sonya (center) said she was wearing a size DD bra by the time she was a preteen Life changing: The mom said she went on a 'hot date' when she was 16 and ended up getting pregnant after having sex for the first time. Over the next 15 years, she had seven children After having gastric sleeve surgery, she lost a total of 170 pounds but was left with 'a lot of loose skin that looked like a mudslide.' Sonya said she went to see a doctor in Miami for skin removal surgery because he was 'a lot cheaper than the California doctors.' Although she just wanted her excess skin removed, the doctor sold her on a 'mommy makeover.' 'The doctor never asked me what I wanted,' she recalled. 'He basically said, "Hi,' lifted my boobs, said, "We can do this," and left.' Sonya said she knew in her gut that something was wrong with her breast as soon as she woke up from the surgery. Transformation: After having her twins in 2016, her weight soared to 307 pounds (left). After having gastric bypass surgery, she lost 170 pounds (right) Surgery: Sonya initially wanted to have the excess skin on her stomach removed after losing 170 pounds, but her surgeon talked her into a 'mommy makeover' Yikes: The discount Florida doctor who performed her surgeries told her to 'put ice' on her nipple when it started to turn black 'I went to the restroom and I looked and I noticed my right nipple [was] black,' she said. 'I showed the doctor. He brushed it off like it was nothing.' The mom said he basically told her to put ice on it and massage it. 'A few days later, I went in again,' she explained. 'This time my boob was inflamed and he said, "You need to be admitted into the emergency room." 'After being in the hospital for a few days, the surgeon removed my areola, nipple, and implant, and when I woke up, where the areola and nipple were was gone. All I could see was meat, flesh.' Sonya, who also the excess skin on her stomach removed, said the stitches on her stomach just started opening and her stomach drain fell out when she was in the hospital. She admitted that she thought she was going to die. Trouble: After the area became inflamed, Sonya was admitted into the hospital and a surgeon removed her right areola, nipple, and implant Disaster: Sonya, who also had the excess skin on her stomach removed, said the stitches on her stomach just started opening and her stomach drain fell out Hard to imagine: Sonya said her stomach looked like a 'butt' after surgery 'After three months of healing, my body looked worse than when I came in,' she said, admitting that she pushed everyone away when she got home, including her partner Tom. During her consultation with Dr. Terry Dubrow and Dr. Paul Nassif, she admitted that she wasn't sure if her doctor in Florida was a board certified plastic surgeon. The doctors came to the conclusion that he was probably a general surgeon not a plastic surgeon which was why his prices were so much cheaper. Dr. Dubrow and Dr. Nassif were stunned when Sonya told them that her doctor advised her to put ice on her nipple when it started to turn black. 'Putting ice on a nipple that is turning black is the last thing you want to do,' Dr. Nssif said in his testimonial. 'You want to increase the blood flow, but putting ice on it is going to constrict the blood flow, making it harder for oxygen to go through, making it more difficult for the nipple to stay alive.' Deformed: 'After three months of healing, my body looked worse than when I came in,' she said Plan: During her consultation with Dr. Terry Dubrow, he told her he thought the best course of acting would be to remove her skin graft and try to put a big implant in there Disaster: He explained that the issue with her abdomen is that her pubic area was contracted upward and pulled up the height of her bellybutton, which was basically just a scar 'Putting ice on a black nipple is neither diagnosing nor treating,' Dr. Dubrow told Sonya. 'We call that in plastic surgery malpractice.' Not only were her breasts deformed, but she also came out of her mommy makeover with a stomach that looked like a 'butt.' In the examining room, the doctors warned her that this would not be an easy fix. 'So, you have a breast implant in place that's soft. This one is a problem child,' Dr. Durbrow said, pointing to her right breast. 'You only have a fraction of your areola. Probably the best thing to do is remove the skin graft and try to put a big implant in there and expand up your regular breast skin.' Much better: Dr. Dubrow warned her that she may not like the end result, even if the surgery goes perfectly, but he still agreed to take on her case Transformation: They decided to move forward with the surgery, and she was thrilled with the results Happy as can be: 'Thanks to Dr. Dubrow, my breasts are symmetrical and my excess flabby skin is gone,' she said after she healed He explained that the issue with her abdomen is that her pubic area was contracted upward and pulled up the height of her bellybutton, which was basically just a scar. 'I mean, this looks like work that was done by a surgeon who read a couple of plastic surgery textbooks, to be honest,' Dr. Dubrow said. Dr. Nassif noted that his partner has taken on a lot of difficult cases, but he had 'no clue' how he was going to go about repairing Sonya's breasts and stomach. 'Even if everything goes smoothly, and you heal properly, and I were to do this perfectly, you still may not like the result,' Dr. Dubrow admitted. Sonya was so upset that she wasted so much money on plastic surgeries that ultimately left her miserable she started to cry in the examining room. Next up: During the episode, the doctors also headed to Montana to meet with a patient named Heather whose face was crushed in a motorcycle accident Traumatic: Heather was just 14 years old when she was throw into a chain-link fence that cut her nose down to her throat Difficulties: Heather had three nasal surgeries, but her nose was still caved in, and she struggled with her breathing They decided to move forward with the surgery, and she was thrilled with the results. Sonya happily showed off her figure in halter dress after she was healed. 'Before surgery, my body looked like a melting mudslide. It was bumpy, lumpy, and disfigured,' she said. 'But now, thanks to Dr. Dubrow, my breasts are symmetrical and my excess flabby skin is gone.' During the episode, the doctors also headed to Montana to meet with a patient named Heather whose face was crushed in a motorcycle accident. She was just 14 years old when she slammed into a chain-link fence during a nighttime ride. 'It was at night and the last thing I remember is just taking off as fast as you can and hitting the fence,' she told the doctors. Hard case: Dr. Paul Nassif was admittedly 'nervous' about going through with the revisional rhinoplasty after examining Heather in her home. However, he agreed to perform the surgery Better than ever: In addition to fixing her nasal passages, he also fixed her scarred right eye. 'I can breathe normally and the skin under my eye looks completely normal,' she said 'It split me from here all the way down to the back of my throat. So, half my jaw dropped in my mouth and it crushed my cheek bone under my eye, as well, completely.' Heather had three nasal surgeries, but her nose was still caved in, and she struggled with her breathing. She also still suffered from PTSD following the accident. 'What Heather went through was extremely traumatic and it's something I'm sure she doesn't want to relive,' Dr. Nassif said in his testimonial. 'If we can do something to help her, that might help erase some of these horrible memories of which she had happen to her.' He was admittedly 'nervous' about going through with the revisional rhinoplasty after examining Heather in her home. However, he agreed to perform the surgery in his operating room in California. In addition to fixing her nasal passages, he also fixed her scarred right eye. 'Before my surgery, a motorcycle accident made my face look unrecognizable,' Heather said. 'Now since my surgery, I can breathe normally and the skin under my eye looks completely normal.' US trade delegation headed by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will visit China on March 28-29. The face-to-face talks will be the first since President Donald Trump delayed a March 1 deadline. (File Photo) Beijing: A US trade delegation headed by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will visit China on March 28-29 for the next round of negotiations, China's commerce ministry said on Thursday. In return, Vice Premier Liu He will travel to the Washington in early April for more talks, according to ministry spokesman Gao Feng, as the world's two biggest economies try to hammer out a trade deal to end months of disputes. The face-to-face talks will be the first since President Donald Trump delayed a March 1 deadline to avert a rise in tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent from the current 10 percent. Trump warned on Wednesday that the United States may leave tariffs on Chinese goods for a "substantial period" to ensure that Beijing complies with any trade agreement, adding to uncertainty over the talks. They say there is an art to picking the perfect perfume, but now, thanks to one luxury beauty brand, the act of applying it can be turned into a truly creative experience. Israeli start-up Amkiri has just unveiled the world's first Visual Fragrance, a scented body art ink that allows perfume lovers to actually paint on their scent, while drawing dramatic designs on their skin. 'With scientifically developed technology that combines the senses of smell and sight, Amkiri is designed to enable the complete freedom of multisensory self-expression - making the invisible, visible,' the brand explained of its innovative release. Skin scent: A luxury beauty brand has launched a scented body ink that allows you to draw on visual fragrance to your skin Get creative: Amkiri's Visual Fragrance - which is billed as the first of its kind in the world - is available in both white and charcoal, and can be used with stencils, or freehand Art: The fragrance comes in two different wands, one of which is thicker and is sold with a set of stencils for $60, while the $50 option has a finer tip and is intended for freehand use Launched on March 21 in honor of National Fragrance Day, Amkiri's Visual Fragrance comes in the form of a wand that dips into a pot of the scented ink, which is available in either charcoal - essentially a black-gray shade - or white. Off you go: The original wand retails for $60 and comes compete with a set of stencils Those who aren't quite creative or brave enough to try drawing on the artistic scent without some assistance can opt for a $60 package that comes with the wand and a set of stencils that can be used to create striking designs on the skin. Anyone who is seeking more freedom in their body art can choose the $50 wand by itself, and opt to paint the ink on freehand, experimenting with whatever shapes, designs, or drawings take their fancy. The stencil wand also boasts a slightly thicker tip for quicker application, while the freehand wand is finer, so that more precise designs can be created. Dozens of different design ideas have been posted on Amkiri's official Instagram, where customers are shown modeling both freehand and stenciled designs on their bodies, from simple graphics and numbers to ornate flowers and patterns. While discussing the launch of the unique product, Amkiri's founder Shoval Shavit Shapiro, who was educated in both Tel Aviv and Berlin, explained that she wanted to find a way to blend body art, cosmetics, and fragrance - thereby offering people another way to visually express themselves. Show it off: According to Amkiri, the ink and its integral scent will last on the skin for 12 hours after application Get a whiff! The scent used with the wands is described as a 'long-lasting fine fragrance' with notes of spearmint, ginger oil, and juniper berry, as well as cedar wood and musk 'The next generation of consumers is energized by self-expression and visual communication,' Shapiro told WWD. 'They are increasingly politically minded and socially motivated, creating new norms whether in relation to beauty standards or otherwise. Visual Fragrance was created for and by this generation. We dont just want to be heard; we want to be seen.' And while the concept might seem like something of a gimmick, Shapiro enlisted a diverse team of experts in business, chemistry, engineering, design, and fragrance in order to create a product that would stand the test of time. According to Amkiri, the ink design, and its integral scent, will last on the skin for 12 hours after application, while the ink itself is hypoallergenic, water and sweat resistant, alcohol-free, and vegan and cruelty free. The scent itself is described as a 'long-lasting fine fragrance that opens the imagination and inspires the creative spirit within'. 'Light and refreshing spearmint meets rich and spicy undertones of ginger oil and juniper berry,' the website describes. 'Hints of musk and cedar wood round out this dreamy and sensual scent.' A creative mother from Houston, Texas truly went above and beyond for 'crazy hair day' at her four-year-old daughter's school and ended up inspiring other Twitter users who wanted to be part of their world. Rather than take the easy route, April Castillo transformed her daughter Atlantis' hair into a look worthy of a Disney princess. In fact, her look actually was a Disney princess. Little Atlantis went to school with Little Mermaid locks, her strands braided and sprayed green to make the tail before an actual Ariel doll was snugly placed in the middle. Under the sea! Four-year-old Atlantis Castillo from Houston, Texas recently went to school with this impressive 'do for crazy hair day Did she use a dinglehopper for that? Her mother, April Castillo, spent about a half hour on the creation, turning her daughter's hair into Ariel from The Little Mermaid Where the people are: The pre-k students' big sister, also named Ariel, tweeted about it and the pictures have gone viral Creative family: The little girl (pictured with her mom and sister) love the hairdo so much she wore it to gymnastics later that day Atlantis' big sister whose name happens to be Ariel shared pictures online that have quickly gone viral. 'My sister had crazy hair day at school today and my mom was not playing games and really wanted her to win,' she wrote. Atlantis had a French braid running down the back of her head, which had been sprayed all over with bright green temporary dye. An Ariel doll with her signature red hair and a purple bikini top popped out of the top of the braid. According to sister Ariel, the whole thing took about 25 minutes. Too cute! Other parents have replied with pictures of their own kids on crazy hair day Sweet! Several parents have given their little girls buns and made them look like cupcakes Festive: This little girl's cupcake buns even have squiggly birthday candles Above and beyond! There are lots of parents who go for over-the-top looks 'My mom picked the hairstyle, she had seen people use a paper doll and wasnt really feeling it so she went the extra mile and added a real life doll,' she told BuzzFeed. 'My parents have always had quite an obsession with under the sea so my sisters and I have always loved mermaids,' she went on. Atlantis was thrilled with the result and wore it the rest of the day. 'She loved it so much and didnt want to take it off. She even went to her gymnastics class with her hair like that,' said Ariel. And according to a later tweet, Atlantis did win the contest at pre-k. 'Yall just wait for my mom the upcoming year!' she wrote. Tasty! This little girl's hair was made into a doughnut which was paired with coffee, naturally Dreams that you dare to dream really do come true! This little girl got the rainbow treatment Space case! This little girl's hair was galaxy-themed, complete with a rocket A fantasy! Another poster shared this picture of a girl who went full unicorn The tweet with Atlantis' pictures has been liked three quarters of a million times in just two days and earned lots of approving comments. The fun family has also inspired other parents to post pictures of their own kids on crazy hair days at school. One little girl went for a galaxy theme with gold glitter, a rocket, and the moon on her head. A few little girls wore their hair in buns on either side of their head, with the buns transformed to look like cupcakes. A little boy got in on the fun, too, with fake eyes in his hair and a tongue drawn on his forehead. Exposure to pesticides by the age of one could increase the risk of being diagnosed with autism, a new study claims. Researchers found that children who were exposed before being born and during their first year of life had about a nearly 10 percent higher risk of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD). And the risk of an ASD diagnosis with an intellectual disability - trouble with conceptual skills, social skills and practical skills - was as high as 50 percent. The team, from the University of California Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health, is now calling on public health policymakers to implement changes that would reduce a pregnant woman's exposure to pesticides down to zero. However, experts question the controversial findings and say that previous studies have shown ASD is largely genetic and that a small fraction of cases are due to environmental factors. A new study from the University of California Los Angeles found there was a 10% higher risk of developing autism spectrum disorder if children were exposed to pesticides before birth and in the first year of life (file image) Previous studies have linked pesticide exposure to abnormal brain development, but few have studied how it affects ASD risk. Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental disorder in which sufferers have a hard time communicating and with behavior. It encompasses several conditions - including autism, Asperger's syndrome and childhood disintegrative disorder - and symptoms can range from mild to severe. Children are usually diagnosed by age two after they exhibit signs such as reduced eye contact, not responding to their name and performing repetitive movements. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in 59 children has ASD. For the study, published in The British Medical Journal, the team looked at nearly 3,000 patients diagnosed with ASD, 445 of whom also had an intellectual disability. To compare, they included more than 35,000 patients who were not diagnosed with ASD. The participants were born between 1998 and 2010 in the California Central Valley, an agricultural area. About 80 percent of the children were boys. Using data from the state's Pesticide Use Registry, researchers analyzed exposure the patients would have had before they were born and during their infancy to 11 common pesticides. One of the studied weedkillers, glyphosate, has been at the forefront of the news in recent months due to trials surroundings its potential ability to cause cancer. In August 2018, a California jury ruled that Roundup - whose main ingredient is glyphosate - gave groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. And, just yesterday, a San Francisco jury found Roundup to be a 'significant factor' in Edwin Hardeman being diagnosed with the same disease. The team discovered that babies exposed to pesticides had a slightly increased risk of being diagnosed with ASD - about eight percent - compared to controls. However, the odds of an ASD diagnosis along with an intellectual disability - the most severe of cases - was a shockingly high 50 percent. Experts question the team's results and say the percentages of children diagnosed seem suspiciously high. 'ASD is largely genetic as demonstrated by family and twin studies,' said Dr David Menassa, a research fellow at the University of Southampton in the UK. 'A small percentage of cases may have an environmental aetiology and this is what this current case-control study attempts to address. Case control studies only give us odds ratios that have no relationship to risk. There is no causation here, only a weak association.' The authors say further studies are needed, but believer their research comes on the heels of past work in the field. 'Our findings suggest that ASD risk may increase with prenatal and infant exposure to several common ambient pesticides that impacted neurodevelopment in experimental studies,' they wrote. In an accompanying editorial, Dr Amanda Bakian and Dr James VanDerSlice, professors in the division of public health at the University of Utah, said they agree with the authors that limiting pesticide exposure during pregnancy is important. 'Yet, reducing maternal exposure to zero for [pesticides] might be close to impossible in some populations,' they write. The associate professors add that further studies, which confirm the findings of this one, may help policymakers enact change that will reduce the risk of pregnant women living in areas with high pesticide use. Dr James Fallon's 'professional ADHD' - as he calls it - led him to discover a pattern in the brains of psychopaths, and begin studying them. Then he discovered he is a psychopath. Dr Fallon is a neuroscientist at University of California, Irvine, where he studies how a number of conditions and diseases behave in the brain. But in the 1980s, he happened to be studying the brains of killers - ones suspected to be psychopaths, using PET scans of their brains. He also happened to decide to use scans of his family's brains as the control group for what 'normal' brains look like, and included his own. Among the pile of family scans was one that he was sure had been placed there incorrectly. Its activity patterns were all wrong for a normal person. But they were identical to those of a psychopath. Dr Fallon thought someone in his lab was playing a joke. They weren't. He peeled back the piece of black tape keeping the scan anonymous - and found his own name. Dr James Fallon is a neuroscientist who discovered brain traits that identify psychopaths, and discovered he is one in the process of his research Only about one percent of the population are psychopaths, people who have little or no empathy or remorse. They tend to be egotistical and lack inhibitions. In other words, they do things like drive their kids into the African Sahara in the middle of the night without a guide to go pick up the skull of a freshly-killed crocodile, with more lurking in the water. Or steal cars in spite of an obsession with a religion that tells them 'thou shalt not steal' - and have nothing to say at Catholic Confession. It's exhausting - it's hard to be a nice person These are all things Dr Fallon has done, but never thought were particularly strange. He also holds both a Master's degree and PhD, has made a number of notable scientific discoveries, has been married for many years and has raised three children. Dr Fallon is also the type of man who will recruit his family (and himself) to act as controls in a study that might well tell them if they have early signs of Alzheimer's. Even though his wife was 'really cool about it,' when he asked her how she felt about taking part in the study, Dr Fallon now admits 'it was kind of a mistake.' It's also how he ended up seeing his own brain scan and recognizing all the hallmarks of psychopathy in it. PET scans of most brains show blood flow and activity in the front orbital cortex of the prefrontal cortex (top two), but a psychopath's has very little or no blood flow (bottom) When he saw it, Dr Fallon said to the two technicians he was working with: 'whoever this is shouldn't be walking around in society, they're a very dangerous person.' But even then, he didn't care - a phrase he says a lot, and that gives away his true nature. He did mention it to his wife, however. 'She said this very seriously, and I didn't realize it at the time - she's a very funny gal - she said "That doesn't surprise me,"' Dr Fallon says. I'm not dangerous to strangers, but I tend to be a little too much fun and I get people close to me into predicaments 'There's no psychopathy genes, but there are traits associated with them, traits that drive them... I had all the genetics.' But he 'blew it off,' he says. 'I said, "I know who am."' It wasn't until nearly 30 years later, in 2010, when a former Norwegian prime minister and some scientists turned drinking buddies for the evening told Dr Fallon they thought he might be a borderline psychopath that he decided to take it seriously. When Dr Fallon underwent psychiatric and psychological analysis, the writing was on the wall. 'The summary was, "here's a patient who has all the urges, thoughts and temptations of a full-blown psychopath," which is true,' he says. 'You don't think, growing up that that the things you think are psychopathic, you don't know...because what do you have to compare it to?' But he isn't what is called a 'categorical' psychopath. Dr Fallon is a 'pro-social' psychopath. 'It doesn't mean your a nice person, it means you have the skills to make people think you're normal and OK and likable. People think you have charisma and it makes people attracted to you,' he explains. Others, those who are 'categorical', have antisocial and violent tendencies, have a far harder time hiding their psychopathy and functioning in society. I don't want their money or their sex. I want to own them, for a moment or an hour or two hours. It's a kind of manipulation to own somebody. He credits the positive environment he grew up in and the influence of his family, full of good, smart people - especially his mother - with the skills that have helped him thrive. 'I was looking at her, sitting out in the yard, on a three-legged stool, trimming the Rhododendrons, and I thought, "that's it, she's the third leg of the stool,"' recalls Dr Fallon. 'I have the genes and the brain [of a psychopath] but she is the third leg,' the reason that he is not dangerous to others, because a worse upbringing would have rounded out the three categories of risk factors for psychopathy. 'I have all the biomarkers and traits of somebody who should be dangerous, but I'm not.' Most of the time, that is. Since learning of his psychopathy, Dr Fallon has tried to emulate his friends and family (pictured) to treat those in his life better and counteract his own disorder 'I'm not dangerous to strangers, but I tend to be a little too much fun and I get people close to me into predicaments,' he says. That's one of the tendencies of a psychopath, 'playing with people just for your own thrills,' he says, that Dr Fallon exhibits. He name drops countries where his seemingly infinite list of remarkable stories (all true, he says, as he is 'careful never to lie') take place, and enjoys the attention it gets him, but it's a different kind of pleasure than most people get from it. 'At parties, my wife will be sitting there watching all these gals, young gals in their 20s and 30s, all over me and she's sick of it - of course, who wants to put up with that sh** - but it's a sort of manipulating,' he says. 'I don't want their money or their sex. I want to own them, for a moment or an hour or two hours. 'It's a kind of manipulation to own somebody.' I think I can do anything I want - I can't beat my own psychopathy, but I can, because I'm that good, I can use my own pathology to do it But Dr Fallon says he doesn't have the urge to kill or to rape, and that makes him a 'lucky' psychopath. And since learning of his psychopathy, he's 'tried to use my own kind of narcissism' to be a good psychopath too. 'I think I can do anything I want - I can't beat my own psychopathy, but I can, because I'm that good, I can use my own pathology to do it.' So he tries to 'mimic' the behaviors of others and 'do things like a normal roommate or husband or friend would do.' His wife has noticed, too. 'She said, "what has come over you, you're really nice all of a sudden,"' he explains. 'I said, "don't take it too seriously, I'm doing an experiment." She didn't care, because I'm really treating her better, and I'm trying with others too.' But there is one unexpected side effect to Dr Fallon's experiment. 'I found out I started sleeping more and more,' he says. 'It's exhausting - it's hard to be a nice person.' A baby girl was born with her own twin sister, unformed but still growing with its own umbilical cord, inside her. The little girl called Itzamara, born on February 22 in Barranquilla, Colombia, is an incredibly rare example of 'fetus-in-fetu' births, first described in 1808 but rarely seen since. The handful of other cases, mostly in Asia, were discovered after birth, with stunned doctors realizing that what appeared to be an abdominal cyst was actually a fetus. But this case broke new ground because the mother's specialist obstetrician, Dr Miguel Parra-Saavedra, spotted it on a scan at 35 weeks' gestation thanks to a 3D/4D ultrasound technique. The team delivered seven-pound Itzamara early via C-section at 37 weeks at La Merced clinic to prevent her twin growing and damaging her internal organs. A day later, they performed keyhole surgery to remove her 45-millimeter, 14-gram twin, who died when its umbilical cord was cut. The baby had arms and legs but no heart and no brain. WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT Astonishing: This is a scan taken at 35 weeks which shows Itzamara, and (in the yellow square) her unformed but growing twin, attached via an umbilical cord to her intestines Now, a month old, Itzamara is in perfect health, with barely any signs of damage or impact to her abdomen WHAT ARE FETUS-IN-FETU TWINS? Fetus-in-fetu twins occur as a result of late cell division, meaning the twins don't fully separate. One connects to the mother via the placenta, while the other, smaller one connects to its twin's vessels. As the bigger twin grows, the smaller twin becomes absorbed into the abdomen. The first description of 'fetus-in-fetu' came in the British Medical Journal in 1808. They are estimated to occur in one in 500,000 births. Most of the reported ones have been born in Asia, usually diagnosed after birth. Advertisement Essentially, Dr Parra-Saavedra said, Itzamara was pregnant with her sister. Now, a month later, Itzamara is in perfect health, with barely any signs of damage or impact to her abdomen. It was 'one of the strangest and most fascinating things you can see in maternal-fetal medicine,' Dr Parra-Saavedra told his local paper The Herald, after local network Los Informantes broke the story. The 33-year-old mother, Monica Vega, had been referred to Dr Parra-Saavedra, a high-risk pregnancy expert who has worked in Barcelona, after her primary obstetrician spotted what appeared to be a cyst on the baby's liver. Using a Color Doppler, which presents a multi-colored image of the blood vessels for more detail, he could see it wasn't a cyst but another tiny fetus with its own umbilical cord. Fetus-in-fetu twins occur as a result of late cell division, meaning the twins don't fully separate. One connects to the mother via the placenta, while the other, smaller one connects to its twin's vessels. As the bigger twin grows, the smaller twin becomes absorbed into the abdomen. Dr Parra-Saavedra was stunned - but nowhere near as shocked as Monica. 'It's difficult explaining to someone that they're experiencing that happens in one in a million because obviously they have never heard of it, ever seen it, and in fact most people don't know this happens,' he explained to The Herald. 'She was surprised and in disbelief, but after we showed them photos, videos, and scientific evidence they understood the phenomenon and allowed us to go ahead with the necessary steps [to handle it].' Dr Parra-Saavedra, who is close with the media after being a high-profile pundit when Zika swept northern South America in 2016, called local journalists, who filmed the birth and the following surgeries, offering an unprecedented look at each step of the way. The doctors wanted to wait as long as possible, to prevent risks associated with premature birth. But within two weeks, a scan revealed the under-formed twin had grown 20 to 30 percent - threatening Itzamara's health, so they performed a C-section (pictured) This is Itzamara's unformed twin who had arms and legs but no brain or heart A day after Itzamara's birth, the doctors performed keyhole surgery (pictured) to remove her 45-millimeter, 14-gram twin, who died when its umbilical cord was cut Monica had to be closely monitored because she was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, dangerously high blood pressure that can lead to a stroke during childbirth At first, they wanted to see if they could hold out as long as possible, to prevent risks associated with premature birth. But within two weeks, a scan revealed the under-formed twin had grown 20 to 30 percent - an astonishingly rapid surge that threatened Itzamara's health. What's more, Monica was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, dangerously high blood pressure that can lead to a stroke during childbirth. The team rallied to prepare for the Cesarean section, ready for laparoscopic surgery once Itzamara was stabilized 24 hours later. 'Once we cut the umbilical cord [of the attached twin], the baby's life ended because it was surviving off its sister,' Dr Parra-Saavedra explained. Dr Parra-Saavedra said Monica (pictured) and her husband were 'surprised and in disbelief, but after we showed them photos, videos, and scientific evidence they understood the phenomenon' A popular energy drink has been banned in Zambia after tests found it contained the active ingredient in Viagra, according to local authorities. Natural Power High Energy Drink SX was investigated after a man reported having a six-hour erection, sweating and abnormal heartbeat after consuming it. Officials in the African nation found some samples of the drink had been spiked with sildenafil and recalled all cans that were on sale. They warned that consuming the drink 'poses a threat' to the public. Sildenafil has been linked to loss of hearing, vision problems and skin cancer. Natural Power High Energy Drink SX was investigated and banned by local authorities after it was found to contain Viagra, a statement said The ban followed a complaint from the countrys medicine regulator, Zambia Medicine Regulatory Authority, in December suggesting the drink was contaminated with sildenafil citrate. Sildenafil is the active ingredient in Viagra, which can be bought over the counter in the UK but always needs a prescription in Zambia. The Ndola City Council collected various samples which were forwarded to the Food and Drugs Laboratory for tests. They said: 'Results from both Zimbabwe and South Africa correlated with those obtained from the Foods and Drugs Laboratory that indicated a positive presence of sildenafil citrate.' WHAT IS VIAGRA? Viagra was developed in 1998 by accident, after scientists discovered it had benefits for sufferers of erectile dysfunction. Manufactured by Pfizer, the magic blue pills are taken by more than one million men in Britain each year, figures suggest. Most users are in their early to mid 50s, but younger people are starting to take the drugs more often, the pharmaceutical previously said. Until 2013, only the US drug giant had permission to make the pills - costing on average 21.27 for a pack of four. But since its patent expired, rivals have made generic versions containing the same active ingredient, priced at around 1.45 for the same amount of capsules. Celebrities such as Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine, and Hollywood actors Ben Affleck and Ashton Kutcher have previously admitted using Viagra. Advertisement The levels of sildenafil citrate found in the samples ranged from 68.5 mg - 71.3 mg per 250ml of the drink - it is sold in 500ml servings. Men using Viagra tablets sold over the counter are recommended to take one tablet containing 50 mg of sildenafil. The statement said: 'However, the raw material samples tested negative therefore confirming the alleged adulteration. 'The Ndola City Council has also suspended the production of Natural Power SX Energy Drink until remedial measures are put in place to the satisfaction of all the mentioned regulatory authorities.' The manufacturer, Revin Zambia Ltd, could not immediately be reached for comment on the ban. The company also export the drink, characterized by it's muscley man on the front, to other African countries such as Uganda and Malawi. Natural Power Energy Drink SX is very popular among Zambian people, sold mostly in supermarkets and bars. Sildenafil, used to treat erectile dysfunction in men, 'should only be taken upon recommendation by a medical doctor', the council said. 'The team of medical experts from the stated relevant authorities have highlighted many adverse side effects if not being administered with medical prescription, thus the drink Natural Power SX possess a threat to members of the public.' Sildenafil has been linked to loss of hearing, vision problems and skin cancer. As many as one in ten people, side effects include dizzines, skin flushes and blurred eyesight. Conjoined two-year-old twin girls have finally been separated by surgeons in a 15-hour operation. Ysabelle and Ysadora Freitas, from Ceara, Brazil, were the first pair of craniopagus conjoined twins to be born in the country. This rare phenomenon meant the girls had separate brains - despite being joined at the head. But they shared blood flow through complex vessels. The mother, Debora, struggled to raise them with little help for 18 months, hoping that one day the girls would be able to lead normal lives. Ysabelle and Ysadora Freitas, from Ceara, Brazil, were the first pair of craniopagus-type conjoined twins to be born in the country Mother Debora Freitas, had struggled to raise them with little help for 18 months before surgeons came together to operate. Pictured with Dr Maristela Bergamo after separation Medics across the globe came together to operate in pioneering surgery on four separate occasions, the last in November 2018. Mrs Freitas and Diego were able to hold their girls separately for the first time after the procedure, describing the experience as 'magic'. Mr and Mrs Freitas, who said the twins are still thriving, were ecstatic when they found out they were having twin girls. However, the scan showed something was abnormal with their babies. Mrs Freitas said: 'When I had the ultrasound he [the consultant] said "Yes, it's two girls but there's a malformation. I'm not sure if they have a face or not maybe it's the stomach because it's very small. They could be conjoined".' This was later confirmed and in her 41st week of pregnancy, Mrs Freitas gave birth to her girls by caesarean section. Each baby weighed more than 7.7lbs (3.5kg) and were perfectly healthy, despite sharing a head. Mrs Freitas said: 'We spent three months in the hospital then we went home. We hoped they could have surgery. 'I learned how to feed them. I learned how to cope alone with them.' The family were then introduced to a neurosurgeon, Professor Helio Machado, who temporarily moved them to his hospital Ribeirao Preto's Medical School in Sao Paulo. He examined a series of scans that revealed the complex network of blood vessels that bridged the join between the twins' heads. Dr James Goodrich developed a new approach to surgery, where he divided the head into four quadrants, to be performed in four different surgeries (before the surgery) Before the last surgery, the girls had skin expanders placed under the scalps to create extra skin, which would be used to cover both their heads (before the surgery) Mrs Freitas hoped that one day the girls could lead separate lives (pictured before the surgery) The scans also showed that the girls had separate brains. Professor Machado said: 'The rarity of this condition makes the medical procedures extremely complex. So we organised a group of people to help us with the treatment of these children.' A member of that group was American neurosurgeon, Dr James Goodrich, who had successfully separated nine sets of craniopagus-type conjoined twins before. He had developed a new approach to surgery, where he divided the head into four quadrants, to be performed in four different surgeries. The first operation, when the twins were 18 months old, was led by Brazilian neurosurgeon Dr Ricardo Oliveira, and cut off and re-routed sections of the twins' shared blood supply. In the second and third operations, surgeons successfully separated part of Ysabelle and Ysadora's heads where their brains were almost touching. To everyone's surprise, the girls recovered from each operation quickly and without any complications. In preparation for the fourth surgery, skin expanders were placed under the girls' scalps to create extra skin, which would be used to cover both their heads once they were separated. Mr and Mrs Freitas said holding their girls separately was 'magical' (pictured after the surgery) Mrs Freitas said before the operation: 'Just imagining picking up my daughters separately makes me so emotional. 'It's going to be such a wonderful thing that I can't even explain what I'm feeling.' The final operation was expected to take 14 hours in total the first part to finally separate them, and the second to reconstruct the twins' heads. Mr Freitas said: 'They told us not to worry about time. And that the important thing is that everything will be okay.' HOW RARE ARE CRANIOPAGUS CONJOINED TWINS? Craniopagus conjoined twins are babies who are connected at the top of the cranium. This condition occurs in about ten to 20 babies in every million of births in the United States. An estimated two to six percent of conjoined twins are attached at the top of the head, making it the rarest form. Overall, conjoined twins are more likely to be female. With craniopagus twins, they are always genetically identical and share the same sex. Few craniopagus twins survive the birth because of how they are attached. About 40 percent are stillborn and an additional 33 percent die after birth, normally due to organ failure or abnormalities. But 25 percent have been known to survive and even have the option to be separated depending on where they are attached at the skull. Advances in brain imaging and neurosurgical techniques have made these separation surgeries more possible. Advertisement And after an excruciating eight hours and 40 minutes, Ysabelle and Ysadora were separated. Mrs Freitas said: 'They were born again. Second birth. First by me, second by the doctors. I am so happy, I'm going to jump and my heart is going to explode.' Dr Oliveira said: 'We all worked together as a team on the girls and we had great expectations. 'When we saw that they were separated it was like magic. Suddenly we have two separated children' After a total of 15 hours on the operating table, the parents were finally able to see their daughters as two separate people. Mrs Freitas said: 'It has been a battle we've needed a lot of patience. Just to be able to hold our babies feels joyous.' Mr Freitas added: 'It's a lovely moment holding the girls in our arms.' Although it is not known how long it'll take for Ysabelle and Ysadora to be fully healed and rehabilitated, the girls are showing positive signs of a full recovery. They are working on strengthening their leg muscles, to learn to walk properly with the help of paediatrician Dr Maristela Bergamo and her team. Dr Begamo said: 'I believe that they'll need physical motor and neurological rehabilitation for quite some time, maybe until they're five years old. 'From there, my prediction is that they will have a normal life. They will develop normally and can be whatever they want.' Body Bizarre is on Saturdays at 10pm on TLC UK. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed a bill banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected into law on Thursday. So-called 'heartbeat bills' are among the most restrictive abortion measures being considered in US states. They could make abortions illegal as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, when a fetal heartbeat can, in some cases, first be detected. Similar bills were passed by the Georgia and Tennessee Houses of Representatives earlier this month, and may well become law later this year. A Planned Parenthood supporter wore an abortion rights button on her hat during a rally on the steps of the Capitol in Jackson, Mississippi on Tuesday ahead of the governor's signing the state's heartbeat bill into law Thursday (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File) Abortion opponents are emboldened by new conservatives on the Supreme Court and are seeking cases to challenge the court's 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, and Mississippi is among a number or other states seeking tighter abortion restrictions. As Georgia and Tennessee consider similar laws, Kentucky has passed one banning abortion after the detection of a heartbeat. Its law was immediately challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union when Republican Governor Matt Bevin signed it on March 14, and a federal judge temporarily blocked it. A federal judge on Wednesday also blocked another Kentucky law that would ban abortion for women seeking to end their pregnancies because of the gender, race or disability of the fetus. In 2018, another federal judge struck down a previous Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, saying it is unconstitutional. The law that Bryant signed Thursday says a physician who performs an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected could face revocation of his or her Mississippi medical license. It also says abortions could be allowed after a fetal heartbeat is found if a pregnancy endangers a woman's life or one of her major bodily functions. Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed a 'heartbeat bill' into law Thursday (left, AP, file). In January, Senator Joe Fillingane answered questions during a debate over the law as images of fetuses scrolled across monitors in the Mississippi Senate chamber (Sarah Warnock/The Clarion-Ledger via AP, File) The House and Senate both rejected efforts to allow exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest. The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights called the measure 'cruel and clearly unconstitutional' and said it would sue Mississippi to try to block the law from taking effect on July 1. After a bill signing ceremony at the state Capitol, Bryant told reporters that he's not worried about lawsuits. 'They don't have to sue us. It's up to them,' Bryant said. 'If they do not believe in the sanctity of life, these that are in organizations like Planned Parenthood, we will have to fight that fight. But it is worth it.' 'Lawmakers didn't get the message,' Hillary Schneller, staff attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement Thursday. 'They are determined to rob Mississippians of the right to abortion, and they are doing it at the expense of women's health and taxpayer money. This ban - just like the 15-week ban the governor signed a year ago - is cruel and clearly unconstitutional.' ____ Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus . Shocking photos show painful blisters that crept up a woman's legs, which left doctors baffled by what caused them. Aminah Jagne, 28, was in agony and unable to walk because of the lesions, which cropped up days before she went on a holiday. She had initially been given antibiotics by her doctor, but while holidaying in Egypt, her legs felt like they were on fire as the ulcers grew. On her return to the UK, Ms Jagne, who lives in Pontypridd, Wales, was rushed to hospital where she stayed for three weeks. Doctors struggled to work out if the cause was an insect bite or Ms Jagne's previously diagnosed lupus. The autoimmune disease can cause inflammation to the joints, skin and in severe cases the organs in raging flare-ups. It took five months of bandaging for Ms Jagne's skin to heal, and the ordeal has left her shocked at the unpredictability of her disease. Aminah Jagne, 28, from Pontypridd, Wales, had a skin reaction so severe she was in agonising pain and unable to walk after a suspected insect bite Ms Jagne had initially been given antibiotics by her doctor, but while on holiday in Egypt, her legs felt like they were on fire as ulcers grew The skin took five months to heal after three weeks in hospital She said: 'The blisters turned to ulcers and the pain reached a point where I had to be wheeled to the toilet. 'Every time I stood up, my legs felt like they were on fire and it would take some time for the burning to stop after I lay back down. 'I've never been religious, but I found myself praying during that hospital stay. The experience made me realise that lupus is unpredictable. 'I may be absolutely fine for months and then it may cause a massive reaction in a way that I've never seen before.' Ms Jagne was diagnosed with lupus in 2011 after she noticed throbbing pain and stiffness in her wrists, hands and feet. She said: 'I'd be stiff and achy in the mornings as if I'd been doing strenuous exercise.' Lupus is a long-term auto-immune condition, for which there is no cure, whereby the immune system attacks itself. An estimated 240,000 Americans and 15,000 people in England and Wales are diagnosed with lupus, making it relatively uncommon. Ms Jagne's legs first reacted a few days after she was bitten by an insect. But they became ulcerated (pictured) while on a week holiday 'I was seeing nurses every other day to have my wounds cleaned and bandages changed' Ms Jagne said Ms Jagne was in her first year of university when she realised something must be seriously wrong - she stood to get off a bus but realised she couldn't walk due to being in so much pain. She said: 'My friend helped me off the bus and we then had to call other housemates to carry me home. It was then I realised that something was really wrong.' After Ms Jagne's diagnosis, she was forced to leave university and move back in with her parents. She said: 'I had to withdraw from university and go and stay with my parents who were living in South Africa at the time. I couldn't handle all the demands of my life with studying and working part-time. 'Really it was a relief to finally have an answer and to be able to stop fighting through it every day and pretending I could keep up with everything.' Ms Jagne got into fitness thinking that by keeping fit she would be able to control the effect it had on her life. In March 2018, while training for a bodybuilding competition, she was bitten by an insect, causing a severe reaction a few days later. Her GP prescribed antibiotics just before she jetted off to a scuba diving holiday to Egypt. Ms Jagne, pictured on a holiday, was on a boat in Egypt when her legs became excruciatingly painful. She was unable to get medical attention for a week Ms Jagne had to quit university due to the severity of her lupus flare ups When she ran out of prescriptions from her GP while on holiday, Ms Jagne said her condition went downhill quickly Ms Jagne said her healing was slow due to lupus. Pictured, her legs between bandage changes While staying on a boat on holiday, Ms Jagne's blisters started creeping up her legs, turning into ulcers. She was in excruciating pain but tried to put on a brave face, having taken all her strong painkillers and no access to medical help. Ms Jagne said: 'My legs started to blister a week after getting bitten, and then ulcerate a week after that. I had no idea what was going on and have never been so scared. 'I had flown to Egypt for a holiday and was staying on a boat when the blisters were at their worst. 'I couldn't access a doctor and after the oral antibiotics I was given by the GP back home stopped working, things went downhill fast. 'I ran out of stronger painkillers and was taking paracetamol and ibuprofen together after being advised by a former nurse who was on board. 'I was in so much pain but couldn't get this across to anyone and tried to put a brave face on.' After landing at Heathrow a week later, Ms Jagne went to hospital at home and was admitted straight away. Ms Jagne was admitted in to hospital, pictured, straight away on her return to the UK After three weeks, Ms Jagne could go home, but her recovery would be a long time She said: 'I was so relieved when they said they would admit me but didn't realise things would get worse. 'Because of my lupus, the healing was slow. I was seeing nurses every other day to have my wounds cleaned and bandages changed. 'Each time was excruciating and no-one was able to give me an idea of how long it would take for them to heal. 'When I was in hospital, I met other patients with lupus who were affected in completely different ways to me.' Doctors are unsure whether Ms Jagne was even bitten, or the blisters and ulcers were caused by her lupus. She said: 'I've accepted that I have to live with lupus, rather than fight against it.' Due to joint pain and fatigue, Ms Jagne takes medication every day and medical steroids when her condition flares. Ms Jagne uses fitness to feel more confident about her lupus, which was diagnosed in 2011 Doctors are still unsure if it was an insect bite or lupus that caused Ms Jagne's reaction. Pictured, her legs healed 'I suppose I'd like to get across that lupus shouldn't be underestimated. Just because your symptoms are quiet now, doesn't mean they always will be,' Ms Jagne said. She finds a positive mentality through fitness, working a routine around her flare-ups. 'I don't know if it [fitness] has helped limit the physical impact of lupus, but it's definitely helped with the mental impact,' she said. 'Rather than see myself as fragile I view myself as strong and I know that my body is capable of lots of amazing things - even with lupus, which is amazing. 'Fitness has given me confidence. When I'm flaring and have had to take a day off work or am feeling weak and incapable, I can tell myself, "Yes, but you're also capable of picking up 100KG". 'I had to slow down and be kind to myself. It took time and therapy for me to accept that I can be vulnerable at times.' A woman has told of how her nose was pushed two inches into her skull after she crashed her car into a tree during a seizure. Stefani Manzoni, a 27-year-old former postal worker from Pennsylvania, was driving home after a long shift when she began feeling nauseous. She felt delirious and confused about where she was and completely blacked out, while her mother was on the phone through Bluetooth. Mrs Manzoni then suffered a seizure which allegedly affected her thinking, causing her to drive up an embankment, which triggered her airbag. And she claims it made her perform a 90 degree turn across the highway, where she crashed into a tree and her face smashed into the steering wheel. Mrs Manzoni's eye sockets and nose were shattered by the accident, which also broke her arm in two places and fractured her skull. She was told that if her nose was pushed just a millimetre further into her skull, she could have died. Surgeons managed to repair her nose in a gruelling 11-hour procedure, though she has more reconstruction operations scheduled. Stefani Manzoni, a 27-year-old former postal worker from Pennsylvania, was driving home after a long shift when she began feeling nauseous (pictured right, with her wife Gia) She was told that if her nose was pushed just a millimetre further into her skull, she could have died (pictured during hospital after the accident) Doctors have yet to find what caused the seizure which triggered her accident in August 2018, and it is unknown what type of seizure she had, or if she had epilepsy. The Mayo Clinic states seizures can cause temporary confusion, as well as uncontrollable jerking movements and loss of consciousness. Despite the accident being caused by an unexplained seizure, Mrs Manzoni has been charged with 'reckless driving' and making an illegal turn. She said: 'I was driving home from work, talking to my mum on Bluetooth. I don't remember anything after leaving the parking lot at work. 'My mum told me that I kept complaining of feeling nauseous and sounding delirious. 'I remember pulling over to the side of the highway to throw up, where I unbuckled my seat belt, to just lean outside of the car. 'I remember looking at a puddle and thinking for some reason that I was back home where I grew up and felt very confused on why I was there.' She added: 'The rest is a complete black out. My mum, still on Bluetooth, told me I started driving home again and she begged me to pull over. Mrs Manzoni's eye sockets and nose were shattered by the accident, which also broke her arm in two places and fractured her skull (pictured in hospital) Mrs Manzoni suffered a seizure which allegedly affected her thinking, causing her to drive up an embankment, which triggered her airbag. She claims it made her perform a 90 degree turn across the highway, where she crashed into a tree (pictured, the damage to her car) WHAT IS A SEIZURE? A seizure is a sudden, uncontrolled electrical disturbance in the brain. It can last from a matter of seconds to a couple of minutes. It can cause changes in your behavior, movements or feelings, and in levels of consciousness. Seizures can happen after a stroke, a closed head injury, an infection such as meningitis or another illness. Many times the cause is unknown. Symptoms include: Temporary confusion A staring spell Uncontrollable jerking movements of the arms and legs Loss of consciousness or awareness Cognitive or emotional symptoms, such as fear, anxiety or deja vu Source: Mayo Clinic Advertisement 'But I wasn't understanding her and [I was] talking irrationally, at which point a few minutes later she heard static and the phone went dead.' Her car's airbag was already deflated when she went up the embankment, meaning her face went straight into the steering wheel when she hit the tree. A male bystander told her to sit down, though she was delirious and allegedly told him that she had been punched in the face. Another witness came to the scene to help her, who Mrs Manzoni has described as her 'guardian angel' for keeping her calm. When she arrived in hospital, medics began cutting her out of her clothes and she started to panic as it dawned on her that she couldn't move. Mrs Manzoni, whose wife and parents were alongside her in hospital, had no idea about the damage to her face, until she looked at herself in a mirror. Doctors sent her home for a few days and when she got back to the hospital, she was told she needed facial reconstruction surgery. Her doctor informed her that during the accident, her nose was pushed two inches into her skull, and they had to pull off the skin on her face to return it to normal. Mrs Manzoni said: 'Terrified isn't even the word because they told me my nose was pushed two inches into my skull. 'They were supposed to put three plates in my nose to help me breathe and to fix the look of it. Doctors have yet to find what caused the seizure which triggered her accident in August 2018, and it is unknown what type of seizure she had, or if she had epilepsy (pictured in hospital) Despite the accident being caused by an unexplained seizure, Mrs Manzoni has been charged with 'reckless driving' and making an illegal turn (pictured before the crash with her wife Gia) When she arrived in hospital, medics began cutting her out of her clothes and she started to panic as it dawned on her that she couldn't move (pictured after the accident with Gia) Mrs Manzoni, whose wife and parents were alongside her in hospital, had no idea about the damage to her face, until she looked at herself in a mirror (pictured on her wedding day) 'The surgery was worse than I ever could imagine; it was originally meant to be a four-hour surgery but took eleven hours.' Mrs Manzoni said she woke up yelling for help and unable to see clearly from the swelling. She has had the reconstruction surgery and a metal plate put into her broken arm and has more operations scheduled. Mrs Manzoni, who married her wife Gia two months before the crash, said: 'The accident was and is a huge adjustment. 'I'm a very hard worker and always need to keep busy so having to sit rest and heal is very difficult for me.' 'I've been suffering from extreme depression and anxiety seeing a different face in the mirror now. It doesn't get any easier as time goes on. Hopefully in the future I will get more of "my face" back after more surgeries. 'Between a new face that isn't mine, the wondering "how could this have happened to me", and the long healing process that feels never ending, it's been very hard.' She added: 'My wife has been incredible. I would be lost without her. She's been by my side through every step and always making sure I'm okay and have what I need. 'Sometimes you have to find the positive in the hard times. I had a hard time coping with everything and kept asking 'why me' before I realised how lucky I really am. 'I got a second chance at life when I should've died. The "why me" will only take you to a darker place. It takes a lot of work, but it does get better.' She has had the reconstruction surgery and a metal plate put into her broken arm and has more operations scheduled (pictured with Gia before the accident) Mrs Manzoni, who married her wife Gia two months before the crash, said: 'The accident was and is a huge adjustment (pictured before the accident) She said: 'I've been suffering from extreme depression and anxiety seeing a different face in the mirror now. It doesn't get any easier as time goes on' Four mosques in the central English city of Birmingham have been attacked overnight, with a man wielding with a sledgehammer. Counter-terrorism officers are investigating attacks on the mosques in four different areas in the north of the city. (File Photo) London: Four mosques in the central English city of Birmingham have been attacked overnight, with a man wielding a sledgehammer seen smashing windows at two places of worship, the police said on Thursday. Counter-terrorism officers are investigating attacks on the mosques in four different areas in the north of the city, West Midlands Police said in a statement. The force added the incidents "are being treated as linked". "At the moment we don't know the motive for last night's attacks," said Chief Constable Dave Thompson in a statement. "What I can say is that the force and the counter terrorism unit are working side-by-side to find whoever is responsible." Officers were first alerted in the early hours of Thursday to reports of a man smashing windows with a sledgehammer at one of the places of worship, police said. Following reports of a similar attack at another mosque in a nearby neighbourhood, officers launched targeted patrols and discovered "further damage" at two other sites. "Forensic officers are working to identify evidence, and CCTV is being examined," the West Midlands force added. British national police chiefs last week announced officers were providing "reassurance patrols" around mosques in the immediate aftermath of Friday's deadly gun rampage in New Zealand. Anti-racism groups have warned Islamophobia is on the rise in Britain and spurring a spike in far-right activity in the country. A report released last month by the Hope Not Hate charity cited a poll which found more than a third of Britons see Islam as "generally a threat to the British way of life". In another recent incident, Mohammed Mahmoud -- an imam who won praise for shielding the perpetrator of a 2017 deadly terror attack against a north London mosque -- reported he was spat at and abused this week. Mahmoud said he was targeted Monday while returning home from a solidarity event for the New Zealand massacre with other religious leaders, as well as interior minister Sajid Javid and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. A nine-month-old boy died because of brain damage suffered when he was born in the breech position. Henry Payne-Smith died in May 2018 after living for months with cerebral palsy triggered by his traumatic birth. His mother Sophie, 22, has since heard in an inquest that the hospital where Henry was born wasn't equipped to deal with breech births. She is now warning other parents-to-be about the dangers of their babies being wrongly position and telling them to 'push doctors' for the right care. Henry Payne-Smith, born in Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, died when he was just nine months old because of brain damage which had been caused when he was born in the breech position 'The nine months I had with him were the happiest of my life despite all the hurdles and challenges Henry faced,' said Miss Payne, from Hythe, Kent. Around three per cent of babies are in the breech position when they are in position to be born bottom-first but it is not necessarily dangerous. However, it carries a higher risk of the baby getting stuck in the birth canal or their oxygen supply being cut off because of pressure on the umbilical cord. Henry's labour took so long he was left with severe brain damage. His head didn't leave his mother's womb until more than 20 minutes after his rear end did. Midwives at Clacton Maternity Unit Miss Payne was living in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, at the time hadn't realised Henry was in the breech position until five minutes after Miss Payne's waters broke, an inquest heard. A coroner at Chelmsford Coroner's Court heard the unit was not equipped to cope with breech births and ultrasound scans had been kept separate from Miss Payne's medical records. Henry's bottom came out first at 5.12am and the rest of his body was not delivered until 5.35am, the court was told. An ambulance was called to transfer him to Colchester General Hospital, which was nearly 40 minutes away from the midwifery led unit. WHAT IS A BREECH BIRTH? A breech birth is when a baby is naturally born bottom-first or feet-first instead of head-first. It affects around three to four per cent of pregnancies in the UK. Babies are often in different positions throughout the course of a pregnancy but will usually end up head-down by the time they are due. Birthing the baby backwards is not necessarily dangerous and mothers may be able to do so in certain circumstances. However, it carries a higher risk of the baby getting stuck in the birth canal or their oxygen supply being cut off because of pressure on the umbilical cord. Medics might want to try and rotate the baby an external cephalic version which can be done by hand. Or, if a vaginal birth isn't safe, the mother may be advised to have a caesarean section. Options are usually discussed if the baby is still in the breech position by the 36th week of pregnancy. Source: NHS Advertisement He needed to be resuscitated after he was born and, in the 23 minutes between his bottom and head being birthed, his brain was starved of oxygen. Henry would spend three weeks in hospital before his mother was allowed to take him home in August 2017. As a result of the traumatic birth, Henry was left with cerebral palsy a condition which causes muscle weakness, learning disabilities, and problems with vision and swallowing. After living longer than doctors had expected, he died as a result of the brain damage last year. Miss Payne said: 'I would not wish the pain I continue to live with over Henry's death on anyone. 'The first time I got to see Henry properly was in hospital when all I could see at the end of the bed were wires. 'I just broke down in tears. I didn't want to see him like that. 'The doctors thought he would not survive and that we should say our goodbyes but Henry managed to defy the doctors. 'He was such an adorable and brave little boy who was a real fighter to the end.' Miss Payne is now speaking out to warn parents about the dangers of breech births. She added: 'While I know nothing will bring him back I was determined to get answers for my little boy so hopefully other families do not have to experience the pain that I have. Sophie Payne, 22, said the nine months she had with her son were the 'happiest of my life' despite his devastating health problems. A coroner heard the maternity unit where he was born was not equipped to deal with breech births and midwives were not all aware 'By speaking out I just hope that parents are fully aware of the potential dangers of their baby being in the breech position and, if they feel it is needed, ask questions and push doctors for answers so they can decide what is best for them.' Angela Tillet, medical director at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Clacton Hospital, said: 'We wish to offer our deepest sympathies and condolences to Henry's family at this difficult time. 'The coroner heard evidence from the midwives involved and also from an independent medical expert, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr Malcolm Griffiths, who said that the circumstances were tragic but unavoidable. 'As with any tragic event where a life is lost we will review the coroner's findings in detail and always strive to improve the quality of the care we provide to our patients and their families.' A 21-year-old National Guard recruit has lost his leg as he fights for his life against a flesh-eating bacteria he contracted during basic training. Dez Del Barba was six weeks into his stint at Fort Benning in Georgia when he began complaining of a sore throat and leg pain at the beginning of February. An initial test for strep came back negative, but a 24-hour culture revealed he did have a strep infection, reported WRBL. Several days passed before army staff took him to the hospital, giving him ibuproften throat lozenges instead. By that time, physicians told Del Barba he had necrotizing fasciitis, a fast-moving infection that destroys tissue under the skin - and that it had spread through both of his legs. Since then he's undergone 14 surgeries at three different hospitals - including one to amputate his left leg - and doctors are now working to save the right leg. Dez Del Barba, 21, of Stockton, California, was in basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia when he began complaining of leg pain and throat pain on February 7. Pictured: Del Barba, right, after his leg was amputated Two immediate strep tests came back negative so Del Barba was just given ibuprofen and throat lozenges. Meanwhile, a 24-hour throat culture was sent to a lab, which later came back positive. Pictured: Del Barba during basic training, left, and in California, right Del Barba was attending Sonoma State University, when he took a leave of absence during his last semester to attend basic training, according to a GoFundMe page. He was then planning to complete his degree and attend the Officer Candidate School of the Army. Del Barba's parents, Mark and Kamini, told WRBL that when their son left his hometown of Stockton, Californi,a on January 7, he was healthy. But just one month later, on February 7, Del Barba's throat felt sore, according to his medical records. Two immediate strep tests came back negative so he was just given ibuprofen and throat lozenges. Meanwhile, a 24-hour throat culture was sent to a lab. The next day, when Del Barba began complaining of leg pain, he was seen by a physical therapist. 'Dez told us the drill sergeant continuously deterred him from asking for medical treatment for his ongoing symptoms,' Mark told WRBL. 'He was told he could be recycled and have to repeat the course.' Later that Friday, the 24-hour throat culture results came back positive for group A streptococcus. A handwritten note was put in Del Barba's medical records that read: 'Positive for culture. Call AM Monday.' Del Barba wasn't told about the positive results and, when his condition worsened, he was finally taken to the hospital on February 11, where he was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis. Pictured, left and right: Del Barba in physical therapy Necrotizing fasciitis is a rare bacterial infection that quickly kills surrounding tissue, and group A strep infections are believed to be the most common cause. Pictured: Del Barba in the hospital On February 10, Del Barba was taken to the hospital after he complained of more leg pain and throat pain. But he was released the same day and given more ibuprofen and throat lozenges. 'Nobody looked at the lab results nor notified him of his positive culture results,' Mark told WRBL. 'All they had to do was give him a shot of penicillin.' When Del Barba's condition worsened the next day, he was taken to Piedmont Columbus Regional, a medical center in Columbus, Georgia, where he was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis. Necrotizing fasciitis is a rare bacterial infection that quickly kills surrounding tissue. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), public health experts believe group A Streptococcus are the most common cause of the infection. It usually enters the body through the tiniest cut or scrape in the skin. The CDC says between 700 and 1,200 cases occur in the US each year. Early symptoms include a red or swollen area of the skin and severe pain. Later symptoms can include dizziness, nausea, blisters and change in skin color. The health agency says that a prompt diagnosis and rapid treatment is key to stopping the infection in its tracks. This includes antibiotics or surgery when medication is unable to reach the tissue that has already been infected. The CDC says about 25 to 30 percent of necrotizing fasciitis cases every year result in death. Since then, Del Barba has undergone 14 surgeries, including one to amputate his left leg, and doctors are now working to save his right leg. Pictured; Del Barba in the hospital He is now being treated at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, where he will undergo skin grafts, reconstruction surgery, physical therapy and wound care. Pictured: Del Barba in the hospital On February 21, Fort Benning said in a statement that four basic trainees had developed strep infections. Pictured: Del Barba, right, before the incident Del Barba's first surgery at Piedmont removed muscles and tissues from his left leg in an attempt to save it. He had another surgery the following day and his parents were told he was in grave condition. 'Doctors told us that day he had a 50-50 chance to live,' Mark told WRBL. On February 13, two days after arriving at Piedmont, he was airlifted to University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital Burn Center. The next day, Del Barba's left leg was amputated right above his knee. Del Barba was flown to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, where he will undergo skin grafts, reconstruction surgery, physical therapy and wound care. Between the three hospitals, Del Barba has undergone 14 surgeries and tissue has been removed from throughout the body to curb the disease's spread. There was fear at one point that Del Barba's right leg would also be amputated, but it seem that surgeons were able to save it. Mark says a series of errors during his son's care at Fort Benning nearly cost him his life and that's he grateful for the doctors that have since treated his son. 'We are so grateful for the excellent care my son received from Piedmont ICU,' he told WBRL. 'The medical team saved my son's life. And the continued care he received from UAB was absolutely amazing. The care now at BAMC is nothing but superb.' His parents have started a GoFundMe page for donations to various charities including Wounded Warrior Project and Fisher House. So far, more than $10,400 has been raised out of a $50,000 goal. On February 21, Fort Benning told the news station that four basic trainees had developed strep infections. However, post spokesman Ben Garrett said the cases should be considered a cluster and not an epidemic. An Iraqi baby has been born without a nose, meaning they can only suck in air through their mouth. The unidentified child lives in Fallujah, around 40miles (64km) west of Baghdad - the capital of the war-torn nation. No further details have been released about the baby, other than they have three siblings who are healthy. The unidentified child lives in Fallujah, around 40miles (64km) west of Baghdad - the capital of the war-torn nation It is unclear why the baby has been born without a nose, though a rare condition called arhinia may be to blame. The condition is believed to be caused by faulty genes. Fewer than 100 cases have ever been recorded. Images of the newborn were published by Fallujah Birth Defects, which claims the rate of birth defects has spiked after the Iraq war. The organisation, created nine years ago, claims it is the first time it has ever come across a baby without a nose. No external party has yet confirmed the picture is real. It is unclear why the baby has been born without a nose, though a rare condition called arhinia may be to blame WHAT IS ARHINIA? Arhinia is the absence of the nose and parts of the olfactory (the sense of smell) system. One type is congenital arhinia (where the person is born with it), another is acquired arhinia (loss of the nose to cancer, infection, or accident). It can be total (complete absence of the external nose and all/or parts of the olfactory (the sense of smell) system, the website Widesmiles reports. Or, it can be partial (only parts of the external nose and olfactory system is missing). Fewer than 100 cases have ever been recorded. Advertisement The baby was also born with microcephaly, a condition in which the brain does not develop properly and results in a smaller than normal head. The infant's family had reportedly refused a tracheotomy, which is where a tube is inserted into the windpipe. They came from a rural area outside of Fallujah. The city itself was the scene for a bloody battle in 2004 between US forces and insurgents. Fallujah was heavily bombed, leaving many of its buildings destroyed and much of its 300,000-strong population displaced. FBD, which has nearly 5,000 Twitter followers, claims the two US invasions of Iraq are to blame for the birth defects. The group's social media imagery features a claim that around 15 per cent of all babies born in the city have birth defects. Doctors in the ancient city have claimed to have delivered conjoined twins and babies born with extra fingers and toes or missing limbs. The rate of defects, according to unconfirmed reports, is 14 times higher than that seen in Hiroshima in Japan. FBD also alleges the two US wars in Iraq have left behind 'hundreds of tonnes of depleted uranium munitions and other toxic wastes'. A report by Dutch peace group Pax in 2014 found US forces fired depleted uranium weapons at civilian areas in Iraq. Al Jazeera reported in 2012 that there are higher than usual levels of radioactivity in Fallujah and other cities in Iraq. It sent a journalist to visit the city, who claimed he was told local doctors believe the birth defects are a 'direct result' of weapons used by US forces. Though, no concrete evidence of a link between the two has even been found. A 14-year-old Irish girl who has been battling cancer for 12 years is flying to the US for treatment. Robyn Smyth, from Dublin, was first diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma, a cancer that forms in nerve tissue, at three years old in September 2007. After going through a series of aggressive treatments, she was declared to be in remission in 2009. However, she's relapsed four times since and doctors in Ireland say they've done all they can to help her, reported The Irish Sun. Now her parents say they're bringing her to Michigan, where she was treated three years ago, in the hopes that medical team can help Robyn enter remission again. Robyn Smyth, 14 (pictured), from Dublin, Ireland, was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma, a cancer that forms in nerve tissue, at three years old in September 2007 After going through a series of aggressive treatments, Robyn (left and right) was declared to be in remission in 2009. She was cancer-free until July 2013, when doctors found a tumor in her jaw Neuroblastoma is a cancer that develops in immature nerve cells throughout the body. It most commonly begins in the adrenal glands, which are right on top of the kidneys, but can also develop in other places such as the chest, abdomen or spine. Symptoms include abdominal pain, chest pain, dark circles around the eyes, fever and weight loss. The cancer is most frequently diagnosed in children who are five years old or younger. Treatment depends on the tumor's location and size, but can include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy and stem cell transplants. According to Extra, Robyn was given a 30 percent chance of survival when she was diagnosed with the cancer as a toddler. However, she was declared to be in remission in 2009 and remained cancer-free until July 2013, when doctors found a tumor in her jaw. Following chemotherapy and radiation therapy, she was once again declared to be in remission until 2015. Robyn was participating in a neuroblastoma vaccine trial that could help prevent relapse at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Michigan and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Pictured: Robyn, left, with her younger sister Millie at Yankee Stadium in New York In January 2019, Robyn (left and right) relapsed for the fourth time. The family is now traveling to Michigan to undergo scans and begin oral chemotherapy The cancer had reentered her jaw and, this time, it was also in her spine and pelvis. It was around then that Robyn's chances of survival fell to five percent and doctors told her family to stop treatment, reported Extra. Her family refused and Robyn entered remission again, but has since relapsed twice more - in January 2017 and in January of this year. Robyn had been participating in a trial for a neuroblastoma vaccine that could help prevent relapse at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Michigan and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Her parents says the treatment, which began in August 2018, appeared to be working until recently. 'We are devastated as the hope was to keep it away. We are talking to neuroblastoma experts globally and there are still several options in America and Germany that can get her back in remission and keep her there,' her mother, Bernadette Dornan, wrote in an Instagram post. The family is now traveling to Michigan to undergo scans and begin oral chemotherapy that will hopefully kill the cancer cells in her body. Her family has started a GoFundMe page to help cover the cost of medical bills and travel. So far, more than 129,900 ($147,400) has been raised out of a 300,000 ($340,500) goal. Almost a third of NHS hospitals in England hit maximum capacity at some point this winter, figures show. A total of 31 per cent NHS trusts, 41 of 134, reported occupancy rates of 100 per cent on at least one day, meaning there wasn't a single spare bed. Three-quarters of trusts had an average bed occupancy rates of 92 per cent or more - at which point officials say performance of staff drops. The peak of the winter crisis was revealed to be a week in February, when hospitals across the country were so overloaded that only five in 100 beds were free. A total of 31 per cent NHS trusts, 41 of 134, reported occupancy rates of 100 per cent on at least one day, meaning there wasn't a single spare bed Three-quarters of trusts had an average bed occupancy rates of 92 per cent or more - at which point officials say performance of staff drops Dr Nick Scriven, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said hospitals are managing capacity levels 'on shoestring budgets and with depleting workforces'. He said: 'For those working at the sharp end of the NHS, the figures are no shock. 'Our hospitals have been on a knife-edge for more than 18 months now, with staff run ragged trying to keep them safe. 'We have seen a year-on-year reduction in the beds available to care for acutely unwell people in hospitals, despite an ever-increasing need from an ageing population.' General and emergency wards were on average 93.5 per cent full between December 2018 and March, according to NHS England data. NHS Improvement suggests A&E performance begins to deteriorate when bed occupancy exceeds 92 per cent. While the British Medical Association (BMA) recommends 85 per cent capacity as a safe upper limit. THE NHS TRUSTS THAT SPENT THE MOST NIGHTS AT 100% CAPACITY THIS WINTER Croydon Health Services NHS Trust: 54 London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust: 43 Weston Area Health NHS Trust: 42 The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust: 27 Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust: 24 James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: 13 The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: 12 Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust: 10 Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: 9 Whittington Health NHS Trust: 7 Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust: 7 Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust: 7 The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust: 7 Advertisement The worst hit trusts were Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, who reached capacity on 54 nights, London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust on 43 and Weston Area Health NHS Trust on 42. The busiest day was on December 3, when 11 of the 134 trusts were completely full overnight. Escalation beds which are temporarily set up to cope with demand were put up an average of 3,162 times a day during the winter. Healthcare workers union Unison said cuts to social care budgets have led to a growing problem of patients staying for long periods. This has a ripple affect as hospitals struggle to accommodate urgent admissions. On a typical day, more than 40,000 patients had been in hospital for a week or more, and an average of 15,300 had been in hospital for at least three weeks. Sara Gorton, Unison head of health, said: 'Although this winter's weather has been relatively mild, there has been no let-up in the pressures facing patients and staff, laying bare serious underlying problems. 'Meanwhile, ambulance crews are tied up with handover delays rather than being where they and the public want them to be responding to 999 calls and saving lives.' More than 1.2 million people were taken by ambulances to acute hospital trusts over the winter months, according to NHS England data. Delays left 146,000 patients waiting 30 minutes or more before they could be transferred to the care of A&E staff, and of those nearly 30,000 waited for more than an hour before they were admitted. WHAT TRUSTS REACHED CAPACITY AT LEAST ONCE LAST WINTER? Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: 5 Bolton NHS Foundation Trust: 3 Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: 1 East Cheshire NHS Trust: 4 Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust: 2 Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: 2 Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust: 7 Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust: 1 The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust: 7 Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: 6 Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust: 4 Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust: 1 Isle of Wight NHS Trust: 6 Medway NHS Foundation Trust: 1 Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust: 1 Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: 1 Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: 1 North Bristol NHS Trust: 1 Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust: 1 Weston Area Health NHS Trust: 42 Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: 1 Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: 9 Croydon Health Services NHS Trust: 54 King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: 3 London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust: 43 North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust: 2 St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: 1 The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: 12 Whittington Health NHS Trust: 7 Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: 3 Bedford Hospital NHS Trust: 1 George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust: 1 James Paget University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: 13 Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: 3 Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust South: 7 Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust: 2 The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust: 27 Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust: 24 West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust: 1 Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust: 10 Wye Valley NHS Trust: 5 Advertisement An NHS spokesman said: 'NHS staff across the country have been working incredibly hard throughout winter to provide the best care for patients. 'Despite significant increases in demand, almost a quarter of a million more people have been seen and treated within four hours in A&E this winter compared to last year. 'Ambulance services are responding to life-threatening calls faster, with fewer ambulance handover delays at A&E, and significantly more people have got the support they needed to avoid a long stay in hospital. 'Meanwhile tens of thousands more people are benefiting from timely tests or treatment, including for cancer and mental health.' Part of the reason for a rising bed shortage during winter could be a sudden spike in beds being closed because of in-hospital outbreaks of norovirus, diarrhoea or vomiting. On average, 708 beds were closed each day last week across the country for this reason a 34 per cent rise from 530 per day the week before. US health officials are doubling down on warnings to slimmers to think twice before traveling to Tijuana, Mexico, for weight loss surgery. The rate of American citizens returning home with an antibiotic-resistant form of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an aggressive bacteria, has more than doubled - from 11 in early January to 25 as of this week. More than half of the cases have been diagnosed in people who had gastric sleeve surgery - meant to shrink the stomach by about 80 percent - at Grand View Hospital, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC already put out a travel warning about this very issue in January, but this week, the agency is issuing reminders as doctors in San Diego, just across the border from Tijuana, say they are struggling to deal with an influx of patients. The rate of US citizens returning home with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an aggressive flesh-eating bacteria, has more than doubled - from 11 in early January to 25 as of this week. One patient was Tamika Capone, 40 (left and right), who had bariatric surgery in October 2018 More than half of the cases have been diagnosed in people who had gastric sleeve surgery - meant to shrink the stomach by about 80 percent - at Grand View Hospital, where Capone (pictured) had her surgery The San Diego Country Health and Human Services Agency told local doctors this week that four patients had gone to area hospitals with P. aeruginosa. Dr Eric McDonald, medical director for San Diego County's epidemiology and immunizations services, told DailyMail.com that one person was admitted with the infection in October 2018, one in January 2019 and two in February. As of this week, three of the four patients are still hospitalized, he said. The bacterium usually develops in healthcare settings and spreads due to poor hygiene, such as people not washing their hands or medical equipment that is not properly cleaned The CDC says that around 51,500 P. aeruginosa infections associated with healthcare occurs in the US each year. About 13 percent of the infections are resistant to several drugs and are responsible for approximately 400 deaths every year. Of the 25 travelers to Tijuana who contracted the infection, most of them had weight loss-surgery between August 2018 and February 2019, and 18 of them had it performed at Grand View Hospital, reported The San Diego Union-Tribune. One of them was 40-year-old Tamika Capone, from Jonesboro, Arkansas, who had gone for bariatric surgery. Her husband's insurance wouldn't cover the $17,500 operation at St Bernard's Medical Center, so she decided to instead pay $4,000 to have it done at Grand View. Her incision began leaking while she was waiting at San Diego International Airport for her flight home and, after she returned home, she became increasingly ill. Weeks later, doctors learned that the hole in her stomach was infected with P. aeruginosa. Capone's wound has improved. She told DailyMail.com that it was about the size of a key fob and it's now about the size of two pinheads. 'I've been packing it with gauze, I use Dial soap and I scrub it really good,' she said. 'As soon as I'm out of the shower, I pack it up and bandage it.' However, she says because the infection can spread easily, she lives in constant fear that any bump or cut on her skin could harbor P. aeruginosa Capone (left and right) has a hole in her stomach that needs to be cleaned every day and has racked up about $40,000 in medical bills. She said an associate of the doctor who performed her surgery offered to fly her down to Mexico and treat her, but she refused An attorney for the company that owns Grand View said there have been no cases of pseudomonas detected at the hospital. Pictured: CDC illustration of P. aeruginosa bacteria Capone has since racked up about $40,000 in medical bills and says she may be close to having to file to bankruptcy. 'I wish I could have gotten a loan and done [the surgery] here because then I wouldn't be as much in debt as I am now.' Last week, the CDC updated its travel alert to Level 2 from 'practice usual precautions' to 'practice enhanced precautions'. The agency recommended that US citizens avoid having weight-loss surgery at Grand View 'until the Mexican government can confirm that the drug-resistant form of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria is no longer present at that facility.' An attorney for the company that owns Grand View told the San Diego Union Tribune there have been no cases of pseudomonas detected at the hospital. Yet, according to the CDC, 18 of the 25 cases were from people who had surgeries done at Grand View - most by the same physician: Dr Mario Almanza. Dr Almanza's website declares him to be the 'leading bariatric weight-loss surgeon in the world'. Last year, a $100 million class-action lawsuit was filed against him by former patients who said they suffered life-threatening complications following weight-loss surgery, reported the White Mountain Independent. Capone says an associate of Dr Almanza's contacted her and said they were willing to fly her down to Mexico to treat her for the infection. 'I said: "You think Im going to go back to Mexico and let him treat me?"' she said. 'I would be a fool to fly back there and let him treat me.' Scientists have invented a toilet seat which could detect signs of heart failure before symptoms appear. The gadget fits over the top of a normal seat and contains sensors which can measure the user's heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen levels through their legs. Its inventors claim the product could save millions of lives and make it easier to monitor at-risk patients with accurate, real-time information. Currently costing 1,500 each, the toilet seats aren't cheap but they could save hospitals money and improve people's health, the researchers said. The toilet seat, invented by scientists in New York, fits on top of a normal toilet seat and incorporates sensors to pick up on the user's heart rate and blood pressure The inventors said the gadget offers an easy way to monitor patients at risk of heart failure when they're at home, potentially saving lives by spotting symptoms early on Inventors at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York have designed and produced the seat, which they hope will cut hospital admission rates. Around a quarter of heart failure patients are readmitted to hospital within 30 days of discharge, the researchers said, while 45 per cent are taken back within six weeks. By monitoring the patients at home and not requiring them to do anything other than what comes naturally medics may be able to keep a closer eye on them. This also reduces the likelihood of mistakes which would otherwise happen if people were doing their own monitoring using other devices. And the data from the seat, which is WiFi enabled, can be transmitted automatically to doctors if necessary, so they can decide whether someone needs treatment. 'This system has the potential to address many of the challenges with in-home monitoring,' the inventors wrote in a report in the journal JMIR mHealth. They said the seat could overcome problems with convincing people to take reliable measurements themselves, because it would do it for them without any extra effort. WHAT IS HEART FAILURE? Heart failure means that the heart is unable to pump blood around the body properly. It usually occurs because the heart has become too weak or stiff. Heart failure doesn't mean your heart has stopped working it just needs some support to help it work better. It can occur at any age, but is most common in older people. Heart failure is a long-term condition that tends to get gradually worse over time. It can't usually be cured, but the symptoms can often be controlled for many years. The main symptoms of heart failure are: breathlessness after activity or at rest feeling tired most of the time and finding exercise exhausting swollen ankles and legs Some people also experience other symptoms, such as a persistent cough, a fast heart rate, and dizziness. Symptoms can develop quickly (acute heart failure) or gradually over weeks or months (chronic heart failure). See your GP if you experience persistent or gradually worsening symptoms of heart failure. Source: NHS Advertisement They added: 'Such a device may enable new approaches and capabilities in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease, including but not limited to those with heart failure.' 'If successful,' the report said, 'this strategy has the potential to reduce the burden of heart failure and cardiovascular disease on the health care industry as well as improve the quality of life for patients.' The developers said the seat would make it easier to be proactive about monitoring patients' care, by monitoring them before symptoms appear, instead of being reactive, and only being able to help when someone is already ill. And the legs could be a good location for this monitoring to take place because the aorta the body's largest artery runs into the thighs. Heart failure is a serious condition in which the heart cannot pump blood properly around the body, often because it is too weak or stiff. The toilet seat could look for signs of this, its inventors say, by noticing when the oxygen volume in blood is low, when blood pressure is high, and when smaller amounts of blood are being pumped with each action. Heart failure isn't curable but it is treatable. If left untreated it can cause breathlessness, tiredness and dizziness. The condition increases the risk of kidney and liver damage or further damage to the heart. A trial of the toilet seats, made by the firm Heart Health Intelligence, will be conducted on 150 discharged heart patients in the US. They are battery-powered, waterproof, wireless and do not require any setting up or programming by the patient. UPDATE: The security rating for the new Porsche Macan has been upgrraded from a 'poor' rating to superior following assessment of the specification of a motion sensor function on the key fob by an insurance research association. Richard Billyeald, chief technical officer at Thatcham Research, said: 'We are pleased to be able to rate the Porsche Macan as having superior security following clarification from Porsche Cars GB. 'Vehicle manufacturers are beginning to offer solutions and fixes to Keyless Entry/Start vulnerabilities, with Audi, Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes and Porsche really taking a lead. We expect others to follow suit quickly.' A new vehicle security rating scheme launched in the UK has highlighted the relay-theft risk motorists currently face, even if they buy the latest cars on the market. Five of the 11 models reviewed by security experts Thatcham Research were labelled 'poor' due to the lack of built-in measures to prevent gangs from hacking the keyless systems and stealing them remotely. Suzuki's 15,500 Jimny SUV was given the lowest rating available - 'unacceptable' - for its lack of security options. However, in light of the recent spate of gang-operated relay thefts, the scheme has been slammed by the car industry body for 'signposting vulnerable models' to criminals and confusing the issue of relay thefts for consumers. 'Unacceptable' - Suzuki's 15,500 Jimny SUV was given the lowest rating available by Thatcham Research for its lack of security options. See which other 5 models were given low scores for being vulnerable to relay thefts Thatcham's rating scale for vehicles is based on their vulnerability to thieves and has five category scores for security: 'superior'; 'good'; 'basic'; 'poor'; 'unacceptable'. The first round of tests reviewed 11 new models motorists can buy in dealer showrooms today and found that most are easy targets for organised car gangs. Five received a 'poor' score because they were susceptible to keyless thefts. These included family cars like the Ford Mondeo, Hyundai Nexo, Kia ProCeed, Lexus UX and the British-built Toyota Corolla Hybrid. The 46,000 Porsche Macan SUV originally received a 'poor' rating but has since been upgraded to 'superior' as per the update above. All were found that have plenty of security features built into them, but none had preventive systems that could stop organised criminals from remotely mimicking the keyless entry and start systems leaving them vulnerable to theft. First 11 cars rates for security by Thatcham Research Audi e-tron: Superior Ford Mondeo: Poor Hyundai Nexo: Poor Jaguar XE: Superior Kia ProCeed: Poor Land Rover Evoque: Superior Lexus UX: Poor Mercedes B-Class: Superior Porsche Macan: Superior** Suzuki Jimny*: Unacceptable Toyota Corolla Hybrid: Poor NB: Keyless entry/start system assessed within rating whether available as an option or fitted as standard *Suzuki Jimny does not have a keyless entry/start system as standard or an option **Porsche Macan originally rated 'poor' but later upgraded to 'superior' Relay car thefts - when criminal gangs use gadgets to infiltrate keyless systems built into vehicles - have been on the rise in recent year Both the British-made Toyota Corolla Hybrid (left) and Hyundai Nexo were given 'poor' ratings by Thatcham Research Family cars including the Kia ProCeed (left) and Ford Mondeo (right) were also criticised for a lack of security These five models were all rated higher than Suzuki's compact offroader, though. It was given the lowest possible score due to it performing 'badly across all criteria' and 'missing some fundamental security features that consumers might rightly expect should be fitted', according to Thatcham's chief technical officer Richard Billyeald. 'We've seen too many examples of cars being stolen in seconds from driveways,' he added. 'Most of the cars rated 'poor' would have achieved at least a 'good' rating had their keyless entry/start systems not been susceptible to the relay attack. 'Security has come a long way since vehicle crime peaked in the early 1990s. But the layers of security added over the years count for nothing when they can be circumvented instantly by criminals using digital devices.' 'Most of the cars rated 'poor' would have achieved at least a 'good' rating had their keyless entry/start systems not been susceptible to the relay attack', said Richard Billyeald from Thatcham Some models did score well in the rating scale. Jaguar's XE saloon was given the top recommendation of 'superior' The new Range Rover Evoque was also listed as being a 'superior' model when it comes to vehicle security There were some models that the security experts did praise. The remaining four cars tested earned 'superior' ratings, issued to the Audi E-tron, Jaguar XE, Range Rover Evoque and Mercedes B-Class. How Thatcham tests security Thatcham Research technicians conduct a series of tests, ranging from timed 'brute-force' attacks on locks and access points, to tests that identify digital vulnerabilities, namely whether the keyless entry/start system is susceptible to the Relay Attack or the On-Board Diagnostic (OBD) Port allows blank keys to be coded. Cars that fail the keyless entry/start and OBD tests move down a category per failure. The rating applies whether the keyless entry/start system is optional or standard-fit. The categories are: Superior, Good, Basic, Poor and Unacceptable. They were given the highest recommendation by Thatcham because they all feature more secure wireless technology for their keyless entry and keyless start systems or offer key fobs that go to sleep when idle, meaning they can't be hacked. While the rating scale is designed to give consumers a clearer understanding of which new cars are least and most susceptible to the keyless theft crime wave, it was blasted by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, which said it had 'serious concerns' about the scheme's blanket approach to security. 'It doesn't compare like with like, failing to differentiate vehicles with keyless and traditional entry systems in a combined rating and failing to distinguish between different model grades and specifications,' said SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes. 'It confuses rather than simplifies a very complex issue and will not help consumers, rather offering a signpost to thieves and increasing the risk of targeted criminal activity.' Thatcham, which has independently been testing vehicle security since the 1990s, recommends owners of models vulnerable to relay thefts to check whether there are solutions available with the vehicle key fob. This includes finding out if it can be turned off overnight or go to sleep when not being used. Faraday shielding pouches designed to block fob signals were also recommended. Speaking about the new rating, minister for policing and the fire service, Nick Hurd, added: 'I am determined to take swift and decisive action against vehicle theft. Mike Hawes from the SMMT blasted the new rating scheme, saying it offered 'a signpost to thieves and increasing the risk of targeted criminal activity' 'In January I chaired the first meeting of the Vehicle Theft Taskforce, which brought together members of industry and the police to significantly strengthen our response to this crime. 'In addition to improving vehicle security standards, the Taskforce will work together to ensure that robust measures are in place to prevent criminals exploiting the salvage process, and to stop access to devices that may be used to commit this theft.' 'Having an updated understanding of vehicle security helps the public better understand the theft risk of new cars. 'I welcome the finding in Thatcham Research's work that some manufacturers are addressing vulnerabilities that exist, and would encourage others to see what more they could do. Together we can reduce the risks to the public that their vehicles will be stolen.' Donald Trump would not discuss the potential for a military conflict with Iran on Friday. The U.S. president said 'that's not appropriate to be talking about' when a reporter asked him about it during a joint news conference with the German chancellor. 'But, I can tell you this, they will not be doing nuclear weapons; that, I can tell you. OK?' Trump replied. 'They're not going to be doing nuclear weapons, you can bank on it.' Donald Trump warned Iran on Tuesday that it will 'have big problems' if it restarts its nuclear program with or without an agreement providing sanctions relief in exchange for its cooperation Trump must decide by May 12 whether he wants to yank the U.S. out of a nuclear pact that the Obama administration made with Tehran in 2015. His new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said today at NATO's headquarters in Brussels that Trump 'is unlikely to stay in that deal past May' unless there are substantial changes to it. It was clear this week that those changes wouldn't happen that quickly, although French leader Emmanuel Macron said he would start working on a companion deal that addresses the problems Trump has with the existing pact. Trump said Tuesday that Iran will 'have big problems' if it restarts its nuclear program with or without an agreement providing sanctions relief in exchange for its cooperation. 'If Iran threatens us in any way, they will pay a price like few countries have ever paid,' he said at a news conference with Macron. Trump signaled then that he could stay in the existing agreement that covers Tehran's nuclear activities in the face of a promise that Europe will work toward a new deal that addresses his concerns about Syria and ballistic missiles. Macron said Wednesday that it was his sense, however, that Trump would leave the deal in order to put pressure on Tehran to broker a new one, much like the hardline approach he's taken to dealing with North Korea. Trump's threats followed Tehran's claims that it could take 'surprising actions' and the U.S. would suffer 'serious consequences' if the U.S. president fulfills his promise to leave the pact. The president railed against Barack Obama's administration for signing onto the accord in the first place as he held court with the Oval Office with Macron. Trump said the U.S. was 'insane' to send Iran 'barrels of cash' as part of the deal he claimed 'should have never, ever been made.' Macron talked him down by committing to pursuing a new pact after hours of meetings at the White House with Trump that he said ended in a 'common reading' on what is happening in Syria, where the U.S. and Iran both have boots on the ground. At the White House on Friday, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor said the agreement 'is anything but perfect.' Merkel said the region is of 'prime importance' to Europe, however, because 'Syria and Iran are countries that are right on our doorstep' The U.S. joined France and the U.K. on launching airstrikes against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's government after his latest chemical weapons attack. The measure brought Trump and Macron even closer, with the leaders speaking to each other on the phone regularly in the weeks since. 'In the past, sometimes France argued that it was time to take action against chemical weapons, and it was -- France was not followed by its allies, including the United States at the time. It is not what happened this time. We decided together what was possible and what was not,' Macron said at a joint news conference. As for the Iran nuclear deal, Macon said, 'I do not know what President Trump will decide...and it's his responsibility.' The French president said he would work with regional powers, including Turkey and the Syria-aligned Russia, for now, to forge a new agreement. 'I believe we can both combine our common views and our differences, because we are not in a vacuum. I always said we should not tear apart the JCPOA and have nothing else.' Trump told him during the media availability that 'nobody knows what I'm going to do,' although he said to his foreign counterpart, 'you have a pretty good idea.' The U.S. president said his actions will depend on whether it will be possible to do a new deal with 'solid foundations' unlike the crumbling agreement his predecessor left him. 'It's a bad deal. It's a bad structure. It's falling down. Should have never, ever been made,' he said. 'I blame Congress. I blame a lot of people for it. But it should have never been made, and we're going to see what happens.' At the White House on Friday, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor said the agreement 'is anything but perfect.' 'It will not solve all the problems with Iran. It is one piece of the mosaic, one building block, if you like, on which we can build up this structure; and that when the United Kingdom, France and Germany work together with the American colleagues, this was brought about, and then we will now see what sort of decisions are made by American partners,' she said. Merkel said the region is of 'prime importance' to Europe because 'it's not a thousand kilometers away, as it is the case, for example, between the USA and -- and Syria. 'But Syria and Iran are countries that are right on our doorstep,' she said. 'So that is of prime importance for us, and we will continue to be in very close talks on this.' The president railed against Barack Obama 's administration for signing onto the pact as he held court with French President Emmanuel Macron in the Oval Office. Macron said afterward that he got the sense that Trump would leave the pact In his Oval Office meeting with Trump, Macron said the U.S. and France must work together to bring stability to the region. 'The Iran deal is an important issue but we have to take a far broader picture which is security in the overall region,' he said. 'What we want to do is to contain Iran an its presence in the region.' Trump chimed in, having already delivered his own remarks to press to begin their meeting, and tore into Iran. 'It just seems that no matter where you go, especially in the Middle East, Iran is behind it, wherever theres trouble, Yemen, Syria, no matter where you have it, Iran is behind it,' Trump said. 'And now, unfortunately Russia is getting more and more involved.' Trump said the U.S. was not 'going to allow certain things to happen that are happening,' pointing specifically to Iran's ballistic missile testing and its terror financing in Yemen. 'The Iran deal is a disaster. Theyre testing missiles. Whats that all about?' he griped. 'What kind of a deal is it when you dont talk about Yemen and you dont talk about all the other problems that we have with respect to Iran?' The president lit into former Secretary of State John Kerry. Trump said that 'despite all of the money that we gave them,' Kerry 'didn't want to discuss it because it was too complicated.' Obama's administration transferred $1.7 billion to Iran, the first $400 million of which was sent over in pallets of cash, after the deal was brokered. The money resolved a dispute between the U.S. and Iran over a failed 1970s arms deal. Iran paid the U.S. for the weapons but the U.S. cancelled the deal and froze the funds after an uprising. 'That's actual cash, barrels of cash. It's insane. It's ridiculous,' Trump claimed Tuesday in the Oval Office. Trump appeared to be referring to the fact that the first installment of the payment delivered on wooden pallets in foreign currencies order to comply with sanctions the U.S. has on Iran's banking system. He said later on Tuesday that he also heard that the money was delivered in boxes, as well as barrels. 'In barrels, I hear, it was taken out, and in boxes it was taken out -- cash -- they should have made a deal that covered Yemen, that covered Syria, that covered other parts of the Middle East where Iraq is -- where Iran is involved. They didn't do that,' he said. The U.S. is party to the pact with France, Great Britain, Germany, China and Russia. The secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said Tuesday that the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran would readily take 'surprising actions' if the U.S. reneges. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the U.S. could expect 'severe consequences' if Trump moves ahead with plans to pull out. 'I am telling those in the White House that if they do not live up to their commitments,' Rouhani proclaimed in a speech, 'the Iranian government will firmly react.' Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that the U.S. could expect 'severe consequences' if Trump moves ahead with plans to pull out of the nuclear agreement Iran loomed large over both Merkel's and Macron's visits to the White House. The French leader was the first to bring it up on Tuesday, mentioning it on the South Lawn in remarks that the U.S. president limited to the United States' long-standing friendship with the nation's oldest ally. He did most of the talking in a joint news conference on the subject, too, after saying in an opening statement that Trump's views on the topic are well known. President Trump has said he would be willing to stay in the deal if Europe is willing to toughen it up by addressing the existing sunset clauses and Tehran's illicit ballistic missile tests. He added Syria to the list of demands on Tuesday. He told Macron in front of reporters that he was open to 'doing something' Iran so long as it is 'done strongly.' As the agreement stands, Trump said, 'Its insane. Its ridiculous. It should never have been made.' A reporter began to inform Trump that Iran says it will resume its nuclear activities if he yanks the U.S. out of it. 'It won't be so easy for them to restart. Theyre not going to be restarting anything. If they restart it, theyre going to have big problems, bigger than they ever had before. And you can mark it down,' Trump interrupted. 'If they restart their nuclear program, they will have bigger problems than they ever had before.' As they entered into an expanded meeting with their aides after a brief session alone, Trump was visibly calmer. 'We're fairly close to understanding each other,' he said. 'Our one on one went very well.' He told reporters during the news conference that Iran's presence in Syria was now on the table as part of a new deal, which Macron then agreed to. Trump also said that U.S. troops would be 'coming home relatively soon' from Syria. 'I would love to get out. I'd love to bring our incredible warriors back home. They've done a great job,' he stated. 'With that being said, Emmanuel and myself have discussed the fact that we don't want to give Iran open season to the Mediterranean, especially since we really control it.' The Iran nuclear deal and Trump's desire to recall U.S. troops from Syria were sticking points heading into the negotiations with France on Tuesday. Macron emphasized in a Sunday interview that aired on Fox that the agreement is not 'perfect' but there is no 'Plan B.' 'I dont have any Plan B for nuclear against Iran,' he said. 'So thats a question we will discuss, but thats why I just want to say, on nuclear -- lets present this framework because its better than the sort of North Korean type of situation. Macron said, 'I'm not satisfied with the situation with Iran. I want to fight against ballistic missiles, I want to contain their influence in the region.' White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders rebuffed Macron on Monday, telling American reporters, 'We certainly think that there should be a better deal, one that actually is positive, that works. And we don't really typically look to the leadership in Iran to determine what our foreign policy is.' The French president seemed ready to negotiate by the time he got into the room with Trump, making what was interpreted as an about-face on his 'Plan B' comment. He said at the news conference that the 'Plan B' remark in the interview was about climate change, not Iran, and so his position had been mischaracterized. 'Now, regarding Iran, I've always been coherent,' he insisted. Macron said he would move forward with small group discussions on an improved deal that includes the four pillars that he and Trump discussed. Britain, France and Germany reaffirmed their backing for the Iran nuclear deal, despite Donald Trump's threat to walk away. Downing Street said Theresa May spoke by telephone with President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel after their visits last week to Washington. The two leaders returned home apparently having made little headway in their efforts to persuade the U.S. President not to abandon the agreement. Theresa May, along with her counterparts in France and Germany, are committed to the Iran nuclear deal and are trying to get U.S. President Donald Trump stay in it Mr Trump must decide next month whether to re-certify it the deal, or to dump it and reinstate sanctions on the Middle Eastern nation. He has long made clear his opposition to the deal, signed under former president Barack Obama, arguing it is time-limited and does not cover Iran's ballistic missile programme. Number 10 said the three European leaders discussed the importance of the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. German Chancellor Angela Merkel returned home apparently having made little headway in their efforts to persuade the U.S. President not to abandon the agreement U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently called for the 'terrible deal' to be 'fixed' with a new agreement, and French President Emmanuel Macron worked on him while in Washington They all agreed it was the best way of neutralising the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. 'They agreed that there were important elements that the deal does not cover, but which we need to address - including ballistic missiles, what happens when the deal expires, and Iran's destabilising regional activity,' it said . 'Acknowledging the importance of retaining the JCPoA, they committed to continue working closely together and with the U.S. on how to tackle the range of challenges that Iran poses - including those issues that a new deal might cover.' The provincial government has asked the members of the Hindu Rajput community in Peshawar whether they want a temple or a community hall. Ravi Kumar, a member of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, made the announcement while addressing a Holi celebration. (File Photo) Peshawar: Pakistan's provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will construct a temple or a community hall for the Hindu community of Peshawar, a minority lawmaker of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party announced on Thursday. Ravi Kumar, a member of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, made the announcement while addressing a Holi celebration event organised by the local Hindu community here. The provincial government has asked the members of the Hindu Rajput community in Peshawar to decide whether they want a temple or a community hall. Congratulating the Hindu community on Holi, he said that the formal Holi celebration at the government level would be organised on March 30. A company in the United Arab Emirates has fired and deported an employee after he allegedly celebrated the mass killing of Muslims in New Zealand last week. Security firm Transguard said the worker had made 'inflammatory comments' on his personal Facebook account after the attack. At least 50 people were killed and dozens wounded by a lone gunman at two mosques in Christchurch on Friday in what is the country's worst modern mass shooting. A company in the United Arab Emirates has fired and deported an employee after he allegedly celebrated the mass killing of Muslims in New Zealand last week. Pictured: Mourners leave flowers at a makeshift memorial to those killed in Christchurch on Friday Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist who was living in New Zealand, was charged with murder on Saturday. 'Over the weekend, a Transguard employee made inflammatory comments on his personal Facebook account celebrating the deplorable mosque attack in Christchurch, New Zealand,' security company Transguard said in a statement on Tuesday. 'We have a zero-tolerance policy for the inappropriate use of social media, and as a result this individual was immediately terminated and turned over to the authorities to face justice,' Managing Director Greg Ward said. The company said the employee was deported by the UAE government. Brenton Tarrant (pictured) has been charged with one initial count of murder over the mass shootings that killed 50 people in the southern city of Christchurch and faces life in prison Transguard, an Emirates Group brand, did not disclose the alleged comments. The name, nationality, and position of the employee were also not disclosed. UAE government officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. An Emirates spokeswoman said the company had nothing to add to the Transguard statement. The UAE has condemned the attack and expressed its condolences to the victims' families and to New Zealand. (Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Michael Perry) Former Top Gear presenter James May has demolished two homes so that he can build a new luxury 3m house that will have room for his incredible motorbike and car collection. The 56-year-old TV star has had to move out of his properties while developers completely rebuild them in a project that will take more than a year to complete. Nicknamed Captain Slow for his driving style, he has relocated his beloved motors to a garage around the corner from the site in a conservation area in Hammersmith, West London. Former Top Gear presenter James May has demolished two homes so that he can build a new luxury 3m house that will have room for his incredible motorbike and car collection Grand Tours host May, 56, has had to move out of his properties while developers completely rebuild them in a project that will take more than a year to complete Plans shown in red outlines the area of May's property that has been demolished. The work is expected to take around a year before it is finished May has demolished the house he bought for 325,000 in 2000 and combine it with the semi-derelict property next door, for which he paid 310,000 five years ago May (pictured), who's worth an estimated 10m, lived up to his Mr Nice Guy image and avoided a bruising battle with his neighbours by constantly including them in the planning process May has demolished the house he bought for 325,000 in 2000 and combine it with the semi-derelict property next door, for which he paid 310,000 five years ago, to store his 40 motorbikes plus a Rolls-Royce, limited edition Ferrari 458 Speciale, Porsche 911 and Fiat Panda for running around town. The new home will be six per cent larger than May's existing property, with an extra floor on the two side wings. But the star, who has made millions from presenting Amazon's The Grand Tour with Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, lived up to his Mr Nice Guy image and avoided a bruising battle with his neighbours by constantly including them in the planning process. One said: 'I couldn't wish for a better neighbour than James. He is a delight and has involved us all at every step of the way. His next-door-neighbour Cathy Lewis agreed: 'James has been really good and given us lots of information. This will be really good for our street, will be a big improvement on what was there before and the designs are sympathetic to the area. 'We know it will take a long time with a lot of disruption, but so far, the builders have been great. The new house will look fabulous.' Plans approved by the council for May's new London home show it will be six per cent larger than the star's existing property existing property, with an extra floor on the two side wings May had planning permission approved in 2016 and has put in a series of amendments since then to ensure residents' views on the development of his home were taken into account As work began on the property, one neighbour told MailOnline: 'I couldn't wish for a better neighbour than James. He is a delight and has involved us all at every step of the way' May, who is currently in Japan filming a solo travelogue for Amazon called 'Our Man InJapan' wanted to ensure the property fits in with a street where some homes were built in the 1840s May had planning permission approved in 2016 and has put in a series of amendments since then to ensure residents' views were taken into account and to ensure the new property will fit in with a street where some homes were built in the 1840s. He is currently in Japan filming a solo travelogue for Amazon called 'Our Man InJapan'. May shares the Hammersmith house with his partner, dance critic Sarah Frater. In 2013, May said he planned to embark on the improvements in order to appease his her. 'The permanent and fragrant presence of Woman demands something a bit better,' he said. He also admitted he would save himself money as there is no VAT on new-builds. May's approved plans to the 1950s-home are to change use of one property from commercial use to residential, demolition of the properties to rebuild into one two-storey building with a garage on the ground floor. May shares the Hammersmith house with his partner, dance critic Sarah Frater. In 2013, May said he planned to embark on the improvements in order to appease his her. 'The permanent and fragrant presence of Woman demands something a bit better,' he said. The majority of the buildings have now been demolished after work began in October, with builders laying foundations for the rebuild to begin. He held a consultation meeting with his neighbours in 2015 as he was finalizing the plans in order to appease any concerns they had around being overlooked as the new property has an extra floor on two wings and is six per cent larger all round. One of the builders said, as a concrete lorry squeezed into the narrow street: 'This is a massive job. It will take more than a year to finish, but we are making good progress. We are trying hard to be nice to the neighbours and James is a delight to work for.' A mother and baby were trapped on the second floor of a burning building set alight by 'yellow vest' protesters in the middle of Paris. Protesters - known as the gilets jaunes - targeted the banking agency Banque Tarneaud, which was directly beneath the trapped woman's home, according to local sources. A shocking video showing her screaming for help as the flames licked up the building near the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Saturday emerged yesterday. Panicked bystanders could be seen pleading with the petrified woman to escape the second floor apartment with her nine-month-old baby. Armed police and fire fighters desperately tried to rescue her. The mother-of-four is understood to have been saved and taken to safety by the emergency services. Anti-government protesters targeted the banking agency Banque Tarneaud, which was directly beneath the trapped woman's home The mother-of-four could be seen screaming for help from the second floor apartment in Paris near the Champs-Elysees The building was targeted during the latest anti-government riot to have hit Paris. Angered by tax rises, riotous protesters known as 'yellow vests' have clashed with police and vandalised buildings across Paris for months. Armed police have had running battles with the yellow vests, who first began violent demonstrations four months ago. The video, which shows a scene of total destruction, was filmed by a journalist at Paris' Line Press network. French soldiers will be deployed on Saturday to help guard public buildings, allowing police to focus on dealing with 'yellow vest' demonstrators in case of renewed violence in Paris and other cities, the government said yesterday. President Emmanuel Macron announced the military will secure government buildings and other sites to allow police forces to focus on maintaining public order. About 7,000 soldiers, most armed with automatic weapons, are already deployed across the country in what the military calls Operation Sentinel, which was created to protect sensitive sites following deadly attacks in 2015. In a shocking video panicked bystanders could be seen pleading with the petrified woman to escape with her nine-month-old baby Armed police and fire fighters desperately tried to rescue the trapped woman who was believed to have been saved by the emergency services Armed police have had running battles with the yellow vests in Paris, who first began violent demonstrations four months ago The French government announced on Monday new security measures and a ban on yellow vest protests along the Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris and in two other cities following riots on Saturday that left luxury stores ransacked and charred from arson fires. It was announced separately that Prime Minister Edouard Philippe had decided to put off a planned overseas trip to French Guiana at the weekend to be on hand at home. 'Given the special situation concerning public order, the premier decided to postpone his visit,' his office said. Last Saturday, more than 5,000 police officers failed to stop hundreds of violent protesters from rampaging along the Champs-Elysees, burning and looting over 100 businesses in disturbances that lasted more than seven hours. Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said earlier that the troops will be redeployed from the 'Sentinelle' anti-terror operation, which patrols streets and protects airports, train stations, places of worship and other sites. Soldiers will be deployed in French cities on Saturday to help guard public buildings after yellow vest protesters clashed with police again at the weekend Unionists holding a poster reading 'Blanquer Killed Me' referring to French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer demonstrate as part of a national day of strikes in Paris Around 7,000 soldiers, most armed with automatic weapons, were already deployed across the country to combat the second wave of resurgent protests This will allow police forces to 'concentrate on crowd control, along with maintaining law and order,' he said. After Saturday's rioting, the government sacked Paris police chief Michel Delpuech. Two other top police officials, including one of Delpuech's aides, will also be removed from their positions, government sources told AFP. The deployment of troops is intended to allow riot police to engage more aggressively with the far-left and far-right groups as well as anarchists who have been blamed for much of the violence. But some police unions have warned that maintaining law and order was not the role of a soldier. 'I'm worried about how they'll respond in case of attack,' said Philippe Capon of the Unsa-Police union. Troops were originally deployed on the streets in January 2015 after the jihadist massacre at the Charlie Hebdo magazine, and their patrols have become a regular sight in Paris and other cities. The government has also announced plans to outlaw protests along the famed Champs-Elysees and other key areas if hooligans once again infiltrate the 'yellow vest' demonstrations, which have taken place every Saturday since mid-November. A judge blocked oil and gas drilling across almost 500 square miles in Wyoming and said the U.S. government must consider climate change impacts more broadly as it leases huge swaths of public land for energy exploration. The order marks the latest in a string of court rulings over the past decade - including one last month in Montana - that have faulted the U.S. for inadequate consideration of greenhouse gas emissions when approving oil, gas and coal projects on federal land. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington appeared to go a step further than other judges in his order issued late Tuesday. Previous rulings focused on individual lease sales or permits. But Contreras said that when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management auctions public lands for oil and gas leasing, officials must consider emissions from past, present and foreseeable future oil and gas leases nationwide. Banned: Drilling rigs off of Way Highway 59 outside of Douglas, Wyo., close to the public lands where a judge has blocked oil and gas drilling and says the government must consider cumulative climate change impacts of leasing public lands across the U.S. 'Given the national, cumulative nature of climate change, considering each individual drilling project in a vacuum deprives the agency and the public of the context necessary to evaluate oil and gas drilling on federal land,' Contreras - an Obama appointee - wrote. The ruling coincides with an aggressive push by President Donald Trump's administration to open more public lands to energy development. It came in a lawsuit that challenged leases issued in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado in 2015 and 2016, during President Barack Obama's administration. Only the leases in Wyoming were immediately addressed in Contreras' ruling. It blocks federal officials from issuing drilling permits until they conduct a new environmental review looking more closely at greenhouse gas emissions. The case was brought by two advocacy groups, WildEarth Guardians and Physicians for Social Responsibility. WildEarth Guardians climate program director Jeremy Nichols predicted the ruling would have much bigger implications than a halt to drilling in some areas of Wyoming, assuming the government does what Contreras has asked. 'This is the Holy Grail ruling we've been after, especially with oil and gas,' Nichols said. 'It calls into question the legality of oil and gas leasing that's happening everywhere.' Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon criticized the ruling, saying carbon emissions shouldn't be reduced at the expense of workers who provide reliable and affordable energy. 'Bringing our country to its knees is not the way to thwart climate change. We need solutions not grandstanding,' said Gordon, a Republican. Federal officials were reviewing the court ruling to determine its implications and had no further comment, BLM spokeswoman Kristen Lenhardt said. Judicial blow: The ruling by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras comes at a time when the Trump administration is aggressively pushing for more drilling on public lands Emissions from extracting and burning fossil fuels from federal land generates the equivalent of 1.4 billion tons (1.3 billion metric tons) annually of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, according to a November report from the U.S. Geological Survey . That's equivalent to almost one-quarter of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. Companies paid more than $6.5 billion to produce oil, gas and coal from federal lands and waters in 2017, according to the most recent government figures. The money is split between the federal government and states where the extraction occurs. Kathleen Sgamma with the Western Energy Alliance, which lobbies on behalf of the oil industry, said the BLM already was analyzing emissions appropriately under rules set up during the Obama administration. Following previous court rulings over climate change, the BLM has gone back and reconsidered the effects of fossil fuels and then re-affirmed its approvals of projects. That could happen again in this case, with further studies done before drilling is allowed to proceed, said Harry Weiss, an environmental lawyer based in Philadelphia whose clients have included oil and gas companies. 'This decision should not be interpreted as a ban on leasing activities,' Weiss said. 'The court is not ruling on whether it's thumbs up or thumbs down. The court is simply grading how the administration did analyzing the issues.' Controversial Senator Fraser Anning spent more money than any member of federal parliament flying his family around Australia in 2018. It comes as a sting to many taxpayers who didn't even vote the right-wing senator into Parliament, who received only 19 votes in 2016. Senator Anning spent the most money out of all 76 Senators and 150 members, flying his family around the country last year. According to data from the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority, he claimed $34,672 for family travel expenses on 44 trips throughout the year. Far-right senator Fraser Anning (pictured with his wife) has topped the list for costing taxpayers the most money in family flight expenses in 2018 Mr Anning refused to comment on a series of questions from the Sydney Morning Herald regarding his use of taxpayer funds, which included $21,483 for 22 flights to places outside of Canberra. A spokesman for the senator said 'the interstate travel falls within parliamentary entitlement requirements and is for the benefit of his Queensland constituents.' Despite having no constituents in Victoria, Senator Anning also admitted to charging taxpayers to attend right-wing rallies in Melbourne last year. Mr Anning has recently come under intense public scrutiny for his comments after the Christchurch terror attack, blaming Muslim migration for spikes in violence. The senator has refused to apologise for the comments, despite widespread backlash from both sides of politics. During a taxpayer-funded trip last weekend, Mr Anning was 'egged' by a 17-year-old boy, nicknamed 'egg boy', protesting his remarks linking the mosque shootings to Muslim immigration. During a taxpayer-funded trip last weekend, Mr Anning was 'egged' by a 17-year-old boy, nicknamed 'egg boy', protesting his remarks linking the mosque shootings to Muslim immigration 'Egg boy,' a 17-year-old from Melbourne called Will Connolly, rose to social media stardom after egging the controversial senator during a press conference in Melbourne. Connolly was then punched by Anning and aggressively tackled to the ground and held in a tight choke-hold by his supporters, which was also later slammed online. The data, which was released on Tuesday, revealed federal politicians claimed $139 million for all categories of expenses last year. This figure showed an increase of about $10 million on travel expenses from the previous year. All MPs are entitled to bring family members on trips to Canberra or around their electorate at taxpayers' expense, although there is a cost cap. They can also have three interstate family reunion trips each year. Only Mathias Cormann and Melissa Price, both cabinet ministers from Western Australia, claimed more than $30,000 for family travel trips last year. The cost of Senator Anning's staff travel was $247,128 last year, taking his total claims for the year to $556,472. Senator Anning's total entitlement claims were over half a million dollars ($556,472) in 2018 Opposition Leader Bill Shorten claimed more than any other MP, for all categories of expenses last year, totaling $3,182,385. 'The Office of the Leader of the Opposition has more staff than other MPs, so the travel expenses are higher,' a spokeswoman claimed. 'And unlike the offices of the Prime Minister and government ministers, the office flies commercially and does not use a private VIP jet, the costs of which are not listed on the expenses reports.' The accounts also reveal Prime Minister Scott Morrison spent $2000 on luxury car travel during his highly-publicised 'bus tour' of Queensland in November. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Fraser Anning's office for comment. The Project embarrassingly made a factual error in an editorial countering Scott Morrison's claim the show was responsible for a 'disgraceful smear' on his reputation. The dispute between The Project and the Prime Minister erupted after star Waleed Aly's emotional response to the Christchurch terrorist attack included the claim that Mr Morrison told colleagues to exploit voters' fears of Muslim immigration as a political strategy in 2010. Mr Morrison slammed the claims as 'lies' and cancelled an appearance on the show. On Wednesday night, The Project host, Hamish MacDonald returned fire at the Prime Minister, saying: 'The PM says he wants the truth. Well, here are some facts.' Unfortunately, his speech almost immediately contained a factual error and The Project was forced to Tweet a correction shortly after it aired. MacDonald said claims Morrison advocated an anti-Muslim election strategy were reported in 2010, when they were actually reported in 2011. Scroll down for video The Project embarrassingly made a factual error in a speech claiming to provide 'some facts' to Scott Morrison on Wednesday night Host Waleed Aly took aim at anti-Muslim sentiment in politics in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack on Friday night, and claimed Mr Morrison (pictured) had suggested in 2011 that his party exploit Muslim immigration concerns as a political strategy Aly's accusation against Morrison was drawn from a 2011 report published by Fairfax that said Morrison - who was the Opposition's immigration spokesman at the time - had brought up the strategy at a shadow cabinet meeting but it was knocked back. On whether or not the meeting happened, MacDonald said: 'In truth, no-one but those in that room can now say for sure what was said and there does seem to be two very distinct versions. 'But we as a country know what our leaders have been saying about refugees and immigrants and Muslims for well over a decade.' MacDonald compared Mr Morrison's heated response to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. 'If anything paints a clearer picture on the state of Australian politics today it is this; after Waleed made that genuine, thoughtful, and reasoned contribution on Friday night a plea for our community to come together the Prime Minister of our country threatened to sue. 'In contrast, New Zealand's Prime Minister invited Waleed to her country to sit down for an interview. 'If you want to know why I'm here tonight and not Waleed that's why, that's where he is.' Aly's accusation against Mr Morrison was drawn from a 2011 report published in the Sydney Morning Herald that said Morrison - then only a member of parliament - had brought up the strategy at a meeting but it was knocked back Mr Morrison aimed his criticism at Aly earlier on Wednesday on ABC TV and labelled the accusation an 'appalling lie'. He pointed out he had a long history of working with the Islamic community. 'That's why I'm welcomed when I attend mosques in south-western Sydney, with warm embraces,' he said. 'Perhaps if people focused a bit more on the story they don't want to tell about my relationship with people of all faiths in this community, then perhaps they wouldn't leap to make prejudiced conclusions.' The PM also said he would not sue after his office previously called Aly's comments defamatory. Michael Daley could have blown his chance to lead Australia's biggest state after making an incredible mistake in a live TV debate ahead of Saturday's election. The New South Wales Labor leader was in with a strong chance to win this Saturday's election, with a poll last week showing the Opposition leading the Coalition 51 to 49 per cent. Mr Daley's hopes of bringing Labor back to power, after eight years in the political wilderness, suffered a significant blow after he struggled to answer simple questions about school and TAFE funding at a western Sydney People's Forum debate on Sky News. Scroll down for video New South Wales Labor leader Michael Daley (pictured) has blown his chance to lead Australia's biggest state after making an 11th hour stumble in a live TV debate During the live TV debate at Western Sydney University, he also struggled to name a dollar figure for school funding, even though Labor is vowing to match recommendations made in a landmark report by business leader David Gonski. 'I can't remember the exact figure,' Mr Daley said. 'I'll have a look at it. I just can't remember it off the top of my head.' The train wreck continued when he couldn't recall how much a Labor government would spend on TAFE vocational education. 'Ah, about, $3 billion on TAFE,' Mr Daley said. The New South Wales Labor leader was in with a strong chance to win this Saturday's election, with a poll last week showing the Opposition leading the Coalition 51 to 49 per cent Premier Gladys Berejiklian (pictured) couldn't contain her glee at the televised People's Forum, in western Sydney as her opponent struggled to answer questions on school and TAFE funding Premier Gladys Berejiklian couldn't contain her glee at the televised People's Forum, in western Sydney. 'What?,' she said. Sky News moderator David Speers was also surprised at the Labor leader's inability to say how much a would-be government led by him would spend on education. 'Hang on, hang on, hang on. Michael Daley, you're not sure whether education the centrepiece of your election you're not sure how much you're spending on schools and you're not sure how much you're spending on TAFE,' he said. Sky News moderator David Speers (pictured) was also surprised at the Labor leader's inability to say how much a would-be government led by him would spend on education Mr Daley, who could potentially be premier next week, answered: 'I'll just check that figure and get back to you.' The former corporate lawyer and Customs officer, who took over the Labor leadership in November, later confirmed his party would allocate $2.7 billion over four years to increase public school funding, and $64 million to TAFE. Mr Daley denied he had stumbled on Thursday morning as he faced a grilling from Today show host Deborah Knight. 'I didn't stumble on stadiums,' he told the Nine Network. Knight said he had performed badly in the Sky News debate. 'It was embarrassing for you last night in the leaders' debate. You stumbled on spending in the key policies of education, and TAFE,' she said. 'Whats going on? Have you run out of puff? Mr Daley (right) on Thursday morning denied he had stumbled in the TV debate with Ms Berejiklian (left) as he faced a grilling from Today show host Deborah Knight (centre) The Sky News debate debacle occurred just days after it was revealed Mr Daley had last year told a politics in pub forum (pictured) in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, that Asian immigrants were taking the jobs of young Australians 'You stumbled on education and TAFE big time.' Mr Daley tried to put some spin on his poor live TV performance. 'Yeah, both of us made a couple of blunders last night. No doubt about that, under the pressure of debate,' he said. The Sky News debate debacle occurred just days after it was revealed Mr Daley had last year told a politics in pub forum in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, that Asian immigrants were taking the jobs of young Australians. 'Our young children will flee and who are they being replaced with? They are being replaced by young people from typically Asia with PhDs,' he told a public function in Wentworth Falls in September when he was Labor's deputy leader. The revelation about his comments on Asian immigration could hurt Labor's chances of picking up marginal seats from the Liberal Party in south-west Sydney, which has a higher-than-average proportion of overseas-born residents 'So there's a transformation happening in Sydney now where our kids are moving out and foreigners are moving in and taking their jobs.' Mr Daley declined to given an unconditional apology when grilled on the issue on Tuesday. 'I have conceded that my language could have been better, I've readily acknowledged that and if anyone has taken offence to what I've said, I do apologise,' he told reporters. The revelation about his comments on Asian immigration could hurt Labor's chances of picking up marginal seats from the Liberal Party in south-west Sydney, which has a higher-than-average proportion of overseas-born residents. Ms Berejiklian emerged victorious in a debate held at Western Sydney University in front of 100 undecided voters, with the support of 50 people in the audience compared with just 25 for Mr Daley. Ms Berejiklian (left) emerged victorious in a debate held at Western Sydney University in front of 100 undecided voters, with the support of 50 people in the audience compared with just 25 for Mr Daley (right) The remaining 25 were left undecided. A UComms/ReachTel poll, published in the Sun-Herald newspaper last week, showed Labor leading the Coalition 51 to 49 per cent after preferences, after the Opposition campaigned against the demolition and rebuilding of stadiums in Moore Park and Sydney Olympic Park. This represented a swing of more than five per cent against the government, compared with the 2015 election. Should the Coalition win the election on Saturday, Ms Berejiklian would become Australia's first female conservative premier to win an election in her own right. It would also the first time since 1971 that a Liberal Party-led government in NSW had won a third consecutive term. Accused Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant allegedly fired at pedestrians from his car while en route to carry out an attack at a second mosque, according to a disturbing new video. Security footage from a hotel car park on Deans Avenue, just 300 metres away from Al Noor, captured the moment the accused gunman drove away from the mosque after allegedly killing 42 worshippers during Friday prayer. The 28-year-old Australian suspect is believed to have been on his way to the Linwood mosque, where he is accused of killing an additional eight people. The video, first obtained by CNN, is timestamped at 1.42pm, one minute after New Zealand Police received the first call. Security footage from a hotel car park shows a driver, believed to be accused gunman Brenton Tarrant, driving up to pedestrians on Deans Avenue, before opening fire at a passerby (pictured) through his window Tarrant was arrested on the sidewalk by two police officers last Friday after he allegedly shot and killed 50 Muslim worshipers at two Christchurch mosques During this time, a series of gunshots are heard, presumably coming from the Al Noor mosque, but bystanders do not react. Minutes later, at 1.46, the sound of the gunshots becomes louder and clearer, and nearby pedestrians begin to flee. Police sirens are also heard wailing in the background. A white station wagon, believed to belong to Tarrant, then comes into the frame and he is seen honking his horn at a bystander in an attempt to get their attention. The accused gunman then allegedly opens fire through a closed window of the passenger seat as the person takes cover. Police would arrest Tarrant just 16 minutes after that moment at 2.02pm. Hotel staff told CNN they have handed the video over to police, but authorities would not comment on the footage. Footage of the arrest shows police were able to stop the suspect by wedging their station wagon between a cop car and a gutter in a residential street They were seen approaching with their weapons drawn before pulling a person in dark clothing out of the vehicle On Wednesday, New Zealand Police revealed further details surrounding the alleged gunman's arrest. Tarrant allegedly fled the Linwood mosque in his car but was ran off the road and dragged out by two officers shortly after. 'These two guys pull this guy out but at the same time he was yelling, "I've got a bomb," and shooting at the same time. So we overuse the word hero, but not in this case,' Police Minister Stuart Nash claimed. Footage filmed by a passing motorist showed the moment Tarrant was taken down after officers rammed him off the road. His white station wagon was wedged between the gutter and another police car, with its front wheels spinning in the air. Police told reporters they believe the alleged gunman was on his way to another attack when officers stopped him. Nash would not say whether the officers will receive awards for their heroism but admitted, there 'aren't too many more acts of bravery higher than that.' The officers had sprung into action straight after attending a training session on how to deal with armed criminals, it was previously revealed. The entire incident, from when the alleged gunman opened fire to when he was brought into custody, took place over approximately 40 minutes. 'While we had the offender in custody at the Justice Precinct within 36 minutes, it in fact only took 21 minutes from the first 111 call for the offender to be apprehended at the roadside by the two officers,' Commissioner Mike Bush said. A monster father who sexually abused his daughters from the age of four and let his co-workers gang rape them has been jailed after more than two decades of torment. The 80-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his daughters, pleaded guilty to 87 charges in the Townsville District Court last week. During a police interview, he blamed the 20-plus years of relentless sexual abuse on a 'vision' he had of one of his daughters becoming a drug addict and prostitute. A monster father who sexually abused his daughters from the age of four and let his co-workers gang rape them has been jailed after over two decades of torment (stock image) He claimed he wanted to 'shock' the girl out of following the path he saw in the vision, and subjected her to vaginal, anal and oral rape at knifepoint. In a chilling twist, the girls' mother knew of the abuse and did nothing to stop it, the Townsville Bulletin reported. The court heard of one incident where the man forced the family dog upon one of his daughters. On another occasion the mother loaned $300 to her then 15-year-old daughter to pay for an abortion after the girl was impregnated by her rapist father. She was then made to pay back the money. He also allowed his daughter to be gang-raped by groups of men after taking her to his workplace. 'My father is a person I have feared all my life. He has had a lifelong traumatic impact on me,' one of the abused daughters wrote in a victim impact statement submitted to the court. 'I was just a little girl and could not understand what I had done wrong to warrant such vile treatment, punishment and threats by my father.' The woman detailed how her whole 'world fell apart' and 'life changed forever' when her mother walked in on her being abused by her father and did nothing to stop it. When she reached adulthood the abuse didn't stop, and in one incident the father raped his daughter while she was pregnant to her husband. He would rape her while her husband was at work, and threaten to kill her or the unborn child if she told anyone. Defence barrister Tom Polley argued that his client was extremely remorseful for his decades long abuse and regretted what had happened. Judge Lynham sentenced the father to 27 years jail, causing one of the daughters to let out a cry from the public gallery. She said she would carry the trauma of her father's actions for the rest of her life. Reverend Gerold Langsch, 75, has been arrested after being accused of groping a woman while giving her the last rites in Texas A Roman Catholic priest has been arrested after being accused of groping a woman while giving her the last rites in Texas. Reverend Gerold Langsch, 75, allegedly anointed the woman's chest with holy water, then began to apply lotion, massaging a breast, pinching a nipple and asking 'does that feel good?' The woman, who is still alive, added that Langsch, from Austin, then tried to slip his hand inside her diaper but was unable to. He was arrested today after being accused of assaulting the woman in home hospice care on October 5. Despite the incident being reported five days later, the arrest was delayed because of the woman's health problems, reports CBS news. Police contend in the arrest affidavit that the woman was in hospice care for complications from diabetes when Lansch went to her home to administer the sacrament of anointing the sick, a sacrament of absolution. The woman later told police the priest's actions left her in shock, uncomfortable, confused and feeling like, she told police, a 'nasty, dirty piece of meat'. Langsch is free on $15,000 bond. If convicted, he could be sentenced to a year in jail and fined up to $4,000. Langsch, 75, allegedly anointed the woman's chest with holy water, then began to apply lotion, massaging a breast, pinching a nipple and asking 'does that feel good?' Pictured: St. Paul Catholic Church in Austin where Langsch was a pastor In a statement Wednesday, the Catholic Diocese of Austin said Langsch had been pastor of St. Paul Catholic Church in Austin until last month, when the diocese 'received an unrelated report that he had failed to maintain proper boundaries with an adult'. The statement said that report did not involve any physical contact. Nevertheless, the diocese removed Langsch from his post and deemed him no longer able to serve as a priest in the diocese. The diocese said it will cooperate fully with police and asks anyone with information about the priest's actions to notify police. Police have also encouraged any other victims to come forward. The event is scheduled for 31 March. The archbishop calls on all the parishes in the capital to join and to refuse communion to Catholic drug dealers who do not repent. Colombo (AsiaNews/Agencies) Card. Malcolm Ranjith, archbishop of Colombo, plans to lead a silent march against drug trafficking in Colombo on 31 March. The prelate made the announcement yesterday at a press conference. If there are any Catholics known to be engaged in the drug trade and are not showing any signs of repentance, it is best that the parish churches do not welcome them and do not provide for them any rights that they may have as Catholics to receive holy communion or a burial with a service, the archbishop said in an appeal to parishes. Whilst Card Ranjith is the promoter of the event, other religious leaders will be present, including the Venerable Thambawita Gunawansa who said that Buddhists will attend the rally. Buddhism, the venerable explained, is a religion that holds that drugs are a social evil and should be eliminated from the world. President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe are also expected at the march. The former is behind the current campaign against drugs and drug trafficking, which in recent months has led to the arrest of numerous traffickers and the reintroduction of the death penalty for drug-related offences. On 31 March, three groups of marchers will start from different points in the capital and converge in Vystwyke Park where a stage will be set up. The cardinal calls on all the parishes of the archdiocese to join the event, organising groups of worshippers and priests after Sunday Mass. Finally, the archbishop urges the Christian community to act responsibly. Although the President had appointed a task force to combat drugs and many arrests have been made, we cannot let things slip away. We call upon Catholics and all men and women of goodwill to help the relevant agencies to be rid of this menace completely. It is our Christian duty as well, he said. A Mississippi jury has awarded $250,000 in damages to a woman jailed 96 days on trumped-up drug charges without seeing a judge, retaining a lawyer or having a chance to make bail. The verdict included $200,000 in damages against Choctaw County Sheriff Cloyd Halford and $50,000 against the county. It was handed down Tuesday after a two-day trial in federal court in Aberdeen. The jury was only determining how much the plaintiff, Jessica Jauch, was owed, after US District Court Judge Sharion Aycock earlier ruled that the county and Halford were liable. Verdict: A Mississippi jury has awarded $250,000 in damages to Jessica Jauch (pictured in a 2012 mugshot) who was jailed 96 days without seeing a judge. Jauch, now aged 36, was originally arrested on traffic charges in 2012 and held in Choctaw County after being served with a drug indictment. While in jail for more than three months, she was forced to temporarily sign over her daughter's custody rights to her mother. After finally seeing a judge, Jauch was appointed a public defender and quickly made bail. Eventually, she was cleared of the drug charge after undercover video didn't show her committing any crime. Daniel Griffith, a lawyer who represented Choctaw County in the trial, said Jauch testified that other women who were arrested would bond out quickly. Jauch's own lawyer, Israel Fleitas, declined comment. Griffith said Halford and Jauch shook hands while jurors were deliberating Tuesday. 'I can tell you the sheriff is a good man,' Griffith said. Griffith said the county government's damages will be paid by insurance. He wasn't sure if Halford is insured or if he will have to pay his share of the money personally. Jurors awarded the $250,000 as compensatory damages, rejecting additional money for punitive damages. The verdict included $200,000 in damages against Choctaw County Sheriff Cloyd Halford (right) who jailed Jauch in 2012 Halford had argued that he didn't have to take Jauch before a judge until court met because she'd already been indicted on a felony drug charge, thus establishing probable cause for her detention. The problem was that in Choctaw County, like many rural Mississippi counties, circuit court only meets twice a year, and the next meeting was months away. The county and Halford also argued the illegal detention was the fault of failures by state court judges. It's unlikely Jauch would have ever collected money from judges because they're generally immune from lawsuits. Aycock originally agreed with the county, dismissing Jauch's case in 2016 on the grounds that because she had been indicted by a grand jury on the felony drug charge, none of her constitutional and legal rights were violated. But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals was sharply critical of Aycock's ruling, reinstating Jauch's case in 2017 and calling her detention 'unjust and unfair' and 'alien to our law.' Pulled over for traffic offenses on April 26, 2012, Jauch was held thereafter because prosecutors relied on the word of an informant who said Jauch sold her eight Xanax pills for $40 in February 2011, according to court papers. In fact, a Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics video showed Jauch asking to borrow the $40. But Jauch's lawyer in her federal suit, Victor Fleitas, said no one knew that because investigators and prosecutors apparently never watched the video before persuading the grand jury to charge her with selling a controlled substance. Jauch was cleared of a trumped-up drug charge that had been brought against her based on the words of an informant She wasn't arraigned until the next court term in Choctaw County, three months later. Jauch posted $15,000 bail and was released August 6 after she finally got a lawyer. Once the assistant district attorney watched the video, he immediately agreed to drop the charges, Public Defender Hays Burchfield wrote. The full 5th Circuit and the US Supreme Court refused to hear further appeals by the county. Mississippi has continuing issues with people being arrested before trial and held for months or years with little access to a lawyer or bail. Since Jauch was arrested, the state Supreme Court has enacted new rules of criminal procedure last year that are showing some progress in keeping poor people from being stuck in jail without a lawyer or bail. Those rules say that, among other things, those arrested before being indicted are supposed to appear before a judge within two business days, and anyone arrested after indictment must be arraigned within 30 days. Griffith, who represents a number of local governments, said those rules are making a difference, along with the publicity surrounding Jauch's case and others in which governments have been sued for jailing people. 'Nobody wants to be sitting where the sheriff was sitting,' Griffith said. He said Choctaw County jailers are now sending a list of inmates who need a court appearance to a judge every day. Ultimately, though, Griffith said Mississippi needs a statewide system of public defenders, instead of the part-time defenders who are assigned in most counties. Lawmakers failed to act this year on such a proposal put forward by a task force. A university student has been praised for her work scraping dried candle wax left behind after a vigil for Christchurch. Julia Prendergast worked until her hands ached, cleaning up the steps at the State Library of Victoria. Earlier in the week hundreds of Victorian Muslims and supporters had gathered to remember the victims of terrorist attacks at two mosques in New Zealand. Julia Prendergast (pictured) worked until her hands ached, cleaning up the steps at the State Library of Victoria following a vigil for Christchurch shooting victims Ms Prendergast, a Monash University art student, had volunteered to help clear the steps as she will use the wax her her latest art project Ms Prendergast, a Monash University art student, had volunteered to help clear the steps but she has admitted it wasn't a completely selfless act. 'I got permission from the Islamic Council of Victoria to collect the wax today for an art project I'm working on,' she said on Reddit. Ms Prendergast, who was born in New Zealand but lives in Melbourne, is working on a piece that will be an ongoing memorial. She hopes her art piece will ensure moments, space, and events that need to be remembered don't simply become archived, she said. 'I'm hoping to create vinyl records with the debris I've collected, mixed with resin and other materials, so that these moments can be held, played, and honoured.' She requested permission first as she did not want to take anything that was not meant to be taken. Hundreds of Victorian Muslims and supporters had gathered to remember the victims of terrorist attacks at two mosques in New Zealand People lay flowers and lit candles on the steps of the Victorian state library on Monday evening ahead of a vigil organised by the Islamic Council of Victoria in honour of the victims of the Christchurch attacks 'It's a loaded time and a sensitive subject, so I wanted permission to not step over a line.' People have taken to social media to praise her after a picture of her scraping the steps was shared on Reddit. 'That is amazing and you're amazing best of luck with your endeavours and can't wait to hopefully see something beautiful come of your efforts,' one person said. 'You're the hero we need but don't deserve,' another person said. 'What an absolutely amazing idea, I really can't wait to see the end product. It's quite empathetic of you to know this needs to be preserved too.' Two JetBlue pilots allegedly raped three airline workers during a layover in Puerto Rico and even left one of the women with an STD, according to a new lawsuit. The Brooklyn suit alleges that on May 9 in San Juan, crew members met Flight Officers Eric Johnson and Dan Watson on the beach. The women starting drinking beers with the men once learning that they were pilots with JetBlue, the suit reads according to the New York Post. 'The beer was laced with a drug, and after that point, the rest of the night became a blur for [the women],' the lawsuit reads. It was filed on Monday. The Brooklyn suit, filed on Monday, says that three JetBlue crew members met Flight Officers Eric Johnson and Dan Watson on May 9 in San Juan. The alleged incident is said to have taken place at the Intercontinental Hotel Both women and a third crew member wound up at the Intercontinental Hotel with the pilots. Jane Doe 1, from Riverton, Utah, claims that Johnson raped her and the third crew member in the hotel. 'Johnson was on top of [Jane Doe 1] raping her,' the lawsuit states. '[Jane Doe 1] felt the influence of the drug that [Johnson] laced the beer with, and was unable to react to the situation, but was simply aware that it was happening. '[Her] flashes of memory included Johnson having sexual intercourse with the other crewmember who was also under the influence of the drugs.' Johnson is said to have thanked the woman for 'making my fantasy come true.' Jane Doe 2, from Fort Worth, Texas, says that she became ill from the drugs and was repeatedly puking. 'Johnson and Watson drugged [Jane Doe 2] and intended to rape [her] but did not when [she] began vomiting which was a turnoff,' the suit continues. JetBlue said in a statement that it couldn't comment on pending litigation but that it took 'allegations of violent or inappropriate behavior very seriously and investigates such claims thoroughly' While on a flight to Newark, NJ, the next morning, the women 'expressed to each other that they were stunned by what had happened' and expressed feeling 'groggy and numb.' The women say that the airline has taken no action against the pilots after they were notified of the incident. Jane Doe 1 also accused Johnson of intentionally giving her HPV. 'What happened to my clients is truly horrific, and Jet Blue's failure to take appropriate action is appalling,' said Abraham Melamed, the women's attorney. Both women are suing for at least $75,000 plus attorney's fees. JetBlue said in a statement that it couldn't comment on pending litigation but that it took 'allegations of violent or inappropriate behavior very seriously and investigates such claims thoroughly.' (Editor's note: A previous version of this article included an incorrect photo of the Eric Johnson mentioned in this story. We apologize for the error.) Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten should look to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for lessons on leadership, experts have claimed. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has impressed many international onlookers with her handling of the Christchurch mosque shootings. White supremacist Brenton Tarrant, 28, allegedly shot and killed 50 people at two mosques in the city on Friday, injuring dozens more in the worst terrorist attack to ever hit the usually-peaceful nation. Ms Ardern, 38, donned a hijab as she embraced those mourning the loss of loved ones, and was swift to call for New Zealand's lax gun laws to be strengthened in the wake of the attack. Dr Paul Williams, senior lecturer at Griffith University, said Australian Prime Minister Mr Morrison and Opposition Leader Mr Shorten should take a page out of Ms Ardern's book. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (pictured) has impressed many international onlookers with her handling of the Christchurch mosque shootings Dr Paul Williams, senior lecturer at Griffith University, said there are lessons to be learned from Ms Ardern for Australian politicians including Prime Minister Scott Morrison (pictured) Dr Williams said Australians didn't see Scott Morrison or Bill Shorten (pictured) as inspiring leaders 'The polls say that most Australian voters don't see Shorten or Morrison as terribly inspiring leaders. We're not looking at Bob Hawke or John Howard here,' he told Daily Mail Australia. Dr Williams said Ms Ardern's response to the shootings seemed to be '100 per cent' genuine. What Australian politicians can learn from Jacinda Ardern 1. Genuine 2. Empathetic 3. Humility 4. Lack of self-interest 5. Measured Source: Dr Paul Williams Advertisement 'For a long time in Australian politics, we've seen leaders role playing,' he said. 'Ardern seems to be 100 per cent authentic - our leaders don't appear to be as authentic. 'So much of public policy [in Australia] is done through cost management analysis - will this get or lose me votes.' Dr Williams said Ms Ardern's empathetic response to the shootings was impressive. 'To be genuinely, 100 per cent empathetic is very important. Voters want leaders who are like them,' he said. 'That's been demonstrated in [Ms Ardern's] warm embrace of Muslims, but also in her wearing the hijab, which was a genuine signal that ''we're all in this together''. 'Her harshest critics would see it as grandstanding but most people would've seen it as a genuine connection.' Ms Ardern has shown her humility throughout the days following the attack by focusing on the plight of the victims and a nation in mourning, Dr Williams said. 'She's a very humble woman. She seemed tickled pink that a student during a school visit would ask her how she was doing,' he said. Poll Who would you prefer as Australian Prime Minister? Scott Morrison Bill Shorten Jacinda Ardern Who would you prefer as Australian Prime Minister? Scott Morrison 278 votes Bill Shorten 46 votes Jacinda Ardern 1017 votes Now share your opinion 'She said she was sad but she moved on quickly to talk about others. 'She's obviously under stress... we don't like our politicians to be too polished.' Dr Williams said voters were initially impressed by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd when he spoke without pausing or stumbling over his words, but the electorate eventually came to see it as unrelatable. 'We like people who are just like us, but are a bit better than us,' Dr Williams said. He said Ms Ardern's gender did not play a major role in how she was perceived. 'She didn't do anything that a man couldn't do - but underneath that there are gender and cultural stereotypes that women are more caring,' he said. Her lack of self-interest - 'the big killer in Australian politics' according to Dr Williams - also stood out. Dr Paul Williams said Ms Ardern's (pictured) response to the shootings seemed to be '100 per cent' genuine Jacinda Ardern meets with one of the first responders who was at the scene of the Christchurch mosque shootings 'She's been measured. It could be easy to overreach... by being too emotional,' he said. 'A lot of sexist people think that a woman can't be a strong leader - but here's proof that they can. She's a natural leader.' Dr Williams said her decision to not name the alleged gunman was 'absolutely' the right one. 'He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless,' Ms Ardern said in an address to parliament in Wellington on Tuesday. Dr Stewart Jackson, a politics lecturer the University of Sydney, said Ms Ardern's 'statements and presence' were qualities that should be matched by Australian politicians. 'She's shown honesty, grace... and renounced the politics of hate. Our politicians get themselves in knots trying to blame others,' he said. 'If we are a multicultural society - and we are... then stop falling into the trap of talking about immigration because of housing affordability. 'Politicians can moderate their language and stay moderated... don't walk into these conspiracy areas.' Dr Jackson said New Zealanders felt Ms Ardern was a true representative of theirs. 'Ms Ardern speaks for a majority of New Zealanders - she's their Prime Minister. I don't think Morrison and Shorten have achieved that yet,' he said. 'There's been outpourings of the feeling that ''we will not be pushed over''. You see students doing a haka for their schoolmates. 'She's a positive voice. It's not a really tough approach... she realises people need a moment to grieve.' Dr Jackson compared Ms Ardern's decisive actions on gun control to those of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard following the Port Arthur massacre in April 1996. Ms Ardern speaks to a young Cashmere High School student on Wednesday. The school has been directly affected by the terror attack last week, with two students killed The Project host Lisa Wilkinson and 13-year-old Muslim girl Summer Joyan are among a score of Australians who have called for Ms Ardern (pictured) to take control of both countries 'One of John Howard's early triumphs was Port Arthur - he took action very quickly, he had to take the lead and he did show leadership,' Dr Jackson said. 'People could identify that it was authentic. It was a real response - people want a real response.' The Project host Lisa Wilkinson and 13-year-old Muslim girl Summer Joyan are among a score of Australians who have called for Ms Ardern to take control of both countries either side of the Tasman Sea and become Prime Minister of Australia. 'I'm sure you will remain Prime Minister of New Zealand for a long time. But if not, do you think maybe you could move to Australia and become our Prime Minister? That would be a dream come true,' Summer wrote in an open letter published by the ABC on Thursday. Wilkinson said Ms Ardern had shown 'real, engaged, compassionate and powerful leadership'. 'May our own politicians here in Australia, as they stand on the brink of an election, please take notes, learn from her, and try to outdo her, in her empathy, integrity, unity and decisive action,' she wrote for 10 Daily. 'But until then, do you think she'd adopt us?' Others took to Twitter to express their admiration for Ms Ardern's response to the terrorist attack. 'Jacinda Ardern you aren't our Prime Minister here over the water but in times of chaos and need we will look to you before we look to our own,' one person said. 'My goodness Jacinda Ardern is a wonderful leader and should be celebrated. I like many wish she was our leader,' another Australian said. Dr Williams said Ms Ardern's decision to not name the alleged gunman was 'absolutely' the right one. Pictured: Ms Ardern with her boyfriend Clarke Gayford and their daughter Neve Australians took to Twitter to express their admiration for Ms Ardern's response to the terrorist attack Before becoming the world's youngest female leader, Ms Ardern was a DJ, performing a 45-minute set at Auckland's Laneway music festival in 2014. She also performed at her local Real Groovy record store, playing the Spice Girls, The Beatles, Iggy Pop and Snoop Dogg from her Macbook. On Thursday, Ms Ardern announced that New Zealand would ban all military-style weapons and assault rifles. 'On 15 March our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too. We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place,' Ms Ardern said. 'All semi-automatic weapons used during the terrorist attack on Friday 15 March will be banned. 'I strongly believe that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners in New Zealand will understand that these moves are in the national interest, and will take these changes in their stride.' Before becoming the world's youngest female leader, Ms Ardern was a DJ, performing a 45-minute set at Auckland's Laneway music festival in 2014 (pictured) Sam Neill has revealed that he was comforted by a Muslim cab driver when he broke down in a taxi after hearing about the Christchurch massacre on the radio. The Jurassic Park star was in the back of a taxi in Auckland last Friday afternoon as the terror unfolded, when a gunman stormed mosques in Christchurch and gunned down 50 worshippers. The actor - who lives in Queenstown - sat down with The Today Show to talk about his reaction to the tragic event. The Kiwi star told of how he broke down in 'a flood of tears' after finding out about the Christchurch mosque massacre 'I was with a Muslim taxi driver. As we were driving back to my brother's house the full horror of what was happening, what had happened became apparent on the radio.' Neill said he was in a 'flood of tears' by the time he arrived at his brother's house, and that he was comforted by the driver. 'To think that these people who have come here from the worst places in the world to get away from the worst things find this, this terror, this horror in one of the quietest little refuges in the world, it is unthinkable,' the 71-year-old star went on to say. The actor then got onto the Australian immigration debate, saying Australian politicians haven't shown enough compassion in the wake of the massacre. Mr Neill condemned Australian politicians for wanting to look tough on borders, but at the same time claiming to be compassionate. He went on to call Australian politicians 'complicit', referring to controversial MP Fraser Anning's recent hate speech about immigration. 'All Australian politicians should be thinking about castigating Fraser Anning but I think there should be a little bit of castigation on all of them because all of them are complicit in this,' he said. Senator Anning sparked global outrage last week when he said 'the real cause of bloodshed' in Christchurch was the country's immigration program that allowed 'Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place'. The Jurassic Park actor used The Today Show as a platform to call out Australian politicians for their lack of compassion when it comes to immigration Kiwi actor Sam Neill spoke of his respect for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (middle) for her compassion and empathy in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has condemned Senator Anning's comments, branding them a 'disgrace.' Mr Neill praised 'extraordinary' Ardern for her empathy and strength in the aftermath of last Friday's attack. The star recognised the prime minister's wearing of the hijab to meet with the Muslim community as a message of respect. The actor then slammed One Nation leader Pauline Hanson's over her burka stunt in 2017, saying it's a stark contrast to how Ardern has handled recent events. The right-wing senator made international headlines in 2017 when she wore a burqa in a stunt she claimed was to highlight security issues with full-face Islamic veils. Drivers who fail to wash their cars properly could be hit with expensive fines. Motorists could be slapped with a staggering fine of up to $450 and lose three demerit points if their licence plates aren't displayed cleanly and clearly. The Facebook post by NSW Police has advised that 'not washing your car properly,' by 'neglecting' cleaning the licence plate could end up costing you. Road users could be slapped with a staggering fine up to $450 and lose three demerit points if their licence plates aren't cleaned properly According to Clause 25 of the Regulation in the NSW Roads and Maritime Services, plates must be 'clear and clean,' and must not be obscured, defaced or otherwise not legible. You can also get stung for licence plates that are not properly displayed or are hard to read. In another post by the NSW Police, they state that number plates are not allowed to be hinged. Pictured: a poorly displayed licence plate from NSW Police Facebook page 'They must be securely fixed to prevent them swinging out of sight. $448 + 3 points.' While the laws and penalties vary in each state, social media users have been quick to criticise the NSW laws on the Facebook post. Facebook user, Lizzie Maree West, highlighted the implication with water restrictions, saying '... we can't wash ours on level 6 water restrictions...' While the laws and penalties vary in each state, social media users have been quick to criticise the NSW laws on the Facebook post She also added 'you get fined for everything these days.' However, not all Facebook users criticised the post by the NSW Police Force. Other users seemed to agree with the less-known law. Nathan Stansbie was one supporter, commenting 'Yep I'd agree with this fine.' Some Facebook commentators agreed with the NSW law LAWS BY STATE FOR HAVING A DIRTY NUMBER PLATE QLD: Fine up to $104 NSW: $448 fine; three demerits SA: Fine up to $534 VIC: Fine up to $161 WA: Fine up to $100 NT: Fine up to $70 TAS: Fine up to $163 Advertisement Despite the hefty fine in NSW, other states in Australia have higher penalty rates. Car owners in South Australia could be fined up to $474 with an additional fine of $60 for the victim's levy, which covers the cost of support sought for victims. In Western Australia, road users with 'obstructed' licence plates can be hit with a fine of up to just $100. In Victoria, road users are hit with a moderate fine of $161. The state with the lowest penalty rate is the Northern Territory, with just a $70 fine for a licence plate that is 'not displayed properly.' Authorities say alcohol flowed from the mouth of a suspected drunk driver accused of killing a family-of-three when paramedics tried to revive her after a vehicle crash in Ohio. Law enforcement said Abby Michaels, 21, was driving the wrong way in Sunday's fatal collision where Timmy Thompson, 51, and his daughter, Tessa Thompson, 10, died at the scene. The girl's mother Karen Thompson, 50, passed away later at Kettering hospital. According to a report, Michaels crossed over the median on the I-75, turned around and headed north in the southbound lane around 8.10pm. Cops said Abby Michaels (pictured May 2018), 21, was driving the wrong way in Sunday's collision in Dayton, Ohio Timmy Thompson and his daughter, Tessa Thompson, 10, died at the scene when she hit their car. The girl's teacher mother Karen Thompson, died later in hospital A 911 caller was reported as saying: 'I'm pretty sure no one survived. It is awful' Michaels was driving 'via the paved turnaround restricted for authorized and emergency vehicles' a police report said, noting a northbound witness saw a white sedan pull a 'U-turn area of the median'. She crossed over a median on I-75 and turned into oncoming traffic at 8.10pm. Michaels is pictured at her June 2018 wedding The Xenia woman's Kia 'then pulled into the middle lane of oncoming traffic and within 10-15 seconds hit another car head-on'. The incident which resulted in the deaths of the Warren County family is being investigated as a vehicular homicide. Michaels was believed to have earlier on March 17 celebrated St Patrick's Day as she was 'wearing a festive St Patrick's Day shirt, multiple green, plastic shamrock necklaces and she had a temporary tattoo on her right cheek of an apparent beer mug'. Moraine police discovered a large cup in her bag with a Fireball whiskey logo on it and first responders noted a 'frothy fluid coming from her mouth' when they tried to make her breath, which 'the medics identified as beer'. A 911 caller was reported as saying: 'I'm pretty sure no one survived. It is awful.' Michaels was in serious but stable condition in Miami Valley Hospital Wednesday. Michaels was listed as marrying Kyle Pastorelle in June 2018 but just two days before the crash he filed for divorce. Writing on The Knot website before their Washington Courthouse, Ohio nuptials, Abby said: 'I met Kyle in high school just before the summer of 2013! I was a freshman and Kyle was a junior. After some back and forth compliments, Kyle gave me his number and we began to develop a friendship. 'We spent the summer swimming, going to kings island, hanging out with our families and growing ever closer. We've been together 5 years now, and I absolutely cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with my best friend!' Those listed among her six bridesmaids, maid of honor and matron of honor had pictures from last summer's ceremony on their social media pages. Local resident Steve Setoodeh said the crash looked so horrific, he didn't recognize the family's Camry. It was so bad the road was closed for four hours after what Setoodeh described as 'a big tragedy'. 'Karen was a tremendous teacher and her work had a huge impact on many families,' said Frances Russ, communications officer for the Cincinnati Public School District where she worked as a disabilities teacher at Taft Elementary told Dayton Daily News. 'All of us will miss her.' 'Karen was a tremendous teacher and her work had a huge impact on many families,' said the communications officer for the Cincinnati Public School District where the mother worked as a disabilities teacher Mason City Schools sent counselors to assist children as they learned St. Susanna School student Tessa Thompson was killed School spokeswoman Tracey Carson said Tessa was 'a bright light who had a great effect on students and staff,' adding it's a tragic loss for all who knew her It's believed the trio were returning from visiting mother Karen's family in northern Ohio Timmy Thompson (pictured) is survived by his grown-up son who was not in the vehicle It's believed the trio was returning from visiting her family in northern Ohio. Mason City Schools sent counselors to assist children as they learned St. Susanna School student Tessa was killed. Their spokeswoman Tracey Carson said Tessa was 'a bright light who had a great effect on students and staff,' adding it's a tragic loss for all who knew her. Father Timmy Thompson is survived by his grown-up son who was not in the vehicle at the time. Michaels (pictured May 2017) was dressed in St Patrick's Day gear in the March 17 crash and first responders said beer came from her mouth when they tried to get her to breathe Michaels was in serious but stable condition in hospital. She's pictured in May 2018 Theresa May last night told MPs to end their political games and deliver Brexit. With the UK just eight days from a No Deal departure, she went on live TV to condemn the Commons for failing to back her EU withdrawal agreement. The Prime Minister will travel to Brussels today to ask for an extension until the end of June to try to get her plan through. She said the delay to the planned March 29 exit date, which she had promised to keep more than 100 times in Parliament, was a matter of great personal regret. With the UK just eight days from a No Deal departure, she went on live TV to condemn the Commons for failing to back her EU withdrawal agreement She hinted she would rather quit or leave with No Deal than allow delay to give more time for politicians to argue. Donald Tusk had raised the stakes by warning an extension to Article 50 would be agreed only if MPs approved her deal. This opened up the possibility that the UK could leave without a deal next Friday. May's great regret Nearly three years have passed since the public voted to leave the European Union. I came to office on a promise to deliver on that verdict. In March 2017, I triggered the Article 50 process for the UK. Two years on, MPs have been unable to agree on a way to implement the UKs withdrawal, as a result we will now not leave on time with a deal on March 29. This delay is a matter of great personal regret for me. You the public have had enough. You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree, I am on your side. So today I have written to Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, to request a short extension of Article 50 up to June 30, to give MPs the time to make the final choice. Do they want to leave the EU with a deal? Do they want to leave without a deal? Or do they not want to leave at all? It is high time we made the decision. So far Parliament has done everything possible to avoid making a choice. All MPs have been willing to say is what they do not want. But I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than June 30. Some argue that I am making the wrong choice and that I should ask for a longer extension to the end of the year or beyond to give more time for politicians to argue over the way forward. That would mean asking you to vote in European elections nearly three years after our country decided to leave. What kind of message would that send? Some have suggested holding a second referendum. I dont believe that is what you want and it is not what I want. You want us to get on with it and that is what I am determined to do. Advertisement I believe that a short extension would be possible, said Mr Tusk, who is president of the European Council. But it would be conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons. He said the hopes of a deal now seemed frail, even illusory but said the EU would not give up. He suggested an emergency Brussels summit could be held at the end of next week, just hours before Britain is due to leave, to consider offering the UK a much longer extension at a price. Government sources last night indicated Mrs May would make a third and probably final attempt to persuade MPs to approve her deal next week, possibly as soon as Monday. Speaking 1,000 days after the UK voted to leave the EU, Mrs May warned MPs they would never be forgiven if they failed to deliver Brexit. Addressing the public directly, she said: Of this I am absolutely sure, you the public have had enough, you are tired of the infighting, you are tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our childrens schools, our National Health Service, knife crime. You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. Ministers still hope they can win the backing of the DUP and persuade more moderate Eurosceptics to back the deal. But they have all but abandoned hope of persuading the two dozen Brexit hardliners holding out for No Deal. Instead they are focusing on Labour MPs, particularly those in Leave-supporting areas, who they believe might reluctantly back Mrs Mays plan rather than allow the UK to crash out next week. Last night some MPs suggested her comments could backfire, with one warning they could spark attacks on MPs. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is urging Mrs May to give Tory MPs a free vote next week in the hope of making it easier for Labour MPs to vote for the deal. In other developments: Jeremy Corbyn walked out of cross-party crisis talks with the Prime Minister last night in protest at the presence of ex-Labour MP Chuka Umunna; Reports from France suggested President Emmanuel Macron is ready to veto any request for a Brexit delay, meaning the UK will leave on March 29 with or without a deal; Arch Remainer Dominic Grieve said he was ashamed to be a Conservative and warned: We are going to spiral down into oblivion and the worst part of it all is that we will deserve it; Mrs May held talks with opposition leaders in the hope of securing their support for a deal next week to prevent the UK crashing out; The European Parliaments Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt said: The only relevant question now is if Prime Minister May can muster a cross-party majority by next week; The Liberal Democrats and SNP called for Parliament to prepare to revoke Article 50 as a last resort; European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker warned that the UK would have to hold elections to the European parliament if it wanted to delay beyond May 23; Tory hardliners called for the Prime Minister to resign, with Peter Bone accusing her to her face of betraying the British people; A SkyData poll found that 90 per cent of voters believe the Brexit negotiations have been a national humiliation. Jeremy Corbyn, pictured at PM's questions, walked out of cross-party crisis talks with the Prime Minister last night in protest at the presence of ex-Labour MP Chuka Umunna Mrs Mays decision to rule out a long delay stunned Cabinet Remainers who believed she was ready to sign up to the proposal in order to remove the risk of No Deal. The decision was taken by the PM in the early hours of yesterday and released to the media before ministers were told. It came a week after her deputy David Lidington told MPs: A short one-off extension would be downright reckless. A senior Remainer accused Mrs May of caving in to Brexiteer Cabinet ministers, who had threatened to quit rather than allow a long delay. The minister said: No Deal has got more likely. The ERG hardliners are never going to vote for it now because they have got the prospect of No Deal. Iain Duncan Smith, a former leader of the Conservatives, said: Why are we on bended knee to the EU begging for things we dont need? Next week should be a simple choice between her deal and No Deal. If it isnt then it will be a national humiliation. Another former leader, William Hague, warned that the chances of an imminent election were rising fast. He also warned of a longer and longer delay to Brexit. Young students at New Zealand's largest Muslim school have performed an emotional haka to honour those who died during the Christchurch terror attack. Hundreds gathered at Al Madinah School in Auckland, on New Zealand's North Island, on Wednesday to pay their respects to the 50 people who were killed in the mosque shootings on Friday. And while the assembly was filled with heartfelt speeches featuring messages of equality and diversity, it was the performance by the young students that struck a cord with all in attendance. Young students at New Zealand's largest Muslim school have performed an emotional haka to honour those who died during the terror attack last week The boys, dressed in their white school uniform, had the audience roaring with their rendition of Ka Mate. Their performance signaled strength and unity with the combining of the two cultures. Students told 1News they were nervous before the performance because of the large crowd but the response the received left them feeling emotional. Armed police have been standing guard since Friday's attack where two mosques were targeted. The boys, dressed in their white school uniform, had the audience roaring with their rendition of Ka Mate signalling strength and unity by combining the two cultures 'They tried to break us,' Teacher, Sheik Sarfaraz said. 'They would never have thought that this is how we strike back, being so united and being so together.' Auckland Mayor Phil Goff told the crowd that while the hurt cannot be done, a better New Zealand can be built. 'We want to build a country where everyone is equal and treated equally with respect regardless of race, colour or creed,' he said. 'A country where we regard diversity as something that enriches us and does not divide us, a country where our children can grow up to live in a peaceful and harmonious place.' What happened yesterday? Theresa May made the biggest gamble of her political career in a desperate bid to get her Brexit deal through. First she asked the EU for a short extension of Article 50 from March 29 next Friday to June 30. In a letter to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, she said her deal with some slight changes would come back to the House of Commons next week for another vote. If it passes, she said, Parliament would need more time to pass necessary Brexit laws and ratify the deal. What else did The Prime Minister say? Her second intervention came at Prime Ministers Questions in the Commons. Three times, she repeated: As Prime Minister, I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than 30 June. This was seen as a clear signal that if the deal does not pass at the third time of asking, she would either allow a No Deal Brexit which will happen automatically or quit rather than go cap in hand to the EU to ask for a longer delay. In a tirade at MPs, she said the House had indulged itself for far too long and a longer delay would mean endless hours and days of this House carrying on contemplating its navel on Europe. Theresa May heads to Brussels tomorrow afternoon for a crunch summit on the fate of Brexit - and almost nothing is certain What did the EU say? Upping the stakes significantly, Mr Tusk said the EU would agree to a short extension, but only on the condition that the deal is passed by the Commons next week. He said Europe was suffering from Brexit fatigue but prepared to help. Crucially, he left open the possibility that EU countries could refuse a longer delay if the deal does not pass. President Macron is also, reportedly, taking a hard line against a longer extension. What do hardline Brexiteers say? Many were initially furious with Mrs May for trying to delay Brexit at all, arguing she should have walked away long ago and be pushing ahead with No Deal. One said the request for an extension was a betrayal and several others called for the PM to resign. If anything they appear less likely to vote for the deal, in the hope they can force through No Deal either next week or at a later point. What about the Tory Remainers? With No Deal now appearing to be more likely, they are up in arms. Dominic Grieve who is campaigning for a second referendum, was incandescent and said he was ashamed to be a member of the Conservative Party. He and other Tory Remainers believed they had forced Mrs May to take a No Deal Brexit off the table, and claim she agreed to ask for a long delay. But yesterday, with just eight days to go until we leave, she turned the tables on them. In the coming days, they will doubtless try once again to seize control of Parliament and force her to change course. Dominic Grieve (pictured above) has been campaigning for a second referendum What will Corbyn and Labour MPS do? No10s calculation appears to be that the deal will not get through solely with the backing of Tory MPs, even if the DUP can be won over with various legal promises about Northern Ireland and the backstop. So instead they are putting the squeeze on Labour MPs and forcing them to choose between Mrs Mays deal and the prospect of either No Deal or a long extension to Article 50. Will Jeremy Corbyn fear being blamed for Brexit not happening and allow his MPs to abstain? Or will Mrs May win over the 30 or so Labour MPs in Leave seats she needs to win the day? Jeremy Corbyn (pictured above) is having to force to chose between Mrs May's deal of a No Deal What happens over the next few days? Mrs May travels to Brussels today with the howls of anger from Westminster ringing in her ears. And the stage is set for an almighty showdown next week, with rumours the vote could come before MPs as early as Monday. Will the Speaker let the vote take place or will he plunge the country into a constitutional crisis by refusing to allow it? If it passes, will she be able to cling on in No10 and for how long? What If her deal is rejected again? Chaos. The kind of chaos that makes the mayhem of recent days and weeks look like a walk in the park. Will the EU offer an emergency summit and a longer delay to Brexit? Unwilling to countenance a long delay or a No Deal exit, will Mrs May quit and let someone else pick up the pieces? If that happens, would Mrs Mays successor really agree to a long delay that a majority of the Tory Party are opposed to? If Britain faces No Deal, will the Commons attempt to force what many see as the nuclear option and vote to revoke Article 50 and stop the process of Brexit altogether? Could the Commons, with the help of Speaker John Bercow, find another way to take control in such a short time? With the clock running down, this really is High Noon for Brexit. The archbishop took part in a Youth Meeting for Life with thousands of young people and religious leaders. People must accept every life as it is from the moment of conception". Likewise, The death penalty is a serious insult and a sin against this fundamental right to life. Seoul (AsiaNews) South Koreas Constitutional Court has to rule on the constitutionality of existing laws on abortion and the death penalty. Against this backdrop, Card Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, archbishop of Seoul, reiterated Catholic doctrine in the defence of life, asserting that Every human being has a sacred and inalienable dignity, and life is inviolable from the moment of conception." The meeting at which the prelate spoke was held last Sunday in the South Korean capital. Organised by the Committee for Family and Life of the South Catholic Bishops' Conference of Korea (CBCK) together with March for Life Korea, the event attracted thousands of young people and religious leaders "What we should do is to accept every life as it is from the moment of conception under the responsibility of both father and mother at the same time, said the archbishop. [G]iven that every life is under the common responsibility of our society, we should try to improve the overall social welfare system to support parents to give birth and raise their children. Two days before the meeting, the prelate officiated the solemn Spring Mass in the presence of Catholic lawmakers (pictured). In his homily, he said that "embryos should be protected and respected as independent beings, not considered as property of mothers or fathers. Human dignity cannot be decided by the vote of a majority or judged on the basis of socio-economic standards. The prelate also addressed the issue of the death penalty. "Human life, he stressed, is the most important and fundamental gift; it is the source of all human rights," he added, quoting from Pope Francis. The death penalty is a serious insult and a sin against this fundamental right to life. The NHS staffing crisis is so critical it cannot be fixed by training more doctors and nurses alone, according to a major report. With falling numbers of GPs, the health service must consider recruiting 9,000 more physiotherapists and pharmacists to help in general practice, it said. They could look after those with ailments such as back pain and take care of repeat prescriptions, freeing up GPs to treat those most in need. Backed up: Staff shortages mean patients are having to wait longer for treatment, and a new report has revealed that just training more GPs won't help The report by the Kings Fund, Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation think-tanks warned patients are facing longer delays for treatment as the NHS struggles to recruit and retain sufficient staff. Shortages of GPs in England will almost triple to 7,000 and double in nursing to 70,000 within five years unless action is taken, it said. Richard Murray, of the Kings Fund, said: Without radical action to expand the NHS workforce, there is a very real risk that some of the extra funding pledged by the Government will go unspent, waiting lists will continue to grow and important improvements to services like mental health and general practice will fail. While nurse recruitment is failing to keep pace with rising demand, GP numbers are falling. Despite the Government vowing to create 5,000 additional GP posts by 2020, recent figures suggest a further shortfall of 1,300 full-time family doctors has developed. Many are choosing go abroad for better lifestyles, while high numbers are a retiring early to avoid hefty taxes that kick in when their pension pot exceeds 1million. Richard Murray, of the Kings Fund, has warned that without radical action to expand the NHS workforce important improvements to services like mental health and general practice could fail The report noted 62 per cent of GPs now take early retirement, up from 33 per cent in 2011/12. Consequently, the service must look to other professionals to carry out some of the work, it suggests. Mr Murray said: We cant GP our way out of the problem. Theres no way that by training more GPs or by trying to do something on retention that that on its own will create enough GPs. To plug the workforce gap, 6,000 more physiotherapists and 3,000 more pharmacists are needed in GP surgeries, he added. He noted that around 20 per cent of patients who see GPs are there for issues such as back pain, and this is exactly what physiotherapists are trained for. Mr Murray said: First-contact physiotherapy has been piloted across England and has been successful. You cant with all of them many patients may have things that still need a GP but theres a significant workload there [for physiotherapists]. For pharmacists, he added, theres a lot of work that GPs do that is repeat prescribing, repeat dispensing, medications reviews. Using a wider range of staff could relieve pressure on GPs, making it easier for patients to book appointments, he suggested. The report warned of dire nursing shortages that could escalate to 100,000 positions within a decade. While nursing numbers have increased, the number per head of the population has declined. In the past six years, the number of nurses leaving has grown by 25 per cent and one in nine staff left the NHS in 2017/18. Shortages of GPs in England will almost triple to 7,000 and double in nursing to 70,000 within five years unless action is taken, the report said Anita Charlesworth, of the Health Foundation, said: Although this is a really dire situation, it is not inevitable. The Government could do something to radically transform the situation. The report called for a 5,200-a-year grant for trainee nurses and tuition funding for all post-graduate nursing degrees. It also said an extra 5,000 nurses a year must be recruited from abroad, and barriers to international health staff coming to the UK removed. The think-tanks said their proposals must be backed by a 900million increase in the annual budget for training and developing NHS workers by 2023/24. Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, of the Royal College of GPs, said: We must not give up on our aims and endeavours to build the GP workforce. We are extremely grateful to the hard work, skill and dedication of members of the wider practice team they are pivotal in supporting us. But they are not GPs and must never be seen as direct substitutes or used to fill the gaps long term where numbers of GPs are insufficient. Rachel Power, of the Patients Association, said: The NHSs deepening workforce crisis is putting patients wellbeing and safety at risk. This report identifies the massive scale of the challenge and the decisive action required. Dido Harding, of NHS Improvement, said: Our staff are our biggest asset. It is vital we do more to retain, recruit and develop them across both health and social care. I welcome this report, which will help inform the development of our workforce implementation plan. He claims his latest inventions are a breath of fresh air. But with a combined cost of around 1,000, Sir James Dyson's two 'wellbeing' gadgets are perhaps as likely to induce a sharp gasp. The controversial businessman is marketing a lamp that claims to mimic daylight and a desktop air purifier. Dyson claims its products will bring fresh air and natural light to those stuck in front of a screen for hours on end. However, the gadgets maintain the firm's reputation for expensive products, such as its 300 hairdryers and 550 fan heaters. The Dyson Lightcycle continually adjusts its colour temperature and brightness in relation to your local daylight, providing the right light for the right time of day The light, which uses LED bulbs, dims when the sun sets to mirror the natural world The Pure Cool Me 'personal purifying fan' is 299.99, while the Lightcycle is 649.99 for the floor lamp and 449.99 for the desktop-sized version. Sir James, who is under fire over his decision to relocate Dyson's headquarters from Britain to Singapore, has also announced an upgraded version of its cordless vacuum cleaner. The V11 Absolute will cost from 499.99. Yesterday, his eldest son Jake led the launch of the lamp and fan, which he claimed are an alternative to going for a walk or opening the windows for those who spend most of their lives indoors. The lamp mimics daylight conditions. The firm says: 'The Dyson Lightcycle task light continually adjusts its colour temperature and brightness in relation to your local daylight, providing the right light for the right time of day. The Pure Cool Me purifying fan is described as 'a perfect fit for your personal space whether beside your bed, on your desk, or in a nursery' and 'engineered to support your wellbeing, delivering cleaner air and a more comfortable cooling experience' The Lightcycle also provides options that change the intensity of its output depending on the age of the user 'It uses a unique time, date and location driven algorithm to calculate the colour temperature and brightness of daylight, anywhere in the world.' As a result, it means the light, which uses LED bulbs, dims when the sun sets to mirror the natural world. The Lightcycle also provides options that change the intensity of its output depending on the age of the user. This is based on the theory that a 65-year-old needs up to four times more light than a 20-year old. There are also some pre-set modes labelled study, relax, precision, boost, wake-up and sleep for specific times of the day. The Pure Cool Me purifying fan is described as 'a perfect fit for your personal space whether beside your bed, on your desk, or in a nursery' and 'engineered to support your wellbeing, delivering cleaner air and a more comfortable cooling experience'. It has the look of a smart speaker, such as the Amazon Echo or Google Home devices. The Pure Cool Me has the look of a smart speaker, such as the Amazon Echo or Google Home devices. New Dyson Core Flow technology creates a steady stream of purified air and allows you to direct the airflow precisely where you need it It incorporates both a tiny fan and an air filter. The filter is claimed to capture 99.95 per cent of particle pollutants, including particles as small as 0.1 microns one three-hundredth the thickness of a human hair It incorporates both a tiny fan and an air filter. The filter is claimed to capture 99.95 per cent of particle pollutants, including particles as small as 0.1 microns one three-hundredth the thickness of a human hair. Jake Dyson, himself an inventor and designer, said: 'Light matters to our wellbeing and task performance. 'When trying to recreate the characteristics of daylight, light quality is vital. So we developed a way to protect it for the long term. 'New technology allows these machines to give you even greater control of your personal surroundings and environment... whether you want to be cooled with cleaner air while you sleep, are concerned about the type of light you're exposed to or are sensitive to dust and allergens.' It captures ultrafine particles such as pollen and bacteria, and activated carbon absorbs and traps gases, odours and household fumes Dyson has also announced an upgraded version of its cordless vacuum cleaner. The V11 Absolute will cost from 499.99 Dramatic images show the Venezuelan consulate in New York City abandoned and after it was taken over by officials loyal to the country's opposition leader. A representative of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido on Tuesday defended taking control of the country's New York consulate as a 'liberation,' and promised it would soon reopen to 'all Venezuelans.' The six-story consulate, located near the United Nations, 'was illegally inhabited by officials of the regime of (Venezuelan President) Nicolas Maduro,' said Gustavo Marcano, a senior Guaido-appointed official, adding they had 'no legal status to be here.' As President Trump told a press conference with his Brazilian counterpart Jair Bolsonaro that his administration could impose 'a lot tougher' sanctions on Venezuela, Marcano showed journalists around the consulate. The image above shows the Venezuelan consulate in New York City on Tuesday The consulate was overtaken by supporters of Juan Guaido, the opposition leader who claims to be the country's real president An office in Venezuela's consulate sits empty in the image above taken on Wednesday Some rooms were empty, but the building was dotted with art and pictures of former President Hugo Chavez - Maduro's predecessor - maps of Venezuela, piles of passport applications and a cabinet where shirts remained on hangers. A computer room had been stripped, but it was not immediately clear who had taken the contents. Guaido's ambassador to Washington, Carlos Vecchio, announced Monday that the opposition government had taken control of three Venezuelan diplomatic properties in the US: two military buildings in Washington and the consulate in New York. A State Department spokesman confirmed that the U.S. government - which recognizes Guaido's authority along with some 50 other countries - backed the move. 'This is a welcome development for our bilateral relations with Venezuela... U.S. policy is to support democracy in Venezuela, interim President Guaido and the National Assembly, which is the only democratically elected institution in the country,' the spokesman told AFP. In a statement on Twitter, the Venezuelan government meanwhile branded the action an 'extremely serious violation of the U.S. government's international obligations,' and threatened to take reciprocal action in Venezuela. Vecchio added that the group expected to take control of Venezuelas embassy in Washington 'in the days to come.' Guaido, president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, arguing that Maduros May 2018 re-election was illegitimate. He has been recognized as Venezuelas rightful leader by most Western countries, including the United States. 'We are taking these steps in order to preserve the assets of the Venezuelans here in this country,' Vecchio said from one of the buildings, the office of Venezuelas military attache to Washington, after removing a portrait of Maduro from the wall and replacing it with one of Guaido. U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters the United States was 'pleased to support these requests.' In Caracas, the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro denounced the 'forced and illegal occupation of some of its diplomatic headquarters' in the United States. The image above shows a room in the New York consulate A large poster of Venezuela's former president, Hugo Chavez, hangs in an empty reception area on the country's consulate in New York Another empty room in the consulate is seen in the above photo which was taken on Tuesday Carlos Vecchio (right), Juan Guaido's chief envoy to the United States, hangs a photo of the opposition leader at the office of Venezuela's military attache in Washington, D.C., on Monday. An aide is seen left taking down the photo of President Nicolas Maduro Guaido (left), president of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, invoked the constitution to assume an interim presidency in January, arguing that Maduros (right) May 2018 re-election was illegitimate In a statement, Venezuelas foreign ministry called on U.S. authorities to 'take the necessary measures to immediately reverse this forcible occupation' of its diplomatic offices. It said the transfer of possession violated international law on the protection of diplomatic properties. Maduro, who has branded Guaido a U.S. puppet seeking to oust him in a coup, broke off relations with Washington after it recognized Guaido, calling diplomatic and consular staff back to Caracas. Of 55 staff members, 12 decided to remain in the United States and support Guaido, Vecchio said on Monday. He added that his staff would work out of the attache building, which is in the upscale Kalorama neighborhood and has an assessed value of $2.2million, according to Washington property records. A Georgia man who initially denied helping burn a teacher's body admitted to his part in the coverup in videotaped interview with federal investigators that was shown to a jury on Wednesday. The footage was shown in the third day of the trial for Bo Dukes, who was charged with making a false statement, hindering the apprehension of a criminal and concealing the death of another. 'I'm tired of living like this,' Dukes told the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in the 2017 footage, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Scroll down for video 2017 footage shown on the third day of Bo Duke's trial shows the defendant admitting to helping his friend hide 30-year-old's Tara Grinstead body Dukes was charged with making a false statement, hindering the apprehension of a criminal and concealing the death of another Tara Grinstead, 30, disappeared from her Ocilla home in October 2005. Ryan Alexander Duke, of no relation to Dukes, was charged with the former beauty queen's death in February 2017. Bo Dukes was tapped as an accomplice, with authorities believing he helped his friend dispose of the body. In the footage, Dukes told authorities that his friend told him the next day when he killed the woman and used his pickup truck to move the body. The former beauty queen (left) disappeared from her Ocilla home in October 2005. Ryan Alexander Duke, of no relation to Dukes, was charged with the former beauty queen's death in February 2017 The two went to hide the woman's body in a pecan orchard owned by Dukes' uncle, Fox News reports. In the footage, Dukes can be heard describing that it took the pair two days to burn the woman's body. Dukes explained that Duke told him he used a credit card to get inside the woman's home as she slept. Dukes said his friend admitting to strangling her 'right there.' It is believed that the man broke into the woman's home to steal money for drugs but Dukes never indicated a motive. Dukes (pictured) told authorities that Duke told him he used a credit card to get inside the woman's home as she slept. Dukes said his friend admitting to strangling her 'right there' It is believed that the man broke into the woman's home to steal money for drugs but Dukes never indicated a motive Irwin District Attorney Paul Bowden testified on Wednesday to denounce claims from Dukes' defense attorney that he had offered the man a deal if he turned his friend over to authorities. A Kennesaw State University anthropologist also testified on Wednesday that bone and teeth fragments were found at the site where the pair said they burned Grinstead's body. The GBI crime lab also testified that a latex glove was found at Grinstead's home that had both her and Duke's DNA on it. The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn is institutionally anti-Semitic, according to a study. It found the leadership has failed to prevent the party hosting hatred of Jews or to weed out a deep-rooted culture of anti-Semitism denial. Interference by the leadership in disciplinary cases also shows Labour has failed to tackle its problem with racial hatred against Jews, the study said. A new study has suggested that the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn (pictured above) is institutionally anti-Semitic It was conducted by Professor Alan Johnson, senior fellow at the British Israel Communications and Research Centre, who looked at 130 examples of anti-Jew hatred. He urged Mr Corbyn to drive the haters out of the party. A Labour spokesman said: We completely reject claims of institutional anti-Semitism. This is full of factual inaccuracies, baseless claims and personal opinions, to which the party was not afforded the opportunity to respond. We completely reject claims of institutional anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism complaints received since April 2018 relate to about 0.1 per cent of our membership, but one anti-Semite in our party is one too many. We are determined to tackle antisemitism and root it out of our party. A source said: This is not an academic study and basic principles of research have not been applied. Alan Johnson is not based at a university or academic institution. He is a staff member at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. Aldi has opened the first of its small convenience shops as it steps up its battle with the big four supermarkets. It hopes to attract busy shoppers looking to grab a meal on their way home from work. Aldi Locals are around half the size of a normal Aldi store and stock 300 fewer products. There are no car parks and no bulky items. The Aldi Local in Balham, south London, may be copied across the UK if it is successful The Aldi Local in Balham, south London, follows the success of smaller Aldi supermarkets on several high streets in the capital. The German-owned discount chain denies its move into convenience stores is designed to compete directly with Tesco Express and Sainsburys Local. But experts suggest the move is a real threat to Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Morrisons. The convenience store market is worth 33.6billion in the UK and it is growing at a faster pace than the overall grocery sector. The supermarket aims to offer foods for people to grab on their way home from work Two anonymous individuals have filed court documents to keep details related to Jeffrey Epstein (pictured in an arrest photo from 2006) from ever becoming public, citing privacy concerns Two anonymous individuals are fighting to keep details related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex crime scandal from ever becoming public, citing their own privacy concerns. The details they want to remain private are contained in documents that were part of a lawsuit brought by alleged sex slave Virginia L. Giuffre (now Roberts) against Epstein-friend Ghislaine Maxwell, who Giuffre has accused of aiding Epstein, 66, in sex trafficking. That lawsuit was settled in May of 2017, but now an appeals court has indicated it would make filings from the case with lurid details about Epstein's sex acts, and those of others, public, after the trial court judge refused to do so. Maxwell and two others going only by 'John Doe' and 'J. Doe' argue that keeping the documents sealed, or at least covering up names and personal information of other people not named as a party in the lawsuit, is necessary to protect people 'whose privacy and reputations may be jeopardized,' according to court documents obtained by DailyMail.com. Giuffre, however, argues the documents 'should be immediately unsealed,' stating that '[m]ost of the materials do nothing more than demonstrate her [Maxwell's] role as a lynchpin in an international sex trafficking organization.' Giuffre is joined by three other parties in arguing for the release of the documents, including the Miami Herald. The documents were filed in alleged sex slave Virginia Giuffre's lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, a friend of Epstein's, which was settled in May of 2017. Virginia Giuffre (now Roberts) is pictured holding a photo of herself at age 16, when she says Palm Beach multimillionaire Epstein began abusing her sexually Giuffre is pictured in 2011, three years after Epstein took a plea deal Epstein had a Palm Beach, Florida, mansion and has been accused by alleged victims of bringing at least 40 underage girls for what turned into sexual encounters. Authorities said he had female fixers who would look for suitable girls, some local and others recruited from Eastern Europe and other parts of the world. Epstein took a controversial plea deal in 2008 which allowed him to avoid federal charges by pleading guilty to a lesser, single state charge of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. He served 13 months in custody, paid financial settlements to victims and registered as a sex offender. Now, Giuffre is fighting to unseal documents which she said 'prove the truth' that she was sex trafficked by Epstein with the help of Maxwell. Giuffre's attorney has said documents, which are part of a motion for summary judgment in her 2017 settled lawsuit against Epstein's alleged right-hand woman, are focused solely on Maxwell, and not on other individuals, so privacy concerns are not an issue. A motion for summary judgment is a motion for the court to decide a case before a trial ever begins. It generally will include what one party considers to be the facts of the case, and the other party will have a chance to respond with his or her own version of the truth. 'The summary judgment filings focused solely on whether Ms. Maxwell was an essential co-conspirator in Epstein's international sex trafficking organization,' the filing read. 'It may be "embarrassing" for Ms. Maxwell to have the world know the scope of her involvement in the trafficking of underage girls intentionally for sexual purposes. But her involvement in a criminal enterprise does not remotely approach legitimate ground for sealing.' Ghislaine Maxwell (left), and now two people referred to as 'John Doe' and 'J. Doe' are arguing the documents should remain under seal to protect the privacy of people who have not been implicated in Epstein's (right) alleged sex crimes publicly, up to this point Giuffre argues that all personally identifying information of anyone besides Maxwell can be removed from the documents before they are made public. Former federal prosecutor Nick Lewin on behalf of a 'John Doe,' and Washington-based gender equality attorney Kerrie Campbell on behalf of a 'J. Doe,' have now joined Maxwell in fighting to keep whatever is stated in those documents a secret. According to Lewin, US District Court Judge Robert Sweet, who presided over the lawsuit, described the documents as including 'a range of allegations of sexual acts involving Plaintiff [Giuffre] and non-parties to this litigation, some famous, some not,' as well as 'the identities of non-parties who either allegedly engaged in sexual acts with Plaintiff or who allegedly facilitated such act[s].' Sweet said about the case, 'This defamation action from its inception in September 2015 to its settlement in May 2017 has been bitterly contested and difficult to administer because of the truth or falsity of the allegations concerning the intimate, sexual, and private conduct of the parties and of third persons, some prominent, some private.' Lewin is now arguing that to make the documents public as a whole 'will almost certainly disclose... allegations that may be the product of false statements or, perhaps, simply mistake, confusion, or failing memories of events alleged to have occurred over a decade and half ago.' Campbell said her client, J. Doe, is 'objecting to public disclosure of specific content pertaining to Doe to protect compelling personal privacy interests.' The filing was initially kept private by Judge Sweet with the understanding that they would become public at the time of trial, according to Giuffre's attorney. But there never was, and never will be a trial, because the lawsuit settled in May of 2017. It was three other parties seeking to make the documents public that resulted in Judge Sweet ruling they should remain private, Politico reported. Harvard law professor and former Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who is now a prominent Trump defender, along with filmmaker and far-right social media personality Mike Cernovich, and the Miami Herald, each asked the judge to unseal the filings. Dershowitz said he wanted the records made public to discredit allegations made by two women that he had sex with them at Epsteins direction, which Dershowitz has denied. Cernovich argued for the release because he said the continued secrecy has undermined efforts to expose sexual trafficking by the wealthiest Americans. The Miami Herald asked the judge to make all records pertaining to the case public for inclusion in reporting on Epstein, which was published without the documents last year. After Judge Sweet denied all three requests, a panel of three judges on New York's US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard arguments in favor of unlocking whatever secrets were contained within the files. That appellate court indicated that it would make the documents public soon, and set a deadline of Tuesday for anyone to come forward with specific reasons as to why the documents should remain under seal. Giuffre has stated that redacting information like names, social security numbers and the like of third parties would not be difficult and so it should not be an argument against releasing the documents. 'Ms. Giuffre wants the summary judgment materials unsealed to demonstrate that she was sexually trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to their powerful friends, both in this country and overseas,' Giuffre's filing reads. 'Indeed, Ms. Giuffre continues to suffer prejudice from every day that Ms. Maxwell succeeds in delaying that disclosure.' Meanwhile, in a separate lawsuit brought by alleged victims of Epstein, US District Judge Kenneth Marra ruled in February that federal prosecutors in Florida violated the rights of victims by secretly reaching a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein related to the accusations that he sexually abusing dozens of underage girls. The plea deal that Jeffrey Epstein agreed to back in 2008 saved the accused child rapist from having to register as a sex offender in 31 of 50 states. The Washington Post reports that the victim who Epstein admitted to soliciting for prostitution was not the 14-year-old girl who first reported the millionaire money manager, but rather another girl, 16, whose age was left blank on court documents. That victim's age means that Epstein did not have to register as a sex offender in states like New Mexico, where he owns a 7,600-acre property called Zorro Ranch, and allows him to be classified as a low risk offender in the US Virgin Islands, which is currently his primary residence. Marra said in a 33-page decision that victims of Epstein should have been consulted under federal law about the deal. Marra stopped short of invalidating the non-prosecution agreement but asked prosecutors and victims' lawyers to recommend how to move forward. 'While the government spent untold hours negotiating the terms and implications of the (agreement) with Epstein's attorneys, scant information was shared with victims,' Marra wrote. 'Instead, the victims were told to be '"patient" while the investigation proceeded.' The law, Marra added, 'lends itself to only one interpretation; namely, that victims should be notified of significant events resulting in resolution of their case without a trial.' 'They were cutting a plea deal. It wasnt a prosecution,' said attorney Spencer Kuvin, who represented the 14-year-old girl who alerted police. 'They had a grab bag of 40 girls to choose from.' He then revealed that he and his client believed they had been the victim referenced in the plea deal. 'Its unbelievably upsetting,' said Kuvin. 'The rug has been swiped out from under the one girl who was brave enough to come forward and break this thing.' Epstein reached the deal in 2008 with then-Miami US Attorney Alexander Acosta's office to end the federal probe that could have landed him in prison for life. Epstein instead pleaded guilty to lesser state charges, spent 13 months in prison, registered as a sex offender and paid financial settlements to alleged victims. Meanwhile, in a separate lawsuit brought by victims of Epstein, US District Judge Kenneth Marra ruled in February that federal prosecutors in Florida violated the rights of victims by secretly reaching a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein related to the accusations that he sexually abusing dozens of underage girls. Epstein reached the deal in 2008 with then-Miami US Attorney Alexander Acosta's office to end the federal probe that could have landed him in prison for life. Epstein instead pleaded guilty to lesser state charges, spent 13 months in prison, paid financial settlements to victims and is a registered sex offender. Acosta (right), is now President Donald Trump's (left) labor secretary Acosta, now President Donald Trump's labor secretary, has defended the deal as appropriate given what prosecutors knew and could prove at the time, especially with many victims allegedly reluctant to testify. Marra said in his ruling he was not passing judgment on whether the deal should have been struck, only that victims' rights were violated. Bradley Edwards, attorney for two of the alleged victims who brought the lawsuit, said the decision should mean the non-prosecution agreement is thrown out - possibly exposing Epstein to federal charges once again. The agreement also granted immunity to anyone who assisted Epstein in finding the underage girls or concealing the abuse. 'Rather than work to correct the injustices done to the victims, the government spent 10 years defending its own improper conduct,' Edwards said in an email. 'It is time for the government to work with the victims, and not against them, to hold everyone who committed these crimes accountable.' The Miami US attorney's office declined comment at the time of the ruling on February 21. The Justice Department, however, recently opened a separate investigation into the handling of the Epstein case to determine whether prosecutors committed professional misconduct. US Senator Ben Sasse, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Oversight Subcommittee, said in a prepared statement that the Justice Department should reopen its non-prosecution agreement so Epstein and anyone else who abused these children are held accountable. 'Jeffrey Epstein is a monster and his victims deserve justice,' Sasse said. 'I'm relieved that the court agrees that it was wrong to hide this child rapist's pathetically soft deal from his victims, in violation of federal law. The fact that it's taken this long to get this far is heartbreaking and infuriating.' Earlier in February, the Labor Department run by Acosta issued a statement saying the secretary welcomes the Justice Department probe. Before the scandal initially broke in the late 2000s, Epstein was friends with Trump and had visited his Mar-a-Lago resort. Trump at the time told interviewers that Epstein was 'a great guy.' Epstein (left) and Trump (right) are pictured at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida in 1997 Records also show former President Bill Clinton flew on Epstein's jet more than two dozen times on various philanthropic trips. Neither Trump nor Clinton have been implicated in any wrongdoing. Clinton is pictured delivering a speech in Washington DC on September 13, 2000 'For more than a decade, this prosecution has been reviewed in great detail by newspaper articles, television reports, books, and congressional testimony,' the statement said, adding that 'the actions taken were in accordance with department practices, procedures, and the law.' Marra ordered on March 13 that the US Justice Department and the victims' attorneys decide by May 10 how they want to proceed with the case. Marra had initially set a March 8 deadline but agreed to move it back after federal prosecutors in Atlanta took over the case. Before the scandal initially broke in the late 2000s, Epstein was friends with Trump and had visited his Mar-a-Lago resort. Trump at the time told interviewers that Epstein was 'a great guy.' Records also show former President Bill Clinton flew on Epstein's jet more than two dozen times on various philanthropic trips. Neither Trump nor Clinton have been implicated in any wrongdoing. Tory MPs last night reacted with fury to Theresa May's attempt to blame Parliament for the Brexit impasse. They condemned the Prime Minister for saying that the public wanted MPs to get on with it but Parliament had 'done everything possible to avoid making a choice'. Her speech was labelled 'toxic' while one MP even suggested it could incite attacks on parliamentarians. Others added that it lacked any significant update for the public. Sam Gyimah, who resigned from the Cabinet over Mrs May's deal in November, said: 'Resorting to the "blame game" as the PM is doing is a low blow. All part of her strategy to run down the clock and rule out other options. Toxic.' Tory MPs last night reacted with fury to Theresa May's (pictured in the Commons during yesterday's PMQs) attempt to blame Parliament for the Brexit impasse Ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: 'Why are we on bended knee to the EU begging for things we don't need? 'Next week should be a simple choice between her deal and No Deal. If it isn't then it will be a national humiliation.' Andrea Jenkyns added: 'As usual another statement saying very little. PM says she regrets having to delay. Then don't do it.' Nick Boles, one of the MPs to have tabled amendments to the Brexit withdrawal agreement in a bid to scupper Mrs May's deal, claimed the speech was typical of the Prime Minister. He said: 'Has anyone ever learned anything from a speech by Theresa May? How come everyone is so surprised?' Labour MP Wes Streeting said: 'I've thought long and hard before saying this, but Theresa May knows that MPs across the House are subjected to death threats some very credible. Her speech was labelled 'toxic' while one MP even suggested it could incite attacks on parliamentarians Sam Gyimah (left) and Nick Boles (right) were among the Tory MPs who hit out at the Prime Minister 'Her speech was incendiary and irresponsible. If any harm comes to any of us, she will have to accept her share of responsibility.' Meanwhile Tory backbench Brexiteers publicly demanded Mrs May resign. Despite her speech being seen as a win for Tory Brexiteer Cabinet ministers, Nigel Evans said that unless Mrs May could deliver a swift departure from the EU, it was time for her to 'move on'. Nadine Dorries said her deal would pass the Commons easily if she agreed to step down as Prime Minister. And Peter Bone accused her of 'betraying' the public by pushing Brexit beyond March 29. The comments come amid widespread anger, from both hardline Brexiteers and Remainers, after the Prime Minister wrote to Brussels to request an extension of Article 50 to the end of June. Mr Evans, MP for Ribble Valley, told BBC News: 'She has failed and I think there are now big question marks as to whether she should be allowed to carry on.' Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (pictured), a women's rights campaigner from Wiltshire, was accused of committing a hate crime by Susie Green, whose daughter Jackie, 25, transitioned after turning 16 A second woman has been questioned over 'transphobic' posts made on social media, following complaints from the mother of the youngest Briton to transition. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, a women's rights campaigner from Wiltshire, was accused of committing a hate crime by Susie Green, whose daughter Jackie, 25, transitioned after turning 16. The 44-year-old was alleged to have made a number of transphobic comments on Twitter last year, and was questioned by officers from West Yorkshire Police following a complaint from Ms Green. And then she was later interviewed by Wiltshire Police following two You-Tube clips in which she criticised Ms Green for supporting her daughter's transition, as revealed by The Daily Telegraph today. The news comes after Caroline Farrow, a broadcaster and writer for Roman Catholic newspapers, revealed on Tuesday that she was being investigated by Surrey Police after allegedly calling Ms Green's daughter a 'he' on Twitter. The first case against Ms Keen-Minshull, who has labelled the investigations a 'waste of time', was closed with no further action taken. And speaking to The Daily Telegraph, claimed she was entitled to her comments on YouTube, saying: 'I think it is outrageous that police are wasting valuable time investigating people because their views might not be liked. It is McCarthyist and it is terribly frightening.' Jackie Green (right) formally Jack, had a sex change after turning 16. She is the daughter of Susie Green (left) who appeared on Good Morning Britain alongside Caroline Farrow Caroline Farrow (right) had appeared alongside Susie Green (left) in September 2018 to discuss Girl Guiding policies. But tweets after their appearance sparked a row Ms Keen-Minshull, of the charity Standing Up For Women, previously came under fire when in September last year she raised 700 for a billboard with the definition of a woman written on it to be set up in Liverpool. The poster, on the side of the old Gaumont cinema on Gredington Street in Toxteth, Liverpool, bore the Google definition of a woman 'adult human female.' But it was removed after Dr Adrian Harrop, 31, who is not transgender, complained to billboard company Primesight that it would serve to make transgender women feel unsafe. Ms Green today revealed that she plans to withdraw her complaint to police about Ms Farrow because she fears the row is giving the broadcaster and writer 'a platform'. Feminist blogger Kellie-Jay Keen- Minshull (pictured) raised 700 for the poster to be put up in Liverpool for a fortnight The row began over tweets posted after they appeared on TV together last year - and has since sparked a row over whether police should be spending time examining tweets rather than pumping more resources into tackling violence and theft. Ms Green told the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire: 'Every day, people misgender my daughter online, that wasn't uncommon. What was uncommon was that this was a journalist who had a public platform, who used that to send very malicious and nasty messages. 'It's not just the misgendering, it's actually the context that she puts it into and that she calls me a child abuser... it's also the stuff around mutilation and castration. It was the really damaging things she said about me.' Ms Green was asked whether she thought that, though upsetting, the tweets were a matter for police. Jackie (left) and her mother Susie (right) pictured at their home in Leeds shortly after Jackie had the operation Jackie Green (pictured above) had previously appeared on This Morning to discuss her place at the Miss England finals She said that was up to the police and prosecutors, but as the founder of a charity which advises others to report hate crime, she felt she should report it. Adding that she is now withdrawing her complaint, she said: 'If I had continued my complaint then Caroline Farrow would have continued to have a platform to spread misinformation about what actually happened. Being involved in an investigation would have meant that I couldn't talk.' The original tweets posted by Ms Farrow on October 4 were read out on air yesterday. One stated: 'What she [Susie Green] did is illegal. She mutilated him by having him castrated and rendered sterile while still a child.' Another tweet accused Ms Green and her charity of 'child abuse'. Ms Farrow tweeted on Wednesday morning: 'All I have been told by Surrey Police that I 'misgendered Susie Green's daughter'. In 2012 her daughter Jackie Green made history when she became the first transgender Miss England finalist. Jackie, who was born Jack and spent her childhood trying to persuade her parents she had been born in to the wrong body, said: 'I knew from the start that I was a girl, it was just actually having the vocabulary to make people understand. Jackie Green (left) and her mother Susie (right). Jackie had previously said that at the age of four she told her mother that she should have been born a girl Jackie was born Jack (left as a baby) and her mother Susie is now a transgender activist (Susie and Jackie as a baby pictured right on Susie's wedding day) Jackie Green pictured as a youngster before surgery. She said she always insisted on wearing girls clothing and growing her hair Jackie (formerly Jack) is pictured above wearing a patterned dress with a fringe cut. Jackie had told her mother that she should have been born a girl Susie and Jackie (pictured above) the pair enjoyed a holiday to Thailand before Jackie had her operation 'I would have had the surgery at five years old if I could. After the surgery it felt like starting life for the first time. 'Loads of kids go through stages, some people go down the transgender route and then change their minds, mostly because they don't have the support of their family. 'At primary school I dressed as a boy for the majority of the time. The kids understood and just took it in their stride. 'But secondary school was horrible. I was being spat on, being beaten up and called so many different names. The parents were the worst. 'I was prescribed 'blockers' by a doctor in Boston when was I was twelve. It basically paused puberty and it saved my life. I would have killed myself. I wouldn't have been able to cope.' When Jackie was aged just four she told her mother Susan: 'God has made a mistake, I should be a girl.' Jackie (pictured on Instagram above) was the real life inspiration for a drama starring Anna Friel called Butterly which charted the transition of a boy to a girl Jackie (centre) had the support of her mother Susie (right) and her father (left) Trapped in a body she hated, Jackie first overdosed aged 11 and made six more suicide attempts before she was 15. Medicines were locked in a safe and knives had to be hidden away. She threatened to mutilate her genitals. And so, aged 16, Jackie Green became the youngest person in the world to undergo transgender surgery. She said:'Without that surgery, I wouldn't be here now. 'I'm a girl, I always have been there's never been any doubt in my mind about that. It's just that my body didn't match because, as far as I'm concerned, I had a birth defect.' Carole and Michael Middleton leave The Goring Hotel in London after their daughter Kate's wedding in April 2011 The party supplies company run by the Duchess of Cambridge's mother has dismissed some of its staff amid fears for its future, it was claimed last night. Party Pieces, run by Carole Middleton, is said to have laid off at least three of its staff on Wednesday and a fourth worker was told they were at risk, although there were claims up to half of staff members were let go. The abrupt dismissals come months after three warehouse employees were laid off before Christmas. The company's web designer, PR agent and 'search engine optimisation' employee were among the recent firings. A shocked source told The Sun: 'There is a terrible air of doom and gloom about the place.' The firm, whose slogan is 'magical parties for over 30 years', says on its website it has 40 staff 'as well as a dedicated customer service team'. The company offices of Party Pieces are located on a farm in Berkshire, pictured in 2012 Mrs Middleton, 64, set up the firm with husband Michael, 69, in 1987 and has publicly credited her children Kate, Pippa and James for helping grow the business. On the company's website, Mrs Middleton wrote: 'It's always been a family business and all the children have played a part. The Duchess of Cambridge at an outing in January, she told students at King's College London of her 'entrepreneurial background' James established our personalised photo cakes, Catherine started the 1st birthday side of the business, and Pippa developed the Party Pieces blog.' Another source told The Sun: 'There wasn't so much as a Christmas tree or festive decorations in the office. Morale is at rock bottom.' James' company, Boomf, which prints Instagram photos on marshmallows, recorded losses of 3 million between 2015 to 2018. The company, reportedly worth about 30 million, has almost exclusively funded the family's upper-middle-class lifestyle. The family own a secluded, seven-bedroomed, Grade II listed mansion in the village of Bucklebury, in Berkshire. They sent the future Queen and her siblings to preparatory schools and Malborough College, where the yearly fee for a day pupil then ranged from 13,000 to 19,000 a year. The revelations come as Kate paid tribute to her 'entrepreneurial' parents during a visit with the Queen to King's College on Wednesday. The Duchess told two university students: 'I come from an entrepreneurial background and my parents started their own business so I'm all for it! The disclosures could prove humiliating for Mrs Middleton after she recently celebrated the company's 30th birthday last year with two high-profile media interviews. James Middleton arrives for the 20th GQ Men of the Year Award at Komische Oper in November in Berlin, Germany The grandmother to the future King broke a 15-year silence to give interviews to The Daily Telegraph and Good Housekeeping Magazine. Mrs Middleton, 64, set up the firm with her husband Michael, 69, in 1987 She told Good Housekeeping that she still turns to her children for advice on the business. 'Because they [the children] all grew up with me working, Party Pieces has been very much part of our lives and what we talked about. 'I still ask their advice and say 'What do you think of this?' The company began when the family returned to the UK from Jordan, where Mr Middleton had been managing an international air station for British Airways. Mrs Middleton initially ran the business from her kitchen and enlisted a young James to model its clothes. The Duchess of Cambridge also modelled for the firm's catalogue as a child. As it grew, the firm moved to a business unit in Hungerford, close to the family home in Berkshire. The move prompted Mr Middleton to join the business full-time, resigning his job with BA. Mrs Middleton revealed her excitement at apparently capturing what was then a niche in the market. Pippa Middleton is seen walking her baby Arthur Michael William in Chelsea earlier this month In an interview serialised over two days, she told The Daily Telegraph: 'We were pretty much the only ones doing this sort of thing when we started. 'It was really clear almost from the start that this was going to work. 'I got help from other mums paperwork and that kind of thing I think it's easier to start a business when you're young. 'You're less aware of the pitfalls and maybe you have less of a lifestyle to lose. 'Running a business is very simple: you buy things and sell them for a profit'. She vowed to continue running the business, adding: 'I don't see myself stopping [work]. If I did I'd have to have so many projects on. I'd have to redecorate the house. I'd love to travel, but then I'd miss the grandchildren. 'I've got a billion ideas I still want to do.' She hinted the family business kept her sane amid her busy life as a relative of the Royal family, adding: 'I have two other children and grandchildren and my job, and I lead a lot of my life round here, where I've lived for years and people knew me before Catherine's impact. It isn't normal maybe to go to Louis' christening or Catherine's wedding, but, in the end, they're all family events.' A Party Pieces spokesperson told The Sun it was 'working on an exciting development partnership'. It added: 'The company's structure is being reviewed to align with its financial targets, in consultation with staff.' For the Maronite patriarch the issue of Syrian refugees represents a "real danger". Fr. Paul: the "great fear" of the Lebanese is that they are "abandoned" while the country is experiencing a situation of profound economic and social crisis. Almost 40% of the population lives below the poverty line. Beirut (AsiaNews) - The "risk" is that Syrian refugees "will become like Palestinians, abandoned for decades" on Lebanese territory. This "is the great fear" of the majority of the citizens of the land of the Cedars, who "are close to those who need" but, at the same time, "cannot solve all of the problems and are themselves experiencing great suffering, says Fr. Paul Karam, president of Caritas Lebanon. For over seven years he has been on the front line in aiding Syrian families fleeing the war. In the past, the priest has repeatedly warned about the danger of a serious economic, political and social crisis for the country. The words of the Caritas director follow the alarm launched also by the Maronite patriarch, Card Beshara Rai, who, echoing the warning of President Michel Aoun. Both have called the Syrian refugee crisis "a real danger" for Lebanon. "We cannot wait - the prelate said - for a political solution in Syria to launch this process, as the political leaders themselves involved in the destruction caused by the war in Syria would like". For the Maronite patriarch and for the Lebanese president it is not possible to link the question of the return of refugees to a political solution to the Syrian crisis, a nation in which war persist and which is still far from a return to political and institutional progress. The refugee emergency (almost two million in the midst of the crisis, compared to a population of 4.4) risks collapsing the entire social and economic system in Lebanon, weighing unsustainably on infrastructure. Furthermore, analysts and experts fear the risk of an increase in radicalization among those hosted in reception centers in conditions of absolute precariousness. World Bank sources say that the Syrian crisis would have pushed at least 200,000 Lebanese beyond the poverty line, adding to the one million already present. "The problem - explains Fr. Paul Karam - is that Lebanon is a small country and there is not enough space to accommodate a number of refugees representing about a third of the total population. The situation is very precarious, this economic and social crisis cannot be sustained for long without a collapse . This emergency, adds the President of Caritas Lebanon, touches "the economic, the infrastructural aspect" of a nation that "can no longer bear such a great weight". Then there is the problem of education: "We - says the priest - have fielded several initiatives for the education of children in refugee camps, but the structures can no longer hold up." From the beginning of the crisis, he adds, "little has changed. They have said that some people have returned to Syria, but we also know that they are forced to flee again and cross the border, to return to Lebanon . The political problem, he warns, "must be separated from the war, otherwise we risk ending up like the Palestinian refugees who have spent over 60 years" in the country. "The Lebanese population is very generous and has demonstrated this in the service given to refugees and the international community, paying the burden of destruction on their own backs." "We need a solution - concludes Fr. Paul - because needs increase as aid gradually decreases over time. The population is becoming impoverished, so much so that almost 40% is below the poverty line and the social and humanitarian damage is enormous . NHS sites use advertising technology which tells Google when people search for advice on issues such as HIV, mental health or abortions, it has been claimed. Analysis found nine out of ten government websites from across the EU sent data on peoples browsing habits to Google and Facebook, The Times reported last night. Search trackers, known as cookies, help businesses target users online depending on what they have searched for previously. Google and Facebook get data from NHS websites that give users advice on HIV and abortion, it has been claimed Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright has pledged to investigate trackers and clamp down on the advertising industry. Researchers from online analysts Cookiebot searched for sensitive health issues and found 60 per cent of UK pages had ad trackers. The so-called cookies were found on NHS pages for questions including I have HIV, now what? and I want to terminate my pregnancy. Johnny Ryan, of Brave, a browser which uses software to block ad trackers, said the research is a call to action for governments, and that companies must be stopped from inserting themselves between the citizen and the state. Kate Osamor (pictured above) previously said she was stepping down from the party to support her family A disgraced Labour MP who resigned from the shadow cabinet over her sons drug conviction has expressed her solidarity with a member kicked out of the party following an anti-Semitism row. Kate Osamor, 50, stood down as the partys international development spokesman after it emerged she had lied about her involvement in the trial of her son Ishmael. She has now defended former party member Marc Wadsworth by saying she feels he has been through a very difficult time, the Times reported last night. Mr Wadsworth was expelled from the party in 2016 after accusing Jewish Labour MP Ruth Smeeth of working hand-in-hand with the right-wing media at the launch of a report into fighting anti-Semitism in the party. In a speech at a conference on Saturday, Mr Wadsworth criticised the media for peddling fake news in its reporting of his case. Later he was in the audience at the Media Democracy Festival in London when he asked Miss Osamor about abuse suffered by MPs, to which she replied: I send my solidarity to you, because you have personally been through a very difficult time. Kate Osamor had quit her role following the conviction of her son Ishmael Osamor (pictured above) who was sentenced to community service Marc Wadsworth (pictured above) was suspended from the Labour Party following a complaint of anti-semitism against him Mr Wadsworth later wrote on Twitter that he was heartened by her comments. He added that she had reinforced my point about unprecedented online and MSM (sic) abuse that MPs such as Diane Abbott had suffered. Conservative MP Andrew Percy, who is also vice-chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel, called her comments a staggering example of the casual approach to anti-Semitic racism at the top of todays Labour Party. He added: Sadly, we all know that nothing will be done and brave Labour MPs like Ruth Smeeth will continue to be subjected to hateful abuse for simply standing up for decency and against hate. Marc Wadsworth had accused Ruth Smeeth (pictured above) as working hand-in-hand with the right wing media Friends of Miss Osamor told the paper that she made the controversial remarks because Mr Wadsworth looked poorly and it made her concerned. The pair have known each other for more than thirty years. They added that she was not talking directly about the scandal which resulted in Mr Wadsworth being removed from the party. Miss Osamor made the comments while taking part in a panel alongside fellow Labour MP Clive Lewis. Only Fools and Horses star John Challis has backed plans to have a statue of Del Boy outside Nelson Mandela house. Harlech Tower in Acton, West London, was used to portray Nelson Mandela House, the home of the Trotters - despite the comedy set 13 miles away in Peckham, south-east London. But in January plans emerged to have it demolished as part of a 650 million regeneration of the area which will see more than 3,500 homes built. John Challis who played sniggering, cigar smoking wheeler-dealer Boycie in the beloved UK comedy, is backing a petition from comedy channel Gold for a statue of the iconic character, played by Sir David Jason. Mr Challis said: 'The tower carries a lot of nostalgia for many of us - not just the cast, but everyone who has enjoyed watching the show over the years. British Actors Lennard Pearce; David Jason And Nicholas Lyndhurst, who played Grandad, Del Boy and Rodney in the popular TV series An artist's impression of a gold statue of Only Fools and Horses' character Del Boy Trotter (left) or gold Morris Minor (right) that could be installed in west London to commemorate Harlech Tower, which portrayed Nelson Mandela House in the sitcom's opening credits John Challis, who played Boycie, has backed calls for a statue at Nelson Mandela house to commemorate Only Fools and Horses 'While we don't want to stand in the way of any progress being made, we do want to commemorate the tower's long-standing connection to Only Fools And Horses and its British comedy legacy. 'Join me in signing Gold's online petition calling for a plaque or Del Boy statue to be installed on site to celebrate the famous block.' The TV channel has shared the initial designs, which include a shiny gold statue. They have also mocked up a golden version of Del Boy's car, and a plaque that reads: 'This plaque commemorates Nelson Mandela House, the much loved home of Derek & Rodney Trotter in 'Only Fools And Horses', 1981 - 2003.' The petition needs 1,500 signatures to be submitted for Ealing Council's consideration. In January, Sir David said he thinks the tower building should be 'listed' and that it is a 'shame' to see it knocked down. The FBI has joined the criminal investigation into the certification of the Boeing Cos 737 MAX, the Seattle Times reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. This comes after Reuters reported that federal prosecutors and the U.S. Department of Transportation are scrutinizing the development of the 737 MAX jetliners in the wake of two deadly crashes in five months. The Department of Justice has issued a number of subpoenas as part of the investigation into the Federal Aviation Administrations certification and marketing of the companys 737 Max planes, CNN is reporting. Investigators have requested that the company turn over information about safety and certification procedures, including training manuals for pilots. They also want to examine how Boeing marketed the aircraft, sources told CNN. A worker walks next to a Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane parked at Boeing Field in Seattle on Thursday Investigators with the U.S. National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) look over debris at the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 on March 12, 2019 in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. The federal government is scrutinizing Boeing's rollout of the 737 Max 8 - the model which crashed More than 300 MAX passenger jets have been taken out of service globally following a fatal plane crash in Ethiopia nine days ago. An FBI spokeswoman would neither confirm nor deny an investigation. A Boeing spokesman did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Boeing's ill-fated 737 MAX and federal regulators next week will face the first public grilling by Congress over the two fatal plane crashes in recent months. Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, called for a hearing of the Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation and Space, for March 27, with three transportation officials, notably the acting head of the FAA. Cruz intends to hold a second hearing to question Boeing officials as well as pilots and others in the industry, according to the statement. More than 300 people perished in the two crashes of 737 MAX 8s that occurred shortly after takeoff in Indonesia in October and in Ethiopia earlier this month. Boeing and the FAA are under investigation for how the rollout of the jet was handled, especially the a new flight system, the MCAS stall-prevention system, which was implicated in the Lion Air crash in October. Pilots have complained they were not informed about the new system, which can force the nose of the plane down if it gets an erroneous reading from a sensor making it appear the plane is at risk of stalling. The committee will hear next week from FAA acting chief Daniel Elwell, as well as the Transportation Department's chief investigator, Calvin Scovel, and National Transportation Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt. The FAA said Wednesday it will review the information from the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder from the Ethiopian Airlines accident as it becomes available. Understanding the circumstances that contributed to this accident is critical in developing further actions and returning aircraft to service, the FAA said. Military-style semi-automatic assault rifles have been banned in New Zealand under new laws following the Christchurch mosque attack. The country will also ban assault rifles, high capacity magazines, and certain modification parts.` New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced the ban on Thursday, following the attack that killed 50 at two mosques in the city on Friday. 'In short, every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country,' she said. 'We are confident as a government that the vast majority of New Zealanders will support this change.' An amnesty would be put in place for the weapons to be handed in, with a buyback scheme to be announced soon, at an estimated cost of $NZ100 million to $NZ200 million. More than 70,000 people called for the guns to be banned in a petition to the government. New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced the ban on Thursday afternoon, following the attack that killed 50 at two mosques in the city on Friday There are an estimated 1.5 million firearms in New Zealand - roughly one for every three citizens and more than double the rate in Australia. Under the old law pest control was legally considered a reason to own a military-style semi-automatic weapon and there were no restrictions on the number of guns or ammunition a person could own. 'On March 15 our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too. We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place,' Ms Ardern said. 'Cabinet agreed to overhaul the law when it met on Monday, 72 hours after the horrific terrorism act in Christchurch. The prime minister added that an amnesty would be held to allow people to hand in the banned weapons, as well as a buyback scheme. Police and the military, as well as pest control workers and some sportsmen and women, will be granted exemptions from the law. 'To owners who have legitimate uses for their guns, I want to reiterate that the actions being announced today are not because of you, and are not directed at you. Our actions, on behalf of all New Zealanders, are directed at making sure this never happens again,' Ms Ardern added. Facebook left the video of the New Zealand mosque mass shooting on its site for an hour before it was taken down, it has been revealed. A live stream of the terror attack in which 50 worshipers were gunned down was left on the social media site for half an hour after it was flagged by a user, it has been reported. The 17-minute live broadcast by the gunman began at 1.33pm, according to data from Facebook and the New Zealand police. At 2.02pm, 12 minutes after the live stream finished, a user flagged the content to Facebook. But the clip was not removed from the platform until a few minutes after the social media giant was alerted to the video by police at 2.29pm, the Wall Street Journal reports. New Zealand police told the newspaper this timeline was approximately correct, while Facebook declined to comment. The social media site has been widely accused of not acting quickly enough to take down the gunman's live stream video of the attack in Christchurch that left 50 people dead, allowing it to spread rapidly online. Facebook has said its AI systems failed to detect the live broadcast of the shooting at Al Noor mosque (pictured) in Christchurch New Zealand last Friday, in which 50 people were killed Thousands of people were expected to come together for an emotional Friday prayer service led by the imam of one of the two New Zealand mosques where 50 worshippers were killed in a white supremacist attack on Friday March 15 Facebook said that its artificial intelligence systems failed to automatically detect the shooting video, an executive of the social media giant confirmed. Facebook's vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen, responded to the criticism in a blog post yesterday, saying 'this particular video did not trigger our automatic detection systems.' Facebook confirmed it did not get any reports of the video until after it ended and so it was not prioritized for removal. Rosen's statement added: 'During the entire live broadcast, we did not get a single user report. 'This matters because reports we get while a video is broadcasting live are prioritized for accelerated review. 'We recognize that the immediacy of Facebook Live brings unique challenges, and in the past few years weve focused on enabling our review team to get to the most important videos faster.' One reason is because artificial intelligence systems are trained with large volumes of similar content, but in this case there was not enough because such attacks are rare. New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (pictured hugging a worshipper at the Kilbirnie Mosque) has announced a new ban on sales of military style semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines Rosen said another challenge is in getting artificial intelligence to tell the difference between this and 'visually similar, innocuous content,' such as live-streamed video games. New Zealand authorities moved quickly to try and stop the spread of the shooter's video, warning that anyone sharing the footage faced prosecution. Authorities said they are 'actively investigating' those who have shared the material and two people have already been charged. Businessman Philip Neville Arps, 44, appeared in a Christchurch court yesterday after allegedly copying the live-stream of the mass killings and distributing it on Saturday. He was charged with two counts of violating New Zealand's 1993 Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act by distributing an 'objectionable publication'. A teenager also faces the same charges for allegedly re-posting the footage. Meanwhile Britain's Metropolitan Police has said that spreading footage of the attack 'may result in a criminal investigation'. Facebook is now 'looking to understand how online platforms... were used to circulate horrific videos of the terrorist attack,' Rosen said. Mourners lay flowers near the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (pictured) has again screened clips of a video taken by the Christchurch mosque gunman, a day before the foreign minister of New Zealand - which is trying to stop its use - is due in Turkey According to the blog post, nobody flagged the video to Facebook's moderation service during the live broadcast, with the first user report on the original footage coming in 29 minutes after it started and 12 minutes after it ended. In those 12 minutes, a user on 8chan had made a copy of the video and re-posted it on the file-sharing website. The 17-minute video, which was viewed about 4,000 times in total before being removed from Facebook, showed the suspect wielding at least two rifles and spraying terrified worshippers with bullets. New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday announced that the government was immediately banning sales of military style semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines like those used in last Friday's attacks. Owners of such assault weapons or attachments must report them to the government in the next two days before turning them in. Anyone found to still have a banned weapon after an initial amnesty period could be prosecuted. The man arrested in the attacks had purchased his weapons legally and enhanced their capacity by using 30-round magazines 'done easily through a simple online purchase.' President Erdogan delivers a speech during a campaign rally on Thursday. He used both the Christchurch gunman's video and his 'manifesto' to attack his opposition leader ahead of the March 31 local elections Meanwhile Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan again employed the gruesome video an election campaign prop despite criticism from New Zealand authorities. On election trail for a March 31 local vote, Erdogan projected the video and repeatedly referenced the attack, saying it targeted Islam and Turkey. The gunman's so-called 'manifesto' mentions Turkey and the minarets of Istanbul's landmark Hagia Sophia, now a museum, that was once a church before becoming a mosque during the Ottoman empire. New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters protested on Monday that politicisation of the massacre 'imperils the future and safety of the New Zealand people and our people abroad, and it's totally unfair'. At a rally in the northwestern city of Eskisehir, Erdogan again showed both the video and the so-called manifesto in order to attack the main opposition party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu who had warned against 'terrorism rooted in the Islamic world.' Erdogan compared Kilicdaroglu to far-right Australian senator Fraser Anning, who drew ire for blaming the New Zealand attacks on Muslim immigration. Peters will reportedly 'confront' Erdogan on his actions and comments relating to the Christchurch shootings when he arrives in Turkey tomorrow. Prime Minister Theresa May addressed the nation from Downing Street on Wednesday night, to update Britain on her Brexit plans. She confirmed the UK would not leave the EU on March 29 and said she had asked Brussels for a three-month extension to Brexit. Here is what she said in full: 'Nearly three years have passed since the public voted to leave the European Union. 'It was the biggest democratic exercise in our country's history. 'I came to office on a promise to deliver on that verdict. 'In March 2017 I triggered the Article 50 process for the UK to exit the EU and Parliament supported it overwhelmingly. Scroll down for video 'This delay is a matter of great personal regret for me,' Mrs May told Britain from Downing St 'Two years on, MPs have been unable to agree on a way to implement the UK's withdrawal. 'As a result, we will now not leave on time with a deal on the 29th of March. 'This delay is a matter of great personal regret for me. 'And of this I am absolutely sure: You, the public, have had enough. 'You're tired of the infighting, you're tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our children's schools, our National Health Service, knife crime. 'You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side. 'It is now time for MPs to decide. 'So, today, I have written to Donald Tusk the President of the European Council to request a short extension of Article 50 up to the 30th of June to give MPs the time to make a final choice. 'But I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than the 30th of June,' Mrs May told viewers 'Do they want to leave the EU with a deal which delivers on the result of the referendum, that takes control of our money borders and laws while protecting jobs and our national security? 'Do they want to leave without a deal, or do they not want to leave at all causing potentially irreparable damage to public trust not just in this generation of politicians but to our entire democratic process? 'It is high time we made a decision. 'So far, Parliament has done everything possible to avoid making a choice. 'Motion after motion and amendment after amendment has been tabled without Parliament ever deciding what it wants. 'All MPs have been willing to say is what they do not want. 'I passionately hope MPs will find a way to back the deal I've negotiated with the EU, a deal that delivers on the result of the referendum and is the very best deal negotiable. 'And I will continue to work night and day to secure the support of my colleagues, the DUP and others for this deal. 'But I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than the 30th of June. We're off... on June 30th at the latest, as long as Brussels agrees, Mrs May said in her address 'Some argue that I'm making the wrong choice and I should ask for a longer extension to the end of the year or beyond to give more time for politicians to argue over the way forward. 'That would mean asking you to vote in European elections nearly three years after our country decided to leave. 'What kind of message would that send? And just how bitter and divisive would that election campaign be at a time when the country desperately needs bringing back together. 'Some have suggested holding a second referendum. 'I don't believe that's what you want and it is not what I want. 'We asked you the question already and you've given us your answer. 'Now you want us to get on with it. 'And that is what I am determined to do.' Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made a rare comment during discussions over case concerning a Mississippi death row inmate and racial bias in jury selection. The conservative judge spoke towards the end of Wednesday's hearing to ask Curtis Flowers' defense team if they had pushed forward any 'peremptory challenges' for their client's six cases. 'Were any peremptories exercised by the defendant?' Thomas asked, according to CNN. 'And what was the race of the jurors struck there?' Thomas' question came as a result of Flowers asking for his murder conviction to be overturned, with the man claiming that prosecutors struck jurors off with racial bias. Scroll down for video Clarence Thomas spoke towards the end of Wednesday's hearing to ask Curtis Flowers's defense team if they had pushed forward any 'peremptory challenges' for their client's six cases Flowers was convicted in the 1996 killings of four people at a furniture store in Winona. In the 2010 conviction, his jury consisted of 11 white members and one black member. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled 'peremptory challenges' - which allow lawyers the right to strike off potential jurors without much reason - could not be made on the basis of race. Flowers was convicted in the 1996 killings of four people at a furniture store in Winona Justice Samuel Alito highlighted the 'unusual' and 'disturbing history' of a prosecutor Doug Evans who struck all 10 prospective black jurors after Flowers' first two trials. That same prosecutor was cited twice for improperly using race to strike jurors in the previous cases. Alito added that all the problems with the 'history' added onto the death sentence that was handed to Flowers in his six trial. The sentiment was shared by Justice Elena Kagan who felt that the questions asked of black jurors by the prosecutory were 'staggering' compared to white jurors. Justice Sonia Sotomayor also highlighted the prosecutor's evident 'passion for the case. 'The only plausible interpretation of all the evidence viewed cumulatively is that (prosecutor) Doug Evans began jury selection in Flowers VI with an unconstitutional end in mind,' said Flowers' lawyer, Sheri Lynn Johnson, 'to seat as few African-American jurors as he could.' Justice Samuel Alito highlighted the 'unusual' and 'disturbing history' of a prosecutor Doug Evans (center) who struck all 10 prospective black jurors after Flowers's first two trials. That same prosecutor was cited twice for improperly using race to strike jurors in the previous cases When asked Thomas's question, Johnson said of her client's trial attorney: 'She only exercised peremptories against white jurors. But I would add that ... her motivation is not the question here. The question is the motivation of Doug Evans.' Sotomayor interjected that most of the black jurors were already weeded out by then. Thomas has a history of keeping quiet during proceedings, believing that lawyers should have enough time to present their cases. Flowers's supporters are asking that Batson v. Kentucky (1986) be given more scope to look over race neutral justifications that may be used to build mostly white juries. Social media users couldn't help but comment on Elizabeth Holmes voice after watching the Theranos CEO in HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley Monday. Viewers were shocked to hear the 35-year-old Washington DC woman spoke in a lower tone than expected, something that a former employee at her company, has claimed is fake. Twitter users joked that her vocal tones were the only thing they could focus on as they watched the program that revisited tragic details of how an employee took his own life rather than expose the fact that the $9billion company was built around a machine that did not work. Scroll down for videos Social media users commented on Elizabeth Holmes voice after watching HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley on Monday Tweeters said the deep and breathy sound synonymous with California Valley girls simply reminded them of trying to sound more mature HBO even got in on the jokes about Holmes after viewers caught on to her vocal fry 'Honestly would've watched a whole doc just about Elizabeth Holmes f**king voice lol,' one tweeter wrote. Another posted: 'I'm worried I might start talking in an Elizabeth Holmes voice and never stop,' to which HBO Documentaries replied: '*clears throat* Us, too,' and HBO's account commented: 'I've already stopped blinking.' In second comment, the network's social media manager referred to a moment in their documentary where someone connected to Holmes said the first thing they noticed about her was that she 'didn't blink'. But footage of Holmes in The Inventor had viewers more intent on listening than looking for her eyelids to close. One Twitter user compared her vocal fry to Mira Sorvino's character in Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion. Speaking about the vocal cord vibration, caused by letting air pass between them to create a creaky sound, a tweeted joked: 'have spent the better part of the evening trying to drop my voice and speak in a basso profundo a la Elizabeth Holmes and it's possible I've damaged my vocal cords irreparably.' Viewers were shocked to hear the 35-year-old Washington DC woman spoke in a lower tone than expected Twitter users joked that her vocal tones were the only thing they could focus on as they watched the program Users on the micro-blogging site declared Holmes's voice was so powerful that they'd use it to deliver instructions or requests with more conviction One Twitter user compared her vocal fry to Mira Sorvino's character in Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion In the trailer someone said the first thing they noticed about Holmes was she 'never blinked' Footage of Holmes in The Inventor had viewers more intent on listening than looking for her eyelids to close Users on the micro-blogging site declared Holmes's voice was so powerful that they'd use it to deliver instructions or requests with more conviction. Others said the deep and breathy sound synonymous with California Valley girls simply reminded them of trying to sound more mature. It's something Stanford professor Dr. Phyllis Gardner may agree with. She told ABC Radio's podcast The Dropout that Holmes' voice was higher pitched when they first met. When she came to me she didn't have a low voice,' Gardner said. 'When I next saw her again was at the Harvard Medical School board meeting where she was being introduced. She says with this low voice and I'm like, 'Oh my god.' It was quite off.' As well as claiming that Holmes modeled her fashion after Steve Jobs in turtlenecks, former employee, Ana Arriola, claimed that staff caught her out at one point. 'It was maybe at one of the company parties, and maybe she had too much to drink or what not, but she fell out of character and exposed that that was not necessarily her true voice,' Arriola said in the podcast. 'Maybe she needed to be more convincing to project a persona within a room among male [venture capitalists], I'm not really quite sure.' Stanford professor Dr. Phyllis Gardner (left on March 11 with Jessie Deeter) told ABC Radio's podcast The Dropout that Holmes' voice was higher pitched when they first met The much anticipated documentary revisited how Theranos biochemist Ian Gibbons was found close to death in his bathroom after taking an overdose of pills on the morning of May 17, 2013, the same day he was to be deposed in a patent lawsuit filed against Theranos by a competitor. He died in the hospital one week later, at which point his widow called the Theranos office to inform Holmes of the devastating news. Holmes, who is currently awaiting a date being set for her fraud trial, did not call back however, and instead Gibbons' grieving wife was sent an email demanding she turn over her husband's computer and any other confidential Theranos documents. Gibbons was the first experienced scientist hired by Theranos and an expert in the field of blood testing, having patented a mechanism for mixing and diluting blood that was a crucial part of the company's technology. He began working at Theranos in 2005, and the Cambridge-educated biochemist shared the rights to a number of patents with Holmes. It is believed by most people that it was Gibbons who did all the work to obtain these patents, to which Holmes would simply attach her name. Deadly ambition: Theranos founder Holmes (above in 2015) is accused of using a fake voice Logic: In the months leading up to his deposition, Ian Gibbons, who took his own life in 2013 became increasingly ostracized at Theranos, and vocal about the problems with the Edison Devastated: His widow Rochelle (above) said that the night before he was to be deposed he asked her if she believed he was going to lose his job, and she said yes Gibbons began to notice over time however that Edison, the machine that Holmes had claimed would revolutionize the medical industry, did not work. That situation was further complicated by Holmes' business model, which forced each department in her company to operate independently and not share any information. Former co-workers describe him as a 'wealth of knowledge', but by 2012 he had been ostracized to the point that he did not even have an office at the company headquarters. In early 2013, Theranos was hit with a patent lawsuit, and did everything in its power to keep Gibbons from testifying. The belief at the time was that this was because he might reveal that the Edison did not function, thus shattering the groundwork on which the company had been built. A former Theranos employee said that he had been told Gibbons was asked to stay home by Holmes due to the fact that he continually pointed out things that were not working with the company's inventions. 'Ian asked me if I thought he was going to be fired. And I told him yes, unfortunately,' said Rochelle. 'And that was the night he killed himself.' She went to explain how 'distraught' her husband was at the time about the patent case and his fears over what he was going to do with the rest of his life once he was fired from the company where he had spent the past eight years of his life. When asked if she has ever once heard from Holmes in the six years since her husband took his life, Rochelle said: 'No.' The DOJ charged Holmes and Theranos' former COO Ramesh 'Sunny' Balwani, with 11 criminal felony counts in June 2018. They are next due in court in April for a status hearing ahead of a trial date being set and could face up to 20 years behind bars if convicted. A father who shook his four-month-old daughter so violently she was left a quadriplegic and in a state where her life is 'not worth living' will walk free from jail in just two years. The New Zealand man, who can't be named, faced the Southport District Court in Queensland on Thursday and admitted to causing grievous bodily harm to his daughter, The Courier Mail reported. The court heard how the 41-year-old shook his daughter with such force in the 2016 incident that her heart stopped and her brain went into atrophy. As a result the toddler now suffers from severe spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy which will require full time care for the rest of her life. A father who shook is four-month-old daughter so violently she was left a quadriplegic and in a state where her life is 'not worth living' was jailed for six years (stock photo) Crown prosecutor Michael Hines told the court the girl will never be able to eat or even move by herself. 'She will never get better ... she has no quality of life,' he said. 'This is extremely serious offending it's hard to imagine a more serious consequence.' After shaking his daughter the man went into a panic and rushed to his neighbour's house to perform CPR and call 000. When police arrived to investigate the incident the court heard the man had varying versions of the story until a medical examination uncovered the truth. While sentencing the man as he wept, Judge Julie Dick said the incident was 'appalling' and had left the baby with a 'life not worth living'. He was sentenced to six years' jail and will be eligible for parole after two years. The incident occurred in a private home in the village of Panch Gachia. Rev Anand Hari is now in hospital. The members of others religions have no restrictions on meeting, says prominent Christian, whilst Christians instead are not allowed to worship Our Lord. Kolkata (AsiaNews) A group of Christians was attacked in West Bengal by Hindu fanatics during a prayer meeting at the home of a Church member, Shibu Thomas speaking told AsiaNews. Thomas is the founder of Persecution Relief, an organisation that defends Christians from persecution in India. Rev Anand Hari, pastor of the Full Gospel Evangelical Church, who was leading the prayer, was severely beaten. He is now in hospital in serious condition. The attack took place yesterday in Panch Gachia, a village in Paschim Bardhaman district, around 7 am (local time). "The attackers did not spare even women," Thomas lamented. In fact, in addition to the pastor, "there were eight women and two teenagers. About 15-20 minutes after the meeting started, 20 people suddenly broke into the house and started hitting everyone present with fists, kicks and sticks. Then they fled, leaving the wounded on the ground." The leader of Persecution Relief explained that the incident attracted the attention of others, who took the reverend to a government hospital where he is still recovering. The aggression against worshippers at prayer represents a serious example of religious intolerance, less than a month before the general election. "In India, it has become difficult even to pray in private homes used as places of worship. Churches are attacked, destroyed, torched and vandalised, Thomas said, this despite the fact that "The Indian Constitution recognises freedom of religion and freedom of assembly. The faithful were only praying," he explained. "If people get together and pray for the sick, their country, their family and even politicians, they are not doing anything wrong. Christ brings happiness and joy to people. He is the light of the world, sent to earth for us, his disciples. It is our responsibility to spread his message as much as possible." Unlike Christians, "members of others religions have no restrictions on meeting. They can do it in public offices or private properties, without a permit. We Christians instead are not allowed to worship Our Lord." (Photo credit: Persecution Relief) President Trump arrived home at the White House late Wednesday after a rally in Ohio where he once again criticized John McCain - prompting a number of Republicans to express their admiration for the late senator. The president wore a downcast expression on his face as he stepped off Marine One moments after the helicopter landed on the South Lawn of the White House late Wednesday. 'Leaving the GREAT STATE of OHIO for the White House,' Trump tweeted just before taking off for Washington, D.C. 'A really great day!' President Trump arrived home at the White House late Wednesday after a rally in Ohio The president wore a downcast expression on his face as he stepped off Marine One moments after the helicopter landed on the South Lawn of the White House late Wednesday Trump is seen above disembarking from Marine One after it landed on the South Lawn Trump also tweeted quotes from Fox News denouncing the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Mueller probe is looking into allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump - a charge that both the president, his supporters, and the Russian government deny. In another tweet, Trump referred to James Comey, the former director of the FBI, as a 'dirty cop' for 'leaking his memos to a friend...who leaked them to the press on purpose.' Trump has come under fire from Democrats and even some Republicans who took issue with the president's repeated barbs against McCain, the senator from Arizona who died of brain cancer this past summer. House Rep. Peter King, the Republican congressman from Long Island, called out Trump by name on Wednesday. 'Leaving the GREAT STATE of OHIO for the White House,' Trump tweeted just before taking off for Washington, D.C. 'A really great day!' Trump also tweeted quotes from Fox News denouncing the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller In another tweet, Trump referred to James Comey, the former director of the FBI, as a 'dirty cop' for 'leaking his memos to a friend...who leaked them to the press on purpose' King tweeted: 'Time for @POTUS Trump to end the shots at John McCain a true patriot, good man and true friend.' Other Republicans came to McCain's defense, but they did not mention the president. 'John McCain was a true American hero and a good friend,' said Dan Sullivan, the U.S. senator from Alaska. 'He wasnt perfect; nobody is. 'But his decades of service and sacrifice to America were distinguished, unwavering and exemplary. 'Lets let him Rest In Peace.' Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia said not only the McCain family but the nation 'deserves better' than Trumps disparagement. 'I dont care if hes president of the United States, owns all the real estate in New York, or is building the greatest immigration system in the world,' Isakson told The Bulwark, a conservative news and opinion website. Trump has come under fire from Democrats and even some Republicans, like House Rep. Peter King of New York, who took issue with the president's repeated barbs against McCain, the senator from Arizona who died of brain cancer this past summer 'John McCain was a true American hero and a good friend,' said Dan Sullivan, the U.S. senator from Alaska. 'He wasnt perfect; nobody is. But his decades of service and sacrifice to America were distinguished, unwavering and exemplary. Lets let him Rest In Peace' Pushback also came from Sen. Martha McSally, a Republican Air Force veteran appointed to McCains seat from Arizona. 'John McCain is an American hero and I am thankful for his life of service and legacy to our country and Arizona,' she tweeted Wednesday Later, Isakson called Trumps remarks 'deplorable.' 'It will (be) deplorable seven months from now if he says it again,' Isakson continued in remarks on Georgia Public Broadcastings Political Rewind radio show, 'and I will continue to speak out.' Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the GOPs 2012 presidential nominee whom Trump briefly considered nominating as secretary of state, tweeted praise for McCain on Tuesday and criticism of Trump. 'I cant understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God,' Romney wrote. Pushback also came from Sen. Martha McSally, a Republican Air Force veteran appointed to McCains seat from Arizona. 'John McCain is an American hero and I am thankful for his life of service and legacy to our country and Arizona,' she tweeted Wednesday. 'Everyone should give him and his family the respect, admiration, and peace they deserve.' That McSally declined to criticize Trump directly reflected the broader wariness among Republicans to cross a president famous for mobilizing his followers against GOP lawmakers he deems disloyal. But this week, Trump seemed to inspire a new determination among some to draw a line, however delicately. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who wept openly on the Senate floor after McCain died but has allied himself strongly with Trump, said, 'I think the presidents comments about Sen. McCain hurt him more than they hurt the legacy of Sen. McCain.' Graham hit out at Democrats and others who long criticized McCain, saying that they are now using him as a tool to attack Trump. The president hit out at John McCain on Wednesday for handing over a copy of the Steele Dossier to the FBI. Trump is seen above on Wednesday in Lima, Ohio 'A lot of people [who] are coming to John's defense now [are the same people] that called him crazy and a warmonger, so it's kind of interesting to see the politics of how this dispute's being used to bash Trump by people who were against both Trump and McCain,' said Graham. Democratic leaders, meanwhile, were eager to jump into the uproar. 'I look forward to soon re-introducing my legislation re-naming the Senate Russell Building after American hero, Senator John McCain,' tweeted Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer of New York. Trump once again attacked McCain on Wednesday, this time suggesting the Vietnam war hero should have come to him after he was first handed a copy of the Golden Showers dossier. The president also said that the McCain family wasn't grateful enough to him for approving state funeral arrangements for the late senator. 'I endorsed him at his request and I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve,' Trump said. 'I don't care about this, I didn't get a thank you. That's okay. We sent him on the way. But I wasn't a fan of John McCain.' McCain's funeral was held in the National Cathedral and included ceremonial honors, though Trump didn't attend at McCain's request. He also took shots at McCain's support for U.S. military intervention abroad. The president returned to the topic of the dossier which contained salacious and unverified claims about Trump's comments in a Moscow hotel room as well as claims of Russian influence over Trump's circle. 'John McCain received the fake and phony dossier. Did you hear about the dossier? It was paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton, right?' Trump said at the rally in Lima, Ohio, drawing boos at the mention of his Democratic rival, who had a law firm fund opposition research after a conservative group first funded the research that became the dossier. 'And John McCain got it. He got it. And what did he do? He didn't call me. He turned it over to the FBI hoping to put me in jeopardy. And that's not the nicest thing to do,' Trump said. Fox News reported based on filings that a McCain associate turned over the dossier to the FBI, along with media outlets, after the campaign. Trump brought up the infamous Steele dossier, which stated Russian agents had gained material sufficient to 'blackmail' him, and said the regime had been cultivating Trump for years Referencing the Iraq War, Trump said: 'We're in a war in the Middle East that McCain pushed so hard. He was calling Bush, President Bush, all the time: "Get into the Middle East! Get into the Middle East!" 'So now we're into that war for $7 trillion,' Trump said. 'Thousands and thousands of our people have been killed. Millions of people overall. ... So John McCain loved it.' Then Trump concluded, at an event meant to highlight job gains in Ohio and throughout the nation: ''We're all set. I don't think I have to answer that question, but the press keeps "What do you think of McCain? What do you think?" Not my kind of guy. But some people like him and I think that's great.' McCain associate and former State Department official David Kramer testified in a court case that McCain gave the first pages of the dossier to former FBI Director James Comey on December 9, 2018. The president's latest comments came as the McCain controversy boiled over after Trump's weekend attacks on the longtime senator who was held captive for 5 1/2 years in a Hanoi POW camp during the war. In recent days the controversy has brought in McCain family members, the Senate leaders from both parties, and other lawmakers who knew McCain. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said he will reintroduce legislation to name a Senate office building after McCain following Trump's comments that he is 'not a fan' of the Vietnam war hero. Lt. Commander John S. McCain III, a POW for over five years, waves to well wishers March 18, 1973 after arriving at Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida. John McCain is administered to in a Hanoi, Vietnam hospital as a prisoner of war in the fall of 1967. McCain spent 20 years in the Navy, a quarter of it in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp. On Oct. 26, 1967, McCain's jet was shot down over Hanoi during a bombing mission John McCain is greeted by President Richard Nixon in Washington during the spring of 1973 after spending more than five years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp. Solitary confinement was McCain's fiercest enemy during his more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, an experience he says taught him confidence, humility and the ambition to pursue larger dreams after he was released Schumer first raised the issue after McCain's death in August. He brought it up again after Trump blasted McCain on Twitter over the weekend, then doubled down when asked about McCain in the Oval Office Tuesday. Schumer's prior resolution was cosponsored by former Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican who was a regular Trump target. The building's naming after Sen. Richard Russell has become controversial due to the Georgia Democrat's support for segregation and opposition to civil rights legislation. 'I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be,' Trump told reporters Tuesday. Daughter Meghan McCain hit back at Trump Wednesday, saying her father 'would think it was so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death' McCain died of brain cancer in August. He voted down an Obamacare repeal and had a role in the transmission of the Steele dossier Sen. Charles Schumer wants to name a Senate office building after McCain Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called McCain his 'good friend' and former colleague a hero on Twitter but did not directly call out Trump for his comments 'Today and every day I miss my good friend John McCain. It was a blessing to serve alongside a rare patriot and genuine American hero in the Senate. His memory continues to remind me every day that our nation is sustained by the sacrifices of heroes,' said McConnell. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was McCain's best friend in the Senate and something of a protege, has been put on the spot by the situation. Meghan McCain hit out at Trump for his latest criticism of her father on 'The View' on Wednesday. 'If I had told my dad, "Seven months after you're dead, you're going to be dominating the news and all over Twitter," he would think it was so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death,' Meghan said about her father, the late Senator John McCain. Then she tried to turn the tables by bringing up cyber bullying a top issue of First Lady Melania Trump. 'Do not feel bad for me and my family,' she said. 'We are blessed. We are a family of privilege. Feel bad for people out there who are being bullied that don't have support.' She continued: 'There are kids committing suicide because of cyber bullying online. There are people going through rough times. 'We have 20 veterans a day committing suicide. Focus on these issues,' she said. Meghan concluded: 'Im just surprised because I do think this is a new bizarre low. 'I will say attacking someone who isnt here is a bizarre low, but my dads not here but Im sure as hell here.' Trump attacked the late senator twice this weekend on Twitter, focusing on McCain's ties to the infamous Steele dossier that contains the unverified allegations the Russians have blackmail material on the president. 'So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) 'last in his class' (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!, the president wrote on Sunday. McCain was actually fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, and regularly joked about his own academic performance. A California woman has been charged with the attempted premeditated murder of her husband, who is not expected to survive, after she allegedly shot him on Saturday. Paul Shatswell, 45, was alleged gunned down by his wife, Maria Vides, 39, at their home in Pittsburgh during domestic dispute. Shatswell, who is the principal at the Pittsburg Adult Education Center, is currently on life support at a hospital and is not expected to survive, The Mercury News reported. A GoFundMe page has been created to help provide for Shatswell's eight children. California's Maria Vides, 39 (center, right), has been charged with the attempted premeditated murder of husband, Paul Shatswell, 45 (center, left), after she allegedly shot him on Saturday Shatswell, who is the principal at the Pittsburg Adult Education Center, is currently on life support at a hospital and is not expected to survive 'He was such a pillar to the community,' said Joshua Selpha, a family friend who created the fundraising page. 'Hes given back so much to the community as a reserve sheriffs deputy, a principal and more. He was really beloved in the community. He loved to teach and help give back. Its really heart-wrenching.' At least one man who knows Vides was shocked she has been charged with the shooting. 'Maria would give you the shirt off her back, her last dollar, be there for you in any situation, at any time,' former colleague Nicky Ballas wrote in an email. 'She is the most selfless person Ive ever known.' Ballas said the pair were 'always laughing, loving and enjoying life together. They are the best of friends,' adding, 'My heart is breaking for them, their families and friends.' Vides former colleague, Nicky Ballas said the pair were 'always laughing, loving and enjoying life together. They are the best of friends,' adding, 'My heart is breaking for them, their families and friends.' The two are shown in a photo shared to social media Vides was charged by the Contra Costa County District Attorneys Office with one count of attempted willful, deliberate and premeditated murder on Wednesday. Authorities added two enhancements to the charge, the first of which being that Vides inflicted great bodily injury causing a brain injury and paralysis. A second enhancement alleges that Vides intentionally shot her husband. Shatswell is currently on life support at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek. Selpha wrote on the fundraising campaign page, 'We are asking for help with the financial strain that has come with this tragedy. Paul's 8 children all need help in one way or another. Please help the Shatswell family during this heartbreaking tragedy. Anything helps.' Shatswell's children range in age for six to 29. One of his sons, Paul Shatswell Jr., lost his Paradise home in the Camp Fire. A paedophile with dwarfism could avoid going to jail over fears he'll be targeted by other inmates because of his size. Daniel James Knuth, the son of Queensland MP Shane Knuth, pleaded guilty to 35 child sex offences when he faced Townsville District Court in December. The 21-year-old admitted to using a fake Facebook account to trick young girls into sending him nude photographs, saying no one would talk to him on his real profile. Daniel James Knuth, 21, could avoid going to jail for 35 child sex offences after his defense lawyer argued his bone deformities and dwarfism would make him a target of inmates Knuth pretended to be a personal trainer and engaged in sexually explicit conversations with 27 child victims between October 2016 and September 2017, the Townsville Bulletin reported. At his initial sentencing in December, Knuth's defense barrister claimed prison would be a 'very difficult' environment for him due to his stature, and said he had undergone 17 surgeries to correct bone deformities. Judge Greg Lynham said he had never seen this type of criminal behavior with such a high number of victims, and intended to send Knuth to jail. The 21-year-old is the son (bottom) of KAP Member for Hill Shane Knuth (middle) admitted to using a fake Facebook account to trick young girls into sending him nude photographs, saying no one would talk to him on his real profile But Judge Lynham was held off sentencing him until the court had a complete understanding of the vulnerabilities of people with dwarfism in a prison. On Wednesday the matter was brought to court again, where Judge Lynham ordered the Director of Public Prosecutions contact the manager of the Townsville Correctional Centre, to determine what Knuth's sentencing outcome would be. 'They can accommodate (some) sorts of conditions quite well', Judge Lynham told the court, 'but we have unique features here that Im not sure whether the Townsville Correctional Centre has been confronted with before. 'In fairness to them they need to have an opportunity to consider how they might accommodate,' Judge Lynham said. Knuth is on bail and is set to be sentenced in May. The largest evacuation before a cyclone in the Northern Territory's history is underway with Cyclone Trevor due to hit landfall on Saturday. Nearly 1000 residents have been evacuated from Groote Eylandt and Numbulwar with more people being moved out of Borroloola and other communities all the way along the Gulf of Carpentaria coast to Queensland. A state of emergency has been declared in the Gulf country, Chief Minister Michael Gunner said on Thursday. The largest evacuation before a cyclone in the Northern Territory's history is underway with Cyclone Trevor due to hit landfall on Saturday Very destructive winds, with gusts to 260 km/h, heavy rainfall and a very dangerous storm tide are expected near the cyclone centre as it approaches and crosses the coast 'As Cyclone Trevor tracks across the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting that the cyclone will make landfall between Borroloola and Groote Eylandt during Saturday as a category four severe tropical cyclone,' he told reporters. 'Marine conditions in the gulf are deteriorating from this morning.' Very destructive winds, with gusts to 260 km/h, heavy rainfall and a very dangerous storm tide are expected near the cyclone centre as it approaches and crosses the coast, the bureau said. The severity of the storm, the significant threat it poses, as well as the complications that come with the remoteness of the area, led to the decision to start evacuations, Mr Gunner said. The town of Borroloola, which as a population of 900, is most at risk of being directly hit. Most people are going to Darwin and will be based at the showgrounds while people remaining will move into shelters. In Queensland's Cape York peninsula, Trevor uprooted trees, caused flooding and roof damage, closed schools and roads and downed power lines with severe wind gusts and heavy rain since it made landfall in earlier this week. The town of Borroloola, which as a population of 900, is most at risk of being directly hit The severity of the storm, the significant threat it poses, as well as the complications that come with the remoteness of the area, led to the decision to start evacuations Trevor lashed the Aurukun community overnight and some 180 places were without power on Thursday as residents began cleaning up. Trevor began ripping through northern Queensland late on Tuesday as a category three storm, dumping 300mm of rain and recording wind gusts of more than 133km/h. It left Queensland as a category one, but looks likely to power up again to a category four over the gulf over the weekend. Weather bureau meteorologist Lauren Pattie said the storm was expected to move towards the Northern Territory on Saturday and Sunday. The forecast path shown is the Bureau's best estimate of the cyclone's future movement and intensity A satellite image of Cyclone Trevor moves over the Northern Territory from the Bureau of Meteorology But it could stall and move back towards Queensland next week. Residents have been warned storm tides may inundate the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula between Mapoon and Aurukun on Thursday morning, where a red alert remains in place for mariners in the Gulf of Carpentaria. 'Places like Weipa will probably see their highest tide of the year,' Bureau of Meteorology's Adam Blazak told AAP. Weather permitting, crews would fly in from Mareeba and Cairns to begin the restoration effort, Ergon Energy said. The timing is uncertain with gales still expected across western parts of the peninsula on Thursday morning between Cape York and Pormpuraaw. That will include Aurukun and Weipa as the cyclone moves offshore and re-intensifies with possible gusts in excess of 130 km/h. The timing is uncertain with gales still expected across western parts of the peninsula on Thursday morning between Cape York and Pormpuraaw On the east coast, crews restored power to the community of Coen on Wednesday night and have begun resupplying Lockhart River, where the electricity network damage was worse On the east coast, crews restored power to the community of Coen on Wednesday night and have begun resupplying Lockhart River, where the electricity network damage was worse. 'We are down to 96 customers without power in Lockhart River from a peak of 150 customers, or the entire community,' Ergon said. And while Brisbane is still being struck with heavy rain and possible storms, that is expected wrap up by the weekend, with sunshine expected over the weekend. The rainfall in Sydney seems to also be easing as the week comes to an end. Some showers are expected on Friday but that should clear by Saturday as temperatures jump to a high of 30C on Sunday. Melbournians might need to reach for their umbrellas over the weekend, with storms expected by Saturday afternoon. Adelaide will see mostly sunny days with some cloud expected over the weekend, sadly showers are expected on Sunday. Perth can expect sunshine for the rest of the week, with a high on 29C on Friday. Young women in Myanmar are being trafficked as 'brides' to China, where they would be locked up in rooms and raped until they become pregnant, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. The report released on Thursday says women, often teenagers from Myanmar's conflict-ridden Kachin and Shan states, are often tricked into travelling to China in search of work or kidnapped and held against their will to be sold as 'brides' for Chinese men. The report urges governments of both sides to do more to raise awareness about the risks of trafficking, provide more support for victims who return home, and to prosecute those guilty of crimes against them. Marip Lu, 24, sits in her family's shelter in a refugee camp in northern Kachin State, Myanmar. Lu says she was kidnapped and suffered six years of captivity, rape and abuse deep in China. Human Rights Watch says the governments in Myanmar and China are failing to stop the brutal trafficking of young women from the conflict-ridden Kachin region for sexual slavery Ethnic Kachin women pass their time in a kitchen at a camp for displaced people. The 226 known cases of trafficking in 2017 were only a fraction of the total number, the report says The 226 known cases of such trafficking in 2017 were only a fraction of the total number, since many victims are afraid or ashamed to come forward, especially given the lack of support from law enforcement or welfare services, the report says. 'Human Rights Watch's research suggests the number of women and girls being trafficked is substantial and possibly growing,' it said. The group interviewed 37 survivors of such crimes for the report. It said the women were sold to Chinese families for the equivalent of US$3,000 to US$13,000 each. Twelve of those interviewed were under 18 when they were trafficked. The youngest was 14. It said 22 of them were held for a year or longer. A young woman who was trafficked at age 17 by a friends mother who promised her a well-paid child care job and then sold her to a family in China as a 'bride' Camps in Kachin are close to the Chinese border, which is easy to cross without a passport Myanmar refugees in Kachin State gather near their refugee camp in Myitkyina, northern Myanmar. Human Rights Watch interviewed 37 survivors of trafficking for the report. It said the women were sold to Chinese families for the equivalent of US$3,000 to US$13,000 each Often, the women are drugged and taken captive, left at the mercy of families with whom they can barely communicate. Those who do escape are often obliged to leave children fathered by Chinese men behind. 'Most were locked in a room and raped repeatedly as the families that bought them wanted them to become pregnant,' said Heather Barr, author of the report and a co-director for women's rights at Human Rights Watch. The traffickers are able to lure women with false promises of jobs because of the lack of good options for making a living in camps for displaced people in northern Myanmar's Kachin state. As of September, there were about 100,000 people displaced inside Kachin, where the Kachin Independence Army, like other ethnic minority armed groups, has been fighting for greater autonomy for decades. Thousands of women and children have also fled their homes in neighboring Shan state, some across the border into China. Kachin refugees wait for rations at the Je Yang IDP camp, the biggest and closest camp to Laiza, Laiza, northeastern Myanmar. Although Chinese authorities have been battling trafficking inside China as well, the families who buy the women are almost never prosecuted A woman and her baby seen at a refugee camp in Kachin state. Myanmar anti-trafficking police said they handled 130 cases of trafficking, 96 of which involved women, in January-July 2018 The porous border between southern China's Yunnan province and northern Kachin facilitates such trafficking, and the relative shortage of marriageable women, thanks to Chinese traditions favoring male heirs over girls has left many families in China desperate for brides. Although Chinese authorities have been battling trafficking inside China as well, the families who buy the women are almost never prosecuted, the report says. Some foreign brides from neighboring countries go voluntarily. But for many, the experience is harrowing. One interviewee, Ja Htoi Tsawm, was kidnapped while doing farm work in China to support her family and held captive for two years. While she was away her in-laws sold her house and put one of her children in an orphanage. Another of her four children died. The report said that Myanmar police and other authorities refused interviews by Human Rights Watch although the Ministry of Social Welfare did provide some data. Myanmar anti-trafficking police said they handled 130 cases of trafficking, 96 of which involved women, in January-July 2018, the report said. Refugee women with children gather in their refugee camp in Myitkyina, Kachin state, northern Myanmar. The report urges governments of both sides to do more to raise awareness about the risks of trafficking, provide more support for victims who return home, and to prosecute those guilty of crimes against them Refugees from Myanmar's Bhamo city build a new tent at a rescue camp in the Chinese southwestern border city of Longchuan, Yunnan province Of 820 successful prosecutions for trafficking in 2008-2013, 534 cases involved forced marriages and an even larger share were with China. Chinese authorities did not respond to requests for comment, it said. The persisting conflict in areas of Myanmar has left millions of women and children vulnerable to great risk. U.N. investigators reported last fall on a fact-finding mission that found violence by the Myanmar military in Kachin, Shan and the western state of Rakhine. It cited allegations of crimes by the military and other security forces including murder, torture, pillaging, execution without due process, rape, sexual slavery and hostage taking. Members of the Kachin Women's Association, a group affiliated with the Kachin Independence Organization that helps victims, were quoted as saying that at times they lack the money to help provide and top up SIM cards needed to keep in contact with the women still stuck in China. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to the support of his friend John McCain on Wednesday as he blasted President Donald Trump's recent tirade against the late senator. The former California governor called Trump's tweets and remarks against McCain 'disgraceful' and 'destructive'. 'He was just an unbelievable person,' Schwarzenegger explained to The Atlantic. 'So an attack on him is absolutely unacceptable if he's alive or deadbut even twice as unacceptable since he passed away a few months ago. 'It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to do that. I just think it's a shame that the president lets himself down to that kind of level. We will be lucky if everyone in Washington followed McCain's example, because he represented courage.' Scroll down for videos The former California governor called Trump's tweets and remarks against late Arizona Senator John McCain 'disgraceful' and 'destructive' Schwarzenegger's comments came after Trump attacked McCain this past weekend on Twitter, focusing on the late senator's ties to the infamous Steele dossier that contains the unverified allegations the Russians have blackmail material on the president. On Saturday, Trump said McCain leaking the 'dirty dossier' was 'dark stain' on his legacy. By Wednesday, Trump launched into a lengthy rant in which he claimed without citing evidence that McCain had pushed for a war and failed America's veterans. Schwarzenegger's comments came after Trump attacked McCain this past weekend on Twitter Trump said McCain leaking the 'dirty dossier' was 'dark stain' on his legacy 'I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted,' Trump told reporters at a campaign-style rally in Lima, Ohio. 'I didn't get (a) thank you but that's OK.' McCain and the Terminator first worked together in 2005 on spending initiatives in California before the actor-turned-politician endorsed the Arizona senator for president in 2008. Schwarzenegger, 71, described his old friend as 'a hero.' 'He was a great public servant, no two ways about that,' Schwarzenegger asserted. 'He was known for his honesty, for his courage, and his patriotism and his service.' The actor-turned-politician endorsed the Arizona senator for president in 2008 The former Mr Olympia took the time to poke fun at Trump's 243lb physique. 'I know he must be working out every day because he's so unbelievably in shape,' Schwarzenegger joked. And while he doesn't care to embark in a petty feud with the Commander in Chief, the Kindergarten Cop actor does think the president's focus isn't in the right place. 'The president should lift people up, should lift the nation up rather than always tearing people down,' he stated. Schwarzenegger took one last jab at the President in telling him to focus on the First Lady's efforts to curb online bullying. 'Why don't you go and sit down with your wife for just a few minutes, Mr. President, and listen to the First Lady when she's talking about stopping online bullying,' he said. 'That is a really great message. Which way do we go? Your way, or her way. That's really the question here.' An alleged pedophile accused of raping a girl in a south Sydney dance studio has been slapped with fresh charges at his latest court appearance. Anthony Peter Sampieri, 55, allegedly raped, choked and filmed a seven-year-old girl he held captive in a Kogarah dance studio bathroom in November. Two adults burst in and Sampieri allegedly stabbed one before being subdued, arrested and hauled before the courts on child rape and assault charges. Alleged rapist Anthony Peter Sampieri, 55, faces 100 charges after his last court appearance He allegedly raped, choked and filmed a seven-year-old girl he held captive in a Kogarah dance studio bathroom (pictured) Strikeforce Berliet detectives charged Sampieri - who's in custody - with two new counts of sexual intercourse with a child under 10 when he faced Central Local Court on Thursday. The new charges relate to the same alleged attack in Kogarah, AAP understands, and brings his total count to over 100 alleged offences. The case's notoriety prompted more alleged victims of Sampieri to come forward since November and, ahead of a court appearance in January, he was charged with making dozens of offensive phone calls. The seven-year-old was allegedly attacked at the St George Dance Centre in Kogarah, south of Sydney, about 8pm on Thursday (pictured) Sampieri's months-long spree saw him make as many as 15 calls on a single day, according to court documents. He allegedly made 13 calls in November. Three of those were on the afternoon of November 15 - just four hours before he is accused of going into the dance studio. Two weeks after Sampieri was arrested a leading senior constable was suspended with pay following an internal investigation into the handling of a complaint prior to the alleged attack. Sampieri did not apply for release on Thursday and it was formally refused. He is expected to face the same court again on May 30. Historic flooding could soon deluge parts of several Southern states along the lower Mississippi River, where floodwaters could persist for several weeks, scientists say. The flood threat in the South will be discussed Thursday, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration releases its 2019 spring outlook. Experts plan a briefing on their flood forecast at the National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Nebraska, Iowa and Wisconsin have declared states of emergency further north as they reel from a 'bomb cyclone' last week. This March 11 photo shows a makeshift levee built by a resident in Rolling Fork, Mississippi Backwater flooding covers stretches of farm lands near Yazoo City, Miss., Sunday, March 17 The cab of a pickup truck peeks out of floodwaters Wednesday, March 20, in Hamburg, Iowa Aerial photo shows flooding near the Platte River in in Plattsmouth, Neb., south of Omaha Aerial view of road damaged by major flooding in Elkhorn, Nebraska last week More than 7 million people were under flood warnings as of Tuesday, the National Weather Service said, as the heartland deals with the aftermath of snow melt and last week's 'bomb cyclone' that has left at least four dead in Nebraska. Thursday's report is aimed at helping emergency managers and other safety officials to prepare for flooding along the Mississippi. Flooding in Southern states this spring will be 'potentially historic,' NOAA said in an advisory. Rapidly melting snow in the upper Midwest is contributing to flooding that will eventually make its way downstream to the Gulf Coast, forecasters have said. The Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shared on Facebook by the police department Aerial view of road damaged and partially submerged by major flooding in Elkhorn, Nebraska, March 17 Vice President Mike Pence and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds view floods from the Missouri River during a helicopter flight that started in Omaha on Tuesday Flooding near the Platte River in in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, south of Omaha A neighborhood in Bellevue, Nebraska, is flooded by waters from the Missouri River, Tuesday Rescuers work to free cats from a flooded house on the Missouri River near Glenwood, Iowa The expected surge of water from the north is unwelcome news in parts of Mississippi. In the western part of that state, the Mississippi River is already swollen and has been flooding some communities unprotected by levees since last month. The small town of Craig in Missouri was evacuated on Wednesday as the Missouri River - which connects with the Mississippi north of St. Louis - rose, according to the Holt County Sheriff's Department. Backflow waters flood Mississippi 16 near Rolling Fork, Mississippi, Monday, March 11 Backflow waters flood a section of Mississippi 16 near Rolling Fork, Mississippi on March 11 Backflow waters flood home property and farm land along Mississippi 16 near Rolling Fork The town of about 250 residents is located about 110 miles north of Kansas City in Missouri. As of Tuesday evening, 74 counties, 83 cities and four tribal areas in Nebraska were under states of emergency, according to the State of Nebraska Government Page. They added that 95% of the state's roughly two million people have been affected. The body also stated that 59,088 square miles of Nebraska (76.39%) was affected. While Mississippi state is experiencing a relatively calm patch of weather, thunderstorms are expected to begin again on Monday. The National Weather Service expects warm weather in the north-central United States to continue into Thursday and Friday, triggering more accelerated snow melt. Flooded RV's, washed away by the flood waters of the Platte River, are seen in Merritt's RV Park in Plattsmouth, Nebraska A BNSF train sits in flood waters from the Platte River, in Plattsmouth last week People view the rising waters from the Platte and Missouri rivers which flooded areas of Plattsmouth Bob the cat gets a boat ride after being rescued Wednesday, March 20, in Hamburg, Iowa Bill Peeler (R) helps his friend Kathy Drummond remove items from her flooded home yesterday in Hamburg, Iowa One Mississippi region protected by levees is also flooding. That's because smaller rivers can't drain into the Mississippi River as normal because a floodgate that protects the region from even worse flooding by the big river has been closed since Feb. 15. Around Rolling Fork, Mississippi, townspeople first noticed water rising from swamps near the Mississippi River in late February. The water eventually invaded some homes in that community, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of Vicksburg. Major flooding is already occurring this week on the Mississippi River near several Southern cities including Arkansas City, Arkansas; Natchez, Mississippi; and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to river gauges and data from NOAA. On Monday, the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge - which remains in a state of emergency - reached 44.1 feet, marking the seventh highest crest on record and the second highest since 1945 just below the river's 47-feet levees. A white former police officer said Thursday he thought a weapon was pointed at him when he shot and killed an unarmed black teenager outside Pittsburgh last summer. Former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld took the stand at his homicide trial and insisted he was in fear for his life when he gunned down 17-year-old Antwon Rose II. Rosfeld, 30, got choked up and dabbed away tears as he recounted finding the mortally wounded Rose on the ground. 'I was upset, shocked,' Rosfeld said. 'He was moaning, trying to breathe.' East Pittsburgh police officer Michael Rosfeld is charged with homicide in the shooting death of Antwon Rose II Rosfeld shot Antwon Rose II (above) three times as the teen fled a traffic stop last summer. Rose had been sitting in the front seat of an unlicensed taxicab when the back-seat passenger rolled down a window and shot at two men in North Braddock. The drive-by shooting led Rosfeld to pull over the unlicensed cab a short time after During Thursday's court hearing, a defense expert said Rosfeld followed proper procedure in Pittsburgh last fall. Clifford W. Jobe Jr., a retired state trooper saidys he 'can't fault Officer Rosfeld' in the fatal shooting of Rose, calling the officer's actions that day 'textbook.' The trial will resume Friday with Jobe back on the stand for cross-examination. Rosfeld testified he thought a weapon was pointed at him when he opened fire. Prosecutors say Rosfeld gave inconsistent statements about the shooting, including whether he thought Rose had a gun. The former officer testified after the prosecution rested its case earlier Thursday. Michelle Kenney, left, the mother of Antwon Rose II, leaves the Allegheny County Courthouse with her lawyer S. Lee Merritt, during the trial for Michael Rosfeld, a former police officer A photo of Antwon Rose II sits with a memorial display for Rose II in front of the Allegheny County courthouse at the trial of Rosfeld who is charged with homicide in the fatal shooting Footage of the moment Michael Rosfeld shot dead unarmed black 17-year-old Antwon Rose II as he fled a traffic stop last June was shown to the jury at the former East Pittsburgh police officer's trial on Tuesday. Rosfeld is circled left and Rose is circled right A prosecution witness has said that after the shooting, he heard Rosfeld say repeatedly, 'I don't know why I shot him. I don't know why I fired.' But another prosecution witness said he heard the officer ask, 'Why did he do that? Why did he take that out of his pocket?' Kyra Jamison, the sister of Antwon Rose II, leaves the Allegheny County Courthouse Rosfeld fired three bullets into Rose after pulling over an unlicensed taxi he suspected - correctly, as it turned out - to have been involved in a drive-by shooting. Rose, a passenger in the car, was shot in the back as he fled. Rosfeld testified the car that Rose was riding in had its rear windshield shot out. He chirped his siren and turned on his police lights, and the driver complied and pulled over. Rosfeld said he got out of his car with his gun drawn and ordered the driver to the ground. That's when he said Rose and another occupant, Zaijuan Hester, 'jumped out' of the car. Demonstrating for the jury what threatening gesture he believed he saw, Rosfeld stood up, raised his right arm to shoulder length and fully extended it as if pointing a weapon. 'It happened very quickly,' Rosfeld said. 'My intent was to end the threat that was made against me. I just wanted to end the threat to me. I followed the threat and fired. I just saw that person moving, so I assumed the threat was still there.' Asked by his attorney, Patrick Thomassey, why he fired his gun and did not simply let the suspects get away, Rosfeld said: 'Because I thought one of them was pointing a weapon at me. They were dangerous felon suspects. They had just fired a gun at someone.' Michelle Kenney, second from left, the mother of Antwon Rose II, leaves the courthouse Rose had been riding in the front seat of the cab when Hester, in the backseat, rolled down a window and shot at two men on the street, hitting one in the abdomen. Hester, 18, pleaded guilty last week to aggravated assault and firearms violations. Hester told a judge that he, not Rose, did the shooting. The Pennsylvania district attorney pressed criminal charges against Rosfeld eight days after he fatally shot Rose. The officer is seen above in his mugshot Earlier Thursday, Judge Alexander Bicket rejected a defense motion to acquit Rosfeld on the murder counts he faces. Prosecutors charged Rosfeld with an open count of homicide, meaning the jury can convict Rosfeld of murder or manslaughter. The defense argued a murder charge wasn't appropriate in the case. 'What we have is a police officer doing his duty. There's not a hardness of heart required for first- or third-degree murder,' Thomassey argued in court. 'We have a burst of three shots in one second on a fleeing felon and we're going to charge him with murder? It's not fair.' Prosecutor Daniel Fitzsimmons said the fact that Rosfeld shot a fleeing Rose in the back was evidence of malice, and the judge ruled the murder counts would stand. Rosfeld's decision to testify wasn't unusual. At least three other white officers charged in the on-duty fatal shootings of black people have taken the witness stand in recent years. Video from the drive-by shooting that preceded the fatal traffic stop shows 18-year-old Zaijuan Hester extending his gun out of the window of the gold Chevrolet Cruze and firing. Rose's silhouette can be made out in the front seat A Pittsburgh public works trucks block traffic on Grant St. in front of the courthouse Michael Rosfeld's attorney, Patrick Thomassey, waves to an acquaintance inside Allegheny County Courthouse on a lunch break during the homicide trial of Rosfeld In October, a Chicago jury convicted former officer Jason Van Dyke of murder in the shooting death of teenager Laquan McDonald. After the trial, jurors said Van Dyke's testimony hurt his defense. Van Dyke got fewer than seven years in prison. An officer in Balch Spring, Texas, was convicted of murder last August and sentenced to 15 years after a jury didn't buy his explanation that he was trying to protect his partner when he fired into a car full of black teenagers, striking a 15-year-old. And in 2017, a former South Carolina patrolman was sentenced to 20 years in prison for killing an unarmed motorist. The officer pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges following a state trial at which he testified and the jury deadlocked. A witness in the shooting of Rose by Rosfeld said Wednesday March 20,2019 at his trial in Pittsburgh, that he saw the officer standing on the sidewalk, panicking, saying, 'I don't know why I shot him. I don't know why I fired.' Scott Morrison and Waleed Aly will go head-to-head on The Project on Thursday night after the PM slammed the star for claiming he wanted to target voter fears about Muslim immigration. The dispute erupted after Aly claimed in his emotional response to the Christchurch terrorist attack that the PM told colleagues to exploit fears of Muslim immigration as a political strategy. Mr Morrison slammed the claims as 'lies' and cancelled an appearance on the show earlier this week. The PM's appearance on The Project will be a commercial free sit down one-on-one conversation with Aly. Scroll down for video The PM's appearance on The Project will be a commercial free sit down one-on-one conversation with Aly Scott Morrison (pictured) and Waleed Aly will go head-to-head on The Project on Thursday night The Prime Minister's decision to appear comes after The Project embarrassingly made a factual error in an editorial countering Scott Morrison's claim the show was responsible for a 'disgraceful smear' on his reputation. On Wednesday night, The Project host, Hamish MacDonald returned fire at the Prime Minister, saying: 'The PM says he wants the truth. Well, here are some facts.' Unfortunately, his speech almost immediately contained a factual error and The Project was forced to Tweet a correction shortly after it aired. MacDonald said claims Morrison advocated an anti-Muslim election strategy were reported in 2010, when they were actually reported in 2011. Aly's accusation against Morrison was drawn from a 2011 report published by Fairfax that said Morrison - who was the Opposition's immigration spokesman at the time - had brought up the strategy at a shadow cabinet meeting but it was knocked back. On whether or not the meeting happened, MacDonald said: 'In truth, no-one but those in that room can now say for sure what was said and there does seem to be two very distinct versions. 'But we as a country know what our leaders have been saying about refugees and immigrants and Muslims for well over a decade.' MacDonald compared Mr Morrison's heated response to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. 'If anything paints a clearer picture on the state of Australian politics today it is this; after Waleed made that genuine, thoughtful, and reasoned contribution on Friday night a plea for our community to come together the Prime Minister of our country threatened to sue. 'In contrast, New Zealand's Prime Minister invited Waleed to her country to sit down for an interview. 'If you want to know why I'm here tonight and not Waleed that's why, that's where he is.' The Project embarrassingly made a factual error in a speech claiming to provide 'some facts' to Scott Morrison on Wednesday night The dispute erupted after Aly's emotional response to the Christchurch terrorist attack included the PM told colleagues to exploit fears of Muslim immigration as a political strategy Mr Morrison aimed his criticism at Aly earlier on Wednesday on ABC TV and labelled the accusation an 'appalling lie'. He pointed out he had a long history of working with the Islamic community. 'That's why I'm welcomed when I attend mosques in south-western Sydney, with warm embraces,' he said. 'Perhaps if people focused a bit more on the story they don't want to tell about my relationship with people of all faiths in this community, then perhaps they wouldn't leap to make prejudiced conclusions.' The PM also said he would not sue after his office previously called Aly's comments defamatory. Aly has visited New Zealand where he spoke to PM Jacinda Ardern, which will be aired on Monday. The mines were placed in the Shiite sanctuary area of Karti Sakhi. Last year another attack killed 29 faithful in the same place of worship. President Ghani: "Afghanistan needs peace, more than oxygen". Kabul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - This morning three dynamite explosions shook the Afghan capital, while the population was celebrating for the first day of Nowruz, the Persian New Year. The authorities report that at least six people were killed and 20 wounded in the blasts near a Shiite shrine. The victims there included two children. Meanwhile, a statement from the Islamic State claims the massacre, in a land ravaged by years of war and by Islamic fundamentalism of the al-Qaeda Taliban. Baser Mujahid, Kabul police spokesman, reports that four mines had been placed in some flower boxes near the Shiite temple Karti Sakhi, in the western quadrant of Kabul. Three of them exploded, the fourth was defused by the agents. The attack could have caused carnage, since thousands of people attended the celebrations. The area is densely populated by Shiite believers, considered heretics by Islamic radicals who follow the Sunni orientation. In a message released on Telegram, the Islamic State claims that "the soldiers of the caliphate" have killed at least 50 people. The area was cordoned off and made inaccessible to the public for safety. The celebration of the Persian New Year in Kabul was also targeted last year, with an attack on the same shrine that killed 29 people. Today, for the first time since he was in power, President Ashraf Ghani also took part in the celebrations in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of the province of Balkh. Here, speaking to those present, he said: "Afghanistan needs peace, more than oxygen. I hope that this new year, 1398 according to the Afghan calendar, will bring peace to the country ". Cesar Sayoc (pictured) pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court on Thursday to sending pipe bombs to prominent critics of President Donald A Florida man sobbed in court as he pleaded guilty on Thursday to using weapons of mass destruction and other crimes in connection with mailing explosives to prominent Democrats and other critics of President Donald Trump. Cesar Sayoc, 57 - who became known as the MAGA bomber - entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan federal court, speaking in a halting, shaky voice that often dropped to a whisper. He admitted to sending 16 devices 'designed to look like pipe bombs' consisting of a plastic pipe filled with power from fireworks and fertilizer, a digital clock and wires. All of the devices were intercepted before reaching their intended targets, and none exploded. After describing what he did, he broke down in sobs, for several seconds unable to speak. 'I know that these actions were wrong and I am extremely sorry,' he finally said. When Rakoff asked Sayoc whether he intended the devices to explode, or to kill or injure people, Sayoc said he did not. However, he admitted that he knew there was a risk they could explode. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Cesar Sayoc, 57, (in a court sketch from the Thursday hearing) entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan federal court. He spoke in a halting, shaky voice that often dropped to a whisper. He admitted to sending 16 devices 'designed to look like pipe bombs' consisting of a plastic pipe filled with power from fireworks and fertilizer, a digital clock and wires After describing what he did, Sayoc broke down in sobs, for several seconds unable to speak. He finally said: 'I know that these actions were wrong and I am extremely sorry' Sayoc listed the intended recipients of his packages, including former President Barack Obama, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, billionaire investor and Democratic donor George Soros, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, actor Robert DeNiro. Devices were also mailed to CNN offices in New York and Atlanta. The bombs began turning up weeks before the hotly contested midterms, contributing to an already tense political environment. Although the wave of attacks that harmed no one but spread fear of political violence across the U.S. for days leading up to last fall's midterm elections. In addition to using weapons of mass destruction, the charges include mailing explosives with an intent to kill or injure people or property, and conveying threats through interstate commerce. Sayoc faces up to life in prison when he is sentenced on September 12. The change-of-plea hearing was revealed last week after a phone conference between prosecutors, Sayoc's lawyers and a judge. Sayoc has been held without bail since his late-October arrest outside a South Florida auto parts store. A package addressed to former CIA head John Brennan and an explosive device that was sent to CNN's New York office in October 2018 Cesar Sayoc's van is seen in Boca Raton, Florida, covered in Donald Trump stickers Sayoc, a part-time pizza deliveryman, grocery worker and former stripper, was arrested in October after a four-day manhunt. At the time, he had been living in a white van plastered with pro-Trump stickers, the slogan 'CNN SUCKS' and images of Democratic leaders with red cross-hairs over their faces. All of his intended targets are either prominent Democratic politicians or critics of Trump, a Republican. Prosecutors say evidence against Sayoc included DNA linking him to 10 of the explosive devices and fingerprints on two of them. Without a plea deal, Sayoc - who has been locked up since October 26 - faced charges carrying a potential penalty of life in prison. Authorities say the former stripper sent 14 mail bombs to former Secretary of State Clinton, De Niro and Soros, as well as to the CNN headquarters in New York. All his targets had been critical of Trump. Former stripper Sayoc was set to go to trial in July on charges that he sent 16 improvised explosive devices through the U.S. mail to victims across the country Sayoc, a part-time pizza deliveryman and grocery worker, is a former stripper (pictured in 1997) In the indictment, prosecutors noted that an improvised explosive mailed to Clinton in Chappaqua, New York, contained a picture of her and members of her family marked with a red 'X'. The indictment said others targeted by the mailings received similarly marked pictures of themselves along with the explosives. The charges said he aimed to 'kill, injure and intimidate an individual and unlawfully to damage and destroy a building, vehicle, and other real and person property.' Prosecutors said in court papers the explosives were packed with glass intended to 'maximize harm to the defendant's victims'. Sayoc is accused of sending bubble-wrapped manila envelopes to other elite Democrats such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The packages were intercepted from Delaware to California. At least some listed a return address of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chair of the Democratic National Committee. Wasserman Schultz represents the Florida district where Sayoc, a former strip club DJ, lived. A native of New York City's Brooklyn borough and a registered Republican, Sayoc railed against Democrats, Muslims and liberals on Facebook and Twitter. Public records showed that he had been arrested multiple times for domestic violence, theft and other charges, including threatening to bomb an electric company over a billing dispute. An exclusive private school in New Zealand has come under fire for banning students from wearing the hijab. The Diocesan School for Girls, in Auckland, allegedly told Muslim pupils who wanted to wear the headscarf that it was not part of the school dress code. The ban has come to light less than a week after Australian terrorist Brenton Tarrant allegedly targeted two mosques during Friday evening prayers, killing 50 Muslims. In a statement to the New Zealand Herald the Diocesan's principal Heather McRae, claimed the school celebrated diversity and inclusion but the uniform policy '(created) a sense of oneness and family.' The Diocesan School for Girls principal Heather McRae with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern The newspaper stated that ban may contravene the Human Rights Act and the New Zealand Bill of Rights. Ms McRae stands by the ban, claiming the regulations are in place to 'ensure the Diocesan identity is upheld.' She told staff at a briefing that the policy was not new and that she expected staff to enforce the rule. She continued, saying 'no wearing of jewellery or nail polish, skirt length, a requirement to tie back long hair and wear the school blazer outside school grounds, shoe styles and so on. 'All parents sign up to the uniform policies when they join the school.' An unidentified member of staff told TRT World that the school staff were told the dress code allowed small religious or cultural items, such as crosses, to be worn underneath uniforms. The exclusive private school in Auckland (pictured) allegedly told Muslim pupils who wanted to wear the headscarf that it was not part of the school dress code The teacher also revealed that two students were told that their hijab was against the policies of the 100-year-old school, when they had made inquiries. The teacher then claimed, 'there was just silence [by the teachers]. I got the feeling that people were shocked this was a thing.' He said a student first learned of the hijab policy was asked to read her poem about Islamophobia at a school assembly this week after the attacks. The ban has come to light less than a week after Australian terrorist Brenton Tarrant allegedly targeted two mosques during Friday evening prayers, killing 50 Muslims (stock image) The poem, 'Living beneath the veil', was published on the school's blog two days ago but has since been removed. The Herald, however, has obtained a copy of the poem by the Year 12 student which is about the abuse Muslim women endure throughout their lives. Just days ago, in a move largely praised across the world, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern donned a hijab when she visited the two mosques targeted in the terror attack. In a statement to the Herald a spokeswoman said: 'The hijab has never been banned at Diocesan. It is simply not part of the long standing school uniform code and there has never been a formal request from a family to have changes made to include it.' Wilber Martinez-Guzman, 20, is charged with four counts of murder and five of burglary A detective says a Salvadoran illegal immigrant charged with four Nevada murders told police he robbed and killed his elderly victims during a 10-day rampage in January because he needed money to buy methamphetamine. Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman, 20, broke into tears and repeatedly called himself an 'idiot' before confessing to the murders during a police interrogation, a Reno grand jury heard. Martinez-Guzman's confession came just hours after his arrest on January 19 in Carson City, the detective told the grand jury. Washoe County Sheriff's Detective Stefanie Brady testified on March 13 that Martinez-Guzman initially denied any wrongdoing and was smiling and giggling through part of the questioning, according to the grand jury transcript obtained by the Associated Press. Martinez-Guzman appears in court in Carson City, Nevada in January. He cried during his police interrogation and called himself an 'idiot,' a grand jury heard But after the detective confronted him with several contradictions in his story during a nearly three-hour interrogation, he said through a Spanish interpreter he had 'done something that's unforgivable.' She says he told her he shot the victims 'because of the drugs.' 'He said he needed the money for the meth and it was the meth,' Brady testified, according to the 268-page transcript filed late Tuesday in Washoe District Court. The grand jury indicted Martinez-Guzman last week on four counts of murder with the use of a deadly weapon, three counts of burglary while in possession of a firearm and one count each of burglary, burglary while gaining possession of a firearm and possession of a stolen firearm. A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf during an arraignment Tuesday. His trial isn't scheduled to begin until April 2020. His public defense attorney, John Arrascada, said in an email to AP he didn't receive the grand jury transcript until Wednesday, was reviewing it and had no immediate comment. Martinez-Guzman talks to his public defender and interpreter during his initial court appearance in January. He is charged with four counts of murder in Nevada Federal officials have said Martinez-Guzman is in the U.S. illegally but they don't know how or when he crossed the border. The case has drawn the attention of President Donald Trump, who says it shows the need for a border wall. District Attorneys Chris Hicks of Washoe County and Mark Jackson of Douglas County announced last week they are seeking the death penalty but that Martinez-Guzman's immigration status had nothing to do with that decision. The four slaying victims include Gerald David, 81, and his 80-year-old wife, Sharon David, a prominent Reno Rodeo Association couple who had employed Martinez-Guzman as a landscaper last summer at their house where they were found dead January 16. Police say they were shot with a .22-caliber handgun that Martinez-Guzman stole from them earlier. Court documents allege that Martinez-Guzman's DNA was found on the same gun that was also used to kill Connie Koontz and Sophia Renken in their homes in Gardnerville south of Carson City. On January 16, the bodies of 81-year-old Gerald David, and his 80-year-old wife, Sharon (together above in a family photo), were found in their home on the southern edge of Reno On January 10, Connie Koontz, 56, (left) was murdered in her home in Gardnerville Ranchos. Three days later, Sophia Renken, 74, (right) was found dead in her home a mile away Detective Brady told the grand jury that Martinez-Guzman was 'engaging' and made 'lots of eye contact' during the early stages of the interrogation at the Carson City sheriff's office. 'He smiled, kind of giggled through some of the questions. But he was very engaged in the conversation,' she said. After she read him his Miranda rights, 'he actually acknowledged that he was fine not having an attorney because he hadn't done anything wrong,' she said. He indicated he had buried 'a bunch of stuff' that he found by a river in Carson City. But when she confronted him about several contradictions, his answers became slower, his body posture was more slumped and he started touching his face uncontrollably. When she asked him about some fishing poles that had been stolen from the Davids, 'there was a really long pause. And at that point, he had dropped his head and began to cry with long deep breaths.' 'He talked about how he was an idiot. He repeated that several times,' Brady testified. 'He talked about how he had done something that's unforgivable.' 'He said ... something about if he tells me what he did, it's not going to bring back the people that he shot,' she said, and then shortly after that blamed the killings on his need for money to buy drugs. She said he initially denied he killed Renken, but ultimately acknowledged he shot her too. Police have apologised to a woman who was accidentally listed as murdered in the Christchurch terror attack. The mishap occurred when alleged terrorist and white supremacist Brenton Tarrant faced Christchurch District Court on Saturday charged with murder. Australian-born Tarrant, who is expected to be hit with more charges, faced one charge of murdering a woman but her identity was unknown as her name was suppressed by Judge Paul Kellar. Police have apologised to a woman who was accidentally listed as murdered in the Christchurch terror attack (pictured: floral tribute to victims in Christchurch) The woman was somehow connected to the fatalities but is alive and well. 'An error was made in the charging document prepared for the first court appearance of the man charged with murder in relation to the Christchurch terror attacks,' a police spokesperson said. 'The error saw an incorrect victim name included in the charging document.' Police said they have spoken with the woman and the charge sheet will be amended. 'We have spoken with the person incorrectly named on the charging document and apologised. 'The charge sheet will be amended. New Zealand Police regret this error and apologies for any harm caused by the mistake.' The mishap occurred when alleged terrorist and white supremacist Brenton Tarrant faced Christchurch District Court on Saturday charged with murder (pictured: man pays his respect victims of attack) The error will not affect the validity of the prosecution. Tarrant is due back in court on April 5. Tarrant is accused of gunning down 50 defenceless worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch as they attended Friday prayers. Police Commissioner Mike Bush announced on Thursday authorities had finalised the identities of the victims. 'I can say as of a few minutes ago the identification process into all 50 victims has been completed and all of the next of kin have been advised,' he told reporters. 'That is a landmark for this process, over 120 people, forensic experts, police officers, international experts, coroners, pathologists have been involved working as best as humanly possible to make that happen.' Tarrant is accused of gunning down 50 defenceless worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch as they attended Friday prayers Police Commissioner Mike Bush (right) announced on Thursday authorities had finalised the identities of the victims Mr Bush said the victims will now able to be released to their families. 'I would like to personally acknowledge the families of the victims, and thank you for the support you have shown NZ Police and our coronial colleagues as we worked through the formal identification process,' he said. 'We know that the wait to have your loved ones returned to you has been difficult and our thoughts have been with you.' 'I want to reassure you again that we absolutely recognise how vital the return of your loved ones is.' A five-month-old baby boy died suddenly and inexplicably in Spain, just as he and his parents were about to board their flight home to Britain. Little Ernie Allen-Bryan, who heartbroken relatives described as 'always smiling' was with parents Sam and Lee, from Aldridge in Walsall, when he stopped breathing at the airport. Nothing could be done to save the infant. His family, all Aston Villa fans, have asked if a minute's applause can be held at the Blackburn game on March 30 to celebrate his short life. Nick, brother to Ernie's father Sam, said of his little nephew: 'Ernie was such a happy boy, he was always smiling. It's senseless, we're all pretty powerless in these circumstances, you can't really find any answers. 'There are really no words anyone can say, other than he was a little boy who was really developing and blooming. He'd already cut a couple of teeth.' Little Ernie Allen-Bryan was with parents Sam and Lee, from Aldridge, when he stopped breathing as they prepared to catch a flight Uncle Nick said: 'All Ernie ever did was smile, he never seemed to shed a tear' Nick and his father John - Ernie's grandfather - were all on holiday together with Ernie and his parents and the family were due to return on Tuesday March 5, when tragedy struck at the airport. Nick, from Walsall, said: 'We'd all had a fantastic holiday then this unfolded from absolutely nowhere. It was complicated to get them back due to the whole process of being in a foreign country. 'But, thanks to a lot of fantastic people, they managed to get back within a matter of days. My dad managed to find some good people who helped.' Little Ernie's funeral will take place at Aldridge Parish and Streetly Crematorium on Monday, March 25 and the family say they are hoping for such a big turnout they have to hire a 'cathedral'. Nick said: 'We've been putting the order of service together and made the centre a collage of photos. All Ernie did was smile, he never seemed to shed a tear. 'Being so sudden, we're all feeling very raw at the moment. He touched a lot of people. I think we're going to need a cathedral on Monday for his service rather than a church because so many people are coming. Ernie's uncle said: 'Ernie was such a happy boy, he was always smiling' 'He was a very special little boy who had a long journey to be with us and a very short, yet joyous time with us', his uncle said He said no-one knew why Ernie had died, explaining it was a 'long tough process' for his parents to conceive. 'It took seven years for him to get here', he said. 'He was Sam and Lee's only child so he made me an uncle for the first time and my dad a grandad. He was a very special little boy who had a long journey to be with us and a very short, yet joyous time with us. 'That's why they want as many people as possible to celebrate his life.' He went on: 'We're a very close knit family, we're all trying to be there for each other. The bond between a mother and son is unique.' He added: 'Ernie's got a gorgeous face that needs to be seen...and it will be, every day. We shall do him proud. It's so desperately sad. We've got a great support network and that, in time, will help as we're all there for each other.' The family are having a collection for the Donkey Sanctuary in Sutton Park, where Sam and Ernie enjoyed spending time and Sam would sing 'Little Donkey' to his son. 'If ever he was a bit miserable, which was very rare, you'd sing that song and it was like a switch. 'The sanctuary helps children and adults with additional needs so it's a good charity to support. 'Ernie was always happy and smiling, we've got to channel that happiness going forward.' Hobart woman Susan Neill-Fraser has been granted the right to launch a fresh appeal against her murder conviction. Neill-Fraser, 65, is serving 23 years' jail after being convicted in 2010 of killing partner Bob Chappell on the couple's Four Winds yacht moored at Sandy Bay on Australia Day 2009. In Hobart Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon, Justice Michael Brett deemed Neill-Fraser had provided evidence that met the criteria of 'fresh and compelling', enough for him to grant leave for an appeal. Scroll down for video Sue Neill-Fraser (pictured) has spent nine years behind bars for the murder of her partner on their yacht in Tasmania on Australia Day in 2009 That evidence concerned the whereabouts and DNA of then-homeless teenager Meaghan Vass. Ms Vass's DNA was found aboard the yacht, but she told the original trial she was not on the boat. Ms Vass signed a document in April last year saying she was on the boat the night of the murder, but backflipped when giving evidence at the appeal bid, telling the court it was not true and she put her name to it under threats. Neill-Fraser is accused of murdering her medical professional partner Bob Chappell (pictured) while the pair had been on board a yacht Ms Vass's DNA was found aboard the yacht (pictured) but she told the original trial she was not on the boat The case was re-opened last week so a new affidavit from Ms Vass about her whereabouts on the night of the murder - revealed on Channel Nine's 60 Minutes program - could be included. 'The fresh and compelling evidence to which this decision refers is the evidence of the out of court representations of Ms Vass,' Justice Brett said. 'The principal piece of evidence providing such context, of course, is the location of Ms Vass's DNA on the yacht, and what (forensic scientist) Mr Maxwell Jones has now had to say about that DNA.' Mr Jones had told court the DNA was a 'good or strong' source. Neill-Fraser maintains her innocence as she serves a 23-year jail sentence in Tasmania. Right to left: Bob Chappell, Susan Neill-Fraser, Neill-Fraser's daughter Sarah Bowles (nee Fraser-Meeker) and son-in-law Mark Bowles Although his body was never found, Ms Neill-Fraser (pictured) was found guilty of attacking Mr Chappell and dumping his body in the River Derwent Neill-Fraser was in 2010 found guilty of bludgeoning Mr Chappell and dumping him in the River Derwent. His body has never been found. Neill-Fraser has maintained her innocence but several previous appeals against her conviction have failed. Outside court, Neill-Fraser's daughter Sarah Bowles said she was extremely grateful for the decision. 'Mum is an innocent woman. It's time she came home for cuddles with her grandchildren,' she said, standing in front of several supporters. A Queensland mother has been sentenced to prison for taking her two daughters to Africa to have parts of their genitals removed. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was found guilty of taking her daughters, then aged 10 and 13, to Somalia in April 2015 for the procedure. Brisbane District Court Justice Leanne Clare described the mutilation as child abuse, and said the mother, 45, had taken them to Africa for the purpose of having it done. Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons (stock image) 'In this case, a woman of unknown ability used a sharp implement to excise the clitoral hood of each girl,' Justice Clare said during sentencing on Thursday. 'The girls were not sedated, there was bleeding and a period of significant pain for perhaps a number of days, there was obvious risk of infection, even death.' The mother is the first person to be sentenced in Queensland for removing a child from the state for female genital mutilation. Cutting or removing some of a girl or young woman's genitals is considered traditional in some cultures but illegal here. 'To treat the adherence to tradition as mitigation would dilute the protection of the law for those children in most need of it,' Justice Clare said. 'No matter where a family may come from, whether it be Somalia, India or Ashgrove, it makes no difference, that children in this state have equal protection under the law.' Judge Clare said the mother made the journey with the intention of the mutilation and had deliberately taken the girls from a country that would protect them, ABC News reported. 'A mother who subjects her daughters to that treatment seriously betrays her position of trust,' Judge Clare said. A Queensland mother has been sentenced to prison for taking her two daughters to Africa to have parts of their genitals removed The mother is the first person to be sentenced in Queensland for removing a child from the state for female genital mutilation The court heard the girls had been staying at their grandmother's house in Somalia when the procedures were allegedly arranged. They were playing outside their grandmother's home days after arriving in Somalia when they were separately called inside. A woman they didn't recognise carried out the procedure on the older girl first, followed by her younger sister. What is female genital mutilation? Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women. Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths. More than 200 million girls and women alive today have been cut in 30 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where FGM is concentrated. FGM is mostly carried out on young girls between infancy and age 15. FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women. Source: World Health Organisation Advertisement Their stepsister tipped off child safety services when they returned to their home south of Brisbane several months later. Crown prosecutor Dejana Kovac said the mother told a child safety officer in 2008 she knew genital mutilation was illegal here, that sending children overseas to have it done was also against the law and she did not intend to subject her daughters to it. Ms Kovac said the woman had her daughters subjected to genital mutilation despite undergoing the procedure herself and experiencing complications because of it. The woman's children were in court for the sentencing, and her eldest son at one point got on his feet in the public gallery to ask if he could speak. Judge Clare told him he could not. Defence barrister Patrick Wilson said the children stood by their mother, who is undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer that has spread to her spine. He said his client was often in pain, that she found it difficult to walk and breathe, and suffered significant swelling in her arms. The children will be cared for by their father, and the woman's sentence will be suspended after eight months. While the woman is the first person to be jailed over female genital mutilation in Queensland, the first person jailed in Australia was Shabbir Mohammedbhai Vaziri, who was sentenced to jail for 11 months in 2016, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Vaziri was found guilty of acting as an accessory after the fact while the victim's mother and a former midwife were found guilty of mutilating the clitoris of two girls. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has accused Waleed Aly of a smear campaign over claims he once suggested using Muslim immigration for political gain. A fired-up Mr Morrison told The Project host during a live, on-air interview Thursday night that the claims had damaged his reputation in the Islamic community. 'You implied Muslims couldnt feel safe because they had a PM who had somehow been prejudiced against them and I dont believe thats true,' he said. The pair locked horns in an intense and awkward interview after Aly took aim at anti-Muslim sentiment in politics following the Christchurch terror attack. He repeated claims originally made in a newspaper that Mr Morrison once suggested colleagues exploit fears over immigration for political gain during a 2010 shadow cabinet meeting. 'Cant you see that what youre suggesting is at complete odds with the experience that I have been involved in over the last 10 years of my public life?' Mr Morrison told Aly on Thursday night. Scroll down for video Prime Minister Scott Morrison has accused Waleed Aly of a smear campaign over claims he once suggested using Muslim immigration for political gain A fired-up Mr Morrison told The Project host during a live, on-air interview Thursday night that the claims had damaged his reputation in the Islamic community During a segment following the Christchurch terror attack on Friday night, Aly took aim at anti-muslim sentiment in politics and claimed Mr Morrison once suggested colleagues exploit fears of immigration for political gain during a shadow cabinet meeting in 2010 Mr Morrison told Aly he didn't personally hold any anti-Muslim sentiment on Thursday, before The Project host attempted to shift the focus back to the prime minister's political party 'I was shadow immigration minister at the time and I was very concerned about these issues and the way people were feeling in the community. 'I was concerned that we needed to address them ... I was acknowledging there were fears, and we had to address them. Not exploit them.' Aly had referenced a 2011 report in the Sydney Morning Herald to make the claim, which Mr Morrison called a smear and a lie earlier in the week. But The Project host challenged Mr Morrison's claim that the report was not valid. 'Can you tell me who was lying?' Aly said. Mr Morrison responded that it could have been anyone who spoke to a journalist at the time with the intention to smear him, and questioned the credibility of the sources. 'You talk about people who have been on the record,' Aly said. 'There is at least one saying it did happen, you have multiple journalists, reporting multiple sources.' When asked if the Coalition had a problem with Islamophobia, Morrison responded. 'I dont believe the Liberal party does,' Mr Morrison said. 'I cant speak for the National Party.' The Prime Minister went on to say he personally didn't hold any anti-Muslim sentiment, before host Aly interrupted him. 'No it is important to focus on the party.' Aly drew up past examples of Coalition members who had landed themselves in hot water over the issue. He noted Tony Abbott once said 'Islamophobia never killed anyone' and listed off a number of senators who shook Senator Fraser Anning's hand following his 'final solution' speech in parliament. 'When I aggregate all that, is there something that needs to be confronted within your own party?' Aly said. Mr Morrison replied: 'Well as leader, its my job to ensure that the tone I set is the right tone.' The Prime Minister also touched on Muslim sentiment in the wider Australian landscape and admitted that 'I don't know if Australians understand Islam very well.' 'But that doesn't always translate into extremism,' he said. It didn't take long before Aly and Mr Morrison were speaking over each other in a bid to be heard. Mr Morrison touched on Muslim sentiment in the wider Australian landscape and admitted that 'I don't know if Australians understand Islam very well' Tensions quickly reached boiling point between the pair when Aly shifted the focus to the alleged 2010 cabinet meeting, claiming Mr Morrison suggested his party focus on immigration scare tactics for political gain 'I feel like it is very difficult to get through a sentence at the moment, Aly said to a fired-up Mr Morrison. Aly later pressed Mr Morrison whether the Prime Minister would preference One Nation below Labor and Greens at the next election. While Mr Morrison said he wouldn't do any 'deals' with One Nation, Aly remained firm and said that wasn't the initial question. He wanted to know if the Liberal Party would put One Nation at the bottom, in light of the fact the party's leader Pauline Hanson had once called Islam a 'disease that needs to be vaccinated'. 'All Im saying at this stage is that well never do a preference deal with One Nation and well settle on everything else at the time of nominations closing,' Mr Morrison said. The Project host also took time to touch on the rhetoric surrounding asylum seekers, and whether or not the Prime Minister considered it a problem to frame them as 'possibly being rapists, murderers and paedophiles'. 'Thats only relevant if its in cases were talking about - that its what is known about the actual individual,' Mr Morrison said. 'Were not going to sugarcoat to the public the implications of laws passing parliament.' Viewers of the show could do nothing but watch as the heated interview unfolded, with many praising Aly's composure. 'All Im saying at this stage is that well never do a preference deal with One Nation and well settle on everything else at the time of nominations closing,' Mr Morrison said Aly also took time to touch on the rhetoric surrounding asylum seekers, and whether or not the prime minister considered it a problem to frame them as 'possibly being rapists, murderers and pedophiles' 'This is painful, not sure how Waleed is keeping his composure but he's doing a better job than #ScoMo,' one person tweeted. Another aimed criticism at Mr Morrison: 'Scott Morrison is coming across as rude and bad tempered. This is not paying well for him.' The Prime Minister's decision to appear on the show comes after The Project embarrassingly made a factual error in an editorial countering Scott Morrison's claim the show was responsible for a 'disgraceful smear' on his reputation. On Wednesday night, The Project host, Hamish MacDonald returned fire at the Prime Minister, saying: 'The PM says he wants the truth. Well, here are some facts.' Unfortunately, his speech almost immediately contained a factual error and The Project was forced to Tweet a correction shortly after it aired. MacDonald said claims Morrison advocated an anti-Muslim election strategy were reported in 2010, when they were actually reported in 2011. Viewers of the show could do nothing but watch as the heated interview unfolded, with many praising Aly's composure One tweeter praised Aly for his composure during the heated interview Another person criticised Mr Morrison and the way he carried himself during the interview Mr Morrison aimed his criticism at Aly earlier on Wednesday on ABC TV and labelled the accusation an 'appalling lie'. He pointed out he had a long history of working with the Islamic community. 'That's why I'm welcomed when I attend mosques in south-western Sydney, with warm embraces,' he said. 'Perhaps if people focused a bit more on the story they don't want to tell about my relationship with people of all faiths in this community, then perhaps they wouldn't leap to make prejudiced conclusions.' The PM also said he would not sue after his office previously called Aly's comments defamatory. Aly has visited New Zealand where he spoke to PM Jacinda Ardern, which will be aired on Monday. US-backed forces have denied Kurdish media claims that they have captured Islamic State's final enclave - insisting the operation is still underway. Hawar had earlier said Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had 'liberated all of Baghouz from the Daesh mercenaries' and that the campaign had 'ended with the defeat' of the terror group. However, SDF officials denied the reports and said combat operations were still underway today. It comes the morning after US President Donald Trump predicted ISIS was on the verge of being wiped off the map, unfurling printouts showing the jihadists' shrinking presence in Iraq and Syria. 'Combing continues in the Baghouz camp and there is no truth [to the report] about the complete liberation of the village,' an SDF media official said, quoting the commanders of the offensive. The terror group's final defeat at Baghouz will end its territorial rule that once spanned a third of Iraq and Syria. US-backed forces have denied Kurdish media claims that they have captured Islamic State's final enclave - insisting the operation is still underway. Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces are pictured giving the V for victory sign earlier this week as they closed in on victory Hawar said Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have 'liberated all of Baghouz from the Daesh mercenaries' and that the campaign had 'ended with the defeat' of the terror group. However, SDF officials denied the reports and said combat operations were still underway today The SDF on Tuesday captured an encampment where the jihadists had been mounting a last defence of the tiny enclave, pushing diehard fighters onto a sliver of land at the Euphrates riverside. U.S.-backed Syrian forces were sweeping through the final enclave held by Islamic State fighters on Thursday and said they would declare the group defeated once a search for hidden mines and jihadist holdouts was complete. 'Our forces are still conducting combing and search operations and as soon as they are finished we will announce the liberation', Mustafa Bali, spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, said in a note to journalists. Bali added that the operation included sweeping for mines and combing for fighters still hidden in trenches and tunnels dug beneath Baghouz, the last patch of Islamic State territory. He also tweeted on Thursday evening that Chya Farat, the commander of the Desert Storm Operation, said: 'Our forces currently engages against ISIS terrorists in several points on the Euphrates river valley, and International Coalition conducts several airstrikes against terrorists targets.' The situation in Baghouz appeared calm for a second consecutive day, a Reuters journalist in Baghouz said. Warplanes with the U.S.-led coalition, including drones, could be seen overhead. A news outlet with close ties to the Syrian Kurdish-led authorities, Hawar, reported that the operation was now finished and Islamic State defeated. But an SDF denial swiftly made clear it was not quite prepared to declare victory yet. Fighters of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) walk through a field in the village of Baghouz A vehicle carrying fighters of the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) drives through the village of Sousa A propaganda video carrying the mark of an Islamic State news outlet and distributed among online followers of the group on Thursday showed footage from inside Baghouz and a fighter calling for Muslims in Western countries to stage attacks. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said another 2,000 women and children had arrived late on Wednesday at the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria that has received tens of thousands of people who have poured out of the shrinking Islamic State territory. The last clashes reported by the SDF were on Tuesday, indicating that major fighting is over in the last big battle of a five-year international campaign against a self-proclaimed caliphate that once comprised a third of both Iraq and Syria. The SDF, backed by U.S. air power, swept on Tuesday into a camp where hundreds of fighters had been making their last stand with thousands of civilians, many their own wives and children. A report issued by the United Nations' population fund, the UNFPA, on Thursday said 'it is estimated that around 7,000 people are still inside' Baghouz. The al-Hol camp is now holding more than 72,000 people, including more than 40,000 children as 12 died after arriving at the camp, IRC said. The total number of deaths on the way to it or shortly after arriving now stood at 138, the overwhelming number of them babies and infants. A cat walking past a destroyed building in the village of Sousa, near the village of Baghouz in the eastern Syrian province of Deir Ezzo Fighters from the SDF stand together in the village of Baghouz today as the final push to sweep ISIS from the area continues Of the 1,248 pregnant women and girls in the camp, up to 15 percent were younger than 18, the UNFPA said. Wendy Taeuber, IRC's Iraq and northeast Syria country director, said in a statement: 'These women and children are in the worst condition we have seen since the crisis first began. Many have been caught up in the fighting and dozens have been burnt or badly injured by shrapnel. 'We are expecting another 3,000 to arrive soon and we are very worried that they may be in even worse shape.' Trump yesterday claimed American forces have inflicted significant casualties on the battlefield in the past month. He has signalled the group's imminent demise on several previous occasions, although ISIS has yet to wave the white flag of surrender. In one map shown by Trump to reporters in Washington and then again at a rally to workers at a military tank factory in Lima, Ohio, ISIS territory marked in red extends over large areas. A second map, he said, shows the extremist organisation about to be wiped out. 'There is no red. In fact, there's actually a tiny spot which will be gone by tonight,' he said at the White House. Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) celebrate as they come back from the frontline in the battle against ISIS on Tuesday After sweeping across swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, the ISIS jihadists' cross-border caliphate has been whittled down by multiple offensives to the tiny embattled enclave in Baghouz, Syria (pictured) Later in Ohio, standing by M1A2 Abrams tanks painted in camouflage in front of a huge American flag, Trump again used his map props to highlight the military gains against the jihadists. 'When I took over it was a mess, they were all over the place, all over Syria and Iraq,' he said of ISIS, pointing at the red territory. 'And now you look at it, and there's no red,' he crowed as workers cheered. 'As of today, this is ISIS, there's none. The caliphate is gone as of tonight.' The Pentagon's internal watchdog released a report last month saying Islamic State remained an active insurgent group and was regenerating functions and capabilities more quickly in Iraq than in Syria. The group could resurge in Syria within six to 12 months and regain limited territory without sustained pressure. The United States believes Iraq is the location of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who stood at the pulpit of the great medieval mosque in Mosul in 2014 to declare himself caliph, sovereign over all Muslims. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on a visit to Jerusalem, told reporters victory was 'close'. After sweeping across swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014, the ISIS jihadists' cross-border caliphate was whittled down by multiple offensives to the tiny embattled enclave in Baghouz, Syria. Fighting continued in Baghouz on Wednesday, with the ISIS jihadists surrounded and under heavy fire from a US-led coalition of Kurds, Syrians and others. Trump claimed US forces in the last month 'have killed the terrorists responsible for the attack in Syria that killed four Americans.' On Tuesday a US-backed force in Syria said it arrested the jihadists suspected of involvement in that January attack, the deadliest on US troops since they deployed in the war-torn country in 2014. Trump also said US forces have killed those who attacked the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, and who orchestrated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole which left 17 American servicemen dead. 'We killed them all,' Trump said. 'We killed them all.' In January the US military said that Al-Qaeda operative Jamal al-Badawi, an architect of the bombing, was believed to have been killed in a precision strike in Yemen. The chief suspect in the USS Cole attack, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is being held in the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A disqualified driver has been jailed after causing a devastating crash when she fell asleep at the wheel. Penina Nauer, 22, was driving her family from Griffith in western New South Wales to Sydney Airport when she fell asleep and veered into oncoming traffic. Her Toyota Hiace, which was carrying nine family members, slammed headfirst into another car and her father and a two-year-old girl were killed instantly. In Cambelltown Local Court today, Nauer was sentenced to a minimum of four years, and six months in jail. Penina Nauer, 22, (pictured) was driving her family from Griffith in western New South Wales to Sydney Airport when she fell asleep and veered into oncoming traffic in 2017 Nauer was sentenced to four years, six months in jail and will be eligible for parole after two and a half years Nauer was obeying her fathers orders when he told her to take over the wheel as they were driving along Mamre Road in Kemps Creek in 2017. But she had failed to disclose that she had had her learner's license suspended two months earlier. The court heard how in Samoan culture, elders are obeyed if they ask another family member to do something. Nauer's big family were said to be devastated by the sentencing. The horrific crash occurred after Nauer was asked by her father to take the wheel, however, she was a learner driver and had had her licence suspended just two months earlier The Kemps Creek crash claimed the lives of her father and a two-year-old girl in 2017 'It's very tragic, they're still living daily with it,' Nauer's lawyer Sohan Singh told 9News. 'They have forgiven her, but this has happened. Accidents happen.' The judge also felt sympathy for the young mother, but said that 'sentencing is not based on emotion'. She pleaded guilty to the act in November 2017. Nauer will be eligible for parole in two and a half years. Mr Nauer, pictured was killed in the 2017 crash after he asked his daughter to drive Farid Ahmed moved to New Zealand in 1988. Since 2013, he has been confined to a wheelchair due to a car accident. During the attack, his wife Husna saved a group of worshippers. Whilst returning to help her husband, Brenton Tarrant, the terrorist, shot her in the back. Wellington (AsiaNews/Agencies) Despite the pain, Farid Ahmed (pictured), a 59-year-old Bangladeshi who lost his wife Husna in the attacks against the Islamic community in Christchurch, has the strength to forgive and the courage to say "I still love you" to the murderer, 28-year-old Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant who, armed with assault rifles, killed 50 people: 42 at the Al Noor mosque and eight at the Linwood Islamic Centre. Farid Ahmed moved to New Zealand in 1988. Six years later, he was joined by the woman he married on the day of her arrival. He has been in a wheelchair since 2013 because of a traffic accident. When Tarrant broke into the Al Noor mosque shooting indiscriminately, Husna Ahmed was in the women's section. Reacting to the situation, Husna yelled Hold your children, come this way, as she led a group out of the building through a side door. Once women and children were out of danger, she then returned in search of her husband. The gunman shot her from behind as she ran. "I was asked 'how do you feel about the person who killed your wife?' and I said 'I love that person because he is a human, a brother of mine," Farid said. He still cannot hate Tarrant, he said. "I do not support what he did - he got it wrong. But maybe he was hurt, maybe something happened to him in his life . . . but the bottom line is, he is a brother of mine. "I have forgiven him and I am sure if my wife was alive, she would have done the same thing. Since the shooting Farid has thought about the gunman during his sleepless nights. "[I]t came to me then that I wish I could give him a hug, I wish I could meet his mother and give her a hug and say 'you are my aunty'. I wish if he had a sister, I could hug her and say 'you are no different than my sisters'. Some people might call me crazy but I speak from my heart, I am not pretending if I got an opportunity, I would hug him." Farid hopes the gunman and others who hold the same ideas will reflect on what had happened and change their life. "Every human has two sides evil and humanitarian; bring out your humanitarian . . . instead of killing and hate . . . I wish I could say that. If I can change one person from cruelty to generosity, I'll be honoured." Days after the massacre, expressions of solidarity by New Zealanders continue to pour in in a country still shaken by the worst episode of violence in its modern history. Meanwhile, the government is taking measures to prevent similar tragedies. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced a ban on all military style semi-automatic weapons. Police also issued a statement saying that all the victims in the attacks have been identified, and that burials can take place. Advertisement Theresa May insisted last night it was the 'moment of decision' for MPs as she accepted EU terms for delaying Brexit by at least two weeks to avoid No Deal next Friday. After a marathon summit meeting, EU Council President Donald Tusk confirmed plans for a two-stage delay plan. If Mrs May passes her deal at a third attempt next week, Britain will be allowed to stay in the EU until May 22. If she fails, Britain must say whether it will take part in the EU elections by April 12. If elections take place, a longer delay could be agreed - but if the polls are not held then No Deal looms because Britain staying in becomes impossible. In a midnight press conference in Brussels, the Prime Minister said the 'flextension' plan offered MPs a clear choice. 'We can leave with a deal in an orderly manner, have that extension until May 22, or if we don't get that deal, that vote, through then we have to come forward with another plan, and if that plan means another extension, it means standing in those European elections,' she said. 'Tomorrow morning I will be returning to the UK and working hard to build support for getting the deal through.' And she left no doubt that she does not believe the UK should have to elect MEPs in the polls scheduled for May 23-26 across Europe. 'It would be wrong to ask people in the UK to participate in these elections three years after voting to leave the EU,' she said. Thursday's agreement means that no-deal Brexit was no longer a possibility on March 29, but it remains on the table if MPs have not approved the Withdrawal Agreement by April 12. The agreement avoids the need for an emergency EU summit as soon as next week. EU sources told Sky News the plan 'reduces the likelihood of a chaotic crash out in the next 7 days, or a 24 hour scramble to find an alternative.' In the press conference Mrs May said she would return to Britain in the morning to resume work on building support for the deal. Most in Westminster believe she is doomed to fail a third time. She insisted Britain should still leave in an 'orderly fashion' with a deal despite MPs rejecting it twice by a landslide. Amid fury at her tirade against MPs last night, Mrs May also admitted to expressing her 'frustration' at the situation - insisting politicians on all sides had 'passionately held views' - but stopped short of apologising. In a press conference held after midnight in Brussels, Mrs May said she would return to Britain in the morning to resume work on building support for the deal. Most in Westminster believe she is doomed to fail a third time EU Council President Donald Tusk (left leaving the talks tonight) confirmed plans for a two-stage delay plan. If Mrs May passes her deal at a third attempt next week, Britain will be allowed to stay in the EU until May 22 Mrs May's intervention came after EU leaders agreed the terms of delay after the summit ran late into the night. The Prime Minister - excluded from the talks - failed to win her demand for more three months. As EU leaders talked last night, Mrs May was forced to sit and wait tonight as EU leaders wrestled with Britain's Brexit fate at an overrunning EU summit. Britain is banned from talks on how the EU handles Brexit but the PM made a 104-minute pitch for a three month extension to Article 50 earlier this evening. At the late night press conference, Mr Tusk said: 'The cliff edge date will be delayed. (Before April 12) The UK will still have a choice between a deal, a no deal, a long delay or revoking Article 50.' Mr Tusk insisted he expected the UK to have new options ready by April 12 if it sought a long delay - a clear nod towards a new general election or a referendum. He warned staying beyond April 12 was 'impossible' without Britain electing new MEPs. In ominous news for Remainers hoping they can cancel Britain's departure at the 11th hour, French President Emmanuel Macron warned there would be a No Deal if MPs turn the deal down for a third time. The third 'meaningful vote' already appears doomed next week after she angered MPs by blaming them for the mounting crisis. Some Brexiteer MPs who backed the deal on the second vote could return to rebelling on the third. Theresa May (pictured at the EU summit yesterday) made a 104-minute plea for more time from EU leaders today as draft conclusions from the EU summit suggest she will only get a Brexit delay until May 22 Donald Tusk outlined the EU's plan for avoiding No Deal next week on Twitter following hours of talks on what to do about Brexit In her press conference, the Prime Minister said: 'What the decision today underlines is the importance of the House of Commons passing a Brexit deal next week so that we can bring an end to the uncertainty and leave in a smooth and orderly manner. 'Tomorrow morning I will be returning to the UK and working hard to build support for getting the deal through.' Mr Tusk said that April 12 was a 'key date' for the UK because if it decided not to participate in the European Parliament elections then a long extension would become impossible. Mrs May said 'it would be wrong to ask people in the UK to participate in these elections three years after voting to leave the EU'. He said: 'April 12 is a key date in terms of the UK wondering whether to hold European Parliament elections. 'If it is not decided do so by then the option of a long extension will immediately become impossible.' Mr Tusk added: 'In regards to the extension our decision envisaged two scenarios. 'In the first scenario, that is if the agreement is passed next week, the European Council agrees an extension to May 22. 'In the second scenario, if the agreement is not approved, the European Council agrees an extension until April 12 while expecting the UK to indicate a way forward. 'What this means in practice is that until that date all options remain open.' Earlier, reports from Brussels suggest Mrs May was 'evasive' and 'tightlipped' during the marathon session on what she would do if the vote fails, BuzzFeed said. Piling pressure on to MPs ahead of next week's proposed third Commons vote Mr Macron said: 'In the case of a negative British vote then we'd be heading to a No Deal. We all know it,' adding a longer extension would require 'a deep political change' in Britain - a nod to a second referendum or general election. Other EU leaders queued up to deliver the same No Deal warning including Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel who said: 'You decided to leave - you want us [the EU] to be the bad guy. But if there is no deal [at Westminster] in days there will be No Deal. We can't extend - for me it is then over'. While European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was asked if he was tiring of Mrs May's political drama at home and said: 'I didn't even know I had this much patience'. The No Deal threats will excite Brexiteers but will be bad news for Remainers who are hoping that the EU will offer a long delay so they can push for the softest possible Brexit or stop it completely. Walking into the summit - which was meant to the last one Britain would ever attend as an EU member - Mrs May said she was disappointed to be calling for a delay. 'This is a matter of personal regret for me but a short extension would give Parliament time to make a final choice that delivers on the result of the referendum,' she said. A smiling Theresa May says hello to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel as she asks the EU to delay Brexit until June Mrs May was kissed by President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, who demanded the May 22 Brexit rather than a June 30 The PM walks into the Brussels summit with Britain's ambassador to the EU, Sir Tim Barrow, where leaders piled pressure on her to win an unlikely victory in the Commons next week Theresa May sat down for head to head talks with Donald Tusk in the margins of the EU summit today (pictured) as she asks for a three month delay on Brexit Theresa May has arrived in Brussels to request a delay to Brexit and refused to rule out leaving with No Deal in eight days. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron (pictured today) both says it's Mrs May's deal or No Deal French President Emmanuel Macron struck the toughest note yet as EU leaders prepare to receive Britain's request for a three month delay to Brexit today saying if she loses in the Commons 'it's No Deal for sure' European Union leaders attend the round table meeting at an EU summit in Brussels. British Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to persuade European Union leaders to delay Brexit by up to three months, just eight days before Britain is scheduled to leave Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, right, and Keir Starmer, Labour Shadow Brexit secretary, leave EU headquarters prior to an EU summit in Brussels Jeremy Hunt: There's no guarantee the PM can bring back her vote Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said he does not know if Theresa May's Brexit deal will be brought back to Parliament next week, as he warned of 'extreme unpredictability' if the issue is not resolved. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'If we are in the same situation this time next week then only a very limited list of things could happen: Parliament could vote to revoke Article 50, which is cancelling the Brexit process - I think that's highly unlikely... 'There could be an EU emergency summit to offer us an extension and we don't know what the length will be and it could have some very onerous conditions - they could say, for example, 'We'll give you an extension if you have a second referendum'. 'Again, I think it's very unlikely Parliament would vote for that. And then we have no-deal as the legal default on Friday. 'So the choice that we have now is one of resolving this issue or extreme unpredictability.' Mr Hunt said 'no prime minister in living memory has been tested' in the way that Mrs May has. 'Let's not forget the extraordinary pressure that she is personally under, and I think she does feel a sense of frustration,' he told Today. 'She is absolutely determined to deliver what people voted for and I think ... the Brexit process has sapped our national confidence and we need to remember now what we're capable of as a country. 'And we need to remember that the economy has actually not suffered in the way many people thought it would and we have a chance now to resolve this and move on, to close this chapter, move on to the next chapter. 'And we will be able to say, as one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the world, that we were faced with a very difficult decision - a decision that most of the political establishment didn't want to go ahead - and we've delivered it because we are a country where we do what the people say.' Advertisement Yesterday's drama in Brussels came after a day in which the PM faces attacks from all sides on the Commons over her controversial speech on Tuesday night that criticised MPs for failing to deliver Brexit. Yesterday Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said 'no Prime Minister in living memory has been tested' in the way that Mrs May. Defending the Prime Minister, who is facing calls to quit, he told the BBC: 'Let's not forget the extraordinary pressure she is under. She was expressing her frustration and the public's frustration' - but added: 'I don't think we should all make this about Theresa May'. Tellingly the Foreign Secretary twice admitted it is not yet certain Mrs May can bring back her deal for a third vote - but said if it's defeated there are three options: No Deal, revoke Article 50 or a 'long delay' to Brexit. Tory Remainer Sam Gyimah hit out at his party leader and said: 'Resorting to the blame game, as the PM is doing, is a low blow. Democracy loses when a Prime Minister who has set herself against the House of Commons then blames MPs for doing their job. It's Toxic. She knows MPs are receiving hate mail. We're repeatedly being urged to hold their noses to the stench of this deal and vote for it. That cannot be the blueprint for our great country and I cannot support it'. Potential 'switcher' Lisa Nandy claimed last night that Mrs May had blown her chance and said: 'There's absolutely no chance she is going to win over MPs in sufficient numbers after that statement. It was an attack on liberal democracy itself. I will not support a government that takes such a reckless approach'. But Brexit Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said today he believes more MPs will back the Prime Minister's deal after her intervention and insisted she has a 'good shot at landing the deal and winning a vote next week'. He added: 'I don't think there is a blame game at all- she set out very clearly where we are in the process. There is a deal. If we get the deal through, we can get a short extension to the Article 50 process and we can leave the EU. 'I think saying: 'I'm with you' makes perfect sense. The cab driver who drove me here this morning said: 'I just want to leaveget the deal done and I want to be out of the EU'. The Prime Minister very much reflected that opinion, which is widely held. People are fed upthey want to leave the EU'. Conservative former minister Sir Oliver Letwin said he believed MPs would support a Norway-style Brexit deal and could seize control of Brexit, possibly on Monday. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that MPs needed to establish if there is a majority in favour of an alternative plan if the Prime Minister's deal is defeated again next week. Sir Oliver said: 'I believe, for example, that we will probably on that day be able to get a cross-party majority in favour of what is sometimes called Norway plus and sometimes called Common Market 2.0, which is an arrangement where we remain in the single market and we have a customs arrangement with the EU and that has not yet been tested.' Tory Remainer Sam Gymiah hit out at his party leader and said: 'Resorting to the blame game, as the PM is doing, is a low blow' while Tory Brexiteer Henry Smith says that Britain must now opt for No Deal Potential Labour 'switcher' Lisa Nandy claimed last night that Mrs May had blown her chance to win her and other MPs over DUP reject Theresa May's 'toxic' Brexit deal as support for the PM falls away in wake of 'misjudged' speech as she heads to Brussels in search of a withdrawal delay until June Sammy Wilson said there was no pressure on the DUP to support a deal from Theresa May linked to a three-month Brexit delay Theresa May's hopes of getting a Brexit deal through Parliament have been handed a devastating blow today after the DUP signalled that it does not intend to back it. The Northern Irish party's Brexit spokesman said there was 'no pressure on me or my party to vote for this deal' as the Prime Minister headed to Brussels. EU leaders are expected to make a three-month Brexit delay sought by Mrs May today conditional on her being able to squeeze a withdrawal agreement through the Commons next week. But hardline unionist and Brexiteer Mr Wilson tore into Brussels, including European Council president Donald Tusk, accusing them of 'arrogance' over their offer in an interview with TalkRadio. He said: If anything the arrogance of the EU negotiators this arrogance is born of the fact that the EU see us as a bit of a rollover when it comes to negotiations. But for anyone to say we'll give you a three month extension if you accept this toxic deal - I neither want this toxic deal nor the extension so there is no pressure on me or my party to vote for this deal, and certainly not on the basis of demands from Donald Tusk.' The DUP has a 'confidence and supply' deal with Mrs May's Conservatives for its 10 MPs to support her in the Commons. But they have so far voted against her Brexit deal twice because of their intense opposition to the provisions for the Northern Irish border backstop. Even with their support Mrs may faces an uphill task to convince MPs to back her. Advertisement In the Commons at PMQs on Wednesday (pictured) Theresa May condemned MPs for 'navel gazing' over Europe and said their refusal to pass the deal was to blame for delay The Prime Minister's Brexit speech to the nation in full The Prime Minister blamed for MPs for the country's Brexit chaos The Prime Minister addressed the nation from Downing Street on Wednesday night. Here is what she said: 'Nearly three years have passed since the public voted to leave the European Union. 'It was the biggest democratic exercise in our country's history. 'I came to office on a promise to deliver on that verdict. 'In March 2017 I triggered the Article 50 process for the UK to exit the EU and Parliament supported it overwhelmingly. 'Two years on, MPs have been unable to agree on a way to implement the UK's withdrawal. 'As a result, we will now not leave on time with a deal on the 29th of March. 'This delay is a matter of great personal regret for me. 'And of this I am absolutely sure: You, the public, have had enough. 'You're tired of the infighting, you're tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our children's schools, our National Health Service, knife crime. 'You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side. 'It is now time for MPs to decide. 'So, today, I have written to Donald Tusk the President of the European Council to request a short extension of Article 50 up to the 30th of June to give MPs the time to make a final choice. 'Do they want to leave the EU with a deal which delivers on the result of the referendum, that takes control of our money borders and laws while protecting jobs and our national security? 'Do they want to leave without a deal, or do they not want to leave at all causing potentially irreparable damage to public trust not just in this generation of politicians but to our entire democratic process? 'It is high time we made a decision. 'So far, Parliament has done everything possible to avoid making a choice. 'Motion after motion and amendment after amendment has been tabled without Parliament ever deciding what it wants. 'All MPs have been willing to say is what they do not want. 'I passionately hope MPs will find a way to back the deal I've negotiated with the EU, a deal that delivers on the result of the referendum and is the very best deal negotiable. 'And I will continue to work night and day to secure the support of my colleagues, the DUP and others for this deal. 'But I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than the 30th of June. 'Some argue that I'm making the wrong choice and I should ask for a longer extension to the end of the year or beyond to give more time for politicians to argue over the way forward. 'That would mean asking you to vote in European elections nearly three years after our country decided to leave. 'What kind of message would that send? And just how bitter and divisive would that election campaign be at a time when the country desperately needs bringing back together. 'Some have suggested holding a second referendum. 'I don't believe that's what you want and it is not what I want. 'We asked you the question already and you've given us your answer. 'Now you want us to get on with it. 'And that is what I am determined to do.' Advertisement TWO MILLION sign petition to cancel Brexit: Celeb Remainers Hugh Grant, Annie Lennox and Professor Brian Cox back campaign to avoid No Deal (but other names look like they've been added from North Korea and Afghanistan) Celebrity Remainers including Hugh Grant and Annie Lennox are among more than two million people who have signed a petition today to cancel Brexit to avoid No Deal. Grant claimed every 'sane' person in the country was signing the plea, which was also backed by Professor Brian Cox and Jennifer Saunders. Rising rapidly every minute it passed the seven-figure milestone shortly before 3pm after Theresa May made a speech blaming Parliament for a delay to Brexit last night. The petition passed 10,000 names on Monday soon after it was created. Parliament's petition site crashed repeatedly today as the number of signatures rose. Despite verification checks including a signatory's post code and email addresses, the data from the petition appeared to suggest some names may have been added from overseas. The rule of Parliament's petition site say only UK citizens can sign. As people flocked to the campaign today, Mrs May was back in front of the cameras on arrival at the EU summit in Brussel - refusing to rule out No Deal and insisting Brexit had to be delivered. The petition crashed past 1,000,000 signatures shortly before 3pm today after backing from a host of celebrities A map showing where people have signed shows concentrations of support in cities such as London, Oxford and Edinburgh The petition states: 'The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is ''the will of the people''. 'We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People's Vote may not happen - so vote now.' The Government is obliged to offer a written response and it will be considered for a debate in Parliament - but it will not be staged before exit day on March 29. A map showing where people have signed shows concentrations of support in cities such as London, Oxford and Edinburgh. A raft of public figures have promoted the petition since Mrs May's controversial speech in Downing Street last night. Celebrities including Hugh Grant, Annie Lennox and Brian Cox all backed the petition Hugh Grant said: 'I've signed. And it looks like every sane person in the country is signing too. 'National emergency. Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU.' Anne Lennox said the petition was 'currently gaining 100,000 signatures an hour'. Actor Eddie Marsan urged his followers to sign, tweeting: 'In years to come, when future generations look back on Brexit and how this country was taken over by fanatical ideologues, to the left andto the right, they'll ask ''where were you? What did you do?''.' TV physicist Brian Cox said: 'I've signed this petition to revoke A50 and deal with the consequences afterwards - referendum, election, whatever. 'I have no idea whether these things do any good but after May's astonishingly irresponsible speech this evening I'll give anything a go.' Margaret Anne Georgiadou, who started the petition, told the BBC: 'I became like every other Remainer - very frustrated that we've been silenced and ignored for so long. 'So I think now it's almost like a dam bursting, because we've been held back in a sense - it's almost like last chance saloon now.' She said the petition 'didn't do very well for a week'. The Petitions Committee said: 'As many of you have guessed, the number of people using the site has caused problems this morning. 'It's a mix of people reloading the front page to watch the signature count go up and people trying to sign petitions.' Theresa May's deputy official spokesman said the Government had said '12,000 times' it would not revoke Article 50, adding: 'It is not something that she is prepared to do.' Emergency 'Cobra' committee takes over No Deal preparations amid moves to activate 'Operation Yellowhammer' on Monday - putting 3,500 troops on standby, booking ferries for NHS drugs and getting ready for huge lorry jams The Government's emergency Cobra committee has taken over No Deal preparations today amid plans to activate 'Operation Yellowhammer' on Monday. Yellowhammer is the civil contingencies wing of No Deal and involves putting 3,500 troops on standby, booking space on emergency ferries for NHS drugs and preparing for miles of lorry queues out of Dover. The plans - dubbed a No Deal 'doomsday' scenario - also include Foreign Office teams preparing to help Britons who get stranded in Europe from a dedicated 'nerve centre'. Officials have been planning for No Deal for months and activated 320 other contingency plans before Christmas with 101 days to March 29. It included a public information campaign telling citizens to prepare their own families. The new escalation comes with just eight days until exit is due to happen and with no deal agreed amid deadlock in Parliament. Cabinet Ministers were told on Tuesday Operation Yellowhammer would be stood up, the Daily Telegraph revealed. Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, told them in a letter: 'Operation Yellowhammer command and control structures will be enacted fully on 25 March unless a new exit date has been agreed between the UK and the EU.' He told departments to be ready to make 'necessary changes' to their contingency planning to account for an extension, and be ready to 're-programme' certain measures so that they could instead be activated before the new exit date. Yellowhammer is the civil contingencies wing of No Deal and involves putting 3,500 troops on standby, booking space on emergency ferries for NHS drugs and preparing for miles of lorry queues out of Dover Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told Cabinet on Tuesday that Operation Yellowhammer would be stood up on March 25 What does yellowhammer mean and how did civil servants come up with the name? Yellowhammer is the code name for the work for planning a no deal Brexit carried out by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS). It takes its name from a small yellow bird which lives across the UK. They forage for seeds to eat, breed in May and enjoy singing. Male yellowhammers learn their songs from their fathers, and over the course of time regional dialects have developed. In ancient legend the birds were linked to the devil - the intricate patterns on their eggs were said to conceal an evil message. The Yellowhammer operation works across all Whitehall departments to ensure the UK is able to weather the shock of crashing out of the Brussels bloc. The word itself is randomly generated by a computer. The CCS was established in 2011 and works on projects to ensure the UK can handle potentially disruptive change. Projects similar to Yellowhammer have been carried out to prepare for the 2012 Olympics and the Champions League final. Advertisement A Department for Transport source told The Times: 'Clearly if we are facing a no-deal Brexit on Friday there are going to be issues that require a substantial response and we need to ensure that the department is working in a way that allows us to do that ahead of time. 'The unknowns are going to be the reaction of other European countries to issues like customs and driving licences. We need to be in a position to respond to issues quickly.' A government spokesman said: 'As a responsible government we have been planning and continue to prepare for all eventualities and that includes managing the impacts of a no deal Brexit as they arise.' European Research Group deputy chairman Mark Francois said in the Commons yesterday Operation Yellowhammer shoudl be stood up immediately. He said: 'If that is so and there is no extension, why do we not just vote down the rancid withdrawal agreement and sprint for the line?' Chris Heaton-Harris, a Brexit minister, told MPs: 'We do have Operation Yellowhammer, which is working to deliver the biggest peacetime project in the history of the civil service. 'Leaving the European Union with a deal remains the government's top priority, but a responsible government must plan for every eventuality including a no-deal scenario, and these preparations are taking place alongside work to deliver on the government's policy priorities.' An official report published last month admitted 200,000 firms that trade with the EU are not ready for a no deal Brexit. The study from the Brexit department also found citizens are ignoring no deal warnings and failing to make sure they are ready for a no deal. It said no deal would cause delays at the border - potentially meaning shortages and prices rises for some food, particularly fresh produce not in season in Britain. The report warns panic buying could fuel shortages in foods that are shipped across the Channel. Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan revealed the No Deal 'nerve centre' that is ready to help stranded UK citizens this week Labour MP and Best for Britain supporter Rosie Duffield said: 'The only reason this money is being spent on disaster planning rather than our crumbling public services is because the Prime Minister is obsessed with keeping no deal on the table to force through her bad Brexit deal. 'Stopping the coming crisis should be the government's sole agenda, not facilitating it. 'Messes like this explain why the mood in the country has shifted over the last three years. 'No deal is not an acceptable outcome. People want a final say on Brexit, but also expect MPs to think about revoking A50 to stop this government walking us over a cliff-edge if we reach a point of national crisis next week.' 3,500 troops are on standby for no deal Brexit Extra personnel could be needed at British ports, at the border or even to help police civil disobedience if a no deal Brexit leads to food shortages or other problems Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson told MPs last year that 3,500 troops will be 'held at readiness' to help with a no-deal Brexit. The troops are a mix of regulars and reserves and will be held on bases to be deployed as needed as Britain leaves the EU. Extra personnel could be needed at British ports, at the border or even to help police civil disobedience if a no deal Brexit leads to food shortages or other problems. Downing Street insisted the use of soldiers is common - pointing to how troops helped out successfully in the running of the Olympics. Speaking in the Commons when he made the announcement, Mr Williamson said: 'We've as yet not had any formal request from any Government department but what we are doing is putting contingency plans in place, and what we will do is have 3,500 service personnel held at readiness - including regulars and reserves - in order to support any Government department on any contingencies they may need.' Up to 10,000 lorries could be parked in Kent if no deal causes delays at the ports Dover has room for 1,720, Manston Airport near Margate, which has been purchased by the Department for Transport, could fit 4,000 and 4,500 could be parked on the M20 - as happened when 'Operation Stack' was triggered in 2015 More than 10,000 lorries could be parked in Kent to cater for queues of trucks heading for France in event of a no-deal Brexit. First lorries would be parked at Dover, then on Manston Airport and finally the M20. Dover has room for 1,720 while Manston Airport near Margate, could fit 6,500 following a series of tests. If they run out of room, more lorries could be parked on the M20 - as happened when 'Operation Stack' was triggered in 2015. Further contingency plans that emerged in November suggested the 10-mile long M26 could also be pressed into service for overflowing lorries. Specialist drugs first in line for emergency ferry space Transport Secretary Chris Grayling had mooted the Government leasing entire roll-on, roll-off lorry ferries Reserving space on ferries for critical supplies is among the contingency plans triggered by the Cabinet today. Specialist drugs used by the NHS are first in line for space on the No Deal ferries, which were mired in controversy when Transport Secretary Chris Grayling handed one of the contracts to an untested firm with no ships. The deal was later cancelled. The Department of Health is understood to have contacted pharmaceutical companies urging them to route their supplies using the new ferry services. Jeremy Corbyn blames 'confusion' for storming out of Brexit talks with Theresa May because Labour defector Chuka Umunna was invited Jeremy Corbyn today blamed 'confusion' for leaving a Brexit meeting in No 10 because Chuka Umunna was invited. The Labour leader is in Brussels and met EU leaders today as the row over his decision to snub Mr Umunna last night continues. He was accused of 'extraordinary' and 'juvenile' behaviour after he walked out and critics pointed out that he had been happy to meet members of the IRA and Hamas in the past. Today he insisted he can deliver Brexit and accused Theresa May of trying to 'threaten' MPs into voting her deal through next week - but twice refused to rule out revoking Article 50 if a longer delay was needed. But when asked if he could be trusted to lead when he can't accept being in the same room as Mr Umunna, who left Labour this year, he said: 'There was confusion over that meeting' and said later on he had 'a separate and very extensive' discussion with Mrs May. Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Stammer (left) and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrive in Brussels ahead of a meeting with Michel Barnier Jeremy Corbyn (pictured leaving Downing Street last night) walked out on a crucial Brexit briefing with party leaders because former Labour MP Chuka Umunna (right) was invited Speaking after what he described as 'very constructive discussions' with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and European Commission secretary general Martin Selmayr in Brussels, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: 'Our determination is to prevent a no-deal exit from the European Union next Friday. 'We are therefore looking for alternatives and building a majority in Parliament that can agree on a future constructive economic relationship with the European Union. 'We've been discussing how this could come about and trying to reach out here as both Keir (Starmer) and myself have been reaching out to colleagues in all parties in the UK Parliament.' Accompanied by shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Corbyn said: 'This morning's meetings have been positive and we have done what I believe the Government ought to be doing - instead of bringing back a twice-rejected deal to the British Parliament, looking for constructive solutions.' Mr Corbyn refused to sit down with Chuka Umunna, who, as a member of the breakaway Independent Group, had been invited along with other opposition representatives by the Prime Minister. Unite general secretary Len McCluskey tweeted today: 'No anti-Corbyn distractions on this. He's right not to meet with the people who betrayed their party. He wants to take the country forward with people who can be trusted. Keep the focus. We need a Labour deal, not a deal to put the interests of Tories beyond those of the people'. And ruling out a second referendum he added: 'This is not difficult. We need a customs arrangement'. Today Labour MP Barry Gardiner insisted his party leader was right to refuse to take part in talks if Mr Umunna was present because The Independent Group he has joined are not a 'political party' and said Mr Corbyn has concerns about how they are funded. Labour MP Ian Murray tweeted an ironic attack on Mr Corbyn's walk-out from Brexit crisis talks, highlighting how Mr Corbyn is failing to champion a people's vote like Chuka Umunna is, despite it being Labour Party policy. He said: 'As for Jeremy Corbyn. He was right to walk out of talks with the PM tonight because @ChukaUmunna was attending. 'Chuka would have championed what is Labour Party policy in a public vote. 'How dare Chuka champion the policy of Labour members. That's the leadership's job. Disgraceful.' He added minutes later: 'Thanks for all the messages and emails. This was irony. I should know better than to think Twitter does irony.' His refusal came despite the fact he has been happy to sit alongside members of terror group Hamas in the past - going so far as to call them his 'friends'. Mr Corbyn also invited members of the IRA to the House of Commons just days after the Brighton Bomb. But yesterday he refused to sit alongside Mr Umunna - complaining he 'wasn't a proper party leader'. Critics last night lambasted his 'juvenile' behaviour at a time when Britain's future hangs in the balance. Leading the criticism, Countdown presenter Rachel Riley (pictured) mocked Mr Corbyn for his actions She wrote on Twitter: 'Corbyn on Hamas (the terrorists): I wanted Hamas to be part of the debate. Corbyn on Chuka Umunna (the anti-racism ex-Labour MP): Tell him I'm not talking to him' Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said: 'Jeremy Corbyn's kinder, gentler politics was found wanting as he stomped out of the meeting before it began rather than breathe the same air as Chuka Umunna. 'This is a rather strange way to behave at a moment of national crisis.' Mr Umunna said the country was in 'a crisis situation' and the people of the UK expect conflicting political groups to 'come together' to find a way forward. 'That's why the Prime Minister convened the meeting and I welcome the fact she did so,' he said. 'I think it's really extraordinary behaviour for the Leader of the Opposition to behave in really this kind of very juvenile way when the moment demands that we all step up and engage in some serious dialogue to find our way through this chaos and this mess.' And others pointed out his shady history in meeting extremists such as Hamas and Hezbollah. John Woodcock, the former Labour MP who now sits as an independent, said: 'This man makes a grotesque virtue of fraternising with the violent extremists that many people conclude he sympathises with. 'But at the moment that our country desperately needs MPs to reach an agreement on Brexit, he draws a line at Chuka Umunna.' Former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron tweeted: 'Jezza has been quite happy to meet with some rather 'edgy' folk in the past... but draws the line at that menace to civilisation, Chuka Umunna.' In 1984, just two weeks after the Brighton bombing which killed five people and injured 31, Mr Corbyn caused an uproar by inviting representatives of the IRA to the House of Commons. In 2009, Mr Corbyn was filmed at a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign event saying: 'It will be my pleasure and honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. 'I've also invited our friends from Hamas to come and speak as well.' And in 2014, Mr Corbyn visited the graves of terror leaders linked to the Munich massacre. The Mail published a photograph of him holding a wreath just feet away from the graves of terror leaders linked to the 1972 killings. Following the meeting, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said: 'That is rather a strange way to behave in a national crisis' Mr Umunna described Jeremy Corbyn's refusal to engage in talks as 'extraordinary' and 'very juvenile' SNP MP Stewart McDonald told Mr Corbyn to 'get a grip' after his refusal to engage in talks with the Independent Group Anna Soubry, a former Tory MP who is now with the Independent Group, also attended the meeting Last night Countdown host Rachel Riley - who has been a victim of anti-Semitic abuse from hard-left activists - criticised the Labour leader. She wrote: 'Corbyn on Hamas (the terrorists): 'I wanted Hamas to be part of the debate'. Corbyn on Chuka Umunna (the anti-racism ex-Labour MP): 'Tell him I'm not talking to him'.' Euan Philipps, spokesman for Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said: 'What's apparent from tonight's display is that, despite his claims, Jeremy Corbyn only ever speaks with people he agrees with. 'While he seems prepared to talk with Hamas and Hezbollah, he won't sit round a table with a BAME south London MP even when to do so is in the national interest and at a time of crisis. 'This is a man who appears too blinded by his own prejudices to do what is right for the country.' Mrs May invited leaders of the other parties to a meeting in the Commons yesterday to discuss the way ahead on Brexit. Tory MP Simon Hoare said: 'Jeremy Corbyn has always said in defence of his meetings with the IRA that you've got to sit down and talk to make progress. 'He was given the opportunity today and he's flunked it. It's another indication that at times when statesmanship is required, he falls well wide of the mark.' Chris Leslie, an Independent Group MP, said: 'Astonishing. Yet again Jeremy Corbyn puts petty party politics before the national interest.' SNP MP Stewart McDonald told Mr Corbyn to 'get a grip' after his refusal to engage in talks with the Independent Group present. He tweeted: 'I mean honestly, nine days until the country he wants to be Prime Minister of leaves the EU and Jeremy Corbyn has gone full 'you can't sit with us'. 'This isn't Mean Girls. Get a grip of your life, man!' Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson tweeted: 'Jeremy Corbyn this evening channelling a teenager who doesn't get his way. A sad, depressing way to conduct politics.' A spokeswoman for the Labour Party said: 'It was not the meeting that had been agreed and the terms were broken. 'Downing Street is in such chaos that they were unable to manage their own proposed meeting. 'We are in discussions with Number 10 about holding the bilateral meeting with the PM that Jeremy proposed at Prime Minister's Question Time.' Kathy Bacchus blamed her alcohol problem on living in Saudi Arabia after she was convicted of drink driving at Manchester Magistrates' Court A mother of two caught driving while more than four times the alcohol limit has walked free from court after she claimed she turned to drink after 'struggling' with strict laws she had to abide by whilst living and working in Saudi Arabia. Kathy Bacchus, 50, who worked as a cookery teacher and a chocolatier in the Kingdom before returning to the UK got so drunk on white wine at 3pm she drove home from an off licence with a punctured tyre. An eye witness who saw her Vauxhall Astra scrape along a suburban street looked on in shock as Bacchus stumbled and fell over the bonnet of the vehicle as she stopped and got out outside her home. Police who arrived at her semi detached property in Worsley, Greater Manchester found Bacchus was unsteady on her feet and slurring her words. The witness later told officers: 'How she hadn't killed someone I don't know.' At Manchester magistrates court, Bacchus who worked as an 'Event and Laboratory' manageress for a chocolatier company in the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah admitted driving with excess alcohol. But she escaped with a suspended prison sentence after the court heard she turned to alcohol having 'struggled as a female' in the Arab country where alcohol is forbidden and where women were not allowed to drive and are also forbidden from travelling, conducting official business, or undergoing certain medical procedures without permission from 'male guardians.' It is is thought she stopped working in Jeddah in 2017 before the ban on women drivers was lifted in 2018. The arrest took place on February 10 after Bacchus had gone to a Co-op to buy wine. Prosecutor Mr Andrew Martin said: 'A member of the public called the police after he was walking down the street in Worsley at around 3:10pm he heard a loud noise and saw a car driving up the road. 'He immediately noticed a vehicle with a puncture he noticed the defendant was driving the vehicle and that she was alone. The defendant then parked up outside her home and the informant went to speak with her to advise her about the tyre. 'She was unsteady on her feet and slurring her speech and police attended the address. When they attended they stated that the defendant was still very intoxicated, she was slurring her speech she appeared to be in a state of confusion. Manchester Magistrates' Court heard Bacchus drove to her local Co-op to buy white wine on February 10. A pedestrian reported her to police after she was spotted driving with a punctured tyre. The pedestrian noticed Bacchus was unsteady when he spoke with her and alerted the authorities 'The informant also stated that when she got out of the vehicle she fell onto the bonnet. Then informant commented: 'How she hadn't killed someone I don't know.' Tests showed Bacchus had 146 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35mg. In the dock Ms Bachus appeared confused and disorientated, initially trying to sit with her husband in the public gallery on entry before being directed to the doc by the usher. She interrupted the district judge on several occasions and at one stage asked him if she could leave. In a plea from the dock she wept as she said: 'Please don't send me to jail. I had been suffering from anxiety and depression since October and I am not coping very well in life at the moment. 'We are having a lot of family issues at the moment. I was feeling very stressed and I needed to get out the house I had driven to get a bottle of wine there, came home to try and relax. I have no previous convictions at all - in fact I am an upstanding member of society. I haven't worked for the last seven years and I am very very stressed out with this matter.' Bacchus was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison suspended for 12 months and ordered to undergo a six-month alcohol treatment programme. She was also banned from driving for three years and fined 200 A probation report read to the court said: 'She doesn't recall if she had any alcohol before she got into the car but she accepts that she clearly had consumed quite a significant amount. She has demonstrated a high level of remorse and has repeatedly said that she has let herself down. 'She has described to me quite a turbulent 12 month period after she moved back from Saudi Arabia where she struggled with being a female in a country with quite strict laws and regulations. She has moved home ahead of her husband and she's got a very limited support network. 'When her husband had moved home he works away in the week they have got two children 11 and 15. Her stepfather has cancer and she has been diagnosed with anxiety and depression. 'She accepts that she needs to go to the GP, no counselling has been offered. She accepts that she is in a vicious cycle of depression and alcohol abuse. She has accepted that she is alcohol dependent and describes herself at breaking point. She is a very emotionally fragile lady.' Sentencing district judge Mark Hadfield told Bacchus: 'The aggravating features of this case are the extremely high reading and unacceptable standards of driving. Fortunately no one was put in any direct danger. However I acknowledge that you are the carer of two young children.' Bacchus was sentenced to 12 weeks jail suspended for 12 months and was ordered to complete a six month alcohol treatment programme. She was also banned from driving for three years and was was told to pay costs and surcharges of 200. The moment a car fleeing from police smashed into a public bus in Ohio was captured in horrifying footage. Authorities have released multiple videos from both the street and the inside of the bus that show the brutal collision on March 10 in Trotwood, a suburb of Dayton. All three people in the Pontiac were killed and six people on the bus were injured. CCTV footage shared by the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority on Wednesday shows bus passengers being flung from their seats when the car struck the exit doors. The impact caused the bus to roll onto its side as shattered glass rained down on the riders. Horrifying footage from inside an RTA bus in the Dayton suburb of Trotwood, Ohio, shows the moment a car crashed into its side on May 10, killing three teenagers and injuring six others The bus rolled over on to its side sending the passengers and driver flying. The six on board were treated at hospital for non-life-threatening injuries Other clips show the reaction of the bus driver as the vehicle overturns. The horror smash happened at around 6pm on March 10 near State Route 49 and Free Pike The bus driver can be asking passengers: 'Are you guys okay?' before rushing over to help The bus driver pulls herself up from her seat and asks the passengers: 'Are you guys okay?' as she rushes to their aid. They were all taken to a hospital for injuries, but none were life-threatening. Neither the bus driver nor the passengers have been identified. The suspected driver of the Pontiac, 18-year-old Christopher Baker, was taken to the hospital in critical condition and died three days later. Front seat passenger Mya'Nie Nabors, 15, was pronounced dead at the scene and Kyren Wright, 18, died at a local hospital. Trotwood police released dashcam footage from the horror crash earlier this week. They said the Pontiac crashed as the driver attempted to run a red light The car can be seen colliding with the bus with with so much force that it rolls onto its side as debris and large pieces of the car fly off into the middle of the intersection Police said Christopher Baker (left), 18, was the driver of the vehicle. Following the crash he was rushed to the Miami Valley Hospital, but he died three days later. Kyren Wright, 18, (right) of Dayton, was the second passenger in the vehicle Mya'Nie Nabors, 15, was a passenger in the vehicle that was driven by 18-year-old Christopher Baker last week. Nabors was pronounced dead at the scene The crash occurred at around 6pm on March 10 after a Trotwood police officer attempted to pull the Pontiac over when she noticed its vehicle registration had expired. Dashcam footage released earlier this week shows the officer following Baker's vehicle when he makes an illegal right turn on State Route 49. That's when the officer activated her overhead lights as she approached an intersection, but decided not to pursue the vehicle, according to police. But seconds later, Baker's vehicle is seen colliding with the RTA bus at the Free Pike and Ohio 49 interchange. The Pontiac burst into flames shortly after the crash, sending up a plume of thick smoke Officers and other drivers rushed over to try and help the passengers, but it was too late The video shows the car smash into the bus, sending debris and large pieces of the car flying into the middle of the road. Another clip shows heavy smoke coming from the car as it caught on fire. The officer and other drivers rushed over to try and help the passengers, but it was too late for Wright and Nabors. Baker was rushed to the Miami Valley Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries on Wednesday. The collision remains under investigation. Authorities have not released information about how fast the car was traveling. It's believed Nabors was sitting in the front seat of the vehicle. The 15-year-old's grieving family described her as being a 'vibrant' young lady. Her mother, Endya Reed (bottom right), said she's 'not really upset with anybody because teenagers make bad mistakes' Classmates, friends and family remembered Wright during a prayer vigil at Stivers School for the Arts on Tuesday. The 18-year-old was reportedly in the backseat of the Pontiac Baker (above) succumbed to his injuries from the crash three days later. His family and friends came together for a balloon release and candle vigil in his honor on March 16 A GoFundMe account has been created to help the Nabors family with funeral expenses. The grieving family described Nabors as being a 'vibrant' young lady who attended Trotwood High School. According to her family, Nabors was a member of the Lady Rams basketball team and a member of the school's JROTC. 'She was very loving, caring and never met a stranger. Mya'Nie put so many smiles on many peoples' faces,' the account read. Endya Reed, Nabors' mother, told WHIO that she's 'not really upset with anybody because teenagers make bad mistakes'. 'I just want the new generation to, you know, don't be so quick to jump in cars with people... You don't have to jump in the car with people because you never know what that person is going to do,' Reed said. 'In a split second, my child's life is gone,' she added. Last Tuesday, friends and family members gathered for a balloon release for Nabors. Also on Tuesday, students, friends and family remembered Wright during a prayer vigil at Stivers School for the Arts. On Saturday, Baker's family and friends came together for a balloon release and candle vigil as they remembered him. The Clash were one of the most influential bands to come out of Britain's punk rock scene in the 1970s. They formed in 1976, with founding members including singer Joe Strummer, guitarist Mick Jones and bassist Paul Simonon alongside another guitarist Keith Levene and drummer Terry Chimes. They made their debut supporting the Sex Pistols at a gig in Sheffield that year, but Levene soon departed after becoming disillusioned while Chimes also left a year later because he 'wanted a different life'. The Clash were a hugely influential band that came out of Britain's punk rock scene in the 1970s. Pictured left to right are Joe Strummer, Nicky 'Topper' Headon, Paul Simonon and Mick Jones They enjoyed success between 1976 and 1986, although Headon (second left) left in 1982 and Jones (second right) followed out the door a year later. Also pictured are Simonon (far left) and Strummer (far right) The addition of Nicky 'Topper' Headon cemented the classic line-up and they made a breakthrough in 1977 with their self-titled debut album. Success followed on both sides of the Atlantic, with third album London Calling making them a household name. The band also became well known for incorporating various different styles into their sound including reggae, ska and funk. Hit singles Should I Stay or Should I Go? and Rock the Casbah followed in the 1980s but tensions began to rise and Headon was kicked out in 1982 due to his heroin usage. Mick Jones was then fired a year later and although other musicians were brought in to replace the pair, the group disintegrated and disbanded by 1986, with Strummer claiming they had 'run out of gasoline'. But what happened to them afterwards? Joe Strummer Born John Mellor in Turkey in 1952 to a father in the British Foreign Service, Strummer spent his early childhood around the world in Egypt, Mexico and Germany, before going to boarding school in Surrey aged nine. He lost brother David to suicide in 1970 and soon after became known on the art scene first in London and then in Newport, Wales, while he also worked as a gravedigger during this time. After starting a career as a musician in Wales, he changed his name to Strummer in 1975, forming The Clash a year later. Strummer enjoyed solo success after The Clash, working on film soundtracks and acting, while he also toured with The Pogues. He is pictured left in 1981 and right in Las Vegas in 2002, shortly before his death from an undiagnosed heart defect Following the split, Strummer became involved with films, recording music for several soundtracks including Sid and Nancy and Grosse Point Blank, while he also acted in Alex Cox film Straight to Hell in 1987 and Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train in 1989. Strummer continued his solo career while he also toured with the Pogues in the 1980s and 1990s, deputising for lead singer Shane McGowan on a tour in 1991. He married South African citizen Pamela Moolman in 1975 to help her obtain citizenship, but spent 14 years with Gaby Salter, whom he met when she was 17 in 1978, and had two children with her. (From left) Strummer, Headon and Simonon pictured during a photoshoot in 1977, which was a breakthrough year for The Clash They could never marry as Strummer was unable to find Ms Moolman to divorce her. But he later met and married Lucinda Tait in 1995 whom he remained with until his death from a heart defect at his Somerset home in 2002. Mick Jones Mick Jones was born in Wandsworth in 1955 to a Welsh father and Russian mother. He always wanted to be in a band and attended art school to achieve that means, earning praise as a guitarist in the early 1970s in a glam rock band before leaving to seek a new direction, which led him to meet the other members of The Clash. Jones played a huge part in the band's success as lead guitarist and one of the main songwriters but by 1983 his lack of punctuality led to Strummer and Simonson firing him. Mick Jones played lead guitar and co-wrote many of The Clash's songs before he was kicked out in 1983 due to concerns over punctuality and commitment. He is pictured left in 1978 and right in 2004 with wife Miranda Davis Jones, right, and Simonon, left, would collaborate again in 2010 when both joined Damon Albarn's Gorillaz to perform at festivals including Coachella and Glastonbury He went on to perform with bands General Public and Big Audio Dynamite and also found success as a producer, working on The Libertines' debut album Up the Bracket in 2002. Jones and Simonon also reunited to join Damon Albarn-led Gorillaz in 2010 as part of the live band which played at major festivals including Coachella and Glastonbury. Most recently he announced he would be collaborating with US rock band The Flaming Lips, narrating their upcoming 2019 album King's Mouth, released in April, on which he is 'on nearly every song'. Jones is married to film producer Miranda Davis and they live in a 5million home in Notting Hill. The couple have a teenage daughter, Stella, 16, who also works as a model. Paul Simonon Simonon was another artistic youth whose father was an amateur painter. He was born in Croydon and grew up in Brixton, but also spent a year in Siena and Rome when his mother remarried. His position in The Clash was less secure than others and he was actually still learning the bass when they first recorded. But he is also credited with coming up with the name for the group, claiming he repeatedly saw the word 'clash' in the news. Art student Paul Simonon couldn't even play the bass properly when the band first started recording but went on to perform with the group throughout it's entire run until the split in 1986. He is pictured left in 1977 and right with former wife Miss Ronane in 2002 The Clash, pictured, were known for their punk attitude and outspoken style during the late 1970s and 1980s Simonon has also gone down in rock history after posing on the iconic cover of London Calling about to smash his guitar on the ground. After the group split up in 1986, he returned to painting and staged gallery shows as well as contributing album artwork to other projects. In music, he collaborated with Bob Dylan on his 1988 album Down in the Groove and in the mid-2000s joined rock supergroup The Good, The Bad and The Queen alongside Blur frontman Damon Albarn, The Verve guitarist Simon Tong and Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen. He has also been active with Greenpeace, joining a protest on an oil rig in Greenland in 2011 that landed him in jail for two weeks. Simonon married former model and Clash manager Tricia Ronane in 1990 and they had two children, but split in 2006. A year later he began seeing lingerie mogul and Agent Provocateur co-founder Serena Rees, whom he remains with to this day. He officially divorced Miss Ronane in 2008 and the pair divided their London properties and Clash royalties equally. It is believed Simonon was the only 'classic' member of The Clash who opposed them performing a reunion show ahead of their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2003, a feat which became impossible after Strummer's death in December 2002. Nicky 'Topper' Headon Known as 'Topper' because he resembled Mickey the Monkey from Topper comics, Nicky Headon was born in Bromley in 1955 and grew up in Kent. He began playing drums at an early age and was heavily was influenced by jazz. Headon was active with bands including Mirkwood and Supertramp in the early 1970s, before joining The Clash in 1977. Headon initially wanted to establish himself as a talented drummer with the band before moving on, but changed his mind and became an integral part of the group, including writing most of the music for smash hit Rock the Casbah. Topper Headon, pictured left in 1978 and right in 2007 with a female friend at a film premiere, was kicked out of the group for heroin use in 1982 However by 1982 he was struggling with a heroin addiction and his continued drug use caused tensions with the rest of the band, leading to them kicking him out in May of that year. Headon later apologised for his actions and claimed if he had stayed in the group it may not have split up in 1986. He continued in music for the next two decades, recording a solo album and working on other projects, but began experiencing serious back pain by 2003 due to a curvature of his spine. Headon also contracted hepatitis C in the 1980s which caused lengthy liver problems into the mid 2000s. He has since become a spokesman for the Hepatitis C Trust. He currently lives in Dover. A Christian mother was today branded 'homophobic' after claiming live on TV that being gay is a choice and nobody is born homosexual. Izzy Montague, of Croydon, South London, claimed during a debate on LGBT lessons in schools that her beliefs prevented her from having a gay relationship. But she was criticised by some viewers of ITV's Good Morning Britain, who claimed she was 'bigoted' and 'from the 1500s' with 'absolutely disgusting' views. Izzy Montague appeared on ITV's Good Morning Britain today alongside gay father Tom Cox Gay father Tom Cox, who is a blogger, appeared alongside her on the programme today and insisted that people are born with their sexual preference. But Ms Montague said: 'I don't agree with that you're born, you know, anything, no. Of course I believe it's a choice. I've made a choice on what I think is right or wrong. 'I don't remember ever thinking to myself 'am I gay, am I straight?' It's something that I have done based on how I believe. 'Even if I was gay, I do personally believe - based on my belief - that I feel that a heterosexual relationship is the right course of action for me.' Mr Cox added: 'I think you're doing a child a disservice by not allowing them to have that education to see that families come in all different shapes and sizes. 'We live in such a diverse time. Gay people are everywhere, so they're going to get on a bus and that bus driver is going to be gay. 'They're going to be served food in a restaurant by a gay woman, a gay person may be delivering your child's baby one day. We are everywhere.' However, Ms Montague then said: 'What makes you think that my child is going around in a world thinking that nobody is gay? 'I never said that I would not teach my child. I'm Christian, so we have our own ways of teaching about the world - it's not about living in a vacuum. 'It's not about saying this person doesn't exist, it's nothing like that. It's our opinions of the world around us. Viewers of the show hosted by Ben Shephard and Kate Garraway were quick to criticise the woman on Twitter, labelling her 'blatantly homophobic'. One, Megan Gratton, from Yeovil, Somerset, said: 'Wow, lost for words with this debate. Who in their right mind would choose to be gay with the amount of hate and abuse they would endure?' Another said: 'Wow, this womans views are absolutely disgusting to say people who are gay have a choice. The more she talks the more I dislike her. She is blatantly homophobic!' Ms Manning was in the news last November after complaining about a gay parade at her five-year-old son's school before being confronted by a staff member wearing a T-shirt saying: 'Why be homophobic when you could just be quiet?' Alan Nolan (pictured), who avoided prison after his girlfriend died from swallowing his cocaine stash could be jailed for beating up his pregnant partner A violent thug who avoided prison after his girlfriend died from swallowing his cocaine stash is now set to be jailed for beating up his pregnant partner. In October 2018, Alan Nolan walked free after his girlfriend, Georgia Cassidy died after swallowing four-wraps of his cocaine stash when they were pulled over by police in February 2018. Just 19 days after he walked from court, the 23-year-old, from Kirkby, Merseyside, unleashed his temper on his new partner, pregnant Bethany Wainwright, after she refused to pick him up from the city centre, when he woke her up with a 1am phone call, the Liverpool Crown Court heard. He had been out with his friends, drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis while Ms Wainright stayed at his flat on November 11. Returning in the early hours, he battered Ms Wainright through the communal areas of the flat and even placed his foot on her stomach - despite her pleading with him that she had his baby inside of her. Ms Wainwright was so scared she ran to her car and locked herself in, while Nolan, who she claimed had cocaine powder around his nose, tried to kick out the windows, screamed and threatened to 'spoon the baby out of her'. Nolan walked free after his girlfriend, Georgia Cassidy (pictured) died after swallowing four-wraps of his cocaine stash when they were pulled over by police in February 2018 The court heard she later opened the door, and was dragged out by her hair, with clumps of it thrown by bully Nolan onto the windscreen. At one point Nolan grabbed Ms Wainwright by the throat, pinned her against the wall and mocked her by claiming the unborn baby was not his. He forced her down onto a blow-up bed and screamed in her face before the assault finally ended when he broke down in tears and insisted she 'get out'. Liverpool Crown Court heard a victim impact statement (VIS) from a traumatised Ms Wainwright, who described her ex as a 'monster' who 'terrified' her. Photos shown also illustrate how Nolan left his defenceless girlfriend black and blue. Reading from her VIS, prosecutor Simon Leong said Ms Wainwright struggled to sleep and suffers from nightmares, doctors have also diagnosed her with depression. She branded Nolan 'a liar', who was 'not being honest about what happened,' 'playing the victim and blaming her.' Just 19 days after Miss Cassidy's death, Nolan unleashed his temper on pregnant partner Bethany Wainwright after she refused to pick him up from the city centre, when he woke her up with a 1am phone call, the Liverpool Crown Court heard Ms Wainwright, who said she was too scared to see Nolan in court, described what happened last year as 'something else' and 'how she thought he was going to seriously harm her'. In her statement she also told of how she now 'relies heavily on her family, and some days struggles to get out of bed' and described their ten-month relationship as 'volatile' and 'violent', during which time Nolan had been unfaithful to her. Ms Wainwright ended by telling police how she 'never wishes to see him [Nolan] again', had experienced weight loss and described often feeling tired. In his first police interview, Nolan lied to police, saying his partner had been 'possessive and verbally and physically aggressive towards HIM'. Prosecutors applied for a restraining order and revealed how Nolan, who admitted common assault and breach of a suspended sentence [Georgia Cassidy's case], completed just 15 hours of a required 284 hours of unpaid work. Photos shown also illustrate how Nolan left his defenceless pregnant partner black and blue. In her victim impact statement Ms Wainwright said she suffers from nightmares and doctors have also diagnosed her with depression Ms Wainwright branded Nolan 'a liar', who was 'not being honest about what happened,' 'playing the victim and blaming her'. She also described their ten-month relationship as 'volatile' and 'violent', during which time Nolan had been unfaithful to her Judge David Aubrey, QC, said: 'I remember vividly this case... it was said by his parents they were confident her son would never take drugs again and his life was in tatters, and that he was full of remorse. 'But a few weeks later, he took alcohol and cannabis and behaved like an animal. I warned him, what would happen if he breached it [his suspended sentence.]' Back in October 2018 he was given a 18-month suspended sentence for possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply and 284 hours of unpaid work, of which he has only completed 15 hours. There were no charges specially relation to the death of Georgia Cassidy, 19, after she became fatally ill after digesting his four wraps, which later tore open in her stomach, when they were pulled over by police back in February 11. Back in October 2018 he was given an 18-month suspended sentence for possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply and 284 hours of unpaid work, of which he has only completed 15 hours. There were no charges specially relation to the death of Georgia Cassidy He was slammed for only taking his Miss Cassidy, who he had been in a relationship with for four years, to Aintree hospital an hour after she became ill. Instead of rushing her to hospital, he first called two friends Mark Guest and Anthony Whitworth at the The Punchbowl pub car park in Sefton Village. When he finally arrived at hospital with the fatally ill 19-year-old, Georgia was not breathing and was in cardiac arrest. She never regained consciousness, and her family eventually had to switch off her life support machine. Nolan will be sentenced on Thursday. Police said the charges carried a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars Police were forced to rescue a baby before charging an 18-year-old with child sexual abuse and pornography offences. The woman, from Lalor in Melbourne's north, was arrested by police and charged with using a carriage service to produce and transmit child pornography, and the sexual touching of a child under 16 and sexual penetration of a child under 12. The dramatic arrest followed a tip-off from authorities working for the National Crime Authority in the United Kingdom. A Melbourne woman, 18, is facing potentially 20 years behind bars after she was charged with child sexual abuse and pornography offences (stock image) The teenager faces a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars, while the infant was found safe at another premises in Victoria. Jayne Crossling, the Australian Federal Police Detective Superintendent, dished out high praise to a handful of investigators who worked on the case from the Victorian Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Team (JACET). 'I want to praise the commitment and collaborative effort of the Victorian JACET members who had to deal with this material, and then carry out complex searches and inquiries to identify and locate this woman and infant,' she said. 'Investigators regularly have to deal with the most abhorrent aspects of society, and I can't praise them more highly for what they do in matters such as this. 'In doing so, they significantly alter a child's life by removing them from an extremely harmful and distressing situation.' Anyone who has information about people involved in online child sexual exploitation should call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. A Melbourne woman 18, is looking at a lengthy jail stint after she was charged with child sexual abuse and pornography offences (stock image) A pair found dead in the middle of the night after being electrocuted on railway tracks near London Stadium could have been railway graffiti artists or train surfers, according to theories being probed by police. Police came across the first victim, a man in his 20s, at 1am and the second at 2.31am, while a witness overlooking the busy morning commuter line in Stratford described seeing flames and smoke on the line. Both victims were badly burnt. It is not known why the two people were on the tracks and the British Transport Police are yet to determine the second person's gender. A spokesman would 'not speculate' on train surfers being more likely because of the overhead power lines, but said that both deaths were being linked. Police were called to the line just after 1am to find a man in his 20s dead on the tracks. A second person, whose gender is not yet known, was also found dead at 2.31am. Pictured: Flames and smoke near the tracks last night Another photo taken by a resident near the tracks at around 2am showed the emergency service response The tracks run between Hackney Wick and Stratford, which are just by West Ham's home ground Novelist Joseph Allchin, 35, has a flat looking over the track. He told The Standard: 'I heard a loud explosion and went to the window and saw a fire on the tracks next to a stationary freight train. I thought it was fireworks at first. 'I was concerned because of the freight train. It had a large white canister, so I was worried it would blow up. 'The fire was igniting underneath the train. I thought someone had thrown something burning onto the tracks.' The first body was found on tracks near Wallis Road in Hackney Wick and the other on the line near Carpenters Road, Stratford. The highway that runs underneath the bridge that links the shopping centre to the park was littered with orange traffic cones and barriers and appeared to be under construction. It appears the new road is linked to a new housing development being built between Westfields and West Ham's London Stadium. The railway lines were on the side nearest to Westfield Shopping Centre. There was no longer a police presence at Carpenters Road by 1pm today and workmen at the construction site nearby appeared unaffected. Pedestrians also walked across the bridge unconcerned and did not seem to be aware anything had taken place overnight. No sign of a forensic tent or officers were visible from the bridge. A spokeman for British Transport Police (BTP) said: 'One of the victims is a male in his 20s, we cannot confirm which one at this time. 'The train tracks between Stratford and Hackney Wick are served by an overhead power line which is electrified. 'We are looking into the possibility that the victims were train surfers or graffiti artists - we are not ruling out either at this stage of the investigation. 'At the moment we are looking for any witnesses who could help us with our enquiries.' An undated photo of Hackney Wick station, near where the two victims were found dead last night A BTP spokeswoman said: 'At approximately 1am in the morning on March 21, BTP were called to the line between Hackney Wick and Stratford.' Pictured: Stratford Station It is not known why the two Stratford victims were on the tracks. Last year, three graffiti artists were hit by a train near Loughborough Station in south London. They were, left to right: Jack Gilbert, 23, Alberto Fresneda Carrasco, 19 and Harrison Scott-Hood, 23 The incident initially caused closures and disruption on the London Overground and Greater Anglia services but this has now been cleared. Last year, three graffiti artists were killed by a train when they walked down tracks near Loughborough Station in south London. The families of Alberto Fresneda Carrasco, 19, and 23-year-olds Jack Gilbert and Harrison Scott-Hood gave a joint statement saying 'a love of painting' was the only thing they were guilty of. Detective Chief Inspector Tim Tubbs said: 'An investigation is now underway to discover what happened and how these two people came to lose their lives on the railway. 'At this time we are treating their deaths as unexplained as we make a number of urgent enquiries. 'I would ask anyone who was near Stratford or Hackney Wick last night, and saw something which they think might be relevant to contact us as soon as possible.' Information can be passed to BTP by sending a text to 61016 or by calling 0800 40 50 40 quoting reference 23 of 21/03/19. Police are examining if the two victims could have been graffiti artists. Pictured is graffiti in Statford near to where the incident happened Sentencing Aaron Campbell, Judge Lord Matthews said: 'You were found guilty of the abduction, rape and murder of Alesha MacPhail, a six year old child. 'Merely stating that fact is horrific enough but the circumstances surrounding these vile crimes and the manner of their commission have quite rightly aroused revulsion and disbelief that these sorts of things could happen. 'Alesha had just arrived on Bute to spend a holiday with her father and grandparents and had gone to bed apparently safe in her own room. 'No doubt she was looking forward to what the next few weeks had in store. 'Her father and his parents would have enjoyed every minute of it while her mother and her family would have been counting down the days till they saw her smiling face again. 'Meanwhile you attended a party at your own home, consumed alcohol and then, on your account, to which I will return, went off in search of cannabis. 'You went into the house and then her bedroom. You removed her from there and took her to a secluded spot where you violated and murdered her in the most brutal fashion. 'The details of that were revealed in the evidence and I do not intend to go over them again. 'It is difficult to imagine the distress which her family must have suffered, not only when she went missing but when the awful news came in that she had been found dead. 'That distress can only have been intensified, if that was possible, by their finding out the extent of what you did to her, not only in the weeks and months immediately afterwards but in the course of the trial. 'I have read statements by her parents and grandparents in which they have tried to express their loss and the emptiness which greets them every day. 'Just as I know that no sentence which I can pass will alleviate their anguish, so I know that mere words are poor reflections of it. 'The effect on the island community was profound. Many of them rallied round to help in the search and the effect on those who saw Alesha in the woods will be long lasting. 'I have never before seen a police officer almost break down in the witness box, so affected was he by the sight. The contrast between them and you could not be more vivid. 'Your attitude was clearly demonstrated by the evidence that you posted an image of yourself in a mirror while making a joke that you had found where the murderer was hiding. 'The arrogance and callousness of that is breathtaking. Thanks to the dedication of the police and forensic scientists, ably assisted by members of the public, such as those who came forward when they found articles of your clothing on the shore, you were eventually brought to justice. 'Despite the overwhelming evidence against you, you did not plead guilty but elected to go to trial. 'That was your right and I do not increase your sentence because of it. However it is symptomatic of your staggering lack of remorse. 'Not once during the trial did I detect a flicker of emotion from you and that was also the experience of the professionals who interviewed you for the purposes of the reports, to which I will turn shortly. 'Your defence was one of incrimination of a young woman Toni-Louise McLachlan and you gave evidence in support of it. 'It was a cruel travesty of the truth which was understandably reported widely in the media and left her open to suspicion at the very least and quite possibly hatred, all of which was due to your perverted machinations. 'I am very grateful to Mr McConnachie who today made it clear that she was completely innocent. 'Mr McConnachie has said all that could be said on your behalf, entirely in keeping with the exemplary way the trial was conducted on both sides of the bar. 'All matters of fact which could reasonably be agreed were agreed and the issues were well focused and laid before the jury. 'As I said to the jury after they returned their verdict, Counsel do not make up defences but present the case on the basis of their instructions. 'It is obvious what your instructions were and your evidence was entirely in keeping with them, albeit it was a tissue of lies. 'It does not go too far therefore when I say that I was shocked when I saw the contents of the Criminal Justice Social Work report and the report from Dr Macpherson, the consultant forensic clinical psychologist. 'Each of these reports contains clear admissions by you of your guilt. 'Not only that, and this is a terrible thing to say of one so young, but they paint a clear picture of a cold, callous, calculating, remorseless and dangerous individual. 'I do not intend to go into every detail of the reports or of your admissions since much of it would, I think, be distressing and much of it merely confirms some of the evidence which was led. 'However, I think it right that the public, and more particularly her family, be given some flavour of the contents. 'Dr Macpherson noted that you presented your account in a matter-of-fact manner notable for the absence of any emotions. 'He recorded that you told him that in the 12 months prior to the murder you entertained thoughts of 'doing something excessive', including rape. 'Your account in brief was that you had been drinking but wanted cannabis and decided to break into the house to get some. 'You took a kitchen knife because you wanted to protect yourself but having gained entry you left the house and disposed of it. 'You returned to the house and entered Alesha's bedroom. Amongst other things Dr Macpherson records that you told him that you had consumed one and a half bottles of wine between 8pm and 8.30 pm but that you did not feel intoxicated, although you told the social worker that you still felt the effects of it. 'You were not under the influence of any illicit substances. He records that when you saw Alesha your reaction, according to you, was as follows: '... A moment of opportunity... At any other time in life, murder wouldn't have been the conclusion. If I was a year younger I don't think I would have done it.... All I thought about was killing her once I saw her.' 'You told both Dr Macpherson and the social worker in some detail what you did. 'You said that Alesha was drowsy and became a bit more awake when you went outside. 'At one point she asked who you were and where you were going. You said you were a friend of her father's and that you were taking her home. 'You gave her your top because she was cold. I will not go into the horrific and cold blooded details of what you said you did to her but you explained that after you murdered Alesha you threw your bloodstained clothing into the sea, had a shower and then went back where you left her to retrieve your phone. 'Dr Macpherson reports that you told him that over the next few days you were totally unconcerned other than to be mildly amused that the Police had not arrested you. 'Two other aspects of his report are worth mentioning. The first is that you told him that at points during the trial it took everything to stop you laughing and you had to zip your mouth. 'The second is that you volunteered that you were quite satisfied with the murder. 'According to all of the reports, you are not suffering from any mental health disorder and indeed you are not suffering from any syndrome or disorder of any kind. 'On the other hand, you are completely lacking in victim empathy, the social worker noting your cold, calculating manner. 'The only sentence I can impose on you is detention without limit of time. In addition you will be subject to the notification provisions of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 for an indefinite period. 'However, I also have to specify a period which must pass before you can apply for release on parole. Whether you will ever be released will be for others to determine but as matters stand a lot of work will have to be done to change you before that could be considered. It may even be impossible. 'The period I select is known as the punishment part of the sentence and its purpose is to satisfy the requirements of retribution and deterrence. 'The Parole Board will deal in due course with the protection of the public. I have taken account of the circumstances of the offences, the contents of the reports and everything said on your behalf. 'I am conscious that you are a child. In sentencing children it has to be borne in mind that they are not yet fully rounded, mature human beings. 'A child's best interests are a primary consideration and the desirability of the child's reintegration into society must also be taken into account. 'However, the weight to be given to the various sentencing considerations will depend on a number of factors including the age of the child and all the circumstances of the case. 'The nature of these appalling offences and what I have read in the reports make it clear to me that reintegration and rehabilitation, while these are important considerations, are remote possibilities and neither your best interests nor anyone else's will be served by a speedy return to the community. 'Nonetheless, the punishment part will not be as long as it would have been had you been an adult. 'Your sentence will run from July 6, 2018. You will be detained without limit of time and I fix the punishment part at 27 years.' PIME member Fr Sebastiano DAmbra is the founder of Silsilah, a movement for Islamic-Christian dialogue. Moved by the attack in New Zealand, the priest shares his thoughts and commitment to peace and dialogue, inspired by his experience of violence in Mindanao. Zamboanga (AsiaNews) - Despite the dismay and the grief, Christchurch's murder madness can lead people in the right direction, that is, towards a new spirit of "human fraternity," this according to Fr Sebastiano DAmbra (pictured), a missionary with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) who has spent more than 40 years in Mindanao, southern Philippines. The priest is the founder of Silsilah, a movement for Islamic-Christian dialogue, and the executive secretary of the Commission for interreligious dialogue of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP). In an open letter, the missionary starts with the Christchurch tragedy to share his thoughts, based on his personal experience and that of Silsilah. "One of the reasons why I started to embrace the mission of dialogue and peace in Mindanao in 1977, and after continue it through the Silsilah Dialogue Movement in 1984, is rooted in the situation of violence that I experienced when I arrived in Mindanao. "That was the time of the conflict of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and I witnessed the terrible situation [. . .] in my first mission in Siocon, Zamboanga del Norte, Mindanao. Thousands of people were displaced. Poverty and hatred were visible. It was the beginning of the terrible revenge of the Ilaga, a group of Christians who reacted killing Muslims." Relations between the Christian and Islamic communities on the island was based on prejudice, Fr DAmbra notes. I said to myself: If this is the situation, I have to do more on the path to dialogue to share my love to all, including to Muslims brothers and sisters. "Instead of discouraging me, this reality gave me more determination to do more for dialogue. He went to live in a Muslim village. Later he began helping in the peace process with the MNLF. For two years, he travelled to the forest of Siocon to meet the MNLF as negotiator. They were my friends which greatly surprised the Christians. I was there respecting them although they knew that I was against any form of violence." One episode stands out in his visits to the rebels. One day one young MNLF member said to me: Father, this is the logic of the revolution; we have to kill many to bring attention in our mission. I listened in silence praying. That sad story was an additional reason to dedicate my life to dialogue and peace. I I said to myself: If there are those who risk life for a mission that is implemented through violence, why can we not have the same determination through a mission of dialogue and peace? How can we tell the world that love is stronger than hatred? These and similar reflections have been part of the motivation to invite people, especially Muslims and Christians in Mindanao, to follow the path of peace, promoting the culture of dialogue. Fr DAmbra ends on a positive note about an event that recently drew world attention, namely the meeting in Abu Dhabi between Pope Francis and Ahmad Muhammad Al-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, on 3 February. On that occasion the two leaders gave the world a beautiful document titled Human Fraternity for world peace and living together. It contains many reflections and statements that humanity needs to reflect upon, especially one passage in which the two religious leaders call for a culture of dialogue as a path, mutual cooperation as the code of conduct, reciprocal understanding as the method and standard. This is the moment a yob was filmed smashing up the windows of a mosque in Birmingham in a late-night rampage. The mosque targeted is the Masjid Faizul Islam in Broadway, Perry Barr and it was one of five in the city to be vandalised last night, with anti-terror officers now investigating. Muslim worshippers in the city say they are afraid to take their children to prayers following the attacks, which took place less than a week after the Christchurch massacre. The video footage shows a man wearing a hat with his face covered as he walks towards the mosque in the early hours. He is carrying an object in his hand, thought to be a hammer, and uses it to smash a window of the mosque. A mosque in Birmingham had its windows smashed up by a yob who kept his face covered The police forensic team at work at the mosque and community centre on Albert Road had its windows smashed Five mosques in the city were attacked in total last night. They are on Albert Road, Birchfield Road, Slade Road, the Broadway and Witton Road in the city. A concerned parent told Sky News that he no longer 'felt safe taking his five year old to prayers'. The attack at the Witton Road Islamic Centre in Witton, saw seven windows and two doors smashed up. The mosque's imam says that the attack took place between 1.30am and 2am with West Midlands Police saying they were alerted to the other attacks throughout the night. Police were called to the mosque on Birchfield Road at 2.32am before realising that the attack had happened earlier. Volunteers work on fixing the damaged windows at the Witton Road Islamic centre in Birmingham after it was attacked last night A mosque on the corner of Fentham Road and Birchfield Road in Birmingham that had its windows smashed with a sledgehammer Anxious worshippers look at the mosque in Perry Barr, Birmingham after its damaged windows were boarded up At 3.14am, they were alerted to a similar attack at the mosque on Slade Road, Erdington. They then began patrols in areas with mosques and came across the other damaged buildings. Forensic officers are working to identify evidence, and CCTV is being examined. Footage of the damaged Witton mosque was posted online by Labour party Councillor for the Bromford and Hodge Hill ward, Majid Mahmood. Worshippers inspect the damage done to the Witton mosque during last night's rampage He tweeted: 'Unfortunately the Witton Road Islamic Centre was attacked overnight by an individual who used a sledgehammer to break the windows. 'I said last week that Muslims were afraid after the terrorist attacks in Christchurch. 'We need support in Brum.' His words were echoed by the Imam of Witton Islamic Centre. Sharafat Ali, 66, told Birmingham Live: 'Its terrible, the community is shocked because of what's happened in New Zealand. The mosque's imam Sharafat Ali, 66 is now calling for more police protection ahead of Friday prayers Four attacks were confirmed by police this morning, before a fifth one was discovered later in the day 'We've been here for 30 years. In the morning you get 40 worshippers for morning prayer, on Friday you get about two to three hundred. 'This doesn't happen in Aston. 'Tomorrow is Friday prayers and I don't know what's going up happen. 'We are asking the police to give us more security.' Home Secretary Sajid Javid tweeted: 'Deeply concerning and distressing to see number of mosques have been vandalised in Birmingham overnight. @WMPolice are investigating motive but let me be clear - hateful behaviour has absolutely no place in our society & will never be accepted.' Labour's deputy leader Tom Watson tweeted: 'I'm deeply saddened and disturbed by the attacks that have taken place on mosques across Birmingham in the early hours of this morning. Footage showed the moment the Masjid Faizul Islam mosque (pictured) had its windows smashed The motive for the vandalism is unclear, with anti-terror police now investigating the overnight attacks 'Mosques are places of worship where people should feel safe and I'm appalled that they've been targeted in this way. 'I stand in complete solidarity with the British Muslim community against the growing tide of Islamophobia we are facing in this country. 'We have recently seen the tragic consequences of right wing extremism in New Zealand. I hope the government takes the necessary steps to reassure the British Muslim community and that the perpetrators of these hate-fuelled attacks are swiftly brought to justice.' Shabana Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood, tweeted: 'The reports of attacks on mosques across Birmingham are truly terrible. 'I have spoken with the Chief Constable & will be in constant contact with community leaders throughout the day. 'I would urge all residents to remain calm & call Crime Stoppers with any info you may have.' The Al-Habib Masjid Mosque on the corner of Birchfield Road and Fentham Road in Perry Barr, Birmingham was attacked West Midlands Police Chief Constable Dave Thompson said: 'Since the tragic events in Christchurch, New Zealand, officers and staff from West Midlands Police have been working closely with our faith partners across the region to offer reassurance and support at mosques, churches and places of prayer. 'At the moment we don't know the motive for last night's attacks. 'What I can say is that the force and the Counter Terrorism Unit are working side-by-side to find whoever is responsible. 'At difficult times like this, it is incredibly important that everyone unites against those who seek to create discord, uncertainty and fear in our communities.' The Jame Masjid on Birchfield Road in Birmingham also had its windows smashed with a sledgehammer The mosque's windows were boarded up after volunteers had cleared up all the glass outside the building A mosque in Birmingham was attacked last night with sledgehammers, windows smashed, no casualty reported UK pic.twitter.com/2lgxkgDJvq Khalid (Halit Ertugrul) (@khalid_pk) March 21, 2019 John Cotton, Labour councillor for Glebe Farm and Tile Cross areas in the city, tweeted: 'Appalled to see that Birmingham mosques have been the target of vandalism and violence overnight. 'I'm working with @WMPolice & @BhamCityCouncil to ensure we find those responsible & support our Muslim communities. 'These thugs do not speak for Birmingham & will not divide us.' The Birmingham Council of Mosques said it a statement: 'As far as we can tell the Masajids were based around Handsworth/Aston and Witton. 'We ask the masajids to be vigilant and do not hesitate in reporting any unusual/suspicious behaviour to the police immediately. 'It is vital you report it so it can be logged.' West Midlands Police Chief Constable Dave Thompson confirmed they are working alongside counter-terrorism officers Representatives of the Birmingham Council of Mosques slammed the attack and called on police to do more Javid Iqbal, a spokesman for Witton Islamic Centre said: 'We've had a white intruder strike in the middle of the night. He has arrived with a sledgehammer and smashed one window. The force of the swing has actually meant he had lost his grip and the sledgehammer ended up in the middle of the mosque. 'Incredibly, he has then gone away for half and hour and come back with another hammer to damage several more windows. There's about five or six windows that have been put through. 'In that half and hour, other mosques in a two mile radius or so have been attacked as well. So I don't know if he was working in a team and there were several of them. 'Whatever the case, it is just a minority of idiots that do not reflect the values of this city or this community. 'We have boarded up the mosque but it remains open today for worshippers. I'm yet to speak to insurers about the cost of the damage. Seven windows and two doors were smashed in the attack that took place between 1.30am and 2am Mosque volunteers could be seen sweeping up the broken glass in the aftermath of the vandalism Police officers were spotted helping mosque officials clean up the glass that littered the pavement outside one of the damaged mosques 'We have asked for extra resources from police, not just for Friday prayers but also for early in the morning and late at night.' Worshipper Rashid Mohammed, 33, a father-of-three, said: 'I was afraid something like this might happen after New Zealand. It was only a matter of time. 'I won't lie, I've been looking over my shoulder since Christchuch, even to the point where I make sure I'm by an emergency exit when I pray in case anything happens. 'All it takes is one small-minded racist and it is very sad to see this happening in this day and age. We are proud to live in such a diverse city and we are devastated that these incidents still happen.' Anyone with information has been asked to contact police via Live Chat between 8am and midnight, via 101 any time, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 Emmanuel Macron dealt a heavy blow to Theresa May's meager hopes of a Brexit delay today, warning that a third defeat for her deal at the hands of British MPs would see the UK crash out of the EU without a deal. The French President spoke out against a longer Article 50 extension as Mrs May tried to woo EU leaders with a personal plea for a three-month hiatus at a showdown Brussels summit. Piling pressure on to MPs ahead of next week's proposed third Commons vote Mr Macron said: 'In the case of a negative British vote then we'd be heading to a No Deal. We all know it', adding a longer extension would require 'a deep political change' in Britain - a nod to a second referendum or general election. The Democratic Unionist Party and hardline Tory Brexiteers remain bitterly opposed to Mrs May's deal. And the situation may have been made worse by the PM's Wednesday night TV address which sparked cross-party fury when she blamed them for postponing Brexit. Other EU leaders queued up to deliver the same No Deal warning including Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel who said: 'You decided to leave - you want us [the EU] to be the bad guy. But if there is no deal [at Westminster] in days there will be No Deal. We cant extend - for me it is then over'. While European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was asked if he was tiring of Mrs May's political drama at home and said: 'I didnt even know I had this much patience'. The No Deal threats will excite Brexiteers but will be ominous news for Remainers who are hoping that the EU will offer a long delay so they can push for the softest possible Brexit or stop it completely. Mrs May yesterday begged the EU to stop the clock until June 30 - but arriving in Brussels today she wouldn't rule out leaving with No Deal next week if her plan is defeated in the Commons again. Emmanuel Macron and France have taken one of the hardest lines against Britain over Brexit in the past three years A smiling Theresa May says hello to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel as she asks the EU to delay Brexit until June The Prime Minister met with Irish Taoiseach Leo Veradkar and President of the European Council Donald Tusk before addressing the 27 EU leaders to explain why they should accept a three-month Article 50 extension. Walking into the summit - which was meant to the last one Britain would ever attend as an EU member - she said: 'This is a matter of personal regret for me but a short extension would give Parliament time to make a final choice that delivers on the result of the referendum.' She twice refused to rule out a No Deal Brexit on March 29 but added: 'I still want to leave with a deal'. Mrs May added: 'What matters is that we recognise that Brexit is the decision of the British people - we need to deliver on that. We're nearly three years on from the original vote - it is now the time for Parliament to decide'. If Article 50 is not extended, then the UK will crash out of the EU next Friday, in all likelihood without a deal as MPs have already rejected Mrs May's exit plans twice. Any decision by the EU to accept Britain's extension of Article 50 must be unanimous, meaning the potential Macron veto could be devastating to Mrs May's plans. For France, two criteria will count in a possible support for the British extension request: the likelihood that the British Parliament will end up ratifying the agreement, but also the impact of this extension on the European Union. Theresa May arriving in Brussels today ahead of a lengthy grilling by EU leaders over her Brexit plans Mrs May was kissed by President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, who has suggested they will demand a May 22 Brexit rather than a June 30 A 'cross-party majority of MPs believe they can force through a soft Brexit that would include freedom of movement if Theresa May loses another vote on her deal next week. Tory former minister Oliver Letwin said he believed that a plan known as Norway Plus or Common Market 2.0 could succeed if the PM fails get enough backing for her plan to leave in June. This would include membership of the Single Market, which requires free movement of people. It came as the DUP handed Mrs May a devastating blow, with Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson saying there was 'no pressure on me or my party to vote for this deal'. The hardline unionist and Brexiteer tore into Brussels, including European Council president Donald Tusk, accusing them of 'arrogance' over their offer in an interview with TalkRadio. He said: If anything the arrogance of the EU negotiators this arrogance is born of the fact that the EU see us as a bit of a rollover when it comes to negotiations. But for anyone to say we'll give you a three month extension if you accept this toxic deal - I neither want this toxic deal nor the extension so there is no pressure on me or my party to vote for this deal, and certainly not on the basis of demands from Donald Tusk.' It means that unless Mrs May wins a lot of rebel Labour votes a third meaningful vote looks dead in the water. Theresa May, pictured at RAF Northolt in London today, asked EU leaders in Brussels this afternoon for a Brexit delay until June amid disarray and fury in Westminster. But she appears to have been left disappointed A likely compromise for France accepting a relatively short delay for the London parliament to finally ratify Mrs May's Brexit deal is Britain not taking part in key decisions during its last months in the EU. Raging MPs today branded Theresa May a 'f***ing disgrace' after she used her live TV speech to scold them for not backing her Brexit deal. Mrs May condemned the Commons for failing to back her EU withdrawal agreement and accused them of playing 'political games'. The Downing Street address was meant to persuade Brexiteer Tories, Labour rebels and the DUP to back her deal when it comes back to the Commons next week, most likely on Tuesday. But her defiant speech caused a great deal of upset among MPs who branded it 'toxic', 'contemptuous', 'incendiary and irresponsible' while another called it a 'f***ing disgrace'. Tory Remainer Sam Gymiah hit out at his party leader and said: 'Resorting to the blame game, as the PM is doing, is a low blow' while Tory Brexiteer Henry Smith says that Britain must now opt for No Deal Potential Labour 'switcher' Lisa Nandy claimed last night that Mrs May had blown her chance to win her and other MPs over Tory Remainer Sam Gyimah hit out at his party leader and said: 'Resorting to the blame game, as the PM is doing, is a low blow. Democracy loses when a Prime Minister who has set herself against the House of Commons then blames MPs for doing their job. It's Toxic. 'She knows MPs are receiving hate mail. We're repeatedly being urged to hold their noses to the stench of this deal and vote for it. That cannot be the blueprint for our great country and I cannot support it'. Potential 'switcher' Lisa Nandy claimed last night that Mrs May had blown her chance and said: 'There's absolutely no chance she is going to win over MPs in sufficient numbers after that statement. It was an attack on liberal democracy itself. I will not support a government that takes such a reckless approach'. But Brexit Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said today he believes more MPs will back the Prime Minister's deal after her intervention and insisted she has a 'good shot at landing the deal and winning a vote next week'. The Prime Minister will travel to Brussels today to ask for an extension until the end of June to try to get her plan through, arriving at around noon. She is rumoured to be addressing EU leaders at around 3pm. Advertisement More than 10,000 people have marched silently through the New Zealand city home to the far right terrorist who shot up a mosque last week, as the country paid its respects to the 50 victims of the tragedy. Marchers made their way through Dunedin today to a rugby stadium where a total of about 15,000 people gathered for a sombre vigil. The accused killer, Australian-born 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, had lived for the past two years in the city on New Zealand's South Island before carrying out last Friday's slaughter in Christchurch, about 220 miles to the north. A man fights tears at a vigil held at Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin for the 50 victims of the Christchurch mosque attack More than 10,000 marchers made their way through Dunedin today to the stadium where a total of 15,000 people gathered for the sombre vigil Teary-eyed locals hold candles at the vigil after marching silently through the city - home to the shooter - in remembrance of the victims The accused killer, Australian-born 28-year-old Brenton Tarrant, had lived for the past two years in the city on New Zealand's South Island. Pictured: Vigil attenders at Forsyth Barr Stadium today A self-avowed white supremacist, Tarrant took advantage of New Zealand's relatively lax gun laws to acquire military-style semi-automatic weapons that he used to gun down worshippers at two Christchurch mosques. The march began at the University of Otago, about 20 minutes walk away from Forsyth Barr Stadium. The marchers were joined by thousands more who had made their way there for ceremonies that included Maori incantations and Muslim prayers. Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull called on New Zealanders to come together in support of those left bereft by the tragedy. 'We need to examine what needs to change so that this does not happen again,' he said, according to the newspaper. 'To my Muslim brothers and sisters... you are a precious part of us and we embrace you.' A woman clutches flowers and watches on (left) while another wipes tears from her eyes as Maori incantations and Muslim prayers take place to remember the victims It was announced on Thursday announced that immediate ban on the military-style semi-automatic weapons would come into force. Here, a man watches on as the names of the men, women and children killed in the shooting are read out Parents comforted their children as the sombre remembrance took place in the rugby stadium 20 minutes from the University of Otago Attendees hold candles and pay their respects to victims after a week of immense sadness for New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday announced an immediate ban on the military-style semi-automatic weapons used in the slayings. Also on Thursday, hundreds of mourners turned out in Christchurch for a second straight day for the funerals of those killed. Ardern has said a national remembrance ceremony would be held soon but a date has not yet been given. Police today apologised to a woman who was accidentally listed as murdered in the mosque attack. The mishap occurred when alleged terrorist and white supremacist Brenton Tarrant faced Christchurch District Court on Saturday charged with murder. Tarrant, who is expected to be hit with more charges, faced one charge of murdering a woman but her identity was unknown as her name was suppressed by Judge Paul Kellar. The woman was somehow connected to the fatalities but is alive and well. 'An error was made in the charging document prepared for the first court appearance of the man charged with murder in relation to the Christchurch terror attacks,' a police spokesperson said. 'The error saw an incorrect victim name included in the charging document.' Police said they have spoken with the woman and the charge sheet will be amended. 'We have spoken with the person incorrectly named on the charging document and apologised. 'The charge sheet will be amended. New Zealand Police regret this error and apologies for any harm caused by the mistake.' A teenage girl who shaved her head for World's Greatest Shave claims she was 'humiliated and reprimanded' by a teacher at her prestigious high school. The year-11 student at Lourdes Hill College, in Brisbane's east, who does not wish to be named, was allegedly told to cover her new haircut despite participating in the fundraiser for leukaemia research. The alleged confrontation came to light after a concerned parent of a fellow student wrote a post on Facebook which has since gone viral. 'Today I was informed by my daughter, that another student at Lourdes Hill College in Hawthorne, Brisbane, was humiliated and reprimanded for participating and raising over $900 for Worlds Greatest Shave,' the post said. A teenage girl who shaved her head for World's Greatest Shave claims she was 'humiliated and reprimanded' by a teacher at her prestigious high school (stock image) The alleged confrontation came to light after a concerned parent of a fellow student wrote a post on Facebook which has since gone viral 'This particular girl was advised that she was not allowed to remove her hat at any time during the day because her head was shaved, for a great cause I might add.' The post, shared on Tuesday, claims the teacher asked fellow staff whether the teenager continued to wear the hat in other classes. 'When this female teacher found out that she had taken her hat off in class she was pulled out of the classroom in front of the other students and reprimanded for 20 minutes before being allowed back into the classroom,' the post continued. 'This is bullying. The student was once again advised to not take her hat off for any reason.' The parent then called on the school to apologise to the teenager who was simply trying to raise money for charity. 'Not only did she raise money, she had the courage to shave her head,' she wrote. The year-11 student at Lourdes Hill College (pictured), in Brisbane's east, was allegedly told to cover her new haircut despite participating in the fundraiser for leukaemia research The post, shared on Tuesday, claims the teacher asked fellow staff whether the teenager continued to wear the hat in other classes (stock image) 'This student deserves an apology not by only the teacher who is shaming her but by the whole school.' The school had released two letters to parents by Wednesday following the social media post, news.com.au reported. The first letter, signed off from principal Robyn Anderson, said the school 'has a long history of supporting charitable fundraising initiatives'. The second email notified parents the family of the teenager requested the school did not publicly comment on the incident. The teenager set a goal of $560 but has raised well above $3000 - with donors commenting thoughtful messages (stock image) Since the Facebook post went viral, the teenager's fundraising page has skyrocketed in donations. The teenager set a goal of $560 but has raised well above $3000 - with donors commenting thoughtful messages. 'You're doing an amazing thing LHC is here to support you!' one donor wrote. 'Everyone student of LHC supports you and this amazing deed you're doing,' commented another. 'Fantastic thing you are doing Ebony - hats off to you.' Daily Mail Australia has attempted to comment Lourdes Hill College for comment. Advertisement Haunting portraits have revealed the faces of women committed to a London lunatic asylum in the early twentieth century. The images show various 'insane' women who were hospitalized at Croydon Mental Hospital in South London between 1909 and 1912. As the British capital's population surged at the start of the twentieth century, Croydon Mental Hospital was established to accommodate the vast numbers of 'un-placed London lunatics' in the city. And while some images in the series seem to reveal women with legitimate mental illnesses, others appear to show women who may have been hospitalized against their will for dubious reasons. Among those kept in the asylum was a newly-wed bride, Ingrid Schwitzguebel, who was committed by her husband at the age of 37 because she supposedly enjoyed shopping and going to the theatre 'too much'. However, other motives may have been at play as the records go on to show that she suspected her husband of affairs with other women, and had threatened to attack him with a hat pin. Kate Jeffrey (left) was 40 when she was admitted in October 1910. She blamed her relatives for attempting to force her into a marriage with a cousin whom she thought immoral. Ingrid Schwitzguebel (right) was admitted in July 1909, aged 37 years old. Ingrid was committed by her husband for living almost exclusively for pleasure, claiming her desire to visit theatres, musicals, lounging in the London fashionable streets, looking at shops was 'insatiable'. However, other motives may have been at play as the records go on to show that she suspected her husband of affairs with other women, and had threatened to attack him with a hat pin Ida Macpherson Stevenson (left) was 39-years-old when she was admitted in August 1909. It's written that 'she talks to herself inexplicably and says she is being persecuted and poisoned.' Alarmingly it goes onto say 'She says that she is burning all over and must have ice, calls to God and constantly screaming'. Lora Finnemore (right), was 25-years old upon her admission in August 1909. It's written that she is demented and said 'she had been feeling funny and people were making fun of her and that everyone was leaving her out of everything' Jane Jefferies (left), 50-years-old when she was admitted in July 1909. She is described as 'having the aspect of a lunatic' as she would 'sing rubbish and clap her hands.' Jane Elizabeth (right) was 45-years-old when she was admitted in August 1909. It's written that 'she says she hears voices of people talking to her. She is incoherent and incapable of answering the most simple questions' as well as being continually described as being 'demented' Another woman was institutionalized for objecting to a forced marriage with her own cousin, while a 35-year-old female was sent to a psychiatric hospital because she believed she was a God. Opened in June 1903, Croydon Mental Hospital was reputedly the first British institution to be called a 'mental hospital' at a time when most comparable institutions were called 'asylums'. The founders hoped that the name would distance this new hospital from unwelcome historical associations of neglect and abuse. The county borough of Croydon came into existence following the Local Government reforms of 1888-90. For many years, Cane Hill Asylum in Coulsdon, South London had housed 'insane' patients from the Croydon area. But with the continued development and population growth of Croydon at the end of the Victorian era, the council decided a local space was required to house the vast numbers of 'un-placed London lunatics'. Pauline Mary Thompson (left) was 29-years-old when she was admitted in June 1909. In her notes it was written that she says 'she is unfit to live in the world. Has a light twitching of the left eye and froths at the lips when she speaks. She claims that people are trying to deprive her of her chastity and that the birds talk to her.' She was discharged in September 1909. Dressmaker Lilian Rose-Froome (right), aged 45-years-old upon admission in June 1909. She is described with having 'grandiose ideas' and saying 'that she effects to inherit a large estate and that royalty will visit her' Harriet Pinpoint (left), a maid from London, was 50-years-old when she was admitted in May 1909. She was suffering from melancholy and delusions. She told staff that she had committed a great sin and was unfit to live, despite being in good health. She improved and was released in June 1911. Marion Francis Bouche (right) was 33-years-old upon admission in August 1909. It's written in her notes that 'she tried to run away from her nurse saying she heard devils in human form around her and that they were talking to her' Emily de Longe (left) was 39-years-old when she was admitted in July 1909 after she stole a mannequin from a dress maker and tried to take it into London. Once in the asylum she said been given a 'mission that was for the glory of the world'. Katharine Wilding (right) was aged 51-years-old on admission in July 1909. It's written that she 'self-harms and has acute melancholy and depression. She hardly speaks and destroys her clothes' Initially, Croydon Mental Hospital consisted of three male and female blocks placed either side of the central administrative, recreational and service areas. The ground also included a large chapel and a burial ground. A few years later, the hospital was extended and two further blocks for female patients were added. In the twenty years following the end of World War II, Croydon Mental Hospital (renamed as Warlingham Park) was hailed as one of the leading hospitals in psychiatric care. It became the first mental hospital to thoroughly implement an 'open door' policy and the first to open a specialized unit to treat patients with alcohol and drug dependency. After the introduction of Care in the Community in the early 1980s, Croydon Mental Hospital went into a period of decline and eventually closed in 1999. Following closure, the hospital site was re-developed for residential use. Lodvik Guraj, 33, pictured, used more than 42 mobile phones to run his London-based drugs empire over an 18-month period A major cocaine dealer has been jailed for 15 years having been found guilty of supplying more than 40kg of the drug to users across London and the south east. Lodvik Guraj, 33, from Greenford, London used more than 42 mobile phones to run his drugs empire over an 18-month period. During the investigation, detectives discovered Guraj used his illegal business to enjoy a lavish lifestyle, including travelling on luxury holidays and buying expensive jewellery and designer clothes. Snaresbrook Crown Court heard detectives from the Met's Organised Crime Command managed to link 14 other individuals to Guraj's drugs empire from evidence contained on his mobile devices. The electronic devices also had dozens of videos featuring Guraj and some of his luxury possessions, such as a white Lamborghini, a hoverboard and a speedboat. According to the Met, 14 drugs couriers, suppliers and distributors have also been jailed after they smashed his network. Detective Superintendent Neil Ballard, from the Mets Specialist Crime Command, said: 'During his trial, Guraj attempted to present himself as a victim acting under duress who was only involved in the supply of Class A drugs to pay off large debts. Guraj had videos on his electronic devices featuring him inside his luxury Lamborghini Guraj kept the videos showing his luxury lifestyle on several mobile devices As well as sitting at the wheel of his sports car, other videos featured Guraj on a boat 'As a result of the tenacious and meticulous investigation carried out by officers from the Mets Specialist Crime Command, we were able to present evidence clearly showing that Guraj was benefiting from the profits of Class A drugs supply. 'Through covert operations officers seized significant amounts of Class A drugs and cash. 'The courts have sentenced those connected to Guraj to more than 140 years imprisonment and we have managed to totally disrupt this Organised Criminal Network, headed by Guraj. 'The sentence should stand as a deterrent to others and send a clear message that the Met will continue to identify and target those involved in serious and organised crime.' One video seized by the police featured Guraj on a hoverboard, pictured Guraj was also filmed at the helm of a speed boat while on a luxury holiday A Brit who died in an off-roading event in north Texas had proposed to his girlfriend just two weeks before. Steven Fairbairn, 25, lost his life on Saturday after a head-on collision at the 4x4 Rednecks with Paychecks Spring Break event. Fairbairn, who moved to the U.S. in 2017, was working at a manufacturing company in Duncan, Oklahoma, when he met Abbey Green. The pair connected after noticing they had similar tattoos. Her step-father, Jeffery Archer, said Fairbairn proposed earlier this month after buying a ring while visiting his family in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The car enthusiast was airlifted about 70 miles from the grounds of the four-day festival in Saint Jo to a Fort Worth hospital, and kept on life support until his family could fly in to say goodbye. Steven Fairbairn had proposed to his girlfriend Abbey Green, pictured together, just two weeks before he died in a crash at an off-roading event in north Texas The car enthusiast was airlifted about 70 miles from the grounds of the four-day festival in Saint Jo to hospital, and kept on life support until his family could fly in to say goodbye On Facebook, organizers of Rednecks with Paychecks, pictured, describe last week's event as 'four days and nights of mud, rocks, music, camping, and friends' Fairbairn died at the hospital around 10.35am Saturday of blunt force trauma to the head, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner's office. His death was ruled an accident. His organs were donated after his death, Archer said. Deputies are investigating the deadly crash, which Montague County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Jack Lawson said happened on a wide dirt road on the event's expansive private campus in the small town near the Oklahoma state line. He did not provide further details on the incident. Archer said his family and the Fairbairns are desperate to know what happened, but have heard next to nothing from law enforcement and the organizers of Rednecks with Paychecks. 'We need somebody to come forward and tell us what has happened, because we really don't know,' Lynne Fairbairn told WFAA television . Fairbairn, who moved to the U.S. in 2017, was working at a manufacturing company in Duncan, Oklahoma, when he met Green. The pair connected after noticing they had similar tattoos Staff of Rednecks with Paychecks have not responded to a phone message from The Associated Press seeking comment. Lawson said the group's owner, Derrick Morse, has been cooperating with the investigation. On Facebook, organizers of Rednecks with Paychecks describe last week's event as 'four days and nights of mud, rocks, music, camping, and friends'. The group's promotional material features scantily clad women gyrating and bearded men maneuvering ATVs through deep mud as American and Confederate flags wave in the background. It states that only people 18 and older can attend, and that everyone must sign a waiver before arrival. Deaths have been reported at the events in previous years. Green told WFAA that the documents amount to 'signing your life away' and that the off-road event needs to be shut down. A woman whose brother and parents were killed in the New Zealand mosque massacre has said she will forgive the attacker if he repents and converts to Islam. Ghulam Hussain, his wife, Karam Bibi, and their son Zeeshan Raza, all of Pakistan, were killed when a terrorist gunman went on the rampage in Christchurch last week. The only one now left alive in their family is Zeeshan's sister, who lives in Karachi. In an interview, Maryam Gul said that after initial anger, she has decided she can forgive the man who carried out the horrifying attack, that left 50 dead and dozens more injured last Friday. A woman whose brother and parents were killed in the New Zealand mosque massacre has said she will forgive the attacker - and wants him to convert to Islam Zeeshan Raza (pictured) and his parents were gunned down in the massacre last week. He had a degree in mechanical engineering and moved to Auckland In 2014 as a permanent New Zealand resident Ghulam Hussain (left) and his wife, Karam Bibi (right) were visiting their son from Pakistan Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist who was living in New Zealand, has been charged with murder over the attacks. Gul told the BBC: 'First of all I wanted him to be punished very severely, but then I realised that's not the sunnah (example) of my prophet. 'He used to forgive the person who killed his relatives. I want him (the killer) to become Muslim and repent, and see that it's wrong and realise how beautiful Islam is.' Her parents were visiting Zeeshan for the first time from Pakistan when they were slaughtered along with their son. He had previously described New Zealand as 'paradise'. Ghulam Hussain, his wife, Karam Bibi, and their son Zeeshan Raza, all of Pakistan, were killed when a gunman went on the rampage in Christchurch last week. Pictured: Mourners leave flowers near the scene of one of the attacks Brenton Tarrant (pictured) has been charged with one initial count of murder over the mass shootings that killed 50 people in the southern city of Christchurch and faces life in prison Mr Raza, who had a degree in mechanical engineering, moved to Auckland In 2014 as a permanent New Zealand resident. He had only moved to Christchurch a few days before the attack and was renting a home close to the Al Noor mosque - one of two mosques attacked on the day. His retired father, Ghulam Husain, once worked for Pakistan Airlines. Advertisement Fascinating vintage photos show overstretched London police officers dealing with a raft of crimes, lost children and misdemeanours in the mid-fifties. The incredible shots depict a policeman attempting to calm down a distraught little boy, a woman who looks worse for wear being led to safety by kindly officers, and a thief being bundled into his cell by a stout warden. In 1954, when the photos were taken, London's Police force was 4,000 constables under strength of its 20,000 target. The famous bobbies had to cope with a maze of problems including traffic duties, dealing with roaring drunks, lost people including children, attempted suicides, violent robbery and murder. Despite the enormous pressures they faced, in 1953 the number of serious crimes reduced by nine per cent. The London copper - rushed off his booted feet and complete with helmet - coped remarkably well but senior staff are aware that policing had to become a more enticing prospect if they were to restore the necessary number of staff. It is a scenario which will be familiar to many of today's modern police forces after budget cuts since 2010 have seen more than 20,000 police officers taken off the streets. London City Hall announced last year that Government cuts to policing have led officer numbers in London to drop to their lowest level per head in 20 years. Wonderful vintage photographs of London's police in 1954 have emerged. Above, two officers help a young woman who is unsteady on her feet. A milestone for women had been reached at the tail-end of the previous decade - when Elizabeth Bather became the first female Chief Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police in 1949 In 1954, the Met suffered serious understaffing problems with a force of only 16,000. It needed an estimated 4,000 men, mainly police constables. In the Fifties, Met Police cadets were trained at Hendon Police College, in north-west London. (Above, the two officers continue to assist the woman) A policewoman watches as a thief is searched for incriminating tools. All his possessions are taken from him. Despite the enormous pressures they faced, in 1953 the number of serious crimes had reduced by nine per cent. The spectre of the Second World War still loomed large - and meat, butter, cheese, sugar and sweets were all still rationed that year The thief is placed in a cell, where he will spend the night. According to a shocking poll conducted by the Daily Mail last year, the majority of Britons say the police have now lost control of the streets - 57 per cent of people say officers have surrendered control of our neighbourhoods and criminals have no fear of being caught Not surprisingly, the thief looks depressed by his surroundings. The overstretched bobbies of the time would have also had their work cut out for them with incidents of road fatalities, drunks, domestic disputes, murders and suicides The thief has his fingerprints taken. A landmark case in forensic science for the Met Police was in 1905 - when fingerprint evidence was used to help convict brothers Alfred and Albert Stratton of bludgeoning Thomas Farrow, 71, to death during a break-in at his paint suppliers in Deptford, South East London, in February that year. It was the first time British murderers had been convicted using such a method A member of the force types up a report at a newly opened police station in Chelsea. The year 1954 also marked the creation of the Metropolitan Police Drug Squad A lost boy calms down when a policeman gives him a truncheon - allowing the nipper to 'take charge' of the station. Young children in the 1950s would have led very different lives to those of today. Most left school early, with many starting work at 14, and far fewer people had the chance to go on to further education A police officer unwraps a sweet for the child while he waits for the boy to be picked up and taken home. A year later would see the launch of BBC TV series Dixon of Dock Green, which charted daily life at a London police station, and starred Jack Warner It's all in a day's work for the bobbies on the beat, as the boy's mother arrives to pick up her son. Among the copper's tools of the trade at this time would have been a whistle, a truncheon - and the blue police boxes on the streets, for if they needed to make phone calls Police dogs are let out for exercising. A dog section was formed in the Met Police in 1946, and proved their worth in tracking and apprehending criminals. In 1954, a New Dog Training establishment opened in West Wickham, south-east London Among the policeman's many other chores was to make sure that schoolchildren got safely across special road crossings. The School Crossing Patrol Service was introduced for primary schoolchildren in the UK in the 1950s. Initially provided by the police, they are now employed by local councils A 'cross-party majority of MPs believe they can force through a soft Brexit that would include freedom of movement if Theresa May loses another vote on her deal next week. Tory former minister Oliver Letwin said he believed that a plan known as Norway Plus or Common Market 2.0 could succeed if the PM fails get enough backing for her plan to leave in June. This would include membership of the Single Market, which requires free movement of people. It came as the DUP handed Mrs May a devastating blow, with Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson saying there was 'no pressure on me or my party to vote for this deal'. It means that unless she wins a lot of rebel Labour votes a third meaningful vote looks dead in the water. Sir Oliver told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that MPs needed to establish if there is a majority in favour of an alternative plan if the Prime Minister's deal is defeated again next week. He said: "I believe, for example, that we will probably on that day be able to get a cross-party majority in favour of what is sometimes called Norway Plus and sometimes called Common Market 2.0, which is an arrangement where we remain in the single market and we have a customs arrangement with the EU and that has not yet been tested." Sir Oliver Letwin said he believed 'that we will probably on that day be able to get a cross-party majority in favour of what is sometimes called Norway Plus' Sammy Wilson said there was no pressure on the DUP to support a deal from Theresa May linked to a three-month Brexit delay EU leaders are today expected to make a three-month Brexit delay sought by Mrs May today conditional on her being able to squeeze a withdrawal agreement through the Commons next week. But hardline unionist and Brexiteer Mr Wilson tore into Brussels, including European Council president Donald Tusk, accusing them of 'arrogance' over their offer in an interview with TalkRadio. He said: If anything the arrogance of the EU negotiators this arrogance is born of the fact that the EU see us as a bit of a rollover when it comes to negotiations. But for anyone to say we'll give you a three month extension if you accept this toxic deal - I neither want this toxic deal nor the extension so there is no pressure on me or my party to vote for this deal, and certainly not on the basis of demands from Donald Tusk.' Emmanuel Macron today warned a third catastrophic Commons defeat for Theresa May's Brexit deal would spark a certain No Deal as the Prime Minister tried to woo EU leaders at a showdown Brussels summit. The French President spoke out against a longer Article 50 extension as Mrs May made a personal plea for a three-month delay to Brexit today. Arriving in Brussels today Mrs May twice refused to rule out a No Deal Brexit on March 29 but added: 'I still want to leave with a deal' A smiling Theresa May says hello to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel as she asks the EU to delay Brexit until June Mrs May was kissed by President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, who has suggested they will demand a May 22 Brexit rather than a June 30 Piling pressure on to MPs after Mrs May blamed them for the stalemate Mr Macron said: 'In the case of a negative British vote then we'd be heading to a No Deal. We all know it'. Other EU leaders queued up to deliver the same warning including Luxembourg PM Xavier Bettel who said: 'You decided to leave - you want us [the EU] to be the bad guy. But if there is no deal [at Westminster] in days there will be No Deal. We cant extend - for me it is then over'. While European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was asked if he was tiring of Mrs May's political drama at home he said: 'I didnt even know I had this much patience'. Mrs May yesterday begged the EU to stop the clock until June 30 - but arriving in Brussels today she wouldn't rule out leaving with No Deal next week if her plan is defeated in the Commons again. The Prime Minister met with Mr Macron and President of the European Council Donald Tusk before addressing the 27 EU leaders to explain why they should accept a three-month Article 50 extension. Walking into the summit - which was meant to the last one Britain would ever attend as an EU member - she said: 'This is a matter of personal regret for me but a short extension would give Parliament time to make a final choice that delivers on the result of the referendum.' She twice refused to rule out a No Deal Brexit on March 29 but added: 'I still want to leave with a deal'. Mrs May added: 'What matters is that we recognise that Brexit is the decision of the British people - we need to deliver on that. We're nearly three years on from the original vote - it is now the time for Parliament to decide'. Donald Tusk made a short speech in Brussels yesterday after speaking to Theresa May by telephone and following talks with EU leaders over the past week The DUP has a 'confidence and supply' deal with Mrs May's Conservatives for its 10 MPs to support her in the Commons. But they have so far voted against her Brexit deal twice because of their intense opposition to the provisions for the Northern Irish border backstop. Even with their support Mrs may faces an uphill task to convince MPs to back her. The last time she put a meaningful vote to the Commons on March 12 she lost by 149 votes, including 75 Tory rebels. Yesterday Mr Tusk said: 'In the light of the consultations that I have conducted over the past days, I believe that a short extension would be possible. 'But it would be conditional on a positive vote on the Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons. 'The question remains open as to the duration of such an extension.' Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt today admitted the Prime Minister is 'under extraordinary pressure' after raging MPs branded her a 'f***ing disgrace' for using a TV speech to scold them for not backing her Brexit deal. With the UK just eight days from a No Deal departure, Mrs May went on live TV to condemn the Commons for failing to back her EU withdrawal agreement and accused them of playing 'political games'. The Downing Street address was meant to persuade Brexiteer Tories, Labour rebels and the DUP to back her deal - after the EU said it would only grant a short delay to Article 50 if the Prime Minister can win a vote on her plan before next Friday. But May's address appears to have spectacularly backfired as she heads to Brussels today for a crucial summit. Her defiant speech caused a great deal of upset among MPs who branded it 'toxic', 'contemptuous', 'incendiary and irresponsible' while another called it a 'f***ing disgrace'. Mr Hunt said 'no Prime Minister in living memory has been tested' in the way that Mrs May has and claimed the tone of her speech reflected her 'extreme frustration' at the current Brexit stalemate, which he said is 'sapping our national confidence'. Defending the Prime Minister, who is facing calls to quit, he told the BBC: 'Let's not forget the extraordinary pressure she is under. She was expressing her frustration and the public's frustration' - but added: 'I don't think we should all make this about Theresa May'. Tellingly the Foreign Secretary twice admitted it is not yet certain Mrs May can bring back her deal for a third vote - but said if it's defeated there are three options: No Deal, revoke Article 50 or a 'long delay' to Brexit. The Prime Minister will travel to Brussels today to ask for an extension until the end of June to try to get her plan through arriving at around midday. She will address EU leaders at around 3pm. Last night Mrs May appeared to misjudge a live TV speech by blast MPs for not backing her Brexit deal as she heads to Brussels today to beg for a three-month Article 50 extension. Tory Remainer Sam Gymiah hit out at his party leader and said: 'Resorting to the blame game, as the PM is doing, is a low blow' while Tory Brexiteer Henry Smith says that Britain must now opt for No Deal Potential Labour 'switcher' Lisa Nandy claimed last night that Mrs May had blown her chance to win her and other MPs over Tory Remainer Sam Gyimah hit out at his party leader and said: 'Resorting to the blame game, as the PM is doing, is a low blow. Democracy loses when a Prime Minister who has set herself against the House of Commons then blames MPs for doing their job. It's Toxic. 'She knows MPs are receiving hate mail. We're repeatedly being urged to hold their noses to the stench of this deal and vote for it. That cannot be the blueprint for our great country and I cannot support it'. Potential 'switcher' Lisa Nandy claimed last night that Mrs May had blown her chance and said: 'There's absolutely no chance she is going to win over MPs in sufficient numbers after that statement. It was an attack on liberal democracy itself. I will not support a government that takes such a reckless approach'. But Brexit Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said today he believes more MPs will back the Prime Minister's deal after her intervention and insisted she has a 'good shot at landing the deal and winning a vote next week'. He added: 'I don't think there is a blame game at all- she set out very clearly where we are in the process. There is a deal. If we get the deal through, we can get a short extension to the Article 50 process and we can leave the EU. 'I think saying: 'I'm with you' makes perfect sense. The cab driver who drove me here this morning said: 'I just want to leaveget the deal done and I want to be out of the EU'. 'The Prime Minister very much reflected that opinion, which is widely held. People are fed upthey want to leave the EU'. Israeli security forces opened fire after explosive devices were fired in Nablus. The soldiers were allocated to defend the faithful on pilgrimage to the tomb of Joseph. A 19-year-old Palestinian also died, suspected of the March 17 attack in the Ariel colony. On the eve of the elections, the US Secretary of State confirms support for the outgoing premier. Jerusalem (AsiaNews / Agencies) - At least two Palestinians were killed in yesterday's clashes with Israeli security forces in the Occupied West Bank. Army sources report the launch of explosive devices from a car, in the direction of some troops, stationed in defense of the Jewish faithful near the tomb of Joseph, in Nablus. In response, the soldiers opened fire, killing two people. In a second incident, which took place in Ramallah, security forces killed a Palestinian in a gunfight, held responsible for an attack on March 17 that killed two Israelis. The victim is 19-year-old Omar Amin Abu Lila, who was hit by four anti-tank missiles inside his home, from which he was shooting in the direction of the military. He is the author of the stabbing of 19-year-old Israeli soldier Gal Keidan and 47-year-old Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger near the Jewish colony of Ariel. Palestinian health sources report that the two victims struck yesterday by Israeli soldiers in Nablus are 21-year-old Raid Hamdan and 20-year-old Zaid Nuri. The violence broke out while hundreds of Jewish faithful, escorted by the military, were about to enter Joseph's tomb - a sacred place for Jews and Muslims - to pray. In the context of the clashes there were also 30 injured among the Palestinians, one of them is in critical condition. In a context of growing tensions, which erupted on March 30th in conjunction with the beginning of the "March of Return", Israel is approaching the general elections scheduled for April 9th. To support the candidacy of outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Jerusalem yesterday where he immediately spoke of a "strategic alliance" between the two countries. The head of Washington's diplomacy has renewed the common goal for Israel and the United States to combat Teheran's "acts of aggression" in the region and in the world "and confirmed" the friendship "between President Donald Trump and Netanyahu. "Israel has no better friends than the United States," said Pompeo. "I want to thank you and President Trump - replied Netanyahu, who is due to go to Washington next week - for all you do to support this collaboration. Our alliance has never been as strong as in recent years". The Auschwitz museum has urged visitors not to balance on the train tracks for pictures at the former Nazi death camp. Curators of the memorial in Poland warned visitors there were 'better places to learn how to walk on a balance beam' than at the site. The railway tracks were used during the Holocaust to transport prisoners to the gas chambers where they were systematically murdered. Some 1.1million people died at the extermination camp, around 90 per cent of them Jews. Staff at the former Auschwitz death camp in Poland have told visitors to stop taking pictures such as these, balancing on the rail tracks that brought a million people to their deaths A visitor at Auschwitz walks on one of the rail tracks with one of the main buildings of the extermination camp behind him. Staff said there were 'better places' to learn to balance Posting on Twitter, staff at the site said: 'When you come to Auschwitz Museum remember you are at the site where over one million people were killed. Respect their memory. 'There are better places to learn how to walk on a balance beam than the site which symbolizes deportation of hundreds of thousands to their deaths.' They shared pictures of several such visitors, who had posed for pictures with their arms outstretched as they stood on one of the rails. Clarifying later on Wednesday, they said: 'Photography at Auschwitz Museum will not be banned. 'Yet we ask visitors to behave respectfully, also when taking pictures.' The camp is located in the town of Oswiecim in Poland, which was known as Auschwitz while under German occupation. Staff at the memorial told visitors to 'respect the memory' of those who were murdered there Another visitor walks along the tracks at the Auschwitz extermination camp. The camp is located in the town of Oswiecim in Poland, which was then occupied by Nazi Germany A child balances on one of the rails. Some 1.1million people died at the extermination camp, around 90 per cent of them Jews The Nazis converted what had been a local army barracks into a gigantic killing machine where an estimated 1.1million people died. The foundation estimates that around 90 per cent of those who died at Auschwitz were Jews. The camp was liberated by invading Soviet forces on January 27, 1945 - the date now marked as Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK. The governments of Poland and Germany have both contributed to preserving the camp as a memorial, which was declared a World Heritage Site in 1979. A record number of people visited the former Nazi concentration camp in 2018, the memorial revealed in January. The gates to Auschwitz, with the slogan Arbeit Macht Frei - work sets you free - across the entrance British people continued to be the second largest group to come to the memorial in Poland, making up more than an eighth of the 2.2million foreign visitors last year. Dr Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz Museum, said at the time: 'Such a high percentage of those who choose to learn the history of Auschwitz in guided groups is of great significance. 'It is the most valuable educational form, which does not only provide more in-depth knowledge and understanding but also allows visitors to engage in a dialogue and ask questions about selected aspects of this tragic history. 'No automatism, no printed form or electronic equipment can substitute this human interaction during the visit that is difficult, both in terms of the amount of factual information and emotions.' Three sailors have been rescued from a small island off the coast of Wales today after getting stranded while returning from a night out. The Russian, Dutch and Filipino nationals had left their ship, the Netherlands-registered Alana Evita, anchored off Minehead, Somerset, last night and went to Barry in south Wales in a 13ft inflatable dinghy. After a night out drinking, they set off to return at around 3.45am but never made it back after getting lost in foggy conditions. A search and rescue operation was launched by the RNLI and Coastguard shortly after 8am today, including a Coastguard helicopter. Three Russian sailors were rescued this morning after getting stranded on Flat Holm island in the Bristol Channel. Pictured is one of the sailors, in blue, being taken off the island on an RNLI dinghy The RNLI released video footage which showed the trio being rescued from the island A helicopter was also used in the search, which took place after the crew's dinghy got lost in fog in the early hours of the morning The trio had left cargo ship the Alana Evita, registered to the Netherlands, after it was anchored two miles off the coast of Minehead This map shows how the dinghy left the ship at Minehead and went to Barry, before the trio of sailors got lost in fog and ended up on Flat Holm Island Coastguard and RNLI reports had initially suggested all three sailors were Russian. They were discovered shortly after on Flat Holm Island in the Bristol Channel, which is around four miles from the mainland. A coastguard spokesman said: 'Three missing crew have been found safe and well in the Bristol Channel. 'The three crew members were reported missing in the early hours of Thursday after they had left Barry on a rib to return to their vessel that is anchored in the Bristol Channel. 'The trio were found after an extensive search involving the Coastguard search and rescue helicopter from St Athan, Barry Coastguard and RNLI lifeboats from Barry and Milford Haven. 'The crew were found on Flat Holm an island in the Bristol Channel and have been taken back to Barry.' RNLI crews were scrambled from Minehead, Barry, Penarth and Ilfracombe today as part of the rescue effort Once rescued, the sailors were taken back to Barry RNLI station, where they have been handed over to the police The Coastguard said today it had sent a helicopter along with rescue teams to search for the missing sailors, who had gone for a night drinking in Barry, south Wales The Alana Evita, pictured, is a general cargo ship that was built in 2009 that weighs around 2,200 tonnes Andy Berry of Penarth lifeboat said: 'A Dutch registered motor vessel was moored off Minehead. 'Three sailors took a RIB boat over to Barry. They left about 3.45am but failed to return so a launch was initiated. 'Other lifeboats including Barry Dock lifeboat launched earlier than us. We were tasked to assist at 7.50am. 'Penarth lifeboats carried out a search of the area and found the sailors on Flat Holm. They were cold but otherwise well. 'Five lifeboats in total plus the rescue helicopter. Casualties taken back to Barry for medical checks. 'This is a great demonstration of multi agencies working together and a great outcome for the three sailors.' This is the shocking moment lionesses help chase away an aggressive male after a massive fight erupted when he tried to take over their pride. Three strong mothers helped two lions from their pack fight off the large male when it began roaring at their cubs. The lionesses ganged up on him, pouncing on him from the front as the two males sneaked behind to fight him from all angles. Brave lionesses pounce on an aggressive male who tried to take over their pride in the Greater Kruger National Park in South Africa The ferocious fight was filmed in the Greater Kruger National Park in South Africa. After the animals first traded blows, it seemed the fight was over as the lions could be seen scattering in separate directions. But the aggressive male followed one of the lionesses, prompting another lion to square off with him. They bit and clawed at one another before the three lionesses returned and began attacking him once more. A lioness can be seen attacking the male as two other lions sneak behind him Three lions stand their ground and the male is forced to retreat following the ferocious fight Despite the shocking nature of the brawl, it is not uncommon for fights to erupt when male lions try to take over another pride. At around two to three years old, young males leave their mother's pride and are forced to battle for a new one. They typically either kill off or chase away the males and kill the young cubs so they can start their own bloodline. Jeremy Corbyn today blamed 'confusion' for leaving a Brexit meeting in No 10 because Chuka Umunna was invited. The Labour leader is in Brussels and met EU leaders today as the row over his decision to snub Mr Umunna last night continues. He was accused of 'extraordinary' and 'juvenile' behaviour after he walked out and critics pointed out that he had been happy to meet members of the IRA and Hamas in the past. Today he insisted he can deliver Brexit and accused Theresa May of trying to 'threaten' MPs into voting her deal through next week - but twice refused to rule out revoking Article 50 if a longer delay was needed. But when asked if he could be trusted to lead when he can't accept being in the same room as Mr Umunna, who left Labour this year, he said: 'There was confusion over that meeting' and said later on he had 'a separate and very extensive' discussion with Mrs May. Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Stammer (left) and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrive in Brussels ahead of a meeting with Michel Barnier Jeremy Corbyn (pictured leaving Downing Street last night) walked out on a crucial Brexit briefing with party leaders because former Labour MP Chuka Umunna (right) was invited Speaking after what he described as 'very constructive discussions' with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and European Commission secretary general Martin Selmayr in Brussels, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: 'Our determination is to prevent a no-deal exit from the European Union next Friday. 'We are therefore looking for alternatives and building a majority in Parliament that can agree on a future constructive economic relationship with the European Union. 'We've been discussing how this could come about and trying to reach out here as both Keir (Starmer) and myself have been reaching out to colleagues in all parties in the UK Parliament.' Accompanied by shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Corbyn said: 'This morning's meetings have been positive and we have done what I believe the Government ought to be doing - instead of bringing back a twice-rejected deal to the British Parliament, looking for constructive solutions.' Mr Corbyn refused to sit down with Chuka Umunna, who, as a member of the breakaway Independent Group, had been invited along with other opposition representatives by the Prime Minister. Unite general secretary Len McCluskey tweeted today: 'No anti-Corbyn distractions on this. He's right not to meet with the people who betrayed their party. He wants to take the country forward with people who can be trusted. Keep the focus. We need a Labour deal, not a deal to put the interests of Tories beyond those of the people'. And ruling out a second referendum he added: 'This is not difficult. We need a customs arrangement'. Today Labour MP Barry Gardiner insisted his party leader was right to refuse to take part in talks if Mr Umunna was present because The Independent Group he has joined are not a 'political party' and said Mr Corbyn has concerns about how they are funded. Labour MP Ian Murray tweeted an ironic attack on Mr Corbyn's walk-out from Brexit crisis talks, highlighting how Mr Corbyn is failing to champion a people's vote like Chuka Umunna is, despite it being Labour Party policy. He said: 'As for Jeremy Corbyn. He was right to walk out of talks with the PM tonight because @ChukaUmunna was attending. 'Chuka would have championed what is Labour Party policy in a public vote. 'How dare Chuka champion the policy of Labour members. That's the leadership's job. Disgraceful.' He added minutes later: 'Thanks for all the messages and emails. This was irony. I should know better than to think Twitter does irony.' His refusal came despite the fact he has been happy to sit alongside members of terror group Hamas in the past - going so far as to call them his 'friends'. Mr Corbyn also invited members of the IRA to the House of Commons just days after the Brighton Bomb. But yesterday he refused to sit alongside Mr Umunna - complaining he 'wasn't a proper party leader'. Critics last night lambasted his 'juvenile' behaviour at a time when Britain's future hangs in the balance. Leading the criticism, Countdown presenter Rachel Riley (pictured) mocked Mr Corbyn for his actions She wrote on Twitter: 'Corbyn on Hamas (the terrorists): I wanted Hamas to be part of the debate. Corbyn on Chuka Umunna (the anti-racism ex-Labour MP): Tell him I'm not talking to him' Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said: 'Jeremy Corbyn's kinder, gentler politics was found wanting as he stomped out of the meeting before it began rather than breathe the same air as Chuka Umunna. 'This is a rather strange way to behave at a moment of national crisis.' Mr Umunna said the country was in 'a crisis situation' and the people of the UK expect conflicting political groups to 'come together' to find a way forward. 'That's why the Prime Minister convened the meeting and I welcome the fact she did so,' he said. 'I think it's really extraordinary behaviour for the Leader of the Opposition to behave in really this kind of very juvenile way when the moment demands that we all step up and engage in some serious dialogue to find our way through this chaos and this mess.' And others pointed out his shady history in meeting extremists such as Hamas and Hezbollah. John Woodcock, the former Labour MP who now sits as an independent, said: 'This man makes a grotesque virtue of fraternising with the violent extremists that many people conclude he sympathises with. 'But at the moment that our country desperately needs MPs to reach an agreement on Brexit, he draws a line at Chuka Umunna.' Former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron tweeted: 'Jezza has been quite happy to meet with some rather 'edgy' folk in the past... but draws the line at that menace to civilisation, Chuka Umunna.' In 1984, just two weeks after the Brighton bombing which killed five people and injured 31, Mr Corbyn caused an uproar by inviting representatives of the IRA to the House of Commons. In 2009, Mr Corbyn was filmed at a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign event saying: 'It will be my pleasure and honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. 'I've also invited our friends from Hamas to come and speak as well.' And in 2014, Mr Corbyn visited the graves of terror leaders linked to the Munich massacre. The Mail published a photograph of him holding a wreath just feet away from the graves of terror leaders linked to the 1972 killings. Following the meeting, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable said: 'That is rather a strange way to behave in a national crisis' Mr Umunna described Jeremy Corbyn's refusal to engage in talks as 'extraordinary' and 'very juvenile' SNP MP Stewart McDonald told Mr Corbyn to 'get a grip' after his refusal to engage in talks with the Independent Group Anna Soubry, a former Tory MP who is now with the Independent Group, also attended the meeting Last night Countdown host Rachel Riley - who has been a victim of anti-Semitic abuse from hard-left activists - criticised the Labour leader. She wrote: 'Corbyn on Hamas (the terrorists): 'I wanted Hamas to be part of the debate'. Corbyn on Chuka Umunna (the anti-racism ex-Labour MP): 'Tell him I'm not talking to him'.' Euan Philipps, spokesman for Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said: 'What's apparent from tonight's display is that, despite his claims, Jeremy Corbyn only ever speaks with people he agrees with. 'While he seems prepared to talk with Hamas and Hezbollah, he won't sit round a table with a BAME south London MP even when to do so is in the national interest and at a time of crisis. 'This is a man who appears too blinded by his own prejudices to do what is right for the country.' Mrs May invited leaders of the other parties to a meeting in the Commons yesterday to discuss the way ahead on Brexit. Tory MP Simon Hoare said: 'Jeremy Corbyn has always said in defence of his meetings with the IRA that you've got to sit down and talk to make progress. 'He was given the opportunity today and he's flunked it. It's another indication that at times when statesmanship is required, he falls well wide of the mark.' Chris Leslie, an Independent Group MP, said: 'Astonishing. Yet again Jeremy Corbyn puts petty party politics before the national interest.' SNP MP Stewart McDonald told Mr Corbyn to 'get a grip' after his refusal to engage in talks with the Independent Group present. He tweeted: 'I mean honestly, nine days until the country he wants to be Prime Minister of leaves the EU and Jeremy Corbyn has gone full 'you can't sit with us'. 'This isn't Mean Girls. Get a grip of your life, man!' Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson tweeted: 'Jeremy Corbyn this evening channelling a teenager who doesn't get his way. A sad, depressing way to conduct politics.' A spokeswoman for the Labour Party said: 'It was not the meeting that had been agreed and the terms were broken. 'Downing Street is in such chaos that they were unable to manage their own proposed meeting. 'We are in discussions with Number 10 about holding the bilateral meeting with the PM that Jeremy proposed at Prime Minister's Question Time.' Millions of Britons have effectively no protection against the Omicron Covid variant, health experts have warned as the public was urged to get their booster jabs to avoid overwhelming the health service this Christmas. The highly-transmissible mutant strain is likely to make up most cases of Covid in Britain over the next two weeks, the UK Health Security Agency said in a report yesterday, and could reach one million infections by the end of this month. While Covid booster jabs have been shown to be effective against Omicron, there are concerns that the millions of people who are yet to get their third inoculation could be unprotected against the virus without it. Government scientists compared 581 cases of Omicron in Britain with 56,000 of Delta to give preliminary estimates of how well vaccines protect against a variant with mutations that help it evade the body's immune response. They found that the mostly elderly people who had two doses of AstraZeneca several months ago had almost no protection against Omicron infection, and two Pfizer doses offered little more than 30 per cent. But a third dose, if using Pfizer, can take protection levels back up to 71 per cent in those who had AstraZeneca the first time around and 76 per cent for those who had Pfizer. Rwanda has proposed the world's first nationwide DNA database to combat crime - sparking human rights concerns. Under the scheme, samples would be taken from all of Rwanda's 12 million citizens. The country's Minister for Justice and Attorney General, Johnston Busingye said the database would help to fight crimes like rape and murder. Rwanda has sparked human rights concerns by proposing the world's first nationwide DNA database to combat crime. Pictured: The city's capital Kigali But the initiative has already caused alarm among human rights activists, the Independent reports. Alexandrine Pirlot de Corbion, from Privacy International, told the website: 'There is an inherent risk that this kind of database could be misused in the future. 'Around the world we have seen instances where large sets of data have been misused for repression - allowing authorities to identify and profile groups in society that a government might want to locate.' Busingye said the country now has the 'technical basis' to launch the 'development of a DNA database'. But he cautioned that there is a legal process go through first. Local media quote him as saying: 'We will examine global best practice on the issue, propose appropriate law and implement accordingly.' The country's Minister for Justice and Attorney General, Johnston Busingye (pictured) said the database would help to fight crimes like rape and murder 'I want to assure you that the ultimate goal is to have all the necessary equipment and technical know-how to provide accurate information about who is responsible for crime'. If confirmed, Rwanda would be the first country to implement nationwide DNA database to combat crime. In 2015, Kuwait announced plans for everyone in the country - including expats - to give DNA samples to the nation's police force. It came in the wake of a devastating suicide bomb attack on a mosque in the capital. But two years later, the law was revoked with a court ruling it violated Kuwait's constitutional guarantee of personal liberty. A university student in central China has revealed how she underwent surgery to sell her eggs in order to pay online loan sharks. The unnamed woman from Wuhan, Hubei province told Chinese media that she was given injections over 22 days to stimulate her ovaries before 29 of her eggs were harvested in two separate surgical procedures and sold to illegal fertility agencies. She said she was not given anaesthesia during the operations and the money she received was used to pay off a 60,000 yuan (6,840) debt she had incurred from an online lending platform. A university student in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province has revealed how she underwent surgery to sell 29 of her eggs in order to repay online loan sharks (file photo) In a recording sent to Shanghai-based news outlet The Paper, the woman claimed that she was given physical examinations at a hospital but the operation took place at the agency's illegal clinic. She said she was given anti-inflammatory medication for three days after her first surgery in Shanghai. The second operation took place in Wuhan, where she was on an anti-inflammatory drip for four days. 'Before the procedure, they would also ask about my health condition, level of education, whether there are any hereditary diseases in the family and even look at my height and appearance,' she said. The woman said she was given injections over 22 days to stimulate her ovaries (file photo) She was given anti-inflammatory medication for three days after her first surgery in Shanghai. The second one was in Wuhan (above) and she was on an anti-inflammatory drip for four days 'I was not allowed to bring anything, not even my cell phone,' she said, adding that each surgical procedure lasted for about 15 minutes. She did not say how much she was paid for her eggs after each surgery, but said she owed 60,000 yuan (6,840) in debt from borrowing money online. 'The first time was very, very painful. The second time was better,' she said. Advertisements from illegal agencies seeking young women to sell their eggs can be found in the bathrooms and women's dormitories in university, according to The Paper. 'Attention to women who are short of money! Here's an opportunity for you to earn some cash!' one such advertisement read. 'Infertile families are requesting for volunteer donors.' Advertisements from illegal agencies seeking young women to sell their eggs can be found in the bathrooms and women's dormitories in university. 'Attention to women who are short of money! Here's an opportunity for you to earn some cash!' the above advertisement reads. 'Infertile families are requesting for donor volunteers' A person would get paid between 10,000 yuan (1,137) and 50,000 yuan (5,690) per 'donation', the advertisement said. Chinese authorities have been ramping up efforts to crack down on illegal surrogate clinics and the trades of sperms, eggs and fetus. The black market of 'underground eggs' has grown as more infertile couples try for more children after the scrapping of the one-child policy at the end of 2015. More than 45 million people in the country were infertile, the Global Times reported in 2017 citing the China Association of Reproductive Health Industry. Organisations and individuals are prohibited from conducting egg donations for the purpose of making profit, according to China's assisted reproductive technology code released by the National Health and Family Planning Commission in 2003. Just last week, a 20-year-old university student almost died after selling her eggs for 10,000 yuan (1,100) in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province in order to buy a new iPhone Only eggs left from IVF treatment could be used for donations, and their sale and purchase were strictly prohibited, the Global Times reported. Just last week, a 20-year-old university student almost died after selling her eggs for 10,000 yuan (1,100) in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province in order to buy a new iPhone. Three days after the operation at the illegal clinic, her health quickly deteriorated and she suffered severe abdominal bloating and difficulty breathing. She was diagnosed with ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which can happen when ovaries become too stimulated for egg growth and fluid builds up around them. Theresa May (pictured in Downing Street today) is heading to Brussels as final No Deal preparations are activated The Army has opened a No Deal command post inside the secret Pindar nuclear bunker under Whitehall, it was reported tonight. It is the latest escalation of No Deal planning just eight days before Britain is due to leave. There is currently no agreed divorce deal. The emergency Cobra committee took over the No Deal preparations today amid plans to activate 'Operation Yellowhammer' on Monday. Yellowhammer is the civil contingencies wing of No Deal and involves putting 3,500 troops on standby, booking space on emergency ferries for NHS drugs and preparing for miles of lorry queues out of Dover. The plans - dubbed a No Deal 'doomsday' scenario - also include Foreign Office teams preparing to help Britons who get stranded in Europe from a dedicated 'nerve centre'. The troops will be commanded out of the 'Pindar' nuclear bunker under the Ministry of Defence on Whitehall. The military part of the plan is dubbed Operation Redfold, Sky News reported tonight. Officials have been planning for No Deal for months and activated 320 other contingency plans before Christmas with 101 days to March 29. It included a public information campaign telling citizens to prepare their own families. The new escalation comes with just eight days until exit is due to happen and with no deal agreed amid deadlock in Parliament. Cabinet Ministers were told on Tuesday Operation Yellowhammer would be stood up, the Daily Telegraph revealed. Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, told them in a letter: 'Operation Yellowhammer command and control structures will be enacted fully on 25 March unless a new exit date has been agreed between the UK and the EU.' He told departments to be ready to make 'necessary changes' to their contingency planning to account for an extension, and be ready to 're-programme' certain measures so that they could instead be activated before the new exit date. Yellowhammer is the civil contingencies wing of No Deal and involves putting 3,500 troops on standby, booking space on emergency ferries for NHS drugs and preparing for miles of lorry queues out of Dover Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told Cabinet on Tuesday that Operation Yellowhammer would be stood up on March 25 A Department for Transport source told The Times: 'Clearly if we are facing a no-deal Brexit on Friday there are going to be issues that require a substantial response and we need to ensure that the department is working in a way that allows us to do that ahead of time. What does yellowhammer mean and how did civil servants come up with the name? Yellowhammer is the code name for the work for planning a no deal Brexit carried out by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS). It takes its name from a small yellow bird which lives across the UK. They forage for seeds to eat, breed in May and enjoy singing. Male yellowhammers learn their songs from their fathers, and over the course of time regional dialects have developed. In ancient legend the birds were linked to the devil - the intricate patterns on their eggs were said to conceal an evil message. The Yellowhammer operation works across all Whitehall departments to ensure the UK is able to weather the shock of crashing out of the Brussels bloc. The word itself is randomly generated by a computer. The CCS was established in 2011 and works on projects to ensure the UK can handle potentially disruptive change. Projects similar to Yellowhammer have been carried out to prepare for the 2012 Olympics and the Champions League final. Advertisement 'The unknowns are going to be the reaction of other European countries to issues like customs and driving licences. We need to be in a position to respond to issues quickly.' A government spokesman said: 'As a responsible government we have been planning and continue to prepare for all eventualities and that includes managing the impacts of a no deal Brexit as they arise.' European Research Group deputy chairman Mark Francois said in the Commons yesterday Operation Yellowhammer shoudl be stood up immediately. He said: 'If that is so and there is no extension, why do we not just vote down the rancid withdrawal agreement and sprint for the line?' Chris Heaton-Harris, a Brexit minister, told MPs: 'We do have Operation Yellowhammer, which is working to deliver the biggest peacetime project in the history of the civil service. 'Leaving the European Union with a deal remains the government's top priority, but a responsible government must plan for every eventuality including a no-deal scenario, and these preparations are taking place alongside work to deliver on the government's policy priorities.' An official report published last month admitted 200,000 firms that trade with the EU are not ready for a no deal Brexit. The study from the Brexit department also found citizens are ignoring no deal warnings and failing to make sure they are ready for a no deal. It said no deal would cause delays at the border - potentially meaning shortages and prices rises for some food, particularly fresh produce not in season in Britain. The report warns panic buying could fuel shortages in foods that are shipped across the Channel. Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan revealed the No Deal 'nerve centre' that is ready to help stranded UK citizens this week Labour MP and Best for Britain supporter Rosie Duffield said: 'The only reason this money is being spent on disaster planning rather than our crumbling public services is because the Prime Minister is obsessed with keeping no deal on the table to force through her bad Brexit deal. 'Stopping the coming crisis should be the government's sole agenda, not facilitating it. 'Messes like this explain why the mood in the country has shifted over the last three years. 'No deal is not an acceptable outcome. People want a final say on Brexit, but also expect MPs to think about revoking A50 to stop this government walking us over a cliff-edge if we reach a point of national crisis next week.' 3,500 troops are on standby for no deal Brexit Extra personnel could be needed at British ports, at the border or even to help police civil disobedience if a no deal Brexit leads to food shortages or other problems Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson told MPs last year that 3,500 troops will be 'held at readiness' to help with a no-deal Brexit. The troops are a mix of regulars and reserves and will be held on bases to be deployed as needed as Britain leaves the EU. Extra personnel could be needed at British ports, at the border or even to help police civil disobedience if a no deal Brexit leads to food shortages or other problems. Downing Street insisted the use of soldiers is common - pointing to how troops helped out successfully in the running of the Olympics. Speaking in the Commons when he made the announcement, Mr Williamson said: 'We've as yet not had any formal request from any Government department but what we are doing is putting contingency plans in place, and what we will do is have 3,500 service personnel held at readiness - including regulars and reserves - in order to support any Government department on any contingencies they may need.' Up to 10,000 lorries could be parked in Kent if no deal causes delays at the ports Dover has room for 1,720, Manston Airport near Margate, which has been purchased by the Department for Transport, could fit 4,000 and 4,500 could be parked on the M20 - as happened when 'Operation Stack' was triggered in 2015 More than 10,000 lorries could be parked in Kent to cater for queues of trucks heading for France in event of a no-deal Brexit. First lorries would be parked at Dover, then on Manston Airport and finally the M20. Dover has room for 1,720 while Manston Airport near Margate, could fit 6,500 following a series of tests. If they run out of room, more lorries could be parked on the M20 - as happened when 'Operation Stack' was triggered in 2015. Further contingency plans that emerged in November suggested the 10-mile long M26 could also be pressed into service for overflowing lorries. Specialist drugs first in line for emergency ferry space Transport Secretary Chris Grayling had mooted the Government leasing entire roll-on, roll-off lorry ferries Reserving space on ferries for critical supplies is among the contingency plans triggered by the Cabinet today. Specialist drugs used by the NHS are first in line for space on the No Deal ferries, which were mired in controversy when Transport Secretary Chris Grayling handed one of the contracts to an untested firm with no ships. The deal was later cancelled. The Department of Health is understood to have contacted pharmaceutical companies urging them to route their supplies using the new ferry services. Gokmen Tanis (pictured) is suspected of shooting three people dead on a tram in Utrecht on Monday A man suspected of carrying out a tram shooting that left three people dead and seven injured in Holland is to face terror charges, Dutch prosecutors say. Gokmen Tanis will be charged with offences including multiple murder or manslaughter with a terrorist intent following the shooting in Utrecht. The public prosecutor's office in the central city said Tanis also faces charges of attempted murder or manslaughter and making threats with a terrorist intent. Prosecutors said that investigations so far into Monday's shooting indicate that the shooter acted alone. But investigations continue into whether the suspect's actions 'flowed from personal problems combined with a radicalised ideology', the statement added. Tanis, 37, is to appear before an investigating judge on Friday. Such hearings are held behind closed doors. It comes after police revealed they were investigating a terrorist motive for the tram attack, as they arrested a new suspect over the deadly shooting. Authorities said they had found a suspicious letter in a getaway car used by Turkish-born main suspect Tanis, which made them 'seriously' consider terrorism might have been involved in Monday's rampage. Armed counter-terrorism officers meanwhile arrested one new suspect, aged 40, in Utrecht who was 'suspected of being involved in the shooting incident', prosecutors said, adding that his 'role was being further investigated.' Emergency: Dutch special police forces inspect the tram in Utrecht after a gunman opened fire in the public transport carriage and killed three people Two other men who were arrested Monday in connection with the shooting had been released, prosecutors added. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte earlier in the day laid flowers for the victims at the scene of the attack and said he was 'still filled with horror' by the bloodshed. 'So far, a terrorist motive is seriously being taken into account. This is based on a letter found in the getaway car among other things and the nature of the facts,' Dutch police and prosecutors said in a joint statement yesterday. Apparently ruling out reports that the shooting was due to a family dispute, the statement added: 'Our investigation has established no link between the main suspect and the victims.' The three people who died in the shooting were a 19-year-old woman from Vianen, south of Utrecht, and two men aged 28 and 49 from Utrecht itself, the statement said. Armed police captured Tanis after an eight-hour manhunt that virtually shut down the Netherlands' fourth largest city and saw security stepped up at airports and key sites across the country. Police said they found a red Renault Clio that the suspect had carjacked before the attack and used as a getaway car afterwards. They had also found a firearm after his arrest. A stream of mourners laid flowers on Tuesday at the site of the attack near the 24 Oktoberplein square. 'One of the victims was my friend's girlfriend. So coming here today was the least I could do,' Marco van Rooijen, 43, told AFP. The attack raised security fears ahead of Wednesday's provincial elections in the Netherlands. Populist and far-right parties have seized on the attack to push their agenda for the polls but Rutte has remained restrained. 'A day later, I am still filled with horror,' Rutte told parliament. Tributes: Students lay flowers near the site of the shooting as Dutch police and prosecutors pursue 'every lead there is' 'There are still many questions about the motive, and the police and prosecutors still have to do a lot of work. But there is no doubt that the impact was huge.' Flags were flying half-mast on many buildings around the Netherlands and on foreign embassies. Public transport was running again after forensic police finished their investigations at the scene and removed the tram on which the shooting erupted. But there was also growing anger after it emerged that the suspect had only been freed from jail in a rape case two weeks ago. Tanis was originally arrested in 2017 then released from pre-trial detention, before being taken back into custody when he breached his bail conditions, the central Netherlands district court said. He was freed again at the start of March. In 2014, he was also convicted of 'illegal possession of weapons' and attempted theft but acquitted of attempted manslaughter. He was also convicted in recent months for shoplifting and burglary. Broadcaster NOS meanwhile said some of his relatives had links to fundamentalist Islamic groups, but also that he was known for unstable behaviour after divorcing his wife two years ago. A woman involved in the rape case told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper: 'He is completely mad and uses drugs. I have previously warned the police against him. He's not a terrorist but a psychopath.' Support for the Netherlands poured in from around the world, including the United States, the EU and Russia. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: 'America stands with you. We will continue to do all we can to help you in this terrible time of tragedy.' Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's intelligence agency was 'looking into' the attack. A murderer who lured a teenager into his ute and killed her during a sexual assault will appeal his conviction. Francis John Wark was in January 2018 found guilty of murdering 17-year-old Hayley Dodd, who disappeared in 1999 while walking along a remote road in Wheatbelt, Western Australia. Justice Lindy Jenkins sentenced Wark to life with a minimum of 21 years in jail, almost 20 years after her disappearance. Hayley's body has never been found. Francis John Wark was in January 2018 found guilty of murdering 17-year-old Hayley Dodd (pictured) Wark (pictured), who lured the teenager into his ute and killed her during a sexual assault, is appealing his conviction Sam Van Dongen, Wark's lawyer, told the Court of Appeal on Thursday Justice Jenkins had not given his client's evidence proper credibility, the ABC reported. Wark, who owned a property in Badgingarra near where Hayley was last seen, has denied involvement in the teenagers disappearance. He was charged with the cold case murder of Hayley in 2015 while serving a 12-year jail term for sexually and physically assaulting a 31-year-old woman. Wark picked up the woman, who was hitching, on a remote north Queensland road in June 2007. Justice Jenkins found Wark had 'a propensity to pick up a lone female hitchhiker and to violently and seriously assault her so that she could not resist his sexual assault'. Mr Van Dongen told the court that Wark's conviction for the sexual assault in north Queensland was incorrectly used by Justice Jenkins who did not accept his client's alibi. Justice Lindy Jenkins sentenced Wark (left) to life with a minimum of 21 years in jail, almost 20 years after Hayley's (right) disappearance Wark, who owned a property in Badgingarra near where Hayley was last seen (pictured), has denied involvement in the teenagers disappearance He also argued the 2007 offence was almost a decade after Hayley disappeared. 'It doesn't bear on his credibility or truthfulness,' Mr Van Dongen said. Mr Van Dongen said Justice Jenkins did no accept what time Wark left on the day Hayley disappeared and argued the time difference was critical in determining if his client had time to commit murder. Mr Vandongen said the judge relied on 'speculation and guesswork' by placing him inside the half-an hour time frame Hayley disappeared, despite an alibi claiming he was shopping 50 kilometres away. Hayley's mother, Margaret Dodd (right), sat in the public gallery for the appeal case on Thursday and admitted the proceedings were hard to hear The teenager's mother, Margaret Dodd, sat in the public gallery for the appeal case on Thursday and admitted the proceedings were hard to hear. 'It's very hard, it's just like hearing it all over again,' she said. 'Victims always complain about this, they go through a trial, they think that's it, and the next minute it's an appeal and you're going to hear all the same thing all over again.' By Robyn Arianrhod, Adjunct Associate , School of Mathematical Sciences, Monash University Shutterstock/Africa Studio Three centuries ago, when modern science was in its infancy, the gender disparity in education was not a gap but an abyss: few girls had any decent schooling at all. The emerging new science was clearly a male enterprise. But it arose from a sense of curiosity, and women, too, are curious. If you look closely enough, its clear women played an important role, as both readers and authors, in the history of science writing. New vs old ideas Both science and science writing were up for grabs in the 17th century. Technology was rudimentary and researchers struggled to obtain even the simplest observational evidence, and then searched for ways to make sense of it. Read more: How not to write about science You can see this struggle in the Italian astronomer Galileo Galileis famous Dialogues of 1632 and 1638. He painstakingly and somewhat tortuously tries to justify his arguments for heliocentrism in which the planets go around the Sun and the nature of motion and gravity. https://images.theconversation.com/files/264777/original/file-20190320-6... 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264777/original/file-20190320-6... 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264777/original/file-20190320-6... 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264777/original/file-20190320-6... 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264777/original/file-20190320-6... 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"> Shutterstock/Georgios Kollidas Tortuously, not only because he was bending over backwards to please the censors heliocentrism was held to defy scripture but especially because most of the experiments, methods, and even the mathematical symbolism of modern science did not yet exist. So although yesteryears scientific content was simple compared with todays overwhelming complexity, Galileos Dialogues show that the lack of data, methods and scientific language presented its own problems for science communication. Conversation in science Galileo resorted to the Socratic device of a conversation, in which he debated his ideas in a long dialogue between an innovative philosopher, Salviati, and two (male) friends. In trying to convince even the least scientifically learned of his interlocutors, Galileo was writing what we might call popular science (although the more complex parts of the 1638 Dialogue read more like a textbook). There were no scientific journals then, and there wasnt quite the same distinction between the announcement of scientific discoveries to colleagues and the communication of those ideas to a wider public. Perhaps the first mass-market popular science book was another dialogue related to heliocentrism, Frenchman Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelles 1686 Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. It was a runaway success that helped non-specialists accept the Copernican system a Sun-centred solar system rather than the time-honoured, seemingly self-evident geocentric one with Earth at the centre. The hero of Fontenelles story, too, is a male philosopher but this time he is conversing with a pretty marquise, who is spirited and quick to grasp new facts. Although its style was flirtatious, Fontenelles book was a significant recognition that women are curious and intelligent. Science gets complex Then, the very next year, everything changed. The English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton published his monumental Principia Mathematica. Suddenly science became a whole lot more complex. https://images.theconversation.com/files/264778/original/file-20190320-6... 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264778/original/file-20190320-6... 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264778/original/file-20190320-6... 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264778/original/file-20190320-6... 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264778/original/file-20190320-6... 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"> Shutterstock/Georgios Kollidas For instance, Fontenelles explanation of the cause of heliocentrism had been based on Frenchman Rene Descartes notion that the planets were swept around the Sun by gargantuan cosmic ethereal vortices. Newton replaced this influential but unproven idea with his predictive theory of gravity, and of motion in general, which he developed in 500 dense pages of axioms, observational evidence, and a heap of mathematics. Principia provided the modern blueprint for experimentally based, quantitative, testable theories and it showed the fundamental role of mathematics in the language of physics. The trouble was that only the best mathematicians could understand it. It was so innovative (and tortuous in its own way) that some of the greatest of Newtons peers were sceptical, and it took many decades for his theory of gravity to become universally accepted in Europe. Science writers played a key role in this process. Something for ladies The earliest popularisations of Newtons work were short or semi-technical, such as that by the French mathematician Pierre-Louis Moreau Maupertuis. In the 1730s, Maupertuis tutored a real-life marquise, Emilie du Chatelet, but she was of a very different calibre from Fontenelles fictional student or indeed the curious but rather flighty marquise in another mass market popularisation: the Italian Francesco Algarottis Newtonianism for the ladies. https://images.theconversation.com/files/264782/original/file-20190320-6... 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264782/original/file-20190320-6... 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264782/original/file-20190320-6... 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264782/original/file-20190320-6... 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264782/original/file-20190320-6... 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"> Google Books Newtonianism here referred not just to Newtons theory of gravity. As its somewhat patronising title might suggest, it focused mostly on his more accessible 1704 work, Opticks, which explains his experiments on the behaviour of light and the nature of colour. But these, too, were controversial, and Algarotti was an expert in optics. He had been inspired to address the ladies by two outstanding female contemporaries: his French mathematical friend Emilie du Chatelet, and the Italian physicist Laura Bassi. But both women disliked his books flirtatious style. https://images.theconversation.com/files/265005/original/file-20190321-9... 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265005/original/file-20190321-9... 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265005/original/file-20190321-9... 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265005/original/file-20190321-9... 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265005/original/file-20190321-9... 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"> Wikimedia Du Chatelet and her lover Voltaire were writing their own more serious (and non-gendered) popularisation of Newtons work. Du Chatelet later wrote a very successful popular synthesis of the scientific ideas of Newton and his German rival Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bassi used the Italian translation of it in her own teaching. Du Chatelet then went on to produce the first translation of Principia outside Britain an insightful work that is also interesting in the context of popular science writing. She appended a 110-page commentary, summarising Newtons method in everyday language, and explaining more recent applications of his theory. The self-taught science writers Nearly a century later, the Scottish mathematician Mary Somerville felt the same compulsion to reach out to the non-specialist reader male and female in the introduction to her book explaining the latest developments of Newtons theory, Mechanism of the Heavens. https://images.theconversation.com/files/265007/original/file-20190321-9... 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265007/original/file-20190321-9... 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265007/original/file-20190321-9... 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265007/original/file-20190321-9... 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265007/original/file-20190321-9... 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"> National Galleries of Scotland It is worth celebrating the fact that Somervilles Mechanism was used at Cambridge as an advanced textbook in celestial mechanics and at a time when women were not allowed to attend university. Like Du Chatelet, Somerville was mostly self-taught. She understood the importance of science writing in educating the public, especially those denied formal education, and went on to write two best-selling popular science books: On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences and Physical Geography. Another successful British female science writer in the early 19th century was Jane Marcet. Unlike those of Du Chatelet and Somerville, Marcets two books Conversations on Chemistry and Conversations on Natural Philosophy were aimed particularly at women. They were built around conversations between two teenage girls and their female teacher. Unlike Fontenelles and Algarottis works for the ladies, these books were down-to-earth, non-patronising attempts to educate women in practical chemistry and physics. But like those of Fontenelle and Algarotti, Marcets books proved popular with male lay readers, too including the self-taught British physicist and chemist Michael Faraday, who went on to become co-discoverer of electromagnetism. Read more: Let there be light! Celebrating the theory of electromagnetism Biology was also progressing in the 19th century, but this had a downside for women. The discovery that women had smaller brains was used to reinforce the stereotype that women were incapable of intellectual study. Somerville wrote movingly on how this affected her life. She would have been thrilled to read this years book by female neuroscientist Gina Rippon, The Gendered Brain, which asserts that brain plasticity and connectivity should displace old notions of gendered brains. Rippons is one of a growing number of female-authored popular science books on all aspects of science, and it is also an example of how women can contribute important new perspectives to scientific topics. Another example is the ecological perspective of pioneering biologist and science writer Rachel Carson, whose 1962 Silent Spring played a leading role in launching the modern environmental movement. Scientific understanding is often driven initially by a reductionist approach, and Carson was the first to clearly point out the role of artificial pesticides on the whole food chain. Read more: Who writes science and technology stories? More men than women Then theres the question of ethics in science. Rebecca Skloots 2010 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the little-known story of the 1951 illegal harvesting and selling of cells from poor black farmer Henrietta Lacks. Having diverse voices of all kinds in science and science writing is a good thing for science, as even a brief look at history shows. As far as womens participation goes, weve come a long way. But we still need more women to help shape and tell the story of science. Robyn Arianrhod received grants from the Australia Council and Arts Victoria to help her research her 2011 book "Seduced by Logic", on Emilie du Chatelet and Mary Somerville. Originally published in The Conversation. Came to son Luca's combat training class are sparred with him blindfolded Staff Sgt. Rob Cesternino had been based in Middle East for almost a year Staff Sgt. Rob Cesternino had been based in Middle East for almost a year This is the beautiful moment a US soldier surprised his nine-year-old son by sneaking into the youngster's taekwondo session to be his sparring partner. The boy went into a flood of happy tears after seeing his dad who had been away on deployment for 10 months. Blindfolded Luca Cesternino had no idea what was about to come next as he swung punches at the mystery body in front of him, thinking it was all part of a training routine. Staff Sgt. Rob Cesternino (centre) with his son Luca (right) and his wife Leah (left) when they reunited 10 months after Rob was deployed to the Middle East Little did Luca know, though, his trainer at Success Martial Arts Centre in Lebanon, Tennessee, had switched places with his father, Staff Sgt. Rob Cesternino. Towards the end of the drill on Monday, Staff Sgt. Rob Cesternino can be heard saying 'Hey Shib' - a name he used to call Luca when he was younger. The words instantly sparking a reaction from his son, saying 'Daddy?'. Stopping in his tracks, Luca fights to remove the blindfold before immediately diving into his father's arms and breaking down into tears. Staff Sgt. Cesternino hopped into the youngsters taekwondo session to become his surprise sparring partner The 9-year-old had no idea about the surprise and happily swung punches at the mystery body in front of him, thinking it was all part of a training routine Applause rang out all around the training centre as the pair embraced, with Rob telling Luca, 'I love you, and I'm so proud of you. You were such a big boy while I was gone'. The pair were also joined by the staff sergeant's wife, Leah, who helped organise the surprise and was praised by Rob for caring for son Luca while he was away. Speaking to the Lebanon Democrat, Luca said: 'I was, like, wow! Everybody came here to see my dad and me. 'It's just excitement. I felt joy in my heart - I will never leave his side.' Luca's father can be heard calling out 'Hey Shib' - a name he used to call Luca when he was younger - and Luca thinks he recognises the voice Luca rips off the blindfold before immediately diving into his dad's arms and before breaking down into tears. The staff sergeant returned from deployment on Sunday but had to then spent 24 hours in seclusion. The staff sergeant left with the Tennessee Army National Guard's 230th Sustainment Brigade in May 2018. 'I love you, and I'm so proud of you. You were such a big boy while I was gone,' dad Rob could be heard saying to Luca From there, the unit headed to Kuwait, with Rob also spending time in Jordan and southern Syria. As well as the surprise reunion with his son, Rob was also treated to a special homecoming by the local community. With the help of Leah, a project saw locals decorate Lebanon Square and other areas of the city with yellow ribbons to welcome Rob back and celebrate all veterans. Rob added: 'The person we both have to thank is Luca's mom and my wife, Leah. 'It starts and ends with her - she makes us better. 'If you are a husband or a wife of a service member, if you are a child of a service member, they deserve more applause than we get, because they have a tougher row to hoe.' Hundreds of people have queued to egg a life-sized picture of Senator Fraser Anning at an event at Canberra Comedy Festival. The portrait of Senator Anning was hung up in the foyer of the Canberra Theatre Centre, on Wednesday night, during The Chaser's War On History show. The attraction was an 're-imagining' of the now infamous egging incident last Saturday, which saw teenager Will Connolly crack an egg on the controversial politician's head during a Conservative National Party Meeting, in Melbourne. The portrait was set up outside in the foyer of the Canberra Theatre Centre on Wednesday night - audience members were then encouraged to egg the controversial Senator The incident was captured on video and showed supporters of Senator Anning's wrestle Connolly to the ground before holding him in a head lock. During the Chaser's show, comedian Charles Firth was seen inviting audience members up on stage to throw an egg at giant portrait of Mr Anning. And after the show finished, audience members filed out of the auditorium to find the same poster stuck to a fence with stewards encouraging everyone to have a go. The Chaser team bought 1,000 eggs for punters to throw at Mr Anning. 'It was extremely popular,' one attendee wrote on social media. Comedian group The Chaser allegedly bought 1,000 eggs for the audience to use Hundreds of excited punters then passionately egged Mr Anning with many shouting 'bulls eye' when their egg hit the portrait Will Connolly (pictured) became an overnight celebrity since egging Senator Anning in Melbourne last Saturday Mr Connolly He has had murals painted of him in Melbourne and Sydney (pictured), has amassed more than 600,000 followers on social media In footage uploaded to social media punters can be seen passionately throwing eggs the photo of Mr Anning. A comedy worker can be heard ordering the crowd to move on in order for everyone to be able to have a go. The egging of Mr Anning has been a hugely debated topic not only in Australia but internationally. In the wake of the Christchurch terror attack last Friday, Mr Anning blamed immigration as the reason behind the massacre, which saw 50 people lose their lives. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Canberra Comedy Festival for comment. Senator Fraser Anning (pictured) caused uproar over his statement he released just one day after the Christchurch mosque massacre where he blamed Muslim immigration for the terror attacks that claimed the lives of 50 Edmund Ian Riggs was found guilty of the manslaughter of his wife Patricia Riggs (pictured) in 2001 A Queensland man who lied about killing his wife and then burying her dead body twice for over a decade has been jailed for 15 years. Edmund Ian Riggs attended Brisbane Supreme Court on Thursday where Justice Peter Flanagan handed down his sentence for the manslaughter of his wife Patricia Riggs. He was also sentenced for multiple perjury offences and interfering with a corpse. The 60-year-old had previously gone to extreme lengths to deceive police after Ms Riggs' death in September 2001. It was only during his trial last month that he admitted Ms Riggs, who was 34 at the time, had died in September 2001 at their home in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane, after he pushed her in response to her spitting at him during a heated argument. Riggs claimed that when he realised his wife was dead he 'panicked' and attempted to cover his tracks by burying her body in a shallow grave on the outskirts of Caboolture, 50km north of Brisbane. A few years later he dug up her remains after seeing heavy machinery at the site, and reburied her the family home. Edmund Ian Riggs (pictured) attended Brisbane Supreme Court on Thursday where Justice Peter Flanagan handed down his sentence Ms Riggs' remains were found in 2016 by the new owner of the home who had began excavating in preparation for building a retaining wall. However, on Thursday Justice Flanagan labelled his post-offence actions as 'out of proportion' and refuted his version of events. 'The extent of steps you took to distance yourself from your wife's death is out of all proportion to you pushing your wife during the course of an argument and her hitting her head on a bedpost,' Justice Flanagan said, reported 9News. The mother's remains were found on the property (pictured) previously shared by the couple The mother's remains were found when a man began excavating a yard in preparation for building a retaining wall 'I determine you are to be sentenced for manslaughter on the basis Patricia Riggs died a violent and sudden death at your hands in September 2001.' At the time of the investigation, an examination of the family's home found blood splatters on a bedroom wall. The discovery contradicted Riggs' version of events. 'The positioning of this blood spatter is inconsistent with your version of your wife hitting her head on the bedpost at the foot of the bed nearest to the door,' Justice Flanagan said. 'There were no discernible traces of blood in the immediate vicinity of where you say your wife hit her head, nor where you say you repositioned her body in the immediate aftermath of her death,' he added. Ms Riggs' father Jon Knowles (pictured centre) spoke publicly about the sentence Riggs had received Justice Flanagan also stated that Riggs had been found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder because the jury were unable to determine if he had intended to kill his wife. Prior to his trial, Riggs had repeatedly lied for years, and even told their two children that their mother had run away. After the hearing, Ms Riggs' father Jon Knowles spoke publicly about the sentence Riggs had received. He said that if someone takes another person's life they should not be allowed out of prison ever and said no sentence would be long enough. Mr Knowles added that while Riggs could be 'walking around' in 10 years' time, his daughter couldn't. Riggs is eligible for parole in September 2027. Prime Minister Scott Morrison was 'disrespectful' and 'patronising' on Thursday night during a one-on-one interview with Waleed Aly, viewers of the panel show say. The politician, who is just weeks away from an election, came on the show after days of back-and-forth over whether he suggested using anti-Muslim sentiment to win points with voters. A report published in 2011 claimed he made the suggestion during a 2010 shadow cabinet meeting, and the claim was repeated by Aly in the wake of the Christchurch massacre last Friday, where gunman Brenton Tarrant, 28, shot and killed more than 50 Muslim people as they prayed inside a mosque. Morrison was slammed by viewers for his body language, which saw him slouched back in a chair, without a tie - a direct contrast to Aly, who was seen leaning forward as he asked questions while dressed in a full suit. Prime Minister Scott Morrison was slammed on Thursday night for his 'unprofessional' body language during a heated interview with Waleed Aly on The Project One Twitter user likened the country's top politician to a child, and said he had failed to live up to the standard set by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. 'I don't need to know politics to understand that the way in which Morrison is conducting this conversation is so unprofessional,' she wrote. 'In light of Ardern's diplomacy and her empathy, it sounds like Waleed is talking to a child.' The heated debate was not only frustrating to viewers, with both men appearing to become increasingly exasperated over the course of the interview. The two continually interrupted each other, with Aly saying at one point: 'I feel like it is very difficult to get through a sentence at the moment. Many viewers slammed the PM for his 'rude and bad tempered' attitude, with one remarking: 'this is a trainwreck for ScoMo'. One viewer added that Mr Morrison had come across as 'patronising and passive aggressive.' If the presenter was feeling frustrated he wasn't alone, with many viewers taking to social media to express their irritation with the premier A Twitter user shells out criticism and labels Mr Morrison a 'trainwreck' during the interview But not all were left unimpressed by Morrison's performance, with some believing he had shown incredible composure under pressure. 'Waleed tried to dig up dirt on our gracious PM who tonight clarified that he stands for uniting, not dividing the Australian people,' one person tweeted. 'But the same cant be said for Waleed. Its not about composure. Its about cohesion.' Another tweeted: 'ScottMorrison did way better than I anticipated. I was disappointed in Waleed's performance though.' Another commented that Aly was trying to undermine the Prime Minister but said that 'the PM handled himself just about as well as someone could in that situation. We actually have a no-nonsense, straight talking, intelligent PM.' Mr Morrison found himself hard pressed after Aly asked him if the Coalition and Australia more generally had a problem with Islamophobia. Aly listed off a number of politicians who had made controversial comments in the past - including Tony Abbott who said 'Islamophobia never killed anyone', and Senator Fraser Anning's 'final solution' speech in parliament. Mr Morrison appeared to avoid answering the question numerous times before he said: 'If your question to me is do I think that every single statement by any single member of the Liberal party has always been consistent ' Aly quickly cut off the Prime Minister to say that was not his original question, when Mr Morrison snapped back: 'Well maybe you want to rephrase it.' Aly managed to finally squeeze an answer out of Morrison - who denied it was a problem. 'ScoMo has just failed to answer the same question around ten times,' one tweeted. Another posted: 'Not a single question is answered by Scott Morrison straight. He's stuttering and finding it not difficult but impossible. He's getting very very uncomfortable.' Others noted the the Prime Minster slouched back in his chair and crossed his legs , at times looking disinterested. 'Body language is everything! And this tells me that ScoMo actually doesn't give a f**k,' one person tweeted. 'Compare the way Scott Morrison is behaving now to the composed and calm way Jacinda Ardern has conducted herself the past week - polar opposites.' Though others stepped in to defend Mr Morrison and interpreted his reclined state and relaxed body language as a power move. 'To me that means hes not intimidated by his interviewer,' one person said on Facebook. 'Now sitting comfortably is against the law according to leftist thinkers.' Tensions reached boiling point onscreen when Mr Morrison and Aly shifted focus on the alleged 2010 shadow cabinet meeting. Mr Morrison locked horns with The Project host Thursday night, as he took on questions about anti-Muslim sentiment in politics, which led to heated moments where he would speak over the host The PM found himself hard pressed after Aly asked him if the Coalition government had a problem with Islamophobia Aly listed off a number of politicians who had made controversial comments in the past - including Tony Abbott who said 'Islamophobia never killed anyone', and Senator Anning's 'final solution' speech in parliament Aly called to attention numerous Coalition senators who had attended 'Reclaim Australia' rallies Mr Morrison appeared to avoid answering the question numerous times before he said: 'If your question to me is do I think that every single statement by any single member of the Liberal party has always been consistent ' During the debate Aly referenced a 2011 report in the Sydney Morning Herald which claimed Mr Morrison had suggested his party exploit immigration policy as a political strategy. Mr Morrison has vehemently denied the claim and said it had damaged his reputation with the Islamic community. 'You implied Muslims couldnt feel safe because they had a PM who had somehow been prejudiced against them and I dont believe thats true,' he said. 'Cant you see that what youre suggesting is at complete odds with the experience that I have been involved in over the last 10 years of my public life?' Mr Morrison told Aly on Thursday night. Mr Morrison said that as shadow immigration minister, he raised concerns about anti-Muslim sentiment and wanted them addressed. 'I was acknowledging there were fears, and we had to address them. Not exploit them.' During the debate Aly referenced a 2011 report in the Sydney Morning Herald which claimed Mr Morrison had suggested his party exploit immigration policy as a political strategy Mr Morrison has vehemently denied the claim and pointed out the statement had damaged his reputation with the Islamic community Mr Morrison said that as shadow immigration minister, he raised concerns about anti-Muslim sentiment and wanted them addressed While Mr Morrison may have appeared fired-up at times, some viewers praised him for his composure Another viewer tweets their support for Scott Morrison following the heated interview on The Project Sean Kenna, 45, was arrested Wednesday with police believing he is responsible for scrawling anti-Semitic graffiti on signs and mailboxes around Miami Beach Police have arrested a homeless man they believe is responsible for scrawling anti-Semitic graffiti on signs and mailboxes around Miami Beach. Sean Kenna, 45, was charged Wednesday with seven counts of felony criminal mischief, with investigators claiming he spray-painted swastikas and wrote 'Kill the Jews' on public and private property in the South Florida area. Kenna was involved in the creation of seven shocking inkings discovered over the course of five weeks, an arrest report claims. Police allege that between February 9 and March 19, Kenna spray-painted a swastika on the front gate of a home, scrawled the word 'death' on a blue US Postal Service mailbox and wrote 'Kill the Jews' on a sign. Kenna was captured on surveillance camera on Tuesday 'approaching an electrical box where he drew an image of a devil', according to The Sun-Sentinel. Police announced his arrest the following day, tweeting there was 'no place for hate'. Kenna has reportedly denied his involvement in the incidents. Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle will now review the case to determine whether the incidents will be classified as hate crimes. The shocking graffiti has shaken the Miami Beach community, which has long had a substantial Jewish population The shocking graffiti has shaken the Miami Beach community, which has long had a substantial Jewish population, and has recently been targeted by separate anti-Semitic attacks. In recent months, swastikas were discovered on a synagogue and historic Jewish building. And in December, police arrested a man accused of making threats inside a Jewish center. Just days later, another man was arrested for allegedly attacking Jewish men inside a Kosher Dunkin Donuts in Miami Beach. Well, sighed Princess Diana, in her now infamous BBC TV interview from 1995, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded. She was responding to a question asking if she thought her husband Prince Charles then mistress (now wife) Camilla Parker Bowles had been a factor in the breakdown of her marriage. And Diana was being rather disingenuous with her answer given there were a lot more than three people circling the various royal boudoirs at the time. But if you thought THAT marriage was dysfunctional, how the hell do we get our heads round the Conways? In the often crazily unpredictable world of Donald Trump, few things should still surprise us. But the current hilariously unedifying spat between the President, one of his closest advisers and her husband is beyond anything even the most imaginative comedy writer could conjure. Kellyanne Conway has publicly sided with Donald Trump against her own husband George By backing her boss, Kellyanne Conway has surely spun her marriage into a divorce court Kellyanne Conway is officially employed at the White House as Counselor to the President. The exact nature of what she does for Trump is open to persistent conjecture and we probably dont know the half of it. But what we DO know is that she has become his strongest public defender, often defending the utterly defensible. It was Kellyanne who first coined the phrase alternative facts to justify Trumps unfortunate problem with telling the truth. And its Kellyanne who Trump trusts most to go on TV when he needs someone articulate, smart and aggressive to argue black is white for him. Her finest hour if youre Trump (her worst hour if youre a Trump-hater) came when she passionately defended him after the Access Hollywood grab them by the p*ssy tape broke and threatened to instantly derail his 2016 election campaign. I remember watching her ferociously go into bat for him in the days that followed and thinking that she was literally single-handedly saving Trumps presidential chances before our very eyes. Trump is big on loyalty. As I have personally experienced, he can be extremely loyal to people he likes or who are loyal to him particularly if they publicly stand up for him when the furnace of fury is most intense. Trump is big on loyalty, and Kellyanne saved his a** over the 'grab em by the p*ssy' tape So he absolutely loves Kellyanne because she saved his a** over that tape, and has never once wavered in her unequivocal support for him despite the huge amounts of vile abuse this has earned her in the process. The problem is that not everyone in the Conway marital bed shares her undying devotion to the President. Kellyanne Conway has become Trump's strongest public defender, often defending the utterly defensible In fact, her husband George can be safely identified as one of Trumps most persistent and vicious enemies. For the past few months, Mr Conway has attacked Trump on Twitter with the same passion that his wife has defended him. When he first started doing this, I was absolutely astonished. How could anyone publicly mock and insult their spouses boss in this way? It seemed such an extraordinarily cheap and disloyal thing to do, even if the boss is the worlds most powerful man. For the past few months, Mr Conway has attacked Trump on Twitter with the same passion that his wife has defended him George Conway knows how over-sensitive and volatile Trump can be about personal criticism, yet didnt seem to care what damage his abuse might cause his wifes career. His attacks got worse and worse until this week they reached a nadir when he directly stated that Trump was a verifiable lunatic, citing sections of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Americans, Conway tweeted, should be thinking seriously now about Trumps mental condition and psychological state. Whats perhaps been even more inexplicable than Conways campaign against Trump has been his targets dignified silence given how he normally fights any verbal fire, however insignificant, with a blazing inferno of vitriol in return. But finally, Trump snapped and retaliated. A total loser! he declared after his 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted: We all know Donald Trump turned down Mr Kellyanne Conway for a job he desperately wanted. He barely worked at the Justice Department and was either fired/quit, didnt want the scrutiny? Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success. POTUS doesnt even know him! Trump lashed out at George Conway on Twitter Wednesday morning, branding him a 'total loser' Conway instantly hit back, tweeting Trump: Congratulations! You just guaranteed that millions of more people are going to learn about narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism! Great job! Conway retaliated, baiting the President with a string of tweets that were like a red rag to the Oval Office bull Conway has repeatedly suggested the President has Narcissistic Personality Disorder Of course, this was like a red rag to the Oval Office bull. George Conway, tweeted Trump, often referred to as Mr Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wifes success & angry that I, with her help, didnt give him the job he do desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell! It got even uglier. You. Are. Nuts. Conway retorted. Things got even uglier as Conway branded Trump 'nuts' and questioned his mental health So Trump told the media that Conway was a whack job a colloquial term which according to the dictionary means a crazy, possibly dangerous person. Wow. OK. Lets process this for a moment This is Kellyanne Conways BOSS calling her HUSBAND and father of her four children a jealous loser, husband from hell, and whack job. I dont know about you, but if my boss publicly said similar words about my spouse, Id resign, seconds after punching him on the nose. But Kellyanne didnt resign, or punch Trump on the nose. Instead, incredibly, she once again defended him only this time against the man she sleeps with every night! She told Politico that Trump had avoided attacking George for months out of respect for me. Then she added: You think he shouldnt respond when somebody, a non-medical professional, accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down? Kellyanne even personally attacked her husband and claimed the media was turning the saga into 'Gossip Girl' Kellyanne then personally attacked her husband. Dont play psychiatrist any more than George should be. Yesterday, George spent the day tweeting about the President. I spent my day doing two one-hour briefings with press and intergovernmental affairs people and then over an hour briefing that I led in the Oval Office with the President and First Lady in the Cabinet on opioids. So this is what I do here. I think it probably looks differently if everybody is turning into Gossip Girl. Forgive us Kellyanne, but its not we the public or media that is turning into Gossip Girl. Its this utterly bizarre menage a trois between you, your boss and your husband that has been deliberately detonated into the publics consciousness by the two most important men in your life. As a former winner of Trumps old show Celebrity Apprentice, I can confidently predict that someones now going to get fired from this completely untenable situation. The big question is who? Trump wont fire Kellyanne, he needs her too much. Kellyanne wont fire Trump and quit - that much is obvious from her decision to defend him yesterday against her husband. So that just leaves one likely victim. Trump won't fire Kellyanne, and she won't quit his administration - so that just leaves one likely victim This is one of those fights where most people hope everyone loses. But of the three protagonists, I blame George Conway the most. Hes the one who started all this by slagging off his wifes boss. It doesnt matter that the boss is President Trump, there are some things you just dont do in life and one of them is publicly calling your spouses boss a nutter. Hes been at it again today, firing off a blizzard of new insults at Trump - calling him a compulsive liar, narcissist and worst kind of dumb. But the cold harsh reality behind Georges thuggish bravado is that Kellyanne, when finally forced to choose between her husband and her boss, chose to side with Trump not him. That, to me, says it all. Sorry George, but there are three of you in this marriage and youre Diana not Camilla. So youre getting fired. A gymgoer was battered with hammers by thieves as they stole her Audi. Blythe Mason-Boyle had just left the Energie Fitness gym in Birmingham, West Midlands on Tuesday evening when she was attacked by two men beside her Audi A1. She suffered a gash on her head and a fractured eye socket in the sickening attack. Blythe Mason-Boyle had just left a gym in Birmingham when she says she was attacked beside her car. She is pictured after the sickening attack A fundraiser has now been organised for Blythe, pictured before the attack, to help her with her recovery Blythe shared pictures of her horrific injuries on Facebook following the incident She shared pictures of her sickening injuries on Facebook in an effort to warn people to be on their guard against thieves. In her post she said: 'So last night at around 8pm whilst leaving the gym I was attacked by two men with hammers for the sake of an Audi A1. 'Ladies and Gents please all be extra vigilant when getting into your cars after dark. Take that extra bit of time to check your surrounding area and study the people around you. Stay safe, you never know what's around the corner! 'If anybody saw anything between 8:00 and 8:05 by Energie fitness sheldon gym please contact me!' In one of the pictures, Blythe can be seen with blood pouring down from her swollen eye onto her chest. Another shows Blythe with her hair full of blood. A third image shows the spot were Blythe had been hit on the scalp. The photos have been shared over 17,000 times and have left many people outraged. Marlon Harrison said: 'It's got to the stage where its not worth having anything nice to beat a lady like this is terrible. They need a good hiding!' Dawn Adams added: 'Oh my god Blythe. So sorry to see this. I hope there was CCTV in the car park so the thieving b******* can be caught. Take care and sending a big hug your way.' Warren Wozza Willis wrote: 'Sick b*******! What the f*** is wrong with people, cowards attacking a woman, I'm a true believer in karma, what goes around comes around, hope you feel better soon.' Nikki Patricia said: 'This is awful and literally right by my house! Wishing you a speedy recovery and I really hope they find the scumbags. 'My mum was carjacked only a few weeks ago on her drive again round the corner! I know the gym has CCTV in the car park.' A fundraiser has now been set up for Blythe to help her with her recovery with a target of 1000. The fundraiser states: 'On the evening of the 19th March 2019 Blythe left the gym at the Wheatsheaf just before 9pm. 'She went to get in her car and was attacked by two males with a hammer, she was beaten round the head and has been left with a broken eye socket and a bleed to the head. 'This poor girl does not want to drive anymore or leave the house. Please help with a donation so this young girl can carry on, as at the moment she can't work for no fault of her own.' A spokesman for West Midlands Police confirmed that a woman had been attacked on Tuesday evening. In a statement police said: 'Police are investigating a carjacking on Coventry Road in the Sheldon area of Birmingham just after 7.30pm on Tuesday. 'A black Audi A1 was taken after a woman was attacked with a hammer. She was taken to hospital with injuries to her head and eye. They are not thought to be life-threatening. 'Enquiries continue and anyone with information is asked to contact police via Live Chat at west-midlands.police.uk between 8am and midnight or call 101 anytime. Crimestoppers can be called anonymously on 0800 555 111.' If anyone has information call police on 101 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111, quoting crime reference 20BE/67413P/19. Kaden Young, three, died after he slipped from his mother's arms and was taken by a current in Ontario's Grand River as the two tried to escape their submerged vehicle A mother tested positive for a cocktail of drugs on the night she drove into a Canadian river and her three-year-old son was swept away, court documents say. Police allege that Michelle Hanson drove past a road closure sign marked by orange pylons and onto a flooded road on February 21 last year. Her minivan was then caught up fast-moving water and swept into the Grand River in Ontario at around 1am. Hanson's three-year-old son Kaden Young drowned after he was taken by a current as the two attempted to escape the submerged van. Hanson was rescued on the river bank and found to have cocaine, OxyContin, Percocet and alcohol in her system, according to a letter sent to a family court judge in nearby Orangeville. The letter, from Dufferin Child and Family services, cites a toxicology report by the Center for Forensic Sciences. Michelle Hanson (pictured) faces charges of impaired driving causing death, dangerous driving causing death and criminal negligence causing death Hanson was charged in October with impaired driving causing death, dangerous driving causing death and criminal negligence causing death. According to an affidavit submitted by Kaden's father Cam Young, just after midnight on February 21 2018 Hanson entered his bedroom and told him she was driving to the store to buy cigarettes. The affidavit says that Hanson proposed to take Kaden with her because the toddler was still awake and car rides often helped him to fall asleep. Kaden Young, three, died after his mother allegedly drove past a 'road closed' sign while crossing the Grand River in Ontario, Canada last February Hanson's vehicle was pulled from the Grand River in Ontario (pictured) and after a 60-day search her son's body was also recovered Hanson said that after the car was swept away by the river Kaden slipped out of her arms as she tried to get to safety. The toddler's body was recovered on April 21 following a two-month search by authorities and thousands of volunteers. A pretrial for the case has been scheduled for April 9. Protesters have returned to a Birmingham school amid claims diversity classes which they oppose have resumed. Families stood outside the Parkfield Community School on Thursday to demonstrate against the No Outsiders program which they say 'promotes homosexuality'. The school recently bowed to pressure and stopped the classes, but angry parents claim they are still being taught. Placards and posters displayed held up by children outside school read: 'Let kids be kids' and 'Education not indoctrination'. Protesters who oppose diversity classes which they say 'promote homosexuality' have resumed their demonstrations outside a Birmingham school The classes aims to teach LGBT tolerance, but parents don't want their children in them Parents also called for senior members of staff including headteacher David Williams to resign. A statement issued by Parkfield Community School on Wednesday said: 'We are looking to evolve our equalities programme for pupils at Parkfield, in collaboration with parents, to include all the protect characteristics and meet the requirements of the Equalities Act. 'During this time until a resolution has been reached, 'No Outsiders' lessons will not be taught at Parkfield.' The No Outsiders program was authored by the primary school's assistant headteacher, Andrew Moffat. The aim of the program was teach students about the positive values of diversity, tolerance and acceptance, as well as LGBT rights, same-sex relationships, gender identity, race, religion and colour. Placards and posters displayed held up by children outside school read: 'Let kids be kids', and 'Education not indoctrination' Students, along with their parents, held up signs outside of the school. One sign read: 'Let kids be kids' Another sign read: 'Say not to discrimination against our children' Thursday's protest comes after four other schools in Birmingham stopped teaching lessons about diversity and LGBT issues following complaints from parents. Earlier in March, parents protested outside of Parkfield Community School for the lessons to be stopped, despite Ofsted inspectors have concluded the lessons are 'age-appropriate'. Leigh Trust said it was stopping the program at Leigh Primary School, Alston Primary School, Marlborough Junior and Infants School and Wyndcliff Primary School until after Ramadan in May, according to the BBC. Charity Humanists UK said the move to stop teaching LGBT classes after protests from parents who believe it is against their religious beliefs was 'very alarming'. Other signs read: 'Say not to undermining parental rights and authority' and 'Say no to 'No Outsiders' program. Stop now!' Members of the parent community also called for senior members of staff including headteacher David Williams during the protest. A statement issued by Parkfield Community School on Wednesday said: 'We are looking to evolve our equalities programme for pupils at Parkfield' and that 'No Outsiders' lessons will not be taught at Parkfield' Director of public affairs and policy Richy Thompson said: 'Schools have an important role to educate students about all types of relationships and that includes teaching respect and tolerance for LGBT people. 'They also have a duty to protect the wellbeing of all of their students including LGBT students who are at higher risk of bullying without such education. 'We urge the Department for Education to take a strong stand and support these schools in reinstating LGBT lessons back into the classrooms.' Allen Pearson, 39, has been sentenced to two years in prison for driving his car into three people standing outside a restaurant in Bridgeport, Connecticut, last May A Connecticut man who pinned twin eight-year-old boys and a woman who tried to protect them against a wall with his car has been sentenced to two years in prison. Allen Pearson, 39, was convicted of second-degree assault after police say he drove directly into the boys who were standing outside of a restaurant in Bridgeport on May 31, 2018. Shanta Jordan, 32, saw the car barreling toward the children and leaped in front of it in an attempt to shield them. Shocking video shows the moment the car struck all three pedestrians, fracturing Jordan's hip. One of the boys suffered fractured legs and a broken shoulder and his brother suffered scrapes and bruises. Investigators did not perform any tests to determine whether Pearson was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Shocking video shows the moment the car struck twin eight-year-old boys and Shanta Jordan, a woman who tried to shield the boys by leaping in front of the speeding vehicle Jordan suffered a fractured hip and one boy suffered a broken shoulder and fractured legs The Connecticut Post reported that at his sentencing Tuesday afternoon, Pearson told a judge: 'I'm remorseful and I'm sorry.' Superior Court Judge Frank Iannotti responded: 'You dont seem like a bad guy, but sometimes people who are not bad people do bad things.' Iannotti expressed concern over the fact that Pearson was arrested twice while the assault case was pending. One day after the crash, Stamford say they found the hallucinogenic drug PCP on his person and he was charged with possession with intent to sell. The second arrest for was allegedly choking his girlfriend. Jordan (above) suffered a fractured hip and one of the boys suffered a broken shoulder and fractured legs. The other boy was left with bruises and abrasions Shocking footage has emerged showing a mass brawl from inside a shopping mall in Perth's south. The footage was recorded on Tuesday around 5pm at the Phoenix Shopping Centre in Spearwood, with the drama unfolding just metres away from a series of terrified children and their parents. Two men (pictured) start brawling at a shopping centre in Perth's south - the reason for the fight on Tuesday night in Spearwood remains unknown At one stage during the carnage, a bargain bin was hurled in the direction of another man. The cause of the fight between what appear to be a handful of fired up tradesmen remains unknown. Shop worker Dajana Tesevic described the brawl as 'confronting and frightening.' 'Everyone was trying to work out what was going on, it didn't look good,' she told Seven News. 'It seems to happen at most shopping centres for some reason.' Speaking on camera, one local declared the Phoenix in Spearwood is no longer safe to walk through at night, with another stating he now refuses to use ATM's for fear of getting robbed. Other shoppers revealed anti-social behaviour has increased in the area since the Spearwood Police Station moved to nearby Cockburn about two years ago. A high school football player has been accused of sexually assaulting an unconscious 16-year-old girl. Chase J. Eckenrode, 18, is said to have kissed his teen victim's neck and used his hand to sexually assault her. She was 'rendered unconscious' when the attack took place, according to the complaint. Running back Eckenrode 'knew the victim was unaware the indecent contact was occurring' on the night of February 23, Lower Paxton Township police said. The Pennsylvania teen, who is thought to attend Central Dauphin High School, now faces felony charges of aggravated indecent assault without consent, aggravated indecent assault of an unconscious person and unlawful contact with a minor. Eckenrode, from Harrisburg, also faces misdemeanor charges of indecent assault of an unconscious person, corruption of minors and indecent assault without consent, Penn Live reports. Chase J. Eckenrode, 18, has been accused of sexually assaulting an unconscious teen girl The high school football player is said to have kissed his teen victim's neck and used his hand to sexually assault her. Running back Eckenrode 'knew the victim was unaware the indecent contact was occurring' on the night of February 23, Lower Paxton Township police said Eckenrode was arraigned on his charges Tuesday before Dauphin county magisterial district Judge William C. Wenner. Dauphin county court is pictured The Trump supporting teenager, who describes himself as 5 foot 6 and weighing 118lbs on an online football profile, is set to appear for a preliminary hearing at the beginning of April. He was arraigned on his charges Tuesday before Magisterial District Judge William C. Wenner and posted $15,000 bail in cash. Ousseynou Sy, pictured, hijacked an Italian school bus, abducted 51 children and set the vehicle on fire A man who hijacked a school bus in Italy and set it alight was a known paedophile who had posted a video on YouTube saying 'Africa - arise', it has emerged. Ousseynou Sy abducted 51 children, told them 'no one would survive' and set the bus on fire after they escaped in a 40-minute ordeal near Milan yesterday. The 47-year-old driver, of Senegalese origin, told authorities he wanted to vindicate Europe-bound migrants who have died in the Mediterranean. Italy's interior ministry said in a statement that the driver had been previously caught driving while drunk and had sexually assaulted a minor. Claiming he had 'lost three children at sea', Sy had said he 'wanted the whole world talking about his story', police revealed. He posted a video on Youtube to explain his actions and say 'Africa - arise', directed at family and friends in Crema but also in Senegal. The driver was said to have planned the hijack over several days, making preparations such as buying a canister of gasoline and restraints on Tuesday. Sy explained under questioning that he wanted 'to draw attention to the consequences of migration policies', according to his lawyer. During the hijack he said migrant deaths were the fault of Italian deputy prime ministers Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini, a rescued girl told Italian media. Di Maio and in particular Salvini, who is also interior minister, have taken a hard line against migrants since they formed a populist coalition government in June. Ousseynou Sy (pictured left, and being arrested right) told authorities he wanted to vindicate Europe-bound migrants who have died in the Mediterranean Ablaze: The Italian school bus burns near Milan after the driver tried to kidnap the children and then set the vehicle on fire in an apparent protest over Mediterranean migration 'This villain has to pay for everything,' said Salvini, whose League party is riding high in the polls in part because of its tough anti-migrant stance. He said Sy's citizenship could be revoked if convicted of terror under a tough security decree introduced last year. Prosecutors said they have found no evidence of Islamic radicalisation or ties to extremists, saying it appeared the bus driver acted alone. Sy was being investigated on suspicion of kidnapping, intention to commit a massacre, arson and resisting law enforcement, with terrorism as an aggravating circumstance as the event caused panic. Police broke windows at the back of the bus to reach the passengers and got all of them out without serious injuries. The 47-year-old suspect is a father of two, whose ex-wife is Italian, and is originally from Senegal but is also an Italian citizen. One of the middle school students described his terror in an interview with La Repubblica TV. 'We were all very afraid because the driver had emptied the gas canister onto the floor (of the bus.) He tied us up and took all the telephones so we could not call the police,' the student said. Wreckage: The remains of the bus in San Donato Milanese, near Milan, which was set alight yesterday morning Smoke pours from the bus after the 40-minute ordeal near Milan yesterday 'One of the telephones, belonging to a classmate, fell to the ground, so I pulled off the handcuffs, hurting myself a bit, and went and picked it up. We called the Carabinieri and the police.' Officials told Sky TG24 that the bus was ferrying two middle-school classes between school and a nearby gym in Cremona province, 25 miles from Milan. The driver threatened the passengers, telling them 'no one would survive today' as he commandeered the bus, and ordered the children's hands to be tied up. Authorities said that an adult called an emergency operator, while one of the students called a parent, and they alerted officials who set up roadblocks. The bus was intercepted on the outskirts of Milan by three Carabinieri vehicles, which were able to force it into the guardrail, commander Luca De Marchis said. 'While two officers kept the driver busy - he took a lighter and threatened to set fire to the vehicle with a gasoline canister on board - the others forced open the back door,' De Marchis said. Remains: The shell of the bus after the 47-year-old driver set the bus alight and then he threatened to kill himself, saying deaths in the Mediterranean must be stopped De Marchis credited the officers' 'swiftness and courage,' for getting out all the children and their teachers 'with no tragic consequences.' Some of the passengers were treated at a hospital, mostly for cuts and scratches related to the evacuation and firefighters also attended the scene, he said. Sky TG24 said that the driver had worked for the bus company for 15 years without any employment-related issues. 'Investigators must clarify how the transport company permitted such a delinquent ... to drive a bus, especially one carrying children,' said Riccardo De Corato, a Milan provincial official for security. Recovery: Firefighters and police officers attended the scene after a student aboard called the police Massimo Traetta, who was driving in the opposite lane, witnessed and filmed the scene Policemen were called by a student after the driver started screaming, showing a can of gasoline and a lighter Another student aboard the bus told Repubblica: 'He was threatening us, saying if we moved he would have poured the gasoline and set a fire. 'He kept saying that people in Africa die and it is the fault of Di Maio and Salvini. 'Then the police saved us.' Autoguidovie, a society managing the school bus service, said: 'The man, our coworker since at least 2002, has been working full time since 2004. 'Over the years he has never shown any signs of mental imbalance, neither have we ever received any complaint regarding his behaviour as a driver. 'As a company, we did not know anything about his criminal record.' An investigation at the driver's house is ongoing. The RAF Bomber Command controlled the RAF's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968, including Squadron XV, and was responsible for the strategic bombing of Germany during the Second World War. When the command was founded in 1936 it was only intended to be a deterrent, but the reality when war broke out three years later was very different. Bomber command crews suffered incredibly high casualty rates. A total of 55,573 died out of 125,000 (44.4 per cent mortality rate), 8,403 were injured and 9,838 became prisoners of war. Most who flew were very young and the vast majority were still in their late teens. Crews came from across the globe from the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and all corners of the Commonwealth, as well as from occupied nations including Poland, France and Czechoslovakia. It took astonishing courage to endure the conditions they faced. Flying at night over occupied Europe, running the gauntlet of German night fighters, anti-aircraft fire and mid-air collisions. The RAF Bomber Command controlled the RAF's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968 and was responsible for the strategic bombing of Germany during the Second World War But it was not until 1942 that the Bomber Command gained a real sense of direction, with the introduction of Air Marshal Arthur 'Bomber' Harris. Harris was appointed as commander in chief of Bomber Command in February 1942, with instructions to start attacking German industry, much of which was located in large cities. His objective was to destroy Germany's industrial might and create a collapse in the morale of the civilian workforce, breaking Germany's will to fight on. Times were hard. Victory seemed distant, and chivalric notions of war fighting had been burned away in the fire of the Blitz. U-Boats were roaming the Atlantic, sinking merchant shipping in an effort to starve Britain into submission. The prospects of success were uncertain. Morale among British workers had largely held firm in the teeth of prolonged attacks by the German Air Force. Harris, however, firmly believed that through a combination of improved aircraft like the Lancaster and Halifax, better training and navigational aids, and a ruthless will to press the attack, Bomber Command could knock Germany out of the war. Bomber command crews suffered incredibly high casualty rates. A total of 55,573 died out of 125,000 (44.4 per cent mortality rate), 8,403 were injured and 9,838 became prisoners of war. Pictured: Wellington Bomber air crew who took part in the raid on Heligoland In May 1942, Harris launched his first 'thousand bomber raid' against Cologne. The scale of the attacks shocked Germany, but the country continued to fight. Further attacks did have a devastating effect on the Nazi war economy. Albert Speer, the German armaments minister, believed that a series of raids like that on Hamburg in August 1943, repeated in quick succession, might well have compelled Germany to surrender. But that wasn't the case. Other more specialised operations also took place. The famous 'Dam Busters' raid of May 1943 shocked the world with its audacity, as Guy Gibson's 617 Squadron launched a daring raid on the dams surrounding the Ruhr Valley. Other attacks, like that on the battleship Tirpitz the following year, eliminated the German navy's last major surface ship. Raids in 1944 and 1945 against German 'V weapon' launch sites were also a crucial defensive measure, helping to limit attacks from flying bombs and rockets on British cities. Bomber Command switched its attentions to tactical objectives in early 1944, helping to pave the way for D-Day, the allied invasion of occupied Europe. It played a vital and highly effective role attacking infrastructure around the invasion beaches. Attacking railways, roads and other transport links created chaos behind German lines, preventing the defending forces from massing to repel the landings. The closing months of the war saw arguably the most controversial operations, such as the raid on Dresden in February 1945. In four huge raids by the RAF and United States Army Air Force, a firestorm destroyed the city centre and killed thousands of civilians. It took astonishing courage to endure the conditions they faced. Flying at night over occupied Europe, running the gauntlet of German night fighters, anti-aircraft fire and mid-air collisions. Pictured: Bomber Command crews prepare for the raid on Heligoland The planners of the raid argued the city was a vital communications hub and needed to be targeted. The critics said that Germany was well beaten and the bombing was needless. The truth is that it was a time of total war, and ideas about the boundaries of conflict were very different than those we have today. Bomber Command did not win the Second World War independently - but the war could not have been won without their efforts. The RAF's attacks forced Germany to divert invaluable men, guns, aircraft and equipment to defend its airspace, effectively opening a second front long before D-Day. The young men of Bomber Command faced dangers that today we can barely imagine, all in defence of our freedom. Their sacrifice and extraordinary courage should never be forgotten. Source: Bomber Command Memorial Warrant Officer John Henry Coates (pictured) went missing during a mission in March 1945 A young war hero who was killed when his Spitfire was shot down near Venice in Italy is to finally be laid to rest 74 years later after archaeologists discovered his body. Warrant Officer John Henry Coates of 111 Squadron was declared missing in action after his RAF aircraft crashed close to the village of Cavarzere in March 1945. Seven decades later, he is set to be given a military funeral attended by around 22 relatives after his body was discovered the wreckage of his plane. His immediate family all died without knowing how or where the 24-year-old soldier from York was killed. But it has now been revealed that WO Coates had been taking part in the dawn bombing of barges moored on a canal when his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire. His name was engraved on the Malta War Memorial, which features 2,298 names of aircrew who lost their lives around the Mediterranean and who have no known grave. It was in October 2017 that WO Coates' remains were discovered by members of the Romagna Air Finders, an organisation which recovers WWII aircraft. An appeal to find his descendants was launched and after one of his relatives spotted a story in a local newspaper his family finally learnt of his resting place. His niece Helen Watts, 65, said: 'Myself and my siblings grew up knowing that our uncle had gone missing towards the end of WWII. WO Coates' plane was discovered near Cavarzere, which was excavated after the Romagna Air Finders were told by locals an aircraft had crashed there in the 1940s WO Coates (shown standing on the wing of a Spitfire) was based near Rimini supporting operations to drive the German forces out of Italy 'It is absolutely amazing that he has been found all these years later. This is the kind of thing that only ever happens to someone else. 'We had always thought his plane had gone down close to Lake Como, so it was a surprise he was discovered elsewhere. 'Sadly none of his siblings, including my mother, lived to see the day. They would have been thrilled by the news. 'The whole family is delighted that he will now be given a hero's burial. We are expecting the funeral to be a very moving and special ceremony.' WO Coates, who had no children but three brothers and three sisters, will be laid to rest at Padua War Cemetery on March 27. He was born in 1921 and had worked as a draughtsman in York while living at home with his parents John and Eliza Coates. Although in a reserved occupation he chose to volunteer for the RAF and he trained as a pilot. By early 1945 he was flying Spitfire Mark 1Xs with 111 Squadron. He was based near Rimini supporting operations to drive the German forces out of Italy. Shown left is the remains of a boot found amongst the wreckage of the plane, while right is a display from the flight deck WO Coates had been taking part in the dawn bombing of barges moored on a canal when his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire (shown is the aircraft's engine) It was in October 2017 that WO Coates' remains were discovered by members of the Romagna Air Finders, an organisation which recovers WWII aircraft On the day of his death he should have been on leave but swapped duties to fly with a team of 6 RAF Spitfires on a mission to target barges. He never married or had children and had no direct descendants, but there are at least 62 known blood relatives. WO Coates' plane was discovered near Cavarzere, which was excavated after the Romagna Air Finders were told by locals an aircraft had crashed there in the 1940s. Alessandro Voltolina said: 'We were working on the excavation of a different WWII aircraft when when the son of an eyewitness told me where another had crashed. 'As a result I started a search for that unknown plane. It is always a matter of great satisfaction when you find the location and all your efforts are rewarded. 'WO Coates is the 6th or 7th pilot I have found. His discovery means he may now rest with all the other youngsters who lost their lives in Italy and are too often forgotten. 'I hope it means much happiness for his family as now they know where he rests. He has become a pilot killed in action rather than a pilot missing in action. 'His story now has an ending.' A body found in the Humber Estuary is that of missing 21-year-old student Libby Squire, police have confirmed. Officers found a body in the estuary near Grimsby Docks on Wednesday but Humberside Police could not formally identify the body until yesterday afternoon. A post mortem took place last night but the results have yet to be confirmed, while an inquest is likely to open in due course. The University of Hull student, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, had not been seen since the early hours of February 1. She had been on a night out in Hull but is believed to have been refused entry to a nightclub and put in a taxi by her friends. Humberside Police had said she may have 'come to harm' and a 24-year-old man suspecting of abducting her was later charged with a number of unrelated offences. Officers confirmed that Polish butcher Pawel Relowicz, from Hull, was still under investigation, although he has never been charged in relation to her disappearance. Mourners have left floral tributes in her memory today at a bench in Beverley Road, Hull, where she was last seen on February 1. University of Hull student Libby Squire, 21, who is originally from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, was last seen in the early hours of February 1 this year Mourners have been coming to the bench in Beverley Road, Hull, throughout the morning to pay their respects to the student Floral tributes have been left in her memory on a bench where she was last seen in Hull Messages of love and support for Libby and her family have been left alongside flowers Libby Squire has not been seen since the early hours of February 1. A timeline shows how the police investigation has progressed since her disappearance. Yesterday a body was recovered from the Humber Estuary near Grimsby docks Tributes have poured in for Libby today from staff and students at the University of Hull, with the students' union saying everyone is 'devastated' by her death. The vice chancellor and union president said extra measures have been put in place to support students trying to cope with the news and more safety measures have been put in place, including organising students who want to walk in groups or with security staff, if requested. Union president Osaro Otobo said: 'The student community are absolutely devastated by this news but now we want to pull together and support each other to make sure we're all during this time.' Ms Otobo was speaking with vice-chancellor Susan Lea in front of floral tributes which have been laid in memory of Ms Squire around a tree on the campus. She said: 'The student body would like to pay their respects to Libby and her family. So, as a students' union, we have a Remembrance Tree on our ground floor where students can write a note for Libby and her family which will be passed on to them. 'They just want to show their respects. You can see from the tree, all of the flowers and the tributes. 'That's what want to do just show how much we care.' Asked whether students were worried about their own security, Ms Otobo said: 'There'll be some concerns about safety but I want to highlight that this is such a rare occurrence, so now, as a students' union, we highlight all the measures that you can take to be safe on a night out, including how to prepare your journey, make sure you book a taxi on a night out.' Professor Lea said: 'It has been a difficult time. Students and staff are devastated by the situation and way it has unfolded. But I think we've pulled together as a community. 'This a really close-knit community and we've been really heartened and moved by the way in which staff and students, the local community and the police have come together at a difficult time both in the search for Libby but, also, to support one another.' She said safety was an 'absolute priority' for staff and students. 'We are absolutely committed to providing all the support we can to our staff and our students,' the professor said. 'We are doing that in a variety of ways and I have an extremely strong team leading that. 'So we have extra assistance available to our students through advisers. The bench in Beverley Road, Hull, pictured, is now covered in bouquets and has become something of a shrine in her memory Last week, Libby's mother Lisa (pictured right with her daughter) said the family were 'really struggling' without their daughter and 'miss her beyond belief'. The student's body was yesterday found in waters near Grimsby Docks Russell and Lisa Squire, the parents of missing student Libby Squire, made an emotional appeal for information in helping to find her soon after she went missing 'But we also have schemes available so security will walk with them if they would like somebody to walk with them. And students have got together to form groups so they can walk in pairs. 'So there's a variety of initiatives to provide that support.' Prof Lea also said mental health support for students had been 'augmented'. Revealing the tragic news yesterday evening, Detective Superintendent Martin Smalley said: 'A post-mortem examination commenced this afternoon and is continuing to be carried out this evening. 'However formal identification has now taken place and we can confirm the body recovered is that of missing woman Libby Squire. Libby's family have been informed and are receiving support from specially trained officers.' Speaking last night, Professor Susan Lea, vice-chancellor at the University of Hull, where Libby was a student, said: 'As a close-knit University community of staff and students, we are all absolutely devastated by the loss of our student, Libby Squire. 'Our hearts go out to Libby's family and friends at this incredibly difficult time and we will continue to give them our full support.' She added: 'We will keep doing everything we can to support our staff and students as they adjust to this shocking and tragic news and we will continue to support the police fully with their investigation.' Police were on Tuesday seen combing Oak Road playing fields in Hull as part of an 'ongoing investigation'. Oak Road playing fields have been at the centre of the search for missing Libby in recent weeks While Hull Community Church also last night changed its profile picture on Facebook to one paying tribute to Miss Squire. With a post on the page reading: 'We are devastated at the news of Libby Squire. Our prayers and thoughts are with the family at this horrendous time. 'We have taken Libby to our hearts, and she will never be forgotten by us here in Hull. 'We have laid white tulips for Libby on the bench where she was last seen - only to find that others have come too to pour out their grief and send messages of love.' Miss Squire was dropped off near her house at 11.29pm on February 1 and was last seen walking in a nearby road at 12.05am wearing a black skirt, black leather jacket and distinctive trainers. CCTV captured her walking towards the nightclub earlier in the evening, with cameras also capturing her on a bench near her home. On Wednesday, Humberside Police revealed that a body had been recovered from the Humber Estuary, in close proximity to Grimsby Docks. The RNLI launched from Cleethorpes at about 2.30pm and brought the body to the quayside, where there was a large police presence. A spokesman for the RNLI said at the time: 'Lifeboat crews from the RNLI's Humber and Cleethorpes stations launched at 2.30pm this afternoon to a report of a casualty in the water.' Officers were seen raking long grass in a wooded area in Oak Road Playing Fields in Hull soon after her disappearance, 500 yards from where the university student was last seen on CCTV In the days after her disappearance, officers from the police regional marine unit searched a pond at Oak Road Playing Fields, near to Miss Squire's home Officers cordoned off an area of the dock and a blue tarpaulin could be seen alongside the boat, covering something on the ground. A number of uniformed officers could be seen and what appeared to be detectives. Police have been engaged in a desperate search for the 21-year-old ever since she went missing earlier this year. Also still missing are two men who tragically jumped from the Humber Bridge within minutes of each other in the early hours of December 29. Sam Conlin, 24, from Hull, is believed to have taken his own life after an eight year battle with his mental health. The second man, believed to be in his 40s from Grimsby, was not named by police at the time. Moments prior to Miss Squire's disappearance she was spotted on a security camera near a bench on Beverley Road, where a motorist stopped to offer her help. And a woman living in a street close to Miss Squire's home later said she heard a scream which she said 'sounded like someone being attacked'. The woman said the 'nature' of the noise - heard in the early hours - had shocked her as 'they don't normally get women screaming like that' on her street. A video released by the Squire family shows Libby dancing and singing in the passenger seat of a car One of the people featured in Humberside Police's CCTV footage of four witnesses, who they believe 'may have seen or heard something that could be vital' The four people who feature in the CCTV footage from February 1 in Hull are circled above The woman said the area was filled with mainly students who were often loud at night. Police also revealed at the time that they had found Miss Squire's mobile phone at her home but that it had not helped to provide any information about where she went the night she went missing. Police were on Tuesday seen combing Oak Road playing fields in Hull as part of an 'ongoing investigation'. Timeline of Libby Squire disappearance January 31: Ms Squire is dropped off in a taxi near her home on Wellesley Avenue at 11.29pm and is seen 10 minutes later on CCTV near a bench on Beverley Road, where a motorist stopped to offer her help. February 1: She is believed to have remained in the area until about 12.09am. She is reported missing and officers begin an intensive search for the student. February 5: Around 200 students and staff gather in the rain at the University of Hull to show solidarity and support for Ms Squire, her family and friends. February 6: Pawel Relowicz, 24, is arrested at an address in Raglan Street in Hull on suspicion of abducting Ms Squire. Earlier in the day, her parents Lisa and Russ issue a statement thanking the public for their help and say they have been 'overwhelmed with people's kindness and support'. February 7: Officers take to the streets around where Ms Squire was last seen a week earlier to hand out leaflets and drive around a large screen displaying images of the student, as the search continues. February 11: Relowicz, of Raglan Street, Hull, appears at Hull Magistrates' Court accused of voyeurism, outraging public decency and burglary - charges unrelated to the disappearance of Miss Squire. He remains under investigation following his earlier arrest on suspicion of abduction. February 28: Police admit it is increasingly likely Ms Squire 'has come to harm'. Detective Superintendent Martin Smalley, leading the investigation, says his team has followed up hundreds of leads and carried out intensive searches yet her disappearance remains 'unexplained', adding: 'We must increasingly consider she has come to harm.' March 7: Relowicz appears in court charged with seven further unrelated offences, including two counts of burglary, two counts of voyeurism, two counts of outraging public decency and one of receiving stolen goods in connection with seven alleged incidents committed between 2017 and 2019 in Hull. March 20: Humberside Police say a body has been recovered from the water in the Humber Estuary but add that it is too early for any identification or confirmation of gender to be made. March 21: Humberside Police say a post-mortem examination has confirmed that the body recovered is that of Ms Squire, and her family has been informed. Advertisement Oak Road playing fields have been at the centre of the search for missing Libby in recent weeks. And police divers have searched the lake in Oak Road , which is near to the home of the missing 21-year-old student. Last week Libby's family released a new video of her singing in the car with her family as they struggle to cope without her six weeks on. Her mother Lisa said the family are 'really struggling' without their daughter and 'miss her beyond belief'. She said: 'As a family, we are really struggling. The whole family miss Libby beyond belief. 'Libby's disappearance is having a big effect on all of us. Please if you have any information let the police know.' The video shows Libby singing with her brother and two sisters who are out of view of the camera. Senior Investigating Officer Detective Superintendent Martin Smalley added at the time: 'For the past six weeks the amount of support from the people of Hull, the region and around the UK has been staggering. 'I want to thank everyone for their assistance and to everyone who has come forward with information to help us with our investigation so far. 'We continue to search for Libby. Hundreds of officers have been involved both on land and in the water and we have followed up hundreds of leads and lines of enquiry. 'Libby's disappearance remains unexplained and while we remain hopeful, we must consider she has come to harm. 'Last month we released CCTV footage showing four people on Oak Road in Hull close to the junction with Clough Road around the time that Libby was last seen. 'We want to speak with them as they may be possible witnesses and might hold important information'. Libby's family had previously said that the student's disappearance was 'very out-of-character' and that she is a 'very thoughtful and caring young woman who puts others before herself'. Soon after she went missing around 200 students from across Hull gathered at an event held in her honour, which was also attended by Libby's parents, Lisa and Russell Squire, who joined students and members of the local community. University staff and students braved the wet weather and walked more than 100m from the library to the Canham Turner building as part of a solidarity march. At the time, Vice chancellor professor Susan Lea told those in attendance: 'We come together this evening to express our deep concern about Libby. 'Libby is a Philosphy student here at the university of Hull and one of our community. 'I have to say we have been deeply moved by the way in which both our students and local community have come together in support of one another and to help to try and find Libby. 'This event this evening is part of that support and solidarity to show support and solidarity for Libby, for Libby's parents, for Libby's friends, for Libby's family and indeed for one another.' Photographs released by Miss Squire's family show her at home on Christmas Day last year (left) and in Paris in May 2017 (right) when she visited with friends during a gap year A map traces Libby's last known movements before she disappeared six weeks ago Relowicz was arrested on suspicion of abduction after Libby Squire vanished more than a month ago, and remains under investigation. But the 24-year-old Polish national has never been charged with anything in relation to the University of Hull student's disappearance. Appearing at Hull Crown Court on Monday, he denied five counts of burglary, three of voyeurism, three of outraging public decency and one of receiving stolen goods. He spoke only through an interpreter to confirm his name and enter his not guilty pleas during the 15-minute plea and trial preparation hearing. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has lashed out at Laura Ingraham and her Fox News guest for mocking the way she pronounces her name, saying she's doing 'the Latina thing'. Ingraham was speaking to conservative lawyer Joe diGenova on her Fox News program on Tuesday night when they started mocking the freshman Congresswoman for saying her name with an accent. The host of 'The Ingraham Angle' had asked her guest if he'd noticed that Ocasio-Cortez takes on an accent when she introduces herself. The conservative lawyer went on to mispronounce Ocasio-Cortez's first name as he used an exaggerated accent. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has lashed out at Laura Ingraham and her Fox News guest for mocking the pronunciation of her name and for saying she's doing 'the Latina thing' 'She does the Latina thing where she does her, you know, 'Anastasio Ocasio-Cortez,' diGenova said. He went on to say his name with Italian pronunciation, adding: 'And I assume she's going to love that when I do that.' Ocasio-Cortez fired back on Wednesday night in a series of tweets slamming Ingraham. 'If by 'the Latina thing,' she means I actually do the work instead of just talk about it, then yeah, I'm doing 'the Latina thing.' Unless of course she's talking about being multilingual, which we know isn't a 'Latina thing.' It's a '21st century' thing,' Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. Ingraham was speaking to conservative lawyer Joe diGenova on Tuesday night when they started mocking the freshman Congresswoman for saying her name with an accent Ocasio-Cortez fired back on Wednesday night in a series of tweets slamming Ingraham and Fox News The New York Congresswoman also criticized Fox News in general for saying her surname incorrectly on the network. 'By the way: Fox News likes to say my name (incorrectly) as 'Cortez,' which I can only imagine is bc that sounds more 'stereotypically' Hispanic + probably incites more 'anxiety' for them. Pro Tip: My last name is not 'Cortez,' just as theirs isn't 'Ingra' or 'Carl' or 'Hann'. 'My last name is Ocasio-Cortez. Full stop. That's my name. No, you can't say 'Cortez.' I've never used that in my life. 'Cortez' is referring to someone else. Even if they're trying to be rude + wrong, my dad's last name was Ocasio anyway. (His name was hyphenated too, though.) 'For the curious, in Latinx culture children take *both* their parents' names. It's not a 'progressive, new thing.' It's just how some names work. PR hyphenates, others mark differently. Your last name = the families that came together to make you. AOC is also fine though.' AOC also added: 'Siri, show me the brand of economic anxiety that mocks Americans of color as unintelligent + unskilled, while *also* mocking those same Americans for speaking more languages than you.' Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has slammed an elite public high school in Manhattan for admitting only seven black students out of 895 available slots in the freshman class. 'This is a system failure,' the freshman New York Democrat wrote on Twitter of entrance stats at Stuyvesant High School. 'Education inequity is a major factor in the racial wealth gap. This is what injustice looks like.' Stuyvesant is one of New York City's elite specialized schools, which admit students based solely on their performance on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test. Currently, the student body at Stuyvesant is 74 per cent Asian, many of them from low-income and immigrant families. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (above) slammed Stuyvesant High School for admitting seven black students out of 895 spots, despite the school's policy of admitting based solely on testing New York City's total population is 43 per cent white, 29 per cent Hispanic, 24 per cent black, and 14 per cent Asian. Ocasio-Cortez's outraged reaction followed a New York Times article on the admission statistics, which argued that the low admission rate of black students to the specialized high schools was 'raising the pressure on officials to confront the decades-old challenge of integrating New Yorks elite public schools.' The article stated that the admission of seven black students to Stuyvesant this year was down from ten a year ago and 13 the year before. Entrance to the city's specialized schools is seen as a fast track to college and career success, and the racial makeup of the schools' student bodies has become a hot-button issue in New York. Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, drew furious backlash in recent months after he proposed eliminating the high-stakes entrance exam that controls entrance to the schools, and instituting a lottery drawing from schools across the city instead. Asian community groups filed lawsuits and took to the streets in protest, arguing that the plan would unfairly disadvantage Asian students who had rigorously prepared for the entrance exam. This year, Stuyvesant High School made 33 offers to Hispanic students, 194 white students, and 587 Asian students. The school uses only an entrance exam for admissions The mayor's plan is now all but dead, after Governor Andrew Cuomo refused to back it and necessary approval from the state legislature appeared unlikely to materialize. The issue remains hot button, however, with the Times article revealing that Stuyvesant made 33 offers to Hispanic students, 194 white students, and 587 Asian students. Reaction to the numbers was split, with many echoing Ocasio-Cortez's outrage, and others finding the statistics less alarming. 'Admission to Stuyvesant has been a ticket out of poverty for hundreds of thousands of brilliant, non-wealthy New York kids,' wrote New York Times columnist Bret Stephens on Twitter. 'Its an overwhelmingly majority-minority school. Why would progressives not celebrate this?' Celebrity Remainers including Hugh Grant and Annie Lennox are among more than two million people who have signed a petition today to cancel Brexit to avoid No Deal. Grant claimed every 'sane' person in the country was signing the plea, which was also backed by Professor Brian Cox and Jennifer Saunders. Rising rapidly every minute it passed the seven-figure milestone shortly before 3pm after Theresa May made a speech blaming Parliament for a delay to Brexit last night. The petition passed 10,000 names on Monday soon after it was created. Parliament's petition site crashed repeatedly today as the number of signatures rose. Despite verification checks including a signatory's post code and email addresses, the data from the petition appeared to suggest some names may have been added from overseas. The rule of Parliament's petition site say only UK citizens can sign. As people flocked to the campaign today, Mrs May was back in front of the cameras on arrival at the EU summit in Brussel - refusing to rule out No Deal and insisting Brexit had to be delivered. The petition crashed past 1,000,000 signatures shortly before 3pm today after backing from a host of celebrities A map showing where people have signed shows concentrations of support in cities such as London, Oxford and Edinburgh The petition states: 'The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is ''the will of the people''. 'We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People's Vote may not happen - so vote now.' The Government is obliged to offer a written response and it will be considered for a debate in Parliament - but it will not be staged before exit day on March 29. A map showing where people have signed shows concentrations of support in cities such as London, Oxford and Edinburgh. A raft of public figures have promoted the petition since Mrs May's controversial speech in Downing Street last night. Celebrities including Hugh Grant, Annie Lennox and Brian Cox all backed the petition Hugh Grant said: 'I've signed. And it looks like every sane person in the country is signing too. 'National emergency. Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU.' Anne Lennox said the petition was 'currently gaining 100,000 signatures an hour'. Actor Eddie Marsan urged his followers to sign, tweeting: 'In years to come, when future generations look back on Brexit and how this country was taken over by fanatical ideologues, to the left andto the right, they'll ask ''where were you? What did you do?''.' TV physicist Brian Cox said: 'I've signed this petition to revoke A50 and deal with the consequences afterwards - referendum, election, whatever. 'I have no idea whether these things do any good but after May's astonishingly irresponsible speech this evening I'll give anything a go.' A raft of public figures have promoted the petition since Mrs May's controversial speech in Downing Street last night Margaret Anne Georgiadou, who started the petition, told the BBC: 'I became like every other Remainer - very frustrated that we've been silenced and ignored for so long. 'So I think now it's almost like a dam bursting, because we've been held back in a sense - it's almost like last chance saloon now.' She said the petition 'didn't do very well for a week'. The Petitions Committee said: 'As many of you have guessed, the number of people using the site has caused problems this morning. 'It's a mix of people reloading the front page to watch the signature count go up and people trying to sign petitions.' Theresa May's deputy official spokesman said the Government had said '12,000 times' it would not revoke Article 50, adding: 'It is not something that she is prepared to do.' Parliament's petition site crashed repeatedly today as the number of signatures rose Mrs May has arrived in Brussels today to ask the EU to delay Brexit until June - but wouldn't rule out leaving with No Deal next week if she is defeated in the Commons again. The Prime Minister is meeting French President Emmanuel Macron and President of the European Council Donald Tusk before addressing the 27 EU leaders to beg them to accept a three-month Article 50 extension. As she arrived for the summit - which was meant to the last one Britain would ever attend as an EU member - she said: 'This is a matter of persona regret for me but a short extension would give Parliament time to make a final choice that delivers on the result of the referendum.' She twice refused to rule out a No Deal Brexit on March 29 but added: 'I still want to leave with a deal'. Mrs May added: 'What matters is that we recognise that Brexit is the decision of the British people - we need to deliver on that. We're nearly three years on from the original vote - it is now the time for Parliament to decide'. Theresa May has arrived in Brussels to request a delay to Brexit and refused to rule out leaving with No Deal in eight days Mrs May said she felt 'deep regret' that she needed to delay Brexit but again urged MPs to back her deal next week The PM will meet EU leaders before presenting to the 27 heads explaining why they should grant a delay to Brexit Today Mrs May faces a torrent of anger from raging MPs who branded her a 'f***ing disgrace' for using a TV speech to scold them for not backing her Brexit deal, accusing her critics of playing 'political games'. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt admitted the PM is 'under extraordinary pressure' after failing to keep her promise that Britain would leave the EU on March 29. Last night her Downing Street address was meant to persuade Brexiteer Tories, Labour rebels and the DUP to back her deal - after the EU said it would only grant a short delay to Article 50 if the Prime Minister can win a vote on her plan before next Friday. But it already appears to have spectacularly backfired ahead of today's crucial summit in Belgium with MPs branding her words 'toxic', 'contemptuous', 'incendiary and irresponsible' with former Tory minister Sam Gyimah, claiming 'some MPs are receiving death threats'. The Prime Minister's deputy spokeswoman dismissed claims that Mrs May's attempt to blame MPs for the Brexit mess put them at risk of intimidation or attack and said: 'There is no evidence that is the case'. Prime Minister Theresa May walks to her plane at RAF Northolt as she heads to Brussels for an EU summit, which was meant to be Britain's last as members of the EU Theresa May leaves Downing Street for Brussels as her Brexit deal hangs in the balance Mr Hunt said 'no Prime Minister in living memory has been tested' in the way that Mrs May has and claimed the tone of her speech reflected her 'extreme frustration' at the current Brexit stalemate, which he said is 'sapping our national confidence'. Jeremy Hunt: There's no guarantee the PM can bring back her vote Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said he does not know if Theresa May's Brexit deal will be brought back to Parliament next week, as he warned of 'extreme unpredictability' if the issue is not resolved. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'If we are in the same situation this time next week then only a very limited list of things could happen: Parliament could vote to revoke Article 50, which is cancelling the Brexit process - I think that's highly unlikely... 'There could be an EU emergency summit to offer us an extension and we don't know what the length will be and it could have some very onerous conditions - they could say, for example, 'We'll give you an extension if you have a second referendum'. 'Again, I think it's very unlikely Parliament would vote for that. And then we have no-deal as the legal default on Friday. 'So the choice that we have now is one of resolving this issue or extreme unpredictability.' Mr Hunt said 'no prime minister in living memory has been tested' in the way that Mrs May has. 'Let's not forget the extraordinary pressure that she is personally under, and I think she does feel a sense of frustration,' he told Today. 'She is absolutely determined to deliver what people voted for and I think ... the Brexit process has sapped our national confidence and we need to remember now what we're capable of as a country. 'And we need to remember that the economy has actually not suffered in the way many people thought it would and we have a chance now to resolve this and move on, to close this chapter, move on to the next chapter. 'And we will be able to say, as one of the oldest parliamentary democracies in the world, that we were faced with a very difficult decision - a decision that most of the political establishment didn't want to go ahead - and we've delivered it because we are a country where we do what the people say.' Advertisement Defending the Prime Minister, who is facing calls to quit, he told the BBC: 'Let's not forget the extraordinary pressure she is under. She was expressing her frustration and the public's frustration' - but added: 'I don't think we should all make this about Theresa May'. Tellingly the Foreign Secretary twice admitted it is not yet certain Mrs May can bring back her deal for a third vote - but said if it's defeated there are three options: No Deal, revoke Article 50 or a 'long delay' to Brexit. The Prime Minister will travel to Brussels today to ask for an extension until the end of June to try to get her plan through arriving at around midday. She will address EU leaders at around 3pm. Last night Mrs May appeared to misjudge a live TV speech by blast MPs for not backing her Brexit deal as she heads to Brussels today to beg for a three-month Article 50 extension. Tory Remainer Sam Gyimah hit out at his party leader and said: 'Resorting to the blame game, as the PM is doing, is a low blow. Democracy loses when a Prime Minister who has set herself against the House of Commons then blames MPs for doing their job. It's Toxic. She knows MPs are receiving hate mail. We're repeatedly being urged to hold their noses to the stench of this deal and vote for it. That cannot be the blueprint for our great country and I cannot support it'. Potential 'switcher' Lisa Nandy claimed last night that Mrs May had blown her chance and said: 'There's absolutely no chance she is going to win over MPs in sufficient numbers after that statement. It was an attack on liberal democracy itself. I will not support a government that takes such a reckless approach'. But Brexit Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said today he believes more MPs will back the Prime Minister's deal after her intervention and insisted she has a 'good shot at landing the deal and winning a vote next week'. He added: 'I don't think there is a blame game at all- she set out very clearly where we are in the process. There is a deal. If we get the deal through, we can get a short extension to the Article 50 process and we can leave the EU. 'I think saying: 'I'm with you' makes perfect sense. The cab driver who drove me here this morning said: 'I just want to leaveget the deal done and I want to be out of the EU'. The Prime Minister very much reflected that opinion, which is widely held. People are fed upthey want to leave the EU'. Conservative former minister Sir Oliver Letwin said he believed MPs would support a Norway-style Brexit deal and could seize control of Brexit, possibly on Monday. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that MPs needed to establish if there is a majority in favour of an alternative plan if the Prime Minister's deal is defeated again next week. Sir Oliver said: 'I believe, for example, that we will probably on that day be able to get a cross-party majority in favour of what is sometimes called Norway plus and sometimes called Common Market 2.0, which is an arrangement where we remain in the single market and we have a customs arrangement with the EU and that has not yet been tested.' Stephen Taubert, 61, of Syracuse was found guilty Wednesday of three felony counts including threatening to kill a former President of the United States A self-described 'cranky, old' New York man who called Congress and threatened to kill former President Barack Obama and Rep. Maxine Waters, along with her entire staff, was found guilty on related felony charges Wednesday. Stephen Taubert, 61, of Syracuse, New York was convicted on charges of threatening to kill a former president, transmitting a threat via interstate commerce, and threatening to murder a member of Congress after a three-day jury trial. Authorities said Taubert used 'vile racial slurs' in referencing Obama and Waters during multiple calls to federal lawmakers' offices in 2017 and 2018. On July 2, 2017, Taubert called former Sen. Al Franken's office on Capitol Hill multiple times and said during two calls that he was planning travel to Washington D.C. the next day to 'hang' Obama at his home. Taubert later told investigators he was upset about comedian Kathy Griffith tweeting a video of herself holding a prop that appeared to be the decapitated, bloody head of President Donald Trump. Authorities said Taubert used 'vile racial slurs' in referencing Obama (left) and Waters (right) during multiple calls to federal lawmakers' offices in 2017 and 2018 On July 20, 2018, Taubert called Waters's district office in Los Angeles and said he would be attending all the Congresswoman's upcoming events where he would kill her and every member of her staff, referring to Waters as a 'low-IQ n****r'. Taubert later admitted to investigators that he called Waters's office to 'terrorize' her for then-recent public statements she had made. His threats to Waters came less than a month after she told her supporters in L.A. to publicly confront Trump officials in response to the administration's 'zero tolerance' policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the U.S. southern border. During interviews with police, Taubert apologized for his actions, saying he was just 'a cranky old man with a lot of time on his hands and too much television,' according to Syracuse.com. The jury concluded Taubert targeted Obama and Waters because they are black and he could face additional hate crime charges as a result, according to the AP. Taubert is scheduled to be sentenced on July 24. An 11-month-old baby boy was almost boiled alive after accidentally falling in to a bucket of scalding-hot water in Ukraine. Doctors are battling to save the life of little Daniil Chernenko after he suffered horrific burns to 80 per cent of his body in the village of Salhany in southern Ukraine's Odessa Oblast region. Heartbreaking pictures taken by a charity volunteer show Daniil lying on the bed and covered in bandages after being hospitalised. The incident is said to have unfolded when the baby was about to have a bath. His mother Tetyana Chernenko reportedly brought a bucket with boiling water in to the bedroom and put it on the floor near a table. An 11-month-old baby boy was almost boiled alive after accidentally falling in to a bucket filled with boiling water in Ukraine. Heartbreaking pictures taken by a charity volunteer show Daniil Chernenko lying on the bed after being hospitalised The incident unfolded when the baby was about to have a bath. His mother Tetyana Chernenko reportedly brought a bucket with boiling water in to the bedroom and put it on the floor near a table She planned to mix some boiling water with cold water in a baby bathtub that was standing on the table so she could bath her son. At this point, Daniil was playing on the table near the bathtub. But when his mother turned away for a few seconds to take some cold water, the child fell from the table into the scalding hot bucket of water. Mrs Chernenko said: 'I saw how he fell in the boiling water. I rushed to the bucket and pulled him out. 'I hugged him, then wrapped him in a cotton cloth. When I unwrapped him I saw his skin was peeling off.' Daniil was rushed to hospital in Odessa, the capital city of the region, in critical condition and diagnosed with burns to 80 per cent of his body. Daniil was rushed to hospital in Odessa, the capital city of the region, in critical condition and diagnosed with burns to 80 per cent of his body Hospital staff say the child became hoarse from the constant crying caused by his unbearable pain Pictures taken by Katherine Nozhevnikova, a volunteer from a local charity organisation, show Daniil lying on the bed after being hospitalised. It has been reported that only patches of skin on the youngster's forehead, fingers and toes escaped being affected. Hospital staff say the child became hoarse from the constant crying caused by his unbearable pain. Doctors are battling to save the infant's life but have not speculated on his chances of survival. Vadim Shukhtin, the head of Odessa Oblast Region Clinical Hospital, said: 'His [Daniil's] condition is very serious. The boy receives all possible treatment and medication.' Tetyana Chernenko is in the hospital with her son. Reports say she has not been able to forgive herself for what happened. Police are treating the case as an accident. Advertisement Speaker John Bercow pointedly praised MPs for their hard work and dedication today, saying 'none of you is a traitor' as Theresa May's faced a furious backlash over a Brexit TV address. The Prime Minister sparked cross-party fury after she used a live broadcast to lay blame for any delay to the UK quitting the EU at the door of Parliament for not backing her deal and accusing her critics of playing 'political games'. It prompted a torrent of anger from raging MPs who branded her a 'f***ing disgrace', with Tory MP Nigel Evans warning that a third vote next week may now go 'worse than last time', when she was defeated by 149 votes. Mr Bercow intervened after Hull MP Diana Johnson called for a debate on patriotism, revealing she had received death threats before last night's speech and suggesting Mrs May had 'pitched Members of Parliament against the general public'. Ms Johnson said: 'In recent weeks, like many in this House I have been accused of being a traitor and I have also had Facebook posts saying that, along with the two other MPs in Hull that we should be shot and hanged.' After Commons' Leader Andrea Leadsom called for MPs to be 'treated with respect', Mr Bercow said: 'None of you is a traitor. 'All of you are doing your best - this should not be, and I'm sure will not prove to be, a matter of any controversy whatsoever. 'From the chair let me say I believe passionately in the institution of Parliament, in the rights of members of this House and their commitment to their duty. 'And I use the word duty in the singular advisedly - the sole duty of every Member of Parliament is to do what he or she thinks is right.' John Bercow told MPs that he believed they were 'doing your best' after they raised concern at Theresa May's television speech last night Mrs may arrived in Brussels this afternoon ahead of an attempt to win a Brexit delay from assembled EU leaders. She last night blamed MPs for the need for a delay Labour's Diana Johnson had told the Commons she had been labelled a 'traitor' and received messages suggesting she deserved to be 'shot and hanged' Mr Bercow did not speak so loftily of MPs in the Commons just two minutes later when he told a Tory to 'grow up'. Labour's Leyton and Wanstead MP John Cryer had branded Mrs May's speech 'one of the most contemptuous statements I have ever heard - and that is up against some stiff competition'. When this provoked barracking from Worthing West MP Sir Peter Bottomley, Mr Bercow rose and called for order, saying: 'Let's grow up. 'Do grow up, for goodness sake. This is not a matter of party political hackery. 'Let's have some seriousness of purpose and mutual respect. 'The honourable gentleman is an experienced member of the House, he has asked an honest question to which the leader, I know, will honestly reply. 'For goodness sake let's raise the level.' This only prompted an attack from Commons' Leader Andrea Leadsom, who clashes regularly with the speaker. She told him: 'Mr Speaker may I say your response does not raise the level, but i'll leave it there.' He promptly told her to sit down, barking: Resume your seat Leader of the House. 'My response sets out the constitutional position that has applied to the House of Commons over generations and I cannot see that there is anything controversial about what I said.' Minutes after praising MPs John Bercow rounded on Tories who tried to shout down Labour's John Cryer, telling them: 'Do grow up, for goodness sake' Mr Cryer had branded Mrs May's speech 'one of the most contemptuous statements I have ever heard - and that is up against some stiff competition' Mrs May arrived in Brussels today to ask the EU to delay Brexit until June - but wouldn't rule out leaving with No Deal next week if her plan is defeated in the Commons again. The Prime Minister is meeting French President Emmanuel Macron and President of the European Council Donald Tusk before addressing the 27 EU leaders to beg them to accept a three-month Article 50 extension. As she arrived for the summit - which was meant to the last one Britain would ever attend as an EU member - she said: 'This is a matter of personal regret for me but a short extension would give Parliament time to make a final choice that delivers on the result of the referendum.' She twice refused to rule out a No Deal Brexit on March 29 but added: 'I still want to leave with a deal'. Mrs May added: 'What matters is that we recognise that Brexit is the decision of the British people - we need to deliver on that. We're nearly three years on from the original vote - it is now the time for Parliament to decide'. She went on live TV last night to condemn the Commons for failing to back her EU withdrawal agreement and accused them of playing 'political games'. The Downing Street address was meant to persuade Brexiteer Tories, Labour rebels and the DUP to back her deal - after the EU said it would only grant a short delay to Article 50 if the Prime Minister can win a vote on her plan before next Friday. But May's address appeared to have spectacularly backfired. Her defiant speech caused a great deal of upset among MPs who branded it 'toxic', 'contemptuous', 'incendiary and irresponsible'. Some suggested that her attempt to pitch the people against MPs was in poor taste after intimidation faced by MPs including Anna Soubry in recent months. Arriving in Brussels today Mrs May twice refused to rule out a No Deal Brexit on March 29 but added: 'I still want to leave with a deal' Conservative MP Nicky Morgan, who backed Remain and who supports compromise over a Brexit deal, told BBC Radio 4's World At One: 'It seemed terribly misjudged to attack the very people she needs to win over for the deal. 'I'd have thought there would be a better way of appealing to MPs acting in the national interest. 'But instead, to accuse MPs of being a road block when we haven't ever really had the opportunity to vote on other options and things like that I thought was quite extraordinary.' Ms Morgan (Loughborough), who chairs the Treasury Select Committee, said the speech would have put off both supporters and potential supporters. 'I suspect there will be people who were thinking of voting for the deal who will have been put off,' she said. 'People who perhaps have voted for the deal will be thinking "well, why am I going to help this process out?" 'Unfortunately, what it does is it makes people even more entrenched just at the moment when maximum flexibility is needed. 'It's so easy to remain absolutely in your own trenches rather than accept there is a need for compromise, which many of us have done, and I would hope that others might do - although sadly I don't hold out much hope for that now.' Conservative MP Ben Bradley, a Brexiteer who has previously backed Mrs May's deal, also labelled her speech 'not helpful' and suggested he might now vote against the deal himself. When asked if he would back the deal, he said: 'I'm not sure to be honest. Former education minister Nicky Morgan said she suspected 'there will be people who were thinking of voting for the deal who will have been put off' by the tone of the address last night Ben Bradley said Mrs May's speech 'has made it more difficult ... In terms of getting enough support to get it over the line, that speech last night was not helpful' 'She has made it more difficult ... In terms of getting enough support to get it over the line, that speech last night was not helpful. Tory Remainer Sam Gyimah hit out at his party leader and said: 'Resorting to the blame game, as the PM is doing, is a low blow. Democracy loses when a Prime Minister who has set herself against the House of Commons then blames MPs for doing their job. It's Toxic. 'She knows MPs are receiving hate mail. We're repeatedly being urged to hold their noses to the stench of this deal and vote for it. That cannot be the blueprint for our great country and I cannot support it'. Potential 'switcher' Lisa Nandy claimed last night that Mrs May had blown her chance and said: 'There's absolutely no chance she is going to win over MPs in sufficient numbers after that statement. It was an attack on liberal democracy itself. I will not support a government that takes such a reckless approach'. But Brexit Minister Kwasi Kwarteng said today he believes more MPs will back the Prime Minister's deal after her intervention and insisted she has a 'good shot at landing the deal and winning a vote next week'. He added: 'I don't think there is a blame game at all- she set out very clearly where we are in the process. There is a deal. If we get the deal through, we can get a short extension to the Article 50 process and we can leave the EU. 'I think saying: 'I'm with you' makes perfect sense. The cab driver who drove me here this morning said: 'I just want to leaveget the deal done and I want to be out of the EU'. 'The Prime Minister very much reflected that opinion, which is widely held. People are fed upthey want to leave the EU'. The Prime Minister's deputy spokeswoman earlier dismissed claims that Mrs May's attempt to blame MPs for the Brexit mess put them at risk of intimidation or attack. She said: 'I would just flatly reject that ... there is no evidence that is the case.' Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt had admitted the Prime Minister was 'under extraordinary pressure', saying that 'no Prime Minister in living memory has been tested' in the way that Mrs May has. He claimed the tone of her speech reflected her 'extreme frustration' at the current Brexit stalemate, which he said is 'sapping our national confidence'. Defending the Prime Minister, who is facing calls to quit, he told the BBC: 'Let's not forget the extraordinary pressure she is under. She was expressing her frustration and the public's frustration' - but added: 'I don't think we should all make this about Theresa May'. Mrs May arrived in Brussels today to ask the EU to delay Brexit until June - but wouldn't rule out leaving with No Deal next week if her plan is defeated in the Commons again. Tory Remainer Sam Gymiah hit out at his party leader and said: 'Resorting to the blame game, as the PM is doing, is a low blow' while Tory Brexiteer Henry Smith says that Britain must now opt for No Deal Potential Labour 'switcher' Lisa Nandy claimed last night that Mrs May had blown her chance to win her and other MPs over The Prime Minister is meeting French President Emmanuel Macron and President of the European Council Donald Tusk before addressing the 27 EU leaders to beg them to accept a three-month Article 50 extension. As she arrived for the summit - which was meant to the last one Britain would ever attend as an EU member - she said: 'This is a matter of personal regret for me but a short extension would give Parliament time to make a final choice that delivers on the result of the referendum.' She twice refused to rule out a No Deal Brexit on March 29 but added: 'I still want to leave with a deal'. Mrs May added: 'What matters is that we recognise that Brexit is the decision of the British people - we need to deliver on that. We're nearly three years on from the original vote - it is now the time for Parliament to decide'. George Conway suggested Thursday that Donald Trump is in 'cognitive decline,' in spite of a public warning from his wife - a senior adviser to the president - that he's not qualified to dish out medical advice. Trump had raised the temperature Wednesday in his feud with Conway, calling him 'a husband from hell' in a tweet and telling reporters that he's 'a whack job.' The back-and-forth prompted the lawyer's wife, Kellyanne Conway, to publicly side with her boss in the month's long spat. The next morning, George Conway was back on the attack, promoting a decades-old Tom Brokaw interview with a 33-year-old Trump as evidence for his argument that Trump is nuts. He also claimed the president is a 'compulsive liar,' and that's why Trump's lawyers didn't want him talking to Robert Mueller. After calling Trump 'dumb' in one assessment, Conway said, in response to a follower's claim that Trump could be in 'cognitive decline,' that it's 'possible' the 72-year-old president is losing his mental faculties. 'Also possible. There's a clip of Trump online talking to Tom Brokaw thirty years ago and Trump is speaking in complete, coherent sentences. It's quite a remarkable contrast to today, when all you get are these often incomprehensible word salads,' he said. George Conway suggested Thursday that Donald Trump is in 'cognitive decline,' in spite of a public warning from his wife - a senior adviser to the president - that he's not qualified to offer such a diagnosis Trump had raised the temperature Wednesday in his feud with Conway, calling him 'a husband from hell' in a tweet and telling reporters that he's 'a whack job' The next morning, George Conway was back on the attack, promoting a decades-old Tom Brokaw interview with a 33-year-old Trump as evidence for his argument that Trump is nuts He also claimed that Trump is a compulsive liar who would put himself in legal jeopardy if he had to sit for questioning Attorney George Conway, husband of White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway, speaks at Georgetown Law School on March 8 His wife gave a pained interview hours later in which she said it's 'unlike' him to tweet and it's a 'new' development that he's no longer 'supporting the agenda of the president and my work there.' 'I appreciate the president defending what he thinks is unfairness. I'll leave that up to him. I was raised, though, in a household of strong Italian Catholic women who taught me that you air grievances like that in private, so it is very surprising to see it be so public,' she told Maria Bartiromo on her Fox Business show. 'I've always encouraged him, I think would he be a fantastic judge or law professor.' The former campaign manager for Trump who followed him to the White House has avoided comment on her marriage and her husband's derogatory remarks about her boss. She addressed the clash at length for the first time on Wednesday, in a Politico interview. She noted Thursday, on Bartiromo's program, 'I don't talk much about this publicly.' Conway said her first priority is the 'protection' of the four children she has with George. She said her husband encouraged her to work for the president and was 'enthusiastic' about the family's move from New York to Washington at the beginning of the Trump administration. 'We have four school-aged children. So you don't just -- I -- I'm their mother. I could never have just come here and been here for two and a half years without them. So we made a decision as a family to move here,' she said. 'George decided he would like to do something different with his career. I totally supported that. He wanted the solicitor general's job. That didn't work out. Then he was nominated or offered the job at the Justice Department.' Conway argued that her husband's tweets are meaningless, as he does not have the power to act on his assessments in the way Mueller, the deputy attorney general or a talk show host does. 'I don't know when the feminists are going to write this story about the unusual situation of a man getting power through his wife,' she predicted. 'But that's what we have here.' Her husband produced a letter this week affirming his claims that he turned the DOJ job down. He also shared screen-grabs from a psychiatric diagnostic manual to back up his claims that Trump is mentally ill. The president decided Wednesday that enough is enough. He skewered George Conway on Twitter and slammed him to reporters as he took questions ahead of a departure from the White House. 'George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife's success & angry that I, with her help, didn't give him the job he so desperately wanted,' Trump wrote on Twitter. 'I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!' As he left the White House for Ohio hours later, he couldn't resist putting his broadside on videotape. 'I don't know him. He's a whack job, there's no question about it,' the presdient said. 'I think he's doing a tremendous disservice to his wonderful wife. Kellyanne is a wonderful woman, and I call him 'Mr. Kellyanne',' he added. Mrs. Conway defended Trump for clobbering her own husband, asking Politico in a phone interview: 'You think he should just take that sitting down?' President Trump branded George Conway, his chief counselor Kellyanne Conway's spouse, a 'husband from hell' after the two crossed swords online, and then told reporters that he's 'a whack job' Mr. Conway tweeted a series of pages from a psychiatric diagnosis manual, suggesting the president is mentally ill Mrs. Conway broke a glass ceiling in 2016 as the first woman to lead a successful presidential campaign; Trump claimed Wednesday that she played a role in keeping her husband from getting a top Justice Department job Trump wrote that Mr. Conway is angry that he didn't get a plus administration position, and mocked him as 'Mr. Kellyanne Conway' She said Trump had sat on the sidelines of her household's intramural political mudfight long enough. 'He left it alone for months out of respect for me,' she said. 'But you think he shouldn't respond when somebody, a non-medical professional, accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?' 'Don't play psychiatrist any more than George should be,' she told Politico. 'You're not a psychiatrist and he's not, respectfully.' The president's Wednesday morning tweet marked the first time Trump has claimed Kellyanne played a role in her husband's failure to secure a plum Justice Department position in the administration's early days. That claim quickly lost power, however, when The Washington Post released a May 31, 2017 letter from Mr. Conway to the president in which he turned down the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the DOJ. 'I am profoundly grateful to you and to the Attorney General for selecting me. ... I have reluctantly concluded, however, that, for me and my family, this is not the right time for me to leave the private sector and take on a new role in the federal government,' the letter reads. 'Kellyanne and I continue to support you and your Administration, and I look forward to doing so in whatever way I can from outside the government.' Mrs. Conway was the president's campaign manager in the fall of 2016, the first woman ever to successfully bring a White House campaign across the finish line. Trump's long-simmering feud with Mr. Conway boiled over this week after the attorney claimed online that he is mentally ill and tweeted pages from a standard psychiatric diagnosis manual to back up his assertions. He tweeted at Trump on Wednesday: 'You seem determined to prove my point. Good for you! #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder.' and added minutes later: 'You. Are. Nuts.' He said in an interview on Tuesday that he takes his anti-Trump frustrations out online so he can avoid disrupting his marriage by complaining directly to his powerful wife about the president he considers insane. 'The mendacity, the incompetence, it's just maddening to watch,' he told The Washington Post on Tuesday. 'The tweeting is just the way to get it out of the way, so I can get it off my chest and move on with my life that day. That's basically it. Frankly, it's so I don't end up screaming at her about it.' Speaking of the public war of words that led him to tweet a definition of 'narcissistic personality disorder,' he said the armchair diagnosis 'stuck ... because of the utter bizarreness this weekend, his own conduct. It was so illustrative. Mr. Conway fired back, mocking Trump as 'nuts' Within an hour of Trump claiming he denied Mr. Conway a plum Justice Department job, The Washington Post published this May 2017 letter in which Conway turned Trump down Conway also pushed back on Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale's claim on Twitter that the president turned Conway down for a senior-level DOJ position. He said he withdrew from consideration after Trump fired his FBI Director, James Comey, a move that led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. 'I'm thinking to myself, this guy is going to be at war with the Justice Department for the next two years. I'm not doing this,' Conway said. Trump had called him 'a total loser' just hours before. And the president's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, claimed 'Mr. Kellyanne Conway' is 'jealous' of his more-famous wife's success. 'He barely worked @TheJusticeDept and was either fired/quit, didn't want the scrutiny? Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success. POTUS doesn't even know him!' Parscale tweeted Monday night. Mr. Conway had launched a barrage of insults at the president on Monday evening, tweeting medical definitions of personality disorders including 'deceitfulness' and grandiosity as symptoms and saying they apply to the 45th president. His latest criticism of Trump followed a weekend of digital slams from the president against a range of targets including the late Sen. John McCain and Saturday Night Live. The president piled on Tuesday, calling Mr. Conway '[a] total loser' after his 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale claimed Kellyanne's husband was 'jealous' of her success Conway shoved back on Twitter, congratulating Trump for raising the public profile of their onlin sparring match Mr. Conway fired back sarcastically at Trump on Monday, tweeting that it wasn't smart of the president to give his amateur head-shrinking a bigger platform. 'Congratulations!' he wrote in a tweet. 'You just guaranteed that millions of more people are going to learn about narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism! Great job!' Conway's wife, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, brushed off the incident, saying she was taking care of the couple's four children Monday morning and hadn't paid attention. Parscale, however, spoke for Trumpworld; the president himself piled on hours later Mr. Conway posted the definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder; he also tweeted the cover of the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders in a slap at Trump. According to the definition, someone with the disorder has three or more of a list of symptoms. Among them are a 'Grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).' Trump's 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted that Mr. Conway is 'jealous of his wife's success' Strained? Kellyanne Conway brushed aside her husband's claims that her boss had at least two mental disorders by saying she was not 'up to speed' Mr. Conway tweeted from a manual of mental disorders that psychiatrists use to make diagnoses ALL THE BEST SCORES: Conway seemed to be suggesting that President Donald Trump has a grandiose sense of self-importance or other narcissistic traits Conway also tweeted out signs of an antisocial personality disorder A person with a narcissistic disorder may also be: 'Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love;' 'Believes he or she is 'special' and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions);' and 'Requires excessive admiration ... has a sense of entitlement ... [and] is interpersonally exploitative.' Before his stab at armchair psychiatry, Conway retweeted conservative commentator William Kristol, who urged people to think seriously about Trump's psychological state. 'Agree with this, but would add that *all* Americans should be thinking seriously *now* about Trump's mental condition and psychological state, including and especially the media, Congress and the Vice President and Cabinet,' Conway wote. Kellyanne Conway commented on that instance of her husband torching the president her boss by brushing off a question by a reporter at the White House. 'I have four kids and I was getting them out of the house this morning before I got here, so I could talk to the president about substance. So I may not be up to speed on the whole thing,' she said. As Conway's tweet attacking the president's alleged narcissism reverberated, Trump weighed in on the New Zealand terror attack that killed 50, defending his own image and complaining that he was being blamed for the slaughter. 'The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!' the president wrote. Last year, former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson said Trump had aced a diagnostic test used to look at potential mental disorders. Trump got a perfect score on a test designed to look for signs of memory loss or cognitive dysfunction. He bragged about the results as he blamed his predecessors for failing to solve problems in North Korea. 'I guess they all realized they were going to have to leave it to a president that scored the highest on tests,' Trump quipped at the time. The Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, pictured, has blasted the Home Office after it suggested Christianity was a 'violent' religion when rejecting an Iranian Christian convert's asylum application The Bishop of Durham has blasted the Home Office today for denying an Iranian Christian convert asylum in the UK because Christianity 'is not a peaceful religion'. The unnamed asylum seeker told the Home Office he wanted to stay in the UK after converting from Islam to the 'peaceful' Christianity. But the Home Office rejected the claim as 'inconsistent' and used violent passages from the Book of Revelations, suggesting it was filled with 'images of revenge, destruction, death and violence.' Today the Church of England has hit back, with Bishop of Durham Paul Butler saying he is 'extremely concerned' at the Home Office's position. It comes after trainee solicitor Nathan Stevens, who represents the applicant, shared the letter online and branded it 'extremely offensive'. The Home Office said it was investigating the letter and claimed it was 'not in accordance with its policies', although it is unclear whether any disciplinary action will be taken. The Bishop also called for an overhaul of the ethos of the Home Office and said there was a problem of 'religious literacy' among staff. He said: 'I am extremely concerned that a Government department could determine the future of another human being based on such a profound misunderstanding of the texts and practices of faith communities. One of the passages quotes examples from The Book of Leviticus, from the old testament, while others focus on passages from The Book of Revelations After quoting another bible package the letter says 'These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a 'peaceful' religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence rage and revenge' 'To use extracts from the Book of Revelation to argue that Christianity is a violent religion is like arguing that a Government report on the impact of Climate Change is advocating drought and flooding. 'It is good that the Home Office has recognised that this decision is inconsistent with its policies and that its staff need better training. 'But the fact that these comments were made at all suggests that the problem goes deeper than a lack of religious literacy among individual civil servants and indicates that the management structures and ethos of the Home Office, when dealing with cases with a religious dimension, need serious overhaul.' He added: 'I look forward to hearing what changes in training and practice follow from this worrying example. 'The Church of England has regularly raised the issue of the religious literacy of staff at all levels within the Home Office. 'This fresh case shows just how radically the Home Office needs to change in its understanding of all religious beliefs.' Mr Stevens posted excerpts from the letter on Twitter and said he was 'genuinely shocked' to read such an 'unbelievably offensive diatribe.' He added: 'Whatever your views on faith, how can a government official arbitrarily pick bits out of a holy book and then use them to trash someone's heartfelt reason for coming to a personal decision to follow another faith.' Officials appear to have used six examples taken from the Bible Gateway - a searchable online bible, and one of the world's most well-utilised Christian websites. The refusal letter also quotes parts of The Book of Leviticus from the old testament. The full statement below the verses says: 'These examples are inconsistent with your claim that you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a 'peaceful religion, as opposed to Islam which contains violence, rage and revenge.' Mr Stevens added on Twitter that his client will be appealing the decision and he will be complaining to the Home Office. Social media users were so shocked by the content of the letter a number of them did not even believe it was real - with the decision being described as 'gobsmacking' and 'unreal.' Immigration caseworker Nathan Stevens posted excerpts from the letter on Twitter and said he was 'genuinely shocked' to read such an 'unbelievably offensive diatribe' The Iranian national claimed asylum in 2016, but was turned down, with Home Office (pictured) officials saying his conversion from Islam was 'inconsistent' with his claim Christianity was a peaceful religion - by highlighting violent passages from the bible Legal expert Conor James McKinney, deputy editor of website Free Movement, told Mail Online: 'Immigration lawyers often speak of a 'culture of disbelief' among the officials that make these life-or-death asylum decisions. 'This case seems to be an extreme example of an individual official manufacturing a reason to refuse an asylum claim, and the Home Office acknowledges that it was out of line, but those working with asylum seekers do report horror stories almost as bad on a regular basis.' Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society told the Independent it was 'wholly inappropriate' for the Home Office to use 'theological justifications for refusing asylum applications'. He added: 'Decisions on the merits of an asylum appeal should be based on an assessment of the facts at hand and not on the state's interpretation of any given religion. It's not the role of the Home Office to play theologian.' A Home Office spokesman said: 'This letter is not in accordance with our policy approach to claims based on religious persecution, including conversions to a particular faith. 'We continue to work closely with key partners, including the APPG on International Freedom of Religion and a range of faith groups, to improve our policy guidance and training provided to asylum decision-makers so that we approach claims involving religious conversion in the appropriate way.' A shaken clubber tells cops how Conor McGregor 'ripped' his cell phone from his hand then 'smashed' it on the floor in a 911 call obtained exclusively by DailyMailTV. Ahmed Abdirzak, 22, also describes the moment he pleaded with the snarling UFC superstar to return his damaged $1,000 iPhone 8 during the early hours row last Monday. 'I said sir please, please. May I have my phone back?' he tells an emergency dispatcher from the Miami Beach Police Department. 'And what he done, he smashed it on the floor. He picked it up, you could see him putting it in his pocket and taking it into his vehicle,' he says. McGregor, 30, is due in court next month on felony charges of criminal mischief and strong-armed robbery. The more serious of the two, the robbery offense, carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years and could scupper the Irishman's chances of getting another visa to fight in the US. Ahmed Abdirzak, 22, describes how McGregor 'ripped' his phone from his hands and how he pleaded for it back in a 911 call exclusively obtained by DailyMailTV Abdirzak has admitted he tried to video McGregor as the pair left LIV nightclub at the swank Fontainebleau Hotel at around 5am. But the British restaurant manager, who was on a Florida vacation for two weeks, denies antagonizing McGregor or saying anything to provoke him. The UFC fighter was arrested and took this mugshot after the 911 call was made last Monday outside of a Miami nightclub. He's been charged with criminal mischief and strong-armed robbery Abdirzak borrowed a bystander's phone afterwards to report the clash to cops, telling dispatcher Alejandro Alvarez he had just been robbed by an 'A-list celebrity'. He says during the 5.41am call: 'My telephone mobile was taken by force. It was ripped out of my hand and taken to another vehicle.' Pressed for further detail, he goes on: 'He didn't have a weapon but you know I wasn't able to get to him you know, because he was a A-list celebrity and there was a lot of guards around him.' The dispatcher then asks: 'Hold on, the person who took your phone was a celebrity?' Abdirzak tells Alvarez the suspect was 'Conor McGregor, the UFC fighter'. 'He was surrounded by his security, yes. And I begged him back for my phone, I said sir please, please. May I have my phone back?' he goes on. 'And what he done, he smashed it on the floor. He picked it up you could see him putting it in his pocket and taking it into his vehicle.' Alvarez is heard entering notes into the police CAD (computer-aided dispatch) system as Abdirzak speaks, misspelling the alleged suspect's name as Connor McGregor. 'He smashed it on the floor then he put the smashed broken phone in his pocket?' the dispatcher asks. Abdirzak replies: 'In his pocket. He didn't really smash it. He stepped on it and it wasn't smashing so he picked it up put it in his pocket and he went off.' McGregor, 30, is due in court next month and could face 15 years in prison and a revoked visa, but he brushed off the arrest to lead the St Patrick's Day Parade in Chicago Sunday McGregor shared this picture of him in the back of a Miami Beach Police cruiser taken after his arrest where he's visibly grinning The call concludes with Abdirzak confirming that McGregor had left the scene in a black SUV, possibly a Cadillac, but he cannot say in which direction. 'I told you who the person is, McGregor, he's not there anymore, no. I told you he got into his car. He drove off,' he adds. The 911 audio is consistent with the account Abdirzak, a father-of-one from Slough, just outside London, gave to DailyMail.com in the wake of the incident. 'I'm not going to lie, I was scared for my life the guy is a lethal weapon,' he said during our exclusive interview. Abdirzak also complained that the damaged phone containing pictures of his son and his family was never returned, even after McGregor's arrest last Monday afternoon. The former two-division UFC title holder was on vacation with his family and was staying at a friend's Miami Beach house. Abdirzak, a restaurant owner from London, admitted that he 'feared for his life', telling DailyMailTV exclusively that the UFC fighter 'is a lethal weapon' The altercation happened in the early hours of the March 11 at the Fountainbleu Hotel, which is home to the nightclub LIV where McGregor and Abdirzak were partying His arrest came just three days after McGregor completed his probation for a violent altercation in April 2018 when he attacked a bus carrying several UFC fighters in Brooklyn, New York by hurling a dolly through the window. He avoided prison and immigration turmoil by pleading guilty to a single misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge and completing community service and an anger management course without further incident. McGregor's legal team will likely try to negotiate a similar deal in the Miami case because a violent felony conviction could lead the Department of Homeland Security to deport him or declare him inadmissible for re-entry. The sportsman is also facing a civil action brought by Abdirzak who is demanding more than $15,000 for battery, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress. McGregor's criminal defense attorney has dismissed the lawsuit filed in Miami Dade County as 'a quick effort seeking a payday.' The Notorious himself has made only a passing reference to the case on his Instagram account, posting: 'Patience in this world is a virtue I continue to work on.' White House advisor Jared Kushner's father has written an op-ed to defend his real estate empire from charges of conflicts and foreign influence, and says the firm has passed up 'many business opportunities' to avoid potential conflicts. Kushner, who served 14 months in prison after being convicted of campaign finance violations and hiring a prostitute as part of a plot to entrap his brother-in-law wrote a Washington Post op-ed in order to 'set the record straight' about the family business he founded. He did so despite being a private person' who prefers 'to keep the details of my familys business as private as possible.' Charles Kushner has written an op-ed defending his business dealings, lauding son Jared Kushner's management of Kushner Companies, and saying that the firm gave up potential business to avoid conflicts 'Jareds service to the country has brought unprecedented scrutiny of the Kushner Companies from the media and government investigators,' Kushner wrote. 'We are happy to assist with all inquiries, but I must note that we are already voluntarily adhering to the strictest standards to avoid even the appearance of conflicts,' he continued. 'As a result, we have passed up many business opportunities that we normally would have pursued. That might not be as alluring as some of the crazy stuff I read about my family and our business. But it happens to be the truth.' Kushner began the business that became Kushner Companies by purchasing and fixing up apartments across the East Coast, starting the business with his own father, a Holocaust survivor. Charles Kushner (C) wades though the media with his legal team and wife to the U.S. District Courthouse August 18, 2004 in Newark, NJ. Kushner, a New Jersey developer and a major campaign contributors to Democrats including then-embattled Gov. Jim McGreevey before he was expected to plead guilty to federal charges that he hired a prostitute to try to silence a witness in a federal investigation Kushner wrote that the sale of 666 Fifth Avenue, a deal that reportedly drew interest of the special counsel's investigators, brought 'significant financial upside' Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, White House Senior Advisers, walk to Air Force One prior to departure with US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, October 30, 2018 White House Advisor Jared Kushner, watches alongside a member of the Saudi Delegation during a meeting between President Donald Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the Oval Office at the White House on March 20, 2018 Saudi Arabia's Prince Mohammed bin Salman escorts White House senior advisor Jared Kushner at the Global Center for Combatting Extremist Ideology in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 21, 2017. Kushner took on a broad portfolio that includes Middle East peace issues and other matters Jared Kushner took over as chief executive of the company in 2008, two years after his release from prison, although Charles Kushner doesn't mention this in the op-ed. The elder Kushner defended transactions regarding the family's skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue. Kushner Companies bought the building for $1.8 billion in 2007, shortly before the collapse of the real estate market. It became a series of interest to investigative reporters as well as Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators, who reportedly looked into the family's efforts to secure financing the debt on the deal. Kushner wrote that the company sold half the retail business in the building for $525 million in 2008, sold the remaining 51 per cent stake in retail for $1.03 billion in two pieces a few years later. After signing a $1.3 billion 99-year lease last year with Brookfield Asset Management the deal resulted in 'significant financial upside for our company,' he wrote. He did not mention Jared Kushner's conversations with potential investors from Chinese conglomerate Anbang, including with its chairman, Wu Xiaohui during the presidential transition. CNN reported last year that Mueller's team also asked parties during interviews about a potential Qatari investor in the project. The potential investor was identified as former Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani. Jared Kushner divested from the company and many other investments when he joined the Trump administration. Kushner also met during the transition with Sergey Gorkov, chairman of Russian state-run Vnesheconombank. Charles Kushner addressed why the family sought foreign investors in the deal. 'Trophy assets in New York often appeal to foreign investors thats a legal and appropriate stream of funding,' he wrote. He also addressed general 'attacks on my' from unnamed critics. 'You wouldnt know it from the way his nine-year stewardship of the company has been portrayed, but before he resigned to join the Trump administration in 2017, Jared led major property acquisitions worth more than $5 billion, and the company grew from about 50 employees to more than 700. We now have more than $7 billion of assets under management,' Charles Kushner wrote. Officials from four foreign countries privately talked about ways to manipulate Jared Kushner, the Washington Post reported last year. The countries were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico. A woman who posed as a man on a gay dating app to stalk and share the explicit photographs of her victims has fled to France ahead of sentencing. Yannick Glaudin was due to be sentenced at Inner London Crown Court for harassment, stalking, disclosing private sexual photos and failing to surrender. However the 30-year-old has left the country and returned to her native France. Claire Cooper, prosecuting, said: 'Following her pleas Ms Glaudin moved back to France and those who instruct me are in the process of obtaining a European arrest warrant for her.' Judge Usha Karu said: 'In the current political climate is there a good chance that you are able to achieve your aims?' Yannick Glaudin was due to be sentenced at Inner London Crown Court (pictured) for harassment, stalking, disclosing private sexual photos and failing to surrender Ms Cooper said she would be able to get the warrant as the prosecution is aware of Glaudin's location in France. Glaudin, of Mile End, east London, has admitted one count of disclosing private sexual photos. She has also admitted one count of harassment, one count of stalking without fear or alarm and failing to surrender. There will be a further hearing on April 17 to set a sentencing date. A magistrate accused of abusing a teenage boy said it was a 'needless expense' to pay for an extra room when they travelled together. Graeme Bryan Curran, 68, has pleaded not guilty in the NSW District Court to indecently assaulting the boy nine times between 1981 and 1983 when he was aged between 13 and 15. The childless magistrate is accused of grooming the boy, sleeping naked with him and performing a Saturday morning 'ritual' on him which involved massaging him and touching his penis. Graeme Bryan Curran (pictured centre), 68, faced New South Wales District Court on Thursday and pleaded not guilty to indecently assaulting the boy nine times between 1981 and 1983 During cross-examination on Thursday, Curran denied ever abusing the boy or sleeping naked with him but admitted they often shared a bed. The magistrate said paying for an extra room on holidays was a 'needless expense' and that he 'didn't have any money to throw away'. 'It was part of the reason I could afford to take him (on holidays),' he said. Curran denied grooming the boy with overseas holidays, a new car for his parents and giving him more than $34,000 when he was an adult. 'I had some money and they had a big need,' he said of the decision to buy the family a brand-new car. 'I had no one that I could bestow generosity on that needed it.' Prosecutor Mark Hobart SC suggested Curran told the young boy about the sexual relationships between adult men and pre-pubescent boys in Ancient Greece. 'It was a way of explaining away your behaviour towards him,' Mr Hobart said. Curran denied telling the boy about the practice but said another family friend had 'talked about it openly in (the boy's) presence in a very exaggerated way'. The image shows Graeme Bryan Curran arriving at the Downing Centre in Syndey, in New South Wales Mr Hobart said Curran surrounded himself with young boys through volunteer work and that he had a 'sexual desire' towards the victim that he could not control. 'What I suggest to you, sir, is that you have many fine qualities but you have a weakness when it comes to your affection for boys,' he said. 'No,' Curran replied. His long-term neighbours Judith Simpson and her son Edward also testified for the defence, describing Curran as an 'eccentric relative that would come over for dinner' weekly. 'I would express a lot of love to him, he would express a lot of love to me,' 24-year-old Edward said, adding that he still hugs the magistrate. The trial continues before Acting Judge Anthony Rafter. The image shows Downing Centre Local and District Court in Sydney, in New South Wales A young man in a wizard's costume who was riding a bike through a suburban street in Queensland may be able to help police explain how a nearby grass fire started. Queensland Police were called to Kimridge Drive in Heritage Park in Brisbane's south just before 1pm on March 5 after they received reports of smoke in the area. When they arrived, officers discovered a grass fire on a vacant block, which was quickly extinguished with no major damage. A young man in a wizard's costume (pictured) who was riding a bike through a suburban street in Queensland may be able to help police explain how a nearby grass fire started Police believe a young man dressed in wizard's costume, who was spotted riding a bike near the scene may be able to help them with their inquiries. Authorities have released CCTV footage of the 'young wizard' on Facebook in the hope he will come forward or someone will be able to identify him. Crime Watch Logan shared the video, along with the caption: 'Inquiries with local muggles have been unsuccessful to solve this riddle, however police have ruled out any involvement of He Who Must (Not) Be Named.' While the mysterious wizard is not considered a suspect, police are eager to talk to him as they believe he may have witnessed the incident taking place. The magical man was in close proximity to a house fire on an adjacent block of land in August of last year, which completely destroyed the residence. Police have urged anyone with information about the fire or the identity of the man to come forward. Advisers to former Vice President Joe Biden want him to name failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams as his running mate on day one of his 2020 presidential bid, it was revealed on Thursday. They argue Abrams would bring diversity and youth to the ticket plus show Biden 'isn't just another old white guy,' Axios reported. But the move also has its down falls: it would be seen as a gimmick and would risk Biden having to explain why none of the other Democratic primary candidates qualify to be his number two. Advisers to former Vice President Joe Biden want him to name failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams as his running mate They argue Stacey Abrams, who is 31 years younger than Biden, would bring youth and diversity to the ticket Abrams, at 45, is 31 years younger than the 76-year-old Biden. But the choice of Abrams would fit the timeline she suggested she was following during an appearance earlier this month at the South by Southwest festival. 'In the spreadsheet with all the jobs I wanted to do, 2028 would be the earliest I would be ready to stand for President because I would have done the work I thought necessary to be effective in that job,' during her talk at the popular festival,' she said. She later tweeted that did not mean she was ruling out a 2020 presidential bid. But if she was the vice presidential candidate and Biden won in 2020, then won reelection, that would put her in a strong position to pursue the presidency in 2028. The Rev. Al Sharpton told Axios having Abrams on the ticket could help Biden by neutralizing questions about his treatment of Anita Hill during Justice Clarence Thomas' confirmation. During the contentious confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Biden came under fire for his treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1991 when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Hill had accused Thomas of making inappropriate sexual remarks when the two were colleagues. Biden was criticized for not shielding Hill from attacks by senators and for not calling witnesses who could have supported her. Biden and Abrams had lunch together in Washington DC last Thursday and it was Biden who requested the meeting, CNN reported. The two discussed many topics - including whether Abrams would run for Senate in Georgia next year - but the vice presidency was not mentioned, the network reported. Abrams became a national political star in her question to become the first African American female governor of Georgia Some of Biden's advisers argue Abrams' addition to the ticket could neutralize questions about his treatment of Anita Hill during the 1991 Clarence Thomas confirmation hearing (seen above) Stacey Abrams is also weighing a 2020 Senate bid in Georgia In the 2018 gubernatorial contest, she lost to Republican Brian Kemp by 1 percent of the vote - 55,000 votes - in a contentious race that saw star power flood Georgia for both candidates. Biden endorsed her but did not go to the state to campaign for her. Since her defeat, Abrams has established a voting rights foundation and delivered the Democratic response to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address last month. Abrams told the Associated Press she would announce her Senate plans in early April. Meanwhile Biden has told wealthy supporters he is running for president and asking for their help in lining up top donors so he can quickly raise millions of dollars to compete with other contenders, it was reported this week. The former vice president has hinted he would run in 2020 but has yet to make an official announcement. He is considering launching his formal exploratory committee around Easter, which means it would be after the March 30 first quarter fundraising deadline. JOE BIDEN AND THE 28 DEMOCRATS HE RAN AGAINST TO BECOME PARTY'S 2020 CANDIDATE JOE BIDEN Age on Inauguration Day 2021: 78 Entered race: April 25, 2019 Career: No current role. A University of Delaware and Syracuse Law graduate, he was first elected to Newcastle City Council in 1969, then won upset election to Senate in 1972, aged 29. Was talked out of quitting before being sworn in when his wife and daughter died in a car crash and served total of six terms. Chaired Judiciary Committee's notorious Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Ran for president in 1988, pulled out after plagiarism scandal, ran again in 2008, withdrew after placing fifth in the Iowa Caucuses. Tapped by Obama as his running mate and served two terms as vice president. Contemplated third run in 2016 but decided against it after his son died of brain cancer. Family: Eldest of four siblings born to Joe Biden Sr. and Catherine Finnegan. First wife Neilia Hunter and their one-year-old daughter Naomi died in car crash which their two sons, Joseph 'Beau' and Robert Hunter survived. Married Jill Jacobs in 1976, with whom he has daughter Ashley. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. Hunter's marriage to Kathleen Buhle, with whom he has three children, ended in 2016 when it emerged Hunter was in a relationship with Beau's widow Hallie, mother of their two children. Hunter admitted cocaine use; his estranged wife accused him of blowing their savings on drugs and prostitutes Religion: Catholic Views on key issues: Ultra-moderate who will emphasize bipartisan record. Will come under fire over record, having voted: to stop desegregation bussing in 1975; to overturn Roe v Wade in 1981; for now controversial 1994 Violent Crime Act; for 2003 Iraq War; and for banking deregulation. Says he is 'most progressive' Democrat. New positions include free college, tax reform, $15 minimum wage. No public position yet on Green New Deal and healthcare. Pro-gun control. Has already apologized to women who say he touched them inappropriately Would make history as: Oldest person elected president Slogan: Our Best Days Still Lie Ahead AND THE 28 WHO HAVE WITHDRAWN MICHAEL BENNET, Colorado senator Entered race: May 2, 2019 Quit: February 12, 2019, evening of New Hampshire primary MIKE BLOOMBERG Entered race: November 24, 2019 Quit: March 4, 2020, day after Super Tuesday primaries CORY BOOKER, New Jersey Senator Entered race: February 1, 2019 Quit: January 13, 2020 STEVE BULLOCK, Montana governor Entered race: May 14, 2019 Quit: December 2, 2019 PETE BUTTIGIEG, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana Entered race: January 23, 2019 Quit: March 1, 2020, day after South Carolina primary JULIAN CASTRO, former Housing Secretary Entered race: January 18, 2019 Quit: January 2, 2020 BILL DE BLASIO, New York City mayor Entered race: May 16, 2019 Quit: September 20, 2020 JOHN DELANEY, former Maryland Congressman Entered race: July 8, 2017 Quit: January 31, 2019 KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York senator Entered race: January 16, 2019 Quit: August 28, 2019 TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii congresswoman Entered race: January 11 2019 Quit: March 19, 2020 MIKE GRAVEL, Former Alaska governor Entered race: April 2,2019 Quit: August 2, 2019 KAMALA HARRIS,California senator Entered race: January 21, 2019 Quit: December 3, 2019 JOHN HICKENLOOPER, Former Colorado governor Entered race: March 4, 2019 Quit: August 15, 2019 JAY INSLEE, Washington governor Entered race: March 1, 2019 Quit: August 21, 2019 AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota senator Entered race: February 19, 2019 Quit: March 2, 2020 WAYNE MESSAM, mayor of Miramar, Florida Entered race: March 28, 2019 Quit: November 20, 2019 SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts congressman Entered race: April 22,2019 Quit: August 23, 2019 RICHARD OJEDA, former West Virginia state senator Entered race: November 12, 2018 Quit: January 25, 2019 BETO O'ROURKE, former Texas congressman Entered race: March 14, 2019 Quit: November 1, 2019 DEVAL PATRICK, former Massachusetts governor Entered race: November 13, 2019 Quit: February 13, 2019, morning after New Hampshire primary TIM RYAN, Ohio congressman Entered race: April 4, 2019 Quit: October 24, 2019 BERNIE SANDERS, Vermont senator Entered race: January 25, 2019 Quit: April 8, 2020 JOE SESTAK, former Pennsylvania congressman Entered race: June 23, 2019 Quit: December 1, 2019 TOM STEYER, billionaire activist Entered race: July 9, 2019 Quit: February 29, 2020 ERIC SWALWELL, California congressman Entered race: April 8, 2019 Quit: July 8, 2019 ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts senator Entered race: December 31, 2018 Quit: March 5, 2020, two days after Super Tuesday MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, author Entered race: November 15, 2018 Quit: January 10, 2020 ANDREW YANG, entrepreneur Entered race: November 6, 2018 Quit: February 12, 2019, evening of New Hampshire primary Advertisement Advertisement Pine Bluff, Arkansas has the dubious distinction of being the fast-shrinking city in America, according to a new report. Many Americans are moving out of smaller cities in favor of major metropolises that offer more job opportunities and greater economic growth. A new report identifies the 25 cities that are shrinking fastest because people are leaving more rapidly than they are moving in or being born. The analysis of U.S. Census data by 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the rate of change in population of 382 American cities from 2010-2017, finding that 25 metro areas had population declines of 3 percent 10 percent. Many Rust Belt cities made the list, including those in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. Scroll down for the full list This map illustrates America's 15 fastest-shrinking cities, according to U.S. Census data. It also reveals the percent of the population decline and the net change in population to due migration for each city A lack of good-paying jobs could be a factor for many of these cities all but one (Ocean City, New Jersey) had median incomes below the national median of $59,039. Pine Bluff topped the list, with a 9.1 percent decline in population during that period - with a net loss of 10,001 residents due to out-migration to other cities. The city had a population of 90,963 in 2017 (down from 100,093 seven years earlier) and a median household income of $37,076. Johnstown, Pennsylvania ranked second, with a 7.2 percent decline in population over seven years and a net loss of 7,070 residents due to out-migration. The citys median income was $44,100 in 2017. Charleston, West Virginia came in third the first of four cities in the state to make the list. The city had a 5.5 percent decrease in population from 2010-2017 and a net loss of 9,772 people due to out-migration. The city has a median income of $41,689. Sierra Vista, Arizona followed, with a 5.3 percent decline in population and a net loss of 9,495 residents due to out-migration. The citys median income was $45,508. Beckley, West Virginia ranked fifth, with a 5.1 percent decrease in population and a net loss of 4,503 residents due to out-migration during the seven-year period. The city has a median income of $44,178. Weirton, West Virginia followed, with a 4.9 percent decline and a net loss of 2,086 people due to out-migration. The citys median income is $44,733. In seventh place was Danville, Illinois, a city that saw its population decline 4.6 percent and experienced a net loss of 4,417 people due to out-migration. Its median income was $45,481. Wheeling, West Virginia followed, with a 4.5 percent decline in population and a net loss of 3,761 people from migration. The city has a median income of $44,131. Decatur, Illinois ranked ninth on the list, tying Wheeling with a 4.5 percent population decline, though it saw a greater 6,090 net loss in population due to out-migration. The city has a median income of $46,198. Rounding out the top 10 is Cumberland, Maryland. The city had a 4.2 percent decline in population over seven years and a net loss of 2,556 people due to out-migration. The city had a median income of $45,808. The 25 fastest-shrinking cities in America A mother-of-three from Chicago and her boyfriend have been charged in the child abuse death of the womans two-year-old son, who was discovered with sores and bruises on his body. Police responded just before 7pm on Monday to an EMS call at a South Side home located in the 6000 block of South Prairie Avenue, and found Ja'hir Gibbons unresponsive and with visible injuries on his face and body. The toddler was rushed to Comer Children's Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. Dejon Waters, 21 (left), and Brittany Hyc, 28 (right), have been charged in the suspected child abuse death of the woman's two-year-old son Ja'hir Gibbons died Monday after he was found not breathing and covered in bruises and sores at his mother's home in Chicago The medical examiners office concluded that Ja'hir died of multiple injuries caused by child abuse and ruled his death a homicide. Police announced Thursday that 21-year-old Dejon Waters, who was babysitting, has been charged with first-degree murder, while Ja'hir's biological mother, 28-year-old Brittany Hyc, has been charged with felony child endangerment for leaving the boy with Waters. Police say Hyc's five-year-old son found in the home at the time of the incident was also hospitalized for injuries. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services released a statement saying that it has been involved with Hyc's family since 2010 in connection to allegations of abuse and neglect concerning her two older children, a son and daughter. DCFS opened a case in October 2018 investigating claims of abuse involving Hyc and Ja'hir, reported WGN. Ja'hir was found unresponsive inside his family's home on the South Side of Chicago Hyc is accused of leaving her son in Waters' care despite the fact he had abused him before Case workers contracted by DCFS last visited Hyc's home on Saturday, just two days before Ja'hir's death, and reported back that the woman's children were safe, reported ABC 7 Chicago. DCFS said it is now in the process of putting together a complete timeline documenting the agencys interactions with Hyc and her family over the years. Police said on Monday, Hyc had left her boyfriend, Dejon Waters, in charge of her two sons before heading to work. When she returned that evening, she found Ja'hir lying on the floor but initially thought he was just taking a nap. She later became concerned that something was wrong with her son and ran to neighbors for help. Hyc has been receiving treatment stemming from an October 2018 child abuse complaint concerning her and Ja'hir When officers arrived on the scene, they found a neighbor performing CPR on Ja'hir while the boy's mother stood off to the side next to her older son, who was covered in bruises. One of the responding officers took over the life-saving measures and noticed bruises on the toddler's stomach and chest, and sores on his face. Jahir was pronounced dead at the hospital less than an hour later. Police said Waters was arrested and admitted to physically abusing Ja'hir the day he died, reported Chicago Tribune. Investigators said Hyc was criminally charged for allowing her boyfriend to babysit her son, even though he had abused him in the past. Hyc's surviving five-year-old son is currently in DCFS's custody. Her daughters whereabouts are unknown. The sentencing of Alesha MacPhail's killer Aaron Campbell was broadcast live online today in what was believed to have been the first case of its kind in the UK. Judge Lord Matthews's sentencing remarks were shown live on the BBC News and Sky News TV stations and websites from Glasgow High Court this morning. Previous sentencings in Scotland shown live include that of Alexander Pacteau, who murdered student Karen Buckley. Sky News were permitted to broadcast his 23-year jail sentence live from the courtroom in 2015. But today is thought to have been the first time a sentencing has been live streamed. Courts across the country do not normally allow cameras inside. Aaron Campbell (left) was sentenced over the death of six-year-old Alesha MacPhail (right) It is believed that the BBC applied for permission to broadcast the remarks live from court. Once this was granted, STV and Sky were then also allowed to use the feed. However, in 2017 a pilot run involving the BBC, ITN, Sky News and the Press Association saw them film sentencing remarks by judges at UK crown courts. This was done on condition the footage was never used, and it was then submitted to the Ministry of Justice and the judiciary for further consideration. Alesha's mother Georgina Lochrane, 23, leaves Glasgow High Court with police today But selected cases at the Court of Appeal's Civil Division in London have been live-streamed on the English and Welsh judiciary's YouTube channel for four months. Judicial officials say that the online streaming, which began on November 15 last year, is 'to improve public access to, and understanding of, the work of the courts'. Speaking last August, senior ITN executive John Battle told the Guardian: 'There will be protocols and safeguards in place to protect witnesses but it is inevitable there will be more filming in the courts in time to come. 'We have now filmed in quite a number of courts and there's not really been any negatives. We've shown that proceedings are not disruptive and people aren't put off from coming to court.' Alesha was reported missing by relatives then found dead in woods two and a half hours later Today, Lord Matthews sentenced Campbell to life imprisonment and ordered him to spend at least 27 years behind bars before he can apply for parole. But he warned he may never be released, with reports having 'painted a clear picture of a cold, callous, calculating, remorseless and dangerous individual'. The judge said Campbell had shown a 'staggering lack of remorse' and told the teenager: 'Not once did I detect a flicker of emotion from you'. Campbell was convicted at Glasgow High Court on February 21 when a jury found him guilty unanimously after a nine-day trial over her death on July 2 last year. A spokesperson for the Judicial Office for Scotland said: 'The BBC applied to live-stream the sentencing hearing in the case of Aaron Campbell, in accordance with the provisions of the recently introduced Protocol on Recording and Broadcasting of Proceedings in the High Court of Justiciary, and the Court considered that the application should be granted given the substantial level of public interest in the case.' At least 71 people have died in a ferry disaster in Iraq after the vessel sank in the Tigris during Kurdish new year celebrations. The overloaded ferry went down near the city of Mosul on Thursday as scores of people were out in a tourist area celebrating Nowruz, an ancient Persian festival. The death toll could yet rise as search operations continue, with many women and children said to be among the dead. Col. Hussam Khalil, head of civil defence in the northern Nineveh province, said more than 80 people were on the ferry when it sank. Scene of the accident: The Tigris river in Mosul where a ferry carrying more than 80 people sank during Kurdish new year celebrations He said the ferry sank because of a technical problem and that there were not many boats in the area to rescue drowning revellers. Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Saad Maan said 71 people had died, adding that 55 have been rescued, including 19 children. Earlier, a health ministry official said the dead included 33 women, 12 children and 10 men. Another civil defence official said 12 people had been rescued from the ferry as it sank into the Tigris river. The accident appeared to have happened against a backdrop of fairground rides including a ferris wheel and small roller-coaster. The river's level was high because of a rainy season that brought more precipitation than previous years. Two people swim across the river in a bid to rescue people from the ferry while a group of women watch on from the shore Iraqi forces drove ISIS jihadists from Mosul in 2017 after a devastating campaign that left entire neighbourhoods in ruins. ISIS extremists were said to have carried out forced displacement, summary killings and the use of human shields in the Iraqi city. Also known as the Persian new year, the Nowruz festival, which falls today, marks the arrival of spring. The holiday dates back to at least 1700 BC and incorporates ancient Zoroastrian traditions. It is the most important event in the Iranian calendar and is widely celebrated across the territories of the old Persian empire, from the Mideast to Central Asia. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calculated to force universities to choose between restrictive on-campus speech codes and an annual gush of federal dollars. 'If a college or university doesn't allow you to speak, we will not give them money, it's very simple,' he announced in an East Room signing event, with conservative leaders and student activists gathered. The Republican president said students in the room 'faced down intimidation, pressure and abuse' on their campuses. 'You did it because you love your country and you believe in truth, justice and freedom,' he stated. 'You fought bravely for your rights, and now you also have a president who is fighting for you. I'm with you all the way,' he told them to applause. He further directed his Department of Education to look 'very seriously' at student debt that has surpassed $1.5 trillion collectively. 'With today's action and every action to come, the Trump administration will fight for American students,' he said. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calculated to force universities to choose between restrictive on-campus speech codes and an annual gush of federal dollars Trump also instructed his Department of Education to look 'very seriously' at student loan debt that has surpassed $1.5 trillion collectively The Republican president said students in the room 'faced down intimidation, pressure and abuse' on their campuses Trump said his administration will be holding meetings and 'very major discussions' with some of the biggest colleges and universities about a proposal to have them shoulder more of the financial burden of student loans. His administration is also looking at ways to distribute information to students outcomes they can expect based on their field of study. 'They borrow more money than they can ever expect to pay off,' he said. The billionaire president and former real estate developer said he knows a thing or two about loans. 'I've always been good with loans. I love loans. I love other peoples' money,' he said to laughter. A fact sheet on the executive order says the Department of Education is upgrading ts mobile application and College Scorecard to provide more transparency on the financial risks of student loans. The order he signed Thursday also aims to cut down on the 'indoctrination, censorship and coercion' he says is taking place on college campuses. 'We're here to take historic action to defend American students and American values they have been under siege,' he said as he opened the event. 'Just the thought of it sounds good.' The White House's approach runs counter to what Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said at a September 17, 2018 Constitution Day event. She said the government shouldn't intervene. DeVos is seen here at Trump's signing event with Liberty University President Jerry Falwell University of Nebraska student Kaitlyn Mullen shakes the president's hand. Teachers at her university protested while she recruited students to join her Turning Point USA chapter Polly Olson holds up a heart that says 'Jesus Loves You' in the East Room. Olson said that while attending Northeast Wisconsin Technical College the college had limited her from handing out Valentine's Day cards with religious messaging on campus White House officials said Thursday morning that the president will withhold federal research grants from colleges that don't certify that they have formal policies supporting the First Amendment rights of students. It's exactly the approach his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, warned against in September. Conservative activists claiming a double standard exists for groups pushing a non-traditional message on liberal college campuses said federal action to protect free speech is overdue. They acknowledged they had not seen the full text of the order the White House was expected to release in Thursday afternoon. Nonetheless, Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk told DailyMail.com, 'The idea that a president is definitively standing up and saying that there's a crisis of free speech on our campuses is a massive win and of itself.' Kirk's group sponsors organizations built on the conservative principles of free markets and limited government on college campuses across the United States. Organized campus protests like this one at the University of Utah against conservative writer Ben Shapiro in 2017 have led to the cancellation of speeches and few university administrators have stepped in to guarantee the free flow of ideas The clash of liberal university protesters intent on speaking their mind and conservative targets who are prevented from following suit has long been a pet peeve on the right Conservatives say free speech is being stifled Hayden Williams, a field representative paid by the Leadership Institute, became the poster child for free speech activism on college campuses when a student punched him in the face at U.C. Berkeley. He had been invited to the campus by Turning Point USA, a national group that promotes conservative principles on college campuses. President Trump brought him on stage for recognition at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March. Turning Point and LI, the parent organization of Campus Reform, have said for many years that conservative speech is being stifled at public colleges and universities. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point, says he and his colleague Candace Owens were barred from speaking at DePaul and Cornell. Conservatives have a long history of strife at Berkeley, where members of the College Republicans have reportedly had their property vandalized and a visit by former Breitbart News writer Milo Yiannopoulos provoked violence. Police called off his February 2017 speech at the last minute amid rioting on campus that resulted in $100,000 worth of damage. A former professor was also arrested in the town of Berkeley on charges of assault after alleged attacks on Trump supporters with a metal bike lock. Advertisement A field representative paid by the Leadership Institute, another group known for conservative activism on campus that has been at the forefront of the free speech movement, was handing out literature for a Turning Point affiliate at U.C. Berkeley in February when a student cursed at the recruiter and punched him in the face. The incident prompted the president to announce at a conservative conference that he was working on an executive order to protect the right to free speech and assembly at public colleges and universities. Representatives LI's Campus Reform project and Turning Point were invited to attend the White House event on Thursday. Campus Reform media director Cabot Phillips told DailyMail.com in a call on the way to the White House that Trump's order is the 'first step of hopefully many steps in holding universities accountable and making sure they know if they're not performing the task of serving as a marketplace of ideas' and promoting debate, they could lose out on taxpayer dollars. 'If a federally funded college is not protecting the First Amendment of the Constitution, then I think it's reasonable that they should lose federal funding,' he said. Phillips and Kirk each contended that excitement about the president's order ought to be bipartisan. 'I think the left should be supporting this, too. I support all viewpoints being heard on campus,' said Kirk in advance of the White House event. 'It's not just a conservative win ... this is a substantive policy win for all students of any view point.' A field representative paid by the Leadership Institute, another group known for conservative activism on campus that has been at the forefront of the free speech movement, was handing out literature for a Turning Point affiliate at U.C. Berkeley in February when a student was caught on camera cursing at the recruiter and punching him in the face Kirk and colleague Candace Owens, the driving force behind the 'Blexit' movement that calls on African-Americans to leave the Democratic Party, were barred from speaking at DePaul and Cornell, he said, because their values did not align with the private universities' free speech codes. 'I know first hand how important this measure is to hold these colleges accountable, so they can not arbitrarily disbar or not allow speakers to come to campus based on view point,' the activist and author said. University of Nebraska student Kaitlyn Mullen faced backlash on campus from teachers protesting as she recruited students to join her Turning Point USA chapter. She thanked the president for intervening in remarks on Thursday in the East Room. Another student, Polly Olson, says her college prohibited her from handing out valentines that said 'Jesus Loves You' at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, because they bore a religious message. Once Trump's executive order goes into effect, even the private schools will have to come to heel or they could have their grant money limited. Trump's order will not jeopardize universities' access to federal grant and loan dollars that help students pay tuition. But it closes the loop on Trump's longstanding complaint that colleges can limit constitutional freedoms with impunity inside the borders of their campuses. The White House said in a Thursday afternoon statement: 'The order instructs Federal agencies to ensure public and private institutions of higher education are upholding the First Amendment or their stated policies on free speech. Free inquiry and free speech are essential features of our Nation's democracy. 'This order is part of the Trump Administration's administrative and legislative efforts to support a focus on student outcomes and improve transparency, accountability, and affordability in postsecondary education.' The president son, Don Jr., promoted his father's order in a tweet crediting Turning Point for its work on college campuses A White House official said Thursday morning that the president takes issue with 'limited approaches to diversity on campuses' that focus on race and gender at the expense of 'ideological diversity and differences of opinion.' The official said the final executive order will not include obvious policy triggers or easily measurable minimum standards, making it more of a shot across the bow than a tactical torpedo. Under the terms of the new executive order, a senior White House official said during a conference call with reporters, public universities that want to qualify for federal research dollars will be required to certify that they are not restricting First Amendment freedoms. Private institutions of higher learning will only have to guarantee that they are complying with their own 'intended' institutional policies about freedom of speech, the official said. 'Schools are already supposed to be following these rules,' the official added, saying federal regulators routinely require grant recipients to certify compliance with a long list of prerequisites, and 'they will just add free speech as one of those conditions.' The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education said in a statement Thursday that 'campus censorship is a real and continuing problem,' but cautioned that Trump's order appears not to specify 'how or by what standard federal agencies will ensure compliance, the order's most consequential component.' 'To the extent that today's executive order asks colleges and universities to meet their existing legal obligations, it should be uncontroversial,' the group said. However watered-down the White House's approach, it runs counter to what DeVos said at a September 17, 2018 Constitution Day event when she railed against campus administrators who allow student protesters to shout down some invited speakers and pre-emptively cancel events before others arrive. 'The way to remedy this threat to intellectual freedom on campuses is not accomplished with government muscle,' DeVos said in Philadelphia. President Trump shared the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month with Hayden Williams, a field representative of the conservative Leadership Institute who was physically assaulted for distributing literature at UC Berkeley A pro-Trump protester held a sign reading 'STOP LIBERAL INTOLERANCE' at U.C. Berkeley on September 24, 2017 as hundreds of people protested and some rioted to prevent a speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who was on campus for a 'free speech rally' 'A solution won't come from defunding an institution of learning or merely getting the words of a campus policy exactly right. Solutions won't come from new laws from Washington, D.C., or from a speech police at the U.S. Department of Education.' Instead, she said, higher education should take its cue from University of Chicago Dean of Students John Ellison, who warned students in 2016 that he would buck what has become a national trend. 'Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called 'trigger warnings,' we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual 'safe spaces' where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own,' Ellison wrote to the incoming class of 2020. DeVos also said in 2017 that state legislators should take the lead on protecting First Amendment rights since they have more immediately financial relationships with most schools. 'You have the power of the purse,' she told state lawmakers at a American Legislative Exchange Council conference, 'and I wouldn't hope to suggest how you might approach that, but I think that really bringing some of the most egregious examples to the forefront.' Trump, who revels in poking sharpened rhetorical sticks at 'political correctness,' raised the issue loudly during a two-hour-long speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on March 2. He highlighted the aggravated assault case against a man who was caught on video punching a conservative recruiter in the face on February 19 because he disagred with his politics. The instantly viral assault footage, shot at the University of California, Berkeley, crystallized Republicans' longstanding complaints about broadly liberal university faculties and deans who protect one-sided political environments in classrooms. Hayden Williams, the victim, spoke briefly from Trump's podium with his black eye still visible 11 days later. 'If these socialist progressives had their way, they would put our Constitution through the paper shredder in a heartbeat,' Williams declared. Berkeley and other potentially targeted schools have said they already have policies protecting free speech, but Trump announced at the CPAC event that universities would soon have a new litmus test to pass. 'If they want our dollars, and we give it to them by the billions, they've got to allow people like Hayden and many other great young people, and old people, to speak,' he said. 'And if they don't, it will be very costly.' Berkeley was in the news less than two weeks after he took office when a violent riot caused the cancellation of a planned speech by far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. 'If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?' the president tweeted then. Tacked on to Thursday's executive order is a provision requiring colleges and universities to give the federal government a set of performance metrics for graduates of specific programs. Those include grads' average earnings, their average student loan debt, their rates of loan default and information about how quickly their debts are repaid. The Department of Education plans to publish the information as part of its annual College Scorecard. A baby has defied the odds to survive despite being born weighing less than half a regular bag of sugar. The boy in north-western China was delivered via a Caesarean section at 25 weeks and weighed just 490 grams (1lb 1oz). His condition was critical, his skin was semi-transparent like jelly and his tiny body could fit into a doctor's hands, according to Gaoxin Hospital in the city of Xi'an. Palm-size: At birth, the Chinese baby was so tiny his body could fit into a doctor's hands Growing strong: After spending three months in the hospital, the boy's condition has stablised The baby was born at 25 weeks after his mother had unexpected bleeding in her placenta Initially, doctors feared that the baby wouldn't survive. But in the next three months to follow, he overcame one obstacle after another and has now largely recovered from neonatal complications, according to a hospital statement on its official social media account. The hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit celebrated the boy's miraculous survival at a special ceremony on Sunday after he turned 100 days old. Doctors celebrated the boy's miraculous survival on Sunday after he turned 100 days old The boy has been given a dear nickname, 'little soya bean', due to his incredibly small size Doctors have given him a dear nickname, 'little soya bean', as their best wishes to the child, who was born with a minute size but has stayed strong since. According to the hospital, the baby was born on December 5 prematurely after his mother suffered from unexpected bleeding in her placenta. He had only spent 25 weeks and six days in his mother's womb. The baby beat various risks, including an intracranial haemorrhage and serious infections His weight has increased to 2,480 grams (5lb 7oz) and he will carry on stay in hospital The newborn had severely under-developed lungs and experienced serious breathing problems. His digestive system was also under-developed and he suffered from a series of birth complications. Despite the poor physical condition, the baby appeared energetic, doctors said. He was put into an incubator and immediately transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where a special team was formed to give him around-the-clock care. The baby faced various challenges during the three-month intensive care, including the risks of an intracranial haemorrhage and infections. He was able to breathe freely after 40 days and is now able to suck milk by himself. His weight has increased to 2,480 grams (5lb 7oz). The baby will carry on stay in hospital for observation. The world's smallest surviving baby boy (pictured) ever was born via an emergency C-section in Keio University Hospital in Tokyo in August weighing just 0.59lbs (268g) He was treated at a neonatal intensive care unit, which helped get his weight up to 7.14lb Last August, the world's smallest surviving baby boy was born in Japan at 24 weeks, weighing just 268g (0.59lb). He weighed less than a block of butter and the same as an onion. The child was allowed to go home last month after a lengthy hospital stay. The world's smallest baby girl so far is from Germany. She was born at 25 weeks in 2015, weighing 0.56lbs (252g). According to the University of Iowa's Tiniest Babies register, only 23 babies have survived after being born prematurely weighing less than 300g (0.66lb). Among them, four are boys. The teenage daughter of Loose Women star Lisa Maxwell has revealed she made 300,000 helping Chinese parents pick an English name for their children and says that she intends to use the money to pay her university fees. Beau Jessup, 19, from Edge, Gloucestershire has named more than 677,000 babies so far and also plans to invest in property. She studies social anthropology at the London School of Economics. Since setting up her company at 16, it has gone from strength to strength and she even gave a TEDx talk about the business. Beau Jessup, 19, from Edge, Gloucestershire, set up the company three years ago and has named more than 677,000 Chinese babies The daughter of actress Lisa Maxwell (pictured together in 2011 and with Lisa's husband Paul Jessup right in 2012), the teenager will use the money she made to invest in property and pay her university fees She jokingly told News.AU: 'My parents are really proud but probably because they don't have to pay for my uni fees.' Beau set up SpecialName.cn after spending time in China and travelling with her father. One of his business associates, a Mrs Wang, asked for help in naming her three-year-old daughter and when Beau suggested Eliza, after Eliza Doolittle, the woman was delighted. All Chinese babies are given a traditional Chinese name at birth, which is written in Chinese characters and used for all government documents. Beau set up SpecialName.cn after spending time in China and travelling with her father Actress Lisa Maxwell (pictured centre-left) is a regular panellist on ITV's daytime show Loose Women But there has been a growing demand in the last 20 years to adopt an additional English name that can be read, pronounced and printed in English. Beau says she was dismayed at some of the names she heard, like Popcorn and Gandalf. The most popular names chosen on Beau's website Speaking to News.AU, Beau previously revealed the most popular girls and boys names. Royal family names proved popular with Chinese families, with Katherine, Mary, Elizabath and Charlotte topping the list. Meanwhile, the most used English-style names for boys were William, Matthew and Jake. Advertisement The former Cheltenham Ladies College pupil said at the time: 'When I went to China I kept being asked to name babies for my parents' friends. 'They explained an English name is vital because you can't use a Chinese name on email or a university application to the UK. Your English name stays with you for life. 'But I also heard lots of examples where people had chosen culturally inappropriate English names they'd heard from films or read online. 'It made me realise there was an opportunity to help Chinese people get it right from the start.' To solve the problem Beau developed Specialname to suggest culturally appropriate English names to prospective parents based on their ideals and aspirations for their child. It reflects the Chinese tradition for creating unique names for their children. The website invites parents to select from a list of 12 personality traits including sensitive, honest and confident, to best describe their aspirations for their baby. Beau says she was dismayed at some of the names she heard, like Popcorn and Gandalf One of her father's business associates, a Mrs Wang, asked for help in naming her three-year-old daughter and when Beau suggested Eliza, after Eliza Doolittle, the woman was delighted The site then analyses the choices and suggests a shortlist of three culturally-appropriate names. The shortlist is presented along with their meaning and a famous namesake such as Grace Kelly or Catherine Middleton. The site then shares the shortlist of suggested names with friends and family via messaging giant We-Chat - China's equivalent to WhatsApp with more than 600million users - inviting help in making the final choice. The naming service costs the equivalent of 60p for three names and takes just over three minutes from start to finish. And so far the website has made 309,557.40 from the babies named, CNBC Make It reported. Lisa Maxwell and partner Paul Jessup with their then six-year-old daughter, Beau, at home in London in 2006 After making their choice, users are sent a naming certificate to keep. Parents are also encouraged to post their baby's picture on the website. Beau previously explained how she is proud to play a part in so many happy occasions. She added: 'There are babies being born every day and they all need a Special Name. I like the idea of providing a service that enhances such a happy occasion. 'I have a target to reach which will allow me to pay for my university fees and writing the text for the site was really good practice for my Mandarin GCSE. 'I spend two hours a day talking to my customers asking how I can make the service better and about an hour making improvements. 'Since parents love sharing photos of their babies, I have recently added a gallery, so I'm gradually building a SpecialName community.' A retired school head, who was awarded an MBE in the Queen's birthday honours, has been jailed after he was caught by paedophile hunters. David Watkin Bundock, who was recognised by the Queen for services to education in 2004, has been sentenced to 27 months in prison. The 74 year old, from Cardiff, plead guilty to a string of child sex offences including four charges of possessing indecent pictures of children and grooming, in Swansea Crown Court on Thursday. He was also caught in a sting after exchanging lurid messages on Grindr with an account purportedly belonging to a 15 year old boy. Retired school head David Watkin Bundock, who was awarded an MBE in the Queen's birthday honours, has been sentenced to 27 months prison after he was caught by paedophile hunters for trying to meet with a 15 year old boy on mobile phone app Grindr The retired head - who worked at several schools during a career spanning more than 40 years - wrote in one message: 'I used to be a school teacher, it would have been nice to have you in my class.' The court heard he had been using the mobile phone application Grindr where he started engaging with an account set up by the Paedophile Hunters Balance Group. The account purported to be a 15 year old boy but was actually run by group member Paul Price. The conversation involved graphic sexual references and Bundock attempted to arrange a meeting at his flat in Cardiff Bay despite repeatedly being told he was engaging with a 15 year old child. A meeting was arranged at a car park on February 5 this year and when he arrived group members approached his car and said: 'You're David aren't you? You're in a bit of trouble mate.' The court heard Bundock said 'I'm not staying here' and tried to drive off with Mr Price still hanging onto the side of the car. Police later visited his home where they found an overnight bag in the kitchen which contained lubricant and seven condoms. He was taken ill on the way to the police station and a defibrillator was required. Bundock later agreed he had been talking to what he thought was a young boy, claiming he thought he was 17, about life in general but admitted there had been talk of a sexual nature, including about oral sex and masturbation. The court heard he had been using the mobile phone application Grindr where he started engaging with an account set up by the Paedophile Hunters Balance Group. The account purported to be a 15 year old boy but was actually run by group member Paul Price The court heard Bundock had been found with 18 indecent images in separate unrelated WhatsApp conversations. He had also been using the Kik messenger application, under the alias SUN1919, where he spoke to someone he was told was '14 legit' and where he graphically described his fantasies. Julia Cox, defending, said it was a 'fall from grace' for the former head teacher. She said: 'These offences are completely out of character. It is an ongoing struggle to fully appreciate the reasons for why it is Mr Bundock has come to be in this situation and acted in the way that he did. 'The whole situation has had a significant detrimental effect on him.' Judge Keith Thomas said Bundock had gone against the 'moral values he had previously espoused'. In addition to the 27 month jail sentence, Bundock was issued with a sexual offences prevention order, and a destruction order made for two Apple iPhones. Bundock was head teacher at Llandysul Primary School when he received the MBE for services to education in 2004. Bundock was head teacher at Llandysul Primary School when he received the MBE for services to education in 2004. His teaching career spans 40 decades He was also head teacher at a number of other primary schools in Ceredigion including Aberbanc School, Pontsian School, and Capel Dewi School. His offences are not related to his time as a head teacher and were committed between October 2017 and February this year. After the hearing, an NSPCC Cymru/Wales spokesman said: 'As a former head teacher Bundock held positions of great responsibility over children and would have been aware of the importance of safeguarding. 'He would also have been aware that the children in the indecent images he downloaded were real and suffered horrific abuse for them to be made - it is not a victimless crime.' Speaking in 2004 after recieving his MBE, Bundock said: 'I have been extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity of teaching in a number of Ceredigion schools and working with a large group of dedicated people - the pupils, staff, governors and officers of the local authority.' 'This reward will remind me, when I retire next year, of the immense pleasure and satisfaction I have had of being part of the education system in Ceredigion.' Two MS-13 gang members, who allegedly shot dead a journalist who was highly critical of the government, have been arrested, the Honduran National Police have announced. Gabriel Hernandez, 54, was about to board a bus Sunday afternoon when the two men pulled up on a motorcycle and shot him in the city of Nacaome, in southern Honduras. Hernandez, a television station program director, was transported to a local hospital where he later died. Hernandez had previously criticized President Juan Orlando Hernandez's regime and local government officials in the Valle department on his show 'El Pueblo Habla' ['The People Speak'] for independent channel Valle TV. The veteran journalist, who was also a correspondent for Radio Globo, had reported several death threats which had been sent to him. But he turned down the National Commission of Human Rights's proposal to issue him police protection because he thought the cops would try to kill him themselves. Honduran journalist Gabriel Hernandez was murdered Sunday as he was about to board a bus in southern Honduras. Police arrested two MS-13 members who they suspect killed the television program director Police arrested Anderson Emmanuel Baquedano Avila and Leonel Natan Lopez Amador The victim had requested help from a national agency in charge of protecting members of the press but the petition was denied, according to Honduran media outlet La Prensa. Local police announced that they had arrested gang members Anderson Emmanuel Baquedano Avila, 24, and Leonel Natan Lopez Amador, 22, during a home raid on Tuesday night. The law enforcement agents said they confiscated two 9mm handguns and a Genesis dirt bike that the duo allegedly used in the shooting. Cops recovered two 9mm guns that were reportedly used in the deadly assault A Genesis dirt bike was confiscated by police officers during Tuesday night's raid that led to the arrest of two MS-13 gang members Gabriel Hernandez was just leaving a local university where he was attending class moments before gunmen fired at him multiple times at 12:10pm local time. Cell phone images showed Hernandez lying unconscious on the flatbed of a pickup truck as an unidentified male tried to take his pulse. An unidentified male is spotted trying to take's Gabriel Hernandez's pulse while he was being transported to a local hospital The Committee for Free Expression [C-Libre] have demanded an official inquiry into Hernandez's death. 'The murder of journalists constitutes the most extreme form of censorship,' C-Libre said in a statement. 'This action not only infringes in a particularly drastic way the freedom of thought and expression of the affected person, but also affects the collective dimension of these rights.' Since 2001, 77 journalists have been murdered in Honduras and 92 percent have gone unsolved due to a 'lack of investigation', El Heraldo reported. Xavier Uziel Perez, 38, was arrested on Wednesday in Scottsdale, Arizona A healthcare worker in Arizona has been accused of sexually assaulting a female patient while she was under sedation. Xavier Uziel Perez, 38, was arrested on Wednesday in Scottsdale, where he is charged in the alleged assault on a patient at Integrated Pain Consultants in June 2018. A 48-year-old patient told police that she was emerging from sedation in the recovery room after a back pain treatment when she became aware that she was being assaulted. 'She realized that something wasn't right, that she was being sexually assaulted. Obviously when you're coming out of sedation you're foggy so we were trying to put that together but she just knew something wasn't right,' said Scottsdale Police Officer Kevin Watts, according to AZFamily.com. The investigation lasted several months, and police say it was ultimately DNA evidence that led to Perez's arrest. The alleged assault occurred on June 25, 2018 at Integrated Pain Consultants (above) 'We're happy that we were able to bring it to this conclusion today, it was a timely process but hopefully the victim will get some justice,' said Officer Watts. Until his arrest, Perez remained employed at the pain clinic, where he worked as a transporter who helped move patients. A spokeswoman with Integrated Pain Consultants said that Perez remained employed there because the initial police investigation found no evidence of assault. 'At that time, an investigation had taken place by Scottsdale authorities and video surveillance had been reviewed in detail. Scottsdale police found no evidence of assault, which led the executive team to make the decision Xavier Perez would remain employed,' she told AZFamily. Police say that Perez admitted to the assault in an interview after his arrest, but insisted that it was the only time he had abused a patient. Perez is being held in custody. It was unclear whether he had a lawyer to comment on his behalf. It comes months after a long-term incapacitated patient in nearby Phoenix gave birth after being raped. Nathan Sutherland, 36 was charged in that case. He has pleaded not guilty. This is the incredible moment a selfless hero jumps into a freezing cold American river to rescue a small puppy. A crowd has gathered on a bridge around a woman who pleading for someone to rescue the tiny black dog trapped in the icy water below. Footage shot by onlooker Anne Graceffa shows the daring rescue attempt by a brave coastguard officer who can be seen swimming towards the stranded animal on the Milwaukee River. As the rescue worker pushes through mounds of floating debris and ice, the puppy visibly gets more tired and appears to be in danger of going under. It is not known how the dog got into the river, as the banks of the Milwaukee are extremely steep. But as the coastguard nears the distressed dog, two large blocks of ice come together and force the dog's head underneath. Bring in the coastguard: A crowd gathers above as a man attempts to rescue the small dog The crowd can be heard screaming, terrified that the animal has been lost so close to be being rescued. With time of the essence, the man throws himself onto the ice and frantically searches in the dirty water. Seconds later he lifts up a small black blob from the depths. The crowd cheer as they realize that he has rescued the dog alive, although clearly weakened from the ordeal. The crowd above can be heard screaming as the animal is forced underneath by two colliding sheets of ice. As time runs out the coastguard finally find the small dog and pulls it to safety, much to the crowd's delight The crowd cheer as they realize that he has rescued the dog alive, although clearly weakened from the ordeal. Content with the successful rescue operation, the coastguard catches his breath on the ice block before bringing the dog to land. Beckie Josephitis, who was watching the rescue, then films the moment that the little dog is swaddled in blankets by an officer from Milwaukee Police. Beckie Josephitis, who was watching the rescue, then films the moment that the little dog is swaddled in blankets by an officer from Milwaukee Police. 'You okay little guy? Oh look at him shake,' she says sympathetically You okay little guy? Oh look at him shake,' she says sympathetically in a video which she shared on Facebook. Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control Commission (MADACC) later said that the dog did have a microchip and was later picked by its owner. The Milwaukee River, which runs through the eponymous city in Wisconsin state, can prove extremely treacherous in winter, with temperatures not lifting above 4 C for months. Billionaire philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, seen here in an August 11, 2010 picture, has been accused of sexual harassment by women who sought him out for donations to their organizations A prominent New York philanthropist who is considered a titan in the Jewish community has been accused of sexual harassment by six different women. Michael Steinhardt, 78, has been accused of asking women for sex, making inappropriate remarks about their bodies and fertility and offering them millions of dollars to let him set them up with other men in a series of scathing interviews published by The New York Times on Thursday. Steinhardt, who is married with adult children, allegedly asked some women for threesomes and repeatedly asked them to sleep with him while they were courting him for donations. He is also accused of berating the women if they were unmarried and suggesting that a young rabbi become his live-in mistress when she was 27 and he was in his fifties. The billionaire, who made his fortune through hedge funds in the 1960s, has an 'obsession' with matchmaking in the Jewish community, friends say, and has given millions of dollars to Jewish nonprofits over the last several decades. According to insiders, he is known to push single Jews into 'kissing, dating or marrying'. He also pushes Jewish women into having children by offering them money or the use of a Caribbean home for them to conceive children in. All of the women who have shared stories about him either came into contact with him through work or when trying to get a donation from him. They say they felt they had to tolerate his behavior or risk losing their careers. Sheila Katz, the vice president of Hillel International, a campus organization for Jewish college students says he asked her to have sex with him and called himself the 'king of Israel'. She had gone to his Manhattan office in 2015 to film an interview for a campaign when he started making inappropriate remarks. Sheila Katz, 35, (left) says Steinhardt asked her to have sex with him in 2015 then berated her for not being married and refused to fund any of her projects until she wed and had a baby. Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi (right) said Steinhardt asked her in 1995, when she was 27 and he was sponsoring her first rabbinical position, to become his live-in mistress Katz said that after asking her to have sex with him, he brought in two male employees and told her he would give her $1million to marry one of them. He added that it was an 'abomination' that she was not married and said he would not fund any of her projects until she was married with a baby. She complained about him to her boss at Hillel and was promised she would not have to see him again. The foundation continued accepting donations from him until last year after conducting its own internal investigation into his treatment of another female employee. On Thursday, she complained that it had taken so long for her claims to become public. 'My nearly four-year struggle to hold prominent philanthropist Michael Steinhardt accountable for his sexual harassment of me & countless other woman finally came to light. Theres no dispute that my attempts at humor could be provocative. As an example, its well known that I would often say at events with young people, Look around, if any of you who are here now marry each other I will give you a free honeymoon on a Caribbean Island Michael Steinhardt 'The fact that it took this long to shed light on his wrong doing illustrates how powerful harassers continue to be protected, enabled, and immunized, even in the #MeToo era. 'While I am still nervous and scared of retaliation- my goal in coming forward and sharing my story is to hopefully prevent any other woman in the Jewish community or beyond from having to endure any form of sexual harassment from Michael Steinhardt ever again,' she said. Deborah Mohile Goldberg worked for him at Birthright Israel, the nonprofit he founded which has sent thousands of young Jews on free trips to Israel. She claims he asked her and another female colleague if they would engage in a threesome with him. They were in Jerusalem at the time at a donor reception. 'We were working Joes, pretty vulnerable, and here he is with all his authority, coming over and propositioning us,' Goldberg, who was Birthright Israel's director of communications between 2001 and 2010, said. Natalie Goldfein worked for Synagogue Transformation and Renewal, a smaller organization in Chicago which Steinhardt gave $250,000-a-year to. She said that he asked her to have babies with him. 'I always felt that it was like a game to him and that I had to put up with it and play along. But it wasnt an equal playing field,' she said. She is now 58. The earliest claim dates back to 1995 when Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi says he asked her to become his concubine. Steinhardt, pictured with his wife Judy, denied many of the allegations but apologized for 'boorish' remarks which he said were part of his 'schtick' At the time, she was 27 and he was sponsoring her first rabbinical position. During a meeting, she said he berated her for being unmarried, told her to put her 'womb to work', then suggested that she be a 'pilegesh' which is an ancient Hebrew word for concubine or mistress. She alleged that he then told her he believed concubinage should be reinstated and that she should become his. 'He set a horrifying standard of what women who work in the Jewish community were expected to endure,' she said. Two other women who did not want to be named described similar mistreatment. After the news broke on Thursday, female rabbis spoke out to describe the allegations as the 'worst kept secret' in the Jewish community. STEINHARDT STATEMENT In my nearly 80 years on earth I have never tried to touch any woman or man inappropriately. As I have said before, I deeply regret cavalierly making comments in professional settings that were boorish, disrespectful and just plain dumb. They were part of my shtick since before I had a penny to my name, and I unequivocally meant them in jest. I fully understand why they were inappropriate. I am sorry. I never intended to cause any embarrassment, discomfort or pain. Theres no dispute that my attempts at humor could be provocative. As an example, its well known that I would often say at events with young people, Look around, if any of you who are here now marry each other I will give you a free honeymoon on a Caribbean Island. And I gave 30 or 40 honeymoons. It was a conspicuous pattern. I hope my inappropriate banter, which was always meant in a lighthearted way, does not now become twisted into being something it is not. Advertisement In a statement, Steinhardt said: 'In my nearly 80 years on earth I have never tried to touch any woman or man inappropriately. 'As I have said before, I deeply regret cavalierly making comments in professional settings that were boorish, disrespectful and just plain dumb. They were part of my shtick since before I had a penny to my name, and I unequivocally meant them in jest. I fully understand why they were inappropriate. I am sorry. I never intended to cause any embarrassment, discomfort or pain. 'Theres no dispute that my attempts at humor could be provocative. As an example, its well known that I would often say at events with young people, Look around, if any of you who are here now marry each other I will give you a free honeymoon on a Caribbean Island. 'And I gave 30 or 40 honeymoons. It was a conspicuous pattern. I hope my inappropriate banter, which was always meant in a lighthearted way, does not now become twisted into being something it is not.' His charity also published a letter condemning the Times' article. 'Admittedly, Michaels sense of humor can be insensitive, and he has apologized for the unintended bad feelings his remarks have caused... 'To characterize provocative remarks made in jest and in group settings as actual propositions intentionally distorts the context as well as Michael's intent -- in order to fabricate something that never happened,' it said in part. 'Did Michael constantly try to fix people up and make inappropriate jokes? Of course he did. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the article goes out of its way to make these comments sound insidious,' it went on. It claimed the journalist 'ignored' flattering statements given by others in the community which contradicted the women's stories. Last year, after an investigation into Steinhardt's behavior, the Hillel association did not pursue a $50,000 donation he had pledged and removed him from its international board of governors. In 2012 and 2013, two sexual harassment suits were filed against a New York art gallery where Steinhardt was an important client. While Steinhardt was not a defendant, he was mentioned as having made sexually loaded remarks to female employees of the gallery who were expected to put up with it. Both suits were 'resolved amicably with confidentiality agreements,' the women's lawyer, Jeffrey Pollack, told the Times. This shocking video shows the moment a young woman knocked out a burly bouncer with a kick to the head during a block party in South Carolina. In the clip, a bouncer can be seen pinning a young man to the ground as a number of revellers gather around the pair at the Folly Gras Festival in Folly Beach. Taylor Renee Nealey, who has since been arrested, then appears to walk over to the men and begins wildly kicking at the bouncer. A security guard pinned down this male reveller at the Folly Gras Festival in Folly Beach, South Carolina Taylor Renee Nealey, pictured in the white top and brown trousers, is seen arguing with other partygoers who attempt to pull her back. She refuses to give up and appears to attack the bouncer in the shocking clip The 22-year-old is dragged away by other partygoers at the annual event, which is Mardi Gras-themed, but refuses to give up. Pictured: Nealey's mugshot after she handed herself in when the clip went viral After arguing with a number of people, including the bouncer, she once again appears to kick him - this time knocking him unconscious. With the bouncer immobile, the man he was pinning down gets up and walks away, joining Nealey. As the pair walk away stunned festivalgoers can be heard screaming 'She kicked him! She kicked him! She knocked him out. Oh s***! What the f***!' Footage of the incident on February 23 quickly went viral on social media. Nealey turned herself in after the clip, filmed by Brandon Ryback, racked up more than 846,000 views on Twitter. She was charged with second degree assault and battery. She was released six hours later after posting a $10,000 bond. Nealey then appears to deliver a savage kick to the bouncer's head as shocked revellers film the attack The bouncer is then seen lying on the ground unconscious. The man he was pinning down gets up and walks away Folly Beach Police Chief Andrew Gilreath said at the time: 'We contacted her and let her know of the warrant she turned herself in this morning 'We are still working on any additional leads and charges that may arise for the male that was involved with her.' Gilreath also confirmed that the bouncer who appeared on the video to be knocked out from the kick was at Nealey's bond hearing. Following the incident, organisers announced that the annual Folly Gras Festival would be cancelled. Kieran Conway (pictured) refused to admit the acts were murder, claiming the IRA had not deliberately targeted the pubs with the intention of killing civilians The 1974 Birmingham pub bombings were not murder but 'an IRA operation that went badly wrong', its former intelligence chief has told an inquest. Kieran Conway refused to admit the acts were murder, claiming the IRA had not deliberately targeted the pubs with the intention of killing civilians. The blasts at the Mulberry Bush in the base of the city's iconic Rotunda and the basement Tavern in the Town killed 21 people and injured 220 more. IRA operatives phoned security services to warning of the bombings minutes before they detonated, but failed to mention exactly what pubs they were hidden in. The bombers are believed to have tried to use a pre-selected phone box earlier in the night to warn police, but found it was out of order, delaying the call. Mr Conway said the attacks were 'not sanctioned' by the IRA and public outrage at the attacks 'nearly destroyed' the group. Following what he called the 'disaster in Birmingham' on the night of November 21 by a provisional IRA active service unit, 'the dip in public support was extraordinary'. He added: 'The IRA was only saved by the subsequent talks with the British Government.' An official ceasefire was agreed in 1975 but did not hold. Bereaved families have waited 44 years for fresh inquests, which are now in their fourth week. Barrister Kevin Morgan, asking questions on behalf of the relatives, asked: 'Would you agree that the killings in Birmingham on November 21 1974 constituted murder?' Mr Conway, speaking over a video link from Dublin, replied: 'No I don't agree. I believe it was an IRA operation that went wrong.' 'Had the IRA deliberately targeted that pub with the intention of killing civilians then that would have been murder, yes. The blasts at the Mulberry Bush (shown) in the base of the city's iconic Rotunda and the basement Tavern in the Town killed 21 people and injured 220 more Jurors at hearings into the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings were told there was no evidence of attempts to clear the premises or its immediate area, in spite of an 8.11pm warning call pin-pointing the iconic Rotunda where the pub was located 'But in the circumstances, as I have been told, I don't accept that it was murder. I say that it was an IRA operation that went badly wrong.' A formal IRA court of inquiry, convened in Ireland in the days and weeks after the bombings, cleared those involved in the bombings, Mr Conway added. He said the court agreed with the 'initial explanation' the 'atrocity' was down to the phone box, selected to call in the advance coded warning, being out of order. 'No court martial ever took place,' he added, and no IRA members were internally disciplined over the attacks. Mr Conway said, at the time of the bombings, IRA operations in England were 'autonomous' of the organisation's command in Ireland and were picking bombing targets themselves. More than 50 devices went off in and around the Midlands in the run-up to the pub bombings, the inquests have already heard. Operations covering IRA active service units in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and London all came under an 'OC', or officer commanding. L-R: Pamela Palmer, Desmond Reilly, James Craig, and Maralyn Nash were killed that night More than half of the victims were under 30. L-R: Stephen Whalley, 21, Jane Davies, 17, Maureen Roberts, 20, and Eugene Thomas Reilly, 23, lost their lives in the atrocity Firemen at work following the bomb attacks in Birmingham city centre that targeted the Mulberry Bush pub and the Tavern in the Town The OC and his adjutant - the second-in-command - were both based in London, Mr Conway said. Both senior IRA men in England were called back to Ireland within four days of the bombings to account for what happened but Mr Conway said he was not present for the discussion. He said: 'I'm not sure either of the two (England IRA) men knew anything about it (the bombings) either. 'I believe it was carried out by the IRA in Birmingham, who would have had wide autonomy to carry out operations at the time without referring to London.' He said nobody in the IRA's ruling Army Council had any idea the pubs were to be targeted. Opening the proceedings, coroner Sir Peter Thornton QC (above) told jurors they would hear evidence of how the two bombs ripped apart two pubs on what was a 'perfectly ordinary evening' Mr Conway said: 'I told them if it turned out that it was deliberate and sanctioned then I would leave the IRA immediately.' He added: 'The bombings had been careless if not downright incompetent.' Mr Conway also spoke to David O'Connell, chairman of the IRA Army Council - which ran the organisation's military operations - and another member immediately after the bombing. He said: 'They certainly said that it was not sanctioned by them.' Mr Conway said the policy of the IRA at the time was civilian targets were 'strictly and loudly forbidden'. He added: 'Those targets ought never to have happened. I have said that many times. 'The volunteers who carried it out, the person who commanded them, either didn't know that or ignored it. They were not legitimate targets. 'It was a civilian pub, there was no question of it being a pub with which soldiers commonly drank - and it was not. It was not a permissible target.' He also described the IRA's campaign of bombings against commercial targets in England, which reached a high tempo in the Midlands between 1973-74, as 'wrong-headed'. Asked if the IRA had taken responsibility for the pub bombings, he replied: 'Yes. I mean they didn't deliberately fail to get a warning to the authorities in time. 'But if you plant bombs you must take the consequences, including the consequences of what happened in Birmingham.' Mr Conway said former Army Council member Joe Cahill admitted as far back as 1985 that the bombings had been carried out by the IRA. Asked at the inquest if the Provisional IRA carried out the bombings, he replied: 'Absolutely 100 per cent certain of that without any first-hand knowledge but from what I heard from David O'Connell and other members of the leadership, and through general discussion in the IRA circles, I'm certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that the IRA carried out this awful atrocity.' The inquests continue. John McCain's youngest daughter Bridget has made a rare public statement in defense of her late father and slammed President Donald Trump in the process, calling him a 'child' and saying he wasn't invited to senator's funeral because 'you could not be counted on to be courteous.' Bridget McCain, 27, offered her thoughts on the president's attacks on her father via her Twitter account, which her sister Meghan McCain then read Thursday morning on ABC's 'The View.' 'My little sister Bridget for the first time ever has decided that she wants to speak out,' Meghan McCain announced before sharing her younger sibling's reaction. Meghan McCain read her sister Bridget McCain's defense of their late father during 'The View' on Thursday John McCain with daughters Bridget and Meghan and wife Cindy on Election Night 2010 in Phoenix 'Mr. Trump, everyone doesn't have to agree with my dad or like him, but I do ask that you be decent and respectful. If you can't do those two things, be mindful. We only said good-bye to him almost seven months ago. Even if you were invited to my dad's funeral, you would have only wanted to be there for credit and not for the condolences. Unfortunately, you could not be counted on to be courteous as you are a child in the most important role the world knows,' McCain read. Trump complained during a visit to a manufacturing plant in Ohio on Wednesday that he didn't get thanked for giving McCain 'the kind of funeral that he wanted.' 'I endorsed him at his request and I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I don't care about this, I didn't get a thank-you. That's okay. We sent him on the way. But I wasn't a fan of John McCain,' Trump said. The president was criticized after McCain's death for not keeping the flag flying at the White House at half-staff. It was eventually lowered and stayed that way until McCain was buried. He was not invited to the funeral at the late senator's request. Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush gave the eulogies. A slew of political VIPs - Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney and others - were in attendance. It was notable that Bridget McCain has broken her long public silence and weighed in on the matter. The youngest McCain child has stayed out of the national spotlight and rarely appeared with her father in his public life. She did read a bible verse at her father's memorial service at North Phoenix Baptist Church this past August. But she has otherwise stayed out of the public arena. 'It's very brave of her. She's young and she does not speak publicly,' Meghan McCain said on 'The View.' She also noted her younger sister is 'very, very private.' 'Anyone who knows anything about political history could probably surmise why she's chosen to lead a very private life but she felt inclined to say and tweet this,' Meghan McCain said. It was a rare public statement from Bridget McCain in defense of her father During the 2000 Republican presidential primary, rumors were spread in South Carolina - before its decisive primary election - that Bridget was the illegitimate child of John McCain. The McCains had actually adopted her as a baby from an orphanage in Bangladesh, when Cindy McCain was visiting the impoverished nation on a humanitarian visit and spotted Bridget. During the 2000 primary, which George W. Bush eventually won, voters in South Carolina described receiving polling phone calls that asked them: 'Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?' in what was a reference to Bridget. It's been Meghan McCain who has led the defense of her father from Trump's attacks. Her two brothers, Jack and Jimmy, serve in the military and McCain's children from his previous marriage have been quiet thus far. 'I don't like coming here every day and having to do this. It's extremely emotionally exhausting,' Meghan McCain admitted on 'The View' Thursday. 'I want to thank the American public for the decency and compassion they have given for us,' she added. President Trump has spent the past week attacking the late senator, with whom he had a bitter relationship when McCain was alive. Bridget McCain read a bible verse at her father's August memorial service President Donald Trump complained during a visit to a manufacturing plant in Ohio on Wednesday that he didn't get thanked for giving McCain 'the kind of funeral that he wanted' The president also suggested on Wednesday that the Vietnam war hero should have come to him after he was first handed a copy of the infamous Golden Showers dossier, an unverified document that claims the Russians have black mail material on Trump. 'John McCain received the fake and phony dossier. Did you hear about the dossier? It was paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton, right?' Trump said at the event in Ohio, drawing boos at the mention of his Democratic rival, who had a law firm fund opposition research after a conservative group first funded the research that became the dossier. 'And John McCain got it. He got it. And what did he do? He didn't call me. He turned it over to the FBI hoping to put me in jeopardy. And that's not the nicest thing to do,' Trump said. McCain associate and former State Department official David Kramer testified in a court case that McCain gave the first pages of the dossier to former FBI Director James Comey on December 9, 2018. The president's latest comments came as the McCain controversy boiled over after Trump's weekend attacks on the longtime senator who was held captive for 5 1/2 years in a Hanoi POW camp during the war. In recent days the controversy has brought in McCain family members, the Senate leaders from both parties, and other lawmakers who knew McCain. Cindy McCain at the 2008 Republican National Convention when John McCain was the GOP presidential nominee with the McCain children: From Left to Right: Andrew, Meghan, Jimmy, Cindy, Jack, Doug, Bridget and Sydney Bridget McCain and Meghan McCain watch as their mother laid a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial during a funeral procession for John McCain Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said he will reintroduce legislation to name a Senate office building after McCain following Trump's comments that he is 'not a fan' of the Vietnam war hero. Schumer first raised the issue after McCain's death in August. He brought it up again after Trump blasted McCain on Twitter over the weekend, then doubled down when asked about McCain in the Oval Office Tuesday. 'I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be,' Trump told reporters Tuesday. Trump's continued public animosity has pushed several GOP senators to weigh in with their own views. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell came out with a tweet calling his 'good friend' and former colleague a hero but did not directly call out Trump for his comments. 'Today and every day I miss my good friend John McCain. It was a blessing to serve alongside a rare patriot and genuine American hero in the Senate. His memory continues to remind me every day that our nation is sustained by the sacrifices of heroes,' said McConnell. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was McCain's best friend in the Senate and something of a protege, has been put on the spot by the situation. A former fierce Trump critic, Graham now backs Trump on a series of issues and has provided critical cover on the subject of the Russia probe. 'A lot of people are coming to John's defense now that called him crazy and a war-monger, so it's kind of interesting to see the politics of how this dispute's being used to bash Trump by people who were against both Trump and McCain,' said Graham in his home state, NBC reported. Sen. Charles Schumer wants to name a Senate office building after McCain Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called McCain his 'good friend' and former colleague a hero on Twitter but did not directly call out Trump for his comments Meghan McCain, meanwhile, delivered another emotional tribute to her father on ABC's 'the View' on Wednesday, punching back at Trump. 'If I had told my dad, 'Seven months after you're dead, you're going to be dominating the news and all over Twitter,' she said. 'He would think it was so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death.' Then she tried to turn the tables by bringing up cyber bullying a top issue of first lady Melania Trump. 'Do not feel bad for me and my family,' she said. 'We are blessed. We are a family of privilege. Feel bad for people out there who are being bullied that don't have support.' She continued: 'Feel people out there who are being bullied who don't have support ... There are kids committing suicide bc of cyber bullying on line. There are people going through rough time. ... We have 20 veterans a day committing suicide. Focus on these issues,' she said. Meghan McCain has led the defense of her father and hit back at Trump on Wednesday, saying her father 'would think it was so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death' Meghan McCain read her sister's statement on 'The View' on Thursday Trump attacked the late senator twice this weekend on Twitter, focusing on McCain's ties to the infamous Steele dossier. 'So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) 'last in his class' (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!, the president wrote on Sunday. McCain was actually fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, and regularly joked about his own academic performance. On Monday, Meghan McCain slammed Trump for having a 'pathetic life' for spending his weekend tweeting criticism of her father. 'He spends his weekend obsessing over great men, because he knows it, and I know it, and all of you know it, he will never be a great man,' McCain said on ABC's 'The View.' 'My father was his kryptonite in life. He was his kryptonite in death,' she added. Kellyanne Conway spoke at length Thursday about her husband's ugly public feud with the president after Trump called him a 'whack job' - saying she was 'not being asked to choose between my job and my marriage.' The White House counselor gave a pained interview just as her husband George renewed his assault on Trump in which she said it's 'unlike' him to tweet at all and it's a 'new' development that he's no longer 'supporting the agenda of the president and my work there.' She scolded her husband on television after involving herself in the fight between him and Trump a day prior. She said the president had a right to defend himself because her husband had criticized him first. 'I appreciate the president defending what he thinks is unfairness,' she told Maria Bartiromo on her Fox Business show, Mornings with Maria. 'I'll leave that up to him.' She added in a message intended for her husband: 'I was raised, though, in a household of strong Italian Catholic women who taught me that you air grievances like that in private, so it is very surprising to see it be so public.' She said she had 'certainly' had conversations with her husband about keeping his views to himself but said that she was focused on her work with Trump. 'I've talked about it in passing,' she said when asked what discussions she and the president had been having. But she said: 'I am not being asked to choose between my marriage and my job.' The intervention had little impact on her husband, who before she spoke had suggested that Donald Trump is in 'cognitive decline' in a series of tweets. Kellyanne Conway is speaking out publicly about her husband's dispute with the president following her boss' claim that she's married to a 'whack job' who's damaging this wife's reputation Unaffected: George Conway continued tweeting criticism of the president after his wife spoke on Fox Business Network After the interview, George Conway kept tweeting, including '#notstable #notagenius', a reference to Trump declaring himself a table genius, and retweeting messages calling him 'a pathological narcissist.' Trump had raised the temperature Wednesday in his feud with George Conway, calling him 'a husband from hell' in a tweet and telling reporters that he's 'a whack job.' The back-and-forth prompted the lawyer's wife, Kellyanne, to publicly side with her boss in the month's long spat. The next morning, George Conway was back on the attack, promoting a decades-old Tom Brokaw interview with a 33-year-old Trump as evidence for his argument that Trump is nuts. He also claimed the president is a 'compulsive liar,' and that's why Trump's lawyers didn't want him talking to Robert Mueller. After calling Trump 'dumb' in one assessment, Conway said, in response to a follower's claim that Trump could be in 'cognitive decline,' that it's 'possible' the 72-year-old president is losing his mental faculties. 'Also possible. There's a clip of Trump online talking to Tom Brokaw thirty years ago and Trump is speaking in complete, coherent sentences. It's quite a remarkable contrast to today, when all you get are these often incomprehensible word salads,' he said. Watch the latest video at foxnews.com Fox Business Privacy Policy George Conway suggested Thursday that Donald Trump is in 'cognitive decline,' in spite of a public warning from his wife - a senior adviser to the president - that he's not qualified to offer such a diagnosis Trump had raised the temperature Wednesday in his feud with Conway, calling him 'a husband from hell' in a tweet and telling reporters that he's 'a whack job' The next morning, George Conway was back on the attack, promoting a decades-old Tom Brokaw interview with a 33-year-old Trump as evidence for his argument that Trump is nuts He also claimed that Trump is a compulsive liar who would put himself in legal jeopardy if he had to sit for questioning Attorney George Conway, husband of White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway, speaks at Georgetown Law School on March 8 The former campaign manager for Trump who followed him to the White House has avoided comment on her marriage and her husband's derogatory remarks about her boss. She addressed the clash at length for the first time on Wednesday, in a Politico interview. She noted Thursday, on Bartiromo's program, 'I don't talk much about this publicly.' Conway said her first priority is the 'protection' of the four children she has with George. She said her husband encouraged her to work for the president and was 'enthusiastic' about the family's move from New York to Washington at the beginning of the Trump administration. 'We have four school-aged children. So you don't just -- I -- I'm their mother. I could never have just come here and been here for two and a half years without them. So we made a decision as a family to move here,' she said. 'George decided he would like to do something different with his career. I totally supported that. He wanted the solicitor general's job. That didn't work out. Then he was nominated or offered the job at the Justice Department.' Conway argued that her husband's tweets are meaningless, as he does not have the power to act on his assessments in the way Mueller, the deputy attorney general or a talk show host does. 'I don't know when the feminists are going to write this story about the unusual situation of a man getting power through his wife,' she predicted. 'But that's what we have here.' Her husband produced a letter this week affirming his claims that he turned the DOJ job down. He also shared screen-grabs from a psychiatric diagnostic manual to back up his claims that Trump is mentally ill. The president decided Wednesday that enough is enough. He skewered George Conway on Twitter and slammed him to reporters as he took questions ahead of a departure from the White House. 'George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife's success & angry that I, with her help, didn't give him the job he so desperately wanted,' Trump wrote on Twitter. 'I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER & husband from hell!' As he left the White House for Ohio hours later, he couldn't resist putting his broadside on videotape. 'I don't know him. He's a whack job, there's no question about it,' the presdient said. 'I think he's doing a tremendous disservice to his wonderful wife. Kellyanne is a wonderful woman, and I call him 'Mr. Kellyanne',' he added. Mrs. Conway defended Trump for clobbering her own husband, asking Politico in a brief phone interview: 'You think he should just take that sitting down?' President Trump branded George Conway, his chief counselor Kellyanne Conway's spouse, a 'husband from hell' after the two crossed swords online, and then told reporters that he's 'a whack job' Mr. Conway tweeted a series of pages from a psychiatric diagnosis manual, suggesting the president is mentally ill Mrs. Conway broke a glass ceiling in 2016 as the first woman to lead a successful presidential campaign; Trump claimed Wednesday that she played a role in keeping her husband from getting a top Justice Department job Trump wrote that Mr. Conway is angry that he didn't get a plus administration position, and mocked him as 'Mr. Kellyanne Conway' She said Trump had sat on the sidelines of her household's intramural political mudfight long enough. 'He left it alone for months out of respect for me,' she said. 'But you think he shouldn't respond when somebody, a non-medical professional, accuses him of having a mental disorder? You think he should just take that sitting down?' 'Don't play psychiatrist any more than George should be,' she told Politico. 'You're not a psychiatrist and he's not, respectfully.' The president's Wednesday morning tweet marked the first time Trump has claimed Kellyanne played a role in her husband's failure to secure a plum Justice Department position in the administration's early days. That claim quickly lost power, however, when The Washington Post released a May 31, 2017 letter from Mr. Conway to the president in which he turned down the position of Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the DOJ. 'I am profoundly grateful to you and to the Attorney General for selecting me. ... I have reluctantly concluded, however, that, for me and my family, this is not the right time for me to leave the private sector and take on a new role in the federal government,' the letter reads. 'Kellyanne and I continue to support you and your Administration, and I look forward to doing so in whatever way I can from outside the government.' Mrs. Conway was the president's campaign manager in the fall of 2016, the first woman ever to successfully bring a White House campaign across the finish line. Trump's long-simmering feud with Mr. Conway boiled over this week after the attorney claimed online that he is mentally ill and tweeted pages from a standard psychiatric diagnosis manual to back up his assertions. He tweeted at Trump on Wednesday: 'You seem determined to prove my point. Good for you! #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder.' and added minutes later: 'You. Are. Nuts.' He said in an interview on Tuesday that he takes his anti-Trump frustrations out online so he can avoid disrupting his marriage by complaining directly to his powerful wife about the president he considers insane. 'The mendacity, the incompetence, it's just maddening to watch,' he told The Washington Post on Tuesday. 'The tweeting is just the way to get it out of the way, so I can get it off my chest and move on with my life that day. That's basically it. Frankly, it's so I don't end up screaming at her about it.' Speaking of the public war of words that led him to tweet a definition of 'narcissistic personality disorder,' he said the armchair diagnosis 'stuck ... because of the utter bizarreness this weekend, his own conduct. It was so illustrative. Mr. Conway fired back, mocking Trump as 'nuts' Within an hour of Trump claiming he denied Mr. Conway a plum Justice Department job, The Washington Post published this May 2017 letter in which Conway turned Trump down Conway also pushed back on Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale's claim on Twitter that the president turned Conway down for a senior-level DOJ position. He said he withdrew from consideration after Trump fired his FBI Director, James Comey, a move that led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. 'I'm thinking to myself, this guy is going to be at war with the Justice Department for the next two years. I'm not doing this,' Conway said. Trump had called him 'a total loser' just hours before. And the president's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, claimed 'Mr. Kellyanne Conway' is 'jealous' of his more-famous wife's success. 'He barely worked @TheJusticeDept and was either fired/quit, didn't want the scrutiny? Now he hurts his wife because he is jealous of her success. POTUS doesn't even know him!' Parscale tweeted Monday night. Mr. Conway had launched a barrage of insults at the president on Monday evening, tweeting medical definitions of personality disorders including 'deceitfulness' and grandiosity as symptoms and saying they apply to the 45th president. His latest criticism of Trump followed a weekend of digital slams from the president against a range of targets including the late Sen. John McCain and Saturday Night Live. The president piled on Tuesday, calling Mr. Conway '[a] total loser' after his 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale claimed Kellyanne's husband was 'jealous' of her success Conway shoved back on Twitter, congratulating Trump for raising the public profile of their onlin sparring match Mr. Conway fired back sarcastically at Trump on Monday, tweeting that it wasn't smart of the president to give his amateur head-shrinking a bigger platform. 'Congratulations!' he wrote in a tweet. 'You just guaranteed that millions of more people are going to learn about narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism! Great job!' Conway's wife, counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, brushed off the incident, saying she was taking care of the couple's four children Monday morning and hadn't paid attention. Parscale, however, spoke for Trumpworld; the president himself piled on hours later Mr. Conway posted the definition of Narcissistic Personality Disorder; he also tweeted the cover of the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders in a slap at Trump. According to the definition, someone with the disorder has three or more of a list of symptoms. Among them are a 'Grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).' Trump's 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale tweeted that Mr. Conway is 'jealous of his wife's success' Strained? Kellyanne Conway brushed aside her husband's claims that her boss had at least two mental disorders by saying she was not 'up to speed' Mr. Conway tweeted from a manual of mental disorders that psychiatrists use to make diagnoses ALL THE BEST SCORES: Conway seemed to be suggesting that President Donald Trump has a grandiose sense of self-importance or other narcissistic traits Conway also tweeted out signs of an antisocial personality disorder A person with a narcissistic disorder may also be: 'Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love;' 'Believes he or she is 'special' and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions);' and 'Requires excessive admiration ... has a sense of entitlement ... [and] is interpersonally exploitative.' Before his stab at armchair psychiatry, Conway retweeted conservative commentator William Kristol, who urged people to think seriously about Trump's psychological state. 'Agree with this, but would add that *all* Americans should be thinking seriously *now* about Trump's mental condition and psychological state, including and especially the media, Congress and the Vice President and Cabinet,' Conway wote. Kellyanne Conway commented on the latest instance of her husband torching the president her boss brushing off a question by a reporter at the White House. 'I have four kids and I was getting them out of the house this morning before I got here, so I could talk to the president about substance. So I may not be up to speed on the whole thing,' she said. As Conway's tweet attacking the president's alleged narcissism reverberated, Trump weighed in on the New Zealand terror attack that killed 50, defending his own image and complaining that he was being blamed for the slaughter. 'The Fake News Media is working overtime to blame me for the horrible attack in New Zealand. They will have to work very hard to prove that one. So Ridiculous!' the president wrote. Last year, former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson said Trump had aced a diagnostic test used to look at potential mental disorders. Trump got a perfect score on a test designed to look for signs of memory loss or cognitive dysfunction. He bragged about the results as he blamed his predecessors for failing to solve problems in North Korea. 'I guess they all realized they were going to have to leave it to a president that scored the highest on tests,' Trump quipped at the time. Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw is fighting for the rights of a fellow Navy SEAL officer who is imprisoned in 'abhorrent' conditions as he awaits his war crimes trial. Edward 'Eddie' Gallagher, 39, is currently jailed in military prison Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in California on charges of premeditated murder and aggravated assault. The 14-year Navy SEAL veteran is accused of murdering a 15-year-old Afghan ISIS prisoner in 2017, performing a reenlistment ceremony with the militant's corpse, and firing sniper rounds at civilians during his deployment in Iraq. Gallagher's prison conditions are reportedly so dire he's allegedly given limited access to food, medical care and access to his legal team, and is jailed alongside convicted criminals, politicians say. Crenshaw, who lost sight in his right eye after he was injured in an IED explosion during his deployment in Afghanistan, and 17 other House Republicans sent a letter to the Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer this week asking for a review of Gallagher's pre-trial confinement. Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw along with 17 other House republicans filed a letter to the Navy Secretary this week, fighting to improve the jail conditions of imprisoned Navy SEAL Edward 'Eddie Gallagher' The 39-year-old has been jailed at military prison Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in California on charges of premeditated murder and aggravated assault for killings he allegedly committed during his deployment 'Chief Gallagher is a decorated warfighter who, like all service members, is entitled to the presumption of innocence while awaiting court-martial,' the letter said. 'We have received reports that Chief Gallaghers access to counsel and access to food and medical care may have been restricted. 'Chief Gallagher and other pretrial service members are intermingled with convicts who have been tried at court-martial, found guilty and sentenced to confinement,' the Congress members stated in their letter. They requested that the Navy reconsider Gallagher's jail site and move him out of Miramar, where he's been for over six months, to 'a more appropriate' location for pretrial confinement. The letter was signed by Crenshaw, Reps. Mac Thornberry of Texas, Van Taylor of Texas, Pete Olsen of Texas, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, Jim Banks of Indiana, Paul Cook of California, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Jody Hice of Georgia, French Hill of Arkansas, Brian Mast of Florida, Ralph Normal of South Carolina, Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania, Austin Scott of Georgia, and Greg Steube of Florida, and Michael Waltz of Florida. He's accused of murdering a 15-year-old Afghan ISIS prisoner and firing sniper rounds at civilians during his deployment in the Middle East His family and politicians say that during his over six months in jail, he's lacked food, medical care, and access to his legal team. The letter demands that his pre-trial conditions be reconsidered and he be moved to another location Still, Gallagher is expected to stay at Miramar until the start of his war crimes trial on May 28. Gallagher was a decorated soldier who served for 19 years and was deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan several times. He had earned the Bronze Star with V for Valor twice as well as a Meritorious Unit commendation and a trio of Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medals. Gallagher's brother Sean released a statement to Fox on behalf the family saying they are 'grateful Members of Congress are calling attention to what our family has been experiencing for seven months: the abhorrent treatment of one of its most decorated warfighters.' 'Let it sink in that it is taking Members of Congress to request that a combat veteran Navy SEAL -- someone who has gone to war for us 8 times -- be given the basics of medical care and legal counsel amidst absurd charges,' he added. 'Americans should be livid,' he closed the statement. The 39-year-old is jailed at the Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar in California awaiting his May 28 trial for his war crimes Though Gallagher is hailed a hero, he faces severe accusations of becoming a 'monster' on the frontlines after years nearly two decades of service, according to prosecutors. He's accused of killing the 15-year-old Islamic State fighter who was in his care by repeated plunging a knife into the already wounded prisoner's body. Then Gallagher allegedly held his reenlistment ceremony with the corpse and posed for a photo with the militant's body. He's also accused of shooting two civilians in Iraq and firing into crowds. Prosecutors said witnesses told investigators Gallagher had allegedly bragged about killing up to 200 people - 'three a day' during his 2017 deployment to Mosul, Iraq, according to the San Diego Tribune. In February a military judge dropped two charges against the vet - charges for allegeding performing the reenlistment ceremony next to the corpose and for operating a drone over the corpse. He still faces charges of premeditated murder for stabbing the teen and aggravated assault for firing rounds at civilians. His trial will begin on May 28. Meghan Markle's estranged half-sister has won a battle to prove she is not on a list of 'fixated' people who police believe are a potential danger to the Duchess of Sussex and the British royal family. Samantha Markle, 54, of Gloucester, Virginia, told DailyMailTV she has taken legal action in London to prove that cops guarding the Duchess of Sussex make no mention of her in their files including on a 'fixated person list.' She told DailyMailTV that she feared the original claim that she was a danger to Meghan was was part of a 'horrible PR strategy' to silence her because of her past criticism of her sister. Samantha revealed she had hired lawyers in London to order the Metropolitan Police, which is responsible for guarding Meghan and her husband Prince Harry, to detail everything they keep on file about her. Samantha Markle, the elder half-sister to Duchess of Sussex Meghan, shot down claims she was on a list compiled by cops of 'fixated people' considered a danger to the royal family and provided DailyMailTV with proof that no such list exists Samantha, who lives in Gloucester, Virginia, tells DailyMailTV: 'I'm pretty sure my sister knows that I'm not fixated'. The Duchess of Sussex, 37, has started maternity leave from royal duties ahead of giving birth to her first child with Prince Harry Samantha, pictured with Meghan at her 2008 graduation, hired lawyers in London to demand the Metropolitan Police - who guard the royals - hand over any information they held on her and was told there is none They responded by saying that they held nothing on her and that there is no 'list' of fixated people maintained by its special unit dealing with threats to the royal family and politicians, which is called the Fixated Threat Assessment Center (FTAC). 'Now that I know there is no such thing as that list, I feel relieved. I'm pretty sure my sister knows that I'm not fixated,' Samantha told DailyMailTV. 'But I also know that she would prefer that everyone in the family be quiet - that's ridiculous because the media talks about us collectively and individually. 'I absolutely have a say where it comes to setting the record straight.' The claim she was on the list came from a police source who told The Sunday Times of London last December that Meghan's own police guards had briefed the FTAC on Samantha. 'You can't protect someone like the Duchess of Sussex without knowing the background of her family. There is big potential for some major embarrassment for the royals,' the source said. But the Duchess' sister tells DailyMailTV: 'Any suggestion that I am fixated on my sister is crazy. Stalkers and fixated people track individuals and harass them every day, constantly show up at their doors and are mentally unstable. 'She is my half-sister, I am not some strange stepsister and most of what I've said in the media has been in defense of our dad.' Samantha says she was left shocked and angry by claims she is obsessed with the Duchess of Sussex and denied that she is any sort of threat to either Meghan or Harry. She said: 'It was a horrible thing to do. It was a horrible PR strategy - people have to be responsible and accountable. 'When they're not telling the truth, people's lives can be destroyed. People can't get away with starting rumors like that.' Samantha has long been one of the most outspoken members of the Markle clan repeatedly intervening to beg the eight-months-pregnant Duchess to contact their father. The sisters, who were born 17 years apart, have not spoken since 2008 and have had a rocky relationship, with Samantha initially branding her sister 'a social climber' and later a 'Duch-a**' on social media. Kensington Palace has recently taken action to counter social media abuse of the Duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex and has said that anyone posting vitriolic comments on the royal Instagram and Twitter pages could be reported to police. Wheelchair-bound Samantha has since claimed the social climber comment was 'taken out of context' and said she is entitled to speak out as she sees fit but still loves her sister and hopes to reconcile with her one day. In October, she visited Kensington Palace while traveling in Europe and hand-delivered a letter begging Meghan to get in touch with the family in particular, 74-year-old Thomas Markle Sr. Two months later, a story published in a UK paper claimed Scotland Yard had placed her on a 'fixated person list' because of the 'reputational risk' she allegedly posed to the Royal Family. A source quoted by the Sunday broadsheet said: 'You can't protect someone like the Duchess of Sussex without knowing the background of her family. 'But someone like Samantha presents a risk rather than a threat. She is not committing criminal offences, but she is causing concerns for the royal family. 'There is big potential for some major embarrassment for the royals. Samantha could make a scene and create headlines with her actions and let's face it she's kind of already done that.' Samantha says she was so shocked by the story, she immediately had her lawyers submit a Subject Access Request, which allows individuals to see information held on them by the UK police. A response received earlier this month said neither the Metropolitan Police nor the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre are holding any information on Samantha. Samantha was turned away at Kensington Palace gates in October 2018 after she flew unannounced to confront her sister over the ongoing family feud Samantha said she was put on the fake list for defending her father Thomas Markle from public scrutiny and 'speaking the truth' A second letter, detailing the response to a request lodged by Samantha's lawyers using British freedom of information laws also denied the existence of a fixated person list. It added: 'Searches were conducted at Royalty and Specialist Protection (RaSP) Command, in particular the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC). 'The searches failed to locate any information relevant to your request. FTAC have advised that there is no Fixated Person List. This has never existed and will never exist. 'The unit manages individual cases and have never supplied any arbitrary list to any policing team, or other department. 'They respond to specific requests only, with responses that are both proportionate and relevant from a policing perspective.' Samantha says she doesn't blame pregnant Meghan for the story and still hopes to be reunited with her younger sister in future. She said: 'I don't blame my sister for not interacting [with the family] because she has perhaps been too busy and she has a lot going on in her life. 'We have extended an olive branch to her and it has not been reciprocated so far but let's wait and see what happens. 'If she did reciprocate and extend an olive branch, that would be wonderful and that's what good humanitarians and diplomats do - especially with family. 'I think we can all be better people and work towards a better future. But it takes effort on the part of everyone for it to come to fruition.' Scotland Yard and Kensington Palace have been approached for comment by DailyMailTV. The two Boeing 737 Max 8 jets that crashed in Ethiopia and Indonesia lacked two safety features in their cockpits that the aircraft manufacturer charges extra for but could have helped pilot detect erroneous readings. The optional safety features - an angle of attack indicator and a disagree light - are not mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration and are currently only installed if the airline pays for the add-ons. Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 were not equipped with the safety features, officials told the New York Times. As investigators look into the cause of the crashes, attention has turned to a new software in the jets that takes readings from devices called angle of attack sensors. The software can essentially push a plane's nose down in some circumstances, for example when the sensors suggest the plane may be stalling. The angle of attack indicator displays the two sensors, which shows how much the aircraft's nose it tilted up or down. The disagree light activates if the two sensors in the plane's software do not agree. The two Boeing 737 Max 8 jets that crashed in Ethiopia and Indonesia lacked two safety features in their cockpits that the aircraft manufacturer charges extra for. Pictured above is the cockpit of one of the 737 Max 8 jets being built in Washington Boeing will now make the disagree light free of charge as part of a forthcoming software update to the 737 MAX fleet in the wake of the two fatal crashes, officials briefed on the matter said on Thursday. The manufacturer will also retrofit older planes with the light that did not initially receive it. The angle of attack indicator will remain a feature that airlines can add on, officials said. Boeing has not commented about the safety features. The entire 737 MAX fleet has been grounded following the deadly crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia that occurred just five months apart. Faulty angle of attack sensors were blamed, in part, for the Indonesia disaster last October that killed 189 people. The sensors have also been at the center of initial investigations into this month's Ethiopia crash in which 157 died. While the two features missing from those two planes are not required by regulators, experts said they were key to safety. 'They're critical, and cost almost nothing for the airlines to install,' Bjorn Fehrm, an analyst at the aviation consultancy Leeham, told the New York Times. 'Boeing charges for them because it can. But they're vital for safety.' The feature is sold at an extra cost, which means some budget airlines like Lion Air have chosen not to fit them. The cockpit of a Boeing Co. 737 MAX 9 jetliner is seen during production at the company's manufacturing facility in Renton, Washington. Boeing will now make the disagree light free of charge as part of a forthcoming software update to the 737 MAX fleet Boeing will now make the disagree light free of charge as part of a forthcoming software update to the 737 MAX fleet in the wake of the two fatal crashes. Pictured is a Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane at the company's manufacturing facility The March 10 Ethiopian Airlines crash has set off one of the widest inquiries in aviation history and cast a shadow over the Boeing 737 MAX model intended to be a standard for decades. Initial investigations show similarities between the Ethiopian crash and the Indonesian accident in October that killed all 189 crew and passengers. Reuters reported on Wednesday that the Lion Air pilots scrambled through a handbook to understand why the jet was lurching downwards in the final minutes before it hit the water. WHAT IS AN ANGLE OF ATTACK INDICATOR AND DISAGREE LIGHT? As investigators look into the cause of the crashes, attention has turned to a new software in the jets that takes readings from devices called angle of attack sensors. The software can essentially push a plane's nose down in some circumstances, for example when the sensors suggest the plane may be stalling. Angle of attack indicator: The angle of attack indicator displays the two sensors, which shows how much the aircraft's nose it tilted up or down. It is the angle between a plane's wing and the oncoming air, according to the FAA. If the angle of attack becomes too great, the wing can stall and lose lift. If a pilot fails to recognize and correct the situation, a stall could lead to loss of control of the aircraft and an abrupt loss of altitude. The indicator can alert pilots of low airspeed conditions before a aerodynamic stall occurs, especially during takeoff and landing. Such stalls can send the plane downwards in an uncontrolled way. Angle of attack disagree light: The disagree light activates if the two sensors in the plane's software do not agree. Boeing will now make the disagree light free of charge as part of a forthcoming software update to the 737 MAX fleet in the wake of the two fatal crashes, officials briefed on the matter said on Thursday. Advertisement A final report on the Lion Air crash, which has taken on new urgency since the Ethiopian one, is expected in August. The first report from Ethiopia's inquiry is expected within a month. While no direct link has been proven between the two crashes, investigators are focusing on an automated flight-control system, MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), that came into service with the MAX two years ago. The software is designed to prevent a loss of lift which can cause an aerodynamic stall, sending the plane downwards in an uncontrolled way. In the Lion Air crash, it may have been erroneously activated by a faulty sensor, investigators believe. Angle of attack sensors would tell MCAS to point the nose of a plane down if it was in danger of stalling. According to the flight data recorder, the pilots of Lion Air Flight 610 struggled to control the aircraft as the automated MCAS system repeatedly pushed the plane's nose down following take-off. The pilots of the Ethiopian Airlines plane reported similar difficulty before the aircraft plunged into the ground near Addis Ababa on March 10. AoA is the angle of the wing relative to oncoming air stream, a measure that indicates if a plane is likely to stall. After the Lion Air crash U.S. aviation officials had issued a warning that pilots of Boeing 737-8 and 737-9 planes 'could have difficulty controlling the airplane'. A faulty sensor could cause 'excessive nose-down attitude, significant altitude loss, and possible impact with terrain', the Federal Aviation Administration had warned. Indonesia has denied that it had leaked details from the Lion Air jet's cockpit voice recorders. Officials disputed reports describing conversations as the pilots panicked just before their Boeing jet plunged into the Java Sea on October 29. The chairman of the National Transportation Safety Committee told reporters that data from the cockpit voice recorder did not match reports detailing how the pilot and co-pilot struggled to regain control of the plane. Investigators say they are still analyzing conversations from the cockpit voice recorder, which was only recovered from the seabed in January. Ethiopian emergency services work at the scene of the crash near Addis Ababa on March 10. The crash has set off one of the widest inquiries in aviation history and cast a shadow over the Boeing 737 MAX model intended to be a standard for decades An Indonesian officer holds the Lion Air JT610 flight data recorder shortly after it's found underwater last November Under unprecedented scrutiny and with its MAX fleet grounded worldwide, the world's largest planemaker has said airlines were given guidance on how to respond to the activation of MCAS software. It is also promising a swift update to the system. A Boeing spokeswoman said training on the software update would be provided by the manufacturer, but declined to disclose further details. Simulators for the Boeing 737 MAX are now being manufactured but they have yet to be delivered to most airlines that have ordered them. Ethiopian Airlines has a simulator but the captain of the doomed flight, Yared Getachew, had no chance to practice on it before the fatal crash, a pilot colleague said Simulators for the Boeing 737 MAX are now being manufactured but they have yet to be delivered to most airlines that have ordered them. They have not formed part of the required conversion training for existing 737 pilots and are not designed to replicate the MCAS system problems, Ethiopian Airlines said. It is among the few that do have such a simulator but the captain of the doomed flight had no chance to practice on it before the fatal crash, a pilot colleague said. Yared Getachew, 29, was due for refresher training at the end of March, his colleague said, two months after Ethiopian Airlines had received one of the first such simulators being distributed. 'Boeing did not send manuals on MCAS,' his fellow Ethiopian Airlines pilot said. 'Actually we know more about the MCAS system from the media than from Boeing.' Globally, most commercial airline pilots refresh training in simulators every six months. In Washington D.C., Boeing is facing various investigations. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has joined a criminal probe into the certification of the 737 MAX, the Seattle Times reported, while the Pentagon Inspector General will investigate whether acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, violated ethical rules by allegedly promoting the company when in office. Boeing will also be summoned to a U.S. Senate panel hearing for questioning over the crashes, and the panel will separately question FAA officials. Regulators in Europe and Canada have said they will seek their own guarantees of the MAX's safety. Nokia phones have been secretly transmitting users' personal data to China, according to Finnish tech watchdog. The manufacturer of the Nokia 7 Plus admitted a software error caused the device to send location information and serial numbers to a 'foreign server'. Finland's data protection ombudsman said the data was sent to servers of the state-owned company China Telecom. The Nokia 7 Plus - which received stellar reviews on its release last year - has been secretly sending users' personal data to China 'Based on our initial analysis it appears that personal data has also been transferred (to China),' Reijo Aarnio, Finland's data protection ombudsman, told news agency STT. 'The idea is that data moves freely within the EU, but when we go outside the EU, there must always be a legal basis,' Aarnio said. 'We are requesting information to try and find out whether there was a legal basis in this case. The second thing is how notification has worked, so were phone users aware that information about them is being transferred to China?' he said. The Finnish-owned manufacturers HMD Global denied that individual users can be identified from the data. Manufacturers of the device admitted a 'software error' caused it to mistakenly send location information and serial numbers to servers of the state-owned company China Telecom It said: 'We can confirm that there has been an error in the software packing process in a single batch of one handset model, which mistakenly attempted to send activation data to a foreign server.' 'The data was never processed and no personal information was shared with third parties or authorities,' it said. 'This has now been fixed and almost any device affected by this error has now installed the update. HMD Global takes the safety and privacy of our customers seriously,' the company said. In recent years, data security concerns over smartphones and network equipment made by the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei have drawn warnings from western intelligence agencies. The skepticism has seen the company banned from selling its 5G network equipment to US, Australian and New Zealand markets. Police in New York City have released surveillance video showing a man randomly sucker-punching a woman crossing the street in Brooklyn earlier this month. According to the NYPD, the violent and unprovoked attack took place at 12.10pm noon on March 9 in the area of Nostrand Avenue and Crown Street. The video shows the victim, identified only as a 27-year-old woman, crossing the street while talking on her cellphone. The NYPD on Wednesday released surveillance video showing a man in a 'Yale' jacket attacking a stranger on a Brooklyn street As soon as the 27-year-old woman crosses the street at Nostrand Avenue and Crown Street, the man throws a punch The unsuspecting victim later required hospitalization for a head injury As she reaches the sidewalk, a man wearing a blue jacket with the word 'Yale' emblazoned across the front and a beanie hat slowly walks up to the pedestrian in total silence and takes a wild swing at her. The woman collapses to the ground on impact, after which her attacker casts a glance at her and calmly walks away with his hands in his pockets. The woman, who has not been named, drove herself to a local hospital to be treated for a head injury. After the woman collapses, the man is seen calmly walking away with his hands in his pockets He is being sought by police In an effort to generate tips and apprehend the suspect, police also released a second CCTV video showing the suspect in the Yale jacket inside a nearby grocery store after the attack. Police say they are searching for a black man, approximately 40 years old, standing at 5 feet 10 inches in height, with black facial hair. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is being asked to call NYPD's Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS. A South Dakota man who suspected his girlfriend was cheating on him allegedly beat her to death and then dumped her mutilated body in a creek 600 miles away. Tamara LaFramboise's dismembered body was found outside of Menominee, in rural Michigan, after she was reported missing March 5 by her worried mother. Authorities say two boys walking their dog made the horrifying discovery of her body on Saturday. Her head, hands and feet had been removed and have yet to be found. Stephen Falkenberg, 45, of Yankton, South Dakota, allegedly killed her and then drove 600 miles to his brother's property to dispose of her corpse, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports. Tamara LaFramboise's dismembered corpse was found outside of Menominee in rural Michigan, on Saturday, after she was reported missing March 5 by her worried mother. Stephen Falkenberg, 45, allegedly killed her and drove 600 miles to dispose of her body Court documents allege that Falkenberg killed LaFramboise, 46, during a domestic bust-up where he accused her of cheating on him. He reportedly told police he pushed LaFramboise after she swung a bat at him. Just a day after she was reported missing, Falkenberg was spotted wearing a brace on one of his hands in an interview with detectives. Detectives were only able to identify LaFramboise's body by the tattoos listed on her missing persons report. A dive team continues to search the water for the woman's missing body parts and other evidence, according to South Dakota police. 'I think it's important to remember that there is a human aspect to this case, too. And that is that Ms. LaFramboise was the daughter of a woman, her mother who still lives in New Mexico,' said Jeffrey Rogg, chief assistant prosecutor in Menominee County. 'She was the mother of two young adult children. If you're a praying person, I would urge you to consider keeping their family in mind during the next difficult days, weeks and months ahead for them,' WBAY reports. Falkenberg, who has been charged with second-degree murder, is scheduled to make his initial court appearance Thursday in Yankton County Court. His cash-only bond has been set at $1 million. Detectives were only able to identify LaFramboise's body by the tattoos listed on her missing persons report. A dive team continues to search the water in the Menominee creek for the woman's missing body parts and other evidence, according to South Dakota police The discovery of the body of LaFramboise, a Native American, comes just days after tribal leaders urged Congress to improve safety measures and increase resources to tackle crime and improve safety on their reserves. They detailed a range of problems including drug trafficking, sex crimes, and missing and murdered women. The hearing was held by North Dakota Senator John Hoeven, who chairs the committee, and the other two members of the state's all-Republican delegation, Sen. Kevin Cramer and Rep. Kelly Armstrong. The testimony will be used to support legislation aimed at boosting public safety for tribes, including Savanna's Act, Hoeven said. The bill is named for Savanna Greywind, a 22-year-old Fargo woman with ties to two reservations who was killed while her baby was cut from her womb in August 2017. The bill aims to improve tribal access to federal crime information databases and create standardized protocols for responding to cases of missing and slain Native American women. Standing Rock Chairman Mike Faith noted the weekend discovery of LaFramboise as another example of crimes against Native American women. Drug trafficking is often tied to violence against Native Women, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Chairwoman Ella Robertson said in prepared remarks read by Councilwoman Lisa Jackson. 'We have experienced sex trafficking where some of our young women were trafficked off-reservation through methamphetamine drug trafficking and abused as part of a migrant industry,' she said. Five men have been convicted of trying to import 1.4 tonnes of cocaine worth 112 million into the UK, in a 60ft sailing yacht in one of the biggest drug busts in British history. Nigel Clark, 64, Dean Waters, 59, both from Britain, and Dutch national Raymond Dijkstra, 27, were today found guilty following a five-week trial at Bristol Crown Court. Estonian Richard Must, 49, and Latvian Voldermars Gailis, 21, pleaded guilty to all charges at an earlier hearing. Their yacht, the SY Nomad, was intercepted on August 29 last year while heading towards the UK, after leaving Suriname, just south of Venezuela. Police found more than 1,400 kilo blocks of cocaine hidden inside locked storage containers on the yacht that was headed to the UK The Border Force intercepted the catamaran in August last year as it headed towards the UK It was then escorted to Newlyn Harbour in Cornwall and the three men on board - Must, Gailis and Dijkstra - were arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking offences. Officers recovered more than 1,400 kilo blocks of cocaine hidden inside locked storage containers on the yacht - with a street value of 112 million. The estimated wholesale of this amount of cocaine is 44,896,000. Nigel Clark and Dean Waters were arrested later that day after being observed by police for two days. Nigel Clark, 64, Dean Waters, 59, both from Britain, were found guilty of drug trafficking offences after being monitored by officers for several days Estonian Richard Must, 49, had earlier pleaded guilty Waters had purchased a smaller boat from Spain which he towed towards Cornwall the day before his arrest to meet up with Clark. Officers believe they planned to use it to transfer drugs from the yacht to the UK. Following their arrests, searches of cars they owned led to the discovery of encrypted mobile phones, a thermal camera and GPS device, a significant quantity of cash and a registration document for the SY Nomad in Clark's name. Latvian Voldermars Gailis, 21, also pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing All five men were charged with conspiring to import cocaine and conspiring to conceal cocaine within a ship and remanded in custody. Ty Surgeon, National Crime Agency investigating officer, said: 'The main instigators Clark and Waters - both of whom have previous convictions for drug trafficking offences - knew exactly what they were doing and had planned every part of the drug smuggling attempt. 'This case should act as a deterrence to anyone who thinks they can import or smuggle drugs into the UK.' Matt Horne, NCA Deputy Director, said: 'This intelligence-led investigation resulted in the seizure of a significant quantity of cocaine that would have made its way to towns and cities across the UK. 'This was a highly profitable commodity with an estimated street value of 112million. 'Making a profit is the motive for organised criminals and this interdiction would have really hit them in the pocket - disrupting their activities and damaging their reputation at the same time. 'We know there are links between drug supply and violent crime and this seizure, along with the two tonnes recovered in similar circumstances at the same harbour in July last year, demonstrate the NCA's role in helping to prevent that'. Clark and Waters pictured walking towards the inflatable boat the prosecution said was going to be used to bring the drugs ashore They were described by the National Crime Agency as being the main instigators of the drug smuggling operation The confiscated cocaine found on the yacht has a street value of 112 million, according to the NCA Gordon Scarratt, head of Border Force Maritime said: 'The Border Force cutter's interception of the yacht was a crucial intervention in this successful operation, leading to the search of the vessel, the discovery of a vast quantity of dangerous drugs and ultimately the men's arrests. 'Our maritime crews play a key role in patrolling the UK's coastline and intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies ensures this is done to maximum effect.' The men have been remanded in custody until sentencing which will be on Tuesday 26 March at Bristol Crown Court. The yacht, the SY Nomad, was intercepted just after leaving Suriname, just south of Venezuela All five men were charged with conspiring to import cocaine and conspiring to conceal cocaine within a ship Nine in 10 Jewish students in France have been targeted with anti-Semitic abuse during their studies, according to a new poll. The extensive survey, conducted by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) this month, interviewed more than 1400 students across the country about their feelings and experiences in higher education. Of the 405 Jewish students polled, 89 per cent said they have been the victim of at least one anti-Semitic act - such as a Holocaust joke, stereotype about Jews or another act of aggression. Almost as many - 85 per cent - reported being subjected to a least one remark that contained an anti-Semitic trope. A poll by the French Institute of Public Opinion (IFOP) surveyed 405 Jewish students and found that 89 per cent said they have been the victim of at least one anti-Semitic act. Last month thousands demonstrated against the rise in hate crimes against Jews (pictured) In February, ordinary citizens and officials across the political spectrum gathered at the Republique square in Paris in solidarity with French Jews after a recent spike in anti-Semitic hate crimes 'In an effort to stick as close as possible to the reality on the ground, we compared these answers to those given by non-Jewish students, and 45 per cent of them say that they have witnessed at least one anti-Semitic act during their studies, which gives an idea of the scale of the phenomenon' Frederic Dabi, Deputy Director General of Ifop, told French weekly magazine L'Express. The survey also found that 75 per cent of Jewish students had endured 'jokes about the Holocaust or Jews'. And one in five said they experienced 'anti-Semitic aggression', meaning physical violence. Shockingly, there is a huge gap between the number of incidents reported in the poll and those that are flagged to police; just one per cent of Jewish students said they pressed charges after receiving anti-Semitic abuse. Slight more - eight per cent - lodged a complaint with their university, but the majority - 58 per cent - tried to resolve the situation directly with the people concerned. The number of Jewish students who stayed silent citing fear of reprisals was almost one in five. 'This shows the abyssal gap between the official discourse, which proclaims that any anti-Semitic action must be the subject of a complaint, and the reality on the ground,' Mr Dabi told L'Express. European Jewish Congress president Dr. Moshe Kantor said: 'Unfortunately, campuses, which are supposed to be the bases of open and liberal thought have become hotbeds of hate and intolerance against Jews. A Paris protester hold a placard saying: 'Anti-Semitism is a crime not an opinion'. One in five Jewish students have said they experienced 'anti-Semitic aggression', meaning physical violence. 'Without the assistance and understanding of the campus authorities, law enforcement agencies and the faculties, many institutions of higher education are becoming no-go areas for Jewish students and this should shame the system.' The Ifop poll, which was commissioned by the Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF), comes just one month after another Ifop survey on anti-Semitism. Although that survey showed a decrease in anti-Semitic sentiment compared to 2016, 21 per cent on respondents said that Jews have too much power in the media, economy and finance. Furthermore, 27 per cent still believe that Jews were richer than the average French person, and 20 per cent said they abuse the Holocaust to promote their own interests. French President Emmanuel Macron looks at a grave vandalised with a swastika during a visit at the Jewish cemetery in Quatzenheim, France The 'Yellow Vest' movement was found to be more agreeable to anti-Semitic statements than the rest of the population. Indeed, 59 per cent of them supported at least one anti-Semitic statement during the test, and one in ten agreed with all of them. During one Yellow Vest march earlier this year, Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut was subjected to a torrent of hate speech, with a video of the scene showing a protester calling him a 'dirty Zionist' and telling him 'France belongs to us'. Despite the poll finding that fewer people hold anti-Semitic views compared with two years ago, there has been a spike in the number of aggressive hate crimes against Jews in France in recent months. France has seen a spike in hate crimes against Jewish people in recent months, such as this swastika and the words 'shoa blabla' discovered on a headstone in the Champagne-au-Mont-d'Or cemetery on February 20 In February, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of his shame after visiting a vandalised Jewish cemetery in Quatzenheim, where 96 tombstones had been spray-painted with blue and yellow swastikas. Swastika graffiti was also found on street portraits of Simone Veil - a survivor of Nazi death camps and a European Parliament president who died in 2017. The word 'Juden' was painted on the window of a bagel restaurant in Paris, and two trees planted at a memorial honouring a young Jewish man tortured to death in 2006 were vandalised, one cut down. Two youths were arrested in February after they allegedly fired shots at a synagogue with an air rifle in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, where a large Jewish community lives. John Walker Lindh, 38, is due to be released from federal prison in May The mother of James Foley, the journalist murdered by ISIS, has said that American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh should not be released from prison. 'I don't think he should be released if he is going to continue to sow hate and terrorism around the world,' Diane Foley said in an interview with on Fox & Friends First on Thursday morning. The 38-year-old Lindh, who was captured in Afghanistan two months after the September 11 terror attacks, is due to be released from federal prison in May after serving 17 years of a 20 year sentence. He was known as 'Detainee 001' in the war on terror, and according to reports he has refused to renounce violent Islamic extremism while behind bars. 'I don't think he should be released if he is going to continue to sow hate and terrorism around the world,' Diane Foley said in an interview with on Fox & Friends First on Thursday morning Reporter James Foley was murdered by ISIS in 2014 after two years in captivity Lindh 'continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts' behind bars as of May 2016, according to a National Counterterrorism Center document reported by Foreign Policy. Lindh has acquired Irish citizenship and is expected to move to Ireland upon his release from FCI Terre Haute in Indiana. Diane Foley went on to say that anyone accused of 'incredible human rights crimes' should be 'put away for the rest of their lives' if found guilty. In 2014, her son James Foley was murdered by ISIS at age 40, two years after he was abducted in Syria. His mother commented on the type of justice she'd like to see for those who commit acts of terror against Americans. 'I would like them brought back to the United States and tried in federal criminal court so all their crimes can be brought out in the open, and they can be, if convicted, they can be held in prison for the rest of their lives,' Foley said. 'That's what I would like.' Watch the latest video at foxnews.com Fox Privacy Policy The American Taliban soldier John Walker-Lindh is seen on December 2, 2001 in Sheberghan, Afghanistan soon after his capture. He later pleaded guilty to helping the Taliban Lindh went to the Middle East in 1998. He dropped out of high school at 17 and went to Yemen to learn Arabic with the support of his parents. He then went to Pakistan and joined forces with a group that was fighting to help Kashmir gain independence from India. Lindh then arrived in Afghanistan and spent seven weeks at a training camp to prepare Taliban fighters. Al Qaeda volunteers also attended the camp to undergo training for terrorist attacks. It was there that Lindh met Osama bin Laden, who thanked him for his participation in the group, he later told FBI investigators during his interrogation. Lindh's parents, who had lost touch with him after he went to Afghanistan, only discovered where he was after CNN interviewed him following his capture. Ireland's government has already said that Lindh would not be refused entry to the country when he is released. The black man handcuffed by cops as he moved into his own home was allegedly then harassed by a police chief when he tried to file a racial bias complaint. The American Civil Liberties of Kansas say military veteran Karle Robinson was held at gunpoint as he moved into the house he had purchased in Tonganoxie. Robinson says he was harassed by law enforcement officials and that Tonganoxie's police chief stopped him from filing a racial bias complaint. The ACLU are now calling for a state investigation into the incident. Police Chief Greg Lawson says he had not seen the ACLU's allegations and would comment later. But the ACLU alleges a pervasive culture of racial bias exists in the Tonganoxie Police Department. The organization asked Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt to investigate or refer the group's complaint to the Kansas Commission on Officers Standards and Training. The American Civil Liberties of Kansas has asked for a state investigation after Karle Robinson was detained by local police while moving into his own home. The ACLU said Thursday that Karle Robinson was held at gunpoint and handcuffed as he moved into a home he had purchased in Tonganoxie Police bodycam footage shows Robinson cuffed and questioned on his own front lawn for looking suspicious while moving a television into new home in August last year In a letter they say Robinson was subjected to 'a campaign of surveillance and harassment' by police that only stopped when his story was made public. When he tried to file a complaint Chief Lawson stopped him, according the ACLU. Police also followed him, parked in front of his home or drove past it daily, Robinson says. 'Each of these incidents would be concerning had they been alleged independently,' the ACLU's letter says. 'Together, they suggest a pervasive culture of racial bias and systemic process failure within the Tonganoxie Police Department.' Lauren Bonds, the interim Executive Director and Legal Director of the state ACLU, added: 'Mr. Robinson believes his detention was motivated by his race rather than reasonable suspicion that he was committing burglary. Robinson says police harassed him and that Tonganoxie's police chief stopped him from filing a racial bias complaint 'It also appears that the Chief of Police prevented Mr. Robinson from filing a credible, legitimate complaint and that is not in compliance with reporting and intake standards. He must not interfere with citizens registering complaints.' Robinson was detained by police on his front lawn on August 19 last year after he was seen moving a wide-screen television into his home. Police bodycam footage shows he was approached by a Tonganoxie police officer who believed that he was a burglar. Chief Greg Lawson told DailyMail.com: The safety of our citizens and visitors continues to be of the highest importance to the Tonganoxie Police Department. 'The members of this agency have pledged to serve the community with honor, and the highest degree of professionalism. All officers are State Certified and trained to respond to criminal and emergency incidents. 'We have fully cooperated with Mr. Robinson and the ACLU regarding inquiries into this matter. We believe that the ACLUs correspondence to the Attorney Generals Office contains multiple accusations that are inaccurate. 'If an investigation is deemed warranted, we intend to fully cooperate with the Attorney Generals Office or the Commission on Police Officers Standards and Training (CPOST).' He told cops he had identification inside his home and could prove that the house was his but the officer handcuffed the man instead, and forced him to wait for roughly eight minutes. Tonganoxie Police Chief Lawson said at the time the officer was keeping a proper balance of courtesy and respect while keeping himself and Robinson safe. A Hawaiian Airlines flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles was forced to turn back midway when a fight broke out between two 'unruly passengers' after one of them bumped the other while reclining his seat. Several fellow passengers on the Tuesday flight described the screaming match at 30,000 feet that almost turned physical. Justin Moore-Brown, a 35-year-old from Redondo Beach, California, said he heard yelling several rows behind him about two hours into the flight. 'Two men started yelling at each other and as one walked away, he pointed to the woman sitting with the man and told her to "stay out of it",' Moore-Brown told NBC News. The fight escalated to the point that one of the men charged at the other. He was running down the aisle when a flight attendant intervened and attempted to restrain him. A Hawaiian Airlines flight from Honolulu to Los Angeles on Tuesday was forced to turn back midway when a fight broke out between two 'unruly passengers' after one bumped the other while reclining his seat. Crew members are seen attempting to diffuse the situation Hawaiian Airlines addressed the incident in a statement, saying: 'Safety is our priority, and we apologize to our guests for the inconvenience' (file photo) Stanson Chung, 30, recorded a video after the situation was diffused in which a crew member can be heard saying that 'the situation required us to use our security procedures and return to Honolulu'. Chung, who had been in Hawaii for a wedding, said the announcement elicited a 'collective sigh' in the cabin. 'We just couldnt believe it. Some people had connecting flights, some people had to work the next day, like me,' he told NBC. 'We were asking the flight attendant: "Do we really have to head back?"' Video recorded by a fellow passenger showed the men involved in the altercation being escorted off the plane by law enforcement when it landed back in Honolulu When the plane landed back in Honolulu - around the same time that it was scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles - the two bickering passengers were escorted off the plane. The others were told that the airline would book them on a new flight. Hawaiian Airlines addressed the incident in a statement saying: 'Hawaiian Airlines Flight 2 departed Honolulu for Los Angeles at 2:50 p.m. local time. Approximately two hours into the flight, the captain elected to return the aircraft to Honolulu due to two unruly passengers. 'Local law enforcement met the aircraft upon arrival at 6:38 p.m. There were 276 passengers and 11 crew onboard. Safety is our priority, and we apologize to our guests for the inconvenience. The new departure time is 8 p.m.' A group of 16 Iraqi migrants - including women and children - have been picked up off the Kent coast. They were questioned by Border Force officials after being found at Dover in the early hours of Tuesday morning. All the migrants were 'well' and did not require treatment after being checked by medics. Hundreds of migrants have made the perilous trip across the Dover Strait - the busiest shipping lane in the world - since last November. Hundreds of migrants have made the perilous trip across the Dover Strait - the busiest shipping lane in the world - since last November. Pictured: A Border Force patrol boat off the Kent coast It comes after 18 asylum seekers were found in the back of a lorry on the M26 near the Brands Hatch racetrack in Kent last week. The Eritreans - 11 men, six women and a child - were found in the German truck during a random stop. It sparked Home Secretary Sajid Javid to haul in extra cutters in the Channel in a bid to tackle the problem. Most of the migrants have been travelling in rigid-hulled inflatable boats, though the Home Office would not reveal what boat the latest group were on. A Home Office spokesman said: 'On Tuesday around 3am, a group of 16 people, made up of men, women and children, arrived at Dover Eastern Docks where they were medically assessed and found to be well. 'The group were transferred to immigration officials for interview and all presented themselves as Iraqi nationals. 'Anyone crossing the Channel - one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world - is taking a huge risk with their life. 'Since the Home Secretary declared a major incident in December we have tripled the number of cutters operating in the Channel, agreed a joint action plan with France and increased activity out of the Joint Coordination and Information Centre in Calais.' Last night eight migrants - all men - were found in the back of a lorry in Runcton, Chichester, West Sussex. The driver heard banging in the vehicle and police were called. All the men were arrested on suspicion of illegal entry into the UK and were still in custody today. Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany's plans to build a block of 75 luxury flats in a conservation area has been approved despite stinging criticism from Historic England. The Belgian centre-back, who co-owns real estate firm M4nchester Two, had applied to bulldoze a 1950s former electrical works and erect a nine-storey apartment building. But the proposal, which has now been given the green light, has come under fire from conservation campaigners who claim the construction will threaten the city's protected Ancoats neighbourhood. Manchester City captain Vincent Kompany's real estate firm is going to build a block of 75 flats despite protests from Historic England The Government-sponsored Historic England group has said that Kompany's plan 'would be harmful to the conservation area' which was one of England's first industrial suburbs. Ahead of last week's City Council meeting, a spokesperson for Historic England told the planning committee in a statement: 'The proposal would relate poorly to its surroundings and the height and monolithic form would be harmful to the conservation area. 'The scale would be particularly oppressive in relation to the narrow width of Silk and Primrose Street, which were originally laid out to accommodate 19th century two to three storey terraced houses of much smaller scale. 'This development would cause harm that requires clear and convincing justification. The nine-storey design (artist's impression pictured) will be built in the Ancoats conservation area which was one of England's first industrial suburbs 'If there is a clear and convincing justification the resulting harm would need to be weighed in relation to any public benefits arising from the proposals. 'This development would cause harm to the significance, character and appearance of the Ancoats Conservation Area.' Yet the group's protests were ignored as council recommended the planning committee approve the application. According to their design statement M4nchester Two said the flats were 'well designed' and 'well thought out'. The statement submitted to the council by the firm, added: 'The area's history and its heritage assets continue to offer a fantastic opportunity to create the type of places that people want to live and which are truly differentiated - with a genuine sense of place. The 32-year-old defender joined Manchester City in 2008 and has since won 259 caps for the club and three Premier League titles. Burger & Lobster is launching the worlds first champagne train luxury brunch for Mother's Day. In partnership with Taittinger, foodies will enjoy a first class champagne experience, with bubbling flutes served by a miniature moving train down a nine-metre bar at Burger & Lobster, Soho. Burger & Lobster is launching the worlds first champagne train luxury brunch for Mother's Day Launching on Friday March 29 for three weeks, diners can choose from the full a la carte menu including their prime cut, Nebraskan, 10oz burger or indulge in one of the only places in London to get wild Atlantic lobster. Trend-hunters can upgrade to the unique Champagne Train journey for an additional 25 per person which will allow diners to select flutes of chilled bubby as the train travels back and forth across the bar at their leisure, to accompany their Atlantic lobster or delicious burger. The founder of a new centrist political movement allegedly fired a campaigner after she told him he had put a drawing of his penis on the internet. Annabel Mullin, 40, told the employment tribunal in Holborn she was kicked out of United for Change (UFC) after she told Simon Franks she spotted an image online of him and a friend holding sketches of their penises. Ms Mullin believed her boss' photo could bring their fledgling centrist political movement into disrepute. The tribunal heard that his response, in denying that he had posted the cartoon-like image online, was to tell Ms Mullin that he would have given himself 'the bigger penis' if he had drawn it. Simon Franks (left) was pictured at the 2015 Frieze Art fair in central London's Regents Park holding a '30 second sketch' which Mr Franks said was drawn by the artist Ken Kagami and posted online by someone else Entrepreneur and philanthropist Mr Franks, the founder and director of UFC, denies that this or the way that Ms Mullin raised governance issues was the motive behind her leaving in February 2018. Mr Franks, who posed for the penis sketch photograph at the 2015 Frieze Art fair in central London's Regents Park, told Ms Mullin: 'If I had drawn it then I wouldn't have given my best friend the bigger penis and me the smaller one.' Mr Franks told the tribunal that he had been 'accused of drawing pictures of my penis and putting it on the internet when I have never in my life done anything inappropriate'. He said the drawing had been created by an artist called Ken Kagami at the fair and been posted on Instagram by philanthropist Anita Zabludowicz. Mr Franks recalled feeling 'terrified and very afraid at the situation that was unfolding' in front of him as Ms Mullin said that his comment had been unacceptable and inappropriate. In his tribunal statement, Mr Franks said: 'She literally recoiled, lurched backwards and stumbled, throwing her hands in the air as if I was about to attack her. Annabel Mullin outside employment tribunal in central London, she alleges the raising of the penis sketch photograph and her concerns over governance were the motives behind an unfair dismissal 'I told Annabel that she was being ridiculous.' Mr Franks told the hearing 'I am so glad I went survival mode' as 'I felt very vulnerable and grabbed the door open' to call in a female colleague. He then told her about what had just happened. Mr Franks also described this tribunal hearing as 'the most uncomfortable thing that has happened to me in my life', adding that 'my reputation and integrity is essential to me.' Mr Franks told the hearing he had been away when Ms Mullin - a former police officer, magistrate and Liberal Democrat candidate for Kensington in the general election - started working there a month earlier. He claims he soon spotted a negative change in the office atmosphere and felt their business relationship had broken down in just four days of them working together. Ms Mullin claims she worked through a hostile and inappropriate atmosphere including being sworn at by Mr Franks. Ms Mullin, of Stockwell, south London, has made various allegations including claims of sexual harassment, direct sexual discrimination, victimisation and unfair dismissal. In the letter where Mr Franks told her that he was terminating her employment, he wrote: 'I was away for five weeks and returned to in-fighting, self-doubt, enormous criticism of me personally and general disunity. 'In the year that we have been working on this project, there has never been any of that, never been conversations behind people's backs.' The letter continues: 'You have only been working here for two weeks, and of those two weeks we have only been in the office together for parts of three days. 'Yet you already publicly challenge me and try to tell me what I can and can't do. 'Already you have a narrative that this is all about my ego, that I do not want to relinquish control and that I am a problem.' Mr Franks claims the online photograph had no bearing on his decision and that he did not fire her on the spot. He told the hearing that 'she had been there for four days when I had been there and we had two serious arguments'. Stating that he had 'never summarily dismissed anybody in my life,' Mr Franks told the hearing he had met Ms Mullin with the intention of telling her that they were 'incompatible' and the relationship would not work. It is believed that Ms Mullin's role at the company involved outreach work. Mr Franks says she had 'some very impressive qualities' as an employee. The hearing was adjourned to Friday at 10am. A Long Island man has been arrested for allegedly stabbing his parents inside their home on Wednesday night, killing his mother, cops say. Ian Kazer, 29, was was charged with second-degree murder and second-degree attempted murder after the apparent family dispute turned violent. Cops say Kazer was fired from his job earlier in the day then got into an argument with his parents in their Syosset Circle home on Wednesday. Long Island man Ian Kazer, 29, has been arrested for allegedly stabbing his parents inside their home on Wednesday night. Kazer pictured above on Facebook in 2011 He had reportedly been fired from his job earlier in the day and got into an argument with his parents. Pictured above in an old Facebook photo The argument allegedly turned violent and Kazer used a knife to attack his parents around 8.55pm, according to the New York Daily News. He allegedly stabbed his 66-year-old mother Frances Kazer in the upper torso and neck. She died from her injuries about an hour later at the hospital. The incident took place here in Ian Kazer's parents' Syosset Circle, Long Island home @NassauCountyPD have confirmed a woman is dead and a man is hurt after they were stabbed last night at a home in #Syosset details coming up on @FiOS1News_LI #FiOS1News #LongIsland pic.twitter.com/Lwgz4zHgIJ Claire Kerr (@ClaireKerrNews) March 21, 2019 Police say he also attacked his 69-year-old Howard Kazer father by stabbing him in the chest. Howard was rushed to the hospital and is currently in a stable condition. Frances had worked as a teacher at John Bowne High School in Queens from 1978 until she retired in 2010. The top U.S. military officer will meet with Google representatives next week amid growing concerns that American companies doing business in China are helping its military gain ground on the U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday that efforts like Google's artificial intelligence venture in China allow the Chinese military to access and take advantage of U.S.-developed technology. 'This is not about me and Google,' Dunford told an audience at the Atlantic Council. 'This is about us looking at the second and third order of effects of our business ventures in China, Chinese form of government, and the impact it's going to have on the United States' ability to maintain a competitive military advantage.' Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says that ventures like Google's artificial intelligence lab in China could help the Chinese military. He is seen above last week Google CEO Sundar Pichai shakes hands with Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun during the 4th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China in 2017 Dunford's comments reflect widespread U.S. government worries that any information or data an American company has or uses as it does business in China is automatically available to the Chinese government and its military. U.S. companies in China are required to have a cell of the communist party present, said Dunford, adding, 'that will lead to that intellectual property from that company finding its way to the Chinese military.' Last week he and acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan expressed similar concerns during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. 'We watch with great concern when industry partners work in China knowing that there is that indirect benefit,' Dunford said during the hearing. 'And frankly, indirect may be not a full characterization of the way it really is. It's more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.' Shanahan also noted that Google is stepping away from some Pentagon contracts. Alphabet chairman and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is seen gesturing during a talk in 2010. Military officials fear the company's work in China may give that country a military edge Internal protests by workers at Google led the tech company to say last year that it is dropping out of Project Maven, which uses algorithms to interpret drone video images from conflict zones. Employees had complained that Google was helping with technology that could improve lethal targeting. Shanahan told senators that $5 trillion of China's economy is state-owned enterprises, 'so the technology that is developed in the civilian world transfers to the military world. It's a direct pipeline. Not only is there a transfer, there's also systemic theft of U.S. technology that also facilitates even faster development of emerging technology.' As a result, Shanahan said the U.S. military needs to continue to invest in artificial intelligence, adding that funding would double in the proposed 2020 budget. The Joint Staff did not release details on the timing of Dunford's meeting next week or who would be attending from Google. Elementary school teachers were left bloodied and nursing bruises and welts after sheriffs sprayed them with plastic pellets during an active shooter exercise. Two elementary school teachers in Monticello, Indiana, said they were asked by the sheriff's office to kneel down against a classroom wall before being shot multiple times across the back with the pellets fired at close range. 'This is what happens if you just cower and do nothing', one of the teachers, who asked not to be identified, claimed the shooters said after the incident. 'They shot all of us across our backs. I was hit four times. It hurt so bad,' the IndyStar reported. An active-shooter training exercise at an Indiana elementary school left teachers with welts and heavy bruising after they were shot with plastic pellets by police conducting the session (image shows similar ALICE training session but not the incident described) Two elementary school teachers in Monticello, Indiana, said they were asked by the sheriff's office to kneel down against a classroom wall before being sprayed across the back with plastic pellets fired at close range. Now the teachers, along with the state's largest teacher's union, are pushing for an end to the practice in other nearby schools Now the teachers, along with the state's largest teacher's union, are pushing for an end to the practice in other nearby schools. 'What we're looking for is just a simple statement in this bill that would prohibit the shooting of some type of projectile at staff in an active shooter drill,' said Gail Zeheralis, director of government relations for the ISTA during testimony in support of House Bill 1004 before lawmakers Wednesday. ALICE training is an 'options-based' approach that encourages students and teachers to be proactive in their response to active shooter incidents. Some of the tactics include rushing a shooter, in extreme situations (pictured are teachers barricading doors during a different drill) The sheriff's office in question say they are no longer using airsoft guns when carrying out the so-called ALICE training. ALICE training is an 'options-based' approach that encourages students and teachers to be proactive in their response to active shooter incidents. Some of the tactics include rushing a shooter, in extreme situations. What is ALICE training ALICE training provides options for victims in an active shooting situation beyond the traditional lockdown method. It provides training on what to do in an active shooter situation or a similar emergency. It does not teach fighting techniques, but instead actions designed to interrupt a violent intruders decision-making cycles and ability to shoot accurately. The program teaches staff to be alert, to inform others of a threatening situation, to counter the situation and to evacuate the premises. In some situations it can even encourage older students to rush the shooter, or more commonly barricade doors with heavy objects to deter the shooter. ALICE stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate. Advertisement The training is being implemented in thousands of schools across the country already. However, shooting teachers with plastic pellets is not typically part of the training. 'I've worked with teachers in other districts who have gone through ALICE and this did not happen,' said an authority on the exercise within the state. 'This is not the normal practice,' she said. White County Sheriff Bill Brooks said the county use 'plastic pellets they used are 4.6 mm in diameter slightly larger than a standard BB. It's a soft, round projectile,' he said. 'The key here is 'soft.'' Brooks said all the teachers involved signed up to participate and that they were given several weeks forewarning. However, the two teachers say staff were not given any warning about being shot. One teacher said many of her co-workers suffered welts and scabs after being sprayed with the bullets. The treasurer of a New York police charity is accused of stealing more than $400,000 that was meant for families of slain officers so she could pay for Barbra Streisand tickets and her grandchild's private school tuition. Lorraine Shanley, 68, was charged on Thursday with bank fraud and aggravated identity theft for allegedly stealing funds from the Survivors of the Shield charity. The charity provides funds to the families of officers who are killed in the line of duty. Shanley, who was the non-profit's volunteer treasurer for seven years, is accused of using $410,000 worth of donations to fund her lifestyle. Lorraine Shanley, 68, was charged on Thursday with bank fraud and aggravated identity theft for allegedly stealing funds from the New York Survivors of the Shield charity. She is pictured above with her NYPD cop brother She is accused of using the charity's money to buy $8,000 in event tickets, including $1,400 to see Barbra Streisand. Shanley, who was the non-profit's volunteer treasurer for seven years, is accused of using $410,000 worth of donations to fund her lifestyle Shanley also allegedly wrote at least $45,000 in checks that she could deposit into her own accounts, paid about $29,000 for her grandchild's private school tuition and spent $63,000 on her son's criminal legal expenses. In addition, she is accused of spending approximately $32,000 on dental expenses and $25,000 on landscaping at her Staten Island home. The amount that Shanley is accused of stealing totaled about 20 percent of the charity's donations, according to court documents. About 99 percent of the donations the charity receive comes from NYPD employees. Prosecutors said Shanley was an authorized signatory on the charity's bank account and credit card but she used those funds to benefit herself and her family. She was caught when a new volunteer reviewed the charity's tax returns and records in an effort to modernize the non-profit's operations. Shanley, pictured left with Borough Commander Of Staten Island Chief Kenneth Core, was the non-profit's volunteer treasurer for seven years Shanley's social media accounts are filled with photos of her with NYPD officials and family members who work on the force. Shanley's social media accounts are filled with photos of her with NYPD officials. Shanley surrendered on Thursday morning and was due to face Manhattan Federal Court later in the afternoon. She is charged with one count of bank fraud, which carries a 30 year maximum sentence, and one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries a two year sentence. 'Lorraine Shanley allegedly capitalized on tragedy and monetized people's generosity,' U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said. 'As alleged, Shanley stole over 20 percent of the donations to a charity whose sole mission is to help the families of NYPD officers killed in the line of duty. 'Thanks to the investigative work of the IRS and special agents from our Office, Shanley will be prosecuted for her actions.' Wendell Alfredo Nibbs, 53, was arrested on Wednesday near Miami A former middle school gym teacher who is charged with raping a student has been arrested for a second time after two additional girls came forward to claim he sexually assaulted them. Wendell Alfredo Nibbs, 53, was arrested on Wednesday near Miami after the two girls told police that he had sexually assaulted them, with one claiming he is the father of her child. Nibbs had been on house arrest since his initial arrest on November 30, 2017, when he was charged with two counts of sexual battery on a child 12 years of age or older but less than 18. He was previously a physical education teacher at Brownsville Middle School in Miami until the first allegations emerged, but has been on administrative leave in the meantime. Nibbs appeared in court on Thursday, where a judge revoked his bond upon hearing the new charges and ordered him held in custody to await trial The parents of the first teen who accused him filed a lawsuit in January saying that Nibbs had a pattern of sexually harassing students and should have been fired sooner, WSVN-TV reported. The suit said that the 15-year-old girl identifies as gay, and that Nibbs told her all she needed was an experience with a man 'to be straight.' The lawsuit claims that Nibbs raped the girl repeatedly in his classroom during school hours, and sent her nude photos using a messaging app. On one occasion, Nibbs told the girl to take off her pants, and then cleared his desk, took out a condom from his back pocket and had sex with the her, a police warrant states. After that, he forced the girl to perform oral sex on him and flushed the condom down the toilet, according to the warrant. Nibbs was a a physical education teacher at Brownsville Middle School in Miami but has been on administrative leave since he was first arrested The ages of the two new accusers is unclear, but the charges indicate that they were students at the middle school at the time of the alleged sexual abuse. On Thursday, Nibbs appeared before a judge, who revoked his bond and remanded him to custody upon hearing the new charges. Nibbs is charged with a total of ten counts of engaging in a sexual act with a child in a position of custodial trust, one count of false imprisonment, and one count of interference with custody. It was unclear whether he had an attorney to comment on his behalf. A couple left a herd of deer to starve to death at their Georgian mansion which they had been renting out as a luxury holiday home, a court has heard. Five of the deer kept by Benjamin Rudge, 43, and Olena Lobunets, 47, died of malnutrition after being abandoned at Clermont Hall in Little Cressingham near Watton, Norfolk. The fallow deer were in a herd of 14 being kept in a paddock without adequate food or shelter at the 18th century hall which was once the home of the 2nd Duke of Wellington. Former technology company boss Rudge and Lobunets had been renting out the mansion and three cottages as a holiday home from 3,956 a week for up to 36 people at a time. Five of the deer kept by Benjamin Rudge, 43, and Olena Lobunets, 47, died of malnutrition after being abandoned at Clermont Hall in Little Cressingham near Watton, Norfolk (pictured) The fallow deer (one of which is pictured) were in a herd of 14 being kept in a paddock without adequate food or shelter at the 18th century hall RSPCA inspectors visited the hall which was leased by the couple on February 17 last year after being contacted by walkers concerned at the condition of the deer Letting agents described it as a 'stunning Grade II listed building, with its own outdoor heated swimming pool, sauna and hot tub' which would 'guarantee you a stay to remember on a fabulous country estate'. King's Lynn magistrates heard how RSPCA inspectors visited the hall which was leased by the couple on February 17 last year after being contacted by walkers concerned at the condition of the deer. One was found dead and another had collapsed while all others showed signs of being emaciated. Their pen in the hall's 24 acres of woods and parkland was also bare of any grass and infested with molehills. RSPCA workers began visiting to feed the animals, but four others also died including the one which had collapsed. Rudge and Lobunets of Richard Foster Road, Cambridge, faced two counts each of causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal. One count related to five deer that died of malnutrition, and the other to the conditions that the animals had been kept in. The case against them was found proved at a hearing last month which they failed to attend. And on Wednesday this week, magistrates banned them from keeping deer for two years and made a deprivation order to pass ownership of the surviving deer to the RSPCA. No costs were awarded and the couple faced no further penalty. One of the deer was found dead when RSPCA workers arrived at the property. While another had collapsed while all others showed signs of being emaciated Later, the one that had collapsed died alongside three other deer, bringing the total number of deceased animals to five Jonathan Eales, prosecuting for the RSPCA, told the earlier hearing that a housekeeper was employed to look after the property and the fallow deer but he did not have money for animal feed. He added: 'Once a deer crosses a certain threshold with malnutrition, you can't bring it back no matter how hard you try. The deer is doomed from that point.' Rudge and Lobunets who no longer lease the hall had denied there was any problem with the herd when interviewed, he said. Mr Eales said post mortem examinations revealed the deer were severely under-weight and emaciated. He said: 'These deer died as a result of neglect. They were malnourished, dehydrated, they were incapable of surviving in an enclosure where there was insufficient food and no shelter.' Speaking after the hearing, a spokesman for the RSPCA recalled the state of the deer when they first arrived at the estate. He said: 'The deer were very skinny - you could clearly see their ribs and their hip bones were protruding. 'We hoped to remove the animals but expert vets said they were too weak to be moved at that stage. Vets advised us to feed them and our officers, who had launched an investigation, visited them daily to monitor their condition. 'Ongoing tests established that, in addition to underfeeding, there were problems with worms and poisonous ragwort in the field so the herd needed to be moved to new pastures before ragwort started to come through in spring. 'The owners failed to move the herd so vets felt they needed to be taken into our care.' The spokesperson added: 'The deer have recovered well and are now living with a private deer keeper. 'When we first contacted the couple - who didn't live on the estate - about the condition of the deer they told us they had paid staff to look after them and assured us they'd ensure they were better looked after. 'However, despite giving assurances the deer would be moved into a safe and suitable environment as advised by the vet and despite offers of help from our team to assist in doing this, Ms Lobunets and Mr Rudge failed to do so and the animals were then seized and taken into our care. 'We tried on countless occasions to work with them to improve the welfare of the deer but, in the end, we had no choice but to act.' Jonathan Eales, prosecuting for the RSPCA, told the earlier hearing that a housekeeper was employed to look after the property and the fallow deer (one of which is pictured) but he did not have money for animal feed Lobunets was also fined 2,000 by Norwich magistrates last October after being convicted of fire safety offences at Clermont Hall. The court heard that a lack of fire safety measures could have resulted in the 'serious injury or death' of occupants of the mansion in the event of a fire. There were no fire doors, fire detection or warning alarms, no fire-extinguishers, no emergency lights, no notices of what to do in the event of a fire, and the travel distance from all floors to the place of safety was excessive, the court heard. Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service safety officer Christopher Soames who inspected the hall in October 2016 was so concerned that he served a notice prohibiting the use of the premises as a holiday house. He visited again in May 2017 and found some minor changes, but ruled that the fire alarm system was inadequate. The hall was said to have been supplied with electricity by two large generators on the back lawn, wired in through a back window. Lobunets was convicted of two counts of failing without reasonable excuse to respond to a letter from a fire safety officer requiring information in respect of the premises. The court heard that she told Mr Soames last March that she had not read his letters and had instead put them straight in the bin. The Regency era hall was bought by the 2nd Duke of Wellington in 1858 and later became a school before falling into disrepair in the 1970s. It was later restored to its former glory. The Regency era hall was bought by the 2nd Duke of Wellington in 1858 and later became a school before falling into disrepair in the 1970s. It was later restored to its former glory. A website described it as 'an ideal location for families and friends to enjoy a celebration to remember, or even for corporate events looking to impress' with nine bedrooms in the main house and nine more in nearby cottages. It added: 'As you open the grand doors you will be instantly impressed by the wonderful reception complete with marble fireplace. Every room has been meticulously decorated to ensure guests enjoy a memorable stay. 'Outside, there are a selection of lawns, ornamental trees and walkways to enjoy whilst taking in the delightful views. 'An enclosed area is home to a herd of Fallow and Sika Deer, as well as enclosures for rabbits, peacocks and hens, ideal for fresh eggs at breakfast!' Wayne Williams (pictured) was given two life sentences for convictions in the deaths of two adults and evidence tied him to other murders Atlanta's mayor and chief of police are leading a push to re-examine evidence from a string of murders from 1979 to 1981 that terrorized the city's black community. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Police Chief Erika Shields announced Thursday that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation will review evidence in the so-called 'Atlanta Child Murders' to see if any could be used for further testing. Wayne Williams was given two life sentences in 1982 for convictions in the deaths of two adults, thought to be among 29 black children and young adults killed. After his conviction, police closed 22 other cases and blamed them on Williams without formally charging him. The announcement comes as law enforcement across the country have been able to close cold cases by comparing DNA samples to genetic testing databases. Authorities will re-examine evidence in the hope that technological breakthroughs might point to a definite killer in the cases, most of which were never solved, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Thursday. She said officials hoped to provide closure to the families of victims who have sought answers about their children's killers for decades. Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, (left), and Police Chief Erika Shields, (right), announced that evidence will be reviewed in the so-called 'Atlanta Child Murders' to see if any could be used for further testing The 29 young black people - most of them males - were murdered between between 1979 and 1981. The case sparked widespread fear for the safety of children. At least two dozen were children between the ages of 7 and 17. Williams was arrested in 1981 and charged in the murders of Nathaniel Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, who were both adults. He was found guilty of both killings in 1982 and sentenced to life in prison. The former news reporter and wannabe music producer was 23 at the time. He was convicted, in part, on forensic technology that connected dog hairs and numerous fibers that had been found in Williams' home and car, to Cater and Payne. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms told a conference on Thursday: 'We are taking a fresh look at these cases and to determine once and for all if there is additional evidence that may be tested. Williams always maintained his innocence for the crimes and said authorities wanted to convict a black man because arresting a white man might have sparked a race war 'It may give some peace to the extent that peace can be had in a situation like this. 'To let the victims' families know that we have done all that we can do to make sure that their memories are not forgotten and to let the world know that black lives do matter.' Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields also said that she hoped the reexamination of the cases would bring some closure to families. Chief Shields said: 'Even though there is evidence tying Williams to these 22 children, he was only ever tried on the cases of two murdered adults. Chris Richardson, (left), was strangled to death in June 1980 and Patrick Rogers, (right), was bludgeoned to death months later in November 1980 Angel Lenair, (left), died from asphyxiation in March 1980 and Jefferey Mathis, (right), died in March 1980. His death was undetermined 'This has caused some of the victims families to believe that they were never afforded justice.' The effort will involve Atlanta Police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Fulton County District Attorneys Office. 'The Atlanta Police Department has reached out to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. 'What weve asked is that they look at the evidence that was handed over to them 40 years ago and they see whether any of it qualifies for further analysis,' Chief Shields said. Shields said that officials will 'painstakingly' examine all boxes of evidence to determine what can be retested or if there may be any evidence that was never tested as technology did not exist at the time. Fulton County district attorney Paul Howard, (pictured), said no stone would be left unturned in reexamining all the evidence from the case The reexamination effort will involve Atlanta Police, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Fulton County District Attorneys Office, a conference heard on Thursday (pictured) 'The fact that I had to work to find out where the evidence was is indicative that no one has gone through it exhaustively,' Shields told reporters. 'We need to exhaustively go through it and say, could this be looked as evidence.' Williams has always claimed he is innocent and argued Atlanta officials sought to cover up evidence of a Ku Klux Klan role in the killings to avoid a race war. The case was high-profile and Sammy Davis Jr., Frankie Sinatra and The Jacksons performed at benefit concerts to raise money for victims' families. It also spawned a 1985 CBS miniseries starring James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman and Martin Sheen, ABC7 reported. The mother of one of the victims who spoke at the conference claimed that she did not have closure 46 years after the death of her son. The body of Jimmy Ray Payne, 21, is taken to Fulton County Medical Examiners office in Atlanta in 1981 after it was discovered in the Chattahoochee River. He was the 26th person to die Wayne Williams (second from left) and his father (left) talk to policemen on the lawn of their home. A witness who reported seeing 23-year-old Wayne Williams with one of Atlanta's 28 young black murder victims two days before he disappeared Catherine Leach, whose son Curtis Walker was murdered, claimed: 'It seems like the Atlanta Missing and Murdered Children have been forgotten in this city. 'We want some closure. I want to know who killed Curtis. His case is still sitting on the shelf, getting dusty and rusty.' In 2010, Williams spoke to CNN after forensic experts said human hairs found on the body of 11-year-old victim Patrick Balthazar could not exclude Williams as the boy's killer. Williams has also questioned the disappearance of certain evidence and accusing investigators of manipulating other evidence. 'The bottom line is nobody ever testified or even claimed that they saw me strike another person, choke another person, stab, beat or kill or hurt anybody because I didn't,' he said at the time. He claimed that police wanted to convict an African-American man because arresting a white man might have sparked a race war and 'Atlanta would've gone up in flames,' he claimed. District Attorney Paul Howard announced the case will be the first one handled by his offices Conviction Integrity Unit. He said this would allow family members and others to make an application to review a case to see if a conviction is justified. Howard who had just started with the District Attorneys Office at the murders called those years a very tough time for the community and added 'many heavy hearts still exist in our community.' Citigroup Inc. will sell several tons of Venezuelan gold it received as collateral from the Maduro regime to settle the nation's billion-dollar loan debt, marking a major financial blow to the dictator's embattled rule. Venezuela's Central Bank missed a deadline on March 11 to repay Citigroup $1.1billion of their $1.6billion loan signed back in 2015, four sources familiar with the matter said. Now that the deadline has passed, Citigroup will sell off the collateral gold Venezuela gave them, valued at roughly $1.358billion, to recover the loan amount. The excess $258million made in the sale will then be deposited into a U.S. bank account in New York, as per two sources. Citigroup will sell several tons of Venezuelan gold worth $1.4billion after the Maduro regime missed a deadline to buy it back as a part of their 2015 financial deal in exchange for a $1.6billion loan That money won't be accessible to Maduro's regime, and as a further hit, it could be handed over to the transitional government's leader Juan Guaido, according to Bloomberg. Maduro's government has used financial operations known as gold swaps since 2014 where they offer gold as collateral to tap into international reserves to access cash. Back in 2015, Venezuela agreed to give Citibank the 'significant volume of gold' and to buy it back in March 2019 in order to obtain a $1.6billion loan. Citibank claimed that following the transaction, it owned the gold. The government used the swap after the country experienced a slump in revenue following sluggish oil sales that created a lack of hard currency in Venezuela. But over the past two years the country has struggled to recover its collateral. Maduro depleted more than 40 percent of the country's gold reserved last year trying to pay creditors and fund government programs in the midst of the crippled economy. Venezuela's financial crisis is coupled with his political instability where control of the government and military is split between long-time dictator Nicolas Maduro and the National Assembly's newly declared president Juan Guaido. Most Western nations are standing behind opposition leader Guaido following Maduro's fraud-ridden elections where he declared himself president. In the midst of the crisis, U.S.-backed support has helped Guaido gain control of the state's oil company PDVSA's U.S. refinery subsidiary. Despite attempts to negotiate a 120-day extension over repurchasing the collateral, Citibank went head to sell the gold. 'Citibank was told that there was a force majeure event in Venezuela, so the grace period was necessary, but they did not grant it,' one of the sources on Guaido's team said. A source inside the Venezuelan government confirmed that the nation's Central Bank did not transfer the loan money to Citibank this month. Citigroup will sell the gold to earn their loan amount back and will store the $258million made in excess in the sale in a U.S. bank that will be untouchable to Maduro and could be handed over to the transitional government's leader Juan Guaido (above) Guaido is now attempting to freeze bank accounts and gold owned by Venezuela abroad. Much of their riches is stored in the Bank of England. In January the nation faced a major financial setback when the Bank of England denied Maduro's request to withdraw $1.2billion of gold stored in its vaults, according to Fox. Knowing that, sources say the Central Bank had no incentive to repay Citibank. As Guaido tries to guide the country out of turmoil, his team has been preparing this month for a potential debt restructuring plan to ease payments and stop hostile creditors, according to two sources. 'We want to address the debt in a comprehensive way. We calculate that it totals $200billion,' one source said. In meets Guaido's team as been meeting with legal advisers in the U.S. and had renegotiations with Venezuelan bondholders as well as the Chinese and Russian governments. Customers at a Houston Petco were left stunned Monday when an unusual and very large animal arrived at the store with its owners. Vincent and Shelly Browning had decided to test the franchise's famous policy that 'all leashed pets are welcome' by bringing along their 2,000 pound African Watusi named Oliver. The pair were pleasantly surprised by Petco's friendly staff, who quickly welcomed the gigantic steer with open arms. Scroll down for video Vincent Browning brought along his one ton African Watusi to a Petco in Houston, Texas on Monday A video shared to Facebook shows Vincent walking Oliver into the store, located in the suburb of Atascocita. In the clip, the one-ton animal tilts its head to allow its large horns to pass through the shop's automatic doors. Immediately, employees rushed up to pat the placid animal, while customers whipped out their smartphones to take photos of the memorable moment. Taking to social media after the event, Vincent praised the pet store, saying: 'The staff members here are always super friendly and courteous to us. We really enjoy coming to this location...our favorite Petco by far!' Posted by Vincent Browning on Monday, March 18, 2019 The unusual animal was welcomed into the store by employees and customers alike Owners Vincent and Shelly Browning were impressed by the way Petco treated their beloved African Watusi Speaking with Chron, Vincent's wife Shelly further gushed over the franchise. 'I didn't think a major chain like that would be open to us bringing him in, but we were just kind of testing the waters on that all-leashed-pets-welcome policy they have.' 'It was exciting and just something we really wanted to do anyways. So it just really kind of fit that we got there (and) came at the right time when the right people were there. They welcomed him with open arms, everyone was so excited.' The African Watusi isn't the only unusual animal to have made its way through the doors of the Atascocita Petco. Pigs and baby calves have previously been brought into the popular chain. A highly decorated police captain shot himself in the head during a heated argument with his ex-girlfriend. Surveillance video footage shows Edilberto Ortiz Correa, 32, grabbing his former partner's hand during a verbal exchange at shop where the woman works in Medellin, Colombia. Various people could be seen walking by the counter at the store that specializes in selling law enforcement gear on Monday afternoon. Ortiz Correa, who was dressed in his service uniform, then removed his weapon from the holster and pointed it at his head. WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES Police captain Edilberto Ortiz Correa (pictured) shot himself during an argument with an ex-girlfriend in Medellin, Colombia. He was declared dead early Tuesday morning at a local hospital Authorities in Colombia have not released the name of Captain Edilberto Ortiz Correa's former girlfriend (pictured). The woman had a heated argument with the commander of Special Security Task Force Unit before he shot himself Ortiz Correa (left) points the gun at his head before he pulled the trigger after arguing with his ex-girlfriend (right) For some reason the gun didn't go off the first time he pulled the trigger in front of the shocked woman, whose name has not been identified by Colombian news outlets. But the second time Ortiz Correa pulls the trigger he immediately crashes back against the gate of a nearby kiosk. Ortiz Correa was the commander of a Special Security Task Force unit. Edilberto Ortiz Correa (pictured) was a 14-year law enforcement veteran in Medellin, Colombia Edilberto Ortiz Correa had scheduled an overseas vacation trip with his ex-girlfriend (pictured) Edilberto Ortiz Correa (left) grabs his ex-girlfriend's (right) hand during an argument The 14-year law enforcement veteran was taken to Soma Clinic, which is located just two blocks away from where the incident took place. According to Colombian news outlet Diario del Cauca, doctors registered him at 5.20pm. He was placed in the Intensive Care Unit and was declared dead at 2.30am Tuesday. Diario del Cauca reported that the former couple were scheduled go on a overseas trip. Investigators are still trying to determine what drove Ortiz Correa to kill himself. DailyMail reached out to his family for comment. The adoptive mother of a 14-year-old girl who was raped, murdered and dismembered by her stepdad said she watched as the teen was choked to death and told her 'it's ok to go'. Sara Packer reportedly smirked as she testified how she took her daughter Grace's hand and said 'I can't help you anymore'. Packer took the stand on Wednesday and told the court: 'Grace had become, for lack of a better word, a non-entity. She just didn't exist anymore. I wanted her to go away.' Tragic Grace Packer was brutally murdered as part of a sick rape-murder fantasy between Jacob Sullivan, 46, and his girlfriend Sara. Sullivan pleaded guilty last month to the 2016 rape, murder and dismemberment of Grace at their home near Quakertown, Pennsylvania. Grace's adoptive mother, Sara Packer, has also agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. She told the court: 'I took her hand and told her it was OK to go. It seemed like it took forever, but it was only a couple minutes.' The defense has said that Sullivan should get the same sentence as Packer - life in prison. She has already told a court that her daughter had a tendency to be a 'very difficult child'. Sara Packer, who wore a red prison jumpsuit, also said she has a degree in psychology and an IQ over 140. Grace (pictured) was brutally murdered as part of a sick rape-murder fantasy between Sullivan and Sara Packer Grace Packer's adoptive mother, Sara Packer (left), said in court that she watched as her daughter was choked to death and told her 'it's ok to go'. Grace was raped, killed and dismembered by Jacob Sullivan (right) in 2016 Grace's family members said they remain haunted by her torture and excruciating death, describing for jurors their unrelenting pain at a hearing that will determine whether her killer will be sentenced to life or death. Prosecutors have said Sara Packer hated Grace, shared a rape-murder fantasy with Sullivan, watched as he sexually assaulted and strangled her in a hot attic outside Philadelphia, and helped hack up her body and dispose of it months later. 'It sickens me to know that Grace was abused, tortured and literally thrown away like she was a piece of trash,' her cousin, Karie Heisserer, with whom Grace lived for a time in 2015, said in court Thursday. 'Grace is in a better place now, free from evil and pain.' Jurors saw photos of the bubbly but troubled teen in happier times: Sitting in the cab of her uncle's big rig, frolicking in the sand at her first trip to the beach, delighting in birthday cake at a pool party. But all of that happened with relatives, not with Sara Packer, a former county adoptions supervisor who prosecutors say spent years physically and mentally abusing the little girl she fostered and then adopted. Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub told the jury that he agreed to a life sentence for Sara in exchange for her confession and guilty plea because the physical evidence against her was weak. Grace's family members said they remain haunted by her torture and excruciating death, describing for jurors their unrelenting pain at a hearing that will determine whether her killer will be sentenced to life or death In a confession to police, Sullivan said he and Sara Packer (pictured during a 2017 court appearance) plotted Grace's death Weintraub said the evidence was weak because it was Sullivan who raped and killed Grace, and because Sara Packer's crimes did not qualify for the death penalty. In a confession to police, Sullivan said he and Sara Packer plotted Grace's death. Sullivan admitted he punched and raped Grace as Sara Packer watched, bound her hands and feet with zip ties and stuffed a ball gag in her mouth. Prosecutors said Sullivan and Packer also gave her what they intended to be a lethal dose of over-the-counter medication and left her to die in a sweltering attic. Grace eventually managed to escape some of her bindings and spit the gag out, but was unable to make it out of the house before Sullivan and Packer returned overnight - some 12 hours later. That's when Sullivan strangled her as Sara Packer looked on. The couple stored her body in cat litter for months, then hacked it up and dumped it in a remote area where hunters found it in October 2016, prosecutors said. Grace's younger brother, Josh Packer, now 14, told jurors the only way he can bear his loss is if adults know her story and then act to prevent child abuse. Prosecutors said Sullivan and Packer gave Grace what they intended to be a lethal dose of medication and left her to die. Grace eventually managed to escape some of her bindings and spit the gag out, but was unable to make it out of the house before they returned That's when Sullivan strangled her as Sara Packer looked on. The couple stored her body in cat litter for months, then hacked it up and dumped it in a remote area (pictured) where hunters found it in October 2016, prosecutors said He said in a statement read by a detective that if his big sister was told she could save other kids' lives by giving her own, she would ask: 'What do I have to do?' 'Watch out for all the kids so that a loss like Grace's loss never happens again,' Josh wrote. 'Do your best to help kids who can't help themselves.' That's not what happened in Grace's case. Sara Packer and her husband at the time, David Packer, adopted Grace and Josh in 2007. The couple cared for dozens of foster children before David Packer was sent to prison for sexually assaulting Grace and a 15-year-old foster daughter at their Allentown home, about an hour outside Philadelphia. Sara Packer lost her job as a Northampton County adoptions supervisor in 2010 and was barred from taking in any more foster children. But child welfare authorities did not remove Grace from the home, despite evidence of abuse. The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services launched an investigation after Grace's murder but its findings have not been made public. A father who allegedly tried to recruit his brother into murdering his wife, before killing her himself with the help of his daughter and blaming it on a panhandler, is extradited from Texas to Baltimore to face murder charges. Baltimore police said 52-year-old Keith Smith and his 28-year-old daughter Valeria Smith arrived by plane shortly after midnight and were booked on first-degree murder charges. Both were denied bail at hearings held hours later. This latest development comes after charging documents have revealed that Keith allegedly tried to recruit his brother to kill his wife. The Baltimore Police Department on Thursday released video showing the extradition of murder suspect Keith Smith (pictured in glasses) and his daughter, Valeria (pictured with blond hair) The father and daughter were booked on first-degree murder charges and denied bond Keith and Valeria Smith are accused of stabbing to death the man's wife, Jacquelyn (pictured with her husband) on December 1 in Baltimore and then blaming it on a panhandler Keith and his daughter are charged in the death of 54-year-old Jacquelyn Smith, an electrical engineer who was married to Keith since 2014. She was stabbed five times in the chest late last year and Keiths tragic tale of charity-gone-wrong made national headlines. After giving several TV interviews, with his daughter weeping by his side, Keith lobbied the city to pass legislation to ban panhandling at city intersections, saying he wanted the law to be named for his dead wife. Oprah Winfrey, once a newscaster in Baltimore, tweeted that the tragic case would make her reconsider handing out cash to panhandlers. The husband claimed his wife was knifed to death on December 1 inside her white Audi by a man after handing $10 to a female panhandler who appeared to be holding a baby and a sign reading 'Please help me feed my baby' late at night in a rough part of Baltimore. But police say he concocted that story and went on the run as authorities were closing in. Smith and his daughter were arrested on March 5 in Texas during what police portray as a desperate dash for Mexico. Police say the pair fled to Texas in an effort to cross the southern border into Mexico Charging documents allege Keith (pictured with Valeria) asked his brother, Vick, to 'get rid of Jacquelyn' prior to the stabbing attack Brandon Mead, Valeria's defense attorney, said his client is innocent. He asserts father and daughter simply intended to take a family vacation south of the border when they were arrested after stopping at a gas station in a Texas border town. 'Lets be realistic: We would all love to take a vacation to Mexico. You know, you get a chance to go to Mexico you say yes,' Mead told WJZ-TV. Jacquelyn, who married Keith in 2014, was allegedly about to divorce him at the time of her death Keith's lawyer, Natalie Finegar, told reporters she believes the evidence cited in the Baltimore Police Departments statement of probable cause is problematic. 'We havent seen any of this evidence yet and there are a lot of questionable forensics that are included in the statement of probable cause,' she asserted after her client was ordered held without bail. Among other things, charging documents in the case state that a friend told detectives Keith Smith had asked his brother, Vick Smith, 'to get rid of Jacquelyn,' taking that to mean he wanted to kill her. Police believe Jacquelyn was about to divorce her husband, who was convicted 20 years ago for robbing the same Maryland bank three times with a pellet gun. When Vick Smith was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, police wrote that he alerted his brother, who began seeking a way out of the country. According to police, Keith tried to book one-way tickets to Cuba and Canada but had no passport. While trying to book a flight to the US Virgin Islands he checked whether it was possible to cross into Mexico. Here are the 81 people and entities sent letters and document requests by the House Judiciary Committee on Monday March 4 2019 1. Alan Garten. Trump Organization chief legal officer and executive vice president. Has worked for Trump since 2006 2. Alexander Nix. Former CEO of Cambridge Analytica; former director of Strategic Communication Laboratories Group (SCL). Boasted that Cambridge Analytica 'ran all of [Trump's] digital campaign,' which campaign denies 3. Allen Weisselberg. Chief financial officer, The Trump Organization. Already has limited immunity from federal prosecutors in Michael Cohen probe 4. American Media Inc. Publisher of the National Enquirer magazine. Entered into non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in the Michael Cohen probe after being part of deals to silence Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal over claims of sex with Trump Target: American Media Inc. and its CEO David Pecker - the president's longtime friend -are both in Democratic crosshairs with a letter demanding they hand over documents about dealings with Trump 5. Anatoli Samochornov. Acted as translator for Nataliya Veselnitskaya at notorious Trump Tower meeting 6. Andrew Intrater. CEO of Columbus Nova, which made payments of $500,000 to the Michael Cohen-controlled LLC also used to pay Storm Damiels. Believed to be a cousin of Viktor Vekselberg, sanctioned oligarch whose business in linked to Columbus Nova 7. Annie Donaldson. Deputy White House Counsel, January 2017 to December 2018 8. Brad Parscale. Trump campaign digital president who company was paid $94 million by the campaign. Now 202 re-election campaign manager 9. Brittany Kaiser. Former Cambridge Analytica director turned whistle-blower; has cooperated with Robert Mueller probe 10. Cambridge Analytica. Data-mining company partly owned by mega-donor Robert Mercer, which did work for Trump campaign. Closed in wake of revelation it used Facebook users' personal data acquired by subterfuge 11. Carter Page. Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who was target of FISA 'eavesdropping warrant' over suspected links to Russia. Name appeared in so-called golden showers dossier. 12. Columbus Nova. New York-registered investment company. Described in federal filings as affiliated to group founded by sanctioned Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg 13. Concord Management and Consulting. Sanctioned Russian company owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the oligarch nicknamed 'Putin's chef' who is accused of running troll farms 14. Corey Lewandowski. Trump campaign manager January 2015 to June 2016. Now a political consultant 15. David Pecker. CEO of American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer and longtime Trump friend. Subject to non-prosecution agreement with U.S. Attorney for Southern District of New York over Michael Cohen probe 16. Department of Justice 17. Don McGahn. White House counsel January 2017 to October 2018 18. Donald J Trump Revocable Trust. Legal vehicle that has held all of Trump's business assets since he entered office. Trustees are Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg; Eric Trump chairs its advisory board 19. Donald Trump Jr. President's eldest son and one of the trustees of the trust holding his business interests. Agreed to notorious Trump Tower meeting and when offered dirt on Hillary Clinton replied: 'I love it.' Another focus: Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg (center) has received a letter from Democrats. He and Donald Trump Jr. make up the board of the trust that holds all the president's assets 20. Dylan Howard. Vice president and chief content officer of American Media Inc, publisher of the National Enquirer. In a non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York over Michael Cohen probe. 21. Eric Trump. President's second son. Executive vice president of the Trump Organization and chairman of advisory board to the trust that holds his father's business assets 22. Erik Prince. Billionaire founder of controversial security firm Blackwater and brother of Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary. Met Russian banker close to Putin in the Seychelles in January 2017 23. Federal Bureau of Investigation 24. Felix Sater. Convicted Russian mobster turned Manhattan property developer who had office beside Trump in Trump Tower. Worked with Michael Cohen on Trump Tower Moscow 25. Flynn Intel Group. Company run by now disgraced national security advisor Michael Flynn before taking office that was hired to lobby by a company tied to the Turkish government 26. General Services Administration. Government agency that helps with the running of basic functions such as IT and property procurement. Involved in the lease of the Trump Hotel 27. George Nader. Pedophile Middle Eastern fixer who is cooperating with Mueller probe. Adviser to both United Arab Emirates' de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, and Blackwater billionaire Erik Prince 28. George Papadopoulos. Trump campaign foreign policy adviser convicted of lying to the Mueller probe and jailed. Tried to set up Trump-Putin meetings Letter: Hope Hicks is being told to hand over documents to Congress 29. Hope Hicks. Trump organization PR who was press secretary to Trump campaign, then successively White House 'director of strategic communications' and communications director. Resigned in March 2018 after admitting she told 'white lies' and DailyMail.com's revelation she was dating Rob Porter, Trump's ex-staff secretary who is accused of beating both his ex-wives. Now chief communications officer for Fox, parent company of Fox News and other Rupert Murdoch holdings not being bought by ABC 30. Irakly Kaveladze. Georgian-American senior vice president of Crocus Group, property firm run by oligarch Aras Agalarov, the billionaire who brokered Trump Tower meeting and tried to do a Trump Tower Moscow deal 31. Jared Kushner. Ivanka Trump's husband and senior adviser to the president. Ran his family's Kushner Companies real estate firm from 2006 to January 2017 32. Jason Maloni. Former personal spokesman for Paul Manafort 33. Jay Sekulow. Personal attorney to Trump since late spring 2017 34. Jeff Sessions. Ex-Alabama senator who was first to endorse Trump. Became attorney general but immediately recused himself from investigations into campaign or president, opening way to Mueller probe, Served January 2017 to November 2018 35. Jerome Corsi. Conspiracy theorist and Roger Stone associate who denies communicating with WikiLeaks about hacked Clinton emails. Has been focus of Mueller inquiry but not charged 36. John Szobocsan. Longtime business partner of late Republican operative Peter Smith. Dead man openly attempted to obtain Hillary Clinton's missing emails 37. Julian Assange. WikiLeaks founder who is holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London 38. Julian David Wheatland. New CEO of Cambridge Analytica, former chairman of its British affiliate 39. Keith Davidson. Attorney for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal when they cut deals to keep their silence on claims of sex with Trump 40. KT McFarland. Deputy National Security Advisor January 2017 to May 2017 meaning she was deputy to Mike Flynn; nominated as ambassador to Singapore but withdrew in September 2018 41. Mark Corallo. Longtime Republican operative who was spokesman for Trump's legal team until July 2017 42. Matt Tait. Cybersecurity consultant contacted by late Republican political operative Peter Smith when he was trying to get Hillary Clinton's deleted emails 43. Matthew Calamari. Corporate director of security, The Trump Organization and a one-time Trump bodyguard; named by Michael Cohen as one who knew about claims Trump engaged in insurance fraud 44. Michael Caputo. Political adviser to Trump campaign November 2015 to June 2016. Previously worked for politicians in Russia and Ukraine Pedophile: Middle Eastern fixer George Nader has child sex convictions 45. Michael Cohen. Trump personal attorney who paid Stormy Daniels for her silence. Convicted of offenses including lying to Congress and has turned on the president, who called him a 'rat.' Due to report to prison in May 46. Michael Flynn. National security advisor January-February 2017. Fired for lying about his contacts with Russia and now convicted of lying to the FBI. Conviction was part of Mueller probe with whom he is cooperating. Still to be sentenced 47. Michael Flynn Jr. Son of disgraced national security advisor. Helped run his father's firm and was prolific pro-Trump tweeter who promoted 'pizzagate' conspiracy theory among others. Account now deleted 48. Paul Erickson. Longtime Republican operative who was in a relationship with alleged Russian spy Maria Butina. Tried to set up Trump-Putin meeting at an NRA convention. Indicted on fraud charges 49. Paul Manafort. Veteran Republican operative and political consultant who was Trump's campaign chairman June 2016-August 2016. Convicted in Mueller prosecution of crimes including failing to register as a foreign agent for his Ukrainian lobbying, tax and bank fraud. Facing 25 years in prison 50. Peter Smith (Estate). Republican donor who tried to get the deleted Hillary Clinton emails and contacted what he thought were Russian hackers. Committed suicide day after revealing his activities, leaving wife, three children and three grandchildren To Russia with love: Publicist Rob Goldstone set up the notorious Trump Tower meeting 51. Randy Credico. New York comedian who texted his associate Roger Stone: 'Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary.' Cooperated with Mueller probe 52. Reince Priebus. Chairman of the Republican National Committee January 2011-November 2016. White House chief of staff January 2017-July 2017 53. Rhona Graff. Longtime executive assistant to Trump who has worked with him at the Trump Organization since 1987. Named by Michael Cohen to Oversight Committee as someone who could corroborate his account 54. Rinat Akhmetshin. Soviet military intelligence officer turned lobbyist who was present at notorious Trump Tower meeting and also lobbied in Washington to overturn Magnitsky Act sanctions on Russia 55. Rob Goldstone. British-American publicist for Emin Agalarov who emailed Donald Trump Jr. to set up notorious Trump Tower meeting. Has cooperated with Mueller probe 56. Roger Stone. Veteran dirty trickster and Trump associate charged by Mueller probe with obstruction, false statements and witness tampering. Awaiting trial. At center of claims he was a conduit to WikiLeaks 57. Ronald Lieberman. Trump Organization executive vice president; named by Michael Cohen as one who knew about claims Trump engaged in insurance fraud 58. Sam Nunberg. Roger Stone protege; Trump consultant 2011-February 2014 and parts of 2015. Accused Trump of illegally funneling corporate money into his campaign; has cooperated with Mueller probe 59. SCL Group Limited. New name for Strategic Communications Laboratories, parent company of Cambridge Analytica. Claims to have influenced elections around the world 60. Sean Spicer. Republican National Committee communications director February 2011-December 2016. White House Press Secretary January 2017-July 2017 61. Sheri Dillon. Tax lawyer to Donald Trump and partner at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in Washington. Being investigated House Oversight Committee on suspicion of making false statements 62. c. White House Deputy Counsel in charge of ethics and compliance January 2017-August 2018. Being investigated House Oversight Committee on suspicion of making false statements 63. Steve Bannon. Ex-investment banker who was Breitbart executive chairman March 2012-August 2016. Chief executive of Trump campaign August 2016-November 2016. Chief counselor and senior strategist to Trump November 2016-August 2017 Reason to smile: Mike Pence is the only man left in Trump's service in this January 2018 picture - and the only one without a demand to hand over documents. Those sent the letter are from left: Reince Priebus; Steve Bannon; Sean Spicer; Mike Flynn 64. Ted Malloch. London-based American academic with history of dubious claims who is associate of Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage and campaigned to be Trump's ambassador to the European Union. Was held by Mueller and appears to have cooperated 65. The White House 66. Trump Campaign 67. Trump Foundation. Family foundation for 'charitable distribution' whose board was Trump, Donald Jr. Ivanka, and Eric Trump and Allen Weisselberg. Under investigation by New York state attorney general who stopped Trump's attempts to dissolve it in 2016; still legally in existence as a result 68. Trump Organization. The entity that controls all Trump's business ventures 69. Trump Transition. Organization chaired by then New Jersey governor Chris Christie May 2016-November 11, 2011, then by Mike Pence 70. Viktor Vekselberg. Ukrainian-Russian billionaire subject to U.S. sanctions. Questioned by Mueller over $500,000 paid to the LLC controlled by Michael Cohen that was also used to pay Stormy Daniels 71. WikiLeaks. Organization led by Julian Assange, which published hacked Clinton emails 72. 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee. Committed headed by Trump friend Tom Barrack. Under investigation already by federal and state prosecutors 73. Christopher Bancroft Burnham. Member of Trump transition team who is now on board of aluminum giant En+ Group, the firm founded by formerly sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who owns a 35 per cent stake 74. Frontier Services Group. Security firm founded by Erik Prince after sale of controversial Blackwater security group 75. J.D. Gordon. Trump campaign's 'director of national security'; pushed for Republican National Committee to change language on arms for Ukraine, removing commitment to arm fight against pro-Russian separatists 76. Kushner Companies. Property holding company led by Jared Kushner from 2006 to January 2017 77. NRA. National Rifle Association. Alleged to have been targeted by Russian spy Maria Butina. Endorsed Trump in May 2016, earlier than previous cycles 78. Rick Gates. Paul Manafort deputy who was deputy Trump campaign chair June 2016-November 2016, then Inaugural Committee deputy chair. Struck plea deal with Mueller February 2018 and is cooperating with probe while waiting to be sentenced 79. Tom Barrack. Founder and executive chairman of Colony Capital private equity group and longtime Trump friend. Chair of inaugural committee and has brokered meetings in Middle East. Interviewed by Mueller probe 80. Tom Bossert. Assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, January 2017-April 2018. Fell for a prankster who posed as Jared Kushner 81. Tony Fabrizio. Chief pollster to Trump campaign from May 2015 to Election Day. Questioned by Mueller about whether polling data was shared with Russia A muscle-bound former NYPD officer accused of murdering four men in a cocaine deal gone wrong is facing the death penalty after he allegedly lured his victims to a local bar and executed them. Authorities allege Nicholas Tartaglione, 49, invited the men to Likquid Lounge, in Orange County under false pretenses, and held them their against their will before killing them - shooting three in the backs of their heads. Police say he was aided by former New York City officer Joseph Biggs, 57. The pair then allegedly drove the bodies to Tartaglione's farm about 30 minutes away and buried them in a wooded area. Prosecutors announced their intention to seek the death penalty in the high-profile case against Tartaglione during a hearing in White Plains on Tuesday, LoHud reports. Authorities allege Nicholas Tartaglione (pictured), 49, invited the men to Likquid Lounge, in Orange County, under false pretenses and held them their against their will before shooting three in the back of their head Defense lawyer Bruce Barket raged at the prosecution's decision to seek the harshest penalty. 'Unfortunate, despicable, unnecessary, unjust, egregious, thoughtless, pointless; those are all words that came to my mind,' Barket said, adding 'outrageous' to the list. Tartaglione is accused in the deaths of Martin Luna, Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna and Hector Gutierrez, who went missing April 11, 2016. Their bodies were found by police using a digger after Tartaglione was arrested in December 2017 over conspiracy to distribute more than 11 pounds of cocaine. Three had been shot in the back of the head, while Martin Luna, whose death was ruled as homicide, died in another, unexplained manner. Prosecutors say the men lured Martin Luna (top left) to a bar 'to track down a drug debt'. Luna brought along two relatives and a family friend - 32-year-old Urbano Santiago (bottom right), 25-year-old Miguel Luna (bottom left) and 43-year-old Hector Gutierrez (top right) - Despite the showing of force from the prosecution, the decision to seek the death penalty is still relatively rare in the state. Manhattan Federal prosecutors announced in September they would pursue the death penalty against Sayfullo Saipov - accused of being an ISIS sympathizer and killing eight people in a 2017 truck attack on the Hudson River bike path. Before Saipov, prosecutors last pursued the death penalty against drug kingpin Khalid (Big Homie) Barnes, convicted in 2008 of running a violent drug ring as well as murdering two people. He was ultimately spared the death penalty. Tartaglione is accused in the deaths of Martin Luna, Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna and Hector Gutierrez, who went missing April 11, 2016. Their bodies were found by police after Tartaglione was arrested in 2017 over conspiracy to distribute more than 11 pounds of cocaine The four bodies were then taken to Tartaglione's farm 30 minutes away and buried. Biggs (pictured) is also also accused of the horrifying murders Tartaglione's defense team had pursued a plea deal for more than a year in a bid to head off the death penalty. They met with with officials at Department of Justice in Washington in December but failed to convince them. Barket told reporters: 'The first part of the trial that we will have, and we are preparing for, is the innocence phase and that's what we're preparing for as much as anything else.' The number of American children killed by guns is rising significantly: more kids were shot dead in 2017 than on-duty police officers and active duty military combined, according to a new study. The number of gun-related deaths among children age 15-18 rose 46 percent from 1,389 in 2013 to reach 2,025 in 2017, the most recent year for which data was available. The rate among those age 5-18 rose 34 percent during the same period, for a total of 437 of deaths in 2017 compared to 326 in 2013, according to the study published Thursday in the American Journal of Medicine. 'It is sobering that in 2017, there were 144 police officers who died in the line of duty and about 1,000 active duty military throughout the world who died, whereas 2,462 school-age children were killed by firearms,' researchers wrote. This graph illustrates the total number of firearm deaths each year among youth age 15-18 This graph illustrates the total number of firearm deaths each year among youth age 5-14 Experts at Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine analyzed data from the National Center for Health Statistics to reach their findings. Overall, 38,940 children age 5-18 years old died from gun violence from 1999-2017. A majority (32,478) were age 15-18, while 6,464 were children age 5-14. The problem has been worsening in recent years, following declines in youth gun deaths in the mid- to late-2000s, with upticks starting in 2013 among 15-18 year olds and in 2009 among 5-14 year olds. Overall, a majority (61 percent) were killed during an assault, while 32 percent died by suicide and 5 percent died in an accident. Details were unavailable on an additional 2 percent of cases. The numbers were more dire among black youth. While African Americans make up roughly 12 percent of the U.S. population, black children age 15-18 accounted for nearly 42 percent of all gun deaths among that age group in 2017. This graph illustrates the number of gun deaths among white and black teens age 15-18 from 1999-2017. Both groups have experienced a major uptick since 2013, and African American teens account for a disproportionate number of gun deaths The number of black teens age 15-18 killed by guns rose 40 percent from 2013-2017 to reach 843 deaths in one year. Meanwhile, gun deaths among African Americans age 5-14 rose an average of 16 percent a year from 2013-2017. White teens also saw a dramatic upward trend: gun deaths among 15-18 year olds increased 67 percent from 2013-2017, to reach 1,110 deaths in one year. 'These descriptive data indicate that mortality rates from firearms in United States schoolchildren are increasing at alarming rates especially among blacks and those aged 15 to 18 years,' researchers wrote. With 393.3 million civilian-owned guns, the U.S. is the only country in the world that has more guns than people, according to a separate report by Small Arms Survey, a Geneva-based think tank. America has a population of 316.5 million, amounting to 120.5 firearms per 100 people. President Donald Trump attacked John McCain yet again on Thursday, calling him 'horrible' after the late senator's two daughters begged earlier that day for the president to leave their dad and family alone. 'I'm not a fan. He was horrible what he did with repeal and replace. What he did to the Republican Party and to the nation, and to sick people that could have had great health care was not good. So I'm not a fan of John McCain and that's fine,' Trump told Fox Business Network. The president has repeatedly complained about McCain's 2017 vote on the GOP's so-called 'skinny repeal' of Obamacare, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate and rolled back a tax on medical devices. President Donald Trump attacked John McCain yet again, calling him 'horrible' Only answering the question? Trump said he only spoke about John McCain because 'you people bring it up' - but spoke about him unprompted in Ohio on Thursday John McCain died of brain cancer in August In 2017, McCain gave a dramatic thumbs' down on a GOP vote to repeal Obamacare McCain gave a dramatic thumbs down on the Senate floor during the vote, which killed Republican efforts to take down former President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law. Trump has railed repeatedly against his late nemesis for the past week, starting off with a flurry of critical tweets over the weekend that segued into harsher language in the past few days. But he denied to Fox Business Network he's spending a lot of time talking about the Vietnam War hero even as he went back to attacking McCain over the infamous Golden Showers dossier, a document with unverified allegations the Russians have blackmail material on the president. RARE INTERVENTION BY ADOPTED DAUGHTER SMEARED AS 'LOVE CHILD' It was notable that Bridget McCain broke her long public silence and weighed in on the matter. The youngest McCain child has stayed out of the national spotlight and rarely appeared with her father in his public life. During the 2000 Republican presidential primary, rumors were spread in South Carolina - before its decisive primary election - that Bridget was the illegitimate child of John McCain. The McCains had actually adopted her as a baby from an orphanage in Bangladesh, when Cindy McCain was visiting the impoverished nation on a humanitarian visit and spotted Bridget at Mother Theresa's Dhaka orphanage. She took her and another girl to the U.S. for medical treatment in 1991 and suggested to her husband that they adopt Bridget. The process was completed by 1993. During the 2000 primary, which George W. Bush eventually won, voters in South Carolina described receiving polling phone calls that asked them: 'Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?' in what was a reference to Bridget. Advertisement 'It's not a good portion of my time, it's a very small portion. But if you realize about three days ago it came out that his main person gave to the FBI the fake news dossier. It was a fake, it was a fraud, it was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. They gave it to John McCain who gave it to the FBI for very evil purposes, that's not good,' he said. Fox Business Network's anchor Maria Bartiromo pressed him on attacking someone who was dead and could not respond. 'But Mr. President, he's dead. He can't punch back. I know you punch back, but he's dead,' she said. 'No, I don't talk about it,' Trump said. 'People ask me the question, I didn't bring this up. You just brought it up, you asked the question.' He added: 'You asked me the question, when I went out yesterday to the scrum they asked me the question. When they ask me the question, I answer the question. But you people bring it up, I don't bring it up.' In fact Trump had spoken about McCain in Ohio on Thursday at a speech which featured no questions from reporters or members of the audience. The interview was filmed shortly after McCain's daughters both pleaded with the president to leave their father and their family alone. McCain's youngest daughter Bridget made a rare public statement in defense of her late father and slammed President Trump in the process, calling him a 'child' and saying he wasn't invited to senator's funeral because 'you could not be counted on to be courteous.' Bridget McCain, 27, offered her thoughts on the president's attacks on her father via her Twitter account, which her sister Meghan McCain then read Thursday morning on ABC's 'The View.' Meghan McCain read her sister Bridget McCain's defense of their late father during 'The View' on Thursday John McCain with daughters Bridget and Meghan and wife Cindy on Election Night 2010 in Phoenix 'My little sister Bridget for the first time ever has decided that she wants to speak out,' Meghan McCain announced before sharing her younger sibling's reaction. 'Mr. Trump, everyone doesn't have to agree with my dad or like him, but I do ask that you be decent and respectful. If you can't do those two things, be mindful. We only said good-bye to him almost seven months ago. Even if you were invited to my dad's funeral, you would have only wanted to be there for credit and not for the condolences. Unfortunately, you could not be counted on to be courteous as you are a child in the most important role the world knows,' McCain read. Her sister was adopted by the McCains from Bangladesh and until now has made rare appearances in public life. Trump complained during a visit to a manufacturing plant in Ohio on Wednesday that he didn't get thanked for giving McCain 'the kind of funeral that he wanted.' 'I endorsed him at his request and I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I don't care about this, I didn't get a thank-you. That's okay. We sent him on the way. But I wasn't a fan of John McCain,' Trump said. He claimed he 'got asked about' the late war hero but the comment came during a free-wheeling speech which was uninterrupted by questions from anyone. His claim that there were no thanks was also challenged by McCain supporters Thursday. They highlighted how in August, shortly after McCain's death from brain cancer, his former campaign manager Rick Davis offered a message of thanks from the McCain family to the Trump administration for their help with the funeral. 'The combined efforts of the Trump administration, the White House, Secretary Mattis and the Department of Defense, especially and the Military District of Washington, are very experienced in these issues related to the logistics of a funeral of this magnitude. And we really thank them for coming together very quickly and pulling together all the federal resources that we have,' he said at the time. The casket of the late John McCain is carried out after the National Memorial Service at the Washington National Cathedral on September 1, 2018 And a spokesperson for the Washington National Cathedral said the president's permission was not needed for McCain's memorial service to be held there. 'Washington National Cathedral was honored to host the funeral service for Senator John McCain. All funerals and memorial services at the Cathedral are organized by the family of the deceased; only a state funeral for a former president involves consultation with government officials,' the spokesperson said. 'No funeral at the Cathedral requires the approval of the president or any other government official.' The president was criticized after McCain's death for not keeping the flag flying at the White House at half-staff. It was eventually lowered and stayed that way until McCain was buried. He was not invited to the funeral at the late senator's request. Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush gave the eulogies. A slew of political VIPs - Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney and others - were in attendance. It was notable that Bridget McCain broke her long public silence and weighed in on the matter. The youngest McCain child has stayed out of the national spotlight and rarely appeared with her father in his public life. She did read a bible verse at her father's memorial service at North Phoenix Baptist Church this past August. But she has otherwise stayed out of the public arena. 'It's very brave of her. She's young and she does not speak publicly,' Meghan McCain said on 'The View.' She also noted her younger sister is 'very, very private.' 'Anyone who knows anything about political history could probably surmise why she's chosen to lead a very private life but she felt inclined to say and tweet this,' Meghan McCain said. It was a rare public statement from Bridget McCain in defense of her father During the 2000 Republican presidential primary, rumors were spread in South Carolina - before its decisive primary election - that Bridget was the illegitimate child of John McCain. The McCains had actually adopted her as a baby from an orphanage in Bangladesh, when Cindy McCain was visiting the impoverished nation on a humanitarian visit and spotted Bridget. During the 2000 primary, which George W. Bush eventually won, voters in South Carolina described receiving polling phone calls that asked them: 'Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?' in what was a reference to Bridget. It's been Meghan McCain who has led the defense of her father from Trump's attacks. Her two brothers, Jack and Jimmy, serve in the military and McCain's children from his previous marriage have been quiet thus far. 'I don't like coming here every day and having to do this. It's extremely emotionally exhausting,' Meghan McCain admitted on 'The View' Thursday. 'I want to thank the American public for the decency and compassion they have given for us,' she added. President Trump has spent the past week attacking the late senator, with whom he had a bitter relationship when McCain was alive. Bridget McCain read a bible verse at her father's August memorial service President Donald Trump complained during a visit to a manufacturing plant in Ohio on Wednesday that he didn't get thanked for giving McCain 'the kind of funeral that he wanted' The president suggested on Wednesday that the late senator should have come to him after he was first handed a copy of the infamous Golden Showers dossier. 'John McCain received the fake and phony dossier. Did you hear about the dossier? It was paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton, right?' Trump said at the event in Ohio, drawing boos at the mention of his Democratic rival, who had a law firm fund opposition research after a conservative group first funded the research that became the dossier. 'And John McCain got it. He got it. And what did he do? He didn't call me. He turned it over to the FBI hoping to put me in jeopardy. And that's not the nicest thing to do,' Trump said. McCain associate and former State Department official David Kramer testified in a court case that McCain gave the first pages of the dossier to former FBI Director James Comey on December 9, 2018. The president's latest comments came as the McCain controversy boiled over after Trump's weekend attacks on the longtime senator who was held captive for 5 1/2 years in a Hanoi POW camp during the war. In recent days the controversy has brought in McCain family members, the Senate leaders from both parties, and other lawmakers who knew McCain. Cindy McCain at the 2008 Republican National Convention when John McCain was the GOP presidential nominee with the McCain children: From Left to Right: Andrew, Meghan, Jimmy, Cindy, Jack, Doug, Bridget and Sydney Bridget McCain and Meghan McCain watch as their mother laid a wreath at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial during a funeral procession for John McCain Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said he will reintroduce legislation to name a Senate office building after McCain following Trump's comments that he is 'not a fan' of the Vietnam war hero. Schumer first raised the issue after McCain's death in August. He brought it up again after Trump blasted McCain on Twitter over the weekend, then doubled down when asked about McCain in the Oval Office Tuesday. 'I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be,' Trump told reporters Tuesday. Trump's continued public animosity has pushed several GOP senators to weigh in with their own views. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell came out with a tweet calling his 'good friend' and former colleague a hero but did not directly call out Trump for his comments. 'Today and every day I miss my good friend John McCain. It was a blessing to serve alongside a rare patriot and genuine American hero in the Senate. His memory continues to remind me every day that our nation is sustained by the sacrifices of heroes,' said McConnell. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was McCain's best friend in the Senate and something of a protege, has been put on the spot by the situation. A former fierce Trump critic, Graham now backs Trump on a series of issues and has provided critical cover on the subject of the Russia probe. 'A lot of people are coming to John's defense now that called him crazy and a war-monger, so it's kind of interesting to see the politics of how this dispute's being used to bash Trump by people who were against both Trump and McCain,' said Graham in his home state, NBC reported. Sen. Charles Schumer wants to name a Senate office building after McCain Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called McCain his 'good friend' and former colleague a hero on Twitter but did not directly call out Trump for his comments Meghan McCain, meanwhile, delivered another emotional tribute to her father on ABC's 'the View' on Wednesday, punching back at Trump. 'If I had told my dad, 'Seven months after you're dead, you're going to be dominating the news and all over Twitter,' she said. 'He would think it was so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death.' Then she tried to turn the tables by bringing up cyber bullying a top issue of first lady Melania Trump. 'Do not feel bad for me and my family,' she said. 'We are blessed. We are a family of privilege. Feel bad for people out there who are being bullied that don't have support.' She continued: 'Feel people out there who are being bullied who don't have support ... There are kids committing suicide bc of cyber bullying on line. There are people going through rough time. ... We have 20 veterans a day committing suicide. Focus on these issues,' she said. Meghan McCain has led the defense of her father and hit back at Trump on Wednesday, saying her father 'would think it was so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death' Meghan McCain read her sister's statement on 'The View' on Thursday Trump attacked the late senator twice this weekend on Twitter, focusing on McCain's ties to the infamous Steele dossier. 'So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) 'last in his class' (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!, the president wrote on Sunday. McCain was actually fifth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, and regularly joked about his own academic performance. On Monday, Meghan McCain slammed Trump for having a 'pathetic life' for spending his weekend tweeting criticism of her father. 'He spends his weekend obsessing over great men, because he knows it, and I know it, and all of you know it, he will never be a great man,' McCain said on ABC's 'The View.' 'My father was his kryptonite in life. He was his kryptonite in death,' she added. A woman who killed her mother coldly denied any involvement to police just hours after beating her to death with a piece of wood. Chilling footage from police interviews with teaching student Simona Zafirovska has been released a week after she was sentenced to life behind bars for murder. Radica Zafirovska, 56, died in her home in Brisbane's inner northwest on October 28, 2016. Simona Zafirovska, 22, (pictured in a forensic jumpsuit) was sentenced to life behind bars on Wednesday lat week for murdering her mother Her adopted daughter, Zafirovska denied playing any part in her death but a jury did not believe her and found her guilty. Throughout the initial police interviews, just hours after the murder, Zafirovska appeared emotionless. Footage obtained by 9news shows Zafirovska sitting in the Ferny Grove Police station with a blanket wrapped around her as she tries to convince police someone had broken into their home. 'What is your knowledge of what's happened today?' a police officer can be heard asking. 'That someone has broken in, my mum has been hurt and she's passed away,' she says. When asked if she knows how her mother was hurt she replies: 'No'. After five hours of questioning by police she was released, however six days later she was arrested and questioned again. During the next stage of questioning Zafirovska refuted the allegation she bludgeoned her mother to death. Chilling footage from police interviews with teaching student Simona Zafirovska has been released a week after she was sentenced to life behind bars for murder 'I haven't killed my mum,' she was recorded saying during a police interview. 'Why would I want to kill my mum? Like give me one good reason why I would want to kill my own mother?' 'I haven't killed my mum. 'Like how can you? I haven't killed her. Why would I want to kill my mum? Like give me one good reason why I would want to kill my own mother?' she can be heard saying. Radica died with 26 severe injuries, including skull fractures and brain bleeding. Zafirovska had claimed intruders broke in and attacked her mother during a triple-0 call. However, police found no evidence of forced entry. A piece of decking covered in Radica's blood was also found in Zafirovska's bedroom. The details of the triple-0 call were made public for the first time last week and reveal the tale she old the operator. 'There's somebody in my house,' Simona whispered down the phone line. Zafirovska (pictured in a forensic jumpsuit) made a chilling phone call to triple-zero just hours after she brutally murdered her mother in their Brisbane home in 2016 Radica Zafirovska died from 26 severe injuries, including skull fractures and brain bleeding 'I can hear them and the dogs have been barking.' When asked by the operator what she can see or hear she replied: 'Footsteps on the wooden, from the wooden floors.' During the 4.55 minute call, Zafirovska then told the operator she was hiding in her bedroom and wasn't sure if the intruders were still there. 'But I can still hear something,' she whispered. 'I can hear someone speaking.' She then admitted she was too scared to leave her room. 'OK, don't talk unless you have to,' the operator said. During sentencing in the Brisbane Supreme Court, Justice Ann Lyons called her story of an intruder an 'elaborate ruse'. 'You then falsely caused a disturbance in the house to make it look as though there were intruders in the house. By the verdict it's clear the jury has not accepted that that was, in fact, the case.' Zafirovska was sentenced to life in jail with a non-parole period of 20 years on Wednesday last week. With time already served, she will be eligible for release in November 2035. Two mosques at the centre of the Christchurch terrorist attack won't be re-open in time for Friday prayers as forensic workers race against the clock to clean up the rooms where 50 people were slaughtered by a white supremacist. Authorities were hoping to have the Masjid al Noor and Linwood Masjid mosques ready for the weekly Islamic ritual known as Jumu'ah. Jumu'ah, otherwise known as Friday prayers, is considered the most important weekly ritual and often the target of terrorists like accused gunman Brenton Tarrant who stormed the mosques last week. Authorities are now hoping to hand over the mosques in Riccarton and Linwood, Christchurch on Saturday. Police and contractors were racing to complete crime scene investigations and restore Christchurch's Masjid al Noor and Linwood Masjid mosques to the Muslim community in time for the Islamic ritual, but unfortunately the mosques won't reopen until Saturday But thousands are still expected to show their support outside the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch's Hagley Park on Friday afternoon for a public memorial. Many attendees are planning to hold hands in a human wall in a show of solidarity and reassurance. Two minutes of silence for the dead and injured will follow the 1.30pm Call to Prayer, which will be broadcast on television and radio. Police and forensic teams worked around the clock to get Masjid al Noor and Linwood Masjid ready for Friday's Islamic ritual, instead thousands are still expected to show their support on Friday afternoon for a public memorial opposite Al Noor mosque The two sites aren't ready and will now be handed over on Saturday, rather than on the one-week anniversary of the shootings by a lone gunman that also resulted in the death of 50 Muslim worshipers 'We appreciate the support that the people of New Zealand have given to us at this time, and the opportunity to do this,' community leader and head of the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand, Mustafa Farouk, said. 'We are so happy that this prayer will be broadcast to the entire world so that everyone can be a part of it.' There's been a strong police presence outside the Al Noor and Linwood mosques since the massacre last Friday, as forensics teams work to clean up the two sites Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will speak at the memorial, which will be attended by thirty foreign dignitaries. 'As a nation, as one, we will pay our respects to those who died in Christchurch,' Ardern said. The public memorial comes the morning after more than 10,000 people marched silently through Dunedin to a packed rugby stadium where 15,000 people gathered for a sombre vigil. Locals look on at the candlelit vigil held on Thursday night at Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin, to show their respects for the 50 people killed in last week's mosque massacre On Thursday night more than 10,000 people marched silently through Dunedin to a packed rugby stadium where 15,000 people gathered for a sombre vigil A mass burial of the victims is expected to take place on Friday after the Police Commissioner announced that all 50 victims of the attack had now been formally identified and their bodies could be released to family. Up to 25 bodies have been washed in preparation for the burial at the city's Memorial Park Cemetery. More than a dozen victims have so far been buried after funerals on Wednesday and Thursday, including 71-year-old grandfather Haji-Daoud Nabi, whose final words - 'Hello, brother' - greeted the gunman who first attacked the Masjid al Noor mosque. Three teenagers were also among those laid to rest. The New Zealand government has moved swiftly to prevent a tragedy like the Christchurch massacre from ever happening again. Police have had a large presence outside the sites of the two mosque attacks in recent days, as well as at Wednesday and Thursday's funerals where more than a dozen of the 50 victims have been laid to rest On Thursday, Prime Minister Ardern announced semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles would be banned, as well as parts that can be used to convert less-powerful guns into military-style weapons. Legislation to introduce the ban is expected to be introduced by April 11, but in the meantime the weapons have become illegal under interim measures. A buyback program - similar to that of Australia's after the Port Arthur massacre - will be launched to take existing weapons out of the public, and gun owners who don't comply will face fines. 'On 15 March, our history changed forever. Now, our laws will, too,' Ardern said. 'We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place.' A teenager accused of killing her mother and the parents boyfriend, then leaving the bodies to rot while she attended a New Years Eve party, appeared in a New York court Thursday. Destiny Garcia was 15 when she allegedly shot then stabbed mother Rosie Sanchez to death and did the same to Anderson Nunez, helped by her 28-year-old boyfriend Jerry Masionett. After requesting a separate trial from the accused man who fathered a child she miscarried after the murders Garcia was in the Brooklyn court for a routine status conference. Scroll down for video Destiny Garcia appeared in Kings County Supreme Court in Brooklyn, New York on Thursday Garcia was in the Brooklyn court for a routine status conference on her murder case She has been charged with two counts of murder in the killings of her mother Rosie Sanchez and the parent's boyfriend, Anderson Nunez, in December 2015. They are pictured above Charged with two counts of murder, Garcia stood before Judge Miriam Cyrulnik for a brief update on the scheduling of her case. The defendant wore her khaki green prison garments over a long-sleeve gray ensemble. She left her rosary beads visible over the top, donned black-framed spectacles and wore her long black hair down in an unkempt fashion. She was appearing alongside her lawyer Peter Guadagino. At one point she shot an unimpressed facial expression at him as he spoke to her while pointing his finger in her direction. Judge Miriam Cyrulnik gave a brief update on the scheduling and told her to return next month She seemed to release a faint smile in the Kings County Supreme Court for criminal matters A law enforcement officer also kept a close eye on Garcia, who remained bound to handcuffs and appeared to try her best to maintain a serious facial expression. But she seemed to release a faint smile in the Kings County Supreme Court for criminal matters where Assistant District Attorney, Richard Y. Chin, was also present. The defendant was told she would be scheduled to return to court in April. Garcia has admitted to the murders. Garcia left her rosary beads visible over her prison top and wore spectacles She had an unimpressed expression as she stood with lawyer Peter Guadagino (right) Three years ago her attorney claimed in court the teen was being harassed by fellow inmates at the juvenile facility where she was being held. She was ordered into protective custody. Garcia had initially implicated her godbrother Jordan Santiago in her first statement on January 3 but in her second statement - given the next day - she then removed Santiago and included her boyfriend Jerry Maisonett as the accomplice, said the New York Daily News. The teen went on to describe how her mother had physically abused her and how she had planned to go and live with a cousin. The teen has claimed her mother had physically abused her and how she had planned to go and live with a cousin The teen claimed her 28-year-old boyfriend Jerry Masionett (center) helped her with killings Garcia attended New Year's Eve celebrations in Times Square while her mother and mother's boyfriend's (pictured) corpses were rotting in the family apartment, investigators say Garcia was 15 when she allegedly shot then stabbed the victims at her home in New York On the night of the killing, Sanchez apparently caught Garcia with her bags packed and after the pair got into an argument, her mother apparently punched her in the face several times, according to a statement obtained by the newspaper. Following the argument, she then called her boyfriend and asked him for a gun 'for protection', which he is said to have brought to her on the night of the 28th. The 15-year-old then attended New Year's Eve celebrations in Times Square while her mother and step-father's corpses were rotting in the family apartment, investigators say. Maisonett has been indicted for the murders and faces life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted. The account, reported by the New York Daily News, revealed that on that night Sanchez had beaten Garcia, before going back into her bedroom. Garcia then got the gun from a drawer and went into her mother's bedroom and shot at her, which after a second attempt, hit Sanchez in the neck. Judge Jeanine Pirro's show will not appear in its regularly scheduled slot on Fox News again, being replaced for a second week in a row following her remarks suggesting that US Representative Ilhan Omar's hijab meant that she subscribes to Sharia law. Pirros program, 'Justice with Judge Jeanine,' did not air on Fox News on March 16. It was replaced by 'Scandalous: The Trial of William Kennedy Smith,' which is the same show now scheduled to air in Pirro's usual time slot, at 9pm on Saturday on the East Coast, according to Fox's online programming list. Fox did not confirm a suspension ahead of the first swap, with a spokesperson telling The Hollywood Reporter, 'We are not commenting on internal scheduling matters.' Scroll down for video Judge Jeanine Pirro's (left) show will be replaced by a documentary on Fox News for the second time following her remarks suggesting Representative Ilhan Omar (right) subscribes to Sharia law because she wears a hijab Pirro's show being sidelined comes just after Pirro came under fire for suggesting that Rep Omar's hijab meant that she subscribes to Sharia law. During the opening monologue of her show on March 9, Pirro claimed that Omar's hijab was a sign that she was committed to the religious law which originates from the Quran, adding that it was 'antithetical' to the constitution. The former district attorney from New York's Westchester County said: 'Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to Sharia law which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?' During the opening monologue of her show (pictured) on March 9, Pirro claimed that Omar's hijab was a sign that she was committed to the religious law which originates from the Quran, adding that it was 'antithetical' to the constitution Omar has been embroiled in an anti-Semitism scandal in recent weeks after making a number of controversial comments. The Minnesota member of congress previously said that she wanted to discuss 'the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country'. Omar also drew ire from both sides of the political spectrum after claiming that Israel's relationship with the US was 'all about the Benjamins' last month, before later apologizing. In the segment which landed Pirro in hot water, she had suggested that the Omar was not getting her 'anti-Israel sentiment doctrine' from the Democratic party. She said: 'Think about this. She's not getting this anti-Israel sentiment doctrine from the Democrat party So if it's not rooted in the party, where is she getting it from? 'Think about it. Omar wears a hijab, which according to the Quran 33:59, tells women to cover so they won't get molested.' Fox News 'strongly' condemned the views expressed by Pirro, saying: 'They do not reflect those of the network and we have addressed the matter with her directly.' In a tweet, Omar thanked Fox for the statement, saying: 'No ones commitment to our constitution should be questioned because of their faith or country of birth.' Despite the rebuke, Pirro released her own statement, in which she refused to apologize. She said: 'I've seen a lot of comments about my opening statement from Saturday night's show and I did not call Rep. Omar un-American. Despite the rebuke, Pirro released her own statement, in which she refused to apologize 'My intention was to ask a question and start a debate, but of course because one is Muslim does not mean you don't support the Constitution. 'I invite Rep Omar to come on my show any time to discuss all of the important issues facing America today.' Pirro was called out on Twitter by a fellow Fox News Channel employee who is Muslim. The employee, Hufia Kumal, works on Bret Baier's news show. She wrote: 'Can you stop spreading this false narrative that somehow Muslims hate America or women who wear a hijab aren't American enough? You have Muslims working at the same network you do, including myself.' President Donald Trump has called on Fox News to 'bring back' Jeanine Pirro after her weekly show was replaced by a documentary following her remarks suggesting that Rep Ilhan Omar's hijab meant that she subscribes to Sharia law In a second tweet, the president said that 'Fox must stay strong and fight back with vigor' And in a third tweet, Trump called on Fox News to 'stay true to the people that got you there. Keep fighting for Tucker, and fight hard for @JudgeJeanine' President Donald Trump called on Fox News to 'bring back' Pirro after her weekly show was replaced by a documentary the first time. On Sunday, Trump tweeted that the 'Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country'. 'They have all out campaigns against @FoxNews hosts who are doing too well,' he added. In a second tweet, the president said that 'Fox must stay strong and fight back with vigor'. 'Stop working soooo hard on being politically correct, which will only bring you down, and continue to fight for our Country. The losers all want what you have, dont give it to them. Be strong & prosper, be weak & die!' Trump said. In a third tweet, Trump referenced Tucker Carlson, and called on Fox News to 'stay true to the people that got you there. Keep fighting for Tucker, and fight hard for @JudgeJeanine'. 'Your competitors are jealous - they all want what youve got - NUMBER ONE. Dont hand it to them on a silver platter. They cant beat you, you can only beat yourselves!' Trump tweeted. It was not immediately clear what Fox had done in addressing the matter with Pirro, who also stoked ire at the networks when she appeared on stage with Trump during a midterm elections campaign rally in November. Fox News' chief executive, Suzanne Scott, had reportedly scolded producers of the network's shows last year, encouraging them to run a tighter ship in terms of incendiary comments. One of New Zealand's most notorious bikie gangs has severed its long standing Nazi ties in the wake of last week's terrorist attack in Christchurch. The Mongrel Mob Kingdom chapter in Hamilton has changed its ways after ditching its 'Sieg Heil' rally cry following the devastating tragedy that claimed 50 lives in the country's deadliest mass shooting. Used by the gang for more than half a century, 'Sieg Heil' was a common chant at political rallies in Nazi Germany, which translates to 'hail victory'. Mongrel Mob Kingdom chapter president Paito Fatu (pictured) is changing his chapter's ways by getting rid of its long standing Nazi ties Members of the fastest growing chapter in New Zealand will now acknowledge each other by saying Mongrel Mob. 'Its about getting out there and doing things productively, constructively and positive to the best of our ability,' chapter president Paito Fatu told Teo Ao. It's part of the group's move from violence, crime and drug abuse to a new focus on on empowering whanau (extended family), women and children. Mongrel Mob members put differences aside with rival bikie gangs to perform a traditional Maori haka to commemorate the victims of last week's mass shootings in Christchurch. 'I look at this era as a healing time. When we look back at how we used it, it was rebelling against the system. Anything that the system saw was evil and bad, we [adopted] some of those and that was just our way of [giving] the system the finger,' Fatu said. Members welcomed the move but admit it has taken time to adjust. Fatu admitted many regional chapters aren't ready to follow their lead. A Mongrel Mob member (right) performs a hongi with a police officer while paying tribute to the Christchurch massacre victims on Wednesday Established in the 1960s, the Mongrel Mob has more 400 members in 30 chapters across New Zealand. There are another 200 members worldwide in countries including Australia and Canada. Members from the Mongrel Mob and rival gangs put their differences aside and united as one on Wednesday to perform a traditional Maori haka to commemorate the victims of last week's mass shootings in Christchurch. Members of the Mongrel Mob and Black Power motorcycle gangs have also gathered outside mosques on Friday when a national two minutes of silence is held to mark one week since the tragedy. The number of fraud victims tricked into handing over life-changing sums to sophisticated criminals has doubled in a year. Britain is facing an authorised fraud epidemic where customers are conned into transferring huge amounts of money out of their accounts. Just this week a Mail investigation revealed how crooks working from an office in India pose as tax officials to target up to 10,000 Britons a day. Victims are told they have an outstanding tax bill and face arrest if they dont pay up. In other cases fraudsters pose as legitimate companies or organisations such as the victims bank, telecoms provider, solicitor or even the police. The number of fraud victims tricked into handing over life-changing sums to sophisticated criminals has doubled in a year Banks recorded 84,624 cases of so-called authorised push payment fraud last year, almost double the number reported in 2017, according to figures from banking trade body UK Finance. In total victims lost 354.3million a 50 per cent increase compared to 2017. Consumer groups described the soaring numbers as alarming and warned the countrys grip on fraud is spiralling out of control. They said the true number of victims and losses were likely to be even higher as many people are too ashamed to come forward. For years banks have refused to refund customers when they fall victim to this type of fraud, claiming the victim authorised the transaction. Of the 354.3million stolen by fraudsters last year, just 83million was repaid to victims, according to the UK Finance figures. Around a quarter of the total losses some 92.7million was a result of impersonation fraud, where crooks pose as people victims trust such as their bank. Britain is facing an authorised fraud epidemic where customers are conned into transferring huge amounts of money out of their accounts Often the crooks claim they are a victim of fraud and must transfer their savings into a supposed safe account. In reality, the account belongs to criminals and as soon as the money has been transferred victims almost never see it again. Another common scam known as a malicious payee involves fraudsters posing as online sellers who trick shoppers into paying for fake goods. This might be a second-hand car that never arrives or a holiday villa that does not exist. There were 52,621 reports of this type of fraud last year, with victims losing 46.4million. In other cases victims have been conned into moving money into a fake investment promising high returns. Or they may have been persuaded to make payments to someone they met through a dating website known as romance scams. Martyn James from Resolver, the complaints website, said: The sheer scale of the fraud figures suggests the activity of scammers is spiralling out of control. As soon as one scam gets shut down, another will take its place, so the businesses that hold our private details need to adapt, invest in tighter security and never become complacent. In a victory for Money Mails Stop the Bank Scammers campaign, victims of authorised fraud are to be refunded from May 28 even if the bank is not at fault. Major banks have also agreed to sign up to a code of conduct that sets out what steps they must take to protect customers. Altogether, fraudsters stole 1.2billion last year, according to UK Finance. On top of the 345million lost to authorised fraud, a further 845million was lost to unauthorised fraud where criminals, for instance, spend your money by stealing your card or using bank details to shop online. Sunrise host David 'Kochie' Koch says he was 'tipped over the edge' by Pauline Hanson, and admits he 'went her' during an interview on Monday. Speaking to Kyle and Jackie O, the veteran TV host said Hanson's divisive words and policies were doing damage to Muslim communities and he had seen it first hand. Koch, who runs a youth centre in Macquarie Fields, said Muslim kids experienced real-life ramifications when politicians like Hanson made divisive comments. 'I went her, because [of] her words, and probably I'm a bit too passionate about this because I do work with Muslim youth workers in western Sydney,' he said. Scroll down for video Sunrise host David Koch says he 'went' Pauline Hanson on Monday over her words about Muslims because he was so deeply affected by the Mosque massacre in Christchurch last Friday 'When politicians talk and they pit Australians against Muslims, and the scaremongering, these kids deal with it on the street. 'What happened in New Zealand really got to me. We're a society now that's becoming a bit dangerous.' Koch said Muslim children faced real-life consequences when politicians made hateful remarks Koch didn't hold back when the One Nation leader appeared on Seven's breakfast program, grilling the federal senator on her party's 'anti-Muslim policies' in the wake of last Friday's Christchurch terrorist attack which claimed 50 lives. Koch even drew comparisons between accused Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant's 74-page manifesto to One Nation's immigration and Muslim policy. 'This terrorist manifesto almost reads like One Nation immigration and Muslim policy. Do you feel complicit with this atrocity?' Koch asked Hanson. 'The anti-Muslim rhetoric that you espouse constantly here, that you did in your maiden speech when you came to parliament. Do you understand?' A defiant Ms Hanson hit back. 'David, I feel for those people and I feel for those families who have lost lives. The same across the road here when we had the Lindt Cafe terrorist attacks. 'We have problems but you've actually got to discuss it and debate the issue. Why we have these terrorist attacks in this country. Why is it happening around the world? Why is it happening in many places?' Many viewers were left outraged at Ms Hanson's treatment on-screen and labelled it 'intimidating behaviour'. A petition with over 122,000 signatures has since been set up calling for the host's sacking. But Koch said the conversation did not go too far, and Hanson should have thicker skin from her time in Parliament. 'Pauline's had worse in parliament, she's the leader of a political party,' he told Kyle and Jackie O. In a three-minute video shared to Facebook, Hanson said the interview was 'an ambush'. 'I felt that way too because I haven't been able to explain myself properly and answer the questions. I know how you feel because you feel exactly the same way and you feel you don't have a voice.' A fired-up Ms Hanson then questioned whether Mr Koch and Senator Hinch - who was also involved in part of the on-air interview - had actually read her party's immigration policies. 'Do they understand? I don't think they do. They're quick to criticise me, but when I get out and speak to people, I know how you feel because I feel exactly the same way,' she said. Ms Hanson reiterated she didn't condone the Christchurch terrorist attack or the way it was conducted 'in any way shape or form' but said people were in fear of 'the ever-changing society we now live in'. 'My heartfelt sympathies go out to the people who have lost their lives and their loved one, the same as I did for all of the other terrorist attacks that happened through out the world,' Ms Hanson said. 'My comments are purely based on let's find the reasons behind these terrorist attacks. Don't shut down debate. Give the people an opportunity to have their say.' Ms Hanson, for her part, hit back at Koch following the interview and branded it an 'ambush' Ms Hanson again downplayed previous connections to under-fire Senator Fraser Anning after being ambushed by Koch and Senator Hinch when she said she would abstain from a vote to censure Mr Anning following his controversial comments on immigration in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shootings. 'I don't agree with anything Fraser Anning has said in placing the blame on these innocent people, that's not the way to go about it,' she said in the video. Koch said politicians should be held more accountable for their words, and 'othering' people from different races to help win votes was an old and unwise play. 'Politicians don't understand the power of their words, particularly in an election campaign,' he said. 'Australia, we are so compassionate, so understanding, and we're proud of it. We're the best multicultural nation in the world.' Refusing to apologise for his actions, he summed up the response from Hanson in just four words. 'Sometimes you offend people,' he said. One of the City's grandest institutions faces a sexism storm after an investigation exposed claims of harassment, assault and bullying. Female victims say they were abused and attacked by male bosses within the insurance market Lloyd's of London, followed by efforts to silence them. Women at Lloyd's are referred to as 'totty' by staff and rated from one to ten on their 'sh**ability', according to an investigation by Bloomberg Businessweek. One woman was attacked by a drunk senior manager in a City pub, but employers persuaded her to drop the complaint, it is claimed. Another woman was allegedly grabbed in a taxi by her boss after a night out, then moved to a new department after complaining, while he kept his job. And secretaries were picked based on their looks by insurers seeking to win more business. When Lloyd's appointed its first female boss, Dame Inga Beale, in 2014 to try to solve the problem, it is claimed that she faced a barrage of anonymous letters including one which called for her to 'go and die'. The allegations were met with horror from equality campaigners and MPs last night. Lloyd's of London faces a sexism storm after an investigation exposed claims of harassment, assault and bullying Tory MP Nicky Morgan, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, said: 'This appears to be a horrific story. Everything must be done to ensure that this behaviour is stamped out immediately.' Jayne-Anne Gadhia, former head of Virgin Money and a campaigner against City sexism, said: 'This kind of behaviour has no place in our society, our country or our city.' Bad behaviour at Lloyd's ranges from abusive language to outright assault, according to Bloomberg, which spoke to 18 women there. In one of the worst cases, a woman claims she was attacked in a pub near Lloyd's by a manager when he was drunk. She claims to have been persuaded to drop the complaint by her employer because it would be bad for her career. Another woman was allegedly sharing a taxi with a drunken manager after a night out. She claims he tried to grab her and she was so scared she jumped from the car. The woman said: 'After that, he basically started bullying me, and things got progressively worse.' She was allegedly marginalised and was moved to another part of the business after complaining. Her attacker is said to have kept his job. The revelations chime with last year's investigation into the Presidents Club men-only charity dinner held in London and primarily attended by finance workers. John Neal, CEO of Lloyd's said he wanted to ensure 'we stamp out these inappropriate behaviours' Undercover reporters from the Financial Times witnessed hostesses being groped, sexually harassed and propositioned. Lloyd's of London, which began 333 years ago in a small coffee shop in the City, handles insurance for businesses all over the world. It operates as a market where policies are bought and sold on its trading floors by independent brokers, traders and wealthy individuals who underwrite policies. Much of the bad behaviour was reportedly carried out by people who work there but are not actually Lloyd's employees. The market has a long-standing drinking culture at lunchtimes and evenings, which the alleged victims say fuelled the harassment. During her time in charge Dame Inga banned drinking in work time but this was largely ignored, and it is claimed she was told by Lloyd's' council and governing board that she spent too much time on diversity. She quit last year and has been replaced by John Neal, former head of Australian insurer QBE. Mr Neal said: 'We take it extremely seriously and will be talking to the Lloyd's market to ensure that we stamp out these inappropriate behaviours.' Sheila Cameron, CEO of the Lloyd's Market Association which represents its members, told Insurance Business: 'Sexual harassment is simply indefensible in any workplace and all instances should be dealt with swiftly and appropriately. 'We, like all other industries facing this issue, must continue to deal with any reports of harassment, head on. Both victims and witnesses of any form of workplace harassment must be encouraged to come forward. 'Victims and witnesses must have confidence in the robust and fair processes and procedures put in place by the leaders of their companies, and those leaders have a responsibility to ensure their workplaces are safe from any form of harassment. 'In recent years the Lloyd's and the London insurance market has taken enormous strides to advance the diversity and inclusion agenda, particularly through the annual Dive In festival, which attracts thousands of market practitioners to participate each year, as well as other important initiatives such as the Inclusive Behaviours Pledge, which was signed by a large number of insurers, brokers and market associations.' The top 10 places for buy-to-let have been revealed, with Rochdale, Greater Manchester topping the list with an impressive average return of nine per cent. The list of best performing areas, according to research by property website Zoopla, only consists of towns in the North and Scotland. It comes ahead of the third anniversary of the stamp duty changes, which saw a three per cent surcharge introduced on second homes and buy-to-properties. Mapped: Property website Zoopla has identified the top 10 most lucrative buy-to-let towns The research looked at the average rental yields of two-bedroom properties in towns with a minimum of 50,000 households. It produced gross yields before tax, which were calculated with a basic calculation of multiplying the monthly rent by 12 and dividing this by the price of the property. It was then multiplied by 100 to get a percentage. However, this is only the yield if you're buying the property outright and a more comprehensive calculation would take into account any mortgage on a property. WORST BUY-TO-LET TOWNS RANKED BY GROSS YIELD Rank Town Avg. Asking Price (2 bed property) Avg. Monthly Rent (2 bed property) Gross Yield 1 St Albans 397,424 1,209 3.65% 2 Croydon 410,391 1,309 3.83% 3 Hereford 194,052 635 3.93% 4 Worthing 277,169 923 4.00% 5 High Wycombe 308,347 1,034 4.02% 6 Poole 271,994 915 4.04% 7 Bath 330,279 1,118 4.06% 8 Aylesbury 258,200 882 4.10% 9 Watford 342,902 1,178 4.12% 10 Solihull 243,441 840 4.14% Source: Zoopla The top town of Rochdale with a rental yield of nine per cent is based on an average asking price of 98,360 and an average monthly rent of 738. It is followed by Blackpool and Glasgow, with average yields of 8.6 per cent based on an average monthly rent of 678, and 7.69 per cent based on 775 a month respectively. House prices in the North tend to be cheaper than in the South, and it is these lower house prices that can produce a higher rental yield for landlords. AVERAGE BUY-TO-LET YIELDS BY REGION Rank Region Avg. Asking Price (2 bed property) Avg. Monthly Rent (2 bed property) Gross Yield 1 Scotland 126,084 632 6.02% 2 Yorkshire and The Humber 120,745 548 5.44% 3 North West England 135,031 605 5.37% 4 North East England 127,423 539 5.08% 5 West Midlands 163,086 652 4.80% 6 East Midlands 151,005 604 4.80% 7 Wales 138,295 531 4.61% 8 South East England 278,824 995 4.28% 9 East of England 256,964 897 4.19% 10 London 639,050 2,220 4.17% 11 South West England 209,519 727 4.16% Source: Zoopla By contrast, towns in the South - specifically those in London's commuter belt - are some of the worst-performing places to do buy-to-let. Values in the South East tend to be higher, helping reduce the rental yields landlords can achieve. St Albans, Hertfordshire is at the bottom of the table with an annual yield of 3.65 per cent, based on an average rent of 1,209 a month. It is followed by Croydon, South London at 3.83 per cent based on an average monthly rent of 1,309 a month and Hereford, Herefordshire at 3.93 per cent based on 635 a month respectively. BEST BUY-TO-LET LONDON BOROUGHS RANKED BY GROSS YIELD Rank London Borough Avg. Asking Price (2 bed property) Avg. Monthly Rent (2 bed property) Gross Yield 1 Barking and Dagenham 280,095 1,247 5.34% 2 Newham 370,470 1,461 4.73% 3 Redbridge 334,873 1,287 4.61% 4 Westminster 1,178,964 4,522 4.60% 5 Havering 305,629 1,169 4.59% 6 Bexley 300,693 1,100 4.39% 7 Hounslow 387,294 1,416 4.39% 8 Brent 422,189 1,543 4.39% 9 Enfield 371,250 1,351 4.37% 10 Sutton 332,926 1,190 4.29% Source: Zoopla The best-performing areas were also identified in London, with Barking and Dagenham topping the list at 5.34 per cent. At the opposite end, Hackney, East London has the lowest average yield of 3.32 per cent. Annabel Dixon, of Zoopla, said: 'This research shows landlords and potential landlords where there are still opportunities in the buy-to-let market. 'Despite the challenges facing the sector, yields - particularly in North England and Scotland - match up well against other forms of investment. 'It's no surprise that towns further south provide lower yields. House prices growth has slowed, but property is still considerably more expensive in these locations, meaning that even with higher rents, the returns are more limited for landlords.' The three per cent stamp duty surcharge was introduced three years ago on 1 April 2016 and applies to second homes and buy-to-let properties bought in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. A new study warns that toxic chemicals stemming from blue green algae has been found in dead dolphins and could be linked to a degenerative brain condition likened to Alzheimer's. In the paper, researchers say detectable amounts of the toxin BMAA -- found in harmful algal blooms -- was observed for the first time in the brains and bodies of 13 of the 14 dolphins studied. Along with that observation, the paper says symptoms and conditions similar to the effects of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease were also detected. Adverse effects in dolphins could be harbinger to increased algae-born toxins in our oceans and waterways. WHAT ARE THE RISKS OF ALGAE BLOOMS? Technically called cyanobacteria, the ancient class of organisms that create the blooms are present nearly everywhere water is found, but thrive in warm, still bodies like lakes and ponds. They also create a unique class of toxins, the impact of which on humans is only partly understood. Long linked to animal deaths, high doses of the toxins in humans can cause liver damage and attack the nervous system. In the largest outbreaks, hundreds have been sickened by blooms in reservoirs and lakes, and officials in some areas now routinely close bodies of water used for recreation and post warnings when blooms occur. But less is known about exposure at lower doses, especially over the long term. Small studies have linked exposure to liver cancer - one toxin is classified as a carcinogen, and others have pointed to potential links to neurodegenerative disease. Advertisement While the new paper, published to the journal Plos One, suggests that the link between the toxin and the adverse cognitive effects warrants further study, scientists have taken the evidence as an opportunity to warn of the potential fallout from increasingly common algal blooms on humans. 'Not to be too political, but it goes to show the health of marine animals and water quality,' David Davis, lead author and a University of Miami Miller School of Medicine neuropathologist told the Miami Hearld in a report. 'Everythings directly related.' As the Earth warms, scientists have predicted that large scale blooms containing toxic blue green algae could become increasingly common. In particular a combination of saltier water, more carbon dioxide, and changes in the amount of rainfall fueled by climate change could all create the ideal conditions for more blooms, according to the EPA. Most notably, the city of Cleveland has been the subject of several harmful blooms throughout the last several years, prompting the Ohio governor to take official action. Just how those blooms will affect humans, however, remains to be seen. Both Florida and Ohio have been affected by massive algae blooms that create hazards for human and animal health A 2011 report from Discover Magazine, highlights researchers from around the world who began to discover linkages between the consumption of seafood containing BMAA and degenerative brain conditions in patients. Other research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has already found that Dolphins are introduced to the toxin through their food source. To help establish the link and further the science of BMAA and its linkages to Alzheimer's researchers are in the midst of conducting a larger and much more definitive study involving 150 dolphins that died in the Gulf Coast during alge blooms last year, according the the Miami Herald. As millions of people in Asia choke under polluted skies, authorities have turned to water-dispersing drones and outdoor air purifiers to improve air quality, while companies have tried to cash in by selling everything from canned air to lung-purifying teas. According to the World Health Organisation, 92 percent of the population in the Asia Pacific region are exposed to levels of air pollution that pose a significant risk to their health, according to UN Environment. Here is a look at some of the ways those living under the haze try to limit minimize its effects. Scroll down for video As millions of people in Asia choke under polluted skies, authorities have turned to water-dispersing drones and outdoor air purifiers, while companies have tried to cash in by selling everything from canned air to purifying teas As public anger rises over toxic air, authorities have turned to spraying water, which is thought to stick to pollutants and carry them to the ground, but tools such as water cannons have been criticised as having little effect and being a 'band-aid' solution that distracts from root causes. New Delhi - the world's most polluted major city - tried in 2017 to use helicopters to sprinkle water over the city, but the choppers were not able to fly due to low visibility caused by smog. In Bangkok, the government tried a raft of measures to combat a murky haze that blanketed the city for weeks in January, including spraying overpasses with water, cloud seeding and even deploying a fleet of water-dispersing drones. Cloud-seeding is used to stimulate rain by injecting chemicals into clouds using rockets, cannons or aircraft, but the technique is not always successful. An attempt by South Korea to create artificial rain to tackle air pollution in January failed, after an aircraft sent to seed clouds with silver iodide only produced several minutes of misty rain. The northern Chinese city of Xian is experimenting with a giant air purifier the size of an industrial smokestack which can reduce PM2.5 concentration by 15 percent within 10 square kilometres, according to researchers. Hong Kong this year opened a 3.7km tunnel equipped with an air purification system touted as the largest of its kind in the world in terms of volume of air handled - 5.4 million cubic metres of vehicle exhaust every hour. The government says it will be able to remove at least 80 percent of harmful particulates and nitrogen dioxide using large fans which suck exhaust into air purification plants in three ventilation buildings along the tunnel. New Delhi last year announced a plan to install huge air purifiers at traffic intersections and mount air filters on the roofs of buses that trap pollutants as they move, according to Hindustan Times. During particularly bad spates of air pollution, which tend to come during the winter, residents in smoggy Chinese cities escape to cleaner places, such as resorts in the south of the country, for a temporary break and return after it has cleared. WHAT ARE THE SIDE EFFECTS OF GEOENGINEERING STRATEGIES? Scientists have proposed all sorts of solutions to fight climate change, including a number of controversial geoengineering strategies. Among the many include: Afforestation: This technique would irrigate deserts, such as those in Australia and North Africa, to plant millions of trees that could absorb carbon dioxide. Drawback: This vegetation would also draw in sunlight that the deserts currently reflect back into space, and so contribute to global warming. Scientists have proposed all sorts of solutions to fight climate change. File photo Artificial ocean upwelling: Engineers would use long pipes to pump cold, nutrient-rich water upward to cool ocean-surface waters. Drawback: If this process ever stopped it could cause oceans to rebalance their heat levels and rapidly change the climate. Ocean alkalinisation: This involves heaping lime into the ocean to chemically increase the absorption of carbon dioxide. Drawback: Study suggests it will have of little use in reducing global temperatures. Ocean iron fertilisation: The method involves dumping iron into the oceans to improve the growth of photosynthetic organisms that can absorb carbon dioxide. Drawback: Study suggests it will have of little use in reducing global temperatures. Solar radiation management: This would reduce the amount of sunlight Earth receives, by shooting reflective sulphate-based aerosols into the atmosphere. Drawback: Carbon dioxide would still build up in the atmosphere. Advertisement Ctrip, Chinas largest online travel agent, estimated in 2016 that every year, over a million residents of smoggy cities such as Beijing and Shanghai leave the country to escape the smog. Popular destinations for these so-called 'smog refugees' include places such as Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Some even travel to Antarctica on these 'lung-cleansing trips,' according to Ctrip. Although experts say residents in smoggy cities are unlikely to see health effects from breathing bottled air, that hasnt stopped entrepreneurs from selling them canisters of the stuff from New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Switzerland. For about US $22, consumers can order an 8 litre can of Banff Air from the popular tourist spot in Canada, or pay US $125 for a jar of air from the British countryside. In China, 'anti-smog' teas are promoted by vendors as a way to clean the lungs, while Mongolian residents drink 'oxygen cocktails' - made by spraying oxygen into glasses of juice using machines or cans of air. Advertisements boast that 'drinking just one oxygen cocktail is equal to a three-hour-walk in a lush forest', despite no scientific evidence they protect from pollution. A tiny British island has witnessed a rare natural phenomenon - a vortex of thousands of tiny puffins. Skokholm island off Pembrokeshire had the awe-inspiring sight of more than 7,500 puffins arriving at the island in just minutes - the highest number ever recorded in March. The little birds were joined by other arrivals including thousands of Auks, a family of the bird species that includes murres, guillemots, auklets, puffins, and murrelets. A tiny British island has witnessed a rare natural phenomenon - a vortex of thousands of tiny puffins (pictured) A spokesman for Skokholm Island said: 'Over 7,300 Puffins today including our first ashore. Highest March count since the 1950s. 'This afternoon's spectacular Puffin vortex resulted in their earliest landfall in 90 years of recording on Skokholm. 'The puffins came in with a bang yesterday so we walked the whole coastline and counted them. 'A mighty 7,447 were rafting just below the cliffs; an amazing count and the highest March count ever. 'They also made first landfall-the earliest date they've dared to brave our shores in 90 years of recording.' The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales which manages Skokholm and Skomer islands confirmed that by Tuesday there were over 7,500 at Skokholm and over 5,000 at Skomer. 'This is the earliest they have landed in 90 years,' a spokesman added. 'In peak season we expect around 8,000 at a time so these numbers are proving very exciting for this years arrivals. 'The highest figures we've had over the islands is 30,000.' Puffin originally meant fatling. In the last half of the 1800's the puffin was given the scientific name of Fratercula arctica, which means 'little brother of the north' in Latin (stock image) Little brother may also be interpreted as 'little friar' an allusion to the puffin's black and white plumage which is reminiscent of a friar's robes (stock image) Puffin originally meant fatling, a young animal that has been fattened in preparation for slaughter, due to the chubby chicks of the Manx Shearwater with which puffin chicks were confused. In the last half of the 1800's the puffin was given the scientific name of Fratercula arctica, which means 'little brother of the north' in Latin. Little brother may also be interpreted as 'little friar', an allusion to the puffin's black and white plumage which is reminiscent of a friar's robes. A second connotation of little friar may be drawn from the puffin's sometime habit of holding it's feet together when taking off, suggestive of hands clasped together in prayer. Regardless of the scientific name, local names still abound. These include such colourful terms as 'clown of the ocean' and 'sea parrot.' It was once believe that a puffin was actually a cross between a bird and a fish because of its superb ability to swim underwater. Some Roman Catholics used belief to bypass the prohibition of meat eating during lent. People used to claim that a puffin was actually a cross between a bird and a fish because of its superb ability to swim underwater (stock image) Google is celebrating composer Johann Sebastian Bach with its first artificial intelligence-powered Doodle. Thursday's animated Google Doodle shows the composer playing an organ in celebration of his March 21, 1685, birthday under the old Julian calendar. It encourages users to compose their own two-measure melody. Scroll down for video Google is celebrating composer Johann Sebastian Bach with its first artificial intelligence-powered Doodle. Google says the Doodle uses machine learning to 'harmonize the melody' Google says the Doodle uses machine learning to 'harmonize the custom melody into Bach's signature music style.' 'With the press of a button, the Doodle then uses machine learning to harmonize the custom melody into Bachs signature music style (or a Bach 80's rock style hybrid if you happen to find a very special easter egg in the Doodle),' the firm wrote in a blog post. Bach's chorales were known for having four voices carrying their own melodic line. To develop the AI Doodle, Google teams created a machine-learning model, called Coconet, that was trained on 306 of Bach's chorale harmonizations. The AI Google Doodle was created to celebrate the birthday of prolific composer Johann Sebastian Bach (pictured) 'His chorales always have four voices, each carrying their own melodic line, while creating a rich harmonic progression when played together,' the firm said. 'This concise structure made them good training data for a machine learning model.' Google engineers said they trained these machine learning models to spit out 'polyphonic music in the style of Bach. 'Coconet is trained to restore Bachs music from fragments: we take a piece from Bach, randomly erase some notes, and ask the model to guess the missing notes from context,' according to a blog post on Google's Magenta unit, which oversees AI projects related to music and art. 'The result is a versatile model of counterpoint that accepts arbitrarily incomplete scores as input and works out complete scores.' To develop the AI Doodle, Google teams created a machine-learning model, called Coconet, that was trained on 306 of Bach's chorale harmonizations There's a special feature in the animation that transforms Bach into a 1980s rockstar. Users just click on the mini amplifier next to the keyboard to turn on the synths Another team worked to allow machine learning to occur within the web browser instead of on its servers. The Doodle will prompt users who are unsure of how to interact with the animated graphic. Users can change they key of the music or its tempo and then share their creation with friends or download it for listening later on. Additionally, there's a special hidden feature in the animation that transforms Bach into a 1980s rockstar. Users just click on the mini amplifier next to the keyboard to turn on the synths. An experimental 33,000-ton nuclear-powered ship that could cut through thick ocean ice sheets is being built by China. The state-owned vessel, dubbed a 'nuclear icebreaker', is designed to cut through the frozen seas north of Russia and North America. The vessel will be fitted with two 25-megawatt water reactors, allowing the enormous vessel to travel at a max speed of 11.5 knots, or just over 13 miles per hour. The country does not yet have a nuclear-propelled surface ship but does have a fleet of nuclear fuelled submarines. Although they have not specified what the ship is for, but experts speculate it could be a testing ground for future attempts to create a fleet of nuclear powered vessels. Scroll down for video An experimental 33,000-ton nuclear-powered ship that could cut through thick ocean ice sheets is being built by China. This graphic compares the Chinese vessel with Russia's largest icebreaker China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) has invited bids for the contract to build a vessel 498 feet (152 metres) long, 30 metres wide and 18 metres in depth. These specifications make it fifteen feet (two metres) longer and a around seven thousand tons heavier than Russias Arktika-class icebreaker. The state, however, has not specified how it plans to use the ship once its built but suggested that it will be an 'experimental platform'. Currently, Russia operates all nuclear-powered icebreakers in the world. With the first one launched in 1957 and the latest put into service in 2007. Hong Kong-based military commentator Song Zhongping said the vessels size was very similar to that of Russian nuclear icebreakers China they have not specified what the ship is for but experts speculate that it could be a testing ground for future attempts to create a fleet of nuclear powered vessels. Currently, Russia operates all nuclear-powered icebreakers in the world. Here, the Taymyr icebreaker Shipping traffic along the Northern Sea Route shot up by 50 percent last year, to ten million tons. The main benefit of the greater size is not the thickness of the ice it can break though, but the width of the channel it leaves in its wake He told the South China Morning Post that the the 'and experience could be used for next-generation aircraft carriers'. The vessel is too small to be an aircraft carrier but one military expert said the ship would help develop China's 'shipbuilding ability', or that it could be a bid to dominate the Arctic. The deadline for bids was Wednesday, and no businesses from outside China were allowed to enter the running. Nuclear icebreaker ships are the example of the latest technology that has been brought into the ice breaking industry. For Russia, the Northern Sea Route is most importantly a slowly thawing shortcut for its Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports to East Asia, especially China. The main benefit of the greater size is not the thickness of the ice it can break though, but the width of the channel it leaves in its wake. Shipping traffic along the Northern Arctic route shot up to 50 per cent last year, to ten million tons. Holiday makers may soon be flying abroad on jets powered by scraps of wood, according to new research. A green fuel that converts plant waste from farm and timber harvests into aviation fuel has been developed by scientists. They say it could help combat climate change by reducing CO emissions from aircraft and rockets. The gas is made from cellulose - one of the most abundant biological substances on the planet. It forms the main part of the cell walls of plants, keeping them stiff and strong. Holidaymakers may soon be flying abroad on jets powered by scraps of wood, according to new research. This file photo shows a Qantas jet equipped with a biofuel powered engine unveiled in January 2018 Professor Ning Li, of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China, said: 'Our biofuel is important for mitigating CO2 emissions because it is derived from biomass. 'It has higher density, or volumetric heat values, compared with conventional aviation fuels. 'As we know, the utilisation of high density aviation fuel can significantly increase the range and payload of aircraft without changing the volume of oil in the tank.' The fuel would be cheap and sustainable as cellulose is a highly abundant polymer. This is a string of molecules that gather in groups. Professor Li believes it will be instrumental in helping the industry 'go green.' Air travel is one of the fastest growing sources of carbon emissions. It accounts for at least two percent of the total global footprint. According to the European Commission, if it was a country it would rank in the top 10 emitters. Environmentalists say this doesn't include the warming impact of contrails or other gases and aerosols. They believe the true impact is about five per cent. In any event, by 2020, this type of fossil-fuel burning pollution is expected to be 70 per cent higher than it was in 2005. The process described in Joule involves a technique called hydrogenolysis in which a chemical reaction is caused by adding hydrogen. In study, the researchers used wheat stalks, corn stalks and rice stalks (pictured) to create the biofuel and found that they produced gases with a higher density than conventional jet fuels. (stock image) Scientists used rice straw, wheat straw, corn stalk (pictured), and the sawdust of some common woods (stock image) In experiments on wheatgrass. it produced a gas with a density about 10 per cent higher than that of conventional jet fuels. Professor Li said: 'The aircraft using this fuel can fly farther and carry more than those using conventional jet fuel, which can decrease the flight number and decrease the CO2 emissions during the taking off, or launching, and landing.' Cellulose essentially provides grasses, algae and other plants with their skeleton. It is one of the most widely used natural resources - best known in the form of wood, cotton and paper. But it is also increasingly important as a renewable raw material for industrial applications. Prof Li said it is the first study to produce complex compounds that can be used as high-density aviation fuel. The gas is made from cellulose - one of the most abundant biological substances on the planet. It forms the main part of the cell walls of plants, keeping them stiff and strong (stock image) This is where much of the biofuel's magic lies. It can be used as either a wholesale replacement, or as an additive to improve the efficiency of other jet fuels. The researchers also say scaling up their laboratory experiments for commercial use will be easy. This is down to the inexpensive and readily available cellulose feedstock, fewer production steps and lower energy cost and consumption. They also predict it will yield higher profits than conventional aviation fuel production because it requires lower costs to produce a higher-density fuel. The biggest issue is the use of a chemical called dichloromethane to break down the cellulose. The compound, used as a solvent in paint removers, is considered an environmental and health hazard. HOW BIOFUEL COULD POWER THE AIRCRAFT OF THE FUTURE In 2008 Virgin Atlantic became the first airline to power a commercial flight using biofuel. The flight, between London's Heathrow and Amsterdam, used a fuel made from a mixture of Brazilian babassu nuts and coconuts which provided 20 per cent of the engine's power. 'This pioneering flight will enable those of us who are serious about reducing our carbon emissions to go on developing the fuels of the future,' said CEO Richard Branson at the time. many airlines are now looking into incorporate biofuels on commercial flights. In 2011, Alaska Airlines operated 75 flights on a cooking oil blend. In 2014, a Finnish airline used a mix of recycled cooking oil and jet fuel to power a long-distance flight. Finnair said it will be able to reduce its net carbon dioxide emission by 50 to 80 per cent by switching to a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly fuel source. But biofuel is more than twice the price of conventionally produced jet fuel and it is too costly for any airline to operate with it exclusively. In 2017 a Chinese airline boss flew 186 passengers and 15 crew members from Beijing to Chicago with the help of recycled cooking oil. Sun Jianfeng, the President of China's largest private air carrier Hainan Airlines, was the captain of the 11-hour flight which flew across the Pacific on November 21. Last year, Singapore Airlines also launched their first-ever flight powered by cooking oil. The aircraft was powered by a combination of hydro-processed esters and fatty acids - a sustainable biofuel produced from used cooking oils - and conventional jet fuel. By 2020 Qantas aims to have biofuel-based flights running regularly. Advertisement Professor Li added: 'In the future, we will go on to explore the environmentally friendly and renewable organic solvent that can replace the dichloromethane used in the hydrogenolysis of cellulose.' Several high powered, waste-based biofuels are already being tested by airlines as a way of curbing CO2. One of the big failures of the Paris climate agreement, adopted in December 2015, is that it doesn't cover emissions from shipping or aviation. The UN's International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) has predicted a three-fold increase in emissions from airplanes by 2050 if nothing is done to restrict carbon. Since Virgin Atlantic flew the first flight powered partly by biofuel in 2008, there have been dozens of tests with many different types of alternative jet fuels, often made from oil seed crops or animal fats. In the UK, the Department for Transport is offering 22 million of funding for projects to develop low-carbon, waste-based fuels for planes and lorries. About 70 groups want to bid for funding. The Government has identified poor air quality as the biggest environmental risk to public health in Britain. The full findings of the study were published in the journal Joule. Distant worlds teeming with simple life forms could be detected by the presence of a gas that's deadly to humans, a new study suggests. High levels of Carbon monoxide (CO) may be perfect for lifeforms on planets similar to Earth when organisms began to emerge around 3.5 billion years ago. An atmosphere with high concentrations of CO would be deadly for complex forms of life, but it could signal alien microbes on other planets. Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in March 2021, will be able to examine CO concentrations in space. Scroll down for video Distant worlds teeming with simple life forms could be detected by the presence of a gas that's deadly to humans, a new study suggests (artists impression) In humans, CO reduces the amount of oxygen that can be transported in the blood stream to critical organs like the heart and brain. At very high levels, which are possible indoors or in other enclosed environments, CO can cause dizziness, confusion, unconsciousness and death. The deadly gas is completely invisible, has no smell or taste and the only definitive way to detect a carbon monoxide leak is with a special alarm. However, in the early days of the planet simple lifeforms were able to thrive in its presences. Dr Edward Schwieterman, the study's lead author and a NASA fellow at the University of California Riversides, said: 'With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope two years from now, astronomers will be able to analyse the atmospheres of some rocky exoplanets. 'It would be a shame to overlook an inhabited world because we did not consider all the possibilities.' Dr Schwieterman's team used computer models of chemistry found in areas on Earth where live thrives, as well as the atmosphere. They used this data to identify two scenarios in which carbon monoxide could readily build up in the atmospheres of living planets. In the first scenario, the team found answers in our own planet's past. Earth's current atmosphere prevents carbon monoxide from accumulating because the gas is quickly converted to carbon dioxide. But three billion years ago, the world was a very different place. The oceans were already teeming with microbial life and the atmosphere was nearly devoid of oxygen and the sun was much dimmer. The James Webb Space Telescope (pictured) from Nasa is now set to fly in 2021 and will characterise planets for levels of carbon dioxide and potential signs of alien lifeforms The team's models reveal that this ancient version of inhabited Earth could maintain carbon monoxide levels of roughly 100 parts per million (ppm) - millions of times higher than current levels. Professor Timothy Lyons, one of the study's co-authors, said: 'That means we could expect high carbon monoxide abundances in the atmospheres of inhabited but oxygen-poor exoplanets orbiting stars like our own sun. 'This is a perfect example of our team's mission to use the Earth's past as a guide in the search for life elsewhere in the universe.' A second scenario is even more favourable for the buildup of carbon monoxide: the photochemistry around red dwarf stars like Proxima Centauri, the star nearest our sun at 4.2 light years away. WHAT IS CARBON MONOXIDE The deadly gas is completely invisible and it produces no smell and has no taste The only definitive way to detect a carbon monoxide leak is with a fitted alarm For humans, breathing air with a high concentration of CO reduces the amount of oxygen that can be transported in the blood stream to critical organs like the heart and brain. At very high levels, which are possible indoors or in other enclosed environments, CO can cause dizziness, confusion, unconsciousness and death. Advertisement The team's models predict that if a planet around such a star were inhabited and rich in oxygen, then we should expect the abundance of carbon monoxide to be extremely high - anywhere from hundreds of ppm to several percent. Dr Schwieterman added, 'Given the different astrophysical context for these planets, we should not be surprised to find microbial biospheres promoting high levels of carbon monoxide'. 'However, these would certainly not be good places for human or animal life as we know it on Earth.' Earth-sized, rocky planets have been discovered orbiting in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri and other similar stars, meaning they could harbour liquid water, an essential ingredient for life. Such planets are likely targets for further characterisation by the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in March 2021. The current study is one component of a broad effort to prepare for these future missions by cataloguing different combinations of atmospheric gases that might be evidence of an inhabited world - so-called biosignature gases. Some gases, such as carbon monoxide, had been proposed previously as 'antibiosignatures' evidence that a planet is not inhabited - if remotely detectable at sufficient abundance. But those assumptions only apply in specific cases. Dr Schwieterman added: 'Although other studies have done exoplanet photochemical modeling that includes carbon monoxide, no one had focused on carbon monoxide on Earth-like exoplanets in such a systematic way,' 'Now we have a guidebook for determining what levels of carbon monoxide are compatible with a photosynthetic biosphere.' The full study is published in The Astrophysical Journal. By now, anyone connected to the internet is familiar with the concept that their data -- whether through social media, search engines, or other apps and interfaces -- is far from private. According to a recent study, the same holds true for what is considered to be among peoples' most sensitive personal information: medical history. The report, released in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) says that the medical information from personal health apps is routinely shared with third parties in a process that is both unregulated and often lacking in transparency. Medical information, among the most guarded categories of data, is now being traded by a growing number of health and fitness apps. WHICH DATA IS SHARED BY HEALTH APPS? A new report found that some of the most popular medical apps for Android in the U.S., U.K. and Australia are sharing user data with third parties. This includes Medscape, Ada, and MedicineWise. Among the most common categories of medical information shared by health apps according to a report are: -Browsing (38 percent) -Drugs taken (25 percent) -Medical conditions (17 percent) Advertisement 'Mobile health apps are a booming market targeted at both patients and health professionals,' reads the study. 'These apps claim to offer tailored and cost-effective health promotion, but they pose unprecedented risk to consumers privacy given their ability to collect user data, including sensitive information.' According to the study, the ubiquity of data sharing among the health apps is also a of major concern for patients and physicians. Of the 24 apps studied, 19 of them, or 79 percent, engaged in data sharing practices. These include some of the most popular medical apps for Android in the U.S., U.K. and Australia like Medscape, Ada, and MedicineWise. While the type of shared information ranged among the apps studied, a significant portion of the subjects exchanged direct medical data like lists of drugs taken by a patient, names, and medical conditions -- valuable data sets that can be sold to interested parties like drug manufacturers and insurance companies. As to where that data is going, the recipients are seemingly wide open. Among the harvesters of medical data are tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, but also lesser known cloud companies like MongoDB, Rackspace, and Tier 3. Alphabet, Google's parent company, was the biggest recipient of medical data through apps. The impact of medical apps' unfettered sharing with third parties not only brings to light serious privacy concerns, according to researchers, but also opens the door to the threat of medically-based discrimination. Some of the most popular apps in the U.S. and U.K. share to large tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. 'Privacy will become an important social determinant of health, and regulators should reconsider whether sharing user data for purposes unrelated to the use of a health app,' reads the study. 'At minimum, users should be able to choose precisely which types of data can be accessed and used by apps (eg, email, location), and to have the option to opt-out for each type of data.' An examination of how data is shared through these types of apps comes at a particularly crucial time, say researchers, as the popularity and volume of them continue balloon. An analysis by Flurry Analytics -- which is coincidentally one of the third party recipients of health data listed by the study -- shows that in just three years leading up to 2017, health and fitness app usage grew by a whopping 330 percent. Human remains thought to be about 4,000 years old and 'charred' have been discovered by builders working on a hotel in rural Northumberland. The Tankerville Arms in Wooler was undergoing renovation work when they unearthed a Bronze Age stone burial chamber - or cist. A digger driver was laying drainage pipes when he struck the stone made coffin before moving the cover slab back to see the hollow inside. Scroll down for video Human remains thought to be about 4,000 years old have been discovered by builders working on a hotel in rural Northumberland. The Tankerville Arms in Wooler was undergoing renovation work when they unearthed a Bronze Age stone burial chamber - or cist Inside were human remains in a crouched burial position with a a small, 'beautifully fashioned flint knife' found by the legs of the skeleton. Archaeologists are examining it to find out the sex of the single skeleton and whether other remains lie around the site. The team, from Northumberland County Council's current estimates suggest the cist dates from some time between 2,200BC and 1,750BC. Local archaeologist Roger Miket said the cist is formed of four upright stones with the cover slab on top.' 'It may have been a woman because they were buried on their right side with their head to the west, although we can't be certain until further analysis is done. 'It also seems to have been charred so that is an interesting insight into the burial process, he said. 'Of course, we have no idea of their religious beliefs but we have the symbols which give us some idea of what they thought so we know they believed in the afterlife. A digger driver was laying drainage pipes when he struck the stone made coffin before moving the cover slab back to see the hollow inside.Inside were human remains in a crouched burial position with a a small, 'beautifully fashioned flint knife' found by the legs of the skeleton Inside were human remains in a crouched burial position with a a small, 'beautifully fashioned flint knife' found by the legs of the skeleton. Archaeologists are examining it to find out the sex of the single skeleton and whether other remains lie around the site He said that the knife would have been a precious item at the time of the burial and was included in the grave for use in the afterlife. Charlotte Lowery, the hotel manager said: 'It's been a very exciting few days here. It's an amazing discovery. 'We're having six self-contained holiday cottages built and the builders were just laying the last drain and came across a very flat, large stone and it became apparent it shouldn't have been there.' Northumbria has numerous archaeologically important sites from prehistoric cup and ring motifs, henges and hillforts including Ad Gedfrin, the palace of the ancient kings. Archaeologists are examining it to find out the sex of the single skeleton and whether other remains lie around the site. The team, from Northumberland County Council's current estimates suggest the cist dates from some time between 2,200BC and 1,750BC Cristiano Ronaldo could be set to face former club Manchester United in Asia this summer - with Juventus reportedly avoiding playing in the United States due to rape allegations against their star player. Both United and Juventus are likely to play in the International Champions Cup, a pre-season tournament where some of the world's biggest clubs play friendlies across the globe. Although the majority of matches are played in the USA, it is reported that organisers will ensure Juve play their games in other countries. Cristiano Ronaldo could be set to face former club Manchester United in Asia this summer Juventus are reportedly avoiding playing in the USA due to rape allegations against Ronaldo According to the New York Times, this is because Ronaldo is facing accusations from Kathryn Mayorga that he sexually assaulted her in Las Vegas in 2009. He denies the allegations. Juve want to avoid unwanted attention around Ronaldo - and the possibility of him being detained if he travels to America - and so are keen to play games in Asia instead. They could come up against United, who will spend their pre-season in Asia and Australia, as well as Tottenham, who have announced they will play friendlies in the Far East. Former school teacher Kathryn Mayorga claims that the Juventus forward raped her in his Las Vegas hotel room in June 2009; they are pictured together here in Rain Night Club that year Ronaldo faced off against United in the Champions League group stages earlier this season. Juve won 1-0 at Old Trafford, however United were 2-1 victors in Turin. The Euro 2016 winner joined Juve last summer in a shock 100million transfer from Real Madrid, where he won three Champions League titles in a row. In September 2018, Las Vegas Police reopened an investigation into accusations by Mayorga, who said Ronaldo raped her in a hotel room and paid her $375,000 for her silence. Ronaldo, 33, has repeatedly denied the accusations, while Juve tweeted their support for him in October, praising his 'great professionalism'. Advertisement What do grizzly bears, galloping water buffalo and an Icelandic mountain have in common? They're all subject matters in the Cewe annual 'Photo Award' competition. The photo book and online retailer has invited amateur and professional photographers from around the world to enter its contest and more than 175,000 entries have poured in so far. And some of them will prompt the jaw to drop. Catering to all interests, there are ten subject categories - people, animals, nature, architecture and infrastructure, landscapes, humour, sport, food, travel and culture, and hobby and leisure. For those who fancy trying to land a prize, submissions are open until May 31 with the winners announced at a glittering awards ceremony on September 25. Here MailOnline Travel presents a selection of the stunning entries that have caught the judges' eyes so far... A mother grizzly bear takes a break in the sun with her cub in this extraordinary shot taken in Alaska by Knud Fuusgaard The sensational Kirkjufell mountain, located on the north coast of Iceland's Snfellsnes peninsula, is captured in a new perspective in this otherworldly photograph by Frank Seltmann A giant wave leaps into the sky during a sea storm in Varigotti, Italy, in this beautifully lit landscape shot by Giovanni Allievi In Padang, Indonesia, farmers race their water buffalo across the rice fields before farming season, believing it is lucky if their buffalo wins the race. One of these races has been captured in a dynamic shot by Alamsyah Rauf A boat hugs the banks of the Acheneau River in France in the quiet early morning light in this photo by Donovan Heneman A couple of trees stand proudly against the impending rain as it casts a gloomy glow over Fjrland in Norway in this shot by Pavla Batkova Seven skiers trek across the snow in this photo taken in the Alps, by Roam Jaros An Alpine Ibex can be seen surveying its kingdom in Bern, Switzerland, in this mountainous shot by Radomir Jakubowski The sun sets over the rainbow houses of Houten, Netherlands, in this shot by Kai Diederichs A fallen tree sinks into the water in a stunning use of perspective by Radoslaw Zubrycki, who's from Poland A young ballet dancer nervously waits to rehearse her performance piece in the setting sun of Havana, Cuba, in this portrait by Conny Muller A field of sunflowers bloom in the late evening light in this golden shot in Tarnobrzeg, Poland, by Jakub Koziol A cat casts its eyes up to the sky in a moment of rare stillness in this striking black-and-white shot taken in Austria by Sylvie Schmuttermeie A skilled surfer flies high above the waves in Florianopolis, Brazil, in this action shot by Gabriel Varalla A trio of holy monks, called sadhus, meditate on the streets of Varanasi, India, in this candid portrait by Gabor Wavrik Advertisement The fourth and final British Airways aircraft to be given a heritage livery has touched down at Heathrow. The Negus design, which was originally on the BA fleet from 1974 to 1980, has been painted on one of the carrier's current Boeing 747s. A special series of historical designs have been introduced to mark British Airways' centenary during 2019. The fourth and final British Airways aircraft to be given a heritage livery has touched down at Heathrow (pictured). It is a Boeing 747 with a retro Negus design from the 1970s The Negus-liveried 747-400, registration G-CIVB, entered the IAC paint bay at Dublin Airport earlier this month to be given its makeover. It's pictured here rolling out at Dublin The Negus-liveried 747-400, registration G-CIVB, entered the IAC paint bay at Dublin Airport earlier this month where it was painted with the first version of the Negus livery that adorned BA aircraft directly after the merger of British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and British European Airways (BEA). When it initially flew, the Negus livery was the first to carry the words 'British Airways' since 1939, when the original British Airways Limited merged with Imperial Airways to form BOAC. Interestingly, the Union Flag is not present on the side of the aircraft as, like the final BEA aircraft livery, the flag began to be fully celebrated on the aircraft's tail fin instead. The aircraft will head to Cape Town later today for its first commercial flight in its retro design. The Boeing 747 is rolled out of the paint shop in Dublin. Its first flight with its retro design livery will be to Cape Town The arrival of the aircraft rounds off a nostalgic few weeks for the aviation community. Enthusiasts around the world have already been treated to a BOAC-liveried Boeing 747, a BEA Airbus 319 and a British Airways Landor 747, which have collectively flown to more than 30 destinations across the UK, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America. Alex Cruz, British Airways' chairman and CEO, said: 'Reintroducing four heritage designs in to our fleet has been an incredibly nostalgic time for us and our customers, we're impressed at how popular they've been. 'In our centenary year it's important that we celebrate our past, and we also have big plans to look to the future. I'm excited about what the rest of this year has in store.' BA has unveiled three other aircraft that have been given a retro livery for the airline's centenary celebrations. The first to be unveiled was a Boeing 747 in a BOAC livery The second design to be launched was on an Airbus A319, which was repainted in the style of a BEA aircraft from the 1960s The third plane to be given a retro makeover was another Boeing 747. It was painted in the Landor design, which adorned the side of BA planes from 1984 to 1997 In its centenary year, British Airways is planning a range of activities and events. The airline is hosting BA 2119 - a programme that will lead the debate on the future of flying and explore the future of sustainable aviation fuels, the aviation careers of the future and the customer experience of the future. The airline will also be working with expert partners to identify BA's 100 Modern Britons - the people up and down the country who are currently shaping modern Britain. The centenary activity is taking place alongside the airline's current five-year 6.5bn investment for customers. This includes the installation of WiFi and power in every seat, fitting 128 long-haul aircraft with new interiors and taking delivery of 72 new aircraft. Earlier this week the airline also revealed its new business class seat - 'Club Suite' - and confirmed it will arrive on the first of its A350 aircraft in July. He's the man responsible for the shredded physique of Thor star Chris Hemsworth and his wife Elsa Pataky's streamline curves. And now, the couple's personal trainer Luke Zocchi has shared how to get a body just like them and he revealed it only takes 20 minutes per day. Speaking to OK magazine on Thursday, Luke explained that it's all about good exercise selection and structure. Get ripped! Celebrity trainer Luke Zocchi (right) revealed to OK magazine on Thursday how to get a beach body like his A-List clients Chris Hemsworth (centre) and Elsa Pataky (left) in just 20 minutes 'I believe with good exercise selection and structure, you can get an amazing workout in a short amount of time,' Luke told OK magazine on Thursday (pictured: Chris Hemsworth) 'I believe with good exercise selection and structure, you can get an amazing workout in a short amount of time,' Luke told the publication. The celebrity trainer explained that his workouts specialise in HIIT (high-intensity training) HIRT (High-intensity resistance training) and strength workouts with weights. He said his 20-minute body blast workout starts with a series of dumbbell exercises that focus on strengthening the core. Secret workout revealed: He explains his 20-minute body blast workout starts with a series of dumbbell exercises that focus on strengthening the core (pictured: Luke Zocchi) He begins with 10 reps of dumbbell thrusters and dumbbell renegade rows. Luke then moves onto 10 reps of bicycle crunches, bicep curls and cross climbers. The fitness instructor goes on to perform a series of planks, starting with 10 reps of walking planks and side planks. 'Train smart, not hard:' Last November, Luke told FEMAIL, 'If you commit to training just three times a week for 20 minutes, you will slowly see results (pictured: Luke with Elsa Pataky) Last November, Luke told FEMAIL, 'If you commit to training just three times a week for 20 minutes, you will slowly see results. Luke is a fan of the 'train smart, not hard' mentality and added that if you focus on training for a lesser period of time, you are more likely to see results. Meanwhile, it's not just Chris and Elsa on his list of celebrity clients. Australian actress Cate Blanchett is a huge fan of the Hollywood trainer. Flex those muscles: Chris is famous for his incredibly sculpted physique (pictured: Chris Hemsworth with Luke) In 2017, Cate said that she was in the best shape of her life thanks to the fitness guru. 'I got fit, I mean really fit. I actually wanted to get up at six in the morning and train with him for 20-minutes before the kids woke up,' Cait told Coveteur. Meanwhile, Luke said that he designed workouts for Cait which were effective and fast. 'We'd normally only train for 20-minutes and she said, as a result, it was the best shape she's ever been in.' Mike Gunner unleashed on Jessika Power during a chaotic dinner party on Wednesday's episode of Married At First Sight. And now co-star Michael Brunelli has slammed the electrician for having a go at the blonde. Appearing on Nova 100's Chrissie Sam & Browny on Thursday, Michael said: 'There is a reason he is 44 and still single!' Scroll down for audio Having his say: MAFS' Michael Brunelli (pictured) has slammed Mike Gunner for unleashing on Jessika Power during Wednesday night's episode of Married At First Sight 'Mike needs to be the centre and everything Mike says has to be right and everyone has to believe it and Mike will never ever change his mind,' the 27-year-old added. 'The worst part about all of this, he has Heidi as a wife, one of the nicest people, most genuine people I've ever met. He is completely ignoring her and trying to dish out relationship advice when his own backyard is really messy.' The primary school teacher then went on to say that Mike has no right to dish relationship advice to any of the other contestants. Outspoken: Mike (pictured) unleashed on Jessika during a chaotic dinner party on Wednesday evening 'His own backyard is really messy': Primary school teacher Michael said that Mike has no right to dish relationship advice to any of the other participants (pictured with 'wife' Martha Kalifatidis) 'The grass needs to be mowed down, he needs to figure that out before he starts dishing out advice for other people,' he stated. When radio host Chrissie Swan said she was shocked at how fired up Mike was at the dinner party, Michael took a swipe at Mike for needing to be on the show at his age. 'Have we all forgotten what happened on the beach with Heidi on a honeymoon? There is a reason he is 44 and still single,' he ranted. During Wednesday's dinner party, Mike repeatedly slammed Jessika at the dinner table, telling her: 'I feel like you delight in other people's misery.' Causing a stir: During Wednesday's dinner party, Mike repeatedly slammed Jessika at the dinner table, telling her: 'I feel like you delight in other people's misery' The drama started after Mike discovered Jessika had been making comments about fellow MAFS participant Mark Scrivens during Tuesday's girls' night. During the girls' night on MAFS on Tuesday, Jessika made some sensational claims about Mark once conversation turned to her 'affair' with Dan Webb. 'I need to just shift the focus, I need to do it,' said Jessika, before addressing Ning in front of the whole group. Jessika added: 'Ning, things that Mick has brought up about you and Mark are not nice. I'd rather not bring it up tonight,' with Mick Gould being her 'husband' on the show. As expected, Ning then demanded to know what was happening, with Jessika happily sharing the possibly fabricated story. Jessika elaborated: 'He lies to you, and Mick and Mark have both said that after this experiment ends they're going to go and f*** a whole bunch of b*****.' Drama: The drama started after Mike discovered Jessika had been making comments about Mark Scrivens (R) during Tuesday's girls' night 'I don't hate you and I don't hate Mark but get rid of your feels, babe. He lies to you.' On Wednesday's show, Mark slammed Jessika's 'manipulative and vindictive behaviour,' before assuring Ning that he's there for the right reasons. Involving himself in the spat, Mike told Jessika: 'To me, it seems that you can create drama out of fresh air. Mark's issues with his wife, that doesn't concern you does it.' 'I've been dragged into drama with this girl before... You said I called you fake,and I have been embroiled in your drama previously. 'Words are powerful darling, and I don't think you realise that. It's not about Instagram, selfies and trout pout.' When Jessika responded, 'you don't know me', Mike hit back: 'I only know your actions.' Later on in the episode, Mike took another swipe at Jessika, saying: 'Words hurt.' 'And if you want to go perpetuating ideas that are going to create problems for people, you have to be accountable for the things you say,' her added. His constant comments were met with much criticism from both his 'wife' Heidi, and the relationship experts. Sunrise weather presenter Sam Mac is definitely not shy. And Thursday morning was no different for the outgoing comedian. Presenting from a traditional Onsen in Japan, a towel-clad Sam began to strip off his underwear, leaving hosts Sam Armytage squirming and David Koch covering his eyes. Scroll down for video 'These better not end up in a vending machine!' Sunrise's Sam Armytage squirms as weather presenter Sam Mac takes off his underwear at a Japanese spa... before jumping into the water naked with two men Pictured: Sam Mac (centre) with his 'Japanese bros' As Sunrise threw to Sam, where he was flanked by two Japanese men in white towels, things became rather racy for a breakfast show. Sam was determined to prove that he would be experiencing the Japanese Onsen the traditional way, which is fully naked. Pulling off his underwear from beneath his towel, he said: 'You need to see this is real!' Look away now! A laughing Sam Armytage (left) squirmed while co-host David Koch (right) covered his eyes Back at the studio, Sam Armytage and Natalie Barr protested 'no' in between laughs. While pointing at his discarded underwear, Sam Mac then joked: 'These better not end up in a vending machine!' In response, blonde journalist Sam squirmed while co-host David was left speechless and covered his face so he didn't have to watch events unfolding. Taking the plunge! Sam whipped off the towel and jumped in the water When the show returned to Sam in Japan, it was time to take a leap of faith. 'Three, two, one,' he counted down before jumping into the water with the men he had dubbed his 'Japanese bros'. 'It's so hot, it's so hot. I haven't looked down once,' he said while swimming in the water. Relocating to an area where he was less exposed, he joked: 'I'm just moving over here behind my modesty rock.' She previously urged fans to 'quit trying to be like everyone else' and to embrace their individuality. But on Tuesday, Elyse Knowles appeared to take inspiration from Elsa Pataky during a low-key outing in Byron Bay. The former Block winner, who relocated to the trendy coastal town a few weeks ago, seems to have adopted Elsa's trademark bohemian style. Hipster chic: Elyse Knowles (left on Tuesday) stepped out in Byron Bay this week wearing the same bohemian skirt worn by Elsa Pataky (right in January) earlier this year Boho fashion: The skirt retails for $229 at Spell & The Gypsy, which is Elsa's favourite label Elyse wore the same $229 skirt from Spell & The Gypsy that Elsa wore in Byron back in January. She paired the look with a $69 Cuba ribbed tank singlet from the same label, which is Elsa's favourite brand. Elyse was joined by her boyfriend, Josh Barker, as they walked their dogs together down a quiet street before stopping for lunch at a local cafe. 'Quit trying to be like everyone else': In October last year, the Myer model, who has posed for countless magazine photo shoots and regularly documents her glamorous life on Instagram, urged fans to stop admiring influencers and models In October last year, the Myer model, who has posed for countless magazine photo shoots and regularly documents her glamorous life on Instagram, urged fans to stop admiring influencers and models. The star, who is often hailed for her girl-next-door appeal, told her Instagram followers to 'quit trying to be like everyone else' and to embrace their unique qualities. 'As I often say in this book, there is only ONE of you in this world,' she began. Words of wisdom: The model, who is hailed for her girl-next-door appeal, told her followers to 'quit trying to be like everyone else' and to embrace their unique qualities 'Your unique qualities, look and personality are special and it's important to embrace them.' She continued: 'Quit trying to be like everyone else on Instagram and in magazines and focus on being your best self. It's amazing how beautiful and confident you will feel if you own who you are. Nothing is more exquisite than self confidence.' Elyse often shares glamorous photos with her 907,000 Instagram followers - but in May last year she shared her concerns about the effects of social media on young people. Glamorous life: Elyse often shares glamorous photos with her 907,000 Instagram followers - but in May last year she shared her concerns about the effects of social media on young people 'The common issue we have in our generation is that we are surrounded by images that aren't real,' she told Body and Soul. 'Everyone puts their best version of themselves on social media; it's hard but we have to remember that that person doesn't look like that all the time, so definitely don't compare yourself to that person you see on social media.' Selfie queen: Else said, 'The common issue we have in our generation is that we are surrounded by images that aren't real' In August, Elyse signed on as a Myer ambassador after the brand's longtime 'Face' Jennifer Hawkins stepped down after 12 years. In addition to her new role at Myer, Elyse is the face of Seafolly, Davidoff Cool Water and Aveda, and has also posed for various magazines including Australian Women's Health and Women's Fitness. Alex Brooker reportedly sent flirty texts to a personal trainer while married to his wife of four-years, Lynsey. The Last Leg presenter, 34, is said to have met up with the PT three times after meeting on a train. The fresh claims come amid reports Alex is desperately trying to save his marriage following allegations he had an affair with a 36-year-old beautician. Rumours: Alex Brooker reportedly sent flirty texts to a personal trainer while married to his wife of four-years Lynsey The comedian reportedly struck up a flirtatious exchange with the personal trainer, telling her she was 'incredibly beautiful' and his 'one and only soulmate'. A source told The Sun: 'They met on a train and Alex was very charming, they exchanged numbers. 'He was very flirty on his messages and they met up a couple of times in London and once up north. Flirty: The Last Leg presenter, 34, is said to have met up with the PT three times while after meeting on a train 'But he didnt mention he had a wife in Yorkshire, things fizzled out when she heard he wasnt single.' MailOnline has contacted Alex's representatives for comment. His alleged flirtatious behaviour comes hot on the heels of reports from The Mirror, that Alex had an affair with a beautician he met in a London pub while he was filming for The Last Leg. A source told the publication: 'Last year was a really tough year for Alex and Lynsey. He was filming in London and she was at home up north. It was a real strain on the marriage. Fling: The Last Leg's Alex Brooker 'trying to save his marriage amid claims he had an affair with beautician he met while filming the Channel 4 series', it was reported on Saturday 'He met this other woman while filming in London for The Last Leg. They had a real connection and became really friendly. 'Things turned romantic in July and this lasted for about a month, before she is believed to have ended things in August.' The publication claimed that Alex's wife is aware of his infidelity, and added that they're working on getting their marriage 'back on track'. Difficult period: A source said 'last year was a really tough year for Alex and Lynsey' and his filming commitments in London kept them apart, which put a 'strain on their marriage' Alex allegedly tried to rekindle the romance after the beautician, who is said to have had a boyfriend during that time, broke off the relationship with him. The television personality was said to have felt guilty following the fling, and then told his wife about what had taken place. He married Lynsey in 2014, and the couple share daughter Daphne, who was born in March 2017. Alex, who was born in Ashford Kent, was born with hand and arm deformities, and wears a prosthetic leg. The presenter has appeared on Channel 4's The Last Leg since 2016 which he co-hosts with Adam Hills and Josh Widdicombe. The legendary Cher was in a panic Wednesday when she realized her favorite black 'eat the rich' tank top was missing from her colossal walk-in closet. 'My T-shirt is gone!' the 72-year-old pop icon - who boasts 6.9M social media followers - tweeted. 'Black studded rhinestone shirt with white pirate [skull and crossbones design]. Worn it for 30-40 [years]. My favorite piece of clothing!' 'My T-shirt is gone!' The legendary Cher was in a panic Wednesday when she realized her favorite black 'eat the rich' tank top was missing from her walk-in closet (pictured in 2016) The 72-year-old pop icon tweeted: 'Black studded rhinestone shirt with white pirate [skull and crossbones design]. Worn it for 30-40 [years]. My favorite piece of clothing!' The Believe hitmaker was last pictured wearing the treasured top in an April 25 snap with her stylist Marjan Malakpour, who could probably get it remade. Indeed, fans uncovered pictures of Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisian) wearing the irreverent article of clothing in 1985 as well as 2001 while performing on Top of the Pops. 'I'm asking [Saint] Anthony to get involved. He finds everything,' the self-described 'lazy' Buddhist then pleaded. Luckily, the half-Armenian beauty has unlimited resources, on top of her estimated $300+M net worth, to recover or recreate the top. Call Marjan! The Believe hitmaker was last pictured wearing the treasured top in an April 25 snap with her stylist Marjan Malakpour (R), who could probably get it remade It's true! Indeed, fans uncovered pictures of Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisian) wearing the irreverent article of clothing in 1985 as well as 2001 while performing on Top of the Pops The self-described 'lazy' Buddhist then pleaded: 'I'm asking [Saint] Anthony to get involved. He finds everything' Sentimental: Luckily, the half-Armenian beauty has unlimited resources, on top of her estimated $300+M net worth, to recover or recreate the top (pictured in 2001) Cher is next scheduled to perform Wednesday night in her 102-date Classic Cher residency at Park MGM's 5,200-seat Park Theater in Las Vegas. The Mamma Mia actress was hoping to complete her EGOT status by winning a Tony for producing Broadway musical The Cher Show, which is currently running at the Neil Simon Theatre. The authorized jukebox show cast three actresses - Stephanie J. Block, Teal Wicks, and Micaela Diamond - to play the SoCal native in different stages of her six-decade career. Busy: Cher is next scheduled to perform Wednesday night in her 102-date Classic Cher residency at Park MGM's 5,200-seat Park Theater in Las Vegas (pictured in 2017) More prayers: The Mamma Mia actress was hoping to complete her EGOT status by winning a Tony for producing Broadway musical The Cher Show, which is currently running at the Neil Simon Theatre (pictured December 3) The Bachelorette's Georgia Love took a trip down memory lane on Thursday, sharing one of her old high school photos to mark her sister Katie's birthday. Taking to Instagram on Thursday, the 30-year-old Channel 10 newsreader posted a sweet picture from her family's archives. In the throwback snap, Georgia and Katie smile for their official school portraits in matching checkered dresses. Who knew she'd grow up to be a Bachelorette? Georgia Love shared this high school throwback photo to celebrate her sister Katie's birthday on Thursday In the photo, Georgia sat graciously on a stool with her arms crossed while her older sister stood behind her. 'Happy birthday, Kak. May we forever be as cool as your thin leather Minnie Mouse watch and my Baby G,' the caption read. The Love siblings had something else to celebrate last year, after Katie married her longtime partner Robbie McLaren at a winery in Tasmania. 'Happy birthday, Kak. May we forever be as cool as your thin leather Minnie Mouse watch and my Baby G,' Georgia (right) wrote on Instagram. Pictured with Katie (left) recently Georgia paid tribute to her sister in an Instagram post at the time, gushing about the happy occasion. 'My sis is no longer a Miss!' she wrote. '[I had] the best day celebrating the best couple in the best location. Can we do it all again please?' Last year, Georgia revealed that a wedding is definitely on the cards for herself and boyfriend Lee Elliott, 37, who she met on The Bachelorette. Still going strong! Last year, Georgia revealed that a wedding is definitely on the cards for herself and boyfriend Lee Elliott (pictured), who she met on The Bachelorette She told The Sunday Telegraph, 'We can see ourselves getting married to each other'. 'At our ages and stages of life, to have been together for 18 months and to say marriage isn't on the cards is silly.' The Bachelorette returns to Channel 10 later this year. He was a part of the Bravo reality TV series when it debuted in 2014. But Thomas Ravenel, 56, has called starring in Southern Charm the 'worst mistake' of his life, according to court documents obtained by The Blast. The former South Carolina Treasurer is currently embroiled in an acrimonious custody battle with his Southern Charm co-star, Kathryn Dennis, 26, over their two children. Thomas Ravenel, 56, [pictured left] has called starring in Southern Charm the 'worst mistake' of his life, according to court documents obtained by The Blast Speaking of his time on the show, the reality TV star said, '[Southern Charm] amplified my past notoriety, showcased my wealth I accumulated through decades of hard work, and made me a walking target for men and women eager to get in front of the camera'. 'Most importantly, it caused embarrassment and pain to my parents, my sisters, and my children.' The father-of-two 'wants a gag order issued in the case' reported The Blast on Wednesday. This would effectively prevent Bravo from airing footage of his ex Dennis talking about their custody fight. Happier times: The former South Carolina Treasurer is currently embroiled in an acrimonious custody battle with his Southern Charm co-star, Kathryn Dennis, 26, over their two children. Seen here in 2014 Ravenel said, 'I do not believe Kathryn and Bravo should profit from this litigation and from the pain and suffering it has caused me and will inevitably cause our children.' 'Sealing this case will do no good if Bravo and Kathryn are allowed to discuss this litigation on TV or social media.' He warned that should the judge in the case deny his request for a gag order, 'Bravo and Kathryn will be at liberty to control the public narrative of this litigation and shape the story as it suits them, and my children will bear the shame of being fathered by a man the public believes is a monster, an abuser and a narcissist.' Ravenel quit the reality TV series last August, Tweeting 'Im not doing the show anymore. In the contract they have the right to fictionalize your story.' '[Bravo] took advantage of me. I decided Ive got too much to lose and informed them Im not coming back.' Fighting back: Ravenel said, 'I do not believe Kathryn and Bravo should profit from this litigation and from the pain and suffering it has caused me and will inevitably cause our children.' The couple seen here in 2014 Kathryn is seeking full custody over their two children, daughter Kensington, four, and son St. Julien, three. She previously had full custody, but lost it following a positive drug test for marijuana in 2016. Thomas regained 50/50 custody, though he had previously pleaded guilty to a charge of purchasing cocaine in 2007. He has accused his ex-partner of causing developmental delays in their two children due to alleged drug and alcohol use during her pregnancies. The former South Carolina Treasurer has twice been accused of sexual assault in the past year. In 2008, Ravenel was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison for drug charges. Karlie Kloss didn't seem flustered as she was snapped in New York City Wednesday, amid a new book that reveals members of her husband Josh Kushner's family did not approve of his marriage to her, and had referred to her with ethnically-disparaging phrases. The St. Louis native, 26, donned a black leather blazer from FRAME over an off-white button-down top with a black pencil skirt, dark pantyhose and black heels. Kloss toted a black Christian Dior bag, wore black sunglasses, and had her wavy blonde tresses parted and down as she strode through Gotham with gusto. Moving forward: Karlie Kloss, 26, didn't seem flustered as she was snapped in New York City Wednesday, amid a new book that reveals members of her husband Josh Kushner's family did not approve of his marriage to her, and had referred to her with ethnically-disparaging phrases The 6ft2 catwalk queen was in the headlines this week amid the release of a book Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump by Vicky Ward, which reveals a litany of unflattering details about the way she was looked at and treated by the family, which includes senior presidential adviser Jared. Josh's father Charles Kushner and his wife Seryl spurned Kloss for six years after she started dating the venture capitalist in 2012, Josh told businessman Gary Cohn (who formerly served alongside Jared in President Donald Trump's administration), according to the book. The family - including Jared - did not approve of Kloss because she was not born Jewish (she converted last summer), according to the book, and Seryl said that Josh's marriage to the model was her 'biggest failure'. Jared was one of the Project Runway star's biggest critics, calling Kloss the phrase 'shiksa,' an offensive term referring to women who are not Jewish. New details: Both Charles Kushner and Jared Kushner did not approve of Josh dating Kloss because of her religion, and shunned her for six years as a result, the book states Stylish: The Chicago native donned a black leather blazer from FRAME over an off-white button-down top with a black pencil skirt, dark pantyhose and black heels Below the belt: Jared also jabbed at Kloss's intelligence, telling a colleague that Kloss is 'not that smart,' according to the book Windy day: The Midwestern beauty's wavy tresses blew to the side as she made her way through the Big Apple 'Jared's mind-set was made quite apparent when, in 2012, Joshua started dating the Victoria's Secret model Karlie Kloss,' Ward wrote, noting that he made clear the effort was to push her away early on. Ward wrote that after journalist Aaron Gell wished Jared well in regards to Josh's romance with Kloss, Jared responded in saying: 'Don't worry. The family is going to take care of that. We're not very happy about him dating a shiksa. We're hoping he'll move on.' Jared also jabbed at Kloss's intelligence, telling Gell that Kloss is 'not that smart.' The book also noted that Josh went out of his way to exclude his parents from participating in his wedding in upstate New York last year as payback for the flak he took over the relationship. Poised: Kloss seemed to be in a great mood as she looked to board a vehicle He faced off with Ernie Dingo during a fiery interview more then a decade ago. But radio host Kyle Sandilands has now mended bridges with the Australian television favourite, all in the name of charity. Ernie, 62, had called Kyle a 'commercial w***er' during that exchange, but on Thursday morning their historic spat seemed to be a thing of the past. Kyle, 47, offered the first olive branch as he revealed to Ernie, who was appearing on Kyle and Jackie O's Bounty Hunter segment, that he had 97 rescue animals on his farm. The two old foes then shared a touching moment as Ernie recalled how he lost his dog in a national park after it tried to eat some animal bait. The conversation appeared to be a clear reference to Ernie telling the radio host in 2008, 'I don't think you've cared for an animal in your life.' 'I just wanted to tell you, I genuinely was upset we had that falling out,' Kyle told Ernie during the segment. The Crocodile II star then aimed a light-hearted jibe at Kyle, recalling an awkward encounter between the two at an airport. 'Kyle, I saw you at the airport in Sydney. You looked at me, did a double take and thought "Oh s***",' Ernie recalled. Olive branch: Radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands has ended his decade-long feud with TV favourite Ernie Dingo after the pair had a fiery on-air blow up back in 2008 During the pair's notorious 2008 interview, the much-loved comedian had taken exception to Kyle associating him with the 'The dingo stole my baby' jingle. 'Your game is to sensationalise things and you're just basically a commercial w**ker,' Ernie said at the time. Kyle angrily ended the call as his interviewee tried to talk to Jackie O instead, saying 'what a c**khead you turned out to be Ernie. Get out of here, I'm not interested.' The diffusing of tensions between the two on Thursday is part of Kyle and Jackie O's Bounty Hunter - where the ever-opinionated Kyle attempts to heal his relationship with different celebrities. Inspired by the TV series Billions - which is being streamed exclusively on Stan - Kyle is aiming to make good with his adversaries for a good cause. Ernie said he wanted the $10,000 on offer donated to a footy charity, a day after Prime Minister Scott Morrison was a no-show on the morning breakfast show. Kyle has never been shy about his distaste for Prime Minister, and used Monday's breakfast show to air a montage of some of his own choice words for Mr Morrison. The radio star was hoping he could tempt Morrison to come on air, pledging to donate $30,000 to charity if he phoned up. She has recently been enjoying a sun-soaked holiday in Dubai. And Lauren Goodger took to Instagram on Wednesday to share another sizzling bikini snap with her followers after she returned to the UK from her winter break. In the snap, the 32-year-old reality star showcased her assets as she posed in the swimming pool at the Five Palm Jumeirah hotel in the celebrity hotspot. Sizzling: Lauren Goodger took to Instagram on Wednesday to share another sizzling bikini snap with her followers after she returned to the UK from her winter break Lauren barely covered her assets with a tiny strapless bikini top, which she paired with equally skimpy thong style bikini bottoms for her dip in the pool. She knelt in the pool for the sensational shot, while resting her hands against one of the tables designed to hold drinks while guests enjoy a swim. Lauren's hair was slicked back and looked wet after she had presumably been swimming moments before the picture was captured. Back on? Lauren's post comes as she was spotted with her on-off boyfriend Joey Morrison outside her Essex home earlier this month on 1 March Lauren completed her pool look with a pair of oversized black shades, as she posed against an idyllic backdrop which was complete with palm dress and a huge window. Lauren's post comes as she was spotted with her on-off boyfriend Joey Morrison outside her Essex home earlier this month on 1 March. The on-off couple, who are now over, tried to keep a low profile as they entered Lauren's property separately from a parked car just weeks ago. While the next day, Lauren appeared from her home in a different ensemble looking effortlessly glamorous in a pair of fitted black trousers with a matching long-sleeved peplum top. Dig?: The pictures came before Lauren appeared to take a dig at her ex Joey on Tuesday as she shared a meme against a colourful background on her Instagram story The pictures came before Lauren appeared to take a dig at her ex Joey on Tuesday as she shared a meme against a colourful background, which read: 'Dating a drug dealer all fun & games until you find out all them unsaved numbers ain't customers, they all b*****.' Lauren's post appeared to stir up old hurt as Lauren dumped Joey amid claims he sent a slew of X-rated snaps to other women from his prison cell. MailOnline contacted a representative for Lauren who said the former couple 'are not together', adding: 'No dig was done about anyone today.' Hitting back: MailOnline contacted a representative for Lauren who said the former couple 'are not together', adding: 'No dig was done about anyone today.' Joey left prison last September after serving nine years of a 16 year sentence for possession of a firearm, kidnap, blackmail and actual bodily harm, with Lauren recently insisting she is single. In February, Lauren shared a cosy selfie of herself with her jailbird ex to her Instagram in the early hours, which she deleted just hours later. Posing with another male friend, Lauren tagged Joey in the post and added the caption, '#family', followed by a tongue out emoji. But she has since said she has no sexual feelings towards Joey and said she is 100% 'over it'. Talking in her column for new! magazine, she said: 'I regret giving two and a half years of my life to someone who was in jail only for him to come out and not be what I thought. 'I thought we were going to get a house, get married and have kids. I regret the time I've wasted.' Lauren had been left heartbroken when her two and a half year romance with Joey came to an end in July, despite waiting for her love while he was behind bars. Joey was given a 16-year prison sentence for a violent offence but was released after nine years - Lauren and Joey split close to his release date. Split: Lauren had been left heartbroken when her two and a half year romance with Joey came to an end in July, despite waiting for her love while he was behind bars Lauren's love life has been somewhat turbulent as her romance with Joey come after she dated Jake McLean on/off from 2012 until 2016. The TV star was previously engaged to her TOWIE co-star Mark Wright whom she had been dating for more than a decade. Yet the exes cut off their engagement in May 2011 after just five months and Extra presenter Mark went on to marry TV darling Michelle Keegan. Lauren accused her ex Mark and his wife Michelle of 'blanking her' and spoken about the incredible sexual energy she and her ex had. She's considered one of the most beautiful supermodels in the world. And Heidi Klum proved worthy of the title as she flaunted her magnificent figure in a pair of black panties via Instagram on Wednesday. The 45-year-old German stunner showcased her pert derriere as she looked over the Hong Kong skyline with her fiance Tom Kaulitz. Rear view: Heidi Klum, 45, flaunted her magnificent figure in a pair of black panties via Instagram on Wednesday Daring to impress, the television personality looked overjoyed as she spent the day with her new beau. The couple confirmed their engagement earlier this year, after going public with their relationship in May last year. And Heidi has admitted that her four children Helene, 14, Henry, 14, son Johan, 12, and Lou, 9, 'can't wait for the wedding' as they love their rocker stepfather-to-be, 29. Speaking to Closer magazine on Tuesday, the model, 45, gushed: 'The kids adore Tom. They can't wait for the wedding! They'll be very involved in it all.' Stunner: The German stunner showcased her pert derriere as she looked over the Hong Kong skyline with her fiance Tom Kaulitz Impressive: Daring to impress, the television personality looked overjoyed as she spent the day with her new beau Going on to discuss their engagement, ten months into their romance, she said: 'We met in February 2018 - and honestly I would have married him that day, probably! 'I was surprised when he asked, but I was kind of thinking it was going to go that way because we just clicked.' The former Victoria's Secret Angel said she and her fiance have set a date for the wedding, but have their work cut out for them as they've been too busy with their work to plan anything. Sweet: Heidi revealed that her children 'can't wait' for her wedding to fiance Tom Kaulitz... as the model admitted she would have married him the DAY they met Love: Heidi said her daughter Helene, who she shares with ex partner Flavio Briatore, and her three children with ex-husband Seal, Henry, Johan, and daughter Lou (pictured), 'adore' Tom Heidi met Tom on set of Germany's Next Top Model, and Tom popped the question on December 24 with a dark-stone engagement ring. Heidi is 16 years older than the Tokio Hotel guitarist, and, of their wedding, she told ET last month: 'We're two Germans, it will be very organised and on time. Very, very much on time and very organised.' Heidi shares her eldest daughter with her ex partner Flavio Briatore, who she split from soon after announcing her pregnancy. While she shares her three other children with ex husband Seal, who she married in 2004 before the pair finalised their divorce in 2014. Whirlwind romance: Heidi met Tom on set of Germany's Next Top Model in February 2018, and Tom popped the question on December 24 with a dark-stone engagement ring It's Tom's second engagement after previously being betrothed to Ria Sommerfeld for a year until their 2016 split. Speaking about the musician - who is 17 years her junior - with InStyle, Heidi said: 'I don't really think about getting older that much - I mean, know it's happening to me, it's happening to all of us.' 'My boyfriend is many years younger than me, and lots of people are questioning that and asking about it. That's really the only time when age seems to be shoved in my face and I have to give an answer for it.' She continued: 'I don't really think about it that much otherwise. You have to just live a happy life without worrying too much about what people think because worrying is only going to give you more wrinkles.' Immigrant women more likely to be overweight during pregnancy A new study in the Journal of Public Health finds that women in Norway from immigrant backgrounds are more likely to be overweight during pregnancy. The prevalence of obesity has increased worldwide and is a notable public health challenge. Women who are overweight or obese are more likely to suffer adverse pregnancy outcomes such as gestational diabetes, pregnancy-induced hypertension, preeclampsia, and caesarean delivery. These women are also more likely to have complications such as congenital anomalies, miscarriages, stillbirths, and preterm births. Previous studies have shown a higher prevalence of obesity among pregnant immigrant women in Sweden, Germany, and the United States, compared with non-immigrant women. This observational study was based on Medical Birth Registry Norway and Statistics Norway. The study population consisted of 219,555 deliveries between 2006 and 2014. Some 22.3% of the women studied were overweight. 12.2% of women were obese. The highest rates of excess weight (30.8%) and obesity (13.5%) were recorded among women from the Middle East and North Africa or with no education (30.7% and 17.2%). Some 39.5% of women studied in sparsely populated counties were overweight and obese, compared to 26.4% for women living in Oslo. Adjusted for country of birth, education level, age, parity, smoking and marital status, women in sparsely populated counties were 65% more likely to be overweight. Women born in the Middle East and North Africa or Sub-Saharan Africa were most likely to be overweight. Women born in Asia were least likely to be overweight. There was an inverse association between pre-pregnancy BMI and education level. Women with no education had the highest prevalence (47.9%) of being overweight. In contrast, women with the highest education were least likely (22.3%) to be overweight. "This study reveals that immigrant women from the Middle East or Africa have a notably higher prevalence of obesity than women from other parts of the world, or women born in the recipient country. Additionally, women with lower education had a higher prevalence of obesity," said Katariina Laine, head of department of obstetrics at Oslo University Hospital. "Health care providers should take these factors into consideration in planning of prenatal care. Some groups of women may need more follow-up than the healthiest women." ### The paper, "Country of birth and association with overweight - a population based study of 219 555 pregnancies in Norway," is available (at midnight EST on March 21) at: https:/ / academic. oup. com/ jpubhealth/ article-lookup/ doi/ 10. 1093/ jpubhealth/ fdz001 Direct correspondence to: Katariina Laine Department of Obstetrics, Oslo University Hospital Ulleval, Pb 4965, Nydalen, 0424 Oslo, NORWAY kattiksen@yahoo.no To request a copy of the study, please contact: Daniel Luzer daniel.luzer@oup.com Sharing on social media? Find Oxford Journals online at @OxfordJournals This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Globetrotter Bella Hadid emerged from her $60K/month Tribeca penthouse in Manhattan on Wednesday hilariously hauling bags emblazoned with her first name. The 22-year-old IMG Model's navy-patterned carry-on bag and matching four-wheeled luggage were custom RIMOWA x Off White. Hadid - who relies on stylist Mimi Cuttrell - wore a black-ribbed scoopneck top beneath a matching blazer, high-waisted pants, and floral-print high-top sneakers. Globetrotter: Bella Hadid emerged from her $60K/month Tribeca penthouse in Manhattan on Wednesday hilariously hauling bags emblazoned with her first name Branded: The 22-year-old IMG Model's navy-patterned carry-on bag and matching four-wheeled luggage were custom RIMOWA x Off White The half-Jordanian, half-Dutch beauty scraped her brunette tresses into messy updo and she was likely sporting a pair of her sister Gigi's Vogue Eyewear. Bella - who boasts 24.5M Twitter/Instagram followers - Insta-storied videos of herself that day boarding a private jet and grooving to Solange's single Binz. The Malibu-born socialite also posted a Polaroid of herself rocking a glamorous updo and diamond earrings taken Tuesday. Hadid was very likely flying to Toronto to reunite with her live-in love The Weeknd, who executive-produced Nav's second studio album Bad Habits dropping Friday. Comfortable: Hadid - who relies on stylist Mimi Cuttrell - wore a black-ribbed scoopneck top beneath a matching blazer, high-waisted pants, and floral-print high-top sneakers Taking flight: The half-Jordanian, half-Dutch beauty scraped her brunette tresses into messy updo and she was likely sporting a pair of her sister Gigi's Vogue Eyewear Current: Bella - who boasts 24.5M Twitter/Instagram followers - Insta-storied videos of herself that day boarding a private jet and grooving to Solange's single Binz In demand: The Malibu-born socialite also posted a Polaroid of herself rocking a glamorous updo and diamond earrings taken Tuesday The 29-year-old Grammy winner - whose Chapter 6 record is 'getting cooked' - will likely be celebrating his fellow Canadian's record at a big bash. The Lost in the Fire hitmaker (born Abel Tesfaye) then announced on Tuesday that he 'might not leave here.' Bella and The Weeknd have been going strong ever since they began dating again last May following his nine-month fling with pop star Selena Gomez. The On Thursday designer first fell in love with the former Fyre Festival promoter in 2015 after enlisting her to serve video vixen duties in his In the Night music video. Dropping Friday! Hadid was very likely flying to Toronto to reunite with her live-in love The Weeknd (R), who executive-produced Nav's (L) second studio album Bad Habits 'Vibes for the town': The 29-year-old Grammy winner - whose Chapter 6 record is 'getting cooked' - will likely be celebrating his fellow Canadian's record at a big bash Permanent? The Lost in the Fire hitmaker (born Abel Tesfaye) then announced on Tuesday that he 'might not leave here' She spent the weekend with her ex-boyfriend, Arthur Manidis, in Sydney last week. And shortly after photos of the reunion surfaced on Wednesday, Married at First Sight 'bride' Martha Kalifatidis was back in the arms of her 'husband', Michael Brunelli. The couple put on a united front in Bondi, as they stepped out hand-in-hand at a local cafe. Still going strong! Married at First Sight's Martha Kalifatidis (right) stepped out with her 'husband' Michael Brunelli (left) in Bondi on Wednesday Just days after Martha, 30, was pictured showing affection to her ex-Arthur, during a romantic dinner in Bondi, she and Michael, 27, packed on the PDA on a lunch date with friends. Martha looked smitten as she gazed adoringly at the primary school teacher, weeks ahead of the upcoming MAFS finale. They wore matching black outfits, with Martha wearing flared pants, a jacket and heels. High spirits: Just days after Martha spent the weekend with her ex-boyfriend, Arthur Manidis, in Sydney last week, she and Michael put on a united front in Bondi Smitten: Martha looked smitten as she gazed adoringly at the primary school teacher, weeks ahead of the upcoming MAFS finale Fancy seeing you here! Former Biggest Loser host, Fiona Falkiner (left), also dined at The Shop cafe in Bondi but separately from the MAFS stars Matching outfits: Martha and Michael wore matching black outfits, with the makeup artist wearing flared pants, a jacket and heels. Primary school teacher Michael kept his look simple in a T-shirt, shorts and Adidas sneakers Group chat: The pair were joined by friends as they shared a bottle of wine at the cafe Michael kept his look simple in a T-shirt, shorts and Adidas sneakers. The pair out on a flirty display at The Shop and Wine Bar, where former Biggest Loser host, Fiona Falkiner, also dined. They later stepped into a local spa, where they enjoyed a couples' massage together. United front: Martha and Michael walked hand-in-hand down the quiet Sydney street Happy: The couple couldn't stop smiling during the low-key outing Shortly after, they put on a loved-up display as they walked down the street holding hands - showing no signs of strain. On Sunday, Martha raised eyebrows when she enjoyed a day out with her ex-boyfriend, Arthur, while Michael was nowhere in sight. Martha and Arthur picked up wine at a local bottle shop before dining together at Italian eatery, A Tavola, where they shared a hearty meal and a bottle of red wine. Long-distance: Melbourne-based Michael carried luggage suggesting he had travelled to be with his 'wife' for the weekend The 'married' reality star and her male companion sat side-by-side and gazed into each other's eyes during an intimate conversation. At one point, Martha affectionately rubbed Arthur's nose as they chatted shared a tender moment. The eyebrow-raising photos come just days after a source claimed to New Idea this week that Martha has 'no intention' of staying with her husband, Michael. Is everything ok? The pair looked visibly shocked as they browsed through a smartphone after photos of Martha with her ex-boyfriend surfaced online 'Martha has no intention of staying with Michael,' the source claimed. 'She's only ever seen this experiment as a way of boosting her profile and launching a reality TV career.' On MAFS, Martha and Michael are portrayed as a picture-perfect couple. Look away Michael! Martha showed affection to her ex-boyfriend Arthur (pictured left on Sunday) during a cosy dinner in Bondi on Sunday and her 'husband' was nowhere in sight During an appearance on the Kyle and Jackie O show last month, the Sydney makeup artist insisted that she and Michael are stronger than ever. 'I am still with Michael. We're still together,' she said. During a recent commitment ceremony on MAFS, Michael revealed that he's head over heels. 'I know my feelings for her are real, I can see myself falling for this girl,' Michael told the relationship experts. When asked by expert John Aiken if she feels the same way, Martha replied: 'I think I could, yeah!' He furiously savaged his Married At First Sight co-star Jessika Power on Wednesday night's episode over claims she made about their fellow participant, Mark Scrivens. And on Thursday morning, Mike Gunner lost his cool again - accusing two radio show hosts of starting rumours about him and ex-MAFS contestant, Bella Frizza. The Gold Coast electrician had been chatting amicably about his dinner party blow-out when 90.9 Sea FM announcers mentioned his appearance at the station's yacht party, earlier this month. Following the summer party, the radio station's presenters had suggested sparks had been flying between Mike, 43, and Bella. 'Did Bella Frizza leave you alone at all?' the reality TV star was asked. 'We put up one photo (on social media) together and suddenly everyone's talking about it,' Mike replied. 'Frankly that's inaccurate and you knew it,' Mike shot back at hosts Dan Anstey, Ben Hannant, and Frizza - who had been filling in for Heather Maltman. The presenters broke out into laughter, but Mike curtly responded 'you'll have to explain to me how that's funny'. He went on to say that it wasn't right for rumours to be swirling around his personal life while he was still involved in an on-air relationship with Heidi Latcham, 38. 'Explain to me how that's funny': Married At First Sight's Mike Gunner lost his cool during radio interview over rumours of a romance with ex-MAFS star Bella Frizza (pictured the photo of them together at yacht party this month) Vicious: The incident came after he furiously savaged his MAFS co-star Jessika Power (confrontation pictured) on Wednesday night's episode about claims she made about their fellow participant Mark Scrivens Following an apology from the radio trio, Mike took a step back - admitting it had been 'a long night'. He said he had copped a wave of social media criticism about his confrontation with Jessika since the airing of Wednesday night's episode. Meanwhile, over On Nova 100's Chrissie Sam & Browny, co-star Michael Brunelli also criticised his behaviour. 'Mike needs to be the centre and everything Mike says has to be right and everyone has to believe it and Mike will never ever change his mind,' he said. Sofia Richie modeled a simple set of powder pink sweats when she was glimpsed this Wednesday emerging from LAX. The 20-year-old daughter of Lionel Richie returned stateside after a luxurious work trip to Kuwait City to launch her capsule purse collection with local brand Marzook. Slicking her blonde hair back into a high ponytail, Sofia rounded off her latest airport look with a sleek pair of sunglasses and a large handbag. In transit: Sofia Richie modeled a simple set of powder pink sweats when she was glimpsed this Wednesday emerging from LAX Marzook have also released collaborations with such names as the high-end Swiss jeweler De Grisogono and Lebanese designer Nicolas Jebran. Sofia has a fondness for holidaying in Middle Eastern countries, having jetted out for lavish vacations in the past to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The half-sister of Nicole Richie has been running around for over a year now with Kardashian satellite Scott Disick, who is 15 years her senior. 'I think a lot of people think they have to prove their relationships through social media and I'm just happy being private about my relationship,' Sofia said recently. Homecoming: Slicking her blonde hair back into a high ponytail, Sofia rounded off her latest airport look with a sleek pair of sunglasses and a large handbag Covering the April issue of Tatler, she explained: 'It's not like I won't post pictures about it, but I like having my little private life.' Scott shares three children with Kourtney Kardashian - nine-year-old son Mason, six-year-old daughter Penelope and four-year-old son Reign. Last year, Kourtney's half-sister Kendall Jenner commented on a photo of Scott with Sofia, Mason, Penelope, and Reign: 'Awww Scott and his kids'. Lap of luxury: The 20-year-old daughter of Lionel Richie returned stateside after a work trip to Kuwait City to launch her capsule purse collection with local brand Marzook Kourtney and Scott, who were introduced by Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis in 2006, went on and off before finally breaking off the romance in 2015. Like Scott, Kourtney, 39, has a penchant for picking drastically younger people to date - she recently ran around with 25-year-old Algerian model Younes Bendjima. Kourtney and Younes broke up last year, and since then she was linked 21-year-old model Luka Sabbat - but he told The Cut last month: 'We're definitely not dating.' Keeping Up with the Kardashians star Khloe Kardashian flaunted her 'flat tummy' while promoting a controversial 'teatox' product on Wednesday. The 34-year-old reality star - who welcomed daughter True 11 months ago - claimed she whittled her waist by drinking Flat Tummy's meal replacement shakes in 'two weeks.' 'Loving how my tummy looks right now you guys!' the Good American co-founder - who boasts 135.2M followers - wrote. 'Loving how my tummy looks right now you guys!' KUWTK star Khloe Kardashian flaunted her 'flat tummy' while promoting a controversial 'teatox' product on Wednesday 'The progress is undeniable.' According to Forbes, Flat Tummy shells out '$200K' for each paid partnership post from celebrity sponsors. In her accompanying Insta-story, the Revenge Body host's hips were noticeably thinner than her post from just one week earlier. Kardashian's hips were equally as wide on March 12 when she grabbed dinner with her sisters at Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica while clad in a clingy snakeskin dress. 'The progress is undeniable': The 34-year-old reality star - who welcomed daughter True 11 months ago - claimed she whittled her waist by drinking Flat Tummy's meal replacement shakes in 'two weeks' Brand ambassador: According to Forbes, Flat Tummy shells out '$200K' for each paid partnership post from celebrity sponsors Digitally slimmed down? In her accompanying Insta-story, the Revenge Body host's hips (L) were noticeably thinner than her post (R) from just one week earlier Unretouched: Kardashian's hips were equally as wide on March 12 when she grabbed dinner with her sisters at Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica while clad in a clingy snakeskin dress Khloe wasn't the only one pushing Flat Tummy as her momager Kris Jenner posted Tuesday about 'feeling slimmer than I have in a looong time' after only a week of shakes. On Thursday, the Calabasas socialite covered up her 'flat tummy' in a voluminous pink teddy coat while visiting a beauty salon in Los Angeles. The 5ft10in blonde's street sighting came a day after she tweeted to a fan that her scandalous split from philandering babydaddy Tristan Thompson was 'worth it' for baby True. Khloe 'doesn't blame' Jordyn Woods for splitting with the Canadian 28-year-old after the 21-year-old plus-size model admitted to kissing him during a drunken February 19 afterparty at his house Khloe wasn't the only one pushing Flat Tummy as her momager Kris Jenner posted Tuesday about 'feeling slimmer than I have in a looong time' after only a week of shakes Bundled: On Thursday, the Good American co-founder covered up her 'flat tummy' in a voluminous pink teddy coat while visiting a beauty salon in Los Angeles 'Thank you!' The 5ft10in blonde's street sighting came a day after she tweeted to a fan that her scandalous split from philandering babydaddy Tristan Thompson was 'worth it' for baby True 'This was Tristans fault': Khloe 'doesn't blame' Jordyn Woods (L) for splitting with the Canadian 28-year-old after the 21-year-old plus-size model admitted to kissing him during a drunken February 19 afterparty at his house It's over: The Cleveland Cavaliers center previously cheated with 'strip club worker' Lani Blair in April, and he canoodled with three other women back in October 2017 while Kardashian was pregnant (pictured November 22) The Cleveland Cavaliers center previously cheated with 'strip club worker' Lani Blair in April, and he canoodled with three other women back in October 2017 while Kardashian was pregnant. Catch more of Khloe on 16th season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, which premieres March 31 on E! Back in 2017, the half-Armenian beauty and her famous family signed a massive $100M deal with the the cable network through 2020 - according to Variety. Jennie Garth looked downcast when she was glimpsed this Thursday on a casual outing in the Studio City area of Los Angeles. The 46-year-old layered up in a canary yellow sweater, pulling its hood over her trademark blonde hair and slipping into charcoal sweats. Rounding off her look with monochrome Nike sneakers, the Illinois-born actress went for a minimalist look where makeup was concerned. Out and about: Jennie Garth looked downcast when she was glimpsed this Thursday on a casual outing in the Studio City area of Los Angeles Jennie recently mourned the death of her old Beverly Hills, 90210 co-star Luke Perry, who died at 52 on March 4 after suffering complications from a stroke. Her first Instagram post after Luke's death was four days later - an International Women's Day snap of her daughters Luca, 21, Lola, 16, and Fiona, 12. She was swiftly trolled for not uploading a social media post about Luke, even though she had given a tribute statement to People the day he died. In response to the criticism, she wrote that Luke 'didn't give a f*** about social media' and that the 'rude comments' on her grieving process were 'really uncool.' On the go: The 46-year-old layered up in a canary yellow sweater, pulling its hood over her trademark blonde hair and slipping into charcoal sweats Beverly Hills, 90210 hunk Brian Austin Green, who is now married to Megan Fox, dished on his podcast that the cast recently reunited in honor of Luke's passing. 'You were happy to see everybody and you felt like: "God, it's been too long," and it was great, but what a horrible reason to have to see everyone again,' he said. A number of the Beverly Hills, 90210 cast - including Brian and Jennie - are getting together for a revival of the franchise that is slated to begin over the summer at Fox. Brian said on his podcast that Luke's commitments to his CW series Riverdale prevented him from joining the revamped 90210 show. The way they were: Jennie recently mourned the death of her old Beverly Hills, 90210 co-star Luke Perry (left), who died at 52 on March 4 after suffering complications from a stroke Luke's last movie will be the upcoming Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which is set against the backdrop of the Manson Family murders of 1969. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a faded actor and Brad Pitt his stuntman - a pair who live together next door to Manson Family victim Sharon Tate. Margot Robbie plays Sharon, whose sister Debra recommended her for the role in a 2017 TMZ interview, saying Jennifer Lawrence was 'not pretty enough' for the part. Jamie Chung and Scheana Shay kicked off the first day of spring in style. The actress and reality star, 33, were looking good from head to toe as they celebrated the launch off Jamie's new footwear collaboration with Chinese Laundry, 42 Gold, in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Dressed as if she meant business, Jamie, 35, oozed style and sophistication in a royal blue suit that was strategically styled to flash a hint of skin. Stepping out in style! Jamie Chung and Scheana Shay celebrated the launch of the star's new footwear collaboration with with Chinese Laundry, 42 Gold, in Los Angeles on Wednesday The Hangover Part II star teamed the cool suit with a pair of salmon pink heels from her new collection, a diamond necklace from Le Vian, while carrying an orchid purple envelope purse. She styled her blonde locks down into loose, glossy waves that were parted at the center, while touching up her complexion with a dewy coat of blush and nude lips. A slick of cat eye liner finished off the glam look. While Jamie went for a sleek, business look, Scheana used the party as a chance to show off her edgy side. Suits her! Chung looked like she meant business in the royal blue suit with orchid purple purse Stunning: The ladies dazzled while showing off their style at the event The Vanderpump Rules star rocked a black crop top, matching leggings, and glossy camel bomber jacket. Along with a pair of suede ankle boots, Scheana looked trendy and super cool in her look. She wore her jet black hair down glossy and straight, while topping off her complexion with shimmering pink lip gloss and ample amounts of mascara. These boots were made for walking! The Vanderpump Rules star rocked a cool pair of suede ankle boots Jamie's new footwear collaboration is now available for purchase, and was designed for the 'everyday woman'. 'Really the essence of these shoes is they wanted to create something for the everyday woman,' Jamie explained on Tuesday to KTLA. 'The woman that's the boss lady, she's running around in meetings, she's going in and out, she's picking up the kids, she's doing everything.' She is one of Australia's must successful Hollywood exports. But Pitch Perfect star Rebel Wilson has told of how her life could have been so much different were it not for a bout of malaria that nearly killed her two decades ago. She revealed on the Aussies In Hollywood podcast that she contracted a bad strain of the debilitating illness when she was 19-years-old in Mozambique. Scroll down for video 'I'm just lying there in hospital': Rebel Wilson revealed the surprising reason behind her decision to become an actress on the Aussies In Hollywood podcast this week 'I'm just lying there in hospital, can't really hear, can't really watch TV and I was just hallucinating on the drugs that I was an actress.' The 39-year-old, whose latest film Isn't It Romantic was released to Netflix this month, revealed her hallucinations included dreams she was an actress. 'I was giving an acceptance speech and I gave an acceptance rap, which seems so dorky now,' she said. 'When people have kind of near death experiences, people can experience certain things that really change the course of their life.' Inspiration: Rebel told Australian movie journalist Jenny Cooney she contracted a bad strain of the debilitating illness when she was 19-years-old in Mozambique Upon her return to Australia, Rebel auditioned for the National Institute for Dramatic Arts - only to be rejected. Rebel said her life-altering experience came during a charitable program in Africa. 'They tried to give me pills but I heard they can cause mental problems - so I ended up being the stupid person who got it (malaria).' The 39-year-old (pictured in Isn't This Romantic) revealed her hallucinations included dreams she was an actress The then-teenager was still trying to find her place in the world - and she then juggled a law degree and acting classes as she pursued her dream. Rebel is heading back to Australia to shoot a new TV series, Les Norton, in Sydney. The series is based on the Les Norton book series, and is about lovable battler Les, who works in an illegal Kings Cross casino. Grant Denyer isn't shy when it comes to divulging intimate details of his sex life with wife Cheryl 'Chezzi' Denyer. And speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Australia on Thursday, the former Family Feud host got candid about how he keeps the spice alive with his spouse of nine years. 'We just take showers without anybody knowing,' Grant said. EXCLUSIVE: Grant Denyer (right) says he and wife Chezzie (left) often take intimate showers together to keep their sex life alive Grant and Chezzi are the parents to daughters Scout, three, and Sailor, seven. 'Unfortunately my three-year-old is learning how to unlock doors with a bobby pin, so there is nowhere safe in the house for me and my beautiful wife to be romantic.' The Gold Logie Award winner continued: 'That's the reality of having two kids under 10, I love them but every now and then mummy and daddy need some time alone.' It's not the first time the father-of-two revealed personal details of his sex-life. 'There is nowhere safe in the house for me and my beautiful wife to be romantic': Grant said the couple have to get creative when it comes to romance due to having two kids Last week, the 2DayFM Breakfast radio host discussed his sex life live on air. The 41-year-old spoke about how he found it difficult to get intimate with his 40-year-old wife, without his kids interrupting. He detailed on his 2DAY FM breakfast radio show how a '60-second sex' session proved to be the ultimate antidote to his children's ever-presence. Quick session: Grant detailed on his 2DayFM Breakfast radio show how a '60-second sex' session proved to be the ultimate antidote to his children's ever-presence 'I went into the bathroom where there were two lines of defence,' Grant revealed to bemused co-hosts Ed Kavalee and Ash London. 'She (Chezzi) is perched on top of the bathroom sink with one foot planted on the door - I sort of held the other leg and away we went. 'When you have kids that just can't leave you alone, no matter whether you're on the toilet or what you're doing - you've got a matter of 60 seconds at best.' She loves to make a bold fashion statement. But Cara Santana opted for a more subdued approach to style while attending the Jamie Chung x 42Gold event in LA on Wednesday night. The Salem actress, 34, still looked chic as she rocked an artsy white jean jacket with basics beneath. Mellow look: Cara Santana went for a casual chic look while donning a cool white jacket to the Jamie Chung x 42Gold event in LA on Wednesday Cara's ivory jacket was covered with impressionistic illustrations of faces. Ms. Santana showed off the piece, which was a collaboration between AG Jeans and artist Blanda, on her Instagram earlier in the day. Keeping things simple, she wore a black tee and denim underneath. Classic Vans sneakers completed her look. The star kept a fresh, makeup-free face and piled her shiny, chocolate brown locks on top of her head in a bun. Fresh faced: The star went makeup-free as she piled her shiny, chocolate brown locks on top of her head in a bun Thrice as nice! At the event, Cara teamed up with hostess Jamie Chung and English TV presenter Louise Roe for a photo At the event, Cara teamed up with hostess Jamie Chung and English TV presenter Louise Roe for a photo. Cara has been dating Jesse Metcalfe for over a decade, and the pair have been engaged for over two years. But recently, Santana admitted she wasn't making much progress on the wedding plans. Going strong: Cara has been dating Jesse Metcalfe for over a decade, and the pair have been engaged for over two years. Above the pair are seen February 24 'Were nowhere!' she told Us Weekly during Daily Front Rows Fifth Annual Fashion Los Angeles Awards on Sunday, March 17. Cara isn't in any rush to walk down the aisle, however, explaining that the pair have 'no plans' at the time. 'Were totally enjoying it, so hopefully well find something soon,' she said. Married At First Sight's Ning Surasiang made a shocking comment while reflecting on her rocky start to 'married' life with Mark Scrivens, 41, on Wednesday's episode. At the dinner party, the Townsville mother-of-three told the other couples that she wanted to 'stab him with a knife' when they first met. The camera then panned to fellow 'bride', Jules Robinson, who looked taken aback by the confession. Shocking: Married at First Sight's Ning Surasiang confessed she wanted to 'stab' her 'husband' Mark Scrivens when they first met Ning, 32, made the shocking remark after Mick Gould brought up how the couple initially disliked each other when they met. 'Oh yeah, I wanted to kill him,' Ning replied. 'I wanted to stab him with a knife!' 'Oh yeah, I wanted to kill him,' said Ning (leff) while speaking of her rocky start with Mark (right), before then muttering the 'stab' comment Mark then said: 'The first four weeks of this we hated each other.' As Ning then said it was a 'horrible' time, the rest of the group gushed about how far they have since come as a couple. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Nine for comment. Stunned: The camera then panned to fellow 'bride', Jules Robinson (pictured), who looked taken aback by the confession Despite ending the conversation on a high, it appears that the couple may throw in the towel during this Sunday's commitment ceremony. In a preview that aired on Wednesday's Talking Married, Mark is shown desperately trying to fix things as he pleads with his wife not to leave him. 'I just hope you don't base your decision on what everyone else around you is saying. We've worked hard to get where we are now,' Mark said in the clip. Ning seemed to be having second thoughts about their marriage while telling her 'husband' that he didn't handle the situation with Jessika Power very well. Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez donned a trendy animal print for her CW series' PaleyFest Q&A event in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The 34-year-old Golden Globe winner practically purred in a silky leopard-print pencil skirt, nude stilettos, and a black long-sleeved top selected by stylist Lauren Rodriguez. Make-up artist Carissa Ferreri brought out the Chicago-born bride-to-be's natural beauty. Effervescent: Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez donned a trendy animal print for her CW series' PaleyFest Q&A event in Los Angeles on Wednesday Hairstylist Jose Lopez added volume to Gina's (born Virginia) shiny raven locks with a bouffant hairpiece. That same morning, Rodriguez - who boasts 4.2M social media followers - shared a far less glamorous selfie alongside her castmate Justin Baldoni. The 35-year-old actor plays her character Jane Gloriana Villanueva's on/off beau Rafael Solano, who biologically fathered her 'miracle' son Mateo. During the Q&A, the NYU Tisch grad recalled one of her favorite moments while shooting the romantic dramedy series over the last five years. Here kitty kitty: The 34-year-old Golden Globe winner practically purred in a silky leopard-print pencil skirt, nude stilettos, and a black top selected by stylist Lauren Rodriguez Big smile: Make-up artist Carissa Ferreri brought out the Chicago-born bride-to-be's natural beauty Coiffed: Hairstylist Jose Lopez added volume to Gina's (born Virginia) shiny raven locks with a bouffant hairpiece 'Dancing with [season two guest star] Britney Spears was a major highlight!' Gina told the audience. 'Justin came in to watch the scene even though he wasn't in it. We were all happy to learn Britney was a fan of the show.' Rodriguez heaped praise on creator Jennie Snyder Urman, who granted her an audition when she was 29 and 'could barely pay rent.' 'They know I'm Puerto Rican, right?' the Families Belong Together advocate recalled asking her agent at the time. 'We woke up like this. No legit, we did': That same morning, Rodriguez - who boasts 4.2M social media followers - shared a far less glamorous selfie alongside her castmate Justin Baldoni (L) After! The 35-year-old actor plays her character Jane Gloriana Villanueva's on/off beau Rafael Solano, who biologically fathered her 'miracle' son Mateo Reflecting: During the Q&A, the NYU Tisch grad recalled one of her favorite moments while shooting the romantic dramedy series over the last five years Gina told the audience: 'Dancing with [season two guest star] Britney Spears was a major highlight! Justin came in to watch the scene even though he wasn't in it. We were all happy to learn Britney was a fan of the show' (pictured in 2015) 'They know I'm Puerto Rican, right?' Rodriguez heaped praise on creator Jennie Snyder Urman (L), who granted her an audition when she was 29 and 'could barely pay rent' The Miss Bala beauty also directed two episodes - including the March 27 premiere - in Jane the Virgin's 19-episode fifth and final season. Gina also produces and narrates the spin-off Jane the Novela starring Jacqueline Grace Lopez, who Insta-storied on-set snaps of herself and castmate Remy Hii on Thursday. Marcia Cross and Hunter Parrish also reportedly appear in the upcoming Telenovela-inspired anthology on The CW. Rodriguez would have never met her fiance Joe LoCicero had he not guest-starred in three episodes, including one in 2016 where he played 'Don Quixote Stripper.' At the helm! The Families Belong Together advocate also directed two episodes - including the March 27 premiere - in Jane the Virgin's 19-episode fifth and final season #BTS: Gina also produces and narrates the spin-off Jane the Novela starring Jacqueline Grace Lopez (L), who Insta-storied on-set snaps of herself and castmate Remy Hii (R) on Thursday The 32-year-old Cop Chronicles actor popped the question to the Carmen Sandiego stunner in July, and his mother is 'doing all the' wedding planning. 'She's the greatest. I would happily marry Joe today in the courthouse, but we belong to a big Italian family and a big Puerto Rican family,' the Annihilation actress told ELLE earlier this month. 'That was not going to happen. We're doing the thing for our family, and we hope they're happy. That's all that matters to me, that everybody's happy. That's also something I'm working on: people-pleasing.' Love at first strip! Rodriguez would have never met her fiance Joe LoCicero had he not guest-starred in three episodes, including one in 2016 where he played 'Don Quixote Stripper' Her husband Thomas Sadoski stars in the off-Broadway play White Noise. And on Wednesday, Amanda Seyfried supported him as the show had its official opening night at Manhattan's Public Theater. The Mama Mia! Here We Go Again star looked lovely in a sleeveless dark red dress and a matching shade of lip color. Stylish: Amanda Seyfried supported husband Thomas Sadoski at the opening night of his new Off-Broadway play White Noise at Manhattan's Public Theater on Wednesday Seyfried's dress had ruffles around the bodice and a tiered skirt that fell to just above the knee, and it was cinched at the waist with a black band. The actress, 33, went bare-legged in black pumps and wore her long blonde hair loose. She and Sadoski met in 2016 on the set of the film The Last Word. They married in March 2017, the same month they welcomed their daughter. Pretty: The Mama Mia! Here We Go Again star looked lovely in a sleeveless dark red dress with ruffles around the bodice and a tiered skirt that fell to just above the knee Night at the theatre: The actress, 33, went bare-legged in black pumps and wore her long blonde hair loose Couple: Seyfried and Sadoski met in 2016 on the set of the film The Last Word. They married in March 2017, the same month they welcomed their daughter Opening night: Sadoski posed for photos with his fellow castmembers 42, Zoe Winters, Sheria Irving and Daveed Diggs Sadoski, 42, stars in White Noise with Zoe Winters, Sheria Irving and Daveed Diggs and the group posed for photos together on their big night. Sadoski began is professional stage career in 1998 in Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our youth. He's worked steadily in New York theatre ever since. He became a familiar face after starring for three seasons in HBO's The Newsroom. Also at the opening night was Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda who arrived with fellow playwright, composer and collaborator Quiara A Hudes. Katherine Heigl will act in, and executive produce, a new CBS comedy called Our House. On the series, the star of USA's Suits, 40, will play Bridget, the mother of a family dealing with a family circus as her parents and siblings reemerge in her life when she moves back home. Heigl's character is relaxed and progressive, according to The Hollywood Reporter, as is her therapist husband, played by Malcolm Barrett. Scroll below for video The latest: Katherine Heigl will act in, and executive produce, new CBS comedy called Our House. She was snapped last May in NYC The filming of the series, a collaboration between Sony Pictures TV and CBS TV Studios, will not interfere with Heigl's work on the last season of Suits, according to the publication. Insiders told THR that Heigl - who has past experience in comedy, with work on motion pictures such as 27 Dresses, The Ugly Truth and Knocked Up - is one of the biggest names inked during Hollywood's pilot season, with a number of performers focused on work on cable and streaming formats. Heigl, who shares three kids with her husband Josh Kelley, 39 - daughters Nancy Leigh, 10, and Adalaide Marie Hope, six; and son Joshua Bishop Jr., two. - had previously worked for CBS on the 2017 legal drama Doubt. Also working as executive producers on the project include Brendan O'Brien, Nick Stoller and Conor Welch, with TV veteran James Burrows directing. New role: Heigl's character is relaxed and progressive, according to The Hollywood Reporter Close: Heigl's reps include her mother/manager mother and manager, Nancy Heigl, who she paid tribute to earlier this month for International Women's Day Heigl's reps include her mother/manager mother and manager, Nancy Heigl, who was among the people the actress paid tribute to earlier this month for International Women's Day. 'Heres to the mother that raised me,' she said, along with a shot of the pair. 'The sister that graced me. The daughters that saved me. 'I have been so impressively and divinely influenced by these incredible women and these little girls and I am who I am because of them. And I am proud to be the woman they believe me to be. Most of the time.' She was the image of late-night TV glamour during her interview on this Wednesday's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. But Joey King was casual as could be when she was glimpsed that day arriving at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood to tape the segment. The 19-year-old wore a black tee with matching jeans and boots, complementing her salmon hoodie with coral shades and a scarlet handbag. Smile and wave: Joey King was casual as could be when she was glimpsed that day arriving at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood to tape Jimmy Kimmel Live! Joey, who rose to fame playing little sister to Selena Gomez in the 2010 movie Ramona And Beezus, has been busy on the talk-show circuit lately. She has been doing the publicity rounds for her new Hulu series The Act, which stars her opposite Oscar-winner Patricia Arquette and bows Wednesday. To this end, Dee Dee - a real person - purportedly took drastic measures against her child, including making Gypsy have operations she did not need. Joey features on the web series as Gypsy, who eventually got together with her boyfriend Nicholas Godejohn to murder Dee Dee in 2015. Simply stylish: The 19-year-old wore a black tee with matching jeans and boots, complementing her salmon hoodie with coral shades and a scarlet handbag Workaday: Joey, who rose to fame playing little sister to Selena Gomez in the 2010 movie Ramona And Beezus, has been busy on the talk-show circuit lately Big day: She has been doing the publicity rounds for her new Hulu series The Act, which stars her opposite Oscar-winner Patricia Arquette and bows Wednesday Her current ultra-short hairdo is the result of her performance as Gypsy on The Act, which required her to have her head shaved. Gypsy and Nicholas are both in jail now - she for 10 years, he for life - and their story was told in the 2017 HBO documentary Mommy Dead And Dearest. While appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! this week, Joey dished about living with her mother Jamie, sister Hunter and the latter's fiance Nico Svoboda. 'I love it,' said Joey of living with her actress family members, and she shared that 'We all have a pretty similar sense of cleanliness.' In and out: Joey could be seen emerging from the El Capitan after her interview, modeling her snappy talk-show trouser suit from ADEAM and a pair of white heels Staying dry: The daughter of Jamie King sheltered under an umbrella being held by a gentleman who walked a short distance behind her As for whether Hunter and Nico will relocate after marriage, Joey said: 'I'm literally, like, begging them not to. I want them to stay! I love - I love having them there!' Jimmy asked Nico, who was sitting in the studio audience with Hunter, to 'Nod yes if you wanna stay' - and Joey's future brother-in-law did a circular head motion. 'Yes! For Joey, yes,' Nico clarified, which Jimmy interpreted: 'Yeah, that seemed like a no, really, but you guys'll hash it out off the air.' Could lovable Married At First Sight newlyweds Jules Robinson and Cam Merchant be headed for the The Block? The loved-up couple enjoyed a leisurely lunch with The Block's 2018 winners Hayden and Sara Vale at Sydney's Watsons Bay Boutique Hotel on Thursday. Taking to Instagram, Jules shared a photo of the two Channel Nine reality TV couples spending time together. Merging reality shows: Married At First Sight's Cam Merchant and Jules Robinson (left) enjoyed a lunch with The Block's Sara and Hayden Vale (right) at Sydney's Watsons Bay Boutique Hotel on Thursday 'When #MAFS meets these two awesome winners of #9TheBlock!!!' Jules captioned the photo. 'Fantastic achievement! We won love! You won both! Money and you had love!! Amazing,' she wrote under the double-date photo. Hinting that the couples have formed a friendly bond, Jules continued: 'People who dont know MAFS always ask me, what do you win ?!? Errrhhh LOVE! #bestprize. Cant wait to catch up again.' Swapping shows: Their lunch date is sure to raise eyebrows, with many fans undoubtedly wondering if an appearance on The Block is in Cam and Jules' future Coming out on top: Sara and Hayden won last year's season of The Block, with their Melbourne apartment netting them a $645,000 profit Their lunch date is sure to raise eyebrows, with many fans undoubtedly wondering if an appearance on The Block is in Cam and Jules' future. Both shows are on Channel Nine, and while it's not known how the two couples came to meet, Jules described them as '#greatpeople', and labelled them '#newfriends'. Sara, 31, and Hayden, 45, won last year's season of The Block, with their Melbourne apartment netting them a $645,000 profit. 'Being the underdogs has definitely made [winning] a bit sweeter': Sara told Domain in October last year, shortly after the hit renovation show's finale 'Being the underdogs has definitely made [winning] a bit sweeter,' Sara told Domain in October last year, shortly after the hit renovation show's finale. Meanwhile, Jules, 37, and Cam, 34, have proven to be fan favourites on this year's season of Married At First Sight, and regularly boast of their love on Instagram. 'Thank you husband for always making me smile, even when Im unhappy. You always understand and reassure me everything will be ok [sic]. It's safe to say you have become my best friend,' Jules wrote of Cam on Instagram this week. There were eyebrow-raising claims made about her in a new book including a claim that her brother-in-law Jared said she's 'not that smart.' And Karlie Kloss looked tense on a recent outing with her husband Joshua Kushner. The power couple were spotted inside of SUV together in New York City on Wednesday. Tough times: Karlie Kloss looked tense on a recent outing with her husband Joshua Kushner Karlie, 26, appeared to not give much attention to the 33-year-old businessman as she tapped away on her mobile phone. At one point Jared even turned to the runway star and appeared to say something to her but the model remained fixated on her device. The 6ft2 catwalk queen was in the headlines this week amid the release of a book Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. Busy: The 26-year-old model appeared to not give much attention to the 33-year-old businessman as she tapped away on her mobile phone Preoccupied: Karlie was dressed business chic Tense: At one point Jared even turned to the runway star and appeared to say something to her but the model remained fixated on her device The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump by Vicky Ward, which reveals a litany of unflattering details about the way she was looked at and treated by the family, which includes senior presidential adviser Jared. Josh's father Charles Kushner and his wife Seryl spurned Kloss for six years after she started dating the venture capitalist in 2012, Josh told businessman Gary Cohn (who formerly served alongside Jared in President Donald Trump's administration), according to the book. The family - including Jared - did not approve of Kloss because she was not born Jewish (she converted last summer), according to the book, and Seryl said that Josh's marriage to the model was her 'biggest failure'. Jared was one of the Project Runway star's biggest critics, calling Kloss the phrase 'shiksa,' an offensive term referring to women who are not Jewish. New details: Both Charles Kushner and Jared Kushner did not approve of Josh dating Kloss because of her religion, and shunned her for six years as a result, the book states Stylish: The Chicago native donned a black leather jacket over an off-white button-down top with a black pencil skirt, dark pantyhose and black heels Below the belt: Jared also jabbed at Kloss's intelligence, telling a colleague that Kloss is 'not that smart,' according to the book Windy day: The Midwestern beauty's wavy tresses blew to the side as she made her way through the Big Apple 'Jared's mind-set was made quite apparent when, in 2012, Joshua started dating the Victoria's Secret model Karlie Kloss,' Ward wrote, noting that he made clear the effort was to push her away early on. Ward wrote that after journalist Aaron Gell wished Jared well in regards to Josh's romance with Kloss, Jared responded in saying: 'Don't worry. The family is going to take care of that. We're not very happy about him dating a shiksa. We're hoping he'll move on.' Jared also jabbed at Kloss's intelligence, telling Gell that Kloss is 'not that smart.' The book also noted that Josh went out of his way to exclude his parents from participating in his wedding in upstate New York last year as payback for the flak he took over the relationship. Poised: Kloss seemed to be in a great mood as she looked to board a vehicle The Australian fitness influencer is though to be masterminding a move to Hollywood with her two children. And on Thursday, Tammy Hembrow made a very believable attempt at the American accent during an extended Los Angeles getaway. In a clip shared by model pal Jena Frumes, the 24 year-old, seen heavily filtered, tucks into an ice-cream churro sandwich. She's going Hollywood! Tammy Hembrow breaks into fits of giggles after adopting an American accent following rumours she's planning a permanent move to Los Angeles When Jena asks Tammy if she's enjoying the sugary treat, she responds 'it's so good,' in her native accent. It was when her friend laughed and mocked the Australian accent, that the blonde attempted to repeat the phrase with a strong LA intonation. Tammy then descended into a fit of giggles at her valiant second attempt. Delicious: In a clip shared by model pal Jena Frumes (right), Tammy makes the valiant attempt The hilarious display comes after it emerged Tammy had discussed with her family the idea of permanently relocating to Los Angeles. Back in January, her sister Emilee said in a YouTube video that the Saski Collection founder was 'trying to make us all move to LA or America'. Emilee, who has two children under the age of four and is based on the Gold Coast like Tammy, admitted she was concerned about the move. Will Australia's wannabe Kardashians move to LA? Tammy is said to be trying to convince her family to relocate to America full time (Pictured L to R: Amy, Tammy, Starlette, and Emilee) Busy momma: Until last year, Tammy was engaged to Australian streetwear designer Reece Hawkins, who is the father of her two children, two-year-old daughter Saskia and three-year-old son Wolf 'I have mixed feelings, because I hear raising kids in America isn't the best,' she said. Tammy, who owns her own activewear label, boasts more than 9.3 million Instagram followers and 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube. She is the daughter of Australian director, screenwriter and musician Mark Hembrow and has four sisters - Amy, 28, Emilee, 26, Starlette, 18, and Ava, 13. Until last year, she was engaged to Australian streetwear designer Reece Hawkins, who is the father of her two children. She was recently linked to U.S. rapper Tyga, who is the ex-boyfriend of Kylie Jenner. Jeff Brazier has revealed his two teenage sons will mark the 10th anniversary of their mother Jade Goody's death with a charity quiz night for Marie Curie. The television presenter, 39, who shares Bobby, 15, and Freddie, 14, with the late reality star, revealed their plans in a series of heartfelt tweets on Wednesday. In a tribute to Jade, Jeff also opened up about the the years his sons have spent 'without the most important person in their life'. Family: Jeff Brazier opened up about the years his sons have spent 'without the most important person in their life' in a series of heartfelt tweets (L-R, Freddie, Jeff, Bobby and Kate Dwyer) He wrote: 'Staggeringly, Its been 10 years my children have had to do without the most important person in their life. 'To their absolute credit, they want to mark the occasion remembering their Mum by raising money for charity at their private quiz night amongst family and friends. 'They have personally chosen @MarieCurieUK because of how fantastic they have heard the nurses were in caring for their Mum in her final days. 'They have also elected to support @GOSHCharity on this occasion for their work with the bravest of children too. Tribute: Television presenter Jeff, 39, who shares Bobby, 15, and Freddie, 14, with the late reality star, also revealed the boys had organised a charity event 'Your support offers more than a wonderful donation. It grants the encouragement to know they are being brave and that their efforts are seen. 'It tells them they are not alone in their grief and that others, friends they are yet to meet are keeping an eye on their journey.' The reality star also took the time to thank his followers for their support and for encouraging Freddie and Bobby's 'bravery in daring to remember joyfully.' He said: 'As a parent I thank you for embracing their bravery in daring to remember joyfully. 'It's all I've ever wanted to encourage and they both look forward to creating an evening that their Mum would have so loved to have been at the heart of. In a series of tweets, Jeff wrote: 'Staggeringly, Its been 10 years my children have had to do without the most important person in their life' Sons: Jade shared her boys with Jeff Brazier, 39, but was no longer in a relationship with him 'This for us is how you truly pay respect. Thank you for even thinking of donating to my children's fundraising efforts.' Jade died aged 27 on March 22, 2009, with ex Jeff raising their two sons - who were just just five and four years old at the time of their mother's death - alone. Her closest friends last week revealed how they try to care for her sons in their mother's absence. In an interview with the Sun, Charlene Steele - who was a bridesmaid at her wedding to Jack Tweed a month before her death - said: 'I was with her right up to the end. 'She'd wanted to write letters herself to Bobby and Freddie to open on their 18th but was too weak.' Jeff continued: 'As a parent I thank you for embracing their bravery in daring to remember joyfully' (Pictured, Jade, Freddie and Bobby in 2006) Tragic: Jade died from cervical cancer aged 27, six months after receiving the tragic diagnosis. She passed away on March 22, 2009 Jennifer Smith recalled: 'We told her we would be there for them. She was pleased. 'We do all the things Jade would have done if she was here give them lifts, have sleepovers with them, text them to tell them we love them and embarrass them in front of all their friends.' Her friends also revealed that Jack no longer sees Jade's sons, and that their lives are very much centered around their father Jeff and his new wife, PR director Kate Dwyer. Caroline Silverstein recalled that she helped Jade to her bed on the day of her and Jack's nuptials, with Jade having to leave the reception early due to her condition. 'Jack came up briefly. Jade was out of it and asleep. I told her the next day hed stayed with her all night, she didnt need to know any different,' Caroline said. Pictured: Jeff, who raised Freddie and Bobby alone, and his sons in 2005 at an event in London Jennifer added: 'He was drinking and dancing. He stayed out late with the boys. He pushed his pals around in her wheelchair.' Bobby has started a modelling career this year - proving to be the spitting image of his late mum. After he posted a headshot to Instagram on Saturday, fans were sure to leave gushing comments beneath the Instagram post. 'All handsome but 2 ya are ya Mams double she be so proud of you both beautiful boys,' one fan wrote, spearheading the commentary on Instagram. Others wrote: 'Image of his mam'; 'He looks so much like jade'; 'Spitting image of your mum. Beautiful photos'; 'You look so much like your mum'. It's all relative: Jade's son Bobby has started a modelling career - and fans think he's the spitting image of his mother She has an enviable contact book and catalogue of A-list friends as the momager of the most prominent family in showbiz. So it's no surprise Kris Jenner looked amazing on arrival at her friend Kathy Hilton's birthday party at Mr Chow, in Beverly Hills, California on Wednesday. The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star, 63, was effortlessly stylish in a velvet mid-length coat as she dressed all-in-black for the special occasion. It's party time! Kris Jenner looked flawless in an all-black ensemble as she attended her friend Kathy Hiltons 60th birthday bash, in California on Wednesday Having just got her haircut, the reality star fixed her signature pixie hairstyle in a layered fashion and she applied natural tones of make-up to her complexion. Kris made a statement with her grey rectangular handbag, yet she kept her dazzling jewellery to a minimum as she only opted for a silver watch and earrings. The mother peered through dark tinted sunglasses when she headed home from the swanky bash alongside the likes of her long-time pal Kyle Richards, 50. What a woman: The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star, 63, was effortlessly stylish in a velvet mid-length coat as she dressed all-in-black for the special occasion Check her out: Kris made a statement with her grey rectangular handbag, yet she kept her dazzling jewellery to a minimum as she only opted for a silver watch and earrings The Kardashian and Hilton clans have had a tumultuous friendship in the limelight but Kris and Kathy's daughters Kim and Paris have finally put their feud to bed. Their daughters had been close childhood friends before socialite Paris publicly declared she wouldn't want a bottom like Kim's famous posterior in 2008. 'I would not want [Kim's butt] it's gross!' she told a US radio show as reported by Gawker at the time. 'It reminds me of cottage cheese inside a big trash bag.' Birthday girl! Kathy Hilton looked happy as she was gifted with a box filled with bouquets of flowers to mark her special 60th Daring! Kathy left little to the imagination when she went braless beneath a sheer dazzling top as she made a statement on her birthday A decade later, Kim and Paris finally ended their feud but they finally called a truce when the Kardashian sister sent her frenemy her latest fragrance. Clearly delighted with the gift, Paris tweeted in February last year: 'Love the amazing @KKWFragrance PR box! Thanks @KimKardashian!!' Months later, the reality star insisted everything was 'great' between the pair as she gushed she was 'so proud of her'. In November, Paris said she had even chatted to her childhood pal over the phone 'just a couple of weeks ago. She's sensational: Kyle Richards looked terrific in a blue velvet suit when she sauntered out of the swanky venue among the stars 'Everything's great. We've known each other since we were little girls. I love her and I am so proud of her, she's such an amazing businesswoman,' she told TODAY. It's been a scandalous few months for the Kardashians since Khloe dumped her beau Tristan Thompson after he reportedly cheated on her with Kylie's BFF Jordyn Woods. Kylie allegedly still isn't speaking to ex-BFF Jordyn Woods after cutting ties with her in the wake of the cheating scandal, according to TMZ. She's currently in a long-distance marriage to new husband Tim Robards. And on Thursday, Anna Heinrich put on a smile as she got ready to attend a fashion event in Sydney without her beloved beau by her side. The 31-year-old is still based in Sydney, while Tim recently moved to Melbourne to film TV soap Neighbours. Brave: Anna Heinrich put on a brave smile as she got ready to attend a fashion event in Sydney without husband Tim Robards by her side Earlier this month, Anna opened up about the unorthodox living situation on the eve of Tim's departure. 'There will be times where it's tough,but I'm keeping busy here [in Sydney],' she told The Sunday Telegraph. 'I think he's got it harder because he's moved to a new city. He has to make new friends and adapt to a new job.' 'I've got it easy. I'm surrounded by everything I know. I'm standing by my man,' Anna added. 'There will be times where it's tough': Anna recently revealed how she and her Tim are going to make a long-distance marriage work after he landed a permanent role on Neighbours Tim will be living in Melbourne from Monday to Friday and will return home to Anna on the weekends. The move comes after Tim made his debut on Neighbours as Pierce Greyson - a handsome and wealthy investor - in October last year. After successfully turning his guest stint on the popular soap into a permanent role, he recently gushed over his full-time job during an interview with The Daily Telegraph, saying: 'I'm so excited'. Long distance: Tim will be living in Melbourne from Monday to Friday, and will return home to Anna on the weekends. Pictured: Tim (L) and Anna (R) 'When I first started on set [it was] like the first few seconds of jumping out of a plane - you forget to breathe while everything is coming at you 100 miles an hour,' he said. The role comes after a psychic told Tim, who always dreamed of a career in acting, that he's destined to become a Hollywood star. 'It's really something I've always wanted to do but I've never had the guts to give it a proper go,' he admitted during an interview with Today Extra in October, 2018. In love with the new gig! Former Bachelor star Tim recently turned his guest stint on Neighbours into a permanent role Meanwhile, both Tim and Anna rose to fame after appearing on the first season of The Bachelor in 2013. More than 1.2 million people watched the Network Ten finale, which saw Tim declare his love for his now-wife Anna on the clifftop of a Thai resort. Five years after falling in love on reality TV, the pair tied the knot at the Masseria Potenti hotel in Italy in June, 2018. Tim and Anna moved in together in mid-2014, and are based in the Sydney beachside suburb of Bondi. Lorraine Kelly issued an apology on behalf of Colin Farrell after he shocked viewers by swearing live on air at 9am. The TV presenter, 59, scolded the actor, 43, for saying a 'wee naughty word' moments after he accidentally made a foul-mouthed blunder and uttered 'horse s**t' in an interview about his new movie, Dumbo, on Thursday morning's show. Lorraine said: 'I just have to apologise about when Colin said a wee naughty word, some of you werent happy about that.' 'It's live TV, what can we do?' Lorraine Kelly (pictured) issued an apology on behalf of Colin Farrell after he shocked viewers by swearing live on air at 9am on Thursday morning She jokingly added: 'But what can we do, its live TV?! The host's apology came after Colin was chatting about the new live action version of Disney classic Dumbo, with the star joking about working with kids and animals. He said: 'They say don't work with kids and animals, but the days are more limited when you do. It's a story about family, forgiveness and sickness. 'I play a widower, my children have lost their motherbut it does it in such a gentle way that is accessible to a wide variety of audience. My character has to clean up horse s**t.' Whoops: The TV presenter, 59, scolded the actor, 43, (pictured) for saying a 'wee naughty word' moments after he accidentally made a foul-mouthed blunder Error: The host's apology came after Colin was chatting about the new live action version of Disney classic Dumbo, with the star joking about working with kids and animals Despite Lorraine not initially noticing his mistake, fans at home were quick to pick up on the Fantastic Beast star turning the air blue. Taking to Twitter, one viewer wrote: 'Colin F saying s**t on breakfast TV. Made my day. #Lorraine .' While another asked: 'did #colinfarrell just say horses s**t on breakfast tv?' 'Did Colin Farrell just say the S word on #Lorraine?' questioned a third watcher. With another remarking: 'Most awkward interview ever, and then to top it off he says s**t!! #Lorraine.' During the chat, Colin enthused over his co-star Nico Parker, 14, who is Hollywood actress Thandie Newton's daughter. Shock: Despite Lorraine not initially noticing his mistake, fans at home were quick to pick up on the Fantastic Beast star turning the air blue He said: 'Nico is amazing, Thandie has her well knocked into shape! 'It was a joy to go to work everyday. It was a joy! Tim Burton was a dream to work with, I've been a fan of his for 20 years.' He also joked that his children were not that impressed with the movie, saying: 'My youngest saw [Dumbo] he thought it was alright. Hes not too impressed. 'Its a tough crowd at home, they are so not impressed. But thats the way to have it, it keeps you honest.' Colin plays Holt Farrier, a war veteran and former circus star from Kentucky who is hired to care for Dumbo the elephant as a newborn. Yikes: Colin uttered 'horse s**t' in an interview about his new movie, Dumbo Dumbo follows the tale of a circus elephant ridiculed for his big ears, who discovers he can use his ears as wings and can fly. Following on from re-makes of Cinderella, Maleficent, Jungle Book, and Beauty and the Beast, Disney's latest live-action offering is set to be released in March. Burton is in the director's chair for the film, while his frequent collaborator Danny Elfman is on board to do the soundtrack. It is based upon a storyline written by Helen Aberson and is a full-length adaptation of Walt Disney's 1941 animated film of the same name written by Otto Englander, Joe Grant, and Dick Huemer. Dumbo is set to be released on March 29 in cinemas across the UK and USA. He's known for his role as the malevolent Petyr Baelish, aka Littlefinger, in HBO's hit show Game Of Thrones. And Aidan Gillen was put through quite the awkward interview while on Thursday's edition of Lorraine, as he snapped back at her when she called his partner Camille O'Sullivan his 'fiancee'. The host, 59, asked the actor, 50, if he was looking to start a career in singing, as she said: 'So you're taking on a new role, youre singing with your fiancee?' Correction: Aidan Gillen snapped back at Lorraine for calling his partner Camille O'Sullivan his 'fiancee' in VERY awkward chat on Thursday But the Peaky Blinders star was quick to clap back, as he responded: 'She's not my fiancee, she's my partnerI'm not looking at a career in music.' Left aghast by the faux-pas, Lorraine apologised to him as he said it was 'all good', before she then joked: 'So sorry Aidan, keep me in the loop next time!' After the exchange, viewers took to Twitter to discuss how awkward it was to watch the interview, with some even hitting out at both Lorraine and her guest. Awkward: Left aghast by the faux-pas, Lorraine apologised to him as he said it was 'all good', before she then joked: 'So sorry Aidan, keep me in the loop next time!' One person blasted Lorraine's attempt to laugh it off, as they said: 'Lorraine. It wasn't that funny. You said they was engaged and they wasn't. F****** hell get over it. (sic)' Another criticised the Irish actor, as they wrote: 'Aidan Gillen is possibly one of the most awkward interviews I've ever seen. His PR needs to do some SERIOUS media training, or just not book him for TV interviews. I'm cringing.' While one concurred: '#AidanGillen was a total p**** to @reallorraine there. She only said Fiance FFS. he looked at her like theyre actually days as from a breakup (sic).' One viewer simple wrote: 'Wow that was an awkward interview #Lorraine' Cringing: After the exchange, viewers took to Twitter to discuss how awkward it was to watch the interview, with some even hitting out at both Lorraine and her guest But, despite the awkwardness, Aidan was keen to talk about his new Syfy drama Project Blue Book, which centres around the emergence of the UFO phenomenon in the early 50s in the USA. Discussing his opinion on the idea of extraterrestrial life, Aidan said: 'Well I'm open minded. Id be very surprised if we were alone in the universe. 'Having done research, theres a certain number of cases here which are very credible. Let's just say yes!' New show: Despite the awkwardness, Aidan was keen to talk about his new Syfy drama Project Blue Book, which centres around the emergence of the UFO phenomenon in the early 50s Never say never: Discussing his opinion on the idea of extraterrestrial life, Aidan said: 'Well I'm open minded. Id be very surprised if we were alone in the universe' Lorraine joked that his mother must be happy that he's playing a 'good' character, after making a name for himself around the globe as Littlefinger. The Wire star said: 'I always try and find the light in those characters. My mother took me aside and said I have to play some warm characters in [my] career. I hope she's okay with this one!' And Aidan went on to reveal that the US remake of his hit show Queer As Folk is 'pretty far down the road' but that he doesn't think there would be another version of the show in the UK, 20 years on from the original series. She started her career as a model and is no stranger to experimenting with her looks. And Jamie King showcased her edgy new haircut when she attended a Ted Baker London SS'19 launch event, hosted at Elephante in Santa Monica on Wednesday night. The actress, 39, put on a stylish display in a cute tweed shift dress with a red thread running through it. New look: Jamie King showcased her edgy new haircut when she attended a Ted Baker London SS'19 launch event, hosted at Elephante in Santa Monica on Wednesday night Jamie matched her statement, heart-shaped bag to the stylish little number, and set off the look with a pair of over-the-knee suede boots. The blonde beauty completed her attire with a slick of scarlet lipstick, drawing attention to her choppy new bob. Sharing a snap of her 'punk rock chic' 'do as she sat in the hairdresser's chair before the bash, Jamie posted: 'New cut from my one and only @brantmayfield'. The hair was only a little shorter than her old chin-length style, but certainly freshened up her look. Minor change: The hair was only a little shorter than her old chin-length style (left), but certainly freshened up her look Transformed: Sharing a snap of her 'punk rock chic' 'do as she sat in the hairdresser's chair before the bash, Jamie posted: 'New cut from my one and only @brantmayfield' Jamie was joined by a host of fellow fashion-lovers at the clothing bash, partying the night away in style. The stunning star is a mother to sons Leo Thames, three, and James Knight, five, who she raises with her husband of 12 years, Kyle Newman. She previously discussed her experience of motherhood in an interview with Mother Muse, calling it 'empowering, Complex, Challenging, Thrilling. Its like a feeling of ecstasy'. The star revealed she is keen to raise awareness about issues affecting mothers, including postpartum and pre-natal depression. Chic: Jamie (pictured with Addison Riecke) matched her statement, heart-shaped bag to the stylish little number, and set off the look with a pair of over-the-knee suede boots Jamie confessed: 'I struggled with prenatal depression. I felt like my whole pregnancy with Leo Thames, I was deeply anxious only a handful of people knew.' She found out 22 weeks into her pregnancy with her second child that he had a serious heart defect. 'My life was at risk and so was my child... Its almost as if I disconnected with myself and the world. 'Because of my fear of losing Leo Thames if he were not to make it if I were to leave this earth, somehow I wouldnt hurt so much.' She's a DJ and model who boasts a whopping 4.3 million followers on Instagram. And, Chantel Jeffries looked sensational in an edgy, all-black ensemble as she arrived for dinner at Madeo Italian Restaurant in Beverly Hills, California on Thursday. The 26-year-old American beauty showed off her incredible physique in a tiny black crop top and coordinating skin-tight jeans, with the only splash of colour coming from her lime green manicure. Gorgeous: Chantel Jeffries, 26, looked sensational in an edgy, all-black ensemble as she arrived for dinner at Madeo Italian Restaurant in Beverly Hills, California on Thursday Daring to impress, Chantel ensured her washboard abs were on display in the high-waisted skinny jeans. Flaunting her phenomenal figure, the raven stunner donned a tiny bandeau crop top which clung to her ample cleavage. Chantel strolled along in patent leather heeled boots and added a rock-chick edge to her look with the help of an oversized leather biker jacket. Showcasing her natural beauty, the diminutive diva went virtually makeup free with a slight smokey eye and dab of berry lip. Incredible: The American beauty showed off her incredible physique in a tiny black crop top and skin-tight jeans, with the only splash of colour coming from her lime green manicure Wow! Daring to impress, Chantel ensured her washboard abs were on display in the high-waisted skinny jeans She kept her trademark dark tresses long and straight as they casually cascaded over her petite shoulders. In addition to modelling, Chantel has also veered into a DJ career, putting out her debut single in May titled Wait. The idea of becoming a DJ, she told L'Officiel, came from 'Just listening to so many different things and having a huge music library, so people would always joke around and call me Ceejay The DJ.' She claimed; 'I was always the DJ by default at gatherings and parties, so it kind of just took on a life of its own. Edgy: Chantel strolled along in patent leather heeled boots and added a rock-chick edge to her look with the help of an oversized leather biker jacket Beauty: Showcasing her natural beauty, the diminutive diva went virtually makeup free with a slight smokey eye and dab of berry lip 'Eventually, I had so many of my friends [who] were DJs and [they] kind of encouraged me to pick it up.' Of her influences, she said: 'I go through phases where I'll listen to one type of music for a week or two straight and I'll just be really inspired by that, then jump to something totally different, kind of finding the key things I like from each and seeing how I can put them together.' Her music career somewhat spawned years ago after a brief romance with pop star Justin Bieber in 2014. It wowed viewers across the globe with its heart-wrenching storyline, and many have been desperate to see what comes next for the characters. Well, it seems like fans won't have to wait long for a Call Me By Your Name sequel as it was revealed on Wednesday that Andre Aciman is working on a follow-up novel. Given the title Find Me, the book is expected to publish in October and will explore what's in story in the distant future for Elio and Oliver, which was briefly teased in the original novel's epilogue. More to come: Call Me By Your Name will be getting a sequel novel as it was revealed on Wednesday Andre Aciman's follow-up is called Find Me, and teases a future for Elio and Oliver Publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux revealed preliminary information about the plot to Vulture, who reported: 'Aciman shows us Elios father Samuel, now divorced, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. 'A chance encounter on the train leads to a relationship that changes Samis life definitively. 'Elio soon moves to Paris where he too has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a professor in northern New England with sons who are nearly grown, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return visit to Europe.' Reunion? Publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux revealed initial information to Vulture, who said: 'Elio soon moves to Paris... while Oliver finds himself contemplating a return visit to Europe' The film, which starred Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer in the lead roles, won critical appraise and the hearts of viewers across the globe with its story of their character's intense yet doomed summer love. Call Me By Your Name was also recognised during awards season following its release, as it received three nominations and one win for Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards in 2018. Given the huge popularity of the production, both leads and director Luca Guadagnino have expressed their interest in making a follow-up. However, on Tuesday Armie told Vulture that he thinks the original is so special, it should be left as a stand alone. Huge hit: The film, which starred Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer in the lead roles, won critical appraise and the hearts of viewers across the globe Asked if a sequel could be in the works, Armie replied: 'The truth is, there have been really loose conversations about it, but at the end of the day Im sort of coming around to the idea that the first one was so special for everyone who made it, and so many people who watched it felt like it really touched them, or spoke to them.' 'And it felt like a really perfect storm of so many things, that if we do make a second one, I think were setting ourselves up for disappointment. I dont know that anything will match up to the first, you know?' But the actor acknowledged that if his co-star and director were on board and there was 'an incredible script,' he would be 'an a**hole to say no' to a sequel. Coronation Street fans have taken to social media to claim parts of its shock factory roof collapse made 'no sense'. Rana Habeeb, played by Bhavna Limbachia, was killed when the Underworld factory's roof suddenly gave way on Wednesday night's edition of the ITV1 soap. Baffled viewers have now taken to Twitter to ask why she decided to call her fiancee Kate Connor instead of paramedics when she was pinned to the floor by rubble. Traumatic: Rana Habeeb, played by Bhavna Limbachia, was killed when the Underworld factory's roof suddenly gave way in the ITV soap on Wednesday night's edition of the ITV1 soap One user, Georgia, wrote: 'Few things I picked up in #Corrie last night - 1. Why did Rana phone Kate & not 999. '2. Why did Kate then stay on the phone to her and neither her, Johnny or Jenny phoned Imran to let him know where she was? '3. Why did the paramedics not even ATTEMPT to move the rubble off her?' The frustrated viewer went on to ask how the character died when she had been 'talking, moving and laughing' moments before. Confusing: Viewers have now taken to Twitter to ask why she decided to call her fiancee Kate Connor instead of paramedics when she was pinned to the floor by rubble She then asked how Rana managed to get into the factory in the first place when 'strikers had barricaded the doors'. Another user, James Kinsella, condemned Rana heading back into the factory 'for no reason at all' as 'b***** ridiculous'. Others wanted to know why the bride-to-be had been in the factory in the first place. Viewers did, however, soon point out that Rana had ventured back to the office to pick up a bag she had left behind ahead of her wedding to Kate (Faye Brookes). Some users mused how Rana had died at all when Sally Metcalfe (Sally Webster) - who had been on top of the roof when it collapsed - appeared to have suffered greater injuries. Questions: One Twitter user, Georgia, wrote: 'Few things I picked up in #Corrie last night - 1. Why did Rana phone Kate & not 999' Furious: Other Coronation Street viewers wanted answers as to why the bride-to-be had been in the factory in the first place Michelle Jones said: 'Sally fell [through] the roof and she's still alive. Rana being the only one to die in the factory makes no sense.' A representative for Coronation Street has been contacted for comment by MailOnline. Rana's death came as a shock to many fans - especially as she was thought to be nowhere near the factory when the roof collapsed. However, the bride-to-be returned to the factory to fetch her weddings rings, as fellow bride Kate (played by Faye Brookes) waited patiently at the venue. It was then revealed Rana was trapped under the rubble, and she made a desperate phone call to Kate for help. Mrs and Mrs: As Rana lay under the rubble, she and Kate emotionally exchanged their rings and wedding vows While paramedics managed to reach Rana, she asked doctor Ali to break the news to Kate that she might not survive. After Kate wept at the chance she may never see her wife-to-be again, she decided to try and save her and ran into the factory rubble. In scenes that left viewers on the brink of tears, Kate and Rana recited their wedding vows to each other and exchanged rings, and the nurse then suddenly passed away. The episode ended on a sombre note as Kate sobbed hysterically while cradling the woman she loved, as the camera panned up and out of the destroyed factory. She rose to fame as Vesper Lynd in 007 movie Casino Royale in 2006. And Eva Green has revealed that she initially turned down her breakout role as a Bond Girl after cancelling an audition nine months prior to her getting the part. The French actress, 38, also spoke about her aerialist character, Colette Marchant, in Tim Burton's new movie Dumbo, admitting she had to face her fear of heights for the role. Candid: Eva Green has revealed that she initially turned down her breakout role as a Bond Girl after cancelling an audition nine months prior to her getting the part Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, she said: 'I was probably a bit stupid or naive. I said, "Ugh, a Bond girl? What kind of prissy girl is that?" They also kept the script secret. 'So it wasnt until they gave me the script [nine months later] that I realised it was a meaty role. I didn't see her as a Bond girl. Shes a strong character; shes got cracks.' When producers got back to Eva, the likes of Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron were said to be in talks for the role. Bond Girl: The French actress, 38, also spoke about her aerialist character, Colette Marchant, in Tim Burton's new movie Dumbo, admitting she had to face her fear of heights for the role (pictured with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale in 2006) Not impressed: Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, she said: 'I was probably a bit stupid or naive. I said, "Ugh, a Bond girl? What kind of prissy girl is that?"' (pictured in Casino Royale in 2006) Dumbo is the third time Eva has collaborated with director Burton and she revealed that she conquered her fear of heights after he asked that she perform some of her aerialist character's stunts. The actress admitted that her 'fear of heights and swinging is really serious' and that she 'panicked' when hearing about the role. However, after training with circus performers for a few months Eva revealed she gained confidence to go 'higher and higher'. Fears: Dumbo is the third time Eva has collaborated with Burton and she revealed that she conquered her fear of heights after he asked that she perform some of the aerialist stunts (pictured in Dumbo) Scary: The actress admitted that her 'fear of heights and swinging is really serious' and that she 'panicked' when hearing about the role She added to the publication: 'We went quite step-by-step, and I cant believe I managed to do those things. I always thought I would be afraid of heights for life, and its really in facing my fear that I was able to overcome it. Im very proud of myself on that one.' Also starring alongside Eva in Tim Burton's re-imagining of the animated classic is Colin Farrell, who plays Dumbo's carer Holt Farrier. Following on from re-makes of Cinderella, Maleficent, Jungle Book, and Beauty and the Beast, Disney's latest live-action offering is set to be released on 28 March. Impressive: However, after training with circus performers for a few months Eva revealed she gained confidence to go 'higher and higher' (pictured in Dumbo) Proud: She added to the publication: 'I always thought I would be afraid of heights for life, and its really in facing my fear that I was able to overcome it. Im very proud of myself on that one.' (pictured in Dumbo) Eva is recently waded into the ongoing debate over who should play the next 007 - insisting it shouldn't be a woman. Speaking to Vanity Fair at the premiere of Dumbo, in Hollywood, she explained: 'I'm for women, but I really think James Bond should remain a man. It doesn't make sense for him to be a woman.' Eva continued: 'Women can play different types of characters, be in action movies and be superheroes, but James Bond should always be a man and not be Jane Bond. 'There is history with the character that should continue. He should be played by a man.' Piers Morgan has hit out at Jameela Jamil amid a furious debate about Sam Smith's gender fluidity. The Twitter row occurred after Good Morning Britain Piers scoffed at Sam's recent revelation that he shifts between identifying as the male or female gender. Sharing a link to an article about the 53-year-old TV host's on air comments, Jameela, 33, made her thoughts on the matter very clear. Clash: Piers Morgan has hit out at Jameela Jamil amid a furious debate about Sam Smith's gender fluidity Sam had made the admission during Jameela's new I Weigh Interview series, while discussing what a 'non-binary' and 'genderqueer' identity meant to him. The Good Place actress tweeted: 'LOL. Of course Englands biggest s**t stain has something mean to say about it. 'He thinks men who carry babies in a comfortable papoose where they can feel your body heat and pulse, arent manly. This clown spews constant toxic ideas of masculinity".' Piers fired back: 'Appalling that you just assume I am identifying as male tonight.' Furious: Jameela branded Piers 'England's biggest s**t stain' after Piers made light of Sam Smith's recent revelation he is non-binary, meaning he identifies with neither male or female gender 'Youre right, it is extraordinary I identify you as any kind of human being at all you giant pile of w**k', Jameela hit back. Piers retorted, 'Id rather be w**k than woke, luv', prompting Jameela to reply with, 'Mission accomplished hun'. The presenter then told her: 'Dont call me hun. 'I identify as male, but hun normally applies to a female (honey) which means you are mockingly mis-gendering me & thats now apparently a criminal offence in Britain. 'Unless you meant hun as a derogatory term for Germans in which case youre a racist.' Row: Sharing a link to an article about the 53-year-old TV host's on air comments, Jameela made her thoughts on the matter clear, but Piers had plenty to say back Jameela appears to have left the feud lie there, but Piers couldn't resist another retort. Replying to a tweet supporting Jameela, he wrote, 'The only vile thing around here is your horrible click-baiting & Ms Jamils disgusting foul-mouthed abuse,' he wrote. The origin of the feud stems from Piers' comments on Tuesday's edition of GMB. He told viewers: 'Sam Smith has announced hes gender fluid he cant work out if hes male or female. 'Im now identifying as Sam Smith so I can get his royalties. It works both ways.' Debate: Last week, Sam bravely admitted, 'You are just you. You are your own special creation. That is how I take it. I am not male or female. I think I float somewhere in between - somewhat on the spectrum' Piers' co-host Susanna Reid asked him: 'Why do you care?' Branding it a 'generational thing', Piers elaborated: 'He has millions of fans. What are they supposed to think? 'I think there are so many ramifications around self-identity which actually are a real concern and they havent really thought it through.' Sam had spoken about his own experience of gender fluidity in a chat with Jameela last week. The four-time Grammy winner explained: 'You do not identify in a gender. You are just you. You are your own special creation. Controversy: The origin of the feud stems from Piers' comments on Tuesday's edition of GMB, when he joked, 'Sam Smith has announced hes gender fluid.. Im now identifying as Sam Smith (pictured) so I can get his royalties. It works both ways' 'That is how I take it. I am not male or female. I think I float somewhere in between - somewhat on the spectrum.' Giving further context, Sam said: 'Ive always had a bit of a war in my body and my mind I do think like a woman in my head at times. 'Ive sometimes sat there and questioned, do I want a sex change? Its something I still think about, but I dont think it is,' he explained. Sam also revealed he has always been 'very free' when it comes to thinking about his sexuality. 'Ive tried to change that into my thoughts on gender when I move, when I have sex with men, its very feminine. Im feminine in many ways - and Ive resented that,' he stated. She's the glamorous WAG married to Carlton player Marc Murphy. And on Thursday, Jessie Murphy (nee Habermann) looked effortlessly chic as she supported her AFL star husband at the Melbourne MCG. The 28-year-old wore a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt and a pink blazer as she waited on the sidelines to wish her man luck before the match. Pretty in pink! WAG Jessie Habermann looked effortlessly chic in a blazer and jeans as she supports Carlton star husband Marc with their son Max from sidelines at AFL match at Melbourne's MCG on Thursday night As Jessie held couple's one-year-old son Max, Marc stopped by his family as he made his way onto the pitch. The married pair shared a brief smooch, before he walked away holding the small child in his arms. Max was dressed in a matching jersey to his father, with the lettering 'daddy' prominently placed on the back. Kiss for luck! The married pair shared a brief smooch, before he walked away holding the couple's one-year-old son Max Jessie became an overnight celebrity when she arrived at the 2016 Brownlow Medal in a plunging Oglia Loro Couture gown. But the blonde's style appears to have evolved in her two-and-a-half years in the spotlight as Marc Murphy's wife. Daily Mail Australia has taken a look back at her fashion transformation, beginning with the dress that made her famous. From THAT show-stopping Brownlow dress to sophisticated style: Jessie Habermann's fashion transformation revealed as she swaps busty dresses for classy, conservative ensembles. Pictured left: at the 2016 Brownlow Medal, and right: at VAMFF in March Jessie turned heads in September 2016 at the Brownlow Medal ceremony when she wore a daringly low-cut, custom-made skintight dress. The design, by Oglia Loro Couture, highlighted her eye-popping cleavage and also featured painstakingly intricate beading throughout. Here comes the WAG! At the 2015 Brownlow Medal, Jessie wore a bridal-inspired design including a feathered train, mesh bodice, lace applique and a halterneck Risque: And in 2016, Jessie attended the Carlton Gala ball in a thigh skimming frock with semi sheer panelling across the bust, drawing attention to her cleavage It was a noticeably more daring choice of outfit compared to her 2015 Brownlow dress the previous year, which featured a bridal-inspired design including a feathered train, mesh bodice, lace applique and a halterneck. Also in 2016, Jessie attended the Carlton Gala ball in a thigh skimming frock with semi sheer panelling across the bust, drawing attention to her cleavage. By 2017, however, her red carpet style was beginning to evolve. Changing things up: By 2017, however, Jessie's red carpet style was beginning to evolve. While attending a YSL beauty event in April of that year, she channelled her inner rock chick in skintight black leggings and a feathered, off-the-shoulder jacket While attending a YSL beauty event in April of that year, Jessie channelled her inner rock chick in skintight black leggings and a feathered, off-the-shoulder jacket. And at the 2017 Melbourne Fashion Festival, she opted for a risque yet sophisticated look in the form of a mesh bodysuit and fluffy skirt. While she hasn't always got it right, there's no doubt the mother-of-one has had plenty of fashion highlights in recent times. Mesh and applique: And at the 2017 Melbourne Fashion Festival, she opted for a risque yet sophisticated look in the form of a mesh bodysuit and fluffy skirt On Thursday, she stunned at this year's Melbourne Fashion Festival in a pink blazer dress cinched by the waist with a belt by Off-White. She accessorised her ensemble with a shimmering Alexander McQueen purse. While on a family holiday in Europe recently, Jessie was the picture of sophistication in a knitted jumper and mid-length green skirt during a stopover in London. Jessie, who is married to Carlton captain Marc Murphy, is a mother to one-year-old son Max in addition to her career as a model and blogger. Her latest look: On Thursday, the mother-of-one stunned at this year's Melbourne Fashion Festival in a pink blazer dress cinched by the waist with a belt by Off-White English rose! While on a family holiday in Europe recently, Jessie was the picture of sophistication in a knitted jumper and mid-length green skirt during a stopover in London Jameela Jamil has hit out at Khloe Kardashian once again after the reality star posted an Instagram snap promoting a controversial weight loss product. The actress, 33, called out Khloe for being 'irresponsible' in the comments of the image, which advertised a meal replacement shake by Flat Tummy Co. She wrote: 'If you're too irresponsible to: a) own up to the fact that you have a personal trainer, nutritionist, probable chef, and a surgeon to achieve your aesthetic rather than this laxative product... Sponsored: Jamila Jamil hit out at Khloe Kardashian (pictured) after she claimed to have toned her waistline by drinking Flat Tummy's meal replacement shakes in 'two weeks' 'And b) tell them the side effects of this NON-FDA approved product, that most doctors are saying aren't healthy. 'Possible Flat Tummy Tea side effects are cramping, stomach pains, diarrhea and dehydration... then I guess I have too.' Jameela pleaded with the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star, 34, to 'be smarter than this' and to 'not hurt other girls the way you have been hurt.' Irresponsible: The actress, 33, called out Khloe for being 'irresponsible' in the comments of the image, which advertised a meal replacement shake by Flat Tummy Co She said: 'It's incredibly awful that this industry bullied you until you because this fixated on your appearance. That's the media's fault. 'But now please don't put that back into the world and hurt other girls the way you have been hurt. You're a smart woman. Be smarter than this.' In the snap, posted to Instagram on Wednesday, Khloe claimed she had whittled down her waistline in just 'two weeks' by drinking meal replacement shakes. Jameela wrote: 'It's incredibly awful that this industry bullied you until you because this fixated on your appearance. You're a smart woman. Be smarter than this' 'Loving how my tummy looks right now you guys!' the Good American co-founder - who boasts 135.2 million followers - wrote. Khloe wasn't the only one pushing Flat Tummy, however, as her mother Kris Jenner posted she was 'feeling slimmer than I have in a long time' after a week of shakes on Tuesday. And it wasn't just Jameela who was bothered by the mother-of-one's endorsement. Controversial: KUWTK star Khloe faunted her 'flat tummy' in a skimpy pink bralet One user said: 'I wish celebrities would promote a healthy lifestyle, not tons of laxative teas and hunger suppressive food. 'Young girls are looking up to you and they think it will work / or that its normal.. you have so much power. please use it wisely, and focus on the fact that beauty is so much more than what can be seen.' Another commented: 'Stop promoting this harmful product and viewpoint! It's so harmful to anyone that's struggling right now with body love and acceptance. Another user said: One user said: 'I wish celebrities would promote a healthy lifestyle, not tons of laxative teas and hunger suppressive food' 'Please set a better example.' MailOnline has contacted a representative for Khloe for comment. The Good Place actress has previously criticised Kim Kardashian after she shared a post on 'how to maximise weight loss'. Brand ambassador: According to Forbes, Flat Tummy shells out '152,000 ($200,000)' for each paid partnership post from celebrity sponsors Family ties: Khloe wasn't the only one pushing Flat Tummy as Kris Jenner posted Tuesday about 'feeling slimmer than I have in a looong time' after only a week of shakes Sharing the tweet, the Good Place star questioned: 'How do we minimize this womans bulls***?' She also commented that the 'whole family' make her 'feel sad', adding 'All the money and fame in the world cant make you stop hating your nose, your lips, your a***, your weight, your skin'. It comes after the British actress previously described Kim, 38, as 'terrible and toxic influence' for promoting an appetite suppressing lollipop - leading the star to delete the advert. Julianne Moore previously said she was originally cast in Melissa's role as Lee Israel in Can You Ever Forgive Me? before director Nicole Holofcener fired her. And Richard E. Grant revealed on Thursday that the actress, 58, was forced to leave the project as she wanted to wear a fat suit and a fake nose to embody the character. Making an appearance during Advertising Week Europe at Picturehouse Central, in London, the actor, 61, was speaking with Empire's Editor-In-Chief Terri White when he made the candid confession. Candid: Richard E. Grant revealed at Advertising Week on Thursday that Julianne Moore was fired from Can You Ever Forgive Me? because she wanted to wear 'a fat suit and a false nose' The Withnail & I star explained: 'Julianne Moore wanted to wear a fat suit and a false nose to play Lee Israel and Nicole Holofcener said, "You're not going to do that."' Richard also revealed that Helena Bonham Carter and Sam Rockwell were also set to be part of the film before he was cast. Earlier this month, Julianne made the sensational revelation on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen that she was dropped from the project. At loggerheads: The Withnail & I star explained: 'Julianne Moore wanted to wear a fat suit and a false nose to play Lee Israel and Nicole Holofcener said, "You're not going to do that"' Chatty: The actor, 61, was speaking with Empire's Editor-In-Chief Terri White when he made the candid confession Spilling the beans: Richard also revealed that Helena Bonham Carter and Sam Rockwell were also set to be part of the film before he was cast Clearly still feeling a tinge of embarrassment from the turn of events in 2015, the actress also admitted that she had yet to see the movie as 'it's still kind of painful'. Julianne was in high spirits on the popular show, however, when a viewer called in to ask her why she left the film her demeanour immediately changed. 'I didnt leave that movie, I was fired,' she shockingly confessed and admitted it was the flick's first director, Nicole, who was the one who gave her the boot. Giving further context to the situation, the Still Alice star detailed: 'I think she didnt like what I was doing. 'We just been rehearsing and doing pre-production and stuff and her idea of where the character was was different than where my idea of where the character was, so she fired me,' Julianne confessed. Shock: Earlier this month, Julianne made the sensational revelation on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen that she was dropped from the project Oh no! Clearly still feeling a tinge of embarrassment from the turn of events in 2015, the actress also admitted that she has yet to see the movie as 'it's still kind of painful' To add insult to injury, the redhead noted: 'The only other time I was fired was when I was working at a yogurt stand when I was 15, so it felt bad.' Nicole ended up cutting ties with the movie herself, and the biographical comedy went on to be helmed by Marielle Heller, with a starring cast of Melissa and Richard. Julianne also proved further embarrassed when she was asked if she had seen the critically acclaimed movie, to which she admitted she hadn't. Giving her reason for her choice, Julianne admitted it was because it was 'still painful for her.' However, she was quick to state there was no hard feelings with the leading lady, who was nominated in the Best Actress category for every major award ceremony this year. 'Our ideas were different': Giving further context to the situation, the Still Alice star detailed: 'I think she didnt like what I was doing' Too much: Julianne also proved further embarrassed when she was asked if she had seen the critically acclaimed movie, to which she admitted she replied she hadn't 'I worship her': She was quick to state there was no hard feelings with the leading lady, who was nominated in the Best Actress category for every major award ceremony this year 'I love Melissa McCarthy. I worship her. I think shes fantastic, so Im sure shes great,' she expressed. Can You Ever Forgive Me? follows best-selling biographer Lee Israel, played by McCarthy, as she becomes irrelevant in the publishing world. To make rent, Israel starts selling forged letters she claims were written by literary geniuses like Louise Brooks, Dorothy Parker, and Ernest Hemingway. 'Lee was a fascinating womanso smart, so funny, so challenging. I don't think we see enough women characters that are wonderfully flawed portrayed,' she previously told THR. 'She's so unlikable, I love her. You've got to watch someone fall down and roll in the mud to root for them to get back up. I think you need to see the bumps and bruises.' Shaking it up: Nicole (L) ended up cutting ties with the movie herself, and the biographical comedy went on to be helmed by Marielle Heller (R), with a starring cast of Melissa and Richard In January, Ben Affleck publicly quit his role as Batman ahead of the planned 2021 solo film of the Caped Crusader. And on Wednesday, Armie Hammer stopped by Fallon Tonight, and addressed rumors that he would step into the shoes of the famed superhero. The 32-year-old confirmed that he would love to do it if asked. Would he or won't he? On Wednesday, Armie Hammer, 32, stopped by Fallon Tonight, and addressed rumors that he would take over the role of Batman after Ben Affleck's departure. He is seen in New York on Sunday Host Jimmy Fallon, 44, questioned his thoughts on rumors around roles, and the star noted that 'none of the people who start rumors are actually the people who can give you jobs.' 'So it's always like, "oh are you, are you gonna play Batman?" And I'm like, well you just asked me, but guess who hasn't? Warner Brothers!' he said. When asked if he has been approached to star in the film, The Social Network talent confirmed that he had not. 'No Da** it. No.' 'Would you consider it?' Jimmy pressed. 'Yeawho wouldn't want to be Batman?...It's a good gig!' No one's offered: When asked if he has been approached to star in the film, The Social Network talent confirmed that he had not 'Yeawho wouldn't want to be Batman?': When asked if he would 'consider it,' he confirmed that he would love to do it. Ben Affleck is seen with Gal Gadot and Henry Cavill in a promotional still from Batman v. Superman Dawn of Justice Jimmy also asked the married father-of-two if he and his Call Me By Your Name co-star, Timothee Chalamet would team up for a sequel to their 2017 film. The actor said that the duo would be 'down', but didn't know for sure. He confirmed that the book's author, Andre Aciman, and director Luca Guadagnino are interested in moving forward. 'Who knows,' he began. 'Here's the deal. Andre Aciman wants to write another book. Luca wants to write the script. Timmy and I are down, as long as they give us each $12 million dollars,' he joked. 'But yeah, so I mean, who knows. who knows.' He's coming back: Jimmy also asked the married father-of-two if he and his Call Me By Your Name co-star, Timothee Chalamet would team up for a sequel to their 2017 film. He is seen with wife Elizabeth Chambers, 36, in January in Beverly Hills The actor is expected to return for his role as Oliver in a Call Me By Your Name sequel. He'll also take the lead in Death on the Nile, Rebecca, Dreamland and Wounds. Armie can next be seen in the based-on-a-true-story film, Hotel Mumbai. The Santa Monica native will play David, a married Taj Mahal Palace hotel guest who must decide if he and his wife should separate, in order to save their child in the midst of the 2008 Islamic terrorist attack in India. Chris Hemsworth and his Spanish actress wife Elsa Pataky enjoyed an 'incredible' family holiday in Western Australia this month. However there was one part of the idyllic trip that seemingly left a sour taste in the Australian actor's mouth. The Thor star, 35, was seen grimacing as he tasted a 'warm-water sea urchin' for the very first time, in a clip to Instagram on Thursday. The Hollywood star, who is an ambassador for Tourism Australia, was first seen carefully examining the sea urchin on his finger, at the outset of the clip. The concerned actor then proceeded to smell the spiny, globular animal, to undoubtedly catch a whiff of what he was about to put inside his mouth. However as soon as Chris placed the sea urchin on his tongue he was seen furiously spitting it out back into the water. The Aussie hunk appeared to be so 'disgusted' by the taste that he felt compelled to wash his mouth out with salty water. 'As soon as it hits your lips, it's disgusting!' Chris Hemsworth (left) face sours as he tastes a sea urchin for the very first time while Elsa Pataky (right) calls the ocean delicacy 'delicious' during idyllic Western Australia getaway Salty: The Aussie hunk (pictured) appeared to be so 'disgusted' by the taste that he felt compelled to wash his mouth out with salty water 'Delicious': Meanwhile the Tidelands star (pictured) appeared to thoroughly enjoy the ocean delicacy as she was seen happily lapping it up with a utensil Seconds later, Chris was seen delivering his final verdict, sharing: 'As soon as it hits your lips, it's disgusting!' Meanwhile the Tidelands star appeared to thoroughly enjoy the ocean delicacy as she was seen happily lapping it up with a utensil. The blonde star also called the sea urchin 'delicious' in the caption of her video. 'We feel so lucky to have been able to go on an incredible trip to WA': Elsa (L) and Chris (R) shared photos from their holiday to Western Australia this month Star-studded trip: The high-profile couple were seen soaking up the serenity alongside their close pal, US actor, Matt Damon (right) Chris and Elsa certainly lived up to their down-to-earth reputation this month as they roughed it in tents with little water and no wifi or phone signal in the remote locale. Earlier this month, Elsa took to the photo-sharing app to post a string of photos - including a cute selfie with Chris. 'We feel so lucky to have been able to go on an incredible trip to WA (Western Australia), a beautiful place with amazing people,' she wrote. Nature: The pair left the Tinseltown glamour behind to rough it in tents (pictured) with little water and NO wifi or phone signal Bikini babe: The 42-year-old Spanish actress (L) showed off her incredible physique in a red polka-dot bikini while posing with a friend 'We were able to connect with our kids, partners and friends in deeper, different ways. Without the stress of routine, without agendas, plans or luxuries. Just beaches, shells, surf and games around the camp fire. I feel very fortunate.' Photos showed a bikini-clad Elsa frolicking along the beach with her friends. Other images showed the couple's children eating breakfast by the beach and playing in a rock pool. Family: Other images showed the couple's children eating breakfast by the beach Picturesque: Elsa played with one of her children in a rock pool by the sea Chris and Elsa swapped the bright lights of Hollywood for a more relaxed life in Byron Bay, on Australia's east coast, five years ago. The Hollywood couple have been married for nine years, and have called Byron Bay home since 2014. Elsa, who previously lived in Los Angeles with her husband, recently said she enjoys the more laid-back lifestyle of Australia. 'We did the move three years ago and I'm so happy with it,' she revealed to Women's Health magazine in April 2017. 'In Byron we just feel like locals. People really respect us... and it's what I always dreamed of giving to my kids.' 'I feel very fortunate': Photos showed a bikini-clad Elsa (L) frolicking along the beach with her friends Living the good life! 'Just beaches, shells, surf and games around the camp fire,' wrote Elsa. ' I feel very fortunate' It was a dramatic night that saw a major character killed off after the Underworld factory roof collapsed on Wednesday's episode of Coronation Street. But soap stars Kate Ford and Jack P. Shepherd looked happy and relaxed as they headed for lunch in Manchester's Media City on Thursday after the shocking scenes aired. The actors, who play Tracy Barlow and David Platt respectively, took a break from filming as they joined Rula Lenska, who portrays Ken Barlow's girlfriend Claudia Colby on the cobbles. Lunch date: Coronation Street's Kate Ford and Jack P. Shepherd looked happy and relaxed as they headed for lunch in Manchester's Media City on Thursday Looking casual for her lunch break, Kate, 42, rocked a black padded coat and blue jeans, which she paired with a pair of white trainers. The actress, who wheeled along a pink 'I love Manchester' suitcase, went make-up free for the low-key outing and kept her brunette tresses loose on her shoulders. Jack, 31, looked effortlessly cool in a white long-sleeved polo shirt, black skinny jeans and chunky black boots as he strutted down the street. He added a pair of dark sunglasses to his dapper ensemble as he listened to some music in the sunshine. Glitz and glamour: Rula Lenska was her usual glamorous self, donning a knitted silver top layered over a black jumper Rula, 71, was her usual glamorous self, donning a knitted silver top layered over a black jumper. She teamed her outfit with a black leggings, a black and silver scarf and a fluffy white gilet. Showing off her daring side, Rula slipped her feet into a pair of knee-high patent black boots, while ensuring all her essentials were in one place with a red patterned rucksack. The actress was later seen taking the weight off her feet as she stopped and chatted on her mobile. Their outing comes amid a dramatic week for Coronation Street which saw Rana Habeeb (Bhavna Limbachia) die in the Underworld roof collapse - on what was supposed to be her wedding day. Chitter chatter: The actress was later seen taking the weight off her feet as she stopped and chatted on her mobile Rana's death came as a shock to many Corrie fans - though not all as Bhavna had confirmed beforehand she was leaving the soap - especially as she was thought to be nowhere near the factory when the roof collapsed. Rana returned to the factory to fetch the wedding rings, as fellow bride Kate (Faye Brookes) waited patiently at the venue for her wife-to-be. It was then revealed that Rana was trapped under the rubble, and made a desperate phonecall to Kate for help. While paramedics managed to reach Rana, she asked doctor Ali to break the news to Kate that she might not survive. Heart-wrenching: It was a dramatic night that saw a major character killed off after the Underworld factory roof collapsed on Wednesday's episode of Coronation Street After Kate wept at the chance she may never see her wife-to-be again, she decided to try and save her and ran into the factory rubble. In scenes that left viewers highly emotional, Kate and Rana recited their wedding vows to each other and exchanged rings, and the nurse then suddenly passed away. While Underworld boss Carla Connor (Alison King) will get the blame for the accident because she knew the building was unsafe, Corrie viewers at home will know she's not the real culprit. Coronation Street continues on Sunday March 24 at 8pm on ITV. She last stepped into the water for her role in James Cameron's Titanic, which she starred in opposite Leonardo DiCaprio 22 years ago. And Kate Winslet braved the ocean waves once again as she got to work on set of lesbian romantic drama Ammonite alongside Saoirse Ronan on the Beach at Eype near Bridport, Dorset, on Monday. Portraying paleontologist Mary Anning, the actress, 43, was stoic as she embodied the fossil hunter, who made important discoveries about Jurassic marine fossil beds in the Victorian era. Going with it: Kate Winslet braved the strong ocean waves as she filmed new beach scenes for lesbian drama Ammonite in Dorset on Monday... 22 years after starring in Titanic Kate barely batted an eyelid as she was hit by the strong waves, and she was dressed in a chequered period costume which had a starch white collar. Her brunette locks were styled in a chic bun, and she wore a minimal amount of make-up to give her a natural look. While it was unlikely to be dangerous, a member of the crew was on hand nearby to assist Kate if anything went awry as she walked along the beach and into the sea. Production on the film continues even after the family of dinosaur pioneer Anning hit out at the filmmakers for 'inventing' the fact that she was gay. Scene partners: Kate got to work on set alongside Saoirse Ronan further up the beach Modern classic: Kate last stepped into the water for her role in James Cameron's Titanic, which she starred in opposite Leonardo DiCaprio 22 years ago Loving the ocean: Kate barely batted an eyelid as she was hit by strong waves, and she was dressed in a chequered period costume which had a starch white collar Helping hand: While it was unlikely to be dangerous, a member of the crew was on hand nearby to assist Kate if anything went awry as she walked along the beach and into the sea Demure: The Hanna star transformed into her character of Anning's supposed lover Frances Bell as she dressed in an off-white gown from the era The Titanic went down in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York after striking an iceberg. The film is a fictionalised account of the RMS Titanic's sinking in April 1912, which killed more than 1500 passengers after the ship collided with an iceberg. James Cameron's screen version followed the story of the wandering Jack Dawson and upper class Rose DeWitt Bukater - who fall in love aboard the ship, ahead of its tragic voyage. Titanic was released in 1997, and went on to become one of the most successful films ever - bagging eleven of the fourteen Oscars it was nominated for the year after its release, and grossing a whopping $2 billion worldwide. It was the second film in history to do so after 2009 flick Avatar, directed once again by James Cameron. Disaster: The Titanic went down in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York after striking an iceberg Gritty: The film is a fictionalised account of the RMS Titanic's sinking in April 1912, which killed more than 1500 passengers after the ship collided with an iceberg It also shot Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio to super-stardom after playing star-crossed lovers Rose and Jack in the film. After shooting scenes in the ocean, Kate also stepped out to film alongside her co-star Saoirse up on the beach. Changing for the scene, Kate looked demure as she was clad in a plaid skirt and navy coat, a brown scarf knotted around her neck and a leather satchel slung over one shoulder. The Titanic star wore gloves to protect herself from the winter chill, while she wore her brunette locks in a loose pinned-back style. In character: Kate's brunette locks were styled in a chic bun, while she wore a minimal amount of make-up to give her a natural look Perfect for the era: Kate looked demure as she was clad in a plaid skirt and navy coat, a brown scarf knotted around her neck and a leather satchel slung over one shoulder Getting into it: As they got into their scene, Saoirse didn't seem fussed as she dragged a prop towards her and got mud on her costume and hands Exploring: The actress could be seen climbing up the bank and examining the rocky terrain Meanwhile, the Hanna star transformed into her character of Anning's supposed lover Frances Bell as she dressed in an off-white gown from the era. Paired with a form-fitting jacket and a red satchel bag, the actress gave her look a chic flair by wearing her blond locks in stylish ringlets. As they filmed their scene, Saoirse didn't seem fussed as she dragged a prop towards her and got mud on her costume and hands. Watching the waves: Kate seemed to be contemplating something as she looked out at the sea Action! The acting duo were hard at work as they filmed next to an abandoned boat Determined: Despite getting very wet from the waves, Kate walked with purpose as she lifted her skirt and walked along the beach Stuck in the mud: Saoirse crouched down as she seemed to be excavating for fossils Barbara Anning, a distant niece who still lives near the Jurassic Coast where the fossil hunter made many discoveries, said there was no proof she was ever in a same-sex relationship. Ms Anning, of Axminster, said: 'The lesbian storyline is pure Hollywood as far as I know and there was no suggestion that she was a lesbian at all. That's just what they do I suppose.' The plot centres around the famous paleontologist, who becomes involved with a young woman sent to convalesce by the sea. Let's go: After they had got what they needed, Saoirse could be seen wrapping her bag over her shoulder On a mission: During the scene, both stars dug around in the dirt to get specimens Busy schedule: Kate made her way along the beach while carrying a plank in one hand What's she preparing? Kate also grabbed a handful of rope and it was unclear why she had it Saoirse plays her love interest in the film, 'a London woman of means to whom she must unexpectedly play nursemaid.' It is directed by Francis Lee, who was recognised at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 for God's Own Country. Lyme Regis, famously depicted by novelist Jane Austen, has undergone a makeover ahead of the Hollywood duo descending upon the town. The project marks Kate and Mary Queen Of Scots star Saorise's first collaboration on the big screen. What's next? With her hands covered in mud, Saoirse looked to Kate during the scene as if she was asking her what they needed to do next Getting into character: Kate looked stoic as she walked towards Saoirse Carrying on: Production on the film continues even after the family of dinosaur pioneer Anning hit out at the filmmakers for 'inventing' the fact that she was gay Anning's niece had previously written on an online forum: 'I do not believe there is any evidence to back up portraying her as a gay woman... I believe Mary Anning was abused because she was poor, uneducated and a woman. Is that not enough?' Experts and fans of her work are also upset, claiming Miss Anning, who never married or had children, was 'interesting enough' without needing her life to be spiced up. A fan society dedicated to the fossil finder called Mary Anning Rocks also objected to the plotline, including Harvard University geologist Bretton Carter, who said: 'I have mixed feelings about this movie. 'Being gay, I'm all about the inclusion of LGBTQ characters, but I feel like Mary Anning is an interesting enough person as she is, they didn't have to throw in same-sex affair with her (as it has no known historical basis).' Drama: The plot centres around the famous paleontologist, who becomes involved with a young woman sent to convalesce by the sea Hitting back: Barbara Anning, a distant niece to the fossil hunter, said there was no proof she was ever in a same-sex relationship Warming up: While taking a break from filming, Kate hugged director Francis Lee as she wrapped up in a black jacket and held a hot water bottle in her hands Also there: Another actor who took part in the scene was dressed to impress in a white coat and a three piece suit, while he sported a black top hat A spokesperson for the society added they would 'love Mary even more' if there was evidence she was gay, but hoped the director Francis Lee would treat her story with respect The spokesperson said: 'We are all hoping the press has exaggerated the Mary being gay part! Francis Lee is an amazing writer/director, I doubt contrived gay scenes are his thing! I hope that wouldn't wash with a straight-talking, gay pig farmer from the Pennines! 'But don't get us wrong, if there was proof Mary, a working class, Victorian, self-educated powerhouse was also a lesbian we'd love her, even more.' Slammed: Some on Facebook, including Harvard geologist Bretton Carter, pictured, have also criticised the film for adding the plot without historical basis False? There is apparently no evidence that Anning, pictured, ever had a same-sex relationship Anning is known for making major discoveries in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs at Lyme Regis and Charmouth. Her work contributed to important changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life. However, due to being a woman, she was prevented form joining the Geological Society of London and did not receive full credit for her findings. It is also thought she was the inspiration for the 1908 tongue-twister 'She sells seashells on the seashore' by Terry Sullivan. She recently angered her fitness DVD bosses after she lent all the credit to the Herbalife supplement for her amazing figure. And Ferne McCann, 28, was back in a bikini once again as she took part in a photo shoot with her former TOWIE co-star pal Danielle Armstrong, 30, at Hutton Hall in Brentwood, Essex, on Thursday. Prancing about in a canary yellow two-piece, the mother-of-one pouted as she took selfies while showing off her washboard abs and toned arms. Fit friends: Ferne McCann, 28, was back in a bikini once again as she took part in a photo shoot with her pal Danielle Armstrong, 30, at Hutton Hall in Brentwood, Essex, on Thursday In the background of the clip, shared on Instagram, Danielle could be seen posing for professional photographer James Rudland in a skimpy red string bikini. Proving she can still enjoy her favourite treats, Ferne was spotted on footage on Danielle's social media account nibbling on a cupcake as she stood in a blue leopard print bikini. Both the Essex natives, who started off their reality TV careers on TOWIE, sported perfectly applied hair and make-up for their day in front of the lens. Ferne, who has multiple Instagram accounts for her different business ventures, shared a range of content from the day across her platforms. Trim: Prancing about in a canary yellow two-piece, the mother-of-one pouted as she took selfies while showing off her washboard abs and toned arms On her nutrition page, she uploaded snaps onto her story where she could be seen in royal blue leggings and a matching crop top. Ferne recently caused bosses who produced her fitness DVD Fit As Ferne to be furious after she promoted a supplement alongside a picture of herself in a yellow bikini on holiday in Dubai with her daughter Sunday, 15 months. A source told The Sun: 'Ferne's fitness DVD bosses are fuming. They can't believe she has credited Herbalife with helping her get her pre-pregnancy body back. 'Her DVD has been promoted as the 'workout that got her into the best shape of her life' after having Sunday. Treat: Ferne was spotted on footage on Danielle's social media account nibbling on a cupcake as she posed in a blue leopard print bikini 'Yet, she's also saying that a meal replacement shakes and bars were the trick to achieving her post-baby body. It's a nightmare.' In the post in question, Ferne wrote on January 4: 'I look like this because I decided to do a 30 day challenge [with Herbalife] this time last year in Jan.' The post was shared on her @fernutrition account which has 100,000 followers compared to the 2,200,000 admirers on her official Instagram account. Herbalife member Ferne claimed her journey with the supplement began when she was pregnant and she was 'blown away' by her BFF Danielle's figure. She wrote on the official website: 'My Herbalife Nutrition journey began when I was pregnant. I was blown away by my friend Danielle Armstrong's body transformation. 'She had completely changed her body shape by dropping 21 lbs in body weight & gained 7 lbs of lean muscle. 'She was glowing and looked absolutely incredible. I couldn't believe this was all down to Herbalife Nutrition.' Peachy! On her nutrition page, the mother-of-one uploaded snaps onto her story where she could be seen in royal blue leggings and a matching crop top Her career began in the music industry, but she's paved her way into acting. And Christina Milian looked radiant as she made her way into the SiriusXM studios in New York on Thursday morning. The 37-year-old star highlighted her fit figure in a casual mini dress while adding an edgy element with thigh-grazing black PVC boots. Beauty: Christina Milian looked radiant as she made her way into the SiriusXM studios in New York on Thursday morning Milian's gym-honed figure was on display in a fuzzy black Fashion Nova dress which featured a high hem and neckline. She added inches to her petite frame with thigh-high black PVC leather boots with laces tied tightly above her knees. Christina beat a light rain storm, but stayed dry with the help of a clear plastic rain coat and her own personal umbrella holder. The 37-year-old star highlighted her fit figure in a Fashion Nova mini dress while adding an edgy element with thigh-grazing black PVC boots City slicker: Milian's gym-honed figure was on display in a fuzzy black Fashion Nova dress which featured a high hem and neckline She swept her curly brown hair back into a tight bun with braids positioned on top of her head and wispy tendrils framing her face. Christina's makeup was subtle but sweet, with a touch of pink blush on her cheekbones and a glossy nude shade on her lips. Milian left the studios wearing an electric yellow top and jeans, with matching neon pumps to complete her casual outfit. On Wednesday, she bragged about her Falling Inn Love co-stars with a sweet message posted on Instagram. Stunner: Christina's makeup was subtle but sweet, with a touch of pink blush on her cheekbones and a glossy nude shade on her lips Quick change: Milian left the studios wearing an electric yellow top and jeans, with matching neon pumps to complete her casual outfit 'Who knew work could be this fun?! Seriously, I love what I do,' she wrote. 'Feel so blessed & grateful to make new friends and family everywhere I go.' The AM to PM songstress posed with Adam Demos and Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman in a series of shots. She stars as 'city girl Gabriela' who enters a contest to win a property in New Zealand, only to realize the home is a disaster and embarks on a journey to fix and flip the abode, according to Deadline. Roger Krumble of Cruel Intentions and Just Friends directed the Netflix film which shot on location last month. Keanu Reeves needs 'a lot' of guns in the new trailer for John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum. The darkly lit, action packed trailer dropped Wednesday ahead of the May 17, 2019 release of the third installment in the neo-noir action thriller franchise. Assassin John Wick battles dozens of ninjas in the teaser and showcases his impressive knife skills, hurling several of the sharp objects at his foes. Tick, Tock Mr. Wick: The trailer for John Wick 3: Parabellum dropped Wednesday and is promising a high-octane flick for the thrilling franchise starring Keanu Reeves The trailer stuns with dimly lit sets, ballerinas, crushed glass flying every which way and even a sword fight ... on motorcycles. In John Wick 3, the title character is still on the run following his assassination of Santino D'Antonio in The Continental. Wick, played for the third time by 54-year-old Reeves, has a $14 million global contract on him and is banned from every Continental service, which forces him to fight his way out of New York City with the help of a hitwoman (Halle Berry) who still trusts him. In the trailer, Halle Berry appears both beautiful and terrifying as she agrees to help Wick, fulfilling a previous debt with the assassin. Coming soon: Reeves, who plays John Wick, says in the trailer that he needs 'a lot' of guns Puppy love! As with all of the John Wick films, dogs featured prominently in the trailer Attack! A group of German shepherds play the role of attack dogs for new character Halle Berry Icon! Halle Berry is joining the franchise for the third installment and plays a mysterious hit woman who has a long history with Wick Her character has a support staff of attack dogs who appear to do her bidding in dramatic jaw-snapping fashion in snippets of the clip. Along with Reeves and Berry, the thriller stars Laurence Fishburne, Mark Dacascos, Asia Kate Dillon, Lance Reddick, Said Taghmaoui, Jerome Flynn, Tobias Segal, Boban Marjanovic, Anjelica Huston and Ian McShane. The film promises and endless amount of high-octane action scenes with Reeves, who does his own stunts, impressively battling ninjas. Artillery: Actor Ian McShane outfits John Wick with an arsenal Assassin: John Wick battles dozens of ninjas in the teaser and showcases his impressive knife skills, hurling several of the sharp objects at his foes Wow: Reeves does his own stunts in the film In an interview with Collider, Reeves said that the team got to 'build cool new sets' for the flick. 'I think the set design is really great,' he gushed. 'So, I think the film is really easy to watch. Its beautiful. Theres a character that we root for, hopefully. Hes fighting for his life.' The first film in the franchise debuted to both critical and commercial success, telling the riveting story of a retired hitman (Reeves) seeking revenge after someone killed his puppy. 'I think the set design is really great,' Keanu said in a recent interview Legends! The cast for Chapter 3 boasts an impressive list of stars like Laurence Fishburne and Angelia Huston Drama: Wick has a $14 million global contract on his head which forces him to fight his way out of New York City Dogs feature prominently in the trailer for Chapter 3 as both Wick's side kick and canine henchman for Halle Berry. Reeves is gearing up for a big year in 2019, with the highly-anticipated John Wick 3: Parabellum, hitting theaters on May 17, and he's also set to voice Duke Kabooom in Toy Story 4, arriving June 21. Reeves is gearing up for a big year in 2019, with the highly-anticipated John Wick 3: Parabellum, hitting theaters on May 17, and he's also set to voice Duke Kabooom in Toy Story 4, arriving June 21. Incredible: The visuals were dark and interestingly lit with different colors and reflective surfaces in the trailer She's shed a whopping two stone following her strenuous stint on ITV competition series Dancing On Ice. And Gemma Collins has now revealed she's selling her old size 24 clothes for just 10 following her impressive weight loss on social shopping app Depop. Taking to Twitter on Thursday, the TOWIE star, 38, promoted a wide selection of her items on the platform, featuring a ruched red dress, a V-neck sweater and a pink cardigan. Out with the old: Gemma Collins has now revealed she's selling her old size 24 clothes for just 10 following her impressive weight loss on social shopping app Depop The TV personality, who boasts 27,000 followers on Depop, has sold over 3,000 clothing pieces since signing up to the peer-to-peer app. Earlier this year, Gemma's grueling training regimen saw her drop two stone during her appearance on the reality skating show. Shedding light on the extent on her strict workouts, her professional dance partner Matt Evers previously told The Sun: 'Now she is doing 2 hours training 3 times a week, burning at least 1,000 calories a time.' The 43-year-old skater added: 'She weighed herself last Thursday and came in and told us all the news on Saturday, saying, 'It's official. I've lost two stone.' Taking to Twitter on Thursday, the TOWIE star, 38, promoted a wide selection of her items on the platform, featuring a ruched red dress, a V-neck sweater and a pink cardigan Popular: The TV personality, who boasts 27,000 followers on Depop, has sold over 3,000 clothing pieces since signing up to the peer-to-peer app 'She asked for double training sessions - she is on three hours on the ice. She gets there early and texts me saying, ''Matt, where are you? I'm here.'' It's a different person. Meanwhile, her on-off boyfriend James 'Arg' Argent previously revealed she hopes to tie the knot in 2020. Speaking to OK! Magazine last year, Arg, 31, revealed his proposal plans, he said: 'I've got a few ideas up my sleeve! I cant tell you when but Im definitely asking Gemma to be my wife next year.' Shedding the pounds: Earlier this year, Gemma's grueling training regimen saw her drop two stone during her appearance on the reality skating show (pictured right in 2017) 'She's burning 1,000 calories a time': Shedding light on the extent on her strict workouts, her professional dance partner Matt Evers previously told The Sun: 'Now she is doing 2 hours training 3 times a week' However, the couple had a dramatic temporary split in February after Arg shared and deleted a 'humiliating' clip of her snoring, leading him to fat-shame her in a string of texts. Yet Gemma and Arg put on a united front last week at a charity event, after he publicly apologised to his girlfriend on breakfast television. Mark Wright's best pal had said to Gemma: 'You are a fat joke of a woman. An absolute car crash! Who the f*** do you think you are? Youve got more rolls than Greggs.' Wedding bells? Meanwhile, her on-off boyfriend James 'Arg' Argent previously revealed she hopes to tie the knot in 2020 Arg later told Good Morning Britain that him saying that it was like 'pot kettle black' and he admitted he is 'childish and hypocritical. He said: 'Im the biggest [weight] Ive ever been. We were both cussing each other and it was very school ground.' Gemma and Arg have had a seven-year on-off relationship, with their romance back on track following their recent woes. After the success of the 2017 movie adaptation of Call Me By Your Name, author Andre Aciman revealed he was writing a sequel novel, and now the title is revealed. Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux revealed (via Vulture) that the title will be Find Me, with the novel set to be published on October 29. The book will re-kindle the romance between Elio and Oliver, who were played by Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer in the movie adaptation. New title: The title for Andre Aciman's upcoming Call Me By Your Name sequel has been revealed to be Find Me, with the novel set for publication this October The sequel Find Me will also feature Elio's father Samuel, played by Michael Stuhlbarg in the film adaptation, who is on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio. The official plot description adds that Elio has, 'become a gifted classical pianist,' while, 'a chance encounter on the train leads to a relationship that changes Samis life definitively. The novel also features Elio moving to Paris, 'where he too has a consequential affair,' while also showcasing Oliver back in New England. Elio's return: The sequel novel Find Me will also feature Elio's father Samuel, played by Michael Stuhlbarg in the film adaptation, who is on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio. Oliver has become, 'a professor in northern New England' who now has, 'sons who are nearly grown.' The official description ends by teasing that Oliver, 'suddenly finds himself contemplating a return visit to Europe.' After news of the sequel novel, author Andre Aciman provided a new statement about the sequel novel to Vulture. Oliver: Oliver has become, 'a professor in northern New England' who now has, 'sons who are nearly grown' 'The world of Call Me By Your Name never left me,' Aciman began. 'Though I created the characters and was the author of their lives, what I never expected was that theyd end up teaching me things about intimacy and about love that I didnt quite think I knew until Id put them down on paper,' he added. 'The film made me realize that I wanted to be back with them and watch them over the years which is why I wrote Find Me,' he concluded. Author's statement: After news of the sequel novel, author Andre Aciman provided a new statement about the sequel novel to Vulture Aciman previously teased the sequel in a tweet from December, where he stated, 'I would actually love a sequel to Call Me By Your Name. In fact I am writing one.' There has been talk of a movie sequel ever since the original adaptation's release, with director Luca Guadagnino slated to return, along with Chalamet and Hammer. With the sequel novel slated for publication in late October, that could kickstart development on the movie sequel as well. Sequel novel: Aciman previously teased the sequel in a tweet from December, where he stated, 'I would actually love a sequel to Call Me By Your Name. In fact I am writing one' New book: 'The world of Call Me By Your Name never left me,' Aciman began In her role as Adelaide Wilson she encounters her doppelganger, who proves intent on killing her. And on Thursday, Lupita Nyong'o stopped by Un Nuevo Dia at the Telemundo Center in Miami, Florida. The actress appeared on the show in order to promote her new horror-thriller, Us. Work visit: On Thursday, Lupita Nyong'o, 36, stopped by Un Nuevo Dia at the Telemundo Center in Miami, Florida Lupita looked lovely in a tea-length, hot pink dress adorned with red and black trim. The 36-year-old added a pair of simple, strappy heels to her look, and accessorized with small earrings and multiple rings. The beauty styled her hair partially up. For make-up, Lupita highlighted her full lips with a red shade, which matched elements of her dress and shoes. Pushing her role: The actress appeared on the show in order to promote her new horror-thriller, Us In Us, directed by Jordan Peele, Lupita plays mom Adelaide Wilson, a woman whose family encounters their doppelgangers that are intent on killing them 'I loved working with Jordan Peele on this movie. It is very confusing to play two characters that are so different, but also connected to each other,' she said, while at Un Nuevo Dia. 'But it was like a big challenge of my career to date, and I'm very, very proud of it.' Beautiful: Lupita looked lovely in a tea-length, hot pink dress adorned with red and black trim. She kept warm beneath a chic, red coat Up next, Lupita can be seen returning to her role as Maz Kanata in Star Wars: Episode IX. The actress will then take the lead in the English remake of John Woo's bloodshed film, The Killer. She'll then appear in the action thriller, 355, alongside Penelope Cruz, Jessica Chastain and Marion Cotillard. She recently said she didn't have time to date. But sparks appeared to be flying between Kiernan Shipka, 19, and Oscar-winner Gary Oldman's son Charlie, 20, as they were spotted out together on Wednesday night. The duo appeared very content in each other's company as they strolled arm in arm after dinner at Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. New romance: Kiernan Shipka, 19, was pictured out on Wednesday night arm in arm with Gary Oldman's son Charlie, 20 The Chicago-born actress wore a plaid mini dress with silk and lace bodice along with a cropped bomber jacket. Charlie, a model, showed off his arm tattoos in a white T-shirt and grey pants. His dad Gary scooped the Oscar for best actor for his role in Darkest Hour last year and Charlie was by his side to help celebrate, along with Gary's wife Gisele and his other son Gulliver, 21. Gary, who has been married five times, shares Charlie and Gulliver with photographer ex-wife Donya Fiorentino. He also has son Alfie, 31, with ex-wife Lesley Manville. Dinner date: The Chicago-born actress wore a plaid mini dress with silk and lace bodice along with a cropped bomber jacket Casual: Charlie showed off his arm tattoos in a white T-shirt and grey pants In an interview in November, Kiernan insisted she was too busy to be dating. In an interview with Seventeen magazine, she said of her hectic work schedule: 'I'll wrap on Saturday at 6am, so I'm pretty much useless on Saturday. 'And then Sunday, I have to get all my stuff done for Monday. Occasionally, the cast can drive me out for a fun time but work is my number one priority right now.' The former Mad Men star now appears as Sabrina Spellman in Netflix series The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, with season two coming next month. Busy career: Kiernan, pictured last week, said in November she didn't have time to date because of her hectic schedule Kiernan said she was attracted to the part of Sabrina in the Riverdale spin-off because of the show's 'feminist content'. She explained: 'I gravitate toward feminist content because that's just who I am. But there was something so cool about this show being so feminist while still having this very separate fantastical element. 'It's sort of set in this timeless period where there aren't many references to pop culture or what's happening now or what happened in the past. 'But at the same [time], it's related to what's happening in many different ways and resonates on so many levels.' They make up two of the three McCord sisters. And on Wednesday, AnnaLynne and Rachel McCord looked lovely in blush as they stepped out for lunch in Marina Del Rey, California. For their upscale meal, the women chose to coordinate in pantsuits. Pretty women: On Wednesday, AnnaLynne, 31, and Rachel McCord, 29, looked lovely in blush as they stepped out for lunch in Marina Del Rey, California AnnaLynne wore a springtime, light pink satin blazer with a matching set of wide leg pants. The former 90210 star added a set of cage heels to her look, and accessorized with a gold handbag and shades. The blonde bombshell wore her naturally curly hair pulled back in a ponytail, with front pieces left to frame her face. Matching: For their upscale meal, the women chose to coordinate in pantsuits Ready for spring! AnnaLynne's blazer was a pretty, light pink shade While AnnaLynne opted for a solid color, monochromatic look, Rachel, chose a floral pantsuit, layered over black bodysuit. Joining the women for their day out was Rachel's husband Rick Schirmer, whom she's been married to since 2013. Not seen with the girls was the third McCord sister, Angel, 33. Her style: Sister Rachel layered a black bodysuit underneath her tropical print pantsuit Perfect make-up: The star's make-up featured a natural glam look, complete with a dusty rose shade for her lips AnnaLynne rose to fame as popular, tough girl Naomi Clark on the 2008 remake of 90210. Next up, the Atlanta native will Liz in the drama, Wrongfully Accused. She'll also appear as Heather in the western, Soldier's Heart. Finally, the beauty will appear in the short, Milkshake Girls, about sex trafficking. It's been less than a month since Kate Mara announced her pregnancy on Instagram. And the expecting mom, 36, was happy to show off her quickly growing baby bump while out in Los Angeles on Thursday. This will mark the star's first child with her husband Jamie Bell, 33. Baby on board: Kate Mara, 36, highlighted her growing baby bump while out in Los Angeles on Thursday The mom-to-be walked through an LA neighborhood, wearing black leggings and a casual blue T-shirt. Keeping warm in the chilly morning weather, the actress also donned a black leather jacket, which her expanding bump peaked out of. The star played up the casual street wear with black studded mules and a roomy purse, also lined with silver studs. She smiled with her hair pulled back into a loose messy bun. Easy going: Kate looked at ease as she strolled across the street carrying a large black purse The actress appeared to be comfortable and relaxed as she enjoyed her morning. Kate has been married to English actor Bell since 2017. The duo confirmed their pregnancy last month on Instagram while sharing a snap at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party in West Hollywood, California. 'Went on a date with our bun in the oven,' she wrote in the caption for her roughly 301,000 followers. Exciting news: Kate and Jamie cryptically posted their pregnancy announcement on Instagram in February Kate and Jamie co-starred in the 2015 superhero movie Fantastic Four and started dating in late 2015. They later got engaged in January 2017 and announced in July 2017 that they had secretly married. Aside from House of Cards, which she is best known for, Kate also starred in the 2018 drama Chappaquiddick as Mary Jo Kopechne. Inseparable: Jamie sweetly kissed his bride on the cheek while roaming through Disneyland together last October Coming up, the strawberry blonde will appear in a new TV movie titled, A Teacher. Jamie can next be seen in the musical drama Rocketman, based on the life of Sir Elton John, 71. Welsh actor Taron Egerton, 29, will portray Elton while Jamie will play his longtime songwriter Bernie Taupin. Rocketman, also starring Richard Madden as Elton's manager, John Reid, and Bryce Dallas Howard as his mother, Sheila Eileen Dwight, is scheduled for release on May 24 in the UK and May 31 in the US. She plays a French trapeze artist in Disney's live-action remake of Dumbo. And Eva Green showed off her Parisian beauty as she attended the film's European premiere at the Curzon Mayfair cinema in London on Thursday. Joined by her fellow cast on the red carpet, the 38-year-old actress exuded glamour in a glittering emerald green dress. Striking: Eva Green showed off her Parisian beauty as she attended Dumbo's European premiere at the Curzon Mayfair cinema in London on Thursday The dress, adorned with hundreds of green gems, hugged Eva's slender frame and dazzled as she strutted down the red carpet in a pair of black Louboutin court shoes. She complemented the ensemble with a Jessica McCormack yellow gold and diamond snake ring and wore her brunette locks in soft waves, partially pinning it back to help frame her face. The Bond girl finished off her show-stopping look with a bold slick of red lipstick and a pink smoky eye. Shimmering: Joined by her fellow cast on the red carpet, the 38-year-old actress exuded glamour in a glittering emerald green dress Green with envy: The dress, adorned with hundreds of green gems, hugged Eva's slender frame Leggy: She strutted down the red carpet in a pair of black court shoes Big night: Eva could hardly contain her excitement as she put on an animated display at the screening Remake: The star raised her arms in triumph as she took in the impressive billboard of the fictional elephant Eva had to learn a host of terrifying new stunts as trapeze artist Colette Marchant for Tim Burton's remake. Speaking at the Los Angeles conference she shared to Fresh Fiction TV: 'The circus people were very patient, very kind with me, I was absolutely petrified. I thought I would never be able to do that. 'For two months, every day, I trained, you need a very strong core as well. Very strong abs. Very strong arms. 'Little by little, Id go higher and higher and higher and that was amazing.' Talented: Eva had to learn a host of terrifying new stunts as trapeze artist Colette Marchant for Tim Burton's remake Quick fit: Eva readjusted her dress as she made her way down the red carpet Gorgeous: She complemented the ensemble with statement rings and wore her brunette locks in soft waves, partially pinning it back to help frame her face Strike a pose: Eva stopped to pose with fans ahead of the screening Flexibility skills: Eva admitted she was 'absolutely terrified' to take on the role of a trapeze artist Celebrations all round The actress air kissed Danny DeVito as the cast posed for a photo Sweet: Eva also knelt down to chat to some young boys as she made her way down the red carpet Atmosphere: The French-born beauty was in jubilant spirits, hugging Tim Burton (L) and Colin Farrell Adoring fans: She happily signed dozens of autographs as fans fought each other to hold their Dumbo posters over the railings Up in the air: Eva plays a French trapeze aritist in DIsney's live-action remake of Dumbo Dumbo follows the tale of a circus elephant ridiculed for his big ears, who discovers he can use his ears as wings and can fly. Following on from re-makes of Cinderella, Maleficent, Jungle Book, and Beauty and the Beast, Disney's latest live-action offering is set to be released in March. Burton is in the director's chair for the film, while his frequent collaborator Danny Elfman is on board to do the soundtrack. It is based upon a storyline written by Helen Aberson and is a full-length adaptation of Walt Disney's 1941 animated film of the same name written by Otto Englander, Joe Grant, and Dick Huemer. Donny and Marie Osmond have announced the end of their Las Vegas show. The brother and sister pop duo have officially confirmed they are saying goodbye to their residency after 11 years of performing their 'Donny and Marie Show' at the Flamingo Hotel. The duo appeared on Good Morning America on Thursday to break the news to their fans. Donny and Marie's farewell: Donny and Marie announce on Good Morning America that The Donny and Marie Show in Las Vegas is coming to an end 'It's been rumoured that we are bringing 'Donny & Marie' to an end here in Las Vegas and we are here to say it's official,' Donny said. When asked by host Paula Faris if the announcement 'was hard to say', Donny, 61, replied: 'It's very, very hard.' The 'Vegas Love' hitmaker admires his sister, 59, as she has remained a professional and committed performer despite going through rough times in the past. Official end: 'It's been rumoured that we are bringing 'Donny & Marie' to an end here in Las Vegas and we are here to say it's official,' Donny said. 'We have been through so much the past eleven years, her particularly - and she gets on stage and she's such a professional and she does a great job,' Donny added. 'I'm going to miss this a lot. What she's gone through and still remained a professional there's a bond here that will never be broken,' he continued. Marie, 59, also revealed that her brother supported her greatly when her 18-year-old adopted son Michael Blosil died in 2010 after jumping from the eighth floor of his Los Angeles apartment. Supportive brother: Marie, 59, also revealed that her brother supported her greatly when her 18-year-old adopted son Michael Blosil died in 2010 after jumping from the eighth floor of his Los Angeles apartment 'I have been through a lot but he's been my rock,' Marie added. 'I went through a terrible divorce here, and terrible custody battle and I lost a child here.' 'We know each other's buttons, and I will never let anybody hurt him. Just me!' she joked. Marie also recognized the success of the show and believes the pair's residency has been such a hit because 'there's a unique chemistry and 'people love that sibling sound'. Sibling love: 'I have been through a lot but he's been my rock,' Marie added. I went through a terrible divorce here, and terrible custody battle and I lost a child here' She also spoke about how the end will be bittersweet because of the fans, who have come 'around the world' to see them perform. Faris said that when she saw the show, there was a woman who was screaming that she was waiting for that moment her entire life, which Marie said was 'the sweetest.' When asked what tricks they have up their sleeve for the final show, Donny said he had 'no tricks,' he just wants to go out there and 'have the time of my life.' Around the world: She also spoke about how the end will be bittersweet because of the fans, who have come 'around the world' to see them perform 'It's the end of The Donny and Marie Show. It's not the end of Donny and Marie,' Donny added. Faris added at the end of the GMA segment that both Donny and Marie were looking forward to starting something new and stepping out of their comfort zone. Marie has 'some film roles lined up,' according to Faris, who also revealed that the final performance of The Donny and Marie Show will be November 16 at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. She's said to be loved up with police constable Scott Dobinson. Yet Scarlett Moffatt was enjoying her own company as she attended the European premiere of Dumbo at The Curzon Mayfair in London on Thursday. Looking effortlessly stylish as she hit the red carpet, the Gogglebox star, 28, proved that less is more in a black boilersuit. Flying solo: Scarlett Moffatt was enjoying her own company as she attended the European premiere of Dumbo at The Curzon Mayfair in London on Thursday Cinching in at her waist, the all-in-one featured a large zipper across the front, which she pulled up to a demure height. Injecting a splash of colour, Scarlett rocked a bold red lip, whilst her glossy locks were slicked back into a ponytail made up of french braids. She finished off the look by donning barely-there heels and toting a small cross body bag, whilst her jewellery was kept simple in the form of a delicate gold necklace and rings. Chic and cheerful: Looking effortlessly stylish as she hit the red carpet, the Gogglebox star, 28, proved that less is more in a black boilersuit Disney's latest live-action offering, Dumbo, follows the tale of a circus elephant who discovers he can use his ears as wings and can fly. It is set to be released on March 29. Scarlett attended the premiere on her own, amid reports she's found love with a new man. The former Queen of the Jungle is said to be dating police constable Scott Dobinson after the pair met through a mutual friend four months ago. Glamorous: Injecting a splash of colour, Scarlett rocked a bold red lip, whilst her glossy locks were slicked back into a ponytail made up of french braids The notoriously unlucky-in-love Gogglebox star uploaded a snap with her new man to social media, cosying up to him, looking blissfully happy. A source told the Sun: 'Scott seems like a really stand-up guy. He could be good for her. 'The pair met through a mutual friend and hit it off straight away. And he's got a decent job being a police officer in Durham near where she lives.' She's taking a step back from acting to get behind the lens for a few upcoming television projects. And Mila Kunis looked comfortable in an over-sized sweatshirt as she ran a few errands around Los Angeles on Thursday morning. The 35-year-old actress sported a red-and-blue striped sweater with black slacks as she dodged the rainy weather in Southern California. Out and about: Mila Kunis looked comfortable in an over-sized sweatshirt as she ran a few errands around Los Angeles on Thursday morning Mila kept warm underneath the slouchy sweater which featured a high neckline and billowing sleeves. She covered up her slender legs with black slacks and rocked a pair of white, low-top Converse sneakers. Kunis wore her chocolate brown hair parted toward the side and straight past her shoulders with minimal makeup on her already stunning features. Sleek: The 35-year-old actress sported a red-and-blue striped sweater with black slacks as she dodged the rainy weather in Southern California Beauty: Kunis wore her chocolate brown hair parted toward the side and straight past her shoulders with minimal makeup on her already stunning features Her Orchard Farm Productions company began working on Made In LA more than three years ago, a 30-minute comedy sketch loosely based on The Glitter Plan, according to Deadline. Juicy Couture founders Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor wrote the memoir about how they created a global brand from a humble $200 investment. Mila is also listed as the executive producer for the drama Hunted, which centers around an escaped prisoner on a quest to prove she didn't kill her husband, according to IMDb. She founded the company in 2014 to develop and produce projects with ABC Studios receiving first-look deals. Boss: Her Orchard Farm Productions company began working on Made In LA more than three years ago, a comedy loosely based on The Glitter Plan, according to Deadline; seen in March Kunis has been married to fellow actor Ashton Kutcher for four years and the couple has two children: Two-year-old son Dimitri and four-year-old daughter Wyatt. They met while working together for nearly one decade on set of That '70s Show, where they played teenaged lovers Jackie Burkhart and Michael Kelso. Kutcher was married to Demi Moore for six years before the couple split in 2011, with a divorce finalized in November 2013. Mila dodged marriage rumors for years after she began dating Macaulay Culkin in 2002, but the couple called it quits in 2011. Paige Butcher enjoyed a girls-only shopping outing with her daughter Izzy on Thursday. The star, 39, and her mini-me daughter looked like the best of friends as they stocked up on groceries together in Beverly Hills. Two-year-old Izzy clung to her mother as the Australian actress carried her little girl in her arms en route to the store. Just the girls! Paige Butcher and her mini-me daughter Izzy looked like the best of friends as they headed the store together in Beverly Hills The oh-so-precious tot wore a pink pair of star print trousers, a black velvet sweatshirt, and a pair of sandals for the outing, while her mom rocked a sporty all-blue look. Paige looked ready for a workout in a blue Cotton Citizen 'Milan' crew top and 'Monaco' thermal joggers, black Nike trainers, and sunglasses. The model wore her blonde hair slicked back into a high ponytail while concealing her eyes behind a cool pair of black sunglasses. Paige headed inside the store with her little girl in her arms and a soft smile on her face. That's her girl! Butcher - sporting a blue Cotton Citizen 'Milan' crew top and 'Monaco' thermal joggers - carried her two-year-old tot into the store Pick-me-up! The Australian actress held hands with her little girl after their shopping trip After their shopping trip, the star left the store carrying a bag of tangerines along with an iced coffee for a midday pick-me-up. Izzy left the store holding her mother's hand. Paige and her fiance Eddie Murphy welcomed Izzy, their first child together, two years ago. The couple became parents again with the birth of their son Charles Murphy, who was born in November 2018. It was baby number ten for Eddie, who has eight other children from previous relationships. It happens to the best of us, Tammy. While heading out for a dinner in West Hollywood on Thursday, Australian model Tammy Hembrow suffered a rare fashion faux pas. A clothing tag was visible poking out the back of her dark green cargo pants as she arrived at the upmarket Toca Madera restaurant. Whoops! While heading out for a dinner in West Hollywood on Thursday, Australian model Tammy Hembrow suffered a rare fashion faux pas Despite this sartorial slip-up, the 24-year-old businesswoman looked every inch the LA party girl during her late-night outing. Tammy paired her '90s-inspired pants with a white singlet and nude high heels, and styled her glossy blonde hair in a high ponytail. She was joined by fellow Instagram model Jena Frumes, who cut a stylish figure in knee-high red boots and a Balenciaga hoodie. It happens to the best of us! A clothing tag was visible poking out the back of Tammy's dark green cargo pants as she arrived at the upmarket Toca Madera restaurant After arriving at the Mexican eatery, Jena shared footage to Instagram of Tammy tucking into an ice-cream sandwich. During their meal, the Saski Collection founder also playfully demonstrated her best American accent. When Jena asked the Queensland native what she thought of her sandwich, Tammy responded in an Australian accent: 'It's so good!' Glamour girls: The 24-year-old was joined by fellow Instagram model Jena Frumes, who cut a stylish figure in knee-high red boots and a Balenciaga hoodie Jen then burst into laughter, which prompted Tammy to repeat the phrase with a strong Californian twang. In recent months, rumours have circulated that the mother-of-two is planning on moving to Los Angeles permanently with her family. Back in January, her sister Emilee Hembrow said in a YouTube video that Tammy was 'trying to make us all move to LA or America'. She's gone Hollywood! After arriving at the Mexican eatery, Jena (right) shared footage to Instagram of Tammy (left) demonstrating her best American accent Emilee, who has two children under the age of four and is based on the Gold Coast like Tammy, admitted she was concerned about the move. 'I have mixed feelings, because I hear raising kids in America isn't the best,' she said. Tammy, who owns her own activewear label, boasts more than 9.3 million Instagram followers and 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube. Will 'Australia's Kardashians' move to LA? In recent months, rumours have circulated that Tammy is planning on moving to Los Angeles permanently with her family. Pictured (left to right): The Hembrow sisters, Amy, Tammy, Starlette and Emilee Tammy is the daughter of Australian director, screenwriter and musician Mark Hembrow and has four sisters: Amy, Emilee, Starlette and Ava. Until last year, she was engaged to Australian streetwear designer Reece Hawkins, who is the father of her two children, Wolf and Saskia. She was recently linked to U.S. rapper Tyga, who is the ex-boyfriend of Kylie Jenner. Love Island star Wes Nelson is reportedly dating Instagram model Lissy Roddy, two months after his split from Megan Barton Hanson. A source told The Sun that the pair have grown 'inseparable' after first meeting at a fashion party in Dublin, and until not have kept their relationship under wraps. It comes amid claims that Wes 'kissed' a mystery brunette while on a night out in Manchester last week, despite ex Megan claiming he vowed to give her his 'undivided attention.' Not single anymore? Love Island star Wes Nelson has reportedly found love again, two months after his split from Megan Barton Hanson Stunning: The hunk is reportedly dating Instagram model Lissy Roddy, after the pair met a party in Dublin, according to The Sun The source claimed that Wes met Lissy - real name Alicia - at the party thrown by Nasty Gal, with his co-star Josh Denzel acting as wing man for the encounter. They added: 'Wes is having a really good time getting to know Lissy, they've been on some nice dates and they've been hanging out, going on shopping trips together and chilling at home. 'Lissy's the reason Wes was so adamant he wouldn't be getting back with Megan. She is absolutely stunning and he's one very happy man.' MailOnline has contacted representatives for Wes Nelson and Alicia Roddy for comment. Jaw-dropping: Lissy is no stranger to flaunting her figure in scantily clad social media posts, and also boasts a staggering 600,000 followers on Instagram Amazing: The model and influencer is no stranger to a snap or two, posing up a storm in various revealing bikinis Ab-tastic: Lissy - real name Alicia - also posts videos on her Youtube channel, with makeup tips, must-have outfits and her favourite hairstyles Living the high life: The beauty also posts plenty of snaps from her sun-soaked getaways Lissy is no stranger to flaunting her figure in scantily clad social media posts, and also boasts a staggering 600,000 followers on Instagram. The model also posts videos on her Youtube channel, with makeup tips, must-have outfits and her favourite hairstyles. These claims come after it was reported that Wes had been spotted cosying up to a mystery brunette last week while on a night out in Manchester. The pair were reportedly seen 'kissing passionately' after the mystery girl approached Wes' table to say hello to the Dancing On Ice finalist, the Sun claimed. The onlooker then claimed the brunette left with Wes and a group of his friends at the end of the night. Naughty: This comes after it was claimed Wes was spotted 'kissing' a mystery brunette on a night out in Manchester But just days later, ex Megan claimed that Wes vowed to give her his 'undivided attention' in a birthday card, which she shared in pictures allegedly obtained by The Sun. Inside the card, the Dancing On Ice finalist poured his heart out in a bid to win the blonde bombshell back and announced he was whisking her away to remote villa in Morocco for some 'alone time'. Being honest about his feelings, he expressed how difficult their break-up had been on him. He wrote: "...For the first birthday gift I have booked a remote villa trip for us in Morocco. It's completely out of the way so we have alone time. 'However the biggest thing I want to give you is my undivided attention from this day forth. Words really can't describe how much I love you. There's not been a minute of the day that I have not spent think about you. Concluding: 'It's been so difficult doing the "normal" things we always do together. Once again we have "gravitated" back to each other. Love Wesley' (sic). Controversial: It was also recently reported that Wes 'begged' ex Megan to take him back after he sent her a grovelling birthday card Done: It was also claimed that Megan has 'grown sick of Wes's immaturity,' as he continues 'to act like a single man despite trying to win her back' Previously, it was said that Megan was reportedly 'confused' by the situation - which stemmed from Wes' appearance on Loose Women at the time, where he shut down any hopes of the pair getting back together. And now The Sun reports that Megan has 'grown sick of Wes's immaturity,' with the source adding that there was 'no way' Megan would take him up on his breakaway offer as he continues 'to act like a single man despite trying to win her back'. Wes had previously vowed that he and Megan would never get back together last month. Asked if there was a chance they could reconcile, he sighed: 'I don't think so, it's sad it is very sad.' Done: Megan and Wes split in January six months after first meeting in the Love Island villa Discussing their break-up, he reasoned: 'It's very difficult. Any person in the public eye knows, when your relationship is your career essentially. It was a lot of pressure, there was a lot of opinions.' 'We havent spoken in a good amount of time. Sometimes it's civil, sometimes it's not. I'm not a malicious person, I'm not bitter.' Megan and Wes split in January six months after first meeting in the Love Island villa, which itself sparked a furore as their coupling left his former partner Laura Anderson heartbroken. Their split came after Megan was embroiled in a so-called 'feud' with his Dancing On Ice professional partner Vanessa Bauer, claiming on social media she tactically split from her own partner as a publicity stunt. She has spent the past week sharing sun-soaked holiday photos from her recent trip to Bali, Indonesia. And Kelly Gale gave her Instagram followers serious FOMO on Thursday, when she posed for yet another sizzling bikini snap. The Victoria's Secret model, 23, stripped down to a skimpy white two-piece while posing in a outdoor spa at her Uluwatu resort. Scroll down for video Wish you were here? Kelly Gale flaunted her toned abs in a tiny white bikini while on holiday in Bali, Indonesia earlier this week In the picture, Kelly gazed seductively into the camera while showcasing her ample cleavage, toned legs and well-defined abs. The Swedish-Australian beauty proudly flaunted her holiday tan, and also styled her dark hair in loose, beachy waves. It's unclear if the picture is a throwback, however, as Kelly shared Instagram Story posts on Thursday tagged in Stockholm, Sweden. Serious FOMO! Kelly has spent the past week sharing sun-soaked holiday snaps from Uluwatu Two places at once? It's unclear if the picture is a throwback, however, as Kelly shared Instagram Story posts on Thursday tagged in Stockholm, Sweden Kelly works hard to stay in such great shape, revealing last year she exercises six times a week and walks up to 30km per day. She told Vogue Australia in November: 'To be honest my exercise regimen doesn't change that much leading up to a [Victoria's Secret] show. 'I work out six days per week all year round and usually work out [for] two hours per day. On top of that, I like power walking 15-30km each day. 'In the lead up to the show itself, I walk closer to 30km every day, and work out [for] two hours per day.' Dedication: Kelly works hard to stay in such great shape, revealing last year she exercises six times a week and walks up to 30km per day. Pictured backstage at a Victoria's Secret show Back in October 2018, Kelly revealed on Instagram she had just spent four hours straight exercising in the gym. She shared a photo of herself in an empty studio, adding that she was 'proud' to have pushed herself to her limits. 'Just doubled up class and then I doubled up the double up,' she wrote in the caption. 'What I'm trying to say is I just smashed four hours and I'm proud.' Married At First Sight's Samuel Ball has confirmed that elements of his 'affair' with Ines Basic were scripted by producers. In his first radio interview in months, the 26-year-old tradesman revealed he was told what to say during the pair's secret rendezvous. During an appearance on Fitzy & Wippa, Sam alleged that MAFS producers would pull him aside and tell him, 'It would sound great if you say this...' Storyline exposed! Married At First Sight's Samuel Ball (right) has confirmed that elements of his 'affair' with Ines Basic (left) were scripted by producers. Pictured on the show Sam claimed that, after repeating the producers' suggested lines, situations would naturally 'progress' towards a storyline. This extraordinary admission appears to prove that Ines and Sam's 'affair' would not have happened without behind-the-scenes intervention. Of course, in the program's final edit, the relationship was shown developing naturally as both contestants found themselves in unhappy marriages. 'It was definitely pushed and manipulated. Like the whole show, we all know it's not completely real,' Sam said, adding that he and Ines never even had sex. Breaking his silence: During an appearance on Fitzy & Wippa, Sam (centre) claimed producers would pull him aside and tell him, 'It would sound great if you say this...' Pictured with Ryan 'Fitzy' Fitzgerald (left) and Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli (right) in the Nova 96.9 studio on Friday Sam, who has previously starred in Home and Away and Netflix drama Secret City, also addressed rumours Channel Nine hired him as a professional actor. He admitted that he was sometimes 'acting' on camera (for example, when he body-shamed Elizabeth Sobinoff at their wedding) but wasn't on the show as an actor. When asked about the audition process, Sam confirmed that he signed up himself because he 'genuinely wanted to meet someone' and wasn't put forward by a talent agent. 'Manipulated': After repeating the producers' suggested lines, Sam claimed that situations would naturally 'progress' towards a storyline. Pictured right: Ines Basic Elsewhere in the interview, Sam spoke about the personal toll of being portrayed as a 'villain' on Married At First Sight. He said his parents had been 'great' and 'supportive' amid the backlash, but acknowledged that his mother was 'upset' by what had happened. Looking ahead to the reunion dinner party, which was filmed in January and will air next month, Sam confirmed he does return and that viewers can expect 'fireworks'. 'It will be massive,' he added. 'You will [see me again].' She is one of Britain's finest actresses. And Gemma Arterton looked absolutely flawless as she stepped out for the UK premiere of Vita & Virginia at the 33rd BFI FLARE Film Festival at BFI Southbank, London on Thursday. The star, 33, showed off her style credentials in a figure-flattering chocolate brown Emilia Wickstead jumpsuit as she arrived on the red carpet. Wow: Gemma Arterton, 33, looked absolutely flawless as she stepped out for the UK premiere of Vita & Virginia at the 33rd BFI FLARE Film Festival at BFI Southbank, London on Thursday All focus was on Gemma in the sensational one-piece which showed off her figure to perfection. The jumpsuit put focus on her tiny waist and structured sleeves, and she added to the look with a pair of metallic gold high heels. Gemma enhanced her porcelain features with a dewy complexion, complete with striking scarlet lipstick. Her glossy brunette looks were tousled to perfection and fell effortlessly upon her shoulders. Fashionista: The star showed off her style credentials in a figure-flattering chocolate brown Emilia Wickstead jumpsuit as she arrived on the red carpet Commanding attention: All focus was on Gemma in the sensational one-piece which showed off her figure to perfection Fashionista: The jumpsuit put focus on her tiny waist and structured sleeves, and she added to the look with a pair of metallic gold high heels Vita and Virginia centres on the romantic affair between Virginia Woolf, played by Elizabeth Elizabeth Debicki, and socialite Vita Sackville-West, played by Gemma, in the 1920s. Gemma shot to fame starring in comedy St Trinians in 2007, before scoring worldwide stardom for her turn as Strawberry Fields in Quantum Of Solace a year later in 2008. The actress has since admitted the early stages of her career were more about her learning what roles she didn't want to take on. Speaking in an interview with The Guardian newspaper earlier this week, she explained: 'The first six years of my career were all about me learning what I didnt want to do. Beauty: Gemma enhanced her porcelain features with a dewy complexion, complete with striking scarlet lipstick Mane attraction: Her glossy brunette looks were tousled to perfection and fell effortlessly upon her shoulders Like a pro! Gemma looked sensational as she posed up a storm at the premiere New movie: Vita and Virginia centres on the romantic affair between Virginia Woolf, played by Elizabeth Elizabeth Debicki, and socialite Vita Sackville-West, played by Gemma, in the 1920s 'If Id been really strong-minded back then, I would have turned them down. But I wasnt, so I own that. I think self-belief is very rare in young actors. 'Whenever I meet a really confident young actor, I just think, "F**k, yes, go on". I wasnt that person when I was younger. I wish I was.' Although she admitted she 'doesn't regret' taking on the Bond Girl that was largely the launchpad of her career, Gemma said she 'could have done better, really'. Since her early days in the business, the actress has gone on to secure numerous stage roles, including Made In Dagenham, Nell Gwynn and Under The Skin. Star: Gemma shot to fame starring in comedy St Trinians in 2007, before scoring worldwide stardom for her turn as Strawberry Fields in Quantum Of Solace a year later in 2008 Charo pledged to keep on performing in her first on-camera appearance since her husband Kjell Rasten's suicide a month ago. 'It's been a month since my husband died,' the 68-year-old entertainer said in a clip she posted on social media Wednesday. 'It's very, very hard. I want to thank you with all my heart for your help, your prayers, your support - that kept me going. 'I want to let you know that my husband supported my music ... because he [knew] that I'm happy when I'm performing,' said the veteran entertainer. 'In his honor, I want to share with you, that I will continue - for his legacy, and for the love that I have for entertaining and making people happy.' Scroll below for video The latest: Charo, 68, pledged to keep on performing Wednesday in her first on-camera appearance about a month since her husband Kjell Rasten's suicide Charo, who said she's been 'meditating all this month,' wrapped up in saying, 'Thank you with all my heart and God bless you all. I really need you and you were there.' The Molina de Segura, Spain native wrote in the caption, 'Hola amigos, this message is to let you know that I love you all! Thank you for your support. I want to tell you that life is very beautiful and we should enjoy every Single day and I look forward to sharing my days with you, my friends! Mucho amor!' Rasten, who was 78, died February 18 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after shooting himself at the Beverly Hills, California home the couple lived in, TMZ reported. Rasten was despondent amid health issues that severely impacted his quality of life, Charo said in a statement confirming his tragic passing. Getting through a tough time: Charo said she's been 'meditating all this month' following the tragic occurrence Better times: Charo and her longtime husband appeared on Celebrity Wife Swap 4 years ago 'In recent years, his health began to decline and he developed a rare and horrible skin disease called bullous pemphigoid,' she said. 'He also became very depressed. That, along with the many medications he needed to take, became too much for him, and he ended his suffering.' Describing Rasten as 'an amazing man' who 'dedicated his life to loving and supporting his family,' Charo made clear that the suicide took his loved ones by surprise. Glitzy: Charo and Rasten were dressed to the nines at a 1985 event in Hollywood Sad end: Rasten, who was 78, died February 18 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after shooting himself at the Beverly Hills, California home the couple lived in, TMZ reported 'There are no words to describe what we are feeling now,' she said. 'None of us had any idea this could happen to such a wonderful, kind and generous man.' The Love Boat alum, whose real name is Maria del Rosario Pilar Martinez Molina Baeza, implored people to be proactive with their loved ones who might show signs of depression. 'Please, if anyone you know and love is suffering from depression or illness, hold them close, tell them you love them with all your heart and that the world is better because they are in it. Get any help you can. Suicide is not the answer.' For confidential support in the U.S., call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Rita Ora has 'rekindled her relationship with musician ex-boyfriend Andrew Watt, five months after their split'. The singer, 28, was said to have been left 'heartbroken' earlier this month when it emerged Hollywood actor Andrew Garfield, 35, had called time on their four-month fling for a 'more private life'. But the Hot Right Now hitmaker has now moved on from the upset and ran back into the arms of her songwriter ex in the wake of the split to give their romance a second shot. Reunited: Rita Ora has 'rekindled her relationship with musician ex-boyfriend Andrew Watt, five months after their split' Insiders told The Sun that they didn't want to 'throw away what they had' and have vowed to spend more time together now after breaking up because they were both 'so busy'. The source explained: 'They know that what they have is the real deal. 'Their friends all get on with each other and it just seemed crazy to them to throw away what they had. 'Her string of dates with Andrew Garfield really put things in perspective. She and Andrew Watt have always remained good friends.' MailOnline has contacted Rita's representatives for comment. Rita and Watt split in September, with the star revealing her single status during an appearance on the Jonathan Ross Show. Case of the ex: The singer, 28, was said to have been left 'heartbroken' earlier this month when it emerged Hollywood actor Andrew Garfield, 35, had called time on their four-month fling The host, 58, addressed Rita's relationship by saying: 'Youre single at the moment. Fred from First Dates here is known for fixing people up on dates. 'Fred you must have a nice young guy we can set Rita up with?', to which Rita confessed: 'I'm blushing'. Rita was first romantically linked to Watt when they were spotted enjoying a romantic getaway to Rome last year. Following their split, Rita struck up a brief romance with Amazing Spider-Man star Garfield - with the pair dating for four months. They called time on their romance in March whilst Rita was on the other side of the world in Australia, where she launched her Phoenix World Tour. It's believed the actor split from the singer because he wanted to lead a 'more private life'. Boomerang romance: the Hot Right Now hitmaker has now moved on from the upset and ran back into the arms of her songwriter ex in the wake of the split (pictured in January) A source told The Sun at the time: 'Rita is cut up about the whole situation. Andrew split up with her recently and its been hard going as they had spent a lot of time together. 'They spent Christmas together and she thought things were going well between them. Her career is going from strength to strength and lives her life in the spotlight but he told her he wanted to lead a more private life. 'Rita had tried to do that and had kept their romance off social media but things didnt work out.' A separate source insisted to MailOnline that the split was amicable. Garfield quickly moved on from Rita with actress and comedian Aisling Bea, 35, with the pair seen 'kissing and canoodling' at a showing of West End musical Hamilton at London's Victoria Palace Theatre earlier this month. An onlooker told MailOnline: 'They were very cosy. At one point he appeared to kiss her and then playfully kiss and caress her neck.' Unlucky-in-love: Prior to her relationships with Watt and Garfield, Rita has had several high-profile romances 'They were deep in conversation before the show and looked really happy to be with one another.' 'To be honest, they looked like a normal couple who were very comfortable with each other and in one another's company.' Prior to her relationships with Watt and Garfield, Rita has had several high-profile romances. The pop princess dated rapper Ricky Hilfiger, 28, the son of fashion mogul Tommy Hilfiger for just over a year before calling it quits in July 2015. Rita was in a relationship with Scottish mega-DJ Calvin Harris, 35 - real name Adam Wiles - for 14 months from April 2013 to June 2014. The singer also dated Rob Kardashian, 32, for just over a year from November 2011 to December 2012, with the split becoming extremely high-profile when the now-reclusive reality star accused her of cheating on him with 'over 20 guys'. Rita is also rumoured to have flings with David Beckham's best friend, football agent Dave Gardner, 43, and son Brooklyn, 20. Their co-created Canadian comedy hit TV screens in 2015. And four years following its debut, the upcoming sixth season of Schitt's Creed will be its last. Dan Levy, who co-created the film with his father Euguene, took to Twitter to announce the show's end on Thursday. All done: Dan Levy, who co-created the film with his father Euguene,72, took to Twitter to announce the end of Schitt's Creek on Thursday. They are seen in May in 2016 In his Twitter post, Dan announced the show was returning for it's sixth season, before breaking the news of its ending. 'We also wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that we have decided season six will be our last.' The Toronto-born native noted that the show's ending was a decision made presumably by himself and his father. 'It's not lost on us what a rare privilege it is in this industry to get to decide when your show should take its final bow. ' 'What a rare privilege': The Toronto-born native noted that the show's ending was a decision made presumably by himself and his father In the midst of his announcement, the actor revealed that the final season will have 14 episodes, and thanked his fans for their 'overwhelming love and generosity.' Dan and his actor father's show premiered in 2015, on CBC Television. The show earned eight Canadian Screen Awards and one Bell Media Award. Grateful: In the midst of his announcement, the actor revealed that the final season will have 14 episodes, and thanked his fans for their 'overwhelming love and generosity' (L-R) Eugene, Noah Reid, Annie Murphy, Catherine O'Hara, Daniel and Emily Hampshire The series followed a wealthy family who lost their money, and were forced to relocate to a new, less attractive location. The series co-starred Annie Murphy, Chris Elliot, Catherine O'Hara and Jennifer Robertson, among others. In addition to creating and executive producing the show, Dan and Eugene also starred in the show, alongside Dan's sister Sarah. She had a starring role in Dolce & Gabbana's Spring/ Summer 2018 ad campaign, and has walked the catwalk for them in Fashion Week. And Lady Kitty Spencer continued to do right by the brand as she attended their party in Rome, Italy on Thursday. Exuding elegance in a cream trouser suit, Princess Diana's niece, 28, was a vision of beauty on the outing. Stunning: She had a starring role in Dolce & Gabbana's SS18 campaign. And Lady Kitty Spencer continued to do right by the brand as she attended their party in Rome on Thursday Lady Kitty looked sensational in the tailored two-piece, with the blazer featuring a subtle yet stylish leopard print trim on the lapels. The flared trousers skimmed over her lean legs, whilst a pair of platform heels boosted her model frame. The stunning socialite completed the look by toting a large black handbag and styling her glossy golden locks in loose waves that framed her pretty features. Hair she comes: Exuding elegance in a cream trouser suit, Princess Diana's niece, 28, was a vision of beauty on the outing, turning heads as she walked in flipping her hair The outing came after she revealed that she feels empowered by earning and spending her own money - despite her father having a fortune of more than 100 million. In an interview with this month's Harper's Bazaar UK, Lady Kitty shared her thoughts on social media, women's rights and feminism and revealed why being self-sufficient is so important to her. 'It symbolises my independence. It means that I do not have to depend on or answer to anybody. I cannot be silenced or bargained with or threatened,' said the daughter of Earl Spencer, whose fortune is estimated at 116M. 'It means that if I want to work back-to-back, day and night, for weeks on end, then I can do so. It also means that during quieter times, if I want to go home to South Africa to lay low with my family and read a ton of books, that option is available too.' 'It gives me a balance and a rhythm that I have a say in. It makes me feel as though I am in command of my own life - or as in command as any of us actually ever is.' Wild thing! Lady Kitty looked sensational in the tailored two-piece, with the blazer featuring a subtle yet stylish leopard print trim on the lapels Lady Kitty was born in the UK but raised in South Africa. The Spencers relocated to South Africa in 1995. When Earl Spencer divorced Kitty's mother, Victoria Aitken, she stayed behind in Cape Town while her father moved back to the UK. Kitty later attended university in Cape Town, studying psychology, English literature and politics. She eventually moved to London and graduated with a Master in luxury brand management from the European business school of Regent's University in London. David Letterman reveals he stuck around on network television about 10 years too long, during a new interview with Ellen DeGeneres. Letterman quit in 2015 after 33 years as a late-night host on CBS and NBC, but he revealed on Thursday's episode of Ellen that his mistake was he, 'stayed on television way too long.' When Ellen responded by saying, 'That's not true,' he said it was, adding, 'It turns out, nobody had the guts to fire me, and I should have left like 10 years ago. Too long on TV: David Letterman admits in a new interview with Ellen that he stayed on television 'way too long' 'You want to make sure you have some energy to direct towards other things,' he said, before adding that he's essentially the opposite of Ellen. 'Now you, nothing but energy, are doing other things, while you're on television,' Letterman, 71, added. 'And that's great. I did not. All I cared about was myself.' He added that when the show was gone, he realized, 'I've been looking through the wrong end of the telescope.' More energy: 'You want to make sure you have some energy to direct towards other things,' he said, before adding that he's essentially the opposite of Ellen He says it took leaving the show for him to realize that there's more to life than asking some celebrity to 'tell us about your pet beaver.' When Ellen asked who that guest was, the always quick-witted Letterman responded, 'Martha Stewart.' Ellen added that his new Netflix show, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, has a finite amount of episodes and it's not something he's doing every day, which opens him up to doing 'really great work' with Habitat for Humanity. Pet beaver: He says it took leaving the show for him to realize that there's more to life than asking some celebrity to 'tell us about your pet beaver' Ellen showed photos of the late night legend working in Houston, with Letterman adding, 'It's a lot of fun.' Before Letterman came on, Ellen shared a clip from her very first appearance on Letterman's original show, Late Show with David Letterman in 1993. She warned viewers that people wore 'big clothes' in that era, before showing the clip where she was wearing a large brown coat, telling a joke about a fly on a plane. Early appearance: She warned viewers that people wore 'big clothes' in that era, before showing the clip where she was wearing a large brown coat, telling a joke about a fly on a plane Ellen also got the late night legend to play along in a game called Burning Questions, where, for every 'honest answer' he gives, Shutterfly will donate $1,000 to Habitat for Humanity. Ellen's first question was about his first crush, who he revealed was a woman named Susie Franks, who he loved all through high school but he 'screwed it up.' He also revealed the most rebellious thing he did as a teenager was skateboarding from the highest point in Indiana through a grave yard, which Ellen admitted, 'wasn't that rebellious.' Honesty: Ellen also got the late night legend to play along in a game called Burning Questions, where, for every 'honest answer' he gives, Shutterfly will donate $1,000 to Habitat for Humanity He added that he's always looking for 'skin problems' when he looks in the mirror and that his favorite job before getting into show business was 'sacking groceries at the Atlas Supermarket,' a job he loved, and the owner, Sid Mauer was like a father to him. He also added that it drives his son crazy that he's always trying to get him to dance, and when asked what he would ask President Trump if he got to interview him again, he said he was 'disappointed in his administration. He added that he would say to him, 'Don, why are you such a putz?' and in response to the final question, the one thing he loves that everyone hates is 'peanut butter and Worcestershire sandwiches.' For his honesty, Ellen 'rounded up' his answers and Shutterfly donated $20,000 to Habitat for Humanity. First crush: Ellen's first question was about his first crush, who he revealed was a woman named Susie Franks, who he loved all through high school but he 'screwed it up' Burkina's capital Ouagadougou has been hit three times, with the latest attack targeting the army headquarters in March 2018 A Burkina Faso rights group on Thursday accused the military of carrying out the "summary execution" of at least 60 people in an anti-jihadist operation last month. On February 5, the army said it had "neutralised 146 terrorists" following a jihadist attack had killed 14 civilians near the country's northern border with Mali. But an investigation by the Burkinabe Movement for the Rights of Man and the People (MBDHP) found no evidence of any fighting in the area. "We were able to confirm on the ground that there were cases of summary executions of at least 60 people out of the 146," MBDHP's president Chrysogone Zougmore told a press conference. Most of the fatalities were from the nomadic Fulani herding community, the group said, citing relatives and locals it had interviewed. The military had said its raids were conducted in northern areas of Kain, Banh and Bomboro, but Zougmore said they found no evidence of any fighting there. - 'Shell casings' - Burkina Faso "We were told there was fighting which led to the neutralisation of 146 people. We searched the combat zones, and found no sign of this. "On the other hand, we picked up an enormous quantity of shell casings near the homes of the people who were killed," he said. "Clearly... these people were, in fact, executed." Such "summary and extra-judicial executions" were "extremely serious", he said. The NGO also questioned the military's original motive for the operation -- the purported deaths of 14 civilians in the district of Kain, in Yatenta province. "We approached the people in those areas, and they said that... nobody in their area had been killed" on the dates cited by the army, said Zougmore. Contacted by AFP, a government spokesman said Ouagadougou "noted" the allegations but had no immediate reason to question the "version of the facts" given by the military in May. Military judicial investigators have opened an inquiry into the incident as has the justice ministry. - State of emergency - The allegations followed a Human Rights Watch last year, which said the armed forces had carried out extrajudicial killings during anti-terror operations in 2017 and 2018. Jihadist violence first emerged in northern Burkina Faso in March 2015 and has since spread to the east, leaving more than 300 people dead. The capital Ouagadougou has been hit three times in attacks that have killed nearly 60 people. The latest attack in March 2018 targeted the army headquarters in the city centre. Since January 1, a state of emergency has been in force in 14 of the country's 45 provinces -- which has granted the security forces enhanced powers to search homes at any time of the day or night. Ross told lawmakers he had no 'nefarious' purpose in seeking to collect citizenship data US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Thursday denied accusations he lied to Congress about his decision to collect citizenship data in next year's national census. Ross's denial came shortly before the Supreme Court is due to wade into the controversy, after federal judges blocked him asking about citizenship status in next year's census, ruling that his decision-making process was unlawful. Democrats, who now control the House of Representatives, accuse Ross of working with White House officials to devise a census question that critics fear will dissuade ethnic minorities from responding and being counted, while trying to hide this motive from Congress. Census results are used to apportion congressional seats and federal funding across the United States and thus are key to the balance of power. Ross has repeatedly testified that he added the question following a Justice Department request in December 2017. But, in a stinging opinion in January, a federal judge called this explanation a "sham," and saying Ross pressured his own staff to ask the Justice Department to request the citizenship question. "You are complicit in the Trump administration's attempt to suppress the growing political power of the non-white population," Representative Lacy Clay of Missouri said at Thursday's hearing. "You should in my opinion resign." Clay cited an internal email from May 2017 -- seven months before the Justice Department request -- in which Ross spoke of "my months-old request that we add a citizenship question." Ross denied he was behind the Justice Department's request. "I have never intentionally misled Congress or intentionally said anything incorrect under oath," Ross said. He said the proposed question did not ask respondents whether they were in the United States legally, and confidential responses would never be provided to law enforcement officials. "I want to be clear we intend to count as many people as possible," Ross said, noting that he had increased the budget for the census, including a $500 million advertising campaign. In the main decennial census, the government has not asked about citizenship since 1950, although the question is included on smaller survey's on a fraction of US populace. Joyce Banda served as Malawi's president between 2012 and 2014 Malawis former president Joyce Banda has pulled out of the May 21 presidential race and endorsed opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera, who heads the Malawi Congress Party. Speaking to AFP, Banda, who heads the People's Party, confirmed her decision, saying: "Yes, it is true". But she declined to comment further ahead of a joint news conference with Chakwera on Saturday. In a joint statement, the two parties said they had begun talks in 2015, a year after Banda lost the presidency, partly as a result of a huge multimillion-dollar corruption case known as the "Cashgate" scandal. She fled the country into self-imposed exile but returned to Malawi last year, saying the allegations against her were politically motivated. She has never faced any charges. Six weeks ago, Banda and Vice President Saulos Chilima said they had formed a four-party alliance in a bid to take on President Peter Mutharika in the May vote. But it didn't last long, with Banda announcing just days later that she had submitting papers to run as a presidential candidate. Now 68, Banda first came to power in April 2012 following the sudden death of then president Bingu wa Mutharika. At the time, she was serving as vice president with his death propelling her into the top office where she served until May 2014. Turkish authorities requested red notices for 18 suspects in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in November 2018, as well as another two in December, and Interpol has issued 20 Turkey on Thursday said Interpol had issued red notices for 20 people in connection with the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor and critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 last year. An Interpol red notice informs the police agency's member states about a suspected criminal wanted in one country. Turkish authorities requested red notices for 18 suspects on November 15 and for two on December 21 in 2018, the justice ministry said. Interpol issued the notices on March 1, the ministry said on Twitter, without giving further details on the suspects. Turkey has said the journalist was killed by a team of 15 Saudis who strangled him. His remains have yet to be found. Eleven men are on trial in Saudi Arabia, accused of involvement in the killing. The attorney-general is seeking the death penalty for five of them. A report by Kerem Navot says that nearly 47 percent of the Palestinian land requisitioned under rules permitting seizure for "urgent military needs" is used for settlement housing or access roads Israel grabbed over 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) of Palestinian land in the past 50 years, citing security needs, but nearly half has gone to its West Bank settlements, an Israeli NGO said Thursday. A report by Kerem Navot, which monitors Israeli settlement and government land appropriations in the occupied West Bank, covers seizure orders issued between 1969 and 2014. It says that nearly 47 percent of the land requisitioned under rules permitting seizure for "urgent military needs" is today used for settlement housing or access roads. Some was initially used to house military infrastructure that was later passed to settlers, it says. Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day war and today about 450,000 Israelis live there in settlements deemed illegal under international law. The Israeli military told AFP on Thursday that it was unaware of the report but that it would be "studied by the competent authorities". The report's author, researcher Dror Etkes, said that the first wave of settlement took place under the relatively doveish Labour party. "The Labour party, between 1967 and 1977, is the party that establishes the concept of seizure of land for settlements," he said at press briefing ahead of the report's publication. Seizures peaked, however, between 1979 and 1983 under the right-wing Likud, he said. Kerem Navot says that under humanitarian law such requisitions must be temporary and the owners must be compensated. But it says that its research shows that 60 percent of the Palestinian land appropriated by Israel is being held indefinitely and there is no "fair compensation mechanism". Even the setting up of the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo peace accords did not halt the seizure of land supposedly under PA control, Etkes said. And in the rare case when seizures were cancelled, "not once was the land returned in the same state it had been prior to confiscation," he said. The speed at which jihadist violence has spread in Burkina Faso has taken many by surprise An alarming rise in jihadist attacks in Burkina Faso is posing a mounting threat to security in three of its coastal neighbours, according to security sources and analysts. Benin, Ghana and Togo have so far been spared the Islamist violence that has hit their landlocked neighbour since 2015 -- a fallout from instability in Mali, a haven for groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State group. Yet the speed at which violence has spread in Burkina Faso has taken many by surprise. In recent months, attacks have occurred in the eastern region, which borders Benin and Togo, sparking fears that the jihadist bushfire in the Sahel is heading towards the coast. Security fears have increased since the killing of four Burkinabe customs officials and a Spanish priest who was returning from a meeting in Togo's capital, Lome. They were killed just after crossing the border. Bakary Sambe, the head of the Timbuktu Institute in Senegal's capital, Dakar, said the upsurge in violence "seems to indicate that Burkina Faso is the last obstacle that these groups want to get over to reach the coast". Map locating Ghana, Togo, Benin and Burkina Faso Northern Ghana, Togo and Benin could become "ideal staging points" for jihadists hiding in forested areas or isolated rural locations along the porous border, he added. "What's more, stretching their area of operations far from the current epicentre of jihadism could allow them access to the sea via west African ports" and possibly new networks for acquiring weapons, he told AFP. - Border activity - Ghana and Togo went on high alert against attacks after gunmen from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) killed 19 people in the Ivorian resort of Grand-Bassam in March 2016. In the W Regional Park, which straddles Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso, rising militant activity has been detected in recent years. Police have been the victim of attacks in Burkina Faso The Thomas More Institute, a European think-tank, said this month that "fighters from Mali reportedly conducted a reconnaissance operation in 2014-2015 reaching as far as Benin". In December last year, four alleged jihadists from Burkina Faso, Mali and Ivory Coast were arrested in Mali on suspicion of preparing to attack New Year celebrations. Other sources point to "recent incursions of small groups" from Burkina Faso to villages in northern Togo and Benin, where locals have been asked to stop selling alcohol. Radical messages have also been preached in mosques, they added. Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo and Benin last year conducted joint operations against banditry and cross-border criminality, leading to the arrest of more than 200 people. Several were suspected of jihadist activities. - Real threat - One senior Togolese security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said military reinforcements had been sent to the north since the Spanish priest was killed. He gave no further details but said of the security situation in Burkina Faso: "The threat is real. Everyone is on the alert. "The Togolese and Beninese security forces are working in close collaboration with the Burkinabe. A jihadist attack on a hotel in Ouagadougou in January 2016 killed 29 people including foreigners "Patrols have been organised regularly in recent times in border villages, especially at night-time." Ghana Army spokesman Colonel Eric Aggrey Quarshie said the military was "on top of" protecting the northern border. "Everything is under control," he added, without elaborating. But Ghana's National Disaster Management Organisation said it was beginning to see the effects of violence in Burkina Faso. In recent weeks, more than 300 people, including 176 children, have sought refuge in the Bawku area of northeast Ghana. - Breeding ground - Most attacks in Burkina Faso go unclaimed but are blamed on Ansarul Islam, the Group to Support Islam and Muslims (JNIM) or the Islamic State in the Greater Sahel (ISGS). Ansarul Islam emerged near the Mali border in December 2016. The JNIM has sworn allegiance to AQIM, while ISGS was behind the deadly ambush of US troops in western Niger in 2017. Rinaldo Depagne, West Africa project director at the International Crisis Group, said the exact nature of the relationship between these groups and others was unclear. But he said the militants were exploiting the "weak link" -- the government in Ouagadougou, which does not have the means to confront the problem on its own. "The increase in fronts allows them to avoid the military response from Western armies and forces of the G5 Sahel group (Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad)," he added. A wider geographical spread of militants is complicated further by the involvement of criminal groups which have long operated in border areas. They have joined the jihadists as cover for their activities such as weapons and drug smuggling or illegal gold mining. Several analysts said poverty, illiteracy and the geographical remoteness of the border areas could make them fertile breeding grounds for radical ideologies. The same factors helped the development of Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria. strs-cl/phz/ri File picture of Ali Bongo, who fell ill with a stroke last October while visiting Saudi Arabia Gabonese President Ali Bongo, who is convalescing in Morocco after suffering a stroke five months ago, will return home this weekend for the third time since he fell ill, his office said on Thursday. Bongo "will leave Morocco to return to Gabon on Saturday March 23," presidential spokesman Ike Ngouoni said in a statement. "(He) is delighted to return to his fellow countrymen... and wishes to give his warmest thanks... to the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, for his excellent welcome and incomparable support throughout his stay." Bongo, 60, was taken ill on October 24 while visiting Saudi Arabia. He has returned only twice since then, staying less than 48 hours each time, although the government has insisted that he is in good shape. In late February, Bongo led a cabinet meeting during which a raft of appointments were announced and several close aides were dismissed, although no media were on hand for the event. His prolonged absence has stoked concern about a vacuum of power, apparently sparking a brief attempted coup by renegade soldiers on January 7. It has also sparked rumours that he has a body double for public appearances -- a scenario that the president's office vigorously dismissed on March 7. Bongo took office after an election in 2009 that followed the death of his father, former president Omar Bongo, who took office in 1967. DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Sen. Bernie Sanders has hired four key Iowa staffers and three veterans in New Hampshire, building out a team of old and new staff as he makes his second Democratic bid for president. The Iowa team, in particular, showcases the Vermont senator's emphasis on grassroots organizing and an effort to diversify his staff following allegations of sexism and sexual harassment against some of Sanders' top 2016 staffers. Leading the team is Misty Rebik, Sanders' Iowa state director. She previously worked on LGBTQ rights and education advocacy for One Iowa, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, and served as a regional director for Planned Parenthood, where she created the organization's first transgender care program in Iowa. In 2018, Rebik worked as campaign manager for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cathy Glasson, a union leader who embraced Sanders' progressive policy priorities in her failed bid. Another new addition is Jess Mazour, who will serve as Sanders' political director. Mazour was most recently lead organizer on the farm and environment team at Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a progressive advocacy group, and was a Sanders delegate in 2016. Her hire underscores the emphasis on rural issues that the senator has made a focus of his 2020 bid as he hopes to defeat President Donald Trump. "I've spent over six years organizing grassroots rural Iowans impacted by factory farming, corporate agriculture, and other rural issues in parts of the state that went for Trump in 2016," Mazour said in a statement. "It's clear Iowans want clean water, health care, living wages for workers and fair prices for farmers." Sanders has also brought back Evan Burger to serve as his Iowa caucus director and Pete D'Alessandro to serve as a senior adviser to his team. Both worked on Sanders' 2016 campaign, Burger as the senator's advance director and D'Alessandro as his campaign coordinator. Burger most recently worked for Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement as a senior organizer, while D'Alessandro made a failed bid for Congress last cycle. 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders greets supporters after a rally, Saturday, March 9, 2019, at the Iowa state fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa. (AP Photo/Matthew Putney) The returning hires are notable, as many of Sanders' 2016 staffers have been snapped up by other Democratic presidential hopefuls. At least three of his 2016 Iowa campaign staff, including his former caucus director, Brendan Summers, went to other campaigns, while other staffers don't plan to return to politics this cycle. Sanders' previous state director, Robert Becker, was dismissed after being accused of sexual assault by a former staffer, an allegation he denied. Becker was just one of a number of high-profile Sanders staffers accused of improper behavior during the 2016 campaign, and a number of former staffers signed a letter requesting a meeting with Sanders to discuss what they said was "sexual violence and harassment on the campaign," according to Politico . The senator publicly apologized, and his campaign now has protocols intended to address some of the issues that staffers faced in 2016. Sanders recently made his first swing through the state as an official candidate, drawing hundreds of fans for three rallies across Iowa. His team said Sanders enters the Democratic primary race in a stronger position than 2016 - when he orchestrated a surprise second-place finish in the caucuses that catapulted his campaign to national prominence - and facing more scrutiny, as a top-tier candidate. In New Hampshire, three veterans of Sanders' 2016 run joined his 2020 campaign there. Sanders won the New Hampshire primary by 22 points in 2016. Joe Caiazzo will be the state director for Sanders after working as the Rhode Island state director for Hillary Clinton's 2016 general election campaign. Carli Stevenson, a seasoned New Hampshire politico, will be the deputy state director and communications director for the campaign. The campaign has also retained Kurt Ehrenberg as its New Hampshire senior adviser. Ehrenberg was the New Hampshire state director for the unsuccessful effort to get Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016. He then became the New Hampshire political director for Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign. ___ Associated Press writer Hunter Woodall in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report. WASHINGTON (AP) - A look at where investigations related to President Donald Trump stand and what may lie ahead for him: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW The Justice Department expects to make a redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on the Russia investigation public Thursday. Attorney General William Barr will hold a 9:30 a.m. press conference accompanied by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversaw the investigation since Mueller's appointment in May 2017. The nearly 400-page report will be sent to Congress and made available to the public. It will be the first time America gets to hear directly from Mueller on what he found over a nearly two-year investigation into Russian election interference and the Trump campaign. The report will detail the evidence Mueller uncovered on "both sides" of the question of whether Trump obstructed justice. It could lay out how prosecutors viewed the Trump campaign's attempts to capitalize off the Kremlin's interference, even if they fell short of criminal activity. President Donald Trump arrives for a Opportunity Zone conference with state, local, tribal, and community leaders South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, on the White House complex, Wednesday, April 17, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) Barr's credibility is on the line as the public will be able to compare the redacted report from Mueller to a letter Barr released last month detailing the special counsel's principal conclusions. Trump's lawyer-spokesman Rudy Giuliani says the president's legal team has prepared a document to release after Mueller's report is made public. ___ DID THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN COLLUDE WITH RUSSIA? According to Barr, the answer is no. In his letter dated March 24, Barr quotes from Mueller's report saying the investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." The letter does not detail what Mueller learned about a broad range of Trump associates who had Russia-related contacts during the 2016 presidential campaign and transition period. It also doesn't answer why several of those people lied to federal investigators or Congress during the Russia probe. Barr is confronting concerns that his four-page letter unduly sanitized the full report in Trump's favor, including on the key question of whether the president obstructed justice. House Democrats have approved subpoenas for Mueller's entire report and any exhibits and other underlying evidence that the Justice Department might withhold. ___ IS TRUMP OUT OF THE WOODS? No. Trump also plays a central role in a separate case in New York, where prosecutors have implicated him in a crime. They say Trump directed his personal lawyer Michael Cohen to make illegal hush-money payments to two women as a way to quash potential sex scandals during the campaign. New York prosecutors also are looking into Trump's inaugural fund. Congressional investigations also are swirling around the president. Democrats have launched a sweeping probe of Trump, an aggressive investigation that threatens to shadow the president through the 2020 election season. ___ For more in-depth information, follow AP coverage at https://apnews.com/TrumpInvestigations SAN JUAN LA LAGUNA, Guatemala (AP) - Friends who were with an Englishwoman found dead near a Guatemalan highland lake in her final days recall her as a spiritual person who spread joy to others, and said numerous details of the case suggest to them that it was an accident. Those who helped search for Catherine Shaw, 23, of Witney, England, said several things didn't seem to square with possible foul play, such as that her sweater was found near the body carefully folded with her rings inside. Also found nearby was the puppy she adopted as a sidekick the day she arrived in San Juan La Laguna. Now they're looking for someone else to take care of the small dog, which they've named "Cat," after Shaw's nickname. "She was like a fairy who went around spreading happiness," said Elena Consolini, describing Shaw as relaxed and without conflicts. "I thought she seemed a bit sad the last days, but we didn't talk much," Consolini added. "We just played music, without speaking." She was among the two dozen or so people who gathered to say a final goodbye to Shaw on Tuesday evening, lighting 23 candles - one for each year Shaw spent on Earth. In this Tuesday, March 12, 2019 photo, Elena Consolini, right, is comforted by Francisco Rosales as they attend a memorial for their friend Catherine Shaw at a hotel in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala. Shaw, an English tourist whose body was found near a Guatemala highland lake popular with travelers, died of hemorrhaging resulting from a traumatic brain injury, according to an autopsy report completed Tuesday. (AP Photo/Santiago Billy) Later, around a campfire on a hotel terrace, they told stories about their time with her. As the night advanced they held hands, sang, took a group photo and said, in unison, "See you later, Cat!" The informal wake took place a day after Shaw's unclothed body was found in the shrubs near a mountain overlook above Lake Atitlan, found four days after she was reported missing. An autopsy found she died of hemorrhaging from traumatic brain injury. Authorities have not said what may have caused that, though the doctor who carried out the procedure told The Associated Press the body had no gunshot or stab wounds. The woman's father, Tarquin Shaw, identified her body Tuesday at a morgue about 30 miles (50 kilometers) away in the city of Quetzaltenango. He later visited the MayAchik hotel, a thatched-roof eco-lodge where she had been staying up the slope from the lake in San Juan La Laguna. Escorted by police, Shaw did not want to speak to reporters but told AP he was grateful to those who searched for his daughter and for the support of the Lucie Blackman Trust, which has been assisting the family. Catherine Shaw had arrived early last week at the hotel where she struck a deal with management to do volunteer work in exchange for lodging. She roomed with Consolini, an Italian who is the last known person to see Shaw alive and was the one who reported her missing last Thursday. "They didn't pay any attention. The police just said she would appear - 'Go looking for her, she must be around somewhere,'" Consolini said. She and others spent two days asking whomever they could to help, but it wasn't until Saturday a serious search was launched. Shaw's friends collected money to pay for a helicopter to fly over the area, and local Tzutujil indigenous residents, foreign tourists and some police officers scoured the mountainous terrain. Finally Shaw's body was located Monday afternoon around the overlook of Indian Nose, a mountain formation that from a distance looks like the face of someone lying down. The uninhabited area has some walkable trails and other parts can only be climbed, said Johanna Rodriguez, who took part in the search. Shaw's friends were eager to counter rumors on social media of purported drug use, sexual assault or the possibility she was responsible for her own death. Those unsupported accounts, plus a grisly photo of the body that circulated online, gave an inaccurate portrait of who Shaw was, they said. "She had a free spirit," said Francisco "Paco" Rosales, a Mexican who said he met Shaw four years ago and traveled with her in several countries. "She was very spiritual. She liked to meditate. She was a master of Reiki and yoga." Atitlan is popular among travelers seeking a connection with nature, and Rosales, who traveled from Mexico to join the search, said Shaw had left the hotel to see the sunrise. The Indian Nose overlook affords a dramatic, east-facing view of the lake and the mountains that ring it. Amy Farrow, a U.S. paramedic who has been living in the area for several years and helped coordinate the search, said she had reviewed security camera video of Shaw from the day she was last seen. Shaw was captured leaving her room last Tuesday at 1:30 a.m. carrying a drum with her, and again around 5 a.m. "She did not seem intoxicated," Farrow said. "She was acting normal." The autopsy estimated the time of death at four to six days earlier, roughly coinciding with her disappearance. While authorities have yet to say why Shaw died, Rosales thinks he knows what happened: She hiked to the place alone and took off her clothes due to the heat, before falling to her death. In Shaw's circle, being nude in an unpopulated place because of warm temperatures or while meditating wouldn't be considered odd. "Many people had morbid thoughts from the photograph of her unclothed at the scene, quickly saying that she had been raped," Rosales said. "But she saw the body as something natural ... that's why it's easy to believe that she undressed." Rosales and others said Shaw had been in a period of fasting and reflection and had not eaten or even drunk water for four days before she went missing. They speculated that weakened state could have led her to fall. The Lucie Blackman Trust has also said it believes Shaw's death to be a "tragic accident," while not ruling anything out for now. Her family said Tuesday that she "just loved mountains and sunrises" and "died doing what she loved." The bungalow in the the hotel MayAchik' where late English tourist Catherine Shaw stayed stands in San Juan La Laguna, Guatemala, Tuesday, March 12, 2019. The English tourist whose body was found near a Guatemala highland lake popular with travelers died of hemorrhaging resulting from a traumatic brain injury, according to an autopsy report completed Tuesday. (AP Photo/Santiago Billy) This undated photo provided by the Lucie Blackman Trust shows Catherine Shaw, 23, of Witney, England, pictured in an unknown location. Shaw's body was discovered at a mountain overlook called Nariz del Indio, or Indian Nose, nearly a week after she went missing near a Guatemala highland lake popular with travelers, authorities in the Central American nation said Monday, March 11, 2019. (Lucie Blackman Trust via AP) In this Tuesday, March 12, 2019 photo, friends of English tourist Catherine Shaw gather during a memorial for her at a hotel in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala. Shaw, whose body was found near a Guatemala highland lake popular with travelers, died of hemorrhaging resulting from a traumatic brain injury, according to an autopsy report completed Tuesday. (AP Photo/Santiago Billy) Funeral home worker Carlos Gonzalez sets an empty coffin inside a hearse outside the morgue where an autopsy is being performed on the body of English tourist Catherine Shaw in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, Tuesday, March 12, 2019. The body of the 23-year-old who was found dead near a highland lake popular with travelers showed signs of trauma but no apparent gunshot or stab wounds, a doctor performing an autopsy said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Santiago Billy) In this Tuesday, March 12, 2019 photo, Francisco Rosales holds his phone with a photo showing him and Catherine Shaw during a memorial for her in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala. Shaw, an English tourist whose body was found near a Guatemala highland lake popular with travelers, died of hemorrhaging resulting from a traumatic brain injury, according to an autopsy report completed Tuesday. (AP Photo/Santiago Billy) NEW YORK (AP) - The Chinese electronics giant Huawei pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges accusing it of plotting to violate Iran trade sanctions, a case that has complicated the China-U.S. trade dispute and cast a harsh light on the daughter of the company's founder. Lawyers for the No. 2 smartphone maker entered the plea in federal court in Brooklyn. It came two weeks after Huawei pleaded not guilty to separate federal charges filed in Seattle accusing the company of stealing technology from T-Mobile. Both cases have heightened tensions over U.S accusations that China is using predatory tactics to turn Chinese companies into leaders in tech fields such as communications, robotics and electric vehicles. If convicted, Huawei could face fines, forfeiture and other financial penalties. The hearing Thursday lasted only a few minutes, and the lawyers left court without speaking to reporters. U.S. authorities announced the Brooklyn indictment in late January. It charges the company and two affiliates with bank fraud, conspiracy to violate sanctions, conspiracy to commit money laundering and other counts. Lawyers for the Chinese electronics giant Huawei from left, James Cole, Michael Alexander Levy, and David Bitkower leave Brooklyn federal court in New York, Thursday March 14, 2019. Lawyers for Huawei have entered a not-guilty plea in a U.S. case charging the company with violating Iran trade sanctions. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) Prosecutors allege Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Huawei's founder, was in on the scheme in her role as chief financial officer. She made a presentation in 2013 to a banking executive in which she "repeatedly lied" about the relationship Huawei and a shadowy Iranian company called Skycom, prosecutors said. Wanzhou was arrested in Canada and is awaiting extradition to the United States. She denies the allegations. Skycom is also named in the indictment. But it was not represented at Thursday's arraignment, prompting U.S. Magistrate Judge Ramon Reyes to ask prosecutors, "What's the deal with Skycom?" Assistant U.S. Attorney David Kessler said the U.S. government was still trying to make contact with the company. In the Seattle case, prosecutors accuse Huawei of engaging in a scheme to steal the technology behind a robotic device that Bellevue, Washington-based T-Mobile used to test smartphones, according to the charges. Prosecutors say one Huawei worker even removed the robot's arm from T-Mobile's lab, took detailed measurements and photos of it, and then sent the information about it to China. The company says the worker acted independently and was later fired. Lawyers for the Chinese electronics giant Huawei from left, James Cole, Michael Alexander Levy, and David Bitkower leave Brooklyn federal court in New York, Thursday March 14, 2019. Lawyers for Huawei have entered a not-guilty plea in a U.S. case charging the company with violating Iran trade sanctions. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) Lawyers for the Chinese electronics giant Huawei from left, James Cole, Michael Alexander Levy, and David Bitkower leave Brooklyn federal court in New York, Thursday March 14, 2019. Lawyers for Huawei have entered a not-guilty plea in a U.S. case charging the company with violating Iran trade sanctions. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) James Cole, a lawyer for the Chinese electronics giant Huawei, leaves Brooklyn federal court in New York, Thursday March 14, 2019. Lawyers for Huawei have entered a not-guilty plea in a U.S. case charging the company with violating Iran trade sanctions. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) Lawyers for the Chinese electronics giant Huawei from left, James Cole, Michael Alexander Levy, and David Bitkower leave Brooklyn federal court in New York, Thursday March 14, 2019. Lawyers for Huawei have entered a not-guilty plea in a U.S. case charging the company with violating Iran trade sanctions. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews) ALPHONSE ISLAND, Seychelles (AP) - A British-led marine scientific mission off the Seychelles succeeded on Thursday in retrieving a key underwater drone from the sea bed, where it had fallen after its cable was cut two days ago. The camera-carrying drone is a vital piece of equipment for the Nekton Mission scientists as they explore the Indian Ocean depths. Two recovery attempts on Wednesday failed. Pilot Jimmy Boesen called the success a welcome relief after two sleepless nights: "The mission is 50 percent not done if we didn't get it done. So it's a good one." The loss of the Remotely Operated Vehicle, capable of reaching a depth of 500 meters (1,640 feet), had caused scientific data collection to stop while efforts focused on its retrieval. The mission is on an unprecedented exploration of the Indian Ocean to document changes taking place beneath the waves that could affect billions of people in the surrounding region over the coming decades. Mission director Oliver Steeds was relieved that the mission could now continue after the retrieval efforts had battled strong currents. Submersibles sent to recover an ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) lost off the coast of the tiny island of Alphonse Seychelles, Wednesday March 13, 2019. The previous day, an accident severed the cable connecting the drone to the mother-ship of the British-based Nekton mission. The camera-carrying ROV is a vital image-gathering tool that can go deeper than the submersibles. (AP Photo/David Keyton) The mission has faced a number of mishaps: Bad weather forced a change of course. Fierce underwater currents have buffeted the submersibles, aborting dives. The scientists on board the Ocean Zephyr now hope their luck has changed and that their mission to document the world's least-explored ocean can kick into high gear. In a message to the mission on Thursday, the United Nations special envoy for the ocean, Peter Thomson, noted the "seminal importance" of such work. "The ocean is in deep trouble," he wrote, "largely as a result of continuing planetary warming arising from our greenhouse gas emissions. We will be depending on global consensus on scientific findings to be the basis of our agreements on solutions and actions necessary to reverse the cycle of decline in which the ocean's health is currently caught." The Associated Press is the only news agency working with British scientists from the Nekton research team on its deep-sea mission. AP video coverage will include the search for submerged mountain ranges and previously undiscovered marine life, a behind-the-scenes look at life on board and aerial footage. The seven-week expedition is expected to run until April 19. BAGHOUZ, Syria (AP) - U.S.-backed Syrian fighters said Thursday a "large number" of Islamic State militants and their families are surrendering a day after intense fighting in the last speck of land the extremists still hold in eastern Syria. At the edge of Baghouz, the village where the militants are still holed up, men, women and children climbed a road that winds along a cliff overlooking what remains of a tent encampment, heading out. Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces said they searched the evacuees as they reached the front lines. Many of the people carried rolls of blankets and clothes but cast them aside as they made their way up the hill. Women carried babies as children slowly made their way up the rocky terrain. Most of the men appeared to be wounded, with many limping or walking with crutches, and they carried little aside from water bottles. Women were weighted down with duffel and plastic bags, and children holding onto their arms or to the black robes they wore. The sound of sporadic gunfire echoed off the cliff and U.S.-led coalition planes flew overhead. SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said after an intensive offensive Wednesday from multiple fronts, "a large number" of IS militants and their families "started to surrender" early Thursday. The U.N. said in a Wednesday report that some 7,000 new evacuees are expected to arrive at an already overpopulated displaced people's camp to the north over the next few days. A woman and her children, who left the besieged Islamic State-held village of Baghouz, Syria, scramble over a rocky hillside to be checked by U.S-backed Syrian Democratic Forces Thursday, March 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) The SDF forces said the militants took advantage of dusty and windy conditions a day earlier to launch multiple counterattacks. The U.S.-backed forces fought back, repelling the offensive and apparently triggering the latest evacuation. Windy conditions continued on Thursday, and SDF commanders inspected front-line positions early in the day. A day after heavy bombing and clashes, it was quiet Thursday. By early afternoon, it began drizzling. The battle to retake Baghouz and surrounding villages began in September, but has been paused on a number of occasions to allow civilians out. Some fighters have surrendered in recent weeks, but hard-core militants, including many foreigners, are still holed up in the shrinking space along the eastern banks of the Euphrates River. Since early February, more than 10,000 civilians were evacuated from the IS-held pocket, most of them family members of IS fighters. The capture of Baghouz would be a milestone in the devastating four-year campaign to dismantle the extremist group's self-declared caliphate, which once covered a vast territory straddling both Syria and Iraq. Wind and dust storms give the extremists a reprieve from airstrikes and aerial reconnaissance. The militants have also burned tires and oil to thicken the air cover above their tent encampment in Baghouz, where an unknown number remain holed up. SDF spokesman Adnan Afrin reported heavy clashes late Wednesday, saying IS sent suicide bombers to blast open gaps in their lines. At one point, IS had a group of SDF fighters encircled, but reinforcements managed to liberate them. The civilians evacuated from the area have been sent to al-Hol, a camp for the displaced. The U.N. Population Fund said Wednesday that more than 53,000 have arrived at the camp since December, mainly women and children. It said the camp's 67,000 residents are living in "uninhabitable" conditions, with harsh weather, overcrowded tents and lax security. The U.N. said aid groups are overwhelmed and cannot access parts of the camp because of a lack of resources or safety issues. Some 200 people took part in violent protests in the camp earlier this month. U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) soldiers watch from a rooftop the battle to oust Islamic State militants from Baghouz, Syria, Wednesday, March 13, 2019. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) command the battle to oust Islamic State militants from Baghouz, Syria, Wednesday, March 13, 2019. U.S.-backed Syrian forces say Islamic State militants are putting up a desperate fight against their advances and have staged a counterattack from the tiny speck of land the extremists still hold in eastern Syria. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - Algeria's new prime minister promised Thursday to create a government within days and to respond to the demands of protesting youth, a day before planned nationwide protests that could further crank up the pressure on authorities. As the country faces mounting calls for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down, Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui told a news conference that the government would be in place by early next week and will include a combination of young people and more experienced members. He called upon all sides to build trust and cooperate in order to overcome the crisis shaking the gas-rich country, which is an important player in the global fight against Islamic extremism. "We have understood the message from Algerian youth in the protests. We will from now on commit ourselves to responding," he said. Facing unprecedented pressure, the president agreed this week to abandon plans for a fifth term - but he also canceled a presidential election set for April 18, raising fears he will stay in power indefinitely. Bouteflika's undertaking failed to satisfy protesters, who will hold major protests for the fourth Friday running. The streets were packed last week with tens of thousands of protesters in the capital and numerous other cities. Algeria's new prime minister Noureddine Bedoui gives a press conference, in Algiers, Algeria, Thursday, March 14, 2019. Algeria's new prime minister is promising to create a government within days as the country faces mass protests calling on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down. (AP Photo/Anis Belghoul) The prime minister gave no indication of when Algeria might have new elections. But he expressed optimism that "we can get out of the transition phase rather quickly" if there's a spirit of dialogue. Bedoui was interior minister before the president named him this week to head a new government meant to calm tensions. Bouteflika also ordered the creation of a special body tasked with drafting a new constitution and paving the way for new elections. The prime minister praised the "peaceful nature" of the protests that started a month ago, but said security forces will remain present "to protect property and people." Algerians question Bouteflika's fitness for office since a 2013 stroke left him largely hidden from public view. Lakhdar Brahimi, a renowned diplomat, described Bouteflika as mentally sound after meeting with him Wednesday. He said the president has "100 percent of his mental capacities" and that he has use of his hands, if not his legs, pushing back on rumors about the poor state of Bouteflika's condition. Wheel-chair bound, he has rarely been seen in public since his stroke. The protests also reflect deep-seated frustrations at Algeria's shady power structure, with millions struggling to make ends meet despite the country's gas wealth. A teacher holds a placard during a protest in Algiers, Algeria, Wednesday, March 13, 2019. Algerian teachers gathered outside the central post office in the capital Algiers to protest President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's decision to delay next month's presidential election. (AP Photo/Anis Belghoul) Algeria's new prime minister Noureddine Bedoui gives a press conference, in Algiers, Algeria, Thursday, March 14, 2019. Algeria's new prime minister is promising to create a government within days as the country faces mass protests calling on President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down. (AP Photo/Anis Belghoul) A teacher holds a placard during a protest in Algiers, Algeria, Wednesday, March 13, 2019. Algerian teachers gathered outside the central post office in the capital Algiers to protest President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's decision to delay next month's presidential election. (AP Photo/Anis Belghoul) PARIS (AP) - France doesn't see an unusually large number of aviation disasters, but its plane crash investigators are world famous. The French air accident investigation authority, known by its French acronym BEA, is now handling the analysis of the flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed after takeoff earlier this week, killing 157 people. Ethiopian authorities wanted European investigators to handle the analysis because of its complexity, according to BEA spokesman Sebastien Barthe. They initially asked Germany, which said it didn't have the necessary capacity to take it on, so then the Ethiopians turned to France, Barthe told The Associated Press. And the BEA said yes. The French agency, based in the Paris suburb of Le Bourget, has extensive experience in investigating crashes and other incidents involving commercial flights. The BEA notably helps with investigations in countries without the resources or equipment to analyze the flight recorders, often called the black boxes. BEA investigators are also often called upon when an Airbus plane has a problem anywhere in the world, because the aviation manufacturer is based in France. This time the plane was a Boeing, whose popular 737 Max 8 model has been grounded or barred from air space in more than 40 countries pending investigation into what caused Sunday's crash. Two men carry suitcases containing the flight recorders from the Ethiopian jet, into the French air accident investigation authority, Thursday, March 14, 2019 Le Bourget, north of Paris. The French air accident investigation authority, known by its French acronym BEA, is now handling the analysis of the so-called black box flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed earlier this week. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) The National Transportation Safety Board in the U.S., where Boeing is based, said it will send three investigators to France to help download and analyze the flight recorders. NTSB investigators have also been sent to Ethiopia to help with the investigation. Aviation safety experts say it's standard procedure for the country where a crash occurred to lead the investigation and decide where the flight data and voice recorders will be analyzed. Smaller countries, like Ethiopia, don't have the equipment to read damaged recorders, so they get to choose where they want that done. In this case, Ethiopia picked France, but not the U.S., which certified the airworthiness of the 737 Max jets. Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the NTSB who is now an aviation consultant, said Ethiopian investigators likely avoided sending the data to the U.S. because its Federal Aviation Administration certified the airworthiness of the Max and has a relationship with manufacturer Boeing. The FAA's reluctance to ground the planes when most of the world already had done so might also have played a role, Goelz added. "I can't speak for the Ethiopians," Goelz said. "I'm sure that was under consideration that the FAA was adamant until they weren't. I think Ethiopia wanted to choose and investigative partner that clearly didn't have a dog in the fight." Preliminary results may arrive as early as Friday, Goelz said. The BEA isn't saying how long it will take to analyze the recorders - which are actually orange, despite their nickname. One collects data such as the plane's altitude and airspeed, while the other records the sounds in the cockpit. Analysis typically takes days or weeks, depending on whether the recorders were damaged in the crash. The French agency insists that its investigations are not aimed at assigning blame but at finding out what went wrong to make recommendations to improve air safety around the world. Among major crash investigations the BEA has led were the 2015 plunge of a Germanwings jet - whose black boxes revealed that the co-pilot had deliberately slammed the plane into an Alpine mountainside after locking the captain out of the cockpit. The BEA also studied the flight recorders retrieved from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean two years after the 2009 crash of Rio-Paris Air France Flight 447. The investigation determined its speed sensors had iced over, causing confusion in the cockpit. Two men carry suitcases containing the flight recorders from the Ethiopian jet, into the French air accident investigation authority, Thursday, March 14, 2019 Le Bourget, north of Paris. The French air accident investigation authority, known by its French acronym BEA, is now handling the analysis of the so-called black box flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed earlier this week. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) The headquarters of the BEA is pictured in Le Bourget, north of Paris, Thursday, March 14, 2019. The French air accident investigation authority, known by its French acronym BEA, is now handling the analysis of the so-called black box flight recorders from the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed earlier this week. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) A grieving relative is held back by others at the scene where the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 crashed shortly after takeoff on Sunday killing all 157 on board, near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia Wednesday, March 13, 2019. Much of the world, including the entire European Union, has grounded the Boeing jetliner involved in the Ethiopian Airlines crash or banned it from their airspace, leaving the United States as one of the few remaining operators of the plane involved in two deadly accidents in just five months. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene) WASHINGTON (AP) - The House Foreign Affairs Committee has approved bills intended to step up U.S. pressure against the government of Venezuela's embattled president, Nicolas Maduro (nee-koh-LAHS' mah-DOO'-roh). One would add new restrictions on the export of tear gas, riot gear and other items that can be used for crowd control. The second measure urges the Trump administration to provide up to $150 million in humanitarian aid. And the third would require the State Department and intelligence agencies to provide an assessment about the threat from Russian influence in the South American country. The U.S. and more than 50 other nations have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido (gwy-DOH') as interim president of the country. They say Maduro wasn't legitimately re-elected last year. WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic lawmakers accused Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Thursday of secretly orchestrating the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census, citing an email they say shows he misled Congress about the decision. Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the chairman of the House oversight panel, said documents show Ross engaged in a campaign to add the question from the first days he joined the Commerce Department. "These documents showed that he was not merely responding to a request from another agency," Cummings said. "To the contrary, he was choreographing these efforts behind the scenes, he became impatient when his demands were not being met, and he was working directly with officials at the highest levels of the Trump administration to force this issue through." Ross testified before the House Oversight and Reform Committee in an often contentious hearing. He stuck with his explanation from previous hearings that Justice Department officials made a formal request to include the citizenship question to help it enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Census Bureau initiated a review to consider alternatives to DOJ's request. Ultimately, Ross determined in March 2018 that reinstating the question was warranted. Some 18 states, 15 big cities or counties, and immigrants' rights groups have sued the Commerce Department. The plaintiffs say an undercount of Latinos and immigrants would jeopardize federal funding and congressional representation in states with a substantial number of both groups. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross testifies during the House Oversight Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) Two federal judges have declared the move to reinstate the question illegal. A federal judge in New York had previously blocked the administration from adding the question to the population count that occurs every 10 years, and the Supreme Court last month agreed to review that decision. Democratic lawmakers accused Ross of misleading Congress because he had previously testified "we are responding solely to the Department of Justice's request." The most withering criticism came from Rep. Lacy Clay, D-Mo., who said Ross withheld critical information from Congress about what led up to the decision. He read an email from Ross that came months before the DOJ's request for the citizenship question, which stated: "I am mystified why nothing have been done in response to my months old request that we include the citizenship question. Why not?" Clay said Ross failed to mention the memo when previously testifying to Congress. He asked Ross whether he wanted to "take responsibility today for misleading Congress, whether intentionally or not about the process you followed to add the citizenship question." "I have never intentionally misled Congress or intentionally said anything incorrect under oath," Ross said. Clay refused to accept that answer and accused Ross of being "complicit in the Trump's administration's intent to suppress the growing political power of the non-white population." He said Ross should resign. A citizenship question has not appeared on the once-in-a-decade headcount since 1950, though it has been on the American Community Survey, for which the Census Bureau annually polls 3.5 million households. Democrats also released a memo noting that a Department of Justice official told committee staff last week that in the fall of 2017, the Commerce Department's James Uthmeier hand-delivered what Cummings called a "secret memo and handwritten note" on the citizenship question to John Gore in the civil rights division at the Department of Justice. That delivery occurred months before the DOJ formally requested the citizenship question. Gore would not reveal to committee staff the content of the memo or the note, based on recommendations from counsel at the department. "Did the secret memo or note describe the real reason you wanted to ask the citizenship question?" Cummings asked. Ross said he did not believe such a message was delivered, but if there was a document of that sort he wanted the chance to review it. The Trump administration's decision to ask people about their citizenship has set off worries among Democrats that immigrants and their families will dodge the survey altogether, diluting political representation for states that tend to vote Democratic and robbing many communities of federal dollars. Ross sought to emphasize that the Trump administration has boosted spending for the census and that it was using the money to increase its advertising budget and hire more community partners. "We have done all kinds of things we can think of to make sure we have the best census possible," Ross said. Republicans said it was completely appropriate to add the citizenship question to the census. "For the life of me, I do not know why the Democrats don't want to know how many citizens are in the United States of America," said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking Republican. "But for some reason, they are focused on this question. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross testifies during the House Oversight Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross testifies during the House Oversight Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) CHELTENHAM, England (AP) - Two wins for female jockeys. A victory for an owner who has been blind from birth. It was quite the day at the Cheltenham Festival on Thursday. Bryony Frost became the first woman to ride a winner in a Grade One race at the prestigious meeting as Frodon held on for victory in the Ryanair Chase. "Sometimes fairy tales do come true," said the 23-year-old Frost, who rose to her feet in the saddle and pumped her fists as she was applauded into the winner's enclosure. Another female jockey, Lizzie Kelly, then followed up by steering Siruh Du Lac to victory in the Stable Plate Handicap Chase. Both winning horses were 9-2 shots. In between those races, Paisley Park overcame a blunder at the last fence to win the Stayers' Hurdle for owner Andrew Gemmell , who has never seen the horse because he was born blind. "I can't believe it's happened," Gemmell said. "I couldn't see the race but that roar is incredible." Paisley Park almost died following an attack of colic two years ago. ___ More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports NEW YORK (AP) - In an unusual team effort to broaden the #MeToo movement, a group of prominent U.S. foundations is launching a new fund aimed at combating sexual violence and harassment in the workplace. In addition to the foundations' contributions, some funds are coming from CBS - money initially set aside as an exit package for former CEO Les Moonves that has been redirected due to his firing over sexual misconduct allegations, organizers told The Associated Press. The fund , which claimed pledges of $20 million even ahead of its public launch Thursday, plans to direct most of its grants to programs led by and benefiting the most vulnerable categories of women - low-income workers, migrants, women of color. Among the likely recipients are campaigns led by women of color to bolster the rights of domestic workers who lack standard labor protections and restaurant workers who depend on tips for income. The 11 partners that have signed on so far include the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Conrad Hilton Foundation and the NoVo Foundation. Most of the partners fund a wide variety of causes, while the NoVo foundation has focused on the empowerment of women and girls. Its co-presidents are Peter and Jennifer Buffett; Peter is the youngest son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Pamela Shifman, the NoVo Foundation's executive director, said the group of donors was inspired by the multitude of women in the U.S. and around the world who engaged in the #MeToo movement. FILE - In this Saturday, Jan. 20, 2018 file photo, a marcher carries a sign with the Twitter hashtag #MeToo used by people speaking out against sexual harassment as she takes part in a Women's March in Seattle, on the anniversary of President Donald Trump's inauguration. A group of prominent U.S. foundations is launching a new fund aimed at combating sexual violence and harassment in the workplace. Organizers tell The Associated Press the fund was launched Thursday, March 14, 2019, and plans to direct most of its grants to programs led by and benefiting low-income workers, migrants and women of color. The 11 partners so far include the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Conrad Hilton Foundation and the NoVo Foundation. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) "We've seen girls and women step up with such incredible bravery," Shifman told The Associated Press. "This is about funders stepping up to say, 'We hear you. We see you.'" Since the #MeToo movement emerged in October 2017, scores of powerful men have been toppled by allegations of sexual misconduct, and pervasive abuse has been documented in sectors ranging from Hollywood to the restaurant industry. However, Shifman said, less than 2 percent of foundation giving in the U.S. has focused on gender-based violence. "As Tarana Burke said, calling out individual bad actors doesn't get to the root of the problem," said Shifman, referring to #MeToo's founder. "We need to prevent violence in the first place and change the culture." For now, the new initiative is called the Collaborative Fund for Women's Safety and Dignity, although there are plans to shift to a pithier name. The fund will be housed at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, with plans to award at least $5 million a year over the next five years. The fund will focus most of its efforts on the United States but also will seek to build international alliances. That was an attraction for the Ford Foundation; combatting violence against women and girls is among its top global priorities. The initiative was prompted in part by an appeal in October from a coalition of groups engaged in the #MeToo movement, including Girls for Gender Equity, Justice for Migrant Women, the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and Restaurant Opportunities Centers United. The coalition challenged America's philanthropic sector to allocate $300 million over the coming year to address sexual violence and sexual harassment. One of the groups in the coalition was the National Women's Law Center, which played a key role in creation of the Times Up Legal Defense Fund after the #MeToo movement caught fire. The defense fund has raised millions of dollars to help financially struggling women litigate their complaints of sexual assault and harassment. Fatima Goss-Graves, the law center's president, is pleased that the foundations launching the new fund see the potential for capitalizing on the #MeToo movement with broader initiatives. "Moments like this do not happen that often, and they have to be effectively resourced," she said. The operator of a leading neo-Nazi website claims it's too dangerous for him to travel to the U.S. to be questioned under oath for a lawsuit accusing him of terrorizing a Montana real estate agent by unleashing an anti-Semitic "troll storm" against her family. Attorneys for The Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin have asked a federal magistrate judge for an order excusing him from an in-person deposition in the U.S. Anglin's lawyers insist the Ohio native hasn't lived in the U.S. for years and fears for his safety if his whereabouts are disclosed. Tanya Gersh's lawyers from the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center say Anglin's request is baseless gamesmanship. "Since the outset of this case, (Anglin) has displayed a pattern of disregard for the authority of this Court and the seriousness of these proceedings," they wrote in a court filing Tuesday. Court records show Anglin dubiously suggested meeting in Cuba or Venezuela for his deposition by Gersh's lawyers. "I have to admit that his suggestions of Caracas or Havana are positions that I am not prepared to vigorously defend," Marc Randazza, one of Anglin's lawyers, wrote in an email to Gersh's attorneys. FILE - In this undated file photo provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Tanya Gersh poses for a photo. The operator of a leading neo-Nazi website claims it's too dangerous for him to travel to the U.S. to be questioned under oath for a lawsuit accusing him of terrorizing Gersh, a Montana real estate agent, by unleashing an anti-Semitic "troll storm" against her family. Attorneys for The Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin have asked a federal magistrate judge for an order excusing him from an in-person deposition in the U.S. Anglin's lawyers insist the Ohio native hasn't lived in the U.S. for years and fears for his safety if his whereabouts are disclosed. Gersh's lawyers say Anglin's request is baseless gamesmanship. (Dan Chung/Southern Poverty Law Center via AP, File) However, Anglin's lawyers argue the court can order Anglin's deposition to take place abroad or by telephone or video conference. Gersh sued Anglin in Montana in April 2017, claiming anonymous internet trolls bombarded her family with hateful and threatening messages after Anglin published their personal information, including her 12-year-old son's Twitter handle and photo. In a string of posts, Anglin accused Gersh and other Jewish residents of Whitefish, Montana, of engaging in an "extortion racket" against the mother of white nationalist Richard Spencer. Gersh says she had agreed to help Spencer's mother sell commercial property she owns in Whitefish amid talk of a protest outside the building. Sherry Spencer, however, later accused Gersh of threatening and harassing her into agreeing to sell the property. Gersh's attorneys say they recently deposed Richard Spencer "without incident, and without publicizing either the fact of the deposition or its location or timing." Anglin's attorneys claim Spencer's deposition is a "blatant attempt to use that information to bring unrelated claims against him in Montana." The mystery about Anglin's current whereabouts has been a significant issue in the case. His lawyers say he hasn't been to the U.S. since 2013 and has no intention of returning. Anglin has refused to publicly reveal where he is living, claiming he gets "credible" death threats. He has said he took up residency in the Philippines sometime before 2010, moved to Greece in 2013 and then moved to Cambodia four days before Gersh sued him last year. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch concluded there's sufficient evidence that Anglin was legally "domiciled" in Ohio when Gersh sued him. Anglin's lawyers had argued the court lacks jurisdiction over the case - and therefore must dismiss it - because they claim Anglin is "not a citizen of any state." Gersh's suit accuses Anglin of invading her privacy, intentionally inflicting "emotional distress" and violating a Montana anti-intimidation law. Anglin's site takes its name from Der Sturmer, a newspaper that published Nazi propaganda in Nazi-era Germany, and includes sections called "Jewish Problem" and "Race War." COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Nurses who helped administer excessive and possibly fatal painkillers to dozens of Ohio hospital patients should have questioned an intensive-care doctor's order for those high doses, the state attorney general said Thursday. Officials are pursuing potential discipline against 25 nurses who worked in the Columbus-area Mount Carmel Health System with the doctor, William Husel, who was fired in December. "Nurses are professionals who have a duty to exercise their best judgment, and tens of thousands of them do, every single day," Attorney General Dave Yost, whose office represents the Ohio Board of Nursing in the matter, said in a statement. "These nurses didn't." The board said the nurses have a right to administrative hearings before action might be taken against their licenses. At least 14 of the nurses, including Husel's wife , have been named as defendants in some of the two dozen wrongful-death lawsuits filed against the doctor and Mount Carmel. A message seeking comment was left Thursday for a lawyer representing Mount Carmel and some of the nurses in those lawsuits. FILE - In this Jan. 15, 2019 file photo, the main entrance to Mount Carmel West Hospital is shown in Columbus, Ohio. The Ohio hospital system where an intensive-care doctor is accused of ordering painkiller overdoses for dozens of patients says it has put more employees on leave and changed key leaders at the hospital where nearly all those deaths occurred. Mount Carmel Health System said Wednesday, March 13 that 48 nurses and pharmacists under review have been reported to regulatory boards. It says 30 are on leave, and 18 no longer work there. The doctor was fired in December. (AP Photo/Andrew Welsh Huggins, File) Mount Carmel said all employees who were part of administering medication for affected patients have been removed from patient care as a precaution. It said 48 nurses and pharmacists under review were reported to their respective boards. Thirty of those employees have been put on leave, and 18 no longer work there, including some who left years ago, the health system said. Mount Carmel found Husel ordered potentially fatal drug doses for 29 patients over several years, including five who may have been given that pain medication when there still was a chance to improve their conditions with treatment. The hospital system said six more patients got doses that were excessive but not likely to have been what caused their deaths. Police and prosecutors are investigating , and the State Medical Board suspended Husel's license. In responses to some of the lawsuits, his lawyer denied Husel negligently or intentionally caused patients' deaths. Husel hasn't commented publicly. Mount Carmel has publicly apologized and said it is cooperating with authorities. In a statement Thursday, it said it recognizes "the complexities of each patient's circumstances and individual nurse actions." It previously said the relevant employees' actions are being reviewed on a case-by-case basis. ___ Follow Franko on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kantele10 . ___ Have a tip? Contact the author securely at https://www.ap.org/tips CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - Janet Guthrie, the first woman to qualify and compete in both the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500, was dropped from the latest list of nominees for NASCAR's Landmark Award that honors contribution to the sport. With Guthrie off the list of five nominees, Anne B. France and Norma "Dusty" Brandel remain the only women officially recognized in the Hall of Fame for at least another year. France married NASCAR founder Bill France Sr. and was secretary and treasurer of both NASCAR and International Speedway Corp. Anne France was among the 20 nominees for the Hall of Fame in 2013 and 2014 but was not elected despite lobbying in the voting room by her granddaughter, ISC CEO Lesa France Kennedy. The Landmark Award was created in 2015, Anne France was moved to that ballot and elected as the first recipient of an award designated to "honor significant contributions to the growth and esteem of NASCAR." Guthrie and Barney Hall, longtime anchor for the Motor Racing Network, were dropped from the Landmark Award nominees announced Wednesday night. Hall in 2013 was inducted into the Hall of Fame under a media award named for him, and Brandel made it last year on the same award as the first woman to report from inside the NASCAR garage in 1972. Guthrie and Hall were replaced on the Landmark list of five nominees by Edsel Ford II of Ford Motor Co., Pocono Raceway founder Joseph Mattioli and Mike Helton, the first non-France family member to be named NASCAR president. Her removal was a surprise to Guthrie, who turned 81 last week. FILE - This April 6, 1978, file photo shows Janet Guthrie posing with a toy race car at a news conference in New York. Guthrie, the first woman to qualify and compete in both the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500, was dropped from the list of nominees for NASCAR's Landmark Award that honors contribution to the sport. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler, File) "Surely the nominees for 2020 haven't been announced yet?" she replied in an email to The Associated Press. "I find that I was nominated for the Landmark Award of 2017 and 2018 as well as 2019. I've no idea what their reasoning is in selecting candidates." The 24-person nominating committee meets during Speedweeks of the Daytona 500 to select the Hall of Fame and Landmark Award nominees. The committee includes eight NASCAR executives - among them Helton - and the daughter of Pocono founder Mattioli is among the 13 track operators who decide the nominees. There are four women on the panel, including France Kennedy and Jill Gregory, the first female chief marketing officer in NASCAR history. Guthrie praised Jim Hunter, the longtime NASCAR and track executive who received the Landmark Award over her in this year's class. She also lamented the financial limitations of her racing career. "I was an admirer of Jim Hunter, who treated us well back when not everyone in NASCAR did," she wrote to AP. "What I really wish is that I had found the funding to continue racing for the 10 years necessary to be eligible for the Hall of Fame itself. I felt certain that, had I been able to continue full time, I'd have won Cup races." Guthrie was an aerospace engineer when she began racing in 1963 on the SCCA circuit and was full-time by 1972. She made 33 starts in NASCAR's elite Cup Series from 1976 through 1980. She had five career top-10 finishes, and her sixth-place finish at Bristol Motor Speedway in 1977 is shared with Danica Patrick for the top finish by a female in NASCAR's top series in the modern era. Guthrie in 1976 became the first woman to compete in NASCAR's longest race after Charlotte Motor Speedway officials persuaded her to try to make the field for what was then known as the World 600. At the time, NASCAR had gone a decade without a woman in the field. In her book, "Janet Guthrie A Life at Full Throttle," Guthrie recounted the icy reception she received from other drivers when she arrived for the '76 race, where she finished 15th. "When I shook hands with Richard Petty I thought I'd get frostbite," Guthrie wrote in her book. "Later, he would be quoted as saying of me: 'She's no lady. If she was she'd be at home. There's a lot of differences in being a lady and being a woman.'" Petty, a member of the inaugural Hall of Fame class and a seven-time champion, softened his stance in a 2006 interview after Guthrie's book was released. "The deal with her ... she came in before you had any diversity deal," he told AP. "She come in just as herself and done a decent job. She come in the hard way, because no one really welcomed her in. She said, 'I'm here, I'm going to do it,' and she was able to get it done. You have to admire her for that." Guthrie became the first woman to lead a Cup race, under caution, at Ontario Speedway in 1977. Patrick and Guthrie are the only two women to compete in both the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500. At least 108 women have qualified for and started a race in one of NASCAR's touring series, including 16 at the elite level. Shawna Robinson and Hailie Deegan remain the only women to have won a race in one of NASCAR's touring series; Robinson won three times between 1988 and 1989 in the now-defunct Dash Series, while Deegan has two victories in the K&N Pro Series West, including earlier this month at Las Vegas. ___ Full AP NASCAR coverage: https://apnews.com/tag/NASCAR COMPTON, Calif. (AP) - A small plane ran into another aircraft on a Los Angeles-area runaway in a fiery crash that killed one person and injured another. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor says a Cessna with two people aboard landed Wednesday night at Compton/Woodley Airport. A North American T-28 then landed and ran into the Cessna, which was still on the runway. The Cessna exploded into flames. The Compton Fire Department says one person was killed and a second person was taken to the hospital in unknown condition. NEW YORK (AP) - The Latest on an appeals court ruling on a defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump (all times local): 1:55 p.m. President Donald Trump's legal team plans to appeal a ruling that Trump isn't immune from a defamation lawsuit filed by a former "Apprentice" contestant. Attorney Marc E. Kasowitz said in a statement on Thursday that the team "respectfully" disagrees with the majority decision in New York's Appellate Division and expects to prevail upon appeal in a higher court. The suit was brought by Summer Zervos. She was among over a dozen women who emerged during the Republican's 2016 campaign with allegations of sexual misconduct years earlier. He called the women liars. ___ 12:10 p.m. A New York appeals court has ruled that President Donald Trump isn't immune from a defamation lawsuit filed by a former "Apprentice" contestant who accused him of unwanted kissing and groping. A state Supreme Court Appellate Division panel issued its ruling Thursday in a case brought by Summer Zervos. The decision lets Zervos' suit proceed and increases the prospect that Trump could have to sit for sworn questioning. Zervos was among over a dozen women who emerged during Trump's 2016 campaign with allegations of sexual misconduct years earlier. He called the women liars. Trump's lawyers have said the case shouldn't go forward while he's in office. They also say his comments were opinions and protected free speech. Zervos' lawyers say Trump's words were factual falsehoods that subjected her to threats. HAVANA (AP) - Cuban officials have made a lengthy presentation on a series of mysterious illnesses suffered by U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Havana, reiterating that no evidence supports allegations that the symptoms resulted from high-tech attacks. The officials said Thursday that they don't dispute that diplomats became ill, but suggested that many of the cases consisted of ordinary illnesses that were erroneously blamed on a mysterious single phenomenon due to the high degree of public and media attention focused on the case. Mitchell Valdes-Sosa, director of Cuba's Center for Neuroscience, said that a review of U.S. studies of the illnesses showed that some had begun before the start of the supposed phenomenon, and others consisted of a wide range of symptoms that hardly ever result from the same disease. Cuba's director-general for the United States, Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, accused the Trump administration of using the illnesses to falsely accuse Cuba of attacking diplomats, something he said his country would never do. U.S. officials have told Cuban officials in meetings that there is no evidence of an attack, De Cossio said. "It's a scandal that the State Department is still using the term 'attacks' in its statements to the press, with total irresponsibility," De Cossio said. "This is a subject of national security for Cuba." Cuba's Director General of U.S. Affairs Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, center, waits to give a statement to the press as Cuban Interior Ministry investigating officer Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Hernandez Caballero arrives in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, March 14, 2019. Cuban officials made a lengthy presentation on a series of mysterious illnesses suffered by U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Havana, reiterating that no evidence supports allegations that the symptoms resulted from high-tech attacks. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) Tensions are high between the United States and Cuba over Venezuela, Cuba's closest ally and the subject of a U.S. push to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro and replace him with opposition leader Nicolas Guaido. Canada has confirmed 14 cases of unexplained health problems since early 2017. Twenty-six workers at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba have also been affected, suffering a range of symptoms and diagnoses including mild traumatic brain injury, also known as concussion. The U.S. withdrew most of its non-essential diplomatic staff from Havana in September 2017 and Canada announced in January that it was removing up to half of the Canadians at its embassy in Cuba after another diplomat fell mysteriously ill. WASHINGTON (AP) - The Treasury official nominated by President Donald Trump to be the next president of the World Bank has cleared a major hurdle, with nominations for the position closing with no other candidates emerging. The World Bank said Thursday that David Malpass was the only candidate put forward by the bank's 189 member countries. Malpass is currently the undersecretary for international affairs at Treasury. The presidency at the global lending institution came open earlier this year when Jim Yong Kim, who had been nominated by the Obama administration, announced he was stepping down. The World Bank said its 25-member executive board will interview Malpass in the coming days and expects a decision will be made before the bank's spring meetings, which start April 12. Both the World Bank and its sister lending institution, the International Monetary Fund, are headquartered in Washington. The head of the IMF has always been a European while the head of the World Bank has always been an American. The current head of the IMF is Christine Lagarde, a former French finance minister. President Donald Trump announced Malpass' nomination in a White House ceremony last month. Trump said his administration would make it a "top priority to ensure that U.S. taxpayers' dollars are spent effectively and wisely, serve American interest and defend American values." FILE- In this Feb. 6, 2019, file photo David Malpass, undersecretary for international affairs at the Treasury Department, listens to Trish Regan during "Trish Regan Primetime" on Fox Business in Washington. The Treasury official nominated by President Donald Trump to be the next president of the World Bank has cleared a major hurdle, with nominations for the position closing with no other candidates emerging. The World Bank says Malpass was the only candidate put forward by the bank's 189 member countries. (AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz, File) Malpass, 63, has been a vocal critic of the World Bank and the IMF. However, from his position in Treasury last year he helped win support for a $13 billion funding increase for the bank. He has argued that the bank should cut back its lending to China, which he says is no longer a country dependent on the bank's loans because it can borrow on global capital markets. He has argued that World Bank loans should be targeted at poorer nations. His candidacy was backed by a global lobbying effort led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who promoted Malpass's bid during conversations with a number of foreign finance officials over the past month. GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip on Thursday forcibly dispersed hundreds of Palestinians protesting dire living conditions in the blockaded territory. Videos circulated on social media showed police firing live rounds in the air, beating protesters and hauling them into police vehicles. Hamas says it is restoring order after demonstrators burned tires and blocked roads. Rights groups say Hamas arrested a dozen activists this week who were organizing the rally under the slogan: "We want to live." The protests were centered in the northern Jebaliya refugee camp, with smaller gatherings across the territory. Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized power in 2007, and the closures, coupled with mismanagement by Hamas authorities, have devastated the local economy. Hamas tax hikes have sparked further outrage. MIAMI (AP) - A federal judge has set a new deadline in a Florida victims' rights case involving a wealthy financier accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra ordered Wednesday that the U.S. Justice Department and the victims' attorneys decide by May 10 how they want to proceed with the case involving victims of 66-year-old Jeffrey Epstein. Marra ruled last month that former Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta's prosecutors violated the victims' rights by secretly reaching a 2008 non-prosecution agreement with Epstein. Under the agreement, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges, spent 13 months in jail, paid settlements to victims and became a registered sex offender. Marra had initially set a March 8 deadline but agreed to move it back after federal prosecutors in Atlanta took over the case. Acosta, now President Donald Trump's labor secretary, says the deal was appropriate. RENO, Nev. (AP) - The Latest on criminal charges against a Salvadoran immigrant in the U.S. illegally who is accused of killing four people in Nevada (all times local): 11:50 a.m. Prosecutors in Nevada say they'll seek the death penalty for a Salvadoran immigrant in the U.S. illegally who is charged with killing four people in January. Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks said Thursday that Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman's immigration status has nothing to do with the decision to seek capital punishment. The 20-year-old Martinez-Guzman is accused of fatally shooting a Reno couple and two women in neighboring Douglas County during a 10-day crime rampage. The case has drawn the attention of President Donald Trump, who says it shows the need for his proposed border wall. FILE - In this Jan. 24, 2019 file photo, Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman, 19, of El Salvador, is escorted into the courtroom for his initial appearance in Carson City Justice Court in Carson City, Nev. A grand jury has indicted Martinez-Guzman on murder charges in the killing of four northern Nevadans in January. The district attorneys for Washoe and Douglas counties scheduled a news conference in Reno Thursday, March 14, 2019, to provide an update on the case, including their decision on whether to seek the death penalty for Martinez-Guzman.(AP Photo/Scott Sonner, File) A grand jury in Reno indicted Martinez-Guzman on Wednesday on murder, burglary and weapon charges. He was previously charged in criminal complaints ____ 8:55 a.m. A grand jury has indicted a Salvadoran immigrant on murder charges in the killing of four northern Nevadans in January. The Washoe County grand jury handed up the indictment in Reno late Wednesday for 20-year-old Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman. He's accused of fatally shooting an elderly Reno couple and two women in neighboring Douglas County during a week-long robbery spree in January. The district attorneys for Washoe and Douglas counties scheduled a news conference for 11 a.m. Thursday to provide an update on the case, including their decision on whether to seek the death penalty. The case has drawn the attention of President Donald Trump, who says it shows the need for his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall. Federal officials say Martinez-Guzman is in the United States illegally but they don't know how or when he got here. A man said by federal prosecutors to have been a top leader of New Yorks notorious Gambino crime family has been shot and killed on Staten Island. Francesco Franky Boy Cali, 53, was found with multiple gunshot wounds to his body at his home in the boroughs Todt Hill section. Cali was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn had referred to Cali in court filings in recent years as the underboss of the Gambino organisation, related through marriage to the Inzerillo clan in the Sicilian Mafia. Police respond to a report of shots fired in the Staten Island borough of New York (Joseph Ostapiuk/Staten Island Advance via AP) Multiple press accounts since 2015 said Cali had ascended to the top spot in the gang, although he never faced a criminal charge saying so. His only mob-related criminal conviction came a decade ago, when Cali pleaded guilty in an extortion conspiracy involving a failed attempt to build a Nascar track on Staten Island. He was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison and was released in 2009. The last crime family boss to be shot in New York was Paul Castellano. The Gambino crime boss was assassinated outside Sparks Steakhouse in Manhattan in 1985. The Gambino family was once among the most powerful criminal organisations in the US, but federal prosecutions in the 1980s and 1990s sent its top leaders to prison and diminished its reach. George and Amal Clooney have arrived in Edinburgh to attend a charity event. The actor and film-maker has returned to the Scottish capital with his wife, a human rights lawyer, to attend the Peoples Postcode Lottery Charity Gala at the McEwan Hall. Asked how it felt to be in Edinburgh, he said: Its great, thanks for the weather, its nice out. The couple will be interviewed by broadcaster Natasha Kaplinsky during the event. The event marked a return to Edinburgh for the actor (Andrew Milligan/PA) The Gravity stars appearance in the city comes after hundreds of people turned out to welcome Clooney when he visited homelessness campaigners Social Bite and the headquarters of the Peoples Postcode Lottery in Edinburgh in November 2015. When news of the couples attendance at the latest event emerged in December, the Clooneys said: We are thrilled to be attending the Peoples Postcode Lottery Charity Gala in Edinburgh. Fans were outside the venue to see the celebrity couple (Andrew Milligan/PA) It is a perfect setting to highlight the urgent need to protect millions of the worlds most vulnerable people from human rights abuses. The annual Peoples Postcode Lottery Charity Gala is a celebration of the work done by the charities which are supported by the lotterys players. In total, players have raised more than 400 million for charities and good causes since 2005. MPs have voted to authorise Theresa May to seek an extension of the two-year Article 50 negotiations, delaying Brexit beyond March 29. They earlier decisively rejected an attempt to secure a second referendum, voting by 334 to 85 a margin of 249 against an amendment tabled by members of The Independent Group of former Labour and Tory MPs, who quit their parties in part because of differences over EU withdrawal. And by the far narrower margin of 314-312, MPs voted down a cross-party bid for Parliament to seize control of the Brexit process. Heres the latest from Westminster: Spectacular indecision David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, has described Labours position on a second referendum as spectacular indecision. Spectacular indecision on the part of @UKLabour on the issue of a second referendum. David Davis (@DavidDavisMP) March 14, 2019 Corbyn offers Peoples Vote support Following the vote, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reiterated his support for a Peoples Vote. He said: Today I reiterate my conviction that a deal can be agreed based on our alternative plan that can command support across the House. I also reiterate our support for a Peoples Vote not as a political point-scoring exercise but as a realistic option to break the deadlock. On the rejection of a second referendum, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable told the Press Association: Jeremy Corbyn didnt follow through on his promise to support it. Clearly he has difficulties with the issue despite the support of Labour MPs and Labour voters. It is disappointing, but I think it will come back again in the same way Theresa Mays deal keeps coming back. Brexit process will be extended MPs have approved a Government motion which aims to extend the Brexit process by 412 votes to 202, majority 210. (PA Graphics) Benn on victory despite loss Hilary Benn told the Press Association: What weve won today although we lost the vote on my amendment is Stephen Barclay confirmed that the Government will bring this so-called neutral motion back by the 25th and we will have a chance to amend it. So, in effect, the slot to decide what we are going to do next as Parliament was won six days later than we were hoping, but that is as a result of putting down the amendment. Bryant withdraws amendment Labour MP Chris Bryant withdrew his amendment to stop a third meaningful vote on Theresa Mays Brexit deal. MPs are now voting on the Government motion to seek an extension of the two-year Article 50 negotiations. Corbyn amendment defeated MPs have rejected a Labour amendment which calls for a delay to Brexit to provide parliamentary time for this House to find a majority for a different approach by 318 votes to 302, majority 16. (PA Graphics) MP resigns as Watson aide Labour MP Ruth Smeeth has resigned as an aide to deputy leader Tom Watson in order to vote against a second referendum. I've resigned from Labour's front bench this evening in order to vote against a second referendum. This was a difficult decision but I have a duty to support the will of my constituents. We need to leave, and leave with a deal that works for the Potteries https://t.co/yOtP1jWsmS Ruth Smeeth (@RuthSmeeth) March 14, 2019 Labour chiefs met backbenchers over conditional deal backing The Labour leadership had a constructive meeting with backbench MPs Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson who have put forward a plan to back Theresa Mays deal on the condition it is put to a referendum. A Labour Party spokesman said: This afternoon Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Nick Brown and Keir Starmer had a useful and constructive discussion with Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson as part of Labours engagement with MPs across Parliament to find a practical solution to break the Brexit deadlock. The move comes after Labour MPs where whipped to abstain on an amendment calling for a second referendum. Another narrow Government victory MPs have rejected an amendment which seeks to allow the House of Commons to decide what kind of Brexit deal should be negotiated by 314 votes to 312, majority two. House of Commons votes 314 to 312 to reject @hilarybennmp's Amendment (i) to the #Article50 extension motion. It would have given cross-party backbenchers control of parliamentary time next Wednesday in order to "find a way forward that can command majority support". pic.twitter.com/j5VEfojplq UK House of Commons (@HouseofCommons) March 14, 2019 Wollaston not giving up on second referendum Independent Group MP Sarah Wollaston said she would try again next week after her amendment calling for a new referendum was rejected. Dr Wollaston told the Press Association: The disappointing thing is that the Labour Party, having said they would support a peoples vote, clearly havent supported a peoples vote. But, well be bringing it back next week. Barnier being patient The EUs chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said he was awaiting the completion of votes in the House of Commons with patience, but believed the Withdrawal Agreement reached in November remains the only one available. In a speech in Romania, Mr Barnier said: What we need to move ahead is not a negative vote against no-deal. We need a constructive and positive vote. He added: I will continue to exercise patience and calm and to remain respectful of the UK and its people and of its legislative and parliamentary procedures. We will be expecting and awaiting the votes in that spirit. Holding up a copy of his Withdrawal Agreement, Mr Barnier said: If the UK still wants to leave the EU and wishes to leave it in an orderly fashion which is what the Prime Minister said then this treaty is the only one available. Narrow loss in bid to add June date to Benns amendment MPs voted against amending Labour MP Hilary Benns amendment to insert the date June 30 by 314 votes to 311 majority three. They are now voting on Mr Benns amendment. Meaningless vote? Meaningless Commons vote just now on another referendum in which overwhelming majority of us who back one abstained. Priority today #article50 extension, as yesterday it was taking #NoDealBrexit off the table. #finalsay #peoplesvote day will come & better when we can win it. Ben Bradshaw (@BenPBradshaw) March 14, 2019 SNP puts blame at Labours door Reacting to the result on the Wollaston amendment, Ian Blackford the SNP leader in Westminster called Labour absolutely spineless and the midwifes to Theresa Mays Brexit. We have lost a peoples vote amendment by 334 votes to 85 votes. Labour abstained. An opportunity to drive forward the need for such a vote and Labour flunk it. They are the midwifes to @theresa_may Brexit. Absolutely spineless. #peoplesvote Ian Blackford (@Ianblackford_MP) March 14, 2019 The Independent Groups Brexit spokeswoman Anna Soubry said: This is a betrayal of Labour Party members and voters, Labour MPs, Labours conference policy and, most importantly, the British public. The Labour Party leadership are determined to deliver Brexit, which would harm our country. But The Independent Group will not give up. We will keep up the pressure for a Peoples Vote on the final Brexit deal. Well keep holding the Government to account and providing the real opposition our country needs. The British people deserve the final say on Brexit. Wollaston amendment rejected MPs have rejected an amendment which seeks to extend Article 50 to stage a second Brexit referendum by 334 votes to 85, majority 249. (PA Graphics) ERG unlikely to back the votes Members of the Brexit-backing European Research Group are expected to vote against all the amendments on Thursday evening, a source said. Four amendments under consideration The Speaker has provisionally selected the following amendments to the motion on extending the #Article50 period: (h) - @sarahwollaston (i) - @hilarybennmp (e) - @jeremycorbyn (j) - @RhonddaBryant A manuscript amendment from @LucyMPowell to amendment (i) has also been selected. pic.twitter.com/nO6VGIXQee UK House of Commons (@HouseofCommons) March 14, 2019 Speaker John Bercow has selected four amendments and one amendment to an amendment for debate, but not all of them will necessarily be pushed to a vote. Second referendum Tabled by Independent Group MP Sarah Wollaston and backed by members of the new grouping, Liberal Democrats and a handful from other parties, this amendment seeks an Article 50 extension to stage a second referendum with Remain and Parliaments preferred Brexit option on the ballot paper. Indicative votes Tabled by a cross-party group led by Labours Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper and Tory Sir Oliver Letwin, this would allow Parliament to take control of business in the Commons on March 20 to force a series of indicative votes to establish MPs preferred option for Brexit. An amendment to the indicative votes plan, tabled by Labours Lucy Powell, would limit to June 30 any extension of Brexit talks to discuss Parliaments preferred option. Labour Labours amendment notes that Parliament has decisively rejected both Mrs Mays deal and no deal and calls for a delay to Brexit to provide parliamentary time for this House to find a majority for a different approach. Block the meaningful vote An amendment tabled by Labours Chris Bryant challenges Theresa Mays right under parliamentary rules to bring her Withdrawal Agreement back before the Commons for a third meaningful vote, after it was rejected by a majority of 230 in January and 149 this week. The vote on Mrs Mays proposals will take place at the end of the sequence, with MPs voting on the PMs motion as amended if any of the amendments have secured a majority. Earlier, the US president gave his opinion on the Brexit process: Ahead of the votes, the Independent Group of MPs are pushing ahead with a cross-party amendment calling for a new Brexit referendum despite expecting it to be voted down, sources said. A Tig source said: I think it would be an absolute travesty if we get to the end of this process and Parliament has been too spineless to actually press an amendment. We absolutely refute this idea that it is one shot. We will be bringing it every opportunity now. I am under no illusion, without unequivocal Labour Party support it cannot pass. I fully expect the Labour Party to feel the heat and to get round to backing it next week. MPs have decisively rejected an attempt to secure a second referendum on Brexit. The House of Commons voted by 334 to 85 a margin of 249 against an amendment tabled by members of The Independent Group (TIG) of former Labour and Tory MPs, who quit their parties in part because of differences over EU withdrawal. And by the far narrower margin of 314-312, MPs voted down a cross-party bid for Parliament to seize control of the Brexit process. The cross-party amendment, tabled by MPs including Labours Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper and Tory Sir Oliver Letwin, would have forced a set of indicative votes to determine the preferred Brexit outcome of the House of Commons. Result of the House of Commons vote on Hilary Benns amendment giving MPs time to debate Brexit alternatives The decision to press the referendum issue to a vote was opposed as premature by the Peoples Vote campaign, which said MPs should be focusing on the question of whether to seek a delay to Brexit. The Commons is later due to vote on a motion from Prime Minister Theresa May to extend the two-year Article 50 negotiation process beyond the scheduled date of March 29. The votes came as US President Donald Trump said Brexit was ripping Britain apart and warned that another referendum would be unfair. Speaking during Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkars visit to the White House, Mr Trump said: Im surprised at how badly its all gone from the standpoint of a negotiation. I gave the Prime Minister my ideas on how to negotiate it. She didnt listen to that and thats fine shes got to do what shes got to do. I think it could have been negotiated in a different manner, frankly. I hate to see everything being ripped apart now. (PA Graphics) The third evening of Brexit votes in the Commons came after MPs rejected Mrs Mays Withdrawal Agreement by a 149-vote margin on Tuesday and then inflicted further defeat on the PM on Wednesday by voting to rule out a no-deal outcome. Ministers met for a special political meeting of Cabinet, at which Mrs May was said to have berated four senior colleagues who defied the Tory whip to abstain in the no-deal vote. Conservative MPs have been given a free vote on Mrs Mays motion, which proposes a one-off delay of Brexit day to June 30 if her Withdrawal Agreement is approved in a third meaningful vote ahead of next weeks EU summit in Brussels. But it warns that if her deal is rejected for a third time any extension would have to be longer and would involve the UK taking part in European Parliament elections in May. Cabinet Office minister David Lidington told MPs that in this case, the Government would stage two weeks of debate following the March 21-22 summit for the Commons to try to establish a majority around a different plan. Mr Bercow sparked fury among Brexiteers by selecting TIG MP Sarah Wollastons referendum proposal for debate, while blocking another amendment, signed by 127 MPs, which sought to rule out a second public vote. Donald Trump in the Oval Office meeting Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (Brian Lawless/PA) A Labour amendment demanding an extension to Article 50 withdrawal negotiations to provide time to find a majority for a different approach was rejected by 318 votes to 302, majority 16. A spokesman for the Peoples Vote campaign said they regarded Dr Wollastons decision to press the referendum case to a vote as premature. We do not think today is the right time to test the will of the House on the case for a new public vote, said the spokesman. Instead, this is the time for Parliament to declare it wants an extension of Article 50 so that, after two-and-a-half years of vexed negotiations, our political leaders can finally decide on what Brexit means. Labour whipped its MPs to abstain on the referendum vote, but 24 voted in favour not including Brightons Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who went through both lobbies to cancel his own vote out. TIG Brexit spokeswoman Anna Soubry said: This is a betrayal of Labour Party members and voters, Labour MPs, Labours conference policy and, most importantly, the British public. The Labour Party leadership are determined to deliver Brexit, which would harm our country. Labour revealed that leader Jeremy Corbyn and senior aides have met with backbenchers Peter Kyle and Phil Wilson, who are promoting a plan to accept Mrs Mays deal on the condition that it is subject to a second referendum. Any extension must be approved unanimously by the 27 remaining EU states, and Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl said there could be some problem in obtaining this if it took Brexit beyond the date of elections. Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney told RTE radio: If you have a long extension of, say, 21 months to the end of 2020 whatever the period would be then Britain has a legal entitlement to have representation in the European Parliament and so must take part in EU elections. During my consultations ahead of #EUCO, I will appeal to the EU27 to be open to a long extension if the UK finds it necessary to rethink its #Brexit strategy and build consensus around it. Charles Michel (@eucopresident) March 14, 2019 European Council president Donald Tusk has indicated that the EU may be ready to offer a lengthy extension to negotiations if the UK wants to rethink its Brexit strategy and build consensus around it. But Mrs May left no doubt that she opposes a lengthy delay, telling MPs: I do not think that would be the right outcome. But the House needs to face up to the consequences of the decisions it has taken. A stonemason accused of beating and stabbing his friend to death is a convicted killer responsible for the deaths of four other men in Europe, jurors have heard. Mane Driza, 41, who was known as Scarface film character Tony Montana, is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of murdering fellow Albanian Stefan Bledar Mone, 23, in June 1999. He allegedly launched a brutal and merciless attack on Mr Mone at his London home after accusing him of stealing his wedding ring. Afterwards, he fled to Italy where police tracked him down in Sicily the following year, the Old Bailey has heard. It emerged at his trial that Driza had killed two men in his home country of Albania two years before Mr Mones death, and went on to shoot two others dead in Italy afterwards. Mane Driza is on trial at the Old Bailey accused of murdering Stefan Bledar Mone (Metropolitan Police/PA) Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay read out the defendants history of extreme violence in agreed facts. In Albania, Driza was convicted with his father of two charges of premeditated murder in complicity of citizens in December 2001. The victims, father and son Elmaz and Lavdosh Kannani, lived in the same village as the Drizas. Lavdosh Kannani had been sentenced to six years in jail for an offence against the defendant. But in March 1997 he returned to the village of Bishan after prisons were opened during turmoil in Albania. On April 11 1997 the defendants, in co-operation with his father, shot and killed him. As they returned home, they met Elmaz Kannani and shot him dead too, jurors were told. Following the killings, the defendant came to Britain where he allegedly attacked Mr Mone in his Wembley flat. He allegedly inflicted more than 120 injuries with a lock knife and pick axe handle, cutting Mr Mones throat with a curved cheese knife, the court was told. Mr Mones pregnant girlfriend found the body the next day but was only able to identify him by his belt buckle, jurors have heard. By then Driza had taken a flight to Italy, where he went on to kill two more men and attempt to kill a third. In Catania, Sicily, in June 2002, he was convicted of conspiracy to murder Maskaj Artan and Blushaj Albert, and the attempted murder of Maskaj Lefter. The Italian court found that, as part of a plan, the defendant went with others to a bar in Catania carrying two firearms on December 20 1999. He shot dead the two men and tried to kill a third, but the gun jammed, the court heard. He was arrested the next day and has remained in prison until he was brought to Britain by UK police on May 31 last year. On his arrival he was arrested and charged with the murder of Mr Mone. The court was told Driza had been tried in his absence in Albania but accepts he did shoot the men in both countries. Driza, also known as Sokol Drenova, of no fixed abode, has denied the murder of Mr Mone. A woman who pretended to have cancer in order to help defraud the charity she worked for out of more than 85,000 has been jailed by a judge who told her she had shown no shame. Patricia Robertshaw, 42, pretended that she was having radiotherapy in order to earn three months sick pay from Yorkshire Cancer Research in Harrogate, where she worked as an events manager. Whilst off work, the defendant used fake degree certificates to apply for jobs at other companies, having used the same fraudulent documents to attain the role at the charity. York Crown Court heard how Robertshaw, of Gisburn Road in Barrowford, Lancashire, had produced three bogus degree certificates. They were for a masters in science from the University of Leeds and a doctorate in philosophy from the same university, as well as a masters in project management from Leeds Metropolitan University. Prosecutors explained how the documents helped her to earn a 10,250 a year pay rise, which she earned for seven months, earning a total of 86,833 whilst working at the charity between September 2015 and November 2017. Patricia Robertshaw said she was having radiotherapy in order to earn three months sick pay (Danny Lawson/PA) It was explained how Robertshaws web of lies unravelled when other workers at the charity scanned the QR codes she had submitted on sick note forms and found they were invalid. She pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and one of forgery. Handing her a sentence of four years and five months in jail on Thursday, Judge Andrew Stubbs QC told her: Embedded in the charity as you were, you would have known the good that money would have done. Discussing Roberthsaws attempts to feign cancer, he said: Those claims were as bogus as the qualifications you had used. This led to you claiming, without any apparent sense of shame, that you had cancer while working for a cancer charity. The charity relies upon the generosity of the public and as a result those who should have benefited from the research will have been impacted in some degree by the fraud of the defendant. Robert Sandford, prosecuting, explained how Robertshaw started to pretend to have cancer in April 2016, saying she was having treatment at the Airedale General Hospital in Bradford and at Barrowford Surgery in Nelson, Lancashire, before eventually being found out in November 2017. Her employers had twice offered her independent health assessments, but she refused on both occasions, and even went as far as forging sick notes. Whilst on three-month sick leave, she applied for roles as an events and commercial lead at Manchester City Council and as the head of income generation at the Pendleside Hospice in Burnley, the court heard. The court heard how she had a conditional offer from the former, which would have paid her a salary of 49,313, and was close to getting an offer from the latter, which had an advertised salary of 36,075. In a previous role at Leeds Beckett University, she was responsible for sending off students assessments to the relevant exam board. In order to save herself work, the court heard, she instead forged certificates saying they had passed their qualifications, meaning that 55 students were given invalid certificates. The court was told that the university has had to pay 500 settlements to 36 of those students, who were studying for qualifications in leadership and management. Mr Sandford said: As a result, these students thought they had valid certificates, only to find out that their hard work was to no avail. Catherine Silverton, defending, explained how her client had a history of mental health difficulties and has a borderline personality disorder. She said: The defendant wishes to express through me her deepest remorse and regret for these offences. She acknowledges the harm done to all of the victims. Following the sentencing, Detective Constable Shane Martin, who led the case for North Yorkshire Police, described Robertshaws actions as astonishingly unethical. He said: This is the most abhorrent fraud case I have investigated in 25 years of being a police officer. Its absolutely incomprehensible that anyone could lie about having such a serious illness. Arfaq Nabi, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said: This was a calculated and heartless fraud. Robertshaw elicited sympathy from her colleagues in an entirely heartless way, claiming to be suffering from the very disease the charity itself was campaigning for. The Scottish Government has announced 175,000 funding to support relief efforts following deadly floods in Malawi. Severe flooding in the south of the African country in recent days has affected nearly a million people. At least 45 people are reported to have died, while tens of thousands have been displaced. The cash will help secure clean water supplies and treat contamination. Environment Secretary @strathearnrose on @scotgov's commitment to support emergency relief work in the south of Malawi, where severe flooding has affected nearly a million people. pic.twitter.com/5dy8Np3Fe3 Net Zero Scotland (@ScotGovNetZero) March 14, 2019 Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham said: First and foremost, I know the people of Scotland will join the Scottish Government in sending our thoughts and prayers to the growing number of people in southern Malawi whose lives have been affected by this devastating flooding particularly those who have, tragically, lost a family member. We have close links with the people of Malawi and, since news of the flooding broke, we have been in contact with International Development and Climate Justice Fund partners on the ground to identify how the Scottish Government can best support emergency relief efforts. The Scottish Government has given aid for flood relief efforts in Malawi (Marys Meals/PA) The funding we have announced today will go to the heart of addressing the urgent issues being faced. It will enable our HydroNation programme experts, who are in the region right now co-ordinating relief efforts, to continue to deliver emergency action targeting the most at-risk water supplies. A vigil has taken place in Belfast following news that one soldier will be prosecuted over the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings in Londonderry. Thirteen civil rights demonstrators were shot dead on January 30 1972, on one of the most notorious days of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Around 100 people gathered at the former site of the Andersonstown police station on Thursday evening to stand in solidarity with the Bloody Sunday families. Belfast Lord Mayor Deirdre Hargey during the vigil in West Belfast (Niall Carson/PA) Many held black flags and pictures of people who had been killed on Bloody Sunday as well as in a 1971 shooting in west Belfast known as the Ballymurphy massacre. West Belfast MP Paul Maskey, Lord Mayor Deirdre Hargey, former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly were among those in attendance. Mr Maskey said they were standing in solidarity with the Bloody Sunday families. Speaking at the vigil, Mr Maskey said the decision to prosecute only one soldier over Bloody Sunday was wrong. The Bloody Sunday families have shown determination and dignity over the past 47 years that has been remarkable, he said. We are proud to stand in solidarity with them this evening. The British state must be answerable for the crimes it has committed in Ireland. He continued: The Bloody Sunday families are continuing on their journey for justice and Belfast will stand with them, the message to the British Government and its forces is very clear, justice will prevail. Pictures of Bloody Sunday victims James Wray and William McKinney were held up (Niall Carson/PA) Briege Voyle, whose mother Joan Connolly was one of 10 people, including a priest, shot dead at Ballymurphy in 1971, also addressed the vigil. She paid tribute to the dignity of the Bloody Sunday families following the devastating announcement that just one soldier will be prosecuted. They are heartbroken but they were dignified as they have always been, as we have always tried to be, we have followed them in their footsteps, she said. We will be there standing by the Bloody Sunday families as they are there with us. We will get there us fighting Irish will fight them all the way to the High Court if we have to. It came hours after Northern Irelands Public Prosecution Service (PPS) announced that a former paratrooper, known only as soldier F, will be charged with two murders and four attempted murders. He will face charges for the murders of James Wray and William McKinney and the attempted murders of Joseph Friel, Michael Quinn, Joe Mahon and Patrick ODonnell in Londonderry in 1972. However, the PPS said 16 other former soldiers and two suspected ex-members of the Official IRA, all of whom were also investigated as part of a major police murder probe, will not face prosecution. Relatives of those who died reacted with a mix of vindication, disappointment and defiance. While welcoming the news for the six families directly impacted by the decision to prosecute Soldier F declaring that a victory the campaigners said they would keep fighting for the other dead and injured. Former Liberal leader Lord Steel has sought to clarify evidence he gave to an inquiry about child abuse allegations against former MP Sir Cyril Smith. And he warned that sensationalist headlines from what he told the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) could distract from panels search of the truth. The former Scottish Parliament presiding officer spoke out after the Liberal Democrats started disciplinary proceedings against him, after he told the inquiry a conversation with Smith left him assuming the allegations were correct but the party did not investigate them. The party has rightly begun a disciplinary investigation into Lord Steel following his revelations. Clearly this is incredibly serious and he should be suspended while this takes place. https://t.co/kfx140EtpT Jo Swinson (@joswinson) March 14, 2019 Liberal Democrat deputy leader Jo Swinson tweeted: The party has rightly begun a disciplinary investigation into Lord Steel following his revelations. Clearly this is incredibly serious and he should be suspended while this takes place. She spoke after Lord Steel denied he had been hiding his head in the sand over the child abuse allegations made against the former Rochdale MP. Lord Steel said he asked the late politician in 1979 about claims that he abused boys at a Rochdale hostel, and found they dated back to Smiths time as a Labour councillor in the 1960s. He told the inquiry he came away from the conversation with Smith assuming he had committed the offences, because he did not deny them. Lord Steel recalled Smith had told him police had investigated the claims and taken no action. The IICSA heard no formal inquiry was then held by the Liberal Party into the claims. On the suggestion that no action was taken then because Lord Steel did not want to get involved in a nasty confrontation with Smith, he told the hearing: I wouldnt have been hiding my head in the sand. These allegations all related to a period some years before he was even an MP and before he was even a member of the party, therefore it did not seem to me that I had any position in the matter at all. Smith, who was an MP for Rochdale between 1972 and 1992, is accused of sexually abusing a number of boys. Former Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith. (PA/PA Archive/PA Images) Allegations against him found a greater public spotlight after he died in 2010. Lord Steels conversation with Smith was prompted by a story in Private Eye. It came after the Rochdale Alternative Press published a story in 1979 saying police had investigated Smith over allegations of abuse against teenagers at the Cambridge House hostel in the town. Lord Steel told the inquiry: He accepted the story was correct. Obviously I disapproved but as far as I was concerned it was past history. He added: He was not an MP at the time. He wasnt even a member of the party. I did not feel I had any locus in it all, other than being a reader of the paper. In a statement released on Thursday Lord Steel said he wanted to clarify what happened in 1979 when I asked Cyril Smith about the report in Private Eye. He added: As I told the Inquiry yesterday, I did not have that report with me when I tackled him, nor did we discuss the details in it. He admitted to me that the report was correct, in that he had been investigated by the police at the time and no action taken against him. I had already told the inquiry in writing that in my opinion he had been abusing his position in Rochdale Council (that is to gain access to council-run childrens homes), but that had been properly a matter for the police and the council, and not for me, as he was neither an MP nor even a member of the Liberal Party at the time. I was in no position to re-open the investigation. Lord Steel said: The inquiry has a serious and sensitive job to undertake and spinning evidence to generate sensationalist headlines only serves to distract from panels search of the truth. Ministers and MPs have issued a video supporting young people staging school strikes as part of a global day of youth action on climate change. In the video released ahead of Fridays strikes, Environment Secretary Michael Gove tells the students walking out of lessons and lectures to call for urgent action on cutting emissions: Dear school climate strikers, we agree. Collective action of the kind youre championing can make a difference, and a profound one, he says. Organisers of the Youth Strike 4 Climate say events will take place in more than 100 towns and cities from Penzance to Aberdeen on Friday, in the second walkout for climate action in the UK. Driven by what students say is an alarming lack of government leadership on climate action, the strikes are part of a global day of walkouts and demonstrations by young people in more than 100 countries. They have been inspired by teenager Greta Thunberg, who protests every Friday outside Swedens parliament to urge leaders to tackle climate change. Ministers have praised climate strikers who are walking out again on Friday (Stefan Rousseau/PA) Organisers here say they expect attendances to be larger than the first UK strike on February 15, which saw thousands of students defy headteachers and politicians to ditch lessons for demonstrations. Some politicians and school leaders criticised young people for taking part in the education strike on February 15, but their action was backed by other MPs, academics and environmental campaigners. Mr Gove says the transition to a clean economy will require us to change the way in which our energy is generated, change the way in which our homes are built, change the way in which our land is managed and farming operates. But that change is absolutely necessary, he says in the new video, published via the Conservative Environment Network. Elsewhere in the video Tory MPs highlight action the Government is taking on climate change, but acknowledge more needs to be done. Energy and Clean Growth Minister Claire Perry says: This Government has committed to setting a net zero emissions target, so that we are no longer adding harmful emissions to the climate. Together, we can stop climate change. Other political leaders have also backed the climate strikers. Thank you for standing up against climate change. You shouldnt have to pay the price for the mistakes of previous generations. Id be delighted to meet you, hear your message and to discuss how we can work together to protect our planet. https://t.co/aM10cl00br Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 14, 2019 In a tweet Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: Thank you for standing up against climate change. You shouldnt have to pay the price for the mistakes of previous generations. Id be delighted to meet you, hear your message and to discuss how we can work together to protect our planet. Three men have been convicted of trying to import cocaine with a street value of over 100 million into the UK hidden in a yacht. The 1.4 tonnes of cocaine worth 112 million was hidden in the SY Nomad which was intercepted by the authorities off the Cornish coast in August last year. UK nationals Nigel Clark, 64, and Dean Waters, 59, and Dutchman Raymond Dijkstra, 27, were convicted by a jury of conspiring to import cocaine and conspiring to conceal cocaine within a ship at Bristol Crown Court following a five-week trial. Bags of cocaine seized by the British authorities (National Crime Agency/PA) Co-accused Estonian Richard Must, 49, and Latvian Voldermars Gailis, 21 pleaded guilty to all charges at an earlier hearing. The court heard the 60ft yacht had left Suriname, just south of Venezuela, at the beginning of August heading for the UK when it was intercepted. The vessel was escorted into Newlyn Harbour in Cornwall and the three men on board skipper Must and crew Gailis and Dijkstra were arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking offences. The authorities then searched the boat and within an hour they discovered more than 1,400 kilo blocks of cocaine hidden inside locked storage containers on the vessel. The drugs were hidden inside the yacht (National Crime Agency/PA). The estimated wholesale of this amount of cocaine is 44,896,000, with an approximate street value of 112 million. Clark and Waters were arrested later that day by National Crime Agency officers who had been observing their activity over a period of two days. The authorities believe that Waters, who had purchased a rigid inflatable boat, and Clark planned to meet the yacht at sea and transfer the drugs. Ty Surgeon, who led the investigation for the National Crime Agency, said: This is another fantastic example of law enforcement and partner agencies working together, sharing intelligence and conducting operational activity to stop the importation of a huge amount of cocaine into the UK. The main instigators Clark and Waters both of whom have previous convictions for drug trafficking offences knew exactly what they were doing and had planned every part of the drug smuggling attempt. This case should act as a deterrence to anyone who thinks they can import or smuggle drugs into the UK. NCA deputy director Matt Horne said: This intelligence-led investigation resulted in the seizure of a significant quantity of cocaine that would have made its way to towns and cities across the UK. This was a highly profitable commodity with an estimated street value of 112 million. Making a profit is the motive for organised criminals and this interdiction would have really hit them in the pocket disrupting their activities and damaging their reputation at the same time. We know there are links between drug supply and violent crime and this seizure, along with the two tonnes recovered in similar circumstances at the same harbour in July last year, demonstrate the NCAs role in helping to prevent that. Clark, of no fixed address; Waters, of Estepona, Spain; Must, of Estonia; Gailis, of Latvia; and Dijkstra, of Holland, will be sentenced on March 26 at Bristol Crown Court. Cast: Akshay Kumar, Parineeti Chopra Director: Anurag Singh Hindi; 1 hour, 50 minutes; UA Rating: Four stars The movie is set in 1897, in the North-West Frontier Province, now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. (Source: YouTube screengrab) So, Kesari is a triumph. It is Akshay Kumars triumph but it is also more. The true story is the most powerful star of Kesari. Showcasing the Battle of Saragarhi, it is set in 1897, in the North-West Frontier Province, now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Here, 21 Sikh soldiers die fighting 10,000 Afghan tribesmen attacking their fort. Despite massive odds, the Sikhs remain valiant to the core. They are led by Havildar Ishar Singh (Akshay Kumar) who inspires with his military acumen, his spirit and his gentleness. Akshay Kumar is astonishing as Ishar Singh featuring no traces of Akshay Kumar. There is none of the stars swagger or teasing smile here. Instead, Ishar is a simple peasant-turned-soldier who changes upon receiving racist abuse from his British officer. In a slower first half, Ishar perceptibly shifts, from a sipahi doing his tooti to a man who fights ferociously as a free being. Akshay is superb his face, smaller than usual under a large pagdi and a fulsome beard, looks more gaunt than glamorous. His eyes, when he salutes the racist Brit, swim with hurt. His smiles, during imagined conversations with his wife Malko (Parineeti Chopra in a sparkling cameo), are shy. There is no sign of the flamboyant Khiladi Kumar here. Instead, the real star is the cinematography shot by Anshul Chobey, capturing the NWFPs unrelenting landscape, a kaleidoscope of snow-clad mountains and dusty plains, harsh, rocky, an occasional silvery nadi, and everywhere, an implacable, insistent ochre. Kesaris ensemble cast is terrific. Each soldier carves out his individuality; there are small touches a postcard with a childs handprint, a pair of shoes lovingly bought for an ageing father, the trembling mouth of the youngest soldier, Gurmukh Singh (a notable performance) that stamp each sipahi as a person from a world of vivid love. This love extends to their comrades, each falling after decimating multiple Afghans, many killed by foul means, not fair combat. In this, Kesari will touch more than a historical nerve. The film paints a portrait of the past turbulence of the NWFP and subtly suggests its present dangers as well. The films portrayal of the Afghan Mullah Syedullah, who uses jihad to push towards Hindostan, is spot-on. When the Mullah captures, tortures and beheads an Afghan woman, the grimness underlines how little has changed in that part of the world. The action, especially in the stunning second half, throbs there are remarkable wide-angle war scenes and closer-focus shots, capturing Akshays martial prowess in detail. There are a few quibbles too. The Afghans are mostly portrayed as a clump they are either a bunch of leering, gibbering savages, or plasticky peasants, but theres little individuality beyond that. An Afghan girl has a small role but this lacks impact. Most of the actors playing Afghans look oddly miscast while one an effeminate sharp shooter, all reddened nails and spiteful lip-sticked mouth remains a mystery, unless the point of his existence was to recall Malik Ghafoor of Padmaavat fame. Kesari strides across history and topography. (Source: YouTube screengrab) Yet, these are minor quibbles. For the most part, Kesari strides across history and topography (its Punjab sequences are marvellous too, evoking the exact green of its fields, the vast blueness of its skies, against which a baradari archly arches) confidently. Certain scenes the suicide bombers or Ishar murmuring, Chal jhootha to the malevolent Mullah spark applause. And the films running thread flames at the end, when the Sikhs lose the battle but win the war. Watch Kesari, a vibrant movie which captures one point from the past thats relevant in the present too. Also read: 'Kesari' Trailer Launch: Akshay Kumar showcases soldierly pride, Sikh valour and Punjabi power! When numerous cracks require an instant fix, the best way is to improve the facade and sweep everything under a flashy, dazzling carpet. Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee has resorted to this policy while pitching candidates for at least three Lok Sabha seats. A popular and senior film actress, Moon Moon Sen who is also in the fray dubbed the entry of fresh faces from the film world as encouraging with so many pretty faces contesting the election. Budding Bengali film actors Mimi Chakrabarty and Nusrat Jahan have been pitched from two politically significant seats. One of the seats, Jadavpur, has always been a high-profile seat, with the likes of Somnath Chatterjee, Malini Bhattacharya and Mamata having been the sitting MPs in the past. Basirhat, the other constituency which is close to the Bangladesh border, had been a CPM-stronghold for eight terms, till the TMC wrested it in 2009. But going by the poll arithmetic, with anti-incumbency and communal tension creating space for Hindu consolidation, Mamatas trump card is Nusrat, non-political and attractive. In 2009, when the TMC won Basirhat, the partys face was the communal and aggressive Haji Nurul. The border district witnessed maximum communal flashpoints, which led to Hindu polarisation and the emergence of the Bajrang Dal and the Hindu right wing. Both entries have surprised voters. (Photo: Twitter) Mamata replaced him with an apparently timid Idris Ali in 2014, but it seemed the TMC would continue to pamper the 22 per cent Muslim voters of Basirhat and reportedly infiltrators from across the border. The 71 per cent Hindus in the area started seeing things in a different light as the infiltration kept mounting and the area saw frequent communal tension. Mamata was aware of the feelings of Basirhat Hindus. So she was looking for a non-political, fresh face. Nusrat fits the bill. She is likely to cast her spell on Muslim and Hindu voters alike and the youth could be easily swept off their feet with Nusrat doing a few road shows. With the Muslim vote bank already with the Trinamool, if Nusrat can make some dent in the Hindu vote bank, shell surely win, which wouldnt have been possible with any political Muslim candidate, said a TMC political pundit. However, the BJP is not going to make it easy for Nusrat. In Jadavpur, Mamata has also brought in a change by dropping sitting MP Sugata Bose, a Harvard professor who became unpopular after some of his critical statements about the politicisation of educational institutions, in favour of actress Mimi Chakrabarty, another political greenhorn with a substantial fan following. Mimis entry had surprised many and shocked party members since the Jadavpur Assembly seat was under CPM stalwart Sujan Chakrabarty and he is a popular face in his constituency. A hardcore politician from a politically high-profile seat would have given a thrill of a different magnitude. But diluting the seriousness of the fight and distracting attention from the political significance of the seat with a popular household soap opera name might work wonders. The BJP has also apparently talked to two popular Bengali film stars and a fashion designer to contest from the seat. The actresses have declined, but the fashion designer might just agree. Meanwhile, film actress Moon Moon Sen, who won from Bankura Lok Sabha seat in 2014 by defeating CPM veteran Basudev Acharya, has been transferred to Asansol, where the BJPs sitting MP is Babul Supriyo. The reason behind shifting Moon Moon was the discontentment among Bankura voters who reportedly resented her non-performance. They apparently regret getting carried away by the actress glamour instead of relying on their heavyweight minister, who would be with them through thick and thin. When it became clear glamour will not cut it again in Bankura, Mamata brought in TMC veteran Subrata Mukherjee against Acharya. The contestants on this seat are likely to kick up some real political storms and clashes of ideology. (Courtesy of Mail Today) Also Read: How Mamata Banerjee has emerged as the face of the anti-BJP brigade The Hershey Co. engages in the manufacture and market of chocolate and sugar confectionery products. The firm operates through the following geographical segments: North America; and International and Other. The North America segment is responsible for the traditional chocolate and non-chocolate confectionery market position of the company, as well as its grocery and snacks market positions, in the United States and Canada. The International and Other segment is the combination of all other operating segments which are not individually material, including those geographic regions where the company operates outside of North America. Its brands include Hershey's, Reese's, and Kisses. The company was founded by Milton S. Hershey in 1894 and is headquartered in Hershey, PA. 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The company develops QLUE, a blockchain-agnostic search and analytics engine that enables law enforcement, RegTech, regulators, and government agencies to visually track, trace, and monitor digital currencies transactions at a forensic level; and BitRank Verified that offers a risk score for digital currencies that enables RegTech, banks, ATMs, exchanges, and retailers to meet traditional regulatory/compliance requirements. It also develops brokerage and exchange software to make the purchase and sale of digital currency easily accessible to the mass consumer and investor with a focus on compliance and safety. The company has a partnership with Blockchain Foundry Inc. to develop an integrated forensic and risk scoring product for syscoin-based tokens. The company was formerly known as BIG Blockchain Intelligence Group Inc. and changed its name to BIGG Digital Assets Inc. in September 2019. BIGG Digital Assets Inc. is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. Read More Blackrock Silver Corp. engages in the acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral properties located in the United States. It primarily explores for gold and silver deposits. The company's flagship property is the Tonopah West silver-gold project that consists of 97 patented and 17 unpatented claims covering an area of 4.5 square kilometers located in the Silver State of Nevada. It also holds interest in the Silver Cloud project that consists of 572 mining claims covering an area of approximately 45 square kilometers located in Nevada. The company was formerly known as Blackrock Gold Corp. and changed its name to Blackrock Silver Corp. in March 2021. Blackrock Silver Corp. was incorporated in 1999 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Sealed Air: A.P.S. (Holdings) Limited, AFP Trading (China) Co. Ltd., AFPTOH LTD, APS Automated Packaging Systems GmbH & Co. KG, APS Verwaltungs-GmbH, Air Ride Pallets Hong Kong Limited, Austin Foam Plastics Inc. (dba AFP Inc.), Automated Packaging Systems, Automated Packaging Systems Asia Holding Company Limited, Automated Packaging Systems Comerciale Importacao do Brasil Ltda., Automated Packaging Systems Europe, Automated Packaging Systems LLC, Automated Packaging Systems Limited, Automated Packaging Systems Southeast Asia Co. Ltd., B+ Equipment, B+ Equipment SAS, Beacon Holdings LLC, Biosphere Industries, BluPack (New Zealand), Blue Dot Packaging Pty Ltd., Cactus (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Cryovac (Malaysia) SDN. BHD, Cryovac Brasil Ltda., Cryovac Holdings II LLC, Cryovac International Holdings Inc., Cryovac LLC*, Cryovac Leasing Corporation, Cryovac Londrina Ltda., Cryovac Packaging Portugal Embalagens Ltda., Cryovac-Sealed Air de Costa Rica S.R.L., DELTAPLAM Embalagens Industria e Comercio, Diversey, Diversey J Trustee Limited, Diversey Trustee Limited, Entapack Pty. Ltd., Fagerdala (Chengdu) Packaging Co. Ltd, Fagerdala (Shanghai) Foams Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Shanghai) Polymer Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Suzhou) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala (Thailand) Limited, Fagerdala (Xiamen) Packaging Co. Ltd., Fagerdala Leamchabung Limited, Fagerdala Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Fagerdala Mexico S.A. de C.V., Fagerdala Mexico Supply Chain S.A. de C.V., Fagerdala Packaging Inc. (Indiana), Fagerdala Singapore Pte Ltd, Fagerdala Singapore Pte. Ltd., Getpacking.com GmbH, Invertol S. de R.L. de C.V., JSC Sealed Air Kaustik, KRIS Automated Packaging Systems Holding Company, Kevothermal LLC, Kevothermal Limited, Nelipak Holdings, Pack-Tiger GmbH, Polyrol Limited, Polyrol Packaging Systems LLC, ProAseptic Technologies S.L., Producembal- Producao de Embalagens LTDA, Reflectix Inc., SLD Air Packaging Paketleme Malzemeleri Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Saddle Brook Insurance Company, Sealed Air (Asia) Holdings BV, Sealed Air (Barbados) S.R.L., Sealed Air (Canada) Co./CIE, Sealed Air (Canada) Holdings B.V., Sealed Air (China) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air (China) Limited, Sealed Air (Israel) Ltd., Sealed Air (Korea) Limited, Sealed Air (Latin America) Holdings II LLC, Sealed Air (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Sealed Air (New Zealand), Sealed Air (Philippines) Inc., Sealed Air (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Sealed Air (Ukraine) Limited, Sealed Air Africa (Pty.) Limited, Sealed Air Americas Manufacturing S. de R.L. de C.V., Sealed Air Argentina S.A., Sealed Air Australia (Holdings) Pty. Limited, Sealed Air Australia Pty. Limited, Sealed Air Australia Real Estate Pty Ltd, Sealed Air B.V., Sealed Air Belgium N.V., Sealed Air Central America S.A., Sealed Air Chile SpA, Sealed Air Colombia Ltda., Sealed Air Corporation (US), Sealed Air Cyprus Ltd., Sealed Air Denmark A/S, Sealed Air Finance B.V., Sealed Air Finance II LLC, Sealed Air Finance Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Funding LLC, Sealed Air General Trading LLC, Sealed Air GmbH (Germany), Sealed Air GmbH (Switzerland), Sealed Air Hellas SA, Sealed Air Holding France SAS, Sealed Air Holdings (New Zealand) Pty. Ltd., Sealed Air Holdings South Africa Proprietary Limited, Sealed Air Holdings UK I Limited, Sealed Air Holdings UK Limited, Sealed Air Hong Kong Limited, Sealed Air Hungary Ltd., Sealed Air Investment and Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Japan G.K., Sealed Air LLC, Sealed Air Limited (Ireland), Sealed Air Limited (UK), Sealed Air Luxembourg (I) S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Luxembourg (II) S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Sealed Air Management Holding Verwaltungs GmbH, Sealed Air Multiflex GmbH, Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) I B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands (Holdings) II B.V., Sealed Air Netherlands Holdings V B.V., Sealed Air Norge AS, Sealed Air OY, Sealed Air Packaging (India) Private Limited, Sealed Air Packaging (Shanghai) Co. Limited, Sealed Air Packaging (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Sealed Air Packaging LLC, Sealed Air Packaging Materials (India) LLP, Sealed Air Packaging S.L.U., Sealed Air Peru S.A.C., Sealed Air Polska Sp. Zoo, Sealed Air Pty Limited, Sealed Air S.A S., Sealed Air S.r.l., Sealed Air South Africa (Pty.) Ltd., Sealed Air Svenska AB, Sealed Air Taiwan Limited, Sealed Air UK Limited Partnership, Sealed Air US Holdings (Thailand) LLC, Sealed Air Uruguay S.A., Sealed Air Verpackungen GmbH, Sealed Air de Mexico Operations S. de RL. de C.V., Sealed Air de Venezuela S.A., Sealed Air s.r.o., Shanklin Corp, Shanklin Corporation, TTS-Ciptec, TXAFP Asia Pacific Ltd., TXAFP GP LLC, and Trigon Industries. Chelverton Growth Trust PLC is a close-ended equity mutual fund launched and managed by Chelverton Asset Management Limited. It invests in the public equity markets of the United Kingdom. The fund seeks to invest in stocks of companies operating across diversified sectors. It primarily invests in small-cap stocks of companies listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) with a market capitalization at the time of investment of up to $ 99 million. The fund benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against the FTSE All Share Index. Chelverton Growth Trust PLC was formed on August 9, 2001 and is domiciled in the United Kingdom. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Prudential Financial: 210-220 E. 22nd Street SSGA Owner LLC, AIG Edison, AIG Star, AREF Cayman Co Ltd., AREF GP II Pte. Ltd., AREF GP Ltd., ASPF II - Feeder Fund GmbH, ASPF II - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, ASPF II Management GmbH, ASPF III (Scots) L.P., ASSURANCE, AST Investment Services Inc., Adlerwerke CB Investment LLC, Administradora de Fondos de Pensiones Habitat S.A., Administradora de Inversiones Previsionales SpA, Aoba Life Insurance Company, Asia Property Fund III GP S.a.r.l., Assurance IQ LLC, Assurance Intelligence LLC, BSC CP LP, Braeloch Holdings Inc., Braeloch Successor Corporation, Brazilian Capital Fund GP Limited, Broad Street Global Advisors LLC, Broome Street Holdings LLC, CB German Retail LLC, CLIS Co. Ltd., COLICO INC., Campus Drive LLC, Capital Agricultural Property Services Inc., Chadwick Boulevard Investment Holdings Co. LLC, Cibecue LLC, Coconino LLC, Colico II Inc., Columbus Drive Partners L.P., Commerce Street Holdings LLC, Commerce Street Investments LLC, Coolidge LLC, Coral Reef GP, Coral Reef L.P., Coral Reef Unit Trust, Cottage Street Investments LLC, Cottage Street Orbit Acquisition LLC, DHFL PRAMERICA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED, DICKENS AVENUE HOLDINGS VI LLC, DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI (Ireland) L.P., DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI (US) L.P., Don Cesar Investor LLC, Dryden Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Dryden Finance II LLC, EVP II GP S.a r.l., EVP II Sweden Resi I GP S.a r.l., Edison Place Senior Note LLC, Essex LLC, EuroCore GP S.a r.l., European Value Partners GP S.a.r.l., Everbright PGIM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Flagstaff LLC, GA 1600 Commons LLC, GA 333 Hennepin Investor LLC, GA BV LLC, GA Bay Area GP LLC, GA Bay Area Investor LLC, GA Belden LLC, GA CLARENDON LLC, GA Cal Crossings LLC, GA Collins LLC, GA E. 22nd Street Apartments Holdings LLC, GA East 86 Street LLC, GA JHCII LLC, GA MENLO PARK INVESTOR LLC, GA Manor at Harbour Island LLC, GA Metro LLC, GA Mission LLC, GA TRITON INVESTOR LLC, GA W Paces LLC, GA/MDI 333 Hennepin Associates LLC, GIBRALTAR BSN HOLDINGS SDN BHD, GIBRALTAR INDIA SOLUTIONS LLP, Gateway Holdings II LLC, Gateway Holdings LLC, German Retail Income CP LP, Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad, Gibraltar International Insurance Services Company Inc., Gibraltar International Service LLC, Gibraltar Reinsurance Company Ltd., Gibraltar Universal Life Reinsurance Company, Glenealy International Limited, Global Portfolio Strategies Inc., Gold GP Limited, Gold II L.P., Gold L.P., Graham Resources Inc., Graham Royalty Ltd., Green Tree GP, Green Tree L.P., Greenlee LLC, Halsey Street Investments LLC, Hirakata LLC, IVP Fund GP LLC, Impact Investments Bridges UK S.a.r.l, Inter-Atlantic G Fund L.P., Inversiones Previsionales Chile SpA, Inversiones Previsionales Dos SpA, Ironbound Fund LLC, Jennison Associates LLC, Kyarra S.a r.l., Kyoei Annuity Home Co. Ltd., LINEUP LLC, Lake Street Partners IV L.P., MC GA COLLINS HOLDINGS LLC, MC GA COLLINS REALTY LLC, MC Insurance Agency Services LLC, Manor at Harbour Island LLC, Marble Canyon LLC, Maricopa LLC, Market Street Holdings IV LLC, Morenci LLC, Mulberry Street Holdings LLC, Mulberry Street Investment L.P., Mulberry Street Partners LLC, Mullin TBG Insurance Agency Services LLC, MullinTBG Insurance Agency Services, National Family Assurance Group LLC, New Savanna, Orchard Street Acres Inc., PAI Bay Farm LLC, PAI Bayrock Groves LLC, PAI Belvidere Farms LLC, PAI Big Cypress Farm LLC, PAI Corcoran 640 Ranch LLC, PAI DeKalb Farm LLC, PAI Delano 1500 Ranches LLC, PAI Flicker Orchard LLC, PAI Good Hope Farm LLC, PAI Hawk Creek Ranch LLC, PAI Hills Valley Ranches LLC, PAI Holly Hill Groves LLC, PAI Hunt Farm LLC, PAI Jackson Bayou Farm LLC, PAI Lake Placid Groves LLC, PAI Wallula Gap Vineyard LLC, PCP V Cayman AIV GP L.P., PEREF II Co-Invest 1 GP S.a r.l., PEREF II GP S.a r.l., PEREF II PV S.r.l, PFI EM-Tech Fund I LLC, PG Business Service Co. Ltd, PG Collection Service Co. Ltd., PGA Asian Retail Limited, PGA European Limited, PGI Co. Ltd, PGIM (Australia) Pty Ltd, PGIM (Hong Kong) Ltd., PGIM (Scots) Limited, PGIM (Shanghai) Company Ltd., PGIM (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PGIM AVP IV GP S.a r.l., PGIM Advisory (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PGIM Agricultural Investments GP LLC, PGIM Agricultural Investors LP, PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Fund L.P., PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Partners LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management (Feeder) VI LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Fund VI L.P., PGIM European Financing Limited, PGIM European Services Limited, PGIM Financial Limited, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund II L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives GP LLC, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives II GP LLC, PGIM Foreign Investments Inc., PGIM Holding Company LLC, PGIM INDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM INDIA TRUSTEES PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM Inc., PGIM International Financing Inc., PGIM Investments LLC, PGIM Japan Co. Ltd., PGIM Korea Inc., PGIM LTIF Berlin GP S.a r.l., PGIM LTIF Berlin MLP S.ar.l., PGIM LTIF GP S.a.r.l., PGIM Limited, PGIM Loan Originator Manager Limited, PGIM M Campus GP S.a r.l., PGIM Management Partner Limited, PGIM MetaProp Investor LP LLC, PGIM Netherlands B.V., PGIM Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Company Ltd, PGIM Private Capital (Ireland) Limited, PGIM Private Capital Limited, PGIM Private Placement Investors Inc., PGIM Private Placement Investors L.P., PGIM REF EUROPE SCSp, PGIM REF Europe GP S.a r.l., PGIM REF Europe Member LLC, PGIM REF Intermediary Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate (Japan) Ltd., PGIM Real Estate (UK) Limited, PGIM Real Estate CD S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Capital VII GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest L.P., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest SCSp, PGIM Real Estate Co-Invest Holdings LLC, PGIM Real Estate Debt GmbH, PGIM Real Estate Finance Holding Company, PGIM Real Estate Finance LLC, PGIM Real Estate France SAS, PGIM Real Estate Germany AG, PGIM Real Estate Global Debt GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles S. de R.L. de C.V, PGIM Real Estate Italy S.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Loan Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate Luxembourg S.A., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Management Luxembourg S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Mexico S.C., PGIM Real Estate S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate U.S. Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management (Feeder) I LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management Fund I L.P., PGIM Strategic Financing LLC, PGIM Strategic Investments Inc., PGIM USPF VI Manager LLC, PGIM Warehouse Inc., PGLH of Delaware Inc., PIFM Holdco LLC, PIIC Limited, PIISC Holdings (UK) Limited, PIM KF Blocker Holdings LLC, PIM KF Blocker V Holdings LLC, PIM USPF V Manager LLC, PLA Administradora Industrial SRL, PLA Administradora LLC, PLA Administradora S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional II S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional S.de R.L. de C.V., PLA Co-Investor LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager I LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager II LLC, PLA Mexico Residential Manager I LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Limited Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund III Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund IV Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Residential Fund IV Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Blue LP, PLA Retail Fund I LP, PLA Retail Fund I Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Red LP, PLA Retail Fund II Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LP, PLA Retail Fund II Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II U.S. Carry/Co-Invest LP, PLA Services Manager Mexico LLC, PLAI Limited, PMCF Holdings LLC, PMCF Properties LLC, PPPF General Partner LLP, PR GA SCP Apartments LLC, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP (SCOTS FEEDER) LLP, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP LLP, PRECO ACCOUNT III LLC, PRECO ACCOUNT PARTNERSHIP III LP, PRECO Account IV LLC, PRECO Account Partnership IV LP, PRECO III GP LLP, PREFG Hanwha Manager LLC, PREI Acquisition I Inc., PREI Acquisition II Inc., PREI Acquisition LLC, PREI HYDG LLC, PREI International Inc., PRIAC Property Acquisitions LLC, PRICOA Management Partner Limited, PRISA Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Pooled Manager LLC, PRISA III Fund GP LLC, PRISA III Fund PIM LLC, PRREF II Fund Manager LLC, PRU 3XSquare LLC, PRUCO LLC, PRUDENTIAL CAPITAL ENERGY PARTNERS MANAGEMENT (FEEDER) LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP MEMBER LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP REIT LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE 2 LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE LLC, PT PFI Mega Life Insurance, Passaic Fund LLC, Pine Tree GP, Pine Tree L.P., Platinum GP Limited, Platinum II L.P., Platinum L.P., Pramerica (Hong Kong) Holdings Limited, Pramerica (Luxembourg) CP GP S.a.r.l., Pramerica (Scots) CP GP LLP, Pramerica Business Consulting (Shanghai) Company Limited, Pramerica EVP CP LP, Pramerica Financial Asia Headquarters Pte. Ltd., Pramerica Financial Asia Limited, Pramerica Fixed Income Funds Management Limited, Pramerica Fosun Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Pramerica General Partner LLP, Pramerica Holdings Ltd, Pramerica Insurance Agency (China) Company Ltd., Pramerica PRECAP I GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP II GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP III GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP IV GP LLP, Pramerica Pan European Real Estate (Scots) LP, Pramerica Property Partners Fund (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I GP (Scots Feeder) LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital II (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital III (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP (Scots Feeder) LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Limited, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V (Netherlands) GP LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital VI (Scots) Limited Partnership, Pramerica SGR S.p.A, Pramerica Systems Ireland Limited, Preco III (Scotland) Limited Partnership, Pru 101 Wood LLC, Pru Alpha Partners I LLC, Pru Fixed Income Emerging Markets Partners I LLC, PruVen Capital Partners Fund I L.P., Pruco Assignment Corporation, Pruco Life Insurance Company, Pruco Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, Pruco Securities LLC, Prudential 900 Aviation Boulevard LLC, Prudential Affordable Mortgage Company LLC, Prudential Agricultural Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Annuities Distributors Inc., Prudential Annuities Holding Company Inc., Prudential Annuities Inc., Prudential Annuities Information Services & Technology Corporation, Prudential Annuities Life Assurance Corporation, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Captive Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Universal Company, Prudential Bank & Trust FSB, Prudential Capital Energy Opportunity Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners Management Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Partners Management Fund IV L.P., Prudential Capital and Investment Services LLC, Prudential Chile II SpA, Prudential Chile SpA, Prudential Commercial Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Customer Solutions LLC, Prudential Equity Group LLC, Prudential Financial Securities Investment Trust Enterprise, Prudential Fixed Income Global Liquidity Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Fixed Income U.S. Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Funding LLC, Prudential General Services of Japan Y.K., Prudential Gibraltar Agency Co. Ltd., Prudential Global Funding LLC, Prudential Holdings of Japan Inc., Prudential Huntoon Paige Associates LLC, Prudential IBH Holdco Inc., Prudential Impact Investments Mortgage Loans LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Debt LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Equity LLC, Prudential Industrial Properties LLC, Prudential Insurance Agency LLC, Prudential International Insurance Holdings Ltd., Prudential International Insurance Service Company L.L.C., Prudential International Investments Advisers LLC, Prudential International Investments Company LLC, Prudential International Investments LLC, Prudential Investment Management Services LLC, Prudential Japan Holdings LLC, Prudential Legacy Insurance Company of New Jersey, Prudential Life Insurance Company of Taiwan Inc., Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 1 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 2 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Capital Asset Holding Company LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Funding LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Holdings LLC, Prudential Multifamily Mortgage LLC, Prudential Mutual Fund Services LLC, Prudential Newark Realty LLC, Prudential QOZ Investment Fund 1 LLC, Prudential Realty Securities Inc., Prudential Retirement Financial Services Holding LLC, Prudential Retirement Holdings LLC, Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company, Prudential Securities Secured Financing Corporation, Prudential Securities Structured Assets Inc., Prudential Seguros Mexico S.A. de C.V., Prudential Seguros S.A., Prudential Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Prudential Structured Settlement Company, Prudential Systems Japan Limited, Prudential Term Reinsurance Company, Prudential Trust Co. Ltd., Prudential Trust Company, Prudential Universal Reinsurance Company, Prudential Workplace Solutions Group Services LLC, Prudential do Brasil Seguros de Vida S.A., Prudential do Brasil Vida em Grupo S.A., Prudential/TMW Real Estate Group LLC, Pruservicos Participacoes Ltda., QMA JP EM All Cap Equity Partners LLC, QMA LLC, QMA Wadhwani LLP, Quartzsite LLC, Residential Services Corporation of America LLC, Rio CP LP, Rock European Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock Global Real Estate LLC, Rock Kensington Limited, Rock Marty GP S.a r.l., Rock Oxford S.a r.l., Rock UK Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock UK Real Estate II S.a.r.l., Rockstone Co. Ltd., Rosado Grande LLC, Ross Avenue Energy Fund Holdings LLC, Ross Avenue Minerals 2012 LLC, SCP Apartments LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERS VI GP LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERSHIP FUND VI GP LLC, SHP IV Carried Interest LP, SHP V Carried Interest L.P., SMP Holdings Inc., SVIIT Holdings Inc., Sanei Collection Service Co. Ltd. (Kabushiki Kaisha Sanei Shuuno Service), Senior Housing Partners IV L.L.C., Senior Housing Partners V LLC, Senior Housing Partnership Fund IV L.L.C., Senior Housing Partnership Fund V LLC, Sterling Private Placement Management LLP, Stetson Street Partners L.P., Strand Investments Limited, TBG Insurance Services Corporation, TENSATOR HOLDINGS LTD, TF Proveedora S.C., TMW ASPF I Verwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, TMW ASPF Management GmbH, TMW Management LLC, TMW Real Estate Group LLC, TMW Realty Advisors LLC, TMW USPF Verwaltungs GmbH, TRGOAG Company Inc., The Gibraltar Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Keynes Dynamic Beta Strategy (US) Fund GP LLC, The Prudential Assigned Settlement Services Corp., The Prudential Brazilian Capital Fund LP, The Prudential Gibraltar Financial Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Prudential Home Mortgage Company Inc., The Prudential Insurance Company of America, The Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd., The Prudential Real Estate Financial Services of America Inc., The WMF Group, Thurloe Commercial Guernsey Limited, Times Square Center Associates, USPF V - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, USPF V Carry LLC, USPF V Co-Invest LLC, USPF V Investment LP, United States Property Fund VI GP S.a r.l., Vailsburg Fund LLC, Vantage Casualty Insurance Company, Wabash Avenue Holdings V LLC, Wabash Avenue Partners V L.P., Wadhwani Capital Limited, Waveland Avenue Holdings I LLC, Waveland Avenue Partners I (Ireland) L.P., Waveland Avenue Partners I (US) L.P., Wellness Services Ecossistema De Bem Estar Ltda., Wellness Services SRL, Yamato Life, and Yavapai LLC. The following companies are subsidiares of Bristol-Myers Squibb: 1096271 B.C. ULC, 345 Park LLC, A.G. Medical Services P.A., AHI Investment LLC, AbVitro LLC, Abraxis BioScience Australia Pty Ltd., Abraxis BioScience Inc., Abraxis BioScience International Holding Company Inc., Abraxis BioScience LLC, Abraxis BioScience Puerto Rico LLC, Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Adnexus, Adnexus a Bristol-Myers Squibb R&D Company, Allard Labs Acquisition G.P., Amira Pharmaceuticals, Amira Pharmaceuticals Inc., Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Apothecon LLC, B-MS Generx Unlimited Company, BMS Benelux Holdings B.V., BMS Bermuda Nominees L.L.C., BMS Data Acquisition Company LLC, BMS Forex Company, BMS Holdings Sarl, BMS Holdings Spain S.L., BMS International Insurance Designated Activity Company, BMS Investco SAS, BMS Korea Holdings L.L.C., BMS Latin American Nominees L.L.C., BMS Luxembourg Partners L.L.C., BMS Omega Bermuda Holdings Finance Ltd., BMS Pharmaceutical Korea Limited, BMS Pharmaceuticals Germany Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals International Holdings Netherlands B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Korea Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Mexico Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Netherlands Holdings B.V., BMS Real Estate LLC, BMS Spain Investments LLC, BMS Strategic Portfolio Investments Holdings Inc., Blisa Acquisition G.P., Bristol (Iran) S.A., Bristol Iran Private Company Limited, Bristol Laboratories Inc., Bristol Laboratories International S.A., Bristol Laboratories Medical Information Systems Inc., Bristol-Myers (Andes) L.L.C., Bristol-Myers (Private) Limited, Bristol-Myers Middle East S.A.L., Bristol-Myers Overseas Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Israel) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (NZ) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Proprietary) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (West Indies) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb A.E., Bristol-Myers Squibb Aktiebolag, Bristol-Myers Squibb Argentina S. R. L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Australia Pty. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Axia Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb B.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Belgium S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Business Services Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada International Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Delta Company Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Denmark Filial of Bristol-Myers Squibb AB, Bristol-Myers Squibb EMEA Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Egypt LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Epsilon Holdings Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Ltda., Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Portuguesa S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb GesmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb GmbH & Co. KGaA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holding Germany GmbH & Co. KG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings 2002 Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Germany Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Ireland Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Pharma Ltd. Liability Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Ilaclari Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb India Pvt. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Company Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Investco L.L.C., Bristol-Myers Squibb K.K., Bristol-Myers Squibb Kft., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg International S.C.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb MEA GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Manufacturing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Marketing Services S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Middle East & Africa FZ-LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Norway Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Nutricionales de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Peru S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (HK) Ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (Thailand) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Holding Company LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Ventures Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Polska Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Products SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico/Sanofi Pharmaceutical Partnership Puerto Rico, Bristol-Myers Squibb Romania S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.A.U., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Holding Partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Service Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Services Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Spol. s r.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Theta Finance Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Trustees Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Colombia S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Costa Rica Sociedad Anonima, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Guatemala S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb/Astrazeneca EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Pfizer EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, Bristol-Myers de Venezuela S.C.A., CHT I LLC, CHT II LLC, CHT III LLC, CHT IV LLC, CR Finance Company LLC, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc., Celem LLC, Celem Ltd., Celgene, Celgene A.B., Celgene AS, Celgene Ab (Finland), Celgene Alpine Investment Co. II LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. III LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. LLC, Celgene ApS, Celgene B.V., Celgene BVBA, Celgene Brasil Produtos Farmaceuticos Ltda., Celgene CAR LLC, Celgene CAR Ltd., Celgene Chemicals Sarl, Celgene China Holdings LLC, Celgene Co., Celgene Corporation, Celgene Distribution B.V., Celgene EngMab GmbH, Celgene Europe B.V., Celgene Europe Limited, Celgene European Investment Company LLC, Celgene Financing Company LLC, Celgene Global Holdings Sarl, Celgene GmbH [Austria], Celgene GmbH [Germany], Celgene GmbH [Switzerland], Celgene Holdings East Corporation, Celgene Holdings II Sarl, Celgene Holdings III Sarl, Celgene Ilac Pazarlama ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Celgene Inc., Celgene International Holdings Corporation, Celgene International II Sarl, Celgene International III Sarl, Celgene International Inc., Celgene International Sarl, Celgene K.K., Celgene Kft., Celgene Limited [Hong Kong], Celgene Limited [Ireland], Celgene Limited [New Zealand], Celgene Limited [Taiwan], Celgene Limited [UK], Celgene Logistics Sarl, Celgene Ltd, Celgene Luxembourg Sarl, Celgene Management Sarl, Celgene NJ Investment Co, Celgene Netherlands B.V., Celgene Netherlands Investment B.V., Celgene Pharmaceutical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Celgene Pte. Ltd., Celgene Pty Ltd, Celgene Puerto Rico Distribution LLC, Celgene Quanticel Research Inc, Celgene R&D Sarl, Celgene RIVOT LLC, Celgene RIVOT Ltd., Celgene RIVOT SRL, Celgene Receptos Limited, Celgene Receptos Sarl, Celgene Research Incubator At Summit West LLC, Celgene Research S.L.U., Celgene Research and Development Company LLC, Celgene Research and Development I ULC, Celgene Research and Development II LLC, Celgene Research and Investment Company II LLC, Celgene S. de R.L. de C.V., Celgene S.L.U., Celgene S.R.L., Celgene SAS, Celgene Sarl AU, Celgene Sdn Bhd, Celgene Services Sarl, Celgene Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Celgene Sp. Z.o.o., Celgene Sro [Czech Republic], Celgene Summit Investment Co, Celgene Switzerland Holding Sarl, Celgene Switzerland II LLC, Celgene Switzerland Investment Sarl, Celgene Switzerland LLC, Celgene Switzerland Sarl, Celgene Tri A Holdings Ltd., Celgene Tri Sarl, Celgene UK Distribution Limited, Celgene UK Holdings Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing II Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing III Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing Limited, Celgene d.o.o., Celgene sro [Slovakia], Celmed LLC, Celmed Ltd., ConvaTec Divestiture, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals AB, Crosp Ltd., Delinia Inc., Deuteria Pharmaceuticals Inc., DuPont Pharmaceuticals, E. R. Squibb & Sons Inter-American Corporation, E. R. Squibb & Sons L.L.C., E. R. Squibb & Sons Limited, EWI Corporation, EngMab Sarl, F-star Alpha, FermaVir Pharmaceuticals L.L.C., FermaVir Research L.L.C., Flexus Biosciences, Flexus Biosciences Inc., Forbius, Galecto Biotech, GenPharm International L.L.C., Gloucester Pharmaceuticals LLC, Grove Insurance Company Ltd., Heyden Farmaceutica Portuguesa Limitada, IFM Therapeutics, Impact Biomedicines Inc., Inhibitex, Inhibitex L.L.C., Innate Tumor Immunity Inc., JuMP Holdings LLC, Juno Therapeutics GmbH, Juno Therapeutics Inc., Kosan Biosciences, Kosan Biosciences Incorporated, Linson Investments Limited, Mead Johnson (Manufacturing) Jamaica Limited, Mead Johnson Jamaica Ltd., Medarex, Morris Avenue Investment II LLC, Morris Avenue Investment LLC, MyoKardia, O.o.o. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oy Bristol-Myers Squibb (Finland) AB, Padlock Therapeutics, Padlock Therapeutics Inc., Pharmion LLC, Princeton Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Receptos LLC, Receptos Services LLC, RedoxTherapies Inc., Route 22 Real Estate Holding Corporation, SPV A Holdings ULC, Seamair Insurance DAC, Signal Pharmaceuticals LLC, Sino-American Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Societe Francaise de Complements Alimentaires(S.O.F.C.A.), Squibb Middle East S.A., Summit West Celgene LLC, Swords Laboratories, VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Westwood-Intrafin SA, Westwood-Squibb Pharmaceuticals Inc., X-Body Inc., ZymoGenetics, ZymoGenetics Inc., ZymoGenetics LLC, ZymoGenetics Paymaster LLC, iPierian, and iPierian Inc.. Deutsche Telekom AG, together with its subsidiaries, provides integrated telecommunication services. The company operates through five segments: Germany, United States, Europe, Systems Solutions, and Group Development. It offers fixed-network services, including voice and data communication services based on fixed-network and broadband technology; and sells terminal equipment and other hardware products, as well as services to resellers. The company also provides mobile voice and data services to consumers and business customers; sells mobile devices and other hardware products; and sells mobile services to resellers and to companies that purchases and markets network services to third parties, such as mobile virtual network operators. In addition, it offers internet services; internet-based TV products and services; and information and communication technology systems for multinational corporations and public sector institutions with an infrastructure of data centers and networks under the T-Systems brand, as well as call center services. The company has 242 million mobile customers and 22 million broadband customers, as well as 27 million fixed-network lines. Deutsche Telekom AG has a collaboration with VMware, Inc. on cloud-based open and intelligent virtual RAN platform to bring agility to radio access networks for existing LTE and future 5G networks; and partnership with Microsoft to deliver high-performance cloud computing experiences. The company was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Bonn, Germany. Read More The following companies are subsidiares of Thermo Fisher Scientific: 236 Perinton Parkway LLC, 27 Forge Parkway LLC, ABR--Affinity BioReagents, ACI Holdings Inc., ARG Services LLC, ASPEX Corporation, Abgene Inc., Abgene Limited, Acoustic Cytometry Systems Inc., AcroMetrix LLC, Acros Organics B.V.B.A., Advanced Biotechnologies Limited, Advanced Scientifics (ASI), Advanced Scientifics Inc., Advanced Scientifics International Inc., Affymetrix Biotech Participacoes Ltda., Affymetrix Biotech Shanghai Ltd, Affymetrix Inc, Affymetrix Japan K.K., Affymetrix Pte Ltd, Affymetrix UK Ltd, Afora S.A.U., Ahura Scientific, Alchematrix Inc., Alchematrix LLC, Alfa Aesar, Alfa Aesar (China) Chemical Co. Ltd., Alfa Aesar (Hong Kong) Limited, Allergon AB, Alphine Mountain Limited, Ambion Inc., Apogent Denmark ApS, Apogent Finance Company, Apogent Holding Company, Apogent Technologies Inc., Apogent Transition Corp., Apogent U.K. Limited, App-Tek International Pty Ltd, Applied Biosystems B.V., Applied Biosystems Finance B.V., Applied Biosystems International Inc., Applied Biosystems LLC, Applied Biosystems Taiwan LLC, Applied Biosystems Trading (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Applied Biosystems de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Applied Scientific Corporation, Avances Cientificos de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Avocado Research Chemicals Limited, B.R.A.H.M.S. Biotech GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. UK Ltd, BAC BV, BAC IP BV, Barnstead Thermolyne LLC, Beijing Phadia Diagnostics Co Ltd, Bender MedSystems GmbH, BioTrove Corporation, BioTrove International Inc., Bioanalysis Labsystems S.A., Biochemical Sciences LLC, Biolab, BmT GmbH Laborprodukte, Bonsai Tecnologies - Sistemas para Biotecnologia e Industria Unipessoal Lda, Brammer Bio, Bumi-Sans Sendirian Berhad, CAC Limited, CB Diagnostics AB, CB Diagnostics Holding AB, CEPH International Corporation, CHK Holdings Inc., CRS Robotics, CTPS LLC, Capitol Scientific Products Inc., Capitol Vial Inc., Cellomics Inc., CellzDirect Inc., Cenduit GmbH, Cenduit LLC, Cezanne S.A.S., Chase Scientific Glass Inc., Chromacol Limited, Clintrak, Clintrak Clinical Labeling Services LLC, Clintrak Pharmaceutical Services LLC, Cohesive Technologies (UK) Limited, Cohesive Technologies Inc., Columbia Diagnostics Inc., Compendia Bioscience Inc., Comtest Limited, Consolidated Technologies Inc., Consultores Fisher Scientific Chile Ltd, Core Informatics, Core Informatics LLC, Core Informatics UK Ltd., D-finitive Technologies Inc., DCG Systems B.V., DCG Systems C.V., DCG Systems G.K., DCG Systems GmbH, DCG Systems Korea Ltd., DCG Systems LLC, DPI Newco LLC, DSM Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Dharmacon, Diagnostix Ltd., Dionex (China) Analytical Ltd, Dionex (Switzerland) AG, Dionex (UK) Limited, Dionex Austria GmbH, Dionex Benelux B.V., Dionex Brasil Instrumentos Cientificos Ltda, Dionex Canada Ltd., Dionex China Limited, Dionex Corporation, Dionex Denmark A/S, Dionex Holding GmbH, Dionex I LLC, Dionex Pty Ltd., Dionex S.A., Dionex S.p.A., Dionex Singapore Pte Ltd., Dionex Softron GmbH, Dionex Sweden AB, Distribution Solutions International Inc., Doe & Ingalls Investors Inc., Doe & Ingalls Limited, Doe & Ingalls Management LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties II LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties LLC, Doe & Ingalls of California Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Florida Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Maryland Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Massachusetts Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of North Carolina Operating LLC, Doublecape Holding Limited, Doublecape Limited, Drakeside Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Duke Scientific Corporation, Dynal Biotech Beijing Limited, EGS Gauging Ltd., EGS Gauging Technical Services Company, EP Scientific Products LLC, Ecochem N.V., EnviroEquip Pty Ltd, Epsom Glass Industries Limited, Equibio Limited, Erie Electroverre S.A., Erie Finance Limited, Erie LP Holding LLC, Erie Scientific Company of Puerto Rico, Erie Scientific Hungary Kft, Erie Scientific LLC, Erie U.K. Limited, Erie UK 1 Limited, Erie UK 2 Limited, Erie UK Holding Company, Erie UK Senior Holding Limited, European Laboratory Holdings Limited, Eutech Instruments Europe B.V., Eutech Instruments Pte Ltd., Eutech Instruments Sdn Bhd, Ever Ready Thermometer Co. Inc., FEI Asia Pacific Co. Ltd., FEI Australia Pty Ltd, FEI CPD B.V., FEI Company, FEI Company Japan Ltd., FEI Company of USA (S.E.A.) Pte Ltd., FEI Czech Republic s.r.o., FEI Deutschland GmbH, FEI EFA Inc., FEI EFA International Pte. Ltd., FEI Electron Optics B.V., FEI Electron Optics International B.V., FEI Europe B.V., FEI France SAS, FEI Global Holdings C.V., FEI Hong Kong Company Limited, FEI Houston Inc., FEI Italia Srl, FEI Korea Ltd., FEI Melbourne Pty Ltd., FEI Microscopy Solutions Ltd, FEI Munich GmbH, FEI Norway Holding AS, FEI SAS, FEI Saudi Arabia LLC, FEI Servicos de Nanotecnologia Ltda., FEI Technologies Inc., FEI Technology de Mexico S.A. de C.V., FEI Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., FEI Trondheim AS, FEI UK Ltd., FHP LLC, FRC Holding Inc. V, FS (Barbados) Capital Holdings Ltd., FS Casa Rocas Holdings LLC, FS Mexicana Holdings LLC, FSI Receivables Company LLC, FSII Sweden Holdings AB, FSII Sweden Holdings I AB, FSIR Holdings (UK) Limited, FSIR Holdings (US) Inc., FSUK Holdings Limited, FSWH Company LLC, FSWH II C.V., FSWH International Holdings LLC, Fermentas China Co. Ltd, Fermentas Inc., Fermentas International, Fermentas Sweden AB, Fermentas UK Limited, Fiberlite Centrifuge LLC, Finesse Scientific Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Finesse Solutions AG, Finesse Solutions Inc., Finnzymes Oy, Fisher Alder S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Asia Manufacturing Ventures Inc., Fisher Bermuda Holdings Limited, Fisher BioImage ApS, Fisher BioPharma Services (India) Private Limited, Fisher BioSciences Japan G.K., Fisher BioServices Inc., Fisher Bioblock Holding II SNC, Fisher CLP Holding Limited Partnership, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 1, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 2, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 3, Fisher Canada Limited Partnership, Fisher Chimica BVBA, Fisher Clinical Logistics LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services (Bristol) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Colombia) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Korea) Co. Ltd, Fisher Clinical Services (Mexico) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Peru) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services Colombia S.A.S., Fisher Clinical Services GmbH, Fisher Clinical Services Inc., Fisher Clinical Services Japan K.K., Fisher Clinical Services Latin America S.R.L., Fisher Clinical Services Limited Liability Company, Fisher Clinical Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Clinical Services Peru S.R.L, Fisher Clinical Services Pte Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services U.K. Limited, Fisher Emergo B.V., Fisher Germany Holdings GmbH, Fisher Hamilton China Inc., Fisher Hamilton Mexico LLC, Fisher Holdings ApS, Fisher Internet Minority Holdings L.L.C., Fisher Laboratory Products Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Fisher Luxembourg Danish Holdings SARL, Fisher Manufacturing (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Maybridge Holdings Limited, Fisher Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific (Austria) GmbH, Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Fisher Scientific (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific (SEA) Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific A/S, Fisher Scientific AG, Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Limited, Fisher Scientific Biotech Line ApS, Fisher Scientific Brazil Inc., Fisher Scientific Central America Inc., Fisher Scientific Chile Inc., Fisher Scientific Colombia Inc., Fisher Scientific Company, Fisher Scientific Company L.L.C., Fisher Scientific Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Fisher Scientific Europe Holdings B.V., Fisher Scientific GTF AB, Fisher Scientific Germany Beteiligungs GmbH, Fisher Scientific GmbH, Fisher Scientific Holding Company LLC, Fisher Scientific Holding HK Limited, Fisher Scientific Holding U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific Holdings (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific Holdings (S) Pte Ltd, Fisher Scientific International LLC, Fisher Scientific Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Fisher Scientific Ireland Investments Unlimited, Fisher Scientific Ireland Limited, Fisher Scientific Japan Ltd., Fisher Scientific Jersey Island Limited, Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd, Fisher Scientific Latin America Inc., Fisher Scientific Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Fisher Scientific Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific Mexico Inc., Fisher Scientific Middle East and Africa Inc., Fisher Scientific Norway AS, Fisher Scientific Operating Company, Fisher Scientific Oxoid Holdings Ltd., Fisher Scientific Oy, Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific S.A.S., Fisher Scientific S.L., Fisher Scientific SPRL, Fisher Scientific The Hague I B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague II B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague III B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague IV B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague V B.V., Fisher Scientific U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company 2, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company Limited, Fisher Scientific Unipessoal Lda., Fisher Scientific Venezuela Inc., Fisher Scientific Worldwide (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Holdings I C.V., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Inc., Fisher Scientific de Mexico S.A., Fisher Scientific of the Netherlands B.V., Fisher Scientific spol. S.r.o, Fisher Servicios Clinicos (Chile) LLC, Fisher Servicios Clinicos Chile Ltda, Fisher WWD Holding L.L.C., Fisher Worldwide Distribution SPV, Fisher Worldwide Gene Distribution SPV, Flux Instruments, Fuji Partnership, G & M Procter Limited, G V Instruments Limited, GV Instruments Canada Ltd., GV Instruments Inc, Gatan Inc, General Scientific Company Sdn Bhd (M), Genomed molekularbiologische und diagnostische Produkte GmbH, Gerhard Menzel B.V. & Co. KG, Gold Cattle Standard Testing Labs Inc., Golden West Indemnity Company Limited, Goring Kerr Detection Limited, Greenville Service Company Inc., HENO GmbH i.L., Hangar 215 Inc., Helmet Securities Limited, Henogen, HighChem, HyClone International Trade (Tianjin) Co. Ltd, Hybaid Limited, I.Q. (BIO) Limited, IDnostics AG, ILS Laboratories Scandinavia AB, Inel Inc., Inel SAS, InnaPhase Inc., InnaPhase Limited, IntegenX, Intrinsic BioProbes Inc., Intrinsic Bioprobes Inc., Invitrogen (Shanghai) Investment Co. Ltd., Invitrogen Argentina SA, Invitrogen BioServices India Private Limited, Invitrogen Europe Limited, Invitrogen Finance Corp., Invitrogen Holdings LLC, Invitrogen Holdings Ltd., Invitrogen Hong Kong Limited, Invitrogen IP Holdings Inc., Invitrogen Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ion Torrent Systems Inc., Ionalytics Corporation, JSC Thermo Fisher Scientific, Jouan LLC, Jouan Limited, Jouan SA, Kendro Containment & Services Limited, Kendro Laboratory Products Ltd, Kettlebrook Insurance Co. ltd., Keystone Scientific, KonTEM GmbH, Kyle Jordan Investments LLC, LIFE TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION, LTC Tech South Africa PTY Ltd., La-Pha-Pack GmbH, Lab Vision (UK) Limited, Lab Vision Corporation, Lab-Chrom-Pack LLC, Lab-Line Instruments Inc., Labomex MBP S. de R. L. De C.V., Laboratoire Service International - L.S.I, Laboratory Management Systems Inc., Laboratory Specialties Proprietary Ltd., LambTrack Limited, Laser Analytical Systems Inc., Liberty Lane Investment LLC, Liberty Lane Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Life Sciences International (Poland) SP z O.O, Life Sciences International Holdings BV, Life Sciences International LLC, Life Sciences International Limited, Life Technologies AS, Life Technologies Australia PTY Ltd., Life Technologies BPD AB, Life Technologies BPD UK Limited, Life Technologies Brasil Comercio e Industria de Produtos para Biotecnologia Ltda, Life Technologies Chile SpA, Life Technologies Clinical Services Lab Inc., Life Technologies Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Czech Republic s.r.o., Life Technologies DaAn Diagnostic (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Europe B.V., Life Technologies Finance Ltd., Life Technologies Finland Oy, Life Technologies GmbH, Life Technologies Holdings PTE Ltd., Life Technologies Inc., Life Technologies International B.V., Life Technologies Japan Ltd., Life Technologies Korea LLC, Life Technologies Limited, Life Technologies Magyarorszag Kft, Life Technologies New Zealand Ltd., Life Technologies Norway Investments US LLC, Life Technologies Polska Sp z.o.o., Life Technologies SA, Life Technologies SAS, Life Technologies s.r.o, Linkage Biosciences Inc., Linkage Biosciences S.a.r.l., Loftus Furnace Company, Lomb Scientific, Lomb Scientific (Aust) Pty Limited, MTI-GlobalStem, Marketbase International Limited, Matrix MicroScience Inc., Matrix MicroScience Ltd., Matrix Technologies Corporation Limited, Matrix Technologies LLC, Maybridge Chemical Company Limited, Maybridge Chemical Holdings Limited, Maybridge Limited, Medical Analysis Systems Inc., Medical Analysis Systems International Inc., Medical Diagnostics Systems Inc., Metavac LLC, Microgenics Corporation, Microgenics Diagnostics Pty Limited, Microgenics GmbH, Microm International GmbH, Microm Laborgerate S.L.U, Molecular BioProducts Inc., Molecular Probes Inc., Molecular Transfer Inc., NAPCO Inc., NERL Diagnostics LLC, NOVODIRECT GmbH Labor- und Industrie- Megerate, Nalge (Europe) Limited, Nalge Nunc International (Monterrey) LLC, Nalge Nunc International Corporation, Nanjing WeiKangLe Trading Industrial Co Ltd, NanoDrop Technologies LLC, National Scientific Company, Navaho Acquisition Corp., Neomarkers Inc., New FS Holdings Inc., NewcoGen PE LLC, Nihon Dynal K.K., Niton Asia Limited, NovaWave Technologies Inc., Nunc A/S, ONIX Systems Inc., OXOID CZ s.r.o., Odyssey Holdings Corporation, Odyssey Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 1 S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 2 S.a r.l., Odyssey Venture Corporation, Omega Data Systems, One Lambda Inc, Onix Holdings Limited, Orme Scientific Limited, Owl Separation Systems LLC, Oxoid (ELY) Limited, Oxoid 2000 Limited, Oxoid AS, Oxoid Australia Pty. Limited, Oxoid Company, Oxoid Deutschland GmbH, Oxoid Holding SAS, Oxoid Holdings Limited, Oxoid Inc., Oxoid International Limited, Oxoid Investments GmbH, Oxoid Limited, Oxoid N.V., Oxoid New Zealand Limited, Oxoid Pension Trustees Limited, Oxoid Senior Holdings Limited, Oxoid UKH LLC, PAX - DSI Acquisition LLC, PE AG, Pacific Rim Far East Industries LLC, Pacific Rim Investment LLC, Panomics L.L.C., Panomics S.R.L., Patheon, Patheon API Inc., Patheon API Manufacturing Inc., Patheon API Services Inc., Patheon Austria GmbH & Co KG, Patheon B.V., Patheon Banner U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon Biologics (NJ) LLC, Patheon Biologics Australia Pty Ltd, Patheon Biologics B.V., Patheon Biologics LLC, Patheon Calculus Merger LLC, Patheon Cooperatief U.A., Patheon Development Services Inc., Patheon Finance LLC, Patheon France SAS, Patheon Holdings B.V., Patheon Holdings I B.V., Patheon Holdings II B.V., Patheon Holdings SAS, Patheon I B.V., Patheon I Holding GmbH, Patheon Inc., Patheon International AG, Patheon Italia S.p.A., Patheon KK, Patheon Life Science Products International GmbH, Patheon Manufacturing Services LLC, Patheon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Patheon Pharmaceuticals Services Inc., Patheon Puerto Rico Acquisitions Corporation, Patheon Puerto Rico Inc., Patheon Regensburg GmbH, Patheon Softgels B.V., Patheon Softgels Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings LLC, Patheon UK Limited, Patheon UK Pension Trustees Limited, Pelican Acquisition Corporation, Perbio Science (Canada) Company, Perbio Science AB, Perbio Science BVBA, Perbio Science France SAS, Perbio Science Inc., Perbio Science International Netherlands B.V., Perbio Science Invest AB, Perbio Science Nederland B.V., Perbio Science Projekt AB, Perbio Science Sweden Holdings AB, Perbio Science Switzerland SA, Perbio Science UK Limited, Phadia AB, Phadia Diagnosticos Ltda, Phadia GmbH, Phadia Holding AB, Phadia International Holdings C.V., Phadia Korea Co. Ltd, Phadia Luxembourg Holdings S.a.r.l., Phadia Malta Holdings Limited, Phadia Oy, Phadia Real Property AB, Phadia Sweden AB, Phadia Taiwan Inc., Phadia US Inc., Phadia s.r.o., Pharmacaps Mexicana SA de CV, Phenom-World B.V., Phenom-World Holding B.V, Phenom-World Innovations B.V., Phinotex, Pierce Biotechnology Inc., Pierce Milwaukee Holding Corp., Pierce Milwaukee Inc., Polychromix, Power Sweden Holdings I AB, Power Sweden Holdings II AB, Power Sweden Holdings III Aktiebolag, Princeton Gamma-Tech Instruments LLC, Princeton Security Technologies, Prionics AG, Prionics Asia Ltd., Prionics Deutschland GmbH, Prionics France SAS, Prionics Italia S.r.l., Prionics Lelystad B.V., Prionics USA Inc., Priority Air Express LLC, Priority Air Express Pte. Ltd., Priority Air Express UK Limited, Priority Air Holdings Corp, Priority Solutions International, Promedica Pty Limited, Proxeon, Proxeon Biosystems ApS, Qiagen, REP GBP I-B Blocker Inc., Raymond A Lamb Limited, Remel Europe Limited, Remel Inc., Richard-Allan Scientific Company, Robbins Scientific LLC, Robocon Labor- und Industrieroboter Gesellschaft m.b.H, Rupprecht and Patashnick, Rupprecht and Patashnick (R&P), Russell pH Limited, S.C.I. du 10 rue Dugay Trouin, SCI Inno 92, STC Bio Manufacturing Inc., Samco Scientific (Monterrey) LLC, Samco Scientific LLC, Saroph Sweden AB, Schantz Road LLC, Seradyn Inc., Shanghai Life Technologies Biotechnology Co. Limited, Shanghai Thermo Fisher (C-I) Trading Co. Ltd, Shanghai Thermo Fisher (S) Trading Co. Ltd, Southern Trials (Pty) Ltd., Specialty (SMI) Inc., Spectra-Physics AB, Spectra-Physics Holdings Limited, Spectra-Physics Holdings USA LLC, Spectronex, Staten Island Cogeneration Corporation, Sterilin Limited, Stokes Bio Ltd., Sweden DIA (Sweden) AB, SwissAnalytic Group GmbH, Systems Manufacturing Corporation, TFLP LLC, TFS Breda B.V., TFS LLC, TFS Singapore HK Limited, TFSL Financing GP LLC, TFSL Senior GP Holdings 2 LLC, TK Partnership, TKA Wasseraufbereitungssysteme, TMOI Inc., TPI Real Estate Holdings LLC, TSP Holdings I LLC, TWX LLC, Technology Design Solutions Pty Ltd, Thermedics Detection de Argentina S.R.L, Thermo Allen Coding Limited, Thermo Asset Management Services Inc., Thermo BioAnalysis LLC, Thermo BioAnalysis Limited, Thermo BioSciences Holdings LLC, Thermo CIDTEC, Thermo CRS Holdings Ltd., Thermo CRS Ltd., Thermo Cambridge Limited, Thermo Cayman Holdings Ltd., Thermo Corporation, Thermo DMA Inc., Thermo Detection de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Dutch Holdings Limited Partnership, Thermo EGS Gauging LLC, Thermo Eberline Holdings I LLC, Thermo Eberline Holdings II LLC, Thermo Eberline LLC, Thermo Electron (Calgary) Limited, Thermo Electron (Chile) S.p.A., Thermo Electron (Karlsruhe) GmbH, Thermo Electron (Management Services) Limited, Thermo Electron (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Electron A/S, Thermo Electron Australia Pty Limited, Thermo Electron Export Inc., Thermo Electron Holdings SAS, Thermo Electron Industries, Thermo Electron LED GmbH, Thermo Electron LED S.A.S., Thermo Electron Limited, Thermo Electron Manufacturing Limited, Thermo Electron Metallurgical Services Inc., Thermo Electron North America LLC, Thermo Electron Pension Trust GmbH, Thermo Electron Puerto Rico Inc., Thermo Electron SAS, Thermo Electron Scientific Instruments LLC, Thermo Electron Sweden AB, Thermo Electron Sweden Forvaltning AB, Thermo Electron Weighing & Inspection Limited, Thermo Elemental Limited, Thermo Environmental Instruments LLC, Thermo Fast U.K. Limited, Thermo Finland Holdings LLC, Thermo Finland Holdings MT1 B.V., Thermo Finland Holdings MT2 B.V., Thermo Finnigan LLC, Thermo Finnigan Limited, Thermo Fisher (CN) Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher (CN) Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher (CN) Malta Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher (CN-I) Luxembourg LLC, Thermo Fisher (CN-II) Luxembourg LLC, Thermo Fisher (Cayman) Holdings I Ltd., Thermo Fisher (Cayman) Holdings II Ltd., Thermo Fisher (Finland Holdings 2) LLC, Thermo Fisher (Finland Holdings) Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher (Gibraltar) II Limited, Thermo Fisher (Gibraltar) Limited, Thermo Fisher (Heysham) Limited, Thermo Fisher (Kandel) GmbH, Thermo Fisher CHK Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher China Business Trust, Thermo Fisher China Business Trust II, Thermo Fisher Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Thermo Fisher Cyprus Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Detection Mexico LLC, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics (Ireland) Limited, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AB, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AG, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AS, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Aps, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Austria GmbH, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics B.V., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics GmbH, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics K.K., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Limited, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics NV, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics S.L.U., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics S.p.A. , Thermo Fisher Diagnostics SAS, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Thermo Fisher Eurobonds Ltd., Thermo Fisher Financial Services Inc., Thermo Fisher GP LLC, Thermo Fisher German Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Germany B.V., Thermo Fisher India Divestco Private Limited, Thermo Fisher India Holding B.V., Thermo Fisher Insurance Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Insurance Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Thermo Fisher Israel Ltd., Thermo Fisher Production et Services SAS, Thermo Fisher Project Cyprus LLC, Thermo Fisher Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Asheville) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Australia) C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Barbados) Holdings Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Breda) Holding BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Bremen) GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (CN) Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China-HK) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (DE) Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Ecublens) SARL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance II) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Fuji) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Holding II) B.V. & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Johannesburg) (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mexico City) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Milwaukee) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mississauga) Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Monterrey) S. De R.L. De C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (NK) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) Austria Holding GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-I) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-II) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN1) UK Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) Dutch LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Praha) s.r.o., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) GmbH & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Schweiz) AG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Instruments Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Suzhou) Instruments Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific AL-1 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific AU II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Aquasensors LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V.B.A., Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (I) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (II) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Baltics UAB, Thermo Fisher Scientific Beteiligungsverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Biosciences Corp., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brahms LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Instrumentos de Processo Ltda., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Servicos de Logistica Ltda, Thermo Fisher Scientific C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cayman Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chemicals Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific China (C-I) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China (S) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings IV B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings Aps, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus IV C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus V C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Denmark Senior Holdings ApS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie 1 Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Europe GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC Finance C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSUKHCO Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Falcon Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Finance Company BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific GENEART GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Germany BV & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific HR Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) I, Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) II , Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings Europe Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific IT Services GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Pvt Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Malta) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments Malta (Sweden Financing) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Invitrogen Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific K.K., Thermo Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific LSI Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments III S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments IV S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life NL Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Netherlands Holding C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Switzerland Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Tech Korea Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Enterprise Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investments Holding LP, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Luxembourg Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Enterprise Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg German Holdings S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Life Technologies UK Holding S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings I S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings II S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malta Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Messtechnik GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Mexico City S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Middle East Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Milano Srl, Thermo Fisher Scientific NHK Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Holdings, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway Holdings AS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway US Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Operating Company LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Oy, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 C.V, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Panama I Cayman Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Peru S.R.L., Thermo Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific SL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Financing LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Holdings Australia LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific South Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific SpA, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg I S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Investments Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Switzerland Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific TR Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Taiwan Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific West Palm Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Wissenschaftliche Gerate GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Worldwide Investments (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific eCommerce Solutions LLC , Thermo Fisher Senior Canada Holdings LLC, Thermo Foundation Inc., Thermo Gamma-Metrics Holdings Pty Ltd., Thermo Gamma-Metrics LLC, Thermo Gamma-Metrics Pty Ltd, Thermo Holding European Operations LLC, Thermo Hypersil Ltd, Thermo Hypersil-Keystone LLC, Thermo Informatics Asia Pacific Pty Ltd., Thermo Instrument Controls de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Thermo Kevex X-Ray LLC, Thermo Keytek LLC, Thermo LabSystems Inc., Thermo LabSystems S.A., Thermo Life Science International Trading (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Thermo Life Sciences AB, Thermo Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo MF Physics LLC, Thermo Measurement Ltd, Thermo Measuretech Canada Inc., Thermo Neslab LLC, Thermo Nicolet Limited, Thermo Onix Limited, Thermo Optek (Australia) Pty Ltd., Thermo Optek Limited, Thermo Optek S.A., Thermo Orion Inc., Thermo Portable Holdings LLC, Thermo Power Corporation, Thermo Process Instruments GP LLC, Thermo Process Instruments L.P., Thermo Projects Limited, Thermo Quest S.A., Thermo Radiometrie Limited, Thermo Ramsey Italia S.r.l., Thermo Ramsey LLC, Thermo Ramsey S.A., Thermo Re Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Pte Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Sdn Bhd, Thermo Scientific Portable Analytical Instruments Inc., Thermo Scientific Services Inc., Thermo Securities Corporation, Thermo Sentron Canada Inc., Thermo Sentron Limited, Thermo Shandon Inc., Thermo Shandon Limited, Thermo Suomi Holding B.V., Thermo TLH (UK) Limited, Thermo TLH L.P., Thermo Trace Pty Ltd., Thermo-Fisher Biochemical Product (Beijing) Co. Ltd., ThermoLase LLC, ThermoSpectra Limited, Trek Diagnostic Systems LLC, Trek Diagnostic Systems Ltd., Trek Holding Company II Ltd., Trek Holding Company Ltd., Trex Medical Corporation, USB Corporation, Union Lab Supplies Limited, United Diagnostics Inc., VG Systems Limited, Westover Scientific Inc., ZAO PE Biosystems, eBioscience GmbH, eBioscience Ltd, eBioscience SAS, and picoSpin LLC. The following companies are subsidiares of PPG Industries: AIPCF V Texstars Blocker Inc., AkzoNobel, Alermac Inversiones S.A. de C.V., Alpha Coating Technologies LLC, Alpha Coatings Inc., Broad Range Development Limited, Brown Brothers Distribution Limited, CG Holdings Manufacturing Co., Centro de Investigacion en Polimeros S.A. de C.V., Chemfil Canada Limited, Chorlton Trade Paints Limited, Comercial Mexicana de Pinturas S.A. de C.V., Comex, Comex Industrial Coatings S.A. de C.V., Consorcio Comex S.A. de C.V., Cristacol S.A., Cuming Microwave Corporation, Deutek SA, Dexmet Corporation, Dexmet Holding Corporation, Distribuidora Kroma S.A. de C.V., EPIC Insurance Co. Ltd., Eberle Design Inc., Empresa Aga S.A. de C.V., Ennis Canadian Holding Company, Ennis Flint Soluciones Seguras Para Trafico, Ennis Highway Traffic Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Ennis Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, Ennis Paint Australia Holding Pty Ltd, Ennis Paint Boya Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., Ennis Paint Canada ULC, Ennis Paint Germany GmbH, Ennis Paint Netherlands Holdings LLC, Ennis Paint U.K. Holding Company Limited, Ennis Traffic Safety Solutions Pty Ltd, Ennis Flint Mexico, Ennis Flint New Zealand, Ennis Flint New Zealand Holding Pty Ltd, Ennis-Flint, Ennis-Flint Africa (Pty) Ltd, Ennis-Flint Inc., Foshan Bairun Chemicals Co. Ltd., Fpu Industrial S.A. de C.V., Grupo Comex S.A. de C.V., Hemmelrath Automotive Coatings (Jilin) Co. Ltd., Hodij Coatings B.V., Homax Products, Industria Chimica Reggiana I.C.R. SPA, Johnstones Paints Limited, Kalon Investment Company Limited, Kalon South Africa Proprietary Limited, Manchester Thermoplastics LLC, Masterwork Paint, MetoKote Canada Limited, MetoKote Corporation, MetoKote Mexico Holding Inc., MetoKote UK Limited, MetoKote de Mexico S. de RL de CV, PPG AC - France SA, PPG ALESCO Automotive Finishes Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., PPG AP Resinas S.A. de C.V., PPG Aerospace Materials (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PPG Architectural Coatings (Puerto Rico) Inc., PPG Architectural Coatings Canada Inc., PPG Architectural Coatings Ireland Limited, PPG Architectural Coatings Italy S.r.l., PPG Architectural Coatings UK Limited, PPG Architectural Finishes Inc., PPG Asian Paints Private Ltd., PPG COATINGS SINGAPORE PTE. LTD., PPG Canada Inc., PPG Cieszyn S.A., PPG Coatings (Hong Kong) Co. Limited, PPG Coatings (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., PPG Coatings (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Thailand) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Wuhu) Company Ltd., PPG Coatings (Zhangjiagang) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings B.V., PPG Coatings Belgium BV, PPG Coatings Danmark A/S, PPG Coatings Deutschland GmbH, PPG Coatings Europe B.V., PPG Coatings Manufacturing SARL, PPG Coatings Nederland BV, PPG Coatings S.A., PPG Coatings South Africa (Pty) Ltd., PPG DYRUP S.A., PPG Deco Czech a.s., PPG Deco Polska sp. z.o.o., PPG Deco Slovakia s.r.o., PPG Deutschland Business Support GmbH, PPG Deutschland Sales & Services GmbH, PPG Distribution S.A.S., PPG Europe B.V., PPG Finance B.V., PPG France Business Support S.A.S., PPG France Manufacturing S.A.S., PPG Guadeloupe SAS, PPG Hellas S.A., PPG Hemmelrath Coatings Inc., PPG Hemmelrath Lackfabrik GmbH, PPG Holdco SAS, PPG Holdings (U.K.) Limited, PPG Holdings Argentina USA LLC, PPG Holdings Latin America USA LLC, PPG Iberica S.A., PPG Iberica Sales & Services S.L., PPG Industrial Coatings B.V., PPG Industrial do Brasil - Tintas E. Vernizes - Ltda., PPG Industries (Korea) Ltd., PPG Industries (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PPG Industries (UK) Ltd, PPG Industries Argentina S.R.L., PPG Industries Australia PTY Limited A.C.N. 055 500 939, PPG Industries Colombia Ltda., PPG Industries Czech Republic s.r.o., PPG Industries Delfzijl B.V., PPG Industries Europe Sarl, PPG Industries France S.A.S., PPG Industries International Inc., PPG Industries Italia S.r.l., PPG Industries Kimya a Sanayi VE Ticaret AS, PPG Industries LLC, PPG Industries Lipetsk LLC, PPG Industries Middle East FZE, PPG Industries Netherlands B.V., PPG Industries New Zealand Limited, PPG Industries Ohio Inc., PPG Industries Poland Sp. Z.o.o., PPG Industries Securities LLC, PPG Industries de Mexico S.A. de C.V., PPG Italia Business Support S.r.l., PPG Italia Sales & Services S.r.l., PPG Japan Ltd., PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes Canada LP, PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes U.K. LLP, PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes U.S. LLC, PPG Luxembourg Finance S.aR.L., PPG Luxembourg Holdings S.aR.L., PPG Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Mexico S.A. de C.V., PPG Packaging Coatings (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PPG Paints Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Performance Coatings (Hong Kong) Limited, PPG Powder Coatings (Shanghai) Limited, PPG Romania S.A., PPG SSC Co. Ltd., PPG Switzerland GmbH, PPG Trilak Kft., PPG Vietnam Co. Ltd., PRC-DeSoto Australia Pty Ltd., PRC-DeSoto International Inc., PT. PPG Coatings Indonesia, Painter's Supply, Paintzen, Peintures de Paris SAS, Plasticos Envolventes S.A. de C.V., Polymeric Systems Inc., Prismo Road Markings Limited, ProCoatings B.V., ProCoatings BV, Protec Pty Ltd. A.C.N. 007 857 392, Reno A&E LLC, Revocoat France SAS, Revocoat Holding SAS, Revocoat Iberica SLU, Revocoat S.A.S, Road Infrastructure Investment Holdings Inc., SEM Products Inc., Sealants Europe SAS, Sierracin Corporation, Sierracin/Sylmar Corporation, Sigma Marine & Protective Coatings Holding B.V., SigmaKalon (BC) UK Limited, SigmaKalon Group, SigmaKalon Middle East B.V., Sikar (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Spraylat International Ltd, Texstars LLC, The Crown Group Co., The Crown Group Inc, The Homax Group, Tikkurila Group, Traffic Safety Intermediate LLC, Traffic Safety Parent LLC, United International Business NV, Vanex Inc., Vernisol S.p.A., Versaflex, Viasa S.A. de C.V., Whitford, Whitford B.V., Whitford Corporation, Whitford Jiangmen Ltd., Whitford Ltd. (HK), Whitford Ltd. (UK), Whitford Pte. Ltd., Whitford S.r.l., Whitford Worldwide Company LLC, Worwag Coatings, and Zaganite Industries Pty Ltd. There is not enough analysis data for BlackRock MuniYield Quality Fund. 4.3 Community Rank Outperform Votes BlackRock MuniYield Quality Fund has received 110 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes BlackRock MuniYield Quality Fund has received 64 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment BlackRock MuniYield Quality Fund has received 63.22% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about BlackRock MuniYield Quality Fund and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe MQY will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe MQY will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next Imperial Oil Limited explores for, produces, and sells crude oil and natural gas in Canada. It operates through three segments: Upstream, Downstream, and Chemical. The Upstream segment explores for and produces crude oil, natural gas, synthetic oil, and bitumen. As of December 31, 2020, this segment had 138 million oil-equivalent barrels of proved undeveloped reserves. The Downstream segment is involved in the transportation and refining of crude oil, as well as blending, distribution, and marketing of refined products. It also transports crude oil to refineries by contracted pipelines, common carrier pipelines, and rail; maintains a distribution system to move petroleum products to market by pipeline, tanker, rail, and road transport; and owns and operates fuel terminals, natural gas liquids, and products pipelines in Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario. In addition, this segment markets and supplies petroleum products to motoring public through approximately 2,400 Esso and Mobil-branded sites. Further, it sells petroleum products, including fuel, asphalt, and lubricants for industrial and transportation customers, independent marketers, and resellers, as well as other refiners serving the agriculture, residential heating, and commercial markets through branded fuel and lubricant resellers. The Chemical segment manufactures and markets various petrochemicals and polyethylene, such as benzene, aromatic, and aliphatic solvents; plasticizer intermediates; and polyethylene resins. The company was incorporation in 1880 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. Imperial Oil Limited is a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corporation. Read More Just Group plc provides various financial services in the retirement income market in the United Kingdom. It offers de-risking solutions, guaranteed income for life, secure lifetime income, care plans, lifetime mortgages, and protection products. The company also provides professional services, including regulated financial advice and guidance services; and a range of business services, such as consultancy and software development, and outsourced customer service delivery and marketing services. In addition, it engages in writing of insurance products for distribution to the at- or in-retirement market, which is undertaken through the activities of the life company; and provision of licensed software to financial advisers, banks, building societies, life assurance companies, and pension trustees. Further, the company arranges guaranteed income for life contracts; and provides lifetime mortgages through advice and intermediary services. It offers its products and services to trustees and scheme sponsors, individuals, homeowners, and other corporate clients. The company was formerly known as JRP Group plc and changed its name to Just Group plc in May 2017. Just Group plc was founded in 2004 and is based in Reigate, the United Kingdom. Read More There is not enough analysis data for North American Palladium. 4.1 Community Rank Outperform Votes North American Palladium has received 140 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes North American Palladium has received 85 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment North American Palladium has received 62.22% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about North American Palladium and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe PDL will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe PDL will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next HDFC Bank Ltd. engages in the provision of banking and financial services, including commercial banking and treasury operations. The firm also provides financial services to upper and middle income individuals and corporations in India. It operates through the following segments: Treasury, Retail Banking, Wholesale Banking and Other Banking Operations. The Treasury segment consists of bank's investment portfolio, money market borrowing and lending, investment operations and trading in foreign exchange and derivative contracts. The Retail Banking segment provides loans and other services to customers through a branch network and other delivery channels. The Wholesale Banking segment provides loans, non-fund facilities and transaction services to large corporates, emerging corporates, public sector units, government bodies, financial institutions, and medium scale enterprises. The Other Banking Business segment includes income from para banking activities such as credit cards, debit cards, third party product distribution, primary dealership business, and the associated costs. The company was founded by Aditya Tapishwar Puri in August 1994 and is headquartered in Mumbai, India. Read More There is not enough analysis data for Samsung Electronics. 4.1 Community Rank Outperform Votes Samsung Electronics has received 130 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Samsung Electronics has received 77 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Samsung Electronics has received 62.80% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Samsung Electronics and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe SSNLF will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe SSNLF will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next The following companies are subsidiares of Illinois Tool Works: A V Co 1 Limited, A V Co 2 Limited, A V Co 3 Limited, ACCU-LUBE Manufacturing GmbH - Schmiermittel und -gerate -, AIP/BI Holdings Inc., Accessories Marketing Holding Corp., Advanced Molding Company Inc., Allen Coding GmbH, Allen France SAS, Alpine Automation Limited, Alpine Engineered Products, Alpine Holdings Inc., Alpine Systems Corporation, Anaerobicos S.r.l., AppliChem GmbH, Arylux Hungary Elektromechanikus Alkatreszgyarto Kft, Avery Berkel France, Avery India Limited, Avery Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avery Weigh Tronix, Avery Weigh-Tronix (Suzhou) Weighing Technology Co. Ltd., Avery Weigh-Tronix Finance Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Holdings Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix International Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix LLC, Avery Weigh-Tronix Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Properties Limited, Azon Limited, B.C. Immo, Beijing Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Berkel (Ireland) Limited, Berrington UK, Brapenta Eletronica Ltda., Brooks Instrument (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Brooks Instrument B.V., Brooks Instrument GmbH, Brooks Instrument KFT, Brooks Instrument Korea Ltd., Brooks Instrument LLC, Buell Industries Inc., CAPMAX Logistica S.A. de C.V., CCI Realty Company, CFC Europe GmbH, CS (Australia) Pty Limited, CS (Finance) Europe S.a.r.l., CS Mexico Holding Company S DE RL DE CV, CSMTS LLC, Calvia Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosci, Capital Ventures (Australasia) S.a r.l, Capmax Logistica S.A. de C.V., Celeste Industries Corporation, Coeur, Coeur (Shanghai) Medical Appliance Trading Co. Ltd, Coeur Asia Limited, Coeur Holding Company, Coeur Inc., Compagnie Hobart, Compagnie de Materiel et d'Equipements Techniques-Comet, Constructions Isothermiques Bontami C.I.B., Crane Carrier Company, Despatch Industries, Diagraph Corporation Sdn. Bhd, Diagraph ITW Mexico S. de R.L. De C.V., Diagraph Mexico S.A. DE C.V., Dongguan Ark-Les Electric Components Co. Ltd., Dongguan CK Branding Co. Ltd., Dorbyl U.K. (Holdings) Limited, Duo Fast de Espana S.A.U., Duo-Fast Korea Co. Ltd., Duo-Fast LLC, E.C.S. d.o.o., ECS Cable Protection Sp. Zoo, ELRO (Holding) AG, ELRO Grosskuchen GmbH, ELRO-WERKE AG, Elga Skandinavian AS, Elro Group, Eltex-Elektrostatik-Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Envases Multipac S.A. de C.V., Eurotec Srl, FEG Investments L.L.C., Fasver, Filtertek, Filtertek De Mexico Holding Inc., Filtertek De Mexico S.A. de C.V., GC Financement SA, Gamko B.V., Gun Hwa Platech (Taicang) Co. Ltd., HOBART Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Hartness International, Hobart (Japan) K.K., Hobart Andina S.A.S., Hobart Brothers International Chile Limitada, Hobart Brothers LLC, Hobart Dayton Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Hobart Food Equipment Co. Ltd., Hobart Foster Belgium, Hobart International (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Hobart Korea LLC, Hobart LLC, Hobart Nederland B.V., Hobart Sales & Service Inc., Hobart Scandinavia ApS, Hobart Techniek B.V., Horis, ILC Investments Holdings Inc., ITW (China) Investment Company Limited, ITW (Deutschland) GmbH, ITW (EU) Holdings Ltd., ITW (European) Finance Co. Ltd., ITW (European) Finance II Co. Ltd., ITW (European) Finance III Co. Ltd., ITW (Ningbo) Components & Fastenings Systems Co. Ltd., ITW AEP LLC, ITW AOC LLC, ITW Aircraft Investments Inc., ITW Alpha Sarl, ITW Ampang Industries Philippines Inc., ITW Appliance Components EOOD, ITW Appliance Components S.A. de C.V., ITW Appliance Components S.r.l.a, ITW Appliance Components d.o.o., ITW Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, ITW Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd., ITW Australia Pty Ltd, ITW Automotive Components (Chongqing) Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Components (Langfang) Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Japan K.K., ITW Automotive Korea LLC, ITW Automotive Parts (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, ITW Automotive Products GmbH, ITW Automotive Products Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Bailly Comte, ITW Befestigungssysteme GmbH, ITW Belgium, ITW Brazilian Nominee L.L.C., ITW Building Components Group Inc., ITW CER, ITW CP Distribution Center Holland BV, ITW CS (UK) Ltd., ITW Canada Inc., ITW Celeste Inc., ITW Chemical Products Ltda, ITW Chemical Products Scandinavia ApS, ITW Colombia S.A.S., ITW Construction Products (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Construction Products (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., ITW Construction Products AB, ITW Construction Products AS, ITW Construction Products ApS, ITW Construction Products CZ s.r.o., ITW Construction Products Italy Srl, ITW Construction Products OU, ITW Construction Products OY, ITW Contamination Control (Wujiang) Co. Ltd., ITW Contamination Control B.V., ITW Covid Security Group Inc., ITW DS Investments Inc., ITW DelFast do Brasil Ltda., ITW Delta Sarl, ITW Denmark ApS, ITW Dynatec, ITW Dynatec Adhesive Equipment (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Dynatec GmbH, ITW Dynatec Kabushiki Kaisha, ITW EAE B.V., ITW EAE Mexico S de RL de CV, ITW EF&C France SAS, ITW EF&C Selb GmbH, ITW Electronic Business Asia Co. Limited, ITW Electronic Components/Products (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Electronics (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Epsilon Sarl, ITW Espana S.A., ITW FEG Hong Kong Limited, ITW FEG do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW Fastener Products GmbH, ITW Finance Designated Activity Company, ITW Finance Europe S.A., ITW Fluids and Hygiene Solutions Ltda., ITW Food Equipment Group LLC, ITW France Finance Alpha S.A.S., ITW GH LLC, ITW GSE ApS, ITW GSE Inc., ITW Gamma Sarl, ITW German Management LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones, ITW Global Investments II Inc., ITW Global Investments Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Europe GmbH, ITW Global Tire Repair Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Japan K.K., ITW Graphics (Thailand) Ltd., ITW Graphics Asia Limited, ITW Graphics Italy S.R.L. in liquidazione, ITW Great Britain Investment & Licensing Holding Company, ITW Group France (Luxembourg) S.ar.l., ITW HLP Thailand Co. Ltd., ITW Holding Quimica B.C. S.L. Sole Shareholder Company, ITW Holdings Australia L.P., ITW Holdings I Limited, ITW Holdings II Limited, ITW Holdings III Limited, ITW Holdings IV Limited, ITW Holdings IX Limited, ITW Holdings Inc., ITW Holdings UK, ITW Holdings V Limited, ITW Holdings VI Limited, ITW Holdings VII Limited, ITW Holdings VIII Limited, ITW Holdings X Limited, ITW Holdings XI Limited, ITW Hungary Finance Beta Kft, ITW ILC Holdings I Inc., ITW IPG Investments LLC, ITW Imaden Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW India Private Limited, ITW International Holdings LLC, ITW Invest Holding GmbH, ITW Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, ITW Ireland Unlimited Company, ITW Italy Finance Srl, ITW Italy Holding Srl, ITW Japan Ltd., ITW Korea LLC, ITW LLC & Co. KG, ITW Limited, ITW Lombard Holdings Inc., ITW Lys Fusion S.r.l., ITW M FILMS II LLC, ITW MH LLC, ITW Meritex Sdn. Bhd., ITW Metal Fasteners S.L., ITW Mexico Holding Company S. De R.L. de C.V., ITW Mexico Holdings LLC, ITW Morlock GmbH, ITW Mortgage Investments II Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments III Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments IV Inc., ITW Netherlands Administration BV, ITW Netherlands Beta B.V., ITW Netherlands Finance Alpha BV, ITW New Universal LLC, ITW New Zealand, ITW Novadan Sp. Z.o.o., ITW PPF Brasil Adesivos Ltda., ITW Packaging Technology (China) Co. Ltd., ITW Participations S.a r.l., ITW Pension Funds Trustee Company, ITW Performance Plastic (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Japan Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Korea Limited, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids OOO, ITW Performance Polymers (Wujiang) Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers ApS, ITW Performance Polymers and Fluids Group FZE, ITW Peru S.A.C., ITW Philippines Holdings LLC, ITW Poly Mex S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Polymers Sealants North America Inc., ITW Pronovia s.r.o., ITW Pte. Ltd., ITW Qufu Automotive Cooling Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Real Estate Germany GmbH, ITW Residuals III L.L.C., ITW Residuals IV L.L.C., ITW Rivex, ITW SMPI, ITW SPG Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Simco-Ion (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., ITW Slovakia s.r.o., ITW Spain Holdings S.L., ITW Specialty Film LLC, ITW Specialty Films France, ITW Specialty Materials (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Spraytec, ITW Sverige AB, ITW Sweden Holding AB, ITW Test & Measurement Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, ITW Test & Measurement GmbH, ITW Test and Measurement Italia Srl, ITW Test and Measurement Services Industry and Trade Ltd., ITW Texwipe Philippines Inc., ITW Thermal Films (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW UK, ITW UK Finance Beta Limited, ITW UK Finance Delta Limited, ITW UK Finance Gamma Limited, ITW UK Finance Limited, ITW UK Finance Zeta Ltd., ITW UK II Limited, ITW Universal II LLC, ITW Welding, ITW Welding AB, ITW Welding GmbH, ITW Welding Products B.V., ITW Welding Products Group FZE, ITW Welding Products Group S. DE R.L. De C.V., ITW Welding Products Italy Srl, ITW Welding Products Limited Liability Company, ITW Welding Produtos Para Solgdagem Ltda., ITW Welding Servicios Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Welding Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW de France, ITW do Brasil Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Ideal Molding Technologies LLC, Illinois Tool Works (Chile) Limitada, Illinois Tool Works (ITW) Nederland B.V., Illinois Tool Works Norway AS, Impar Comercio E Representacoes Ltda., Industrie Plastic Elsasser GmbH, Inmobiliaria Cit. S.A. de C.F., Innova Temperlite Servicios S.A. de C.V., Innovacion y Transformacion Automotriz S.A. de C.V., Instron (Shanghai) Ltd., Instron (Thailand) Limited, Instron Brasil Equipamentos Cientificos Ltda., Instron Foreign Sales Corp. Limited, Instron France S.A.S., Instron GmbH, Instron Holdings Limited, Instron International Limited, Instron Japan Company Ltd., Instron Korea LLC, International Leasing Company LLC, International Truss Systems Proprietary Limited, Isolenge - ITW Sistemas de Isolamento Termico Ltda., KCPL Mauritius Holdings, Kester, Kester Components (M) Sdn. Bhd., Kleinmann GmbH, Krafft S.L., Loma Systems, Loma Systems (Canada) Inc., Loma Systems BV, Loma Systems sro, Lombard Pressings Limited, Lumex Inc., Lys Fusion Poland Sp. z.o.o., M&C Specialties (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., M&C Specialties Co., MAGNAFLUX GmbH, MEHB Holdings Limited, MGHG Property LLC, MOA Enterprises Inc, Manufacturing Avancee S.A., Meritex Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Meurer Verpackungssysteme GmbH, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC, Miller Insurance Ltd., NDT Holding LLC, NOVADAN APS, Norden Olje AB, North Star Imaging Europe, North Star Imaging Inc., Nova Chimica S.r.l., Orbitalum Tools GmbH, PENTA-91 OOO, PR. A. I. Srl, PT ITW Construction Products Indonesia, Pacific Concept Industries Limited (Enping), Panreac Quimica S.L., Paslode Fasteners (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Peerless Machinery Corp., Penta Dnepr LLC, Penta Sever OOO, Penta Volga OOO, Polyrey, Premark FEG L.L.C., Premark HII Holdings LLC, Premark International, Premark International LLC, Prolex Sociedad Anonima, QSA Global Inc., Quimica Industrial Mediterranea S.L., Ramset Fasteners (Hong Kong) Ltd., Rapid Cook LLC, Refrigeration France, S.E.E. Sistemas Industria E Comercio Ltda., ST Mexico Holdings LLC, Sealant Systems International Inc., Sentinel Asia Yuhan Hoesa, Shanghai ITW Plastic & Metal Co. Ltd, Simco (Nederland) B.V., Simco Japan Inc., Societe de Prospection et dInventions Techniques SPIT, Speedline Holdings I Inc., Speedline Holdings I LLC, Speedline Technologies GmbH, Speedline Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Speedline Technologies Mexico Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Stokvis Celix Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Stokvis Danmark ApS, Stokvis Holdings S.A.R.L., Stokvis Promi s.r.o, Stokvis Prostick Tapes Private Limited, Stokvis Tapes (Hong Kong) Co. Limited, Stokvis Tapes (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Taiwan) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes BVBA, Stokvis Tapes Benelux B.V., Stokvis Tapes Deutschland GmbH, Stokvis Tapes France, Stokvis Tapes Italia s.r.l., Stokvis Tapes Limited, Stokvis Tapes Limited Liability Company, Stokvis Tapes Norge AS, Stokvis Tapes Oy, Stokvis Tapes Polska Sp Z.O.O., Stokvis Tapes Sverige AB, Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek (China) Limited, Teknek (Japan) Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V.B.A., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta (Guangzhou) Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Vesta Global Limited, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, ZF TRW (Engineered Fasteners and Components), and Zip-Pak International B.V.. TC Energy Corporation operates as an energy infrastructure company in North America. It operates through Canadian Natural Gas Pipelines, U.S. Natural Gas Pipelines, Mexico Natural Gas Pipelines, Liquids Pipelines, and Power and Storage segments. The company builds and operates 93,400 km network of natural gas pipelines, which transports natural gas from supply basins to local distribution companies, power generation plants, industrial facilities, interconnecting pipelines, LNG export terminals, and other businesses. It also has regulated natural gas storage facilities with a total working gas capacity of 535 billion cubic feet. In addition, it has approximately 4,900 km liquids pipeline system that connects Alberta crude oil supplies to refining markets in Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas, and the U.S. Gulf Coast. Further, the company owns or has interests in seven power generation facilities with a combined capacity of approximately 4,200 megawatts that are powered by natural gas and nuclear fuel sources located in Alberta, Ontario, QuAbec, and New Brunswick; and owns and operates approximately 118 billion cubic feet of non-regulated natural gas storage capacity in Alberta. The company was formerly known as TransCanada Corporation and changed its name to TC Energy Corporation in May 2019. TC Energy Corporation was incorporated in 1951 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. Read More TCF Financial Corporation operates as the financial holding company for TCF National Bank that provides various financial products and services in the United States and Canada. It operates through Consumer Banking, Commercial Banking, and Enterprise Services segments. The company offers checking, savings, and money market accounts; certificates of deposit; individual retirement accounts; debit and credit cards; and check cashing and remittance services. It also provides investment management and custodial services, trust services, financial and estate planning, and retirement planning and employee benefit programs; residential, consumer, and small business lending products; and consumer real estate secured lending, consumer loans, loans secured by personal property, and unsecured personal loans. In addition, the company offers loans and lines of credit, deposits, cash management, capital market products, international trade finance, letters of credit, foreign exchange management services, and loan syndication services. Further, it provides commercial and industrial, commercial real estate banking, and lease financing; and treasury services comprising investment and borrowing portfolios, as well as manages capital, debt, and market risks. As of December 31, 2020, the company operated 478 branches, including 373 traditional branches, 102 supermarket branches, and three campus branches located in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, and South Dakota; and 1,062 ATMs. TCF Financial Corporation was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. Read More American Consumer News, LLC dba MarketBeat 2010-2021. 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LLC, Chapter 4 Corp, Cherry SAS, Ciliegia Srl, Corporacion Distribiduidora de Dickies S de RL de CV, Cutler de Mexico SA, Czech Distribution Services s.r.o., DSI Enterprises LLC, Dickies de Honduras SA de CV, Dickies de Parras S de RL de CV, EAGLE CREEK EUROPE LIMITED, Eagle Creek, Eagle Creek Inc., GFYS LLC, GREENSPORT MONTE BIANCO, Horace Small, INVERSIONES INMOBILIARIES AUSTRALES SA, INVERSIONES VF CHILE DOS LTDA, INVERSIONES VF CHILE LTDA, IW Apparel LLC, IW Holdings LLC, IW Panama Trading S. de R.L., IceBreaker, Icebreaker Apparel LLC, Icebreaker Australia Pty, Icebreaker Australia Retail Pty, Icebreaker Europe Limited, Icebreaker Holdings Limited, Icebreaker Licensing LLC, Icebreaker Limited, Icebreaker Merino Clothing Europe Ltd., Icebreaker New Zealand Limited, Icebreaker Pure Merino GmbH, Imagewear Apparel Corp., Industrial Laundry Services LLC, Industrias Coahuila de Zaragosa S de RL de CV, JanSport Apparel Corp., Kipling Apparel Corp., Kipling Belgium, Kipling Holdings LLC, Kirsche GmbH, Kodiak Group Holdings CO., Lee Bell Inc., Lucy, Lucy Apparel LLC, Majestic Athletic Official Store, Mo Industries Holdings, NII Sales - Texas LLC, Napapijri, North East Rig-Out Limited, North Elm Properties LLC, RED KAP DE MEXICO S DE RL DE CV, RKI HONDURAS S de RL, Reef Holdings Corporation, Rock & Republic, SERVICIOS Y PROMOCIONES TEXTILES LTDA, South Cone, South Cone Inc, Supreme, Supreme Holdings Inc., Supreme Intermediate Holdings Inc., T.I. Venture Group Inc, TBL INVESTMENTS HOLDING GMBH, TBL Licensing LLC, THE NORTH FACE ITALY SRL, THE NORTH FACE SAGL, THE RECREATIONAL FOOTWEAR CO., TIMBERLAND EUROPE BV, TIMBERLAND HK TRADING LTD., TIMBERLAND LUXEMBOURG HOLDING ASIA S.A.R.L., TIMBERLAND UK LTD., The North Face, The North Face Apparel Corp, Timberland, Timberland Asia LLC, Timberland IDC Ltd., Timberland International LLC, VANS MADEIRA LDA, VANS SPAIN SL, VF (J) FRANCE SAS, VF (J) NEDERLAND BV, VF (J) NETHERLANDS SERVICES BV, VF APPAREL PORTUGAL LDA, VF ASIA LTD, VF Apollo Investments Limited, VF Apollo Singapore Pte. Ltd., VF Asia Sourcing Ltd, VF Austria GMBH, VF BRANDS MALAYSIA SDN BHD, VF BRANDS TAIWAN LTD., VF Belgium BV, VF Brands Pte. Ltd., VF CH Apollo Sagl, VF CH Holdings GmbH, VF CH Imagewear Canada GmbH, VF CH MEXICO INVESTMENTS SAGL, VF CH-MEX Holdings LLC, VF CHINA LTD., VF CIS LLC, VF COMERCIALIZADORA LTDA, VF CZECH SERVICES SRO, VF CZECH SRO, VF Corporation, VF DE ARGENTINA SA, VF DO BRAZIL LTDA, VF EGE GIYIM SANAYI VE TICARET LIMITED SIRKETI, VF EUROPE BV, VF GERMANY TEXTILE-HANDELS GMBH, VF Germany Services GMBH, VF HELLAS EPE, VF HOLDING SAGL, VF HOLDINGS MEXICO LLC, VF Hong Kong Limited, VF IB Holdings LLC, VF IMAGEWEAR DE MEXICO S DE RL DE CV, VF IMAGEWEAR MAJESTIC (UK) LTD, VF INTERNATIONAL SAGL, VF INVESTIMENTOS DO BRAZIL LTDA, VF IP Holdings LLC, VF ISRAEL (APPAREL) LTD, VF ITALIA SRL, VF ITALY SERVICES SRL, VF Imagewear Canada Co., VF Imagewear Inc, VF Intellectual Property Services Inc, VF International Holding GmbH, VF Investments Holding GmbH, VF Investments Netherlands BV, VF JEANSWEAR ARGENTINA SRL, VF JEANSWEAR ESPANA SL, VF Japan KK, VF KOREA LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY, VF LUXEMBOURG SARL, VF Management Service Italy S.r.l., VF NL Holdings CV, VF NL Imagewear B.V., VF NORTHERN EUROPE LIMITED, VF NORTHERN EUROPE SERVICES LIMITED, VF Norway AS, VF OUTDOOR (CANADA) CO, VF OUTDOOR MEXICO S DE RL DE CV, VF OUTDOOR SERVICES S DE RL DE CV, VF Outdoor LLC, VF PANAMA SOURCING SERVICES S. DE R.L., VF PARTICIPACOES DO BRASIL LTDA, VF PERU SA, VF POLSKA DISTRIBUTION SP ZO O, VF Playwear Dominicana SA, VF Playwear LLC, VF Receivables LP, VF Receivables Services LLC, VF SAGEBRUSH ENTERPRISES LLC, VF SALES SAGL, VF SERVICIOS DE HONDURAS SA, VF SERVICIOS EL SALVADOR LTDA. DE CV, VF SHANGHAI SOURCING LIMITED, VF SOURCING THAILAND LTD, VF Scandinavia ApS, VF Services LLC, VF Servicios de Guatemala Srl, VF Servicios de Nicaragua Srl., VF Shanghai Enterprise Company, VF Shanghai Limited, VF Singapore Overseas Services Pte Ltd, VF Solutions LLC, VF Sourcing India Private Limited, VF Sweden AB, VF Switzerland Enterprises GmbH, VF Taiwan Limited, VF Transglobal GmbH, VF Treasury Services LLC, VFSE Investments LLC, VFSLA Commercial Services LLC, VFSLA Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Vans, Vans Inc, W-D APPAREL COMPANY LLC, W-D Licensing LLC, WD Europe SAS, WD Supply Holding Limited (HK), Walls Cayman Limited, Walls Holding Company LLC, Walls Industries LLC, Williamson Industries Ltd., Williamson-Dickie APAC Holding Company Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Apparel Trading (Shanghai) Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Canada Co., Williamson-Dickie Europe GmbH, Williamson-Dickie Europe Holdings Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Europe Ltd., Williamson-Dickie HK Holding Company Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Holding Co-Mexico S de RL de CV, Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Company LLC, Williamson-Dickie Middle East FZE, Wooster GK, Workwear Sourcing S. de R.L., World Jeans VF Asia Ltd, Worldwide Workwear Ltd., and Ying Tao Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.. Jalisco Tequila Tasting Aims for Guinness World Record Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - A week-long celebration in the State of Jalisco marked Mexico's first-ever National Day of Tequila on March 16th - but the party's not over! To close the of the National Tequila Day celebrations, Guadalajara will attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for the world's largest tequila tasting. Guadalajara is looking to entice 1,200 residents and visitors to join in the city's attempt to beat Canada's record of 864 tequila tasters, which earned the city of Toronto a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records in 2013. Previously, the title belonged to the Mexican state of Guanajuato, with 341 participants in 2010. The head of the Ministry of Tourism of Jalisco, German Ralis Cumplido, said that, in honor of the iconic drink that has become the country's 'ambassador par excellence,' Tequila lovers and enthusiasts will gather together at Guadalajara's Plaza Liberacion at 5:00 pm on Sunday, March 24, for the world's largest tequila tasting. Breaking this record will result in the world-wide promotion of the State of Jalisco, as the Guinness Book of World Records is the second most popular book on the planet, (after the Bible), with more than 3 million books in 22 languages sold in 100 countries. "We are proud that the tequila represents not only Jalisco, but Mexico internationally, and therefore, as an extension to the celebrations of the National Day of Tequila, this Sunday we will send a message that transcends borders in the tourist promotion of our state," the Tourism Secretary said. He specified that, if the participation of at least 1,200 tequila lovers is certified, Jalisco will break the aforementioned record, a recognition that will be endorsed by the Official Adjudicator of Guinness World Records, whose attendance at the event has been confirmed. To participate in the tasting it is necessary to register through the event's official website. On the day of the event, 15 windows will be opened for the registration of attendees, who must present official identification (INE) and the email received after registering online. According to Ralis Cumplido, Tequila Master Jaime Diaz Villalobos will lead the tasting of three labels of the spirit from special edition National Tequila Day Commemorative Bottles, which were created by the National Chamber of the Tequila Industry (CNIT). The vice president of CNIT, Francisco Javier Soltero Jimenez, said "tequila is a versatile drink of great quality, which offers five classes and two categories to those who taste it. At this tasting, participants will have the opportunity to appreciate the characteristics of tequila, and learn a little more about the most consumed spirit in our country." "Tequila is considered Mexico's ambassador to the world, along with Mariachi and Charreria; and Jalisco is the country's main producer of tequila, above Guanajuato, Michoacan, Nayarit and Tamaulipas, the only states within the Tequila Denomination of Origin," he added. Xem them ... Tin bai cuoi cung Khong con du lieu e load A unique seed-stage program for massively scalable, science-based companies is bringing together the best in the Atlantic region with the best in the world. The Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) helps promising ventures transition into high-growth companies by providing access to a powerful network of national and international mentors. CDL started at the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management, and arrived at Dals Rowe School of Business in 2017. Read more: Creating Atlantic Canadas next entrepreneurial superstars There are CDL locations at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, HEC Montreal, and the Stern School of Business at New York University. The program recently launched at the prestigious Oxford University in London, England and its expected that more international locations will follow. Admitted start-ups enter a nine-month program that is focused on defining objectives with measurable deliverables. It involves a series of eight-week sprints, and the ventures that demonstrate the greatest progress will continue to receive support and advice from fellows and associates. Those that stagnate, and are unable to resolve key issues and/or do not receive further offers of mentorship from fellows and associates, will not move forward in the program. CDL is all about finding ways to successfully translate science into social and economic impact. says Jeff Larsen, executive director, innovation and entrepreneurship. Commercialization of ocean, clean technology and agriculture research CDL Atlantic engaged 52 business leaders to serve as fellows and associates for the first cohort of ventures admitted to the program in 2017-18. In total, 12 companies graduated from CDL Atlantic this year, and together they raised $9.6 million in investment and created approximately $48 million in equity value. Harbr, a Halifax-based start-up that is revolutionizing the construction industry through its real-time project management platform for retail construction, graduated from the CDL program last spring. Over the course of nine-months Harbr raised $1.75 million in new funding, added customers, improved their product features and hired seven new staff. They were also one of 11 graduating start-ups that attended the CDL Super Session, which was held at the Rotman School of Management in June 2018. I was truly impressed by the calibre of mentors at CDL Atlantic, as well as the excellent quality and performance of the ventures in attendance, says Bill Aulet, managing director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. CDL Atlantic has achieved a great deal in its inaugural year and should continue to be a leading conduit for investment in science-based companies. A new wave of innovation The newest CDL Atlantic cohort began in the fall of 2018, and included 25 companies. One of these companies is Rayleigh Solar Tech. Led by two long-time friends, Sam March and Dane George, Rayleigh Solar Tech is aiming to commercialize perovskite solar cells. Perovskite is a solution deposited at low temperatures, easy to make, and works really well. With an efficiency that has skyrocketed to over 23 per cent, this technology has gained incredible traction in the research community in the past five years, and it will be cheaper than any existing solar cell technology. Sam March is a great example of how CDL Atlantic can work, where a PhD student who might never have commercialized his research has started a company that will bring next generation solar to market, says Larsen. Read more: Nova Scotia start-up a game changer for future of clean energy Another company involved in this cohort is Motryx. Founded by two PhD students at Dalhousie, this start-up has developed a compact and robust accelerometer tag that can be attached to samples of blood, and helps to identify problems while they are being transported. The next session for this cohort will be held in April. Research Support Fund At Dalhousie, the federal Research Support Fund (RSF) program helps to fund, among other things, the commercialization of research at Dalhousie. Established in 2003, the RSF (formerly the Indirect Costs Program) helps Canadian universities and colleges, along with their affiliated health research institutes and research hospitals, with the indirect costs associated with federally-funded research. Last year, the RSF grant provided $8.9 million to support the indirect costs of research at Dalhousie and affiliate hospitals. There were media reports that Etihad has approached the SBI to purchase its 24 per cent stake in the airline. New Delhi: Lenders, led by the SBI, are trying to revive debt-laden Jet Airways by change in management as they feel collapse of the airline will not be good for consumers and competition, a source said after the SBI chief met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday. With Jet flying just about a third of its fleet, defaulting on interest payments and delaying salaries to pilot, State Bank of India Chairman Rajnish Kumar along with Aviation Secretary Pradip Singh Kharola and Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Nripendra Misra met Jaitley Wednesday afternoon. Kumar said the meeting was to apprise the government, which is an important stakeholder, about the happenings in what was once India's second-biggest airline, and not to discuss a bailout package. He, however, emphatically stated that it was in the interest of the lenders and consumers to keep Jet Airways flying, and dragging the debt-ridden firm under bankruptcy proceedings is the last option. Jet Airways has a debt of over Rs 8,200 crore and needs to make repayments of up to Rs 1,700 crore by the end of March. In case the airline collapses, 23,000 jobs would be at stake. Though Kumar refused to share details of the lenders' resolution plan, the source said that the lenders have proposed to change the management of the beleaguered air carrier as they feel it is not possible to run the company with present management. Jet Airways is headed by Naresh Goyal, who currently holds 51 per cent stake. Abu Dhabi based Etihad Airways has 24 per cent. There were media reports that Etihad has approached the SBI to purchase its 24 per cent stake in the airline. On getting a new player in Jet Airways, Kumar said, "No possibility is ruled out". "The dialogue with Etihad is on. It is not that they have conclusively decided that they will go out. But there are certain conditions which they want to be fulfilled and it is nothing but that the airline should be professionally managed and without any interference," he said. Lenders of Jet Airways have been working on a resolution plan for last five months and it is almost ready, Kumar said, adding "We will make every effort to keep Jet Airways flying and in no manner it is a bailout for any individual or any promoter whatsoever". The SBI chief said that resolution of a service industry, like airline, is nearly impossible under Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and is the last option. "IBC means that we are grounding the airline. We will keep trying till such time we believe that all hope is lost. But as on date, I can say that not all hope is lost. We have not reached that decision point where we say enough is enough and nothing can be done," Kumar said. Chairman of the country's largest bank said that the government is the most important stakeholder and it is the duty of the lenders to keep the government informed. "It is in the lender's Interest, the country's interest, the aviation sector's interest that Jet Airways continues to fly," Kumar added. The pilots union of Jet Airways had on Tuesday threatened to stop flying from April 1 if their salaries are not paid by March 31. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said only 41 aircraft of the Jet Airways were currently available for operation and there may be "further attrition" of flights "in coming weeks". 41 aircraft is just one-third of Jet's fleet of 119 planes. Mumbai: Onida, a leading Indian consumer durables brand announces the launch of new smart AC series - ONYXS and GENIO. In the last quarter Onida achieved phenomenal growth of 100 per cent, pumped up by its success and the forecasted demand of voice-driven smart technology in Air Conditioners in Indian market, the brand has launched these two new models. As the air conditioners are powered by a smart voice Integrated AI technology, air conditioners with Inverter features and powerful cooling bundled with other innovative features, keep in mind the summer season, these products will cater to all the segments in the market. These new air conditioners will have ethereal texture and stylish finish and boast of market leading innovations of 4D cooling, 100% copper condenser, Blue fin powerful coating, eco-friendly R-32 refrigerant gas, and smart digital displays. These ACs are designed keeping in mind the mandatory norms meeting the latest ISEER Ratings. ONYX SMART is a Voice Integrated Smart air conditioners, which is powered by Alexa, driven by in-house ViOT (Voice IOT) technology and helps you control the air conditioner with only your voice through the Alexa App. GENIO, is powered by Internet of Things. GENIO in Spanish means GENIUS, a product with unique and exceptional features. Along with the smart technology, Onida will also be introducing Magnified Cooling with Multiplier Cooling Inverter Technology. This means that ONIDAs Inverter air conditioners delivers 120 per cent magnified cooling in just 30 seconds, cooling beyond the rated capacity of the AC, due to multiplier inverter technology. Also, ONIDA has developed a unique and powerful Smart Home App, available on both iOS and Google Play Store, makes your smartphone the single platform which controls the entire eco-system of remote-operated devices in your home. Two variants of ONYX SMART series include Inverter 5 Star and 3 Star in each of 1 Ton and 1.5 Ton categories, and they come at a price range between Rs 44,990 to Rs 63,990. Two variants of GENIO in both 1 Ton and 1.5 Ton are 3-star ACs and come at price range of Rs 46,990 to Rs 55,990. All ONIDA air conditioners come with 5 years comprehensive warranty on both indoor and outdoor units, including coverage on PCB, a category first benefit offered by ONIDA. Commenting on the development, Mr G Sundar, CEO MIRC Electronics Ltd. (Onida) said that, We are very delighted to launch voice integrated smart air conditioners. We had phenomenal growth in our air conditioners business during the last quarter and we are looking forward to favourable season for the current year. This new range of products would definitely open up opportunities for us to expand the market and also gain momentum in our revenues under this segment. At least three vessels chartered by the Indian conglomerate supplied refined products to Venezuela in recent weeks. (Photo: Twitter) New Delhi: Indias Reliance Industries, operator of the worlds biggest refining complex, has turned to selling fuels to Venezuela from India and Europe to circumvent sanctions that bar US-based companies from dealing with state-run PDVSA, according to trading sources and Refinitiv Eikon data. Reliance had been supplying alkylate, diluent naphtha, and other fuel to Venezuela though its US-based subsidiary before Washington in late January imposed sanctions aimed at curbing the OPEC members oil exports and ousting Socialist President Nicolas Maduro. At least three vessels chartered by the Indian conglomerate supplied refined products to Venezuela in recent weeks, and another vessel carrying gasoil is expected to set sail to the South American nation as well, according to the sources and data. Reliance, an Indian conglomerate controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has significant exposure to the financial system of the United States, where it operates subsidiaries linked to its oil and telecom businesses, among others. New Delhi/Mexico City: Reliance Industries is selling fuels to Venezuela from India and Europe to sidestep sanctions that bar US-based companies from dealing with state-run PDVSA, according to trading sources and Refinitiv Eikon data. Reliance had been supplying alkylate, diluent naphtha and other fuel to Venezuela through its US-based subsidiary before Washington in late January imposed sanctions aimed at curbing the OPEC members oil exports and ousting Socialist President Nicolas Maduro. At least three vessels chartered by the Indian conglomerate supplied refined products to Venezuela in recent weeks, and another vessel carrying gasoil is expected to set sail to the South American nation as well, according to the sources and data. A Reliance spokesman wrote to Reuters in an email and said: Reliance is and will remain in compliance with the sanctions and shall work with the concerned authorities. He also said the volume of products supplied to and crude oil imported from Venezuela have not increased. Reliance, an Indian conglomerate controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has significant exposure to the financial system of the US, where it operates subsidiaries linked to its oil and telecom businesses, among others. The Indian market is crucial for Venezuelas economy because it has historically been the second-largest cash-paying customer for the Opec countrys crude, behind the United States. Additional sanctions against Venezuela are possible in the future, as US President Donald Trumps administration has not yet tried to prevent companies based outside the United States from buying Venezuelan oil, a strategy known as secondary sanctions. Refinitiv Eikon trade data shows that Reliance shipped alkylate, a component for motor gasoline, to Venezuela on vessels Torm Mary and Torm Anabel in recent weeks. Those originated in India and passed through the Suez Canal. It also shipped a gasoline cargo using tanker Torm Troilus to Venezuela and is preparing to send 35,000 tonnes of gasoil in a vessel called Vukovar to the South American nation. Reliance is also supplying some products from its Rotterdam storage, a source familiar with Reliances operation said. PDVSA did not reply to a request for comment. In a statement last week, Reliance said its US unit has completely stopped all business with PDVSA. Reliance also halted all supply of diluents including heavy naphtha to Venezuela and does not plan to resume such sales until sanctions are lifted, according to the release. Venezuela has overall imported some 160,000 barrels per day of fuel and diluents for its extra heavy oil output since the US measures were imposed, according to PDVSA and Refinitiv data. Jet's troubles, have buoyed up the shares of SpiceJet and InterGlobe Aviation, parent of IndiGo. Mumbai: Despite heavy odds, efforts are on to save Jet Airways from going belly up. Reports have said that lenders led by the State Bank of India are trying to revive debt-laden airline through a change in management, as they feel that a collapse of the airline will not be interest of consumers and competition. SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar said in New Delhi that putting Jet Airways into bankruptcy is the last option and lenders are making every effort to keep the airline flying. With Jet flying just about a third of its fleet, defaulting on interest payments and delaying salaries to pilot, the SBI Chairman, along with Aviation Secretary Pradip Singh Kharola and Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Nripendra Misra met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday afternoon. Kumar said the meeting was to apprise the government, which is an important stakeholder, about the happenings in what was once India's second-biggest airline, and to discuss a bailout package. "We believe that it is in everybody's interest that Jet Airways continues to fly," Kumar told reporters post-meeting, adding that placing Jet into bankruptcy would mean grounding the airline. Jet's troubles, have meanwhile, buoyed up the shares of SpiceJet and InterGlobe Aviation, parent of IndiGo. Investors are betting on the low-cost airlines as woes of Jet Airways woes mounted. On Wednesday, SpiceJet stock surged 16.3 per cent to close at Rs 91.65, while InterGlobe Aviation gained 7.2 per cent to close at Rs 1,422 per share. The Jet Airways counter saw heavy selling on report that angry passengers demanded refunds and pilots threatened to go on strike over unpaid salaries. The Jet stock plunged 4.8 per cent to Rs 218. Analysts said SpiceJet could benefit from the grounding of Jet Airways planes, and the low-cost carrier is in talks with lessors to lease some of those aircraft. According to reports, lessors are chasing SpiceJet as they are worried if Jet goes for insolvency, their planes will be stuck in India. Jet Airways' lessors have offered 50 aircraft to SpiceJet, according to a news wire report. The grounding of aircraft by crisis-hit Jet Airways, grounding of Boeing MAX 737 planes by SpiceJet and curtailed schedule of IndiGo, among other factors. (Photo: Pixabay) New Delhi: The civil aviation ministry on Wednesday said it is working with all airlines to provide sufficient capacity and is monitoring safety as well as compliance levels on a daily basis, amid concerns over flight cancellations and rise in airfares. The grounding of aircraft by crisis-hit Jet Airways, grounding of Boeing MAX 737 planes by SpiceJet and curtailed schedule of IndiGo, among other factors, have impacted flight schedules. "To ensure passenger convenience, stable operations and affordable fares, MOCA (Ministry of Civil Aviation) is working with all airlines to provide sufficient capacity across the entire network. We continue to monitor safety and compliance on a daily basis," the ministry said in a tweet. All airlines are required to follow Passenger Charter requirements fully and comprehensively. Any complaints may be registered with the AirSewa portal, it added. With the elections taking over, the Telugu film industry continues to remain dull this week as well. There are no noteworthy films releasing this week, and almost everybody from the industry is busy with the Andhra Pradesh elections. On Wednesday, actor Naga Babu joined his brother Pawan Kalyans Jana Sena Party and will be contesting for the Lok Sabha from the Narasapuram constituency. Interestingly, the producer Prasad V. Potluri will also be contesting but from Vijayawada and on a YSRCP ticket. Additionally, the producer Kodali Nani is going to contest as an MLA from the prestigious Gudivada constituency on a YSRCP ticket. Interestingly, Balakrishna will be contesting from Hindupur on a TDP ticket while Pawan Kalyan is going to contest from Gajuwaka (Vizag) and also from Bhimavaram (West Godavari). And that is not it! While actress Madhavi Latha is contesting on a BJP ticket from Guntur, the popular actor and producer, Murali Mohan, has given way for his daughter-in-law Roopa to contest on a TDP ticket from the Rajahmundry Lok Sabha constituency. And while those mentioned above are in the fray, many others from the industry are planning to campaign for the various political parties and its going to be one hectic year. Actor Vijay Deverakonda, who has been busy with the completion of his film Dear Comrade which is set to release in April, was admitted to a leading hospital in Hyderabad on Wednesday. A source close to Vijay informed, Its nothing to worry about. Its just exhaustion. And ideally, one should just rest it out. But Vijay cant afford a break right now. So he has checked into the hospital for quick relief in order to be able to resume shooting as soon as possible. What a way to celebrate Holi. I was shooting till 6 am on Wednesday morning, when I noticed that I was down with fever. I was beginning to feel very weak, but I wanted to recover quickly, which is why I checked into the hospital for treatment, said Vijay with a chuckle. Vijay prefers not to let his health suffer because of work. One time, a few years ago, even Priyanka Chopra had to be hospitalised for dehydration as she was working round-the-clock. Bengaluru: While the country cheered Wing Commander Abhinandan's return from Pakistan after his aircraft was shot down by that country during a post-Pulwama operation, a Bengalurean, A.C. Gurumurthy paid his own unique tribute to him. Using his manual typewriter, he took two hours to make his portrait from the letters, symbols, numbers and special characters on the keyboard. Formerly an employee of the Bank of Baroda, he took voluntary retirement to pursue his dream of making portraits with his typewriter and has been going strong since. I can proudly say that I'm the first type- artist not only in India, but in the world, claims Mr Gurumurthy, revealing that he completed his senior typewriting course in the late 1960s and later came up with the idea of making portraits of leaders and famous personalities using his typing skills. "My first type -portrait was of Senator Robert Kennedy of the United States, who was assassinated on June 6, 1968, and my latest portrait is of Abhinandan," he says. Former President APJ Abdul Kalam, Mahatma Gandhi, Lord Buddha, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mother Teresa are among the many other world figures he has drawn using his typewriter, a skill that seems to come easy to him. "I keep a photograph of the personality I want to draw before me and using a pencil, draw the outlines on the typing sheet before feeding in the letters, special characters etc. to finish the portrait," he explains. With 100 such type- portraits under his belt over the last 51 years, he regularly organises exhibitions of his work to show it off to the public at large. "I sent a portrait of the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to him. Admiring my work he sent back a certificate of appreciation for me," he recalls, the moment clearly a reward in itself. Travel is no longer about breaking the monotony of routine life but engaging in enriching experiences that satiate the soul. (Photo: Representational/Pixabay) Mumbai: The Indian travel industry has witnessed paradigm shift over the years and now the trend forecast shows that tourists are gravitating towards experiential travel, which resonates at a deeper emotional level. Forward thinking travel brands are working towards providing a seamless expedition that focuses on three important parameters: uniqueness, experience and personalisation. Vacationing has become a must-do with an element of escapism associated with almost every modern Indian traveller. The concept of holiday has moved beyond and is no longer restricted to being an annual affair. It has become a reason to retreat every few weeks. Long weekends have changed the way travellers and tourism industry look at the Indian traveller. This has created a market for alternate travel possibilities. Mr. Daniel D'Souza, President and Country Head, Leisure, SOTC Travel avers, Short haul destinations like Singapore, Thailand and Maldives are becoming more family friendly and the Indian consumers are opting for value driven packages. Destinations with visa on arrivals facilities, discounted airfares and accommodation are also a few reasons for the rise of this trend as it becomes more affordable and reasonable for consumers to embark on these leisure journeys. According to him, this summer Thailand, Bali, Mauritius, Maldives, Singapore, Bhutan and Sri-Lanka are in great demand as their product teams have carefully designed unique packages for the value conscious travellers, travelling to these destinations. Talking about trends Ms. Heena Akhtar, Co-founder, tripXOXO shares, The smart weekend concept has emerged from couple of years and there is robust growth in festival tourism as the domestic travellers seek to amalgamate the cultural and spiritual elements which are creating a distinctive increase in travel demand. She further elaborates that people are extensively planning holidays around festivals to get the best offers and packages for value for money deal. The travel industry has thus far undergone enormous changes with travellers opting for experiential tours where they can soak as much as they can the local culture, cuisine, festivities and a lot more. It is no longer about breaking the monotony of routine life but engaging more in enriching experiences that satiate the soul. To keep up with this fast pace change and the travel service provides are constantly reworking their strategies, innovating new technologies to understand the trend and meet their requirements. Travel loans have become prevalent in the last three years. Patrons are opting for their dream trips because of the loans and can upgrade trips to international destinations especially the honeymoon travellers. To cater to the excursionists, SOTC has launched On The Go, which is a travel service for personalised tours. This service has been developed after meticulously understanding the mindset of the new age travellers who are always on the look out for customised experiences and activities. Improvements in flight routes, transport, cheap flights, on-demand care rentals and recommendations, micro trips and many more innovative holiday concepts are helping in elevating the travel experience, thereby ensuring a growth momentum in the tourism sector. Jet Airways owned by foreign investors, out of public money, but not to Indias debt-ridden farmers? New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday said the government intended to bring a bailout package for the cash-strapped Jet Airways partly owned by foreign investors using Indian tax payers money. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told mediapersons on Wednesday that the Modi government had asked public sector banks - State Bank of India (SBI) and Punjab National Bank (PNB) to waive the debt on the airliner totalling `8,500 crore by taking an equity of `1. Naresh Goyal, who is a London-based NRI, owns 51 per cent stakes while Etihad Airways has 24 per cent stake. It means the 75 per cent ownership is with an NRI and a foreign company, said Mr Surjewala. Why is the Modi government giving a bailout package to a bankrupt corporate entity like Jet Airways owned by foreign investors, out of public money, but not to Indias debt-ridden farmers? The PMO (Prime Ministers office) has issued two orders. It has asked the SBI and other PSU banks to waive the loan by converting it into equity of Rs 1. Also, it is going to pay Rs 150 for every share to Etihad. Will the Modi government now save every defaulting crony capitalist out of public funds? Calling spade a spade, the Left announced in the evening that it has fielded its candidates at Jangipur and Uttar Maldah. Kolkata: In a dramatic twist in the battle of seat-sharing with the Left Front, the Congress on Wednesday announced that it will not contest in five out of 42 seats in the ensuing Lok Sabha (LS) Elections in West Bengal, sending a message of political courtesy. The development came a day after the Left decided to not to field its candidates in four seats: Uttar Maldah, Dakshin Maldah, Jangipur and Berhampore, which were won by the Congress in the last LS polls, with a deadline of 24 hours before the Congress to respond. The Congress also made it clear that it would not withdraw its candidates from Raiganj and Murshidabad seats which were won by the Left earlier. Calling spade a spade, the Left announced in the evening that it has fielded its candidates at Jangipur and Uttar Maldah. It is likely to field its candidates for Dakshin Maldah and Berhampore on Thursday. The Lefts move has ended the hope of a seat-sharing formula with the Congress. In the morning, state Congress president Somen Mitra said, We will not field our candidates in five seats: Asansol, Diamond Harbour, Arambagh, Bishnupur and Tamluk. We are leaving it for the Left. When the Left has not fielded its candidates in four seats, we will also not field our candidates in these five seats. Congress Rajya Sabha MP Pradip Bhattacharya said, We are not asking the Left to convey its decision by 4.30 pm on Thursday. But we will certainly expected them to get back to us at the earliest. We always an alliance with the Left, not a seat-sharing formula. Significantly, none of the five seats left by the Congress was won by the Left in the last LS polls. While Babul Supriyo became a BJP MP from Asansol, chief minister Mamata Banerjees nephew and young Trinamul leader Abhishek Banerjee won from Diamond Harbour. Aparupa Poddar was elected as a Trinamul MP from Arambagh. Saumita Khan won as a Trinamul MP from Bishnupur before defecting to the BJP recently. Suvendu Adhikari won as Trinamul MP from Tamluk before he resigned and contested to become an MLA and transport minister. Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has not been attending to 60 per cent of grievances registered onli-ne. Every day, the civic body has been receiving about 100 grievances thro-ugh social media platforms and dealing with a mere 20. Officials claimed that lower rung staff fearing that the grievances had been tagged to higher officials and political bosses was clearing them with immediate effect. A Senior GHMC official said that the corporation had been resolving social media grievances with immediate effect since the residents had even been tagging the delay to GHMC commissioner and current TRS working president K. Taraka Rama Rao. He said that even though the grievances closed on time, residents had been reopening them continuously. However, officials said that social media platforms had been keeping officials on their toes. Since January this year, around 71 persons have been arrested by the RGIA police for trying to fly to Kuwait using forged visas. Hyderabad: In one of the biggest human trafficking rackets exposed in the state, where at least 5,000 persons from various states were trafficked to Gulf countries, the Cyberabad police have arrested 18 persons, including an airlines employee and a police constable on Wednesday. The Cyberabad police said that over 100 accused persons are involved in the trafficking racket who are yet to be nabbed. The accused, most of them acting as agents employed by the kingpins, have deceived the victims seeking employment abroad to earn money for their families living in the rural areas in Andhra Pradesh. Since January this year, around 71 persons have been arrested by the RGIA police for trying to fly to Kuwait using forged visas. A special task force, which was formed at the Cyberabad commissionerate, has investigated and arrested two gangs, comprising 15 persons, besides a police constable working at the Chevella police station, a Gulf Air employee, and a former Oman Air employee on Tuesday. The police said that the two gangs, headed by T. Kanteswara, 28, of Kadapa and G. Sasi, 28, have been issuing forged visas to the job aspirants, mostly women, to fly to Kuwait for employment. The Cyberabad police commissioner V.C. Sajjanar explained that the gangs would initially arrange for a work visa for the aspirants and would then forge the same to make a visit visa out of it, as the aspirants did not have clearance from the Protector of Emigrants. Sasis gang, on the other hand, additionally assisted the aspirants who were medically unfit to work in Kuwait by taking them to Sri Lanka, from where they were sent to Kuwait. The commissioner said that the gangs even conducted training sessions for the aspirants to act normal if the police or immigration officials questioned them about their travel, and also taught them how to tear their visa stickers. To carry out the process, the kingpins had employed agents at the village, mandal, district, and state levels. Iron box used to remove the visa stickers. During the investigation, the police discovered that the agents were using an iron box to remove the work visa stickers which were pasted on the passports. After using a mildly heated iron box to remove the sticker from the passport, they would create a forged visa with the same serial number as on the work visa. Further, with the help of the airlines employees, passengers were also provided fake return tickets along with forged visit visas. However, such passengers were identified and arrested, said the commissioner. The police seized 250 passports, fake visas, 38 cell phones, fake rubber stamps, 160 police verification certificates, 6 computers, 5 laptops, 2 printers, `5.02 lakh in cash, and records containing the data of over 5,000 persons who have already fled the country. Constable issued 500 clearance certificates illegally. The special task force that has busted the trafficking racket has found that the police constable G. Madhu, who had made acquaintances with the accused gangs while working at the RGIA police station has assisted the gang by providing them with police clearance certificates to avail work visas. The certificates were issued illegally for `2,500. New Delhi: Against the backdrop of the Congress facing difficulties in forging alliances in a number of states, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot has asserted that if pre-election tie-ups are not formed due to "compulsions", the anti-BJP forces will come together post the Lok Sabha polls. The Congress wants to enter into alliances in various states and party president Rahul Gandhi has clearly stated that the party will take to the electoral battlefield in the Lok Sabha elections with its alliance partners, Mr Gehlot said. "The BJP has massive resources at its disposal. It wants to capture power by misusing the resources at its disposal and on money power. "The Congress has its compulsions as it is a national party. If the Congress does not forge alliances properly and its workers do not align with the alliance partners, then what is the use of such a tie-up," the senior Congress leader told agencies. Talking about the Congress and the SP-BSP-RLD alliance fighting separately in the electorally crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, Mr Gehlot said the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have their own "compulsions". "They (SP and BSP) are unable to come with the Congress due to their compulsions. However, pre-poll or post-poll, alliance will be done. There will be pressure from the people," the 67-year-old leader said. The SP and the BSP have forged an alliance on 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. The SP will contest 37 Lok Sabha seats in the state and the BSP 38, leaving three for the Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal and two for Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli) and Rahul Gandhi (Amethi), as per the deal. Bengaluru: Air travellers flying to Europe are apprehensive that air fares might go up as the flights going to European countries have been barred from using the Pakistan air space. Several passengers complained that the air fares have gone up, but travel companies and agents denied it saying ticket prices depend on the proximity of the travel date, availability of seats and the day of travel. An employee working as a flight scheduler with a well-known airline said that the flights to European countries from South India will not see any fare increase as they fly over the Arabian Sea, while flights going from North India will have to take diversions via Mumbai. The situation is under control and there is nothing to panic about. According to our information, there is no hike in fares from the Southern regions till today, he said. A few travel agents and companies said that there is no hike for now, but the flights taking off from Delhi, Chandigarh and Kolkata have to take the longer routes and it is not confirmed whether the rise is reflected in the tickets. Anmol, a ticketing agent from a reputed travelling company in the city, said, We have only heard that air fares have gone up for those departing from Delhi as they have to take a diversion. But from Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi and Hyderabad, there is no increase in fares as there is no deviation in routes. Another travel agent said, We dont know what is happening in Delhi but there is no increase in Bengaluru and fares are according to airlines standards. A few passengers claimed that there is a slight increase in fares for flights from Bengaluru. Aishik Chanda, who recently booked tickets for Amsterdam said, I keep travelling frequently and realised that there is a slight increase and when checked with the airlines, they claimed that it was due to holiday season. But we are not sure for what they have increased. Security forces launched a search operation in the area following information about the presence of militants there, a police spokesman said. (Image: ANI/Representational ) Srinagar: Security forces, with the help of locals, Thursday rescued one of the two civilians held "hostage" by militants after a search operation in the Hajin area of Jammu and Kashmi's Bandipora district, police said. Security forces launched a search operation in the area following information about the presence of militants there, a police spokesman said. "Two civilians were held hostage by the terrorists. With the assistance of security forces, police and community members, one civilian has been rescued while efforts are on to rescue another," he said. The spokesman said the hostage still with the militants is reportedly a minor. Mr Siddharth Luthra, senior counsel for Ashok, submitted that Telangana police had no jurisdiction to lodge the case and investigate as the data was the AP states. Hyderabad: The Telangana High Court adjourned the petitions filed by Mr D. Ashok, director of IT Grids, to next Wednesday for further hearing. Justice Shameem Akther on Wednesday was dealing with the two petitions by Mr Ashok urging the court to quash the FIRs filed by the Telangana Police or transfer the cases which were lodged against him to the appropriate authority of AP state, as the allegations were data breach of AP voters. Mr Mahesh Jethmalani, senior counsel from Supreme Court, representing the Telangana Police submitted that the Telangana Police had jurisdiction to investigate the data breach case on the ground that the office of M/s IT Grids was located in Hyderabad. He said that the director, who was an accused in the case, was also a resident of Hyderabad. Further, he submitted that the vital, personal and sensitive data which the IT Grids company possessed, pertained to voters residing in Rangareddy district, Hyderabad, Kadapa apart from Vishakapatnam. The offence of sensitive data theft occurred in Hyderabad and the Telangana Police had jurisdiction to investigate it. He said that the Telangana police were called as it would be failure to do mandatory duty, if they did not investigate the matter. Mahesh Jethmalani said that the main contention of the director of IT Grids that the Telangana Police had no jurisdiction would take a back seat here. The fulcrum plea of the petitioner was unsustainable because the director of IT Grids, who was the mastermind behind the data theft was still on the run, and fearing arrest. By citing various Supreme Court judgments, he submitted that courts could not quash FIRs on mere territorial jurisdiction issue. Mr Siddharth Luthra, senior counsel for Ashok, submitted that Telangana police had no jurisdiction to lodge the case and investigate as the data was the AP states. Amma Master Health Checkup Centre in the Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super Speciality Hospital, Omandurar Government Estate, is a big hit among Chennaiites. It has screened nearly 8,000 people in Chennai. (DC) Chennai: S. Sumathi, 45, (name changed), a daily wage labourer from Guduvancherry, has reason to thank the Amma Master Health Checkup Centre, at the Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super Speciality Hospital. Her breast cancer was detected at an early stage and she has been undergoing treatment here for the past few months. I am happy that the breast cancer was detected at the initial stage itself. Based on the suggestion of the doctors and experts at the Centre, I am undertaking treatment and on way to recovery, Sumathi said. Like Sumathi, many women and men have benefited from the Centre located in the Omandurar Government Estate. The centre was opened in June 2018 by the Chief Minister, and has screened nearly 8,000 people so far. More than 60 types of tests and screening are done under one roof and it looks better than many corporate hospitals. Tests that may cost Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 in some private hospitals, cost a fraction of that amount here. The centre treats various ailments including cancer, diabetes and thyroid. More than 650 cases of type-two diabetes have been detected and are undergoing treatment. Some 60 tests are available at the centre, and doctors and experts offer free consultation and provide medicine. Four breast cancer patients underwent operations and have recovered. Patients come here from various districts in the state for screening. A Arunadevi, 45, of Krishnagiri, said, I learnt about the centre recently through friends. The doctors and staff were courteous. They have detected tiny stones in my kidney; its the first time I came to know about this. They have offered consultation and medicine. Four doctors provide consultation at the centre and 21 paramedical staff and technicians, including a radiologist, a cardiologist for ECHO, five lab technicians, an ECG technician, an Echo technician and two radiographers work in the centre. Assistant surgeon Dr M. Ambika, said ovarian cancer is the second most common disease among women in the country. The centre has detected many women with this cancer and provided them treatment. A vaccine is also available to prevent this ailment. If needed, patients are referred to the Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super Speciality Hospital. The centre also monitors patients after they are discharged from the hospital, Dr Ambika said. Based on the feedback, the Centre has been improving its facilities. Recently, a ThinPrep Pap test, a modified Pap test technique designed to reduce some of the technical problems inherent in the traditional type of Pap smear, was introduced. The Naturopathy and Life Style clinic at the centre has become very popular, with around 40 people visiting it every day, according to public relation officer, Dr V. Ananthkumar. The Centre was set up with the intention of providing expensive medical facilities to people at a nominal cost. Dr Ananthkumar said. Chennai: In an embarrassment to the Congress and its ally DMK in Tamil Nadu, the TNCC working president Mayura Jayakumar, has been summoned by the CB-CID for questioning in the Pollachi sexual assault case. In an effort to establish an alibi, the prime accused Thirunavukkarasu has told investigating officers that on February 12 this year, the day he was allegedly involved in the sexual assault of a woman student in Pollachi, he was in Coimbatore with his father to meet Jayakumar. With the case becoming an election issue, Jayakumar lost no time in clarifying his position to reporters. "On Feb. 12, the day the incident has taken place, the accused Thirunavakarasu has claimed that he has come to District Congress Committee office with his father and some other people to greet me. He just wants to record that he was not in Pollachi and he was in Coimbatore. I am in no way connected to him and his crime," said the Congress leader. "Hundreds of people come to meet me in the office and he could have been one among them. It's a big hall and I cannot remember every face that comes to greet me. I have now enquired with people in Pollachi and was told that his father Kanagaraj was associated with the party, when GK Vasan was in the Congress. I do not know him or his son Thirunavukarasu, have never interacted with either of them, either in person or even on phone. In fact, I came to know about them only after this scandal broke out," Jayakumar said, adding that he had sent a reply to this effect to the CB-CID police after receiving theirsummons. n Another story that was doing the rounds was about the involvement of local DMK functionary Thendral Selvaraj's son in the scandal, which forced the latter to clarify on social media that he is not personally known to the main accused Thirunavakkarasu. With media reports and accusations from political platforms alleging involvement of influential people in both the Dravidian majors, the DMK and the AIADMK, in the Pollachi scandal, the news that the Crime Branch police have summoned a Congress state leader has created some fresh concerns relating to this sensational case. There have beenallegations of attempts by the state government and the police to shield some unnamed political bigwigs. With the Opposition parties using the case as a poll campaign weapon, the AIADMK Government recently transferred the investigation to the CBI but the Central agency is yet to take charge of it. Officials said that a CRPF jawan Ajit Kumar shot and critically wounded his three colleagues after an altercation inside its 187 battalion headquarters at Battal Ballian area of Udhampur at 10.15 pm on Wednesday. SRINAGAR: Three Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans were killed in a reported act of fratricide in Jammu and Kashmirs Udhampur district late on Wednesday night. Officials said that a CRPF jawan Ajit Kumar shot and critically wounded his three colleagues after an altercation inside its 187 battalion headquarters at Battal Ballian area of Udhampur at 10.15 pm on Wednesday. All the three injured men succumbed in the hospital. Subsequently, the CRPF jawan Kumar shot himself also but survived the apparent suicide attempt, the officials said. Dr Vijay Bansotra, medical superintendent of the district hospital Udhampur, said that four CRPF jawans were brought to the hospital. Three of them succumbed. The fourth one was critical and has been evacuated to the military command hospital, he added. Jammus inspector general of police Manish Kumar Sinha said that the police has taken up the investigation and further details of the incident are being ascertained. Station House Officer Udhampur Vijay Singh Choudhary said that as per an initial report Kumar opened fire on his colleagues in a fit of anger. He shot himself also and was rushed to the hospital, he said. The CRPF has ordered a commission of inquiry into the incident. An earlier report had said that the CRPF personnel fired at each other after an altercation took place among them over some issue. The CRPF has ordered a commission of inquiry into the incident, the sources in the force said. A team of senior officers is probing the incident to ascertain what exactly led to the fatalities, the sources said. Such incidents are not uncommon in J&K ravaged by a three decade old militancy and violence. As per official statistics, hundreds of incidents of fratricide and suicide have taken places within the security forces during this period. Stress is mainly believed to be the root cause of the incidence although the Army as well as paramilitary forces have initiated concrete steps in the light of "in-depth" analysis of past incidents and identification of windows of prevention which have helped in addressing the issue greatly. While the Army has set up help lines and yoga classes to help the soldiers deal with stress, the CRPF and Border Security Force hold regular shows to entertain their men. However, main reasons of members of the security forces' resorting to extreme steps continue to be denial of leave and their being forced to perform duties for long periods in tough conditions including counter-insurgency operations, a recent survey had said. CHENNAI: Congress president Rahul Gandhi's interaction with students at Stella Maris women's college here did not violate the election commission's model code of conduct, the Election Commission said on Thursday. Nevertheless, the EC has sought a report on his speech. The District Electoral Officer (DEO) has informed the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Satyabrata Sahoo that Gandhi's event at the college had sought and been given permission and hence there was no violation of model code of conduct (MCC). The CEO, who said that local election officials have reported there was no violation in terms of permission obtained by Stella Maris College for Women to host the interaction on March 13, went on to add that he had sought further information on Rahuls speech. I have sought further information on what kind of speech was given. I have asked the DEO to give a report based on the speech content, Sahoo said. On a hectic day, before launching the UPA campaign for Tamil Nadu at Nagercoil, Rahul had interacted with the students. Videos of Rahuls interaction went viral in the social media. His informal interaction revolved around various issues ranging from economy to the controversial Rafale deal and on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Taking a serious note of the event hosted by Stella Maris College, the Directorate of Collegiate Education (DCE) had sought a report from the regional joint director (Chennai) as to how permission was granted to the college to host the event when the moel code of conduct was in force in view of the Lok Sabha polls. A senior GHMC official said the names of two experts in archaeology, heritage and history had ben forwarded to the government for inclusion as co-opted members of the committee. Hyderabad: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) has formed a heritage committee to revisit all 163 heritage structures and suggest measures to restore and conserve them. The committee would frame policies pertaining to maintainence of heritage structures. It has been decided that works pertaining to sanitation near heritage sites be handed over to the civic body from the state heritage department. GHMC deputy commissioners would inspect the sites every week to ensure sanitation. A senior GHMC official said the names of two experts in archaeology, heritage and history had ben forwarded to the government for inclusion as co-opted members of the committee. The committee will revisit the heritage sites which were notified by the erstwhile Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority. He said that the committee make an on-field conditional assessment and and prepare a report for the government. GHMC commissioner M. Dana Kishore, who is chairman of the committee, instru-cted zonal and deputy commissioners to examine the sanitation around the heritage structures and visit the sites in their jurisdiction at least once a week to ensure cleanliness. He asked police authorities to protect the heritage buildings. Hyderabad: In the wake of the mass shooting at two mosques at Christchurch in New Zealand in which 50 persons were killed, Hyderabad police has further beefed up security in and around the historic Macca Masjid. Though there is no specific input to suggest a terror threat, the Hyderabad police do not want to leave anything to chance. According to sources, soon after the New Zealand attack, senior police officials held a meeting during which it was decided to take up precautionary measures in and aro-und the premises, especially on Fridays, when the mosque witnesses huge gatherings, running into thousands of people. A police official said that besides increasing the number of policemen in mufti who have been asked to remain inside the mosques during pray-ers, more so on Fridays, a police picket is being stationed outside the mosque. It is a precautionary measure. It is always better to be prepared, said a senior police official when asked about the new security measures. Already, a large number of policemen are deplo-yed every Friday -- as has been the drill over the last many years -- as security measures, especially after a bomb blast took place in the Macca Masjid on May 18, 2007. There are teams of Rapid Action Force (RAF), Task Force apart from policemen drawn from different police stations of the south zone. Special branch personnel, another wing of the Hyderabad police, have also been asked to step up vigil in the vicinity of the mosque. Importantly, patrolling has further been intensified during the time prayers are held at the place of worship. Charminar division Assistant Commissioner of Police B. Anjaiah said, Security is always high in and around the Macca Masjid. A total of 28 poli-cemen guard the premises in three shifts with an incharge officer. There are 43 CCTV cameras in and around the mosque which are continuously monitored and there are five doorframe metal detectors besides four-hand held metal detectors. He said that in view of the elections, flag marches were being conducted in key places in the old city. A stray dog that entered the Hosur government hospital were shockingly found feeding on the corpse of a newborn infant which according to its relatives was thrown into the garbage bin by the hospital staff. KRISHNAGIRI: A stray dog that entered the Hosur government hospital were shockingly found feeding on the corpse of a newborn infant which according to its relatives was thrown into the garbage bin by the hospital staff. Sources said, M. Nagamma of Karnoor village, near Hosur of Krishnagiri gave birth to a male baby here in the Hosur GH on Wednesday evening. The newborn infant, which recorded low birth weight of less than one kilo was kept in the neo-natal intensive care unit. The baby died on Wednesday night and it was handed over to its biological mother in the maternal ward. The relatives had the dead baby in the hospital ward with a plan to transport it the next day because they could not carry the corpse at the night. Later, the infants relative allegedly packed the infant's body in a plastic bag and kept it in the hospital toilet facility after other patients objected to keeping the corpse of the newborn in the hospital ward. The hospital staff, when asked about the missing baby, told the relatives that the bag with the infants body might have been thrown in the garbage bin by the sanitary workers. Meanwhile, people who went to the isolated place in the hospital premises, found a stray dog mauling the body of the newborn and informed the hospital staffs. The hospital staff went to that spot, recovered the body and kept it in the Hosur hospital mortuary for autopsy procedure. The dog had nibbled away a major portion of the bodys face, legs and hands. S. Boopathy, medical officer of Hosur GH, termed the death of the baby as intrauterine death. The baby was handed over to its relatives after completing the official procedure. It was suspected that the relatives might have abandoned the baby in the hospital premises which was later fed by the stray dog. A police complaint has been filed and only a full investigation can bring out the truth, he said. The Bible has been under attack in the western world for over 200 years but never more intensely than today. These attacks have taken different forms and have come from many different corners of the academic world, from philosophers, to scientists, to textual critics. In the specialized world of archaeology the attacks have increased dramatically in the past 50 years. Once a specialization filled with Bible believing individuals, the field of archaeology is now overrun with atheists and skeptics, agnostics and those committed to the destruction of the Bible as a source of true historical information. These attacks on the Bible are a part of a sweeping movement in western culture. Spearheaded by academic elitists in the university and the public educational system, the news and popular media, and the entertainment industry, these revisionists cloak themselves with supposed objectivity, purity of motives, and the superiority of science over the "uninformed", "unscientific", religious community. They regularly mock those who question their world-view and their conclusions by name-calling and the worst forms of anti-Bible and anti-Christian propaganda. They have powerfully infected the church by turning Bible believing Christians against the very Scripture which is the foundation of truth and life in this world. Instead of contending for the Bible, Christian academics, pastors, and lay-persons are making egregious accommodations to these destroyers of faith and truth. In these days of intense spiritual battle, God has called ABR to step into the gap to contend for the truth and to assist the church in this critical hour. ABR is a non-profit ministry dedicated to demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible and to give answers to questions being asked by believers and non-believers alike. We do this by using original archaeological fieldwork and research along with studies in other apologetic disciplines. We take on the bold claims of skeptics and critics. We challenge the bizarre anti-biblical propaganda that is purveyed upon the public as gospel through television and print media. We uphold the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is God's message for the salvation of all mankind! Warangal: After experiencing strong rebuke over its choice of Parliament candidate for Mahbubabad seat, the Congress party now seems to be rethinking its decision to field Mr Porika Balram Naik. The Adivasi and Lambada sections of the party have strongly opposed the candidature of Mr Naik and threatened to field rebel candidates against him. In this context, the party has summoned Lambada Porata Hakkala Samithi national vice president Tejavath Bellaiah Naik to the office of AICC chief Rahul Gandhi. Mr Balram Naik, who was named as the candidate for the seat is yet to set a date for filing his nomination. He too is said to be in a dilemma after facing the heat from the Adivasis and also from his own Lambada community. Mr Bellaiah Naik who received a call from New Delhi left for the capital on Tuesday. He is expected to meet Rahul on Wednesday. When asked, Mr Bellaiah Naik told DC, he was confident of doing well in the elections with the support he had in the constituency. I met some top leaders in Delhi. I assured them of getting at least one lakh additional votes than the other contestants of the Congress. The Lambada Hakkula Porata Samithi has come down hard on the Congress decision. The leaders questioned why the party had chosen someone who was defeated in three consecutive elections. On the other hand, TPCC member and Adivasi leader Chimala Venkateshwarlu is strongly rooting for an Adivasi candidate for the seat, and is also opposing the candidature of the Lambada. He contended that the representation of the Adivasis was more in the Assembly constituencies under the Mahbubabad constituency. He said that lambada candidates were chosen over Adivasis in both Adilabad and Mahbubabad which were reserved for the STs. When asked to comment, Mr Balram Naik played down the development as mere speculation. He said he had got the B-form from the party four days ago. BSP chief Mayawati on Wednesday announced she will not contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, but stressed it was not necessary to be an MP to become a minister or a prime minister. (Photo: File) Lucknow: BSP chief Mayawati on Wednesday announced she will not contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, but stressed it was not necessary to be an MP to become a minister or a prime minister. The statement announcing her decision pointedly mentioned that a minister or a prime minister has six months to become a member of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha. The Bahujan Samaj Party chief has in the past indicated that she is not averse to becoming the country's prime minister and posters put up by her supporters in Uttar Pradesh have pitched her for the position. In view of the present circumstances and the need of the country and the interests of the party, the movement and the public, it is the need of the hour that I do not contest the Lok Sabha polls, Mayawati said. The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister asked party workers to not get disheartened with her decision. When I became UP Chief Minister the first time in 1995, I was not a member of either the UP Assembly or the Council, she said. It is a similar provision at the Centre, where a person has to become a Lok Sabha or a Rajya Sabha member within six months of holding office of a minister or the prime minister, she added. Don't get disheartened by my decision to not contest the Lok Sabha polls now," she tweeted. When I became UP CM first time in 1995 I was not member of either UP Assembly or Council. Similarly is provision at the Centre where a person have to be a LS/RS member within 6 months of holding office of minister/PM. Don't disheartened from my decision not to contest LS poll now Mayawati (@Mayawati) March 20, 2019 The Dalit leader added it would not be a problem if there is a need for her to enter Parliament later. "If it so happens that I have to get elected to the Lok Sabha later, I can contest from any seat by getting it vacated and becoming an MP. I will not face any problem," she said. Mayawati claimed that all she has to do is to file the nomination papers and her party workers will ensure her victory. The BSP chief suggested that if she contests now, party workers will focus on her seat even if she forbids them, affecting the campaign in other constituencies. "Hence, winning each and every Lok Sabha seat is more important than my personal victory," she added. The BSP, Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal have entered into an alliance in Uttar Pradesh for the April-May Lok Sabha polls. The Congress is not part of this pact, but the alliance has said it will not field candidates in Amethi and Raebareli, the two seats that are now with Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. The Congress, in turn, said it will leave seven UP seats for the SP-BSP-RLD alliance, an offer that was spurned by Mayawati. Vijayawada: Jana Sena chief K. Pawan Kalyan welcomed his brother and famous Telugu actor/producer K. Nagababu into the party. He said that it was from Nagababu he had learnt about politics and hence went to his house and invited him to join him. Pawan Kalyan added that Nagababu would contest from the Narasapuram Lok Sabha seat. He said that his brothers entry should not be seen as a back door entry like others and claimed that his joining and contesting election was a direct entry. The Jana Sena chief said that Mr Nagababu had courageously taken the step to seek a public mandate. Apart from praising Nagababu for his awareness about politics, he added that he would be available to the public and hence he was fielding him as the JS candidate from Narasapuram Lok Sabha seat. Mr Nagababu responded that during their childhood days, he entertained younger brother Pawan and he became a good leader which is a good thing. He also heaped praise saying that Pawan Kalyan was kind-hearted adding, Pawan is not a younger brother to me but a leader. He said he was inspired by Pawan to serve the public. It is noted that the price of turmeric per quintal has fallen to Rs 5,000 from Rs 17,000. NIZAMABAD: Turmeric and red jowar prices have become crucial for political parties in the upcoming Parliament elections. The ruling TRS, Opposition Congress and BJP leaders are trying to garner the support of farmers in this regard. Aggressive farmers have decided to file en masse nominations for the MP seat to register their protest. Turmeric and red jowar is being cultivated on a large scale in Nizamabad district. The produce is transported across the nation and exported to foreign countries too. But, steep fall in prices of both the products is worrying the farming community. In this context, farmers decided to pressurise political parties by filing enmasse nomination in the elections. It is noted that the price of turmeric per quintal has fallen to Rs 5,000 from Rs 17,000. Earlier, the state government paid Rs 2,300 per quintal of red jowar, but the price now stands at Rs 1700. As a result, farmers are forced to incur losses on both the crops. Market intervention by the state government would rescue them from the crisis of prices, farmers felt. Farmers of Armoor, Balkonda, Nizamabad rural, Korutla and Jagitial have intensified their agitation in the last few days demanding remunerative price for turmeric and red jowar. However, targeting sitting MP, Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Raos daughter K. Kavitha, farmers got 143 nomination papers from the returning officer for the last three days. They are planning to file nomination papers by paying Rs 25,000 deposit for each set of nomination. Reacting to this, Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao and MP K. Kavitha urged farmers to be patient on the prices issue. We are planning to rescue the farmers from the turmeric and red jowar price crisis, they said. Food processing units, involvement of women self-help groups would benefit the farmers to get minimum support price, they assured. Interestingly, MP Kavitha called upon farmers to file 1000 nominations in Varanasi and Amethi parliamentary constituencies. Not only Nizamabad, farmers should come forward to file nominations at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress chief Rahul Gandhis constituencies to draw the attention of the nation on the price issue, she dared. The JD(S) is at present certain of fielding its own partymen in only four constituencies, while the fifth is likely to be a businessman, according to sources. Bengaluru: Despite appearing to strike a hard bargain with the Congress for its share of constituencies for the coming Lok Sabha poll, the JD(S) is reportedly considering either giving up three of the eight allotted to it or fielding Congress candidates from them due to lack of suitable candidates of its own. The JD(S) is at present certain of fielding its own partymen in only four constituencies, while the fifth is likely to be a businessman, according to sources. The problem seems to be that the party has been given the two constituencies of Udupi-Chickmagalur and Karwar on the coast where the BJP has a strong base and where it could not find winning candidates for even the Assembly poll. In 2014, the JD(S) had only one MLA from Chickmagalur and polled merely 15, 000 votes in the parliamentary poll. Going by sources, the JD(S) had hoped to field former MP, K Jayaprakash Hegde from Udupi-Chickmagalur this poll if he quit the BJP to join it, but following his refusal, it has asked Mr Pramod Madhwaraj to file his nomination from the constituency. In Karwar, the JD(S) is said to be considering fielding Mr Prashanth Deshpande, who had contested the 2014 poll from here. As for Vijayapura (Bijapur), the party had hoped to field Mr Ravi Rathod from it, but after his refusal to contest, it does not have a strong candidate in mind for the constituency. Although former Congress minister, Shivaraj Tangadagi, is eyeing the Vijayapura ticket, its uncertain whether the Congress will allow him to contest on a JD(S) ticket. If sources are to be believed, candidates of all three constituencies feel they would be better off contesting on a Congress ticket rather than on a JD(S). Meanwhile, a businessman, closely associated with both the JD(S) and Congress, could reportedly be fielded in Bengaluru north. Visakhapatnam: AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu alleged that YSRC president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy was asking for one chance, which he would use to loot the people and the state. Mr Naidu said that along with Mr Reddy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao were displaying their anger at him. Addressing public meetings in Vizianagaram district on Thursday, Mr Naidu said, KCR has taken away assets that we built in Hyderabad for more than 60 years and is still trying to rule AP with the help of Jagan. KCR has already given Rs 1,000 crore to Jagan and he will try to pay Rs 5,000 for each vote. That is KCRs return gift. Alleging that Mr Modi and Mr Rao were worried that AP would witness more development than Gujarat and Telangana, Mr Naidu said, When we question about the special category status, Modi tried to threaten us with CBI, Enforcement Directorate and income-tax departments. They are still conspiring to attack Telugu Desam leaders using central institutions. NIA deals with terrorists and Im surprised when they have taken up the case of Jagans rooster knife. He has said that the youth at the TD meeting were responsible and would never let the state go into the hands of people who are trying to destroy it. The youth supporting the YSRC are being served alcohol at every meeting. They should remember that the YSRC leaders will involve the youth in any wrong cases too, Mr Naidu said. In my tenure I have brought several companies to the state. If Jagan becomes Chief Minister, industrialists will be worried about going to jail, he said. Mr Naidu said Jana Senas Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha candidate, former CBI joint director V.V. Lakshminarayana, knew about the cases against Mr Reddy, and demanded that he reveal the facts to the people. The Muslim population of New Zealand is less than two per cent, and will be less than three percent 30 years hence, according to projections. That hardly adds up to the invasion that New Zealand killer Brenton Tarrant imagined. (Photo: ANI) How does the psychopath who sought to massacre congregations at two mosques during Friday prayers in Christchurch, New Zealand, differ from those who perpetrate comparable atrocities in the name of Islam? A toxic ideology based on the misanthropic notion that only a particular type of people based on their ethnic origin, religion, sect or skin colour have any right to exist? Tick. Locating and interacting online with a toxically like-minded community of fanatics? Tick. Routine dehumanisation of the other? Tick. A deep-set desire to instigate some sort of clash of civilisations? Tick. Across much of the West, though, there is a tendency to differentiate between jihadist violence and far-right violence, with the latter likely to be designated a lesser evil, or at least a smaller problem. This could be attributed to a built-in bias: the idea that whereas the Islamists are completely alienated from the precepts of Western civilisation, the white supremacists have something useful to say that could find a place in the mainstream media, if only they didnt go to extremes. A deep-set desire to instigate a clash of civilisations? Tick. The general thrust of such arguments is that while its perfectly acceptable to demonise Muslims and to try to restrict or diminish their numbers, murdering them directly is going too far when, in Australias case, Muslim refugees can be tormented by being cast away indefinitely on Manus Island or Nauru, perhaps even killed by being returned to where they fled from. And, mate, even as were doing all this, lets also send out an open invitation to white South African farmers who wish to emigrate. They would fit right in with Aussie culture, naturally, given their extended experience of fair dinkum apartheid. Australian Senator Fraser Annings comment in the aftermath of the massacres that the blame lay with Muslim immigration has been roundly condemned across the political spectrum, and he is expected to face a bipartisan censure motion when parliament reconvenes. But he has also moronically been compared by the powerful home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, with the Australian Greens, who have offered the perfectly sensible suggestion that hate speech by parliamentarians should be outlawed. Perhaps Dutton takes it personally, given his previous expressions of antipathy towards Muslims. The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, wouldnt get away scot-free either if hate speech were formally to be proscribed. Neither falls in quite the same category as Donald Trump, who followed the dispatch of his commiserations and best wishes to New Zealand by declaring that white supremacism is an inconsequential phenomenon with very few adherents. If that were true, chances are Trump would not have received enough votes to become president. And as he knows, any critique of white nationalism from the White House would substantially deplete his infamous base ahead of next years elections. You certainly wont see him admit that in the past decade white supremacism has accounted for a lot more atrocities, albeit a smaller death toll, than Islamist outrages. This, after all, is the president who identified some good people among those who were chanting Jews will not replace us. Replacement of European whites appears to have been a key concern of the Christchurch killer, according to the manifesto he distributed online minutes before embarking on his murderous mission. It may be beside the point, but the Muslim population of New Zealand is less than two per cent, and will be less than three percent 30 years hence, according to projections. That hardly adds up to the invasion that New Zealand killer Brenton Tarrant imagined. But no one should be particularly surprised. He found his way to Christchurch via a discourse disseminated not just by far-right ideologues such as former Trump aide Steve Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, Tommy Robinson or Pauline Hanson, but normalised by the mainstream print and electronic media not least the sections of it controlled by Rupert Murdoch in Australia, Britain and the US as well as politicians with power or influence. At the same time, the spontaneous outpouring of support and empathy for New Zealands minuscule Muslim community, especially from the nations admirable Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, but more broadly from New Zealanders in general who have never before been faced with an atrocity on this scale and in fact internationally is deeply gratifying. New Zealands government has also launched an effort to tighten rather lax gun laws. In Australia, though, efforts are already afoot to preserve the scope for Islamophobia, which is an even bigger trend across Europe and in the US. Christchurch wasnt the first manifestation of its inevitable consequences, and it wont be the last, with retaliatory violence (as possibly seen in Utrecht) helping to keep the ugliest of flames alive. On both sides. By arrangement with Dawn Size does not matter. A small country can outshine big ones by moral clarity and strategic vision in the leadership stakes, as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has shown. Ms Arderns exemplary words and actions after a terrorist shot dead 50 Muslims in two mosques in Christchurch unequivocally signals that New Zealand, a country of about five million people, is pluralistic, and that it will ferociously push back against the ideological infrastructure which nourishes majoritarian visions. Ms Ardern could have chosen to express shock, horror and stop at condemning the terror attack. But she went way beyond. Her first response, even before all the details were known, leaped out to millions across the world. She said: They have chosen to make this their home. They are us. By this simple statement, Ms Ardern had bridged the us and them divide that stalks natives and those of immigrant stock, and minority populations everywhere. What she said was to affirm a simple but much-needed message the terrorist who had come from Australia killed Muslims who were not they but us New Zealanders. Ms Ardern has been covering her head while meeting families of the victims a mark of cultural sensitivity. She has also shown her astuteness by declaring that she would never take the name of the terrorist, thereby denying him, and people like him, the notoriety they seek. She asks people to remember the victims by name instead. This is not just symbolism. The conscious de-personalisation of the terrorist shows an astute way to deal with extremism and terrorism. Concretely, Ms Ardern has followed up with plans to overhaul New Zealands gun laws. If Jacinda Arderns words and deeds were mealy-mouthed platitudes, they would not have resonated with so many people across the world. They resonate, including with this writer, and many others in India, because they are the powerful signals we are looking for in an increasingly polarised society where the us and them divide is leading to rising stigmatisation and violence. It is as important to neutralise and counter the ideological infrastructure that pushes people to become terrorists as to catch the terrorists and their allies. At a time when anti-minority rhetoric threatens to rip apart social cohesion in democracies across the world, Ms Ardern matters, because she is explicitly telling people who are visibly or culturally different from the majority that they are part of the same family, not outsiders. This is intended to make them feel secure when they are at their most fragile. Crucially, Ms Ardern did not resort to what-aboutery in the hour of crisis. This should make us in India introspect deeply. Our multi-cultural fabric is being ripped apart by an ideology that is gaining traction and that privileges the sentiments of the most bigoted members of the majority community. One of the most worrying trends on the social media, which is playing an increasingly important role in shaping public opinion in this country, is the tendency to conflate two very different things radical Islamic terrorist groups and ordinary Muslims. It is dangerous what-aboutery to start talking about Islamic terrorist groups each time Muslims are targeted by terrorists simply because they are Muslims, though they have nothing to do with terrorism. The Christchurch attack was an act of terror by a white supremacist who unapologetically hates Muslims and every other minority group. In India, we have seen hatred towards Muslims being fuelled and sustained by words and deeds. Take the most recent example of the attacks on Kashmiri students and shopkeepers in different parts of the country when an Islamist terrorist linked to Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked a CRPF bus in Pulwama, killing over 40 jawans. What would have helped is an immediate, unambiguous signal, which went beyond just expressing grief, anguish or condemnation. Like an immediate, unequivocal statement from the Prime Minister that while terrorists and their minders will be dealt with severely, ordinary Kashmiris were us and attacks on them of any kind is an attack on us. He needed to make it very clear at once that the ideological infrastructure that equates every Kashmiri and every Muslim with all that is bad will not be tolerated. These statements were made, but they were weak, and they came late. Nor was this identification with victims of terror demonstrably shown each time an ordinary Muslim was lynched, whether in the name of protecting the cow or anything else. Instead, what we have seen are immediate and provocative statements by other lawmakers. Take just one example: Bharatiya Janata Party MP Vinay Katiyar was quoted in the media as saying, while replying to questions on mob lynching: When such incidents happen, people from the other community should also think about it. They shouldnt touch cows when they know Hindus get aggressive over it. They shouldnt kill cows. This emboldens extremist peddlers of hate and leads to hate crimes. Here is some data. The Observer Research Foundation in March 2018 released a study based on a statistical mapping of hate speech and counter-speech on the social media pages active in India. The study, a first of its kind, revealed that religion and religio-cultural practices related to food and dress, were the most explicit basis for hate as expressed in Indian social media: they accounted for a rise from 19 to 30 per cent of the incidents over the one-year timeframe of the study, points out Maya Mirchandani in a August 2018 paper titled Digital hatred, real violence: Majoritarian radicalisation and social media in India. She wrote: The data was gathered from public pages in two separate month-long time periods spread over 12 months starting from July 2016. Most of the comments incited bodily harm or violence against people belonging to Indias Muslim community who comprise about 180 million of the countrys 1.2-billion-strong population... Subjects that evoked hate speech ranged from opposition to inter-faith marriage between Hindus and Muslims, positions on universal human rights, and the contentious issues of cow protection and beef consumption. There is a moral as well as a business case for social cohesion. No country or society can realise its potential if specific groups of people are made to feel they dont belong and made to cower in fear of physical and psychological attacks. Jacinda Ardern understands this. Indias political leaders, from the top to the bottom, could learn a lot from her. Within a decade, 5G will drive all US factories, utilities, refineries, traffic management and help underpin autonomous vehicles. AT&T Inc Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said Wednesday that Chinas Huawei Technologies Co Ltd is making it very difficult for European carriers to drop the company from its supply chain for next-generation 5G wireless service. If you have deployed Huawei as your 4G network, Huawei is not allowing interoperability to 5G meaning if you are 4G, you are stuck with Huawei for 5G, said Stephenson at a speech in Washington. When the Europeans say we got a problem thats their problem. They really dont have an option to go to somebody else. The United States has been pressuring other countries to drop Huawei from their networks. Stephenson said the US government could do a better job explaining the security risks of Huawei. The biggest risk is not that the Chinese government might listen in on our conversations or mine our data if we use their equipment, Stephenson said. Within a decade, 5G will drive all US factories, utilities, refineries, traffic management and help underpin autonomous vehicles. If that much of infrastructure will be attached to this kind of technology do we want to be cautious about who is the underlying company behind that technology. We damn well better be, Stephenson said. Huawei did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. The United States warns that next-generation 5G equipment, which some telecoms experts see as more vulnerable to attack than previous technology, could be exploited by the Chinese government for spying if supplied by Huawei. Huawei has grown rapidly to become the worlds biggest maker of telecoms equipment and is embedded in the mobile networks and 5G plans of many European operators. It denies that its technology represents a security risk. In the United States, 5G networks will largely be built by Nordic equipment makers Ericsson and Nokia , and Strayer said there were safer alternatives to Huawei. The United States has also alleged Huawei violated its sanctions on Iran and stole intellectual property. No evidence of spying has been presented publicly even as scrutiny on Huawei has intensified, and several Western countries have restricted the firms access to their markets. Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday Germany was not planning to exclude any one company from its 5G auction per se, but rather wanted bidders in the mobile spectrum auction to meet certain requirements. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. Rimasauskas, originally from the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, was extradited to the United States from Lithuania in August 2017. A Lithuanian man on Wednesday pleaded guilty to US charges that he helped orchestrate a scheme to defraud Facebook Inc and Alphabet Incs Google out of more than $100 million, federal prosecutors announced. Evaldas Rimasauskas, 50, entered his plea to one count of wire fraud before US District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan. He faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison at his sentencing, currently scheduled for July 24. Rimasauskas also agreed to forfeit about $49.7 million he personally obtained from the scheme, according to a court filing. Paul Petrus, a lawyer for Rimasauskas, said the plea spoke for itself and declined to comment further. Rimasauskas, originally from the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, was extradited to the United States from Lithuania in August 2017. US prosecutors accused Rimasauskas and unnamed co-conspirators of bilking Google and Facebook out of more than $100 million by posing as an Asian hardware vendor and claiming that the companies owed the vendor money. The prosecutors did not name the companies, but Taiwan-based Quanta Computer Inc confirmed after Rimasauskas arrest that it was the Asian vendor, and a Lithuanian court order in 2017 identified Google and Facebook as the victims. The scheme defrauded Google out of $23 million and Facebook out of $99 million, according to that order. Prosecutors said Rimasauskas contributed to the scheme by setting up a fake company and a bank account in Latvia. The scheme is an example of a growing type of fraud called business email compromise, in which fraudsters ask for money using emails targeted at companies that work with foreign suppliers or regularly make wire transfers. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in February 2017 that losses from such scams since the agency began tracking them in 2013 totaled more than $3 billion. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. The reduction comes after the Supreme Court overturned in January one of several lower court rulings against the US firm for abusing its dominant market position. South Koreas antitrust regulator has lowered a decade-old penalty imposed on US chipmaker Qualcomm Inc by 18 percent to $200 million, the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said on Thursday. The reduction comes after the Supreme Court overturned in January one of several lower court rulings against the US firm for abusing its dominant market position. In 2009, the KFTC fined Qualcomm 273 billion won ($242.6 million) for abusing its market power in CDMA modem and radio frequency chips, which were then used in handsets made by South Koreas Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics Inc. The KFTC said it had reset the penalty to reflect the Supreme Courts ruling, adding however that a monopolist enterprises abuse of its market position cannot be tolerated. The fine is the latest in a series of antitrust rulings and investigations faced by Qualcomm from regulators across the globe. In a separate case, the South Korean regulator fined Qualcomm $854 million in 2016 for what it called unfair business practices in patent licensing and modem chip sales. Qualcomm declined to comment. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. These so-called cy pres (pronounced see pray) settlements are used in class action cases when it might be impractical to carve up low-value individual damages among a large number of plaintiffs. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File) The US Supreme Court on Wednesday put in jeopardy an USD 8.5 million settlement Google made with users to resolve a class action lawsuit accusing it of violating their privacy by sharing users search queries with other websites. The justices, in an unsigned opinion, threw out a ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that had upheld the settlement, directing it to take a fresh look at whether the plaintiffs had the legal standing necessary to sue and whether they were even harmed by the search engine operator. Google, part of Alphabet Inc., was accused in the lawsuit of violating a 1986 law governing the privacy of stored electronic communications. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, saying the increasingly common type of settlement at the heart of the case was unfair and unreasonable and should not have been approved by the 9th Circuit. These so-called cy pres (pronounced see pray) settlements are used in class action cases when it might be impractical to carve up low-value individual damages among a large number of plaintiffs. In endorsing the Google settlement in 2017, the 9th Circuit said each of the 129 million US Google users who theoretically could have claimed part of it would have received a paltry 4 cents in recovery. Proponents have said these settlements can put otherwise negligible awards per person to good use by benefiting groups that work for the public good or support underfunded entities. Critics have said they encourage frivolous lawsuits and excessive fees going to plaintiffs lawyers. Google agreed in the settlement to disclose on its website how users search terms are shared but was not required to change its behavior. The three main plaintiffs received USD 5,000 each for representing the class. Their attorneys received about USD 2.1 million. Under the settlement, much of the rest of the money would go to organisations or projects that promote internet privacy, including at Stanford University and AARP, a lobbying group for older Americans, but nothing to the millions of Google users who the plaintiffs were to have represented in the class action. A Google representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. The settlement was challenged by attorneys including Ted Frank of the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, which advocates against what it considers abusive class action procedures. Following the ruling, Frank said he expects the lower courts to again find that the plaintiffs may sue and that the issue will soon be back before the high court. The decision simply delays the day of reckoning for this unfair practice, Frank said. The case began when a California resident named Paloma Gaos filed a proposed class action lawsuit in 2010 in San Jose federal court. The plaintiffs said that their privacy was violated when their search terms were disseminated by Google to other sites. One searched for her own name, another for financial and health data, and a third for information related to his divorce proceedings. The Supreme Court may soon get another opportunity to clarify what is needed for plaintiffs to achieve the legal standing necessary to sue. The justices are considering whether to hear a pending appeal by online shoe retailer Zappos, a subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc, over whether customers are entitled to sue over a 2012 data breach. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. Beira: Aid workers raced on Wednesday to help survivors and meet spiralling humanitarian needs in three southern African countries battered by the region's worst storm in years. Five days after tropical cyclone Idai cut a swathe through Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, the confirmed death toll stood at more than 300 and hundreds of thousands of lives were at risk, officials said. Mozambique, where the monster storm made landfall early last Friday, is reeling. "We've thousands of people ... in roofs and trees waiting for rescue," Caroline Haga, spokeswoman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said. "We are running out of time. People have been waiting for rescue for more than three days now," she told AFP in the storm-ravaged coastal city of Beira. She added: "Unfortunately, we can't pick up all the people, so our priority are children, pregnant women, injured people." Survivor Aunicia Jose, 24, speaking in the district of Buzi near Beira, said, "The situation is very bad, we haven't eaten since Thursday, until today.We are sleeping outside, everything is destroyed, our houses are destroyed, everything is gone, we have recovered nothing." World Food Programme (WFP) spokeswoman Deborah Nguyen told AFP in Beira that "the priority today is to rush to rescue people trapped in the flooded areas" as much as organising temporary shelter for those rescued. "The situation has not really improved. In Buzi, the villages are still under water but the good news is that there are many rescue teams working all day long. "Relief operations are progressing, but there is still a lot of work." The UN said it was "one of the worst natural disasters in southern Africa", and launched an international appeal for relief funds, having earlier said it was aiming to help some 600,000 people in coming weeks. "We do not yet know enough about the level of destruction to give an accurate estimate of the amount of this call for funds, but it will be important," spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters at UN headquarters in New York. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said on Tuesday that 202 people had died, according to the latest toll, and nearly 350,000 people were at risk. In Zimbabwe, the death toll stood at 100 on Wednesday but was expected to surge to 300, while up to 15,000 people are estimated to have been hit by the storm. In Malawi, nearly a million people have been affected and more than 80,000 forced from their homes, according to the UN. Aid agencies said they were prepared for the cyclone which made landfall early Friday, but not for the massive floods that followed. Mozambique bore the brunt from rivers that flow downstream from its neighbours. Beira airport which was partially damaged by the storm and temporarily shut, had re-opened to become the relief operations hub but is proving not large enough. Air force personnel from Mozambique and South Africa have been drafted in to fly rescue missions and distribute aid which can only be airlifted as roads out of Beira have been destroyed. A government worker who asked not be identified spoke from a roadside after he was rescued by boat in Nhamatanda, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Beira, saying "this is the first time our generation has seen something like this". Climate expert John Mutter, a professor at the Earth Institute at New York's Columbia University, said the heavy toll was partly explained by the infrequency of such weather events in southern Africa. "Mozambique and Zimbabwe are essentially unprepared. They both have weak governance that, honestly, focuses on many more pressing things (as they would see it). And because cyclones are so rare in this part of the world, so preparedness is minimal," Mutter told AFP. In Zimbabwe, at least 217 people are listed as missing in Chimanimani in Manicaland, an eastern province which borders Mozambique. The district remains cut off after roads were swallowed by massive sinkholes and bridges were ripped to pieces by flash floods -- a landscape that Defence Minister Perrance Shiri said "resembles the aftermath of a full-scale war". Families were using hoes to dig through mounds of soil in search of their missing relatives, an AFP correspondent saw. After visiting some of the victims in Chimanimani, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa said "a tragedy has visited us". "The last place we visited, where three main rivers merge, an entire village was washed away. I think those are the bodies which are now being found in Mozambique," he said. The three countries are some of the poorest in the region and depend heavily on foreign aid. In Rome, Pope Francis expressed "my pain and my closeness" for those caught up in the disaster. "I entrust the many victims and their families to the mercy of God and I implore comfort and support for those affected by this calamity," he said, addressing thousands of pilgrims in St Peter's Square. The agency alleged that Patel frequently asked female servers to go out on dates with him. (Representational Image) New York: An Indian-origin owner of a restaurant franchise has been accused of sexually harassing women employees. The accused, Manish Patel, is the owner and general manager of Swami Pancake, a franchise of an American pancake restaurant chain in Florida, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said in a statement. The agency alleged that Patel frequently asked female servers to go out on dates with him, made crude sexual comments at them and touched them inappropriately. The EEOC filed a lawsuit saying that the restaurant franchise violated federal laws when its owner and general manager subjected a class of female employees to sexual harassment. It said such conduct violates the provisions of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex. The EEOC filed the suit in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process. The agency seeks back pay, compensatory and punitive damages for the discrimination meted out to the victims as well as injunctive relief. Regional attorney for the EEOC's Miami District Office Robert Weisberg said the agency will continue to fight against sexual harassment, including in the restaurant industry, where the menace continues to be so pervasive. The discovery of plumes is one of the biggest surprises of my scientific career, said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in the US. Washington: A NASA spacecraft, that will return with a sample of a near-Earth asteroid Bennu in 2023, has discovered plumes erupting from the cosmic bodys surface among a numerous other findings including evidence of water-bearing minerals. Bennu also revealed itself to be more rugged than expected, challenging the mission team to alter its flight and sample collection plans, due to the rough terrain. Bennu is the target of NASAs Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission, which began orbiting the asteroid on December 31 last year. Bennu may contain unaltered material from the very beginning of our solar system. The discovery of plumes is one of the biggest surprises of my scientific career, said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in the US. And the rugged terrain went against all of our predictions. Bennu is already surprising us, and our exciting journey there is just getting started, Lauretta said. Shortly after the discovery of the particle plumes on January 6, the mission science team increased the frequency of observations, and subsequently detected additional particle plumes during the following two months. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. The face-to-face talks will be the first since President Donald Trump delayed a March 1 deadline. (File Photo) Beijing: A US trade delegation headed by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will visit China on March 28-29 for the next round of negotiations, China's commerce ministry said on Thursday. In return, Vice Premier Liu He will travel to the Washington in early April for more talks, according to ministry spokesman Gao Feng, as the world's two biggest economies try to hammer out a trade deal to end months of disputes. The face-to-face talks will be the first since President Donald Trump delayed a March 1 deadline to avert a rise in tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent from the current 10 percent. Trump warned on Wednesday that the United States may leave tariffs on Chinese goods for a "substantial period" to ensure that Beijing complies with any trade agreement, adding to uncertainty over the talks. Zaid Mustafa (in wheelchair), who was wounded in the attack on mosques, arrives to attend the funeral of his slain father Khalid Mustafa and brother Hamza Mustafa at the Memorial Park cemetery in Christchurch on Wednesday. AFP Christchurch: A Syrian refugee and his son who fled the chaos of their homeland only to meet tragedy in New Zealand were buried on Wednesday in the first funerals of those killed in the mosque massacres. Hundreds of mostly Muslim mourners gathered at a cemetery in Christchurch to lay to rest Khalid Mustafa and his 15-year-old son Hamza, who were among 50 people slaughtered at two mosques by an Australian white supremacist. The family of five had fled to New Zealand seeking sanctuary from the Syrian maelstrom but died in last Fridays hail of bullets, a bitter irony that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called gutting. I cannot tell you how gutting it is to know that a family came here for safety and for refuge, and they should have been safe here, Ardern said at a press meet in Christchurch after the funeral. Khalid, 44, and Hamza were shot dead at the Al Noor Mosque, the first site to be attacked, but not before Hamza called his mother in a panic. After that I heard shooting and he screamed and after that I didn't hear him, she told New Zealand media this week. Their younger son Zaid, 13, was also injured in the attack and attended the funeral in a wheelchair. In a powerful scene, he held his hands aloft as he prayed alongside rows of mourners. I shouldnt be standing in front of you. I should be lying beside you, Zaid said at the graves of his brother and father, according to Jamil El-Biza, who travelled from Australia for the funerals. Also attending was Abdul Aziz, an Afghan refugee who confronted the gunman at Linwood Mosque. He was embraced by many mourners. In a sign of lingering tensions, the PA system at the funeral announced evacuation procedures from the venue in the event of an emergency, mourners said. A total of six burials took place on Wednesday and more were expected in the days ahead after police on Tuesday began releasing victims remains for burial. Brussels: Delaying Brexit to June 30 would bring serious legal and political risks, the European Commission warned on Wednesday in an internal briefing note ahead of an EU summit. Britain has asked to postpone Brexit to that date, but the commission, the EUs executive arm, urged leaders to choose instead between a short delay to May 23 or a longer one at least until end 2019. The European Council, which groups the member states, confirmed it had received the letter from Prime Minister Theresa May asking for the delay, with leaders of the remaining 27 EU countries to decide on a possible postponement at their Brussels summit on Thursday and Friday. May needs more time because her lawmakers have refused to approve the deal she struck with the EU to leave the bloc. Elections to the European Parliament will be held on May 23-26, and the commission said that if Britain is granted a long delay, it must organise ballots. Any extension offered to the UK should either last until 23 May 2019 or should be significantly longer and require European elections. This is the only way of protecting the functioning of EU institutions and their ability to take decisions, said the commission note, which was prepared on Wednesday morning before Mays letter was received. It will be for the leaders to decide on length of extension. Fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, who was remanded in custody till March 29 by a UK court on Wednesday, is likely to be held in a separate cell in Her Majesty's Prison Wandsworth, which is one of the largest prisons in western Europe. (Photo: File) New Delhi/London: Fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, who was remanded in custody till March 29 by a UK court on Wednesday, is likely to be held in a separate cell in Her Majesty's Prison Wandsworth, which is one of the largest prisons in western Europe. In the prison in south London, 48-year-old Modi's inmates will include the likes of alleged Dawood henchman Pakistani-origin Jabir Moti, currently undergoing extradition proceedings to the US. Nirav Modi, who was living in a plush apartment in Centre Point in the West End until his arrest on Tuesday, was sent to prison on the eve of Holi. HMP Wandsworth is a Category B prison, where criminals are held if not deemed to be of a high level of security risk. It can currently hold 1,628 prisoners and was originally built in 1851. Since 1989, there has been extensive refurbishment and modernisation of the wings, including in-cell sanitation, privacy screens for cells occupied by more than one prisoner and the more recent installation of in-cell electricity, the UK Justice Department notes in reference to the prison. Nirav Modi is likely to be held in a separate cell until his next hearing on March 29. He was arrested from a Metro Bank branch in London by uniformed officers on Tuesday, when he went there to open a new bank account. Nirav Modi and his uncle, Mehul Choksi, are the main accused in the PNB scam and they both left India before the details of the fraud came to light in January 2018. He is one of India's richest men, worth an estimated USD 1.75 billion, according to Forbes. He launched his own eponymous brand in 2010 and he soon had stores across India, as well as in New York, London and Hong Kong. Modi, accused of involvement in a massive bank fraud that rocked Indias corporate community, was arrested in the British capital on Tuesday. (Photo: File) London: Nirav Modi, Indias fugitive jeweller to the stars, refused to submit to extradition when he appeared in a London court on Wednesday. Modi, accused of involvement in a massive bank fraud that rocked Indias corporate community, was arrested in the British capital on Tuesday. The 48-year-old appeared in custody at Westminster Magistrates Court and was denied bail. District judge Marie Mallon ruled there was a risk Modi would fail to surrender for future hearings due to his access to a vast fortune which could help him evade the courts, and his keenness to do so. Modi fled India last year after being accused of having a central role in a USD 1.8-billion fraud involving Punjab National Bank (PNB), the countrys second-largest public lender. Lawyer Jonathan Swain, appearing on behalf of the Indian authorities, said: This is a very high level, extended fraud. Modi spoke only to confirm his identity and refusal to submit to extradition. His lawyer George Hepburne Scott said the diamond jeweller had been living in London since June 2018. His son was here and had been here for five years at school, he added. Modi was living openly in Britain, paid local taxes and was trying to obtain a driving licence, the lawyer said. While in Britain, he has undertaken work for which he was paid pounds 20,000 (USD 26,400, 23,200 euros) per month, according to Hepburne Scott. Modi will next appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on March 29 for a case management hearing. Modi owned luxury jewellery stores in several major cities across the world and boasted celebrity customers including actresses Naomi Watts, Kate Winslet and Priyanka Chopra-Jonas before his downfall last year. Earlier this month, Indian authorities dynamited the billionaires multi-million-dollar seafront mansion. The 33,000 square-foot (3,000 square metre) property near Mumbai, believed to be worth USD 14 million, had been seized. Forbes estimated Modis wealth at USD 1.73 billion before the alleged fraud, placing him 85th on Indias rich list. Counter-terrorism officers are investigating attacks on the mosques in four different areas in the north of the city. (File Photo) London: Four mosques in the central English city of Birmingham have been attacked overnight, with a man wielding a sledgehammer seen smashing windows at two places of worship, the police said on Thursday. Counter-terrorism officers are investigating attacks on the mosques in four different areas in the north of the city, West Midlands Police said in a statement. The force added the incidents "are being treated as linked". "At the moment we don't know the motive for last night's attacks," said Chief Constable Dave Thompson in a statement. "What I can say is that the force and the counter terrorism unit are working side-by-side to find whoever is responsible." Officers were first alerted in the early hours of Thursday to reports of a man smashing windows with a sledgehammer at one of the places of worship, police said. Following reports of a similar attack at another mosque in a nearby neighbourhood, officers launched targeted patrols and discovered "further damage" at two other sites. "Forensic officers are working to identify evidence, and CCTV is being examined," the West Midlands force added. British national police chiefs last week announced officers were providing "reassurance patrols" around mosques in the immediate aftermath of Friday's deadly gun rampage in New Zealand. Anti-racism groups have warned Islamophobia is on the rise in Britain and spurring a spike in far-right activity in the country. A report released last month by the Hope Not Hate charity cited a poll which found more than a third of Britons see Islam as "generally a threat to the British way of life". In another recent incident, Mohammed Mahmoud -- an imam who won praise for shielding the perpetrator of a 2017 deadly terror attack against a north London mosque -- reported he was spat at and abused this week. Mahmoud said he was targeted Monday while returning home from a solidarity event for the New Zealand massacre with other religious leaders, as well as interior minister Sajid Javid and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Khalid Hameed, an English professor at the Government Sadiq Egerton College in Bahawalpur, was preparing for the farewell party when one of his students attacked him with a dagger, police said. (Representational Image) Lahore: A student stabbed a college professor to death on Wednesday in eastern Pakistan on Wednesday, apparently because he felt that a planned party that women were going to be involved with would be un-Islamic, a police official said. Khalid Hameed, an English professor at the Government Sadiq Egerton College in Bahawalpur, was preparing for the farewell party when one of his students attacked him with a dagger, police said. "Apparently, the accused has no link to any religious group but we are investigating about his past and the reasons behind his mindset," local police official Farhan Hussain said. He added that the motive given by the alleged attacker was Hameed's decision to hold the party. The student, Khateeb Hussain, was in policy custody and was being charged with murder, police said. The attacker was wrestled to the ground by students present at the party rehearsal but they could not save Hameed, who died of his wounds after being taken to a local hospital, college principal Wali Muhammad told Reuters. Egerton College is one of few institutions in Pakistan with a majority female student population, with 4,000 women attending alongside 2,000 male students, Muhammad said. The dead professor had been due to retire in four months. Religion and gender are sensitive topics in Pakistan, where women's rights are often described as un-Islamic by right-wing religious groups. Last year, a school principal was shot and killed after reprimanding a student for missing classes to attend a protest organised by an ultra-right wing Islamist group. The student equated the teacher's words with blasphemy, police said. This month, a women's march was condemned by the country's religious right and its organisers were threatened with rape and death for publicly demonstrating against taboo topics such as sexual harassment and the demonisation of divorce, and for calling out men for not doing housework. A Thomson Reuters Foundation poll found Pakistan to be the sixth most dangerous country for women in 2018. After union minister Uma Bharti, another senior BJP leader Kalraj Mishra on Thursday expressed his unwillingness to contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls. Mishra, who was a sitting MP from Deoria LS seat in Uttar Pradesh, said that he had apprised the party leadership of his desire. ''I have many other commitments....I have to campaign in other states besides discharging my responsibilities as the in-charge of Haryana,'' he said. Mishra, a senior 'Brahmin' leader from eastern UP, said that he would not be able to devote time for Deoria given his preoccupation with other responsibilities. Mishra had been elected from Deoria in 2014 LS polls and had been a minister in the union cabinet. He had resigned ahead of the cabinet reshuffle in 2017. It was being speculated that Mishra, 78, would not be renominated owing to his being over 75. Prime minister Narendra Modi's praise of Mishra during a public meeting at Gorakhpur a few days back, however, fueled speculations that he might get the ticket again. Some local BJP leaders in Deoria, however, had openly said that Mishra should not be renominated and that some local leader should be given the party ticket. Mishra hails from Ghazipur district. Earlier Uma Bharti, a sitting BJP MP from Jhansi, had also expressed her unwillingness to contest the polls. Yenepoya (Deemed to be) University and Directorate of Health Service, Republic of Ghana, signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) on extending health services and strengthening education, skill development areas in the two countries. Director General of Ghana Health Service Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare and Vice Chancellor of Yenepoya (Deemed to be University) Dr M Vijayakumar signed the MoU at the High Commission, Republic of Ghana, New Delhi. Vice President of the Republic of Ghana Mahamudu Bawumia, who was in New Delhi, as a special guest of honour at the 14th CII Exim Bank conclave on the India-Africa Partnership project, was present during the exchange of the MoU. The High Commissioner to India Michael Nii Nortey Oquaye and Eddison Mensah Agbenyegah, Head of Chancery, High Commission of Republic of Ghana and Dr Arun Bhagwath, Yenepoya (Deemed to be) University, witnessed the signing of the MoU. The second lady of Ghana Samira Bawumia, Ministers from the Republic of Ghana, high commissioners and heads of other African countries were present on the occasion. Training The memorandum of understanding also envisages training of doctors in advanced fellowships in super/subspecialties, capacity building and skill training through Health technology programmes, medical tourism, free paediatric care, faculty and student exchange in health and allied sectors, and establishment of joint centres for excellence in research and training at Ghana, establishment of incubation, and entrepreneurship development centres. Yenepoya (Deemed to be) University Pro Chancellor Farhaad Yenepoya and other personalities were awarded excellence in health care services by Ghana high commission and NCR Chapter Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO). WEST CHESTER Officials at West Chester University have confirmed a student has contracted mumps. The student, a commuter who is not a resident on campus, has been isolated and is undergoing treatment. No other students are reporting symptoms. The mumps case follows a more widespread outbreak at Temple University, where the student visited. It is not known if there is a connection between the Temple outbreak and the West Chester student. West Chester University officials took swift action Thursday upon notification by the student who described symptoms associated with mumps following a visit to Temple University. On Monday, the non-resident student was administered the appropriate tests by Student Health Services and was directed not to attend classes and isolate away from campus and others. The student has remained in isolation as directed. Tests results have confirmed this as a case of mumps. No other cases have been reported on campus, and there have been no other students who have reported such symptoms. The Chester County Health Department (CCHD) is working closely with WCUs Student Health Services and advising protocol. Thursday the health department will contact roommates of the student at the off-campus location to advise on the recommended booster for the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. WCU takes the health of its community seriously, a university official said in a statement. The University encourages any individuals who think they may be experiencing symptoms to contact WCU Student Health Services at 610-436-2509 or their health care provider. All students, faculty, and staff are advised to watch for symptoms and take precautions to stay healthy and prevent the spread of illness. Mumps can be transmitted by sharing food, beverages or eating utensils with infected individuals. In Philadelphia, the mumps count at Temple now has reached more than 70. City Department of Health spokesman James Garrow said Wednesday there are 15 confirmed cases and 59 probable cases, all but three of them in Philadelphia. Probable diagnoses indicate a person showing mumps-like symptoms. The city says the numbers reported this year are high compared with those in past years; 54 cases were reported in 2010. Students who may be infected should limit contact with others and seek medical care. Mumps is a viral infection that involves swollen glands. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine is the best protection. Mumps vaccine has been part of routine childhood shots for decades, but research suggests that protection fades 10 or more years after the second dose. Signs and symptoms of mumps are vague at the onset of illness and may last for 3-4 days. They include low-grade fever, body aches, headache, lack of appetite, and tiredness. Symptoms appear 12 to 25 days after exposure to an infected person. Parotitis (inflammation and swelling of the salivary glands) may occur on one or both sides of the face. A person may complain of earache or tenderness at the angle of the jaw. Infected persons are most contagious just prior to, and for several days after, the onset of swelling. Severe complications from mumps are rare, but they may occur. Recommendations by medical officials to prevent mumps: * Immunization is the best way to prevent mumps. Two doses of MMR vaccine with the first dose being given on or after the first birthday and the second dose being given at least 28 days later. * Persons with mumps symptoms should not attend school, public activities, or family gatherings until 5 days after the swelling began or at the recommendation of their doctor. The infected individual should be isolated in their room. * Persons with mumps symptoms should be evaluated by their health care provider for diagnosis and treatment. MIDDLETOWN A popular Delaware County musician who went missing on Friday has been found dead, according to his familys Facebook page. John Carlton Morphet, 54,is dead following an apparent suicide. He was found close to his family home in Middletown around 6pm on Wednesday night. Thanks to everyone for their search efforts. John will live in our memories forever, read the post on the John Morphet Search page posted late Wednesday night. Morphet, who was the drummer for the popular band Jimmy Shoe and The Shine, was last seen at a family home on War Trophy Lane in Middletown about 3:30 a.m. Friday. Tom Morphet, in the area visiting from Alaska, last heard his brother talking on the phone about 6 a.m. Tom went back to sleep and awoke about 9:30 a.m., thinking his brother went out for a walk. John Morphet, who previously resided in Clifton Heights but has been staying at his late fathers residence in Middletown, may have left the house while in psychiatric crisis. His family members believed John was in crisis following the recent death of their father and the suicide of an older brother. According to Tom, John was denied in-patient treatment at a hospital the day prior to his disappearance after telling doctors there that he was not suicidal. John is severely depressed, irrational and delusional, said Tom earlier this week. He left home without his wallet, a phone or his keys. He needs immediate psychiatric care. Our family already is grieving two family deaths. We are throwing a lifeline out to the Philadelphia community to try to find our brother. Family members thought he was able to travel far. For that reason, they were concentrating their search efforts within a mile radius of the War Trophy Lane house. But they have visited his Clifton Heights neighborhood as well. John is a gentle soul who is well-known around Media and Clifton Heights as a restaurant cook and musician. He is not violent or dangerous, but he was incapable of caring for himself at this time, Tom said. If there has been a silver lining, Tom Morphet said it is the support of many friends and neighbors who have volunteered to help in the search. Search efforts included the use of drone. The nights are the worst, thinking he is on the street somewhere, Tom said earlier. We want to bring him home. Pennsylvania State Police troopers were also looking for Morphet. RADNOR In September of 2016, a black bear was sighted in Radnor near Ithan Elementary School. And in short order, the bear apparently took to Twitter as an account was created under the name @RadnorBear. Its happened again but this time with a coyote. Tuesday afternoon Radnor police put out an alert informing the public of a confirmed coyote sighting in the area near Abrahams Lane and Church Road. Within a few hours of the alert and after several media reports about the sighting, a new Twitter account popped up @RadnorCoyote. As of early Wednesday afternoon, Radnor Coyote has racked up 45 followers and pushed out 65 tweets. The Twitter feed was filled with memes and various media posts about him. The latest tweets Wednesday afternoon asked about catching trout in Darby Creek and the cows along Darby-Paoli Road. And of course, there was a Gritty meme with the the fuzzy Flyers mascot wondering if he was a relative of the Road Runner. Bill Gallagher, animal control officer for Radnor Township, said there were two additional sighting reports from residents in the same area as was Tuesdays confirmed report. The calls came in about an hour apart from one another around the 10 and 11 a.m. time frame. According to Gallagher, Radnor has been getting calls for a while about coyotes and they are known to be in the area. He referenced some having been seen a few years ago on the Ardrossan Estate. We know theyre around, Gallagher said. Well get a couple of calls a week and then we wont get another call for a month. A few weeks ago, they got a call near Conestoga Road in Villanova and another one on Maplewood Road in Wayne, he said. Lower Merion also warned about coyotes in 2017 when police reported several confirmed coyote sightings throughout the township including one in Villanova. In the alert put out Tuesday, police said The coyote has been seen running in the area between Abrahams Lane and Church Road. While there have been many sightings reported to Police, Radnor Police Officers have been first able to confirm the reports of the animals existence in the early afternoon hours on March 19th. The Radnor Police request residents in the area to please use caution when letting pets outside, the warning read in part. Gallagher said there was no way of knowing if it has been in Radnor for a while or migrated from another location recently as the bear did in 2016. Coyotes normally wont go after people, according to Gallagher, since they are generally afraid of them, but the township is asking pet owners to be cautious. The big thing is to let people know that it or they are out there and to keep your pets inside or if you let your pet outside to make sure you are with it and if you are walking on a trail to make sure its on a leash, he said. The Radnor bear that was in the township a few years ago was believed to have entered the township from Ridley Creek State Park and was later found there. It was captured at Ridley Creek and taken to state game lands in Dauphin County and released. Education Landmarks and Legacies: UNT and eminent domain Courtesy photo The original site for the Normal, now the University of North Texas, was landlocked from the beginning by the Syndicate, which developed the surrounding land. Joshua Chilton Joseph Carroll The University of North Texas has been in the news lately over the possible use of eminent domain, but UNTs beginning on a small, landlocked parcel of land made eminent domain struggles inevitable. James Rogers book, The Story of North Texas: From Texas Normal College, 1890 to the University of North Texas System, 2001, hints at difficulties faced by those who started what is now a large university. The railroad helped Denton expand, but with only one rail line, city business leaders followed Huntsvilles example and looked for a college to ensure success. Between 1880 and 1900, Dentons population quadrupled from 1,194 to 4,187. In May 1890, Mayor Joseph Carroll appointed a finance committee to steer a new college. The committee met with Joshua Chilton, who was looking for a place to start a normal school, the term for a teacher training institution. Their first meeting must not have gone well because Chilton continued to look for other sites. Chilton eventually entered into a one-sided contract with Mayor J.A. Carroll on behalf of the city. Classes began in fall 1890 in temporary quarters on the second floor of the B.J. Wilson hardware store, the current site of J.T. Clothiers, at the northwest corner of the Square. Faculty members hired by Chilton included Dr. J.Q. Dealey, Mrs. McKissack, future Methodist Bishop John N. Moore, C.E. Sargent and Jesse Sanders. Site selection for the new school became extremely heated between partisan groups focused on two locations: a hill overlooking the cemetery near present-day 719 W. Sycamore St., and the current location along West Hickory Street. The cemetery site, also known as Hann Hill, was chosen, but Alderman Harry Hanns change of heart finalized the location to the Hickory Street site by one vote. The group voted 93 times. The Syndicate formed to resolve the dispute. Harry Schweer, who eventually went to jail for bank fraud, persuaded the Hann brothers, owners of the cemetery site, to join the Syndicate, thus changing the shape of Denton. A syndicate is a group of individuals who promote a common cause, usually financial. Dentons Syndicate focused on real estate, and it dissolved in 1892. The group included five current, former or future mayors, prominent businessmen, bankers and land investors. Dentons Syndicate was a formidable, if not overwhelming, opponent for President Chilton. C.A. Bridges, who started teaching at the Normal in 1922, listed Syndicate members in his book, History of Denton, Texas From Its Beginning to 1960. They included Joseph A. Carroll (mayor, 1890-1891), T.W. Abney (mayor, 1883-1885), Harry Schweer (Denton County National Bank president), Daniel Head (business owner), Col. Matthew Deavenport (mayor in 1877, banker and miller), John and Robert Hann (brothers, business partners with Schweer and owners of Hann Hill), Myron S. Stout (land and loan agent), William A. Ponder (Exchange National Bank cashier), and Alderman G.B. Collins (who developed the Collins addition between Gregg and Congress streets). Five other men were involved with the Syndicate: John B. Schmitz (business owner), Stephen M. Bradley (lawyer, mason and county judge), J.W. Cook (county tax collector), Oliver P. Poe (mayor, 1891-1894, 1896-1904), and Joseph W. Jagoe (mayor in 1896 and lawyer who reviewed the Normal). Syndicate member W.A. Ponder facilitated the purchase of 240 acres of undeveloped land, which the city annexed as The College Addition. The land was so rural that the schools early site needed barbed wire to keep out wandering livestock. Although land was cheap, the Syndicate donated 10 acres, only 4 percent, of the large addition for a city that began with only 100 acres. At the time, Christian men understood a tithe to be 10 percent. The land was loosely bounded by Barnard and West Hickory streets at the northeast corner and by Mill Street, now Eagle Drive, and Avenue D at the southeast corner. An area between West Oak and West Hickory streets completed the northern boundary between Fry Street and the current Jagoe and Avenue C intersection. The Normals original site was landlocked from the beginning by the Syndicate, who developed the surrounding land. This started the complicated relationship between Dentons first college, residential neighborhoods and the city. Chilton forfeited his five-year contract in 1893 after three years for failure to meet the strict enrollment requirements dictated by the Syndicate. He died three years later in Indiana at the age of 43, believing he failed to make a mark in the world. Until securing state funding in 1899, the Normal struggled. The Normal, now the University of North Texas, got assistance from Denton, despite the profit motives of Dentons early real estate Syndicate. Although the drive behind the colleges early placement was financial, UNT now thrives. ANNETTA RAMSAY, Ph.D., is a licensed and nationally certified counselor who has lived and worked in Denton for many years. She can be reached at annetta.ramsay@gmail.com. SALT LAKE CITY The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday the approval of the first drug specifically designed to treat postpartum depression in new mothers. The drug could save the lives of mothers and children, according to the FDA, but it's expensive, averaging $34,000 per patient before discounts, and requires a stay in a hospital, according to Sage Therapeutics, the drug's manufacturer. Brexanolone, which will be marketed as Zulresso, is administered via intravenous infusion over 2 days, according to the FDA's press release. It works within 48 hours, much faster than other antidepressants, the New York Times reported. "This brings up a lot of very complex public health issues," Dr. Kimberly Yonkers, a professor of psychiatry, obstetrics, gynecology and preproductive sciences at Yale, told the New York Times. "It may be worth it if somebody has been treatment-resistant or they can't wait the two to four weeks for an antidepressant to kick in." On social media, people expressed joy at the availability of treatment and dismay at the cost of the drug. #Zulresso is the first drug that has been approved for the treatment of #postpartum depression. Shockingly, the drug which was developed by @SageBiotech, will cost between $20,000 - $35,000, which will clearly make the treatment prohibitive to most mothers. Shame on #BigPharma Andy Behrman (@electroboyusa) March 20, 2019 Any postpartum depression relief on tap for women who arent heirs to shipping fortunes? Or no? pic.twitter.com/29uF0kfbie Clark Feels The Bern (@Clarknt67) March 19, 2019 Sage Therapeutics told the Times that insurance companies are currently evaluating Zulresso, and the company expects insurers will cover the treatment. In addition, a pill with similar chemistry that would be much more accessible will be submitted for approval in a couple of years if testing continues to prove its effectiveness, Sage told the Times. Each year more than 400,000 infants in the United States are born to mothers who are depressed, according to a 2017 study published in Pediatrics in Review. And the condition impacts 1 in 9 women nationally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Postpartum depression often occurs following childbirth, but symptoms, including sadness, decreased ability to feel pleasure, cognitive impairment, feelings of worthlessness or suicidal ideation can start during pregnancy, says the FDA. "Postpartum depression is a serious condition that, when severe, can be life-threatening. Women may experience thoughts about harming themselves or harming their child. Postpartum depression can also interfere with the maternal-infant bond," said Dr. Tiffany Farchione, acting director of the Division of Psychiatry Products in the FDAs Center for Drug Evaluation and Research in the press release. "This approval marks the first time a drug has been specifically approved to treat postpartum depression, providing an important new treatment option." Because of the drug's risks, including sudden loss of consciousness, Zulresso will only be available at certified health care facilities where patients can be carefully monitored, according to the press release. Jeff Jonas, CEO of Sage Therapeutics, told CNN that the drug will be available in June. Without treatment for postpartum depression, which typically involves counseling and traditional antidepressant medications, women can suffer for months or even years, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Researchers found Zulresso to be effective in two clinical studies where participants were given either the drug or a placebo and then followed for four weeks, according to the press release. One study focused on patients with severe postpartum depression and the other focused on patients with moderate postpartum depression. In both experiments, Zulresso was more effective than the placebo at reducing depressive symptoms, the press release said. Zulresso specifically targets postpartum depression as opposed to other types of depression because it contains a synthetic form of the hormone allopregnanolone, NBC reported. The hormone increases throughout a womans pregnancy and plummets after she gives birth, potentially contributing to depressive symptoms. Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, professor of mood and anxiety disorders at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, told NBC that the Zulresso is designed for postpartum depression but "is a step in understanding how we treat depression more broadly. We have had the same treatments for depression for 30 years. Theres an enormous need for new, novel ways to treat depression, and to treat it quickly, she said. Just a few weeks ago, the FDA approved esketamine, a fast-acting nasal spray, as a treatment for severe depression. Meltzer-Brody, who was involved in trials for the Zulresso, said her greatest hope is that the drug's release will increase awareness about the serious suffering so many new mothers endure. "What's heartbreaking is the number of women who suffer in silence and do not get the treatment that they need," she told CNN. "People need to reach out and get screened and get treatment, regardless of if treatment is with brexanolone or not." SALT LAKE CITY U.S. Customs and Border Patrol released 50 apprehended immigrants in McAllen, Texas, on Tuesday due to a lack of available detention space, with over 200 additional undocumented immigrants set to be released Wednesday. When immigrants are detained by Border Patrol officials, they are normally transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be processed and placed in detention facilities. However, officials told the Los Angeles Times that neither agency has available space due to an increase in the amount of Central American families crossing the border. As the Deseret News previously reported, more than 76,000 undocumented immigrants crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in February, more than double the number that crossed during the same time period in 2018. More than 90 percent of those immigrants were from Guatemala, and 65 percent were either children traveling alone or families traveling together. "The system is well beyond capacity and remains at the breaking point," Kevin McAleenan, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told reporters in February. Immigrants' rights advocates voiced concerns that Border Patrol is releasing immigrants in order to make it seem as if there is a crisis at the border. Zenen Jaimes Perez, advocacy director for the Texas Civil Rights Project, told the Los Angeles Times, "Why do this now? It doesn't make sense. This isn't something they've done before." In the past, border officials have been faced with larger influxes of immigrants. Border arrests have been down in recent years. In 2017, the number of immigrants intercepted at the border was the smallest in decades, with 310,531 arrests. The last time there were so few arrests was in 1971. However, fiscal year 2019 has seen an uptick in the number of immigrants crossing the border, with 237,327 immigrants apprehended along the border since October. That's a 97 percent increase from the previous year. A Border Patrol officer told the Los Angeles Times that officials weren't releasing the immigrants to make a political statement. "It is a crisis," he said. "It's not a self-proclaimed crisis." According to the Los Angeles Times, the 50 immigrants released Tuesday were sent to Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, and the 200 immigrants set to be released Wednesday will also be sent to Catholic Charities' local respite center. But that center is already operating at full capacity as well, caring for over 900 immigrants. Another temporary center was opened this week to handle the influx, the Los Angeles Times reported. According to Esquire, the McAllen, Texas, detention center is the largest in the U.S. with a capacity of 1,500 immigrants. Border Patrol officials had been transferring around 700 to 800 immigrants per day to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but as the Deseret News previously reported, the agency lacks adequate space for both families and single adults and is currently detaining over 50,000 adults, the highest number ever. With detention centers at full capacity, it is increasingly falling on volunteers, church leaders and other community members to take in immigrants and help them find a place to stay. Also on Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in the case Nielsen v. Preap that undocumented immigrants and green card holders can be arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement indefinitely for having committed crimes that would trigger deportation, and held without bail. This applies to immigrants who were released from custody years ago, as well as those who already completed their sentences or paid their fines. Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the dissent, argued that the ruling deprives immigrants of due process. The justices in the majority argued that "it would be 'too risky' to let terrorists or dangerous criminals go free while deportation was pending," David Savage wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "But their opinion conceded the law is so broad it also sweeps in nonviolent 'drug offenders and tax cheats.'" The ruling overturned a 2016 ruling by California's 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that held undocumented immigrants were not subject to mandatory detention if they were not "promptly" taken into custody after being released from jail or prison. LAYTON Remember that ugly sweater your grandmother gave you for your last birthday? Or the awkward introductions at the last social mixer you attended? Or that time you had to get up in front of a group and speak impromptu? Not too many people innately know to handle these scenarios. The principals of four Davis School District elementary schools are working to ensure their students are taught the social skills to handle themselves in any situation. Twenty-one students put their social graces to the test Wednesday in the Amazing Shake contest at Layton Elementary School on Wednesday. The students rotated through three mock scenarios judged by adults that called for good manners, firm handshakes and thinking on their feet. "We go all out to teach kids social skills because a lot of kids arent explicitly taught that. So we want to make sure they can go get a job and then we teach them well enough they can keep a job," said Layton Elementary Principal Diane Hammer. Along with the host school, students from Doxey Elementary in Clearfield, Tolman Elementary in Bountiful and Whitesides Elementary in Layton competed. Some participants jumped into personal introductions with the zeal of a motivational speaker. Others nervously rocked back and forth on their heels as they shook hands with the people they met, starting with a firm handshake, all the while maintaining eye contact and making polite chitchat. One contestant ended her conversation with three adults by saying, "Maybe we could all hang out some time." Some children role-played to the hilt. One of the social situations was tactfully handling being given a well-meaning but awkward gift by your grandmother, which in this case was a small tube of toothpaste, toothbrush and deodorant. One girl effused, "It's the best gift ever!" One boy, fully immersed in the role of dutiful grandchild, said, "Love you, Grandma." Students were judged on their gratitude, whether they connected with the gift, whether they opened the card and whether they engaged in meaningful conversation with their grandmother. Doxey Elementary student Breeanna Schryver said her mother insists on good manners but interacting with adults presented new challenges. "It was pretty intimidating. They're just staring at you. You're not supposed to look away and you have to have eye contact, avoid looking around. There's hand shakes not too firm. It's pretty interesting," she said. Caleb Andrews, a student at Whitesides Elementary, said he learned a lot from the contest. "If you have bad manners, no one will want to be around you," Caleb said. The Amazing Shake contest was developed by the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta. The nonprofit middle school has been recognized nationally and internationally for its success in educating students with academic rigor, passion and creativity balanced by a strict code of discipline, the school website states. Hammer said many of the teachers at the four schools that took part in Wednesday's event have participated in training at the academy, which they have put to work in their schools. The contest aims to educate students about the "nuances of professional and social interaction with an emphasis on displaying manners, discipline and respect. As a result, students are given the skills needed to present themselves exceptionally well for opportunities today and in the future," the academy's website states. Breeanna said she feels like the experience was valuable. "Certain people just have no manners and this is teaching the younger generation to have better manners than what a lot of older people have," she said. "It's a really good opportunity for kids to be able to function well with adults and a whole bunch of great manners, especially posture, table manners and of course, the handshake." Hammer said the contestants by and large "were really pretty poised. I don't remember being that poised when I was a kid." The contest aside, the Amazing Shake program has significant benefits for participating schools, she said. "I just know from when we started it to now I see a difference when we walk down the hall. They say, 'Hello.' They don't look down when I pass by," Hammer said. "We teach them that people are to be interacted with and that everyone is maybe just a friend you haven't met yet. You need to go out of your shell and reach out to people. I hope that's what they do, that they feel confident in themselves and can actually do that." Correction: In an earlier version, photo captions misidentified Gabriella Hughes, a third-grader from Tolman Elementary School, as McKell Astill, a third-grader at Whitesides Elementary School. SALT LAKE CITY On Thursday morning, a Salt Lake woman will finally be able to lay to rest her father, a bomber pilot who went missing in action during World War II. "I didn't think that after 74 years he would come back," Mary Ann Hadfield Turner said Tuesday, after her dad's remains returned to Utah from the German field where they lay lost until the wreckage was discovered in 2016. "It fills an emptiness that I felt for I don't know how long, and it gives me peace that I haven't known my whole life." On March 21, 1945, Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. Lynn W. Hadfield, 26, of Salt Lake City, was piloting a bomber from France to Germany in WWII when it was hit by enemy fire and crashed. "It's an indescribable emptiness it's haunting in a way," Turner said of her father's disappearance. His remains were identified on Dec. 13, 2018, from a crash site in Germany that was discovered in 2016. Efforts to excavate the site and identify any remains were led by the group History Flight, and several volunteers have traveled to Utah for today's service. Hadfield will be buried with full military honors and a military aircraft flyover at Utah Veterans Memorial Park in Bluffdale, exactly 74 years after his disappearance. Mary Ann Turner is Hadfield's only living child Turner's brother, Kent Hadfield, died in the 1990s. The family was unsure if any of Hadfield's 15 siblings were still alive. Close to 150 family members were expected to attend the funeral services. Creating memories Turner was only a toddler when her father left for war and was still very young when he went missing. The only memories the family have of him come from stories of those who knew him. "I don't remember him, but I see pictures of him holding me and that is so nice," she said. Hadfield's grandson and Mary Anne Turner's son, Chris Turner, said he wished he could have met his grandfather. "I'm getting to know him now through this journey, he said. "He was slow to anger but quick to laugh, he was fun to be around, well-liked very smart." He described the experience as "exciting and bittersweet" for the family. In addition to the remains of the three men onboard the bomber when it crashed, some of the airmen's personal effects were also located. She now has her father's pilot wings from his uniform, his dog tags and a pen cap with a piece of his uniform under the clip. "We're very proud of his service, we're proud of his willingness to sacrifice," Chris Turner said. Bringing closure According to a news release from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, it was the combined efforts of the agency, History Flight and German researcher Adolf Hagedorn that led to the discovery and identification of Hadfield's aircraft and remains. Chris Turner said the organizations truly take "no man left behind or no woman left behind" to heart. Hagedorn discovered the crash site on a farm in 2016. "I think it's indescribably beautiful that a German man would do this for an enemy aircraft it is just so beautiful, I just don't have words," Mary Ann Turner said. Chris Turner said tens of thousands of working hours were poured into this recovery project and both he and his mother are deeply grateful for everyone involved in bringing his grandfather home. "It's absolutely awe-inspiring," he said. "We had so many people in this world that worked together and applied their expertise and skills and abilities to bring somebody home they didn't know." Five members of the History Flight team that helped recover Hadfield's body will attend the funeral Thursday, including a geologist, two anthropologists and two historians. The nonprofit has recovered at least 110 individuals from the Pacific region and seven service members in Europe, with plans for more European recovery missions. Jean-Louis Seel and Jean-Philippe Speder, WWII historians from Belgium and Belgian army veterans, worked on Hadfield's recovery mission and traveled from Belgium to attend. Geologist Chuck Thudium and Steve Cassells, archeologist and anthropologist, drove from Colorado to attend the funeral services and meet the family. Both men are volunteers for the nonprofit organization dedicated to recovering missing service members from 20th century American wars. The two men put in a lot of hours for Hadfield's recovery project. "It was pretty brutal at times, but we got over there and were able to successfully do it," Thudium said. This recovery mission was Thudium's first trip for the organization and he's since been on four more. Hadfield's funeral is the first either men have been able to attend. Thudium, retired military himself, said this is his way of giving back. He also lost an older brother in WWII and appreciated the opportunity to give other families closure. "This brings it full circle," Thudium said. "It means a lot to me to be able to bring closure to families that I was never able to get." Cassells, an archeologist for almost 50 years, has worked on four recovery missions and two crash site excavations. "Our primary goal is to recover as much of the personnel who were killed in that incident," he said. "With the ultimate goal of having these people identified and returned." He said a team of about 15 to 20 people dug every day for about a month and went 10 to 12 feet into the ground. One of the team members had frostbitten toes by the end of the excavation, Cassells said. "The funeral is the culmination for us that we actually have been able to accomplish what started for us over two years ago with this project," Cassells said. "Just to be a part of this return, a big celebration of his life, sad as it is, this is I think a great way to commemorate his life." Even though the dig was difficult at times, the pair said a lot of things fell into place and they learned interesting stories from locals. For instance, an elderly German man said he knew about the plane crash, and when he was a boy he took a piece of scrap metal from the site and sold it to buy an air rifle. "These are the human interest side that 'Wow he knows where this is,' and it really worked out well. It was a perfect dig, everybody was a team," Thudium said. Cassells said he thinks this work is important. "I've never had such a rewarding exercise in archeology as working with History Flight because we now see some ultimate good coming to the families providing them with some closure to their loss for all those years," he said. "It's too bad it's taken over 70 years for it to happen, but at least it happened." Thudium agreed. "Bring the boys home that's the whole story, to be able to find, locate, recover and give a little bit of closure to families who are still surviving," he said. "It's just a perfect end for a very, very long journey for Lt. Hadfield." A final thanks Mary Ann Turner is planning a trip to Germany this summer with her German-fluent cousin to see the crash site and visit the area where her father was at. She wants to personally thank the farm owners for giving the agency two months to dig at the crash site. Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died during the war, according to the accounting agency. There are still 72,747 service members from WWII unaccounted for and about 26,000 are possibly recoverable. Hadfields name, along with others missing from WWII, is on the Tablets of the Missing memorial at the Netherlands American Cemetery the only American military cemetery in the country. A rosette will be added to his name, indicating he's been accounted for. His two crew members, Sgt. Vernon Hamilton, of West Virginia, and Sgt. John Kalausich, of Pennsylvania, also died during the mission and their remains were identified from the crash site as well. Hadfield was a member of the 642nd Bombardment Squadron, 409th Bombardment Group, 9th Bombardment Division, 9th Air Force, at the time of his death. I want him to be remembered as someone who died for his country and as someone who I think I wouldve loved to have met," Chris Turner said. Seeing her father honored was emotional for Mary Ann Turner. "It's a tribute to Dad, it really is," she said. SALT LAKE CITY Another candidate has officially jumped into this year's race to be mayor of Utah's capital, just days after Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski bowed out for a "serious and complex family situation." Previously the longtime chairman of the Downtown Community Council, Christian Harrison made his formal campaign announcement in front of the Salt Lake City-County Building on Wednesday, the first day of spring a day he said was fitting because it reflected his "bold, constructive optimism" vision for Salt Lake City. Harrison, 46, joins an already crowded race, where six others have already filed paperwork to campaign, and there could be more. "I know we can do better, and that we must do better if we are ever going to meet our incredible potential," Harrison told a cheering crowd of supporters. Harrison, who up until January served for 13 years as the Downtown Community Council's chairman, laid out his vision for Salt Lake City, which he said has no room for politics and looks ahead decades. "It's a vision of a government our citizens can trust to put aside playground politics and get to work on the hard things we are facing," Harrison said. "A vision of a plan that protects and empowers the next generation, that looks 40 years down the road, not just four." Harrison laid out a multipronged vision, with focus on creating equal opportunities, bridging the divide between the mayor's office and the City Council, and tackling issues like the Utah Inland Port Authority, which he said shows the city needs to join forces with other cities to "take back control" from the state. "From the inland port to sales tax, from air quality to quality of life, the state of Utah regularly interferes in the internal affairs of cities across our great state," Harrison said. To do that, Harrison called for a movement to push an amendment to Utah's Constitution to clarify local control, whether that be through the Legislature or a ballot initiative. "To thrive, cities need to innovate, and that's just not possible when our relationship with the state is not clearly defined," he said. "An amendment that will guarantee cities the right to govern themselves." Harrison also said the city needs to "take control of our finances" by establishing a public bank, which he said would leverage city assets to fund projects "that align with our values and our priorities and then channel the interest those loans make back into our neighborhoods." Harrison also said "we need to reboot City Hall" so that it's "free of the tyranny of playground politics." He hinted at the clash between Biskupski and the Salt Lake City Council on issues including the inland port, saying he would open "the doors between the mayor's office and City Council" to help the city fire "on all cylinders." Harrison also said the city needs to "heal" from physical, linguistic and socioeconomic divides, calling for a government that is better equipped to help immigrants, people with disabilities and people "struggling to make ends meet." He also pledged to lead with an eye to the far future and being more prepared for big issues, including if a major earthquake were to hit the Wasatch Front, impacts from climate change, or rapid population growth. "Right now the plan is prayer," Harrison said. "Praying the 'big one' doesn't strike in our lifetimes. Praying climate change isn't as bad as predicted. Praying that somehow doubling our population doesn't deliver twice the people, twice the cars and four times the headache." Christine Passey, who has run unsuccessfully to be a state lawmaker and who worked in Biskupski's office as a coordinator for disability rights before she said she left because of policy differences, threw her support behind Harrison, saying he impresses her with his attention to detail and inclusiveness for people with disabilities. "He definitely knew his stuff and had a vision for it," Passey said, crediting him with having specific ideas so early in the campaign. Passey said she worked for Biskupski's campaign before the mayor appointed her in her office, where she said she "saw what went well and saw what went badly." Harrison joins several other the candidates who have announced campaigns, including former state Sen. Jim Dabakis, David Garbett, former executive director of the Pioneer Park Coalition; David Ibarra, a prominent Latino businessman; and former Salt Lake City Councilman Stan Penfold. Freelance journalist Richard Goldberger and Aaron Johnson, a veteran, have also filed personal campaign committees. SALT LAKE CITY Utah GOP Chairman Rob Anderson said Wednesday he's not seeking a second term as party leader, as some Republicans continue to fight over a controversial election law despite losing their legal challenge. "Why? I'm not the guy," Anderson said. "I would be a hinderance to the party reuniting and unifying, so I think it's probably best that someone else do it. My call for unity kind of fell on deaf ears." Phill Wright, a longtime opponent of the 2014 election law known as SB54 who ran against Anderson two years ago for party chairman, said he's planning to get in the race. Last Saturday members of the party's governing State Central Committee censured Anderson because he did not submit a bylaw last year to the state that sought to punish some candidates for gathering voter signatures to get on a primary ballot. Anderson said the bylaw was illegal because signature-gathering is an alternative to the party's traditional caucus and convention candidate nomination system permitted under SB54. A 40-page confidential report into the incident obtained by the Deseret News said there was "ample justification to remove" Anderson but recommended censure in part because ousting him now "could be viewed as an underhanded political move." Anderson said the censure was not a factor in his decision. Some 4,000 delegates will choose a party chairman at the May 4 state Republican Party convention. Anderson said he is not backing a candidate "at this time." So far, Sylvia Miera-Fisk of Davis County has filed. Later Wednesday, Wright, a member of the GOP State Central Committee, said he plans to run for party chairman. "I appreciate that the party has exhausted its options to litigate a law that I do believe is unconstitutional," Wright said. "Right now, I think it's important that we move on and focus on promoting our platform and electing Republican candidates." SB54 has been upheld in local federal district court as well as the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. A group of Republicans on the State Central Committee failed earlier this year to get the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case. Wright declined to comment on last Saturday's committee meeting but said if he is elected Republican Party chairman, his role will be "to follow the direction of the governing body." Asked if would continue to work to end SB54 as party chairman, Wright said "if the state Legislature decided they wanted to repeal SB54, I would support that. That would be great. But that is not going to be my focus." If elected, he said he's "going to actively work to unite our party." Wright said he hasn't been fighting against the Republican Party, but for it, by defending the right of GOP leaders to determine who gets on the ballot. Chris Karpowitz, co-director of BYU's Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, said that "because of the fight over SB54, the job of party chairperson is extraordinarily difficult and thankless." There is a "group of people who are simply pushing this issue at the exclusion of almost every other interest of the party," Karpowitz said, including most members of the GOP-controlled Legislature and voters "That's just not a recipe for healthy party governance," he said, and over time, it could weaken the GOP. "If the party gets a reputation for nominating extreme candidates or fiscal irresponsibility at the party level in the state, then that's problematic." Anderson said whoever is elected to lead the Utah GOP "is going to have a very difficult tenure." He said his hope that the SB54 battle would end when the Supreme Court declined the case "is probably not a reality." The volunteer post, Anderson said, has given him "a new appreciation for some of the criticisms our elected officials are subject to. Does it feel like a firing squad? Absolutely, sometimes." SALT LAKE CITY Did you know a huge meteor exploded over the Bering Sea in December? It happened. NASA reported that a huge fireball exploded in Earths atmosphere back in December. The explosion was the second largest of its kind within the last 30 years, which makes it the biggest since the fireball explosion over Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013, BBC News reports. The meteors explosion had 10 times the amount of energy as the Hiroshima atomic bomb. See a video of the meteor below. A video showing the smoke trail from the #Meteor over the Bering Strait last December, produced using data from @JMA_kishou's #Himawari satellite. The orange meteor trail in the middle, shadow above-left. Hi-res copy: https://t.co/EXn8sFb556 pic.twitter.com/X54InkvMnl Simon Proud (@simon_sat) March 19, 2019 So why havent you heard about it until now? Lindley Johnson, a planetary defense officer at NASA, told USA Today that NASA has an agreement with the U.S. Air Force to share data about these natural events, but it can take days or weeks to process them. Johnson said information on the meteor explosion hasnt been released until now because the explosion was over a remote location where no one could see it. According to The Guardian, the sound was picked up by infrasound detectors, which can track sound waves that human ears cant pick up on. SANDY The suspected gunman in a fatal shooting at a Midvale convenience store was found dead in Sandy following a late-night chase with police. Jose Luis Garcia, 24, suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound and his car rolled through the fence of Peruvian Park Elementary School, 1545 E. 8425 South, and down a steep hill into a field, police said. It was not known Thursday if Garcia shot himself before he crashed, but Unified Police Sgt. Melody Gray noted the vehicle was traveling just 25 mph when it unexpectedly went over the curb and into the school property. The Canyons School District said Thursday that classes at the school would not be affected. The incident began just after 9 p.m. Wednesday in the parking lot of Maverik, 7720 S. Main in Midvale. Ray Paul Willie Vasquez, 40, had just bought a drink and was sitting in the driver's seat of his car when a black Jeep Wrangler pulled up and parked next to the victim on the passenger side, Gray said. The driver of the Jeep, Garcia, got out of his vehicle and shot and killed Vasquez, she said. Investigators say the men knew each other and do not believe the attack was random. Because Unified police has a substation nearby, Gray said officers were at the Maverik quickly. Officers soon started pulling over every black Jeep Wrangler in the area, she said. One Jeep that was spotted by several agencies kept eluding officers every time officers got close, Gray said. One officer, however, was able to get a license plate number. Just before midnight, Cottonwood Heights police spotted the Jeep again and a chase ensued, Gray said. It went through residential areas before ending up at the elementary school. A motive for the shooting had not been established as of Thursday morning. According to state court records, Garcia had no adult criminal history in Utah. Vasquez was paroled from the Utah State Prison in December. He was convicted of two counts of sexual abuse of a child, a second-degree felony, and sentenced in 2013 to two terms of one to 15 years to be served consecutively, according to court records. KEARNS Police have arrested the 15-year-old stepbrother of a 16-year-old boy who was shot and killed inside his room earlier this week. Unified police on Monday originally reported that the 16-year-old was killed by an accidental self-inflicted shotgun blast. The boy was in his house, 5007 W. 5400 South, with his stepbrother. The two were looking at the gun and "swinging it around" when it went off, police said. The stepbrother was booked into a juvenile detention center in connection with the shooting death. According to family members on social media, the teen was arrested for investigation of murder. Police originally reported that the stepbrother was 17, but said Thursday that he is actually 15. Family members have identified the deceased boy as Jerrad Jacobsen. On Facebook Thursday, a series of angry comments purportedly posted by Jerrad's mother, Theresa Hinkle Toledo were posted that are directed toward Jerrad's stepbrother. "You murdered my son. It wasn't accidental. You waited until my son's back was turned and put a shotgun to the back of his head and murdered him. You cleaned up yourself and made it look like it was my son. I want the whole world to know my baby didn't accidentally shoot himself playing with a gun. He knew better. My son was murdered by one he called his brother and trusted," she posted. "I hope my baby haunts you. You took so much from us and even more you took from my son." The mother went on to say that the stepbrother's first court hearing was held Thursday morning. "Nothing more heartbreaking than finding out that your baby died until you find out their brother did it," other posts state. "You didn't just point a gun at and shoot him, you waited 'til his back was to you. That's no accident." Another family member claimed that after Jerrad was shot, the 15-year-old took a shower and changed his clothes before notifying other family members. A large number of people gathered outside Jerrad's house on Wednesday night for a candlelight vigil. A fundraiser to help the family with funeral expenses was set up on Facebook. Unified police released few details on Thursday, saying the investigation is ongoing. OREM A Utah Valley University professor is under criminal investigation after court documents indicate he admitted to students that he had looked at child pornography and then apologized to his students. On Dec. 3, the 42-year-old part-time adjunct economics professor at UVU was lecturing students on macroeconomics when he suddenly "confessed to his class of students about his child pornography addiction," according to a search warrant affidavit filed in 4th District Court. The class, which was also being video streamed, was recorded on a thumb drive and presented to the UVU Police Department, which then contacted the Department of Homeland Security. On Dec. 4, the professor "was confronted about his in-class confession" by Laura Carlson, the school's director of Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action, and he "tendered his resignation," the affidavit states. University spokesman Scott Trotter released a brief statement on Wednesday, stating in part that the man "was employed at Utah Valley University from August 2014 to December 2018. He no longer works at the university. As of Thursday, the professor had not been arrested nor charged. Phone messages left for him Wednesday and Thursday were not returned. Investigators reviewing the recorded classroom lecture noted that about 90 minutes into his class, he "ceases his discussion of the subject matter related to macroeconomics and begins talking to his students about taking them on a/his 'spiritual journey.' It was during this portion of the video that (he) makes statements about his involvement with viewing child pornographic materials," the affidavit states. "Tonight I am going to beg your pardon to share my filth with you," he said at one point, according to the court document. "The very worst thing that I can share with you is the fact that I have seen youth beautiful, wonderful children of this earth, in compromising positions, and sexual positions. If we are talking about a line in the sand then we are taking it south of an area that we shouldnt be. Im sorry, but I have seen that." While continuing to apologize, the professor stressed to the class that he has not touched anyone inappropriately and does not keep "a library" of pornographic images, "except what is in his head," the affidavit states. "If you are a human being who I saw, I am not sorry that I saw you as terrible as that sounds. I am sorry that I looked at you in that way. I am sorry that I chose to look at you in that way, he told the class, according to the warrant. "What I saw was not art, let me make it very clear. Its embarrassing, Im ashamed and I apologize. And I will live with it, he said, according to the affidavit. He "then stated that he wanted to change the world by admitting when we are wrong and that we can all be better people now and change." Investigators noted in their warrant that several students filed complaints with the UVU Ethics Point Complaints program due to "the graphic nature of (his) classroom confession to viewing child pornographic materials." The program allows students to anonymously file ethics complaints. "He started talking about how he had never inappropriately touched a child and in a roundabout way, he talked about I'm guessing his pornography addiction (I don't think I actually heard him say 'pornography')," wrote one student, who also noted, "No one really understood what he was getting at." "After that, he said he was going to take us on 'a spiritual journey' and that is when I decided to leave class (because I didn't want to go on a spiritual journey. That has nothing to do with macroeconomics)," the student continued in the affidavit. "So, it was SUPER weird, and I just don't feel like it was an appropriate thing to do in a macroeconomics class." In another complaint, a student said the professor never stated the exact ages of the minors in the photographs, nor did he say when the viewing had occurred or whether any "action had been taken against him for doing so." An investigator with the Department of Homeland Security obtained a warrant to search the professor's Midway home on Feb. 28 to seize electronic equipment or disks that could potentially contain child pornography. The warrant does not say what specifically was seized or whether anything was found. Messages left with the Department of Homeland Security seeking additional comment were not returned. The Nepal Telecommunication Authority (NTA) has ordered market leader Nepal Telecom to pay NPR20 billion ($181 million) to renew its mobile licence. The licence was initially valid for ten years, with the option to extend it for another five years. However, according to NepaliTelecom.com, the terms of issue did not clearly stipulate a renewal fee and Nepal Telecom proposed a sum of around NPR10 billion roughly 4% of its yearly revenue. While Nepal Telecoms suggestion is around half of what the NTA is now demanding, it is worth noting that the countrys operators had petitioned the regulator to set the renewal rates at reasonable levels that would be considered internationally standard. NTA acting chairman Purushottam Khanal has stated that it has decided on the NPR20 billion licence renewal fee as a standard for all operators in the market. At MWC 2019, we spoke to Oranges MEA chief Alioune Ndiaye about the groups ambitions in the region. Whether its eliminating the digital divide or empowering the masses through mobile money, Orange foresees a prosperous future for the continent. At the start of May 2018, Alioune Ndiaye was appointed CEO of Orange MEA. Having started in the Sonatel Group as the CFO, he spent 10 years there before moving to Orange Money to launch operations - initially branded as Ikatel, it was folded into Orange in 2006. Ndiaye was CEO there for 10 years, then moved back to Sonatel Group but this time in the position of CEO. The group has revenue of around 1.5B - roughly 30% of Orange MEA and covers five countries: Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Bissau, and Sierra Leone. Could you go into detail about Orange Money and how it is performing? We launched mobile financial services in 2008, and the service now has 40 million subscribers across Africa and the Middle East. Of these, 15 million are active customers i.e. they have made at least one transaction in the past 30 days. Now Orange Money represents up to 15-20% of our revenues depending on geographies; it has become a growth engine for Orange, enabling us to compensate for the decreased revenue coming from voice and text messaging, which have been on a fast decline for the past few years because of tougher competition from OTTs. With the increasing penetration rate of the internet, many of our subscribers now use services such as WhatsApp or Viber so our revenues from voice are decreasing. Orange Money combined with the development of data users has enabled us to offset this fall in voice revenue revenue grew by a substantial 5.1% in 2018, driven by mobile money and data. These are the two growth engines for MEA at this time, but its not all about the model of increasing revenue when you have 40 million people who are totally excluded from any financial services, and you can offer them access to this world via their mobile phone in a very easy way, with great customer experience, thats also very important for us. How do you plan to develop and spread the service? We still have huge potential to develop mobile financial services. We have 120 million telecom subscribers, of which 40 million use Orange Money. The 15 million active users of Orange Money only represent 13% of our mobile customer base some operators have reached mobile money penetration rates of 70% among their user bases, so we have this potential. Additionally, we have not yet launched all the possible use cases; today, our subscribers can make P2P money transfers, pay utility bills, make merchant payments and buy airtime, but we havent launched credit and saving services. While we offer these services in Mali and Madagascar, weve done this using the licences of banks and financial institutions, and this involves revenue sharing. We have requested a bank licence in West Africa in order to offer these services via Orange Money were waiting to hear about this but were expecting it to be granted by the end of April or May. Once weve received the licence, well launch microcredit and savings services theres huge potential here, because in Africa around 70% of the jobs are informal roles, so people often need credit services to buy goods. We can be more efficient than banks and other financial institutions by allowing customers to apply for credit via their phone. We have a scoring platform that uses all the data we have on the telco side. If one of our customers asked for credit, it would take a few seconds to tell them how much wed be able to grant them using these scoring facilities. If they agree to the amount, they can have it in their Orange Money account immediately thats a very simple journey for the customer, and makes us more competitive than banks and other financial institutions. In this space, who are your competitors? Some mobile money providers and operators are offering this kind of proposition; operators can get to know their customer, understanding their purchase power, how often they buy airtime, how much money they spend on telco services. This is a great deal of data that enables a strong scoring platform that provides a competitive advantage over banks and other institutions. Is mobile money interoperability on your agenda? One of the initiatives weve taken is an agreement with MTN one of our main African competitors. Weve set up a JV with them called Mowali, which enables interoperability between Orange Money and MTN across our footprints. This grants both groups the opportunity to address all users across both of our subscriber bases, and this will attract other providers Airtel is already interested. Banking regulators are also likely to push for interoperability between telcos otherwise its not sustainable. They did this for the banks, and when you look at services like M-Pesa, they had a quasi-monopoly in mobile money and that extends to telco services. Mobile money is very sticky people dont change their bank every month. What kind of services are you looking to offer in the future? We used to just be a telco weve now become a mobile finance provider in addition to this. We will continue this strategy of offering many services weve already launched an energy service in eight countries, providing solar home systems to customers. This leverages our assets as we have a strong distribution network with 700,000 points of sale across Africa. We have a strong network and brand, and all these assets enable us to be a key player even in fields not traditionally associated with telcos. Well be able to make the energy service very successful, and we will move to offer services that provide basic needs for Africans around areas such as agriculture and education. Millions of people cant access education due to lack of schools and teachers, but digital can provide a solution to this by offering a platform that enables people to learn with just an internet connection. Subscriber content preview By DON THOMPSON Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif. California is calling in the National Guard for the first time next month to help protect communities from devastating fires like the one that largely destroyed the city of Paradise last fall. Starting in April, 110 California National Guard troops will receive 11 days of training in using shovels, rakes and chain saws to help thin trees and brush, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Mike Mohler said. . . . Subscriber content preview SEATTLE The Alaska Trade Building, at 1917 First Ave., has sold for a little over $11.5 million, according to King County records. The seller was ATB LLC, which acquired the property in 2001 for $7 million. However, that sale also included the separate Butterworth Building, at 1921 First, which ATB sold in 2005 to another group for almost $3 million. . . . The Most Extensive and Reliable Source of Information Related to the Mexican Drugs Cartels. You will not find this level of coverage anywhere else, join us! Send information, pictures or videos, you remain 100% anonymous. Envia fotos, videos, notas, enlaces o informacion todo 100% Anonimo. Borderland Beat? We love to have you in our team, send Sol Prendido or HEARST an email! Want to be a contributor or citizen reporter forBorderland Beat?We love to have you in our team, sendoran email! WARNING: Posts may contain strong violent material, discretion is advised. COMMENTS: We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. A New Jersey couple who lost their camcorder while on holidays in Donegal are hoping for its safe return, or the chip from inside it. On October 18, Janis and Robert Rayca arrived in Donegal on holiday. They travelled to the coastal town of Dunfanaghy, Donegal town and also visited the picturesque village of Killybegs. It was a wonderful day and the couple from New Jersey enjoyed a leisurely day with their cousin Mary Tracey from Creggan in County Tyrone. After an enjoyable lunch in the Bayview Hotel in Killybegs, they returned to their car shortly after 1pm. When we returned to our car I placed our JVC camcorder on the hood of the boot while I took off my coat, Robert said. I got in the car and drove off with the camcorder left on the hood. I'm sure it dropped off the car and into the street soon after I began driving. The car was parked on the main street up from where the Bayview hotel is located. Distress The couple did not realise that their camcorder was missing until the following day. When the couple realised their loss they were distressed as the chip on the camcorder contained some sentimental images of family celebrations. The camcorder was used to record Janiss 70th birthday last year. Footage of their grandchildren is also on the video camera. This footage means a lot to both Janis and Robert and their family. The card on the camera also contains the recording of their first week in Ireland during 2018 and some imagery from Donegal. Robert has contacted Gardai in Donegal. He has also filed a lost property report. He subsequently followed the matter up with Gardai but found that there were no favourable updates in relation to his loss at that point. The couple also contacted the Bayview Hotel to establish whether anyone had brought the camcorder to their attention. However, staff told Robert that the camera had not been handed in to them. The importance of the chip Robert said: I am losing hope that we will ever retrieve the camcorder, or more importantly, the chip, which is what we really want. The camera is a JVC GZ-E300 camcorder and the chip inside is a 128GB SanDisk SD card. The couple are hoping that someone will have found the camera. The couple's main concern is the chip inside the camcorder. Robert said that the footage which is on the camcorder has not been backed-up and that is the main reason the couple are so eager for the safe return of the chip: I am prepared to offer a reward and as well as pay postage as long as the chip is the real deal, he said. Robert said that he is willing to offer a reward of 50 to those who can arrange the safe return of his camera or the chip from within it. Anyone with any information can contact news@donegaldemocrat.com. Independent TD for Donegal Thomas Pringle spoke to students at a climate march event in Lifford on Friday, organised to call on the Government for greater action on climate change. Student marches were carried out globally across a number of cities, and here in Ireland there were a host of marches around the country, with a number of larger marches organised in Dublin and Cork. Deputy Pringle attended the protest at County House, Lifford. We have to remember that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail all knew climate change has been happening since the 1990s therefore its vitally important that the young people of today say enough is enough and hold those politicians to account for refusing to act on something they were complicit in, he said. Climate Change Deputy Pringle is a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Climate Action and recently had his Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill signed into an Act which removes public money from investments in fossil fuel companies. He told students on Friday: Politicians should take a leaf out of your book today and reflect the sense of urgency on the issue of climate change as you have so clearly demonstrated today. He said that past and current Governments are failing the young people of today and future generations by their current stance on the issue. I commend all those who showed their support today and in particular Conal OBoyle who organised the event and who spoke plainly on the impacts of climate change, not just in Ireland but across the world, where entire populations are already being severely affected by climate change. He said he also acknowledged the hard work carried out by the students from Meentinadea National School who also attended the important march. Stand up He said: I believe the only way we can effect change is to stand up to the politicians. Young people across the country are an important constituency, a constituency for the future and one which through action such as strikes, marches and campaigns can demonstrate to politicians that complacency will no longer be tolerated. He said that governments must now prioritise climate action now. Deputy Pringle added: Governments must face up to their failures and start prioritising climate action now. Donegal mother, Bella Ward, from Letterkenny, has shared her heart-breaking, amazing story of one of her twin daughters, Kayleigh, who was born prematurely in critical condition. She was born with serious cardiac conditions and had to be airlifted to Crumlin hospital, where she received life-saving world-class care. Bella said she will never forget the kindness of the nurses in Crumlin hospital, and said that she will always have a special place in her heart for the Childrens Medical Research Foundation (CMRF Crumlin). Vital funds CMRF Crumlin raises vital funds for Crumlin hospital and the National Childrens Research Centre (NCRC). CMRF Crumlin was established in 1965 and is the principal fundraising body for Our Ladys Childrens Hospital, Crumlin and The National Childrens Research Centre. My twin girls, Kayleigh and Emily, were born in Letterkenny Hospital at 34 weeks, but when they were one week old a nurse from the neonatal unit called us at 3am. Bella said. She told us Kayleigh was in a critical condition. It was terrifying. We didnt know what was happening. We were so lucky the girls were in the neonatal unit, and the team acted immediately. We knew something serious was wrong with Kayleighs heart and a team from the Rotunda stabilised our baby girl so she could be airlifted to Crumlin Hospital. She was far too ill to travel by road. My husband and I drove to Dublin after her and it was, without doubt, the worst journey of our entire lives. Bella explained that the duct in Kayleighs heart had started to close and her aorta was kinked. Shone's complex She also found out her tiny baby had Shones complex four defects in her heart. Kayleigh had surgery to repair her aorta and after three weeks they finally got to bring their baby girl home. Bella said her mother was wonderful and took care of their other three children - a five year old, a three year old and a 10 month old. We didnt see them for three weeks and it was difficult on all of us. I was so happy to get back to my family and reunite Kayleigh and her twin, Emily. Bella said:We brought Kayleigh back to Crumlin Hospital for a follow up appointment when she was seven weeks old and they noticed her aorta was closing in again and she was admitted again. She had her aorta ballooned and seemed to be doing well. The day we were planning to take her home we got a phone call to come in immediately - Kayleighs condition had deteriorated rapidly. The staff were waiting for us at the door of the ward and we found out shed had a cardiac arrest. Worst nightmare I was living my worst nightmare. That was the worst moment of my life. My tiny girl was put on an ECMO machine to keep her alive and the team talked us through everything. It was a blur, it happened so quickly. We were in shock and had to prepare for the worst. After 24 hours Kayleigh came off the ECMO machine and was doing well. We really couldnt believe it, it was such an emotional rollercoaster. Health issues There was a possibility that Kayleigh could have long-term health issues after this, but shes five years old now and is doing incredibly. Kayleigh has annual appointments in Crumlin Hospital now, but luckily she hasnt had to stay there since she was seven months old when she was in for her aorta again. Kayleigh and Emily are the best of friends. They mind each other and theyre doing great in school. Their personalities are very different; Emily is quite shy, while Kayleigh is outgoing and confident. I think thats because of her experience in the hospital. Kayleigh gets herself in the most trouble too! She fell out of bed and got a concussion, she swallowed money and last July she fell off the trampoline and broke her arm. Wed wrap her up in cotton wool if we could! Sometimes I think if I roll her in bubble wrap, it would be safer. When Kayleigh was in hospital it was the scariest time for our family. We have such a huge amount of respect for Crumlin. My daughter wouldnt be alive without the gifted, exceptional people working there. Special place Theyre like a family. They take care of you too. Crumlin Hospital is a very special place. Bella has urged the public to help support some of Irelands sickest children by donating whatever they can afford to https://cmrf.org/donate Donegal County Council is to share 730,000 to pilot energy-saving technology with a neighbouring local authority. The Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme 2014-2020 has announced that they would fund the innovative Smart Energy Management in Remote Northern, Peripheral and Arctic Regions or SMARCTIC project proposal with a total budget of 1.4 million, from which the North West of Ireland will get 730,000. The approach proposed by SMARCTIC to improving energy efficiency is quite unique - led by public authorities but working with universities and businesses to create flexible demonstration test-beds based on applying technologies first used in a smart city setting, e.g., Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Starting in May 2019, this project will last for three years and will involve 11 partners from across Europes Northern Periphery and Arctic zone stretching from Finland through Sweden, Norway, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Iceland to Canada in North America. Donegal Donegal County Council will develop a smart pilot that monitors the indoor environment in all public buildings. This will consist of low power, long range, and secure connected IoT devices with geolocation features, that can penetrate dense building material to monitor municipal operations and energy usage. Visualization tools and AI will facilitate building managers to optimise indoor environments to improve conditions for workers and increase energy efficiency in local authorities. Derry City & Strabane District Council will develop a smart grid pilot that integrates renewable energy, battery storage and smart energy management in the form of sensors and smart meters to monitor consumption and learn from user behaviour. The Smart grid will consist of an electricity and heating network to power and heat a number of public buildings within a specific geographic boundary. Artificial Intelligence technology will record consumption data in conjunction with external weather conditions, energy performance of equipment, and learned user profile, to maximise energy efficiency and optimise the consumption of renewable energy produced. ERNACT EEIG Chairperson, Councillor Gus Hastings, stated that this is another example of what can be achieved by the North West Ireland city-region, working together on a cross border basis in the context of European Union Funding. Furthermore, welcoming approval of the project, Brian Boyle, Chairperson of the European-wide ERNACT network, stated that the success has demonstrated the continuing value to local, regional and city authorities regions working together in the vastly experienced ERNACT network to accelerate the digital transformation of their areas. This proposal was developed by ERNACTs experienced project development team located in Letterkenny (Ireland) in the North West Ireland cross border city region area. Commenting on this, Colm Mc Colgan, ERNACT General Manager, stated that the team has built up excellent skills in digital transformation, knowledge of EU innovation and research funding, financial and operational management of European projects and trans-European communications. The mother of one of the wee lads shot dead in Derry on Bloody Sunday went missing the day after his funeral. The family knew she was distraught so they were very concerned. Anyway, someone eventually copped on she might have gone to the City Cemetery to visit his grave. And she had. She had gone up, she explained when found, with a couple of blankets to put over his grave because it would be cold in there on a winters night. I remember immediately relating to this story totally because it would have been like something my own mother would have done. Something all our mothers would have done. Last week you could see all that trauma revisited for the families when it was decided that only one soldier is to be charged with murder despite the fact that 13 people died and fourteen others were seriously wounded by British paratroopers on a cold winter's day in January, 1972. What is more, it was done in broad daylight in front of the worlds media so you would have thought eye witness evidence would have been enough. But there you go. Its an old adage that the first casualty in a war is the truth and Bloody Sunday is a classic case. Within hours of the shooting, the British propaganda machine went into full swing issuing statements from their embassies in Washington, Paris and Rome etc that their soldiers had acted in self defence after being attacked by bombers and gunmen. It is worth recording that only one British journalist went into print to dispute the armys version. Despite being under huge public pressure to support our boys Simon Winchester of the Guardian remarked just a couple of days later: I came away with the firm impression, re-enforced by dozens of eye-witnesses, that the British army may have fired needlessly into a huge crowd. An Italian journalist, Fulvio Grimaldi, had none of Winchesters guarded commentary. He told the Irish Times no shots were fired before the massacre. Note the word massacre. On Thursday last, 47 years on, the families of those who died on that awful day gathered in the Guildhall in the hope that they would, finally, get justice. It was to be a vain hope. Soldier F is to be charged with only two murders despite the fact that he is believed to have been involved in five deaths and the wounding of four others. No other soldier will face prosecution. Outraged Needless to say the British establishment is outraged. Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson has pledged to pay all costs for Soldier F, and has clearly joined with the DUP chorus in alleging security forces personnel are being unfairly singled out when it comes to investigating legacy crimes. That is a total red herring. Gerry Moriarty, once of the Donegal Democrat and now Northern editor with the Irish Times succinctly summed it up in an analysis column in the paper on Saturday when he wrote: Claims of a betrayal and witch hunt (against State forces) hardly stand up. As pointed out by Paul OConnor of the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry, just four British soldiers have been convicted of murders relating to the Troubles and all ultimately received royal pardons and were permitted to re-join their regiments. This compared, he said, with the estimated 20,000 -30,000 former republican and loyalist paramilitaries who served time in prison for a range of offences including murder. Heres the rub. Over the years condemnation of the IRA was pretty comprehensive from all the main parties in this State most of it justified but what used to annoy large swatches of our population was the attitude of many of our own leading politicians when it came to condemnation of the actions of the British security services and its allies. There were politicians who gave them a by-ball in the belief that in any drama there should only be one villain - and that, as far as they were concerned, was the IRA. Former journalist, Anne Candwallader, in her book Lethal Allies stated the Glennane Gang were responsible for the sectarian murders of up to 120 Catholics. This gang included RUC men, members of British intelligence as well as loyalist killers. And she went on to point out that Communications minister, Conor Cruise OBrien actually publicly acknowledged alliances between these groupings, stating if he knew of collusion then so did others. All this sort of unresolved legacy stuff poisons the political well in this country, and between Ireland and Britain. Until all parties do, the chains of hurt, anger, and hatred which have been holding us all back, will never be broken. Rod Stewarts Late Late Show appearance The first record myself and the missus bought when we got our first record player was an album by Rod Stewart. I have been a fan since way back in the Maggie May/Mandolin Wind days. But, to be honest, I never really considered him back then to be a real artist; it is hard to take a guy who strutted round in gold coloured, figure hugging pants, spiked hair and a medallion seriously. I was wrong. Over the years Rod has recorded some great music. And no one was more surprised than me to learn he had recorded last year the Irish song Grace while tells the tragic tale of the marriage of Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford just hours before he was executed. I never knew either how much it meant to him. On the Late Late Show on Friday night last he got emotional when presented with a first edition copy of Plunketts poetry. The old adage about never judging a book by its cover still holds true. And what a brilliant interview it was, best in years. Young people leading the way I was delighted to see our young people take to the streets on Friday to protest about climate change. What is it they reckon, that we have only got a decade to take meaningful actions before its too late? When we have idiots like Donald Trump all but denying climate change yet the evidence is clearly all around us it needs our young people to get off their backsides to demand that change. Good on them. Home Four wheelers Four Porsche 911 GT2 RS & Other Premium Cars Sink In Atlantic Ocean After Fire Broke Out On Ship oi-Stephen Neil A container ship carrying around 2,000 cars and tonnes of chemicals sank in the Atlantic ocean on March 11, 2019. This has caused a loss of millions of dollars to several companies and heartburn to car enthusiasts because of the kind of cars that now lie at the bottom of the ocean. On board the ship was four units of the Porsche 911 GT2 RS among a total of 37 Porsche cars. Audi too has reportedly lost several cars in the incident. The ship named Grande America departed from Hamburg in Germany and was en route to Casablanca in Morocco. After docking in Morocco, it was supposed to head to Brazil where customers of the Porsche and Audi cars were awaiting their precious cargo. The incident happened after a fire broke out in one of the containers and soon spread to other containers. The ship was carrying containers with tonnes of sulphuric acid and hydrochloric acid, and these highly inflammable materials burned uncontrollably. The crew of the ship tried to put the fire out, but to no avail and they finally ended up abandoning the ship. The troubles of the crew didn't end there, as the motor on their lifeboats did not start. The crew were therefore tossed about in the rough 5-6 metre-long waves of the Atlantic Ocean. The crew had sent out an emergency 'mayday' call and therefore a Royal Navy Ship - HMS Argyll - rushed to the rescue of the crew. All 27 members of the crew were saved, but the cargo aboard the ship sank to the depths. Other than the prized 911 GT2 RS cars, Porsche Brazil lost a few 718 Caymans, Boxsters and even Cayennes. The cars were supposed to be unloaded at Santos, Brazil and then handed over to customers. Production of the Porsche 991 911 GT2 RS was stopped in February 2019, and the four cars on-board the Grande America were among the last cars to be shipped for delivery. The 911 GT2 RS is one of the best performance cars in the world and boasts of German engineering finesse. It was only a couple of days ago that the 911 GT2 RS took the record for the fastest street-legal car at the Buddh International Circuit. Such cars would only be reserved for Porsche loyalists and not anyone with enough money to buy the car. Porsche therefore took the decision to restart production of the 911 GT2 RS so that they could be delivered to their respective customers in Brazil. Porsche wrote a letter to its customers that stated, "We are sorry to inform you that, due to a fire, a Grimaldi group ship, that was transporting your vehicle, sank on March 12, 2019. And for that reason, your GT2 RS can not be delivered. As you may know, Porsche ended the 991 GT2 RS production on February 2019 and under normal circumstances, it wouldn't be possible to give you another car. But, due to the nature of the situation, and considering that you're a loyal and highly valuable customer for our brand, Porsche has decided to resume the in Germany, and your vehicle will be produced in April, with delivery scheduled for June. We recommend that you contact your local Porsche Center for further information." As for the other cars that sunk with the ship, there is no information about their manufacturer or where they were headed. Thoughts On Ship With 2,000 Cars Including Porsche 911 GT2 RS Sinks In The Atlantic Ocean It is extremely painful to see such a large number of cars sinking to the ocean floor. The ship and its cars will become an artificial reef to the fish in the ocean. Meanwhile, on land, Porsche will restart production and make sure that the cars reach their owners safely this time around. Source: Carscoops ImageSource:dailymail Most Viewed Videos The number of students attending counselling services in DkIT has more than doubled in the past 10 years, according to figures obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The 2017/2018 academic year had the highest number of appointments, with 346 students accessing counselling services. Compared to the lowest in 2008/2009, when there were 144 appointments, this is an increase of 140 percent. These figures have continued to rise almost every year, with small dips in the 2011/2012 and 2015/2016 academic years. The President of DkIT Students Union, Maria Maguire, believes that the increase in students accessing counselling is due to several factors. She thinks that before recent times, students were waiting until they reached a crisis point to reach out for help. Students are now presenting and recognising symptoms and seeking help a lot earlier, Maria says. She also explained that far more young men are presenting earlier to avoid reaching this crisis point. Another potential reason for the increase is due to increased financial strain that is being pushed on students. According to Maria, more students are taking up part-time jobs to pay rising college expenses. Since 2004, there has been a 363 percent increase in college fees, with it rising from 825 to 3000. Maria believes that this, along with funding from grants not increasing, can be the cause of unwanted mental strain on students. Mental health issues do not just hit a specific person or type of person. It can hit absolutely anybody, said Maria. DkIT have also focused on holding events to promote awareness for mental health. They recently had former Ireland rugby international, Alan Quinlan to speak to students about their mental health. Working with the Union of Students in Ireland, DkITSU hosted a Re:Charge campaign, which focused on helping students to seek support for their mental health. Much like recharging our phone batteries, we need to recharge our mental health and wellness, said the USI Vice President for Welfare, Damien McClean. For students who are seeking counselling in DkIT, there is usually a one week wait time before they are seen. However, during busier times, low risk students may be made wait longer to facilitate those who are at more immediate risk. DkIT also have supports available for students who might be struggling with college work, through their Student Learning and Development Centre. They also provide workshops based around exam and study skills. Rural learner drivers and young people around Dundalk are said to be impacted most by the lengthy wait time to sit the driving test. According to the latest figures, there are currently 748 people on a waiting list to sit their driving test in Dundalk. The test centre in Dundalk has the tenth longest waiting time in the country with a current average waiting time for a test of 9.1 weeks, with some waiting as long as three months. The figure is however an improvement on last months figure of 9.7 weeks for an average wait time, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) aims to have a national average waiting time of 10 weeks. It is understood that young people and those living in rural areas are most impacted by the lengthy waiting times, and some who have spoken to the Democrat have waited much longer than three months. Ben Mulholland, a student from Kilkerley who recently passed his test detailed how he had to wait from September till February to get a test date at the Dundalk centre. I had to do about an extra 8 or 10 refresher lessons while waiting just to make sure I was ready when I eventually got called. He added: It was also quite annoying that my car insurance deal ran out before my actual test date. Living in a rural area makes it tougher as you cant use public transport. Its even more difficult living in Dundalk than in Dublin because there is no DART, Luas or effective bus service. Stephen Kneel also a student from Kilkerley, who is currently on the waiting list for a test, spoke of his frustration at being unable to make long term plans or book a summer holiday. Ive heard through other people that the waiting list is about three months but havent gotten any official indication. He continued: Its also becoming increasingly expensive as I have to keep taking refresher lessons to make sure Im ready when I am eventually given a date. Living rurally its really restrictive from a social point of view, having to rely on other people and my parents for lifts. Commenting on similar figures released in early March local Sinn Fein TD Imelda Munster criticised the lack of planning to deal with the large numbers. The main factor causing this backlog is that there are nowhere near enough testers to deal with the demand. A significant number of testers have retired in recent years. This is foreseeable, and I do not accept that new testers could not have been recruited to ensure that these retirements did not affect the service. Munster called for further recruitment of testers at the centre, The one test centre that we have in Dundalk needs an additional six driving testers to be fully staffed and to operate at full capacity. Data released by the RSA from the Dundalk centre for one week in August last year showed a failure rate of 40%. Of the 143 tests carried out that week 67 passed (47%) and 61 failed with a further 13 people missing their appointment and 2 unable to take a test due to issue with vehicle or documentation. Addressing the national figures Minister for transport Shane Ross stated that he was aware of the issue. While also noting, There is a gradual reduction in waiting times at almost all test centres. He further commented that, With the additional resources available as well as those coming on stream, waiting times will continue to reduce at all test centres. Fianna Fail Candidate in the Dundalk Carlingford LEA has called on all the candidates in the Local Election to support the manifesto of the Disability Federation of Ireland. The Disability Federation of Ireland (DFI) has launched a campaign to make disability rights a priority for candidates in the Local and European Elections on May 24. McGreehan states: "It is so important that us candidates unanimously support positive changes for people with disabilities. Organisations like the DFI are continuously working to improve individuals quality of life and I wholeheartedly support their Manifesto." "If successful in May I want to you represent everyones views and people with disabilities make up 13.5% of our population. They deserve their voice to be heard. I want to be in a position to influence progressive policies that will directly impact peoples lives," McGreehan continued. The DFI has identified three areas that can be committed to which are: 1. Accessibility - Make all local public services are open and accessible for people who have a disability. 2. Participation - Ensure the participation of people with disabilities on local decision-making structures. 3. Planning Make sure your Local Authority publishes a United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UN CRPD, and Implementation Plan by 2020. McGreehan advised that is was: "true to say Louth County Council have included many fantastic goals and objectives in the Local Economic and Community Plan that aim to promote and support the economic and community development. There is a strong emphasis on people with disabilities and I would be looking forward to working on those goals making them a reality." Tiernans SuperValu in The Fairways Dundalk was announced as a finalist in the running for the highly coveted SuperValu Store of the Year 2019 title, making them among the top thirteen SuperValu stores in Ireland. The Louth store fought off stiff competition from 219 SuperValu stores across the country. Tiernans SuperValu was presented with their finalist award by Martin Kelleher, SuperValu Managing Director, Ian Allen, SuperValu Sales Director and JF Michel, Account Director of Three Business, the competition sponsors. SuperValu Managing Director, Martin Kelleher praised the stores success. This is a tremendous achievement for Tiernans SuperValu, as they have maintained exceptionally high retail standards across all areas of the store. SuperValu stores work hard to succeed in a very competitive market and it is the passion of the independent entrepreneurial retailers and their enthusiastic teams that is a pinnacle to their success. he said. On receipt of the finalist award, Store owner Richard Tiernan of Tiernans SuperValu paid tribute to his team acknowledging their dedication, professional approach and attention to detail. Richard went on to add We are delighted with this recognition as it reaffirms the work we have done over the year, especially in further developing our fresh food range, customer service and store initiatives to provide our customers with a top-class local shopping facility. We are thrilled to have been recognised for our efforts, not only by our customers but by our colleagues throughout the SuperValu network. Louth IFA Livestock Chairman Peter McEneaney has said that farmers selling cattle at the current unviable prices are shipping major financial losses and facing financial ruin. Mr McEneaney called on the Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed to insist that the Brexit compensation package currently being negotiated with the EU to be applied retrospectively. The IFA Livestock man said "it is very easy for Commissioner Hogan to tell farmers not to panic and for Minister Creed to adopt a wait and see approach, but the financial reality is Irish beef farmers are on their knees and urgently need a tangible response from Brussels, which addresses the Brexit losses." According to Mr McEneaney, the IFA has put detailed proposals to the Department of Agriculture on whats needed for the beef and livestock sector. He said the current base price for steers at 3.75/kg and 3.85/kg for heifers are down 25c/kg on this time last year or 100 per head. "There was little or no margin in it last year and at the low prices this year, finishers are facing financial ruin." He accused the factories and agents of overcooking the negativity around the cattle price, which he said has seriously damaged farmer confidence in the sector. Cattle farmers have faced a barrage of negativity on the price since last autumn. It is incredible that the price has been stuck at a base of 3.75 for steers and 3.85 for heifers since last September. The IFA Livestock man pointed out that cattle prices in our main export market in the UK are 3.46 for the week ending March 9th, equivalent to 4.24/kg including vat at an exchange rate of 86p/. He said this compares to the official Irish steer price of 3.84/kg for the same week, and highlights a price differential of 40c/kg or up to 150 per animal. Across the main EU markets R3 male cattle are making the following; Italy (Y Bulls) 4.31/kg, France (steers) 3.92/kg, Y Bulls 4.06/kg, Germany (Y Bulls) 3.93/kg, Spain (Y Bulls) 3.98/kg. He concluded by saying, "the very strong cattle price in our main export market in the UK and the stronger prices across the main EU markets for male cattle all indicate that the factories here could be paying more." On numbers, Peter McEneaney said the latest weekly kill of 34,200 excluding calves point to some level of tightening in supplies. This is the first time that the kill has come back to last years levels. The cost of land in Louth is the third highest in Ireland according to the annual land price survey from the Irish Farmers Journal, with the county coming behind Dublin and Kildare in the rankings. The survey which covers all 32 counties also revealed that while almost a quarter of the land sold nationally is being bought by business people; a huge 43% of land sold in Louth in 2017 was sold to businesses or business people. This is the fourth consecutive year that the countys land values have risen, in Louth last year land prices stood at 13,169 per acre up from 12,584 in 2017, representing a 4.6% increase. Louth also continued a trend of having a low supply of land, with just 608 acres coming on the market in 2018, down 12% on the 783 acres offered in 2017. According to the survey a number of factors have driven the increase in prices, including storm Emma, the fodder crisis and the drought experienced across the country in the summer which brought serious pressure on farmers and saw farming costs rise sharply. It seems likely that the rise in businesses purchasing land is also adding to the competition which in turn has seen an increase in prices, 57% of purchased land in Louth sold for over 14,000 per acre in 2018. Commenting on the figures Gerard Melia, County Chair of the Louth Irish Farmers Association (IFA), stated that the figures were to be expected. At the moment theres not a lot of confidence in the farming community, farmers are finding it increasingly hard to survive and some see no other option other than to sell. He continued: Dairy and beef prices mean farmers are really struggling and of course Brexit isnt going to help things either, its small farmers who are hit the hardest and we risk seeing the loss of small scale farming altogether. Commenting on the low supply of land he concluded: Louth is a small county which obviously means theres going to be a small amount of land available and of course this means that prices are going to be high because of this scarcity. Wafilin Systems announced that it has entered into a Channel Partner agreement with SUEZs Water Technologies & Solutions Netherlands for joint development and commercialisation of filtration and separation systems. The strategic cooperation enables Wafilin and Suez to unlock the market for customers with specific environmental challenges, especially in the field of resource recovery. The closure of this agreement follows years of intensive cooperation between the companies. Andries van der Vegt (left) of Suezs Water Technologies & Solutions Netherlands and Henk Schonewille (right) of Wafilin Systems signed the agreement (Photo: Ruth Rottine/Wafilin) Tailor-made solutions Wafilin is specialised in smart membrane filtration systems and wants to support the food and diary sector in the future development of top-quality products. Suez Water in the Netherlands sees the cooperation with Wafilin as an opportunity to be able to offer its customers more tailor-made solutions. Andries van der Vegt, Global Service Director at SUEZs Water Technologies & Solutions Netherlands: "Wafilin has proven itself over the past years by connecting a number of new customers to us. It is a company with a strong passion toward developing solutions for environmental challenges in various areas." Van der Vegt: "We see a lot of potential in the Dutch market and notice that our proposition in this region is working well. With Wafilin, we have found a good partner to unlock this growth market for us". Food and diary market Henk Schonewille, CEO at Wafilin Systems: "We are delighted to be able to add Suez to our high-quality offer-range." Schonewille emphasises the ability to deliver an even better, tailor-made solution to our customers, especially in the food and dairy market. "This collaboration is an important next step in achieving our vision of ground-breaking and smart membrane filtration solutions for the world of tomorrow." Based at the Leeuwarden Water Campus, Wafilin can use highly advanced research facilities both for water treatment and food production. About Suez In 2018 Suez generated total revenues of 17.3 billion euros in the five continents. The company is a world leader in providing sustainable resource management for cities and industries. Suez secures water resources, delivering wastewater treatment services to 58 million people and reusing 882 million m3 of wastewater. About Wafilin Systems Wafilin brings over 40 years of experience in designing specialized membrane-based solutions for high-efficiency applications in the food & beverages, textile and dairy industries. It qualifies itself as masters in membrains and delivers unique technology concepts to reduce the costs of complex processes and unlock hidden values for higher profitability and growth. Wafilin is based at the Water Campus, alongside the Water Application Centre (WAC) and the Food Application Centre for Technology (FACT), who provide the research facilities to develop unique solutions. This news item was originally published on the website of Wafilin. (Photos: Wafilin) Read also on this website EWTW2018: Wafilin Systems announces membrane installation for Avebe in Ducam project, the Netherlands, 27 September 2018 Wafilin and Westra developed special BioAir DS ultrafiltration version for high tech metal working machine, 4 December 2012 Amsterdam International Water Week 2017: Sightseeing hot stuff at Aquatechs Innovation Avenue, 3 November 2017 Expertise: Water technology More information Wafilin Systems Leeuwarden, the Netherlands +31 58 288 35 05 www.wafilinsystems.nl The Chinese embassy and Chinese community in Zimbabwe have provided emergency aid to local victims hit by Cyclone Idai. Blankets and quilts donated by the Chinese community in Zimbabwe are being unloaded on Wednesday, March 20, 2019. The goods are to help Zimbabwean victims affected by Cyclone Idai. [Photo: China Plus] Food, purified water, blankets, tents A bunch of relief goods thats worth 200-thousand U.S. dollars have been donated by the Chinese Embassy and Chinese community in Zimbabwe, to help those badly hit by Cyclone Idai. Speaking at the handover ceremony of the goods, Chinese ambassador to Zimbabwe Guo Shaochun says China stands ready to support Zimbabwe to go through the difficult times. Guo Shaochun suggests, besides the emergency aid to help relieve the disaster triggered by cyclone Idai, more assistance is coming from China to help with Zimbabwes development. In the next few days, the Chinese government will provide more assistance through official channels. We will donate funds and 10,165 tons of rice to the Zimbabwean people and drill another 500 boreholes for Zimbabwe this year. We hope all these will help Zimbabwean people to gain strength and confidence to overcome the difficulty. Local Chinese communities such as the Chamber of Chinese Enterprises in Zimbabwe, the Chinese Federation of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe-China Business Association have contributed to the donations. The SinoZim Wildlife Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting wild animals in Zimbabwe, has also dispatched three inflatable rescue boats to the affected areas to help those who are still trapped. Li Manjuan, Vice President of the Zimbabwe-China Business Association, says the Chinese community in Zimbabwe is eager to make their own contributions the disaster relief efforts in spite of the economic hardship. She says more relief goods are pouring in and will be delivered to the disaster-stricken areas in the coming days. The Chinese community, be it enterprises or individuals, is undergoing a hard time as the local economy is still sluggish. Yet they are actively making donations. Weve collected several truckloads of goods in four days time. And more donations are coming. Martin Rushwaya, permanent secretary of Zimbabwes Ministry of Defence and War Veterans Affairs, has expressed his gratitude for the help from China. He says the donations are due to relieve the sufferings of the victims. "These donation of various assortments of food items and blankets by the Chinese embassy in conjunction with the Chinese business community will go a long way in alleviating the plight of the victims of the cyclone. As the saying goes: a friend in need is a friend indeed. The Chinese have demonstrated that they are friend at a time of our need and as such friends indeed to Zimbabwe." The first batch of relief goods has been delivered to the cyclone-affected areas. Cyclone Idai has killed at least 98 people in Zimbabwe. The death toll is likely to rise as hundreds are still missing. Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa is visiting the worst-hit areas, leading the rescue operations. The record flooding in the Midwest that has now been blamed for four deaths could also have lasting consequences for the region's many farmers. Flooding has swamped fields and stockpiles and drowned or harmed livestock in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and other states. In Nebraska alone, the loss of crops and livestock is estimated to total nearly $1 billion, Reuters reported Tuesday. "The economy in agriculture is not very good right now. It will end some of these folks farming, family legacies, family farms," Iowa farmer Farmer Jeff Jorgenson told The Associated Press. "There will be farmers that will be dealing with so much of a negative they won't be able to tolerate it." One of those farmers might be Anthony Ruzicka of Verdigre, Nebraska. His family has been farming the same plot for five generations, since the 1800s. But the floods have destroyed their farmhouse, littered their alfalfa and corn fields with chunks of ice and killed at least 15 of their cattle. "There's not many farms left like this, and it's probably over for us too, now," Ruzicka The New York Times. "Financially, how do you recover from something like this?" Not only crops were lost. The floods have damaged roads, bridges and railways farmers rely on to move their products to processing plants and shipping centers, Reuters reported. Such a major blow to U.S. farmers is likely to have national consequences. "This will impact the food on your table," Chair of Nebraska's Democratic Party Jane Fleming Kleeb tweeted, as The New Food Economy reported. Bad Timing The floods come at a bad time for farmers for a variety of reasons. Seasonally, the floods have come just as farmers usually start their spring planting and need dry weather in order to get seeds in the ground. At the same time, farmers in the region are generally suffering. The number of farms that filed for bankruptcy last year rose by 19 percent, the highest level in more than ten years. Further, incomes from farming have fallen by more than 50 percent because of a global glut of grain, Reuters reported. To make matters worse, a trade war with China has meant the country has stopped importing U.S. soybeans. Many farmers had stored last years' crops of grain and soy in hopes of better prices, and now some of those stores have been destroyed. "I've never seen anything like this in my life," Winslow, Nebraska farmer Tom Geisler, who lost two storage bins full of corn, told Reuters. "We had been depending on the income from our livestock, but now all of our feed is gone, so that is going to be even more difficult. We haven't been making any money from our grain farming because of trade issues and low prices." BRISTOL BOROUGH >> The Bristol Riverside Theatre (120 Radcliffe Street) brings back a holiday favorite and welcomes audiences home this holiday season. "An American Christmas Songbook," the theatres first concert in the theatre since 2019, gathers audiences December 9-19 for a heartwarming evening of favorite carols and songs performed by a cast of BRT favorites. Former BRT Artistic Director Keith... A U.S. federal judge temporarily blocked oil and gas drilling on 300,000 acres of federal leases in Wyoming Tuesday, arguing that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) "did not sufficiently consider climate change" when auctioning off the land, The Washington Post reported. The land was leased under the Obama administration in 2015 and 2016, but the ruling has implications for the Trump administration's agenda of boosting fossil fuel production across the country. "This is the Holy Grail ruling we've been after, especially with oil and gas," Jeremy Nichols, Director of the Climate and Energy Program of WildEarth Guardians, the group that filed the lawsuit along with Physicians for Social Responsibility, told the Associated Press. "It calls into question the legality of oil and gas leasing that's happening everywhere." The ruling by U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras goes further than previous rulings that faulted the government for not considering the climate implications of fossil fuel projects on federal land. That's because Contreras said that BLM must consider potential emissions from all former, current or likely future leases every time it leases land for oil and gas development. "Given the national, cumulative nature of climate change, considering each individual drilling project in a vacuum deprives the agency and the public of the context necessary to evaluate oil and gas drilling on federal land before irretrievably committing to that drilling," he wrote, as The Washington Post reported. Some of the land leased was for fracking, a point emphasized by the groups behind the suit. "Fracked gas is dangerous for people and terrible for the climate," Environment and Health Program director for Physicians for Social Responsibility Barbara Gottlieb said in a press release issued by the Western Environmental Law Center, which partnered with the two non-profits on the case. "This latest court win is not only a victory for our health and future, but it reinforces that the oil and gas industry doesn't get a free pass to pollute." Offshore and land-based oil, gas and coal leasing by the federal government accounts for 25 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and oil and gas drilling is responsible for around 40 percent of that amount, a U.S. Geological Survey report found. Tuesday's ruling doesn't ban drilling on the leased land entirely, but rather orders BLM to redo its assessment of the impact of the leases. "This decision should not be interpreted as a ban on leasing activities," environmental lawyer Harry Weiss, who has represented oil and gas companies before, told The Associated Press. "The court is not ruling on whether it's thumbs up or thumbs down. The court is simply grading how the administration did analyzing the issues." However, both supporters and opponents of the ruling agreed it could have a chilling impact on oil and gas activities. (UN Photo: Jess Hoffman)Nicolas Maduro Moros, Venezuelan president, addresses the a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Nov. 12, 2015 The Vatican issued an unheeded urgent appeal to Venezuela's leaders to suspend its new Constituent Assembly which, it says, is threatening the future of the South American nation. The strongly worded statement, issued by the Vatican's Secretariat of State, said Pope Francis is following closely the situation in Venezuela, where President Nicolas Maduro accelerated a showdown with the opposition, as he inaugurated his bitterly-opposed new assembly. The message came as the body's 545 delegates were installed at the legislative palace in Caracas, close to the chamber where the opposition-controlled National Assembly meets. The Vatican had joined dozens of States in rejecting the new assembly, which it said "creates a climate of tension and conflict" in the overwhelmingly Catholic country, The Guardian reported. The United States said will not recognise the consituent assembly, the State Department had said on Aug. 3, calling it "the illegitimate product of a flawed process," Reuters reported. Despite the Vatican's strongly-worded statement, a Catholic priest gave his blessing at the inauguration on Friday of the body which will have the power to rewrite the constitution and dissolve State institutions. Maduro wants the new Constituent Assembly to rewrite the country's constitution and holds powers that override all other government branches. Opposition leaders have denounced the erosion of democracy and pledged they will only be removed by force. More than 125 people have already been killed in over three months of violent anti-government protests. The statement expresses "profound concern for the radicalisation and worsening of the crisis," including the increase in deaths, injuries and arrests of protesters. It called on all of Venezuela's politicians, in particular, the government, to guarantee "full respect for human rights and basic freedoms, as well as for the existing Constitution." The Vatican said the new Constituent Assembly should be "avoided or suspended" since its "foments a climate of tension and conflict" which "mortgages the future" of the country, rather than fostering reconciliation and peace. The statement calls for a negotiated solution, along the lines already indicated in a previous letter from the Secretary of State on December 1, 2016. These solutions must take into account "the serious suffering of the people", due to a lack of security, as well as the shortages of food and medicine. (Photo: REUTERS / Carlos Garcia Rawlins)Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro attends to a meeting with representatives of the opposition, the Roman Catholic Church and Union of South American Nations' (UNASUR) at Miraflores Palace in Caracas April 10, 2014. Maduro hosted Venezuelan opposition leaders on Thursday at the start of mediated talks intended to stem two months of political unrest that has killed dozens in the OPEC nation. Pope Francis has spoken on the political and human rights crisis that is still devastating in Venezuela, saying that the United Nations needs to be involved in reaching a solution. Francis spoke to journalist aboard his overnight flight from Colombia to Rome on Sept. 10 after his trip to the South American country and touched on Venezuela, Catholic News Agency reported. "It seems that it's a very hard thing, and the most painful is the humanitarian problem, the many people who escape or suffer...we must help to resolve it in any way (possible). I think the U.N. must also make itself felt there to help," the Pope said after the Sept. 6 to 10 visit. Francis, his eye bandaged and blackened after an accident in the popemobile, wrapped up his trip to Colombia on appealing to the country to "untie the knots of violence" after a 50-year civil war, Reuters reported. "I think that the Holy See has spoken strongly and clearly," he said on the plane, also mentioning the many times he has spoken about the situation in Venezuela during his Angelus addresses. The pontiff was asked about President Nicolas Maduro's inconsistent rhetoric, in particular his claim to be "with" Pope Francis, while at the same time speaking out violently against the country's bishops. "What President Maduro says, he can explain. I don't know what he has in his mind," Francis said, On Sept. 11 the UN human rights chief said in a speech that Venezuelan security forces may have committed crimes against humanity against protesters and called for an international investigation. "There is a very real danger that tensions will further escalate, with the Government crushing democratic institutions and critical voices," said Zeid. However, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said at the same meeting as Zeid, that protesters used firearms and home-made weapons against security forces, but said, "Our country is now at peace." FOUR EX-PRESIDENTS In his on flight conversation the Pope mentioned the extensive work of the Holy See to promote dialogue in the country, including the agreement to send a group of four ex-presidents as facilitators in a meeting between the Venezuelan government and the opposition Oct. 30, 2016. The group was made up of former Colombian president Ernesto Samper Pizano, the secretary general of UNASUR (the Union of South American Nations); Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain; Martin Torrijos of Panama; and Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic. The Vatican also sent Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli to participate as a nuncio of the Holy See. Francis said that after "speaking with the people," the Holy See has also spoken to Venezuela in a private manner, possibly referring to a private meeting that occurred between him and President Maduro at the Vatican last October. Venezuela continues to face escalating protests and violence, as President Nicolas Maduro has suppressed opposition and democracy activists, and moved to seize legislative power in the country. The United Sates and several other nations have dismissed as illegitimate the results of a July 30 election convened by Maduro. Just like any other news (read gossip) hungry millennial, I was lazily scrolling through my Twitter feed yesterday when I stumbled across Vivek Anand Oberoi's timeline and his big announcement. He tweeted, "A glimpse of a journey youve all been waiting to see unravels today at 3 pm. We all seek your blessings." I was elated. The clock struck 3. All my drafts were saved and I juggled between Twitter and Youtube, refreshing the feed every 30 seconds to get a glimpse of Vivek and Omung Kumar's version of Modi Ji's life. An hour down the line, except for a few poorly edited fan-made videos, I found nothing. Just like my Acche Din. Or the 15 lakh I was expecting to see in my bank account. I knew I shouldn't have trusted the tweet by someone whose Twitter handle didn't have the 'Chowkidar' prefix. I had to get back to work. Hours later, somebody alerted me saying that the trailer was out. Earphones were plugged in. YouTube screen was set to HD. The video was played. And let me tell you, those were the best 2 minutes and 35 seconds of my 24-year-long life. Twenty seconds into the trailer, I hear a crowd cheering Dhoni, Dhoni. Wait a second. Am I watching the wrong trailer? Of course not. The crowd was cheering for Modiji. Damn! Kunal Kamra was right. He could only think of a hypothetical situation where Modiji could bat for India. Having watched Kamra's stand-up comedy a couple of days back, this was more like deja vu. *Goosebumps* Then comes the adorable little Modiji aka Naru. Naru wears an oversized Nehru Jacket, pardon, Modi Vest with 'Sabki Chai, Modi Chai' written on its back. Holy cow! The sensational 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas' was Naru's idea. Naru serves tea to the passengers in a local bus and worships the national flag. Did he serve chai to Nehru and get it thrown on his face? (I'll watch the film twice in PVR and even buy their jumbo popcorn tubs if the filmmaker promises that). Naru is a grown man now. That's when the travel bug bit him. Here's a lesson for all millennials out there. If your parents are standing between you and your #Wanderlust goals, you tell them, "Mai Sanyasi banna chahta hu," ( I wish to become a monk). If they don't buy it, show them this trailer. Pack your bags, go out, see the most picturesque locations in the country, bid goodbye to formals and resort to comfy desi clothes and once you've seen it all, come back home. Tell your folks that you want to serve the country and then start wearing khaki shorts everywhere. Travel goals, fashion goals, this trailer has it all. Here's the trailer btw: Just when Bollywood had almost convinced me that only Punjabis have the right amount of SWAG to ride a Royal Enfield, our boy is back impeccably impersonating a Sardar. He even says 'Jo bole so nihaal. Sat sri akal'. Now my question is to Jaspreet Singh Did Jassi like this? Also, will all the Marvel and DC fans stop fighting for 155 seconds? Your Iron Man has a suit, Captain America has a shield, but our Modiji has a Tricolour flag and a 56-inch chest. By the way filmmakers, Vivek Oberoi's chest measures 43". A whole 13 inches narrower than Modiji's. Talk about lack of attention to detail. Later, a grown-up Modiji is sad that no one identifies themselves as a 'Hindustani'. At the time of the Godhra riots, there is Modiji in the foreground, with a classic 'Yeh sab kya ho raha hai?' expression saying, "Mera Gujarat jal raha hai." Wait a second. I've seen this somewhere. Was it Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight? More power to Vivek, really. Modiji says that he won't move till his country is safe, except perhaps when he's travelling all around the world. The film also shows Vivek Oberoi's Modiji as a Sardar, Modiji in the GoT setting, Modiji as Manjhi the Mountain Man and Modiji as Gabbar Singh (listen to the 'Haath kat dunga dialogue'). Now as I'm watching this trailer which is super exciting, funny, inspirational, emotional and action-packed all at once I can't help thinking, will I get to see Modiji in the Chowkidar costume as well? (Views expressed here are the author's own and do not reflect those of the publication) A federal district judge in Washington ruled this month that the U.S. Department of Education cannot delay implementation of a policy intended to draw closer attention to minority over-representation in special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This rule, known as Equity in IDEA, was slated to go into effect for 2018-19, before Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos put a two-year hold in place so that the regulation could be studied further. The judges March 6 decision to eliminate that hold now has states, districts, and schools wondering what comes next as federal education officials weigh their options. Heres some background on policies in play. Just what is Equity in IDEA? The Equity in IDEA rule, finalized in December 2016, is meant to address what the Obama administration saw as widespread disparities in the treatment of minority students in special education. Under the rule, states must use a standardized approach to monitoring how their districts identify and serve minority students with disabilities. The administrations rationale was that all states should use a similar yardstick when it comes to investigating if districts are identifying and punishing minority students at markedly higher rates than their peerswhat the law calls significant disproportionality. If a district is found to have significant disparities in how it identifies minority students for special education, disciplines minority special education students, or places them in classrooms separate from their general education peers, it must use 15 percent of its federal special education money to address those problems. Were states already monitoring districts for this issue? Yes. The IDEA has required such monitoring since 1997. But prior to the rule, the law left it up to each state to determine if a district had disparities that were broad enough to merit intervention. Only a small fraction of the nations school districts have ever been identified as having significant disproportionality. For the 2016-17 school year, the Education Week Research Center found that 457 districts were required to spend nearly $200 million to address disparities. Thats about 3 percent of the nations districts. Is that small fraction of identified districts a problem? The Obama administration thought so. Its argument was that more districts need to be thinking carefully about how minority students in special education are treated. The Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, had the same opinion. In 2013, it issued a report saying that because states were using so many different methodologies, significant disproportionality was likely going unaddressed. Why did the Trump administration want to set the rule aside? When President Trump took office in 2017, he directed all of his cabinet officials to look at sweeping away unnecessary, outdated, and duplicative regulations. This particular rule would have stood out because of its financial impactif more districts end up being tagged as having significant disparities, then more districts would be required to use their federal special education funds to fix those problems. No one knows how many districts would be affected, but its almost certain that it would be more than 3 percent. The argument DeVos put forward is that the rule might prompt districts to create quotas to avoid penalties. The secretary is concerned that the regulations will create an environment where children in need of special education and related services do not receive those services because of the color of their skin, the Education Department said when it announced the delay. The Council of Parent Advocates and Attorneys, which supported the rule, promised to sue over the delay. The judges decision was a win for that group. What was the basis of the judges decision? U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, in the District of Columbia, said that the Education Department violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies propose and implement regulations. The department failed to show a reasoned explanation for the delay and to consider the costs of the delay, the ruling said. For example, Chutkan said, the concerns about quotas had already been addressed when the rule was debated back in 2016, and DeVos was not able to show how the decisions made then were insufficient. Notably, the judge said, the department was prepared to let states go ahead and use the new rule if they wanted to; it was only delaying the rules mandatory use. That undercuts the departments stated concern that the rule would prompt illegal quotas, she said. Whats been the response from state and district special education leaders? The National Association of State Directors of Special Education says states have spent significant time and resources thus far in addressing disproportionality, and are committed to continuing this critical work. We believe equity should be a central tenet in all facets of IDEA, and will work closely with the U.S. Department of Education to assist in determining next steps or implementing any new initiatives on this matter. The Council of Administrators of Special Education, which represents district special education leaders, said that it stands ready to work with the Education Department. But it also took exception to the departments argument about quotas. Nobody ever believed school-based teams acting in the best interests of children would be denying children special education services simply because too many children of color were already receiving these services. It goes against everything our organization believes to be true about how to support students with disabilities, said the organizations executive director, Luann Purcell. What should school leaders be watching for next? When the ruling came out earlier this month, Education Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Hill said it was being reviewed, and no additional information has been forthcoming. But this is a position the department has been in before. The Education Department tried to delay another Obama-era rule intended to protect student loan borrowers who were defrauded by their colleges or universities. DeVos argued that the rule made it too easy for student borrowers to cancel their loans. But when a judge found that delaying that rule was also arbitrary and capricious, the department said it would defer to the courts judgment. If the department were to take the same position in this case, the Equity in IDEA rule would go back into effect. If the department were to challenge the judges decision, it would have to ask for a stay of that ruling. That would still leave the rule and its timelines in effect while a court studies the issue, said Selene Almazan, the legal director for the Council of Parent Advocates and Attorneys. School leaders also will need to keep an eye on any new implementation guidelines; the rule envisioned a two-year, stakeholder-driven process before it went into effect in 2018-19. That school year is almost over, so would the new rule be expected to go into effect for the 2019-20 school year, just a handful of months away? The answer is not clear. Also not clear is whether the Education Department might create rules of its own around this issue. It signaled that a new proposed rule might be coming in February, but its proposal hasnt been seen yet. New Mexico is planning a major shakeup of its plan to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act . And its not the only state thats mulling changes. Among others with potential revisions in the works: Indiana, Michigan, South Carolina, and Wyoming. Those rewrites could present an interesting test for U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team. Will the department let a state go in an entirely new direction, as long as what it is proposing to do is still kosher under the law? DeVos has approved ESSA plans for every state and the District of Columbia. Most state plans were in place at some point during the 2017-18 school year. So far, the department has outlined a streamlined process for approving changes to states ESSA plans. State chiefs must first consult with their governors and give the education community an opportunity to comment. Then they need to send DeVos staff a revised version of the plan that reflects the proposed changes in red, a cover letter describing what they want to do differently, and an explanation of how they reached out to the public to get feedback on the revisions. Any changes that could affect how a state flags low-performing schools in the 2019-20 school year were supposed to have been submitted by March 1. Revisions submitted after that date will still be accepted and reviewed, but states may not be able to implement the changes by next school year. This process applies to small tweaks, as well as to dramatic changes, along the lines of what New Mexico is proposing . It wants to ditch the states system for rating schools on an A-F scale and replace it with broader labels for schools. Schools in the top quartile of schools in the state would be labeled as spotlight schools. Those in the middle 50 percent would be considered traditional support schools. And those in the bottom 25 percent would get one of ESSAs labels, including targeted support (for schools where subgroups of students are struggling) and comprehensive support (for low-performing schools). The department has approved similar systems for other states under ESSA. The state is also seeking to ditch the PARCC tests from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and rework its teacher evaluation system, arguably the toughest in the country. And the new interim state education chief, Karen Trujillo, has signaled more changes are coming, according to the Albuquerque Journal. The changes arent coming out of left field. The original ESSA plan was developed under the previous governor, Susana Martinez, a Republican. The new governor, Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, ran on getting rid of many of the changes Martinezs administration put in place, including the teacher-evaluation system and the A-F rating system. The former state chief, Christopher Ruszkowski, said the new proposal represents an important test for DeVos and her department. Right now in New Mexico, the big concern for a lot of [advocates]: Will the department provide the right degree of scrutiny to any amendments to a particular plan? he said. Dan Gordon, a senior legal and policy adviser for EducationCounsel, which provides policy consultation on ESSA, said he doesnt think making changes to a plan necessarily means it is being watered down. I think its a mistake to view amendments as just retreats or bad news or driven by politics, he said. The fact is, we want states to periodically review their approach. If their approaches are not delivering for kids, I would say they have not just a legal but a moral obligation to rethink and to revise and to improve. Tweaking Systems Elsewhere, Indiana is seeking to move away from its letter-grade system for federal accountability and replace it with new labels: exceeds expectations, meets expectations, approaches expectations, and does not meet expectations. Wyoming has also developed an amendment that reworks the states goals, in part because of a new testing system. Then there are bills under consideration in state legislatures that could force changes to ESSA plans. South Carolina is mulling legislation that would call for students to receive a yearly rating of their math and literacy skills. The legislation would also scrap some social studies and science testing, which might mean revisions to South Carolinas ESSA plan. Theres also potential ESSA drama in Michigan, where lawmakers voted last year to replace the accountability system at the center of the states approved plan. They decided instead to use a new, letter-based accountability system that judges schools on English and math proficiency on a state test, growth in English and math scores, and growth among English-language learners, among other measures. That state system, however, conflicts with ESSA and the main federal special education law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. That means, for now, that the state is using two separate systems: the one approved by the department for federal accountability and the new A-F system for state accountability. Some in Michigan have suggested the state could ask the federal government for waivers in order to use the new state A-F system for federal accountability, but it is unlikely that those changes would be approved before the new school grades are implemented, said Martin Ackley, a spokesman for the Michigan education department. The state is considering next steps, he said. Schools and districts depend on a host of outsiders to help them create powerful learning experiences for all their students. A loose collection of curriculum providers, tutoring programs, staff developers, management consultants, and school designers forms what education professor Brian Rowan calls the school improvement industry. Debates have swirled around these external providers for some time. On the one hand, federal funding intended to support evidence-tested strategies that help schools improve has fueled their growth. On the other, critics charge the spread of these outsiders has come with little evidence of improvements in student learning. Numerous factors contribute to this complicated state of affairs. Schools face constant demands to make rapid improvements in student performance. And it takes significant time, effort, and costs to develop programs and prove their effectiveness. Although some providers have demonstrated the effectiveness of their programs through research, with thousands of schools seeking to improve, it should not surprise us that they turn to thousands of materials, practices, and programs that are not yet proven. Policymakers and school leaders cant sit on the sidelines waiting for outside providers to produce more effective programs. They need be able to take advantage of all available support and to use it thoughtfully as part of an overall strategy to improve student learning. Policymakers and school leaders can't sit on the sidelines waiting for outside providers to produce more effective programs." To help policymakers, school leaders, and providers understand the possibilities and challenges of this work, my colleagues and I studied the nature, extent, and collective impact of programs aimed at improving student learning available in one subject (reading) at one level (public elementary schools) in one large urban school system (New York City). Our recent research brief and report documented more than 100 programs that work directly with students or teachers to improve reading outcomes in New York City public elementary schools. A review of a representative sample of 26 of these programs revealed a wide range of goalssome programs focused on specific skills like improved reading comprehension, others on the mastery of common-core standards. Only 19 percent of the sample programs had publicly available evaluations reporting on their outcomes, although many were using research-supported approaches. The programs demonstrated substantial reach, however, suggesting that this school improvement industry could serve as a valuable lever for system-wide change. In fact, 26 of the sample programs were reaching 16 percent of all elementary schools in the city. We also found some basis for collective impact, as just over half of the sample programs were implemented in collaboration with at least one other sample program. At the same time, the sample programs got support and information from a wide range of sources of funding and expertise that are themselves likely to be only loosely related. What would it take to increase the collective impact of this external support? Long-term strategies can build on efforts at the national level to identify effective programs, to support research use, and to foster networked improvement communities. At the local level, districts, providers, and funders can all pursue short-term strategies to promote greater coordination, coherence, and collective impact right now: Share information and build awareness by regularly mapping which programs are providing support in key aspects of schooling. Periodic scans of the educational environment in areas like reading, math, and school improvement could identify the outside support available, reveal areas of overlap, and expose underserved areas where more support might be needed. Anyone can take the initiative in this work: districts, schools, providers, or funders. Support coordination, common understanding, and coherence. Local hub organizations can bring together stakeholders from inside and outside schools to jointly reflect on the information from these periodic scans and other research. These hubs could then identify common needs, discuss relevant research and effective practices, and develop agreements on standards and expectations. Build broad coalitions for collective impact. Alliances and collaborations could enable strategic partners to take on emerging needs in local neighborhoods or broader regions. Everyone involved must recognize the need for greater investments in building the capacity of both external support providers and schools. In the meantime, these three strategies establish a middle way between adding more bureaucratic requirements and letting 1,000 flowers bloom. Districts face an intimidating array of cybersecurity threats. What are some of the common-sense steps they can take to make sure theyre protected, or that theyre at least lessening the risks? 1Determine the systems you need to protect the most and build your cyber protections out from there. Districts should identify informationsuch as students personal data, or financial recordsthat must be safeguarded and set a baseline of controls around that information, says Doug Levin, the president of EdTech Strategies, LLC. The first steps in protecting that information from hackers are likely to include actions such as running anti-virus products, having proper firewalls, and segmenting networks so a hacker cant get access to everything at once. More sophisticated protections can be scaffolded on from there, such as two-factor password authentication. But many of those more rigorous steps require a heavier lift from the IT department, and potentially for district employees and students. Districts need to make a judgment about how sophisticated hackers coming after their information are likely to be, says Levin, and what protections are worth it. 2Train your staff, and retrain them. Teachers, administrators, and other employees need help on how to identify threats. And they need reminders throughout the year. Some districts have sought to make this training engaging, through videos and gamification. As part of their training, staff should be given information that details what phishing e-mails and other scams look like. When districts are hit by cyberattacks, its often because staff members dont recognize the threat. As one district administrator told Education Week: Our biggest threat is ourselves. In addition, key staff should regularly be trained on how to respond to crises, and the K-12 systems crisis plan should be revised after an attack, based on how well the district performs during a simulation, according to a checklist put forward by the Consortium for School Networking. 3Think about restricting administrative access. Some districts dont allow teachers, students, or even top district administrators to download software on their machines that could allow malware or a virus to penetrate their networks. About This Report This Education Week examination of K-12 cybersecurity is the second of three special reports focused on the needs of K-12 district technology leaders, including chief technology officers. Each report in the series features exclusive results of a new, nationally representative survey of CTOs, conducted by the Consortium for School Networking, an organization representing K-12 district technology officials. This doesnt mean district officials cant download anything. But it means they cant download resources that will install software or make system changes that could infect a machine and eventually a network, says Melissa Tebbenkamp, the director of instructional technology for the 9,000-student Raytown, Mo., Quality Schools, which has put in place those types of controls. Keep in mind that in many districts, restricting administrative access will come as a huge cultural shift, especially for teachers and administrators who are used to downloading what they want. Try to figure out what essential resources these staff need to do their jobs, then limit the amount of freelance downloading of software on devices throughout the district. 4Have an emergency-response plan in place for when a cyberattack hits. Key personnel in a district should be trained on how to respond to a cybersecurity crisis, which means putting staff through simulations of attacks, advises CoSN. Districts need to make sure that plan has been updated relatively recently; COSN advises a refresh at least every two years. District tech leaders should also be prepared in other ways. They should know who their point of contact is in local law enforcement, advises Levin. And they should make sure the school systems attorney knows about cyber threats and how the district should respond. In addition, K-12 officials need to know whether the district and its vendors have cyber insurance, and what it covers. Pinning all of this down up front is easier than trying to scramble for help after a crisis has struck. 5Monitor your networks for intrusions. CoSN recommends that districts have live monitoring in place to keep track of network intrusions and viruses. Thats important, because the focus of many hackers is not stealing students or school employees personal information, says Tebbenkamp. For some, the main focus is resource utilizationgaining access to the districts network to launch attacks on other users, so the attack cant be traced back to the hacker. If a district is tracking information on its server, it has a better chance of knowing when malicious activity is underway. 6Set clear expectations for education and technology companies. Make sure you have a point person or group of people who are evaluating software for data-security and vulnerabilities. That evaluation needs to occur even if a district is only using an ed-tech product for a short term, such as with a pilot, says Tebbenkamp. She also advises districts to have data-governance contracts with vendors, ensuring that they follow best practices. Contract provisions include making sure data is secure, including the times when it is transmitted; that any company staff who come in contact with district data have background checks; and that data gets deleted when it is no longer needed by the school district. District tech leaders have different concerns about cybersecurity, and different strategies for addressing those concerns, which vary by the size of their school systems. Compared to their rural counterparts, administrators from big-city districts are more likely to say their worries about protecting their K-12 systems are on the riseand theyre more likely to have begun implementing formal password-management policies and measures. Thats according to a survey conducted by the Consortium for School Networking and the Education Week Research Center of more than 300 ed-tech leaders. Overall, 68 percent of leaders say that student-data privacy and security is a somewhat or much more important priority this year compared with last year. That share rises to 82 percent for administrators from urban school districts. By comparison, its 68 percent for suburban leaders and 64 percent for their rural peers. This is not to say that student data privacy and security are unimportant to leaders from rural districts. They may have more basic concernslike accessing the internet in the first place. Even as the percentage of U.S. schools with WiFi skyrocketed from 30 percent to 98 percent between 2013 and 2018according to data from the nonprofit EducationSuperHighwaymany rural schools continue to face challenges merely getting connected. But within the biggest K-12 systems, cybersecurity is seen as an urgent problem. One hundred percent of leaders from large districts with more than 50,000 students report that student data privacy and security is a somewhat or much more important priority this year compared with last year. That percentage falls to 63 percent for those from small districts with fewer than 1,000 students. Across the country, worries about cybersecurity among tech leaders from districts of all sizes have soared over the past few years, notes Keith Krueger, the chief executive officer of the Consortium for School Networking. But the challenges that rural school systems face in protecting themselves from cyber threats are especially acute, he said. If the largest school K-12 districts are scrambling to keep up, one can only imagine the challenge for small school systems with no technical staff, Krueger explained. The best you can do is [find out] what best practice is, implement that, and make sure your school board and your superintendent understand that these are the steps worth takingand that even with those best steps, bad things can happen. Shunning Password Protections All districts face hurdles in responding to threats and in creating safeguards that are both effective and reasonably easy to manage, said Keith Bockwoldt, the chief information officer for the 4,500-student Hinsdale High School District in Illinois. About This Report This Education Week examination of K-12 cybersecurity is the second of three special reports focused on the needs of K-12 district technology leaders, including chief technology officers. Each report in the series features exclusive results of a new, nationally representative survey of CTOs, conducted by the Consortium for School Networking, an organization representing K-12 district technology officials. Larger systems, for instance, face more complex challenges in protecting data and training staff because of their size and getting everyone on board with their policies, said Bockwoldt, who serves on CoSNs cybersecurity advisory committee. The threats are there, whatever classification youre in, Bockwoldt said. In that sense, everyone is in the same boat. Concerns about student data privacy and security are not the only aspects of cybersecurity in which large and urban district leaders differ from their small and rural peers. Large and urban leaders also approach password management differently than do their peers from smaller, rural and suburban districts. For example, just over half (56 percent) of all K-12 leaders say their districts have formal password policies that are widely followed. Seventy-two percent of urban leaders say they have widely-followed formal password policies. Thats compared with 62 percent of suburban administrators and less than half (41 percent) of their rural counterparts. In fact, nearly 1 in 3 (29 percent) of rural leaders report that their districts do not have formal password policies although staff members are regularly encouraged to use best practices for password management. This Is Crazy Timothy Smith, the supervisor of instructional practice and technology integration for the Red Lion Area School District in Pennsylvania, said tech leaders in rural K-12 systems may have a harder time than their urban peers imagining that malicious actors will target their schools. District officials in smaller districts may think, Why would they focus on me? Why would there be a hacker or someone who wants to dig into the data that we have? said Smith, whose district has 6,100 students. Smaller districts are much less likely to have full time chief technology officers than larger districts, according to federal data. Because rural tech leaders are juggling so many duties, making progress on even relatively simple cybersecurity steps can be difficult, said Smith. See Also On-Demand Webinar: Attacking the K-12 Cybersecurity Challenge K-12 districts face an array of threats from cyberattacks and security breaches. In this Education Week webinar, staff writer Benjamin Herold talks with guests about how district leaders can secure data and networks and insulate schools from bad actors. Register now. Despite those odds, his district has taken steps to tighten the security reins. Three years ago, his school system put in place stronger protocols for password security. Smith had assumed everyone would be on board with the measure, but he still gets resistance. I was really surprised by that, he said. Every 120 days, without fail, I will get one or two or three staff members who will reach out to me and say this is crazy [to change passwords]. Protect Data at All Costs The COSN/EdWeek survey found that 100 percent of large district leaders have formal, widely-followed password policies. That share falls to 43 percent for administrators from small districts. In addition to examining formal password policies, the survey also asked leaders if their districts had implemented 13 different types of security measures related to passwords, including requiring passwords to be of minimal complexity and/or length (84 percent); prohibiting password sharing (73 percent) and locking accounts after a specified number of unsuccessful log-in attempts (62 percent). Urban leaders are more likely than their rural or suburban peers to have implemented 11 of the 13 measures. For example, 96 percent of urban leaders say they require minimum lengths and levels of complexity for passwords, compared with 86 percent of suburban respondents and 76 percent from rural areas. Similarly, 87 percent of urban respondents said their districts prohibit password sharing, compared with 78 percent of suburban leaders and 66 percent of their rural counterparts. Leaders from larger districts are also more likely than those from the smallest districts to report that they had implemented the 13 security measures. For many districts, no matter what their size, effective cybersecurity means thinking differently about the obligations they have to protect students, said Smith. Just as schools establish physical barriers to make sure access to their campuses are controlled, he argued, we need to be the beacon that will protect data at all costs. Share this blog post with friends Thank you to Maxi-Cosi for sending me a Lara Stroller to review. As always, all opinions are my own. If youve been keeping up with my posts, youve probably read that were headed to the west coast later this spring and I couldnt be more excited! Mostly Im excited because this has been a never-ending winter (with record snowfall for Minnesota in February!) and Ive got the travel bug BAD. Our kids are going to be six and three when we travel this time. Were planning to do a few days in Seattle, a few days on the northern Oregon coast, and a few days at my husbands parents in northern Idaho. I was debating whether to bring a stroller with us, because Im not sure how much well use one but I know if we dont bring one, well probably regret it. When I decided Id like to bring a stroller, I realized we dont have any that are particularly compact or lightweight! I did a bit of research and turned to Maxi-Cosi because their Lara Ultra Compact Stroller was exactly what I had in mind! Maxi-Cosi Lara Ultra Compact Stroller At just fourteen pounds, this is one of the most lightweight strollers I could find without purchasing just a cheap umbrella stroller. I honestly hate umbrella strollers-the handles are so low that I get pain in my back every time I push one, and they dont allow for ANY storage either. So while the Maxi-Cosi Lara is at a higher price point than an umbrella stroller, its worth every penny in convenience and ergonomics. It also comes with a carrying strap to make hauling it easier. This stroller folds down so compactly that its the perfect fit for an airplane carry-on. I prefer bringing my stroller on flights because Ive had them stowed before and they always come back damaged. The fact that the Lara can come with me on the flight and stay compactly folded in the plane with me is a great convenience. Folding the stroller down is also super simple; I can do it with one hand while holding my son in the other! There are two storage compartments on the Lara Ultra Compact Stroller which are great for diapers, wipes, snacks, keys, and more. Goodness knows my arms are always full of my kids stuff, so I like having somewhere to stow it when necessary. Since our son is three and likes to assert his independence, this small stroller is the perfect option because its not inconvenient to push around when he decides to walk, and its also there when he decides hes tired. The seat fully reclines which is perfect for nap time, too! The Lara is so easy to push and maneuvers tight spaces really well. We actually brought it with us on a recent trip to the Mall of America and it was great for the hotel and using at the mall. Weve all had that bulky stroller thats hard to turn and inconvenient more than helpful-this stroller is the complete opposite of that! There were huge crowds at the mall and we were able to make our way through with no issue. With a large UPF 50 sun shade and a parent cup holder, its the perfect option for a small, compact stroller and will be great for outside as well. We cant wait to take it with us to Seattle later this spring. Keep an eye out for additional posts as we use it more! The Lara is available in three colors including Nomad Blue, Black, and Nomad Grey. Buy it: Maxi-Cosi Maxi-Cosi Connect with Maxi-Cosi: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram Hi there! Im Amber, a 32 year old wife and mom of two from central Minnesota. I love to travel and to be outside with my kids anywhere the weather is warm! When I have a spare free moment, I love to read and scrapbook as well as binge-watch Netflix long after the kids are asleep. I drink too much Caribou Coffee and have a real sweet tooth but also try very hard to consume organic foods and use eco-friendly, fair trade products as much as possible. I also love socializing and sharing about my favorite products! www.emilyreviews.com/ Related posts we've written: Driver hijacks, sets ablaze school bus in Italy A bus full of schoolchildren was hijacked and set on fire by its own driver on Wednesday in an apparent protest against migrant drownings in the Mediterranean, Italian authorities said. All 51 children managed to escape unhurt before the bus was engulfed in flames on the outskirts of Milan, Italys business capital. Police named the driver as Ousseynou Sy, a 47-year-old Italian citizen of Senegalese origin. "I WILL CARRY OUT A MASSACRE" He shouted, Stop the deaths at sea, Ill carry out a massacre, police spokesman Marco Palmieri quoted Sy as telling police after his arrest. A video posted on Italian news sites showed the driver ramming the bus into cars on a provincial highway before the fire took hold. Children can be seen running away from the vehicle screaming and shouting escape. One of the children told reporters that the driver had threatened to pour petrol over them and set them alight. One of group managed to call the police, who rushed to the scene and broke the bus windows to get everyone to safety. Palmieri said some children were taken to hospital as a precautionary measure because they had bruises or were in a state of shock, but none suffered serious injuries. A teacher who was with the middle school children was quoted by Ansa news agency as saying that the driver had said he wanted to get to the runway at Milans Linate airport. An unnamed girl was also quoted as saying that Sy blamed deputy prime ministers Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio for the deaths of African migrants at sea. The United Nations estimates that some 2,297 migrants drowned or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2018 as they tried to reach Europe. A Libyan security official said on Tuesday that at least 10 migrants died when their boat sank off the Libyan coast near the western town of Sabratha. The Italian government has closed its ports to charity rescue ships that pick up migrants off the Libyan coast. Salvini says this has helped reduce deaths because far fewer people are now putting to sea. Human rights groups say deaths might have increased with hardly any boats now searching for the would-be refugees. Explosion at Egypt fertilizer factory kills ten Another five injured, two of whom are reportedly in critical condition. Ten workers were killed Thursday when a tank full of ammonia exploded at a fertilizer factory in Egypt's northeastern Suez province. TEN DEAD FIVE INJURED According to local media reports, the incident occurred in Egypts Ain Sukhna region. Five other workers were reportedly injured by the blast, two of whom are now said to be in critical condition. The injured are currently receiving treatment at the Suez General Hospital. Karadzic's imprisonment makes victims' families happy The war criminal and former Republika Srpska President Radovan Karadzic has been sentenced for life imprisonment. A UN tribunal in The Hague on Wednesday sentenced former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to life in prison for genocide, crimes against humanity, and violating the laws and customs of war. ONE OF THE DARKEST WARS IN THE HISTORY In the war in Bosnia (1992-1995), one of the darkest wars in human history, many Bosnians who lost their relatives followed Karadzic's appeal in the building of International Criminal Courts in The Hague, the Netherlands. Families began to wait with photographs of their relatives. After the appeal council broke its 40-year prison sentence in 2016 and sentenced Karadzic to life imprisonment, the victims ' relatives could not hide the tears of joy. Indin Cehic from Prijedor City, where the war began in 1992, said he should be convicted of "genocide" in seven other cities outside Srebrenica. Karadzic's imprisonment makes victims' families happy WATCH "I am satisfied with this decision that has finally come to an end. And I was held in three different concentration camps for seven months. I've seen what the Serbs can do for their purposes." he added. Turkey's Armenians to select their leader after Easter The election for the 85th patriarch to be held after April 21. Orthodox Armenians in Turkey are set to select their spiritual leader after Easter following the death of Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan earlier this month. "AFTER THE ELECTION, THE NEW PATRIARCH WILL BE SWORN IN AND START HIS DUTY" The election for the 85th Armenian patriarch will be held after April 21, said Sahak Masalyan, the deputy of the late Armenian patriarch, Mesrob Mutafyan, who passed away on March 8 in Istanbul after a long illness. "After the election, the new patriarch will be sworn in and start his duty," Masalyan, who is also a patriarch hopeful himself, told Anadolu Agency. Late Mutafyan was elected as top religious leader of the Armenian community in Turkey in 1998. In 2008, Mutafyan suffered from health issues that prevented him to fulfill his duties. For the first time in history, the Armenian Church in Turkey has been ruled by a deputy Patriarch since 2008. Turkish war jets hit PKK terrorist targets in N.Iraq Weapon emplacements, shelters and ammunition depots of terrorist PKK in northern Iraq destroyed. Turkish air strikes on Thursday hit terrorist PKK targets in Northern Iraq, Turkey's Defense Ministry said. Turkish jets attacked and destroyed PKK weapon emplacements, shelters, and ammunition depots in the regions of Qandil, Avasin-Basyan, Metina, Sinat-Haftanin and Zap, the ministry said on Twitter. In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU has been responsible for the deaths of nearly 40,000 people, including many women and children. Washingtons top diplomat hails relations with Israel At meeting with the Israeli president, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says Israel has no better friend than US. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday hailed his country's close ties with Israel, saying the self-proclaimed Jewish state had no better friend than the US "A THREAT TO THE STABILITY OF THE REGION AND ISRAEL" At a meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Pompeo also said that Hamas and Hezbollah both continued to pose a threat to the stability of the region and Israel. The US, Pompeo reportedly said at the meeting, had a moral and political obligation to prevent hostile forces from destabilizing the Middle East. Pompeo arrived in Israel on Wednesday as part of a wider tour of the region that has already taken him to Kuwait and will include a visit to Lebanon on Friday. At Thursdays meeting, Rivlin was quoted as telling Pompeo: We know you are visiting Lebanon tomorrow, but I would like to point out that when we talk about Lebanon, Lebanon is not separate from Hezbollah, and if anything happens from Lebanon to Israel, we will hold Lebanon responsible. He added: We are very concerned about what is going on. We have problems with the Iranians, and I am sure you have spoken with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about that. "WE CANNOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORIST" In a subsequent statement, Rivlin said he had also discussed the situation in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip with Pompeo. We cannot negotiate with terrorist organizations, Rivlin said in reference to resistance faction Hamas, which has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007. Since last October, Egypt, Qatar and the UN have been trying to hammer out a Hamas-Israel truce by which the former would halt its weekly rallies along the Gaza-Israel buffer zone while the latter would be expected to ease its 12-year-old siege of the coastal enclave. Developers should allow users to choose precisely what data are shared and with whom, say researchers Data sharing by popular health apps is routine and far from transparent, warn experts Developers should allow users to choose precisely what data are shared and with whom, say researchers Sharing of user data by popular mobile health applications (apps) is routine, yet far from transparent, warn experts in a study published in The BMJ today. They say regulators should emphasise the accountabilities of those who control and process user data, and health app developers should disclose all data sharing practices and allow users to choose precisely what data are shared and with whom. App developers routinely, and legally, share user data. But evidence suggests that many health apps fail to provide privacy assurances around data sharing practices, and pose unprecedented risk to consumers' privacy, given their ability to collect sensitive and personal health information. So researchers led by Assistant Professor Quinn Grundy at the University of Toronto, set out to investigate whether and how user data are shared by popular medicines related mobile apps and to characterise privacy risks to app users, both clinicians and consumers. They identified 24 top rated medicines related apps for the Android mobile platform in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, and Australia. All apps were available to the public, provided information about medicines dispensing, administration, prescribing, or use, and were interactive. First, they downloaded each app onto a smartphone and used four dummy user profiles to simulate real world use. They ran each app 14 times and found baseline traffic relating to 28 different types of user data. They then altered one source of user information and ran the app again to detect any privacy leaks (sensitive information sent to a remote server, outside of the app). Companies receiving sensitive user data were then identified by their IP address, and their websites and privacy policies were analysed. Most (19 out of 24; 79%) of the sampled apps shared user data outside of the app. A total of 55 unique entities, owned by 46 parent companies, received or processed app user data, including developers and parent companies (first parties) and service providers (third parties). Of these, 18 (33%) provided infrastructure related services such as cloud services and 37 (67%) provided services related to the collection and analysis of user data, including analytics or advertising, suggesting heightened privacy risks. Network analysis revealed that first and third parties received an average of three unique transmissions of user data. Both Amazon.com and Alphabet (the parent company of Google) received the highest volume of user data (24 unique transmissions), followed by Microsoft (14). Third parties also advertised the ability to share user data with 216 "fourth parties" including multinational technology companies, digital advertising companies, telecommunications corporations, and a consumer credit reporting agency. Only three of these fourth parties could be characterised predominantly as belonging to the health sector. Several companies, including Alphabet, Facebook, and Oracle, occupied central positions within the network with the ability to aggregate and re-identify user data The researchers point to some limitations that may have influenced the results. For example, it is unknown whether iOS apps share user data and whether these apps share user data more or less than other health apps, or apps in general. Nevertheless, they say their findings suggest that health professionals "should be conscious of privacy risks in their own use of apps and, when recommending apps, explain the potential for loss of privacy as part of informed consent." Privacy regulators should also consider that loss of privacy is not a fair cost for the use of digital health services, they conclude. ### Scientists have harnessed powerful data analysis tools and three-dimensional studies of genomic geography to implicate new risk genes for osteoporosis, the chronic bone-weakening condition that affects millions of people. Knowing the causative genes may later open the door to more effective treatments. "Identifying a disease's actual underlying cause often helps to steer us toward correct, targeted treatments," said study leader Struan F.A. Grant, PhD, a director of the Center for Spatial and Functional Genomics (CSFG) at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). "We have identified two novel genes that affect bone-forming cells relevant to fractures and osteoporosis. Furthermore, the research methods we used could be applied more broadly to other diseases with a genetic component." Grant and colleagues published their research March 19, 2018 in Nature Communications. He co-led the study with Andrew D. Wells, PhD, an immunology researcher at CHOP and the other director of the CSFG; and Kurt D. Hankenson, DVM, PhD, an expert in bone formation and remodeling at the University of Michigan. Genetics researcher Alessandra Chesi, PhD, also from CHOP, was the first author, along with three additional joint first authors. Grant and Wells also are faculty members in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The study team investigated genetic loci, or DNA regions, previously established to be associated with bone mineral density in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), both in adults and children. "Scientists have known for some time now that the nearest gene to a variant associated with a disease is not necessarily the cause of the disease," said Wells. Because GWAS research detects single-base changes in DNA that are usually not located in obvious parts of the genome, much research has turned to the broader context of interactions within the genome--the entire complement of DNA within cells. Sometimes the changes, called single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, found in GWAS are located close to a culprit gene. More often the signal comes from a non-coding region of the DNA that regulates another gene that may be thousands of bases away on the DNA sequence. "The geography of the genome is not linear," said Grant. "Because DNA is folded into chromosomes, parts of the genome may come into physical contact, enabling key biological interactions that affect how a gene is expressed. That's why we study the three-dimensional structure of the genome." In analyzing how chromatin, the fibers that make up chromosomes, is arranged into specific shapes, spatial genomics offers insight into how genes physically interact with the regulatory regions in DNA that initiate transcription. Transcription is the process in which DNA is copied into RNA, the first event in gene expression. Grant and colleagues used state-of-the-art massively parallel, high-resolution tools to analyze genome-wide interactions in human osteoblasts--bone-forming cells derived from mesenchymal stem cells. Their analytical tools use a "multi-omic" approach, integrating data from the genome sequence and details of chromatin structure to map interactions between potential BMD-related gene promoters and regions harboring genetic variants related to BMD biology. The study pinpointed two novel genes, ING3 and EPDR1, which in turn revealed strong effects on human osteoblasts. "While we're not ruling out other possible causative genes in these regions, the ING3 gene particularly stood out because we found that the genetic signal at this region was the strongest one associated with bone density at the wrist--the major site of fracture in children," said Chesi. Hankenson noted, "This suggests to us that follow-up studies investigating biological pathways affected by this gene may present targets for therapies to strengthen bone mineral density and ultimately prevent fractures." Researchers have long known that bone accrual during childhood may bolster bone health in adulthood. This new line of research may present strategies to build on that knowledge. Grant added that the analytical approach used in this study could have a broader use in studying other genetic diseases--including pediatric conditions. His team is collaborating with researchers at CHOP and other centers to generate atlases of promoter-variant interactions across multiple cell types. "Our hope is that this approach and these atlases could offer up great resources in crafting targeted treatments for many different diseases, including certain pediatric cancers, diabetes and lupus." ### The National Institutes of Health (grant HG010067) supported this research. Alessandra Chesi et al, "Genome-scale Capture C promoter interactions implicate effector genes at GWAS loci for bone mineral density," Nature Communications, March 19, 2019. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09302-x About Children's Hospital of Philadelphia: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation's first pediatric hospital. Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care, training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals, and pioneering major research initiatives, Children's Hospital has fostered many discoveries that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is among the largest in the country. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public service programs have brought the 564-bed hospital recognition as a leading advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit http://www.chop.edu March 21, 2019 - Infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria are a global public health threat causing serious illness and even death. Strains of the bacterium Enterococcus faecium (E. faecium) are generally harmless in healthy people, but can be pathogenic in immunocompromised or severely ill patients. E. faecium strains from hospital environments have acquired resistance to commonly used antibiotics, including those used to treat serious infections, making these infections especially challenging to treat. In a study published today in Genome Research, researchers conducted a survey of 20 municipal wastewater plants in England, and isolated drug-resistant E. faecium from all sites in both untreated and treated wastewater plants except three, which use ultraviolet light disinfection. Importantly, drug-resistant E. faecium counts were significantly higher in untreated wastewater from plants that were direct recipients of hospital sewage. A genomic comparison of E. faecium isolates from wastewater and bloodstream isolates of infected patients revealed two major lineages, with ampicillin-resistant bacteria in clade A1 and A2 and vancomycin-resistant bacteria exclusive to clade A1. Further genetic analysis revealed the presence of shared antibiotic, metal, and biocide resistance genes in clade A1 isolates from bloodstream, hospital sewage, and municipal wastewater. This study demonstrates close genetic relatedness of drug-resistant E. faecium isolates released into the environment with those that cause serious human disease. Further research is needed to determine the public health implications of exposure to healthcare- and waste-associated pathogens. Terminal ultraviolet light disinfection of wastewater is one solution that would reduce environmental contamination with drug-resistant bacteria. ### Researchers from the University of Cambridge, Public Health England, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, University of Oslo, and Mahidol University contributed to this work. The study was funded by grants from the Health Innovation Challenge Fund, Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship, Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Postdoctoral Fellowship, and European Research Council. Media Contacts: The authors are available for more information by contacting Craig Brierley, University of Cambridge; +44 (0)1223 766205) and Sam Wynne, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Interested reporters may obtain copies of the manuscript via email from Dana Macciola, Administrative Assistant, Genome Research; +1-516-422-4012). About the article: The manuscript will be published online ahead of print on 21 Mar 2019. Its full citation is as follows: Gouliouris T, Raven K, Moradigaravand D, Ludden C, Coll F, Blane B, Naydenova P, Horner C, Brown N, Corander J, Limmathurotsakul D, Parkhill J, and Peacock S. 2019. Detection of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium hospital-adapted lineages in municipal wastewater treatment plants indicates widespread distribution and release into the environment. Genome Research doi: 10.1101/gr.232629.119 About Genome Research: Launched in 1995, Genome Research is an international, continuously published, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on research that provides novel insights into the genome biology of all organisms, including advances in genomic medicine. Among the topics considered by the journal are genome structure and function, comparative genomics, molecular evolution, genome-scale quantitative and population genetics, proteomics, epigenomics, and systems biology. The journal also features exciting gene discoveries and reports of cutting-edge computational biology and high-throughput methodologies. About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press is an internationally renowned publisher of books, journals, and electronic media, located on Long Island, New York. Since 1933, it has furthered the advance and spread of scientific knowledge in all areas of genetics and molecular biology, including cancer biology, plant science, bioinformatics, and neurobiology. The Press is a division of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, an innovator in life science research and the education of scientists, students, and the public. For more information, visit our website at http://cshlpress.org. The newly-minted Institute for Interdisciplinary Brain and Behavioral Science (The Brain Institute) at Chapman University, with Dr. Uri Maoz as project leader, is the recipient of a total of $7.04 million to study how the human brain enables conscious control of decisions and actions. The John Templeton Foundation funded $5.34 million; the Fetzer Institute funded $1.55 million; and the remaining $150,000 comes from the Fetzer Memorial Trust. This is Chapman's largest non-federal research grant to date. With the Chapman Brain Institute serving as the central hub, this grant supports research efforts at 17 universities spanning four continents, including Charite Berlin (Germany), Dartmouth, Duke, Florida State University, Harvard, Indiana University Bloomington, NIH, Monash University (Australia), NYU, Sigtuna (Sweden), Tel Aviv University (Israel), University College London (UK), University of Edinburgh (UK), UCLA and Yale. The project launched at an international conference on the Neuroscience of Free Will that the Brain Institute and Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences at Chapman University hosted in mid-March. "We were pleased to establish Chapman's Brain Institute and to bring the faculty associated with it to Chapman University last year," said Daniele Struppa, Ph.D., Chapman University president. "Their approach to research reflects Chapman's goal of combining research with teaching and involving undergraduate and graduate students at all levels in the process. We are grateful for this grant from the Templeton Foundation and the Fetzer Institute, which recognizes Chapman as a leader in this developing field." "This grant aims to create a new field in the study of the brain--the neurophilosphy of free will," said Uri Maoz, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology and computational neuroscience at Chapman University. "The extent and scope of human free will has been debated by philosophers for millennia. In recent decades, neuroscientists have joined the discussion, leading to some interesting discoveries. The current project, however, represents a four-year effort forging structured, close collaborations on these questions between eight neuroscientists (including Dr. Aaron Schurger, assistant professor of psychology, the latest faculty recruit to the Brain Institute at Chapman) and nine philosophers from around the world. Hopefully, in 10 years we will look back at the grant and say that's where it all started," said Dr. Maoz. "This large-scale investment, by the John Templeton Foundation and the Fetzer Institute, comes to the Brain Institute even before its official launch next month," said Amir Raz, Ph.D., Chapman University professor of psychology and brain sciences and director of the Brain Institute. "Work at the Brain Institute addresses fundamental questions of human experience: do we have free will? Are we, in fact, free to do what we wish? What is the role of consciousness in our decisions? We are grateful for the opportunities the combined grant offers as well as the testament it provides to confidence in our work." "The Templeton Foundation and Fetzer Institute grant acknowledge that consequential, complex questions find answers only when approached through the lenses of multiple disciplines and their research techniques," said Janeen Hill, Ph.D., dean of Crean College. "Chapman University and Crean College's commitment to brain science and its inherent interdisciplinarity is reinforced by the significance of this combined grant." Entitled "Consciousness and Free Will: A Joint Neuroscientific-Philosophical Investigation," the grant aims to advance efforts in the neurophilosphy of free will. For example, researchers at the Brain Institute and their collaborators will use advanced analysis techniques of brain activity and strive to decode decisions and actions before they take place. Or they will use various techniques to compare human brain activity when people make arbitrary decisions (e.g., when asked to randomly raise their left or right hand) and deliberate ones (e.g., when asked to raise their left or right hand to donate to one charity or another). "This grant, placing Chapman as a leader in neuroscience, reflects our deepening commitment to research and to academic excellence," said Glenn Pfeiffer, Ph.D., provost of Chapman University. "This announcement comes soon after the recent elevation of Chapman University to Carnegie Classification R2, signifying 'high research activity.' We have never been stronger as a research institution than we are right now." "In fact," said Thomas Piechota, Ph.D., PE, vice president of research, "this is an opportune time to partner with Chapman University. The research being conducted by the Brain Institute and throughout Chapman is exciting and innovative. Our faculty are exemplary researchers and the involvement of students of every level - including first-year undergraduates - is a fundamental part of the personalized education that we offer." Hosted at the Rinker Health Science campus in Irvine, as well as on the Orange campus, the Brain Institute comprises a network of interdisciplinary researchers who conduct empirical investigations into the cognitive neuroscience of altered planes of consciousness, neuropsychology, volition, formal models of higher brain functions among other fields. Our work draws on clinical populations, healthy volunteers, and innovations in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data. "Questions about consciousness and free will are of enduring interest in both philosophy and the sciences. This project will feature field-leading researchers on these two topics, using rigorous and collaborative methods to advance our understanding of both of them. It is therefore a perfect fit for the John Templeton Foundation, and we are pleased to support Chapman in this initiative," said John Churchill, director of philosophy and theology programs at the John Templeton Foundation. "We are drawn to this work because of its cutting-edge exploration of free will, the breadth of the research effort Chapman University has developed, and the scale of this major funding collaboration with Templeton," said Mohammed Mohammed, Fetzer Institute program director of research, discovery, and development. "We are excited about this venture into the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience." ### About the John Templeton Foundation Founded in 1987, the John Templeton Foundation supports efforts to advance human well-being through rigorous scientific research and related scholarship. Its founding benefactor, the late Sir John Templeton, held the conviction that rigorous scientific research could reveal ever-deeper truths about the universe and humanity's place within it. With over $3.4 billion in assets and annual grants of $129 million in 2017, it ranks among the 25th largest grantmaking foundations in the United States. Headquartered outside Philadelphia, PA, the Foundation's philanthropic activities have engaged all major faith traditions and extend to 35 countries around the world. The Foundation is dedicated to the ideals of humility, open-mindedness, and curiosity. About the Fetzer Institute The Fetzer Institute is a nonprofit, private operating foundation based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Established by broadcast pioneer John E. Fetzer (1901-1991), the Institute uses its philanthropic resources to advance programs that help build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Its current priorities include understanding spiritual formation at the individual and community levels, healing the heart of democracy, and exploring the intersection of science and spirituality. Learn more at fetzer.org. About Chapman University Chapman University is California's third largest private university and ranks fifth in the U.S. News & World Report listing of Best Regional Universities in the West. Chapman is categorized by the Carnegie Classification as an R2 "high research activity" institution and offers personalized education to more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Chapman strives for diversity and inclusion by recruiting and supporting students representing a variety of backgrounds, experiences, learning styles and unique talents. The campus has produced a Rhodes Scholar, been named a top producer of Fulbright Scholars and hosts a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest and most prestigious honor society. Founded in 1861 and based in the City of Orange, California, Chapman also includes the Harry and Diane Rinker Health Science Campus, 21 miles south, in the Irvine Spectrum, Orange County's technology hub. In 2020, the university will open its 11th college, the Fowler School of Engineering in its newest facility, Keck Center for Science and Engineering. In research that casts cells as curators of their own history, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists have discovered that adult tissues retain a memory, inscribed on their DNA, of the embryonic cells from which they arose. The discovery led to one even more intriguing - that the memory is fully retrievable: under certain conditions, cells can play the story of their development in reverse to switch on genes that were active in the fetal state. The findings, published online today by the journal Molecular Cell, overturn the prevailing scientific assumption that adult tissues bear little trace of their embryonic origins. The discovery is especially relevant to the field of regenerative medicine, because it suggests that cells from patients may be coaxed into an earlier stage of development and then allowed to mature into adult tissues that can be used to replace diseased or failing organs. It also holds promise for cancer research, particularly on the ability of cancer cells to activate long-unused genes to help them spread throughout the body. "We discovered that adult cells maintain a catalog of all of the genes in use early in development - a record of the stage in which organs and tissues are formed within the embryo," says the senior author of the new study, Ramesh Shivdasani, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. "Beyond the sheer existence of this archive, we were surprised to find that it doesn't remain permanently locked away but can be accessed by cells under certain conditions. The implications of this discovery for how we think about cells' capabilities, and for the future treatment of degenerative and other diseases, are potentially profound." The "embryonic memory" discovered by Shivdasani and his colleagues takes the form of molecules called methyl groups that bind to and detach from the DNA within cells. The placement of these methyl groups - which portion of DNA they bind to, and in what numbers - determines which genes are active and which are not. The arrangement of methyl groups in a given section of DNA is known as its methylation pattern. In the new study, researchers focused on the methylation pattern of regions of DNA known as enhancers. Enhancers can be thought of as keys for switching genes on and off. To activate a gene, DNA forms a loop that brings an enhancer close to the coding portion of the gene - the section that contains the blueprint for making a protein. Then, along with other regions of DNA and specialized proteins, the genetic code embedded in DNA is converted into RNA. Over the course of embryonic and fetal development, as cells evolve to take on the specific characteristics of the hundreds of types of adult tissues, cells "are constantly making choices about what kind of cell they will become," Shivdasani explains. "This process, known as cell differentiation, involves cells flipping different genes on and off using different enhancers." At each stage of development, particular sets of enhancers become active, much as individual sections of an orchestra play during different portions of a symphony. By the time a child is fully formed, the set of active enhancers remains largely unchanged for the remainder of life (although the liver, for example, becomes larger as a child grows, its identity as a liver is consistent). For the most part, enhancers that were used early in development but are now idle "look like they've been shut down," Shivdasani says. "They don't seem to have the features of activity." One of the distinguishing features of enhancers is that certain sections of them - where the C molecule of the genetic code is followed by the G molecule - are largely shorn of methyl groups, a state known as hypomethylation. This is true even of enhancers that have been shut down after their role in embryonic development ended. Scientists didn't know, however, how extensively cells preserve this memory of their earliest incarnations, and whether these memories can be accessed. The results of the new study were illuminating on both counts. In intestinal cells from adult mice, Shivdasani and his colleagues found a nearly complete archive of enhancers that were active in the formative stages of intestinal development. Moreover, they found that in the absence of a protein called Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2), most of these mothballed enhancers returned to activity within two weeks' time. (PRC2 is one of the major proteins used by cells to turn off specific genes.) "We showed that adult cells not only retain a memory of the embryonic and fetal period but also that, under certain circumstances, this memory can be recovered," Shivdasani remarks. "The archive is stored safely and can be recalled with remarkable specificity and accuracy." At this point, researchers can only speculate about why adult cells preserve these molecular memories. One possibility is that they're simply relics of an earlier stage of cells' lineage - fossils of their course of development. Another is that cells may need to summon these memories - to bring them to life, in effect - in order to generate fresh tissue to repair damage. "If the body needs to regenerate tissue that is damaged, it may be necessary for cells within that tissue to replay what happened in the embryo," Shivdasani states. The findings may open a new chapter in regenerative medicine, as scientists explore whether cell memory can be harnessed to generate replacement tissue for organs that are damaged or diseased, the study authors say. Since such tissue would be derived from patients' own cells, there would be no risk of rejection by the immune system. The discovery may also hold promise for cancer treatment. It's thought that one of the ways cancer cells gain the ability to leave the original tumor and metastasize is by switching on genes that were active during fetal development but later became dormant. Knowing that cells keep a record of their once-active enhancers may suggest new targets for therapies aimed at halting or preventing metastasis in patients. ### The lead author of the study is Unmesh Jadhav, PhD, of Dana-Farber, Brigham and Women's, and Harvard Medical School. Co-authors are Huafeng Xie, PhD, of Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School; Nicholas K. O'Neill, Zachary Herbert, MS, and Shariq Madha, of Dana-Farber; Alessia Cavazza, PhD, and Kushal K. Banerjee, of Dana-Farber, Brigham and Women's, and Harvard Medical School; Veronica Saenz-Vash and Huili Zhai, PhD, of Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research; and Stuart Orkin, MD, of Dana-Farber, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants R01DK081113, R01DK082889, U01DK103152, F32DK103453, K01DK113067, and P50CA127003); the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute-Novartis Drug Discovery Program; a fellowship from the Italian American Cancer Foundation; and gifts from the Lind family. About Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is one of the world's leading centers of cancer research and treatment. It is the only center ranked in the top 4 of U.S. News and World Report's Best Hospitals for both adult and pediatric cancer care. Dana-Farber's mission is to reduce the burden of cancer through scientific inquiry, clinical care, education, community engagement, and advocacy. We provide the latest in cancer for adults through Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Care and for children through Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. Dana-Farber is dedicated to a unique and equal balance between cancer research and care, translating the results of discovery into new treatments for patients locally and around the world. Arlington, Va., March 21, 2019 - Beware the ball pit. Ball pits used in children's physical therapy - similar to those made popular by restaurants catering to families - may contribute to germ transmission between patients, according to new research published in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC), the journal of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, published by Elsevier. The popularity of ball pits has increased since mainstream commercial restaurants installed them nationwide for children in the 1980s, and they are often found to be contaminated with visible dirt, vomit, feces, or urine, providing a permissive environment for contamination. Similar ball pits are commonly used in pediatric physical therapy to provide stimulation to children with sensory or motor impairments. According to the study, clinics may go days or even weeks between cleanings, allowing time for microorganisms to accumulate and grow to levels capable of giving children infections and making them sick. Investigators from the University of North Georgia examined six ball pits located in inpatient physical therapy clinics or outpatient clinics in the state of Georgia. Nine to 15 balls were randomly selected from different depths of each sampled ball pit. The study found considerable microbial colonization in ball pits that were tested, including eight bacteria and one yeast that could cause disease. Bacterial colonization was found to be as high as thousands of cells per ball, clearly demonstrating an increased potential for transmission of these organisms to patients and an increased possibility of infection. "We found considerable variation in the number of microorganisms between the different ball pit samples," said the study's lead researcher Mary Ellen Oesterle, EdD, PT, Department of Physical Therapy, University of North Georgia, Dahlonega, GA, USA. "This suggests that clinics utilize different protocols for cleaning and maintenance, potentially representing a broader need to clarify and establish standards that reduce the risk of transmission." Overall, researchers identified 31 bacterial species and one species of yeast. The human-associated bacteria found in the ball pits included: Enterococcus faecalis, which can cause endocarditis, septicemia, urinary tract infection, and meningitis; Staphylococcus hominis, a cause of bloodstream infections and reported as a cause of sepsis in a neonatal intensive care unit; Streptococcus oralis, known to cause endocarditis, adult respiratory distress syndrome, and streptococcal shock; Acinetobacter lwofii, which has been reported to cause septicemia, pneumonia, meningitis, and urinary tract and skin infections. "This research shows that ball pits may pose an infection hazard," said 2019 APIC President Karen Hoffmann, RN, MS, CIC, FSHEA, FAPIC. "Facilities should establish a program for regular cleaning to protect patients and healthcare workers from potential infection risks." ### The article is "Are ball pits located in physical therapy clinical settings a source of pathogenic microorganisms?" by Mary Ellen Oesterle, Kimberly Wright, Marissa Fidler, Paul Johnson, and Dobrusia Bialonska (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2018.09.031). It will appear in the American Journal of Infection Control, volume 47, issue 4 (April 2019) published by Elsevier. This study was published online in November 2018 ahead of final publication in print scheduled for April 2019 and is openly available. Neuroscientists can now start building a formal catalogue for all the types of cells in the brain, with their role and function "For nearly 100 years, scientists have been trying to name cells. They have been describing them in the same way that Darwin described animals and trees. Now the Blue Brain Project has developed a mathematical algorithm to objectively classify the shapes of the neurons in the brain," explains Professor Henry Markram, Blue Brain's Founder and Director. "This will allow the development of a standardized taxonomy [classification of cells into distinct groups] of all cells in the brain, which will help researchers compare their data in a more reliable manner." The team, with lead scientist Lida Kanari, have developed an algorithm to distinguish the different shapes of the most common type of neuron in the neocortex - the pyramidal cells. Pyramidal cells are distinctively tree-like cells that make up 80% of the neurons in the neocortex and, like antennas, collect information from other neurons in the brain. Basically, they are the redwoods of the forests of trees in the brain. They are excitatory, sending waves of electrical activity through the network, as we perceive, act, and feel. The father of modern neuroscience, Ramon y Cajal, first drew pyramidal cells over 100 years ago, by looking at them under a microscope. Yet, up until now, scientists have not reached a consensus on the types of pyramidal neurons. Anatomists have been assigning names and debating the different types for the past century, while neuroscience has been unable to tell for sure which types of neurons are subjectively characterized. Even for visibly distinguishable neurons, there is no common ground to consistently define morphological types. Seventeen types of pyramidal cells The study from Blue Brain proves for the first time that objective classification of these pyramidal cells is possible, by applying tools from algebraic topology, the branch of mathematics that studies the shape, connectivity, and the emergence of global structure from local constraints. Blue Brain has pioneered the use of algebraic topology to tackle a wide range of neuroscience problems, and with this study has once again demonstrated its effectiveness. In collaboration with Professors Kathryn Hess at EPFL and Ran Levi from the University of Aberdeen, Blue Brain developed an algorithm, which they then used to objectively classify seventeen types of pyramidal cells in the rat somatosensory cortex. The topological classification does not require expert input, and is proven to be robust. The structure of most neurons resembles a complex tree, with multiple branches connecting to other neurons and communicating via electrical signals. If we keep the longest (persistent) components of the neuron structure and decompose the smaller branches, we can transform its tree-like structure into a barcode - a mathematical object that can be used as input for any machine-learning algorithm that will classify the neurons into distinct groups. "Species" of brain cells Any neuron classification process is plagued by this question: are two cells that look different just part of a continuum of gradually changing differences (like different "strains" of a species, e.g. different types of dogs) or are they really different "species" of neurons (e.g. dogs, cats, elephants, etc.)? In other words, are they discrete or continuous morphological variations of each other? This can be answered by using the new topological classification and grouping the different "species" of brain cells, each with its own characteristic "strains". "The Blue Brain Project is digitally reconstructing and simulating the brain, and this research provides one of the solid foundations needed to put all the types of neurons together," explains Kanari. "By removing the ambiguity of cell types, the process of identifying the morphological type of new cells will become fully automated." This breakthrough can benefit the entire neuroscience community, as it will provide a more sophisticated understanding of cell taxonomy, and a reliable comparative method. The objective definition of morphological types is an essential first step towards a better understanding of the brain's basic building blocks: how their structure is related to their function, and how local properties of neurons are connected to their long-range projections. This method provides a universal descriptor of trees, meaning that it can be used for the consistent description of all cell types in the brain, including neurons of all brain regions and glia cells. ### The article in Open Access can be found here: https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/29/4/1719/5304727 Although neglected diseases account for 11% of the global disease burden, they are targeted by only a small proportion of the new drugs developed every year. Between January 2012 and September 2018, a total of 256 new drugs entered the market, but only eight (3.1%) were designed to treat neglected diseases. This value exceeds the proportion for 1975-99, which was 1.1%, but falls short of the 4.3% mark recorded for 2000-11. The term "neglected diseases" refers to malaria, diarrheic diseases, tuberculosis, and 20 neglected tropical diseases recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO), such as dengue, chikungunya, Chagas and leishmaniasis, among others. An up-to-date survey of drugs and vaccines for neglected diseases has been published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Signed by two researchers affiliated with the University of Sao Paulo (USP) in Brazil, it shows that much remains to be done, especially with regard to neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). NTDs were targeted by none of the new chemical entities approved between 2012 and 2018, although two targeted malaria and tuberculosis. The new drugs for tuberculosis (bedaquiline), with a novel action mechanism, and for Plasmodium vivax malaria (tafenoquine) are the first innovations in treatment for their respective targets in the last 40 and 60 years, respectively. "The other six products registered between 2012 and 2018 for this group of diseases are repurposed drugs, biologicals or new formulations. The repurposed drugs, for example, were used to treat other diseases and have been approved for new clinical uses. None is what we call a new chemical entity, meaning the result of innovation and hence not containing any active molecule previously approved for clinical use," said Adriano Andricopulo, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo's Sao Carlos Physics Institute (IFSC-USP) and one of the authors of the article. The other author is Leonardo L. G. Ferreira, who has received a doctoral scholarship and a postdoctoral scholarship from FAPESP. Both scientists are also affiliated with the Center for Research and Innovation in Biodiversity and Drug Discovery (CIBFar), one of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) funded by FAPESP. The WHO is committed to eliminating epidemics of NTDs by 2030. In addition, the 2012 London Declaration on NTDs established action plans to control, eliminate or eradicate ten NTDs by 2020. "By incorporating cutting-edge science and technology, drug research and development for neglected diseases have progressed considerably. Nonetheless, a profound gap persists between disease burden and the development of therapeutic assets for such diseases," the authors write. However, they note that the list of approved new chemical entities will expand in 2019 with the development of fexinidazole, the most advanced oral drug for human African trypanosomiasis. "The drug is now being tested for Chagas disease," Andricopulo said. Andricopulo is the principal investigator for one of five proposals approved in a call issued by FAPESP with the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Newton Fund for NTD Joint Center Partnerships. Over the next three years, groups led by Andricopulo and Kevin David Read of the University of Dundee's Drug Discovery Unit (DDU) in Scotland will investigate the use of bioactive natural products in the discovery of new drugs to treat leishmaniasis and Chagas. ### About Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) The Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at http://www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at http://www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center found in a recent study that only three different genetic alterations drive the early development of malignant glioblastomas. At least one of these three cancer drivers was present in all tumors investigated. However, it is the activation of telomerase that leads to rapid growth. The tumors develop for up to seven years before they become noticeable as symptoms and are diagnosed. However, in contrast to their early development, glioblastomas, which return after therapy, share virtually no concurrent genetic alterations. Glioblastomas are the most common malignant brain tumors in adults. Since they invade diffusely into healthy brain tissue, surgeons rarely succeed in completely removing the tumor. Therefore, glioblastomas often recur very quickly despite the radiation and chemotherapy following surgery and are then considered incurable according to current knowledge. "There was a theory that certain mutations might enable glioblastoma cells to survive standard radiochemotherapy and then grow into resistant subclones of the tumor. Our question was: Does the therapy exert a selection pressure on the tumor cells?" said Peter Lichter from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) explaining his current research project. For the development of new drugs that are also effective against relapsed tumors, it is crucial to identify genetic traits that enable cancer cells to evade therapy. In order to answer this question, Lichter and systems biologist Thomas Hoefer from the DKFZ investigated glioblastoma tissue samples from a total of 50 patients in which they were able to directly compare material from the primary tumor and recurrence. Based on a careful analysis of the tumor genome, the researchers were able to develop a mathematical model of tumor development. They used mutation rates and estimates of tumor cell count. "We simulated the evolutionary pathways of glioblastoma cells and the influence of their gene mutations during tumor growth on the computer," said Hoefer describing the procedure. The surprising results: At the time of diagnosis, a glioblastoma had already developed over a very long period of time, the researchers calculated up to seven years. "This is hardly conceivable in view of the extremely rapid growth of glioblastomas," said Verena Koerber, the first author of the current publication. "However, we can explain this by the fact that many cancer cells die at the beginning, only at a certain moment does the rapid growth in size start. The researchers have also discovered this decisive moment: During their early development, all glioblastomas studied showed at least one of three characteristic genetic alterations (gain of chromosome 7, loss of chromosome 9p and 10). These chromosome losses or gains are associated with known, specific "driver mutations" that promote the development of cancer. However the glioblastomas only start with their rapid growth and increase in size when an additional mutation permanently activates one of the promoters for the telomerase. The enzyme telomerase ensures that the cancer cells can now divide infinitely and do not reach their natural "limit" and die after a certain number of cell divisions. In healthy cells, the telomerase gene is therefore usually not active. During their exponential growth, numerous other mutations accumulate in the cancer cells. In contrast to the common path of the early developing glioblastomas, the recurrent tumors did not share any characteristically corresponding mutations. They can develop from cancer cells with a variety of different mutation patterns. "This suggests that the current standard therapy does not exert any noticeable selective pressure on the cancer cells and therefore does not promote the development of resistant subclones. This shows that we basically need new forms of treatment in order to effectively treat glioblastomas," said Peter Lichter summarizing the current results. ### Verena Koerber, Jing Yang, Pankaj Barah, Yonghe Wu, Damian Stichel, Zuguang Gu, Michael Nai Chung Fletcher, David Jones, Bettina Hentschel, Katrin Lamszus, Jorg Christian Tonn, Gabriele Schackert, Michael Sabel, Jorg Felsberg, Angela Zacher, Kerstin Kaulich, Daniel Hubschmann, Christel Herold-Mende, Andreas von Deimling, Michael Weller, Bernhard Radlwimmer, Matthias Schlesner, Guido Reifenberger, Thomas Hoefer, Peter Lichter: Evolutionary trajectories of IDH-wildtype glioblastomas reveal a common path of early tumorigenesis instigated years ahead of initial diagnosis. Cancer Cell 2019, DOI: 10.1016/j.ccell.2019.02.007 The German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) with its more than 3,000 employees is the largest biomedical research institute in Germany. At DKFZ, more than 1,000 scientists investigate how cancer develops, identify cancer risk factors and endeavor to find new strategies to prevent people from getting cancer. They develop novel approaches to make tumor diagnosis more precise and treatment of cancer patients more successful. The staff of the Cancer Information Service (KID) offers information about the widespread disease of cancer for patients, their families, and the general public. Jointly with Heidelberg University Hospital, DKFZ has established the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, where promising approaches from cancer research are translated into the clinic. In the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research (DKTK), one of six German Centers for Health Research, DKFZ maintains translational centers at seven university partnering sites. Combining excellent university hospitals with high-profile research at a Helmholtz Center is an important contribution to improving the chances of cancer patients. DKFZ is a member of the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centers, with ninety percent of its funding coming from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the remaining ten percent from the State of Baden-Wurttemberg. Researchers have discovered how antibiotic-resistant bacteria construct their defense system, which could lead to new treatments for untreatable infections Superbugs, also known as Gram-negative bacteria, are causing a global health crisis. Each year in the United States, at least two million people contract an antibiotic-resistant infection, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Of those, 23,000 people die. One way to stymie this crisis is to avoid contraction. But no one goes looking for bacterial infections. So, while health care professionals and food industries work to constrict the spread of E. coli, staph, and the deadly C. difficile infections, researchers are looking for new ways to skirt the impressive Gram-negative defense system. Daniel Kahne, the Higgins Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and his lab are dedicated to determining how Gram-negative bacteria work. In the last decade, he and his team discovered an integral machine that builds each bacterium's powerful protection, an outer membrane constructed with a beefy molecule called lipopolysaccharide (LPS). "Because there are no antibiotics for some Gram-negative infections, learning how the outer membrane is assembled and how to interfere with assembly has major medical implications," Kahne says. Construction isn't simple. The bulky LPS is made inside the bacteria's cytoplasm, which is separated from the outer membrane by two additional barriers. Within the cytoplasm, the molecule ATP provides enough energy to produce the LPS building blocks and move them around the cell, like microscopic construction workers. But these workers (ATP) cannot cross the membrane barriers to transport LPS to the outer membrane work site. Graduate student Tristan Owens decided to solve this mystery. In 2013, after spending a year teaching in Qatar, Owens returned to the United States to join the Kahne lab. That Fall, he told Kahne he planned to figure out how LPS gets to the outer membrane, a problem that scientists have been working on since the early 1970s. "As advisors often do, I assured him this would be possible," says Kahne. To tackle the mystery, Owens would have to answer two major questions. First, if those tiny construction workers cannot follow LPS through the bacterial membranes, what pushes the molecule where it needs to go? He and the Kahne lab already discovered that a protein bridge guides the LPS across. But, without any energy to push the building blocks through, they should just fall back into the cytoplasm like so many apples thrown into the air. For the second question, Owens would have to determine how LPS gets onto the protein bridge in the first place: How does the bacterial machinery distinguish LPS from the other molecules floating around in the cytoplasm? "It was estimated in the 1970s that it would be necessary to move about three million LPS molecules every five minutes per cell to make the outer membrane," Kahne says. The bacterial machines had to be efficient. Now, six years and a dissertation later, Owens can explain how they run their well-organized operation. In a paper published in Nature, first author Owens identifies two crystal structures responsible for extracting LPS from the cytoplasm and moving the molecule onto the protein bridge. Previous research proposed that LPS gets to the bridge via multiple pathways, but Owens' work determined that ATP shuttles the molecule along just one path. Owens also discovered how the LPS continues to move through the bridge without help from the ATP construction workers. Like a Pez machine, the protein bridge opens and closes gates that keep the LPS moving up toward the outer membrane. "The gate provides an explanation for unidirectional transport," Kahne says, "because gate closure prevents backflow." The more scientists know about how Gram-negative bacteria build their outer membrane, the closer they get to dismantling their powerful defenses. Now, with this decades-old mystery solved, researchers can start to develop new drugs that slow the bacteria's efficiency, hobble their machinery, and make them vulnerable to our antibiotics once again. ### Terrestrial water storage (TWS) includes all phases of water over land (e.g., surface and groundwater, snow etc.) and acts as an important fresh water resource. It is a critical component of terrestrial water cycle, so a reliable TWS decadal prediction would be beneficial for a sustainable water resources management, especially in a changing climate. "Hydrological predictability mainly comes from two sources: the memory in initial hydrological conditions and the predictability of boundary meteorological forcings." Prof. Xing Yuan from Institute of Atmospheric Physics at Chinese Academy of Sciences explains motives of the newly published study in Nature Communications, "Scientists have been debating whether more efforts should be devoted to improving the accuracy of initial hydrological conditions or to decadal climate forecasts. And we still don't know the TWS baseline forecast skill that considers the dynamical forecast skill from the state-of-the-art climate models." Yuan and his Ph.D. student Enda Zhu provide a new perspective to tackle these issues. They find that incorporating the current decadal climate prediction would significantly improve the baseline skill of TWS prediction over more than 25% global major river basins at 1-4 years lead, and up to 47% river basins at 7-10 years lead. They performed 2200-year global land surface hydrological ensemble simulations, and used a skill elasticity framework to analyze the impacts of two predictability sources with various degrees of uncertainties to the TWS decadal predictability over 32 global major river basins. Furthermore, they obtained a new TWS benchmark skill by considering decadal climate prediction skill with the elasticity framework, which is "a new norm to assess whether different strategies for future upgrades in the climate-hydrology approach are beneficial for decadal hydrological prediction", according to one of reviewers. The result suggests that improving observation to reduce the uncertainty of initial hydrological conditions is an effective way to improve TWS prediction over arid and semiarid regions at 1-4 years lead. However, with the growth of lead time, improving accuracy of boundary conditions gradually plays a key role in the improvement of TWS decadal prediction. Compared with the skill from the traditional hydrological forecast that is based on the initial memory, the new benchmark skill is significant higher over 25% basins at 1-4 years lead, and up to 47% basins at 7-10 years lead. "The benchmark skill estimated in our study can be regarded as a new reference for verifying the usefulness of decadal hydrological forecasts, regardless of using complicated dynamical or statistical downscaling approaches. This paper analyzed TWS decadal predictability and benchmark skill, but it can be applied to other hydrological variables (e.g., streamflow, soil moisture) from sub-seasonal to decadal time scales." says Yuan. ### To successfully implement the energy transition and to store regenerative energy, better batteries are required. The European research initiative BATTERY 2030+ brings together leading scientists and companies from all over Europe to achieve major progress in battery science and technology. It is scheduled for a duration of ten years. The preparation project for BATTERY 2030+ will start in March. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is a partner of this consortium. The aim of BATTERY 2030+ is to develop more powerful batteries and cutting-edge technology for European industry. Batteries are crucial to the sustainable storage of energy from renewable sources and, hence, to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In future, new generations of extremely powerful, reliable, safe, sustainable, and inexpensive batteries will be required. Apart from KIT, five European universities and eight research centers are involved in the consortium of BATTERY 2030+. "We will contribute to all central topics, in particular to accelerated development of materials," says Professor Maximilian Fichtner, Head of the Energy Storage Systems Group of KIT's Institute of Nanotechnology. The chemist also is Deputy Director of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm and Scientific Director of the Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage Ulm & Karlsruhe (CELEST for short). CELEST pools the know-how of 29 institutes of KIT, Ulm University, and the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Wurttemberg (ZSW). It is the biggest research platform in the area of electrochemical energy storage in Germany. "BATTERY 2030+ is about changing the way we have done research and development, for example by including Artificial Intelligence (AI)." Fichtner points out. AI-based data evaluation of a large number of samples produced by robots might reveal the behavior of certain materials and answer the question of how a material has to be structured to exhibit certain properties. "By pooling European expertise in these areas, we have the chance to be among the world's leaders in battery development and to be competitive with groups in the USA and Asia," Fichtner adds. He also coordinates the Cluster of Excellence "Post Lithium Storage" (POLiS) acquired by KIT and Ulm University within the Excellence Strategy launched by the federal government and the federal states. The BATTERY 2030+ research initiative is coordinated by Kristina Edstrom, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Uppsala University in Sweden. "With BATTERY 2030+, we address all challenges encountered in the manufacture of high-performance batteries," the scientist says. "For this purpose, we will establish a platform to more rapidly detect new battery materials by means of machine learning and artificial intelligence. We are particularly interested in the interfaces in batteries, where reactions take place that adversely affect the battery's service life. We will design smart functions of the complete system down to the battery cell level and pay particular attention to sustainability," Edstrom adds. "The duration of ten years of the BATTERY 2030+ initiative gives the partners the planning security needed in science when shaking at the foundations of the process," Maximilian Fichtner emphasizes. ### About the BATTERY 2030+ Consortium Apart from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, five universities are partners of the BATTERY 2030+ consortium: Uppsala University, Po-lytechnical Institute of Torino, the Technical University of Denmark, the Free University of Amsterdam, and the University of Munster. In addition, several research centers have joined the consortium, namely, the French Research Center for Alternative Energies and Nuclear Energy CEA, the French National Center for Scientific Research CNRS, Forschungszentrum Julich, Fraunhofer Society, Fundacion Cidetec, the National Institute for Chemistry of Slowenia, and the Organization for Applied and Technical Research of Norway. In addition, the renowned industry associations of EMIRI, EASE, and RECHARGE, as well as the company Absiskey are consortium partners. The consortium is supported by official European and international bodies, among others by ALISTORE ERI, EERA, EIT InnoEnergy, EIT RawMaterials, EARPA, EUROBAT, EGVI, CLEPA, EUCAR, KLIB, RS2E, the Swedish Center for Electric Mobility, PolStorEn, ENEA, CIC energigune, IMEC, and the Tyndall National Institute. For more information on BATTERY 2030+: http://battery2030.eu/ Press contact: Dr. Martin Heidelberger Press Officer Phone: +49 721 608-21169 Email: martin.heidelberger@kit.edu Being "The Research University in the Helmholtz Association," KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility and information. For this, about 9,300 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 25,100 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. This press release is available on the internet at http://www.sek.kit.edu/english/press_office.php. In mobiles, fridges, planes - transistors are everywhere. But they often operate only within a restricted current range. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich physicists have now developed an organic transistor that functions perfectly under both low and high currents. Transistors are semiconductor devices that control voltage and currents in electrical circuits. To reduce economic and environmental costs, electronic devices must become smaller and more effective. This applies above all to transistors. In the field of inorganic semiconductors, dimensions below 100 nanometers are already standard. In this respect, organic semiconductors have not been able to keep up. In addition, their performance with regard to charge-carrier transport is considerably worse. But organic structures offer other advantages. They can easily be printed on an industrial scale, the material costs are lower, and they can be transparently applied to flexible surfaces. Thomas Weitz, a professor in LMU's Faculty of Physics and a member of the Nanosystems Initiative Munich, and his team are working intensively on the optimization of organic transistors. In their latest publication in Nature Nanotechnology, they describe the fabrication of transistors with an unusual structure, which are tiny, powerful and above all versatile. By carefully tailoring a small set of parameters during the production process, they have been able to design nanoscale devices for high or low current densities. The primary innovation lies in the use of an atypical geometry, which also facilitates assembly of the nanoscopic transistors. "Our aim was to develop a transistor design which combines the ability to drive high currents that is typical of classical transistors with the low-voltage operation required for use as artificial synapses," says Weitz. With the successful assembly and characterization of vertical organic field-effect transistors with exactly selectable dimensions and an ionic gating, this goal has now been achieved. Potential areas of application for the new devices include OLEDs and sensors where low voltages, high ON-state current densities or large transconductances are required. Of special interest is their possible use in so-called memristive elements. "Memristors can be thought of as artificial neurons, as they can be used to model the behavior of neurons when processing electrical signals," explains Weitz. "By fine-tuning the geometry of a memristive device, it could be applied in a variety of contexts, such as learning processes in artificial synapses." The researchers have already submitted a patent application for the device to enable them to develop the new transistor architecture for industrial use. ### In an article published in Lancet Planetary Health(link is external), a team from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), provides evidence that even window screens with no insecticide suppressed mosquito populations and dramatically reduced malaria prevalence in the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam. Led by LSTM's Dr Gerry Killeen, the study team has also worked with local and national government partners for over a decade to develop practical affordable implementation systems for community-based application of environmentally-friendly biological insecticides that selectively kill mosquito larvae in puddles, drains, river fringes, ponds and other sundry stagnant water bodies. Dr Prosper Chaki, who co-led the study, said "We are pleased that our efforts over all these years have culminated in government-funded scale up of larviciding, first across all of Dar es Salaam, and then to all major urban centres in Tanzania. Also, our government has invested domestic treasury funding into construction of a manufacturing plant for biological control products in Kibaha, just outside the city, which is now fully operational." However, previous external analyses of the first large-scale pilot in Dar es Salaam indicated that larviciding only reduced malaria prevalence by 21%. Furthermore, this previous analysis provided no explanation for the much larger reductions of malaria prevelance that occurred over the study period, which steadily declined from >28% in 2004 to <2% by 2008. The LSTM and IHI team therefore re-assessed these epidemiological data to see how much of this remarkable 97% drop in malaria prevalence could be attributed to other factors. Only the coverage of complete window screening consistently increased to levels high enough to have any meaningful impact. While only 40% of houses had complete window screening at the start of the study in 2004, coverage had more than doubled to 86% by 2008. This surprisingly rapid scale up of window screening coverage was unplanned and spontaneous, implemented by households at their own expense, using flexible plastic screening which they found easy to install. This steady rise in window-screening coverage was statistically associated with a 92% reduction of malaria prevalence amongst residents, accounting for most of the spectacular overall decline in malaria prevalence. Mosquito biting rates were also reduced by as much as 92%, and impact was greatest for the most efficient malaria vector species that depend heavily on human blood. "People who live with mosquitoes protect themselves by taking advantage of any products they can access and afford." said Dr Nicodem Govella, a co-author of the study, who continues "Here is an encouraging example from the citizens of Dar es Salaam, who spent millions of dollars of their own money to protect their houses and families, but also protected their neighbours by making life tougher for mosquitoes". In addition to revealing the remarkable contribution of window screens to this near-collapse of malaria transmission, this re-analysis also yielded a more encouraging estimate for the impact of regular larvicide application. Larviciding halved malaria prevalence by reducing malaria vector abundance, consistent with subsequent evaluations of scale up across the remainder of the city. In addition to demonstrating that mosquito-proofed window screening may have far greater impacts upon malaria than previously thought, these observations also challenge the view that it is too expensive and impractical for widespread use in poor countries. "While Dar es Salaam is a big city, we think our observations also have important implications for rural Africa", said Dr Gerry Killeen. "Historically, most rural African houses have been made with mud and sticks for the walls and grass thatch for the roofs. Mosquitoes readily entered through the eave gaps between the wall and roof, which were left open for ventilation because these simple house designs lacked windows. However, Africa is changing faster than ever before, and that picture is rapidly becoming outdated across much of the continent. Houses ventilated by windows and built with bricks, timber and iron sheets are increasingly common even in rural Africa. The people who live with mosquitoes and malaria invest as much as they can in better houses, which are easier to protect with readily-available netting materials". "This study shows how the relatively simple intervention of installing window screens was taken up beyond a research study setting and led to a remarkable reduction in malaria infections in the wider community. These findings demonstrate that it can take more than a decade for research to have a real impact on the communities that need it most", says Branwen Hennig, Senior Portfolio Lead at the Wellcome Trust one of the major sponsors for the study. The authors also note that ongoing housing improvements across rural Africa are closely associated with declining malaria burden and that even bigger reductions may be possible if they could be treated with insecticides. ### Funding for this study was kindly provided by the United States Agency for International Development, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust (Fellowship award to GFK), and Valent BioSciences LLC. A new study in the Journal of Public Health finds that women in Norway from immigrant backgrounds are more likely to be overweight during pregnancy. The prevalence of obesity has increased worldwide and is a notable public health challenge. Women who are overweight or obese are more likely to suffer adverse pregnancy outcomes such as gestational diabetes, pregnancy-induced hypertension, preeclampsia, and caesarean delivery. These women are also more likely to have complications such as congenital anomalies, miscarriages, stillbirths, and preterm births. Previous studies have shown a higher prevalence of obesity among pregnant immigrant women in Sweden, Germany, and the United States, compared with non-immigrant women. This observational study was based on Medical Birth Registry Norway and Statistics Norway. The study population consisted of 219,555 deliveries between 2006 and 2014. Some 22.3% of the women studied were overweight. 12.2% of women were obese. The highest rates of excess weight (30.8%) and obesity (13.5%) were recorded among women from the Middle East and North Africa or with no education (30.7% and 17.2%). Some 39.5% of women studied in sparsely populated counties were overweight and obese, compared to 26.4% for women living in Oslo. Adjusted for country of birth, education level, age, parity, smoking and marital status, women in sparsely populated counties were 65% more likely to be overweight. Women born in the Middle East and North Africa or Sub-Saharan Africa were most likely to be overweight. Women born in Asia were least likely to be overweight. There was an inverse association between pre-pregnancy BMI and education level. Women with no education had the highest prevalence (47.9%) of being overweight. In contrast, women with the highest education were least likely (22.3%) to be overweight. "This study reveals that immigrant women from the Middle East or Africa have a notably higher prevalence of obesity than women from other parts of the world, or women born in the recipient country. Additionally, women with lower education had a higher prevalence of obesity," said Katariina Laine, head of department of obstetrics at Oslo University Hospital. "Health care providers should take these factors into consideration in planning of prenatal care. Some groups of women may need more follow-up than the healthiest women." ### The paper, "Country of birth and association with overweight - a population based study of 219 555 pregnancies in Norway," is available (at midnight EST on March 21) at: https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdz001 Direct correspondence to: Katariina Laine Department of Obstetrics, Oslo University Hospital Ulleval, Pb 4965, Nydalen, 0424 Oslo, NORWAY kattiksen@yahoo.no To request a copy of the study, please contact: Daniel Luzer daniel.luzer@oup.com Sharing on social media? Find Oxford Journals online at @OxfordJournals People from North Africa are likely the main group that founded the indigenous population on the Canary Islands, arriving by 1000 CE, reports a new study by Rosa Fregel of Stanford University, USA and Universidad de La Laguna, Spain, and colleagues, published March 20, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. Numerous studies of the culture and genetics of indigenous people living in the Canary Islands, an archipelago off the coast of Morocco, point to North African Berbers as the founders, but more recent human activities - such as the Spanish conquest, the start of sugarcane plantations and the slave trade - have changed the indigenous population's genetic makeup. To shed light on who first colonized the archipelago, researchers analyzed 48 ancient mitochondrial genomes from 25 archaeological sites across the seven main islands. They selected mitochondrial genomes because, since they are inherited directly from the mother, they are especially consistent and useful for tracking human migrations. The researchers discovered lineages that have only been observed in Central North Africa, and others that have a wider distribution including both West and Central North Africa, and, in some cases, Europe and the Near East. They also identified four new lineages specific to the Canary Islands, which, when analyzed together, are consistent with radiocarbon dating evidence showing that people reached the islands by 1000 CE. Additionally, the researchers found that the distribution of the different lineages on each island varies depending on the island's distance from the continent, which supports previous studies finding that the islands experienced at least two distinct early migration events. The Canary Islands lineages discovered in this study fit into a larger pattern of Mediterranean migration through North Africa, as part of the Neolithic expansion of humans from the Middle East to Europe and Africa. The presence of these Mediterranean lineages suggests that the Berbers had already mixed with Mediterranean groups at the time that they colonized the islands. The authors add: "Using next-generation techniques, we have been able to obtain ancient DNA of the indigenous population of all the seven Canary Islands for the first time. Our results indicate that mitochondrial DNA diversity is variable within the archipelago, suggesting that the colonization of the islands was a heterogeneous process and that the different islands had different evolutionary histories." ### Peer-reviewed; Observational study; People Citation: Fregel R, Ordonez AC, Santana-Cabrera J, Cabrera VM, Velasco-Vazquez J, Alberto V, et al. (2019) Mitogenomes illuminate the origin and migration patterns of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands. PLoS ONE 14(3): e0209125. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209125 Funding: C.D.B. and R.F. were funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (1201234) and the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator Award; R.F. was funded by a Fundacion Canaria Dr. Manuel Morales fellowship and by a grant from Direccion General de Patriomonio Cultural del Gobierno de Canarias (MITOCAN); M.A. was funded by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (HAR2015-68323-P) and by the Maria Rosa Alonso grant from Cabildo de Tenerife; B.S. was funded by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF-3804); A.C.R.R. was funded by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (HAR2017-83205P); R.G.M., J.M.L.S and C.F. were funded by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RTC-2017-6471-1) and Area Tenerife 2030 from Cabildo de Tenerife (CGIEU0000219140), and from the agreement OA17/008 with Instituto Tecnologico y de Energias Renovables (ITER). Tibicena Arqueologia y Patrimonio provided support in the form of salaries for authors V.A. and M.A.M.B. and radiocarbon dating of four archaeological samples, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: Tibicena Arqueologia y Patrimonio provided support in the form of salaries for authors V.A. and M.A.M.B and radiocarbon dating of four archaeological samples. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0209125 WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- The increase in cesarean sections is on the verge of a global epidemic. Though the World Health Organization recommends an optimal C-section rate of 10-15 percent, the United States' C-section rate is more than 30 percent. In many Latin American countries, the procedure is sky rocketing, reaching more than 50 percent in some. While C-sections are lifesaving in some cases, they are increasing beyond recommended rates with harmful consequences for children's health. Cesarean delivered children tend to be susceptible to infections, obesity, asthma and allergies. This occurs in part because many mothers are unable to successfully breastfeed them after a C-section. However, recent research shows that this may be culturally mediated. In some parts of the world, mothers are able to breastfeed successfully after C-section deliveries, and this practice may reduce their negative child health effects. Amanda Veile, an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue University, and her team report that indigenous mothers in farming communities in Yucatan, Mexico, breastfeed for about 1.5 months longer following cesarean deliveries than they do following vaginal deliveries. Veile believes this is possible because the mothers live in an exceptionally supportive breastfeeding environment. "Moms living in this Mexican community don't have to hide in a bathroom to feed their child when they are in public," says Veile, a biological anthropologist who specializes in infant and child development. "Here, it is a cultural norm to breastfeed anytime, anywhere, and to sustain breastfeeding for longer than two years. And we think that prolonged breastfeeding offers protective benefits that reduces some of the health problems we often see in children delivered by C-section." Veile's research appears in the American Journal of Human Biology's special issue on the evolutionary and biocultural causes and consequences of rising cesarean delivery rates. Veile and collaborator Karen Rosenberg, a professor from the University of Delaware, are the guest editors for the special issue. It features 10 research articles written by anthropologists, biologists and healthcare practitioners, which are available open access through spring 2019. In Veile's study, she and her team compared breastfeeding durations and childhood infection rates based on how the child was born to Yucatec Maya farmers. Following 88 children from birth until age 5, the results show that those children born via C-sections were breastfed for about 2.7 years, whereas vaginally delivered children were breastfed for just over 2.5 years. There was no difference in infection rates between the two groups of children. "What a powerful message supporting breastfeeding," Veile says. "We need to continue studying this issue, but it seems that these mothers, perhaps subconsciously, increased their breastfeeding efforts post-cesarean." Veile says that Yucatec Maya women do experience post-cesarean challenges in the hospital environment, such as prolonged separation from their infants, latching issues and delayed milk let-down reflex. Still mothers overcome these challenges through determination, consumption of special foods, and the use of herbs and compresses. They also receive emotional support and breastfeeding advice from their family and friends. "Now that C-sections are becoming more universal, it is important to understand more about the consequences for children's health in a variety of settings," Veile said. "This includes very rural communities worldwide that are transitioning to increased health care access, while simultaneously experiencing poor community sanitation and the double burden of malnutrition." ### This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Purdue Research Foundation and Dartmouth College. Veile collaborated with Sydney M. Tuller, graduate student in Purdue's Department of Anthropology; Amy A. Faria, graduate student in Purdue's Department of Consumer Science; Sydney Rivera, medical student at the Indiana University School of Medicine; and Karen L. Kramer, professor of anthropology at the University of Utah. Other research by Veile examined childhood growth patterns and environmental health issues in indigenous children as related to C-sections. Veile is the director of the Laboratory for Behavior, Ontogeny and Reproduction (LABOR), which studies maternal reproductive biology and the immuno-nutritional development of infants and children. In addition to Mexico, she has conducted research in Bolivia, Venezuela and Peru. The work aligns with Purdue's Giant Leaps celebration, acknowledging the university's global advancements made in health, longevity and quality of life as part of Purdue's 150th anniversary. This is one of the four themes of the yearlong celebration's Ideas Festival, designed to showcase Purdue as an intellectual center solving real-world issues. HOUSTON - (March 21, 2019) - If an antibiotic doesn't kill all the bacteria that infects a patient, the surviving bugs may be particularly adept at timing their resurgence. Theoretical scientists at Rice University have proposed a better way to understand how to prescribe antibiotics to kill every last bacterium or at least discourage them from developing resistance Anatoly Kolomeisky, a Rice professor of chemistry and chemical and biomolecular engineering, considers antibiotic resistance "the most serious problem of the 21st century." A new study by Kolomeisky and postdoctoral researcher Hamid Teimouri shows that fluctuating growth rates of bacteria can increase the time it takes for a bacterial colony to die out and give it a better shot at developing resistance. "Our calculations suggest this fluctuation, which bacteria can easily do, might help them bide their time and try different mutations," Kolomeisky said. "We think this is the possible first step in antibiotic resistance." Their theory appears in the Royal Society journal Interface. The researchers show that there is no correlation between the bacterial extinction probabilities widely used to determine antibiotic doses and actual extinction times. "There is huge abuse of antibiotics in the world, and especially in this country," Kolomeisky said. "In the last five years, there's been a 4 percent increase in antibiotic prescriptions. Essentially, a huge amount of antibiotics is given to people when it's not needed." The researchers argued it should someday be possible to prescribe a more accurate dose by knowing the size of an infecting colony and the average time it will take to completely eradicate it. They present a preliminary model, from which the pharmaceutical companies might learn how to develop better strategies to improve treatment of infections. Bacterial population dynamics are key to the study, Kolomeisky said. "Now, when doctors calculate how much antibiotic you should get, they treat everyone equally," he said. "That's already a huge mistake: They assume you have a huge amount of bacteria in your body and use a very simple deterministic model to prescribe the minimal concentration of antibiotic. Below that threshold, they say you will not be cured, and above it, you will always be cured. "So everyone is getting exactly one tablet per day, and it doesn't matter whether you're a kid or an adult," he said. That one-size-fits-all strategy doesn't account for fluctuations in the growth rate of bacteria, Kolomeisky said. The new model incorporates these random fluctuations when averaging the amount of time it takes a population to die. "The problem comes when the antibiotics are working and you come to where there's almost no bacteria," he said. "When there's almost none or the numbers are relatively small, so-called stochastic (random) effects become important. We know that it's enough to have as few as 10 salmonella or shigella bacteria for the infection to start again." Kolomeisky said current models only tell doctors the probability that a course of antibiotics will cure a patient. "We care much more about the average time to be cured, not the probability," he said. "This will give doctors a much clearer description of what should be done." The study has implications for agriculture, Kolomeisky said. "Food supplies 75 percent of antibiotics," he said. "We need to optimize antibiotic activities there as well, to lower the levels of antibiotics getting to people. "This is a very long way from real applications, but it should give industry some ideas of what to do next and how to couple it with biochemical studies," Kolomeisky said. "It's not enough to investigate only the biochemical and genetic parts of bacterial infection. Knowing the population dynamics aspects of the antibiotic action can clarify a lot of issues." ### The Welch Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics at Rice supported the research. David Ruth, 713-348-6327, david@rice.edu Mike Williams, 713-348-6728, mikewilliams@rice.edu Read the abstract at https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2018.0765. This news release can be found online at https://news.rice.edu/2019/03/21/bacteria-bide-their-time-when-antibiotics-attack/ Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews. Related materials: Kolomeisky Research Group: http://python.rice.edu/~kolomeisky/ Wiess School of Natural Sciences: http://natsci.rice.edu Center for Theoretical Biological Physics: https://ctbp.rice.edu Image for download: https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2019/03/0325_BACTERIA-1-web-scvksv.jpg Rice University researchers Anatoly Kolomeisky, left, and Hamid Teimouri have built a theoretical model to predict how long, on average, it takes to eradicate a bacterial infection with antibiotics. The model could help doctors fight resistance by prescribing antibiotics that neither over- or under-dose a patient. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University) https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2019/03/0325_BACTERIA-2-web-131wvs9.jpg Rice University scientists have built a model to predict how long, on average, it takes to eradicate bacterial infections like those caused by shigella, above, with antibiotics. The model could help doctors fight resistance by prescribing antibiotics that neither over- or under-dose a patient. (Credit: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. Both electric dipoles and spin moments can be ordered in solids, leading to ferro-type phases, e.g. ferromagnetism or ferroelectricity. Generally these two degrees of freedom are not simultaneously active in solids. Multiferroics, are those materials with orders of both spin moments and electric dipoles, which provide an ideal platform for these two vectors to twist together. Even though, the coupling between magnetism and ferroelectricity is nontrivial since they obey different physical rules. From the symmetric aspect, an electric dipole breaks the spatial inversion symmetry while a spin moment breaks the time reversal symmetry. Microscopically, the existing of net magnetization requires unpaired spin, while the formation of dipole usually needs empty orbitals. Then how can they dance together? Thanks to the extensive studies in the past decades, now scientists know how to active both degrees of freedom in solids and link them together. In a recent Topical Review by Dong, Xiang, and Dagotto, published in Natl. Sci. Rev., the authors summarize various mechanisms to coupling magnetism and ferroelectricity, which can be categorized to three paths: spin-orbit coupling, spin-lattice coupling, spin-charge coupling. These physical mechanisms have been explained with examples of typical materials. ### This research received funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Special Funds for Major State Basic Research, the Qing Nian Ba Jian Program, the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering Division. See the article: Shuai Dong, Hongjun Xiang and Elbio Dagotto. Magnetoelectricity in multiferroics: a theoretical perspective Natl Sci Rev 2018; doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwz023 https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwz023 The National Science Review is the first comprehensive scholarly journal released in English in China that is aimed at linking the country's rapidly advancing community of scientists with the global frontiers of science and technology. The journal also aims to shine a worldwide spotlight on scientific research advances across China. SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Physicists in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University have confirmed that matter and antimatter decay differently for elementary particles containing charmed quarks. Distinguished Professor Sheldon Stone says the findings are a first, although matter-antimatter asymmetry has been observed before in particles with strange quarks or beauty quarks. He and members of the College's High-Energy Physics (HEP) research group have measured, for the first time and with 99.999-percent certainty, a difference in the way D0mesons and anti-D0 mesons transform into more stable byproducts. Mesons are subatomic particles composed of one quark and one antiquark, bound together by strong interactions. "There have been many attempts to measure matter-antimatter asymmetry, but, until now, no one has succeeded," says Stone, who collaborates on the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) experiment at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. "It's a milestone in antimatter research." The findings may also indicate new physics beyond the Standard Model, which describes how fundamental particles interact with one another. "Till then, we need to await theoretical attempts to explain the observation in less esoteric means," he adds. Every particle of matter has a corresponding antiparticle, identical in every way, but with an opposite charge. Precision studies of hydrogen and antihydrogen atoms, for example, reveal similarities to beyond the billionth decimal place. When matter and antimatter particles come into contact, they annihilate each other in a burst of energy--similar to what happened in the Big Bang, some 14 billion years ago. "That's why there is so little naturally occurring antimatter in the Universe around us," says Stone, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, which has awarded him this year's W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics. The question on Stone's mind involves the equal-but-opposite nature of matter and antimatter. "If the same amount of matter and antimatter exploded into existence at the birth of the Universe, there should have been nothing left behind but pure energy. Obviously, that didn't happen," he says in a whiff of understatement. Thus, Stone and his LHCb colleagues have been searching for subtle differences in matter and antimatter to understand why matter is so prevalent. The answer may lie at CERN, where scientists create antimatter by smashing protons together in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's biggest, most powerful particular accelerator. The more energy the LHC produces, the more massive are the particles--and antiparticles--formed during collision. It is in the debris of these collisions that scientists such as Ivan Polyakov, a postdoc in Syracuse's HEP group, hunt for particle ingredients. "We don't see antimatter in our world, so we have to artificially produce it," he says. "The data from these collisions enables us to map the decay and transformation of unstable particles into more stable byproducts." HEP is renowned for its pioneering research into quarks--elementary particles that are the building blocks of matter. There are six types, or flavors, of quarks, but scientists usually talk about them in pairs: up/down, charm/strange and top/bottom. Each pair has a corresponding mass and fractional electronic charge. In addition to the beauty quark (the "b" in "LHCb"), HEP is interested in the charmed quark. Despite its relatively high mass, a charmed quark lives a fleeting existence before decaying into something more stable. Recently, HEP studied two versions of the same particle. One version contained a charmed quark and an antimatter version of an up quark, called the anti-up quark. The other version had an anti-charm quark and an up quark. Using LHC data, they identified both versions of the particle, well into the tens of millions, and counted the number of times each particle decayed into new byproducts. "The ratio of the two possible outcomes should have been identical for both sets of particles, but we found that the ratios differed by about a tenth of a percent," Stone says. "This proves that charmed matter and antimatter particles are not totally interchangeable." Adds Polyakov, "Particles might look the same on the outside, but they behave differently on the inside. That is the puzzle of antimatter." The idea that matter and antimatter behaves differently is not new. Previous studies of particles with strange quarks and bottom quarks have confirmed as such. What makes this study unique, Stone concludes, is that it is the first time anyone has witnessed particles with charmed quarks being asymmetrical: "It's one for the history books." ### HEP's work is supported by the National Science Foundation. A major new finding about the fundamental structure of all matter has just been published by a group of researchers that includes a Temple University physicist and two former Temple graduate students. Appearing March 14 as a rapid communication in the journal Physical Review D, the research stems from an analysis of data produced by an experiment conducted at the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island in polarized proton-proton collisions. The new data is derived from the STAR (Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC) experiment that added detail--and complexity--to an intriguing puzzle that scientists have been pondering: How the building blocks that make up a proton effect its spin (both protons and neutrons form the center of each atom). The spinning is as essential to a particle's identity as its electric charge and mass. Because particles have spin, they can act like tiny magnets with a particular polarity. For example, aligning and flipping the polarity of proton spin is the basis for technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), an indispensable medical diagnostic tool. Understanding how this proton spin arises from each proton's inner building blocks--which include quarks, gluons and what is called a sea of quark-antiquark pairs--may help scientists better understand the nuclear structure of atoms. "After multiple years of experimental work at RHIC, this exciting new result provides a substantially deeper understanding of fundamental quantum physics questions regarding how quantum fluctuations affect the dynamics of quarks inside the proton," says Professor Bernd Surrow, vice chair of the Temple Physics Department. "It contributes to our exploration of the structure and dynamics of the visible world around us, including the human body, a table or a car, and what gives them mass in terms of their atomic structures." In a field dominated by males, Surrow notes that two women who formerly were graduate students in his laboratory--Amani Kraishan and Devika Gunarathne--were two of the three graduate students who analyzed the data that led to the publication of the research, and continue in the field. Kraishan is currently an adjunct professor both in Temple's Physics Department and at Al-Hussein Bin Talal University in Jordan. She continues to collaborate with the Temple group under the leadership of Professor Surrow, focusing on the ongoing research program at Brookhaven National Laboratory and a future U.S. Electron-Ion Collider facility. The third student involved, Jinlong Zhang of Shandong University, subsequently was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and is now at Stony Brook University. The research was funded by an ongoing grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Future goals of the study include more precise measurements of the quarks and antiquarks, and the gluons which "glue" or bind the quarks and antiquarks together to form both protons and neutrons. ### This science will be studied further at RHIC, but the nuclear physics community agrees that the next major advances will come with the construction of a new accelerator laboratory called the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), which will be built in the US. Temple University physicists play lead roles in securing this new facility. Professor Zein-Eddine Meziani contributed last year, at the request of the DOE, to a committee empaneled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that made the scientific case for the EIC. Surrow leads the Steering Committee of the Electron-Ion Collider User Group, an international organization of physicists charged with plotting the scientific priorities and instrumentation needs of the new accelerator. Research led by the University of Birmingham has found that increased levels of hormones including testosterone could cause a brain condition that can lead to blindness in women. Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension - also known as IIH - is caused by high pressure in the brain with consequences from blindness to incapacitating daily long-term headaches. IIH was originally identified over 100 years ago yet the cause of the condition has remained unknown although there has been much speculation about why more than 95 per cent of total incidence is in women with obesity. Once regarded as rare, incidence of IIH is now rising dramatically in line with the global rise in obesity and there has been a 150 per cent rise in incidence in last 10 years. Currently there are very limited treatment options. Scientists at the University of Birmingham carried out research, funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), the Medical Research Council UK, and Wellcome Trust and published today in JCI Insight, exploring the role of hormones known as androgens in the way IIH develops. The researchers examined the levels of androgens in blood and urine, as well as in brain fluid known as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), in 55 women with IIH aged 18 to 45. They then compared the results with the levels observed in women with obesity of the same age and body mass index (BMI), as well as a cohort of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). PCOS is a common condition and is classically associated with increased levels of specific types of androgens, which can cause excess hair and irregular periods. The researchers found that IIH patients had a very different profile of raised levels of androgens compared to women of a similar age with obesity and women with PCOS. Most notable were the high levels of the androgen 'testosterone' found in the blood in IIH women. Crucially, levels of androgens were uniquely increased in the brain fluid (CSF) of women with IIH. When the researchers, analysed human choroidal plexus tissue, which is the site in the brain where CSF is produced, they confirmed that androgens could increase the rate of CSF secretion, a potential driver for increased brain pressure. Corresponding and senior author Dr Alex Sinclair, NIHR Clinician Scientist at the University of Birmingham, said: "For over 100 years the cause of IIH has been unknown. "These findings mark a key step forward; for the first time we have found a pattern of androgen dysregulation that is unique to IIH and potentially a driver of abnormal brain pressure in people with the condition. "Taken together this provides the first evidence that IIH may be a manifestation of female androgen excess." Lead author Dr Michael O'Reilly, Hoffenberg Clinician Scientist in Endocrinology and Human Metabolism at the University of Birmingham, said: "These findings, for the first time, implicate androgens as a potential cause of IIH." Professor Wiebke Arlt, Director of the University of Birmingham's Institute of Metabolism and Systems Research, added: "These findings mark a significant step forward in a previously poorly understood disabling condition. "Understanding the cause of a disease is a vital step to ultimately refine treatments which improved patient care and outcomes." Michelle Williamson, Chair of the patient charity IIHUK, added: "The recent patient and doctor research Priority Setting Partnership identified that uncovering the cause of IIH was the number one priority for IIH. We are delighted by this discovery. It is vital for the patients to see that progress is being made." This latest study comes after experts led by the University of Birmingham recently produced the first internationally collaborative guidelines aimed at improving the treatment and diagnosis of IIH. Created by a group of specialists in neurology, neurosurgery, neuro-radiology, ophthalmology and neuroradiology, who have had expertise in managing IIH, the team envisage that the new guidelines, published last October in Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, will step change the treatment of the condition. ### For more information please contact Emma McKinney, Communications Manager (Health Sciences), University of Birmingham, Email: e.j.mckinney@bham.ac.uk or tel: +44 (0) 121 414 6681, or contact the press office on +44 (0) 7789 921 165 or pressoffice@contacts.bham.ac.uk Notes to Editors: The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world's top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 6,500 international students from over 150 countries. O'Reilly et al (2019). 'A unique androgen excess signature in idiopathic intracranial hypertension is linked to cerebrospinal fluid dynamics'. JCI Insight. DOI: [insert here] Dr Alex Sinclair is also an Honorary Consultant Neurologist and Clinician Scientist at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. This study was funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), the Medical Research Council UK, and Wellcome Trust. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme Nurses of the National Institute of Health Research/Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility at University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, helped with patient recruitment and running of the study. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Health Service, the National Institute for Health Research, or the Department of Health UK. University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) runs the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Birmingham Chest Clinic, Heartlands Hospital, Good Hope Hospital, Solihull Hospital and various community services across the region. The Trust has regional centres for trauma, burns, plastics, neurosciences, dermatology and cancer. It also has centres of excellence for vascular, headache, bariatric and pathology services, as well as the treatment of MRSA and other infectious diseases. We also have expertise in HIV/AIDS, premature baby care, bone marrow transplants and thoracic surgery. UHB has the largest solid organ transplantation programme in Europe and runs Umbrella, the sexual health service for Birmingham and Solihull. It is also home to the West Midlands Adult Cystic Fibrosis Centre and a nationally-renowned weight management clinic and research centre. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham is a Major Trauma Centre treating the most severely injured casualties from across the region. The hospital's single site 100-bed critical care unit is the largest in Europe. The Trust hosts the Institute of Translational Medicine (ITM) and leads the West Midlands Genomics Medicine Centre as part of the national 100,000 Genomes Project. UHB is also proud to host the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (RCDM) at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. The RCDM provides dedicated training for defence personnel and is a focus for medical research. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is the nation's largest funder of health and care research. The NIHR: Funds, supports and delivers high quality research that benefits the NHS, public health and social care Engages and involves patients, carers and the public in order to improve the reach, quality and impact of research Attracts, trains and supports the best researchers to tackle the complex health and care challenges of the future Invests in world-class infrastructure and a skilled delivery workforce to translate discoveries into improved treatments and services Partners with other public funders, charities and industry to maximise the value of research to patients and the economy. The NIHR was established in 2006 to improve the health and wealth of the nation through research, and is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. In addition to its national role, the NIHR commissions applied health research to benefit the poorest people in low- and middle-income countries, using Official Development Assistance funding. About Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension is a rare condition, with an incidence in the general population rising rapidly from 2 per 100,000 in 2002, to 5 per 100,000 by 2016. The incidence is highest in women with obesity. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41433-018-0238-5 The cause of IIH has, to date, been unknown but is characterised by raised intracranial pressure, resulting in disabling chronic daily headaches and optic disc swelling which cause blindness in up to 25%. A previous study by the University of Birmingham research team has shown that weight loss is successful in relieving IIH. https://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c2701.long New guidelines for treating IIH: Mollan et al (2018).'Idiopathic intracranial hypertension: consensus guidelines on management'. Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1136/jnnp-2017-317440 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29903905 Offering praise and having a good working relationship isn't always enough to engender loyalty from staff - employees also need to feel that the relationship with their boss is important, according to new research. The study, led by Dr Allan Lee from the University of Exeter's Business School, is the first of its kind to examine both the quality of exchanges between a leader and follower and the value of those exchanges in the eyes of the follower. It had previously been assumed that a high quality relationship alone would automatically lead to feelings of loyalty towards managers, but this latest research shows that it also depends on whether the employee views the relationship as important in the first place. "Our findings have real implications for the workplace because it shows that the perceived importance of a manager is also really important in building loyalty," said Dr Lee. "While it's worthwhile investing in employees who see the relationship as important, employers would also do well to look for ways to motivate those staff who don't." The research was also carried out by Professor Geoff Thomas from Surrey Business School, Professor Robin Martin from Alliance Manchester Business School, Professor Yves Guillaume, Liverpool Business School and Dr Anders Marstand, Birkbeck, University of London. "We also found that a quality relationship with a boss caused greater feelings of psychological empowerment and this effect was felt more strongly when the relationship was viewed as important by the employee," added Dr Lee. "For instance, if a member of staff receives recognition and praise from a leader, it has more impact on the way they view their own competencies the more importance they place on that relationship. "Employees with a strong sense of empowerment are also likely to take an active attitude towards their work and perform "above and beyond" what is expected." Two separate studies were carried out; the first with 292 participants studying for a business-related degree at a UK business school. The second study involved 196 participants from a UK-owned organisation based in India. Participants were asked their views at three different time points over a period of six months. Those in the first study reflected on their relationship with their appointed team leader for a group-work based module and participants in the second study reflected on their relationship with their work supervisor. The research, Beyond relationship quality: The role of leader-member exchange importance in leader-follower dyads is published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology. ### COLUMBIA, Mo. - Parents hoping to raise teenagers with positive body image might just find helpful tools in the kitchen every morning. A new study from the University of Missouri says consistently eating breakfast as a family might promote positive body image for children and adolescents. "We know that developing healthy behaviors in adolescence such as eating breakfast every day and eating family meals can have long-term effects into adulthood," said Virginia Ramseyer Winter, assistant professor in the School of Social Work and director of the MU Center for Body Image Research and Policy. "Children and adolescents are under a lot of pressure from social media and pop culture when it comes to physical appearance. Having a healthy relationship with food from eating breakfast and spending meal time with family might have a significant impact on well-being." Researchers analyzed data from more than 12,000 students in more than 300 schools in all 50 states and Washington D.C. They looked at data related to eating behaviors, including frequency of eating breakfast and eating meals with a parent. The researchers found that eating breakfast during the week more frequently was associated with positive body image. Just over half of the sample reported eating breakfast five days a week; however, nearly 17 percent reported never eating breakfast. More than 30 percent reported eating breakfast fewer than five times a week. The researchers also found that boys were more likely to eat breakfast than girls. Additionally, the researchers found that children were much more likely to have a positive body image if they regularly ate breakfast with a parent. "We know that the health behaviors of a parent can have long-term effects on a child," Ramseyer Winter said. "Results of this study suggest that positive interactions with food-- such as eating breakfast and having family meals together-- could be associated with body image." "Eating breakfast and family meals in adolescence: the role of body image," recently was published in Social Work in Public Health. Aubrey Jones, a doctoral student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and Elizabeth O'Neill, assistant professor at Washburn University, also contributed to the study. The study is part of the newly created Center for Body Image Research and Policy, an interdisciplinary research center housed in the MU College of Human Environmental Sciences. The center was built around the goal to improve body image, health and wellness for individuals, families and communities. ### A new large-scale longitudinal study carried out by University of Sussex psychologists has found a clear link between episodes of depression and anxiety experienced by adults in their twenties, thirties and forties, with a decrease in memory function by the time they are in their fifties. The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, is the first of its kind to look at the relationship between depressive symptoms experienced across three decades of early-mid adulthood and a decline in cognitive function in midlife. The Sussex psychologists analysed data from the National Child Development Study, which was established in 1958 with a cohort of over 18,000 babies and followed participants from birth into childhood and through to adulthood. The Sussex psychologists found that an accumulation of symptoms experienced by participants over the three decades provided a strong indicator of a linear decrease in memory function by the time the adults were fifty. They found that one episode of depression or anxiety had little effect on the memory function of adults in midlife, regardless of which decade it was experienced, but that once the episodes increased to two or three over the course of the three decades, that this predicted a steady decrease in the participant's memory function by the time they reached fifty. This, the psychologists from the EDGE Lab at the University of Sussex argue, highlights an opportunity to protect future memory function by promoting mental health interventions amongst young adults and they are calling on the UK government to invest in the mental health of young adults as a preventative measure to protect the future brain health of our ageing population. Dr Darya Gaysina, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Sussex said: "We found that the more episodes of depression people experience in their adulthood, the higher risk of cognitive impairment they have later in life. This finding highlights the importance of effective management of depression to prevent the development of recurrent mental health problems with long-term negative outcomes. "We'd therefore like to see the government investing more in the mental health provision for young adults, not only for the immediate benefit of the patients, but also to help protect their future brain health." As well as memory, the psychologists also assessed verbal fluency, information processing speed and accuracy scores of the participants once they turned fifty. Encouragingly, episodes of depression and anxiety had little impact on the latter four areas of cognitive function but the associated loss of memory suggests that depressive symptoms experienced in early adulthood could predict dementia in older adulthood. Previous research carried out by the EDGE lab at the University of Sussex had found a relationship between depressive symptoms experienced in older adulthood and a faster rate of cognitive decline, but this is the first time that such a large and UK nationally representative sample has been able to make this link in the first three decade of adulthood. University of Sussex Psychology PhD student Amber John said: "We knew from previous research that depressive symptoms experienced in mid adulthood to late adulthood can predict a decline in brain function in later life but we were surprised to see just how clearly persistent depressive symptoms across three decades of adulthood are an important predictor of poorer memory function in mid-life. "With the publication of this research, we're calling for the government to invest in mental health provision to help stem the risk of repeated episodes of depression and anxiety. From an individual's perspective, this research should be a wake up call to do what you can to protect your mental health, such as maintaining strong relationships with friends and family, taking up physical exercise or practicing mindfulness meditation - all of which have been shown to boost mental health. Then of course, seeing your GP for advice if you feel you need help with depression or anxiety." ### Female birds age more slowly and live longer when they have help raising their offspring, according to new research from the University of Sheffield. Researchers studied the relationship between ageing and offspring rearing patterns in the Seychelles warbler, and found that females who had assistance from other female helpers benefitted from a longer, healthier lifespan. The findings help explain why social species, such as humans, which live in groups and cooperate to raise offspring, often have longer lifespans. The study was led by researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, in collaboration with the universities of Sheffield, Leeds and Wageningen, and with Nature Seychelles. Professor Terry Burke, from the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, said: "It is well understood that one of the benefits of having relatives' help to raise offspring is that this improves the survival of the young. We have now shown that as parents age they decline in their ability to care for their offspring, but having helpers compensates for this effect, allowing the parents to continue to reproduce successfully into old age. This result helps to answer the question of why some animals assist others to reproduce, instead of raising their own offspring." Professor David S Richardson, from UEA's School of Biological Sciences, said: "There is huge variation in lifespan between different species, and also between individuals within a species. But we know very little about what causes one individual to live a long healthy life, and another to die young. Or indeed, why individuals in one species live much longer than individuals in another similar species. "Finding out more about what causes biological ageing is really important. And, until now, there has been very little known about the relationship between sociality and ageing within species." Many species have cooperative breeding systems - in which offspring are cared for not only by their parents, but also by other adult members of the group called 'helpers'. These helpers are often - but not always - grown-up offspring from previous years. The research team used more than 15 years of data on the breeding patterns of Seychelles warblers living on the small island of Cousin, in the Seychelles, to study associations between cooperative care giving and ageing. As well as studying how quickly individuals' chances of dying increased as they grow older, the team also used the length of the birds' telomeres as a measure of their condition. Telomeres are found at the end of chromosomes and act as protective caps to stop genes close to the end of the chromosome being damaged - like the hard plastic ends of a bootlace. Professor Richardson said: "Our previous work has shown that telomere length can be a good indicator of an individual's biological condition relative to its actual age - a measure of an individual's biological age so to speak. So we can use it to measure how quickly different birds are ageing. "In the Seychelles warbler the majority of helpers are female - and they assist with incubating the eggs and providing food for the chicks. This means that the parents don't need to do as much work when they have help. "We found that older dominant females really benefit from having female helpers - they lose less of their telomeres and are less likely to die in the near future. This shows they are ageing slower than females without helpers. Interestingly, these older female mothers were also more likely to have female helpers. "Meanwhile the survival of elderly birds who were not assisted by helpers declined rapidly with age. "The birds only need one female helper to show the effect of delayed ageing, and indeed most only have either one or no helpers. Very few may have two or three helpers, but there were not enough of those to determine whether there would be a greater benefit in having more helpers." Dr Martijn Hammers, from the University of Groningen, said: "Our results suggest that for the older mothers, there are real benefits to cooperative breeding. Biologically speaking they stay 'younger' for longer, and they are more likely to live longer. "These findings may help to explain why social species often have longer lifespans. "What we don't know yet is why some older individuals have helpers, which enable them to live longer, and some don't despite the obvious benefits. Further research is needed to confirm the causality of the associations we have found." ### 'Breeders that receive help age more slowly in a cooperatively breeding bird' is published in the journal Nature Communications on March 21, 2019. For further information please contact: Emma Griffiths, Media and PR Assistant, University of Sheffield, 0114 222 1034, e.l.griffiths@sheffield.ac.uk Notes to editors The University of Sheffield With almost 29,000 of the brightest students from over 140 countries, learning alongside over 1,200 of the best academics from across the globe, the University of Sheffield is one of the world's leading universities. A member of the UK's prestigious Russell Group of leading research-led institutions, Sheffield offers world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines. Unified by the power of discovery and understanding, staff and students at the university are committed to finding new ways to transform the world we live in. Sheffield is the only university to feature in The Sunday Times 100 Best Not-For-Profit Organisations to Work For 2018 and for the last eight years has been ranked in the top five UK universities for Student Satisfaction by Times Higher Education. Sheffield has six Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students and its alumni go on to hold positions of great responsibility and influence all over the world, making significant contributions in their chosen fields. Global research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Unilever, AstraZeneca, Glaxo SmithKline, Siemens and Airbus, as well as many UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations. JACKSON, Tenn. - The Southern Weed Science Society (SWSS) recently honored Larry Steckel, a professor with the University of Tennessee Department of Plant Sciences, with the Outstanding Educator Award. The award was presented at the society's 2019 annual meeting. The Outstanding Educator Award is presented annually to a weed scientist who has made significant contributions to the Southern Weed Science Society and the discipline of weed science through education. Steckel has served as UT Extension Weed Specialist since 2003. His responsibilities include conducting statewide educational programming and research in weed management for row crops. In this role, Steckel's calendar stays full speaking at many field days, extension workshops, seminars or short courses, and making farm visits to meet with producers individually to answer questions and assess a situation. He coordinates an annual weed tour for farmers and industry and uses social media tools such as YouTube, Twitter and blog posts to quickly communicate new research with producers and extension agents. As a professor, Steckel has served as a major advisor to seven graduate students, while also serving as a mentor to three faculty. "Dr. Steckel is truly deserving of this award," says Scott Senseman, head, UT Department of Plant Sciences. "He has a heart for education, and takes great pride in helping our state's producers tackle weed challenges. I am proud to work with him and see the positive impacts he is making in the field of weed science." A recent weed challenge in Tennessee involved dicamba herbicide drift. Steckel was charged with developing a training module to address the issue. Thanks in part to his extensive training efforts, Tennessee reported a significant reduction in dicamba-damaged crop acres in 2018. ### The Southern Weed Science Society was established to bring together weed control experts in the areas of research, education, regulation, manufacturing and merchandising. Through its mission of research, teaching and extension, the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA) touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. ag.tennessee.edu. this news is not available With continued political chaos surrounding the protracted Brexit saga, the latest developments have seen the perceived probability of a potentially calamitous no-deal Brexit rise as investors eye the upcoming EU summit for a verdict on the UK's Brexit extension. As it stands, in lieu of an extension or a miraculous deal in the coming days, the UK is set to exit the European Union on March 29th without a negotiated agreement. Given the unshakeable Brexit impasse which has crippled progress in the area, Prime Minister Theresa May confirmed that she has written to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, to officially request a delay until March 29th. The PM said she would not be willing to extend Brexit any further - attributing the decision to the will of the people while speculators viewed the move as a ploy to appease hard-line Brexiteers within the Conservative Party. Ouch - Minister on PMs decision to ask only for short delay - Weak, weak, weak. Substantially increases the risk of no deal. Her most craven surrender to the hardliners yet. She knows this is the wrong choice for the country but shes putting her short term interests first. Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) 20 March 2019 Regardless, the EU response was quick to shoot-down the PM's request, with a statement from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker saying the maximum extension granted will be until May 23rd at the latest, lest the UK will have to participate in European elections. Given EU member state leaders must vote unanimously to back an extension, even a short delay is far from a forgone conclusion. Especially given recent comments from some EU officials who have clearly run out of patience with Brexit and, in particular, the UK governments approach thereto. According to reports from French news outlet LePoint, President Emmanuel Macron is one such case. The article read "For Macron, it is decided: we must... refuse to allow the British to postpone the Brexit, scheduled for 29 March. In any case, this is the position he will express on Thursday at the European council." In response to the latest developments, the Pound Sterling (GBP) fell sharply against a basket of peers, losing almost 1% against the Euro and US Dollar. Looking ahead, it's clear that while a managed Brexit is the favoured outcome for the majority of UK and EU politicians, a no-deal or disorderly Brexit scenario remains a distinct possibility. So what happens if the EU rejects the UK's request to delay Brexit? Or perhaps the EU agree but 2 or 3 months down the line it comes down to the wire once more with neither the UK government or the EU willing to delay Brexit any further? In the event of a no-deal Brexit, already highlighted by the Bank of England and the UK government's own assessment as the outcome expected to be the most economically detrimental, it's not only the UK who is likely to suffer with trading partners within the bloc tipped to come under pressure also. EU-UK Tariffs to Revert to WTO Terms Under No-Deal Brexit For one, trade between the UK and EU would become a whole lot more complicated in terms of tariff variations and also more expensive for UK exporters. Without a deal, EU-bound shipments of UK goods would be subject to World Trade Organisation (WTO) tariff schedule which would lead to not only higher costs but also a vastly more complex environment for UK exporters to navigate. Head of international trade analysis at ING, Raoul Leering, commented on the headache-inducing complexity UK exporters would face, "theres a big variation in tariff rates across different products. Apparel, cars and agricultural products tend to face the steepest tariffs. The highest rates are on dairy and agricultural products with tariffs for some particular types of products as high as 178%." According to plans already outlined by the UK government, importers of goods to the UK would benefit from a temporary tariff schedule which would see a high portion of tariffs slashed to zero, meaning that in this area at least, external parties could actually benefit from a no-deal Brexit, at least temporarily. While positive for those exporting goods to the UK, the decision could come back to bite when it comes to negotiating preferential trade deals with other nations. Regarding the Government's proposed tariff cuts, Leering wrote "This is a bold decision that would erode the competitiveness of British companies on the local market. If permanent, It would also make it more difficult to strike free-trade deals with the rest of the world, as there would not be much left to offer in terms of tariff reductions." At the end of the temporary tariff period, the UK will then have to decide on the tariff's imposed on exports going forward. If the UK chose to simply mirror the tariffs the EU's WTO terms impose on UK goods, the average rate would be around 6%. However, the basket of exports from individual EU member states varies substantially, meaning this percentage would likely be different for each and every EU country. Leering added "Ireland, for example, exports a lot of diary, meat and agricultural products that are subject to higher-than-average duties. For some other countries, the opposite is true. Finnish exports, for example, are dominated by paper and wood products, for which tariffs are typically low." The imposition of tariffs in either direction is likely to directly impact GDP for the involved parties. For example, British final demand accounts for roughly 7.4% of Irish GDP meaning reciprocal tariffs are likely to have a significant impact on growth while for Greece, UK final demand only accounts for 0.6% of GDP. The UK's exposure here would also be substantial with 6.8% of the UK's gross domestic product growth reliant on final demand from the EU. Sectoral effects are also likely to cause issues on both sides of the channel. For example, 10% of Europe's mining and quarrying output is dependent on final demand from the UK. However, tariffs in the sector are low, usually less than 1% so the impact could be limited. Other sectors, such as automotive parts and vehicles, pharmaceuticals and food producers, which typically have much higher tariffs, could cause problems for individual EU member states given a higher than average demand for British final demand. No-Deal Brexit Would Bring an End to Frictionless Trade On the other side of the trade dilemma will be the UK's exit from the single market. Trade between the UK and EU benefits from frictionless logistics, meaning reciprocally imported/exported goods aren't subject to border checks when passing from one jurisdiction to another. Under a no-deal Brexit, the UK's access to the single market would end meaning a return to border-checks which in turn equates to longer delivery times, higher costs and more difficulties in doing business which could prompt some firms to refrain from exporting to the UK. Food and animal products are one area of major concern with neither Calais or Dover ports having the required Border Inspection Posts (BIPs) to carry out veterinary checks. For example, the UK exports around 81% of the UK's total catch - limited ability to carry out the necessary border checks could see long delays. Just-in-time supply chains are likely to be some of the most heavily impacted. According to the British Transport Association, for each extra minute a lorry spends at Customs, an additional 17 miles of queues form on the M20/A20, increasing transport costs. Crippled Sterling Could Boost UK Export Appeal While a no-deal Brexit has yet to manifest, the impact is already being felt by firms both in the UK and across the channel. Recent PMIs have highlighted the ramping up of messy Brexit preparations with firms stockpiling at record levels and diverting capital otherwise used for business operations to shore up defences for the worst-case scenario. The latest Confederation of British Industry (CBI) industrial order expectations release highlighted just how hamstrung the UK manufacturing sector is amid continued Brexit uncertainty. According to the CBI, manufacturing output in Q1 2019 fell to it's weakest levels since May 2018. A quarter of the firms reported increased levels of Brexit-related stockpiling, reduced investment and weak demand both domestically and for export. Head of CBI economic intelligence, Anna Leach, wrote "The manufacturing sector has slowed again this month and is now barely growing. Brexit uncertainty is one of the biggest threats to growth in the UK manufacturing sector both current and future as firms prioritise stockpiling goods over investing in the future of their business." Leach reiterated calls for the government to "eliminate the threat of a "no-deal" Brexit in order to alleviate manufacturers fears of border delays, ruptured supply chains and tariffs on exports to the EU. UK manufacturers have 3 major no-deal Brexit concerns: 1 Border delays 2 Tariffs on EU goods 3 Supply chain disruptions Read more #ITS https://t.co/K2bgpSzZai pic.twitter.com/8G4hTX34Pr CBI (@CBItweets) 20 March 2019 Group director of INEOS, Tom Crotty, similarly highlighted Brexit-blight as key factor impinging on business growth. Crotty wrote "Manufacturers are in despair at the unacceptable failure of politicians to end the Brexit impasse. Every day that goes by without a resolution results in more businesses putting off investment and stockpiling goods in order to soften the blow from a potentially disastrous no deal Brexit scenario." Crotty went on to the note the impact of a weaker , "UK manufacturers continue to be supported by the lower level of sterling. The one positive outcome expected of a no-deal Brexit for UK business would be the increased appeal of UK exports should the Pound Sterling plummet. Median projections suggest that under a no-deal Brexit, the GBP could fall by as much as 5-10% meaning importers of goods from the UK could face bargain prices, supporting external demand. UPDATE: After plunging to a fresh one-week low of 7.1209, the British Pound Turkish lira exchange rates surged higher into Friday's session, with the GBP rallying in response to a two-week Brexit delay. Brexit-blight had weighed heavily on the over recent sessions with investors uncertain as to whether the European Union would agree to delay Brexit. While the two-week delay granted doesn't leave time to secure alternative arrangements, it's aimed to give PM May enough time to hold a third EU withdrawal agreement meaningful vote. Data-wise, it's a quiet session ahead with Brexit-related news0flow expected to remain the key driver of price action. For the Lira, focus remains on ties with the US. President Erdogan recently reaffirmed his commitment to purchase a Russian-made missile-defence system, straining the already tenuous Turkey-US relationship. Dovish Fed Supports Turkish Lira but Upside Limited The Pound Sterling (GBP) rose steadily against the Turkish Lira (TRY) through the Asian session with the cross briefly retaking 7.21 before slumping sharply into Thursday's session. At the time of writing, the pound to lira exchange rate was seen trading at 7.1576. Brexit remains a key driver for GBP markets with the latest developments heightening concerns over a potential no-deal Brexit. With just 8 days until the UK is due to leave the EU, EU leaders have said they will only grant an extension (until May 23rd) if the UK back's the PM's deal. Focus will be on the EU council summit for any further details. Elsewhere, UK retails sales and public sector net borrowing figures are due alongside the latest Bank of England (BoE) monetary policy releases. The central bank is expected to keep rates on hold until Brexit clarity emerges, whereupon, should the underlying fiscal situation remain unaltered, the BoE are expected to gradually pursue policy tightening. Meanwhile, the dovish Fed, whose 'dot plot' projections signalled no further hikes in the year ahead, helped to lift EM currencies such as the Lira. A Turkish-based FX trader commented "Its a very positive decision for emerging market currencies including the lira, and we were able to observe its impact on the market, with lira gaining around 1 percent against the dollar, adding "However, the report that ties with the U.S. are seen entering a difficult period was the only factor that limited this rise. Whether tensions between the US and Turkey continue to heighten over forthcoming sessions is expected to play a direct role on the Lira's market value. Having come under pressure earlier in the session, the Pound to Turkish Lira exchange rate spent the latter part of Wednesday's European session clawing back earlier Brexit-spurred losses. At the time of writing, GBP/TRY was last seen trading at 7.2269, down 0.42% from the daily open after slumping to sub 7.2 earlier in the session. Pound Sterling's slump came in the wake of, unsurprisingly, fresh Brexit-related concerns. Prime Minister Theresa May's request for a Brexit extension until the end of June was quickly rebuffed by EU officials who claimed the longest delay they would countenance would be no longer than to May 23rd in order to avoid the political complexities of the UK taking part in European elections. Further commentary from President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, suggested the EU's extension offer was conditional on the UK parliament being able to put forward a united front behind a majority-backed deal. Speaking to journalists, Tusk said "In the light of the consultations that I have conducted over the past days, I believe that a short extension will be possible, but it will be conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons." Near-term therefore, the Sterling remains an uncertain bet with a delay likely to support the currency in the near-term while no delay would mean the UK leaves the EU at the end of the month with no deal whatsoever. For the Lira, feisty talk from Turkish President Recep Tayipp Erdogan has led some analysts to believe a re-flaring of US-Turkish tensions could be on the cards with the Turkish President stating the nation would make no "U-turns" in their plans to purchase a Russian missile defence system. The move threatens to invoke "grave consequences" from the US, according to Defence spokesman Charles Summer, including an arms embargo. Overall, the Lira remains unappealing as the Turkish economy slides into recession. Danske Bank senior economist, Vladimir Miklashevsky, wrote "Major downside risks to our TRY forecasts include more aggressive monetary easing than markets are pricing, the Fed becoming more hawkish and geopolitical confrontation with the US on Russian air defence system." Given these risks, Danske Bank remain bearish on the TRY in the medium and longer-term, "as large FX debt redemptions by the Turkish private sector and further rate cuts are set to weigh on the TRY in 2019." Indicative of the institutional outlook on the Lira, Tuesday's session saw William Blair & Company, which manages around $100B in assets, announce they had cut their positions on the Turkish Lira, citing a potential political crisis between Turkey and the US. Partner and portfolio manager, Thomas Clarke, commented "There is now a growing chance that geopolitical risks will rise in a repeat of last summer, with a Trump versus Erdogan confrontation on the defence issue, adding "Were still long, but given these geopolitical risks, our position is now reduced... We will watch the situation and consider increasing our position at more attractive levels if this geopolitical issue creates a bigger opportunity. BREAKING: The British Pound was recovered losses after news broke that EU-27 leaders have come up with a two-part plan to help avoid a no deal Brexit on March 29. LIVE NOW - my remarks following the #EUCO working session on #Brexit https://t.co/42y3hI5Z8p Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) March 21, 2019 The leaders agreed to delay the Brexit process until May 22, if Theresa May can secure approval to the Withdrawal Agreement in the UK Parliament next week. If May fails to get her deal through for the third time, Brexit will be delayed until April 12. The Pound tumbled against a basket of major peer currencies in early Thursday trading as Prime Minister May prepared to travel to Brussels to discuss delaying Brexit beyond the impending March 29th deadline. The Pound-to-Dollar (GBP/USD) exchange rate was last seen trading at $1.31689. The Pound-to-Euro (GBPEUR), meanwhile, was last seen at 1.1554. The slump came as markets re-adjusted positions to reflect the real possibility that the UK and EU could part ways without a deal at the end of the month. While the EU have agreed to discuss a Brexit delay until May 23rd, some EU officials have said such an extension is contingent on UK lawmakers backing the EU withdrawal agreement. In a letter to EU leaders, chairman on the upcoming EU summit, Donald Tusk, wrote "We could consider a short extension conditional on a positive vote on the Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons." However, other EU leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, have made it clear their patience with the UK government is wearing thin and this is very much the last chance to secure an alternative to a no-deal Brexit. In terms of the condition attached, the Prime Minister's EU withdrawal agreement has already seen two massive defeats in the House of Commons, with both falling into the 'top 5' in terms of greatest marginal defeats for a sitting government in UK parliament history. These recent developments have prompted a distinct shift in the probabilities of various potential Brexit outcomes. Both the EU's stance and PM May's capitulation to anti-EU factions from within the Conservative Party have severely reduces the potential for a longer delay and therefore avenues to alternative, possibly softer Brexit outcomes, including no Brexit by way of a second referendum. Given the attached condition, i.e., get behind the withdrawal agreement or leave without a deal at the end of March, the persistent inability of the UK government to find consensus around Brexit means the risk of a disorderly departure following March 29th remains a distinct possibility. Commenting on the Sterling, Arkera analyst Viraj Patel wrote that the best thing for the GBP would be if "Mays deal gets over the line as it would lower uncertainty. Regrading the challenge facing Prime Minister May, Rabobank strategist, Bas van Geffen, likened the situation to catch-22. Geffen wrote "the EU wants to see the Withdrawal Agreement being approved by the House of Commons before it commits itself... and the PM May needs a substantial change to what has been agreed before she can bring anything back to the House for a vote. Like the chicken and the egg discussion, this sounds a bit like a stalemate." Despite the EU's stance, Danske Bank analysts still see the potential for a longer delay. Senior ECB/Euro area analyst, Piet Christiansen, wrote "we see the options being either a very short one (delay) to mid-May or a long one lasting into 2020. Our base case remains the latter." Christiansen added that "The risk scenario is that the EU27 leaders reject an extension, as they are more hawkish on Brexit than Tusk, Juncker and Barnier." All 27 heads of EU member states must vote unanimously and while they tend to predetermine how they will vote, it's not guaranteed. Investors will be focussed on the Brexit discussion element of the EU Council summit with specific regard to how EU leaders are expected to vote when the delay is put to the vote. A vote isn't expected until just ahead of the March 29th deadline in order to give PM May time for a third meaningful vote (MV3) The consequence here is that Brexit is well and truly going down to the wire with uncertainty ahead of the MV3 likely to prompt some substantial market volatility. Commenting on the Pound-to-Dollar cross, cross-asset strategist Robin Wilkin of Lloyds Commercial Banking wrote "While prices remain in a holding pattern under the 1.3300-1.3400 range highs, risks remain high for a test of support in the 1.3100 region." For the Euro-to-Pound exchange rate, Wilkin added "Prices have pushed back to test important resistance in the 0.8650-0.8700 region, after basing at 0.8500-0.8475. A rally through this resistance region would do significant short-term technical damage and suggest a return to the upper range." Daily FX 10.12.21: Where Next for British Pound vs Euro and Dollar? Posted by Tim Clayton on 10 Dec, 2021 Pound Sterling: Live market rates 10/12/2021, 12:00 BST: GBP/EUR 1.17077 (-0.02%), GBP/USD 1.31993 (-0.19%) Get free exchange rate alert Subscribe to daily exchange rates by email Markets Braced for key US CPI Inflation Data, Strong Data Would Increase Pressure for Aggressive Federal Reserve Tightening Risk appetite remained more cautious on Thursday Wednesday with the Omicron variant continuing to fuel uncertainty with traders braced for headlines of rising case rates across major economies. The focus on... Daily FX 10.12.21: Where Next for British Pound vs Euro and Dollar? Hi all, I am hoping someone can give me some insight on what to do in this situation. I have tried searching but have been unable to find any answers to my problem. The situation is this: I am a US citizen hoping to apply to join my husband in the UK. He is a born UK citizen and has resided in the UK his entire life. My husband works for a large retail company on a 30 hour a week contract, however overtime is available on top of these base hours. He has been with this company for over 6 month, so we are planning on applying under category A. His pay for the for the base 30-hours comes to some odd 16,000, so we are relying on his overtime pay to help reach the 18,600 threshold. I have worked out the past 6 months of pay slips (all above the 1,550 mark) as per the appendix (averaged overtime for 6months/6*12) and this comes well above the threshold to 20k. However there is an issue. We reached out to HR to get an employment letter and provided them with the details it would need to include. This is what we received. "RE: SIMON XXX To whom it may concern, This is to confirm that the above employee has been permanently employed at XXX since 13/09/17. His current job title is a XXX and his employment is continuous. His current salary is 16,820 per annum (excluding London Weighting). In accordance with Company Policy, only the above information is disclosed for employees and is always presented on XXX standard letterhead. The Company does not provide any further information." It showed no mention of overtime. So we reached out again and explained again the purpose of it and details it needed to include, asking if they could include overtime being available due to store needs. They sent an amended letter, only changing it to include the mention of his 30/hr contract. Along with this they refused to include any mention of overtime due to it being "non-contractional" Every thread I have looked at shows people in similar contract hour jobs have been advised to have their employer include overtime in the letter. I am worried sick that it will cause issues showing the amount 16,820 clearly under the threshold and no mention of the overtime available, even though his pay slips clearly show the overtime hours and pay. Does anyone have any advice as to what we can do in this situation? I do not want this to have a negative impact on our application. Thank you in advance. Steve Foley said: As a Democratic Socialist of the Clement Attlee type I did not take it that way either. Click to expand... I don't want to get personal with this - but how any individual did or did not take any given comment is kind of irrelevant to the conversation. And, consider the source - many, if not all political posts by Conky often have a bit of "facetiousness" about them. Feel free to take them that way or not, but don't be surprised when someone here does. That's all I'm saying here. The downward slide into the murkiness of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome can be touched off by many different factors, while the pain and uncertainty experienced can easily cascade into other, more serious problems. Then, if the person in question begins to give up hope or stops fighting, then the consequences can be even direr. Jesse Cannone's mission is not only to help those he deals with directly, but to bring the messages of hope in the form of natural strategies and information that give people to take charge of their own healing and life. His interview of Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, author of The Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Solution: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia, Made Easy!, is broken down into 9-edited radio show podcasts, available below, brings all their wisdom, knowledge and experience to the listener. Dr. Teitelbaum battled CFS and fibromyalgia while attending medical school in the mid 1970's. In his struggle to heal, he discovered treatments that were unknown to the medical community and began a quest that became his life's passionhelping those who suffer from these debilitating illnesses. In the same vein Jesse Cannone, co-founder of The Healthy Back Institute and author of The 7-Day Back Pain Cure, has gone through enough physical setbacks to know how vital is people to know they should first seek solutions that don't involve prescription medications or surgery. Fibromyalgia can really encompass all the syndromes above and to slide into chronic pain syndrome can be from various causes; car accident, severe injury, tragedy in family, big change in life, virus or bacterial infection that sidelines someone, depression, food poisoning or many other causes. Jesse Cannone lists five hidden causes of chronic pain that, if corrected, can return mobility and health to anyone. 1) Muscle Imbalance 2) Spinal Decompression 3) Trigger Points 4) Emotional or Negative Stress 5) Nutritional Imbalance Fix these, says both Dr. Teitelbaum and Jesse Cannone, and you're well on your way healing from Fibromyaglia, Chronic Fatigue or Chronic Pain. Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, How He Came to Help People with Fibromyalgia & Pain Management Fibromyalgia & Fatigue Syndrome Not A Myth, Fighting Doctor & Medical Hubris with Dr. Teitelbaum Causes of Fatigue Syndrome, Food, Chemicals, No Sleep, Sickness & More From Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum, No One Cause of Fatigue Syndrome, Strategies for Overcoming Power Shortage Sleep Solutions, Supplements & Compounds for Fatigue Syndrome, Medical Advice Considered Hormones for Fibromyalgia & Fatigue Syndrome, Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum Talks with Jesse Cannone Infections & Inflammations on Fatigue Syndrome, Natural Solutions & Drugs Used by Dr. Teitelbaum Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum on Nutrition for Fatigue Syndrome & Other Tools for Managing Pain & Health Exercise for Fibromyalgia, Dr. Jacob Teitlebaum on Regimen & Overcoming Illness for Better Life About Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum: Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, author of The Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Solution: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia, Made Easy!, is a board certified internist and nationally known expert in the fields of chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, sleep and pain. He is also Director of the the Practitioners Alliance Network (PAN) and author of numerous books including The Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Solution (Avery), the best-selling From Fatigued to Fantastic! (Avery Penguin), Pain Free 1-2-3: A Proven Program for Eliminating Chronic Pain Now (McGraw-Hill), Three Steps to Happiness! Healing Through Joy (Deva Press), the Beat Sugar Addiction NOW! series (Fairwinds Press), Real Cause, Real Cure (Rodale), and the popular free iPhone and Android application "Cures A-Z." He is the lead author of four studies on effective treatment for fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, and a study on effective treatment of autism using NAET. Dr. Teitelbaum does frequent media appearances including Good Morning America, CNN, Fox News Channel, the Dr. Oz Show and Oprah & Friends. He lives in Kona, Hawaii. Dr. T battled CFS and fibromyalgia while attending medical school in the mid 70's. In his struggle to heal, he discovered treatments that were unknown to the medical community and began a quest that became his life's passionhelping those who suffer from these debilitating illnesses. The S.H.I.N.E, based treatment program he developed, has helped tens of thousands of sufferers reclaim the vitality CFS/FMS once robbed from their lives. Through his books, speaking engagements and private practice, Dr. T has also reached many of you. About Jesse Cannone: Jesse is the co-founder and visionary CEO of The Healthy Back Institute, the world-leading source of natural back pain solutions. His mission as a former back pain sufferer is to help others live pain free without surgery and pharmaceuticals. As a personal trainer and post-rehabilitation specialist, Jesse's hands-on work helped hundreds of clients with special conditions including stroke recovery, Parkinson's and back pain. His success at helping his clients avoid back surgery led him to collaborate with massage therapist Steve Hefferon and a hand-selected board of medical advisors to create the world's first self-assessment and self-treatment program for back pain and sciatica, the Lose the Back Pain System. Jesse's earned certifications include Post-Rehabilitation Specialist, Specialist in Performance Nutrition, Advanced Level Fitness Trainer and Master Fitness Trainer. Yet that was only the start of his ongoing journey of discovery. Jesse's passion for helping others find relief and improve their lives has led him to travel the world and interview dozens of world-renowned health experts in search of natural solutions for pain and improved health. A bankruptcy judge on Thursday denied a request to appoint a trustee to take control of San Antonio-based Mexican food maker Papa Grande Gourmet Foods. Lender TransPecos Banks, owed more than $6 million by bankrupt Papa Grande, said in a court filing that the business was unlikely to successfully reorganize under Chapter 11, and that a trustee should be appointed to run the business for the benefit of creditors. Papa Grande, which does business as Garcia Foods, argued that its turning the business around as a result of a new business relationship and the addition of personnel to manage its plant and finances. OnExpressNews.com: San Antonio food-maker seeks bankruptcy protection Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ronald King sided with Papa Grande. It sounds like some improvements are going on, King said during a court hearing. King scheduled an April 22 hearing to reconsider the banks request, however. Papa Grande officials were pleased with the judges ruling. Its a family business thats been around for 60 years, Hilda Garcia, one of the principals, said after the hearing. Its something we want to continue for the next generation. The judge granted approval for Papa Grande to enter into a copacking agreement with Orleans International Inc. to provide meat. Papa Grande will receive payment within 72 hours, far better than roughly two weeks it now waits to get paid. Kenneth Garcia, Papa Grandes president, testified he expects the business will save $50,000 a month in meat costs as a result of its arrangement with Michigan-based Orleans. He also expects to generate business from new customers. King called the agreement a reasonable exercise of the business judgment of Papa Grandes management. The copacking agreements sounds a little onerous at first, but it doesnt sound that bad after you hear the terms of it, where they get an adequate supply of raw meat and then they get paid within 72 hours, King said. The company makes barbacoa, tamales, fajitas, chorizo and other products that are sold at H-E-B, Walmart and other places under the brand name Andy Garcia Foods. Papa Grande employs about 88 people, Hilda Garcia said. OnExpressNews.com: San Antonio Mexican food producer in dire financial straits, bank alleges Theyre going to produce more barbacoa this week than they ever have in the history of the company, said Ronald Smeberg, Papa Grandes bankruptcy lawyer. Papa Grande filed for Chapter 11 on Feb. 25, on the eve of a state district court hearing where TransPecos was expected to ask a judge to appoint a receiver to take control of the business. TransPecos had sued Papa Grande and the Garcias Feb. 5, alleging the company was insolvent or in imminent danger of insolvency and in need of $1 million to stay viable. We have a debtor who is ultimately managed by Kenneth Garcia (and) who has shown a distinct inability to operate this debtor properly, Mark Taylor, a lawyer for TransPecos, told the judge. Papa Grande has not paid certain vendors or paid property taxes for the last two years, Taylor said. Papa Grande has hired a new plant manager and a chief financial officer in recent weeks to help it get out of its financial troubles. The company reported $5.4 million in assets and about $4.7 million in liabilities in a recent court filing. The judge also granted a Papa Grandes motion to use cash that serves as collateral for three loans from TransPecos. Need a healthful and refreshing bite of the Mediterranean? A new North Side restaurant has you covered. Mr. Chickpea has opened in the shopping plaza anchored by Sprouts Farmers Market near Loop 1604 and U.S. 281. Owner Charbel Mader said his family converted what had been a Rays Pizzeria location his family operated at the same address to Mr. Chickpea to focus on the cuisine of their native Lebanon. After being handed a bruising decision last week by the Texas Supreme Court, the city of San Antonio indicated Wednesday that it is trying to resolve a seven-year legal battle over land next to the historic Hays Street Bridge. The City Council heard chants from activists while heading into an executive session to get an update on the lawsuit, filed in 2012 by the Hays Street Bridge Restoration Group. The nonprofit group got a favorable ruling in a trial court that the city took to 4th Court of Appeals, which ruled that the city had governmental immunity. But the states high court reversed the 4th Court ruling on Friday, sending the case back to the appellate court and giving the restoration group a moral victory. Protesters carried signs and chanted at the end of a council work session Wednesday, calling for the return of a 1.7-acre tract north of the bridge, at 803 N. Cherry St., that activists said never should have been sold for private development. What do we want? Cherry & Lamar! When do we want it? Now! protesters chanted. Yaneth Flores, who led the chants, said it is pointless for the city to keep fighting the case for at least another year, knowing that the community is going to win. She wants the city to return the tract to the community, even if it has to buy the land back at fair market value. Were asking them to drop the appeal and to reverse the land sale, said Flores, an organizer with the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center, which joined the restoration group in 2011. On ExpressNews.com: Supreme Court rules against city It remains to be seen how the city could bring an end to the long-running dispute without exposing itself to the possibility of other litigation. The lawsuit was filed when the city adopted an ordinance authorizing the sale of land, which had been donated to the city by beer distributor BudCo in 2007, to Alamo Beer. Brewery owner Eugene Simor built his complex on the south side of the bridge, and deeded the Cherry Street tract on the other side to developer Mitch Meyer. Activists have also fought Meyers plans for a mixed apartment-retail complex up to five stories tall, saying the land was donated for use as a park or other open community space. Meyers development plans were twice rejected by the Historic and Design Review Commission. But City Manager Sheryl Sculley, who recently retired, overruled the advisory board, allowing Meyer to proceed with the project. To meet one of Sculleys conditions of approval, Meyer presented a plan that was approved by the Dignowity Hill Neighborhood Associations architectural review committee. On ExpressNews.com: Bridge fight goes to states highest court After the council met Wednesday in an executive session, City Attorney Andy Segovia issued a statement saying the city is looking at ways to move the case toward a resolution. Though the Texas Supreme Court on Friday directed the 4th Court of Appeals to take up the citys remaining arguments on the case, the city of San Antonio is exploring options on how to remove those issues from consideration, Segovia said. Mayor Ron Nirenberg supports efforts to end the litigation, his office confirmed. Last weeks opinion by Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht outlined the effort begun some 30 years ago to save the 1880s bridge, which was relocated to San Antonio in 1910. The Union Pacific Railroad planned to demolish it in the 1980s. But local residents worked to save it and sought help from the city, which obtained a $2.89 million federal grant to rehabilitate it, with the restoration group raising $189,000 and arranging in-kind donations as part of a local match for the project. In a case heard before District Judge David Canales, a jury found that the city failed to comply with a 2002 memorandum of understanding with the restoration group. Since then, city officials have said the city has complied with the courts order to apply money from the sale of the Cherry Street tract to bridge restoration. But in his opinion, Hecht called that assertion unverified. The restoration group argues that even if the judgment allowed the sale of the property, the city has not allocated the proceeds to project costs as required, Hecht wrote. The city claims to have satisfied the judgment, but the restoration groups contrary contentions remain viable. At this point, the case is not moot. Although the MOU doesnt contain the work park, people who have followed the project for years have said there was a shared vision that it would be an open space with a hike-and-bike trail, restrooms, parking and other amenities for community use. We have so much language about how it was supposed to be a park, said Esperanza Executive Director Graciela Sanchez. We have an image of landscapes from a 2006 grant that the city wrote, and it was city architects that drew up that image. Weve got a lot of stuff that proves that it was intended to be a park, when the city staff at that time was in favor of it. And there was just a switch to a new council. Nettie Hinton, an East Side activist and early supporter of the project, was among the protesters who said the community group would win if the city continues to press the case. The Supreme Court decided appropriately. I dont know how the appeals court handles the technicalities of things. But if they go back to what Canales and the jury trial found, then we will win, Hinton said. Sanchez said the best next step for the city would be to withdraw its appeal of the 2014 decision. Then the idea is to spend the next days, months or whatever, to figure out how to get that land back, she said. Scott Huddleston covers Bexar County government and the Alamo for the San Antonio Express-News. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | shuddleston@express-news.net | Twitter: @shuddlestonSA Investigators have not officially determined if malfunctioning commercial e-scooters - rather than bad roads or sidewalks, alcohol or drugs, rider error or other factors - were responsible for any of the small number of deaths associated with the dockless vehicles nationwide. In none of these cases did police reports indicate that the scooter rider was wearing a helmet. March 15, 2019 - A 41-year-old man riding his own electric scooter was struck by a vehicle at night in Santa Monica, California. He reportedly fell onto a road before the car hit him, and died shortly afterward at a hospital. Police are searching for the driver. March 13, 2019 - Christopher Conti, 53, of Woodstock, Georgia, crashed into a tree around 10 p.m. while riding a Bird scooter in San Diego and became that citys first scooter fatality. He was not wearing a helmet. Feb. 1, 2019 - Mark Sands, 21, a University of Texas exchange student from Ireland, was riding a Lime scooter north against traffic on the southbound frontage road of Interstate 35 in downtown Austin when he was struck by an Uber vehicle, according to police reports. Sands died the following day. The driver cooperated with police and was not charged. Dec. 22, 2018 - Esteban Galindo, 26, was riding a Bird scooter in Chula Vista, California, when he was struck from behind by a car about 4 a.m., police said. The driver reportedly stopped after the accident, and an initial police report didnt say if drugs or alcohol were involved. Sept. 21, 2018 - Carlos Sanchez-Martin, 20, was struck by an SUV in Washington D.C.s Dupont Circle as he rode a Lime scooter. He was pinned beneath the vehicle and died at a hospital shortly afterward. Police have classified Sanchez-Martins death as a pedestrian crash. Sept. 2, 2018 - Jacoby Stoneking, 24, a Dallas restaurant worker, died from a cerebral hemorrhage a day after he was found on a downtown Dallas sidewalk at 3:18 a.m. about 160 yards from his broken-in-half Lime e-scooter. The cause of the accident is unknown. Aug. 18, 2018 - Jessica Summers, 21, was killed around 10 p.m. as she drove her own ICON G e-scooter through downtown Cleveland and was struck by a vehicle. The driver, 19, was charged with aggravated vehicular homicide. Police say alcohol played a role in the crash. Bruce Selcraig is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read his stories on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | BSelcraig@express-news.net A San Antonio woman convicted for the second time of orchestrating the murder of her ex-boyfriend received an even stiffer sentence this time around: life in prison. Vanessa Cameron, 38, was given 70 years in prison when she was first convicted in 2012 for the death of her childs father, VIA bus driver Samuel Allen Johnson Jr., 26. After deliberating for about an hour Wednesday, the jury handed down Camerons second sentence, the outcome of a retrial after her original conviction was thrown out because of a technicality. Her motive for arranging Johnsons January 2010 slaying, prosecutors argued, was a $750,000 life insurance policy and jealousy over his new girlfriend, who had recently become pregnant with his second child. Prosecutor Karl Alexander recommended the jury sentence Cameron to life in prison, saying she was someone who could cold-heartedly order a hit on the father of their child as if theyre ordering a pizza. Camerons attorney John Hunter, however, described his client as a mother who regretted her actions and didnt pose the same threat to society as someone with a physical hand in the killing. Earlier that day, Cameron, the daughter of a now-retired San Antonio police officer, took the stand so jurors could have a full picture of her role in Johnsons death. It was his wish to die, Cameron said during the sentencing phase of the trial. He came up with the idea, and I said, OK. On ExpressNews.com: Woman guilty in plotting ex-boyfriends murder Her testimony came just minutes after her wife testified that she couldnt imagine Cameron plotting the violent acts described by prosecutors. But once on the stand, Cameron detailed her role in the killing, saying she arranged it but didnt know exactly how the other people involved planned to kill Johnson. Cameron described her relationship with Johnson as toxic, one plagued with abuse and Johnsons suicidal ideations, which manifested in the couple planning various ways to stage Johnsons death so she could collect his life insurance policy. I told him, yes, that was the best plan hed ever come up with, she recalled, telling jurors that she discouraged others ways that Johnson planned to kill himself because that wouldnt work youre going to get hurt and not die. In tearful testimony, Cameron said she wished she couldve put on the brakes. Although she was described as the mastermind behind the murder plot, she had three co-defendants in her original trial her sister Susan Marie Sutton, Suttons then-common-law husband, Bernard Brown and his cousin, LaKisha Brown. Prosecutors alleged Camerons sister, who was living with her at the time, lured Johnson to a house by saying she had money he was owed. There, he was hit with a two-by-four, tied up and shoved into the trunk of his car before he was shot to death. Both LaKisha Brown and Sutton each pleaded guilty to murder, agreeing to testify against the others in exchange for 25-year prison terms. But despite their testimony, Bernard Browns attorneys successfully argued he was framed, eventually leading to his acquittal of murder by a jury in 2013. Seven years after her first trial, Cameron said Wednesday that shortly before the killing, Johnson decided he didnt want to die. But she missed his phone call so the murder went on as planned. I gave instructions, Cameron said, her voice breaking. I wanted the people in my life to have a good life; thats all I wanted. After the judge announced Cameron was sentenced to life, Johnsons family members hugged each other, their sobs heard throughout the courtroom. When addressing Cameron directly after the sentencing, Johnsons mother called her a heartless witch who had subjected her family to even more pain and suffering by dragging them through a second trial. Hell never be there for his sons, said Stephanie Johnson. Two black boys will grow up unnecessarily without their father. In 2014, Camerons original conviction and 70-year prison sentence was thrown out because of a technicality during jury selection. Her attorneys argued that her constitutional right to a public trial was violated when her relatives couldnt find a place to sit in a crowded courtroom because all the seats were already taken by the jury pool. Five years after the conviction was overturned, Camerons friends and relatives were seated in the courtroom when she received her sentence this time, life in prison. Related: Appeals court overturns murder conviction of police sergeants daughter After another round of embarrassing revelations, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said Wednesday he has taken a direct role in disciplining his employees. I felt removed from the disciplinary process and maybe that was the problem to this point, Salazar said, adding that he now has the final say-so on terminations. While that wasnt the process before, it is now. Previously, Salazars chief deputy, Don Tijerina, was in charge of discipline. Tijerina retired in February at the sheriffs request and Salazar fired jail director Ruben Vela after numerous deputies had been arrested and after continued blunders at the jail. OnExpressNews.com: Bexar County sheriff reveals more deputy misconduct in press conference The turmoil has included a man who was released without his court-ordered tracking device, and a finding by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards that the Bexar County Jail did not meet state standards. And in 2018 alone, 23 deputies were arrested for a variety of crimes. But Salazar, who was elected for the first time in 2016 and faces reelection in 2020, is intent on assuring the public that he is a hands-on leader. He personally brought back the man who had been released without the monitor, implemented a plan to correct the jail inadequacies and taken steps to curb the arrests of his personnel. Its going to happen at any law enforcement agency youre going to have people run afoul from the law, Salazar said at a news conference Wednesday. Salazar, who has an extensive background in law enforcement, including 23 years with the San Antonio Police Department, said he wasnt caught off guard by the multiple arrests of deputies. What separates you from the pack is how you handle it, he said. You dont sweep it under the rug, you confront it head on. You deal with it openly and honestly. He attributes the high number of deputy arrests to longer-term issues in the department. That led to his hiring in January of a staff psychologist, who Salazar hopes will help reset the agencys culture and tackle a pervasive issue of misconduct. OnExpressNews.com: Bexar County sheriff submits jail plan to regain compliance with state commission He also believes holding officers publicly accountable is key. At Wednesdays news conference, Salazar revealed he had terminated five deputies in less than a week, and two more are in the process of being fired. He said hes doing what he promised he would do several months ago. I made no bones about it, that if you are caught dishonoring this badge, I will make it a point to hunt you down and cut you out like a cancer, Salazar said. Among the most recent terminations, Salazar said, were Sgt. Wesley Anderson and Lloyd H. Mickens, a probationary deputy. Anderson was fired after deputies became aware of his alleged involvement in an assault at an H-E-B in August 2018. The criminal case against him is still pending. Over the weekend, Mickens was involved in an off-duty disturbance that also involved assault allegations, Salazar said. Mickens was terminated because he was uncooperative with the sheriff offices internal investigators, Salazar said. Im not tolerating it, Salazar said. We terminated him effective immediately. The sheriff also said that on Friday he fired Vanessa Flores, a dispatcher who was arrested last year on a charge of DWI; deputy Adrian Parra, who was terminated after an incident at the training academy; and Joseph Martinez, a deputy who was arrested on a DWI charge last year. All of the deputies, except Mickens, who was a recent hire still in his probationary period, can appeal the terminations and potentially return to service for the Bexar County Sheriffs Office. Salazar also said he delivered a notice of termination to Corporal Ryan Storm Ferrell, a jailer who was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated on St. Patricks Day. Salazar has been open about deputy misconduct since he was elected in 2016. Officers have been arrested on charges ranging from DWI to family violence. We recognize the need to arrest deputies sometimes, Salazar said. However, thats not my only approach. Salazars steps to curb arrests include implementing stricter hiring requirements and hiring psychologist Brandi Burque, who previously worked at the San Antonio Police Department, to help deputies resolve personal issues before they get out of hand. The sheriff also has increased training and recently sent several trainers to New Orleans to learn about EPIC, a police peer intervention program that stands for Ethical Policing is Courageous. Were doing the things as a command staff that we need to head in the right direction, he said. Note: This report was updated to correct the year Salazar was elected. President Donald Trump said Wednesday the last pocket of the Islamic State's land in Syria will be liberated by U.S.-backed forces "by tonight." U.S. President Donald Trump shows a map of Syria and Iraq showing the presence of the Islamic State (IS) in 2017 and 2019, as he speaks to reporters before leaving the White House in Washington, Wednesday, March 20, 2019, for a trip to visit an Army tank plant in Lima, Ohio, and a fundraising event in Canton, Ohio. [Photo: AP] Trump has previously announced the defeat of the group, but sleeper cells of fighters have re-emerged. With no signs of fighting Wednesday, however, the long-running battle to retake the militants' last outpost in eastern Syria appeared to have reached its conclusion. "The caliphate is gone as of tonight," Trump said in a speech at a factory in Lima, Ohio, where military tanks are assembled. The complete fall of Baghouz would mark the end of the Islamic State group's self-declared caliphate, which at its height stretched across large parts of Syria and Iraq. Controlling territory gave it room to launch attacks around the world. During his speech, Trump held up two maps of Syria one covered in red representing territory held by the militant group when he was elected president in November 2016 and the other that had only a speck of red. "When I took over, it was a mess. They were all over the place all over Syria and Iraq," said Trump, who has said the U.S. will keep 400 troops in Syria indefinitely. For the past four years, U.S.-led forces have waged a destructive campaign against the group. But even after Baghouz's fall, IS maintains a scattered presence and sleeper cells that threaten a continuing insurgency. The militants have been putting up a desperate fight, their notorious propaganda machine working even on the brink of collapse. The battle for Baghouz has dragged on for weeks and the encampment had proven a major battleground, with tents covering foxholes and underground tunnels. The siege has also been slowed by the unexpectedly large number of civilians in Baghouz, most of them families of IS members. Over past weeks they have been flowing out, exhausted, hungry and often wounded. The sheer number who emerged nearly 30,000 since early January, according to Kurdish officials took the Syrian Democratic Forces by surprise. Ciyager Amed, an official with the Kurdish-led SDF, said they were searching for any IS militants hiding in tunnels in a riverside pocket in the village of Baghouz. The SDF has not yet announced a victory over IS. Associated Press journalists saw SDF soldiers loading women and children into trailer trucks on the hilltop over Baghouz a sign that evacuations were still underway Wednesday. Black smoke was rising from the village. On Tuesday, the SDF seized control of the encampment held by IS after hundreds of militants surrendered overnight, signaling the group's collapse after months of stiff resistance. Des soldats camerounais au front Archives The attack took place in Belo, Boyo Division of the North West region on Wednesday afternoon, when soldiers fell in an ambush, set up by separatists also known as Amba boys. Following a military report, in shoot out that lasted for hours, five of Cameroons soldiers were wounded, with two sustaining heavy injuries. Amba boys used weapons such as AK47 and most deadly M21, to attack their enemy. Presidential Guards, Daouda Charles and a certain Njikam, were seriously wounded in the head and two knees, respectively. A gendarme, Njipita Frank, suffered an injury on his leg, while two soldiers of the Army sustained minor injuries on their stomachs. They were taken to the Mbingo hospital for treatment, while their leader called Bamenda, for backup. The said backup team, suffered an attack by Ambazonia fighters along the Babanki highway, few Metres to Mbingo, where the wounded soldiers had been transported to.They however, succeeded to transfer their colleagues to Bamenda. Reports say the fighters succeeded to seize Two M21 guns and ammunition from the Cameroonian military. Since the Anglophone crisis, became bloody, Ambazonia fighters(Amba Boys), have been using Dane guns, knives and cutlasses, to attack their enemies. With the introduction of deadly weapons by diaspora leaders, such as the M21 and AK47, civilians fear that the war might not end soon. Recently, leaders of the Ambazonian movement based abroad, have been raising funds to purchase these weapons, so as to send them back home, to the fighters. They initiated many of these fund raising activities such as My Trip to Buea and today, Operation Ak47. While the fighting between President Paul Biya's forces and the Amba boys goes on, more than half a million continue to be displaced, with a total number of at least 50,000 refugees , residing in nearby Nigeria. For three years, children have not been able to go to school, some hospitals and churches have shut down, while the economy has dropped. Above all, many children have been rendered orphans and homeless. After war broke out between Japan and the United States in 1941, Liban Brillantes was a young Filipino farmer who appeared to get along with invading Japanese troops. But he also was a guerrilla and courier who patrolled and reconnoitered enemy-held areas and on occasion mounted ambushes. A bolo man trained to use the heavy machete to hack at his enemy, he also carried a bolt-action rifle. Now 103, Brillantes enthusiastically imitated the sound of a machine gun as he recalled the firefights. OnExpressNews.com: First woman to head Texas National Guard had a hero - her mom If you were a soldier, would you feel bad fighting your enemy? he asked. You feel better because you kill your enemy. A San Antonio resident and big Spurs fan, Brillantes marked his birthday by attending a game the day after Christmas. On Wednesday night, the team saluted him at the AT&T Center, bringing him onto the court during the first timeout of the second quarter. Service members and veterans in the crowd were asked to stand as the Spurs celebrated Military Appreciation Night. Brillantes hasnt forgotten a moment of a war that began more than 77 years ago, when he was 25, with Japans bombing of U.S. military bases in the Philippines, Midway, Wake Island, Guam and other targets on the same morning as the attack on Pearl Harbor. The empire made stunning advances throughout the Pacific in the weeks that followed, and in the Philippines pushed regular U.S. forces into the Bataan peninsula, then the island reboubt of Corregidor, forcing a final surrender in May. But guerilla resistance continued. Clutching a cane, Brillantes didnt look so old courtside but he walks slowly these days, a mild concession to time. Family members say he was as excited as a kid to learn the Spurs would honor him. When he heard it, he said, When are we going?! When are we going?! said his granddaughter, Precious Joy Ross, 26, a San Antonio-based flight attendant. Brillantes voice is still strong and like a lot of World War II veterans he can go on and on telling stories. His recollections, often told in a dialect of Tagalog, are of soldiering that began at age 19 when he entered the Army and began training, earning 1 peso, 50 centavos per month. The pay stopped after Japan occupied the Philippines. His unit the 1st Company, 3rd Battalion, 121st Infantry of the U.S Army Forces in the Philippines-Northern Luzon broke up and went into hiding. OnExpressNews.com: San Antonio's burn treatment pioneer Basil Pruitt dies at 88 Due to continuous intensive and extensive heavy mopping up operations conducted by the Japanese military forces against the guerrillas, our company unit was dispersed and its members laid low, returned to civilian life and engaged in farming, he said in an affidavit submitted to apply for a military pension. When he rejoined the unit, his duties included delivering secret messages. He went on patrols, scouted the enemy, helped fellow troops make their way through the jungle, and evacuated women and children ahead of Japanese offensives. The Japanese might have been suspicious of Brillantes but he really was a farmer a father of two young children, he grew rice, fruit, vegetables, coconuts and tobacco near his village, Nangas-asan, in northern Luzon. He and his wife, Rosita, had been married in 1933, when he was 16. The village was more than a day by foot and ferry from Manila, if you made it to the boat by 5 p.m. If not, those arriving late bedded down by a riverbank and spent the night there. The Japanese occupation was terrifying and brutal. The Philippines had been an American territory for decades, and many Filipinos served in the U.S. armed forces. Brillantes never used the bolo he carried in close-quarter combat but he was in two firefights, both of them ambushes. He told a tale of a spy who informed the Japanese about Filipinos who were hiding two American soldiers in the jungle. One of the Americans gave himself up to save the Filipinos harboring him, telling them, Im going to die for you. The other American also was captured. Both were executed. Some 600 Americans and thousands of Filipinos died in the aftermath of the regular forces surrender in what became known as the Bataan Death March. Life was grim for the survivors. Forty prisoners a night died in the infirmary in 1942 at Cabanatuan, which held around 3,000 patients in its hospital. Food was meager, with prisoners living on a rice gruel that occasionally included bits of fish. Beatings were common, with the Japanese guards sometimes killing their prisoners. Four in every 10 POWs died over the course of the war, with the survivors losing half their body weight over 41 months of captivity. Civilians suffered as much, it not more. Brillantes remembers a mass shooting near his native Sallapadan, Alba, that claimed the lives of 10 people. One of those arriving at the scene heard a moan come from the common grave, he said. After the Japanese left, somebody retrieved the wounded man and nursed him back to health. Brillantes, meanwhile, did a little bit of everything when on duty with the Bolo Battalion, as some called it. He worked out of a guerrilla headquarters, sometimes serving as a guard and on other occasions as a guide and cook. One partisan, Emilio Narcise, said in a 1998 statement that he took Brillantes to lead our units (to find) the whereabouts of the Japanese Imperial Forces busy patrolling the Sallapadan area. OnExpressNews.com: At San Antonio's BEAST, the slippery slope of mind over matter Another guerrilla, Tiburcio D. Banatao, remembered Brillantes serving as a leader of a group of laborers who leveled an airstrip. A third guerrilla said he saw Brillantes not only helping build the airstrip, but also procuring food and other supplies, and helping carry the wounded and sick for treatment. Brillantes managed to gain the trust of the Japanese. If American or Filipino troops were headed in one direction, he would convince the enemy to go the other way. I feel good that I was able to do service to my countrymen and America, Brillantes said. After the war, Brillantes returned to the farm where he and his wife raised eight children. He later served on a local municipal council but eventually came to the United States, moving here when he was 85, and become a citizen seven years later. Wary of using a walker, Brillantes instead is partial to his cane and has always been independently minded. At 97, he traveled on his own to Canada and England. He still flies regularly around the country, but these days has someone with him. Brillantes rose slowly from his chair a few days ago to greet a reporter. He had a strong handshake and talked for nearly three hours, later telling his daughter, Febelyn Janacek, that he was just getting started in his recollections about the war. I still have a lot of stories to tell him yet, she recalled him saying. But you guys are stopping me. Sig Christenson covers the military and veterans in San Antonio, Bexar County and the nation. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | sigc@express-news.net | Twitter: @saddamscribe More telecommuting. Flexible work schedules. Retiring older, diesel-burning school buses. Using more electric vehicles. Those are among the proposed changes to cut San Antonios ozone levels. City officials believe voluntary efforts and cash from a Volkswagen air-pollution legal settlement could help lower ozone to meet air-quality standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Colleen Bridger, an interim assistant city manager, laid out a plan to the City Council on Wednesday that she and other city executives are confident will meet the EPA threshold. Ozone a combination of nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, plus heat and sunlight peaks in the summer. It is especially harmful to people with lung diseases, such as asthma, emphysema and chronic bronchitis, as well as children and the elderly. Among the list of actions in the citys plan, which is set for council adoption in May, are changes that would affect some of the citys workforce. Bridger said City Manager Erik Walsh could authorize more telecommuting for employees whose work doesnt require them to be in city offices, and flexible work schedules, where some employees might work 40 hours in four days instead of five, reducing commuting. The plan also would call on the council to revisit the citys anti-idling ordinance, which limits how long the largest vehicles in San Antonio delivery trucks and larger can run their engines, perhaps by reducing some of the dozen or so exemptions to the local law. Bridger said the city plans to work with local businesses to reduce their contributions to ozone levels, from telecommuting to volunteering not to test diesel generators on high-ozone days. She told the council there are plans to expand a ozone-attainment business group that would identify how companies could opt to change operations that now elevate ozone levels and educate their employees on how they can could help. With tens of millions of dollars expected from the Volkswagen settlement, the city would switch some of its fleet to electric vehicles and work with school districts to replace their worst-polluting buses. The plan also calls for several types of communications directed at residents and businesses about high-ozone days during the summer, including public service announcements, grassroots marketing and messages from social-media influencers. On ExpressNews.com: Ozone expert studies how to improve San Antonio air quality Bridger, who was director of the Metropolitan Health Department, said the plan would set the city on a path to reduce ozone levels to 70 parts per billion by Dec. 31, 2020. It builds on significant successes over the past decade in reducing ozone levels from a high of 91 ppb in 2004. In 2015, the EPA reduced the acceptable level of ozone and then declared last year that San Antonio had been categorized as in marginal non-attainment, the least-severe ranking. But if the levels here dont continue to decrease and hit 70 by the end of next year, San Antonio will be hit with a moderate non-attainment designation, and with that comes more significant and costly federal regulations. San Antonio has two summer seasons to reduce levels before the EPA reassesses its designation. According to Bridger, reducing ozone is an issue for both public health and the economy. Ozone is bad for your lungs. And people who are at risk for problems, like asthma and other breathing problems really suffer when ozone levels are high, she said, noting that researchers have found that an estimated 24 deaths annually could be avoided if the areas ozone level drops to 70 ppb or below. We also care about it because of potential economic costs, she said. We know that if we fail to get to 70, there will be federal regulations that will be imposed upon the city. And these federal regulations could cause a loss of gross regional product, could delay road construction and could deter manufacturing expansion. According to a 2017 study commissioned by the Alamo Area Council of Governments, marginal non-attainment could cost the local economy between $3.2 billion and $27.5 billion over 27 years while a moderate non-attainment designation could cost $7.1 billion to $36.2 billion over 30 years. That said, there are lots of big cities here in Texas that are currently in moderate non-attainment who are growing just fine, Bridger said. And so after an adjustment period, you figure out how to deal with it. But we dont even want to deal with it. On ExpressNews.com: Excessive ozone levels trigger more oversight, could hurt San Antonios economy In an interview, Bridger said the use of more fuel-efficient vehicles has reduced ozone. The biggest thing is the cars, she said. Environmental standards for vehicles have improved drastically over the past decade. Part of the citys plan to keep reducing ozone, she told the council, is a persistent lobbying effort by officials, including Mayor Ron Nirenberg, directed at the federal government not to roll back environmental standards for polluters, whether its the industrial sector or vehicle emission standards. Councilman Clayton Perry seemed to balk at the plan and worried about cost. Bridger assured him that it wouldnt be much, about $400,000, she said, and the citys annual budget already includes funding for fleet replacement. Using the Volkswagen money, which covers 80 percent of cost, would actually reduce the citys costs as it buys new, cleaner vehicles. Councilman Manny Pelaez quickly redirected the councils discussion, noting that the cost of doing nothing is far more expensive. The federal government is telling us if we dont hit 70, theyre going to kick us in the teeth, he said. Mario Bravo, the Texas outreach specialist for the Environmental Defense Fund, said after the meeting that opponents focus on the cost in this case, less than a half-million dollars rather than the losses, which could top $36.2 billion over three decades. Josh Baugh covers environmental issues in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | jbaugh@express-news.net | Twitter: @jbaugh By several accounts, a New York audience was moved to tears as the staff of Arte Publico Press the nations oldest and largest publisher of U.S. Hispanic literature accepted a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Critics Circle. Five representatives of Arte Publico, including founder Nicolas Kanellos, stood before the nations top publishers, agents, reviewers and others in that rarefied world last week and delivered an inspiring statement about U.S. Latino literature. The team skillfully crushed the myths that Latinos dont write, dont read and represent too small or too risky a market, even as the book world embraces beloved works by foreign-born Latinos. Arte Publico, it should be noted, first published The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, an American classic read the world over. Last month, the former San Antonian won the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. In receiving the Book Critics Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, Arte Publico became only the fourth institution to be so honored in 37 years. The Houston-based publishing houses mission for four decades has been to make U.S. Latinos more visible, to teach that we have always been here, the team said in its acceptance. Like our writers, we are mostly children of the working class, the children of citizens, of families that have been here since before the founding of the United States, they said. In representing writers who were often the first in their families to graduate from college, they sought to combat stereotypes while inserting ourselves into the national identity. That proved difficult, no matter how well we spoke and wrote the Kings English. They also lamented that, It matters not that we are descendants of original settlers, intermarried with indigenous peoples and descendants of African slaves, whether immigrants from long ago or just yesterday, because no matter how long Latino families have resided in and contributed to the making of this country, we have been seen as foreigners. They thanked the Book Critics Circle in hopes that U.S. Latino literary arts will become more recognizable as part of this grand cultural venture that is the creation and publication of books. Michael Schaub, the San Antonio-born book critic for National Public Radio, chaired the panel that selected Arte Publico for the lifetime achievement award. He said people in the audience wiped away tears as Arte Publico accepted the honor. People told him it was the best acceptance speech theyd ever heard at the event. In addition to Kanellos, four Latina executives from Arte Publico Gabriela Baeza Ventura, Nellie Gonzalez, Marina Tristan and Carolina Villarroel spoke in turn and eloquently. The NBCC award ceremony can be found on YouTube. Arte Publicos speech begins at the 38-minute mark. The small publishing house based at the University of Houston has 36 full- and part-time staff, including graduate and undergraduate students. Its the largest licenser of literary materials and textbooks in the United States for the Hispanic market. It publishes 25 titles a year; and its childrens imprint, Pinata Books, publishes mostly bilingual works. Arte Publico also unearths long-lost work in its Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, the largest of its kind. It recovers documents and books written by Latinos from the 16th century to 1960. Kanellos said it has recovered hundreds of thousands of documents, diaries, pieces of correspondence, manuscripts and books. Among its most significant treasures are two 19th century novels written by a Mexican American woman named Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton. Who Would Have Thought It? and The Squatter and the Don defied stereotypes of subservient women in the 1800s and now. The latter was the first novel written by a Mexican American in English about the conquered Mexican population, who were denied full citizenship under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Author Sergio Troncoso said Arte Publico is at once creating a Latino literary future while preserving its past. It has been in the empathy business for a long time, he said at the ceremony. Among its best-read authors are Rudolfo Anaya, Pat Mora, Rolando Hinojosa, Ana Castillo, Luis Valdez, Julia Alvarez, Jimmy Santiago Baca and San Antonians Xavier Garza and Diane Gonzales Bertrand. Kanellos said many more deserve to get on the page and into the hands of readers and students. Arte Publico publishes about 25 books a year but receives more than 2,000 submissions annually. Theres room for more Latino presses, he says, especially at universities that can provide them the stability to endure. Kanellos wouldnt mind the competition one bit. Elaine Ayala is a columnist covering San Antonio and Bexar County. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eayala@express-news.net | Twitter: @ElaineAyala Croatias nine commercial airports are gearing up for a busy summer season which should result in a record eleven million passengers being handled in 2019 following last year's 10.5 million. Zagreb Airport anticipates registering a 5% increase in passenger numbers this year, while aircraft movements are estimated to grow 3%. "We are in talks with a number of airlines over the introduction of new routes, however, as the negotiations are ongoing and confidential, we are unable to provide further information at this time. This summer season, several carriers, including Iberia, Vueling, LOT Polish Airlines, Qatar Airways and Eurowings, will boost capacity on their flights to Zagreb, while a number of other airlines will increase their frequencies. Croatias nine commercial airports are gearing up for a busy summer season which should result in a record eleven million passengers being handled in 2019 following last year's 10.5 million.anticipates registering a 5% increase in passenger numbers this year, while aircraft movements are estimated to grow 3%. "We are in talks with a number of airlines over the introduction of new routes, however, as the negotiations are ongoing and confidential, we are unable to provide further information at this time. This summer season, several carriers, including Iberia, Vueling, LOT Polish Airlines, Qatar Airways and Eurowings, will boost capacity on their flights to Zagreb, while a number of other airlines will increase their frequencies. Split Airport is eyeing another record year, although the pace of growth is expected to slow. "The 15% to 20% annual growth we have witnessed are unlikely to continue in the coming years and we expect the usual 5% to 10% increase in passenger numbers. First and foremost we are looking out for the sustainability of the business", Deputy General Manager, Pero Bilas, said. Split Airport will be served by some fifty airlines this summer season. A number of new carriers will introduce flights to Croatia's second largest city this year, including Air France, British Airways, Luxair, Ryanair and Laudamotion. Croatian airports, JAN - FEB is eyeing another record year, although the pace of growth is expected to slow. "The 15% to 20% annual growth we have witnessed are unlikely to continue in the coming years and we expect the usual 5% to 10% increase in passenger numbers. First and foremost we are looking out for the sustainability of the business", Deputy General Manager, Pero Bilas, said. Split Airport will be served by some fifty airlines this summer season. A number of new carriers will introduce flights to Croatia's second largest city this year, including Air France, British Airways, Luxair, Ryanair and Laudamotion. Airport PAX Change (%) Zagreb 371.351 2.9 Split 71.185 10.7 Dubrovnik 60.088 29.6 Osijek 5.163 12.5 Zadar 3.833 5.4 Rijeka 3.425 73.5 Pula 1.756 41.8 Losinj 24 44.2 Brac 20 25.0 Dubrovnik Airport anticipates for its passenger numbers to increase some 5% this year following on from a record 2018. "In 2019, we estimate passenger growth of 4.59%. The biggest increase in travellers is expected from the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and the Czech Republic", the airport said. During the summer season, some 65 to seventy airlines will maintain operations to the city. "After 28 years, Croatia will be linked with the United States thanks to American Airlines' service between Philadelphia and Dubrovnik. During the summer, Flydubai will continue to run services from Dubai while the world's largest low cost airline, Ryanair, will launch flights to our airport", General Manager Frano Luetic noted. He added, "A significant increase in traffic is expected from cities such as London, Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin". Pula Airport is targeting growth of 7% this year, after it broke its all-time record in 2018. It is expected the airport will handle some 750.000 travellers over the course of the year on 11.000 flights. easyJet, Laudamotion, TUI Airways, Jet2 and Condor will introduce new services to the seaside city over the coming months. The airport noted it is monitoring developments with Brexit and its impact on air travel, since British travellers make up 32% of all passengers passing through Pula. Zadar Airport anticipates strong growth this year with Ryanair to launch eight new routes from the city despite the closure of its base. Furthermore, easyJet will introduce two new routes, while Iberia Express, Air Serbia, Transavia, Laudamotion and Condor will all commence seasonal flights to Zadar this summer. A total of sixteen airlines will maintain 51 scheduled flights to 31 destinations in sixteen European countries. As a result, the airport expects to welcome an additional 100.000 passengers this year. In 2018 it handled a record 603.819 travellers through its doors. Ryanair accounts for the bulk of the airport's annual traffic with a passenger share of 60%. anticipates strong growth this year with Ryanair to launch eight new routes from the city despite the closure of its base. Furthermore, easyJet will introduce two new routes, while Iberia Express, Air Serbia, Transavia, Laudamotion and Condor will all commence seasonal flights to Zadar this summer. A total of sixteen airlines will maintain 51 scheduled flights to 31 destinations in sixteen European countries. As a result, the airport expects to welcome an additional 100.000 passengers this year. In 2018 it handled a record 603.819 travellers through its doors. Ryanair accounts for the bulk of the airport's annual traffic with a passenger share of 60%. Rijeka Airport will welcome four new carriers this year including Lufthansa, Air Serbia, TUI Airways and Volotea. It anticipates growing its passenger numbers by 16% to 197.000, while aircraft movements should improve 6% to 5.800. In addition to the new arrivals, a number of carriers will boost their services to city. Notably, Transavia will increase its flight offering by 300% compared to last year. Similarly, Osijek Airport forecasts its passenger growth at 11%, with 74.300 travellers expected. This summer, Wizz Air will add an extra weekly flight on its Basel - Osijek service, for a total of three per week, while Eurowings will bring forward the resumption of its seasonal flights from Cologne by forty days. Les prix du riz remontent de 1,8% au premier semestre 2016 Archives Few hours after the Minister of Trade, Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, announced fixed rates for rice and fish in markets across Yaounde and Douala, some wholesalers and retailers continue to sell at exorbitant prices, stating they must finish the old stock, before respecting the Ministers decision. This morning in a local market in Douala called Misoke, buyers complain that a cup of rice is still sold at 150FRS, while half a bag of rice such as Neyma, Bijour brands, are sold at 11000 to 12000FRS. A price that earlier, stood at 9000FRS. A kilogram of Rice formerly at 350FRS and 450FRS, is now sold at 450FRS and 550FRS, respectively. Mireille Femelui, is a retailer in Douala, who sells a cup of Neyma rice at 150FRS. She says she has two bags she bought at the unauthorised increased price, and intends to sell them at 150FRS per cup, unless the Minister compensates her. " I bought this half bag of rice for 11000FRS. There is another one in the house. If the minister wants us to reduce the prices, let him compensate us first. The minister should compensate us first, shouted the business woman. On his part, a wholesaler said there was no way he could follow the ministers price, because it was too early to do so and he had to finish the old stock first. Same complains have been advanced, by cold store operators. Following an unusual increase on the prices of the said goods in the market, Minister Luc Magloire, met with consumer rights groups, as well as producers at his ministry on Wednesday, where they dialogued for close to three hours on the price increase, before they all resulted to an agreed rate. According to the Minister, rice and fish remain the products highly consumed by the population and should be made affordable. Importers associate the increase to the high taxes, customs duties and the cost of transportation to different regions. After hours of negotiating, both parties reached an agreement to set fixed rates, depending on the region and based on the cost of transportation. All parties of the meeting, agreed that there is no scarcity of these high consumption foodstuffs in the market. The minister has promised frequent checks in local markets, while assuring that defaulters will be punished. A kilogram of rice of premium quality: Bijour, Neyma Douala = 410frs Yaounde = 425frs Other inferior brands Douala 330fts Yaounde 350frs As for fish, the prices range from 650frs to 1350frs per kilogram. GREENWICH Interim Superintendent Ralph Mayo and Western Middle School principal Gordon Beinstein expressed dismay and disappointment over the drug arrest of Ahmed Sambo, a longtime Greenwich Public School district employee, and frustration over the lack of further information on the arrest in letters sent to staff, parents and students on Wednesday. Sambo, 42, a professional assistant at Western Middle School, was arrested Monday afternoon in his home at Armstrong Court on multiple drug charges, police said Tuesday. Needless to say, we were shocked, disappointed and dismayed to learn this news, considering that neither his background checks nor behaviors provided any indication of the alleged activities, Mayo said in the letter. We learned about the charges only shortly before the news was released publicly. The Western community is still rocked by the news, Beinstein told Western families on Wednesday evening. The school staff learned of the arrest shortly before Greenwich-based media published the story, he said. Having kids the same age as yours, I do understand your concerns and fears, Beinstein said. As both a parent and principal, I too am angry, and disappointed, and saddened and full of a range of other emotions that Im struggling to communicate. As a community, we will get through this. More for you Western Middle School worker faces drug-dealing charges Officers said they seized 20 grams of cocaine and more than $7,000 in cash during a raid on the home of Sambo, 42, whom police described as a suspected drug dealer. They found a range of paraphernalia used to hide drugs, such as hollowed-out books and safe-stash soda cans, police said. Materials used to package drugs for sale a digital scale and plastic bags were also found, according to court documents. Sambo was charged with operating a drug factory, possession of narcotics with intent to sell, illegal possession of narcotics and drug possession within 1,500 feet of day-care facility. He was also cited for marijuana possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. Sambo has been an employee of Greenwich Public Schools at Western Middle School since 2004, Mayo said. The district placed Sambo on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation, Mayo said. The school district is also running an internal investigation while fully cooperating with the police department, he said. If Sambo is found guilty of criminal charges or if the districts internal investigation determines there is just cause, it is grounds for disciplinary action up to and including termination, Mayo said. The facts the Greenwich Police Department has shared do not indicate that any of the alleged activities for which Sambo has been charged occurred in or around Western Middle School or involved WMS students or staff, the district said in a statement. I understand that there are frustrations around wishing to have more information and your questions answered, Mayo said. I, too, share this frustration. As this is an ongoing police investigation, there is little more that I can share or even know. Particularly since these allegations did not involve the school or district, please direct your questions about the investigation to the police department. Sambo was a professional assistant, working with teachers and students and providing extra support in classrooms to students with special needs, according to the Greenwich Public Schools. The school district conducts extensive background checks including fingerprinting, reviews of criminal records, internet searches and reference checks when staff are hired, he said. The district is also required to send a Release of Information form to the Connecticut Department of Children and Families to conduct and share a records search to ensure the individual has never been under investigation or placed on the DCF registry. Since 2016, as required by state law, the district contacts every previous employer that involved contact with children, and they are required to disclose whether their former employee has ever been the subject of, or disciplined, for the allegation of abuse or neglect or sexual misconduct, Mayo said. If there is any knowledge or evidence of illegal, unethical or inappropriate behavior, staff is immediately placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of internal or external investigations, he said. As superintendent, I will ensure that we all continue to prioritize the safety and security of your children, Mayo said. If your child is aware of the situation and has any concerns about the news, our counselors, mental health staff, teachers and administrators are always available to them. jo.kroeker@hearstmediact.com Pengrowth Energy Corporation, a resource company, explores for, develops, and produces oil and natural gas assets in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia provinces in Canada. The company explores for crude oil, bitumen, natural gas, shale gas, and natural gas liquids. Its principal producing properties are the Lindbergh thermal property covering an area of 20,800 net acres located in Alberta; and Groundbirch property totaling an area of 12,536 net acres located to the south west of Fort St. John, British Columbia. As of December 31, 2018, the company had 269 net producing oil and natural gas wells; and 586 net non-producing wells, as well as total proved plus probable reserves of 446.6 millions of barrels of oil equivalent. Pengrowth Energy Corporation was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. Read More There is not enough analysis data for Petro Matad. 4.5 Community Rank Outperform Votes Petro Matad has received 131 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.) Underperform Votes Petro Matad has received 64 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.) Community Sentiment Petro Matad has received 67.18% outperform votes from our community. MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Petro Matad and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe MATD will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe MATD will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days. Previous Next Ohio Farm Bureau volunteers get updates on China, USMCA trade deals while in D.C. By Susan Crowell / editor@farmanddairy.com WASHINGTON Throughout the Ohio Farm Bureau county presidents trip to Washington D.C., March 12-14, legislators and administrators hinted that a final trade deal with China was just around the corner, and the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement was also in the home stretch. I think in a few weeks, we might have some pretty good news, said U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, speaking to the Ohio farm leaders March 14. I think the Chinese want it now. Portman credited President Donald Trump and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, a native of Ashtabula, Ohio, with holding a tough stance to make sure China not only says it will buy more U.S. products like soybeans, but that they will change their market structure and intellectual property rights. Chinas ceremonial legislature passed a measure March 14 seeking to prevent Chinese officials from forcing U.S. and other foreign companies to turn over proprietary technology, a key sticking point in the trade fight between the two countries. Export impact In 2018, the U.S. moved $140 billion worth of ag products through exports, according to Ken Isley, administrator of the U.S. Department of Agricultures Foreign Agricultural Service, who spoke to a combined crowd from the farm bureaus in Ohio, Missouri and Nebraska March 13. Of that, Ohio exports account for approximately $3.6 billion, Isley said. Conversely, the U.S. imported $120 billion in 2017, a figure that rose slightly in 2018. The Trump appointee said current trade is not always fair or reciprocal, and thats whats driving these negotiations. Isley said negotiators have been addressing a long-term, structural change that will benefit of ag and increase access to Chinas markets. If we were granted equal access, agriculture wouldve been granted many more sales than the $24 billion that we had in 2017. The FAS administrator said a trade deal with China is down to the final details. I dont have a crystal ball, but I can tell you I think the path is coming to an end. And when that trade deal is approved, Isley said more than just soybean growers should be happy although 50 percent of all soybean shipments were exported to China, and resumption of that will be huge. The USDA official expects other ag commodities to benefit in volume and structural access to China as well. U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs, who hosted an afternoon forum with the Ohio Farm Bureau delegation, said hes positive a deal with China is imminent. I think Chinas economy needs a trade deal more than we need a trade deal, Gibbs said. Their economy is not doing well over there. The new NAFTA Gibbs also said the top priority for Congress should be to ratify the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, adding the trade agreement is a win-win for everybody. The two neighboring countries were the No. 1 and 2 trading partners for the U.S. in 2018. The president has said the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement implementing legislation will be sent to Congress very shortly, but that was back in mid-February. And in a hint of a brewing battle, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is among lawmakers urging the Trump administration to lift the steel and aluminum tariffs on products brought in from Canada and Mexico. Grassley said its a first step to getting the USMCA through Congress, although the steel and aluminum tariff issues are not covered in the agreement. In his comments to the Farm Bureau, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown said the administrations trade policies have been attacking U.S. allies, and hurting Americans, like the farmers hurt by tariffs on China. We need to convince the president that a trade policy has got to lift agriculture up, not play farmers against steelworkers, something Brown said the U.S. did when renegotiating NAFTA. In a visit to U.S. Rep Bill Johnson, Columbiana County Farm Bureau President Danielle Burch asked Johnson for continued support of the USMCA. We need trade outlets, and we need them now, Burch said. You know our income has gone down 50 percent on average farms just since 2013. We need places for our products to go. HERSHEY, Pa. An interactive workshop focusing on child agricultural injury prevention in the Eastern United States is scheduled for March 28-29 at Hershey Lodge, Hershey. Well teach participants how to work with farmers and farm supervisors to protect children who live, work and play on farms and ranches, said Marsha Salzwedel, M.S., National Childrens Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety. The first workshop, held last August in Wisconsin, included participants from producer groups, insurance, FFA, healthcare, Extension, agribusiness, public health and media. The workshop is designed for those who work in or with the agriculture industry, and wish to improve their knowledge and dissemination of child agricultural injury prevention strategies. The early-bird deadline is March 1 ($199 registration fee), and scholarships are available to assist with the cost of registration. More information, including the registration link, is available at www.marshfieldresearch.org/CAIP-Workshop. The National Childrens Center, a program of the National Farm Medicine Center, Marshfield Clinic Research Institute, is co-hosting the workshop with Penn State University and the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health, part of Bassett Healthcare. Westfield Insurance, John Deere and the National Farm Medicine Center are co-sponsoring. By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to understand the leading causes of injuries to children who are either working or playing on farms; describe interventions most likely to be effective in preventing childhood farm injuries; and identify their (and their organizations) unique role in helping farm children grow up happy and healthy. For more workshop information, email nccrahs@marshfieldresearch.org, or call 1-800-662-6900. NORTH LIMA, Ohio The Pinelakers 4-H Club held an election of officers at the March meeting. Officers elected: Kaitlyn Susany, president; Patrick Howlett, vice president; Katelyn Ryan, secretary; Todd Miller, treasurer; and Gavin Linden, health and safety. Members tied knots for three fleece blankets that will be donated to Hospice in memory of longtime adviser Nancy Kemp. MOUNT GILEAD, Ohio The Buckeye Brigade 4-H Club held a meeting March 8. They planned acts of community service this year and discussed rule changes for livestock exhibitors. Megan Gardner demonstrated how to make slime, and Emily Keckler demonstrated folding a paper swan. CANFIELD, Ohio The Mahoning County Goat Herders held a meeting March 16 at the Hofmann home. Members received new project books and binders. Members received information on quality assurance make-up dates, and Dairy Palooza. Forms and orders for the fundraiser are to be turned in at the next meeting. Christopher Greenfield gave a demonstration on goat milk. The next meeting will be held April 15 at 7 p.m. at the Burcaw home. ELLSWORTH, Ohio During the March meeting, Western Reserve Rangers 4-H Club members voted to donate a gift basket to the 4-H Endowment Benefit Dinner and Auction in April. Following the meeting, the youth made cards for area veterans. The Rangers 4-H Club will meet again April 11 at 7 p.m. at the Ellsworth Fire Hall. Following the meeting, members will fill eggs with candy for the Berlin and Ellsworth Community Easter Egg Hunt. Nearly 6 million in funding has been allocated to the farming industry as part of a campaign to tackle a highly contagious cattle disease. The 5.7 million 'Stamp It Out' initiative was launched by the Defra last summer in a bid to eradicate Bovine Vial Diarrhoea (BVD). Within six months the project which is being delivered by SAC Consulting, part of Scotlands Rural College (SRUC) 120 veterinary practices across England have been recruited to offer the programme to farmers on the ground. The disease costs farmers an estimated 61 million a year in lost performance, and it is estimated that more than 90% of UK herds have had exposure to BVD. Under the Stamp It Out scheme, farmers can access up to 530 of their vets time to investigate the disease both on a one-to-one basis or through a series of cluster meetings with like-minded keepers. They can also access 61.80 for preliminary testing work, and up to 440 where there is evidence of persistently infected animals. Vets who have signed up to the scheme have made a commitment to engage 8,000 farmers in active BVD control by 2020 with 3,000 signed up so far. A further 2,000 farmers have asked to join the BVDFree England initiative, an industry-led scheme which will take the momentum generated by Stamp It Out and continue with the ambition to eradicate BVD in England. Neil Carter of SAC Consulting said: My advice for farmers is to speak to your vet to find out whether they have signed up already. Any vets contacting us to get involved from now on will be put on a waiting list, and we will wait and see if any vets already engaged struggle to sign up their clients. On current experience, though, vets have come back asking for more funding rather than less. Bovine Viral Diarrhoea has a real impact on productivity, cattle health and welfare and can carry significant costs for farmers. The BVD virus is transmitted in a number of ways, either through a congenital infection during pregnancy to the foetus giving rise to a persistently infected animal, or between cattle within the herd, often spread from nose-to-mouth, and giving rise to a wide variety of clinical signs. CAP payments worth more than 300m have begun to make their way to farmers' bank accounts in Scotland. In the coming months, eligible farmers, crofters and land managers will receive their Common Agricultural Policy Pillar 1 2018 entitlement. In total, over 300 million of EU funding will be paid to more than 18,000 farmers, crofters and land managers. Around 78% of eligible claimants having already received up to 90% of their entitlement through a government loan announced in October. Common Agricultural Policy payments are guaranteed at current levels until 2021. Scottish government's Rural Economy Secretary, Fergus Ewing said: In line with the payment schedule I published last year, I can confirm that the first tranche of 2018 Basic Payment, Greening and Young Farmer payments has now begun. This funding will directly support investment, jobs and the rural economy moving forward, providing certainty for many in our rural communities. With further payments being made in the coming weeks and months, I am confident that the majority of payments will be made by the end of the payment window. Mr Ewing added that Brexit is continuing to present the 'biggest threat' to the Scottish farming industry. Farmers have urged dog owners to be responsible and control their animals in the countryside when out and about this spring. Marking the Spring Equinox the first day of spring the farming industry has called on the public to pick up after their pets and keep them on a lead around livestock. With many lambs now in fields, farmers say it is 'imperative' that dogs are under the full control of their owners and attacks on sheep are avoided. Attacks on livestock on farmland are still on the increase, as is the problem of dog fouling which can cause livestock to contract dangerous diseases. The key messages are aimed at farmers and dog owners, they include to be informed about the Outdoor Access Code, to plan ahead and know walking routes, to control pets at all times and to pick up dog mess. In early December, NFU Scotland surveyed farmers about the issues they have with irresponsible access, either through livestock worrying by dogs, or the impacts of owners failing to pick up after their pets on or near farmland. The survey had more than 340 responses, which showed that 72 per cent of respondents had an issue with livestock worrying on their land. 100 per cent of survey respondents said they have an issue with dog fouling on their land this included plastic bag pollution as well as instances where livestock have contracted diseases from eating dog poo and plastic bags. 84 per cent of responses felt the outdoor access code requiring on a lead or under close control didnt provide sufficient protection to them or their livestock. Andrew McCornick, NFU Scotland President said: Attacks on livestock happen all too often and we are really pleading with the public to keep their dogs on a lead, avoid fields with livestock if possible and be responsible when walking on farmland. The industry can no longer tolerate the problem of dog owners who do not control their dogs on farmland. He added: Many people underestimate the damage dogs can do to livestock whether that is attacking them when being off a lead or causing them to contract dangerous diseases through their poo we need dog owners to take responsibility for controlling their dogs whilst out enjoying the countryside. You think your dog is just playing with the sheep but that could change in an instant and you will have no way to stop the dog when it starts to attack, Mr McCornick said. Theresa May has been warned by a farming union to prepare for the upcoming European Union parliamentary elections as Brexit uncertainty continues. The Prime Minister blamed MPs for delaying Brexit and told the public she in 'on their side' on Wednesday (20 March). It comes as there are just eight days to go before Britain is due to leave the EU. She had written to EU leaders seeking an extension to the Article 50 period until 30 June. It follows MPs voting last week to delay Brexit. A leaked internal EU diplomatic memo suggests that the leaders of the 27 Member States, who must approve any extension period, will have to choose either a short extension before May 23 or a long delay until at least the end of the year. The memo states that an extension until 30 June ...would entail serious legal and political risks for the European Union and would import some of the current uncertainties in the United Kingdom into the EU27 and that any extension offered to the United Kingdom should either last until 23 May 2019 or should be significantly longer and require European elections. But the Farmers' Union of Wales (FUW) has now warned the Prime Minister that preparations must be made for EU parliamentary elections in May to avoid taking options off the table which are in the 'nations' interest'. FUW President, Glyn Roberts letter states that while the union supports the revocation of Article 50 in order to take 'full control' over the Brexit process, ...if a short delay is agreed by the EU but Parliament again finds itself unable to reach agreement in the weeks leading up to the new deadline, we may have no choice but to leave the EU without an agreement if we have not made the necessary preparations for the European Parliament elections in May. Mr Roberts acknowledges that there ...may be mechanisms by which to overcome ...[the problems of having to hold an MEP election]...such as rolling over the representation of current MEPs, but given that the EU requires notifying of candidates and arrangements in the coming weeks, we believe it is essential that preparations should be made for a possible European Parliament election in May. He goes on to say: Failure to do this is likely to take one or more of the future options available to the UK off the table in the event that a further or longer delay is, later in the year, deemed to be in our nations interest. While I appreciate that such a decision would be controversial and unpopular amongst some, I would emphasise that vast numbers of businesses and individuals fully appreciate the complexity of withdrawing us from a relationship built up over 46 years, and understand why respecting the outcome of the Referendum without inflicting damage on the UKs economy can only be achieved if Brexit takes place over a safe and realistic timescale. The UK shipped a record number of pig meat around the world last year, worth just under 490m, further demonstrating the importance of non-EU countries to pig meat trade. In 2018, the UK shipped a record total of 347,000 tonnes of pig meat, worth just under 490 million, around the globe 12,000 tonnes and over 19 million more than the previous year, marking a decade of sustained growth. UK pig meat exports have also got off to a flying start to 2019, fuelled by more than 16 million in shipments to non-EU destinations in January alone. The latest IHS Maritime & Trade figures show a rise of more than 40 per cent in the value of exports to countries outside the European bloc and close to 28 per cent in volume for January 2019, compared to January 2018. Trade to the EU remained fairly stable, with volume increasing by 0.36 per cent and value by three per cent to more than 24 million. Combined, this meant UK pig meat exports rose by nearly 11 per cent overall year-on-year to well over 28,000 tonnes, worth just under 41 million, up from 35 million in January 2018. Angela Christison, AHDB Pork Strategy Director, said: This is a fantastic start to the year and while the EU remains a significant and valued customer, this demonstrates the growing importance of non EU countries to pig meat trade. British pork is enjoyed in some 97 countries around the world now and the interest only seems to be growing. China was the UKs biggest buyer this January, taking 7,800 tonnes of pig meat, followed by Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands. Outside the EU, other top-ranking customers were Hong Kong, the USA and the Philippines. UK exports team, which carry out market access and development work overseas on behalf of the pig industry, was instrumental in opening Taiwan to UK pig meat last year, worth a potential 50 million over the next five years. Morrisons has become the first retailer to commit to supporting new farm standards as set out by Arla's UK 360 programme. Retailers signing up to the co-operative's new programme will commit to supporting standards across its entire Arla milk supply. The move means approximately 200 farmers will be directly supported by Morrisons to deliver across the eight farm business areas identified in the 360 programme which aims to make a fairer supply chain. The standards' areas are: Animal health, people, environment and natural resources, community, economic reinvestment and resilience and research and eevelopment to lead the dairy agenda. The move means that farmers aligned with the retailer will transition to the Arla UK 360 standards in the coming months with a target to have reached these by October 2019. In aligning behind one standard in farming, the dairy co-operative believes this will enable 'flexibility' for farmers and retailers to partner on solving challenges within the industry. Graham Wilkinson, Agriculture Director at Arla Foods UK, said the move by Morrisons to support the programme is 'hugely significant'. Monsanto has suffered a second major blow as a federal jury in California found that its Roundup weed killer product caused a man's cancer. It follows last year's case when a judge upheld a jury's verdict that Roundup caused school caretaker Dewayne Johnson's cancer. However, 70-year-old Edwin Hardeman's case against Monsanto is the first to be tried in federal court. The six-member jury in San Francisco concluded on Tuesday (19 March) that glyphosate Roundup's key ingredient was a 'substantial factor' in Mr Hardemans non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Bayer, owner of Monsanto, said it is 'disappointed' with the jury's initial decision. We continue to believe firmly that the science confirms that glyphosate-based herbicides do not cause cancer. We are confident the evidence in phase two will show that Monsantos conduct has been appropriate and that the company should not be liable for Mr. Hardemans cancer. The German company added: We have great sympathy for Mr. Hardeman and his family, but an extensive body of science supports the conclusion that Roundup was not the cause of his cancer. Approximately 11,200 plaintiffs, who claim they were exposed to glyphosate, are suing the company. Two-thirds of livestock farmers are still experiencing, or expect to experience, a shortage of forage and fodder supplies as a result of growing conditions in 2018, according to an NFU survey. Farmers were asked about the potential impact on farms if they receive only 75% of long-term average rainfall during the 2019 growing season the prospect for which is currently described as a reasonable worse-case scenario. Of the farmers experiencing continued problems, two-thirds of them have been able to extend the growing season, two-thirds have needed to buy in fodder, and half of them have sold off livestock. The survey results emerge as the Environment Agency said that within 25 years England will not have enough water to meet demand. The combined impact of climate change and population growth means that the UK faces an existential threat. The agency said it wants to see wasting water become as socially unacceptable as blowing smoke in the face of a baby. The NFU survey indicates that farmers are not waiting for long-term climate change to bite, but are already contingency planning to meet short-term risks of water scarcity. The survey results among members who use crop irrigation show the range and scale of measures being put in place to mitigate against drought risk: A third of irrigated crop growers are making changes to the types of crops grown A quarter are reducing the planted area of particular crop types A half are investing in new irrigation equipment to increase efficiency and optimum use A fifth are investing in new or additional reservoir storage capacity One-sixth are exploring opportunities for trading (of water and/or land with water rights) One-sixth of farmers were not taking any particular measures to manage risk of water shortage. NFU Vice President, Stuart Roberts said: Farmers bear the brunt of the impacts of extreme weather, and climate change predictions indicate that events like last summers drought, as well as the flooding of agricultural land, are likely to become more frequent in the years to come. We all have a role to play in managing water as a resource, however the question remains why are we jeopardising our nations food security so that members of the public can wash their cars? UK dairy exports increased last year with most products going to the European Union, new figures show. Exports were up in 2018 for butter, cheese and raw milk, with most of it going to the UK's main export destination, the EU. Cheese exports were up 11% at 190,000 tonnes. Key growth countries included Ireland, Germany and Spain, according to figures from AHDB Dairy. Exports also increased to Malaysia, China, and Algeria, but from a low base. Butter exports were up 14% at 62,000 tonnes. Additionally, higher prices boosted export value, up 23% at 275 million. The Netherlands and Belgium were key growth countries. Exports to regions outside the EU either declined, or were up by relatively low amounts. Exports of milk (1-6% fat) rose 5% to 846,000 tonnes. Nearly all of this was raw milk crossing the Irish border into the Republic of Ireland. If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, the tariffs these exports could face may disrupt the export situation as it currently stands. Despite this, a report aimed at identifying a strategy for the UK dairy industry post-Brexit concluded that the 'future is bright' for British dairy farmers. It comes as a UK organic dairy cooperative highlights the 'growing opportunities' in trade with non-EU countries, namely with the United States. An unofficial event similar to the NFYFC's annual convention will take place in Blackpool in May and will raise money for air ambulance charities. The event, which aims to attract young farmers for a night out in Blackpool, will raise money for Air Ambulances UK and Blackpool RNLI. It comes as the National Federation of Young Farmers Clubs (NFYFC) was forced to shut down its annual convention indefinitely as a consequence of antisocial behaviour displayed by a small minority of YFC members in Blackpool last year. However, 20-year-old John Houseman, who is a Yorkshire YFC member, said last year's incident put young farmers' reputation in 'jeopardy'. He is now organising the unofficial event in Blackpool this year, dubbed 'Blackpool D.I.Y AGM 2019', taking place from 3 May to 6 May. Mr Houseman said it is 'important' to show what the majority of young farmers are 'really like'. He said: The young farming community will once again be heading to Blackpool for a big weekend. As a way of giving a bit back this year, due to there being no attendance fee we are going to raise money for the national air ambulance service and Blackpool RNLI please donate generously to two great causes. The national air ambulance services are close to the hearts of many in the farming community, having come to the aid of many at a time of need. He added: It is also important to support RNLI Blackpool as a way of giving something back to the people of Blackpool, who rely on this service to safeguard people in the sea. 2020 was a year marked by hardships and challenges, but the Fauquier community has proven resilient. The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you for your continued support, wed like to offer all our subscribers -- new or returning -- 4 WEEKS FREE DIGITAL AND PRINT ACCESS. We understand the importance of working to keep our community strong and connected. As we move forward together into 2021, it will take commitment, communication, creativity, and a strong connection with those who are most affected by the stories we cover. We are dedicated to providing the reliable, local journalism you have come to expect. We are committed to serving you with renewed energy and growing resources. Let the Fauquier Times be your community companion throughout 2021, and for many years to come. Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 8:34PM Microsoft wanted to remind its users that Windows 7 support will be ending in less than a year. A newly deployed update will let users know that security updates will end after January 14, 2020. Theres even a not-so-subtle reminder that the OS has been around for 10 years and now is the time to consider whats next. This update should start appearing on those Windows 7 machines starting April 18th. Itll be hard to miss the alert the first time it appears, but you will get an option to disable future reminders. According to Engadget, a lot of people will be seeing this notice with Net Applications data suggesting Windows 7 is represented nearly 40.2 percent of desktop usage as of February. But we dont know if these users will heed the warning. A lot of these are PC users that would struggle with the change, and others are using corporate machines where updating isnt in their control. But Microsoft is hoping the alert will reach the holdouts. Once official support ends, only those who paid for extended support will get security updates (that is until 2023). Outside of a big issue, like the WannaCry ransomware outbreak, Microsoft wont release anymore updates. Campaigners fighting plans for a quarry in the mountains above Yesil Uzumlu and Incirkoy have vowed a protest attended by around 500 people over the weekend is just the start of their battle to halt the proposal. Families and farmers concerned about the impact of the stone quarry on their everyday lives were among the crowds enjoying picnics in Sundays sunshine amid banners and waved placards urging the authorities to intervene in the application. Proactive Role But spokeswoman Zeynep Ebru Aksoy said, if the protest is to remain sustainable, then it needs to take a proactive role in promoting positive aspects to life in the area rather than simply reacting to controversial plans to exploit its natural resources. We have to create a long-standing sense of community, she said. To do that, we need to inspire more awareness of the values of the region. Sunday was a beginning but we need to arrange similar events at least once a month, whether its a walk or a meeting. Locals with their placards protesting over plans for the new quarry above Yesil Uzumlu and Incirkoy Coming Up The next event on the calendar is the annual Yesil Uzumlu Mushroom Festival to be held this year between Friday, April 5, and Sunday, April 7. The campaigners will have a stall present to explain their objectives. A guest speaker from Germany will also visit the region on Sunday, April 14, to lead classes on plants which grow in the area and which are often used in herbal remedies or for medicinal purposes. But we hope people who feel as we do about the risk the quarry poses to the area will keep an eye on our English and Turkish Facebook pages and support the events we have planned, said Ebru. Public pressure is important and, by supporting us, they can help us over the weeks and months to come. Sources: https://www.facebook.com/groups/923795221052514/ So True, Folks! This is so true and the maker of this meme should receive the 'Meme Award' of the year for coming up with this one. When you eat dosa with a fork #PMNarendraModiTrailer pic.twitter.com/VC9tAJEaNi Godman Chikna (@Madan_Chikna) March 21, 2019 Things We Indians Do There are many things that make an Indian out of us and that should never change. College Life The pressure of studies, love and various other things wants up to simply give up and lead a life of a 'sanyasi'. When some one says mujhe chaay nahi pasand Me :- #PMNarendraModiTrailer pic.twitter.com/dNj0Zu3SNm @ (@Samcasm7) March 20, 2019 Tea The Taste Of India But how can someone not like tea/coffee in India? It's simply impossible! Rajkot Police, when they see someone playing PUBG. #PMNarendraModiTrailer pic.twitter.com/AEsJ16WzIU Bade Chote (@badechote) March 21, 2019 Pubg Addiction We guess the Government needs a special force to combat this special addiction of its citizens. #PMNarendraModiTrailer Me after looking at my all daily life problems pic.twitter.com/gKgzQMJSzD SH (@sarcastic_zoned) March 20, 2019 Life, As They Call It... The everyday life as they call it wants one to become a sanyasi. Rating: 2.5 /5 Star Cast: Akshay Kumar, Parineeti Chopra, Govind Namdeo, Rajpal Yadav, Mir Sarwar Director: Anurag Singh Kesari Movie Review: Akshay Kumar | Parineeti Chopra | FilmiBeat "Ek gore ne mujhse kaha tha ki tum Gulaam ho....Hindustan ki dharti se darpok paida hote hain....Aaj Jabab dene ka vakt aa gaya hai," says Havildar Ishar Singh (Akshay Kumar) to his regiment of soldiers as they see a huge army of Afghan invaders approaching to attack the fort of Saragarh. The tension in the air is palpable and you can feel the adrenaline rush too. Sadly, Kesari has less of such emotionally-charged moments. Set in 1897, Kesari begins with British Indian army Havildar Ishar Singh (Akshay Kumar) getting into a confrontation with a few Afghans after they attempt to kill a woman. When Singh disobeys his British superiors, he gets transferred to the sleepy fort of Saragarhi where he is in-charge of a battalion of 21 from the 36 Sikh regiment. Soon, the Afghans decide to attack their fort. However, the 21 Sikhs led by Ishar Singh refuse to retreat and choose martyrdom instead. The Battle Of Saragarhi is a story which deserves to be told on celluloid. Since a very long time, Indian filmmakers have been fascinated with this tale of courage and valour. However, it's Akshay Kumar and team who get a chance to translate this dream on the reel. Anurag Singh makes his directorial debut in Bollywood with Kesari. While the director is honest with his craft, it's the lazy writing which plays a major spoilsport. The first half of the film moves at a sluggish pace and tests your patience. Anurag takes his own sweet time for the build-up of the battle, but there isn't enough meat there to chew on. Thankfully post interval, Kesari picks up speed and gets you engrossed in it. The last 20 minutes of the film are highly impressive and linger with you for long. One of the biggest shortcomings for the film is the lack of backstories for its characters. As a result, it becomes a tad difficult to emotionally involve yourself with their journey. Speaking about the performances, Akshay Kumar portays Ishar Singh with great conviction. His body language and pitch perfectly goes with his role. Be it the combat sequences or tearjerker moments, the Khiladi does leave a lasting impression. However, his fake beard and moustache comes across as distracting. The rest of his comrades too put up a good show. Parineeti Chopra has minimum screen-time and her character barely adds any depth to the story. Manish More's lousy editing makes the pre-interval portion a drag. Had there been few more impressive songs, it would have added more flavour to the film. The piercing jabs and the striking slashes pique your curiosity in the battle sequences. Anshul Chobey's cinematography tunes well with the theme of the film. Music-wise barring the soul-stirring Teri Mitti, none of the songs have a recall value. While Akshay Kumar's Kesari has its intentions in the right place, it's the dull writing which makes it lose half the battle. I am going with 2.5 stars. Brief On What Has Happened Pooja Gandhi apparently stayed at the Lalit Ashok hotel in Bangalore between April 2016 and March 2017 along with her politician friend Anil P Mensinkai, and a film crew. But, reports started circulating that she had escaped from the hotel without clearing a bill of Rs 4.5 lakhs, due to which, the hotelier lodged a police complaint against her to recover the rest of the amount. She Calls It Bogus Though However, when Filmibeat Kannada tried contacting her on the day of the complaint, they couldn't reach her phone. Pooja Gandhi stayed aloof and hadn't issued any statement on the matter. But, yesterday while talking to Deccan Herald, she called the police complaint against her 'bogus'. Apparently. She even told the hotel to contact her politician friend for the rest of the bill payment. 'There Has Been Some Miscommunication' She issued a statement that read, "We have settled all the dues with the hotel and I even called up the general manager who confirmed the dues were settled. There has been some miscommunication." She Further Added "It's true that our crew stayed at the hotel for the film shoot and we had a couple of events there, but the bills were duly settled and I do not know how this complaint cropped up suddenly." Total Real Estate According to the records provided by Sumalatha while filing the nominations, total worth of her real estate is around Rs 17.72 crore. The exact value breaks down to, Rs 17,72,91,150. The actress owns farm land worth Rs 41 lakh. The house in JP Nagar, Bangalore is also said to be worth a huge amount. Bank Balance & Family Heirloom She owns a total of Rs 12,70,363 in her HDFC, SBI and City Bank accounts. Her family heirloom is worth Rs 5,68,62,989. Records also shows that Sumalatha owns gold worth Rs 1,66,81,189 and Silver, Rs 12,57, 545 Total Loan During the nominations , the candidates are required to provide details about the loans too. According to Filmibeat Kannada reports, Sumalatha has multiple small loans from private lenders,which sums up to Rs 1,42,32,295. How Much Does Nikhil Own? Karnataka's CM, Kumaraswamy's son is also contesting from Mandya. After learning about Sumalatha's statement, we wonder how much JDS candidate Nikhil Kumar owns. VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 20, 2019 / Vangold Mining Corp (the "Company" or "Vangold") (TSXV:VAN) announces that effective immediately Mr. James Anderson has been appointed Chairman, President and CEO of the Company and that Mr. Praveen Varshney has been appointed CFO and a Director of the Company. Cameron King has resigned as President and CEO but will remain on the Company's Board of Directors. The Company would like to thank Mr. King for his efforts and hard work during his tenure as President and CEO. Likewise, the Company would like to thank Mr. Xavier Wenzel and Mr. Robert Kang for stepping aside as the Company's CFO and Director, respectively, to make room for the appointment of Praveen Varshney. About Vangold Mining Corp. Vangold Mining Corp is a Canadian-based precious metal mining company with a goal to acquire significant exploration opportunities supported by a defined set of geological principals. The Company has a diverse range of quality projects in Mexico. Vangold will continue to expand its portfolio with near production opportunities that bring value to shareholders by providing longer term exploration upside and mineral resource growth potential. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS "James Anderson" Chairman and CEO For further information regarding Vangold Mining Corp, please contact: James Anderson, +1 (778) 989-5346 Email: james@vangoldmining.com Continue to Follow, Like and Watch our progress: Web: www.vangoldmining.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed Transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements". This forward-looking information includes, or may be based upon estimates, forecasts and statements of management's expectations with respect to, among other things, the completion of the proposed Transaction, the issuance of permits, the size and quality of mineral resources, future trends for the company, progress in development of mineral properties, future production and sales volumes, capital costs, mine production costs, demand and market outlook for metals, future metal prices and treatment and refining or milling charges, the outcome of legal proceedings, the timing of exploration, development and mining activities, acquisition of shares in other companies and the financial results of the company. There can be no assurances that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially and substantially from those anticipated in such statements. Investors should not rely on forward-looking statements because they are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Vangold's expectations, and expressly does not undertake any duty to update forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to the following, limited operating history, proposed exploration and/or drill programs and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Vangold to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. SOURCE: Vangold Mining Corp. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539701/Vangold-Mining-Corp-Announces-Changes-to-Its-Management-and-BOD Washington, D.C.--(Newsfile Corp. - March 20, 2019) - The Securities and Exchange Commission today voted to adopt amendments to modernize and simplify disclosure requirements for public companies, investment advisers, and investment companies. These amendments are expected to benefit investors by eliminating outdated and unnecessary disclosure and making it easier for them to access and analyze material information. The amendments, consistent with the Commission's mandate under the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, are based on recommendations in the staff's FAST Act Report as well as a broader review of the Commission's disclosure rules. The amendments are intended to improve the readability and navigability of company disclosures, and to discourage repetition and disclosure of immaterial information. Specifically, the amendments will, among other things, increase flexibility in the discussion of historical periods in Management's Discussion and Analysis, allow companies to redact confidential information from most exhibits without filing a confidential treatment request, and incorporate technology to improve access to information on the cover page of certain filings. "Investors will benefit from the SEC staff's exemplary work to improve disclosure," said SEC Chairman Jay Clayton. "The amendments adopted today demonstrate our focus on modernizing our disclosure system to meet the expectations of today's investors while eliminating unnecessary costs and burdens." The amendments relating to the redaction of confidential information in certain exhibits will become effective upon publication in the Federal Register. The rest of the amendments will be effective 30 days after they are published in the Federal Register, except that the requirements to tag data on the cover pages of certain filings are subject to a three-year phase-in, and the requirement that certain investment company filings be made in HTML format and use hyperlinks will be effective for filings on or after April 1, 2020. FACT SHEET FAST Act Modernization and Simplification of Regulation S-K March 20, 2019 Action The Commission voted to adopt amendments to modernize and simplify certain disclosure requirements in Regulation S-K, and related rules and forms, in a manner that reduces the costs and burdens on registrants while continuing to provide all material information to investors. The amendments are also intended to improve the readability and navigability of disclosure documents and discourage repetition and disclosure of immaterial information. Highlights Among other things, the amendments: Simplify disclosure or the disclosure process, including changes that would allow registrants to omit confidential information from most exhibits without filing a confidential treatment request, and changes to Management's Discussion and Analysis that allow for flexibility in discussing historical periods; Revise rules or forms to update, streamline or otherwise improve the Commission's disclosure framework by eliminating the risk factor examples listed in the disclosure requirement and revising the description of property requirement to emphasize the materiality threshold; Update rules to account for developments since their adoption or last amendment by eliminating certain requirements for undertakings in registration statements; and Incorporate technology to improve access to information by requiring data tagging for items on the cover page of certain filings and the use of hyperlinks for information that is incorporated by reference and available on EDGAR. The amendments also include parallel amendments to several rules and forms applicable to investment companies and investment advisers, including amendments that require certain investment company filings to include a hyperlink to each exhibit listed in the exhibit index of the filings and be submitted in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) format. What's Next? The amendments will be effective 30 days after they are published in the Federal Register, except that the amendments relating to the redaction of confidential information in certain exhibits will become effective upon publication in the Federal Register. The requirements to tag data on the cover pages of certain filings are subject to a three-year phase-in, depending on the nature of the filer. All investment company registration statement and Form N-CSR filings made on or after April 1, 2020 must be made in HTML format and comply with the rule and form amendments pertaining to the use of hyperlinks. Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 20, 2019) - American Biofuels Inc. (TSXV: ABS.H) (the "Company") announces that Keturah Nathe has been appointed to the Board of Directors, effective March 20, 2019. Ms. Nathe has also been appointed Interim CEO and President of the Company, taking the place of Ron Hughes, who will remain a director of the Company. The Company sincerely thanks Mr. Hughes for his 18 years of service as President and CEO of the Company. Ms. Nathe has extensive experience with corporate development, the financing of various corporations, including involvement in operations, acquisitions and fund raising. The Company welcomes her expertise to the Board. For clarification, the Company's officers and directors are now comprised as follows: Keturah Nathe, Interim President, Chief Executive Officer and Director Teresa Cherry, Secretary and Chief Financial Officer Ron Hughes, Director Richard Barnett, Director Jurgen Wolf, Director Christopher Cherry, Director Stephen Watts, Director ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD SIGNED: "Teresa Cherry" Teresa Cherry, CFO and Secretary Contact Teresa Cherry: (604) 336-8617 Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43567 Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 21, 2019) - Bluestone Resources Inc. (TSXV: BSR) (OTCQB: BBSRF) ("Bluestone" or the "Company") is pleased to announce additional high-grade intercepts from the infill resource drill program at its Cerro Blanco Gold Project. The primary focus of the program is to upgrade Inferred Resources identified during the previous drill program completed in 2018. In addition, this program is designed to define new resources along known veins in the mine plan that extend outside of the current resource envelope. The Cerro Blanco Feasibility Study (see press release January 29th, 2019) highlighted some 360,000 ounces of Inferred Resources that could be potentially converted to Measured and Indicated Resources through infill drilling. Two LM-75 diamond drill rigs are currently situated within the North Zone of the Cerro Blanco underground workings and are targeting key veins in the upper part of the Cerro Blanco resource. David Cass, Bluestone's Vice President of Exploration, stated, "Results from our drilling continue to validate our belief in the exploration and growth potential of Cerro Blanco. Of special note is that the 201 g/t Au high-grade assay intercepted in drill hole UGCB19-119 is approximately 20 meters outside the current resource model and is a good example of the potential to define additional resources by drill definition of the extensions to known veins, in addition to the conversion of the Inferred Resources. Additionally, new parallel structures not yet classified as in the above table and therefore not included in the current resource model represent further potential." Table 1. Significant Intercepts (this Press Release) HOLE ID FROM TO CORE INT. TRUE WIDTH Au g/t Ag g/t Vein ID UGCB19-116 14.9 15.8 0.9 0.9 13.1 29 - 21.6 22.6 1.0 1.0 7.2 7 - 58.9 60.3 1.4 1.4 18.0 27 VN_02 UGCB19-117 44.1 44.7 0.6 0.6 4.8 21 VN_02 50.9 51.9 1.0 1.0 6.6 60 VN_03 UGCB19-118 45.3 48.8 3.5 3.5 8.5 7 - 79.0 80.0 1.0 1.0 5.6 11 VN_01 82.6 83.6 1.0 1.0 3.7 6 - UGCB19-119 38.7 39.7 1.0 1.0 4.3 28 VN_02 42.7 45.1 2.4 2.4 86.1 963 VN_03 including 42.7 44.1 1.4 1.4 4.8 135 " and 44.1 45.1 1.0 1.0 201.4 2,139 " Notes: Intervals in bold are cited in the text of the news release. Hole coordinates and azimuth/dip information accompany the plan view attached to this release. Drill holes UGCB18-116, 117 and 119 were all drilled at positive angles from Platform 04-N in the North Ramp to target veins VN_01, VN_02 and VN_03 in the upper parts of the Cerro Blanco deposit. Drill hole UGCB18-118 was drilled from Platform 01-N also within the North Ramp of the underground workings and designed to intercept VN_02 at depth, a primary vein with a total of 46,800 ounces in the Inferred Resource category as per the current resource estimate (154,500 tonnes grading 9.4 g/t Au). Hole UGCB18-119 intercepted vein VN_03 as anticipated which assayed 86.1 g/t Au and 963 g/t Ag over 2.4 meters, which included a one-meter interval that assayed 201.4 g/t Au and 2,139 g/t Ag (229 g/t Au Eq.*, true width) representing some of the highest grades encountered in the infill drill program to date. At Cerro Blanco, exceptionally high grades are characteristically associated with fine colloform-banded quartz-adularia veins with silver sulphides as ginguro bands along with visible gold and electrum. Of special note is that this intercept is approximately 20 meters outside the current resource model and is a good example of the potential to add resources by drill definition of the extensions to known veins, in addition to the conversion of Inferred Resources. Additionally, new parallel structures not yet classified as in the above table and therefore not included in the current resource model represent further potential. Drilling is ongoing and further results will be reported as received. A plan view showing drill hole locations, sections, and core photos can be accessed by clicking HERE. *Gold Equivalent (AuEq) calculated via the formula: Au (g/t) + [Ag (g/t) / 78 and assumes 100% metal recoveries. Quality Analysis and Quality Control Assay results listed within this release were performed by Inspectorate Laboratories ("Inspectorate"), a division of Bureau Veritas, which are ISO 17025 accredited laboratories. Logging and sampling are undertaken on site at Cerro Blanco by Company personnel under a QA/QC protocol developed by Bluestone. Samples are transported in security-sealed bags to Inspectorate, Guatemala City, Guatemala, for sample preparation. Sample pulps are shipped to Inspectorate Laboratories in Vancouver, BC, Canada or Reno, NV, USA, and assayed using industry-standard assay techniques for gold and silver. Gold and silver were analyzed by a 30-gram charge with atomic absorption and/or gravimetric finish for values exceeding 5 g/t Au and 100 g/t Ag. Analytical accuracy and precision are monitored by the analysis of reagent blanks, reference material, and replicate samples. Quality control is further assured by Bluestone's QA/QC program, which involves the insertion of blind certified reference materials (standards) and field duplicates into the sample stream to independently assess analytical precision and accuracy of each batch of samples as they are received from the laboratory. A selection of samples is submitted to ALS Chemex Laboratories in Vancouver for check analysis and additional quality control. Qualified Person David Cass, P.Geo., Vice President Exploration, is the designated Qualified Person for this news release within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and verified that the technical information set out above in this news release is accurate and therefore approves this written disclosure of the technical information. About Bluestone Resources Bluestone Resources is a mineral exploration and development company that is focused on advancing its 100%-owned Cerro Blanco Gold and Mita Geothermal projects located in Guatemala. A Feasibility Study on Cerro Blanco returned robust economics with a quick pay back. The average annual production is projected to be 146,000 ounces per year over the first three years of production with all-in sustaining costs of $579/oz (as defined per World Gold Council guidelines, less corporate general and administration costs). The Company trades under the symbol "BSR" on the TSX Venture Exchange and "BBSRF" on the OTCQB. On Behalf of Bluestone Resources Inc. "Darren Klinck" Darren Klinck | President, Chief Executive Officer & Director For further information, please contact: Bluestone Resources Inc. Stephen Williams | VP Corporate Development & Investor Relations Phone: +1 604 646 4534 info@bluestoneresources.ca www.bluestoneresources.ca Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation and "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). All statements, other than statements of historical fact, that address activities, events or developments that Bluestone Resources Inc. ("Bluestone" or the "Company") believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future including, without limitation: the conversion of the inferred mineral resources; increasing the amount of measured mineral and indicated mineral resources; the proposed timeline and benefits of further drilling; the proposed timeline and benefits of the Feasibility Study; statements about the Company's plans for its mineral properties; Bluestone's business strategy, plans and outlook; the future financial or operating performance of Bluestone; capital expenditures, corporate general and administration expenses and exploration and development expenses; expected working capital requirements; the future financial estimates of the Cerro Blanco Project economics, including estimates of capital costs of constructing mine facilities and bringing a mine into production and of sustaining capital costs, estimates of operating costs and total costs, net present value and economic returns; proposed production timelines and rates; funding availability; resource estimates; and future exploration and operating plans are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements reflect the current expectations or beliefs of the Company based on information currently available to Bluestone and often use words such as "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "estimates", "intends", "may" or variations thereof or the negative of any of these terms. All forward-looking statements are made based on the Company's current beliefs as well as various assumptions made by them and information currently available to them. Generally, these assumptions include, among others: the ability of Bluestone to carry on exploration and development activities; the price of gold, silver and other metals; there being no material variations in the current tax and regulatory environment; the exchange rates among the Canadian dollar, Guatemalan quetzal and the United States dollar remaining consistent with current levels; the presence of and continuity of metals at the Cerro Blanco Project at estimated grades; the availability of personnel, machinery and equipment at estimated prices and within estimated delivery times; metals sales prices and exchange rates assumed; appropriate discount rates applied to the cash flows in economic analyses; tax rates and royalty rates applicable to the proposed mining operation; the availability of acceptable financing; anticipated mining losses and dilution; success in realizing proposed operations; anticipated timelines for community consultations and the impact of those consultations on the regulatory approval process. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements and, even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, Bluestone. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things: risks relating to variations in the mineral content within the mineral identified as mineral resources from that predicted; risks and uncertainties related to expected production rates, timing and amount of production and total costs of production; risks and uncertainties related to ability to obtain or maintain necessary licenses, permits, or surface rights; risks associated with technical difficulties in connection with mining development activities; risks and uncertainties related to the accuracy of mineral resource estimates and estimates of future production, future cash flow, total costs of production and diminishing quantities or grades of mineral resources; risks associated with geopolitical uncertainty and political and economic instability in Guatemala; risks and uncertainties related to interruptions in production; the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; uncertain political and economic environments and relationships with local communities; variations in rates of recovery and extraction; developments in world metals markets; risks related to fluctuations in currency exchange rates; as well as those factors discussed under "Risk Factors" in the Company's Amended and Restated Annual Information Form. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it was made, and except as may be required by applicable securities laws, Bluestone disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Although Bluestone believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to their inherent uncertainty. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Non-IFRS Financial Performance Measures The Company has included certain non-International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS") measures in this new release. The Company believes that these measures, in addition to measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, provide investors an improved ability to evaluate the underlying performance of the Company and to compare it to information reported by other companies. The non-IFRS measures are intended to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. These measures do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS, and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. All-in sustaining costs The Company believes that all-in sustaining costs ("AISC") more fully defines the total costs associated with producing gold. The Company calculates AISC as the sum of refining costs, third party royalties, site operating costs, sustaining capital costs and closure capital costs all divided by the gold ounces sold to arrive at a per ounce amount. Other companies may calculate this measure differently as a result of differences in underlying principles and policies applied. Differences may also arise due to a different definition of sustaining versus non-sustaining capital. Total cash costs Total cash costs is a common financial performance measure in the gold mining industry but has no standard meaning. The Company reports total cash costs on a gold ounce sold basis. The Company believes that, in addition to measures prepared in accordance with IFRS, such as revenue, certain investors can use this information to evaluate the Company's performance and ability to generate operating earnings and cash flow from its mining operations. Management uses this metric as an important tool to monitor operating cost performance. Total cash costs include (cost of sales such as mining, processing, maintenance and site administration, royalties, selling costs and by-product credits) to arrive at total cash costs per ounce of gold sold. Other companies may calculate this measure differently. AISC and total cash costs reconciliation ASIC and total cash costs are calculated based on the definitions published by the World Gold Council ("WGC") (a market development organization for the gold industry comprised of and funded by 18 gold mining companies from around the world). The WGC is not a regulatory organization. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43577 Net sales reached 277.0 million in reported currency, a 6% growth year-over-year (+8% in constant currency) EBITDA was 40.2 million, a significant increase compared to 21.9 million in 2017 and in line with recent outlook, despite certain non-recurring charges. Adjusted EBITDA was 43.3 million after 24.4 million in 2017. Net profit and free cash flow turned positive in 2018 In keeping with ongoing turnaround, continued investments in innovation. Released results of the Phase III trial for STAGR320 to treat house dust mite-induced allergic rhinitis and completed two Real World Evidence studies as part of our BREATH program Continued close collaboration with the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety (ANSM) to meet the requirements stated in its injunction dated 4 January 2018, in particular with respect to its injectable products. 2019 outlook: Net sales in the range of 290 million and 300 million; EBITDA in the range of 50 million and 60 million (excluding one-off costs) Regulatory News: This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190320005890/en/ Paris:STAGR Stallergenes Greer, a biopharmaceutical company specialising in treatments for respiratory allergies, today published its full-year results for the twelve-month period ended 31 December 2018. FY 2018 Financial Highlights (in million) Full Year (audited) 2017 2018 Var. (m) % change Net sales 260.2 277.0 + 16.8 + 6% Gross profit 165.8 179.1 + 13.3 + 8% Gross margin 64% 65% n.a. + 1 point EBITDA 21.9 40.2 + 18.3 + 84% EBITDA margin 8% 15% n.a. + 7 points EBIT (Operating Profit) (5.4) 17.6 + 23.0 n.a. Net profit/(loss) (9.9) 12.8 + 22.7 n.a. Michele Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer of Stallergenes Greer, commented: "Stallergenes Greer sustained the ongoing recovery of its business in 2018 and we regained leading positions in many key markets. We delivered meaningful growth and continue to invest in our product pipeline and manufacturing capabilities. Net sales and EBITDA were in line with our recent outlook and we showed steady growth across our main regions and products. We delivered substantial EBITDA margin expansion as a result of strong operating efficiencies. Stallergenes Greer's business fundamentals are robust and provide the means and so confidence to continue enhancing our competitive profile, advancing our pipeline and further investing in technical operations and quality. Going forward, we will remain focused on providing patients and the medical community with a broader portfolio of innovative and high-quality allergy treatments and ultimately seek to deliver on our purpose of enabling people with allergies to live normal lives." FY18 net sales increased 6% as a result of continued growth across main products and regions, in line with outlook Unaudited In million Reported Currency Constant Currency FY-17 (12m) (m) Sales FY-18 (12m) (m) Sales Var FY-18 (12m) (m) Sales Var Southern Europe 119.0 46% 136.5 49% 15% 136.4 48% 15% Northern Central Europe 33.7 13% 33.5 12% 0% 33.8 12% 0% International markets 19.6 8% 15.7 6% -20% 16.5 6% -16% United States 87.9 33% 91.3 33% 4% 95.5 34% 9% Net sales 260.2 100% 277.0 100% 6% 282.2 100% 8% Sublingual products 156.7 60% 172.9 63% 10% Subcutaneous products 70.4 27% 70.1 25% 0% Veterinary 10.2 4% 9.4 3% -8% Other products 22.9 9% 24.6 9% 7% Net sales 260.2 100% 277.0 100% 6% The 6% increase year-over-year in full-year net sales reflects positive growth in Southern Europe and in the United States. U.S. revenue was negatively impacted by the foreign currency exchange rate in 2018. The region delivered 9% net sales growth year-over-year in local currency (US$). Staloral was Stallergenes Greer's main growth driver in 2018 across all its major markets. In addition, the Company regained share with Oralair in the grass tablet segment in some of its key markets. Operational efficiencies delivered margin improvement The Group's full-year 2018 gross margin of 179.1 million represented 65% of net sales, compared to 64% in 2017. The Group reported 2018 EBITDA of 40.2 million, compared to 21.9 million in 2017. Reported EBITDA increased overall by 18.3 million as a result of a 16.8 million increase in sales and a 8% decline in Selling, General and Administrative expenses, from 131.9 million in 2017 to 120.7 million in 2018. The Group benefited from the reduction of its operating expenditures and costs associated with its operations in the U.K., France and the United States in 2018. Reported 2018 EBITDA came in near the low end of the outlook range, mostly due to a re-assessment of the research tax credits in France for fiscal years 2014-2017; non-recurring charges related to the change in leadership effective from January 2019 and costs associated with streamlining of the Company's operations. For the first time in three years, the Group generated a positive net profit and a positive cash flow. In 2018, net profit was 12.8 million compared toa net loss of 9.9 million in 2017. Free cash flow was positive 23.1 million versus a negative 20.4 million in 2017. As a result of the business performance and robust measures to contain costs, Stallergenes Greer continues to have a solid balance sheet. At 31 December 2018, the Group's shareholders' equity represented 82% of the balance sheet total. Cash balance stood at 74 million. Continued investments in innovation translated into significant achievements in 2018 Stallergenes Greer is committed to developing innovative therapies for major respiratory allergies and invested 38.4 million in Research Development in 2018, primarily to fund STAGR320, the Group's phase III global multi-centre clinical trial for house dust mite (HDM)-induced allergic rhinitis. In November 2018, Stallergenes Greer announced that this phase III trial achieved its primary endpoint. The study also achieved all key secondary endpoints and showed a comparable safety profile to that observed in other clinical studies with STAGR320. The randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, which recruited more than 1,600 patients from 231 participating investigative sites in 13 countries, was the largest phase III clinical trial conducted to evaluate the treatment of house dust mite allergy. Whilst certain hurdles remain, the results provide a basis for regulatory submissions in Europe and the United States and an assessment of the commercial viability of this new product. In addition, Stallergenes Greer announced positive results from two real-world evidence studies regarding the use of allergy immunotherapy compared to the use of only symptomatic treatments in patients with respiratory allergies as part of the BREATH real-world evidence program designed to understand the real-world benefits of allergy immunotherapy outside of a clinical trial setting. These studies, conducted in France and Germany, further substantiated the long-term benefits of AIT to significantly reduce the need for allergic rhinitis and asthma medications in patients suffering from grass pollen and birch tree pollen-induced allergies. Investments in Technical Operations and Quality to continue Stallergenes Greer pursued investments in Technical and Quality Operations capabilities at all its manufacturing sites in 2018 to strengthen its quality culture across the organisation and to ensure product quality and patient safety for all released and distributed products. Stallergenes Greer continues its ongoing improvements of the manufacturing facilities in France and closely collaborates with the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety (ANSM) to meet the requirements stated in its injunction dated 4 January 2018, in particular with respect to its injectable products. In the United States, Stallergenes Greer continued to strengthen its quality system and introduced state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies and advanced initiatives to increase capacity. 2019 Business outlook Stallergenes Greer anticipates further progress will be made in 2019. This includes investing in growth opportunities and delivering cost efficiencies across the organization. The Group expects: Net sales to be in the range of 290 million and 300 million, and EBITDA to be in the range of 50 million to 60 million (excluding one-off costs) Stallergenes Greer plc recognised non-cash impairment with no impact on Group consolidated accounts As part of its annual reviews, Stallergenes Greer plc has performed an impairment analysis of its "investments in subsidiary undertakings" on its statutory accounts based on the latest business plan and risks associated to it and an impairment of 47 million was recorded. The impairment in the statutory accounts for Stallergenes Greer plc has no impact on the Group consolidated accounts, its 2018 operating result, EBITDA or Equity1 WEBCAST AND CONFERENCE CALL INFORMATION Stallergenes Greer will host an Investors and Analysts meeting today, 21 March 2019. The event will be available via live webcast at 10:30 am GMT 11:30 am CET / 5:30 am EST. The webcast will be available via the following link: https://edge.media-server.com/m6/p/vtdehysm and on the company's website, http://stallergenesgreer.com/financial-calendar-events. Participants UK International: +44 (0) 2071 928000 Participants France: 0805103028 Participants United States: 18669661396 Conference ID: 9197292 Participants are asked to connect at least 15 minutes prior to the conference to register, download and install any necessary audio software. FINANCIAL CALENDAR 17 April 2019: First 2019 Quarter Sales Publication 13 June 2019: Annual General Meeting 29 August 2019: H1 2019 Results ABOUT STALLERGENES GREER PLC Headquartered in London (UK), Stallergenes Greer plc is a global healthcare company specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of allergies through the development and commercialization of allergy immunotherapy products and services. Stallergenes Greer plc is the parent company of Greer Laboratories, Inc. (whose registered office is in the United States) and Stallergenes SAS (whose registered office is in France). TRADING INFORMATION Name: Stallergenes Greer ISIN: GB00BZ21RF93 1 Ticker: STAGR ICB Classification: 4577 LEI: 213800CYVZA7GJQEME86 Market: Euronext Paris regulated market Additional information is available at http://www.stallergenesgreer.com. This document (including information incorporated by reference in this document), oral statements made and other information published by the Company contain statements that are or may be forward-looking with respect to the financial condition and/or results of operations and businesses of the Company. These statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believe," "expects," "project," "estimated," "forecast," "should," "plan," "may" or the negative of any of these, or other variations thereof, or comparable terminology indicating expectations or beliefs concerning future events. These forward-looking statements include risk and uncertainty because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future. Without being exhaustive, such factors include economic situations and business conditions, including legal and product evaluation issues, fluctuations in currencies and demand, and changes in competitive factors. These and other factors are more fully described in the Company's 2018 annual report published on 21 March 2019 on the Company's website www.stallergenesgreer.com. Actual results may differ from those set forth in the forward-looking statements, due to various factors. Save as required by applicable law, neither the Company nor any other person assumes any obligation to update these forward-looking statements or to notify any person of any such update. TABLE OF CONTENTS Consolidated income statement as of 31 December 2018 Consolidated balance sheet as of 31 December 2018 Consolidated cash flow statement as of 31 December 2018 Reconciliation of net income to EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA The financial information set out above does not constitute the Group's financial statements for the period-ended 31 December 2018 but are derived from those statements. The annual report for 2018 will be made public on 21 March 2019 and delivered to the UK Companies House on or before 30 June 2019. The auditor has reported on those statements. Their report was unqualified, did not draw attention to any matters by way of emphasis and did not contain statements under Section 498 (2) or (3) Companies Act 2006 or equivalent preceding legislation. While the financial information included in this preliminary announcement has been computed in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), this announcement itself does not contain sufficient information to comply with IFRS. The Group published full financial statements that comply with IFRS that are available on its website at http://stallergenesgreer.com/half-year-report The financial statements were approved by the Board of Directors on 20 March 2019. Consolidated income statement as of 31 December 2018 thousands 31/12/2018 31/12/2017 Net sales1 276,954 260,195 Other revenues 99 36 Total revenues 277,053 260,231 Cost of goods sold (94,458) (97,917) Gross margin 179,136 165,773 Distribution costs (10,806) (11,413) Selling and marketing expenses (47,738) (60,624) Administrative expenses (57,378) (57,588) Other general expenses (4,768) (2,281) Selling, general and administrative expenses (120,690) (131,906) Research and Development expenses (R&D) (38,429) (45,630) R&D related income 865 6,412 Net R&D expenses (37,564) (39,218) Operating profit (loss) (EBIT) before transformation costs 20,882 (5,351) Transformation costs (3,322) Operating profit (loss) (EBIT) 17,560 (5,351) Financial income 109 20 Financial expenses (1,000) (1,817) Net financial expense (891) (1,797) Profit (loss) before tax and associates 16,669 (7,148) Income tax (3,910) (2,145) Share of loss from associated companies (578) Profit (loss) for the period attributable to: Owners of the parent 12,759 (9,871) Non-controlling interest Group share of net profit (loss) 12,759 (9,871) 1. The 2017 net sales figure includes a 5,112k unused reversal of the recall provision against sales. Consolidated balance sheet as of 31 December 2018 thousands 31/12/2018 31/12/2017 Goodwill 202,723 195,187 Other intangible assets 65,093 70,913 Property, plant and equipment 76,148 69,138 Non-current financial assets 2,736 3,957 Deferred tax assets 27,276 26,754 Other non-current assets 237 237 Non-current assets 374,213 366,186 Inventories 58,453 56,793 Trade receivables 33,025 33,199 Current financial assets 772 684 Other current assets 9,192 9,231 Current income tax receivable 2,997 611 Research tax credit and subsidies receivable 21,704 22,708 Cash and cash equivalents 73,946 50,849 Current assets 200,089 174,075 Total assets 574,302 540,261 Share capital 19,788 19,788 Share premium 539 539 Merger and contribution premium 342,149 342,149 Revaluation reserve (348) (236) Retained earnings 109,067 85,086 Group shareholders' equity 471,195 447,326 Non-controlling interests Total shareholders' equity 471,195 447,326 Provision for employee retirement obligations and related benefits 3,708 3,442 Non-current provisions 860 514 Non-current financial liabilities 6,318 6,318 Deferred tax liabilities 3,815 6,283 Non-current liabilities 14,701 16,557 Trade payables 21,680 19,793 Current provisions 1,264 2,115 Current financial liabilities 12,437 12,204 Income tax payable 2,566 1,313 Other current liabilities 50,459 40,953 Current liabilities 88,406 76,378 Total equity and liabilities 574,302 540,261 Consolidated cash flow statement as of 31 December 2018 thousands 31/12/2018 31/12/2017 Cash flow from operating activities Group share of net profit (loss) 12,759 (9,871) Share of loss from associated companies 578 Income tax 3,910 2,145 Net financial expense 891 1,798 Amortisation and depreciation charges 21,529 23,404 Change in provisions (195) (1,904) Share-based compensation 2,363 2,429 Capital losses from disposal of assets 1,156 4,466 Financial losses excluding interests (73) (35) Operating cash flow before changes in working capital 42,340 23,010 Current income tax paid (5,722) (3,768) Change in subsidies and R&D tax credit receivables (1,614) (7,240) Change in working capital of operating activities 6,731 (16,231) Change in deferred income (55) 11 Net cash flow from operating activities 41,680 (4,218) Cash flow from investing activities Purchase of non-current assets (24,863) (12,643) Acquisition of investments in consolidated undertakings, net of cash acquired (123) (1,403) Proceeds from sale of non-current assets 5,652 5,269 Change in working capital of investment activities 816 (1,400) Net cash flow from investing activities (18,518) (10,177) Free cash flow after investing activities 23,162 (14,395) Cash flow from financing activities Proceeds from issuance of ordinary shares Treasury shares transactions 169 (72) Net financial interest paid (822) (1,407) Use/(repayment) of bank overdrafts (4) (227) Repayment of borrowings (5,522) (15,054) Proceeds from borrowings 5,502 12,095 Net cash flow from financing activities (677) (4,665) Change in cash and cash equivalents 22,485 (19,060) + cash and cash equivalents opening balance 50,849 71,262 +/- effect of translation adjustment on foreign currency denominated cash 612 (1,353) = cash and cash equivalents closing balance 73,946 50,849 Reconciliation of net income to EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA thousands 2018 2017 Group share of net loss 12,759 (9,871) Add back: Tax expense 3,910 2,145 Net financial expense 891 1,798 Amortisation and depreciation 21,529 23,404 Capital losses and impairments 1,156 4,466 EBITDA 40,245 21,942 Transformation costs, not already considered in amortization, depreciation and capital losses 687 Share-based compensation 2,363 2,429 Adjusted EBITDA 43,295 24,371 To supplement our financial information presented in accordance with IFRS we use the following financial measures to clarify and enhance an understanding of the company's performance: EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA. We believe that the presentation of these financial measures enhances an investor's understanding of our financial performance. We further believe that these financial measures are useful financial metrics to assess our operating performance from period-to-period by excluding certain items that we believe are not representative of our core business. We define our core business as those operations relating to the Group's ongoing performance. We use these financial measures for business planning purposes and in measuring our performance relative to that of our competitors. We utilise both EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA as primary measures of performance. EBITDA consists of net income before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation. Adjusted EBITDA consists of EBITDA adjusted for (i) certain non-cash items included within net income, specifically share-based compensation, (ii) items the Group does not believe are indicative of ongoing operating performance, specifically transformation and significant transaction costs. We believe that making such adjustments provides investors meaningful information to understand our operating results and ability to analyse financial and business trends on a period-to-period basis. 1 For more details please refer to the Group Financial Review and Stallergenes Greer plc. Financial statements View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190320005890/en/ Contacts: Investor Relations Youssef Abbas Tel: +33 1 55 59 78 43 Email: youssef.abbas@stallergenesgreer.com Investor Relations agency FTI Consulting Arnaud de Cheffontaines Tel: +33 6 07 59 55 44 Email: stallergenesgreer@fticonsulting.com Communications Catherine Kress Tel: +33 1 55 59 26 05 Email:catherine.kress@stallergenesgreer.com Media Relations Agency Havas Paris (Europe) Claire Olivieri +33 6 13 54 38 91 E-mail: claire.olivieri-ringot@havas.com (to be implemented by way of a scheme of arrangement under Part 26 of the U.K. Companies Act 2006) Regulatory News: This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190320005895/en/ THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONTAINS INSIDE INFORMATION NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN, INTO OR FROM ANY JURISDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION For immediate release 21 March 2019 RECOMMENDED CASH ACQUISITION of STALLERGENES GREER PLC by ARES LIFE SCIENCES I S.A R.L. (to be implemented by way of a scheme of arrangement under Part 26 of the U.K. Companies Act 2006) Summary The special committee of independent directors of Stallergenes Greer (Paris:STAGR) (the " Special Committee ") and Ares Life Sciences I S.a r.l. (" Waypoint ") are pleased to announce that they have reached agreement on the terms of a recommended cash acquisition by Waypoint of the entire issued, and to be issued, ordinary share capital of Stallergenes Greer not held directly or indirectly by Waypoint (the " Acquisition ") and Ares Life Sciences I S.a r.l. (" ") are pleased to announce that they have reached agreement on the terms of a recommended cash acquisition by Waypoint of the entire issued, and to be issued, ordinary share capital of Stallergenes Greer not held directly or indirectly by Waypoint (the " The Acquisition will be implemented by way of an English law scheme of arrangement (the " Scheme ") which requires, among other things, both the approval of SG Shareholders (other than Waypoint) and the approval of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. Following the Acquisition, Stallergenes Greer will be de-listed from the regulated market of Euronext Paris. ") which requires, among other things, both the approval of SG Shareholders (other than Waypoint) and the approval of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. Following the Acquisition, Stallergenes Greer will be de-listed from the regulated market of Euronext Paris. Under the terms of the Scheme, Shareholders will be entitled to receive: in respect of each Scheme Share: Euro 37.00 in cash The Acquisition values the Existing Issued Share Capital at approximately Euro 730.1 million with an enterprise value of approximately Euro 678.5 million, and represents a premium of approximately: 42.9 per cent. to the closing price per Share of Euro 25.90 (the " Closing Price ") on the Last Practicable Date; ") on the Last Practicable Date; 33.5 per cent. to the volume weighted average Closing Price per Share of Euro 27.71 for the three months ended on the Last Practicable Date; and 30.6 per cent. to the volume weighted average Closing Price per Share of Euro 28.33 for the twelve months ended on the Last Practicable Date. Background to and reasons for the Acquisition On 18 December 2018, Waypoint GP Limited, which manages Waypoint's immediate parent, Ares Life Sciences L.P., approached the Board to explore the possibility of Waypoint becoming the sole shareholder in Stallergenes Greer. Following this approach, the Board formed the Special Committee to evaluate and consider the proposal on behalf of Stallergenes Greer. Waypoint has been Stallergenes Greer's majority shareholder since 2015 and on the Last Practicable Date held approximately 83.9 per cent. of the Existing Issued Share Capital. Waypoint continues to recognise and value Stallergenes Greer as a leader in the development and marketing of allergy immunotherapy treatments. However, in light of Stallergenes Greer's limited public float, Waypoint has concluded that the benefits of having Shares publicly listed are limited, and the costs of maintaining such listing are not justified for Shareholders. In addition, de-listing Shares from the regulated market of Euronext Paris would allow Stallergenes Greer's management team to focus on the successful implementation of Stallergenes Greer's business objectives without the distraction of listing obligations. Enabling the management team to focus on the execution of Stallergenes Greer's business objectives without this distraction is particularly important as Stallergenes Greer continues to recover from the difficult operational challenges of recent years. Waypoint believes that the Acquisition, in combination with an Acquisition Price that delivers a highly attractive valuation and full liquidity to Shareholders, represents the best alternative for all of Stallergenes Greer's stakeholders. Implementation The Acquisition will be implemented by way of the Scheme, on the terms and subject to the conditions set out in this Announcement and to be set out in a document to be dispatched to (among others) Shareholders, including, among other things, the full terms and conditions of the Scheme (the " Scheme Document To become Effective, the Scheme requires, among other things, the approval of a majority in number representing not less than 75 per cent. in value of the Scheme Shareholders present and voting in person or by proxy at a meeting of Scheme Shareholders, and the passing of the resolutions necessary to implement the Acquisition at a general meeting of SG Shareholders. After this, the Scheme must also be approved by the Court. Stallergenes Greer will put in place arrangements similar to those which it has put in place for its previous shareholder meetings to allow Shareholders to vote (or direct the vote) of the Scheme Shares in which they are interested so that it is only Shareholders who determine whether the approval required at the Court Meeting of Scheme Shareholders is given. Waypoint is not entitled to vote at the Court Meeting of Scheme Shareholders. The Scheme will complete if the relevant resolutions are passed at the two shareholder meetings referred to above, the Court Order is obtained and the Court Order is filed at Companies House. If the Scheme completes, it will bind all of the Scheme Shareholders, even those who did not vote in favour of the Scheme, and Shareholders will receive the Acquisition Price in respect of each Scheme Share they hold. The Scheme will fail if the necessary majority does not approve the resolutions at the two shareholder meetings referred to above or if the Court does not then approve the Scheme. If the Scheme fails, Waypoint will not acquire any Scheme Shares pursuant to the Acquisition, even from Scheme Shareholders who voted in favour of the Scheme. Waypoint intends to finance the aggregate price payable to Shareholders through a new debt facility to be entered into by Waypoint (or one of Waypoint's affiliates) before the Effective Date. Waypoint and Stallergenes Greer have also entered into the Funding Commitment Letter with certain affiliates of Waypoint, setting out arrangements for Waypoint to pay the aggregate price payable to Shareholders pursuant to the Scheme if the debt facility is not available. It is expected that: the Scheme Document will be dispatched to Shareholders and, for information only, to participants in Share Schemes within 28 days following the date of this Announcement; and the Scheme will become Effective in May 2019, subject to the satisfaction of the Conditions and certain further terms set out in Appendix I to this Announcement. If any dividend or other distribution is paid in respect of Shares on or after the date of this Announcement and before the Effective Date, Waypoint reserves the right to reduce the Acquisition Price by the aggregate per Share amount of such dividend or other distribution. Regulation The Scheme is not subject to the tender offer rules under the General Regulation of the Autorite des marches financiers , the French Financial Markets Authority (the "AMF") or to authorisation by the AMF. However, the AMF has jurisdiction to enforce the provisions of the Market Abuse Regulation against Stallergenes Greer and to review public disclosures made by Stallergenes Greer in connection with the Acquisition under the Transparency Directive and applicable provisions of the General Regulation of the AMF. The Scheme is not subject to the U.K. City Code on Takeovers and Mergers or the jurisdiction of the U.K. Panel on Takeovers and Mergers. Recommendation The Special Committee, which has been so advised by its financial adviser, Evercore Partners International LLP (" Evercore "), as to the financial terms of the Acquisition, considers the terms of the Acquisition to be fair and reasonable. In providing its advice to the Special Committee, Evercore has taken into account the commercial assessments of the members of the Special Committee. "), as to the financial terms of the Acquisition, considers the terms of the Acquisition to be fair and reasonable. In providing its advice to the Special Committee, Evercore has taken into account the commercial assessments of the members of the Special Committee. Accordingly, the Special Committee: (i) believes that the terms of the Acquisition are in the best interests of Shareholders as a whole; and (ii) intends to unanimously recommend that Shareholders vote in favour (or procure or direct votes in favour) of the Acquisition at the Court Meeting and the General Meeting, as each member of the Special Committee who holds, or is otherwise beneficially interested in, Shares has irrevocably undertaken to do in respect of his or her entire beneficial holdings of, in aggregate, 1,150 Shares (representing 0.00583 per cent. of the Existing Issued Share Capital). Independent Expert In addition to appointing Evercore as its financial adviser, the Special Committee appointed Finexsi Expert Conseil Financier as its independent valuation expert (the "Independent Expert") to deliver an opinion on the fairness of the Acquisition Price. The Independent Expert has opined that the Acquisition Price is fair from a financial point of view. Copies of the Independent Expert Report will be made available on Stallergenes Greer's website within one Business Day of being delivered in French and English in final form. The Independent Expert Report will also be published in the Scheme Document. Comments on the Acquisition Commenting on the Acquisition, Elmar Schnee, the Chairman of the Special Committee said: "The Special Committee has given careful consideration to the proposal by Waypoint and believes that the value proposed recognises the future potential of the business and the improved prospects of Stallergenes Greer following recent efforts by management. The proposal also represents an attractive cash premium to the current share price as well as a source of liquidity for Shareholders. As majority shareholder, Waypoint has been consistently and demonstrably supportive of Stallergenes Greer. We have confidence that with 100 per cent. ownership of Stallergenes Greer, Waypoint will develop the business into a successful future to the benefit of patients, employees and other stakeholders. Further information This summary should be read in conjunction with, and is subject to, the full text of this Announcement, including the Appendices. The Acquisition is subject to the conditions and certain further terms set out in Appendix I and to the full terms and conditions to be set out in the Scheme Document. Appendix II contains the sources and bases of certain information contained in this summary and the following Announcement. Appendix III contains details of the irrevocable undertakings received by Waypoint to vote in favour of the Scheme. Appendix IV contains the definitions of certain terms used in this summary and the following Announcement. Investor and media calls An investor slide deck is now available on the Investor Relations section of Stallergenes Greer's website at www.stallergenesgreer.com. Stallergenes Greer will hold an investorcall and webcast at 10.30 a.m. (GMT) on 21 March 2019 to discuss this Announcement. Investors may dial in to the investor call on +44 (0) 20 7192 8000 (confirmation code: 9197292). Enquiries: Stallergenes Greer Youssef Abbas, Investor Relations +33 1 55 59 78 43 Catherine Kress, Communications +33 1 55 59 26 05 Evercore +44 (0) 20 7653 6000 Financial adviser to the Special Committee Edward Banks, Senior Managing Director Simon Elliott, Senior Managing Director Wladimir Wallaert, Managing Director FTI Consulting +33 1 47 03 69 48 Investor and media relations adviser to Stallergenes Greer Arnaud de Cheffontaines Havas Worldwide Paris +33 06 13 54 38 91 Media relations adviser to Stallergenes Greer Claire Olivieri UBS +44 (0) 20 7567 8000 Financial adviser to Waypoint Cailin McGurk, Managing Director Sarantis Douropoulos, Executive Director Nicolas Le Ray, Executive Director Hirzel.Neef.Schmid.Counselors +41 43 344 42 42 Media relations adviser to Waypoint Dr Jorg Neef IMPORTANT NOTICES Important Notices Relating to Financial Advisers UBS AG London Branch is authorised and regulated by the Financial Market Supervisory Authority in Switzerland. It is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and subject to regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority and limited regulation by the Prudential Regulation Authority in the United Kingdom. UBS AG London Branch is acting exclusively as financial adviser to Waypoint and no one else in connection with the Acquisition. In connection with such matters, UBS AG London Branch will not regard any other person as its client, nor will it be responsible to any other person for providing the protections afforded to its clients or for providing advice in relation to the Acquisition, the contents or subject matter of this Announcement or any transaction, arrangement or other matter referred to herein. Evercore Partners International LLP, which is authorised and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority, is acting as financial adviser exclusively for the Special Committee and no one else in connection with the matters referred to in this Announcement and will not regard any other person as its client in connection with the matters referred to in this Announcement and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Special Committee for providing the protections afforded to clients of Evercore, nor for providing advice in relation to the matters referred to in this Announcement. Further Information This Announcement is for information purposes only and is not intended to, and does not, constitute or form part of any offer, invitation, inducement or the solicitation of an offer to purchase, otherwise acquire, subscribe for, sell or otherwise dispose of or exercise rights in respect of any securities, or the solicitation of any vote or approval of an offer to buy securities in any jurisdiction, pursuant to the Acquisition or otherwise nor shall there be any sale, issuance or transfer of any securities pursuant to the Acquisition in any jurisdiction in contravention of any applicable laws. The Acquisition will be implemented solely pursuant to the terms of the Scheme Document, which will contain the full terms and conditions of the Acquisition, including details of how to vote in respect of the Scheme. Any decision, vote or other response in respect of the Acquisition should be made only on the basis of information contained in the Scheme Document. Shareholders are advised to read the formal documentation in relation to the Acquisition carefully once it has been dispatched. This Announcement does not constitute a prospectus or prospectus-equivalent document. This Announcement has been prepared for the purpose of complying with English law and disclosure requirements under French law. Accordingly, the information disclosed may not be the same as that which would have been disclosed if this Announcement had been prepared in accordance with the laws of jurisdictions outside of the United Kingdom and France (as applicable). Overseas Jurisdictions The release, publication or distribution of this Announcement in, and the availability of the Acquisition to persons who are residents, citizens or nationals of jurisdictions other than France may be restricted by laws and/or regulations of those jurisdictions. In particular, the ability of persons who are not resident in France or who are subject to the laws of another jurisdiction to direct voting of the Scheme Shares in which they are interested with respect to the Scheme at the Court Meeting, or to execute and deliver Forms of Proxy appointing another to vote at the Court Meeting on their behalf, may be affected by the laws of the relevant jurisdictions in which they are located. Therefore, any persons not resident in France and/or who are subject to the laws and regulations of any jurisdiction other than France should inform themselves about, and observe, any applicable legal and regulatory requirements. Any failure to comply with the applicable requirements may constitute a violation of the laws and/or regulations of any such jurisdiction. The Acquisition will not be made, directly or indirectly, in, into or from any restricted jurisdiction where to do so would violate the laws of that jurisdiction and no person may vote in favour of the Acquisition by any use, means, instrumentality or form within a restricted jurisdiction or any other jurisdiction if to do so would constitute a violation of the laws of that jurisdiction. Accordingly, copies of this Announcement and any formal documentation relating to the Acquisition are not being, and must not be, directly or indirectly, mailed or otherwise forwarded, distributed or sent in, into or from any restricted jurisdiction and persons receiving such documents (including custodians, nominees and trustees) must not mail or otherwise forward, distribute or send them in or into or from any restricted jurisdiction. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Waypoint, Stallergenes Greer and persons involved in the Acquisition disclaim any responsibility or liability for such violation by any person. The receipt of cash pursuant to the Acquisition by Shareholders may be a taxable transaction under applicable national, state and local, as well as foreign and other tax laws. Each Shareholder is urged to consult their independent professional adviser regarding the tax consequences of the Acquisition applicable to him or her. Further details in relation to Shareholders in overseas jurisdictions will be contained in the Scheme Document. Notice to U.S. Investors in Stallergenes Greer The Acquisition relates to the shares of a company organised under the laws of England and Wales and listed on Euronext Paris and is proposed to be effected by means of a scheme of arrangement under the laws of England and Wales (Part 26 of the Companies Act). This Announcement, the Scheme Document and certain other documents relating to the Acquisition have been or will be prepared in accordance with English law and French law (in connection with disclosure only), all of which differ from the relevant laws in the United States of America. The Acquisition is not subject to the tender offer rules or the proxy solicitation rules under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Accordingly, the Acquisition is subject to the disclosure requirements of and practices applicable to a company listed on Euronext Paris which is subject to an English law scheme of arrangement, which differ from the disclosure requirements of the United States of America tender offer and proxy solicitation rules. Stallergenes Greer's financial statements, and all financial information that is included in this Announcement or that may be included in the Scheme Document, or any other documents relating to the Acquisition, have been or will be prepared in accordance with non-U.S. accounting standards that may not be comparable to financial information of companies in the United States of America or other companies whose financial statements are prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. Neither the United States Securities and Exchange Commission nor any U.S. state securities commission has approved or disapproved the Acquisition, passed upon the merits or fairness of the Acquisition or passed any opinion upon the accuracy, adequacy or completeness of this Announcement or the Scheme Document. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offence in the United States of America. Stallergenes Greer is incorporated under the laws of England and Wales and listed on Euronext Paris. Waypoint is incorporated under the laws of Luxembourg. In addition, some of Stallergenes Greer's and Waypoint's respective officers and directors reside outside the United States of America, and some or all of their respective assets are or may be located in jurisdictions outside the United States of America. Therefore, investors may have difficulty effecting service of process within the United States of America upon those persons or recovering against Stallergenes Greer, Waypoint or their respective officers or directors on judgments of United States of America courts, including judgments based upon the civil liability provisions of the United States of America federal securities laws. It may not be possible to sue Stallergenes Greer, Waypoint or their respective officers or directors in a non-U.S. court for violations of the U.S. securities laws. The receipt of cash pursuant to the Acquisition by U.S. holders of Shares pursuant to the Scheme may be a taxable transaction for U.S. federal income tax purposes and under applicable U.S. state and local, as well as foreign and other, tax laws. Each U.S. holder of Shares is urged to consult his or her independent professional adviser immediately regarding the tax consequences of the Acquisition applicable to him or her. Forward-Looking Statements This Announcement contains certain statements which are, or may be deemed to be, "forward-looking statements" which are prospective in nature. All statements other than statements of current or historical fact, are or may be deemed to be, forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and projections about future events and are therefore subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from the future results, performance or events expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "is subject to", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes", "targets", "aims", "projects", "goal", "objective", "outlook", "risks", "seeks" or words or terms of similar substance or the negative thereof, as well as variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "should", "would", "might", "probably" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. Such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could significantly affect expected results and are based on certain key assumptions. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied in any forward-looking statements. Due to such uncertainties and risks, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this Announcement. Any forward-looking statements made in this Announcement on behalf of Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint are made as of the date of this Announcement based on the opinions and estimates of directors of Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint respectively and no assurance can be given that such opinions or estimates will prove to have been correct. Each of Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint and their respective members, directors, officers, employees, advisers and any person acting on behalf of one or more of them, expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking or other statements contained in this Announcement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Neither Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint or their respective members, directors, officers or employees, advisers or any person acting on their behalf, provides any representation, assurance or guarantee that the occurrence of the events expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements in this Announcement will actually occur. No forward-looking or other statements have been reviewed by the auditors of Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint. All subsequent oral or written forward-looking statements attributable to Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint of their respective members, directors, officers, advisers or employees or any person acting on their behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statement above. Rounding Certain figures included in this Announcement have been subjected to rounding adjustments. Accordingly, figures shown for the same category presented in different tables may vary slightly and figures shown as totals in certain tables may not be an arithmetic aggregation of the figures that precede them. No Profit Forecasts or Estimates Nothing in this Announcement is intended or shall be deemed to be a forecast, projection or estimate of the future financial performance of Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint for any period and no statement in this Announcement should be interpreted to mean that cash flow from operations, earnings, or earnings per share or income of those persons (where relevant) for the current or future financial years would necessarily match or exceed the historical published cash flow from operations, earnings, earnings per share or income of those persons (as appropriate). General If you are in any doubt about the contents of this Announcement or the action you should take, you are recommended to seek your own independent financial advice immediately from an appropriate authorised independent financial adviser. THIS ANNOUNCEMENT CONTAINS INSIDE INFORMATION NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY IN, INTO OR FROM ANY JURISDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OF SUCH JURISDICTION For immediate release 21 March 2019 RECOMMENDED CASH ACQUISITION of STALLERGENES GREER PLC by ARES LIFE SCIENCES I S.A R.L. (to be implemented by way of a scheme of arrangement under Part 26 of the U.K. Companies Act 2006) 1. Introduction The Special Committee and Waypoint are pleased to announce that they have reached agreement on the terms of a recommended cash acquisition by Waypoint of the entire issued, and to be issued, ordinary share capital of Stallergenes Greer not held directly or indirectly by Waypoint. It is intended that the Acquisition will be implemented by way of an English law scheme of arrangement pursuant to Part 26 of the Companies Act which requires, among other things, both the approval of the Scheme Shareholders and the approval of the Court. Following the Acquisition, Stallergenes Greer will be de-listed from the regulated market of Euronext Paris and re-registered as a private limited company. 2. The Acquisition Under the terms of the Acquisition, which will be on the terms and subject to the Conditions set out in Appendix I to this Announcement and the full terms and conditions to be set out in the Scheme Document, Shareholders will be entitled to receive: in respect of each Scheme Share: Euro 37.00 in cash The Acquisition values the Existing Issued Share Capital at approximately Euro 730.1 million and at an enterprise value of approximately Euro 678.5 million, calculated on the basis described in paragraphs (b) and (c) of Appendix II. The Acquisition Price represents a premium of approximately: (a) 42.9 per cent. to the Closing Price per Share of Euro 25.90 on the Last Practicable Date; (b) 33.5 per cent. to the volume weighted average Closing Price per Share of Euro 27.71 for the three months ended on the Last Practicable Date; and (c) 30.6 per cent. to the volume weighted average Closing Price per Share of Euro 28.33 for the twelve months ended on the Last Practicable Date. As of the Last Practicable Date, Waypoint held 16,550,910 Shares in aggregate (as a direct shareholder and indirectly through Euroclear as nominee), representing approximately 83.9 per cent. of the Existing Issued Share Capital. The Acquisition relates to all Shares not directly or indirectly owned or controlled by Waypoint, as well as 857,313 options to be cash settled under the Share Schemes. 3. Background to and reasons for the Acquisition On 18 December 2018, Waypoint GP Limited, which manages Waypoint's Parent, approached the Board to explore the possibility of Waypoint becoming the sole shareholder in Stallergenes Greer. Following this approach, the Board formed the Special Committee to evaluate and consider the proposal on behalf of Stallergenes Greer. Waypoint has been Stallergenes Greer's majority shareholder since 2015. Waypoint continues to recognise and value Stallergenes Greer as a leader in the development and marketing of AIT. However, in light of Stallergenes Greer's limited public float, Waypoint has concluded that the benefits of having Shares publicly listed are limited, and the costs of maintaining such listing are not justified for Shareholders. In addition, de-listing Shares from the regulated market of Euronext Paris would allow Stallergenes Greer's management team to focus on the successful implementation of Stallergenes Greer's business objectives without the distraction of listing obligations. Enabling the management team to focus on the execution of Stallergenes Greer's business objectives without this distraction is particularly important as Stallergenes Greer continues to recover from the difficult operational challenges of recent years. Waypoint believes that the Acquisition, in combination with an Acquisition Price that delivers a highly attractive valuation and full liquidity to the Shareholders, represents the best alternative for all of Stallergenes Greer's stakeholders. 4. Waypoint's intentions Waypoint intends to support Stallergenes Greer in its ongoing process of recovery from the significant operational issues resulting from the ANSM's full suspension of production and distribution in Antony, France in 2015. Consistent with this current intent, Waypoint will support the CEO, Michele Antonelli, and the senior leadership team in their continuation of the restructuring programme previously announced by Stallergenes Greer, including: (i) taking all necessary actions in relation to the remaining ANSM injunction issued in January 2018 and resolving the ongoing operational issues at the Antony plant; (ii) continuing the operational efficiencies programme previously communicated by Stallergenes Greer; and (iii) consistent with the previously announced RESTART programme, refining and rebuilding Stallergenes Greer as a trusted leader in AIT. Waypoint believes that this previously announced programme has significant embedded risk and that the management team has a meaningfully better opportunity to successfully implement the programme as a private company. As noted above, Waypoint believes that the benefits of being a public company are not justified by the financial costs and the time and effort the management team must spend to comply with the requirements of being a public company. Waypoint, in particular, believes that the additional time and capacity to focus on these restructuring efforts afforded as a result of being a private company is critical to addressing the significant risks embedded in the implementation of the restructuring programme. 5. Share Schemes The Acquisition will extend to any Scheme Shares which are unconditionally allotted, issued or transferred to satisfy the exercise of existing options under the Share Schemes. The Acquisition will not extend to Shares issued after the Scheme Record Time and, instead, any Shares issued after that time shall be automatically transferred to Waypoint (or as it directs) on the same terms as the Acquisition. Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint will make proposals to the holders of options to acquire the Shares granted under the Share Schemes. Further details of these proposals will be set out in the Scheme Document. Full details of the effect of the Acquisition on participants' rights under the Share Schemes, and the actions they may take in respect of their options, will be communicated to participants in separate letters to be sent to them following publication of the Scheme Document. 6. Background to and reasons for the recommendation The combination of Stallergenes S.A. and Greer Laboratories in 2015 made Stallergenes Greer a global biopharmaceutical leader in the development and marketing of AIT. The combination created a worldwide leader with a fully integrated manufacturing network underpinned by a diversified geographic footprint, the largest production capacity in AIT globally, strong international research and development presence, a broad portfolio of products in both Europe and the United States and an important global network supported by recognised brands and prime market access across target regions. In December 2015, following a notification from the ANSM, as a result of certain technical problems encountered in the launch of its new IT business operations system, the production and distribution at Stallergenes Greer's plant in Antony (France) was temporarily suspended and products withdrawn in France according to a risk management plan agreed with the ANSM. The production resumed shortly after, but in January 2018, Stallergenes Greer received an injunction from the ANSM following the inspection of one of the production areas at Stallergenes Greer's facility in Antony. Addressing the operational issues at the Antony plant, which is the largest manufacturing facility for AIT globally and Stallergenes Greer's largest manufacturing facility, continues to be a key area of focus for management today, particularly given the increasingly competitive environment in which the SG Group is operating. Since 2016, the leadership team of Stallergenes Greer, supported by Waypoint as its majority shareholder, has been implementing a significant turnaround plan to stabilise the organisation, improve production processes, deliver efficiencies, start to invest in the food allergy sector and leverage strategic alliances and partnerships to re-establish Stallergenes Greer's market leadership and bring the group back onto a path of profitable long-term growth. As part of the ongoing turnaround, Stallergenes Greer has seen improved financial performance in 2018, when compared to the turnaround initiatives reflected in 2017, with net sales increasing by 6 per cent. supported by positive performance in Stallergenes Greer's Europe and International region and in the United States, despite unfavourable foreign exchange effects, and solid growth in the sublingual route driven by Staloral. EBITDA increased by 84 per cent. in 2018 driven by margin expansion resulting from strong operating efficiencies. As a result of the actions taken by management since 2016, the Special Committee is confident in the future prospects of Stallergenes Greer. Waypoint first approached Stallergenes Greer with a proposal in relation to becoming Stallergenes Greer's sole shareholder in December 2018. Following this approach, the Board formed the Special Committee comprised of independent directors. The Special Committee engaged Evercore as financial adviser and Clifford Chance LLP as legal adviser in order to evaluate the approach and determine how to respond. Evercore has acted as the sole financial adviser to the Special Committee in relation to the financial terms of the Acquisition. After the approach by Waypoint, the Special Committee and its advisers held extensive discussions with Waypoint in relation to the terms and structure of the Acquisition. As a result of these discussions, in February 2019, Waypoint put forward an improved proposal to acquire the Existing Issued Share Capital not already held directly or indirectly by Waypoint for Euro 37.00 in cash per Scheme Share. The Special Committee considered the Acquisition in the context of the fundamental value, future prospects and cash generation profile of Stallergenes Greer weighed against the operational, competitive and regulatory risks that are inherent to Stallergenes Greer and other businesses in this field. The Special Committee believes that the Acquisition represents an opportunity for Shareholders to realise the value of their holdings in cash at an attractive premium, particularly in the context of Stallergenes Greer's relative lack of liquidity and the control already exercised by Waypoint as the holder of approximately 83.9 per cent. of the Existing Issued Share Capital. The Acquisition will allow Shareholders to crystallise the value of their shareholdings at a premium of 42.9 per cent. to the Closing Price of Euro 25.90 per Share on the Last Practicable Date, and a premium of 33.5 per cent. to the volume weighted average Closing Price per Share of Euro 27.71 for the three months ended on the Last Practicable Date. 7. Recommendation The Special Committee, which has been so advised by its financial adviser, Evercore, as to the financial terms of the Acquisition, considers the terms of the Acquisition to be fair and reasonable. In providing its advice to the Special Committee, Evercore has taken into account the commercial assessments of the members of the Special Committee. Accordingly, the Special Committee: (i) believes that the terms of the Acquisition are in the best interests of Shareholders as a whole; and (ii) intends to unanimously recommend that Shareholders vote in favour (or procure or direct votes in favour) of the Acquisition at the Court Meeting and at the General Meeting, as each member of the Special Committee who holds, or is otherwise beneficially interested in, Scheme Shares has irrevocably undertaken to do in respect of his or her entire beneficial holdings of, in aggregate, 1,150 Scheme Shares (representing 0.00583 per cent. of the Existing Issued Share Capital). 8. Independent Expert In addition to appointing Evercore as its financial adviser, the Special Committee appointed the Independent Expert to deliver an opinion on the fairness of the Acquisition Price. The Independent Expert has opined that the Acquisition Price is fair from a financial point of view. Copies of the Independent Expert Report will be made available on Stallergenes Greer's website within one Business Day of being delivered in French and English in final form. The Independent Expert Report will also be published in the Scheme Document. 9. Irrevocable undertakings Irrevocable undertakings given by members of the Special Committee Waypoint has received irrevocable undertakings from each member of the Special Committee to vote or procure votes in favour of the Scheme at the Court Meeting and the Special Resolution to be proposed at the General Meeting in respect of an aggregate of 1,150 Scheme Shares, in which they have an interest, representing approximately 0.00583 per cent. of the Existing Issued Share Capital. Irrevocable undertakings given by Directors who are not members of the Special Committee Waypoint has also received irrevocable undertakings from Stefan Meister and Rodolfo Bogni (being the other Directors who hold Shares) to vote or procure votes in favour of the Special Resolution to be proposed at the General Meeting in respect of an aggregate of 32 Shares, in which they have an interest, representing approximately 0.00016 per cent. of the Existing Issued Share Capital. Due to their relationship with Waypoint, neither Mr. Meister nor Mr. Bogni is entitled to vote or procure votes in favour of the Scheme at the Court Meeting. Irrevocable undertaking given by Waypoint Waypoint has undertaken in the Implementation Agreement to vote or procure votes in favour of the Special Resolution to be proposed at the General Meeting in respect of an aggregate of 16,550,910 Shares, representing approximately 83.9 per. cent of the Existing Issued Share Capital. Further details of these irrevocable undertakings are set out in Appendix III to this Announcement. 10. Information relating to Waypoint Waypoint is owned by a fund managed by the Waypoint Group. Chaired and owned by Ernesto Bertarelli, the Waypoint Group and the businesses created by it manage investments in healthcare, medical technologies and asset management, including real estate. The Waypoint Group principally manages the investment funds associated with the Bertarelli family, which arise mainly from the $8.5 billion of capital realised by the 2007 sale of Serono, a global leader in biotech and healthcare developed by the Bertarelli family over three generations. The Waypoint Group has grown to more than 160 employees across five global offices in Geneva, London, Jersey, Boston and Luxembourg. Further details are available on the following website: www.waypointcapital.net. 11. Information relating to Stallergenes Greer The combination of Stallergenes S.A. and Greer Laboratories in 2015 made Stallergenes Greer a global biopharmaceutical leader in the development and marketing of AIT. The combination created a group with a fully integrated manufacturing network underpinned by a diversified geographic footprint, the largest production capacity in AIT globally, strong international research and development presence, a broad portfolio of products in both Europe and the United States and an important global network supported by recognised brands and prime market access across target regions. The SG Group: (a) owns and operates five manufacturing sites in France, the United States and Canada; (b) has a direct presence in 19 countries with distribution networks in a further 73 countries; and (c) has approximately 1,240 employees in 19 countries. The annual report and audited consolidated accounts of Stallergenes Greer and its group for the year ended 31 December 2018 are available on Stallergenes Greer's website at www.stallergenesgreer.com. 12. Financing the Acquisition In connection with the financing of the aggregate price payable to the Shareholders pursuant to the Acquisition, Waypoint (or one of Waypoint's affiliates) intends to enter into a new debt facility. Waypoint and Stallergenes Greer have also entered into the Funding Commitment Letter with certain affiliates of Waypoint, setting out arrangements for how these affiliates would finance Waypoint to allow Waypoint to pay the aggregate price payable to Shareholders pursuant to the Scheme if the debt facility is not available. Waypoint's payment obligation to Shareholders under the Scheme will not be guaranteed by a presenting bank. A summary of the Funding Commitment Letter is set out in paragraph 17 below. 13. Structure of the Acquisition Structure It is intended that the Acquisition will be effected by means of a Court-approved scheme of arrangement between Stallergenes Greer and the Scheme Shareholders under Part 26 of the Companies Act. The Scheme is an arrangement between Stallergenes Greer and the Scheme Shareholders to which Waypoint will adhere. The purpose of the Scheme is to enable Waypoint to become the holder of the entire issued ordinary share capital of Stallergenes Greer by the transfer to Waypoint by Scheme Shareholders of the Scheme Shares in consideration for which Shareholders will receive the Acquisition Price in respect of each Scheme Share. Summary of Scheme Process The key events relating to the Scheme are as follows: (a) within 28 days of this Announcement, the Scheme Document including the notices of the Meetings will be sentto Shareholders; (b) not less than 35 clear days after the service of the notices convening the Meetings, the Meetings will be held to vote on the Scheme Resolution and the Special Resolution. The General Meeting will take place immediately following the Court Meeting; (c) provided the requisite majorities approve the Scheme Resolution and the Special Resolution, the Scheme will be considered at the Court Hearing. Shareholders, creditors and other interested parties may attend and object to the implementation of the Scheme on certain limited grounds (for example unfairness or procedural flaws); (d) if the Court is satisfied that the correct procedures have been followed, that the Scheme Resolution and Special Resolution have been properly approved, that the terms of the Scheme are fair and that no valid objections have been raised, it will grant the Court Order approving the Scheme; and (e) the Court Order will be delivered for registration to the Registrar of Companies and the Scheme will become binding on all Shareholders, whether or not they supported the Scheme. Conditions The Scheme is subject to the Conditions and certain further terms set out in Appendix I to this Announcement and to the full terms and conditions to be set out in the Scheme Document, and will only become Effective if, among other things, the following events occur on or before the Long Stop Date: (a) a resolution to approve the Scheme is passed by a majority in number of the Scheme Shareholders present and voting (and entitled to vote) at the Court Meeting, either in person or by proxy, representing 75 per cent. or more in value of the Scheme Shares held by those Scheme Shareholders; (b) the Special Resolution necessary to implement the Scheme is passed at the General Meeting of Stallergenes Greer (which will require the approval of SG Shareholders representing at least 75 per cent. of the votes cast at the General Meeting); (c) following the Meetings, the Scheme is approved by the Court at the Court Hearing (with or without modification, on terms agreed by Waypoint and Stallergenes Greer in writing); and (d) an office copy of the Court Order is delivered to the Registrar of Companies. If any of the deadlines for the Conditions set out in paragraphs (a)(ii), (b)(ii) and (c)(ii) of Part A of Appendix I is not met, Stallergenes Greer shall make an announcement by 7.00 a.m. on the Business Day following such deadline confirming whether Waypoint has invoked the relevant Condition or agreed with Stallergenes Greer to extend the deadline in relation to the relevant Condition. Scheme becoming Effective Once the Conditions have been satisfied, the Scheme will become Effective upon delivery of the Court Order to the Registrar of Companies. The Scheme is expected to become Effective in May 2019. Waypoint is not entitled to vote at the Court Meeting. If the Scheme becomes Effective, it will be binding on all Scheme Shareholders, whether or not they attended the Meetings and voted in favour of the Scheme Resolution and the Special Resolution. Payment to Shareholders The cash consideration payable under the Acquisition will be dispatched by (or on behalf of) Waypoint to the Paying Agent no later than five Business Days after the Effective Date. The Paying Agent will pay Shareholders following receipt of such consideration in accordance with its normal practice. Further details about payment to Shareholders will be set out in the Scheme Document. Failure or lapse of Scheme The Scheme will fail if the necessary majority does not approve the Scheme Resolution or the Special Resolution or if the Court does not approve it. The Scheme will also lapse if the Scheme does not become Effective by the Long Stop Date (provided that the deadline for the Scheme to become Effective may be extended by written agreement between Waypoint and Stallergenes Greer, with the consent of the Court (if required)). If the Scheme fails or lapses, Waypoint will not acquire any Scheme Shares pursuant to the Acquisition, even in respect of Shareholders who voted in favour of the Scheme. Future issues of Shares Any Shares issued before the Scheme Record Time will be subject to the terms of the Scheme. The Special Resolution will, amongst other matters, provide that the Articles be amended to incorporate provisions requiring any Shares issued after the Scheme Record Time (other than to Waypoint and/or its nominees) to be automatically transferred to Waypoint on the same terms as the Acquisition (other than terms as to timings and formalities). The provisions of the Articles (as amended) will prevent any person (other than Waypoint and its nominees) from holding shares in the capital of Stallergenes Greer after the Effective Date. Scheme Document The Scheme Document will include full details of the terms and conditions of the Scheme, together with notices of the Court Meeting and the General Meeting. The Scheme Document will also specify the necessary actions to be taken by Shareholders. It is expected that the Scheme Document together with Forms of Proxy will be sent to Shareholders and, for information only, to persons with information rights and to holders of options and awards granted under the Share Schemes as soon as practicable and, in any event, within 28 days following the date of this Announcement (or such later date as is agreed in writing between Waypoint and Stallergenes Greer). 14. Regulation of the Acquisition France The Scheme is not subject to the tender offer rules under the General Regulation of the AMF or to authorisation by the AMF. However, the AMF has jurisdiction to enforce the provisions of the Market Abuse Regulation against Stallergenes Greer and to review public disclosures made by Stallergenes Greer in connection with the Acquisition under the Transparency Directive and applicable provisions of the General Regulation of the AMF. United Kingdom The Scheme is not subject to the U.K. City Code on Takeovers and Mergers or the jurisdiction of the Panel because it is a scheme of arrangement relating to a company subject to shared jurisdiction. Stallergenes Greer is a company subject to shared jurisdiction as it is a company incorporated in England and Wales with shares admitted to trading solely on the regulated market of Euronext Paris. The Acquisition will be governed by English law and be subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales. 15. Anticipated Scheme timetable An expected timetable of principal events in connection with the Acquisition will be included in the Scheme Document. It is expected that the Scheme will become Effective in May 2019. 16. De-listing from Euronext Paris Prior to the Scheme becoming Effective, Stallergenes Greer will make an application to Euronext Paris for the cancellation of the listing of Shares on Euronext Paris with effect as of or shortly following the Effective Date. As soon as practicable after the Scheme is Effective and the de-listing of the Shares, Waypoint intends to re-register Stallergenes Greer as a private limited company under the relevant provisions of the Companies Act. 17. Acquisition related arrangements Non-Disclosure Agreement Waypoint and Stallergenes Greer have entered into the Non-Disclosure Agreement pursuant to which Waypoint and Stallergenes Greer have undertaken to each other to keep information provided to each other in connection with the Acquisition confidential and not to disclose it to third parties (other than to permitted recipients) unless required by law or regulation. The Non-Disclosure Agreement sets out (among other things): (a) an obligation on each party to keep information relating to the Acquisition and the other party confidential and not to disclose it to third parties unless permitted by the terms of the Non-Disclosure Agreement; (b) a prohibition on each party from, at any time prior to the Effective Date, or the date on which the Scheme is abandoned or fails, having contact with any shareholder, member of management, director, employee, customer or supplier of, or lender to, any member of the other party's group (save for their respective representatives); and (c) an obligation on each party, to the extent that it is: (i) reasonably practicable; (ii) not prohibited by law or regulation; and (iii) in relation to Stallergenes Greer, not likely to adversely affect the interests of Stallergenes Greer, to consult with the other party and its representatives and take into account the other party's reasonable comments prior to communicating with its regulator (including the Panel and the AMF, as applicable), and afford the other party a reasonable opportunity to participate in any such communications, in each case in connection with the Acquisition. The obligations set out in the Non-Disclosure Agreement will expire one year from the date of the Non-Disclosure Agreement. Implementation Agreement Waypoint and Stallergenes Greer have entered into the Implementation Agreement, to record the steps that each has agreed to take in relation to the implementation of the Acquisition. The Implementation Agreement sets out (among other things): (a) undertakings given by Waypoint that it: (i) has sufficient cash resources available, and which will remain available, to satisfy the cash consideration requirements under and in connection with the Acquisition, and will pay or procure the payment of the cash consideration to the Paying Agent in immediately available funds as soon as possible and in any case by no later than five Business Days following the Effective Date; (ii) will vote in favour of the Special Resolution in respect of its entire beneficial holding of Shares; (iii) will not, and will procure that each member of the Waypoint Group will not, deal in Shares prior to the Effective Date; (iv) will not, and will procure that any person acting in concert with it does not, make any arrangements with SG Shareholders, or deal or enter into any arrangements to deal in Shares, or enter into arrangements which involve an acceptance of an offer for Shares on favourable terms including as to price that are not being extended to all SG Shareholders; (v) will provide such collaboration and co-operation to Stallergenes Greer as it may reasonably request in connection with any discussions that Stallergenes Greer may have with any works council or other employee body in respect of the Acquisition; and (vi) will provide Stallergenes Greer with information that is true, accurate and not misleading for the purposes of inclusion in the Scheme Document; (b) undertakings given by Stallergenes Greer: (i) to ensure that the conditions set out in the Scheme Document shall be the same as the Conditions and certain further terms set out in Appendix I to this Announcement; (ii) to the extent reasonably practicable, to keep Waypoint informed of the number of proxy votes received in respect of the Scheme Resolution and Special Resolution; (iii) to the extent reasonably practicable, to provide Waypoint with details of any material changes to the register of SG Shareholders (including beneficial owners of Shares) that occur prior to the Effective Date; (iv) at Waypoint's cost, to provide, and procure that each member of the SG Group will provide, such collaboration and co-operation to Waypoint as it may reasonably request in connection with arranging the debt facility to finance the Acquisition in advance of the Effective Date, provided that compliance with this undertaking does not adversely affect Stallergenes Greer's ability to continue operating in the ordinary course of business; (v) to co-operate with and provide such further details to Waypoint in relation to the Share Schemes as Waypoint may request and to communicate with participants of the Share Schemes as necessary to implement the Acquisition in the manner contemplated by the terms set out in the Implementation Agreement; (vi) to promptly provide, and procure that each member of the SG Group promptly provides, to Waypoint such information, documentation and access to the management and employees of the SG Group as is reasonably necessary for the purposes of Waypoint's post-Acquisition planning and verifying of Stallergenes Greer's business plan, provided that compliance with this undertaking does not adversely affect Stallergenes Greer's ability to continue operating in the ordinary course of business; and (vii) that it will not (without the prior approval of Waypoint) take any action which may result in the Acquisition being frustrated or in the Shareholders being denied the opportunity to decide on its merits; and (c) the agreement by the parties to implement the Acquisition in accordance with, and subject to the terms of, the Implementation Agreement and this Announcement (including the Conditions); (d) customary warranties given by Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint, together with a warranty given by Waypoint that it has not acquired any Shares in the three months prior to the date of the Implementation Agreement; (e) the agreement by the parties to implement certain proposals in relation to the Share Schemes; (f) the terms relating to the provision of directors' and officers' insurance and indemnification in respect of the current Directors; and (g) the circumstances in which the Implementation Agreement may be terminated. Funding Commitment Letter Waypoint, the Funding Entity, the Waypoint Parent and Stallergenes Greer have entered into the Funding Commitment Letter, to record the manner in which the aggregate price payable to Shareholders pursuant to the Scheme will be funded. The Funding Commitment Letter sets out (among other things): (a) an obligation on the Funding Entity to transfer or cause to be transferred to Waypoint the aggregate price payable to Shareholders pursuant to the Scheme unless Waypoint has obtained this funding from another source; (b) undertakings given by the Funding Entity that: (i) it has sufficient cash resources available (whether in the form of liquid assets or amounts available for draw down under the Facilities Agreement, or a combination of these) and will ensure that such cash resources remain available to satisfy at least 125 per cent. of the aggregate price payable to Shareholders pursuant to the Scheme; (ii) it will not take any action, or permit any action to be taken, to cancel, terminate or adversely amend the Facilities Agreement or which would allow UBS Switzerland AG to cancel or otherwise terminate the Facilities Agreement or not to advance any amount pursuant to the Facilities Agreement that is required by the Funding Entity to discharge its obligations under the Funding Commitment Letter; and (iii) it will not take any action, or permit any action to be taken, which could reasonably be expected to cause it not to be able to discharge its obligations under the Funding Commitment Letter; and (c) undertakings given by Waypoint that: (i) it will not take on or assume liabilities in an aggregate amount greater than Euro 1,000,000, other than pursuant to the interest free loan agreements entered into between the Waypoint Parent and Waypoint on 18 December 2015 and 28 December 2017 (the "IFLAs") or in connection with the Acquisition; and (ii) it will not take any action, or permit any action to be taken, which could reasonably be expected to cause it not to be able to discharge the aggregate price payable to Shareholders pursuant to the Scheme; (d) undertakings given by the Waypoint Parent that it will not take any action, or permit any action to be taken, which would result in any amount being paid by Waypoint pursuant to the IFLAs or assign its rights under the IFLAs to any other person; (e) customary warranties around existence, capacity and authority and the accuracy of information provided by Waypoint, the Funding Entity and the Waypoint Parent to Stallergenes Greer; and (f) the circumstances in which the Funding Commitment Letter will be terminated. 18. Documents on display Subject to certain restrictions relating to persons resident in certain restricted jurisdictions, copies of the following documents will, by no later than the Business Day after this Announcement, be made available on Stallergenes Greer's website at www.stallergenesgreer.com until the Effective Date: (a) this Announcement; (b) the irrevocable undertakings referred to in paragraph 9 above; (c) the Funding Commitment Letter; (d) the Non-Disclosure Agreement; and (e) the Implementation Agreement. Neither the contents of Stallergenes Greer's website, Waypoint's website, nor the content of any other website accessible from hyperlinks on such websites, is incorporated into or forms part of, this Announcement. 19. Restrictions concerning Shareholders General The availability of the Acquisition and the distribution of this Announcement to Shareholders who are not resident in France may be affected by the laws of their resident jurisdiction. Such persons should inform themselves of, and observe, any applicable legal or regulatory requirements of their jurisdiction. The Acquisition is not intended to be made available to persons directly or indirectly subject to such restrictions, and their participation cannot, in any way whatsoever, be accepted if originating from a jurisdiction in which the Acquisition is subject to such restrictions. Shareholders who are in any doubt regarding such matters should consult an appropriate independent professional adviser in the relevant jurisdiction without delay. Any failure to comply with the applicable restrictions may constitute a violation of the securities laws of the relevant jurisdiction. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Waypoint, Stallergenes Greer and persons involved in the Acquisition disclaim any responsibility or liability for the violation of such restrictions by any person. This Announcement does not constitute an offer to purchase any securities. Shareholders are advised to carefully read the Scheme Document and related Forms of Proxy once these have been dispatched. United States of America The Acquisition relates to the shares of a company organised under the laws of England and Wales and listed on Euronext Paris and is proposed to be effected by means of a scheme of arrangement under the laws of England and Wales (Part 26 of the Companies Act). This Announcement, the Scheme Document and certain other documents relating to the Acquisition have been or will be prepared in accordance with English law and French law (in connection with disclosure only), all of which differ from the relevant laws in the United States of America. The Acquisition is not subject to the tender offer rules or the proxy solicitation rules under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Accordingly, the Acquisition is subject to the disclosure requirements of and practices applicable to a company listed on Euronext Paris which is subject to an English law scheme of arrangement, which differ from the disclosure requirements of the United States of America tender offer and proxy solicitation rules. 20. General The information disclosed in connection with the Scheme may not be the same as that which would have been disclosed if this Announcement had been prepared in accordance with the laws of jurisdictions outside England and Wales and France. The Acquisition is subject to the Conditions and certain further terms set out in Appendix I and the full terms and conditions to be set out in the Scheme Document when issued. Any voting decision or response in relation to the Acquisition should be made solely on the basis of the Scheme Document. The bases and sources of certain financial information contained in this Announcement are set out in Appendix II. Appendix III contains details of the irrevocable undertakings received by Waypoint.Certain terms used in this Announcement are defined in Appendix IV. UBS has given and has not withdrawn its written consent to the issue of this Announcement with the inclusion of references to its name in the form and context in which they appear herein. Evercore has given and has not withdrawn its written consent to the issue of this Announcement with the inclusion of references to its name in the form and context in which they appear herein. Finexsi Expert Conseil Financier has given and has not withdrawn its written consent to the issue of this Announcement with the inclusion of references to its name in the form and context in which they appear herein. Clifford Chance LLP has given and has not withdrawn its written consent to the issue of this Announcement with the inclusion of references to its name in the form and context in which they appear herein. Enquiries: Stallergenes Greer Youssef Abbas, Investor Relations +33 1 55 59 78 43 Catherine Kress, Communications +33 1 55 59 26 05 Evercore +44 (0) 20 7653 6000 Financial adviser to the Special Committee Edward Banks, Senior Managing Director Simon Elliott, Senior Managing Director Wladimir Wallaert, Managing Director FTI Consulting +33 1 47 03 69 48 Investor and media relations adviser to Stallergenes Greer Arnaud de Cheffontaines Havas Worldwide Paris +33 06 13 54 38 91 Media relations adviser to Stallergenes Greer Claire Olivieri UBS +44 (0) 20 7567 8000 Financial adviser to Waypoint Cailin McGurk, Managing Director Sarantis Douropoulos, Executive Director Nicolas Le Ray, Executive Director Hirzel.Neef.Schmid.Counselors +41 43 344 42 42 Media relations adviser to Waypoint Dr Jorg Neef IMPORTANT NOTICES Important Notices Relating to Financial Advisers UBS AG London Branch is authorised and regulated by the Financial Market Supervisory Authority in Switzerland. It is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and subject to regulation by the Financial Conduct Authority and limited regulation by the Prudential Regulation Authority in the United Kingdom. UBS AG London Branch is acting exclusively as financial adviser to Waypoint and no one else in connection with the Acquisition. In connection with such matters, UBS AG London Branch will not regard any other person as its client, nor will it be responsible to any other person for providing the protections afforded to its clients or for providing advice in relation to the Acquisition, the contents or subject matter of this Announcement or any transaction, arrangement or other matter referred to herein. Evercore Partners International LLP, which is authorised and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority, is acting as financial adviser exclusively for the Special Committee and no one else in connection with the matters referred to in this Announcement and will not regard any other person as its client in connection with the matters referred to in this Announcement and will not be responsible to anyone other than the Special Committee for providing the protections afforded to clients of Evercore, nor for providing advice in relation to the matters referred to in this Announcement. Further Information This Announcement is for information purposes only and is not intended to, and does not, constitute or form part of any offer, invitation, inducement or the solicitation of an offer to purchase, otherwise acquire, subscribe for, sell or otherwise dispose of or exercise rights in respect of any securities, or the solicitation of any vote or approval of an offer to buy securities in any jurisdiction, pursuant to the Acquisition or otherwise nor shall there be any sale, issuance or transfer of any securities pursuant to the Acquisition in any jurisdiction in contravention of any applicable laws. The Acquisition will be implemented solely pursuant to the terms of the Scheme Document, which will contain the full terms and conditions of the Acquisition, including details of how to vote in respect of the Scheme. Any decision, vote or other response in respect of the Acquisition should be made only on the basis of information contained in the Scheme Document. Shareholders are advised to read the formal documentation in relation to the Acquisition carefully once it has been dispatched. This Announcement does not constitute a prospectus or prospectus-equivalent document. This Announcement has been prepared for the purpose of complying with English law and disclosure requirements under French law. Accordingly, the information disclosed may not be the same as that which would have been disclosed if this Announcement had been prepared in accordance with the laws of jurisdictions outside of the United Kingdom and France (as applicable). Overseas Jurisdictions The release, publication or distribution of this Announcement in, and the availability of the Acquisition to persons who are residents, citizens or nationals of jurisdictions other than France may be restricted by laws and/or regulations of those jurisdictions. In particular, the ability of persons who are not resident in France or who are subject to the laws of another jurisdiction to direct voting of the Scheme Shares in which they are interested with respect to the Scheme at the Court Meeting, or to execute and deliver Forms of Proxy appointing another to vote at the Court Meeting on their behalf, may be affected by the laws of the relevant jurisdictions in which they are located. Therefore, any persons not resident in France and/or who are subject to the laws and regulations of any jurisdiction other than France should inform themselves about, and observe, any applicable legal and regulatory requirements. Any failure to comply with the applicable requirements may constitute a violation of the laws and/or regulations of any such jurisdiction. The Acquisition will not be made, directly or indirectly, in, into or from any restricted jurisdiction where to do so would violate the laws of that jurisdiction and no person may vote in favour of the Acquisition by any use, means, instrumentality or form within a restricted jurisdiction or any other jurisdiction if to do so would constitute a violation of the laws of that jurisdiction. Accordingly, copies of this Announcement and any formal documentation relating to the Acquisition are not being, and must not be, directly or indirectly, mailed or otherwise forwarded, distributed or sent in, into or from any restricted jurisdiction and persons receiving such documents (including custodians, nominees and trustees) must not mail or otherwise forward, distribute or send them in or into or from any restricted jurisdiction. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Waypoint, Stallergenes Greer and persons involved in the Acquisition disclaim any responsibility or liability for such violation by any person. The receipt of cash pursuant to the Acquisition by Shareholders may be a taxable transaction under applicable national, state and local, as well as foreign and other tax laws. Each Shareholder is urged to consult their independent professional adviser regarding the tax consequences of the Acquisition applicable to him or her. Further details in relation to Shareholders in overseas jurisdictions will be contained in the Scheme Document. Notice to U.S. Investors in Stallergenes Greer The Acquisition relates to the shares of a company organised under the laws of England and Wales and listed on Euronext Paris and is proposed to be effected by means of a scheme of arrangement under the laws of England and Wales (Part 26 of the Companies Act). This Announcement, the Scheme Document and certain other documents relating to the Acquisition have been or will be prepared in accordance with English law and French law (in connection with disclosure only), all of which differ from the relevant laws in the United States of America. The Acquisition is not subject to the tender offer rules or the proxy solicitation rules under the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Accordingly, the Acquisition is subject to the disclosure requirements of and practices applicable to a company listed on Euronext Paris which is subject to an English law scheme of arrangement, which differ from the disclosure requirements of the United States of America tender offer and proxy solicitation rules. Stallergenes Greer's financial statements, and all financial information that is included in this Announcement or that may be included in the Scheme Document, or any other documents relating to the Acquisition, have been or will be prepared in accordance with non-U.S. accounting standards that may not be comparable to financial information of companies in the United States of America or other companies whose financial statements are prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. Neither the United States Securities and Exchange Commission nor any U.S. state securities commission has approved or disapproved the Acquisition, passed upon the merits or fairness of the Acquisition or passed any opinion upon the accuracy, adequacy or completeness of this Announcement or the Scheme Document. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offence in the United States of America. Stallergenes Greer is incorporated under the laws of England and Wales and listed on Euronext Paris. Waypoint is incorporated under the laws of Luxembourg. In addition, some of Stallergenes Greer's and Waypoint's respective officers and directors reside outside the United States of America, and some or all of their respective assets are or may be located in jurisdictions outside the United States of America. Therefore, investors may have difficulty effecting service of process within the United States of America upon those persons or recovering against Stallergenes Greer, Waypoint or their respective officers or directors on judgments of United States of America courts, including judgments based upon the civil liability provisions of the United States of America federal securities laws. It may not be possible to sue Stallergenes Greer, Waypoint or their respective officers or directors in a non-U.S. court for violations of the U.S. securities laws. The receipt of cash pursuant to the Acquisition by U.S. holders of Shares pursuant to the Scheme may be a taxable transaction for U.S. federal income tax purposes and under applicable U.S. state and local, as well as foreign and other, tax laws. Each U.S. holder of Shares is urged to consult his or her independent professional adviser immediately regarding the tax consequences of the Acquisition applicable to him or her. Forward-Looking Statements This Announcement contains certain statements which are, or may be deemed to be, "forward-looking statements" which are prospective in nature. All statements other than statements of current or historical fact, are or may be deemed to be, forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and projections about future events and are therefore subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results, performance or events to differ materially from the future results, performance or events expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "is subject to", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes", "targets", "aims", "projects", "goal", "objective", "outlook", "risks", "seeks" or words or terms of similar substance or the negative thereof, as well as variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "should", "would", "might", "probably" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. Such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could significantly affect expected results and are based on certain key assumptions. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied in any forward-looking statements. Due to such uncertainties and risks, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this Announcement. Any forward-looking statements made in this Announcement on behalf of Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint are made as of the date of this Announcement based on the opinions and estimates of directors of Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint respectively and no assurance can be given that such opinions or estimates will prove to have been correct. Each of Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint and their respective members, directors, officers, employees, advisers and any person acting on behalf of one or more of them, expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking or other statements contained in this Announcement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Neither Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint or their respective members, directors, officers or employees, advisers or any person acting on their behalf, provides any representation, assurance or guarantee that the occurrence of the events expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements in this Announcement will actually occur. No forward-looking or other statements have been reviewed by the auditors of Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint. All subsequent oral or written forward-looking statements attributable to Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint of their respective members, directors, officers, advisers or employees or any person acting on their behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statement above. Rounding Certain figures included in this Announcement have been subjected to rounding adjustments. Accordingly, figures shown for the same category presented in different tables may vary slightly and figures shown as totals in certain tables may not be an arithmetic aggregation of the figures that precede them. No Profit Forecasts or Estimates Nothing in this Announcement is intended or shall be deemed to be a forecast, projection or estimate of the future financial performance of Stallergenes Greer or Waypoint for any period and no statement in this Announcement should be interpreted to mean that cash flow from operations, earnings, or earnings per share or income of those persons (where relevant) for the current or future financial years would necessarily match or exceed the historical published cash flow from operations, earnings, earnings per share or income of those persons (as appropriate). General If you are in any doubt about the contents of this Announcement or the action you should take, you are recommended to seek your own independent financial advice immediately from an appropriate authorised independent financial adviser. APPENDIX I CONDITIONS AND FURTHER TERMS OF THE ACQUISITION Part A Conditions to the Acquisition The Acquisition will be subject to the following Conditions: (a) (i) approval of the Scheme by a majority in number of the Scheme Shareholders present and voting, either in person or by proxy, representing three-quarters or more in value of the Scheme Shares held by those Scheme Shareholders at the Court Meeting; and (ii) the Court Meeting being held on or before the 36th clear day after the expected date of the Court Meeting to be set out in the Scheme Document in due course (or such later date as Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint may agree in writing and the Court may allow); (b) (i) the Special Resolution being duly passed by the requisite majority or majorities at the General Meeting; and (ii) the General Meeting being held on or before the 36th clear day after the expected date of the General Meeting to be set out in the Scheme Document in due course (or such later date as Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint may agree in writing); and (c) (i) the approval of the Scheme by the Court (with or without amendment as agreed by Waypoint and Stallergenes Greer) and the delivery of the office copy of the Court Order for registration to the Registrar of Companies; and (ii) the Court Hearing being held on or before the 36thclear day after the expected date of the Court Hearing to be set out in the Scheme Document in due course (or such later date as Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint may agree in writing and the Court may allow). Part B Extension and Invocation of the Conditions The Scheme will not become Effective unless the Conditions have been fulfilled by no later than the Long Stop Date. If any of the deadlines in the Conditions set out in paragraphs (a)(ii), (b)(ii) and (c)(ii) above are not met, Waypoint may extend such deadlines, with Stallergenes Greer's prior written consent. Stallergenes Greer shall make an announcement by 7.00 a.m. on the Business Day following such deadline confirming whether Waypoint has invoked the relevant Condition or agreed with Stallergenes Greer to extend the original deadline in relation to the relevant Condition. Each of the Conditions shall be regarded as a separate Condition and shall not be limited by reference to any other Condition. Part C Certain Further Terms of the Acquisition Scheme Shares will be acquired by Waypoint fully paid and free from all liens, equitable interests, options, charges, encumbrances, rights of pre-emption and other third party rights and interests of any nature whatsoever and together with all rights attaching to them as at the date of this Announcement or subsequently attaching or accruing to them, including voting rights and the right to receive and retain, in full, all dividends and other distributions (if any) declared, made, paid or payable, or any other return of capital made, on or after the date of this Announcement. If any dividend or other distribution is paid in respect of Shares on or after the date of this Announcement, Waypoint reserves the right to reduce the Acquisition Price by the aggregate per Share amount of such dividend or other distribution, in which case any reference in this Announcement or in the Scheme Document to the consideration payable under the terms of the Acquisition will be deemed to be a reference to the consideration as so reduced. To the extent that any such dividend and/or distribution and/or other return of capital is declared, made or paid or is payable prior to the Court Hearing and it is: (i) transferred pursuant to the Acquisition on a basis which entitles Waypoint to receive the dividend or distribution and to retain it; or (ii) cancelled, the consideration payable under the terms of the Acquisition will not be subject to change in accordance with this paragraph. Any exercise by Waypoint of its rights referred to in this paragraph shall be the subject of an announcement and, for the avoidance of doubt, shall not be regarded as constituting any revision or variation of the Acquisition. The Acquisition will be subject, inter alia, to the Conditions and certain further terms which are set out in this Appendix I and those terms and conditions which will be set out in the Scheme Document. The availability of the Acquisition to persons not resident in the United Kingdom or France may be affected by the laws of the relevant jurisdiction. Persons who are resident in jurisdictions other than the United Kingdom or France should inform themselves of, and observe, any applicable requirements. Further information in relation to Shareholders not resident in the United Kingdom or France will be contained in the Scheme Document. The Acquisition is not being made, directly or indirectly, in, into or from, or by use of the mails of, or by any means of instrumentality (including, but not limited to, facsimile, email or other electronic transmission, telex or telephone) of interstate or foreign commerce of, or of any facility of a national, state or other securities exchange of, any jurisdiction where to do so would violate the laws of that jurisdiction and will not be capable of acceptance by any such use, means, instrumentality or facility or from within any such jurisdiction. This Announcement and any rights or liabilities arising hereunder, the Acquisition, the Scheme and any Forms of Proxy will be governed by English law and be subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales. The Scheme will also be subject to certain public disclosure requirements under the General Regulation of the AMF. APPENDIX II SOURCES OF INFORMATION AND BASES OF CALCULATION In this Announcement: (a) unless otherwise stated, financial information concerning Stallergenes Greer has been extracted from Stallergenes Greer's 2018 annual report and audited consolidated financial statements; (b) the equity value of the Acquisition of approximately Euro 730.1 million is based upon 19,733,323 Shares in issue as at the close of business on the Last Practicable Date (excluding 54,230 Treasury Shares); (c) the enterprise value of approximately Euro 678.5 million is based upon the equity value of the Acquisition as set out in paragraph (b) above less Stallergenes Greer's net cash balance of Euro 55.2 million as at 31 December 2018, plus Euro 3.6 million in cash proceeds due to holders of 409,004 options which vested in September 2018 to be cash settled under the Share Schemes, but excluding the cash proceeds due to holders of 448,309 options which will be cash settled under the Share Schemes once they vest in September 2019; (d) unless otherwise stated, all prices for Shares are the Closing Price (as derived from Bloomberg) on the relevant date; (e) the three month and twelve month trading day volume weighted average Closing Prices of Shares have been derived from data provided by Bloomberg on the Last Practicable Date; and (f) the International Securities Identification Number for Scheme Shares is GB00BZ21RF93. APPENDIX III DETAILS OF IRREVOCABLE UNDERTAKINGS Irrevocable undertakings given by members of the Special Committee The following members of the Special Committee have given irrevocable undertakings to vote (or direct the voting) in favour of the Scheme at the Court Meeting and the Special Resolution to be proposed at the General Meeting in relation to the following Scheme Shares: Name Number of Scheme Shares Percentage of Existing Issued Share Capital Jean-Luc Belingard 20 0.00010 per cent. Philip Broadley 100 0.00051 per cent. Yvonne Schlaeppi 30 0.00015 per cent. Elmar Schnee 1,000 0.00507 per cent. The irrevocable undertakings given by the above listed members of the Special Committee will cease to be binding if the Implementation Agreement terminates in accordance with its terms. Irrevocable undertakings given by Directors who are not members of the Special Committee The following Directors who are not members of the Special Committee have given irrevocable undertakings to vote (or direct the voting) in favour of the Special Resolution to be proposed at the General Meeting in relation to the following Shares: Name Number of Scheme Shares Percentage of Existing Issued Share Capital Rodolfo Bogni 16 0.00008 per cent. Stefan Meister 16 0.00008 per cent. The irrevocable undertakings given by the above listed Directors will cease to be binding if the Implementation Agreement terminates in accordance with its terms. Irrevocable undertaking given by Waypoint Waypoint has undertaken in the Implementation Agreement to vote in favour of the Special Resolution to be proposed at the General Meeting in respect of an aggregate of 16,550,910 Shares, representing approximately 83.9 per. cent of the Existing Issued Share Capital. APPENDIX IV DEFINITIONS "Acquisition" the proposed recommended cash acquisition by Waypoint of the entire issued and to be issued share capital of Stallergenes Greer not directly or indirectly held by Waypoint to be implemented by means of the Scheme, on the terms and subject to the conditions set out in this Announcement and to be set out in the Scheme Document "Acquisition Price" Euro 37.00 in cash for each Scheme Share "AIT" allergy immunotherapy treatments "AMF" Autorite des marches financiers, the French Financial Markets Authority "Announcement" this announcement, together with its appendices "ANSM" l'Agence Nationale de Securite du Medicament et des Produits de Sante,the French Health Authority "Articles" the articles of association of Stallergenes Greer from time to time "Board" the board of directors of Stallergenes Greer "Business Day" a day (other than Saturdays, Sundays and public or bank holidays in the U.K. or France) on which banks are generally open for business in the City of London and Paris, including for the purposes of trading Euro in the international bank markets "Closing Price" the closing middle market price per Share of Euro 25.90 on the Last Practicable Date "Code" the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers issued from time to time by the Panel on Takeovers and Mergers "Companies Act" the United Kingdom Companies Act 2006 "Conditions" the conditions set out in Part A of Appendix I to this Announcement and to be set out in the Scheme Document "Court" the High Court of Justice of England and Wales "Court Hearing" the hearing of the Court to sanction the Scheme "Court Meeting" the meeting(s) of the Scheme Shareholders to be convened by order of the Court pursuant to section 896 of the Companies Act for the purpose of considering, and if thought fit, approving the Scheme (with or without amendment as approved by the Court and agreed by Waypoint and Stallergenes Greer) and any adjournment thereof "Court Order" the order of the Court approving the Scheme under section 899 of the Companies Act "Directors" the directors of Stallergenes Greer "Effective" the Scheme having become effective in accordance with its terms, upon delivery of the Court Order to the Registrar of Companies "Effective Date" the date upon which the Scheme becomes Effective "Euroclear" Euroclear France S.A. "Euronext Paris" Euronext Paris S.A. "Evercore" Evercore Partners International LLP, financial advisers to the Special Committee "Existing Issued Share Capital" the entire issued share capital of Stallergenes Greer as at the Last Practicable Date, other than any Treasury Shares "Facilities Agreement" the facilities agreement entered into between the Funding Entity and UBS Switzerland AG on 11 May 2018 "Forms of Proxy" the voting instructions or proxy form in connection with each of the Meetings which will accompany the Scheme Document for use by Shareholders "Funding Commitment Letter" the funding commitment letter entered into between Stallergenes Greer, Waypoint, the Waypoint Parent and the Funding Entity on 21 March 2019 in connection with the Acquisition "Funding Entity" Waypoint Treasury Limited "General Meeting" the general meeting of SG Shareholders (including any adjournment thereof) to be convened in connection with implementing the Scheme, notice of which will be set out in the Scheme Document "IFLAs" the interest free loan agreements entered into between the Waypoint Parent and Waypoint on 18 December 2015 and 28 December 2017 "Implementation Agreement" the implementation agreement entered into between Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint on 21 March 2019 in connection with the Acquisition "Independent Expert" Finexsi Expert Conseil Financier, the independent expert appointed by the Special Committee "Independent Expert Report" the report delivered by the Independent Expert to the Special Committee including an opinion on the fairness of the Acquisition Price "Last Practicable Date" means 20 March 2019 (being the last practicable date prior the date of this Announcement) "Long Stop Date" 11.59 p.m. on 30 June 2019, or such later date (if any) as Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint may agree and, if required, the Court may allow "Market Abuse Regulation" Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 April 2014 "Meetings" the Court Meeting and the General Meeting "Non-Disclosure Agreement" the non-disclosure agreement entered into between Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint on 27 February 2019 "Panel" the U.K. Panel on Takeovers and Mergers "Paying Agent" Societe Generale Securities Services or such other paying agent as is notified by Stallergenes Greer to Waypoint on or before the Effective Date "Registrar of Companies" the Registrar of Companies in England and Wales "Scheme" the proposed scheme of arrangement under Part 26 of the Companies Act between Stallergenes Greer and the Scheme Shareholders to implement the Acquisition with or subject to any modification, addition or condition approved or imposed by the Court and agreed by Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint "Scheme Document" the document to be dispatched to (among others) Scheme Shareholders including, among other things, details of the Scheme required by section 897 of the Companies Act, the full terms and conditions of the Scheme and the notices of the Meetings "Scheme Record Time" the time and date to be specified as such in the Scheme Document or such later time and/or date as Stallergenes Greer and Waypoint may agree "Scheme Resolution" the resolution to approve the Scheme to be considered at the Court Meeting "Scheme Shareholders" holders of Scheme Shares "Scheme Shares" Shares: (i) in issue at the date of the Scheme Document; (ii) issued after the date of the Scheme Document and prior to the Voting Record Time; or (iii) issued at or after the Voting Record Time and before the Scheme Record Time, in respect of which the original or any subsequent holders thereof are, or shall have agreed in writing to be, bound by the Scheme, in each case which remain in issue at the Scheme Record Time but excluding any Treasury Shares or Shares legally or beneficially held by or on behalf of Waypoint or any of its affiliates "SG Group" Stallergenes Greer and its subsidiaries and subsidiary undertakings from time to time "SG Shareholders" registered holders of Shares "Share Schemes" the option plan for the subscription of shares in Stallergenes S.A. with a date of grant of 12 November 2010 and the Stallergenes Greer long-term incentive plan adopted on 29 September 2016 "Shareholders" those persons (other than Waypoint) holding Shares through Euroclear, either in "bearer" or "registered" form and any Scheme Shareholder other than Euroclear "Shares" the ordinary shares of Euro 1.00 each in the capital of Stallergenes Greer "Special Committee" the special committee of independent directors of Stallergenes Greer formed by the Board to evaluate the terms of the Acquisition "Special Resolution" the special resolution in connection with the implementation of the Scheme to be proposed at the General Meeting "Stallergenes Greer" Stallergenes Greer plc "Transparency Directive" Directive 2004/109/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 15 December 2004 "Treasury Shares" the Shares held as treasury shares as provided for in section 734 of the Companies Act "UBS" UBS AG London Branch, financial advisers to Waypoint "U.K." the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland "U.S." the United States of America "Voting Record Time" the date and time specified in the Scheme Document to which entitlement to vote at the Court Meeting will be determined "Waypoint" Ares Life Sciences I S.a r.l. "Waypoint Group" Waypoint Group Holdings S.A. and its subsidiaries and subsidiary undertakings from time to time "Waypoint Parent" Ares Life Sciences L.P. (acting through its General Partner, Waypoint GP Limited) For the purposes of this Announcement, "subsidiary", and "subsidiary undertaking" have the respective meanings given thereto by the Companies Act. All references to "Euro" are to the lawful currency of the European Union. References to an enactment include references to that enactment as amended, replaced, consolidated or re-enacted by or under any other enactment before or after the date of this Announcement. All the times and/or dates (other than references to Business Days) referred to in this Announcement are to those times and/or dates as determined by Greenwich Mean Time, unless otherwise stated. References to the singular include the plural and vice versa. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190320005895/en/ Contacts: Stallergenes Greer Youssef Abbas, Investor Relations +33 1 55 59 78 43 Catherine Kress, Communications +33 1 55 59 26 05 Evercore +44 (0) 20 7653 6000 Financial adviser to the Special Committee Edward Banks, Senior Managing Director Simon Elliott, Senior Managing Director Wladimir Wallaert, Managing Director FTI Consulting +33 1 47 03 69 48 Investor and media relations adviser to Stallergenes Greer Arnaud de Cheffontaines Havas Worldwide Paris +33 06 13 54 38 91 Media relations adviser to Stallergenes Greer Claire Olivieri UBS +44 (0) 20 7567 8000 Financial adviser to Waypoint Cailin McGurk, Managing Director Sarantis Douropoulos, Executive Director Nicolas Le Ray, Executive Director Hirzel.Neef.Schmid.Counselors +41 43 344 42 42 Media relations adviser to Waypoint Dr Jorg Neef London, March 21, 2019 Following the previous announcement by CNH Industrial N.V. (NYSE: CNHI / MI: CNHI) of the launch of a benchmark note issuance denominated in Euro, CNH Industrial N.V. confirms that the offering will be of Euro 600,000,000 in principal amount of 1.75% notes due March 25, 2027 with an issue price of 98.597% of the principal amount. The closing of the offering is currently expected on March 25, 2019. The notes will be issued by CNH Industrial Finance Europe S.A., a wholly-owned subsidiary of CNH Industrial N.V., under the Euro Medium Term Note Programme guaranteed by CNH Industrial N.V. CNH Industrial Finance Europe S.A. intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for its general corporate purposes. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION OR RELEASE IN THE UNITED STATES OR TO U.S. PERSONS MiFID II professionals/ECPs-only / No PRIIPs KID - Manufacturer target market (MIFID II product governance) is eligible counterparties and professional clients only (all distribution channels). No PRIIPs key information document (KID) has been prepared as not available to retail in EEA. The notes will be offered and sold only outside the United States to institutional investors that are not "U.S. persons" (as such term is defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act")) and have not been and will not be registered under the Securities Act or any other securities laws. The notes may not be offered or sold in the United States or to or for the account or benefit of "U.S. persons" absent registration under the Securities Act or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements thereof. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or an offer of financial products or securities, nor shall there be any sale of these notes, in the United States or any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer or sale would be unlawful. No action has been or will be taken to permit a public offering of the notes in any jurisdiction. The offering of the notes has not been cleared by the Commissione Nazionale per le Societa e la Borsa (CONSOB), pursuant to Italian securities legislation. Accordingly, the notes have not been and will not be offered, sold or delivered in Italy in a solicitation to the public (sollecitazione all'investimento), and the notes may only be offered, sold or delivered in Italy in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. This press release is directed only (i) to persons who are outside the United Kingdom, (ii) to persons who have professional experience in matters relating to investments falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the "Financial Promotion Order") or (iii) to high net worth entities falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) ("high net worth companies, unincorporated associations, etc.") of the Financial Promotion Order (all such persons together being referred to as "Relevant Persons"). This press release must not be acted on or relied on by persons who are not Relevant Persons. Any investment activity to which this press release relates is reserved for Relevant Persons only and may only be engaged in by Relevant Persons. In the Netherlands, this press release is directed only to qualified investors within the meaning of the Dutch Financial Supervision Act (Wet op het financieel toezicht). This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements reflect current beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information available to, the entities referred to in this press release. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties. Actual future results and developments could differ materially from those set forth in these statements due to various factors. These factors include, among others, changes in the general economic and competitive situation, particularly in the CNH Industrial Group's businesses and markets. In addition, future results and developments could be affected by the performance of financial markets, fluctuations in exchange rates and changes in national and supranational law. None of the companies referenced in this press release undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements. CNH IndustrialN.V. Contacts: Corporate Communications Email: mediarelations@cnhind.com Investor Relations Email: investor.relations@cnhind.com Attachment COPENHAGEN, Denmark, March 21, 2019 - Bavarian Nordic A/S (OMX: BAVA, OTC: BVNRY) announced today its Annual Report for 2018. Below is a summary of business progress, financial performance for the year and financial outlook for 2019 from the report. The full report is attached as a PDF file and can be found on the company's website, www.bavarian-nordic.com (http://www.bavarian-nordic.com/). Delivering on our strategy Paul Chaplin, President & Chief Executive Officer of Bavarian Nordic said: "We made excellent progress on our pipeline assets and delivered on all our plans in 2018. The Company initiated a number of new studies and reported important clinical data that confirmed Bavarian Nordic as the global leader in smallpox and in RSV vaccine development. This year will be another exciting year, as we continue to invest in our future with the initiation of new clinical studies evaluating new treatment options for cancer patients and the completion of our filling line investment that will secure improved revenues in the years ahead. We look forward to our first vaccine approval in the U.S. that will create new options beyond stockpiling to help the U.S. Government in their preparedness plans for smallpox and also have the real possibility to significantly improve our 2019 guidance if we sell the associated priority review voucher. Everyone in the company is excited about the opportunities ahead, as we continue to develop innovative products to improve public health and return to profitability within the coming years." Key highlights Financial performance Bavarian Nordic achieved its planned goals for the year, while also managing the expenditures better than planned, contributing to a better than guided result and cash preparedness at year-end. Revenues were DKK 501 million in line with guidance and the result before interest and tax (EBIT) was a loss of DKK 354 million, compared to a guided loss of DKK 385 million. The cash preparedness at year-end was DKK 2,314 million, compared to a guidance of DKK 2,100 million. Danish kroner (DKK) is the Company's reporting currency. The USD figures provided below are based upon an assumed exchange rate of DKK 6.52 per 1.00 USD, which was the exchange rate as of December 31, 2018. DKK million USD million 2018 guidance actual guidance actual Revenue 500 501 77 77 EBIT (385) (354) (59) (54) Cash preparedness, year-end* 2,100 2,314 322 355 Revenue was comprised of DKK 323 million from sale of MVA-BN smallpox bulk drug substance to the U.S. Government, DKK 38 million from the sale of MVA-BN smallpox vaccine to other customers and DKK 140 million from ongoing development contracts, with the majority generated by the Janssen agreements. Outlook for 2019 - Investing for the future 2019E DKK million USD million Revenue 600 92 EBIT (360) (55) Cash preparedness, year-end* 1,600 246 * Cash preparedness includes cash, cash equivalents, investments in securities and the aggregate amount of undrawn credit lines. Only signed contracts are included in the revenue expectations for 2019, which are comprised of revenue of approximately DKK 320 million from the MVA-BN smallpox vaccine business and approximately DKK 280 million from contract work. The majority of revenues are dollar-denominated, based on an exchange rate of DKK 6.5 per 1.00 USD. While the Company anticipates the award of a Priority Review Voucher upon the expected approval of MVA-BN smallpox vaccine by the FDA in 2019, income from the sale of this voucher has not been included in the guidance. In addition to factors already mentioned, the guidance is based on the continued investment into research and development (R&D) of approximately DKK 570 million, of which DKK 150 million will be recognized as production costs. Also included are the final investments in the new fill and finish facility of approximately DKK 270 million, which will support securing improved revenues from the existing MVA-BN smallpox order in the years to come. With significant R&D investments, we continue to develop our key pipeline assets and will report key data for both BN-Brachyury and CV301, initiate a Phase 3 study for the freeze-dried version of MVA-BN smallpox vaccine, while also preparing to initiate an RSV Phase 3 study in 2020. Conference call and webcast The management of Bavarian Nordic will host a conference call today at 2 pm CET (9 am EDT) to present the annual results followed by a Q&A session. A listen-only version of the call can be accessed via http://www.bavarian-nordic.com/investor/events.aspx?event=5502 (http://www.bavarian-nordic.com/investor/events.aspx?event=5502). To join the Q&A session, use one of the following dial-in numbers: Denmark: +45 32 72 80 42, UK: +44 (0) 844 571 8892, USA: +1 631 510 7495. Participant code is 6777399. Contacts Rolf Sass Srensen Vice President Investor Relations (EU) Tel: +45 61 77 47 43 Graham Morrell Paddock Circle Advisors (US) graham@paddockcircle.com (mailto:graham@paddockcircle.com)Tel: +1 781 686 9600 Company Announcement no. 04 / 2019 About Bavarian Nordic Bavarian Nordic is a fully integrated biotechnology company focused on the development of innovative and safe therapies against cancer and infectious diseases. Using our live virus vaccine platform technology, MVA-BN, we have created a diverse portfolio of proprietary and partnered product candidates intended to improve the health and quality of life for children and adults. We supply our MVA-BN non-replicating smallpox vaccine to the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile and other government stockpiles. The vaccine is approved in the European Union (under the trade name IMVANEX) and in Canada (under the trade name IMVAMUNE. In addition to our long-standing collaboration with the U.S. government on the development of MVA-BN and other medical countermeasures, our infectious disease pipeline comprises a proprietary RSV program as well as vaccine candidates for Ebola, HPV, HBV and HIV, which are developed through a strategic partnership with Janssen. Additionally, in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute, we have developed a portfolio of active cancer immunotherapies, designed to alter the disease course by eliciting a robust and broad anti-cancer immune response while maintaining a favorable risk-benefit profile. Through multiple industry collaborations, we seek to explore the potential synergies of combining our immunotherapies with other immune-modulating agents, e.g. checkpoint inhibitors. For more information visit www.bavarian-nordic.com (http://www.bavarian-nordic.com/) or follow us on Twitter @bavariannordic (http://twitter.com/bavariannordic). Forward-looking statements This announcement includes forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside of our control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning our plans, objectives, goals, future events, performance and/or other information that is not historical information. All such forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements and any other cautionary statements which may accompany the forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances after the date made, except as required by law. Regulatory News: Cellnovo Group (Paris:CLNV) ("Cellnovo" or the "Company" CLNV: EN Paris), a medical technology company marketing the first connected diabetes management platform composed of an insulin micro-pump communicating via Bluetooth with a locked-down Android smartphone, today provides an update on its commercial activity and financial situation. The Company expects its revenues in the first quarter of 2019 and in the following quarters to fall short of the anticipated growth trend following the acceleration in sales observed in the second half of 2018 and announced in the Company's press release dated 15 January 2019. This forecast comes despite the warm welcome given to the new Gen3 version of the connected system by patients suffering from Type 1 diabetes and an enhanced user experience which provides patients and caregivers with real added value, unrivaled on the market. However, the still limited robustness of the Gen3 System, inherent to any innovative solution, has led to a higher than expected service cost for distribution partners, which hinders immediate large-scale deployment of the new solution. The Company is making every effort to achieve a service cost in line with its partners' expectations, but the time required to finalize the development of the new solution implies that it will not be possible to roll it out on a large scale before the end of the year. This lack of growth will impact the Company's operating results in 2019, as well as its cash position and its ability to meet the commitments made to Kreos Capital in connection with the financing granted by the latter in 2018, including the commitment to raise an additional financing of 1.5 million by 31 March 2019 at the latest, it being specified that if these commitments are not met, Kreos may require early repayment of all or part of the sums lent. As a result, the Company considers that there are significant uncertainties affecting its short and medium-term financing. In this context, the Cellnovo group has hired a consulting firm to help it explore all the group's strategic and financial options and assist it in its efforts with strategic partners and investors in order to restore its financial situation. The Company will communicate as soon as possible on the progress of these initiatives. About Cellnovo (Euronext: CLNV) Cellnovo Group is global innovative medical technology company supporting the needs and desires of people with type 1 diabetes. Cellnovo has developed and markets a novel diabetes management system, which is a connected platform that aims to make life easier for people with type 1 diabetes. Cellnovo's insulin delivery system comprises a discreet, wearable micro-pump that communicates via Bluetooth Low Energy with a locked-down Android smartphone. This unique system allows optimal management of insulin dosing and delivery while ensuring freedom of movement and peace of mind. Thanks to the transmission of data in real time, the patient's status can be seamlessly monitored by family members and healthcare professionals. Cellnovo is currently participating in several major Artificial Pancreas projects with TypeZero, PEPPER and Diabeloop, to develop fully automated, closed-loop insulin delivery systems. For more information go to www.cellnovo.com Cellnovo is listed on Euronext, Compartment C ISIN: FR0012633360 Ticker: CLNV) Cellnovo Disclaimer This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, these forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. For review of risks and uncertainties which could cause Cellnovo's actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, please refer to the Presentation of the Main Risks and Uncertainties ("Description des principaux risques et incertitudes") set forth in Exhibit 1 of the 2017 Annual Financial Report ("Rapport Financier Annuel") and Risks and Uncertainties ( Risques et incertitudes ) section #2.8 of the 2018 Half-yearly Financial Report ("Rapport Financier Semerstriel") of the Company published on the website of Cellnovo Group (www.cellnovo.com), respectively, on April 30, 2018 and November 26, 2018. This press release and the information contained herein do not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe to shares in Cellnovo Group in any country. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005186/en/ Contacts: Cellnovo Chief Executive Officer Sophie Baratte investors@cellnovo.com NewCap Investor Relations Dusan Oresansky + 33 1 44 71 94 92 cellnovo@newcap.eu NewCap Media Relations in France Nicolas Merigeau + 33 1 44 71 94 98 cellnovo@newcap.eu The European Investment Trust Plc - Transaction in Own Shares The European Investment Trust plc ("the Company") The Company announces that on 20 March 2019 it purchased the following number of its ordinary shares of 25 pence each on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. Ordinary Shares: Date of purchase: 20 March 2019 Number of ordinary shares purchased: 20,000 Lowest price per share 816.14p Highest price per share 816.14p The Company intends to cancel the purchased shares. Following the above transaction, the Company has 40,461,769 ordinary shares in issue. Each of the Company's shares carries one vote. Accordingly, the total number of voting rights of the Company is 40,461,769. 21 March 2019 LEI: 213800QNN9EHZ4SC1R12 Enquiries: Kenneth J Greig Edinburgh Partners AIFM Limited Tel: 0131 270 3800 The Company's registered office address is: Beaufort House 51 New North Road Exeter EX4 4EP AMSTERDAM, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Datacenter.com, the data center provider for on-demand colocation services for hybrid cloud solutions and a planned roll-out of colocation data centers in strategic markets worldwide, today announced it has become member of the European Data Centre Association (EUDCA). The EUDCA is the trade organization with participation of the leading data centers in Europe whose mission is to strengthen the economic growth and enhance the profile of the data center sector to the European Government, media and society. Through active participation in EUDCA, Datacenter.com wants to represent itself in decisions taken at European level with regard to the data center industry, together with market leaders such as Equinix, Interxion and Digital Realty Trust who are also members of EUDCA. "I am delighted that Datacenter.com is now part of the European Data Centre Association (EUDCA). The EUDCA is committed ensuring that the data center provider market continues to play a large part of the European economy and Datacenter.com is keen to actively support the organization in its excellent work," said Jochem Steman, Chief Executive Officer of Datacenter.com. "We are delighted to welcome Datacenter.com to the EUDCA. We recognize that Datacenter.com has quickly established itself as an important participant in the data center market and it is great to have them on board. The EUDCA works hard to ensure that regulators and other interested parties are informed in making decisions that affect the industry whilst also enabling operators to reach markets that they might otherwise not have the resources to access. Having Datacenter.com onboard further strengthens our voice and demonstrates the strength of the industry in Europe to markets farther afield," Alex Rabbetts, Managing Director at the EUDCA. Datacenter.com specializes in carrier-neutral, purpose-built data centers, providing high dense solutions that enable the fastest delivery of data to end-users. Datacenter.com's uniformly designed, energy-efficient data centers offer customers extensive security and the highest uptime for their mission critical applications. About Datacenter.com Datacenter.com is motivated by the belief that all companies seeking data center and colocation offerings should have access to greater efficiency and flexibility at a reasonable price. With our state-of-the-art data center facilities, we meet the market's growing need for energy efficient, highly interconnected and modular colocation facilities, in which organizations can flexibly and securely host their critical IT infrastructure while cloud computing needs are addressed. Datacenter.com's customized, reliable and innovative data center solutions are accompanied with the company's best-in-class customer support. To learn more about Datacenter.com, visit https://datacenter.com or follow Twitter @datacenter_com or Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/datacenter.com Contact: info@datacenter.com Exclusive License Agreement for Australia and New Zealand markets WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / March 21, 2019 / Alltemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: LTMP) (the "Company"), a developer of proprietary, environmentally friendly refrigerant technologies, announced today that the Company recently entered into an exclusive License and Distribution Agreement ("LDA"), with Energy Sales Innovations Pty Ltd ("ESI"), for alltemp refrigerants within Australia and New Zealand. Under the LDA, Alltemp has received its first order from ESI and alltemp refrigerants have been delivered to Australia for installations at identified sights. In connection with the first round of installations, ESI will be working with Jenny Craig and Energy Conservation (www.energyconservation.com) to evaluate the impact of alltemp refrigerants on Australia's Renewable Energy Certificates. Energy Conservation employs engineering professionals for measurement, modeling and assessment of energy-consuming building assets. "Australia is a unique market for refrigerants and one of the most progressive for lowering Greenhouse Gas emissions. Alltemp's low Global Warming Potential, combined with its ability to significantly reduce HVAC-R energy costs, makes it an ideal fit. Working with ESI, and its established energy efficiency partners in Australia and New Zealand, should allow us to quickly build the alltemp brand," said William Lopshire, Alltemp CEO. ESI is controlled by St Baker Energy Innovation Fund, which invests in transformative companies across the energy sector, from generation to consumption, including innovations that enable entirely new products, performance improvements of existing products, increased efficiency and more sustainable processes (www.stbenergy.com.au). For alltemp sales inquiries, please contact Mark Greenberg at (855) 687-4867, ext 712 or Mark@alltemp.solutions. About Alltemp, Inc. Alltemp, Inc. has developed a proprietary refrigerant technology, after years of research and development, called alltemp, a proven replacement for many worldwide refrigerants that have detrimentally affected the global environment. alltemp,'s refrigerants are environmentally friendly, sustainable, and cost-efficient energy solutions for the residential and commercial marketplace. alltemp refrigerants have broad applications, ranging from Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning ("HVAC"), to refrigeration and foam insulation, to industrial solvents. alltemp is the ideal solution for replacement R-134a, R-404a, and HCFC-22, better known as R-22, but which is rapidly being phased out in all developed countries due to environmental concerns over its strong effect on the depletion of the Earth's ozone layer. For further information, please go to alltempsolutions.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "Act"), as well as Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. In particular, when used in the proceeding discussion, the words "plan," "confident that," "believe," "expect," or "intend to," and similar conditional expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Act and are subject to the safe harbor created by the Act. Such statements about the Company's future expectations, including future revenues and earnings, and all other forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that are subject to change at any time, and the Company's actual results could differ materially from those expressed in any of the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, market conditions, the availability of components for and delays in the start of production, general acceptance of the Company's products and technologies, competitive factors, the ability to successfully complete additional financing, and other risks. CONTACT: Alltemp, Inc. ir@stockcommgroup.com 832-802-8724 SOURCE: Alltemp, Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539649/Alltemp-Enters-into-License-and-Distribution-Agreement-with-Energy-Sales-Innovations-Pty-Ltd-Australia Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Digital solutions from Grundfos help customers manage their networks through various data points and reduce the amount of energy consumed, plug leaks, and optimise maintenance LONDON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Based on its recent analysis of the global water and wastewater pumps market, Frost & Sullivan recognises Grundfos with the 2018 Global Company of the Year Award for its exceptional organic growth. In Q1 2018, Grundfos announced a 5.3 per cent increase in its organic growth, which was its highest ever, and aims to end the year with a 6 per cent growth. Its sustainable and effective solutions have set the benchmarks for product development in the dynamic water and wastewater pumps market. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/838782/Grundfos_Award_.jpg "Grundfos was among the first companies to introduce an off-grid water supply solution with its solar-powered pumping system in 1982," said Fredrick Royan, Vice President at Frost & Sullivan. "More recently, it introduced the borehole pump for submerged applications and became the first pump manufacturing company to integrate software into its products to support bidirectional communication between the hardware and its operators. By pioneering this technology, Grundfos avoided commoditisation and outperformed the competition." Grundfos is currently conducting several pilot projects in Serbia that recycle 75 per cent of the country's water and harvest rainwater. Other project examples include a plant in China that uses recycled water to flush toilets and an office building in Chennai, India that uses indirect sunlight to power pumps. The company established a digital task force with the goal of identifying opportunities and successfully addressing digitalisation in its operations as well as products. Its digitisation strategy extends beyond pump services and covers demand-driven distribution, wherein an advanced algorithm uses data to adapt to network behaviour and then applies the required amount of pressure to prevent water loss and infrastructure damage. Digitalisation also enables predictive maintenance and self-diagnostic pumps that can learn to identify and raise potential issues, which will help customers order parts ahead of a full product shutdown. Another important offering is Grundfos' new generation MGE motors, some of the world's most efficient pump motors, which range from 0.25 kW to 11 kW. These products provide a 10 per cent increase in energy savings and a 25 per cent faster return on investment through reduced energy consumption. "Grundfos backs its wide product portfolio with simple online installation tools. The pit creator allows customers to configure their pumping stations based on the pit, pump, pump controller, level controller, external communication, and accessories. The entire process takes less than 15 minutes," noted Royan. "These exceptional products, services, and sustainability benefits strengthen Grundfos' customer relationships and positions the company for greater growth in the future." Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents a Company of the Year award to the organisation that demonstrates excellence in terms of growth strategy and implementation in its field. The award recognises a high degree of innovation with products and technologies, and the resulting leadership in terms of customer value and market penetration. Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry. About Grundfos Grundfos is a global leader in advanced pump solutions and a trendsetter in water technology. The company contributes to global sustainability by pioneering technologies that improve quality of life for people and care for the planet. As such, its core activity aligns closely with the sustainability aspects of how we use water and manage water quality. Grundfos has over 19,000 employees working out of 56 countries all around the world. For more information, visit www.grundfos.com, follow @grundfos on Twitter or the Facebook-page at www.facebook.com/Grundfos/. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion . Contact: Estefany Ariza P: 210.477.8469 E: estefany.ariza@frost.com Passengers on the One Hour Cruises Typically See a Variety of Wildlife, Including Birds, Porpoises, Whales and More MALLAIG, SCOTLAND / ACCESSWIRE / March 21, 2019 / The founders of Western Isles Cruises Ltd. are pleased to announce that they have added new wildlife cruises to their already-diverse and popular selection of cruises. The new wildlife adventures are focused in and around the west coast of Scotland. To learn more about the wildlife cruises, which can also include remote drop offs, please visit https://westernislescruises.co.uk/private-hire/wildlife-adventures-remote-drop-offs/. As a company spokesperson noted, from the day Western Isles Cruises first opened for business, the wildlife cruises have been immensely popular with visitors to the area. To offer their valued customers even more exciting options to see wildlife, the founders decided to add additional routes. "If you do nothing else whilst visiting Mallaig you must do this," the spokesperson noted, adding that the one hour wildlife cruise has become a main attraction in the area. Passengers on the one hour cruises can typically see a wide selection of wildlife; this includes a number of birds, porpoises, dolphins, whales and basking sharks. People can relax with a drink from the bar and enjoy some of the best scenery they can see anywhere on Earth, the spokesperson noted. For those who love photography, the wildlife cruises offer plenty of amazing opportunities to snap incredible shots of Mother Nature's handiwork. The boats that Western Isles Cruises uses for their wildlife tours are also exceptionally comfortable and offer a number of amenities. For instance, the MV Western Isles has toilets and a Whisky bar aboard; passengers are welcome to bring their own food from the chippy or a sandwich from one of the local shops. "And The Big Dipper provides comfortable and safe transport to, and from, Knoydart and the surrounding areas," the spokesperson noted, adding that people may charter the boat for a one hour wildlife adventure, a half day or even a whole day charter. About Western Isles Cruises Ltd.: Western Isles Cruises Ltd. offers unforgettable experiences that will live with people forever. Western Isles Cruises operates the Knoydart Ferry Service, One Hour Wildlife Cruises and Private Charters for weddings and special occasions, plus fast remote drop off and pickups in their Red Bay RIB. They have operated as the ferry service up Loch Nevis for the past 60 years. For more information, please visit https://westernislescruises.co.uk/. Western Isles Cruises Ltd., The Pier Office Mallaig PH41 4QD Contact: Joe Blower info@westernislescruises.co.uk 01687 462 233 SOURCE: Western Isles Cruises Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539722/Western-Isles-Cruises-Ltd-Announces-the-Addition-of-New-Wildlife-Cruises-in-the-West-Coast-of-Scotland Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 21, 2019) - Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. (CSE: LDS) (OTCQX: LDSYF) (FSE: LD6) (WKN: A14XHT) ("LDS" or the "Company") announced that it has received an approval from the Canadian Securities Exchange to amend certain terms of the non-brokered private placement financing (the "Offering") the Company announced on March 5, 2019. As per amended terms, the warrant exercise price was decreased from the original CAD$0.70 per warrant share to CAD$0.50 per warrant share. In addition, the Company agreed to finders' fees of 7% cash and 7% warrants, which will be paid to eligible finders. All other terms of the Offering remain unchanged. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of any of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful, including any of the securities in the United States of America. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933 (the "1933 Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for account or benefit of, U.S. Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the 1933 Act) unless registered under the 1933 Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. About Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. is a technology company that licenses its technology to a state-of-the-art production and packaging facility located in Southern California. The Company's technology produces infused strips (similar to breath strips) that are not only a safer, healthier option to any other form of delivery but also allows for inclusion of a wide spectrum of ingredients from over the counter medications to homeopathic, nutraceutical, vitamins and supplements. The technology provides a new way to accurately meter the dosage and assure the purity of selected product. From start to finish, the production process, based on the Company's technology, tests for quality and composition of all the ingredients used in each and every strip which results in a delivery system that is safe, consistent and effective. On behalf of the board of directors of Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. Brad Eckenweiler CEO & Director FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: investor.relations@lifestyledeliverysystem.com 1-866-347-5058 Cautionary Disclaimer Statement: The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release. Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's limited operating history and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. In addition, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug under the United States Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Although Congress has prohibited the US Justice Department from spending federal funds to interfere with the implementation of state medical marijuana laws, this prohibition must be renewed each year to remain in effect. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43576 (TSXV: GBR) Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 21, 2019) - Great Bear Resources(the "Company" or "Great Bear"), today reported drill results from the Dixie Hinge Zone ("DHZ") and Dixie Limb Zone ("DL") at its 100% owned Dixie Project in the Red Lake District of Ontario. Drilling continues to test along strike and at depth of the DHZ. Some of the DHZ drill holes also cross the adjacent DL at shallow depths and hence Great Bear is able to test both zones with the same drill holes. Hinge Zone drill results are provided in Table 1. Highlights of current drilling include: Drill hole DHZ-031 intersected four significant gold bearing quartz veins along a 141 metre wide zone of increased quartz veining and alteration in the DHZ vein system . intersected zone of increased quartz veining and alteration in the DHZ vein system Gold-bearing vein intercepts from DHZ-031 include: a)7.25 metres of 30.15 g/t gold, which includes 1.50 metres of 130.49 g/t gold, b) 4.00 metres of 11.72 g/t gold, and c)0.50 metres of 60.72 g/t gold. The high grade intercepts in DHZ-031 occur 20-60 metres west of previously reported drill hole DHZ-023 which included 3.40 metres of 31.60 g/t gold (see news release of February 21, 2019). 26 of 42 drill holes (62%) completed by Great Bear along 240 metres of strike length of the DHZ that has been drilled to date have intersected intervals containing greater than 15 g/t gold. Results of shallow drilling of the Dixie Limb Zone are also provided in Table 2. Highlights include 39.20 metres of 2.07 g/t gold starting at approximately 25 metres depth, including 9.20 metres of 5.43 g/t gold which includes 0.70 metres of 20.46 g/t gold. Chris Taylor, President and CEO of Great Bear said, "The Hinge Zone continues to rapidly expand as we keep stepping out along strike and at depth. In our most recent results, drill hole DHZ-031 intersected a gold-bearing quartz vein network consisting of multiple high grade veins within a 141 metre (462 foot) wide drill interval. All current drilling is designed to cross the Hinge Zone at approximately right angles, meaning the interval widths are approximate true widths. The vertical depth of the DHZ-031 intervals ranges from approximately 60 to 190 metres from the surface. The scale and strength of near-surface multi-veined gold mineralization at the Hinge Zone continues to impress." An updated long section through the Hinge Zone is provided in Figure 1, showing the location of current reported drill intercepts. Images of high grade gold mineralization from DHZ-031 are shown in Figure 2. The Company continues to undertake a fully funded, 30,000 metre drill program that is expected to continue through 2019. In order to accelerate the program, a second drill rig was added in early 2019. Approximately 13,000 metres of drilling remain in the current program. Table 1: Most recent drill results from Hinge Zone drilling. Drill Hole From(m) To(m) Width*(m) Gold(g/t) Vein Vertical Depth (m) DHZ-026 269.10 271.10 2.00 8.07 1 218 including 269.10 269.60 0.50 24.27 DHZ-027 Anomalous DHZ-028 192.00 192.50 0.50 4.63 1 165 and 206.20 208.25 2.05 10.94 2 177 including 206.20 207.20 1.00 22.07 and including 206.70 207.20 0.50 41.27 DHZ-029 174.80 175.30 0.50 32.60 1 158 and 222.00 227.50 5.50 2.01 2 201 including 226.50 227.50 1.00 6.27 and 248.60 257.70 9.10 3.52 3 224 including 248.60 249.90 1.30 21.02 and including 248.60 249.40 0.80 34.06 DHZ-030 156.40 159.30 2.90 1.63 1 140 including 158.80 159.30 0.50 4.90 and 170.90 171.60 0.70 4.97 2 153 DHZ-031 68.50 70.00 1.50 5.91 1 64 and 136.50 143.75 7.25 30.15 2 128 including 136.50 141.00 4.50 48.47 and including 136.50 139.75 3.25 66.62 and including 136.50 138.50 2.00 99.73 and including 137.00 138.50 1.50 130.49 and 181.00 181.50 0.50 60.72 3 169 and 198.00 209.50 11.50 4.36 4 191 including 204.50 209.50 5.00 9.70 and including 205.50 209.50 4.00 11.72 * reported width is determined to be 90-95% of true width based on intersection points of the drill hole intercept with the geological model and oriented drill core data. Drilling in the Dixie Limb continues to define shallow, wide intervals of gold mineralization, including high grade sub-intervals. The DL drill intervals are presented separately in Table 2. As drill holes like DHZ-026 are collared north of the DL and drill southwards into the DHZ at depth, these holes carry intervals from both zones. Two exploratory step-out drill holes, DL-038 and DL-039 have encountered a new gold-mineralized silicified sediment zone similar to the DL. These holes were drilled from the DL across the D2 axial planar fault that divides the DL from the DHZ towards the south, into an area east of the DHZ. Results are included along with DL drill results in Table 2. These intercepts may represent a new zone of gold mineralized sediments, or may be an offset continuation of the Dixie Limb Zone in the footwall of the fault. Follow-up drilling is required to characterize this new discovery. Two exploratory step-out drill holes, DHZ-024 and DHZ-025 were also completed east of the Hinge Zone fold closure (outside of the Hinge Zone) and encountered anomalous gold values of 0.92 metres of 1.46 g/t gold and 0.50 metres of 1.52 g/t gold, respectively, confirming gold is also present in this new area. Follow-up drilling is required to determine if significant gold-bearing quartz veining is also developed in this new area. Table 2: Current drill results from the Dixie Limb Zone. Drill Hole From(m) To(m) Width*(m) Gold(g/t) Vertical Depth (m) DHZ-026 40.80 80.00 39.20 2.07 34 including 56.80 80.00 23.20 3.19 47 and including 64.00 76.20 12.20 4.87 and including 67.00 76.20 9.20 5.43 56 and including 67.00 69.50 2.50 7.68 and including 74.50 76.20 1.70 11.62 62 and including 75.50 76.20 0.70 20.46 DHZ-027 48.50 63.15 14.65 1.12 43 including 61.15 63.15 2.00 5.19 54 and 72.40 85.00 12.60 3.45 64 DL-038** 347.55 349.05 1.50 0.34 324 DL-039** 219.75 224.75 5.00 2.27 195 including 219.75 221.25 1.50 4.51 *All reported widths are drill indicated core length. Insufficient data has been collected at this time to determine true widths. **These drill holes have intersected mineralized sediments in the footwall of the local D2 axial planar fault located south the DL, and east of the DHZ. They may represent a new zone, or offset continuation of the DL. Figure 1: Composite Long section through the DHZ (view to north) as drilled to-date showing currently reported drill results, and the location of recent step-out drilling. New results are highlighted in yellow. To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5331/43578_253d9f9b64bb4a09_002full.jpg Figure 2: Images of high grade gold in drill core from DHZ-031. Interval returned 1.50 metres of 130.49 g/t gold. To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit: https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/5331/43578_greatbear2enhanced About Great Bear The Dixie property is located approximately 15 minutes' drive along Highway 105 from downtown Red Lake, Ontario. The Red Lake mining district has produced over 30,000,000 ounces of gold and is one of the premier mining districts in Canada, benefitting from major active mining operations including the Red Lake Gold Mine of Goldcorp Inc., plus modern infrastructure and a skilled workforce. The Dixie property covers a drill and geophysically defined 10 kilometre gold mineralized structure similar to that hosting other producing gold mines in the district. In addition, Great Bear is also earning a 100% royalty-free interest in the West Madsen, Pakwash, Dedee and Sobel properties, which cover regionally significant gold-controlling structures and prospective geology. All of Great Bear's Red Lake projects are accessible year-round through existing roads. Drill core is logged and sampled in a secure core storage facility located in Red Lake Ontario. Core samples from the program are cut in half, using a diamond cutting saw, and are sent to SGS Canada Inc. in Red Lake, Ontario, and Activation Laboratories in Ancaster Ontario, both of which are accredited mineral analysis laboratories, for analysis. All samples are analysed for gold using standard Fire Assay-AA techniques. Samples returning over 3.0 g/t gold are analysed utilizing standard Fire Assay-Gravimetric methods. Selected samples with visible gold are also analyzed with a standard 1kg metallic screen fire assay. Certified gold reference standards, blanks and field duplicates are routinely inserted into the sample stream, as part of Great Bear's quality control/quality assurance program (QAQC). No QAQC issues were noted with the results reported herein. Mr. R. Bob Singh, P.Geo, Director and VP Exploration, and Ms. Andrea Diakow P.Geo, Exploration Manager for Great Bear are the Qualified Persons as defined by National Instrument 43-101 responsible for the accuracy of technical information contained in this news release. For further information please contact Mr. Chris Taylor, P.Geo, President and CEO at 604-646-8354, or Mr. Knox Henderson, Investor Relations, at 604-551-2360. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD "Chris Taylor" Chris Taylor, President and CEO Inquiries: Tel: 604-646-8354 Fax: 604-646-4526 info@greatbearresources.ca www.greatbearresources.ca Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This new release may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially because of factors discussed in the management discussion and analysis section of our interim and most recent annual financial statement or other reports and filings with the TSX Venture Exchange and applicable Canadian securities regulations. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. We seek safe harbor To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43578 GUANGZHOU, CHINA / ACCESSWIRE / March 21, 2019 / HeyGears is a technically innovative company focused on 3D printing applications and digital intelligent manufacturing technology. As one of the innovators in the 3D printing industry, HeyGears attended the LMT LAB DAY on February 21st - 23rd of 2019 at Chicago Illinois, U.S. Here is the recap. During the show, HeyGears showcased the full spectrum of digital dental solutions empowered by 3D printing, from intraoral scan data collection to post-processing. HeyGears' goal is to provide full support for dental labs and clinics when it comes to adapting the 3D printing technology and achieving maximum efficiency. HeyGears demonstrated two 3D printers at the show. UltraCraft A2 and UltraCraft D-OS. Both printers are designed and manufactured by HeyGears. The A2 is an industrial-grade DLP 3D printer, the printed parts are within 50 microns for more than 80%. The A2 printer can satisfy printing demands that require high accuracy and smooth surface, with fast post-process. HeyGears' CEO Gui Peiyuan is explaining A2 printer technology. The D-OS, on the other hand, is a smart desktop 3D printer with industrial-grade DLP printing capability. This printer can allow dental clinics and smaller labs to produce low volume, high accuracy dental models. Most importantly, HeyGears is the first company to cooperate with Alibaba Cloud AI in the 3D printing industry. By using the artificial Intelligence algorithm, HeyGears is able to optimize the 3D printing process, increasing accuracy and speed at the same time, resulting in shorter printing time by 40%. 3D printers aside, HeyGears also presented 9 types of medical-grade dental resins at the show. These resins can cover nearly 70% of dental implantation, restoration, and orthodontic needs. HeyGears' CEO Gui Peiyuan and Overseas Sales Director Huang Dan is demonstrating dental resins. In conclusion, HeyGears is a first-time participant in the LMT LAB DAY show, it aroused great interest of the professional community and brought positive sentiment into 3D printing and dental industry. About HeyGears: HeyGears was founded in 2015 Guangzhou, China, by a talented group of young men from the School of Engineering at UIUC. Since founded, HeyGears has been dedicated to providing the cutting edge digital dental solutions for dental labs in China and the U.S. HeyGears introduced UltraCraft series 3D printer in 2017 and launched Ultra-Net printer management system and Ultra-Hub cloud data management center in the following year. Contact Info: Company: HeyGears Contact: Steven Zhao Address: 3007-3008, 30th Floor, Poly International Plaza South Tower, No. 1, PaZhou Ave, Haizhu District, Guangzhou, China Tel: +86 020-84132729 Email: info@Heygears.com Website: www.Heygears.com SOURCE: HeyGears View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539727/HeyGears-3D-printer-revolutionize-digital-work-flow Bob Shanks, Ford chief financial officer, announces intention to retire at year-end; Tim Stone, 20-year Amazon veteran and former CFO of Snap, joins Ford and will succeed Shanks as CFO on June 1 Peter Fleet, president of International Markets Group, to retire; Mark Ovenden named president, International Markets Group, effective April 1 Stuart Rowley appointed president, Ford of Europe, as Steven Armstrong named chairman, Ford of Europe; Birgit Behrendt, vice president, Joint Ventures, Alliances and Commercial Affairs, Ford of Europe, to retire Ford Motor Company today announced that Chief Financial Officer Bob Shanks plans to retire from the company at the end of 2019. He will be succeeded by Tim Stone, an accomplished finance executive who served 20 years at Amazon Inc., and as CFO of Snap Inc. Stone, 52, will join Ford on April 15 as a company officer and assume the role of CFO on June 1. He will report to Ford President and CEO Jim Hackett. "Bob will leave a remarkable 42-year legacy at Ford," Hackett said. "As a CFO, he's been relentless in driving for results and pushing the company to greater heights. He's also been a wonderful colleague who leads with integrity, warmth and humor. Bob's leadership was integral to Ford's comeback during the great recession, and he has been an invaluable partner as we transform Ford to succeed in the next era." Shanks, 66, will work closely with Stone on the CFO transition and then work on special projects through the end of the year. "We're so excited to have Tim join Ford at this incredible time for our company as we strive to become the world's most trusted company, designing smart vehicles for a smart world," Hackett said. "He was a key player in the incredible success at Amazon and he understands the principles of fitness and growth as complementary virtues for Ford's future." Stone comes from the tech space, but brings an appreciation for Ford and the auto industry to the job. Before earning his bachelor's degree in accounting from University of Southern California, Stone worked for his father, a general contractor and plumber. The vehicles in his dad's business were Ford trucks and the family drove Ford Explorers and Ford vans. "Thirty years ago, through my father's business, I witnessed firsthand the importance of Ford to our economy and our community," Stone said. "I am honored to join this iconic company and put my experience building the businesses of the future toward helping Ford build its next 100 years." International Markets Group Also today, the company announced that Peter Fleet, president of International Markets Group, has announced his intention to retire. Fleet, 51, has held leading roles in Ford marketing, sales and service, and business operations globally for nearly 30 years. Prior to the establishment of the International Markets Group, Fleet served as president of Asia Pacific, leading all of Ford's operations and partnerships across the region. Previously, he held roles as diverse as president of Ford ASEAN and vice president, Sales, Ford of Europe. "Peter has had a tremendous 30-year career with Ford, holding key leadership positions in Europe and Asia Pacific and we thank him for all his contributions," Hackett said. Effective April 1, Mark Ovenden, currently president Ford Middle East Africa, is named president, International Markets Group and will lead its formation. The International Markets Group will become a reporting business unit on January 1, 2020. The company's new business unit will oversee nearly 100 markets, including the company's operations in Africa, ASEAN, Australia, India, Mexico, Middle East, New Zealand and South Korea, as well as a number of emerging and distributor markets around the world. The formation of this new business unit follows the recent establishment of China as a standalone business unit. "We're fortunate to have Mark Ovenden to lead the formation of this new group of high-potential markets. He understands how to operate in diverse markets with different needs and distributions channels," Hackett said. Ovenden, 54, will report to Jim Farley, president of Ford Global Markets. "With the establishment of IMG, we have a unique opportunity to create a new business model with a diverse culture and an agile mindset to deliver profitable growth. This new group will be a lean, dynamic and networked team focused on leveraging both local customer insights and Ford's global know-how," Farley said. "Globally, some of the highest growth markets in the next five years are located in this part of the world." The emerging markets are expected to account for one in three future vehicle sales. Ford's growth in IMG will be fueled by its leading market positions in compact pick-ups and commercial vehicles as well as optimizing the company's import portfolio and maximizing after-sales opportunities. Ford of Europe Ford also announced that Stuart Rowley, currently chief operating officer for Ford North America, is appointed to the role of president, Ford of Europe, taking on operational leadership of the business unit, including acceleration of the European transformation strategy. In recent months, Rowley has been deeply engaged in Europe's transformation planning, working with Steven Armstrong. Rowley, 51, succeeds Armstrong who is being named chairman, Ford of Europe. In this new role, Armstrong, 54, will oversee key transformation projects and joint venture partner interactions for the region, as well as lead Ford's engagement with European governments on key industry legislation and issues. Both roles will report to Farley and are effective April 1. "Under the leadership of Stuart and Steve, the European team has developed a comprehensive plan to fundamentally transform its operations and return the business to profitability, work which only will accelerate as they take on their new roles," Hackett said. Birgit Behrendt, vice president, Joint Ventures, Alliances and Commercial Affairs in Europe also announced her intention to retire. Over a 40-year career with many recognitions, she held several leadership positions in Purchasing in Europe and the U.S., including oversight of Global Purchasing Operations. In her current role until the end of March, Behrendt, 59, serves as the main interface with the company's joint venture and alliance partners as well as supporting the establishment of the strategic alliance with Volkswagen. Going forward, she will continue to serve in her role as a member of the Ford Werke Supervisory Board. "We also thank Birgit for the many contributions she has made to our business throughout her career and look forward to her continuing to serve on the Ford Werke Supervisory Board," said Hackett. Ford of Europe announced in January its plans to implement a transformation strategy aimed at strengthening the Ford brand and creating a sustainably profitable business in Europe. Near term, Ford is accelerating key fitness actions and reducing structural costs. In parallel, the fundamental redesign includes changes to Ford's vehicle portfolio, expanding offerings and volumes in its most profitable growth vehicle segments, while improving or exiting less profitable vehicle lines and addressing underperforming markets. "The changes we are announcing today are significant, but seamless, which exemplifies the strength of Ford," Hackett said. "While we are saying goodbye to very accomplished leaders who have delivered significant progress in their decades of service with Ford, the talented leaders stepping into new roles will continue to steward our transformation." Related information For biographical information on Bob Shanks, click here. For biographical information on Tim Stone, click here. For biographical information on Peter Fleet, click here. For biographical information on Mark Ovenden, click here. For biographical information on Steven Armstrong, click here. For biographical information on Stuart Rowley, click here. For biographical information on Birgit Behrendt, click here. About Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company is a global company based in Dearborn, Michigan. The company designs, manufactures, markets and services a full line of Ford cars, trucks, SUVs, electrified vehicles and Lincoln luxury vehicles, provides financial services through Ford Motor Credit Company and is pursuing leadership positions in electrification, autonomous vehicles and mobility solutions. Ford employs approximately 199,000 people worldwide. For more information regarding Ford, its products and Ford Motor Credit Company, please visit www.corporate.ford.com For news releases, related materials and high-resolution photos and video, visit www.media.ford.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005354/en/ Contacts: Media Karen Hampton 313.390.9080 khampto2@ford.com Equity Investment Community Lynn Tyson 313.621.2902 914.485.1150 ltyson4@ford.com Fixed Income Investment Community Karen Rocoff 313.621.0965 krocoff@ford.com Financialnewsmedia.com News Commentary PALM BEACH, Florida, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- It seems that legal cannabis laws may not change in the short term in the U.K. but consumer acceptance of CBD infused products is indeed growing. A recent article published in the U.K reports that CBD usage is growing in the U.K. It said: "Although legalization in the UK does not look likely in the near future, CBD products are carving a defined space for themselves in the health and wellbeing industry. Large retailers such as Holland & Barrett and Superdrug, as well as online retailers, now sell products containing CBD, as UK CBD use climbs. Recent reports indicate that the global cannabidiol (CBD) market is estimated to grow by 700% and could be worth $2.1 billion by 2020. In the UK, the number of people using CBD oil is estimated to have reached around 300,000. The Cannabis Trades Association UK has estimated that UK CBD use has doubled in a year. The rise in popularity has followed a loosening of legal restrictions around the world. Although CBD-based products have been commercially available in the UK for some time, they appear to be gaining greater mainstream use and acceptance, as big-name companies invest increasing amounts of money in the development of CBD-based products. Active Companies from around the market with current developments this week include: Marijuana Company of America, Inc. (OTC:MCOA),Medical Marijuana, Inc. (OTC: MJNA), Hemp Inc. (OTC: HEMP), Sugarmade, Inc. (OTC: SGMD), mCig, Inc. (OTC: MCIG). With the UK CBD market now generating around 50 million per year, the health and well-being market looks likely to capitalize on growing public interest, with CBD-based snacks, supplements and even skincare products making their way onto shelves. Chief scientific officer at Eos Leisure, Dr. David Dawit believes that although full legalization of marijuana is not on the cards, the public is more ready than ever to embrace CBD-based products. Marijuana Company of America, Inc. (OTCQB:MCOA) BREAKING NEWS: Marijuana Company of America is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary, hempSMART, Ltd., a corporation organized in the United Kingdom, will officially launch the Company's industrial hemp CBD formulated hempSMART products in the United Kingdom during the Company's March 23, 2019 launch event in London. The hempSMART launch event is sold out, with associates attending from the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe. The Company has implemented a lineup of fantastic speakers with some joining from across the globe by video conference. The Company's launch program will include an in-depth overview of the CBD industry, its hempSMART products, as well as marketing and compensation plans that will also feature information on how associates can start their own business in the CBD industry. The Company believes its hempSMART wellness products, which are formulated with industrial hemp derived CBD, are well suited and positioned for the UK and EU markets, as the Company's CBD extraction processes have reduced the trace levels of THC in its hempSMART products to below 0.02% of dry weight, meeting the current accepted standards for CBD supplement products in the UK. The hempSMART, Ltd. UK team has worked diligently over the last few months to ensure its associates get the very best customer support both during and after the launch. During the event, the Company will recognize associates who achieved outstanding pre-launch activity with an assortment of awards and prizes. In addition, the Company's mobile storefront will be fully manned at the event ensuring everyone can place orders and take them home the same day. Ian Harvey, Global Sales Director of hempSMART, Ltd., commented: "I personally have never felt so much excitement surrounding a new product line being launched in the UK. hempSMART, Ltd. is poised to become one of the leaders in the CBD wellness industry in the UK and the EU, and I am delighted to be Global Sales Director, as we continue to be focused on other exciting developments moving forward." Read this and more news for MCOA at:https://www.financialnewsmedia.com/news-mcoa/ In the industry developments and happenings in the market this week include: Medical Marijuana, Inc. (OTCPK: MJNA) the first-ever publicly traded cannabis company in the United States, recently announced that its subsidiary Kannaway is pleased to welcome Kenneth Christopher "Skip" McClendon as a company spokesperson to help spread awareness on the benefits of hemp cannabidiol (CBD) for athletes and active consumers. "For many, CBD is the last solution to their problems when it should actually be their first," said Kannaway CEO Blake Schroeder. "We look forward to seeing the future positive impact of Skip sharing his experience with CBD and helping others not only see it as a last resort." Hemp Inc. (OTCPK: HEMP) recently announced "The Hemp University" educational seminar is rapidly approaching and is almost sold out. The event will take place this week on Saturday, March 23, 2019 in Ashland, Oregon. The seminar will help others in the area who are interested in the hemp industry or are currently participating learn more about the "Industrial Hemp Revolution" and how this movement can not only help transform Southern Oregon's economy, but also revive family farms and small business in the surrounding areas. "With the passing of the Farm Bill in 2018, the industrial hemp crop in Oregon is expected to grow past $1 billion, and the state ranks third in the country in land that is dedicated to industrial hemp," said Hemp, Inc. CEO Bruce Perlowin. Sugarmade, Inc. (OTCQB: SGMD) a major supplier to the growing hydroponic cultivation sector, recently announced its exercise of an option to acquire BZRTH, LLC. Under the terms of the exercise and upon closing, all BZRTH revenues will be reported through Sugarmade significantly further boosting Sugarmade's revenue base. The acquisition is expected to be highly accretive for common shareholders. Mr. Jimmy Chan, CEO of Sugarmade commented, "BZRTH is a sister company of BizRight, LLC. During December of 2017, Sugarmade and BizRight signed a Master Marketing Agreement where BizRight's products would be sold by Sugarmade. We recently modified that agreement to include BZRTH. Our exercise of our option to fully acquire these businesses will allow us to now realize full revenue recognition, boosting our top line growth rate very significantly. We will retain the entire staff of employees, who we warmly welcome to the Sugarmade family." mCig, Inc. (OTCQB: MCIG) recently announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, CBJ Distributing, is expanding its sales reach by introducing to its clients in Nevada and California a new in-house developed product line of hemp pre rolled cigarettes and CBD vape pens with a proprietary terpene rich formula. CBJ Distributing saw its sales increase dramatically during the last year. The company distributes its line of cannabis supply items, such as: labels, jars, child proof envelopes, vape pens, to almost all dispensaries in Nevada, while enlarging its market share in southern and central California. After carefully analyzing the CBD market, CBJ Distributing decided to expand its product line by joining this huge opportunity of selling hemp products to smoke shops and dispensaries around the Country. "We have a strong team of professionals with boots to the ground, following the trends, growth, and needs of the market through client-based communication and customer service. DISCLAIMER: FN Media Group LLC (FNM), which owns and operates Financialnewsmedia.com and MarketNewsUpdates.com, is a third party publisher and news dissemination service provider, which disseminates electronic information through multiple online media channels. FNM is NOT affiliated in any manner with any company mentioned herein. 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Contact Information: Media Contact email: editor@financialnewsmedia.com +1(561)325-8757 BARCELONA, Spain, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CL3VER, the pioneering 3D rendering startup from Barcelona, announces today that its new proprietary cloud solution will be the first one to bring the power of Nvidia RTX rendering to Google Cloud, making it available to hundreds of thousands of business users. Nvidia broke new ground in real time ray tracing when it introduced the RTX platform and technology last year. CL3VER will be the first tech company to harness RTX's power to make it available through its own added-value rendering solution on Google Cloud. At the core of CL3VER's technology is a brand new 3D ray tracing engine that renders any real time 3D scene, regardless of its complexity, in the cloud, live-streaming the result to any browser using standard html5 technology. CL3VER's technology is accessible to desktop or mobile end-users without the need of any plugin. This new technology offers photorealistic results, immersive 3D navigation, fast loading times and instant changes, making it the perfect choice for web-based 3D applications such as real estate and product configurators, training and educational modules, interactive storytelling and so on. "By making RTX rendering available on Google Cloud, CL3VER proves again its capacity to innovate and makes its own cloud-rendering technology and service available to a wide business market" CL3VER's CEO, Daniel Iborra, said. "It's been a pleasure to develop on Google Cloud, it's a great environment." Launched last November, RTX is NVIDIA's revolutionary ray tracing technology is already praised for the advances it brings in real-time 3D rendering. Founded in 2011 in Barcelona, CL3VER is a pioneering real-time rendering technology company focused on bringing photorealism to mobile and web-based applications. A live demo or more information can be requested from this link: https://www.cl3ver.com/contact-us/ Media Contact: CL3VER Barcelona Spain +1-(410)-779-9556 from US +34-93-328-41-67 from EU www.cl3ver.com Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/800659/CL3VER_Logo.jpg ECG Device Manufacturer Partnerships Grow as FDA Cleared GEMS Mobile Smartphone ECG App Expands Device Access to Consumer and Telemedicine Cardiac Monitoring Solutions Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - March 21, 2019) - CardioComm Solutions, Inc. (TSXV: EKG) ("CardioComm" or the "Company"), a leading global provider of consumer heart monitoring and electrocardiogram ("ECG") acquisition and management software solutions, confirms the start of an OEM co-marketing agreement for the HeartCheck Palm handheld ECG device, the Company's newest GEMS Mobile ECG app ("GEMSTM Mobile") enabled ECG device. The HeartCheck Palm will be the Company's third US Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") cleared HeartCheck branded handheld ECG device for over-the-counter ("OTC") sales. The HeartCheckTM Palm has a colour display and can record and save medical grade ECGs of 10 to 30 seconds in duration which are controlled through GEMSTM Mobile. Saved ECGs can be reviewed on the device and then transferred to a Smartphone. The ECG trace colour will change from red, to yellow, to green, to confirm the ECG recording quality. Recording time starts once the ECG waveform is green. GEMSTM Mobile is a slimmed down version of the Company's hospital-based Global ECG Management System (GEMSTM) software and holds a unique market position as the only FDA cleared ECG management Smartphone app that supports multiple manufacturers' ECG monitoring devices. GEMS Mobile provides HeartCheck ECG device users the ability to generate free, medical-grade ECG PDFs in near-real-time. GEMS Mobile users also have access to CardioComm's SMART Monitoring ECG reading service through which they can request a professional review of their ECG to confirm the presence or absence of arrhythmias. CardioComm will continue to develop ECG device manufacturer partnerships to expand the medical usability of these third party devices and to bring cost effective, innovative and credible cardiac monitoring solutions to the remote patient monitoring, consumer and clinical trials markets. CardioComm acknowledges the cooperation of Contec Medical Systems and BORSAM Biomedical Instruments as the original device manufacturers of the HeartCheck Palm and HeartCheck CardiBeat respectively. GEMS Mobile is now available on the App Store and Google Play. The Company is pleased to announce that it has already received expressions of interest in the new devices from several prospective customers. To learn about pre-orders for the HeartCheck device with free ECG reviewing packages included and for further updates regarding GEMSTM Mobile ECG device partnerships please see the Company's websites at www.theheartcheck.com and www.cardiocommsolutions.com. About CardioComm Solutions CardioComm Solutions' patented and proprietary technology is used in products for recording, viewing, analyzing and storing electrocardiograms for diagnosis and management of cardiac patients. Products are sold worldwide through a combination of an external distribution network and a North American-based sales team. CardioComm Solutions has earned the ISO 13485 certification, is HIPAA compliant and holds clearances from the European Union (CE Mark), the USA (FDA) and Canada (Health Canada). FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Etienne Grima, Chief Executive Officer 1-877-977-9425 x227 egrima@cardiocommsolutions.com investor.relations@cardiocommsolutions.com Forward-looking statements This release may contain certain forward-looking statements and forward-looking information with respect to the financial condition, results of operations and business of CardioComm Solutions and certain of the plans and objectives of CardioComm Solutions with respect to these items. Such statements and information reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management. By their nature, forward-looking statements and forward-looking information involve risk and uncertainty because they relate to events and depend on circumstances that will occur in the future and there are many factors that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. In evaluating these statements, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. The Company does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements and forward-looking information contained in this release other than as required by applicable laws, including without limitation, Section 5.8(2) of National Instrument 51-102 (Continuous Disclosure Obligations). Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43579 Digital marketplaces with predictive and efficient business models receive a boost with the higher adoption of eCommerce channels, finds Frost & Sullivan SANTA CLARA, California, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- As the tech-savvy millennial population has come to expect a high level of user experience (UX), the healthcare industry has begun to digitize products, services, and commerce models. The industry is setting up personalized UX/user interface (UI)-enabled eCommerce platforms and websites, which are expected to be the preferred digital channels for browsing and ordering medical devices and supplies. This will not only improve access, quality, and affordability of healthcare, but also promote predictive, preventive, and outcome-based care models. The overall benefits of supply chain optimization and improved UX are expected to result in an eCommerce channel that will reach $200 billion at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15 percent by 2022. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/839291/Frost_and_Sullivan_eCommerce_Health.jpg "Drug and device OEMs and distributors should prioritize their eCommerce strategy based on the maturity of their buyer/market using a mix of available digital tools for educating, researching product information, and order and payment management," said Kamaljit Behera, Industry Analyst, Transformational Health. Frost & Sullivan's recent analysis, Healthcare eCommerce Market in North America, Forecast to 2022, examines the key trends and developments in healthcare eCommerce with specific focus on the eCommerce market for pharma drugs and medical devices in North America. It also provides market projections, opportunity analysis by supply chain participants, strategic imperatives, and industry best practices or case studies for both segments. For further information on this analysis, please visit: http://frost.ly/3ak. "The convergence of healthcare with IT and retail industries has opened the market up to non-traditional players, which is disrupting the existing business channels and future revenue streams. For example, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft (GAFAM) in the West, and Baidu, Ali Health, and Tencent (BAT) in East will continue to make further headways in the healthcare industry," noted Behera. "Amazon will have a particularly high impact on emerging home or individual care concepts like telehealth, telemedicine, and direct-to-consumer (D2C) commerce." Some of the most prominent trends and growth opportunities in the healthcare eCommerce space include: Hospital buyers are more willing to repurchase from a B2B digital marketplace that offers transparency, personalization, and competitive pricing for stable medical devices, implants, and consumables. Selling, general & administrative ( SG&A ) expenses accounting for 35 percent to 40 percent of the overall healthcare industry cost, which creates a need for an efficient eCommerce distribution model by automating sales representatives' routine and tactical works. ( ) expenses accounting for 35 percent to 40 percent of the overall healthcare industry cost, which creates a need for an efficient eCommerce distribution model by automating sales representatives' routine and tactical works. Development of business models that support the integration of the product sale and service functions (maintenance, repairs) in the eCommerce channel. Furthermore, the integration of eCommerce channels with customer relationship management ( CRM) , business intelligence ( BI ), and social relationship management ( SRM ) tools will help standardize the purchasing process. that support the integration of the product sale and service functions (maintenance, repairs) in the eCommerce channel. Furthermore, the integration of eCommerce channels with customer relationship management ( , business intelligence ( ), and ( ) tools will help standardize the purchasing process. eCommerce platforms offering not only robust account management functionalities but also integration with warehouse and fulfillment software to provide real-time inventory updates and delivery status to customers. to provide real-time inventory updates and delivery status to customers. Apart from drug or device types and purchase volumes, factors such as market positioning, target end users, and reimbursement playing a critical role in eCommerce channel selection and success. Retail pharmacy , consumer devices, and medical supplies segments present a scope for large profit pool disruption by eCommerce. At the same time, digital marketplace and centralized contract management platforms such as OpenMarkets, Amazon Business, DST Pharmacy Solutions, and Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) are viewed both as an opportunity and threat by groups of purchasing organization (GPOs) and pharmacy benefit management (PBMs). , consumer devices, and medical supplies segments present a scope for large profit pool disruption by eCommerce. At the same time, digital marketplace and centralized contract management platforms such as OpenMarkets, Amazon Business, DST Pharmacy Solutions, and Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) are viewed both as an opportunity and threat by groups of purchasing organization (GPOs) and pharmacy benefit management (PBMs). eCommerce will solve the humongous medication adherence challenge and it presents an opportunity to increase transparency in drug pricing- a problem plaguing the United States healthcare system for decades. Healthcare eCommerce Market in North America, Forecast to 2022 is part of Frost & Sullivan's global Advanced Medical Technologies Growth Partnership Service program. About Frost & Sullivan For over five decades, Frost & Sullivan has become world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion. Healthcare eCommerce Market in North America, Forecast to 2022 K2AB-54 Contact: Mariana Fernandez Corporate Communications T: +1 210 348 10 12 E: Mariana.Fernandez@frost.com http://ww2.frost.com CHAIRMAN'S INTERIM STATEMENT DANA GROUP INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENTS LIMITED ("the Group" or the "Company") I am pleased to present Dana Group International Investments Limited's consolidated, unaudited interim financial results for the six months' period from 1stJuly 2018 to 31stDecember 2018. These consolidated financial statements have not been reviewed by the Group's auditors. Financial results The results for the first half of the current year were positive with profit of USD 95,000. The comprehensive loss for the six months' period ended 31stDecember 2018 was USD 1.44 million (2017: comprehensive income of USD 4.02 million) and the net profit for the period was USD 0.09 million (2017: net loss of USD 0.13 million), giving rise to basic earnings per share of US cents 0.04 (2017: basic loss per share of US cents 0.05). At 31stDecember 2018, the Company's net assets stood at USD 50.46 million (2017: USD 89.85 million); or US cents 20 per share (2017: US cents 36 per share). The decrease in net assets for the comparable period is attributable to the decrease in fair value of available for sale financial asset (i.e., Bonyan International Investment Group (Holding) LLC ("Bonyan") in which the Company holds a 21.68 per cent interest). This decline in the value of Bonyan and hence of the Company's interest in it was attributable to the reduction in fair value of investment properties held by Bonyan and the dilution of Bonyan's shareholding in one of its investee companies during the last financial year and was discussed in the announcement of the results for the year ended 30thJune 2018. Board changes During the period under review, at the annual general meeting in respect of the financial year ended 30thJune 2018, Mr. Muin El-Saleh retired by rotation and did not offer himself for re-election. Current Trading Trading from 1stJanuary 2018 to date remains consistent with the Directors' expectations at the beginning of the current financial period. Outlook The performance of Bonyan, in which the Company has an investment, during the second half of 2018 to date is in accordance with the Directors' expectations. Conclusion The Group will continue to explore further opportunities and to work towards the improvement of shareholders' value. I look forward to informing shareholders of any significant developments as these crystallise. Firas Baba Chairman Dubai, 21stMarch 2019 Important: the Notes numbered 1 to 7 which appear after the condensed, consolidated statement of cash flows below are an integral part of the condensed, consolidated interim financial information, which should be read in the context of these Notes. Condensed, consolidated statement of profit or loss and comprehensive income for the six months' period ended 31stDecember 2018 Note Six months' period ended 31 December 2018 (unaudited) Six months' period ended 31 December 2017 (unaudited) USD USD Revenue - 18,047 Employee costs (78,822) (84,268) Other operating expenses (52,431) (41,801) Legal and professional expenses (49,907) (43,064) Other income 276,177 - Depreciation - (701) Operating profit/(loss) 95,017 (151,787) Finance income - net 298 22,753 Profit / (loss) for the period 95,315 (129,034) Other comprehensive income Items that are or may be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss Fair value changes in available for sale financial asset 6 (1,538,228) 4,154,931 Total comprehensive (loss) / income for the period (1,442,913) 4,025,897 Earnings / (loss) per share attributable to the equity holders of the parent during the period Basic earnings /(loss) per share for the period 5 0.0004 (0.0005) Condensed, consolidated statement of financial position as at 31stDecember 2018 Note 31 December 2018 (unaudited) 31 December 2017 (unaudited) USD USD ASSETS Non-current assets Available for sale financial asset 6 51,081,859 90,691,221 Total non-current assets 51,081,859 90,691,221 Current assets Loans and advances - 4,700,000 Prepayments, advances and other receivables 41,455 638,847 Cash and cash equivalents 2,389 8,626 Total current assets 43,844 5,347,473 Total assets 51,125,703 96,038,694 LIABILITIES AND SHAREHOLDERS' EQUITY EQUITY Share capital 2,010,490 2,010,490 Share premium 83,862,586 83,862,586 Available for sale fair valuation reserve 7 (27,099,645) 12,509,717 Accumulated losses ( 8,313,198 ) ( 8,533,980 ) Total capital and shareholders' equity 50,460,233 89,848,813 LIABILITIES Non-current liabilities Provision for employees' end of service benefits 27,531 35,130 Total non-current liabilities 27,531 35,130 Current liabilities Trade and other payables 637,939 6,154,751 Total current liabilities 637,939 6,154,751 Total liabilities 665,470 6,189,881 Total liabilities and shareholders' equity 51,125,703 96,038,694 Condensed, consolidated statement of changes in equity for the six months' period ended 31stDecember 2018 Share capital Share premium Available for sale fair valuation reserve Accumulated losses Total USD USD USD USD USD At 1st July 2017 (audited) 2,010,490 83,862,586 8,354,786 (8,404,946) 85,822,916 Total comprehensive income for the period Loss for the period - - - (129,034) (129,034) Other comprehensive income for the period - - 4,154,931 - 4,154,931 Balance at 31st December 2017 (unaudited) 2,010,490 83,862,586 12,509,717 ( 8,533,980 ) 89,848,813 At 1st July 2018 (audited) 2,010,490 83,862,586 (25,561,417) (8,408,513) 51,903,146 Total comprehensive income for the period Profit for the period - - - 95,315 95,315 Other comprehensive loss for the period - - (1,538,228 ) - ( 1,538,228 ) Balance at 31st December 2018 (unaudited) 2,010,490 83,862,586 ( 27,099,645 ) ( 8,313,198 ) 50,460,233 Condensed, consolidated statement of cash flows for the six months' period ended 31stDecember 2018 Six months' period ended 31 December 2018 (unaudited) Six months' period ended 31 December 2017 (unaudited) USD USD Cash flows from operating activities Net profit / (loss) for the period 95,315 (129,034) Adjustments for: Finance income - net - (23,693) Depreciation - 701 Provision for employees' end of service benefits 1,992 2,472 Operating cash flow before working capital changes Working capital changes: Trade and other receivables 603 162,918 Trade and other payables ( 110,002 ) (47,269) Net cash flow from operating activities (12,092 ) (33,905) Net decrease in cash and cash equivalents (12,092) (33,905) Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of the period 14,481 42,531 Cash and cash equivalents at end of the period 2,389 8,626 Notes to the condensed, consolidated interim financial information for the six months' period ended 31stDecember 2018 1. Legal status and activity Dana Group International Investments Limited ("the Company") was incorporated on 29thMay 2007 under the International Business Companies Act, 2000, in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas under registration number 148728 (B). The registered office address of the Company is Ocean Centre, East Bay Street, P.O. Box SS19084, Nassau, Bahamas. The unaudited, condensed, consolidated interim financial information of the Company for the period ended 31stDecember 2018 comprises the Company and its subsidiaries (collectively referred to as "the Group"). There have been no changes in the Group structure since the date of most recent annual consolidated financial statements for the year ended 30thJune 2018. The principal activities of the Group are property and real estate investments, development and advisory services for projects related to the real estate and infrastructure sectors. 2. Basis of preparation The unaudited, condensed, consolidated interim financial information for the six months ended 31stDecember 2018 has been prepared in accordance with IAS 34, 'Interim Financial Reporting'. The condensed, consolidated interim financial information should be read in conjunction with the annual audited, consolidated financial statements for the year ended 30thJune 2018, which have been prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards. 3. Estimates and assumptions The preparation of condensed, consolidated interim financial information requires management to make judgements, estimates and assumptions that affect the application of accounting policies and the reported amounts of assets and liabilities, income and expenses. Actual results may differ from these estimates. In preparing the condensed, consolidated interim financial information, the significant judgements made by the management in applying the Group's accounting policies and the key sources of estimation uncertainty were the same as those that were applied to the consolidated financial statements for the year ended 30thJune 2018. 4. Significant accounting policies The accounting policies adopted in the preparation of the condensed, consolidated interim financial information are consistent with those followed in the preparation of the Group's annual consolidated financial statements for the year ended 30thJune 2018. 5. Earnings / (loss) per share Basic earnings / (loss) per share Basic loss per share is calculated by dividing the profit attributable to equity holders of the parent by the weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue during the period. Period ended 31 December 2018 Period ended 31 December 2017 (unaudited) (unaudited) Profit/(loss) attributable to equity holders of the parent (USD) 95,315 (129,034) Weighted average number of ordinary shares in issue (No.) 249,289,747 249,289,747 6. Available for sale financial asset 2018 2017 USD USD Balance at 1st July (audited) 52,620,087 86,536,290 Change in fair value - refer note (i) below (1,538,228) 4,154,931 Balance at 31st December (unaudited) 51,081,859 90,691,221 (i) Change in fair value represents the difference in the fair value of Bonyan during the period of six months from 1stJuly 2018 to 31stDecember 2018. 7. Available for sale fair valuation reserve At 31stDecember 2018, available for sale fair valuation reserve represented the change in fair value of Group's investment in Bonyan which was classified as available for sale financial asset. This announcement has been made after due and careful enquiry; the directors of the Group accept responsibility for its content. Enquiries: Dana Group International Investments Ltd: Contact: tel: +971 (0)4 350 3530; e-mail: ir@dana-investments.com; further information on Dana Group International Investments Limited is available from the Company's website: www.dana-investments.com Keith, Bayley, Rogers & Co. Limited: Graham Atthill-Beck: tel: +44 (0)20 7464 4091; mobile: +971 (0)50 856 9408/+44 (0)750 643 4107; e-mail: Graham.Atthill-Beck@kbrl.co.uk; blackpearladvisers@gmail.com Brinsley Holman: tel: +44 (0)20 7464 4098; e-mail: Brinsley.Holman@kbrl.co.uk VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NexOptic Technology Corp. ("NexOptic" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: NXO) (OTCQX: NXOPF) (FRANKFURT: E3O1) is pleased to announce that Richard J. (Rich) Geruson has joined its Board of Directors, effective immediately. Mr. Geruson's experience spans CEO roles at Lexmark International, Phoenix Technologies and VoiceSignal Technologies, and Senior Vice President and executive positions at Nokia, IBM, Toshiba, and McKinsey & Co. As CEO of Lexmark International, a multibillion-dollar imaging technology and solutions company with 10,000 employees, he grew printer sales faster than at any time in the preceding 10 years while simultaneously executing extensive process reengineering, transforming the business from negative EBITDA and high debt to positive multi-hundred-million-dollar EBITDA and a healthy debt profile. While CEO of Phoenix Technologies, he achieved consistently high profit year-over-year for six years straight in the company's business of firmware and software for PCs, tablets, and embedded internet of things (IoT) devices. As CEO of VoiceSignal Technologies, he pioneered voice recognition software for mobile phones, resulting in an increase in shareholder value of over 10-fold and culminating in the sale of the company for 12 times its revenue. At Nokia he propelled the business from fifth-place market share to first-place in the US, and first-place in the world for the first time in its history, catapulting the stock price to more than a sevenfold increase in less than three years. "We are thrilled to welcome Rich and his remarkable business and leadership acumen to our Board of Directors," said Darcy Daugela, Chairman. "Rich brings unparalleled organizational expertise and an exceptional track record of success in manufacturing, sales, and global distribution of sophisticated consumer and business hardware products. He will be a tremendous asset to our company." DoubleTake, NexOptic's reimagined binoculars, was recently awarded GearJunkie's "Best in Show" Winter Gear 2019 award at the Outdoor Retailer Snow Show, North America's largest outdoor trade show in Denver, Colorado. The award was the latest in a string of high-profile recognitions (https://nexoptic.com/news/) for NexOptic's technology. Over the past year, NexOptic has grown its suite of optical innovations to include artificial intelligence (AI), which is garnering enthusiastic attention from the mobile device industry for its outstanding performance in low-light conditions and in reducing motion blur. The appointment of Mr. Geruson comes as NexOptic prepares to disrupt the global binocular industry with DoubleTake. "I am excited to join the Board of a company whose technology has such tremendous potential to impact many verticals in a variety of industries - from smartphone lenses to binoculars," Mr. Geruson said. "I look forward to bringing my experience and expertise to bear as we move NexOptic's sophisticated and award-winning offerings to global markets." Mr. Geruson has served on numerous public and private boards across three continents and holds graduate degrees from Oxford University, including a D.Phil. in economics. While a member of the research faculty at Harvard Business School, he wrote A Theory of Market Strategy, a book used in many business schools' curriculums. Capital Raise Subject to acceptance by the TSX-V (the Exchange), NexOptic intends to complete a non-brokered private placement of up to 9,100,000 units of NexOptic (the "Units") at an issue price of CDN $0.55 per Unit, for gross proceeds of up to CDN $5,005,000 (the "Private Placement"). Each Unit comprises one common share in the capital of NexOptic (the "NexOptic Shares") and one common share purchase warrant (each a "Warrant"). Each Warrant will entitle the holder to purchase one additional NexOptic Share at an exercise price of CDN $0.75 for a period of 24 months from the date of issuance of the Units. The net proceeds from the Private Placement are intended to fund the continued advancement of the Company's core projects and for general working capital. Finder's fees may be payable on all or portions of the Private Placement, in accordance with the policies of the Exchange. Upcoming Event NexOptic is excited to showcase its latest technologies at the upcoming Outdoor Adventure and Travel Show in Calgary on March 23-24, 2019, located at Stampede Park, BMO Centre. The Outdoor Adventure and Travel Show is Western Canada's largest showcase of outdoor gear and adventure travel experiences. NexOptic is eager to further establish its DoubleTake technology and highlight advances in its products' artificial intelligence. About NexOptic Technology Corp. NexOptic is an innovative optical development company, which aims to enhance the way we view the world around us. The Company is readying to globally launch its reimagined binoculars, the multi-award winning DoubleTake, its first consumer product engineered to disrupt the growing outdoor recreation market. DoubleTake utilizes NexOptic's high magnification lenses for a state-of-the-art digital experience. NexOptic is also working on commercializing its ground breaking-artificial intelligence ("AI") for imaging as well as exploring opportunities for the Company's innovative mobile lens designs. Utilizing Blade Optics, the Company's developing suite of optical technologies which now includes AI, NexOptic can increase aperture sizes within given depth constraints of various imaging applications for improvements to diffraction-limit and increased resolution. NexOptic's AI drastically reduces image noise and motion blur common in poor lighting imaging environments utilizing algorithms. In addition to enhancing image quality, NexOptic's AI can be used to improve long-range image stabilization and image capture in otherwise difficult lighting conditions. Blade Optics refers to NexOptic's lens designs, algorithms, and mechanics, which vary from patented to patent-pending, and includes all the Company's intellectual property and know-how. More information is available at www.nexoptic.com (https://nexoptic.com/). Media and Investor Enquiries Tel: +1 (604) 669-7330 x 202 look@nexoptic.com (mailto:look@nexoptic.com) TSX-V: NXO OTCQX: NXOPF Frankfurt: E3O1 Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including, but not limited to, statements with respect to expectations concerning the development of its sports-optic device and technology, and expected results, specifications, capabilities, and applications thereof. The reader is cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors which are difficult to predict and that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the then current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about the business and the industry and markets in which the Company operates and are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations, including, among others: risks commonly associated with the development of new technologies, including that the Company's technology, product designs and prototype are at an early stage and additional work will be required to confirm potential applications and feasibility of its technologies or bring product designs to market; the Company may not be able complete product development as currently expected; potential applications of the Company's technology are based on limited studies and may not be representative of the broader market; the risk that prototypes and designs may not achieve expected results; the Company may not be able to commercialize its technology; the Company may not be able to source components for its products on a cost-effective basis; the Company may not have access to necessary financing on acceptable terms or at all; pending or future patent applications may not be approved as contemplated or at all; and other risks inherent with technology and product development and the business of the Company. Such forward-looking statements should therefore be construed considering such factors. Other than in accordance with its legal or regulatory obligations, the Company is not under any obligation and it expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. The Rohde Schwarz R&SQPS201 Was Deployed at Denver International Airport to Evaluate New, People Screening and Advanced Security Technology Solutions to Support TSA's Security Mission and Improve the Passenger Security Experience Rohde Schwarz, a world leader forinnovative communications, information and security products for professional users, announced today its latest TSA-certified advanced checkpoint scanner, the Rohde Schwarz R&SQPS201, was purchased by Denver International Airport (DEN) and deployed to demonstrate next-generation security technology. The unit has been operational at DEN since mid-December. "We are pleased to partner with Denver International Airport, TSA and the agency's Innovation Task Force to demonstrate our QPS201 high-performance people screening system," said Scott Bausback, President and CEO of Rohde Schwarz USA, Inc. "We applaud DEN's leadership and commitment to identifying new advanced security technology to transform the passenger security screening experience and support TSA's demonstration of capabilities to meet the demands of security checkpoint operations." Deployed globally since 2015, R&S QPS scanners are flat panel solid-state millimeter wave imaging systems that safely and rapidly screen people at security checkpoints. The R&S QPS201 has achieved TSA and European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) detection certifications. TSA certification validates that the R&S QPS201 meets TSA's stringent aviation security detection requirements. The R&S QPS201 security scanner delivers high-performance security screening using safe, millimeter wave radio frequency technology to rapidly and accurately screen passengers automatically for concealed threats. For more information, please visit the QPS Learning Center http://www.rohde-schwarz.com/QPS. Rohde Schwarz The Rohde Schwarz technology group develops, produces and markets innovative communications, information and security products for professional users. The group's test and measurement, broadcast and media, aerospace defense security, networks and cybersecurity business fields address many different industry and government-sector market segments. On June 30, 2018, Rohde Schwarz had approximately 11,500 employees. The independent group achieved a net revenue of approximately EUR 2 billion in the 2017/2018 fiscal year (July to June). The company has its headquarters in Munich, Germany. Internationally, it has subsidiaries in more than 70 countries, with regional hubs in Asia and America. R&S is a registered trademark of Rohde Schwarz GmbH Co. KG. All press releases, including photos for downloading, are available on the Internet at http://www.press.rohde-schwarz.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005197/en/ Contacts: Press: Europe (headquarters): Christian Reiter, Phone: +49 89 4129 15615, E-mail: press@rohde-schwarz.com North America: Pam Sanders, Phone: +1 410 910 7908, E-mail: pam.sanders@rsa.rohde-schwarz.com Asia Pacific: Wen Shi Tong, Phone: +65 6 307-0029, E-mail: press.apac@rohde-schwarz.com Contacts for readers: Customer Support Europe, Africa, Middle East: +49 89 4129 12345 customersupport@rohde-schwarz.com Customer Support North America: +1 888 TEST RSA (+1 888 837 87 72) customer.support@rsa.rohde-schwarz.com Customer Support Latin America: +1 410 910 79 88 customersupport.la@rohde-schwarz.com Customer Support Asia Pacific: +65 65 13 04 88 customersupport.asia@rohde-schwarz.com Customer Support China: +86 800 810 8228 or +86 400 650 5896 customersupport.china@rohde-schwarz.com Wdesk Recognized as Best Software-Defined Product Workiva (NYSE:WK), the leading cloud provider of connected data, reporting and compliance solutions, today announced that its Wdesk platform was named the Best Software-Defined Product, last night at Computing's DevOps Excellence Awards dinner. The Computing DevOps Excellence Awards recognize outstanding achievement from organisations, personalities and solutions operating within the DevOps industry. Winners were selected on their superior functionality, level of ability to modernize business processes, positive customer feedback and a strong return on investment. "We are proud to win this prestigious award," said Marty Vanderploeg, CEO of Workiva. "As the global leader in connected reporting, XBRL and Inline XBRL, our Wdesk platform helps customers all over the world consolidate, connect and tag their data in a single, cloud environment so they are able to reduce risk and save time when filing reports with various regulators and other stakeholders." XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) standardizes how regulators, investors and companies analyze and consume financial data. Inline XBRL creates a single, standardized, machine-readable report that is integrated within companies' human-readable HTML filings. Workiva, which was one of the first companies to be certified by XBRL International, has been on the forefront of helping Foreign Private Issuers use XBRL tags in their U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. European companies are now adopting Wdesk to comply with the European Securities and Markets Authority's mandate for Inline XBRL for its European Single Electronic Format (ESEF) taxonomy. More than 5,000 EU issuers will be required to use this taxonomy for their annual financial reports, ending on or after January 1, 2020. Multinational companies are also using Wdesk to improve efficiency and transparency in global statutory reporting, which is a complex and painful process for reporting information to government agencies in compliance with each jurisdictions' local GAAP requirements. Wdesk users are able to connect their data, people and processes with built-in workflow, tasking and a full audit trail. "Wdesk is the only cloud platform that provides data assurance throughout the entire reporting process from ERP transactional data to final reports," said Vanderploeg. "Our Wdesk platform will continue to be a driving force in transforming financial reporting throughout the world." See the full list of DevOps Excellence Award winners here. About Workiva Workiva, the leading cloud provider of connected data, reporting and compliance solutions, is used by thousands of enterprises across 180 countries, including more than 75 percent of Fortune 500companies, and by government agencies. Our customers have linked over five billion data elements to trust their data, reduce risk and save time. For more information about Workiva (NYSE:WK), please visit workiva.com. Read the Workiva blog: www.workiva.com/blog Follow Workiva on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/workiva Like Workiva on Facebook: www.facebook.com/workiva/ Follow Workiva on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Workiva Claim not confirmed by FORTUNE or Fortune Media IP Limited. FORTUNE and FORTUNE 500 are registered trademarks of Fortune Media IP Limited and are used under license. FORTUNE and Fortune Media IP Limited are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of, Workiva Inc. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005212/en/ Contacts: Media: Kevin McCarthy Workiva Inc. press@workiva.com Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 21, 2019) - Blue Star Gold Corp. (TSXV: BAU) ("Blue Star" or the "Company") is pleased to present this update on its corporate activities and to report on its planned operations for 2019. Blue Star has decided to drill this year on its priority gold targets within the Company's 100%-owned Hood River concessions (the "Hood Property") and to map and sample in detail certain high-grade grade gold occurrences for future drilling programs. Since restructuring of its board and management in late 2018, Blue Star has been working on the planning, permitting and execution of its inaugural drill program on its 100%-owned Hood Property in the Kitikmeot region of western Nunavut. The Company began the process by meeting and consulting with Nunavut stakeholders, and has augmented its technical team by engaging expert consultants in areas of community relations and territorial permitting. Management and the technical team have completed several trips to the north beginning with the 47th Annual Yellowknife Geoscience Forum held November 19-21, 2019 and, since the new year, has travelled to Nunavut monthly, visiting nearby communities, meeting with the public, various stakeholders, Institutes of Public Government (IPGs) the Regional Inuit Authority (RIA), the Government of Nunavut and the Government of Canada. Further, Blue Star has attended forums such as the 20th annual Kitikmeot Trade Show, February 11-13, 2019 in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, and during the recent Mineral Exploration Round-up in Vancouver and the Prospectors and Developers Association Conference in Toronto, members of our board, management and technical team took advantage of opportunities to meet with delegates attending from Nunavut. Stephen Wilkinson, CEO and President, commented, "The Blue Star team has now met with several of the stakeholders and interested parties within Nunavut. Not only have we been able to introduce our Company, we have heard from parties what their interests are. We are moving forward collaboratively and look forward to ongoing open dialogue with our neighbors and landowners respecting our developing mineral projects. Such two-way communication should greatly assist Blue Star in building strong relations with the people and regulators of Nunavut. Furthermore, we are pleased to report Blue Star has commenced the process of amending and renewing existing authorizations for its planned exploration program that will include locating a new camp site and commencing a sizable drill program." Blue Star is also pleased to report that the Nunavut Planning Commission ("NPC"), on March 18, 2019, referred our application for the Hood River exploration program to the Nunavut Impact Review Board ("NIRB") for screening. Following receipt of public comments and a screening decision from the NIRB, Blue Star will commence land use licencing with the surface landowner, the Kitikmeot Inuit Association ("KIA"), and will seek to renew and amend the existing water licence administered by the Nunavut Water Board ("NWB"). Blue Star expects to hold required authorizations in time to support a late summer drill program. Hood Property and Exploration Plans - 2019 The Hood Property covers 8,015 hectares (80.15 square km) and is located 125 km west of Bathurst Inlet, Nunavut. The Hood Property lies entirely on Inuit-Owned surface and sub-surface land; Blue Star holds an agreement with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. ("NTI") for the exclusive right to explore the parcel. Priority drill targets within the Hood Property are on-strike and north of the Ulu Mining Lease's advanced Flood gold zone and are related to the 5 km long Ulu regional fold. The North Fold Nose Area (the "NFN Area") is the part of the Ulu fold that extends for 2 km from the Ulu lease boundary north, traced the axis of the fold. It is reported that several gold occurrences are located on this trend including the NFN Vein, the Bizen and the Apex. In 2014, the Company sampled the NFN Vein taking 18 channel samples that had an average width of 0.92m and graded 6.94 grams/tonne gold (g/t Au) and 7.66 grams/tonne silver (g/t Ag). BHP tested the vein with 5 diamond drill holes in 1990 and 1991. Diamond drill hole 90VD-81 tested the vein on the east fold limb and returned 6.03m grading 7.31 g/t Au, including 25.63 g/t Au over 1.54m at a vertical depth of 60m. Drill hole 91VD-111 was drilled underneath 90VD-81 the following year and intersected 9.16 g/t Au over 6.88m, including 54.94 g/t Au over 0.95m and 0.25m grading 18.2 g/t Au at a vertical depth of 95m below surface. Blue Star recognizes the NFN Vein as an excellent candidate among others for a comprehensive program of highly detailed geological mapping and sampling of the surface showings. Other Hood Property gold occurrences on or related to the Ulu fold include the Bizen and the Apex zones. The historical Bizen mineralization was sampled by BHP in 1993. Ten grab samples were obtained within the Ulu fold axis and along a 300m long gossanous occurrence. The two highest gold analyses are reported as 177,000 ppb Au and 49,700 ppb Au. The Apex zone is located 2 km south of the NFN Vein and just north of the Ulu mining lease boundary. The Apex is also localized along the Ulu fold axis. Historical work has shown the Apex zone to be up to 700m long with typical surface samples of 2-11 g/t Au over widths of approximately 1.0m. The Bizen zone, the Apex zone, and the area between the two zones are also priority targets for Blue Star's immediate exploration plan. Interim Funding As Blue Star continues its corporate development and advancement plans, the Company was funded by way of shareholder loans from Dr. Georg Pollert who is also a Director. The advances are qualified by two non-recourse notes where each is in the amount of $250,000. The settlement date under the first note will mature on December 31st, 2020 and the second note will mature on March 30th, 2021. The loans will pay simple interest of 7.5% per annum and the interest payment shall be made in cash on the earlier of the date of the repayment or on the settlement date. Subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, Blue Star will grant Bonus Shares to Dr. Pollert where the value of the Bonus Shares will equal 20% of the loans. A total of 2,000,000 Bonus Shares shall be issued by the Company and shall be priced at $0.05 each. Qualified Person Warren Robb, P.Geo., is a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"), and has reviewed and approved the geological information contained in this presentation. About Blue Star Gold Corp. Blue Star is a Vancouver-based gold and silver exploration company focused on mineral exploration and development within Nunavut, Canada. The Company through its subsidiary, Inukshuk Exploration Inc., owns the highly prospective 8,015 ha Hood River gold property located contiguous to the Ulu mining lease. Blue Star holds a definitive agreement to acquire the Ulu, an advanced gold and silver project. The Company website is under construction and Blue Star will announce the availability of the website as soon as it is available. For further information, please contact: Stephen Wilkinson, President and CEO Telephone: +1 778-379-1433 Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the Policies of the TSX-Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this Release. CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND INFORMATION This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking information. All information included herein, other than statements of historical fact, including the expected completion of the Placement and the timing thereof, and the expected use of proceeds are forward-looking statements and involves various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that the forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/43568 VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / March 21, 2019 / DIGATRADE FINANCIAL CORP (OTCQB: DIGAF), an OTC digital asset trade desk for institutions and financial technology company, has officially started implementation of its recently announced agreement with Securter Inc., the developer of leading edge security tools for credit card transactions. The top priority of this implementation is to combine the expertise of the two management teams. They have started integrating their efforts and are on-schedule to progress through the anticipated R&D, testing and customer rollout phases. Digatrade's acquisition of Securter is increasing Digatrade's profile in the fintech sector because of the immense benefit that Securter's technology brings to major financial institutions and credit card users alike. Digatrade is also preparing a suite of new investor relations resources for shareholders that will inform them in greater detail of Securter's goals in fintech as well as the company's progress in meeting these goals. Securter technology can reduce the billions of dollars of losses annually that arise from fraudulent online transactions in which the merchant never sees the customer or the credit card ("Card Not Present/CNP"). This type of transaction, CNP, represents the most rapidly growing segment of consumer spending. Digatrade's information-portal launches in coming weeks will to help DIGAF shareholders understand the business significance to them (and to the fintech industry) of Digatrade/Securter's work. Securter is engaged in research and development of the next generation of payment and online user authentication platform that is based on remote processing of Europay, MasterCard and VISA smart credit/debit cards. Securter's payment platform adapts and extends conventional best-practices technology (currently intended for physical Point of Sales / POS) to secure EMV online payments. Digatrade/Securter R&D is related to the cyber-security field in order to yield robust system architecture without dependence on any computer vulnerabilities. This removes the need for costly risk management of intermediate servers as they exist in the current standard protocols within the market. Digatrade/Securter will monetize its technology by sharing global credit card transaction-fee revenue with participating payment processors. The revenue sharing model has produced the fintech giants that operate in today's global payments system. Digatrade/Securter will thereby benefit financially from the world's existing payments infrastructure, by improving its reliability, profitability, convenience and security. ABOUT DIGATRADE: DIGATRADE is a Financial Technology "Fintech" company that offers buyside cryptocurrency transactions and liquidity to institutions through its proprietary over-the-counter trade desk. The company is also developing a next generation platform for security in the online credit card payment system, globally. The Company is owned and operated 100% by Digatrade Financial Corp., located in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is publicly listed on the OTC.QB under the trading symbol DIGAF. DIGAF is a reporting issuer in the Province of British Columbia, Canada with the British Columbia Securities Commission "BCSC" and in the United States with the Securities Exchange Commission "SEC". CORPORATE CONTACT INFORMATION: Digatrade Financial Corp 1500 West Georgia Street, 1300 Vancouver, BC V6G-2Z6 Canada Tel: +1(604) 200-0071 Fax: +1(604) 200-0072 www.digatradefinancial.com Forward-Looking Information This press release contains certain "forward-looking information". All statements, other than statements of historical fact, that address activities, events or development that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future constitute forward-looking information. This forward-looking information reflects the current expectations or beliefs of the company based on information currently available to the Company. Forward-looking information is subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking information, and even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on the Company. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to, the possibility of unanticipated costs and expenses. Any forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Although the Company believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking information are reasonable, forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such information due to the inherent uncertainty therein. SOURCE: Digatrade Financial Corp. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539694/Digatrade-Begins-Implementation-of-New-Securter-Fintech-Relationship PHOENIX, AZ / ACCESSWIRE / March 21, 2019 / For The Earth Corporation (the "Company" or "FTEG") (OTC PINK: FTEG), an emerging vertically integrated CBD producer and retailer, is proud to announce that it will be cutting its total Authorized Shares by 50% to 10 billion and reducing its forecast for capital requirements in half due to recent improvements in operational efficiency and projected growth in returns on invested capital in coming quarters. "As we navigate this transition into a fully vertically integrated CBD producer and retailer, we want our investors to know that we are committed to avoiding dilution along the way," noted FTEG CEO Nelson Grist. "We have taken a number of steps to ramp up operational efficiencies, including the establishment of a tailored product logistics facility in Phoenix. We now believe the path to strong revenue growth will be far less capital intensive than we have previously assumed." Management notes that recent increases in analyst expectations for growth in the CBD space (now anticipating a twenty-fold ramp in total sales volume over the next 36 months to over $20 billion in North America, according to several prominent forecasts) is also an important driver for the Company's reduction in capital needs and share authorization. The Company now sees both a more efficient path to initial revenue growth and a steeper growth curve beyond that point. In addition, management also notes that the Company has no immediate plans for a reverse share split. "Our assessment of our growth potential once CBD production and distribution is underway at full scale suggests no need to reverse split our shares any time on the foreseeable horizon," continued Mr. Grist. "That said, there are times when a reverse split strategy can be in the long-term best interests of shareholders. So, it's something we would consider if we believe it will augment our growth prospects. But, at present, we do not have any plans for such a move given the organic growth potential we believe we are tapping into as we ramp up our integrated CBD operations." About For The Earth Corporation For The Earth Corporation is an emerging integrated CBD producer and retailer in the United States. The Company is in the process of establishing a vertical framework that will extend from cultivation to extraction and production to a strategic retail footprint that includes multiple locations in Las Vegas and New York featuring mall kiosks, vending machines, e-commerce, and full store locations serving both the human and pet CBD markets. Two mall leases have been signed recently in Las Vegas, with another vending machine location secured in New York City. The Company plans to expand its New York vending machine penetration by the end of 2019. In addition, the Company has begun early-stage work to establish a state-of-the-art CBD extraction and production facility in Eugene, OR. Forward-Looking Statements Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this press release are forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties. See For The Earth's filings with OTC Markets, which may identify specific factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Safe Harbor Statement This release includes forward-looking statements, which are based on certain assumptions and reflect management's current expectations. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations. Some of these factors include: general global economic conditions; general industry and market conditions, sector changes and growth rates; uncertainty as to whether our strategies and business plans will yield the expected benefits; increasing competition; availability and cost of capital; the ability to identify and develop and achieve commercial success; the level of expenditures necessary to maintain and improve the quality of services; changes in the economy; changes in laws and regulations, including codes and standards, intellectual property rights, and tax matters; or other matters not anticipated; our ability to secure and maintain strategic relationships and distribution agreements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Press & Media Inquiries: EHC Branding Agency Info@EHCBrandingAgency.com (626) MJ-BRAND Corporate Contact: For The Earth Corporation 20 East Thomas Rd. Phoenix, AZ 85012 USA Contact: Nelson Grist Telephone: 602 612-8300 Email: INFO@FTEGCORP.COM SOURCE: For The Earth Corporation View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539717/For-The-Earth-Announces-Sharp-Reduction-in-Dilution-Risk-and-Authorized-Share-Total The "Freight and Logistics Market in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)-Growth, Trends, and Forecast (2019 2024)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Eastern European countries, like Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Slovakia, are among the fast growers in Europe, in terms of GDP. Such strong economic performance is prompting countries in Eastern Europe to demand a greater say in the future of the European Union. With Germany dominating the logistics market, the eastern countries have a lot of work on their hands to increase their market share. In particular, East European countries need to address poor infrastructure, political corruption, lack of competitiveness, staff shortages, etc. While Germany and the United Kingdom remain the top e-tailing markets, the fastest growth is expected to take place in Eastern Europe, with Poland leading the growth. Rapidly growing online sales, a large consumer market, access to a relatively cheap labor force, and an established logistics market make Poland an exceptionally attractive location for international e-tailers. Existing online retailers are likely to continually expand their warehouse space in the coming years, while new market players may search for suitable facilities and supply chain operators. Increasing demand for appropriate distribution space, as well as tailored logistics services, puts pressure on developers and 3PLs to adjust their offer to meet these new requirements. Despite the unstable environment, logistics operators have been clamping down cooperation year by year, offering a growing range of services with a modern technology and significant capacity. The logistics sector in Eastern Europe is a relatively young market. In Poland, there are currently 13.4 million sq. m of modern warehouses. Also driving this growth are the relatively cheap costs in CEE, which have attracted companies, such as Amazon (Slovakia) and Alibaba (Poland). Key Market Trends Growing E-commerce Propels Demand for the Logistics Industry The logistics sector is restless by the growing demand for logistics services, which is generated by the boom and evolution of e-commerce. Contrary to the basic assumption, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have seen a robust growth in the industry and continue to dominate the European economy. The evolving e-commerce has put pressures on sales channels for faster delivery and optimum supply chain. This scenario brings opportunities for the third-party logistics and warehousing services. In the past, real estate and production were the factors driving CEE. Currently, e-commerce is in the same position, both in domestic, as well as foreign markets. Poland and the Czech Republic mainly export to the west, but currently Brexit is expected to affect the industry, and confidence in the region may benefit from the situation. If firms cannot be located in the United Kingdom, they need to be on the continent. CEE is the current preferred location over western counterparts. But, as per the latest sources, most of the votes favored against Brexit. The e-commerce market in this region may be lagging behind other more mature European markets, but it is on its way to catching up over the next few years. Consumers are creating a rapidly growing demand toward a multi-channel market, for both products and services. Retailers, especially in the online food industry, are looking toward innovative e-logistics to help them grow in the future. Poland-Largest Logistics Market in the Central Eastern European Region The Polish logistics market, the largest market in the Central and Eastern European region, has grown notably since the opening of its national borders. Poland is among the fastest-growing logistics markets in Europe, due to its strong value proposition, proximity to Western Europe, and extensive transportation infrastructure. The logistics market has been developing at a double-digit pace for several years. Historically, the majority of warehouse space was located in the Warsaw area. However, regional markets have been growing more dynamically and account for over two-thirds of the current market. With around 12 million sq m of modern logistics space across Poland, the majority of supply is concentrated in the five most-developed markets. Big-box logistics projects are generally located along motorways and exit roads outside of the administrative borders of the largest Polish cities, but there are also multiple projects within city borders, often for smaller occupiers, such as small business units (SBUs). With the ever-increasing cross-border trade, the country is also looking into the modernization of border infrastructure with the cooperation of the neighboring countries, as this is vital and supplements the growth of cross-border trade. Located at a strategic geographical location connecting Western Europe with Russia and China, the cross trade (international road transport between two different countries performed by a road motor vehicle registered in a third country) through the country is also very high. Competitive Landscape The logistics market landscape of Central and Eastern Europe is fragmented in nature, with a mix of global and regional players. Many major Western European companies have factories in CEE because the cost of labor is low. It is known that the Western Europe is home to some of the global logistics giants. The aforementioned scenario has brought many western logistics players into the current market. Additionally, regional and global developers are adding new warehouses and distribution facilities at a record pace. The facilities and infrastructure can be built and operated at less cost in countries, like Poland or Czech Republic, and still serve markets of high-cost countries, such as Germany, Switzerland, and France. Furthermore, some of the logistics players are establishing logistics hubs in Central Europe and serve the Eastern European countries. For instance, DHL purchased 60,000 square meters of land at the Vienna Airport to act as a freighter hub for Eastern Europe, and opened up the region to all modes of transport. There have been significant merger and acquisition activities by the global logistics players to gain advantage of the Eastern European growing logistics market. For instance, by the end of 2017, Yusen Logistics acquired Tibbett Logistics, a wholly-owned subsidiary of UK-based Keswick Enterprises Group. Key Topics Covered 1 Introduction 1.1 Scope of the Market 1.2 Market Definition 1.3 Executive Summary 2 Research Methodology 2.1 Study Deliverables 2.2 Study Assumptions 2.3 Analysis Methodology 2.4 Research Phases 3 Market Insights 3.1 Current Market Scenario 3.2 Technological Trends and Automation 3.3 Government Regulations and Initiatives 3.4 Brief on Freight Rates 3.5 Insights on Intermodal Transportation 3.6 Review and Commentary on CEE Countries' Relation with Western European Countries (Analyst's View) 3.7 Spotlight- Role of CEE Countries in Belt and Road Initiative 4 Market Dynamics (Drivers, Restraints, and Opportunities) 4.1 Drivers 4.2 Restraints 4.3 Opportunities 4.4 Porter's Five Forces Analysis 4.5 Industry Value Chain Analysis 5 Market Segmentation 5.1 By Function 5.1.1 Freight Transport 5.1.1.1 Road 5.1.1.2 Shipping and Inland Water 5.1.1.3 Air 5.1.1.4 Rail 5.1.2 Freight Forwarding 5.1.3 Warehousing 5.1.4 Courier, Express, and Parcel 5.1.5 Value-added Services 5.1.6 Key Quantitative and Qualitative Insights on Other Emerging Areas, Such as Cold Chain Logistics, Return Logistics and Logistics Tech Developments 5.2 By End User 5.2.1 Manufacturing and Automotive 5.2.2 Oil and Gas, Mining and Quarrying 5.2.3 Distributive Trade (Wholesale and Retail Segments and FMCG included) 5.2.4 Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry 5.2.5 Construction 5.2.6 Healthcare and Pharmaceutical 5.2.7 Other End Users 5.3 By Geography 5.3.1 Poland 5.3.2 Czech Republic 5.3.3 Slovakia 5.3.4 Austria 5.3.5 Hungary 5.3.6 Croatia 5.3.7 Belarus 5.3.8 Romania 5.3.9 Rest of CEE 6 Competitive Landscape 6.1 Mergers and Acquisitions, Joint Ventures, Collaborations and Agreements 6.2 Market Concentration Overview 6.3 Strategies Adopted by Major Players 7 Company Profiles 7.1 Deutsche Post DHL Group 7.2 Yusen Logistics Co. Ltd. 7.3 CEE Logistics AS 7.4 Hellmann Worldwide Logistics Ltd. 7.5 CEVA Logistics 7.6 Raben Group 7.7 Kerry Logistics Network Limited 7.8 GIES Logistics 7.9 De Sammensluttede Vognmnd (DSV) 7.10 Rohlig Suus 8 Other Companies in the Report Include 8.1 Prologis, PKP Cargo, GEODIS, Kuehne Nagel AG, Logicor, Gebrder Weiss, Feige, JAS Worldwide, Rail Cargo Logistics, CSAD Logistik List not Exhaustive 9 Appendix 9.1 GDP Distribution, by Activity, Key Countries 9.2 Insights on Capital Flows 9.3 Economic Statistics- Transport and Storage Sector, Contribution to Economy of Key Countries 9.4 External Trade Statistics- Export and Import, by Product 9.5 Insights on Key Export Destinations 9.6 Insights on Key Import Origin Countries For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/pfzhnf/the_freight_and?w=4 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005443/en/ Contacts: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 Related Topics: Logistics A win in all six core categories affirms Vetter as a trusted solution provider Vetter performs very well in customer-critical aspects Results directly reflect the experience of pharma and biotech companies in working alongside a trusted contractor More than 120 service providers assessed to determine the award recipients Life Science Leader, a leading trade press publication has awarded Vetter, a global operating Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO), in all six core categories of the 2019 Leadership Award. The award was granted during a ceremony in New York City on March 20. Unlike other awards, there is no application process and the winners are determined by customers ranking their experience with service providers they have actually worked with. Because results cannot be influenced in any way, the awards signify a high level of accomplishment that those companies have attained in supporting the needs of pharma and biotech customers. Vetter won the award in all core award categories quality, expertise, reliability, capabilities, compatibility, and service. This is an affirmation of the company's hard work in its daily efforts for customers and a motivation for continued improvement towards excellence as a solution provider. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005460/en/ Pride and satisfaction in accepting the 2019 CMO Leadership Award. Oskar Gold, Vetter's Senior Vice President Key Account Management, Marketing/Corporate Communications and Customer Project Management. Picture source: Vetter Pharma International GmbH "Vetter is thrilled to win this award, particularly in all six core categories. Together these areas are among the key performance indicators cited by our customers when doing business with us, and well represent our continuous efforts to meet their expectations," said Vetter Managing Director Peter Soelkner. "We are especially pleased to receive such positive feedback from our customer base in the US, Europe and Asia as it underscores our efforts to serve the global pharma and biotech markets," added Oskar Gold, Vetter's Senior Vice President Key Account Management, Marketing/Corporate Communications and Customer Project Management. "Each year, the value that CMOs bring to individual pharma and biotech companies increases, as does the overall importance of the service sector to our entire drug development and manufacturing industry," says Louis Garguilo, Chief Editor and Conference Chair, Outsourced Pharma. "Our congratulations to all of this year's Award winners you keep the industry on the path to further success." The CMO Leadership Awards is an annual event now in its eighth year. In determining the award recipients, Life Science Leader teams up with Industry Standard Research (ISR) as the research conductor. For the 2019 award, more than 120 contract manufacturers were assessed by 23 performance metrics in ISR's annual Contract Manufacturing Quality Benchmarking survey. Participants were recruited from pharma and biotech companies of all sizes and screened for decision-making influence related to working with contract manufacturing partners. Respondents only evaluate those companies with which they have worked on an outsourced project within the past 18 months. Through this level of qualification, survey responses are based on actual involvement with contract manufacturers and clear experiential data. Find the Vetter press kit and more background information here About Vetter Headquartered in Ravensburg, Germany, Vetter is a global leading contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with production facilities in Germany and the United States. Currently employing 4,500 individuals worldwide, the company has long-term experience in supporting biotechnology and pharmaceutical customers both large and small. Vetter services range from early stage development support including clinical manufacturing, to commercial supply and numerous packaging solutions for vials, syringes and cartridges. As a leading solution provider, Vetter appreciates its responsibility to support the needs of its customers by developing devices that contribute to increased patient safety, convenience, and enhanced compliance. Great importance is also given to social responsibility including environmental protection and sustainability. Learn more about Vetter at www.vetter-pharma.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005460/en/ Contacts: Vetter Pharma International GmbH Markus Kirchner Corporate Spokesperson Media Relations Phone: +49 (0)751-3700-3729 E-mail: PRnews@vetter-pharma.com WEST PALM BEACH, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 21, 2019 / Saveene Corp www.saveene.com (Saveene, the Company). The company specializes in fractional yachts and co op or co ownership of yachts and vessels ranging from 34' to 64' fully managed and crewed solutions. Share our joy and join us at the West Palm Beach International Boat Show - please visit us at booth 821. The countdown to the 2019 West Palm Beach International Boat Show is on, and it's a yachting event you do not want to miss! As the exclusive co op and fractional yacht exhibitor, Saveene will have over a dozen various new and unique yacht co ownership and fractional yacht options to choose from. To find out how you can own a luxurious yacht which you could enjoy with your friends and family for a fraction of the whole operating cost . We have developed a sophisticated booking system with no blackout dates and use as you want dates. No fixed weeks or months this is your time and your yachting experience. Contact us today for more information www.saveene.com. About us Saveene Corp www.saveene.com (Saveene, the Company). The company is entering its 10th year of operations and has offered similar programs in Canada with smaller vessels designed for lake cruising and much larger yachts in the 100' range in Spain. The company also offers luxury villa rentals in Spain, Mexico, and Costa Rica Something our co-op owners have priority over and at super discounted prices. The co op program launch in West Palm Beach, Florida offers a unique luxury yacht affordable co ownership program. At Saveene - we offer a truly unique one of a kind turnkey co op ownership program. With Saveene we have really sharpened our pencil and created a no black out sale anytime program. With most fractional and time share type programs the end user is restricted to the dates, times, and specific months or usage they can enjoy the yacht. With Saveene we have created a unique algorithm and a sophisticated booking system which will allow our guests and yacht owners to sail when they want and how they want. All that is required for Saveene co op owners to do is board the vessel and choose the desired itinerary. Saveene crew and captain will take care of the rest. Contact: www.saveene.com Saveene@saveene.com TOLL FREE 1 855 60 Yacht Text Yacht 797979 SOURCE: Saveene.com Inc View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539702/Fractional-Yachts-Offered-by-Saveene The Sysdig Cloud-Native Intelligence Platform continues to provide visibility inside cloud-native applications and help enterprises secure their containers Sysdig, Inc., the cloud-native intelligence company, today announced that Computing, the UK's leading business technology publication for IT leaders, has named Sysdig the winner of the Best DevOps Security Tool during their DevOps Excellence Awards ceremony on March 20. The Computing DevOps Excellence Awards honors outstanding achievements from organizations, personalities, and solutions operating within the DevOps space. Sysdig has pioneered the industry's first platform that unifies cloud-native visibility and security, enabling enterprises to operate reliable and secure containerized applications. This award recognizes the value the Sysdig Cloud-Native Intelligence Platform brings to the DevOps community. "Sysdig was born in the cloud with a laser focus on enabling DevOps to adopt modern, cloud-native architectures by providing the right data with context at the right time. We expect enterprise adoption to continue to scale this year as leaders realize the value in having one tool to deliver both cloud-native visibility and security. This award further reinforces the strength of Sysdig's security and visibility tool," said Apurva Dave, chief marketing officer at Sysdig. Enterprises are adopting a cloud-native architecture for its speed of development, multi-cloud scaling capabilities, and lower total cost of ownership; however, DevOps and security teams tasked with translating cloud-native architectures into operational reality struggle with ensuring reliable, secure applications. The key challenge they face is a loss of visibility into their clouds, containers, and applications. This is especially painful because existing security, monitoring, and APM tools simply lack the in-depth visibility and rich context needed to be relevant in cloud-native environments. Sysdig has given DevOps teams, security teams, and service owners a single tool that provides security and visibility into operational status of the software and infrastructure that they manage, but at the massive scale that enterprises require. By offering a unified approach, Sysdig is able to deliver more data for higher visibility and a more complete view of the environment, while operating at a 10 times greater scale than before, with management and control that the largest organizations in the world require. The Sysdig platform combines ContainerVision with ServiceVision, the company's patented data collection and enrichment technologies that automatically provide massive amounts of context around applications and events to give enterprises a complete view inside of a cloud-native environment. Unlike traditional approaches, the Sysdig Cloud-Native Intelligence Platform was built on an open core and with an understanding of the modern DevSecOps workflow across Kubernetes, Docker, and both private and public clouds. Sysdig has experienced rapid growth over the last year which includes more than tripling the number of Fortune 500 customer deployments and nearly doubling its global employee count to keep up with demand for its combined visibility and security solution. This award comes on the heels of winning three 2019 Cyber Defense Magazine InfoSec Awards at RSA Conference for Sysdig's commercial cloud-native security tools and the company's open source container security project, Falco, a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Sandbox Project. About Sysdig Sysdig (Twitter: @sysdig) is the cloud-native intelligence company. Enterprises depend on Sysdig to deliver reliable, secure containerized applications. We have created the only unified platform to deliver container security, monitoring, and forensics in a microservices-friendly architecture. Our open source technologies have attracted a community of over a million developers, administrators, and other IT professionals looking for deep visibility into applications and containers. Our cloud-native intelligence platform monitors and secures millions of containers across hundreds of enterprises, including Fortune 500 companies and web-scale properties. Learn more at www.sysdig.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005555/en/ Contacts: Amanda McKinney, 280blue, Inc. amanda@280blue.com LONDON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Africa's legal cannabis industry could be worth more than $US 7.1 billion annually by 2023 if legislation is introduced in a number of the continent's major markets, European-based market intelligence and strategic consultancy firm Prohibition Partners has found in its latest report, released today. The African Cannabis Report - the first detailed report on the legal cannabis industry in Africa, finds that the continent could reap significant rewards through the legalisation of cannabis. The report includes detailed market value forecasts, regulatory timeline analysis, consumption data and healthcare analyses for nine key markets, including Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Key findings of the report include: International demand offers a strong opportunity to unlock the potential value of Africa's legally produced cannabis, which could be worth up to $US 7.1 billion annually by 2023. legally produced cannabis, which could be worth up to annually by 2023. Annual prevalence rates of cannabis use in Africa (13.2%) cement the region as having one of the highest consumption rates around the world. (13.2%) cement the region as having one of the highest consumption rates around the world. Africa is home to five of the world's top 30 countries for cannabis prevalence among adult populations (aged 15-64) with over 76m users. is home to five of the world's top 30 countries for cannabis prevalence among adult populations (aged 15-64) with over users. The region has a long history of cannabis cultivation and many farmers have turned to illegal cannabis cultivation as the only means of subsistence since the decline in demand for other crops such as tobacco. Assuming there is full legalisation and regulation of the cannabis industry, South Africa and Nigeria potentially represent the region's two largest value medicinal cannabis markets going forward, worth US$667m to South Africa and US$75m to Nigeria by 2023. and potentially represent the region's two largest value medicinal cannabis markets going forward, worth to and to by 2023. Should the law change, NGOs, charities and other donors who provide a significant proportion of the region's healthcare supplies will be an essential partner in providing access to legal medicinal cannabis products due to the inaccessibility of healthcare services. Ahead of the launch of the report, Daragh Anglim, Managing Director at Prohibition Partners, explained: "A regulated legal cannabis market could be transformative to patients, farmers and economies across Africa. From a financial standpoint, Africa could reap significant rewards through the legalisation of cannabis, with international demand offering a strong commercial opportunity for cannabis cultivation. "Despite moves to legalise in several key markets, cannabis remains illegal across vast swathes of the continent as the great majority of African governments have yet to follow the trend of legalisation that is sweeping across Europe, North America and Latin America. "It is currently estimated that 38,000 tonnes of illegal cannabis is produced across Africa each year, with a market value of billions of dollars. This demonstrates the clear potential for an economic boom for African countries that actively seek to legalise and regulate their cannabis market." The report will be published on 21/03/2019, and can be downloaded on Prohibition Partner's website www.prohibitionpartners.com. About Prohibition Partners Within two years, we have become the world's leading provider of market insights and strategic consultancy for this emerging frontier. We firmly believe that data, insights and education will unlock the societal and commercial potential of cannabis. Our research and content teams routinely share the latest legislative developments and key trends in the industry - information that is regularly cited by political leaders, investment banks and Fortune 500 companies. Our consultancy team works with investors, operators and regulators to identify and execute opportunities across multiple jurisdictions. We advise our private clients on licensing, regulatory and business opportunities. (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/717815/Prohibition_Partners_Logo.jpg ) (Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/839435/Africa_Cannabis_Market_Value.jpg ) Marijuana News TodayPot legalization in the U.S. has been a steady march of progress so far this year, but in the marijuana news today we have our first blow to the movement in 2019 as New York drops the potential marijuana legalization from its budget.New York marijuana legalization has been a hot topic this year since Governor Andrew Cuomo came out in support of legalizing pot in the state. Since then, however, progress has slowed, leading to Cuomo dropping marijuana revenue from the state budget.The good news is that Cuomo remains in support of marijuana legalization in New York, even if dropping it from the budget is a setback."For us, marijuana is a relatively. Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. Stable net income in 2018: -1% vs 2017 Cost structure under control in a sustainable way Financial structure adapted to ambitions Regulatory News: THERACLION (ISIN: FR0010120402; Ticker: ALTHE, eligible for the PEA-PME equity investment plan), an innovative company specializing in the development of medical equipment for echotherapy, notably for varicose veins, announces today its annual results 2018 ended 31 December 2018. David Caumartin, CEO of Theraclion, declares: "After the announcement on February 12, 2019 of the financing agreement of 4.8 million to be raised to 11.8 million, the publication of the 2018 annual resultsmakes it possible to shine a light on another line of work undertaken in recent months: a strong and lasting reduction in the cost structure, in the order of 1 million per year. Theraclion has now a financial structure and a cost structure adapted to its development. Our echotherapy solution is gradually adopted by specialists. Nearly 800 treatments were performed in 2018, up 45%. The threshold of 2,000 cumulative treatments for historical pathologies, thyroid nodules and breast adenofibroma has been crossed. In 2019, Theraclion will capitalize on its historical know-how to deploy its technology on varicose vein treatment and offer an innovative solution: non-invasive, without postoperative pain and without anesthetist." Results of Theraclion SA in 2018 In thousands of euros 31/12/2018 31/12/2017 Change Sales 1,928 2,429 -21% Subsidies 11 393 -97% Other revenues 1 0 n.a. Total operating revenue 1,940 2,822 -31% Purchases of goods (1,080) (1,436) -24% External costs (3,386) (3,790) -10% Personnel costs (3,766) (4,104) -8% Other operating expenses (685) (592) 16% Total operating costs (8,918) (9,922) -10% Operating income/(loss) (6,977) (7,098) -2% Net financial items (274) (256) 7% Net non-recurring items (72) (18) 300%. Research tax credit 1,179 1,148 3% Net income/(loss) (6,144) (6,224) -1% Average headcount (FTE) 29 32 -9% Accounts approved by the Board of Directors on March 18, 2019. The audit procedures for the financial statements for fiscal year 2018 have been completed and the certification report will be issued after verification of the management report. 2018 sales: 1.9 million Theraclion's sales amounted to 1,928,000 at the end of 2018. Equipment sales, which represent more than 77% of the business ( 1,495,000), were impacted by an unfavorable base effect. 2017 was marked by a significant one-off sale of 5 machines to the Chinese subsidiary. The number of sold machines restated for this exceptional sale remains relatively stable: 7 Echopulse machines sold in 2018, compared to 6 in 2017. Recurring revenue, consisting of the sale of consumables and services, doubled in 2018, from 154 K to 306 K , in line with the increase in installed capacity. Consumable turnover came to 180,000. It is growing faster (+ 97%) than the number of treatments (+ 45%), as treatment centers are restoring their stocks. Services revenue reflects the underwriting of system maintenance contracts at the end of the warranty period. Equipment rental revenue amounted to 127,000 at the end of 2018. External revenue generated by Theraclion SA and its subsidiaries rose by 8% to K 1,932. Stable net income due to strict and sustainable cost control In line with its strategy to develop an innovative treatment for varicose veins using echotherapy, Theraclion reorganized in 2018 by concentrating its sales forces on its historically exploitable markets and adapting its Echopulse solution to varicose veins. This reorganization made it possible to adapt the cost structure to the strategic needs of the company and thus reduce salary expenses by 20% on an annual basis, while maintaining the R D investments required for the company's strategic ambitions. Total R D costs amounted to 3.6 million (versus 3.8 million in 2017), with more than 50% of the workforce dedicated to it. In 2018, operating expenses were reduced by 1.0 million. Merchandise purchases declined by 24%, a little more than the decline in sales (-21%), illustrating the productivity gains made. External expenses decreased by 10% to 3.4 million, even though clinical expenses rose sharply as a result of the finalization of the clinical study on the treatment of varicose veins and continued recruitment in the Multicenter trial in the United States on breast fibroadenoma treatment. Staff costs amounted to 3.8 million, down 8%. During the year, Theraclion reduced its team to the only resources needed to implement its refocused strategy. The workforce at the end of 2018 is 22 employees, compared with 33 at the end of 2017. After taking into account the financial loss of 281,000 for the year, mainly related to interest on the repayable advance TUCE, and a research tax credit of 1,179,000, up 3%, the net result 2018 shows a loss of 6,144,000, stable compared to 2017. Evolution of cash flow and continuity of operations At December 31, 2018, Theraclion's available cash position amounted to 0.9 million. On February 12, 2019, the company announced the setting up of a 4.8 million financing, which could be raised to 11.8 million on investors' option. This funding agreement, in tranches, has been calibrated to give Theraclion the ability to finance its developments in the treatment of varicose veins, as it progresses. The cash injection of 4.8 million in February 2019, expected sales growth in 2019, the reimbursement of tax credits and the financing line put in place in June 2018 with Nice Green will allow to provide funding for Theraclion for the next 12 months. Outlook 2019 2018 was a year of transition towards the development of a new varicose vein treatment. The clinical study conducted on the exercise gave very good results. At the end of 2018, Theraclion applied for a market access authorization, via the filing of an application for CE marking in Europe and via starting discussion with the FDA in the United States. In 2019, supported by the additional cash contribution of February 2019 and a strengthened board of directors, Theraclion will begin to deploy its operational objectives: Reinforce the efficacy of varicose vein treatment with Echopulse via a significant clinical study of more than 200 treatments on European and American sites; Encourage the membership of Key Opinion Leaders (KOL), mainly in Germany and the United States; Finalize the adaptation to the pathology of varicose veins in the high intensity Echopulse ultrasound treatment robot, which is now specifically developed for the non-invasive ablation of breast adenofibromas and thyroid nodules. The company anticipates for 2019 to obtain the CE marking and the recruitment of the first patients for its clinical study. On its historical activities (thyroid nodules and breast fibroadenoma), Theraclion intends to continue the commercial dynamic based on the existing commercial system, which should result in a slight increase in sales over the year. The company will also finalize the recruitment of its multicentric study in the United States. About Theraclion Theraclion is developing an innovative high-tech echotherapy solution using therapeutic ultrasound for the treatment of varicose veins. With its expertise in echotherapy for the non-invasive ablation of breast adenofibromas and thyroid nodules, pathologies for which the company has obtained CE marking and for which it commercializes treatments, Theraclion is adapting its solution to provide an innovative solution non-invasive, with no post-operative pain and without an anesthetist for the treatment of varicose veins. This venous pathology is highly prevalent worldwide and is the cause of approximately 5 million procedures per year according to the Millennium Research Varicose Vein Device Market Study 2015. Theraclion's Echopulse technological solution is a high-tech, precise, easy-to-use and easy-to-handle ultrasound medical imaging tool for practitioners. Located in Malakoff, near Paris, Theraclion brings together a team of 25 people, more than half of whom are dedicated to R&D and clinical trials. For more information, please visit Theraclion's website: www.theraclion.com Theraclion is traded on Euronext Growth Paris Eligible for the PEA-PME equity investment plan Ticker: ALTHE ISIN code: FR0010120402 LEI: 9695007X7HA7A1GCYD29 Translation for information purposes only. In case of discrepancy between the French and English versions of this press release, only the French version should be deemed valid. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005577/en/ Contacts: Theraclion David Caumartin CEO Tel.: +33 (0)1 55 48 90 70 David.caumartin@theraclion.com The robotic platform for extracting and screening antibiotic activities from bacterial strains is now operational for the analysis of several hundred strains monthly; Bpifrance paid 1.5m to DEINOVE as part of the first milestone payment of the AGIR Programme. Regulatory News: DEINOVE (Euronext Growth Paris: ALDEI), a French biotech company that uses a disruptive approach to develop innovative antibiotics and bio-based active ingredients for cosmetics and nutrition, announces that it has successfully completed the first key milestone of the AGIR program Antibiotics against Resistant Infectious Germs which is supported by the Investments for the Future Program. This milestone triggered the payment of 1.5m. The AGIR program aims to explore the antimicrobial potential of rare bacterial strains with the objective of identifying new antibiotic structures and developing innovative treatments to address the health challenge of increasing antimicrobial resistance. The goal for DEINOVE is to accelerate the screening of antibiotic activities of multiple strains under various conditions in order to quickly detect new antimicrobial structures. The first stage of the AGIR program led to the development of a robotic platform for extracting and screening strains. The high-tech equipment has been consolidated and the experimental protocols validated. "With our robotic platform, we now have a unique tool to explore the potential of many rare microorganisms, both from our proprietary library, our targeted collection activities, and samples provided by our research partners1. First bacterial extracts of interest have been identified and are currently being dereplicated, in order to identify the molecule that is causing the antibiotic activity and verify its innovative character. We want to move fast because antibiotic resistance is progressing rapidly throughout the world and represents a major danger to mankind with projections on deaths amounting to 10 million from 2050 onwards2 says Georges GAUDRIAULT, Scientific Director of DEINOVE. The division Next-generation anti-infectives which is one of DEINOVE's strategic pillars was initially developed by DEINOBIOTICS, a subsidiary wholly-owned by DEINOVE. A decision was taken to merger DEINOBIOTICS into DEINOVE through a total asset transfer on November 1, 2018, after which DEINOBIOTICS was removed from the Trade and Companies Register. ABOUT THE AGIR PROGRAM The AGIR program Antibiotics Against Resistant Infectious Germs was selected in 2017 by the Investments for the Future Program and receives from Bpifrance a financial support of 14.6m over 5 years. AGIR, a platform dedicated to the search for unprecedented antibiotic structures from rare bacterial strains The AGIR program aims to explore a wide-ranging biodiversity, mainly rare micro-organisms in order to identify and develop a portfolio of drug candidates. While the world lacks new antibiotics, research is still predominantly focused on a small number of micro-organisms of interest or on the construction by chemical synthesis of molecules derived from existing drugs. Conversely, the AGIR program is developing new methods of collection, culture, evaluation of the antibiotic potential of rare bacterial strains, and optimization of the molecules of interest. The AGIR program is run with the Charles Viollette Institute which brings its expertise in enzymatic engineering and characterization. An ambitious collaborative project strengthened by targeted strategic partnerships to broaden the scope of research Capitalizing on its technology that allows it to automate and accelerate the analysis of large quantities of strains, DEINOVE aims to maximize the opportunities to discover new antibiotic structures by expanding its field of research beyond its own bacterial library. The Company has entered into partnerships with several companies, including bioMerieux and Naicons, with portfolios of diverse strains collected as part of their pharmaceutical activities. ABOUT DEINOVE DEINOVE is a French biotechnology company, committed to innovate in a radical way, in order to help meet the challenges of antibiotic resistance and the transition to a sustainable production model for the cosmetics and nutrition industries. DEINOVE has developed a unique and comprehensive expertise in the field of rare bacteria that it can decipher, culture, and optimize to disclose the untapped potential and induce them to produce biobased molecules with activities of interest on an industrial scale. To do so, DEINOVE has been building and documenting since its creation an unparalleled biodiversity bank that it exploits thanks to a unique technological platform in Europe. DEINOVE is organized around two areas of expertise: ANTIBIOTICS, new-generation anti-infectives : DEINOVE is preparing to enter a first antibiotic candidate into Phase II. The Company is also pursuing the systematic exploration of biodiversity to supply its portfolio with new leads, drawing notably on partnerships with Naicons and bioMerieux (AGIR program supported by Bpifrance). : DEINOVE is preparing to enter a first antibiotic candidate into Phase II. The Company is also pursuing the systematic exploration of biodiversity to supply its portfolio with new leads, drawing notably on partnerships with Naicons and bioMerieux (AGIR program supported by Bpifrance). BIOACTIVES, Active ingredients of natural origin with cosmetics as the first market and potential in nutrition and health: DEINOVE already markets a first innovative active ingredient, a second in partnership with Greentech, while two others are in development with Oleos (Hallstar Group). It also runs a program in animal nutrition with Groupe Avril. Several other partnerships are also ongoing. Within the Euromedecine science park located in Montpellier, DEINOVE employs 62 employees, mainly researchers, engineers, and technicians, and has more than 300 patent applications internationally. The Company has been listed on EURONEXT GROWTH since April 2010. Visit www.deinove.com 1 DEINOVE has initiated research collaborations with the Italian biotech company Naicons and the diagnostic specialist bioMerieux, which provide the Company with a range of diverse strains. Other partnerships of this nature are under discussion. 2 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-30416844 View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005613/en/ Contacts: Investors Coralie Martin Communication, Marketing and Investor Relations Ph.: +33 (0)4 48 19 01 60 coralie.martin@deinove.com Media ALIZE RP Aurore Gangloff Catherine Megelas Ph.: +33 (0)1 44 54 36 66 deinove@alizerp.com CALGARY, AB / ACCESSWIRE / March 21, 2019 / CanadaBis Capital Inc. "TSXV: CANB.P" ("CanadaBis" or the "Company"), an Alberta capital pool corporation listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, and 1926360 Alberta Ltd. doing business as Stigma Pharmaceuticals ("Stigma"), a recreational and medical cannabis and cannabis products company with a facility located in Red Deer, Alberta, are pleased to announce they are in the final stages of completing their amalgamation (the "Amalgamation"). This Amalgamation will constitute a Qualifying Transaction of CanadaBis and upon completion thereof CanadaBis will be a Tier 2 Life Sciences Issuer. Under the CPC Policies, CanadaBis was to have completed its Qualifying Transaction by March 11, 2019. The recent announcement relating to the suspension of trading relates to CanadaBis missing this deadline. However, CanadaBis has an additional 90 days from that date and fully intends to complete the above noted transaction. Trading of the shares of CanadaBis will remain suspended until the Qualifying Transaction is completed. About Stigma - Stigma has developed a commercial "craft cannabis" grow facility located on land it purchased in the Red Deer County. Stigma currently has 42 proprietary cannabis varieties with a wide range of terpene and potency profiles. It holds a lease and option to purchase a 66,000sq ft facility located on its lands. The facility has currently been built out for 22,000sq ft of cultivation to meet demands of recreational cannabis, as well as medicinal consumption needs. The facility is currently set up for multiple grow rooms, drying rooms, a packaging and processing room, a shipping area and a secure product storage area. Stigma recently received a Cultivation License and a Processing License for cannabis from Health Canada. "Phase 1" of the facility is designed to produce 1,500 kg per annum. "Phase 2" will involve the raising and investment of additional capital and an expansion to 16,000 kgs per annum. The founders of Stigma have invested over 2 years of research and development to determine optimal cannabinoid profiles and yield. Stigma has also applied for a Sales License. Stigma Pharmaceuticals looks to become one of the few vertically integrated craft companies in this market space. All information contained in this news release with respect to CanadaBis and Stigma was supplied by the parties respectively for inclusion herein. Completion of the Transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to, acceptance of the Transaction by the TSX Venture Exchange. There can be no assurance that the Transaction will be completed as proposed or at all. Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the filing statement to be prepared in connection with the Transaction, any information released or received with respect to the Transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon. Trading in the securities of a capital pool company should be considered highly speculative. The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. For further information, please contact: Gregory Smith Tel: (587) 356-5625 Email: greg.smith@oakridgefinancial.ca Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE: CanadaBis Capital Inc. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/539759/CanadaBis-Capital-Inc-and-1926360-Alberta-Ltd-dba-Stigma-Pharmaceuticals-in-the-Final-Stages-of-Proposed-Amalgamation NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Mobile TeleSystems Public Joint Stock Company ("Mobile TeleSystems" or the "Company") (NYSE: MBT). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980. The investigation concerns whether Mobile TeleSystems and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices. [Click here to join a class action] On November 20, 2018, Mobile TeleSystems disclosed that it had reserved approximately $840 million to cover potential liability concerning investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") and Department of Justice ("DOJ") into the Company's former operations in Uzbekistan. On this news, Mobile TeleSystems' American depositary receipt ("ADR") price fell $0.64 per share, or nearly 8%, to close at $7.45 per share on November 20, 2018. Then, on March 7, 2019, the DOJ announced that Mobile TeleSystems and its subsidiary had entered into an agreement with the DOJ and SEC to pay a combined $850 million in penalties to resolve charges arising from its role in a scheme to pay $420 million in bribes in Uzbekistan. Following this announcement, Mobile TeleSystems' ADR price fell $0.24 per share, or 3.08%, to close at $7.54 per share on March 7, 2019, damaging investors. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com. CONTACT: Robert S. Willoughby Pomerantz LLP rswilloughby@pomlaw.com Its not just infrastructure loans, overall lending to industry too has shown a reviving trend after staying in the negative for two consecutive years. Does a recent spike seen in bank lending to infrastructure offer early signs of recovery in the economy? In the first nine months of financial year 2019, credit growth to infrastructure sector stood at 10.8 percent, growing at double digits after a gap of four years. For clarity, lets look at the growth figures in the previous years. In financial year 2018, credit growth to infrastructure contracted by 1.7 percent, in FY17 by 6.1 percent and in FY 16, infra credit grew by 4.4 percent. In FY 15, the growth was 10.5 percent and thats the point to which growth has returned now. Its not just infrastructure loans, overall lending to industry too has shown a reviving trend after staying in the negative for two consecutive years. Credit to industries grew by 1.9 percent in the first nine months of this fiscal year. While this is no significant jump, one must remember that the credit growth to industries was flat in FY 18 (0.7 percent) and was negative in FY17 (-1.9). One reason why banks shut doors to industry in recent years was risk aversion following increased scrutiny by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Following the NPA-clean up programme and punitive provisioning imposed on banks which failed to disclose bad loans, banks were more keen to focus on low-risk retail loans instead of large non-retail loans. Lower demand in a slowing economy and absence of fresh private investments in large projects too added to low credit off take. Banks may, however, be re-looking at these projects again with much of the pains behind them and governments infra push has contributed to the revival. Contradictory signals What is puzzling is that while there is a revival in bank credit to infrastructure and industries, suggesting recovery in economic activity, that revival signal is not shown in the factory output numbers. Since June, 2018 (7 percent), the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) has been falling consistently, with the only exception being October, 2018 when the index recorded a sudden spike of 8.4 percent. In January, 2019, when the latest set of the IIP data was out, the reading was 1.7 percent. There are no signs of demand-revival yet. Recently, the country's leading car manufacturer Maruti Suzuki reportedly slashed production by nearly 27 percent in March due to sluggish demand in passenger car market and tougher emission norms, which are to come into effect from next year. Maruti Suzuki has reportedly cut its car production by 26.8 percent to about 126,000 units in March as compared to more than 172,000 units during the same period a year ago. A number of ground reports also show that an unemployment crisis is unfolding in India. Having said that a revival in bank credit growth to infrastructure sector for projects primarily funded by the government after a fairly long lull phase tells us two things. One, there is some pick up in investment activity in the labour-intensive infrastructure sector on the ground which is a positive news for the economy. Second, it is even more clearer now that the onus to bring back the growth momentum in the economy rests with the public sector, since most of these infrastructure projects that have caused a revival in the credit demand are funded by the government; there is no aggressive participation from the private sector. At this point, government spending is the primary factor that is supporting the economic recovery. (With data support from Kishor Kadam) By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AT&T Inc Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said Wednesday that Chinas Huawei Technologies Co Ltd is making it very difficult for European carriers to drop the company from its supply chain for next-generation 5G wireless service. 'If you have deployed Huawei as your 4G network, Huawei is not allowing interoperability to 5G -- meaning if you are 4G, you are stuck with Huawei for 5G,' said Stephenson at a speech in Washington. By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AT&T Inc Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said Wednesday that Chinas Huawei Technologies Co Ltd is making it very difficult for European carriers to drop the company from its supply chain for next-generation 5G wireless service. "If you have deployed Huawei as your 4G network, Huawei is not allowing interoperability to 5G -- meaning if you are 4G, you are stuck with Huawei for 5G," said Stephenson at a speech in Washington. "When the Europeans say we got a problem -- that's their problem. They really don't have an option to go to somebody else." The United States has been pressuring other countries to drop Huawei from their networks. Stephenson said the U.S. government could do a better job explaining the security risks of Huawei. "The biggest risk is not that the Chinese government might listen in on our conversations or mine our data if we use their equipment," Stephenson said. Within a decade, 5G will drive all U.S. factories, utilities, refineries, traffic management and help underpin autonomous vehicles. "If that much of infrastructure will be attached to this kind of technology do we want to be cautious about who is the underlying company behind that technology. We damn well better be," Stephenson said. Huawei did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. The United States warns that next-generation 5G equipment, which some telecoms experts see as more vulnerable to attack than previous technology, could be exploited by the Chinese government for spying if supplied by Huawei. Huawei has grown rapidly to become the worlds biggest maker of telecoms equipment and is embedded in the mobile networks and 5G plans of many European operators. It denies that its technology represents a security risk. In the United States, 5G networks will largely be built by Nordic equipment makers Ericsson and Nokia , and Strayer said there were safer alternatives to Huawei. The United States has also alleged Huawei violated its sanctions on Iran and stole intellectual property. No evidence of spying has been presented publicly even as scrutiny on Huawei has intensified, and several Western countries have restricted the firms access to their markets. Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday Germany was not planning to exclude any one company from its 5G auction per se, but rather wanted bidders in the mobile spectrum auction to meet certain requirements. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Dhirubhai Ambani was a hardened business magnate and a soft family man with a melting heart both ways. By supporting Anil, brother Mukesh has made a giant leap in his fathers cherished path The closing years of the 20th Century, particularly the pre-globalisation '80s, were the high point of entrepreneurship and enterprise, thanks to just one person: Dhirubhai Hirachand Ambani and his Reliance Industries Ltd. But the opening decade of the 21st Century began with the demise of this dynamic doyen and the painful splitting of his cherished legacy between his sons. We have known popular political icons and filmy idols who have drawn masses to them with their leadership and histrionics. In my view, Dhirubhai was the first corporate hero in an otherwise colourless and dour world of balance sheets and sundry numbers. In a milieu wherein corporate czars controlled big companies with negligible stakes a substantial chunk was held by government-controlled institutions like LIC and Unit Trust of India, etc, and the paltry rest by random shareholders Dhirubhai launched a daring onslaught against this entrenched lot. The crony capitalists were cruelly jolted out of their comfort zones as the neo-revolutionary with novel ideas, indomitable will to succeed, and deeper insight of the devilish details of the system used the very system with greater agility and ability to turn the tables. In one fell swoop, Dhirubhai had rewritten the rules of business and stock market for posterity. In doing so, he was not being an opportunistic businessman but actually a great visionary for whom the current scenario was just an irritating stumbling block. He was preparing himself and his legacy for the cataclysmic changes and the cut-throat competition of the globalisation era. He started with nothing, left a Rs 65,000-crore empire at the time of his passing in 2002 and today his Reliance is one of the greatest conglomerates of our times. However, to measure Dhirubhais success in mere monetary terms is to belittle him. His was the vision of a leader who rose from very humble origins to the pinnacle of glory, a peoples leader unknown in the corporate world. In his obituary, published on 12 July, 2002, on NewsToday, I had written: "He had a fan following that was much broader in its base, wider in its spectrum and deeper in its love and reverence for him than any other celebrity of his time.... And one does not have to look far for the reasons for such undiminished faith and adoration that he commanded amongst his countrymen, a confidence that remained undented by reams and reams of calculated calumny unleashed by vested interests and envious enemies. While all the other stars enriched themselves at the expense of their followers, here was a superstar that shone in every household that reposed trust in him. Dhirubhai s prosperity was also the prosperity of millions of his shareholders and as his wealth ballooned, so did the wealth of his investors. Dhirubhai achieved through his capitalism what socialism was supposed to!" After Dhirubhais passing, the division of his empire, not to speak of the accompanying gossip and bad press, was the most distressful episode in recent corporate history. Dhirubhai neither envisaged nor deserved this posthumous heir-splitting as he believed his was rock solid and unbreakable family. My father, TR Ramaswami (TRR), enjoyed an excellent and lasting friendship with Dhirubhai. I had the good fortune as an ambitious 20-something to meet him very often. On most such occasions Mukesh and Anil used to be around and the combined presence of the doting father and the devoted sons and their visible mutual bondage was a sight to behold. Indeed, when Dhirubhai suffered a debilitating stroke in 1986, while at the receiving end of a relentless witch-hunt, I still remember the way the two sons rose as a single entity and despite their young age, steered the company through the turmoil and insulated their ailing father till he was back on track. And he was, in good time, back in usual form despite his physical difficulties. When I attended Dhirubhais funeral in July 2002, the sons received me with affection and I was, despite the gloom of the occasion, in a way happy at their brotherly bonhomie. Indeed, it came as a rude and bewildering shock as a well-wisher of the family when things turned from bad to worse to ugly. It is in a way improper to compare siblings, but Mukesh and Anil were not just another pair of brothers. They were the sons of the great Dhirubhai Ambani, inheritors of a legacy that was just one generation old, the result of the hard work and business acumen of one man. The spat was grist to the media and enemy mills that were silenced for more than a decade by Reliances soaring successes. Anil was flashy and seemingly fast on his feet, while Mukesh was sedate and steady. Both were risk-takers in their fathers mould. But while Anil made big business bids eager to be first off the block, Mukeshs ventures were underlined by patience and diligence. Mukesh knew the virtue of waiting, a characteristic that has put him in good stead in business and family as recent events now show. This is not to speak ill of Anil, but the way things have turned out since Dhirubhais passing, it is clear he committed the mistake that most businessmen do in these tempting business world of false opportunities. Anil fell for many baits which only bit his hands. Dhirubhai, too, was a man in a hurry. But he would tread the treacherous terrain of business with great caution thanks to his inborn street smartness and natural and native survival skills. The timeline of events shows Mukesh has inherited and imbibed the traits of Dhirubhai. His calm and cool demeanour, in contrast to his brothers rather reckless disposition, hid a keen intelligent mind. Mukesh is vintage Ambani. To the friends of the family and admirers of Dhirubhai, this is an occasion for rejoicing, to see the brothers building their burnt bridges and replacing rancour with reconciliation. Anils desperation which had reached a point of him being jailed may have been the agent provocateur but Mukesh and Nita Ambanis timely intervention was a commendable act of family bonding. Mukesh and Nita could have just thrown up their arms and walked off saying that his younger sibling should pay for his misadventures not to speak of all the unilateral mudslinging. There is much in the public domain (recall Anils front-page advertisement onslaught against Mukesh during the gas pricing dispute) that proves Anils constant potshots and even preposterous allegations and acts against Mukesh. But Mukesh maintained admirable composure, ignoring all that in the interest of the family and instead concentrating on building what was left to him. Mukesh is where he stands thanks to his maturity. Indeed, it was this attitude of Mukesh, an attitude of filial feelings of responsibility and love evidently shared by his wife Nita Ambani, too that has now saved Anil from a truly grave crisis. Anils thanksgiving, a graceful response albeit a bit late to an understanding big brother and sister-in-law, is still heart-warming. The coming together of the two is also a warning to other barons of the Bombay Club as the Ambani steamroller now has a clear leader beyond all doubt, leading it from the front aided by a humbled but able lieutenant. The repercussion of this unified and powerful force on business and consumers needs a separate study as do the intricacies of the financial deals and legal proceedings. But lets look beyond economics. Many see Mukesh and Nitas rescue act as just financial help at the least and brotherly handout at best. While that may be true in a narrow sense, the media, particularly, seemed to have missed out on the larger aspect of the issue. Big or small, traditional Indian businessmen and their businesses are family-oriented. Unlike the Western model where an individual is a unit, in India, it is the family that counts, like it or not. Mukesh and Nita have, with good intelligence and intentions, used business that once divided, to act as a glue now to seal and heal a disrupted relationship. In doing what they did, Mukesh and Nita have emulated Dhirubhai Ambani, the hardened business magnate and a soft family man with a melting heart both ways. The father was magnanimity personified, a pioneer of the sharing economy that enriched everyone the common shareholder, his employees, family and extended family, thousands of other beneficiaries including himself. Mukesh, the businessman who for his part has made great strides and fought his way beyond formidable frontiers in the quest for a fortune for his shareholders and himself, has with this simple, small and saviour step made a giant leap in his fathers cherished path, decorated by forgiveness and goodwill. And by doing so, not just in business but in benevolence, too, he has proved to be the true inheritor of Dhirubhais legacy. As I see it, its a win-win for both brothers. Mukesh has now won over the prodigal sibling, thus ending an enduring pain in his heart. But Anil is the bigger gainer. In Mukesh, he has got back his dear father. The author is editor of News Today, where this piece first appeared. It's reproduced here with permission. Disclaimer: Reliance Industries Ltd is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd which publishes Firstpost Naresh Goyal-led Jet Airways is facing the worst financial crisis of its 25-year existence with more than $1 billion of debt New Delhi: The pilots of financially-strapped Jet Airways have urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu to intervene and instruct the management to release their pending salaries. "We fear that the airline is on the verge of collapse. This will leave thousands of people unemployed. It will change the dynamics of aviation as fares will increase due to a reduction in capacity, and travelling public will face major inconvenience," said the National Aviators Guild (NAG), the registered trade union of Jet Airways' Indian pilots. Two days ago, they had threatened to stop flying from 1 April if their pending salaries are not cleared by 31 March. While the airline is going through a tough financial phase, all employees except for pilots and engineers are getting paid on time, claimed the NAG in communication to Modi and Prabhu. "The pilots and engineers are now almost three months behind salaries and facing a lot of financial hardships with no relief in sight. Our repeated pleas to the management have gone unheard. The pilots have maintained professionalism and not hampered operations of the airline as that would have had a catastrophic effect on passengers' travel plans," read the letter. Naresh Goyal-led Jet Airways is facing the worst financial crisis of its 25-year existence with more than $1 billion of debt. As it struggles to stay aloft, the carrier has delayed payments to banks, suppliers, and aircraft lessors some of which have begun terminating lease deals. The airline is reportedly down to operating 150 flights a day from 450 at full capacity with a third of its 12-plane fleet grounded. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has already instructed Jet Airways airline to comply with relevant provisions of the applicable civil aviation requirements for facilitation of passengers regarding timely communication, compensation, refunds and providing alternate flights wherever applicable. The state-owned banks have been working on a resolution plan to bail out the debt-laden airline. Jet is also in talks with Abu Dhabi-based Etihadits majority stakeholderto secure a rescue deal. The NAG said the continued uncertainty and financial difficulties are causing extreme stress among pilots and engineers that can easily compromise safety which is not at all desirable. In prison, 48-year-old Nirav Modi's inmates will include the likes of alleged Dawood henchman Pakistani-origin Jabir Moti London: Fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, who was remanded in custody till 29 March by a UK court on Wednesday, is likely to be held in a separate cell in Her Majesty's Prison Wandsworth, which is one of the largest prisons in western Europe. Modi, who was living in a plush apartment in Centre Point in the West End until his arrest on Tuesday, was sent to prison on the eve of Holi. In the prison in south London, 48-year-old Modi's inmates will include the likes of alleged Dawood henchman Pakistani-origin Jabir Moti, currently undergoing extradition proceedings to the US. HMP Wandsworth is classed as a Category B prison, where criminals are held if not deemed to be of a high level of security risk. According to a March 2018 inspection report by the UK's Chief Inspector of Prisons, it holds 1,428 men and remains "one of the most overcrowded prisons in England and Wales. "There were too many prisoners, many with drug-related or mental health issues, and with not enough to do, noted the inspection report. Cells designed for one prisoner were occupied by two, with poorly screened lavatories and the prisoners confined in them for far too long each day in common with many other prisons of this type, prisoners at Wandsworth had far too little time out of their cells," the report added. Wandsworth prison can currently hold 1,628 prisoners and was originally built in 1851. Since 1989, there has been extensive refurbishment and modernisation of the wings, including in-cell sanitation, privacy screens for cells occupied by more than one prisoner and the more recent installation of in-cell electricity, the UK Justice Department notes in reference to the prison. Modi is likely to be held in a separate cell until his next hearing on 29 March which is expected to be presided over by Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot the same judge who ordered the extradition of former Kingfisher Airlines boss Vijay Mallya to India last December. That case is now in the High Court as part of Mallya's application seeking leave to appeal against Arbuthnot's ruling. He was arrested from a Metro Bank branch in London by uniformed officers Tuesday, when he went there to open a new bank account. Modi and his uncle, Mehul Choksi, are the main accused in the PNB scam and they both left India before the details of the fraud came to light in January 2018. He is one of India's richest men, worth an estimated $1.75 billion, according to Forbes. He launched his own eponymous brand in 2010 and he soon had stores across India, as well as in New York, London and Hong Kong. Mehul Choksi, who left India last year, is wanted by the CBI and ED, which are probing the PNB fraud case New Delhi: The extradition process against absconding diamond jeweller Mehul Choksi has begun in Antigua, official sources said on Wednesday. They said Indian investigative agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) have sent across documents to authorities in Antigua to peruse and send back Choksi to India, accused in the $2 billion PNB fraud case along with his nephew Nirav Modi and others. Nirav Modi was arrested by the London Police on Wednesday as part of a similar extradition request India sent against him to the UK authorities. The extradition process against Choksi is on and we are hopeful of a positive response from the authorities of Antigua and Barbuda, they said. The legal processes are on, and the probe agencies are looking forward to the next intimation by the authorities of that country, the official sources added. Choksi took Antiguan citizenship last year after he surrendered his Indian passport. In August last year, India handed over Antigua a request for Choksi's extradition. Choksi, who left India last year, is wanted by the CBI and the ED, which are probing the PNB fraud case, the biggest banking scam in the country. Jet Airways has more than $1 billion in debt, and owes money to banks, suppliers, pilots and lessorssome of whom have started terminating leases with the carrier Mumbai: A group of state-run banks want Jet Airways embattled founder and Chairman Naresh Goyal to reduce his stake in the carrier to 10 percent, news channel CNBC-TV18 reported on Thursday, quoting sources. Banks want Goyal to bring his stake down to 10 percent, below the 17 percent envisaged in the bank-led provisional resolution plan (BLPRP), sources told CNBC-TV18. The state-run banks are also pushing Goyal to step down, CNBC-TV18 said. Jet has more than $1 billion in debt, and owes money to banks, suppliers, pilots and lessorssome of whom have started terminating leases with the carrier. The government has asked state-run banks, led by State Bank of India (SBI), to rescue Jet without pushing it into bankruptcy, two people within the administration have told Reuters, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to avert thousands of job losses weeks before a general election. Several people who have worked closely with Goyal, 69, have told Reuters that his penchant for control has emerged as a major obstacle in negotiating a rescue deal. SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar had said on Wednesday that a resolution plan was almost ready and that it would not involve a bailout for any individual, including Goyal. Jet and SBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday, which is a public holiday in India. The eight-month trade war between the worlds two largest economies has raised costs, roiled financial markets, shrunk US farm exports and disrupted manufacturing supply chains Washington: US President Donald Trump warned on Wednesday that the United States may leave tariffs on Chinese goods for a substantial period to ensure that Beijing complies with any trade agreement. The stance could complicate US-China trade talks set to resume next week, as Chinese officials have been pressing for a full lifting of US tariffs as part of any deal, people familiar with the talks have said. Trump said his top negotiators, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, would leave for Beijing this weekend, confirming plans for talks next week disclosed on Tuesday by an administration official. The face-to-face talks will be the first since Trump delayed a 1 March deadline to avert a rise in tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent from the current 10 percent. The deal is coming along nicely, Trump said to reporters at the White House, adding that the China trip was intended to further the deal. But when asked about lifting US tariffs on Chinese goods, Trump said: Were not talking about removing them. Were talking about leaving them for a substantial period of time because we have to make sure that if we do the deal, China lives by it. Trump did not elaborate on his plans for the tariffs. His negotiators have demanded that China agree to an enforcement mechanism to ensure that Beijing follows through on any reform pledges in any deal. Washington is demanding that China end practices it says force the transfer of American technology to Chinese companies, improve access for American companies to Chinas markets and curb industrial subsidies. Since July 2018, the United States has imposed duties on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, including $50 billion in technology and industrial goods at 25 percent and $200 billion in other products including furniture and construction materials, at 10 percent. China has hit back with tariffs on about $110 billion worth of US goods, including soybeans and other commodities. The eight-month trade war between the worlds two largest economies has raised costs, roiled financial markets, shrunk US farm exports and disrupted manufacturing supply chains. Later on Wednesday, during a speech in Lima, Ohio, Trump emphasized again that he wanted the United States to reach a great trade deal with China. Were so far down, its got to be a great deal. If its not a great deal, you never catch up, Trump said in remarks at a military tank manufacturing plant. The New York Times headline said it all: Only 7 Black Students Got Into Stuyvesant, N.Y.s Most Selective High School, Out of 895 Spots. But what should be done? Mayor Bill de Blasio had already called for dropping the entrance exam for the citys specialized high schools, but he has made little progress in getting Albany to act. Gov. Andrew Cuomo suggested this week that de Blasio should start by changing the admissions policy at the selective high schools the mayor does have control over but de Blasio insisted any changes should be made all at once and that the state should allow him to do so. Earlier this week, we asked our readers to weigh in on whether or not to keep the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT. In an entirely unscientific online poll, as of Wednesday evening the vast majority called for keeping the test. Others suggested providing free test prep for minority students, altering the test to remove cultural biases, creating more specialized high schools and making admission contingent on a combination of the test, grades and perhaps an essay. Still others approached the issue more broadly, calling for improved instruction at all schools. (Another vocal subset of respondents took aim at Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, saying he should be fired.) Now, were turning to the experts. In this weeks Ask the Experts feature, we reached out to Syed Ali, a professor of sociology at Long Island University-Brooklyn; Zakiyah Ansari, the advocacy director for the Alliance for Quality Education; David Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College; and Soo Kim, president of the Stuyvesant High School Alumni Association. Should the admissions criteria for New York Citys specialized schools be changed? David Bloomfield: The admissions criteria set by a 1971 state law must be changed and changeable. The so-called Calandra-Hecht law should be repealed since the Legislature, made up mostly of non-city legislators, has no business uniquely dictating enrollment requirements for Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, and LaGuardia (by audition). As in every other school district in the state and like it does for other gifted and talented programs, the city should control admissions. New specialized high school admissions might include a single standardized test for some students. But since that system demonstrably favors highly tutored test-takers mostly white and Asian males and is of dubious validity, other measures should be added for some students including a mix of class rank and state test proficiency as the mayor has ham-handedly proposed. One thing the mayor and chancellor should do immediately is free the five SHSAT schools established by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg from the test. These are not covered by state requirements. The chancellor has already said, We need to eliminate the single test for specialized high school admissions now. It is hypocritical to have such a clear position and not make enrollment changes to the schools which are entirely under his control. Zakiyah Ansari: The Legislature has a bill before it right now that would ensure the top 4 to 7 percent of students in every school are offered a slot at the specialized high schools. This seems like a fair approach that would ensure much more equity. But also we need to raise the quality of education in every school and get away from the Hunger Games mentality where there are educational haves and have nots. That means that state needs to provide the $1.4 billion owed to New York City schools and it means the mayor cannot propose a budget that cuts funding. Syed Ali: As a sociologist, I'm wary to take a political stand. (Yup, copout.) But if the city's goal is desegregation (read: more blacks and Latinos), and desegregation now, then reserving 20 percent of admission seats for kids from underpriviliged (read: poor and largely black and Latino) schools will boost their numbers a bit. Changing the Hecht-Calandra Act so that the city can have the top 7 percent of students from every middle school guaranteed admissions will up their numbers greatly. I actually feel that this won't drop standards at these schools, because these kids coming in will benefit from being around driven peers, and the academically-oriented peer culture will propel them forward. Some won't be able to cut it and will transfer out. That's OK. But I think (based on research about integrating students of different abilities) that the vast majority of students will be fine. But this is a much deeper problem. The vast majority of black and Latino students attend segregated schools and underperform. And if the city truly cared about equity in the high schools, they'd go after screened schools and programs, which account for over a third of all students. Soo Kim: The latest results of the test are a function of the following: This year there are 5 percent less spots due to Discovery seats yet to be allocated. I am certain that final numbers will be higher this year and actually black and Hispanic admits ticked up from 10 percent to 11 percent for the specialized high schools as a whole. But either way, nothing has changed to the two primary factors below: 52 percent of high proficiency math students in New York City are Asian, 10 percent are black and Hispanic, and almost 70 percent of Asian 8th graders take the test. When adjusted for private school populations, less than 20 percent of white and Hispanic 8th graders take the test, and about 25 percent of black eighth graders take the test. Until we improve both, the problem of representation will continue to exist. Why are New York Citys schools so segregated? Soo Kim: I dont have much to say about the state of the New York City public schools generally, but I do believe that the system appeared segregated. According to the IBO, the majority of white families dont send their kids to public school. Now there are a number of good public high schools that have strong white populations, but is that purposeful segregation, or are parents opting back into the public system for a handful a better schools? That is a question for greater minds than mine. Syed Ali: How much time do you have? They're segregated because neighborhoods are segregated and kids largely go to neighborhood schools. Even with gentrification, white parents aren't sending their kids to local black/Latino supermajority schools. In a study on choices parents make on where to send their kindergarten children, the Center for New York City Affairs found that only 60 percent of parents and 40 percent of black parents sent their kid to the local zoned school in 2016-17. Which means that a ton of parents, including a lot of black parents, are avoiding low-performing schools, i.e., schools where the students are largely poor and black and Latino. Interestingly, the black parents not sending their kids to the zoned schools largely opted for charter schools, which are mostly segregated. Zakiyah Ansari: New York City's schools have always been segregated. I believe what has really elevated more conversation around this has been gentrification. White families who have moved into historically black communities are now sending their children to black and brown schools which have been denied equity for many years. As they see this inequity, the white families work to address it, which often leads to more white families entering into the school and instead of helping it tends to have the opposite of effect. Gentrification pushes many black and brown families out of the community and ultimately oversaturates another school district or school. David Bloomfield: Segregation is baked into the American dilemma of race relations, particularly regarding racism against black and Latinx residents. All manner of public policies, not just in schools, have created deep racial divisions in housing, the economy, and community attitudes. Our schools suffer from this legacy with common legal and de facto obstacles to integration, tangled with the racialization of poverty. Noted researchers Kucsera and Orfield have called New York City schools among the most intensely segregated in the country with many schools having less than 10 percent white enrollment with related concentrations of students living in extreme conditions of poverty, home insecurity, and educational need. Racially-drawn community school district lines, proliferation of charter schools, and a surfeit of screened schools increase this pernicious pattern of segregated schooling based on race, ethnicity, academic performance and other factors. What else should be done to address segregation the citys public schools? Syed Ali: District 15 in Brooklyn and District 3 in Manhattan have taken huge steps to desegregate by getting rid of academic screens, which lead all their middle schools towards true integration. But the city needs to do this holistically, and not just wait for individual districts to do it, because many, if not most, won't. They need to think big, and they need to desegregate across district and borough boundaries. Move these kids around. K-5, it's hard because they're small, but do it. Use the buses. Will they have to wake up earlier and get home later? Yes. Middle school it's easier because theyre already taking buses and subways. Send the Bronx kids to Queens, send North Shore Staten Island kids to the South Shore and vice versa. Parents, especially white and Asian parents, will be pissed. Let em be. This is about what's best for the majority of students. Anything else is tinkering around the edges, which is what weve done for decades, and nothing will come of it. Zakiyah Ansari: We should be centering equity as one of the ways to improve our schools and address segregation. We must have painfully honest dialogue to address the legacy of racism in New York City. I believe Chancellor Carranza understands, from the $23 million for anti-bias teacher training to his vocal fight for the $1.4 billion owed New York City public schools from the state. However we still need the city DOE to implement a culturally responsive curriculum that reflects the diversity of the students in our public schools. There is a tremendous problem with the segregation of educational opportunity where black and brown students are in schools with less high quality programs and not enough supports. We need both the state and the city to end that. David Bloomfield: The mayor has been largely absent from this debate, not even willing to say the word segregation in public. The chancellor has been little better, talking a good game and unfairly taking credit for limited efforts in Districts 1, 3 and 15 which arose out of community designs and organizing. But little system-wide action has been taken. A thin, amateurish 'blueprint" announced by the DOE two years ago has gone next to nowhere and preliminary recommendations by a subsequently empaneled mayoral task force have been ignored by City Hall. What is needed is citywide leadership with community members and expert educators, demographers, lawyers, and other professionals embarking on this most urgent of educational and social missions. A special NIA Court in Panchkula on Wednesday acquitted all four accused in the 2007 Samjhauta train bombing case for lack of evidence, invoking sharp and wildly contrasting reactions from Pakistan, the Indian government, victims' families and the Opposition. A special NIA Court in Panchkula on Wednesday acquitted all four accused in the 2007 Samjhauta train bombing case for lack of evidence, invoking sharp and wildly contrasting reactions from Pakistan, the Indian government, victims' families and the Opposition. While Opposition leaders questioned how alleged double standards of convicting non-Muslim offenders seem to have been in play, the Bharatiya Janata Party hailed the verdict as "historic". The blast on the Samjhauta Express occurred near Panipat in Haryana on 18 February, 2007, when the train was on its way to Attari in Amritsar, the last railway station on the Indian side. Swami Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajinder Chaudhary, four of the accused in the case, will now walk free. Pakistan's acting foreign secretary summoned Indian High Commissioner Ajay Bisaria to lodge a strong protest against the verdict. Pakistan stressed how it had consistently raised the "lack of progress and the subsequent, concerted attempts by India to exonerate the perpetrators of this heinous terrorist act in which 44 innocent Pakistanis lost their lives". One of the first to react was Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti. "Despite damning evidence, the accused, including a former RSS member have been acquitted. God forbid, had they been Kashmiris or Muslims, they would be pronounced guilty and imprisoned without even a fair trial. Why such double standards and leniency towards saffron terror?" the former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister asked. The verdict came after NIA special judge Jagdeep Singh dismissed the plea filed by a Pakistani woman for examining eyewitnesses from her country, saying it was "devoid of any merit" Among those who bore the burden of maximum disappointment was Mohammad Jawid, who lost 11 relatives in the blast and had been waiting to see justice done to the perpetrators for nearly 12 years. "We did not get the justice. The real culprits are still out. This is not a right verdict," the 37-year-old Gaya resident told PTI. The NIA chargesheet had dubbed Sunil Joshi as the mastermind of the blast. Joshi was shot dead near Madhya Pradesh's Dewas district in December 2007, while three other accused Ramchandra Kalsangra, Sandeep Dange and Amit were never be apprehended and declared proclaimed offenders. The BJP said the verdict was an indication of how the previous Congress-led government played politics with terror. "The case was based upon very imperfect evidence. This has to be seen in conjunction with the saffron terror issue raised by the then Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and also echoed by P Chidambaram," BJP leader and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said. The NIA had claimed that the accused were upset with terror attacks on Hindu temples and then conspired to seek "revenge". Congress leader Kapil Sibal sought to highlight the apparent notion now that "no one" had caused the blast. 2007 : Samjhauta Express Bomb Blast 68 killed NIA charged 8 accused Verdict : No one knows who killed the 68 victims Must be a proud day for our criminal justice system ! Kapil Sibal (@KapilSibal) March 21, 2019 CPI(ML) leader Kavita Krishnan countered the verdict with the accusation that India could now be held responsible for harbouring terrorists just as much as Pakistan could. Pakistan Government harbours terrorist Masood Azhar. True. Doesn't India's Government harbour Aseemanand and other terrorists like him, responsible for Samjhauta Express & many other blasts? Citizen/ Human/ Kavita Krishnan (@kavita_krishnan) March 21, 2019 Several journalists also pointed out the implications of the verdict. Some pointed out how the NIA had failed at its task, which others asserted that Aseemanand had been extremely lucky. Major failure of @NIA_India as all accused in the Samjhauta Blast case are acquitted. 68 people including 43 Pakistani nationals were killed. https://t.co/JreOpSaMlc Suhasini Haidar (@suhasinih) March 20, 2019 Swami Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajender Chaudhary acquitted in the Samjhauta blasts. Another clean chit to right wing terror in India. https://t.co/WjiUgTMNwe Rana Ayyub (@RanaAyyub) March 20, 2019 Nobody did the Samjhauta blast. Shivam Vij (@DilliDurAst) March 20, 2019 Aseemanand has the luck of the devil. Acquitted for Samjhauta blast too. So who planted the bombs that killed 68, including 43 from Pakistan? Harinder Baweja (@shammybaweja) March 20, 2019 With inputs from PTI Shivani Saxena's counsel had approached the court against the FRRO for non-compliance of the order of 6 March cancelling the look out circular against their client. New Delhi:: A special CBI court has issued notice to the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO) for non-compliance of the order cancelling the look out circular against Shivani Saxena, an accused in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland money-laundering case. Special CBI Judge Arvind Kumar on Wednesday directed the FRRO to authorise an officer from the department to appear before the court on the next date of hearing on 26 March. The court also asked the FRRO to file a compliance report in connection with the order. Shivani Saxena's counsel Shivani Lohiya Luthra and Prateek Yadav had approached the court against the FRRO for non-compliance of the order of 6 March cancelling the look out circular against their client. They argued that despite the court order, FRRO officials allegedly harassed Shivani Saxena at the Indira Gandhi International Airport while she was on her way home in Dubai. On 6 March, the special judge had said, "The LOC (look out circular) is not sustainable in the eyes of the law and liable to be cancelled." Shivani Saxena is the wife of AgustaWestland deal accused Rajiv Saxena who recently moved a plea to turn approver in the case. She is the director of two Dubai-based firms M/s UHY Saxena and M/s Matrix Holdings and is currently on regular bail with the condition to take prior permission from the court if she wants to travel abroad. On Tuesday, the special judge had directed the Tihar jail authorities to move alleged middlemen Christian Michel in the deal out of solitary confinement. Michel, who was extradited from the UAE in December 2018, is currently lodged in the prison in connection with the CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) cases against him. In 2014, India had cancelled the contract with Finmeccanica's subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW-101 VVIP choppers to the Indian Air Force (IAF) over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of kickbacks in the deal. Three CRPF personnel of the 187th Battalion were shot dead by a fellow jawan at the battalion headquarters in Udhampur's Battal Ballian on Wednesday night. Udhampur: Three CRPF personnel of the 187th Battalion were shot dead by a fellow jawan at the battalion headquarters in Udhampur's Battal Ballian on Wednesday night. After firing at his colleagues, the jawan shot himself. His condition is said to be critical. The fratricide occurred around 10 pm when Constable Ajit Kumar shot three of his colleagues with his service rifle, officials said. Speaking to media in Udhampur, Harinder Kumar, commandant of the 187th Battalion, said: "Three jawans have died. The one who shot them dead is critically injured." The dead soldiers have been identified as head constables Pokarmal R of Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan, Yogendra Sharma of Delhi and Umed Singh of Rewari in Haryana. Kumar hails from Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur. Officials said the incident occurred after the jawans had a quarrel. With inputs from agencies This mystery fever in Uttar Pradesh is compelling ammunition for the Lok Sabha election, especially as it follows the deaths of several children at a Gorakhpur hospital last year. Editor's Note: A network of 60 reporters set off across India to test the idea of development as it is experienced on the ground. Their brief: Use your mobile phone to record the impact of 120 key policy decisions on everyday life; what works, what doesn't and why; what can be done better and what should be done differently. Their findings straight and raw from the ground will be combined in this series, Elections on the Go, over a course of 100 days. Read more articles from the series here *** Bareilly: Many of my family members were sick when I read reports of people dying in the district hospital due to a mysterious fever; I was really very scared. Yet, I delayed taking them to the doctor and, later, got them admitted to Novoday Hospital, where I had to shell out Rs 40,000. Not only have I realised that nothing is more important than life, but I have also seen the state of our healthcare sector and will vote wisely now. Pramod Srivastava, a resident ofBareilly district's Qilla area My father came down with the mystery fever, too, during the time the number of cases were rising. I admitted him to a private hospital, and he recuperated well. Its been three months since, but we are still scared that anyone in the family can get it. - Rahul Kumar, a resident of Bareillys Kamarchari Nagar These are just two stories among the many that surfaced in the six months after cases of a 'mystery fever' in Uttar Pradesh first broke last year, killing scores of people across four districts of Bareilly division. After sweeping through Bareilly, where 140 villages were affected, Badaun, where 160 villages were hit, and then afflicting Pilibhit and Shahjahanpur, strains of the 'mystery fever' were felt in Lucknow division, as well. Health department authorities struggled to contain the outbreak and are still groping in the dark to find the exact cause of the disease. Opposition leaders, however, resorted to government-bashing while the cases emerged. There is no realistic assessment of the toll even now, but media reports peg the figure anywhere between 100 and 700. How it all started The outbreak began in September 2018, as the monsoon was retreating. Back then, speculations were rife that the deaths were due to either typhoid, malaria or "some other" viral fever. Encephalitis was being debated, as well. That's what State Director-General of Health Services Padmakar Singh's "prima facie" evaluation was. "Medicines are being provided and fogging operations are being carried out to control the mosquito population," he had said. It took Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ordering an audit on 20 September for officials to take serious note of the issue. However, the official report has yet to be released. Soon after the outbreak, one of the teams formed to analyse it tested water samples from various areas and found the presence of plasmodium falciparum in some, including in the samples taken from Bareilly's Majhgawan block, where a large number of people died of the 'mystery fever'. Plasmodium falciparum is one of the four protozoa that cause malaria. According to the World Health Organization, the symptoms include fever, chills, headache, muscular pain and weakness, vomiting, cough, diarrhoea and abdominal pain. These are usually followed by organ failure, which then leads to a coma and/or death. It's a known fact that mosquitoes breed around accumulated trash and stagnated water after monsoon, but what needs to be investigated now is why this mystery fever gripped Bareilly and Badaun the hardest. Also intriguing is the fact that despite malaria and typhoid being curable, the outbreak hit epidemic proportions. However, in the absence of an official audit report, coupled with the fact that many deaths went unreported and without autopsies, it remains an epidemic of a mystery fever, not malaria. What did the health department do? According to Bareilly Chief Medical Officer Dr Vineet Kumar Shukla, more than 100 teams were formed after the first outbreak of the mystery fever, and they were sent to all villages to diagnose the symptoms among patients and provide preliminary medication. "Our teams of doctors did rapid active surveillance to check this fever in various villages in Bareilly division, which was the first to report the disease. Fortunately, this year, the health department has not heard of any such deaths," Dr Shukla said, adding that it was the media that had coined the term 'mystery fever'. When asked why doctors were unable to diagnose the fever and contain its spread faster, he said people died of the disease in a very short time, giving doctors little time to get to the bottom of it. They worked in the emergency ward as per emergency medical protocol to contain the epidemic, he added. Dr Shukla explained that lack of awareness compounded the problem, and hence, the health department is now taking the help of the education department. "By taking simple precautions, one can easily protect oneself from diseases, but lack of awareness hinders that. Hence, we are taking the help of the education department to spread important information. Our first priority is to curb the spread of vector-borne diseases. Spreading awareness will play a crucial role in controlling them." Dr Rajendra Kumar, who heads the Community Health Centre (CHC) in Aonla, Bareilly district, said they got a lot of cases of the mystery fever. "The hospital was full of patients with a fever that came with symptoms similar to those of malaria. Several died, too. Surveillance teams were formed soon after the seriousness of the issue was realised and sent to every affected village," he said, adding that the health department's field staff was also asked to spread awareness about precautions, such as sleeping wearing full-sleeved clothing, using mosquito nets and drinking clean water. "At the CHC and PHC (Public Health Centre) level, we formed separate teams to check this fever and set up different wards for it." Reports show that several of those who took precautions for malaria, as instructed by the health department, succumbed to their illness nonetheless. Dr Kumar, however, asserts that authorities are now fully prepared to deal with any such situation should it recur. Fear lingers as election draws nearer To get a firsthand account of the situation, this correspondent visited Pathri village in Aonla. According to Gram Pradhan Gurvir Singh, "Seven people died due to the mystery fever, and many villagers abandoned their homes and moved to urban areas, where they had access to proper medical care. Some villagers even had to sell their land to get their kin treated. Since then, residents have been living in constant fear that the outbreak will reappear." Another villager Narottam Singh said, "Some had to sell their harvest at throwaway prices just to be able to afford treatment for their sick family members." Village elder Hira Lal explained: "It all happened so fast that many lost several family members in quick succession, even before anyone could get the right medical attention. That's why we are all still scared." He claimed that neither government officials nor local politicians came forward to help the affected families. Meanwhile, members of Opposition parties began to take potshots at the government for neglecting the affected villagers. They demanded that proper compensation be paid to the families that lost their loved ones. Highlighting the "bad state" of healthcare services in Uttar Pradesh, Congress spokesperson Onkar Nath Singh claimed: "Even after so many deaths, the government hasn't upgraded the healthcare services in the affected areas, nor has any effort been made to provide them financial assistance. Instead, all that the BJP government is doing is brazenly indulging in divisive politics in the name of caste and religion." State unit head of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, Dr Masood, echoed Singh's views and said: "The government has failed to protect the lives of the people. By not providing timely healthcare services to the needy, the government aggravated the situation, as a result of which casualties mounted." Dr Masood demanded that the government provide Rs 10 lakh compensation to every family that lost its members to the fever. Amid these accusations of neglect and indifference, the health department has maintained that the situation is under control, but there is no denying that the Opposition now has a crucial point to target the state's deteriorating healthcare system ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha election. This mystery fever in Uttar Pradesh is compelling and scathing poll ammunition, especially as it follows the deaths of several children last year at Gorakhpur's Baba Raghav Das Medical College allegedly due to an oxygen shortage. The author is a Bareilly-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters With a sharp decline in regular salaried jobs and self-employment opportunities, defending Hinduism has become a major occupation of men in western UP Perhaps it was the bullying of the older auto-rickshaw drivers, who ganged up on him seeing his new-fangled electrickery-rickshaw, and wouldnt let him pick up passengers. Perhaps it was because there isnt much else for young people to do in Bhainswal, his village in Shamli district of western Uttar Pradesh. Perhaps, then again, it was because of the unsettling feeling that there ought to be more to life than waiting by the highway, shrouded in truck-exhaust and dust, hoping a passenger shows up. Whatever the reason, four years ago, Sandeep Kashyap set up a Dharm Jagran Samiti, or Religious Awakening Committee, in his village. It is better I do religious work to pass the time than drink or squabble like others, he says. Belonging to a community officially recognised as socially and educationally backward, Kashyap is now a minor celebrity, his face plastered on posters announcing the Samitis gatherings. His worth is judged by how many members his Samiti enrols and how much muscle it flexesnot by how many passengers he picks up. In a social setup where lifes trajectory is tied to caste and class, Kashyap has found his own personal salvation. The story of young men like him, who are drawn to adopt religion in an organised as opposed to private manner, is complex. It is sown and watered not just by hate but a generations desperate search for agency and self-worth in a world apparently designed to deny it. Highway 709B swings through western Uttar Pradesh, past villages nestled in sugarcane and mustard fields, and heads north of Shamli town and past Bhainswal. The bucolic scenery, though, veils an ugly reality. An International Labour Organisation study from 2017 reports a sharp dip in regular salaried jobs for male workers, despite the regions dramatic economic growth and a big drop in poverty. Self-employment opportunities shrank, even casual labour growth was almost stagnant. Put simply, the regions green revolution gains have plateaued, leaving the young facing the prospect of their generation not being able to sustain the gains of their parents. For young men, this is a crisis of self-worth, even masculinity: at an age where their fathers supported families, they are prospectless. Being a man in west Uttar Pradesh includes marrying, having children, educating them, and caring for aging parents. Kashyaps Samiti holds out hope of escaping this morass. Each month, its 48 members donate `100 to its kitty. With this money, Kashyap has organised a Ramcharitamanas reading, four all-male pilgrimages to a Hanuman temple in Rajasthan and two visits for women to a nearby temple, all free of cost. The Samiti is a form of collective support. I had an accident last year and needed lakhs of rupees, says Sonu Kashyap, one of the three founding members. The Samiti contributed all it had`20,000. With traditional joint-families decaying, such support is a major draw. Samiti-like bodies are also part of a larger project. Varun Vashisht, who prompted Kashyap to set it up, belongs to the Hindu Yuva Vahini, the militant Hindutva outfit raised by Uttar Pradeshs firebrand chief minister Yogi Adityanath. Kashyap claims not to know this. For him, its irrelevant that the Samiti is part of an enterprise to forge a Hindu political identity. Indeed, Kashyap affects disinterest in politics: Ill remain a labourer no matter whos in power, he says, stoically. Kashyap is, however, deferential towards Vashisht, former school teacher and son of a contractor from Bijnor, and a Brahmin. He is media in-charge and coordinator of the Vahini in Shamli. Four years ago, Vashisht was drawn to the Vahini after an official in Shamli took him to a meeting, where he first heard of Adityanath. I Googled Maharaj-ji and discovered Hindutva, Vashisth says, referring to Adityanath, who continues to be chief priest of the Gorakhnath temple. For Vashisht, Hindutva is primarily Hinduism minus caste. As a corollary, his vision of a Hinduised nation is India minus caste-based reservations. Hindutva tells us were all Hindus, regardless of caste, he says. Sah-bhoj, or inter-caste dining, is the primary source of Vashishts belief that Hindutva eradicates caste. Sah-bhoj rests on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghs notion of inculcating samajik samrasta, or social harmony (as opposed to equality). It presupposes that subaltern castes gain self-respect and dignity upon dining with elite caste membersa tradition dating back to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and before. This caste-free Hinduism has limits. For instance, co-dining is encouraged but not inter-caste marriage with Dalits. That cannot happen overnight, Vashisht protests, eating together is a beginning. Given that commensality as a technique to bridge the caste divide is a century old, Hindutva remains stuck in the beginning. Nevertheless, Kashyap gains status by fraternising with elite castes, a privilege denied in the traditional order. Vahini teams are going door-to-door in Shamli and beyond, checking on government-funded schemes for housing, toilets and education. The problem is that the administration doesnt listen to people while people blindly trust gram pradhans, who rip them off, Vashisth says. The Vahini sidesteps pradhans and takes matters straight to district authorities. Unless officials convince us why a government benefit hasnt reached a household, we abuse them, he says. The Vahini might not be able to obtain prized government jobs for the youth, but it does help them exert power over petty bureaucrats. For years, Yashveer Singh, a wealthy farmer from Mundet village, helped locals with administrative matters or disputes. Mostly, his interventions failed. The scenario changed dramatically as soon as he joined the Vahini a decade ago. The administration hears us now, says Singh, who manages the Vahini in the district. Earlier, they did not. The entire district knows Maharaj-jis instruction that no one should be oppressed. This usurping of state power has paid off. Vashisht reports that the Vahini, which appoints 21 members each in village, block and district, has no position vacant. The more credit the Vahini can claim for resolving problems, the more members it gathers. So strong was the interest that enrolments were stopped in 2017. We were getting 5,000 requests daily to join, Singh says. We even suspected infiltration by rival groups. Favour-seeking and -granting enhance the growing appeal of the Vahini and assorted outfits. Sachin Nirwal, 28, from a Jat family in Shamli, obtained a Masters in education, believing it would help him land a job. When it didnt, he tried the army. But farming while preparing for exams proved an insurmountable challenge. Six years ago, his uncle, 32-year-old Vishal Nirwal, joined the Bajrang Dal. Vishal was involved in a police case that a local Bajrang Dal man, Vivek Premi, had helped him get out of, earning his loyalty. In turn, Vishal recruited Sachin, who had given up on finding a job. Sachin began attending Bajrang Dal events informally. I go when I can, for cow protection or dharnas against the other side, Sachin says. As he has friends on the other sidewith people ideologically opposed to Hindutvahe isnt fully committed to Bajrang Dal events. Besides, hes married and runs a farm. Only someone 100 per cent jobless can be a full-time member, he says. If youre full-time, when they drop a WhatsApp message that youre needed for a cow-smuggling raid, you have to leave meals unfinished and go. In mid-February, after the massacre of CRPF jawans in Pulwama, Vishal joined thousands who hit Shamli streets, clamouring for the blood of the gaddartraitors. Nationalism is a headier opiate than religion. Put together, the prospect of a new Hinduism transcending caste, and their networks of influence, have transformed allegiances of backward communities. They are the glue that is drawing the youth from all sections to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Peoples priorities shift when theyre given a religious identity, says Sudhir Panwar, a Samajwadi Party leader. They start doing dharm jagrans instead of demanding economic and social rights. For members of backward communities, organising religious events has an added appeal: to them, it represents their social and political assertion in addition to their obvious identification with the Hindu religion. For this new Hindu society to be built, one group needs to create the otherand Muslims serve that purpose. This is why, after Pulwama, the slogans raised in Shamli, Agra, Bharatpur and beyond harped on punishing traitors. But theres no traitor herejust aggressive nationalism fostering divides, says Jayant Chaudhary, former Member of Parliament and Rashtriya Lok Dal leader. Other political outfits are left with little choice but wait for high-pitched campaigns against gaddars to die. All issues, from unemployment to farm crisis, get washed away in nationalism, says Chaudhary. In this context, anyone who says outrageous things about other leaders, the administration, or the other, is regarded a good leader. Extreme statements become a way to get ahead, deepening the identity crisis. Those who separated from IndiaPakistan, Bangladeshgot Muslim countries but India didnt become Hindu Rashtra because some Hindus betrayed us, says Ghanshyam Parcha, a farmer in Shamli. The flip side is that high-pitched campaigns can apply counter-pressure on governments, fueling a spiral of demands and expectations. Vivek Premi, now the Uttar Pradesh in-charge of Bajrang Dals student outreach says, On the thirteenth day after the Pulwama attack the Indian government sent fighters into Pakistan with our greetings. We felt content, at peace. He is referring to the Hindu ritual held either four days or 13 days (tehravi), after death; the attack actually happened on the 14th day. Premi had been waiting for some such action by India against Pakistan. How far this politics will sustain is unclear. Hindutva outfits in Shamli insist on state subsidy for their pet projectcow shelterswhile confessing they havent been paid lakhs of rupees due from sugar mills. The government has failed to make agriculture remunerative. And abandoned cows are eating up crops and farmers are falling ill as they have to guard their fields on bitterly cold nights. Competitive communalism, too, is a growing concern. Imran Masood, a Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh, said in March 2014, that he would cut Modi to pieces. Nahid Hasan of Samajwadi Party, and scores others, have made derogatory statements, hoping to attract insecure Muslims. Probably the Gau Rakshak, as an idea of Hindu identity, will thrive so long as despair shapes young mens lives. Hindu nationalism has provided the burgeoning youth cohort with a sense of purpose and agency that they lack in everyday life. Faith and nationalism help them cope with their sense of emasculation: through militant action against cow slaughter, love jihad campaigns, they discover a lost self-worth. Then a Sandeep Kashyap becomes more than just another autorickshaw drivera defender of Hinduism, the sharp, priapic sword of his peoples faith. This article also appeared in the 16 March edition of Firstpost Print The CRPF, Rajnath Singh and Arvind Kejriwal are among those will not take part in Holi festivities in respect for the CRPF soldiers killed in Pulwama. The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal are among those who said they will not take part in Holi festivities this year, in honour of the 42 CRPF soldiers who died in the terror attack on their convoy at Pulwama on 14 February. CRPF chief RR Bhatnagar announced on Wednesday that the paramilitary force will not have any official Holi function anywhere in the country in solidarity with the families of its personnel killed in Pulwama. Central Industrial Security Force, Border Security Force and other paramilitary forces have also decided to refrain from officially celebrating the festival of colour. Rajnath and Kejriwal both announced their decisions on Wednesday. The home minister spoke to ANI, while the Aam Aadmi Party tweeted Kejriwal's decision. By Thursday, Major Surendra Poonia, new Bharatiya Janata Party vice-president Baijayant Panda, the party's Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher, Darjeeling MP SS Ahluwalia and Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri had also tweeted that they will shun Holi celebrations this year in solidarity with the Pulwama fallen. Delhi Chief Minister @ArvindKejriwal will not celebrate the Holi festival tomorrow as a mark of respect to the martyrs of Pulwama terror attack. AAP (@AamAadmiParty) March 20, 2019 As a mark of respect for our CRPF bravehearts who made the supreme sacrifice in Pulwama ,I am not celebrating/playing Holi this year. My mind & heart is with the families who grieve & mourn their loved ones. Wishing Everyone a #HappyHoli Play Safe Major Surendra Poonia (@MajorPoonia) March 21, 2019 I will not be celebrating #Holi this year in solidarity with the @crpfindia & its 40 brave sons of India who were killed in the #PulwamaAttack While praying for their families, i also pray that the festival of colours will bring good tidings for all of you & your loved ones Chowkidar Baijayant Jay Panda (@PandaJay) March 21, 2019 Will not be celebrating #holi and there will be no #festivities at my residence in remembrance of the soldiers lost in the #Pulwama terror attack and in memory of late Shri #ManoharParrikar. God bless their souls! Chowkidar Kirron Kher (@KirronKherBJP) March 20, 2019 I will not be celebrating Holi this year in memory of the 40 @crpfindia jawans martyred in the #PulwamaAttack, and in solidarity with their families & loved ones, whose homes shall today stand testimony to their grief, amongst a world full of colour and festivities. SS Ahluwalia (@SSAhluwaliaMP) March 21, 2019 May the colours & positivity of Holi give us yet another reason to stay together as one people & celebrate the unity of India. However, to honour the sacrifice of our Pulwama Martyrs, Lakshmi & I are not celebrating Holi. Thoughts & prayers with the families of the bravehearts. pic.twitter.com/2cyKvErWzO Chowkidar Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) March 21, 2019 Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh said he will not celebrate Holi not just because it comes in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack but also in light of the passing of former Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar. My family & I are not celebrating Holi this year owing to the sadness that engulfs us in the aftermath of the #PulwamaAttacks & #ManoharParrikar Jis untimely death However,I do hope that the year ahead is filled with the colours of joy & success for you & your family. #Holi2019 Chowkidar Vijay Kumar Singh (@Gen_VKSingh) March 21, 2019 The gesture was not limited to prominent personalities alone, as several others tweeted that they, too, would remember the CRPF soldiers who died instead of celebrating Holi. The imagined trauma of a school teacher suffering in a Special Operations Group camp may have stirred civil society once again, yet Rizwan Pandit's is neither the first custodial death in India, nor is it a sudden jolt in a system we believed was very different. Like many Kashmiri men before him, Rizwan Asad Pandit was picked up from his house for questioning. His eventual death in police custody has set in motion a chain of events, beginning from outrage among people and ending in an inquiry now being undertaken by the Jammu and Kashmir Police. The imagined trauma of a school teacher suffering in a camp of the state police's Special Operations Group (SOG) may have stirred civil society once again, yet Pandit's is neither the first custodial death in India, nor is it a sudden jolt in a system we believed was different. Rizwan is another example of the ritual crackdown on Kashmiris who are vaguely separatist. In a state already saturated with armed forces keeping no one above question, Rizwan had ties to the Jamaat-e-Islaami, and such organisations have been on the receiving end of law enforcement's renewed suspicion. Mainstream politicians like Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and Sajad Lone have all condemned the return of this inescapable threat to the Valley. In 2007, Tarsain Lal of Jammu district's Makwal village got into a what reports said was a small quarrel with a neighbour, but was picked up by the Jammu and Kashmir Police soon after. In a few days, Lal's body was returned to his family, with the police maintaining that he died of natural causes. Protests rose to such a crescendo that then chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad ordered the suspension and arrest of four policemen involved in his arrest and murder. The same year, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court stayed trial court proceedings in the case of 21-year-old Zahoor Ahmad Sofi, who was picked up by the police from Brar village and subsequently killed in yet another SOG camp at Bandipora in 2006. Sofi worked at a BEd college, was in custody for 13 days, at the end of which he had suffered three internal injuries, a ruptured left kidney and a haemorrhaging right kidney, Kashmir Reader had reported. Two police officers had been jailed for killing Sofi. Misguiding numbers A PTI report from 2018 notes that the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had registered nearly 1,680 cases of custodial deaths in India in a period of 10 months between 1 April, 2017, and 28 February, 2018. Of them, 1,530 were deaths that occurred in judicial custody, and 144 of them took place while the victims were in police custody. "Custodial violence and torture continue to be rampant in the country. It represents the worst form of excesses by public servants entrusted with the duty of law enforcement," the report said. A similar report by the American NGO Human Rights Watch looked at the period between 2012 and 2015. In that period, as many as 591 men and women died in police custody in India, as per government figures alone. The figure is already high, even though it does not include the number of people who died under mysterious circumstances like alleged encounters. The death of Khalid Muzaffar Wani, the elder brother of former Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani, in 2015 is one such example. Khalid was killed by the Indian Army in Tral, in what was publicised as an encounter with militants, but chances are slim that there had been an encounter at all. One of the most important reasons why the lines are forever blurred in favour of the perpetrators in this regard, notes the Economic and Political Weekly, is that there has been no consistent documentation of police torture-related complaints. The National Crime Records Bureau does not document cases of custodial torture, the report highlights. The NHRC does deal with cases of torture in custody, but the annual figures related to such cases do not get included in its reports. Like Rizwan, most of the people who have died in police custody are political activists. Kalimpong Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) leader Barun Bhujel, who had been in the custody of the West Bengal Police since June 2015, died in October that year, with The Indian Express noting that there were rumours of a delay in giving the 40-year-old medical treatment. The EPW report highlights how "anti-GAIL protestors in Kozhikode, Dalits protesting against violence during Bhima Koregaon celebrations and anti-Sterlite protesters in Tuticorin were all subjected to illegal detentions, mass arrests and torture in police custody". Battles in courts In the absence of legislation to provide recourse to those who suffer and die in police custody, the Supreme Court has long since tried to act as a watchdog. The process began in 1987, when one Suman Behera was taken from his house in Odisha's Sundargarh district for petty thieving. The day was 1 December. On 2 December, his mother Nilabati came to know that Suman's body had been found on the railway tracks. She wrote a simple letter to the Supreme Court, which the country's highest judicial authority took note of. In several cases, like that of Rudul Sah (who was kept in jail for 14 years since his acquittal) and Sebastian M Hongray (the case wherein two villagers were held by armymen in Manipur's Huining village for no apparent reason) , the apex court attempted to right those wrongs that no sitting Bill or Act could. In 2008, a Prevention of Torture Bill was introduced in Parliament, but it was sent to a select committee for further review. The committee's draft was presented in the Upper House in 2010, where it has been stuck ever since. An Army soldier was killed when Pakistan violated the ceasefire by heavily shelling forward areas and posts along the Line of Control with mortar bombs in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district Thursday, officials said. Jammu: An Army soldier was killed when Pakistan violated ceasefire by heavily shelling forward areas and posts with mortar bombs along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district Thursday, officials said. Pakistani troops violated ceasefire in Keri belt of Sunderbani sector this morning, they said. J&K: Army rifleman 24 year old Yash Paul lost his life in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Sunderbani sector earlier today pic.twitter.com/7kY8FBrhCU ANI (@ANI) March 21, 2019 One soldier was was killed in Pakistani firing, they added. Pakistani troops have violated the ceasefire over 110 times along the LoC since January. On Monday night, Pakistan army initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation by resorting to shelling with mortar bombs and firing of small arms along the LoC in Akhnoor and Sunderbani sectors, a defence spokesman had said. An Army soldier was killed and four others were injured Monday when Pakistan Army violated the ceasefire by resorting to heavy mortar shelling and firing along the LoC in Rajouri district. "Rifleman Karamjeet Singh was critically injured and later succumbed to injuries," the spokesman had said. The border skirmishes witnessed a spurt after India's air strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp in Balakot, Pakistan, on February 26 in response to the 14 February Pulwama attack that killed 42 CRPF personnel. The year 2018 witnessed the highest number of ceasefire violations (2,936) by Pakistani troops in the last 15 years along the Indo-Pak border. Pakistan continues to violate the 2003 ceasefire agreement with India despite repeated calls for restraint and adherence to the pact during flag meetings between the two sides. Taking a dig at those opposing his son Nikhil's candidature, HD Kumaraswamy said 'those who are originally from the Congress have already extended their support and JD(S) workers are efficient to ensure his victory.' Bengaluru: Karnataka chief minister HD Kumaraswamy said Thursday he will not plead for support with those Congress leaders who are against his son Nikhil Kumaraswamy's candidature as coalition candidate from Mandya in the Lok Sabha polls. Taking a dig at those opposing Nikhil, the chief minister said "those who are originally from the Congress have already extended their support and JD(S) workers are efficient to ensure his victory." He also said his father and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda was yet to decide on contesting the Lok Sabha polls. "Some leaders in Mandya have gone ahead from the backdoor. It is not necessary for me to talk to them now. My workers are efficient. Instead of trusting those backstabbing, trust those who work honestly. I'm not blaming everyone," Kumaraswamy said in response to a question about him personally seeking support from Mandya Congress leaders. "Among the original Congress men, many of them are with us... but there are a few, I know... a situation won't arise before me to go to them and plead, (but) there is no need of it also," he said. Kumaraswamy said even now he wanted to tell those leaders that there were no permanent enemies or friends in politics and the Congress had decided to give the seat to the JD(S) in the coalition set up. "With their own adamant behaviour, if they still want to go away with an intention to take revenge, good, they can work anywhere they want," he added. The chief minister's sharp reaction came a day after several Congress leaders in Mandya extended their support to Independent candidate Sumalatha Ambareesh despite their party denying her a ticket. The Congress and JD(S), who have been traditional rivals in Mandya, have decided to fight the election together in an alliance this time, and according to the coalition arrangement the seat had gone to the regional party as it had a sitting MP there. The Congress' move to cede the seat to JD(S) is being vehemently opposed by leaders in Mandya, with a few even expressing openly their support to Sumalatha, widow of actor-politician Ambareesh. Ambareesh had early won on Congress' ticket from the constituency. It is a high stake battle for Kumaraswamy and JD(S) as Mandya had remained the party bastion for long. The party also wonthe entire eight Assembly segments in the Vokkaliga stronghold during the May 2018 Assembly polls. For the coalition to emerge as a formidable Opposition to the BJP and win more number of seats, it is crucial for the Congress to transfer its votes to JD(S), and vice versa, including Mandya. According to sources, BJP is unlikely to field its candidate from Mandya and may extend support to Sumalatha. On Deve Gowda contesting the polls, Kumaraswamy said, "There is pressure from several leaders on him to contest the polls, but he has not yet decided whether tocontest or not. There is still no clarity in him whether to contest or not If he decides to contest he will either contest from Tumkur of Bangalore North," he said. Kumaraswamy asserted there was no issue or confusion on constituency for the former prime minister, but there was pressure from everywhere. Both his elder brother Revanna and nephew Prajwal wanted Gowda to contest from Hassan as this will be his last election, he said. "Gowda wished to contest his last election from Hassan, but as he had promised the seat to Prajwal three years ago, he doesn't want to go back on the decision now," he said. Prajwal Revanna, the other grand son of Deve Gowda has been announced as the JD(S) candidate from Hassan, the family turf of the party patriarch and the seat he has been representing. The Congress and JD(S) have decided to launch a joint election campaign in the presence of Congress president RahulGandhi on 31 March, either near the old airport road or near Nelamangala, by gathering about 5 lakh people, Kumaraswamy said. Indicating that former Congress minister Pramod Madhwaraj is likely to be party candidate from Udupi-Chikmangalur Constituency, he said, discussions are on. After taking Congress leaders into confidence,"We will come to a final decision. We have already asked him (Madhwaraj) to make the preparations." The polls in Uttar Pradesh will be held in all seven phases. The counting of votes will take place on 23 May. New Delhi: Senior BJP leader and Lok Sabha MP from Deoria, Kalraj Mishra on Thursday announced that he will not contest in the ensuing general elections. "I will not contest the elections this time; I have been given a lot of other responsibilities by the party so my time will be devoted to that," Mishra told ANI. Mishra had defeated Bahujan Samajwadi Party's (BSP) Niyaj Ahmad with a margin of over 2.65 lakh votes in the Lok Sabha 2014 election. He resigned from the union cabinet in 2017. He was in-charge of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises. With a twist in Uttar Pradesh politics, BSP chief Mayawati on Wednesday announced that she will not contest the upcoming general elections. Lok Sabha elections are scheduled to be held from 11 April and will go on till 19 May in seven phases. The polls in Uttar Pradesh will be held in all seven phases. The counting of votes will take place on 23 May. The electoral battle in this island, which is largely inhabited by migrants from mainland India, has been between the BJP and the Congress. The lone Lok Sabha seat on the Union Territory island of Andaman and Nicobar will be voting on 11 April. The electoral battle in this island, which is largely inhabited by migrants from mainland India, has been between the BJP and the Congress. However, the Trinamool Congress is also trying to make a mark owing to the presence of a large number of Bengalis in the constituency. Currently administered by Admiral (Retd) DK Joshi, this tourist heaven is also growing in strategic value due to its location in the Indian Ocean Region. The island hosts Indias only tri-service command base - the Andaman and Nicobar Command. The island was recently in the news for the renaming of three islands: The Ross Island as Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Dweep; the Neil Island as Shaheed Dweep; and the Havelock Island as Swaraj Dweep. Andaman and Nicobar Lok Sabha Constituency Total electors: 2,69,360 (2014 estimates) Female electors: 1,26,578 Male electors: 1,42,782 Reserved: No Delimited: No Assembly Constituencies: N/A Results in last four elections: Bishnu Pada Ray of the BJP has won the seat thrice in last two decades: 1999, 2009 and 2014. In 2004, Manoranjan Bhakta won the seat on a Congress ticket. Interestingly, Bhakta is the longest serving MP from Andaman and Nicobar, having been elected eight times between 1977 and 2009. Demographics: Most of the population on the island constituency come from the mainland. The constituency is rural in nature. Around 62 percent of the total population lives in rural areas as per the 2011 Census. According to the 2011 Census, 69 percent of the population is Hindu, while 21 percent follow Christianity. The Bengali, Tamil and Hindi-speaking communities are the three notably dominant communities in this constituency. Assam, which became the BJPs gateway to North East after the saffron party came to power for the very first time in 2016, is going to polls in the aftermath of the state-wide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill. The most populated state in the North East, Assam, which has 14 Lok Sabha seats, goes to poll in three phases. While five constituencies each go to polls on 11 and 18 April, the remaining four constituencies will be voting on 23 April. Assam, which became the BJPs gateway to North East after the saffron party came to power for the very first time in 2016, is going to polls in the aftermath of the state-wide protests against the Citizenship Amendment Bill. While the BJP-led Centre withdrew tabling the Bill in the face of active resistance from the local population, the issue is expected to dominate the political discourse in the state. Another issue which is likely to dominate the polls is the National Register of Citizens of India (NRC) drive undertaken by the government to determine the citizens of Assam. With lakhs of names missing from the list, the whole process is likely to dominate the elections in Assam. This election, the fight is expected to be between the Congress and the ruling BJP, which won an unprecedented seven seats in the last Lok Sabha elections. The AIUDF led by perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal and the Asom Gana Parishad, which is expected to be in alliance with the BJP, are the other players. Interestingly, Muslim voters play a crucial role in deciding the political fate of candidates in at least 10 Lok Sabha seats in Assam. Here are the profiles of the 14 constituencies in Assam: 1. Karimganj Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 1 Total electors: 11,65,997 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 6,15,198 Female electors: 5,50,799 Assembly Constituencies: Ratabari (SC), Patharkandi, Karimganj North, Karimganj South, Badarpur, Hailakandi, Katlicherra, Algapur Reserved: Yes. For Scheduled Castes Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: AIUDFs Radheshyam Biswas is the MP from Karimganj since 2014. In 2004 and 2009 elections, Lalit Mohan Suklabaidya of the Congress won the seat. In 1998 and 1999, Nepal Chandra Das held the seat while representing the Congress party. Demographics: Part of the Barak Valley, Karimganj is notably a Muslim-dominated constituency. The community forms over 50 percent of the electorate. The AIUDF, a Muslim dominated party, has made inroads into this constituency in recent years. 2. Silchar Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 2 Total electors: 10,60,175 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 5,54,540 Female electors: 5,05,635 Assembly Constituencies: Silchar, Sonai, Dholai (SC), Udharbond, Lakhipur, Barkhola, Katigorah Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Former Union minister Santosh Mohan Dev represented the constituency between 1999 and 2009. In 2009 elections, Kabindra Purkayastha of the BJP won the seat. In the 2014 polls, Congress leader Sushmita Dev won the seat defeating Purkayastha. Demographics: Muslims voters play a significant role during elections in this constituency as they constitute at least 35 percent of the total population. Bengali Hindu voters, most of whom are descendants of refugees from Bangladesh, are also a significant proportion of the population. 3. Autonomous District Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 3 Total electors: 7,01,890 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 3,58,880 Female electors: 3,43,010 Assembly Constituencies: Haflong (ST), Bokajan (ST), Howraghat (ST), Diphu (ST), Baithalangso (ST) Reserved: Yes. For Scheduled Tribes Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Jayanta Rongpi of the CPM-ML won the seat in 1999 elections. Since 2004, the seat is being held by Biren Singh Engti of the Congress party. Demographics: The constituency comprises two tribal autonomous districts: Dima Hasao and Karbi Anglong. These two autonomous territories are home to several indigenous tribes in Assam like Karbi, Dimasa, Kuki, Biate etc. 4. Dhubri Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 4 Total electors: 15,52,554 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 7,98,124 Female electors: 7,54,430 Assembly Constituencies: Mankachar, Salmara South, Dhubri, Gauripur, Golakganj, Bilasipara West, Bilasipara East, Goalpara East, Goalpara West, Jaleswar Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: While Abdul Hamid was elected on a Congress ticket in 1999, Anwar Hussain won the seat in the 2004 polls. Since 2009, AIUDF chief Badruddin Ajmal has been representing the constituency. Demographics: Muslims, largely immigrants from Bangladesh, form nearly 70 percent of the electorate in this constituency. The immense Muslim influence can be gauged by the fact that all MPs elected from this constituency since 1952 have been Muslims. The constituency is largely agrarian and rural in nature. 5. Kokrajhar Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 5 Total electors: 15,05,476 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 7,76,071 Female electors: 7,29,405 Assembly Constituencies: Gossaigaon, Kokrajhar East (ST), Kokrajhar West (ST), Sidli (ST), Bijni, Sorbhog, Bhabanipur, Tamulpur, Barama (ST) and Chapaguri (ST) Reserved: Yes. For Scheduled Tribes Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Sansuma Khunggur Bwiswmuthiary, an Independent candidate until 2009 and later as a candidate of the Bodolands Peoples Front, represented the constituency between 1998 and 2014. In the 2014 elections, another Independent candidate Naba Kumar Sarania won the seat. Demographics: The seat is dominated by the indigenous Bodo community who constitute little less than half of the 15 lakh voters. Minorities, mainly Muslims, are nearly four lakh voters. SCs like Koch Rajbanshis are also found in significant numbers. 6. Barpeta Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 6 Total electors: 14,30,175 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 7,55,559 Female electors: 6,74,616 Assembly Constituencies: Bongaigaon, Abhayapuri North, Abhayapuri South (SC), Patacharkuchi, Barpeta, Jania, Baghbar, Sarukhetri, Chenga, Dharmapur Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Congress partys AF Golam Osmani won the seat in 1999 and 2004 Lok Sabha elections. Ismail Hussain of the Congress won the seat in 2009 before losing to Sirajuddin Ajmal in the 2014 elections. Demographics: Like Dhubri, Barpeta is another Muslim majority constituency in Assam, where the community accounts for nearly 3/5th of the electorate. Moreover, most of the Muslims found in this constituency are Bengali-speaking immigrants. 7. Gauhati Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 7 Total electors: 19,22,270 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 9,88,067 Female electors: 9,34,203 Assembly Constituencies: Dudhnai (ST), Boko (SC), Chaygaon, Palasbari, Jalukbari, Dispur, Guwahati East, Guwahati West, Hajo, Barkhetry Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Except for 2004 elections, when Kirip Chaliha of the Congress won, this constituency has been represented by veteran BJP leader Bijoya Chakravarty since 1999. Demographics: This constituency is partially urban, owing to the presence of Assams most important hub Guwahati. The SCs and STs constitute one-fifth of the total electorate. Over 4 lakh Muslims (both immigrants as well as of Assamese-origin) voters are also found in this constituency. 8. Mangaldoi Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 8 Total electors: 15,15,676 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 7,91,539 Female electors: 7,24,137 Assembly Constituencies: Kamalpur, Rangiya, Nalbari, Paneri, Kalaigaon, Sipajhar, Mangaldoi (SC), Dalgaon, Udalguri (ST), Majbat Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Ramen Deka of BJP has been the sitting MP since 2009. Before him, Narayan Chandra Borkataky of the BJP represented the constituency. In 1999 elections, Madhab Rajbhangshi of the Congress won the seat. Demographics: Bodo voters are in sizeable numbers in the constituency. Mangaldoi also has over 4 lakh Muslim voters, half of whom are of Assamese origin. Mangaldoi Assembly segment, which comes under this constituency, has a special place in Assams political history, as a bye-election here in 1979, exposed the irregularities in the electoral rolls. This incident is considered the starting point of the six-year-long Assam agitation. 9. Tezpur Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 9 Total electors: 12,59,568 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 6,54,866 Female electors: 6,04,702 Assembly Constituencies: Dhekiajuli, Barchalla, Tezpur, Rangapara, Sootea, Biswanath, Behali,Gohpur, Bihpuria Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Ram Prasad Sarmah of the BJP is the sitting MP from Tezpur. In the 2009 elections, Joseph Toppo of the AGP won the seat while Moni Kumar Subah of the Congress scored an electoral hat trick between 1998 and 2004. Demographics: The Gorkha population are found in sizeable numbers in this constituency. In fact, the constituency has elected Gorkha MPs five times in the last 25 years, including the incumbent. The constituency is largely rural, with just 9 percent of the population living in urban areas, as per one report. Tea workers are also a notable vote bank in this constituency. 10. Nagaon Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 10 Total electors: 15,23,881 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 7,92,424 Female electors: 7,31,457 Assembly Constituencies: Jagiroad (SC), Marigaon, Laharighat, Raha (SC), Nowgong, Barhampur, Jamunamukh, Hojai, Lumding Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Union Minister Rajen Gohain is the sitting MP from Nowgong since 1999. Demographics: Nagaon, which is considered the hub of vegetable production in Assam, is a BJP citadel. With 35 percent Muslim electorate, the party has reportedly been able to retain the seat due to split in Muslim votes in previous elections. 11. Kaliabor Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 11 Total electors: 14,57,865 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 7,52,785 Female electors: 7,05,080 Assembly Constituencies: Golaghat, Dergaon (SC), Bokakhat, Dhing, Batadroba, Rupohihat, Samaguri, Kaliabor, Sarupathar, Khumtai Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: A Congress party stronghold, former chief minister Tarun Gogoi, his son Gaurav, and brother Dip Gogoi have been elected from this constituency since 1998. Demographics: Muslims are the single biggest dominating factor in Kaliabhor Lok Sabha constituency. With over 30 percent of the electorate being Muslim, there was even speculations of a possible alliance with AIUDF the Muslim-dominant party in Assam. 12. Jorhat Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 12 Total electors: 1,234,448 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 6,34,236 Female electors: 6,00,212 Assembly Constituencies: Jorhat, Titabar, Mariani, Teok, Amguri, Nazira, Mahmara, Sonari, Thowra, Sibsagar Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Late Congress leader Bijoy Krishna Handique was the longest serving MP from Jorhat. He represented the Jorhat in the Lok Sabha from 1991 to 2014, when he was defeated by BJPs Kamakhaya Prasad Tasa. Demographics: Unlike in other parts of Assam, Muslims are not a significant factor in Jorhat. Instead, tea workers, who have traditionally backed the Congress, are a decisive factor in the electorate landscape of Jorhat. 13. Dibrugarh Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 13 Total electors: 11,24,305 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 5,79,657 Female electors: 5,44,648 Assembly Constituencies: Moran, Dibrugarh, Lahowal, Duliajan, Tingkhong, Naharkaria, Tinsukia, Digboi, Margherita Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Barring one term, Paban Singh Ghatowar represented this constituency between 1991 and 2014. However, Sarbananda Sonowal, who was then an AGP leader, represented the constituency between 2004 and 2009. In the 2014 elections, Rameshwar Teli of the BJP won the seat. Demographics: Dibrugarh is the centre of tea politics in Assam, with tea workers constituting more than 30 percent of the electorate in the constituency. In fact, Ghatowar himself comes from the tea tribe communities which were brought in to work in estates in Assam. 14. Lakhimpur Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 14 Total electors: 14,30,994 (2014 estimates) Male electors: 7,35,263 Female electors: 6,95,731 Assembly Constituencies: Majuli (ST), Naoboicha, Lakhimpur, Dhakuakhana (ST), Dhemaji (ST), Jonai (ST), Chabua, Doom Dooma, Sadiya Reserved: No Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: The seat is currently in the BJPs kitty. Former Congress minister Ranee Narah won the seat in 1998, 1999 and 2009 elections. In 2009 elections, Arun Kumar Sarmah of the AGP won the seat. In the 2014 polls, BJPs Sarbananda Sonowal won the seat defeating Narah by a huge margin. He vacated the seat in 2016 to take over as Chief Minister of Assam. Demography: The Ahom community as well as the Mishing tribe, one of the largest tribes in the North East, who also inhabit parts of Arunachal Pradesh, are the main electorates in the constituency. Tea workers are also a sizeable section of the electorate in Lakhimpur. Spread across 24 districts, Jharkhand has 14 parliamentary constituencies and 81 Assembly constituencies. Jharkhand, the 28th state of the Union of India, came into existence on 15 November, 2000 (also the birth anniversary of tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda) by the Bihar Reorganisation Act. The state is rich in mineral resources such as uranium, mica, bauxite, granite, gold, silver, graphite, magnetite, dolomite, fireclay, quartz, feldspar, Coal, iron, copper etc. Spread across 24 districts, Jharkhand has 14 parliamentary constituencies and 81 Assembly constituencies. Nearly 32 tribes inhabit the state, namely Birhor, Korwa, Hill Kharia, Sauria Paharia, Mahli, Lohra, Karmali, Chik Baraik, Santhal, Munda, Oraon, Ho, Bhumij etc. Out of 24 districts, 21 are currently receiving funds under the Backward Regions Grant Programme. The state will vote in four phases with voting on 29 April, 6, 12 and 19 May in the upcoming Lok Sabha election. Though the delimitation exercise was carried out in Jharkhand in 2002, it was nullified by Section 10B of the Delimitation Amendment Act, 2008. In the 2014 general elections, BJP won 12 seats and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha made its way to two seats. While BJP has a stronghold in the state, Congress, which has been out of power in the mineral-rich tribal state for many years, is looking to make some headway in the upcoming polls. The Congress has entered into an alliance with regional parties Jharkhand Vikas Manch (JVM) and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). According to The Telegraph, the Congress would contest in seven seats, JMM in four, JVM in two and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in one seat after these parties formed an alliance. However, the JMM is unhappy with four seats (Dumka, Rajmahal, Giridih, and Jamshedpur) and wants Singhbhum and Khunti as well. On the other hand, the BJP and AJSU party, who are also the current ruling coalition partners in the state, will contest the Lok Sabha elections together. BJP will contest 13 seats while AJSU party will do so from Giridih parliamentary constituency. On 16 March, the state BJP unit prepared a list of nearly 40 probable Lok Sabha candidates which will be forwarded to the party high command for the finalised list. One of the main issues in the state is the Maoist insurgency. Twenty-one districts of the state have been declared Left Wing Extremism-affected by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Following is a detailed list of all the parliamentary constituencies in Jharkhand: 1.Chatra Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 4 Total electors: 13,12,545 (as per 2014 estimates) Female electors: 6,16,031 Male electors: 6,96,514 Reserved: No Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Chatra (SC), Simaria (SC), Latehar (SC), Panki, Manika (ST). Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: RJD candidate Dhirendra Agarwal won the 2004 election, beating JD(U)s Inder Singh Namdhari by more than 18,000 votes. However, Namdhari made his comeback as an independent candidate in 2009 Congress Dhiraj Prasad Sahu. The BJP finally came to power in 2014, when Sunil Kumar Singh won the seat, leaving Sahu high and dry. Demographics: The Chatra parliamentary constituency is spread across Chatra district and parts of Latehar and Palamu. Chatra district is spread across 3706 square kilometres and has a population of 10.42 lakh as per Census 2011. It has a sex ratio of 951 females for every 1,000 males and a literacy rate of 60.18 percent. It is a Hindu-majority district with 9.03 lakh people following the religion. Almost 90 percent of the population depends on agriculture in the district. Latehar district has a population of 3.70 lakh people, as per the latest Census. Its literacy rate is 59.51 percent. It is a predominantly tribal district with more than 66 percent of the population comprising SCs and STs. It is the richest district in terms of forest resources. Located in the northwestern part of the state, Palamu has a population of nearly 19.4 lakh people and a literacy rate of 63.63 percent, as per Census 2011. 2. Dhanbad Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 7 Total electors: 18,89,994 Female electors: 8,57,989 Male electors: 10,32,005 Reserved: No Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Bokaro, Sindri, Nirsa, Dhanbad, Jharia, Chandankiyari (SC). Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Congress leader Chandra Sekhar Dubey won the 2004 election defeating BJP leader Rita Verma. However, BJPs Pashupati Nath Singh snatched the seat from Congress in the 2009 election and retained it in the 2014 General Elections as well. Demographics: The Dhanbad parliamentary constituency is spread across parts of Bokaro and Dhanbad district in the state. Both districts are among the 250 backward districts receiving support from the Backward Regions Grant Fund Programme. Dhanbad is the second most populous district in the state after Ranchi, with a population of 26.84 lakh people. The coal mining industry dominates the district. Of the total population, 80.07 percent are Hindus while 16.08 percent are Muslims. 3. Dumka Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 2 Total electors: 12,47,155 Female electors: 6,00,270 Male electors: 6,46,885 Reserved: Yes, for Scheduled Tribes. Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Skiaripara (ST), Nala, Jamtara, Sarath, Dumka (ST), Jama (ST). Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Former Jharkhand chief minister and JMM chief Shibu Soren has been the MP since 2004, when he trounced BJPs Sone Lal Hembrom in the General Election, by a whopping margin of 18.4 percent votes. In 2009 and 2014, he defeated BJP candidate Sunil Soren, who is a former JMM man and was a close aide of Shibus eldest son, Durga Soren. At present, Shibu is a member of the Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution Standing Committee in the Parliament. Demographics: This reserved parliamentary constituency is spread across Dumka, Deoghar and Jamtara districts. The district of Dumka has a population of 13,21,442, comprising 6,68,514 males and 6,52,928 females, as per Census 2011. It has an ST population of 5,17,077 persons. Jamtara district is situated in the northeastern part of Jharkhand, with a population of 7,90,207 people. It was carved out of Dumka district after the formation of Jharkhand in 2000. The economy of the district mainly depends on cultivation or related work. More than 64 percent of the total workers are engaged in the primary sector. Deoghar district has a population of 14,92,073 people. The district was earlier a part of Dumka district. The literacy rate is 53.18 perecnt. 4. Giridih Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 6 Total electors: 15,15,137 Female electors: 7,03,151 Male electors: 8,11,986 Reserved: No Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Giridih, Dumri, Gomia, Bermo, Tundi, Baghmara Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: In 2004, JMM Tek Lal Mahto won the seat, trouncing BJP candidate Ravindra Kumar Pandey. However, in 2009, Pandey managed to defeat Mahto by more than 94,000 votes. BJP retained the seat in 2014 as well, with JMMs Jagarnath Mahto as the runner up. Demographics: This constituency comprises parts of Giridih, Dhanbad and Bokaro districts. The population of Giridih district is 24.45 lakh people. Spread over an area of 4853.56 square kilometres, it was previously part of the Hazaribagh district. The region is inhabited by several tribal communities, mainly Mundas. On the other hand, with a population of 20.62 lakh, Bokaro district is one of the most industrialised zones in the country. It has a literacy rate of 72.01 percent, as Census 2011 and a sex ratio of 922 females per 1,000 males. 5. Godda Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 3 Total electors: 15,90,628 Female electors: 7,64,922 Male electors: 8,25,706 Reserved: No Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Madhupur, Deoghar (ST), Jarmundi, Poreyahat, Godda, Mahagama. Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: In 2004, Congress leader Furkan Ansari came to power defeating BJP leader Pradeep Yadav by more than 26,000 votes. However, BJPs Nishikant Dubey won the 2009 and 2014 Lok Sabha elections, defeating Ansari. Dubey courted controversy last year after a video of a party worker washing the BJP MPs feet and drinking the water went viral. Demographics: The constituency is spread over Godda district, and parts of Deoghar and Dumka districts. Godda district is located in the northeastern part of the state, with a population of 13.14 lakh people. Its literacy rate is 46.02 percent. The main economic activity of the people is agriculture, and major crops grown are paddy, wheat and maize. Godda is the land of a tribe called Santhals as well. Dumka district is one of the largest producers of silk cocoons in India. More than 30 percent of the district is under forest area. 6. Hazaribagh Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 14 Total electors: 15,18,831 Female electors: 7,06,344 Male electors: 8,12,487 Reserved: No Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Barhi, Barkagaon, Ramgarh, Mandu, Hazaribagh Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Former Union minister of finance Yashwant Sinha contested the 2004 General Election from Hazaribagh constituency but lost to Bhubneshwar Prasad Mehta from the CPI. However, the senior BJP leader won the seat in 2009, defeating Congress Saurabh Narain Singh. In 2014, Sinhas son, Jayant Sinha emerged victorious with a winning margin of 16.45 percent votes. He is also the Union minister of state for civil aviation in the Narendra Modi government. On 18 March, the Ranchi district administration filed a poll code violation case against Jayant. The case was filed on a complaint by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha that wrote to Jharkhand Chief Electoral Officer L Khiangte, claiming that Sinha has used the convocation ceremony at IIM-Ranchi to publicise the BJP government's achievements, in gross violation of the Model Code of Conduct. Demographics: The constituency covers the entire Ramgarh district and parts of Hazaribagh district. According to Census 2011, Hazaribagh has a population of nearly 17.34 lakh people, of which 58.41 percent are literate. The district of Ramgarh has a population of 9.49 lakh people, comprising 494230 males and 455213 females. The Scheduled Tribes population in the district stands at 2.01 lakh people. 7. Jamshedpur Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 9 Total electors: 15,81,665 Female electors: 7,70,033 Male electors: 8,11,632 Reserved: No Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Bahragora, Ghatsila (ST), Potka, Jugsalai (SC), Jamshedpur East, Jamshedpur West Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: In 2004, JMMs Sunil Kumar Mahato came to power with a winning margin of 13.6 percent. Tribal leader and former Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda won the 2009 General Election on a BJP ticket, defeating JMMs Suman Mahato. In 2014, BJP candidate Bidyut Baran Mahato grabbed the seat defeating Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik)s Ajay Kumar. Demographics: The constituency covers the entire East Singhbhum district. Located in the southeast corner of Jharkhand, East Singhbum district has a population of 22.93 lakh people. The economy of the district largely depends on cultivation or related work. Its literacy rate is 76.13 percent. The district is rich in minerals such as iron ore, copper, uranium, gold kyanite etc. 8. Khunti Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 11 Total electors: 11,11,852 Female electors: 5,46,308 Male electors: 5,65,544 Reserved: Yes. For Scheduled Tribes. Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Kharsawan (ST), Tamar (ST), Torpa (ST), Khunti (ST), Kolebira (ST), Simdega (ST). Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Veteran Congress leader and former Bihar minister, Sushila Kerketta, won the Khunti Lok Sabha seat, defeating tribal leader and BJP candidate Kariya Munda in 2004. Kerketta passed away in 2009. In the same year, Munda won the seat on the BJP ticket conquering Congress candidate Neil Tirkey. He was also the Deputy Speaker of the 15th Lok Sabha. Munda continued to hold the seat in the 2014 election as well. Demographics: This Lok Sabha constituency covers the entire Khunti and Simdega district and includes parts of Ranchi and Seraikela-Kharsawan district. Historically known as the birthplace of tribal freedom fighter Birsa Munda, Khunti district has a population of 5,31,885 people. The district is part of the South Chotanagpur division. The region comes under the Red Corridor experiencing considerable Maoist insurgency. It has a tribal population of 3,89,626 people. Simdega district has a population of nearly six lakh people, where more than 86 percent of total workers depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Nearly 80 percent of its population comprises tribal communities. Its literacy rate is 67.99 percent. It is the only Christian majority district in the state (51.1 percent) with 3.06 lakh people following the religion as per the 2011 Census. Ranchi districts population constitutes 8.83 percent (29,14,253 persons) of Jharkhands population, as per Census 2011. Its sex ratio stands at 949. The district has a literacy rate of 76.06 percent. The district is also a beneficiary of the Backward Regions Grants Fund Programme. 9. Kodarma Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 5 Total electors: 16,39,629 Female electors: 7,69,613 Male electors: 8,70,016 Reserved: No Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Kodarma, Barkatha, Dhanwar, Bagodar, Jamua (SC), Gandey. Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Babulal Marandi, who was also the first chief minister of Jharkhand, won the seat in 2004 General Election, defeating JMMs Champa Verma by more than 1.5 lakh votes. Marandi resigned from the seat and the party in 2006 and floated his own political party JVM. In 2009, he contested as a JVM candidate and triumphed over Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninst)(Liberation)s Raj Kumar Yadav. However, he had to forfeit the seat to BJPs Ravindra Kumar Ray in 2014. Demographics: It is spread across the Kodarma district, and parts of Hazaribagh and Giridih districts. Kodarma has a population of 7,16,259 people, comprising 3,67,222 males and 3,49,037 females. Around 15.21 percent of the population comes under Scheduled Tribes. Hazaribagh district is a Hindu-majority district with 80.55 percent following Hinduism. The Census 2011 figures indicate that the percentage share of scheduled caste population to total population in Giridih district was 13.31 percent while that of scheduled tribes is 9.74 percent. The literacy rate is 63.1 percent in the district. 10. Lohardarga Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 12 Total electors: 11,19,144 Female electors: 5,40,261 Male electors: 5,78,883 Reserved: Yes. For Scheduled Tribes Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Mandar (ST), Sisai (ST), Gumla (ST), Bishunpur (ST), Lohardaga (ST) Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: The seat has been a BJP stronghold for the last decade. In 2004, Congress candidate Rameshwar Oraon won the seat with a winning margin of 19.35 percent votes. Since 2009, BJPs Sudarshan Bhagat has held the seat. He is the Minister of State for Tribal Affairs in the Narendra Modi government at the Centre. Demographics: This reserved constituency covers the entire Gumla and Lohardaga districts and parts of Ranchi district. Part of the South Chotanagpur division, Gumla district has a population of nearly 10.3 lakh people, according to the 2011 Census. Both Lohardaga and Gumla districts come under the Backward Region Grants Fund Programme. The region is rich in minerals such as bauxite, aluminium, iron oxide and manganese dioxide. Lohardaga district has a population of 4.62 lakh people, of which 56.89 percent are Scheduled Tribes, according to the 2011 Census. Its literacy rate stands at 67.61 percent. 11. Palamu Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 13 Total electors: 16,45,957 Female electors: 7,55,947 Male electors: 8,90,010 Reserved: Yes. For Scheduled Castes. Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Daltonganj, Garhwa, Bhawanathpur, Bishrampur, Chhatarpur (SC), Hussainabad Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: This parliamentary constituency has seen members of three different parties in power over the last 15 years. In 2004, RJD leader Manoj Kumar became the MP. He was succeeded by JMM candidate Kameshwar Baitha in 2009, who defeated RJDs Ghuran Ram. In 2014, the BJP came to power with Vishnu Dayal Ram as the MP with a winning margin of 27.01% votes, while RJDs Kumar came a distant second. Demographics: The constituency covers the entire Garhwa district and parts of Palamu district. The constituency is part of the Red Corridor and is affected by Left-Wing Extremism. Garhwa district has a population of 13.23 lakh people, where 24.19 percent of the population belongs to Scheduled Castes. It also receives funding under the Backward Regions Grant Programme. Most of the population in the district reside in rural areas. Its literacy rate stands at 60.33 percent. Palamu also receives funding from the Backward Regions Grant Programme and is an LWE-affected district. 12. Rajmahal Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 1 Total electors: 13,53,172 Female electors: 6,61,918 Male electors: 6,91,254 Reserved: Yes. For Scheduled Tribes. Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Rajmahal, Boiro (ST), Barhait (ST), Litipara (ST), Pakaur, Maheshpur (ST) Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: In 2004, JMMs Hemlal Murmu, a veteran tribal leader, claimed victory to the seat, defeating Congress candidate Thomas Hansda with a margin of 0.43 percent votes. However, Murmu had to forfeit the seat in the 2009 General Elections to BJPs Devidhan Besra. Following his defeat, Murmu, who served JMM for over a decade, resigned from the party and joined BJP instead. He contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls on a BJP ticket from Rajmahal but lost to JMMs Vijay Kumar Hansdak. Demographics: Rajmahal parliamentary constituency is spread across Sahibganj and Pakur districts. Sahibganj district has a population of nearly 11.50 lakh while Pakur district has a population of close to nine lakh people. A tribal dominated area, Pakur has an ST population of 3,79,054 and 3,08,343 in Sahibganj, according to Census 2011. The literacy rate is 52 percent in Sahibganj district. In Pakur, Santhals and Paharias are the main tribes living in the district and are the oldest inhabitants of the area. Set within the lush green region, the district of Sahibganj with a predominantly tribal population is a part of Santhal Pargana division and forms the easternmost tip of the division. 13. Ranchi Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 8 Total electors: 16,48,464 Female electors: 7,79,681 Male electors: 8,68,783 Reserved: No Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Ichagarh, Silli, Khijri (ST), Ranchi, Hatia, Kanke (SC). Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Congress MP Subodh Kant Sahay kept the BJP at bay for two terms, 2004 and 2009, defeating the saffron party candidate Ram Tahal Choudhary on both occasions. However, riding on the Modi wave, Choudhary vanquished Sahay in the 2014 General Election, by more than 1.99 lakh votes. Demographics: Ranchi parliamentary constituency comprises parts Seraikella Kharsawan and Ranchi districts. Seraikella Kharsawan comes under the Backward Regions Grant Fund Programme. According to Census 2011, the population of Seraikella Kharsawan district is 10.63 lakh persons. More than 60 percent of the population is engaged in the primary sector. Ranchi district is the seventh most densely populated state. In this district, 51.29 percent of the population comprises Hindus while Muslims constitute 28.77 percent as per Census 2011. Ranchi is also rich in natural and mineral resources. 14. Singhbhum Lok Sabha Constituency Constituency number: 10 Total electors: 11,52,570 Female electors: 5,69,126 Male electors: 5,83,444 Reserved: Yes. For Scheduled Tribes. Delimited: No Assembly constituencies: Seraikela (ST), Chaibasa (ST), Majhgaon (ST), Jaganathpur (ST), Manoharpur (ST), Chakaradharpur (ST) Results in last four Lok Sabha elections: Veteran Congress leader Bagun Sumbrai, who passed away in June 2018, won the seat in 2004, defeating BJPs Laxman Gilua. In 2009, independent candidate Madhu Kora won the election, trouncing BJPs Barkuwar Gagrai. However, BJPs Gilua, who is also the current state party unit president, clinched the seat in the 2014 elections. Demographics: The constituency covers the West Singhbhum district and a part of Seraikella-Kharsawan district. West Singhbhum district, which is a tribal region, has a population of 15,02,338 people, as per the latest census. It ranks first in terms of sex ratio (1005) against the states 949. More than 70 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture. In West Singhbhum, tribal groups constitute 67.31 percent of the district population. Its literacy rate is comparatively lower than the state average (66.41 percent) at 58.63 percent. Puducherry district covers most of the areas coming under the Union Territory. One of the tiniest Union Territories of India, the enclave of Puducherry is divided into four different areas. Puducherry district covers most of the areas coming under the Union Territory. Karaikal, which lies on the coast of Bay of Bengal, is another district. Yanam and Mahe, on the other hand, are tiny enclaves surrounded by Andhra Pradesh and Kerala respectively. Currently, in the news for the political tug of war between Lt-Governor Kiran Bedi and Congress chief minister V Narayanaswamy, Puducherry has generally been a Congress stronghold. The ruling Congress has 15 seats in the Assembly, while its ally the DMK has two. As per the seat sharing deal between the Congress and DMK, Puducherry seat will be contested by the former. Here is a brief look at the Puducherry Lok Sabha seat, which will be voting to elect its representative on 18 April. Puducherry Lok Sabha Constituency Total electors: 9,59,566 (2019 estimates) Female electors: 4,53,153 Male electors: 5,06,320 Reserved: No Delimited: No Assembly Constituencies: There are 30 seats in the Puducherry Assembly. Embalom, Nettapakkam, Thirubuvanai, Ossudu, Nedungadu Assembly Constituencies are reserved for Scheduled Castes candidates. Results in last four elections: In the last four elections, the Congress has won the seat twice while the PMK, which was part of the Congress-led UPA between 2004 and 2009, won the seat in 2004 elections. A splinter group of the Congress, the AINRC, won the seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha as part of the NDA. Demographics profile: The Union Territory is dominated by Vanniyars, who are also influential in the northern parts of Tamil Nadu. Vanniyars form at least 30 percent of the population. Dalits constitute nearly 15 percent of the population. However, several reports in the past have also highlighted their inability to influence the election due to the dominance of non-Dalit castes. Yanam, surrounded by Andhra Pradesh, has Telugu speakers while Mahe, an enclave in Kerala, has Malayalam speakers. As per 2011 Census, Muslims and Christians constitute a little over 12 percent of the population. This constituency is largely urban with over 2/3rd of the population residing in urban centres. During the Assembly elections in December 2018, Twitter said it had recorded over the past two months more than 48 lakh tweets about poll-related queries. As political parties gear up for the latest electoral battle scheduled to be held from 11 April, the Election Commission is now on Twitter to directly answer all voting process related queries. With the staggering volume of conversations on Twitter, the number of people who turn to the microblogging site has significantly grown since the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Leaders across the political spectrum also put forward their views or squabbles on the social media platform. After introducing an app and a helpline number, the organising body of elections in India is now on Twitter with the handle @ECISVEEP, to answer your queries. The EC, using #DeshKaMahaTyohar, has already started posting their educational and informational videos to spread voter awareness. Ensuring that no Voter is left behind!#Goverify SMS space to 1950 to check your details on Voter List or Call Voter Helpline 1950. If you are not registered #GoRegister on https://t.co/Y7f9inmAuC so that you are not left out from #DeshKaMaha pic.twitter.com/pOiAOaUaWo ECI #DeshKaMahaTyohar (@ECISVEEP) March 21, 2019 Many on Twitter welcomed the 'much-needed' move taken by EC. I am happy to inform ECI has finally come on Twitter. You would get all information and educational messages directly! Please follow @ECISVEEP Dr. S.Y. Quraishi (@DrSYQuraishi) March 20, 2019 Happy to see this. Most needed Kiran Bedi (@thekiranbedi) March 20, 2019 During the Assembly elections in December 2018, Twitter had said that it had recorded more than 48 lakh tweets about poll-related queries during two months before the election. In his interaction with the students, Rahul Gandhi had promised 33 percent reservation in government jobs for women and answered several of their questions. Chennai: The Election Commission Thursday said Congress president Rahul Gandhi's interaction with students at a women's college in Chennai did not violate the model code of conduct, though it has sought a report on his speech. Tamil Nadu's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Satyabrata Sahoo said local election officials have reported that there was no violation in terms of permission obtained by Stella Maris College for Women to host the interaction on 13 March. He said the District Electoral Officer (DEO) has informed him that "there was permission" for Rahul's event. "So, there is no violation of MCC." However, Sahoo has sought "further information" on Rahul's speech. "Have sought further information on what kind of speech was given... have asked the DEO to give report based on the speech content," Sahoo said. Earlier, the Tamil Nadu government had ordered an inquiry as to how the college gave its approval for Rahul to interact with its students when the model code for elections was in force. The Director of Collegiate Education, R Sarumathi, had directed a subordinate official to inquire into the matter. In his interaction with the students, the Congress chief had promised 33 percent reservation in government jobs for women and answered several of their questions. He had also brought up the issue of the Rafale deal and reiterated his allegations about the pricing of the aircraft and the process. The Samsung Galaxy M30 packs the best display on a budget phone but gamers might want to stay away. Samsung has been off the pace when it comes to budget phones for a few years now and the company's new Galaxy M Series is a serious push towards setting things right in 2019. As with the Galaxy M10 and M20 launched earlier this year, the Galaxy M30 aims to offer good value at a price of Rs 14,990. Something that the Korean giant hasn't really tried over the past few years. The competition when it comes to the Rs 15,000 budget range does heat up quite a bit. We have smartphones from the likes of Xiaomi, Realme, Asus and even Honor competing to grab eyeballs, and Samsung's Galaxy M30 gets right into the mix with what it packs. Coming from the Galaxy M10 and M20, the Galaxy M30 slots right above the Galaxy M20 and packs in a gorgeous Super AMOLED display instead of LCD, a mammoth 5,000 mAh battery and triple rear cameras that certainly pack a punch. It's certainly a great phone, but does it do enough to topple the mighty Redmi Note 7 Pro? The best display on a budget smartphone I can comfortably state, and with conviction, that the Galaxy M30 has the best display (by some margin) on a phone that is priced under Rs 15,000. Samsung does make the best OLED panels for smartphones and it doesn't surprise me that the display on the Galaxy M30 is an absolute joy to look at. The colours are punchy, the saturation levels are remarkable and the display gets bright enough to blind you for a few seconds if you suddenly flick the phone out of your pocket in the dark. Like the Galaxy M10 and M20, Samsung's packed in a 6.4-inch Infinity-U display here with slim bezels. If you're coming from an LCD panel and you love watching videos, the Galaxy M30 is an absolute treat. If you don't like the way the colours turn out on the display by default, Samsung also throws in a bunch of display profiles to choose from in the display settings. I personally prefer the 'AMOLED photo' display profile but I did come across a couple of people at least who would rather leave the display at 'Adaptive', so that does boil down to preference. Samsung also throws in a couple of handy options like a blue-light filter toggle and the option of changing font style and size if you want to. The only niggle I had is with the auto-brightness feature which failed on me so often that I found myself turning the feature off within a day's use. Two-day battery life with heavy usage The Galaxy M30 packs a 5,000 mAh battery unit and while that sounds like a lot, we have seen phones like the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2 pack similar units in the past. But the AMOLED display on the Galaxy M30 and the Exynos 7904 SoC make miracles happen, as far as battery life is concerned anyway. Even with hours of video watching on mobile data, I was able to drain only a meagre amount of the battery. Add to that an hour of music streaming on Spotify, a couple of hundred WhatsApp messages, Slack, two mail accounts running in the background, selfies and photos every now and then and about half an hour worth of voice calls, I still managed two full days before I reached for the charger (the M30 still had 6 percent juice). Samsung's bundled a type-C fast charger (about 18 W) in the box but since this is a big battery to fill, it did take me two hours and 25 minutes on average to charge the phone completely. But then again, I wouldn't complain with such a stellar battery life. Triple-cameras that could have been better A triple-camera setup on a budget phone is unheard of but Samsung's done that with the Galaxy M30. It was definitely something I was eager to put to the test since the last triple-camera Samsung smartphone I'd tried out was the Galaxy A7. Well, I was a tad disappointed with what Samsung could have done with such impressive hardware but the cameras on the Galaxy M30 definitely do a decent job overall. However, pitted against the Redmi Note 7 Pro (review), the performance does fall short. The phone packs a 13 MP f/1.9 primary camera supported by a 5 MP f/2.2 depth sensor and a 5 MP f/2.2 ultrawide-angle lens. Now, images shot in daylight turn out well with great contrast levels and natural-looking shades. Samsung does give you an easier way to turn on HDR but you can head to settings and turn that to 'Auto' if you like. Focusing is fast and the wide-angle lens is a nice option to have if you're trying to squeeze in more into the shot. Images shot using the wide-angle lens do turn out horribly distorted at times though and Samsung does have a 'shape corrector' to let you fix the distortion. However, there were occasions when the images were just too distorted to fix. The portrait mode (live-focus as Samsung calls it) works well with great edge detection and a very natural-looking separation of the background from the subject. The background blur looks quite natural and I love the fact that you can alter the level of background blur even after taking the picture. Here's a portrait mode comparison against the Redmi Note 7 Pro and the Samsung's Galaxy A30. In low light, the camera does well when you have a light source illuminating the subject but once you move to darker situations, you will notice a lot of noise which is aggressively dealt with, as it is on most smartphones. The resulting image is therefore washed out with little to no detail. Adding a night mode here would be really helpful though. As for the 16 MP f/2.0 front camera, I was really pleased with the selfies, both in daylight as well as in tricky lighting conditions. Definitely, a thumbs up here if you click a lot of selfies. The 'live focus' mode also works well here and a dedicated sticker mode was also worth a try. You can check out high-res images clicked by the Galaxy M30 here. As for video, the resolution is capped at 1080p 60fps but EIS (electronic image stabilisation) works well here and you'll enjoy shooting some steady clips using the Galaxy M30. A tall yet grippy device which could have been designed better The Galaxy M30 may not be a smartphone that will wow you with its looks but Samsung has tried to make it look appealing in its unique way. What would otherwise look like a very dull phone, has an odd, dual-tone gradient finish which might not be breathtaking to look at but does make the phone stick out in a crowd. The frame and back of the phone have been moulded completely out of plastic and though we understand Samsung wanted to cut costs on materials, the Galaxy M30 could have been designed better. The phone does feel rigid otherwise though. The rounded back also helps a great deal in gripping the phone, something which is a worry with glass on phones these days. The back does have a glossy finish, which means that you will have to throw a case on if you don't want scratches to show within a day or two. Talking about scratches, there no camera bump on the Galaxy M30, which means that you won't have to worry too much about scratching the camera lenses. Now, the Galaxy M30 is not a small phone. It features a large 6.4-inch display and a mammoth 5,000 mAh battery but Samsung's been able to keep the weight fairly low. This has definitely been aided by the use of plastic but is still remarkable nonetheless. No 'OneUI' but Samsung's 'Experience UI' has gotten marginally better Something that distinguishes Samsung's new Galaxy A series from the M Series is the inclusion of OneUI. With the Galaxy M30, you're still stuck on Android Oreo 8.1 with the company's old Experience UI. I did receive a software update while reviewing the phone which updated the Android Security patch to February 2019 but apart from that, there nothing that we haven't seen before on Samsung phones. That said, the software does feel fairly well-optimised and I did not come across any major stuttering with normal usage. You do see some stutter when using multi-window mode and when playing games. Having used the Galaxy A30 for a while, OneUI does feel far snappier to use, so this certainly isn't a performance issue. Switching to a third-party launcher could help your cause but I really hope Samsung plans on bring OneUI to the M Series phones. As for additions like face unlock, the feature does work fairly well with a decent amount of accuracy for an unsecure, 2D-based system. The Exynos 7904 chip isnt a good bet for PUBG fans Samsung's stuck with the same 14nm Exynos 7904 we saw on the Galaxy M20 and while it handles daily messaging apps and web browsing just fine, it's certainly doesn't handle heavy games like PUBG Mobile and Asphalt very well. The phone also begins to stutter every now and then while trying to use the multi-window feature, which was a mild disappointment. RAM management on the 4 GB / 64 GB unit we have for review was good and I could toggle between multiple apps with relative ease. The single, bottom-firing speaker gets fairly loud and the output off the 3.5 mm jack was also quite pleasing. The fingerprint scanner on the back is also fairly fast but we have seen faster scanners on phones in the same budget. The earpiece on the front may be small, but I didn't have any issues worth noting while taking phone calls. Verdict The bright and punchy display coupled with the brilliant battery life certainly makes the Galaxy M30 a great pick for those who love watching a lot of videos on their phone. With Widevine L1 certification essential for HD streaming on apps like Netflix, and a rarity among budget phones this phone certainly has you covered for HD streaming on all the popular streaming platforms out there. If you are picking the Galaxy M30 for its cameras, you won't be disappointed. The M30 does a great job with selfies and portrait shots and the wide-angle lens here is a definite bonus. It's only in low-light that you see the phone choke a bit. But again, this is a Rs 14,990 phone, and at this price, the M30 certainly packs a punch. Overall, the Galaxy M30 does come across as a good device for the price. Its only major drawback is performance, which will be a factor if you are a gamer or a heavy multi-tasker. However, you do have a number of other options to choose from including the Honor 10 Lite, the Oppo K1 (review) and also the Realme 2 Pro (review). The Redmi Note 7 Pro, though, for the time being, still keeps its crown. tech2 News Staff Google marked the festival of Holi on 21 March with a colourful doodle showcasing the bright and fun spirit of the festival. Holi, also known as "the festival of colours", is a Hindu festival marking the arrival of spring and the end of winter. India and Nepal are the two countries that devotedly celebrate Holi every year. However, the presence of Indian diaspora all over the world has made it one of the most popular Indian festivals celebrated in Asia and the West. Holi falls on a full moon night on the 'Purnima' of the 'Phalgun' month in the Hindu calendar. Traditionally, festivities for Holi are observed over two days the 20 and 21 March this year by Hindus. Celebrations on the first days kick off with people lighting a large bonfire in their community or backyards, and making offerings of raw coconut and corn. On the second day, people play with colours, pichkaris, water guns, and water balloons. In some states like Ahmedabad and Gujarat, an earthen pot with buttermilk is tied at a height and as tradition has it, the boys try to break it and the girls try to stop them. Maharashtrians celebrate the festival for a full week. While lighting the bonfire a day before the festival, people offer a meal and sweet dish to the fire. Puran Poli is passed around as a special delicacy during the festival. The Holi purnima (full moon) is called Shimga and is a representation of evil being eliminated by good. Google also has a mesmerizing Arts and Culture featured exhibit explaining the significance of Holi alongside gorgeous artwork. tech2 News Staff The Huawei P30 and P30 Pro are expected to launch at an event that is scheduled to take place on 26 March. While we've already seen a number of leaks specifying key features of the two phones, new leaks appear to have given it all away. Yes, including the prices. The leaks which appear from a listing by a Norwegian retailer, Power, gives us another look at the devices, corroborating previous renders that showed a waterdrop notch for both phones. The listings also reveal 6 GB RAM/128 GB storage variants for both devices, as well as an 8 GB RAM/256 GB storage option for the P30 Pro. Soon after the listings were spotted, popular tipster Evan Blass also revealed images on Twitter that flesh out the full-colour selection that Huawei is working on with both versions of the phone. Huawei Netherlands also accidentally uploaded a page on its website promoting the P30 and P30 Pro. The page was quickly removed but not before media publications were already able to pull out a bunch of images and learn more on the pre-order bonuses. While Huawei hasn't confirmed anything officially yet but another listing leaked by Amazon Italy (also removed shortly after) suggests that 5 April may be the day when both phones go on sale. Its worth noting though that dates in other countries may differ. As far as design is concerned, there's not a lot of new pointers here. The P30 Pro variant will come with four rear cameras, whereas the regular Huawei P30 will have three. The Amazon listing also supposedly included a price of EUR 1,028.19 (around Rs 80,430) for the 128 GB model. Also included on the listing a list of specifications, which included details like a 4,200 mAh battery, a Kirin 980 chipset and 8 GB of RAM. The quad-lens rear camera, meanwhile, is said to include 40 MP, 20 MP and 8 MP lenses, with a depth-sensing time-of-flight (TOF) lens taking up the fourth slot, and support for 10x hybrid zoom. The front camera is supposedly a 32 MP sensor. However, the specs don't really reveal anything that we don't already know about either device. tech2 News Staff Rumour mill last month gave out hints about Motorola planning to bring two Moto devices with Samsung Exynos chipsets. While little was known about which Moto series phone would accommodate Samsung's in-house SoC, a new report now suggests that the Motorola's upcoming Android One-powered device might come with a Samsung-Exynos chip. The information which was leaked by the folks at XDA Developers suggests that the new Motorola Android One smartphone will feature a Samsung Exynos 9610 processor. The device said to be christened as the Motorola One Vision. Till date, the Lenovo-owned brand has launched two Android-One powered smartphones the Motorola One and Motorola One Power. If the report is to be believed, then the Motorola One Vision will be the third in the series. The upcoming One Vision smartphone is said to feature a dual rear camera setup with a 48 MP primary camera. As per the report, the Motorola One Vision will have a QCFA (Quad Colour Filter Array) similar to the Redmi Note 7 Chinese variant. The QCFA will enhance dynamic range, noise reduction, and per-pixel detail. The phone is reported to feature Video 3D HDR and Long Exposure with the latter said to help capture better-detailed pictures in low light. As for the display, Motorola's One Vision is tipped to feature a 6.2-inch unit with full HD+ (2,520 x 1080 pixels) resolution and a 21:9 aspect ratio with a cutout for the front camera at the top end. To recall, Sony introduced Xperia 1 and Xperia 10 with 21:9 front panel last month. In addition, the Motorola One Vision is tipped to run Android 9.0 Pie OS. The phone will likely come in 3 GB/4 GB RAM and 32 GB/64 GB or 128 GB internal storage. It is reported to have a battery backup of 3,500 mAh. As per the report, the smartphone will arrive as Motorola P40 in China. Motorola One Vision is speculated to release in other international markets including India, Brasil and Latin America. tech2 News Staff The Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus will soon cease to be the Korean giant's flagship smartphone. That's because the company appears to be finally ready to launch the Galaxy S10 5G. According to a report by Yonhap News the handset will be released in the US on 5 April, which is actually before the first consumer 5G networks will be launched in the country. Samsung was initially expected to launch the phone this month but later delayed the launch, suggesting that the company wasn't ready. Even then, it will still be the first commercially available 5G-enabled smartphone, since both the Mi Mix 3 5G and the Huawei Mate X are expected to arrive only later. The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G is, as the name would suggest, is a 5G version of the Samsung Galaxy S10, but it has a bigger screen size than any other S10 phones including the Galaxy S10 Plus, a bigger battery, and has an extra 3D depth camera over its smaller siblings. Samsung has hinted that there won't be any pre-orders this time, but customers purchasing the phone between 5 April and 16 April will get a pair of Galaxy buds free along with a wireless charger and a 50 percent discount on one screen replacement within the first year. Itll also likely cost a lot more than the other Galaxy S10 phones, although because there arent any 5G phones out yet we dont really know how much 5G compatibility will add to a phones price. New Zealand is currently recovering from the shock of its first 21st Century terrorist attack, one of the worst in recent history globally, and the worst ever in the Australian and New Zealand experience combined New Zealand is currently recovering from the shock of its first 21st Century terrorist attack, one of the worst in recent history globally, and the worst ever in the Australian and New Zealand experience combined. The implications are wide-ranging. New Zealand's long-held assumption that terrorism was something that never could happen here, has been shattered. It has to face up to the possibility of further attacks, inspired by the Christchurch offender. But the potently graphic streaming of the incident, and its global reach, means it is not just in New Zealand that his followers may emerge. He was Australian, they could emerge there, or anywhere that extreme right-wing individuals or groups hibernate. There is another chilling consequence until now, the Islamic State never really knew, or cared to know, where New Zealand was. Now it does. Now the live streamed video may well be used in Islamic State propaganda to incite violence. The terror outfit's spokesperson Abu Hassan al-Muhajir has already been reportedly calling for a revenge attack on New Zealand. The country has possibly entered a spiral of violence, or fears or threats of it, that could have long-term security implications. It has already been grappling with a few individuals, who perhaps carelessly or deliberately, have recently shared the gunman's live stream or posted anti-Muslim comments. New Zealand had already put a small number of individuals before the courts for possessing and disseminating Islamic State propaganda; so why these people thought they could effectively do the same thing is puzzling. Now, anyone's comments that suggest an extremist view will attract State security sector attention, when before last Friday, many such comments may have been passed over. New Zealand will now struggle with what the 'freedom of speech' means, it will have to find the balance an open democratic society demands, and a consistent and even line that all those with extremist views Left, Right, religious, ideological or single issue can no longer cross. It is not what is said now, but what is heard, that will matter. Things said before, that were offensive if never dangerous, that were verbally threatening but not followed by acts of violence, that used to be dismissed as the ramblings of activists, malcontents or volatile loners will now be met with heightened suspicion. Warnings previously given to the anti-1080 activists who threatened damage or violence, may well be a thing of the past. Our much vaunted multiculturalism and commitment to diversity will quite rightfully be put under the microscope. New Zealand's high police population ratio, and its routinely unarmed consent-based policing approach may now need to change. The country, one of the few in the world that has since the late 19th Century kept its patrol constables without sidearms, will need to review whether this approach can now still work in an society where terrorism just became real. The funding of police, the adequacy of arms and terrorist legislation, even the continuing free access of its closest neighbours to freely visit are all going to have to be scrutinised. We will need to close the glaring loopholes right through which this tragic incident has shone a deadly light. Prime Minister Jacinda Adern's announcement on firearms restrictions today goes some way towards addressing those gaps, but these changes need to be administered and enforced, and adequate resources will be needed to do that. Banning semi-automatic weapons will mean a boost to the already-established elicit importation of these weapons, and policing New Zealand's lengthy borders, airports and sea ports will need to be stepped up. Now that the security threat level is 'high', New Zealand will have to decide what this means. New Zealanders almost certainly have not thought this through, quite possibly assuming they would never have to. We may recall the ridicule the Defence Force faced after warning its personnel in 2016 to keep alert when walking around in public, and to remain aware of what was around them. This was not just sage advice to soldiers then it is advice we all have to take now. A high threat level means precautions where we didn't need them before, not taking our safety for granted, a more visible police presence, more stringent rules in public spaces a significant reduction in the carefree lifestyle we used to have. The biggest challenge New Zealand faces is to quantify the extent of not just right-wing extremism, but any other form of extremism where violence can be attached. It probably does not matter how large any of these groups are they will probably be found to be quite small. But modern terrorism is often leaderless and lone, and the volume of those who purvey it is inconsequential. The Christchurch attack was the work of one man. That one man may have engaged in any number of behaviours and uttered or penned any number of offensive comments alongside many others around the world. The enormous challenge for security sector agencies is too find that one man among all the other offensively racist groups or individuals who talk big but do not act. It is not like trying to find 'a needle in a haystack' it's like trying to find 'a needle in a needle-stack'. The freedoms extended to social media, to tech companies who appear to take only minimal responsibility for content posted, or for the welfare of their customers, need to be considered. From grizzly echo chambers of intolerance to cyber-bullying New Zealanders (and citizens of many other countries) need to ask themselves why have we accepted that the internet can be an unpoliceable space for criminal activity, bullying, extremist and terrorist behaviour. Why are tech companies not held responsible, in the same way as the driver of an unsafe vehicle would be for the safety of their passengers? The author is a Fellow at the Centre for Defence and Security Studies in Massey University, New Zealand Observing that Pakistan has economic concerns as well, the US official said the Financial Action Tasks Force is one area which demonstrates the need for them to take these actions against terror groups Washington: The United States has asked Pakistan to take sustained, verifiable and irreversible action against the perpetrators of terrorism, while warning the country that another terror attack on India will prove to be "extremely problematic". "We need to see Pakistan taking concrete and sustained action to reign in the terrorist groups, mainly the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba in order to ensure that we don't have re-escalation (of tension) in the region," a senior administration official told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. "And, if there's any additional terrorist attack without Pakistan having made a sustained, sincere effort against these groups, it would be extremely problematic for Pakistan and it would cause re-escalation of tensions, which is dangerous for both countries," the official said on the condition of anonymity. Asked about the steps being taken by Pakistan in the aftermath of the Balakot air strike by Indian fighter jets, the official said the US and the international community needed to see "irreversible and sustained" action against the terror groups. "It's early to make a full assessment," the official said. In the recent days, the official said Pakistan has taken some "initial" actions. They have frozen the assets of some terrorist groups and made some arrests. They have taken administrative control of some of the JeM facilities, the official added. "But we clearly need to see more. We need to see irreversible action because in the past, what we've seen is they made some arrests and then a few months later, they released these individuals. The terrorist leaders are sometimes still allowed to travel around the country, hold rallies," the official said. Reiterating that the United States is looking for "irreversible action", the official said America is working with its international partners to increase pressure on Pakistan. "Because it has been too long that these groups have been able to operate." Observing that Pakistan has economic concerns as well, the official said the Financial Action Tasks Force (FATF) is one area which demonstrates the need for them to take these actions against terror groups. "Otherwise, they're at risk within the system and the FATF to be grey-listed," the official said. Pakistan needs to decide if it wants to be viewed as a responsible international player and have access to all the financial mechanisms that are available or is it going to continue to fail to take the steps necessary against these terrorist groups and see itself further isolated. "The choice is Pakistan's," the senior administration official asserted. While the situation between the two south Asian neighbours have de-escalated, the two armies are still on high alert and that concerns the US, the official said. "So, we realize that if there, God forbid, would be another terrorist attack that you could quickly see the escalation in the situation once again. So that's why, we're making clear that any additional military action by either side runs an unacceptably high risk, for both countries and for the region," the official said. The Trump Administration, the official said, has taken sort of a "zero tolerance policy" on the issue of safe havens to terrorists. "The terror terrorist attack on February 14th on India was a demonstration that Pakistan's continuing provision of sanctuary for any terrorist group is not acceptable," the official said. During the height of the crisis 26-28 February the United States was in continuous contact with Indian and Pakistani officials, both on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad. "They were working the phones continuously and were deeply engaged in seeking to deescalate what was a very dangerous moment in India-Pakistan relations," the official said. The United States has also reached out to influential countries to have them help deescalate the situation, the senior administration official said. Some of these countries are China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and Australia. Xi and other Chinese officials of turning seven disputed reefs into islands, causing massive environmental damage, and blocking large numbers of fishermen from their fishing grounds Manila: Two former Philippine officials have filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court accusing Chinese President Xi Jinping of crimes against humanity over his government's assertive actions in the disputed South China Sea, which they say deprived thousands of fishermen of their livelihoods and destroyed the environment. Former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario and anti-graft prosecutor Conchita Carpio Morales said on Thursday that they filed the complaint with the tribunal last week, before the current Philippine president's move to withdraw the country from the tribunal took effect last weekend. They accused Xi and other Chinese officials of turning seven disputed reefs into islands, causing massive environmental damage, and blocking large numbers of fishermen from their fishing grounds. There was no immediate reaction from China. By Nelson Renteria SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - A Guatemalan presidential candidate known for tackling high-profile corruption as attorney general said on Wednesday that she would return from neighbouring El Salvador within days despite an arrest warrant. A judge on Monday ordered the arrest of Thelma Aldana, a former attorney general who helped topple and imprison a former president on corruption charges and investigated current President Jimmy Morales, who has largely dismantled the country's U.N.-backed anti-corruption investigative body known as CICIG. The country's electoral tribunal confirmed her candidacy in the June presidential election on Tuesday, shortly after news reports circulated of the order By Nelson Renteria SAN SALVADOR (Reuters) - A Guatemalan presidential candidate known for tackling high-profile corruption as attorney general said on Wednesday that she would return from neighbouring El Salvador within days despite an arrest warrant. A judge on Monday ordered the arrest of Thelma Aldana, a former attorney general who helped topple and imprison a former president on corruption charges and investigated current President Jimmy Morales, who has largely dismantled the country's U.N.-backed anti-corruption investigative body known as CICIG. The country's electoral tribunal confirmed her candidacy in the June presidential election on Tuesday, shortly after news reports circulated of the order. Aldana said if she wins, she would make government efficient and transparent as well as strengthen CICIG, adding that the accusations against her were politically motivated to undermine her bid for top office. "No, I'm not scared. They're the ones who are scared," Aldana told Reuters in an interview in El Salvador's capital, where she had previously scheduled activities. "When I go back to Guatemala... I'll do it with complete calm, I'll do it without a single problem." The arrest order includes charges of embezzlement, lying and tax fraud. Aldana said she plans to return to Guatemala on Thursday or Friday and had not been notified of the warrant. Under Guatemalan law, she holds immunity as a presidential candidate. In January, Morales' government said it was terminating CICIG, after already banning the group's head from the country. Aldana had worked with CICIG to investigate President Jimmy Morales for campaign financing violations. She and CICIG previously led the probe into former President Otto Perez Molina that triggered his impeachment and ousted him from office. He remains in custody on charges of involvement in a customs corruption ring. If she wins, Aldana said she would ask the United Nations to formally expand the anti-corruption mandate of the CICIG, which was originally formed to investigate illegal security forces. "Clandestine security bodies embedded in the state motivated the Guatemalan government 10 years ago to go to the United Nations ... but they're still there," she said. Aldana added that she is against a law proposed by Morales' party that would free military officials convicted of human rights crimes during the Central American country's 36-year civil war, which has sparked criticism from international rights groups. "Without a doubt, it's a proposal that could generate impunity and obviously I'm not in favour of approving it," she said. (Reporting by Nelson Renteria; Writing by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. GENEVA (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday in a new year speech broadcast on state TV that the Islamic Republic successfully resisted 'unprecedented, strong' U.S. sanctions. GENEVA (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday in a new year speech broadcast on state TV that the Islamic Republic successfully resisted "unprecedented, strong" U.S. sanctions. Iran has faced economic hardship since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from a multilateral nuclear deal last year and reimposed sanctions. Khamenei also said that economic hardship and the fall of the currency remain top problems and that the government should confront these issues by boosting production. (Reporting by Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A Palestinian was shot and killed in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday by what a Palestinian ambulance service said was Israeli army gunfire. The Israeli military said it was checking the report. The Palestinian Red Crescent said one of its crews treated a man with two bullet wounds at an Israeli military roadblock near the city of Bethlehem and that Israeli forces had shot him JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A Palestinian was shot and killed in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday by what a Palestinian ambulance service said was Israeli army gunfire. The Israeli military said it was checking the report. The Palestinian Red Crescent said one of its crews treated a man with two bullet wounds at an Israeli military roadblock near the city of Bethlehem and that Israeli forces had shot him. It gave no details about the circumstances of the night-time shooting. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man as a 26-year-old from Bethlehem and said another Palestinian had also been shot and critically wounded. Tensions have been high in the West Bank since a Palestinian killed an Israeli soldier and a rabbi in a stabbing and shooting attack in the territory on Sunday. Israeli forces on Tuesday killed the alleged assailant near the West Bank city of Ramallah after he opened fire at troops who had come to arrest him, Israel's Shin Bet security service said. In a separate incident on Tuesday, two other Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces during clashes near the West Bank city of Nablus. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians seek to establish a state there and in the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014. (Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Peter Cooney) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Update March 26, 2019: Redmi Note 7 Pro Kernel source is also available now. You can get it from the source link below. Xiaomi launched the Redmi Go its the first Android Go smartphone in India at an event this week. It packs a 5-inch HD screen, Snapdragon 425 SoC with 1GB of RAM, and runs on Android Oreo (Go edition). Last month, it launched the Redmi Note 7 in the country, which was launched with a different camera sensor in China earlier in January. Redmi Note 7 Indian variant and Redmi Note 7 Chinese variant share the same codename lavender. Now, the company has released kernel sources for these smartphones, Redmi Note 7 (codename lavender) kernel sources are based on Android Pie and Redmi Go (codename tiare) kernel sources are based on Android Oreo. Even though the source code is not useful for normal users, it would be helpful for Android developers and tinkerers who would like to create custom software builds. You can download the kernel source from the GitHub source link below. Redmi Go will go on sale for the first time on 22nd March, and Redmi Note 7 duo go on sale every Wednesday, all these smartphones are available exclusively on Flipkart, Mi.com and are also available Mi Home stores. Source 1, 2, 3 | Via What happened Shares of Intelsat ( INTE.Q 63.00% ) traded down more than 12% on Thursday morning after a key government official said the Federal Communications Commission will take its time figuring out how to proceed on a wireless spectrum auction that could generate upward of $40 billion for Intelsat and other satellite providers. So what Intelsat, along with three other satellite companies authorized to use the C-band airwaves, has proposed selling access to the 200 megahertz range to wireless telecom companies including Verizon. The spectrum could be valued at about $40 billion, but the proposal faces pushback from some lawmakers who would like to nationalize the spectrum, or at least sequester some of the proceeds to promote broadband access in rural areas. Intelsat hopes to use the cash it would generate from a sale to pay down some of the $14 billion total debt on its balance sheet. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, speaking at the America's Communications Association summit in Washington, D.C., made it clear that the potential auction would not slide through as easily as some Intelsat investors would like. Pai said the commission would be "deliberating as vigorously as we can and hope to reach a resolution at some point in the future," adding, "it's important for us to make the right decision, not the right now decision." Check out the latest earnings call transcript for Intelsat. Now what Thursday's trading continues a volatile pattern for Intelsat, which has doubled over the past year but is down 30% year to date. It's important to remember that this is all just talk at the moment, and investors should have been well aware by now that the FCC is in no hurry to get a decision out the door. It seems apparent that Intelsat investors should expect the government to take some sort of toll from an eventual sale. How much of a take, and what it will mean for Intelsat's long-term outlook, is going to take some time to sort out. Bahama Bucks Expands Partnership with St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital Bahama Bucks just got a little bit sweeter! March 20, 2019 // Franchising.com // Every year, Bahama Buck's takes a step towards fighting childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases by partnering with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. This year, Bahama Bucks is taking an even bigger step with the addition of the colorful and delicious Cotton Candy Smoothie. Giving back to the communities Bahama Bucks serve is an integral part of the mission of Blessing Our Guests. Both Cotton Candy Smoothie and the fan-favorite Blue and Pink Cotton Candy Sno flavors give our organization an opportunity to support a great cause. We encourage guests to stop by their local Bahama Bucks shop and order the Cotton Candy Smoothie to support St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital. The partnership with St. Jude began July 2017 with the launch of the Blue and Pink Cotton Candy Sno flavors. Adding Cotton Candy Smoothie to the flavor lineup expands the way Bahama Bucks and our franchisees can get involved and provides another benefiting product for St. Jude. Bahama Bucks Franchise Corporation and its franchisees, collectively, will make a minimum donation of $20,000 by July 30, 2019, to help the lifesaving mission of St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital. Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing, and food - because all they should worry about is helping their child live. For more information about St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital visit stjude.org. About Bahama Bucks Bahama Bucks is the nations premier tropical dessert franchise featuring the Greatest Sno on Earth, as well as their famous, fresh-blended tropical Island Smoothies. Founded in 1990, Bahama Bucks is dedicated to creating the Ultimate Tropical Dessert Experience for each guest. Their innovative approach to the dessert industry offers guests a flavorful taste of paradise in an island-inspired atmosphere. Visit bahamabucks.com for more information and connect with Bahama Bucks at https://www.facebook.com/bahamabucks/, twitter.com/bahamabucks, youtube.com/user/BahamaBuck, and instagram.com/bahamabucks/. About St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and defeats childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. It is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20 percent to 80 percent since the hospital opened more than 50 years ago. St. Jude is working to drive the overall survival rate for childhood cancer to 90 percent, and we won't stop until no child dies from cancer. St. Jude freely shares the discoveries it makes, and every child saved at St. Jude means doctors and scientists worldwide can use that knowledge to save thousands more children. Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food because all a family should worry about is helping their child live. Join the St. Jude mission by visiting stjude.org, liking St. Jude on Facebook (facebook.com/stjude) and following us on Twitter (@stjude). Media Contact: Stephanie Knox Bahama Bucks Franchise Corporation (806) 776-9899 sknox@bahamabucks.com SOURCE Bahama Bucks ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus BIGGBY COFFEE Changing Lives With Davenport University Scholarship Program Tuition Partnership Encourages Growth with BIGGBY COFFEE Employees March 21, 2019 // Franchising.com // East Lansing, MI - Over the past two years BIGGBY COFFEE has partnered with Davenport University to provide scholarships to BIGGBY COFFEE employees, spouses, and dependents. Through this scholarship BIGGBY COFFEE is excited to help support people in building a life they love by making higher education more accessible with lower costs. When Davenport University contacted BIGGBY COFFEE about developing a partnership, co-CEOs, Bob Fish and Mike McFall, were more than thrilled. As Fish and McFall strive to create a brand that exists to support people in building a life they love, this partnership allows them to do just that. With core beliefs like We exist to love people, and Everyone deserves to feel special, this partnership shows that BIGGBY COFFEE truly values the personal growth and success of their employees. We made a real steadfast commitment to developing our people in a way thats not developing them to produce for the company, but in a way that they will live a life that they love, said McFall. BIGGBY COFFEE employees from brand new baristas to Home Office employees have taken advantage of this educational partnership. One such employee is barista, Blake Opie. Opie is in his second semester with Davenport University and anticipates graduating with a bachelors degree in the summer of 2019. Once Opie found out about the partnership between BIGGBY COFFEE and Davenport University, he searched for the nearest hiring BIGGBY COFFEE. My professional goals are simple, Opie said. to be successful wherever life takes me, and I want to be happy. With the tuition discount I have not had to take out any student loans and it has been incredible. The tuition discount is more than worth it but getting to work for an awesome business helps too! Opie is one of many students that found BIGGBY COFFEE through the partnership with Davenport. If it had not been for the scholarship, they may never have chosen BIGGBY COFFEE as an employer. However, because the Davenport University partnership brought them to BIGGBY COFFEE, theyve not only experienced the joy of furthering their education but have had the opportunity to work for a company that is on the leading edge of conscious capitalism and changing workplace culture. Founded on the belief that people, profit, and the planet are equally important, BIGGBY COFFEE is taking measures to ensure that the people within the walls of their Home Office, working in their stores, and visiting their stores are valued, loved, and encouraged to reach for the stars. One of the main reasons I first got a job at BIGGBY was because of my love of all things coffee and the partnership, junior Noah French said. BIGGBY helped me find a love for people. BIGGBY has helped me step out of my comfort zone. I would tell [anyone considering this opportunity] to look beyond just the financial advantages of working for BIGGBY. BIGGBY will help you grow personallyand push you to be your best. Partnering with a school like Davenport University allows students to study a variety of subjects at any of their campuses - Grand Rapids, Holland, Lansing, Midland, Detroit, and online. With undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs available, Davenport University has a number of options and resources to support students through their educational journey. Dante Petrarca, BIGGBY COFFEE Owner/Operator Liaison, took advantage of the Davenport partnership as a way to further his career at the BIGGBY COFFEE Home Office in East Lansing, Michigan. Petrarca completed the Certificate of Project Management program through the Institute of Professional Excellence at Davenport University. I took this course because I am passionate about project management and wanted to further my knowledge in the field. The course gave me a variety of useful tools that have helped me here in the office. I still reference the course materials on a regular basis, Petrarca said. While employees are pursuing degrees at Davenport University, they are also able to receive real-world experience with their work at BIGGBY COFFEE. This enables students a comprehensive learning opportunity, gaining experience in both the academic and professional settings at the same time. Kylee Slowik has experienced this advantage firsthand. When she heard of the scholarship, she found a BIGGBY COFFEE hiring and transferred to Davenport University to finish her degree. While she works toward educational and professional goals, shes learned the value of both. BIGGBY is allowing me to gain experience in both real-world situations and the classroom. I am serving as a PERC [store trainer] at BIGGBY, which is helping me build my resume. I have goals I aspire to reach and BIGGBY is helping me accomplish them by assisting with my degree, Slowik said. One thing rang true for all of these students: no matter where they are in their professional and educational pursuits, they all expressed how easy it was to enroll at Davenport University with the BIGGBY COFFEE partnership. With this partnership, BIGGBY COFFEE employees and family members are able to take advantage of scholarship dollars to offset the cost of tuition while taking advantage of Davenport Universitys incredible college experience. For more information on this partnership, visit www.davenport.edu or a BIGGBY COFFEE near you. About BIGGBY COFFEE BIGGBY COFFEE, East Lansing, Mich.-based, was started with a single store on March 15, 1995. One year later, and on the cusp of opening a second location, Bob Fish and Michael McFall, on a handshake and $4,000, decided to franchise the concept. BIGGBY COFFEEs cultural values of Make Friends, Have Fun, B Yourself, and Share Great Coffee help coffee-lovers and the coffee-curious alike benefit from a less pretentious and fun approach to the standard gourmet cafe paradigm. Besides connoisseur-worthy drinks with pronounceable names like Teddy Bear and Caramel Marvel, BIGGBY baristas provide a unique experience focused on brightening their customers day and supporting them in building a life they love. The Big B on the orange background caught on, and today BIGGBY COFFEE has more than 230 cafes across 9 states and counting including Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Florida, and Texas. In 2018, BIGGBY launched an Area Representative Program and currently has 8 area representatives in 6 states. Media Contact: Nikki Robertson 517-980-0995 press@biggby.com SOURCE BIGGBY COFFEE ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Express Employee of the Year Winner is the Epitome of Hope Through Employment Express Employment Professionals announces James Michael as the 2018 Employee of the Year from the East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, franchise. OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA. (PRWEB) March 20, 2019 - Just three short years ago, James Michael walked in an Express Employment Professionals office with one goal - to regain custody of his son. Not only does his son now live with him full-time, but James life has been completely transformed by the investment of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Express franchise owner Terry Lukas and her staff. Michael was one of five nominees for Express Employment Professionals Employee of the Year award, ultimately securing the top honor and accepting the prize in person at the International Leadership Conference (ILC) in Grapevine, Texas. He was initially awarded $1,000 from Express as the Employee of the Year winner for his region, eventually winning $5,000 as the overall winner, plus more than $2,000 for the all-inclusive trip. Michael was placed on his first assignment with the East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Express office in 2009 before moving out of the area. He returned in 2016, counting on Express to change his life. He was homeless, staying in the local Salvation Army Shelter and needed a job to gain custody of his son who was in a bad living situation. Express was able to put him to work the very next day. We felt James had many obstacles in his way, which so many would use as reasons to miss work, but he never did, Lukas said. James did so much to get his young son into a better living environment, and you just dont see that often. When someone shows such will and determination to improve not only their life, but the life of their child, they deserve to be rewarded. He never put himself first, but just continued to do everything in his power to better the life of his son. Last fall, Lukas and her team worked with the client company where Michael was employed to announce his regional Employee of the Year news as the companys monthly meeting. As the regional winner, he was also now eligible for the national award. They filled Express backpacks with goodies and presented Michael with airline tickets for both him and his son, Landon, for the leadership conference in February. They continued the celebration by taking the pair suit shopping for their big moment. At ILC, Landon was able to join his dad on stage when Michael was recognized for his outstanding work in front of more than 1,700 Express franchise owners and their staff. James said thank you a million times and said he never thought just doing your job and doing the right thing could amount to this, Lukas said. I told him we can only hope that Landon remembers this great experience and why he received the award. Hopefully, because of how and why Express rewarded him, his son will grow up with the work ethic, compassion for others and ambition to be great. With the prize money, Lukas said her star employee plans to replace his car, which several co-workers had been helping him repair. Those co-workers even helped give Landon rides to daycare and pick Michael up for work. Lukas said she was not surprised that everyone pitched in to help Michael in his time of need. That is just how much people like him, she said. The remaining four nominees also received $1,000 as regional Employee of the Year winners, however, during the awards ceremony, Express surprised them further with $5,000 each in appreciation of their dedication to the company. The Employee of the Year ceremony is one of my favorite parts of each year, because we get to showcase the amazing employees that work for Express and the franchise owners that invest in them, said Bill Stoller, CEO and chairman of the board for Express. I cant think of a better representation of providing hope through employment. Other nominees for Employee of the Year included: Michael Bowden - Bremerton, Washington - Bremerton, Washington Eric Kramer - Cedar Falls, Iowa - Cedar Falls, Iowa Rasjhen Z. Cotton - North Miami-Dade County, Florida - North Miami-Dade County, Florida Aaron Williams-Mathis - Royal Oak, Michigan About Express Employment Professionals Express Employment Professionals puts people to work. It generated $3.56 billion in sales and employed a record 566,000 people in 2018. Its long-term goal is to put a million people to work annually. For more information, visit ExpressPros.com. Media Contact: Sheena Karami Express Employment Professionals (405) 401-1787 SOURCE Express Employment Professionals ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Signarama To Celebrate A Grand Opening in Loxley, AL on March 28th MOBILE, AL - March 21, 2019 /24-7PressRelease/ - Signarama Loxley, a new franchise location that is a part of the world's largest sign franchise, is celebrating their grand opening on March 28th. The 1600 sq. ft. facility will kick off its Grand Opening event at 9:00 a.m. at 2127 North Hickory St, Loxley, AL 36551. "We live in Baldwin County and we are proud to say that we have some of the best growth in the nation. We know that we are centrally located to service the need of the entire Baldwin County community, we couldn't think of a better franchise to open and be part of," said owners Chase, Caitlyn and Lynell Bowen. Signarama offers extensive marketing and promotional services. The grand opening of Signarama Loxley will take place on March 28th and is in partnership with the Central Baldwin Chamber of Commerce. Festivities will include an official ribbon cutting to commemorate the opening, tours of the facility, production examples, food and drink and more. Signarama has proven track records in business success with a solid business plan that demonstrates rapid growth potential. With its headquarters based in West Palm Beach, Florida, Signarama provides unparalleled corporate and field support for all franchisees. This provides access to proven systems which guides franchisees on a path to success. The new Signarama Loxley will be open Monday - Friday from 8:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Media Contact: Victoria Segovia Ink Link Marketing Voice: 305-631-2283 SOURCE Signarama ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Galveston, TX (77553) Today Overcast skies and windy. Morning high of 69F with temps falling to near 60. Winds N at 25 to 35 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph.. Tonight Some clouds. Low near 50F. Winds NNE at 15 to 25 mph. Conflicting legacies of Vietnam War topic of panel discussion at UMass AMHERST Vietnam veterans, anti-war activists and historians will come together this week to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. At 7 p.m. Thursday, the history department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Veterans Education Project, an Amherst nonprofit, will host The Conflicting Legacies of the Vietnam War: Why They Still Matter, with five panelists sharing their stories and perspectives about the war. The event in the Bernie Dallas Room of Goodell Hall on the UMass campus is free and open to the public. Organizers say they hope the discussion will help bring people with different experiences to better understand each other. When people have a chance to really deeply listen to each others stories, they cant help but connect, even if they come from different backgrounds, Veterans Education Project director Susan Leary said. The panelists are Christian Appy, a UMass history professor and author of several books on the Vietnam War; Cherie Rankin, who served in Vietnam as part of the American Red Cross; Wayne Smith, who served two tours in Vietnam as an Army medic; Randy Kehler, a peace activist who spent 22 months in federal prison for not cooperating with the draft; and Tom Weiner, author of Called to Serve: Stories of Men and Women Confronted by the Vietnam War Draft, which tells stories of military veterans, their families and war resisters. The panel will be moderated by Tom Fricke, a Veterans Education Project board member and Amherst Regional High School social studies teacher. Rob Wilson, former director of the Veterans Education Project and current volunteer, said the event is a throwback to the mostly anti-war teach-ins on college campuses from the 1960s and 70s, but representing a broader range of perspectives. Theres a lot that can be done to come to a better understanding, Wilson said. Gena Mangiaratti can be reached at gmangiaratt@gazettenet.com. Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021. Redmi Note 7 and Redmi Go goes developers friendly: Kernel Source Code released News oi-Vivek Redmi Go is the most affordable smartphone from Xiaomi Xiaomi's is known as a developer's friendly smartphone OEM, as the company will release the source code for most of its budget and high-end smartphone. Now, by releasing the Kernel Source Code (which is crucial to design and develop third-party ROMs) for the Redmi Note 7 and the Redmi Go, the company is continuing streak. The Redmi Note 7 and the Redmi Go are the latest smartphones from Xiaomi India, which retails for Rs 9,999, and Rs 4,499, respectively. At their specific price point, these smartphones offer some of the best features at that particular price range. With the Source Code, the third-party Android developers can work on third party ROMS, like AOSP, CyanogenMod (Lineage OS), Omni ROM, and Pixel Experience. Redmi Note 7 code name - Lavender (kernel Source Code) Redmi Go code name - Tiare (Kernel Source Code) The source code can be found on Reddit under the code name of these smartphones. Xiaomi Redmi Go The Xiaomi Redmi Go is the most affordable smartphone from the brand, which retails in India for Rs 4,499. The smartphone runs on Android 8.1 Oreo Go Edition and will go on sale for the first time on the 22nd of March on Flipkart and Mi.com. The Redmi Go is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 Quad-core SoC with 1 GB RAM and 8 GB internal storage. The device has dual SIM card slots with support for 4G LTE and VoLTE on both the slots. The phone has an 8 MP primary camera and a 5 MP depth camera with HD video recording capability. Unlike most of the Redmi smartphones, the Redmi Go runs on stock Android OS, allowing a smoother user experience compared to MIUI skin. Redmi Note 7 The Redmi Note 7 is the most affordable smartphone in the country with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC, clocked at 2.2 GHz. The device has a 6.3-inch IPS LCD screen with FHD+ resolution, protected by 2.5D curved tempered glass. Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications Samsung Galaxy M30 going up for sale again in India tomorrow News oi-Sandeep Sarkar The smartphone's key highlight is the triple lens rear camera setup. Samsung Galaxy M series was announced in India this year with it replacing the Galaxy J and Galaxy On affordable smartphone lineup. Samsung introduced the Galaxy M series with the launch of Galaxy M10 and Galaxy M20 smartphones. With the launch of Galaxy M series, Samsung strengthened its grip in the budget smartphone segment where it was losing against the Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, Honor etc. The South Korean tech giant then extended its Galaxy M lineup with the launch of the Galaxy M30 in the country. The Galaxy M30 is the high-end variant in the Galaxy M series and comes with some interesting set of features such as a triple lens primary camera, a waterdrop notch display and more. This is one of those smartphones that offer a triple lens camera setup t a sub Rs 20K price range. The device has been made available via various flash sales in India. Now, it is all set to go on a flash sale again in the country. The next Galaxy M30 flash sale is scheduled for tomorrow in India, i.e March 22. The sale will begin at 12 noon on the e-commerce platform Amazon. The device will also be available for purchase on Samsung India's web store. As it is a flash sale it will last for a limited duration. Users will be able to choose the smartphone from two different gradient color options including black and blue. As for the pricing, the 6GB RAM carries a price label of Rs 17,990, whereas, the 4GB RAM variant is retiling for Rs 14,990. To recap, the triple-lens primary camera setup is the key highlight of Samsung Galaxy M30 smartphone. It comprises of 13MP (f/1.9) primary lens paired with a 5MP (f/2.2) secondary sensor and one 5MP depth sensor. For selfies, there is a 16MP (f/2.0) aperture front camera which is also used for video calling. The smartphone flaunts a 6.4-inch Super AMOLED display panel with a resolution of 1080 x 2340 pixels. It has a waterdrop notch at the top for the front camera. It runs on an Exynos 7904 SoC and ships with dated Android Oreo OS. There is a humongous 5,000mAh battery completing the smartphone's spec sheet. Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications NASA is gearing up to send a helicopter to the Red Planet News oi-Vishal Kawadkar NASA has big plans for the Mars mission. NASA will be sending a helicopter to the Red Planet. According to the space agency, "the Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency's Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Plane" "NASA has a proud history of firsts," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. "The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling. The Mars Helicopter holds much promise for our future science, discovery, and exploration missions to Mars." Besides, the admin also hinted that the first person to set foot on Mars could be a woman. "It's likely to be a woman, the first next person on the Moon. It's also true that the first person on Mars is likely to be a woman," CNN cited Bridenstine on a radio talk show "Science Friday." No specific names were revealed but this shows that woman are at the forefront of NASA's space ambitions. The space agency also conducted an all-female spacewalk at the end of the month. Astronauts Anne McClain and Christina Koch were in space all by themselves for up to seven hours, said NASA. Bridenstine also said that the first manned mission to Mars will take place in the year 2024 and 2026. Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications Photo: Creative Time Youtube Sylvia McAdam A judge has dismissed charges against one of the founders of the Indigenous Idle No More protest movement who was accused of living illegally on Saskatchewan park land. Sylvia McAdam and her brother Kurtis were to stand trial for failing to comply with a provincial government order to vacate land in the Zig Zag Bay area near the community of Big River. The Crown has 30 days to appeal the decision. Court heard that Sylvia McAdam was living on the land for two years before she was ordered to leave early in 2017. She argued her family had been at Zig Zag Bay for generations and she had a Treaty right to live on the land. McAdam says the court ruling is a relief. "My family has always lived there," McAdam said outside court in Prince Albert Wednesday. "For the province to come and create a park there without our consent, in violation of Treaty 6, is problematic." Her lawyer, Larry Kowalchuk, says the family hopes to work out an agreement with the government for use of the land. McAdam says she hopes to be able to live back on the property some day. "That's where I grew up," she said. Idle No More says it was formed in 2012 as a protest against the introduction of a bill by the former Conservative government to change legislation, including the Indian Act, Navigable Waters Protection Act and Environmental Assessment Act. The group argued that the changes diminished the rights and authority of Indigenous communities while making it easier for governments and businesses to push through projects without strict environmental assessment. Washington's Homeland Response Force participates in joint exercise By Sara Morris, Washington National Guard March 20, 2019 BOISE, Idaho -- "These elements have been a challenge," said Lt. Col. Daniel Bugbee, commenting on wind gusts up to 45 mph and freezing temperatures. "It's actually good training though because the weather will almost certainly not be ideal if we were called to a real-world disaster." The Washington National Guard's 10th Homeland Response Force traveled to Boise, Idaho to participate in Idaho Response 2019. The exercise simulated a response to an earthquake with a potentially toxic chemical release in order to evaluate the different elements. A Homeland Response Force (HRF) is a regionally aligned Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, high-yield Explosive (CBRNE) asset established to support and enhance local, state and federal emergency managers. The HRF provided command and control of the CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Package, which was composed of members of the 420th Chemical Battalion, commanded by Bugbee. The elements at the training site were then broken down to CBRNE Assistance Support Element (CASE), search and extraction, decontamination and medical personnel. "I haven't done this in 5 years so I am relearning skills I haven't used, and some processes have changed a little," said Staff Sgt. Angela Lord, a team leader in the decontamination element. "I appreciate that we can train like this. We can go a little bit slower and really refine our process to make sure we aren't missing anything." In an emergency that would require an HRF response, guardsmen from the different disciplines would most likely augment with their local first responders. The CASE would provide security and assist with moving wounded personnel to medical providers. The search and extraction team would assist with removing remains. "Search and extraction personnel is trained through a course on how to enter into a collapsed or at-risk buildings, subterranean evacuations, and they were bracing a wall," said Bugbee. "So if a building needs to be entered that is not secure they are going to brace it first, and they can build the bracing on the scene before entering to extract the casualties." The decontamination element is comprised of two lanes that process those who may have been exposed to a toxin. The lanes are broken down into persons that can walk and those that cannot. The decontamination process is simple, undress to walk through the washing station, go into monitoring to be evaluated and either go to redress or repeat the washing station until the substance has been removed. The CERFP included both Army and Air Guard members. Bugbee said that he has worked with Air Guard in the past, but mostly with air controllers or medical elements. "So it is unique to have such a robust air guard element under my command. They bring different assets to the fight and it's good to know what those assets are," said Bugbee. "Because in today's environment it's very much a joint one." Training on all of these skills is crucial in order to be prepared for a catastrophic event. Using the time to go through the processes will save lives in affected communities. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Idaho quake response exercise flexes multiagency muscle By Master Sgt. Sarah Pokorney | Idaho National Guard March 20, 2019 BOISE, Idaho -- A team of personnel from the Washington National Guard's 10th Homeland Response Force, dressed in tan protective suits, entered a partially collapsed building in search of possible survivors. The damage to the building and potential deadly argon gas contamination resulted from a catastrophic earthquake and aftershocks affecting southern Idaho. Across town, in a dark, cramped room deep within the Lucky Peak Dam, Guard members of the Idaho 101st Civil Support Team assemble a rescue tripod over a dark utility hole to rescue workers trapped hundreds of feet below. These are just a few of the hundreds of disaster scenarios that played out over the week-long Idaho National Guard disaster response exercise, Idaho Response-19, that took place March 7 to 13 in Boise, Idaho. More than 350 Guard members took part in the exercise. Nearly 80 were Idaho Army National Guard Soldiers and Idaho Air National Guard Airmen, including the 101st Civil Support Team, Joint Staff assigned to Idaho's Joint Operations Center, white cell planners, observers and personnel orchestrating Joint Reception, Staging, Onward Movement, and Integration, or JRSOI, for inbound organizations. Nearly 250 participants came from surrounding states including Guard members from Washington's 10th HRF, Montana National Guard's 83rd CST, and Utah National Guard's 85th CST. Representatives from U.S. Northern Command and the National Guard Bureau joined the Joint Task Force Idaho staff. The purpose of the Idaho Response-19 exercise was to test the Idaho National Guard's ability to interact with regional partners and support civil authorities and agencies during a no-notice, catastrophic disaster. The scenario was designed to overwhelm an otherwise prepared state. "When we started planning in early 2017, we envisioned an exercise of such magnitude that it would drive objectives we've never performed in a domestic response before," said Col. Doug Smith, exercise director. "It would include seeking National Guard capabilities outside of the state like the 10th Homeland Response Force and civil support teams, require us to JRSOI incoming resources and stand up a dual-status commander to receive Title 10 forces." "I didn't want to make too many factors notional, so we could really go through the motions as we would in a real response. The joint staff came in piecemeal as they would in a real incident--because they would be victims too," said Smith. "The staff struggled at first but exceeded my expectations as they tracked both simulated and notional activities." The exercise was engineered to challenge the participants in a variety of ways. Day one started with a high volume of incidents overwhelming local first responders and testing participants' communication skills and established processes. Day two brought fewer but more complex scenarios, which required more specialized response capabilities and taxed decision-making and prioritization skills. As the exercise progressed, the highly complex situations required focused working groups and multi-agency collaboration. The exercise culminated with a significant infusion of notional federal resources, which brought the exercise to a timely end. "Some of the biggest lessons learned included our coordination with the Idaho Office of Emergency Management and how to support them as well as the process that the joint staff developed to effectively respond to situations as they rolled in," said Col. Ryan Robinson, exercise chief of joint staff. Robinson explained that the 18 months of preparation for the exercise included quarterly joint staff training, practical exercises, sending observers to Vigilant Guard exercises in other states and a visit to U.S. Northern Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. Smith noted that the Idaho National Guard plans to hold another similar exercise in 2022 that will align with the Washington and Oregon Vigilant Guard Exercises, NORTHCOM's Ardent Sentry and FEMA's Cascadia Rising, which are based on a scenario following an earthquake and tsunami in the highly probable Cascadia Subduction Zone. Dubbed "The Big One," this widespread incident is predicted to unleash a 9.0+ magnitude earthquake and a 100 foot-tall tsunami affecting the bulk of the Pacific coast shoreline and western states. Smith went on to explain that key to maintaining our preparedness is by keeping leadership and the joint staff engaged while continuing to refine the planning and training. "The joint staff needs to stay engaged, which can be challenging as an additional duty, but we're on a good path." The exercise followed the Idaho Office of Emergency's Management's three-day exercise, Operation Shared Response, which focused on the same scenario the week before. That exercise included local, state and federal responders. Both exercises ensure that the Idaho Military Division remains capable to respond during a real-world emergency or disaster. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Polish President Duda visits Battle Group Poland By Sgt. Sarah Kirby March 20, 2019 BEMOWO PISKIE, Poland -- Soldiers assigned to Battle Group Poland (BGPOL) received a special treat this week - a historic visit from the Polish President himself, Andrzej Duda, March 6. While visiting the Bemowo Piskie Training Area, Poland, (BPTA) to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Poland joining NATO, President Duda wasted no time in expressing his pride and gratitude towards the Soldiers standing before him. "Thank you, Soldiers," expressed President Duda. "Thank you to your loved ones who accept with understanding that you serve in my country, on foreign soil. I assure you that it is a brotherly land." BGPOL is a NATO battle group comprising of soldiers from Romania, Croatia, the U.K., Poland, and the United States. Part of NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence, BGPOL focuses on interoperability and deterrence towards any foreign threat to the region. The combination of air defense artillery, multiple rocket launch systems, field artillery, tanks, and infantry make BGPOL a dynamic and lethal force. The president commemorated the presence, hard work and momentous impact of BGPOL in his address to the Soldiers gathered. "I am very happy that I can be here in this historic moment for Poland," stated President Duda. "Poles have been waiting for this moment since the Second World War. This symbolizes that freedom after years of expectation has come and is strong." Accompanying President Duda was the Polish Minister of National Defense, Mariusz Blaszczack. The President and Defense Minister attended a display of BGPOL's might, which included Croatian's Multiple Rocket Launch Systems, American's Paladins and Abrams tanks and Polish aviation maneuvers. Witnessing the lethality of the combined armament display, Defense Minister Mariusz addressed the troops, stating, "We have seen that soldiers of allied armies cooperate greatly. They are also perfectly familiar with the quality of equipment that particular armies have at their disposal." U.S. Army Spc. Jack Bouchard, an American sniper assigned to BGPOL, witnessed the ceremony. "It was great seeing the President there," stated Bouchard. "He looked very interested in what we were there to do which meant a lot, especially coming from someone of such a high position." President Duda ended his remarks by encouraging continued commitment to NATO Enhanced Forward Presence and expressing hope in a lasting and powerful presence of troops in his home country. "This is an eloquent demonstration of the presence of the North Atlantic Alliance in our country," stated President Duda. "I hope that this presence will deepen and grow over the years, that we will not only have present Soldiers from various armies of the North Atlantic Alliance in Poland but that there will also be more exercises in our country." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address March 20, 2019 News By Jim Garamone Defense.gov Military Officials Dispute Amnesty International Allegations of Civilian Casualties WASHINGTON -- Allegations by a human rights group that U.S. Africa Command is responsible for civilian casualties in Somalia are not correct, Defense Department officials said. Amnesty International released a report alleging that five Africom-directed airstrikes in 2017 and 2018 resulted in civilian casualties. The human rights group gave Africom the report before releasing it. The initial report alleged eight instances of civilian casualties. In three of those allegations, a DOD official speaking on background said, Africa Command had no aircraft that could have been involved. "We appreciate Amnesty's efforts to allow us to contribute to the report prior to its publication," the official said, "but we really do believe the report does not accurately reflect Africom's record in mitigating civilian casualties." Extraordinary Precautions The command -- like all American military units -- takes extraordinary precautions to avoid civilian casualties, the official said, adding that this is the morally right thing to do. It also plays out in operations, as indiscriminate bombing or mistakes can lead to creating more enemies, not fewer, the official noted. "We exercise restraint as a matter of transparency," the official said. "We work with all information reasonably available at the time prior to taking any decision to apply lethal force against al-Shabab in support of Somali partners." Africa Command launches airstrikes in coordination with the Somali government. The strikes are directed against al-Shabab -- a murderous terror group that has affiliated itself with al-Qaida. The strikes defend the Somali people against these violent groups and have eliminated more than 800 al-Shabab terrorists in 110 airstrikes since June 2017, the official said. Strict Parameters The parameters for command airstrikes are that they must be in secluded, low-populated areas, and all must comply with the laws of armed conflict. Strike planners take all feasible precautions to minimize civilian casualties. "Our procedures -- combined with precision-strike capabilities, weaponeering and 18 years of amassed battlefield experience help us safeguard civilians and civilian infrastructure," the official said. The command conducts post-strike analyses, which include intelligence sources and methods not available to nonmilitary organizations, the official said. Al-Shabab has lied before, claiming civilian casualties where none occurred, or where the group itself was responsible, defense officials said. Al-Shabab also uses civilians and civilian homes and businesses as shields for their efforts, they added. "Continuing pressure on the al-Shabab network in coordination with Federal Government of Somalia and partner forces has resulted in real, incremental change to the security for the Somali people," a defense official said. "In the last couple of years, Somali forces have liberated territory in the lower Juba River Valley, allowing more than 1,000 displaced families to return, bringing back economic growth and a stable way of life." Success Breeds Success Airstrikes continue to be needed, officials said. Meanwhile, Somali government forces are making incremental progress in their ability to take the fight to the enemy and their ability to generate forces. "Success breeds success, and as Somali national government forces and Somali regional member state forces have shown the ability to increasingly to cooperate on the battlefield that becomes an attractive proposition for the federated member states to get Somali national forces alongside them on the battlefield," a defense official said. "It provides them additional capability. It provides them connection to the federal government." On any given day, between 500 and 600 U.S. service members are serving in Somalia, officials said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address More Charges Announced in Ongoing Investigation into Bid Rigging and Fraud Targeting Defense Department Fuel Supply Contracts for U.S. Military Bases in South Korea FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, March 20, 2019 Two Additional Companies Agree to Plead Guilty and Enter into Civil Settlements; Indictment Against Seven Individuals Unsealed South Korea-based companies Hyundai Oilbank Co. Ltd. and S-Oil Corporation have agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges and pay a total of approximately $75 million in criminal fines for their involvement in a bid-rigging conspiracy that targeted contracts to supply fuel to United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force bases in South Korea, the Department of Justice announced today. Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil have agreed to plead guilty to an antitrust charge contained in a superseding indictment that was unsealed today. The superseding indictment also charges seven individual defendants associates, managers, and executives of companies that conspired to rig bids for fuel supply contracts for participating in this bid-rigging conspiracy and in a scheme to defraud the U.S. government. In separate civil resolutions, Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil have agreed to pay a total of approximately $52 million to the United States for civil antitrust and False Claims Act violations related to the bid-rigging conspiracy. These settlements reflect the important role of both Section 4A of the Clayton Act and the False Claims Act to ensure that the United States is fully compensated when it is the victim of anticompetitive conduct. "These charges reflect the Antitrust Division's commitment to prosecuting bid rigging and fraud especially when those crimes directly target taxpayer dollars that fund the U.S. military's critical work. We will not waver in our dedication to prosecuting corporations and individuals, wherever they are located, that seek to profit at the expense of American taxpayers," said Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim of the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division. "We will continue to use Section 4A of the Clayton Act to obtain civil settlements that protect the interests of American taxpayers." "As the superseding indictment shows, the United States will pursue and hold accountable not only corporate malefactors but also individuals who defraud the military," said U.S. Attorney Benjamin C. Glassman for the Southern District of Ohio. "Illegal bid-rigging schemes violate fundamental tenets of government contracting and lead to inflated charges and costs to the government," said Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt for the Department of Justice's Civil Division. "The Department remains steadfast in its commitment to upholding the rule of law and protecting our nation's military and the American taxpayer from conduct that undercuts competition." Pursuant to the Department's Coordination policy, often labeled the Anti-Piling On policy, the Antitrust Division's criminal and civil sections and the Civil Division's Fraud Section worked together effectively to reach coordinated global settlements that were equitable and proportionate to the defendants' conduct. Furthermore, both divisions successfully coordinated their efforts to avoid imposing fines, penalties, or damages that were unnecessarily duplicative of each other. The Criminal Case: Today, the Department of Justice unsealed a three-count superseding indictment from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio that was returned in September 2018. According to the superseding indictment, the Defense Logistics Agency and the Army and Air Force Exchange Service are two U.S. Defense Department agencies that contract with South Korean companies to supply fuel to the numerous U.S. military bases throughout South Korea. Count One charges Hyundai Oilbank, S-Oil, and the seven individual defendants with participating in a combination and conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition during the bidding process for these fuel supply contracts. The individual defendants, all residents and citizens of South Korea, are Hee-Soo Kim, Tae Ho Cho, Jiwon Kang, Young-Ho Yoon, Byung Kuk Kim, Byungik Moon, and Eul-Jin Hyung. Count Two charges Hyundai Oilbank, S-Oil, and the seven individual defendants with participating in a conspiracy to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful function of the procurement processes for the fuel supply contracts. As part of its plea agreement with Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil, the Antitrust Division agreed to move to dismiss Count Two against Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil upon sentencing. Count Three charges Hee-Soo Kim with tampering with a witness by use of intimidation, threats, or corrupt persuasion, with the intent to hinder, delay, and prevent communication with a law enforcement officer of the United States. Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil have agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department's ongoing criminal investigation. The plea agreements are subject to court approval. The investigation began based on a tip to the Defense Logistics Agency Inspector General (IG) Hotline. The IG office developed the information, interviewed the complainant, and then referred the case to the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. "We will vigilantly protect the integrity of our nation's military procurement process and the enabling capabilities it brings to our warfighters across the globe," said Deputy Director Paul K. Sternal of the Department of Defense, Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS). "The criminal charges and fines announced today demonstrate the heavy consequences for those who subvert competition through collusion and price fixing. Joined by our investigative partners, DCIS stands ready to pursue those who threaten our nation's military resources." "We are pleased with today's guilty pleas from the defendants for their unconscionable involvement in this bid-rigging conspiracy that threatened to place our forces in jeopardy while fulfilling their missions," said Frank Robey, the Director of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command's Major Procurement Fraud Unit. "As we have stated many times before, the highly trained special agents from our Major Procurement Fraud Unit, along with our federal law enforcement partners, will continue to aggressively investigate organizations that commit crimes against our Army, our Soldiers and our nation." "The Air Force Office of Special Investigations has an unwavering commitment to identify, exploit, and neutralize fraud impacting the integrity of the Air Force, Department of Defense and U.S. Government acquisition process," said Director Timothy Ries, of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Office of Procurement Fraud. "These significant criminal and civil penalties are the result of the exceptional collaborative efforts of our organization and its law enforcement and Department of Justice partners to bring these corporations to justice for engaging in the decade-long bid-rigging conspiracy that targeted fuel supply contracts for U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force bases in South Korea." "Today's announcement demonstrates the FBI's persistence in investigating fraud against the United States wherever it occurs," said FBI Executive Assistant Director Amy Hess. "These companies and individuals thought they could cheat the system and the American taxpayer, but the FBI, working with our partners, exposed their scheme. This case should be a lesson to all: the FBI will aggressively pursue those who attempt to defraud the United States and will bring them to justice." "Open competition remains a cornerstone of our free democratic society," said Assistant Director in Charge Paul D. Delacourt of the FBI's Los Angeles Field Office. "These criminal and civil charges demonstrate the FBI's determination to investigate companies and individuals, foreign and domestic, who engage in bid rigging and other corruption schemes to defraud the U.S. Government. Working with our federal law enforcement partners, the FBI is committed to bringing to justice those who enrich themselves through illegal activity at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer." An indictment merely alleges that crimes have been committed, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. A criminal violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a criminal fine of $1 million for individuals and a maximum criminal fine of $100 million for corporations. The maximum fines may be increased to twice the gain derived from the crime or twice the loss suffered by the victims of the crime, if either of those amounts is greater than the statutory maximum fine. A criminal violation of 18 U.S.C. 371 carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison. Today's pleas are the fourth and fifth respectively resulting from an ongoing federal investigation into bid rigging, price fixing, and other anticompetitive conduct targeting U.S. Department of Defense fuel supply contracts in South Korea. The criminal case is being prosecuted by the Antitrust Division's Washington Criminal I Section and the United States Attorney's Office of the Southern District of Ohio, in conjunction with the DCIS, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Army CID, the Defense Logistics Agency Office of the Inspector General, and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Anyone with information in connection with this investigation is urged to call the Antitrust Division's Citizen Complaint Center at 888-647-3258 or visit www.justice.gov/atr/contact/newcase.html. The Civil Case: The Department's Antitrust Division today filed a civil antitrust complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and at the same time filed proposed settlements that, if approved by the court, would resolve the lawsuit against Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil for their anticompetitive conduct targeting the U.S. military in South Korea. As a result of this conduct, the United States Department of Defense paid substantially more for fuel supply services in South Korea than it would have had Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil competed for the fuel supply contracts. Under Section 4A of the Clayton Act, the United States may obtain treble damages when it has been injured by an antitrust violation. The proposed settlement provides that Hyundai Oilbank pay $39.1 million and S-Oil pay $12.98 million to the United States to resolve the civil antitrust violations. In addition to the payments, Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil have agreed to cooperate with the ongoing civil investigation of the conduct and to abide by antitrust compliance program requirements. The amount paid by each defendant exceeds the amount of the individual overcharge and reflects the value of defendants' cooperation commitments and the cost savings realized by avoiding extended litigation. The payments will also resolve civil claims that the United States has under the False Claims Act against Hyundai Oilbank and S-Oil for making false statements to the government in connection with their agreement not to compete. The Civil Division has entered into separate settlement agreements with the companies to resolve these claims. Except where based on admissions by defendants in the criminal pleas, the claims resolved by the civil agreements are allegations only. The civil settlements were handled by the Antitrust Division's Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture Section, by the Civil Division, and by the Civil Fraud section of the United States Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Ohio. The United States' civil investigation resulted from a whistleblower lawsuit filed under the qui tam provisions of the False Claims Act. Those provisions allow for private parties to sue on behalf of the United States and to share in any recovery. The proposed civil antitrust settlement, along with the Antitrust Division's competitive impact statement, will be published in The Federal Register, as required by the Antitrust Procedures and Penalties Act. Any person may submit written comments concerning the proposed settlement within 60 days of its publication to Kathleen O'Neill, Chief, Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture Section, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 450 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 8000, Washington, D.C. 20530. At the conclusion of the 60-day comment period, the court may enter the civil antitrust settlement upon a finding that it serves the public interest. Topic(s): Antitrust False Claims Act Component(s): Antitrust Division Civil Division Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) USAO - Ohio, Southern Press Release Number: 19-249 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The Philippines eyes more Chinese investment, dismissing debt trap Global Times By Yu Jincui Source:Global Times Published: 2019/3/20 22:13:40 A delegation of senior Philippine officials from key departments including finance, infrastructure and energy is in Beijing, in a bid to deepen cooperation with China and attract more Chinese investors. In a keynote speech delivered on Wednesday at the Philippine Economic Briefing, Garlos G. Dominguez, the Philippine Secretary of Finance, who heads the delegation, called on Chinese investors to examine the opportunities for investment in the Philippines. The administration of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte kicked off the ambitious Build, Build, Build infrastructure program in 2018 with the purpose of modernizing the country's roads, railways, ports and airports over the medium term. China is expected to play an important role in helping the country realize the program. Vivencio B. Dizon, chairman of the Subic-Clark Alliance for Development, told reporters that several Chinese companies are involved in the development of the new Clark City, one of the big-ticket projects under the Build, Build, Build program, among which the biggest is China Gezhouba Group. The Philippine side is hopeful that an agreement on developing a 500-hectare industrial park will be signed with the group in the second half of this year. After that, the two sides will jointly conduct an investment roadshow in China to attract Chinese companies to the industrial park, Dizon said. "The program works in concert with China's much larger and broader Belt-and-Road Initiative. Improved interconnections between the economies in this part of the world will raise all ships," Dominguez said. China is the Philippines' biggest trading partner and the second largest source of investment. According to the finance secretary, the total trade volume between the two countries reached $43 billion in 2018, 13 percent higher than in 2017 and net foreign direct investments from China grew 244 percent to $479 million in 2018. The economic and trade relationship between China and the Philippines has definitely moved into a high gear ever since President Duterte visited China in October 2016, when the two countries reached consensus on strengthening bilateral economic ties, Dominguez said . There are wide areas for potential cooperation on government-to-government or sector-to-sector basis. Dominguez also dismissed rabble-rousing of the so-called China debt trap. "The Philippines will never fall into a debt trap," the senior financial official said. He said that having fallen into a debt trap before in the 1970s and 1980s, the Philippines knows a lot about what to do to avoid it. The projects that Manila is going to ask for financing from China or any other countries must be economically viable, Dominguez noted, saying that these projects have to go through very rigorous analyses before deciding on borrowing from foreign financiers. Dominguez also said the Philippines is very careful about the debt structure. "We do not borrow without putting our own capital as well," he stressed, adding that the Philippines mainly borrows from their own sources in the country and only a maximum of 30 percent or 35 percent of financing is borrowed from abroad. The current debt of the Philippines to China is less than 1 percent of the country's total debt. Even by the end of the Build, Build, Build projects, if all projects with China were realized, the total debt will be only 4.5 percent of the Philippines' total debt. "That's a very low figure," said the secretary. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Yemeni army targets Saudis' positions with missiles IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Tehran, March 20, IRNA -- The Yemeni missile unit fired two Badr-1 ballistic missiles toward Saudis' positions in southern Saudi Arabia. According to Yemeni media 'Al-Masirah', the army and the popular committees of Yemen targeted Saudi forces' positions in Jizan. Meanwhile, Yemeni forces have taken control of Saudi military forces' positions in Najran. This is while, the UN special envoy Martin Griffith announced on Tuesday that significant achievements have been made on implementation of the first round of al-Hudaydah agreement. The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2451 to support the Stockholm Agreement on deployment of a team in order to facilitate monitoring and implementing the Agreement and establishing truce in important Yemeni ports. The resolution mainly focuses on sending essential commodities to the Yemeni people, supporting the Stockholm Agreement, assigning the Secretary-General of the United Nations to implement it and observing the ceasefire. The fourth round of Yemen peace talks kicked off in Stockholm, Sweden on December 6 with the attendance of Griffith and the government representatives. It agreed to establish truce in Yemeni ports of al-Hudaydah, al-Salif and Ayn Issa. Saudi Arabia and its regional allies attacked Yemen in March 2015 to bring back to power the deposed president of Yemen Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. Since then, the invaders have committed horrible war crimes against Yemeni civilians. 9376**2050 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address U.S., European Reserve Navy Partnerships Build Strategic Depth Navy News Service Story Number: NNS190320-06 Release Date: 3/20/2019 2:50:00 PM From Chief of Navy Reserve Public Affairs WASHINGTON (NNS) -- Chief of Navy Reserve Vice Adm. Luke McCollum participated in a week of Navy Reserve maritime counterpart visits in the United Kingdom and Germany, March 11-15. Hosted by Royal Navy Commander Maritime Reserves, Commodore Martin Quinn ADC, and German Navy Vice Adm. Rainer Brinkmann, the visits allowed the reserve senior leaders an opportunity to discuss cyber warfare, civilian employers, policies, civilian skills and ways leadership can implement best practices in support of the active regular, U.K. fleets in the maritime domain. "We were delighted that Adm. McCollum was able to spend two days with the Royal Naval Reserve in Portsmouth and Yeovilton during his visit to Europe," said Quinn. "We clearly share many similar challenges and both see people as our most important asset." He also said that he has taken ideas from Adm. McCollum for future people development, and was pleased to be able to show him first-hand how they are developing their people. "We value our relationship with the USN and its Reserve most highly and look forward to developing it even further as a result of Adm. McCollum's visit," he said. After visiting with Quinn and Royal Navy Reserve Sailors in the U.K., McCollum traveled to Rostock Germany for senior leadership discussions with Brinkmann at the German Navy headquarters. "We had fruitful discussions about our Reserve forces regarding practice, techniques, skill and doctrines," Brinkmann said. "We were able to exchange some very good ideas on how to improve and enhance our concepts." McCollum said the exchange of information and sharing of techniques and policies build stronger Navies and nations. "In recent years, the maritime strategy has shifted from power projection to sea control, and we must be ready to meet these challenges," he said. "There is great value in deepening relationships with allies and partners," he said, adding that he believes the counterpart visits play a vital role in keeping the lines of communication and discussion open with global maritime partners. "These visits bring insight to other maritime reserve techniques, which cannot be received without reaching out and visiting international maritime leaders and starting the dialog," he said. "The UK and the German Navy Reserve both leverage programs and policies to effectively employ highly trained Sailors within the Reserve system. This type of discussion provides great insight as we develop our strategic depth." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Amnesty: US behavior in Somalia can amount to war crimes Iran Press TV Wed Mar 20, 2019 03:58PM "The Hidden US War in Somalia." That is what Amnesty International names its recent report on the United States' military involvement in Somalia that has witnessed a substantial rise in US airstrikes and "unlawful killings," which could well amount to "war crimes." Since April 2017, the US "has dramatically increased the number of airstrikes - from manned aircraft and unmanned drones - it has launched in Somalia, tripling the annual rate of attacks," according to the report published on Wednesday. The London-based rights group documented 14 civilians killed in just five airstrikes, in Lower Shabelle region, which its researchers investigated in detail. The Pentagon has stepped up airstrikes against alleged positions of al-Shabab militants in the country in the wake of President Donald Trump's approval in 2017 of expanded military operations there. Al-Shabab, which has long sought to topple Somalia's Western-backed government, was forced out of Mogadishu with the help of African Union forces in 2011. Despite being ousted from large parts of the south and central Somalia, the al-Qaeda-linked militant outfit, continues deadly attacks across the country, which has been ravaged by decades of war and poverty. "Members of the US government forces who planned and carried out the airstrikes may have committed violations of international humanitarian law, including unlawful killings, which could amount to war crimes," Amnesty said. In reaction, the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) has rejected Amnesty's report. It claims al-Shabab terrorists make up all the casualties. "Since June 2017, AFRICOM conducted 110 airstrikes in Somalia, eliminating more than 800 terrorists," AFRICOM said in a statement, adding that "our assessments found that no AFRICOM airstrike resulted in any civilian casualty or injury." Amnesty's military expert Brian Castner said "the civilian death toll we've uncovered in just a handful of strikes suggests the shroud of secrecy surrounding the US role in Somalia's war is actually a smokescreen for impunity." "Our findings directly contradict the US military's mantra of zero civilian casualties in Somalia," Castner added. On Monday, the US conducted an airstrike claiming the lives of an employee of mobile phone company Hormuud Telecoms and three unidentified passengers, a relative of one of the victims told Reuters on Tuesday. AFRICOM claimed that three militants were killed in the attack. "We are aware of reports alleging civilian casualties resulting from this airstrike... The US Africa Command will review any information it has about the incident." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Watchdog: US Navy's F-35s Nowhere Near Combat Ready Sputnik News 22:24 20.03.2019 Despite reaching initial operating capability status in February (on the very last day of a much-extended deadline), the US Navy's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program isn't anywhere near ready for combat, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), an independent watchdog group, said in a Tuesday report. Largely citing a 2018 report from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) regarding the program, POGO analysts say the Navy's F-35 fleet "continues to dramatically underperform in crucial areas including availability and reliability, cyber-vulnerability testing and life-expectancy testing." "Despite years of patches and upgrades, the F-35's most combat-crucial computer systems continue to malfunction, including the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) maintenance and parts ordering network; and the data links that display, combine and exchange target and threat information among fighters and intelligence sources," the report reads. It goes on to point out that F-35 fleets assigned to both the US Navy and the US Marines have experienced "so many cracks and received so many repairs and modifications that the test planes can't complete their 8,000-hour life-expectancy tests." Documents obtained from the US Navy by POGO show that the fully mission capable rates of both the Marines' F-35B and the Navy's F-35C were far lower in 2018 than they were in 2017. The mission capability rate determines the percentage of fighter jets that are fully functional at any given time. "The F-35B's fully mission capable rate fell from 23 percent in October 2017 to 12.9 percent in June 2018, while the F-35C plummeted from 12 percent in October 2016 to 0 percent in December 2017, then remained in the single digits through 2018," POGO analysts determined. Furthermore, the F-35 program has also been unable to provide necessary resources to "build, test and validate onboard mission-data files that control mission accomplishment and survival." "The fact that the Navy is pushing ahead with the aircraft in spite of evidence that it is not ready for combat and could therefore put at risk missions, as well as the troops who depend on it to get to the fight, comes at the same time as the Pentagon's annual operational testing report for fiscal year 2018 shows that the entire F-35 program, the most expensive weapon system in history, is not ready to face current or future threats," the report states. F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin, naturally, paints a rosier picture. In a statement to Military.com, the company revealed that both its F-35C and F-35B variants were proving strong in test performances, and that mission capable rates were on the rise as technicians and pilots become more acquainted with the fighter jet. "As more aircraft enter service, we are optimizing resources across the fleet and leveraging data across hundreds of thousands of flight hours to identify and invest in the biggest drivers to improve readiness and reduce costs," Lockheed said. "For example, we are improving supply availability and turnaround time; further enhancing system reliability and maintainability; implementing advanced analytics tools; enhancing [the Autonomic Logistics Information System]; conducting supply chain competitions; buying parts in bulk up front; accelerating modifications of earlier aircraft; and supporting the stand-up of regional warehouses and customer repair depots." The defense contracting giant also contradicted POGO's capability rate calculations, saying the F-35C fleet was in fact maintaining a 60 percent mission capable rate. The outlet noted that Lockheed used a "different measure than the fully mission capable rates" reviewed by POGO. According to Military.com, the US Navy presently has a fleet of 27 F-35 jets in its lineup, just a small portion of its order of 273 such aircrafts. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Photo: CTV News Police have arrested a Vancouver man after he allegedly spat on a woman in a wheelchair on the downtown Granville Strip. Daniel Bielewcz, 28, has been charged with assault in the unprovoked assault, which happened Sunday morning. Bielewcz is alleged to have spat in the face of the 19-year-old woman on Granville Street, near West Georgia. Video surveillance appears to show the suspect also spitting on the chest of an elderly man and two other women walking by. "These random assaults are very concerning, says Sgt. Jason Robillard. We are urging the three additional victims to come forward, as their information could be crucial to the investigation. Anyone who may be a victim is asked to call Vancouver Police at 604-717-3321. US Says No Civilians Have Died in Somali Airstrikes, Contrary to Probe Findings Sputnik News 22:02 20.03.2019(updated 22:26 20.03.2019) US Africa Command is pushing back against an Amnesty International report claiming US airstrikes in Somalia have caused massive civilian casualties. However, the Trump administration has long abandoned any consideration of civilian deaths, and commanders have admitted they don't investigate until complaints arise. AI's report, "The Hidden US War in Somalia," officially published on March 20, finds that 14 civilians were killed in five airstrikes between October 2018 and February 2019 and separates those strikes into two categories: "The first category includes two incidents in which the US military appears to have targeted suspected Al-Shabaab members riding in vehicles, killing civilians near the targeted vehicle The second category includes three incidents in which civilians were killed apparently either after being mistakenly identified as Al-Shabaab fighters or another lawful military objective, or incidentally in a strike against a lawful military objective." In the first category, AI notes that in two incidents, "it appears that US forces had ample opportunity to avoid civilian deaths and injuries, by taking feasible precautions, as required by IHL [international humanitarian law], including by carrying out the attack before the vehicle entered, or drove by, the civilian areas." In the second category, AI says, "The misidentification appears to have occurred either because the target was wrongly identified as a specific individual or individuals or because the target was wrongly targeted by a 'signature strike' where the victim's identity was unknown by US forces, but their actions, as viewed from the air, were perceived to fit a suspicious pattern of behavior." AI notes its findings are based on interviews with scores of witnesses and survivors from the airstrikes, all of which occurred in the fertile Lower Shabelle coastal region, which stretches from north of the capital of Mogadishu south to the Kenyan border. "AFRICOM goes to extraordinary lengths to reduce the likelihood of civilian casualties, exercising restraint as a matter of policy," US Africa Command, which is based in Stuttgart, Germany, said in a Tuesday statement. "We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously regardless of their origin," AFRICOM said. The command claimed that during the period covered by Amnesty International's report, "Our assessments found that no AFRICOM airstrike resulted in any civilian casualty or injury." "AFRICOM complies with the law of armed conflict and takes all feasible precautions to minimize civilian casualties and other collateral damage," the statement continues. "We have processes in place to ensure the safety and protection of the local population remains a top priority. These procedures, combined with precision strike capabilities, safeguard civilians and infrastructure." "Following an airstrike, AFRICOM conducts additional analysis to ensure the military objectives were met and that there were no civilian casualties." However, these claims run contrary both to moves by the Trump administration and statements made by AFRICOM commanders. While the US' undeclared war in Somalia has been raging for decades, only in 2013 did the Obama administration establish rules for the use of drones in the East African nation. President Barack Obama's standards required "near certainty" of the target's presence, as well as the absence of potential civilian casualties, before a strike could be authorized, Sputnik reported. However, in March 2017, the New York Times reported that incoming President Donald Trump had changed these standards to require merely a "reasonable certainty" of the presence of al-Shabaab fighters. The new standards take no account of potential civilian casualties. In fact, former US AFRICOM commander Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc told the Daily Beast that the US military presumes that everybody it kills are enemy fighters until protests are raised by journalists, governments or nongovernmental organizations. "The only assessment we have is we continue to fly over the objective post-strike to get a sense of the environment from the air," Bolduc said last November. Further, the Trump administration moved this year to make the US war in Somalia even more opaque. Trump said at his first Cabinet meeting of the year in late January that the Pentagon would no longer furnish public records on its missions in Somalia, Sputnik reported. Then in March, Trump revoked Section 3 of Executive Order 13732, which requires the Director of National Intelligence to release an unclassified summary of US airstrikes in undeclared war zones, including assessments of combatant and non-combatant deaths caused by those strikes, each May 1, Sputnik reported. Undeclared war zones are those where the US military is authorized to carry out certain operations against "associated forces" of al-Qaeda or the Taliban by the 2001 Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF). These include Somalia as well as Pakistan and Yemen; Libya was recategorized late last year from an undeclared war to the status active warzone, placing it alongside Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. "There has never been any reason to believe that the US numbers are accurate because there has been little, if any post-strike investigation," Leah Bolger, a retired US Navy commander who is now a peace activist with World Beyond War, told Sputnik Wednesday. "The Pentagon literally does not know who they are killing. Under Obama's order, they had to report something, even if wildly inaccurate, but since Trump has rolled back this minimal requirement, the Pentagon has no reason to even try to keep track," Bolger said. "To make matters worse, all of these strikes are in violation of the US Constitution which requires approval by Congress to engage in combat." In other words, there's nothing to support any of AFRICOM's claims of zero civilian casualties or even to suggest that it would be aware of how many civilians US airstrikes might have killed, much less to definitively refute Amnesty International's claims of documented civilian deaths. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UN Concerned by US Sanctions' Possible Impact on Venezuelan People Sputnik News 21:29 20.03.2019(updated 22:13 20.03.2019) UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) - The United Nations is worried that the latest sanctions against Venezuela's oil sector will lead to greater economic deterioration in that country and will further affect people's well-being, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on Wednesday. "Although this pervasive and devastating economic and social crisis began before the imposition of the first economic sanctions in 2017, I am concerned that the recent sanctions on financial transfers related to the sale of Venezuelan oil within the United States may contribute to aggravating the economic crisis, with possible repercussions on people's basic rights and well-being," Bachelet said. Meanwhile, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) data revealed that US imports of Venezuelan crude oil dropped to zero last week after importing 112,000 barrels per day the week ending March 8. The last large US import of Venezuelan oil came the week ending February 15 at 558,000 barrels per day. The United States has imposed several rounds of sanctions on Venezuela in recent months, including on the state-owned oil company PDVSA, until the company is transferred under control of Juan Guaido, the speaker of opposition-led National Assembly, who declared himself to be interim president in January. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has denounced the sanctions as an illegal attempt to seize Venezuela's sovereign assets. In addition, he has called Guaido a puppet of the United States and accused Washington of attempting to conduct a coup d'etat in Venezuela in order to claim the country's resources. Russia, China, Mexico, Turkey and other countries continue to recognize Maduro as Venezuela's only legitimate president. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump: 400 US Troops to Remain in Syria With 200 Stationed 'Closer to Israel' Sputnik News 19:57 20.03.2019(updated 21:32 20.03.2019) The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have since February been slowly breaking through the defensive positions of Daesh in Baghuz, a small city on the Euphrates River near Syria's border with Iraq, considered by Washington and its allies to be the last stronghold of the terrorists in Syria. US President Donald Trump, speaking about the success of the SDF operation to clear out the last stronghold of Daesh* militants in Syria, claimed that there was one last "small pocket" of militants, which would be cleared "tonight." "In Syria we're leaving 200 people there and 200 people in another place in Syria closer to Israel for a period of time," Trump said. To prove his point, the American president has presented two maps showing territories in the Middle East where the terrorists were present: one as of 2017 and one as of today. "This is a map of everything in red, this was on election night in 2016. Everything red is ISIS [Daesh]. When I took it over it was a mess," Trump said demonstrating the map of the Islamic State-held territory. "Now, on the bottom, that's the exact same [map], there is no red. The fact is actually a tiny spot, which will be gone by tonight." Since February, the US-backed Kurdish SDF has been attacking the terrorists in the Syrian city of Baghuz, after all the civilians had left the besieged area. The US-led coalition has been carrying out air support for the operation with strikes, which have reportedly resulted in civilian casualties. The coalition, in turn, denied these reports, saying that they had seen "no evidence" for them. *Daesh (also known as Islamic State, IS, ISIS, ISIL) a terrorist group banned in numerous countries, including Russia Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Swedish Military Intel Boss Sees "Threat" From Russian Missiles, Chinese Bases Sputnik News 15:42 20.03.2019(updated 15:43 20.03.2019) A fresh Swedish military intelliegence report points out Russia's increased defence capabilities and China's growing interest in Europe and the Arctic as the most important security trends. In its annual report, the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST) has predicted that Sweden's vicinity in the coming years will be characterised by the antagonism between Russia and the US and NATO, envisioning a possible polarisation. "There are few signs today that the parties are ready to approach each other to handle existing security challenges", the MUST report said. According to MUST chief Gunnar Karlson, Russia has continued to modernise its arsenal and strengthen its military capabilities. "The have not become more, but they have become better", Karlson told the newspaper Eskilstuna Kuriren, venturing that Russia has bolstered its military presence in the Baltic Sea area. Karlson described Russia's weaponisation as a slow, yet continuous process, in which older aircraft and naval vessels are replaced by more modern ones and increasingly complex exercises are carried out. Still, he found his compatriots' obsession on Russia's new Iskander robots in its westernmost part, Kaliningrad Region, "difficult to understand". "I believe it has become a little difficult to understand Sweden's fixation on just one thing, namely Iskander robots in Kaliningrad", Karlson said, suggesting that the Kaliningrad Region hosts other missile systems as well. The Iskanders are also in other places and may be moved around, he pointed out. Another player identified as a threat in MUST's annual report is China. According to MUST, China is boosting its activity in Sweden's vicinity. As a result of climate change, China is investing in transport links in the Arctic within the framework of the project Polar Silk Road. By extension, this may involve security risks, once China decides to set up military bases in the area, the MUST boss pointed out. "Across the world, we see China's will to acquire bases, with Somalia and Sri Lanka as the most well-known examples. The question whether China would like to have bases in our part of the world will be relevant sooner or later, if it already isn't", Karlson said. China's process of building aircraft carriers is seen as one particular examples of its ability to project military power across the globe. Karlson described them as "the ultimate symbol of desire to move military power at will". Earlier this year, the Swedish Security Police published a security report of its own, warning of Chinese and Russian intelligence operations in the country. MUST is a department at the Armed Forces headquarters tasked with monitoring the threats against the Swedish Armed Forces, such as alien intelligence, crime, terrorism, sabotage, and subversion. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Command Explains B-52 Bombers Flying Close to Russian Borders Sputnik News 15:22 20.03.2019(updated 15:23 20.03.2019) NATO planes have been regularly conducting flights close to Russia's borders since 2014 sometimes forcing Russian jets to scramble and escort them during the flight to prevent airspace violations. The US Air Force command in Europe has confirmed that its B-52 Stratofortress bombers have been conducting flights in the Baltics in close proximity to Russia's borders in the Kaliningrad and Leningrad regions, the Defence Blog reported. The command noted that the flights serve as a demonstration of Washington's commitment to regional security. "These missions have been closely coordinated with the governments of the respective countries and the NATO Enhanced Forward Presence units operating there", the statement by the command said. The confirmation comes amid reports of American B-52 bombers being spotted flying 150 kilometres away from the Russian border. The Russian Defence Ministry earlier confirmed that the US planes had not violated Russian airspace and that the country's armed forces kept track of them during the flight. US and NATO planes have been actively patrolling along Russia's borders since 2014, sometimes forcing Russian jets to scramble to prevent airspace violations. In the most recent incident, a Russian Su-27 fighter was scrambled to intercept a US RC-135 reconnaissance plane that was approaching Russian airspace over the Baltic Sea. After the RC-135 changed its course, the Su-27 safely returned to its air base. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Afghan Official Refuses to Apologise Over Verbal Attack on US Envoy - Reports Sputnik News 13:31 20.03.2019 MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Afghan National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib has refused to apologize over scathing remarks aimed at US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad, NBC reported on Wednesday. The United States privately asked the adviser for a formal apology, suggesting he might be excluded from peace talks otherwise, but Mohib refused, the NBC broadcaster reported, citing people familiar with the situation. Mohib's refusal and return to Afghanistan from Washington increased the uncertainty over the talks expected to bring peace to Afghanistan. Meanwhile, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale has reportedly notified Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that Mohib was no longer welcome in Washington or the US in as a whole and that no American officials would deal with him. The apology was requested after last week's Mohib statement, in which he suggested that the US administration was planning to undermine the Afghan government, accusing Khalilzad in particular of ambitions to become an Afghan leader. The remark was made in the wake of the United States' talks with the Taliban movement. The latest round of negotiations that wrapped up earlier in March delivered some progress, but no agreement on the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan. Mohib told reporters it was humiliating that the Afghan government was excluded from the negotiations. The US forces entered Afghanistan in late 2001, soon after the September 11 attack in the United States. The military operation was aimed against al-Qaeda, whose members the United States believed to be in Afghanistan. The Taliban government of Afghanistan was overthrown as the result of the operation, but it regrouped and remained insurgent. The peace talks in several formats have been ongoing to return peace to the country. *the al-Qaeda is a terrorist group, banned in Russia Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Venezuela National Assembly Names PDVSA Subsidiary's Directors Board - Guaido Sputnik News 09:12 20.03.2019(updated 09:13 20.03.2019) MEXICO CITY (Sputnik) - The Venezuelan National Assembly, which all the other governmental branches have been refusing to recognise, has appointed its ad-hoc board of directors of petrochemical enterprise Pequiven (a subsidiary of state-owned energy company PDVSA), self-proclaimed interim leader of Venezuela Juan Guaido claimed. The National Assembly has also named the board of directors of Pequiven's branch in neighbouring Colombia, Monomeros Colombo Venezolanos. This move is reportedly aimed at enabling Guaido to gain control of Venezuela's assets abroad. The US office of Guaido, who was swiftly recognised by Washington when he proclaimed himself interim president, announced a new board of directors of CITGO (the US-based PDVSA subsidiary) in February. While PDVSA called the appointment an attempt to "steal the wealth of the people," and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro promised to bring to trial those who would recognize the new appointments, Guaido said that it was the Venezuelan government that wanted "to steal everything." After the political crisis broke out in Venezuela in late January, the United States has imposed several rounds of sanctions against Venezuelan officials and entities and blocked $7 billion in assets belonging to PDVSA. Maduro has denounced the sanctions as an illegal attempt to seize Venezuela's sovereign assets. The Venezuelan government has also decided to relocate the PDVSA office from Lisbon to Moscow and open a subsidiary in Russia, which supports Maduro as the legitimate leader of Venezuela. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Media Note Office of the Spokesperson Washington, DC March 20, 2019 The governments of the State of Kuwait and the United States held the third U.S.-Kuwait Strategic Dialogue, the first such dialogue hosted in Kuwait, on March 20, 2019. U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Kuwaiti Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah co-chaired the opening session. These dialogues produce concrete advances in our strategic partnership in defense, security, trade, investment, education, consular affairs, customs, border protection, and health issues. Today's dialogue builds on the September 2018 meeting between President Trump and His Highness Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah at the White House and represents a year's progress of the Strategic Dialogue's working groups. Our two countries took the opportunity of this Dialogue meeting in Kuwait to renew their shared commitment to promote the stability and security of the region. Secretary Pompeo expressed the appreciation of the American people for the outpouring of affection and tributes from the leadership of Kuwaiti people on the passing of President George H.W. Bush. This dialogue process, begun in October 2016, has materially benefitted both nations; today, we are taking further steps to serve our peoples. Secretary Pompeo and Deputy Prime Minister al-Sabah signed a document formalizing the structure of the Strategic Dialogue and affirming both countries' intent to continue broadening our relationships to meet mutual interests. Political Cooperation The United States and Kuwait discussed the most pressing regional political issues, including the ongoing GCC dispute. The United States reiterated its appreciation for the Amir's extraordinary efforts to help reach a settlement, and the United States and Kuwait renewed their call for a resolution. Our two countries share a common view of the need for GCC unity in effectively confronting the region's many challenges and in promoting a peaceful and prosperous future to the region. We discussed our productive coordination as members of the UN Security Council in 2018 and our priorities for the year ahead. We look forward to continuing our close collaboration in the Council in 2019 to address issues affecting international peace and security, such as countering terrorism and the use of weapons of mass destruction. The United States and Kuwait recognize the importance of the establishment of the Middle East Strategic Alliance among the United States, the GCC member states, Egypt, and Jordan. Both countries welcomed the discussions on January 9 in Muscat, Oman, on the economic and energy pillars, and the consultations on February 21 in Washington, D.C., on the political and security pillars of the Alliance. We look forward to further coordination on the establishment of the Alliance, which will enhance multilateral cooperation between the United States and the participating States and address threats to our shared vital interests in regional stability, security and prosperity. The United States recognizes the continuous efforts taken by Kuwait towards maintaining security and stability in Iraq, as well as supporting the Government of Iraq in the process of reconstruction, by hosting the Kuwait International Conference for Reconstruction of Iraq on February 12-14, 2018, which resulted in $30 billion in pledges to Iraq. We welcomed the constructive dialogue that took place at the Ministerial to Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East in Warsaw, Poland on February 13-14. The United States appreciates Kuwait's significant contributions to peace and security in some of the world's most troubled regions and its willingness to serve as a key source of direct assistance to internally displaced persons, as well as to refugees hosted in other countries. The United States welcomes Kuwait's recent announcements of additional humanitarian assistance for Yemen and Syria. The United States and Kuwait expressed their support for UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths and reiterated the need for all parties to implement the agreements reached in Stockholm during the December 2018 meeting and to continue working to advance the political process. Particularly as co-members of the UN Security Council at this time, our delegations reiterated the need for the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2254 to help end the Syrian conflict and bring lasting stability to that country. We discussed and reviewed efforts to promote Middle East Peace and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We also discussed other regional issues, such as Syria, Libya, and the destabilizing behavior of Iran. Both countries welcomed the February 6 ministerial meeting in Washington, D.C., of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS/DAESH and re-affirmed the Coalition's commitment to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS. Both countries called upon the international community to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions regarding North Korea. Defense Partnership The United States reiterated its commitment to Kuwait's security. Today, both countries continue to work together closely to ensure that the Armed Forces of Kuwait are effectively equipped to defend their nation through the acquisition of U.S. systems such as the F/A-18 Super Hornet and the M1A2 tank, and by expanding U.S. comprehensive professional training programs. We discussed our future defense cooperation and the priority of moving forward with modernizing the military facilities in Kuwait used jointly by our forces, as guided by our Joint Military Commission. We discussed future cooperation and the integration of our Armed Forces to enhance the defense of Kuwait in the most efficient and cost effective manner. The Joint Military Commission will continue considering opportunities for such integration, which both sides agree will enhance the defense of Kuwait. The Kuwait and U.S defense partnership plays an important role in regional security and stability, and it extends to areas of combating terrorism and deterring external aggression. The U.S appreciates Kuwait's efforts in hosting the Armed Forces Chiefs of Staff Meeting of GCC countries, Egypt, Jordan, and the commander of the U.S. Central Command in September 2018. Kuwait and the U.S are looking forward to the multinational exercise "Eagle Resolve" to be held in Kuwait in 2020 with participation from GCC countries and the United States, to enhance the military capabilities and deterrence force. Today, we signed an agreement that will allow the U.S. Department of Defense to provide defense articles, training, including counter-terrorism training, and materials to Kuwait on a grant basis. Both countries welcome the recent dedication of the site of the National Desert Storm and Desert Shield War Memorial in Washington, DC, and look forward to the future opening of this memorial. It will commemorate and honor those who participated in the liberation of Kuwait through their active duty service in support of Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield. Security Cooperation The United States and Kuwait are strong partners in the fight against terrorism. Together, we are making the Kuwaiti and American people more secure. We agreed to expand this cooperation in order to thwart potential terrorist attacks. The United States reiterated its appreciation for Kuwait's cooperation and its facilitation of the effort to ensure a lasting defeat of ISIS. Both countries remain committed to take further steps to confront global terrorist threats and cut off the financing of terrorism. Recognizing the benefits from combining our resources to defeat this scourge, our nations are taking specific steps to increase information sharing that will help deter terrorist attacks; our growing security cooperation seeks to deny refuge or sanctuary to terrorists and criminals. Training of Kuwaiti prosecutors and regular workshops provided by the United States will help the Kuwaiti government bring those engaged in the support or financing of terrorism to justice. This collaboration will continue. The United States welcomes Kuwait's future engagements in the U.S. government's Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, which have recently been agreed to by both countries. In implementation of this agreement, the United States will provide training to Kuwait's law enforcement personnel to build their counterterrorism capabilities and skills. Today, the United States and Kuwait completed agreements to improve our cooperation to identify high-risk travelers that threaten both countries' security. This will make all flights more secure. The United States and Kuwait discussed the dangers to society posed by narcotics trafficking. We signed today a memorandum of cooperation to enhance the counter-narcotics cooperation between the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Kuwaiti Drug Control General Department. This will enhance our ability to disrupt transnational criminal organizations. The United States and Kuwait recognize the critical importance of cybersecurity and agreed on the need for close cooperation to prevent cyber threats. Cybersecurity cooperation between the United States- and Kuwait is growing across the public and private sectors. The governments of the United States and Kuwait signed a Letter of Intent on Cybersecurity Cooperation in September 2018. Today, we discussed further avenues for this cooperation. Both sides look forward to enhanced collaboration, including joint efforts to fight cybercrime and to further an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable, cyberspace. The United States welcomes Kuwait's decision to join the 24-7 High Tech Crime Network, which facilitates point-to-point contact for investigations involving electronic evidence that require urgent assistance from member nation law enforcement partners. Trade and Investment Increasing trade and investment ties between Kuwait and the United States have contributed to the growing prosperity of both countries. Two-way trade rose to more than $8 billion in 2017. Bilateral investment positions remain strong. Other cooperative actions underway focus on better managing risks associated with travel and the trade in goods, preserving the integrity of financial transactions and raising the level of cybersecurity. During the Strategic Dialogue, both countries pledged to seek ways to continue reducing barriers to trade and investment. Growing commercial relations between the United States and Kuwait complement our close official bilateral relations. During the second annual U.S.-Kuwait Economic Forum on January 14, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry signed a memorandum of cooperation to foster collaboration between the two. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is preparing to launch a first-ever U.S.-Kuwait Business Council, to be composed of corporate members from both countries. Yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in partnership with Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority (KDIPA) held a roundtable with business leaders to discuss ways to increase trade and investment between the two countries. These developments follow important business-to-business exchanges during the year, including Kuwait's strong participation at the Select USA Investment Summit in Washington, D.C. in June 2018, and Kuwait's successful Investment Outreach Roadshow in Silicon Valley in November 2018. Kuwait has been an active long-term investor in the U.S, mainly through the Kuwait Investment Authority where the majority of its investments are allocated in the U.S. or in U.S. dollars. The United States recognizes the efforts of Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority in facilitating investment procedures in Kuwait. Kuwait Vision 2035 provides potential fertile ground for direct investment in Kuwait. Today, our two sides signed a memorandum of understanding between the Kuwait National Fund for Small and Medium Enterprise Development and the U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration to promote innovation, entrepreneurship, and small business development. Formalizing this relationship supports Kuwait's effort to further develop the private sector and to diversify its economy. The United States and Kuwait welcome the recent agreement between Boeing and the Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority to deploy for the first time in Kuwait training solutions for the next generation of Kuwaiti pilots. Educational and People-to-People Ties Education remains a solid building block of the U.S.-Kuwait partnership and a lasting bond between our peoples. Five generations of Kuwaitis have studied in the United States. Both countries continue to encourage more Kuwaitis to join the nearly 10,200 Kuwaitis studying for academic credit, and an additional 2,500 in intensive English language institutes in the United States. These numbers are expected to rise. We will continue to cooperate closely to prepare Kuwaiti students to succeed at quality U.S. educational institutions, including through enhanced coordination in English language teaching and college admissions advising. In recognition of the unparalleled quality and diversity of U.S. institutions of higher learning, our two sides will endeavor to expand the number of U.S. institutions and fields of study available to Kuwaiti scholarship recipients, and the number of universities in Kuwait with U.S. affiliations. We also will work together to facilitate an increase in the numbers of U.S. students and scholars studying or conducting research at universities in Kuwait. In recognition of the importance of bilateral cooperation in the field of culture, the two governments signed a Statement of Intent to work together to enhance cultural understanding and people-to-people connections between the United States and Kuwait, in order to support the shared ideals of tolerance and appreciation for cultural diversity. As a result of this Statement of Intent, both parties will encourage partnerships between U.S. and Kuwaiti cultural institutions, professional exchange programs, a diverse range of cultural programs, and programs that support and engage youth. During the 2017 Strategic Dialogue, the United States and Kuwait signed a memorandum of understanding for cooperation in the field of higher education. That agreement has already resulted in many productive academic and professional exchanges. In the next few months, a Fulbright Specialist in student advising for U.S. college admissions will work with the Kuwaiti Ministry of Higher Education to ensure that Kuwaiti students have the most accurate and complete information about U.S. institutions. The Kuwaiti Ministry of Education and the U.S. Embassy will also be jointly funding an intensive English course for Kuwaiti public school teachers in spring 2020. Finally, the U.S. Embassy will fund a new afterschool English course for underprivileged students in Kuwait, beginning in fall 2019. During today's dialogue, we also discussed opportunities for increased collaboration, training, and exchange between our countries in the fields of education and academic research. The United States and Kuwait welcome the reinvigoration of the American Kuwaiti Alliance, which works to expand people-to-people exchanges, increase business, investment and trade, and foster cross-cultural understanding. Consular Affairs, Customs, and Border Protection We reaffirmed our commitment to the protection of our nationals in Kuwait and the United States and around the world, solidifying our international obligations to provide consular notification and access to detained citizens and expanding our efforts to assist our citizens during crises. The United States and Kuwait are working to improve our communication and partnership to prevent and resolve international parental child abductions according to the laws and regulations in both countries. Kuwait and the U.S. affirmed their intention to establish a mechanism for prisoners' transfer. Kuwait's National Assembly recently ratified our Customs Mutual Assistance Agreement to improve information sharing, training, and enforcement of our customs and immigration laws. The entry into force of this agreement marks a significant milestone in collaboration on security and trade facilitation between the two countries. We welcome the cooperation agreement signed in September 2018 between our two governments that set up efforts to prevent the trafficking of nuclear and other radioactive materials, and we recognize the importance of mutual training and exercises. We also completed a comprehensive review of visa reciprocity to ensure fair treatment of our citizens in both countries. We also signed an agreement between KGAC and CBP that will enhance security and protect the international supply chains through data sharing that will identify high-risk cargo shipments. Kuwait and the United States welcomed the recent resumption of the Kuwait Airways direct flight to New York City; this was done in coordination between our two governments. This will have positive effects on all fields including business and tourism. The United States and Kuwait look forward to closer collaboration between the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. Kuwait reiterated its interest in becoming a pre-clearance border point to the United States. Health Cooperation The United States and Kuwait are strengthening their bilateral relationship in the area of healthcare and healthcare management. We have begun negotiations on a memorandum of understanding between the Kuwait Ministry of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that will identify areas of mutual collaboration. Looking Ahead The United States and Kuwait commit to further increasing cooperation in all of the areas of greatest practical benefit to our governments and to our peoples, as we formalized today in the signing of the overarching Strategic Dialogue agreement. Today, we set a roadmap for the advancement of our relations in the coming year. Bilateral working groups will work together to: facilitate systems that will defend Kuwait; modernize jointly-used military facilities; extend information sharing and cooperation to thwart acts of terrorism, including the financing of terror; enhance cybersecurity; expand trade and investment; protect and enforce the intellectual property rights of Kuwaitis and Americans; broaden our educational and research linkages; cooperate to provide high quality, cost-effective health care; and facilitate travel procedures between our two countries. We look forward to making progress in these areas when the Dialogue meets next in the United States. Remarks With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President of the Republic of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades, and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras Remarks Michael R. Pompeo Secretary of State David Citadel Hotel Jerusalem March 20, 2019 PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU: Good evening. I want to welcome to Jerusalem our dear friends the president of Cyprus, President Anastasiades, Nicos; the prime minister of Greece, Prime Minister Tsipras, Alexis; and the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. It's good to see you all here. This is the sixth summit meeting between Israel, Cyprus, and Greece. We began this a few years ago and it's blossomed into one of the best regional associations in the world. We cooperate in everything, from firefighting now to energy. We are planning to lay down a pipeline called the EastMed pipeline from Israel, through Cyprus, through Greece, to Europe. Something that will benefit our economies greatly, provide stability for the region and prosperity to our peoples, but also we think would diversify the energy supplies to Europe. The fact that we are joined in this meeting by the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo I think is significant. It signifies the fact that the United States supports this regional effort, and it has many, many facets that we're going to discuss, and I think that it says that this is something for the long haul. Obviously, we would welcome the association not only of the United States but other countries, something that we're going to discuss as soon as we complete the open part of this meeting. So welcome, friends. It's good to see you again. And we're planning our next meeting as we speak. Nicos, please. PRESIDENT ANASTASIADES: This is indeed a great moment, and I want to thank my very good friend the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu Benjamin Netanyahu, my dearest friend Bibi, for convening this very historic meeting in Jerusalem. We are delighted to have the American Secretary of State, Mr. Mike Pompeo, joining us today. His presence is a tangible proof that our three countries constitute reliable partners to the United States, particularly in the fields of energy and security, and an anchor of stability in the Eastern Mediterranean. Our region (inaudible) of an Eastern Mediterranean energy corridor is an excellent example in this respect. I want to assure Cyprus unwavering commitment to this reliable and strong partnership that aims through tangible actions to generate much-needed security, stability, and prosperity in our (inaudible) in the region. This is our grand-scale vision, and we are extremely happy that the Secretary of State is here to endorse its geopolitical value on behalf of the United States, and I look forward to a productive discussion of issues of common interest such as energy security with respect of sovereign rights and the protection of energy and marine activities, and of course diversification of energy. Once again, thank you, Bibi. PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU: Thank you. Thank you. PRIME MINISTER TSIPRAS: So I want to thank Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not the first time I cannot count how many times I have been in Jerusalem. This is the sixth time that we're meeting together in this strategic trilateral cooperation. So I'm feeling so familiar here in Jerusalem. I think that in the last few years, the role of our countries in the Eastern Mediterranean, together and individually, has become stronger. Our cooperation has become strategic our trilateral cooperation has become strategic and particularly in the fields of energy and security. The participation of Secretary of State Mr. Pompeo in the alliance, the United States support in our strategic cooperation, and his participation, I think that it will strengthen our efforts and our dialogue, especially on the field of energy but not only security and economy as well are challenges that we have ahead, and I think that the region have a lot of challenges but also important opportunities. Our basic ideas idea is very simple but very significant as well. The idea is to create a safe and secure network to transport the energy resources of the region of the Eastern Mediterranean to Europe through Israel, through Cyprus, through Greece, to Europe. And I think that the establishment of the EastMed pipeline can help both security dialogue and economic development of the region. So I look forward to our discussions in this regard, and I think that our discussion could be beneficial not only in the energy field, but about security, safety, stability, and the economic development of the region. Thank you. SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you. Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for hosting us here in Jerusalem. I'm looking forward to our discussion. Prime Minister Tsipras, President Anastasiades, you don't know but about a week ago I spoke in Houston, Texas, to a big group of energy leaders from all around the world, talking about opportunities and projects just like this, about how energy connects up with our security interests in America and how the opportunities to create energy in places that we hadn't had it before and transport it and create the infrastructure in places that we've not had it before is an enormous benefit. I think this is incredibly timely. Revisionist powers like Iran and Russia and China are all trying to take major footholds in the East and in the West, and we view the United States and Israel and the Republic of Cyprus and Greece as great, key partners in security and prosperity. So I'm very much looking forward to our conversation this evening. As we cooperate on these important energy issues, I know we'll improve our security and prosperity even more broadly between our four nations. We believe this deeply. When free countries with free markets act together and work to develop infrastructure for energy, greater security always follows. And I know this too: If we do this right, we will attract the investment that will maximize these resources in a way that good infrastructure and open markets always do. I'm looking forward to cooperating with each of you in this opportunity in the Eastern Mediterranean. Thank you for allowing me to be here tonight. PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU: Thank you. Thank you, Mike, and thank you all. Thank you. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 2nd annual C-130J fly-in grows Herc Nation By Airman 1st Class Kristine M. Gruwell, 19th Airlift Wing Public Affairs / Published March 20, 2019 LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark.(AFNS) -- Representatives from eight C-130J Super Hercules units came together to train and enhance mobility partnerships across the C-130J enterprise during the second annual fly-in at Little Rock Air Force Base, March 9-16. The fly-in allowed for side-by-side training aimed at increasing readiness and effectiveness of the C-130J force by improving cohesiveness and bolstering the ability of units to project agile combat airlift together downrange. "We're doing what we can to improve ourselves, one another and the C-130 community at large," said Col. Gerald Donohue, 19th Airlift Wing commander. "When we train side-by-side and tackle the issues we face as a community, not only are we better for it, but we are taking the charge our senior leadership has given us to push responsibility to the lowest level and move out on solutions where appropriate. The end result is a more effective, more lethal tactical airlift capability for our nation." Little Rock AFB personnel were joined by units from Ramstein Air Base, Germany; Yokota AB, Japan; Channel Islands Air National Guard Station, California, Keesler AFB, Mississippi and Dyess AFB, Texas. By including representatives from the U.S. Army, the training improved on joint teamwork. Throughout the week, units worked together to enhance numerous C-130 tactics such as large formation operations, heavy equipment, container delivery system and personnel airdrop, large-cargo loading, heavyweight assault landings and sea rescue kit airdrops. "The fly-in gives us the opportunity for our weapon system to get together with all our sister units and exchange tactics and procedures and to be interoperable," said Maj. Christopher Dolby, 36th Airlift Squadron director of plans and operations from Yokota AB. During the fly-in, a weapon system council brought together relevant stakeholders from across the C-130J enterprise to discuss tactics and address common concerns from within the community. They covered how units are addressing full-spectrum readiness, as well as how they are improving the C-130 deployment structure with wing-to-wing partnership. Attendees also heard from higher-headquarters representatives about the health and future of the fleet. "While this week saw some really high-end training, it was not just about flying together," said Col. Shane Haughian, 19th Operations Group commander. "It was about having a necessary conversation that brought together the best from each unit to really dig down into how we, as a C-130 enterprise, are getting after full-spectrum readiness. In the end, that crosstalk is invaluable." This team-driven training promoted problem solving at the unit level, focusing on driving the enterprise forward. "The fly-in is important for (Little Rock AFB) because it stresses the importance of relationship building," said Maj. Brendan Wier, 19th Operations Support Squadron chief of tactics. "This dynamic environment creates a platform for relationships to be built so Airmen have good communication when there are changes in procedures or events they're unfamiliar with during real-world operations." The fly-in was a testament to the tactical airlift capabilities of the C-130, highlighting how combat airlifters of all specialties enable and ensure global reach. "With every cargo load, airdrop, takeoff and landing this week, our interoperability grew," Donohue said. "Let this week stand as a showcase of what the "Herc" community brings to the fight, and also of the truly global scale on which the C-130 operates. We couldn't be happier to foster this conversation right here at the Home of Combat Airlift." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address The House of Commons justice committee, which heard more than three hours of testimony from former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould on Feb. 27, was a committee hearing. Had her testimony been in court, she would have opened with the oath "I solemnly affirm that the evidence to be given by me shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." Instead, the former minister began with a proud, oath-like statement: "I come from a long line of matriarchs and I am a truth teller." The online Urban Dictionary defines 'my truth' as a "pretentious substitute for 'non-negotiable personal opinion' which is often used by academics to avoid arguments because people can contradict your opinion but not your truth." Oxford Dictionaries' 2016 word of the year "post-truth" well describes the media furore following the "my truth" testimony. "Post-truth" is defined as an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals. It's an apt description of the SNC Lavalin affair. Frankly, over one month of the SNC Lavalin affair explorations by media has become tiresome. In my opinion, true moral failure in the Liberal caucus occurred on Oct. 5, 2016, when the prime minister asked his caucus to defeat Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith's Bill C-246, the Modernizing Animal Protections Act. Most Liberal MPs obliged. I began voting Liberal when then-justice minister Anne McClellan introduced Bill C-17 in 1999. It was the first attempt to amend the animal cruelty sections in the Criminal Code of Canada. In 2016, I withdrew my support for the Liberal Party following the directed defeat of Bill C-246. There was no moral outrage in the media at the time. Helen Schiele, Kelowna SOUTHCOM Military Deputy Commander Meets with Leaders in Colombia By U.S. Southern Command Public Affairs / Published March 20, 2019 BOGOTA, Columbia (AFNS) -- Lt. Gen. Michael Plehn, U.S. Southern Command's military deputy commander, visited Colombia March 17-19 to meet with Colombian military leaders to discuss strengthening the U.S.-Colombia bilateral security relationship and to deepen understanding of the rapidly changing security situation in the country. On March 18, Plehn met with Colombian Army Maj. Gen. Luis Navarro Jimenez, commanding general of the Colombian Military Forces, to discuss U.S.-Colombia defense cooperation. The meeting was held nearly a month after Navarro visited SOUTHCOM headquarters in Miami. During the trip, Plehn also visited Colombian military commands to meet with leaders and troops and get a firsthand look at operations and the security environment. As a part of his trip, Plehn visited Colombia's Special Forces Division and met with the division's commander, Gen. Juan Pablo Forero, who previously headed SOUTHCOM's J7/9 Exercises and Coalition Directorate. Colombia and the United States share a strong security partnership. The enduring military partnership dates back decades. Colombian and U.S. troops served under the United Nations Command during the Korean conflict. For many decades, U.S. and Colombian troops have worked alongside each other during exercises, humanitarian assistance missions, professional exchanges and security operations to counter transnational threats. Today, the two countries also partner to help other countries build capacity and address security challenges. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Bombers fly coordinated missions from Indo-Pacific, Europe Pacific Air Forces Public Affairs / Published March 20, 2019 JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR HICKAM, Hawaii (AFNS) -- B-52H Stratofortress bombers launched from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam and RAF Fairford, United Kingdom, March 18, to conduct simultaneous theater familiarization training in the Indo-Pacific and Europe. Bombers launched from Andersen AFB and flew north to an area east of the Kamchatka Peninsula before returning to base. Collectively, the flights from the Indo-Pacific and Europe demonstrated U.S. commitment to allies and partners through the global employment of military forces. The B-52Hs from Andersen AFB deployed from the 5th Bomb Wing, Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, in support of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command's Continuous Bomber Presence. The CBP has been operational for more than a decade in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific. These missions, flown by Pacific Air Forces, routinely operate throughout the region in accordance with international law and norms. The B-52Hs operating out of RAF Fairford are part of the Bomber Task Force currently deployed to Europe from the 2nd Bomb Wing, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. While in theater, the bombers will conduct training with NATO allies and partners in order to enhance interoperability and readiness. The deployment of strategic bombers to the U.K. helps exercise RAF Fairford as U.S. Air Forces in Europe's forward operating location for bombers. Strategic bomber missions enhance the readiness and training necessary to respond to any potential crisis or challenge across the globe. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Afghanistan Again Postpones Presidential Election By Ayaz Gul March 20, 2019 Officials in Afghanistan have delayed the country's presidential election for a second time, setting Sept. 28 as the new date. They also announced Wednesday that provincial council elections in all 34 Afghan provinces would be held on the same date. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) said recent amendments to election laws and the pending resolution of "numerous problems and challenges" facing the voting system prompted it to push back the polls. The presidential election originally was scheduled for April 20, then was delayed to July 20 mainly because of security concerns and widespread skepticism about IEC's ability to organize a fair ballot in the wake of last October's controversial Afghan parliamentary polls. The parliamentary ballot was set up in 33 provinces; security concerns and local political disputes prevented IEC from holding elections in Ghani province. Question of finances IEC Chairperson Hawa Alam Nuristani, speaking to reporters, described the October polls as "the worst elections in the last 15 years." She cautioned, however, that her institution would be able to hold the elections in time, provided "all relevant sides, especially the government and the international community," provide the IEC with the required finances. The rescheduling of the presidential vote comes as the United States is trying to find a political settlement to its 18-year-old war with the Taliban. But it is not clear whether the dialogue has anything to do with the rescheduling of the elections. A spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani, who is seeking re-election and completes his mandated term in May, said the government was determined to cooperate with and fully supported the IEC's decision to delay the polls. Ghani's main challengers in the elections will be his coalition partner, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, and former National Security Adviser Mohammad Haneef Atmar. Taliban talks The U.S.-Taliban peace talks have excluded the Ghani government because the insurgent group is opposed to engaging in any talks with Kabul. Afghan officials say the move has undermined the legitimacy of the elected government, and they caution that no sustainable peace can be initiated without involving them. Ghani's national security adviser last week launched blistering public attacks on chief U.S. negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad for allegedly sidelining the government and giving the Taliban legitimacy. Hamdullah Mohib, while speaking to reporters during his visit to Washington, went on to accuse the Afghan-born U.S. diplomat of trying to create "a caretaker government [in Afghanistan] of which he would then become viceroy," a title used for the colonial administrator of British-ruled India. The following day, Robert Palladino, the deputy spokesman of the State Department, told a news conference that Mohib was "summoned" and told "attacks on Ambassador Khalilzad are attacks on the department and only serve to hinder the bilateral relationship and the peace process." Media reports later quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying they had conveyed to Ghani that his national security adviser would no longer be welcomed in Washington and that U.S. officials would no longer do business with Mohib. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Israeli Army Warns of New Hezbollah Threat By Joshua Brilliant March 20, 2019 A Hezbollah commander who allegedly headed a 2007 raid on an American base in Iraq, which ended with the slaying of kidnapped American soldiers, is now building a secret force that could attack Israel from Syria, according to an Israeli military intelligence report. Their report was released in the days leading up to a visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who also is stopping in Kuwait and Lebanon, where discussions will include the threat of Iran and Hezbollah. The force that Ali Musa Daqduq is building could be used to widen a front with Israel in case of another clash with Lebanon. Hezbollah also could launch attacks only from Syrian territory in an effort to spare Lebanon from painful Israeli retaliations, Yoram Schweitzer of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv said in an interview. Israel and Lebanon have amassed such a destructive capability on both sides of the border that they deter one another there. Hence, Israeli attacks on convoys of arms for Hezbollah were targeted when they were in Syria, not Lebanon. Daqduq, who also is known as Ali Hussein Sajid, joined Hezbollah a quarter-century ago. He was involved in attacks on Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, trained militants in Iran and Iraq, established cells in Iraq to fight American and Iraqi forces, and commanded the January 2007 raid on an American base in the Karbala region. There, raiders wearing American-style uniforms killed a guard and abducted four soldiers who were later executed. British troops arrested Daqduq in Basra two months later; he was in jail, without trial, until the American withdrawal from Iraq. The security agreement with Iraq required that its government would have to concede to transfer individuals into or out of the country, so an American idea of transferring him to Guantanamo was dropped, the Israeli Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center noted. The Iraqis returned him to Lebanon in 2012, citing a lack of evidence. He then became responsible for training Hezbollah's Special Forces, the Israeli intelligence report said. Golan File The new buildup, called the Golan File, started last summer in the northern tip of the Golan Heights, close to Lebanon. The recruits come from the town of Quneitra and several villages such as Hader, Arneh and Khan Arnabeh, some of which are Druze. The Druze community did not join the rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The report suggested the recruits "joined for financial reasons." While some of the men had been trained in sabotage, sharpshooting, and firing mortars and Grad rockets, they now engage in gathering intelligence on Israel, sometimes from Syrian army positions along the border. They patrol the border to familiarize themselves with the terrain and analyze infiltration routes, but the network is still "in initial stages of establishment and recruitment and is not yet operational," the intelligence report added. The men's light arms and anti-tank missiles have been in the area during the civil war, but the report anticipates attempts to deliver additional weaponry from Lebanon "or avail themselves of the existing arsenals kept by Hezbollah and Iran in Syria." The Golan File is very secret, compartmentalized, and has been initiated "without informing the Assad regime," the report noted. Assad is "sitting in his office and doesn't know about it." Earlier attempts to establish buildups on the Golan crashed when commanders assigned to the task Samir Kuntar and Jihad Mughniyah were killed. Israel was the immediate suspect but never assumed responsibility for their deaths. Israeli preparations Hezbollah apparently knows that Assad wants to stabilize the area and doesn't want to give Israel reasons to strike there. In an attempt to nudge him, the Israeli report argued that, "Now, with the end of the [civil] war in sight, Hezbollah has lost its legitimacy to stay in Syria." Russia, too, would not want to see clashes there. "The Russians have a growing interest in security stability of the Assad regime," the report noted. Israeli troops, meanwhile, have stepped up their preparations for an encounter, with more elite forces deployed there. Israel strengthened its intelligence-gathering capabilities and established new hidden routes, said the commander of the division that is deployed on the Golan, Brig. Gen. Amit Fisher. The military "will act with full force to push it away from the Golan front," he added. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "Israel knows what you're doing; Israel knows where you're doing it. What we've uncovered today is just the tip of the iceberg. We know a lot more." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey, Iran Join Forces Against Kurdish Rebels By Dorian Jones March 20, 2019 Turkey is heralding as groundbreaking a joint military operation with Iran against Kurdish rebel groups. Turkish-Iranian relations have markedly improved, to the concern of Turkey's Western allies. Coordinated and concurrent military strikes against "terror groups" were carried out along the "borders of the two countries," read a statement by the Iranian Interior Ministry, released Wednesday and reported by Turkish media. The announcement came two days after Iran, through military sources quoted by the Fars news agency, denied involvement. The Turkish interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, announced the operation Monday, declaring it "a first in history." The operation targeted the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which is fighting a decades-long insurgency for greater minority rights in Turkey. Few details about the joint military mission, however, have been given by either Ankara or Tehran, other than a few photos, released Wednesday, showing Turkish soldiers in mountainous regions. Ankara has long courted Tehran's support in its war against the PKK. The rebel group has used Iranian territory to enter Turkey from its main bases in Iraq, located near the Iranian border. According to former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, Tehran's support would be essential in targeting the PKK's headquarters in Iraq's Qandil mountains. "Iran is geographically important because the entry to Qandil is on the Iranian side, as Qandil is a complex mountainous region that is almost inaccessible," Selcen said. Claims seen as not 'realistic' Selcen opened Turkey's consulate in Iraq's Kurdish region and served in Baghdad, spending much of his time working on countering the PKK. Selcen has voiced skepticism about Ankara's claims of a breakthrough with Tehran in Ankara's war against the PKK. "I don't find it realistic that such a [joint] operation took place. We have always heard for years that Iran will offer such cooperation, and it never happened. Because Iran has its problems with its Kurdish population, they would prefer to keep their own Kurdish region quiet," Selcen said. The PKK has an Iranian wing called PJAK, which in recent years has mostly avoided confrontation with Iran's military forces. Analysts often describe Iranian-Turkish relations as a combination of cooperation and rivalry. However, they say efforts to end the Syrian conflict are providing the impetus to strengthen bilateral cooperation, even though Iran and Turkey backed rival sides in the civil war. The deepening bilateral relations coincide with a souring in ties between Turkey and the United States. Turkey is angered by America's support of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in its war against Islamic State. Turkey claims the YPG is affiliated with the PKK. Turkish and U.S. military officials are in talks over the creation of a security zone in Syria to protect Turkey's border from the YPG. With Turkish media reporting the U.S.-Turkish talks deadlocked, analysts suggest the announced Iranian-Turkish operation is sending a signal to Washington that Ankara has alternatives in combating the PKK and its affiliates. "It's a credible idea if you are sitting behind your desk in Ankara," said Selcen. "But whether such a move will have much effect today on the U.S., I am not so sure, because Turkey and U.S. relations as they are right now have enough troubles. ... So it could be quite a risky strategy." Pulling Ankara from West Analysts say Iran, along with Russia, is working to draw Ankara away from its traditional Western allies. Both countries have committed themselves to developing deeper trade relationships with Turkey. They point out, however, that there are limitations to this courtship, given they remain rivals in the region. "We get no trading favors from either Iran or Russia, and that does not surprise me," said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners, a business management consultancy in New York. "Iran and Russia understand a more prosperous Turkey would invade their markets and would eventually become a political rival to them." Four years ago, Tehran and Ankara signed a preferential trade agreement to boost annual trade to $35 billion. In 2018, bilateral trade amounted to $9.3 billion, a nine-year low. Trade is set to worsen after the Iranian parliament passed legislation in January aimed at encouraging use of locally produced goods. "I don't know if it [the new legislation] is specifically against Turkish imports, but in reality, it does affect a lot of Turkish imports into Iran," said Yesilada. "I have spoken to dozens of businesses who told me Iranians had not granted any favors to Turkish businesspeople." Similar skepticism has been expressed in the past by Turkish officials regarding Tehran's commitment to assisting Ankara in combating the PKK. "They always talk about cooperation, but when it comes to it, they do nothing," said a senior Turkish counterterrorism official, who asked not to be identified. Turkish government ministers in the past went as far as accusing Tehran of supporting the PKK in a bid to weaken Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is campaigning ahead of hotly contested local elections, is aware anti-Western rhetoric and policies play well with his nationalist and religious base. Analysts suggest with the election results of the last four years, Erdogan may have more room to maneuver for a diplomatic reset. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Hundreds of Trucks Blocked on Cameroon-CAR Border By Moki Edwin Kindzeka March 20, 2019 Hundreds of trucks transporting food and humanitarian assistance to the Central African Republic are blocked at the border with Cameroon, as rebels have cut off the road to the capital, Bangui. The rebels acted to protest the president's new cabinet, which they say is not being representative enough. Among the 230 trucks and more than 500 drivers stranded in Garoua Boulay was Kum Aki, 54, who was transporting rice, maize and vegetable oil to the troubled CAR. He said most of the drivers had exhausted their $200 to $400 allowances they were given to cover the distance within a maximum of 10 days. Expenses mount "We are almost about 10 days here. ... You have eaten, you have paid hotel bills and all this. So now we are short of money," he said. Alex Nseumen, president of the CAR transport trade union, said he crossed the border but was asked to return. He said that when he crossed the border, he was told that CAR rebels had blocked the road at Nzokombo, 14 kilometers from the town of Garoua Boulay. He said he was expecting his boss to send additional funds so he could take care of himself and the assistant driver. Garoua Boulay residents have complained of the mass movement of panic-stricken CAR residents across the border, expressing concern it may escalate. In a crisis meeting Monday, Laurence Diyem Jam, the highest-ranking government official in Garoua Boulay, assured the population of their safety and said the military was controlling the border. El Hadj Oumarou, Cameroon coordinator of the land freight transportation bureau, visited the drivers and thanked the government of Cameroon for assuring their safety. He said he was very happy that the government had secured the trucks, goods and lives of the stranded drivers despite the tension their presence is causing in Garoua Boulay. He said they had not documented any incidents that would be a threat to anyone's life. Landlocked CAR depends on Cameroon's Douala seaport for about 95 percent of its supplies. Etienne Mbonjo, director of Catholic Church Health Services in CAR, said patients might begin to suffer soon, if drugs meant for Bangui remained in Cameroon for another week. He said it took courage to meet the rebel groups, though negotiations failed to open the border. He said health and humanitarian needs were increasing daily and that the United Nations should take note. CAR rebel groups accuse President Faustin-Archange Touadera of failing to comply with a 2018 peace agreement that required a government with representatives from all armed groups. Only six of the 14 groups that signed the deal have members in the cabinet. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Taiwan to donate patrol boats to Palau, Nauru: MOFA ROC Central News Agency 2019/03/21 17:05:03 Taipei, March 21 (CNA) Taiwan will donate coast guard patrol vessels to Palau and Nauru, two of its diplomatic allies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) confirmed Thursday before President Tsai Ing-wen () departed on a visit to the Pacific island nations. During Tsai's one-week visit to the South Pacific, Taiwan will sign a coast guard cooperation agreement with Palau and Nauru, similar to a deal it already has with the Marshall Islands, MOFA spokesman Andrew Lee () told reporters. Under the agreement, Taiwan will fund the construction of two eight-tonne patrol boats, one each for Palau and Nauru, which will be built in the two countries, Lee said. Meanwhile, Tsai will present each of the two allies with a miniature model of the boats to symbolize the donations, during her visit there, he said. He was responding to reporters' questions about a Radio New Zealand report earlier in the week that said Taiwan would donate a patrol boat to Palau during Tsai's visit there March 21-23. According to MOFA, Taiwan signed a similar deal with the Marshall Islands in July 2018 and the details of donation are still being discussed. Tsai, who is on her sixth trip abroad as president, is scheduled to visit three of Taiwan's diplomatic allies, Palau, Nauru and the Marshall Islands, May 21-28. (By Joseph Yeh) Enditem/pc NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Norouz Attack In Kabul Kills At Least Six; IS Claims Responsibility By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan March 21, 2019 Multiple explosions have killed at least six people and wounded 23 near a Shi'ite shrine in Kabul, Afghan officials say. The Islamic State (IS) militant group claimed responsibility for the March 21 attack, which took place during celebrations marking Norouz, the pre-Islamic Persian new year. Two children were among the wounded in the blasts, Kabul's Emergency Services director Muhammad Asim said. There were conflicting reports about the cause of the blasts near the Karti Sakhi Shi'ite shrine and cemetery in a western Kabul neighborhood that is heavily populated by Shi'ite Muslims. Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said an initial investigation indicated that three explosive devices had been remotely detonated, setting off the successive blasts as people gathered there to mark Norouz. But Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said on Twitter that three rockets had been fired at civilian homes and Norouz gatherings -- adding that security forces arrested the attackers and secured the area. President Ashraf Ghani condemned the attack, saying on Twitter: "As we celebrate this auspicious day to bind us together our fellow citizens witnessed another devastating day in Kabul. "We lost peaceful citizens to a coward enemy that knows no bounds," Ghani added. Islamic State claimed responsibility, saying on the Telegram messaging service that "soldiers of the caliphate" detonated three explosive devices among a Shi'ite crowd near a shrine. IS claimed 50 people were killed and wounded in the attack. The extremist group considers Shi'ite Muslims to be heretics. All routes to the Shi'ite shrine were cordoned off by security forces, a local live TV broadcast showed. Traditionally, people hoist green flags at the shrine and honor the dead at the cemetery by placing food beside graves. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and dpa Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/at-least-six-killed-in-kabul-blasts/29833772.html Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Toughest US Sanctions Against Venezuela 'Yet to Come' - Bolton Sputnik News 21:11 21.03.2019 WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States has yet to impose its toughest sanctions against the government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, US National Security Advisor John Bolton said in a statement on Thursday. "As President [Donald] Trump clearly stated, the toughest sanctions are yet to come," Bolton said via Twitter. "Unless Maduro's usurpation ends, he and his cronies will be strangled financially. The window is closing." In the meantime, Jesus Faria, Venezuela's former trade minister who sits on the parliamentary financial commission, told Sputnik that the United States had sanctioned a Venezuelan gold mining firm as a warning to foreign investors. "These sanctions are a threat and a warning to all actors interested in this economic sector. The US has imposed a batch of sanctions over the last five years, causing an economic blockade of our country. They have been particularly aggressive in the past couple of years," Faria said. The US Treasury has imposed several rounds of sanctions on Venezuelan state companies since January. On Tuesday, it sanctioned the state gold mining firm Minerven and its president, Adrian Antonio Perdomo Mata. Recently, the UN has voiced concern about the impact of the American sanctions on the Venezuelans. Thus, the international body warned, the punitive measures might lead to greater economic deterioration in that country and will further affect people's well-being. The United States sided with Juan Guaido, the Venezuelan opposition leader who declared himself interim president in January. President Nicolas Maduro calls him a US puppet. The incumbent president is backed by Russia, China and several other countries. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Joint Declaration Between Cyprus, Greece, Israel, and the United States After the Sixth Trilateral Summit Media Note Office of the Spokesperson Washington, DC March 21, 2019 The governments of the United States, the State of Israel, the Hellenic Republic, and the Republic of Cyprus met yesterday in Jerusalem to affirm their shared commitment to promoting peace, stability, security, and prosperity in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Secretary Pompeo underlined U.S. support for the trilateral mechanism established by Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, noting the importance of increased cooperation. The leaders agreed to increase regional cooperation; to support energy independence and security; and to defend against external malign influences in the Eastern Mediterranean and the broader Middle East. They welcomed the recent natural gas finds in the Eastern Mediterranean and its potential to contribute to energy security and diversification. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Photo: RCMP Escaped cheetah in 2015. The owners of two cheetahs will not be allowed to return the large, African cats to Southeastern B.C. to use them as ambassador animals promoting conservation of the endangered species. The Environmental Appeal Board, which considers issues raised under B.C.'s Wildlife Act, has refused to overturn a 2017 ruling denying a permit to move the cheetahs to Crawford Bay, north of Creston. The appeal by Earl Pfeifer argued the permit denial relied on allegedly unsupported details about the danger posed by cheetahs, as well as charges that were laid by the province but later dropped, after one of the cats escaped in December 2015. In a 37-page decision, the appeal board says Pfeifer and his partner Carol Plato have not offered any special circumstances that would allow the province to override legislation written in 2007 after a captive tiger fatally mauled a woman at a zoo-like attraction near Williams Lake. The board panel, chaired by Linda Michaluk, questions Pfeifer's commitment to his own safety protocols and his ability to control the seven-year-old cheetahs, Robin and Annie, which were described as "undisciplined" by a wildlife park operator in Alberta who briefly housed the cats. Pfeifer and Plato had hoped to bring the pair to a property in Crawford Bay to use them for "education and outreach" aimed at children, after acquiring them from a South African reserve. Without the permits, the cats remain in Ontario where Pfeifer testified he now rarely sees them. A team member with Cheetah Outreach in South Africa told the hearing that cheetahs are the most docile of the large cats and that Robin is blind but both he and Annie, "are well socialized and suitable as ambassador animals." Linda Rosenlof said she worked with the two felines in South Africa in the year after they were born and before they were shipped to Pfeifer and Plato in Ontario in 2013. She testified there is no formal study program to become a cheetah trainer but the panel referred to a textbook co-written by cheetah biologist and handler Laurie Marker, who testified on behalf of B.C.'s director of wildlife. "Cheetahs are not pets; they are wild animals and should be treated as such," says the textbook "Cheetahs: Biology and Conservation." "Working with cheetahs requires extensive previous experience with animal training and handling. There are both courses and books that teach training practices that use positive reinforcement. Additionally, trainers new to cheetahs must begin their hands-on work with a mentor or with experienced co-trainers," the textbook says. Given that description, Michaluk writes that the panel "has concerns" about Pfeifer's level of formalized training and with the consistency of care he could offer the cheetahs, especially during the daily walks and exercise he told the panel they would require outside the enclosure. "Of particular concern is the evidence regarding Annies escape (in Crawford Bay) in December 2015. This reflects on the appellants abilities as a handler, although the panel accepts that this incident raises more issues than simply handling expertise," writes Michaluk, adding that Pfeifer brought the cheetahs to B.C. shortly before Annie escaped, even though he knew he lacked the required permit. Treasury Sanctions Congolese Officials Responsible for Undermining DRC Elections U.S. Department of the Treasury March 21, 2019 WASHINGTON Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned three senior Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) officials pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13413, as amended by E.O. 13671, which authorizes sanctions in light of actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in the DRC. "This action follows persistent corruption by senior officials within the DRC's National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) and the former Kabila Government to obstruct and delay preparations for credible and inclusive elections," said Sigal Mandelker, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. "We stand with the Congolese people who went to the polls on December 30 but remain concerned about a flawed electoral process in which, following the presidential election, CENI continued to obstruct the democratic process and failed to ensure the vote reflected the will of the Congolese people. The United States will continue to assist those who seek to root out credible allegations of corruption but will not hesitate to leverage our authorities to impose tangible and significant consequences on malign actors in the DRC and around the world that undermine the democratic process and traffic in corruption." Specifically, OFAC designated three senior CENI officials: Corneille Yobeluo Nangaa (Nangaa), CENI President; Norbert Basengezi Katintima (Katintima), CENI Vice-President; and Katintima's son, Marcellin Basengezi Mukolo (Basengezi), a high-level CENI advisor. As a result of today's actions, all of the designated persons' assets within U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them. Corneille Yobeluo Nangaa, President of the National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) Nangaa was nominated and sworn in as the President of CENI in November 2015. CENI is tasked with executing elections in the DRC, and under Nangaa's leadership, elections originally scheduled for December 2016 were postponed to December 2018. In postponing the 2016 elections, CENI cited a lack of funding and delays in voter registration. In his capacity as CENI President, Nangaa, and other CENI officials under his direction, embezzled and misappropriated CENI operational funds and undertook actions that slowed voter registration, facilitating election delays. Nangaa oversaw CENI officials using several shell companies to embezzle CENI operational funds for their own personal and political gain. Nangaa and other CENI officials enriched themselves through the purchase and sale of gasoline for profit at the expense of CENI, which delayed registration in Kasai, an opposition stronghold, and meant that many voters were unable to register. In acquiring fuel to power generators for CENI offices, Nangaa negotiated a discounted rate and retained the difference from the budgeted amount to divide among senior CENI employees. Nangaa subsequently instructed CENI officials to fabricate receipts to account for the spending gap. Under Nangaa's leadership, CENI officials inflated by as much as $100 million the costs for the electronic voting machine contract with the intent to use surplus funds for personal enrichment, bribes, and campaign costs to fund the election campaign of Kabila's candidate. Nangaa, with other CENI officials, awarded an election-related contract and doubled the award amount on the understanding that the winning company would award the extra funds to a DRC company controlled by CENI leadership. Nangaa approved the withdrawal of CENI operation funds for non-authorized budget items for personal use by DRC government employees. Nangaa ordered CENI employees to fabricate expense receipts to cover spending gaps resulting from CENI funds being used for personal gain. Nangaa delivered bribes to Constitutional Court justices to uphold a decision by the CENI to delay DRC's 2016 elections. Norbert Basengezi Katintima, CENI Vice President Katintima was nominated and sworn in as the Vice President of CENI in November 2015. CENI is tasked with executing elections in the DRC, and under Katintima's leadership, elections originally scheduled for December 2016 were postponed to December 2018. In postponing the 2016 elections, CENI cited a lack of funding and delays in voter registration. In his capacity as CENI Vice President, Katintima and other CENI officials under his direction, embezzled and misappropriated CENI operational funds, facilitating election delays. Katintima oversaw CENI officials using several shell companies to embezzle CENI operational funds for their own personal and political gain. Katintima withdrew and provided at least $80,000 from CENI operational funds to his personally-owned hospital, which provided medical care to all CENI employees. The Supreme Audit Institution had sent unidentified investigators to CENI to conduct an audit of its financial activities. However, CENI officials, including Katintima, agreed to bribe the investigators to conduct an inaccurate audit. Katintima delivered bribes to Constitutional Court justices to uphold a decision by the CENI to delay DRC's 2016 elections. Marcellin Mukolo Basengezi, CENI Advisor Marcellin Basengezi is a CENI advisor and the son of Vice President Katintima. Basengezi has embezzled and misappropriated state assets from CENI and has undertaken actions that slowed registration, which facilitated election delays. Basengezi and other CENI advisors were in charge of assigning CENI contracts, enabling them to award contracts to their own shell companies for personal profit and to circumvent official procurement procedures. Basengezi inflated costs for an election-related contract with the intent to use surplus funds for personal enrichment, bribes, and campaign costs to fund the election campaign of Kabila's successor. Basengezi awarded a separate election-related contract and doubled the award amount on the understanding that the winning company would award the extra funds to a DRC company controlled by CENI leadership. Basengezi and other CENI official have purchased and sold gasoline for profit at the expense of CENI, including selling fuel prepositioned for voter registration. The interest in self-enrichment of Basengezi and others delayed voter registration in Kasai, an opposition stronghold, and meant that many voters were unable to register. View identifying information on the individuals designated today. #### NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Rescue, Relief Efforts Underway in Cyclone-Hit Southern Africa By Margaret Besheer March 21, 2019 The Red Cross says it its deploying two major emergency response units to the port city of Beira in Mozambique to provide services for thousands of people affected by last week's Cyclone Idai, one of the most destructive storms to hit southern Africa in decades. One unit is expected to provide basic sanitation facilities for up to 20,000 people, while the other is expected to produce as much as 225,000 liters of clean water each day enough to help 15,000 people struggling to survive the massive flooding that has followed the storm. Jamie LeSueur, head of Red Cross operations in Mozambique, said in a statement that aid workers are most concerned about preventing the spread of waterborne disease. She said the emergency response deliveries will help protect against that. "More help is needed, and we are continuing to do all we can to bring in more resources and reach more people," she said. Helicopters are conducting food drops over villages that were destroyed and cut off from the outside world after the cyclone hit Beira, then swept inland to neighboring Zimbabwe and Malawi. Aid officials say an untold number of survivors are clinging to treetops or are trapped on rooftops of houses that remain submerged by floodwaters. The combined death toll in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi has risen to at least 437 people, a number which is expected to climb as the flood waters recede and search crews finally enter the damaged areas. The U.N. says the official death tolls from the governments are: Mozambique - 242, Zimbabwe 139, and Malawi - 56. President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique has said he expects the death toll to exceed 1,000 in his nation alone. Mozambique began three days of official mourning Wednesday. Aid agencies said they were prepared for the cyclone but not the massive floods that followed. Mozambique was hardest hit as a result of rivers flowing downstream from its neighbors. The U.N. World Food Program said it was transporting enough aid for 600,000 people across the three nations. The U.N. said it has allocated $20 million from its central emergency response fund and urged other donors to contribute. "Now that the flood waters are coming down, we are shifting to a different stage in the response," said Gemma Connell, the Head of Office of the U.N.'s humanitarian regional office for Southern and Eastern Africa. "This stage is that we have to get the response that we can to everyone in need through a combination of air and on ground, but we have to do that cognizant of the restraints we face." She said aid workers need fuel and other essentials to keep the response operation running smoothly. The African Union has contributed $350,000 to the three storm-stricken countries. The European Union announced an initial aid package valued at nearly $4 million. Britain and the United Arab Emirates have also promised aid. The Indian Defense Forces have sent a medical team and South Africa's Air Force has been assisting with search and rescue operations. The U.S. State Department said the United States is supporting relief efforts "in coordination with our partners." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran dismisses Israeli hacking claims as 'lies' meant to spread Iranophobia Iran Press TV Wed Mar 20, 2019 07:34AM Iran says reports that it has hacked into the phones of Israeli officials are part of the "lies" Tel Aviv spreads against the Islamic Republic on a daily basis, asserting that Tehran would rather put its technological prowess to good use. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said the allegation was an extension of an "already failed psychological war" being waged by the US, Israel and their allies to promote Iranophobia as they try everything in their power to subject Tehran to utmost pressure. "The officials of this regime (Israel) have developed an old habit of making up lies and causing distractions," Qassemi said. "Apart from fabricating lies, they have also been attempting to awkwardly link anything that happens around the world to Iran using their means of propaganda." Israeli media claimed last week that Iranian hackers had breached the cellphone of former army chief Benny Gantz, who is the biggest rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the regime's upcoming general elections. Gantz's Kahol Lavan party confirmed the report, saying in a statement that Israel's internal intelligence apparatus Shin Bet had warned the official about the issue and a possible theft of sensitive data. Qassemi said there was no denying that Iran had reached "unimaginable" levels of advancement in various technological fields. However, he noted, Tehran uses those capabilities "only to address domestic needs, lift the scientific status of our homeland and reduce technological and scientific dependence on others." Inside the Israeli-occupied territories, the allegation is widely viewed as an attempt by Netanyahu's campaign to force Gantz out of the race while diverting public attention away from the corruption scandals that are gripping the prime minister. Australian parliament hacking claims 'lies of similar nature' Qassemi also dismissed similar allegations about a cyberattack on Australia's parliament in February, which some reports claimed had originated from Iran. "Undoubtedly, this lie is part of the same psychological warfare that aims to stop Iran's scientific and technological advancements by portraying them as a threat," he added. Citing the US cyber research company Resecurity, The Wall Street Journal reported in late February that the attack targeting Australia's political parties and Parliament had likely been carried out by Iran-based hackers. However, Australian sources with detailed knowledge of the hack, who were not allowed to discuss the matter publicly, told The Sydney Morning Herald that China was the main suspect in the investigations. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US 'very strongly' considering NATO membership for Brazil Iran Press TV Wed Mar 20, 2019 01:46AM US President Donald Trump says he is "very strongly" considering NATO membership for Brazil or some other formal alliance with the Latin American country as he hosts his far-right counterpart in Washington. Trump made the announcement in a joint news conference at the White House with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday. "As I told President Bolsonaro, I also intend to designate Brazil as a major non-NATO ally or even possibly, if you start thinking about it, a NATO ally. We have to talk to a lot of people, but maybe a NATO ally, which will greatly advance security and cooperation between our countries," Trump said. "We are going to look at that very, very strongly in terms of whether it's NATO or it's something having to do with alliance. But we have a great alliance with Brazil, better than we have ever had before," he added. Trump also stressed that Washington would be looking forward to expanding bilateral ties with Brasilia, saying the US will soon finalize an agreement with Brazil to conduct space launches from the South American Country. Bolsonaro originally arrived in the US on Sunday, stating that the trip marked the first "pro-America Brazilian president" recently visiting the country. Bolsonaro is an avid admirer of Trump and his policies, particularly those with regard to opposing anti-imperialist governments in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. The Brazilian president, who is also known as "Tropical Trump," has sparked controversy by following Trump on calling for the relocation of his country's embassy to the occupied city of Jerusalem al-Quds. Bolsonaro personally made the promise to Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu while he attended the Brazilian president's inauguration ceremony on January 1. Trump recognized the occupied city as Israel's so-called capital and officially opened the US embassy in the city in May last year, sparking international outrage. Jerusalem al-Quds was occupied by the Tel Aviv regime during the Six-Day War in the 1967, and is deemed the capital of a future Palestinian independent state. In January, Bolsonaro also said that he is open to considering the establishment of a US military base in Brazil as a way to "counter Russian influence" in neighboring Venezuela. The move was later rejected by Brazilian Defense Minister General Fernando Azevedo e Silva. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Brazil Ex-President Temer Arrested Amid Corruption Investigation - Reports Sputnik News 17:58 21.03.2019(updated 18:04 21.03.2019) MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Brazilian authorities have detained former president Michel Temer amid an anti-corruption investigation, news portal Globo reported on Thursday. Temer, 78, was president from 2016 to 2018, taking office following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. According to the portal, the arrest took place within the framework of the Lava Jato police operation targeting a corruption scandal in oil-and-gas company Petrobras. The scandal hit Petrobras in 2014, when it became known that several company officials signed contracts and received commissions for this in the amount of 3 percent of the contract amount. These funds were later used to bribe politicians and officials. According to the Brazilian authorities, overpricing and bribes brought the authors of the scheme about $3.8 billion. The spike of fuel prices in Brazil, one of the main Latin American oil producers, has provoked the outrage of the country's population last year, with truckers striking over the fuel prices principles. The public discontent and rallies forced Brazilian President Michel Temer to agree to the protesters' demands and to reduce diesel prices. At the same time, it led to the resignation of Pedro Parente, then president of Brazil's Petrobras state petroleum company. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Buddy refueling exercise shows aircraft carrier combat capability: experts Global Times By Liu Xuanzun Source:Global Times Published: 2019/3/20 21:23:40 Buddy refueling exercise shows aircraft combat capability China's aircraft carrier-based fighter jets can now have a larger combat radius and longer endurance and can also carry more weapons, thanks to aerial refueling, experts said after state media released a video of a buddy-to-buddy refueling exercise for the first time. Several J-15 fighter jets of the People's Liberation Army Navy recently conducted an aerial refueling exercise in the airspace above the Bohai Sea, China Central Television (CCTV) reported on Tuesday. The buddy pod used for buddy-to- buddy refueling was spotted on a picture of a J-15 some years ago, prompting military observers to think the aircraft-based fighter jet was capable of aerial refueling, but this is the first time a state media has released video of a real buddy-to-buddy refueling exercise. Most aerial tankers are variants of large transport aircraft or bombers, but in this case, both the feeding aircraft and receiving aircraft are of the same type of warplane, which is why it is called "buddy-to-buddy refueling," the report said. Normal tankers are too large for an aircraft carrier, but a small number of fighter jets can be reconfigured to carry more fuel and fewer weapons and act as smaller tankers, an anonymous military expert told the Global Times on Wednesday. This will allow other fighter jets to greatly expand combat radius, extend endurance and also opt to carry more weapons and less fuel when taking off from the carrier, the expert said, elaborating that a carrier-borne warplane might not be able to take off with maximum payload due to the short take-off range, and sometimes has to choose between carrying more fuel or weapons. Multiple J-15s joined the exercise in successive sessions, CCTV reported, noting it is challenging for the receiving aircraft to connect its refueling probe with the feeding aircraft's drogue due to the wake turbulence caused by the aircraft in the front. The anonymous expert said the CCTV report indicates China's increasing confidence in the combat capability of its aircraft carrier. Other experienced aircraft carrier-wielding countries also use the same refueling technique, but some analysts pointed out it might become obsolete in the near future. The US is developing the MQ-25 carrier-based drone designated for aerial refueling, which analysts say is more efficient than buddy-to-buddy refueling. China also has extensive experience in developing drones, so people may see a drone playing similar role on China's future aircraft carriers, the expert predicted. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Xi underscores firm implementation of major reforms People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 07:13, March 20, 2019 BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping stressed firm implementation of major reforms at the seventh meeting of the central committee for deepening overall reform Tuesday. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, chairman of the Central Military Commission and head of the central committee for deepening overall reform, presided over and addressed the meeting. Xi stressed efforts to fix the problem of formalities for formalities' sake at the grassroots level through reform, continue to strengthen people's sense of fulfillment, happiness and security, and unswervingly promote the implementation of major reform policies and measures. Members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and deputy heads of the reform committee Li Keqiang, Wang Huning and Han Zheng also attended the meeting. Participants agreed that to reach a new stage in the large-scale development of the western region, measures should be taken to focus on priorities, address inadequacies, and shore up points of weakness. The meeting decided to prioritize ecological and environmental protection and stick to a new path featuring environmental protection and green growth in the western region development. With joint development of the Belt and Road playing a leading role, the country should accelerate cross-border route and regional hub construction as well as improve the infrastructure network, for a high level of opening-up and economic development. The meeting also stressed efforts to promote high-quality development and coordinate economic and social development of the population, resources and environment in the western region. Stating that higher education and research institutes serve as important forces in the process of implementing the innovation-driven development strategy and making China a country of innovators, the participants underlined efforts to streamline management procedures for science and technology projects and reform the system on approval and enforcement of major science and technology projects. Participants agreed that efforts should be made to promote further integration of artificial intelligence with the real economy, deepen reform and innovation, optimize the institutional environment and boost the innovation vitality of enterprises. The meeting also stressed strengthening and improving rural governance, calling for the establishment of a law-based modern rural social governance model under which Party committees exercise leadership, the government assumes responsibility, non-governmental actors provide assistance, and the public gets involved. Efforts are needed to deepen the integration and sharing of public resource trading platforms, innovate the transaction supervision system, and improve the efficiency and fairness of public resource allocation. The meeting stressed promoting reform in the operation mechanism of the oil and natural gas pipeline network. The country will set up oil and gas pipeline network companies that are state-owned capital controlled and with diversified investors. The country will also work to improve the oil and natural gas resource allocation efficiency and ensure a stable supply of resources. The meeting stressed speeding up the building of a modern public legal service system that covers urban and rural areas with high efficiency, convenience, and equitable access. As for reform on firefighting law enforcement, the meeting stressed efforts to develop new ways of regulation and supervision, strengthen management at the source, further streamline administration and delegate powers, and resolutely remove various unreasonable barriers. The participants called for efforts to defuse prominent tensions and problems and push forward reform in a steady and orderly way as this year will face more challenges and risks in reform and development. A number of documents were reviewed and adopted at Tuesday's meeting. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump Linking Huawei Criminal Case, China Talks Deepens Concerns Over Interference By Masood Farivar March 20, 2019 President Donald Trump shocked some last month when he suggested that the criminal charges against Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, might be used as leverage in his administration's ongoing trade talks with China. "We're going to be discussing all of that during the course of the next couple of weeks," Trump told reporters at the White House Feb. 22 in response to a question about Meng's case. "We'll be talking to the U.S. attorneys. We'll be talking to the attorney general. We'll be making that decision. Right now, it's not something we've discussed." The president's apparent willingness to possibly barter away the prosecution of Huawei and one of its executives in exchange for a favorable trade deal with China alarmed legal experts who say it could lead to pushback at the Justice Department. "If the White House told the Department of Justice that it wanted Justice to dismiss altogether the case against Huawei and Ms. Meng, I'd expect there to be mighty objections and resistance to that," said David Laufman, who served as a senior national security official at the Justice Department until last year and is now in private practice. The Justice Department, while an arm of the executive branch of government, has a long tradition of independence in prosecuting cases. Critics say Trump's frequent public trashing of Justice Department officials amid the investigation of Russian interference in U.S. elections has undercut the department's independence. That perception would be reinforced by outright White House intervention in the Huawei criminal case. Ron Cheng, a former federal prosecutor who was the Justice Department's sole resident envoy in Beijing, said it would be highly unusual for the criminal case against Meng to be affected by the trade talks. "There are a number of concerns about the precedent something like that would establish," said Cheng, now a partner at the O'Melveny & Myers law firm. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will return to China next week for a new round of talks with Chinese officials with the aim of inking a trade deal by late April. The Justice Department on Jan. 29 unsealed a 13-count criminal indictment in New York against Meng, Huawei and two subsidiaries for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and related charges, nearly two months after Meng was arrested in Canada at the request of U.S. authorities. A separate, 10-count indictment in Washington State accused Huawei and its U.S. affiliate of stealing robotics trade secrets from U.S. telecom provider T-Mobile. The Justice Department's request for Meng's extradition along with the indictments exacerbated tensions with China and led Beijing to denounce the case against Meng as "political persecution." That prompted Trump's overture. Trump, who prides himself on his negotiating skills, could well have been bluffing in hopes of enticing the Chinese into a trade agreement. But a quid pro quo deal as part of the trade talks is not without precedent. Last year, Trump ordered the Commerce Department to lift a ban imposed on ZTE Corporation, Huawei's smaller rival. ZTE had violated the terms of an agreement with the department to settle charges that it had exported U.S. goods to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. In Huawei's case, the extent of Trump's personal involvement and the nature of any talks between the White House and the Justice Department about the company's fate remain unclear. After Meng's arrest in December, a spokesman for National Security Adviser John Bolton said that neither Bolton nor Trump had been told about her detention in advance. Trump later said the White House had talked to the Justice Department about the Huawei case. Senior Justice Department officials have sought to tamp down talk of any linkage between the Huawei case and the ongoing trade talks with China. Asked about the issue after the Justice Department unsealed the indictments in January, then acting attorney general Matt Whitaker said, "We do our cases independent from the federal government writ large because that's the way the criminal system has to be." A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to say whether the White House had engaged the department in any discussions about Huawei since Trump's latest comments. The company has pleaded not guilty to the charges brought in New York and Seattle. Spokespeople for the U.S. Attorneys for those cities said the cases are proceeding. The charges against Huawei come as the Trump administration has stepped up a global campaign against the telecom behemoth, warning that the company founded by a former People's Liberation Army official poses a national security threat and urging allies to keep it out of their 5-G networks. While Australia and New Zealand have imposed a ban, other U.S. allies have demurred. With business operations in more than 170 countries and annual revenues of $108 billion, Huawei is the world's largest supplier of telecom equipment. Last year, the multinational company beat Apple to become the No. 2 manufacturer of smartphones and tablets in the world. In national security related criminal cases, it is not uncommon for the Justice Department to notify the White House about impending law enforcement actions.This allows officials to deescalate conflict if necessary or weigh in on the timing of an announcement. "It's not to give the White House prior approval authority or veto authority," Laufman said. Some experts see the real possibility that the White House crosses the line and intervenes in the criminal case. Short of calling for a dismissal of the case, the White House could press the Justice Department to devise a resolution that would afford the agency a measure of vindication without appearing to let the company or Meng off the hook. Such a resolution could involve Huawei admitting responsibility, paying a hefty fine, and agreeing to a stringent compliance regime and other conditions, according to Laufman. "But I think even there, that will likely engender concern throughout the Justice Department," Laufman said. That is how ZTE settled charges of violating U.S. sanctions. In 2017, ZTE pleaded guilty and paid $430 million for exporting U.S. goods and technology to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. The company later admitted to violating the terms of its settlement with the Commerce Department and faced near collapse after the department responded by forbidding U.S. companies from selling it crucial components. After Trump intervened, the Commerce Department lifted its ban, but not without imposing what it called the most "stringent compliance measures." The Huawei case could well be settled under similar terms. But there is a hitch. Because she faces criminal charges, Meng would have to appear in a U.S. court to enter a plea. "The only way to resolve a case like this with some sort of a formal disposition is to come to the United States," Cheng said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump Reportedly Takes Helm in US-DPRK Negotiations as MSM Cries Foul Sputnik News 00:30 21.03.2019 In the aftermath of the failed Hanoi summit between the US and North Korea, US President Donald Trump has reportedly taken the helm in denuclearization negotiations with Pyongyang. Meanwhile, Seoul now sees the ball as having landed in its court to convince its neighbor to give up its weapons and rocket programs. According to Trump administration officials who spoke with Time for a Monday article, the US president is "sidelining" his special envoy to North Korea, Stephen Biegun, and "dismissing the warnings of top intelligence and foreign policy advisers" who dissent from his continued policy of negotiation with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Time reports that Trump has shut down attempts by Biegun to establish a back channel to Pyongyang via the socialist country's United Nations mission in New York, citing US and South Korean officials, and is focusing on attempts to negotiate a deal with Kim instead of bowing to the advice of his advisers to press North Korea harder with sanctions or to abandon negotiations altogether. Trump and Kim met late last month in Hanoi, Vietnam, for a second round of denuclearization talks to follow up on a June 2018 summit that laid the groundwork for peace on the Korean Peninsula. While Pyongyang has made considerable progress with the South toward that end, negotiations with Washington have stalled, as the two sides reached a point where neither was willing to budge any further until the other side gave something first. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has made several good faith moves toward reducing tensions, including the halting of weapons tests and the destruction of key missile and nuclear program sites. However, Kim was unwilling to make further concessions before Washington lowered at least some of its economic sanctions blocking international trade in many items with his country. The US has refused to lower any of those sanctions until Kim produces "verified denuclearization." The Hanoi summit failed to surmount this impasse. Trump administration officials such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton have used Pyongyang's red line to argue that Kim is intransigent and not cooperative. The mainstream media has also largely adopted this position, as the articles by Time, CNN and The Hill on these developments show. Indeed, ever since Trump agreed to meet with Kim last spring, the mainstream media has been devoted to producing stories that undermined Trump's attempts at peace, and hawkish foreign policy think tanks have produced report after report claiming Kim has violated the terms of the negotiations. Their reports are often based on outdated or undated evidence, supposition or otherwise unverifiable claims, Sputnik has reported. One example, from Time's Tuesday article, tries to juxtapose Trump's supposedly delusional belief that "Kim is his 'friend,'" according to an administration official, with the "unanimous assessment by multiple agencies that Kim remains wedded to his nuclear program," and thus is incapable of responding to a carrot, understanding only the stick. Indeed, such has been the common refrain by US state officials for decades, going back to George F. Kennan's eponymous telegram about how the US should handle the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and even further to the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in imperial China at the turn of the last century. Meanwhile, South Korean President Moon Jae In has continued his rapprochement with Kim, despite US-DPRK failures. "We're in a deep agony over how to take advantage of this baton that has been handed over to us," said a Moon administration figure earlier this week, according to South China Morning Post. "We agree with the view that no deal is better than a bad deal However, in reality, it is difficult to achieve complete denuclearization at one stroke. I think we need to reconsider the so-called all or nothing strategy," the official said. Seoul aims to get Pyongyang to "agree with a broad road map aimed to achieve the overarching goal of denuclearization," the official said, noting that "we should make further efforts to turn a small deal into a deal that is good enough. In order to achieve meaningful progress, we need one or two early harvests for mutual trust-building to move on toward the final goal." Still, in the aftermath of Hanoi, Moon's popularity fell in his country from a high of 70 percent last summer to a measly 45 percent earlier this month, Sputnik reported. The metaphor of the "harvest" presents a timely parallel as North Korean officials have pressed the UN to step up its food and medical aid to DPRK in the coming year due to bad harvests last year and projected shortages in 2019, Sputnik has reported. "Although Security Council sanctions clearly exempt humanitarian activities, life-saving programs continue to face serious challenges and delays," Tapan Mishra, the UN's resident coordinator in the DPRK lamented earlier this month. "While unintended consequences of sanctions persist, these delays have a real and tangible impact on the aid that we are able to provide to people who desperately need it. US and other international sanctions bar many useful medical items from being imported by DPRK, too. For example, a paper published last December by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey looked at scientific projects in which North Korean scientists had partnered with scholars from other countries, noting that roughly 100 of the 1,300 they examined had "identifiable significance for dual-use technology, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or other military purposes." That means that even though DPRK doctors might be studying epidemiology, their work could be subject to weapons sanctions. "When you study infectious diseases, which are a big burden in North Korea, you have to grow bacteria," Harvard Medical School neurosurgeon Kee Park, director of DPRK Programs for the Korean American Medical Association, told NPR at the time. "That's the kind of technology that goes into creating biological weapons." The problem is that "virtually all technology you can possibly think of is dual use," professor and author Tim Beal told Sputnik. Time reports that Trump administration officials fear the US president might try and strike a deal with Pyongyang and lift some sanctions in exchange for a pledge to continue their freeze on weapons development and testing, which Trump has said he considers to be more important to maintain than the total removal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems from North Korean possession. However at the same time, it seems to be the consensus among administration officials that any such deal wouldn't actually make progress at all, only "remove much of the leverage" on the DPRK that they believe compels the country to negotiate in the first place. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address India to Buy More Air-to-Air Missiles Amid F-16 Deployment by Pakistan - Report Sputnik News 13:53 20.03.2019(updated 15:36 20.03.2019) The Indo-Pak border has become a hot-bed of hostilities after the 14 February Pulwama terror incident. Indian fighter jets are doing patrol sorties on a continual basis in fully weaponised mode carrying air-to-air rockets. New Delhi (Sputnik): As combat air patrol missions continue near the Pakistani border, the Indian Air Force (IAF) has asked the defence ministry to procure additional air-to-air missiles for its fighter jets on urgent basis. A media report published by the Indian English daily Economic Times said that the fast track purchase has been sought because replenishment of missiles and other ammunition had been deemed necessary under the current scenario as Indian fighter jets have had to undertake additional sorties in fully-loaded mode. "These missiles have a certain life, which is counted in terms of the age of the system in years. But when fighter jets are operationally deployed, the life of the missile depends on the number of sorties being undertaken. So we need fresh replenishments", the media report read citing top government sources. Pakistan has reportedly moved terror camps out of IAF reach to the country's far west region namely the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Its air force had been undertaking night patrol flights along the Indo-Pak border using its F-16s on a regular basis and its air defence network is also on continuous alert. India has in place its frontline fighter jets, including the Sukhoi Su-30MKIs and Mirage 2000s, for quick reaction in case hostilities escalate. The IAF has also increased fighter strength at its air bases in Jammu and Kashmir. "The F-16s have been placed all across Pakistani airbases and are still trained at us. They are continuing to undertake night flights and have their air defence network on alert", the newspaper report read citing its sources. Speaking about developments at ground level, defence sources have told Sputnik that night flights have been stopped. In addition, the total number of sorties per day has declined near the Line of Control (de facto border between the two nuclear armed nations) since Saturday. "Yes, regular combat air patrol missions are there. But it seems situation in terms of air patrol is more or less normal now", sources added. Meanwhile, Pakistan has not yet opened its airspace for civilian traffic even though normal flying has resumed on the Indian side. India and Pakistan engaged in their first air clash in decades when on 26 February Indian fighter jets violated Pakistan's territorial integrity and conducted a "non military, pre-emptive" air strike in Balakot inside Pakistan to destroy infrastructure allegedly belonging to terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed. It was this jihadi outfit that had claimed responsibility for the Pulwama Attack on 14 February in which 40 Indian soldiers were killed. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Photo: file photo The Penticton RCMP is gearing up for an increase in street activity downtown with the closure of the winter homeless shelters at the end of the month. Police in Penticton say they are coming off a very quiet winter for street activity, something the detachment says is due to an increase in shelter beds and temporary housing in the community this year. Its clear that what was making the difference, said Const. James Grandy, the Penticton RCMPs mental health officer, speaking to reporters Thursday. This year, BC Housing rented out 20 rooms at a local motel to provide shelter for vulnerable people while construction continues on permanent solutions. Regional commanding officer Supt. Ted De Jager says they will be increasing their presence downtown this summer by moving their five-member Community Support and Enforcement Team into a shared office with city bylaw. A new dedicated downtown and youth liaison officer, Const. Dave Dickson, will join the team and will have his primary focus downtown. We are hopeful that with the strides that BC Housing, CAST and the city have made, that by the mid-summer housing will all be online and we will be able to solve a lot of that, De Jager said. You end homelessness with housing, its simple as that, he added. De Jager stressed that being homeless is not illegal, but urges any member of the public that does not feel safe to call them. BC Housing is currently building a 62-unit modular development on Winnipeg Street that is set aside for those currently on the streets or with a history of homelessness. The long-awaited Compass Court transitional housing development at the old Super 8 Motel is still under construction after lengthy delays. Penticton city council originally approved the BC Housing plans at that facility back in August 2017, but its opening has been pushed back numerous times. Once it comes online it should provide another 42 units to those with a high risk of homelessness. For the working poor, Ellis Don is also putting the finishing touches on an 40-unit apartment building on Backstreet Blvd. that will be turned over to BC Housing when completed. BC Housing is also building a building for low-income families and seniors on Brunswick Street. Did the Indian Prime Minister Create Enough Jobs? By Anjana Pasricha March 20, 2019 For people streaming in from rural areas around New Delhi, the first stop is a collection of busy city intersections where contractors select daily wage labor from the crowds of young and old waiting every morning to get work. Many standing at these intersections say they get work for barely half the month. "I have the ability to work hard. I never turn down any work. But I would prefer to get a cleaner, permanent job," says 29-year-old Tek Chand. "The problem is one day I have money to buy rations, the next day I don't." Like millions of others, he migrated from his village three years ago to seek work and a better life in the city. As India prepares for general elections on April 11, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being attacked by opposition parties for failing to make good on a promise he made in 2014 to create millions of jobs for India's huge young population. Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party rebuts that criticism and says India is generating new opportunities as it becomes one of the world's fastest growing major economies. Job creation is a massive challenge for a nation with one of the world's youngest populations -- half the country's 1.3 billion people are under the age of 25. Recent data shows that joblessness has soared to record high levels. Opposition parties have made joblessness one of their principal election planks and have accused the prime minister of failing the estimated 8 to 10 million young people who enter the workforce every year. The independent Mumbai-based Center for Monitoring Indian Economy estimates that unemployment reached 7.2 percent last month and that 11 million jobs were lost in 2018. With a working population of 500 million, that translates into more than 30 million people waiting for jobs. An unpublished official survey that showed unemployment at a 45-year-high has also been widely quoted by Indian media. On the campaign trail, the head of the main opposition Congress Party, Rahul Gandhi, who is seen as Modi's principal challenger, talks repeatedly about a "jobs crisis." "Our government is refusing to accept that we have a massive crisis and potential disaster in front of us," Gandhi told a group of university students in New Delhi recently, many who will be first time voters. Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party dismisses concerns about the job data saying it does not capture the real picture because it focuses only on the 15 percent of Indians who work in the formal economy. It points to a recent industry report that jobs have been created in the medium and small sectors. The BJP says millions of people have found work in the transport and infrastructure sectors or as delivery boys in booming online businesses as India becomes one of the world's fastest growing major economies. They point out that the issue is not jobs but livelihoods, and point to millions of people who are not counted in job data. They are self-employed people like cab owner Chain Pal Singh. As the app based taxi business boomed, Singh's friend, who operated a cab, persuaded him to quit his job and take out a loan to buy a car. His decision has paid off -- in four years he has earned enough money to invest in two more cabs. Singh says he is much better off than when he held a job. "I used to earn about $225 dollars a month. Now in some months I can earn almost double that amount. Its beneficial for me." Following defeats in key state elections in December, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told parliament last month, "This truth has to be acknowledged. The unorganized sector has 80 to 85 percent of the employment." He pointed to millions of commercial vehicles sold in recent years and questioned if they had not generated jobs for drivers. Economists admit India's large informal sector has made it difficult to calculate employment, but they say joblessness or underemployment remains the country's biggest challenge. While scarcity of jobs is not a new problem, two disruptive economic steps in the last two years exacerbated the problem. In 2016 a sweeping currency ban meant to tackle the problem of illegal cash, dried up jobs as it created huge currency shortages, particularly in small businesses and in the countryside. A poorly-implemented tax reform known as the Goods and Services Tax a few months later was another blow to businesses. Meanwhile, Modi's "Made in India" campaign, which aimed at making India a manufacturing hub like China, has made a slow start and sluggish labor-intensive sectors cannot cater to growing numbers of job seekers. "We can't keep patting ourselves on the back that we are the fastest growing economy specially if all these other indicators are not growing at a rate that will absorb the growing labor force," says Santosh Mehrotra, a human development economist at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "More young people are entering the labor force, millions want to leave agriculture but can't find construction work because construction activity has slowed down because the investment rate in the economy has slowed down." He points out that exports, another sector that created a number of jobs has also not been performing well. As the campaign heats up, the opposition will try to keep the spotlight on jobs, or lack of them, even as the BJP tries to focus on national security following a recent confrontation with Pakistan. The final verdict on whether to give Prime Minister Modi a second term in office will be delivered by millions of voters when they cast their ballots. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran military Spox denies any joint operation with Turkey IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Tehran, March 20, IRNA -- Spokesman of the Iranian Armed Forces Abolfazl Shekarchi said Iran has no plan to hold joint military operations with Turkey at border points. Speaking to IRNA on Wednesday, Shekarchi underlined the absence of Iranian forces in joint operation with Turkey. Referring to some news released in domestic and foreign media as regards with an Iran-Turkey joint operations, he said two countries has never had such operation at border points. He reiterated that Iranian border guards will confront firmly against any move by anti-Revolution and terrorist groups. He went on to say that Iranian forces will not let terrorists to damage security of the country. 9376**1424 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran will never allow others to decide its fate: Zarif Iran Press TV Wed Mar 20, 2019 05:38PM Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the Iranian nation's struggle to nationalize the country's oil industry in 1951 is proof that the country will never allow others to decide its fate. "This isn't the first time that Iran has been targeted for exercising its right to decide its own destiny: 68 yrs ago today, parliament under democratically-elected PM [Mohammad] Mossadeq nationalized our oil industry. A coup followed. Iranians will never allow others to decide their fate," he said in a tweet on Wednesday. On March 20, 1951, members of the Iranian parliament voted unanimously to approve a bill that Mossadeq, the country's then democratically-elected prime minister at the time, had introduced to nationalize Iran's oil industry. Mosaddeq's nationalist party backed the initiative, which had won the support of the country's religious figures as a result of efforts led by prominent cleric Ayatollah Abolqasem Kashani. The movement ended Britain's four-decade monopoly over Iran's oil industry. Before the nationalization, the British oil giant Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) controlled all aspects of the industry and paid only fraction of the revenues to Iran. In retaliation for Mosaddeq's move, Britain and the United States subjected Iran's oil sector to harsh economic sanctions. When they realized that the sanctions were not effective, London and Washington colluded to stage a coup against the Iranian PM's government in 1953 in order to reinstate Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Western-backed monarch. Declassified documents released by the he US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) six decades later confirmed Washington's role in the coup d'etat. "The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," read one of the documents, released in August 2013. Today, Iran sits on some 10 percent of the world's known oil reserves. The country joined the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1960 and remains one of the major oil producers. The US has never stopped its hostile moves to curtail Iran's thriving oil industry. Zarif's tweet came at a time that Washington, under President Donald Trump, has been trying to drive down Iranian oil exports to zero through imposing major sanctions. Trump re-imposed what he called "toughest ever" sanctions on Iran's energy industry last year, after abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powersthe US, the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany. Following the exit from the landmark agreement, Trump said he would maintain the economic pressure to the point that Iran's oil exports would hit zero. However, that strategy failed when major purchasers of Iranian energy failed to find viable replacement, forcing Washington to issue longtime waivers. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran's new gas phases free up export capacity for Asians Iran Press TV Wed Mar 20, 2019 01:46PM The first shipment from phase 13 of South Pars, including 300,000 barrels of gas condensate, has been delivered for export, operator of the phase which was inaugurated Sunday has said. According to Payam Motamed, the delivery was made on March 11 prior to President Hassan Rouhani's inauguration of phases 13, 22, 23 and 24. The $5 billion refinery for phase 13 had already become fully operational, but it was officially inaugurated by Rouhani along with another $50 billion refinery for phases 22, 23 and 24. Each plant has a capacity to process 56 million cubic meters of gas per day and convert it to LPG, ethane, condensate and sulfur worth $5.5 billion a year at the going market prices, Shana news outlet said. The revenue, it said, will account for 2 percent of Iran's GDP of some $427 billion. With their launch, Iran's daily gas production will be surpassing that of Qatar with which it shares the offshore field, Iranian media reports have said. The launch will also free up new capacity for exports as Iranian supplies tighten amid rising domestic demand after Persian Gulf Star Refinery came online last month. South Korea was the biggest client of Iranian condensate, importing 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the ultra light oil on top of 100,000 bpd of crude oil before the US imposed sanctions on Tehran in November. On Tuesday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the East Asian country more than quadrupled its imports of Iranian crude oil in February from a month ago, nearing levels before the sanctions. Iranian condensate took up 51 percent of Seoul's total condensate imports during the first quarter of last year, it said. Asian customers favor Iran's South Pars condensate for its rich naphtha yield, a stable supply and price competitiveness. Rouhani said Sunday the new inauguration dealt a blow to the US sanctions which are foremost aimed at crippling Iran's lifeline oil industry. "Today is a very auspicious day for the Iranian nation, which has dealt strong blows to enemies, because they thought that by imposing sanctions, they would be able to stop all our plans and advances," he said in the coastal city of Kangan. Rouhani described sanctions as "a crime against humanity," saying "Americans did not want us to inaugurate any important projects during the current year, but we made all projects operational on schedule." Iran has divided development of South Pars to 24 onshore and three offshore phases. Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh said on Saturday that Iran expects to operate all the 27 phases by next March. Iran had awarded development of phase 11 to a consortium led by Total, but the French company left the project after the US threatened to impose sanctions on companies that do business in the country. When Total left, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) was to take over according to the contract. Zangeneh said talks are continuing with CNPC. Some 400 Iranian companies have been taking part in the development of the South Pars gas field through supplying equipment to related projects. On Tuesday, Shana said the implementation of remaining projects in South Pars has been delegated to Iranian consortia consisting of contractors, consultants and builders who are utilizing their maximum power and expertise. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran vows to defend oil shipments, urges UNSC to address Netanyahu's threats Iran Press TV Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:28AM Iran has called on the United Nations Security Council to address the Israeli regime's "provocative" policies, warning that it will not hesitate to exercise its right to self-defense if the regime proceeds with its threats of blocking Iranian oil shipments. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a graduation ceremony of navy cadets in Haifa on March 6 that Israeli naval forces needed to block oil cargoes that Iran was trying to "covertly" ship over maritime routes to "circumvent" US sanctions on its energy sector. Iran's permanent mission to the UN asserted in a letter to the UNSC on Tuesday that Netanyahu's remarks amounted to an open threat of using of force in clear violation of the United Nations Charter. The letter said Iran would mount a swift response to defend itself against any hostile moves, a right enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter. The letter said Netanyahu was trying to imply that Iran's oil industry was subjected to a "universal" ban while no such sanctions ever existed against Tehran, not even in the the council's now-canceled resolutions. US President Donald Trump re-imposed what he called "toughest ever" sanctions on Iran's energy industry last year, after abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powersthe US, the UK, France, China, Russia and Germany. Following the exit from the landmark agreement, Trump said he would maintain the economic pressure to the point that Iran's oil exports would hit zero. However, that strategy failed when major purchasers of Iranian energy failed to find viable replacement, forcing Washington to issue longtime waivers. Defying Trump, the European Union has also mobilized to protect the deal as well as its business ties against US threats. In the letter, the Iranian mission said Netanyahu's remarks ran against the council's will and undermined UNSC Resolution 2231, which endorsed the nuclear deal and backed the removal of all nuclear-related sanctions against Iran, including those targeting the shipments of Iranian oil and related products. It urged the council to condemn Netanyahu's irresponsible statements and said there was an urgent need to stop the Zionist regime's destabilizing activities. Es'haq Al-e Habib, the Iranian Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations said Tehran had asked the UNSC to register the letter as an official document. During his remarks, Netanyahu also urged the international community "to stop Iran's attempts to circumvent the sanctions by sea, and of course, by any (other) means." The threat drew harsh reactions from Iranian officials, with Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami vowing a "firm" response to any moves by the Israeli navy in blocking Iran's oil. "The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran have the necessary capability to protect the country's shipping lines in the best way against any possible threat," he said, noting that Tehran viewed such moves as "piracy." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US renews waiver for Iraq to continue Iran trade Iran Press TV Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:23AM The Trump administration says it is extending a 90-day waiver for the second time to let Iraq continue energy imports from Iran which is under draconian US sanctions. The State Department issued the waiver after the original exemption granted in December 2017 expired on March 19. "While this waiver is intended to help Iraq mitigate energy shortages, we continue to discuss our Iran-related sanctions with our partners in Iraq," a State Department official was quoted as saying. The waiver will allow Iraq to continue buying gas and electricity from Iran. Gas imports from Iran generate as much as 45 percent of Iraq's 14,000 megawatts of electricity consumed daily. Iran transmits another 1,000 megawatts directly, making itself an indispensable energy source for its Arab neighbor. Iraq and Iran share a 1,400-kilometer-long border. For their run-of-the-mill maintenance, Iraqis depend on Iranian companies for everything from food to machinery, electricity, natural gas, fruits and vegetables. The State Department said on Tuesday Washington was continuing to work with Iraq to end its dependence on Iranian gas and electricity and to achieve energy independence. Iraq, however, is pushing back on US pressures in what has become a major point of conflict between Washington and Baghdad, the New York Times reported in February. According to the leading newspaper, the Trump administration had told Iraq's leaders that they had until late March to end electricity purchases. The US gave a 45-day waiver on electricity to Iraq and extended it by 90 days in December after it reimposed sanctions on Iran in May. Officials in Baghdad say there is no easy substitute because it would take three years or more to adequately build up Iraq's energy infrastructure, the paper reported. Iraqi officials say the American demand acknowledges neither Iraq's energy needs nor the complex relations between Baghdad and Tehran. Iraq's former prime minister Haider al-Abadi has told the New York Times that Baghdad was in a precarious situation because the Americans have failed to "look at the geopolitics of Iraq." "We happen to be neighbors of Iran; the US is not. We happen to have the longest border with Iran; the US does not. And we don't have that powerful an economy," he said. Iraq's infrastructure has been destroyed in 30 years of wars, mostly after the US invasion which saw the bulk of the highly-skilled human force leave the country. Iran offers an invaluable pool of human capital, services and resources which are literally within a walking distance from the Iraqi border. Hence, choking such a vital source is as much damaging - if not worse - to Iraq as it is to Iran, explaining why President Barham Salih said recently that Iraq's interests lie in maintaining very good relations with Iran. His remarks came as President Hassan Rouhani visited Iraq about a week ago with a delegation of 32 businesspeople and oversaw the signing of several deals in oil, healthcare, bilateral commerce, and a railway linking the two countries. Iraqi leaders, including Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, have stressed that Baghdad will not be a party to the system of sanctions against Iran. Observers say the new deals will convince Tehran that Baghdad is serious about its pledge. They will also make it all but impossible for the White House to refuse to exempt Baghdad from its sanctions on Iran. "The futility of US pressure on Iraq over Iran should serve as a fresh reminder of the fundamentally questionable nature of Trump's one-dimensional and confrontational Iran policy," former University of Tehran and Boston University professor Kaveh Afrasiabi wrote. "This effort to demonize Tehran as a force of subversion with respect to its neighbors flies in the face of the opposite reality: the increasingly powerful and mutually beneficial relations between Iran and Iraq," he added. During Rouhani's visit, officials said the two countries were set to further boost the already flowering trade which has jumped from an annual $2 billion eight years ago to over $12 billion today, and is expected to rise to $20 billion in two years. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pompeo, Netanyahu Discuss How To Counter 'Iranian Aggression' By RFE/RL March 20, 2019 U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have discussed ways to "roll back Iranian aggression" in the region and around the world, the Israeli leader said after the two met in Jerusalem. "There is no limitation to our freedom of action, and we appreciate very much the fact that the United States backs up our actions," Netanyahu said on March 20, speaking alongside Pompeo. Accusing Iranian leaders of seeking the "annihilation and destruction" of Israel, the top U.S. diplomat pledged continued U.S. support. "With such threats a daily reality of Israeli life, we maintain our unparalleled commitment to Israel's security and firmly support your right to defend yourself," Pompeo said. Netanyahu reiterated his pledge to keep Iran from entrenching itself militarily in neighboring Syria, where Iran, along with Russia, has given Syrian President Bashar al-Assad crucial backing throughout his country's eight-year civil war. Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes in the war-torn country against what it describes as Iranian targets and those of allied militias, including the Lebanon-based Shi'ite militant group Hizballah. Netanyahu also welcomed Washington's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers last year, as well as U.S. sanctions that were reimposed on Iran's economy. "This pressure is working," he said. "We need to increase it." In a video statement posted on YouTube to mark the Norouz new year holiday on March 21, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that his country will overcome "inhumane and illegal" U.S. sanctions. "We rely solely on our own people to overcome any challenges, but we also welcome constructive engagement, including with the expanding array of nations who are equally sick and tired of the bullying of the U.S.," Zarif said. Pompeo's Jerusalem visit comes less than a month ahead of Israel's April 9 general elections in which Netanyahu is facing a stiff challenge from a centrist alliance. The Israeli prime minister is set to visit Washington next week and meet with President Donald Trump. Pompeo arrived in Jerusalem after a stop in Kuwait, where he renewed calls for a resolution to a dispute between Qatar and four other Arab states. From Israel, he is to travel to Lebanon. With reporting by AFP and AP Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/pompeo-netanyahu-discuss-how-to- counter-iranian-aggression-/29833005.html Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Extends Iraq Waiver for Purchasing Electricity From Iran for 3 Months Sputnik News 18:25 20.03.2019 WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States has extended for 90 days its waiver which exempts Iraq from sanctions for buying electricity from Iran, a State Department spokesperson told Sputnik on Wednesday. "An additional 90-day waiver was granted to allow Iraq to continue to pay for electricity imports from Iran," the spokesperson said. Washington is engaged in ongoing discussions with Baghdad on sanctions against Iran, the official added. "We are also continuing to work with Iraq to end its dependence on Iranian natural gas and electricity and increase its energy independence," the official said. The State Department official noted that diversifying energy exports away from Iran would strengthen the Iraqi economy. Earlier this month, the White House noted it may allow purchasing Iranian crude oil to eight states within the framework of the significant reduction exemptions (SRE) a waiver on sanctions awarded to them earlier. Despite the American sanctions on Tehran's oil exports, the revenues from them in the first nine months of the current Iranian year which runs from 21 March 2018 to 20 March 2019 have reportedly increased by 48.9 percent year-on-year. The US granted its first such sanctions waiver for Iraq on December 21, 2018. A month before that, Washington has granted reduction exemptions (SRE) to China, India, Italy, Greece, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey for a period of six months. The sanctions were re-imposed by Washington against Iranian energy companies and banks on 5 November 2018. Initially, they were lifted under the provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal. Trump, who has been a critic of the deal since his election campaign, announced that the US would abandon the agreement, which he labelled "flawed at its core" in May 2018. The move was unilateral, with other signatories slamming Washington for the move and expressing readiness to continue to adhere to the deal. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pompeo, Netanyahu Vow to Roll Back Iranian Aggression By Cindy Saine March 20, 2019 U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are vowing to counter what they call Iran's aggression in the Middle East. "We need to increase it, we need to expand it, and together the United States and Israel are working in close coordination to roll back Iranian aggression in the region and around the world," Netanyahu said Wednesday, noting U.S. pressure on Iran is already having an impact. He made the comments after regional security talks with Pompeo, who arrived in Israel from Kuwait earlier in the day. During Wednesday's talks, Netanyahu and Pompeo emphasized the closeness of the U.S.-Israeli relationship and vowed to deter Iranian threats to Israel. Both leaders also announced President Donald Trump will host Netanyahu at the White House next week. The Israeli prime minister thanked the U.S. secretary of state for the Trump administration's support for Israel and the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, calling the decision "historic." Pompeo noted what he called threats toward Israel from Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei. "The Ayatollah has declared that the annihilation and destruction of Israel is his primary goal," Pompeo said. "With such threats a daily reality of Israeli life, we maintain our unparalleled commitment to Israel's security and firmly support your right to defend yourself." The top U.S. diplomat also said the Trump administration is dedicated to combating anti-Semitism, and hatred and bigotry in all forms. "With the dark wave of anti-Semitism rising in Europe and in the United States, all nations, especially those in the West, must go to the barricades against bigotry," Pompeo said. On Thursday, the secretary said he and his wife will visit the newly-opened U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, as well as historic and holy sites in the city. Netanyahu's government is headed to a tough April 9 re-election contest as the prime minister is embroiled in a corruption investigation and facing allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Pompeo, in comments to reporters on route to the Middle East, dismissed the suggestion that his meeting with Netanyahu could be seen as the United States intruding in the Israeli election in support of Netanyahu. A senior State Department official said last week that Pompeo would not be meeting with Netanyahu's opponents, but Netanyahu alone as the current head of the Israeli government. Pompeo, speaking while traveling to the region, said the recent U.S. shift away from terminology describing the West Bank and Syria's Golan Heights as "Israeli-occupied" to that of "controlled" by the Jewish state was not accidental. He said that the characterization in a recent State Department report on human rights around the world about Israeli control of the disputed territories "was a factual statement about how we observe the situation. And we think it's very accurate, and we stand behind it." From Israel, Pompeo will travel to his third and final stop on his Middle East trip, Beirut, Lebanon. "We'll spend a lot of time talking with the Lebanese government about how we can help them disconnect from the threat that Iran and Hezbollah present to them," Pompeo said. The United States considers Hezbollah, a militant Islamist political group, as a pro-Iranian "terrorist" organization, even though it is represented in the coalition government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a U.S. ally. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address In Middle East, Pompeo Seeks Regional Support Against Iran By VOA News March 20, 2019 U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the Middle East for regional security talks as Washington looks to draw new support in its opposition to Iranian aggression. Pompeo began is trip in Kuwait late Tuesday and headed to Israel Wednesday. His trip will also take him to Lebanon. In Israel, Pompeo is due to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is headed to a tough April 9 re-election contest as Netanyahu is embroiled in a corruption investigation and facing allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Pompeo, in comments to reporters en route to the Middle East, dismissed the suggestion that his meeting with Netanyahu could be seen as the U.S. intruding in the Israeli election in support of Netanyahu. A senior State Department official said last week that Pompeo would not be meeting with Netanyahu's opponents, but Netanyahu alone as the current head of the Israeli government. Netanyahu is visiting Washington next week for the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful Jewish lobbying group in the United States, and also could meet with President Donald Trump. Pompeo said the recent U.S. shift away from terminology describing the West Bank and Syria's Golan Heights as "Israeli-occupied" to that of "controlled" by the Jewish state was not accidental. He said that the characterization in a recent State Department report on human rights around the world about Israeli control of the disputed territories "was a factual statement about how we observe the situation. And we think it's very accurate, and we stand behind it." Pompeo said that on his third stop, in Beirut, "we'll spend a lot of time talking with the Lebanese government about how we can help them disconnect from the threat that Iran and Hezbollah present to them." The United States considers Hezbollah, a militant Islamist political group, as a pro-Iranian "terrorist" organization, even though it is represented in the coalition government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a U.S. ally. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iranians seize opportunity of economic hardship caused by US to advance, FM Zarif says Iran Press TV Thu Mar 21, 2019 04:21PM Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says Iran has "proudly outlived" many aggressors throughout history and seized the opportunity of economic hardship to make progress. Zarif released a video message on the occasion of Nowruz which marks the begging of the new Iranian year, calling it "hope for a brighter future." Nowruz, he said, "testifies to the character, spirit and magnanimity of our people that they celebrate amid unprecedented, inhumane and illegal sanctions and pressures." Zarif said "despite the medieval tactics employed by the US to destroy their livelihoods," the Iranians "are unwavering in their sense of hope." "This is of course not new: as our people have shown seven consecutive American presidents, we Iranians don't just persevere in the face of adversity. Rather, we seize on it as an opportunity to reinvent ourselves, and to advance." The Islamic Republic, Zarif said, solely relies on its people to overcome challenges facing the country. "We Iranians have proudly outlived many aggressors, but our people have consistently shown a strong preference for less regional and global tension and more dialogue and constructive engagement." "In the coming year, Iranians will experience the dividends of an emerging economy of resilience that will increasingly shield their livelihoods," Zarif said. Back in May 2018, the US president unilaterally withdrew his country from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and imposed what he called the "toughest" sanctions ever on the Islamic Republic. On January 31, France, Germany, and the UK launched a special payment mechanism named the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchange (INSTEX) in a bid to protect European business links with Tehran by circumventing the American bans. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ayatollah Khamenei: Iran will defeat economic war, but it is not enough Iran Press TV Thu Mar 21, 2019 01:34PM Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says the enemy is waging an "economic war" on Iran, but the country will defeat it. "The enemy is engaged in an economic war on us. We must defeat the enemy in this war and God willing we will defeat it," the Leader told a huge crowd at the shrine of Imam Reza (AS) in Mashhad on Thursday. "We will defeat the enemy, but this is not enough. Beside defeating the enemy, we must establish deterrence" in the economic sphere, the Leader said. The Leader made the statements on the occasion of the new Iranian year of 1398 which started on Thursday. Opportunities in new year Ayatollah Khamenei touched on "unrealistic speculations" about threats to Iran in the new year, dismissing them as part of the enemy's psychological war. "The enemies of this nation, in addition to what they do in reality, also wage a psychological warfare and make boastful exclamations which should be taken as they are," he said. "I believe the year 1398, with divine grace, will be the year of opportunities, possibilities and opening - not threats," the Leader said. Ayatollah Khamenei touched on US sanctions, saying they are an opportunity to expose Iran's weaknesses and improve the country's administration in the coming years. "Sanctions can be an opportunity because experience has shown that countries with natural resources such as oil, whenever their revenues have fallen, they have found motivation to implement economic reforms and rescue themselves from reliance on oil." The Leader said extensive studies have already begun at the governmental, research and academic levels to find out how to run the country with non-oil revenues. "As long as oil revenues are abundantly in their disposal, government officials and others will not think of an economic reform in the country." Economic deterrence Ayatollah Khamenei cited the "Sacred Defense" years of 1980-1988 when Iran had to fight a war with Iraq under former dictator Saddam Hussein amid an international embargo on Tehran. "The enduring of hardships during the war led those with ideas and thoughts to change military reliance on outsiders as a result of which the Islamic Republic of Iran is now better and superior than all the regional countries in terms of military and defense capabilities." Ayatollah Khamenei said, "To the dismay of the enemies, we will continue to reinforce our defense strength and will not give in to outside pressure." Iran, he said, must emulate its defense industry to insulate its economy. "We must reach a point of deterrence where the enemy realizes that it cannot use economic fissures to harm and pressure us." "The Islamic Republic of Iran has a strong fist and a powerful hand to reach this point and possibility in economic matters and the opportunity has been put in front of us in light of the enemies' threats," the Leader said. In order to create an economic deterrence, he said, Iran should fully cease to think of Western help. "We can expect intrigue, betrayal, and stabbing in the back from the West but not help and honesty." Europeans not trustworthy Ayatollah Khamenei said the Europeans had failed to fulfill their commitments after the US withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). "Despite the US pullout, the Europeans should have carried out their obligations under the JCPOA with stoicism but they refused to do so under various pretexts." A new trade channel known as Instex, established by the European Union to purportedly cushion the blow of reimposed US sanctions on Iran, "is more like a bitter joke," the Leader said. "Although Western politicians wear suits, neckties and eau de cologne and carry Samsonite briefcases in their hands, they are wild inside in true sense of the word." Ayatollah Khamenei also criticized some individuals and sections of the media in Iran "engaged in adorning the West." "I don't mean we cut ties with Western countries because I have always encouraged different administrations in different periods to develop ties with them but this also does not mean we should follow them since the West should not be trusted." Iran's current problems, the Leader said, are partly due to trusting the West in various negotiations. "Today, government officials have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to move with the West on the right path." Ayatollah Khamenei further slammed the Europeans for their reaction to the recent massacre of Muslim worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. "Neither European politicians nor their media would bother to call it a terrorist act. They called it a shooting," Ayatollah Khamenei said. "Whenever there is something against someone favored by the West, terrorism and human rights are lined up for confrontation, but here such a blatant act is not called terrorist. Such are they," he added. Not worried by Saudi nuclear plans The Leader cited Western support for the Saudi regime despite its devastating war on Yemen and elimination of dissidents, touching on recent reports about a multibillion-dollar US plan to build nuclear reactors in the kingdom. "I do not know of any regime in the region and perhaps the world as bad as the Saudi government. It is not only despotic, dictatorial, corrupt and tyrannical but also sycophantic," he said. "They want to supply such a government with nuclear equipment. They have announced to build missile manufacturing centers for it. Here, they see no problem because (Saudi Arabia) depends on them and belongs to them. "Of course, if they build them, I personally will not be upset because I know that God willing they [the facilities] will fall into the hands of Muslim Mujahedin in the not too distant future," the Leader said. Nothing can stop Iranian will With Iran facing its "second phase" of the Islamic Revolution, the country has to identify its advantages and capacities and use them to shield against shortcomings and weaknesses, Ayatollah Khamenei said. "The West and the United States have come to the conclusion that if the nation of Iran decides to achieve something, nothing can stop their will. Hence, they are trying to weaken the willpower of the Iranian nation." The Leader said, "Today, the enemies should open their blind eyes to the most advanced industries in Iran making their presence felt in the face of Western industries, thanks to the country's faithful youths." Ayatollah Khamenei stressed the need to support entrepreneurs with a Jihadist spirit as he underlined promotion of domestic production in line with Resistant Economy. Earlier Thursday, the Leader called the new Iranian year as the "Year of Economic Boom." "In a jihad, literate and efficient people will find the right ways with scientific methods, and thus the economy will flourish," he said. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Nazarbaev's Daughter Handed Powerful Senate Post As Kazakhstan Gets New President By RFE/RL's Kazakh Service March 20, 2019 ASTANA -- Former President Nursultan Nazarbaev's eldest daughter was elected speaker of Kazakhstan's upper parliament house a day after her father announced his resignation, thrusting her into a highly prominent role just over a year ahead of the next scheduled presidential election. Darigha Nazarbaeva, 55, was chosen in a unanimous vote by Senate members on March 20, hours after outgoing upper house chairman Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev was sworn in as interim president of the Central Asian country. Under the constitution, he is to remain in office until an election that is due to be held in April 2020. Nazarbaeva has long been seen as a possible successor to her father, who is retaining his positions as head of the ruling Nur Otan party and lifetime chairman of the country's Security Council, as well as his status as "Elbasy," or leader of the nation. The 78-year-old Nazarbaev, who had ruled since before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and tolerated little dissent, is expected to continue to wield powerful influence in the country of 18.7 million. Nazarbaeva has chaired the International Affairs, Defense, and Security Committee in the Senate since September 2016, and before that served as a deputy prime minister. She will now hold the No. 2 spot in Kazakhstan's political hierarchy and would become acting president if the president were to die or become incapacitated. Nazarbaeva was recommended by Toqaev, 65, a Moscow-educated former prime minister and foreign minister who took the oath of office at a joint session of the parliament's chambers, the Mazhilis and the Senate. The interim president said that Nazarbaev's "respected opinions" will be key in making "strategic decisions" and proposed that the capital, Astana, be renamed Nursultan after him, a request that was swiftly approved by parliament a little later in the day. "It is necessary to immortalize the name of our great contemporary -- the first president of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Abishevich Nazarbaev -- in the following way: Our capital must carry the name of our president and be called Nursultan," Toqaev said. "Nursultan Nazarbaev remains the only father of the nation for life." Toqaev also proposed erecting a monument to Nazarbaev in the capital and naming central streets in every town and city in the country after him. Nazarbaev moved the capital of Kazakhstan from Almaty to Astana in 1997 and the windswept city on the steppe was built up substantially, making it a modernized symbol of his power. In announcing on March 19 that Toqaev would be interim president, in accordance with the constitution, Nazarbaev said that his successor "can be trusted to lead Kazakhstan." Toqaev served a total of 10 years as foreign minister, was prime minister from 1999-2002, and headed the Senate for two long stints, in 2007-11 and from 2013 until his promotion to the presidency. He has also served as director-general of the UN office in Geneva and is fluent in Kazakh, Russian, English, and Chinese. The U.S. State Department on March 19 expressed confidence that the "strong" U.S. relationship with Kazakhstan will continue after the resignation of Nazarbaev, who met with President Donald Trump at the White House in January 2018. Washington looks forward to "continuing our work with Kazakhstan on a wide variety of issues," a State Department spokesperson said. A spokeswoman for the European Union's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, praised Nazarbaev for driving forward "modernization reforms, including constitutional reforms," and for playing "an important role in promoting cooperation both regionally and globally, with a particular emphasis on promoting peace, stability, and security." Russian President Vladimir Putin, who spoke to Nazarbaev by phone the day he announced his resignation. senr Toqaev a congratulatory telegram on March 20. According to a Kremlin statement, Putin told Toqaev that he is known in Russia as "an experienced statesman who has made a large personal contribution to strengthening" the "strategic partnership" between Russia and Kazakhstan. Putin called for joint efforts to further develop constructive bilateral ties and for "partnerlike interaction in resolving current issues on the international agenda," saying that such cooperation "is doubtless in the interests of our brotherly peoples" and would promote regional stability and security. Once a steelworker, Nazarbaev has been the senior leader in Kazakhstan since June 1989, when he became Community Party boss in what was then a Soviet republic. Rights activists and critics say he persistently suppressed dissent, prolonged his time in office through undemocratic votes or referendums, and used the levers of power to neutralize potential opponents. As president, Nazarbaev maintained close relations with Moscow, helping create economic and security groupings that include Russia and other ex-Soviet republics, while also courting investment from Europe, the United States, China, and other regions to develop Kazakhstan's plentiful oil and natural-gas resources. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/toqaev-sworn-in-kazakh -president-nazarbaev/29831419.html Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kazakhstan's New President Pledges to Continue Nazarbayev's Policies Sputnik News 10:41 20.03.2019(updated 14:46 20.03.2019) ASTANA (Sputnik) - Kazakhstan's acting President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said Wednesday that he will continue the policies of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the country's former head of state who announced his resignation yesterday. Tokayev was formally sworn in earlier in the day. He will perform the duties of the president until the 2020 election. "I am planning to direct my knowledge and experience to the preservation of the strategic policies [of the former leader]", he said after the swearing-in ceremony. Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a telegram to the interim Kazakh president. "Russia knows you as an experienced government official, who makes an important personal contribution to strategic partnership and alliance between our states, as well as to mutually-beneficial integration in Eurasia", the Russian president said. Tokayev also noted that the country's capital Astana should be renamed after ex-President Nazarbayev. "I believe it is necessary to memorialise the name of our great contemporary, the first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Our capital should be renamed after him and be called Nursultan", the head of state said. Tokayev also said that Nazarbayev should be granted the status of honorary senator. "As the former chairman of the Kazakh Parliament's Senate [upper chamber], I consider it necessary to grant Elbasy [leader of the nation, Nazarbayev] the status of honorary senator", Tokayev said. Tokayev conferred upon Nazarbayev the titles of Hero of Kazakhstan and the Hero of Labour of Kazakhstan. In the meantime, Dariga Nazarbayeva, daughter of the ex-president, has been elected the speaker of Kazakhstan's upper house of Parliament. "I understand well the role of the parliament in the country's life, the head of the state has always supported the initiatives for modernising the country and supporting socially vulnerable groups I express my gratitude for your trust, and I assure you that I will invest all my knowledge and skills into the development of our country", Nazarbayeva said during a plenary session at the Senate. Nazarbayev, 78, held a number of senior posts in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, which was a part of the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Nazarbayev remained in power, becoming president of the independent Republic of Kazakhstan. Despite his resignation as president after almost 29 years in office, Nazarbayev remains head of the country's Security Council and leader of the ruling party Nur Otan. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Libya stands at a 'critical juncture', UN mission head tells Security Council 20 March 2019 - Predicting that the "days ahead will prove foundational to the years ahead for Libyans and the region", the top United Nations official in the country told the Security Council on Wednesday, that it was no exaggeration to describe the oil-rich nation as having reached "a crucial juncture". Special Representative and head of the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) Ghassan Salame, told Council members via videoconference from Tripoli, that the mission was working to both "prevent recent developments and tensions on the ground from escalating", and "pivot to stability and a political compact" which would end the country's crisis. For most of the period since the 2011 overthrow of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, the Mediterranean nation has been contested by various armed factions, leading to a breakdown of the economy, infrastructure and security across the country. Mr. Salame has been working to ease relations between the internationally recognized government of Prime Minister Faiez Serraj based in Tripoli, and the main rival authority led by the Libyan National Army (LNA) Commander, Khalifa Haftar in the east. But efforts by the LNA to bring more stability and security to southern and western Libya in recent months, had been met with armed opposition in some areas, and in the east, fighting around Derna had resulted in reported human rights abuses, and "many civilian casualties", Mr. Salame said. Turning to the humanitarian situation, the Special Representative said that Libya's infrastructure was deteriorating "at an alarming rate" with basic services eroding with water production "particularly fragile". Noting that some 823,000 people, including migrants and 248,000 children, need humanitarian assistance, he stated that a $202 million Humanitarian Response Plan for 2019 was launched on 5 February, to provide health, protection, water, and shelter to more than half a million of the most vulnerable people in Libya. Election pledge, shows new 'sincerity' UNSMIL has supported two rounds of preparatory talks in its Tunis office between the advisors of Prime Minister Serraj and General Haftar, continuing a process that started in September 2017. At the end of last month, in a meeting arranged by Mr. Salame in Abu Dhabi, both agreed to work towards holding a general election as a precursor to a unified democratic Libya, with civilian control of the military; a move welcomed by the UN Secretary-General. The parties also agreed to unify Libya's long-divided institutions and to schedule national elections before year-end. "What is new is the sincerity to turn these words into the end of the transitional period through elections" observed the UNSMIL chief. Meanwhile after many months, the UN opened a hub in Benghazi "to better deliver across the east of the country" he said, adding that for the first time since 2013, UN programmes have begun operating in Sabha and discussions are underway for a hub there to support operations in the south. National Conference: A 'critical opportunity' A National Conference to be convened inside Libya from 14-16 April, "represents a critical opportunity" to end the eight-year transitional period, Mr. Salame told Council members. "There is much at stake", he spelled out, citing the risks of "prolonged stalemate or conflict". The Special Representative argued that the Conference offers a real opportunity "to step back from the edge of this precipice" and for all parties "to put aside their differences for the good of the country, to unite, to avoid war and to choose a path of peace and prosperity". Moreover, it will decide whether to endorse the National Charter, which came from a consultative process; to chart a roadmap for concluding the transitional period; and to provide recommendations on how to deal with the Draft Constitution produced by the Constitutional Drafting Assembly. Pointing to "a notable uptick in the weaponization of media platforms as tools of incitement", he called on everyone to "refrain from the use of inflammatory and alienating rhetoric" and to "avoid acts of obstruction and incitement". "I also call on all in the international community to put the interests of the Libyan people first, and to act committedly and sincerely to pressure all parties to avoid conflict and conclude a peaceful formula to end the transitional period in Libya, for the sake of all", concluded the Special Representative. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Terrorists kill six security personnel in SW Pakistan IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency Islamabad, March 20, IRNA -- At least six security personnel on Wednesday were killed in a terrorist attack on a check post in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province, local media reported. Reports quoting Deputy Commissioner Ziarat Qadir Bakhsh Pirkani as saying that the armed terrorists attacked a Levies checkpost in Ziarat district's Sanjavi area. All Levies personnel deployed at the checkpost were killed, he added, while the terrorists managed to escape. The bodies of the Levis personnel were taken to a local hospital. After the incident, Levies personnel and other law enforcement agencies reached the spot to launch an investigation into the attack. According to some media reports banned terrorist outfit Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack. 272**2050 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pakistani Party Leaders Grilled In Anticorruption Probes By RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal March 20, 2019 ISLAMABAD -- The leaders of one of Pakistan's main opposition parties have been summoned by the country's anticorruption agency to face questions in three separate cases. Former President Asif Ali Zardari and his son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who head the secular Pakistan People's Party (PPP), were questioned at the headquarters of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in Islamabad. Hundreds of angry supporters gathered outside the facility in protest. Some of them clashed with police, chanting "Down with Imran Khan." Bhutto, the PPP chairman, later accused Khan's government of deliberately targeting political opponents. "This isn't a system of accountability. This is a system of political engineering. This is a system of the politics of revenge," Bhutto told a news conference. In a statement, the NAB said that investigators had quizzed Bhutto and his father for around two hours about three cases, adding that both men were given questionnaires to be handed back within 10 days. It gave no details on the cases. Officials have told Pakistan's Supreme Court that the cases were related to corruption and money laundering. The family denies all accusations of corruption. The PPP rules Pakistan's southern province of Sindh and finished third in last July's general election, which was won by Khan's Pakistan Movement for Justice (PTI). Bhutto is the son of two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in December 2007. His father, Zardari is the PPP co-chairman. In December 2018, Pakistani authorities announced they were imposing a travel ban on him, while investigators completed a probe into money laundering. Zardari was elected president in 2008, after leading efforts to remove military ruler Pervez Musharraf, and served until 2013. He left the country in 2015 after delivering a speech in which he criticized the role of the military in Pakistani public life, and returned in 2016. With reporting by Dawn and Reuters Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/pakistani-party-leaders-grilled -in-anticorruption-probes/29832754.html Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Six Pakistani Security Officers Die in Terror Act in Balochistan - Reports Sputnik News 16:17 20.03.2019 MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Six Pakistani security officers were killed on Wednesday during a terror attack on a security checkpoint in the country's southwestern Balochistan province, Pakistani Dawn reported, citing local officials. The terrorists attacked a checkpoint in the province's northern Ziarat district, killing all of the personnel inside, and managed to escape, according to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. Pakistani security forces are investigating the attack, Qadir Bakhsh Pirkani, the district's deputy commissioner, said. Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal, in turn, condemned the attack and offered his condolences to the family members of the victims. There are a number of terrorist organizations operating in Pakistan's Balochistan region, including the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban, a separatist ethnic Balochistan group and the Daesh terrorist group's affiliate based out of neighbouring Afghanistan. *Daesh a terrorist group, banned in Russia Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Lavorv: Limited nuclear war possible if US refuses to resume disarmament Iran Press TV Wed Mar 20, 2019 04:18PM Russia has called on the United States to resume bilateral efforts towards nuclear disarmament and stop fueling speculations about the possibility of a limited nuclear war, as both countries are poised to leave a crucial Cold War-era arms control treaty. Speaking at the Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned the ongoing row over Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which has been suspended by both sides, showed that nuclear weapons reduction mechanisms between Moscow and Washington had exhausted itself and a multilateral approach was needed. Singed in 1987, the treaty banned the US and the former Soviet Union from creating ground-launched nuclear-capable missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers. "As the INF Treaty crisis has shown, nuclear disarmament progress on the bilateral Russian-US basis has exhausted itself. Time is ripe to give serious thought to how to make the nuclear weapons control process multilateral and acceptable for all countries involved," he said. Lavrov said that any multilateral process needed to be based upon the principles of integral and indivisible security. "In the meantime, instead of a constructive response we have been hearing only speculations about a resumption of nuclear tests, deployment of attacks systems in space and even of the possibility of starting a limited nuclear war," he said, adding Russia kept all weapons control proposals in place. "It may become a reality, though, if we fail to jointly identify a sound alternative to the destabilization of the international situation, to the further aggravation of contradictions among states and to upsetting the existing system of multilateral weapons control agreements," he warned. US President Donald Trump suspended the INF for three months earlier this year, warning that he would withdraw completely in August unless Russia dismantles its new 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile. Washington has complained for over six years that the Russian weapon is in violation of the INF. Russia, however, has rebuffed the claim by showcasing the missile to journalists and revealing many of its sensitive specifications to ensure the international community that the Trump administration is being dishonest. The Russian Foreign Ministry doubled down on Tuesday that Moscow would not destroy the missile because of "baseless" US claims. "We can't destroy the 9M729 [missile] complexes, which Washington had declared in violation of the treaty without any reason," Russia's Foreign Ministry asserted in a statement on Tuesday. US planning tests of banned cruise missile Earlier this month, the Pentagon confirmed that it was preparing to test two ground-launched missiles after leaving INF in August. The projects include a low-flying cruise missile with a range of about 1,000 kilometers and a ballistic missile with a range of roughly 3,000 to 4,000 kilometers, military officials who could not reveal their name under the Pentagon's security rules told the media. The Pentagon's new ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) might be ready for deployment within 18 months, Michelle Baldanza, a Pentagon spokeswoman said. The longer-range ballistic missile, however, won't be ready for flight tests before November and its deployment will take five years or more, the official added. Baldanza said that Washington would stop the projects if Moscow agreed to a deal to rescue the INF treaty before August. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia Pledges to Respond to Australia's New Anti-Moscow Sanctions Sputnik News 20:04 20.03.2019(updated 20:27 20.03.2019) MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The Russian Foreign Ministry pledged a response to Australia's new anti-Russian sanctions over the Kerch Strait situation. "Duplicating similar destructive decisions by the United States and the EU, official Canberra continues, in line with the notorious Western solidarity, to follow the short-sighted course to undermine bilateral relations. The Russian side will not leave this unfriendly action without a response," the ministry said. According to the Foreign Ministry, Moscow has repeatedly emphasised that its actions on 25 November 2018 had been carried out in full compliance with the Russian Constitution and norms of international law which are recognised worldwide. Following in the footsteps of the US, Canada and the EU, the sanctions were imposed by Canberra on 18 March over the Kerch Strait incident. When commenting on the move, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it regretted that Washington and its allies continued to pursue a "disastrous course toward a complete destruction of bilateral relations," adding that Moscow would respond to the new restrictions. Last November, three Ukrainian vessels illegally crossed the Russian maritime border as they sailed toward the entrance to the Sea of Azov. Russia seized the Ukrainian vessels and detained 24 people on board after they failed to respond to a demand to stop. After the incident, a criminal case on illegal border crossing was opened in Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin called the incident a provocation, noting that there were members of the Ukrainian security service, who were in charge of the operation, on board the Ukrainian vessels. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kremlin: US Bombers Near Russian Borders Creates Additional Tension Sputnik News 15:01 21.03.2019(updated 15:06 21.03.2019) MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The appearance of US bombers near Russia does not strengthen the security atmosphere in the region that is directly adjacent to the Russia's borders but rather creates additional tension, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday. "From the military-tactical point of view, only our military specialists may probably comment here, I am convinced they will do that. But in general, I will probably confine myself to saying that of course, such US actions do not strengthen the security and stability atmosphere in the region that is directly adjacent to Russia's borders", Peskov said. The comment referred to a video that the Russian Defence Ministry published on Thursday of Russian Su-27 fighters escorting a US B-52 strategic bomber over the Baltic Sea. "Rather, on the contrary, this causes additional tension. We regret Washington's actions", Peskov said when asked how the Kremlin assessed the US decision to send bombers from a political point of view. As the Russian Ministry of Defence specified, a group of B-52 Stratofortress bombers approached Russia's border in the skies over the Baltic Sea, but changed course after the Russian planes came closer. The US Air Force command in Europe, for its part has confirmed the incident, stressing that such flights serve as a demonstration of Washington's commitment to regional security. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Trump: US Recognizes Israeli Sovereignty Over Golan Heights By Ken Bredemeier March 21, 2019 President Donald Trump said Thursday the United States is recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the Syrian territory it captured in 1967's Six-Day War and has controlled since then. Trump, in a Twitter comment, said the Golan Heights "is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Trump's statement came while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Jerusalem, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to visit the contested Western Wall in the holy city of Jerusalem accompanied by an Israeli leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The visit possibly signaled tacit U.S. recognition of Israeli control of the Jewish holy site, but it was quickly followed by Trump's specific announcement on the Golan Heights. Netanyahu has accused Iran of attempting to launch attacks on Israel from the Golan Heights, saying, "I think for this reason and many more, it is time that the international community recognizes Israel's stay on the Golan, and the fact that the Golan will always remain part of the State of Israel." The Israeli leader praised Trump's decision shortly after the president's announcement. "President Trump has just made history," Netanyahu said after calling the U.S. leader. "The message President Trump has given the world is that the United States stands by Israel. We are deeply grateful for the U.S. support." Last week, the U.S. State Department, in its annual human rights report, dropped the phrase "Israeli-occupied" from the Golan Heights section, instead calling it "Israeli-controlled." Pompeo told reporters the change in terminology was not accidental but rather a reflection of the reality on the ground that the Jewish state controlled the territory. In his visit to Jerusalem, Pompeo reaffirmed the long-standing U.S. friendship and support for Israel. Pompeo accused Tehran of seeking the "annihilation and destruction" of Israel. "With such threats a daily reality of Israeli life, we maintain our unparalleled commitment to Israel's security and firmly support your right to defend yourself," he told Netanyahu. The Golan Heights is about 1,800 square kilometers on the northeastern edge of Israel along its border with Syria, with about two-thirds of it controlled by Israel and the remainder under contested Syrian control. There have been numerous battles over the land during the eight-year Syrian Civil War. After the 1967 war, Israel formally annexed the territory in 1981. But the international community has not recognized that annexation and considers the Golan Heights as occupied territory. Trump and other former U.S. leaders and top U.S. officials have visited the Western Wall privately in the past but not with an Israeli leader. The Western Wall is located underneath the Old City's Muslim Quarter in eastern Jerusalem that was captured by the Israelis in the Six-Day War. But for decades, top U.S. officials have refrained from visiting the site with Israeli leaders to present a sense of impartiality in deciding eventual control of Jerusalem in the years of unresolved discussions over the creation of a Palestinian state. The Palestinians have sought to claim east Jerusalem as its capital of an eventual independent state, but Israel also considers Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital. "I think it's symbolic that a senior American official go there with a prime minister of Israel," Pompeo said. "It's a place that's important to many faiths, and I'm looking forward to it. I think it will be very special." Pompeo and Netanyahu viewed the wall and adjacent tunnels. The two officials stopped by a visitor's center to watch a virtual reality recreation of the Jewish temple that once stood on the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is revered by Jews as the holiest site in Judaism, which once housed the biblical temples. It is also home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, considered the third holiest site in Islam. The Western Wall website says that the tour of the tunnels "allows visitors to reach the segments of the Wall hidden from view, and to touch the original and special stones that tell the story of the Jewish nation." Pompeo's visit to the site and the recognition of the Israeli ownership of the Golan Heights could further inflame tensions between Palestinians and Israelis. The Palestinians have already severed ties with the U.S. over Washington's Jerusalem policies. Trump, early in his administration, abandoned long-standing U.S. policy by moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem after recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. When Trump did so, he said it did not determine the city's eventual borders, but Palestinians viewed the U.S. action as tipping the scales toward Israeli support and cut ties with the U.S. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, criticized Pompeo's visit to Israel absent any corresponding plans to meet with Palestinian officials. "While they are claiming to be trying to solve the conflict, such acts only make it more difficult to resolve," he said. Pompeo said, "The Israelis and Palestinians live side by side. We need to help them figure out how to do that. It's a fact, and this administration wishes well for the Palestinian people." While in the Old City, Pompeo, a devout Christian, also stopped at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where tradition says Jesus was crucified and resurrected. Pompeo visited Kuwait on the first leg of his five-day Middle East trip before heading to Israel and Lebanon, the last stop. Pompeo met formally with both Netanyahu and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, reaffirming U.S. support for Israel and its right to defend itself against attacks. They also discussed how best to combat what the U.S. considers Iranian aggression in the Middle East. Trump is meeting with Netanyahu in Washington next week. Netanyahu's government is headed to a tough April 9 re-election contest as the prime minister is embroiled in a corruption investigation and faces allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Netanyahu has called the case against him a political "witch hunt." In comments to reporters en route to the Middle East, Pompeo dismissed the suggestion that his meeting with Netanyahu could be seen as the United States intruding in the Israeli election in support of the prime minister. A senior State Department official said last week that Pompeo would not be meeting with Netanyahu's opponents but with Netanyahu alone as the current head of the Israeli government. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Why China's Financial Incentives for Taiwanese Flatlined By Ralph Jennings March 20, 2019 Just over a year ago the Chinese government announced 31 incentives for Taiwanese to work, study and invest in China, a market where salaries can run higher than in Taiwan and the number of consumers has no equal. The Taiwan government fretted then that China was trying to attract Taiwanese people as a way of pressing its case for political unification a goal that Taipei opposes. But those measures have made little impact over the past year because of anxiety among the Taiwanese being targeted, experts and officials say. Economists point to rising costs in China. There's spillover from the Sino-U.S. trade friction. Some Taiwanese worry about holes in China's legal system, particularly when it comes to protecting copyrights and trademarks. Other Taiwanese wonder whether, by working or investing, they would unwittingly help China's goal of unification, the government in Taipei believes. "The main goal is to inject some energy into China's economy," said Chiu Chui-cheng, spokesman for the Taiwan government's Mainland Affairs Council. "As for us, our initial review over the past year is that at the moment, to be honest, there's no obvious impact on our society, industry or economy." Political backdrop China has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s and threatened to take it by force if needed. More than seven in 10 Taiwanese oppose unification, the Mainland Affairs Council said in January. Officials in Taipei see the incentives as a soft approach to bring the two sides together. "Taiwanese have learned to be a little bit smarter than taking the bait from China," said Shane Lee, political scientist with Chang Jung Christian University in Taiwan. "Political reasons have overtaken the economic reasons." Other workers and investors may fear that China's communist political system lacks the legal guarantees, such as copyright protections and fair court hearings, that they're used to in their democratic homeland, some analysts say. "Gaps" are also clear in the development of China's market economy compared to Taiwan's, Chiu said. China needs to gain Taiwan's trust in its laws and "structure" that includes economics and politics, said Wu Hui-lin, research fellow with Taipei-based policy research organization Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research. Shifting economic landscape Sino-U.S. trade friction over the past year also raises tariffs on Taiwanese companies that produce in China for export to the United States. China rolled out its incentives for Taiwan a month before U.S. President Donald Trump issued a memorandum ordering the round of tariffs that kicked off the past year of trade tensions. "These 31 measures, held up to the Sino-U.S. trade conflict, they didn't offer much of a big incentive at that time," said Darson Chiu, deputy macroeconomic forecasting director with the think tank Taiwan Institute of Economic Research in Taipei. Labor costs are also rising, and Chinese environmental rules growing more stringent, causing trouble for some Taiwanese investors, Chiu said. Taiwanese investors have capitalized factories in China since the 1980s, taking advantage then of cheap labor and a fast-growing domestic consumer base. Investments there totaled $8.74 billion in 2017 after falling for three straight years. As costs of business rise in China, some Taiwanese investors have expanded into Southeast Asia or back to Taiwan. Taiwanese investors from offshore, often in China, have applied since January to start projects at home worth a total $1.29 billion since January, the economic affairs ministry in Taipei said on March 15. It cites its own incentives as a reason. "It's impossible to survive in China," Wu said, referring especially to Taiwanese tech firms. "So, we can see these Taiwanese investors who have recently returned, almost all are going to the science parks to look for land." More incentives coming Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said March 15 his government would offer additional incentives for Taiwanese people. He did not give details when making the announcement in Beijing. The premier probably means "good jobs" and "good conditions for investment" that might appeal especially to this year's batch of Taiwanese university graduates, Lee said. Those incentives would be consistent with last year's list. The existing 31 measures include tax breaks and special land use rights. Young people in Taiwan might still try out China's incentives, the Mainland Affairs Council spokesman said. China is encouraging younger Taiwanese to start their own companies in its hubs for startups. The success rate of Taiwanese people's "business launches" in China is about 1 percent, the spokesman cautioned. "They've run into some difficulties," he said. "We've reminded our youth to beware of the risks." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US to Hand Over Two Additional F-35s to Turkey Amid S-400 Spat Report Sputnik News 20:27 20.03.2019 F-35 deliveries to Turkey have been under threat since the country signed a contract with Russia in December 2017 for the purchase of S-400 air defence systems. Washington believes the S-400s could reveal weaknesses of the F-35 and that the data could be relayed to Moscow, leading the US to warn it could block the delivery of its jets to Ankara. The US will be transferring an additional two F-35 fifth-generation jets to the Luke Air Force Base soon, where they will be handed over to Turkish pilots and technicians who will learn to fly and maintain the aircraft, spokesman for the F-35 programme Joe DellaVedova told Anadolu Agency. According to him, Turkey's participation in the F-35 programme is continuing as planed "until otherwise directed". DellaVedova noted that the two F-35s meant for Turkey are already at the Luke Air Force Base and are scheduled to be transferred to the country in November, the news agency reported. The spokesman declined to reveal the specific date, but according to the schedule, the new aircraft are meant to be delivered to the destined state within a year or two after the end of the training programmes. The fate of the 100 F-35s that Turkey has ordered from Lockheed Martin remains in question, as the US Congress is considering blocking the deliveries. US lawmakers fear that the Russian S-400 air defence systems that Turkey bought in 2017 may reveal the F-35's weaknesses and transfer the data to Moscow. Their concerns were recently supported by several top Pentagon officials, who have advised against transferring F-35s to Turkey unless it drops its S-400 deal with Russia. Turkey has repeatedly refused to do so, reaffirming its determination to acquire both F-35s and S-400s. Ankara has also claimed that it was forced to buy Russian systems, as Washington had refused to sell its Patriot missiles to it. Amid the ongoing spat over the S-400 purchase by Turkey, the Department of State permitted the sale of Patriot systems to Ankara, but the latter hasn't changed its position. The situation is further complicated for Washington as Turkey produces some of the parts used in the assembly of F-35s. In addition to this, Turkey points out that it has already transferred the money for the first batch of jets. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkish Media Reveals First Deployment Site of Russian-Made S-400s Sputnik News 13:42 20.03.2019 Turkey has remained committed to the acquisition of Russian S-400 air defence systems despite US threats to impose sanctions on Ankara or freeze the sale of American-built F-35 fighter jets. The Russian-made S-400s purchased by Turkey would first be deployed at the Murted Air Base, formerly known as Akinci Air Base, located northwest of Ankara, Yeni Safak reported, citing military sources. According to the media outlet, the base will become the main centre for the dispatch of Russian air defences, but later the S-400s may be moved to other regions. In addition, the Ministry of National Defence and the General Staff are planning to send a delegation of 100 people to Azerbaijan to examine S-300 PMU2 missile defence systems this year, before heading to Russia where Turkish troops will be trained to operate the S-400s ahead of the system's deployment by October. Ankara and Moscow inked a $2.5 billion contract on the delivery of four battalion sets of S-400s to Turkey in 2017 in a move that's been strongly criticised by the United States. Washington has pressured Ankara to abandon the deal with Russia, offering as an alternative its Patriot air defence systems. Turkey has, however, turned down the $3.5 billion offer, saying that it may buy US-made systems in the future, but refused to cancel the S-400 purchase as a precondition. In response, Pentagon spokesperson Charlie Summers warned Turkey of "grave consequences" in terms of military relationship with the United States and threatened with depriving Ankara of US-built F-35 fighter jets. Shortly after, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hit back by saying that the S-400s were not connected to the "security of NATO, the United States, or the F-35 in any way". Washington has consistently threatened to impose sanctions on Ankara under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), a 2017 law adopted in response to Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 US election, if Turkey went ahead with the S-400 acquisition. The US has been concerned over the fact that Ankara's purchase of Russian S-400s along with F-35s might provide Russian experts with key insights into sensitive information related to the fighter jet's technology. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US 'Reconciling' Presence of Russia-Made S-400, F-35 in Turkey - Top General Sputnik News 19:25 21.03.2019(updated 19:26 21.03.2019) WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States hopes to find a solution to the dispute with Turkey over Ankara's purchase of Russian S-400 air defence systems, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Commander Gen. Joseph Dunford said at the Atlantic Council on Thursday. "Our position has been made very clear to Turkey, and we are hopeful that we can find a way to solve this tough issue," Dunford said. Both executive and legislative branches of the US government "are going to have a hard time reconciling the presence of the S-400 and the most advanced fighters that we have the F-35," the general stated. "We're hopeful that we can find a way through this, but it is a tough issue," the marine general told a security forum in Washington. The comment was made after last Thursday Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said Ankara was expecting the delivery of US-made F-35 fighter jets in November despite Washington's criticism of the decision to buy Russian S-400 air defence systems. Turkey is planning to purchase 100 F-35 fighter jets from the United States with its pilots being trained at the Luke Air Force Base in the US state of Arizona. At the same time, Ankara continues facing strong criticism of Washington, connected with a loan agreement for the supply of the Russian S-400 defence systems signed by the country in December 2017. Recently, Reuters reported, citing Katie Wheelbarger, acting assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs, that Washington was mulling to "send signals" to convince Ankara to ditch buying the S-400. The reported "signals" include the F-35 engine overhaul depot in Eskisehir, Turkey used in the jets' production line. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Wants to 'Send Signals' to Turkey on F-35 Supplies Amid S-400 Spat - Report Sputnik News 14:58 21.03.2019 A spokesman for the F-35 programme Joe DellaVedova previously told Turkish media that preparations for the delivery of F-35s to Turkey are going as planned "until otherwise directed" with the first two jets scheduled for transfer in November 2019. Washington is planning various moves to "send signals" to Ankara indicating that its threats about stopping the delivery of F-35s due to its planned acquisition of Russian S-400 systems are serious, Reuters reported, citing Katie Wheelbarger, acting assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs. Wheelbarger added that "decisions come up constantly" to pause the delivery of certain "things" that are required for the consequent delivery of the jets themselves. "There's a lot of things in train that can be paused to send signals to them [that we're serious]", she said. Russia's S-400 air defense system. File photo Another option that the US plans to use in order to convince Ankara to ditch buying the S-400 is finding an alternative to Turkey's "engine depot", allegedly referring to an F-35 engine overhaul depot in Eskisehir, Turkey used in the jets' production line. The alternative might be situated in Western Europe, Wheelbarger added. The assistant secretary of defence further explained Washington's position that under no circumstances will F-35s be delivered to Turkey if it receives Russian air defence systems. "The S-400 is a computer. The F-35 is a computer. You don't hook your computer to your adversary's computer and that's basically what we would be doing", she said. Spokesman for the F-35 programme Joe DellaVedova earlier told Turkey's Anadolu Agency that soon two additional F-35s will be delivered to a US air base, where Turkish pilots are learning to fly them. He further stated that the preparations for the delivery of the jets to Turkey are going as planned "until otherwise directed". The fate of the 100 F-35s that Turkey has ordered from Lockheed Martin remains in question; because the US Congress has expressed concern the S-400 systems ordered by Turkey from Russia in 2017 may reveal the F-35's weaknesses and transfer the data to Moscow. American lawmakers have tried to halt the delivery of the jets in a bid to force Ankara to ditch the deal with Russia. Their fears were recently supported by several top Pentagon officials, who have advised against transferring F-35s to Turkey if it receives Russian S-400s. Turkey has repeatedly refused to do so, reaffirming its determination to acquire both F-35s and S-400s. Ankara has also claimed that it was forced to buy Russian systems, as Washington had refused to sell its Patriot air defence systems to it. The situation has been further complicated for Washington as Turkey produces engines, cockpit displays and the landing gear used in the assembly of F-35s. In addition to this, Turkey points out that it has already transferred the money for the first batch of jets. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Delaying Brexit to June 30 would have political risks: European Commission Iran Press TV Wed Mar 20, 2019 01:02PM Britain's request to delay the Brexit deadline from March 29 to June 30 would bring "serious legal and political risks", says the European Commission. The announcement came in an internal briefing note ahead of an EU summit on Wednesday, after British Prime Minister Theresa May asked the bloc to delay the deadline. It further urged EU leaders to urged leaders to choose between a short delay to May 23 or a longer one to "at least until end 2019". May's request for a three-month delay to Brexit comes amid a political deadlock in London over the UK's decision to leave the European Union. With only nine days left until the scheduled departure date, the divorce deal is blocked in political conflict between the parliament and the government of May. In a PMQ session in parliament Wednesday, May asserted that the extension does not rule out a no-deal scenario at the end. "If it is the case that there is an extension, this does not actually take no deal off the table. It leaves that as a point at the end of that extension," May told MPs. Scottish National Party lawmaker Pete Wishart slammed May's remarks, noting that she has "caved in to hard Brexiteers." "She has once again cravenly caved in to hard Brexiteers and will now only seek a short extension to Article 50, contrary to the expressed will of this House. When will she develop a backbone and stand to those that would take this nation to disaster? And as one of her ministers said this morning, referencing another feeble prime minister - weak, weak, weak." The British premier responded by trying to "update the House on the forthcoming European Council and the issue of Article 50 extension." "On Thursday, the House voted in favor of a short extension if the House had supported a meaningful vote before this week's European Council. The motion also made it clear that a longer extension would oblige the United Kingdom to hold elections to the European parliament," May said. "I do not believe that such elections would be in anyone's interest. The idea that three years after voting to leave the EU, the people of this country should be asked to elect a new set of MEPs is I believe unacceptable. It will be a failure to deliver on the referendum to deliver on the referendum decision that this House said it would honor." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UK Will Not Leave EU on March 29 - Prime Minister Sputnik News 23:41 20.03.2019(updated 00:05 21.03.2019) British Prime Minister Theresa May has said her country will not leave the European Union on March 29, as originally planned, but said the departure wouldn't be delayed any further than June 30. "Nearly three years have passed since the public voted to leave the European Union," May said in a Wednesday address to the nation. "It was the biggest democratic exercise in our country's history. I came to office on a promise to deliver on that verdict. In March 2017, I triggered the Article 50 process for the UK to exit the EU, and Parliament supported it overwhelmingly." "Two years on, MPs have been unable to agree on a way to implement the UK's withdrawal. As a result, we will now not leave on time with a deal on the 29th of March. This delay is a matter of great personal regret for me. And of this, I am absolutely sure you the public have had enough," May said. The United Kingdom was scheduled to leave the EU on March 29, 2019, but the British government's repeated failure to ratify an agreement signed between London and Brussels has left the country on the precipice of a "no-deal" Brexit, without a negotiated political, diplomatic or economic relationship after the end of the month. "You're tired of the infighting, you're tired of the political games and arcane procedural rows," May told the public. "I agree. I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide," she said chiding lawmakers for failing to reach an accord and only being willing to list "what they do not want." "Do [MPs] want to leave the EU with a deal which delivers on the result of the referendum, that takes back control of our money, borders and laws, while protecting jobs and our national security? Do they want to leave without a deal? Or do they not want to leave at all, causing potentially irreparable damage to public trust, not just in this generation of politicians, but to our entire democratic process? It is high time we made a decision." Both May and the House of Commons have thoroughly rejected the idea of a "no deal" Brexit. May said Wednesday she wrote to European Council President Donald Tusk requesting the extension to June 30. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Ukraine Imposes Sanctions On Russians Over Kerch Bridge, Seizure Of Naval Vessels March 20, 2019 Ukraine has imposed economic and other sanctions on hundreds of individuals and entities for their alleged roles in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia over the Crimea region and the war in eastern Ukraine. President Petro Poroshenko on March 20 signed the order to implement the sanctions against 294 legal entities and 848 individuals, overwhelmingly Russian, as approved by the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine the previous day. Some of the sanctions target people and entities connected with the construction of the Kerch Strait bridge between Ukraine's annexed Crimea region and Russia. Others are applied against people and entities believed to have played a role in the detention in November 2018 of two Ukrainian naval vessels and their 24 crew members by Russia near the Kerch Strait. The 24 Ukrainian sailors are still being held by Moscow. Still others are applied to people and entities that organized and held unauthorized and unrecognized "elections" within the separatist entities occupying parts of Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions in November 2018. Others included in the new sanctions list are accused of violating Ukrainian travel legislation by visiting Crimea or of playing a role in the relocation or use of museum collections belonging to Ukraine. Relations between Russia and Ukraine have been at a nadir since Moscow annexed Crimea in March 2014 and began providing military, political, and economic support to the separatist formations waging a war against Kyiv in parts of eastern Ukraine. Some 13,000 people have been killed in that conflict, which the International Criminal Court ruled in November 2016 was "an international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation." Based on reporting by UNIAN, Ukrinform, and TASS Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-imposes-sanctions -on-russians-over-kerch-bridge-seizure -of-naval-vessels/29832844.html Copyright (c) 2019. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO, March 07, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- -- (via Blockchain Wire) -- CoinAgenda (www.coinagenda.com), the premier conference series for connecting blockchain and cryptocurrency investors with startups since 2014, today announced the winners of its CoinAgenda Caribbean Blockchain Startup Competition. Coming in first place was Tide Foundation, creator of the Tide Protocol, which enables a data marketplace for businesses, consumers and third parties to share and monetize personal data using blockchain technology. In second place was TapJets, an on-demand private jet app. In third place was 0Chain, a fast, secure, and scalable blockchain that enterprises can use to build applications. When CoinAgenda gave us the opportunity to present Tide to blockchain investors, we jumped at the chance, said Issac Elnekave, Co-Founder of Tide Foundation. Were developing a protocol that makes privacy profitable for businesses, marketers, and consumers, all by ensuring consumers reclaim control of their data. We are thrilled that this mission resonates with the CoinAgenda community. To compete among such high quality companies, as is a staple at Michael Terpins CoinAgenda events, was an honor. To win was a significant accomplishment for TapJets, said Eugene Kesselman, Founder of TapJets. Im incredibly proud of the TapJets team and grateful to our private jet clients for their support. I had a blast presenting at CoinAgenda and really appreciate those who voted for 0Chain, said Derick Fiebiger, Director of Operations at 0Chain. We are thrilled to finally bring a fast decentralized cloud to the blockchain space. Please check us out this month as we launch AlphaNet, and download our 0Box app. CoinAgenda Startup Competition winners are awarded an exhibitor booth at an upcoming CoinAgenda conference, and conference passes to CoinAgenda and other blockchain industry events. Past CoinAgenda Competition winners include Bancor, Cashbet, Omega One, and SALT Lending, which have gone on to raise millions in funding. Held at the InterContinental San Juan March 1-3, CoinAgenda Caribbean featured three days of panel discussions, keynotes, and fireside chats from industry leaders including Ryan Lackey, Head of Security at Tezos; Scott Walker, CEO at DNA and Chairman at Casper Labs; Harry Dent, Founder of Dent Research; Bo Collins, CEO of San Juan Mercantile Bank and Trust International; and Pedro Piquer Henn Esq. of the Puerto Rico Department of Economic Development and Commerce. Conference sessions explored topics including security tokens, IEOs, NFTs, exchange innovations, digital currency funds, and private equity in blockchain. For information on future CoinAgenda events and competitions, please visit www.coinagenda.com. ABOUT COINAGENDA CoinAgenda is the premier global conference series for connecting blockchain and cryptocurrency investors with startups since 2014. CoinAgenda has held conferences in North America, Europe, and Asia, with its global conference happening each October in Las Vegas. To learn more, visit https://coinagenda.com/. CONTACT: contact@coinagenda.com Connect with CoinAgenda: Twitter Facebook Telegram TORONTO, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Toronto walked out of the classroom today to protest changes to the post-secondary sector. This was part of a province-wide campaign at University campuses. The group of 300 were supported by campus labour unions, community groups and concerned faculty members. Speakers at the rally included representatives from the Canadian Federation of Students (C.F.S.), Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 3902 (C.U.P.E. 3902), and the Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students at the University of Toronto (A.P.U.S.) The Ford government announced sweeping changes to the sector, including restructuring the Ontario Student Assistance Plan (O.S.A.P.), a province-wide tuition cut and funding for campus organizations. The January announcements coming out of Queens Park have left many student groups across the Ontario wondering how they will make ends meet in the coming years. Speaking to the move from grants to loans for low-income O.S.A.P. recipients, Jaime Kearns, President of A.P.U.S. expressed, "The changes to OSAP will continue to narrow access to post-secondary education that will undoubtedly effect low- and middle-income students; Indigenous, Black and racialized students; queer and trans students and students with disabilities. U of T has a duty to advocate for and publicly support an accessible system of post-secondary education and we need them to make the right choice and support students now. Other groups feel the Ford government is out of touch with what University campuses need. A tuition cut without funding to fill the gap can only lead to increased pressure at the bargaining table, an as much as 5% cut across the board, job layoffs, said Jess Taylor, Chair of C.U.P.E. 3902. The announced 10 percent tuition cut has come under public scrutiny as it has left many wondering if the government has a plan to support Ontario Universities. The U of T will have to lower operational costs using other measures like increased student enrolment, increased commodification, increasing international student tuition, or clawbacks in working and learning conditions, she continued. In an unprecedented move, the Ford government has intervened in how campus organizations, clubs and centres are funded. The new policy will allow students to opt out of all ancillary fees that do not fall within campus wellness services. Affected groups include student government organizations, equity-based community groups, campus newspapers, and Indigenous student centres. Many of these groups have already had to fight for funding, petitioning students through opt-in campaigns to secure guaranteed yearly funding for their organizations. Speaking to the need for such organizations, Noor Alideeb, Chair of the C.F.S. said, "Students across the province need an independent voice in order to hold local administrations and the government accountable. It is through these mechanisms that we have successfully advocated for grants, reduced tuition, sexual violence and harassment support, mental health resources and more. The government has dubbed the policy the Student Choice Initiative. Alideeb continued, Though the government claims that the Student Choice Initiative is a way to save money, students overwhelmingly reject it because it is an ideological attack on advocacy groups and unions that fight for students' rights. Student groups build community, ensure campus democracy, and provide crucial services." In a fundraising email to Progressive Conservative Party supporters, Ford himself motivated for the importance of the Student Choice Initiative by saying I think we all know what kind of crazy Marxist nonsense student unions get up to. (Source: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/ontario-pcs-say-student-unions-instigate-crazy-marxist-nonsense-1.4291985 ) Taylor referred to the potential for wider spread changes to Ontarios public sector, We know what is coming next, that the Rand Formula and the right to unionize will come under attack. This Government has targeted student groups that do not align with their political values. They will attack labour unions. But we are here to advocate for the rights of members, for stronger work protections. Benefits and higher wages are not a gift, they are won through negotiations and demonstrations of collective power. Contacts: Jess Taylor Chair, CUPE 3902 416-593-7057 Kathryn McDonald CUPE 3902 Staff 613-532-5415 A photo accompanying this announcement is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/30cd3413-d61f-48fc-a0b9-039836002843 French English Return to profitability in H2 Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, March 21, 2019 - IBA ( Ion Beam Applications SA , EURONEXT), the worlds leading provider of proton therapy solutions for the treatment of cancer, today announces its consolidated annual results for the 2018 financial year. On July 20, 2018, IBA announced that it had decided to explore new strategic alternatives for IBA Dosimetry which could include a sale, merger, initial public offering, or retention of the business. Following the announcement, IBA initiated a disposal process and determined that all criteria of IFRS 5 were met in order to present the assets and liabilities of IBA Dosimetry as assets held-for-sale. As IBA Dosimetry is also a separate operating segment, it also meets the criteria of discontinued operations. Consequently the results of this activity are presented on a separate line in the income statement as Profit/(loss) from discontinued operations in 2018 and in the comparative numbers for 2017. Active discussions are currently ongoing on the sale of this division and the Company expects to inform the market of the outcome of these discussions in Q2 2019. FY 2018 (EUR 000) FY 2017 (EUR 000) Variance (EUR 000) Variance % PT & Other Accelerators 208 440 236 485 -28 045 -11.9% Total Net Sales 208 440 236 485 -28 045 -11.9% REBITDA 7 782 -11 517 19 299 % of Sales 3.7% -4.9% REBIT 885 -17 260 18 145 % of Sales 0.4 % -7.3% Profit Before Tax -5 152 -23 502 18 350 % of Sales -2.5% -9.9% Discontinued operations 3 171 2 457 714 29.1% NET RESULT -4 401 -39 201 34 800 % of Sales -2.1% -16.6 % Olivier Legrain, Chief Executive Officer of IBA commented:: IBA made good progress in 2018, having returned to profitability in the second half of the year and achieving a positive REBIT for the full year, despite the challenging proton therapy market. Seven ProteusONE contracts were signed in the period with three starting to generate revenues during the year. The double-digit growth in Proton Therapy service revenues underlines our confidence in this expanding revenue stream, and results were also boosted by record orders in Other Accelerators. We have taken clear steps to strengthen the business for the long-term as we focus on cementing our position as proton therapy market global leader. This includes a company-wide focus on cost control to help us achieve sustained profitability. Despite the short-term unpredictability of the timing of new contracts, the clinical evidence and real-life experience with our proton therapy systems is driving expansion in new and existing markets around the world. With our flexible product offering, rapid installation capability and commitment to constant innovation, IBA is well placed to benefit from future market growth. Financial summary * Total 2018 revenues of EUR 208.4 million, down 11.9% (2017: EUR 236.5 million), now composed solely of Proton Therapy and Other Accelerators. The decrease was predominantly due to a slower PT market. Other Accelerators had a 33% increase in equipment sales, boosted by a record order intake. Equipment and service backlog of EUR 955 million, comprising an equipment backlog for Proton Therapy and Other Accelerators of EUR 278 million at full year 2018 including upgrades and services backlog of EUR 677 million. Full year REBIT amounted to EUR 0.9 million vs a loss of EUR 17.2 million for the previous year. On a proforma basis including Dosimetry numbers, REBIT for 2018 would have amounted to EUR 5.4 million, largely ahead of the break-even guidance that had been announced over the year. This strong improvement was largely driven by a record order intake in Other Accelerators, excellent performance in service and a reduction in operating expenses as part of the ongoing cost cutting initiative. Full year REBIT margin of 0.4% versus -7.3% in the prior year (2.1% on a proforma basis vs -4% LY). Dosimetry (discontinued operation) net profit of EUR 3.2 million, up 29% (2017: EUR 2.5 million), driven by strong cost control and halting of depreciation in accordance with IFRS 5. The Company moved into profit at both REBIT and Net Income at the Group level in the second half compared with the first half of 2018. Total Group loss of EUR 4.4 million, representing an 89% improvement versus PY (2017: EUR 39.2 million), driven by the Group wide programme to reduce costs and the absence of exceptional items. Net debt position of EUR -47.1 million (including cash position of Dosimetry for EUR 2.3 million) at the end of 2018 compared to EUR -15.5 million at the end of December 2017, driven for around half by temporary working capital requirements and for half by a lease facility for IBAs new building. The Group has sufficient credit lines from its banks to finance its cash flow requirements. Moreover, the improved 2018 financial results also allow the Group to meet the bank covenants on its credit lines. * The above numbers are stated with Dosimetry as an Asset Held for Sale except when explicitly mentioned otherwise Business summary Order intake of seven rooms comprising seven Proteus ONE* solutions sold in the UK, Italy, China, Singapore and Belgium, equating to 58% share of the overall market. ONE* solutions sold in the UK, Italy, China, Singapore and Belgium, equating to 58% share of the overall market. Currently 21 projects have been financially activated and 37 rooms are under development, comprising 14 Proteus ONE and 7 Proteus PLUS*. ONE and 7 Proteus PLUS*. The service business continued to grow, with 29 centers under operation at the end of December 2018. Six IBA proton therapy centers became operational during the period: Toyohashi, Japan; Sapporo, Japan; Caen, France; Newport, UK; Groningen, Netherlands; and Chennai, India at the start of 2019. Based on current activated contracts, 50 or more centers are expected to be under operation by 2023. Significant progress towards sustained profitability through a company-wide focus on operating expenses and cost-efficiency measures. Opening of a new factory at IBAs headquarters in Louvain-La-Neuve to assist in the efficient production of IBAs technology and contribute to the overall reduction of costs. Market authorization received from the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (ANVISA) for a Proteus ONE single-room solution during the period, expanding global reach of proton therapy. ONE single-room solution during the period, expanding global reach of proton therapy. Positive developments reinforcing the growth potential for proton therapy include: Evidence generation through an increasing body of publications presenting the benefits of proton therapy for various indications. On-going use and validation of the model-based approach at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) that show positive early results. An increasing number of institutions in Europe, North America and Asia are showing interest in this model. New treatment techniques such as ARC and FLASH demonstrate significant potential patient benefits illustrated by the first irradiation of a Spot Scanning Proton Arc (SPArc) plan at the Beaumont Health Proton Therapy in Michigan and the first Flash irradiation in an IBA gantry treatment room at the University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG) in The Netherlands. Continued commitment to develop clinically relevant proton therapy treatment innovations to patients with the launch of the Victoria Advisory Committee, a consortium of worldwide radiation therapy experts to help define the future of Proton Therapy care, at the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) in October. Hosting of the 8th Annual Proteus User Meeting in Miami providing a platform for open dialogue, technical and clinical discussions, collaboration and real-time feedback from the worlds largest and most experienced proton therapy community, with more than 165 participants representing 40 sites in 17 countries. Dosimetry As explained earlier, the Dosimetry division has been accounted for as an Asset Held for Sale at the end of FY18 and its net profit is included in the P&L as a Discontinued Operation. Dosimetry showed a FY18 net profit of EUR 3.2 million, up 29% (2017: EUR 2.5 million). Dosimetry order intake remained close to prior year levels, while sales were down 6.3% mainly due to slower backlog conversion. Gross margin slightly decreased versus 2017, whilst the overall profit margin was more favourable as a result of sustained cost control. Active discussions are currently ongoing on a sale of this division and the Company expect to inform the market of the outcome of these discussions in Q2 2019. ***ENDS*** The conference call will be held on Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 15:00 CET / 14:00 GMT / 10:00 EDT / 07:00 PDT and can be accessed online at: http://arkadinemea-events.adobeconnect.com/iba2103/event/registration.html If you would like to participate in the Q&A, please dial (PIN code 74657221#): Belgium: +3224035816 UK: +442071943759 NL: +31207095119 LU: +35227300163 US: +16467224916 FR: +33172727403 The presentation will be available on IBAs investor relations website and on https://iba-worldwide.com/content/full-year-2018-results-web-conference-presentation shortly before the call. To ensure a timely connection, it is recommended that users register at least 10 minutes prior to the scheduled webcast. Financial calendar First Quarter 2019 Business Update Wednesday, May 8, 2019 General Assembly Wednesday May 8, 2019 First Half 2019 Results Thursday, August 22, 2019 Third Quarter 2018 Business Update Thursday, November 14, 2019 About IBA IBA (Ion Beam Applications S.A.) is a global medical technology company focused on bringing integrated and innovative solutions for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The company is the worldwide technology leader in the field of proton therapy, considered the most advanced form of radiation therapy available today. IBAs proton therapy solutions are flexible and adaptable, allowing customers to choose from universal full-scale proton therapy centers as well as compact, single room solutions. In addition, IBA also has a radiation dosimetry business and develops particle accelerators for the medical world and industry. Headquartered in Belgium and employing about 1,500 people worldwide, IBA has installed systems across the world. IBA is listed on the pan-European stock exchange NYSE EURONEXT (IBA: Reuters IBAB.BR and Bloomberg IBAB.BB). More information can be found at: www.iba-worldwide.com *ProteusONE and ProteusPLUS are brand names of Proteus 235 For further information, please contact: IBA Soumya Chandramouli Chief Financial Officer +32 10 475 890 Investorrelations@iba-group.com Thomas Ralet Head of Corporate Communication +32 10 475 890 communication@iba-group.com For media and investor enquiries: Consilium Strategic Communications Jonathan Birt, Matthew Neal, Angela Gray, Lizzie Seeley +44 (0) 20 3709 5700 IBA@consilium-comms.com Attachment WAYNE, Pa., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Teleflex Incorporated (NYSE:TFX) today announced that multiple studies were presented at the 2019 European Association of Urology (EAU) meeting in Barcelona, Spain, highlighting the effectiveness of the UroLift System, a minimally invasive treatment, usually performed in-office that provides rapid relief and recovery from the symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).1,2 BPH, also known as enlarged prostate, is a common condition marked by bothersome urinary symptoms that can cause loss of productivity, depression, interrupted sleep, and decreased quality of life.3 BPH affects over 40 million men in the United States alone.4 If left untreated, the condition can worsen over time and cause permanent bladder damage.5 A presentation entitled Pulling The Foley: Can the Prostatic Urethral Lift be used in men with catheter-dependent urinary retention? was presented by Thomas Mueller, M.D., urologist of New Jersey Urology (Voorhees, N.J.). The study highlighted real-world retrospective data from a study of 30 men with urinary retention treated with the UroLift System. Since a significant number of men with BPH also have urinary retention that requires a catheter, Dr. Muellers objective for the study was to determine whether the UroLift System would be an effective treatment for this patient population. Men with active urinary retention have been previously excluded from PUL studies. Our study confirmed that the UroLift System is an effective treatment in a very complex cohort, with 83 percent of men with urinary retention catheter-free in less than three days, said Dr. Mueller. We also found significant improvement in prostatic symptom score, quality of life and post-void residuals, further demonstrating the effectiveness of the UroLift System treatment for men with BPH. The UroLift System was highlighted in three additional presentations at the EAU meeting: Novel treatment strategies in Benign Prostatic Obstruction (BPO) presented by Henry Woo, M.D., professor of surgery (urology), University of Sydney, Australia Minimally-invasive surgical therapies for Benign Prostatic Obstruction (BPO) presented by Zorn K., M.D., assistant professor of urology and director of robotic surgery of University of Montreal, Canada What is the optimal treatment for patients with male LUTS? presented by Christian Gratzke, M.D., professor and chair of the urology department of Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany Dr. Muellers real-world study and the other presentations shared at EAU are consistent with the value proposition of the UroLift System treatment for patients with BPH, said Dave Amerson, president of Teleflex Interventional Urology business unit. These findings add to an extensive bank of clinical and real-world evidence affirming that the UroLift System is a safe and effective minimally invasive treatment that allows patients to achieve lasting relief from the burdensome symptoms of BPH. The UroLift System is the only minimally invasive treatment option that has been shown to provide rapid and durable symptomatic and urinary flow rate improvement without causing sexual dysfunction.*1,6-9 The Prostatic Urethral Lift procedure is recommended for the treatment of BPH in both the American Urological Association and European Association of Urology clinical guidelines. *No instances of new, sustained erectile or ejaculatory dysfunction. About the UroLift System The FDA-cleared UroLift System is a proven, minimally invasive technology for treating lower urinary tract symptoms due to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). The UroLift permanent implants, delivered during a minimally invasive transurethral outpatient procedure, relieve prostate obstruction and open the urethra directly without cutting, heating, or removing prostate tissue. Clinical data from a pivotal 206-patient randomized controlled study showed that patients with enlarged prostate receiving UroLift implants reported rapid and durable symptomatic and urinary flow rate improvement without compromising sexual function. *1,2 Patients also experienced significant improvement in quality of life. Over 100,000 men have been treated with the UroLift System worldwide. Most common adverse events reported include hematuria, dysuria, micturition urgency, pelvic pain, and urge incontinence. Most symptoms were mild to moderate in severity and resolved within two to four weeks after the procedure. The Prostatic Urethral Lift procedure using the UroLift System is recommended for the treatment of BPH in both the American Urological Association and European Association of Urology clinical guidelines. The UroLift System is available in the U.S., Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico and South Korea. Learn more at www.UroLift.com . About Teleflex Interventional Urology The Teleflex Interventional Urology Business Unit is dedicated to developing innovative, minimally invasive and clinically effective devices that address unmet needs in the field of urology. Our initial focus is on improving the standard of care for patients with BPH using the UroLift System, a minimally invasive permanent implant system that treats symptoms while preserving normal sexual function. Learn more at www.NeoTract.com . About Teleflex Incorporated Teleflex is a global provider of medical technologies designed to improve the health and quality of peoples lives. We apply purpose driven innovation a relentless pursuit of identifying unmet clinical needs to benefit patients and healthcare providers. Our portfolio is diverse, with solutions in the fields of vascular and interventional access, surgical, anesthesia, cardiac care, urology, emergency medicine and respiratory care. Teleflex employees worldwide are united in the understanding that what we do every day makes a difference. For more information, please visit www.Teleflex.com . Teleflex is the home of Arrow, Deknatel, Hudson RCI, LMA, Pilling, Rusch, UroLift and Weck trusted brands united by a common sense of purpose. Dr. Thomas Mueller is a paid consultant to NeoTract | Teleflex Interventional Urology. Contacts: For Teleflex Incorporated: Jake Elguicze, 610.948.2836 Treasurer and Vice President, Investor Relations Media: Nicole Osmer, 650.454.0504 nicole@healthandcommerce.com *No instances of new, sustained erectile or ejaculatory dysfunction 1. Roehrborn, J Urology 2013 LIFT Study 2. Shore, Can J Urol 2014 Local Study 3. Speakman et al. 2014 BJUI International 4. NeoTract US Market Model estimates for 2018 based on IQVIA Health Drug and Procedure data 5. Tubaro et al. 2003 Drugs Aging 6. AUA BPH Guidelines 2003, 2010, 2018 7. Naspro, Eur Urol 2009 8. Montorsi, J Urol 2008 9. McVary, J Sex Med 2016 MAC01000-01 Rev A VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc. (CSE: AGN) (FRANKFURT: AGW) (OTCB: BTHCF) (the Company or Algernon) a clinical stage pharmaceutical development company is pleased to announce that Dr. Arun Sanyal, a leading global expert and clinician in the area of chronic liver disease, has joined the Algernon Medical and Scientific Advisory Board. Arun Sanyal, MD, has developed, mediated and encouraged global liver research as a physician-scientist for 25 years. Currently, Dr. Sanyal is the Vlahcevic Chair of Medicine in the department of Internal Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and Director of the KL2 program in the Center for Clinical and Translational Research at VCU. His esteemed medical career has spanned the spectrum of translational science in liver cirrhosis, NASH and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), with a particular focus on obesity and cardiovascular affects related to liver disease. Dr. Sanyal is a past President of the AASLD (American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases), and has chaired committees at the NIDDK NASH clinical research network and the NIH hepatobiliary study section. He recently received the 2018 Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. The award signifies 30 years of research including 17 continuous years of National Institutes of Health funding, the development of therapeutics reducing liver disease across the globe, and countless international leadership roles and awards. Dr. Sanyal continues to lead a number of major drug trials for the treatment of NASH with the support of his research nurses, fellow post-doctoral staff-members and laboratory professionals. Dr. Sanyal has published numerous liver disease papers in leading medical journals and periodicals throughout his career. I am very pleased that Dr. Sanyal accepted our invitation to join the Algernon Advisory Board, said Christopher J, Moreau, CEO of Algernon pharmaceuticals. He has made significant contributions as a global thought leader in the area of chronic liver disease and we look forward to both his medical and scientific guidance and direction as we advance towards our first human clinical trials. About Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc. Algernon Pharmaceuticals is a clinical stage pharmaceutical development company focused on advancing its lead compounds for of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), chronic kidney disease (CKD) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). CONTACT INFORMATION Christopher J. Moreau CEO Algernon Pharmaceuticals Inc. 604.398.4175 ext 701 info@algernonpharmaceuticals.com investors@algernonpharmaceuticals.com www.algernonpharmaceuticals.com The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not in any way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. CAUTIONARY DISCLAIMER STATEMENT: No Securities Exchange has reviewed nor accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release. This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to product development, licensing, commercialization and regulatory compliance issues and other statements that are not historical facts. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as will, may, should, anticipate, expects and similar expressions. All statements other than statements of historical fact, included in this release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Companys expectations include the failure to satisfy the conditions of the relevant securities exchange(s) and other risks detailed from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulations. The reader is cautioned that assumptions used in the preparation of any forward-looking information may prove to be incorrect. Events or circumstances may cause actual results to differ materially from those predicted, as a result of numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking information. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company will update or revise publicly any of the included forward-looking statements as expressly required by applicable law. ATLANTA, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GIGA Data Centers , LLC (GIGA), a new breed of data center provider creating affordable, hyper-scale performing facilities with unprecedented energy efficiency, announced today that company CEO, Jake Ring, has been selected by DCD>New York to convey the benefits of new modular data center enclosures. Taking place on April 9th at the New York Marriott Marquis, NY, at 12:50 pm in Hall 2, Mr. Ring will detail how next-gen modular enclosures realize rack-power densities that support loads 5-times higher than typical colocation facilitiesat significantly lower price points. View how data centers can be built quickly , without the need for a chilled water system, CRAC/CRAH units, or raised floor here: https://bit.ly/2HFYtwz . According to DCD>New York, 80% of traditional data centers are set to be obsolete by 2020 and enterprises must evolve to remain competitivebest-practice sharing and accelerated technology adoption is key to solving this challenge. With a Power Use Efficiency (PUE) rating of < 1.15 and 60MW of capacity at 4.1 per kWhr, GIGAs new Mooresville, NC data center provides the ideal, real-world case study as a backdrop for event attendees to learn how high-performance computing is now within reach of any small to mid-sized enterprise organization. The typical colocation data center uses the decades-old tradition of raised-floors which is a higher-cost, less-efficient design and that tops out at 7kW per rack power density. By contrast, GIGAs WindChill System is ushering in a new era of modular enclosures that provide hot & cold aisle isolation and adiabatic cooling. With this ground-breaking method, we are able to realize rack-power densities beyond the reach of current colocation offerings. I am excited to be sharing these innovations with DCD>New Yorks industry attendees, Mr. Ring said. To speak with Jake Ring at the DCD>New York event, please contact Betsey Rogers at betsey@bridgeviewmarketing.com . For more information on GIGA Data Centers, please visit the companys resource page at www.gigadatacenters.com/resources/ . About GIGA Data Centers Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, GIGA Data Centers (GIGA) takes a modern approach to building & operating data centers with innovative, modular technology that is proven to be more efficient than the decades-old tradition of facilities with raised floors as well as over-provisioned cooling and power systems. GIGA is motivated by the belief that all companies seeking data center colocation should have access to greater efficiency and flexibility at a reasonable price. The result is a guaranteed PUE of 1.15, up to 50kW per rack-cabinet, and an immensely scalable design delivered at very competitive rates. A $1.14 billion after-tax NPV with 8% discount rate and a 50% IRR at an average price $11,882/t LCE Significant cash flows generation over a 35-year life of mine drive a rapid payback of 1 year and 8 months provide a variety of financing alternatives Maiden Proven and Probable Reserves of 1.3Mt of LCE with 790 mg/l Lithium Low pre-production capital cost of $319 million (excluding deferred and sustaining capital costs) and low operating costs of $2,914/t LCE Life of mine average annual production of 20,000t LCE (battery grade) with significant potential to expand with reserves being only 32% of entire resource Well known processing, with conventional evaporation pond operations followed by purification and precipitation of lithium carbonate Significant opportunities to further improve the project economics, such as increasing higher-grade zone reserve, include by-products and phased expansions TORONTO, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Neo Lithium Corp. (Neo Lithium or the Company) (TSXV: NLC; OTCQX: NTTHF; FSE: NE2) is pleased to announce positive results of a prefeasibility study (PFS) prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101) for its wholly-owned Tres Quebradas lithium brine project ("3Q Project") in Catamarca Province, Argentina. The technical report summarizing the PFS is being prepared by GHD Chile SA ("GHD") and Groundwater Insight Inc., in accordance with NI 43-101 (the Technical Report). GHD is a leading independent engineering services firm with extensive experience in projects developments with some of the largest and lowest cost lithium brine processing facilities in Chile and Argentina. Groundwater Insight Inc. is a technical consultancy with lithium brine experience on more than 18 salars in exploration or production stages.The reserve estimation in the Technical Report was done by groundwater numerical model experts IHLLA Research Group under the supervision of Groundwater Insight Inc. (Groundwater Insight). Golder SA and G&T Ingenieria SA also collaborated in the study. Waldo Perez, President and CEO of Neo Lithium, commented, "With the discovery of a high-grade core, we optimised the 3Q Project development plan with respect to our Preliminary Economic Assessment. The new capex and opex, together with a long life of mine and high-grade brine, allow us to present a superior IRR of 50%. Furthermore, we currently continue drilling the high grade core and we are now able to validate that the 3Q Project still has further significant high-grade resource upside potential. The PFS represents a comprehensive study of the technical and economic viability of the 3Q Project and has advanced to a stage where a preferred processing method has been established and an effective method of mineral processing has been determined. PFS Highlights Unless otherwise indicated, all dollar amounts in this press release are stated in U.S. dollars ($). Currency exchange is based on current rates. Description PEA PFS After-Tax Net Present Value ("NPV") @ 8% Discount Rate $1,200 million US$1,144 million After-Tax Internal Rate of Return ("IRR") 27.9% 49.9% Initial Capital Expenditures $490.2 million US$318.9 million Cash Operating Costs (per tonne of lithium carbonate) $2,791 $2,914 Average Annual Production (lithium carbonate) 35,000 20,000 Mine Life 20 years 35 years Payback Period (from commencement of production) 2 years 1 year 8 months Note: By-products (such as potash, calcium chloride and boric acid) are not included in the Companys Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) 3Q Project NI 43-101 Technical Report, Catamarca, Argentina prepared by GHD with an effective date of December 12, 2017 (PEA) or PFS and could potentially add incremental value to the 3Q Project. We are delighted with the results of the PFS. We have improved the PEA results on all fronts, requiring a smaller capital investment for a similar NPV. The 3Q Project is now easier to build, easier to finance, and its larger size allows us to think in terms of potential phased expansions. The final value of this project will be realized over time, said Carlos Vicens CFO of Neo Lithium. Mineral Resources, Mineral Reserves and Mine Plan The Mineral Resources were defined in the Companys Updated Mineral Resource Estimate Technical Report on the 3Q Lithium Project, Catamarca Province, Argentina prepared by Groundwater Insight Inc. with an effective date of August 14, 2018 and summarized in the following table: High Grade Lithium Core (Cut-off 800 mg/L) Deposit at Large (Cut-off 400 mg/L) Measured Indicated M&I Inferred Measured Indicated M&I Inferred Volume [Mm3] 45.4 93.8 139 28.3 152 1,070 1,222 939 Average Lithium concentration (mg/L) 1,010 1,006 1,007 1,239 701 602 614 584 Lithium Carbonate Tonnage (rounded) 244,000 502,000 746,000 186,000 569,000 3,436,000 4,005,000 2,917,000 The strategy to maximize value at the 3Q Project was by first extracting the high-grade core brine with 5 wells strategically located in the middle of the high-grade component of the measured and indicated resource, with screens between 70 and 100 m. Early extraction of high-grade brine allows minimal sizing of early stage ponds. Grade is predicted to decrease with time, as progressively lower grade brine is extracted. Consequently, total pond area increases over the years. A numerical groundwater model was developed to support the reserve estimate and development of the 35-year mine plan. The model predicts a brine grade decrease over time and simulates additional brine recovery to maintain production at around 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent over the life of mine. The model simulates long term brine recovery, based on rigorous assembly of groundwater flow and solute transport parameters. The tonnage, grade, and classification of the Mineral Reserves captured within the PFS mine plan are summarized below. Year Brine Volume [Mm3] *** Average Li concentration [mg/l] *** Li metal [tonnes] LCE [tonnes] *Resources [%] Proven Probable Proven Probable 1 3.3 1,177 1,113 2,542 5,923 13,526 0.5 % 2-10 73 1,000 21,549 44,038 114,642 234,282 9 % 11-20 101 841 20,211 53,472 107,524 284,472 10 % 21-35 183 670 18,694 81,513 99,453 433,651 13 % Total 35 years production** 360 790 61,600 182,000 328,000 966,000 32 % *Total M&I resources 4,005,000 tonnes LCE @ 400 mg/l cut-off / ** Rounded / *** These two include some incidental capture from the inferred resource, which is excluded from the reserve estimate. In the initial 10 years of the PFS mine plan, 5 wells would each produce 51 l/s of high-grade brine. During the subsequent 10 years, the same wells would produce 64 l/s. From 20 years onward, a total of 11 wells would be in operation, with individual production rates between 23 l/s to 49 l/s. These variable brine recovery rates are designed to maintain a relatively constant production rate of approximately 20,000 tonnes of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (LCE). The required yields are reasonable within the known parameters of the brine aquifer. However, ample space exists within the resource for additional production wells, if required. The Company has already installed one production well capable of sustained production of 84 l/s from the high-grade zone. Proposed Mining Operation and Processing The PFS identifies the preferred development option as being a conventional evaporation pond operation followed by purification and precipitation of lithium carbonate. We have been working towards a mining plan and a process facility that maximizes the competitive advantages of the 3Q Project, which is high grade, with low impurities and a large size of resource, said Gabriel Pindar, Director and COO of Neo Lithium. The PFS has been tailor-made to the 3Q Project, while using proven technologies that have been utilized by major companies in the region to minimize operational and construction risks. The process begins with the extraction of brine from pumping wells into solar evaporation pre-concentration ponds. After a retention period of approximately 120 days, approximately 90% of the sodium chloride and other salts crystallizes out from the brine. The potash is harvested in a subsequent pond, with no requirement for reagents. Subsequently, the brine is transferred to calcium chloride precipitation ponds and thickeners are used to extract most of the calcium that precipitates as antarctite. Minor amounts of hydrochloric acid are required for pH control and to crystallize boric acid out of the brine. Residence time in the calcium chloride ponds is approximately 105 days. When the brine achieves a lithium concentration of 3.5%, it is transported to the brine processing plant. The total time to get to this stage is approximately 225 days and lithium recovery in the ponds is approximately 60%. Influent brine lithium grade is predicted to change over the mine life, from 1,177 mg/l in year 1 to 670 mg/l in year 35. Consequently, pre-concentration ponds must be expanded over time to keep production constant. In the initial phase, 406 hectares of pre-concentration ponds will be utilized. This will be followed by two expansions of 102 hectares, each in year 10 and year 20. The calcium chloride ponds and thickeners remain constant over the life of mine. Average production is 20,000 tonnes LCE per year, and the need for capital at the beginning of the project is minimized by mining the high grade first. Processing of the concentrated brine is achieved in four stages at two locations Fiambala y Recreo: Fiambala (100 Km. from Salar 3 Quebradas) Solvent Extraction to remove remaining boron; Sulfatation to remove remaining calcium adding a saturated solution of sodium sulfate; Recreo (465 Km. from Fiambala) Mix with mother liquor and minor soda ash to remove traces of calcium and magnesium; and Addition of soda ash and heat to precipitate lithium carbonate, followed by drying and packaging. Recovery in the sulfatation plant is 92% and recovery in the carbonation plant is 85%. The Company is now operating a 1:500 scale pilot plant in Fiambala, to fine-tune this standard method. The general approach has been proven in industry by major producers, to achieve battery grade lithium carbonate. Key parameters that provide the basis for the PFS and other qualifications and assumptions are provided below. Capital Costs Initial capital costs are estimated at approximately $319 million. Life-of-mine deferred and sustaining capital costs are estimated at approximately $207 million, and closure costs are estimated at approximately $26 million. Details for capital costs could be found in the table below: Description ($ Million) Direct Costs Evaporation Ponds and Wells $128.1 Plant Facilities and Equipment $55.8 Infrastructure and Others $63.7 Direct Costs Subtotal $247.7 Indirect Costs $24.1 Contingency $47.1 Total Initial Capital Costs $318.9 Deferred and Sustaining Capital Costs $206.7 Closure Costs $26.3 Note: numbers may not match exactly due to rounding. Operating Costs Average operating costs per tonne processed are as follows: Description $000/yr $/tonne Li2CO3 (lithium carbonate) Direct Costs Chemical Reactives and Reagents $27,989 $1,469 Salt Harvesting Equipment $1,867 $98 Energy $6,055 $318 Brine Transport $5,075 $266 Manpower $8,019 $420 Li2CO3 Transport $1,694 $89 Maintenance $1,527 $78 Direct Costs Subtotal $52,225 $2,740 Indirect Costs General Expenses $3,310 $174 Production Total Costs $55,535 $2,914 Note: numbers may not match exactly due to rounding. Lithium Markets and Price Neo Lithium commissioned a market study by Benchmark Minerals Ltd. in December 2018, which shows the following results: $/tonne Year 2021 2022 2023 2024 Average onwards Lithium Carbonate 14,100 16,000 14,800 11,500 11,606 The average lithium carbonate pricing estimate over the life of mine is approximately $11,882 per tonne. Base Case Sensitivity Analysis Discount Rate NPV After Tax US$ Million IRR After Tax NPV Pre Tax US$ Million IRR Pre Tax 6% $1,331 $2,004 8% $1,144 49.9% $1,547 60.3% 10% $956 $1,224 Future Work Neolithium intend to now complete a full feasibility study to further validate and detail the elements outlined in the Pre-Feasibility Study. At reserve level, it is recommended to extend drilling at depth of the high-grade zone below the already drilled 100 metres. Definition of additional high-grade resources could have a significant impact on pond requirements, with the possibility to increase production with fewer ponds. This program is already in process, and the first drilling results are expected soon. Additional long-term pumping tests in the high-grade zone are also recommended to test the aquifer in production scale pumping scenarios. Currently, the Company is carrying out a 20 days long term pumping test that is almost completed. The pilot plant operation, currently in the commissioning and testing phase, is critical to complete the feasibility study and to prove the concept of the plant facility to yield battery grade lithium carbonate. The final feasibility study must consider the economics of by-products including potash, calcium chloride and boric acid, all readily available with minor additional investment. The recommended feasibility study is expected to be completed in the first half of 2020. Environmental and Permitting Considerations Neo Lithium is fully permitted for the current work program, through feasibility and up to construction. The Company has completed the baseline studies and is now completing the final environmental impact assessment report for mine construction. The report is expected to be delivered to the mining authorities in Argentina imminently. Technical Information The Technical Report will be filed on SEDAR within 45 days of the date of this news release. The PFS is being prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 by GHD and Groundwater Insight, in conjunction with a team of globally recognized consultants. The two independent qualified experts that lead the team of consultants are: Gino Zandonai, P.Eng., a Chilean Professional Mining Engineer and competent person under CRISCO#0155, is the independent qualified person signing the report for GHD Chile SA; and Mark King, Ph.D., P.Geo., a Canadian Professional Geoscientist registered with the Association of Professional Geoscientists of Nova Scotia, is the independent qualified person signing the report for Groundwater Insight. These two qualified persons under NI 43-101 have reviewed that the technical information in respect to the PFS in this press release is accurate and approve the written disclosure of such information. Other than as set forth above, all scientific and technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed, verified, and approved by Mr. Perez, Ph.D. and P.Geo., CEO and Director of Neo Lithium, and a qualified person for the purposes of NI 43-101, and also supervised the preparation of and approved the contents of this news release. Project Financing The PFS defines the major economic parameters of the 3Q Project. The Company now has a strong foundation to discuss various financial options to move the project forward, following strategic discussions with multiple partners during 2018. "The robust project economics generated from the PFS further validates our view that the 3Q Project is an exceptional project, particularly when our industry faces unprecedented growth and it needs predictable, long term, low cost producers, noted Constantine Karayannopoulos, Chairman of Neo Lithium Corp. We are not short of options, and the next step is a careful analysis of how to maximize value for our shareholders. About Neo Lithium Corp. Neo Lithium Corp. has quickly become a prominent new name in lithium brine exploration by virtue of its high quality 3Q Project and experienced team. Already well capitalized, Neo Lithium is rapidly advancing its recently discovered 3Q Project - a unique high-grade lithium brine lake and salar complex in Latin Americas Lithium Triangle. The 3Q Project is located in the Province of Catamarca, the largest lithium producing area in Argentina. The project covers approximately 35,000 ha and the salar complex within this area is approximately 16,000 ha. The technical team that has discovered the 3Q Project characterized this unique salar complex as one of the most experienced in lithium salars. For example, this team discovered and led the technical work, including resource definition and full feasibility study, that established the Cauchari lithium salar as one of the largest lithium brine resources in the world. Additional information regarding Neo Lithium Corp. is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com under the Company's profile and at its website at www.neolithium.ca, including various pictures of ongoing work at the project. For further information, please contact: Neo Lithium Corp. Carlos Vicens cvicens@neolithium.ca Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements - Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements include but are not limited to, statements as to lithium brine grades at depth being consistent with surface results, the potential for resource expansion at depth, the potential of the northern salar sediments, and deeper sediments, for hosting brine, the ability to proceed to scoping studies quickly, proceeding with continued work for additional economic studies the potential for production expansion in the Companys assessment of the economic potential of the 3Q Project, that test results are indicative of future results, and the additional of additional independent directors. Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as plans, expects or is expected, scheduled, estimates intends, anticipates, believes, or variations of such words and phrases, or statements that certain actions, events or results can, may, could, would, should, might or will, occur or be achieved, or the negative connotations thereof. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company, which could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from the future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. These risks include, without limitation, risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms, political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration activities, including environmental regulation, risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill and sample results, risks related to the uncertainty of cost and time estimation and the potential for unexpected delays, costs and expenses, risks related to metal price fluctuations, the market for lithium products, competition for experienced directors in the junior mineral exploration and development sector, and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Companys disclosure record. Although the Company believes its expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions and has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended and undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. SUNRISE, Fla., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Profile Solutions, Inc. (OTC Pink: PSIQ) announces it has granted the exclusive distribution rights to Paraguay, Chile and Brazil to RCS International Investments, Corp. (RCS) with first year minimum guarantee of $ 500,000 and 20% growth per year thereafter. RCS previously executed an exclusive distribution agreement with PSIQ for Mexico and Argentina on November 27th, 2018. In December 2017, Paraguays Congress passed a bill creating a state-sponsored system to import marijuana seeds and grow the plant for medical use. See https://420intel.com/regional/paraguay. In January 2018, president Horacio Cartes officially signed the medical cannabis bill that approved the legalization of medical cannabis. This bill removed marijuana from the list of the countrys most dangerous drugs and, in effect, re-categorized it as a medication instead. See https://panampost.com/sabrina-martin/2018/01/09/paraguay-legalizes-marijuana-for-medicinal-and-scientific-use-under-state-control/?cn-reloaded=1. In November 2018, Brazils Senate approved a bill that would legalize home growing of medical marijuana. Only patients, patient associations or relatives would be authorized to grow and produce medical marijuana if the measure becomes law. Currently, the only legal way of accessing medical marijuana in Brazil is to import product individually, with approval on a case-by-case basis. Because importing products is so expensive, home growing would increase access to a large number of patients that today cant even dream of having access to legal imported cannabis, Margarete Brito, general coordinator of APEPI, an association of medical cannabis patients, told Marijuana Business Daily. See https://mjbizdaily.com/brazil-looks-to-home-grows-to-expand-medical-marijuana-access-but-is-it-enough/. In 2014, Chile legalized the cultivation of medical cannabis. Cultivators must get a license from the Chilean Agriculture Service. Sale of medical cannabis is only allowed through prescription at pharmacies. https://www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com/article/cannabis-legalization-world-map/ Based upon the success and commitment being made in Mexico and Argentina by RCS, we have granted additional distribution rights to RCS. We expect the relationship with RCS to continue to flourish to increasing revenues for PSIQ, stated Dan Oran, CEO of PSIQ. ABOUT RCS INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENTS CORP. RCS International Investments, Corp. (RCS) formed in 2004 is a leading distributor of electronic equipment, hardware, video games, screen cameras, video games consoles, games and accessories from the United States to Argentina. RCS main suppliers are Florida Games, WIT, Fair Price, Innovations Computers, Apple (corporation account), Solutions to go (Sony Corporation), F & E and 888. ABOUT PROFILE SOLUTIONS, INC. Profile Solutions, Inc., through its subsidiary Elite Products International, Inc., is a leading distributor and manufacturer in the cannabinoid (CBD) industry. The Company's products contain cutting-edge CBD industrial hemp extracts in the form of edibles, creams, oils, salves and others. Financial information can be found at www.otcmarkets.com/stock/PSIQ/profile. Please visit the company website at www.profilesolutionsinc.com, Facebook at www.facebook.com/EliteProductsINTL/, Instagram at www.instagram.com/elite_hemp/, Linkedin at www.linkedin.com/in/elite-hemp-products-3a863914a/, Twitter at www.twitter.com/incprofile Blog at www.elitehempproducts.com/blog. SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT This press release contains forward-looking statements that can be identified by terminology such as "believes," "expects," "potential," "plans," "suggests," "may," "should," "could," "intends," or similar expressions. Many forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results or implied by such statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, our ability to continue to enhance our products and systems to address industry changes, our ability to expand our customer base and retain existing customers, our ability to effectively compete in our market segment, the lack of public information on our company, our ability to raise sufficient capital to fund our business, operations, our ability to continue as a going concern, and a limited public market for our common stock, among other risks. Many factors are difficult to predict accurately and are generally beyond the company's control. Forward-looking statements speak only as to the date they are made and we do not undertake to update forward-looking statements to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the date the forward-looking statements are made. SANTA MONICA, CA, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Oliveda International, Inc. (OTC Pink: OLVI), a leading international natural cosmetics and wearable beauty and health technology innovator, today announced that it has signed an engagement letter to retain a PCAOB-registered independent public accounting firm to conduct an audit of its annual financial statements for 2017 and 2018, bringing OLVI a step closer to its stated goal of filing financial reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Audited annual financials will also meet a requirement of the OTCQB Venture Market, in the event that OLVI decides to apply for an upgrade on the OTC Markets Group platform. Oliveda International, Inc. expects to have its 2018 annual financial report and disclosure statement posted on the OTC Markets Group website within the next two weeks. In addition to the audit of the 2017 and 2018 annual financial statements, OLVIs legal representatives are expected to begin preparing the company to file financials and information statements with the SEC. The next step in Olivedas Internationals upgrade as a U.S. public company is to ensure the highest degree of transparency for our shareholders and all investors, commented Chairman and CEO Thomas Lommel. Qualifying as an SEC-reporting company, as well as for the OTCQB Venture Market, will better position OLVI to initiate its expansion into new markets in North America and Asia. We very much look forward to our stockholders seeing the financial results for year-end 2018, which we expect to show continued revenue growth and very positive indicators for this year. OLVIs quarterly and annual financial reports and disclosure statements can be found on the OTC Markets website at https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/OLVI/disclosure. Oliveda International Inc. Founded in 2003 by German real estate investor Thomas Lommel, Oliveda International, Inc. is a leading international natural cosmetic company in the premium segment. The company has also developed a globally-unique wearable beauty and health technology. In addition to online sales and a global branch network of 650 retail stores, the companys wholly owned Oliveda Deutschland GmbH subsidiary operates flagship stores, Olive Tree Pharmacy, in Berlin and Dusseldorf with plans to open new locations in Los Angeles, Taipei and Seoul. Overall, the company believes that it will be able to operate a total of 60 of its own flagship stores worldwide and increase the retail store network worldwide to 1,200 over the next five years. Through subsidiary operations, Oliveda International is the largest investor in eco-certified mountain olive trees as well as the largest conservationist in Arroyomolinos de Leo, Spain. Further information on Oliveda International can be found at http://www.oliveda.com and http://www.olivetreepeople.com. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain statements, estimates or projections that constitute "forward-looking statements" pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. federal securities laws. Generally, the words "believe," "expect," "intend," "estimate," "anticipate," "project," "will" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, which generally are not historical in nature. Forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, which may be found in the Companys filings with OTC Markets Group Inc., that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's historical experience and present expectations or projections. Investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. The Company expressly disclaims any obligation or intention to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements unless otherwise required by law. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Yield Growth Corp. (CSE:BOSS) (OTCQB:BOSQF) (Frankfurt:YG3) is pleased to announce its new cannabis wellness brand, Wright & Well, will be launching in Oregon. The products are intended to help relieve pain and anxiety, and will be sold through a distribution network of 400 retail cannabis stores. The initial nine products include THC and CBD oils, analgesic topical gel with THC and CBD, pain balm with THC and CBD, massage oil with THC and CBD, and three types of capsules containing THC and Ayurvedic herbal formulations, blended with ingredients that have historically been used to treat arthritis and chronic pain. We are excited by the imminent launch of the Wright & Well product line in Oregon, says Yield Growth CEO Penny Green. With our new cannabis products, our goal is to reach as many people as possible who are suffering from anxiety, stress and pain. We plan to use the upcoming Oregon launch as a blueprint to launch this brand in other markets such as California, Nevada and Canada. Wright & Well branded products will be launching in the legal cannabis market in Oregon, and will serve the growing number of wellness-minded people seeking new ways to take control of their health. Sophisticated, familiar and intelligent, the new brand aims to demystify the world of cannabis and make it more accessible for a wider audience. Yield Growth worked with an expert branding agency over several months to position the new brand. Wright & Well invites users to experience a sense of freedomby looking and feeling their best, and by deciding to purchase from a brand designed especially for them. Familiar, sophisticated and thoughtful, the name is a homonym: when spoken, it is Right and Well, which evokes the idea of proper and healthy. Wright means a maker of, so Wright & Well also means a maker of health. The brand intentionally stands out from the others in this space, and is designed to cultivate affinity with a new, savvy group of consumers, making the decision to purchase an easy one. Wright & Well will appeal to people who are a step ahead in finding health solutions that are right for them, says Bhavna Solecki, Director of Product & Content at Urban Juve. The products will stand out in the marketplace because they are the first to use our patent-pending hemp root oil. Hemp root oil complements and enhances our products with therapeutic healing compounds that provide superior transdermal absorption due to the unique terpene profile. Wright & Well products are formulated with proprietary formulas using carefully selected cannabis strains, and the pain balm, topical gel and massage oil contain hemp root oil. About The Yield Growth Corp. The Yield Growth Corp. intends to disrupt the wellness market, which is a $4.2 Trillion Global Economy according to the Global Wellness Institute, by connecting ancient healing with modern science, and harnessing the power of hemp- and cannabis-infused products. It is a vertically integrated asset company with the leadership, financial position and science-backed formulas to capitalize on the cannabis revolution. The Yield Growth management team has deep experience with global brands including Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, MAC Cosmetics, Skechers, Best Buy, Aritzia, Coca-Cola and Pepsi Corporation. Yield Growth serves mainstream luxury consumers who seek sophisticated wellness products. Its flagship consumer brand, Urban Juve, has registered 35 products with Health Canada and has signed 70 retail locations to sell its products. Key ingredients in these products include Cannabis Sativa hemp seed oil and hemp root oil, created using Urban Juves proprietary, patent-pending extraction technology. Urban Juve has also filed 11 provisional patents in the United States. Through its subsidiaries, Yield Growth is commercializing over 70 wellness and cosmetic products and has multiple revenue streams including licensing, incubation services and product sales. For more information about Yield Growth, visit www.yieldgrowth.com or follow @yieldgrowth on Instagram. Visit www.urbanjuve.com and #findyourjuve across social platforms to learn, engage and shop. Investor Relations Contacts: Penny Green, President & CEO Kristina Pillon, Investor Relations invest@yieldgrowth.com 1-833-514-BOSS 1-833-514-2677 1-833-515-BOSS 1-833-515-2677 The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes forward-looking information and statements (collectively, forward looking statements) under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates, forecasts, beliefs and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks, uncertainties and factors include, but are not limited to: risks related to the development, testing, licensing, intellectual property protection, and sale of, and demand for, Urban Juve, UJ Topicals, UJ Beverages and UJ Edibles products, general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties, delay or failure to receive board or regulatory approvals where applicable, and the state of the capital markets. Yield Growth cautions readers not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements provided by Yield Growth, as such forward-looking statements are not a guarantee of future results or performance and actual results may differ materially. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and Yield Growth expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter statements containing any forward-looking information, or the factors or assumptions underlying them, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cf69743b-2d70-4d8e-a92c-d7b1bc4aa2ed WASHINGTON and OTTAWA, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Sustainable Forestry Initiative Inc. (SFI) announced 15 community grants today featuring collaboration between 78 partner organizations. The grants will help communities across the United States and Canada grow their relationship with forests and improve their quality of life. Through these grants, SFI is bringing together a diverse range of organizations to engage and educate youth; train and educate current and future practitioners; support and promote Indigenous, Tribal and Heritage values; and support underserved communities through forestry. Grant project leaders include conservation organizations, environmental education providers, forestsector nonprofit organizations and community and Indigenous groups. The grants have a broad impact and involve organizations such as the North American Forest Partnership, Ohio State University, Michigan State University, and FPInnovations. Government agencies in Quebec, Vermont, Louisiana, Michigan, Arkansas, Georgia, and Ohio are also partners. SFI Program Participants, SFI Implementation Committees , and Project Learning Tree state networks are also involved. We are engaging in projects focused on strengthening communities where our SFI Program Participants operate, as well as working closely with our local grassroots network of SFI Implementation Committees and Project Learning Tree partners. Together, we are linking sustainably managed forests to community building, said Kathy Abusow, President and CEO of SFI Inc. SFI community grants are awarded through the SFI Conservation and Community Partnerships Grant Program , which is dedicated to improving forest conservation and strengthening the communities that depend on forests. These projects illustrate best practices and innovative approaches for partnerships focused on environmental sustainability and the quality of life in local communities. Support from SFI matters because its helping us create a chance for youth from West Coast communities to engage in local restoration efforts and learn about ecology and conservation. Stewardship and education opportunities for youth are a key component of healthy communities. By fostering a deeper connection to and understanding of local ecosystems and natural resources we are inspiring the next generation to take care of them, said Tom Balfour, Project Manager, Central Westcoast Forest Society. SFI is also supporting our community-building efforts directly through the SFI Community Engagement Fund , which directly supports the work of SFI Implementation Committees. SFI responds to local needs and issues across the U.S. and Canada through 34 SFI Implementation Committees at the state, provincial and regional level. The SFI community engagement fund has supported many of our new programs, like the Women Owning Woodlands (WOW) Network, that will be essential to educating our local forest landowner community. With the WOW Network, we will be able to both prepare women for active roles in managing family forests and inspire women to engage in sustainable forest management practices, said Emily Oakman, South Carolina Forestry Association Director of Landowner Outreach, Education and Programs. In addition to SFIs Community Grants, Project Learning Trees (PLT) GreenWorks! grants funds education projects. PLT, an initiative of SFI, is funding 23 GreenWorks! grants for schools and youth organizations to support environmental service-learning projects involving more than 1,000 students, from kindergarten to high school. SFI is funding the following community projects in 2019: Engaging and educating youth The Forest of Health/Bosque de Salud program, led by the Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods , educates underserved youth to encourage understanding, appreciation, and hands-on interaction with the natural world using Project Learning Tree (PLT) curriculum. By reaching youth, their parents, and their community, this program is a creative approach to exposing urban youth to trees and woodlands and encouraging their future care. The Earth Rangers School Clubs Program and Clubs Missions will increase engagement in the natural world. It leverages Earth Rangers extensive reach into schools through a new school clubs program that teachers and students can engage with year-round. The project will also inform teachers across Canada about Project Learning Tree (PLT) Canada . EdVentures for Educators supports teachers to help them develop understanding and expertise in environmental science education through an immersive two-day professional development education event, hosted by the Environmental Education Association of Illinois . The training will include academic instruction, field experience, leadership development, and it will incorporate PLT curriculum and activities. The Teacher Conservation Tour Workshop Series is an extensive PLT-focused, educator workshop, led by the Arkansas Forestry Association Education Foundation , which focuses on the environmental, ecological, and economic benefits of Arkansass forestlands and timber industries. Camp Canopy for Teenagers Interested in Forestry is a week-long camp for teenagers interested in forestry, wildlife, and conservation. Its goal is to educate youth and inspire them to explore the fields of forestry and wildlife, utilizing PLT curriculum. This project is supported by the Ohio Forestry Association and the Ohio SFI Implementation Committee . The Next Seven Generations: Supporting Indigenous Values and Improving Well-Being Through Forest Education is a program that promotes environmental literacy, well-being and traditional Lakota values to engage underserved youth from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It is led by South Dakota Project Learning Tree , and supported by the Central Rockies SFI Implementation Committee. Training and educating current and future practitioners The National Knowledge Exchange Program , from the Canadian Institute of Forestry , provides an effective way to support ongoing training of forest professionals who in many cases work in remote areas with limited access to professional development. The program has a strong focus on engaging and educating youth given that many of the targeted forestry professionals are in the early stages of their careers. Managed Forests for Birds: Spreading the Word Across the Landscape , led by the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) , will deliver a workshop in partnership with the Louisiana SFI Implementation Committee, to facilitate an open discussion of forest management and bird habitat conditions among SFI Program Participants, forest owners, and wildlife, forestry, and harvesting professionals. It will complement an ongoing ABC project: Bringing Back the Forest Birds, Phase II . Recruiting and Retaining the Next Generation of Multicultural Forestry Professionals , led by the Michigan State University College of Agriculture and Natural Resources , is designed to help address concerns over declining enrollments in forestry and related natural resource degree programs. The program is also focused on increasing the capacity of high school teachers to integrate forestry principles into STEM curriculums through Project Learning Tree workshops. Expanding SFI Engagement in Vermont Through Project Learning Tree Educator Recruitment and Green Careers Program Development is a program to encourage greater participation in the SFI Program through green careers programming and training student teachers. The program is led by the Vermont SFI Implementation Committee and includes Project Learning Tree Vermont. Safe Driving on Forest Roads, led by Workplace Safety North , will help the forest products sector enhance the safety of Canadas trucking industry. This program will design a set of best practices for driving as a framework for teaching in classrooms and online learning environments. The South Carolina WOW (Women Owning Woodlands) Network is recruiting, engaging, and teaching female participants about sustainable forest management. Evidence suggests that women will play a large role in the future of forests, making final end-of-life land use decisions that could lead to conservation or development. The project is led by the South Carolina SFI Implementation Committee . Supporting and promoting Indigenous, Tribal and Heritage values The Sustainable Management of American Marten project, led by the Cree Trappers Association and the Cree First Nation of Waswanipi , will create greater harmonization between traditional Cree trapping practices and sustainable forest development within the Cree territory. The program will also introduce Cree youth to scientific concepts and forestry career opportunities, and will provide opportunities to learn about their traditional way of life in a forest-based setting. The Ucluelet and Tofino Field School Education, Restoration and Monitoring Program, led by the Central Westcoast Forest Society , is focused on educating and engaging children in environmental management. It is reaching the surrounding First Nation communities of Toquaht, Hitacu, Esowista, Ty-histanis, Ahousaht, and Hesquiaht. Supporting underserved communities through forestry The Georgia Landowner Academy is supporting underserved communities in Georgia by focusing on addressing the challenges families face relating to heirs property. Heirs property refers to a home or land that passes from generation to generation without a legally designated owner. The Georgia Heirs Property Law Center, Inc . sponsors this project. About the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Inc. (SFI). SFI Inc. is a sustainability leader that stands for future forests. We are an independent, non-profit organization that provides supply chain assurances, delivers conservation leadership, and supports environmental education and community engagement. SFI works with the forest sector, brand owners, conservation groups, resource professionals, landowners, educators, local communities, Indigenous peoples, governments, and universities. SFI standards and on-product labels help consumers make responsible purchasing decisions. Additionally, we oversee the SFI Forest Partners Program, which aims to increase supply of certified forest products, the SFI Conservation and Community Partnerships Grant Program, which funds research and community building, and Project Learning Tree, which educates teachers and youth about forests and the environment. SFI Inc. is governed by an independent three chamber board of directors representing environmental, social, and economic sectors equally. SFI believes caring for forests improves everyones quality of life. Learn more: sfiprogram.org . About Project Learning Tree (PLT) Project Learning Tree is an initiative of SFI. PLT educates teachers and youth about forests and the environment. PLT encourages critical thinking to increase students understanding of the environment and actions they can take to conserve it. Learn more . About SFI Implementation Committees The SFI Program responds to local needs and issues across the U.S. and Canada through 34 SFI Implementation Committees at the state, provincial or regional level. This unique grassroots network involves private landowners, independent loggers, forestry professionals, Indigenous people, local government agencies and conservationists. Logger and forester training, to reach the thousands of independent contractors that are the key to the quality of forest harvesting operations, is a major focus. Learn more . Media Contact Daniel Pellegrom, Vice President, Communications 202-596-3452 / daniel.pellegrom@sfiprogram.org Community Contact Amy Doty, Senior Manager, Community Engagement 202.596.3458 / amy.doty@sfiprogram.org SFI Implementation Committee Contact Gordy Mouw, Director, SFI Program Participant Relations 715-220-4132 / gordy.mouw@sfiprogram.org TULSA, Okla., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (NYSE: HP) today announced that John Lindsay, President and CEO, Mark Smith, Vice President and CFO, Todd Benson, President of H&P Technologies, and Dave Wilson, Director of Investor Relations will attend the Scotia Howard Weil 47th Annual Energy Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana on Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26, 2019. John Lindsay and Todd Benson will present on behalf of the Company on Monday, March 25, 2019, at 1:15 p.m. U.S. Central Time. The investor slides to be used during the conference will be available for download on the Companys website . About Helmerich & Payne, Inc.: Founded in 1920, Helmerich & Payne, Inc. (H&P) (NYSE: HP) is committed to delivering industry leading drilling productivity and reliability. H&P operates with the highest level of integrity, safety and innovation to deliver superior results for our customers and returns for shareholders. Through its subsidiaries, the Company designs, fabricates and operates high-performance drilling rigs in conventional and unconventional plays around the world. H&P also develops and implements advanced automation, directional drilling and survey management technologies. For more information, visit www.hpinc.com . IR Contact: Dave Wilson, Director of Investor Relations 918-588-5190 investor.relations@hpinc.com THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES OR TO U.S. NEWS AGENCIES VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Asante Gold Corporation (CSE:ASE/ FRANKFURT:1A9) (Asante or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Abdel-Majeed Haroun to the Board of Directors. Dr. Haroun, a resident of Accra, Ghana, brings to the Board more than 30 years of hands-on experience in Ghanas two most important industries mining and agriculture. He has held the positions of Deputy Minister of Mines and Deputy Minister of Agriculture. He was also the Special Advisor to Vice President Alou Mahama on the Economy and International Relations. In addition, Dr. Haroun was the Senior Agricultural Economist for the Northern Region Rural Integrated Development Program in association with Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). As a Minister, he was the Chairman of the Steering Committee: for the EU43 million Mining Sector Support Project, Ministry of Mines; for the Root Crops Development Project, and the CIDA-CANADA/DFID-UK Policy Support Fund, Ministry of Food and Agriculture. He also served as a member on the Board of Ghana Oil Palm Company, and as Acting Managing Director of Prestea Sankofa Gold Ltd, a subsidiary of Ghana National Petroleum Corporation. Dr. Majeed co-founded and is the executive director of Africa Paulownia Silviculture and Environmental Conservation Institute, a consultancy focused on reclaiming galamsey-damaged land back to environmentally sustainable agricultural use. The Institute also focuses on research to halt desertification across the African Sahel. He is currently the CEO of the Northern Development Authority responsible for the financing and construction of the Infrastructure for Poverty Alleviation projects, the flagship vehicle to turn around the economies in the poorest regions of Ghana. Douglas MacQuarrie, President & CEO states, As the former CEO of PMI Gold Corporation, my team and I worked closely with Dr. Haroun to bring the abandoned Obotan mine (now the Asanko-Goldfield mine), back to life. This mine currently produces 223,000 oz of gold per year and has generated massive new investment, employment, and tax revenues for Ghana. Our shared vision to return this mine to production yielded significant capital gain opportunities to early PMI shareholders. We look forward to working with Dr. Haroun to bring the new SMD 1 mining technique developed by Anaconda Mining (TSX:ANX) 2 to Ghana, and in particular to our high grade Kubi and Keyhole gold projects. This technique has the potential to slash the mining costs, development time, and capital required to take near surface vein type gold deposits to production. The Company also announces the granting of 500,000 incentive options at a price of $0.10 per share for a term of 5 years. On behalf of the Board, "Douglas R. MacQuarrie" President and CEO 1 http://www.asantegold.com/news/asante-gold-explores-new-mining-technology-for-kubi-gold-project-ghana 2019. 2 https://www.anacondamining.com/narrow-vein-mining , 2019. https://disruptmining.com , 2019. Scientific and technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Douglas R. MacQuarrie, P.Geo. (B.C.) Geology & Geophysics, the President and CEO of the Company, who is a "qualified person" under NI 43-101. *Kubi Main Zone has a current NI 43-101 resource estimate, completed by SEMS Exploration Services Ltd. of Accra, Ghana: Measured Resources 0.66 million tonnes @ 5.30g/t for 112,000 ounces; Indicated Resources 0.66 million tonnes @ 5.65g/t for 121,000 ounces; and Inferred Resources 0.67 million tonnes @ 5.31g/t for 115,000 ounces, which is filed on SEDAR. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability . About Asante Gold Corporation Asante is continuing to source equity/debt or joint venture partner funding to develop the Kubi Mining Lease in Ghana as a potential near term mine; and exploring the Keyhole, Fahiakoba and Betenase concessions/options, all adjoining or along strike of major gold mines near the centre of Ghanas Golden Triangle. For further information, please contact: Douglas MacQuarrie, President and CEO, tel: +1 604-558-1134; E-mail: douglas@asantegold.com Doreen Kent, Shareholder Communications, tel: +1 604-948-9450; E-mail: d.kent@eastlink.ca Valentina Gvozdeva, Business Development, E-mail: valentina@asantegold.com Florian Riedl-Riedenstein, Director; European Investor Relations, E-mail: frram@aon.net Additional information is available on our web site at: www.asantegold.com Further information on Kubi is available at: http://www.asantegold.com/projects/kubi-gold-mine LEI Number: 529900F9PV1G9S5YD446 Neither IIROC nor any stock exchange or other securities regulatory authority accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SHARES ISSUED: 57,160,221 EL CENTRO, Calif., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Imperial County Behavioral Health Services is partnering with Alvarado Parkway Institute Behavioral Health System to bring Jackson House, a shortterm acute residential mental health and addictive disease treatment facility, to El Centro. This will add much needed behavioral healthcare beds to the community. With the support of Prop 63 the Mental Health Services Act, Imperial County Behavioral Health has been seeking innovative solutions to expand behavioral health service within the county. By identifying the specific level of care that best serves the largest need within the community, through public + private partnerships the county can cast a larger net with available funds to treat mental illness and substance use disorder. Andrea Kuhlen, Director of Imperial County Behavioral Services says, Imperial County faces a continual challenge of helping those who are struggling with mental illness. Behavioral Health Services is excited to be working with Alvarado Parkway Institute Behavioral Health System to develop a Crisis Residential Treatment Center in Imperial County. Ms. Kuhlen explains the facility is a voluntary, short-term 15-bed recovery based program where residents can practice real-world recovery in a home-like setting by performing daily household activities along with learning basic living and social/interpersonal skills necessary to successfully transition back into the community. This new facility will allow individuals experiencing a crisis to be served and supported in their community which is more desirable for the individual and their family. We understand that early intervention, diagnosis and treatment of mental illness and substance use disorders is important to recovery and long term success of treatment. Currently, some residents of Imperial County in need of mental health or addiction treatment present at the hospital emergency departments, which are not only more expensive, but are also unable to provide on-going care. In many cases those experiencing early episodes can avoid psychiatric hospitalization and receive more personalized treatment in a short-term residential behavioral health facility, said Patrick Zeimer, President and Chief Development Officer, Alvarado Parkway Institute Behavioral Health System. We are very excited that through this partnership with Imperial County Behavioral Health, we are adding a new facility in the community for the benefit of Imperial County residents. This will allow greater family involvement in treatment, which improves outcomes. Slated to open its doors September 1, 2019, Jackson House El Centro will provide treatment that will serve as an alternative to or continuation of inpatient psychiatric hospitalization in an environment that is more home-like and recovery oriented. Zeimer explains, Typically, psychiatric hospitalization concentrates on addressing the acute episode only, at Jackson House El Centro the focus will be on not only treating the acute episode, but also on stabilization and long term recovery. We help clients by providing them the tools to understand and manage their illness, which enables them to live the quality of life that they desire. We are looking forward to bringing these much needed services to the residents of Imperial County. The contemporary design of this newly constructed 6448 square foot, 15 bed, 24 hour crisis residential treatment facility will offer semi-private rooms, beautifully appointed indoor and outdoor spaces, large group rooms, and computer lab space, as well as private meeting rooms for individual client consultations. Over the last several years, Imperial County has made it a priority to provide quality, innovative behavioral health treatment solutions to the community. As we considered opportunities for expanding this level of care across southern California, we were humbled and excited to collaborate with a public partner like Imperial County Behavioral Health that has shown a tremendous commitment to seeking innovative solutions to the complex problems that exist in behavioral health, said Zafar Azimov, Board Member, Alvarado Parkway Institute Behavioral Health System. Jackson House El Centro is the first of several planned short-term residential treatment facilities that will utilize the successful model Jackson House started in La Mesa, California. Jackson House believes that clients should be treated in the least restrictive setting possible, and thus provides the residential setting as an option to a locked psychiatric hospital environment, when appropriate. Treatment that focuses on identifying, learning and applying the tools needed to manage mental illness and substance use disorders can deliver hope to the residents of Imperial County and their families who struggle with the symptoms of these diseases. Click here for photos and logo About Jackson House: Jackson House is a highly structured, supportive, voluntary, short term acute residential treatment program. Our specialized and impassioned team of clinical and medical professionals provides individualized, evidenced based treatment interventions designed to equip our clients with skills to get well, while learning to live well. Clients at Jackson House are supported as they work on symptom management, sleep hygiene, self-regulation, medication compliance and living and relating in the real world. Jackson House is an alternative to acute inpatient hospitalization, when appropriate, and a bridge to lower levels of care, charting a pathway home. Our team works with our clients loved ones and healthcare providers to develop a wellness action plan and ensure a seamless transition of care. Jackson House is a cell phone and computer friendly environment. Jackson House El Centro is a member of the Alvarado Parkway Behavioral Health System family of services. FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES CONTACT: Renee Novo, Media Relations rnovo@apibhs.com 619-401-3349 A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d0f7d718-1c88-4852-a78f-df5bc452ef83 English Lithuanian INVL Baltic Real Estate (hereinafter may be referred as the Company) informs that the decision from the Director of the Supervision Service of the Bank of Lithuania on the amendment of the Company's regulatory activity form was received on 21th March 2019. The Company from now is considered not to be operating on the basis of a license, but operating under the permission issued by the Bank of Lithuania. This decision of the Bank of Lithuania was adopted seeking to implement the new wording of the Collective Investment Undertakings Law that came into force on 1st February 2019. The Company informs that the change of regulatory activity form does not affect the rights and / or duties of the Company's investors or the activities of the Company. KAMPALA, NYC, DENVER, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, on World Down Syndrome Day, the Global Down Syndrome Foundation (Global) pays tribute to the largest Down syndrome awareness event on the continent of Africa, which they helped co-organize. Global also celebrates the important day at Colorados State Capitol with self-advocates, scientists, clinicians, and Governor Jared Polis, while simultaneously providing an important keynote presentation at the Holy See Mission at the United Nations (UN) in New York City. At each event, self-advocates with Down syndrome take center stage. In Uganda, there are music and festivities and also an important announcement of a new employment program linking corporations with adults with Down syndrome. Self-advocates and family members are excited to communicate the importance of this program. In Denver, over 200 people gather at the Capitol to hear the latest research and medical care updates from the Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome and the Sie Center for Down Syndrome. Four-time Emmy-winning Born this Way actress, Megan Bomgaars, encourages people not to limit her or limit themselves. And at the United Nations in New York City, Globals President & CEO, Michelle Sie Whitten, gives a keynote speech that charters a brighter future for people with Down syndrome. Whitten emphasizes that the increased federal research and medical care funding for people with Down syndrome is already helping to elongate life and improve quality of life for a population that is still plagued by discrimination. The Holy See Mission organized this UN conference called Social Protections for Women, Girls, and all those with Down Syndrome. Other keynote presenters include world-renowned swimmer and activist, Karen Gaffney, and parent/activists, Deanna Smith and Rick Smith. People with Down Syndrome have a right to their fair share of research and medical care dollars, says Whitten. We are done with this idea that earlier, better detection will solve the problem. What will solve the problem is increased funding from the National Institutes of Health, ensuring good health, equity, and opportunity. What will solve the problem is people advocating for the lives of our children and adults. Down syndrome organizations are working together to deliver on this important mission. Globals leadership in research, medical care, and advocacy is essential to our community, says Debbie Revels, Executive Director of the Down Syndrome Association of Jacksonville. We are excited to present Global with our inaugural 'Making a Difference Award' at our 30th Anniversary Gala, which also commemorates World Down Syndrome Day. We are happy to continue working with Global and charting a brighter future for people with Down syndrome. World Down Syndrome Day falls on March 21st or 3-21 signifying the fact that people with Down syndrome are born with 3 (three) copies of chromosome 21 instead of 2 (two). World Down Syndrome Day was promulgated by the United Nations in 2012 and is celebrated in 190 countries. To learn more about the Global Down Syndrome Foundation and World Down Syndrome Day, visit globaldownsyndrome.org. ### Established in 2009, Global Down Syndrome Foundation (Global) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) dedicated to significantly improving the lives of people with Down syndrome through Research, Medical Care, Education, and Advocacy. Global is part of a network of affiliates who work together to deliver on our mission, supporting hundreds of scientists and medical care professionals. Our affiliates include the Sie Center for Down Syndrome, the Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome, Rocky Mountain Alzheimers Disease Center, and a new pilot Adult Clinic. For more information, visit globaldownsyndrome.org and follow us on social media (Facebook & Twitter @GDSFoundation, Instagram @globaldownsyndrome). TORONTO and MUNICH, Germany, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TANTALEX Resources Corporation Inc. (CSE: TTX FSE: 1T0) (TANTALEX or the "Company") announces the results of its special meeting of shareholders that was held on March 15, 2019 (the Meeting). The Companys shareholders approved every resolution that was presented to them as part of the management information circular dated January 18, 2019 that was sent to the Companys shareholders and filed on SEDAR on January 28, 2019 (the Information Circular). The shareholders unanimously approved the amalgamation of TANTALEX with International Cobalt Corporation (ICC) (the Amalgamation), as more particularly described in the Information Circular. The Companys shareholders further approved to set the number of Directors of the resulting entity assuming completion of the Amalgamation (the Resulting Issuer) at five (5) for the ensuing year and to approve the appointment of the following persons as Directors of the Resulting Issuer to serve until the next annual meeting of the shareholders of the Resulting Issuer: Mr. Eugene Beukman; Mr. Maciej Lis; Mr. Paul Deslauriers; Mr. Dave Gagnon; and Mr. Michel Lebeuf. In addition, the Companys shareholders approved the appointment of Adam Sung Kim, Chartered Professional Accountant, as the Resulting Issuers independent registered accounting firm for the ensuing year. Completion of the Amalgamation will be subject, amongst other conditions, to ICC obtaining approval from its shareholders on the contemplated Amalgamation, as ICC and TANTALEX continue to discuss their ongoing relationship and how to work together in the near future. About TANTALEX Resources Corporation TANTALEX is a mining company engaged in the acquisition, exploration, development and distribution of Lithium, Cobalt, Tantalum and other high-tech mineral properties in Africa. The Corporation is listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange (symbol: TTX) and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (symbol: 1T0). Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements The information in this news release includes certain information and statements about management's view of future events, expectations, plans and prospects that constitute forward looking statements. These statements are based upon assumptions that are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Because of these risks and uncertainties and as a result of a variety of factors, the actual results, expectations, achievements or performance may differ materially from those anticipated and indicated by these forward looking statements. Although TANTALEX believes that the expectations reflected in forward looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurances that the expectations of any forward looking statements will prove to be correct. Except as required by law, TANTALEX disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements to reflect actual results, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions, changes in factors affecting such forward looking statements or otherwise. The Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE) has not reviewed this news release and does not accept responsibility for its adequacy or accuracy. For further information, please contacts Investor relations: ir@tantalex.ca Or visit us at: WWW.TANTALEX.CA VANCOUVER, March 21, 2019 - Hannan Metals Limited ("Hannan" or the "Company") (TSXV: HAN) (OTCPK: HANNF) is pleased to announce it has further expanded the area under mineral claim application at the San Martin sediment-hosted copper-silver project in north-central Peru. A district-scale sediment-hosted copper terrane is now secured, with applications covering more than 76 kilometres strike of the prospective host horizon. Key Points: 5,900 hectares of claim applications have been lodged for the Sacanche area, located 44 kilometres south of the central and initial Tabalosos claim application; Hannan's mineral claim applications now cover 76 kilometres of combined strike (35,400 hectares) of the prospective host horizon within a 110 kilometre long basin (Figure 1); Sacanche delivers an additional 25 kilometres of host horizon strike under application, and is interpreted to be an extension of the mineralized position discovered in Hannan's Tabalosos claim applications where initial sampling by Hannan outlined four areas of high-grade copper and silver over 15 kilometres of strike within at least two structural corridors. Nineteen grab samples from mineralized float in river beds (>0.1% copper) ranged in grade from 0.1% to 8.3% copper and 0.2 g/t silver to 109 g/t silver with an average grade of 2.8% copper and 27.2 g/t silver. Historic prospecting at Sacanche identified both sediment-hosted copper and lead-zinc showings with multiple gossans up 80 metres in thickness with anomalous zinc, lead and copper and grab samples from creeks assaying significant copper and silver within the 25 kilometre strike of the claim application area (Figure 2). Michael Hudson, Chairman and CEO states, "San Martin demonstrates the initial makings of a high-grade sediment-hosted copper and silver discovery in north-central Peru. Hannan's first mover position has allowed claiming of a district-scale sedimentary copper-silver target over 76 strike kilometres in length and we look forward to a multi-team exploration program during 2019 to target areas of grade and thickness." Hannan's claim applications extend over a combined 76 kilometres of strike within a 110 kilometre basin scale trend. Early stage historic exploration at Sacanche identified both sediment-hosted copper and lead-zinc showings. Multiple gossans up 80 metres in thickness with anomalous zinc, lead and copper have been recorded over multiple kilometre strike (Figure 2). The thick lead-zinc gossans are interpreted to be developed at different stratigraphic positions than the interpreted location of the stratabound sedimentary-hosted copper-silver mineralized target zone. Scant historic sampling records grab samples from river float assaying significant copper and silver discovered intermittently along the 25 kilometre strike of the Sancache claim application area (Figure 2). Hannan interprets the separate copper and lead-zinc mineralized zones as products of an evolving basinal system, related to processes observed in other sedimentary-hosted copper districts where lead and zinc can be locally elevated. The Sacanche claims are an extension of the sediment hosted copper-silver mineralized position discovered in Gera and Tabalosos claim applications where initial sampling by Hannan outlined four areas of high-grade copper and silver over 15 kilometres of strike within at least two structural corridors within the Tabalosos claim application area. Nineteen grab samples from mineralized float in river beds (>0.1% copper) ranged in grade from 0.1% to 8.3% copper and 0.2 g/t silver to 109 g/t silver with an average grade of 2.8% copper and 27.2 g/t silver. Hannan has commenced the 2019 dry-season exploration program with field reconnaissance and plans to have a multi-team exploration program commence from mid to late April 2019. The areas under claim are sparsely populated. No indigenous land designation is recorded within Gera and Sacanche claim areas and only a small area (13%) of the Tabalosos application is defined as indigenous lands, which the Company views as a positive for future drill permitting. The Company has begun to identify and involve local stakeholder groups, and will continue to engage with communities and authorities during the 2019 field programs. The San Martin project lies in the Sub-Andean zone of Andean Cordillera. Since the 1970's the area has principally been explored for petroleum, delivering large seismic datasets similar to those being used by Hannan for targeting of zinc in Ireland. Seismically-defined basin structures and stratigraphy are now being interpreted in the context of sediment-hosted copper mineralization. The Sub-Andean zone is underlain by a series of retro-arc foreland basins that were inverted during the Mid-Eocene and the Miocene. The inversion exposed a rift sequence initiated in the late Permian, composed of red beds and thick basin-wide evaporites. These rocks are contemporary to the Pucara and Mitu Groups in western Peru. The geological history shows a strong similarity to sedimentary basins which host giant sediment hosted copper deposits with respect to the stratigraphy, basin architecture, presence of thick evaporites and long periods of quiescence. Copper and silver mineralization is hosted by the 150 Ma Saraquillo Formation, which was deposited in an intra-continental basin during the Jurassic-Early Cretaceous period. The Saraquillo Formation is 1.2-1.8 kilometres thick and extends for over 1,000 kilometres of strike. The Saraquillo Formation is spatially associated with salt domes which supports the seismic observations of widespread evaporitic strata, with several small artisanal salt and copper mines present in the area. Copper mineralization discovered to date is associated with the contact of fine-grained reduced carbonaceous sandstones with highly oxidized red beds of the Saraquillo Formation. Chalcocite is the dominant copper sulphide and it is always found together with carbonaceous material. Chalcocite occurs as fine disseminations, fracture filling and centimetre-sized massive aggregates. Secondary copper minerals are common on exposed surfaces. Albitization and silicification is associated with the mineralization, where the former dominates in more strongly mineralized samples. Management of Hannan have had significant prior experience in Peru, which is the world's second largest copper producer, with steady growth predicted over the coming years. The country's copper output is forecast to increase from 2.5 million tonnes ("Mt") in 2018 to 3.8Mt by 2027, averaging 4.7% annual growth. Sediment-hosted deposits are the world's second-most important source of copper accounting for approximately 20% of world production. About Hannan Metals Limited (TSX.V:HAN) (OTCPK: HANNF) Hannan Metals Ltd. is a base metal project generation company. It has 100% ownership of the County Clare Zn-Pb-Ag project in Ireland, which consists of 9 prospecting licenses for 35,444 hectares and has recently filed mineral claim applications for 35,400 hectares within the San Martin Province in Peru searching for copper and silver. Over the last decade, the team behind Hannan has forged a long and successful record of discovering, financing and advancing mineral projects in Europe and Peru. Mr. Michael Hudson FAusIMM, Hannan's Chairman and CEO, a Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical disclosure contained in this news release. On behalf of the Board, "Michael Hudson" Michael Hudson, Chairman & CEO Forward Looking Statements Certain information set forth in this news release contains "forward-looking statements", and "forward- looking information" under applicable securities laws. Except for statements of historical fact, certain information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements, which include the Company's expectations regarding future performance based on current results, expected cash costs based on the Company's current internal expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and beliefs, which may prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the Company's actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projects of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statement. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: The Company's expectations regarding timing to complete field work and outcome of results, the granting of the claim applications in Peru, community relations, liabilities inherent in mine development and production, geological risks, the financial markets generally, and the ability of the Company to raise additional capital to fund future operations. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable securities laws. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. SOURCE Hannan Metals Ltd. Vancouver, March 21, 2019 - Guyana Goldstrike Inc. (the "Company" or "Guyana Goldstrike") (TSXV: GYA, OTC: GYNAF, FSE:1ZT) is pleased to announce that it will conduct a non-brokered private placement to raise up to $2,000,000 through the issuance of up to 10,000,000 units (each, a "Unit") at a price of $0.20 per Unit. Each "Unit" will consist of one common share and one common share purchase warrant entitling the holder to acquire a further common share at a price of $0.30 for a period of thirty-six months. Gold Mountains Asset Management Ltd. (a subsidiary of Zijin Mining Group Ltd.), through its Zijin funds, has elected to participate in the placement on a pro-rata basis in order to maintain its 24.4% ownership interest in the Company as a strategic partner. The proceeds from the placement will be used towards ongoing exploration work at the Company's Marudi Gold Project, as well as for general working capital purposes. The Company may pay finders' fees to eligible parties who have assisted by introducing subscribers to the placement. All securities to be issued in connection with the placement will be subject to a four-month-and-day statutory hold period in accordance with applicable securities laws. Completion of the placement remains subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. About the Marudi Gold Project The Company is developing the Marudi Gold Project located in Guyana, South America. The project has 18-year mining license in good standing, all-season road access, infrastructure in place, with an established camp serviced by employees, service buildings, and a full-time camp manager. The Property has three known gold bearing areas: the alluvial areas, the saprolite, and the underlying hard-rock. There has been 42,000 metres of historic diamond drilling (141 holes) completed on the project by prior operators that have delineated two zones of mineralization: Mazoa Hill and Marudi North zones. The Company has recently completed a mineral resource estimate on the Mazoa Hill zone containing 259,100 indicated gold ounces within 4,428,000 tonnes grading 1.80 g/t and 86,200 inferred gold ounces within 1,653,000 tonnes grading 1.60 g/t. The Company has recently discovered a third mineralized zone: Toucan Ridge. This zone is the current focus of the Company's 2018 trenching program. There exists excellent exploration upside for the further discovery of mineralized zones through the development of previously and newly identified mineralized bedrock targets on the project. For information concerning the mineral resource estimate and the project, readers are encouraged to review "Technical Report: Marudi Property Mazoa Hill Mineral Resource Estimate", a technical report prepared for the Company by Global Mineral Resource Services and is available at http://www.guyanagoldstrike.com/images/pdf/43101_Report_Guyana_Goldstrike_Mazoa_Hill_Zone_Jan_2018.pdf and under the Company's profile on SEDAR www.sedar.com. About Guyana The Republic of Guyana is located in South America adjacent to Suriname. The country is English speaking and under British Common Law with a democratically-elected government. It has an established mining act and a rich history of gold production. In 2016, 690,000 ounces of gold was produced by operators mining in the country. The Fraser Institute's 2016 Annual Survey of Mining listed Guyana as the third best mining jurisdiction with regards to investment attractiveness in the Latin America and Caribbean Basin sub-group. The Guiana Shield is the geographic gold-hosting region, and is world-recognized as a premier gold region that is highly prospective, under-explored and has geological continuity with West Africa.* In 2016, two mines in Guyana declared the commencement of commercial production: the Aurora deposit (Guyana Goldfields) and the Karouni deposit (Troy Resources). * Independent Technical and Environmental Review Karouni Gold Project - Guyana, Behre Dolbear Australia Pty Ltd, April 29, 2016 On behalf of the Board of Directors of Guyana Goldstrike Inc. Peter Berdusco President and Chief Executive Officer Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may contain certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities laws. When used in this news release, the words "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect", "target, "plan", "forecast", "may", "schedule" and other similar words or expressions identify forward-looking statements or information. These forward-looking statements or information may relate to future prices of commodities, accuracy of mineral or resource exploration activity, reserves or resources, regulatory or government requirements or approvals, the reliability of third party information, continued access to mineral properties or infrastructure, fluctuations in the market for gold, changes in exploration costs and government regulation in Guyana, status of artisanal mining activities and associated rights, and other factors or information. Such statements represent the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive, political and social risks, contingencies and uncertainties. Many factors, both known and unknown, could cause results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the results, performance or achievements that are or may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements or information to reflect changes in assumptions or changes in circumstances or any other events affections such statements and information other than as required by applicable laws, rules and regulations. Copyright (c) 2019 TheNewswire - All rights reserved. Governments around the nation are working to design the best vaccine policies that keep both their employees and their residents safe. Although the latest data shows a variety of polarizing perspectives, there are clear emerging best practices that leading governments are following to put trust first: creating policies that are flexible and provide a range of options, and being in tune with the needs and sentiments of their employees so that they are able to be dynamic and accommodate the rapidly changing situation. An Oklahoma sheriff and nearly all of her staff resigned this week, defying a district judge's reported orders to reopen a county jail that has been closed and evacuated over safety issues.Nowata County Sheriff Terry Sue Barnett told reporters on Monday that she could not "in good conscience" bring prisoners back to the Nowata County Jail, despite threats of being held in contempt of court. Neither could the county's undersheriff, deputies, the head of the department's dispatch and most of the jail staff, who also tendered their resignations on the same day. Even the canine ranger stepped down, according to Barnett, who added the dog had "resigned with his paw print."As of Tuesday, only five employees remain on staff, including dispatchers who are redirecting calls to neighboring emergency and law enforcement agencies, Tulsa World reported."The condition of the jail is such that it does not comply with constitutional standards," Barnett said, reading off a litany of hazards within the facility, starting with a carbon monoxide leak that led to the shutdown on Feb. 28.Barnett explained that the cause of the toxic gas emissions, which sent four employees to an emergency room and prompted the removal of more than a dozen inmates to a nearby jail, has still not been determined. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and NYPD officials said on Tuesday they support banning repeat sexual offenders from the subway system.Cuomo, speaking at an unrelated news conference in Albany, said anyone with two or more subway-related sexual assault convictions should be banned from the system."I understand civil rights and civil liberties and access to transportation, but ... if you are convicted of two sexual offenses on the subway system where groping, touching, grinding is a major problem and recidivism is a major problem, I fully support saying after the second conviction you're banned from going back to the subway," Cuomo said. "But look, the precedent is set: We have sexual predators who get locked up and get released and then you say, common sense, we don't want them locating near a school, near areas where they have in the past targeted victims. You have people who target victims in the subways. And that's where they go. Many people, crowded areas, certain techniques -- and that's where they go."Earlier in the day, Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said it was important to "not forget about the victims" and that people shouldn't have to worry about repeat offenders."To me it defies logic how somebody that has been arrested over and over and has shown what they intend to do, and to let them out and do the exact same thing on this subway system," Shea said. "Women should not be subjected on the train ... These are heinous, despicable acts and we can, and I think we should, do better for victims."Last year, there were 866 complainants of a sex crime in the subway system, according to the NYPD's statistics, and 373 arrests. It wasn't immediately clear how many of those arrests were repeat offenders."We support legislation that would ban serial sex offenders from the subway and we look forward to working with the Governor and the Legislature to implement it into law," said MTA president Pat Foye.Alphonso David, counsel to the governor, said that California implemented a similar ban years ago."California did this a number of years ago and they have different criteria depending on the number of incidents. So it can be for 90 days; it could be for 180 days; it could be a year," he said. "There are different statutes around the country, and we're going to be studying those to determine the appropriate threshold for banning people after a certain period of time."Cuomo said he was open to discuss the length of such a ban in New York. Attorneys who represent victims of sexual abuse by priests have released what they say is the most comprehensive list yet of Catholic clergy with ties to Illinois who have been accused of misconduct against children.The list includes about 400 priests and lay people who at one time served in parishes or schools or otherwise worked in the state, with accusations spanning more than a half-century. That number far exceeds the roughly 200 priests who already have been publicly identified by Illinois' six Catholic dioceses, including the Chicago Archdiocese."The data reveal the horrifying scale of priests sexually assaulting minors to the present day," the report said. "Perhaps most shocking among the discoveries is that some perpetrators were intentionally transferred and retained in trusted positions with direct access to children even after they were known to sexually abuse children."Many of the priests named in the new report already have been publicly identified in news stories and court records, even if they don't appear on dioceses' official lists. The dioceses generally used different standards for publicly identifying priests, in some cases omitting clergy when claims against them could not be substantiated or when an allegation was made after the priest died.The new study, called the Anderson Report, takes a broader approach, including any priest, seminarian or religious employee -- in some cases of Catholic orders outside the dioceses -- who has ever been accused of child sexual abuse, regardless of whether the claim was found credible or the alleged abuse occurred in Illinois. The authors note that in many cases settlements were paid to victims, but in numerous other cases the alleged abuses were never substantiated in court, sometimes because a statute of limitations prevented lawsuits or criminal investigations from moving forward."We have chosen to reveal this information because the Catholic bishops and the religious orders, who are in charge and have this information and hold it secret, have chosen to conceal it," said attorney Jeff Anderson.John O'Malley, who serves as special counsel to the Chicago Archdiocese on misconduct issues, contests the report's claim that church officials have not been transparent in disclosing priests known to be predatory. He said all allegations contained in the report already were reported to and investigated by law enforcement."When an allegation comes in and the priest is in ministry, he is withdrawn from ministry and put on leave pending a resolution," O'Malley said. He added that, in such cases, the parish is notified, and the archdiocese puts out a media release."Those are very public moments, so we're not hiding this issue," O'Malley said.In separate responses to the Anderson Report, the Diocese of Springfield questioned the study's accuracy because it said the whereabouts of several diocese priests were unknown, even though the diocese has confirmed their deaths."The facts are clear in the Diocese of Springfield that the majority of instances of abuse occurred more than 30 years ago, and only one instance has occurred in the past 20 years," spokesman Andrew Hansen said in a statement.A Chicago leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Larry Antonsen, said he's not surprised by the number of priests named in the report.He noted that the report includes photographs of the accused priests and their work history, which Antonsen said is important because it can help jog victims' memories and encourage them to speak out."I believe that telling your story to somebody ... is the beginning of healing," Antonsen said. "The more you keep it in, it just eats away at you and eats away at you."Still, the new report cites a much smaller number than the 690 priests that then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said her office identified in its own investigation last year into priest sexual abuse. Anderson hypothesized that Madigan's numbers were higher because the office set up a hotline to receive reports directly from victims.Madigan began looking into priest sexual abuse after a report in Pennsylvania revealed widespread abuse and cover-ups not before known. Her preliminary report was critical of the Illinois dioceses' handling of abuse allegations, saying their investigations were sometimes flawed and lacked transparency, but her office did not release a full list of accused priests.The victims' advocates who released Wednesday's new report, Anderson and Chicago attorney Marc Pearlman, said at the time that they wouldpublish their own set of names if Illinois officials did not make their list public. The attorneys have released similar lists in other areas of the country, though Anderson said this is the first statewide report of this kind he has compiled.The Illinois list includes only one priest who is still in active ministry, Anderson said. In that case, the priest was reinstated in 2014 after an investigation by law enforcement and child welfare officials found two separate allegations unsubstantiated, according to the Chicago Archdiocese.Additionally, one priest is under investigation and has been removed from ministry since January while authorities investigate the alleged abuse of a minor in 1979, according to the archdiocese.Madigan's successor, Kwame Raoul, issued a statement before he took office in January saying he remained committed to continuing the investigation. His office has not released further information, citing the ongoing inquiry.On Wednesday, Raoul's office released a statement saying it "will review any new information that could be relevant" to the investigation.O'Malley said the church has reported all allegations to law enforcement since 1992, when Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin led a commission on the sexual abuse scandal. In 2002, U.S. bishops adopted the policy nationwide."If the public authorities choose not to prosecute or can't prosecute, we then have our own investigative process," O'Malley said Wednesday. "If, as a result of the public authorities, or if as a result of our own process, an allegation is substantiated, it has been posted on our website with a description since 2006."At that time, the practice of dioceses publishing names of priests who had substantiated allegations against them was much less common than it is now.A statement Wednesday from the Chicago Archdiocese said it found 22 clerics named in the Anderson Report who are not included in the list the archdiocese has provided online. Of those, 20 already were reported to civil authorities, one came to the attention of the archdiocese when the priest was arrested and one involved an allegation of misconduct involving an adult, not a minor, the statement said.The sexual abuse scandal has roiled the church for decades, but it received renewed attention last year after a sweeping grand jury report in Pennsylvania identified more than 300 predator priests. In response to the report, Madigan launched her own investigation in August.In December, the attorney general said her preliminary findings indicated that 690 clergy members were accused of abuse, but the Illinois dioceses had identified only 185 clergy at that time as having been "credibly accused." A few names have since been added to some of those public lists, and some Catholic religious orders, including the Midwest Province of the Society of Jesus, a Jesuit order, released their own lists of accused priests, brothers or lay people around the time Madigan's preliminary findings were unveiled.Madigan's bombshell report also found that Illinois dioceses did not investigate allegations in many instances, including in some cases if a lawsuit had been filed, when a victim wanted to remain anonymous, when only one complainant came forward or if the clergy member had previously resigned. In cases in which the claim involved clergy who were visiting from a religious order, the allegations often were referred to the order rather than being investigated by the diocese, the Madigan report said.O'Malley disputed that finding as it applied to the Chicago Archdiocese, saying all allegations had been forwarded to law enforcement over nearly three decades. He acknowledged the possibility that oversights occurred in other Illinois dioceses.The list of credibly accused clergy members provided by the Chicago Archdiocese also does not include the names of those who had died before an allegation surfaced. The archdiocese also may not include a name if the priest was listed by a different diocese.Anderson and Pearlman made a point to include those cases in theirs.In one example, a priest who reportedly was ministering at St. Stanislaus Church in south suburban Posen between 1963 and 1964 was named in the Pennsylvania report. According to the grand jury report, the Rev. Raymond Lukac, who died in 2000, had a history of misconduct, including an allegation from when he served in the Diocese of Gary in Indiana. The report said the Archdiocese of Chicago requested information about Lukac in August 2006 after receiving a complaint that Lukac had sexually abused an 11-year-old girl between 1962 and 1964 in the St. Stanislaus rectory.Asked why the Chicago Archdiocese does not include names of priests who have died before an allegation arises, O'Malley said the priest has no opportunity to defend himself."The church's policy has been to not include it for the reason that in the case of the deceased priest, there is no risk to children and there is no question of fitness of ministry," he said.But Antonsen, of the victims advocacy group SNAP, said it's important for dioceses to be transparent about those who are accused of abuse, including clergy members who died before allegations were made, because it can inspire other victims to come forward.Antonsen said Catholic Church leaders, including Pope Francis, aren't doing enough to hold abusers accountable. Despite the conference on sexual abuse at the Vatican in February, Antonsen said few officials have faced real consequences for covering up abuse allegations."The church never seems to do anything until they are absolutely forced to do it," he said.Antonsen said he himself was sexually abused by a priest when he was a sophomore at St. Rita High School in Chicago in the 1960s. The priest, the late Rev. Michael P. Hogan, was a teacher at St. Rita and is named in the new report.Antonsen said he reported the abuse in 2006 to the Archdiocese of Chicago but was told the archdiocese could not handle the investigation because Hogan was not a diocesan priest but belonged to the Order of St. Augustine. He said he took his allegation to the order and was told that Hogan, then in a nursing home, denied the claim but that the order offered to pay for two years of counseling, which he declined. He said he felt he was not believed, which he said "felt like a slap in the face."Church leaders "really do not care about survivors. They don't realize what we live with every day," Antonsen said. "I still wake up almost every night with nightmares."No one from the order could immediately be reached for comment.After hearing of Madigan's report, Antonsen decided to try again and said he made a report to the attorney general's office in January. He was told the allegation would be reported to the police but said he's heard nothing more since.Another man who said he was the victim of priest sexual abuse in the Chicago area appeared at a news conference Wednesday where the Anderson Report was released.Joe Iacono, now 68, said he was abused in the 1960s by the late Rev. Thomas Kelly at St. John Vianney Catholic Church in west suburban Northlake. Kelly is included in the archdiocese's list of those credibly accused.Iacono blamed the church for moving Kelly to a number of different parishes even though they knew he was dangerous. Iacono said it was powerful to see the long list of names and know he was not alone."Through (the church's) actions, they have destroyed my foundation for morality, for values, for trust," he said as he started to cry. "But all of that now has come back to me, and through therapy, through my loving wife." When Batman nabs criminals without killing or maiming them, one of his go-to gadgets is a projectile cable that wraps around a fleeing suspects legs. Minus the batsuit, this is now a real device patented by Las Vegas-based Wrap Technologies , which this week announced a new president, TASER International co-founder Thomas Smith, to help roll out the product to law enforcement.As described on the companys website, BolaWrap 100 was invented by the companys Chief Technology Officer Elwood Norris, who has more than 80 patents to his name mostly related to acoustic and electrical engineering. The handheld device fires an 8-foot Kevlar tether at 640 feet per second about 436 miles per hour at a range of 10 to 25 feet, immobilizing the recipient by wrapping around their legs or other body parts like a bola, a throwing weapon made of weights attached to an interconnected cord. The website says its a non-lethal tool that doesnt rely on pain to subdue suspects, thereby helping to de-escalate encounters with noncompliant or mentally ill people before a situation gets violent.Wrap Technologies is pointing to the strategy and financial success of Tasers as evidence that police could use more nonlethal solutions to altercations, and theres data to back them up: A 2015 study published by the Treatment Advocacy Center estimated that roughly 1,000 civilians die every year from lethal force by law enforcement. It also reported that one in four fatal police encounters involves adults with severe mental illness.Though Axon markets Tasers as an alternative to lethal force, they have contributed to the deaths of civilians in the U.S.Police have been curious about Wrap Technologies' pitch, too. According to Wraps website, BolaWrap 100 is in the internal testing phase in 16 police departments in 11 states; and its in the policy, training and field-testing phase in 31 departments across 13 states.An investor presentation from Wrap Technologies in 2018 quoted various law enforcement officials who have been testing BolaWrap 100, including Police Chief Ed Hudak of Coral Gables, Fla., who called the device outstanding and likely to save lives.Redditt Hudson, who left the St. Louis police force in 1999 to address problems in the criminal justice system, and who is now vice president of civil rights and advocacy at the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis, was quoted endorsing the device as well.Anytime you can have a more humane response to someone in crisis, it is not only good for the department, its good for society, he said. news release from the company explained that Smith, with his executive experience in operations, logistics, manufacturing, global sales and marketing technology to law enforcement, was hired to help drive sales to police departments in the U.S. and abroad.I am very impressed by the domestic and international response BolaWrap has garnered from both law enforcement and the communities they serve, Smith said in a statement. With the growing challenges law enforcement is facing today, I am excited to participate in both the launch of new technology and the growth of the infrastructure to sell, train and support law enforcement helping foster closer ties with their communities while decreasing risks. (TNS0 There will be no digital smart meters in the foreseeable future for Independence utility customers.The City Council voted Monday against entering a contract with either vendor for advanced metering infrastructure more popularly known as smart meters closing a process that had taken place the better part of four years.Honeywell offered a mesh communication system for the smart meters, while Core & Main offered a point-to-point system and had been the first choice for city staff and the Public Utilities Advisory Board from the beginning.Both votes went 5-2, with council members John Perkins, Mike Huff, Karen DeLuccie and Tom Van Camp voting against both proposals.Mayor Eileen Weir voted yes on both counts, joined by Curt Dougherty for the first vote regarding Honeywell and by Scott Roberson on Core & Main.The city's aim with smart meters was to save money. According to latest estimates the city could realize a net savings of $44 million over 15 years with the Core & Main deal, break even in about eight years and cut 15 full-time positions. With the Honeywell deal, 15-year savings project to be about $40.5 million, with a break-even point in nine years and 14 positions cut (one technician would be needed to maintain the mesh network).The PUAB considered Core & Main's bid of just less than $29.45 million against that of Honeywell, which sat at just less than $31.3 million but had not yet finalized.Van Camp and Huff said the city needs to focus more on appropriately closing the Blue Valley plant and replacing the energy capacity from that."We have bigger problems in the city; we have a bill coming due," Van Camp said, referring to Blue Valley reaching the end of its useful life. Smart meters, on the other hand, are a want and not a need right now, he said.Huff said he didn't think it's necessary at all to replace the analog meters and that the upfront cost would hurt chances of reducing rates, as he doubted the city's projections on long-term savings and wondered why there was a 15 percent contingency compared with the more standard 10 percent.Roberson, who has long expressed his preference on point-to-point over mesh for smart meters based on a more secure network and also preferred Core & Main for its experience and customer service with smart meters, said the city would realize more savings by not having to devote personnel and time to utility shut-offs and turn-ons.City Manager Zach Walker said the contingencies came from erring on the side of caution for final negotiations, as the city more urgently needed decisions on yes/no for smart meters and with whom.DeLuccie afterward said she also had doubts about the savings projections because of ongoing operating and management costs and possibly needing to replace meters over time. She also echoed Perkins' concerns about the open-ended nature Honeywell's contract."I just can't justify the expense," she said. "I've never had a contract that didn't use contingency."Answering Perkins' question about what would happen if neither measure passed, Walker said the city would continue to be diligent on checking meters for possible maintenance.Both Roberson and Van Camp initially said they wouldn't vote for a contract with an opt-out policy for customers, though Weir got unanimous support for a resolution that any contract negotiation include an opt-out policy.Back in June 2015, the council had directed the city manager to explore the feasibility of smart meters. A request for proposals first went out in April 2017, but when Core & Main's contract first came up in that fall, the council punted on that decision, then turned it down in April 2018. The majority of council members cited further consideration for the best technology and implementation options as reasons for voting no. In August 2018, the council heard presentations from the five finalist vendors.Core & Main was the lone vendor from five finalists that offered a point-to-point digital transmission system and was preferred by city staff, while all others offered what's called a mesh system. Honeywell rated the highest from that group. A council majority directed city staff to also negotiate with Honeywell for comparison purposes.Weir said she respected but was disappointed in the no votes and that after her research she was convinced Independence should move to smart meters and that it was important the city's future financial health.Both Kansas City Power & Light and the Kansas City, Kansas Board of Public Utilities use smart meters."I'm disappointed we're not moving forward with something I believe the city does need," Weir said.Walker said after the meeting that he anticipates presentations on a Blue Valley closure and the electric rate study, as well as a proposed decision on purchasing energy capacity to replace Blue Valley, before the council in late April or early May. If any requested smart meter proposal came forward in the future, he said, it would be after negotiating again with vendors based on technology and pricing updates. (TNS) The state agency that provides information technology services for other agencies told lawmakers it needs $16 million to pay its bills.Officials with the Office of Management and Enterprise Services said the agency is behind on payments to its vendors and owes $7 million on invoices that are 60 days late. If lawmakers don't free up the cash, the agency said other state services could suffer.OMES is a large agency that provides services to other state entities like human resources, budgeting, purchasing and IT. It receives an appropriation each year from the Legislature, but much of its operating costs are covered by payments it receives from its inter-agency contracts.State Rep. Shane Stone, an Oklahoma City Democrat who sits on the committee that heard OMES' budget request, described gross mismanagement and a lack of oversight at the 8-year-old agency."I didnt hear any explanation that made sense," Stone said. "A lot of that agencys size comes from what it collects from other agencies. It sounds like maybe they had under-charged those agencies. To me, thats even more worrisome."Stone said he first learned about the problems last week after speculation at the Capitol about OMES finances.The agency needs $7 million by April 1 to avoid serious disruptions in service, said Senate Appropriations Chair Roger Thompson."I think they have money in their revolving funds to pay for that," said Thompson, R-Okemah.As of now, Thompson isn't ready to consider doling out the remaining $9 million."I want to do more research into their finances," he said. "This is not a recent problem. While it may be recent to the legislature, its not a recent problem. Its something we want to correct and make sure it doesnt happen again."While Thompson said he has full confidence in the executive branch to work through issues at OMES, he remains skeptical of the agency. This year he filed legislation to make IT services its own agency and give agencies more control over computer services and procurement. (TNS) State Rep. Bill Taylor believes his anti-distracted-driving bill is likely dead.The bill widely known as "Driving Under the Influence of an Electronic Device" was debated on the S.C. House floor Wednesday and was ultimately referred to the House Judiciary Committee Taylor, an Aiken Republican, that same day predicted the bill would either get stuck in that committee or would emerge as something wholly different "remarkably changed," to use his words."You can never predict the legislative process, but I'm not encouraged," he said.Taylor went on to decry "legislative trial lawyers" for "sidetracking" the distracted driving bill during Wednesday's discussion."It's highly likely their maneuvering will kill the bill for this session," the Aiken representative said."Shakespeare was right!" he tweeted, offering little explanation thereafter. The tweet received pushback from at least one fellow lawmaker.DUI-E, as it's been coined, is a proposed update to South Carolina's 2014 texting-and-driving ban. Taylor has called it "Texting 2.0" on more than one occasion.House Bill 3355, among other things, would make it illegal to hold a phone, call, text, email or watch a video while driving. The bill includes exemptions for first responders, those reporting an emergency or crime and those pulled over or legally parked.The use of a headset, bluetooth or dictation would be OK, according to the bill Violators would face a $200 fine an amount that was debated on the House floor Wednesday.Other concerns raised by a variety of lawmakers included how the bill would affect police and how enforceable the cellphone crackdown would be. Comparisons to running a red light were often drawn.Taylor filed a similar distracted driving bill last legislative session . At the end of December 2018, Taylor said that first attempt helped determine "the obstacles" and honed this latest version.Georgia's sweeping distracted driving law don't hold your phone there went into effect last year. Taylor referenced Georgia's apparent success while speaking to the Aiken Standard on Wednesday. (TNS) Spokane International Airports CEO Larry Krauter said its too early to determine the governments plan to use facial recognition at international airports. The technology could someday improve security and efficiency at airports.From the perspective of many of these international gateway airports, better and quicker is going to sound pretty promising over the long term, Krauter said.In March 2017, President Donald Trump issued an executive order expediting an Obama administration law that planned for this technology, but a March 11 report from BuzzFeed news returned the plan to the forefront.Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit research organization, obtained documents that show U.S. Customs and Border Protection plans to use facial recognition at 20 major international airports on 16,300 flights per week by 2021. The technology is already being used at 17 international airports, according to BuzzFeed.Krauter said if the rollout is successful, the technology will be vetted by the time it reaches Spokane International.I could envision trial programs over some period of time with the Transportation Security Administration and then trial programs by the airlines, Krauter said. Some have begun looking at that and experimenting with those types of things.Facial recognition technology could possibly be used in lieu of a boarding pass, Krauter said. He anticipates that would shorten waits in security lines. Another possibility is that airlines might choose to use the technology at the airline gates.Krauter foresees consumer advocacy groups would have privacy concerns regarding facial recognition technology.I think there are going to be a number of concerns about how is this info gathered, where is it gathered and what becomes of it, all those types of questions, Krauter said. I think that those are valid questions that need to be answered.Krauter said when millimeter wave technology was implemented, consumer advocates brought concerns to the TSA that the full-body scan was too invasive, and ultimately their complaint was heard.There were some concerns expressed about how much of the body image was being viewed even though that image was being viewed in a secure way, but (the TSA) made changes to the algorithms within that to address those concerns, Krauter said.Federal and state legislation is taking a closer look at privacy issues. On March 6, the Washington state Senate passed a bill that would place restrictions on facial recognition, but the bill did not directly address use in transportation or border security.In May, Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security asking the project be suspended to allow stakeholders an opportunity to express concerns with the program and gather more information.We request that DHS not only include the match rates, indicating how often facial scans match photos contained in a database, but also the true reject rate the rate at which travelers using fraudulent credentials are accurately rejected, they wrote.Aside from policymaking issues, deploying facial recognition technology in airports will be a large undertaking from an operational standpoint, Krauter said.Youre talking about investing in equipment and then deploying that equipment, he said. youre talking about a pretty significant investment that has to be made by both the government and the private sector in that process, and those things are going to take some time. (TNS) The Lafayette Parish Communication District, which handles emergency calls for the parishs first responders, announced Tuesday its transitioning to a more flexible, cloud-based computer-aided dispatch system.The district is contracting with Mark43, a New York-based software and data service company, for a roughly $1.5 million to $2 million new system. Mark43 is used by at least 60 public safety agencies across the country.Itll be the first multi-agency cloud-based computer-aided dispatch system in Louisiana, said Craig Stansbury, director for Lafayette 911 and the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness for the parish.When every second counts the most important thing is to have state of the art technology, and thats what were trying to bring to Lafayette, he said.Computer assisted dispatch, or CAD, helps 911 operators quickly determine which emergency responders need to be sent to a scene, determine which responders are nearest the call and coordinate call information with first responder agencies, Stansbury said.All first responders in the parish, including the Lafayette Parish Sheriffs Office, Lafayette Police Department, Lafayette Fire Department, Acadian Ambulance Service and volunteer fire agencies, will use the new system.The Mark43 system is more efficient and adaptive than the parishs current server-based system, Stansbury said. Currently, emergency calls are routed through servers at a call facility. The emergency system is required to have back-ups in place, meaning theres a separate facility with a nearly identical set-up in case the primary facility goes down.It doubles the cost, Stansbury said.The new system will be accessible anywhere theres internet access, meaning in the face of a catastrophic event dispatchers could travel in a mobile command unit to a second site and resume receiving 911 calls, he said.Another benefit to the cloud-based system is that it allows the communication district to more quickly adapt for the future. The Mark43 system can more easily absorb new technology initiatives the district is exploring, including allowing video calls to 911 and adding the ability to access area cameras near a call scene, Stansbury said.Though operated through the internet, the system is secure, Stansbury said. The communication district will be contracting with two providers for new fiber cables to service the Lafayette 911 building and a satellite trailer will be acquired as a redundancy to ensure secure internet access for the cloud-based program.Those will be an additional cost in the future, he said.Stansbury said local emergency responder agencies had a say in the selection of the new system. Representatives from the Lafayette Parish Sheriffs Office, Lafayette 911, the Lafayette Fire Department, the Lafayette Police Department and Acadian Ambulance attended demonstrations from top CAD system candidates and scored each presentation. Mark43 was the top-scoring candidate across each agency, he said.The communication district hopes to have the system operating within the next year, he said, but emergency dispatchers will train on a beta version of the program until the new system is ready to go live.Mark43 co-founder and CEO Scott Crouch said in a release Tuesday hes thrilled to be supporting Lafayette first responders with their program.Emergencies leave no room for inefficiency, Crouch said. Thats why we build our technology to support and connect everyone involved in the public safety process, from the dispatchers in the emergency communication centers to the first responders out in the field. (TNS) The integrity of the nations voting systems heading into the 2020 election is lagging, leaving equipment vulnerable to cyberattacks or malfunctions on Election Day, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.We face threats not only from foreign countries, but also the wear-and-tear of decades of use, said Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the Brennan Centers Democracy Program Election officials are largely doing what they can, but recent progress is short of what current circumstances demand.Local election officials in 31 states, including Ohio, told Brennan Center researchers that the need to replace equipment before the 2020 election is extremely urgent. Two-thirds of the officials reported they dont have adequate funds.Among the concerns: 45 states in part Ohio among them use voting equipment thats no longer manufactured; and 12 states continue to use paperless machines as their primary polling place equipment in at least some counties, making it difficult to verify electronic vote tallies in the event of a hack, or to help identify a hack through a post-election auditing process, according to the report.Just five states use currently-manufactured voting machines in all jurisdictions, researchers discovered.Following the detection of interference by Russia during the 2016 presidential race, Homeland Security officials helped states secure election systems to deter election tampering.Homeland security notified 21 states, including elections officials in Ohio, that Russia had attempted to breach elections systems. Bloomberg later reported that Russian hackers attempted to gain entry to voter databases and software systems in a total of 39 states.The deepest-known 2016 infiltration occurred in Illinois, where the records of up to 76,000 voters were downloaded by what federal investigators said was a Russian cyberattack.There is no evidence that votes in any state were altered through hacking in 2016 or during the 2018 midterms. But U.S. intelligence officials continue to assert that Russia, China, Iran and other countries are engaged in ongoing efforts to influence U.S. policy and voters in elections.The big game we think for the adversaries is probably 2020, said Chris Krebs, head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security. Toyota Motor Corporation and Suzuki Motor Corporation have agreed to begin considering concrete collaboration in new fields. Toyota and Suzuki have been considering the concrete details of such collaboration since having concluded a memorandum of understanding toward business partnership in February 2017. (Earlier post.) Toyota and Suzuki, in addition to bringing together Toyotas strength in electrification technologies and Suzukis strength in technologies for compact vehicles, intend to grow in new fields, such as joint collaboration in production and in the widespread popularization of electrified vehicles. For the new collaborative business, Toyota will supply THS (Toyota Hybrid System) to Suzuki. Additionally, Toyota will contribute widely spread hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) technologies in India through local procurement of HEV systems, engines, and batteries. Toyota will also supply two new electrified vehicles built on Toyota platforms (RAV4, Corolla Wagon) to Suzuki in Europe. For its part, Suzukis strength is in compact vehicles and powertrains. Suzuki will supply two compact vehicles built on Suzuki platforms (Ciaz and Ertiga) to Toyota in India. Toyota will also adopt newly developed Suzuki engines for compact vehicles. Such engines are to be supported by Denso and Toyota, and will be manufactured at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Poland. Suzuki will also supply India-produced vehicles (Baleno, Vitara Brezza, Ciaz, Ertiga) to Toyota, targeting the African market. The two automakers will collaborate on technological development and production, leveraging the strengths of both companies. Drawing upon Suzukis expertise in developing vehicles in India, the two will embark on joint development of a Toyota C-segment MPV and OEM supply to Suzuki. Production of the Suzuki-developed compact SUV Vitara Brezza will begin at Toyota Kirloskar Motor Pvt. Ltd. (TKM) from 2022. Moving forward, insofar as Toyota and Suzuki continue to fairly and freely compete against each other, both companies intend to consider further collaboration to realize a sustainable future mobility society while respecting all applicable laws. When it comes to vehicle electrification, which is expected to make further inroads, hybrid technologies are seen as playing a huge role in many markets, as from before. Widespread acceptance is necessary for electrified vehicles to be able to contribute to Earths environment. Through our new agreement, we look forward to the wider use of hybrid technologies, not only in India and Europe, but around the world. At the same time, we believe that the expansion of our business partnership with Suzukifrom the mutual supply of vehicles and powertrains to the domains of development and productionwill help give us the competitive edge we will need to survive this once-in-a-century period of profound transformation. We intend to strengthen the competitiveness of both our companies by applying our strong points and learning from each other. Toyota President Akio Toyoda The European BATTERY 2030+ initiative launches this month with its initial project which will lay the basis for this large-scale research initiative on future battery technologies. A long-term effort over 10 years with a focus on disruptive technologies, the BATTERY 2030+ initiative will concentrate on low TRL transformational research (TRL 1 to 3). Battery challenges. Source: BATTERY 2030+. BATTERY 2030+ complements the short-term initiatives launched in the framework of the European Battery Alliance to develop large-scale manufacturing capacities, and the short-to-medium term research and innovation projects undertaken within the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe work programs. The Battery 2030+ consortium includes five universities (Uppsala University, Politecnico di Torino, Technical University of Denmark, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, University of Munster); seven research centres (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, French National Centre for Scientific Research, Forschungszentrum Julich, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Fundacion Cidetec, National Institute of Chemistry, Slovenia, SINTEF AS); three industry-led associations (EMIRI, EASE, RECHARGE); and one company (Absiskey). The Battery 2030+ consortium has also received the support of a number of European and national organisations, including ALISTORE ERI, EERA, EIT InnoEnergy, EIT RawMaterials, EARPA, EUROBAT, EGVI, CLEPA, EUCAR, KLIB, RS2E, Swedish Electromobility Centre, PolStorEn, ENEA, CIC energigune, IMEC and Tyndall National Institute. The BATTERY 2030+ research initiative is coordinated by Kristina Edstrom, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Uppsala University in Sweden. With BATTERY 2030+, we address all challenges encountered in the manufacture of high-performance batteries, the scientist says. For this purpose, we will establish a platform to more rapidly detect new battery materials by means of machine learning and artificial intelligence. We are particularly interested in the interfaces in batteries, where reactions take place that adversely affect the batterys service life. We will design smart functions of the complete system down to the battery cell level and pay particular attention to sustainability. Professor Edstrom Four main research areas have already been defined to address the challenge of developing next-generation batteries, with more areas to follow. The four research areas defined so far are: Accelerated discovery and design of battery materials and interfaces Smart sensing and self-healing functionalities Manufacturability Recyclability The proposed research directions are chemistry-neutral, which means that they can potentially be applied to any battery chemistry, creating an impact on both state-of-the-art and future electrochemical storage systems. The research actions will span the entire value chain. For example, if sensors, self-healing chemistries, or other smart functionalities are implemented, this will influence not only manufacturability and/or recyclability, but also the development of Battery Management System (BMS) operating protocols, hardware and software. Manufacturability and recyclability are key crosscutting topics, which will be taken into account from the very beginning of the research program. New battery materials, engineered interfaces and smart battery cell architectures will be developed bearing in mind the manufacturability, scalability, recyclability, and life-cycle environmental footprint of the novel technologies. Optimus Ride, a self-driving vehicle technology company, plans to deploy its self-driving systems at two sites: the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a 300-acre modern industrial park with over 400 manufacturing businesses and 9,000 people working on site; and Paradise Valley Estates, a private 80-acre, nonprofit Life Plan Community located in Fairfield, California. Optimus Ride will provide residents and workers at both sites with access to efficient and convenient self-driving mobility within defined, geofenced areas. This news comes weeks after Optimus Ride announced a partnership with Brookfield Properties to deploy self-driving vehicles at Brookfields Halley Rise development, located just outside of Washington, D.C. With these new programs, Optimus Ride will be operating deployments in four US states. Slated to launch in the second quarter of 2019, Optimus Rides deployment at the Brooklyn Navy Yard will be the first commercial self-driving vehicle program in the state of New York. Optimus Ride will deploy self-driving vehicles on the Brooklyn Navy Yards private roads, providing a loop shuttle service to connect NYC Ferry passengers to Flushing Avenue outside the Yards perimeter. Paradise Valley Estates will welcome the Optimus Ride vehicle system onto its private, gated community this summer. During the initial phase of the program at Paradise Valley Estates, the primary service will be to provide prospective residents with self-driving tours of the community. Additionally, residents will be able to access Optimus Ride through its reservation and on-demand ride services to travel to-and-from their friends homes, as well as travel to the community/health center, and access outdoor activities within the property. California air quality regulators released a report recommending actions to improve emergency and routine air monitoring at Californias major oil refineries and in the communities that surround them. Many communities near major refineries live in fear of exposure to airborne pollutants during a major refinery incidentor during normal operations. The recommendations in this report will help to better assess and reduce the risks associated with long-term community exposure to routine and fugitive air releases. They also improve the rapid detection and communication of potentially hazardous releases during an emergency. CARB Executive Officer Richard W. Corey The report lays out a four-part approach for improving air monitoring, modeling and communication around Californias major refineries: Expand air monitoring within refineries, at the fence line and in nearby communities; Improve modeling techniques to better predict impacts of pollution and incidents at refineries; Provide real-time information about air quality near refineries to first responders and the public; and Improve state and local coordination through an interagency refinery monitoring working group. Authored by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association (CAPCOA) (representing the states 35 local air districts), the report also recommends first responders have access to improved air monitoring tools and data, and they be thoroughly trained to apply them. The CARB-CAPCOA report is part of a broader initiative set in place in 2013 to address refinery safety and emissions in response to a major fire in 2012 at the Chevron Refinery in Richmond. The fire raised concerns related to refinery maintenance and safety, and emergency preparedness, at and near Californias oil refineries. Air regulators presented a draft of the report, released in fall of 2017, at a series of meetings in California communities most impacted by potential and actual refinery emissions. Actions recommended in the final report aim to strike a balance between local implementation of stronger air monitoring and communication systems, and state oversight. A proposed interagency working group, which would comprise staff from CARB and local air districts, would develop guidelines that air districts use in requiring refineries to expand air monitoring networks and making the data available to first responders and the public. The refinery-focused guidance could serve as a future template for similar air monitoring around other types of industrial sources that pose a risk to nearby communities. California already has begun to address some of the reports findings and recommendations. Several recent California statutes and regulations now improve refinery emergency preparedness, require community air monitoring, improve notification systems and establish permanent refinery oversight. One example, Assembly Bill 1647, includes new requirements for significantly enhanced fence-line and community-level air monitoring at and near refineries. Findings of the CARB-CAPCOA refinery-focused report will also be a useful resource as CARB and air districts work with stakeholders to implement Californias Community Air Protection Program under AB 617, enacted in 2017. The report takes into account the refinery chemicals of highest concern as identified in a companion report also released today by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA). This report, Analysis of Refinery Chemical Emissions and Health Effects, presents a list of chemicals emitted from California refineries and prioritizes the chemicals according to their emissions levels and toxicity. The report covers emissions that occur routinely in daily operations, as well as potential emissions from an accidental or other non-routine release. The report supports the goals of the Interagency Refinery Task Force, established in response to concerns raised in the aftermath of the Chevron Refinery fire in 2012. As part of a broader effort to improve the coordination of refinery safety and compliance efforts, and improve emergency response capabilities, CARB and CAPCOA agreed to assess existing emergency air monitoring capabilities and identify potential improvements to refinery air monitoring systems. The agencies released an inventory of air monitoring and response capabilities for each major refinery in May 2015. GR woman helped by Climb Wyoming Cheryl James shares her story about how Climb Wyoming helped her provide for her family during the Green River City Council meeting Tuesday night. James is one of many women the organization has provided job training and support for since its inception. For Cheryl James, Climb Wyoming has given her the opportunity to provide for her family and stay in a community with a great school system. James, speaking to the Green River City Council during an update from the organization, spoke about her experiences before applying for the program and how CDL training offered by Climb Wyoming changed her life. Originally from New Mexico, James came to Green River when her husband accepted a job in the area. James took a job at McDonald's, but eventually moved with her husband as his work took him from state to state. Her marriage ended in divorce and... A bill signed by Gov. Mark Gordon will allow the states community colleges to issue bachelors degrees without input from the University of Wyoming. The bill, Senate File 111, was signed Friday. Rep. John Freeman, D-Green River, said the bill allows the states seven community colleges to issue Bachelor of Applied Science degrees in specific fields. Freeman said once Western Wyoming Community College creates the coursework needed for a degree, residents can earn bachelor degrees without leaving Rock Springs. He said the degrees are geared towards technical fields. One example Freeman... Local snowstorms have dumped inches throughout Sweetwater County during the past few months, but the area is still considered abnormally dry according to a report from the U.S. Drought Monitor released Thursday. Despite that classification, drought conditions in southern Wyoming could improve. Abnormally dry is the lowest drought rating listed on the drought monitor, which uses a five-point scale ending with exceptional drought. According to the National Weather Services drought information page, areas that are abnormally dry are considered to be going into a more severe drought or... Manila (CNN Philippines Life) On the streets of Petrograd a century ago, International Working Womens Day (March 8) marked a great leap in the worldwide working class movement. With banners demanding bread for our children, the march of working class women ignited the 1917 February Revolution in Russia. Organized by socialists from North America on Feb. 28, 1909, the first Women's Day called for political rights for working women. At the Second International Conference of Working Women a year later, Clara Zetkin forwarded the organizing of International Working Womens Day. The conference concluded that every country shall celebrate the day with the slogan, The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism. More than a hundred years after 1910, what is the aspiration of the working women's day of militancy? Womens Day in the Philippines If we stop, the world stops was the battle cry of the 5.3 million-strong women's organizations and trade unions that protested in Spain last March 8. From the global north to south, the shouts of women resisting resonated on different rooms, streets, farmlands, rivers and seas, even in the virtual space anywhere women were. In the Philippines, women raised banners against the centuries-old pandemic of hunger and poverty. Majority of Filipinos remain landless agricultural workers, and women farmers carry double or triple the burden for the lack of access to and control over resources and economic opportunities. Under the neoliberal policies of the state, as in the recent rice tariffication law, land-use conversion acts, and the privatization of public utilities like water, more and more women lose land, livelihood, and life. So, women fight. On Women's Month and throughout the year, they take to the streets and raise the torch of justice, freedom, and equality. However, state repression and violence eradicate every movement for genuine and radical change. In militarized areas, those who resist are threatened, harassed, and subjected to violence including warrantless arrests and murder from mercenary soldiers who serve the powerful and the ruling elite. Some peasant women who have been arrested on trumped-up charges were even jailed with their infants or children. Womens resistance and feminism the advancing of the socio-political-economic condition of women are vital for a just society in which resources are fairly distributed and no one is exploited, whether for her gender or her labor power. The global capitalist system has been creating an order where millions of families live in dire poverty while only a few accumulate vast wealth. The mother who strives to feed her children, the wife who enters the economic sphere to build a better home, the woman who works to experience life her dreams and aspirations belong not only to herself. Hence, the feminist struggle marches along with the peoples struggle. We must not forget that while individual successes are important to the revolution, it is always the collective effort of women that must be recognized and perpetuated. The struggle of Filipinas in history Filipina militancy is primarily rooted in the struggle on its native soil, strengthened by lessons of history not only from the local colonial and class struggle but from international solidarity as well. Filipina feminism is established on its own homegrown efforts that both construct and are reconstructed by what is popularly known as western feminism. From the priestess Caquenga who led the Iraya in a 1607 revolt against Dominican priests in Cagayan to the nuns of the 1970s and 1980s who went to the streets to defy Martial Law and call attention to women's issues, Filipinas have always protected their people from foreign or oppressive rule. Gabriela Silang of Abra, Teresa Magbanua of Iloilo, Agueda Kahabagan of Laguna, Nieves Fernandez of Leyte, Felipa Culala of Pampanga, Bai Bibyaon of Davao have all led resistance movements against Spanish, American, and Japanese takeover, as well as against the continuous havoc wreaked by imperialism, bureaucrat-capitalism, and feudalism in indigenous lands and communities. Likewise, historically and quite naturally, militant women whether they would call themselves feminists or not come from all social classes and economic/cultural backgrounds. Many Huk guerrillas were former school teachers or farmers; among the members of Gabriela, the biggest alliance of women's groups in the country, are workers, the urban poor, office ladies, peasants, even celebrities. As in resistance movements in the past, the women joining rallies today, or writing revolutionary songs in the mountains, or reclaiming farmlands from greedy haciendas are doing so anonymously and in massive numbers, working for the true emancipation not only of themselves but of all Filipinos. The continuing militancy From the colonial past to the present, powerful countries have been controlling the economic, political, and cultural life of those living in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the "global south," majority of whom are women. And the leaders of these supposedly sovereign states, carrying their masculine stance, submit to their foreign masters. A country like the Philippines, with vast rice fields and filled with young people, imports rice and exports laborers. History calls upon us to realize the necessity and inevitability of militant and collective efforts of women in the Philippines and abroad. By uniting the particularities and universalities of our experiences, we can create a wave-upon-wave, solid blow to the common enemy of the oppressed and exploited. The 1910 International Working Women's Day has brought to light the contribution of women working women, ordinary women to society and country. It gave birth to today's collective militancy of women, both locally and internationally. It is the mother of modern feminism, the blood that pulsates beneath women's movements all over the world. As the first International Working Womens Day changed the fate of all the women, men, and children who came after it, the challenge in celebrating Women's Day in our time is to strengthen the struggle. The new generation of feminists remembers our mother as we give birth to a new and lasting world order. GREENWICH Kids celebrated the Jewish holiday of Purim with an informative and interactive puppet show Esther Saves the Day at Temple Sholom on Wednesday. Children dressed up in costumes to watch the puppet show, shouting boo! every time Hamans name was mentioned. In the Jewish faith, Purim commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from Haman. It doesnt seem possible, but it is almost time for my favorite springtime event: the Greenwich Riding and Trails Association Horse Show. It will take place Sunday, June 9, at the wonderful Milliken estate on Pierson Drive in the backcountry. It is a wonderful place for a horse show, and of course, a wonderful place for a luncheon under a tent. This event has quite a history. To wit, the show celebrates its 98th anniversary this year. Although not a consecutive run, it is an impressive one. It started in 1914 at Nutbourne Farm in Port Chester, N.Y. One of its features, a tradition that continues today, was a luncheon given under a tent on the showgrounds. And I can attest that the lunch is delicious today, although I wasnt there in 1914. Attendees can enjoy the show while having lunch, which I think is just as good today as it was back then. In 1921, the show moved to Yale Farms off John Street, and then in 1925 to the Greenwich Polo Grounds on Quaker Ridge Road. The show relocated briefly in 1948 to Blind Brook Turf and Polo Club on Anderson Hill Road in Purchase, N.Y., before returning to Quaker Ridge in 1950 for a few years, and then back to Blind Brook for the 38th running in 1954. After a five-year absence, the Horse Show returned in 1960 and was held on the property of William Heron at Lower Cross Road and Lake Avenue. When the Heron family sold their property, the show was moved to Coker Farm in Bedford, N.Y., thanks to the generosity of Judy Richter. Talking about the show reminds me of that one day when the late Miggy Serrrell and I were having tea with our good friends, the Millikens. We were saying how hard it was to find places to have the Greenwich Riding and Trails Association Horse Shows, including the Day in the Country, a smaller show held in September. Both Phoebe and the late Gerrish Milliken said in one breath, Why dont you have it here? Since then, the Milliken family has welcomed the Greenwich Riding and Trails Association each year. It has been a grand affair each year with a delightful lunch, with the tables placed so that one can enjoy a meal and still clearly see the ring. I must say, what is going on in the ring has become extremely glamorous. Both the riders and horses have come a long way. And thank goodness for the wonderful land that we have courtesy of the Milliken family. As Im sure many of you know, ever since 1966, when Miggy Serrell talked to me about the loss of land for the shows, I suggested that we should have a ball to raise much-needed funds for the Greenwich Riding and Trails Association. The answer to that was, Why dont you? And so I became chairman of the organizations first ball. I understand that we will have a ball this year. That is a fine thing that we have been able to do from 1966 to 2019. The Silver Horse Ball will be held at the Round Hill Club on Nov. 2. It will be a ball, which one doesnt hear about so much these days. It brings in the money to cover the expenses, which go up each year, and the proceeds will also help conservation. Come one, come all, and thanks to the Millikens. Greenwich native Norma Bartol, a former Greenwich Time reporter and columnist, lives in the backcountry. Most entrepreneurs never want to take a break. There is always another goal, another number to hit, another partnership to build. It can feel like a mistake to unplug from your business and take a vacation. But, all business leaders need to take time to rest and recharge -- for their own health and for the health of their companies. Unfortunately, too many people wait around for the perfect time to take their dream trip. The truth is, timing is almost never perfect, and no one knows how much time he or she has left on this earth. You have to make time. Related: Is Your Workaholic Behavior Hurting Your Team? The Answer Is Yes. This is not a sign of weakness. In fact, many successful people I know see work as what they do in between their vacations. In 2017, I stopped waiting for the perfect time and took two bucket-list vacations with my family. That year of family leisure travel changed my perspective, brought my family closer together and made me a better leader and entrepreneur. Landon Ray, CEO of Ontraport put it best, "Entrepreneurs who lead fulfilling lives are the best leaders, period. They allow themselves the freedom to vacation and garner new ideas and perspectives while reducing stress. My advice? Take a trip that centers around something youre passionate about." Being your best self means taking time to recharge, but that doesnt mean you cant also broaden your capabilities. To give yourself different types of fulfillment and a wider perspective, my advice is -- dont just take one vacation each year, take these three. 1. One for yourself. Its important to take time off to personally recharge without any responsibility for others. I am an avid skier and have been taking a ski trip to Salt Lake City for the past 15 years. This trip allows me to reconnect with friends and personally recharge. While I like to travel with friends, this type of trip can also be a solo adventure. Going alone will give you plenty of time to reflect without distractions. You can use the time to replenish your mental capacity, or as an opportunity for deep introspection about your personal vision and values. Whether you go it alone or with a group of friends, make sure you take a vacation where you get to do exactly what you want to do. Related: When It's Time For a Break, Take One 2. One with your spouse or partner. Healthy relationships are built, in part, on shared experiences and one-on-one connection. Taking a vacation with just your partner is a great way to reconnect as adults and appreciate each other away from the pressures of daily life. This is especially important for families with young children. Parenting transforms any relationship, and while becoming parents is a fulfilling experience, it also upends the comfortable pattern of your relationship with your spouse or partner. A trip for two provides an opportunity for both of you to have quiet time together to talk and to plan what you want as a couple and how you envision your future together. If you dont actively work to take a trip like this, my experience is that such vacations just will not happen. You need to pick a time, pick a place and go -- even if you are only able to get away for a weekend. 3. One with your family. One of the most sobering posts Ive ever read was on Tim Urbans blog Wait but Why. Urban calculated that by the time he graduated from high school, he had already spent 92 percent of his lifes time with his parents. Because 18 years is less than a quarter of the average persons life, it is easy to miscalculate how many opportunities any of us have for quality time with family. Thats why a family vacation is perhaps the most important trip you can take. While you dont need to do anything lavish, changing your environment and experiencing something new with your family is a chance to create lifelong memories with the people who matter most. In 2017, I spent 10 days traveling through Yellowstone National Park in an RV with my family. It gave me an important reason to completely unplug from my business for over a week and create a once-in-a-lifetime trip with my loved ones. There is nothing I could have possibly done in my business over those 10 days that could have been more impactful than the time we spent together. But, as a bonus, I came back relaxed and rested for my companys busy fall season. Related: What This Company Has Learned From Making It Mandatory for Employees to Tale 4 Weeks of Vacation Per Year Its not easy to give yourself a vacation, much less three. There is always something else to do, another client, another project, another goal to hit. But you owe it to yourself, and to the people around you, to take time away from your everyday life, to rejuvenate yourself, reconnect with your partner or get special quality time with your family. Time away from work will make you a better leader and set an important precedent for your team -- showing colleagues that you trust them to carry on without you and demonstrating that you value taking time to think, relax and recharge. Related: Your Employees Will Work Harder If You Give Them This One Thing (and It's Not More Money) Watch Out For These 4 Warning Signs on The Road to Success The One Tip You Need to Reach Your Peak Performance Copyright 2019 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved On Wednesday, we reported about some renders that were released by 91Mobiles containing the alleged Moto Z4. There are conflicting reports about whether this render represents the Moto Z4 or the Moto Z4 Play. Given the small indent on the bottom that looks like a 3.5mm headphone jack, this is more likely to be the Z4 Play. Alleged render from 91 Mobiles There isnt however, a fingerprint scanner on the side, so were either to believe that its under the display or this render is a fake. Its also rather hard to believe that Motorola is going to launch a 2019 flagship with a single camera when the Moto Z3 and Z2 both had dual-cameras. XDA-Developers did some digging when it cross-referenced some of the IMEIs that were published in the FCC filing. This returned the codename foles which is synonymous with the Z4 Play. With this information, XDA was able to pinpoint several of the phones specs. First off, the phone is believed to run a Snapdragon 675 CPU and have either 4GB or 6GB of RAM. At the same time, there will also be either 64GB or 128GB of onboard storage. There is to be a 3,600 mAh battery integrated into the phone, this according to the FCC document. Also confirmed by the FCC doc is an 18W Turbo Charger for quick top-ups. The charger is rated for 5V @ 3A or up to 12V @ 1.5A so it should be rated for both Qualcomm Quick Charge and Power Delivery. As for the display, there arent much details available yet. However, XDA speculates the display could measure 6.39-inches diagonally given that the G7 Plus with its 6.2-inch display has about the same dimensions and the Z4 should have slimmer bezels. The FCC filing shows the Z4 Play to measure 157 x 75mm. It is again speculated this device will feature an in-display scanner. Moto Z4 Play at the FCC It is too early to tell whether Motorola will actually release two Moto Z4 devices or only keep the Z4 flagship. Lasy year's Moto Z3 felt rushed and solely for the purpose of announcing Verizon's 5G promise. Should the Moto Z4 Play arrive, it should surely support the 5G Moto Mod that Verizon will launch next month. We wonder what the future holds for Motorola this year as it prepares to launch its rumored foldable RAZR phone. Not to mention, the Z4 has some catching up to do since the Z3 launched with a lower-resolution screen and a 2017 CPU. Via Samsung has rolled out Android Pie for a total of four mid-rangers this month. Today a fifth one joins the list as the company released the latest Android version update for the Galaxy A6+ (2018). Similar to Galaxy A9 (2018), the Galaxy A6+ (2018) is also receiving the update only in Poland. However, according to the rollout schedule shared by Samsung, this smartphone is slated to receive Pie in April so we can expect more markets to get the latest version of Android next month. Android Pie for Samsung Galaxy A6+ (2018) is rolling out over-the-air with version number A605FNXXU3BSC6. It weighs more than 1.2GB in size, and, unlike other Samsung smartphones that got February security patch with Pie, this one comes with a patch that's dated March 1, 2019. Via Pretty soon, the Samsung Galaxy S10+ will lose its position as the company's latest and greatest, which will pass on to the Galaxy S10 5G. The company officially confirmed that it's going to release its first 5G smartphone - which will also be the first in the industry - on April 5. Initially, the handset was supposed to go out this month but it was delayed. Even so, it will still be the first commercially available 5G-enabled smartphone. It will be made available in South Korea, which aims to be first country in the world with a working 5G network too. The Samsung Galaxy S10 5G will also launch in the US as Verizon exclusive initially. There won't be any pre-orders but customers purchasing the phone between April 5-16 will get free Galaxy buds, a wireless charger and 50% discount on one screen replacement within the first year. Verizon's 5G network is supposed to launch on April 11. So far, there's no word on pricing, but market analysts believe it will cost the equivalent $1,332 in South Korea so the US price will probably be in the same ballpark. Via Haiti - FLASH : Appointment of an interim Prime Minister In the Official Journal Le Moniteur N42, 174th Year of Thursday, March 21, 2019 was issued an order signed by the President of the Republic Jovenel Moise, appointing the citizen Jean Michel Lapin, ad interim Prime Minister to dispatch current affairs, in waiting for the formation of a new Government. This decree follows the motion of censure against the Prime Minister by the Chamber of Deputies this Monday https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27219-haiti-flash-haiti-has-no-more-government.html In its Article 2, the decree says "The Order of 5 August 2018, naming the citizen John Henry Ceant Prime Minister, is and remains annulled." Recall that Jean Michel Lapin a former Director General of the MCC, had become September 18, 2018, Minister of Culture and Communication to replace Guyler C. Delva. HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Politic : Republican Senator Marco Antonio Rubio meets Jovenel Moise Wednesday, two days before the meeting between President Jovenel Moise and President of the United States Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago, https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27229-haiti-flash-donald-trump-will-receive-the-leader-of-haiti-in-mar-a-lago.html the Republican Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio paid a private visit to the Head of State at the National Palace At the end of this meeting away from the media... Jovenel Moise on his Twitter account wrote "I received in audience, at the National Palace, the Senator Marco Antonio Rubio. The meeting focused on strengthening of relations of friendship and cooperation between Haiti and the US, as well as on investment, security and elections." For his part American Senator said "I met with President of Haiti Jovenel Moise to discuss the importance of the dialogue for the elections in October. I thanked President Moise for his support on the Venezuelan issue and spoke about partnership opportunities for economic development and the fight against drug trafficking." There was also talk of China's predatory economic practices and the formation of the next Government... Senator Marco Rubio then met with the Presidents of both Houses of Parliament, who discussed the choice of a new Prime Minister and the formation of a new government. No meeting was on the senator's agenda with the censored Prime Minister Ceant https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27219-haiti-flash-haiti-has-no-more-government.html Finally, Senator Rubio went to the American Embassy where, in the presence of Ambassador Michele Sison, he met with several Haitian political leaders to whom he asked to focus dialogue to find a solution to the crisis. The next Government, the parliamentary and municipal elections of October 2019 and the favorable conditions for investment in Haiti were also on the agenda of this meeting. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27229-haiti-flash-donald-trump-will-receive-the-leader-of-haiti-in-mar-a-lago.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27219-haiti-flash-haiti-has-no-more-government.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-24580-haiti-flash-in-favor-of-venezuela-haiti-could-be-the-target-of-the-trump-administration.html PI/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Economy : Hundreds of Cubans come to stock up every week in Port-au-Prince The number of Cubans who come to shop in Haiti continues to increase, every week there are hundreds to roam the streets of the capital or to hustle at the market Hippolyte (where Cubans have become the biggest buyers) to the search for articles for their businesses, their business or their personal use. Haitians and Cubans benefit from the sale of household goods, technologies, clothes and shoes, among others. Cubans travel to Haiti usually for a short time and are limited to visiting a very small area of the Haitian capital. They know that back they have a weight limit for their luggage and they can not buy more than 12 items of the same kind. However, a Cuban trader explained that when he bought more copies of the same item it was not a problem, because Cuban traders know each other and organize themselves according to their interests distribute the items in order to respect the quotas. "I buy everything, clothes, electronic equipment, shoes, in Cuba it is very expensive and above all, these products do not exist" explains another Cuban. These Cuban "tourists" of a new kind are easily recognizable at the Port-au-Prince airport because their luggage consists of large packages of clothes, flat-screen TVs, toys and other items. As in the case of Guyana or Panama, there is already a network in Haiti providing transport, accommodation or food sales to Cuban visitors. Near the airport, a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince is even nicknamed "Ti Havana", it is about three streets where are the hotels most frequented by Cubans. SL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Economy : The oil sector strongly disagrees with the decision of the BMPAD Following the announcement of Fils-Aime Ignace Saint-Fleur, Director General of the Office of Monetization of Development Assistance Programs (BMPAD), to allow oil companies in Haiti to proceed with fuel purchases while requiring a Stand-by Credit letter for the value equivalent to the request to guarantee payments and minimize potential risks. https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27223-haiti-politic-importation-of-fuels-the-state-transfers-its-responsibility-to-the-private-sector.html ; the Association of Petroleum Professionals (APPE) has reacted vigorously and signified its refusal to comply with the unilateral decision of BMPAD in the framework of the liberalization of the import of petroleum products: Diesel, Gazoline and Jet and recalls its claims. In a letter dated March 19th, signed by Randolph Rameau, President of APPE addressed to Fils-Aime Ignace Saint-Fleur, the Association notes the desire "to liberalize the import of fuels while maintaining the administration of the prices by the Ministry of Finance" However, Randolph Rameau categorically refuses "the unilateral decision of BMPAD to require oil companies to open letters of credit for potential suppliers" underlining "This request, which we refuse, is inadmissible in the current state of discussions on the details of the implementation of the liberalization and the amount of the advances to be refunded by the customs to the oil companies [...] Customs now owe more than six billion Gourdes to the companies oil companies who no longer have cash to order the products needed for their operations and to lock in the funds corresponding to the guarantees required to obtain the letters of credit in question, "recalling that the oil companies currently sell fuels to gas stations cheaper than they pay at BMPAD. TB/ HaitiLibre Haiti - FLASH : Interpellation, majority divergence in the Senate, the PM seized justice On Tuesday, 13 Senators (Joseph Lambert, Rony Celestin, Jean Rigaud Belizaire, Pierre Francois Sildor, Onondieu Louis, Jean Marie Ralph Fethiere, Nawoon Marcelus, Pierre Wanique, Herve Lenin Fourcand, Denis Cadeau, Gracia Delva and Sorel Jancinthe), addressed a correspondence to Senator Carl Murat Cantave, President of the Senate, expressing their "disagreement with the decision of the Bureau, which persists in holding a interpellation session against a former Prime Minister who has no longer entery in Parliament". Extract of the letter : "[...] As a matter of fact, on 18 March 2019, the Assembly of Deputies realized and, through a massive vote of 93 in favor, 6 against and 3 abstentions, took a motion of censure that led to the dismissal of Prime Minister Jean Henry Ceant and his Government; Considering that the said motion of censure having dismissed Prime Minister Jean Henry Ceant and his Government was duly notified to the President of the Republic who took note and announced provisions to replace the fallen Prime; Considering that the Senate of the Republic could not hold its meeting as it was planned and, consequently, no decision has been issued as to the case; [...] We, the Honorable Senators of the Republic, signatories hereof, intend to signify, as a matter of fact, signify to the Honorable President of the Senate of the Republic, that the massive vote of the Chamber of Deputies who dismissed the Prime Minister and the Government deserves the respect of the Senate; that we disagree with the decision of the office which persists in holding a interpellation session against a former Prime Minister who no longer has his entry into Parliament; request that the work be resumed in the Senate of the Republic in accordance with the internal regulations and the provisions of the last Conference of Presidents; Finally, let us say that the President of the Senate of the Republic, the Honorable Carl Murat Cantave, must make himself available for the necessary consultations to replace the new Prime Minister [...]" In addition, five other Senators (Dieudonne Luma Etienne, Wilfrid Gelin, Jacques Sauveur Jean, Kedlaire Augustin and Willot Joseph) wrote to Cantave, asking him to convene, as a matter of urgency, a special conference of Presidents to find a solution to this crisis which is developing around due to this conflict of interpellation of the Prime Minister between the two room, which risks mortgaging the future of the democracy in Haiti and tarnishing more the image of the parliamentary institution. For its part, against all odds, the former Prime Minister Jean-Henry Ceant does not intend to give way, not only he continues to affirm that he is still in office according to him, but also he assigns the President of the Chamber of Deputies before the court of refered and before the CSC/CA for having been dismissed from his post. He asked the Superior Court of Accounts in particular to declare "null" the request for interpellation, the vote of the Chamber of Deputies and the minutes relating thereto. Ceant also brought an interlocutory action for a stay of the interpellation pending a court decision. Note that Wednesday, March 20, the interpellation session put in continuation by the President of the Senate did not take place. 16 senators took part in a meeting initiated by the Senator Cantave, around the reaction following the vote of censure of the Chamber of Deputies against the Prime Minister, Jean Henry Ceant and in an attempt to resolve their differences before the interpellation session still in progress Thursday, March 21. Youri Latortue invited his colleagues to refrain from any initiative pending the decision of a judge following the action taken by the Prime Minister. Senator Latortue and other members of the radical opposition left the meeting. HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping... Jovenel Moise confirms his meeting with Donald Trump President Jovenel Moise has confirmed his participation in the special meeting with President Donald J. Trump, to be held Friday, March 22 in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27229-haiti-flash-donald-trump-will-receive-the-leader-of-haiti-in-mar-a-lago.html The MOPOD warns Following the vote of censure, Monday, March 18, of Prime Minister Ceant by the Chamber of Deputies https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27219-haiti-flash-haiti-has-no-more-government.html , Serge Jean-Louis, leader of the opposition party "Patriotic People's Movement Dessalinien (MOPOD), warns against the risk of aggravation of the socio-political crisis in the country. Minister Brunet on a mission to appease the border Following violent clashes at the border on March 15 between Haitians and Dominican soldiers who have killed 1 and made several injured among Haitians, Jean-Marie Reynaldo Brunet, the Minister of the Interior, as part of a calming of the area, met the notables of Belladere whose Priest Wilcoxson sainvil. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27225-haiti-dr-the-government-confirms-that-the-wall-of-the-dominicans-respects-the-haitian-territory.html https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27194-haiti-flash-violent-confrontation-at-the-border-between-haitians-and-dominican-soldiers.html Audience of Clifford Brandt postponed Tuesday, after two consecutive sessions, the trial of Clifford Brandt et al., Denis Pierre Michel, the President of the Criminal Court of Gonaives, postponed the audience to eight days. Clifford Brandt's lawyers developed their thesis, supporting a mental problem that their client would suffer to demand his acquittal. Defenders of other defendants will take charge next week. Training on biodegradable waste management Training session for principals and teachers from Martissant schools on biodegradable waste management in light of the expertise of the College Catts Pressoir. This approach of the UPGRADE project aims to integrate this theme into the daily practices of students to better develop their environment. The UPGRADE project is funded by Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance and implemented by the Pan American Development Foundation and CECI. Among other things, it aims to strengthen the resilience of the populations living in the urban areas of Ouanaminthe and Martissant. HL/ HaitiLibre Published on 2019/03/20 | Source "Doctor Prisoner" came in first in its first week. Advertisement According to Nielsen Korea nationwide, the first episode of the KBS 2TV drama "Doctor Prisoner" rated 8.4% and 9.8%. "Doctor Prisoner" is a prison and medical suspense drama about the life and death battle of a genius doctor who becomes a medical director at a prison after being ousted from his hospital. The movie-like deployment of the drama with Namgoong Min, Kwon Nara, Kim Byung-chul, Choi Won-young, and Park Eun-seok succeeded in drawing attention. Meanwhile, SBS drama "Big Issue" rated 4.3% and 4.6% while MBC "Spring Turns to Spring" came in last with 3.6% and 4.3%. Havre Police Department A caller at a Fifth Avenue business reported at 9:24 a.m. Wednesday a door handle was broken. -- William Joseph Williams Jr. of Havre, 33, was arrested on a trespass to property charge after a Ninth Avenue Northwest caller reported Wednesday at 10:50 a.m. that a trespasser was back on the caller's property. -- Marea Jade Redhouse of Havre, 25, was issued a summons on an assault charge after someone stopped at the police station at 11:02 a.m. to speak to an officer. -- Nathan Korb of Havre, 20, was issued a summons on charges of driving while using a cellphone... Box Elder Junior Laila Ketchum, 16, said her experience as a page in this year's Legislative session has opened her eyes to the procedures of government. "It's an honor to be able to do something like this," Ketchum said. " ... Just the experience of being able to sit in during those sessions was a really a big part of it for me." Ketchum was one of six students from across Montana to serve as a legislative page in Helena. She served as page for Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy, D-Box Elder, from March 8 to March 16. That included helping with emails, organizing them, arranging them and delivering... On April 2, Montanans will join hundreds of other alzheimers advocates from across the country in our nations capitol, meeting with Senator Daines, Senator Tester and Congressman Gianforte. The resounding message will again be loud and clear: alzheimers is the most expensive disease in America and must be a public health priority. Indeed, it is the epidemic of our generation. An estimated 5.8 million people are living with the disease, and nearly 14 million will have the disease by 2050. Families are struggling under the emotional, financial and physical weight of this devastating... Editor, We have the chance in Montana to take some control over the future of our electricity costs. The Colstrip power plants have been a reliable source of electricity for our state for decades, and Units 3 & 4 can continue to provide affordable energy for decades into the future. Our legislators should be supporting a plan for NorthWestern Energy to buy more of Colstrip generation. They need to make sure there are controls on what NorthWestern Energy can charge people for the electricity from Colstrip, which is why they changed the bill to allow for more oversight from the Public Serv... Parkinsons disease has been around for years and until now, no one has an absolute answer to how nerve cells dead, and how they lost the ability to produce dopamine. Some studies[1] correlate Parkinsons aging or changes in genes that lead to exposure to hazardous chemicals that can interfere with the production of dopamine from the nerve. There is good news on the horizon for people suffering from Parkinsons disease. A recent study[1] has shown that the use of the most advanced technology used gene therapy may help improve symptoms of Parkinsons disease, such as stiffness, tremors, and other problems with motor function, helping with the safety and tolerability of a patient. Parkinsons disease (PD)[2] is the second neurodegenerative disorder most common throughout the world after Alzheimers disease. PD involves the malfunction and death of nerve cells in the half part of the brain known as the substantia nigra. These parts are in charge of controlling movement and coordination. The cells then produce a chemical called dopamine, a neurotransmitter that sends messages to these parts of the brain. As Parkinsons disease progresses, the amount of dopamine decreases, resulting in motor symptoms like tremor, rigidity, slow movement, and difficulty with balance. Parkinsons Diagnosis And Current Treatments What if someday a neurologist could say reassuring a worried patient, Do not worry, its just Parkinson. Perhaps it will be the case as a research[3] and clinical trials give us better treatments and perhaps even a cure. The current treatment landscape may alleviate some of that excitement. The long-term effects of L-Dopa[4] are uncertain and may lead to serious adverse reactions. Despite the introduction of dozens of other alternative medicines and therapies such as DBS (deep brain stimulation), only partially eliminating the symptoms and not stopping progression, L-Dopa still presents as the most effective drug treatment. However, when you look at some specific areas to study the possibilities for the future still seem quite favorable. Parkinsons Diagnosis Parkinsons disease is difficult to diagnose because there is no one specific test for the condition. Symptoms vary from person to person and several others have symptoms similar to diseases, which means misdiagnosis may occur. Trials have been made to improve the early diagnosis of Parkinsons disease[5]. Early treatment is based on early diagnosis, it is important to note the first symptoms[6] of Parkinsons disease and consult a doctor as soon as possible. Your doctor may recommend these following tests: This help can for other conditions, such as abnormal thyroid hormone levels or liver damage. MRI or CT scan A scan may detect signs of a brain tumor or stroke. If there are no signs of a brain tumor or stroke, most MRI or CT scans of patients with Parkinsons disease appear normal. A person with a normal scan of the brain, but the symptoms of PD can have PD. This is a test image that can sometimes detect low levels of dopamine in the brain. PET scans are costly and some hospitals do not offer them, so this option is not regularly available. This is also a dopamine transporter (DAT) scan. Whatever the results of the examination, the doctor will consider mainly the signs and symptoms of the person making a diagnosis. Parkinsons Treatment Although there is no popular Treatment For Parkinsons Disease, some current options can help control symptoms and improve the patients quality of life. Various treatments are consisting of medication, physical therapy, and Natural Remedies For Parkinsons Patients. These trials include: Medication Dopamine precursor: a drug that can pass through to the brain cells and easily convert to dopamine. Help in managing Parkinsons disease. Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) inhibitors: inhibited the action of catechol-O-methyltransferase enzyme that involves in degrading neurotransmitters. Dopamine agonists[10]: dopamine-producing receptor is activated and helps in managing the disease. MAO-B inhibitors: increases the amount of dopamine-producing in the basal ganglia by inhibiting the activity of an enzyme that breaks down dopamine. Deep brain stimulation[11]: A surgical procedure to improve motor symptoms such as stiffness, slow movements, tremor, rigidity, and trouble walking. Procedures Carbidopa / Levodopa enteral suspension: The drug transmits to the small intestine through a stomach tube through a keyhole performed through surgery. Thalamotomy[12]: The destruction of part of the thalamus to help alleviate movement disorders. Pallidotomy: pallidotomy is the destruction of the globus pallidus, one part of the brain responsible for the symptoms of Parkinsons disease. Therapy Physiotherapy: It can help to balance and improve motor mobility problems. Occupational therapy: Helps to update the daily activities of these foods to eat, read, and dress patients. Parkinsons Gene Therapy A gene therapy for Parkinson, a viral vector delivers a new functional gene can helps cells to create enzymes or neurotransmitters. Together with existing Parkinsons disease drugs, it can create a much stronger result. Novel approaches based on gene therapy for Parkinson is not a cure. However, it has several potentials as it allows more effective management to control symptoms longer. Typically, gene therapy introduces the gene into the cells to make proteins or enzymes which are key to the treatment of the disease. What is gene therapy? Gene therapy[13] for Parkinson involves stimulating the cells to produce proteins that normally they do not. Professionals carry out the therapy by using a genetically engineered virus that has all the disease-causing components removed. This allows us to use the efficacy of a viral vector delivery system. Viruses are very good at infecting cells. Can gene therapy be applied as a Parkinsons treatment? There is a group of several clinical trials[14] that approach various gene therapy strategies for treating Parkinsons disease, including: Glutamic acid decarboxylase GAD[15] increases a brain chemical production associated gamma-aminobutyric acid or GABA. Gene therapy for GAD can set into the subthalamic nucleus in the brains of PD patients. The objective is to increase the presence of GABA in the brain, helping to rewire the abnormal brain of Parkinsons. Aromatic amino acid decarboxylase AADC[16] is an important enzyme in the conversion of levodopa to dopamine and the decline of AADC in the brain can be used for changes in the effectiveness of treatment of long-term levodopa. Gene therapy for AADC was preferable in the putamen in the brain. This therapy aim at increasing the amount of AADC, making more effective treatment. Neurturin (NTN), glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) A protein that is inside GDNF family of nerve growth factors. Specialists can apply a neurturin gene in the several brain regions in PD patients to support the survival of neurons. AADC-TH-GCH Tyrosine hydroxylase, guanosine triphosphate cyclohydrolase, and aromatic amino acid decarboxylase are three important enzymes in the synthesis of dopamine. This therapy has been introduced into the putamen of PD patients to increase the production of dopamine. How does gene therapy work in the brain? A virus, or a vector is a small lump of nucleic acid that penetrates a cell and hijack the machinery of the cell. This then replicates its nucleic acid and produce viral proteins, which frequently cause disease in the process. Certain viruses are still able to incorporate their genetic material into the genetic material of the cell they infect. The scientists intelligently take advantage of these processes to insert therapeutic genes. The harmful DNA pieces are removed from the virus and the gene of choice is incorporated into the viral structure. Then, the modified virus is injected into a specific part of the body, thereby allowing the cells to spread. If everything goes according to plan, those pieces of DNA are used by the cell by the cellular machinery to produce the protein of choice. Conclusion The question was whether gene therapy could cure genetic diseases. After obtaining information about Parkinsons gene therapy, gene therapy has the potential to become a Parkinsons disease treatment. However, it cannot be an official approval as an effective treatment yet. However, to perform the efficacy of Parkinsons treatment, gene therapy must go through several clinical trials. Hopefully, these tests can provide treatment that will become a regular procedure in medical practices for genetic diseases like PD. Frequently Asked Questions What is Parkinsons disease? It is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder that affects movement, symptoms of the common disease include tremor of the limbs, even at rest, in addition to the stiffness of the arms, legs, and trunk, slowness of movement, and impaired balance and posture. Is there a specific test to diagnose? There is no definitive standard test that marks Parkinsons disease. Instead, a neurologist will perform several neurological tests and physical examinations to rule out other diseases that mimic the side effects of Parkinson before concluding PD. Can Parkinsons Be Prevent? To date, theres no known way to prevent Parkinsons disease. But, there are several treatment options, including drug therapy and/or surgery can reduce symptoms and make living with the disease easier. Is Parkinsons disease contagious? Parkinsons is not a contagious disease, theres no need to worry about being in close contact with someone who has it. Can Parkinsons disease be inherited? Although most cases of the disease are not the result of an inherited gene, there is evidence that this could be a possibility in some people. What is gene therapy? Gene therapy for Parkinson is a treatment category that involves the introduction of DNA into cells to modify the proteins that are created and thereby improve symptoms or even cure the disease. Why are viruses used in gene therapy? Viruses are used in gene replacement therapy due to their natural ability to enter the bodys cells. In gene replacement therapy, scientists rework or adapt a virus so that it can be used as a vehicle or delivery vector, without causing disease in humans. What are the risks of gene replacement therapy? Most of the risk of gene replacement therapy has to do with the viral vector used to deliver new genes into cells. Long-term risks are unknown. The general risks listed unwanted immune system reaction, Unable to turn off the new working gene, the new gene inserts in the wrong place. The wrong cells may be targeted. Study is the first to show the impact of cannabis use on psychosis, highlighting the potential public health impact of changes to cannabis legislation Daily cannabis use, especially of high potency cannabis, is strongly linked to the risk of developing psychosis, according to a case-control study from 11 sites across Europe, published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal. The study, involving researchers from the Universitys Department of Psychology and collaborators at Kings College London, suggest that in cities where high potency cannabis is widely available, such as London and Amsterdam, a significant proportion of new cases of psychosis are associated with daily cannabis use and high potency cannabis. Many countries have legalised or decriminalised cannabis use, leading to concerns that this might result in an increase in cannabis use and associated harms. Observational studies and biological evidence support a causal link between cannabis use and psychosis, but until now, it has been unclear whether, at a population level, patterns of cannabis use influence rates of psychosis. Dr Marta Di Forti, lead author from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at Kings College London, UK, explained: Our findings are consistent with previous studies showing that the use of cannabis with a high concentration of THC has more harmful effects on mental health than the use of weaker forms. They also indicate for the first time how cannabis use affects the incidence of psychotic disorder at a population level. As the legal status of cannabis changes in many countries and states, and as we consider the medicinal properties of some types of cannabis, it is of vital public health importance that we also consider the potential adverse effects that are associated with daily cannabis use, especially high potency varieties. Dr Tom Freeman of the Addiction and Mental Health Group (AIM) at the University of Bath added: In this major international study across 11 sites in Europe and Brazil, we found that patterns of cannabis use were strongly associated with both the risk of psychosis and its incidence. We found that daily use of high THC cannabis was associated with a five-fold increased risk of psychosis compared to people who never used cannabis. We also showed for the first time, that that variation in patterns of daily use and high THC cannabis can account for the substantial variation in the incidence of psychosis across Europe. This study cannot provide definitive evidence for a causal relationship between cannabis use and psychosis. However the association between THC exposure and mental health is of concern, given our previous findings that THC concentrations doubled across Europe in the last decade. Recent research from the same team examined the increase in cannabis potency seen across Europe over the past 11 years. Study findings The new Lancet study looked at 11 sites across Europe (and one in Brazil). First, the researchers estimated the prevalence of psychosis by identifying all individuals with first episode psychosis who presented to mental health services between 2010 and 2015. Secondly, they compared 901 patients with first episode of psychosis with 1,237 healthy matched controls to understand the risk factors associated with psychosis. The researchers collected information about participants history of cannabis use and other recreational drugs. Using published data on levels of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), they estimated cannabis potency for the types of cannabis used by participants, and classified types as either high potency (over 10% THC) or low potency (under 10% THC). Daily cannabis use was more common among patients with first episode psychosis, compared to controls. 29.5% (266/901) of patients reported using cannabis daily, compared with 6.8% (84/1237) of controls. High potency cannabis use was also more common among patients with first episode psychosis, compared to controls. 37.1% (334/901) of patients reported using high potency cannabis, compared with 19.4% (240/1237) of controls. Once adjusted for other factors, the authors found that across the 11 sites, people who used cannabis on a daily basis were three times more likely to have a diagnosis of first episode psychosis, compared with people who had never used cannabis. This increased to five times more likely for daily use of high potency cannabis. The authors estimate that one in five new cases (20.4%) of psychosis across the 11 sites may be linked to daily cannabis use, and one in ten (12.2%) linked to use of high potency cannabis. Use of high potency cannabis was a strong predictor of psychotic disorder in Amsterdam and London, where high potency cannabis is widely available. In the Netherlands, the THC content reaches up to 67% in Nederhasj, and 22% in Nederwiet; in London, skunk-like cannabis (average THC 14%) represents 94% of the street market, whereas in countries like Italy, France, and Spain, herbal types of cannabis with THC content of less than 10% were still commonly used. For example, in Amsterdam, four in 10 (43.8%) new cases of psychosis were estimated to be linked to daily cannabis use, and 5 in 10 (50.3%) new cases linked to high potency use. Corresponding rates in London were 21.0% for daily use, and 30.3% for high potency use. If high potency cannabis were no longer available, the incidence of psychosis in Amsterdam would be expected to drop from 37.9 to 18.8 per 100,000 people per year; and in London from 45.7 to 31.9 per 100,000 people per year. The authors note that the data on cannabis use was not validated by biological measures such as urine, blood or hair samples. But they note that the cut-off of 10% THC for potency is conservative. The estimates on potency also do not include the proportion of cannabidiol (CBD), another important component of cannabis. University of Bath It's not always easy to quench your thirst in Igunga, Tanzania. Earning a name as one of the driest districts in the country, Igunga typically receives 22-27 inches of rain every year. And thats if residents are lucky. In recent years, drought and increasingly erratic rainfall have hammered the region, courtesy of climate change. These changing weather patterns combined with a lack of options for water storage are causing big problems for Igungas citizens and agriculture. But, since the Earth doesnt seem to be cooling any time soon, what is there to do? Dry river beds are common sights in Igunga (especially during the dry season). When rivers run dry, many communities are forced to make hand-dug wells in the dry beds, like this one. Here, a woman from a nearby village is visiting this "well" to wash clothes. There were no other available sources of water. Enter the Igunga Eco-Village Project. Through the Eco-Village project, Heifer is partnering with communities to combat climbing temperatures and to give families the tools they need to survive and thrive in the face of a changing world. This includes finding sustainable sources of water in the drought-stricken zone. I visited the project and learned about several different techniques that communities and families are using to ensure that water access isn't a dream, but a reality. Shallow Wells To my untrained mind, wells seem like a natural solution to any water problem. Unfortunately, the reality is much more complicated. Igunga, for example, is blessed with sandy soil that wont support deep wells. Shallow wells that collect water from closer to the surface are bridging the gap, but even they arent easy to build. Heifer Tanzania staff and engineers tested over 17 potential sites around Igunga and only found four areas that could sustain a shallow well. Miriam (center) and her neighbors gather at a newly opened shallow well. Before this well was built, the women had to dig their own wells in the dry riverbed. They were among the first to take water from the well. Not to be deterred, Heifer Tanzania has partnered with communities to build two new shallow wells at these viable sites and has plans to build at least two more. Additionally, existing wells that are broken or dry are being repaired and rehabilitated so that they can, once again, provide water to the people who live near them. So far, a total of eight wells have been built and/or rehabilitated. Rainwater Harvesting Tanks Can you imagine receiving treatment at a hospital that has no clean water? Or coming to your doctors office and leaving with a case of dysentery? For the people of Mwabakima Village in Igunga, Tanzania, this was the reality of their medical care. Mwabakima has something that many neighboring villages don't - a dispensary, a small clinic that provides medical treatment and medicine to families in rural areas. What Mwabakima doesn't have, though, is clean water. Or, at least, it didnt before 2016. Like many other villages in the Igunga district, the soil in Mwabakima is too sandy to support a well, so the only fresh water available to the villagers (including patients in the dispensary) came from the nearby river. Though the river water was cold and refreshing, it wasnt clean and put those who drank it at risk of contracting dysentery and other water-borne illnesses. Understandably, this caused would-be patients of the Mwabakima dispensary to search elsewhere for treatment, even driving them to travel long distances to neighboring districts. Mwabakima Village chairman Silvanus Buluba (L) and local artisan Masanja Buzali (R) stand next to the village rainwater harvesting tank. After receiving training in construction from Heifer Tanzania, Masanja was able to built this tank and two others in Mwabakima. The solution came in the form of a 8,000 gallon rainwater harvesting tank. Instead of relying on a source of running water or being tied to a particular geographic landscape, the harvesting tank collects rainwater and runoff from the dispensary roof through a filtered system and stores it safely until it is used. Currently, the water is used to treat patients in the dispensary. It is also available to any pregnant women in the village and the elderly. While this tank might seem like just a small solution to a big problem, Mwabakima village chairman Silvanus Buluba can testify that it is making waves in the community. We have an increased hospital delivery for women but also a raised number of patients accessing this dispensary, he said. In the past, people used to go to dispensaries and hospital facilities outside the village, but now everyones being treated here. This is due to the availability of water. In the past, only two pregnant women delivered here, but for now, in a month you can get seven pregnant women delivering here. Nyamizi Nikinga gets water from the dispensary's rainwater harvesting tank. The Mwabakima dispensary now averages five patients a day. And the tank isn't just affecting Mwabakima's elderly and sick - it's making a splash in the community as well. Chairman Buluba remarked, "Being constructed at the dispensary area, almost everybody can see this tank. Through seeing this tank some community members are now getting prepared to adopt this technology in their homes." That's where artisan Masanja Buzali comes in. Buzali lives in Mwabakima village and so is no stranger to the water crisis. Seeking a solution for himself and his community, he tried to create rainwater tanks and collection vessels but was unsuccessful because he had no training on how to build them. In 2016, however, he joined the Igunga Eco-Village project and became a Heifer-certified artisan. Using the skills he learned from Heifer Tanzania, he was able to construct the Mwabakima dispensary rainwater harvesting tank. Three of Mwabakima's "bibis" (grandmothers), Monika Maduka (Left), Nyamizi Nkinga (Center) and Luja Kabelele (Right) carry buckets of clean water back to their homes a short way from the dispensary. Before the tank was built, they each had to travel several kilometers a day to get water from the nearest river. Once the large tank was constructed and people saw how well it worked, Masanja received two commissions from local families for smaller versions that they could use in their homes. According to Chairman Buluba, the community has set a collective goal to have a small rainwater harvesting tank at every home. With a low price point of 25,000TZ Shillings (about 10 U.S. dollars) for a small tank and a capable local artisan like Masanja Buzali in the community, that goal isn't as crazy as it once might have seemed. Soon, with a little luck, each family in Mwabakima Village could have clean water. Theresa May has blamed MPs for failing to implement the result of the 2016 EU referendum, and told voters who want Brexit to be over: "I am on your side." In a televised address from Downing Street, Mrs May said it was "a matter of great personal regret" for her to have to ask for a three-month delay to Britain's withdrawal from the EU, which was due to take place on March 29. She will go to Brussels today to make a formal request to the other 27 EU leaders for an extension to the two-year Article 50 negotiation process. Earlier, European Council president Donald Tusk said he believed a short delay "would be possible" after he spoke to the prime minister by phone. Rejected However, he said the extension - which must be agreed unanimously by the EU27 - was likely to be conditional on Mrs May succeeding in forcing her twice-rejected Brexit deal through parliament. She made the request in a letter to Mr Tusk exactly 1,000 days after the 2016 referendum which delivered a 52pc-48pc majority to quit the EU. Speaking behind a lectern in 10 Downing Street, Mrs May said MPs - who rejected her deal by 230 votes in January and 149 last week - had been "unable to agree on a way to implement the UK's withdrawal". In a message directed at voters, she added: "Of this, I am absolutely sure: You the public have had enough. "You are tired of the in-fighting, you're tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our children's schools, our National Health Service, knife crime. "You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide." Mrs May said MPs had so far done "everything possible" to avoid making a decision on the way forward. She warned that an extended delay means staging "bitter and divisive" elections to the European Parliament at a time the country needed bringing back together. "I passionately hope MPs will find a way to back the deal I have negotiated with the EU. "I will continue to work night and day to secure the support of my colleagues, the DUP and others for this deal, but I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than June 30." Tumultuous In his statement, Mr Tusk said it should be possible for EU leaders meeting in Brussels to approve an extension to Article 50, though the "question remains open" as to the duration. He said it should then be possible to finalise the deal without the need for another summit - provided it secured the backing of MPs. After the tumultuous events of recent weeks, he appeared to acknowledge the difficulties facing the prime minister, describing the hopes of success as "frail, even illusory". "Although Brexit fatigue is increasingly visible and justified, we cannot give up seeking until the very last moment a positive solution," he said. "We have reacted with patience and goodwill and I am confident that also now we will not lack the same patience and goodwill at this critical point." Road safety campaigners and gardai have expressed alarm at a grim three months on Irish roads, with fatalities running nearly a third higher than the same period last year. Five people died in five days, with two motorcyclists losing their lives in separate accidents in the space of 36 hours in Dublin and Cork. In Carlow, five young people - a man and four teenage girls - were injured in a single-vehicle accident at Ballinabranagh shortly before noon yesterday. All five were transferred to the Midland Hospital and St Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny, two with serious injuries. The latest fatality involved a man in his 40s, who died after his motorcycle was in collision with a car in Cork. The accident happened at Loughbeg, outside Ringaskiddy, shortly after 7pm on Tuesday. The tragedy brings to 40 the number of people who have died on Irish roads so far this year. It represents nearly a one-third increase on the number who died between January and March 2018. Overall, last year represented a major breakthrough in terms of road safety, with a 5pc decline in fatalities to 148, eight fewer than in 2017. However, there is now concern that if the trend of the past three months is reflected throughout the year, 2019 will mark a major step backwards in terms of road safety. Road Safety Authority boss Moyagh Murdock has urged motorists to drive with care. PARC road safety group stressed that the priority for every motorist should be arriving at their destination safely. Responsibly Garda National Roads Policing Bureau director Chief Superintendent Paul Cleary said it was a matter of serious concern that the recent level of fatalities was effectively the highest since 2014. "Compared to this date last year, there are now 10 more people who have died on Irish roads," he said. "This is very concerning. We must all redouble our efforts to act responsibly and keep the roads safe." Ireland has become a slightly less happy place to live, the annual United Nations investigation into contentedness across the globe suggests. The seventh World Happiness Report ranked Ireland 16th out of 156 countries - a fall of two places on the previous year's report. The country is still above the likes of Germany (17th), Belgium (18th) and the United States (19th). But the UK is now ranked as more cheerful than Ireland, having risen four places in the list to 15th. The happiest country - for the second year running - is Finland, ahead of Denmark, Norway, Iceland and the Netherlands. New Zealand (8th) and Canada (9th) are the only non-European nations in the top 10. The scores are based on individuals' assessments of their own lives over a two-year period. Worst The evaluation asks up to 3,000 survey respondents in each country to place the status of their lives on a "ladder" scale ranging from 0 to 10, where 0 means the worst possible life and 10 the best possible life. The report sees South Sudan replacing Burundi as the least happy country, ahead of the Central African Republic and Afghanistan. Separate data on GDP, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom and corruption is also included in the report. It shows Ireland (6th) ranks above the UK (9th) for social support, GDP (6th for Ireland compared with 23rd for the UK) and healthy life expectancy (20th compared with 24th). But the UK has one of the best generosity rankings (4th) of all countries, ahead of Ireland in 9th. A Czech model has been sentenced to eight years and eight months in prison in Pakistan on charges of trafficking heroin to Ireland. Tereza Hluskova (22) was sentenced at a court in the eastern city of Lahore, the capital of Punjab province. According to the court, Hluskova was arrested in possession of 8.5kg of heroin in January last year at the Lahore airport, from where she was travelling to Ireland via Dubai. Since her arrest, Hluskova has told investigators she came to Pakistan to work as a model but that someone put narcotics in her luggage. Posing Her lawyer Sardar Asghar Dogar said she will appeal. Hluskova was convicted during a court appearance last week. Her sentence also includes an $800 (700) fine. The story first gained attention when Hluskova was captured smiling and posing for photos with Pakistani investigators after she was arrested at the airport. She has previously said she was in Pakistan for a modelling contract and told authorities she did not know how the heroin ended up in her suitcase. In a video released online, a Pakistani customs official is shown 'discovering' the drugs hidden in the suitcase while Hluskova looks on. She then puts her head in her hands. Hluskova later tells the camera: "They gave me something for luggage, three statues or something. They said it was gifts. I didn't know there was something inside." In a bizarre development last month, a man was jailed for three years and four months in the Czech Republic after threatening terror attacks in Pakistan unless Hluskova was released. Nikolai Simeonov Ivanov (21) was found guilty of sending threats by email and text message to a television channel and news website in Pakistan. "I did not think that anyone would take my messages seriously, especially since I included my telephone number and email address," he told his trial. INEOS Enterprises has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire The North American business of National Titanium Dioxide Company Limited (Cristal) from Tronox Limited for $700 million. Cristals North American business includes two-plants located at the Ashtabula Ohio (US) complex. The deal forms the proposed remedy package submitted to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by Tronox ahead of its proposed acquisition of Cristals global titanium dioxide business. The proposed sale of the North American business to INEOS, has received support from Cristal and Tronoxs North American customers and will make INEOS the second largest producer of this essential product in the country. The wider transaction and remedy proposal is subject to clearance by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Ashley Reed, CEO of INEOS Enterprises said, This is a great opportunity for INEOS to enter the pigments market, by acquiring a competitive business, with excellent people and assets. INEOS has a strong track record of manufacturing excellence, running its businesses safely and reliably and working closely with customers to meet their growth aspirations. Merck announced that the company management and the Joint Works Council have signed a comprehensive agreement applicable to the Darmstadt site. The aim is to secure the future viability of company headquarters as a central science and technology hub and to further expand it. For this purpose, Merck will invest a total of 1 billion until 2025. We believe in the tremendous potential of the Darmstadt site. There is no other Merck site in the world that has so much expertise combined at one location. With our investment commitment, we are permitting additional growth and are creating employment perspectives for tomorrow and beyond, said Kai Beckmann, CEO Performance Materials and Merck Executive Board member responsible for the Darmstadt site. Back in 2015, Merck had stated that it would invest a total of 1 billion at its global headquarters in the following five-year period. Our aim is to do the right things today in order to ensure that we remain successful as a company tomorrow. Together with the employee representatives, we want to support the changes in our three business sectors here at the Darmstadt site in the best possible way, Beckmann added. The company management and employee representatives have likewise agreed to extend the employment guarantee until the end of 2025. We conducted intensive negotiations and in some cases had strong debates. Ultimately, with the site agreement we achieved a good outcome that benefits employees and sustainably strengthens the future viability of the site, said Michael Fletterich, Chairman of the Works Council of Merck KGaA. Merck is currently holding talks about the possible construction of a new membrane plant in Darmstadt. Membranes are used, among other things, in various types of filters, for instance in biopharmaceutical production. Moreover, the company plans to construct a new Vocational and Advanced Training Center at the site. Merck currently has more than 500 apprentices in 22 vocational training occupations. The agreement on the future of the Darmstadt site is applicable until the end of 2025 for the roughly 11,000 employees of Merck KGaA in Darmstadt, Weiterstadt and Gernsheim. It also encompasses the commitments on qualification and advanced training, for instance a new internal job placement office. Moreover, the company management and employee representatives have agreed a voluntary leaver program and a bridge model for an early transition to retirement. South Africa: New school, clinic boost Polokwane infrastructure President Cyril Ramaphosa has called on government and its social partners to strengthen their working relationship to address backlogs in the provision of school and health infrastructure. Speaking at the opening of Marobathota High School and Evelyn Lekganyane Clinic in Polokwane, Limpopo, on Wednesday, the President said backlogs in public infrastructure impact negatively on childrens basic rights to a decent basic education and to health, safety and dignity within educational facilities. They impact on the right of our people to access health care services and in the most severe cases, on their right to life and dignity. The work that has been undertaken here at Marobathota High School forms part of a broader national effort to build a positive school environment. It is clear that our school infrastructure build programme is beginning to bear fruits for our people, President Ramaphosa said. He defined a positive school environment as one that has appropriate facilities, well-managed classrooms, available school-based health support, and a clear, fair disciplinary policy. President Ramaphosa said government is committed to use schools as vehicles for promoting access to a range of public services among learners in areas such as health, poverty alleviation, psychosocial support, sport and culture. We are working with the private sector and development partners to eradicate pit latrines and other inappropriate sanitation facilities in all our schools within the next three years. Our experience tells us that school infrastructure is the foundation but effective learning requires a comprehensive approach that addresses not only all aspects of the teaching and learning experience, but also the social conditions under which learners live, the President said. The President said safety in schools cannot be overemphasised. We cannot allow any learner to be injured or killed by another learner, and we cannot allow our schools to become places of fear. He thanked faith-based leaders for the role they play in addressing some of the challenges schools face. Today, they are working in partnership with government to build a better life for all South Africans. It is a reminder of the essential role that religious leaders have played in building cohesive communities, the President said. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Uh-oh! It could be you, or it could be us, but there's no page here. 'So much we want the public to know': Meritus COVID cases surge again Junior Mints have been a candy staple since they were launched in 1949. The brand was acquired by Tootsie Roll in 1993, the same year it was immortalized in the Seinfeld episode The Junior Mint, in which one of the candies inadvertently falls from a hospital observation gallery into the open abdomen of a patient on the operating table. This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services, to personalize ads and to analyze traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies. Learn more here Grand Prize Winner: Donna Rickey Blog Winners: A Song for her Enemies by Sherri Stewart: Mary Ann Hake Spies & Sweethearts by Linda Shenton Matchett: Connie Ruggles Sword of Trust by DebbieLynn Costello: Brenda Walters Justice for Julia by Donna Schlachter: Natalya Lakhno Party Prize winners: Sherri Stewarts Winners A Song for her Enemies: Angie Pool Bottle of Dutch Syrup: Carol Koch Alscheff Corrie ten Boom book: Deb Gramie Burgess Linda Shenton Matchetts winners: $5.00 gift card to online retailer or choice (Kobo, B&N, AppleBooks, Amazon): Karen Hadley A Bride for Seamus: Carol Osterhouse Wotring DebbieLynn Costellos winners: Sword of the Matchmaker: Melissa Planas Sword of Forgiveness: Paty Hinojosa Gomez Shattered Memories: Charlene Zall Capodice Sword of the Perfect Bride: Licha Haney Donna Schlachters winner: Leather Journal: Lisa Turley GIVEAWAY RULES Winners must leave their email address and will be notified by email and the winners name will be announced in the days comments. No one under 18 can enter our giveaways. No purchase is necessary. All winners have one week to claim their prize. USA shipping only. Offer void where prohibited. Odds of winning vary due to the number of entrants. Its a photograph that anyone could have used to play spot which one am I with. The photograph, a vintage, slightly sepia-toned one, shows a bunch of boys playing holi. All the boys have colour in their hair and are seen dancing on a street even as one of them uses an empty bucket to thrash out a drum beat. The photograph was shared on Twitter by Rajeev Saraf, who tagged Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, with the text, Down the memory lane. Happy Holi @ArvindKejriwal !! Yes, the Delhi chief minister is in the photograph and cant be spotted so easily, even though he is right there in the foreground. They mystery as to which one of the boys in the photograph is the Delhi CM was solved only after a journalist asked the Delhi chief minister to identify himself in the photograph. Kejriwal responded with a simple The one in front wid brown trousers... The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Income Tax (I-T) Department are making coordinated efforts to extradite absconders Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, accused in the Rs 13,500 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud even as they simultaneously initiate recovery processes, two government officials said on condition of anonymity. On Wednesday, extradition proceedings officially began against Modi after he was arrested in London. His bail was denied on account of the size of the fraud he is alleged to have perpetrated. A legal team representing Indian agencies are already there in London with necessary documents. If required, a team of ED officials may also go to London. Simultaneously, extradition proceedings are on to get Choksi extradited from Antigua, said the officials. The agencies said they are also taking steps to recover the money and send a strong signal to fugitive economic offenders. A special court in Mumbai has allowed ED to auction 11 luxury vehicles owned by Nirav Modi, including a Rolls Royce, a Porsche and a Mercedes Benz. The court has also allowed the I-T Department to auction 68 paintings owned by Nirav Modi and deposit the auction proceeds with ED. The court has issued non-bailable warrants against Ami Modi, wife of Nirav Modi. ED confirmed the developments in a series of tweets. A PNB executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: Out of about Rs 13,500 crore fraud, the shares of Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi could be in the ratio of 60:40. Hence, arrest of Nirav is a major achievement of Indian agencies. The extradition may, however, take some time as it would involve lengthy legal battle in London. These developments are, however, positive, which will also have a deterring effect on such borrowers who may think that they can dupe public sector banks and get away with the crime, the executive added. PNBs stock jumped 3.37% to close at Rs 93.55 apiece on Wednesday following Nirav Modis arrest. Reacting to the developments, minister of state (independent charge) housing and urban affairs Hardeep Singh Puri tweeted: You can run, but cannot hide from the countrys #Chowkidar. As wheels of justice grind, after Vijay Mallya, fugitive Nirav Modi has been arrested in London. Clear sign that this is not the India which will allow economic offenders to loot the country & evade the long arm of law. Modis arrest is a boost in the arm for the Bharatiya Janata Party which is seeking re-election in the summers parliamentary elections. It was criticised by its opponents for allegedly letting Modi, and before him , liquor baron Mallya (who owed banks around Rs 9,000 crore) escape. The arrest is also timely. On Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign to showcase his fight against corruption. He also changed his twitter display name to mention the workd chowkidar (watchman). Almost the entire Union cabinet followed suit as did a few million of Modis followers. Unidentified gunmen shot at Yogesh Verma, BJP lawmaker from Lakhimpur assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh, on Thursday during Holi celebrations. The incident happened around 3 pm while he was on his way back to Rajgarh residence after celebrating Holi at his office in Patel Nagar area of the city. When he reached near the Guru Nanak Inter College, some unidentified gunmen shot at Verma. He was below his right knee, Kheri police said. The attackers fled the spot. Watch: BJP MLA Yogesh Verma shot at by unidentified men during Holi celebrations The injured MLA was rushed to a neighbouring hospital, where doctors attending on him said his condition was out of danger. Deputy SP Lakhimpur Vijay Anand confirmed the bullet injury to Verma. The lawmaker has been sent for medical examination Appropriate action would be taken after the complaint by him, the police officer said. Meanwhile, Kheri District Magistrate Shailendra Kumar Singh and Superintendant of Police Poonam visited the injured BJP MLA in the hospital and gathered details. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanaths claim that the state has not seen a single riot in the past two years of the Bharatiya Janata Party government has failed to make an impression on Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati. Mayawati on Thursday said the claim to have made Uttar Pradesh riot-free in the last two years is a farce. Writing on micro-blogging site Twitter, the BSP chief said the incidents of mob lynching in Uttar Pradesh have brought bad name to the country. BJPs claim that UP remain riot-free in past 2 years is farce. During the period BJP leaders & ministers remain awfully busy in lifting of heinous cases against them. And what about mob lynching etc which brought bad name to the country and ultimately Hon court had to intervene, she said. BJP's claim that UP remain riot-free in past 2 years is farce. During the period BJP leaders & ministers remain awfully busy in lifting of heinous cases against them. And what about mob lynching etc which brought bad name to the country and ultimately Hon court had to intervene. Mayawati (@Mayawati) March 21, 2019 Mayawatis remark has come two days after Adityanath said under Uttar Pradeshs law and order under the BJP government has become a model for the country as not one incident of rioting happened under his watch. Adityanath hit out at the previous Uttar Pradesh governments under the BSP and its alliance partner the Samajwadi Party saying riots were frequent during past regimes. Uttar Pradesh has not recorded major communal violence in the past two years. But cases of mob violence, including those involving right-wing outfits, have seen political battles between the parties. In December last year, two people including a police officer were killed when a mob of around 400 clashed with the police. In yet another case in January last year, a 22-year-old man was shot dead during Tiranga Yatra in Uttar Pradeshs Kasganj during a clash between two groups. The Union environment ministry has given environmental clearance for open cast coal mining in Parsa in Chhattisgarhs dense Hasdeo Arand forests, in a decision that could have far-reaching consequences for forest cover conservation in India. Hasdeo Arand is one of the largest contiguous stretches of very dense forest in central India, spanning about 170,000 hectares. Parsa is one of the 30 coal blocks in Hasdeo Arand and is owned by the Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Ltd (RVUNL). The mine, which has a capacity of 5 metric tonnes per annum (MPTA), will be operated by Rajasthan Collieries Limited (RCL), a unit of Adani Enterprises Limited. It received stage 1 forest clearance in February this year, but the minutes of the forest advisory committees meeting highlighted that a section of the 841 hectares to be diverted for the mine lies in very dense forest. The Parsa mine open cast mining involves digging for coal after removing all the vegetation and soil from the area -- came up for consideration of the environment ministrys expert appraisal committee (EAC) thrice before clearance was finally granted on February 21, 2019. Earlier, in its February 15, 2018 meeting, the EAC had sought the State Tribal Welfare Departments comments on the status of gram sabha consent for the project and the impact on tribal populations. It also sought the state wildlife boards opinion on the impact of mining on the elephant corridor that runs through the forest. In its July 24, 2018 meeting, the EAC again sought the same clarifications. The minutes of the meeting suggest the RVUNL submitted information on these two queries in September 2018 but there are no details on whether gram sabha consent was taken. The EAC also enquired whether there were pending legal cases related to coal mining in Hasdeo Arand. There are two cases pending in the Supreme Court a petition by Chhattisgarh-based lawyer Sudiep Shrivastava seeking de-allocation of RVUNLs Parsa-Kente Extension coal block (adjoining Parsa open cast mine) in Chhattisgarh and cancellation of the joint venture and coal delivery agreement with Adani Enterprises Limited; and another petition by RVUNL seeking relaxation of the National Green Tribunals direction restricting mining in certain forest areas of Chhattisgarh. The forest advisory committee sought the opinion of the additional solicitor general (ASG) on considering clearance for Parsa mine in view of these pending cases. After the ASG observed that the pending case has no bearing with the Parsa coal block as such, the forest advisory committee went ahead with giving in-principle forest clearance to the mine. The minutes of the EACs February 21 meeting, however, states that environmental clearance granted to Parsa mine is subject to pending matters in the Supreme Court and Chhattisgarh high court on coal mining in the state. The EAC has laid down other conditions too, such as a third-party assessment (by a technical institution or agency) of environmental compliance once every three years. On February 20, the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan wrote to the EAC on environmental and legal concerns related to the project. In a letter, it suggested that two villages in north Chhattisgarhs Surguja district complained to the district collector that gram sabha consent was allegedly forged. Another issue raised by activists and legal experts is that forest clearance to an adjoining mine on the Hasdeo Arand fringe -- Parsa East and Kete Basao captive coal block -- was granted on condition that the Chhattisgarh government would not allow opening up of the main Hasdeo Arand area. However, the Parsa open cast mine that was granted clearance last month is in the core Hasdeo Arand forests. Apart from pending legal issues and procedural lapses, the grant of approval [for open cast mining at Parsa] completely goes against the precautionary principle that is the need of the hour. Initiating mining will fragment one of the last remaining contiguous forest patches in central India, violate forest rights and increase human-wildlife conflict, said Kanchi Kohli, a legal researcher at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in Delhi. In 2009, the environment ministry categorised Hasdeo Arand as a no-go area for mining for its rich, unfragmented forest cover. Environment activists fear the approval for mining will likely be detrimental to forest conservation. Environmental clearance issued to Parsa mine is illegal because the forest advisory committee had earlier held that Hasdeo Arand cannot be opened up for mining. The Forest Survey of India, in a 2014 report, had recommended that Hasdeo Arand should be inviolate for mining said Shrivastava, the lawyer who has moved court for de-allocation of a coal block adjacent to Parsa. RVUNL, which owns Parsa, said it has all necessary permissions. We have received all permissions except a final forest clearance, which will come through anytime. The cases pending in the Supreme Court are related to other coal blocks, so they will not affect this project, said SS Meena, director (technical) at RVUNL. An Adani Group spokesperson said: The Adani Group is a responsible corporate citizen and it is evident from our care for the environment and communities. Besides mining responsibly, Adani Group has interests in solar power, city gas distribution and road construction, among others, in the state of Chhattisgarh. We are committed to the people and ecology of Chhattisgarh and the countrys energy security in all our endeavours. The Indian government will not send any official representative to the Pakistan National Day event at the Pakistan Mission in New Delhi on Friday. It is learnt that the government decided against sending any representative to the reception because Pakistan had invited the representatives of the Hurriyat Conference to the event. The Pakistan National Day is observed every year on March 23, though the Pakistan high commission had decided to organise the reception this year on March 22. An Indian minister usually represents the government at the event.. Amid downturn in bilateral ties following the Pulwama terror attack last month, India had formally complained to the Pakistan government about instances of its diplomats and officials in Islamabad being harassed by security personnel. In a note verbale an unsigned diplomatic correspondence submitted to Pakistans foreign ministry on March 18, the Indian high commission in Islamabad detailed the incidents that occurred last week and sought an investigation, people familiar with developments said. Security forces, with the help of locals, Thursday rescued one of the two civilians held hostage by militants after a search operation in the Hajin area of Jammu and Kashmis Bandipora district, police said. Security forces launched a search operation in the area following information about the presence of militants there, a police spokesman said. Read more| Soldier killed in ceasefire violation by Pak in Jammu and Kashmirs Rajouri Two civilians were held hostage by the terrorists. With the assistance of security forces, police and community members, one civilian has been rescued while efforts are on to rescue another, he said. The spokesman said the hostage still with the militants is reportedly a minor. (This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.) The China-led regional security bloc, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has said India and Pakistan should resolve their differences in the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack bilaterally, cautioning them against any spillover of the animosity in the group. India and Pakistan also have to remain committed to fighting terrorism, the newly appointed SCO secretary-general, Vladimir Norov said. Otherwise, it would be impossible for the two States to participate in the SCO, he added. Norov said the SCO members were sincerely glad that the calls for restraint and a political and diplomatic solution to bilateral conflicts from all SCO member states were heard by the parties. The whole world has heard clear signals from the parties not to escalate relations and their readiness to fully understand and follow the principles established within the organisation, he said. Norov, however, didnt comment on the wide differences between India and Pakistan and also China on terrorism and specific terror suspects. India and Pakistan were admitted to the six-member group in 2017 after several years of negotiations. Their history of hostility and more recently the military engagement following the Pulwama terror attack have put question marks on whether New Delhi and Islamabad will be able to set aside their differences when sitting at the same SCO table. Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack, in which 40 CRPF soldiers were killed. But its leader Azhar Masood was saved from being listed as a global terrorist at the United Nations for the fourth time by Islamabads snug ally, China. India said it was disappointed by Chinas decision to block Masoods listing. In a written question, HT had asked how and whether SCO will be able to iron out these differences on a crucial issue like terrorism among India, China, and Pakistan. Norov didnt answer the question directly but said India and Pakistan will have to work together in the SCO. He was addressing his first press conference held at the SCO headquarters in Beijing on Wednesday; the other SCO members are Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. As you know, before joining the SCO as full members, India and Pakistan committed themselves to strictly implement all the provisions of the legal framework that has been developed by the member states of the organisation, Norov added. One of such fundamental obligations is not to bring bilateral contradictions and disagreements to the SCO family, as the SCO is not engaged in the settlement of disputable bilateral issues, whether border, water or other topics in relations between individual member states, he said. In addition, the most important condition for participation in multi-disciplinary cooperation within the SCO is the commitment to the unconditional and consistent struggle against terrorism, separatism, and extremism, he said. The SCO acquired a trans-regional character with the joining of India and Pakistan. I can say that with the accession of India and Pakistan, the SCO has acquired a trans-regional character, and in terms of its aggregate potential - the total population, territory, reserves of natural resources, GDP - it has become the largest organisation not only in the region but also in the world. Based on this, many experts note that the SCO should be among the main supporting structures of the future world order, Norov said. Norov said counter-terrorism and cooperation in the field of security were very important issues for SCO members. The SCO Charter defines joint counteraction to terrorism, separatism, and extremism in all their manifestations as one of the important tasks. He said that for almost two decades, the organisation has made a significant contribution to security and development in a vast region is an indisputable fact. Over the years, the joint efforts of all parties have succeeded in creating a solid legal framework and effective mechanisms for cooperation in the field of security. The approval at the Qingdao summit of the Cooperation Program of the SCO member states in countering terrorism, separatism and extremism for 2019-2021 reflects the desire of all the organisations states to counter major security threats in Eurasia, he said. In an embarrassing mix up, relatives of 28-year-old Rafeeq, who died of heart attack in Saudi Arabia last month, got a shock of their life when they opened the casket -- it had the body of a woman. The family discovered the horror when the casket reached Konni, about 90 km from the state capital. A police official attached to the Konni police station confirmed the mix up. The body of Rafeeq, who passed away on February 28 in Saudi Arabia, arrived late last night. When the family opened the casket, they found the body was of a lady, believed to be a Sri Lankan. The police have been notified. The womans body is being moved to the Kottayam Medical College Hospital mortuary and arrangements are being made to send it back, said another police officer who did not wish to be identified. Two policemen were injured in a grenade attack in Jammu and Kashmirs Sopore town on Thursday. The incident took place around 10.30 am in Warpora area of Sopore. The Station House Officer (SHO) of Dangiwacha Muddasir Ahmad and his escort were injured, police said. Both of them have been transferred to a hospital. Militants lobbed a grenade at a security forces party at main chowk area of Sopore, PTI quoted a police official as saying. Officials said that search and cordon operations are underway at three places in Kashmir. Hajin in Bandipore, Warpora and Kalantra in Baramulla district. Mobile internet has been suspended in the area. In its first list of 21 candidates announced on Thursday, the BJP retained 14 of its 15 sitting Members of Parliament (MPs) for the upcoming general elections as it attempts to continue its dominance in the state. In the 2014 elections, the BJP had won 17 of the 28 constituencies. It has won the majority of Lok Sabha seats since 2004, when it won 18 constituencies. All three union ministers from the state - Ananth Kumar Hegde (Uttara Kannada), Ramesh Jigjinagi (Bijapur) and DV Sadananda Gowda (Bangalore North) - have been retained. Karadi Sanganna, the MP from Koppal, is the only MP to miss out on the first list. Among the other candidates were veterans V Sreenivasa Prasad from Chamarajanagara (reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates), who has been an MP five times in the past and was a minister in the Union Cabinet of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Another veteran named in the list is GS Basavaraj, a four-time MP from Tumkur, who won for the first time in 1984. The list also included recent inductees from the Congress. While rebel MLA Umesh Jadhav is set to go up against senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge from the Gulbarga seat, which is reserved for SCs, former MLA A Manju will contest the Hassan seat against former prime minister HD Deve Gowdas grandson Prajwal Revanna. The party also did not announce any candidates for the Mandya seat, where chief minister HD Kumaraswamys son Nikhil will battle against Sumalatha Ambareesh, wife of the late film star and former union minister MH Ambareesh, who is contesting as an independent candidate. Surprisingly, the party also did not announce a candidate in the Bangalore South seat, which has been retained by the party since 1991. Tejaswini, the wife of former union minister HN Ananth Kumar who died in November last, was expected to be named the party candidate. Kumar had won the seat for six consecutive elections. A senior party leader, who did not wish to be quoted, said Tejaswini was set to be named the candidate from the constituency. It is only a matter of time because only her name was forwarded to the central leadership, the BJP leader said. The Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) alliance is yet to reveal the list of candidates, except for seats where announcements have been made. The state is set to vote in two phases, on April 18 and then on April 23. In BJPs candidates list, 10 names have been announced for the constituencies that go to polls on April 18. Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav has revived attack on the Narendra Modi government over Pulwama terror strike owned by Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed. Yadav has called the Pulwama terror attack a conspiracy in which soldiers were killed for vote. The SP leader said if the government changes in 2019 Lok Sabha election, and a probe is conducted into the Pulwama terror attack, big fish will be caught. Paramilitary forces are unhappy with the government. Soldiers were killed for votes. There was no security checking between Jammu and Srinagar. Soldiers were being transported in ordinary buses. This was a conspiracy. I did not want to say this at this point of time. When the government changes, (and) it is probed, many big fish will be caught, news agency ANI on Thursday quoted Yadav as saying. RG Yadav,SP: Paramilitary forces dukhi hain sarkar se, jawan maar diye gaye vote ke liye,checking nahi thi Jammu-Srinagar ke beech mein, jawano ko simple buses main bhej diya,ye sazish thi, abhi nahi kehna chahta, jab sarkar badlegi, iski jaanch hogi, tab bade-bade log phasenge. pic.twitter.com/nLPnNP5P2f ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 21, 2019 Responding to Yadavs comment, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the SP leader should apologise for lowering the morale of soldiers. Ram Gopal Yadav has presented an undignified example of politics. He should apologise to the public for his comment meant to raise question on the martyrdom of the CRPF jawans and lowering the morale of the soldiers of the nation, he said. Forty CRPF jawans were killed on February 14, when a suicide bomber targeted a convoy carrying more than 2,500 personnel from Jammu to Srinagar. The incident took place in south Kashmirs Pulwama. The Pulwama terror attack saw escalation in tension between India and Pakistan. Days after the terror attack claimed by the JeM, the Indian Air Force (IAF) carried out a pre-emptive strike in Pakistans Balakot. The target was what was believed to be the biggest terror training camp of the JeM. Pakistan responded to the IAF strike on terror camp by violating Indian airspace in its attempt to target military installations. The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) used a large package of fighter jets including the F-16 in its aerial campaign. An IAF response team foiled the PAFs attempt to hit Indias military installations. One F-16 fighter jet of the PAF was shot down by Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who was flying a MiG 21 Bison. The IAF aircraft was also shot down by the PAF. Pilot Abhinandan ejected safely but landed in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, where he was captured by the Pakistan Army. Amid mounting international pressure, Pakistan released IAF pilot Abhinandan leading to easing out tension between the two countries. The BJP-led government termed the development as its diplomatic victory following a bold move to hit at terror camp deep inside Pakistani territory. The opposition has targeted the government alleging that it is using Pulwama terror attack and IAF strike at Balakot for political gain with an eye on the Lok Sabha election in April-May. Bharatiya Janata Party leaders from Gujarat and long-time associates of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are not surprised by the PM building a political movement centered around the word Chowkidar in the run-up to the 2019 general elections next month. According to them, time and again, Modi has shown himself adept at launching mass political movements using simple phrases including, they add, riffs off ones thrown at him by the opposition. The Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign, they add, is one such a riposte of sorts to the Congress Chowkidar Chor Hai campaign launched by the Congress, which alleged wrongdoing in the Rafale fighter jet deal. The leaders say that the Supreme Court ruling and the report by the Comptroller and Auditor general have proved beyond doubt that there was no corruption in the deal. According to the Gujarat leaders, when Modi joined the BJP in 1987-88 from the partys ideological parent the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the party was at its lowest point it had been reduced to two seats in 1984 Lok Sabha elections. Trying to revive the party in Gujarat, Modi noticed a slogan Jai Baba Satguru painted on walls all over the state. He hired 10 painters and asked them to paint the partys Lotus symbol using top quality paint (so that it would not wash off) all over Gujarat. Subsequently, he added a line Bas, Ab BJP to the symbol in the state. The political message was to vote out the Congress party. In 1995 Keshubhai Patel became the first BJP Chief Minister of Gujarat. On similar lines, when he was chief minister of the state, Modi coined the slogan Jeetega Gujarat (Gujarat will win), which identified him with the aspirational state, in effect portraying the Opposition as anti-Gujarat. The Chowkidar movement, according to top party strategists, is a brainchild of Modi, and conceptualised with a small band of tech-savvy followers. The slogan again identifies Modi as the protector of India along with millions who have now joined the movement. How many seats will the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) get in Uttar Pradesh in 2019? Predictions are always hazardous. However, retracing how the BJP actually achieved what it did in 2014 can help us understand the state of play. Logically speaking, the BJPs overwhelming victory it won 73 out of the 80 seats in the state along with its ally in 2014 was an outcome of two factors: an extraordinary vote share and a fragmented Opposition. BJPs Uttar Pradesh vote share of 42.6% in 2014 is the highest any party has managed after the 1984 elections. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) had a combined vote share of 42.1% in 2014. This was nearly the same as the BJPs, but almost equally divided. The BJPs gains from a divided Opposition will be limited in 2019. The SP, BSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) have significantly increased the index of Opposition unity in Uttar Pradesh with a pre-poll pact in place. Even if one were to assume that party-wise vote shares remain unchanged between 2014 and 2019, the BJPs UP tally could come down significantly due to the alliance. This number could vary, depending on whether SP-BSP alliance galvanises each partys supporters or drives them away. This has been discussed in detail by Neelanjan Sircar in March 20 edition of HT. Let us now come to the question of the BJPs vote share in 2014. A party can increase its vote share in two ways. It can either eat into the support base of other major players, or attract floating voters, who are not aligned with any particular party. HT has looked at vote shares of four major political players Congress, BJP, BSP and various factions of the Janata Dal since the 1989 Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh to understand the role of these two processes in 2014. Our analysis uses the database created by the Trivedi Centre for Political Data at Ashoka University and excludes parliamentary constituencies which were carved out to form Uttarakhand in 2000. The Janata Dal factions include Janata Dal (1989-1998), Janata Party (primarily 1991), RLD (1999 onwards) and the SP (1996 onwards). A sum of vote shares of these big four political players suggests that while it was the second highest in 2014, political consolidation behind four major players in 2014 was not unprecedented. This suggests that interparty transfer rather than floating voter consolidation had a bigger role in the BJPs extraordinarily high vote share in 2014. Let us look at the Janata Dal factions and the BSP first. Their combined vote share of 42.7% in 2014 is not the lowest during our period of analysis. In 1991, their vote share was 41.4%. Why did the BJP not sweep Uttar Pradesh like it did in 2014? The simple answer is that the Congress had still not collapsed in 1991. Its 1991 vote share of 15% was twice the 7.5% it got in 2014. In fact, the combined vote share of the Congress and BJP in the 1991 and 2014 elections is the same (49.8%). Actually, any significant revival/decline in fortunes of the Congress or the BJP in our selected time-frame has always come at the cost of the other party. This makes sense, given the fact that both these parties compete for almost one-fifth (22%, according to the 2015-16 National Family and Health Survey) of the non-Muslim upper caste population of the state. The Janata Dal factions and the BSP are seen as OBC and Dalit centric parties in the state. While these two have seen tactical upper caste support, they have never been the strategic choice for upper caste voters. That the BJP has consolidated upper caste votes in its recent dominance in Uttar Pradesh is clear from the fact that the share of upper caste MLAs in Uttar Pradesh in 2017 was the highest since 1980 as was pointed by Gilles Verniers from Ashoka University in an Indian Express article. To be sure, the combined vote share of the SP-BSP in 2014 was significantly lower than what it had been since the 1998 Lok Sabha elections. What explains this? One possible explanation could be that both the SP and the BSP ended up looking like parties for their subcastes (Yadavs and Dalits) rather than broad caste groups (OBCs and Dalits). In other words, the BJP achieved a rainbow Hindu consolidation comprising upper castes, non-Yadav OBCs and non-Jatav dalits. How does this discussion help us in making sense of the 2019 scenario in Uttar Pradesh? Two vulnerabilities can be underlined for the BJP. If the Congress is able to make even a small dent in the BJPs upper caste support base, it would be a net loss for the latter. Priyanka Gandhi hopping across temples in the state instead of waxing eloquent about secularism or championing Muslim politics could be a strategy to do just that. Given the fact that the BJPs recent rise in Uttar Pradesh has led to a resurgence of upper castes in the states politics, the dominant Yadav and Jatav leadership in the SP and the BSP has a real opportunity to strike deals with other OBC-Dalit groups in the elections. Whether or not such processes are at play would be clearer once the ticket distribution is over in the state. As the Arkansas bill worked its way through the Legislature, it sparked demonstrations and complaints from businesses owners who said it could hurt the economy. Wal-Mart, the retail giant with Arkansas headquarters, and technology companies like Apple have opposed the Arkansas measure. Three sitting MPs in Assam were dropped from BJPs first list of candidates for the coming general elections announced on Thursday evening. The suspense, however, continued over tickets in two crucial seats. The BJP named candidates for 8 of the 14 seats in Assam while refraining from making announcements for Nagaon and Tezpur. Alliance partners Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) will contest from 3 seats and Bodo Peoples Front (BDF) from one. Former union minister Bijaya Chakraborty, 80, who has represented the Guwahati seat thrice since 1999, was replaced by another woman candidate Queen Oja (67). Sitting MPs from Mangaldoi, Ramen Deka and Kamakhya Prasad Tasa (Jorhat) were replaced by Dilip Saikia and Tapan Gogoi, a minister in the Sarbananda Sonowal government. Two sitting MPs, Rameshwar Teli (Dibrugarh) and Pradan Baruah (Lakhimpur) were given tickets while the fates of two other MPs, union minister Rajen Gohain (Nagaon) and Ram Prasad Sarmah (Tezpur), are yet to be decided. BJP had won 7 of the 14 seats in the state in 2014. After Sarbananda Sonowal became chief minister in 2016, the Lakhimpur seat went to Pradan Baruah. Read more| In BJP list, Amit Shah to contest from LK Advanis Gandhinagar seat Union minister of state for railways Rajen Gohain, who is facing a rape charge, had announced recently that he wont be contesting till his name is cleared and Ram Prasad Sarmah had resigned from the party after his name was missing from the list of probable candidates. Himanta Biswa Sarma, a senior minister in the Sonowal cabinet and convenor of North East Democratic Alliance (NEDA), a BJP-led group of anti-Congress parties in the region, was expected to get the Tezpur ticket. But putting all speculations to rest, BJP president Amit Shah announced on Thursday evening that since Sarma holds important responsibilities the party high command wants him to continue with them for the time being. The BJP central committee requested Sarma to continue as NEDA chairman, work for overall development of northeast and help coordinate between the party and the government at Centre, Shah wrote in a series of tweets in Hindi. I hope Assam BJP and workers across northeast will accept this decision, added Shah. There are speculations that Ram Prasad Sarmah might be given the Tezpur ticket while Rupak Sarma, a first-time MLA, might get the Nagaon seat. The Congress in Haryana is struggling to find candidates for the Lok Sabha elections with many senior leaders expressing unwillingness to contest possibly in the wake of the crushing defeat in the Jind bypoll, a party functionary aware of developments said. The leaders reluctance to contest was evident at the first meeting of the newly formed state coordination committee, headed by former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, in Delhi on Tuesday. The meeting also exposed the fault lines in the faction-ridden party. Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Kuldeep Bishnoi, who is upset at not being given any key responsibility in the party, skipped the meeting and senior leaders Navin Jindal, Kuldeep Sharma and Kumari Selja did not sound enthusiastic about contesting the upcoming polls, the leader quoted above said. Polling in the 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana will be held on May 12. Votes will be counted on May 23. While Haryana Congress chief Ashok Tanwar will contest the Lok Sabha polls from Sirsa, Bhupinder Singh Hooda wants to focus on the assembly elections scheduled in October-November this year but would contest if asked by the party high command, the leader added. His son, Deepender Singh Hooda, is seeking a fourth term in the Lok Sabha from Rohtak. Bishnoi, who also skipped the March 12 CWC meeting in Ahmedabad, wants his son, Bhavya, to contest from Hissar. There are reports that he is getting feelers from the BJP and other parties. The Congress may promise targeted job generation in both the public and private sectors, through policy intervention and incentives, in its manifesto for the upcoming national elections, taking on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government over its perceived inability to create a sufficient number of jobs in its five-year term. The principal Opposition party may also offer a 33% womens quota in public sector jobs to reach out to women voters, a Right to Healthcare Bill and a minimum guaranteed income for all poor irrespective of their occupation or job, at least three Congress functionaries aware of the development said on Wednesday. The party is putting the final touches on the manifesto thats expected to be unveiled later this month, a senior leader said . We want to give a clear road map in our manifesto on job creation. It is perhaps the most important issue along with farmers welfare. Its very clear why jobs are not being created and we will also try to pump money back into the system, said a senior member of the manifesto committee. The party manifesto will focus on the export sector and labour-intensive textiles and leather industries and may contain specific policy proposals for job growth in these sectors. Textiles, garments and leather industries are an important source of employment in the manufacturing sector. These industries, together, accounted for 20.9 million, or more than a third of the total manufacturing jobs in India, in 2011-12. The Congress also wants to commit itself to filling up government vacancies, which in its count runs into millions of jobs, to offer secure employment and counter the BJP-led National Democratic Alliances narrative that the unorganised sector and self-employment have experienced healthy job growth. Our road map will indicate policies to promote private sector jobs and if we come to power, we also want to create in the first year itself a few lakhs of jobs in the public employment to show how the NDA government failed to create jobs,the member said. The 19-member manifesto committee includes P Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh, Rajeev Gowda, Kumari Selja, Sam Pitroda and Shashi Tharoor. The panel has so far interacted with more than 50 independent experts, held 120 public consultations and at least 10 meetings. To counter the governments Ayushman Bharat scheme that had already benefited 1.5 million people, the Congress will come out with its own version of universal health care (UHC) in the manifesto. Departing from the health insurance-based Ayushman Bharat, the Congress will promise to double the central heath ministry budget and bring a Right to Healthcare Bill. The party also wants to offer a minimum income guarantee for poor. Former parliamentary affairs secretary Afzal Amanullah said, Manifestoes are an integral part of the election process. But mere promises cant win votes. A party must have right candidates, good organization and dedicated workers to reach out to the voters. When Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh went to the polls in 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept the nine Lok Sabha seats in the two Himalayan states and the drubbing of the then-ruling Congress party was a precursor to it being bundled out of power in both two years later. Five years down the road, both states have BJP governments at the helm and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is still popular, but the Congress believes it can secure enough swing votes to make a dent in the saffron partys LS numbers. In Uttarkhand, the Congress retained about one-third, and in Himachal, about 40% of the votes polled despite suffering losses in the 2014 Lok Sabha and the 2017 state assembly polls. Although the politics of the two states is quite different, there are certain similarities at the ground level. Incumbent chief ministers Trivendra Singh Rawat (Uttarakhand) and Jairam Thakur (Himachal) are generally popular, a fact acknowledged even by Congress leaders, and the BJP has better ground presence than the Congress, which is facing infighting in the local units. Both parties have started preparing for the Lok Sabha polls by holding booth-level meetings and conducting surveys to decide candidates by the end of March. The local issues dominating the discussion are employment, road infrastructure development, corruption in local offices, tourism (one of the biggest contributors to the states gross domestic product [GDP]), and local transfers. Of course, the Congresss plans can be upset by one discussion currently uniting the otherwise disparate hill states: Nationalism. The February 14 Pulwama suicide bombing, which killed 40 troopers, and the subsequent air strike on a terrorist camp in Pakistans Balakot had a big impact in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, two states with a high population of retired personnel from the paramilitary and armed forces. The BJP is now attempting to grab the advantage, steering the conversation towards patriotism and nationalism, while the Congress is trying to keep the focus on job creation and agriculture. In Uttarakhand, BJP spokesperson Devendra Bhasin said the air strikes were in the interest of the country, while Congress president Pritam Singh called the BJPs stance on the issue an eye wash. In Himachal Pradesh, BJP state president Satpal Satti echoed Bhasin even as Congress leader Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu said the elections were about the unkept promises of the Modi government. Political experts said the BJP had the advantage in the first round (Pulwama attack) but lost the edge somewhat after the Balakot air strike. The BJP is better placed than the Congress as Uttarakhand lost four jawans and it has been able to take political mileage of it. But, I dont know whether the sentiment will remain till the polling day, said SMA Kazmi, a Dehradun-based political analyst. Harish Thakur of Himachal Pradesh University said the people in the state realised that all the brouhaha was for the elections and therefore, the BJP was not getting much traction. At most, it may help BJP in some parts of Kangra and Hamirpur, which has large population of ex-servicemen, Thakur said. Uttarakhand Sipping hot tea on a rainy day in Dehraduns posh Rajpur road, 25-year-old Rajender Singh Negi described chief minister Rawat as a good man who is not very effective in running the administration. I met the CM three months ago and requested him to his transfer my sister to Dehradun. Despite his assurance nothing has happened, he said, while pointing out that transfers and postings were a big political issue in a state, where at least half of the employment is generated by the public sector. He got support from Aman Rawat, who hails from Tehri Garwhal and said Rawats predecessor and Congress leader Harish Rawat was much more accessible. But Alok Gaur, who works in a local hotel, differed. He said that the BJP government had introduced a transparent and effective administrative system, wherein people didnt have to rush to politicians to get their work done. Only the BJP thinks about everyone, Gaur said, referring to the 10% reservation for the economically weak sections in the general category introduced by the Centre. The reservation is a talking point in the hill state, where upper castes --- Rajputs and Brahmins --- dominate the political scene. Since formation of the state in 2000, all chief ministers have been Rajputs or Brahmins. Former CM Harish Rawat said the 10% reservation can help the BJP but can also alienate the scheduled castes, who backed the saffron party in 2014, especially in Haridwar and Nainital-Uddamsingh Nagar Lok Sabha seats. Rawat is keen to contest again from Haridwar, the Lok Sabha seat he won in 2009, but one his wife Renuka Rawat lost to BJP leader and former chief minister Ramesh Pokhriyal in 2014. Rawat, the only Congress leader to have pan-Uttarakhand appeal, expressed confidence that the SC voters will return to the Congress and said the outcome will depend on candidate selection. That should not be a problem for the Congress, which has only a handful of influential leaders left, after an exodus to the BJP before the 2017 assembly polls. On the other hand, the BJP is facing a problem of plenty. Except Tehri, where incumbent MP BC Khanduri has expressed a reluctance to contest the seat citing ill-health, all other sitting MPs have staked their claim. Apart from them, three cabinet ministers --- Harak Singh Rawat, Yashpal Arya and Rekha Arya --- have also expressed an interest to contes the polls. Former Congress chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, who joined the BJP before the 2017 assembly election, is eyeing an LS ticket, most likely from Tehri, a seat he won in 2009. Uttarakhand BJP chief Ajay Bhatt said there were no vacancies for the Lok Sabha seats. Our party is full of mass leaders. We have five former chief ministers, said Bhatt. The BJP believes the construction of the all-weather Chardham road, which passes through all five Lok Sabha seats, and the image of PM Modi will help the party retain all five seats. The road will give a big boost to tourism and will be a major employment generator, said Uttarakhands higher education minister Dhan Singh Rawat, brushing aside allegations that the government overlooked environmental norms to build the highway in a hurry. With general elections approaching, Congress leaders have started parallel mass contact programmes. State president Pritam Singh has started Parivartan Yatra, Harish Rawat Maer Mait (my campaign) and leader of the opposition in the state assembly, Indira Hridayesh, Jan Aakrosh Yatra. The separate yatras, BJP general secretary Vinod Bansal argued, indicated infighting in the Congress. Political analyst Surendra Singh Pagti said the infighting in the Congress may hurt its chances, but that the BJP was facing a bigger challenge. There is dissatisfaction among the BJP cadre over appointment of turncoats from the Congress in the cabinet and in prominent boards and corporations. Also, accessibility to this government ministers is a raging issue among people, he said. Himachal Pradesh At the iconic Fascination restaurant on the Mall, the Lok Sabha elections are hotly debated over cups of Palampur green tea. On the table is lawyer Anil Chauhan, who belongs to the upper Himachal region, and Kamlesh Pathania, a government employee from Kangra in the lower Himachal region. Chauhan criticizes the incumbent BJP government for ignoring the apple belt of upper Shimla. All the new projects have been started in lower Himachal, particularly in Mandi (chief minister Jairam Thakurs home district), he alleged. Pathania counters by saying that the Congress had pampered upper Himachal by diverting all projects there. The two regions represent the traditional divide in the state politics. All Congress chief ministers, including the longest-serving Virbhadra Singh, were from upper Himachal and all of the BJPs CMs, including incumbent Jairam Thakur, belong to lower Himachal. But the two regions are slowly coming together With the passage of time, the divide has diminished and the people vote more for performance than region, said Harish Thakur. Both Chauhan and Pathania agreed that the BJP was better placed than the Congress as there was no major controversy against the ruling party and the opposition appeared to be in tatters, especially after a brawl at Congress headquarters between Virbhadra Singh and former state Congress president Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu factions resulted in injuries to three Congress workers. Himachal Congress president Kuldeep Rathore said the incident was history and that the party is now united to take on the BJP, elaborating on the measures being taken to connect with the party workers and voters. His counterpart in BJP, Satpal Singh Satti, said the chief minister had visited 64 of the 68 assembly constituencies and they mapped 2.5 million beneficiaries of state and the central government schemes. Conversations with people from different regions and professions indicated the BJP may not be able to retain the 53.85% vote share it got in 2014 but it has an edge over the Congress. In the 2017 assembly election, the BJP lost about five percentage points as compared to 2014 and won, but was still ahead of the Congress by about seven percentage points. Bridging that difference will not be easy for the grand old party. Like most elections, three issues dominate the Lok Sabha polls --- horticulture development (mainly apple), road construction and transfers and postings of government employees, mainly teachers. The 700,000-odd government employees among the states 6.8 million people can swing any poll outcome. The employees, especially the teachers, are not very happy with the governments transfer policy and it can have implications for the Lok Sabha polls, Thakur said, recalling that the BJP lost all Lok Sabha seats in 1992 primarily because of government employees anger against then Shanta Kumar government for introducing a no work, no pay rule. Pathania and Chauhan said the 2014 aura of the PM may have lost its sheen but there isnt much anger against him either. That, added to the nationalist fervour, may give the BJP the edge in the hills. With the first phase of elections less than a month away, parties have already started finalising their list of candidates. While common wisdom would suggest that most incumbent members of Parliament should run again, the Indian experience tells a different story. Anti-incumbency, or the proclivity of Indian voters to reject those they have voted into power in the previous election, is a wellknown factor in Indian politics. In most democracies, incumbents run with a series of advantages, such as name recognition, party backing, a funding head start and the benefit of whatever work they have accomplished during their tenure. In India, these aspects seem to work against rerunning incumbents. Beyond the effect of overall party performance, most sitting MPs lose their seat, either rejected by voters or by their own parties. Anti-incumbency can be measured in two ways: party or government-level incumbency, that is the ability of a government to win a consecutive term, and individual-level incumbency, that is the ability of individual MPs to get re-elected. Stable results or high government incumbency can conceal a lot of volatility, in which many seats change hands. We measure individual incumbency after having attributed a unique personal identifying number (PID) to each Lok Sabha candidate, across time and political parties. The figures do not include incumbents running again but contesting under different party affiliations (turncoats). The data factors in by-polls and compares the elected members of a new Lok Sabha with the sitting members at the close of the previous Lok Sabha. Law of low returns Since 1991 and across parties, three quarters of all MPs run again on average, and about half of them get re-elected. This means that each Lok Sabha since 1991 has counted an average of 40% of re-elected MPs. In 2014, 72% of all MPs ran again, with a strike rate of 42%. This means that out of 543 MPs, 167 are re-elected parliamentarians, while 376 are either former MPs (59) or first-time MPs (317). This high turnover is easy to explain as a consequence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wave that swept away many incumbents running again, particularly among the Congress. But the ratio of successful incumbents in the 2009 Lok Sabha was equally low, at 32%. This meant that despite the fact that the United Progressive Alliance won a second term, most MPs returning to the fray lost their seats. The 2009 Lok Sabha counted 290 new MPs within its ranks. The ratio of incumbents running again and those running again successfully was much higher in the 1998 and 1999 polls, owing to the proximity between these two elections and the relatively stable performance of the Congress and the BJP. But the data suggests that individual incumbency is not solely linked to party performance and that, given a choice, voters would rather go for a different candidate than for the incumbent MP. As a result, the bulk of MPs elected over the years have been first-time MPs. Political circumstances usually account for these high numbers. In 1971, Indira Gandhi won a large majority with many new candidates, after the 1969 Congress split. The Janata coalition victory in 1977 brought fresh blood to Parliament. The ratio of firsttime MPs decreased during the 1990s. In 1999, most parties contested with the same candidates. How do the Congress and the BJP compare? n terms of mere re-nominations, the BJP and Congress run 46% of their incumbents again on average. These numbers were higher for the BJP in the late 1990s, when it ran 56% and 70% of its incumbents again. Post-2004, the numbers dropped as the party rejected more of its sitting MPs. In 2014, the number of incumbents running for office again increased slightly to 40.6%. Most of them (88.8%) got re-elected. There is less variation in the re-nomination patterns of the Congress, which, by and large, lets slightly less than half of its MPs to run again. In terms of performance, BJP MPs running again tend to be more successful than those from the Congress. This is due to the fact that BJP MPs and votes tend to be more concentrated in the Hindi Belt. In 2014, most BJP MPs running afresh were re-elected (88.8%), against half of them five years earlier. Explanation Why would parties discard so many of their incumbents? The easy answer is that by doing so, parties aim to counter party level anti-incumbency by fielding fresh faces. The results in recent state elections suggest that even in the states where it formed the government, most sitting Congress members of the legislative assembly lost their seats. This indicates that voters anger was not solely directed against the BJP. There are other factors that intervene. Some MPs, unable to keep up with the spiraling cost of staying in politics, exit of their own accord. Alliances and seatsharing agreements can lead parties to discard some of their incumbents, although this factor does not play much for both national parties. Similarly, the rebalancing of local caste equations can lead parties to change their candidates. Nomination time can also be the moment for parties to deal with factionalism and sideline/ do away with undesirable candidates. Finally, since 2014, 30 members have resigned or ceased working, while 20 have died. The BJP has already sent the signal that its incumbent MPs would not necessarily get a chance to seek re-election and that their candidacy would be conditioned to an evaluation of their performance. This is consistent with most parties re-nomination practice. In reality, the decision of which incumbent will get to run again will be made strictly on the basis of a cold calculation of their winnability. Refusing to secure the position of incumbents was common practice in Gujarat when Narendra Modi was chief minister. He would routinely discard half of his partys MLAs in every election, as a means to keep the other half disciplined. Publicly, this practice was meant also to create the impression that the party cared about performance above the interests of its members. A high turnover of MPs has far-reaching implications for the functioning of the legislative branch. On the one hand, one could argue that the renewal of political elites is a good thing for a democracy, a sign of competitiveness of elections, and a sign that voters keep their representatives accountable by punishing them in the polls. On the other hand, the high turnover of representative means a net loss of cumulative legislative experience. Most assemblies in India are assemblies of fleeting newcomers, who have little incentive to learn the ropes of legislative work. The combination of the high cost of entry into politics and short political life expectancy also encourage predatory behaviour, MPs having little time ahead of them to recoup their investment and raise funds for their next campaign. The fact that parties generally rely on self-funding candidates compounds this phenomenon and contributes to giving a premium to rich candidates as well as to those with a criminal background. The fate of the current MPs will be determined very soon and, in all likelihood, half of them will already be packing their bags before the electorate castes the first vote . (Gilles Verniers is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Co-Director, Trivedi Centre for Political Data, Ashoka University. Mohit Kumar, Sukanya Janardhanan, Priyamvada Trivedi and Sudheendra Hangal coded the incumbency data, using Surf, a TCPD-developed name matching software. Views are personal.) The Congress in Haryana is struggling to find candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections with many senior leaders reluctant to contest from the state. This could be linked to the crushing defeat in the recently held Jind assembly by-poll, a party functionary aware of the development said. The faction-ridden party has been witnessing infighting in Haryana for a long time now and all efforts by the central leadership to get the state unit to set its house in order have failed. That senior Congress leaders are reluctant to fight the Lok Sabha elections was evident at the first meeting of the newly-formed state coordination committee in Delhi on Tuesday. Formation of a 16-member panel, headed by former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, too had its share of controversy when the party withdrew the announcement minutes after issuing it. Congress general secretary in-charge of Haryana Ghulam Nabi Azad later restored the order clarifying that it was withdrawn as the party wanted to name other panels as well. Tuesdays meeting exposed the fault lines further in the party. Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Kuldeep Bishnoi, who is upset at not being given any key responsibility in the party, skipped the meeting. Senior leaders Navin Jindal, Kuldeep Sharma and Kumari Selja did not sound enthusiastic about contesting the upcoming polls, the leader said. Polling in 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana -- Kurukshetra, Sirsa, Hissar, Karnal, Sonipat, Rohtak, Bhiwani-Mahendragarh, Ambala, Gurgaon and Faridabad will be held on May 12. Votes will be counted on May 23. While Haryana Congress chief Ashok Tanwar will be fighting the Lok Sabha polls from Sirsa, Bhupinder Singh Hooda wants to focus on the assembly elections scheduled in October-November this year -- but would agree to contest if asked by the party high command, the leader added. His son, Deepender Singh Hooda, is seeking a fourth term in the Lok Sabha from Rohtak. Bishnoi, who also skipped the March 12 CWC meeting in Ahmedabad, wants his son Bhavya to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Hissar. There are reports suggesting that the BJP and other parties are reaching out to him. In the Jind by-poll, All India Congress Committee (AICC) communication department head and sitting legislator from Kaithal Randeep Singh Surjewala finished third. While Krishan Lal Middha of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the seat, Digvijay Singh Chautala of the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) finished second. Surjewala, who agreed to contest the by-election on the directions of the Congress leadership following an internal assessment that the party could finish fifth or sixth, is keen to seek re-election to the state assembly from Kaithal. The by-poll also brought to the fore the sharp division in Haryana on caste lines between Jats and non-Jats. Political parties are now drafting their electoral strategies based on these calculations. Azad has now proposed a bus tour from March 26 to 30 to ensure that the warring factions move together and display unity ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. The tour will begin from Faridabad and end in Jhajjar. With this move, the Congress wants to replicate the model it used in Karnataka in 1999-2000 and in united Andhra Pradesh in 2003-2004. The leaders are different before entering the bus, but when they come out of the bus after a few weeks, they are one. Twenty leaders become one. When they speak from one stage, when they eat from the same plate, they become one, Azad had said while announcing the bus campaign on Monday. Arvind Kejriwal had called me to say that my name has been deleted from the voters list. How can this happen? I have a voters ID; why was my name removed? Please add my name to the list, a person on the phone can be heard complaining to an attendant at the election call centre at the Mini Secretariat, set up to give poll related information to voters. Please share your details and we will check the information. Where do you live? Okay. Street number? Okay, give me a minute, says the call attendant. The call centre has been flooded with more than 10,000 calls in the past three months, with harried people calling them about missing names in the voters list. Your name is there on the electoral list. I have just checked, the attendant, Vishal, says but even before he completes the sentence, he is cut-off by the caller who is not convinced by the assurance. Attendants say that such calls do not surprise them anymore. The centre has been set up at the National Information Centre (NIC), which has been tasked with the job of resolving voters queries ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Buzzing with phone calls from 9am till 9pm on a daily basis, the centre which operates out of the second floor of the Mini Secretariat has become a centre of activity since the state election commission launched the helpline 1950 to address poll-related queries and complaints of voters in January. Manned by four people, who work in two shifts from 9am to 3pm and 3pm to 9pm, the centre is tasked with the job of addressing queries that emerge from four assembly constituencies of the Gurgaon district Sohna, Pataudi, Gurugram and Badshahpur. From January 22 to March 18, the helpline has received 11,003 calls. In addition to receiving calls related to electoral registration and polling stations, attendants on the helpline number said that they were also receiving queries that were bizarre and, sometimes, plain funny. People get false calls and then start panicking. One or two calls like these are received daily. We make our best efforts to resolve their doubts, but if they still refuse to believe us, we share the contact details of the block level election officer, said Punit, 23, head of the call centre. He said that the attendants also received calls related to mundane things such as mobile phone SIM cards and top-up offers. Once, we got a call from someone enquiring if we were from a telecom agency. The caller kept complaining that his phone SIM card wasnt functioning properly and we should do something about it. On another occasion, the caller kept badgering us with requests to check why his phone had not been recharged, he said. Another attendant shared how an angry caller had once threatened to take action after the centre refused to share the complete list of voters with him. This caller first sought details of his name on the electoral roll. We couldnt find any record. Later, he started seeking details of voters in a certain locality, the whole city and eventually, the whole district. It was bizarre because he kept calling the head office in Chandigarh simultaneously, said Punit. After weeks, the caller finally stopped calling, much to the relief of the attendants at the call centre. The caller would call daily and waste my time. One day, I told him that there were more than 12 lakh voters in the city and he would get details of all the names if he decided to pay for the printing cost, which comes to somewhere around 12 lakh. Since that day, he hasnt called, said Punit Officials of the district administration said that the helpline was playing a crucial role in providing essential information to the voters. However, some people, due to poor awareness, are misusing it. Whenever a toll-free helpline is initiated, people start treating it like the 100 helpline of the police. From ways of making Aadhaar card to the ration card, people start treating it like an outlet of getting their queries resolved, said Sant Lal, district election tehsildar. An officer working with the election office, on condition of anonymity, said that some people were calling the helpline to play pranks. These bizarre incidents aside, the centre is taking various measures to ensure that voters queries are resolved. The four-member team has people who can converse in English, Hindi, Haryanvi and Punjabi. A majority of the calls being received are election-related. As the polls near, the call centre will start working 24X7. We will make ourselves available for the assistance of voters, said Vijay Yadav, district revenue officer, who is also looking after the workings of the call centre. In January, the AAP had alleged that the BJP got more than 30 lakh voters names deleted in Delhi. Since then, AAP leaders have asserted that they hired the services of call centre employees to make people aware that names had been deleted from voters list. Through our surveys, we realised that names of lakhs of voters had been deleted from the voter list in Delhi. In order to sensitise voters and ensure that they have their names on the electoral roll, we have been making calls to make them aware of the deletion. Most of the calls made through our campaign are accurate, said Sudhir Yadav, AAP Haryana spokesperson. A ferry overloaded with people celebrating the Kurdish new year sank in the Tigris River near the Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday, killing at least 71 people, mostly women and children, officials said. Col. Hussam Khalil, head of the Civil Defense in the northern Nineveh province, told The Associated Press the accident occurred as scores of people were out in a tourist area celebrating Nowruz, which marks the Kurdish new year and the arrival of spring. Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Saad Maan said 71 people died, adding that 55 have been rescued, including 19 children. Earlier Thursday, Health Ministry spokesman Seif al-Badr said the dead include 33 women, 12 children and 10 men. He said 30 people were rescued, adding that search operations are still underway as it is not known how many people were aboard the ferry. Khalil said the ferry sank because of a technical problem, and that there werent many boats in the area to rescue people. He said more than 80 people were on the ferry when it sank. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi ordered an investigation and expressed deep condolences to families of the victims. The rivers level was high because of a rainy season that brought more precipitation than in previous years. The U.S. Embassy said Charge dAffaires Joey Hood and the entire mission express our deepest condolences to the families and friends of those who lost their lives in the tragic ferry accident on the Tigris River near Mosul. Nowruz, or the Persian new year, dates back to 1700 B.C. and incorporates Zoroastrian traditions. It is celebrated across territories that once made up the ancient Persian empire, stretching from the Middle East to Central Asia. Iraqi forces drove the Islamic State group from Mosul in 2017 after a devastating campaign that left entire neighborhoods in ruins. . A suspected gunman arrested for killing three people on a Dutch tram this week is believed to have acted with terrorist intent, and authorities are also investigating whether he had other personal motives, prosecutors said on Thursday. Prosecutors said they believe the suspect, 37-year-old Turkish-born Gokmen Tanis, acted alone in the shooting in the city of Utrecht, but the investigation is still ongoing. We are investigating whether the suspect acted solely from a terrorist motive, or whether his actions came out of personal problems in combination with a radicalised ideology, the prosecutors said in a statement. Tanis is due to be brought before a judge on Friday and will also undergo psychological examination. Three people died and five were wounded late Monday morning when a gunman opened fire on a tram in the central city of Utrecht. Tanis, the only suspect in the shooting, was arrested after a seven hour manhunt. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON China on Thursday said it has an open attitude towards Indian investments in Sri Lanka after it emerged that Indian company is part of a $3.85 billion joint venture, which will build an oil refinery near the Beijing-built Hambantota port in the south of the island nation. Earlier this week, Nalin Bandara Jayamaha, the Lankan deputy minister of development strategies and international trade was quoted as saying that the Oman Oil Ministry and a Singapore-investment entity owned by Indias Accord Group have agreed to construct an oil refinery in the country. It would be the biggest foreign direct investment (FDI) in Sri Lanka where China and India are competing for influence. With this refinery, our exports will grow by $7 billion per year, Jayamaha was quoted by the Reuters news agency as telling reporters at a news conference in Colombo. Asked to react to reports about the new oil refinery in Sri Lanka and whether Indian investments were source of concern to China, foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said at the regular ministry briefing that Beijing has an open attitude regarding Indias investments in the island nation. I dont have relevant information as of now. But I want to say China and Sri Lanka have cooperation in many areas that yielded concrete outcomes. As far as the port (Hambantota) you mentioned, (it is) another example of our fruitful cooperation, Geng said. We have an open attitude towards Indian investment in Sri Lanka. While we make our contribution to the development of Sri Lanka, China is not as narrow minded as you thought, he said. The $3.5 billion refinery project will be located near the southern Sri Lankan port of Hambantota, built with funding from Beijing and eventually included in Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, a massive intercontinental connectivity project. The port had to be handed over on a 99-year lease to a state-owned Chinese company in a debt-to-equity swap raising international concern about Beijing acquiring a strategic asset in the Indian Ocean Region, which could also be used by the military. In the past few years, China has emerged as the largest source of FDI in Sri Lanka and is involved in several big projects including the Hambantota port and the Colombo Port City project. Overall, Beijing is said to have invested more than $7 billion in the island nation. Beijings state owned companies are also involved in several infrastructure and building in roads and railway networks in Sri Lanka. According to Chinas national news agency, in 2017, Sri Lanka received FDIs worth 1.63 billion dollars with China bringing in the highest FDI followed by India and Singapore. The word charanda describes a natural rum from Michoacan. According to the rules of its protected denomination of origin (PDO), charanda may only be made in that large Mexican state just west of Mexico City and only with specific varieties of sugar cane. Charanda Uruapan is blended from two distillates 50 percent cane juice wild-fermented in the open air and distilled on a wood-fired copper pot still, and 50 percent molasses distilled on a modified French-style column still to create a 92 proof clear white spirit. Like the rhums agricoles of Martinique and the hard-to-find clairins of Haiti, the charanda drinks more like an aguardiente (a category of strong clear spirits loosely translated as firewater) de cana than a traditional rum. New Zealand police on Thursday admitted that the person they originally charged suspected mosques gunman Brenton Tarrant with murdering is actually still alive. An error was made in the charging document prepared for the first court appearance of the man charged with murder in relation to the Christchurch terror attacks, a police spokesman told AFP. The error saw an incorrect victim name included in the charging document. Tarrant appeared in court Saturday on the first of what were expected to be multiple murder and other charges. Fifty people died last Friday when a gunman entered the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch, on New Zealands South Island. We have spoken with the person incorrectly named on the charging document and apologised, police said. The charge sheet will be amended. New Zealand Police regret this error and apologise for any harm caused by the mistake. A student stabbed a college professor to death on Wednesday in eastern Pakistan on Wednesday, apparently because he felt that a planned party that women were going to be involved with would be un-Islamic, a police official said. Khalid Hameed, an English professor at the Government Sadiq Egerton College in Bahawalpur, was preparing for the farewell party when one of his students attacked him with a dagger, police said. Apparently, the accused has no link to any religious group but we are investigating about his past and the reasons behind his mindset, local police official Farhan Hussain said. He added that the motive given by the alleged attacker was Hameeds decision to hold the party. The student, Khateeb Hussain, was in policy custody and was being charged with murder, police said. The attacker was wrestled to the ground by students present at the party rehearsal but they could not save Hameed, who died of his wounds after being taken to a local hospital, college principal Wali Muhammad told Reuters. Egerton College is one of few institutions in Pakistan with a majority female student population, with 4,000 women attending alongside 2,000 male students, Muhammad said. The dead professor had been due to retire in four months. Religion and gender are sensitive topics in Pakistan, where womens rights are often described as un-Islamic by right-wing religious groups. Last year, a school principal was shot and killed after reprimanding a student for missing classes to attend a protest organised by an ultra-right wing Islamist group. The student equated the teachers words with blasphemy, police said. This month, a womens march was condemned by the countrys religious right and its organisers were threatened with rape and death for publicly demonstrating against taboo topics such as sexual harassment and the demonisation of divorce, and for calling out men for not doing housework. A Thomson Reuters Foundation poll found Pakistan to be the sixth most dangerous country for women in 2018. N ow in its 15th year, Ceramic Art London is an opportunity to view the work of many of Britains brightest new creative stars. One collector who would not miss the show, in the vast central concourse at Central Saint Martins in Kings Cross, is American-born Preston Fitzgerald. The former banker, now a leading expert in contemporary and antique ceramics, has been snapping up new work by British talent for a quarter of a century. For newcomers to collecting, he advises taking it slowly and looking a lot. Putting in time and effort is fun. Start in the V&A ceramics department. Then go to fairs or shows look and ask questions. The ideal place is Ceramic Art London. You can see works by 91 makers. You can look, talk about and handle the works and there are makers from around the world, so its wonderful. Scroll through our gallery, above, for some of his favourite new makers the ones to watch. But, adds Fitzgerald, you should buy an object because you love it, not because you hope to profit from it. "Beautiful forms": Fitzgerald praises the subtle colours and beautiful forms in the work of Egyptian-born British artist Ashraf Hanna How to buy pieces that last The home Preston Fitzgerald shares in west London with his partner Cedric Smith is filled with ceramics. Fitzgerald collects functional and sculptural pieces, using the functional ones daily, while the sculptural ones are on show everywhere. One to watch: Grainne Watts uses layers of vibrant under glazes and slips to create interesting surface detail The American former mortgage banker came to Britain 25 years ago. When his visitors visa needed renewing, Fitzgerald enrolled as a student at Christies and Sothebys. I worked on a decorative art show and got to handle the handmade objects a great deal. It mushroomed from there, he explains. He opened an antiques business selling mostly to America, but the market collapsed in the years after 9/11. Today every surface of the couples home displays the results of their collecting. I love ceramics, says Fitzgerald. I appreciate different ceramic materials and finishes. He singles out a piece by Folkestone-based potter Matt Horne, sitting on a mantelpiece with colourful crystalline glazes. He also likes blue pieces to reflect the Chinese porcelain traditions of blue and white. If I see something I like in a different colour, I say, This is nice but do you make it in blue? Expert eye: art/antiques collector Peter Fitzgerald, left, and partner Cedric Smith He combines historical with contemporary, decorating the kitchen with Greek Pattern blue-and-white Spode dinner service circa 1820, interspersed with work by ceramicists Peter Beard, Tanya Gomez and Felicity Aylieff. We use it, its not just for show. Theres no joy in buying because it might be valuable, you buy because you love it. You have to want to live with it. But he admits that a small Rupert Spira bowl bought 20 years ago for 90 is now worth 900. A vast hilltop apartment with a window onto the only listed view in England has been sold for more than 7 million. East Wing, a six-bedroom residence at the Star and Garter building in Richmond, overlooks picturesque meadows and the meandering Thames. On clear days Windsor Castle is visible in the distance. Writer Sir Walter Scott described it as an unrivalled landscape and Sir Joshua Reynolds and JMW Turner immortalised it in paintings. The British buyer of the apartment will be able to enjoy the panorama from the only private roof terrace on the Thames side of the landmark Neo-Classical building designed by Sir Edwin Cooper. Sold: the East Wing sale figure is undisclosed but is thought to be close to the 7.95 million asking price It was built at the summit of Richmond Hill as a home for soldiers injured in the First World War and was opened by King George V and Queen Mary in 1924, but closed as a hospital in 2013. The site was previously the location of the Star and Garter hotel, where guests included Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens and Napoleon III. The new owner will count Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Pete Townshend and Richard E Grant among their neighbours. The entrance to the East Wing has a library lined with original polished wood panelling, a carved fireplace, herringbone parquet flooring and an Art Deco chandelier. Double doors lead onto a 98ft-long living area, with 19ft-high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows. The terrace has a colonnade of Doric pillars in Portland stone. There is a self-contained two-bedroom suite for staff or guests, a living area and kitchen on the ground floor, and four bedrooms with suites on the upper level. A-list locals: the East Wing's new owner will count Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Pete Townshend and Richard E Grant among neighbours The view is the only one in the country protected by an Act of Parliament the Richmond, Ham and Petersham Open Spaces Act. It was passed in 1902 to protect the land on and below Richmond Hill from development. The scene is said to have inspired the name of Richmond, Virginia, after city founder William Byrd II noticed a curve in the James River that resembled that of the Thames. The sale figure is undisclosed but is thought to be close to the 7.95 million asking price. The rest of the place was very normal, and then BOOM, a kind of nightclub, done up in reds and blacks it was like someone had built a nightclub in their living room. It was, oh my God ... it was a time capsule. Like nothing had been changed since 1971. In Detroit, my next door neighbor had worked for Henry Ford as a valet and he had a room just like this, set up in his basement to entertain. Because you could go to clubs, in Detroit and in Chicago, but if you were black it was often made known that you werent welcome. So you entertained, you had parties in your home. And Isaiah Muses place this was more elaborate than anything I saw in Detroit. And while Im looking at it, the (real estate) agent is saying to me Oh, so Im going to tear all of this stuff out. I had to act like it wasnt anything to me, so he wouldnt raise the price on the condo right then. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) For the second year in a row, CNN Philippines on Saturday will hold a women's summit in a continuous effort to empower, inspire and celebrate women. The summit entitled "Taking Charge: #BalanceforBetter" will feature keynote speakers and panel discussions, which aim to highlight women empowerment and further create awareness of a more gender-equal society. Through stories and in-depth conversations, the summit hopes to inspire women to take charge in bettering the "balance" and the world. Key speakers and guests for the event include Tourism Secretary Berna Romulo-Puyat and CNN International Senior Correspondent Paula Hancocks. CNN Philippines will likewise set up a marketplace area featuring women entrepreneurs and their products. The Marketplace will showcase a variety of hand-crafted goods, locally made designer wares and cosmetics, as well as healthy snacks. The platform will also offer health and financial advice to attendees. CNN Philippines, together with Magnolia Chicken, Monterey, BMW, Avon, Kohl, BDO, SM Aura, San Mig Light, will hold 'Taking Charge #BalanceforBeter' on March 23 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Samsung Hall, SM Aura in Taguig. Lunch will be served at the venue. Its frustrating, because the actors are up to the task and the setting and the complications hold promise. Right away, The Aftermath makes its clear Col. Morgan (Clarke) is an exception to the rule; unlike so many of his callow fellow Britons, he sees German suffering and postwar Hamburg as a human tragedy. His son with Rachael has been dead three years, victim of a Nazi air attack back home. (The novel gave the Morgans a second, surviving child.) The former architect, Herr Lubert, does the best he can with a brooding, motherless 16-year-old daughter (Flora Thiemann), whos mixed up with a vengeful Nazi punk (Jannik Schumann). At home, she answers one of the Morgans attempts at small talk with a sudden, catlike hiss. The time for action is now, before the unwillingness to offer the musicians a contract that continues the defined benefit pension plan causes irreparable damage not only to the CSO, but to the entire city of Chicago. The economic efficiency of defined benefit pension plans has been shown over and over to vastly exceed the benefits of the CSOAs proposed alternative, said the letter. We wont know exactly Labro and his quartet do with this material until he takes the Green Mill stage, but listeners probably neednt expect a sentimental or nostalgic approach. For in addition to reworking the underlying harmonic structure to these songs, Labro will punctuate his sets with his original compositions. And though he estimates that the Chanson Experiment generally features about 70 percent French repertoire, and the rest originals, that proportion probably will even out at the Mill, where headliners perform three sets a night. Pipeline 21 March 2019 Deutsche Hospitality is driving forward expansion in the Netherlands. The IntercityHotel Amsterdam Airport, which is scheduled to open in 2021, will become the latest addition to the group's portfolio. It will join the existing IntercityHotel in Enschede, the Steigenberger Airport Hotel in Amsterdam and Jaz in the City Amsterdam as Deutsche Hospitality increases its presence in the country to four hotels. Preparations for the start of construction works for the IntercityHotel Amsterdam Airport are continuing apace. "Our experiences with Steigenberger Hotels and IntercityHotel in the Netherlands have been very good," said Thomas Willms, CEO of Deutsche Hospitality. "When we were seeking a location for the first Jaz in the City in 2016, it rapidly became clear that Amsterdam is the ideal environment for a young hotel brand that takes its inspiration from music and design. Today, the Jaz Amsterdam boasts an occupancy rate of over 80 percent. This success proves that we were right, and we are now looking to achieve strong growth right across the Netherlands." Mr. Willms sees this second IntercityHotel as part of an overall expansion strategy in the country, which also encompasses Steigenberger Hotels, Jaz in the City and the MAXX by Steigenberger and Zleep brands. "Many discussions are currently ongoing, and these relate in particular to the brands MAXX by Steigenberger, IntercityHotel and Zleep Hotels." Mr. Willms stated that Rotterdam, Den Haag, Utrecht, Eindhoven, Nijmegen, Arnhem, Maastricht, Groningen and the resorts on the Dutch coast were all potential locations alongside Amsterdam. The IntercityHotel Amsterdam Airport will be the second IntercityHotel in the Netherlands when it launches in 2021. Like all the brand's new generation hotels, its interior design concept will bear the signature of Italian architect Matteo Thun. The hotel will offer 280 rooms, conferencing and events areas, a restaurant and a health and beauty spa and gym facility. It will be located within the direct proximity of Hoffddorp Station with easy access to the A4 motorway. Other transport links are equally attractive. Intercity Amsterdam Airport can be accessed on foot in five minutes, and Amsterdam city centre is also only just under 15 minutes away. The project is being implemented by Necron AG, which worked with Deutsche Hospitality in the past on the development of the IntercityHotel at Zurich Airport. "The IntercityHotel Amsterdam Airport is an extremely exciting project," said Necron AG's CEO Patrick Paternotte. "We are looking forward to working in partnership with SADC and Deutsche Hospitality to realize the venture." Groundbreaking 21 March 2019 Fathom Companies and Hilton's (NYSE:HLT) lifestyle brand Canopy by Hilton today announced opening plans for Canopy by Hilton Portland Waterfront, slated for spring 2021. Located on the corner of Center and Commercial Streets in Portland, Maine's Old Port neighborhood, the 135-room hotel will be situated on one of the last remaining buildable lots. The property will also be home to an indoor/outdoor rooftop bar and restaurant overlooking Casco Bay, a first for the New England coastal city. Fathom Companies will develop and manage the property. The development firm is in the approval process with the city, Historic Preservation Board and Planning Board and anticipates approvals in second quarter 2019 with a fall construction groundbreaking and spring 2021 opening. Canopy by Hilton Portland Waterfront offers 135 Just-Right rooms, all of which are designed for ease and comfort. The design process utilized a strong contingent of local consultants and professionals, including interior design firm Ealain Studios that designed the space with local touchpoints. Amenities will include mobile check-in and complimentary Wi-Fi, and on arrival, guests will receive a welcome gift inspired by the Old Port neighborhood. In addition to the first-of-its-kind indoor/outdoor rooftop bar in Portland, the hotel will offer a street-level restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. Guests will also be invited to evening tastings during their stays, featuring light bites and local craft beers, wines and spirits. As a lifestyle brand that embraces its locale, Canopy by Hilton provides guests with authentic and unique local experiences. Each property is designed as a natural extension of its neighborhood with connection to local art, food, drink and culture. Hotel team members are called Enthusiasts - Canopy's local experts - who connect guests to the best of their neighborhood, offering recommendations for the best restaurants, shops, running paths and more. Ideal for meetings and social gatherings, Canopy Portland Waterfront will also offer more than 2,000 square feet of meeting and function space. Canopy Portland Waterfront will participate in the award-winning guest-loyalty program for Hilton's 17 world-class brands. Hilton Honors members who book directly through preferred Hilton channels have access to instant benefits, including a flexible payment slider that allows members to choose nearly any combination of Points and money to book a stay, an exclusive member discount that can't be found anywhere else and free standard Wi-Fi. Now Open 21 March 2019 Kimpton Da An Hotel brings a new luxury hotel offering to modern Taipei (Taiwan). With its unique location in the heart of the Da'an District and an elevated, sophisticated design, the hotel is an urban sanctuary for the laid-back luxury traveler. Kimpton Da An is ideally located in the heart of Taipei city, allowing guests easy access to local cafes, boutiques and galleries, while providing a welcoming environment decorated with artwork from local artisans. The hotel features 129 rooms and has been designed by Neri & Hu, the winner of MASION&OBJET Asia in 2015, a prestigious design accolade. Once guests enter the hotel, the lush greenery and sophisticated water installation, coupled with custom lighting, immediately offers guests a sense of calm. Kimpton Da An will enjoy Kimpton's signature perks such as in-room yoga mats and a Morning Kick-Starter, as well as tea and coffee served in the lobby living room to energize guests. Guests can also take part in wellness morning yoga on the rooftop, free fitness and wellness classes or explore the city with complimentary bicycles. Guests can also meet fellow travelers at Kimpton's daily social hour in the hotel's lobby lounge. Kimpton Da An is a pet-friendly hotel, welcoming pets at no extra charge. Home to The Tavernist restaurant, its culinary experience provides diners with contemporary dishes coupled with local touches and innovative cooking methods. The Tavernist embraces Taiwan's organic movement and works closely with local farmers and food producers. The restaurant is led by Chef James Sharman, who has traveled to countless countries with his team and has sought inspiration from local cuisine around the world. To him, The Tavernist offers a place where guests can discover something new while feeling at home. IHG currently has 6 hotels* operating under 4 brands in the Taiwan market including, Regent Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo, Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts and Holiday Inn Express, with another 6 hotels in the pipeline. In the next few years, Kimpton is slated to open new hotels in Shanghai, Beijing, Sanya, Tokyo and Bali. Kimpton was recently named the fifth best company to work for on the 2019 FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For list, the company's 10th year on the highly-coveted list. Appointment 21 March 2019 Slim Ben Chahla takes the reins of the kitchen at Bord Eau, Abu Dhabi's most popular French restaurant. The Frenchman brings more than 24 years of culinary experience to the award-winning restaurant. As part of his role as chef de cuisine, Chef Slim will introduce 10 of his signature dishes that will be trickled into the menu one at a time, week after week. Born in Hautes-Alpes, France, Chef Slim has worked at the helm of top kitchens around the world, supporting chefs at Michelin restaurants like Restaurant La Rotonde at the Casino Le Lyon Vert, Le Meurice with Yannick Alleno, George V and Restaurant des Rois at La Reserve de Beaulieu. This was followed by an 11-year stint in Morocco, where he took on more leadership roles, working as a vital part of the launch team of leading hotels, restaurants and resorts, before returning to France for a remarkable gastronomic season at Courchevel. Event IBTM Arabia is a dynamic three-day invitation only event, the first of its kind in the Middle East, where 200 Hosted Buyers will have the exclusive opportunity to meet with 200 leading MICE industry suppliers, resulting in an all-important one-to-one ratio. The event will deliver three days of inspirational education and keynotes, pre-scheduled business appointments, nine networking opportunities and unlimited business. IBTM Arabia is organized by Throughout the first 40 years (mostly the era of co-founder Bernie Sahlins) at the famed Chicago comedy institution, Second City's revues generally maintained the kind of political balance that Trump has realized no longer exists. Things waxed and waned a little in the 1990s, based on who was president anyone who does satire will tell you that the main target should be power and the satirist is always more successful when punching up but anyone who saw those shows can recall plenty of caustic takedowns of the values and personalities of the left. The prevailing idea, which Sahlins often articulated, was to offer something for both political sides. Ideally, Sahlins used to say, the show would not have a dominant narrative political view. That was not the point. Press Release 21 March 2019 In a further demonstration of the interest the British Government has always shown in British tourism in Spain, and particularly in the Balearic Islands, yesterday the senior British diplomat in Spain visited the headquarters of Melia Hotels International, one of the largest Spanish travel companies with a longstanding presence in popular destinations for British tourists such as Palmanova or Magaluf. Advertisements Although accompanied by the uncertainty caused by Brexit, the meeting was very constructive, with diplomats expressing their wishes for a reasonable agreement which would allow them to "get down to work" to implement the contingency plans developed with companies and the Spanish authorities. Both Manley and Escarrer agreed on critical aspects in which the Spanish and British governments are already working, such as the need to reduce obstacles for travellers as far as possible, including aspects such as visa requirements or airport congestion caused by customs procedures. Although Gabriel Escarrer expressed his "full respect for the decision of the British people", the result of the referendum of 2016 "astonished" and saddened him, and he was especially worried about the situation for European nationals working in the hotels the company operates in the UK (4 in operation and 2 more scheduled to open in 2020). Manley stressed the British government's desire to "normalise" the situation as far as possible, to facilitate the labour relations of European citizens in the United Kingdom, and also allow the country to continue to attract the best talent "regardless of nationality." The Ambassador emphasised that European companies have a great responsibility in reassuring and informing their workers in the UK, and both parties acknowledged the importance of presenting a cooperation proposal to British Authorities through business forums such as the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in the UK, of which Melia is a member. Manley and Escarrer also discussed a completely different subject of great interest to them both: the improvements to tourism in Magaluf, a destination in which the hotel company has invested more than 250 million euros in recent years, and also the quality and behaviour of younger British tourists in different destinations in the Balearic Islands. After a review of the important progress already made, they discussed the challenges still pending with regard to a small number of hotels and other facilities still focused on very cheap alcohol or all-inclusive packages, and also the intensification of police controls along with the implementation of local regulations to avoid illegal and unruly activities in the destination. With regard to British travellers, the Embassy has been working for many years with the Balearic and local authorities (Calvia Town Hall), tour operators and hotel associations on prevention and education campaigns with very significant results. Mallorca and Palmanova-Magaluf have always been popular destinations for UK travellers, which still represent around 22% of total visitors to Mallorca, a figure which rises to 47.65% in Palmanova-Magaluf. Gabriel Escarrer and his team thanked the Ambassador for his efforts and for the readiness of the British Government to work to "build new bridges" between Spain and the UK to allow tourism to continue to grow and develop as normal, something considered of "maximum interest" for both countries. Press Release 21 March 2019 PARSIPPANY, N.J. (March 21, 2019) - Microtel by Wyndham, the award-winning economy hotel brand under Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: WH), today unveiled its newest prototype, a reimagined interior and exterior concept designed to further elevate the brand, reduce building costs, optimize efficiencies and drive greater returns for developers. The prototype is the first step of Wyndham's overarching new construction growth strategy focused on delivering long-term value and quality for owners. Advertisements The new prototype, Moda, represents the evolution of the Microtel brand emphasizing modern efficiency and minimalism for today's guest and owner. The new exterior architecture and interior design elevate the brand's spaces to match the midscale experience it already delivers - now at an even more competitive, economy cost to build. Moda reduces Microtel's total footprint by 28 percent versus the prior prototype. The design also delivers more than 70 percent of rentable space - one of the strongest in both the economy and midscale segments. "Microtel is the epitome of efficiency: it outperforms the segment, offers streamlined operations and leads its peers in guest satisfaction," said Keri Putera, vice president, Brand Operations, Microtel by Wyndham. "As we build on the brand's existing model, we've identified small, purposeful details which can drive large, incremental savings for developers and create a significant impact on the experience for our guests. Moda - a term symbolizing both style and precision - simplifies operations through design while tapping into the growing trend of minimalism, addressing the changing needs of today's travelers and owners." The first hotels leveraging the new prototype are set to break ground in 2019. Development Disruptor Microtel's transformative next step is the first of a multi-pronged growth strategy for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts as it builds the foundation for future expansion just over nine months into its tenure as a pure-play hotel company. Wyndham's new development strategy prioritizes quality and longevity in the economy and midscale segments via smart investment and partnering with growing entrepreneurs. Taking a page from the industry-leading practices of its newly acquired La Quinta by Wyndham brand, the company's strategy underscores new construction growth, design-driven conversions and a redesigned franchisee journey emphasizing added value over the lifetime of the investment. "Microtel is already a category-killer in the economy segment and is poised to disrupt in the midscale segment where it often competes, making it the perfect first step as we set out to transform the new construction landscape in both these segments," said David Wilner, senior vice president, New Construction Development, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. "With a focus on streamlined new construction models like Moda, we are paving the way for continued expansion across our economy and midscale brands and creating a foundation of long-term support for entrepreneurial hoteliers growing their businesses." A More Efficient Microtel by Wyndham Developed in collaboration with seasoned Microtel owners and award-winning architect firm, Hoefer Wysocki, Moda incorporates modern architecture, smart interior staples like wall-hung furniture and minimalist interior design trends to appeal to millennials and today's business and leisure travelers. According to Mayflower, millennials are leading the way when it comes to streamlined living spaces with the bare essentials, with 23 percent significantly more likely to say they're minimalists when it comes to purging things or belongings. The Moda prototype delivers a sleek, minimalist look and feel contributing to an elevated guest experience while also streamlining costs to develop. Exterior Highlights The new design includes a four-story exterior facade option and features a new, flat-roof design, elevating Microtel's visibility, signage and status from its previous pitched-roof design. The building itself is sleeker, reducing the total number of cut-outs in the foundation by modeling a Bauhaus architectural style - at 34,700 to 35,700 square feet, it's saving developers significant square footage material costs. The design changes minimize the brand's land requirements by 11 percent, affording developers more freedom and flexibility to build. Interior Highlights The interior design delivers layout and maintenance efficiencies inspired by conversations with owners and operators across the industry. Leaner and more modular, Moda uniformly positions guestrooms by unit type - suites, doubles and singles - allowing for natural building breaks and flow. Wall-mounted headboards, desks and televisions help housekeepers turn guestrooms faster, maximize open guest space and appeal to the personal aesthetic of today's millennial travelers. Incorporating the Franchisee's Fingerprint Helping to ensure Moda fits the owner and guest bill at each stage of the design process - from first conceptualization to final prototype - is a team of Microtel owners and industry vets, including a 15-person Microtel Developer Advisory Council offering feedback and expertise. The brand tapped owners, operators and general managers from various brands, markets and segments to work hand-in-glove with designers integrating additional operational feedback into the design. Microtel owner and Franchise Advisory Board member Chad Moore is one of the first to sign executed agreements to build two new Moda prototypes in Milford and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware in 2019. "I like to keep things simple, especially in business, and Microtel lets me do this," said Moore, seasoned owner of the Microtel by Wyndham Georgetown in Delaware. "Moda streamlines the development and operations of the hotel - while strongly upholding the defining design and service principles that have made Microtel the economy champion it is today - making the new Microtel an even more attractive, lucrative and valuable long-term investment." As of December 2018, Microtel has 82 hotels in the development pipeline - 59 in the United States and 23 internationally. Interested developers can visit www.buildmicrotel.com, or contact the Microtel Franchise Development team by email at [email protected] and by phone at (800)889-9710, for more information. Supplier News 21 March 2019 OTA Insight, the cloud-based data intelligence platform for the hospitality industry, today announced key findings from its data-driven infographic, "The Real Rate Parity Problem No One is Talking About," along with the release of its Annual Hotel Parity Review. Findings from the first-of-its-kind infographic outline key root issues surrounding rate parity for hotels, such as wholesalers that break the chain of contracts between hotels and Online Travel Agents (OTAs) by selling discounted rooms to non-contracted OTAs, effectively allowing them to undercut hotel room prices significantly. Additionally, the Annual Hotel Parity Review provides a benchmark for hoteliers to understand parity performance in different markets across Europe and North America. "As an advocate and partner for hoteliers, we spend a lot of time working with them to uncover and understand their key business concerns and constraints," said Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of OTA Insight. "Rate disparity is a huge problem for our customers but it also impacts the major OTAs, so we wanted to shed light on some of the root causes. Our parity management tools, combined with our extensive data resources and in-house analysts, gave us a unique opportunity to provide a resource that illustrates the current landscape." INFOGRAPHIC CALLS OUT INDUSTRY PARITY PROBLEM Most hoteliers recognise that they need a diverse mix of distribution channels to maximise their reach. However, it is becoming increasingly apparent that third-party sellers are not playing fair, and as a result, many hoteliers are suffering from huge losses in revenue while also undermining their direct sales and marketing efforts. In fact, according to OTA Insight's infographic findings, major North American hotel chains are negatively impacted 24 percent of the time by non-contracted OTAs, while major European chains are negatively impacted more than one-third (36 percent) of the time. Additionally, these figures are much higher for independent hotels and local chains. The data highlights even more findings from OTA Insight's own data that includes: Top 5 undercutting wholesalers Top non-contracted OTAs that wholesalers are on-selling to A spotlight on parity issues and its impact around the world ANNUAL HOTEL PARITY REPORT PROVIDES ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS Along with the infographic, the company's Annual Hotel Parity Review examined the European and North American rate parity trends for 2018. In line with OTA Insight's mission to help the hospitality industry visualise and leverage data, the report provides visibility into the differences between major chains (based on nine of the leading global hotel chains within the hospitality market), and independents and local chains (a range of independent properties and local market chain hotels). This level of transparency to the market allows hoteliers to come away with actionable insights on parity, showcasing how it affects them and their properties. Key findings from the report across Europe and North America include: In Europe: OTAs are more likely to be in parity with major chains than Independents and local chains. Market-wide, there are significant parity loss issues with Independents and local chains facing losses for 53% of tracked shops in comparison to 45% for major chains. In North America: OTAs are more likely to be in parity with major chains than Independents and local chains. Market-wide, there are significant parity loss issues with Independents and local chains facing losses on 46% of tracked shops in comparison to 35% for major chains. The infographic findings were compiled from 2018 data generated from OTA Insight's suite of parity management tools, which identify where there's disparity, including which wholesalers are selling inventory to which non-contracted OTAs for a wide selection of hotels. Photo: OTA Insight Research for the report was undertaken by the Market Data Insights team at OTA Insight - an international team of researchers and analysts focused on extracting hotel market trends. The online market survey gathered OTA Insight data from 2018, across 146 countries and more than 28,000 hotels globally on brand.com, OTAs and metasearch sites. For more information, please visit: www.otainsight.com. Opinion Article 21 March 2019 An increasing number of women in hospitality join leadership positions without an intention to leave their family ambitions behind. What enables them to achieve their life goals? A study by Dr. Sowon Kim looks into key factors that help women manage this balancing act. Advertisements The conflict generated from managing work and family is real. For half a century, the primary focus of research on this topic was driven by this potential conflict. Still today, female leaders reveal what seems to be a trade-off between career and children. One of the most powerful women in the world - former CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi - shared and advised when stepping down as CEO from PepsiCo last October: "I've been blessed with an amazing career, but if I'm being honest, there have been moments I wish I'd spent more time with my children and family. Make the most of your days and make space for the loved ones who matter most" - Indra Nooyi Balancing demanding jobs and family: what research reveals In a quest of understanding further how women with demanding jobs and family responsibilities cope with their work and family life, I conducted a study interviewing female leaders primarily in the hospitality sector across Switzerland. As an increasing number of women join leadership positions without an intention to leave their family ambitions behind, I focused in particular on what factors enabled women to achieve their life goals. I found that women have a dual-centric identity as they place a high identity on both and work family roles, and not necessarily one over the other. Women perceived their work and family spheres as integrated (vs. segmented) even if the degree of permeability (cognitive, affective, and behavioral spillover of roles) and flexibility (roles are elastic and mutable) of work-family boundaries were context dependent. In general, women who ran their own hotel properties had greater permeable and flexible boundaries than women who were hired to manage a business unit or operation. Women excelled in proactively developing an ecosystem of support which included family (nuclear and immediate), company (supervisor, peer, and subordinate), and the institution (childcare systems) and engaging in boundary management behaviors. Developing a support ecosystem As an example of this integration approach is the experience shared by consultant Cornelia Kausch, an EHL Alumni and VP of development at hotel property company Pandox. She told EHL students during a panel discussion that women make up more than 30 percent of Pandox's board. Noting this was 'nothing special' for a Scandinavian firm, she argued that the industry needs to find ways to integrate women with children. "My big advantage when I had my twins was that I was running hotels, so whenever they were sick I just took them with me to the hotel and put them in a hotel room. That was my solution." Kausch acknowledged that this solution is far from being perfect and that it was one of the benefits of being in a leadership role. Many women in hospitality clearly would not have such advantages but the message is clear: companies could be doing more to support women achieve their goals, whether through flexible work arrangements or childcare provision. In line with this suggestion, one of the family owned hotels in my study sample had opened the hotel guests' childcare facilities for their employees, which impacted employees' rate of attraction (to the company) and retention. While this might not work for all hotels including business hotels or any type of hotel without childcare facilities, other alternatives exist to enable employees to manage their work and family life. In fact, having family supportive work environments and supportive supervisors are far more important than work-family policies per se. As gatekeepers of a positive environment, the role of supervisors is critical: are they - or are they not - providing the right amount of psycho-social and emotional support to their employees to balance work-family life? Opinion Article 22 March 2019 Google has launched a full destination search site for hotel listings in a move that could seriously shake up online travel - again. Under the innocuous title "There's still time to plan your perfect spring break trip," Google's Richard Holden published an article late last week that showcased a range of new features from the search giants. Amongst updates to Google Flights and the 'nearby hotels' feature on Google Maps was a glimpse of 'google.com/hotels.' A closer look revealed a full-scale hotel search site with definite similarities to Airbnb's clean, uncluttered, map-based interface. So, what has actually changed? Well, Google has consolidated various elements of its hotel search experience in one platform. There are several new ways to filter results, including 'deals' determined by Google based on current and historic pricing data. The user experience still isn't perfect and the process of actually comparing like-for-like pricing can still be frustrating. But while the hotel search experience in itself isn't vastly different to what Google have been experimenting with in recent months in both their organic and Maps search, these new features and the simple fact that Google now has a dedicated site for hotel bookings could signal a watershed moment for online travel. It looks like Google is making a play to own the lion's share of the user booking journey within their own sphere of influence. It's no wonder that Expedia and Booking Holdings spent $10.6 billion on brand advertising in 2018. If they weren't already, hotels need to be taking very seriously the power of Google over their customers, their competitors, and their distribution partners. But there's opportunity here too. Let's take a look at what this update really means. Seizing the opportunity of Google Hotel Ads If there's one thing that's clear as a result of the update, it's that Google wants to be the place where people decide what hotel they want to go to and how much they're going to pay for it. The search platform aggregates a huge amount of content from both organic and paid sources: photos, reviews, business listings, prices, room descriptions, map data, and more. It's a clear play to own the territory previously presided over by the major OTAs, suggests Triptease's Chief Product Officer Alasdair Snow. "Google's changes bring their search experience much closer to the core historic utility of an OTA: the ability to compare and contrast hotels and use tools like maps and reviews to refine a hotel search down to a shortlist of possible options," says Alasdair. "With this functionality now present and prominently positioned inside the world's number-one search engine, you can expect a lot more of this guest activity to take place within Google itself rather than on OTA sites. This puts Google in an amazing position to make itself the central hub where all guest research and decision making will take place. "And, as long as Google continues to allow hoteliers to own the guest relationship when participating in this experience - and we don't see that changing! - this is a huge and timely opportunity for hoteliers that they should seize with both hands." If Google continues to become the destination of choice for guests searching for hotels and comparing prices, hotels should be looking to make the absolute most of that by getting their direct price in the mix when they are likely to win the booking. That means bidding when you have the best price and when the guest's previous searches indicate they're a good match for your hotel; it also means not bidding when you're being undercut by an OTA. Chetan Patel, VP E-commerce at Onyx Hospitality Group, suggests that combining meta with an organic Google strategy is the way for hotels to take advantage of the changes. "Unless Google changes tack and cares only about monetization, something they do not quite have a track record for, this is a massive opportunity for the travel industry," Chetan suggests. "At Onyx, we generate over a third of our organic traffic via the Google listings of our properties. This is huge. That traffic also converts at a significantly higher rate than traffic from other sources. If users are able to use Google to find all the information they need to decide on their accommodation, and hotel websites are a regularly viable option for finishing the reservation, this could undermine OTAs." So, how are Google making that organic information more accessible for potential guests? And how can hoteliers make their websites the 'viable option' for completing the booking? Let's take a look at what's actually changed with Google's latest update. The search experience Most of what you can see on google.com/hotels has been available for a couple of months already. When we tested it searching from both a desktop and mobile in London, we were still presented with the familiar top-of-listing ads followed by the Google Hotels panel before the organic listings. Having the panel here rather than to the side of the results certainly makes it a more interruptive experience, and the prompt to enter search dates after having made a very generic query ('hotels in Paris') is a simple yet highly effective way to retain the user (and their potential for revenue generation) instead of having them immediately click out to Booking.com, Expedia or TripAdvisor. Entering search dates takes you into the Google Hotels experience proper. As an interface, it's more than a little reminiscent of Airbnb's search result listings. You can explore results via the map, by altering your preferred price, or by filtering on a variety of different criteria - including the new 'Deals' marker, which we'll come onto in a second (or you can jump down there now). Google's search experience (left) compared to Airbnb's (right) Photo: Triptease At this stage of the search, the meta auction isn't visible - which makes sense from a user perspective. If you're yet to choose an exact location, price range or even accommodation type (the opportunity to adjust our search to vacation rentals was clearly highlighted on desktop), you don't need to know that there are five or six different prices available for every hotel. But that's not to say that price and pricing options aren't playing a role in the user experience, even at this early stage. How is Google determining the sort order of hotels? When we first ran our search for 'hotels in Paris' then input our dates of June 12-13 (as we would if we were planning to attend Triptease's European Direct Booking Summit), the first two hotels we saw on our results were the Hotel Ritz Paris (rate: 1,029) and the Four Seasons Hotel George V (rate: 1,079). We then searched Barcelona and clicked on a result at random: the Barcelona City Centre hotel (rate: 79). When we then went back and refreshed our Paris search, our results had completely changed: five of the top six hotels we had to choose from had rates under 100, and two were advertised as having 'great deals'. We'd been firmly put in the low-budget, deal-hungry bucket of potential guests. As is to be expected, Google is altering how results appear to guests based on what it can learn from their search behavior. What we know less about is whether or not there is still an extent to which advertisers can promote a specific property at this stage of the search. When searching from within Google Maps, the top two results for a hotel query are often 'Featured offers' such as in the picture below. Booking.com bidding on the 'Featured offer' slots for this Google Maps search Photo: Triptease An advertiser (in this case Booking.com) can pay to promote a property within a generic destination search, with the benefit that theirs is the only rate shown initially when the user clicks through. Mirai published a great detailed overview of this feature when it launched in the summer of 2018. It doesn't seem as though these advertisements have been migrated over to the Google Hotels site, but we'd be surprised if some form of promotion on the results page didn't become available to advertisers in the near future. There's endless choice - but it's easy to tailor The search experience on Google Hotels is tangibly designed around getting the user to what they want in as frictionless a way as possible. We've already seen that they'll adjust how results are displayed based on factors like previous search behavior, but that's pretty much expected practice of ecommerce in 2019 (though it's something hotels struggle to achieve on an individual basis). What's more notable is how phenomenally easy it is to narrow down your choice to two or three properties in just a few clicks. Starting with our generic search - just location and dates - we began by filtering our price point down to 145 and under. One click. Then, we upped our minimum guest rating (based on aggregated Google, TripAdvisor and OTA reviews) to 4+. Another click. Next, we selected a couple of amenities - free wifi and a bar. Lastly, we opted to filter on 'Just deals'. In no time at all, we were down to seven properties to choose from. Google's filtered search results Photo: Triptease We tried to replicate the search on Booking.com and reached an almost identical number of results - six hotels. One property appeared in both sets of filtered results (Google's and Booking.com's). The major difference between the two experiences? Booking.com makes almost no visual distinction to suggest your results are filtered. Scrolling past the list of six takes you straight into more suggested properties. It may be subjective, but the Google experience certainly gives a stronger impression of actually producing results tailored to the user. Scrolling through Booking.com's tailored search results - there's almost no distinction between the six filtered listings and their other suggested properties So what does that mean for hotels? Well, as with almost everything Google does, there'll be proponents and detractors of this change. In terms of the good stuff, the traffic that does end up looking at your property will be more highly-qualified as a result of the easy filtering process. It also means there's room for you to compete on organic (rather than paid) grounds with other hotels and accommodation providers in your area. While you may not be able to bid higher than the Marriott next door on PPC, you can keep yourself in the same consideration set on Google Hotels with great guest reviews, high-quality photos and well-documented amenities. What may be a red flag for some businesses though is the 'Deals' tag and how it can be used to narrow down results. We've already seen how tightly it can constrain the set of properties under consideration. It looks like Google is calculating these 'deals' based on a combination of historic pricing data for each hotel and a market comparison of other hotels in the location, both of which it is turning outward for the user to see. Google's 'Price evaluation' feature There are a bunch of implications here. Firstly and perhaps most obviously, your revenue management strategy (or lack thereof) will be made visible to any searcher checking out your hotel. Secondly and perhaps most importantly, it's entirely feasible that an undercut price from an OTA will trigger that 'deal' tag, especially if it's a significant disparity - which, while it might help your hotel stay in the consideration set for price-conscious searchers, will promote the fact that the best price for your property is available elsewhere. Going forward Getting Google right is hard, not least because the search giant is famously cagey about its algorithms, sorting criteria and product direction. And that can make it hard for hotels to know where to turn. "Google knows better than anyone that the key to driving revenue online is through relentless experimentation, measurement and iteration," explains Scott Stirling. Scott manages Triptease's guest acquisition and metasearch bidding technology. "This makes it hard for a hotelier to keep up to date with the sheer pace of change that Google's Hotel business is experiencing and will continue to experience." "A year back, Google's hotel booking interface merely acted as a quick gateway to the hotel website or to OTAs via Google Hotel Ads," adds Chetan. "It has since dramatically expanded into a one-stop shop where you can locate a property on map or search, access useful information, see reviews, look at pictures, watch videos and even take virtual tours. It even shows price fluctuations. Unlike hotel and OTA websites, you also get to see pictures posted by other guests. This allows for well-rounded information-gathering that consumers need to make a decision. "Google search and Maps are so ubiquitous that it is hard for most users not to pass them on their way for a perfect hotel," he continues. "Because Google cares as much about providing great user experience as they do about monetizing their traffic, the hotel website link and official site option on meta are properly highlighted for consumers. That is why it is significant. Google seems to be taking over the role OTAs have played in the guest journey so far, and are arguably doing a better job at it." Google may be taking over parts of the OTAs' role, but that doesn't mean OTAs aren't wise to the opportunities presented by Google's metasearch. "We always need to remember that Google's mission statement is 'to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful,'" Scott advises. "This mission presents enormous opportunities to those able to take them. OTAs spend billions of dollars a year on metasearch. Hotels, on the other hand, get just one in 50 of their guests from meta! Hotels need a partner for guest acquisition that is able to leverage data scale like the OTAs do. "In order to drive more direct bookings, hotels need to ensure that as Google makes the hotel world's information accessible and useful, that their direct listing is up there along with the OTAs, it is in parity, and it links the user through to a super-high converting website. Only Triptease can offer this holistic solution." Performance 21 March 2019 HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee The U.S. hotel industry reported positive results in the three key performance metrics during February 2019, according to data from STR. Advertisements In a year-over-year comparison with February 2018, the industry posted the following: Occupancy: +0.7% to 62.2% Average daily rate (ADR): +1.9% to US$128.94 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +2.6% to US$80.15 "A sign of the times, a 2.6% increase in RevPAR was actually the highest for any month since October," said Jan Freitag, STR's senior VP of lodging insights. "Regardless, we once again set records across the key performance metrics as strong demand growth (+2.8%) outpaced our largest year-over-year increase in supply (+2.1%) since April 2010. Supply growth is certainly a factor in major markets, but the big concern nationally is on laborboth from a cost and talent acquisition standpoint. Rising costs in that department paired with a lack of meaningful ADR growth applies quite a bit of pressure on profitability. "On the plus side, we continue to be surprised by the upside in Group ADR growth. A 4.5% lift in February was the highest Group ADR increase since April 2018." The industry has now posted year-over-year RevPAR growth for 107 of the past 108 months (nine years). The longest overall expansion cycle in industry history lasted 112 months from December 1991 through March 2001. Among the Top 25 Markets, Super Bowl LIII host Atlanta, Georgia, reported the highest lift in ADR (+28.6% to US$139.86), which resulted in the largest increase in RevPAR (+33.1% to US$98.04). San Francisco/San Mateo, California, experienced the highest rise in occupancy (+4.1% to 79.9%) and the only other double-digit increases in ADR (+23.4% to US$258.01) and RevPAR (+28.4% to US$206.24). Denver, Colorado, saw the third-largest jump in RevPAR (+7.6% to US$79.79). Overall, 13 of the Top 25 Markets saw RevPAR growth. Last year's Super Bowl host, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, saw the steepest drop in occupancy (-8.5% to 59.2%) as well as the only double-digit decreases in ADR (-30.9% to US$109.33) and RevPAR (-36.8% to US$64.71). Houston, Texas, registered the second-largest declines in occupancy (-6.5% to 65.8%) and RevPAR (-8.8% to US$72.25). New Orleans, Louisiana, saw the second-largest drop in ADR (-4.7% to US$163.77). Download STR's February U.S. monthly hotel review. A note to editors: All references to STR data and analysis should cite "STR" as the source. Please refrain from citing "STR, Inc." "Smith Travel Research" or "STR Global" in sourcing. Additional Performance Data Are you a member of the media looking for performance data for a hotel market not included in this release? STR's sample comprises more than 63,000 hotels and 8.6 million hotel rooms around the globe. Please refer to the contacts listed below for additional data requests. Performance 21 March 2019 HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee The Canadian hotel industry recorded negative year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 10-16 March 2019, according to data from STR. Advertisements In comparison with the week of 11-17 March 2018, the industry reported the following: Occupancy: -3.6% to 60.9% Average daily rate (ADR): -1.4% to CAD144.12 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): -4.9% to CAD87.75 Among the provinces and territories, Prince Edward Island reported the only double-digit increases in each of the three key performance metrics: occupancy (+59.2% to 47.5%), ADR (+11.2% to CAD116.93) and RevPAR (+77.0% to CAD55.49). Manitoba experienced the second-highest increase in occupancy (+4.9% to 69.0%), which resulted in the only other jump in RevPAR (+6.5% to CAD86.78). The Northwest Territories saw the largest declines in occupancy (-27.6% to 65.7%) and RevPAR (-29.0% to CAD110.71). Newfoundland and Labrador registered the steepest drop in ADR (-7.4% to CAD121.38), which resulted in the second-largest decrease in RevPAR (-16.2% to CAD52.40). Nova Scotia experienced the second-steepest decline in occupancy (-10.6% to 55.4%). Revenue per available room down 4.9 Percent to CAD87.75 The Canadian hotel industry recorded negative year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 10-16 March 2019, according to data from STR. In comparison with the week of 11-17 March 2018, the industry reported the following: Occupancy: -3.6% to 60.9% Average daily rate (ADR): -1.4% to CAD144.12 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): -4.9% to CAD87.75 Among the provinces and territories, Prince Edward Island reported the only double-digit increases in each of the three key performance metrics: occupancy (+59.2% to 47.5%), ADR (+11.2% to CAD116.93) and RevPAR (+77.0% to CAD55.49). Manitoba experienced the second-highest increase in occupancy (+4.9% to 69.0%), which resulted in the only other jump in RevPAR (+6.5% to CAD86.78). The Northwest Territories saw the largest declines in occupancy (-27.6% to 65.7%) and RevPAR (-29.0% to CAD110.71). Newfoundland and Labrador registered the steepest drop in ADR (-7.4% to CAD121.38), which resulted in the second-largest decrease in RevPAR (-16.2% to CAD52.40). Nova Scotia experienced the second-steepest decline in occupancy (-10.6% to 55.4%). STR provides clients from multiple market sectors with premium, global data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England. For more information, please visit str.com. Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest Hotel industry news and trends. Subscribe 2021 Hotel News Resource Set to open in 2022, the hotel will mark Hyatts first Hyatt Place hotel in Vietnam Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) announced last week that a Hyatt affiliate has entered into a management agreement with an affiliate of Ben Thanh Holdings to develop a Hyatt Place hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. The new 200-key Hyatt Place Saigon Phu Nhuan will be the first Hyatt Place hotel in Vietnam. The Hyatt Place brand is rooted in extensive consumer insights indicating that guests seek stylish, comfortable, seamless experiences that accommodate their lifestyles and familiar routines. To embody this, the brand offers casual hospitality and purposeful service in a smartly designed, high-tech and contemporary environment. "We are pleased to start our relationship with Ben Thanh Holdings with the introduction of our first select service hotel and the Hyatt Place brand into a fast-developing country like Vietnam," said David Udell, group president, Asia-Pacific, Hyatt Hotels Corporation. "With its thoughtful, intuitive design, Hyatt Place Saigon Phu Nhuan will offer multi-tasking professionals and leisure travelers a comfortable stay equipped with all the essentials to help them get the most out of their stay." The hotel will reside in the Phu Nhuan district, which is considered the geographical center of Ho Chi Minh City due to its central location and accessibility from all the surrounding areas. Conveniently located within two kilometers from the Tan Son Nhat International Airport and less than five kilometers from the city's Central Business District, Hyatt Place Saigon Phu Nhuan will provide guests with convenient access to financial hubs and local attractions. "Hyatt Place Saigon Phu Nhuan's close proximity to dynamic business zones and local attractions will help position it as the choice accommodation for value-conscious business professionals and leisure travelers," said Tri Cao Nguyen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ben Thanh Holdings. "We are excited to collaborate with Hyatt and tap on its wealth of experience in hospitality to introduce guests to Hyatt's first select service hotel in Vietnam." Hyatt Place Saigon Phu Nhuan will feature 200 guestrooms, a cafe, grab-and-go food market, bar, lobby lounge, outdoor pool, fitness center as well as two meeting rooms totaling more than 255 square meters. Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest Hotel industry news and trends. Subscribe 2021 Hotel News Resource Davidson Hotels & Resorts announces the promotion of Thom Geshay from chief operating officer to president. Geshay continues a 30-plus-year career with one of the largest privately held management companies in the lodging industry and is only the fourth president in the company's 45-year legacy. Davidson Hotels & Resorts announces the promotion of Thom Geshay from chief operating officer to president. Geshay continues a 30-plus-year career with one of the largest privately held management companies in the lodging industry and is only the fourth president in the company's 45-year legacy. He succeeds John Belden, who will retain the role of chairman and CEO after serving as the company's president and CEO for nearly 14 years. As president, Geshay's focus is furthering strategic growth and performance excellence while Belden, as chairman and CEO, concentrates on vision casting, organizational development, and ensuring the company's culture and values continue to strengthen as business expands. Davidson Hotels & Resorts is poised to reach major milestones in 2019 with record-breaking annualized portfolio revenues projected to surpass $1.2 billion by year end, the forthcoming launch of its restaurant group, the significant expansion of its resort portfolio, and a robust development pipeline including 12 new-build projects, eight of which are slated to open between 2019 and 2021. "While I've had the privilege of helping to inspire the greatest era of change and growth in Davidson's history, we are now at a stage where Thom's exceptional skills and strong leadership can take us to even greater heights," said John Belden, chairman and CEO, Davidson Hotels & Resorts. "The prosperity of our company and strength of our portfolio is due to our dedicated team members, and we are committed to cultivating the next generation of leadership talent from within our current team while also attracting best-in-class talent externally in order to expand our capabilities and perspectives for property owners and investors." Geshay, who began his hotel career at an early age as a bellman, has been in a management position with Davidson Hotels & Resorts since 1988. He became COO in 2016 and was responsible for overall operations of the company's two distinct divisionsDavidson Hotels & Resorts, managing hard-branded assets, and Pivot Hotels & Resorts, comprised of soft brand and independent luxury and lifestyle assets. His strategic corporate experience also includes positions as senior vice president of business development, regional vice president of operations, and vice president of sales and marketing. Prior to that, Geshay served as general manager of several properties within the Davidson Hotels & Resorts portfolio. Geshay is an active member of Marriott's Distribution Strategy Advisory Committee and the American Hotel & Lodging Association's Hospitality Investment Roundtable, a frequent industry conference speaker, and a past member the Urban Land Institute's Hospitality Development Council. He earned his Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University. Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest Hotel industry news and trends. Subscribe 2021 Hotel News Resource About six years ago, Bertoletti was working in a different hospitals emergency department, where she was assigned to triage and the waiting room. She noticed a woman who had been waiting for two hours start to experience increased pain and lie on the floor. Bertoletti was about to see if she could find her a bed when a man arrived in the midst of a heart attack, she recalled. Cardi B's "Okurrr" was one of the biggest catchphrases in 2018 and now, it looks like she's getting ready to capitalize on it to the fullest. According to The Blast, the Bronx-bred rapper filed paperwork to trademark the saying for merchandising purposes such as shirts, hoodies, pants, as well as cups and posters. Mike Coppola/Getty Images The phrase gained tons of popularity after her appearance on Jimmy Fallon last year. While co-hosting the gig, Fallon asked the star to define "Okurrr," among other Cardi catchphrases. "You know, it's like a cold pigeon in New York City... Okurrr," she explained before showcasing the different variations of the saying. "It depends on the situation that you're in. If somebody checks somebody, it's like...okurrr! I didn't know she had all of that in her, okurrr! It's like okaaay, but okay is played out.... We've done that already!" Cardi not only filed to trademark "Okurrr" with three R's but she also filed documents to trademark a version with two R's. In other Cardi B-related news, the rapper is set to make her acting debut in the upcoming stripper film, Hustlers. Cardi will be joining a star-studded cast including Constance Wu, KeKe Palmer, Lili Reinhart, and more. Filming is set to start tomorrow (Mar. 22nd). CVS' across the United States are set to begin selling CBD products, over 800 locations. Derived from a MarketWatch report, this development places pharmaceutical retailer at the forefront a movement gaining tons of momentum with every passing day. CVS is already regarded as the largest drug store, with the widest outreach in all of America. Spencer Platt/Getty Images "We have partnered with CBD product manufacturers that are complying with applicable laws and that meet CVS's high standards for quality," wrote PR person representing the conglomerate. For reasons I can't begin to explain, CBD remains a contentious issue in some circles, by those who aren't ready to dismiss its ontological roots in the cannabinoid plant. Kind of like a beautiful red poppy, innocuous to the naked eye. While that may be true, cannabis in all its psychoactive splendor has already been implemented in over 33 U.S. States and the District of Columbia, of which 10 those governing bodies have already gone through the legislative process of rendering it legal and non-criminal. Not every CVS store is stocked, but as of last week, at least a handful of the 800 projected locations are already selling creams and lotions of the CBD persuasion. Don't be daft, CBD is the message. If anything "Skinny Girl Wine" should be outlawed in its place. Disney is looking up make future releases for the Star Wars franchise stronger than ever, and that's not just with the films. EA Games is currently handling the Star Wars license when it comes to video games but according to PCGamer, Disney is resurrecting Lucasfilms Games to help them with future Star Wars releases. Dario Cantatore/Getty Images LucasArts used to develop and publish games within and outside of the Star Wars universe before they shut their doors in 2013. Disney acquired LucasArts in 2012. However, recent job listings on the Disney Careers website reveal that they will be bringing people on board to work on interactive products" for LucasFilms Games, the successor of LucasArts. They're also hiring people to work as producers and in the marketing sector. The job description for the producer gig reads that the ideal candidate would help with "interactive products that incorporate Lucasfilm IP, such as Star Wars film and television properties, across all digital platforms, including but not limited to: Mobile (iOS, Android, Windows), Console (Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Switch), PC/Mac, and AR/VR platforms." They also asked candidates to have a passion for Star Wars and other Lucasfilm IP. It appears as though Disney isn't entirely happy with the way EA's been handling the Star Wars video games since they've flopped on a few projects in the past. However, LucasFilms Games won't be dropping EA anytime soon. EA's work with Disney is set to run until 2023, giving LucasFilm Games a few years to develop their first project. They were once one of those Hollywood couples that would make people write "#goals," but now Duane Martin and wife Tisha Campbell-Martin are embroiled in a messy divorce. Last year, after 22 years of marriage, the couple announced that they broke up and since then, the process of splitting up has been on a downward spiral. Duane has filed for bankruptcy and Tisha accuses him of having a $2 million he's hiding from creditors. He's denied those allegations, but it's the accusations of domestic violence that have him on edge. In court documents obtained by The Blast, Duane calls his estranged wife a liar who "manufactured a false claim of alleged domestic violence against the Co-Debtor which they filed with the police. Even Co-Debtors family law attorney would not sign his name on such a claim. The police saw the claim for what it was and did not pursue it," adding, "Additional falsehoods were presented to the Family Law court in order for the Co-Debtor to obtain custody of their children. When it was clear that these falsehoods were not going to work, they were dropped and custody was awarded 50-50 to both parents." Duane also writes in the court documents that Tisha only made claims of domestic violence because she's trying to break him financially, having already "illegally removed" his name from their bank accounts. "However, on April 17, 2018 the situation changed. This is because Co-Debtor was preparing her assault on the Debtor in her divorce proceeding. In an attempt to exert undue influence on her husband of 27 years, she and her brother Stanley Campbell, who was ousted from the police force in Oklahoma, took possession of the residuals." He also accuses her brother of "illegally recording his conversations" and intimidating him into turning over information. "Two weeks ago, Stanley flew to New York. While there, he exerted undue influence, bullying and obtained private financial information of my mother and me. He then turned over his ill-gotten gains to the Trustee a week ago through emails. Stanley is getting more aggressive and using police databases illegally." https://www.instagram.com/p/Bpxe7hwgIcA Documents state that Tisha doesn't believe Duane should have any sort of custody of their two children, while Duane wants the lawsuit against him dismissed. Tisha was also granted a restraining order against her ex this past January. For better or worse, I was an early adopter of Lil Pump. I dont say this to brag or imply that Im ahead of the curve when it comes to discovering artists that are up next. I was simply lucky (?) enough to find Pump on Twitter back in the fall of 2016. Somehow, through six-degrees-of-SoundCloud-separation, I ended up stumbling upon the teaser video for Obama: https://twitter.com/_/status/802647872000798720 You wouldnt be blamed for not recognizing the pre-Gucci Gang Lil Pump appearing in the video. The only obvious tipoff is the sizable Gucci logo tattooed on his chest: theres no face tats, no rainbow dreads, no septum piercing. Back then, he was just a kid uploading videos in whats probably his room at his moms house. Thats exactly why, initially, it was hard for me to determine whether I was looking at a legitimate musical artist or just some dude putting on a persona for fun and gaining a small social media following in the process. Legend has it Pump began rapping after Smokepurpp produced a track and asked him to freestyle over it, eventually turning it into his debut single, Lil Pump. Watching the music video again in 2019, I dont think Pump ever planned to be as famous as he is in hindsight, its even more evident that his music was first and foremost about having fun. Pumps mimicry of trap tropes in his self-titled single are so spot-on that it accomplishes what any successful piece of satire sets out to do: momentarily leave you unsure whether its self-serious or self-aware. With Lil Pump, Purpp and Pump took the most annoying and stupid elements of trap and synthesized them down into a grating two-minute video thats mere existence leaves old heads quivering in their Timbs. Flash forward to 2019 and Lil Pump is one of the biggest rappers in the world. His latest effort, Harverd Dropout, is largely about not going to school, ingesting copious amounts of drugs, and the joys of being a moron. Its sometimes funny (and sometimes not), the production works to mask much of the spotty rapping, and Lil Wayne drops by for a show-stealing verse. Its probably the only album youll ever hear that has a motif of illiteracy. Thats pretty much it. Youd be hard-pressed to find anything else of note to unpack here, but at the very least Harverd Dropout is funsomething that cant be said about the latest offerings from serious rap heavyweights like Kanye West, Drake, The Carters (APESHIT aside), and Nas. As obvious as it might seem to some that Lil Pump plays a character who was never meant to be a serious rapper (it should be blatant enough from the self-titled video when he proclaims that since the third grade hes been had commando and struggles to hold up the correct amount of fingers to signify the number three), to many long-time rap fans, Lil Pump represents everything thats wrong with contemporary hip-hopso much so that he was specifically name-dropped by Eminem on his most recent studio album, Old Man Yells At Cloud. But getting mad or complaining about Pump with regard to the current state of hip-hop is akin to responding to a Trump tweet or commenting on a YouTube video: youve already lost by choosing to engage it in such a way in the first place. Its not only misplaced anger, it underscores the specious divide between whats considered real hip-hop and whats not. A better lens to view Pump through is that his fame is indicative of style over substance, a gnawing trend where an artists personality, social media prowess, and meme-ability matter more than their actual music. Even so, it would be more accurate to assert that Pump is a symptom of a broken system that makes artists like Bhad Bhabie and 6ix9ine famous, not a virus out to ruin rap at all costs. (Its not like removing meme rappers from the hip-hop ecosystem is going to give Mach-Hommy more Spotify streams). And lets face it the vast majority of listeners are passive, not active. The people who currently find new music through curated Spotify playlists like Rap Caviar are the same people who would have found new music through curated playlists on the radio 20 years ago. Can we just admit I Love It is stupidly enjoyable and move on? Lil Pump at Coachella 2018 - Christopher Polk/Getty Images Pumps music is and always has been purposefully and profoundly stupid, and thats the entire point. Does he often devolve beyond satire and into tired tropes and misogyny for misogynys sake? Of course he does (what do you expect when you give a 17-year-old 8 million dollars and 10 million Instagram followers?), but you dont write a line like I take drugs like its vitamin C/Im a millionaire but I dont know how to read without it being tongue-in-cheek. As the gap between what constitutes an Onion article and a New York Times headline continues to wane, no one can really be blamed for misreading the blurred lines between real life and parody. Maybe America is in a phase of post-post-post-post-modernism. The fast food president created a snapshot of his own presidency when he served McDonalds on literal silver platters at the White House. Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel now comes with a tactile grip and Brands are doing Epic Rap Battles of History as sponsored content. Parody is dead; the universe writes itself. Lil Pump is a teenager with a larger-than-life personality who started rapping with his friends for fun and got picked up by the corporate machineand swept you up along with him. Canceled energy auctions, halted pipeline projects, a ban on hydraulic fracturing, a showdown with fuel thieves, political pressure on regulators to resign and plans to build an $8 billion refinery. The first 100 days in office for Mexicos new president Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador are not inspiring much confidence among private and foreign investors in the energy sector south of the border. Lopez-Obradors predecessor Enrique Pena-Nieto oversaw constitutional reforms in 2013 that ended state-run monopolies and opened Mexicos energy markets to investment and competition from both foreign and private companies. Over the past four and a half years, Mexico awarded more than 100 contracts to companies from all over the world for projects ranging from offshore oil wells to solar farms. Also as part of those reforms, a number of foreign and private companies opened gas stations throughout Mexico to sell fuel from international brands such as ARCO, Chevron, Exxon, Sunoco, BP and Shell, among others. On HoustonChronicle.com: Mexican officials limit bidding on new Pemex refinery Since being sworn into office in December, Lopez-Obradors administration has left the gas stations alone but has either canceled or indefinitely postponed energy auctions for oil, natural gas and renewables projects. Looking to cut imports of gasoline and diesel from the United States and other nations, Mexican Energy Secretary Rocio Nahle announced on Monday that the federal government is moving forward with plans to build an $8 billion refinery in the coastal state of Tabasco. For all practical purposes, energy reform in Mexico is dead, said Tony Payan, director of the Mexico Center at Rice Universitys Baker Institute. Nationalistic tone Lopez-Obradors first 100 days in office have taken a nationalistic tone, Payan said. In favor of opening Mexicos energy sector to further private and foreign investment, Lopez-Obrador wants to restore financial stability and production numbers at Mexicos state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. However, Pemex faces some tough realities. The state-owned oil company posted a $7.6 billion loss on $88.7 billion of revenue during 2018. Crude oil production in Mexico fell to a 15-year low of 1.62 million barrels per day in January while imports of gasoline and diesel have grown to 80 percent. Before Lopez-Obrador took office, the average price at the pump was 19.80 pesos per liter, which translates to about $3.94 per gallon. Gasoline prices now average around $4.18 per gallon. Closing Mexicos energy sector to investment and competition while propping up an underperforming national company such as Pemex will not reverse those trends and only promises to make energy prices even more expensive, Payan said. What hes doing is dooming Mexico to a backwards energy model for the next few decades, Payan said. Mexicos progress on energy has been compromised for at least 20 years. Halted pipelines The first major sign of trouble in the energy sector happened just a few weeks before Lopez-Obrador was sworn into office. Calgary-based pipeline operator TransCanada announced in November that it halted two natural gas pipeline projects in the State of Hidalgo citing numerous delays, runaway costs and alleged acts of extortion from local officials. The company won contracts for the Tuxpan-Tula Pipeline and the Tula-Villa de Reyes Pipeline under the Pena-Nieto administration to supply natural gas to federally-owned power plants but could not complete the last few miles of those projects. Fuel Fix: Get energy news sent directly to your inbox During a Feb. 15 earnings call, TransCanada Executive Vice President Francois Poirier told investors the company holds a contract where it continues to receive revenue on the projects from Mexico's federal government for circumstances that are beyond its control. The company, Poirier said, is seeking to work with the new administration to complete the pipeline projects. These projects supply much-needed natural gas to the country to supply gas for gas-fired generation, which shall result in significantly lower electricity cost and lower pollution, Poirier said during the call. Canceled auctions Less than two weeks after Lopez-Obrador was sworn into office, his administration canceled two auctions that would have brought large-scale drilling for crude oil and natural gas to the border state of Tamaulipas. One of the auctions would have brought hydraulic fracturing to the state. However, Lopez-Obrador reiterated his opposition to fracking during his swearing in ceremony. Since that time, Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco Garcia-Cabeza de Vaca has been lobbying the federal government to reopen the auctions and convince them that hydraulic fracturing is safe. Garcia-Cabeza de Vaca hosted Mexicos energy secretary during a March 5 sightseeing tour of the port city of Tampico. The goal, he said, was to show her the states potential to become an energy powerhouse. Related: TransCanada halts work on two pipeline projects in Mexico What were trying to help the new government see is that things have changed, Garcia-Cabeza de Vaca said during a recent visit to Houston. The technology has evolved. Now, this technology doesnt need as much water. Now they can use treated water. They can use saltwater. Its more controlled and friendlier to the environment. A former federal senator, Garcia-Cabeza de Vaca worked on a committee that helped to create Mexicos energy reforms. Designed to bring private investment and allow Mexico to retain ownership of its natural resources, he believes that they are critical to the nations future. It was a hit to all of Mexico because theyre putting the brakes on the development of the energy sector, Garcia-Cabeza de Vaca said about the canceled auctions. When it comes to oil and natural gas, its no longer just an energy security issue, its become a national security issue. We need to have the ability to extract the hydrocarbons that we have in the ground. Nervous investors As a result of the energy reforms, a number of American companies, including some from Texas, have invested in Mexicos energy sector over the past five years. Under Mexicos energy reforms, Houston oil company Talos Energy and Irving-based Exxon Mobil won auctions for offshore projects. San Antonio refining company Valero Energy Corp. is investing on a project that would allow the company import gasoline and diesel at the Port of Veracruz and move the fuel to Mexico City and other lucrative markets. Although Lopez-Obradors Morena party has a supermajority in the Mexican equivalent of the House of Representatives, they do not have one in the Senate meaning that they cannot undo the energy reforms, the supporting law or regulatory agencies enacted by the Pena-Nieto through a simple vote. The Lopez-Obrador administration has not canceled or revoked any contracts issued under the energy reforms but has placed them under review. It has also become clear that the new administration does not want to issue new auctions or permits to private or foreign companies. Related: Mexico cancels bidding on two oil and gas auctions Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute for the Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Wilson Center, said Mexico has developed a diversified economy with a large manufacturing base. And although Mexico is still viewed a good place for investments with huge potential, Wood said the signals being made by the Lopez-Obrador administration regarding the energy sector are giving some investors pause. Investors are not running away from Mexico but theyre not running towards Mexico either, Wood said. Theyre taking a wait and see approach. Evoking the past It was no coincidence that the Lopez-Obrador administration announced bidding documents for its new refinery on Monday, which marked the 81st anniversary of Oil Expropriation Day when then-President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized Mexico's oil and natural gas industry on March 18, 1938. During a press conference for the announcement that drew more than 1,000 supporters, an image of Cardenas was part of the background of the stage. Oil is part of the national identity of Mexico, said Gonzalo Monroy, an energy consultant based in Mexico City. A keen student of Mexican history, Lopez-Obrador is trying to set himself up as a national hero who fights rich elites in the spirit of past presidents such as Cardenas and Benito Juarez, Monroy said. Cardenas created Pemex in July 1938 and Lopez-Obrador has made rescuing the state-run oil company his fundamental energy narrative at the expense of bringing private investment into the sector and developing more renewables, Monroy said. Texas Inc.: Get the best of business news sent directly to your inbox During his speech for the refinery announcement, Lopez-Obrador declared that it was the end of neoliberalism and that his administration marked the fourth transformation of Mexican society. The first transformation was gaining independence from Spain, the second was the Mexican Revolution of 1910 and the third was Cardenas nationalizing the oil industry. Critics of the $8 billion refinery project say the money could be better spent investing other areas. A lack of infrastructure at proposed site means that costs could potentially balloon up to $12 billion or $20 billion dollars. But the symbolism is too powerful, Monroy said. This administration is high on history, Monroy said. They try to use symbolism quite a lot. He knows that a project like Dos Bocas is not profitable, but what he knows for sure is that hell something to show as a legacy for decades. sergio.chapa@chron.com twitter.com/sergiochapa Gaurab Chakrabarti was studying cancer cells in 2013 when he discovered a protein that turns sugar, water and oxygen into hydrogen peroxide a surprisingly versatile (and lucrative) chemical. His initial focus was understanding how cancer cells make hydrogen peroxide to mutate their DNA and survive attacks from the bodys immune system. But upon discovering the protein, Chakrabarti recognized the chemicals positive uses. It prevents infection on a scraped knee, cleans up grease, helps etch printed circuit boards and kills bacteria on fruits and vegetables. Its ability to clean wastewater from hydraulic fracturing could be the most popular use in Texas, a proposition that has helped Houston-based Solugen raise nearly $20 million from investors in Silicon Valley. What if you could use that water for other things? Chakrabarti asked. Solugen creates hydrogen peroxide by placing natural materials sugar, water, oxygen and a proprietary catalyst derived from the protein - into a reactor system. The system does not require the high pressure or intense heat typical of making the chemical compound. And by building a portable reactor system thats 23 feet tall and mounted on a semi-trailer truck, Solugen could help companies make hydrogen peroxide on their jobsites. They would no longer pay to ship it across the country. If you look at the chemicals market, in a large nutshell, its really constrained by logistics and shipping, he said. Cancer curiousity Chakrabarti became interested in hydrogen peroxide while earning his Ph.D. in biochemistry and M.D. training in oncology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. His friend and co-founder Sean Hunt was scrutinizing the more traditional method for making hydrogen peroxide while earning his Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They teamed up and started Solugen in early 2016. Still at school, Chakrabarti worked from his kitchen in Dallas and Hunt worked from his apartment in Cambridge. The company became a full-time endeavor after graduation, and their first round of funding came in May 2016 when Solugen won $10,000 at an MIT business competition. That was enough money to lease a sliver of warehouse space in Dallas, buy PVC pipe from Home Depot and order used pumps from eBay. The first reactor system cost $7,000 to make. Orders started to trickle as the company pitched its product to semiconductor manufacturers. Then word got out among the float spas, where people get into pods filled with Epsom salt and water to float in silence and darkness. The spas use hydrogen peroxide to clean the water, and Solugen was quickly overwhelmed with orders. We literally slept on the floor of the warehouse because we had to operate this thing continuously, Chakrabarti said. But those spas turned the companys initial $10,000 investment into monthly revenue of $12,000 to $14,000. It also helped Solugen get accepted into the Y Combinator accelerator program in Silicon Valley, where Chakrabarti and Hunt spent the first three months of 2017. Y Combinator shifted our thinking, Chakrabarti said, into how do we create a minimum viable product that gets the customer excited enough to take out their checkbook. They received $5 million in seed financing from Y Combinator and others, and they used the money to launch a consumer cleaning product called Ode to Clean. Trojan horse From the start, these wipes were intended as a stepping stone to something grander. A plan that needed Houstons petrochemical workforce. So the company returned to Texas and leased a warehouse in Bellaire, where it produced the hydrogen peroxide cleaning portion of the wipes. The liquid was then sent to a company that turned plant materials into disposable wipes, and that company manufactured the end product. We wanted to use this as a Trojan horse to go into these bigger companies who wouldnt even look at us before, Chakrabarti said. The plan worked. Roughly six months after its launch, Ode to Clean was acquired by wet wipe manufacturer Diamond Wipes International in a deal Chakrabarti said was worth tens of millions of dollars. This included a contract where Solugen would continue supplying the company with hydrogen peroxide. The wipes caught the attention of venture capitalists, too, who invested $14 million in a Series A round that closed November 2018. But the main draw was Solugens potential to disrupt the chemical market. In addition to hydrogen peroxide, the companys catalyst could be used to make peracetic acid, polymers used in plastics and other chemicals. The petrochemical industry hasnt seen fundamental innovation since the age of the polymers, said Seth Bannon, founding partner at San Francisco-based venture capital firm Fifty Years. The entire industry is somewhat stagnant and, on top of that, its incredibly environmentally destructive. Just one in five of his firms portfolio companies are headquartered outside of Silicon Valley. Yet Fifty Years has invested more than $8 million into Solugen. Bannon said he would have supported Solugens team from almost anywhere, praising their speed as exceptionally fast, even compared to companies that are just making software. But he thinks Houston is a good location for attracting petrochemical talent that could help them scale. Solugen has 24 employees, including Chakrabarti and Hunt, and plans to double that within the next year. It produces 120 tons of hydrogen peroxide a year, about 300 gallons a day, but is investing in a facility near Stafford that could produce 50 times that. The $10 million project is expected to open in early 2020. And for a poetic note to this entrepreneurial tale, Chakrabarti said the new location was previously occupied by a chemical manufacturer that used fossil fuels as feedstock. Solugen has knocked down its building and its old-school way of thinking and will build a bio-based chemicals plant. andrea.leinfelder@chron.com twitter.com/andrearumbaugh A Mitsubishi dealership in Conroe is set to open March 25. South Conroe Mitsubishi will join Mitsubishi Motors North America's network of about 355 dealerships nationally. The dealership, at 775 Interstate 45 South, is part of the Japanese automaker's ongoing initiative to expand into untapped markets, such as rural areas, according to the company. "We look forward to cementing a strong partnership with the Mitsubishi brand and the local community," James Anderson, the dealership's owner and principal, said in a statement. RELATED: Group 1 Auto makes inroads in online sales Mitsubishi sold 118,074 vehicles in 2018, up 13.9 percent from the previous year and marking its sixth straight year of sales growth. The company, one of the fastest-growing Asian car brands nationally, offers four crossover models, including a plug-in hybrid SUV. It's March 23, 1969 and KHCN-AM 4747 is taking a break from the daily grind of Apollo program coverage to review a little bit of a history: How Houston became so important to the nation's human spaceflight program. The story involves some of Texas' most influential individuals and institutions. Rice University, Congressman Albert Thomas, President Lyndon B. Johnson, and George R. Brown, who truly needs no introduction. Houston Chronicle file Rice offered the land to the government for free -- land that met a number of parameters laid out by NASA -- while Thomas, Johnson and Brown greased the political wheels in Washington, D.C. And on September 19, 1961, NASA Administrator James Webb announced that Houston would be home to the agency's new home for human spaceflight, the Manned Spacecraft Center. Credit: NASA NASA folks were not too happy about moving to Texas from their current base in Virginia, but Houstonians sure were glad to welcome them. Currently, the average salary at the Manned Spacecraft Center is about $8,000 -- quite a lot of money. And the center has impacted population growth in the region, as well. As scientists, engineers and astronauts flock to the region, Clear Lake's population has gone from 6,000 to 45,000 in just a few years. Learn more about how Houston became Space City by listening to this week's podcast or reading Thursday's Mission Moon story: "Space City: NASA is ever-present in Houston area for more than 50 years." Alex Stuckey writes about NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of influential German design school Bauhaus. While the school itself only lasted about a dozen years, moving twice before the Nazis ultimately pressured it into closing, its modernist, clean-line aesthetic still resonates today in everything from furniture design to art and architecture. Chicago has a special connection with the school. Bauhaus faculty member Laszlo Moholy-Nagy moved to the city in 1937 and set up the New Bauhaus on Prairie Avenue, which lasted about a year. He went on to start the Institute of Design, which ultimately became part of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the last director of the Bauhaus in Germany, became head of architecture at IIT and designed its campus. In other words, if youre looking for ways to celebrate this anniversary, you dont have to look very far. There are celebrations across the world, from Germany where it all started, to Elmhurst Art Museums The Whole World a Bauhaus exhibit which goes on until April 20. But probably the best way to celebrate: Bring these elegant designs created by its students and faculty home. They look as fresh in 2019 as they did in 1919. And how many 100-year-olds can say that? From ashtrays to lamps to watches, the Bauhaus influence means that you dont ever have to worry about going out of style. Chris LaMorte is a freelance writer. In the traditional Christian interpretation of the Bible, sex and marriage between anyone other than a man and a woman is sinful. It is their truth, and in the minds of many blacks, it is as real as the story of Jesus walking on water. To disavow the sin of homosexuality would mean turning their backs on everything they have learned from the Bible. City officials advised Deer Park and Galena Park residents to shelter-in-place Thursday morning after elevated benzene levels were detected following the days long chemical plant burn at Intercontinental Terminals Co. in Deer Park, according to a news release. To find out how to shelter-in-place correctly, click through the photos above for all the necessary steps you should take. Officials said the benzene levels "are below those that represent an immediate risk," according to a previous Chronicle article, but residents are still advised to take shelter. Now Playing: Emergency crews continue to douse whats left of the now-extinguished petrochemical tank fire at Intercontinental Terminals Company on Wednesday, March 20, 2019, in Deer Park. Fire crews extinguished the blaze at ITC about 3 a.m., Wednesday, almost four days after it started. Video: Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle "Residents are advised to remain indoors and to close all doors, windows and other sources of outside air," the city said. "Turn off air conditioning or heating systems and close the fireplace damper to keep chemical vapors from entering. Please continue to monitor City outlets for updated information." WHAT IS BENZENE? What you need to know about the chemicals in the Deer Park plant fire The order to shelter-in-place requires that residents take several measures to ensure they are safe from any hazardous chemicals. According to the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, residents advised to shelter-in-place should first and foremost make sure they move indoors, bring loved ones, emergency supplies and pets and stay put until officials advise it is safe to leave. HOUSTON CHRONICLE EXCLUSIVE: Deer Park company battling fire accused of intentionally polluting water during Harvey The Chronicle previously reported specific areas impacted include south of Tidal Road, east of Beltway 8, west of Underwood Road and north of Pasadena Boulevard. State Highway 225 has been closed from Beltway 8 to Highway 146. HOW TO FILE A CLAIM: ITC sets up hotline to cover damages of Deer Park fire To find out how to shelter-in-place correctly, click through the photos above for all the necessary steps you should take. Rebecca Hennes covers community news. Read her on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, houstonchronicle.com. | rebecca.hennes@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message If Houston will soon be underwater, like Beto says, then we dont have the time to let passions cool before making rash decisions. Those decisions that could plunge us into chaos and bring forth the rule of the mob which would invariably be followed by imposition of federal martial order, just like those old dead European dudes warned us about. Anita Hill, widely known for testifying against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas nearly 30 years ago, will lead a lecture Monday at Rice University, discussing the #MeToo movement and its effect on the political and cultural landscape in the United States. Her hour-long lecture at Rice, From Social Movement to Social Impact: Putting an End to Sexual Harassment in the Workplace, comes more than a year after several celebrities came forward with sexual misconduct allegations against Hollywood executives, producers and actors, reigniting the #MeToo movement that was originally launched by activist Tarana Burke. And it occurs almost six months after Christine Blasey Ford, a Palo Alto University professor, testified against then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh, alleging that he had sexually assaulted her at a party when they were both teenagers. Hill will also make an appearance at the University of Houston Law Center Tuesday, where she'll speak with UH law professor Michael A. Olivas in a "fireside chat" about issues that affect women, including #MeToo and how the federal civil rights law Title IX can be best implemented to protect survivors of sexual abuse and harassment on campus, according to a recent release by UH Law Center. RELATED: Anita Hill speaks on #MeToo movement at Grace Hopper Celebration in Houston Hill, a lawyer and Brandeis University professor, has been vocal about the recent events, even predicting in September while in Houston that Kavanaugh would be confirmed as Supreme Court Justice despite Blasey Fords allegations. Fords story, Hill has noted, has parallels to her own. In 1991, Hill, too, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, alleging that Thomas, once her supervisor at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sexually harassed her by making unwanted advances and sexual comments. Thomas, like Kavanaugh, was eventually confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Hills testimony and wherewithal despite public backlash inspired widespread discussion about sexual harassment and the lack of women in government. People are more educated in gender studies, journalists are more sensitive during hearings, and the #MeToo movement has created a community that has shed more light on sexual harassment and violence, said Hill in September. I think the public understanding is going to definitely be elevated to what you might have seen and read in 1991, said Hill, whose story has been told in the 2016 HBO biopic Confirmation and the 2013 documentary Anita. RELATED: Things have changed since Anita Hill. Really? Hills continuing anti-sexual violence work and activism has made her an important guest for Rices Gray/Wawro Lecture Series in Gender, Health and Well-being, which aims to feature scholars who push public dialogue forward, inspire work toward a more just world, and increase the understanding the current series underlying #MeToo theme, according to Rice's release. Hills work is not frozen in time in 1991, said Helena Michie, the director of Rices Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality. [She] has helped change the discourse about women in the workplace every day of her life since then. Both of Hill's lectures at Rice and UH Law Center Hill's Mondays lecture will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience. If you go Though free and open to the public with RSVP, Hill's lecture at Rice is sold-out and will be streamed online here starting at 6:30 p.m. Monday. Some seats are still available for Hill's Tuesday event at the UH Law Center. The event begins at 4:15 p.m. at University of Houston Law Center, Krost Hall, 4604 Calhoun Road, Houston, 77004. To RSVP online, click here. For more information, click here. Check back here on Campus Chronicles for coverage of the event. Staff writer Andrea Leinfelder contributed to this report. brittany.britto@chron.com twitter.com/brittanybritto Weeks after vowing to cut down drastically on the use of no-knock raids, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo on Thursday drilled down into some of the specifics of his new department policy, which requires more oversight and forbids narcotics officers from carrying out the high-risk busts. Instead, effective last month, SWAT teams will execute all unannounced raids, but only after getting approval from top-ranking Houston police officials and a signature from a district court judge. You dont want to eliminate them completely, Acevedo told a Houston City Council committee Thursday afternoon. There are instances where the no-knock warrant tactic is probably the safest. The newly announced policy marks a sharp shift from past practices, when narcotics officers could routinely go to municipal court judges and county magistrates to get approval for drug raids - then carry them out without the back-up of experienced SWAT teams. The changes come in response to a Jan. 28 raid that turned into a shoot-out, leaving a Pecan Park couple dead and five narcotics officers injured. The botched bust has since morphed into a scandal officials are still struggling to contain amid ongoing questions about the justification for the raid. The new policy could address some of those concerns, though it wont eliminate the use of no-knock warrants altogether - despite Acevedos claim last month that the risky raids would go away liked leaded gasoline in this city. In the case of Harding Street, it was a municipal court judge who greenlit the controversial warrant, which authorities later realized may have contained false claims about an informant that apparently didnt exist. Moving forward, police will only be permitted to go to district court judges for warrant approval, a move Acevedo said would alleviate any appearance of impropriety. One of the complaints (was) that, Well, theyre agents of the actual city, he told council members. And, though it was a narcotics squad that led the raid, drug police will only be permitted to serve knock-and-announce warrant in the future, and only with a lieutenant present at the scene. All no-knocks will go to SWAT teams, and will require approval from one of the departments top lawmen. Also, Houston police will start using ballistic shields and body cameras during forced entries. And - unlike at Harding Street - one buy will no longer be enough to justify a raid. We know that theyre dangerous for everybody, Acevedo said. Police initially burst in the Harding Street home of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas searching for a pair of heroin dealers. But the deadly raid netted few drugs and sparked angry outcry from the couples friends and family who maintained they werent selling narcotics. In the weeks following the raid, Acevedo said Officer Gerald Goines - the veteran case agent who requested the search warrant - will likely face criminal charges for allegedly lying about using a confidential informant to conduct an undercover buy. The department subsequently relieved Goines of duty, along with his since-retired partner, Officer Steven Bryant. Meanwhile, the Harris County District Attorneys Office announced it was reviewing more than 2,200 of Goines and Bryants old cases, and the FBI launched a civil rights investigation into the circumstances behind the raid. Those probes - along with a pair of Houston police investigations - are still ongoing. st.john.smith@chron.com twitter.com/stjbs Houstons higher education landscape is uniquely fertile ground for Arab studies. Houston is the only U.S. city with two endowed chairs at Rice University and the University of Houston in modern Arab history and studies. And this month, UH announced the completed fundraising and imminent launch of a Center for Arab Studies. Georgetown University is the only other U.S. institution with a center focused exclusively on the Arab world rather than on the entire Middle East. This academic environment was made possible by the Arab-American Educational Foundation, an all-volunteer organization founded in the 1980s with the mission of fostering a better understanding of the Arab world. Leaders of the effort credit Houston universities unique focus on Arab studies to the welcoming, inclusive nature of Houstons culture. Grassroots funding from hundreds of local donors, they say, demonstrates that Houstons Arab-American community is united, organized and motivated to push a critical but humanistic narrative when observing the Arab world. They werent saying we want to promote Arab political ideas, said Allen Matusow, who was dean of humanities at Rice University when the educational foundation proposed the first endowed chair at Rice, established in 1997. They wanted to introduce American students of all backgrounds to the important subject of Arab civilization. Education fighting discrimination Ruth Ann Skaff believes prejudice and misunderstanding of Arab culture have always been present in the United States. But Skaff, who is of Lebanese ancestry, remembers the image of her heritage being particularly soured in the years leading up to and after her involvement with the educational foundation as a founding member. A few years after the Iran hostage crisis and OPEC oil crash in the late 1970s, in the midst of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and soon followed by the first Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, Skaff saw caricatures and editorial cartoons depicting Arabs as bombers. Opinion pieces and television images portrayed Arabs as inherently evil. Organizations had launched in the 1980s to try to counter this discrimination, but these groups were largely reactive. Skaff and her colleagues wanted to prevent such attitudes from taking root. Education was their answer. People who dont know you will discriminate against you, said Aziz Shaibani, a Houston neurologist who is the president of the educational foundation. The more people know you and your contributions and culture, the more friendly they are. As a local grassroots organization, the foundation didnt have the same resources as its national-scope, D.C.-based counterparts. Yet those groups, Matusow says, usually do not succeed. The foundation was a determined group focused on education rather than on a political agenda. By 1997, the foundation had raised $1 million for its first endowed chair of Arab studies at Rice University, held by Ussama Makdisi an internationally-renowned scholar of the region, and the nephew of Edward Said, another famous scholar in the field. Unlike many chairs, this position was not funded by one or two wealthy donors over 200 members of the Arab community chipped in. The new chair also came about during a time when humanities schools across the country were undergoing major changes, said Matusow, now the academic affairs director at Rices Baker Institute for Public Policy and a professor emeritus in the history department. Traditionally, humanities schools focused on Europe and the U.S. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, a national movement pushed for more diverse curricula to try to understand the larger world beyond the U.S. and Europe, Matusow said. Arab studies was just one such initiative. In 2011, the foundation raised funds to establish an endowed chair of modern Arab studies at the University of Houston a much larger institution, with 46,000 students, than Rice with about 8,000. About 150 donors contributed a combined $1 million in two and a half years, and Abdel Razzaq Takriti joined the blossoming field of Arab studies in Houston. Organizers said Houstons diverse, inclusive nature, and the motivation and organizational skills of its Arab-American community, were crucial to the success of these initiatives. The two chairs, Takriti and Makdisi, often coordinate to make sure all their students have access to a well-rounded education. Makdisi specializes in 19th century Ottoman history, Takriti in 20th century modern Arab history. The fact that theres such synergy between Rice, a private university, and University of Houston, a public one, and two endowed chairs its a real moment, said Makdisi. Taking back the narrative Makdisi and Takriti often have impassioned conversations about their goals and missions as scholars of the Arab world and the point they, and others, always come back to is taking back the narrative. Theres an extraordinary energy around the study of the modern Arab world in which Arab scholars are actually setting the intellectual agenda, Makdisi said. They are invested in understanding the Arab world in a way this is humanistic, not sensationalist; that is empathetic, not orientalist. They wont whitewash history or shy away from the truth in fact, being funded by so many local donors ensures that they have no ties to powerful foreign entities that may attempt to steer the agenda for a more favorable reputation, Shaibani said. Rather, they prioritize analyzing the Arab world objectively but in the proper perspective and context not demonizing, as has often been done. This is a particularly important approach when studying the Arab world in the U.S., which has heavy military, economic and political involvement in the region, the scholars said. These connections often cause misunderstandings that result in the immense backlash against Arab-Americans the foundation was trying to fight. We need to raise the level of discussion to go beyond simplistic binaries and narratives that pit peoples and civilizations against each other, and try to find better solutions based on humanism, mutual respect and understanding, Takriti said. The new Center for Arab Studies will epitomize that mission. The center will be an interdisciplinary resource for anyone studying the Arab world. It will organize community lectures and symposiums exploring modern Arab history. It will bring in graduate students from across the nation for intensive preparation for their dissertations pertaining to the Arab world. It will establish scholarships and funds to help graduate students pursue their education. And it will continue UHs collaboration with Rice University. We want to make Houston one of the preeminent centers to study this part of the world, Takriti said. The new center also will heighten the profile of the Arab-American community, which has long been all but invisible, Takriti said. When students have an institutional base like this, it helps them confront racism, he said. Giving the Arab world and Arab-Americans institutional visibility allows people to feel empowered. There is a social mission to the Center. massarah.mikati@chron.com NATCHITOCHES, LA. It was a chilly afternoon with bad weather in the forecast when Rhogena Nicholas called her mother for the last time. The two hadnt seen each other for more than a year. Jo Ann Nicholas was in her 80s and couldnt make the drive from Louisiana to Houston anymore. But they talked all the time, and every morning, Rhogena sent her mother a prayer. Jan. 28 was no different. Thank you for a new day and week ahead that is full of promise and possibilities, Rhogena wrote in a text just before 8 a.m. As the day wore on, with forecasters calling for sleet in Natchitoches in central Louisiana, Rhogena phoned to make sure her mother didnt venture out to the nearby Walmart to stock up for the bad weather. They said their I love yous, then Rhogena hung up. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston police officer in drug raid had previous allegations against him Less than an hour later, police burst through the front door of her Pecan Park home, setting off a gun battle that killed Rhogena and her 59-year-old husband, Navy veteran Dennis Tuttle. Authorities said theyd been looking for a pair of heroin dealers, but the botched raid netted few drugs and lots of questions, and has blossomed into the biggest scandal to hit the Houston Police Department in decades. Weeks later, its still not clear who shot who or whether the confidential informant used to justify the raid even exists. Amid allegations of police misconduct, the FBI, Houston police and the Harris County District Attorneys Office launched probes of the raid, the warrant and the case agent behind the failed operation. This week, in an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Rhogenas mother told her slain daughters story, voicing questions publicly for the first time. She wants answers to all the unknowns, and for the department who vilified the slain couple to make things right. Both families are adamant the couple was not dealing heroin. I want them to clear her name, she said. They got along good and everything The daughter of a Lebanese dentist and a Southern housewife, Rhogena was born in Ackerman, Mississippi in 1960. The small town offered enough work to keep the family going, but two years later her father landed a job someplace bigger: the city of Macon, 40 miles away. There, he and his wife set down roots and raised a family. Popular and dark-haired, Rhogena made plenty of friends in her years at Central Academy, the local private high school. She didnt want to be a cheerleader and wouldnt touch a musical instrument, but she still joined the band as a majorette. She had a boyfriend and a social life, but still brought home good grades. On HoustonChronicle.com: Harris County DA to review 1,400 cases that embattled narcotics officer Gerald Goines worked on After graduation, Rhogena headed to Atlanta to study merchandising at Bauder College, a fashion and etiquette school. In the meantime, her parents moved to Florida and their only daughter joined them there after college. When they moved to Shreveport a few years later, Rhogena followed, taking a job at the local motel and rekindling a relationship with Wayne Osborn, a man shed met in Fort Walton Beach. The young couple grew their romance long-distance. In the late 1980s, she moved in with him in Houston. She worked at Shell, and at Budweiser, and kept in close contact with her family, driving north to visit every couple of months. Over time, she drifted away from the man who drew her to the Bayou City in the first place. She wasnt a person to be controlled, Jo Ann said. She didnt want anybody telling her what to do. Instead, Rhogena found Tuttle. Decades later, Jo Ann doesnt remember exactly how they met, but said the two fell in love and married in the late 1990s in a simple courthouse wedding. He was good to her, they got along good and everything, she said, shrugging. His mom loved her to death. John Nicholas, Rhogenas brother, remembered Tuttle as a quiet, easygoing man and a skilled machinist, but who was prone to seizures because of an accident during his time in the service. By the time of the raid, he couldnt work anymore, and rarely left the house. Instead, Rhogena took care of him - just as she also took care of her ex. Osborn, who lived about 15 miles away in northwest Houston, paid Rhogena to help him manage his affairs. He didnt drive, but let Rhogena borrow his blue Mercury sedan. Nearly two months later, the car still sits where Rhogena parked it in the driveway of her home at 7815 Harding A blur of details The morning after the raid, Jo Ann was still in bed, watching the news, when she heard a knock at the door. It was 5:30 a.m., and she hadnt yet made coffee. She padded down the hallway of her neatly decorated single-story home, and found a police officer at the door, asking to come in. You better sit down, the officer said, guiding her to a tan recliner in the living room. Ive got this number to call in Houston. On HoustonChronicle.com: 2nd drug case involving embattled Officer Gerald Goines dismissed in the 'interest of justice' Her hands began to shake. What happened to my daughter? she asked. The officer didnt know, but the Harris County medical examiner had answers. Numbly, Jo Ann took in the news: Thered been some sort of shoot-out, an exchange of fire with police. Rhogena and her husband were dead and it wasnt clear what had happened. Everything blurred, as the elderly widows life turned into a torrent of phone calls and cards, punctuated by moments of quiet grief. I sit here, she said. I stare into space. She respected the police Two months later, the Nicholas family doesnt talk much about the raid. But they have questions and many doubts. They roll the details over in their minds. Police burst in the front door, toting weapons and a no-knock warrant. Tuttle, armed with a .357-revolver, rushed to the noise and started shooting. One of the wounded narcotics officers collapsed on the couch, and Rhogena allegedly reached for his weapon. In the ensuing struggle, she was shot twice and five officers were injured. Though police said they suspected the couple was selling heroin, officers found only 18 grams of marijuana and a little over a gram of cocaine. To John and Jo Ann, the idea that Tuttle could have shot five officers with a revolver doesnt make sense - nor the thought Rhogena tried to wrangle away an officers weapon. They said she wrassled with the police she wasnt big enough to wrassle with the police, Jo Ann said. If they would have told her, Police, open the door, she would have done it. She respected the police. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston shootout: New details emerge as three officers remain hospitalized Even more concerning, they say, is police insistence that Rhogena and her husband were selling drugs. Jo Ann said she stayed in close contact with her daughter; shes sure she would have noticed something amiss. On Tuesday, lawyers for the Nicholas family sent a letter to Houston police requesting a correction of public statements. You and other members of your department have made factually incorrect, but globally disseminated, statements about Rhogena Nicholas and her husband, Dennis Tuttle, from the date of their deaths and going forward, attorney Michael Doyle wrote. These statements have not been publicly corrected or retracted to date. In the coming weeks, he plans to file a motion to investigate - a move that would allow the court to give him the right to depose witnesses and ask for more evidence in the lead-up to a possible lawsuit. Im upset just like everybody else, but maybe theyll wake up and say, We messed up and we need to change our ways of doing things, John said. Clear her name. And hopefully, it wont happen again. Pearls and ashes In the aftermath of the shooting, Jo Ann decided not to have a funeral for her only daughter. Weeks later, a package arrived in the mail with Rhogenas watch, a pair of pearl earrings and a crucifix necklace. The necklace now sits on her mothers dining room table. Her ashes are in the bedroom, still in the box from the crematorium. Every day, Jo Ann misses her daughters voice, the ping of her morning texts. At night, she has trouble sleeping. I wake up to her calling Momma. keri.blakinger@chron.com st.john.smith@chron.com Police are searching for a dark SUV believed to be used in a deadly shootout Wednesday afternoon in east Houston. The gunfire erupted in the 5500 block of Arapahoe around 4:40 p.m., near San Juan and Sakowitz streets. When Houston police officers arrived, they found 19-year-old Luis Gutierrez lying dead in the street with multiple gunshot wounds. BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: Get your Houston breaking news alerts delivered to you "I just heard some shots," Tommy Taylor said. Taylor lives around the corner and said he saw Gutierrez firing back at the shooter, or shooters, in the SUV. "I looked around, and I saw (Gutierrez) shooting back at the black truck," Taylor said. "Then the truck left." When describing what he called a "truck," Taylor pointed to a nearby small SUV. RELATED: More than 4 dozen arrested in Houston drug trafficking sting The wailings of Gutierrez's loved ones echoed throughout the small neighborhood, which is about a quarter mile south of the East Freeway off Lockwood Drive. The same paramedic unit that rushed to try and save Gutierrez's life had to be called out to the scene again after a loved one started to feel short of breath. As of Thursday morning, Houston Police Department homicide detectives did not appear to have any leads other than the small, dark-colored SUV. It is possibly black, authorities said. Anyone with information about the shootout is urged to call HPD's Homicide Division at 713-308-3600 or Houston Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS (8477). Jay R. Jordan covers breaking news in the Houston area. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com | Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan | Email him at jay.jordan@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message A new study is raising concerns that restrictions on new construction put in place after Hurricane Harvey could leave low-income residents with fewer choices for affordable housing. More than 475,000 people in Harris County live in multifamily units at risk of flooding, according to the study released Thursday by the Greater Houston Flood Mitigation Consortium. The group includes the University of Houston, the Kinder Institute and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, among others. Even without the flooding risk, units are becoming less and less affordable. The issue of flooding and the issue of affordable housing are very connected, said Christof Spieler, the consortiums project manager. "We have a lot of Houstonians who are in the difficult position where the housing they can afford is the housing that puts them at risk of flooding. In Harris County, 26 percent of all multifamily units buildings with two or more units are currently located within a flood-risk area. After Harvey, Houston leaders passed an ordinance known as Chapter 19 that requires elevation for rebuilding in the flood plain. The down side, according to the consortium, is that this requirement may lead to the loss of affordable multifamily units in the floodplain. Chapter 19 has the best interests of people in mind, but I just dont think that we really thought through the potential impact on multifamily units, said study co-author Susan Rogers, the director of the University of Houstons Community Design Resource Center. I dont think any of us want to encourage apartment owners to continue to renovate and put people in (apartments) clueless of what could happen to them. While most of the multifamily units in Houston that are being rebuilt were permitted before the ordinance took effect, researchers heard through focus groups that property owners are worried about what will happen after the next storm. If youre trying to keep affordable units, but safe and not-falling-apart units, you dont want reputable property owners to either go bankrupt and abandon their properties to the kind of owner of last resort who will potentially not bring things back up to where they should be, said Kyle Shelton, director of strategic partnerships at Rice Universitys Kinder Institute and another of the studys lead authors. The lack of affordable housing units isnt a new problem in Houston. Last years Hurricane Harvey, which followed major flooding incidents the previous two years, just exacerbated it. From 2000 to 2014, the study found, the number of extremely low-income renters in Harris County rose by 37 percent. But the number of suitable, affordable units available to these renters rose by only 18 percent. Houston is a city of renters. Within the city limits, 57 percent of households just over 478,000 rent. The availability of low-income housing hasnt kept up with the population. As of 2017, 335,000 of the affordable multifamily housing units in Harris County were at risk of becoming unaffordable. Compared to other major metro areas, Harris County, which includes most of the city of Houston, lags in the share of families receiving public assistance, the study found. One in 17 Harris County households get some form of housing assistance, compared to one of every six in New York City and one of seven in Fulton County, Ga., which includes Atlanta. Of the units that public subsidies are making affordable, about 11,000 could slip outside that range by 2023 with subsidies expiring. Meantime, the demand for affordable housing remains high. One in every 11 Harris County households making less than $20,000 a year is cost-burdened meaning the household spends more than 30 percent of income on housing. Its an important contradiction to the narrative that Houston is affordable for everyone, said Shelton. Rents are going up across the board. Unlike some East Coast cities, Houston and many other Texas cities didnt push to have affordable housing developments following World War II, contributing to todays lack of available subsidized housing units. Instead, Spieler said, the city relied on the market to provide housing and has never had a comprehensive affordable housing plan. Renters in Houston have absolutely no power, Rogers said. Theres no guarantee that rents wont increase outside of your reach. The study zeroed in on several Houston neighborhoods, including Gulfton (a neighborhood selected to be part of Mayor Sylvester Turners Complete Communities initiative). In Gulfton, more than half of residents were cost-burdened. Multifamily units make up 94 percent of all area housing. The fair market rent for a one-bedroom in Gulfton, the study found, is $1,040 per month twice what the average family in the neighborhood can afford. Theres a tipping point where the land becomes so valuable that demolition and redevelopment are triggered, Rogers said. Were worried Gulfton may be at that point. In Gulfton, families need to make an average of $7.50 more per hour to afford fair market rent. In Greenspoint, another focus area, families need an average of $7 more per hour. The studys authors offered several solutions to the lack of affordable housing, including increasing the number of housing units, offering incentives to developers for building affordable units, streamlining multifamily permitting and creating an eviction protection program. With federal block grants, Shelton said, the city could offer incentives to developers in the bidding process by adding points for building outside the floodplain and within reachable public transit or any other priority area that helps low-income families. Alternately, he said, the city could address the growing gap between rent and income by approving a minimum wage. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and Texas is not among the 30-some states that have a minimum wage higher than that level. Its not just building our way out of the issue, he said. Its increasing income in ways that allow people to afford more units without spending more than 30 percent of their income. The city could also create a housing trust fund, as many cities have long done, to buy out private multifamily properties at risk of being sold. Its not the most politically palatable option, Rogers acknowledged, but one that might be necessary. Said Shelton: We will likely not solve it all by the next storm, but it doesnt mean we shouldnt take the long-term view. Mayor Sylvester Turner issued a press release in response to the study's findings. "I have made affordable housing a priority during my time as mayor and I will continue to do so," the mayor wrote in the release." Many of the recommendations cited in the report are already being implemented in some form, from building more affordable housing to creating land trusts to ensure long term affordability." sarah.smith@chron.com ELGIN - Although barely 25 miles from one of the countrys fastest growing cities, much of the land hugging this Austin bedroom community remains empty blackland prairie. Small farmhouses dot the dark soil fields that unroll into the horizon. Soon, though, if all goes according to plan, a Canadian company will begin installing a vast array of solar panels across 1,000 acres just a few miles outside of town. But only under one condition: that it receives a multi-million-dollar tax break from the local school district. Property taxes represent the biggest operating expense for solar projects. So without the giant reduction of its tax bill, Recurrent Energy warned, its executives would be forced to look to maximize their investment by building in California. In exchange for the tax break, the company has promised to create exactly one full-time job. The merits of Texass so-called Chapter 313 tax breaks have been debated ever since the program was created two decades ago. Intended to attract large building projects and new jobs to the state, it grants qualifying companies a decade of steep discounts on their school property tax bills. Last year they totaled $750 million. Promoters say it lures development to Texas. Critics worry that, especially in recent years, the program exacts too high a price from cash-starved schools for what it delivers, particularly as measured by jobs. Wind energy companies, which have used the program to build new facilities, often create only a handful of permanent positions. Now, a Hearst Newspapers analysis shows, the program is being inundated by solar energy companies, which can produce even skimpier returns to local taxpayers. Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox Last year, nearly a third of all Chapter 313 property tax relief applications were from solar companies. Together, the 29 solar proposals seeking tens of millions of dollars in property tax breaks have pledged 80 permanent jobs. The program promises taxpayers will benefit from the temporary tax break in the long run. Yet thanks to a pro-solar law state legislators quietly passed five years ago, facilities that win a Chapter 313 tax break can rapidly depreciate the value of the projects. So by the time the 10-year tax break period expires, their school tax bill has plummeted, resulting in a lower return. The solar surge represents the latest accelerant to a limitless economic development program. Chapter 313 doesnt cap the total subsidy Texas school districts grant annually; nor do applicants compete for its benefits. This program is designed to really say yes to almost everything, said Nathan Jensen, a University of Texas government professor who has studied it. The number of companies seeking the property tax breaks more than doubled between 2016 and 2018, with the total projected cost of the program projected to hit $1.1 billion a year by 2024. Because Chapter 313 tax breaks come out of the money collected by schools, the soaring growth comes at a sensitive time for legislators who, after years of false starts, have pledged to put billions more dollars into public education. Here we are looking for more money for schools while were leaking $1 billion a year out the back end, said Dick Lavine, an analyst for the Center for Public Policy Priorities. Added Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, who has pressed to reform the program: As we look at how we pay for public education, Chapter 313 has to be part of the conversation. For subscribers: Texas lawmakers call for a swap: Higher sales taxes, lower property taxes Other states also offer bountiful property tax breaks for solar farms. Yet because Texas is struggling to pay for its schools, the growing tax breaks for solar is not a question of being for or against renewable energy, said Megan Randall, a researcher at the Urban Institute who wrote her University of Texas masters thesis about Chapter 313. Rather, she said, its Is the school finance system the best way to deliver those benefits? No reason to say no Legislators created the Chapter 313 program as a response to what was seen as the states slipping appeal to businesses looking to build large factories, refineries and other major brick-and-mortar projects. In exchange for a company locating its new facility in Texas, local school districts which account for the largest share of property taxes assess the property at only a fraction of its real worth for 10 years, slashing the tax bill. Because the state also agreed to backfill any money lost to local schools, there is little reason for school officials to refuse the deals. According to the rules, qualifying companies have only to clear a few hurdles to earn the tax breaks. School boards sign off on the arrangements; the state comptrollers office certifies them as sound. Yet even those few obstacles have turned flexible, driving 313s popularity. The program has drifted away from its original mission, Kolkhorst said. The act says companies looking to locate in rural areas, for example, must create at least 10 high-paying new permanent jobs. Large industrial projects oil refineries, say, or manufacturing plants have produced thousands of jobs. Most wind and solar companies, however, simply ask to have the requirement waived. Only two of the nearly 30 solar applicants in 2018 have pledged to create the full legal requirement of 10 positions. Most intend to add only one or two. For subscribers: Companies awarded millions of dollars for creating jobs in Texas can quietly renegotiate those deals To buttress their case, applicants cite other applicants. This modest job number is evidenced by previously filed limitation agreement applications by solar developers who also requested a waiver of the job requirements, the vice president of a company applying for a 313 tax break from the Blackwell school district, outside of Abilene, wrote last year. None of the job waiver requests has yet been rejected. The comptrollers office periodically checks to make sure a companys promise to create Chapter 313 jobs has been met. A spokesman said audits had turned up instances in which companies came up short. Yet because Chapter 313 includes a lengthy compliance period up to two years to correct a problem, four before the state would begin to nullify the agreement only one company has ever been fined for an infraction. Walking back the comptrollers announcement Applicants seeking a 313 tax break also must promise the savings are a factor in their decision to locate in Texas. For executives, though, making a case their companies would abandon Texas without the tax break has become more an exercise in paperwork than a genuine test of their intentions, said Jensen. The majority of these firms would have located in Texas even without support from this program, he concluded in his October 2017 study. Most applications are prepared by a half-dozen Texas consultants who use template language. A review of the paperwork shows that those whose threats to locate outside of Texas were too vague were simply asked to resubmit the application with the names of some other possible sites. In its original application filed last December, Alpin Sun said that without the 313 tax break its solar array would move to another area more financially viable for the continuation of this project, thus denying Ellis County from receiving the economic benefits. A month later, it clarified: In addition to Texas, other areas being considered include Pennsylvaniathe United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Romania, Spain and Chile. The comptrollers office recently made qualifying for the 313 program even easier, saying an applicant simply had to assert it required the tax break for the project to be financially viable. Most solar applicants include the wording. While EnergieKontor found Pecos County a desirable location for a solar installation, the company wrote in its December 2018 application to the Fort Stockton school district for a tax break, it would not be able to finance and construct its project without the property tax incentives. 8Minutenergy Renewables was even more candid: Most, if not all solar projects economic model assumptions are based on the project securing the maximum Chapter 313 benefit, it wrote. Even after buying property in the area, securing long-term leases with landowners or signing transmission contracts with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages electric distribution for most of the state, solar applicants have claimed they remained free agents, willing to pack up and leave should their tax break application be denied. In its October 2018 request to the Andrews school district for tax relief, Lapetus Energy Project conceded it already had purchased land for a proposed solar installation. Even so, it added: Without the tax incentive, the applicant would be forced to abandon the project and spend its development capital and prospective investment funds in other states where the rate of return is higher. Solar companies are hardly the only ones whose claims they needed the 313 tax break to move to Texas have been questioned. The Texas Observer identified several projects that appeared to have already broke ground when they applied for the program. Jensen, the University of Texas professor, found more than a dozen projects that started construction prior to getting the break; two wind farms received their 313 tax breaks after theyd already been built. Last August, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar tweeted triumphantly that Texas Instruments was expanding its wafer fabrication facility in North Texas. Great news! @TXInstruments will be expanding in N. Richardson. It was awkward timing for the company, which is in the process of trying to convince the Plano school district that a tax break was essential to locating the facility there. Comptroller Hegar is incorrect in his suggestion that TI has decided where to build its contemplated expansion, the company quickly responded in its 313 application. More solar, but fewer benefits Energy experts say solar projects are springing up now because the economics of producing and selling sun energy have started to make sense. A generous federal tax credit program is due to start phasing out next year, creating urgency to break ground. Texas offers not only abundant sun but also a vast system of state-funded electric transmission lines completed in 2014, making distributing electricity simpler. New technology has lowered costs. Solar is really going in Texas now, said Charlie Hemmeline, executive director of the Texas Solar Power Association. Weve hit that point where weve become cost-competitive as an industry. Warren Lasher, senior director of systems planning for ERCOT, confirmed the agency is seeing a surge in solar companies seeking to connect to the states grid. Yet school districts taxpayers granting solar projects a Chapter 313 tax break stand to gain relatively modest long-term benefits. From a school district perspective, it isnt as attractive, said Dan Casey, a partner in the consulting firm of Moak, Casey & Associates, who has prepared dozens of the applications for school districts. One reason: a 2014 law in which legislators required local appraisers to quickly drop the value of the installations. Written by Rep. Dwayne Bohac, R- Houston, and supported by solar companies, it set a schedule for the facilities to shed 80 percent of their value over only 10 years. Bohac did not respond to a request for comment. Supporters said the change was necessary because rapidly developing technology quickly rendered solar equipment obsolete, which was not fully understood by all Texas appraisers. Hemmeline said the new law helped county appraisers take the guesswork out of how to value aging solar facilities. Yet by reducing the value so quickly, the Legislative Budget Board concluded the law would, in effect, result in a partial exemption. It benefits solar companies, by far, said John Rutledge, a manager for Pritchard & Abbott, Inc., which contracts with about 100 Texas counties to help appraisers calculate valuations. When combined with Chapter 313, the result is that the solar companys property value drops to its lowest point just as its tax break expires, reducing the benefit to local taxpayers. In its April 2018 proposal to build an array in the Damon school district, southwest of Houston, for example, Wagyu Solar is seeking $6 million in school tax breaks. Thanks in part to the speedy depreciation, over the next 25 years the net benefit to taxpayers would amount to less than $6,000 per year, its application shows. Greg Poole is one of Chapter 313s biggest fans. As the superintendent of Barbers Hill schools, in Chambers County, he has signed off on more of the deals than any other Texas district. All have been petroleum or manufacturing facilities whose appraised worth has remained high, resulting in millions for his schools. In fact, Theyre appreciating in value, he said. So everybody benefits when they roll onto the books. With solar and the depreciation, he conceded, it makes it a much more difficult job to sell the program. For instance, in response to a rash of cases of children and adults being taken to hospital emergency rooms after consuming cannabis, sometimes with psychotic symptoms, lawmakers prohibited pot-laced candy bars and other products that look like common store-bought candy, banned advertising to minors, limited THC in edibles, and required the letters THC to be stamped on every bite of candy. But Carlson says the issue goes much further, as new products come out that hide marijuana use, such as spray bottles that look like asthma inhalers, and e-cigarettes that look like nicotine vaporizers. The accident took place in Collinsville, about 16 miles from St. Louis, and comes just three days after another trooper was hit on Sunday. Previous years have seen far fewer cases: eight in 2018, 12 in 2017 and five in 2016. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content. When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to. After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS! OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. According to preliminary February 2019 data from STR, Abu Dhabi hotels reported occupancy dipped 1.9% to 79.2%, but a 31.6% ADR boost to 565.07 Emirati dirhams ($153.87) drove RevPAR up 29.1% to 447.46 dirhams ($121.84). STRs preliminary February 2019 data for Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, indicates lower occupancy but significantly higher room rates. Based on daily data from February, Abu Dhabi reported the following in year-over-year comparisons: Supply: +9.3% Demand: +7.2% Occupancy: -1.9% to 79.2% Average daily rate (ADR): +31.6% to AED565.07 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +29.1% to AED447.46 STR analysts note the year-over-year increases in ADR and RevPAR were mainly driven by Pope Francis visit to Abu Dhabi (3-5 February) and the 2019 International Defence Exhibition & Conference (17-21 February). A jump in rates were seen during the seven-day period surrounding IDEX. STR will release full February results later this month. STR provides clients from multiple market sectors with premium, global data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England. For more information, please visit str.com. Daily News Delivery Join your colleagues and stay up to date on the latest all industry news and trends. Subscribe 2021 Hospitality Trends (CNN) Many people start their day with a cup of tea. But those who drink it piping hot could be increasing their risk of esophageal cancer, according to a new study. Researchers found that tea drinkers who liked their beverage to be warmer than 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) and consumed more than 700 ml of tea per day about two large cups had a 90% higher risk of esophageal cancer, when compared to those who drank less tea and at cooler temperatures. The study looked at more than 50,000 people in Golestan, a province in northeastern Iran. "Many people enjoy drinking tea, coffee, or other hot beverages. However, according to our report, drinking very hot tea can increase the risk of esophageal cancer, and it is therefore advisable to wait until hot beverages cool down before drinking," said Dr. Farhad Islami, of the American Cancer Society and the study's lead author. Previous research has found a link between hot tea drinking and esophageal cancer. This study, published Wednesday in the International Journal of Cancer, was the first to pinpoint a specific temperature, according to the authors. Esophageal cancer is the eighth most common cancer in the world and is often fatal, killing approximately 400,000 people every year, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is usually caused by repeated injury to the esophagus due to smoke, alcohol, acid reflux and maybe hot liquids. The esophagus is a long tube through which swallowed food and liquids travel to reach the stomach. The American Cancer Society estimates that 13,750 new cases of esophageal cancer will be diagnosed in men and 3,900 new cases in women in the United States in 2019. The team of researchers followed 50,045 people, aged between 40 and 75, for an average of 10 years. Between 2004 and 2017, the researchers detected 317 new cases of esophageal cancer. The study said more research was needed on why exactly drinking very hot tea is associated with the higher risk of esophageal cancer. Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said that it was the heat that was the issue rather than the type of beverage. "In fact, it is probably anything hot: Microwaved jam has been known to cause esophageal injury. It is possible that the trauma leads to cell changes and hence to cancer," he told the Science Media Centre. Evans was not involved in the study. In the United States and Europe, tea is rarely consumed at temperatures above 65 degrees Celsius (149 degrees Fahrenheit) but in places like Russia, Iran, Turkey and South America, it is common to drink tea that hot or even hotter. "If you go to the Middle East or to Russia, they drink it out of a samovar that's constantly under heat," said Peter Goggi, president of the Tea Association of the USA told CNN last year. "It's very, very hot." Dr. James Doidge, senior research associate at University College London, said that hot drinks were an established risk factor for esophageal cancer. "It doesn't take a scientist to appreciate that repeated irritation of any body surface increases your risk of cancer. Sunburn gives us skin cancer, smoking gives us lung cancer, and many foods and drinks contribute to risk of gastrointestinal cancers," Doidge, who wasn't involved in the research, told the Science Media Centre. This story was first published on CNN.com "Drinking very hot tea almost doubles risk of cancer, new study says" Despite the lenient outcome for Cochran, it appeared for a while that he might not go through with the guilty plea. He had passed up a similar deal in November and seemed to stumble Thursday at some of the judges routine questions. When asked about his physical health, Cochran, who said hes been taking medication for anxiety, paused and said, Ah, could be better. Spotify Songwriter Town Hall Charm Offensive: Go Ahead, Make My Day [Op-Ed] In an effort to combat some of the negative press it's been receiving over its efforts to keep down songwriter royalty rates, Spotify is planning to hold a series of "town halls" where songwriters can air their concerns, a tactic the streaming company tried in 2014, with less than ideal results. ________________________ Op-ed by Chris Castle of Music Tech Solutions If youve heard about the high turnover at Spotify, heres the latest confirmation: Someone at Spotify evidently thinks its a good idea to have town halls for songwriters in Nashville and Los Angeles (but not New York). Town halls imply an open forum where anyone can talk about issues of importance to the community hosting the town hall. Thats apparently not what these Spotify town halls are to be about. The intention is to limit them to a single topicSpotifys appeal of the songwriter rates at the Copyright Royalty Board. First, remember that Spotify did this kind of thing once before in 2014. Remember, in 2014 the company got a lot of groovy from the pillars of the music business who wanted to see Spotify succeed (and make bank on the stock). In 2014, publicly criticizing Spotify was a new thing and it took some courage for artists to go after the company in the days before Spotify executives gorged themselves on the publics money at the public market trough. That 2014 charm offensive foundered, to be kind. (See Meltdown at the Soho House: Spotifys Artist Charm Offensive Tour Self-Destructs on Opening Night and Billboards coverage, Spotifys Artist Outreach Mission Backfires.) Why was it a disaster? Mostly because try as they might, Spotify couldnt control a roomful of artists and get them to talk about the topic Spotify choseespecially that one thing that Spotify wanted to talk about, namely how groovy they are. Artist rights advocate Blake Morgan attended the New York meeting and politely and articulately took the Spotify self-cheering section apart brick by brick. This wasnt a cage match with Big Daddies on either side waiving their armsthe artists knew what they wanted to say and they said it. They didnt need any help. This is why I find it hard to believe that Spotify is about to do the exact same thing all over again and expect a different result. The mistake they made the last time was in trying to control the agenda and treat the meeting like a corporate communications event rather than an open dialog. That approach is guaranteed to deliver a meltdownwhich it did the last time Spotify tried it. I had to read that news a couple times to make sure it really said what I thought it said as it all seemed counterintuitive. If the company wants to open a dialog with songwriters and artists, then have that dialognot a monologue. Live stream it and record it so that everyone who is not able to attend has the opportunity to hear whats going on. Theres been enough closed door negotiating recently and people are tired of it. Someones going to record it anyway, so why not get ahead of it? But understand thisthere is live litigation going on over the CRB rates. Anything that is said publicly by the litigants could end up being admissible in some case somewhere. So be careful what you wish for. Theres a reason why public companies dont usually engage in town halls concerning live litigation. And also consider thiswhat if the reason that punches were pulled after Spotifys US launch was because everyone wanted to sell those shares and cash out. Thats pretty much happened already. Now whats holding them back? A town hall is not a great look for Spotify. Particularly when they may get an earful on a host of other issues from the vendors who make their only productmusic. If the smart people really want to dig a hole for themselves, far be it from me to stop them. By all meansdig. Im just a country lawyer from Texas. Im sure the rich city fellers know much better than I do. Share on: This website is owned and operated by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). IATA is a Canadian entity, headquartered in Montreal, located at 800 rue du Square-Victoria, QC H4Z 1M1. This policy aims at explaining in a simple and clear way how IATA processes the personal information that You provide by using, accessing, registering or any other action You can have on this website, in accordance with any applicable privacy laws including the European Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Canadian privacy laws (PIPEDA). IATA is committed to respect and protect Your privacy to the greatest extent possible. IATA uses Your personal information to understand better your needs and interests and to provide you with the best services. 1. 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If You have any comments, questions, concerns or complaints about our Privacy Policy and our practices please email us at privacy@iata.org or write us at: International Air Transport Association Att. Legal Services / Privacy Officer PO Box 416 1215 Geneva 15 Airport Switzerland We do take your questions seriously and each request will be promptly investigated. Prudential Committee members Ed Briggs and Ed McGowan participate in Wednesday's meeting. Williamstown Fire District Waiting for State's Approval of Committee Expansion Williamstown Fire District clerk/treasurer Gary Fuls, left, and Fire Chief Craig Pedercini review minutes of February's meeting. WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. It likely will require a special Fire District meeting if the Prudential Committee wants to move forward with a plan to expand its numbers within the calendar year. At Wednesday's monthly meeting, the committee learned that there likely is no way to move forward with the change approved by voters in November in time for this year's annual election in May. "I just got a text from Rep. [John] Barrett," Prudential Chair John Notsley told his colleagues. "The bill should be out of committee next week. Then it should be in the House for two weeks and then it goes to the Senate." The decision by district voters to restructure governance of the Williamstown Fire District needs the blessing of the Legislature via a home rule petition sponsored by state Rep. John Barrett III, D-North Adams. In order to increase representation on the three-member committee, its members asked voters whether it could grow to five members, a proposal that passed unanimously in a special meeting last fall. But with nominations already underway for the May 28 district election held just prior to the annual district meeting it likely is too late to implement the changes. "Technically, we missed the deadlines for this round," assistant treasurer Corydon Thurston told the committee. "It would be great if [the bill] comes out of the Legislature in May. You could make some changes, but my recommendation is that once the approval comes through, we look at setting a special district election. Give it good publicity to encourage candidates for those slots and maybe look at a September special election." Notsley noted that the district may be looking at a special election in the fall anyway in order to advance plans to build a new fire station on the former Lehovec property on Main Street (Route 2). As part of that building project, the district has engaged New Hampshire's Municipal Resources Inc. to do a feasibility study. Chief Craig Pedercini told the committee that representatives from MRI were scheduled to come to town on Thursday to interview district personnel and representatives of Town Hall and the Police Department. The Fire District is a separate entity apart from town government with its own elections and taxing authority, unlike the Police Department, which is a department of town government. The Fire District's budget will be up to a vote at the May 28 meeting, one week after the annual town meeting. On Wednesday, the Prudential Committee discussed whether it had any special funding priorities that it wanted to include in its request to voters. At the moment, the district's fiscal 2019 expenses are tracking well with the budget put forward last spring. The big unknown, as it often is, is the line item for maintenance and operations. Pedercini said he is attempting to schedule inspection for the district's fire trucks, but vendor Five Star Fire of Hartford, Conn., is having trouble. "They have a mechanic shortage with the on-the-road mechanics," Pedercini said. "Usually, they have two, but they're down to one. I'm trying to pin him down for the first or second week of April, but they can't promise us anything." Pedercini said Five Star has offered to come pick up the district's trucks and bring them to Connecticut for servicing and return them at no extra charge. The issue, Pedercini and the committee members agreed, is that such a plan would take the trucks out of service for a couple of days, factoring in the travel time and the inspection time. "It's an option, but I'd rather get them up here and spend a week like they've been doing," Pedercini said. In other business on Wednesday, Pedercini reported that the district responded to 31 fire calls in February; some of that number includes several calls to assist in managing wind damage during the Feb. 25 windstorm Also on Feb. 25, Williamstown firefighters were on scene of a blaze at Sweet Brook Farm that destroyed a barn and sugarhouse and kept the first responders on scene from about 9 p.m. until 5 a.m., Pedercini said. The chief told the committee that the state fire marshal had decided the cause of that fire was undetermined. A former police chief in the DeKalb County town of Hinckley has been charged with eavesdropping and official misconduct for allegedly recording a conversation with her boss the village president without her consent, authorities said. These are some of the highest river levels this area has seen in more than three decades, and I commend local emergency managers, law enforcement, fire and the volunteer organizations that have come together to keep people safe and preserve property, Pritzker said in a statement. For downstream communities that will be impacted by flooding in the days and weeks to come, I know that many groups are already preparing to help their neighbors. While we know that rebuilding will take a lot of time and work, we are committed to being your partners for the future. The shooting occurred hours before a U.S. Postal worker was killed while driving northbound on I-57 near Oak Forest, state police said. ISP said they would increase staffing on area expressways in the wake of the shootings, which were the second and third this year on I-57. Last week, an Urbana man was wounded during a shooting early Saturday morning on I-57, according to a release from state police. In a preliminary statement, police said five to seven shots were fired in the direction of the officers around 3:20 p.m. The person with the gun then fled into the home and barricaded themselves inside. A Geo News cameraperson was attacked covering the visit of the Chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to the National Accountability Bureau in Islamabad on March 20. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joins the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) is strongly protesting the attack on the journalist and demanding an investigation. Shrazi Gardezi was covering the visit for Geo News when he came under attack by workers of the PPP. The attack was caught with his own footage. PFUJ president GM Jamali said journalists and media workers in Pakistan continue to face intimidation, threats and attacks in attempts to silence and gag the media. Financial insecurity is becoming the latest tool of attack. "PFUJ has never backed down in the face pressure tactics and threats. PFUJ and UJs will increase the momentum of the protests which began in January 2019 to protect the rights of journalists and freedom of expression and media. We will increase pressure on the authorities to ensure security to the media, Jamali said. The IFJ said: We condemn the attack on cameraman Shirazi Gardezi and calls the authorities to fully investigate and prosecute those who commit crime on journalists. We also demand the government to ensure of the safety of journalists in the country. Immediate action is needed to stop the physical assaults on journalists as well as media workers. Imperial Valley News Center FDA takes action against marketer of unapproved products claiming to treat addiction, chronic pain... Washington, DC - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Tuesday posted a warning letter to Nutra Pharma Corp. for illegally marketing unapproved products labeled as homeopathic with claims about their ability to treat addiction and chronic pain, including pain associated with cancer, diabetes, shingles, fibromyalgia and other serious conditions. One of our most important obligations is to protect consumers from those who would prey on them with bogus claims and fraudulent products. Weve dedicated new resources to our enforcement work and I consider these activities the cornerstone of our consumer protection mission and one of our most significant institutional obligations. Were especially focused on those who would exploit Americans harmed by the opioid crisis with the false promise of products that can treat pain or addiction, but that offer no such benefit, said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D. Today, we posted a warning letter to a company preying on patients who may be seeking alternative treatments for chronic pain, cancers, arthritis and autoimmune and neurological disorders. Health fraud scams like these are inexcusable. These patients deserve proven treatments not false promises that can deter them from seeking otherwise effective care, and that can also contain ingredients or contaminations that can threaten their health. We have great concern for the millions of Americans who live with chronic pain or cancer, and for whom traditional treatment options have been exhausted, as well as those battling opioid addiction. They deserve new advances in care that can address pain without the risk of addiction, not the deception of bogus products that offer no proven benefit. Well continue our efforts to protect consumers from such false claims, while also working to advance the development of new treatment options, including non-addictive products for pain management and innovative products for the treatment of opioid use disorder. The FDA issued a warning letter to Nutra Pharma for their products: Nyloxin Oral Spray, Nyloxin Topical Gel, Nyloxin Topical Roll-On, Nyloxin Topical Roll-On ES, Nyloxin Professional Size Pump Topical Gel and Regular Strength Sample Pack. These products also may confuse consumers because its name is similar to FDA-approved drugs. Examples of claims made include: Nyloxin . . . treats conditions that cause chronic pain. [C]obra venom saw its primary use in the treatment of cancer and arthritis. Reportedly the venom was used to treat liver cancer, lung cancer, esophageal cancer, skin cancer, and leukemia. Today, cobra venom is being studied for treating various forms of pain, cancers, autoimmune and neurological disorders. Researchers in China are examining the possibility that cobra venom can be used to treat drug addiction. Treatment of the Cobrotoxin in 90 cases with heroin dependence. Health fraud scams like these can pose serious health risks. These products have not been demonstrated to be safe or effective and may keep some patients from seeking appropriate, FDA-approved therapies. Selling these unapproved products with claims that they can treat chronic pain is a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. In addition to supporting the development of alternatives to opioid analgesics for chronic pain, reducing the number of Americans who are addicted to opioids and cutting the rate of new addiction is one of the Administrations highest priorities. This work includes promoting more widespread innovation and access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for the more than 2 million of Americans with an opioid use disorder (OUD). The FDA is taking steps to make safe and effective MAT available to those who suffer from OUD and to reduce the stigma that is sometimes associated with use of these therapies. Using products with unsubstantiated claims may prevent those addicted to opioids from seeking approved treatments that have been demonstrated to be safe and effective, delay their path to recovery and put them at greater risk of death. In fact, patients receiving FDA-approved medication-assisted treatment cut their risk of death from all causes in half, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The FDA has requested responses from Nutra Pharma within 15 working days. The warning letter also states that failure to correct violations may result in legal action without further notice, including, without limitation, seizure and injunction. In December 2017 the FDA proposed a risk-based enforcement approach that prioritizes enforcement and regulatory actions involving drug products labeled as homeopathic that have the greatest potential to cause risk to patients. Given the concerns about the proliferation of potentially ineffective and harmful products labeled as homeopathic, the FDA previously stated it would consider taking additional enforcement and/or regulatory actions, consistent with its current compliance policies, in the interest of protecting the public. Homeopathic products have not been approved by the FDA for any use and may not meet modern standards for safety, effectiveness and quality. U.S.-Brazil Technology Safeguards Agreement Washington, DC - On March 18, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation Christopher Ford and Brazilian Minister of Foreign Relations Ambassador Ernesto Araujo signed the Technology Safeguards Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Federative Republic of Brazil on technology safeguards associated with U.S. participation in space launches from Brazil. Upon entry into force, the Agreement will establish the technical safeguards to support U.S. space launches from Brazil while ensuring the proper handling of sensitive U.S. technology consistent with U.S. nonproliferation policy, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), and U.S. export control laws and regulations. Surface Force Pacific Commander Charges Fleet to Continue Push to Lethality San Diego, California - Commodores, commanders, and surface fleet leaders need to prepare for the high-end fight to meet the challenge of renewed great power competition. That was the message from Vice Adm. Richard Brown, Commander, Naval Surface Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet (CNSP), during the Commanders Training Symposium (CTS), March 14. Reiterating key themes from his Surface Navy Association (SNA) address, Brown, along with representatives from various commands including U.S. Pacific Fleet, Naval Surface and Mine Warfighting Development Center, and Undersea Warfighting Development Center urged leaders to prepare to transition readiness into lethality, reinvigorate mission command, and drive toward a culture of excellence. Driving to a culture of excellence is not a top-down management effort. Weve set the conditions to empower you to bring up issues so my staff and I can effect change. If you run into operational or maintenance roadblocks, let us know and well get after them, Brown told the group of nearly 100 unit commanders, commodores, and senior leaders. CTS covered a wide breadth of surface warfare initiatives and updates, including: Recent revisions to the Surface Force Training and Readiness Manual (SFTRM), which now permit ships crews to certify early when they demonstrate full proficiency during Certification Events (CEs); Recent one year update on the Readiness Reform Oversight Committees (RROC) work to make our Navy a safer and more combat effective force; Integrated training and tactical vignettes; Intelligence and geopolitical updates. CTS is a culmination of a weeks worth of events that emphasized building and sustaining fleetwide readiness. During the week, Adm. John C. Aquilino, commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet, delivered a series of discussions with waterfront leaders in San Diego, March 11-13. We are driving to provide fleet commanders with combat-ready ships and battle-minded crews who will go, fight and win. Continuing the discussion on how we are going to own the fight is the most important element to a synchronized and able-bodied Surface Fleet, Brown said. My staff and I are here to advocate for your needs and to set you up for success. During CTS, Brown reminded the attendees that 2018 was a year devoted to raising standards, improving training, tightening qualifications, re-emphasizing certifications, and re-asserting the primacy of command. Whereas, 2019 is devoted to turning that readiness into lethality through an unrelenting pursuit of excellence over compliance. 2018 is behind us. Continue to focus forward, Brown said. My staff and I are here to advocate for your needs and to set you up for success. When you need support, tell us! CNSP will schedule another CTS this summer to continue this important dialogue. "We are at the beginning of a historic moment for the State of Israel," he said in a statement. "President Trump once again proves the strength of the alliance between the U.S. and Israel. The time has come for the world to recognize that the Golan Heights is an inseparable part of the State of Israel." Secretary of State Michael Pompeo's Visit to Kuwait, Israel, and Lebanon Washington, DC - Secretary Pompeo will travel to Kuwait, Israel, and Lebanon March 1923. The Secretary will participate in a series of bilateral meetings with high-level officials, attend the U.S.-Kuwait Strategic Dialogue and the recurring trilateral Head of State meeting with Israel, Greece, and the Republic of Cyprus, and engage in public events, including visits to religious sites and interactions with business leaders. The Secretary will reinforce the value of our partnerships, as well as the importance of security and economic cooperation in achieving regional stability and countering the Iranian regimes malign activities. Reinvigorating Relationships with Key Allies and Partners The United States is committed to strengthening its relations with Kuwait, Israel, and Lebanon; all critical to regional security, stability, and economic prosperity. These partnerships enable the achievement of shared objectives, including countering terrorism, expanding trade and investment, protecting global energy supplies, and fostering religious tolerance and freedom in the region. In Kuwait, the Secretary will laud the Amirs role in seeking a resolution to the Gulf dispute and highlight the importance of a united GCC in ensuring the success of the Middle East Strategic Alliance. While still in its formative stage, the United States has continued to advance discussions with our partners on the alliance, which includes the GCC member states, Egypt, and Jordan. Since the September 28 GCC+2 meeting at the UN General Assembly, members have met on January 9 in Oman to discuss the economic and energy pillars and on February 21 in Washington to discuss the political and security pillars. In Israel, the Secretary will engage with officials from Cyprus, Greece, and Israel to promote cooperation on energy and security issues, and discuss the Syrian conflict with Israeli leaders. In Lebanon, the Secretary will discuss regional issues with Lebanese officials, including Hizballahs role in the Syrian conflict. Since the beginning of the crisis in Syria, the United States has provided nearly $2.1 billion in humanitarian aid to assist with the needs of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and the Lebanese communities who host them. U.S. humanitarian assistance also supports Lebanese schools, community development centers, water infrastructure, health centers and other host community institutions. Reaffirming and Expanding Bilateral Ties Kuwait is a longtime friend and vital partner that helps advance key U.S. interests in the region, including defense and counterterrorism. The U.S.-Kuwait relationship generates U.S. jobs through hundreds of millions of dollars of direct investment in the United States. At this years strategic dialogue, the Secretary and other U.S. officials will expand the bilateral relationship on innovation, entrepreneurship, and small business development. They will also work to boost counter-narcotics efforts, deter illicit passenger and cargo flows, improve airport security and consular cooperation, and grow academic exchanges. The Secretary will meet with members of the newly created U.S.-Kuwait Business Council and local business leaders to build stronger relationships and enhance economic ties. In Jerusalem, the Secretary will reinforce U.S. support for Israels security, as one of Americas closest regional allies and partners. The Secretary will also reaffirm the Administrations commitment to pursuing a comprehensive and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians that offers a brighter future for all. The Secretarys visits to the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre will reaffirm the Administrations commitments to bolstering religious tolerance and battling anti-Semitism. In Lebanon, the Secretary will articulate U.S. support for the Lebanese peopleas they confront a multitude of economic and regional security challenges. The United States provides more support to Lebanon than any other country in the world more than $800 million in security, development, and humanitarian assistance in 2018. Since 2007, the United States has provided more than $1.2 billion in economic and development assistance to advance Lebanese stability through programs that promote democracy and the rule of law, improve provision of basic services, and expand access to education. The United States is Lebanons top security partner. Since 2005, the U.S. has invested more than $2.2 billion in the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) which has paid significant dividends for U.S. interests in the Middle East. The Secretary will underscore the importance of working with Lebanese financial institutions to preserve the integrity of the Lebanese banking system. Countering Irans Malign Influence The Iranian regime is the single greatest threat to stability in the Middle East. On each stop of his trip, the Secretary will encourage leaders to expose Irans activities and stop the regimes corrupt and destabilizing actions. In Kuwait, the Secretary will thank Kuwaiti leaders for their help in monitoring sanctions compliance and work to combat sanctions evasion. In Israel, the Secretary will emphasize the U.S. commitment to combat Iranian aggression, including illicit tunneling by Hizballah and Hamas indiscriminate firing of hundreds of rockets and missiles into Israel. In Lebanon, the Secretary will reaffirm U.S. support for legitimate government institutions, including the Internal Security Forces and the Lebanese Armed Forces, and reiterate our concern over the influence and actions of Hizballah and its supporters, which put Lebanons sovereignty, the Lebanese people, and the region at risk. The United States designated 40 targets linked to Hizballah in 2018, our highest single-year number of designations to date, and will aggressively continue to expose and disrupt networks that Hizballah uses to fund terror and destabilizing activities worldwide, including inside Lebanon. Deputy Secretary of State Sullivan's Visit to Angola Washington, DC - Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan met today in Luanda with President Joao Lourenco and Foreign Minister Manuel Augusto. In these meetings, the Deputy Secretary commended President Lourenco and his government for their efforts to fight corruption and to foster citizen-responsive governance and dialogue. Deputy Secretary Sullivan and Foreign Minister Augusto co-chaired the U.S.-Angola Strategic Dialogue focused on strengthening U.S. and Angolan collaboration on global and regional issues, security and law enforcement cooperation, trade and investment, and the advancement of democracy, health, human rights, and development, particularly in the Okavango region. The Deputy Secretary also conducted meetings with U.S. and Angolan business leaders where he highlighted U.S. goals for its partnership with Angola in the context of the U.S. Africa strategy. He also met with Angolan journalists, human rights activists, and youth leaders. Unless you live under a bottle cap rusting on the bottom of Loon Lake, you know that if you're concerned about privacy, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the gift that keeps on taking. A week after it landed with a curious (and most likely spurious) thud, Zuckerberg's announcement about a new tack on consumer privacy still has the feel of an unexpected message from some parallel universe where surveillance (commercial and/or spycraft) isn't the new normal. "I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will be even more important than today's open platforms," Zuckerberg said. "Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks." And maybe share more freely their inmost wants and needs, thereby making it easier to serve them ads that convert. While Facebook has a lengthy history of leaks, gaffes, and outright violations of privacy for users and non-users alike, and Zuckerberg has made unfulfilled promises to remedy their problematic and unpopular practices, one needn't look further than recent news to view this pivot in company policy with deep skepticism: Facebook's lobbying against data privacy laws worldwide: Leaked internal memos revealed an extensive lobbying effort against data privacy laws on Facebook's part, targeting the U.S., U.K., Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, and every member state of the European Union. Leaked internal memos revealed an extensive lobbying effort against data privacy laws on Facebook's part, targeting the U.S., U.K., Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, and every member state of the European Union. Facebook's Two-Factor Authentication phone numbers exposed: After prompting users to provide phone numbers to secure their accounts, Facebook allows anyone to look up their account by using them. These phone numbers are publicly accessible by default, and users have no way of opting out once they've provided them. (The company has also used security information for advertising in the past.) After prompting users to provide phone numbers to secure their accounts, Facebook allows anyone to look up their account by using them. These phone numbers are publicly accessible by default, and users have no way of opting out once they've provided them. (The company has also used security information for advertising in the past.) Mobile apps send user data to Facebook (even for non-Facebook users): A study by Privacy International showed that several Android apps, including Yelp, Duolingo, Indeed, the King James Bible app, Qibla Connect, and Muslim Pro all transmit users' personal data back to Facebook. A later update showed that iPhone users were similarly affected: iOS versions of OKCupid, Grindr, Tinder, Migraine Buddy, Kwit, Muslim Pro, Bible, and others were also found to eavesdrop on Facebook's behalf. A study by Privacy International showed that several Android apps, including Yelp, Duolingo, Indeed, the King James Bible app, Qibla Connect, and Muslim Pro all transmit users' personal data back to Facebook. A later update showed that iPhone users were similarly affected: iOS versions of OKCupid, Grindr, Tinder, Migraine Buddy, Kwit, Muslim Pro, Bible, and others were also found to eavesdrop on Facebook's behalf. Hundreds of millions of user passwords left exposed to Facebook employees: News recently broke that Facebook left the passwords of between 200 million and 600 million users unencrypted and available to the company's 20,000 employees going back as far as 2012. Facebook has had more than its share of bad press in recent years, including Russian meddling in U.S. elections and complicity in a genocide campaign in Myanmar, but the company's antipathy toward user privacy seems to belie a wider disdain for the public interest, which leads to a bigger question. Facebook has become the most profitable, debt-free business in the world by selling the private information of its users. Do you really think it's going to stop? Privacy is increasingly important to consumers, but Facebook is proof that a company need not respect the privacy of the lives it comes in contact with in order to thrive--quite the contrary. When Did You Stop Beating Your Users? It seems fair to say that Facebook has not earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to being open and transparent with the public, and I'm not just saying that because I've been betting against the company's stock (I have a fair amount, and, possibly perversely, I think it's still a sound investment). I bring this up because Facebook could be doing something to make itself an even better investment. In fact, any business can do it, and increase its value in the process. Put simply, companies can make themselves harder to hit by hackers, and less prone to compromise. While it's impossible to know for certain whether a company has been compromised or not, organizations have reputations. Reputations tend to color the way we read events. And finally, reputation management in the day and age of near-constant compromise and breach requires transparency--or at least the perception of transparency. This was the cybersecurity song stuck in my head when Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp experienced widespread service outages on March 13, marking the company's longest ever downtime. An announcement on Facebook's Twitter feed described the outage as a result of a "server configuration change," contradicting a widespread assumption that it was caused by a cyberattack. A little context: MySpace recently announced a major migration gaffe: "As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace." People in the know have estimated the mistake affected 53 million songs from 14 million artists. The same day as the MySpace buzzkill, Zoll Medical reported it had experienced a data breach during an email server migration that exposed select confidential patient data, including patient names, addresses, dates of birth, limited medical information, and some Social Security numbers. While Facebook's statement regarding its server configuration change may have been accurate, there may have been more to the story. The problem here is that we're not dealing with a company that releases reliable information (that isn't associated with their users as marketing targets). While the outage may indeed have been caused by an honest sort of epic fail, Facebook has earned a dose of healthy skepticism. Indeed, scandals and overall wrongdoing sometimes seem the way of the world at Facebook, and as a result of this perception--true, false, or truth-y--there is a significant deficit of trust among the general public. While Facebook is too large to fail as a result of this situation, small- to medium-size companies cannot afford the luxury of being perceived as untrustworthy. Perception Is Everything Gustave Flaubert said, "There is no truth. There is only perception." It mattered when he wrote that, and it still matters today. When a company doesn't report a cyberattack--or only reports the more harmless aspects of an incident--that needn't always be ascribed to sinister motives. Consider what would have happened to Facebook if 1) the recent downtime was caused by an attack (possibly made possible by the configuration that they reported), and 2) they admitted it. Admitting publicly that a cyberattack effectively brought a multibillion-dollar business to a halt for the better part of a day would, first and foremost, have the potential to encourage further attacks. Denying anything happened gives system administrators more time to identify and patch newly discovered vulnerabilities. Then there are the repercussions to the company's stock price. In short, there is no upside. Regardless of whether the Facebook outage was the result of a cyberattack or internal error, one factor that's been largely overlooked is the company's plan to integrate all of its platforms--specifically to make the previously separate Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram applications interoperable. This cross-platform integration represents a monumental undertaking. Each of these services have, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of active users, all of them with different security protocols, data structures and network requirements. Changing the architecture of three separate applications at a fundamental level not only opens the door to human error and system glitches but also presents a golden opportunity for hackers, and that should be what we're talking about--before anything bad happens. The primary means of detecting cyber incidents for trained experts or artificial intelligence is to look for inconsistent or unexpected behavior in a system: An influx of traffic could mean a major news event, but it could also mean a DDoS attack. An unexpected delay in network connections could mean a hardware failure, but it could also signify a hijacked DNS server. For filmmakers, horror is one of the toughest genres to get right. Mastering a scare is something that only the most gifted of directors can manage, and there are a lot of films out that that fall very short when trying to terrify their audience. Those that do deliver, though, succeed with aplomb: John Carpenter, George Romero and Get Out director Jordan Peele to name but a few. For those on the hunt for scares, it can be quite hard out there, but fret no more weve compiled the scariest horror films on offer, ranging from German Expressionist films from the 1920s to indie smash hit, Hereditary. Below, we rank all the horror films that will genuinely scare you click through the gallery to see what made the cut. 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Show all 37 1 /37 37 horror films that are genuinely scary 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Funny Games (1997) Directed by: Michael Haneke. Funny Games places the horror in the familiar setting of home. It follows two young men who hold a family hostage and torture them with sadistic games. The result is far scarier than anything featuring ghosts, witches or demons. Concorde-Castle Rock/Turner 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Amityville Horror (1979) Directed by: Stuart Rosenberg. The Amityville Horror is based on the true story of the Lutzes, a family who were run out of their home after being terrorised by paranormal phenomena in 1975. Just one year before, Ronald DeFeo Jr shot and killed six members of his family in the same house. James Brolin and Margot Kidder lead this film, which became one of the biggest hits of 1979. American International Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Audition (1999) Directed by: Takashi Miike . Japanese horror Audition (1999) follows a widower who meets a woman named Ayoma after staging auditions to meet a potential new partner. Soon, though, her dark past begins to surface, which equates to a pretty disturbing climax. Omega Project 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Blair Witch Project (1999) Directed by: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez . Although parodied to death, The Blair Witch Project popularised the found-footage format to terrifying degrees in 1999. People genuinely believed they were watching real clips of three student filmmakers being terrorised by a Maryland legend known as the Blair Witch. Artisan Entertainment 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) Directed by: Robert Wiene . Black-and-white silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) is considered the quintessential work of German Expressionism, but also one of the scariest films in cinema history. It follows a hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist to commit murders, and Wiene's shadowed sets and striking visual style combines to unsettle the viewer in ways most filmmakers only dream of managing. Decla-Bioscop 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Candyman (1992) Directed by: Bernard Rose. A contemporary classic of horror cinema, 1992 film Candyman which spawned two sequels and has a Jordan Peele-produced remake in the works follows a graduate student whose studies lead her to the legend of a ghost who appears when you say his name three times. TriStar Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Directed by: Ruggero Deodato. Extreme enough to warrant a ban in Italy and Australia, Cannibal Holocaust (1980) was one of the first films to embrace the found-footage format so much so that Deodato found himself charged with multiple counts of murder due to rumours that several of the film's death scenes were real. He was later cleared. United Artists Europa 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Descent (2005) Directed by: Neil Marshall. Released in 2005, The Descent follows six women who, upon exploring a cave, battle to survive against the creatures they find inside. It's these creatures that earn this British horror film's placement on this list. Pathe Distribution 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Exorcist (1973) Directed by: William Friedkin. One of the most controversial films of all time, The Exorcist which tells the story of the demonic possession of a 12-year-old girl named Regan (Linda Blair) became the first horror to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars in 1974. Warner Bros 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Halloween (1978) Directed by: John Carpenter. Sure, it may be dated, but John Carpenter's original Halloween film released in 1978 remains the daddy of all horrors. It re-defined the rule book and has been emulated in everything from Scream (1996) to Trick 'r Treat (2007). The tension, as babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) attempts to evade masked murderer Michael Myers, only heightens with every new watch. Compass International Pictures[ 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Hereditary (2018) Directed by: Ari Aster. Proving that horror is a force to be reckoned with, Hereditary became independent distributor A24's highest-grossing film around the world upon its release in 2018. It tells the story of a family who find themselves haunted after the death of their secretive grandmother and features a final act that left many of its viewers with sleepless nights. A24 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The House of the Devil (2009) Directed by: Ti West. The House of the Devil (2009) follows a student named Samantha who is hired to guard an isolated house with one rule: don't go upstairs. For most of the film's runtime, not much happens, which is what makes the action-packed final third so terrifying. Spoiler: she goes upstairs. MPI Media Group 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Innocents (1961) Directed by: Jack Clayton. Based upon Henry James' chiller The Turn of the Screw, the plot of 1961 psychological horror film The Innocents concerns a governess who watches over two children and comes to fear that their large estate is haunted by ghosts and that the youngsters are being possessed. 20th Century Fox 37 horror films that are genuinely scary It (1986) Directed by: Tommy Lee Wallace. Forget the effects-laden remake this version of It, released as a miniseries in 1986, is the most terrifying adaptation of Stephen King's beloved novel to date. It follows a shapeshifting demon who takes the form of a sadistic child-killing clown named Pennywise (Tim Curry). Lorimar Productions 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Ju-On: The Grudge (2002) Directed by: Takashi Shimizu. Japanese horror maestro Takashi Shimizu who also directed the pretty scary 2005 remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar balances mystery with horror in Ju-On: The Grudge, a story based in a cursed house in Tokyo. Lions Gate Films 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Kill List (2011) Directed by: Ben Wheatley. To describe the horrors of Kill List is to ruin the film's surprises, but let's just say this: the final 20 minutes of Ben Wheatley's violent drama from 2011 features some of the most unsettling scenes in any film from this decade. Optimum Releasing 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Lake Mungo (2008) Directed by: Joel Anderson. Taking the form of a mockumentary, the little-seen Australian drama Lake Mungo may have received a limited release in 2008, but its story of a family attempting to come to terms with the drowning of their daughter stays with viewers long after. Arclight Films 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Martyrs (2008) Directed by: Pascal Laugier. The polarising 2008 film Martyrs, often associated with the New French Extremity movement, is the kind of horror that leaves you needing a shower once the credits roll. It follows a young woman's quest for revenge on the people who kidnapped and tormented her as a child. Anchor Bay Films 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Night of the Living Dead (1968) Directed by: George A Romero. Younger viewers may be desensitised by the more extreme horror films to have been released in recent decades, but the scares featured in Romero's Night of the Living Dead including the young girl zombie reveal remain some of the most chilling committed to celluloid. Continental Distributing 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Nosferatu (1922) Directed by: FW Murnau. Alongside Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), the character of vampire Count Orlok in 1922 film Nosferatu played by Mac Schreck remains one of the most spine-tingling in cinema history. Film Arts Guild 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Orphanage (2007) Directed by: JA Bayona. Produced by Guillermo del Toro, this acclaimed 2007 chiller follows the disappearance of a young boy in an orphanage, which brings many of the building's terrifying secrets to the fore. Warner Bros Pictures de Espana 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Others (2001) Directed by: Alejandro Amenabar. The Others (2001) is a towering achievement for Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenabar who wrote, directed and scored this Nicole Kidman-fronted tale about a woman trying to protect her children from supernatural forces. It's perhaps the scariest 12-certificate film of all time. Warner Sogefilms 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Paranormal Activity (2009) Directed by: Oren Peli. Could Paranormal Activity be the scariest film of all time? It's certainly one of them. Just when you thought found-footage had had its day, Oren Peli's small-budgeted festival favourite became one of 2009's biggest hits. Audiences lapped up the story of a couple who capture supernatural presences on a camera in their own home. Paramount Pictures[ 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) Directed by: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman. Paranormal Activity 3 earns its place on this list for its final 10 minutes. Set 18 years prior to the events of the first two films, we see the cause of the curse that follows characters Katie and Kristi for the rest of their lives and it's down to a coven of witches led by their grandmother. Paramount Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary [REC] (2007) Directed by: Jaume Balaguero, Paco Plaza. Played out in real-time, the claustrophobic Spanish horror film [REC] is one of the better examples of found-footage cinema. Released in 2007, it follows a reporter and her cameraman who follow firefighters to a Barcelona building and soon find themselves locked inside with its occupants who are displaying murderous behaviour. Filmax International 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Ring (1998) Directed by: Hideo Nakata. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know the story of Ring by now: viewers of a cursed videotape die seven days after watching it. While the inevitable Hollywood remake in 2002 was better than it had any right to be, Nakata's original is as terrifying as horror films come. Toho 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Rosemary's Baby (1968) Directed by: Roman Polanski. Released in 1968, Rosemary's Baby follows a pregnant woman who suspects that an evil cult want to take her baby for use in their rituals. Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes and Ruth Gordon's performances tip this psychological chiller into classic status. Paramount Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Shining (1980) Directed by: Stanley Kubrick. Forget the iconic "Heeeeere's Johnny" or that bath scene it's the smaller moments that make Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining a terrifying watch, notably the trippy final act that sees Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) lose his mind to the Overlook Hotel. Warner Bros 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Sinister (2012) Directed by: Scott Derrickson. Of all the Blumhouse horror films, 2012 release Sinister which features the demonic character Bughuul is the spookiest of them all. It stars Ethan Hawke as a true-crime writer who discovers a box of home movies depicting grisly murders in the attic of his new house. Momentum Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Sleep Tight (2011) Directed by: Jaume Balaguero. This little-seen Spanish horror follows a concierge who, believing he was born without the ability to feel happiness, decides to make life hell for everyone around him. Filmax 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Directed by: Tobe Hooper. The fictional Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), marketed as a true story, follows a group of cannibals including Leatherface who relentlessly hunt down a group of friends. Vortex 37 horror films that are genuinely scary 28 Days Later (2002) Directed by: Danny Boyle. Many might not reflect upon 28 Days Later (2002) as one of the world's scariest horror films, but its desolate depiction of a viral outbreak seems more real than any other. When merged with the fast-paced infected and the usage of John Murphy's song "In the House In A Heartbeat", it's hard to deny it such status. Fox Searchlight Pictures 37 horror films that are genuinely scary V/H/S (2012) Directed by: Various. Directed by six filmmakers, including Adam Wingard and Ti West, 2012 anthology film V/H/S is grimy horror of the tallest order. Look no further than David Bruckner's section "Amateur Night" following three friends who meet a mysterious girl who says nothing other than three small words: "I like you." Magnet Releasing 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Wailing (2016) Directed by: Na Hong-jin. Twist-filled horror drama The Wailing follows a policeman who investigates a series of mysterious killings and illness in the mountains of South Korea. If the journey fails to scare you, its destination will leave you lying awake at night. 20th Century Fox Korea 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Wicker Man (1973) Directed by: Robin Hardy. The Wicker Man is deemed the best British horror film of all time for a reason. It tells the story of a Police Sergeant who travels to an isolated island in search of a missing girl, only to find its inhabitants practising a form of Celtic paganism. British Lion Films 37 horror films that are genuinely scary The Witch (2015) Directed by: Robert Eggers. For the most part, it's not what you see in The Witch that terrifies, it's what you don't see. Eggers unsettlingly holds his camera a fraction too long in places as he retells the story of a Separatist family who encounter supernatural forces in the woods beyond their farm. A24 37 horror films that are genuinely scary Zero Day (2003) Directed by: Ben Coccio. The horrors are all too real in Zero Day, a film inspired by the Columbine High School massacre in 1999. The majority of the film is portrayed through the video diaries of two students who are planning to attack their high school. Avatar Films Other galleries you might like: 21 actors who took their roles so seriously it out of hand 37 best film twists of all time 37 actors who almost died on set 49 best closing lines in movies Global warming has contributed to greater numbers of bodies of dead climbers emerging from thinning snow and ice on Mount Everest in recent years, authorities have said. Since it was first conquered by Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953 more than 4,800 people have successfully scaled the worlds tallest mountain. Almost 300 people have died during the attempt. Removing bodies from the mountain is difficult and very expensive, so the vast majority of those who have died while trying to reach the summit remain on the mountain. Around two-thirds of the corpses are currently believed to be buried beneath ice and snow. But Ang Tshering Sherpa, the former president of Nepal Mountaineering Association said that "the ice sheet and glaciers are fast melting and the dead bodies that remained buried all these years are now becoming exposed". "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change Show all 38 1 /38 "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 Reuters "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Magdeburg, Germany on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest outside Holyrood in Edinburgh on March 15 Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Cape Town, South Africa on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in New York on March 15 AFP/Getty Images "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Madrid on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Quezon City, Philippines on March 15 Getty Images "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Vienna on March 15 AFP/Getty Images "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Dublin on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Canterbury, Kent on march 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest outside Holyrood in Edinburgh on March 15 Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Erfurt, Germany on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Zagreb, Croatia on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Lisbon on March 15 Reuters "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Edinburgh on March 15 Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Florence, Italy on March 15 Sign reads: there is no future without a planet, let's not sell it for money EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Vienna on March 15 Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Brighton on March 15 Reuters "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest outside Holyrood in Edinburgh Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Cambridge on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change Students protest in Bangalore, India on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Cape Town, South Africa on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change Students protest in Bangalore, India on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change A student protests in Lucerne, Switzerland on 15 March EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 AFP/Getty Images "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Milan, Italy on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 AFP/Getty "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Lund, Sweden on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change A poster with Greta Thunberg, who began the current children's movement at the protest in Lausanne, Switzerland on March 15 AP "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Cape Town, South Africa on March 15 EPA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Canterbury, Kent on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in London on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest in Canterbury, Kent on March 15 PA "Act now or swim later" - Children worldwide protest climate change School children protest outside Holyrood in Edinburgh Getty He told the BBC this was "because of global warming." He said: We have brought down dead bodies of some mountaineers who died in recent years, but the old ones that remained buried are now coming out." This was backed up by a government officer who worked in the region, who said: I myself have retrieved around 10 dead bodies in recent years from different locations on Everest and clearly more and more of them are emerging now. Several studies have indicated the Himalayas are in the grip of considerable loss of ice from glaciers and the trend is forecast to accelerate. A report this year, by 210 authors, warned more than a third of the ice in the region will melt by 2100 even if governments take tough action to limit global warming under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Bodies are occasionally exposed by the shifting glaciers, rather than ice loss due to temperature rises and climbers are usually prepared to spot the occasional dead body when they are on the mountain. Water is essential for survival, and as such it sits at the heart of many of the greatest challenges facing humanity. From the lead contamination plaguing the city of Flint in Michigan to Cape Town edging perilously close to day zero when the taps run dry, lack of water is a very real fear for communities around the world. Even as people struggle to find the water they need for drinking, cooking, washing and farming, many more face inundation as climate extremes batter their homes with storms and floods. As the UNs World Water Day approaches, here are the greatest water-based challenges facing the planet. Rising temperatures and drought Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat facing the global water system, simply because in reality it is composed of many different threats. As greenhouse gas emissions cause the planet to increase in temperature, the worlds hottest regions are becoming even hotter and drying up. A phenomenon known as the Hadley Cell expansion means that as the world heats up, the temperature difference between the poles and the equator decreases and changes worldwide air currents. This means clouds move away from the equator and towards the poles, depriving areas of sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Central America of valuable rainwater. World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures A girl carries jerry cans to fill them up with drinking water at a camp for the displaced people of Hodeidah in Yemen Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures Bathers in Iceland's Blue Lagoon hot springs Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures Locals collect water from an underground mains line in Caracas, Venezuela Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures A man searches for scrap metal in contaminated sewage water in 'the Mine', an area of the largest rubbish dump of Guatemala City Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures Water is released as heavy rain falls at the Pubugou Dam on the Dadu river Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures A woman watches from her window as floodwater rises after the river Calder burst its banks in Hebden Bridge Getty World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures Boys play in the foam covering the heavily polluted Yamuna in New Delhi, India Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures A man catches a 200lb Pacific bluefin tuna while spear fishing off the coast of San Diego, California Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures Residents fill containers full of drinking water from a tanker in New Delhi Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures Pallets of unused water bottles sent as aid are left a year after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures A 350ft artificial waterfall on the Liebian International Building in Guiyang, China AFP/Getty World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures Rohingya refugees crew a fishing boat in the Bay of Bengal Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures A fish farm near the Siberian town of Nazarovo Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures A drought in New South Wales leaves farmland Reuters World Water Day 2019 - our relationship with water in pictures Locals wait on a roof after Cyclone Idai detroyed their town of Beira in Mozambique AFP/Getty Increased rainfall and flooding The other side of the coin is the increased rainfall brought by climate change. Scientists are increasingly confident drawing links between rising global temperatures and shifts in weather patterns that lead to more intense storms, and combined with rising sea levels these can spell trouble. The World Resources Institute estimates that by 2030, the number of people exposed to river floods due to climate change and socio-economic development will more than double to 54 million. In recent years, floods have devastated parts of India and Bangladesh, killing hundreds and affecting millions. Even now, Cyclone Idai tearing through south eastern Africa may well turn out to have been impacted by the changing climate, which is known to drive the intensity of such tropical storms. Poor infrastructure While not the most obvious issue with the worlds water supply, failings in global infrastructure are among the biggest barriers to keeping people supplied. Water must be transported around in vast networks of pipes and sewer systems and dealt with at treatment plants, and these take a lot of maintenance and investment. Recommended UK facing European court after government fails to stop sewage spills This is not a problem unique to poorer nations. On Tuesday the head of the Environment Agency, Sir James Bevan, announced that England could run low on water within just 25 years. While there are many problems contributing to this situation, one official report concluded that the country is losing around three billion litres of water each year to leaking pipes. Groundwater depletion Around a third of the planets fresh water comes from underground aquifers, and while these are not visible, they are vital to maintaining our agriculture and industry. Unless urgent action is taken, 60 per cent of Indias aquifers will be running perilously low on water within just 20 years. This is all exacerbated by rising global populations, and a greater proportion of wealthy people in those populations. With the global population expected to approach 10 billion people by the middle of the century, there will inevitably be an accompanying strain on water sources. As people in developing countries become richer, there is also more demand for luxury products like meat, which in turn require more water to produce. Pollution Tackling water pollution is an enormous challenge, as it encompasses everything from sewage entering drinking water to the endless plastic waste pouring into river systems around the world. According to the UN, around 80 per cent of wastewater, containing anything from human waste to industrial discharges, still goes untreated. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Some of these pollutants, notably plastic and pharmaceuticals, have only in recent years emerged as issues that need to be addressed. While many suspect these substances could be having unpleasant effects on the people and animals consuming them, research is still in its relatively early days. Chick-fil-A donated more than $1.8m to anti-LGBT charities through the Chick-fil-A Foundation, new tax filings show. In 2017, the Georgia-based chicken chain, which is run on its founders conservative Christian beliefs, donated more than $1.6m to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which requires its employees to refrain from homosexual acts, according to ThinkProgress. It also gave $6,000 to the Paul Anderson Youth Home, which teaches boys that same-sex marriage is rage against Jesus Christ and His values. Chick-fil-A's continued support for charities that discriminate against LGBT people comes after president Dan Cathy sparked outrage in 2005 with comments regarding same-sex marriage. Appearing on the Ken Coleman talk show, Cathy said: I think we are inviting Gods judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade Show all 8 1 /8 Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AFP/Getty Images Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AFP/Getty Images Thousands march against Donald Trump in LGBT rights parade AP Chick-fil-A later issued a public apology in which the company announced it would be leaving the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena. The chicken company has previously said it would stop donating to anti-gay causes, according to ThinkProgress, which was disproved with the release of the companys 2017 tax filings. In a statement to ThinkProgress regarding the continued financial support, a Chick-fil-A spokesperson said the companys giving has always focused on youth and education and it has never donated with the purpose of supporting a social or political agenda. The company also said that it would no longer be donating to the Paul Anderson Youth Home moving forward, as a 2010 blog post surfaced that does not meet Chick-fil-As commitment to creating a welcoming environment to all. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events The Independent has contacted Chick-fil-A for comment. An online petition to halt the Brexit process by revoking Article 50 has crashed, prompting conspiracy theories from both sides of the divide. The petition had received more than 600,000 signatures and was trending across social media when it first went down on Thursday morning, Visitors to the website were greeted with an error message that stated: "Petitions is down for maintenance. We know about it and we're working on it. Please try again later." The online petition originally stated: "The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is 'the will of the people'. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People's Vote may not happen so vote now." In the hours before it crashed, the petition was attracting tens of thousands of new signatures every hour, suggesting the cause of the website going down was simply an overload of traffic. Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Show all 18 1 /18 Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well These billboards were plastered by campaign group Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well PA Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter This hasn't stopped speculation that there may be another reason for the outage, with some Twitter users suggesting that there may be darker forces at work. "Is anybody getting error messages when trying to complete the revoke petition?" asked Remain campaigner UK4Europe on Twitter. "Could be volume or something more suspicious." One theory is that pro-Brexit campaigners could have carried out a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, whereby a website is flooded with fake web traffic in order to overload it. However, if a significant number of people are legitimately trying to access the website at the same time with those that cannot reach it refreshing the page then the effect would be exactly the same. Other conspiracy theories surrounding the petition claim that Remain campaigners have been adding fake signatures in an attempt to boost numbers. "The petition saw a suspicious jump in signatures last night, with blatantly fake signatures arising everywhere from Russia, to Afghanistan, to North Korea," an article on right-wing blog Guido Fawkes stated. The petition comes as Prime Minister Theresa May heads to Brussels in an attempt to negotiate a delay to Brexit. The UK's current default position is that it crashes out of Europe without a deal on 29 March. Calls to revoke Article 50 the process by which an EU member state can voluntarily leave the union have grown in recent weeks as a result of the prospect of a no-deal Brexit. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has not ruled out the possibility of revoking Article 50 but said it was "highly unlikely". Regardless of whether the petition is able to attract more signatures, it had already reached its goal of prompting the government to take notice. Parliament must consider any petition that receives more than 100,000 signatures for a debate. A free festival inspired by Michelle Obama is coming to the UK to celebrate black girls and women. Following the success of her memoir Becoming, publishing house Penguin and Black Girl Festival are teaming up to host a three-day event in London. Titled BGF x Becoming Festival, the event will involve talks and workshops inspired by themes from Obamas memoir. The event will offer attendees poster making workshops and bitesize history lessons on Black feminism. It will also provide creative writing workshops and in conversations between black women within the creative industries. Michelle Obama over the years Show all 12 1 /12 Michelle Obama over the years Michelle Obama over the years Appearing at a 'Let's Move' event in 2014 Getty Michelle Obama over the years Speaking at a Clinton campaign rally Getty Michelle Obama over the years August 2016 State Dinner Getty Michelle Obama over the years The Obamas waiting for the 2004 Senate election results Getty Michelle Obama over the years Michelle Obama hula-hooping at a health fair at the White House Getty Michelle Obama over the years Michelle Obama speaks at the 2016 DNC Getty Michelle Obama over the years Barack Obama being sworn in to the 109th Congress Getty Michelle Obama over the years Getty Michelle Obama over the years Getty Michelle Obama over the years Getty Michelle Obama over the years In London at a Let Girls Learn event Getty Michelle Obama over the years State Dinner October 2016 Getty Black Girl Festival was founded by journalist Paula Akpan and curator Nicole Crentsil back in 2017 in celebration of all things black women and girls. Speakers and the festival's full programme of events are yet to be announced but if Obamas recent book tour was anything to go by, you won't want to miss it. In December, Obamas talk with author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Royal Festival Hall in Londons Southbank Centre sold out in minutes, according to The Bookseller. The event came weeks after publishers Penguin Random House announced the authors book was the top selling book of the year. Former US first lady Michelle Obama (L) speaks with Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (R) at the Royal Festival Hall in London on December 3, 2018 (Getty Images) Obama fans will have another chance to see the star at the Becoming: An Intimate Conversation with Michelle Obama event on 14 April at the O2 Arena. At the event, ticket holders will have the chance to hear Obama open up about her experiences, both public and private, from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as a mother, lawyer, First Lady, and author. I cant wait to continue the discussions that have been so meaningful for me and, I hope, for so many others, Obama said of the arena conversation. The BGF x Becoming festival will take place at Canada Water Library in south east London from 9 11 April. Tickets to the event are free but you must you must register here to be eligible. Click here to find out more. Poetry was once considered a dying art. At least, it was until Instagram came along and gave this underappreciated literary form a contemporary platform, one that has paved the way for budding Bards to publish and publicise their work at the same time. While the term Insta poet may not be an apt moniker for these fledgling talents, whose creativity transcends the bounds of filtered squares, its become common parlance to describe the likes of Charly Cox, Rupi Kaur and Nikita Gill, whose pithy musings are changing the way we consume social media, one couplet at a time. As people around the globe celebrate some of the biggest names in literature on World Poetry Day, were paying homage to an exciting cultural movement thats giving poetry its long-awaited renaissance. Here are the six poets on Instagram you need to know about now. Charly Cox Charly Cox is the thoughtful, funny and wistful 22-year-old at the vanguard of Instagram poetry thanks to her witty commentary on everything from body image to dating. Cox's handwritten poems, which she posts on Instagram in artistic influencer-friendly compositions, offer an insight into the highs and lows of millennial life complete with all of the necessary angst ("I wish I'd not spent so long crying in bed"), emotion ("hold my hand and I'll know it") and humour ("oh kale leaves how you depress me"). The success of her witty verse led to the publication of a debut poetry collection, She Must Be Mad, in July 2018. It was dubbed "social media's answer to Carol Ann Duffy". Rupi Kaur With more than 3.6 million followers, Kaur is hardly an up-and-coming talent. Her debut poetry collection, Milk and Honey, was an instant bestseller when it was released in 2014 and her follow-up, The Sun and Her Flowers, in 2017 was an equal success. The 26-year-old is in the middle of writing her third volume of poems but is keeping fans entertained with regular snippets of poetry on Instagram. Kaur's poems stand out on the 'gram not just for their astute observations ("if the hurt comes so will the happiness") but for the fact that they're always written in lower case, a minimalistic aesthetic that has become synonymous with her thoughtful verse. Nikita Gill Nikita Gill's poetry excels in its exploration of womanhood, with poems such as "You aren't like most girls" and "Girls of the wild" adding an empowering and feminist underbelly to her voice. Her latest collection, Fierce Fairy Tales & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul, features poems that dismantle some of the harmful gender stereotypes occupying traditional fairytales, championing brave and independent princesses who can fight the evils of their mystical worlds without the help of a handsome Prince Charming. Gill's 516,000 followers on Instagram are usually treated to a poem a day. Hollie McNish Holly McNish is an established published poet, with five books under her belt, but the Cambridge-based writer boasts a prominent Instagram following thanks to her bright and colourful posts that serve to share her words with the world. She covers everything from the woes of parenting to the disappointment when your phone runs out of battery with the same intellectual rigour, which makes for compelling and entertaining reading. McNish also performs her poetry live and is currently on a tour around the UK. Pavana Pavana Reddy's poetry will feed your soul with spiritual wisdom thanks to verses that compare love to stained glass windows and deep, evocative imagery like the following: "I told the sun about you once. I think she poured herself into me so she could feel you too". The Los Angeles-based writer has penned two collections of poetry, Where Do You Go Alone and Rangoli, and a third is on the way. Atticus A voice message sent by Marrero as the raid on his house was underway circulated on social media. "In this moment, the SEBIN are in my house," he said. "They sadly came for me. Keep fighting. Don't stop. Please take care of the president. And let it be what God wants. God bless you. The Venezuelan people should not stop because of this. We have to understand that the one who gets tired loses." Hey Britain: heres something to cheer you up if youre worried about food and medication in the event Theresa May tips us all off a cliff. Next says chill your boots. Youll still be able to buy hoodies. Yep, that was one of the takeaways from the results of the clothes retailer, which is run by Brexit backing Tory peer Simon Wolfson. We have, he declared, all the contingency plans we need in place to be able to ensure our supplies. Next, of course, is a very big business so it has the money to be able to afford them by contrast to, say, many of the Institute of Directors smaller members, some 40 per cent of which haven't acted largely because they cant. They dont have the resources. Better still for Next is that it doesnt rely on Dover or Calais, which is where the major problems are expected in the event of a no deal Breixt. Why? Well, you see, Next imports from non EU countries where they pay seamstresses pennies to produce its clobber. It comes in via other routes, and the retailer, which again, is a big, rich company, has managed to find alternatives to them if it should have any problems. But theres more: the emergency tariff reductions that the government plans to protect consumers - even though they may be completely illegal under the World Trade Organisation rules that fruit loop Brexiteers keep banging on about supporting - might result in some modest price reductions in the medium term. So hey, your size M top (because youll have lost weight) could be 50p cheaper in a few months. Isnt that nice? Our feeling is that there is a level of fatigue around the subject that leaves consumers numb to the daily swings in the political debate, the statement went on. That was justified by reference to the fact that Nexts sales have held up quite well. But it came barely a day after a petition had been put up on the governments website calling for the revocation of Article 50 and for the UK to remain in the EU. It attracted nearly 1m signatures in very short order. By the time you read this that number will likely have been eclipsed. As one of my friends said, people have been putting their names to it quicker than a rat up a drain pipe. That doesnt look to me like fatigue. It looks like another word beginning with F, fury, in the wake of the Prime Ministers toxic on your side speech and her conduct. Business news: In pictures Show all 13 1 /13 Business news: In pictures Business news: In pictures Flybe collapses Airline Flybe has collapsed. All future flights on the Exeter-based airline have been cancelled leaving more than 2,300 staff facing an uncertain future, and wrecking the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of passengers. The chief executive, Mark Anderson, said: Europes largest independent regional airline has been unable to overcome significant funding challenges to its business. AFP via Getty Business news: In pictures Future product placement will be 'tailored to individual viewers' Marketing executives say that product placement in films and televison shows on streaming services such as Netflix may be tailored to individuals in future. For instance, if data shows that a viewer is a fan of pepsi, a billboard in the background of a shot would host an advert for pepsi, while for a viewer known to have different tastes it could be for Coca-Cola Paramount Business news: In pictures Corbyn wishes Amazon a happy birthday In a card sent to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the company's 25th birthday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn writes: "You owe the British people millions in taxes that pay for the public services that we all rely on. Please pay your fair share" Business news: In pictures No deal, no tariffs The government has announced that it would slash almost all tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Notable exceptions include cars and meat, which will see tariffs in place to protect British farmers Getty Business news: In pictures Fingerprint payment NatWest is trialling a new bank card that will allow people to touch their hand to the card when paying rather than typing in a PIN number. The card will work by recognising the user's fingerprint NatWest/PA Wire Business news: In pictures Mahabis bust High-end slipper retailer Mahabis has gone into administration. 2 Jan 2019 Mahabis Business news: In pictures Costa Cola Coca-Cola has paid 3.9bn for Costa Coffee. A cafe chain is a new venture for the global soft drinks giant PA Business news: In pictures RIP Payday Loans A funeral procession for payday loans was held in London on September 2. The future of pay day lenders is in doubt after Wonga, Britain's biggest, went into administration on August 30 PA Business news: In pictures Musk irks investors and directors Elon Musk has concluded that Tesla will remain public. Investors and company directors were angry at Musk for tweeting unexpectedly that he was considering taking Tesla private and share prices had taken a tumble in the following weeks Getty Business news: In pictures Jaguar warning Iconic British car maker Jaguar Land Rover warned on July 5, 2018 that a "bad" Brexit deal could jeopardise planned investment of more than $100 billion, upping corporate pressure as the government heads into crucial talks AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures Spotif-IPO Spotify traded publically for the first time on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday. However, the company isn't issuing shares, but rather, shares held by Spotify's private investors will be sold AFP/Getty Business news: In pictures French blue passports The deadline to award a contract to make blue British passports after Brexit has been extended by two weeks following a request by bidder De La Rue. The move comes after anger at the announcement British passports would be produced by Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto when De La Rues contract ends in July. The British firm said Gemalto was chosen only because it undercut the competition, but the UK company also admitted that it was not the cheapest choice in the tendering process. Business news: In pictures Beast from the east economic impact The Beast from the East wiped 4m off of Flybes revenues due to flight cancellations, airport closures and delays, according to the budget airlines estimates. Flybe said it cancelled 994 flights in the three months to 31 March, compared to 372 in the same period last year. There arent many out Brexiteers among the business community. Partly that is because, while business leaders dont always have a lot of love for the institution, they recognise that leaving it will be bad for the economy and bad for their companies. Partly it is because they dont much like the idea of standing side by side with the likes of Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin. Wolfson is a cut above him as a businessman. A big cut. Next proved that with its results. The outfit has had its difficulties in recent years, but while profit eased a bit the online business is growing like the clappers and it looks in decent shape. It might not have many bricks and mortar stores in its long term future, but itll be around long after lots of other retailers have failed. Its CEO is also entitled to his views, and its fine to reassure investors that Next is prepped for what may come. But sadly, the way it was done in this case was crass, self serving, and completely tone deaf. Persimmon will allow new homebuyers to hold back thousands of pounds of the purchase price until they are happy faults have been fixed. The housebuilder has been dogged by complaints about poor build quality, leading to speculation it might be kicked off the governments Help to Buy scheme. The government loan subsidy for newbuild homes has been a source of record annual profits of 1.1bn for Persimmon, which in turn have fuelled huge executive pay packets. Under the housebuilders new plan, from July homebuyers solicitors will keep around 6 per cent of the build cost of every new home until any faults identified are fixed. The withheld amount is 1.5 per cent of the total purchase price and will be equivalent to an average of 3,600 per property. Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Show all 11 1 /11 Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Alberto Facundo Arquitecto Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Alberto Facundo Arquitecto Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Alberto Facundo Arquitecto Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Alberto Facundo Arquitecto Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Alberto Facundo Arquitecto Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Alberto Facundo Arquitecto Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Alberto Facundo Arquitecto Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Alberto Facundo Arquitecto Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Alberto Facundo Arquitecto Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Photography by Alberto Facundo Arquitecto Home between houses - Riba-roja de Turia, Spain Alberto Facundo Arquitecto The FTSE 100 company will be the only large housebuilder to have this kind of retention scheme in place. Persimmon will be hoping it goes some way to restoring trust in the company. Of 750 reviews on the TrustPilot website, just 36 per cent rate Persimmon as excellent, compared with 58 per cent describing the company as poor or bad. Persimmons renewed attempt to win over customers comes after former chief executive Jeff Fairburn stepped down earlier this year. His 75m bonus had become a distraction, the company said. Chief executive Dave Jenkinson said: Persimmon is listening hard to all of its stakeholders and we hear the message that we need to continue to raise our game in customer care. The initiatives we have already announced including the action taken in the new year to deliver greater accuracy of anticipated moving-in dates by adopting a more targeted approach to the phasing of sales on specific sites and the improvements and investments that we have made in our customer care team, operations and technology over the last few months are beginning to take effect. Former chief executive Jeff Fairburn scooped a 75m bonus but the build quality of Persimmons homes has been criticised (BBC) We are now accelerating the pace of change through the introduction of a contracted retention, which will give homebuyers far greater satisfaction at the completion of the purchase. Moving into a new home should be a positive experience enhanced by all the benefits of a new build that is designed for modern living. Jordan Peterson, the Canadian academic whose fellowship with the University of Cambridge has been abruptly withdrawn, claims he has fallen foul of the diversity, equity and inclusivity mob. The 56-year-old author and professor of psychology, who has styled himself as an opponent of so-called political correctness, had been due to take up the fellowship later this year to do research on religion. On Wednesday, the university confirmed the fellowship from the department of divinity had been withdrawn. It declined to say when the decision had been taken or why. Mr Peterson said he had not officially informed of the universitys move, or its reasoning. Yet, he told The Independent he believed it was because he did not appeal to the diversity, equity and inclusivity mob at the institution the political correctness types. Top 10 universities 2019 Show all 10 1 /10 Top 10 universities 2019 Top 10 universities 2019 10. University College London Down 3 places on last year in the Complete University Guide rankings Getty Top 10 universities 2019 9. University of Warwick Down one place on last year in the Complete University Guide rankings Jez Sutton Top 10 universities 2019 8. University of Lancaster Up one place on last year in the Complete University Guide rankings Rwendland Top 10 universities 2019 7. Loughborough University Up 3 places on last year in the Complete University Guide rankings Top 10 universities 2019 6. Durham University In the same place as last year in the Complete University Guide rankings Getty Top 10 universities 2019 5. University of St Andrews Down 2 places on last year in the Complete University Guide rankings Getty Top 10 universities 2019 4. Imperial College London Down 3 places on last year in the Complete University Guide rankings PA Top 10 universities 2019 3. London School of Economics Up one place on last year in the Complete University Guide rankings Getty Top 10 universities 2019 2. Oxford University In the same place as last year in the Complete University Guide rankings Getty Top 10 universities 2019 1. Cambridge University In the same place as last year in the Complete University Guide rankings Getty Mr Peterson, whose books include Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief and 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, informed his nearly two million subscribers on YouTube on Monday evening that, having recently returned from a tour of Australia and New Zealand, he would be taking up a fellowship at Cambridge in the autumn. In October I am going to Cambridge University in the UK for two months and I will be a visiting fellow there at the divinity school and should give me the opportunity to talk to religious experts of all types for a couple of months, as well as students, he said. On Wednesday, the department of divinity tweeted that the fellowship had been withdrawn. The university declined to explain the decision. A spokesperson said in a statement: We can confirm that Jordan Peterson requested a visiting fellowship, and an initial offer has been rescinded after a further review. Waking Up podcast:Sam Harris in conversation with Jordan Peterson Cambridge University Students Union said it was pleased by the decision, telling Varsity: His work and views are not representative of the student body and as such we do not see his visit as a valuable contribution to the university, but one that works in opposition to the principles of the university. Mr Peterson, who last year had a controversial interview with Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman wherein Newman challenged him over some of views on women, including referring to some as crazy, harpy sisters, said the university had lost out on a chance for him present a series of lectures on the Biblical book of Genesis. He said he suspected the department of divinity was attempting to capitalise on its virtue signalling. Its not going to stop me. I will do them in Canada or somewhere, he said. Its not that I am going to be unable to occupy myself in October and November. He said he believed the students' union was among those who had been protesting the fellowship, hence its gleeful reaction to the decision. Asked if the problem was not his association with culture war topics such as masculinity and gender pay gaps, rather than his standing as an authority on religion, he said: Im better known for that only if you read newspaper article headlines, not by people who actually follow what I have done. Asked about the students who had opposed the fellowship, he said: They dont know anything about me. Among faculty and alumni, the decision to withdraw the fellowship received a mixed reaction. Conservative writer Toby Young tweeted: Cambridge University Students' Union says his work and views are not representative of the student body. Isnt that the point, you numbskulls? Priyamvada Gopal, who teaches in the universitys English department, responded with sarcasm. The truth is Cambridge just doesnt have enough sage authoritative white men who believe they know better than everyone else and can tell the world how to run itself, she said. We need to ship them in from outside. A motion to reform relationships and sex education (RSE) in English schools which includes teaching LGBT+ issues - has been delayed after one Conservative MP objected. The governments new guidance on RSE says all pupils should be taught about LGBT+ families and how to treat LGBT+ people with respect as part of compulsory lessons from September next year. But the vote on changes to the curriculum was delayed until next week when Tory MP Philip Davies objected to it in a late-night Commons debate on Wednesday. Parliamentary rules say that if a single MP shouts their opposition then a vote can be delayed, allowing backbenchers to make their views known to the government. Mr Davies has gained a reputation for trying to block legislation, using protracted speeches to filibuster backbench bills on issues such as offering free hospital parking for carers and first-aid training in schools. "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching Show all 10 1 /10 "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching Parents and protesters outside of the Parkfield Community School in Birmingham where the 'No Outsiders' programme teaches children about LGBT rights Getty "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching Parents, children and protesters outside of the Parkfield Community School in Birmingham where the 'No Outsiders' programme teaches children about LGBT rights Getty "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching Child protesters hold signs against the 'No Outsiders' programme Getty "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching Parents and protesters outside of the Parkfield Community School in Birmingham where the 'No Outsiders' programme teaches children about LGBT rights Getty "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching A sign outside the Parkfield Community School reads "we are a UNICEF gold rights respecting school" Getty "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching Parents and protesters outside of the Parkfield Community School in Birmingham where the 'No Outsiders' programme teaches children about LGBT rights Getty "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching A child protester holds a sign against the 'No Outsiders' programme Getty "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching Parents, children and protesters outside of the Parkfield Community School in Birmingham where the 'No Outsiders' programme teaches children about LGBT rights Getty "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching Child protesters hold a sign against the 'No Outsiders' programme Getty "No to No Outsiders" - protests against LGBT rights teaching Parkfield Community School in Birmingham where protests are being held against the 'No Outsiders' programme which teaches children about LGBT rights PA Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, said she was deeply disappointed that MPs had been prevented from pressing ahead with the guidance on RSE. She said: Opposing it sends a terrible message to LGBT+ young people just at a time that we should make clearer than ever that we have moved beyond the shameful days of Section 28. "We have a moral imperative to ensure that all children receive LGBT+ inclusive education, and there is a clear legal requirement for schools to comply with the equalities act. The delay comes amid a debate over the provision of LGBT+ lessons, as some families believe they should be able to withdraw their children from relationships lessons when they become mandatory. At least five schools in Birmingham have suspended classes on same-sex couples after weekly protests from parents against the teachings. Parents will be allowed to withdraw their children from sex education lessons up to the age of 15 but they will not be allowed to take pupils out of relationships education classes. Speaking in the Commons, Jim Shannon, a member of the socially conservative Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), asked: Logically, a withdrawal from sex education must surely also be a withdrawal from relationship education unless the two subjects are taught separately? Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda, said: Does the minister not find it utterly depressing that the one bit that people seem to object to is that pupils might be exposed to the fact that there are homosexuals in society, and is that not deeply painful to gay parents, to children who might be gay or have gay uncles, aunts or other family members and to gay teachers? MPs discuss motion to make LGBT+ lessons at school mandatory Nick Gibb, schools minister, replied: One of the key elements of relationships education is ensuring that children are aware, including in primary schools, that loving families can be made up of two mothers, two fathers or one mother and one father. Children are being taught that other family structures are just as loving and caring as their own. Samuel Muriisa thinks he is ready for Ebola, but he is not. Muriisa, 74, is the most widely respected omushaho wekishaka, or traditional healer, in the Lake Bunyonyi area of Uganda. He is aware but only vaguely that Ebola is raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose border is just 20 miles away. Let it stay in Congo, he says. We seldom see Congo people here. Let it not come. Jolly Twinomuhwezi, 60, one of his three wives, who acts as his triage nurse, says she would send away anyone with bleeding eye sockets or fingernail beds, which she has heard were the chief Ebola symptoms. She is dangerously wrong; most Ebola victims never haemorrhage, and if they do, it is a late-stage symptom. Medical experts worry that such combinations of misinformation and wishful thinking are common among traditional healers who, like it or not, are the front lines of rural African medicine. Those concerns are intensifying as the epidemic in Congo spirals out of control. Last week, Doctors Without Borders suspended its work after violent attacks on two of its treatment centres. Across Africa, according to the World Health Organisation, there are about 80 times as many traditional healers as there are medical doctors. Millions of Africans consult healers but, studies suggest, usually do not admit it if they see doctors too. In Congo, doctors now fighting Ebola believe that many of their patients first get infected while visiting such healers. They may arrive at the home of someone like Muriisa with malaria, or even a cough or other minor problem, but then end up lying next to someone with undiagnosed Ebola. In the 2014 west African outbreak, which infected more than 11,000 people, the death of a prominent healer was a crucial super-spreader event linked to more than 300 cases. That healer, who lived in rural Sierra Leone, died after catching the virus from one of her patients. Hundreds of relatives and admirers came from many miles away for her funeral and helped wash her body, which was presumably teeming with the virus. Folo Drissa Lougue, a healer from Kalembouly, wraps the fractured arm of a man. According to legend, descendants of the village have the gift of healing fractures and dislocated joints (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images) They then returned to their homes in Guinea and Liberia, helping ignite the worst Ebola epidemic in history. Muriisa discusses his practice with visiting members of a Canadian medical charity Bridge to Health. The Canadians are offering routine medical and dental care in nearby villages, not doing Ebola-related work. Nonetheless, their infectious disease specialist, Dr Sasan Hosseini-Moghaddam, makes sure triage nurses are on the alert for the virus. Any patient with a fever who has visited Congo, or had contact with someone who did, should be isolated and not touched, Hosseini-Moghaddam tells the nurses. Then the patients should be asked about diarrhoea, vomiting, joint pain, red eyes and difficulty breathing or swallowing all potential signs of Ebola. Of course, Muriisa has no way to do an Ebola test, or even one for malaria, which, when severe, can be confused with Ebola. Ugandas health ministry has not given him one of its brightly coloured posters illustrating Ebola symptoms that can be found tacked up at border posts and conventional clinics. His office is a thatched mud hut decorated with shields and antelope horns. It is at the top of a steep hill above a boat landing on a reed-choked shore so steep that his grandsons keep a dozen polished staffs stuck in the ground to help panting visitors climb it. To meet patients, he tops his normal attire a corduroy jacket and shorts with a cloak of what appears to be serval cat fur and a headpiece of black and white monkey hair. Local residents say the healer is correct that few Congolese ever visit Lake Bunyonyi, which is at an altitude of 6,500ft and surrounded by farmers, crawfish-gatherers and lakeside resorts (including Idi Amins former summer home). A man from DRC has his temperature checked by a non-contact thermometer at the Ebola screening point bordering with DRC in Mpondwe, western Uganda (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images) Most Congolese who traverse the border are traders headed straight for Kampala, Ugandas capital, to buy goods for resale in Congo. Also, nurses stationed at the frontier are supposed to take temperatures and turn back anyone with a fever, and Ugandan bus lines have stopped serving the Congolese cities hit hardest by Ebola, Beni and Butembo, which are 200 miles to the northwest. But borders are permeable and Africans who fall seriously ill may travel long distances to see the healer in their home villages because they trust them. Healers can spend time with patients and speak their home dialects. Muriisas first language is Rukiga (pronounced rue-CHEE-ga). Also, healers accept payment in the currencies of the poor: vegetables, alcohol, chickens and goats. Some very grateful patients, Muriisa says, have even given him a daughter. She then becomes my daughter, he explains. And maybe one of my sons will marry her. Herbalists are also trusted because some of their teas, ointments and powders genuinely do alleviate common ills such as allergies, nosebleeds, arthritis pain or toothache. And they sell potions to ward off curses such as lightning strikes or jealous neighbours, disasters for which western medicine offers no remedies. (Muriisa is a herbalist, not an omufumu, who is paid to put curses on people, according to Innocent Tumusiingize, a local dentist who leads the visit and translates. The two professions have parallels elsewhere; in southern Africa, for example, they are known as sangomas and nyangas.) Local people with HIV do come to him, Muriisa says sometimes right after getting a positive blood test at a clinic. He admits that he could not cure Aids but claims to be able to slow it down to make the virus drunk and weak with a concoction made from the local omusikamoori tree. He does not discourage his patients from taking conventional HIV drugs. Some take them as well as his treatment, he says, but they rarely admit it. From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic Show all 11 1 /11 From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic Horst Luz, Sudan, 1965 A ghostly Nuba glee club bathes in ashes to ward off evil spirits before singing at a sanda festival National Geographic Society From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic Gervas Huxley, Kenya, 1940s Kenyans trudging along a road battle clouds of ying locusts. Spawned in the vast deserts to the north, periodic irruptions of locusts brought millions of insects descending upon everything in sight, devouring crops, destroying grasslands and forests, even covering roads so thickly that cars skidded out of control National Geographic Society From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic Chris Johns, South Africa, 1995 A walking stick on one shoulder, a hunting bow slung over the other, a Bushman watches relatives stride across the dunes near the boundary of Kalahari Gemsbok National Park Minden Pictures From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone, Kenya, 2001 As graceful under water as the sh it swims among, a hippo courses through Kenyas marvelous Mzima Springs, an Edenic oasis in the midst of Tsavo National Park. Tiny sh, the photographers were the rst to discover, each specialised in cleaning various parts of the river horses anatomy National Geographic Creative From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic Michael K. Nichols, Ethiopia, 2002 Lounging beneath ancient heath trees, gelada baboon bachelors gang up until the day when they will turn against each other in the competition for females National Geographic Creative From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic Hans Hildenbrand, Egypt, circa 1925 Men lead donkeys past the Tombs of the Caliphs, mosque-like mausoleums erected outside Cairo to house the mortal remains of Egypts medieval sultans, the foreign dynasty of the Circassian Mamluks. No towering pyramids for them! National Geographic Society From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic Bruce Dale, Kenya, 1968 A Kenyan farmer and his cow climb a hill near Kisii on land that he might well own, since after independence in 1963 the new government had bought some of the choicest parcels and resold them to native smallholders National Geographic Creative From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic David Doubilet, Egypt, 1981 A young goatherd pipes a tune in the wastes of the Sinai Desert. Wild and rugged, this no mans land occupied by Israel at this time as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War had been claimed by Egypt for thousands of years, but was really home only to wandering Beduoin tribes National Geographic Creative From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic Dick Durrance III, South Africa, 1970 In a sign of hope for a better future, a Zulu worker gives a thumbs-up sign in the railroad station at Umlazi, a township in the Kwa Zulu Bantustan. During the Apartheid era, hundreds of thousands of workers commuted each day from segregated townships to jobs as menials and laborers in white-only South Africa Minden Pictures From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic Michael K. Nichols, Chad, 2006 Chads Zakouma National Park is a refuge for the Sahels last remaining elephant herd. But Zakouma is tiny, not even 1,200 square miles, and every year as the dry season relaxes its grip, some 3,500 elephants leave the park to nd better forage." Minden Pictures From Cairo to Cape Town: In and out of Africa with National Geographic National Geographic: Around the World in 125 Years Africa National Geographic: Around the World in 125 Years Africa Joe Yogerst, Reuel Golden Hardcover, 26.9 x 37.4 cm, 312 pages They fear arrest, he says. Because the government says herbs dont work and should not be used. He cannot cure cancer, he admits, but he does treat snake bites. He also treats mental illness. Typically he conspires with the family of an emotionally disturbed person to knock him or her out with a few dark seeds from the rweziringa, or thorn apple, shrub. According to a plant reference book he keeps, it is Datura stramonium, known in the United States as jimsonweed, a powerfully toxic and hallucinogenic member of the nightshade family. In that state, they say many things, he says. And I can tell from their words whether it is demons or a curse making them ill, and I can decide how to treat them. For seriously ill patients, he has two tests to predict whether he can cure them. One requires balancing a small horn on a vertical stick; the other involves boiling a soda bottle full of green liquid to see if it changes colour. If both tests indicate the patient will die, Muriisa does not tell them, because it would be disheartening. Instead, he advises them to go to the local public hospital. His herbal knowledge came from his father, whose grave is just outside the hut and who was the local healer for decades until his death at age 92. But the spiritual aspect of his power, Muriisa explains, comes from an ancient African god named Kazoba Nyamahanga (which means little sun god in Rukiga). Kazoba, he says, sends villagers dreams indicating who their next healer will be and grants the chosen one the power occasionally to predict the future. He also worships the Christian god, he says: I was baptised Samuel, and I go to church but for me its more like a club, someplace to see friends. As the visit ends, Muriisa stands outside with his guests as they wait for their boat. His first wife, Joy Mazooba, 65, brings over one of their grandchildren. Her teeth are too brown could you look at them? she asks the doctors and dentists through a translator. And I think something is wrong with her eyes. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events New York Times It is a form of communication so sophisticated it has long been believed only humans and some great apes are capable of it. Now, new research has found that mimicking facial expressions widely considered a key pillar in the social success of human beings is something the worlds smallest bears do too. It suggests, in terms of communication at least, many other mammals may share abilities previously thought to be almost unique to ourselves raising questions over the supposed supremacy of humankind. The findings, in which sun bears were seen to share facial expressions in apparent bonding and shows of solidarity, came during a two-year study by researchers at the University of Portsmouth. Marina Davila-Ross, who led the project, said: Mimicking the facial expressions of others in exact ways is one of the pillars of human communication. London Zoo releases x-ray photos of animals Show all 5 1 /5 London Zoo releases x-ray photos of animals London Zoo releases x-ray photos of animals PB the tokay gecko 18,000 animals have been x-rayed as part of routine health checks at London Zoo in Regent's Park PA London Zoo releases x-ray photos of animals Nasi the big-headed turtle 18,000 animals have been x-rayed as part of routine health checks at London Zoo in Regent's Park PA London Zoo releases x-ray photos of animals Cornelius the corn snake 18,000 animals have been x-rayed as part of routine health checks at London Zoo in Regent's Park PA London Zoo releases x-ray photos of animals Marion the large hairy armadillo 18,000 animals have been x-rayed as part of routine health checks at London Zoo in Regent's Park PA London Zoo releases x-ray photos of animals Jill the Gila Monster 18,000 animals have been x-rayed as part of routine health checks at London Zoo in Regent's Park PA Other primates and dogs are known to mimic each other, but only great apes and humans were previously known to show such complexity in their facial mimicry. Because sun bears appear to have facial communication of such complexity and because they have no special evolutionary link to humans, unlike monkeys are apes, nor are they domesticated animals like dogs, we are confident that this more advanced form of mimicry is present in various other species. This, however, needs to be further investigated. Researcher Derry Taylor monitored 22 of the animals native to southeast Asia in spontaneous social play sessions. The bears, aged up to 12, were housed in Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre in Malaysia in which enclosures were large enough to allow bears to choose whether to interact or not. During hundreds of play bouts, two distinct expressions were coded one involving a display of the upper incisor teeth, and one without. The bears were most likely to show precise facial mimicry during gentle play. Mr Taylor said such subtle mimicking could be to help two bears signal that they are ready to play more roughly, or to strengthen social bonds. He said: It is widely believed that we only find complex forms of communication in species with complex social systems. As sun bears are a largely solitary species, our study of their facial communication questions this belief, because it shows a complex form of facial communication that until now was known only in more social species. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events The results were published on Thursday in the online journal Scientific Reports. Two versions of reality can exist at the same time, at least in the quantum world, according to a new study. Scientists have conducted tests to demonstrate a theoretical physics question first posed as a mere thought experiment decades ago. Within the concept, two imaginary scientists are both deemed to be correct, despite arriving at totally different conclusions. Demonstrating this in practice therefore calls into dispute fundamental questions about physics and suggests there is no such thing as objective reality. The results were published on arXiv, a site for research that has yet to undergo full peer review, by a British team based at Heriot-Watt University. They set out to explore Wigners friend, named after Nobel prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner who came up with it 1961, which is based on the idea that a photon, or a particle of light, can exist in two possible states. Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary According to the laws of quantum mechanics, this superposition means the photons polarisation or the axis upon which it spins is both vertical and horizontal at the same time. However, once one scientist in an isolated laboratory measures the photon, they find the photons polarisation is fixed at either vertical or horizontal. At the same time, for someone who is outside the laboratory and is not aware of the result, the unmeasured photon is still in a state of superposition. Despite these apparently conflicting realities, both are correct. In their new study, the physicists were able to bring this experiment into reality, using real photons and measuring equipment that stood in for Wigner and his friend. With their results, they were able to confirm the two realities described by Wigner held true. You can verify both of them, study co-author Dr Martin Ringbauer told Live Science, explaining how this bewildering concept could make the leap from theory to reality. Theoretical advances were needed to formulate the problem in a way that is testable, he said. Then, the experimental side needed developments on the control of quantum systems to implement something like that. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events While the experiment and its results may seem a world or even a universe away from everyday life, it raises profound and unsettling questions for physicists about the nature of reality. The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them, the team wrote in their paper. The role of quantum mechanics is to describe the world at such a small scale that the conventional rules of physics do not apply. If measurements from this field cannot be considered absolute, it could change how the discipline operates. It seems that, in contrast to classical physics, measurement results cannot be considered absolute truth but must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement, said Dr Ringbauer. The stories we tell about quantum mechanics have to adapt to that. Counter-terrorism police have been called in to investigate a series of attacks on mosques across Birmingham. Four mosques in the city had windows smashed with a sledgehammer during the early hours of Thursday morning, West Midlands Police said. Damage to a mosque in Birchfield Road was first reported to officers at around 2.30am, before a further attack in Slade Road, Erdington, took place at 3.15am. Police patrols around areas with mosques were then set up, during which damage was also discovered in Witton Road, Aston, and Broadway, Perry Barr. Officers said the incidents were being treated as linked and although they appeared to be targeting the Muslim community, no exact motive had been determined. UK terror plots that were foiled by security services Show all 14 1 /14 UK terror plots that were foiled by security services UK terror plots that were foiled by security services Oxford Street terror plot Lewis Ludlow was jailed for life in March 2019 for planning a 'spectacular multi-victim attack' on Oxford Street in London. He pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey last year to plotting an attack in the UK and funding Isis abroad EPA UK terror plots that were foiled by security services Rosie Cooper MP plot Jack Renshaw admitted plotting to kill his local Labour MP with a machete in June 2018. Renshaw bought a 19in machete intending to use it to kill Rosie Cooper, MP for West Lancashire. His plan was foiled by whistleblower Robbie Mullen, who heard of the plot in a meeting of alleged and convicted National Action members in the Friar Penketh pub in Warrington Hope Not Hate UK terror plots that were foiled by security services 'Poppy terror plot' Nadir Ali Sayed, his cousin Yousaf Shah Syed, and Haseeb Hamayoon, were charged with terrorism offences over an alleged plot to behead a member of public. The trio were arrested in London and High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire on 6 November - three days before Remembrance Sunday in 2014 PA UK terror plots that were foiled by security services National Action arrests Following the arrest of six men in 2018 on suspicion that they were members of the banned far-right terror group National Action, two were jailed. Christopher Lythgoe was found to be leader of the banned group and jailed for eight years, while Matthew Hankinson was jailed for six years. While it was found that Lythgoe did not encourage Jack Renshaw's plot to kill a Labour MP, the judge noted that he "did nothing to stop or discourage" the attack PA UK terror plots that were foiled by security services Shane Fletcher A self-described 'loner', Fletcher planned to kill members of the public at a football match in his home town of Workington. He had been referred to the government's Prevent programme nine moths prior to his arrest after stating that he dreamed about "shooting up a mosque" PA UK terror plots that were foiled by security services Heathrow airport arrests A 19-year-old from Coventry man was arrested at London's Heathrow airport on suspicion of preparing for acts of terrorism in November 2014 UK terror plots that were foiled by security services Extradition of Abu Hamza Radical muslim cleric Abu Hamza was extradited to the US in 2014 after having been jailed in the UK for 7 years for 11 offences under the Terrorism Act Getty UK terror plots that were foiled by security services South East Counter Terrorism Unit arrests Six people were arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences after a series of dawn raids in the south of England in October 2014. Three men and three women were detained separately in two properties in Portsmouth, one in Farnborough and one in Greenwich following an operation by the South East Counter Terrorism Unit. Counter-terror officers said they had disrupted what was believed to be the early stages of what could have turned into a significant plot PA UK terror plots that were foiled by security services October 2014 arrests Three men were arrested in central London on 13 October as part of an investigation into Islamist-related terrorism. The arrests come nearly a week after five men were arrested in dawn raids that Whitehall officials said may have foiled the early stages of a plan to attack the UK Peter Macdiarmid/Getty UK terror plots that were foiled by security services Anjem Choudary arrest Anjem Choudary, the radical activist and co-founder of the banned al-Muhajiroun group, was arrested in September 2014 as efforts intensify to disrupt the ideological backers of young British Muslims travelling to fight in foreign conflicts. Mr Choudary was among nine men held on suspicion of supporting a banned terrorist group and encouraging terrorism. The arrests came shortly after Mr Choudary fired off a series of angry tweets after David Cameron called on MPs to back air strikes against Islamic State militants in Syria Oli Scarff/Getty UK terror plots that were foiled by security services North West Counter Terrorism Unit funds seizing Police seize 250,000 of cash intended to fund Isis at Manchester Airport and north-west ports. Using powers under the Terrorism Act, the money was confiscated by officers from the North West Counter Terrorism Unit in Ocotber 2014 Getty UK terror plots that were foiled by security services Tarik Hassane arrest A medical student who was offered a place at a London university has been named among four men who are being questioned by counter-terror police after a series of raids across the capital. Tarik Hassane, 21, is believed to have been Tasered when he was arrested on suspicion of being involved in a "significant" Islamist terror plot on 7 October 2015 UK terror plots that were foiled by security services Abu Qatada removed from UK Radical preacher Abu Qatada will not be returning to the UK after being cleared of terror charges in Jordan in 2013 Reuters UK terror plots that were foiled by security services Haider Ahmed knife plot Teenage Isis supporter Haider Ahmed purchased a 15ins hunting knife and threatened to launch a stabbing attack on the Tube. Prosecutors said he may alternatively have been planning to rob someone with the weapon to fund his travel to fight for Isis in Syria He was jailed for preparing an act of terrorism in June 2019 Counter Terrorism Policing South East The investigation comes at a time of heightened concern for the safety of Muslims in Western countries, following a terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, where 50 people died after a gunman opened fire at two mosques last Friday. Counter terror police in the UK have stepped up monitoring activity at places of worship and other areas deemed at risk following the shootings. Javid Iqbal, a spokesman for Witton Islamic Centre, one of the places of worship targeted, said the incidents were worrying given the New Zealand attack. Weve had a white intruder strike in the middle of the night. He has arrived with a sledgehammer and smashed one window. The force of the swing has actually meant he had lost his grip and the sledgehammer ended up in the middle of the mosque. Mr Iqbal claimed the attacker returned half an hour later with another hammer, which he used to cause more damage. Whatever the case, it is just a minority of idiots that do not reflect the values of this city or this community, he said. Following the New Zealand terror attacks, we have seen people in that country from all faiths come together in solidarity. Many non-Muslims, whether they be Christians, Hindus, Jews or whatever religion have pulled together to support one another. Neighbourhood officers from are expected to be deployed to work closely with mosques across the West Midlands on Thursday. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events West Midlands Police forensics experts are working to identify evidence at the scenes of the four attacks, while CCTV is also being examined. Since the tragic events in Christchurch, officers and staff from West Midlands Police have been working closely with our faith partners across the region to offer reassurance and support at mosques, churches and places of prayer, the forces chief constable, Dave Thompson, said. At the moment we dont know the motive for last nights attacks. What I can say is that the force and the Counter Terrorism Unit are working side-by-side to find whoever is responsible. At difficult times like this, it is incredibly important that everyone unites against those who seek to create discord, uncertainty and fear in our communities. Additional reporting by SWNS A tattooist who called himself Dr Evil has been jailed for three years for carrying out ear and nipple removals at the request, and with the written consent, of two of his customers. Brendan McCarthy, who also carried out a tongue-splitting procedure at his studio in Wolverhampton, pleaded guilty last month to three counts of causing grievous bodily harm. The 50-year-old, from Bushbury, Wolverhampton, appeared at the citys Crown Court on Thursday afternoon. The court had earlier heard McCarthy carried out the surgery without anaesthetic at his tattoo parlour, Dr Evils Body Modification Emporium, in Wolverhampton, despite having no medical qualifications. McCarthy spent two years battling the Crown Prosecution Service through the courts to avoid a conviction for gross bodily harm. Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Show all 16 1 /16 Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins New Zealand Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins UK Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Las Vegas Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Las Vegas Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Las Vegas Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins LA Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins LA Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Japan Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Japan Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Japan Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Japan Tattoos around the world featured in Needles & Pins Japan But he admitted the charges after the Court of Appeal said his customers written consent to the procedures did not amount to a defence. Earlier court hearings were told the ear removal was performed in 2015 without anaesthetic, three years after McCarthy split a womans tongue with a scalpel. An online petition which attracted 13,000 signatures was set up to support the knowledgeable, skilful and hygienic body-piercer, who was refused permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. Following a failed bid to convince a Crown Court judge that consent was a lawful defence, McCarthy took his case to the Court of Appeal, contending that the procedures should be regarded as lawful to protect the personal autonomy of his customers. But three Court of Appeal judges, who noted that McCarthy had divided a customers tongue to produce an effect similar to that enjoyed by reptiles, said the procedures were not comparable to tattoos and piercings. Although they accepted evidence that the ear removal had been done quite well the judges said it was not in the public interest that a person could wound another for no good reason. In a statement issued after McCarthy pleaded guilty, Wolverhampton City Council said Public Protection officers had served a notice preventing him from carrying out extreme services. Additional reporting by PA An MP has blamed Theresa May after he says he was assaulted in the street. Lloyd Russell-Moyle said his attacker called him a traitor while he was out promoting a final vote on Brexit before grabbing his glasses and trying to hit him. The incident, on Thursday afternoon, came less than 24 hours after Mrs May gave a speech on Brexit in which she blamed MPs for deliberately delaying her attempts to ensure the UK leaves the EU on 29 March. In a series of tweets, Mr Russell Moyle, Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, said the prime minister had whipped up fear and division. Detailing the incident, he wrote: I was out today in the street of Kemptown with @itvnews, a vast majority want to remain and have a final say vote on deal vs remain. Unfortunately at the end of the day a man came up and started shouting at the TV crew and me. Saying MPs are the problems & we are traitors. "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Show all 15 1 /15 "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage waves from the top deck of the Brexit Betrayal bus on the march from Sunderland to London Reuters "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Marchers pass a sign to "Cuckoo Land" in Easington Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Marchers plod on near Grangetown, Tyne and Wear Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A marcher holds up a blue passport as the march passes Grangetown, Tyne and Wear Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage poses for a photo in a pub in Hartlepool Reuters "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage pays his respects to Tommy, the statue of a First World War soldier in Seaham, County Durham Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march An anti-Brexit van has been graffitied in Sunderland on the Brexit Betrayal march Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A marcher carries a Union flag reading "Storm Brexit" in Sunderland Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A couple push a Save Our Sovereignty trolley through a tunnel in Easington, County Durham during the Brexit Betrayal march Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage enjoys a pint with fellow marchers in Hartlepool Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A pro-European counter-marcher lets off a smoke grenade with the colours of the EU flag Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage leads the march in Easington Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Marchers plod on near Easington Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage takes part in the Brexit Betrayal march Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage poses on the top deck of the Brexit Betrayal bus in Seaham Getty He tried to assault me, grabbed & bent my glasses and for a moment I thought he was going to hit me. 3 grown men had to prise him off me. This is not normal. Speaking to the Brighton Argus after the incident in which he said he was not hurt he added: This gentleman came out of Morrisons and said Why the hell are you doing this, youre trying to deny the will of the people? He got very agitated and lunged for me. He was clearly angry and probably a bit disturbed. It sums up what Brexit is all about. Nasty, vengeful and without any logical arguments. He went on: Theresa May said last night that its her vs MPs, that MPs have frustrated the will of the people. If something far worse happens to other MPs because of what shes said it will be on her. The suspected attacker, himself, walked off after the incident, the newspaper reports. The Independent has contacted Sussex Police for comment. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events It comes on the same day the Independent Group MP Anna Soubry said she was too scared to go home because of Brexit death threats. The former Tory and hard-line Remainer said: "This is the reality of it, that's why the language that politicians and indeed everybody uses, including the media, is so important." "We believe adding a sentence prohibiting the firing of any projectile during these drills is a sufficient and necessary guideline going forward," Zeheralis's testimony read. "No one in education takes these drills lightly. The risk of harming someone far outweighs whatever added realism may be sought." More than a million people have signed a petition calling for the government to revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit. The governments petition website crashed several times on Thursday as hundreds of thousands of people voiced their discontent for Theresa Mays plans for the UKs withdrawal from the European Union. The one million signature mark was passed shortly after the prime minister arrived in Brussels, where she is expected to plead with European leaders to agree a delay on Britain exiting the bloc. The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is the will of the people, the petitions organiser Margaret Anne Georgiadou wrote. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now for remaining in the EU. A Peoples Vote may not happen so vote now. Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Show all 11 1 /11 Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray (left) and a pro-Brexit protester argue as they demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament A pro-Brexit protester argues Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Police surround the pro-Brexit protester after he confronted Steve Bray, a pro-European protester Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament A leave supporter is spoken to by a police officer as he argues with a remain supporter, Steve Bray, outside Parliament PA Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament MPs in Parliament are to vote on Theresa May's Brexit deal next week after her December vote was called off in the face of a major defeat Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament A leave supporter is spoken to by a police officer PA Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Police look on as anti-Brexit protesters demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament. Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Police hold back a leave supporter PA Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament A police officer speaks with anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Police surround a pro-Brexit protester after he confronted a pro-European protester Getty Images Police separate clashing Brexit protesters outside Parliament Conservative MP David Davies, wearing a gopro camera, speaks to anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray Getty Images The Petitions Committee, a cross-party group of MPs appointed to examine petitions to parliament, said the rate of signing was the highest its website had ever had to deal with. At 12.45pm, the committee said between 80,000 and 100,000 people were trying to simultaneously view the petition page, while 2,000 were signing every second. Recommended Conspiracy theories abound after Article 50 petition website crashes The petition first went live on the government website in February, but received little attention until Wednesday evening. Interest appears to have spiked following Ms Mays statement from Downing Street, in which she blamed MPs for the current impasse threatening to dump Britain out of the EU without a withdrawal deal in a little over a weeks time. The petition passed 100,000 signatures at 8.30pm, just as the prime minister was beginning her speech, while a million more have added their names in the hours since. It has also eclipsed the 370,000 signatures attracted on a petition started in November calling for Britain to leave the EU without a deal. Despite record-breaking interest in the petition over the past 24 hours, senior government figures have already moved to dismiss its importance. Speaking on Thursday afternoon, leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom said she had been made aware the petition site had experienced outages due to high demand. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Should it reach 17.4 million respondents then Im sure there would be a very clear case for taking action, she added. But I do understand it is absolutely right that people do have the opportunity to put their views and that can then spark yet another Brexit debate. Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said it was possible but highly unlikely Britain would withdraw Article 50, conceding it was among a limited list of options if Ms Mays deal failed to get through the Commons next week. Meanwhile, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn refused to rule out the unilateral revocation of Article 50 when asked if he would consider it as a solution to the current crisis in Westminster. So far as we are concerned, we think there is an urgency in constructing a majority for an agreeable solution and thats what were concentrating on at the moment, Mr Corbyn added following a meeting with European leaders in Brussels. No prime minister in living memory has been tested like Theresa May, a cabinet minister claimed. Jeremy Hunt rallied behind the prime minister in the wake of her inflammatory late-night address on Wednesday, where she heaped blame for the delay to Brexit on parliament and told the public: I am on your side. Amid a furious backlash from MPs, the foreign secretary said Ms May was under extraordinary pressure and warned that Brexit had sapped our national confidence. Mr Hunt also upped the stakes for Brexiteers, warning that MPs could revoke the Article 50 process next week if Ms Mays deal is defeated again. The prime minister is travelling to Brussels for what could be the UKs final summit as a member of the EU, where she will make the case for delaying exit day until 30 June. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Mr Hunt told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: We have to accept that no prime minister in living memory has been tested in the way that she has. He then clarified that he meant outside of wartime, adding: She has had to negotiate a deal with EU which is incredibly difficult, she has had to cope without having a majority in parliament which makes it doubly difficult. So I dont think we should make this all about Theresa May because I think anyone in her shoes would have found this thing very difficult. His comments immediately sparked debate on social media over whether Ms May had endured a more turbulent time in office than Winston Churchill or former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown during the 2008 financial crisis. He said the prime minister felt a sense of frustration over being forced to appeal to EU leaders for a delay to Brexit, after MPs overwhelmingly rejected her deal twice. Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Show all 60 1 /60 Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Anu Shukla Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Phil Watson Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Dogs rallied in Brexit protest Hundreds of protesters gathered with their dogs for the 'Brexit is a Dog's Dinner' rally near Parliament in Westminster on Sunday 10 March 2019. Campaigners said they were concerned about the impact of leaving the EU on animal welfare. They said Brexit will make it difficult to take pets abroad, lead to a deficit in vets in the UK and increase the cost of animal healthcare. From bulldogs to whippets, dogs gathered to feast on treats and snacks at specially prepared dinner tables where they were served by their very own butler. The event was organised by the Wooferendum group, which also staged an event in August last year to demand a stop to Brexit. Ben Starr Mr Hunt said: She is absolutely determined to deliver what people voted for and I think ... the Brexit process has sapped our national confidence and we need to remember now what were capable of as a country. With a matter of days to go until Britains departure from the EU, Ms May formally requested an extension to the end of June in a letter to European Council president Donald Tusk on Wednesday. Ahead of todays Brussels meeting, Mr Tusk said a short delay should be possible but only if MPs finally back her deal before 29 March. With fears in Brussels growing that the UK is heading for a no-deal exit, he said he would not hesitate to call an emergency summit next week if that proved necessary. Mr Hunt said Britain would be faced with three options if Ms Mays deal is defeated again next week: revoke Article 50; leave without a deal; or, he said, a longer extension could be granted at an emergency EU summit, but with onerous conditions. The choice that we have now is one of resolving this issue or extreme unpredictability, he said. Recommended How to get to the Put It To The People march this Saturday Ms Mays Wednesday speech appears to have backfired, prompting fury from MPs who accused her of encouraging abuse against them. Pro-EU Tory Sam Gyimah, who quit as a minister over her deal, described her remarks as toxic. He said: Resorting to the blame game as the PM is doing is a low blow. Democracy loses when a PM who has set herself against the House of Commons then blames MPs for doing their job. Anna Soubry, who left the Conservatives to join the breakaway Independent Group, described it as the most dishonest and divisive statement from any prime minister. Close European Council President Donald Tusk tells media that EU leaders agree to delay the Brexit process Theresa Mays request to extend triggering Article 50 until the end of June was rejected by the EU, which instead offered a shorter time frame. Ms May has now accepted the offer of a delay until May 22 if her withdrawal deal is approved by Parliament. If MPs reject it for a third time, the EU says Britain must propose a new plan by April 12. The result of this would either be a much longer delay or crashing out of the EU without a deal. Ms May said she will not support a long delay because it would mean Britain participating in elections for the European Parliament. Heres how events unfolded: Please allow a moment for the liveblog to load The UK will be heading for a no-deal Brexit if MPs reject Theresa Mays deal next week, EU leaders have warned as they arrived at a summit in Brussels to discuss an extension to Article 50. French president Emmanuel Macron led the warnings, telling reporters on the doorstep of the meeting that a no vote in parliament was effectively a vote for no deal Brexit. "We have to be clear: we can discuss and agree an extension if it is a technical extension in the case of a yes vote. In the case of a 'no' vote, it will guide everybody to a no-deal, for sure, Mr Macron said. He added that such an extension could only be a technical one shorter than the June 30 one requested by Theresa May, and that and that a longer delay would require a deep political change in the UK. We cannot have a long-lasting situation where there is no visibility, no purpose, no political majority, he said. Recommended Jeremy Corbyn refuses to rule out revoking Article 50 There must be a deep political change for there to be anything else other than a technical extension. On Wednesday Brussels officials said an extension was a binary choice between a short extension until mid-May and a longer extension that went to the end of the year and saw the UK participate in EU elections. Other EU leaders gave a similar message to Mr Macron. Luxembourgish prime minister Xavier Bettel said: At the moment, there are more non-options on the table than options... I sometimes have the feeling that we are in the waiting room, a bit like Waiting for Godot. But Godot never came so I hope this time they will come." If next week, the UK is not able to find an agreement in the House of Commons, we are going in the direction of a no-deal. I really hope that we will find an agreement. The time is up," said Slovenian prime minister Marjan Sarec. "It's time for decisions. Because we are concerned what the European Union's future would be, not only the UK's. Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar described the situation in London as somewhat chaotic, while Italian PM Giuseppe Conte said: We think a short delay could be useful. We need to wait for a new vote in the British parliament. None of the leaders mentioned the elephant in the room, however that the Speaker of the Commons has said the Government cannot bring the deal back for another vote under parliamentary rules. "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Show all 15 1 /15 "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage waves from the top deck of the Brexit Betrayal bus on the march from Sunderland to London Reuters "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Marchers pass a sign to "Cuckoo Land" in Easington Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Marchers plod on near Grangetown, Tyne and Wear Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A marcher holds up a blue passport as the march passes Grangetown, Tyne and Wear Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage poses for a photo in a pub in Hartlepool Reuters "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage pays his respects to Tommy, the statue of a First World War soldier in Seaham, County Durham Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march An anti-Brexit van has been graffitied in Sunderland on the Brexit Betrayal march Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A marcher carries a Union flag reading "Storm Brexit" in Sunderland Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A couple push a Save Our Sovereignty trolley through a tunnel in Easington, County Durham during the Brexit Betrayal march Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage enjoys a pint with fellow marchers in Hartlepool Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A pro-European counter-marcher lets off a smoke grenade with the colours of the EU flag Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage leads the march in Easington Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Marchers plod on near Easington Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage takes part in the Brexit Betrayal march Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage poses on the top deck of the Brexit Betrayal bus in Seaham Getty EU heads of state and government must unanimously approve any extension to Article 50, meaning each one effectively holds a veto. The UK can however unilaterally revoke Article 50 to avoid a no-deal Brexit. EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier also attended the meeting. He told reporters waiting on the doorstep: A short extension of the departure date of the UK, chosen by the UK, such an extension should be conditional on a positive vote next week in the House of Commons. We have done our best, now the solution is in London. Arriving at the meeting, Theresa May herself said the prospect of a delay was a matter of regret for her. She confirmed she would seek an extension until June 30. Britains military has set up a team in a nuclear bunker beneath the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to prepare for a no-deal Brexit. Some 3,500 troops were being held at readiness to aid in contingency plans if the UK leaves the European Union (EU) without an agreement in place, a spokesperson said. The mission, dubbed Operation Redford, was activated at the beginning of the week. It could see the armed forces working to transport food, fuel and other essentials around the UK. The bunker, which sits underneath the main MoD building in Whitehall, has been used by the armed forces in wartime and during responses to national disasters such as flooding. A spokesperson for the MoD said: We are always willing to support wider government planning for any scenario, and we have committed to holding 3,500 troops at readiness to aid contingency plans. We will consider any requests from other government departments if they feel defence capability could contribute to their no-deal planning. Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Show all 15 1 /15 Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Pork There will be tariffs on pork in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cheese There will be tariffs in place on some cheeses including 22.10/100kg of cheddar, 19.10/100kg of processed cheese and 18.60/100kg on some blue cheeses Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Milk There will be no tariffs in place on milk Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Car Parts There will be no tariffs on car parts imported from Europe PA Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cars However finished cars will face tariffs of 10.6% Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Alcoholic drinks There will be no tariffs on alcoholic drinks - except on some rums due to ingredients used in their distilling process Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Beef There will be tariffs on beef in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fish There will be no tariffs on many types of fish including cod, haddock, salmon and sea bass Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fruit and vegetables There will be no tariffs on almost all fruit and vegetables Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Chocolate There will be no tariffs on chocolate or other cocoa products Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Poultry There will be tariffs on poultry in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Ceramics There will be some tariffs in place on ceramis Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Steel There will be no tariffs on steel Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Coal There will be no tariffs on coal Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Lamb/Mutton There will be tariffs on the meat of sheep in order to protect British farmers Getty It comes as the EU looks set to offer to delay Brexit until 22 May, as long as MPs approve Theresa Mays withdrawal deal in a House of Commons vote next week. The proposed extension is five weeks short of the 30 June date the prime minister requested on Wednesday, and it would ensure the UK is no longer a part of the EU during the upcoming European Parliament elections. However, if MPs turn down Ms Mays agreement for a third time, several EU leaders have warned the UK could face a no-deal Brexit on 29 March. French president Emmanuel Macron said only a short technical extension was available and said if MPs reject the agreement it will guide everybody to a no-deal for sure. Describing the UK as being in a political crisis, Mr Macron said: There needs to be a profound political change if there is to be an extension which is anything other than technical. Luxembourgs prime minister Xavier Bettel compared said the negotations were "a bit like Waiting for Godot. But Godot never came so I hope this time they will come. He added: At the moment, there are more non-options on the table than options." Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte also said a short delay "could be useful." The governments petition website crashed after three quarters of a million people urged the government to revoke Article 50 and remain in the European Union amid continuing Brexit turmoil. The site experienced outages on Thursday as hundreds of thousands of people offered their support to the petition after Theresa May was forced to beg Brussels for a delay to Britains exit from the bloc. The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is the will of the people, the petitions organiser Margaret Anne Georgiadou wrote. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now for remaining in the EU. A Peoples Vote may not happen so vote now. By Thursday morning, the petition had garnered more than 900,000 signatures, eclipsing the 370,000 a petition launched in November calling for a no-deal Brexit has so far attracted. Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Show all 18 1 /18 Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well These billboards were plastered by campaign group Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well PA Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Any petition of more than 100,000 signatures started on the official parliamentary website is automatically considered for a debate in the Commons. The prime minister addressed the nation on Wednesday evening, insisting she is on the side of the public as the battle over Brexit in parliament descended into chaos, while refusing to offer compromises to opposition MPs. With little over a week until Britain is due to exit the EU, Ms May asked Brussels for a delay until 30 June, a move she described as a matter of deep personal regret. European Council president Donald Tusk has indicated the EU would be prepared to offer the prime minister a short extension, but only if her deal wins the backing of the Commons in a third meaningful vote next week. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Brussels remains open to a longer extension, although Ms May has hinted she will resign if MPs demand a significant delay to the withdrawal process. Ms May will travel to Brussels on Thursday for a meeting of the European Council, where she will make the case to European leaders to give her more time to push her deal through parliament. Theresa Mays statement about a delay to Brexit went down so badly that BBC News was unable to find anyone who supported it. The channels Outside Source programme - which assembles reaction to the headlines from social media and other sources - was forced to show only negative Twitter comments about the prime ministers Downing Street speech on Wednesday night. Ive got colleagues down here in the newsroom, were trying to bring up tweets from a range of different people no one is being positive about it, said presenter Ros Atkins as he discussed reaction to Ms Mays statement. The programme showed tweets from Brexit-supporting broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer, who claimed the prime minister was not on my side, as well as SNP MP Alan Brown, who said Ms Mays lack of self awareness and culpability is astounding. Twelve minutes later, scrolling through further negative tweets, Mr Atkins added: Were looking for people enthused by it believe me were looking were just not finding it. Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Show all 9 1 /9 Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Boris Johnson Former foreign secretary Boris Johnson has long been hopeful, he previously stood in the leadership contest that followed the Brexit vote and has at many times since been thought to be maneuvering himself towards the goal. He remains a darling of the party's right wing, particularly those in the ERG, and is the most popular choice among Tory voters but his leadership bid would be fiercely opposed by many MPs PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Michael Gove Environment secretary Michael Gove is another member who has long wanted to be leader. He has lately been known for rousing his party in the commons, his recent speeches on the Brexit deal and Labour's no confidence motion have overshadowed the Prime Minister's. He has been loyal to the Prime Minister, partly to shed his reputation as a backstabber who abandoned Boris Johnson to stand against him in the 2016 leadership election Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Dominic Raab Former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab has emerged as a favourite to be the Brexiteer candidate in a contest to succeed to Ms May. He displayed a grip on detail in his role as Brexit secretary. When asked recently if he would like to become prime minister he replied "never say never" Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Rory Stewart International development secretary Rory Stewart is pitching himself as the sensible candidate, promising to rule out both a second referendum and a no-deal Brexit. He was only recently promoted to the cabinet, previously serving as prisons minister, where he caught headlines with a pledge to resign if he could not reduce levels of violence within a year PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Esther McVey The former work and pensions secretary announced that she will be standing for the leadership when May leaves. McVey is the first to explicitly state that she intends to stand. She resigned from the cabinet in protest over May's Brexit deal AFP/Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Sajid Javid Home secretary Sajid Javid is said to have a plan in place for a leadership race. He made headlines over Christmas when he declared that people smuggling over the English channel was a "major incident" and more recently when he revoked the citizenship of ISIS bride Shamima Begum. Son of a bus driver, he wants the Conservatives to be seen as the party of social mobility PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Jeremy Hunt Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt was recently thought to be the favourite in the event of a leadership race as he could sell himself as the man to unite the party. Critics worry that his long stint as health secretary could return to haunt him at a general election. He has reportedly been holding meetings with Tory MPs over breakfast to promote his leadership PA Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Andrea Leadsom Following the Prime Minister's second defeat over her Brexit deal, Leader of the house Andrea Leadsom hosted a dinner party at which "leadership was the only topic of conversation", The Times heard. Leadsom ran against Theresa May in the 2016 leadership election before dropping out, allowing May to become Prime Minister AFP/Getty Who could succeed Theresa May as Conservative leader? Priti Patel Former international development secretary Priti Patel is thought to be positioning herself as a contender. One MP told The Independent "she knows she's from the right of the party, the part which is going to choose the next leader, so she's reminding everyone she's there." Patel left the government late in 2017 after it emerged that she had held undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials PA MPs across the political spectrum reacted with fury to the prime ministers televised statement, in which she blamed parliament for blocking her Brexit deal and said she was sure that you, the public, have had enough of political games. Labours Wes Streeting accused the prime minister of putting MPs lives in danger with an incendiary address, while former Conservative minister Sam Gyimah said the blame game was a low blow. Ms May's speech came after EU Council president Donald Tusk told her she would only secure an extension to Article 50 if she could seal a deal with parliament. MPs have called Theresa May irresponsible, disgraceful and toxic after she blamed them for for the UKs impending failure to leave the EU on 29 March. Labours Wes Streeting accused the prime minister of putting MPs lives in danger with an incendiary address. Ms May used a Downing Street speech to criticise the very people she needs to get her Brexit deal through the Commons at the third time of asking, telling voters that she was sure that you, the public, have had enough of political games. She said: Youre tired of the infighting, youre tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our childrens schools, our National Health Service, knife crime. You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side. Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Show all 15 1 /15 Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Pork There will be tariffs on pork in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cheese There will be tariffs in place on some cheeses including 22.10/100kg of cheddar, 19.10/100kg of processed cheese and 18.60/100kg on some blue cheeses Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Milk There will be no tariffs in place on milk Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Car Parts There will be no tariffs on car parts imported from Europe PA Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cars However finished cars will face tariffs of 10.6% Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Alcoholic drinks There will be no tariffs on alcoholic drinks - except on some rums due to ingredients used in their distilling process Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Beef There will be tariffs on beef in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fish There will be no tariffs on many types of fish including cod, haddock, salmon and sea bass Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fruit and vegetables There will be no tariffs on almost all fruit and vegetables Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Chocolate There will be no tariffs on chocolate or other cocoa products Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Poultry There will be tariffs on poultry in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Ceramics There will be some tariffs in place on ceramis Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Steel There will be no tariffs on steel Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Coal There will be no tariffs on coal Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Lamb/Mutton There will be tariffs on the meat of sheep in order to protect British farmers Getty It came after another difficult day for Ms May, with EU Council president Donald Tusk telling her the bloc would only approve an extension to Article 50 if she could seal a deal in parliament. Mr Tusk later told reporters that hope for a final success may seem frail, even illusory, but that he would not give up seeking until the very last moment a positive solution. After the PM blamed them for doing everything possible to avoid making a choice on either leaving the EU with a deal, without one or not at all, MPs from all sides piled in. Mr Streeting tweeted: @theresa_may knows that MPs across the House are subjected to death threats some very credible. Her speech was incendiary and irresponsible. If any harm comes to any of us, she will have to accept her share of responsibility. His Labour colleague Lisa Nandy accused Ms May of pitting parliament against the people, saying that to do so was dangerous and reckless. She added: Yesterday her government attacked their civil servants. Now shes attacking the MPs whose votes she needs. It will have cost her support. Sam Gyimah, the Conservative former minister, said that engaging in a blame game was a low blow. Democracy loses when a PM who has set herself against the HoC then blames MPs for doing their job. Distracts from Art 50 extension, all part of her strategy to run down the clock and rule out other options. Toxic, he added. Fellow Tory Connor Burns asked of the address: What was actually the point of that? Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson tweeted: PM says MPs havent said what they want??? @LibDems and many others have been crystal clear WE WANT A PEOPLES VOTE AND WE WANT IT NOW! And Anna Soubry, who left the Conservatives for The Independent Group, tweeted: Fed up with Brexit? Appalled at the incompetent, mendacious stubborn way @theresa_may has turned us into a national laughing stock, putting her party before national interest? Join us on Saturday in London to demand a @peoplesvote_uk Its the only way out of the #BrexitCrisis. In the ocean of doubt that is Brexit, there is perhaps a little buoy of certainty about what will happen in the next few days. We know that the legal position as stated in statute is that the UK will leave the EU on 29 March, regardless of the fact that the House of Commons has expressed a desire not to do that. However, on Thursday EU leaders were saying that with no deal yet in place, they are ready to give Theresa May a short extension of the Article 50 negotiating period to delay the UKs departure. They are proposing delaying Brexit to 22 May, but only if the prime minister can convince MPs to approve the Brexit deal they painstakingly negotiated with the UK. So given that is the case, we can expect her to try to bring her deal for a third vote in the Commons next week most likely on Monday or Tuesday. If that passes, then the path is clear: Brexit is delayed until late May allowing time for necessary legislation to be approved by the Commons smoothly hopefully and then the UK leaves in an orderly fashion. But wait, this is where things already become hazy. Commons speaker John Bercow has said he will block any attempt to bring Ms Mays deal back for a third vote if the proposition on offer is not substantially different from previous attempts. Whether it is or not is his call, and he has tended to act in whatever way most annoys the government. Even if it can convince Mr Bercow to allow the vote, it still needs to win it. Before Ms Mays statement on Wednesday night, the numbers were already looking bone-achingly tight. But there was at least a feeling that people were moving in the right direction. Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Show all 15 1 /15 Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Pork There will be tariffs on pork in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cheese There will be tariffs in place on some cheeses including 22.10/100kg of cheddar, 19.10/100kg of processed cheese and 18.60/100kg on some blue cheeses Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Milk There will be no tariffs in place on milk Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Car Parts There will be no tariffs on car parts imported from Europe PA Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cars However finished cars will face tariffs of 10.6% Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Alcoholic drinks There will be no tariffs on alcoholic drinks - except on some rums due to ingredients used in their distilling process Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Beef There will be tariffs on beef in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fish There will be no tariffs on many types of fish including cod, haddock, salmon and sea bass Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fruit and vegetables There will be no tariffs on almost all fruit and vegetables Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Chocolate There will be no tariffs on chocolate or other cocoa products Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Poultry There will be tariffs on poultry in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Ceramics There will be some tariffs in place on ceramis Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Steel There will be no tariffs on steel Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Coal There will be no tariffs on coal Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Lamb/Mutton There will be tariffs on the meat of sheep in order to protect British farmers Getty But then the prime minister told the whole country, and all the voters in it, that their MPs were to blame for constantly blocking Brexit. Predictably there has been a huge backlash with some MPs who said they might back the deal, now saying they will not. Now the feeling, which admittedly changes every few hours in Westminster, is that Ms Mays deal is looking less and less likely to pass. Neither Ms May nor the EU has spelt out exactly what happens in this instance, but there are basically two options: a long delay to Brexit, possibly even a revocation of Article 50, or a no-deal Brexit. For the EUs part, French president Emmanuel Macron has said if the deal is rejected for a third time in the Commons then the UK should simply be pushed to a no-deal Brexit. While he has been applauded by some Brexiteers in the UK, many suspect this is a bluff to try to get MPs to vote for the deal next week. European Council president Donald Tusk has indicated that if the deal is beaten again, there may be an emergency summit towards the end of next week to decide what happens next. The chances are that the EU would offer the UK a long extension of the Article 50 period, possibly up to nine months, but there would be onerous and humiliating conditions attached. Nigel Farage leads pro-Brexit march from Sunderland to London The UK would have to take part in EU elections, there would be pressure for a new referendum and a new EU negotiating stance, that in all likelihood would involve the bloc dictating that the UK must have a closer relationship in the future, possibly staying in a customs union. The problem is that Ms May gave a clear statement earlier this week that she is not a prime minister who will consider a lengthy delay to Brexit. This could mean that if the only choices left are a long delay or no deal, that she will quit and allow her successor to take the country into the extended Article 50 period. It could also mean that she opts for a no-deal Brexit. There is, however, one other complicating factor. Once again its those pesky MPs. On Monday there will probably be another opportunity for them, one way or another, to try to seize control of parliaments schedule with an eye on preventing a no-deal scenario from ever taking place and most likely guiding the UK into a softer Brexit relationship, or towards a new referendum, or even perhaps to a revocation of Article 50 altogether. With Brexit at the moment, it is best to take it one key event at a time. So if you begin to feel a bit seasick, just focus on the next crucial step will Mr Bercow allow Ms May to hold her third vote? Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said that if the British parliament votes against the withdrawal agreement next week, it will guide everybody to a no deal, for sure. Should we believe him? The short answer is no. But it is complicated, and it is still possible that the UK could leave the EU next Friday without a deal. So why shouldnt we believe the man known in the banlieues of Paris as the Chuka Umunna of France? Attorneys for the Legislature say that argument is absurd and that the Legislature has used extraordinary sessions for decades. They warned Niess that adopting the liberal groups' position could leave more than 3,000 pages of statutes passed during such sessions vulnerable to legal challenges. The Legislature's attorney, Misha Tseytlin, said during a hearing this week that such a scenario would be a "rolling disaster." Jeremy Corbyn has refused to rule out revoking Article 50 as a last resort in order to stop a no-deal Brexit. The Labour leader said he would not entertain hypotheticals when asked twice about revocation during a visit to meet EU leaders in Brussels. These are hypotheticals. So far as were concerned, we think theres an urgency in constructing a majority for an agreeable solution and thats what were concentrating on at the moment, he said when asked about the move. Asked again, he replied: We think that what were proposing can be achieved in the British parliament ... we do believe we can construct a majority which will prevent the crashing out and all the chaos that will come from crashing out. A Labour spokesperson later confirmed the partys position: As we have always said, we respect the result of the referendum and will do whatever is necessary to prevent a no-deal outcome. We do not believe that revoking Article 50 is in any way necessary. Mr Corbyn visited the de facto EU capital on Thursday at the same time as Theresa May, meeting with senior European Commission officials like Michel Barnier and Martin Selmayr. He also met with senior centre-left prime ministers at their pre-summit gathering. Recommended What you need to know about stopping Brexit and revoking Article 50 Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, who is also in the EU capital, told The Independent that he would prefer a new referendum to revoking Article 50, but that MPs may have to go ahead with a revocation as a last resort. Its a last resort. We prefer a referendum than revocation, he said. But if that isnt possible, parliamentarians may need to revoke article 50 in order to protect the country from no deal. The European Court of Justice ruled last year that Britain could unilaterally revoke Article 50 effectively ending the Brexit process and keeping the UK in the EU until it was triggered again. A mere extension to the negotiating period, however, requires the consent of the other 27 EU member states. Britain will leave the EU if the Article 50 period is allowed to expire with or without a deal in place. Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Show all 18 1 /18 Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well These billboards were plastered by campaign group Led By Donkeys @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well PA Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter Top politicians' Brexit tweets haven't aged well @ByDonkeys / Twitter MPs have voted in principle against a no-deal Brexit, but the government will have to have to find a way to avert one: either by getting a deal in place, extending the Article 50 deadline, or revoking Article 50 entirely. Revoking Article 50 has been a little-discussed option in the Brexit process so far. The idea has, however, been given a boost in recent days, after an online petition backing the move hit around 900,000 signatures and climbing, as of early on Thursday afternoon. Arriving at Thursdays European Council meeting in Brussels Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said a no-deal would only ever be a British choice because the UK has the power to revoke Article 50. Hospitals have been ordered not to tell the public about any damage they expect to suffer from Brexit because it would hurt commercial interests. Requests for information about the impact on the supply of goods and services, and on EU staff numbers, should be refused, the department of health and social care has said. Releasing the information could cause trusts premature financial harm, and so possibly put public wellbeing at risk, hospital bosses were told. The guidance was revealed as Theresa May increased the threat of a no-deal Brexit if MPs still refuse to pass her deal, arriving at the Brussels summit meaning hospitals would have to trigger emergency plans next week. Unearthed by the Health Service Journal (HSJ), it goes as far as suggesting the relevant exemptions under the freedom of information act (FOIA) that could be used to block requests. The advice was revealed after the HSJ submitted FOI requests to every trust in England, asking for their self-assessments of the impact of Brexit. The department then issued guidance stating: Our advice at this point is that trusts should not share this information, as we consider it to be commercially confidential. Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Show all 15 1 /15 Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Pork There will be tariffs on pork in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cheese There will be tariffs in place on some cheeses including 22.10/100kg of cheddar, 19.10/100kg of processed cheese and 18.60/100kg on some blue cheeses Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Milk There will be no tariffs in place on milk Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Car Parts There will be no tariffs on car parts imported from Europe PA Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cars However finished cars will face tariffs of 10.6% Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Alcoholic drinks There will be no tariffs on alcoholic drinks - except on some rums due to ingredients used in their distilling process Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Beef There will be tariffs on beef in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fish There will be no tariffs on many types of fish including cod, haddock, salmon and sea bass Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fruit and vegetables There will be no tariffs on almost all fruit and vegetables Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Chocolate There will be no tariffs on chocolate or other cocoa products Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Poultry There will be tariffs on poultry in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Ceramics There will be some tariffs in place on ceramis Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Steel There will be no tariffs on steel Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Coal There will be no tariffs on coal Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Lamb/Mutton There will be tariffs on the meat of sheep in order to protect British farmers Getty Release of the self-assessment results could prejudice the commercial interests of the entities involved in the exercise (you should consider S43 of the FOIA). Also, release of details could cause health and social care institutions premature financial harm, and so possibly put public wellbeing at risk (you should consider S29 of the FOIA). You will note that the templates issued were marked as Official Sensitive on the basis that the content would not be shared publicly. Each trusts FOI lead should be responsible for considering which exemptions to apply and the wording of the response, according to the guidance. Despite it being issued, several trusts chose to release their entire self-assessments. Some have also included parts of the information in their publicly-available board papers, the HSJ said. Nevertheless, around 150 trusts either withheld the self-assessments using various FOI exemptions or did not respond to its request. A department of health and social care spokeswoman defended the advice, saying: Leaving the EU with a deal is the government's top priority, but as a responsible department it is right we are prepared for every eventuality. The self-assessment of the supply chain is a vital part of this work. In order to secure high quality information, it was important commercially sensitive information from suppliers was treated in confidence. The spokeswoman also downplayed the danger from a crash-out Brexit, adding: We have robust contingency plans in place and we are confident that, if everyone does what they need to do, there should be no impact on patients in the event of exiting the EU without a deal. Three schoolgirls have been sent to prison in Burundi accused of scribbling on a picture of president Pierre Nkurunziza in their textbooks, a human rights group has said. Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the girls, who are all under the age of 18, face up to five years in prison if found guilty. A father of one of the girls said they were too scared to eat, according to Lewis Mudge, HRWs central Africa director. The girls were arrested on 12 March along with three other schoolgirls and a 13-year-old boy, who was later released because he was below the age of criminal responsibility. While three of the six girls were also released without charge, the remaining teenagers were charged on Monday with insulting the head of state. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty In 2016, eight secondary school students were arrested and accused of insulting the head of state for writing phrases such as get out and no to the third term on a picture of Mr Nkurunziza in a textbook. Hundreds of children were also expelled for defacing pictures of the president in textbooks. Burundi has been beset by crisis since Mr Nkurunziza stood for a third term in office in 2015. His announcement was followed by widespread demonstrations and an attempted coup, and human rights groups say thousands have been killed and displaced by the violence. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events With so many real crimes being committed in Burundi, its tragic that children are the ones being prosecuted for harmless scribbles, Mr Mudge said. Authorities should focus on holding perpetrators of serious rights violations to account instead of jailing schoolchildren for doodles. The pilot of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 was never trained on the Boeing 737 Max 8 simulator before the plane crashed, even though the airline was one the first to installs the simulator, according to airline sources. The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Ethiopian Airlines had not authorised disclosure of the information, said the carrier had the Max 8 simulator up and running two months before Flight 302 crashed. Boeing has said that experienced 737 pilots needed little training for the new Max 8, an assertion that has now come under close scrutiny by regulatory officials and pilots at other airlines. Two of the planes have fatally crashed in the past five months, and regulators around the world grounded all Max 8s last week. The captain of Flight 302, Yared Getachew, who had 8,000 hours of flying experience including on the 737, took a refresher course on a different simulator in late September and early October, according to one person familiar with the airline. Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures Show all 9 1 /9 Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures This picture taken on March 11, 2019, shows debris of the crashed airplane of Ethiopia Airlines, near Bishoftu, a town some 60 kilometres southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. - An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 crashed on March 10 morning en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi with 149 passengers and eight crew believed to be on board, Ethiopian Airlines said. (Photo by Michael TEWELDE / AFP)MICHAEL TEWELDE/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures Family members mourn the victims at the crash site of the Ethiopian Airlines operated Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, at Hama Quntushele village in the Oromia region, on March 13, 2019. - A Nairobi-bound Ethiopian Airlines Boeing crashed minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa on March 10, 2019, killing all eight crew and 149 passengers on board, including tourists, business travellers, and "at least a dozen" UN staff. Families of the victims were taken to the remote site on March 13, 2019, where the plane smashed into a field with 157 passengers and crew from 35 countries, leaving a deep black crater and tiny scraps of debris. (Photo by TONY KARUMBA / AFP)TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures A page of a Boeing flight crew operations manual is seen at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner REUTERS Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures epa07434278 Rescue workers search the site for pieces of the wreckage of an Ethiopia Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft near Bishoftu, Ethiopia, 13 March 2019. Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 302 carrying 149 passengers and 8 crew was en route to Nairobi, Kenya, when it crashed on 10 March 2019 by yet undetermined reason. All passengers and crew aboard died in the crash. The Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft has come under scrutiny after similar deadly crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia within a few months. Several countries have banned the plane type from their airspace and many airlines have grounded their 737 Max 8 planes for safety concerns after the Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed minutes after take-off on 10 March. EPA/STRINGER EPA Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures A grounded Boeing 737 MAX 8 passenger plane of the Norwegian low-cost airline Norwegian is parked at the tarmac at Vantaa airport in Vantaa near Helsinki, Finland on March 13, 2019. - A number of countries have banned Boeing's 737 MAX 8 medium-haul workhorse jet from their airspace in response to the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed all 157 people on board. (Photo by Heikki Saukkomaa / Lehtikuva / AFP) / Finland OUTHEIKKI SAUKKOMAA/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures Rescue workers search the site for pieces of the wreckage of an Ethiopia Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft near Bishoftu, Ethiopia, 13 March 2019. Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 302 carrying 149 passengers and 8 crew was en route to Nairobi, Kenya, when it crashed on 10 March 2019 by yet undetermined reason. All passengers and crew aboard died in the crash. The Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft has come under scrutiny after similar deadly crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia within a few months. Several countries have banned the plane type from their airspace and many airlines have grounded their 737 Max 8 planes for safety concerns after the Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed minutes after take-off on 10 March. EPA/STRINGER EPA Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures A heap of debris from the wreckage of an Ethiopia Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft are piled at the crash site near Bishoftu, Ethiopia, 13 March 2019. Ethiopian Airlines flight ET 302 carrying 149 passengers and 8 crew was en route to Nairobi, Kenya, when it crashed on 10 March 2019 by yet undetermined reason. All passengers and crew aboard died in the crash. The Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft has come under scrutiny after similar deadly crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia within a few months. Several countries have banned the plane type from their airspace and many airlines have grounded their 737 Max 8 planes for safety concerns after the Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed minutes after take-off on 10 March. EPA/STR EPA Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures A crew working with an investigative team to clear the site after the Sunday crash of the Ethiopian Airlines operated Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, carry debris at Hama Quntushele village in the Oromia region, on March 13, 2019. - A Nairobi-bound Ethiopian Airlines Boeing crashed minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all eight crew and 149 passengers on board, including tourists, business travellers, and "at least a dozen" UN staff. Families of the victims were taken to the remote site on March 13, 2019, where the plane smashed into a field with 157 passengers and crew from 35 countries, leaving a deep black crater and tiny scraps of debris. (Photo by TONY KARUMBA / AFP)TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Boeing 737 MAX grounding: Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 in pictures FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8, on a flight from Miami to New York City, comes in for landing at LaGuardia Airport in New York, U.S., March 12, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo REUTERS He was not due for another round of simulator training until after the crash on 10 March, they said. It was unclear if the second pilot on Flight 302, first officer Ahmednur Mohammed, had trained on the Max 8 simulator. And it was not clear if the airline had used the simulator for refresher courses it requires pilots to take every six months, or only to train new pilots. Still, use of the simulator by Ethiopian Airlines means the carrier was among the few in the world that not only had a working simulator for Boeing Max jets but was using it a few months after the first Max 8 crash, Lion Air Flight 610. Despite Boeings assertions that the plane was safe, the crashes have raised questions about whether Boeing and its US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), did enough to train pilots on how to deal with the Max 8s new features in particular an automated system to prevent stalls. Boeing said that pilots who had flown earlier models did not need additional simulator training, and even after the October crash in Indonesia, the FAA agreed. Many pilots learned the new features of the Boeing Max on an iPad, and many were not originally informed of the existence of the automated system, which can push the planes nose down if it is approaching a stall. The Ethiopian and Lion Air flights crashed minutes after takeoff and showed similar up-and-down oscillations before fatal nose-dives. A central focus of the Indonesian investigation is the possibility that the automated system pushed the nose down into a fatal dive because of inaccurate input from a sensor. The Ethiopian Flight 302 crash killed all 157 aboard and the Lion Air Flight 610 crash killed all 189. Even if both pilots on Flight 302 had trained on the simulator, it is unclear if such preparation would have included manoeuvres to deal with the kinds of problems they may have faced. After the Lion Air crash, Ethiopian Airlines also shared with its pilots Boeings instructions on how to deal with the kind of problems Lion Air pilots appeared to have encountered, the people close to Ethiopian Airlines operations said. In a bulletin issued in November, Boeing said that emergency procedures that applied to earlier 737 models would have corrected the problems that may have contributed to the Max 8 crash in Indonesia. Boeing jumbo jet tips backwards after airport workers mistakenly unload cargo from nose Pilots for Ethiopian Airlines, who declined to speak on the record, said they paid close attention to bulletins issued by aircraft manufacturers, especially following an accident. One pilot said failing to read the bulletins would be tantamount to walking out of your house naked. The Ethiopian crash has brought new scrutiny to the system Boeing put in its new Max planes to prevent stalls, called Mcas. The system was designed to compensate for changes to the aerodynamics that arose from alterations to the size and position of the engines on the wings. The pilots on the doomed Lion Air flight did not appear to understand why the jet was tipping downward and how to correct that problem. One flipped through a technical manual, and the other began to pray, according to the cockpit voice recording. Recommended Black box from crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight recovered An investigation is still underway to determine what caused the crash in Ethiopia. A possible fault in the Mcas system is part of the inquiry, and the authorities in Ethiopia have said that a preliminary review of the black boxes voice recording and flight data revealed similarities to the Indonesian crash. But experts have cautioned that any conclusions at this stage of an investigation are preliminary and could change. On Wednesday in Washington, the FAA published a notification to regulators in other countries reiterating that Boeing was preparing a software upgrade for the 737 Max along with training to accompany the updated software. The FAA said its review of the new software and training was an agency priority, as will be the roll-out of any software, training or other measures to operators of the 737 Max. The message from the FAA did not reveal any new information about what may have led to the crash in Ethiopia. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Understanding the circumstances that contributed to this accident is critical in developing further actions and returning aircraft to service, the FAA said. In a further sign of scrutiny facing Boeing and the FAA, a Senate subcommittee on aviation and space said it was planning a hearing next Wednesday on airline safety. In light of the recent tragedy in Ethiopia and the subsequent grounding of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft, this hearing will examine challenges to the state of commercial aviation safety, including any specific concerns highlighted by recent accidents, the subcommittee said in a statement. New York Times The Arkansas Senate has approved a bill that prohibits doctors from performing abortions if a foetus has been diagnosed with Down's syndrome. The bill was approved Wednesday by the Senate in a 29-2 vote, and prohibits doctors from performing the procedure if they know it is being sought solely because of the diagnosis, according to the Associated Press. The measure, which will now head to the House, is the latest restriction on abortion in the state. Prior to the vote, state Senator Breanne Davis gave an emotional presentation in which she discussed world Down's Syndrome Day, and her own daughter Everly, who was born with Down's syndrome. The bill is similar to one in effect in North Dakota, which prohibits abortion for reasons related to genetic anomaly. Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Show all 23 1 /23 Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists hold placards outside of the US Supreme Court ahead of an expected ruling on abortion clinic restrictions on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions An abortion rights activist holds placards outside of the US Supreme Court before the Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. The US Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Texas law placing a raft of restrictions on abortion clinics, handing a major victory to the "pro-choice" camp in the country's most important ruling on the divisive issue in a generation. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 27: Pro-life activists pray on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 27: Texas abortion provider Amy Hagstrom-Miller looks on as Nancy Northup, President of The Center for Reproductive Rights speaks to the media outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions An abortion rights activist holds placards outside of the US Supreme Court before the Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. The US Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Texas law placing a raft of restrictions on abortion clinics, handing a major victory to the "pro-choice" camp in the country's most important ruling on the divisive issue in a generation. Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Texas abortion provider Amy Hagstrom-Miller wipes a tear as she walks down the steps of the United States Supreme Court with Nancy Northup, President of The Center for Reproductive Rights on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 27: Abortion rights activists Morgan Hopkins of Boston, left, and Alison Turkos of New York City, celebrate on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 27: Abortion rights activists Morgan Hopkins of Boston, left, and Alison Turkos of New York City, celebrate on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. (Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images) Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activist Morgan Hopkins of Boston, celebrates on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists embrace after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists hold placards outside of the US Supreme Court ahead of a ruling on abortion clinic restrictions on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. / AFP / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. / AFP / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists embrace after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Pro-choice activist, Alissa Manzoeillo, of Washington, D.C. waits for rulings in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. A ruling is expected in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, a Texas case the places restrictions on abortion clinics, as well as rulings in the former Virginia Governor's corruption case and a gun rights case. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists hold placards outside of the US Supreme Court ahead of an expected ruling on abortion clinic restrictions on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists hold placards outside of the US Supreme Court ahead of an expected ruling on abortion clinic restrictions on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. AFP/Getty Images Last week, Arkansas passed legislation that bans most abortion after 18 weeks of pregnancy. The state has also passed a trigger law, according to CBS News, which would make abortion illegal in the event that Roe v Wade is overturned. Although the Supreme Court legalised abortion nationwide in 1973 with the landmark decision, the introduction of conservative justices on the Supreme Court has led some Republican-majority states to introduce trigger laws that would go into effect immediately. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events In Arkansas, the fifth state to have a trigger law, Act 180 states abortion in Arkansas would be abolished and there would not be exceptions for rape or incest. A descendant of enslaved people has sued Harvard University, alleging that the Ivy League institution has shamelessly profited from photos of her ancestors. Tamara Lanier, of Norwich, Connecticut, claims that Harvard has ignored requests to surrender images of a man named Renty, whom she says is her great-great-great grandfather, and his daughter Delia. The images, which date back to the 19th century, show Renty and Delia, of South Carolina, shirtless. They are believed to be among the earliest known photos of enslaved people in America. Lanier is suing Harvard for wrongful seizure, possession and expropriation of the images, asking the university to return the photos to her, pay unspecified damages, and recognise her ancestry. A Harvard spokesman told the Associated Press that the institution has not yet been served, and with that is in no position to comment on this complaint. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The images, also known as daguerreotypes, were taken as part of a study by Louis Agassiz, a Swiss-American Harvard biologist whose work was used to support slavery. A 1996 paper about Agassizs 1850 photos, published in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, a former academic journal and current online publication that reports on race and education in the US, states that Agassizs images served two purposes: one nominally scientific, and the other frankly political. They were designed to analyse the the physical differences between white people and black people, the article states, but at the same time they were meant to prove the superiority of the white race. Agassizs images are currently kept at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography at Harvards Cambridge, Massachusetts campus. To Agassiz, Renty and Delia were nothing more than research specimens, Laniers suit states. The violence of compelling them to participate in a degrading exercise designed to prove their own subhuman status would not have occurred to him, let alone mattered. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events The filing also alleges that by contesting Ms Laniers claim of lineage, Harvard is shamelessly capitalising on the intentional damage done to black Americans genealogy by a centurys worth of policies that forcibly separated families, erased slaves family names, withheld birth and death records, and criminalized literacy. Additional reporting by agencies Justin Trudeau apologised for munching a chocolate bar in parliament as he battled the corruption scandal beleaguering his government. The Canadian prime minister was spotted eating during a late night voting session, in defiance of rules permitting members only to drink water. Opposition MP Scott Reid first suggested Mr Trudeau was hiding a bagel in his desk before taking the opportunity to refer to the ongoing SNC-Lavalin controversy. The prime minister has already stained this place with corruption, he does not need to stain it with mustard as well, said Mr Reid. Amid uproar in the Commons, Mr Trudeau responded: I apologise, it was a chocolate bar, I apologise. Justin Trudeau Show all 8 1 /8 Justin Trudeau Justin Trudeau Day out The family get in the boat with climate change AP Justin Trudeau Keeping fit Jogging over the Alexandria bridge with the Mexican president AP Justin Trudeau Family comes first Sophie inspires me every day to be better. I wouldnt be here tonight if it werent for her leadership and her example." AP Justin Trudeau Three-way handshake Trudeau has vowed to strengthen international relations. Twitter Justin Trudeau Bromance Friendship with the White House The White House Justin Trudeau Pandas Just because. Twitter Justin Trudeau Yoga The plank became an internet sensation Twitter Justin Trudeau Making history Trudeau's gender-balanced cabinet was the first of its kind AP After restoring order, Speaker Geoff Regan announced: Can I remind members that food is not permitted in the chamber. No further detail was provided about the type of chocolate bar devoured by the prime minister. SNC-Lavalin, Canadas largest construction company and a government contractor, is accused of bribing Libyan officials to secure work during the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Members of Mr Trudeaus Liberal party are said to have pressured the attorney general to head off a criminal prosecution. The scandal has caused two of his cabinet ministers and a senior aide to step down, but the prime minister has refused to apologise. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events His party has also blocked calls for former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to answer further questions on the issue, resulting in Wednesdays filibuster by the Conservatives in protest at what they called a cover up. The arrival of spring weather has had an interesting impact on Lake Michigan, where ice shards are beginning to pile up. Lake Michigan has been frozen for most of winter, after a polar vortex brought below-freezing temperatures to parts of the US. In Chicago, Illinois, temperatures reached -30C (-23F) during the peak of the cold front, which caused the formation of ice shelves on the lake hills formed from waves crashing over existing ice piles. But the recent thawing of the Great Lake has resulted in the sheets of ice breaking and ice shards being pushed to the surface. The phenomenon, reported by MLive.com, and visible along Michigans South Havens pier, has been captured in stunning photos. In the pictures, the broken shards can be seen layering as the frozen lake begins to warm up. The lake has been more than 50 per cent frozen (AP) The phenomenon can be seen from South Haven Pier (AP) Ice shards are piling up on Lake Michigan (AP) Despite presenting the perfect opportunity for photos, the US Coast Guard has warned that the ice should only be viewed from afar, as it is not safe to stand on the unstable ice. No ice is safe ice especially this time of year, US Coast Guard BMC Grant Heffner told MLive.com. The ice is certainly deteriorating and breaking up. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Prior to the warmer weather, 56 per cent of Lake Michigan, which is bordered by Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, was covered in ice. Brazil's former president Michel Temer has reportedly been arrested as part of a sweeping anti-corruption investigation known as "Car Wash". He was detained in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday morning in a sprawling probe of alleged graft in the construction of nuclear plant Angra 3, prosecutors said. His lawyer confirmed the arrest. Mr Temer was president from 2016 to 2018, taking office following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, for whom he served as vice-president for six years. He was succeeded this year by Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right former military officer who is himself implicated in a separate corruption scandal. The arrest, which has rattled Brazil's political class, saw Brazil's currency slip as much as 1 per cent on the news and the Bovespa stock index fell 1.5 per cent, as the prospect of new arrests of prominent politicians threatened to delay debate over sweeping economic reforms. Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Show all 20 1 /20 Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Brazil's new President Jair Bolsonaro waves as he drives past before his swear-in ceremony Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Supporters wait in front of the Planalto Palace, where he will take office EPA Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Jair Bolsonaro gestures at the Congress before he is sworn AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Supporters take pictures as Brazil's new President Jair Bolsonaro drives past Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Flanked by first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro waves to the crowd, as he rides in an open car after his swearing-in ceremony AP Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Jair Bolsonaro reacts as he drives past Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration The National Congress before Brazil's President-elect Jair Bolsonaro is sworn in AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Jair Bolsonaro gestures at the Congress AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AP Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration EPA Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration Reuters Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty Jair Bolsonaro: Brazil's far-right leader inauguration AFP/Getty According to O Globo, Mr Temer was arrested by officers who are also seeking former energy minister Moreira Franco. The warrants were issued by a judge in the 7th Federal Criminal Court of Rio on Wednesday, the newspaper reported. Mr Temer, a longtime legislator, was hit with corruption charges during his presidency which were blocked by allies in the lower house Congress. The legislative body must authorise charges against a sitting president. Mr Temer has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. A mother reportedly slashed her boyfriend with a sword after she allegedly caught him molesting her five-year-old daughter. The woman, who has not been identified, walked in on John Lawarren Williams, 25, allegedly abusing her daughter in her home in the US state of Georgia. As the mother tried to get Mr Williams to leave the house she grabbed a sword and sliced him on one of his hands, according to Fox News. Mr Williams eventually left the residence before the authorities arrived at the scene. The mother and the child were taken to hospital and their current condition is unclear. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty When deputies made contact with the complainant it was discovered the complainants boyfriend had been caught molesting a five-year-old female child by the complainant (the childs mother), Twiggs County Sherrifs Offce said in a statement. The complainant had cut the subject with a large sword while attempting to get the subject to leave the residence. The subject fled the residence by the time deputies arrived. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Mr Williams handed himself into the authorities the next morning and has been taken into custody. He has been charged with aggravated child molestation and cruelty to children. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has received death threats frequently enough that her staff stiffens every time someone knocks on the door of her office. The realities of Ms Ocasio-Cortezs time in Congress as the US representative of New York's 14th congressional district have been revealed in a new Time profile, which displays the youngest-ever Congresswoman on the cover. According to the profile, the outspoken Congresswoman has made many fans and enemies in her first few months in office, with the latter leading Capitol Police to train her staff in performing risk assessments of all visitors - even those just leaving positive Post-it notes. The immense public attention shes acquired since being elected in 2018 has also slightly taken a toll on the 29-year-old, who told the magazine that she misses being able to go outside without being watched. I miss being able to go outside in sweats, she said. I cant go anywhere in public and just be a person without a lot of people watching everything I do. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Show all 15 1 /15 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez greets fellow lawmakers ahead of the State of the Union address Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez participates in an event with Democratic members of Congress EPA Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures The Democrat senator speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol January 30, 2019 Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fellow Democrat Rashida Tlaib AP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Senate chamber to watch two votes on January 24, 2019 Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arrives with Chellie Pingree at a House Democratic Caucus meeting Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Ocasio-Cortez during Donald Trump's State of the Union address Reuters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures New York State Assembly member Catalina Cruz with Ocasio-Cortez AFP/Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Nydia Velazquez talks with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Reuters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Ocasio-Cortez casts her vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House EPA Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez poses with a campaign worker during a whistle stop in the Queens borough of New York Reuters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Ocasio-Cortez outside the US Capitol AFP/Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Ocasio-Cortez after casting her ballot in the 2018 midterm general election at a polling site in New York EPA Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez looks on during a march organised by the Women's March Alliance in Manhattan Reuters Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - the Democratic congresswoman in pictures Ocasio Cortez looks on at the Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 16, 2019 AFP/Getty But, as she told the magazine this month, despite the frequent backlash from both sides of the political spectrum, Ms Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist, is dedicated to pushing for legislation that will have a lasting impact. Acknowledging that the process of approving new legislation can often take years, she said: So everything we introduce needs to have 2025 or our kids in mind. The profile also discusses her background, growing up in the Bronx, and the death of her father during her sophomore year of college at Boston University. After shed graduated, Ms Ocasio-Cortez slowly found her way into politics, through grassroots community organising to electoral organising. It was a trip to Flint, Michigan, and then to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation that proved transformational for the Congresswoman - as she saw first-hand the effects of environmental degradation. The trip galvanised her and encouraged her to take more risks. From there, Ms Ocasio-Cortez started her run for Congress, and eventually succeeded. But despite her persona online as someone willing to stand up to anyone, including President Trump, in person she is reportedly much more reserved, according to one congressional source, who described her as quiet as a mouse. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events However, there are some things the activist Congresswoman will not back down on, such as saving the planet, her hope with the Green New Deal. I dont think that we can compromise on transitioning to 100 per cent renewable energy, she said. We cannot compromise on saving our planet. We cant compromise on saving kids. We have to do these things. If we want to do them in different ways, thats fine. But we cant not do them. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has taken aim at Fox News after a guest on Laura Ingrahams show accused her of doing the Latina thing when she pronounces her own name. The congresswoman responded in a series of tweet to a message highlighting a segment on Ingrahams Fox News show, in which the TV host was speaking with attorney Joseph diGenova, a frequent commentator on the network. During her conversation with diGenova, Ingraham asked him to comment on the way Ocasio-Cortez speaks when she introduces herself. She does the Latina thing, diGenova replied, where she does [with Spanish accent] Anastasio [sic] Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez reacted to a tweet from journalist Issam Ahmed, who wrote that some pundits dislike it when people of colour pronounce their own names correctly. Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Show all 23 1 /23 Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Joe Biden The former vice president - poised to be a frontrunner - has announced his run. He recently faced scrutiny for inappropriate touching of women, but was thought to deal with the criticism well AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Bernie Sanders The 2016 runner-up has announced that he will be running again in 2020 Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Hillary Clinton The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State says she is still considering whether she will run again. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Pete Buttigieg The Indiana mayor and war veteran will be running for president. If elected, he would be the first openly LGBT+ president in American history. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Kamala Harris The former California attorney general will be running for president in 2020. Introduced to the national stage during Jeff Sessions testimony, she has endorsed Medicare-for-all and proposed a major tax-credit for the middle class. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Elizabeth Warren The Massachusetts Senator has formally launched her bid for president in 2020. A progressive Democrat, she is a major supporter of regulating Wall Street. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Beto ORourke The former Texas congressman told Oprah Winfrey that he has been thinking about running for presidency, but stopped short of formally announcing his bid to run in 2020. AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Wayne Messam Mayor of the city of Miramar in the Miami metropolitan area, Wayne Messam has announced his bid. He intends to run on a progressive platform against the "broken" federal government. He favours gun regulations and was a signatory to a letter from some 400 mayors condemning President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. Vice News Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Kirsten Gillibrand The New York Senator formally announced her presidential bid in January, saying that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Cory Booker The New Jersey Senator has announced that he will be running for the presidency in 2020. If he secures the nomination he said finding a female vice president would be a priority. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? John Delaney The Maryland congressman was the first to launch his bid for presidency, making the announcement in 2017. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Julian Castro The former San Antonio mayor announced his candidacy in January and said that his running has a special meaning for the Latino community in the US. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Tulsi Gabbard The Hawaii congresswoman announced her candidacy in January, but is likely to face tough questions on her past comments on LGBT+ rights and her stance on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Andrew Yang The entrepreneur has announced his presidential candidacy, and has pledged that he would introduce a universal basic income of $1,000 a month to every American over the age of 18. AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Marianne Williamson The author and spiritual advisor has announced her intention to run for president. She had previously run for congress as an independent in 2014 but was unsuccessful. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? John Kerry The former secretary of state has said he is still thinking about whether to run. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Michael Bloomberg The entrepreneur and former New York mayor with a net worth of around $50bn has said he will decide by the end of February whether to seek the presidency. AFP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Howard Schultz Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has not yet ruled out running for president in 2020, despite criticism that his bid could help re-elect Mr Trump by dividing the Democrat vote. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Eric Holder The former attorney general has said he will decide in the next month or so whether to run as a 2020 presidential candidate. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Eric Swalwell The California congressman said he is ready to do this and will decide before April whether to run. MSNBC Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Terry McAuliffe The former Virginia governor, who worked to elect Democratic governors during 2018 midterms, said there was a 50 per cent chance he would run. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Sherrod Brown The Ohio senator is still undecided about whether to run for president in 2020. Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Mitch Landrieu The former New Orleans mayor said he doesnt think he will run for president, but never say never. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin How dare they refuse to say their name in a wrong accent & not mangle their own family name so that I can feel more comfortable instead of look inside myself & examine why something as small as *a persons name* makes me uncomfortable in the first place?? This is an outrage! Ocasio-Cortez wrote in faux indignation. The congresswoman then said that Fox News likes to say my name (incorrectly) as Cortez. My last name is not Cortez, just as theirs isnt Ingra or Carl or Hann, she added, referring respectively to Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity. For the curious, in Latinx culture children take *both* their parents names, Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a follow-up message. Its not a progressive, new thing. Its just how some names work. [Puerto Rico] hyphenates, others mark differently. Your last name = the families that came together to make you. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Ocasio-Cortez clarified that AOC, as she is often referred to, is also fine by her standards. President Donald Trump on Thursday recognised Israels sovereignty over the Golan Heights, in an abrupt reversal of longstanding US policy on the contested area. In a tweet on Thursday, Mr Trump said that after 52 years it was important for the United States to fully recognise Israels control over what he said is an area of critical strategic and security importance to ... Israel and regional stability. The recognition of the disputed area marks a major shift in US policy, a week before Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Washington to meet with Mr Trump and address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The move is likely to be seen as a campaigning boost for Mr Netanyahu, who faces an election in Israel on 9 April, and who has been pressing for the United States to recognise its claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Israel captured much of the Golan from Syria in a 1967 war and annexed it, a move not endorsed internationally. Mr Netanyahu raised the possibility of US recognition in his first White House meeting with Mr Trump in February 2017. The Israeli prime minister has accused Iran of attempting to set up a terrorist network to target Israel from the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. He has used the incident to repeat his goal of international recognition for Israels claim on the area. Trump backs Israels annexation of Golan Heights Show all 7 1 /7 Trump backs Israels annexation of Golan Heights Trump backs Israels annexation of Golan Heights An Israeli soldier stands next to signs pointing out distances to different cities on Mount Bental, an observation post in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights Reuters Trump backs Israels annexation of Golan Heights Druze people take part in a rally in Majdal Shams near the ceasefire line between Israel and Syria Reuters Trump backs Israels annexation of Golan Heights Israeli Druzes sit together watching the Syrian side of the Israel-Syria border on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights Reuters Trump backs Israels annexation of Golan Heights A European member of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) using binoculars to look towards the Syrian side of the Golan Heights AFP/Getty Trump backs Israels annexation of Golan Heights A file photo taken on October 19, 1973 shows Israeli Defence Minister General Moshe Dayan (R) looking towards the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, four days after the beginning of the Yom Kippur War AFP/Getty Trump backs Israels annexation of Golan Heights A file photo taken on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on September 5, 2014 shows members of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force Zone (UNDOF) using binoculars to look towards the Syrian side of the Golan Heights AFP/Getty Trump backs Israels annexation of Golan Heights Members of the United Nations peacekeepers standing on a watch tower during a visit by the Israeli Defence Minister in 2018 AFP/Getty Mr Netanyahu thanked Mr Trump for his tweet on Thursday. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognises Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! Mr Netanyahu tweeted. Mr Netanyahu later said: President Trump has just made history Ive thanked him on behalf of the people of Israel. He did it again. First he recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital and moved the US embassy. And then he pulled out of the disastrous Iran treaty and reimposed sanctions. And then he did something of equal historical importance. He did so at a time when Iran is trying use Syria as a platform to attack and destroy Israel. The message is: America stands besides Israel. The Israeli prime minister said: We are deeply grateful for the US support, we are deeply grateful for the unbelievable and unmatchable support for our security and our right to defend ourselves. There is no greater friendship than the one between the US and Israel. Thank you President Trump, thank you United States, Mr Netanyahu added. Mr Trumps tweet came as secretary of state Mike Pompeo was in Jerusalem. Mr Pompeo referred to the Israel-US partnership as a remarkable relationship between our two countries. Skiier's helmet camera captures moment Israel intercepts Iranian missile aimed at Golan Heights He called the Golan hard fought real estate for Israel and said Mr Trump made a bold ... important decision, it will be truly be historic. Mr Pompeo also spoke of the Israeli heroism in the battles to take Golan. The international community considers the Golan to be occupied territory, and Syria has demanded its return as a condition for any future peace agreement. After an eight-year civil war, peace talks with Israel are unlikely anytime soon. Throughout the war, Israel has carried out scores of airstrikes in Syria to prevent Iran from establishing a permanent military presence there. Mr Trumps announcement comes just under three weeks before the general election where Mr Netanyahu is hoping to secure a fourth consecutive term in office, becoming the longest-serving premier in the countrys history. This is despite the fact the right-wing leader is competing for the position under the shadow of indictment on corruption charges. The Golan announcement will likely see his popularity soar in the polls after weeks of speculation that his Likud political party would be ousted by a new centrist coalition headed by his former and popular army chief Benny Gantz. Gilad Erdan, Mr Netanyahus minister of public security and strategic affairs, was quick to call it another huge achievement for the state of Israel, the Likud party and the prime minister and again thanked Mr Trump for his tremendous support. Moshe Kahlon, head of the Kulanu Party, which could be an important coalition partner for Netanyahu if he is called to form the next government, said it was an an important accomplishment for the state of Israel. Our neighbours will know that reality is settled and that there is a price for their refusal to recognise Israel, he added. Naftali Bennett, the countrys education minister, head of the New Right party and another key coalition partner that Mr Netanyahu needs to keep on board, thanked Mr Trump. The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. And Israel has no greater friend than the USA. The Golan Hights [sic] forever, he wrote on Twitter. Support for the decision was also expressed by Israels allies in the States. Trumps Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt tweeted that Trumps announcement was another bold, courageous, and historic decision. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Senator Lindsey Graham, who had visited the Golan just last week and vowed to lobby for recognition of Israels control over the Golan, called it strategically wise and overall awesome. He promised to encourage Congress to follow suit. However, Israeli analysts, while welcoming the move, were quick to point out the problematic timing of the decision, calling it electioneering. Michael Koplow, director of the Israel Policy Forum, a Washington-based think tank, wrote that there was no reason to announce this now other than to give Netanyahu a giant undeclared campaign gift. Additional reporting by agencies Nearly $1.3m (990,000) of donations to Donald Trumps re-election campaign have subsequently been transferred to businesses owned by the US president. The money has been spent on hotel rooms, rent, food, legal consulting and other services provided by Mr Trumps firms, according to campaign filings analysed by Forbes. Tens of thousands of people have made payments to his 2020 campaign, which he launched on the day of his inauguration three years ago. The president has not contributed any of his own money, despite boasting on the day he launched his first campaign in 2015: I dont need anybodys money. Im using my own money. Im not using the lobbyists. Im not using donors. I dont care. Im really rich. The majority of the 2020 donations were paid out to Trump Tower Commercial LLC, the holding company through which he owns his skyscraper on New Yorks Fifth Avenue, which received $800,000 (612,000.) The company also received $225,000 (172,000) in rent from the Republican National Committee, Forbes reported. Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Show all 23 1 /23 Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Joe Biden The former vice president - poised to be a frontrunner - has announced his run. He recently faced scrutiny for inappropriate touching of women, but was thought to deal with the criticism well AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Bernie Sanders The 2016 runner-up has announced that he will be running again in 2020 Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Hillary Clinton The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State says she is still considering whether she will run again. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Pete Buttigieg The Indiana mayor and war veteran will be running for president. If elected, he would be the first openly LGBT+ president in American history. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Kamala Harris The former California attorney general will be running for president in 2020. Introduced to the national stage during Jeff Sessions testimony, she has endorsed Medicare-for-all and proposed a major tax-credit for the middle class. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Elizabeth Warren The Massachusetts Senator has formally launched her bid for president in 2020. A progressive Democrat, she is a major supporter of regulating Wall Street. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Beto ORourke The former Texas congressman told Oprah Winfrey that he has been thinking about running for presidency, but stopped short of formally announcing his bid to run in 2020. AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Wayne Messam Mayor of the city of Miramar in the Miami metropolitan area, Wayne Messam has announced his bid. He intends to run on a progressive platform against the "broken" federal government. He favours gun regulations and was a signatory to a letter from some 400 mayors condemning President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. Vice News Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Kirsten Gillibrand The New York Senator formally announced her presidential bid in January, saying that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Cory Booker The New Jersey Senator has announced that he will be running for the presidency in 2020. If he secures the nomination he said finding a female vice president would be a priority. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? John Delaney The Maryland congressman was the first to launch his bid for presidency, making the announcement in 2017. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Julian Castro The former San Antonio mayor announced his candidacy in January and said that his running has a special meaning for the Latino community in the US. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Tulsi Gabbard The Hawaii congresswoman announced her candidacy in January, but is likely to face tough questions on her past comments on LGBT+ rights and her stance on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Andrew Yang The entrepreneur has announced his presidential candidacy, and has pledged that he would introduce a universal basic income of $1,000 a month to every American over the age of 18. AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Marianne Williamson The author and spiritual advisor has announced her intention to run for president. She had previously run for congress as an independent in 2014 but was unsuccessful. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? John Kerry The former secretary of state has said he is still thinking about whether to run. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Michael Bloomberg The entrepreneur and former New York mayor with a net worth of around $50bn has said he will decide by the end of February whether to seek the presidency. AFP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Howard Schultz Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has not yet ruled out running for president in 2020, despite criticism that his bid could help re-elect Mr Trump by dividing the Democrat vote. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Eric Holder The former attorney general has said he will decide in the next month or so whether to run as a 2020 presidential candidate. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Eric Swalwell The California congressman said he is ready to do this and will decide before April whether to run. MSNBC Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Terry McAuliffe The former Virginia governor, who worked to elect Democratic governors during 2018 midterms, said there was a 50 per cent chance he would run. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Sherrod Brown The Ohio senator is still undecided about whether to run for president in 2020. Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Mitch Landrieu The former New Orleans mayor said he doesnt think he will run for president, but never say never. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin Trump Restaurants LLC, which runs eateries in the Trump Tower, has received $60,000 ($46,000) in campaign funds to leasing a small space for sale of campaign memorabilia. Trump Plaza LLC, which runs two apartment buildings in New York City, received $54,000 (41,000) from the presidents campaign, according to the filings. The reason for the payment was reportedly listed as rent, although it is unclear what the buildings have been leased for. Mr Trumps 2020 campaign has also spent thousands at his hotels in Washington DC and Las Vegas. Federal regulations allow election candidates to shift campaign money into their own businesses, providing they pay going rates and the expenditure is not for personal use. A Trump 2020 official told The Independent the campaign paid fair market rents and took legal advice to ensure compliance with the law. Bernie Sanders has urged America to follow the lead of New Zealand in banning military style and semi-automatic weapons a measure taken by the authorities in Wellington within days of the mosque shooting that left 50 people dead. The Vermont senator, one of the early frontrunners of Democrats contesting for the partys 2020 presidential nomination, said New Zealand had set an example with the speed of its response. This is what real action to stop gun violence looks like, he said on Twitter. We must follow New Zealands lead, take on the NRA and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States. On Thursday, the government of New Zealand announced a ban on military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. The move by the administration of prime minister Jacinda Ardern, came just a week after the mosque attack, allegedly carried out by a white supremacist, and which rocked the small nation. The Associated Press said an immediate sales ban went into effect to prevent stockpiling, and that new laws were to be rushed through parliament that would impose a complete ban on the weapons. New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Show all 11 1 /11 New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Zakaria Bhuiyan People gather hoping to find out information about Zakaria Bhuiyan who is still missing after the mosques shootings in Christchurch. David Moir/AFP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Mucad Ibrahim Three-year-old Mucad Ibrahim, the youngest known victim of the mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 15 March 2019. Abdi Ibrahim via AP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Nadeem Rasheed Nadeem Rasheed, brother of Pakistani Naeem Rashid who died alongside his son Talha Naeem, 21, who were killed in shooting at a Mosque in Christchurch, at their home town in Abbottabad, EPA New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Omar Nabi Omar Nabi speaks to the media about losing his father Haji Daoud Nabi, 71, in the mosque attack REUTERS New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Ash Mohammed Ash Mohammed, right, talks to a police officer about his father and two brothers who are missing near the Masjid Al Noor mosque AP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Akhtar Khokhur Akhtar Khokhur, 58, shows a picture of her missing husband Mehaboobbhai Khokhar, 65. AP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Wasseim Alsati A note is seen on a window of a door at the family home of Wasseim Alsati in Christchurch on 17 March 2019. AFP/Getty Images New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Haroon Mahmood Relatives offer condolences to nephew (centre) of Haroon Mahmood, a Pakistani citizen who was killed in Christchurch mosque shootings. AP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Farid Ahmed Farid Ahmed (pictured) survived the Al Noor mosque shootings but his wife Husne was killed. AFP/Getty Images New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Syed Areeb Ahmed A relative shows a picture of Syed Areeb Ahmed, a Pakistani citizen who was killed the Christchurch mosque shooting. AP New Zealand shootings: Victims of Christchurch mosque terror attacks Naeem Rashid A relative looks at a picture on a mobile phone of Pakistani nationals Naeem Rashid and his son Talha Naeem (right) who died in the Christchurch shootings. AFP/Getty Images Every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned, said Ms Ardern. The prohibition included semi-automatic guns or shotguns that can be used with a detachable magazine that holds more than five rounds. It also applies to accessories used to convert guns into what the government called military-style weapons, the news agency said. The rapid action by New Zealand has been seen in stark contrast to faltering efforts to ban such weapons in the US, where up to 35,000 died from guns in 2017. Activists had long pointed to the lobbying power of the gun industry group the National Rifle Association (NRA), which Mr Sanders referred to in his tweet. The group spends millions of dollars backing politicians who support its policies and threaten to fund challengers to those who do not fall into line. Figures show that in the 2016 election cycle, the NRA spent $55m on campaigns and adverts supporting candidates. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events By far the largest portion of that money, around $30m, went to backing the campaign of Donald Trump. The NRA did not immediately respond to enquiries on Thursday. A banner on its website claimed Nancy Pelosi wants a national emergency to confiscate your guns in 2020. Mr Sanders is not the only person to have seized on the example set by New Zealand. Kris Brown, president of the Brady campaign, which has long sought to regulate weapons in the US, said: This is a shining example of what can happen when our leaders take action, not sides. Prime Minister Ardern and her cabinet wasted no time in ensuring that the tragedy in Christchurch will not be repeated in their country, and they are providing a light for the world to follow. She added: Now, its time for our own leaders at home to do the same. March For Our Lives, the student-led group founded in the aftermath of the February 2018 Parkland school shooting, also spoke out over what happened in New Zealand. No community on earth should have to experience the intense loss that comes from gun violence, the group said, saying that it was helping to raise funds for the community in Christchurch. When hate tries to divide us, we will always respond with compassion and unity. Former senior White House official Hope Hicks is said to have agreed to cooperate with a Democratic-led congressional investigation into Donald Trump. Ms Hicks, 30, who was considered one of the presidents closest confidantes and who served as White House communications director from the summer of 2017 to the spring of last year, has reportedly said she will provide documents to a congressional committee looking into possible obstruction of justice by Mr Trump. CNN said Democratic congressman Jerry Nadler, chair of the House of Representatives judiciary committee, wrote to Ms Hicks earlier this month, seeking documents on topics that ranged from former national security advisor Michael Flynns false statements to the FBI, the May 2017 firing of James Comey, and the drafting of a misleading media statement about Donald Trump Jrs 2016 meeting in Trump Tower. The request included documents from any personal or work diary, journal or other book containing notes, a record or a description of daily events about the president, his 2016 election campaign or the Trump Organisation, the network said. Mr Nadlers office did not immediately respond to enquiries on Wednesday. Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California Show all 20 1 /20 Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California The prototypes for President Trumps border wall are being demolished. AP Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California The US Customs and Border protection had built the eight 30-foot tall steel and concrete models near San Diego on the US-Mexico border. Reuters Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California A 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office found that the construction challenges presented by the four concrete models would be extensive and those presented by two of the other models would be substantial. Reuters Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California It was intended that Mr Trump would choose his favourite of the designs after testing had been completed. AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California The President is yet to comment. AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California Each prototype cost $300,000 to $500,000 to build and they are being knocked down in order to make way for the San Diego Secondary Wall project which will see up to 14 miles of barrier being built to support the existing steel border fence. AP Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California The new barrier will not employ the design of any of the prototypes, instead being built of the favoured steel bollards which make up the current section of the wall at San Diego. Reuters Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California The new secondary barrier being built near San Diego. Reuters Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California The rubble of one of the demolished prototypes. Reuters Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California A steel wall prototype AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California A wall prototype made from a mix of steel and concrete AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California A wall prototype made from a mix of steel and concrete AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California A concrete wall prototype AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California A steel wall prototype AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California A concrete wall prototype AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California A concrete wall prototype AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California A concrete wall prototype AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California A digger approaches the prototype wall AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California Aerial view of the wall prototypes at the US-Mexico border after they were torn down AFP/Getty Trump prototypes for Mexico border wall demolished in California An aerial view showing Tijuana, Mexico on the left and the demolished wall prototypes on the right AFP/Getty However, CNN said Daniel Schwarz, a spokesperson for the committee has confirmed Ms Hicks indicated she would cooperate. It said her lawyer has declined to comment. Mr Nadler, a congressman from New York, has set a Monday deadline for 81 individuals and entities to provide information to the panel as part of his investigation into possible abuses of power, corruption and obstruction of justice, the network said. Ms Hicks was widely considered to be among the most influential voices in the White House during the early days of Mr Trumps administration. When she left last year, the president posed with her outside the Oval Office before boarding the presidential helicopter. The president was on his way to Ohio. Bill Maher: Hope Hicks has been voted off the island... she was Trump's work-wife, his emotional companion animal Hope is outstanding and has done great work for the last three years. She is as smart and thoughtful as they come, a truly great person, Mr Trump said. Ms Hicks said: There are no words to adequately express my gratitude to President Trump. I wish the president and his administration the very best as he continues to lead our country. The former communications director is not the only former White House official cooperating with Mr Nadlers committee; the former strategist Steve Bannon has already provided the committee with several thousands of pages of documents. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, said it would also comply with a request. Jared Kushner uses private messaging apps and personal email to communicate about official Trump administration matters with foreign leaders a violation of a laws governing White House records - a congressional committee has been told. Elijah Cummings, the Democratic congressman who heads the House of Representatives oversight committee, said the lawyer of the presidents son-in-law. had made the revelation in December. He said the lawyer had not told congress whether the information Mr Kushner shared was classified. Reuters said the congressman also said the lawyer told his committee that Ivanka Trump, the presidents oldest daughter and Mr Kushner's wife, continued to receive emails related to official business on a personal email account. He said he had made the request in a letter to White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone. In the letter, which Reuters said it had seen, Mr Cummings said the law governing presidential records prohibited senior White House officials, including the president and vice president, from using non-official electronic messaging accounts Criminals who worked for Trump Show all 5 1 /5 Criminals who worked for Trump Criminals who worked for Trump Michael Cohen Former lawyer for Donald Trump was sentenced to three years in prison on counts involving evading income tax, false disclosure of the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels and another hush money charge Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Paul Manafort Former campaign manager for Trump Manafort was found guilty in February 2018 of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. The crimes occurred prior to his appointment in Trump's campaign Getty Criminals who worked for Trump George Papadopoulos Former Trump campaign adviser Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in October 2017. He had lied about making contact with a professor who claimed that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. He was sentenced to 14 days in jail Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Michael Flynn Former White House National Security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December 2017. He had lied about conversations that he had with the Russian ambassador to the US during Trump's Presidential campaign. He was not given prison time due to his "significant assistance" to the Mueller investigation Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Rick Gates Deputy chairman of Trump's presidential campaign Gates pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in February 2018 AFP/Getty The use of private emails for official business became a huge controversy during the 2016 presidential election campaign after it emerged Hillary Clinton had used a personal email server installed at her home in upstate New York when she was secretary of state. An investigation by the FBI, at that time headed by James Comey, concluded that no prosecutor would have brought charges against her. Jared Kushner on Israel: 'The pursuit of peace is the noblest pursuit of humankind' However, he did say Ms Clinton had been being extremely careless in using a private email address located at her home in Chappaqua. Ms Clinton also said she had deleted 30,000 emails, something that was seized on my Mr Trump and his supporters. Mr Cummings said when the committee was under Republican control in March 2017, it had started investigating whether White House officials were using personal email and messaging accounts to conduct official business. He said that Mr Trump's White House had so far failed to provide documents and information and was obstructing his committees efforts to investigate possible violations of White House policy and the presidential records law. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Donald Trump has again attacked John McCain during a speech in which he complained he didnt get thank youd for approving the late senators state funeral. McCain, whom millions of Americans consider a war hero, died of brain cancer last summer, aged 81. Reportedly at the late Republican's request, Mr Trump was not invited to his funeral service at Washington National Cathedral. I endorsed him at his request, and I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which as president I had to approve, Mr Trump told an audience of workers at an Ohio tank factory on Wednesday. I dont care about this I didnt get thank youd, thats OK. We sent him on the way, but I wasnt a fan of John McCain. It is unclear who Mr Trump was seeking thanks from. Criminals who worked for Trump Show all 5 1 /5 Criminals who worked for Trump Criminals who worked for Trump Michael Cohen Former lawyer for Donald Trump was sentenced to three years in prison on counts involving evading income tax, false disclosure of the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels and another hush money charge Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Paul Manafort Former campaign manager for Trump Manafort was found guilty in February 2018 of five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. The crimes occurred prior to his appointment in Trump's campaign Getty Criminals who worked for Trump George Papadopoulos Former Trump campaign adviser Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in October 2017. He had lied about making contact with a professor who claimed that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. He was sentenced to 14 days in jail Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Michael Flynn Former White House National Security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December 2017. He had lied about conversations that he had with the Russian ambassador to the US during Trump's Presidential campaign. He was not given prison time due to his "significant assistance" to the Mueller investigation Getty Criminals who worked for Trump Rick Gates Deputy chairman of Trump's presidential campaign Gates pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in February 2018 AFP/Getty The diatribe, which lasted almost five minutes and was largely met with silence, took in a range of perceived missteps by McCain, including his involvement in a dossier alleging links between Mr Trump and Russia and his vote against a Republican healthcare bill. So I have to be honest, Ive never liked him much, hasnt been for me, Ive really probably never will, but theres certain reasons for it and Ill tell you, and I do this to save a little time with the press later on, Mr Trump began. John McCain received a fake and phoney dossier, did you hear about the dossier? It was paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton, right? And John McCain got it, he got it, and what did he do? He didnt call me, he turned it over to the FBI hoping to put me in jeopardy, and thats not the nicest thing to do. The dossier into Mr Trumps connections to Russia, which was compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, was funded by a private intelligence firm on behalf of the Clinton campaign. McCain, who was made aware of the dossier days after Mr Trumps election in November 2016, passed its contents on a month later to then FBI chief James Comey. Mr Trump continued: John McCain campaigned for years to repeal and replace Obamacare when he finally had the chance to do it he voted against repeal and replace, he voted against at 2 oclock in the morning, remember thumbs down. We said What the hell happened? Mr Trumps thumbs down complaint is a reference to when McCain in 2017 defied Mr Trumps attempt to partially repeal former president Barack Obamas healthcare reforms. Donald Trump launches furious tirade against Mueller on White House lawn as he calls Comey a 'bad cop' The senator voted against the bill, effectively killing the so-called skinny repeal, which would have resulted in 16 million people losing their health insurance. The president also falsely claimed McCain "didn't get the job done" on a healthcare programme for veterans called the Veteran's Choice Act. Mr Trump instead said, "I got it done", despite the fact McCain was the author of the bill, which came into law in 2014. Mr Trump was merely president when Congress last year passed a new version of the programme. His outburst is just the latest in a series of attacks against McCain in recent days. Earlier this week, the president described McCains Obamacare no-vote as disgraceful, and over the weekend falsely claimed on Twitter McCain finished last in his class at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. Although the pair repeatedly clashed during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr Trump's continued jibes even after death has drawn criticism from both lawmakers and McCains family. The late senators daughter, Meghan McCain, on Wednesday said of her father: He would think it was hilarious that our president was so jealous of him, that he was dominating the news cycle in death as well. Close Donald Trump complains of John McCain ingratitude over state funeral Donald Trump signed an executive order which will withhold federal funding from colleges and universities that do not permit or protect free speech amidst the presidents own attacks on Senator John McCain, more than six months after his death. According to the president, the order is the first of many steps to come in his protection of the First amendment. During his remarks, Mr Trump invited students from colleges around the country to share their own stories of hindered free speech. One student recalled a time her school stopped her from handing out Valentines Day cards with religious messages. Mr Trump also discussed his administrations plans for student loan debt, which he said he is going to work to fix. According to the president, who pointed some of the blame at universities, the Education Department and Treasury Department will publish information on future earnings and loan repayment for every major at every school. Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Show all 20 1 /20 Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Donald Trump sits in the living room at Mar-a-Lago in 1993. The following pictures show the interior of the Mar-a-Lago estate. Many of them are from before Trump bought the property in 1985 but, as the newer pictures show, he hasn't done much with the place Rex Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home The dining room at Mar-a-Lago under Trump. The following pictures show the interior of the Mar-a-Lago estate. Many of them are from before Trump bought the property in 1985 but, as the newer pictures show, he hasn't done much with the place Rex Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home The dining room at Mar-a-Lago in 1967. The following pictures show the interior of the Mar-a-Lago estate. Many of them are from before Trump bought the property in 1985 but, as the newer pictures show, he hasn't done much with the place US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home The dining room at Mar-a-Lago under Trump in 2015 The Washington Post/Getty Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Function room at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Donald Trump sits in the living room at Mar-a-Lago in 1993. Rex Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home The living room in Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Master bedroom at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Library at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Cloister at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Entrance hall at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Spiral staircase at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home The dining room at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Patio at Mar-a-Lago in 1928 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Cloister at Mar-a-Lago in 1967 US National Park Service Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Mar-a-Lago in 2018 Getty Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Mar-a-Lago in 2018 Getty Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Mar-a-Lago in 2018 Getty Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Mar-a-Lago in 2018 Getty Inside Mar-a-Lago - Trump's holiday home Mar-a-Lago in 2018 AFP/Getty The presidents remarks on the importance of upholding free speech come as he faces continued backlash over his own comments regarding late Senator John McCain, who he attacked Wednesday during a visit to Ohio. In addition to repeating that he was not a fan of the late senator, Mr Trump complained that he had never been thanked for McCains state funeral. Democrats and republicans have defended McCain following the presidents comments. The Washington National Cathedral also disputed Mr Trumps claims that he had to approve the funeral for the late senator. Also on Thursday, Mr Trump made history when he tweeted that the United States would be recognising Israels sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently hosting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, called the presidents recognition of the territory as Israeli land a Purim miracle and thanked President Trump. Catch up on events as they happened Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Please allow a moment for our liveblog to load At least six people are dead following an explosion at a pesticide factory in China so severe it trigged an earthquake. The blast on Thursday afternoon at Chenjiagang Tianjiayi chemical plant in Yancheng, Jiangsu province, left dozens injured many by flying debris and shattered windows of nearby homes and a school. Residents were helping to take the wounded to hospital, The Yangtse Evening Post reported. Nearly 400 rescue workers and 86 fire engines were dispatched to the scene, the city government of Yancheng, which lies around 200 miles north of Shanghai, said in a statement. The cause of the blast is under investigation. According to the South China Morning Post, the China Earthquake Administration reported a magnitude-3.0 earthquake in Jiangsu, likely trigged by the blast. Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Show all 10 1 /10 Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Smoke billows from behind a building damaged in the fire at a chemical plant in Yancheng, China Reuters Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Smoke billows from the fire at a chemical plant in Yancheng, China Reuters Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Firefighters work to extinguish the flames at a chemical plant in Yangcheng, China AFP/Getty Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Firefighters work to extinguish the flames at a chemical plant in Yangcheng, China Reuters Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Fire rises following an explosion at a chemical plant in Yancheng, China AP Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Fire rises following an explosion at a chemical plant in Yancheng, China AFP/Getty Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Fire rises following an explosion at a chemical plant in Yancheng, China Reuters Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Fire and smoke rises following an explosion at a chemical plant in Yangcheng, China AFP/Getty Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Firefighters work to extinguish the flames at a chemical plant in Yangcheng, China Reuters Fire rages after explosion at chemical factory in Yancheng, China Fire spreads after an explosion at a chemical plant in China AFP/Getty A video posted on state broadcaster CCTV's website shows huge plumes of smoke spewing from a factory building and spreading over the area. Windows and garage doors appear to shatter at the moment of the blast. Paramilitary police officers and a medical staff transfer an injured man following factory blast (AFP/Getty Images) A man staying at a hotel about three miles from the explosion said glass in buildings along the entire street shattered, and at least four people in his hotel were wounded. He said a student at a nearby school was also hurt. Some 31 people had been rescued, CCTV reported. Additional reporting by AP Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) A human rights lawyer running for a Senate seat wants to amend the Constitution to lift the President's power to appoint judges and the Ombudsman. "The Constitution provides that he or she is appointed by the President and the same applies to our judiciary. So that's so much power, that appointing power is too much centralized in one man. That I think has to change," Otso Diretso senatorial candidate Chel Diokno told CNN Philippines' The Source on Thursday. Diokno said he would want to introduce an amendment to the Constitution that would create a council composed of representatives of different sectors of society which would select appointees to the judiciary. "Pwede pa rin ang Pangulo ang pipirma [ng appointment paper,] pero ano na lang 'yun, ministerial na lang. Hindi na discretionary sa kanya," he said in an interview after the show. [Translation: The President can still sign the appointment paper, but that would just be ministerial. It would no longer be at his discretion.] Diokno said this is the only thing that should be changed in the Constitution, but he acknowledged that introducing an amendment may open the possibility for other changes to be made. The human rights lawyer is part of the Otso Diretso opposition coalition and the militant Makabayan bloc. Both political groups have opposed moves to change the Constitution. Currently, the Ombudsman, justices and judges are appointed by the President from a list of at least three nominees prepared by the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) for each vacancy. Critics have accused Duterte of influencing the judiciary, but the Malacanang has routinely denied this. President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies in Congress have been pushing for amendments to the Constitution to shift to a federal form of government. Under proposals from the House and Duterte's consultative committee, no substantial changes have been made on the appointment of members of the judiciary. Free up courts, lifestyle check for judges While there are still no moves to change the Constitution to lift the President's appointment powers over members of the judiciary, Diokno said he would focus on freeing up the courts' dockets to speed up litigation. He said vacancies for the positions of judges and prosecutors should be filled up. He also wants to establish an arbitration committee that would handle commercial and business disputes. Diokno also wants the Ombudsman to conduct lifestyle checks on judges and justices and for members of the judiciary to be required to publish their statements of assets, liabilities and net worth. "Kasi [Because] we have to show people that everything is aboveboard na walang lagayan at malinis ang hustisya [that no one is being bribed and justice is clean,]" he said. A man who sexually assaulted a woman in a lift in Vietnam was fined the equivalent of less than 7, sparking a public outcry. People took to social media to complain after the man was fined 200,000 Vietnamese dong (6.56) for forcibly kissing the victim in a lift at her apartment building in the capital city of Hanoi. CCTV footage, which went viral, showed the defendant chatting to the woman before he cornered and leapt on her. The victim then fled from the lift as the man grabbed her arm. Unlike rape, sexual assault is not a criminal offence in Vietnam, but is considered an administrative violation falling under the category of indecent speech and behaviour, the AFP news agency reported. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty According to the agency, the maximum fine for sexual assault is $13, the equivalent of just under 10. The monthly minimum wage in urban Hanoi is about 4,180,000 Vietnamese dong (137). An online petition has been set up calling for an amendment to the law. Criticising the punishment on Facebook, Duong Dai Trieu said: The fine ... was a mockery and humiliation against the dignity of Vietnamese women. Office worker Nguyen Trang told AFP: Its ridiculous, I cant accept this ... Im worried for my kids and myself. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Khuat Thu Hong, director of the Institute for Social Development Studies, welcomed the public outcry. He told the agency: The reaction is a good sign, society has shown its support to those who are courageous to speak out. Chinas shortage of women is causing young women to be trafficked into the country from Myanmar as brides and raped until they become pregnant, a harrowing new report has found. The Human Rights Watch report, called Give Us a Baby and Well Let You Go: Trafficking of Kachin Brides from Myanmar to China, found vulnerable young women from Myanmars conflict-ravaged northern Kachin and Shan states are being trafficked into sexual slavery in China. Family members and people they deemed to be trustworthy promised them jobs in China, but instead sold them for the equivalent of $3,000 (2,300) to $13,000 to Chinese families, the 112-page report found. In China, they were typically locked in a room and raped so they would become pregnant. Myanmar and Chinese authorities are looking away while unscrupulous traffickers are selling Kachin women and girls into captivity and unspeakable abuse, Heather Barr, the author of the report, said. The dearth of livelihoods and basic rights protections have made these women easy prey for traffickers, who have little reason to fear law enforcement on either side of the border. China cancels Christmas Show all 7 1 /7 China cancels Christmas China cancels Christmas A man sells Christmas decorations on a street of Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas a promoter dressed as a teddy bear rest along a retail street in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas A family walk past images of Santa Claus in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas A worker guards the entrance of a shop decorated with images of Santa Claus in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas Sales staff from an apparel shop dance wearing Christmas themed costumes to promote a year end sales in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas Sales staff from an apparel shop dance wearing Christmas themed costumes to promote a year end sales in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) China cancels Christmas a sales person waits for customers near a Christmas tree decoration in Zhangjiakou in northern China's Hebei province. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) The percentage of women in Chinas population has dropped steadily since 1987 with the gender gap among men and women aged 15 to 29 rising. Researchers estimate China has 30 to 40 million missing women who would be alive today if it were not for the preference for boys aggravated by the countrys one-child policy. The measure, which was in place from 1979 to 2015, saw the state aim to restrict the number of children that parents gave birth to in order to control the population. They also attribute this dearth of women to Chinas continuing restrictions on womens reproductive rights. Previous research found the Asian country has 34 million more males than females. However, it found raising the birth rate could be tricky with the number of Chinese women between the typically child-bearing ages of 20 and 39 expected to drop by more than 39 million over the next decade. Some families deal with the shortage of marriageable women by buying trafficked women or girls. While it is difficult to estimate the total number of women and girls being trafficked as brides to China, the Myanmar government reported 226 cases in 2017. However, experts on the issue told Human Rights Watch they consider the actual figure is most likely a great deal higher. A Kachin woman, who spoke to researchers, said she had been trafficked at 16 by her sister-in-law. The family took me to a room, she said. In that room I was tied up again They locked the door for one or two months. When it was time for meals, they sent meals in. I was crying Each time when the Chinese man brought me meals, he raped me. The report is predominantly based on interviews with 37 trafficking survivors, three families of victims, Myanmar government officials and police, and members of local groups, among others. The report found law enforcement officers in China and Myanmar, including officials of the Kachin Independence Organisation, have made little effort to recover trafficked women and girls. Families pursuing police help were repeatedly rebuffed and often told that they would have to pay before police would take action. Women and girls who contacted the Chinese police after escaping were sometimes jailed for immigration violations rather than being treated as victims of crimes. The Myanmar and Chinese governments, as well as the Kachin Independence Organisation, should be doing much more to prevent trafficking, recover and assist victims, and prosecute traffickers, Ms Barr, acting womens rights co-director at Human Rights Watch, said. Donors and international organisations should support the local groups that are doing the hard work that governments wont to rescue trafficked women and girls and help them recover. Although the 37 women and girls interviewed had all escaped back to Myanmar, some are held as sex slaves for years. Others are faced with the painful predicament of being forced to leave their child behind if they want to go back to their families. Many of the trafficking survivors researchers spoke to were among over 100,000 people internally displaced by fighting in Kachin and northern Shan states who face gruelling, desperate lives in camps. Humanitarian aid to the camps has chiefly been blocked by the Myanmar government. Women are often the sole breadwinners due to men taking part in the conflict. A study, carried out by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Kachin Womens Association Thailand at the end of last year, found thousands of vulnerable women and girls are being trafficked from Myanmar to China and forced to marry and bear children. Marriages are often arranged and brokered by village elders, as well as the womens own families, and women are left powerless to refuse because they are in the lower echelons of the social hierarchy. The study, which was the first to quantify the extent of the problem and was carried out from June 2017 to April of last year, urged both Myanmar and China to provide training to border officials on anti-trafficking and safe migration measures. The driver of a school bus has been arrested in northern Italy after allegedly hijacking the vehicle with 51 children on board and setting it on fire. The children, some of them tied up, were rescued by police through smashed windows before flames destroyed the vehicle, and no one was seriously injured. After police arrived, the driver allegedly doused the vehicle with an inflammable liquid and shouted: No one will survive today. The suspect, a 47-year-old Italian citizen originally from Senegal, has been arrested. He told authorities he wanted to vindicate Europe-bound migrants who have died in the Mediterranean Sea but did not plan to hurt anyone. Bus burned by driver after he abducts 51 children Show all 7 1 /7 Bus burned by driver after he abducts 51 children Bus burned by driver after he abducts 51 children The wreckage of the school bus that was set alight by the driver after he had abducted the 51 children on board AFP/Getty Bus burned by driver after he abducts 51 children The wreckage of a school bus that was set alight by the driver after he had abducted the 51 children on board AFP/Getty Bus burned by driver after he abducts 51 children This picture released by the Carabinieri police shows 47-year-old bus driver Ousseynou Sy who abducted 51 children on a bus before setting it alight EPA Bus burned by driver after he abducts 51 children Firefighters attend to the wreckage of a school bus that was set alight by the driver after he had abducted the 51 children on board Reuters Bus burned by driver after he abducts 51 children Forensic investigators and firefighters inspect the wreckage of a school bus that was set alight by the driver after he had abducted the 51 children on board AFP/Getty Bus burned by driver after he abducts 51 children Middle school student Ramy Shehata who made the call to emergency services to report the incident is pictured with his father after being rescued EPA Bus burned by driver after he abducts 51 children Middle school student Ramy Shehata is pictured with some of the Carabinieri police officers who came to the rescue AFP/Getty However, prosecutors said the man, identified as Ousseynou Sy, made preparations that showed his actions were premeditated. He allegedly bought a canister of petrol and restraints a day before the attack on Wednesday. He also sent a video to friends in Italy and Senegal indicating plans for bold action, with the message Africa, Rise up, prosecutors said. Mr Sy was being investigated on suspicion of kidnapping, intention to commit a massacre, arson and resisting law enforcement, with terrorism as an aggravating circumstance since the event caused panic. Prosecutors said they have found no evidence of Islamic radicalisation or ties to extremists, saying it appeared the bus driver acted alone. Chief prosecutor Francesco Greco praised the Carabinieri, Italys military police force, for moving swiftly to block the bus and remove the children. They carried out an operation that we see in films with special agents, Mr Greco said. Thank goodness, because by then the intent to massacre had ignited, and the man was starting to set fire to the bus, as he did. Milans provincial Carabinieri commander, Luca De Marchis, told broadcaster Sky TG24 the bus was transporting two classes between school and a nearby gym in Cremona province, some 40km (24 miles) from Milan. The wreckage of a school bus that was transporting some 50 children after it was allegedly torched by the driver (AFP/Getty) (AFP/Getty Images) The driver threatened the passengers, telling them no one would survive today as he commandeered the bus, Mr De Marchis said. Italian news agency Ansa quoted one of the students as saying the driver took everyones phones and ordered the chaperones to bind the students hands with cable ties, threatening to spill gas and set the bus ablaze. Ansa said the chaperones only loosely bound several students hands with the zip ties, not everyones. One of the students described his terror in an interview with La Repubblica TV, his face obscured due to his age. His name was not given. Recommended 16 killed as school bus crashes and bursts into flames in Italy We were all very afraid because the driver had emptied the gas canister onto the floor [of the bus]. He tied us up and took all the telephones so we could not call the police, the student said. One of the telephones, belonging to a classmate, fell to the ground, so I pulled off the handcuffs, hurting myself a bit, and went and picked it up. We called the Carabinieri and the police. Authorities said that an adult called an emergency operator, while one of the students called a parent, and they alerted authorities who set up roadblocks. The bus was intercepted on the outskirts of Milan by three Carabinieri vehicles, which were able to force it into the guardrail, Mr De Marchis said. While two officers kept the driver busy he took a lighter and threatened to set fire to the vehicle with a petrol canister on board the others forced open the back door, breaking two windows, Mr De Marchis said. While the evacuation was still underway, the driver started the blaze. Mr De Marchis credited the officers swiftness and courage for getting out all the children and their teachers with no tragic consequences. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Some of the passengers were treated at a hospital, mostly for cuts and scratches related to the evacuation, he said. Prosecutors confirmed Mr Sy, who became an Italian citizen in 2004, had been convicted in 2007 and 2011 of drunken driving and sexual molestation of a minor. Sky TG24 said the driver had worked for the bus company for 15 years without any employment-related issues. AP Aid agencies are warning that those fleeing Isiss last strip of territory are in the worst condition since the crisis began, as 12 died after arriving at al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria. Two thousand women and children arrived at the camp overnight into Wednesday after escaping fighting in Baghouz, with 60 needing immediate hospitalisation and another 12 deaths recorded, the International Rescue Committee, which runs the camp, said in a statement on Thursday. These women and children are in the worst condition we have seen since the crisis first began. Many have been caught up in the fighting and dozens have been burnt or badly injured by shrapnel, Wendy Taeuber, IRCs Iraq and northeast Syria country director said. It is unclear how many children were among the 12 who died. Kurdish authorities and aid agencies are struggling to cope with the huge numbers of those who have been displaced, with more than 60,000 arriving at the camp since fighting began. Some 90 per cent of the arrivals have been women and children. A victory over the last strip of Isis territory appears imminent, with only the most battle-hardened fighters left in Baghouz, believed to be hiding out in underground tunnels. Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Show all 14 1 /14 Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Trucks full of women and children arrive from the last Isis-held areas in Deir ez-Zor, Syria Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Zikia Ibrahim, 28, with her two-year-old son and 8-month-old daughter, after fleeing the Isis caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Men who fled the last Isis-held area of Syria line up to be questioned by American and Kurdish intelligence officials Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate A young girl pulls her belongings after arriving Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate An SDF fighter hands out bread to women and children after they arrive Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Sita Ghazzar, 70, after fleeing from the last Isis-held territory in Syria Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate A family from Russia who recently fled the last Isis-held area of Syria Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Syria at war: Fleeing the caliphate Richard Hall/The Independent Those who escaped are now living in squalid conditions and are sleeping in large, overcrowded tents in the camp. Malnutrition, freezing temperatures and a lack of medical care have led to the deaths of at least 138 people since December, the IRC said. The vast majority (80 per cent) of those who died were infants under five years old, with two-thirds being babies one-year-old and under. The main cause of death for infants in al-Hol has been severe acute malnutrition, pneumonia and dehydration, which reflects the dire conditions they had been living under in Baghouz, Paul Donohoe, from the IRC, told The Independent. Baghouz: Syrian Democratic Fighters begin final push to recapture the last sliver of territory controlled by ISIS Since the final push to defeat the jihadis, there has also been an uptick in war-related injuries, with women and children caught up in the fighting, he added. Hospitals are overwhelmed, with an increasing number of people needing treatment for severe burns or shrapnel wounds. We are expecting another 3,000 to arrive soon, and we are very worried that they may be in even worse shape, Ms Taeuber said. We dont know how many more women and children, if any, are still in Baghouz. However, while fighting continues everything must be done to ensure that they are kept out of the line of fire. Democrats accuse President Trump of violating the norms of the American presidency and our political system, and in most cases, theyre correct. Unfortunately, instead of making clear they will right where Trump went wrong, some members of the party apparatus and 2020 presidential candidates arent advocating correction. What theyre proposing seeks to over-correct, creating an environment in which Trump can win a second term by labeling Democrats the extremists. Trumps routine trashing of the free press, his dismissal of the intelligence community and the people he handpicked to lead those agencies, and well as his attacks on the justice department apparatus investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election have created a political climate unlike we have seen in modern times. Additionally, his propensity for making hasty decisions costs him and the nation before someone steps and forces him to wise up. When Trump announced the withdrawal of troops from Syria without consulting military personnel, it paved the way for James Mattis to leave his role as Secretary of Defense in January. Its nearly April, and the president still hasnt named a permanent replacement. All of this is fair game for Democrats, and they should remind voters every day of these instances particularly suburban voters who went for Democrats in the 2018 House races. Instead, Democrats have floated radical proposals designed only to appeal to the far-left progressive wing of the party. Those ideas include stacking the Supreme Court or, at the very least, implementing term limits for justices; pushing for a constitutional amendment to end the electoral college; reducing the voting age to 16; and ending the legislative filibuster. These do not represent the return to norms and values moderate Americans want. Its not fringe Democratic candidates floating such ideas but prominent presidential candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Beto ORourke, Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand. Mind you, thats in addition to the Democratic support for the Green New Deal, a massive government undertaking that one former Congressional Budget Office director estimated could cost as much as $93 trillion. Lets be honest: Democrats wouldn't have offered up such ideas if Hillary Clinton had won the election in 2016. This is all about Donald Trump and supposedly creating an environment to react to the Trump presidency which can prevent someone like Trump from winning again (via the electoral college). Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Show all 23 1 /23 Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Joe Biden The former vice president - poised to be a frontrunner - has announced his run. He recently faced scrutiny for inappropriate touching of women, but was thought to deal with the criticism well AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Bernie Sanders The 2016 runner-up has announced that he will be running again in 2020 Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Hillary Clinton The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State says she is still considering whether she will run again. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Pete Buttigieg The Indiana mayor and war veteran will be running for president. If elected, he would be the first openly LGBT+ president in American history. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Kamala Harris The former California attorney general will be running for president in 2020. Introduced to the national stage during Jeff Sessions testimony, she has endorsed Medicare-for-all and proposed a major tax-credit for the middle class. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Elizabeth Warren The Massachusetts Senator has formally launched her bid for president in 2020. A progressive Democrat, she is a major supporter of regulating Wall Street. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Beto ORourke The former Texas congressman told Oprah Winfrey that he has been thinking about running for presidency, but stopped short of formally announcing his bid to run in 2020. AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Wayne Messam Mayor of the city of Miramar in the Miami metropolitan area, Wayne Messam has announced his bid. He intends to run on a progressive platform against the "broken" federal government. He favours gun regulations and was a signatory to a letter from some 400 mayors condemning President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. Vice News Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Kirsten Gillibrand The New York Senator formally announced her presidential bid in January, saying that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Cory Booker The New Jersey Senator has announced that he will be running for the presidency in 2020. If he secures the nomination he said finding a female vice president would be a priority. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? John Delaney The Maryland congressman was the first to launch his bid for presidency, making the announcement in 2017. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Julian Castro The former San Antonio mayor announced his candidacy in January and said that his running has a special meaning for the Latino community in the US. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Tulsi Gabbard The Hawaii congresswoman announced her candidacy in January, but is likely to face tough questions on her past comments on LGBT+ rights and her stance on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Andrew Yang The entrepreneur has announced his presidential candidacy, and has pledged that he would introduce a universal basic income of $1,000 a month to every American over the age of 18. AFP/Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Marianne Williamson The author and spiritual advisor has announced her intention to run for president. She had previously run for congress as an independent in 2014 but was unsuccessful. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? John Kerry The former secretary of state has said he is still thinking about whether to run. Getty Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Michael Bloomberg The entrepreneur and former New York mayor with a net worth of around $50bn has said he will decide by the end of February whether to seek the presidency. AFP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Howard Schultz Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has not yet ruled out running for president in 2020, despite criticism that his bid could help re-elect Mr Trump by dividing the Democrat vote. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Eric Holder The former attorney general has said he will decide in the next month or so whether to run as a 2020 presidential candidate. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Eric Swalwell The California congressman said he is ready to do this and will decide before April whether to run. MSNBC Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Terry McAuliffe The former Virginia governor, who worked to elect Democratic governors during 2018 midterms, said there was a 50 per cent chance he would run. AP Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Sherrod Brown The Ohio senator is still undecided about whether to run for president in 2020. Who could be running against Trump in 2020? Mitch Landrieu The former New Orleans mayor said he doesnt think he will run for president, but never say never. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin The biggest issue with the proposals Democrats have offered up is the blindness to the reality of politics. Even if Democrats defeat Trump in 2020, they won't be in power forever. The tide always shifts and Democrats will then have to deal with the consequences of their actions. When former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada chose to end the filibuster for judicial nominees in 2013, he received a warning from then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that Reid would regret the move he made. When Democrats in 2017 signalled they would filibuster the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, McConnell, now the Majority Leader, invoked the nuclear option for Supreme Court nominees, fulfilling the very warning he gave. Todays Democrats are making the same mistake by only looking to the next election. The bet is that Donald Trump can't possibly win re-election. But they made the same bet in 2016, convinced there was no path for Trump to beat Hillary Clinton. As the Newtonian law states, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Democrats desire to make such significant structural changes to our system of government and the Constitution will certainly get left-wing activists to open their checkbooks and make for great fodder on Twitter. But it also creates a climate for President Trump, of all people, to behave like the reasonable candidate during the 2020 campaign. He will proclaim, "They just want to do all of this because I won." And he's right. It's possible that former vice president Joe Biden enters the race and, instead of paying lip service to the more hot-headed activists, focuses on Trump blowing up norms and promises to bring back some semblance of normality within government along with an agenda that suburban voters will get behind. But if the Democratic Party continues down the path of over-correcting, they may find themselves sitting in the audience, watching President Trump taking the oath of office for his second term. Jay Caruso is the deputy editor of the Washington Examiner The sinister way in which the rise of technology is portrayed in much of the mainstream media is starting to look like a string of cliches at best, and a teaser for a low-budget dystopian Netflix series at worst. Robots are stealing our jobs, artificial intelligence will render our hard-earned skills useless, and were all destined to turn into virtual-reality nerds with the social skills of a yoghurt pot. And so you probably wouldnt be surprised by most of the conclusions reached in a recently published study by the Centre for the Governance of Change at Spains IE University. Two acclaimed academics asked over 2,500 European adults from France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK about their perceptions of the impact of technology on our future. Some 40 per cent said that they anticipate the company they currently work for to disappear within the next decade if it fails to implement profound and fast changes. Over 70 per cent said that they believe governments should resort to concrete policy measures to limit automation in businesses, and to tackle socially negative effects. And more than half of the respondents admitted to being somewhat or very concerned about a future where robots will carry out most human work. So far so predictable, and not exactly breaking news thats worthy of a front page. But then comes the plot twist. On page 10 of the chart-peppered report, the academics set the new-fangled cat among the oldschool pigeons, so to speak, by revealing that a quarter of respondents are somewhat or totally in favour of letting artificial intelligence make important decisions about the running of their country. In some places including the Netherlands, Germany, and, yes, the UK the figure was even higher at over 30 per cent. Were petrified of robots taking our own jobs and have been so for what feels like years. Were seemingly prepared to fight tooth and nail to keep our sacred professions out of the claws of the Malicious Machine. But when it comes to some of the most powerful people in the world the individuals who we implicitly trust to defend our basic human rights and represent our best interests on everything from health and housing to education and the economy many of us are totally OK offering their jobs to Lord and Lady Robo on a plate. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The authors of the study commented that the responses to this question reflect the growing mistrust citizens feel towards governments and politicians. Id say it reflects astronomical ignorance and profound hypocrisy. Were sceptical of robots cleaning our houses, making our food and driving our cars, but many of us are perfectly happy giving them the not exactly trivial responsibility of overseeing the whole political and cultural system that we exist and interact by. You might conveniently dismiss these findings as the notions of the opinionated ignorati the vocal hoi polloi who like to share their unsolicited two cents on just about everything and anything, provided it gets traction on social media. But allow me to unnerve you: the research also showed that people with university degrees are equally or even more inclined to leave policy decisions in the hands of AI than those who didnt go to university. So perhaps were facing a new reality where we really are in deep, deep trouble. Amid a rise in the prominence of right-wing political strongmen, like Donald Trump and Viktor Orban, its easy to crave an alternative, and perhaps an unfeeling cyborg does have its certain charm. But lets not get so carried away by the problems of today Brexit, protectionism, trade wars and more that we forsake the systems that have fundamentally served us well for longer than we care to admit. Have we really become so disillusioned that were willing to trade a Maybot or a Heartless Hillary for Frankensteins sapient creation that will steer us into oblivion because of a software malfunction? AI is imperfect. Emotions are a frontier yet to be truly reached by the tentacles of technology. So is empathy. So lets snap out of our entitled, 21st-century sulk and get serious. Lets stop being ludicrous and consider whether we really would be prepared to sacrifice democracy for technocracy. A minute ago robots were evil. Now we want to let them rule. Even theyd muster an expression of astonishment at this pathetic human fickleness. "Nearly three years have passed since the public voted to leave the European Union. It was the beginning of the biggest political humiliation in our country's history. I came to office on a promise to deliver on Brexit and have signally failed in that endeavour. If I had any conscience at all, I would start off by apologising for that, profusely. But I havent and I wont. "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Show all 15 1 /15 "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage waves from the top deck of the Brexit Betrayal bus on the march from Sunderland to London Reuters "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Marchers pass a sign to "Cuckoo Land" in Easington Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Marchers plod on near Grangetown, Tyne and Wear Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A marcher holds up a blue passport as the march passes Grangetown, Tyne and Wear Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage poses for a photo in a pub in Hartlepool Reuters "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage pays his respects to Tommy, the statue of a First World War soldier in Seaham, County Durham Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march An anti-Brexit van has been graffitied in Sunderland on the Brexit Betrayal march Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A marcher carries a Union flag reading "Storm Brexit" in Sunderland Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A couple push a Save Our Sovereignty trolley through a tunnel in Easington, County Durham during the Brexit Betrayal march Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage enjoys a pint with fellow marchers in Hartlepool Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march A pro-European counter-marcher lets off a smoke grenade with the colours of the EU flag Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage leads the march in Easington Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Marchers plod on near Easington Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage takes part in the Brexit Betrayal march Getty "Leave means leave" - Brexit Betrayal march Nigel Farage poses on the top deck of the Brexit Betrayal bus in Seaham Getty In March 2017, I triggered the Article 50 process for the UK to exit the EU, after one Gina Miller rumbled that I was trying to bypass parliament. But I then forgot to get all sides in the House behind a decisive course of action. I continued to plough on regardless, alienating people I should have been getting on side, and consequently, more than two years on, MPs are now unable to agree on a way to implement the UK's withdrawal. As a result, we will now not leave on time with a deal on the 29th of March. Recommended Government orders hospitals not to reveal Brexit impact assessments This delay is a matter of great personal regret for me as it makes me look bad. And of this I am absolutely sure: You, the public, have had enough. You're tired not so much of the political games, the infighting and the arcane procedural rules that underpin so much of our democracy, but you are tired of Brexit itself - and tired I dare say of me - when you have real concerns about your children's schools, our National Health Service, knife crime, things that matter. You are increasingly saying you never want to hear the word Brexit again. A petition to revoke Article 50, set up to register the names of all those people who are sick of Brexit, keeps crashing due to more than a million having signed up already. The Brexit Betrayal march - organised by Nigel Farage, the father of Brexit turned out to be a Farage Mirage. If people congregate on the streets when Brexit is abandoned, it will be not to riot, but to party. Theresa May says that delay to Brexit is 'a matter of great personal regret' as she tells public 'I'm on your side' I am not, however, on your side, and sadly you now appear to know it. In a Sky Data poll, 51% said I am not, as opposed to just 35% who still somehow feel that I am. I have therefore written to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, to request a short extension of Article 50 up to the 30th of June to give me a bit more time to bully and bribe MPs to have a final say on my agreement. Recommended May wants us to follow her down a rabbit hole of Brexit madness Of course I have no real plan for making Brexit work in just three months, but the kicking the can down the road strategy has served me well up until now after all, Im still here! Still, we ask ourselves: do we want to leave the EU with a deal which delivers on the result of the referendum, that takes control of our money and borders and laws while protecting jobs and our national security? Well, sadly, I still havent figured out how to do that, but as you know I never give up and I will carry on trying to implement the unimplementable. The only other options are leaving without a deal a disaster for everyone except the disaster capitalists or just accepting that Brexit really wasn't one of our better ideas, that no one explained to us what it would involve, and anyway it was based largely on sorting out an internal fight within the Conservative Party. It is, of course, largely still about the Conservative Party, but fights have a way of getting out of hand, and it is now also a fight within the Labour Party, which is obviously pleasing for me. Of course, Brexit was fundamentally undeliverable in the way it was first sold to the people in the referendum campaign by the leave campaigners. We all know that is still true, but none of us dare to say it. Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Show all 15 1 /15 Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Pork There will be tariffs on pork in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cheese There will be tariffs in place on some cheeses including 22.10/100kg of cheddar, 19.10/100kg of processed cheese and 18.60/100kg on some blue cheeses Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Milk There will be no tariffs in place on milk Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Car Parts There will be no tariffs on car parts imported from Europe PA Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Cars However finished cars will face tariffs of 10.6% Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Alcoholic drinks There will be no tariffs on alcoholic drinks - except on some rums due to ingredients used in their distilling process Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Beef There will be tariffs on beef in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fish There will be no tariffs on many types of fish including cod, haddock, salmon and sea bass Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Fruit and vegetables There will be no tariffs on almost all fruit and vegetables Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Chocolate There will be no tariffs on chocolate or other cocoa products Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Poultry There will be tariffs on poultry in order to protect British farmers Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Ceramics There will be some tariffs in place on ceramis Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Steel There will be no tariffs on steel Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Coal There will be no tariffs on coal Getty Tariffs in the event of a no-deal Brexit Lamb/Mutton There will be tariffs on the meat of sheep in order to protect British farmers Getty In view of the damage to public trust and the entire democratic process it is high time we made a decision. So far, parliament has done everything possible to avoid making a choice, not least because they may see how unappetising the choice is. They are pig-headed, stubborn and difficult for being unwilling to compromise. I am, by contrast, strong and stable and unwilling to budge. Motion after motion and amendment after amendment has been tabled with MPs willing to say what they do not want, rather than what they do want. I passionately hope MPs will find a way to somehow spare me further personal political embarrassment maybe if one of them could come up with an idea of how to make Brexit work, that would be helpful but otherwise if they could just vote for my disastrous deal anyway that would help me out of this hole. Recommended Our Brexit mess is down to an utterly broken party system And I will continue to work night and day to secure the support of my colleagues, the DUP and others for this deal, even though it is of course a waste of your money and everyones time. But I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than the 30th of June. I know that anyone rational would say that I am making the wrong choice and I should ask for a longer extension, as MPs voted for last week, maybe to the end of the year or beyond to give more time for my fellow MPs to argue over the way forward, or, better still, to just call the whole thing off. That would mean asking you to vote in European elections nearly three years after our country decided to leave. What kind of message would that send? That we have taken leave of our senses? Well, that is pretty much taken as read now in most European capitals thanks to my leadership. I have succeeded in turning a strong and stable country into what one European newspaper called a failed state. Some have suggested holding a second referendum. Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events Of course that is what the overwhelming majority of you want opinion poll after opinion poll has shown that but that is not what I want and this is fundamentally now about me. We have asked you the question already and there is no way I want to put it to you again, now that you are in possession of so many more facts now that my Government has finally got around to producing impact studies and reports about what Brexit actually means. I know many of you would wish me the best of British if I were now to announce as so many of you thought that I would that I was moving out of 10 Downing Street, and there would no doubt be a huge sigh of relief if I had announced that Brexit was finally going to be consigned to the ashcan of history, and we could get on with looking after things like the rough sleepers we are practically falling over on our streets But that is the last thing I am determined to do." European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker embraces Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May as they attend a European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium March 21, 2019. Aris Oikonomou/Pool via REUTERS After a day of tough wrangling EU leaders have agreed on a plan to delay Brexit - postponing the risk of a no-deal crash-out by the UK which had loomed in just seven days. The chairman of a Brexit EU leaders summit, Donald Tusk, confirmed that the process can be delayed until 22 May provided the UK parliament next week approves the British withdrawal deal. If the Westminster parliament fails to do this, the EU will back a shorter delay until 12 April. This again poses the risk of a no-deal ending as the UK would then be challenged to finds ways of getting the deal through or to "indicate a way forward." President Tusk said British Prime Minister, Theresa May, had agreed the EU leaders findings. Going into this tense day-long meeting the UK was due to leave the EU in eight days, with or without a deal, if no extension was agreed. Despite reports of tensions through a day of frank talking, President Tusk said the contacts were positive and constructive. But the plain-speaking former Polish Prime Minister also made it clear that he was not backing down on previous claims about UK Brexiteers deserving a special place in hell for their lack of planning for the project. President Tusk was asked directly whether he believed the UK MPs still opposing a Brexit deal might also find space in hell. According to our Pope hell is still empty it means there is still a lot of spaces, President Tusk said. EU Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, did acknowledge tensions . The clock is ticking not just on Brexit, the clock is also ticking in other areas, President Jean-Claude Juncker said, indicating a certain frustration that the EU has had to spend so much time on Britain's departure. Expand Close Taoiseach Leo Varadkar meets with President of the European Council Donald Tusk in Dublin, Ireland March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Taoiseach Leo Varadkar meets with President of the European Council Donald Tusk in Dublin, Ireland March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne After hours of disputing over specific dates about Brexit extensions, the EU leaders finally came up with a formula to deal with the legal requirement to hold European Parliament elections in member states from May 23 to May 26 and publicise these elections in good time. Indications early today were that this formula went back to the original Brexit extension date of May 22 provided the UK parliament ratifies Theresa Mays draft EU-UK divorce deal next week. If that third parliamentary ratification bid fails next week, then Brexit would kick in on the new date of April 12 next. This risks being a no-deal Brexit unless the UK requests a longer delay but a longer delay would require big changes in Londons Brexit approach, perhaps a general election or even a second referendum. Speaking at a Brussels press conference, Mrs May said: "Firstly I welcome the Council's approval of the legally-binding assurances in relation to the Northern Ireland backstop, which I negotiated with President Juncker last week. "This should give extra assurance to Parliament that in the unlikely event that the backstop is ever used it will only be temporary and that the UK and EU will begin work immediately to replace the backstop with alternative arrangements by the end of December 2020." After a petition to cancel Brexit reached more than two million signatures, the UK Prime Minister said: "I do not believe we should be revoking Article 50." Earlier, the Taoiseach insisted that the UK has the power at all times to avoid a chaotic no-deal Brexit. Leo Varadkar said that if the UK does end up leaving the EU without an exit deal it will be entirely by their own choice. We all need to bear in mind that nobody wants a no-deal here. But no-deal, if it happens, will be a British choice, he emphasised. The Taoiseach said it was the UK who chose Brexit in the first place and it was they who fixed the March 29 deadline. They needed nobodys permission to revoke the Article 50 exit process and resume EU membership right up to the deadline, he stressed. Mr Varadkar attended a preparatory summit meeting with eight other heads of government belonging to the European Peoples Party before the full EU summit. A total of 28 companies have committed to relocating staff or operations to the capital since the June 2016 referendum Dublin is still the most popular location for financial services firms relocating after Brexit, according to EY's latest Brexit tracker. A total of 28 companies have committed to relocating staff or operations to the capital since the June 2016 referendum. Frankfurt is second most popular with 21, with Luxembourg third on 19 and Paris fourth on 18. The tracker does not provide detail on the scale of the staff/operations being moved here, but EY estimates that more than 1.1trn of assets could leave the UK. "The number of jobs that could relocate from the UK to Europe in the near future stands at around 7,000," the professional services firm said. According to recent IDA figures, 5,000 jobs from 70 different companies have been committed to Ireland as a whole because of Brexit. Cormac Kelly, financial services Brexit lead for EY in Ireland, said: "It comes as no surprise that the ongoing political uncertainty surrounding Brexit is continuing to drive organisations to relocate business, people and balance sheet out of London to European centres, specifically Dublin. "We are seeing this first-hand with the arrival of these firms who are taking new office space and recruiting talent as well as seconding experts from their worldwide offices into high-value, skilled roles in Dublin. "Much remains to do for these firms, however their plans are well under way - plans which are not easy to reverse, certainly in the near-term. Whatever the political outcome, it is clear that Ireland is becoming a leading hub for financial services in Europe." The report also tracks so-called 'Globally Systemically Important Banks' (GSIBs). It defines these as "banks whose systemic risk profile is deemed to be of such importance that the bank's failure would trigger a wider financial crisis and threaten the global economy". Ireland comes in third place when it comes to attracting GSIBs, having attracted six here, EY said. Frankfurt, home to the European Central Bank, was first with 12, with Paris second on eight. EY Ireland chief economist Prof Neil Gibson said the tracker results were "a reminder that while disruption of any kind is challenging, it also brings with it opportunity." He said the results show Dublin is "making the most of its potential". Central Bank deputy governor Ed Sibley told the Irish Independent last week that financial firms' Brexit relocations would likely come in two phases. After an initial shift by firms copperfastening EU access, a second phase will follow when the nature of Brexit eventually becomes clear. "We are a long way through the first phase," Mr Sibley said, saying there had been more than 100 applications to the Central Bank seeking either a fresh authorisation for activity here or an extension to existing authorisations. The first cracks in the EU's unified stance on Brexit have emerged as France, Spain and Belgium are resisting giving British Prime Minister Theresa May an extension to the official exit date. The embattled prime minister last night challenged MPs to choose between her deal, no deal or risk losing Brexit altogether. She has asked the EU to extend the Brexit date to the end of June, however she said she is not prepared to delay it beyond that. But as Mrs May was making her announcement, the first cracks in the EU's approach to Brexit were emerging with France ready to block an extension unless it gets concrete assurances from the prime minister. Cabinet ministers in Dublin last night admitted they are concerned that French President Emmanuel Macron's "very strident" resistance could result in Britain crashing out of the EU. It has also emerged Spain and Belgium will weigh-in behind France and demand further reassurances from Mrs May before signing off on an extension at today's crunch EU summit in Brussels. However, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said it was time to "cut the British government some slack" and extend the Brexit deadline to avoid a disorderly Brexit. "There's a lot of political instability in London at the moment, as people can see," he said. "And there is a real risk, that we wish to avoid, of no-deal happening by accident, despite people's best intentions." Expand Close Taoiseach Leo Varadkar discussing Brexit at Government Buildings in Dublin. Photo: PA / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Taoiseach Leo Varadkar discussing Brexit at Government Buildings in Dublin. Photo: PA Mrs May is now pinning her hopes of passing her Brexit deal and preserving her administration on a third meaningful vote on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. If she fails, as many of her own Cabinet believe she will, Brussels will hold an emergency summit just hours ahead of the March 29 deadline and offer either a long extension or a no-deal Brexit. There is growing speculation that either option would mean the end of Mrs May's time in Downing Street. Meanwhile, EU council President Donald Tusk said yesterday Britain would have to pass the Brexit withdrawal agreement before the EU would grant a short extension. He said the question of how long that technical extension would be would remain open - although June 30 poses problems for European elections which happen in May. Ireland will be one of the member states worst affected if Britain crashes out without a deal due to our strong trade ties with the UK. A package of supports for farmers and businesses is still being drawn up with the EU, but has not yet been signed off. The Government has promised it will be ready by next week. Ministers believe the EU ratifying the Strasbourg deal which gave additional assurances on the backstop to avoid a hard Border on the island of Ireland will allow MPs to have a third vote. This is despite a ruling earlier this week that Mrs May can't bring the same deal back yet again. Speaking in Downing Street last night, Mrs May said it was "a matter of great personal regret" for her that Brexit will not go ahead on March 29. In a further move to ramp up pressure on her opponents, she blamed MPs for failing to implement the result of the 2016 referendum. In an address to the UK, Mrs May said MPs - who rejected her deal by 230 votes in January and 149 last week - had been "unable to agree on a way to implement the UK's withdrawal". "You are tired of the in-fighting, you're tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our children's schools, our National Health Service, knife crime," she said. "You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide." EU leaders will meet today in Brussels to discuss the request from Mrs May and they will also hear from the prime minister herself who it is hoped will lay out her strategy. While an extension is still the likely outcome, there are divergent opinions among EU leaders. An extension requires unanimous support from the 27 other EU member states, effectively handing each country a veto at today's summit. It's been a busy Brexit week - what has happened now? Theresa May has written to the President of the EU Council Donald Tusk asking for an extension until June 30 so she can try to get her divorce deal - allowing the UK to depart in an orderly way - passed by parliament. Was this expected? It has long been expected the UK would need to seek a short extension to the March 29 deadline. The British system means that even if the deal was agreed now there would not be enough time to legislate for it. But there was also speculation Mrs May could seek a longer extension from Europe in the event that her deal is not ratified by MPs in Westminster. It is believed this idea did not go down well with members of her cabinet who fear a long extension could risk Brexit not happening at all. Mrs May was yesterday accused of pandering to the Tory hardliners in her party in a bid to keep her party intact and her government in power. Wait, I thought she couldn't have another vote? Well... technically she faces a bit of an uphill struggle to have a third "meaningful vote" on her deal. In a ruling earlier this week the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, said Mrs May could not bring the deal back after it has been twice rejected unless it was substantially changed. His ruling was based on parliamentary procedures dating back to 1604. It has caused another headache for her but Mrs May does plan to bring the deal back. But after two defeats, will it even pass? Good question - it does seem unlikely and there are two schools of thought on that. The first, which is Downing Street's gamble, is that faced with the threat of a no deal, MPs will finally come behind the agreement. But there are concerns that with a short extension the only option on the table, hardline Brexiteers will be more likely to hold out for a no deal. How does Theresa May intend to pass the deal on a third roll of the dice? Since last weekend there had been serious efforts by senior ministers to convince the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to support her deal. The DUP's 10 MPs underpin the current government in a confidence and supply deal. But due to their fears that the deal - and especially the Irish backstop - will result in a regulatory border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK they have yet to vote in favour. It is expected that Mrs May will try to offer some domestic legislation tweaks or other assurances that Northern Ireland will not be treated differently to the rest of the UK after Brexit. Talks with the DUP had cooled somewhat while Downing Street tried to deal with the problem caused by Mr Bercow, but they will likely ramp up again now everything appears to hinge on getting the deal passed. Some rebel Labour MPs will also need to vote for the deal as a core of Eurosceptics in the party will never vote for the deal. What has Mrs May said? Last night, in a live address to the nation from Downing Street, Mrs May said she is not prepared to delay Brexit beyond June. She said MPs have failed to make a decision on how the UK should leave the EU almost three years after people voted for it. She said MPs are now facing a choice between her deal, no deal or possibly no Brexit. She said the public were tired of political games and infighting and so was she. So what happens next? Mr Tusk has said he believes a short extension may be possible if the House of Commons backs the Brexit divorce deal next week. EU leaders - including Taoiseach Leo Varadkar - will hear from Mrs May in Brussels today before she leaves to allow them debate an extension. Surely the EU has to give her an extension or else we're looking at a crash out? The Brexit brinksmanship is well under way. The EU hs said that without a ratified deal it will not grant an extension. However, the bloc has also insisted that it does not want a no deal which would be bad for everyone. The Taoiseach said he believes a no deal is unlikely and said it is time for the UK government to be cut "some slack". Ireland supports an extension but some in Europe feel it just extends the turmoil. There is a "growing frustration" in Europe at the fact Brexit has taken up so much time and energy with no solution in sight. Today's meeting will be interesting to say the least. The pound was the worst-performing major currency yesterday, losing ground against both the euro and the dollar after British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would seek only a short extension to talks on leaving the European Union. The currency started the day trading in a narrow range but then dropped sharply on a media reports that said Brussels would "strongly oppose" extending UK membership of the EU beyond May 23 unless Britain participates in the European Parliament elections that month, a move that financial markets initially interpreted as making a cliff-edge exit with no deal more likely. Markets will be staying on tenterhooks for some time as Jean-Claude Juncker, the Commission president, said that there would likely not be a decision on the British request until next week. Hardline Brexiters are unwilling to buy into a long extension of negotiations as they believe the prolonged talks would likely be used to kill Brexit. Mrs May's call for a short extension was seen as an attempt to keep her Conservative party together by political commentators and, possibly to permit another vote on her twice-rejected agreement with the EU on Britain's terms of exit. A no-deal departure would be the worst possible outcome for businesses here as Ireland is the most exposed of any European Union country to the UK economy. According to investment bank ING, on average, just 1.9pc of EU output depends on final demand from the UK, but that figure rises dramatically here where it accounts for 7.4pc of GDP. Given that parliament has already ruled out a no-deal Brexit, some currency strategists believe that the options are narrowing sharply and that the likelihood of a second referendum is growing. "This scenario has been slowly but surely materialising. PM Theresa May has run out of options and I think the EU will push her into calling a second referendum," said Olivier Desbarres of 4X Global Research. What Theresa May said: The UK governments policy remains to leave the European Union in an orderly manner on the basis of the withdrawal agreement and political declaration agreed in November, complemented by the joint instrument and supplement to the political declaration president Juncker and I agreed on 11 March. And what she really meant: Very little of the governments policy remains. There is almost nothing of it, or of my already diminished authority, left. Please help me. What she said: You will be aware that before the House of Commons rejected the deal for a second time on 12 March, I warned in a speech in Grimsby that the consequences of failing to endorse the deal were unpredictable and potentially deeply unpalatable. The House of Commons did not vote in favour of the deal. What she meant: You know, Donald, what I am up against. You have some pretty odd MPs in your country. When you were prime minister of Poland you tried to reduce the size of parliament and got nowhere. You must help me. What she said: I had intended to bring the vote back to the House of Commons this week. The speaker of the House of Commons said on Monday that in order for a further meaningful vote to be brought back to the House of Commons, the agreement would have to be fundamentally different not different in terms of wording, but different in terms of substance. Some members of parliament have interpreted that this means a further change to the deal. This position has made it impossible in practice to call a further vote in advance of the European Council. What she meant: I had no chance of winning the vote this week, so I had already decided not to put it to the vote, but I was given a brilliant excuse by my worst enemy, John Bercow. I havent had much fun this week but I did enjoy sitting back at cabinet yesterday and just letting my colleagues vent about him. Makes a change from them having a go at me. What she said: However, it remains my intention to bring the deal back to the house. What she meant: I did not find the reference to the Black Knight, whose arms and legs are cut off and who says to his opponent, Lets call it a draw, from Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, in the slightest bit amusing. What she said: In advance of that vote, I would be grateful if the European Council could therefore approve the supplementary documents that President Juncker and I agreed in Strasbourg, putting the government in a position to bring these agreements to the house and confirming the changes to the governments proposition to parliament. Expand Close Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May prepares to make a statement about Brexit in Downing Street in London, Britain March 20, 2019. Jonathan Brady/Pool via REUTERS / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May prepares to make a statement about Brexit in Downing Street in London, Britain March 20, 2019. Jonathan Brady/Pool via REUTERS What she meant: The Commons has already voted on my Brexit deal with those documents attached, but if EU leaders in Brussels tomorrow approve them, I can add that to the list of things I can attach to the deal as a way of persuading Enemy Bercow to let me have another vote. What she said: I also intend to bring forward further domestic proposals that confirm my previous commitments to protect our internal market, given the concerns expressed about the backstop. What she meant: My people are also working on another piece of paper designed to get the DUP on board. I can tack that on to the next vote on the deal too as a way of pretending it is different in terms of substance. What she said: If the motion is passed, I am confident that parliament will proceed to ratify the deal constructively. But this will clearly not be completed before 29 March 2019. In our legal system, the government will need to take a bill through both houses of parliament to enact our commitments under the withdrawal agreement into domestic law. While we will consult with the opposition in the usual way to plan the passage of the bill as quickly and smoothly as possible, the timetable for this is inevitably uncertain at this stage. I am therefore writing to inform the European Council that the UK is seeking an extension to the Article 50 period under Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union ... until 30 June 2019. What she meant: In Britain, the home of democracy, we have a wonderful uncodified constitution which protects the rights of our freeborn citizens under the benign gaze of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. It works smoothly like handcrafted clockwork and all continental Europeans, emerging from the yoke of autocracies, look upon us with envy. But on this occasion we would appreciate it if you could give me a little more time for one last attempt to save my job. What she said: I would be grateful for the opportunity to set out this position to our colleagues on Thursday. What she meant: Let me read this letter out while everyone is putting their coats on. Please? What she said: Yours ever... What she meant: Well, I say ever; at least until 30 June. If this isnt sorted out by then, Im off. Good luck dealing with Boris Johnson. TANAISTE Simon Coveney hit out at hardline Brexiteers and warned they were having "a corrosive impact" on desperate efforts to avoid the UK crashing out of the EU without a withdrawal agreement. Mr Coveney said that while Ireland, the British Government and the EU all want an agreed withdrawal of the UK, hardline Brexiteers want a no-deal scenario and for the UK to crash out of the EU irrespective of the economic consequences. "There is a small number of politicians in Westminster who want to see a no-deal Brexit. They are having a very corrosive impact on the debate because what they want to trigger is the inability for the British Parliament to be able to settle on a way forward," Mr Coveney said. "Therefore, (it would) see a no-deal Brexit happen by accident, by default. I hope the British Parliament will not allow that to happen." "I think there is a strong majority in Westminster that want to prevent a no-deal including the Prime Minister." "As someone who has been very close to these negotiations for many, many months now, no-one wants a no-deal. It is a lose for everybody." "I think the European Council, the British Government, the Irish Government and everybody else involved in this process will be working to avoid a no-deal Brexit." The Cork TD stressed that the Withdrawal Agreement hammered out with British Prime Minister Theresa May is the only option before London, Brussels and Dublin. "She is the only person with a coherent plan on the table." "That is why that plan which has been agreed with the EU will be put to a vote again next week in the British Parliament. I hope it can get through." "If it doesn't, then of course the British Parliament is faced with coming up with an alternative quickly because we really are running out of time." "I think the European Council will consider their approach again next week when they have more clarity from Westminster." But Mr Coveney warned it is impossible to predict what will happen given the deep divisions within the UK and growing frustrations over Brexit in EU capitals. "I think we will have to wait and see how the (European) Council develops but I would be very surprised if the approach that President Donald Tusk outlined yesterday evening is not the line that is agreed and taken." "I think certainly the indications that some countries have gotten frustrated with the process is indicative of the fact that the negotiations on Brexit have been going on for a long time now." "With a week to go there is still an enormous amount of uncertainty coming from Westminster and that has created concern and frustration in many countries who are trying to prepare for Brexit and the changes that will be linked to that." "I would be hopeful that at the end of quite a long discussion in the Eurpopean Council there will be agreement in principle that if the parliament in Westminster ratifies the Withdrawal Agreement there will be a short extension to facilitate the legislation that will be necessary to be passed before they leave in a way that is controlled and predictable." The Tanaiste said it was impossible to predict what will happen in Westminster over Prime Minister May's deal. "We just don't know - that is the honest answer. There are conflicting messages emerging - it is very difficult for her, there is no question about that." "There is a lot of division still within the British political system both within the political parties and across political parties. I think we need to give the Prime Minister the time and space to manage the approach next week in trying to get a deal ratified." "That is essentially what she wants to do - I hope she can do it." "That is what I think provides the most certainty from an Irish perspective in terms of what the future holds linked to the unfolding and developing Brexit negotiations." "Certainly from our perspective, we would like to get a Withdrawal Agreement ratified so that we can at least then move on to the next phase of Brexit negotiations which will last somewhere between two and four years, to put in place the closest possible relationship that can be negotiated between the EU and UK." "Certainly, that is Ireland's perspective and it always has been." He warned that the divisions were even apparent within the European Research Group (ERG), the support group for Brexit supporting MPs. "The ERG does not have one clear position. There are different elements within the ERG - some are complete hardliners that want to see a no-deal Brexit. Others are more pragmatic but they have issues that they need assurance and clarification on," Mr Coveney said. "Of course, there is the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) who are not in the ERG but who do work with different ERG members at different times. They have concerns that we all know and understand. That is why we have worked with our EU partners through the Barnier task force to provide the reassurance and clarification I hope is necessary to allow the DUP to support the overall package." "That is what the agreement in Salzburg a couple of weeks ago was all about." "There are different voting blocks within Westminster - some of them in Government, some of them in Opposition who want different things. That is why, so far, the British Parliament has been able to find a majority for what they don't want - but they have not been able to put a majority together for what they do want." "That has caused a huge amount of frustration in other EU countries which are trying to adapt and predict what is likely to happen in the context of Brexit because it impacts on them too." "That is why I think the Council will listen very carefully to what the British Prime Minister has to say and then they will have a debate themselves on a way forward. But I would not like to predict what that will be until we hear later." Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement about Brexit in Downing Street in London, Britain March 20, 2019. Jonathan Brady/Pool via REUTERS Theresa May yesterday requested a 'short extension' to delay Brexit until June 30. In a televised address from 10 Downing Street, Mrs May said that it was "a matter of great personal regret for me" that Brexit will not go ahead on March 29. She blamed MPs for failing to agree a means to implement the result of the 2016 referendum and said she believes voters just want this stage of the Brexit process to be over. And she told voters: "I am on your side." Mrs May said that she has written to Donald Tusk to request an extension to Article 50. "Today I have written to Donald Tusk to request a short extension to Article 50 up until 30 June. "But I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than the 30th of June." But what happens next? Thursday March 21 Mrs May will travel to Brussels for a summit of the European Council, where she will make her case for a three-month extension to the two-year Article 50 negotiation process, putting Brexit back from March 29 to June 30. The Prime Minister is expected to address leaders of the other 27 EU states before leaving them to discuss their response for about three hours in her absence. The outcome is likely to be announced by Council president Donald Tusk and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in a joint press conference before Mrs May joins the other leaders for dinner. Mr Tusk has indicated the EU27 could agree an extension in principle, subject to Mrs May getting her Withdrawal Agreement through Parliament next week. Their agreement must be unanimous. If they do not offer an extension, the legal default is that the UK leaves on March 29 with or without a deal. Mrs May has already accepted that she no longer has time to complete the necessary legislation by that deadline, leaving her with the unenviable choice of revoking Article 50 to keep the UK in the EU or leaving without a legislated deal. Friday March 22 Mrs May will remain in Brussels to discuss issues like climate change, jobs and the 25th anniversary of the European Economic Area. This will possibly be the final participation of a British prime minister in a summit as one of the 28 EU leaders. Saturday March 23-Sunday March 24 Intensive talks are expected to continue with MPs - particularly Conservative Brexiteers and the Democratic Unionist Party - to try to shore up support for Mrs May's Withdrawal Agreement. Saturday is expected to see large crowds attend a Put It To The People march and rally in central London demanding a second referendum. Monday March 25 Under an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Act secured last year by Remain-backing MP Dominic Grieve, the Government must table an amendable motion in response to its second "meaningful vote" defeat last week. MPs are likely to use the opportunity to promote their own preferred options. These could range from a no-deal Brexit to a close Norway-style relationship with the EU, a longer postponement or a second referendum. Mrs May's effective deputy David Lidington has also promised to kick-off a two-week process to seek a majority on the best way forward, which may involve indicative votes on alternative outcomes. Monday March 25-Friday March 29 Mrs May is expected to put her Withdrawal Agreement package to a third "meaningful vote" in the Commons - assuming that Speaker John Bercow accepts that her motion is fundamentally different from those defeated by 230 votes in January and 149 in March. She is also expected to push a statutory instrument through the Commons and the Lords to remove the exit date of March 29 from Brexit legislation, in a process which Downing Street expects to take one or two days. If the Agreement gets through at the third attempt, the European Council is likely to confirm the offer of an extension, allowing the UK to complete the process of ratifying the treaty and getting legislation in place for an orderly exit in May or June. If the package is rejected for a third time, there will be intense pressure on the EU27 to nonetheless offer an extension to preserve the hope of a smooth Brexit. Thursday March 28 Next Thursday has been mooted as a possible date for an extraordinary European Council summit to find a last-minute solution if no agreement has been reached. Friday March 29 If no extension has been offered and no agreement approved by MPs, the UK will leave the EU without a deal at 11pm, with the potential for widespread disruption. Leave Means Leave marchers demanding a no-deal Brexit are due to arrive in London after a two-week walk from Sunderland. March 30-June 30 If Mrs May's plan has worked, this period will see the UK pass the necessary legislation for an orderly withdrawal from the EU. If Brussels has delivered an extension but Mrs May's deal has been rejected by MPs, there will be furious debate in Westminster on the way forward. April 11 Deadline for the UK to declare it is participating in the European Parliament elections. May 23-26 European Parliament elections. Brussels says that no further extension to Article 50 will be possible if the UK has not taken part in the vote. June 30 Under Mrs May's plans, the UK would leave the European Union and enter an 18-month transition period lasting to December 31 2020, during which it would observe EU rules but have no representation in Brussels institutions. Intensive talks would take place in this period on the future trade and security relationship between the UK and EU, with the hope of finalising a deal before the end of 2020. EU council President Donald Tusk said yesterday Britain would have to pass the Brexit withdrawal agreement before the EU would grant a short extension. He said the question of how long that technical extension would be would remain open - although June 30 poses problems for European elections which happen in May. Ireland will be one of the member states worst affected if Britain crashes out without a deal due to our strong trade ties with the UK. A package of supports for farmers and businesses is still being drawn up with the EU, but has not yet been signed off. The Government has promised it will be ready by next week. Last night, a Cabinet minister said the EU was "doing Theresa May a favour" by insisting on another vote on her deal as it would focus the minds of hardline Brexiteers and the DUP ahead of a potential crash out. "When (EU Commission President) Jean-Claude Juncker says 'not another inch' he's actually supporting her argument that this is the best deal on the table," a senior minister said. "The EU and prime minster both want the same thing which is a deal that allows them leave in an orderly way," the minister added. Ministers believe the EU ratifying the Strasbourg deal which gave additional assurances on the backstop to avoid a hard Border on the island of Ireland will allow MPs to have a third vote. This is despite a ruling earlier this week that Mrs May can't bring the same deal back yet again. Expand Close Address to her nation: Theresa May said the British people were sick of Brexit. Photo: Jonathan Brady/Pool via REUTERS / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Address to her nation: Theresa May said the British people were sick of Brexit. Photo: Jonathan Brady/Pool via REUTERS Another minister said the Cabinet was not told what would happen if the House of Commons did not support the prime minister's deal. "To be honest we don't know what will happen if that's the case," the minister said. The Taoiseach also refused to comment on what would happen if the deal falls again, describing it as a hypothetical situation. Speaking in Downing Street last night, Mrs May said it was "a matter of great personal regret" for her that Brexit will not go ahead on March 29. Expand Close Hypothetical: Leo Varadkar was tightlipped about the Brexit deal. Photo: Gareth Chaney, Collins Photos / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hypothetical: Leo Varadkar was tightlipped about the Brexit deal. Photo: Gareth Chaney, Collins Photos In a further move to ramp up pressure on her opponents, she blamed MPs for failing to implement the result of the 2016 referendum. In an address to the UK, Mrs May said MPs - who rejected her deal by 230 votes in January and 149 last week - had been "unable to agree on a way to implement the UK's withdrawal". "You are tired of the in-fighting, you're tired of the political games and the arcane procedural rows, tired of MPs talking about nothing else but Brexit when you have real concerns about our children's schools, our National Health Service, knife crime," she said. "You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide." EU leaders will meet today in Brussels to discuss the request from Mrs May and they will also hear from the prime minister herself who it is hoped will lay out her strategy. The bar has been set high for Mrs May to sell an extension. It is expected the Taoiseach will lobby his counterparts to grant one, and key allies for this approach include the Netherlands and Germany. While an extension is still the likely outcome, there are divergent opinions among EU leaders. An extension requires unanimous support from the 27 other EU member states, effectively handing each country a veto at today's summit. France has been consistently tough on Brexit, and Spain and Belgium are thought to be among countries signalling they will demand concrete assurances from Mrs May. "A situation in which Mrs May is unable to deliver sufficient guarantees on the credibility of her strategy at the European Council would lead to the request being refused and a preference for no deal," Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, said. Businessman Emmet O'Neill looks set to proceed with the sale of a site with full planning permission for a hotel development on Donnybrook Road in Dublin 4. The site, which is owned by his company, Kouchin, recently secured approval from An Bord Pleanala for the development of a 71-bedroom hotel, immediately adjacent to Donnybrook fire station. The Irish Independent understands the former head of Topaz and founder of Smiles Dental has instructed Knight Frank to prepare the site for sale, with a view to bringing it to the market in the coming weeks. While Knight Frank declined to comment, market sources said they expect the site to command a guide price of between 6m and 7m. Efforts to contact Mr O'Neill for comment were unsuccessful. The site had in the past been controlled by Partenay, an investment vehicle associated with Mr O'Neill's uncle, the billionaire businessman Denis O'Brien. While Dublin City Council gave its approval to Kouchin for the hotel's development on August 15 last, the decision was appealed by a number of local residents. Some claimed the six-storey hotel would be "over-dominant" in the Dublin 4 village, while others maintained it would be "out of proportion to, and out of character with the surrounding built environment of Donnybrook". A senior planning inspector from An Bord Pleanala said the new hotel would be "an appropriate and welcome addition to the streetscape views". She said: "It is not accepted that the proposed development would give rise to noise disturbance that would significantly adversely affect the residential amenities of properties in the vicinity. "The proposed development would not seriously injure the visual amenities and character of Donnybrook village, the residential amenities of adjoining properties or the integrity of historic properties within the residential conservation area in the vicinity." UK farming unions have written to Chancellor Philip Hammond demanding that the government does not allow the Northern Irish border to become a loophole that only works to the benefit of Irish businesses to the detriment of UK producers. Among the signatories of the letter Ulster Farmers Union President Ivor Ferguson said the governments recent no-deal applied tariff policy announcement confirms our view that to leave the EU without a deal in place would be catastrophic for UK farming. While we acknowledge that the tariff policy announced earlier this month is intended to be temporary and would be in direct response to an undesirable situation facing the country, we have very significant concerns about the damage this policy would cause to farmers across the country. He said treating Northern Ireland in effect as a separate customs territory from Britain is not appropriate and governments failure to secure reciprocal commitments from the Republic of Ireland is unacceptable. "It is imperative that government does not allow the Northern Irish border to become a loophole that only works to the benefit of Irish businesses to the detriment of UK producers," he added. An IFA spokesman said the tariff regime suggested last week would be very damaging for farmers here and in the UK. Specifically on the idea of routing through Northern Ireland, the spokesman said the idea lacked credibility. Under a temporary and unilateral regime announced by Theresa May's government, EU goods arriving from the Republic and remaining in Northern Ireland will not be subject to tariffs. Although tariffs will be payable on goods passing from the EU to mainland Britain, via Northern Ireland, customs officers will rely on intelligence and compliance work, rather than checks on cargoes, to impose the levies. The UK government insists that this will not create a border down the Irish Sea, as there will be no checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Instead, "normal compliance and intelligence methods" will be used to detect any traders attempting to abuse the system. Already, commentators are saying this could lead to a smugglers dream as exporters could look to avoid tariffs that would be imposed on direct transport between mainland Britain and the Republic of Ireland, by transporting such goods through Northern Ireland. Windfarms investor Greencoat Renewables has raised 147.7m in an oversubscribed share placing. Stock image Windfarms investor Greencoat Renewables has raised 147.7m in an oversubscribed share placing. In all, 140 million placing shares will be issued at the price of 1.055 per placing share - increasing the issued share capital of the company to 520 million ordinary shares. The group had intended to issue 100 million new shares, but opted to increase the fundraising due to "substantial excess demand." The funds will be used to pay down the company's revolving credit facility, freeing up capital to fund further acquisitions in Ireland. Greencoat chairman Ronan Murphy, as well as directors Emer Gilvarry and Kevin McNamara, subscribed for shares, as did Bertrand Gautier, a partner of the investment manager. Following the placing Mr Murphy will own 0.03pc of the enlarged issued ordinary share capital of the company. Ms Gilvarry and Mr McNamara will both own 0.01pc of the capital respectively. Greencoat raised 270m in its 2017 IPO. Shares fell 0.47pc yesterday to 1.065 each. Dublin hotels experienced a fall in revenue per available room last month, following more than two years of positive growth. (stock photo) Dublin hotels experienced a fall in revenue per available room last month, following more than two years of positive growth. Outside the capital the figure remained upbeat, new data shows. This comes on the back of a controversial Vat hike in the last Budget, as well as increased competition. Revenue per room fell 1.6pc in Dublin hotels last month, with occupancy down 1.0 percentage points. Outside Dublin, revenue from hotel rooms increased 3.5pc in February, while occupancy edged up 1.3 percentage points. Despite intensive lobbying and dire predictions that it would result in job cuts and unprofitability, in last October's Budget the Government restored the Vat rate for sectors including hospitality to 13.5pc from the 9pc rate it had introduced during the downturn. Davy Stockbrokers' Joseph Quinn said Ireland's largest hotel group, Dalata, should still "outperform" the broader market. Shares in Dalata fell 2pc in early trading yesterday. The ransomware attack crippling one of the world's top aluminium makers is exposing how crucial sophisticated digital systems have become in the centuries-old industry of turning mined rock into metal products. Following a "severe" cyberattack on Norsk Hydro's operations in the US and Europe early on Tuesday, the company has been forced to shut down several automated product lines and is keeping its smelters running using manual production processes. Hydro said it's planning to restart certain systems on Wednesday to "allow for continued deliveries to customers". The critical issue for Hydro is to now find specific customer orders and the recipe for how to fulfil them, CFO Eivind Kallevik said in an interview in Oslo on Tuesday. "We can get that either through cleaning the systems and restoring the backups and in some cases, we are able to go back into the backup systems and pull data more manually," he said. "That is a big task at all the plants." The threat of a supply disruption at Hydro is being keenly felt in the aluminium industry, where there are only a handful of companies in the world that can make the technical products required by companies like Daimler and Ford. That means when there's a problem, the effects can be far-reaching, as consumers learned last year when the US unexpectedly sanctioned Rusal, the world's largest aluminium producer outside of China. The Hydro incident and other recent attacks show how central technology and automation have become in the metals and mining industry. As part of its push into the European automotive market, Hydro in 2015 invested in automated ultrasonic testing systems to precisely scan its products for impurities, responding to the exacting needs of customers in the transport sector. Without that automated certification, automakers would be unable to use the parts, according to Colin Hamilton, managing director for commodities research at BMO Capital Markets. On Wednesday, Hydro said the inability to connect to some of its production systems has caused challenges, adding that it's still too soon to estimate the "exact operational and financial impact". More than other base metals, aluminium production is dominated by a handful of companies, meaning there's more risk that supply chains will be disrupted if there's a production problem, according to Michael Widmer, head of metals research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London. The interconnected nature of supply chains isn't unique to the metals industry. As manufacturing processes becoming increasingly complex and spread out around the world, more companies will have to navigate the risk of a disruption from cyberattacks. "The more automation you introduce into your systems, the more you need to protect them," said Mr Widmer. "Along with other industries, you may potentially start to see a much stronger emphasis on cybersecurity." Bloomberg Voxgig is preparing for growth. By the summer we'll be in full public release, onboarding lots of new users and customers. As things progress, we'll move onto the next round of funding, and filling out the 'C-Level' team. That means we'll be bringing experienced people into the company to build out teams and structures. In the last two articles, I wrote about our need for a CTO. In this article I'll continue that discussion - in later articles in this series I'll talk about the other roles we need to hire. Some of them will only come into place much later, but it's good to think ahead. As ever, next year you'll be able to look back and have a good chuckle at my mistakes and wrong-headedness. Of course, so will I - and that's the reason I write this startup diary. What does day one look like for a new CTO joining a growth-stage startup? Excitement and enthusiasm based on the great results so far? Are you looking forward to building out some great technology and jumping into some great scaling and team-building challenges? If so, I'm afraid you'll be better off at an established tech company. If an early-stage startup has got to growth stage, then by definition they've done so with minimal resources and a tiny team. The corners of the corners have been cut. Any problem that isn't immediately fatal has been pushed into the future. Take a look at our website voxgig.com - notice how the page header is not consistent and changes on different pages. How embarrassing. Different people build different pages at different times for different purposes. There's now a job to consolidate all that work. It's just been pushed down the priority list - when you have a trial client running your system in production, they win every time. And rightly so. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Day one for a new CTO means a growing sense of dread and rapidly escalating sense of panic. "What have I got myself into?" The software is usually in such bad shape that a complete rewrite is often felt to be necessary - by everyone. That would be a fatal mistake, so don't succumb to temptation. Netscape's big rewrite in the mid-90s famously allowed Microsoft to come in with the Internet Explorer browser and take over the market. There is a term for this situation - technical debt. It is the deliberate accumulated of bad design and short cuts in the technical system in order to achieve immediate business goals. In an established company, your choices are not so extreme and you can afford to get the engineering right. But in a startup you have no choice - good engineering will kill you. The job of the new CTO is to pay down the technical debt. Not only in the software code itself, but also in the team structure and working practices. This is the reason they have been hired. It is also the reason that this is a particular role needing a very special set of skills. Just being a good architect or technical manager is not enough. You also need to be skilled at organisation and system design, because that is how you deliver the most value. If you're just starting out, you might be wondering how you can mitigate this chaos. Even if you acknowledge the need to 'move fast and break things', you still want to keep damage to a minimum. In Voxgig we kept things reasonably under control with a few key tactics: first, choosing microservices as our architecture. This technical design keeps every part of the system separate, and prevents bad code from spreading. Parts of the system can fail, or become out of date, and things still keep working. Our minimum viable product, the search engine, which is our home page, is the same code from this time last year - the rest of system has moved on, but that old code is not impacted. It is only now that we are looking at upgrading it. Second, choose popular and established tools that you can hire for. Don't use very new or experimental tools. This is a common startup mistake. People look for leverage in new tools that promise greater productivity, precisely because resources are so limited. This bet never pays off. You'll spend more time fixing the tool than building your product. Startups founded by developers often fall victim to this, and it's something I have to watch for in myself. Third, build in partnership with real users. If your system has to go into production, there are basic things you can't avoid, a level of quality you have to reach, so that you can keep your customers happy. In return, they will keep you honest. Despite all this, we have still incurred technical debt. This takes two forms: process debt and system debt. We have no well-defined software development processes. This is deliberate. Startups are so small and so wholly dependent on individual contributors that process adds nothing. You have to have coders on the team that can actually get stuff done independently. If you find that you have to manage them in the usual way, you're not going to make. There's a reason project management is a full time job, and it's a job as founder that you will never have time to do. Your early technical team should be able to work independently and develop an understanding of the business requirements on their own. That's why technical co-founders are such a strong plus for investors. As a new CTO, your job is to design the software development process from scratch. That means not only defining the process from a blank slate, but also working with the existing team to bring them on-board. This will not be easy as developers who choose startups often do so because they have lots of freedom. Nonetheless, to scale, you have to have process and structure. This means setting up a new regular meeting schedule, introducing quality measurement, taking away full access, introducing reviews, pager duty, and all the necessary elements of a larger software development process. Of course, you still don't have the resources to this from day one, so you still have to prioritise and take on more process debt. There's a story from the early days of Amazon that illustrates this well. Amazon allowed you to return your books for a full refund. But they had no system for tracking returns - they literally could not tell if the books had been bought from Amazon itself. Jeff Bezos decided to run the returns process on an honour system. It was more important to provide returns than to police them. Soon enough someone discovered they could get refunded for anything they sent in. They started buying up second-hand books cheap and mailing them back to Amazon for refunds. It was good money. Deciding not build one is exactly the type of decision a CTO needs to be able to take, especially when there are much cheaper non-technical solutions. Designing non-technical solutions that sort of scale is the hidden job of the startup CTO. The system debt is the corners cut in the software itself. This is a technical challenge, and a key measure of the competence of the CTO, but is a little outside the scope of these articles. If you are non-technical how do you know the CTO is doing a good job? There is one key metric: technical debt is directly correlated with the speed that new features can be introduced. Large, complicated, messy systems can't be modified quickly, so features take a long time to build. That's what startups can move faster in the early days. A good CTO minimises this problem. Search engine statistics: in our database of technology conferences we have 2,217 conferences, 6,141 speakers, 4,945 exhibitors, and 961 venues. Marketing update: speakers newsletter: 5,809 subscribers, open rate 12pc; EventProfs newsletter: 487 subscribers, open rate of 37pc, and the podcast is at 49 downloads. One the feature requests we getting in from our early users is more automation for the social media activities that have to happen before, during, and after and event. Since we run our own events, the Dublin (last week's was a great one if you missed it) and London (this week) Eventprofs meetups, we have this need ourselves. It's a perfect case of 'eat your own dog food'. As we build out these features, I will, of course discuss them, and you'll be able to judge the impact for yourself. What exactly are Irish operators planning for 5G services? The only commercial activity being planned by Irish operators is wireless broadband. Eir and Vodafone are trialling rural wireless broadband access using the technology, although both operators say that this would likely be a limited geographical service. In urban areas and big Irish towns, there are no confirmed plans for uses outside what is already available with 4G. That leaves us with the same speculative-use cases generally assumed for 5G. This includes autonomous vehicles (at least five to 10 years off), more use of robots, medical activities (from personal health sensors to intricate remote surgery processes) and greater overall connectivity among everyday things around us. Otherwise, Irish operators are waiting to see what demand will be like and from which quarters it will come. "It's still too early," says Max Gasparoni, Vodafone Ireland's interim chief technology officer. "Some companies have expressed interest, but it's too early to disclose anything." Nova UCD, which is the Dublin university's centre for startups and early-stage ventures, has entered into an agreement with Vodafone to get 10 projects up and running on the telco's Dublin dockland 5G test network. But a spokesman said that it doesn't yet know what kind of startups might emerge from it, or even the general areas of activity. (Applications for the scheme are being sought.) "We have an expectation that when we roll out the network, it will be mostly fixed-wireless applications such as dongles," said a spokesman for Eir, which has announced the start of its 5G rollout for later this year. "But we'll have the network ready and see what people use it for." Abroad, there are some indicators. In Korea, 5G test networks are being used to allow high-bandwidth video-streaming to and from fast-moving objects such as cars and trains. This can be a problem for 4G networks. The emerging autonomous vehicle industry looks set to be somewhat reliant on 5G technology too, when it reaches mass market scale. The idea is that cars, vans and lorries will be in uninterrupted contact with other things around them, such as traffic lights or even other vehicles. But for that to be safe, the system's 'latency' needs to be lightning fast and unerringly reliable - way quicker than the half-second it might take using today's mobile networks and far more dependable, too. "5G will be a key technology for that," says Vodafone's Gasparoni, who agreed that a "five-to-10-year" time frame looked likely for adoption in that context. "The low latency is very important there. But that's a major transformational programme. We're already quite big in the automotive industry and we'll follow the customers." Will 5G services cost more? None of the operators will comment openly on this at this stage, partly because they don't yet know what exact services will emerge outside fixed wireless broadband provision. But in the US, Verizon has announced that its 5G services in Chicago and Minneapolis will cost $10 extra a month for the higher speeds. 5G already has a labelling problem. One of the early complications facing 5G is who gets to call their service a 5G service. Most people understand the term to mean the next iteration of mobile connectivity, with all that this brings. But the first Irish telecoms company to market the term has no mobile service at all. Imagine Communications, which provides broadband between masts and aerials on rooftops in rural areas, made a major announcement about plans to expand its network. It is calling the service '5G' as it was one of the telecoms operators to purchase spectrum from the Communications Regulator in the recent commercial release of 3.6Ghz. To be fair to Imagine, there is no rule to say that it can't market its services as 5G. Indeed, fixed wireless broadband is included in some definitions. But it's pretty certain that most of us will overwhelmingly associate 5G with cellular services rather than fixed wireless ones. A similar issue arose with the in 2007 when Digiweb, a telecoms company that sells broadband and phone packages, tried to market a wireless service as '4G'. At the time, 4G mobile services were years off (they did not launch until 2013) but there was marketing buzz to be gained. And in the US, telecoms giant AT&T recently faced ridicule for putting a '5Ge' reception logo on some phones connecting to its network. The operator branded its non-5G network as '5G Evolution' in an early bid to grab some marketing juice. "There's going to be a little bit of confusion between one tech and the other," says Max Gasparoni. "There will be companies which call their services 5G, possibly using 5G-capable spectrum for services. In our case, it's commercial mobile 5G." Will all of Ireland get 5G coverage? Another issue likely to confuse people is coverage requirements. Although the spectrum used to facilitate 5G services was recently sold to operators by ComReg, it did not come with the usual coverage requirements that 3G and 4G licences attracted. As such, there is no obligation - other than commercial and competitive ones - for operators to roll out any kinds of new services. Should 5G start to look like a modern necessity in five or 10 years (for autonomous vehicles, computers or mobile devices), it may turn out to be even more urban-centric than today's 4G networks. But this isn't a given, senior executives say. "That's not necessarily the case," says Gasparoni. "It genuinely depends on the frequencies available. The minute they are, operators will start using them. It's very important to have the widest possible availability. You want to offer the best to customers." Gasparoni says that coverage distribution will also depend on future spectrum auctions, a "crucial enabler" for wider coverage. How much faster will 5G be? Regardless of what other uses 5G is put to, everyone agrees that connectivity speeds to devices will increase substantially. On paper, 5G is expected to deliver up to 10 gigabits per second, the equivalent of 10,000 megabits per second. By comparison, the current maximum speed on Eir's 'eFibre' broadband product is 0.1 gigabits per second (or 100Mbs). But, at present, there are very few common use cases for such speeds. Moreover, most phones and tablets can only connect at up to 1Gbs, a tenth of 5G's putative maximum. For example, none of Apple's iPhones are being sold as 5G-compliant devices. However, two of Samsung's recently launched phones do come with some 5G compatibility. Both its Galaxy Fold and S10 5G models will offer faster speeds and extra network connectivity. Both, however, will cost substantially more than non-5G handsets. "We initially expect to typically see services of around 500 or 600 megabits per second," said an Eir spokesman. Vodafone's Gasparoni agrees. "For early 5G services, you will see several hundred megabits," he says. "For the likes of 10 gigabits, we'll probably need to wait a few more years, maybe as millimetre wave comes on stream more." Will it need more infrastructure? Operators say that for the most part, rolling out 5G will be a process of swapping in new equipment on existing mobile sites. In cities, more dense infrastructure may be needed over time. Google confirmed that the speeds required for its Stadia platform, which will mix YouTube with gaming, will be above what is available to one million people in the National Broadband Plan (NBP) 'intervention' areas. Photo: REUTERS/Stephen Lam Google's new online Stadia service will skip 500,000 rural Irish households as a lack of broadband begins to bite. It is the first of many expected new services in the next year that may pass rural areas by, due to rollout delays. The tech giant confirmed that the speeds required for its Stadia platform, which will mix YouTube with gaming, will be above what is available to one million people in the National Broadband Plan (NBP) "intervention" areas. The service is Google's biggest product launch of the year. Next week, Apple is expected to announce a new online video service to rival Netflix that may also require high-speed internet access. A number of other tech companies have said they expect to start launching health and security services that will require reliable broadband connections. The NBP has effectively been put on hold by the Taoiseach, who is considering whether or not to continue with the Government's long-standing promise to deliver fibre broadband within the next three years. Expand Close Communications Minister Richard Bruton. Photo: Frank McGrath / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Communications Minister Richard Bruton. Photo: Frank McGrath Sources close to Leo Varadkar said the Government remained committed to broadband availability in rural areas. However, he has expressed concern about the potential cost of the project, suggesting it could cost far more than the 500m estimated seven years ago. He also recently cited Brexit and mistakes over the National Children's Hospital as potential reasons to postpone rural broadband rollout plans. Despite the apparent rollout reconsideration, Communications Minister Richard Bruton recently said that the Government could add more homes to the overall "intervention" area of 540,000, due to telecoms operators letting customers down. Mr Bruton recently told the Dail that promises from broadband firms were not being fulfilled and that the State was stepping in to hook up left-behind homes and businesses. However, Mr Bruton declined to say how many extra homes and businesses the State would now seek to add to the NBP schedule. Google's new service is being seen by industry experts as typical of an ongoing shift into putting more everyday services online, only accessible to those with high-speed internet. Under the Government's NBP criteria, those with speeds of under 30 megabits per second (Mbs) are regarded as having sub-standard broadband that is not future-proof. However, the vast majority of homes with 30Mbs broadband will only see wifi speeds of between 10Mbs and 20Mbs due to the way that speed fades away when wirelessly connected. Google's new service requires 25Mbs over wifi to work to its full capacity. Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt are at the centre of merger talks London's Brexit exodus was supposed to boost the number of finance jobs in Frankfurt. Now, a potential merger between Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank puts the gains at risk. "In Frankfurt alone, between 4,000 and 5,000 jobs could be cut in a merger," said Stephan Szukalski, head of the DBV union and a member of Deutsche Bank's supervisory board. Stefan Wittmann, a Verdi union representative who is on Commerzbank's supervisory board, said that between 8,000 and 10,000 Frankfurt jobs are in danger. "This is the result of a preliminary analysis that we have made," he told Bloomberg. Job cuts of this magnitude would probably be difficult to be offset by positions which are relocated from London to Frankfurt, according to a survey conducted by Bloomberg this week. Lobby group Frankfurt Main Finance, for example, expects an orderly Brexit to result in 10,000 new jobs in Frankfurt. Helaba, a lender based in the city, sees 8,000 added positions over the years, while the Association of Foreign Banks in Germany puts the estimate at 3,000 to 5,000. According to Deutsche Bundesbank, the number of employees at banks in Frankfurt has remained almost constant in recent years. In the summer of 2018, it stood at 63,100. "Our current forecast for the end of 2020 sees a total of 65,000 employees. This includes two developments: on the one hand, a positive Brexit effect and, on the other, continued consolidation of the banks in Frankfurt," said Gertrud R Traud, chief economist of Helaba. "However, this does not take into account any major merger." Spokesmen for Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank declined to comment. Germany's finance ministry has pushed for a merger between the two lenders as a way to create a globally competitive national champion. However, the chancellery has been less enthusiastic. Angela Merkel's chief of staff, Helge Braun, this week said that preserving jobs would be the priority in any government decision on Deutsche Bank - and that Germany doesn't necessarily need a global player in finance. Mrs Merkel said on Tuesday that it's up to the banks to decide. As many as 30,000 positions could be at risk if a deal were reached, people familiar with the situation have said. B&Q owner Kingfisher has reported an 11pc fall in retail profits to 753m (880m) in the 12 months to January 31. Photo: Bloomberg B&Q owner Kingfisher has reported an 11pc fall in retail profits to 753m (880m) in the 12 months to January 31. Announcing its annual results yesterday the group said CEO Veronique Laury, was stepping down. A departure date for Ms Laury has not yet been finalised and the group has launched a succession plan for her replacement. Meanwhile, underlying pre-tax profit fell 13pc year-on-year to 693m (810m). Revenue for the period rose marginally to 11.7bn (13.6bn), slightly below Davy Stockbrokers forecast of 11.8bn (13.8bn). In like-for-like terms revenue fell by 1.6pc. The performance was impacted by its Castorama arm in France, which the company said had been "disappointing". UK and Ireland group sales were up 1.1pc to 5bn (5.8bn) in the context of what the group described as "a weak consumer backdrop". In like-for-like terms sales declined 0.8pc in the UK and Ireland. Meanwhile, retail profit in the market was up 6pc to 399m. Kingfisher operates from eight B&Q stores here. The group said it plans to open a number of Screwfix outlets in the Republic of Ireland later this year. Shares in the company were trading down 1.63pc in London yesterday. Di Caprio previously shared a snap of him in costume with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood co-star Brad Pitt Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio star in the first trailer for Quentin Tarantinos new crime film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Set in the late 1960s in Los Angeles it tells the story of Rick Dalton (DiCaprio), an actor in a western TV series, and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt), who are trying to make a name for themselves in the film industry. It also stars Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate, a Hollywood actress married to director Roman Polanski who was one of five people murdered by the cult led by Charles Manson in August 1969. The first trailer sees Dalton a neighbour of Tate and Booth being introduced in a TV interview, where DiCaprios character is asked what a stunt double does. While smoking a cigarette, he says: Actors are required to do a lot of dangerous stuff. Cliff here is meant to help carry the load. Pitts character is questioned over his response, and replies: What, carrying his load? Yeah, its about right. Robbie is seen in various clips as Tate, with other scenes showing Hollywood as it was 50 years ago. The film, Tarantinos ninth, has an A-list supporting cast including Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, Damian Lewis, Lena Dunham and Austin Butler. It also features Beverly Hills, 90210 star Luke Perry, who died earlier this month aged 52 after a stroke. Video of the Day Perry plays Wayne Maunder in the film, an actor who co-starred in the western television series Lancer. He had completed all of his scenes before he died, and the film marks his final role on the big screen. Acclaimed director Tarantino was six years old and living in Los Angeles at the time of the Manson murders. He has worked on the screenplay for five years. His previous films include Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood will be released August 14. The trouble with making a brilliant debut feature film is what to do next. Jordan Peeles 2017 movie Get Out was universally adored, did serious business at the box office and won an Oscar for its screenplay. Though ostensibly a horror, it brilliantly satirised the state of American race relations and suggested that even the most well-meaning liberals dont know how to behave around black folk. In the era of Trump it seemed razor sharp, archly relevant, an instant classic. Now how on earth do you follow that? By doing something completely different, is Mr. Peeles answer, because although Us expands on the doppleganger theme implicit in Get Out, its a bigger, bolder, weirder and more operatically creepy production altogether. Jordan is a big Twilight Zone fan, and will shortly be fronting up a TV revival of the 1960s sci-fi series: Us embraces the classic shows off-kilter eeriness, and is based on a 1960 Twilight Zone episode called Mirror Image. Young couple Gabe and Adelaide Winston (Winston Duke, Lupita Nyongo) have retreated to their coastal Californian beach house for a break with their children Zora (Shadadi Wright) and Evan (Jason Wilson). Gabes an affable, happy-go-lucky sort, but Adelaide is anxious, and something doesnt feel quite right. In a haunting prologue, we discover that when she was a child, Adelaide got lost in a seafront amusement park and wandered into a hall of mirrors, where she met a little girl who looked exactly like her. Shes never quite gotten over the experience, and has been afflicted ever since by a creeping sense of dread. With good reason, as it turns out, because as theyre settling down one evening four shadowy figures appear in the driveway. They stand stock still, saying nothing, and when Gabe goes out to investigate, they attack him, then scatter, quickly infiltrating the house. And as a wounded Gabe retreats to join his family, they discover to their horror that the four intruders look exactly like them. They seem different, though, ragged, feral, communicating through screeches, snorts and grunts. Only the woman talks, in a scratchy, pained voice that suggests she hasnt had occasion to speak in quite a while. The soliloquy she delivers is oblique but charged with menace: theyve come from underground, and mean to usurp their sunkissed counterparts. Adelaide and the family manage to escape, but the dopplegangers follow. Whats worse, its an epidemic: when the family reach their friends Josh and Kitty (a dreadful, bitter, bickering pair hilariously played by Tim Heidecker and Elisabeth Moss), they quickly realise theyve already been replaced. All over the State and possibly the country, lookalikes are lurching from the depths to kill. And as she fights for her life, Adelaide finds untapped reserves of strength but is troubled by new and lurid flashbacks. In Us, Jordan Peele proves once again that horror films dont have to be stupid. On the contrary, supernatural stories can be the perfect template for metaphors, allegory, big political themes. In Get Out, white Americas inability to move beyond its fear and distaste for black people was the issue, but in Us, refreshingly, race is irrelevant. The Winstons are an American family that happens to be black, but their skin colour has nothing to do with their misfortune, which is universal. Apart from having a tremendous amount of fun on a bigger canvas, what Mr. Peele appears to be addressing here is iniquity, Americas growing underclass, and the worrying idea that if you live well, you do so at someone elses expense. You could call them zombies, but the people from beneath could as easily be seen as the risen proletariat, and Us uses images from Adelaides 1980s childhood to imply that the present rot set in with Reagan. Video of the Day None of this, though, is conveyed in an obvious or heavy-handed manner, and could be blithely ignored by cinemagoers (God forgive them) in search of a good night out. Us is great fun, and very funny, and uses a banging soundtrack to very skilful effect. It also looks great: Jordan Peele has upped his cinematic game since Get Out, and this film is very nicely directed for the most part, beautifully photographed. Maybe the plot does become a little grandiose late on, but it would be churlish to criticise that and not applaud Uss scope, and ambition. And what a performance, or rather double performance, from Lupita Nyongo, who shifts with wonderful ease between the nervy, intuitive Adelaide and her terrifying, dead-eyed doppleganger. At any other time of year, thered be talk of Oscars. (16, 116mins) Also releasing this week: A former postal sorting worker's High Court bullying action arising out of alleged "gay rumours" has been struck out. Claire Stephens (56), a married mother who worked in the Galway Mail Sorting Office, claimed the bullying took place over a number of years and culminated in a pornographic postcard being left on her sorting bench. She said she became distressed by innuendo and rumours in her workplace and circulated a letter to her colleagues saying she was having suicidal thoughts. The case was due to resume on Thursday when Mr Justice Charles Meenan was told by Marguerite Bolger SC, for An Post, Ms Stephens was in Galway where she may be seeking medical attention. Lorraine Lally BL, for Ms Stephens, later told the judge her client had asked that the case be struck out with no order. Ms Stephens had been under cross examination on Wednesday when she became upset while being questioned about what she referred to a "suicide note" she left on her co-workers benches. Counsel put it to her that she was trying to mislead the company about her suicide threat because she told a counsellor she would withdraw the threat. She said she did so because the counsellor was looking for details of her GP and medical history and if she had given that, she would have been put in hospital. She did not want to go into hospital. "I had not told my husband anything, I just wanted to die, I wasn't going into hospital, it would have been my worst nightmare". After the case was adjourned briefly because of her upset, Mr Justice Charles Meenan was told the matter could be adjourned until Thursday by agreement between the parties. The case had been listed for hearing for three weeks. Mr Justice Meenan granted the strike out request. Ms Stephens claimed An Post failed to deal with properly with her complaint of bullying which she said peaked with the postcard incident. The company denied her claims. It accepted the postcard incident happened but says the offender was dealt with under the company disciplinary policy. Ms Stephens said her problems started in 2006 after a female colleague attempted to kiss her in the staff toilets. There followed a number of other touching incidents and "gay rumours" about her over the years until 2012, when a young male co-worker came to her bench and left down a postcard of a woman's vagina with two fingers in it. In subsequent days, she said she heard "a lot of skitting and laughing". She made a formal complaint in March 2013. Her supervisor later told her he had had a talk with the young man involved in the postcard incident and he was sorry for what he did. She claimed this was "no more than a pep talk" and not in accordance with the company's dignity at work policy. She said she lost half a stone in weight, was unable to sleep and started going around to her colleagues saying she was suicidal. She also photocopied "a suicide note" and left it on colleagues' work benches. The court heard that in an internal review of her case in 2014, none of her fellow workers corroborated any of her complaints other than two who heard about the postcard incident. She said they "were never asked". CAMPAIGNERS have demanded that the site of a notorious mother and baby home be fully excavated after they claimed a newly discovered historic map indicated a plot where hundreds of babies could be buried. Bessborough in Cork - which at one time was Ireland's largest mother and baby home - is infamous for having one of the highest infant mortality rates of any such facility. Now, campaigners claimed that a newly discovered old map has indicated a burial site on the former mother and baby home site - and they said they fear hundreds of babies could have been interred there over almost six decades. Their demand for a special excavation came amid a row in Cork after an old folly structure, close to the Bessborough site, was partially demolished last week. Expand Expand Previous Next Close Old map discovered of Bessborough Mother and Baby Home Teddy bears being placed on the railings outside the Bessborough Centre at Mahon, Blackrock, Cork / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Old map discovered of Bessborough Mother and Baby Home The partial demolition sparked a storm of protest from Cork City Council members. Campaigner Maureen Considine said the newly discovered map now warrants a major site exploration given what happened at the Tuam mothers and baby home. "The map is dated between 1830 and 1930 - I have not seen this (detail) on other maps. I have not seen this appear anywhere else. While I have seen the words 'burial ground' on other maps, the location of the burial ground was within the folly area - but this burial ground indicates a much bigger area and also to the southern and south eastern side of the folly which is not the area indicated previously," Ms Considine said. She said the old map is of major significance given the history of the Bessborough site. Ms Considine alerted Bessborough campaigner Catherine Coffey O'Brien. Ms O'Brien ran away from Bessborough when aged in her teens. "What we want from Cork Co Council is no rezoning of property within Bessborough for development - we want this investigated properly," she said. "We want an independent body to come in, excavate the land, check it and make sure to find these babies." Another campaigner, Ann O'Gorman, said everyone in Ireland owed a duty to those who suffered at Bessborough to find any burials plots if they are there. Ms O'Gorman had a baby girl, Evelyn, at Bessborough but was told by the home authorities that the baby girl had died. "I want to see this investigated properly," she said. "We need closure - it would make me so happy to see that (investigation) done." "I am in an awful state over what happened here. The whole lot of me has gone into my daughter." Bessborough suffered not only from a high infant mortality rate in the 1930s, 40s and 50s but was also the focus of controversial Irish vaccine trials. Several mother and baby homes had an infant mortality rate of 55pc - a shocking six times higher than that for babies in ordinary Irish society between 1930-1950. Pioneering research by historian Michael Dwyer also revealed that 2,051 children drawn from the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary facilities at Bessborough and Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary were part of secret vaccine trials. Some children did not realise they were even part of the secret trials until almost 30 years later. Mari Steed, who is now based in the US, was born at Bessborough in 1960 and was used as part of the vaccine trials. "We were used as human guinea pigs," she said. Ms Steed only made the vaccine trial discovery when she was searching through records to try to locate her mother, Josephine. An alleged IRA man accused of raping two teenage boys in a republican safe house told one of them they would be "found on a border road" if they told anyone of the alleged rape, a jury has heard. The man (45) has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to sexual assault and raping two boys in Co Louth in the early 1990s and in 2001. On the second day of the trial, the second complainant told Patrick Gageby SC, prosecuting, that the house he lived in as a teenager was used to house people on their way to "missions" across the Border. The man said that in 1992, on the night he turned 17, he went camping with his older brother and the accused. He said he woke up to discover the accused groping him. He said a couple of weeks later, the accused said he did not want to sleep in his bedroom any more as he had seen his bed "floating". He said the owner of the house told the accused he could share with one of the boys and the accused asked the complainant if he could sleep in his bed. The man said he woke up to find the accused pushing his face into the pillow and raping him. He said he struggled and managed to get the accused off him after 30 seconds. He said that when he tried to leave the room, the accused stopped him and told him that if he informed anyone of what had happened then he would be "found on a border road". The witness told Mr Gageby that when it came to "that organisation" there was no way to take that other than as a threat. The man said he had a conversation in 2002 with the other complainant in the case about the incidents they allege happened. He said he realised that if he had told someone about the alleged events at the time, then he might have saved the other man from abuse. Earlier in the trial, the first complainant rejected what was put to him by John Fitzgerald SC, defending, that he had been in a relationship with the accused and had engaged in consensual sexual activity on the night in 2001 he alleges he was raped. The complainant was aged in his early 20s at this time. The man said he had been sure that the accused would admit his guilt and not put him through having to give evidence. He said there was no relationship ever and the accused was a sexual predator. The trial continues. (L-R) Colette and Brenda Quinn pictured at the Four Courts yesterday. Photo: Collins Courts Two former Quinn Group executives are said to be "very reluctant" witnesses in a High Court action following "threats and actions of violence towards them". Both Dara O'Reilly and Liam McCaffrey have been joined by the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) as third parties in proceedings it and liquidator Kieran Wallace are facing from the children of former billionaire Sean Quinn. The children dispute liability for hundreds of millions of euro in loans given to Quinn companies by IBRC's predecessor, Anglo Irish Bank. Mr O'Reilly and Mr McCaffrey now work as chief financial officer and chief executive respectively for Quinn Industrial Holdings, a company made up of elements of the former Quinn empire. Their barrister Ross Gorman told the High Court they were very reluctant witnesses. He said Mr O'Reilly's car had been burnt out before Christmas and boiling water was thrown in his face last month. Expand Close Aoife Quinn. Photo: Collins Courts / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Aoife Quinn. Photo: Collins Courts The barrister told Mr Justice Garrett Simons his clients accept they had been agents of Quinn Group and for Sean Quinn. However, they say they had not been agents for the five Quinn children, who owned the shares in the group. Mr Gorman told the court Mr O'Reilly had said in a statement he received instructions from Sean Quinn and that he understood Mr Quinn was authorised to act on behalf of his children. The barrister said no allegation had been made by IBRC that either of his clients had done anything wrong. The case is due to hear evidence of how the children, Sean Jr, Ciara, Colette, Brenda and Aoife Quinn, came to sign guarantees and share pledges related to loans for hundreds of millions of euro from Anglo in 2007 and 2008. Some 2.34bn was loaned to Quinn Group companies to fund losses arising from their father's disastrous speculation on contracts for difference, financial instruments which allow a person to speculate on the performance of a share without buying it. The children claim they should not be held liable for loans of 415m and that they were unduly influenced by their father, who they say controlled the business even though they were the owners. They also alleged Anglo behaved in a "morally reprehensible" manner towards them when they signed loan guarantees, and that they were never advised by the bank to take independent legal advice. The claims are denied by IBRC, whose counsel Paul Gallagher SC said the Quinn children were "attempting to rewrite history". Mr Gallagher said it was clear the children had signed and authorised loan guarantees and share pledges. In court yesterday, he went through various transactions involving the children, which he said clearly demonstrated their deep involvement in the running of the business. He told the court the IBRC had identified "a multitude of documents" relating to borrowings, guarantees, shareholdings, pledges, charges and powers of attorney. Mr Gallagher said none of these was being challenged in the proceedings and no issue had been raised about them, yet the Quinns sought to challenge similar documents relating to the Anglo loans. "These were people used to dealing in enormously large transactions and giving people power of attorney," said Mr Gallagher. "They knew what these things were." The barrister also queried claims the children had modest lifestyles. He said that far from having no assets, the children owned the home where their parents lived and had been able to give them gifts worth 12m. The first of the children to give evidence, Brenda Quinn, is due to take the stand tomorrow. The case is expected to last up to six months. A judge has told a man who made a lewd comment to a 15-year-old girl that he should not be working in a primary school. Judge Patrick Durcan jailed Vladamir Cervenak (31) for two months after he pleaded guilty to a public order offence relating to the lewd remark spoken to the girl at the Fairways, Steele's Terrace, Ennis, Co Clare, on November 13, 2016. The court was told that Cervenak, of The Mews, Lifford Lodge, Ennis, was drunk at the time of the incident. Judge Durcan said: "It is totally unacceptable that a young girl going about the streets of Ennis at 5pm is faced with this kind of verbal attack on her person." Solicitor for Cervenak, Daragh Hassett, said his client didn't recall the level of vulgarity that he used and his work as a cleaner was "of great assistance to him". A 35-year-old man charged over the theft of the mummified head of an 800-year-old Crusader knight from a church in Dublin has been further remanded in custody with consent to bail pending directions from the Director of Public Prosecutions. The Crusader was decapitated at the crypt in St Michan's Church, Church Street, sometime over the weekend of February 23 and 24 last and then taken along with another skull. The break-in was discovered on February 25 when a guide about to open the church for visitors but discovered the head of the Crusader had been severed from its mummified body and was missing. On March 5, investigating gardai from the Bridewell station recovered the head of "The Crusader" and another skull that had been taken from the crypt. On the evening of March 14, Brian Bridgeman, with an address at Kings Inns Street, Dublin 1, was brought before Dublin District Court. He was charged under Section 12 of the Theft and Fraud Offences Act that while trespassing at St Michans Church he committed theft, at at time between February 23 and February 24 last. He was remanded in custody with consent to bail which he has yet to take up and he faced his second hearing when he appeared before Judge Victor Blake at Cloverhill District Court today. Judge Blake noted that directions from the DPP needed to be obtained. GardaI were preparing a file for the DPP, CCTV has been provided and some statements needed to be taken. Eimear Delargy BL, for Mr Bridgeman, said her client would not consent to an adjournment longer than two weeks. However, she added, he was agreeable to appearing via video-link at the next hearing. Dressed in a light grey T-shirt and dark trousers he spoke briefly during the proceedings to confirm instructions to his barrister, saying Yes when asked about the video-link option. Judge Blake remanded him in custody with consent to bail to appear again on April 4 next when the case will be listed for mention and for the DPPs directions. He has not yet indicated how he will plead. Evidence of arrest, charge and caution was given by Garda Niall Cadden at his first hearing last week. The defendant made no reply when charged, the court heard. Bail has been set his own bond of 200 of which 100 must be lodged before he can be released with conditions to reside at another address furnished to the court, sign on daily at Blanchardstown Garda station, obey 10pm 6am curfew, be contactable at all times by mobile phone. Another man, in his twenties, was arrested as part of the investigation but he was later released without charge earlier this month. A nephew of Gerry The Monk Hutch has been jailed for two and a half years for beating up a Revenue Commissioners worker who confronted him as he burgled the mans office. Alan Hutch (36) got into a violent struggle with the Revenue employee who returned from a tea break to find him stealing phones and a camera. Hutch repeatedly punched the victim in the face and put a metal pole up to his neck as they grappled on the floor. Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard he faced being a "dead man walking," members of his family had been targeted for assassination in an ongoing gangland feud, and even when he gets out of jail, it will be like a house arrest because he will never be safe. The court was told Hutch was now so paranoid he feared the prison authorities were contaminating his food and water. Judge Melanie Greally gave him two concurrent four-year sentences, back dated to last year and suspended the final 18 months. Hutch, from Portland Place in the north inner city pleaded guilty to assault causing harm and burglary. His father Eddie Hutch was shot dead outside his home in February 2016. Garda Gavin Feely told the court the incident happened at the offices of the Revenue Commissioners at Hannan Buildings, Upper OConnell Street at midday on March 7, 2018. Hutch gained access through an internal door that had been left open by maintenance workers in the adjoining Eir building. He was seen on CCTV walking up stairs into the Revenue building where he went to the office of Karl Higgins, an employee who was on a tea break. Mr Higgins returned to see Hutch taking a white box containing the victims mobile phone and accessories. He shouted, asking what Hutch was doing and the accused put the box into his pocket and attempted to leave the office. He ran at Mr Higgins who was standing in the doorway and there was a scuffle. They fell to the ground and Hutch punched Mr Higgins in the face. Hutch then ran downstairs into the hallway, followed by the victim. Hutch put his foot through a pane of glass as he tried to kick open the locked door, then turned back at Mr Higgins, who shouted at him to drop his phone. Hutch punched him in the face on at least two occasions, the court heard. Another scuffle broke out in which Mr Higgins punched Hutch. Both men fell to the ground and Hutch picked up a large steel pole and pushed it onto Mr Higgins neck and chest area. The victim shouted for help and colleagues came and subdued Hutch at the scene before Gda Feely arrived. Mr Higgins retrieved the phone as well as another mobile that had been charging in his offiice. When searched, Hutch had a camera in his pocket that had also been stolen and was not compliant in interview, giving only no comment answers, Gda Feely said. The victim, who did not wish to make a statement, suffered facial bruising and tenderness but had no broken bones. Hutch had been in custody since his arrest. Hutch had 73 previous convictions for assault, robbery and other offences. Gda Feely said he was aware the Hutch family name would be involved in a feud in the Dublin area. Defence barrister Derek Cooney said a number of Hutchs relatives including his father had been murdered. It is an understatement to put it mildly that people would be aware of the Hutch name, Mr Cooney said. The very fact that he has that particular surname has attracted all sorts of unwanted attention to him. Mr Cooney said you just have to have the name of Hutch to be targeted. 'Dead man walking' is not something that he likes to hear, but all members of the Hutch family are faced with that, he continued. Hutch had to be put on protection in Mountjoy prison and was isolated in a single cell, Mr Cooney said. He did not mix with anyone else and had formed a certain view of the prison authorities contaminating his food and water. Hutch was the fourth of five children; his father Eddie, a taxi driver, was murdered on his doorstep of the family home, Mr Cooney said, reading from a psychological report. His father had been killed because of his association with other family members and his name was enough to bring about his demise. Hutch had had a very challenging upbringing and he had witnessed violence first hand in the family home. Despite that, he missed his father. The author of the report had said that coming from such a background, it was clear to see how Hutch got into so much trouble and it was a sad case. Hutch began smoking cannabis at the age of 14 and was excluded from school for that at 16. He progressed onto pills, cocaine and heroin and never stopped getting into trouble. Just by his name he is caught by matters out of his control and there could be a risk to his life at any stage, Mr Cooney said. Somewhere along the line he would be released and he has to walk around with the name of Hutch on him for the rest of his life. He had the fear and apprehension that he was going to be killed and this had an effect on his mental health. When he is released its going to be a house arrest because he cant leave, he cant walk the streets of Dublin. Mr Cooney said the opposing side had stretched out as far as Majorca and Lanzarote in seeking members of the family and Hutch was never going to be safe. Judge Greally agreed that it would not be feasible to involve the probation service. She said the burglary had developed into a violent struggle. The judge noted that in prison, Hutch was paranoid in relation to others including prison staff. He had been exposed to violence and criminality from a young age. Sentencing him, she said she wanted to at least incentivise his efforts to remain crime free. The judge suspended the final 18 months on Hutch keeping the peace and being of good behaviour for another 18 months. When asked to acknowledge that he understood the conditions of the bond, Hutch said I have a hearing problem and asked: what does that mean? He then confirmed that he understood. Members of the Hutch family had attended the hearing and left shortly after. A concert-goer took part in a "horrific" drink-fuelled attack on a woman at a Take That concert, leaving the victim with clumps of her hair ripped out. Mother-of-two Sharon Byrne (34) is the second woman to admit assaulting the victim in a violent row that started over a spilled drink. Byrne, a personal assistant in a property firm, was drunk and "mis-read" the situation when she assaulted the woman, who was traumatised by being dragged and kicked around Dublin's 3 Arena. Judge John Hughes gave Byrne a six-month suspended sentence and ordered her to pay 5,000 compensation. The accused, from Dundalk but with an address at St Helen's Road, Harrogate, England, pleaded guilty to assault causing harm and violent disorder. Garda Adrian Cahill told Dublin District Court the victim and her husband were at the concert on May 16, 2017, when an argument occurred between them and another group of people, one of whom was Byrne. The argument originated over a spilled drink. The victim said the other people were highly intoxicated throughout the concert, "to the annoyance of them and other people around". They were in close proximity to each other and there was "a bit of a coming together". The victim said she was kicked and punched to the head and body and had large clumps of hair pulled out of her scalp. She was in a state of shock when gardai spoke to her at the scene. Byrne wept as the sentence was suspended for a year and she was ordered to pay compensation within that time. A co-accused, Gemma Finnegan (30), of Ballybay Road, Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, previously pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentence. Inspiring: Laura Brennan campaigned for young women to avail of the HPV vaccine in the last 18 months of her life. Uptake has risen by 20pc Inspirational HPV vaccine advocate Laura Brennan, who died surrounded by her loving family yesterday, made it her mission to spare other women from getting the disease. Tributes poured in last night for Ms Brennan (26), from Ennis, Co Clare, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer stage 2B at age 24 and was given a terminal prognosis. She was determined to prevent others getting the "devastating" cancer and was instrumental in reversing the fall in the numbers of teenage girls availing of the HPV vaccine which protects against cervical cancer. Fronting the HSE's vaccine campaign, she said: "I wish the vaccine had been available to me, of course I do. Don't get swayed by rumours about the vaccine's safety. This vaccine saves lives. It could have saved mine but it can save yours." Her grieving family, who were with Ms Brennan at University Hospital Limerick yesterday, described her as a "light in the life of everyone who knew her; a wonderful daughter, sister and friend. We are lost without her. "We are all incredibly proud of the work she did in the last 18 months to help protect other young women like herself from the cancer that has taken her life today." A Mass of remembrance and celebration will be held for Laura on March 20 in Ennis Cathedral at 1pm. The family have requested family flowers only any donations in lieu of flowers should be directed to Slainte an Chlair. "She will be very sadly missed by her loving parents Bernie and Larry, brothers Colin, Fergal and Kevin, uncles, aunts, cousins, relatives and friends," her funeral notice read. CervicalCheck campaigner Vicky Phelan said yesterday: "I have no words, just tears and emptiness at the loss of another young woman who used what was left of her time to campaign so that others would not suffer her fate. Please, please vaccinate your children." Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said: "Cervical cancer took Laura's life but her powerful advocacy will save many lives." Health Minister Simon Harris described her as "an incredible young woman and a powerful campaigner". He said it was thanks in no small part to her "sheer determination" that the uptake of the HPV vaccine has increased among young women. "The State owes her a debt of gratitude," he said. Ryan Tubridy, who interviewed her on 'The Late Late Show', said he was impressed by her "sheer force of personality and natural kindness. She had these traits in abundance. I met her a number of times and walked away utterly taken aback by her verve and commitment to help people throughout her campaigning". Claire Byrne, who also interviewed Ms Brennan, said she hoped her family "take comfort in her huge achievements and the impact she had on people all over the country". Chief executive of the Irish Cancer Society Averil Power spoke of how Ms Brennan's "selfless honesty inspired us all. Through her steadfast determination she influenced parents to make an informed decision to give their daughters the HPV vaccine and protect them against an illness which was to take her life." Since her campaign, uptake of the vaccine has increased by 20pc. John Pollock, who is to resign as project director of the new National Children's Hospital, had been given a four-year extension of his contract, it has emerged. Mr Pollock, who could have remained in the position for another four years, will leave his post in June. The hospital, which is due to be ready in 2022, has been at the centre of controversy over its construction cost of 1.4bn, some 450m higher than its original price in April 2017. He took on the post in 2014 and was on a five-year contract, but this was extended by another four years by the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board overseeing the construction of the hospital. A spokeswoman for the board said he was on a salary of 133,613 and would not receive any payment as a result of his resignation. "Under the contract of employment, his pension is covered under the Department of Public Expenditure and Reforms Single Public Service Scheme," the spokeswoman said. Mr Pollock was an executive employee with the board, but was not a member. There is provision for a 13-member board and membership expired in July last year. Health Minister Simon Harris appointed 11 members and the chair. There is one position vacant. Under amended legislation in December 2018, the minister was given freedom to appoint a member under competency-based provisions. Mr Pollock's resignation followed the decision of board chairman Tom Costello to step down last month following the furore over the cost. A report on the cost of the hospital is due next month following an analysis by PwC. Mr Pollock said the hospital would open its doors to patients in 2023. New board chairman Fred Barry paid tribute to Mr Pollock's work. A hotel owner quickly cleared of drug suspicions has accused police of blackening his name after three teenagers died outside a St Patrick's Day disco. Michael McElhatton (52) owns the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown, Co Tyrone. He was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of manslaughter. Mr McElhatton was further arrested yesterday on suspicion of possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply. However, just two hours after announcing his second arrest, the PSNI issued a further statement saying a 52-year-old man had been "de-arrested" following the "fast-track forensic examination of a suspicious package". Last night the PSNI said the man had been released on police bail to return for further questioning at a future date. Mr McElhatton said in a statement: "I am shocked and horrified that the powdery substance taken by police from the laundry in my house could be drugs. Expand Close Lauren Bullock (17), Morgan Barnard (17) and Connor Currie (16) were killed in the tragedy / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Lauren Bullock (17), Morgan Barnard (17) and Connor Currie (16) were killed in the tragedy "Despite there being no basis to these suspicions, they have blackened my name and caused so much upset for so many people, especially those who are grieving and distressed over the events at the Greenvale Hotel." Lauren Bullock (17), Morgan Barnard (17) and Connor Currie (16) died in a crush outside the hotel. The hotel owner added: "While I wished to respect the ongoing investigation by the police into the tragic deaths of the three young people at the Greenvale Hotel on St Patrick's night, I have no choice but to make it completely clear that I have nothing whatsoever to do with drugs. "I can assure everyone that whatever any suspicions the police have raised about me in relation to anything to do with drugs is totally without any basis." PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Mark Hamilton said: "As a consequence of the arrest of a person on suspicion of manslaughter, a search was carried out at the home of the suspect. The search discovered a medium-size clear polythene bag containing an amount of a white powdery substance and pieces of tin foil. "This discovery led to the suspicion that the substance was a Class A drug. In line with normal procedure, the suspect was arrested on suspicion of possession of a Class A drug with intent to supply. This arrest was communicated to the media in line with procedure. "Given the gravity of the investigation, the examination of the bag was carried out urgently." He said once it was ascertained to be an innocent substance, the suspect was "de-arrested". "The PSNI would like to make it clear that there is no suspicion of any crime relating to misuse of drugs on behalf of the person who still remains in custody. The actions taken were in good faith and in line with procedure," he added. The funerals of the three victims will take place tomorrow. Morgan's funeral takes place at St Patrick's Church in Dungannon at 10am. It will be followed by that of Lauren at St Patrick's Church in Donaghmore at 11am, and Connor's at St Malachy's Church in Edendork at 2pm. Sarah Thompson felt she had given herself the best chance at life when she underwent a double mastectomy and had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed. And the mother-of-two from Maynooth, Co Kildare, said her family, friends, the Irish Cancer Society and her employers were there for her every step of the way. Sarah, 54, was diagnosed with breast cancer in June 2015 and by November that year, she had been given positive test results for BRCA1 - identifying cancer susceptibility in her genes. I had a double mastectomy and there were so many options available in terms of reconstruction, Sarah said. I benefited from the irish Cancer Societys nurse line, who told me about different reconstructions but I wanted to know from another woman whod been through this. Sarah gave her details to the charity and they set about finding another patient whod had the reconstruction shed been interested in exploring. They came back to me a bit later and got a lady who was happy to talk to me, that was amazing, she said. The stranger helped Sarah make her decision and then when she got the results to the gene test, that was another very tough day,but the charity and medics at the Hermitage Medical Clinic in Dublin, were on hand for advice. Because of the genetic test, I found out the risk of ovarian and breast cancer was increased with the gene, so I elected to have that surgery to lower my risk. They (doctors) never say your risk is zero but its a small risk and anything else was too big for me. I wanted normality, to be back at work, to resume my life and I was guided every step of the way when I asked for help. But nothing happens all at once, you have time to process and time to recover after each procedure. Normality has resumed. Im a year and 10 months back at work and that was the grasp at reality Id really wanted. The Boots store operations support manager, travels the country to different stores. She praised the company for its special range of beauty products, designed to make women feel feminine during their cancer journey. Sarah is married to Seamus, also 54, who shaved her head when clumps fell out in the shower, after bouts of chemotherapy. And her two sons are James, 31, and David, 27, who as part of a wide family network, supported her as she went through her treatment. My husband, my sons, my family and friends, were amazing - they really stepped up to the plate and they were there for the good days as well as the bad, she said. I made the best choices for life and the advice and support I received were invaluable. Sarah is keen to raise awareness of the work the Irish Cancer Society does for patients going through the toughest period of their lives. Today is Daffodil Day, the Irish Cancer Society's annual fundraiser appeal. For more information, see cancer.ie Eileen Rushe is thankful she became a mum at the tender age of 20 and now she looks forward to her sons confirmation while hoping for the all-clear from cervical cancer. Eileen is only 33 and has already been through so much in her young life. She became pregnant with her son, Seamus, now 12, while in first year of college. And her sons father, John Byrne, 32, tragically passed away in July 2017. You have to go forward, rather than back and some of the stuff Ive been through has been very hard, Eileen said. But everything that happens encourages me to better deal with the next issue. And I make my life about the good things, rather than dwelling on the sad. Eileen has just finished intensive cancer treatment, including internal radiation - something which is likely to spark the menopause early while doctors explained there would be no more children. The doctors say, at the moment, Im probably in perimenopause. And then Im set to go into full menopause, Eileen said. I wont be able to have any more children and Ive already started with a higher body temperature and Im only 33. But the way I look at this is, for me, its not the worst situation. I have a 12-year-old son and I know for other women who havent had that chance of becoming a mother, its a far more painful thing. I have had a child and I want to live, so I have to do all I can to survive. Eileen was diagnosed in December while being treated for precancerous cervix cells the previous 18 months. The mother, from Termonfeckin, Co Louth, said she couldnt stop to think how did this happen, as she had to concentrate on getting well. I was told they were treating me to cure the cancer and despite what the treatment does to my body, if it means I can survive, thats all that matters. I can cope with it, just to get through this. Because I already had my son, nothing else was worth dwelling on. Im helping out with weddings and I just want so badly to do normal things. My sons Confirmation is in May. Im due to get the results a week before my sister Siobhans wedding in May but I asked the hospital to give them me a week later, as I want to enjoy the family wedding. Im hoping by the Confirmation and at the end of May, Ill get the news that Im cancer free. Then we will have the biggest party, a cancer free celebration. Eileen praised St Lukes Hospital in Dublin, where shes been treated and the Irish Cancer Society, for being there for advice along the way. I want to help encourage all women to get regular smears, she added. Because believe me, a few minutes discomfort is nothing compared to the gruelling treatment for cervical cancer. Despite it all, Eileen remains positive, because, she added, Thats the best way to be to take this on. Daffodil Day takes place on Friday, March 22nd. The Irish Cancer Society is encouraging fundraising events, volunteering and for the public to buy a daffodil to help cancer patients nationwide. A small turbo prop aircraft plane flies over Toronto as it comes in to land at Billy Bishop Airport. Photo: Deposit Donegal Airport has topped one of the world's best-known lists of scenic landings - for the second year in a row. The Carrickfinn airport headed the annual poll conducted by private jet booking service PrivateFly, beating off much busier and better-known strips like London City and Toronto's Billy Bishop Airport for 2019. "Most beautiful scenery I ever saw, with the beach on one side with crystal clear water and Mount Errigal standing tall on the other side," one voter said. PrivateFly's Top 10 Scenic Airports 2019 Donegal Airport (Ireland) Barra Airport (Scotland) Nice Airport (France) Orlando Melbourne International (US) St Maarten (Netherlands Antilles) Saba Airport (Netherlands Antilles) Queenstown Airport (New Zealand) Toronto Billy Bishop (Canada) London City Airport (England) Aosta Airport (Italy) The poll ranked 129 airports, with thousands of public votes followed by a judging selection overseen by a panel of travel experts, PrivateFly says. "Woohoo!!!" the airport's Twitter account posted. "Management and staff are delighted to have Donegal Airport as the No.1 most scenic airport for the second year. A big thank you to everyone who took the time to vote for Donegal Airport." Just two routes operate from Carrickfinn - to Dublin and Glasgow. "This achievement is a great boost for Co Donegal and for the airport, and is testament to the attractiveness of the county as a destination," said a spokesperson for Stobart Air, which operates the Dublin-Donegal route. Last year, Stobart saw an 11pc increase in passenger numbers on the service, and invested 13.8m in a new ATR42-600 aircraft to operate it. Loganair operates flights between Glasgow and the airport, set about 15 minutes from Gweedore, and a 45-minute drive from Letterkenny. The PrivateFly award comes hot on the heels of another global accolade for a county National Geographic Traveller once dubbed the world's "coolest place". This January, TripAdvisor named Harvey's Point as Ireland's No.1 hotel in its annual Travellers' Choice Awards. Read more: Last week this column concluded with the question of what the Irish Government might be facing today if the EU and the UK had exhausted all means of avoiding the most disastrous of Brexit outcomes - a no-deal exit. As the brinkmanship continues, and focus is now on an extension of the UK's EU membership beyond March 29, the choice of backing down on the backstop as the only way to prevent the worst has not yet arisen. It may not arise over the coming days if all 28 countries involved agree to a British membership extension. But if they do not, then consideration will be needed about the wisdom of sticking with the backstop, if the increasingly tight timeline even allows such consideration. Before looking at this matter, consider the issues and obstacles around reaching agreement on the request to extend the UK's EU membership. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is meeting his fellow EU leaders in Brussels today. They will discuss the British request. The discussion could be brief and cursory. Yesterday afternoon, Donald Tusk, the man who chairs their meetings and speaks for them collectively, appeared to suggest that they would only consider an extension if a majority in the House of Commons votes for the current withdrawal deal, including the backstop. This position has been taken despite two huge votes - last week and in January - against the deal and despite Monday's decision by the Commons speaker that a rejected motion cannot be put to the House without change. The position has upped the ante for MPs of all parties. But doubling down on this position means that if it fails the chances of a no-deal outcome will shoot up. It is possible that Mr Tusk's hardline position yesterday could be softened today when EU leaders discuss the tactics of extension (they have had little discussion of the matter to date). A strong factor in favour of an extension is the avoidance of the immediate disruption to so many areas of commercial activity that a no deal would cause. Closely related to this factor is who takes the blame. EU leaders - individually and collectively - do not want to be accused of shoving the UK over the cliff edge. More strategically, such an exit, which no country is or can be fully prepared for, could lead to longer-term strains between the EU and a country which will always be a major European power. Of all moments in recent European history, this is not the time for division among the continent's democracies. The EU's relations with the other two (non-EU) European powers - Russia and Turkey - are at decades-long low points. Few on this side of the Atlantic have yet to fully internalise the frightening fact that Donald Trump is the guarantor of European security. And just last week the EU declared China - the coming global superpower - as a "systemic rival". In an era of intensifying rivalry among the world's big powers, a divided Europe will be a weaker Europe. All of these arguments should be part of the discussion among the EU leaders today and into next week. But there are also arguments against giving Mrs May an extension. Only a minority of the 27 members would face serious trade disruption if there were to be a no deal next week for the simple reason that their trade with the UK amounts to low single-digit percentages of the overall economic output. These countries want to move on from Brexit and deal with matters that mean more to them. They may argue that getting it over and done with is the least bad option. Another argument against prolonging the agony is that companies who have been willing and able to prepare for no deal would have to undo their plans if it is postponed, and only to have to spend more money in a few months implementing new no-deal plans. The strongest argument against extension is how weak and unreliable the UK has become as an interlocutor and that granting the extension may not achieve anything for anyone. "A political generation which has no serious experience of bad times and is frankly cavalier about precipitating events which they could then not control, but feel they might exploit." These are the words of Ivan Rogers, Britain's ambassador to the EU until 2017 when he resigned, reportedly in exasperation at the handling of Brexit by his political masters. Rogers is worth listening to not only because of his vast diplomatic experience, but also because he has avoided the sort of partisanship that has so polarised discussion of Brexit in his country. Speaking on RTE radio's Sean O'Rourke show yesterday morning, he warned that both the EU and British sides are in danger of misreading each other. Both have done so already. That is so obviously true in the case of the British side that it need not be elaborated on here. But it has also been true for the EU side, most notably on how the backstop would be viewed by the other side. The backstop has become the focus of huge opposition in the UK for two reasons. First, because it would involve removing Northern Ireland from the UK single market, the backstop has implications for the UK's constitutional integrity. Second, because it would involve keeping all of the UK as a de facto member of the EU's customs union indefinitely, Britain might never be able to do its own international trade deals with countries such as the US and Australia (while Brexit advocates grossly overstate the achievable benefits to the British economy of such trade deals, having the freedom to seek them is a totemic issue). The EU side misread the degree of opposition to the backstop and it is for that reason that the current impasse has been reached. There is still a chance that the British will swallow the backstop next week, but if they don't the Irish Government will face a decision. If there is a no-deal Brexit, Ireland is very likely to suffer more than the UK economically, given its much greater dependence on trade, both with the UK and with the continent that moves through the British 'land bridge'. No deal would also bring an immediate Border crisis. This is something that the backstop was designed to avoid for all time. We are not at that point yet, but we are close. Continuing to insist on a position that would lead to what it was designed to prevent would make no sense. Precisely 1,001 days on from that fateful referendum, threats of "a deal or no-deal Brexit" still hang there just eight days from the deadline. This is no way to do grown-up politics. But the crazy mix of an utter lack of a proper Brexit debate in the United Kingdom, and the totally unrealistic expectations of a section of the British political elite, have rendered this lamentable state of affairs inevitable. Let's quickly sum up the state of play as EU leaders gather for yet another Brexit summit in Brussels today. The EU summit chairman, Donald Tusk, has said the bloc could approve Britain's request for a short delay to Brexit - but only if UK MPs next week vote through the withdrawal deal they have twice crushingly rejected. Earlier yesterday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May had asked the EU to delay Brexit from next Friday's deadline until June 30. But all the while those European Parliament elections, due to happen variously across the EU from May 23 to May 26, sit there as an obstacle constraining any extension. Mrs May wants to defer the March 29 departure date to try one more time to get her draft agreement of November 25 last through the necessary parliamentary ratification. She said any postponement beyond the end of June would undermine voters' trust and she ruled out Euro elections. But the policy-guiding European Commission advised EU leaders it would be better to further tighten the delay to Thursday, May 23, the actual date UK voters were due to vote for new MEPs. Alternatively, a much longer delay should happen, until at least the end of 2019, and that would legally oblige the UK to hold elections to an entity it is sworn to abandon. In Brussels last night, diplomats indicated a decision on the delay will probably be delayed until next week - days away from the witching hour. That might, in extremis, require another extraordinary leaders' summit. On the plus side, for those of us dreading a crash-out next week, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed London's "clear request". Germany will "make every effort" to bring about an agreement at this summit. But French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian had a much tougher message. He said Mrs May was not able to deliver and an early no-deal might be best. Mrs May addressed her nation on television last night to explain the belated and reluctant acceptance of the delay. She appealed directly to voters in hopes of increasing pressure on her own MPs, and warned Brexit was now at risk. And she still faces the big obstacle of the speaker of her parliament barring that third Brexit deal vote. Yolanda Hadid, from left, Bella Hadid and Gigi Hadid attend the 2017 Glamour Women of the Year Awards at Kings Theatre on Monday, Nov. 13, 2017, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP) Gigi Hadid and Bella Hadid attend the #BoF500 gala dinner during New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2019 at 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge on September 9, 2018 in Brooklyn City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Business Of Fashion ) Gigi Hadid, Joan Smalls and Bella Hadid seen backstage ahead of the Moschino show during Milan Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2018/19 on February 21, 2018 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Moschino) Gigi Hadid and Bella Hadid watch on during the women's singles quarter-final match between Serena Williams of The United States and Karolina Pliskova of Czech Republic on Day Nine of the 2018 US Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 4, 2018 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images) "Would you join Bella and Gigi Hadid's Book Club?" American Vogue asked its readers after supermodel sisters Gigi and Bella were pictured clutching on to books during their daily-photographer parades outside their respective New York City apartments. The American style bible hyped up the Hadids' new literary prowess, noting that both have been pictured touting around their new reads in recent weeks, with Bella in particular, weaponising her copy of Stephen King's The Outsider to defend her image from the paparazzi outside Charles de Gaulle airport. Four weeks after Paris Fashion Week has wrapped, she is still getting through the 560-page thriller. Vogue is sending an important message by not-so-subtlely reminding its digital readers of the pleasures of flicking through the pages of a physical book, while simultaneously hyping up two of the biggest names in fashion. It's silly, but effective. The New York Post, on the other hand, was roasted on Twitter on Wednesday night for its ghastly headline, "Bella and Gigi Hadid make books the hot new accessory of 2019." It's still unclear if the story was written in jest or not, but it's impossible to take seriously. They note that Gigi has been carrying a copy of Albert Camus' The Stranger, a novel first published in 1942 by the French author which informed his existentialist philosophy and a book which, in 2012, The Guardian described as a "masterpiece", for several weeks now. Expand Close Bella Hadid pictured holding Stephen King's The Outsider / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Bella Hadid pictured holding Stephen King's The Outsider "And like true supermodels, the gals know how to coordinate their outfits to their new brainy accessories," the Post writes. It goes without saying that deeming books 'brainy accessories' is a summation of the idiocracy we find ourselves leaning towards, but let's not forget that the Hadids don't do anything for free - even read. And the fact that this is a coordinated effort evokes even more suspicion. So, this is either phase one of some kind of book club commercial strategy, or the Hadids just learned the joy of books and want to influence others on Instagram in the same way they've spearheaded the tiny sunglasses campaign with such vigour. Rob Delaney arriving for the Trust in Fashion event at the Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane where Harvey Nichols are showcasing designers at a celebrity-studded fashion fundraiser for the Rainbow Trust's Children's Charity Rob Delaney arriving for the Trust in Fashion event at the Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane where Harvey Nichols are showcasing designers at a celebrity-studded fashion fundraiser for the Rainbow Trust's Children's Charity Rob Delaney speaks onstage during the Catastrophe panel as part of the Amazon portion of the 2016 Television Critics Association Winter Tour at Langham Hotel on January 11, 2016 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images) Rob Delaney has been a bag of wet rubbish since his son died 14 months ago. The 'Catastrophe' actor's two-year-old son Henry died of cancer in January 2018, and he has now said the tragedy has been very hard to deal with, and hes only just learning how to cope with the waves of emotion he feels. He said: Im a mess. My child died 14 months ago and Im basically a bag of wet rubbish. I need a lot of help. It has been very hard. It comes in waves. Ive learned to not control how the waves come. Right now Im sad a lot. Rob, 42, has opened up on his loss several times, and says the reason he wants to speak out is because he wants to let other grieving parents know its okay that they feel terrible. He added: The reason Im being honest with you and not trying to impress you, and make you think Im cool or that Im a tough guy, or maybe working through loss in an inspiring way, is that I have found that if a bereaved parent or bereaved sibling reads this, I want them to know that its okay that they feel terrible, sad, confused and so brutally humbled. Ive been sad and angry and I am telling you that just in case somebody else who has suffered a terrible loss reads this - so they dont feel like some a**hole from TV has it all together. I am a life-time work in progress. Expand Close Rob Delaney with wife Leah (Ian West/PA) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Rob Delaney with wife Leah (Ian West/PA) The actor - who had Henry with his wife Leah, with whom he also has two older sons, ages seven and six, and a baby boy born late last year - then praised charity Rainbow Trust for their work in supporting families with ill children, as he says Henrys care worker was like a paratrooper. Speaking to the Evening Standard newspaper whilst at the Rainbow Trusts annual Trust In Fashion fundraiser, he said: We were at Great Ormond Street Hospital for seven months, and then we were at our local hospital for seven months, and then we were home with Henry for seven months, and then he died. It would have been towards the end of our Great Ormond Street stay that we would have been hooked up with Rainbow Trust. The care worker assigned to us was a woman named Fiona who was just amazing, and remains so. She still comes and visits us sometimes. At that point we didnt know Henry was going to die. We knew he was disabled by his tumour and his surgery. Fiona was like a paratrooper who just drops in and has the skill set to help people in unbelievable pain and fear. Helping hand: People are escorted to safety by aid workers at the airport of the coastal city of Beira in central Mozambique. Photo: Getty Images More than 350 people have been confirmed dead and hundreds more are missing after the cyclone that unleashed devastating floods in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Aid workers rushed to rescue victims clinging to trees and crammed on rooftops amid fears that many thousands of people are at risk. In Mozambique, the rapidly rising floodwaters created "an inland ocean", endangering tens of thousands of families, aid workers said as they scrambled to rescue survivors and air-drop food, water and blankets following Cyclone Idai. "This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambique's recent history," said Jamie LeSueur, head of response efforts for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The United Nations allocated $20m (17.6m) from its emergency response fund to ramp up the humanitarian response in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. The European Union and Britain have also pledged aid, and the US Embassy in Zimbabwe said America was "mobilising to provide support" to partners in the three affected countries. Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi said that more than 200 people had been confirmed dead in his country. Earlier he said the death toll could reach 1,000. At least 400,000 people have been left homeless. In Zimbabwe's eastern mountain areas bordering Mozambique, residents struggled to cope with the disaster. "There was a house there, it was buried and the owners may have been buried with it. They are missing," said Zacharia Chinyai, of the Zimbabwean border town of Chimanimani, who lost 12 relatives in the disaster. The cyclone took residents by surprise, Mr Chinyai said. "We heard news on the radio" about the flooding in neighbouring Mozambique, he said. "But we never thought we could also be victims... No-one told us it was going to be this devastating." Chipo Dhliwayo lost her daughters, four-year-old Anita and eight-year-old Amanda. "I wasn't able to save anything except this baby," she said of her lone surviving child, a six-month-old son, who suffered an eye injury and scars to his face. The family was sleeping when their house collapsed, the 30-year-old said. "Trees, rocks and mud were raining on us. I grabbed my son, my husband took Anita and we ran to a hut, but that also collapsed. Anita died there," she said. Amanda was trapped in the rubble of their house and her body was not found until the next day. "I knew she was already dead. I cried the whole night," Ms Dhliwayo said. "I lost so much that I wish I had just died." The cyclone created southern Africa's most destructive flooding in 20 years, said emergency workers. Heavy rains are expected to continue through today. Mozambique's Pungue and Buzi rivers overflowed, creating "inland oceans extending for miles and miles in all directions", said Herve Verhoosel, of the World Food Programme (WFP). "This is a major humanitarian emergency that is getting bigger by the hour," Mr Verhoosel said. He said people were "crammed on rooftops and elevated patches of land". "People visible from the air may be the lucky ones and the top priority now is to rescue as many as possible," he said. Many areas remained impassible. With key roads washed away, aid groups were trying to get badly needed food, medicine and fuel into the hard-hit city of Beira, on Mozambique's coast, by air and by sea. "It's dire," Caroline Haga, of the Red Cross, told the Associated Press from Beira, a city of 500,000. "We did an aerial surveillance yesterday and saw people on rooftops and in tree branches. The waters are still rising and we are desperately trying to save as many as possible." Satellite images were helping the rescue teams target the most critical areas, Ms Haga said. Rescue operations were based at Beira airport, one of the few places in the city with working communications. The waters flooded a swathe of land of almost 400sqkm in central Mozambique, according to the European Union's global observation programme, which was mapping the crisis, putting more than 100,000 people at risk. "The full horror, the full impact... is only going to emerge over coming days," Red Cross spokesman Matthew Cochrane said. People return to Praia Nova Village, one of the most affected neighbourhoods following a cyclone in the coastal city of Beira, Mozambique, Sunday March 17, 2019. Families are returning to the vulnerable shanty town following cyclone high winds and rain. More than 1,000 people are feared dead in Mozambique four days after a cyclone slammed into the southern African country. (Josh Estey/CARE via AP) People return to their homes following a cyclone, and heavy rain in the coastal city of Beira, Mozambique, Sunday March 17, 2019. More than 1,000 people are feared dead in Mozambique four days after a cyclone slammed into the southern African country destroying vulnerable residential areas. (Josh Estey/CARE via AP) In this photo taken on Friday, March 15, 2019 and provided by the International Red Cross, a woman hangs a cloth to dry in a sea of rubble after Tropical Cyclone Idai, in Beira, Mozambique. Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi says that more than 1,000 may have by killed by Cyclone Idai, which many say is the worst in more than 20 years. Speaking to state Radio Mozambique, Nyusi said Monday, March 18 that although the official death count is currently 84, he believes the toll will be more than 1,000. (Denis Onyodi/IFRC via AP) A woman makes her way to a school building being used as an emergency shelter for some 300 local people who are unable to return to their homes following cyclone force winds and heavy rain in the coastal city of Beira, Mozambique, Sunday March 17, 2019. (Josh Estey/CARE via AP) In this photo taken on Friday, March 15, 2019 and provided by the International Red Cross, a man searches through the rubble after Tropical Cyclone Idai, in Beira, Mozambique.(Denis Onyodi/IFRC via AP) Livestock is seen at a washed away bridge along Umvumvu river following Cyclone Idai in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo A man looks at a washed away bridge along Umvumvu river following Cyclone Idai in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo Police keep a close watch as a loader clears the road in Chimanimani, southeast of Harare, Zimbabwe, Monday, March 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi) A general view shows destruction after Cyclone Idai in Beira, Mozambique, March 16-17, 2019 in this still image taken from a social media video on March 19, 2019. Care International/Josh Estey via REUTERS Children stand near a makeshift shelter after a cyclone went through the area in Chimanimani, southeast of Harare, Zimbabwe, Monday, March 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi) A man looks at a washed away bridge along Umvumvu river following Cyclone Idai in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe March 18, 2019. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY An elderly woman stands next to a collapsed bridge in Chimanimani, about 600 kilometers southeast of Harare, Zimbabwe, Monday, March 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi) In this photo taken on Friday, March 15, 2019 and provided by the International Red Cross, people carry their personal effects after Tropical Cyclone Idai, in Beira, Mozambique. (Denis Onyodi/IFRC via AP) The death toll after a powerful cyclone in Mozambique stood at 217 and around 15,000 people still needed to be rescued, the Minister of Land and Environment Celso Correia said on Thursday. Correia said 3,000 people had already been rescued. Cyclone Idai lashed the Mozambican port city of Beira with winds of up to 170 km per hour (105 miles per hour) last Thursday, then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi, flattening buildings and putting the lives of millions at risk. Winds of up to 170 kph (105 mph) and flooding swept across southeastern Africa, including Zimbabwe and Mozambique, affecting more than 2.6 million people, United Nations officials said on Tuesday. Rescue crews were still struggling to reach victims five days later, while aid groups said many survivors were trapped in remote areas, surrounded by wrecked roads, flattened buildings and submerged villages. The Red Cross said at least 400,000 people had been made homeless in central Mozambique alone. "This is the worst humanitarian crisis in Mozambique's history," said Jamie LeSueur, who is leading rescue efforts in Beira for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The organisation said large areas to the west of the port city of Beira were severely flooded, and in places close to the Buzi and Pungwe rivers flood waters are metres deep, completely submerging homes, telephone poles and trees. LeSueur had said earlier on Tuesday, when the death toll was 84, that the full human impact of the disaster remained unclear, and that the figure was likely to rise. New Zealand will ban military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles under tough new gun laws following the killing of 50 people in the country's worst mass shooting, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday. In the immediate aftermath of last Friday's shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, Ardern labelled the attack as terrorism and said New Zealand's gun laws would change. "On 15 March our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too. We are announcing action today on behalf of all New Zealanders to strengthen our gun laws and make our country a safer place," Ardern told a new conference. All semi-automatic weapons used during the terrorist attack on Friday 15 March will be banned." Ardern said she expects the new laws to be in place by April 11 and a buy-back scheme will be established for banned weapons. The buyback would cost up to NZ$200 million ($138 million), she said. All military style semi-automatics (MSSA) and assault rifles would be banned, along with parts used to convert weapons into MSSAs and all high-capacity magazines. Under existing New Zealand gun laws, a standard A-category gun license allows semi-automatics limited to seven shots. Live-streamed video of a gunman in one of the mosques showed a semi-automatic weapon modified with a large magazine. Australia banned semi-automatic weapons and launched a gun buy-back after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 in which 35 people were gunned down. Ardern said that similar to Australia, the new gun laws will allow for strictly enforced exemptions for farmers to conduct pest control and animal welfare. "I strongly believe that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners in New Zealand will understand that these moves are in the national interest, and will take these changes in their stride." New Zealand, a country of less than 5 million people, has an estimated 1.2-1.5 million firearms, around 13,500 of them MSSA type weapons. Most farmers in the South Pacific country own guns, which they use for killing pests such as possums and rabbits, and for putting down injured stock. Recreational hunting of deer, pigs and goats is popular for sport and food, while gun clubs and shooting ranges dot the country. That has created a powerful lobby which has thwarted previously attempts to tighten gun laws after other mass shootings in New Zealand and overseas. Federated Farmers, which represent thousands of farmers, said it supported the tough new gun laws. "This will not be popular among some of our members but...we believe this is the only practicable solution," Federated Farmers Rural Security spokesman Miles Anderson said in a statement. The main opposition National Party, which draws strong support in rural New Zealand, said it also supported the ban. The changes exclude two general classes of firearms which are commonly used for hunting, pest control, stock management on farms, and duck shooting. "I have a military style weapon. But to be fair, I don't really use it, I don't really need it," said Noel Womersley, who slaughters cattle for small farmers around Christchurch. "So I'm quite happy to hand mine over, to be fair." Ardern said a further tranche of reforms will cover the firearm registry and licensing. Mohammed Faqih, a member of the Islamic clergy who flew in from California and attended the funerals for some victims on Thursday, said he was "extremely grateful" for the gun ban. I wish our leaders in the States would follow on her footsteps and do the same thing especially given our history of mass shootings," he said. "Something needs to happen and its a great example for our elected leaders." The first victims were buried on Wednesday and burials continued on Thursday, with the funeral of a school boy. A mass burial is expected to be held on Friday. The bullet-riddled Al Noor mosque was being repaired, painted and cleaned ahead of Friday prayers. Ardern will attend the Muslim call to prayer and a two-minute silence at Hagley Park opposite the Al Noor Mosque. The call to prayer will telecast nationally. Armed police have been guarding mosques around New Zealand since the attacks. "We will have a heightened presence tomorrow in order to provide reassurance to people attending the Friday call for prayers," police said in a statement on Thursday. Thousands of worshippers are expected at the Al Noor mosque, where the majority of victims died. Most victims were migrants or refugees from countries such as Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Somalia, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist who was living in Dunedin, on New Zealand's South Island, has been charged with murder following the attack. He was remanded without a plea and is due back in court on April 5, when police said he was likely to face more charges. Twenty eight people wounded in the attacks remain in hospital, six still in intensive care. More than 1,700 staff at high street retailer The Entertainer are to share a record 3 million in bonuses after the group notched up a 31% surge in annual profits. (The Entertainer/PA) More than 1,700 staff at high street retailer The Entertainer are to share a record 3 million in bonuses after the group notched up a 31% surge in annual profits. The toy company which recently bought the Early Learning Centre (ELC) from Mothercare announced the bonus cheer after profits jumped to 15.1 million thanks to a 12.3% increase in like-for-like sales over the year to January 28. It also saw online sales leap 38% higher at TheToyShop.com. The groups bonus compares with 1.9 million paid out the previous year. As well as its staff bonus, The Entertainer also said it was making charitable donations of 1.6 million after the rise in annual profits, with total donations at 2.7 million thanks also to payroll giving, pennies and carrier bag donations. Its results come after the deal was announced last week to buy the ELC business from Mothercare for up to 13.5 million. Our ambitious growth agenda will continue after our exciting start to the year with the acquisition of ELC, and we will continue to look at every opportunity to expand our presence both nationally and internationallyGary Grant, The Entertainer ELC is run within 80 Mothercare stores in the UK, 400 stores internationally via franchise partners, and online. The acquisition also includes ELCs portfolio of toy brands, such as Happyland. Gary Grant, founder and executive chairman of The Entertainer, said: 2019 will see us continue to keep a tight control on costs, further strengthen our own-label product offering through our Addo brand, ensure we are first to market on key trends and of course offer excellent value for money to our customers. Our ambitious growth agenda will continue after our exciting start to the year with the acquisition of ELC, and we will continue to look at every opportunity to expand our presence both nationally and internationally. Mr Grant and his wife Catherine founded The Entertainer in 1981 in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. It employs 1,530 staff across its 163 stores and 211 at its Amersham head office. A tram passes flowers at the site of a shooting incident in a tram in Utrecht, Netherlands (Peter Dejong/AP) The main suspect in a deadly tram shooting in the Dutch city of Utrecht will be charged with offences including multiple murder or manslaughter with a terrorist intent, prosecutors said. Investigations so far into Mondays shooting that left three dead and three seriously injured indicate that the shooter acted alone, prosecutors said in a written statement. The main suspect, identified by police as Gokmen Tanis, a 37-year-old man of Turkish descent, also faces charges of attempted murder or manslaughter and making threats with a terrorist intent. The prosecution office statement adds that investigations are continuing into whether the suspects actions flowed from personal problems combined with a radicalised ideology. Expand Close Construction workers who witnessed Mondays shooting incident put flowers at the site in Utrecht (Peter Dejong/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Construction workers who witnessed Mondays shooting incident put flowers at the site in Utrecht (Peter Dejong/AP) The team investigating the shooting will ask a forensic psychiatry and psychology institute to carry out a personality test on the suspect. Tanis is to appear before an investigating judge on Friday. Such hearings are held behind closed doors. A 40-year-old man detained on Tuesday afternoon is still under investigation to establish if he possibly had a supporting role, outside the shooting incident, prosecutors said. Two men and a woman were killed when a shooter opened fire on a tram in Utrecht. Authorities put the Netherlands fourth largest city in lockdown for hours amid fears that more than one shooter was active at different locations. Expand Close Dutch counter-terrorism police after the shooting (Peter Dejong/AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dutch counter-terrorism police after the shooting (Peter Dejong/AP) The terror alert level was also raised from four to the maximum five while police hunted for the shooter. It was dropped to four once the suspect was detained. Prosecutors have said they were focused on a possible terrorist motive because of the nature of the shooting they say none of the victims was known to the alleged shooter and because of a note found in a getaway car. They have not disclosed what was written in the note. A silent march is planned for Friday evening in Utrecht to commemorate the victims. Yannick Glaudin, 30, is due to be sentenced on charges of disclosing private sexual photos, harassment and stalking but has fled to France, a court heard (stock photo) India's most wanted man was arrested while trying to open a bank account, days after he was tracked down to an 8m (9.25m) apartment in London's West End. Nirav Modi (48), a diamond jeweller whose designs have been worn by Hollywood stars, was held after a bank clerk contacted Scotland Yard in the wake of publicity generated by an investigation by the 'Daily Telegraph' newspaper. Mr Modi, accused of a 1bn (1.15bn) bank fraud - the largest in Indian history - was denied bail in court and remanded in custody. Mr Modi said only, "I don't consent", when asked whether he agreed to be extradited to India. His refusal is likely to spark an extradition battle that could take years. Daily Telegraph, London Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021] Tory Remainers and Brexiteers yesterday rounded on Theresa May's "shameful" leadership as rivals openly plotted to succeed her following her request to extend Article 50 by three months. The UK prime minister came under fire from all corners of her party as members of the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs sent a letter to Downing Street setting out four demands for her to gain from this week's EU Council meeting in order to get her Withdrawal Agreement through parliament. The letter, which was signed by 39 MPs, tells Mrs May she should have "no reason to fear" leaving on March 29. Warning her not to delay Brexit if she values "our grassroots", the two-page letter calls on Mrs May to seek "legally binding changes to the Withdrawal Act, eg. a unilateral exit clause, a legal end date or Malthouse alternative arrangements". It came after all but three of the 20 MPs who spoke at an ERG meeting on Tuesday threatened to call for her resignation at last night's meeting of the 1922 committee of MPs. At the same time, Mrs May's leadership rivals were seen out "on manoeuvres" yesterday, with Boris Johnson spotted talking with fellow Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg; former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab stepping up his media profile with appearances on television and radio, and amid rumours of machinations involving lesser-known MPs such as Mark Harper, the former chief whip. UN judges have sentenced former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic to life in prison on appeal, ending one of the most momentous trials over genocide committed during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. They upheld Karadzic's conviction for the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica and ruled the 40-year sentence imposed at the close of his trial was too light, given the immensity of the crimes in question. Survivors erupted into applause after Presiding Judge Vagn Joensen read the final sentence, which cannot be appealed. Karadzic, who had argued the court was biased against him, stood impassively. The sentence was fitting given the "extraordinary gravity of Karadzic's responsibility and his integral participation in the gravest of crimes committed throughout the entire area of the conflict in Bosnia," Judge Joensen said. Karadzic (73) was convicted in 2016 for the genocide at Srebrenica. He was also found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the 44-month Serb siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo that terrorised the civilian population, and for overseeing a campaign of ethnic cleansing that drove Croats and Muslims out of Serb-claimed areas of Bosnia. On appeal, prosecutors had sought a life sentence and a second genocide conviction for his role in ethnic cleansing. Judges rejected the request for the second genocide conviction, but upheld his conviction on all other war crimes and crimes against humanity charges, including persecution and murder. "I am partially satisfied but a bitter taste remains that the Hague tribunal could not convict him on the second genocide charge, because of international pressure protecting the interests of Serbia," said Mirsad Duratovic, a former Bosnian Muslim prisoner in three Serb-run detention camps in the town of Prijedor during the war. "I cried because I lost my children, I am all alone," said Mira Dogas of the Mothers of Srebrenica group, who travelled to the Netherlands for yesterday's verdict. "I am very shaken. I lost three sons, my husband, my grandchild, my father died," she said. "He's still alive while our children have been in the ground for a long time and they had a horrible death." Karadzic's lawyer said he would continue to consider ways to look for a judicial review or having the sentence commuted. "He says that if the choice to have an independent (Serb republic in Bosnia) meant that he had to lose his freedom he's prepared to make that choice and lose his freedom," Peter Robinson said outside the courtroom. Democratic senator Kamala Harris has vowed to "prosecute the case" against Donald Trump as she runs for US president. The former California attorney general suggested her legal experience would be an asset on the campaign trail as she seeks to convince voters to oust Mr Trump from the White House. "I believe that voters are going to want someone who has the proven ability to prosecute the case against this administration and this president," she said. Ms Harris is seen as a key contender for the Democrat candidacy, although recent polls put her third behind Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Ted Bakers profits slumped last year as the fashion retailer grappled with a scandal which pushed its founder to resign, as well as a competitive retail environment. Profit before tax was down 26.1% to 50.9 million in the 52 weeks to January 26. Group revenue was 4.4% higher at 617.4 million, thanks to growing sales across the UK, Europe and North America. The results come at the end of a challenging year for the company, which has taken its toll on the balance sheet. Exceptional items totalling 12.1 million included the cost of an external investigation into the conduct of former chief executive and founder Ray Kelvin. The company was also forced to write off unpaid bills from House of Fraser after the department store went into administration last August, while the acquisition of No Ordinary Shoes added another cost. With exceptional items stripped out, pre-tax profits fell 14.3% to 63 million. The competitive environment for retailers pushed the brand to use promotional prices to attract customers, putting additional pressure on the groups gross margin, which fell to 58.3% from 61%. Executive chairman David Bernstein said: Performance has been impacted by the very difficult trading conditions throughout the year, including competitive discounting across the retail sector, consumer uncertainty, the well-publicised challenges facing some of our UK trading partners, and the unseasonable weather across our global markets at different points throughout the period. Despite this challenging backdrop, Ted Baker continues to develop as a global lifestyle brand reflecting the strength of the brand, the design and quality of our collections and the passion and commitment of our talented teams across the world. Mr Bernstein has taken on his executive role to provide additional support to acting chief executive Lindsay Page, who assumed the role following the suspension of Mr Kelvin last year. Mr Kelvin was accused of enforcing a hugging culture at the company. Accusations were also made that he massaged employees, kissed their ears and asked some to sit on his lap. He left the company earlier this month, 32 years after establishing it. More changes at the top are to come, with Mr Bernstein saying he will not stay on as chairman beyond the end of November 2020, by which time a new non-executive chair will be appointed. Donald Trumps tweet came as secretary of state Mike Pompeo was in Jerusalem (Michael Conroy/AP) President Donald Trump has said it is time for the United States to recognise Israels control over the disputed Golan Heights. The announcement signals a shift in US policy and comes ahead of the Israeli prime ministers planned visit next week to the White House. The administration has been considering recognising Israels sovereignty over the Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. Last week, in its annual human rights report, the State Department dropped the phrase Israeli-occupied from the Golan Heights section, instead calling it Israeli-controlled. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Mr Trump tweeted. Minutes later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted his appreciation. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! In addition to its policies towards the Palestinians, the US has taken a hard line towards Iran, much to Mr Netanyahus delight. Mr Trumps announcement came as secretary of state Mike Pompeo is in Jerusalem, lauding warm ties with Israel and promising to step up pressure on Iran. Mr Pompeos words gave a public boost to the Israeli leader at the height of a tight re-election campaign. Mr Netanyahu is to be in Washington for two days next week two weeks before Israels April 9 ballot. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! @realDonaldTrump Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) March 21, 2019 Standing together in Jerusalem, neither Mr Netanyahu nor Mr Pompeo mentioned the heated Israeli election campaign. But Mr Netanyahu, facing a tough challenge from a popular former military chief and reeling from a series of corruption allegations, has repeatedly sought to focus attention on his foreign policy record and strong ties with Mr Trump. Mr Pompeo has said his trip has nothing to do with politics. Mr Netanyahu thanked Mr Pompeo for the Trump administrations strong stance against Iran, which Israel regards as an existential threat. Mr Netanyahu has accused Iran of attempting to set up a terrorist network to target Israel from the Golan Heights, using the incident to repeat his goal of international recognition for Israels claim on the area. You could imagine what would have happened if Israel were not in the Golan, he said. You would have Iran on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Mr Pompeo paid a solemn visit to Jerusalems Western Wall along with Mr Netanyahu in an apparent sign of support for Israels control of the contested city. Mr Pompeo is the highest-ranking American official to tour the holy site with any Israeli leader. His visit was likely to further infuriate the Palestinians, who have already severed ties with the US over its Jerusalem policies. Expand Close Benjamin Netanyahu, Mike Pompeo and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman visit the Western Wall Tunnels in Jerusalems Old City (Jim Young/Pool Image via AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Benjamin Netanyahu, Mike Pompeo and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman visit the Western Wall Tunnels in Jerusalems Old City (Jim Young/Pool Image via AP) Mr Pompeo and Mr Netanyahu prayed at the wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, before depositing written prayers in its crevices and then touring nearby tunnels and a synagogue. Neither made any public comment at the site. The secretary said he thought it was important to visit the wall with the Israeli leader as a show of support for Israel. I think its symbolic that a senior American official go there with a prime minister of Israel, he said before making the trip. Its a place thats important to many faiths and Im looking forward to it. I think it will be very special. Israel captured east Jerusalem and the Old City in the 1967 Middle East war, and for decades US officials refrained from visiting the Western Wall with Israeli leaders to avoid the appearance of recognising Israeli sovereignty over the citys most sensitive holy sites. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. But the Trump administration has upended the longstanding policy, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem last year after recognising the city as Israels capital. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital. Senior US officials, including Mr Trump and numerous predecessors, have visited the wall privately in the past, but never with an Israeli leader. The Old City is home to Jerusalems most sensitive holy sites, including the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where tradition says Jesus was entombed and resurrected. Mr Pompeo, a devout Christian, also stopped at the church. Next to the Western Wall is a hilltop compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The spot, which once housed the biblical Temples, is the holiest site in Judaism and today is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. The competing claims to the site are a frequent source of tension and lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When Mr Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israels capital, he said it did not determine the citys final borders. But the gesture was perceived as unfairly siding with Israel and prompted the Palestinians to sever ties with the US. The Palestinians have already rejected a planned Middle East peace initiative by the administration. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Mr Pompeos visit added additional obstacles to peace hopes. While they are claiming to be trying to solve the conflict, such acts only make it more difficult to resolve, he said. While previous secretaries of state have traditionally met with the Palestinians when visiting the region, Mr Pompeo has no such talks planned. The Israelis and Palestinians live side-by-side. We need to help them figure out how to do that, Mr Pompeo said. Its a fact, and this administration wishes well for the Palestinian people. In addition to the Jerusalem recognition, the administration has also cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinians, helping fuel a financial crisis for Mr Abbass Palestinian Authority. At a meeting with Mr Pompeo, Israels President Reuven Rivlin expressed his deep concern about the Palestinians, both in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and under the internationally backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. If the Palestinian Authority will collapse, we will have to take care about what is going on, he said. Submitted by AMBE Congratulations to two Tsi Snaihne School Students Orahkwinon Thompson and Jayla Keysis of Girl Power Club who were accepted into the Entrepreneurship and Leadership Program for Young Girls with Startup Canada! The two students... Mark Trahant: It's quite the election season already Arizona could decide the control of the U.S. Senate and the Native American vote is often a critical factor in that states election outcome #NativeVote20By Mark TrahantIndian Country Today So far there are at least 17 Democrats running for president. Plus another two or three possible Republican challengers to Donald J. Trump. And, add to that, Howard Schultz, the former chief executive of Starbucks, who is positing a run as an independent. There are a lot of names to keep track of ( we have a spreadsheet for that .) It's quite the election season. Already. And the race for president is not the only game in town. Now is the moment when candidates are starting to line up for the U.S. Senate and the House (as well as top posts in state governments). What is the outlook for Native American candidates in that mix? Keep watching. Its still early in the cycle and there are potential Native American candidates in Kansas, Alaska, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and South Dakota. There are 34 Senate seats in play, including a special election in Arizona for the seat of the late John McCain. That race may be the most competitive in the country. The political web site, FiveThirtyEight, says it already looks tough for everyone and it could decide which party controls the chamber. Let that sink in: Arizona could decide the control of the U.S. Senate and the Native American vote is often a critical factor in that states election outcomes. Honored that @jamescita has joined our team as Campaign Treasurer. Senator Peshlakai is a member of the Navajo Nation and fellow Desert Storm veteran. She has shown a strength and dedication to helping others. Excited to work together, Senator! #FullSpeedAhead #ForArizona pic.twitter.com/Aj7WiPYCqg Mark Kelly (@ShuttleCDRKelly) March 8, 2019 Republican Martha McSally was appointed to that post and now shes running to hold the seat for the last two years of McCains term. But McSally may not be the only Republican in the race. On the Democratic side there are at least two major candidates, Mark Kelly, a retired Navy combat pilot, engineer, and astronaut , and Rep. Ruben Gallegos, representing Phoenix and Glendale in Congress, and an Iraq combat veteran with the U.S. Marines. Gallegos recently tweeted: Ive made no secret of the fact that Im looking seriously at running for the U.S. Senate in 2020, and that hasnt changed. Ill be making a final decision and announcement soon. Ive made no secret of the fact that Im looking seriously at running for the U.S. Senate in 2020, and that hasnt changed. Ill be making a final decision and announcement soon. #AZSEN Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) February 12, 2019 Kelly has already announced his candidacy. He calls the race his next mission. In his video announcement, Kelly said: I care about people. I care about the state of Arizona. I care about this nation. So because of that, I've decided that I'm launching a campaign for the United States Senate. Kelly also happens to be married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, a Tucson Democrat. An opinion in The Washington Post described it this way: His public profile is defined in large part by his relationship to his wife, which is almost unprecedented for a male politician in America. It has worked the other way around on many occasions, usually after the husband died , but not when the wife was elected first. Kelly has been successful raising money -- a quick million in his first 24 hours. Arizona state Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai , Navajo, is the treasurer for Kellys campaign. This ties the campaign to the states tribal nations in a visible way -- especially the Navajo Nation. I was driving along a lonely dusty road up in my district on the reservation, Peshlakai told Indian Country Today. And he says, this is Mark Kelly. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is a telemarketer. But it was Kelly asking Peshlakai to join his campaign and add the voices from Native communities throughout the state. Both Kelly and Peshlakai served in the first Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm. Most of the Senate races will be defined by incumbents. In New Mexico, for example, Sen. Tom Udall, a Democrat, is likely to run for his third term. Udall is vice chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee. Montana Sen. Steve Daines, another member of the Indian Affairs Committee, will be up again in 2020. A recent Big Sky poll shows a tight race ahead: 47 percent of those surveyed say Daines has done a good or excellent job and 52 percent say his performance was fair or poor. But no Democrat has come forward yet. Some of the long shot races will be in Oklahoma and South Dakota. Sen. Jim Inhofe has served for 24 years. He recently told The National Journal that he is not necessarily" seeking re-election but has no plans to leave. Should he not run, watch Rep. Markwayne Mullin, Cherokee, and Rep. Tom Cole, Chickasaw, as potential candidates. South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, a former governor, will also face voters in 2020. The idea that this country has a true democracy is absurd. Everyone knows in their heart of hearts that we're ruled by elites, Wall Street, etc. We need serious, fundamental political reform - real, direct democracy: a Legislature of the People to decide policy.#GravelGang Mike Gravel (@MikeGravel) March 21, 2019 Alaska is another state with another Republican incumbent on the ballot, Sen. Dan Sullivan. One potential Democrat could be former Lt. Gov. Val Davidson,Yupik. (She could also be recruited to take on U.S. Rep. Don Young.) But its also possible that Davidson waits and runs for governor in the next cycle. And there is one other bit of election news from Alaska. Former Sen. Mike Gravel says he may run for the presidency as a Democrat. Hes 88 and full of fire. He tweeted Wednesday : The idea that this country has a true democracy is absurd. Everyone knows in their heart of hearts that we're ruled by elites, Wall Street, etc. We need serious, fundamental political reform - real, direct democracy: a Legislature of the People to decide policy. Mark Trahant is the editor of Indian Country Today . He is a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes . Follow him on Twitter @TrahantReports This story originally appeared on Indian Country Today on March 21, 2019. Join the Conversation By Acee Agoyo WEBCAST: Safety for Our Sisters: Ending Violence Against Native Women A symposium at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., will help draw attention to efforts to protect Native women from violence. "The silent crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women has been my top priority since long before being sworn into Congress," Haaland said last Wednesday at the first-ever hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives on the #MMIW movement "Indigenous women deserve to be protected like just anyone else in this country," said Haaland. Today at noon, Jaime Black (Metis), creator of The REDress Project, will perform along the museum's Riverwalk to evoke the power of Indigenous women and girls to lead us to change and healing from violence. https://t.co/S60cUbNnij #mmiw #mmiwg #REDressProject #NationalMall pic.twitter.com/Q08fNVjD8o AmericanIndianMuseum (@SmithsonianNMAI) March 21, 2019 Yet participants in the NMAI event know that protecting Native women is a cause that hasn't been embraced by everyone in the nation's capital. A day before the historic #MMIW hearing, Republicans in another committee tried to remove the landmark tribal jurisdiction provisions from the Violence Against Women Act Native women fought for the inclusion of the provisions in order to strengthen their own governments. Sarah Deer , a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation who testified at the hearing, also pointed to the "historical mistrust" of outside agencies that have often failed to investigate and prosecute crimes in Indian Country. "When you are a Native woman and your sisters and your aunts and your mother and your grandmother and your great-grandmother have all been victims of violence, and nobody's doing anything, why would you come forward?" asked Deer, who is participating in the NMAI symposium. And as the last session of Congress came to close at the end of 2018, a male Republican lawmaker who is no longer in office held up legislation that would have begun to address the #MMIW crisis. "Shameful," Rep. Norma Torres (D-California), a supporter of Savanna's Act , said of the last-minute maneuver that prevented the bill from becoming law. The bill was named in honor of Savanna Marie Greywind , a 22-year-old woman from the Spirit Lake Nation who was brutally murdered after she went missing in North Dakota in 2017. It has since been reintroduced in the Senate as S.227 "Our Native women deserve protection everywhere," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the sponsor of Savanna's Act, told tribal leaders as they met for the winter session of the National Congress of American Indians in D.C. last month. Sarah Deer (citizen of the Muscogee [Creek] Nation of Oklahoma), a lawyer and professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Kansas. Mary Kathryn Nagle (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), a partner at Pipestem Law, P.C., where she specializes in federal Indian law and appellate litigation. Cherrah Giles (Muscogee), Board Chair of the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center and an advocate who has worked to protect Native women and children. Marita Growing Thunder (Fort Peck Assiniboine Sioux Tribes), a student at the University of Montana who started the Save Our Sisters walk in 2017 Jaime Black (Metis), a multidisciplinary artist based in Winnipeg, Canada, and the creator of The REDress Project, which focuses on the issue of missing or murdered Indigenous women. Rep. Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) will give a videotaped welcome to the symposium. Sari Horwitz, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Washington Post, moderates the symposium. Horwitz is the author of the Posts award-winning series Justice in Indian Country. The NMAI symposium starts at 2pm Eastern and will be webcast at americanindian.si.edu . The agenda includes: Join the Conversation Related Stories Efforts to redesignate a Confederate symbol from the Arkansas flag continue to go nowhere, with opponents attacking a proposal to recognize the tribes that were forced out of the state. At a legislative hearing on Wednesday, a man identified as a veteran and a historian for the Sons of Confederate Veterans said the state flag should not honor those tribes. Do not lose sight of the nature of the Indian tribes to be commemorated, they were vicious murdering savages, Robert Freeman told the House State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee, KATV reported. Especially the Caddos, who when aligned with the Kiowas, raided the early settlements of Arkansas territory killed and scalped men, women, and children from the Arkansas River to southwestern Texas." At a prior hearing, a Republican was overheard asking a colleague why the state would want to honor tribes, especially "after they fought against us," The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. The paper identified the lawmaker as Rep. Jack Ladyman , who has now voted twice against legislation to change the flag. The Arkansas flag features a star that was added in the 1920s to symbolize the Confederate States of America. The star is located above the word "Arkansas" while three stars below it represent the United States, Spain and France, with the latter two once exercising dominion over Arkansas. Rep. Charles Blake , a Democrat, first introduced legislation that would have changed the meaning of the Confederate star. HB1487 would represent the Indian nations that called Arkansas their home before being removed to present-day Oklahoma. "The blue star above the word 'ARKANSAS' commemorates the heritage and contribution of the Quapaw, Osage, and Caddo tribes and the other Native American nations who inhabited Arkansas before France or Spain exercised dominion over Arkansas," the bill read. But after that bill was rejected on a party-line vote on February 27, Blake introduced HB1736 that also would have removed the Confederate connotation and recognized tribal history. The new measure, however, failed on Wednesday even though John Berrey, the chairman of the Quapaw Nation , and Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, endorsed it. "The Quapaw Nation greatly appreciates Gov. Asa Hutchinsons support for state Rep. Charles Blakes proposed bill to change the meaning of a small part of the Arkansas flag so that it would honor the states historic Native American tribes the Osage, Caddo and Quapaw," Berrey said in a statement earlier this month. The word "Arkansas" itself is derived from the Quapaw language. It refers to the "land of downriver people." The tribe once had a reservation in Arkansas and plans to open a casino on ancestral land in the state. Read More on the Story Join the Conversation Being a new mother isnt an easy job but what makes it even tougher is managing the work-life balance. Most countries currently offer some sort of maternity leave policy but when the baby is young, it is tough to leave a piece of your heart home each day and it brings about a whole bunch of emotions. However, the emotions that are the most pronounced when the maternity leave ends are nervousness and guilt. Reuters interviewed new mothers whose maternity leave is ending and their issue might just help you sit back and think about the situation: 1. Nahla Mohamed Abdel Rahman, 37 is a professor. Here, you see her holding her three-month old baby after the first week of joining back work. According to the Egyptian labour law, mothers can take only between three and four months off in paid maternity leave. Fathers cannot take any paternity leave. Talking about getting back to work, Nahla says, "I always feel worried and afraid when I leave Younis, feeding and sleeping times are still too hard to control, that's why I always keep calling my sister Heba to make sure my baby is fine. I think it would be better to have longer period of time with my baby, until he is six months old. By then, he can start eating and won't rely totally on breastfeeding." reuters 2. Natalia Bulgakova, 31, a lawyer, her husband Anatoly, an economic analyst, and their seven-month-old son can be seen posing for this beautiful family photo at their apartment in Moscow, Russia. Natalia took a maternity leave of nine months and got back only in March. "It's pleasant that you'll go back to doing what you were doing before the maternity leave, going back to the previous rhythm of life. But at the end of the day, of course, the child gives you far more positive emotions. Of course, I would like to somehow balance that lifestyle and this one, so as to give equally to the child. At the same time, going out to work still means that I will be gone for most of the day and would be able to spend time with the kid only in the evening and on weekends." One can avail the statutory maternity leave in Russia for as long as three years. Moreover, it can be claimed by any relative - a mother, father, grandmother, grandfather or child's guardian. reuters 3. This photo of Lucie Sol, 32, a social worker, her boyfriend, Rudie Jonkmans, 34, a cook, and their 22-week-old baby Lena Amelie was taken inside their house on the first day Lucie went back to work, in Purmerend, the Netherlands. The statutory maternity leave in the Netherlands is between 10 to 12 weeks. "It's crazy. After 10-12 weeks it was just getting better to breastfeed but still my whole world was upside down," Lucie said. Lucie, eventually, had to extend her leave and was off work for 27 weeks after her baby was born. "I feel bad leaving her behind. She's only 5.5 months old so I want to keep her close. It comes with a lot of guilt," Lucie said. "The Netherlands is a very rich and advanced country, but when it comes to maternity leave we are quite behind", Lucie said. reuters 4. Alesya Rutsevich, 28, an ophthalmologist and her husband Pyotr, 28, a programmer pose with their son Daniil, 3, in the same week that Alesya went back to work, in Minsk, Belarus. The statutory maternity leave in Belarus ensures that mothers are paid their average monthly income for 70 days before birth and 56 days afterwards.Talking about going back to work, Alesya said, "I wanted to continue my professional activity to develop as a professional, not just as a mother but it was very scary and I had some doubts that maybe I shouldn't return. The main thing is not to worry, not to panic because first shift is very emotional." reuters 5. Tatiana Barcellos, 37, a civil servant for the Federal Prosecutor's Office, her eight-month-old daughter Alice, and her husband Marcelo Valenca, 39, a teacher at a navy school are posing for this wonderful family photo at their home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The statutory leave for mothers who work in the public sector in Brazil is 120 to 180 days. Tatiana had to take two months holidays in addition to six months maternity leave. "I feel anxious and worried that my absence will cause stress to my baby. I think mothers should have at least one year of maternity leave, considering the physical and emotional needs of babies in full development", Tatiana said. "I had six months of maternity leave only because I am a federal worker ... I think 180 days is still not enough to meet to the needs of a newborn baby." reuters 6. Gabriela Rodriguez, 32, her husband Cesar Dacchille, 46, and their six-month-old son Gianluca, can be seen in this photo taken at Caracas, Venezuela. Statutory maternity leave in Venezuela is six weeks before giving birth and 20 weeks afterwards. "There are two difficulties. One is physiological and the other is psychological. The psychological one feels like I'm abandoning (him), because he has depended on me for the last six months and leaving him alone - well, with my mother, as I am lucky to have her - is difficult. But you get used to it", Gabriela said. reuters 7. Ana Huanca, 34, her six-week-old baby Luciana, her elder daughter Anabel, 5, and husband Luis Quaquira, 44, a mechanic, took this photograph at their food shop in La Paz, Bolivia. In Bolivia, mothers are entitled to 15 days of maternity leave before they give birth and 45 days after they've given birth. However, the story with these new parents is different. Ana and Luis are among the majority of Bolivian workers who dont go for regular jobs which would entitle them to benefits like maternity leave. Huanca returned to work two weeks after giving birth and she attends to the baby herself as she works. "I felt good, it was a normal delivery and she was born healthy," she said of returning to work so soon after giving birth. Luis, who works as a mechanic, independently, didn't take any leave "The only leave I allowed myself was the day my daughter was born, he said. reuters 8. Natalia Segredo, an attorney, and her husband Mathias Moscardi, a self employed businessman who imports toys, can be seen here with their three-month-old baby Alfonsina in Montevideo, Uruguay. Natalia was back at work on after just 98 days of paid maternity leave. "Going back to work generates insecurity and anguish. Anguish for not knowing how my daughter will react to my absence; insecurity for thinking that I can stop producing milk, that the baby can refuse to take a bottle or otherwise refuse to breastfeed if she gets used to the bottle. Fear that being so small, she may feel that I am leaving her aside and a deep feeling that I am abandoning it", Natalia said. reuters 9. Marlena Mucha, 31, her husband Wojciech Flakiewicz, 39, and sons Borys, 4, and Julek, 1, can be seen at their home in Warsaw, Poland. Marlena took 52 weeks of paid maternity leave. In Poland, an emplyed women can take to 52 weeks of paid leave, and be paid around 80 percent of her salary. "For the first month I will work only 4-5 hours daily. This way the process of leaving my son, will be more gradual. So I will have some time to get used to it. But it is difficult at the beginning. I believe it is harder for me than for him", Marlena said. reuters 10. Blanca Eschbach, 32, posed for this wonderful photo with her baby in San Antonio, Texas, U.S. Blanca is a psychology coordinator at South Texas Children's home and her husband, Jonathan, 30, works as a merchandiser. The United States is the only industrialised nation that does not guarantee paid family leave to its citizens, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). "I'm just now getting...to know her and her routine and her cues, and now I have to turn her over to these strangers to help me raise her while I'm at work", Blanca said. "I feel like I'm...missing out on her during this very important time." reuters 11. Itziar Rufo Lopez, 42, who works in the communication can be seen with her husband Manuel Blazquez, 41, and their son Asier in Madrid, Spain. Statutory maternity leave in Spain is 16 weeks. Rufo added her vacation and breastfeeding times to her maternity leave. "It should be extended to a whole year, when you have already introduced other foods apart from breast milk", she said. "I'm happy about returning to my professional life, but I also would like to spend more time with him, especially now that he's beginning to interact with us. Now is the time when you begin to really enjoy your baby, when he gives you a smile back. I think we go back to work just when we begin to really enjoy our babies." reuters For the first time in over a year when fugitive scamster Nirav Modi was caught on camera earlier this month, he was wearing an ostrich hide jacket which was said to cost over Rs 9 lakhs. British News Paper The Telegraph which tracked Modi down in London also had reported that the main accused in one of India's biggest financial fraud cases was living in a three-bedroom 8 million apartment occupying half a floor within the luxury skyscraper called Centre Point off Tottenham Court Road, where rent is understood to be 17,000 a month. The Telegraph But on the day he was presented in a London court for his bail hearing Modi's lawyer painted a different picture of the scamster. According to his lawyer Hepburne Scott, Modi has undertaken work for which he was paid pounds 20,000 (Rs 18.12 lakhs) per month. This contradicts the findings of the Indian investigators and British media that the disgraced diamond jeweler has resumed business under a new brand name. According to The Times of India, Modi's new business is called Diamond Holdings and has an office in Soho. AFP/FILE Scott also claimed that Modi has been in London since June and was living openly paid local taxes and was trying to obtain a driving license. He also stated that Modi who entered the UK on a business visa was in the country because his son was studying in a London school. Modi who was picked up by the Scotland Yard on Tuesday from a metro station Holborn, central London. He was produced in the Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday and was sent to custody till March 29, when the case comes up for hearing. BCCL Modi, who used to run a highly successful diamond empire named after him is accused of defrauding the Punjab National Bank to the tune of Rs 13,000 crore in connivance with some bank staff who issued fake LoUs on behalf of the bank. Modi, who fled India in February 2018, before the scam surfaced. Based on inputs of his presence in London India had raised an extradition request with the UK. The New Zealand mosque shootings in Christchurch shook the conscience of the entire nation. More than 50 persons were killed while several others injured. Biker groups in the country have now vowed to stand guard outside New Zealand mosques as Muslims take part in their first Friday prayer following the Christchurch shootings. AFP The Mongrel Mob, King Cobra and the Black Power gangs have promised to protect their local Muslim communities across the country after the terror attacks on March 15, several media outlets reported. Waikato Mongrel Mob president Sonny Fatu offered to shield the Jamia Masjid Mosque in Hamilton. AFP Waikato Muslim Association president Dr Asad Mohsin said he appreciated the support they have received from 'different sections of society, different interests and dispositions.' He said he did not view the mob as 'gang members.' 'We value them as humans and we appreciate that they value us too,' he said, quoted to as saying by Dailymail. AFP On Monday, several groups of people in New Zealand performed a ceremonial dance called 'Haka', as a tribute to people who lost their lives in the mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch. The dance is a part of Maori culture which involves stamping of the feet rhythmically shouted accompaniments. The dance form was popularised by the New Zealand rugby team - they perform it before every international match. The dancers performed an emotional Haka at Al Noor Mosque to honour the victims. Another group of New Zealanders living in Australia joined the movement and performed a ceremonial dance at Surfers Paradise in Gold Coast, the Daily Mail reported. Seems the 'wedding gatecrashing' joke is getting too old for authorities at NIT Kurukshetra. So much so, they have issued a notification to warn students against it. National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Kurukshetra, Uttar Pradesh has warned its students not to attend any wedding in the surrounding area unless they are formally invited to the same. 'It has been reported that some students of our institute are going to attend marriage parties without having an invitation. This type of behaviour is considered highly unethical/ uncalled for, immoral and unwanted'. A NIT college warns its students not to attend weddings in the neighborhood without invitation. pic.twitter.com/CxPpE8g9Wb Vasu (@vasudevan_k) 19 March 2019 'All the students are informed that they should desist from doing such type of uncivilised activities. Disciplinary action will be taken against students doing such type of activities as per institute rules,' the circular reads. The Chief Warden proceeded to send out an official letter to the hostel inmates. But for sumptuous-meal-deprived students in the hostel, the gatecrashing practice was one way to satiate their appetite. After the circular, people on the Internet clapped back saying that there was nothing wrong with the 'ancient tradition' of gatecrashing weddings. Others said that the sorry state of mess food in hostels forces students to resort the 'ancient tradition'. Take a look at the hilarious reactions below #1 I shared with my brother and he had this to say. LOL. pic.twitter.com/A2hSNz4Wj0 Nidhi Jamwal (@JamwalNidhi) 19 March 2019 #2 In weddings at Baradari Marriage Hall in Lucknow, hosts prepare food for additional 100-150 people than what they have inVited. Just because its close to Lucknow University Hostel. Faraz (@iamAKHTER) 20 March 2019 #3 Ha ha this was happening in our engg. college days way back in 2000 Antony Devassy (@AntonyDevassy2) 20 March 2019 #4 This is ridiculous. They can't take away the rights of students who lives in hostel. I condemn this. khan (@Makmania88) 19 March 2019 #5 Hahaha. My brother, who studied at REC Moorthal, used to do this with his friends. Haha. Nidhi Jamwal (@JamwalNidhi) 19 March 2019 #6 Simultaneously, the warden should realise that it indicates the quality of food in their hostel mess !!! Kjagdish (@kunchayjagadee1) 20 March 2019 #7 Follow us on twitter appears ready to expand beyond 140 character tweets San Francisco : Twitter appears ready to loosen its decade-old restriction on the length of messages in a bid to make its service more appealing to a wider audience accustomed to the greater freedom offered by Facebook and other forums. CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey telegraphed Twitter's intentions in a tweet posted Tuesday after the technology news site Re/Code reported the company is exploring increasing its limits on text from 140 characters to as many as 10,000. Dorsey didn't directly address the Re/Code report that cited unnamed people, but he made it clear that Twitter isn't wedded to the 140-character limit. He illustrated his point by posting a screenshot of a text consisting of 1,325 characters. If Twitter were to allow tweets to span 10,000 characters, it could produce 1,700-word dissertations, based on the size of Dorsey's extended post. San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. declined to comment on its plans. In his message, Dorsey wrote that Twitter has already noticed that many of its roughly 300 million users already have been including screenshots of lengthy texts in their tweets. He indicated Twitter is examining ways to give people more room to express themselves without polluting the service with gasbags. Imposing some restraint "inspires creativity and brevity. And a sense of speed. We will never lose that feeling," Dorsey pledged. At the same time, Dorsey said Twitter isn't "going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people. As long as it's consistent with what people want to do, we're going to explore it." Analysts said Dorsey is probably trying to avoid a backlash among long-time Twitter users who consider the 140-character tweeting limit sacred. At the same time, he needs to respond to company shareholders pining for a bigger audience that would generate more advertising revenue. More revenue eventually could help Twitter turn a profit for the first time in its history. Twitter can't afford "to become stagnant, they need to get bigger if they want to build a more relevant advertising platform," said Topeka Capital Markets analyst Blake Harper. After a long streak of robust growth that turned it into one of the Internet's hottest companies, Twitter's growth has slowed dramatically during the past year-and-half to leave it scrambling to catch up with social networking leader Facebook and its 1.5 billion users. Twitter's malaise resulted in the departure of Dick Costolo as the company's CEO last July and ushered in the return of Dorsey, who had been ousted as the company's leader in 2008. The pressure has been building on Dorsey to take drastic measures to accelerate user growth as Twitter's stock has sunk further below its November 2013 initial public offering price of $26. The shares shed 64 cents Tuesday to close at $21.92, a decline of nearly 40 percent from where they stood from when Dorsey became CEO last summer. Dorsey helped invent Twitter in 2006 and imposed a 140-character limit on messages so the service would be easy to use on cellphones that had 160-character limits on texts at that time. Those texting limits on phones faded away several years ago as the advent of smartphones enabled people to use other Internet messaging services, making Twitter's restrictions look increasingly antiquated. Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter believes an increased limit on tweets would be a "good, baby step" to attracting more users to Twitter and believes it could be done without alienating the service's current audience. One way to make an increased limit less obnoxious would be to only show a limited amount of text in users' feeds and then leave it to each individual to click on a button to see more. "Twitter is an afterthought in social media right now," Pachter said. "They need to do something to drive more usage of the service. If people start using the service more frequently, other users will come join in, too." Latest Business News Members of the media report from outside of Westminster Magistrates Court in London on March 20, following the extradition hearing of Indian jeweller Nirav Modi. Modi, India's fugitive jeweller to the stars, refused to submit to extradition when he appeared in a London court March 20. (Niklas Halle'N/AFP/Getty Images) Tronox may finally have reassured the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it can meet anti-trust concerns over its purchase of rival TiO2 producer Cristal. Tronox announced on March 18 that it was presenting its proposed divestment of Cristals North American assets to the FTC. A day later,... Insurance fraud seems like it might be an easy thing to do. Insurance companies are often so huge, one wonders how they might not even notic... Tate & Lyle hosts texture scientists meeting Tate & Lyle recently hosted its inaugural European meeting of texture scientists. Technical representatives from food producers from across Europe attended texture innovation seminars led by Tate & Lyle scientists. Tate & Lyle recently hosted its inaugural European meeting of texture scientists. Technical representatives from food producers from across Europe attended texture innovation seminars led by Tate & Lyle scientists and leading texture experts, which were held at the companys application centre in Lubeck, Germany. The seminars in Lubeck provided an opportunity for attendees to discuss the latest starch science and understand how Tate & Lyles Texture Vantage Expert Systems, its suite of texture selection tools, are enabling companies to innovate in line with consumer trends. Using Tate & Lyles texture maps, for instance, formulators are able to predict how different starches will impact on viscosity, processing and sensory characteristics, helping them to accelerate product development and reduce the need for extensive consumer trials. Alongside Tate & Lyle application and research and development experts, the event featured a highly respected speaker line-up of academics, including Claire Rossi, PhD, University of Technology Compiegne, France, and Christian Sina, MD, University of Lubeck, Germany. In addition to the seminars, attendees toured the Lubeck application centre and joined texture innovation workshops focussed on soups, sauces and dressings applications. Dr Judy Whaley, Senior Vice President of Research & Development at Tate & Lyle, said: "One of the key consumer trends in the European market today is the boom in plant-based foods. Vegan and vegetarian products are the fastest growing new product claims1. This, together with the rise and rise of clean-label2 and increasing consumer demand for reduced fat, sugar and calorie products3, means food formulators are grappling with how to deliver functionality with alternative ingredients. Texture is one of the most difficult functionalities to get right. As producers push the boundaries of innovation and use less familiar ingredients, they have a greater need for texture design tools and insights that can predict product and ingredient performance and reduce development time. The demand for this support, and the need for the exchange of ideas and knowledge, will only increase over time, and that is why we bring manufacturers and leading experts together at events such as this. Tate & Lyle offers a portfolio of texturants featuring speciality clean-label starches, customised food systems and selected gums, all of which have functional properties to create a variety of food experiences that consumers expect. Tate & Lyle says its starches can help manufacturers create vegan dressings with a creamy texture, cakes that dont crumble, and low fat sauces, with simple ingredients that offer an indulgent eating experience. Switch the Market flag Open the menu and switch the Market flag for targeted data from your country of choice. for targeted data from your country of choice. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) Lawmakers are meeting again on Monday to hopefully break the impasse on the 2019 budget. "The door is now open for a possible cure to the impasse," Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III said Thursday. Senate Finance committee chair Loren Legarda said she and Senators Panfilo "Ping" Lacson and Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan are hoping to meet with the three-man House panel on the budget composed of Reps. Rolando Andaya, Ronaldo Zamora and Edcel Lagman. Andaya, who heads the House Committee on Appropriations, told CNN Philippines' Newsroom Ngayon that they will only be explaining their side to the senators. He stood pat on the House's itemizations of lump sums in the budget. "Since 1986 po, nung nagkaroon tayo ng bagong Saligang Batas, ang proseso po ng pagbalangkas ng budget has been the same," he said. [Translation: Since 1986, when we had a new Constitution, the process of crafting the budget has been the same.] Sotto said should the House and Senate contingents come to an agreement, the budget may finally be transmitted to Malacanang next week. But if the House still refuses to back down on the amendments they introduced to the budget after its ratification, Sotto said the government may continue to operate under a reenacted budget until August. "If they insist on that and they submit to us again in the same light at kapag nagkaroon ng sit down meeting at ipiplit pa rin nila 'yun, walang mangyayari. Therefore, we will have an August budget," Sotto said. [Translation: If they insist on that and they submit to us again in the same light and even after a sit down meeting they will still push for that, then nothing will happen. Therefore, we will have an August budget.] The House pulled out copies of the budget from the Senate yesterday to open doors to negotiation and break the deadlock on the spending bill. The budget has been prevented being forwarded to Malacanang for President Rodrigo Duterte's approval over Senate's concerns that post-ratification House's amendments on it are illegal and unconstitutional. However, House leaders clarified that they are not backing down from their view that their itemization of lump sums in the budget is legal. "We discussed that we should be steadfast in our position that the House version is constitutional and legal, and we are against lump sum appropriations," Albay Represnetative Edcel Lagman told reporters Thursday. He added that both houses of Congress are allowed to separately complete details in the budget as long as it stays within the approved limits. Andaya earlier said the Senate also submitted itemizations on the budget after its ratification. But Sotto clarified that this only pertains to the P26 billion worth of the Senate's amendments that both houses of Congress agreed to itemize. He added that both chambers also agreed that the House will itemize its amendments worth P20 billion. However, he said this is separate from the P96 billion of funds the House supposedly shaved off from the Public Works department and realigned to their own congressional districts. "Napakalaking halaga nung nagalaw na 'yun. Therefore, hindi kasama 'yun sa na-ratify namin," Sotto said. [Translation: That's a huge amount that they moved. Therefore, that's not part of what we ratified.] Sotto said all that the House should do is to back off from these alleged realignments and the deadlock will be broken. Lawmakers have previously met with Duterte at the Malacanang Palace over the budget, but failed to break the impasse on the spending bill. The government has been operating under a reenacted budget for three months. Economic managers have warned that the country's economy may slow down if no fresh funding for the government is provided. However, Malacanang has assured that the government is ready to cushion the impact of a full-year reenacted budget. CNN Philippines' Xave Gregorio and Joyce Ilas contributed to this report. If thats what Preckwinkle intended and no one knows for sure it appears it didnt work. Within days, Willie Wilson, a candidate in Chicagos mayoral election last month, was endorsing Lightfoot. Given Wilsons strong following in African-American churches, his backing was a strong signal that Lightfoots sexual identity was not going to define her campaign for the legions of Chicago voters who vote based on what they hear in the church pews on Sundays. Insurance is a vital component of safe and effective volunteering, Picone said. As the approved insurance provider for Volunteering Australia, Aon understands the value of volunteering and that organising insurance can be a daunting experience for a Volunteer Involving Organisation. Aons Volunteering Australia Resource Centre delivers educational material and tools as well as general advice to ensure Volunteer Involving Organisations have the right insurance to protect their volunteers. Picone said that as National Volunteer Weeks exclusive sponsor, Aon will help grow this important celebration, which will be held on May 20-26, to acknowledge the generous contribution of Australian volunteers. Working with Aon on National Volunteer Week will also allow more volunteering-involving organisations to learn about Aon and how their expertise in the volunteer space can assist them to ensure their volunteer programs are safe, Picone said. Aons Volunteers Vital Pack, for example, aims to meet the needs of the volunteering sector by offering an insurance package designed for the volunteering sector. Gavin Deadman, Aons not-for-profit client director, welcomed the long-term relationship with Volunteering Australia. Volunteering is the life blood of the Australian community and stretches across every sector of our society, Deadman said. Aon is proud to support Australias hard working and dedicated volunteers by providing insurance solutions for Volunteer Involving Organisations. Read more: TAL launches 2019 Risk Academy program Business insurance advice has grown significantly as a new avenue for financial advisers, said Beau Riley, TAL head of licensees and partnerships. While there are more than 2.3 million actively trading businesses in Australia, research indicates that less than 20% of Australian businesses are equipped with a succession plan. This underinsurance gap presents an ideal opportunity for financial advisers to fulfil their best-interests duty and add value to their customers. By supporting customers to develop good succession plans, financial advisers can help customers maximise the value of their businesses and ensure they meet future needs. There is a clear need for business succession advice and financial advisers with the technical knowledge and skills in the space will differentiate themselves in the market. TAL Risk Academy is also set to run Business Insurance Masterclasses throughout April in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, and Canberra, to be presented by David Glen, TAL national technical manager. The masterclass carries five CPD accreditations for the Association of Financial Advisers (AFA) and five CPD accreditations for the Financial Planning Association of Australia (FPA). The Business Insurance Masterclass is available for a small fee that will be donated to the Australian Business and Community Network (ABCN) Scholarship Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that connects business with disadvantaged children to improve their education. To enrol in the masterclass or for more information, visit the TAL Risk Academy website. One of the strategic principles behind our long-term commitment to OneCare is that it allows Zurich to better service to a wider selection of Australians, said Kristine Brooks, chief distribution officer at Zurich Life and Investments. We know including from adviser feedback that there are pockets of the Australian market, which are underinsured, in part because people cant afford, cant access, or cant relate to life insurance products on the market. We intend to help overcome this problem through the range of life insurance products we offer. With four policy types available, we will offer the broadest range of retail life insurance products, so advisers can feel assured they have a choice of high-quality options to recommend to their clients. Zurich said financial advisers can expect OnePath Lifes customer satisfaction and retention efforts to continue over the long term and to be a core focus under Zurich ownership. Zurichs specialist insurance expertise, our commitment to Australian policyholders, plus our solid financial position means advisers can continue to recommend OneCare with confidence to their clients, Brooks said. Our capability will only improve once OnePath Life employees join us on June 3, are we look forward to welcoming OneCare policyholders into the Zurich family at this point. According to the announcement, the move is in line with the Insurance Local Content Law requirement for all firms in Equatorial Guineas petroleum and gas sector to be insured by GEPetrol Seguros. Alesco is fully committed to supporting the government of Equatorial Guinea in growing their local insurance industry, working hand in hand with Africa Re to host conferences and workshops to share relevant skills and expertise, noted Alesco partner Nadim Semaan. We are extremely excited about this opportunity and we look forward to working closely with the various international oil companies operating in the region, as well as the various reinsurers supporting us. Last month the countrys minister of mines and hydrocarbons Gabriel Obiang Lima visited Lloyds of London. The insurance industry in Equatorial Guinea has taken a significant step forward by our visiting Lloyds of London and meeting with senior representatives, stated the minister. We need to create a local financial services sector in general, and an insurance sector in particular, in Equatorial Guinea. Insurance is a vital peripheral service industry that will help our oil and gas-based economy to thrive and one that our country will benefit from when enforcing the new Local Content Law. We are committed to working with Lloyds, Africa Re, and Alesco to make this happen. Meanwhile Africa Re deputy managing director and chief operating officer Ken Aghoghovbia cited their keen interest in Equatorial Guineas rapid development. We are particularly pleased with the bold steps the government has taken to introduce the Local Content Law in a transparent manner, with a view to creating more jobs and driving economic growth, commented Aghoghovbia. In line with its mission of supporting African economic development, Africa Re identifies with the government initiatives and commits to support the efforts in establishing an efficient and transparent insurance market in Equatorial Guinea. Compared to the 2017 figures, the profit from reinsurance soared from 120 million while that from ERGO improved from 273 million. In addition, Munich Res operating result reached 3.7 billion a tripling from 1.2 billion previously. The groups solvency ratio calculated on the basis of Solvency II stood at 245% as of December 31, 2018. Gross written premium, meanwhile, amounted to 49.1 billion. As for its 2019 outlook, Munich Re has set a profit aim of around 2.5 billion, or a 200 million increase from last year. The Germany-headquartered enterprise expects an investment result of approximately 6.5 billion. 2018 was a successful year for Munich Re, and the good result is a clear endorsement of our long-term and ambitious goals, commented chief executive Joachim Wenning, who believes the global firm is on track to meet its target. Following the significant increase in profit last year, we anticipate that profits for 2019 and 2020 will continue to rise, reaching our medium-term profit guidance of 2.8 billion in 2020. Meanwhile, as part of Munich Res capital repatriation policy, the dividend went up to 9.25 while a further share buy-back programme with a volume of 1 billion has also been announced. The fraud came to light after one of Scholars Firsts buses was involved in a fender bender last month. Fortunately, the bus did not have any children on it, and nobody was hurt. Elias Newman, the driver of the car that was clipped by the bus, asked the bus driver for insurance details for the purposes of filing a claim. However, the bus driver could not just produce an insurance card, and also did not have a drivers license or proof of registration for the vehicle. The driver had to call a Scholars First manager to the scene to provide digital photos of a drivers license and an insurance card, which indicated that the bus company was covered by Mesa Underwriters Specialty Insurance Company of Arizona. But when Newman attempted to file a claim, he was notified by Mesa Underwriters via email that Scholars Firsts policy had been cancelled over a year earlier. That was actually the first moment of, like, Hmmm, whats actually happening here? And do they actually have insurance and why would they give us this thing that had been cancelled? Newman told WWL-TV in an interview. WWL-TV conducted an investigation of its own, issuing a public records request that five charter school management organizations Einstein Charter Group, Foundation Prep, New Beginnings Schools Foundation, Rooted School and Success Preparatory Academy responded to. Each organization provided copies of Scholars Firsts insurance certificates. Three of the certificates showed that Scholars Firsts current liability insurance carrier is Mesa Underwriters, but a spokesperson for the insurance company told WWL-TV that those policies had all been expired since at least mid-2018. The spokesperson also said that two of the policies were written by Mesa Underwriters for two other transportation companies that had nothing to do with Scholars First. Under Beales leadership at Lloyds, the market introduced targets for equal gender representation in senior leadership, provided training to staff on topics like unconscious bias and inclusive hiring, and encouraged colleague networks to form, such as Rainbow for its LGBT+ team members and supporters. The market also launched a diversity and inclusion charter under [email protected]s to promote these initiatives, where firms could sign up and commit to goals like championing diversity and inclusion in the organization and being accountable for creating positive change. Companies would then receive guidance on how to effectively work towards diversity and inclusion practices. The Dive In festival likewise came to life at Lloyds during Beales tenure, and while the leader admitted that she was worried at first about its success and whether the celebration of diversity and inclusion would be accepted, she told Insurance Business, What I realized at the end of these three days was that it unleashed a need for having a conversation about it and then importantly, the need for action. I was delighted when we had the full festival last year in September because it became an annual event, and we had events in 27 countries across the globe. Two countries in particular that Beale said she was proud of joining Dive In were Saudi Arabia and Jordan. That to me means that we have come a long way in the insurance industry globally, if we can start having conversations in some countries where perhaps there are even more difficulties if youre a woman facing the prospect of trying to progress in insurance, she said. It feels now that weve got a whole movement right across the global insurance sector. As a result of this wave of diversity and inclusion initiatives, Beale saw different types of people joining Lloyds, as well as the opening up of dialogue around the experiences of people from diverse backgrounds. Her own experiences becoming a role model for the LGBT+ community opened up conversations in the workplace further so that people felt they could talk about their lives more openly, as did the launch of Pride at Lloyds, and, overall, the market has moved in the right, diverse direction. I look out at Lloyds and I see the number of people from different ethnic backgrounds joining Lloyds, staying there, feeling valued, feeling respected it fills me with a lot of joy, said Beale. Looking ahead, the talent pipeline has to stay diverse, though Beale has already seen the training of HR professionals have an impact on bringing in diverse recruits. Read more: Lloyds announces 2018 gender pay gap figures We dont do such a good job of keeping people, and we all know the aging demographic of people who work in insurance now, she explained, adding that, while on paper, the practices and policies of insurance companies might seem promising, they might not be fulfilling peoples expectations once theyre in the door. That means providing truly flexible workplaces, it means promoting perhaps against targets, and Im a fan of this because of the unconscious bias that goes on, and sometimes even the conscious bias. We make hiring decisions and promotion decisions based on our own views and beliefs, and weve got to force ourselves to make promotion decisions based on peoples potential and we have to be much broader in the way we look at peoples potential. While Beale sees momentum in the industry to advance diversity and inclusion practices, that doesnt mean it wont be a tough nut to crack. Weve got so much ingrained behavior that it will take each and every one of us a bit more effort to make this really happen and be truly inclusive, and for the future of the insurance sector, to me this is so important, she said. The insurance sector often gets criticized for not being innovative enough and progressive enough. I strongly believe if we get this right, and we get these diverse teams working for us, we can make sure that we are being innovative and we have a strong, strong future for insurance. Take a deeper dive into this issue at Women in Insurance. The National Rifle Association won permission from a judge to question a former New York regulatory official under oath in a lawsuit claiming the state illegally discouraged banks and insurers from doing business with the organization after a spate of deadly mass shootings in 2017. U.S. Magistrate Judge Christian Hummel in Albany on Wednesday ruled the gun-rights organization may depose Maria Vullo, former superintendent at the New York Department of Financial Services who led an investigation into an NRA insurance program called Carry Guard. The New York regulator determined last year that the product is unlawful. Hummel said the NRA can question Vullo about a phone call she had about Carry Guard with a regulator in California, which has also cracked down on the insurance program. The NRA claims the phone call is central to its claim that the NRA was targeted by Vullo and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as a result of selective enforcement of New York law. The NRA has demonstrated that Ms. Vullos specific rationale for her alleged actions is at issue in this case such that her deposition testimony may be the only way to address these critical blanks in the record, Hummel said. The states investigation resulted in insurer Chubb Ltd. and insurance broker Lockton Cos. halting their programs for NRA members and paying millions of dollars in fines. The NRA claims Cuomo and the regulator violated the organizations free-speech rights. Copyright 2021 Bloomberg. Topics Legislation New York When Tucker took charge of the center, the University of Chicago had ended its financial support and DeLee was personally funding it. In 1933, he wrote to the Tribunes A Friend in Need columnist: We need an automobile, really two, to take our doctors and nurses to far cases which are not seldom 15 miles from our base. Do you think that one of the readers of your column in The Tribune might donate us an automobile? The owner of a Revere, Mass.-based contracting company has been indicted in connection with a workers compensation insurance fraud scheme, according to Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. Anner Valentin Amaya of Revere, Mass., was indicted by a Suffolk County Grand Jury on five counts of workers compensation fraud, two counts for failure to provide workers compensation insurance, and five counts of larceny of over $250 by false pretenses. He will be arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court on April 17. The attorney generals office said it began an investigation after this matter was referred to the office by the Insurance Fraud Bureau. The AGs Office alleges that between May 2012 and August 2016, Amaya, who owns the business Valentin General Contractors, substantially underreported the number of individuals his business employed and the amount he paid these employees when audited by his workers compensation insurance provider. In total, the AGs Office alleges that Amaya evaded more than $73,000 in insurance premiums. These charges are allegations and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Source: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General Topics Workers' Compensation Fraud Abuse Molestation Massachusetts The former chief executive officer of XL Group, Mike McGavick, admits that frequently during his career he has taken on leadership roles that some of his contemporaries considered too hot to handlesuch as the turnarounds he led at XL Group and Safeco. Ive consistently gotten jobs that no one else wanted. Ive always walked into situations where there was a pretty dire need to rethink the business, he recalled. Indeed, after the successful turnarounds at Safeco and XL, he subsequently discovered that much, much better names than me had turned down offers to run the companies. He feels lucky that these roles fell to him, even if by default. There is no cookie-cutter approach, no standard answer, no blueprint, to turning around a company. So, how did McGavick develop the dogged determinationsome would say courageto run troubled companies and help return them to strong financial health? McGavick sat down with Carrier Management to discuss his career and early life lessons that led him to help with insurer turnarounds and ultimately to his current role as special adviser to AXA Group CEO Thomas Buberl, to which he was appointed after AXAs purchase of XL Group in September 2018. (See related story: AXA XLs McGavick Looks Ahead to The Golden Age of Insurance). Secrets to Success At the tender age of 20, McGavick took on a job where he was paid $100 per week to be a driver for Slade Gorton, who was running as a U.S. senator from Washington state. It was the first job where I had to wear a tie, and all I did was drive him around the state. Back then you didnt fly to campaign events; you drove. And our states a huge state, so I spent lots of hours in the car with this guy. Gorton, who is now 91 and continues to work as an attorney in Washington state, was a U.S. senator from 1981 to 1987 and then again from 1989 to 2001. Previously, he had been Washington state attorney general and had argued 14 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, said McGavick. He is a remarkably achieved human being, and I knew when driving around with him I was going to be able to ask for some advice. McGavick recalled one night when he was driving Gorton, who had been napping in the back of the car. He suddenly woke up and wanted to talk. I thought, OK, this is my chance. So, I asked him the question Id been saving for a moment like this, which was: What do you think is the difference between the most successful people youve seen and super smart people that just dont create that kind of success?' McGavick said Gorton paused for a bit, thinking, and finally said: No. 1, you have to be willing to think very deeply about any problem you are presented. Most people arent able to do this or dont have the discipline to do this. What I mean is any time you see a new problem, the reason its a problem is theres something that makes old solutions not work. What most people do when confronting a problem is they just try to pigeonhole it into some prior successful solution. When youre presented with a problem, Gorton emphasized, Its an opportunity to think past the obvious, past the easy answers, and keep digging and digging and digging until you come to some bedrock answer that is deeply rooted in the fundamental ideas or strategy youre pursuing. Sometimes the answer will be familiar, Gorton told McGavick, but sometimes youll find something really different and be able to build from there something great. So, think very deeply; just be willing and good things will happen. I was told that at the age of 20, and it remains the most important [advice] ever given to me, said McGavick. Indeed, Slades Rule No. 1 has been put into action every time McGavick and his teams worked to develop unique solutions for each of the corporate turnarounds in which he was involved. Some of his contemporaries may have viewed these distressed companies as lost causes, but McGavick viewed them as opportunities to make a difference. (Read further in this article for Slades Rule No. 2.) No Cookie-Cutter Approaches Allowed Gortons advice helped McGavick come to the conclusion that there is no cookie-cutter approach, no standard answer, no blueprint, to turning around a company. Its a mistake that gets made all the time by people who believe that if you cut costs, get out of nonperforming lines, grow high-performing businesses, then the company will be saved, he emphasized. But its not at all that simple. While those things also have to happen, each turnaround is individualized and highly idiosyncratic. You must take into account the companys history, customer base, partner relationships and where the world is moving toward that will enable it to stand out amongst its competitors, he explained. I think a trap that people fall into is that theres some kind of boilerplate solution, or a McKinsey study, or some damn thing thatll just solve it all, which is a crock. You have to be much more creative, insightful and deep-thinking than that to make this work. XL Groups Story When asked to provide a real-life example of how Slades Rule works in the midst of a turnaround, McGavick pointed to XL Group, which he joined in 2008at the onset of the Great Recession. XL Group had been a fair-haired child of the industry but had fallen precipitously in recent years as a result of mortgage guaranty business, written by its one-time bond insurer subsidiary Syncora Capital Assurance (SCA), McGavick explained. The challenge there was to quickly grasp what was the best path to extinguishing those liabilities, he said. The solution was to create a multiparty negotiation, which included not only SCA, XL and its counterparties but also the office of the New York State insurance superintendent. As a result of those negotiations, an agreement was reached that recapitalized SCA and ended litigation against the company, according to an article in Insurance Journal on July 29, 2008, titled Merrill, XL to Bail Out Bond Insurer Security Capital. The drag on our balance sheet was removed, and we thought everything was fine, McGavick recalled. It was thought, at the time, that financial guaranty business was the only problem at XL, which when resolved would create a really cool, high-performing, global company. But once the SCA dust settled, we got a good look at the underlying business and said, Oh, no! This business has been deteriorating for a long time, and were going to have to do some major reform here. And we did. He explained that the underperformance was masked by reserve releases still coming forward from the early 2000s. Repairing the business became the focal point. While it eventually worked, it took a long time and was very hard work. Of course, McGavick and his team instituted all the traditional turnaround tools, such as pulling back on nonperforming lines, cutting costs, etc. Adding insult to injury, the company was suffering from a deficit in underwriting talent. We realized that the infighting that had gone on before I got there over whether to be a financial guaranty company or a pure-play insurance company had led a lot of the insurance talent to leave in a quiet exodus. Historically, XL had operated with a centralized structure, managed from the top down, composed of large units such as international, commercial and reinsurance, which his team realized needed restructuring to be able to attract new talent. After a careful analysis of the underwriting teams financial performance, it was determined that some of the companys most profitable, fastest growing, most insightful businesses were the least respectful of corporate norms. What kind of structure could XL therefore create that would attract the best and brightest underwriters to work there, giving them free rein to do what they do best? Slades Rule No. 1 in Action Here comes the example of Slades Rule No. 1: A major rethinking of XLs structure was required. After digging and digging and digging for answersas per Gortons suggestionMcGavick and his strategic implementation team came up with the idea that a more powerful way to structure the company was around individual, much smaller businesses that were close to customers. Looking at the underwriting units, it was discovered that the fastest growing, most insightful businesses were also the ones who complained the most about time-consuming processes, bureaucratic box-tickingand clearly were the least respectful of corporate norms. It was our job to try and figure out why. How do these things coexist? And whats wrong with this picture? It took us a long time to figure it out. It now seems obvious, but it wasnt obvious at all at the time. Was XL creating a situation where the squeaky wheel gets greased, where the whining teams got what they wanted? That was exactly what people were afraid was going to happen, McGavick recalled. We realized they werent whining. They completely knew that they had to run a business that met its regulatory standards and had no question about its ethics. They knew all that. They couldnt imagine how that business would function without it. But they also knew that most of what they were being asked to do was unnecessary, wasteful, and inhibited creativity and success. They were hungry to be a part of a group that understood that. They didnt lead a revolution; they just bitched a lot, McGavick said with a laugh. During this exhaustive restructuring, XL brought in futurists and all kinds of experts who spoke to XLs executives and the 50-member strategic implementation team who handled the restructuring work. Ideas were discussed and thrown out. Ideas were discussed and considered. It was that exercise that workedbeating it into submission until everything was actually in alignment around an idea that would further our success. Thank you, Slades Rule No. 1. The implementation team came up with a new structure for the business that would emphasize talent over bureaucracy, but the team had to find ways to free up underwriters creativity by removing bureaucratic hindrances while still maintaining controls over an intensely regulated and complex business. Upside-Down Pyramid Structure XL decided to move to a new structure, similar to an upside-down pyramid, with the teams at the top and management at the bottom. How could protections and controls be maintained while encouraging creativity? They realized the answer to that conundrum was technology. For example, underwriting behavior could be monitored in the background so we could lessen disruptive audits and the like. McGavick admitted there continued to be internal resistance to the restructuring. I remember when I walked into the boardroom the day we made this decision. One of my board members derisively called it a glorified HR strategy. I said, Exactly. This is how you attract the best talent in a talent-driven business.' During the restructuring, XL made sure that unified corporate culture was created to make everything work. In addition, the pyramid would turn over five times a year, when we had to answer to our shareholders and our board about what our strategic plans were and how we did against our plans. While an accountability exercise was created around results, for most of the year that was operating in the background, he said. It was more about the creativity and the imagination of these people leading their businesses. The corporate center of the company had to take a more humble view of its job and spend its time thinking about how to enable those businesses to be as powerful and successful as possible, which brought the whole focus of the company closer and closer to the customer all the time. That insight radically changed everything XL didhow the company thought about cost, where to make investments, what kinds of businesses to be in and why to be in them, he explained. The two-part reorganization of XL was an obvious success. In 2008, XL was seemingly on its deathbed with the second worst-performing stock in the S&P 500. By 2009, it had the best-performing stock in the S&P 500, and by 2014, it reported some of its best financial resultsstrong enough to be able to purchase Catlin Group in 2015 for $4 billion, which put us into a different league through its leading market share at Lloyds. Eventually we decided scale was the critical thing and decided to hook up with AXA. (XL was purchased by AXA for $15 billion in 2018.) Safecos Reversal of Fortunes None of the solutions McGavick and his teams devised were the samewhether it was XL, Safeco or CNA. By the time he was named CEO at Safeco Corp. in 2001, McGavick had already developed a reputation for reversing corporate fortunesduring his six years at CNA. [McGavicks] recent history at CNA shows that he knows how to engineer a successful turnaround, said William G. Gary Reed, chairman of Safecos board of directors, who was quoted in Insurance Journal on Feb. 12, 2001. Safeco had been a wonderful, successful company for many years, with a revered name, but it ran into difficulties when it expanded into businesses it didnt understand, he explained. The key to the companys historical success was that it had created an extraordinarily disciplined culture in the personal lines (mainly auto) and in the small commercial space, McGavick continued. They also had life businesses that were based on the same disciplined principles. Unfortunately, the company became impatient with their part of the insurance world, he said. They bought a syndicate at Lloyds, got into large commercial business and did a very large acquisition to break out of their West Coast roots. The net effect of this expansion was to create a balance sheet under severe pressure and large losses. Safeco discovered it was unable to transfer its culture to the new businesses it had purchased and its historically profitable personal lines business received less attention as the company struggled to recover its equilibrium, he said. When McGavick became president and CEO of Safeco in 2001, the Seattle-based company had been teetering on the brink. McGavick and his super talented turnaround team quickly realized that the company needed to get back to its core business that fit the corporate culture. We had to find a way out of all the other things that were distracting usand we did. Another big move involved bolstering the companys commitment to its distribution partners, although the fad at the time was to get rid of agents, he indicated. McGavick and his team decided to create a platform that would help Safecos agents become more efficient and effective, thereby lowering their cost base in auto, homeowners and small commercial. If we were able to lower their cost of doing business, they would make more money if they chose Safeco over other competitors, and we could reduce our expenses at the same time, he said. We put that strategy in place, got out of the other businesses and reduced costs, McGavick continued. Of course, some of those cost reductions involved staff cuts, which he described as a horrible process. In the end, we were successful in making Safeco one of the fastest growing and most profitable insurers of its kind. So, we took a dire situation and it came out very well. He stayed at Safeco until the end of 2005, when he decided to run as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2006, although he didnt win. He joined XL in 2008for the extremely appealing opportunity to help turn around a complex, global commercial insurance and reinsurance business, although, as he described above, it turned out to be a bit more complicated than anticipated. At the Beginning Before Safeco, McGavick had already showed he was adept at helping to reverse fortunesboth politically (for Slade Gorton) and in the corporate sphere at CNA. On the political side, in the years after McGavick was Gortons driver, he also worked on Gortons first successful senatorial campaign and ultimately became a member of his staff in Washington, D.C., specializing in foreign policy and defense issues. He returned home to Seattle to finish his degree in political science from the University of Washington while continuing to work in Gortons state office. When Gorton ran for re-election in 1986, he lost, but he decided to run again for the other U.S. Senate seat in Washington state in 1988. Gorton asked McGavick to join his re-election team as campaign manager. When Gorton won the election, McGavick became his chief of staff in Washington, D.C., when he was only about 29 years old. McGavick eventually moved on from the political fray, taking a series of public affairs positions. In 1992, he was recruited by the American Insurance Association as director of its Superfund Improvement Project in Washington, D.C., where he served as lead negotiator for the insurance industry with Congress, federal agencies and various interest groups involved in the reform of the nations Superfund laws for the cleanup of hazardous waste sites. McGavicks career in the insurance industry had begun. He said he quickly found it to be absolutely, mind-blowingly interesting. Through his role at AIA he met Dennis Chookaszian, who was CEO of CNA Financial Corp. at that time. Chookaszian was trying to turn that company around after a few years of poor performance, said McGavick. Chookaszian was really open to having somebody around who did not have a traditional industry background. In 1995 when he joined the company, Chookaszian gave McGavick a couple of assignments so he could prove himself, saying if he passed those tests, he could take on a leadership role. One such test was leading a strategic project that helped develop an understanding of healthcare reform and its impact across the company. When these projects went well, McGavick was asked to be the CFO of CNAs business that focused on small and medium commercial businesses. Although he had little financial experience, Chookaszian had come through the CFO ranks, and so had several of the leaders of the company, McGavick said. Their view was they didnt have to worry that I would somehow goof things up because there was so much technical expertise around me. But they wanted to see if I understood the numbers and if I could make good decisions based on the numbers and help the business turn itself around. Within a year or so, McGavick asked to run that business, and a couple years after that he was made president of the whole division, which included both small and large commercial operations. His CNA successes were perhaps best described by Safeco Chairman William G. Reed, quoted by Insurance Journal, when McGavick became the companys CEO. Reed said: Basically, Mike made the tough decisions that are providing bottom-line results. Over an 18-month period, his unit improved its combined ratio by seven points. Thats a positive swing of over $200 million. Why would Chookaszian take a chance on a relative industry novice? Dennis, to his credit, always challenged himself to avoid doing things the way they had always been done, even though by then he had been in the industry a fair amount of time. McGavick explained that his hiring at CNA wasnt so much about bringing in an industry newcomer. The deeper idea was to find people who dont get caught up in the idea that things should always be done the same way or that business models should never change. The idea is to observe the external world and apply it to where the business is going, rather than looking back over history and repeating that history, McGavick affirmed. To have such an insightful CEO supporting him was perhaps the best training for what was ahead because the turnaround story was about doing it differently, rethinking what was going on, and challenging ourselves to bring the business to a new place. He has avoided hand-me-down knowledge, which by definition gets you looking backward with your head down and not viewing the business in a fresh way. If the reason for a company process is because its always been done that way, McGavick would say, Thats just dumb, and were not gonna do it that way anymore. While hand-me-down knowledge can work for chunks of time, the world doesnt stand still, and particularly in todays world, change accelerates in a way that no longer allows that to be a successful strategy for very long, he stressed. Today, leaders have to come from a place where they challenge suppositions, and have to be of a mindset that this business is going to be repeatedly reinvented, and what are we doing to lead the way rather than be victims of that pattern. High Points and Low Points When asked about what he is proudest of in his career, McGavick returned to the theme of turnarounds. Whether it was helping to bring Slade Gorton back to the senate, or the turnaround at CNA or Safeco or XL, none of the solutions for any of those four problems were the same. In addition, he proved the impossible was often possible. No one thought Gorton could be re-elected, but he was. No one thought we could make profits in the commercial operations at CNA, but we did. People thought Safeco was dead, but it returned to health. They also thought XL was dead, but we turned it around, McGavick said, describing these successes, against all odds, as very gratifying. However, it hasnt all been smooth sailing, and McGavick does have regrets about some business decisions involving people that had to be made. Ill go to my grave feeling horrible about some of the layoffs we had to make because its such disgusting work. When he has such dark recollections, McGavick tries to remember that in the grand scheme of things, the restructurings ultimately saved thousands of jobs and people were able to keep their careers going within these companies. Whats next for McGavick? After the purchase of XL by AXA, he agreed to be special adviser for AXA Groups CEO Buberl for the next few years. It doesnt require a huge amount of my time, and Im free to do other things as well. Beyond that, I have absolutely no clue what Ill do, he said with a chuckle. My wife has encouraged me to take a meaningful period of reflection and get daily management completely out of my system before I decide. McGavick said he has come to realize that will take a fair amount of time. Meanwhile, Im enjoying the exercise. Slades Rule No. 2 So, this brings us back full-circle to the young McGavick, who asked Slade Gorton for his advice when they drove together through the night. If youll recall, Slades Rule No. 1 was about digging past easy answers. Slades Rule No. 2 was: Only work on things that bring you joy because youll only be willing to work hard and have the energy to work hard if you find joy in what you do. So, has an insurance career brought him joy? Yes, absolutely, he quickly answered. I found that I got joy from the complexity of it, from the sense that it was very important for society to get right and that helping a company perform well was important for every stakeholdercolleagues, investors and customers. This article first appeared in the March/April 2019 print edition of Insurance Journals sister publication, Carrier Management. Topics USA Talent Washington Underwriting Training Development AXA XL SCOR Global P&C announced the following reinsurance appointments, effective April 1, 2019: Michel Blanc has been promoted to CEO of Reinsurance, following Jean-Paul Conoscentes appointment as CEO of SCOR Global P&C with effect from April 1, 2019. Blanc currently serves as CEO of the Asia-Pacific region (APAC) at SCOR Global P&C. (See below for the executives biographies). Christoph Spichtig has been promoted to CEO of APAC for SCOR Global P&C. Eric Jenck has been promoted to regional chief underwriting officer of reinsurance for APAC. In Specialty Insurance, SCOR Global P&C also announced the following promotions, effective Sept. 1, 2019: Stuart McMurdo has been promoted to CEO of SCOR Specialty Insurance EMEA operations. His remit will include SCOR Business Solutions EMEA, as well as The Channel Syndicate. McMurdo will remain CEO of SCOR UK and of The Channel Syndicate. has been promoted to CEO of SCOR Specialty Insurance EMEA operations. His remit will include SCOR Business Solutions EMEA, as well as The Channel Syndicate. McMurdo will remain CEO of SCOR UK and of The Channel Syndicate. Fabio Pinho has been promoted to CEO of SCOR Specialty Insurance Latam operations. His remit will include SCOR Business Solutions Latam, as well as the Brazilian insurance company, Essor, of which he remains CEO. Separately, Pierre Favennec has been promoted to head of Strategy and Development, reporting directly to Jean-Paul Conoscente. Following the organizational changes announced in September 2018, SCOR Global P&C continues to adapt its structure to serve its strategy and be more client-centric, commented Jean-Paul Conoscente, CEO of SCOR Global P&C. The establishment of the Specialty Insurance business unit in September 2018 marked a key change in SCOR Global P&Cs organizational structure, by bringing together insurance business platforms built separately over the years, said Laurent Rousseau, deputy CEO of SCOR Global P&C and CEO of the Specialty Insurance unit. Biographies Michel Blanc, 61, a French citizen, started his career with SCOR in 1992 as a facultative casualty underwriter in the Large Corporate Risks division. From 1995 to 2000, he was in charge of P&C business for Japan and Korea, based in Tokyo. The next eight years saw him in Paris, where from 2001 to 2005 he was underwriting and planning manager at SCOR Business Solutions, and in New York, where from 2005 to 2008 he was senior vice president in charge of SCOR US Discontinued Business. He moved to Singapore as chief underwriting officer of SCOR Global P&C for Asia-Pacific, before taking on the role of CEO of SCOR Global P&C for Asia-Pacific on April 1, 2017. 61, a French citizen, started his career with SCOR in 1992 as a facultative casualty underwriter in the Large Corporate Risks division. From 1995 to 2000, he was in charge of P&C business for Japan and Korea, based in Tokyo. The next eight years saw him in Paris, where from 2001 to 2005 he was underwriting and planning manager at SCOR Business Solutions, and in New York, where from 2005 to 2008 he was senior vice president in charge of SCOR US Discontinued Business. He moved to Singapore as chief underwriting officer of SCOR Global P&C for Asia-Pacific, before taking on the role of CEO of SCOR Global P&C for Asia-Pacific on April 1, 2017. Christoph Spichtig , 45, a Swiss citizen, started in the industry as a treaty underwriter and held various underwriting positions at Zurich Re/Converium in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2007 he joined SCOR and relocated to Sydney as general manager, heading SCORs P&C operations and treaty underwriting for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. In 2014 he relocated to Singapore as chief underwriting officer for Southeast Asia, and became chief underwriting officer, Treaty P&C for SCOR Reinsurance Asia-Pacific in April 2017. , 45, a Swiss citizen, started in the industry as a treaty underwriter and held various underwriting positions at Zurich Re/Converium in Zurich, Switzerland. In 2007 he joined SCOR and relocated to Sydney as general manager, heading SCORs P&C operations and treaty underwriting for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. In 2014 he relocated to Singapore as chief underwriting officer for Southeast Asia, and became chief underwriting officer, Treaty P&C for SCOR Reinsurance Asia-Pacific in April 2017. Eric Jenck , 37, a French citizen, started his career as an actuarial consultant in France before joining SCOR in 2005 as Asia-Pacific pricing actuary and CAT modeler, based in Singapore. In 2009, he became P&C treaty underwriter for the Indian sub-continent countries and helped to establish SCORs position in these emerging markets. Since 2016, he has led the treaty P&C underwriting team in charge of the Southeast Asian markets. , 37, a French citizen, started his career as an actuarial consultant in France before joining SCOR in 2005 as Asia-Pacific pricing actuary and CAT modeler, based in Singapore. In 2009, he became P&C treaty underwriter for the Indian sub-continent countries and helped to establish SCORs position in these emerging markets. Since 2016, he has led the treaty P&C underwriting team in charge of the Southeast Asian markets. Stuart McMurdo, 47, a South African and British citizen, joined SCOR in 2018 as CEO of SCOR UK & The Channel Managing Agency. Before joining SCOR, he was the head of Reinsurance for Santam L, South Africas largest short-term insurer where his responsibilities included both the buying of reinsurance for the group and the establishment of Santam Re, a business writing inwards reinsurance. Before joining Santam, McMurdo was general manager of one of South Africas leading retail brokerages, having previously spent 11 years with the Hannover Reinsurance Group in various roles, both in South Africa and Germany. 47, a South African and British citizen, joined SCOR in 2018 as CEO of SCOR UK & The Channel Managing Agency. Before joining SCOR, he was the head of Reinsurance for Santam L, South Africas largest short-term insurer where his responsibilities included both the buying of reinsurance for the group and the establishment of Santam Re, a business writing inwards reinsurance. Before joining Santam, McMurdo was general manager of one of South Africas leading retail brokerages, having previously spent 11 years with the Hannover Reinsurance Group in various roles, both in South Africa and Germany. Fabio Pinho , 43, a Brazilian citizen, started his career as an auditor at PwC, focusing on the insurance market and pension funds, and taking part in due diligence and reorganizations in the insurance sector. In 2008, he joined XL Re, heading the operations and corporate areas of the local reinsurance company created in During his final years at XL Re, he was vice president of finance and operations, with activities in Brazil and Argentina. In July 2011, he founded Essor, a specialty insurance company in Brazil, which is now fully owned by SCOR. , 43, a Brazilian citizen, started his career as an auditor at PwC, focusing on the insurance market and pension funds, and taking part in due diligence and reorganizations in the insurance sector. In 2008, he joined XL Re, heading the operations and corporate areas of the local reinsurance company created in During his final years at XL Re, he was vice president of finance and operations, with activities in Brazil and Argentina. In July 2011, he founded Essor, a specialty insurance company in Brazil, which is now fully owned by SCOR. Pierre Favennec, 38, a French citizen, started his career in strategy consulting at Booz Allen in Paris. He then joined the investment banking M&A teams of Goldman Sachs and Nomura in London, focusing on financial institutions. In 2017, he joined SCOR Global P&C as head of business development. Source: SCOR Related: Topics Excess Surplus Underwriting Reinsurance Property Casualty Liberty Specialty Markets, part of Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, said it has re-domiciled its European insurance company Liberty Mutual Insurance Europe SE (LMIE) to Luxembourg, the home of its European headquarters. Liberty Specialty Markets will maintain its branch network in the UK, Continental Europe and the Middle East. LMIE will be led by Dirk Billemon, general manager. Licensed by the Commissariat Aux Assurances (CAA), LMIE will conduct insurance and reinsurance business in Europe, irrespective of the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, said Liberty Specialty Markets in a statement. With the new license and opening of our Luxembourg office, we are delivering on our promise to our brokers, clients and employees to provide continuity and certainty, said Billemon. We remain focused on providing flexible, innovative and tailored re/insurance solutions to our clients across the region. Source: Liberty Specialty Markets Topics Europe Uk Lyft Inc. executives are focused on cutting insurance costs and will phase in self-driving vehicles on simple routes first, they said at a road show for investors ahead of the ride-hailing companys initial public offering set for next week. Reducing insurance costs is the number one initiative, said Chief Financial Officer Brian Roberts at a luncheon at a Boston hotel on Wednesday for investors considering whether to buy into the closely watched IPO. Roberts and Lyft co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer did not directly address questions from the audience during the hour-long event about when the company might become profitable, citing ongoing investments to build out technology and car-servicing centers. Lyft reported a net loss of $911 million on revenue of $2.16 billion in 2018, according to its preliminary prospectus. One audience member asked: The obvious question is, what revenue do you have to have to get to break even? Zimmer said that Its not necessarily just a question of scale. Its about beating down those operating costs. For instance, Green said the company might look to lower insurance costs by optimizing routes for safety rather than speed. The leaders also said the company will stay focused on transportation services, unlike rival Uber Technologies Inc. that has expanded into markets like trucking and food delivery. Uber is also expected to go public soon, with both companies benefiting from the rapid adoption of their services that have already upended the taxi industry. But some investors have also expressed concerns the ride-hailing industry could itself be disrupted by the rise of autonomous vehicles. Zimmer said the arrival of such self-driving cars will be gradual over the next 10 years, much as wireless telephone networks have been upgraded. He said Lyft will initially roll out autonomous vehicles on simpler routes that would not stress their systems. He cited examples such as routes where speeds are below 35 miles per hour, U.S. routes without left-hand turns or tunnels, and during good weather. In interviews after the event, several investors expressed a range of reactions to the presentation, on condition they not be named per the policies of their firms. Two said they would be more likely to seek to buy into the IPO, which is oversubscribed, although one said Its hard to understand how they differentiate from Uber. A third investor echoed the sentiment and noted that many drivers serve both companies. (Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Dan Grebler and Lisa Shumaker) Topics Sharing Economy Autonomous Vehicles Ridesharing Federal and local investigators are weighing a probe of the Houston chemical blaze as hazardous compounds waft near the burned-out site. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is following up on the incident and should be making a decision to send an investigator shortly, spokeswoman Hillary Cohen said in an emailed statement on Wednesday. Hours earlier, firefighters extinguished the last of the fires at Intercontinental Terminals Co.s petrochemical complex that menaced the fourth-largest U.S. city for almost four days. Prosecutors in Harris County, which encompasses Houston, also said they were mulling an investigation and would decide once environmental agencies have made their assessments. At a nearby facility in the refining and chemical row east of downtown Houston, Royal Dutch Shell Plc alerted workers that it detected benzene a cancer-causing oil byproduct. The company issued a so-called shelter-in-place order out of an abundance of caution and operations continued uninterrupted. The notice was later lifted. Shell noted the benzene emerged from sources outside the plant, which is less than 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the ITC property. Root-Cause Analysis The CSB, a Washington-based panel formally known as the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, launched extensive probes into the BP Plc refinery disaster in nearby Texas City that killed 15 people in 2005, as well as the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that killed 11 in 2010. No one died or was injured in ITCs incident. A federal investigation will be akin to what FAA does when a plane crashes, said Jonathan Baughman, a partner who chairs the oil and gas practice at McGinnis Lochridge in Houston. Theyll be doing root-cause analysis as well as looking to see if there were any deficiencies with the procedures in place. Reuters reported earlier Wednesday that both the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and Harris County district attorneys office were looking into the fire. ITC officials warned that smoke and steam may still be visible from the area, and firefighting crews will continue to spray foam and water on the tanks to prevent re-ignition. Schools had already been ordered closed before the fire was extinguished, after shifting weather patterns sparked concern that the plume of smoke might sink to ground level, making breathing hazardous. Current readings show no hazardous concentrations of particulates or volatile organic compounds, known as VOCs, according to Adam Adams, an official with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The agency is in the process of taking water samples, with results expected Friday, he said. Related: Copyright 2021 Bloomberg. Topics USA Pollution Chemicals Tens of thousands of people east of Houston are being told to stay indoors after benzene and other volatile organic compounds were found in the air within the city limits of Deer Park, one day after a fire that broke out at a petrochemical storage facility there was extinguished. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the states environmental regulatory agency, said in a news release Thursday morning that some areas of the city had benzene concentrations high enough to cause health concerns. TCEQ said that at the maximum levels detected, the benzene levels could cause headaches and nausea, but no long-term effects. Because the fires are no longer burning, vapor from remaining exposed chemicals can escape. The remaining product is being removed, and vapor suppression activities are continuing, the release said. The city issued a shelter-in-place warning early Thursday morning, and officials advised residents to close all doors, windows, and any sources of outdoor air, according to a city emergency alert. The warning also advised residents to turn off air conditioning and heating systems and close fireplaces to keep chemicals from entering homes. Deer Park has a population of over 33,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Neighboring Galena Park, which has a population over over 11,000, has also issued a shelter-in-place order. Some school districts in the area cancelled school for the day, including Galena Park Independent School District, according to a city emergency alert. Multiple streets in the city of Deer Park have also been closed. On Sunday morning, a fire broke out at a facility owned by Intercontinental Terminals Company. The fire spread through tanks that contained chemicals used in gasoline, and blazed for three days before being extinguished. The blaze caused a tall black plume to hang over Houston, the nations fourth-largest city, for days. But government officials insisted during the fire that the air remained safe to breathe. No shelter order had been issued in Houston Thursday morning, and Houston ISD schools remained open. School officials emphasized that no benzene had been detected outside the shelter-in-place zone, though the district hired contractors to test air conditions at schools on the east side of the city out of an abundance of caution. TCEQ said its staff would be extensively monitoring the air quality, and asked for additional air monitoring equipment from the Environmental Protection Agency, which will arrive and begin operations Thursday, according to the release. The ITC facility where the fire occurred has been open since 1972. The TCEQ fined the company at least 10 times since 2002 for various pollution incidents. This story originally ran in the Texas Tribune: https://www.texastribune.org/2019/03/21/deer-park-texas-terminal-fire-shelter-benzene/ The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. Related: Topics Texas Training Development Pollution Chemicals The Main Street America Group, a super-regional property/casualty insurance company, has announced the promotions of Jeff Kusch and Chris Listau to president roles of their respective divisions. Kusch, president of field operations, and Listau, president of Main Street Americas insurance operations, will both remain based at the companys home office in Jacksonville, Fla., and report to CEO Tom Van Berkel. Van Berkel said Kusch and Listau will focus on the companys day-to-day operations, as well as the long-term strategies of our operating units. He noted the companys recent merger with American Family Insurance and said a key objective of that move is to collaborate to identify mutually beneficial mergers and acquisitions. Identifying merger and acquisition targets and other growth opportunities within the independent agency channel will be one of my primary focus areas in 2019 and beyond, Van Berkel said. As the president of field operations, Kusch will continue to oversee Main Street Americas field sales function, as well as assumed reinsurance and bonds. Following Austin Mutual Insurance Companys affiliation with Main Street America in 2012, Kusch became the companys Western Region president, a role he held until his appointment in 2015 as senior vice president of field operations. In 2017, Kusch was promoted to executive vice president of insurance operations. Kusch transitioned to the role of executive vice president of field operations in 2018. Kusch joined Austin Mutual in 1992 as an accounting manager. His leadership roles at Austin Mutual included treasurer, secretary, president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board. Prior to joining Austin Mutual, Kusch was a member of the senior audit staff at Coopers & Lybrand LLP. In his role as president of insurance operations, Listau will be responsible for the companys commercial and personal lines product areas; and information technology, claims/integrated customer solutions, and business technology operations functions, as well as human resources and strategic planning/governance. Listau joined Main Street America in 2018 as executive vice president of insurance operations. Prior to that, he had an extensive history with American Family, serving in many key executive roles. He joined the organization in 1993 as an agent in Mora, Minn. From 1996-2002, he held several field marketing roles of increasing responsibility. He served from 2002-2007 as Iowa sales director and was appointed as central regional sales vice president in 2007. Listau was named commercial-farm/ranch vice president in 2012 and promoted to president of commercial-farm ranch in 2014. The Main Street America Group is a mutual insurance holding company which writes business through its nine property/casualty insurance carriers: NGM Insurance Company, Old Dominion Insurance Company, Austin Mutual Insurance Company, Grain Dealers Mutual Insurance Company, Main Street America Assurance Company, Great Lakes Casualty Insurance Company, MSA Insurance Company, Spring Valley Mutual Insurance Company and Main Street America Protection Insurance Company. Based in Jacksonville, Fla., Main Street America offers a wide range of commercial and personal insurance, as well as fidelity and surety bond products, to individuals, families and businesses throughout the United States. Topics Carriers Florida Georgias timber industry is facing many headwinds as it seeks to recover from the severe damage wrought by Hurricane Michael late last year. The storm erased three-quarters of a billion dollars in timber, The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer reported. Aside from Hurricane Michael, the industry has been facing other stresses: difficulties in finding log truck drivers; and costs for insurance, equipment and fuel. In late February, state Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black was at the Georgia Capitol, conferring with Gov. Brian Kemp about a proposed federal aid package for areas hit by Hurricane Michael. Those discussions are still ongoing. For every tree that was snapped or blown over to harvest all of it, to have gotten it to market would have required 1.2 million log trucks, Black said. Once a tree has snapped 10 feet up, the wood might be unsafe to harvest or too smashed up to sell for much, anyway, the newspaper reported. Debbie Buckner, a state lawmaker from the Talbot County town of Junction City, said she feels for the many people who lost their retirement savings to Hurricane Michael. The timber plots that blanket much of Georgia represent a retirement for their owners, or perhaps a childs tuition or a rainy day fund. Buckner, a Democrat, also said there are concerns in the industry about obstacles to becoming a truck driver. Several state schools teach commercial truck driving, but log trucks drivers need specialized training to handle conditions such as dirt roads and very heavy loads that are liable to shift, the newspaper reported. Also, the insurance is so expensive that its difficult for anyone to be a self-employed driver, Buckner said. Where we really see sensitivity is the harvesting and logistics sides of things, said Andres Villegas, CEO of the Georgia Forestry Association. The trade group covers landowners, loggers, manufacturers and others. Villegas said the association wants to let students know that whether they have a GED diploma or PhD, theres a place for them in the industry. Folks can make a very good living and not have to deal with the traffic in Atlanta, he joked. Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Georgia Hurricane Anchorage school officials have approved a plan calling for $36.3 million to repair two schools damaged by the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that shook south-central Alaska. The school board voted Monday for the plan to fix Gruening Middle School and Eagle River Elementary, which have been closed since the Nov. 30 quake, the Anchorage Daily News reported. A school district committee had recommended the plan, deciding against the more expensive option of demolishing and rebuilding the schools. Repairing the middle school is expected to cost $24.2 million, while the elementary school requires about $12.1 million in fixes, said George Vakalis, school district consultant. Both schools need new roofs and seismic upgrades. Demolishing and rebuilding the middle school was estimated at $76.7 million, while building a new Eagle River Elementary was expected to cost $34.9 million. District officials expect it will take two years to repair the schools. Middle-school students will continue attending classes at Chugiak High School. The elementary students will be divided between the other elementary schools in Eagle River. The repairs are expected to be funded by a mixture of sources, including state and federal funding and a bond that would require voter approval, Vakalis said. The district has been in contact with the Federal Emergency Management Agency about the plan, and it expects to hear about federal funding soon, he said. The middle school has a history of structural and design flaws, prompting some to support the demolish option. Committee member Kaleigh Wotring had testified against the plan, telling board members that she thinks it is a short-term solution. Fixing instead of rebuilding just to get kids back into a building more quickly is just kicking the can down the road, Wotring said. Architectural and engineering reports indicate the schools can be repaired and made better, district officials have said. Related: Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Education The Midwest once had lots of wolves, and eventually lost nearly all of them. Bringing them back has been a major achievement. But were not alone in thinking this part of the country would benefit from having more of these beasts which Midwesterners have been known to travel to Yellowstone or Glacier National Park in hopes of glimpsing. Closer to home, some tourists trek to the wolflands of Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin hoping for a photograph or just a few howls. Cal/OSHA has cited a Bay Area contractor for serious safety violations after a worker was fatally crushed at a San Rafael construction site on Sept. 18, 2018. Investigators determined that West Coast Land and Development Inc. did not follow regulations when it stacked plywood vertically without securing it. The accident occurred when two employees of the Concord-based company were framing and installing a shear wall on the third floor of a house under construction. One worker went to get a sheet of plywood from a stack of 26 panels stacked vertically and leaning against a wall. A foreman found the workers body 20 minutes later with the stack of plywood on top of him. Unsecured plywood, drywall and similar material stacked vertically create life-threatening hazards to employees, said Cal/OSHA Chief Juliann Sum. As this tragic incident demonstrates, employers should store the materials flat or ensure the materials are secured when stored vertically to prevent serious and even fatal injuries. Cal/OSHA cited West Coast Land and Development $26,540 for eight violations. In addition to the violation for stacking plywood sheets vertically without securing the sheets against tipping or falling, citations were issued for the employers failure to: Guard an opening on the houses second floor to prevent employees falling through it Protect workers from the hazard of impalement on exposed reinforcing steel projections Protect workers from falling when working on elevated surfaces at heights more than 15 feet A regulatory violation was cited for failing to obtain the required construction-related project permit, and general violations were cited for failing to evaluate worksite hazards and protect workers from loose rock or soil at an excavation site, and failure to provide handrails and stair rails along unprotected sides and edges of stairways. Topics California Workers' Compensation Contractors March 21, 2019 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Steve Palmer, Founding Partner, President and Chief Investment Officer for AlphaNorth Asset Management, talks about a handful of companies in diverse industries that have his attention. Streetwise Reports: Steve, would you give us an overview of the AlphaNorth Capital Conference? Steve Palmer: We held our 6th conference in Nassau, Bahamas, in January; it's focused on small-cap non-resource companies. This past year we had a lot of technology and cannabis companies. There were also healthcare and consumer products companies. SWR: How many companies attend the conference? SP: It's grown every year since we started it. This year we had three tracks with 18 companies in each track. SWR: Would you tell us about a couple of the companies that you're excited about? SP: One that I'm particularly excited about is Vancouver-based Jackpot Digital Inc. (JP:TSX.V; JPOTF:OTCQB; LVH1:FSE). It has developed an electronic poker table that is like a giant touchscreen. It eliminates the requirement for a dealer, so casino operators are very keen to have this because it lowers their costs. Also, with poker there's some idle time with the players. If you fold early on in the hand, let's say, you're just sitting there waiting for everybody else to finish. But at your station, you can switch, and you can play electronic blackjack on the table, for example. So it keeps the players engaged, and it generates more revenue than a typical table would. SWR: At what stage is the company now? Is its product in use or is it still in the prototype phase? SP: It has tables in use. It has a new generation table that it's getting orders for now. It has a bunch of its older generation tables currently in use, mostly on Carnival ships. It has current orders for 30 new generation tables to ship in the next few months. It just did a small private placement to fund the building of those tables. What's exciting about Jackpot Digital is the product, and it's getting lots of new orders now. It's at an inflection point, in my view, of turning cash flow positive. When these tables go out, they are expected to generate about $5,000 per month each to the company. SWR: The company receives a share of the earnings of the table? SP: Yes, that's how it works in most places. Jackpot Digital has recently won some orders in France, where the rules are different. The casino industry is very regulated, and in France you're not allowed to take a share of the winnings. So Jackpot sells the tables outright, and it's building a couple for there right now. We're pretty excited about the company; it's just getting to the critical mass now where it's going to be cash flow positive and the momentum on the table orders is ramping up. The biggest hurdle the company faces is having enough working capital to facilitate orders, which is a good problem to have. SWR: What is the next company you'd like to talk about? SP: Another company at the conference I like is in the cannabis sector. I don't normally talk about cannabis companies because I'm not a huge fan of the sector in general. It's LiveWell Canada Inc. (LVWL:CSE; LXLLF:OTCMKTS). Its shares are currently halted. It's going to be a CBD extraction company, and it's going to be one of the largest producers of cannabidiol (CBD) oil using hemp. The change with the Farm Bill in the U.S. has really ignited this industry, and there's a huge demand. LiveWell is getting very good margins, and it's just ramping up a big facility in Montana to produce CBD oil. The numbers are actually quite silly, if you believe them, in terms of what the going rate is for CBD oil and the volumes that these guys are going to be able to produce. SWR: Do you expect, as more CBD oil comes out onto the market, that prices might go to a more reasonable level? Are states regulating prices? SP: The states are not meddling in the pricing. It's the supply and demand that's created a very strong pricing environment. I've asked many of the operators in the space about it because obviously these prices can't stay where they are indefinitely. People involved in the space believe that there's going to be maybe a two- to three-year window where prices will stay where they're at until the supply catches up to the demand. But you're right, over the longer term, these kind of prices won't last. For example, CBD oil sells for $6,500a10,000 per kilogram; that's the going rate right now. And it's been at that level for many months. And LiveWell is producing at less than $500/kg, so it has very strong margins. LiveWell is currently merging with a company called Vitality CBD Natural Health Products Inc., and that's expected to close in the next few weeks. It is guiding to having the stock back trading in March. So I'm excited to see, when it starts trading, how investors react to that. SWR: Is this a merger of equals or is LiveWell acquiring Vitality? SP: It's a reverse takeover situation, and Vitality's the bigger entity. It is acquiring LiveWell. SWR: You mentioned LiveWell is building a large facility in Montana. Does it have other facilities also at this point? SP: LiveWell is producing currently out of another, much smaller facility. The Montana facility is going to have a huge capacity. LiveWell announced recently that it produced 200 kg of CBD equivalent in the first week of February. It expects to ramp that up to 200 kg per day by the second half of 2019. So if you do the math on that, at US$6,500 per kg, that's US$1.3 million a day in product. So you can get to some pretty big numbers. SWR: Is there anything else you want us to know about this company? SP: Just that its numbers look very attractive to me based on the current pricing environment and it should be trading sometime this month. It has plans for a U.S. listing shortly thereafter. So it could be quite an exciting one to watch. SWR: What is the next company? SP: Another one I like that was at the conference is Assure Holdings Corp. (IOM:TSX.V; ARHH:OTCQB). This is an interesting one because it has some decent revenue already. It has equipment for neuromonitoring certain surgical procedures, and it's only in one or two states at the moment. But it has expansion plans to move into other states in the United States. Revenue in 2018 was about $25 million with roughly $15 million in earnings. The revenue growth profile, once it starts adding these other states, is quite significant.The company is forecasting a 70% increase in revenue growth for 2019. SWR: Any other companies you would like to mention? SP: Avivagen Inc. (VIV:TSX.V) is worth talking about; it's fairly timely. The company recently received a very significant order in the U.S. for its product, OxC-beta. It's a proprietary supplement that it has developed that it can put into animal feed, and the trials have shown that the animals, compared to the control group, are healthier and they grow more quickly. It eliminates the need, in many cases, for adding antibiotics to the animal feed. My understanding is the initial volumes for the U.S. are fairly significant. It has been selling into East Asia, the Philippines mainly, for the last several quarters, and that's been ramping nicely. But the U.S. market is much larger, the second largest market in the world, I believe, for animal feed. So we think this is going to be a huge catalyst for the company. The third largest market in the world is Brazil, and we think that it will probably follow suit in ordering product now that the U.S. seems to be on board. There have been many trials that show that the product works. There's a big initiative to cut back on the use of antibiotics in animals, and this is a theme that we like. SWR: Do you have a final company for us? SP: Yes, I could mention one more. It's a Vancouver-based electric bus manufacturer, GreenPower Motor Company Inc. (GPV:TSX.V; GPVRF:OTCQX). It's making great gains. It's one of the few companies that I've come across in the last year that has actually exceeded its expectations in guidance. It is selling buses mainly into the California market, where there are huge incentives for school districts and other transportation municipalities to switch to electric buses. It is ramping up production this year. It should more than triple revenue in 2019 versus 2018. SWR: Thanks for your insights, Steve. Steve Palmer is a Founding Partner, President and Chief Investment Officer of AlphaNorth Asset Management and currently manages the award-winning AlphaNorth Partners Fund, AlphaNorth Growth Fund and AlphaNorth Resource Fund. Prior to founding AlphaNorth in 2007, Palmer was employed as Vice President at one of the world's largest financial institutions, where he managed equity assets of approximately CA$350M. Palmer managed a pooled fund, which focused on Canadian small-capitalization companies, from its inception to August 2007, achieving returns of 35.8% annualized over a nine-year period, which ranked it No. 1 in performance by a major fund ranking service in its small-cap, pooled-fund category. Palmer earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Western Ontario and is a Chartered Financial Analyst. Disclosure: 1) Patrice Fusillo conducted this interview for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an employee. She owns, or members of her immediate household or family own, shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. She is, or members of her immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. 2) The following companies mentioned in this interview are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Avivagen. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. As of the date of this article, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports has a consulting relationship with Avivagen. Please click here for more information. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. 3) Steve Palmer: I, or members of my immediate household or family, and/or AlphaNorth funds, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: All of the companies mentioned. I, or members of my immediate household or family, are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this interview: None. I determined which companies would be included in this article based on my research and understanding of the sector. I had the opportunity to review the interview for accuracy as of the date of the interview and am responsible for the content of the interview. 4) The interview does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports. 5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article, until one week after the publication of the interview or article. As of the date of this interview, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Avivagen, Jackpot Digital and Assure Holdings, companies mentioned in this article. More Info: This news is published on the Investorideas.com Newswire - a global digital news source for investors and business leaders Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. Contact management and IR of each company directly regarding specific questions. More disclaimer info: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Disclaimer.asp Learn more about publishing your news release and our other news services on the Investorideas.com newswire https://www.investorideas.com/News-Upload/ and tickertagstocknews.com Global investors must adhere to regulations of each country. Please read Investorideas.com privacy policy: https://www.investorideas.com/About/Private_Policy.asp Passengers booked to fly from Cork to the US east coast in two weeks time face an anxious wait as Norwegian Air International scrambles to replace its grounded Boeing 737 Max aircraft. The flights are due to return for the summer schedule in April, but the crisis engulfing US plane manufacturer Boeing has put the Cork bookings in jeopardy. Norwegian said it was still too early to say whether the Cork flights to TF Green Airport in Providence, Rhode Island would return before April while the Boeing 737 Max is grounded by aviation authorities around the world. The 737 Max, which is used on the Cork-Providence route, was grounded following the second fatal crash in five months involving the new Boeing aircraft. Some 157 passengers and crew died in an Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10, while a Lion Air plunged into the Java Sea off Indonesia shortly after takeoff last October, killing 189 people. Intensive investigations are underway to establish why the two aircraft came down, with authorities focusing in on Boeings anti-stall software in the 737 Max, among other factors. There are 5,000 orders of 737 Max aircraft from airlines around the world worth around 600bn, with Norwegian already taking charge of 18. The low-cost, long-haul airline is now using a different Boeing model to carry Dublin passengers to the US, but has briefed Cork Airport that it is trying to source different aircraft to fill in for the 737 Max. Analysts estimate the crisis is costing Norwegian, already under pressure following a spending splurge in recent years, up to 1.5m a day. A spokesperson for Cork Airport said it is in regular contact with Norwegian which is currently attempting to optimise its fleet and source alternative aircraft for its busy summer season ahead, including the Cork-Providence service, which is just two weeks away. Visitors to Norwegians website trying to book flights from Cork for April are instructed that they are all sold out, while return flights from May are being priced at 649. A Norwegian spokesman said: The website appears that way because we are temporarily withholding further sales of all routes operated by the 737 Max to ensure we can meet our customers expectations in light of the suspended operations of this aircraft. The flights became the first ever direct transatlantic route from Cork in July 2017, following a prolonged campaign from Irish business and political figures for Norwegian to be granted a US licence. It included then Taoiseach Enda Kenny directly lobbying President Barack Obama. Google was fined 1.49bn by the EU for thwarting advertising rivals, a penalty that may be EU competition chief Margrethe Vestagers third and final ruling on the US tech giant. It brings the total Google has been ordered to pay to 8.2bn in EU competition probes that have run for nearly a decade and taken aim at the companys popular software for Android phones and searches related to shopping. Wednesdays case focuses on Googles role as an ad broker for websites, targeting exclusivity agreements for online ads with its AdSense for Search product. That service places text advertising on websites. The problematic contracts were all dropped by 2016 when the EU escalated the investigation. Google is by far the biggest internet advertising broker, setting up searches on customers websites, Ms Vestager said, and that allows it to control how most consumers start shopping. Its an entry point, Ms Vestager said at a press conference. By gaining a foothold in advertising brokering, competitors could grow their business and then challenge Google in general search advertising, she said. The advertising revenues that fuel profits for Google and Facebook are increasingly coming under competition scrutiny, often prompted by complaints from media companies as advertising spend shifts to the web. Frances competition authority has flagged the scale of Googles ad business as a potential concern. Germany started an inquiry in February and Dutch regulators have been looking at how media companies generate ad revenue. The UK recently signalled it plans to start its own inquiry. Google has already made a wide range of changes to our products to address the commissions concerns, the companys senior vice president for global affairs, Kent Walker, said in a statement. Over the next few months, well be making further updates to give more visibility to rivals in Europe, he said. The EU last July fined the company 4.3bn and demanded that it change the way it puts search and web-browser apps onto Android mobile devices. A year earlier, Google received a then-record 2.4bn penalty after regulators accused it of skewing results to thwart smaller shopping search services. However, Ms Vestager yesterday gave the company hope it could avoid fresh fines by saying she didnt see a non-compliance issue over how Google is obeying competition orders related to Android and shopping searches. Bloomberg R.Kelly has requested through his lawyer Steve Greenberg to be allowed travel on a private jet to Dubai next month for a series of concerts according to The Chicago Sun Times. The performances would be the first since his arrest on sex abuse charges which involve four alleged victims, including at least three between the ages of 13 and 17. The poisonous rhetoric of the extreme right has successfully crept into the mainstream and bolstered the beliefs of people like Christchurch terrorist Brenton Harrison Tarrant, an Irish expert has said. Dr Orla Lynch said the attacks on two mosques in the New Zealand city, claiming the lives of 50 people, including children, was not an isolated event, but part of a rise in far-right killings and extremism. The head of criminology at University College Cork, whose research focus is on the perpetrators and victims of terrorism, said individuals like Tarrant do not operate in a vacuum and are a product of our time. Brenton Harrison Tarrant has become the latest right-wing extremist to carry out a major terrorist attack, Dr Lynch said. But this is not an isolated event in the past 12 months, we have seen an increase in far-right killings and a rise in far-right extremism on both sides of the Atlantic. She said that using a well-planned communication strategy, Tarrant live-streamed the attack on Facebook and released a so-called manifesto entitled The Great Replacement. Dr Lynch said the material led to a flurry of activity aimed at conducting a psychological autopsy of the Australian, with some media reports citing his childhood obesity for his descent into teenage isolation while other reports gave a more sophisticated analysis on his interactions with the extreme right wing. Importantly, however, this autopsy will not provide us with what we ultimately seek, and that is the why. Why did he do it, what motivated him, how could he justify undertaking the attack? The UCC academic said it may never be known why he did it. But she said: What we can do is understand how the perpetrator planned and carried out the attack, we can discover the antecedent behaviours, we can understand the social network supporting the person and we can discover how chance and opportunity played a role in their involvement. In addition, she said: We can understand how a supportive political climate emerged that allowed his views to go unchallenged and constructed a minority population as an existential threat to our way of life. She said the language used in the public sphere can dehumanise minority populations and describe their presence as an invasion. She said: Finally, we can understand how the poisonous rhetoric of the XRW [extreme right wing] has successfully crept into the mainstream and has manifest itself as publicly acceptable forms of racism. Dr Lynch said the language may not be overtly about race, it was more likely to be about culture and identity but said the exclusionary rhetoric served to legitimise the XRW as an extension of moderate right-wing views. She said its capacity to seep into mainstream debate was one of the dangerous strengths of the increasingly prevalent ideological position. While there are significant conceptual and behavioural leaps to be made to bridge the gap between rhetoric and action we must not underestimate the power of legitimising narratives and the role they play in bolstering and legitimising the identity position of individuals like Tarrant, Dr Lynch said. Indivi duals do not operate in a vacuum and Tarrant is a product of our time, mobilised into action through the intersection of grand political narratives, virtual communities, revered ideologues and personal need. Dr Lynch is a board member of the EU-funded Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN), Europe. In her own research, she has interviewed more than 100 people convicted of involvement in terrorism and political violence. She said that understanding terrorism was, on the one hand, about understanding the terrorist, but more importantly, was about understanding the complex societal dynamics that made him possible. Well, I will actually answer the question, Lightfoot said. I hope this campaign and the fact that one of us as African-American women is going to be the next mayor of the city really gives hope to young girls that are out there and young men that are out there to know what my parents taught me: that anything is possible if you actually have the opportunity and take advantage of it and use it as a ladder up. Last year was one of the worst on record for forest fires with 90 reported on Coillte property alone. The most serious took place in the Slieve Blooms. Forest fires in 2018 cost the state forestry agency 4 million. Today Coillte is holding a training day in conjunction with the National Fire Service to highlight the dangers of forest fires. The training day also aims to highlight how people can avoid causing them. Mick Power, Coillte's Risk Manager, says people using forests need to be especially careful of campfires. "The people need to be more cognisant of what they are doing because you do have to remember that it's not just a commercial loss when these things happen, there is a huge environmental loss as well," said Mr Power. You're doing this in the middle of nesting season and there are some very rare and protected species out there and there's no point in burning them out of existence. Coillte wants to educate farmers and landowners without having to penalise them in the future. Mr Power says that rather than relying on a threat of fines, it would be better to educate everyone a little better. People need to be aware of what they should and should not do and the consequences of doing wrong both for themselves and other landowners. "You could actually be burning someone's pension," said Mr Power. Gardai have renewed their appeal for the public's help in locating a 15-year-old girl who is missing from Dublin. Nadine Walsh is missing from the Clontarf area since March 7. Dead calves were found at a farm in Blarney where there were other cattle without access to food or water and today a farmer was given a suspended six-month jail term for animal cruelty. The charges dated back three years and there was evidence that improvements had since been made under ongoing inspections from Department of Agriculture vets. Michael Holland, 52, of Courtbrack, Blarney, pleaded guilty to 12 counts arising out of the investigation. Judge Con OLeary said, after reading a lengthy psychiatric report on the accused man: What I think is that he should not be farming at all. I am quite pessimistic about the future. However, the judge said he would finalise the case and impose a six-month sentence suspended on condition that the accused would keep the peace and treat animals properly for the next two years. He imposed 50 fines on each of 11 other related offences. Department of Agriculture vet, James Hegarty, said Holland has reduced his herd number from 100 to 40 and sold half of his 140-acre farm and is now in a better position to buy fodder: I would contend that the cattle that are there now are probably as much as he can manage." Responding to Judge OLearys expression of pessimism, Mr Hegarty said: He is under supervision. Should it get to a stage where things are starting to slide we can put a stop to it. David OMeara, solicitor, said Holland has been diagnosed with a personality adjustment disorder which caused him a lot of difficulty in his farming and more generally. Despite selling 70 of his 140 acres to clear debts, Holland still has a list of further debts, the solicitor said: As well as being co-operative from the outset he has been through a very very difficult time personally. To his credit, he is battling and coming out of it. He has been through just about every type of pressure." Inspector Ronan Kennelly outlined the background to the case. He said that veterinary inspector Mary Cullinane contacted gardai to attend with her at the farm of Michael Holland as she had a concern of serious animal neglect: Gardai attended the scene with Mary Cullinane and Michael OSullivan, technical agriculture officer. In the farmyard adjacent to Michael Hollands house, gardai were shown 13 dead calves in various locations without any identification tags. There was a cow in a cattle shed unable to stand with no water or food. There was a carcass of a very decayed calf in the calf shed covered in straw. There were a number of other calves in this shed with no access to water or food and standing in appalling conditions. Nine heifers were in the shed with no water and eating poor silage that was nearby. There was a dead adult cow there also. Charges were for failing to take all necessary steps to ensure the welfare of an animal in his possession, in his control, and to ensure that the animal was not caused unnecessary, pain, suffering or injury, contrary to Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013 and one was for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal. A woman arrested for a public order offence including spitting in the direction of a Garda later said she would get him sacked as she was friends with the judge and he will sort me out. The same judge heard the case before Clonakilty District Court, where Christine Williamson denied making the comment at all, and also denied the public order charge and another of being intoxicated in a public place. Judge James McNulty was told by Garda Joseph Grimes that at 2.35am on July 7 last he was dealing with a man found urinating on Pearse St in Clonakilty in Co Cork when Ms Williamson, of 3 Parkview in the town, intervened. Garda Grimes said his colleague, Garda Kevin Kennedy, asked Ms Williamson to desist and to leave on three occasions before she spat in Garda Kennedys direction and called him a "pig. Garda Grimes told the court that after Ms Williamson had been placed, handcuffed, in the patrol car, she told Garda Kennedy she would have him sacked as she and Judge McNulty were friends. Garda Grimess statement was made seven months after the incident but in his evidence Garda Kennedy read from contemporaneous notes. They outlined how Ms Williamson had accused gardai of harassing her son and daughter, was intoxicated and then failed to comply with an order to leave the area. Christine Williamson spat on the ground in front of me and said fucking pigs, Garda Kennedy said, also telling the court that in the patrol car she had said the judge was her friend and he will definitely sort me out. Ms Williamson admitted she had drunk six pints of Coors Light in the two and a half hours before the incident but denied being drunk. She denied spitting or being abusive and said she only commented to gardai where are your manners after Garda Kennedy allegedly shouted at her to move on. She said she felt like she was being picked on and denied making the comments in the patrol car. Judge McNulty said the events of the night were like a reel of film with critical scenes missing. He said the evidence was insufficient regarding the public intoxication charge and dismissed it, but convicted Ms Williamson of the threatening or abusive words and behaviour charge, saying her memory of events may be deficient and that she lapsed from the standard of good behaviour. When things got out of hand her conduct deteriorated, he said. Ms Williamson, a mother of three, had no previous convictions and the judge fined her 100, adding that in his 15 years in West Cork he had found settled Travellers well regarded and respected in Clonakilty. At 3,000 Ireland will have the highest university fees in the EU after Brexit. That is according to the Union of Students in Ireland ahead of a protest today at Dublin's Trinity College. Third level students and staff will call on the government to respond to the growing crisis in higher education funding. USI President Siona Cahill outlines some of the issues they want to highlight: "This affects staffing issues, precarious contracts particularly affecting post-graduate students. "Also, when we look at some of our lecture halls they are really not fit for purpose." The aim of today's demonstration - which will include students, staff and trade unions - is to make clear that students will not be an easy target for cuts. Ms Cahill said that an increase in funding is necessary to secure a sustainable future for the funding of higher education in Ireland. "We need a sustainable funding model, a publicly-funded higher education to be sure that there is access for students coming after us," said Ms Cahill. Retailers in Cork City who led opposition to the St Patricks Street car ban are ready to move beyond the controversy and embrace change, according to one of the organisers of a meeting tonight on the future of retail. Michael Mulcahy, who heads up the Little Island business association, said several city centre retailers who were concerned about the impact of afternoon bus lanes on St Patricks Street felt their voice had not been heard during the debate on the so-called Pana ban. Some were perhaps guilty of focusing on the negativity when there is so much to be positive about, he said. They are a group of people who have always accepted that a proper public transport plan was required, and that bus lanes are part of that. But weve talked the Pana ban to death now. The negativity has done us no favours. We are moving beyond that now. This is no longer about dissension. Its about positivity and progress. The only way forward is a model of progression. Its about embracing change and looking at the retail model and adjusting to changing times. Mr Mulcahy was speaking ahead of tonights meeting in the Clayton Convention Centre Silver Springs on the future of retail, which will be addressed by David Fitzsimons, the CEO of Retail Excellence Ireland, and Bryan Rankin, its head of public affairs. Mr Mulcahy is listed as an organiser of the event alongside pharmacist John Minihan, jeweller Tim Keane, clothes shop owners Pam ORegan and Eddie Mullins, toy shop owner Wyon Stansfeld and shoe shop owner, Paul Gallagher, who is also a council member of Retail Excellence Ireland. All were very vocal in their opposition to the St Patricks St afternoon car ban when it was first introduced last March. While some declined to comment publicly when the traffic management measure was reintroduced last August, several have continued to voice concerns about its impact on the levels of city centre retail trade. Mr Mulcahy insisted that tonights meeting isnt about setting up a rival group to the Cork Business Association, which supported the reintroduction of the bus lanes and pushed for a range of supporting measures, including an extended park and ride service and free parking. Mr Mulcahy said that he hopes the meeting will lead to the development of an all of Cork retail model. The CBA is not solely retail. They have to satisfy a whole range of sectors and retailers felt they needed a voice, he said. It is estimated that the retail sector in Cork city and county employs around 35,000 people in 5,000 businesses and contributes more than 5bn to the Irish economy annually. Tonights meeting is scheduled to start at 6.30pm. Last month, city councillors voted again to back the bus lanes with FF Cllr Terry Shannon accusing those who are still engaged in negative commentary on the measure of cutting their own throats. The time-regulated bus lanes on St Patricks St operate 3pm to 6.30pm seven days a week. The measure is one of the most controversial elements of the wider City Centre Movement Strategy which is designed to future-proof the citys public transport system ahead of an influx of thousands of new city centre office jobs over the next two to three years. In these final stages of the election, theres such an overwhelming desire for change in every neighborhood. Its like a chorus singing at full throttle, Lightfoot said. I think thats what people in this city want. Its very clear theres a distinct difference between Madam President and who I am, and what I represent and what she represents. Tributes have been paid to HPV vaccine campaigner Laura Brennan, who has died from cervical cancer at the age of 26. In 2017 Ms Brennan contacted the HSE following her diagnosis to offer her help in promoting the vaccine, which she was too old to receive when it was first introduced to Irish schools. Ms Brennans family confirmed that the Clare native died in University Hospital Limerick yesterday. Laura was a light in the life of everyone who knew her; a wonderful daughter, sister and friend. We are lost without her, said the Brennan family in a statement. We are all incredibly proud of the work she did in the last 18 months to help protect other young women like herself from the cancer that has taken her life today. Laura used her voice, her generosity and her energy to help parents to make informed choices and protect their daughters from cervical cancer. She wanted to make a difference, and use the time that she had to right what she felt was a great wrong. Clare County Council has announced it will open a book of condolences following Ms Brennans death. Health Minister Simon Harris said he was deeply saddened to learn of Lauras passing. Laura was an incredible young woman and a powerful campaigner, said Mr Harris. Despite her illness, she continued her advocacy and, thanks in no small part to her sheer determination, the uptake of the HPV vaccine has increased among young women. The State owes her a debt of gratitude. As a person, she was kind, funny, and full of life. Her enthusiasm was infectious. Every time I met Laura or spoke with her, I was inspired by her. Amazing doesnt do justice to her or her courage. I want to extend my deepest condolences to her family and friends, said Mr Harris. The HSE said over 22,000 girls got the HPV vaccine this month, and that the uptake of the vaccine has increased almost 20 percentage points since Ms Brennan contacted them, from 51% in 2017 to 70% now. Anne OConnor, interim HSE director general, said the HSE feels immense gratitude and admiration for her and her family. Laura has defined courage and generosity as she supported our work to ensure girls get the HPV vaccine, and are protected from this terrible cancer, said Ms OConnor. Laura came forward when she was first diagnosed with terminal cancer and our mission became hers. We know that Laura has made a difference, and will have saved lives through her great effort and her tremendous generosity of spirit. Irish Cancer Society Paul Connors, HSE National Director of Communications, said Ms Brennan, her parents, and brothers have given everyone in Ireland a remarkable gift. At a moment when her time was most precious, she chose to stand in the public eye and tell her story, in order to help others. She has reached many thousands of families, through her remarkable videos as part of our advertising campaign, by telling her story in the media on television, radio, print and online, and by speaking at events all over the country, he said. Chief executive Averil Power said Ms Brennan showed tremendous strength and bravery in talking about her cervical cancer. Her selfless honesty inspired us all. Through her steadfast determination she influenced parents to make an informed decision to give their daughters the HPV vaccine and protect them against an illness which was to take her life. Lauras legacy is already clear. "In many homes across the country, parents will have her to thank for saving their daughters lives. Through vaccination and the best possible screening programme for women, Ireland can potentially eliminate cervical cancer within a generation. In memory of Laura and her tireless work, we must work towards this goal with more determination than ever, said Ms Power. Students walked out of classes for a lunchtime demonstration at UCC and CIT today. The students are striking as part of the 'Fund the Future' campaign, launched by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI). Students say that funding cuts and increased student contribution charges have undermined services on campuses nationally and threaten to have an impact for many years to come. At both Cork protests, students were joined by staff members in solidarity. USI president, Siona Cahill, said that after Brexit, Irish students will pay more for their education than any others in the EU. She described the situation as unacceptable. In Cork, students made their voices heard. Kelly Coyle, deputy president of UCC Students Union, said: "We're calling for more higher education funding. Fees are increasing, the cost of living is increasing and grants are declining. It's having an impact. The doctors is constantly full, lectures are full and buildings are falling apart because the university doesn't have the money to put into it." Staff unions, including IFUT, the lecturers Union, and SIPTU, which represents 600 administrative staff at UCC, joined the students. They say that funding cuts are causing longer hours, fewer resources and more stress for staff. Edward Lahiff, IFUT chairman, said: "We see it every day in staff:student ratios; the delays of new appointments; and the lack of new resources. We are all struggling to make up the differences." Students and staff at third level campuses to walk out of lectures this afternoon Students and staff at third level campuses will walk out of lectures this afternoon to shine a light on the growing crisis in higher education funding. Major demonstrations will take place on the main campuses of UCC and CIT as part of the 'Fund the Future' campaign, with students set to walk out of classes at 1pm. Students from several other third level institutions will also strike at lunchtime. The campaign, started by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), calls for immediate investment in higher education in Ireland. Today students and staff across the nation come together to demand an end to the crisis in Higher Education. Government is pretending that everything is thing - it isnt. Fees are high, grants are low, work conditions are poor, facilities are crumbling #FundTheFuture pic.twitter.com/AdTTFF2Cph Oisin Hassan (@OisinH1) March 21, 2019 The current student contribution charge is 3,000 per annum. The figure increased by 363% between 2007 and 2014. Over the same period, third level funding was reduced, with students at UCC and CIT claiming that this had a significant impact on campus facilities, such as counselling services. Siona Cahill, USI President, said that the current situation is 'unacceptable.' "The sobering facts for students today is that at 3,000, Ireland will have the highest fees in the EU after Brexit. Meanwhile, SUSI grants have not increased for students in line with the cost of living and soaring rents in Ireland today," she said. "Students and staff will join us in actions across all college campuses in a powerful action making clear that we will not be an easy target for cuts." Today, staff and students across the Country will join together to demand change. For far too long students have been exploited by a system that is crumbling due to a managed decline in funding. Today is the day to have your voice heard #FundtheFuture pic.twitter.com/na4xAKE2rt John #EducationForAll (@USI_South) March 21, 2019 In a statement, the Coalition for Publicly Funded Education said that the funding issues now will continue to have a major impact in the future. "The Department of Education and Skills has accepted the findings of the detailed analysis of the scale of the funding deficit that was carried out by various expert groups on their behalf. If urgent action is not taken, theres a real risk that todays 7 and 8-year old primary school students will not have sufficient college places available to them in 2030 when the demographic bulge peaks with an additional 40,000 students seeking to access third level." A new student group is organising an event at Dublins Spire this Saturday to highlight Islamophobia and far-right extremism in the wake of the recent terror attacks in New Zealand. The organisation, Calling All Allies, says it hopes people will travel from around the country for the gathering, which will host a number of speeches. Organisers stressed that the event while involving Muslim students from universities is for everyone, as it was highlighting shared concerns of hatred as well as marking the 50 lives lost in attacks on two mosques in Christchurch last Friday. Calling All Allies is a newly formed group of students from different universities across Dublin students from the college Islamic societies and also different human rights groups, like LGBT, said Ahmad Ryklief, a final-year student at DIT. We have come together as one group. Its not an Islamic group, but a group from different societies. He said they were working in collaboration with the Islamic Foundation of Ireland (IFI), better known as the Dublin Mosque, on the South Circular Road. The group posted on the IFI Facebook page and they are using IFI facilities to email mosques and organisations across the country, as well as inter-faith and anti-racism groups. We want to get as many people as possible to attend, said Mr Ryklief, a student of mathematical sciences. He said they wanted to show solidarity with the victims of the attacks. There was a very anxious reaction to New Zealand, he said. The reaction was: We need to do something about this. Hopefully it will not happen here. He said the attack felt closer to home as New Zealand and Ireland were similar in many ways: the overall size of the population; the size of the Muslim population; the good relationship between the communities, and the previous lack of such violence. He said it should make people question any sense of complacency that it could not happen in Ireland. We need to raise awareness of this attack. We dont want this to happen to us here, sitting in Friday prayer at a mosque and something like this happening. This is in solidarity with New Zealand and to stand up against Islamophobia and far-right extremism. But he said the issue was wider than just Islamophobia: This was an attack on a mosque, its the same as an attack on a church or a synagogue. Yes, we are saying no to Islamophobia, but we are also saying no to racism, no to hatred, no to fascism. We are expecting Muslims and non-Muslims to attend, its for everyone. Ahmad said that while far-right groups were small in size in Ireland, Islamophobia was a wider problem, which he said both himself and other Muslims have experienced.I know many people who have experienced Islamophobia, especially ladies wearing headscarves, he said. He said people will be meeting at different universities at 3pm on Saturday and then gathering at the Spire for 5pm. Tomorrow, the Irish Muslim Peace and Integration Council is holding a special memorial gathering at the Islamic Centre of Ireland in west Dublin for victims of the mosque terror attacks. The event will take place on the Muslim holy day at the mosque in Coolmine Industrial Estate, Blanchardstown, between 1.30-2.30pm. The Tanaiste has defended the 130,000 salary proposed for directly elected mayors in Cork, Limerick and Waterford, insisting thats whats required to attract the right candidates. Simon Coveney said the role, if sanctioned by plebiscite in May, will come with substantial executive powers and would, in the case of Cork City, create the most powerful politician outside Cabinet. The salary is at that rate because it needs to be. This will be a serious, full-time job that will require a lot of energy, a lot of drive, 14-hour days, he said. He was speaking after the Cabinet signed off on a memo from Junior Minister John Paul Phelan on the range of powers proposed for the new offices. People in Cork, Limerick and Waterford will be asked on May 24 the same day as the local and European elections to either back or reject the proposal which will be discussed by citizens assembly in Dublin later. The government had been criticised recently for the lack of detail on the proposal. Following yesterdays Cabinet meeting, details have emerged which show that if the plebiscite passes, the first mayors could be elected in 2022. The mayors would have powers in housing, planning, roads and the corporate function of the council, and would replace the council chief executive in preparing policy in these areas. The mayor would also replace the CEO as the person responsible for ensuring all decisions of the elected council are lawful. The CEO will, however, retain powers to allocate social housing, grant licences or permits, and to deal with enforcement matters such as planning. The relationship between the two will be similar to that between a minister and the secretary general of a government department. While mayors will be elected for a five-year term and be allowed serve no more than two terms, the initial term will be for two-and-a-half years to allow for transfers of power. A mayor would have a deputy mayor, nominated by the mayor from the existing council but subject to approval by council vote. Salaries for the three offices will cost 1m a year. The council would have oversight of the mayors performance and would also have the power, in certain circumstances, to remove the mayor from the role. Mr Coveney said he plans to campaign for a yes vote to create the office of directly elected mayors. The creation of this role, if the people agree, is quite exciting especially in Cork, in the context of the pace of change and growth the expanding city will face in the future, he said. The mayor will represent over 200,000 people, with a large budget, in a new position which will be as powerful as a minister of state, if not more powerful, speaking for Cork city. Its all part of the same objective, to empower Cork for an exciting period of growth. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said it is time to cut the British government some slack in order to allow them to avoid a crash-out Brexit. Speaking in Dublin, Mr Varadkar said when he arrives for the EU summit in Brussels tomorrow, he will be arguing that prime minister Theresa May be given some space to seek to get approval for her deal. Mr Varadkar also confirmed that a package of supports for Irish farmers and exporters to aid them through a no-deal Brexit was agreed by Cabinet and will be ready by next week. He said the fund, worth hundreds of millions of Euro, is being finalised with the EU Commission as to how it will be paid for. We are continuing with no-deal planning. Packages are being finalised for supports for farmers, for the agri-food sector and for exporters, he said. That is currently being finalised with the EU Commission and we are working out to what extent it will be funded by the EU Commission and to what extent it will be funded by borrowing on behalf of the Irish State. And we will be ready to deploy that if we need to next week, should a no-deal arise, he added. Mr Varadkar said his Government has always said wed be open to an extension if there was a purpose to it and I think its important that we hear from her first and well respond as 27, as the European Union, in the next couple of days. Asked whether he believed that the French president will veto an extension, Mr Varadkar said: No. It is my understanding, and people will know this from his public comments, that he is sceptical about an extension. A lot of people in the European Union want this resolved. Its been going on for over two years now. Theres a lot of frustration across the European Union. Mr Varadkar said it is time to cut the UK government some slack. There is a real risk that we wish to avoid of no-deal happening by accident despite peoples best intentions, he said. Its time now to cut them some slack, to cut the British government some slack, when it comes to their request for an extension and when it comes to their request that the Strasbourg Agreement be ratified formally by the European Council over the next two days. He added that the Irish Government was willing to support both of the British requests, but he reiterated that it was not entertaining any change to the Withdrawal Agreement or the backstop. EU leaders are preparing to hold an emergency summit next week should it be required to avoid a disorderly Brexit, following another day of chaos in Westminster. Amid growing frustration across Europe at the mounting crisis in London, British prime minister Theresa May stands humiliated, having been forced to formally request a three-month extension from EU leaders to avoid a no-deal scenario. Ms May yesterday formally wrote to European Council president Donald Tusk requesting the exit day on March 29 be postponed until June 30. She delivered an aggressive attack on her colleagues at Westminster both in the House of Commons and on television last night, laying the blame squarely on MPs for forcing the delay. Speaking on the 1,000th day since the 2016 referendum, Ms May delivered an ill-tempered attack on MPs for forcing the delay. It is high time we made a decision. So far, parliament has done everything possible to avoid making a choice. Motion after motion and amendment after amendment have been tabled without parliament ever deciding what it wants. All MPs have been willing to say is what they do not want. I passionately hope MPs will find a way to back the deal I have negotiated with the EU, she said. Ms May, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and other European leaders will today gather in Brussels in a last-ditch bid to avoid a disorderly Brexit on March 29. A short delay to Brexit will be possible, provided the British parliament approves Theresa Mays deal, Mr Tusk said. In the light of the consultations that I have conducted over the past days, I believe that a short extension would be possible. But it would be conditional on a positive vote on the Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons, he told reporters. The question remains open as to the duration of such an extension, he added. Mr Tusk indicated that it should be possible for leaders of the remaining EU 27 to approve his plan at a summit in the Belgian capital starting today, but said patience is wearing thin. Even if the hope for final success may seem frail, even illusory, and although Brexit fatigue is increasingly visible and justified, we cannot give up seeking until the very last moment a positive solution of course without opening up the Withdrawal Agreement, he said. Mr Tusk said he would call an emergency summit next week, if required. However, if there is such a need, I will not hesitate to invite the members of the European Council for a meeting to Brussels next week, he said. Mr Varadkar has said it is time to cut the British government some slack in order to allow them to avoid a crash-out Brexit. Speaking in Dublin, Mr Varadkar said when he arrives in Brussels for the EU summit, he will be arguing that Ms May be given some space to seek to get approval for her deal. There is a real risk that we wish to avoid of no-deal happening by accident despite peoples best intentions, he said. Its time now to cut them some slack, to cut the British government some slack, when it comes to their request for an extension and when it comes to their request that the Strasbourg Agreement be ratified formally by the European Council over the next two days. He added that his Government was willing to support both requests, but that it was not entertaining any change to the Withdrawal Agreement or the backstop. An agreement on such an extension is not certain however, as France, Spain and Belgium are ready to veto a Brexit extension. Some member states worry there is no point to an extension as, even after 1,000 days of negotiation, Ms Mays deal keeps being rejected and the EU cannot move any further towards the UK. Cervical cancer campaigner Vicky Phelan says HPV vaccine campaigner Laura Brennan's legacy will be that she saved thousands of lives. I would love if we could get a figure on that so her parents would know how amazing Laura was and what she achieved, said Ms Phelan. But there is no doubt in my mind that she will have saved thousands of women from the fate that she had to endure. Ms Phelan, who was speaking on RTE radio, said Laura did not want any other women to go through what she was facing into. The two campaigners had met a number of times and kept in touch by telephone and social media. What I was struck by was her positivity. For a girl so young facing into a terminal illness, I could not get over how positive she was. That really stuck with me," said Ms Phelan. She did not think Laura realised the effect she had and was glad that she got to see that the uptake of the HPV vaccine had increased from 50 to 70% since she started fronting the HSE's campaign: I am glad that she got to see that because that is all down to Laura. #ThankYouLaura I am only now finding out about Laura's death. I have no words, just tears & emptiness at the loss of another young woman who used what was left of her time to campaign so that others would NOT suffer her fate. Please, please vaccinate your children #HPVvaccine https://t.co/lZpGQXUfsC Vicky Phelan (@PhelanVicky) March 20, 2019 Ms Phelan said she did not think she could have achieved the same impact as Laura because she was so young. The young people need to see that this disease affects very young women as well. She was a beautiful looking girl; very glamorous. And I think she really hit the message home that this is an illness that can hit young girls as well. Ms Phelan said her 13-year-old daughter received her first dose of the HPV vaccine last October and is due to have her second shot in the next couple of weeks: I did not hesitate because unfortunately, cervical cancer can be hereditary. There was always a chance my daughter could get it. It can run down family lines." Her daughter also has a congenital disorder a disease that affects her immune system. If she is willing to give her daughter the HPV vaccine, all parents should be doing the same thing, she says. Ms Pelan said she is in the unfortunate situation of having to hear about women dying from cervical cancer between Emma Mhic Mhathuna, Julie O'Reilly, Orla Church, Alice Taylor and now Laura and it is very upsetting. It just goes to show that if anything good can come out of this it is for women to see how serious this illness is. All of these women have needlessly died. You can prevent this by going for screening and having your children vaccinated. That is my message and that was Laura's message. Chief executive of the Irish Cancer Society, Averil Power, said it took Laura a huge amount of courage and strength for her to contact the HSE and offer to front their HPV vaccine campaign. Ms Power said Laura used the time she had left to help so many people. She was determined to make sure that no other woman would have to go through what she endured: Thanks to Laura the vaccine uptake has increased dramatically." Ms Power said Laura had an incredible selfless determination like Ms Phelan to use her experience and voice to help other women. Earlier, broadcaster, Ryan Tubridy, paid an emotional tribute to Laura during his radio show: There's something about Laura Brennan; there's something about that positivity that will linger a long time on the minds of many of us. People are saying that they got their son or daughter vaccinated because of Laura; that's a win for Laura; that's a win for her family, for her legacy. In fashion there often seems to be something in the ether - whether thats a trend for a colour, or a shape that determines a space in time - the trend for beige this season, for example, or the instantly recognisable silhouette of the 80s power shoulder. A glance at the international fashion week catwalks reveals that AW19 looks set to be characterised by protest as design houses Dior (under its first female artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri) and Viktor & Rolf utilise fashion to make declarations of protest or intent. Closer to home, Irish designer Natalie B. Coleman has become known for the strong feminist rhetoric which runs through her work, and, in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), this feminist sensibility and this call to sisterhood pulses through the body of her AW19 collection, SISTERS. Unveiled at a powerfully emotive show during London Fashion Week last month, the collection, and its presentation using several models of various ages, including a mother and her three daughters, has received critical acclaim, prompting coverage in international publications including fashion bibles Womens Wear Daily, Vogue Italia and Fashionista.com. It was wonderful to have Aisling Farinella, Rebecca Knox, Ena Quinn and Celina Bassili on board to help create the presentation, says Coleman of the London Fashion Week show. Once we had all the right women the energy was really great between them. "The models we chose were all beautiful but their strong personalities also shone through. The older model was such a strong mother figure that even those models who werent her daughters had a great affinity with her, she says. I was really open to whoever came along to the model casting on the day and it worked out really well in terms of the ideas of family and sisterhood running through the collection. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development and 24 years since the Beijing Conference - two landmark events which resulted in sexual and reproductive rights becoming fundamental human rights. Colemans SISTERS collection is inspired by the powerful bonds that exist between women in an increasingly globalised digital age and the power that sisterhood can have in mobilising social change for women across the globe. Working with a team of skilled craftspeople including Carrickmacross Lace makers Marion Egan and Theresa Kelly, embroidery expert and designer Jill de Burca, and knitted textiles designer Katie Hanlan, Coleman has produced an extraordinary womenswear collection of exquisite beauty but one which also strikes deeply at the heart of issues such as female empowerment, reproductive rights and female genital mutilation (FGM). Traditional techniques such as lacemaking, weaving, knitting and hand-embroidery are given an entirely new treatment in the collection through the creation of lace collars featuring the female reproductive system. Theres the designers Vagina Cake sweater and the exquisitely embroidered bridal gown featuring Carrickmacross lacework on the sleeves which was inspired by statistics on child marriage. While the rate of child marriage i.e. marriage under the age of 18 years, is declining, UNICEF states that approximately 650 million girls and women alive today were married before their 18th birthday - a situation that violates the fundamental human rights of girls and young women and which often leads to limitations on schooling, early pregnancy and increased risk of domestic violence. One of the women who helped Coleman to realise her creative vision for SISTERS is lacemaker and artist Theresa Kelly who was approached by the designer to produce the lace sleeves for the wedding gown in the collection. A renowned artist in her own right, Kelly takes the traditional techniques of Carrickmacross Lace and updates them for a new era resulting in skilled and intricate contemporary art pieces for a modern audience. My background is in art and design and when I first came across Carrickmacross Lace (being taught by a woman called Kathleen Flanagan) I felt that there was a wide open perspective to be found in the lace. That has been what has kept me going for the past thirty years, says Kelly, whose contemporary artworks often incorporate other materials such as stone and wood. Natalie B Coleman x UNFPA. Carrickmacross Lace is alive - it can be very vibrant and exciting and has amazing potential. I usually dont collaborate with people, but when Natalie contacted me about her collection I saw straight away that what she wanted - the high relief, 3D work - fitted in so well with what I was doing with my own work. I loved the theme of the collection and I love Natalies quirky sense of humour. No matter what she does I know its going to be good as I know the quality of her design work. Carrickmacross Lace has an expressive quality within it and it can have a most dynamic quality - which fits into what Natalie wanted, says Kelly. Plus it has the edgiest message of anything Ive seen in lace making for ages - that is definitely the reason I was interested in working with Natalie, says Kelly. That tension between working within the tight technique of the lacemaking whilst it being limitless in terms of what you can do with it is something I enjoy exploring. The lace allows the lacemaker to interpret the design - anyone who knows my work would recognise it in the SISTERS piece. The sleeves Kelly produced for Coleman have all the traditional techniques of Carrickmacross Lace - the pops, the applique work, the guipure work and the loops - but they also have a contemporary 3D element which Kelly has developed over time using traditional techniques. Colemans mainline SISTERS collection featuring these time-consuming and intricate methods of embellishment will be complimented by a collection of printed hoodies, t-shirts and scarves which are ethically produced using organic cotton - ten percent of the profits from the sale of which will go to UNFPA. These garments are emblazoned with bold, powerful motifs depicting the sword. Its a depiction which represents both the practice of FGM and the etymology of the word vagina: the scabbard or sheath for a sword from the Latin root of the word. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 200 million women alive right now across the globe have been cut in the practice of FGM. This practice is usually carried out between infancy and the age of 15 and includes several different methods of mutilation of the vulva, clitoris or vagina in a practice that has no medical benefit and is decreed a violation of human rights by the UN and the WHO. While the theme of London Fashion Week this season may have #PositiveFashion, for Natalie B. Coleman using fashion as a conduit for powerful statements is nothing new. For me its not a trend - its something Ive been working towards. I was really happy to partner with the UNFPA on this collection and we are going to continue working together, says Coleman, whose Guaranteed to Bleed sweaters caught the eye of a UNFPA representative at last years Wearing Irish event in New York. Its not the first time Natalie B. Coleman has produced collections in a feminist vein, and she is informed, not just by her design background, but also by her studies on the Master of Philosophy program for Gender and Womens Studies at Trinity College, Dublin. It sounds naff to say it but Ive always been a feminist - long before it was part of the context of my work, she says. But now feminism really informs my design process. David Hare tells Esther McCarthy about writing a film on the early career and defection of Rudolf Nureyev. He was the rising megastar of dance who captivated Paris and whose shock defection at the very height of the Cold War created a crisis. Now a new movie about Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev regarded as the very greatest male dancer of all time aims to piece together why he made the life-changing decision to turn his back on his home country. Gifted and charismatic but also notoriously volatile and difficult, The White Crow focuses on Nureyevs earlier career and the period leading up to his defection to the west while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris in 1961. As far as the films screenwriter David Hare is concerned, it was driven by a desire to dance rather than a political motivation. It was nothing to do with politics. It was to do with freedom and freedom to dance specifically, Hare believes. He knew the minute they said to him: Youve got to go back home to dance for Khrushchev. He smelt a rat. And then they changed the story and said: No actually your mothers ill. He got two stories and he knew that was the end of him as a dancer. He would never get out of Russia again. He would never get to dance the parts he wants to dance. It was a choice between being able to dance and not being able to dance. Nureyev had irked Russian authorities by ignoring strict supervision rules during the Paris tour, partying late at night with western dancers and intellectuals. But there were other reasons not to return to Moscow, believes Hare. He wanted to dance modern. He loved the classical repertory but he felt that modern dance was happening in the west. "And secondly he was in a very difficult menage with the wife of his ballet teacher who was having an affair with him. "And they were living three in a small room. I dont think he was desperate to go back to that. FIENNES TIME Hare, a renowned playwright and theatre director who has penned two Oscar-nominated screenplays (for The Reader and The Hours) was invited to script the movie by long-term collaborator and the films director, Ralph Fiennes. He wanted to get me interested in the ballet which is very unlikely because I knew absolutely nothing about ballet. But he got me to read this Julie Kavanagh book first of all which is an official biography of Nureyev. "We quickly decided that we only wanted to concentrate on his youth and that the idea would be that wed make a film about Nureyev before he became the sacred monster that he later became, before the mask became the mask and before his character became fixed. I suppose we wanted to catch that moment which fixed it and to look at his defection, what it was about, why he defected and all the influences on him which is why we felt we had to go back to Russia. "We then set about researching it, meeting the people who are still alive, of whom the most important is obviously Clara Saint who is the woman who actually effected his defection. She hasnt talked a lot about it but who trusted us and wanted to talk to us. And I think also now shes older, shes at the end of her career. I think she felt that she would like the record to be set straight. Intriguingly, Hare had actually met Nureyev a number of times while the dancer was dancing in London with Margot Fonteyn. By then he had become a huge star and they had a mutual friend who was Russian. Nureyev tended to enjoy the company of Russians and so he would go down to their house in the country for a few days at a time to get away from all the hysteria in London. So if I went with my friend he would be there. I dont think Ive ever since met anybody who so dominated a room. It was a characteristic he had that everybody was just worrying about him all the time. Everyone would be going is Rudy all right? Was Rudy enjoying himself? Is Rudy bored, is Rudy hungry? "He just had this ability to make everybody in the room directed towards him. You couldnt look at anybody else in the room when he was in it. He was commanding as a person and he brought that same quality of command to the stage. Screenwriter David Hare. Did the young Hare ever approach the star to speak with him? I was terrified of him, he smiles in response. I was 19 years old and he was the most famous dancer in the world. I was absolutely scared stiff of him. Most people were. Fiennes and his team took the brave and challenging step of casting a dancer in the lead role. Russian dancer Oleg Ivenko is captivating as Nureyev but is unknown in film and hadnt acted on screen before. Hare agreed with Fiennes belief that he could teach a dancer to act but not an actor to dance to the standard required. Casting directors trawled through several Russian ballet companies looking for the right person. It just seemed to both me and to Ralph that Oleg was outstanding. But then Oleg became this wonderful actor as he went along. He had to learn to speak English as well, he didnt speak a word of English. DIFFICULT PROJECT You get the sense that The White Crow was a difficult project to get over the line. It was probably the most apprehensive film Ive ever worked. The financiers were apprehensive because Ralph was insisting that 50% of it is in Russian. "Everybody was apprehensive about the film being carried by a young man who had no experience. Kevin OHare who is the director of the Royal Ballet in London, saw the film recently and he said this is the first film ever made about ballet in which there are no cringe-making moments for the professional. Despite his many film successes, Hare has stayed close to his theatrical roots, where plays like Plenty, Pravda and Racing Demon first established him as a major force in British and international theatre. I was over 50 when I was first nominated for an Oscar so that the great thing was it was too late to turn my head. I didnt get knocked off course but it would be true to say, you know, Ive spent more time on television this decade. I did the Worricker Trilogy. I did Collateral. "Ever since The Hours, basically, its been much easier for me to get to make the work I want on film and television. The White Crow is in cinemas tomorrow, Friday. For more than two years, British prime minister Theresa May insisted that her country would leave the European Union at 11pm on March 29 next. On the record, from the dispatch box in the House of Commons, she said it 108 times. That was until yesterday the 1,000th day since the Brexit referendum which delivered a 52%-48% majority to quit the EU. Yesterday, she went cap in hand, and formally wrote to the EU seeking a short extension until June 30 in a bid to avoid a disorderly exit. That in itself was yet another humiliating climbdown from a prime minister who has made being a loser a way of life, while attempting bravely to carry on. The reaction from Europe was mixed, to say the least. The European Commission released a briefing note which opposed the idea of extending to June 30, adding that any extension beyond May 24, when EU elections will be held, would require Britain to elect MEPs, which would be highly controversial in current circumstances. EU European Council president Donald Tusk struck a slightly more conciliatory tone, saying an extension would be permissible, but with one major condition. Mr Tusk, a droll former Polish prime minister, told a press conference in Brussels: In the light of the consultations that I have conducted over the past days, I believe that a short extension would be possible. But it would be conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons. The question remains open as to the duration of such an extension. Mr Tusk gave voice to the growing Brexit fatigue in capital cities across the continent which was echoed by comments from Paris, Rome, and Madrid. France, Spain, Belgium, and maybe Italy stand prepared to reject an extension without evidence parliament is now ready to accept a deal and the deadlock can be broken. In Dublin, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar called for Ms May to be given a break in order to avoid a disorderly Brexit, which of course would be disastrous for Ireland. Its time now to cut them some slack, to cut the British government some slack, when it comes to their request for an extension and when it comes to their request that the Strasbourg Agreement be ratified formally by the European Council over the next two days. He added that the Irish Government was willing to support both of those requests but that it was not entertaining any change to the withdrawal agreement or the backstop. EU leaders meet in Brussels today in order to reach some agreement which could allow a third meaningful vote in the House of Commons to take place on Monday. Were that to fail, either to happen or to pass, Mr Tusk made it clear he would not hesitate to call an emergency summit next week. If the leaders approve my recommendations and there is a positive vote in the House of Commons next week, we can finalise and formalise the decision on extension in the written procedure, he said. However, if there is such a need, I will not hesitate to invite the members of the European Council for a meeting to Brussels next week. Mr Tusk added: Even if the hope for final success may seem frail, even illusory, and although Brexit fatigue is increasingly visible and justified, we cannot give up seeking until the very last moment a positive solution of course, without opening up the withdrawal agreement. Ms May stood a broken woman in Downing St last night addressing her people, but refusing to bow out, when all hope appears lost. She insisted her deal, which has been rejected twice so overwhelmingly by the Commons, is still the only deal possible. Such inflexibility from Ms May, unfortunately for Ireland, greatly increases the chances of a no-deal Brexit. Massacres like the Christchurch shootings are not, as some claim, isolated attacks carried out by disturbed individuals but are clearly part of a growing pattern, writes Bjorn Ihler. Last week, a far-right extremist killed at least 50 people including a three-year-old child worshiping at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch. Neither white supremacy, nor racially motivated terrorist attacks carried out in its name, are new phenomena. Yet the response to far-right terrorism remains thoroughly insufficient. After the New Zealand massacre, US President Donald Trump dismissed the threat of white nationalism as a case of a small group of people with a very, very serious problem. This fits into a broader trend, in which attacks by perpetrators with Muslim backgrounds are immediately classified as acts of terror and addressed in a well-resourced and systemic way, while violent attacks perpetrated in the name of other ideologies are treated as an isolated incident. But there is nothing isolated about such incidents. According to the Global Terrorism Index 2018, the death toll from terrorist attacks associated with far-right groups or individuals has been steadily rising since 2014. In the US, right-wing extremists have carried out far more attacks than Islamists. The attack in Christchurch was directly inspired by the 2011 far-right terrorist attack in Norway, of which I am one of the few lucky survivors. Indeed, the Christchurch gunman, Brenton Tarrant, claims to have received the blessing of the perpetrator of the Norway attack, Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people that day. Breivik is far from Tarrants only white-supremacist role model. In his rambling manifesto, released just before the attack, Tarrant also mentions other far-right extremists such as Dylann Roof, who killed nine African-Americans in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. All of this goes against the notion that massacres like the Christchurch shootings are cases of disturbed individuals mentally ill lone wolves carrying out a one-time attack. These attacks are clearly part of a broader pattern, which demands a response on par with all other counter-terrorism efforts. Such a response must, first and foremost, acknowledge the link between resurgent far-right nationalism and the casual racism and dog-whistle politics that have been creeping back into many societies public discourse. My colleagues and I at Extremely Together, a counter-extremism youth-engagement initiative convened by the Kofi Annan Foundation, have been following this trend with growing concern. Several of us know first-hand what it is like to live through terrorist attacks. We also know that, when Trump warns that immigrants will infest the US, he is feeding the narrative that some people are sub-human. That narrative also taken up by other leaders, such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has real-world consequences, including the emboldening of extreme actors. It comes as no surprise that Tarrant praised Trump in his manifesto as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose. The response to this intensifying terrorist threat must also reflect the fact that, like Islamist extremism, violent white supremacists are organising across borders, becoming increasingly closely connected and eager to amplify one anothers messages. To counter this trend, governments and civil-society organisations must work to boost coordination and information-sharing, just as they do in response to Islamist terror. Media also have a role to play. In order to maximise control over his message of hate and its dissemination, Tarrant live-streamed his attack on Facebook. But many news organisations then posted parts of the video on their own platforms, arguably spreading the perpetrators violent message for the sake of clicks. Rather than make themselves accomplices and amplifiers of terror, news organisations must stick to fact-based reporting that avoids spreading terrorist propaganda. A debate may be needed and should be welcomed to help journalists find the right balance, so that they provide comprehensive independent reporting without becoming tools of extremists. Of course, part of the responsibility also lies with social media platforms like Facebook. Todays digital technologies offer an immediate, high-impact channel through which terrorists can reach a global audience, often in real time. Facebook and others must take their share of the responsibility and find ways to prevent their platforms from being used in this manner. Even as far-right extremism surges, most of the worlds people recognise that there is more that unites us than that divides us. Effective responses to poverty, climate change, epidemics, and much else require cooperation across not just territorial borders, but also racial, ethnic, or religious lines. For my colleagues and I in Extremely Together, the imperative could not be clearer. We must stand together against all forms of extremism, uniting in opposition to the hateful messages including from our elected leaders that embolden terrorists of all stripes. Bjrn Ihler, a survivor of the attack on Utya in Norway in July 2011, is part of Extremely Together, a counter-extremism youth-engagement initiative convened by the Kofi Annan Foundation. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2019. New Zealanders didnt think they were a target, either. Our gun control is better. But does anyone seriously think the Christchurch massacres couldnt happen in an Irish mosque? There was a mosque invasion in Kilkenny, when a small group entered the mosque and questioned the imam about the so-called threat Muslims pose to Ireland. Groups affiliated to Pegida in Germany (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident) demonstrated in 2015 against mosques in Tralee and Killarney. Pegida Ireland launched outside the GPO in 2016 and Identity Ireland has registered as a political party with an anti-immigrant agenda. Though Ireland currently scores low for Islamophobia by international standards, there is plenty here and lots of scope for it to grow. A tweet from Gemma ODoherty, who hoped to run for the Presidency last year, which she posted in the wake of the New Zealand massacres, should raise the hair on all our heads. She said the atrocity has all the hallmarks of a classic false flag operation to incite fresh IS attacks, allow the globalists take more control over people and remove freedom a la 9/11. A professional job. The public are no longer fooled. The grieving family of Mucaad Ibrahim, who was only three when he was killed in the attacks last Friday, have most certainly been fooled into thinking a vicious, racist attack ended the life of their precious boy. The hundreds of grieving relations of the other 49 who were dead at the last count were fooled in the same way. Imagine if by some fluke, Gemma ODoherty had got to the Aras? Alright, she didnt even get to be a candidate, but few gave Donald Trump a chance either and it is arguable that his shameless targeting of Muslims with a travel ban has provided leadership for racist extremists. Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed six Muslims in a mosque in Montreal in 2014 said it was Justin Trudeaus refusal to follow Trumps lead which made him lose his mind and think that it was time to go, while the Christchurch murderer, Brenton Tarrant said he regarded Trump as a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose. He is Australian and you can argue that, as such, he is not New Zealands fault. You can argue that extremism is an international phenomenon and all we can offer Irish Muslims is enhanced security. I dont agree. Islamophobia is a bit like climate change changes in the atmosphere here add to the global temperature. We must recognise, before there is another horrific attack, that right wing extremism is now our biggest threat and that Islamophobia is growing fast. We must turn our education system around to make Islam understood as part of what we are, part of what we have always been. They are us, in the words of New Zealand premier, Jacinda Ardern. If it doesnt prevent another international attack, at least it would make life decent and dignified for Irish Muslims. We should counter our Islamophobia by approaching Islam from our own cultural background. Most of us were schooled by Christians. Islam has the same basic values. It is one of the three great faces of Monotheism, the other two being Christianity and Judaism, which is the root of all three. Adherents of the three religions will have their own faith stories. If you leave faith aside you can see that these three religions encode rules for functional and progressive societies which helped bring a large part of the Eurasian continent to a high level of civilisation and compassion. The story of our interconnectedness is not told in our schools. While schools across Northern Ireland are rolling out Arabic classes as part of a British Council initiative to foster cultural richness and mutual understanding, here the second most important international language for an English-speaker to learn is rarely offered. This determined blindness to our cultural connection to Islam and our physical connection to the Middle East was not caused by social media. It goes back to the Crusades. Islamophobia is, as expressed in a letter signed by a long, international list of Muslim leaders in The Guardian this week, systemic and institutionalised. In Ireland, it is culturally acceptable. I have heard it from several well-educated friends and acquaintances, in comments suggesting Muslim girls should not be allowed to wear veils for fear our girls will have to, that Islam is barbaric and that Muslims will subject us to violence because they regard us all as The Infidel. Sometimes Islamophobia lurks under the cover of liberal concern: Muslim women need to be released by us from the veils they say they like but dont really; they need to be freed from Muslim men who forced them into marriage and probably beat them. Along with hostility from traditional racists, Muslims often face misunderstanding from so-called liberal secularists. In Ireland in 2013, when Ali Selim published a book entitled Islam and Education in Ireland calling for a revolution in Irish education to help Muslims feel more included, Atheist Ireland responded by saying that there was already too much time allocated to religious festivals in Irish schools and said they looked forward to all schools recognising Darwin Day and International Blasphemy Rights Day. Muslims affront our new secularism by being openly religious. It is their women who suffer the most from Irish intolerance, according to research published by the Irish Refugee Council, being twice as likely to suffer racist abuse because their head-scarves make them identifiable. Much energy is expended talking about an inoffensive piece of cloth, similar to the ones our mothers and grand-mothers wore to run out to the shops if they had curlers in and to the mantillas they wore to Mass. In ancient Constantinople, Christian women covered their heads while Muslim women didnt. You wouldnt think a head-scarf could possibly cause anyone trouble in todays Ireland it does, repeatedly, for Muslim girls, who get pulled, called names and denied jobs because they want to wear one. Lets be clear about this: wearing such a symbol of religious identity should be an absolute right. Being a Muslim should never exclude a child from a secondary school or from a job as a teacher. These frontiers, defined in their research by the Irish Refugee Council, must be constantly monitored. There are currently 65,000 Muslims in Ireland but Islam is the fastest growing religion in Ireland and by 2043, Islam will be Irelands second biggest religion. The best way to navigate this future is by embracing Irish Muslims as a valuable part of what we are. As New Zealand prepares to mark last weeks atrocity with a two minute silence while adherents of Islam attend Friday prayers we need to adapt Jacinda Arderns words for this countrys Muslims: Ireland is their home. They are us. Sometimes Islamophobia lurks under the cover of liberal concern. One wonders will the worlds political leaders assemble in Christchurch, New Zealand, in solidarity with the victims of the horrific mosque killings last Friday as they did in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris in January 2015? Or would such a gesture be less likely given the extent of complicity of so many political leaders in the rise in Islamophobia and hate crime against Muslims which no doubt inspired the killer? Donald Trump castigated Muslims many times while campaigning for the presidency calling them among other things sick people. As president he noted the fine people among the alt-right protest in Charlottesville, one of whom drove over and killed a counter protester. He has introduced a ban on immigrants from several Muslim-majority countries. Having surrounded himself with anti-Muslim senior advisors his actions and utterances have effectively authorised discrimination and violent attacks against Muslims in the US. Parts of Europe are not so different. The former British Foreign Minister, Borris Johnson, insultingly compared veiled Muslim women to post-boxes and bank robbers. Hungarys Prime Minister Viktor Orban has referred to Europe being overrun by refugees fleeing war, calling them Muslim invaders threatening Europes Christian identity. In Austria the Government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, a coalition with the right-wing populist Freedom Party, which was founded in 1956 by a former Nazi party member and SS officer, has banned the Muslim face veil for women and closed seven mosques. In Australia, soon after the Christchurch killings, Senator Fraser Anning termed them violent vigilantism and blamed Muslim immigration. Thankfully an online petition calling for Annings expulsion from parliament has received more than one million signatures. All of this right-wing populist rhetoric by political leaders has unquestionably led to an increase in hate crime and Islamophobia and the rise of nationalist supremacy, a threat that more moderate governments and the mainstream media are too often in denial about. These political leaders should stay away from Christchurch and instead hang their heads in shame. Ordinary citizens can however show the way by standing in solidarity with our bereaved Muslim brothers and sisters at this time, by helping refugees and campaigning against the rise of nationalist supremacy and for inclusivity, solidarity, peace and an end to divisive wars. - Jim Roche PRO Irish Anti-War Movement Dublin 1845 N. Orchard St., Chicago: $5,989,888 | Listed: Nov. 9, 2021 This six-bedroom home has six full bathrooms, two half baths, and a carved limestone and brick exterior. The Christopher Peacock kitchen has Waterworks fixtures, a farmers sink and two Subzero refrigerator/freezers. It also opens to the living room, which leads to an outdoor area with a full kitchen, seating areas, and a wood-burning fireplace. On the second floor, the primary bedroom suite features a dressing room and morning kitchen and an en suite bath with a separate shower and soaking tub. Three additional en suite bedrooms are also on the second floor. Other features include a wine cellar, a library, a media room with a Savant projection and audio system and an attached four-car garage with extra storage. Agent: Carrie McCormick, @properties, 312-961-4612 *Some listing photos are virtually staged, meaning they have been digitally altered to represent different furnishing or decorating options. To feature your luxury listing of $800,000 or more in Chicago Tribunes Dream Homes, send listing information and high-res photos to ctc-realestate@chicagotribune.com. Join our Chicago Dream Homes Facebook group for more luxury listings and real estate news. Interview Shining a Light on Shady Business in Myanmar's Extractive Industries Eddie Rich, deputy head of the EITI International Secretariat, poses for a photograph at the Beneficial Ownership Asia and Pacific Regional Workshop in Manila, the Philippines, on Tuesday. / Nyein Nyein / The Irrawaddy The global debate on the discloser of beneficial ownership, especially in the extractive industries, is scaling up. More access to information about who really benefits from the revenues is raising accountability and helping in the fight against corruption. Myanmar, an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) candidate country, formed a Beneficial Ownership Taskforce in June to move the country toward membership. Countries that join the EITI must disclose the beneficial ownership of the companies in their extractive industries by Jan. 1, 2020. With the deadline only nine months away, the EITI International Secretariat and industry experts stressed the need for more government collaboration between sectors and agencies during a workshop on beneficial ownership for the Asia and Pacific region in Manila this week. A delegation from Myanmar attended the event to learn and share their views. The Irrawaddy spoke with Eddie Rich, deputy head of the EITI International Secretariat, about the initiatives goals and Myanmars progress toward reaching them. What is beneficial ownership and why is it important for EITI countries to disclose beneficial ownership? Beneficial ownership is the process about which you understand the natural owner, the flesh and blood owner, of companies. And this is to deal with what has been exposed in the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers and lots of recent scandals as a mechanism, that creating shell companies which own other companies butare hiding the real owner. That has been a mechanism for money laundering, it has been a mechanism for terrorist financing, its been a mechanism tax evasion and avoidance. Its been a mechanism also for nepotism. So the revelation of the Panama Papers and then the Paradise Papers showed the extent of this problem, how systematically individual and companies are gaming the whole system in order to particularly avoid tax, but also some very dark motives. The EITI, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, is a global standard for good governance in the sectors, and they highlight it very early on, in fact before the release of the Panama Papers [in 2016], that transparency of beneficial ownership was going to be a critical issue for anti-corruption in the 21st century, and that it was required that all 52 countries reveal disclosing information about the natural owners of the extractive companies in their countries. And in many of these countries, of course, like Myanmar, this is in many ways the most important sector, politically and economically. Myanmar is also trying to work on that beneficial ownership, a task force and every preparation. Exactly. So you know who, for example, is behind the gemstones companies that are operating in Myanmar, which has been, as you know much better than me, a source of some of the conflicts. People, or the companies, are reluctant to share the information because that is directly related. They are operating in the conflict areas, or they are concerned about being targeted if they revealed this information. What are the guarantees that EITI or other international advocacy groups can give to these companies for them to share the beneficial ownership information? A couple of points there. First of all the EITI is not an advocacy group. We are a members-based organization with countries that are implementing, who signed up to the global standard that is established. So it is the countries themselves, along with civil society and companies who establish the standard. So a way of saying this is, the companies are the ones who actually asked for this requirement. The companies are the ones who want this because they want the level playing field; they want to know how their competitors are operating. And they feel its part of being a safer environment. But you are right, there are also concerns on the other side, that if this information about ownership is known, that the owners themselves could be subject to additional threats. There is no single case that I am aware of where there has been an attack on somebody because of the revelation of beneficial ownership information. We, the EITI, dont ensure the protection of the people. That is for law enforcement agencies within each country. So if a country commits to the EITI, they commit to full beneficial ownership in the extractive sector, and as part of that, they are responsible for ensuring the protection of the individuals. What could we say [are] the pros and cons, the advantages and disadvantages, of having this beneficial ownership [disclosure] of the EITI countries? The advantages are that it creates better information about the ownership to inform public policy, but it ensures that you can follow the money. If a country has disclosed its beneficial ownership, the owners of the companies, then if tax is very low for a company, you can try and understand why. And you can see one of the owners might be registered in the Cayman Islands, and you say, Aha, well, maybe that person needs to be domesticated back into Myanmar to ensure that all the money is paid in Myanmar for Myanmars resources. In simile, you can see if a license to explore or to exploit resources has been given to somebody who has been politically exposed, is a relation of a minister or senior officials. So to make sure there is much fairer system. Thats why companies like it, most companies, because it creates a level, a more fair playing field. Those are the pros. The cons, we hear that its difficult to collect the information, and I think we need to understand that. And those are the kind of issues we are discussing. We hear it is difficult to define what a beneficial owners is, or establish a threshold, or ensure that the information is accurate, make sure that you got the right disclosure mechanism. These are all the kinds of questions that come up, and thats what we are discussed in these two days. Myanmar is now a [EITI] candidate country, but what do we need to do to become a full member? Myanmar has undertaken validations and it is being assessed right now, and the [EITI] board will make decision on that, I think, in the next month or so. And it is likely that it will direct you to a few it will indicate that there has been very positive progress. Myanmar has come a way in last few years about declaring, disclosing lots of information about the sector. It will indicate one or two areas where there are specific actions required in order to become a full member. Until that, until the board has made the decision, I dont think I should indicate what they will decide. Weve advised them and made recommendations to them, but this is finally the board decision. So hold on a month or so and you should have a lot more information. You have [put] a lot of focus on 11 countries in Southeast Asia and Eurasia. Compared with Myanmar, are we [in a] similar situations with other countries in terms of EITI candidacy and the work that MEITI has been doing? What are the challenges and similarities? Myanmar is learning a lot and I think other countries are learning also from Myanmar. Thats kind of one of the key advantages, I think, of the EITI, that there is a global network that learns best practices from each other. But each country also has its own specific situation. In Myanmar, you have a lot of state-own enterprises and you have these funny things called your other accounts as part of the state-own enterprises, and trying to unpick and understand what is part of these other accounts is a key specific issue for Myanmar. And on beneficial ownership, you have established of course this company registration under DICA [Directorate of Investment and Company Administration]. Thats come in long way and thats going to try to establish more details. Systematically, when a company registers, they will have to disclose their ownership. So, again, its learning off other countries and its also establishing good practices that other countries may wish to follow. What are the next steps for guaranteeing the information release [about] beneficial owners? What are the next steps that you have prepared, or have you had any discussions to have protection of those data of the beneficial owners, because some are concerned about being targeted by the criminal groups? Yes, as I said, I dont know of any specific cases where this has ever happened. Im not saying its not a legitimate concern. It is. But we need to understand much better what is the real concern? Is there ways, and different ways in different countries, that that could be addressed? Does the address of each person actually need to be put, declare publically? Not necessarily; thats a national decision. Is this information already known? Actually, does the beneficial ownership discloser make any different to whats already out there? What is the law enforcement like? What are the personal protections like? So I think its too simplistic to simply say, Ah. OK, because of threats of kidnapping and other targeting, we must say no to disclosure. I think we need to understand the problem better and looks for particularly country specific solutions, because they are going to be different in different countries. How would you summarize that EITI and beneficial ownership are linked together? Beneficial ownership is absolutely essential to a good governance sector. I talk often about the transparency triangle, which is: if you know the contracts, and you know who the owner is, and you have the payments which were paid for a particular project in terms of tax or royalties, then you should have a complete picture of whether the country got what it should have. If I have a contract with you, and you dont pay me all of that, then I want to know who you are, where youre from. And so I can see, why did she not pay me the full amount. So thats part of the picture. We know who the people are, we know what they should have paid, and we know what they did pay. Lifestyle Yangon Timeout -- Seedspace Yangon Open House and Networking Yangons newest co-working space is now open in a unique location right next to the Yangon River. For the opening day this Friday, the space will be open to the public for use for free throughout the day. From 5 p.m. there will be a networking session where you can meet the team behind the space as well as like-minded folk. Seedspace Yangon is a chapter of the Yangon Innovation Center, an initiative by the Yangon Regional Government operated by Seedstars Myanmar in collaboration with Thura Swiss and CB Bank. Registration recommended. March 22 | 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. | Seedspace Yangon | Kyan Mar Yay Seik Kan Compound, Corner of Pansodan Road and Strand Road, Kyauktada Township Women and Art in Myanmar Nathalie Johnson, founder of Myanm/art Gallery with give a presentation on the history of women artists in Myanmar. The presentation, in English, will be followed by a panel discussion in Burmese. The four prominent female artists who will be on the panel are Yadanar, Nge Lay, Zun Ei Phyu and Thyitar. Note usual security conditions for entering the American Center apply. March 22 | 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. | Freedom Hall | American Center, University Avenue, Bahan Township Rich Palette Art Show This is a group show by famous local artists Win Tint, Maung Oo, Nang Khuu, Thet Su Nady, Kaung H San and Htoo Aung Moe. March 23 to 25 | Gallery 65 | No. 65, Yaw Min Gyi Road, Dagon Township Safe Food from Safe Farms This Saturday and Sunday, Kandawgyi Park will be the venue for a food market focusing on healthy, organic food products. On both days the event opens from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. This is where you can find FDA-certified organic vegetables and produce from members of the Myanmar Fruit and Vegetable Producers (MFVP). March 23 and 24 | 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. | Myaepadaytha Island, Kandawgyi Park, Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township Yangon Zay x Real Fitness This weekends edition of the trendy market Yangon Zay will feature demonstrations and activities organized by Real Fitness, a gym chain with locations across Yangon. Join zumba and combat exercise workouts and later enjoy the food and drinks from the regular pop-up vendors. Tickets 6,000 kyats. March 23 and 24 | 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. | The Tea Factory, No. 2 Kanyeik Thar Street, Kabar Aye Phayar Road The Food of Northern Thailand Pop-up with Austin Bush Famous chef and author of a new cookbook dedicated to northern Thai cuisine, Austin Bush, will be at Union Bar & Grill for one night only. This Saturday evening you can order from an additional special menu, or choose a set menu for 35,000 kyats, to experience the unique flavors of northern Thailand, including the herbal, spicy and wholesome dishes of pounded salads, fried snacks and sausages. March 23 | 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. | Union Bar & Grill | 42 Strand Road, Botahtaung Township Free Walking Tour: Insights into Old Yangon This walking tour, organized by sustainable tourism hub Jozaso, will show you around the unique neighborhoods of Yangon and share stories of interesting residents from historical times. March 24 | 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. | Jozaso Sustainable Tourism Hub, 97 Bo Ywe Street (Upper Block) Like salt. Like a Spine Poetry Reading Come to Myanm/art modern art gallery for a unique poetry reading to round up your weekend. Local poets will be joined by American poet Greg Bem for an evening of readings of various types of poetry. March 24 | 5:30 p.m. | Myanm/art | 3FL, 98 Bogalayzay Street, Botahtaung Township Gender and Climate Change Climate Talk Series Conyat Create and Pansuriya are partnering to host discussions on the issue of gender and climate change in Myanmar. This is the third part in the series of talks on climate change and the title of the discussion is The Role of Women in Adapting to Climate Change: Examples from Myanmar. The speakers are Shashank Mishra of UN Habitat and Su Ei Nandar of Plan International. March 25 | 7 p.m. | Pansuriya | 100 Bogalayzay Street, Botahtaung Township Myanmar Investment Outlook At this event organized by AmCham Myanmar, U Aung Naing Oo, director general of Myanmars Directorate of Investment and Company Administration (DICA) will discuss the current investment outlook and DICAs plans for the year ahead. The talk will be followed by a Q&A session. Tickets $15 for AmCham members and $25 for non-members. Pre-registration recommended. March 26 | 2 p.m. | Melia Yangon | 192 Kabar Aye Pagoda Road, Bahan Township Myanmar-Japan Literature Exchange 2.0 At this event organized by the Japan Foundation, PEN Myanmar and Yangon Book Plaza, renowned Japanese poet and author Yoko Tawada will give a talk on transcending boundaries between humans and non-humans which is a common feature of her writing. The talk will be in English with Burmese translation. March 27 | 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. | Yangon Book Plaza, Lanmadaw Street (Middle Block), Lanmadaw Township Asia Asia's Coal Addiction Puts Chokehold on its Air-Polluted Cities Vehicles drive through the smog in New Delhi, India on January 7, 2019. / Reuters KUALA LUMPUROver the past year, the number of patients treated each day in the hospital unit where cardiologist Ade Imasanti Sapardan works in Indonesias capital has almost doubled to about 100. Sapardan, who sees up to 150 people every week, cites worsening air pollution as a major reason for the rise in patients seeking treatment in the mega-city of Jakarta, home to 10 million people. People in Jakarta have bad pollution every day everybody is not really breathing safe air, Sapardan told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Half her patients suffer from symptoms linked to air pollution like chest pains, coughing and breathlessness. Nine out of 10 people breathe polluted air, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), a problem that impacts more cities in Asia than anywhere else in the world. Burning fossil fuels is a large contributor to air pollution, which kills about 7 million people prematurely each year. Green campaigners and energy experts say Asias growing demand for coal-fired power is one key cause of that pollution. Coal demand outside Asia peaked in 1988 and has since fallen by a third. During the same period, it rose 3.5-fold in Asia, now the worlds main driver of coal-power demand, according to a report published late last year by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. Cities with the worst air pollution are all in Asia and a lot of it is to do with coal, said Nikos Tsafos, a CSIS researcher. The region has such huge economic growth and potential, where the desire to bring electricity to people trumps all other concerns. An air quality report published by Greenpeace and IQAir AirVisual this month showed that the worlds 100 most polluted cities are largely in Asia with India and China dominating. Jakarta and Hanoi are the two most polluted cities in Southeast Asia, according to the report. But while China has already curbed coal use to meet politically important smog targets, and India this year launched a nationwide anti-pollution program, Tsafos said Southeast Asia was a blind spot. Lawsuit Like many Asian countries, Indonesia is experiencing a rise in urbanization, population and economic growth and is scrambling to find ways to increase its power capacity. Jakarta has about 10 coal power plants within a 100-kilometer (60-mile) radius of the city, green campaigners said, with up to three more being planned. Now 20 Jakarta residents are to file a lawsuit against Indonesian President Joko Widodo, backed by non-governmental organizations including environmental group Greenpeace. They argue policymakers have not done enough to tackle air pollution in the capital and hope to force the government to move away from coal power and into renewables. Sapardans medical expertise will be used in the action, which will also target the governors of Jakarta and its surrounding regions as well as the countrys health and forestry ministers. They want a tightening of air standards, coordinated efforts to tackle air pollution, and recognition by the central government of the link between coal-power plants and air pollution, to force a change in power policy. The global trend is now to stay away from coal, but in Southeast Asia it has gone the other way, including in Indonesia, said Tata Mustasya, climate and energy campaign coordinator at Greenpeace Southeast Asia. We still use coal and are expanding it to meet our power needs. A spokesman for Widodo, who will stand for re-election in national polls next month, was unable to provide an immediate comment, while the energy ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Asia-Pacific consumed 75 percent of the worlds coal in 2017, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, up from 50 percent 20 years ago. An abundance of locally produced, cheap coal and a failure to promote alternative energy sources were key reasons for Asia bucking the global trend away from coal, energy experts said. We have cases in the Philippines where people are suffering respiratory diseases because of coal-power plants and coal ash from which they will never recover, said Rayyan Hassan, executive director at the NGO Forum on ADB in Manila. Cash flow With many investment and development banks moving away from coal projects, financing Asias coal boom has been left to state-backed banks and bilateral agencies, energy experts and environmental campaigners said. Japan ramping up its coal-power capacity after the Fukushima nuclear disaster had led to a boon in clean-coal technologies that were now being exported across Asia, said green activists, who also cited Chinas Belt and Road Initiative. There is a narrative that says a lot of this is being enabled by the Belt and Road Initiative that China is exporting coal technology and generation to the region, said Tsafos. But as renewable energy becomes more competitive, market forces will help move Asia away from coal, said Yongping Zhai, an energy expert at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Manila. The ADBs 2009 energy policy states that the bank can still consider coal projects in rare cases where the power provides energy access to the poor and uses advanced technologies. Despite this, the ADB has no coal-power projects in the pipeline and the last coal-power project it was involved with was back in 2013, said Zhai. Although the effects of air pollution in Asia would be felt for decades, Tsafos said calls for clean air in China had led to a reduction in coal consumption and this could now be mirrored in other parts of Asia. Local air pollution can be a really good agent of change, he said. Thats where pressure can pop up really quickly because people can see the damage but also politicians can show that theyve delivered results. Burma Govt Compromises for Aung San Statue Rejected by Activists Local rights activists who attended a meeting with representatives of the Myanmar government for the negotiation of issues surrounding the Gen. Aung San statue in Loikaw, Karenni State on March 20, 2019. / Kayan New Generation Youth / Facebook At a meeting held between the government and rights activists who have been fighting against the installing of a bronze statue of Gen. Aung San, the Karenni Chief Minister L Phaung Sho proposed two points of compromise as possible solutions to the activists dispute. However, the rights activists refused the points of compromise at the meeting which was held in the Karenni capital of Loikaw on Wednesday. The statute of Gen. Aung San, father of State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and often named Myanmars father of independence was installed at a park in Loikaw despite the protests of local rights activists who went on to stage a number of sit-ins in Loikaw, leading to the arrest and detention of scores young activists earlier this year. One of the proposed compromises suggested by Chief Minister L Phaung Sho was that the text of the Panglong Agreement, a historically important agreement declaring autonomy for a number of ethnic areas, be placed below the statue. The second point was that the government would allow the local rights activists to install a statue of their own respected ethnic leader near the Gen. Aung San statue. Khun Thomas, spokesperson for the rights activists, said his group could not accept the two points, and that they are sticking to their demands for the statue to be removed. We cannot accept their two points. Therefore, as we mentioned in our statement, the result of the meeting was not good, said Khun Thomas. Eight people representing the government, including Chief Minister L Phaung Sho, the Karenni Deputy Planning and Finance Minister U Maw Maw and a number of members of the National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC) attended the meeting. Five people from the working committee responsible for the statue were also in attendance. Sevens right activists and four members of the Karenni National Progressive Party also attended while two lawmakers were present as witnesses. At the meeting, Chief Minister L Phaung Sho argued that Gen. Aung San is national hero and that many people in the country respect him. However, sticking to the line they have repeatedly argued in the case of the statue, the activists responded that the problem is not with building the statue, but rather that the Karenni people have their own history which they feel is being ignored. At the meeting, Deputy Planning and Finance Minister U Maw Maw who has denied accusations of his involvement in the statue plan, was seen in photos projected by the activists playing a part in bringing statue to the park where it is located in Loikaw. U Zaw Htay, spokesperson of the Myanmar Presidents Office, attended the meeting as a representative of the NRPC. He said his presence at the meeting showed that the Union government was ready to negotiate for a solution to the problem. He emphasized that the government did not want to have further problems in the statue case and that they are eager to find a solution soon. The activists proposed at the meeting that the government remove the statue and suggested that it could instead be erected at the local NLD office in Loikaw. They did not say whether they agreed with our proposal or not, but they explained why it is impossible to approve it, said Khun Thomas. The right activists agreed to have one more meeting next month, from which they expect some good results will come. For us, we will deal with this problem peacefully. We wanted our region to have stability. They told us that the last meeting will be in April, and that some good results would come from it. Thats why we agreed to have another meeting with them, said Khun Thomas. If we cannot get any agreeable answer from Union level, this could be our last [peaceful] effort. We have done what we should do and we will continue to fight for [the removal of the statue], he said. Burma Kachin Govt Set to Reject Mongolian Mining Proposal Snow-capped mountains in Putao Township, Kachin State / The Irrawaddy YANGONThe Kachin State government has decided to shelve a Mongolian companys proposal to conduct a feasibility study on the extraction of gold and other minerals in Myanmars largest national conservation area, a sanctuary nearly triple the size of Singapore in Kachins northernmost township, due to serious environmental concerns. The project was proposed by Inner Mongolia Duojin Investment Company Ltd, according to the Kachin State Forest Department. The proposal covers an area of 492,900 acres in Putao Township including Hkakaborazi National Park and its southern extension area, which together form the largest national park in the country, as well as the ASEAN Heritage Park-Hponkan Razi Wildlife Sanctuary, which is home to globally threatened wildlife species including the black musk deer, red panda and white-bellied heron. The area also covers protected forests in the townships Northern Mountain Forest Complex; these include subtropical evergreen forests, mixed deciduous forests, pine-rhododendron forests and alpine meadows. Kachin State Chief Minister Khet Aung told The Irrawaddy, I strongly dislike the project. It could destroy our heritage and ecosystem. How could I allow it? he said. Amid a backlash from environmentalist and local residents, the Kachin State cabinet and related departments held a meeting on the issue on Tuesday. At the meeting, the Forest Department submitted a review recommending that the project not be allowed. U Kyaw Kyaw Lwin, the deputy director of the state Forest Department, told The Irrawaddy, We decided not to allow that project. The state government has not issued an official decision on the matter yet, however. The Forest Department said the team started reviewing the companys proposal and field study in January. The department decided the areas deserved to be preserved in the interests of coming generations. U Kyaw Kyaw Lwin said the project threatened to harm not only the national conservation areas but also the NMai Kha River, which is one of the main sources of the Ayeyarwady River, the lifeline of Myanmar. The project faces a strong backlash from locals residents. It could easy provoke a conflict between the company and locals. Thats one reason that we decided to scrap the proposal, he said. Kachin State is rich in natural resources, particular minerals including gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, amber, jade, crystal and coal. Burma Land Lost, Families Uprooted as Myanmar Pushes Industrial Zones Puma Energys fuel and petroleum products storage facility and jetty at Myanmar International Terminals Thilawa (MITT) in Yangon. / The Irrawaddy MYAING THAR YAR, Yangon RegionThan Ei lived in the Thilawa area near Yangon for years, growing vegetables in her backyard and sending her two children to school with money from her husbands construction job. Then came the government order to move. Than Eis family was among 68 households relocated in 2013 to make way for the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ), the first such industrial area in Myanmar, about 23 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of Yangon. Authorities said each family would get a home a few miles away, or a plot of land and money to build a house, as well as jobs in the new factories, with good wages. But six years on, Than Ei and others who moved say their incomes are lower than before, and they have only limited access to services. Many families sold their homes and left the area after they ran out of money, Than Ei said. There is no land to grow vegetables or to keep chickens, and we are not close to transport or the market anymore, Than Ei said outside her one-room home in Myaing Thar Yar Village. My husband only got a job as a security guard two years after (the move). We had to take out a loan until then, which we are still paying off. For developing nations like Myanmar which emerged from decades of economic isolation in 2011 when the military stepped back from direct control SEZs are seen as a way to attract much-needed foreign investment and create jobs. Authorities say Thilawa SEZ is being built according to international environmental and social safeguards, which includes getting the consent of residents and offering adequate compensation. But for those whose lives have been uprooted by the countrys economic ambitions, the reality is different, said Mike Griffiths, a researcher at the Myanmar Social Policy and Poverty Research Group, a think tank based in Yangon. They not only have lower levels of income, but are more likely to have higher expenditure, higher rates of debt and lower employment rates, he wrote in a report last year on the relocated households. The picture is of extreme vulnerability. Risky model The model for economic growth that Myanmar and other countries in the region hope to emulate is that of China, which in the 1980s set up about half a dozen major SEZs to boost its market reforms. Experts say SEZs have contributed significantly to Chinas economic growth, with the World Bank estimating in 2015 that they accounted for nearly a quarter of the countrys GDP. Spurred by Chinas example, governments from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia have adopted SEZs, but analysts say they have a mixed record of success. The model has passed its use-by-date, and officials have been slow to catch on, said Charlie Thame, a professor of political science at Bangkoks Thammasat University. Even from an economic point of view they are fraught with risk, mostly borne by host states. In poorer nations, SEZs overwhelmingly fail to provide decent jobs or generate beneficial effects to local economies, he said, and domestic legislation and international investment frameworks largely fail to protect those affected. No consultation When completed, the Thilawa SEZ will cover some 2,400 hectares (9 sq. miles) of land. Dozens of manufacturers, largely making goods for export, are already operating there. Thilawa is the only operational SEZ in the country, with the Dawei SEZ in the southern region of Tanintharyi on hold after some initial construction. A third SEZ is planned, with Chinese investment, in Kyauk Pyu in Rakhine State. The site in Thilawa had been earmarked for industrial use under the junta government in 1996, but the original plans fell through. When authorities announced the start of development for the SEZ six years ago, they said since the land already belonged to the government, villagers living on it were only eligible to be compensated for their crops. None of the residents made to move were consulted on the economic or social impacts of the development, said Mya Hlaing, a member of the Thilawa Social Development Group, which was set up to represent the villagers. We were also promised training and jobs, but very few have got jobs and even then, only as cleaners and security guards, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. A spokesman for Myanmar Japan Thilawa Development, which operates Zone 1 of the SEZ, said the land acquisition was carried out by government authorities, and that those affected had been offered several job opportunities. Myanmar authorities did not respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment. Backlash About 600 kilometers away in southern Myanmar, development of the Dawei SEZ has been suspended since 2013, after it sparked community protests and hit funding difficulties. The project is a joint venture of the Thai and Myanmar governments, and includes a 140-kilometer road to the Thai border, a port, a power plant, a reservoir and an industrial estate. Most residents affected by the initial phase of construction refused to move into the nearly 500 homes that had been built a couple of miles away. We were not told what types of factories would be built or what their impact would be, said Mar Lar, who sold some of her land in the southern Htein Gyi village but still lives in her own home. Residents in Dawei fear construction on the stalled project will resume soon, even as a backlash against SEZs is growing. Protests broke out in Vietnam last year over planned new SEZs. In India, the Supreme Court has asked why land acquired for SEZs is not being used, and the Myanmar government has scaled back its Kyauk Pyu project with China over fears of a debt trap. But back in Thilawa, the second phase of construction is about to kick off and will see the relocation of more than 800 families, said Aye Khaing Win, a community leader. The government says the SEZ has done many good things, but we have lost our land. We have not benefited, he said. Burma Military Attacks on N. Rakhine Villages Leaves Locals Wounded, Displaced Daw Kyar Htay Sein, a neighbor of victim U Maung Win Yee shows the couple's the burnt out home at Ywar Haung Taw Village, Mrauk-U Township on March 20, 2019. / Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy MRAUK-U, Rakhine State As military artillery shells land and fighter jets bomb mountain ranges near rural villages, women and children from villages in restive northern Rakhines Mrauk-U Township have fled to urban areas in search of refuge. Ywar Haung Taw Village is one of these villages which experienced shelling by the Myanmar military, or Tatmadaw, which started Monday and continued through Thursday. The village lies about 10 kilometers from the Mrauk-U heritage zone. More than 200 people from Ywar Haung Taw are seeking refuge in the town of Mrauk-U at Chit Thaung Monastery which has become a temporary camp for the displaced. Daw Thein Thein Aye told The Irrawaddy that she vividly remembers the explosion of several artillery shells in her village, one of which landed in a home, severely wounding a woman and a man on March 18. She speculates that the artillery fire either came from the Mrauk-U-based Light Infantry Battalion No. 540 or from the police regiment situated next to Koe Thaung Pagoda in the heritage zone of Mrauk-U which is a popular tourist destination. There was no fighting in my village, but many bullets and artillery shells landed in our village, she said. Daw Mhwe Yaing Sein, another woman from the same village, explained that she had been afraid to leave her home as military troops were occasionally seen in the nearby forest during the day time. In rural Rakhine, many villages have not yet adopted modern toilets and traditionally practice open defecation in wooded areas near their homes. Several women from Ywar Haung Taw explained that military troops stationed themselves in the forest and have been patrolling the village since Monday. Daw Khine Saw Than said that, smelling the strangers around the village, the dogs would bark throughout the night. We are scared of when [it gets dark]. We cannot sleep inside our home, so my family members and I sleep on the ground [under the house] as we have not prepared a bomb shelter like other villages, said Daw Khine Saw Than. As women and children left the village for the town of Mrauk-U on Tuesday, most men stayed behind look after their homes during the day, sleeping together at the village monastery at night. The Irrawaddy traveled to Ywar Haung Taw with a local resident named Karen Chay on Wednesday in order to observe the situation. On the way to the village, this reporter travelled close to the police regiment at Koe Thaung Pagoda and witnessed them firing artillery several times. After driving for another 15 minutes, Karen Chay led us to a home which had been hit by artillery shell. A survivor of the shelling Daw Kyar Htay Sein explained that while her family and the family of neighbor U Maung Win Ye were lying on the floor of their home, they heard artillery shooting. This reporter saw the 120-millimeter mortar which landed on their home. U Maung Win Ye and his wife were wounded. With bullets flying across the village, no one was able to stop the fire which had overcome the house and by morning it had been reduced to ashes. We never see a single [Arakan Army (AA) soldier] in my village. It was all about [the militarys] aggressive actions towards us and [they] blame [their actions] on the AA. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the military carried out an airstrike using two fighter jets on the mountain range close to Myebon Townships Pan Myaung Village, a neighboring village of Ywar Haung Taw which is at the border of Mrauk-U Township. Pan Myaung resident Daw Than Than Win was shot on her thigh by a government soldier at her home at about 1 p.m. on Wednesday while government soldiers raided her village. She was transported from the village to Mrauk-U General Hospital in the afternoon. Recounting the ordeals to The Irrawaddy, she said that while walking to the toilet, a young soldier, who she guesses to be aged about 20 years old, knelt down with an assault rifle outside the fence and then shot at her. Her daughter and a sibling quickly came out and dragged her into the temporary bomb shelter they had made near the house. If my daughter and sibling failed to drag in me like that, I could have been killed by bullets, said Daw Than Than Win. Daw Than Than Wins daughter said that army fighter jets were bombing in the mountain range since earlier on Wednesday morning. She said it was around 1 p.m. when they heard gunfire nearby and found her mother had been shot in front of her home. She said about 130 men from the village were captured by soldiers and interrogated, and all but four were later set free. A local relief group from Mrauk-U told The Irrawaddy that about 1,500 people from Pan Myaung Village were displaced and fighting was still ongoing in the region as of Thursday. Since last December, government military troops and AA rebels have been clashing in five townships of northern Rakhine State and Paletwa Township in southern Chin State. Local charity groups estimate that the displaced population in northern Rakhine has now reached approximately 20,000. Burma Myanmar Repatriates Bangladeshi Nationals Arrested 9 Years Ago Bangladesh and Myanmar authorities stand over four Bangladeshi nationals released from jail in Rakhine State at a meeting in Maungdaw Township, Rakhine State, on Wednesday. / Bangladesh Border Guard DHAKA Myanmar on Wednesday handed back four Bangladeshi nationals arrested nine-and-a-half years ago for entering Myanmar waters illegally while fishing the Naff River, which defines part of the border between the two countries. A delegation from Bangladesh received the nationals at a meeting in the north of Myanmars Rakhine State, said Pronoy Chakma, an assistant commissioner of the Teknaf Sub-District of Coxs Bazar District in Bangladesh. Two of the men Muhammad Jashim, 44, and Muhammad Ilias, 29, from Coxs Bazars Nazirpara Village were sentenced to 21 years and that the other two Azgar Ali, 39, and Sabbir Ahmed, 36, from Coxs Bazars Maulvipara Village were sentenced to 25 years, said ASM Mizanur Rahman, a Bangladesh police inspector who attended the meeting in Maungdaw Township. They were mainly charged with trespassing. They served nine-and-a-half years and the Myanmar government reduced their sentences, he said. Police in Teknaf said Myanmar released Jashim and Ilias from jail on Jan. 24 and the other two on Jan. 28, after the two governments discussed their case. They said about 30 more Bangladeshi nationals were still in jail in Rakhine, most of them for entering Myanmar waters illegally while fishing. Mohammad Barikul Islam, the head of Bangladeshs consulate in the Rakhine State capital, Sittwe, was scheduled to attend the meeting in Maungdaw but could not because of fighting in the area between the Myanmar military and insurgents, the Teknaf officers said. On its Facebook page the same day, the consulate said the four men had been repatriated. The officers added that they were soon reunited with their families. Burma Two Tanintharyi Ministers Resign in Wake of Chief Minister's Arrest Tanintharyi Region Chief Minister Daw Lei Lei Maw (standing) attends a meeting in Myeik, Tanintharyi Region, in January with Electricity and Energy Minister U Kyi Hlaing (second from right) and Planning and Finance Minister U Phyo Win Tun (right). / Tanintharyi Region Government / Facebook YANGON Two Tanintharyi Region ministers tendered their resignations in the wake of Chief Minister Daw Lei Lei Maws arrest and firing over corruption allegations earlier this month. The Presidents Office announced on Wednesday that the regions planning and finance minister, U Phyo Win Tun, and electricity and energy minister, U Kyi Hlaing, were allowed to resign from their posts. While the announcement gave no reason for the resignations, many believe they were linked to the corruption investigation. Daw Lei Lei Maw was arrested on March 10 along with Global Grand Services (GGS) Managing Director U Thein Htwe, Director U Aung Myat and General Manager U Thura Ohn under corruption charges. The cases were opened against all four by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) at the Dawei Myoma Police Station in Tanintharyi after a month-long investigation. U Ye Myint Swe, a regional lawmaker, said U Phyo Win Tun was named in the complaint that locals had sent the ACC and the Presidents Office earlier this year about the chief minister. In the complaint, more than 100 residents of Myeik and Dawei districts called for an investigation of Daw Lei Lei Maw, U Phyo Win Tun and the National League for Democracys Tanintharyi committee chair, U Aung Soe. During State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyis visit to the region last month, local residents demanded that all three be replaced because of corruption and nepotism. The state counselor vowed to take decisive action against officials who harm the public interest. U Ye Myint Swe said U Kyi Hlaing was not named in the complaint. But the lawmaker said he believed the minister resigned because he was mostly responsible for awarding an electricity distribution project to GGS that was part of the corruption investigation. It is not possible that he doesnt know about the contract because he is the electricity minister. Whether it was done intentionally or unintentionally, I think he resigned because of that, he said. The ACC said Daw Lei Lei Maw abused her position by awarding several contracts to GGS in exchange for bribes. GGS produces electricity from gas purchased from the government. The company owes more than 8 billion kyats ($5.24 million) for gas deliveries between July 2017, when it launched its power supply service, and late 2018. U Phyo Win Tun and U Kyi Hlaing could not be reached for comment. One of the local residents who joined the complaint sent to the ACC and Presidents Office said he hoped the Anti-Corruption Commission would file more charges but was encouraged by the arrests and resignations so far. I am satisfied to see changes in our region, he said. World Trump Says Tariffs on Chinese Goods May Stay for 'Substantial Period' US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a working dinner after the G20 leaders summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina in December 2018. / Reuters WASHINGTONU.S. President Donald Trump warned on Wednesday that the United States may leave tariffs on Chinese goods for a substantial period to ensure that Beijing complies with any trade agreement. The stance could complicate U.S.-China trade talks set to resume next week, as Chinese officials have been pressing for a full lifting of U.S. tariffs as part of any deal, people familiar with the talks have said. Trump said his top negotiators, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, would leave for Beijing this weekend, confirming plans for talks next week disclosed on Tuesday by an administration official. The face-to-face talks will be the first since Trump delayed a March 1 deadline to avert a rise in tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent from the current 10 percent. The deal is coming along nicely, Trump said to reporters at the White House, adding that the China trip was intended to further the deal. But when asked about lifting U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, Trump said: Were not talking about removing them. Were talking about leaving them for a substantial period of time because we have to make sure that if we do the deal, China lives by it. Trump did not elaborate on his plans for the tariffs. His negotiators have demanded that China agree to an enforcement mechanism to ensure that Beijing follows through on any reform pledges in any deal. Washington is demanding that China end practices it says force the transfer of American technology to Chinese companies, improve access for American companies to Chinas markets and curb industrial subsidies. Since July 2018, the United States has imposed duties on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, including $50 billion in technology and industrial goods at 25 percent and $200 billion in other products including furniture and construction materials, at 10 percent. China has hit back with tariffs on about $110 billion worth of U.S. goods, including soybeans and other commodities. The eight-month trade war between the worlds two largest economies has raised costs, roiled financial markets, shrunk U.S. farm exports and disrupted manufacturing supply chains. Later on Wednesday, during a speech in Lima, Ohio, Trump emphasized again that he wanted the United States to reach a great trade deal with China. Were so far down, its got to be a great deal. If its not a great deal, you never catch up, Trump said in remarks at a military tank manufacturing plant. Thursday, March 21st, 2019 (4:35 pm) - Score 2,841 The Scottish Government (SG) has been heavily criticised by an opposition Conservative MP, John Lamont, after it confirmed that the bidding process for their 600m R100 (Reaching 100%) programme was still ongoing and that contracts would now be vaguely awarded some time during 2019. At present around 94% of premises in Scotland can access a superfast broadband (24Mbps+) ISP network if they so desire and the existing 400m+ Digital Scotland (DSSB) project with BT (Openreach), which has been rolling out FTTC and a little FTTP technology for the past few years, is set to continue some of its work until September 2019. This may well end up leaving a c.5% gap left to fix. In response to that the Scottish Government have been busy developing the new R100 follow-on programme, which raises the definition of superfast to 30Mbps+ and originally aimed to achieve universal coverage of that by the end of 2021; or March 2022 as a financial year (here and here). The proposed investment was aimed at prioritising superfast connections to as many as possible of the estimated 147,000 rural premises not currently receiving at least 24Mbps. Under the original plan we expected the first contract(s) to be awarded by the end of 2018, but this was later delayed and we were expecting the final bids for R100 to be submitted in January 2019, followed by a contract award in March 2019. So far nothing has been announced and John Lamont MP has been trying to find out why for the past month. The reply finally came this week, albeit wrapped in some degree of ambiguity. Paul Wheelhouse, Scottish Minister for Connectivity, said: Thank you for your letter of 19 February 2019 to the First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in relation to progress on the Scottish Governments Reaching 100% (R100) Programme. As the Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands, I have been asked to respond on her behalf. The procurement process for R100 is now well underway and I can confirm that we have three highly credible bidders currently engaged in dialogue. The procurement process is, however, complex and tightly bound by law and procurement rules. I will of course advise the Scottish Parliament first when we are in a position to award the contract, but I can confirm that this is anticipated during 2019. I trust this information is of use to you. I am sorry that I cannot be [sic] on the details at this stage, but will endeavour to make sure all MSPs [sic] and MPs [sic] are kept well informed of details as they emerge. No reason has been given for the delay, although its interesting to note that three credible bidders are still involved at this late stage (originally it was BT, Gigaclear, Axione and SSE Enterprise Telecoms). Last August we revealed that a legal dispute between two of the potential suppliers (BT and Axione) had erupted but since then there has been nothing new on the subject (here), although quietly weve heard that a dispute between bidders is on-going but its unclear if this includes BT. Naturally John Lamont has been only too keen to remind the Scottish Governments Rural Economy Secretary, Fergus Ewing SNP, of his pledge to quit if he couldnt complete the roll-out project by 2021 (here), which is starting to look increasingly likely. John Lamont MP told ISPreview.co.uk: There has been radio silence from the Scottish Government on broadband in recent months, so I am not hugely surprised that the R100 programme is already delayed. Given the Cabinet Secretary in charge said he would stand down if the programme was late, I would have thought he would want to keep on top of things. Since it was announced, the R100 programme has been touted as the solution for everyone in the Borders who has an issue with their broadband. Now we learn the project hasnt even started, is already months behind schedule and that no money has been actually set aside for it yet. The UK Government has provided more funding per head to Scotland than any other part of the UK to deliver better broadband, but the Scottish Government have let people in rural areas down. It is hugely frustrating for too many people that we are still lagging behind the rest of the UK. It is a complete nonsense in this day and age that nearly one in five people in the Borders do not have access to decent broadband. In fairness Scotland faces an extremely challenging task as the remaining 5% live in some of the most sparse and rugged terrain, which given the growing focus on expensive full fibre technology could prove to be a very difficult nut to crack. Weve already seen how some similarly grand aspirations in Wales have, as the reality of the huge economic and technical challenge sets in, fallen well short of early expectations (here). On top of that there remains some confusion over how the SG can best balance R100 against the forthcoming 10Mbps+ Universal Service Obligation (USO) in order to minimise the potential for duplicating any public investment. The USO does carry a 12 month rule to cover areas that are already in another roll-out plan, but this wont cover every eventuality and still leaves some room for a clash. The longer this goes on the more the SG may be tempted to fall back on cheaper satellite and fixed wireless broadband solutions, which will not help to achieve the wider UK goal of delivering nationwide FTTP coverage by the end of 2033. At this point its worth reminding readers that the responsibility for improving broadband in Scotland is reserved to Westminster. UPDATE 25th March 2019 A credible source has informed us that Openreach / BT are no longer part of any dispute in the R100 contract / bidding process. Accounting software provider Sage is preparing to release a cloud version of its HandiSoft practice management software, along with an integration platform that will work with the cloud and on-premises implementations of HandiSoft. Sage APAC executive vice-president Kerry Agiasotis joined the company in September 2017. "We've driven a lot of change in the product line" since then, he said. "I listened to our customers": the world was changing, so Sage needed to change too. The company's core product is the HandiSoft accountancy practice management software. While Sage will continue to develop and support the traditional desktop version of the software, it is preparing to launch a cloud implementation to be called HandiSoft Online. Clients who stay with the on-premises version will continue to receive all the advances made to the software, he assured attendees at the Sage Sessions conference in Melbourne. Perhaps more significantly. Sage has invested in the development of an API to support the integration of HandiSoft and HandiSoft Online with other software. This integration is achieved through the Sage Accountant Cloud, which is built on Salesforce's Force.com. Consequently, Sage partners and customers can create their own applications by using Force.com's no-code or "pro-code" development tools. It also allows integration with the thousands of applications available in the Salesforce AppExchange. In addition, the APIs support integration with a range of third-party applications including Office 365, MYOB, MyWorkPapers, SAS 360 and SimpleFund 360. Another new element is the Sage Data Hub, a cloud-based data warehouse that sits beneath HandiSoft and HandiSoft Online. Tools are provided to ingest data from anywhere, but the first ready-made adaptor is for MYOB. All of these new capabilities are available whether customers upgrade to the new version of HandiSoft or switch to HandiSoft Online. "We've been busy," said Agiasotis. More than 80% of Sage's Australian revenue comes from locally-developed products, and HandiSoft accounts for around 50% of the business, he told iTWire. Sage staff are largely practitioners with deep knowledge of accounting and related fields. Because they stay close to their customers, there has been a tendency to try to meet their immediate needs rather than stepping back to take a longer-term view, and there has been a tendency to think "if it's not Sage, we shouldn't be thinking about it", he explained. But "my competition tomorrow is the banks ... [and] the ATO,"Agiasotis said, noting that Westpac recently made invoicing software available as part of its banking platform. One company can't be the best at everything, so rather than trying to do it all, Sage needed to play specific roles within a broad ecosystem, and to support integration with other outstanding products, he said. However, openness is relative, Agiasotis observed, noting that only Xero partners have full access to that product's APIs. "There's still an inherent fear of losing control." Sage's strategy is to be clear about who we are, and what problems we are solving, and then "be as open as we possibly can be," he said. Instead of continuing to focus on the Sage accounting software plus the practice management software to cement it together, "we've pivoted" the company still offers small business accounting software, but HandiSoft will work well regardless of the software used by a practice's clients. "Every vendor is looking to do it wall-to-wall for their patch," but no accounting practice is 100% satisfied with one brand, he said. Agiasotis also believes the recent confirmation that single touch payroll (STP, the regime that requires payroll transactions to be reported to the ATO at the time they occur) will be extended to even the smallest employers represents an opportunity for Sage, as it is already a major player in outsourced, hosted and on-premises payroll. "We're using STP as a catalyst to change thinking," he told iTWire. For example, small businesses could provide payroll information to their accountants via the portals which are part of Sage's platform. That data could flow into payroll software operated by each practice at a much lower cost per employee than would be possible if each business ran its own payroll software. "It's a BPO-style model," he said. Lofchie said he thought the city was paying too much because he had asked a security company what it would cost them to install the four cameras, and they said $17,000. He originally asked aldermen to send the item back to the Finance Committee where city staff could get more bids for the purchase. The aftermath of the horrific mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week has unfortunately delivered exactly what the mentally deranged perpetrator wanted division. It has also served to further stifle the free flow of online information. As pointed out by digital industry figures Paul Shetler and Matt Barrie, who commented this week about the arbitrary blocking of two well-known websites by Telstra and Optus, we have now entered dangerous territory. The websites Zero Hedge and LiveLeaks had contravened no known broadcasting laws in Australia, yet they were arbitrarily blocked by the two largest telcos. Let us be perfectly clear in this instance. It has long been an offence to post or host objectionable video material online, such as various types of porn or, in this case, a crazed killer going on a murderous shooting rampage. Neither Zero Hedge nor LiveLeaks posted or hosted any footage of the mosque shootings, but they were still blocked by Australias two largest telcos. Meanwhile, social media giants YouTube and Facebook hosted countless posts featuring the shooters video, but were not blocked by the telcos. People who argue that this was a specific, one-off instance where it was better to err on the side of caution by blocking the two sites are missing the point. This has gone a full step beyond deplatforming of contrarian commentators on social media sites and set a dangerous precedent where corporations have assumed the role of gatekeepers of our online content. In future, telcos may arbitrarily decide that sites that have broken no laws, but which contain politically incorrect content, should also be blocked. Many alternative news and conspiracy sites contain politically incorrect views. Should they also be blocked by corporate censors because those views run counter to the prevailing wisdom? What about leaked video and documents showing government wrongdoing? Should Wikileaks have been blocked for posting a video of a US Apache helicopter gunship murdering innocent Iraqis in 2007? Censorship in the free world is not a new phenomenon, of course. Aldous Huxleys dystopian masterpiece Brave New World has been continuously censored throughout parts of the world since its publication in 1932. The book was originally censored in Australia, Ireland, and many parts of the US. Banning and burning books that contain social messages is one thing. However, banning online news and information websites takes censorship to a different level. In the old print paradigm, it is akin to shutting down newspapers. A free press is a fundamental foundation of any true democracy. In the online world, we are now dangerously descending to a situation where the only press that will be given a voice by corporate telecommunications is the corporate media. In effect, we now have one rule for the rich and another for the poor in the online space. Corporate media get to control the news narrative, say what they like, stay fully monetised on whatever platform they are housed, secure in the knowledge that they will never be deplatformed or have their sites taken down by corporate telcos. Independent media on the other hand have to mind their manners or else they may find themselves kicked off YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, or now even worse, have their sites blocked. Those who think that this descent into online media despotism is a mere exaggeration should pause to consider. For the past seven years, an Australian political journalist of the highest order by the name of Julian Assange has been wasting away in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. His only crime has been to engage in real journalism and publish leaked documents online that expose bad behaviour by the US Government. The real crime is his continued detention, tacitly supported by governments of the so-called free world. Assanges detention should be a reminder to those who think erring on the side of caution and blocking alternative news websites is a good idea. The online space has been the last bastion of a truly free press. Unfortunately, the bastion is once again under fire and tottering on the brink. The Windows network at the Norwegian aluminium maker Norsk Hydro was probably infiltrated by attackers who planted the LockerGoga ransomware using something like scheduled tasks or services in Microsoft's Active Directory, a British security expert says. Kevin Beaumont, who followed the whole episode of infection and also looked carefully at the company's response, said in a detailed blog post that his speculation about the route into the Norsk Hydro system was backed up by an assessment by the NorCERT, the computer emergency response team in Norway. For this, the attackers needed remote access, and how they gained this was a puzzle that Beaumont said the company could help solve by releasing some of the incident response information later as it would help protect other companies from a similar intrusion. Beaumont noted that a few weeks before the Hydro calamity, he had pointed out that despite a LockerGoga attack on a French firm,. Altran in January, most endpoint security anti-malware solutions could not detect this strain. "I actually detonated the ransomware myself on several real world endpoints (in isolated fashion as youll learn later it doesnt self-replicate too) and I couldnt find an endpoint security tool which actually triggered a detection (although Ciscos ThreatGrid sandbox technology did classify it as Generic Ransomware)," he wrote. Norsk Hydro announced on Wednesday that it had been hit by the Windows ransomware late on Monday evening. The company provided a steady stream of information about what had happened and held regular media briefings about its progress in sorting things out. On Thursday, the firm said it had called in experts from Microsoft and other security partners to help get business critical systems back to normal. Nice find, fully undetected on VirusTotal ransomware. Digitally signed. https://t.co/qLWBvfi8yH Kevin Beaumont ?? (@GossiTheDog) March 8, 2019 Beaumnont said once inside the Hydro network, the attackers must have had Domain Admin rights to carry out their plan. "Usually in companies it is extremely easy to get this access, despite the industry hard selling a range of privileged access management tools, by simply: "fishing logins out of memory using Mimikatz "taking passwords from Active Directory Group Policy Preferences theyre often right there in the XML files. Its the go to, bread and butter of Red Teams. "Pass The Hash attacks and surf around the entire network using the same local administrator passwords because almost nobody deploys Microsoft Local Administrator Password Solution." Once an attacker had become an Active Directory administrator, it was possible to place the ransomware executable in a place where every system in an organisation could reach. Under normal circumstances, a firm's firewall universally accepts Active Directory traffic internally. "Bingo, you have the keys to the kingdom the only thing stopping you now is security controls around endpoint malware, and as we already established those wont detect LockerGoga at the time of the attack," Beaumont said. Detailing the impact of LockerGoga, he said: "It ends up using every CPU core and thread during encryption and is very, very fast. This is because it spawns hundreds of executables for encryption. Within a few minutes, an average system is toast. "Additionally, some technical blogs mention a list of file types that are encrypted which only includes things like Office files I can say first-hand that it also encrypts system files such as .DLL files. across the C: drive. Since it is deployed as administrator level using Active Directory, it has full control of all files. "It depends on the version being run (on VirusTotal you can see different LockerGoga executables with different features) but newer versions use netsh.exe to disable all network cards after encryption is done. "It then changes every local administrator account password. "It then logs you off, using logoff.exe." Beaumont was full of praise for the way Norsk Hydro had managed the incident. "Organisations should look at how Hydro disclosed and dealt with the issue so far in the public arena,." he said. "It looks like it may be a textbook example of how incident response should be done, with transparency and openness. Not only the public and media perception went well, but the business end went well too people didnt sell off shares because they felt genuinely informed and that Hydro had a dire situation under control." PhD students from Curtin University in Western Australia will travel to France to collaborate on defence research under a partnership agreement with French research institute Ecole Nationale Superieure de Techniques Avancees, Bretange. The Collaborative Doctoral Program will involve a cohort of Curtin PhD students spending up to a year conducting research in France, with ENSTA Bretagne PhD students visiting Curtin in return. The research will be multi-disciplinary across the areas of robotics and artificial intelligence, human factors engineering, corrosion engineering and marine acoustics, as well as other areas that support the defence industry. Curtin University deputy vice-chancellor, Research, Professor Chris Moran said the collaboration was timely given the recent signing of a $50 billion agreement between the Australian Government and French shipbuilding company Naval Group for the delivery of Australias future submarine program. The Curtin-ENSTA Bretagne collaboration builds on not just the Governments recent agreement but with Curtins strategic partnerships with the Governments Defence Science and Technology Group and the Australian defence industry, Professor Moran said. The agreement with ENSTA Bretagne is an opportunity for Curtin to again demonstrate its world-leading research capabilities at an international level in order to make a meaningful contribution to the defence industry. At the same time, Curtin will benefit from the shared expertise and achievements of the visiting ENSTA Bretagne PhD students and researchers in what is a mutually enriching arrangement. ENSTA Bretagne director Pascal Pinot said the development of strong and practical scientific collaborations with leading Australian universities on defence-related issues served to strengthen bilateral ties. "ENSTA Bretagne, a leading engineering school and research centre under the supervision of the French Defence Procurement Agency, has made Australia a privileged country for collaboration for several years, he said. These relationships have intensified since the Naval Group contract was signed, making Curtin a partner of choice, especially for our doctoral students. Our fields of expertise are very close to those of Curtin and we are counting on this collaboration to further strengthen them, to the great benefit of doctoral students who will also mix French and Australian cultures throughout their careers. ENSTA Bretagne is run under the supervision of the French Ministry of Armed Forces and aims to produce engineers capable of mastering the design of complex, industrial systems in an international environment, required by civil industries and the French Defence Procurement Agency. Curtin and ENSTA Bretagne have an ongoing exchange program under which students from ENSTA Bretagne visit Curtin for between three and 12 months. Victoria is set to get improved mobile coverage and more reliable communications under Round 4 of the Federal Governments mobile blackspot program. Regional Services Minister Senator Bridget McKenzie on Thursday announced the locations of 32 new base stations in Victoria, which she said would improve mobile coverage in regional and remote communities. The new Victorian sites include base stations at Chum Creek, Bealiba, Licola and Toolleen. Reliable and effective mobile communications are a key driver of the enormous contribution that our regions make to Australias economic growth, said Senator McKenzie. Greater availability of mobile services is a big deal. It means staying safe in remote areas, keeping in contact with family and friends, unlocking access to online health and education services as well as increased tourism and business opportunities. Under Round 4 of the program, $21.7 million will be invested in mobile infrastructure in Victoria, including $6.5 million funding from the Commonwealth and $5.8 million from the Victorian Government. Senator McKenzie said the Mobile Black Spot Program was delivering 1047 new base stations and generating more than $760 million of new investment in mobile infrastructure including contributions from state and local governments, mobile network operators, businesses and local communities. Base stations under the first three rounds are scheduled to be operational by 30 June, and round 4 base stations are expected to roll out shortly with the first new base stations being activated by the second half of the year. The round 4 mobile black spot locations in Victoria: Site Name, State, Carrier: Environmental Activist and Feminist to Deliver Stevenson Address Vandana Shiva will present a talk titled The Future of Food as part of the Adlai E. Stevenson Memorial Lecture Series on Monday, April 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hansen Student Center. BLOOMINGTON, Ill. International environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate and feminist Vandana Shiva will present an address as part of the Adlai E. Stevenson Memorial Lecture Series on Monday, April 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the Hansen Student Center at Illinois Wesleyan University. In addition to her address The Future of Food, Shiva will host a master class for students in Illinois State Universitys Bone Student Center Old Main Room at 3 p.m. on April 15. Emphasizing the need for sustainable agriculture, Shiva is a supporter of getting women across the globe more involved in planting and farming. Shiva currently chairs the Commission on the Future of Food set up by the Region of Tuscany in Italy and is a Board member of the International Forum on Globalisation (IGF). She is the author of more than 20 books and has spoken at universities around the world. In 2003, Time magazine lauded Shiva as an environmental hero for her work. Shivas contributions to gender issues are nationally and internationally recognized as well. Her book Staying Alive dramatically shifts popular perceptions of Third World women. She founded the gender unit at the International Centre for Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, and was a founding Board Member of the Women Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). In 1993, Shiva received the Right Livelihood Award often known as the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize for her work "placing women and ecology at the heart of modern development discourse." She is also the recipient of the United Nations Environment Programme's Global 500 Award and the Earth Day International Award of the United Nations. Shiva studied as a physicist at the University of Punjab before earning her Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario, Canada in 1978. She later shifted to interdisciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy, which she carried out at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India. The Adlai E. Stevenson Memorial Lecture Series was established by a group of local civic leaders to honor the legacy of Bloomington native Adlai E. Stevenson II, former Illinois Governor and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, after his passing in 1965. The events are co-hosted by Illinois Wesleyan University and Illinois State University. By John Twork Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) Malacanang on Thursday shrugged off fears and claims that Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) founding chairman Nur Misuari's war threat over the federalism push was a type of "blackmail" against the current administration. Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo, in his media briefing, emphasized Misuari was only "expressing his disappointment" that one of President Rodrigo Duterte's campaign promises was still not in place. "It's not a even a threat, he's just expressing what they will do. They're saying that if you force us against the wall, this is what we will do," the spokesman told reporters. In a speech Wednesday evening, Duterte revealed that the Moro leader threatened to wage war should the administration's push for federalism fail. "Sabi ni Misuari kagabi [Misuari said last night], 'If you do not give it (federalism) to me, let me be very honest. I will go to war," Duterte said. Panelo said the President had offered to create a panel involving representatives from both sides-- five members from the government and five MNLF officials-- to discuss and address steps they could take regarding the federalism issue. The spokesman later on revealed Duterte had a "counter-threat" for Misuari. "They will have a one-on-one meeting," Panelo said of the panel. "He (Duterte) said, after which we will celebrate for its (federalism) success. And if it fails, we will die together." "Because the Chairman said, I will go to war, which means if you go to war, then you will be fighting with the government," he added. Panelo, however, expressed confidence the two sides will reach an agreement to attain peace. He added that while the government had previously "won over" the Muslim rebellion, both sides would not want to "reach that stage." Misuari has opted for a federal form of government over the ratified Bangsamoro law, and refused to recognize the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) amid rumors of dissatisfaction with their representation in the government body. READ: Despite favoring federalism, Nur Misuari has 'no choice' but to support BOL - Panelo Federalism still in lawmakers' hands Federalism has been one of Duterte's campaign promises. The House of Representatives has passed a federal charter on third and final reading, but the Senate said it has no time for charter change. Asked if the pronouncement could be a platform for Duterte to urge solons to expedite its passage, Panelo maintained the chief executive will still "not interfere with Congress." For his part, Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III said Congress won't flinch on federalism despite Misuari's threats. "Does he even know what kind of federalism he wants? Why are we going to jump into something because a citizen of the country says he wants this or that?" Sotto said during a forum Thursday. "Hindi ganun kadali 'yun eh. Pinagaaralan 'yun eh," he added. (It's not that easy, it should always be reviewed). Senator Franklin Drilon, on the other hand, said no individual should be allowed to "threaten the very existence of the Republic" if his or her request has not been granted by the government. Senator Ping Lacson meanwhile said Duterte may have been campaigning for federalism himself when the latter made public his conversation with Misuari. Senator Antonio "Sonny" Trillanes IV, a known staunch critic of Duterte, questioned the authenticity of the President's revelation. "Hindi ako naniniwala na sinabi ni Misuari 'yun. Pakana lang ni Duterte 'yun. As always, magsisinungaling siya para lang maitulak yung gusto niya," Trillanes said in a statement. [Translation: I don't believe Misuari said that. It was just made up by Duterte. As always, he has to lie just to push for what he wants.] CNN Philippines' Alyssa Rola, Xave Gregorio, and Chad de Guzman contributed to this report. This free training cannot be combined with other Continuing Education training. For groups of 25 or more, a fee of $0.50 per person will be charged for printed materials required for the training. Training can be offered a salon, For individuals, very small groups, and those not affiliated with a salon, CCSS will be offering training at alternate locations with limited availability. When I did have the opportunity my heart was beating out of my chest, but I was able to pace the role emotionally and technically and I was proud of what I did. I was proud that I didnt try to show off too much and really sung true to who I am. It was just such a monster of a role. A $1.14 billion after-tax NPV with 8% discount rate and a 50% IRR at an average price $11,882/t LCE Significant cash flows generation over a 35-year life of mine drive a rapid payback of 1 year and 8 months provide a variety of financing alternatives Maiden Proven and Probable Reserves of 1.3Mt of LCE with 790 mg/l Lithium Low pre-production capital cost of $319 million (excluding deferred and sustaining capital costs) and low operating costs of $2,914/t LCE Life of mine average annual production of 20,000t LCE (battery grade) with significant potential to expand with reserves being only 32% of entire resource Well known processing, with conventional evaporation pond operations followed by purification and precipitation of lithium carbonate Significant opportunities to further improve the project economics, such as increasing higher-grade zone reserve, include by-products and phased expansions TORONTO, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Neo Lithium Corp. (Neo Lithium or the Company) (TSXV: NLC; OTCQX: NTTHF; FSE: NE2) is pleased to announce positive results of a prefeasibility study (PFS) prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101) for its wholly-owned Tres Quebradas lithium brine project ("3QProject") in Catamarca Province, Argentina. The technical report summarizing the PFS is being prepared by GHD Chile SA ("GHD") and Groundwater Insight Inc., in accordance with NI 43-101 (the Technical Report). GHD is a leading independent engineering services firm with extensive experience in projects developments with some of the largest and lowest cost lithium brine processing facilities in Chile and Argentina. Groundwater Insight Inc. is a technical consultancy with lithium brine experience on more than 18 salars in exploration or production stages.The reserve estimation in the Technical Report was done by groundwater numerical model experts IHLLA Research Group under the supervision of Groundwater Insight Inc. (Groundwater Insight). Golder SA and G&T Ingenieria SA also collaborated in the study. Waldo Perez, President and CEO of Neo Lithium, commented, "With the discovery of a high-grade core, we optimised the 3Q Project development plan with respect to our Preliminary Economic Assessment. The new capex and opex, together with a long life of mine and high-grade brine, allow us to present a superior IRR of 50%. Furthermore, we currently continue drilling the high grade core and we are now able to validate that the 3Q Project still has further significant high-grade resource upside potential. The PFS represents a comprehensive study of the technical and economic viability of the 3Q Project and has advanced to a stage where a preferred processing method has been established and an effective method of mineral processing has been determined. PFS Highlights Unless otherwise indicated, all dollar amounts in this press release are stated in U.S. dollars ($). Currency exchange is based on current rates. Description PEA PFS After-Tax Net Present Value ("NPV") @ 8% Discount Rate $1,200 million US$1,144 million After-Tax Internal Rate of Return ("IRR") 27.9% 49.9% Initial Capital Expenditures $490.2 million US$318.9 million Cash Operating Costs (per tonne of lithium carbonate) $2,791 $2,914 Average Annual Production (lithium carbonate) 35,000 20,000 Mine Life 20 years 35 years Payback Period (from commencement of production) 2 years 1 year 8 months Note: By-products (such as potash, calcium chloride and boric acid) are not included in the Companys Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) 3Q Project NI 43-101 Technical Report, Catamarca, Argentina prepared by GHD with an effective date of December 12, 2017 (PEA) or PFS and could potentially add incremental value to the 3Q Project. We are delighted with the results of the PFS. We have improved the PEA results on all fronts, requiring a smaller capital investment for a similar NPV. The 3Q Project is now easier to build, easier to finance, and its larger size allows us to think in terms of potential phased expansions. The final value of this project will be realized over time, said Carlos Vicens CFO of Neo Lithium. Mineral Resources, Mineral Reserves and Mine Plan The Mineral Resources were defined in the Companys Updated Mineral Resource Estimate Technical Report on the 3Q Lithium Project, Catamarca Province, Argentina prepared by Groundwater Insight Inc. with an effective date of August 14, 2018 and summarized in the following table: High Grade Lithium Core (Cut-off 800 mg/L) Deposit at Large (Cut-off 400 mg/L) Measured Indicated M&I Inferred Measured Indicated M&I Inferred Volume [Mm3] 45.4 93.8 139 28.3 152 1,070 1,222 939 Average Lithium concentration (mg/L) 1,010 1,006 1,007 1,239 701 602 614 584 Lithium Carbonate Tonnage (rounded) 244,000 502,000 746,000 186,000 569,000 3,436,000 4,005,000 2,917,000 The strategy to maximize value at the 3Q Project was by first extracting the high-grade core brine with 5 wells strategically located in the middle of the high-grade component of the measured and indicated resource, with screens between 70 and 100 m. Early extraction of high-grade brine allows minimal sizing of early stage ponds. Grade is predicted to decrease with time, as progressively lower grade brine is extracted. Consequently, total pond area increases over the years. A numerical groundwater model was developed to support the reserve estimate and development of the 35-year mine plan. The model predicts a brine grade decrease over time and simulates additional brine recovery to maintain production at around 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent over the life of mine. The model simulates long term brine recovery, based on rigorous assembly of groundwater flow and solute transport parameters. The tonnage, grade, and classification of the Mineral Reserves captured within the PFS mine plan are summarized below. Year Brine Volume [Mm3] *** Average Li concentration [mg/l] *** Li metal [tonnes] LCE [tonnes] *Resources [%] Proven Probable Proven Probable 1 3.3 1,177 1,113 2,542 5,923 13,526 0.5 % 2-10 73 1,000 21,549 44,038 114,642 234,282 9 % 11-20 101 841 20,211 53,472 107,524 284,472 10 % 21-35 183 670 18,694 81,513 99,453 433,651 13 % Total 35 years production** 360 790 61,600 182,000 328,000 966,000 32 % *Total M&I resources 4,005,000 tonnes LCE @ 400 mg/l cut-off / ** Rounded / *** These two include some incidental capture from the inferred resource, which is excluded from the reserve estimate. In the initial 10 years of the PFS mine plan, 5 wells would each produce 51 l/s of high-grade brine. During the subsequent 10 years, the same wells would produce 64 l/s. From 20 years onward, a total of 11 wells would be in operation, with individual production rates between 23 l/s to 49 l/s. These variable brine recovery rates are designed to maintain a relatively constant production rate of approximately 20,000 tonnes of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent (LCE). The required yields are reasonable within the known parameters of the brine aquifer. However, ample space exists within the resource for additional production wells, if required. The Company has already installed one production well capable of sustained production of 84 l/s from the high-grade zone. Proposed Mining Operation and Processing The PFS identifies the preferred development option as being a conventional evaporation pond operation followed by purification and precipitation of lithium carbonate. We have been working towards a mining plan and a process facility that maximizes the competitive advantages of the 3Q Project, which is high grade, with low impurities and a large size of resource, said Gabriel Pindar, Director and COO of Neo Lithium. The PFS has been tailor-made to the 3Q Project, while using proven technologies that have been utilized by major companies in the region to minimize operational and construction risks. The process begins with the extraction of brine from pumping wells into solar evaporation pre-concentration ponds. After a retention period of approximately 120 days, approximately 90% of the sodium chloride and other salts crystallizes out from the brine. The potash is harvested in a subsequent pond, with no requirement for reagents. Subsequently, the brine is transferred to calcium chloride precipitation ponds and thickeners are used to extract most of the calcium that precipitates as antarctite. Minor amounts of hydrochloric acid are required for pH control and to crystallize boric acid out of the brine. Residence time in the calcium chloride ponds is approximately 105 days. When the brine achieves a lithium concentration of 3.5%, it is transported to the brine processing plant. The total time to get to this stage is approximately 225 days and lithium recovery in the ponds is approximately 60%. Influent brine lithium grade is predicted to change over the mine life, from 1,177 mg/l in year 1 to 670 mg/l in year 35. Consequently, pre-concentration ponds must be expanded over time to keep production constant. In the initial phase, 406 hectares of pre-concentration ponds will be utilized. This will be followed by two expansions of 102 hectares, each in year 10 and year 20. The calcium chloride ponds and thickeners remain constant over the life of mine. Average production is 20,000 tonnes LCE per year, and the need for capital at the beginning of the project is minimized by mining the high grade first. Processing of the concentrated brine is achieved in four stages at two locations Fiambala y Recreo: Fiambala (100 Km. from Salar 3 Quebradas) Solvent Extraction to remove remaining boron; Sulfatation to remove remaining calcium adding a saturated solution of sodium sulfate; Recreo (465 Km. from Fiambala) Mix with mother liquor and minor soda ash to remove traces of calcium and magnesium; and Addition of soda ash and heat to precipitate lithium carbonate, followed by drying and packaging. Recovery in the sulfatation plant is 92% and recovery in the carbonation plant is 85%. The Company is now operating a 1:500 scale pilot plant in Fiambala, to fine-tune this standard method. The general approach has been proven in industry by major producers, to achieve battery grade lithium carbonate. Key parameters that provide the basis for the PFS and other qualifications and assumptions are provided below. Capital Costs Initial capital costs are estimated at approximately $319 million. Life-of-mine deferred and sustaining capital costs are estimated at approximately $207 million, and closure costs are estimated at approximately $26 million. Details for capital costs could be found in the table below: Description ($ Million) Direct Costs Evaporation Ponds and Wells $128.1 Plant Facilities and Equipment $55.8 Infrastructure and Others $63.7 Direct Costs Subtotal $247.7 Indirect Costs $24.1 Contingency $47.1 Total Initial Capital Costs $318.9 Deferred and Sustaining Capital Costs $206.7 Closure Costs $26.3 Note: numbers may not match exactly due to rounding. Operating Costs Average operating costs per tonne processed are as follows: Description $000/yr $/tonne Li2CO3 (lithium carbonate) Direct Costs Chemical Reactives and Reagents $27,989 $1,469 Salt Harvesting Equipment $1,867 $98 Energy $6,055 $318 Brine Transport $5,075 $266 Manpower $8,019 $420 Li2CO3 Transport $1,694 $89 Maintenance $1,527 $78 Direct Costs Subtotal $52,225 $2,740 Indirect Costs General Expenses $3,310 $174 Production Total Costs $55,535 $2,914 Note: numbers may not match exactly due to rounding. Lithium Markets and Price Neo Lithium commissioned a market study by Benchmark Minerals Ltd. in December 2018, which shows the following results: $/tonne Year 2021 2022 2023 2024 Average onwards Lithium Carbonate 14,100 16,000 14,800 11,500 11,606 The average lithium carbonate pricing estimate over the life of mine is approximately $11,882 per tonne. Base Case Sensitivity Analysis Discount Rate NPV After Tax US$ Million IRR After Tax NPV Pre Tax US$ Million IRR Pre Tax 6% $1,331 $2,004 8% $1,144 49.9% $1,547 60.3% 10% $956 $1,224 Future Work Neolithium intend to now complete a full feasibility study to further validate and detail the elements outlined in the Pre-Feasibility Study. At reserve level, it is recommended to extend drilling at depth of the high-grade zone below the already drilled 100 metres. Definition of additional high-grade resources could have a significant impact on pond requirements, with the possibility to increase production with fewer ponds. This program is already in process, and the first drilling results are expected soon. Additional long-term pumping tests in the high-grade zone are also recommended to test the aquifer in production scale pumping scenarios. Currently, the Company is carrying out a 20 days long term pumping test that is almost completed. The pilot plant operation, currently in the commissioning and testing phase, is critical to complete the feasibility study and to prove the concept of the plant facility to yield battery grade lithium carbonate. The final feasibility study must consider the economics of by-products including potash, calcium chloride and boric acid, all readily available with minor additional investment. The recommended feasibility study is expected to be completed in the first half of 2020. Environmental and Permitting Considerations Neo Lithium is fully permitted for the current work program, through feasibility and up to construction. The Company has completed the baseline studies and is now completing the final environmental impact assessment report for mine construction. The report is expected to be delivered to the mining authorities in Argentina imminently. Technical Information The Technical Report will be filed on SEDAR within 45 days of the date of this news release. The PFS is being prepared in accordance with NI 43-101 by GHD and Groundwater Insight, in conjunction with a team of globally recognized consultants. The two independent qualified experts that lead the team of consultants are: Gino Zandonai, P.Eng., a Chilean Professional Mining Engineer and competent person under CRISCO#0155, is the independent qualified person signing the report for GHD Chile SA; and Mark King, Ph.D., P.Geo., a Canadian Professional Geoscientist registered with the Association of Professional Geoscientists of Nova Scotia, is the independent qualified person signing the report for Groundwater Insight. These two qualified persons under NI 43-101 have reviewed that the technical information in respect to the PFS in this press release is accurate and approve the written disclosure of such information. Other than as set forth above, all scientific and technical information contained in this press release has been reviewed, verified, and approved by Mr. Perez, Ph.D. and P.Geo., CEO and Director of Neo Lithium, and a qualified person for the purposes of NI 43-101, and also supervised the preparation of and approved the contents of this news release. Project Financing The PFS defines the major economic parameters of the 3Q Project. The Company now has a strong foundation to discuss various financial options to move the project forward, following strategic discussions with multiple partners during 2018. "The robust project economics generated from the PFS further validates our view that the 3Q Project is an exceptional project, particularly when our industry faces unprecedented growth and it needs predictable, long term, low cost producers, noted Constantine Karayannopoulos, Chairman of Neo Lithium Corp. We are not short of options, and the next step is a careful analysis of how to maximize value for our shareholders. About Neo Lithium Corp. Neo Lithium Corp. has quickly become a prominent new name in lithium brine exploration by virtue of its high quality 3Q Project and experienced team. Already well capitalized, Neo Lithium is rapidly advancing its recently discovered 3Q Project - a unique high-grade lithium brine lake and salar complex in Latin Americas Lithium Triangle. The 3Q Project is located in the Province of Catamarca, the largest lithium producing area in Argentina. The project covers approximately 35,000 ha and the salar complex within this area is approximately 16,000 ha. The technical team that has discovered the 3Q Project characterized this unique salar complex as one of the most experienced in lithium salars. For example, this team discovered and led the technical work, including resource definition and full feasibility study, that established the Cauchari lithium salar as one of the largest lithium brine resources in the world. Additional information regarding Neo Lithium Corp. is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com under the Company's profile and at its website at www.neolithium.ca, including various pictures of ongoing work at the project. For further information, please contact: Neo Lithium Corp. Carlos Vicens This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Statements - Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements. Such statements include but are not limited to, statements as to lithium brine grades at depth being consistent with surface results, the potential for resource expansion at depth, the potential of the northern salar sediments, and deeper sediments, for hosting brine, the ability to proceed to scoping studies quickly, proceeding with continued work for additional economic studies the potential for production expansion in the Companys assessment of the economic potential of the 3Q Project, that test results are indicative of future results, and the additional of additional independent directors. Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as plans, expects or is expected, scheduled, estimates intends, anticipates, believes, or variations of such words and phrases, or statements that certain actions, events or results can, may, could, would, should, might or will, occur or be achieved, or the negative connotations thereof. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company, which could cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from the future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. These risks include, without limitation, risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms, political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration activities, including environmental regulation, risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill and sample results, risks related to the uncertainty of cost and time estimation and the potential for unexpected delays, costs and expenses, risks related to metal price fluctuations, the market for lithium products, competition for experienced directors in the junior mineral exploration and development sector, and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Companys disclosure record. Although the Company believes its expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions and has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended and undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. In its January air permit application filed with the Illinois EPA, Oak Meadow notes that exhaust from the facilitys combustion turbine generators would be released through two 240-foot-tall stacks, and that the plant would emit a maximum of 258 tons of nitrogen oxides annually. Released into the atmosphere, nitrogen oxides contribute to the formation of smog and acid rain, according to the U.S. EPA. TORONTO, March 19, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lydian International Limited (TSX:LYD) (Lydian or the Company) today announced that the Republic of Armenia Government has commenced its third-party assessment (Third Audit) of the Amulsar Gold Projects environmental impact on water resources, geology, biodiversity and water quality. In September 2018, an assessment was ordered by the Armenian government to study possible impacts of the Amulsar Gold Project on water resources. The scope of work will now also include a review of the Companys Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). This is despite the fact that the Companys EIA was previously approved by Armenian authorities in accordance with Armenian law before Lydian began constructing the Amulsar Gold Project. Earth Link and Advanced Resources Development (ELARD) has been selected by the Armenian government as the consulting firm to perform the assessment, which is expected to last approximately 12 to 16 weeks. In February 2019, the Armenian government allocated USD$396,900 to fund the Third Audit and announced earlier today that the Third Audit has commenced. Joao Carrelo, President and Chief Executive Officer of Lydian, stated, We have cooperated fully with the two previous government ordered audits since inception of the blockades in June 2018 and we will collaborate with ELARD in what we have been told by the government will be the final audit. In the meantime, we continue to engage with the Armenian government to enforce the rule of law in order to provide access to the Amulsar project site and allow Lydian to resume construction and environmental activities concurrently with the Third Audit. Despite all our efforts to date and notwithstanding the current governments intolerance of other illegal blockades in country, Lydian has been prevented from restarting construction activities. The Armenian governments actions and inactions form part of an ongoing campaign targeting Lydians investments in Armenia. No other company in Armenia has been subjected to three audits since June 2018 and been unable to continue its operations. The Company does not accept the need or legal basis for the Third Audit, since the Armenian government already confirmed that the Amulsar Gold Project complied with Armenian environmental requirements when it approved the EIA, and that Lydian relied on this approval when investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Armenia. About Lydian International Limited Lydian is a gold developer focused on construction at its 100%-owned Amulsar Gold Project, located in south-central Armenia. However, illegal blockades have prevented access to Amulsar since late June 2018. Amulsar is expected to be a large-scale, low-cost operation with production targeted to average approximately 225,000 ounces annually over an initial 10-year mine life. Estimated mineral resources contain 3.5 million measured and indicated gold ounces and 1.3 million inferred gold ounces as outlined in the Q1 2017 Technical Report. Existing mineral resources beyond current reserves and open extensions provide opportunities to improve average annual production and extend the mine life. Lydian is committed to good international industry practices in all aspects of its operations including production, sustainability, and corporate social responsibility. For more information and to directly contact us, please visit www.lydianinternational.co.uk. For further information, please contact: Doug Tobler, Chief Financial Officer +1 720-307-5087 Pamela Solly, Vice President of Investor Relations +1 720-464-5649 Or: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Caution regarding forward-looking information Certain information contained in this news release is forward looking. All statements in this news release, other than statements of historical fact, that address events, results, outcomes or developments that the Company expects to occur are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects, is expected, intends, anticipates or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results may, could, will, would, should, or occur or the negative or other variations of such terms. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, among others, statements with respect to: the Companys intention to collaborate with ELARD; the Companys engagement with the Armenian government; and the resumption of construction and environmental activities at the Amulsar project site. Statements concerning mineral resource estimates may also be deemed to constitute forward-looking information to the extent that they involve estimates of the mineralization that will be encountered when the property is developed. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on estimates and assumptions that are inherently subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks, uncertainties and factors include, without limitation: changes in gold and silver prices; adverse general economic, political, market or business conditions; failure to achieve the objectives of the future exploration and drilling programs; regulatory changes; as well as "Risk Factors" included in the disclosure documents filed on and available at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results and future events could materially differ from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. All of the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The Company expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, events or otherwise, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Vancouver, Canada / TheNewswire / March 21, 2019 - Further to its News Release of November 19, 2018, Medgold Resources Corp. (TSX-V: MED) is pleased to announce details of its forthcoming drilling program at the Tlamino Project (the "Project" or "Tlamino") in southern Serbia. The objective of the 2019 program will be two-fold: to seek extensions of the gold mineralization defined at the Barje Prospect in 2018, and to drill exploration targets at Karamanica including a 2km long Induced Polarization ("IP") chargeability anomaly within a 2km by 1.5km gold-in-soil anomaly. Management believes that the IP anomaly represents the continuation of a mineralized structure into Medgold's tenement along strike from underground mine workings at Podvirovi currently being put into production by Mineco Limited. The Company also announces final results of its 2018 program, received since its news release of November 19, 2018. The 2019 exploration program remains fully funded by Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. (NYSE: FSM) (TSX: FVI) ("Fortuna") and directed by a joint Fortuna-Medgold technical committee pursuant to the terms of the Tlamino Option Agreement announced on May 1, 2017. Medgold intends to pursue a program of up to 5,000m of diamond drilling in the areas of Barje, Liska and Karamanica during its 2019 exploration program. Barje and Liska Results from the 31 drill holes of the 2018 drilling program, including the results of the 11 drill holes received after the Company's November 19, 2018 news release are shown in Figures 1 and 2, and Tables 1 and 2 below. Based on 3D re-interpretation of drill data and geology, the previously-announced 500m by 400 m mineralized zone at the Barje Prospect is now seen to extend 700m east-west by 250m north-south within a structurally-bound, shallowly-dipping hydrothermal breccia below altered schist. This mineralization ranges in vertical grade-thickness from 10 to 151 meters and appears to be bounded to its south by a fault. Drilling west of this zone returned only sporadic intervals of gold mineralization. The Liska Prospect is situated 1.5km southwest of and around 300m vertically lower than Barje. Approximately 5,000m of drilling was completed pre-1980 at Liska by Yugoslav State Agencies from which a 15 to 40m thick, tabular zone of lead-zinc mineralization was reported(1), associated with a flat-lying boundary between schist/gneiss and overlying units in an area of approximately 300 by 450m; State Agencies reported a historic Mineral Resource Estimate for this area as 4.863 million tonnes at 0.54% Pb and 1% Zn in B+C1 Resource categories(2). Bilans Rezervi Cvrstih Mineralnih Sirovina, Republike Srbije (Balance Solid Mineral Reserves, Republic of Sebia). Geozavod, Belgrade (1998). While it is known that drilling and minor underground development for exploration were carried out at Liska pre-1980, a Qualified Person has not completed sufficient work to classify the historic Mineral Resource Estimate as current Mineral Resources or Mineral Reserves. Key assumptions, parameters, and methods used in its preparation are moreover unknown, and systematic precious metal analyses were not performed. As such Medgold is not treating the historical Mineral Resource Estimate as either current Mineral Resources or Mineral Reserves. Mineral Resources calculated as B+C1 Resource categories in the former-Yugoslavia would be equivalent to Mineral Resources of Indicated or Measured category within the CIM Definition Guidelines relating to NI 43-101. The boundary associated with the historically-reported mineralization at Liska potentially represents the continuation of the host structure identified at Barje. Medgold's 2019 drilling program at Barje-Liska will focus on a 1km target zone between Barje and Liska, with the objective of exploring between the two prospects. This area is covered by a conglomerate sequence believed to be between 10 and 200m thick. Historical mineralization at Liska falls on the margin of a chargeability anomaly identified by an IP geophysical survey carried out by Medgold during 2017 and extended during 2018. Medgold drilled two holes south of the historically-reported mineralization during 2018 (Figure 2) which intersected only weak mineralization. Karamanica Located approximately 8km northwest of Barje, the Karamanica Zone is characterized by a 2km by 1.5km gold-in-soil anomaly in which samples returned values generally above 0.1 ppm gold. Within this anomaly locally-elevated concentrations of Ag, Cu, Pb, Zn, As and Sb are seen to form distinct NW-SE linear features (Figures 3-6 below), which are in turn partly co-incident with marked IP chargeability. These exploration targets will be tested by drilling as part of Medgold's 2019 exploration program. The strong, linear, chargeability anomaly trending NW-SE through the area follows the trend of a fault structure associated with reported mineralization from historic drilling and underground workings at the Podvirovi polymetallic showing (Figure 7 below). Podvirovi is held in a mining permit by Bosil Metal doo, a subsidiary of Mineco Limited, adjacent to Medgold's landholding. A historic Mineral Resource Estimate for Podvirovi was listed by Yugoslav State Agencies in 1989 as 2.216 million tonnes at 3.07% Pb, 3.06% Zn and 0.87% Cu in A+B+C1 Resource categories(3). (While it is known that drilling and underground development for exploration were carried out at Podvirovi pre-1980, a Qualified Person has not completed sufficient work to classify the historic Mineral Resource Estimate as current Mineral Resources or Mineral Reserves. Key assumptions, parameters, and methods used in its preparation are moreover unknown, and systematic precious metal analyses were not performed. As such Medgold is not treating the historical Mineral Resource Estimate as either current Mineral Resources or Mineral Reserves and notes that evidence of mineralization on the adjacent property is not necessarily indicative of mineralization on Medgold's property. Mineral Resources calculated as A+B+C1 Resource categories in the former-Yugoslavia would be equivalent to Mineral Resources of Indicated or Measured category within the CIM Definition Guidelines relating to NI 43-101. In addition to the exploration targets defined along the possible continuation of the Podvirovi structure, the geochemical and geophysical anomalies mentioned above also give rise to exploration targets in areas of similar structure and lithology to that hosting mineralization at Karamanica. Additional maps and information for Barje-Liska and Karamanica are available on Medgold's website at http://medgoldresources.com/tlamino/. Table 1 - Barje Drill Intercepts, 2018. Including final assay results and estimation of vertical thickness. Drill Hole From To Interval Vertical thickness1 Au Ag As Pb Zn (m) (m) (m) (m) (g/t) (g/t) (%) (%) (%) BAR0012 2.38 33.20 30.82 23.7 2.06 55 0.67 0.17 0.37 BAR0022 13.35 48.00 34.65 27.3 3.11 28 0.76 0.13 0.30 including 42.00 44.00 2.00 1.6 23.88 340 3.29 1.08 2.61 BAR0033 2.00 28.10 26.10 22.3 2.44 219 0.92 0.11 0.19 including 3.60 9.60 6.00 5.1 4.20 754 0.88 0.27 0.09 BAR0043 2.20 24.30 22.10 22.1 1.83 109 0.61 0.17 0.34 BAR0054 1.60 102.40 100.80 78.9 0.52 5 0.26 0.07 0.27 including 82.15 102.40 20.25 15.8 1.08 11 0.05 0.25 1.14 BAR0064 74.00 104.00 30.00 27.8 5.45 25 1.47 0.25 0.76 including 85.00 95.00 10.00 9.3 2.73 10 1.22 0.09 0.24 and 95.00 104.00 9.00 8.3 14.17 58 2.70 0.69 2.11 BAR0074 53.00 77.00 24.00 20.4 0.52 4 0.44 0.01 0.02 and 89.50 101.60 12.10 10.3 3.40 12 1.37 0.11 0.30 BAR0085 41.45 54.80 13.35 13.2 5.06 109 0.74 1.44 2.85 including 48.95 54.80 5.85 5.8 10.35 484 0.50 5.03 10.67 BAR0095 0.00 28.00 28.00 25.5 0.86 7 0.52 0.02 0.08 BAR0105 19.80 58.00 38.20 33.5 3.98 158 0.85 0.21 0.45 including 48.15 55.00 6.85 6.0 13.49 788 1.36 1.01 2.08 BAR0115 62.00 72.75 10.75 9.8 4.76 33 2.93 0.16 0.51 BAR012b5 57.80 73.00 15.20 13.3 1.68 10 1.55 0.14 0.35 BAR0135 70.50 89.10 18.60 18.6 3.09 22 1.31 0.40 0.87 BAR0146 87.00 120.00 33.00 25.5 1.14 10 0.45 0.05 0.12 including 117.70 120.00 2.30 1.8 7.46 111 1.32 0.58 1.21 BAR0156 135.00 143.20 8.20 7.7 2.29 19 1.62 0.40 1.06 BAR0166 101.00 120.90 19.90 18.1 1.01 11 0.48 0.03 0.10 BAR0176 No significant intersection of mineralization BAR0186 No significant intersection of mineralization BAR0196 154.90 167.90 13.00 11.5 0.74 5 0.58 0.10 0.26 and 201.00 208.60 7.60 6.7 0.70 4 0.63 0.05 0.16 BAR0206 No significant intersection of mineralization BAR021 No significant intersection of mineralization BAR022 No significant intersection of mineralization BAR023 No significant intersection of mineralization BAR024 174.00 175.10 1.10 1.1 1.64 4 0.39 0.00 0.00 BAR025 180.65 181.50 0.85 0.7 1.53 2 0.02 0.00 0.00 BAR026 No significant intersection of mineralization BAR027 No significant intersection of mineralization BAR028 22.00 28.00 6.00 5.2 1.45 1 0.03 0.00 0.00 BAR029 2.00 21.00 19.00 16.6 1.34 1 0.06 0.00 0.00 LIS001 No significant intersection of mineralization LIS002 No significant intersection of mineralization 1 - The mineralization is thought to be hosted along sub-horizontal to shallowly dipping structural zones. The vertical thickness is calculated from the length of intersect and the inclination of the drill hole as indicated by the drillhole survey. The vertical thickness is believed to be generally within ?10% of the true thickness. 2 - Announced 11 June 2018. 3 - Announced 18 June 2018. 4 - Announced 5 July 2018. 5 - Announced 20 September 2018. 6 -Announced 19 November 2018. Table 2 - Barje - Liska Drill Collars 2018 Drill hole Easting1 Northing1 Elevation Azimuth Inclination Length (m) (?) (?) (m) BAR001 616847 4691858 1082 -50 180 54.9 BAR002 616933 4692085 1131 -50 140 99.3 BAR003 616846 4691859 1082 -60 0 49.1 BAR004 616846 4691858 1082 -90 0 100.2 BAR005 616820 4691998 1130 -50 135 125.6 BAR006 616688 4691951 1144 -70 135 151.6 BAR007 616688 4691951 1144 -60 315 153.4 BAR008 616713 4691883 1114 -80 180 92.8 BAR009 616909 4691901 1081 -65 135 56.1 BAR010 616936 4692083 1131 -60 70 80.5 BAR011 616696 4692051 1172 -65 30 98.5 BAR012b 616663 4692056 1179 -60 315 116.5 BAR013 616635 4691893 1145 -90 0 143.6 BAR014 616689 4691955 1144 -50 80 174.6 BAR015 616525 4692010 1206 -70 135 176.7 BAR016 616526 4692009 1206 -65 315 139.3 BAR017 616389 4691991 1232 -70 0 174.7 BAR018 616389 4691913 1234 -80 180 227.9 BAR019 616392 4691917 1234 -60 80 267.6 BAR020 616305 4691958 1248 -80 180 224.7 BAR021 616303 4691956 1249 -50 0 199.1 BAR022 616220 4692011 1242 -65 325 203.7 BAR023 616196 4691904 1242 -75 180 257.7 BAR024 616123 4691994 1262 -74 180 286.9 BAR025 616123 4691991 1262 -60 225 248.7 BAR026 615805 4692010 1246 -70 0 176.3 BAR027 615774 4691712 1208 -70 135 245.7 BAR028 616040 4692124 1263 -60 0 118.1 BAR029 615971 4692141 1264 -60 315 112.9 LIS001 615634 4690638 910 -60 135 200.6 LIS002 615932 4690457 894 -50 110 200.4 1 - Coordinates are given in WGS84 datum and UTM zone 34 projection. The Tlamino Gold Project The Project is located in Southern Serbia, close to the borders of both Bulgaria and Macedonia, five hours south of Belgrade. Tlamino is comprised of two exploration licenses, Donje Tlamino and Surlica-Dukat, each approximately 100sq.km. All exploration work at the Project is fully-funded by Fortuna, which has an option to earn up to 70% of the Project by spending US $8 million on exploration over five years and completing a Preliminary Economic Assessment (see Medgold news release of March 7, 2017). About Medgold Resources Corp. Medgold is a Serbia-focused, TSX-V listed, project generator company targeting early-stage gold properties in the Oligo-Miocene Belt of Serbia. Run by an experienced management team with a successful track-record of building value in resource companies, Medgold is aiming to become a leading European gold exploration company. Qualified Person and Data Verification The scientific and technical information in this new release has been prepared and approved by Mr. Thomas Sant, FGS, CGeol, EurGeol, who is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr Sant has provided consulting services to Medgold since 2017. Geophysical data from 2017 was collected by Geophysique TMC of Val-d'Or, Canada. Geophysique TMC's report, prepared by Joel Simard, P.Geol./Geoph. (Ontario), was reviewed to verify that information presented in this News Release is consistent with the report's findings and that no quality issues were reported during data collection or processing. Geophysical data from 2018 was collected by Enerson Muhendislik Sond. Mad. Pet. Jeo. Mak. Elek. San. Tic. Ltd. Sti. ("Enerson) of Ankara, Turkey. Enerson's report was reviewed to verify that information presented in this News Release is consistent with the report's findings and that no quality issues were reported during data collection or processing. Sample and analytical data for Medgold's soil sampling during 2016 and 2017 has been verified by reviewing Medgold's sampling procedures and fieldwork reports for the work. Samples from both years were delivered to the independent ALS Geochemistry laboratory facilities in Bor, Serbia. The samples were prepared using method code PREP-41 and a 25 g aliquot of the -180 micron fraction was analyzed for gold and a multi-element suit using method code AuME-TL43. Drilling was carried out by independent contractors using PQ and HQ size tooling. Average core recovery for the program was 92%, Drill core was cut in half by Medgold using a rock saw with one half of the core then taken as a sample for analysis. Sample intervals were generally between 50 to 150 cm producing samples of between 2 to 9 kg. Samples were delivered to the independent ALS Geochemistry laboratory facilities in Bor, Serbia. The samples were crushed and pulverized using method code PREP-31, were fire assayed for Au using method code Au-ICP21, and were analyzed for multi-elements using method code ME-MS61 following a four-acid digestion. Overlimits were analyzed using an appropriate method. Medgold routinely inserted multi-element geochemical standards, blanks, and field duplicate samples into the drill core sample stream as part of a documented Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QAQC) process to monitor laboratory performance, during the 2018 drilling program QAQC material was inserted into sample batches at the following rates per primary sample: 1/4 core duplicates 1 in 30; granite blanks 1 in 30; certified reference material (CRM) 1 in 15. When laboratory analysis results for CRMs did not pass Medgold's QAQC controls, and the CRM's had been inserted in a sequence of mineralized samples, the CRM's and surrounding samples of similar grade were re-assayed until results passed Medgold's QAQC controls. Sample grades were checked against recovery percentage for potential bias; no discernable high- or low-grade bias was observed. Quoted Historical Mineral Resources Mineral Resources were calculated in former-Yugoslavia according to laws and regulations applicable at that time, defined specifically by "Zakon o jedinstvenom nacinu utvr?ivanja, evidentiranja i prikupljanja podataka o rezervama mineralnih sirovina i podzemnih voda i o bilansu tih rezervi" (The Law on the Uniform Method of Establishing, Recording and Gathering Data on Reserves of Mineral Raw Materials and Underground Water and Their Balancing), Sluzbeni list SFR Jugoslavije, br. 53/1977; and by "Pravilnik o klasifikaciji i kategorizaciji rezervi cvrstih mineralnih sirovina i vo?enju evidenciije o njima" (The Book of Regulations on Classification and Categorization of Reserves of Solid Mineral Raw Materials and Keeping a File on Them), Sluzbeni list SFR Jugoslavije br. 53/1979. Additional information on Medgold can be found on the Company's website at www.medgoldresources.com and by reviewing the Company's page on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Jeremy Crozier, Acting President For Further Information, Contact: President Jeremy Crozier (Vancouver), +1 604 801 5432, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Investor Relations Elina Chow (Toronto), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , +1 416.845.8495 Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-looking statements Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and include, without limitation, statements about the exploration plans for the Tlamino Project. Often, but not always, these forward looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "estimate", "estimates", "estimated", "potential", "open", "future", "assumed", "projected", "used", "detailed", "has been", "gain", "upgraded", "offset", "limited", "contained", "reflecting", "containing", "remaining", "to be", "periodically", or statements that events, "could" or "should" occur or be achieved and similar expressions, including negative variations. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Such uncertainties and factors include, among others, the exploration plans for the Tlamino Project; changes in general economic conditions and financial markets; the Company or any joint venture partner not having the financial ability to meet its exploration and development goals; risks associated with the results of exploration and development activities, estimation of mineral resources and the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; unanticipated costs and expenses; and such other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's quarterly and annual filings with securities regulators and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Forward-looking statements contained herein are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management, including but not limited to: that the proposed exploration of the Tlamino Project will proceed as intended; that the Company's stated goals and planned exploration and development activities will be achieved; that there will be no material adverse change affecting the Company or its properties; and such other assumptions as set out herein. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by law. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. TORONTO, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pangolin Diamonds Corp. (TSX-V: PAN) (the "Company" or "Pangolin") is pleased to update its shareholders on its recent activity at its kimberlite diamond projects in Botswana, Africa. Investment Highlights Team has a proven track record Dr. Leon Daniels co-founded African Diamonds (AIM: AFD) that had ownership in the AK6 pipe (now known as The Karowe Diamond Mine purchased by Lucara Diamonds). Dr. Daniels recognized for identifying the economic potential of the AK6 pipe prior to acquiring ownership. Dr. Chris Jennings, a special advisor to the Company, has been involved in over 100 kimberlite discoveries world-wide with 70 in Botswana, as well as Canadas second diamond mine Diavik. Other mines include: Gaghoo GO25 (Botswana), Klipspringer & Marsfontein (South Africa). He recently purchased a 2.6% GOR (Gross Overriding Royalty) from Pangolin for $1.2M, whereby 20 kimberlite targets will be collectively identified and planned to be drilled in 2019 (as set out below in more detail). Dr. Jennings believes there is the potential to discover a new diamondiferous kimberlite field within Pangolins projects. Two kimberlite project areas are 100% owned in Botswana All projects located SE of the Orapa Kimberlite Field; closest is ~40 km. A total of 45 diamonds have been recovered at surface in soils. Plan in place to identify 20 high priority kimberlite drill targets and to drill the first 5 once all the data has been compiled and reviewed that meets the selection criteria. An option to acquire up to 75% of the Orapa AK10 Diamondiferous Kimberlite Pipe 6 hectares in size has been extend to December 31, 2019 Located within the Orapa Kimberlite Field and only 4.4 km away from AK6 (Lucaras Karowe Diamond Mine) and infrastructure. Positive kimberlite chemistry recently processed by CF Mineral Research Ltd., owned by Chuck Fipke who discovered Canadas first diamond mine - The Ekati Diamond Mine. AK10 chemistry demonstrates it has the potential to have large +50 carat diamonds. A 500 tonne mini-bulk sample is underway to confirm diamondiferous character and determine economics of the kimberlite. As previously stated by Dr. Leon Daniels, Being a co-founder of African Diamonds where I identified the potential of the AK6 kimberlite (Karowe Mine), I am very excited about the positive classification of the kimberlite indicator minerals of the AK10 kimberlite to potentially host large +50 carat diamonds. This is a step in the right direction for the Company to have a two prong strategy with the ongoing 500 tonne mini-bulk sample of the AK10 kimberlite to confirm the reported diamondiferous character of AK10, dove-tailed with our own exploration activities in search of a new diamondiferous kimberlite field in Botswana where we have recovered 45 diamonds in soils roughly 90 km SE of the Orapa Kimberlite Field, the largest being 0.19 carats thus far. Dr. Chris Jennings GOR Projects There have been new developments and two main changes to Pangolins exploration activities in Botswana. The first main development is the royalty agreement with Umgeni, a company controlled by Dr. Chris Jennings that has bought a 2.6% GOR on certain projects for a total of $1.2M, and where Pangolin is currently focusing on these exploration prospecting licenses covered in the partnership. Under this partnership with Umgeni, a total of 20 high priority drill targets will be selected by both Umgeni and Pangolin. Umgeni will focus on geophysics and Pangolin will focus on kimberlite indicators and soil sampling. There is good reason for this, as in the past targets selected by geophysicists as classical kimberlite signature magnetic anomalies have resulted in drilling into basalt. The minimum selection criteria now are that any target selected for drilling must meet both geophysical and positive kimberlite indicator criteria as agreed by both parties. To date, Pangolin has identified targets that fit within the agreed selection criteria. However, more work is required to meet the final selection criteria, which includes: additional soil sampling to confirm the initial soil sampling results; more detailed ground magnetic surveys over the identified geophysical anomaly; and additional geophysical surveys using technology that will assist in identifying whether the targets are intrusions into the country rocks. Additional targets are being developed. The programme is to have at least ten targets available for drilling, however, the five having the highest selection criteria score will be drilled first. The second significant change Pangolin has brought about is the re-organisation of the exploration projects from three major projects with multiple prospecting licenses into two project areas. In addition to the reorganization of the Prospecting Licenses into two projects areas, two separate project managers have been appointed for each one. Both projects have specific teams (geophysical and soil sampling) allocated to them. The Company believes this rearrangement of resources will bring about greater productivity and cost saving in the medium and long term. Pangolin is already seeing the initial positive results from this re-organisation. Orapa AK10 Diamondiferous Kimberlite Pipe Pangolin has successfully negotiated the extension of an option agreement to acquire up to 75% of the AK10 diamondiferous kimberlite pipe. The kimberlite indicator mineral chemistry classification suggests it has a high probability to contain diamonds that can be +50 carats in size. The 500 tonne bulk sample of extracting kimberlite is underway to determine the potential economics. Results will be announced once all the material has been processed and analyzed. AK10 is located in the prolific Orapa Kimberlite Field in Botswana. Botswana is the second largest producer of diamonds, both by value and carats. In 2016, the Orapa Kimberlite Field produced 8.85 million carats and contains 83 known kimberlite bodies of which eleven are currently mined, scheduled to be mined or have been mined. These include: AK01, AK02 and AK07 (Orapa, Debswana), AK06 (Karowe, Lucara Diamond Corporation), BK01, BK09, BK12 and BK15 (Damtshaa, Debswana), and DK01 and DK02 (Letlhakane, Debswana). The mineralization and results on the aforementioned kimberlites are not necessarily indicative of the results will be for the AK10 kimberlite. The AK10 kimberlite pipe was originally discovered in 1968 from airborne magnetics by De Beers who established it to be diamondiferous but felt it may not be economical and too small. The compositions of the garnets from AK10 are consistent with the kimberlite having sampled the diamond stability field. It has been modeled to between 5 and 6 hectares in size and is close to surface with only 11 metres of cover. It has excellent infrastructure close by with road access, and the main power grid is less than 1.5km away. Lucara Diamond Corporations AK6 kimberlite pipe (Karowe Mine) is 4.4 km away from AK10. Karowe Mine recently produced Type II large diamonds inclusive of the 813 carat Constellation and the 1,109 carat Lesedi La Rona. A database of mineral chemistry analyses from the Orapa AK10 kimberlite consisting of 8,969 analyses of individual kimberlite indicator minerals (KIMs) were submitted to CF Mineral Research in Kelowna, BC for classification using their proprietary classification scheme for KIMs to assess the diamond potential of the Orapa AK10 kimberlite. A total of 1,908 clinopyroxene analyses were classified. The result of the classification found that 12.6% of the clinopyroxenes, both eclogitic and peridotitc, are associated with a derivation from the diamond stability field. The mineral chemistry of 15.4% of these diamond inclusion type clinopyroxenes is consistent with the chemistry of clinopyroxe diamond inclusions recovered from +50 carat diamonds. This result is consistent with the close spatial association with the large stone producing Karowe Mine of Lucara Diamond Corp. which is a mere 4.4 km distant. The classification of 4,066 garnets resulted in 16.3% of the garnets, both peridotitic and eclogitic, having mineral chemistry consistent with a derivation from the diamond stability field. The majority of these garnets are derived from the lherzolitic mantle environment, consistent with the presence of clinopyroxes from the diamond stability field. The number of spinels with greater than 45 wt% Cr2O3 totalled 1,050. It was found that 9.5% of these chrome-rich spinels had a mineral chemistry similar to spinels recovered as diamond inclusions worldwide. These diamond inclusion spinels are derived from the harzburgitic environment, similar to the source of the G10 garnet population in the Orapa AK10 garnet suite. The KIMs classification results indicate that the Orapa AK10 kimberlite has sampled several source areas (lherzolitic, harzburgitic and eclogitic) in the diamond stability field. A significant proportion of the clinopyroxenes are similar in chemical composition to clinopyroxenes extracted as diamond inclusions from +50 carat diamonds. Grant of Stock Options The Company also announces that its board of directors has approved the granting of 150,000 options under its Stock Option Plan, each share under option having a 5 year term and an exercise price of $0.05. The Options in question were granted to a key employee. Quality Control and Quality Assurances Quality assurance procedures, security, transport, storage, and processing protocols conform to chain of custody requirements. The technical disclosure in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Leon Daniels, BSc., BSc. Honours Geology, PhD and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. About Pangolin Diamonds Corp. and Our Social Connections For more information on Pangolin Diamonds Corp., please visit our website at http://pangolindiamonds.com Follow us on Twitter @pangolindiamond and Facebook at Pangolin Diamonds Corp Pangolin Diamonds Corp. - Contact Information Scott Young, Investor Relations Phone: +1.705.888.2756 Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Graham C. Warren, Chief Financial Officer Phone: +1.416.594.0473 Fax: +1.416.594.1630 Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. College of Veterinary Medicine selects two students for elite scholarship Thursday, March 21, 2019 Elsie McCoy, left, and MaRyka Smith, both seeking a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and a doctorate in pathobiology, have received the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine/Ph.D. Scholarship from the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine. | Download this photo. MANHATTAN Two Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine students are receiving the college's concurrent Doctor of Veterinary Medicine/Ph.D. Scholarship. Recipients are MaRyka Smith, Hoyt, a first-year veterinary student and in the pathobiology doctoral program; and Elsie McCoy, Sabetha, a third-year veterinary student who also is in the pathobiology doctoral program. The concurrent scholarship program, which started in 2011, brings together clinical medicine and research disciplines to create unique opportunities and expand career options in veterinary medicine. Areas of graduate training include, but are not limited to, biomedical research, infectious disease, epidemiology and diagnostic medicine. The scholarship pays for the students' Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, or D.V.M., curriculum tuition and fees, regardless of residency status or when they receive the scholarship. Expenses for the students' doctoral graduate work are supported by their major professors. "We have awarded as many as three scholarships for any given application cycle," said Frank Blecha, the college's associate dean for research. "Currently, there are 11 concurrent D.V.M. and doctoral program students enrolled in the College of Veterinary Medicine. Seven of these students have D.V.M./Ph.D. Scholarships from the college, and two students have scholarships from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service's NBAF Scientist Training Program. Five previous concurrent D.V.M./Ph.D. Scholarship students have matriculated from both degree programs." Smith is studying the pathogenesis of Rift Valley fever virus under the mentorship of A. Sally Davis, assistant professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology. "I am looking into the mechanisms that the virus employs to bind and enter cells," Smith said. "My first year as a doctoral student was as a Transboundary Animal Disease fellow at the university's Biosecurity Research Institute. Through the fellowship, I learned about the infrastructure and design of a facility like the NBAF, the National Bio and Agro-defense Facility, and simulated how to safely work with the pathogens that could be housed there." Davis said Smith is an intellectually gifted student with the enthusiasm and motivation necessary to earn both a D.V.M. and a doctorate in pathobiology. "Her sincere interest and dedication to becoming a veterinary scientist focused on addressing the many challenges presented by transboundary animal diseases, including zoonotic diseases, is admirable," Davis said. "Future veterinarians with such interests and dedication are vital to the continued protection of our food supply and have a significant role to play in public health. The D.V.M. scholarship will enable MaRyka to set aside her immediate financial concerns tied to the cost of her veterinary degree and focus on both her D.V.M. and pathobiology doctorate training." After graduation, Smith would like to continue her work with transboundary and foreign animal diseases in a government laboratory. "I hope to combine the data collecting and analyzing skills that I am learning in my pathobiology doctorate program with the clinical knowledge of my D.V.M. to make a difference in the lives of future animals and the humans that care for them both in the laboratory and in the field," Smith said. "This scholarship is hugely helpful for me to ensure that my education can continue. I also cannot put into words what it means to know that the college believes in me enough to support me in this way. Not having to worry about how I will pay my tuition each semester allows me to put that much more brainpower into my studies." In her pathobiology doctorate program, McCoy focuses on beef cattle production research, primarily liver abscesses in feedlot cattle. "I have conducted research looking at the effects of liver abscesses in feedlot cattle on meat quality and tenderness, and more recently have worked on safety and efficacy trials for an autogenous vaccine developed to reduce liver abscess prevalence in feedlot cattle," McCoy said. "Elsie is a talented student but an even better person," said her mentor, Dan Thomson, Jones professor of production medicine in the College of Veterinary medicine. "Her passion for answers to practical questions, to cattle and to perfection are what make her such a great researcher. This type of program helps students offset costs associated with the added class work of completing a doctorate in pathobiology while attending veterinary school. It also allows us as faculty to fund positions to allow these incredibly talented people to chase their passions." Following graduation, McCoy plans to enter a food animal-predominant private practice. She said the role of food animal practitioners increasingly includes a more broad animal health consultation component at a herd level. "My pathobiology doctorate program has taught me the necessary skills to conduct research and analyze production data to solve industry problems in a way my D.V.M. program alone has not," McCoy said. "After gaining clinical experience in private practice, I would like to work in food animal production research, either through a corporate or governmental route. I believe that my time in private practice will prepare me to better understand the research and product development needs of veterinarians and producers." McCoy said she is grateful for the scholarship. "I am thankful for the opportunities that this scholarship affords me to focus on both veterinary and graduate school while relieving the financial stress associated with these programs," McCoy said. "My D.V.M. and pathobiology doctorate programs so far have each taught me different, unique skills to prepare me for my career in food animal production medicine." By using drug forfeiture money, we are taking money out of the hands of criminals and using those resources to remove deadly drugs from our community, Glasgow, who noted the donation did not come at an expense to taxpayers, said in a news release. The importance of these canines cannot be understated. Dogs trained to detect the presence of illegal narcotics play an important role in helping address the deadly opioid epidemic that is gripping our communities. Not being a professional politician, I believed that an individuals support for me was the same as an endorsement, Stokas wrote. I have since found out that even though someone tells me that they will support me, it does not mean that they wish to officially endorse. A silver lining in an otherwise darkening sky, Mustapha said, has been the strong and immediate reaction of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has refused to use the gunmans name and who this week announced a national ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons, high-capacity ammunition magazines and the parts that allow weapons to be modified into the kinds of guns that were used in the mosque massacre. My girlfriend is a Chicago Public Schools teacher. She regularly tells kids to not bring their cellphones into the classroom even though the school bans cell phones in the classroom. At first I blamed the students. Then after listening to some of her phone conversations with the parents, I realized the parents, not the kids, might be the ones with the problem. ASHLAND, Ore. -- Today, ride sharing began in Ashland. It has been available to be dropped off in Ashland from other cities. Now, Ashland is a home city for Uber and Lyft: Meaning riders can now be picked up in Ashland. Some community members are excited for what ride sharing can potentially do for the economy in downtown, Ashland. Some feel like it will connect the college community with the downtown area, while reducing the risk of drunk driving. Some also feel like it will help out the tourism community. Community members said that it will help people getting out of late shows get home safer and quicker. Registering to be a driver is a simple process. Simply go their respective websites and sign up. Once approved, drivers pretty much control their own schedules. However, there is a catch in Ashland prospective drivers will need to register as a ride share driver with the Ashland Police Department. The Ashland Police Department said that no one had signed up as a ride share driver as of Wednesday. They are expecting many to sign up in the coming days. MYRTLE CREEK, Ore. Investigators have discovered the body of a Myrtle Creek man last seen on March 10, according to a statement from the Douglas County Sheriff's Office (DCSO). 29-year-old Justin Grant Bibow was reported missing on March 12, after last contacting family and friends two days before. In its original statement regarding Bibow's missing status, DCSO indicated that law enforcement in Salem may have had contact with him. "Deputies have learned that prior to being reported as a missing person, a Salem Police Officer (Oregon) conducted a computerized records check on Bibow on Monday, March 11, 2019 at 2:27 AM. Bibow could possibly still be in the Salem, Oregon area," DCSO said. On Wednesday, someone reported finding a burned Dodge pickup about 6 miles up West Fork Cow Creek Road outside of Riddle. When deputies arrived at the scene, they determined that the truck was Bibow's. A search of the area eventually turned up Bibow's body "away from the vehicle." Although the Douglas County Medical Examiner's Office will continue an investigation into Bibow's death, DCSO said that "foul play does not appear to be a factor." Bibow's next of kin has been notified. He was a member of the Riddle Fire Protection District, and on Thursday afternoon the District released a statement regarding Riddle's death that shed some light on the way he lived his life: On Wednesday, March 20th, the Douglas County Sheriffs Office notified the Riddle Fire Protection District that they had located Justin Bibow and had recovered his body. Our deepest condolences and sympathy goes out to all his family and friends. Justin served his community for 15 years as a volunteer firefighter, starting with the Tri-City Rural Fire Protection District and most recently with the Riddle Fire Protection District, where he served as a fire Captain. Justin was also a member of the South County Rescue Team. The Riddle Fire Protection District would like to thank everyone that put their time and effort into locating Justin. At this time, the Riddle Fire Protection District asks for privacy as our firefighters work through this tragic loss. Any additional information will be released through the Douglas County Sheriffs Office. Chief Devin Loughridge Assistant Chief Paul Ritter Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) Leaders of various groups on Thursday demanded the government to publicize a copy of its deals with China on the multibillion-peso Kaliwa dam project in Rizal and Quezon. Community and church leaders living near the dam construction site said they sent a "freedom of information letter" to Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea and Foreign Affairs Chief Teddy Locsin Jr. to release a copy of the Preferential Buyer's Credit Loan Agreement on the New Centennial Water Source-Kaliwa Dam Project between the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewage System (MWSS) and the Export-Import Bank of China. The document is available on the Finance Department's website. The group is also asking for a copy of the Commercial Contract between the MWSS and the China Energy Engineering Corporation. Chel Diokno, a senatorial candidate and legal counsel of the groups, gave the government a 15-day ultimatum or face legal charges. He said the documents are important to find out if the dam construction is disadvantageous to the government and the Filipinos. "Kami po ay nababahala na inililihim nila ang nilalaman nitong mga agreement at kontrata dahil these are matters of public concern. We are also concerned that these contracts may contain onerous provisions na hindi maka-Pilipino, na hindi maganda sa ating kabuhayan, at interes ng Pilipinas," he said in a media briefing. The Duterte administration defended its decision to shift from a public-private partnership (PPP) to an official development assistance (ODA) with China. The Finance Department on Wednesday said the project would have cost P18.7 billion under a PPP arrangement, but the ODA has reduced the amount to P12.2 billion. Finance Assistant Secretary Tony Lambino added the final tab could reach P14.5 billion with the 2 percent interest per year, but it will still be a better deal. He also allayed fears that the Philippines will fall into the so-called China debt trap. Agta/Dumagat tribe leader Marcelino Tena also raised the concerns of the indigenous peoples who will be affected by the construction of the dam. The government targeted to begin the project in July so it can eventually become another water source for Metro Manila. "Sa bahagi po ng mga katutubo sa hilagang Quezon, ipinapahayag din po naming mga katutubo yung tuwirang pagtutol talaga sa dam, dahil sa amin pong mga katutubo, diyan po kami nakatira. Ngayon, sa bahagi po namin, hindi lang po kami binabraso ng MWSS. Ginagahasa pa kami ng MWSS," he said. Fr. Peter Montalliana, Save Sierra Madre Network Alliance chairperson, also said the residents may be victims of the environmental effects of the dam. MWSS earlier said the Kaliwa dam construction will not proceed without the approval of thousands of Dumagat members in their ancestral land, and residents of Barangay Laiban. MWSS Administrator Reynaldo Velasco said consultations are ongoing for the tribal group's relocation. A 27-kilometer tunnel will connect the water source from General Nakar-Infanta in Quezon to a water treatment plant in Antipolo-Teresa in Rizal to supply water to Metro Manila and nearby areas. It is expected to provide 600 million liters of water per day. The Golden Apple Award was founded in 1985 to prepare and support Illinois teachers who work in underserved communities. The program rewards outstanding teachers and administrators with its Excellence in Teaching and Stanley C. Golder Leadership Award each year, according to a news release from the nonprofit organization that administers it. The teachers are nominated for the award, and dont always know who it was that nominated them. EUGENE, Ore. -- Educators from the 4J School District, Lane Community College and Bethel School District were out in Eugene on Wednesday taking a stand for education funding not only here in Eugene, but across the state. Educators said state lawmakers proposed an $8.87 billion budget for 2019 through 2021. RELATED: OREGON TEACHERS PLAN FOR WALKOUT IF BUDGET DEAL ISN'T REACHED That's about $260 million less than the Oregon Association of Schools business officials said is needed to properly fund education in Oregon according to Tad Shannon, President of the Eugene Education Association. "Especially people who don't have kids in schools may not be aware in how far we've slipped in terms of the services we provide students," Shannon said. These educators said they will continue to hold public demonstrations and work to educate the public in preparation for a state-wide movement planned for May 8th. UNITED STATES -- The decision by Europe and Canada to break with U.S. air-safety regulators is likely to delay the resumption of flights by the Boeing 737 Max after two deadly crashes. The Europeans and Canadians vow to conduct their own reviews of Boeing's changes to a key flight-control system, not to simply take the Federal Aviation Administration's word that the alterations are safe. Those reviews could scramble an ambitious schedule set by Boeing and undercut the FAA's reputation around the world. Boeing hopes by Monday to finish its update to software that can automatically point the nose of the plane sharply downward in some circumstances to avoid an aerodynamic stall. That's according to two people briefed on FAA presentations to congressional committees. GREEN, Ore. -- The use of force in the officer-involved shooting captured on camera in Green on March 9 was justified, according to a grand jurys findings. Douglas County deputies and an Oregon State Police trooper exchanged gunfire with a suspect in a stolen vehicle that Saturday. RELATED: Dramatic video captures Green shootout The Major Crimes Team and Douglas County District Attorneys Office submitted evidence to the grand jury on Wednesday. Police said the incident began around 6 p.m. that Saturday when the stolen vehicle was spotted at Loves Travel Stop on Grant Smith Road. It had been reported stolen in Eugene on March 7. MORE: Investigators seeking person of interest in Green shootout When authorities attempted to contact the driver, the car sped away, and officers followed the vehicle to a ranchers field, where it became stuck. During the shooting, police said the car caught fire, and afterward human remains were found inside. No officers were injured. PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A prominent tax dodger who was supposed to surrender to prison earlier this month is now accused of dodging his 10-year prison sentence by failing to turn himself in to the federal Bureau of Prisons as ordered. The Oregonian/OregonLive reports Winston Shrout was supposed to start serving his sentence March 4 after the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals denied his request to remain out of custody pending his appeal. The appeals court upheld U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones' ruling that Shrout poses a danger if he were to remain in the community. The next day, federal authorities issued a warrant for Shrout's arrest. Shrout was sentenced Oct. 22 after a federal jury convicted him of six misdemeanor counts of willful failure to file tax returns and 13 felony counts of producing, presenting and shipping fictitious financial instruments. SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- A report from the Secretary of State found that Oregon hasn't followed up on recommendations to better track the progress of the state's most at-risk students. The report, released Wednesday, said the Oregon Department of Education only made partial progress on three of the 15 recommendations to improve education for students in online or alternative schools. It made no progress on the remaining 12. The department agreed to implement all 15 recommendations by summer of 2019. The recommendations came from a 2017 audit, which found little oversight over the performance of Oregon's alternative and online schools. Nearly half of the state's high school dropouts attend these schools. The Department of Education said staffing challenges and federal requirements were behind the delay. Acting Secretary of State Leslie Cummings called the department's lack of progress "disappointing." As we get out of the deep-freeze of winter and celebrate St. Patricks Day, I remind you to plan ahead if your celebration includes alcohol, Idleburg said in a March 8 statement announcing the March 15-17 enforcement campaign. We see far too many tragedies occur on our roadways because someone made the selfish decision to drive intoxicated. According to Chief Judge Jay Ukena, he was notified that the results of a recent vote by the courts full circuit judges has resulted in the appointment of Bolling W. Haxall III of Barrington to the bench. Theres good and bad news regarding the Delines shows at this years Kilkenny Roots Festival on the May Bank Holiday weekend. The Portland, Oregon based band, fronted by Amy Boone, will play two shows at the festival. All the songs are written by Willy Vlautin, a regular visitor to Kilkenny with Richmond Fontaine over the years. Willy is also an acclaimed author and word came through this week that he has been shortlisted for the Pen/Faulkner award for his novel Dont Skip Out On Me. The awards ceremony will be held in Washington D.C. on the same weekend as the Kilkenny festival. I have to say all year long Ive been looking forward to Kilkenny. said Willy in an email this week. When the Delines were last in Ireland I told everyone I knew about it and everyone I didnt, too. Then just this last week I found out I was nominated for the Pen/Faulkner award for Dont Skip Out On Me. Its one of the bigger US Literary awards and a big honor here in the States, plus it is a big game changer for me here. The hard news is the awards ceremony is in Washington D.C. the same weekend as Kilkenny and Im afraid I have to go to the Pen/Faulkner ceremony. I dont make the decision lightly and have been losing sleep over it but its a once in a lifetime sort of event for me, he said. The good news is the Delines are all about Amy Boone and the world of the songs. The producer of The Delines and Richmond Fontaine, John Askew, will take over as the guitar player. So a family member and the mastermind of the Delines sound will be playing guitar. To be honest the gigs will probably sound better as he is twice guitar player I am. Again, Im so sorry that Ill miss the best festival in the world and thank you for always being so supportive of Richmond Fontaine and the Delines. I hope you understand. Sold out The Sold Out signs have already gone up on shows by Patty Griffin, The Delines, William The Conqueror and Dori Freeman. There has been a phenomenal response to our programme for 2019, said John Cleere. We have bookings from all over Ireland, the UK and mainland Europe. This should ensure a welcome early season boost to tourism in the area, Mr Cleere said. The event has built its reputation on discovering new acts before they attract the attention of the bigger festivals. Two years ago we gave Yola her first gigs in Ireland, now she has become a phenomenon, both in Europe and the USA. We have also given first festival appearances to acts such as Alabama Shakes, John Grant, Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, Ray LaMontagne and many others. Im not a betting man, but Im sure there are artists on this years bill that are headed for big things. There is a big buzz already. about acts such as The Delines, Susto and William The Conqueror The free Smithwicks Music Trail is being finalised this week, adding another 70 gigs to the programme. Tickets for the individual shows are available from the festival website, www.kilkennyroots.com, or in person from Rollercoaster Records in Kieran Street, Tel 0567763669. Jervois, whose management is made up of ex-Glencore executives, is developing the Nico Young deposit in southeastern Australia ahead of an expected boom in demand for the metals used in rechargeable batteries. It is talking with a range of parties for a 20 to 40 percent joint venture arrangement, including miners, battery producers and original equipment makers from China, Japan and Korea, Jervois Chief Executive Bryce Crocker told Reuters. The miner expects to release a prefeasibility study for the project in the next few months, he said. "We are pushing hard ... (but) we are not under pressure to do the deal tomorrow," Crocker told Reuters. Australia has at least four nickel-cobalt projects in various planning stages as developers ready to supply chemicals to make electric vehicle batteries. BHP Group is transitioning its Nickel West operations to produce nickel sulphate this year. Australia has the world's second-largest deposits of cobalt outside of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where supply has been tainted by small-scale miners. Amnesty International attacked the electric vehicle (EV) industry on Thursday for selling itself as environmentally friendly while producing many of its batteries using polluting fossil fuels and unethically sourced minerals. The Nico Young project has been designed as a heap leach project, a cheaper process of extracting nickel than the industry-dominant high pressure acid leach (HPAL) process. Heap leach crushes ore then leaches out minerals using a series of chemical reactions. HPAL uses high temperature and high pressure in a plant with sulphuric acid to recover metal. Jervois in January agreed to buy a Canadian cobalt explorer with operations in Uganda. Crocker and Chairman Peter Johnston both previously worked for global commodity trader and miner Glencore. (Reporting by Melanie Burton; Editing by Tom Hogue) FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Christian Sewing, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, believes there is a strong case for a merger with rival Commerzbank, according to a person with direct knowledge of his thinking. Sewings stance sets the stage for a showdown with unions fearing massive job cuts and some skeptical investors. The supervisory boards of both banks meet on Thursday. Sewing sees multiple benefits of a merger, including clear dominance in its home market, scale, and shared technology costs, the person said. Deutsches CEO also believes that a combined entity would improve the cost of funding, with the best funding ever, the person said. Jobs would be cut with or without a merger, the person said. Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank declined to comment. In past months Deutsche Banks CEO has urged investors to be patient, preferring to focus on internal restructuring before taking on a big project, according to other people with knowledge of his thinking. The latest comments also contrast with the neutral tone set in a letter to employees on Sunday after both Deutsche and Commerzbank confirmed talks. Sewing said then that many factors could still prevent a merger. Deutsche Bank would not have entered talks if the bank expected negotiations to fail, said a second person with knowledge of Sewings thinking. The powerful Verdi labor union, which sits on the supervisory boards of both banks, has voiced fierce objections to a merger, saying that as many as 30,000 jobs are at risk over the long term. Both banks currently employ 140,000 worldwide. A spokeswoman for Verdi said on Thursday that the unions position hasnt changed. RESERVATIONS At least three of Deutsche Banks top investors have voiced reservations about a merger, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. Two of them are awaiting details from Sewing and his colleagues at Thursdays meeting, two of the people said. The ratings agency Moodys said this week that a successful tie-up may lift the banks profit but earnings would still remain below global competitors and a deal now would delay their current overhauls. We would view the impediments to execution on such a deal as very significant, it said. Some German officials have pushed for a merger because they want a strong bank at home to compete with U.S. and Chinese competitors. However, euro zone banking watchdogs on Thursday said banks planning mergers should make sure they could be wound down in a crisis to avoid taxpayers having to pay for any bailout. If a bank becomes too big, complex or interconnected... it needs to have additional capital, the ECB top watchdog Andrea Enria said, when asked in the European Parliament about a possible tie-up between Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank. Since the financial crisis a decade ago, European banks remain relatively weak compared with their U.S. counterparts, said John McFarlane, chairman of Barclays , and it will take a while for them to recover. Even if you get consolidation in Europe, take Deutsche if that ever happens, it will still be less than 10 percent of JPMorgans market cap and still be smaller than Royal Bank of Scotland, he said. Dominated by the London Stock Exchange, the clearing of financial contracts denominated in euros has become a political battleground since Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, with the bloc's authorities vying to gain oversight of this key market on both sides of the Channel. Under a provisional deal struck this month, EU governments and lawmakers gave the Paris-based European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and national supervisors the final word in supervising central clearing counterparties (CCPs) based in the EU. But the ECB said in a letter published late on Wednesday this undermined its ability to "monitor and assess risks posed by CCPs" and sought to block a change to its own rules that would force it to follow ESMA's decisions on the matter. "Under these amendments, the ECB would not enjoy regulatory powers in respect of CCPs established within the European Union," ECB President Mario Draghi said in the letter to George Ciamba, chair of the EU's General Affairs Council. This body, which prepares the meetings of the European Council of EU government leaders, was expected to decide on the proposed changes next week. If the ECB is successful in blocking the amendments to its statute, ESMA would still likely gain oversight of clearing houses but its decisions would not be binding on the ECB. This would limit the ECB's responsibility and possibly also leave the burden of providing liquidity to clearing houses in times of stress to the euro zone's national central banks. In the letter, also sent to the head of the EU's parliament and other authorities, the ECB's Governing Council withdrew its 2017 recommendation to change its statute with respect to clearing. "One of the overarching objectives of the Recommendation cannot be fulfilled, namely, to ensure that the Eurosystem would have binding powers to monitor and assess risks posed by CCPs," Draghi said in the letter. The head of the European Parliament's economic committee, Roberto Gualtieri, struck a sympathetic tone at a hearing on Thursday, blaming the European Council and Commission for failing to take on board the ECB's concerns. (Reporting by Francesco Canepa Editing by Robin Pomeroy) OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian cabinet minister, who had quit in protest over the governments handling of a corruption scandal, said she and others had more to say about the matter, indicating more pain to come for embattled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trudeau has been on the defensive since Feb. 7 over allegations that top officials working for him leaned on former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould last year to ensure that construction company SNC-Lavalin Group Inc avoided a corruption trial. Theres much more to the story that should be told, former Treasury Board President Jane Philpott told Macleans magazine in an interview released on Thursday. I believe we actually owe it to Canadians as politicians to ensure that they have the truth, she said. Philpott added that she and Wilson-Raybould had more to say but did not elaborate. Philpott, a close political ally of Wilson-Raybould, quit on March 4. Trudeau, who has denied any political interference to protect SNC-Lavalin from a bribery trial, indicated he felt Canadians had already heard enough. Wilson-Raybould had the chance to share completely her thoughts during almost four hours of testimony to the House of Commons justice committee last month, he told reporters in Mississauga, Ontario when asked about Philpotts remarks. The crisis may threaten Trudeaus reelection chances in the upcoming October vote. Polls show the center-left Liberals, who as recently as January looked certain to win, could lose to the official opposition Conservatives. As well as the two ministers, the affair has claimed Trudeaus closest political aide and the head of the federal bureaucracy. A Liberal legislator who backed Wilson-Raybould quit on Wednesday to sit as an independent. Trudeau suffered further potential embarrassment on Thursday when SNC-Lavalin Chief Executive Neil Bruce denied he had told government officials that 9,000 jobs could be at risk if the firm was found guilty of offering bribes to Libyan officials. Trudeau has often referred to the 9,000 potential job losses as a reason for helping the company, which wanted to take advantage of new legislation to pay a large fine rather than be prosecuted. Until we are able to put this behind us, its pretty difficult to grow our Canadian workforce, Bruce told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Asked whether he had specified the number of jobs that could be at risk, he replied: No, we never gave a number. A court conviction would bar SNC-Lavalin from bidding on federal government contracts for 10 years. Bruce said if the companys share price continued to suffer, it might become a takeover target. SNC-Lavalins headquarters are in the populous province of Quebec, where the Liberals say they need to pick up more seats in the October election to retain a majority government. Trudeau has dismissed calls for a public inquiry, noting the House of Commons justice committee was probing the matter. That committee, dominated by Liberal legislators, shut down its inquiry on Tuesday, saying no more action was needed. In protest, the Conservatives forced the House to sit through the night from Wednesday into Thursday casting votes on hundreds of confidence motions. WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland will fall behind the rest of Europe on 5G unless it makes regulatory changes, an Erissson executive told Reuters, raising fresh concerns over the countrys plans as it considers excluding Chinas Huawei from its 5G rollout. Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson is among the companies that could benefit should Poland bar Huawei from its 5G plans over concerns about cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the Chinese companys equipment. A number of European governments, including the Czech Republic and Poland, have raised concerns about Huaweis role in the next generation of mobile connectivity, with the European Union is also considering proposals to exclude Chinese firms from 5G networks. Ericsson is ready. But there needs to be spectrum made available and this should be made available in 2020 by the latest, otherwise Poland can really fall behind Europe, said Martin Mellor, Ericssons manager for Poland. Finlands Nokia and Ericsson are the leading European contenders to provide 5G equipment for Poland, the largest economy in eastern Europe. As well as freeing up spectrum frequencies for 5G, the Polish government needs to ease regulations for building new sites for the next-generation network, Mellor said. There may be the need to have a denser network, so you can see lamp posts, bus stations, street furniture becoming part of the 5G network, he said. It would be beneficial if it was easier to build on these sites. Poland also needs to recalibrate power density limits, which Mellor said are among the most limited in Europe, to allow base stations to transmit enough electricity to make the 5G network function. The government has yet to announce a decision on Huawei and finding viable replacements for Chinese telecoms equipment will be challenging, Polands deputy digital minister Wanda Buk told Reuters. Telecoms industry and government officials told Reuters that Ericssons equipment is considered significantly more expensive than Chinese alternatives, which is why most operators in Poland opted for Huawei-produced equipment. Ericssons commercial offerings are priced at a competitive rate, Mellor said. Like all companies, Ericsson will always evaluate its commercial offerings, he added. Editor's Note: Get caught up in minutes with our speedy summary of today's must-read news stories and expert opinions that moved the precious metals and financial markets. Sign up here! (Kitco News) - Chile is the world leader in copper production, but the country also has reserves of cobalt and lithium primed for the electric revolution, said Baldo Prokurica, Minister of Mining of Chile. Were really driving and pushing the e-mobility aspect. Right now, Chile is the second country with the most electrical busses after China, and in fact right now there are 500 electrical busses in Santiago that are used for public transit, Prokurica told Kitco News on the sidelines of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto. Karl du Fresne writes: Let me see if I can get this straight. Millions of oppressed, dispossessed Muslims have risked their lives fleeing the Middle East and North Africa. They are mostly victims of Islamic regimes from a part of the world where democracy is virtually unknown (Israel aside). They are escaping sectarianism, persecution, civil war, anarchy, corruption and starvation. None of them want to go to other Islamic countries. Why would they, when Islam represents all that theyre trying to get away from? Besides, hardly any Islamic regimes offer them refuge. With the honourable exceptions of Lebanon and Jordan, most Islamic countries including some that are fabulously wealthy appear impervious to the suffering of their co-religionists. No, the place these Islamic refugees want to be is Europe Western Europe, to be precise. And what attracts them there? Presumably freedom, for a start. Western Europe is democratic. People actually elect their governments. The rule of law is enforced not by religious zealots but by courts that apply principles of fairness and impartiality. In Europe, peoples prospects dont depend on having been born into the right sex, religious sect or clan. They enjoy civil rights the right to dress the way they want, to vote, to speak their minds, to have educational opportunities, to drive cars and enter into romantic relationships without fear of being murdered in honour killings. And presumably these refugees are also attracted to capitalism, because more than any other ism it gives them the greatest chance to fulfil their human potential. You can understand why they want to come to Europe. So, having been drawn to this benevolent part of the world where people enjoy freedom, opportunity and prosperity, what do they do? A large number of them, it seems, immediately want to replicate the conditions that theyve just fled from. This is the bit that I just dont get. As events in Germany on New Years Eve showed, the first impulse of many young Islamic men is to abuse the hospitality extended to them. Some, of course, go much further than orchestrated sex attacks on young women. They want to murder the infidels who have given them shelter and succour. Things just dont add up here. Why would anyone flee a cruel and repressive society, then seek to undermine the democratic institutions of their host country so that it might become another Muslim theocracy? How perverse is that? They say Islam isnt to blame for the barbaric acts carried out in its name, but thats only partly true. Yes, many Muslims respect Western institutions and want only to live in peace in the countries that have accepted them. They understand that freedom to practise their religion is one thing; the right to impose it on their host society is quite another. These Muslims are welcome. But Islam cannot be exonerated of responsibility for the mayhem and slaughter in the Middle East, nor for the creeping contamination of Europe. The tenets of Islam provide a theological framework that enables groups like the Taleban, Al Qaeda and Isis to flourish. I distinguish between Islam (the religion) and Islamism (the political system based on Islam). Many Muslims are happy to practice their religion as a private thing and dont want the law to reflect their religion. They just want the right to practice their religion. But a large minority believe that the beliefs of Islam should be part of the law of a country. This may be sharia law, making apostasy a crime etc. This is Islamism. I believe that Islamism is on a par with fascism and communism. They are incompatible with democratic liberal values. They all require an all powerful state. I would not see any barrier in the way of Muslims migrating to any country, if they support democratic values. But if they are Islamists. If they believe their religious beliefs should be enshrined in law. Then I think taking in such migrants is a stupid thing to do, as you weaken your country. Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp More Pinterest Print Tumblr Cooper said this year isnt off to a good start either. With 11 suspected overdose deaths in January and three in February, Cooper said the county is already ahead of where it was last year at this time, although he said its too early to call it a trend for the year. I blogged in February on how the MOH tried to undermine a report showing worse outcomes for babies in midwife-led care. Rather than look at how to improve outcomes, they tried to discredit the research. Seems this is not new. Received this e-mail from Andrea Menclova, an associate professor at Canterbury University: My name is Andrea Menclova and Im an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Canterbury. I was very pleased when Diana Sarfati and Ellie Wernham published their paper on the NZ lead maternity carer system. I find it appalling how they have subsequently been treated and this bullying behaviour from the College of Midwives needs to stop. I myself wrote a paper reaching similar conclusions as Sarfati & Wernham in 2008. I presented it at a few conferences/in academic seminars. After a presentation at the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation in Sydney, my Head of Department received a letter from the College of Midwives warning him that I do research of poor quality (with many of their points completely uninformed) and asserting that: there is a clear agenda and conflict of interest which is not stated. At that point, I had only been in New Zealand for less than two years and had no connections in the LMC system or the NZ healthcare system more generally, had received no funding to conduct the study and had no a-priory views on maternity care. The College of Midwives have never contacted me directly. Like Peter Crampton at Otago, my then Head of Department (Seamus Hogan) fully supported me and defended academic freedom. Still, I can very much relate to Peter Cramptons assessment that researchers attacked so aggressively by the College of Midwives then feel beaten up and traumatised by the experience. Thats not okay. Very sad that there is a pattern of abuse and attack of anyone pointing out flaws in the current system. Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp More Pinterest Print Tumblr But Landis said he believes there may be information of an exoneratory nature for Sauer on the phone. He said he is not asking that the woman surrender her phone, just that it not be traded in, upgraded or permanently altered before a defense expert can examine its data. With the first year of the revised calendar complete, administrators will continue to look at conducting other tests and quizzes around winter break, as well as homework assignments, and clarifying expectations for the start of the second semester, Holland said. We have to defeat the evil of hate and the hatred among us, Anwer said before the vigil. We have to overcome it, even though we know there is evil going on. We need to rally together and stand together. For the past two years, students at both schools have taken turns once a month reading aloud to Tobias. Many are struggling readers who have been criticized for their reading skills, but the presence of Tobias makes them want to read more, McMahan said. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) Communist rebels will benefit more from the creation of a new and "inclusive" government peace panel, Malacanang said Thursday as it defended its decision to terminate its current roster of negotiators. "There will be creation of panels, localized nga eh. Lalo ngang pabor sa kanila (It will be more favorable for them)," Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a media briefing. He was responding to a statement made by Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founding chairman Jose Maria Sison that the termination of the government's peace panel shows that President Rodrigo Duterte "has no interest in the peace negotiations," stressing that the President has repeatedly ignored the Left's openness to peace talks. Panelo said Sison "read it wrongly," insisting that localized peace talks would be good for the rebels. The government has been pushing for local government officials to talk to rebels in their areas, but has not released guidelines in doing so. The CPP, meanwhile, said they will never participate in localized peace talks. Malacanang on Monday terminated the services of its peace panel members, including chief government negotiator and Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III. Presidential Peace Adviser Carlito Galvez, Jr. in a statement Thursday said a new panel will be formed composed of different sectoral groups, local government units, and the military, stressing that their "presence are essential to the peace negotiations." Duterte walked away from on-off peace negotiations with the rebels in November 2017 as both sides accused each other of ceasefire violations. The CPP and its armed wing New People's Army has waged a five-decade insurgency, the longest-running in Asia. McAlisters Deli sells a variety of club sandwiches and wraps, as well as turkey, roast beef, corned beef and pastrami, chicken and vegetarian sandwiches, according to its menu. Soups, salads and a signature sweet tea are also featured. Police said they arrested a Valparaiso man Wednesday after he discharged a gun in his apartment, sending a bullet through the wall and tossed a spent bullet casing in the toilet before police arrived, according to a release. This is my first time directing anything. I saw how much hard work was put into the original show so I said, I will take over as director so this show can go on. The theater was gracious enough to allow us to direct its first musical in many years. Also at the meeting, NIRPC Executive Director Ty Warner said the agencys new long-range plan will be unveiled in April, and the regions residents will have several chances to learn about and comment on it. Toth also wanted to include a conversation that the ex-fiancee said she had with Doukas at a McDonalds within weeks before the robberies began on Halloween 2017. Angela Jones, Doukas public defender, said the statements should not be allowed at trial because it was highly prejudicial and they dont know exactly when the conversation took place. Toth said the conversation goes to the crux of our case and crux of identity. The motion states that this lawsuit has received significant attention from the media. A press conference held by the plaintiff and her attorney when the lawsuit was filed included an inflammatory claim that evidence, specifically, a security video, had been tampered with, according to the motion. The event includes a brunch at 11:45 a.m., followed by the program at 12:30 p.m. at Temple Israel, 601 N. Montgomery St. in Garys Miller section. A $5 donation is suggested for the brunch. I said to the superintendent, Im appalled that you let this go on, she said. He turned beet red and that was the first sign. (He asked) Can you tell us what you did? Kabul, March 22: Afghanistans government has announced that the countrys presidential election will be postponed from the current date in April 2018 and are now scheduled to be held on September 28, 2018. This delay is the second time the election has been pushed back. The presidential ballot was originally scheduled for April 20, then delayed to July 20. However, many observers had considered both dates unrealistic given the Independent Election Commission (IEC) is yet to declare the results of October's parliamentary elections. The Independent Election Commission (IEC) said the vote had faced "numerous problems and challenges ... therefore holding the elections based on the timelines previously announced is not possible". The statement added, "In order to better implement the rule of election law, ensure transparency as well as voter registration, the presidential election, provincial council election as well as the parliamentary election of Ghazni province will be held on September 28," the body said in a statement. The election should go ahead, it added, "provided all relevant sides, especially the government and the international community, provide the IEC with the required budget on time". A spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani said the government respects the decision and is "fully prepared to cooperate with the IEC". However, many believe the elections have been pushed back so that the U.S. can negotiate a binding-peace settlement with the Taliban which can also be implemented while the current government is still in charge. But President Ashraf Ghani has been critical of the US talks which are being held directly with the Taliban with no official representing the Afghan government participating. The Taliban too has rejected the participation of the Afghan government saying it is puppet installation of the U.S. Earlier this month a close aide of President Ashraf Ghani spoke out against Washingtons stand to not include the Afghan government by criticising the Taliban-peace talks. "We don't know what's going on. We don't have the kind of transparency that we should have," Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan's national security advisor, told media during a visit to Washington. "The last people to find out are us." The US government is being represented at the talks by special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 22, 2019 12:32 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com). Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) put her habit of mincing no words in policy discussions on display two weeks ago when she released a proposal to break up Amazon, Google, and Facebook. This was a courageous move on several levels. First, the big tech companies long have been assumed to be natural allies of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, the presidential nomination of which Warren has been seeking. Nevertheless, she brought her plan to the SXSW Conference, an annual high-tech hoedown in Austin, Texas, showing that she wasnt afraid of fielding fastballs from those who might be most directly affected. Warren outlined her proposal in terms that customers of the named companies are likely to understand. From Standard Oil to the railroads to AT&T, America has a long history of breaking up big conglomerates. My plan follows that same tradition. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Advertisement Todays big tech companies have too much power too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy, she wrote. Theyve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation. Shes right; if anything, her proposal is too narrow. It should be applied not merely to tech platform companies with revenues of $25 billion of more, as she proposes, but to other monopolizing corporations that have consistently eroded freedom of choice and privacy protections, such as internet service providers. The three companies she named and some she did not have grown too big and too quickly for U.S. government regulators to get their hands around their consequences for competition and innovation. European regulators, who work with a different set of antitrust rules, dont seem to have the same problems. The European Union on Wednesday fined Google $1.7 billion for using its dominance in online search to force third-party websites to restrict ads for Google competitors. The action brought the total EU fines imposed on Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., to about $9.3 billion since 2017. Thanks to their ownership structures, Facebook, Amazon and Google have been almost impervious to outside scrutiny in the U.S. Facebooks co-founder and Chairman Mark Zuckerberg controls 60% of shareholder votes thanks to a two-class share structure; Amazon.com founder and Chairman Jeff Bezos owns only 16.3% of its shares, but hes so closely identified with its success that its almost inconceivable that the company would follow any course with which he disagreed. That means that imposing regulatory discipline from outside is imperative to keep these companies from flouting the public interest. Warren proposes to do so in two main ways. First, she would use existing antitrust authority to unwind mergers that the big companies have used to stifle competition. Among those she mentions are acquisitions by Amazon of the grocery chain Whole Foods, by Facebook of the social media firms Instagram and WhatsApp, and by Google of the advertising platform DoubleClick, the home appliance company Nest, and the traffic app Waze. Warrens argument is that these takeovers gave the parent companies too much power to advantage their own products and services over competitors offerings. They could do so thanks to their control of their platforms, through which they attract consumers to their websites and extract personal data they can sell or otherwise exploit, typically without the full awareness of their users. These platforms include Amazons online marketplace, Google search, and Facebooks social network. That leads to the second part of her plan, which is to designate the big platforms platform utilities and prohibit any company to own both a platform utility and a service using that platform. Amazon could own either its merchandise distribution platform or its online store, but not both; Google would have to spin off its search service and its advertising exchange. The platforms, which are free to users but funded from ad sales or commissions from commercial transactions, could still carry advertising or charge transaction fees, Warren says; they would just have to do so in arms-length arrangements. Curious why I think FB has too much power? Let's start with their ability to shut down a debate over whether FB has too much power. Thanks for restoring my posts. But I want a social media marketplace that isn't dominated by a single censor. #BreakUpBigTech https://t.co/UPS6dozOxn Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) March 11, 2019 Warrens plan quickly attracted a backlash from conservatives and pro-business pundits. Warrens proposal is obviously formulated without taking any account of the interests of users and consumers, declared Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review. Lowry and other critics wrung their hands over how Warrens proposal would reduce the big companies ability to drive innovation. The truth is, however, that most innovation in Silicon Valley and the broader high-tech world comes from small start-ups, exactly the kinds of companies that struggle to reach the marketplace, in part because the big companies stand in their way to protect their own products and services. Thats also true of the activities of big internet service providers that have been permitted to acquire content companies, resulting in the Comcast-NBCUniversal and AT&T-Time Warner mergers. Signs that providers unaffiliated with ISPs face higher costs and other disadvantages reaching the public have proliferated. On CNBC, New York Times business columnist James Stewart asserted that there is nothing illegal about becoming a monopolist because youre so good at what you do that others can not compete with you. Thats true, but Warrens point is that these companies have become monopolists by using their heft to disadvantage others that might have better ideas but cant reach the public with them. Nor is there anything particularly novel about the principles Warren is expressing. From Standard Oil to the railroads to AT&T, America has a long history of breaking up big conglomerates, she told me by email. Back then, we recognized that ownership of a network and participating on the network caused a conflict of interest. My plan follows that same tradition. Government-mandated breakups of large corporations arent panaceas for what has ailed capitalism, but its incorrect to dismiss them out of hand, as Stewart did. The 1934 breakup of United Aircraft & Transport into United Airlines, Boeing and United Technologies arguably liberated the aircraft manufacturing and airline industries from anti-competitive conflicts of interest. The 1948 court order requiring the movie studios to divest their theater chain broadened the availability of films to the moviegoing public. The best example is the court-ordered 1982 breakup of the AT&T monopoly into seven Baby Bells, which launched a period of unparalleled innovation and price-cutting in telecommunications. Before then, AT&T had the power to control the design and distribution of telephones, to stifle the development of data networks such as the internet, and to profiteer from local and long-distance calls. After the breakup, we got new phone technologies, cheaper phones, less-expensive calling plans, and vastly expanded data communications. Stewart scoffed that the Baby Bells have just coalesced back together, so the effort was just a waste of time and money, but his take was both incorrect and irrelevant. The spinoffs have reunited into not one but two companies, Verizon and the rechristened AT&T (formerly Southwestern Bell or SBC). In any case, that development is the result of lax antitrust enforcement after 1982, not of any flaws in the original breakup, the virtues of which long have been manifest. As it happens, Warren in her proposal points directly to the drawbacks of weak antitrust enforcement, and she pledges to turn that around if shes elected. The anti-competitive ills that Warren talks about are hardly mythical. In 2014, Amazon interfered for months with sales of books from Hachette Book Group, the owner of Little, Brown and other imprints, in a dispute over Amazons pricing of online sales of Hachette books. In 2010, Amazon pulled books from Macmillan the owner of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martins Press and other publishers in a dispute over e-book prices. Facebook, for its part, managed to prove Warrens point about the excessive power of the big platforms by removing several ads her campaign had placed promoting her proposal. Curious why I think FB has too much power? she promptly tweeted. Lets start with their ability to shut down a debate over whether FB has too much power. Facebook restored the ads after its action was made public. Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com. Return to Michael Hiltziks blog. Weekend host Jeanine Pirro under fire for her comments about a Muslim congresswoman will remain off her Saturday Fox News show for a second week. Justice with Judge Jeanine will be bumped for a live special on Robert Muellers report on the Trump-Russia investigation. It will be anchored by Fox News chief national correspondent Ed Henry. The network had previously planned to air a repeat of the documentary series Scandalous: The Trial of William Kennedy Smith, in place of Pirro. A representative for Fox News declined comment on why Pirros show had been off the air since March 16. But people at the network not authorized to comment say the fiery conservative host has been suspended for remarks she made about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on her March 9 program. Pirro is expected to return March 30. Advertisement Fox News released a strong public rebuke of Pirro after she questioned whether Omar was committed to Sharia law and Islamic doctrine because she wore a hijab, a traditional head covering worn by Muslim women. The network said it had addressed the matter directly with Pirro. Omar, an immigrant from Somalia, stirred public outrage over tweets she made regarding U.S. support of Israel that were interpreted as anti-Semitic. She has become a popular target of conservative pundits. After Pirros program was pulled Saturday, she did receive support from President Trump, who is a regular viewer and a champion of Fox News. Pirro, a former judge and prosecutor, is an ardent supporter of Trump. Bring back @Judge Jeanine Pirro, Trump wrote Sunday on Twitter. The Radical Left Democrats, working closely with their beloved partner, the Fake News Media, is using every trick in the book to SILENCE a majority of our Country. They have all out campaigns against @FoxNews hosts who are doing too well. The controversy comes at a sensitive time for Fox News. Although conservative commentators on Fox News deliver the largest audiences for the network, their provocative statements have scared off advertisers. The cable news channel this week was spun off into a separate company, Fox Corp., as part of the sale of 21st Century Fox assets to Walt Disney Co. At least four advertisers personal finance company NerdWallet, online marketplace Letgo, and drugmakers Allergan and Novo Nordisk have said they have suspended their sponsorship of Pirros program because of her remarks about Omar. Fox News has been struggling to retain advertisers for conservative weeknight hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. The network must tread carefully because its loyal conservative viewers are turned off when the network is seen as giving in to pressure. stephen.battaglio@latimes.com Twitter: @SteveBattaglio Kraft, who is not a licensed funeral director, served as the secretary and treasurer at the funeral home, while her son, Russell Kraft Jr., became the president, according to the affidavit. Jacqueline Kraft took care of the books, her son said in court records, since day one. Goldman Sachs, one of the last bastions of crisp-collared, bespoke-suited workplace attire, has loosened up. It announced an official firm-wide flexible dress code earlier this month. And at last after the long, slow undoing of corporate formality business casual seems to have triumphed in the American workplace. But for women and minorities who have been playing corporate catch-up for decades, a more casual dress code presents its own complications. As one Goldman Sachs banker in GQ put it: All the men are psyched. For everyone else, dressing more casually for work can be fraught, even risky. Over decades, expensive suits have projected power on Wall Street, almost like a piece of armor, said Susan Scafidi, academic director of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham University. Advertisement Women at work who feel pressure to prove they deserve to be in the room might be wary of ditching their blazers and pumps. Weve just achieved the parity of the pantsuit, and suddenly were told the standard pantsuit is no longer standard workforce attire, Scafidi said. Women will need to find another way to achieve parity in attire at business-casual or some other lower level of formality. Parity, of course, extends not only to power but also to pay. Jaclyn Wong, who researches the intersection of gender and professional life, co-published a study in 2016 looking at the differences in how men and women are rewarded for attractiveness in the workplace. Attractive men and women make roughly 20% more than their less attractive co-workers, Wong found. Even so, they are measured by different standards. For women, perceived attractiveness was based on grooming, like hairstyle, makeup, fitness and clothing. They are rewarded, Wong said, for looking the part. For men, grooming counts far less. If attractive, they tend to be rewarded whether they are well-groomed or not. We know that appearance matters for women and people of color in being seen as competent and worthy of respect, said Wong, a professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina. It becomes this difficult position: Do I want to dress down because I dont want to be seen as this kind of stiff and un-fun person, or do I want to continue dressing up because thats the only way people will treat me with respect? Goldman Sachs is following other firms in a hunt for tech talent that is most comfortable with the sneakers and hoodies of Silicon Valley. Also it is accommodating a growing fraction of its workforce that is made up of millennials with about 75% of its workers under 40 and dressing in a way that fits more casually dressed clients. The investment bank, which announced the change in a memo, called for employees to please dress in a manner that is consistent with your clients expectations, but stressed that they should exercise good judgment. A spokeswoman declined to comment beyond the memo. Good judgment, of course, is open to interpretation. You have to decide: How do you present yourself when youre often the only woman in the room? said Jane Newton, a managing partner at RegentAtlantic. Newton spent 17 years at JPMorgan and runs a forum for women in leadership on Wall Street. In a male-dominated environment, gravitas becomes a key variable in decisions that are made about your potential. Workers tend to take their signals from the top. According to the lore of corporate America, IBM made its first big leap decades ago when executives such as Louis V. Gerstner Jr. changed up the uniform of suit and tie and white collar by mixing in blue button-down shirts. A 1995 headline in the New York Times read: Black Jeans Invade Big Blue after Gerstner said he was rolling out casual dress. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packards relaxed Blue Sky Days on Fridays were said to influence future generations of tech entrepreneurs. Today, its Goldman Chief Executive David Solomon, who performs as a DJ in his spare time and has appeared in interviews without a tie. In the 80s and 90s, there were few role models for women on Wall Street, Newton said, so they tried to blend in. Men in suits cut imposing figures, so women wore blazers with padded shoulders. Men wore ties, so women wore blouses with bows. Fashion is far more flexible now, she said, but younger women still ask Newton the same questions about how to present themselves to be taken seriously. Sometimes she offers to go shopping with them, or she pages through catalogs to show what works and what doesnt. When a woman is dressed informally, shes more likely to be assumed to be more junior or to be someones assistant, said Laura Sherbin, managing director of Culture@Work, a division of Working Mother Media that helps companies develop best practices around diversity. The topic of dress codes still comes up all the time in focus groups she does at companies, she said. Maureen Sherry worked 12 years on Wall Street and was the youngest managing director at Bear Stearns. A friend of mine wore the first pantsuit on the Salomon Bros. trading floor in 1991, and it caused an uproar, she said. She still has it as a kind of trophy. Today, she said, if you saw a woman wearing Birkenstocks or loafers, wed like to think that were not taking her less seriously as a result, but Im not sure if thats true. McGregor writes for the Washington Post. The Pentagons inspector general has formally opened an investigation into a watchdog groups allegations that acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has used his office to promote his former employer, Boeing Co. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an ethics complaint with the Pentagons inspector general a week ago, alleging that Shanahan has appeared to make statements promoting Boeing and disparaging competitors, such as Lockheed Martin. Shanahan, who was traveling with President Trump to Ohio on Wednesday, spent more than 30 years at Boeing, leading programs for commercial planes and missile defense systems. He has been serving as acting Pentagon chief since the beginning of the year, after James Mattis stepped down. The probe comes as Boeing struggles to deal with a public firestorm over two deadly crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliner within the last five months. And it focuses attention on whether Trump will nominate Shanahan as his formal pick for defense chief, rather than letting him languish as an acting leader of a major federal agency. Advertisement Dwrena Allen, spokeswoman for the inspector general, said Shanahan has been informed of the investigation. And, in a statement, Pentagon spokesman Tom Crosson said Shanahan welcomes the review. Acting Secretary Shanahan has at all times remained committed to upholding his ethics agreement filed with the DoD, said Crosson. This agreement ensures any matters pertaining to Boeing are handled by appropriate officials within the Pentagon to eliminate any perceived or actual conflict of interest issue(s) with Boeing. During a Senate hearing last week, Shanahan was asked by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) about the 737 Max issue. Shanahan said he had not spoken to anyone in the administration about it and had not been briefed on it. Asked whether he favored an investigation into the matter, Shanahan said it was for regulators to investigate. On Wednesday, Blumenthal said that scrutiny of Shanahans Boeing ties is necessary. In fact, its overdue. Boeing is a behemoth 800-pound gorilla raising possible questions of undue influence at DoD, FAA and elsewhere, said Blumenthal. Shanahan signed an ethics agreement in June 2017, when he was being nominated for the job of deputy defense secretary, a job he held during Mattis tenure. It outlined the steps he would take to avoid any actual or apparent conflict of interest, and said he would not participate in any matter involving Boeing. The CREW ethics complaint, based to a large part on published reports, including one by Politico in January, said Shanahan has made comments praising Boeing in meetings about government contracts, raising concerns about whether Shanahan, intentionally or not, is putting his finger on the scale when it comes to Pentagon priorities. One example raised by the complaint is the Pentagons decision to request funding for Boeing 15EX fighter jets in the 2020 proposed budget. The Pentagon is requesting about $1 billion to buy eight of the aircraft. Shanahan, 56, joined Boeing in 1986, rose through its ranks and is credited with rescuing a troubled Dreamliner 787 program. He also led the companys missile defense and military helicopter programs. Trump has seemed attracted to Shanahan partially for his work on one of the presidents pet projects creating a Space Force. He also has publicly lauded Shanahans former employer, Boeing, builder of many of the militarys most prominent aircraft, including the Apache and Chinook helicopters, the C-17 cargo plane and the B-52 bomber, as well as the iconic presidential aircraft, Air Force One. This is only the third time in history that the Pentagon has been led by an acting chief, and Shanahan has served in that capacity for longer than any of the others. Presidents typically take pains to ensure the Pentagon is being run by a Senate-confirmed official, given the grave responsibilities that include sending young Americans into battle, ensuring the military is ready for extreme emergencies such as nuclear war and managing overseas alliances that are central to U.S. security. Tesla Inc. filed two lawsuits in as many days against former employees who left to join start-ups in China and Silicon Valley, accusing them of stealing confidential information. On Thursday, Elon Musk-led Tesla alleged that Guangzhi Cao, a former engineer on its Autopilot team, uploaded more than 300,000 files and directories, as well as copies of source code, to his personal cloud storage account before quitting the company Jan. 3. Tesla claims Cao didnt return what it called highly confidential information before joining Xiaopeng Motors Technology Co., also known as XMotors, which is pursuing both electric-vehicle and self-driving technology. Tesla referred to its Autopilot driver-assistance system as having industry-leading features and called the technology a crown jewel of its intellectual property portfolio. The complaint doesnt name XMotors as a defendant. In a separate suit filed Wednesday, Tesla claimed former employees who worked in warehouse and distribution center management at parts distribution centers took information and trade secrets with them to Zoox Inc. to help the company leapfrog past years of work needed to develop and run its own warehousing, logistics, and inventory control operations. Advertisement Tesla says the four employees, who worked in Newark, Calif., and Bethlehem, Pa., violated their employment contracts when they forwarded confidential information to their personal email accounts. A representatives for Zoox, which is the first defendant named in the suit, declined to comment. Tesla representatives declined to comment on the lawsuits. The Tesla lawsuit against Cao has similarities to a case against a former Apple Inc. engineer who left that company to join XMotors. Zhang Xiaolang was arrested in July, just before boarding a flight to China, and charged with stealing proprietary information related to Apples self-driving car project. He has pleaded not guilty. First Congress threatened to cut off federal funds to universities using components made by telecom giant Huawei. Next came a classified FBI briefing last fall for University of California research chiefs about foreign espionage threats. Then in January the U.S. government charged the Chinese firm with bank fraud, violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran and theft of trade secrets. This was the point in which the line was crossed for me, said Randy Katz, UC Berkeleys vice chancellor for research. He promptly announced an immediate ban on new research with Huawei, suspending a partnership with one of the schools largest corporate donors, one that had provided about $9 million over the last eight years. Advertisement Berkeley is among a growing number of American universities, including research powerhouses such as Stanford, MIT and UC San Diego, that have begun to cut ties with Huawei. The moves come in response to warnings from U.S. law enforcement agencies that Huawei cant be trusted and could secretly do Beijings bidding, whether by spying or sabotage. Moreover, the Trump administration wants to restrain Huawei the worlds largest telecom equipment maker from expanding its grip on development of critical 5G infrastructure, the next-generation wireless networking system that experts believe will transform connectivity for self-driving cars, factory automation and many other applications. While Europe has generally been skeptical of White House calls to prevent Huawei from dominating new 5G networks, U.S. universities, many of which have long-standing relationships with Chinese entities, find themselves in a bind: China may be one of the largest outside sources of technology research funding, but it runs a distant second to Washington in underwriting such work. UC San Diego, one of the nations largest research universities, counts on the federal government for most of its more than $1 billion in annual research and development spending. The school in August issued a six-month moratorium on new research involvement with Huawei, and last month extended that indefinitely. Not only do universities fear jeopardizing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants, but they also dont want to find themselves in the position down the road of having contributed to national security problems, however inadvertently. We are sensitive to the federal governments concerns about technologies being appropriated by other countries to the detriment of U.S. national security, Stanford said in December as it announced a moratorium on new engagements, gifts, affiliate membership fees and other support from Huawei. As long ago as 2012, a House Intelligence Committee report warned that deploying Huawei gear could make U.S. infrastructure vulnerable to spying and cyberattacks. More recently, Congress 2019 appropriations measure for the Defense Department, signed into law in August, prohibits funds from going to universities and other institutions that use substantial or essential components from Huawei and certain other Chinese firms for telecom and video surveillance systems. Universities immediately began to scour their campuses for any Huawei gear. UC Berkeley ripped out Huawei-made video communications equipment at one of its off-campus sites, replacing it with an American brand. The freeze by leading research universities should have little effect on Huaweis ability to roll out 5G gear, in which Huawei already is a leader and has no American rival. Still, cutting off Huaweis access to the resources of major U.S. research institutions could have ramifications for the companys long-term growth and technical development. It is also a further blow to the companys reputation, at least in the West. Even as Huawei has become a formidable player in the global telecom industry, with competitive quality and pricing, it has become a virtual pariah in America. Unlike in Europe and Africa, where Huaweis equipment is widely used, the companys products, which also include smartphones, have made little headway in the United States. And given the size of the American market and the reach of its technical and economic power, it may prove difficult in the years ahead to ignore the U.S. position. Although U.S. officials have not offered any public proof of security problems with Huawei equipment, such as malicious code or back doors, they argue that Beijing could at any time order Chinese companies to hack into products they make for espionage or sabotage. Huawei has insisted it would never accede to such requests. The Shenzhen-based firm became a technological powerhouse in part by pouring billions of dollars into research and development, internally and with outside partners. The company could be at a disadvantage if it is slow to reap advances in, say, artificial intelligence and all of its potential applications. Huaweis partnership in Berkeleys artificial intelligence research will continue for now because it was already funded. As part of a consortium of corporate donors that includes Intel and Google, Huawei does not have exclusive rights to any results. Huawei, for its part, has made little public comment about the cutoff in research ties with universities in the United States and elsewhere, including Oxford. But a top company research executive, in a recent newspaper ad that sought to counter U.S. pressure on Europe to ban Huawei, claimed it had never appropriated anyone elses discoveries and thanked European universities for cooperating on mutually beneficial research. All the papers and patents based on joint innovation belong to both sides or to scientists, said Zhou Hong, president of Huaweis European Research Institute. For American universities, its not just about research funds. With more than 400,000 Chinese nationals studying and teaching at U.S. colleges, many schools are concerned that the attention on Huawei and broader U.S.-China tensions could hurt another crucial source of revenue: full-tuition-paying students. The University of Illinois, which has also halted new Huawei-funded research projects, carries a $60-million insurance policy to protect against a sudden drop in students from China. Chinese enrollment was about 5,800 last year, down slightly from 2017 figures, according to the universitys newspaper. Cornell University is among those that havent placed new restrictions on Huawei research. A university spokeswoman said that the school did a careful review to make sure there were safeguards and that they were in compliance with government laws. She declined to provide additional comment. Government records show that in 2017, Cornell reported receiving a $3.9-million contract from Huaweis investment arm, the single largest award to the school from a foreign source that year. Berkeleys ties with Huawei and its Silicon Valley research subsidiary, Futurewei Technologies, go back to 2011. Huaweis total gifts to Berkeley since then represent only a speck of the universitys overall research spending. None of Huaweis existing grants to Berkeley involve sensitive technological secrets, said Katz, the vice chancellor. He described Huawei as having been a responsible research partner, and made a point of emphasizing that the university remains committed to upholding international scientific collaboration. Berkeleys chancellor, Carol Christ, worries about the larger relationship with China. She said the university has had a long and deep research relationship with partners like Peking and Tsinghua universities. Many of its faculty were educated in China. Obviously we have to be careful to protect our intellectual property, and I realize there are legitimate concerns about Chinas practices in regard to intellectual property, she said. But nonetheless, I think the world has so much more to profit by the sharing of research than putting up walls. Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe in Los Angeles contributed to this report. The latest from Washington More stories from Don Lee In an interview on the eve of the Brexit vote in 2016, Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas predicted a future of pea soup and a complete absence of coffee if the referendum passed and Great Britain withdrew from the European Union. For the European sophisticate, long a part-time London resident, Brexit would mean Little England all over again a small-minded, prim and grim place without espresso. Koolhaas said the European Union modernized the English mentality, helping the country find a way of being English, or being continental and English. The referendum did pass, and now as the March 29 deadline for leaving the European Union approaches, the country finds itself paralyzed, unable to decide which kind of Brexit, or a no-Brexit deal altogether. Much has been written about the hundreds of thousands of jobs that could be lost in Brexit-related factory closings, but less noted have been the dire consequences for creative industries, including architecture. Just like manufacturing, architecture is dependent on international trade. British architects export their services, bringing back work and revenues, while a net influx of foreign architects fills offices: A fifth of the profession nationwide is foreign, and in London, a third, according to British architect Piers Taylor. Norman Foster, who heads Foster + Partners, more than 1,000 architects strong, said, My practice absolutely depends on talent, and much of that talent is foreign. With the deadline approaching, blood pressure rising and a sense of national urgency setting in, architects have been sending open letters of alarm to newspapers and politicians at an accelerating pace. The priority now is to stop us crashing out of the EU with no deal at all, wrote Adrian Bull and Alan Bishop to the London Times. The two architects called for another referendum, the so-called peoples vote. The only feasible way to do this is by asking the people whether they still want to leave the EU. Advertisement Dear Prime Minister, began an open letter to Theresa May by Taylor, a TV personality and founder of the Bath firm Invisible Studio Architects. Sent to the Times and signed by dozens of architects, including Britains most famous Foster, Richard Rogers and David Chipperfield the letter continued: Architecture is an international industry where cooperation across borders is critical to the success of our practices. ... We believe there is no good Brexit. Rem Koolhaas, a part-time London resident, is among the architects decrying the potential for cultural isolation if Britain does leave the European Union. (Epsilon / Getty Images) The letters all tell a tale of future financial loss, since architecture is directly tied to the construction sector: A decline in imports will cause upward pressure on the price of materials, with a decrease in construction and demand for architects. A smaller market and drop in the gross domestic product will weaken the economy, weakening practices. If Brexit happens, British firms will have to pay increased taxes on their fees for work in the European Union, further decreasing the work volume because of increased costs. British architects will no longer have access to European competitions, a source of commissions for large and small publicly funded projects across Europe. Each year competitions throughout the EUs 28 nations enable young European firms to establish themselves. Anticipating the Brexit vote before her death in 2016, the celebrated British architect Zaha Hadid, a Pritzker Prize winner, said in a TV documentary that winning European competitions basically established her practice as a viable business. But Chipperfield, an architect active internationally, especially in Berlin, emphasized the qualitative rather than quantitative results of withdrawal from the EU, and said he wasnt just talking romantic drivel. Service industries are especially important, he wrote to the Architects Journal, a leading trade publication, since manufacturing is no longer the base of our wealth, and ... we depend increasingly on our creative abilities. Creative industries trade in knowledge, he said, and handicapping them through isolation cuts off their oxygen, suffocating them with our little island mentality. Diversity breeds cross-fertilization of ideas and skills. Chipperfield has emerged as architectures Churchill in the letter-writing campaign, as he has waged an eloquent, diplomatic campaign of letters to the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Guardian, among others. Like other remainers who mainly argue staying in the EU in economic terms, Chipperfield does acknowledge the economic advantages of remaining, but he points out that commercial criteria and the myopia of money have crowded out the philosophical and political debate. Instead, he argues holistically about the cultural necessity of staying. The European Union is a political, social and cultural project, he wrote to the Architects Journal. Beyond finance, politics and raw materials, the EU trades in ideas. We can profit from each other not only in fiscal but in social and intellectual terms. He links the free movement of ideas to the free movement of people within a larger European cultural community that shares a common history: The Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Latin cultures in close proximity is the extraordinary fortune of Europe. The English Channel is no longer a barrier from the Continent. It is no longer really just English. The immigration at the root of the Brexit vote is not a disadvantage for the architects writing the letters, but a cultural and economic gain, as it brings skill, energy and knowledge into the profession. In 2017, Chipperfield wrote that the threat of evicting EU nationals as a negotiating chip was not worthy of a civilized society, and the filters admitting new arrivals were unduly restrictive: The definition of skilled workers excludes almost all of those who are here to work in our industry. The industry has already experienced an alarming attrition that is weakening the profession as a workforce. Since the 2016 vote, the countrys architecture Registration Board documented a 42% drop, a record. There were 132,000 fewer EU nationals in summer 2018 than in the same quarter a year before. In addition, with an erosion in workload confidence and the investment climate, large offices are considering staffing cuts over the next three months. None is growing. The London skyline, photographed late last year. (Prisma by Dukas / UIG via Getty Images) To be sure, not all British architects object to Brexit. Hadids partner, Patrik Schumacher, favors the deregulation that breaking with Brussels would bring, though he has also opened a branch in Berlin as a workaround. Many British architects have opened offices in Dublin, where they can conduct an Anglo-Saxon practice without being excluded from work on the Continent should Brexit proceed. As for Prime Minister Mays response to the letter? Tory MP Robin Walker wrote, As the Migration Advisory Committee have pointed out, ending free movement is not incompatible with a welcoming approach to migration. Walkers reassurances were not very reassuring, however. Taylor told the Architects Journal: It completely misunderstands the way the industry works. Clearly they have consulted no one within the industry. Ballet, street dance theater, Mexican folk there are enough offerings this spring to satisfy any dance lovers taste. Ford Theatres has a particularly strong lineup, kicking off spring with artist-in-residence Micaela Taylor. The emerging choreographer will premiere Drift, an evening-length work highlighting her blend of contemporary dance and hip-hop on March 30 (see related article). SPRING ARTS PREVIEW: Critics recommendations on theater, art, music and more L.A. darling Jacob Jonas the Company will return to the Wallis as the company-in-residence for a world premiere May 10-11. And the historic Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater will celebrate its 60th anniversary with four programs April 3-7 at the Music Centers Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Advertisement Here are more highlights, a mix of local dance companies and touring troupes from across the nation and abroad. April 14 Pacifico Dance Company For more than 25 years, artistic director Adriana Astorga-Gainey has dedicated herself to preserving traditional Mexican dance in L.A. like the lively percussive zapateado and remixing it with modern and ballet. Al Paso de la Mujer explores Mexicos past from the female gaze, paying homage to religious and historical figures like the Virgen de Guadalupe and female warriors from the Mexican revolution. The premiere of Guerrero is one of the seven works on the program. It features sones de tarima, a dance that blends influences from early African and Chilean settlers, traditionally performed on small wooden boxes to amplify rapid footwork. The Lisa Smith Wengler Center for the Arts, Smothers Theatre, Pepperdine University, 24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. $20-$40. (310) 506-4522. www.arts.pepperdine.edu Pacifico Dance Company will perform at Pepperdine Universitys Smothers Theatre. (Gennia Cui) April 16 Merce Cunningham Trust To commemorate what would have been Merce Cunninghams 100th birthday, his trust is organizing the largest Cunningham event ever. Night of 100 Solos: A Centennial Event is a showcase of performances spread across the Barbican in London, the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York and the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. Former Cunningham dancers are curating each 75-minute performance, celebrating the modern dance pioneers choreography. On each stage, 25 dancers will perform 100 different solos taken from more than seven decades of Cunninghams work. Each event will be live streamed for those unable to attend. Royce Hall, UCLA, 340 Royce Drive, Westwood. $29-$59. (310) 825-2101. www.cap.ucla.edu May 22 Backhausdance The Orange County contemporary company recently completed its 15th anniversary season, which included its first European tour. In this program, company founder and artistic director Jennifer Backhaus and Complexions Contemporary Ballet founding artistic director Dwight Rhoden premiere new work on the company. Rhoden says his impressionistic and abstract ballet will explore love, acceptance and ones place in the world. The program also includes 2018s Beyond the Noise by Italian choreographer Walter Matteini. Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. $40-$100. (949) 854-4646. www.thebarclay.org Contemporary company Backhausdance performs Quantum of Love in 2018. (Jack Hartin) May 24-26 Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg Russian choreographer Boris Eifmans brand of ballet theater takes its cues from literature, tackling classics including Leo Tolstoys Anna Karenina and Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote. Eifmans latest production, The Pygmalion Effect, is inspired by the Greek myth of a sculptor who falls in love with his beautiful, life-like statue. But in this narrative ballet, the sculptor is a successful ballroom dancer who sculpts a performer from an impoverished, clumsy young woman. Pygmalion makes its U.S. debut in Chicago before stopping in Costa Mesa for a weekend. Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $29-$169. (714) 556-2787. www.scfta.org Eifman Ballet of St. Petersburg brings The Pygmalion Effect to the Segerstrom Center in May. (Michael Khoury) June 14-15 Mark Morris Dance Group To kick off its 2017 Sgt. Pepper at 50 festival celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the Beatles landmark 1967 album, the city of Liverpool requested the renowned choreographer to create work. The Brooklyn-based choreographer was just a child when Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, but he fondly recalled Beatlemania. ARCHIVE: Mark Morris mines the Beatles Sgt. Pepper for an irresistible Pepperland The colorful Pepperland shows off the modern troupes trademark musicality and an original score by composer Ethan Iverson, interspersing arrangements of tracks from the album including When Im Sixty Four, A Day in the Life and With a Little Help From My Friends. Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Segerstrom Hall, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $29-$119. (714) 556-2787. www.scfta.org July 12-13 Thomas Ades and Wayne McGregor Music and dance powerhouses collide for Ades & McGregor: A Dance Collaboration. British composer Ades will conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic as it performs three works. Two world premieres choreographed by McGregor are on the program: In Seven Days performed by his Company Wayne McGregor and a currently untitled work danced by the Royal Ballet. The third work, Outlier will be danced by the Royal Ballet and Company Wayne McGregor. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. $34-$138. (213) 972-0711. www.musiccenter.org July 20 Rennie Harris Considered the pioneer of street dance theater, Harris has become a sought-out choreographer across the nation, creating work for companies including Alvin Ailey and Lula Washington Dance Theatre. His latest, Funkedified, follows the West Coast premiere of Lazarus, a work created for Alvin Ailey inspired by the life and legacy of its founder. Funkedified features Harris own company, Puremovement, plus the Hood Lockers and L.A. street dance ensemble Versa-Style Dance Company. With a live band playing tribute to funk legends James Brown, George Clinton and others, the multimedia performance is a celebration of the funk music and street dance Harris grew up with in the 1970s. Ford Theatres, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood. $25-$50. (323) 461-3673. www.fordtheatres.org Aug. 16 Brockus Project Men tend to dominate the dance scene internationally, but in L.A., many women have risen to positions of power, says choreographer and dance curator Deborah Brockus. To honor the womens movement and L.A.s rich history of women in modern dance, Brockus will present a one-night performance showcasing 10 female-run companies in L.A. Women Rising: Choreography From the Female Perspective also coincides with the 99th anniversary of the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote. Expect an array of performances from companies including JazzAntiqua, Heidi Duckler Dance, MashUp Contemporary Dance Company and Luminario Ballet, a group that has performed works by L.A. modern dance pioneer Bella Lewitzky. Ford Theatres, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood. $20-$70. (323) 461-3673. www.fordtheatres.org Lenin Fernandez and Rosanna Taravez in Heidi Duckler Dance Theatres 2018 production The Story of Ramona. (Mae Koo) Aug. 30 Urban Bush Women Black hair is more than just a style thats the message behind the Brooklyn-based dance theater companys latest work. Since its founding in 1984, UBW has been dedicated to telling the stories of African American women. Hair & Other Stories is based on personal narratives from performers and the community about experiences with black hair. The soulful performance mixes contemporary dance, spoken word and some audience participation. Choreographed by the companys associate artistic directors, Chanon Judson and Samantha Speis, the work is a reimagining of founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollars 2001 HairStories. Ford Theatres, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Hollywood. $25-$50. (323) 461-3673. www.fordtheatres.org L.A. DANCE: 12 companies to know and see Ready for your catharsis? The forecast for the spring season calls for a hurricane of tears, shot through with just enough laughter to keep theatergoers from going off the deep end. Based on the book of advice columns by Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things headed to Pasadena Playhouse in a production starring the plays original star, Nia Vardalos moved me to wipe my eyes more than once in a different production earlier this year at San Diegos Old Globe. Falsettos, part of the Ahmansons lineup, could make a statue weep during its hospital room climax. And I practically had to carry my best friend out of the theater in New York after we saw Daniels Husband, which will have its Southern California premiere at the Fountain Theatre. SPRING ARTS PREVIEW: Critics recommendations and profiles of the emerging artists you should know All of these works mix comedy with drama, something Qui Nguyen did with delirious, comic-book-style abandon in his play Vietgone. Judging by the title, I suspect Nguyens follow-up, Poor Yella Rednecks, will proceed in a similar fashion lunatic laughter culminating in a shattering ending when it has its world premiere at South Coast Repertory. Advertisement But the performance that perhaps most tantalizes is Dianne Wiest as Winnie in Samuel Becketts Happy Days, a play that recognizes no distinction between comedy and tragedy. As another existentially immobilized Beckett character once mordantly observed, Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. March 30-April 27 Poor Yella Rednecks In Vietgone, Qui Nguyen conveyed in vivid theatrical color the story of how his Vietnamese parents escaped the war and fell in love in an American refugee camp. In his new play, he picks up the story as his parents struggle to build new lives in the strange new land of Arkansas. Count on hip-hop-infused flamboyance and sneaky emotional truth. South Coast Repertory, Segerstrom Stage, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $26 and up. (714) 708-5555. www.scr.org Eugene Young, left, Maureen Sebastian, Tim Chiou, Samantha Quan and Paco Tolson costar in the world premiere of Poor Yella Rednecks at South Coast Rep. (Robert Schmahl) April 4-6 I Fly! or How to Keep the Devil Down in the Hole Los Angeles Poverty Department collaborates with skid row residents in a performance work interrogating policies of public safety. Whose interests do they serve? Whose do they ignore? How can a divergent community do a better job of collective problem-solving? REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., L.A. $14-$20. (213) 237-2800. www.redcat.org April 5-7 The White Album Joan Didions classic essay is the basis of a multimedia performance by the innovative artist and director Lars Jan. Actor Mia Barron delivers Didions stylish report on her California journey in a countercultural era while a parallel performance unfolds behind her in this Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA offering. It marks a homecoming for the piece, which had its New York premiere last fall at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. UCLA Freud Playhouse, 405 Hilgard Ave., Westwood. $29-$59. (310) 825-2101. www.cap.ucla.edu The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA presents Lars Jans stage adaptation of the Joan Didion essay The White Album. (Lars Jan) April 9-May 12 The Niceties This touted drama by Eleanor Burgess, set on an Ivy League campus, revolves around a confrontation between a white female professor and a student of color over a paper on the American Revolutionary War that exposes differences in racial and generational politics. Geffen Playhouse, Gil Cates Theater, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. $30-$120. (310) 208-5454. www.geffenplayhouse.com Lisa Banes, left, and Jordan Boatman will costar in Eleanor Burgess drama The Niceties at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. (T. Charles Erickson) April 10-May 5 Tiny Beautiful Things The stage version of Cheryl Strayeds collection of Dear Sugar advice columns stars Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), who adapted the book. The radical sincerity of Strayeds hard-won wisdom almost guarantees an emotional earthquake. Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. $25 and up. (626) 356-7529. www.PasadenaPlayhouse.org Nia Vardalos stars in her own adaptation of Cheryl Strayeds collection of Dear Sugar advice columns at the Pasadena Playhouse. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) April 16-May 19 Falsettos As this Lincoln Center Theater revival proved in New York, time has not touched the power of William Finn and James Lapines musical to make us laugh and leave us sobbing. The show redefines the meaning of family as gay and straight New Yorkers of various degrees of neuroticism grapple with liberation and loyalty until the approaching AIDS epidemic forces a more painful reckoning. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. $30-$135. (213) 972-4400. www.centertheatregroup.org Max von Essen, left, and Nick Adams costar in a revival of the musical Falsettos, coming to the Ahmanson in April. (Joan Marcus) April 25-27 Time No Line A live memoir from hallucinatory artist John Kelly, who reflects on his roots in the East Village performance art scene of the 1980s, the ravages of AIDS on the art world and surviving New Yorks endless cultural transformations. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., L.A. $14-$20. (213) 237-2800. www.redcat.org Veteran performance artist John Kelly brings his multimedia-enhanced work Time No Line to REDCAT. (Theo Cote) May 1-June 23 Daniels Husband Michael McKeevers play, a comedy that becomes a serious weeper, revolves around a gay couple divided on whether they should officially tie the knot. Simon Levy directs a fine cast that includes Bill Brochtrup, Tim Cummings and Jenny OHara. Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., L.A. $25-$45. (323) 663-1525. www.FountainTheatre.com Tim Cummings, left, Jenny OHara and Bill Brochtrup costar in the relationship comedy Daniels Husband at the Fountain Theatre. (Paul Dimalanta) May 15-June 30 Happy Days Two-time Oscar winner Dianne Wiest takes on the role of Winnie, the determinedly chipper woman sinking into a mound of earth in Samuel Becketts absurdist classic. Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. $32-$115 (subject to change). (213) 628-2772. www.centertheatregroup.org May 26-June 23 Dana H. This new play from Lucas Hnath (The Christians, A Dolls House, Part 2) is adapted from interviews with Dana Higginbotham, a psych ward chaplain who was held captive for five months by a patient groping for redemption. Les Waters, a cool hand with unorthodox work, directs. Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City. $25-$79. (213) 628-2772. www.CenterTheatreGroup.org The Kirk Douglas Theatre will stage playwright Lucas Hnaths latest work, the drama Dana H. (Zack DeZon) May 28-June 23 Good Boys Playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who is the chief creative officer at Archie Comics, reexamines one of his earlier plays, a thriller set at an elite prep school, involving a star student, a sex tape and a family worried about the future of a golden boy son. Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave., Pasadena. $25 and up. (626) 356-7529. www.PasadenaPlayhouse.org June 4-July 7 Indecent Paula Vogels play takes its inspiration from Sholem Aschs 1907 Yiddish drama God of Vengeance, which was shut down during its Broadway run on charges of obscenity provoked in part by a passionate kiss between two women. The production by Rebecca Taichman, who won a Tony Award for her dream-like direction, smoothly integrates this history with the fate of Yiddish culture that Vogel expertly weaves into her dramatic tapestry. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave., L.A. $30-$149. (213) 972-4400. www.centertheatregroup.org Paula Vogels fact-based drama Indecent tells the tale of a controversial Broadway show from the turn of the last century. (Carol Rosegg) June 11-July 14 Mysterious Circumstances Matt Shakman directs this new play based on Mysterious Circumstances: The Strange Death of a Sherlock Holmes Fanatic, David Granns New Yorker article about the life and death of the worlds preeminent scholar on Sherlock Holmes. Some real-life yarns are indeed stranger than fiction. Geffen Playhouse, Gil Cates Theater, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. $30-$120. (310) 208-5454. www.geffenplayhouse.com Another lousy day begins, a man growls near the start of An Elephant Sitting Still, and he doesnt know how right he is. This extraordinary, overpoweringly bleak movie, a first feature from the Chinese writer-director Hu Bo, plays out over a single day that will grow steadily worse for four people whose slow, meandering paths occasionally intersect. Misery may love company, but these individuals seem most defined by the intensity of their isolation a spiritual condition that follows them out of their dim, squalid apartments and into the sparsely populated streets of the city they are unfortunate to call home. We are in a gloomy industrial ruin somewhere in northern China. Jobs and prospects are scarce, infrastructure either collapsing or nonexistent. The substandard local high school is about to close without warning, leaving its students with an even more uncertain future. Nothing here works, and no one expects that anything will improve. Physical violence erupts at random on the streets and is inflicted on a more intimate, everyday scale at home. Everyone here is petty, self-interested and mean under the circumstances, who wouldnt be? but the movies consoling, deeply humanist insight is that they remain people worth knowing. And Hu opens up their world with a dogged persistence matched only by his exquisite sensitivity. Within a narrative framework that might have seemed schematic in another filmmakers hands, he allows his characters and their sad, often solitary experiences to command the attention of the camera and the viewer in turn. Advertisement The aforementioned growler is the father of Wei Bu (Peng Yuchang), a teenager with a quiet demeanor and a thousand-yard stare. He and a friend are being mercilessly bullied by another kid at school, a conflict that seems destined to end badly. Wei Bu has a crush on a female classmate, Huang Ling (Wang Yuwen), who is romantically involved with a married school administrator. As we learn from her mother, with whom she argues bitterly, today is Lings birthday; needless to say, it wont be a happy one. It takes some time for us to learn the connection between Wei Bu and Yu Cheng (Zhang Yu), a handsome brooder and small-time gangster whos having an affair with his best friends wife; the sequence in which the friend returns home and catches them together, then takes sad, decisive action, is a small masterpiece of narrative and formal economy. Hovering on the outskirts of the action is an older man named Wang Jin (Liu Congxi) whose daughter and son-in-law are trying to move him into a retirement home. Jins gentle interactions with his young granddaughter, and with his dog, are among the few moments of emotional respite. The movies title alludes to an elephant that is kept as a circus attraction in Manzhouli, a distant city that some of the characters dream of visiting so they might see it for themselves. The elephant might be, like them, an object of persecution (some spectators like to stab it with forks), but it is also, enviably, a creature at rest and at peace, impervious to the harsh and hostile world around it. The people we see have no such escape. Over the course of a day they will witness and participate in a remarkable cycle of events a soap opera seasons worth of romantic indiscretions, sudden deaths, unfortunate accidents, provoked and unprovoked attacks in a story that somehow never loses its sense of balance and modulation. One of the reasons An Elephant Sitting Still is so absorbing is that it has the advantage of duration, a willingness to linger in moments of silence and stillness. Paradoxically, as a result, it moves far more swiftly than you might expect. Here is where Im supposed to alert you that this movie runs nearly four hours, at which point you will either close the browser tab or turn the page. Would it convince you to hear that it doesnt have a single boring moment, and that it plumbs emotional depths that can only be achieved with the investment of time? Without soft-pedaling his characters struggles indeed, at the risk of sometimes pushing toward ugly, harrowing extremes Hu locates within them a unifying soulfulness, a shared wellspring of anguish and grief, that reaches toward and occasionally touches the sublime. He accomplishes this through a subtle range of expressive effects and techniques, among them the recurring themes of Hua Luns plaintively beautiful score. Mostly, he avails himself of a muted gray palette and a camera that seems to be forever on the move, floating behind the characters as they walk, following them up and down staircases, drifting beside them as they exchange words or stare into the void. These flowing, uninterrupted shots may induce in devoted art-house-goers a twinge of auteur recognition. Hu was a student of Bela Tarr, the great Hungarian director who in movies like Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies used a rigorously slow-gliding camera to usher the viewer into a raptly contemplative state. In one of those odd coincidences that can reveal the reach of a masters influence, this week also sees the theatrical release of Sunset, from another Tarr disciple, the Oscar-winning Laszlo Nemes (Son of Saul). Hu is less well known and will unfortunately give us no further expression of his remarkable talent. He committed suicide at age 29 in 2017, shortly before completion of An Elephant Sitting Still. The movie went on to premiere at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival and was received with bittersweet ecstasy by critics and moviegoers, who rightly lamented the loss of a vital new voice in Chinese independent filmmaking. The pall cast by Hus death will doubtless provoke crude theories about life imitating art, suicide being one of this movies unignorable preoccupations. But no such extra-textual associations should either embellish or diminish his achievement. He has given us a triumph of bold sociopolitical critique and intimate human portraiture, and a reminder that you rarely encounter the one without the other. ------------ An Elephant Sitting Still In Mandarin with English subtitles Not rated Running time: 3 hours, 54 minutes Playing: Laemmle Glendale, Glendale justin.chang@latimes.com | Twitter: @JustinCChang The beautifully crafted thriller Transit, still playing in theaters, is the latest movie written and directed by German filmmaker Christian Petzold, one of the most gifted cinematic chroniclers of his nations tempestuous past and present. For audiences unfamiliar with his earlier work, the streaming service MUBI is presently showing his two superb previous films, Barbara (2012) and Phoenix (2014), as part of its What Is an Auteur? series. Barbara, a tense tale of love and resistance, centers on a doctor who has been banished to a remote outpost in 1980s East Germany. Phoenix, an aching riff on Vertigo, follows a Holocaust survivor lost amid the rubble of a bombed-out Berlin. Each film is built around an exquisite performance by Petzolds frequent on-screen collaborator, Nina Hoss; together, theyve built one of the most impressive and sustained actor-director collaborations in recent movies. justin.chang@latimes.com @JustinCChang In chasing so many projects yet finishing so few over a peripatetic, groundbreaking life of moviemaking, Orson Welles left behind footprints big enough for lots of wandering and wondering among fascinated cineastes. With The Eyes of Orson Welles, one such dedicated fan, Irish critic-filmmaker Mark Cousins, has taken the approach of parsing Welles celebrated visual style through a heretofore little-appreciated talent of the masters: his voluminous and arresting graphic artwork. Considering the amount of such material Welles left behind sketches, drawings and paintings from his formative childhood travels through decades in movies it makes for a tantalizing reappraisal sure to appeal to even the most knowledgeable Welles enthusiast. And while Cousins archaeological dive operated independently of the restorative labor that last year gave us both a new, completed Welles original (The Other Side of the Wind) and a complementary behind-the-scenes documentary about it (Morgan Nevilles Theyll Love Me When Im Dead), theres never a sense of Welles fatigue (or stones unturned) when taking in Cousins film. On its own, its a nimble, eccentric, sometimes questionable but mostly insightful journey into the coursing visual mind of a voracious and revolutionary artist. Cousins, whose perceptive gifts won many fans after his exhaustive 15-hour epic The Story of Film: An Odyssey, frames Eyes as an inquisitive letter to Welles, one that starts by keenly acknowledging both the technological breakthroughs the director would have embraced (phones as cameras), and political times hed leap to dramatize (the Charles Foster Kane-like qualities of our president). From there, thanks to archival boxes at the University of Michigan and the help of Welles daughter Beatrice, its a nomadic, personal, theme-driven tour of the ways a precocious one-time Chicago Art Institute student with an activist mother memorialized his view of the world its people, its systems through ink and paint. Its also an expansively, entertainingly speculative trip into connections between biography and filmography, politics and staging, and between a controlling temperament and the cinematic dynamism that secured his genius. Advertisement Cousins finds emotional throughlines coursing through the literal lines Welles drew. The curves in an Irish peasants face or a Moroccan merchants robes spoke to a progressive-minded, world-traveling teenagers humanistic ideals. After fascisms rise in the 1930s, facelessness characterized many of his sketched figures at the same time his filmic concerns turned toward the perils of identity-crushing authoritarianism, from Citizen Kane through Mr. Arkadin and his Kafka adaptation The Trial. But also, in a way, those empty visages parallel Welles need to disappear into his own roles with heavy makeup. Facelessness even defined the way he crafted a scene like Desdemonas killing in Othello, her suffocation with cloth as consuming jealousy wipes out his soul and hers. When Cousins examines Welles love life, hes on shakier ground, sidestepping the directors legendary womanizing and expedient friendships for a more pitying view represented by woe-is-me drawings he dashed off during his troubled marriage to Rita Hayworth. The fanciful inclusion of an imagined letter back from Welles, read by Jack Klaff, is Cousins regrettably stretching his conceit to its breaking point. Cousins is more provocatively observant on his subjects depictions of kings and jesters, and that movies like Chimes at Midnight may have expressed a sympathy with fools, but Welles belly-first framing and dominating angles across so many mad tyrant portraits betrayed a truer identification with the allure and pitfalls of kingly appetites. By the end, taking in a museums worth of Welles artwork notebook scribblings, Christmas cards, design concepts, full-on paintings has primed the viewer to appreciate Cousins most persuasive case, that Welles notoriously expressionistic, charcoal-colored Macbeth is the closest he got to a cinematic scrapbook of his graphic sensibilities. Your views may differ, but that doesnt mean Cousins intoxicating brew hasnt made the most of its key ingredient: The Eyes of Orson Welles. ------------- The Eyes of Orson Welles Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes Playing: Starts March 22, Laemmle Royal, West L.A.; Laemmle Playhouse, Pasadena calendar@latimes.com @LATimesMovies We will work individually with all of our students to make sure they are able to find another school to attend, which is why we are making this announcement now. While we are saddened by this outcome, we know that our students deserve better than weve been able to provide, he said. In this series, Running the Show, The Times speaks with showrunners of your favorite TV programs about breaking into Hollywood, being the boss and more challenges of the job. Aline Brosh McKenna cant let it go. She admits that. Advertisement Which is why, next month, when her CW series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend comes to a close after four seasons, it will be no ordinary send-off because, come on, is anything ever ordinary with this show? The swan song finale April 5 will be boosted by a concert special, airing immediately after the last episode of the musical dramedy. Theres also a documentary about the finale in the works that will be available on the CW Seed app. McKenna, co-creator and showrunner of the cult favorite, is in the midst of cutting footage for both bonus offerings. It caps off the already rigorous task of writing the series finale, which McKenna did with fellow co-creator and star Rachel Bloom, and directing the episode too. So, basically, overwhelming panic was inevitable. I dont know what we were thinking, McKenna, 51, says. Rachel and I are still working around the clock. Were insane. I dont know why we did this to ourselves clearly, we couldnt let this show go. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend series creators Rachel Bloom, left, who stars in the series, and showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna, in 2016. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times) Now, movie executives have that sad, dead-eyed stare of having to move corporate product through and TV executives have this the skys the limit feel. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna Considered by many to be an anti-romantic comedy, the show has followed the shenanigans of Rebecca Bunch (Bloom) in the pursuit of love and happiness. Along the way, the show has skewered the cliches often put upon women and has offered a sobering exploration of mental health all while breaking into song every so often. After a particularly dark third season, which included Rebecca plotting revenge on her ex and a suicide attempt, the final chapter has taken on a lighter tone in looking at Rebeccas journey toward happiness in a healthy way. ALSO: When Crazy Ex-Girlfriends creators weighed in on the exploration of Rebeccas mental health For McKenna, whose screenwriting work has largely been focused in film, including The Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses and Morning Glory, the end of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a significant marker in her career. It brings to a close her first TV series a full circle moment for someone who spent her early years in Hollywood writing TV pilots. With the office she used for four years on the Crazy Ex set in North Hollywood already boxed up, McKenna has been using her other office in L.A.s Larchmont Village during the weeks leading up to the shows farewell. There, amid framed photos of Nora Ephron and Joni Mitchell and a mock-up of Runway magazine ever-so-neatly on display, just as Devil Wears Prada editor Miranda Priestly would demand, McKenna talked about wrapping up the show, how her job has changed in the #MeToo era and about writing for TV at a time when content feels overwhelming. Runway magazine, as seen in The Devil Wears Prada, displayed in Aline Brosh McKennas office. Brosh McKenna wrote The Devil Wears Prada. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) It all started when ... After college, I wrote a proposal for a book with my roommate, and we sold it to Pocketbooks. And, then, I tried in vain to become a magazine writer. I really wanted to be, not quite as much of a journalist, but sort of in the world of Devil Wears Prada. I wanted to write for New York Woman, which was a big magazine at the time. We tried to write for Spy. We had a piece killed at Glamour. We tried really hard. And then my writing partner moved to L.A. She got a job on Married With Children. I wrote a screenplay in a screenwriting class, an extension class at [New York University]. And with that screenplay, I got an agent. I was about 23 or something like that. That was actually a blind deal that I got from a producer at Universal that didnt turn into anything. And then the original spec sold to New Regency. Those two deals were the things that sustained me for the first few years of my career. I was just expecting to work as a writer. That was the extent of my goals. Youre sort of swinging from vine to vine trying to keep everything going And I worked in TV for five years. I wrote pilots mainly. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend co-creator and showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna has also written the screenplays for the movies The Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses, We Bought a Zoo, and Morning Glory. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) RUNNING THE SHOW: One Day at a Times Gloria Calderon Kellett on being the boss and the Netflix numbers game TV was very different then. Everybody wanted the same thing and it was very constrained. And the multi-cam format was never the format that I was most comfortable in. I did that for a while, but I felt like there wasnt a lot of freedom, and, then, they are saying to you, You need to have three jokes a page. I think I stopped writing TV when I was pregnant with my son, so I was about 30, and then, I got the job writing Devil Wears Prada six or seven years later. I had two other movies made, Three to Tango and Laws of Attraction. But at the time, movies were doing more character-driven pieces, and then, it completely flipped. It really completely flipped, and now, movie executives have that sad, dead-eyed stare of having to move corporate product through and TV executives have this the skys the limit feel about them. On her first IMDb TV credit Margaret Chos All-American Girl After a few years of writing movies, I got a TV writing partner, this really hilarious gentleman named Jeff Kahn, who was on The Ben Stiller Show, which was on MTV and later Fox. We wrote a bunch of pilots together, and one of those pilots was called Young Americans. When Margarets show looked like they werent going to renew it, they took one of our pilots, and they made it the last episode of All-American Girl. It was a planted spinoff where Margaret moves in with a bunch of we had written sort of Friends without money. Thats the episode. Margaret was in it. Amy Hill was in it as Margarets grandmother. Diedrich Bader was in it. Mariska Hargitay was in it. David Cross. But it didnt get picked up. On learning to be a showrunner By the time we got [Crazy Ex-Girlfriend], I knew a lot of people who were running shows. Everybody does it differently, so I kind of crowdsourced it and called a bunch of different people. I will say that Jennie Snyder Urman [Jane the Virgin] was working at the CW and that was one of the reasons that we went to the CW to begin with. She was very helpful and gave me a lot of good advice. I [also] solicited a lot of feedback from the writers we hired. We had a retreat right in the beginning and I said, Tell me the best practices and the worst practices of your previous jobs L.A. portion of the pilot episode written in longhand by Aline Brosh McKenna, the showrunner of the CWs musical dramedy, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, hangs framed in her office in Los Angeles on March 12, 2019. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend finishes its fourth and final season in April. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) ALSO: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Putting West Covina on the culture map I had to learn that every person you work with requires a slightly different style of communication. If you think about, with your five closest friends, you have a slightly different communication with each. Like, This one, I text with, and this one, I call, and this one, its best to hang out with them in person. And so, you know, we had the same writers and the same department heads and the same people, and we all got better at knowing. like, OK, this is a quick phone call; this is a quick text; this is a quick in-person visit; this is Steven from production coming down with pictures; and this is, you know, having a meeting with the prop manager. Meeting people where they live was something that I think I maybe intellectually understood, but when you see it in practice and you notice that ... Its sort of like with kids. You take them as they are as opposed to trying to get everybody to be on your wavelength. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" creators Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna walk us through the evolution of the song Santa Ana Winds from Season 2 episode 11. On writing in the Peak TV era Looking at the ratings, for us, is really pointless. We realized early on that no ones going to watch the show in any substantial numbers live on network television. So we gave up on that. I would say Rachel and I check that, but very early on, we knew that if they were going to leave us on the air, its not going to be for the ratings. Theres no end of amazing quality things going on in television just recently with Russian Doll and the final season of Catastrophe. The stuff is good because writers are in charge, and writers know stories better than anybody else. And so, what writer doesnt want to go somewhere where the writers are in charge? Theres a reason you know who David Chase is, and theres a reason that you know who Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner are. And theres a reason you know who Mike Schur is because they have a point of view and its sort of like waiting for the latest whatever novel to come out. That has been the biggest change in TV, I think. And I love it. ALSO: So, that time jump on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? Let the writers explain Aline Brosh-McKenna, center right, co-creator and showrunner of the CWs Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, at a writing session during the planning of the series third season on September 26, 2017. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) On being conscious of her role in creating an inclusive workplace I think thats present in my everyday brain. One thing that I do frequently is I ask people to challenge the way they look at themselves. So like we have a female editor that I really encouraged to be a director and, [Kathryn Burns], our choreographer, I really encouraged to be a director. And sometimes, you know, people can opt not to do those things, but sometimes just someone seeing you that way and suggesting that makes people think of themselves in a slightly different way. I remember Rachel said to me once, Why are you so nice to me? Why are you mentoring me? I was mentored and taken care of by a lot of people when I started. Having someone identify, Hey, you did a good job here, or, I see something in you just the slightest little thing is so meaningful when youre starting. And so I mostly try and be aware of being encouraging when I see something that maybe someone is not seeing in themselves. Rachel Bloom in a season 4 episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. (Robert Voets / The CW) ALSO: Introducing Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, in which Rachel Bloom stalks and bursts into song Changing the rom-com narrative I had been so steeped in being likable and the female leads being a certain way that had been hammered onto me. I will say, on Devil Wears Prada, that was the process where that happened the least. Besides [director] Dave [Frankel], it was a movie made primarily by women. And so I got fewer of those notes. Andy [Anne Hathaway] was brainy and she was a little snobby and she was opinionated, and I think thats partly because the book existed. So that helped a lot. But also because it was a movie surrounded by women. And then with Crazy Ex, I think one of the things that really connected Rachel and I was a desire to get underneath stereotypes. She comes from musical comedy where the female characters are often severely compromised. And I had been working in romantic comedies, where I was trying to get these other kinds of characters through. And this was a brilliant opportunity for both of us to kind of spoof these things. Get an inside look at the work that goes into a musical number on the CWs musical comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. ALSO: A midnight bath and the making of Crazy Ex-Girlfriends big Marilyn Monroe parody So from the beginning, wed been making fun of makeovers and runs to the airport. And then all the men are tropes. And so it really is a sustained, four-year-long rom-com. I would say the main genres we dismantled [were] mainly romantic comedy, but also musical comedy, for sure. Rebecca Bunch is a studio executives nightmare of a romantic comedy female lead, and that was highly intentional because its a character whos been fed that crap. What does that look like when youre actually trying to manifest those rom-coms into being? That is maybe the biggest difference between Rachel Bloom and Rebecca Bunch, which is that Rachel is steeped in musicals. Rebecca Bunch is steeped in rom-coms, mostly. How the job has changed in the #MeToo era The way I think about my job and this industry ... I think that theres so much more openness in terms of what were talking about, what the conversations are, and that has dovetailed nicely with what were doing on the show. It is nice to feel like were all sort of engaging in some of the conversations about things we maybe knew, but didnt say. And so that feels great. That new openness that, I think, has brought a lot to everyones creative expression, feeling like some of those sort of unspoken dynamics, not just in Hollywood, but in the world, are being openly discussed now. It certainly came up a lot in our free-form discussions. I think anyone in Hollywood spent a lot of time discussing it, and a lot of the women in our show, in particular. I would describe everyone on our show as feminist; particularly, some of the women are quite outspoken. It was also one of those things we had been talking about and dealing with in our own way, before it all started to really break, because we were dealing with certain of these issues we were already talking about. But, yeah, I think that sound you hear is everyone all across Hollywood talking about all of these things. Crafting a series finale Because Rachel and I were so interested in beginning, middle, and end, it was really nice for us to get to that end and explore what that was. Some of the other [season] finales weve done have been bigger, more bombastic, and had more scale to them. I mean, people are running off cliffs in Malibu. And we always knew [the series finale] was going to be a more intimate, psychological. Crazy Ex-Girlfriends Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna discuss the shows journey, what to expect for Season 4 and the importance of taking weekends off. ALSO: Crazy Ex-Girlfriends final season will be about a girl who is rebuilding her life Its the first one we shot in seven days, which is our normal shoot time. We usually do the finales over a longer period of time. But this one, we knew was going to be more inside Rebeccas mind, and so thats very much how its structured. Rachel and I wrote it together. We wrote the bulk of it in one day. And it felt like the culmination of almost six years of collaborating and talking about what we wanted to say. We did have a big conversation with the writers room before we went to write, just to get their thoughts, because obviously the institutional memory there, after 60 episodes, is pretty amazing. But then we set out to sit together. It was kind of like a dam bursting. And there were tons of refinements, but the spirit of the finale is in that first day that Rachel and I kind of first put it on the page. Bonus: The showrunners essential tool A bowl of words. When Ive hit a wall or need to take a break from the screen, I flip the bowl its these words that are printed on little cubes. And I make sentences. Wooden cubes featuring one word apiece rest in a bowl on the desk of Aline Brosh McKenna, the showrunner of the CWs musical dramedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, at her office in Los Angeles on March 12. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) ALSO: 5 things to know about the final season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend ALSO: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend goes from small screen to small stage at Covina theater ALSO: Shopping in Silver Lake with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom yvonne.villarreal@latimes.com Twitter: @villarrealy Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke revealed on Thursday that she suffered from two life-threatening brain aneurysms that have prompted her to launch SameYou, a charity to advocate for stroke and brain-injury patients. The British actress, 32, has since healed beyond her most unreasonable hopes and is now at a hundred per cent, she wrote Thursday in a personal essay for the New Yorker. The bubbly star is best known for her role as the dragon-commanding Daenerys Targaryen in the hit HBO fantasy-drama that launched her career and kicks off its final season next month. In her essay, she wrote that there is something gratifying, and beyond lucky, about coming to the end of Thrones. The Emmy Award nominee, who has since starred in Solo: A Star Wars Story, Me Before You and Terminator: Genisys, contextualized her health struggle with filming the series. Soon after completing Season 1 in 2011 she became violently, voluminously ill and felt shooting, stabbing, constricting pain in her head that landed her in an English hospital. Advertisement The diagnosis was quick and ominous: a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a life-threatening type of stroke, caused by bleeding into the space surrounding the brain. Id had an aneurysm, an arterial rupture, Clarke wrote, saying that about a third of SAH patients die immediately or soon thereafter. Not long after, at age 24, she underwent a minimally invasive procedure endovascular coiling to seal off the aneurysm. She then suffered from aphasia and, at her worst moments, she wanted to pull the plug at the hospital and have the medical staff let her die. Doctors also told her that she had a smaller aneurysm on the other side of her brain, and it could pop at any time. She kept her condition quiet, but filled in her Thrones bosses and began filming the next season of the globe-trotting series in Croatia. Season 2 would be my worst. I didnt know what Daenerys was doing. If I am truly being honest, every minute of every day I thought I was going to die, Clarke wrote. Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in Season 5 of the HBO series Game of Thrones. (HBO) By 2013, around the time of Clarkes short-lived Broadway run in Breakfast at Tiffanys, a brain scan indicated that her small aneurysm had doubled in size. She had another minimally invasive procedure, but it failed, and resulted in a surgery that required opening her skull and an even more painful recovery. I looked as though I had been through a war more gruesome than any that Daenerys experienced. I emerged from the operation with a drain coming out of my head. Bits of my skull had been replaced by titanium, she said, adding to concerns about her cognitive or sensory losses. She spent another month in a Manhattan hospital, which she described as dark days that her mind has blocked out. She said she lost all hope, had terrible anxiety and panic attacks and was convinced that she wasnt going to live. With the launch of her charity and maybe because she previously denied her struggle in a short National Enquirer story the actress was emboldened to share her story. I know from personal experience that the impact of brain injury is shattering, Clarke said in a statement from SameYou. Recovery is long-term, and rehabilitation can be difficult to access. Brain injury can be an invisible illness, and the subject is often taboo. We must help young adults take control of their recovery and allow them to open up without fear of stigma or shame. Twitter: @NardineSaad On a leafy street off Melrose Avenue, past trendy fashion boutiques, a bungalow with large picture-frame windows can easily catch the eye with its colorful mural evoking a deconstructed Mondrian painting. The Beverly Grove space could be mistaken for an art gallery, but what hangs within the white walls is Atelier & Repairs one-of-a-kind fashion made from discarded garments that have been fixed, modified and zhooshed with bright stitching and vivid patches. Its not a basic brand, said Maurizio Donadi, the Vernon-based companys creative director, relaxing in one of the stores artsy armchairs constructed from Lucite and butter-yellow, patent-leather cushions. Theres a wanting to be, by choice, creative. Atelier & Repairs also gives its own spin to sustainability. Holding up a white shirt that was once a classic button-down, Donadi then goes through the steps that gave it a second life. Donadi says: We are a creative solution for world excess. There is enough to use for decades. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times) Advertisement We made a kimono collar. We made it short-sleeved. We put a lot of tonal patches here, he said, flipping to the back, because there were probably holes and stains. At $325, the open-front jacket is a breezy style, suitable for a modern bohemian. For customers preferring traditional silhouettes, Atelier & Repairs also offers chinos, jeans, denim jackets and sweatshirts, all in unisex sizes. We are a creative solution for world excess, Donadi said. Lamenting the enormous amount of clothing and textiles produced in the fashion industry, he added: There is enough to use for decades. Check out the belt loop on the altered military pants, an example of the flair the brand brings to otherwise dated items. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times) Donadi has followed an unusual trajectory through fashion, which has taken him from steel work in his native Italy to overseeing the openings of hundreds of Benetton stores to making executive decisions at A/X Armani Exchange, Levis XX and Polo Ralph Lauren. He has adopted the motto of a department store he had visited in the Deep South in the 1980s. Were here to surprise and delight our customer, he said. Retail has become very predictable. We have a responsibility to entertain our customer, Donadi said. Thus, the stores theme is changed every few months with new installations. When Donadi opened the shop last June, he highlighted camouflage by demilitarizing army uniforms with floral fabrics. Subsequent displays included $495 indigo jackets inspired by constellations and $685 ponchos assembled from Woolrich fabrics. Atelier & Repairs, which has an atelier in London, is also creating wall tapestries, priced at $2,000 each, for clients such as luxury retailer Lane Crawford in Hong Kong. Donadis store has become a destination for fashion insiders, including Bruce Pask, the New York-based mens fashion director at high-end department stores Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus. Because the majority of Atelier & Repairs items are crafted from recycled materials, the shopping experience, he said, is more of this fun kind of exploration: try one on and see which fits the best. Plus, he added, Donadis store stands out because his work plays to peoples emotions. People walk in and fall in love. A rack of clothing inside the Atelier & Repairs store, where throwaways get a new life. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times) Patricia Billings, a 54-year-old book publisher who recently moved to New York from West Hollywood, is one of the besotted. Her trove from Atelier & Repairs includes six scarves, 10 pairs of jeans and a couple of white shirts. Donadis team also repaired some of her beloved belongings that had fallen apart from frequent wear, such as a maxi-dress made in Ghana by Osei-Duro, which she described as busted on the butt. Priced from $50 to $275, the transformation fees can cost as much as a new garment. Still, she said, Youre investing in an idea of no waste and supporting artistry. Donadi said that, rather than tracking sales growth, he measures success by the tons of garments that Atelier & Repairs diverts from a landfill and regenerates into new fashion. Having repurposed 6 tons last year, he is aiming for 8 tons this year. Of course, it needs to look good, he said. It needs to surprise and delight also. Atelier & Repairs, 710 N. Edinburgh Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 424-4844, atelierandrepairs.com image@latimes.com For fashion news, follow us at @latimesimage on Twitter. Emme Parsons shoe label was inspired by two tiny feet. The catalyst for my brand was having my son, Parsons said of launching her Los Angeles-based eponymous line of womens sandals in 2017. As the story goes, Parsons first had the impulse to create footwear many years earlier while on vacation in the south of France, but it wasnt until her son, Remy, was 4 months old that she decided to follow through on her longtime aspiration. I wanted to be a good role model for him to follow his dreams, the 38-year-old footwear designer said during a recent interview. I thought, I want to make my mark. I want to do something that my son is going to be proud of and that I can be proud to show him. I want to take that risk. Footwear designer Emme Parsons. (Jenny Westerhoff) Advertisement Parsons background as an art director and graphic designer for brands such as Lucky magazine and Theory proved helpful as she developed her namesake labels aesthetic. However, Parsons had no formal training, so she immediately enrolled in a one-day workshop at Willies Shoe Service in Los Angeles. Its actually a weird funny roundabout story, she said, explaining that the stores owner had coincidentally enlisted one of Parsons former Theory colleagues, Keiko Hirosue, to teach what Parsons called a fundamental crash course in shoemaking. After launching the brand in 2017 with a couple of resort styles, Parsons released a small, curated spring 2019 collection in March. Key styles include the Paloma, a dainty design featuring a hand-woven toe band; the Chris, a luxurious-looking slide; and the Susan, a stylish lace-up sandal that also comes in a slingback. I wanted the shapes to be wearable and timeless, Parsons said of her shoes, which are handmade in Tuscany, Italy, and feature a palette of light blue, mango, gold, white, black and beige in materials such as suede and calfskin leather. Theyre really versatile and go with everything. The Susan sandal, clockwise from top left, the Paloma sandal, the Susan slide and the Paloma slide. (Dimitri Newman) Parsons said her shoes differ from others on the market in that the designer prefers a thicker sole and heel in the name of durability. A lot of the high-end designers are moving toward super-thin soles, she said. But once you take them out, they get so beat-up. It was of equal importance to Parsons to sell her sandals at a more accessible price point than those from luxury brands. That way, she said, if you wear them to death, its not the end of the world if you have to buy another pair. Gwyneth Paltrow has been spotted in the designers sandals, which is fitting since Parsons shoes, which retail for $360 to $475, are available at Goop Lab in Santa Monica. Her sandals are also available at Bird in Culver City as well as on the brands website, emmeparsons.com. Parsons said her ongoing goal is to create classic designs and silhouettes that can be worn year-round. The whole intention of the line isnt about reinventing the wheel every season but slowly layering on new designs, she said. The basis of the business is essentials that are available every season. Sandals from the Emme Parsons line. (Nastassia Bruckin) Parsons said she hopes to branch into mens sandals that arent flip-flops and arent too over-designed or over-the-top. Now living in Silver Lake, the former New Yorker, who moved to Los Angeles in 2014, has taken the towns City of Angels nickname to heart. Parsons often volunteers and donates a small portion of company proceeds to local charities such as the Good Shepherd Center for Homeless Women & Children, the L.A. Mission and My Friends Place. Its so important to support our community, Parsons said. Were not at the point where we can donate a specific percentage per shoe, but were taking baby steps and trying to do whatever we can. image@latimes.com For fashion news, follow us at @latimesimage on Twitter. Last month, Italian luxury label Salvatore Ferragamo had a flurry of fashion activity in Southern California. The brand outfitted a bumper crop of stars during awards season, including actors Gerard Butler and Zachary Quinto, who were at Vanity Fairs Oscars party; skier Gus Kenworthy and boyfriend Matt Wilkas, who attended the Elton John AIDS Foundations Academy Awards viewing party; and Daily Show host Trevor Noah and Avengers: Endgame star Chris Evans for the Oscars. And as if that wasnt enough, the Florentine fashion house, which presented its fall/winter 2019 collection last month in Milan, also launched one of the brands newest stores this one at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, which replaced a former store there. The new Salvatore Ferragamo store at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa replaces a former store at the luxury shopping center. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) A three-piece mini collection of goods featuring blue skies and nature motifs of flora and fauna was introduced as part of the new store celebration. The three accessories a handbag and two pairs of shoes commemorate the years the late designer spent in Southern California between 1915 and 1927. Advertisement The strappy shoes, which come in two heel heights, share the same pattern as the bag a pale ivory background lavishly printed with pretty lake-blue birds, flower petals and leaves, and the surprising addition of turbaned men, one in a rowboat and the other riding a horse. The pieces the handbag is $1,890; the shoes are $950 are exclusive to the new store, which opened last month. The store moved from one location in the upscale shopping center to another. New accessories a handbag and shoes commemorate the years the designer spent in Southern California between 1915 and 1927. (James Huang) According to a Ferragamo representative, the 5,500-square-foot space was designed by William Sofield of Studio Sofield in New York and features additional throwbacks to the legendary shoe designer. For example, some areas use wood and cork accents; Ferragamo incorporated those materials into his earliest footwear. Customers to the boutique, which carries the full range of fashion and accessories for men and women, can lounge on plush seating made from pink velvet and boucle or red leather. Art Deco-influenced lamps are another reminder of Salvatore Ferragamos time in the Golden State. A look inside the new Salvatore Ferragamo store at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) Ferragamo, who died in 1960, had worked out of the Hollywood Boot Shop, at Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas Avenue, in the early 1920s. Thats where he repaired and created footwear for the stars of the day, including Greta Garbo and Mae West. During his Hollywood run, he was commissioned to make shoes, among them 12,000 pairs of sandals for the 1923 movie The Ten Commandments, directed by Cecil B. De Mille. The Italian designer established himself as a force in footwear, and subsequently in ready-to-wear, upon his return to Florence, Italy, in the late 1920s. His widow, Wanda Ferragamo, served as honorary president of the luxury empire until her death last year. A look at the mens section of the new Salvatore Ferragamo store at South Coast Plaza. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) image@latimes.com For fashion news, follow us at @latimesimage on Twitter. Since opening Dialogue in 2017, chef Dave Beran has re-created the restaurants tasting menu every season. But one dessert has remained unchanged: the burnt Basque cheesecake. Invented in San Sebastian, Spain, and popularized in recent years you can also catch a version at Simone in the Arts District Berans oozy, crustless cheesecake is not part of the tasting menu or even available every night. Its reserved for diners celebrating birthdays or other special occasions when the kitchen has a batch. If you cant score a slice at the Santa Monica restaurant, go ahead and make Berans five-ingredient recipe at home. Here is the story of his journey to his dead-simple dessert formula: I wish I had come up with this dessert. I was just trying to re-create the one I had at La Vina in San Sebastian, Spain. It was like nothing I had ever had so burnt on top and the flavor was super clean, not blurred up by a bunch of random things. Anytime you can blindside someone with something absolutely delicious, you win. Chef Dave Beran Advertisement As soon as I got home, I went to work on producing it. There were a couple of recipes online, but nothing turned out right. As a chef, whenever you look at something, you start to overthink it. So I tried whipping cream first and partially cooking the custard before baking. When I got the color, the texture was grainy and vice versa. I didnt want to reinvent it because the original was so good, so I started over at zero. I put myself in the position of the La Vina baker making 20 cheesecakes in a tiny pintxos bar kitchen with one oven. It had to be simple. I dont have La Vinas recipe, but I finally tried just combining the ingredients and baking in a super-hot oven. It took a solid three months to figure that out. Chef Dave Beran of Dialogue pours Basque cheesecake mix into a cake pan. (Wonho Frank Lee / For The Times) The unique structure comes from baking in an oven so hot the outside burns, but the custard stays smooth. There cant be flour or cornstarch because the center never gets hot enough for the starch to cook through and it ends up grainy. It is different from the original though because I refrigerate it. At La Vina, they slop it on your plate and its running all over, so you know how melty itll taste. At Dialogue, I make it more deceiving and more surprising by giving it structure while keeping it oozy. We cut it cold to get neat slices, then clean up the edges so it looks like a slice of cake. But when you cut into it to eat it, it melts instantly. Every time someone has it, theyre blown away by it. I think anytime you can blindside someone with something absolutely delicious, you win. Chef Dave Beran of Dialogue pours heavy cream into a mixer to make a Basque cheesecake. (Wonho Frank Lee / For The Times) And you can win with this recipe. There are only five ingredients, and two are sugar and salt. You basically get out the ingredients, blend them, throw it in the pan, and bake it off. But there are things to watch out for: The oven has to be the right temperature. Make sure its fully heated (not on convection) before you make the batter. If you have an oven thermometer, use it and adjust your dial to get to and keep it at 450. Use a food processor for the batter; it can overmix then break if made in a stand mixer. Use Philadelphia cream cheese; other brands dont work as well. Once the cake is in, watch it. (But dont open the oven until the timer goes off.) If the top starts to turn black all over, that means your oven is too hot; turn the heat down. If the top isnt browning, turn the heat up. You can open the oven and start checking at 20 minutes. Shake the pan; the edges should be set and the middle should be really loose and jiggly, like Jell-O when its still setting. If it were cake, theres no way youd think its done. Dont overbake it. If you do, you lose the custardy texture. If you underbake it, you wont be able to cut a clean slice, but itll just be creamier. Always err on the side of under. After you remove the cheesecake from the oven, dont rest it on top of the stove. That residual heat can cause it to overcook. When its at room temperature, put it in the fridge uncovered. You dont want plastic wrap to steam it and ruin the burnt top. Basque Cheescake A slice of Basque cheesecake made by chef Dave Beran of Dialogue. (Wonho Frank Lee / For The Times) This dessert combines the flavor of an ultra-rich New York-style cheesecake with the velvet texture of custard; creme fraiche accentuates the tang of cream cheese while the nearly burnt top balances the sweetness of the batter. 35 minutes plus cooling and chilling. Makes one 9-inch cheesecake Ingredients 4 (8-ounce) blocks cream cheese, cut in 1-inch chunks 1 1/3 cups sugar 9 large egg yolks teaspoon kosher salt 1 cups creme fraiche Instructions Heat the oven to 450 degrees with rack in bottom third. Coat a 9-inch springform pan with cooking spray. Line with a 15-inch square of parchment paper, pressing it into the bottom and up the sides so that it extends above the rim of the pan. Crease and fold the paper as needed to keep it flat. Spray the parchment. Put the cream cheese, sugar, egg yolks and salt in a food processor. Pulse until very smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally. Add the creme fraiche and pulse until fully incorporated. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, then tap the pan against a work surface a few times to smooth the top and eliminate air bubbles. Put on a half-sheet pan, then put in the oven. Bake until the top is dark brown, the edges set and starting to pull away from the sides of the pan, but the center is still quite jiggly, 20 to 25 minutes. If you shake the pan back and forth, the top should roll like a gentle wave. Cool in the pan on a rack until room temperature, then refrigerate uncovered overnight. To serve, release and remove the sides of the pan. Use the parchment to slide the cheesecake off the base onto a cutting board, then pull down the sides of the parchment. Use a sharp knife to cut slices, wiping the blade clean after each cut. Make ahead: The cheesecake can be refrigerated for up to 3 days. Note: Adapted from Dave Beran Anh Do is a Metro reporter covering Asian American issues and general assignments. A second-generation journalist, she has worked at the Dallas Morning News, the Seattle Times, the Orange County Register and Nguoi Viet Daily News, the largest Vietnamese-language newspaper in the U.S. Born in Saigon, Do is a graduate of USC with degrees in journalism and English and she has reported from Cuba, India, Mexico, Peru and Vietnam. Her writing on race, culture and trauma has won awards from Columbia University and the Asian American Journalists Assn. and she is a recipient of Yales Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. Apart from words, shes passionate about all things canine, spending 26 years in dog rescue around the globe. Hoping to lower the cost of mitigating homelessness by preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place, a Los Angeles research group says it has created a screening tool that can predict who is likely to become chronically homeless after losing a job or leaving the foster-care system. The Economic Roundtable published a report Wednesday, offering its statistical model as a way for Los Angeles County workers to target their resources early to keep people from sliding into long-term homelessness. But county officials are declining to use it. Instead, they have accused the Roundtable a nonprofit that has conducted extensive studies on homelessness of misusing millions of records from county and state agencies, including statistics on employment, healthcare and homelessness, as well as involvement in the criminal justice and foster care systems. Advertisement The Roundtable combined the government records and removed duplicate names and other identifying information. But county officials ordered the nonprofit to destroy the data and not to publish the resulting report. In a Feb. 26 letter to the Roundtable, the county counsels office alleged that it had acquired the original records a decade or more ago under agreements that narrowly defined how the information would be used and set time limits that have long since expired for the records to be destroyed or returned. The county, Principal Deputy County Counsel Truc L. Moore wrote, has a duty to protect state and county data, and to report to the state any inconsistencies, if any, with the contractual requirements that all parties agreed to. L.A. promised more housing for homeless people but some neighborhoods are way behind In a partial compromise last week, Roundtable President Dan Flaming agreed to destroy the original records. But he said he hopes to eventually publish his working files, which, he says, would be valuable to other researchers looking to review the findings and to pursue their own studies. The report published Wednesday includes a table of factors that could be entered into a computer program and used by social services workers to calculate the odds that a client will become persistently or chronically homeless. The Roundtable defines persistently homeless as 12 consecutive months of homelessness, or two or more stints within three years. In announcing the results Wednesday, Flaming said the statistical model can identify the 1% of unemployed workers most likely to become persistently homeless with 81% accuracy. For youth leaving the foster care system, the accuracy is 72%. Its very difficult to see a path to housing all the homeless if we dont use this information, Flaming said. The Roundtable, which made an unsuccessful bid for a contract with the county to analyze the annual homeless count data, has published several studies on homelessness and criticized the accuracy of numbers published by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. A 2013 study from the Roundtable found that homeless people who frequently cycle through the county hospital system use nearly four times the public resources that would be needed to house them, providing support for the argument for more locally funded housing programs. In September, after releasing another report, Flaming said the Roundtable would soon publish a screening tool to help homeless services providers identify people who are likely to become persistently homeless. The tool would allow them to intervene early with individually designed packages of assistance, saving public funds in the long term. But the dispute with the county caused him to delay its release in January. The dispute surfaced in December after Flaming briefed Phil Ansell, director of the countys Homeless Initiative. Max Stevens, with the countys Chief Information Office, wrote Flaming a four-page letter ordering him to destroy the data and not publish the report. Following negotiations with the Roundtables attorney, Brad Phillips of Munger Tolles & Olson, the county removed the prohibition on publishing the report but put the nonprofit on notice that it would publish it at its own risk. Flaming said he agreed not use the data for 60 days to see if he could work out an agreement. In the meantime, the Roundtable has entrusted the data to a retired judge. If no agreement is reached, Flaming said, he will submit a public records request and its board would consider filing a lawsuit to make the data public. Last week, The Times filed a public records request for the data. The county has yet to respond. We would love to have the county use this tool, Flaming said. We would do anything we could to support that. County officials declined to comment Wednesday on the dispute over the data. In a statement, Chief Information Officer William S. Kehoe said the county recognizes the importance of good data analysis to assist our efforts but could not comment on the Roundtables report because we do not know where the data came from, what methodology was used, or what research requirements and protocols were adhered to. In the meantime, Flaming is looking for other ways to put the data to work. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor has expressed interest in using the algorithm to select candidates for a job training program, he said. Thats the test we have in our sights at this moment, he said. doug.smith@latimes.com @LATDoug Los Angeles police are investigating the posting of anti-Semitic fliers across the San Fernando Valley, including near at least two schools, as a hate crime. El Camino Real Charter High School officials were notified Monday about the fliers some bearing swastikas which had been taped to signposts and traffic signal poles on the streets surrounding the Woodland Hills campus, said Daniel Chang, chief compliance officer at the high school. Its not clear when the fliers were posted, but officials found none on campus. A parent who saw the fliers near the school Monday posted photographs on social media. One of the fliers asked readers the difference between crackheads and Jews. Another flier included a picture of a swastika with the question, Is this a hate symbol? Underneath, it showed a Star of David with the question, How about this? Messages on at least one of the fliers appeared to equate Nazism with Zionism and the state of Israel. Advertisement A flier with a similar message was posted near the kindergarten gate at Nestle Avenue Charter Elementary in Tarzana. The Los Angeles Unified School District said in a statement that officials are deeply disturbed by the incident. Los Angeles Unified condemns acts of anti-Semitism and any other symbols of hate. This is the responsibility for everyone, inside our schools and within our community, the district wrote. While Los Angeles Unified remains committed to educating students about cultural and religious diversity and the important values of tolerance and inclusion, we encourage this educational process to continue throughout the community. The fliers appeared roughly a week after similar posters were found around Newport Harbor High School in Orange County. Those posters showed up on the heels of a backlash over a viral photo that showed Newport Harbor, Costa Mesa and Estancia high school students posed in a Nazi salute while gathered around a swastika formed by red cups during a house party this month. The incidents come at a time when hate crimes against Jewish people and institutions are surging across the United States. In 2017, anti-Semitic incidents jumped 57% over the previous year, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Hate crimes against Jews grew by 37% in the same period, according to a separate FBI analysis. Los Angeles school board Vice President Nick Melvoin said the growing trend of hate crimes against minorities will not be tolerated. I am especially saddened by the proximity of these messages to our schools, just outside the space where we teach our children to act with kindness and compassion, he said. The Los Angeles Police Department is encouraging anyone who may have information about the fliers to contact detectives in the departments West Valley and Topanga divisions. hannah.fry@latimes.com Twitter: @Hannahnfry No, it wasnt a meteor. Or an alien invasion. Many Los Angeles residents were dazzled Wednesday night when a fireball streaked over downtown Los Angeles, resembling a slow meteor. The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed shortly after the incident took over social media that there was no alien invasion, and the event was just another film shoot. Advertisement This is Tinseltown after all, the LAPD said on Twitter. The commotion was caused by Red Bull Air Force, the energy drinks team of skydivers, who were wearing custom wingsuits fitted with LED lights and pyrotechnics while filming a video celebrating the final super moon of 2019. They jumped from a helicopter 4,000 feet above L.A. and flew one mile, pulled their parachutes at 1,000 feet and landed near the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown hotel, a spokesman said. Many Angelenos looked up apparently learning nothing from the Netflix film Bird Box and wondered whether it was the end of times. By now, L.A. residents should be growing used to unidentified flying objects. In October, a mysterious light was a SpaceX launch. In December 2015, a bright light turned out to be debris from a Russian rocket returning to Earths atmosphere. For now, the only alien invasion that L.A. residents can view on Earth is in theaters showing Captain Marvel. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) A Quezon police official suspects his men may have staged the alleged "shootout" that killed Sariaya, Quezon Mayor Marcelo Gayeta's son Christian and his companion Christopher Manalo last March 14. Senior Supt. Joseph Arguelles said there was a discrepancy in the descriptions of the body builds of the victims and the two people who threatened a gas station employee in Tayabas City based on witnesses' accounts. The two people seen in the gas station were alleged to be Christian and Manalo because they were wearing clothes similar to what the victims were wearing. However, the witnesses could not confirm if the victims were the men in the station because the latter were wearing helmets. "May pagdududa kami sa imbestigasyon namin dahil medyo may pagkakaiba sa build ng mga naggaling doon at saka yung description ng body build ng dalawang biktima," Arguelles told CNN Philippines' Balitaan Thursday. [Translation: We have our suspicions based on our investigation because there was a discrepancy in the description of the builts of those who came from the gas station and that of the two victims.] Prior to the encounter, police testimony also stated Gayeta and Manalo were stopped at a checkpoint and were caught with firearms. This led the police to believe their men may have disguised themselves as the victims and threatened the gas station employee so their fellow officers would have a reason to pursue and shoot Christian and Manalo. Further evidence also suggest they were apprehended before they were killed. A medico-legal report showed marks on the wrists of the victims indicating that they could have been handcuffed prior to their deaths. This development comes just as Christian's body was being laid to rest. The Philippine National Police (PNP) placed 18 men linked to the incident under restrictive custody of the Quezon Provincial Police. Five of them have been relieved, including the Quezon and Tayabas police chiefs and three other officers.15 have surfaced, but the Tayabas chief and two other officers are still missing as of writing. Chief Supt. Edward Carranza, Calabarzon police chief, also aired his suspicions saying the trajectory of the two bullets in the gunshot wounds on the victims were questionable. The National Bureau of Investigation-Quezon is now preparing double murder charges against the involved policemen. IU Northwest will host the education conference Exploring Partnerships for the Future at 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. March 29 in the Bruce W. Bergland Auditorium in the Savannah Center on campus, 3400 Broadway, Gary. The conference is free and open to the public. Region teachers, education professionals, and anyone interested in the local education landscape are encouraged to register. The conference will include presentations, workshops and a luncheon. Gary native and IU alumnus, Eric Deggans, will give a luncheon keynote address. He will discuss his book, Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation. During the conference, the campus will recognize community members who have advanced the cause of diversity and inclusion by awarding its annual diversity awards. Nominate campus and community members for this honor at iun.edu/diversity/forms/awards-nomination.htm. More information and registration are at iun.edu/diversity/new-events/index.htm, or with James Wallace at jamewall@iun.edu or 219-980-6596. Arguing that turning apartments into hotel guest rooms undermines Los Angeles efforts to improve access to housing, a Westside planning board this week ruled against a businessman who has been trying to legalize his conversion of a 32-unit apartment building on the Venice boardwalk. This seems to be contrary to all the citys policies to preserve affordable housing, said West Los Angeles Area Planning Commissioner Esther Margulies during a hearing on Wednesday evening. Venice businessman Carl Lambert later said he would appeal the planning commissions 3-0 ruling on his request to the Los Angeles City Council. The ruling comes amid a wave of controversial hotel conversions as Venice, a once-funky beach town that is now home to offices of Google, Snap and other tech companies, transitions into a luxury residential community and tourist destination. Longtime residents argue they are being pushed out. Advertisement Lambert, who operates as many as 90 hotel rooms in Venice, purchased and renovated the Ocean Front Walk building in 2005 and began advertising it as an extended stay hotel called Venice Suites. In the 1990s, long-term tenants had leased the rent-stabilized studios and one-bedroom apartments for rates as low as $500 a month, former renters said. City Attorney Mike Feuer filed a lawsuit against Lambert two years ago, claiming the conversion was illegal. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge, in a partial decision last year, ruled in Lamberts favor, saying the city code did not prohibit renting apartments for short stays. A trial on the city attorneys remaining claims of false advertising and unfair competition for presenting the building as a hotel is set to begin May 29, a spokesman said. Meanwhile, the City Council has adopted new rules since the judges ruling last year, allowing Airbnb-style short-term rentals only in Angelenos primary residences not at a second home or an investment property. A city zoning administrator also turned down a separate application that Lambert had filed for a zoning variance to operate the Ocean Front Walk building as a hotel, setting the stage for Wednesdays public hearing. During the testimony, Lambert and his lawyers cited old building permits and city codes that they said permitted him to turn the building into an apartment-hotel. I have vested rights, he told the planning commissioners. Lamberts team and supporters also contended that Venice needs more hotel rooms. The beach towns zany street performers, skaters, muscle men and sidewalk vendors have turned the boardwalk into an international tourist destination. Venice residents countered that the tourists come for the bohemian charms of artists and performers who increasingly cant afford to live there. Were at risk of becoming a neighborhood without neighbors, said Judy Goldman, who also warned of a domino effect if the hotel conversion was approved. Another appeal is pending over the 52-unit Ellison building in Venice, which was cited by the city as an illegal hotel. The buildings owner, Lance Robbins, is vigorously contesting the complaint. Zoning Administrator David Weintraub told the commission that he rejected Lamberts variance request because other city codes, planning designations and permits trumped the old documents the hoteliers team unearthed. If Lambert had vested rights for a hotel, he wouldnt need a variance, Weintraub said. Commissioner Margulies acknowledged that the citys paper trail on rentals and hotels is troubling. Im really in disbelief, Margulies said of the conflicting language. This is not the first time we have found some loopholes or vague policies that seem to be in contradiction to the citys policy to preserve housing. But she and other commissioners said they were swayed by the citys affordable housing crisis. After the hearing, Lambert said he had been unfairly caught up in the political furor over short-term rentals. I feel the process was a stacked deck against me for political reasons, he said. I lovingly restored that building. Otherwise, it would have been razed and you would have two condos there. gholland@latimes.com Twitter: @geholland Amazon Prime recently released the pilot episode of a Chapman University professors documentary series about child trafficking. The first installment analyzes the trafficking industry in Cambodia and Thailand. Professor Kelly Galindo spent several years traveling to those Southeast Asian countries, as well as Iraq, Mexico, India and East Africa, to film 26 Seconds, which refers to the interval in which a child is trafficked worldwide. Its horrific that this happens to children, said Galindo, 55, of Orange. Everyone thinks this is a Third World country problem, but it happens right here. I hope this can spread awareness and be a call to action. Galindo worked as an independent film actress and guest starred on televisions ER, Sons of Anarchy and The Closer. Advertisement In addition to highlighting the crisis in foreign countries, Galindos series analyzes trafficking in Orange County, Southern California and other parts of the United States. While the seven-minute pilot, which will soon be available on Google Play and iTunes, is the only available episode, Galindo plans to release six to eight more by November. In Iraq, Galindo learned the intricacies of a trafficking system whereby the Islamic State was attacking villages, initiating boys and selling young girls into sexual slavery. She traveled to refugee camps for interviews flanked by members of the Kurdish military, a necessary security measure only 20 miles from then-ISIS-occupied Mosul. In an interview with Galindo filmed in Orange County, a 10-year-old survivor recounted being raped by a male customer in a hotel across from Disneyland. People dont realize its in these affluent places, Galindo said. Traffickers will bring girls here because there is money to be made. The series includes the stories of victims and the nonprofits that help them try to heal and piece their lives back together. Galindo encourages viewers to contribute to the nonprofits. Follow @timesocofficial for more news and features about Orange County. President Trump said Wednesday that he believed special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs report should be released to the public, even as he disparaged its very existence as ridiculous. Let it come out, let people see it, Trump told reporters as he left the White House on Wednesday for a trip to Ohio. Lets see whether or not its legit. Mueller is expected to present a report to the Justice Department any day now outlining the findings of his nearly two-year investigation into Russian election meddling, possible collusion with Trump campaign officials and possible obstruction of justice by Trump. As Washington awaits Muellers report, heres what we know about the investigation Advertisement Mueller is required to produce a confidential report that at a minimum explains decisions about who was and was not prosecuted. Atty. Gen. William Barr is then expected to produce his own report for Congress and has said he wants to make public as much of Muellers findings as he can under the law. Trump said he was personally looking forward to reading the findings, even as he scorned the fact that Mueller was empowered to write the report in the first place. I just won one of the greatest elections of all time in the history of this country.... And now I have somebody writing a report that never got a vote? Trump said. Its called the Mueller report. So explain that because my voters dont get it. And I dont get it. Trump went on to mischaracterize the effort, saying its sort of interesting that a man out of the blue just writes a report. The House voted unanimously last week for a resolution calling for any report in Muellers investigation to be made public. It was a symbolic action designed to pressure Barr into releasing as much information as possible. Trump and his outside attorneys have worked for months now to undermine Mueller and cast doubt on his findings. Trump continued that effort Wednesday, calling Mueller conflicted and criticizing the lawyers who have worked on the case. Though Muellers office has said nothing publicly about the timing of a report, several prosecutors detailed to Muellers team have left in recent months, suggesting the investigation is winding down. Trump, for his part, said he had no idea when the report would be released, but maintained his innocence, saying there was no collusion and no obstruction. There was no nothing. With all of that being said, he added, I look forward to seeing the report. Authorities on Thursday warned surrounding residents to stay indoors after high levels of benzene were detected in the air near a scorched petrochemical storage facility outside Houston. Firefighters on Wednesday extinguished the blaze at the Intercontinental Terminals Co. in Deer Park that started Sunday and destroyed several large tanks that contained gasoline and chemicals used in nail polish remover, glues and paint thinner. They continued to spray foam on the site Thursday to try to prevent flare-ups. Officials said Wednesday that benzene levels near the facility didnt pose a health concern. But authorities issued an order to shelter in place Thursday due to reports of benzene or other volatile organic compounds in Deer Park, which is about 15 miles southeast of Houston. Several school districts also canceled classes for the day due to the air quality concerns. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who is the countys top administrator, said at a news conference Thursday that light winds were helping to keep the vapors from spreading more broadly. Advertisement Outside of that immediate area were not seeing elevated levels right now, said Hidalgo. Dr. Umair Shah, who heads the county health agency, said theres still only a minimal public health risk, but he cautioned that the elderly, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups should try to limit their exposure. The most important thing is that the levels that have been detected are still not high enough for the level of concern that people may be having, he said. The county fire marshal, Laurie Christensen, said the benzene vapors may be escaping from gaps in the foam that firefighters have been spraying to try to prevent flare-ups at the site. The Texas National Guard was assisting at the scene Thursday. A team of about a dozen guard personnel was helping to contain hazardous materials and provide other assistance to local emergency responders. Environmental groups said residents who live near the facility have experienced various symptoms, including headaches, nausea and nosebleeds. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, long-term exposure to benzene, a highly flammable chemical, is harmful to blood and bone marrow. The Environmental Protection Agency conducted air quality tests throughout the Houston area, both on the ground and from a small plane, and measured no levels of hazardous concentrations, EPA official Adam Adams said Wednesday. Some residents who live near the facility, though, said they didnt have confidence in the air quality test results. Everything has been wrapped up in this nice perfect bow in saying that there were no problems. Every air quality was perfect. Every wind was perfect, blowing it away. And if everything was so perfect, why did it happen? longtime Deer Park resident Terri Garcia said. Bryan Parras, an organizer in Houston with the Sierra Club, said his environmental group had concerns not just about the air quality, but about the potential effects on the environment and the fishing industry if chemicals from the storage facility or firefighting foam get into the Houston Ship Channel, which leads to the Gulf of Mexico. This issue isnt over just because the fire is out. We want systems in place that will protect our communities, Parras said Wednesday. The EPA and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said Wednesday that they were waiting for test results of water samples to determine any potential effects from the foam used to fight the fire on waterways next to the storage facility, including the Houston Ship Channel. Politics is not a pursuit for the faint of heart or the thin of skin. Yet Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) has evidently been so deeply wounded by the invective directed his way on Twitter, 140 to 280 characters at a time, that he has filed a defamation lawsuit against the company and three of its microblogging auteurs. He is seeking a whopping $250 million for the damage he believes they inflicted on his reputation. Two of those alleged defamers went by the monikers Devin Nunes Mom and Devin Nunes Cow, leavening their tweets occasionally with maternal and bovine jokes, respectively. In other words, they were parody accounts. We would be the last to argue that Nunes or anyone else shouldnt be able to seek redress for defamation in court. In this instance, though, it seems Nunes might be doing more damage to his reputation by focusing attention on the critical tweets than by just moving on and doing his work. Then again, Nunes has a history of doing damage to his own reputation, as his performance over the last two years on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence shows. Nunes lawsuit doesnt identify the people responsible for @DevinNunesMom (which was shut down this month) or @DevinCow on Twitter; the third microblogger sued is Liz Mair, a self-described libertarian Republican who has acted as a communications director for a series of Republican candidates across the country. So the catcalls appear to have been bipartisan. Advertisement There are serious questions to ask and answer about how Twitter and other giant social networks manage their users. And then there is Nunes lawsuit. Admittedly, some of the tweets were harsh enough to make a grown man cry especially the ones from Devin Nunes Mom, who had a thing for salacious and profane hyperbole. A frequent topic was Nunes relationship with President Trump; as you may recall, Nunes positioned himself as Trumps shield on Capitol Hill, taking the intelligence committees probe into possible Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and turning it into an attack on the FBI. That led Devin Nunes Mom to accuse him of being such things as presidential fluffer and swamp rat, according to the complaint. The tweets cited in the complaint are so ridiculously over the top, you have to wonder why Nunes paid any attention to them. These include posts that, according to lawsuit, falsely stated that Devin might be unscrupulous, craven, back-stabbing, charlatan and traitor, but hes no Ted Cruz; falsely stated that Nunes was voted Most Likely to Commit Treason in high school; [and] falsely stated that The people of Californias Central Valley are upright folk who work hard, look you square in the eye and give you a firm handshake. And then there is @DevinNunes. Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute Theres a long tradition of low blows and anonymous accusations in politics, and somehow candidates find a way to survive them. Having a sense of humor helps. Just guessing here, but the real point of the lawsuit may not be to strike back at Nunes critics (although he did just that in his successful 2018 campaign for reelection, sending out a 40-page mailer attacking the negative press hed received in the Fresno Bee). And his goal may not be to collect a huge sum from Twitter, which is so clearly protected by federal law against this very sort of lawsuit that Nunes lawyers had to have told him it was a fools errand. Instead, the purpose may simply have been to give Nunes a role in the fight against giant Silicon Valley tech companies that Trump and other Republicans have been waging since before the 2018 election. The lawsuit claims that Twitter censors conservatives and shadow bans them (makes their tweets harder to search for on the site), citing as evidence a since-discredited news story that ostensibly uncovered the shadow-banning and a series of reactions to it, largely in conservative media (and on a news site financed by the Russian government). The claims may not pay off in court, but they may play well among GOP donors. Funny, but liberals have long complained that Twitter is too permissive of racist and misogynistic tweets. The company is also under heavy pressure from policymakers to crack down on fake news, terrorist propaganda and other forms of harmful content that bad actors use its network to distribute. So there are serious questions to ask and answer about how Twitter and other giant social networks manage their users. And then there is Nunes lawsuit. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook Here we go again. The Pentagons inspector generals office said Wednesday it was opening an investigation into acting Defense secretary and former Boeing Co. executive Patrick M. Shanahan, over comments he made that seemed to puff up Boeing at the expense of its rivals in the military-industrial complex. The investigation stems from media reports that Shanahan, as undersecretary to James Mattis, pushed for decisions in Boeings favor and disparaged Boeings competitors despite having signed an ethics agreement to recuse himself from matters involving Boeing. Breaking that agreement is serious stuff, and reflects one of the main problems with a revolving door between government and industry. Such coziness makes corruption and insider-dealing much easier to get away with. Advertisement Thats quite a legacy. Still, Shanahans transgression, if true, is kind of cute compared with some of the other conflicts and scandals that have embroiled current and former appointees of President Trump, whose administration already is one of the most scandal-plagued in U.S. history. Beyond the personal scandals, the professional and political ones include: The abuse of government-funded travel by former Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Pruitt, Zinke and Price all were forced out. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carsons purchase of a $31,000 dining set for his office, for which he blamed his wife. Carsons decision to have his son, a Baltimore businessman, help with a HUD listening tour to Maryland also raised concerns that he was using his position to help his sons business. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynns failure to divulge foreign contracts and his lies to the FBI about conversations with Russian agents, leading to his guilty plea. And then theres the Mueller investigation. Oh, and the lies, both big and small. And Trumps own conflicts of interest. All in all, the Trump administration has amassed an impressively broad and deep list of alleged or admitted chicanery, criminal acts and questionable exercises of judgment. And that doesnt even get into the fundamental incompetence of the administration, which fortunately for the environment cant figure out how to change regulations without getting slapped down by the courts. Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute In fact, the administration has lost at least 63 court challenges over its regulatory changes. By another count, it has prevailed in only 6% of the challenges, compared with a normal win rate for the government of 70%. And in two years, turnover among A team members of the administration, defined as top White House staffers, is about 66%. Among the 24 Cabinet-level positions, 12 have had turnovers, a record for the modern era. Thats quite a legacy. When Gov. Gavin Newsom suspended the death penalty in California last week, he cited an ineffective, irreversible and immoral process that, from trial to execution, is tainted by racial discrimination. African Americans bear the brunt of the bigotry; theyre the most overrepresented on death row. In a state that is only 6% black, more than one-third of defendants sentenced to death in California are black. Decades of studies have uncovered ways that race can tip the scales. For example, in capital cases where the victim is white, defendants are significantly more likely to receive a death sentence than when the victim is black. But the truth is more complicated, and more insidious, than a simple black/white divide. When black men are judged by juries in capital cases, their sentences can hinge on just how black they are perceived to be. Those with darker skin, wider noses and thicker lips are subject to far harsher sentencing than lighter-skinned blacks with less prominent, so-called black features. In research I led in 2006, looking more black more than doubled the chances that a defendant would receive the death penalty. But only when the victims were white. Advertisement When the implicit narrative of black wickedness is not challenged, it can seem to perfectly explain the disparities in outcomes. To determine the impact of appearance on jurors decisions, my team of psychologists and legal scholars used a database of death-eligible defendants black men convicted of capital crimes committed in Philadelphia between 1979 and 1999. We showed the mugshots of those defendants to a group of people who had no idea what our study was about, and asked them to rate each photograph on how stereotypically black the face appeared. We told the raters they could use any number of factors to make their determinations, including skin color, facial features and hair texture. Then we applied their ratings to the individual cases and examined the sentences those defendants had received at trial. For black men convicted of killing black victims, there was no stereotypicality effect. The men whose faces were rated highly stereotypical were sentenced to death at exactly the same rate as those who were rated low in stereotypicality. However, when we looked at black defendants who were convicted of killing white victims, we found a huge effect. Of the men rated low in stereotypical features, only 24% had been sentenced to death. But more than 57% of the highly stereotypical black defendants were sentenced to die for their crimes. The difference persisted even when we controlled for factors like the severity of the crime, aggravating or mitigating circumstances, the defendants socioeconomic class and the defendants perceived attractiveness. Regardless of the nonracial factors we took into account, black defendants appeared to be punished in proportion to the blackness of their physical features, the closer they hewed to conventional stereotypes. Those strong distinctions signal that our perspectives, our criminal justice process and our institutions are influenced by primitive racial narratives that link people of African descent to darkness and evil. The 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant once asserted that punishment should be pronounced over all criminals, proportionate to their internal wickedness. Even in the 21st century, when people look upon a black defendant who is eligible for death, they may use the blackness of his appearance as a marker for wickedness and attempt to punish accordingly. Our deepening knowledge of implicit bias has contributed to 20 states abolishing the death penalty. Californias moratorium, however, will expire when Newsom leaves office, unless he can woo voters to his cause. Ironically, he may have made that harder by citing racial discrimination in his decision. Research has shown that highlighting racial differences in the justice system actually leads members of the broader public to be more supportive of punitive policies, including the death penalty. When the implicit narrative of black wickedness is not challenged, it can seem to perfectly explain the disparities in outcomes. Concessions to bias and bigotry have been so thoroughly incorporated into our national perspective on fairness and liberty that they have proven especially stubborn to change. Even documentation of gross racial disparities failed to move the Supreme Court in a 1987 death penalty case that has been called the Dred Scott decision of our time. Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute After reviewing research that included 2,500 Georgia cases, the court acknowledged a discrepancy [in sentencing] that appears to correlate with race. Still, the justices upheld the death penalty for Warren McCleskey, a black Georgia man convicted of killing a white police officer while robbing a furniture store. Justice Lewis Powell, writing for the five-member majority, dismissed the statistical evidence because, as he put it, disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system. He worried that ruling otherwise would open the door to discrimination claims related to all manner of arbitrary variables, even to gender, he wrote. Or to the defendants facial characteristics. The ruling came under heavy criticism from legal scholars and civil rights activists, concerned that it made institutional racial bias constitutional, and simply part of the status quo. Powells decision reverberates today, making it difficult to challenge racial bias in any phase of the justice system without proof of deliberate discriminatory intent. Two months after delivering the ruling in the McCleskey case, Powell retired from the Supreme Court. He would later say that his decision in this case which allowed McCleskeys execution to go forward, in 1991 was the only court ruling he participated in that he ever regretted. Jennifer L. Eberhardt is the author of Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do. She is a professor of psychology at Stanford University, and is a co-founder of SPARQ, which brings together researchers and practitioners to address significant social problems. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook For those Britons who wanted to remain in the European Union, Brexit is demoralizing and draining. Yet as this chaotic and sordid episode of our history unfolds with the prime minister forced to beg Brussels to extend the March 29 deadline for leaving the EU I cant help but feel better about one aspect of my life. Brexit has helped me come to terms with the fact that Im a poor planner. This failing has always weighed on me. Its professional and financial consequences have ranged from mildly negative to catastrophic. Now I see that this isnt my fault. I am British, and we British have finally revealed ourselves to be truly terrible at planning things. If youre as surprised by that statement as you are by the voluntary pandemonium of Britains current politics, let me explain: The organized, sober Britain you thought you knew only appeared that way because the French and the Germans managed to force us to run the country according to their rules. I am British, and we British have finally revealed ourselves to be truly terrible at planning things. Advertisement For the last 40 years, Britain has been sustained by French planification (yes, they have a word for taking a project and planifying it) and by German effectiveness in implementing the planified plan. While the EU was making everything work and generally improving lives for 500 million people, Britain built a reputation for innovation and pragmatism. This impression was achieved mainly by spending all the money we had to make London look great, while the provinces stagnated and the media stoked resentment of the EUs purported takeover of our sovereignty. And that, of course, is why we have Brexit. Cavalier behavior by Britons is, in fact, nothing new. We were rescued in the nick of time by the planifiers and the implementers of Europe back in the early 1970s, after heading helplessly down the post-imperial toilet in the decades after World War II. Without Europe, we would have continued our descent right into the sewer. How did we manage to succeed before the EU? The answer: colonial adventure. Britains success was built on battle, followed by dominion and plunder. What is a battle anyway if not the acme of chaos? From the Battle of Hastings in 1066, one of the foundational events of England, to the Battle of Britain against Hitlers Luftwaffe, victory emerged by the slenderest of margins from an entirely unpredictable melee. Almost any battle could have gone either way, despite claims of military genius for some generals. The fact that Britain won more than it lost has more to do with stubbornness a trait that now drives our government to follow through on the self-destructive leave means leave slogan. Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute from L.A. Times Opinion When I am not writing novels, I have a day job in which I work with people from every one of the 27 other EU member states. They are all better at planning than I am. Greeks and Cypriots, Bulgarians, Croatians, Estonians and Maltese. Every single one of them. They coordinate things, they liaise, they make Excel spreadsheets that I dont know how to open. All I can do is admire them and blame my failure to adhere to their critical path timelines on the fact that I am a creative. Thanks to the third-raters of the backbenches in the houses of Parliament and the tenth-raters of Theresa Mays Cabinet, I no longer feel bad about this. A crazy disregard for consequences and blind faith that someone else will make things work are obviously genetic. I can no more fight it than I can truly overcome my affection for tea, stodgy meat pies and drizzling rain. The DNA test I took a couple of years ago proved that I am descended from Vikings who arrived in Britain a millennium ago, but I knew that in my heart long before the swab touched my cheek. (The larger genetics puzzle is how the Vikings who didnt come to Britain turned into placid Scandinavians who are really rather good at planning better than the French and Germans, in fact. Did all the lunatics leave for Wales and Northumberland on the longboats, risking a watery grave for the sake of plunder, while the sensible types remained in the fjords, waiting for the EU to come along?) So it is with relief that I am able now to see the chaos of Brexit as a sort of inherited trait, indeed part of my lineage. Instead of rolling my eyes at the news, I shall now revel in the daily displays of incompetence and willful disregard for reality. Until its too late, of course. Matt Rees is the author of nine historical and crime novels, the latest of which is China Strike. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook I dont know if thats really how it happened, he said. It was about not bringing the topic into open session. I dont recall us ever saying anything like that to him. It was something internally that we needed to figure out before we addressed it publicly. On one recent Sunday Twitter tirade, President Trump scolded the autoworkers union, Hillary Clinton, Saturday Night Live, MS-13, three Fox News anchors, a lawyer working on special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs team and the late Sen. John McCain. Surprisingly spared from the online wrath were the dozen Republican senators who just days earlier joined Democrats in voting to terminate Trumps border emergency declaration. Also unscathed were seven Republican senators who supported a measure to end U.S. military involvement in Yemen. condemning Trumps refusal to acknowledge Saudi Arabias role in the killing of U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Trump appears to have ceased at least temporarily his public, intraparty Twitter warfare against GOP lawmakers who cross him. Advertisement Its a sharp reversal from the first two years of his administration, when the president would regularly and publicly mock any congressional Republican by name and Twitter handle who voted against his interests or criticized his behavior. Just ask former Tennessee Sen. Liddle Bob Corker or former Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake-y Flake, two of Trumps favorite Twitter targets last year. He said that Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska really let the Republicans, and our country, down and that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was such a negative force, after they opposed his efforts to repeal the 2010 healthcare law known as Obamacare. Last June, Trump took aim at then-South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford, calling him bad, trouble, and unhelpful. Sanford, who often criticized Trump, lost his 2018 GOP primary to Katie Arrington, who then lost what had been a reliably Republican House seat to a Democrat in November. Trumps last such rant against his own colleagues came in a blistering news conference the day after the midterm election, when he called out by name several House Republicans who had lost. The one glaring exception to Trumps newfound discretion appears to be McCain, who died of cancer last year. Trump reiterated Wednesday that he was never a fan of McCain, who also voted against Trumps plan to repeal Obamacare, and complained as part of a multiday rant that he didnt get a thank you for approving McCains state funeral. But even when Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) on Wednesday called Trumps ongoing attacks against the late war hero deplorable the same term Hillary Clinton once used to describe some of Trumps supporters Trump did not fire back at Isakson. Theories abound about why Trump has slowed the attacks, and whether it can last. Some believe that the president has better relations with his partys members of Congress, or that Trump has been convinced that he needs to allow GOP lawmakers in left-leaning districts to maintain some distance in order to win reelection in 2020. I know the president would like 100% loyalty who wouldnt? But that said, I think the president has gained and is gaining an appreciation for just how independent each member is, particularly senators, said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who is close to the White House. Since the beginning of the administration, GOP congressional leaders had been trying to persuade Trump to stop tweeting against other Republicans. Not only might he need those members votes, Trump was told, but a Twitter rebuke is costly at home for fellow Republicans and GOP allies who occasionally vote against him are better for Trumps agenda than Democrats who would never vote with him. Those efforts are seemingly paying off, although in interviews with nearly a dozen Republican lawmakers and aides on Capitol Hill and in the administration, few were ready to declare a permanent change in Trumps behavior, given the presidents unpredictability. My sense is the president is more comfortable in his role and is less worried about what theyre going to do, said a senior White House official who requested anonymity to avoid alienating Trump or congressional officials. Trump, who often takes political setbacks personally, now sees that senators are making their own individual political calculations and that their votes are not a slight on him. The changing dynamic also reflects a shift in the presidents agenda. During 2017, he was trying to enact legislation largely with only Republican support. His biggest obstacles were moderate GOP lawmakers. Now with a slim legislative agenda on Capitol Hill and increased attention on the Mueller investigation and the 2020 race, he is aiming his fire at Democrats. He is also boosting Republicans in Congress, whom he will need to defend him on the Russia investigation. It doesnt hurt that congressional Republicans seem to have figured out how to deal with the president, according to GOP officials. For instance, many of the senators who voted against the White Houses position on the emergency declaration including Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) were able to tell the president in person during an unrelated trade meeting how they were going to vote, emphasizing that it wasnt a personal censure. Trump speaks to lawmakers more often than he did in the early days of his administration, according to these Republicans, and is kept informed on their positions, preventing surprises that could prompt an online tirade. Theyve gotten used to each other, said one Republican congressional aide. While Trump did issue a few general threats that GOP senators voting against his emergency declaration would be seen as being soft on crime and border security, it was noteworthy that he didnt single out any lawmakers by name, as he had in the past. It is unclear whether the lack of tweets against Republican senators facing competitive races is a blip or a long-term change in strategy that could help Republicans seeking reelection in 2020. But Trumps own reelection effort will rely in part on keeping Republicans united in some of the states in which GOP senators are on the ballot, such as North Carolina and Colorado. Were all on the same team here politically. Maybe thats what is driving this latest decision, said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican who is seeking reelection in West Virginia next year. There are also signs the White House is working behind closed doors on some of the congressional lobbying that Trump once did publicly. When Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) announced in an op-ed that he would vote to disapprove of the emergency declaration, Trump didnt send a tweet. Vice President Mike Pence and White House officials were dispatched to pressure Tillis, however, and he eventually fell in line behind Trump, arguing that he got an agreement from the White House to work on implementing broader limits to presidential emergency powers rules. And instead of calling out the senators who opposed his administrations position on Yemen or the emergency declaration, Trumps tweets were more positive, emphasizing how many Republicans were with him. He thanked the Great Republican Senators who bravely voted for Strong Border Security and the WALL, and predicted when you get back to your State, they will LOVE you more than ever before! The latest from Washington More stories from Jennifer Haberkorn The commandant of the Marines has warned the Pentagon that deployments to the southwest border and funding transfers under the presidents emergency declaration, among other unexpected demands, have posed unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency. In two internal memos, Marine Corps Gen. Robert Neller said the unplanned/unbudgeted deployment along the border that President Trump ordered last fall, and shifts of other funds to support border security, had forced him to cancel or reduce planned military training in at least five countries, and delay urgent repairs at bases. The border deployment and funding transfers, as well as recovery costs from hurricanes Florence and Michael, new housing allowances and civilian pay raises, are taking a toll on combat readiness, Neller wrote to Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and Navy Secretary Richard Spencer. The Times obtained copies of the memos, dated Feb. 19 and March 18. Advertisement Neller, a four-star general, said because of the problems, Marines will not participate in planned training exercises in Indonesia, Scotland and Mongolia, and will reduce their participation in joint exercises with Australia and South Korea. Marines rely on the hard, realistic training of the training exercises to develop the individual and collective skills necessary to prepare for high-end combat, said Neller, who has been commandant since September 2015. He complained about canceling or shrinking the Marines participation at a time where we are attempting to double down on strengthening alliances and attracting new partners. Shanahan and Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are scheduled to testify Tuesday before the House Armed Services Committee. Members are likely to ask about Nellers concerns. ALSO: This psychologist claims Google search results unfairly steer voters to the left. Conservatives love him Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), vice chairman of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, said Nellers memos showed the danger in diverting Pentagon funds to build Trumps border wall. If the president wont listen to the American people or Congress, then listen to the commandant of the Marine Corps, Durbin said in a statement. While the armed services chiefs often warn of budget shortfalls, independent experts who reviewed Nellers memos described the language as unusually strong, in particular because it cites the presidents highest-profile political priorities. Its pretty unusual for the commandant to be raising concerns that... a top political priority for the president is undermining the ability of the Marine Corps to do the training they need, said Mandy Smithberger, a defense expert at the Project for Government Oversight, a nonpartisan independent watchdog group. It looks like from Commandant Nellers perspective, he does think these policies are undermining readiness, she added. This is a pretty strongly worded memo, said Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. Hurricane recovery efforts, increases in civilian pay and the military housing allowance are probably the biggest factors in the budget shortfall, he added. The incremental cost of the border deployment is likely small compared to these other factors, he said. It sounds like there are some bureaucratic politics at work here. The border deployment is adding to the strain after hurricanes severely damaged Marine Corps facilities and housing in North Carolina and Georgia, Neller wrote. Citing limits on his ability to transfer money because of the planned reprogramming under the border emergency, Neller said the Marines already are short $1.3 billion for recovery operations this year with another hurricane season approaching. The hurricane season is only three months away, Neller wrote, and we have Marines, Sailors, and civilians working in compromised structures. Marine Corps Gen. Robert Neller speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington in 2017. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) The memos are likely to revive uneasiness on Capitol Hill about the border deployment, which reportedly chafed some military leaders, including James N. Mattis, then secretary of Defense, when Trump first ordered it shortly before the Nov. 6 midterm election. While the White House insisted that active-duty troops were needed to stave off so-called caravans of migrants from Central America, critics accused him of using the military as props for his political agenda, not for security purposes. On Oct. 29, Trump tweeted, This is an invasion of our country and our military is waiting for you! He later expanded the deployment to roughly 6,000 troops, drawn from the Marines, Army, Air Force and Navy, and extended their stay through September 2019. They have assisted the Border Patrol by erecting barricades, flying helicopter support and maintaining vehicles. They are not allowed to detain migrants, seize drugs or carry out law enforcement duties. The White House and Defense Department have sought to reassure wary lawmakers that the deployment, and the presidents declaration of a national emergency on the border, have not hampered military readiness or effectiveness. During a visit to a Border Patrol station Thursday in McAllen, Texas, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said she talked to Shanahan on a regular basis. We continue to work together to find ways to support the border mission, Nielsen said. Border security is national security. We shouldnt pretend that its something else, because its not its a national security issue. She directed questions about Nellers concerns to the Defense Department. Spokesmen for the Pentagon and Shanahan did not respond to requests for comment. In an email, a Marine Corps spokesman, Capt. Joseph Butterfield, said Nellers memos made clear that damage from hurricanes, and not the border deployments, caused by the far the most significant budgetary pressure. Border operations cost about $230 million by the end of January, according to the Pentagon. The cost could grow to about $850 million this year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. The White House has asked Congress to appropriate a record $718 billion for the Pentagon in 2020, including $9 billion for hurricane relief, border security and backfilling military construction projects whose funding could be raided under the national emergency Trump declared on Feb. 15. Lawmakers have pressed to learn which military construction projects would be deferred or canceled to divert money that could be used to build Trumps long-promised border wall under the emergency. On Monday, the Pentagon sent Congress a list of more than 400 military construction projects around the country and worldwide that could be affected. The 21-page document cites more than $12.8 billion in projects that could be delayed or canceled under the emergency, including 31 projects totaling $1.1 billion in California. Congressional approval of the administrations budget request and backfill is far from assured, given the recent border funding fight that led to a 35-day partial government shutdown, and bipartisan votes in both chambers to block Trumps use of executive action to get around the congressional appropriations process. Trump vetoed the resolution last week. Times staff writer Molly Hennessy-Fiske in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report. molly.otoole@latimes.com Twitter: @mollymotoole When President Trump proposed opening nearly the entire U.S. coastline to more offshore oil and gas drilling, the backlash from states seeking exemptions was swift. Governors, Republican and Democratic, and state legislatures up and down the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines protested so vigorously that the administration promised to consult with them before finalizing any plans. Instead, Trump is quietly laying the groundwork to weaken a decades-old federal law that empowers California and other states to slow and even stop offshore development in federal waters. Republicans are always supposed to be in favor of states rights, said Richard Charter, who has worked on oil issues for 40 years and is a senior fellow at the marine conservation nonprofit Ocean Foundation. But this is in fact an effort to take away states rights when it comes to offshore drilling. Advertisement In a notice published earlier this month, the Commerce Departments National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asked the public to weigh in on ways to streamline a state review process granted under the Coastal Zone Management Act. GRAPHIC: Here is where the Trump administration wants to expand offshore oil and gas drilling The 1972 law is widely considered one of the most powerful tools states have to regulate activity off their coasts. It applies to all of the coastal and Great Lakes states, with the exception of Alaska. The act gives states a voice when federal projects or industry development affect their coast, even activities that occur outside a states jurisdiction, which extends three miles from the coast. The scientific agency cant change the law, but through regulation and implementation, it can have a major impact on how it is enforced. Among other things, the administration appears to be considering limits to the scope of states review powers and a shorter period of time to process an appeal. The full extent of its plans is unclear. The goal, officials wrote, is to provide greater efficiency and predictability for oil and gas projects language often used to justify deregulation. The oil industry cheered the administrations move. We appreciate and support efforts to modernize and improve the governance and efficiency of the permitting and approvals process so that unnecessary barriers to oil and natural gas development are minimized and eliminated, said Erik Milito, a vice president of the American Petroleum Institute. Passed in the wake of the devastating 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, the act assures that drilling, shipping, commercial fishing, mineral extraction, wind power projects and other activities fit into states plans for protecting their coastal zones. In practice, this means that activity in federal waters that would otherwise not be open to extensive public scrutiny can be subjected to hearings and local environmental impact assessments. State leaders can insist on modifications. They can negotiate with industry representatives to reach a compromise. According to a 2016 NOAA report, states end up approving 93% to 95% of the federal projects they review. Supporters of this coordinated review process say it has resolved some of the nations most contentious cases without costly litigation that can drag on for years. And though their word is not final, states have used the act as a weapon to defeat projects that threatened the environment and public health. Citing the law in the early 2000s, California managed to halt 36 controversial oil leases between Monterey Bay and Channel Islands national marine sanctuaries. In 2007, the state blocked a proposed liquefied natural gas port that would have floated 14 miles offshore from Ventura and Los Angeles counties. The project was ultimately abandoned after a state review found it posed significant risks to air quality and marine life. These regulations provide an important public process, said Linda Krop, chief counsel at the Environmental Defense Center, a nonprofit environmental law firm based in Santa Barbara. Obtaining these rights has been a hard-fought battle by coastal states, with California leading the charge. Its very meaningful, she said, and thats what the federal government is afraid of. Mark Delaplaine, who manages the California Coastal Commissions Energy, Ocean Resources and Federal Consistency Division, said attempts to weaken the law were alarming. It gets to the heart of arguably the most powerful tool, even with the checks and balances, that the state has. Period, Delaplaine said. This is not the only states rights battle California is fighting with the Trump administration, which is also seeking to end Californias unique ability to set fuel-economy standards for cars higher than the federal level. The Trump administrations draft offshore proposal would allow new oil and gas drilling in more than a billion acres off the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic coasts. It includes plans for 47 lease sales over a five-year period, more than half of which would take place in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska. The plan would give the oil and gas industry the first new access to California waters in decades, with six proposed lease sales. Another lease sale would be held off Washington and Oregon. Governors of all three states have vowed to protect their coastlines from offshore drilling. Some now fear the Interior Department is slow-walking the unpopular plan to avoid upsetting the nomination of David Bernhardt, the agencys acting chief, who faces a Senate confirmation hearing later this month. A revised draft of the offshore plan which was expected earlier this year has been delayed without explanation. On Wednesday, 17 senators sent a letter to Bernhardt asking him to clarify how much of the countrys coast would be included in the plan. The American people deserve to know your plan for the Outer Continental Shelf before the Senate votes on your nomination, they wrote. Florida politicians who secured the Interior Departments promise a year ago to exempt the state from new offshore drilling were scrambling to figure out whether the administration would honor it. Floridas entire congressional delegation signed a letter last month asking to be left out of Trumps offshore drilling plan. New Jersey, Delaware, New Hampshire, California and other states passed laws prohibiting new oil and gas pipeline and other infrastructure from being built on state lands an attempt to make transporting oil prohibitively expensive. MORE: First came the proclamations against Trumps offshore drilling plan. Now comes the legislation Cindy Zipf, executive director of the New Jersey advocacy group Clean Ocean Action, said the states resistance likely prompted the administrations effort to reduce their power by revising the coastal law. I do think this is blowback from President Trump in response to the states actions to block oil and gas drilling and infrastructure in state waters, Zipf wrote in an email. Trump has also tried to weaken the law by gutting its funding. In his recent budget proposal, the president sought to end the grants given to states to help implement their coastal management programs, which include reviewing federal offshore activities. The administration made a similar attempt last year, but Congress restored funding in the final budget. Previous administrations have also tried to limit states role in overseeing what happens in federal waters part of a decades-long tug of war. In the 1980s, California sued the Reagan administration to protect its right to review activities occurring off its coast. Under former President George W. Bush, key parts of the review process were expedited to address concerns raised by the energy industry, according to a NOAA report. Delaplaine, of the California Coastal Commission, said that when he started in 1976, California lacked any review authority in federal waters. When Exxon asked that year to build an offshore storage and treatment facility in state waters less than a mile from shore, the commission denied the project. So Exxon moved the project 3.1 miles offshore, into federal waters, and built the same storage and treatment facility. The state couldnt do anything about it. The risk of oil spills was enormous, Delaplaine said. So this tool is infinitely powerful we dont have absolute authority ... but the state can be a lot more involved in the process to negotiate less environmentally damaging alternatives to a project. The latest from Washington More stories from Anna M. Phillips California students could be restricted or banned from using smartphones at school under a bill by a state lawmaker who says the devices can interfere with classroom learning. The measure by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) would require school boards to adopt policies that limit or prohibit the use of cellphones on school grounds, leaving it up to them what their rules would do. To the extent that smartphones are becoming too much of a distraction in the classroom, I think every school community needs to have that conversation as to when is too much of a good thing getting in the way of educational and social development, Muratsuchi said Wednesday after introducing the bill. Many school districts have already banned the use of cellphones, said Muratsuchi, a former Torrance school board member. Advertisement Last month, the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School Board adopted a policy requiring children in grades K-5 to have cellphones turned off and stored out of sight during school hours, while older students face similar restrictions but can obtain teacher approval to use a smartphone for academic purposes. At the crux of the new policy is the fact that we want to make sure students are learning in the classroom and not preoccupied with being on their cellphones, said Alexander Cherniss, superintendent of the district. The school boards president, Linda Reid, said concern about cheating and cyberbullying has also come up, adding that parents begged us for a policy. The Times reported last year that 73% of teens carried a smartphone in 2016. The California School Board Assn. has not yet taken a position on the bill, a spokesman said Wednesday. Last year, the French government banned cellphones nationwide at primary and middle schools in a move that President Emmanuel Macron said was aimed at improving student performance. The assemblyman also cited a 2015 study by the London School of Economics and Political Science that found test scores improved significantly at schools that banned mobile phone use, and that the most significant gains were made by the most disadvantaged pupils. The study concluded that schools could significantly reduce the education achievement gap by prohibiting mobile phone use in schools. Muratsuchi was also influenced by the work of San Diego State psychology professor Jean Twenge, author of iGen: Why Todays Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood. Twenge found evidence that mobile device screen time and social media use may increase depression and suicide among American teenagers. Eighth-grade students who spend 10 or more hours per week on social media are 56% more likely to describe themselves as unhappy than those who devote less time to social media, Twenge said in her findings. Electronic devices also affect classroom instruction, she said. Its just too tempting for teens to look at their phones during class and when they do, they are not only distracting themselves, but distracting their classmates and their teacher, Twenge said Wednesday in an email to The Times. Muratsuchi said the intent of his bill is to have school boards decide what policies fit for their schools. There is growing national and international evidence of the social and emotional consequences of too much screen time, he said. Sign up for our Essential Politics newsletter patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com Twitter: @mcgreevy99 Gov. Gavin Newsom has drawn heavy flak for kissing off the voters on capital punishment. Hes also ignoring promises made to voters when they supported a gas tax and vehicle fee increase. This could be a dangerous trend for the new governor. If a powerful elected official were perceived as two-faced with his word and dismissive of the voters desires, hed be headed for the political cliff. The voters would become even more cynical and mistrustful of government, making it harder yet for politicians to gain public support for major projects and policy changes. First, a revisit to the death penalty: Advertisement After Newsom declared a moratorium on capital punishment last week, I wrote that he deserved credit for having the guts to act on his convictions. He still does. But hes being legitimately criticized for snubbing the will of voters after they chose twice in recent years to retain capital punishment. They even voted in 2016 to expedite executions. Moreover, Newsom previously promised to carry out capital punishment even if he opposed it. Campaigning in 2016 for capital punishment repeal, the then-lieutenant governor told the Modesto Bee editorial board that if he were elected governor: I would be accountable to the will of the voters. I would not [put] my personal opinions in the way of the publics right to make a determination of where they want to take us as [it] relates to the death penalty. More from George Skelton After Newsom did just the opposite last week, the Bee editorialized that the governors lack of principle and failure to keep his promise is a slap in the face to survivors of heinous murders. There is no excuse for governing by edict just because a leader doesnt like what voters have said. Last year, when Newsom was running for governor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that his campaign strategist, Dan Newman, said the Democratic candidate recognizes that California voters have spoken on the issue and, if elected governor, hed respect the will of the electorate by following and implementing the law. After declaring the moratorium, Newsom was questioned by reporters about breaking promises. He answered that the state Constitution gives him the right to do what he did. The will of the voters is also entrusted in me on the basis of my constitutional right to grant a reprieve to murderers, he said. But what about his promise? Ive had to process this in a way that I didnt frankly anticipate, he said. A few months ago, it was an abstract question. [Now] this question is real a question that goes deep to who I am. He is unequivocally a death penalty opponent. But hed also better make sure he isnt seen as a governor whose word isnt worth squat. Newsom was compared to President Trump on Wednesday by the Los Angeles County Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys. The [governors] assertion of executive authority is particularly ironic, wrote association President Michele Hanisee, noting that California is leading a lawsuit against Trumps declaration of a state of emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border. The argument presented in the lawsuit is that the presidents use of this executive authority usurps congressional authority. How is this moratorium by the governor, which usurps the legislative authority of the voters to enact laws via ballot initiative, any different? Now about the gas tax: It took about four years for former Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic lawmakers to enact legislation raising $5.2 billion annually for road repairs. Much political blood was spilled. The bill increased the gas tax by 12 cents a gallon and imposed a new annual vehicle fee, ranging from $25 to $175. Out of the pot, 65% goes for road and bridge repairs and 20% for transit. The rest is earmarked for better truck access around ports and for bicycle and pedestrian lanes. Republican opponents charged that in the past, transportation money had been diverted for other projects. There was a small germ of truth in that. So Democrats sponsored a successful, separate ballot measure guaranteeing that all the new tax money would be safeguarded in a transportation lockbox. When gas tax opponents placed a repeal measure on last years ballot, tax advocates cited that lockbox protection in their official voters guide argument. It prevents Sacramento politicians from raiding transportation funds, they asserted. Repeal opponents promised that every community would share in the new transportation funding bonanza. The repeal lost overwhelmingly. Then Newsom took office and almost immediately proposed legislation to withhold gas tax funds from cities that werent doing enough to spur homebuilding a non sequitur. If youre not hitting your [housing] goals, I dont know why you get the [transportation] money, Newsom said. Huh? After objections, Newsom said hed delay the money withholding for four years. Hes trying to put out carrots and sticks to prod housing, said Sen. Jim Beall (D-San Jose), chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, who fought hard to pass the gas tax legislation. I dont describe that as either a carrot or a stick. Id describe that as a nonstarter. I dont see any [legislator] jumping up and down for it. Most think its a lousy idea. He added: It would put a stink on votes for future [ballot measures] like bonds. Newsom should reread Article II, Section 1 of the California Constitution. It begins: All political power is inherent in the people. george.skelton@latimes.com Follow @LATimesSkelton on Twitter If you want to know what it means for something to grow exponentially, consider the death toll of fentanyl. This powerful synthetic opioid seemingly came out of nowhere and is now killing tens of thousands of Americans each year. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention details the meteoric rise of a drug that was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration back in 1968. It shows that fentanyls role as a driver of the opioid epidemic can be traced to late 2013. Advertisement Researchers from the CDCs National Center for Health Statistics tallied the lives claimed by fentanyl between 2011 and 2016. The figures were drawn from death records produced by coroners and medical examiners throughout the country. And while some of these officials were slow to recognize the new threat, the CDC researchers accounted for the fact that as the scourge spread, coroners and medical examiners became more likely to notice when fentanyl played a role in a persons death. Altogether, the records revealed that more than 36,000 Americans died with fentanyl in their systems during the study period. The majority of those deaths 18,335 occurred in 2016 alone. The CDC experts used those figures to calculate annual death rates for overdoses involving fentanyl. After adjusting for age, they found that it is indeed growing exponentially doubling every year. In 2011 and 2012, there were 0.5 drug overdose deaths involving fentanyl for every 100,000 Americans. After that, the death rate began its precipitous climb. Between 2013 and 2014, it jumped from 0.6 to 1.3 deaths per 100,000 Americans. In 2015, it climbed to 2.6 deaths per 100,000. And by 2016, there were 5.9 fentanyl-related deaths for every 100,000 Americans. Fentanyl is anywhere from 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine. When taken in uncontrolled concentrations by unsuspecting users, or by users whose opioid tolerance has not been heightened by long-term use, the drug is more likely even than prescription opioids to suppress respiration and cause death. If youre worried about prescription opioids, you should be really scared of fentanyl Chinas 160,000 chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturers are among the major suppliers of illicit fentanyl, according to testimony presented last summer by Paul E. Knierim of the Drug Enforcement Administration to a House of Representatives subcommittee on global health. To feed a growing population of Americans with addiction, these Chinese firms are shipping their product directly to the United States, and sometimes to cartels in Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean. Once in the Western Hemisphere, these chemicals are combined with heroin, cocaine and other drugs, and often pressed into counterfeit pills to be sold online or on the street as prescription opioids. The result is as profitable as it is deadly. Knierim, the deputy chief of operations for the DEAs Office of Global Enforcement, told lawmakers that because fentanyl is so powerful and can boost the potency of so many illicit drugs, a single kilogram purchased in China for $3,000 to $5,000 can generate upwards of $1.5 million in revenue on the illicit market with the potential of being lethal for 500,000 people. The new CDC report shows that fentanyls claim on female lives has risen sharply, but the toll among men is far more pronounced. The rate of fatal overdoses involving fentanyl also increased exponentially for Americans of nearly all ages. But by 2014, young adults between the ages of 25 and 34 had both the highest rate of fatal fentanyl overdoses and the steepest rise in those deaths. The epidemic of fentanyl deaths has ravaged New England, roared down the Atlantic Coast to Virginia, turned inland to the coalfields and hollows of West Virginia, and spread across the Rust Belt and the Upper Midwest. Fentanyl deaths were also on the rise from Arkansas to Alaska and across the American West, though in those areas they increased much more slowly. Some experts believe the death rate will soon begin to rise more slowly in places like Massachusetts, where fentanyl gained an early and especially deadly foothold. However, they say the West has not yet seen the peak of this spreading epidemic. The new report also documents a shift that had become evident to emergency responders and public health authorities by 2016: While death rates from prescription opioids and illicit synthetic opioids have been highest among rural white Americans, the expansion of an illegal market is creating new communities of users in urban centers, and among minorities. Indeed, between 2011 and 2016, the rate of fatal fentanyl overdoses grew fastest among African Americans and Latinos. melissa.healy@latimes.com @LATMelissaHealy MORE IN SCIENCE Applying for the TSAs PreCheck program just became more convenient for those in the east San Fernando Valley. Security company Idemia opened its newest IdentoGO location in Burbank at 2436 W. Victory Blvd., where travelers can apply for the Transportation Security Administrations expedited security screening program, as well as other other identity-related services. Charles R. Carroll, senior vice president of enrollment services for Idemia, said in an email that the company decided to offer its services in Burbank because of a high demand from travelers in Los Angeles County wanting to sign up for the PreCheck program, which costs $85 and lasts for five years. It allows travelers to quickly get through security lines at airports. Weve had a long-term presence in California and were interested in Burbank, Carroll said. In looking at Burbank, based on the positive attributes, what the city had to offer with its mix of business and consumers we chose Burbank over other cities. Other IdentoGO locations include the Los Angeles International Airport and a Staples store at 5407 Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. The application process through IdentoGO is relatively quick. Those applying can either fill out their application online or in person. Once that is completed, applicants can schedule an appointment for fingerprinting and a background check. Carroll said applicants should bring an old passport or birth certificate, as well as a government-issued ID, such as a drivers license for an in-person appointment. After going through IdentoGO, the application will be processed by the TSA, which can take about three to 10 days. Those approved by the federal agency will receive a traveler number they can use when purchasing a plane ticket. Their boarding pass will have the TSA PreCheck logo and will allow them to quickly get through airport security, Carroll said. In addition to its TSA PreCheck service, IdentoGO provides fingerprinting services for jobs that require that certification. It provides photo services for passports and visas, and partners with a company that helps customers find and print official birth certificates. For more information about IdentoGOs services, visit identogo.com. anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com Twitter: @acocarpio An article published in a September issue of the Week calls predictions of religious decline in the face of science unwarranted. Scientists, intellectuals and social scientists expected that the spread of modern science would drive secularization that science would be a secularizing force, the article states. But that simply hasnt been the case. Although leaders like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish republic, and Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru championed secular and scientific ideals, the majority populations of nations forged from secularism have seen their governments replaced by religious ones, or have seen the rise of influential religious nationalist movements, the article states. In the U.S., with its First Amendment built in the words of Thomas Jefferson as a wall of separation between church and state, the battle between science and religion in classrooms and public spaces has been long fought and wide-ranging, with evolution, the Big Bang and climate change among contentious issues. Recently, the media has made known the concept of Dominionism in American politics, with reports that members of the Trump administration believe the U.S. is or should be a Christian nation. Q. Does an association with science put secular governments at risk of becoming theocracies? Could religious objections to science lead the U.S. toward becoming a theocratic state? First, lets not make the error of assuming that science and faith are opposites, that by nature they are at odds with one another. The person of faith understands that God made both natural, physical laws and moral, spiritual ones. Thats an important thing for the secularist to understand. Science doesnt cure people of faith. In fact, humanitys deepest existential questions can never be answered by science. By his design, creation points us to our creator. This basic fact will never be changed by governmental policy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, religious extremists certainly have dominated other countries and suppressed scientific inquiry. But in our country, disagreements over science v ersu s religion will not lead to a religious coup. Psalm 50:6 and Psalm 97:6 say, The heavens declare his righteousness. Romans 1:20 says, since the creation of the world his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made. People of faith should never fear science. But they should be cautious of those who try to twist science to serve a secularist agenda. Pastor Jon Barta Burbank .. I hate that religion is being pitted against science. Science is not unlike religion in many ways; it seeks to understand the world and our place therein, but it stands on the back of earlier science to peer into the unknown, making faith decisions regarding the outcome of its current investigations. Thats called hypotheses (reaching from the known and believing things about the unseen). Scientists are often very good at their educated guesses, but they also change their minds and apprise us later that there really werent certain evolutionary hominids as science textbooks taught, that it wasnt really a brontosaurus, or that trans fats are no longer good for us. In other words, science is good yet faulty, like religion. But if scientists believe their field is ultimate truth that should eradicate the spiritual, then Houston, we have a problem. Man is naturally religious, and some of our best scientists were Christians, but today its difficult for godly scientists to excel amid the atheistic climate of scientism; kind of like Christian actors having little representation in morally miscreant Hollywood. In the 1960 s, anthropologist Anthony Wallace prophesied, Belief in supernatural powers is doomed as a result of the increasing adequacy and diffusion of scientific knowledge. It reminds me of John Lennon declaring the Beatles greater than Jesus Christ. Then theres neuroscientist Sam Harris final solution, Science must destroy religion! Here are the scientific elite; how can the majority of us not bristle at such hubris, and how can science and religion peacefully co-exist when one wants to burn the other? Christians dont hate science. It has been useful for advancement, but its also people of faith who have created the environment for free scientific inquiry. In atheist countries, scientists may only be useful for helping strengthen a totalitarian state. Then what noble end has science? As to the question, if the science community would value religious views, then religious people might more try to discover how faith is strengthened by science and how science is validated by Scripture. Well never agree on every theory or hypothesis, but we certainly wont agree with any government that takes science and uses it as a bludgeon to kill God. If theres no God, thats one thing, but its our belief he exists that will cause us to rise against the forces of anti-god (Anti-Christ?). Could America become a theocracy? Anythings possible. Rev. Bryan A. Griem Tujunga .. Being a member of a Unitarian Universalist community appeals to me because I can come up with at least two reasonable answers to that question. First, the answer is yes, and we can see evidence in our elementary schools. As the parent of school-age children, I often marvel at their stories of the recess-yard antics of their peers, especially ones involving doubling down, the popular phrase for asserting a belief despite mounting evidence against it (such double-downs usually involve boasts of Minecraft achievements, and one family favorite concerned how a schoolmate of my sons simply would not yield ground on her statement that Katy Perry is her godmother). Sadly, I cant tell my kids that the market corrections of adulthood have been effective in stamping out such behavior, especially recently. Instead, I tell them about the Jefferson Bible, in which one of our founding fathers, in his ample free time, removed mentions of Jesus divinity and miracles from his personal Bible, leaving just his life and morals. I tell them such a thoughtful document is a way of capturing the spirit of the Bible love your neighbor, lets say rather than the often problematic and easily refuted letter. Today we have a president whose base supports doubling-down against contrary evidence, as if our civic life is a game at an Atlantic City casino. I think the cynical co-opting of the evangelical vote, in which clergy encourage Trumps behavior with Sometimes God works with faulty tools is evidence that yes, a theocracy is possible when such a relentless fear of intellectualism is evident. But I also think that, just as the public pendulum shifted toward Bush after Clinton and toward Obama after Bush (and then disengaged entirely), there is a growing understanding that a quest for scientific truth is not at odds with spirituality. What are science and spirituality, after all, if not voyages into the mystery? So Im prepared to say that no, were not in danger of being a theocracy, even if Mike Pence becomes president after his boss wanders off somewhere. Marty Barrett Vice President Unitarian Universalist Community of the Verdugo Hills (UUVerdugo) She was a woman way ahead of her time and a trailblazer within the world of Disney. Mary Blair, an artist, animator and designer, served as the lead concept artist for the animated films Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, among others. She also contributed art to the 1941 animated movie Dumbo. Blair worked on art and designs for a pavilion benefiting UNICEF at the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York, which became the model for Its A Small World at Disneyland in Anaheim and later at Disney Worlds Magic Kingdom in Florida, as well as Disneylands in Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong. Through Oct. 19, the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University is featuring The Magic and Flair of Mary Blair. The exhibition includes more than 20 of her original works, all of them culled from the museums permanent collection. Mary Blair is one of the great geniuses in California art, said the Hilbert Museums director, Mary Platt, who also curated this show. Shes not unappreciated, I mean the Disney fans know her, but the general public may not. The exhibit is arranged chronologically, starting with her early work for Dumbo and watercolor paintings inspired by a 1941 trip to Latin America with Walt Disney and other artists. The El Grupo trip, sponsored by the U.S. government as a goodwill gesture, left a lasting impact on Blair and her art, which became brighter and more abstract after her travels. She really blossomed as a result of the South America Good Neighbor travels they experienced, said Mindy Johnson, author of Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disneys Animation, published by Disney Editions in 2017. She was the only woman [artist] on that particular trek. It transformed her artistry; it was pivotal for her. Mary Blairs concept painting for the 1950 Walt Disney feature animated film Cinderella is currently on display at the The Magic and Flair of Mary Blair exhibit at Chapman Universitys Hilbert Museum of California Art. (Photo courtesy of The Hilbert Collection) The exhibition continues with concept art, mostly gouache on board, for the Disney films Melody Time and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and the classics Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan. It really is through the artistry of Mary that formed the essence of Cinderella, Johnson said. Cinderella is a tried and true fairy tale, but it was her interpretation, her sense of color and style, that really brings that story into its own. Blair was a favorite of Disney, which apparently caused some jealousy among her predominantly male colleagues at the studio. Disney appreciated her futuristic, conceptual approaches, as well as her color choices. She once said, Walt said that I knew about colors he had never heard of before. Many of Blairs original concepts and designs were not used in films she worked on. Other artists and animators said her work and characters were too flat and abstract, and they reverted back to the rounded characters and stylized backgrounds that had proven successful before. However, her work really comes through in Alice in Wonderland, which was a tour de force for her, Johnson said. Wonderland is such a vibrant, colorful world, Johnson added. You get the whimsy, and the topsy-turvyness through Marys work, sometimes just within the simple, elemental strokes. But theres nothing basic about them. Mary demonstrated great sophistication there. Mary Platt, the curator of the Hilbert Museum of California Arts The Magic and Flair of Mary Blair exhibit, says that Blairs work in Alice in Wonderland is where her fantastical style was best realized. (Photo courtesy of The Hilbert Collection) One of the paintings in the show, Alice on Trial from 1951, depicts the climactic scene where the Red Queen denounces Alice in a courtroom in front of a host of playing-card soldiers. In Alice on Trial, you can see echoes of Escher and Picasso, Platt said. That might be the scene, because its so fantastical, where maybe her vision was best realized. The exhibit ends with concept art for Peter Pan and Its a Small World, which may be Blairs best known and loved work. A gouache painting (circa 1963) depicts a joyous array of gold-topped steeples, which looks remarkably like the facade of Disneylands Its A Small World today. Mary Blairs concept painting of Its a Small World (c. 1962-3) may be the artists best known work, and it inspired the famed attraction of the same name at Disneyland. (Photo courtesy of The Hilbert Collection) Though she parted ways with Disney a couple of times, Blair also had a successful career as a freelance illustrator and designer. She created dozens of memorable advertising illustrations, murals, tiles, fabric and fashion designs, as well as sets and backdrops for TV commercials and theatrical productions. She created murals for Disneyland and Disneys Contemporary Resort hotel at Disney World. She is credited as the color designer for the 1967 film How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and she also created a Small World-inspired mural for the Jules Stein Eye Center at UCLA, which still decorates the Pediatric Waiting Room. In addition, Blair illustrated several Little Golden Books, some of which are still in print. Blair died in 1978 at age 66. In 1991, she was named a Disney Legend, and in 1996, the International Animated Film Society honored her with its Winsor McCay Award. In 2011, Google celebrated her 100th birthday with a Google Doodle. Despite her accomplishments and honors, Blair still flies under the radar, and many believe she has not received the recognition she deserves. She is definitely under-rated, under-exposed and under-valued, Johnson said. It was tough for Mary, particularly as a woman. If she were a man, we would have been well-informed of her work. John Canemaker, who wrote an appreciation book on Blair, The Art and Flair of Mary Blair (also on view at the Hilbert), said the artist was brilliant for her imagination and empathy and her influence continues in the many designers who admired her work. There are a lot of Mary Blair-wannabes, said Canemaker, an Oscar and Emmy-winning professor who heads the animation program at New York University. What she did is going to live on. Mary Blair is definitely a role model, said Platt. In a time where the women at Disney were basically being relegated to the copy work, she broke through and through sheer talent, showed to Walt Disney and the others that she could be a visual leader. That really is something that I think all women artists can look toward and thank her for. IF YOU GO What: The Magic and Flair of Mary Blair When: Through Oct. 19; hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays Where: Hilbert Museum of California Art, 167 N. Atchison St., Orange Cost: Free Information: (714) 516-5880 or hilbertmuseum.com Richard Chang is a contributor to TimesOC. Follow him on Twitter at @ricardo77 and follow @timesocofficial for more news and features about Orange County. Youve probably never heard of Jill Lloyd. But for two decades, she was the woman behind many of Orange Countys headline-grabbing moments. Remember the cattle drive of 1994, when 150 cows charged down Fairview Road in Costa Mesa? That was her idea. She also gave us the janitor who rode the Ferris wheel at the Orange County Fair for 38 days straight. And the professor who played a clarinet while covered in 200,000 bees. As the former director of media for the Orange County Fair, she had a knack for finding fascinating characters and sharing their quirky stories. But Lloyd is a story in herself. A crazy story. Crazy as any carnival headline. Lloyd was in kindergarten when her dad told her and her siblings one night that they would hence forth be a family of four. Moms not coming home. There would be no more discussion. Lloyd ran into her parents bedroom. Everything of her mothers was gone. Her clothes. Gone. Her perfume bottles on the vanity. Gone. Even photos of her had vanished. It was horrible, she says. But every time she began to cry, her father ordered her to her room. Tom Lloyd was a World War II and Korean War Army veteran, a career officer who would one day reach the rank of colonel. He ran the house in military fashion. Lloyd began sitting on her front porch and waiting for her mom to come home. When she was 8, her father married another woman and told his children to call her Mom. I wouldnt do it, Lloyd says. She also rejected attempts to involve her in activities, except 4-H. So when she was 9, her dad bought her two rabbits: Bonnie and Claudia. Then he went off to Vietnam. By the time he returned a year later, there were dozens of rabbits all over the backyard. Claudia was renamed Clyde. The rest, though, had to go, dad told her. She ran to her room and hid her head under a pillow while her father butchered all but a few rabbits she planned to show at the fair that summer. He fried them for dinner that night. Lloyd ran to her neighbor Gayle Cory, a fellow 4-H pal who was the wise old age of 11. Your dads right, Cory told her. These arent pets. Its about letting go. One day in junior high, Lloyd was sitting on the gym floor, filling out an emergency contact card, when she noticed a girl sitting next to her had written down her old address. Oh, my gosh, you live in my old house! Has anyone come looking for me? she asked. Like who? the girl replied. My mom, Lloyd said. I havent seen her since I was 5. When Lloyd was 13, her Pappy (her mothers step-father) took her to Shakeys Pizza. He ordered a pitcher of beer. And he poured her one. Then he got right to the point. Youre mother is dead. I cant stand to watch you suffer anymore. Her parents were devout Christian Scientists, a religion that eschews doctors, believing that prayer heals sickness and death is an illusion. Pappy told her that her mom had died of cancer. Being so young, she didnt recall her mom seeming sick. Dont tell your dad Im telling you, Pappy told her. He didnt even know where she was buried. We were both crying, she recalls. When Lloyd got home she phoned Cory. When I get my drivers license, were gonna go look for your mom, Cory promised. Well go to every cemetery in Southern California. And they did. When they werent raising cattle or sheep to show at the Orange County Fair (she had made peace that her animals would wind up someones meal) they would go grave hunting. One afternoon in 1974, when Lloyd was 17, they climbed into Corys station wagon and rolled up to what is now Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Lloyd walked into the office with her standard line: Hi, my names Jill. But before she could get out that she was looking for her mom, the man told her they had been waiting for her and hustled the two girls into a chapel packed with people. Scanning the room she saw Sonny Bono. Then Carol Burnett. Cory couldnt stop giggling. Then the service began. It was for Mama Cass Elliot. They must have been waiting for another Jill. She couldnt believe her luck. My theme song throughout my life was Make Your Own Kind of Music [sung by Mama Cass], Lloyd says. So there was that. But also it was her first funeral, and she was enthralled. Im thinking, This is beautiful! I needed to be there. It was the funeral I never had for my mom. It was powerful for me. A week later she opened the Yellow Pages, and there was an ad for Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana. It seemed like a sign. It even began with the word fair, which is where she was by then, working part time in livestock. She and Cory entered the office and this time, after four years of searching, she heard the words: Yes, Gloria Lloyd is here in the mausoleum. I totally freaked out, she recalls. I was jumping up and down. Jill Ann Lloyd, a funeral celebrant and service director, poses for a portrait in the mausoleum at Fairhaven Memorial Park Mortuary in Santa Ana on Jan. 22, 2019. (Kevin Chang / Times OC) So she was disappointed when after finally seeing her moms name etched on a metal plate, she still felt empty. I really wanted to pick up the phone and call my dad and go, Come on, really? She kept her discovery a secret. After high school she enrolled at Cal Poly Pomona, graduating with a degree in communications. An internship promoting the Orange County Fair led to a job. Then, in 1983, her older sister Ginny died of melanoma at the age of 27. Once again, the family didnt want to talk about it. I started to do weird things, Lloyd says. Specifically, she began buying bottles of shampoo. Dozens of bottles of shampoo. Sitting in the dentist office one day, she saw a hospice brochure. It talked about bereavement. She called the number. I lost my sister, she told the woman who answered. I dont know if Im losing my mind, but I dont feel right. The hospice sent a volunteer to visit her. She started talking about grief. That there are no rules for grief. That was the first time I think I really felt human, Lloyd says. I was exhilarated. A few months later, the Orange County Fair hired Lloyd, by then a single mother of a toddler, to be the director of communications. She also began training to become a hospice volunteer herself. The AIDS epidemic was blowing up. A Laguna Beach facility was desperate for volunteers. One of her favorite patients was a guy named Bob who had giant blisters on his feet and bitterness in his heart. His family was keeping his illness, his truth, a secret. I could relate to that, she says. Just before he died, he asked her to take him to see Thelma & Louise. After the movie, she drove him back and forth between Fashion Island and Laguna Beach, about 20 times, while the sun set over the ocean. I felt alive when I was with him, even though he was dying, she says. Lloyd began spending more time with hospice patients when she wasnt busy promoting the fair, and later the Orange County Market Place. [Work] was a creative platform and it fed that side of me, she says. But I felt like there was something missing. I was still searching for something. In 2015, at the age of 58, she walked into the Cypress College mortuary science department. What do you think of an old lady like me getting into the funeral business, she asked. She wound up enrolling at North Orange County Community College to get a certificate in funeral services. There she learned about another certificate for something called a celebrant. Its a person who is hired, usually by a family, to write and deliver their loved ones eulogy. Thats me! she thought. I was so frickin excited, I couldnt stand it. After class, Lloyd called Cory to announce she was going to become a celebrant. Youre gonna be celibate? No, a celebrant! Lloyd explained that from now on, instead of sharing stories of the living, she would be sharing stories of those who had passed. This is what you were meant to do, Cory told her. A few months later, Cory called with bad news. She had pancreatic cancer and a few months to live. It just so happened that earlier that week California had signed into law the End of Life Option Act. Will you walk that walk with me, she asked. Lloyd drove down to Corys home in Vista on a Thursday night for a final slumber party. They ate pizza and those pink and white frosted Mothers Animal Circus Cookies (that was our thing) and drank wine and reminisced. The stuff she remembered was the goofy stuff, the times we laughed so hard, Lloyd said. There was only one rule: No crying until morning, after Cory drank the medication and took her final breath. It was sad, yet beautiful, Lloyd says of the farewell. I just think grief is what brings out our humanness. I was raised in a religion that denies death. But death is the best teacher; its such a big part of life. Living is harder sometimes. In addition to being a celebrant, Lloyd is now a part-time funeral assistant and service director for Fairhaven, where she found her mother. I think shes been guiding this whole thing, Lloyd says. I feel like shes the wind beneath my wings. First-time authors get guidance and help to pen nonfiction works and show the power of words. The Spring Festival holiday witnesses the world's greatest movement of humanity as people working and living in cities return to small towns or villages for family reunions. It's also the time they marvel at the changes that the internet has or hasn't brought to every tier of society, throw themselves back into intricate family relationships and experience the cultural shock of traveling from modern cities to the traditional communities in their hometowns. The sights and sounds, as well as the emotions triggered, have become a constant inspiration for writing. While feature journalists and humanities and social science scholars have contributed to some of the most outstanding nonfiction works in China, more and more amateur authors are actively writing down their own stories. The burst of New Year journals is just one typical reflection of the phenomenon. New Year journals "At the same hospital, my little half-sibling, 24 years younger than me, was born in the obstetrics department on the fifth floor, nine days before my 82-year-old grandmother's condition was declared critical at the respiratory department on the 22nd floor and she died the following day at home." This is how Zhang Jin from Nanjing University begins her story titled Xiao (Younger) Zhang and Lao (Elder) Zhang Who Failed to Meet Each Other. In a diary style, the story depicts what happened to Zhang's family at that time. It details Zhang's initial objection to her father having another child, her joy at the birth of her younger sister, and a grudge she once held against her grandmother, who kept asking her to accept the fact and go back home. At the end of the story, "everything seems back to normal", as the author overcame the struggle of reconciling with her family. The story reminds some readers of the intricacies of their own family ties. It won first prize at the third Epoch Nonfictional Story Competition, jointly held by Hedgehog Commune, or Ciweigongshe.net, an online media platform, and short video platform Kuaishou. Ye Weimin, a former journalist and one of the judges, speaks of the story as "presenting the truth of how life alternates and continues itself". "The birth and death not only drives the story, but also provokes readers' emotions and thinking," Ye writes in his remarks. This year's competition sought to collect New Year journals about returning home, especially those observing how the authors' hometowns had fared under the influence of the internet. The organizer received more than 400 candidate articles and 1,505 short videos for the competition held from Jan 18 to the end of February, with seven of the written articles getting more than 100,000 clicks online. Three people killed when a helicopter crashed into a home in a gated neighborhood in Newport Beach on Tuesday have been identified, authorities said Wednesday. Joseph Anthony Tena, 60, of Newport Beach, Kimberly Lynne Watzman, 45, of Santa Monica and Brian Reichelt, 56, of Hollywood, Fla., died in the crash, according to the Orange County Sheriffs Department. Two other people were injured, authorities said. Residents said a woman was in the kitchen of the home when the helicopter crashed, damaging a bedroom, but no one in the house was hurt. Tena, Watzman and Reichelt were among four people aboard the Robinson R44 copter when it slammed into the home on Shearwater Place near Egret Court in the Bayview Terrace community, authorities said. Police responded to the crash at about 1:50 p.m. The four-seat helicopter went down shortly after taking off from John Wayne Airport on its way to Catalina Island, according to Joshua Cawthra, a senior investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. The pilot and two passengers were killed, Cawthra said. A third passenger was seriously injured and was taken to Orange County Global Medical Center in Santa Ana in critical but stable condition, hospital spokesman Jeff Corless said. A person on the ground suffered minor injuries and was treated at a hospital and released, authorities said. Authorities would not confirm Wednesday who was flying the helicopter. Tena, nicknamed Pepe, is the only person identified in the crash who had a pilots license, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. He received his private license for helicopters in August 2014. Watzman and Reichelt worked for the Standard chain of boutique hotels, which has locations in West Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, a company representative said Wednesday. Watzman was the general manager of the Standard hotel in West Hollywood. She had worked for the company for nearly 11 years. Reichelt was the regional finance director for parent company Standard International since 2011. We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of our friends, said Amar Lalvani, chief executive of Standard International. Our focus now is on supporting their loved ones and our team during this difficult time. The FAA and NTSB are investigating the crash. Cawthra said no distress call was made from the helicopter before it went down. FAA records show the copter was registered to Spitzer Helicopter LLC in Canyon Lake in Riverside County. Eric Spitzer of Spitzer Helicopter said he leased the R44 to Revolution Aviation, a flight school and touring company at John Wayne Airport. Investigators have determined the flight was not part of a class or sightseeing tour, Cawthra said. Revolution Aviation had been leasing the aircraft one of 85 helicopters in Spitzers fleet since April 2016 and flew it regularly, he said. Messages left with Revolution Aviation were not returned Tuesday and Wednesday. The copter was manufactured in 2003 by Robinson Helicopter Co., based in Torrance. The family-owned companys two-seat R22 and four-seat R44 are popular among flight schools, police departments, sightseeing companies, ranchers and recreational pilots. Bayview Terrace resident Paddi Faubion said Tuesday that she was in her home when she heard a helicopter rotor struggling to turn, as though the aircraft was losing power. She ran to her balcony and watched as the copter clipped the roof of a neighbors home and slammed into the side of another, sending up a plume of dust. It was like a train hitting a wall, Faubion said. You just knew something horrible had happened. Several neighbors rushed to the copters twisted wreckage, and two of them pulled out the pilot, Faubion said. Fuel spilled from the helicopter onto the street. I just put my hands on the side of the helicopter and prayed, Faubion said. The Los Angeles Times and KTLA contributed to this report. hannah.fry@latimes.com Twitter: @HannahFryTCN UPDATES: 4:20 p.m.: This article was updated throughout. 11:20 a.m.: This article was updated with the identity of the third person killed. This article was originally published at 10:45 a.m. On a gloomy morning Wednesday, College View Elementary School welcomed Miss Agnes, a Holstein cow, and Big Red, a 2-month-old bull calf, to help teach students about the dairy business and the role of agriculture in food through a Mobile Dairy Classroom. The free assembly was sponsored by the Dairy Council of California, an organization backed by the states dairy industry to try to elevate nutritional education. The Mobile Dairy Classroom, which began in the 1930s, brings a real cow and calf to schools to help students learn about food, the differences among cow breeds and how milk is produced and gets from farm to market. Students also can pet the calf. Its important for [children] to make that direct connection from the farm to the table to the cafeteria, said Efrain Valenzuela, manager of the Mobile Dairy Classroom for the council. Theres nothing like having a cow and calf in an interactive assembly to know that. The Mobile Dairy Classroom has always been a way for the industry to give back to the community. Christy Stover, a first- and second-grade teacher at College View in Huntington Beach, said the students were super excited when they found out about the assembly. I love that [College View] has partnered with them, Stover said. [Children] getting to see a live cow and go up and pet it is wonderful. Holly Hamasaki, a transitional kindergarten teacher, said the Mobile Dairy Classroom was beneficial for her classs farm unit, which students will begin Monday, because her class was unable to go to a farm. I think its really important for [students] to understand that it doesnt just come from a market, Hamasaki said. It actually is made by animals, people. People grow different things. They need to understand where all of it comes from so they have an understanding of their community. Steve Miller has taught the program for about 16 years. He typically teaches two assemblies at each school, though it depends on the schools student population. He said he loves the reactions he gets from students, which are different every day and at every school. [Miller] is a great speaker and able to give information to kids in an engaging way, Stover said. Its like going to SeaWorld, Miller joked after demonstrating hand milking techniques. Youre going to get a little wet! Declan Chacon, 7, said he was excited when he found out the Mobile Dairy Classroom was coming to College View. He said it was interesting to know facts about the cow. His favorite part was when Miller talked about the four compartments in a cows stomach and where its hips are located. I think the best part was when he taught us how to milk the cow and showed us the grass, the hay the cow eats, said Kaydee Meighan, 9. I thought it was a cool name alfalfa. Miller said hes been working with animals since he was a child and that it was just normal for him. He drives his livestock to schools from Mission Viejo High Schools farm program. He is one of six instructors for the Mobile Dairy Classroom. In a good year, he said, he teaches at about 160 schools. The number has dropped to about 150 this school year because of the rains that have swept through California, he said. A psychology professor who pleaded guilty to participating in the decades-old killing of a man she said raped her was sentenced Friday to six years in prison. Norma Patricia Esparza, 41, was one of five people accused of helping in the kidnapping and slaying of Gonzalo Ramirez, a 24-year-old insulation installer who was hacked to death and dumped by the side of an Irvine road in April 1995. The motive, according to Orange County prosecutors, was revenge. In 1995, Esparza was a 20-year-old student at Pomona College. In the spring that year, she told her ex-boyfriend, a Costa Mesa man named Gianni Van, that Ramirez had raped her in a dorm room, according to testimony at Vans trial last year. Van was convicted of murder in May 2015 for playing a leading role in the slaying. He is now serving a life sentence in state prison. At Vans trial, Esparza testified that Van took her to a Santa Ana nightclub where she had met Ramirez and made her point him out. As Ramirez left the bar with a friend, Van and two other men Shannon Ray Gries and Kody Tran followed, according to prosecutors. Join the conversation on Facebook >> After ramming Ramirezs truck to make him pull over, the three men kidnapped him and threatened his friend, according to testimony at Vans trial. Prosecutors said the group took Ramirez to a Costa Mesa transmission shop that Tran owned and where Gries worked. Investigators later found traces of Ramirezs blood at the building. Esparza testified that she arrived at the shop later that night. Gries led her to Ramirez, who was bloodied but still alive, dangling from a chain tied to his arms, she said. The next day, Irvine police found Ramirezs body, blindfolded and wrapped in a blue cloth that law enforcement later tied to the Costa Mesa shop, according to prosecutors. Authorities charged Van with the killing not long after, but they dropped the case after learning that he and Esparza had secretly married, meaning she could no longer be compelled to testify against him. In 2004, Esparza divorced Van and moved to Europe, where she remarried and became a respected psychology professor at Webster University in Geneva. In October 2012, authorities arrested her while she was on a trip to the United States. The arrest sparked controversy among activists who thought law enforcement should have treated her as a sexual-assault victim, not a suspect. Prosecutors said Esparza never reported the rape to police or a medical professional. Esparza, however, said she was shamed into silence by a nurse when she went to a school clinic to get a pill to prevent a possible pregnancy from the attack. I dont think I was thinking at that time, she told the Los Angeles Times in 2013. I felt ashamed. I felt guilty. I didnt want to come forward because I didnt want my family to know. Esparza was originally charged with murder, but as part of an agreement with prosecutors, she was allowed to plead guilty in September 2014 to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for her cooperation in the case. Gries, now 45, pleaded guilty in May to murder. He was sentenced Friday to 25 years to life in prison. Kody Tran killed himself in a standoff with police before he could be charged in the case. His wife, Diane Tran, now 47, pleaded guilty in January 2014 to voluntary manslaughter. She too was sentenced Friday and received four years in state prison. -- Jeremiah Dobruck, jeremiah.dobruck2@latimes.com Twitter: @jeremiahdobruck An Orange County Superior Court judge has given the green light to Huntington Beachs lawsuit opposing Californias sanctuary state protections for undocumented immigrants, denying the states attempt to delay it. An expedited trial is scheduled for Sept. 27 before Judge James Crandall. After a trial-setting conference Thursday, City Attorney Michael Gates said he was very pleased with Crandalls decision, which was published in a judicial notice Wednesday evening. Its telling [that] the court is interested in taking up the matter, Gates said. Crandall will determine whether Senate Bill 54, authored by state Senate leader Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles), wrongfully keeps municipalities from taking certain actions and spending general fund money on certain law enforcement. SB 54 in many cases prohibits state and local police agencies from notifying federal officials about the impending release of in-custody immigrants who may be deported. Gates argues SB 54 is unconstitutional as it applies to charter cities like Huntington Beach. Earlier this month, California Deputy Attorney General Jonathan Eisenberg filed a motion to halt action on the lawsuit. He argued the delay would be more efficient and would prevent unnecessary duplication because two similar federal cases are further along in the legal system. But Crandall denied Eisenbergs request, writing that the two federal actions do not cover the same subject matter. Crandall said there wouldnt be a conflict even if the citys suit lost, because the citys argument relies on its charter status. The federal lawsuits still could prevail on different merits. Eisenberg declined to comment Thursday. Huntington Beach Mayor Mike Posey and Mayor Pro Tem Erik Peterson proposed the lawsuit as a way to seek relief from the states sanctuary policies. Gates sued in April with 6-1 approval from the City Council. Councilwoman Jill Hardy dissented. Huntington joined a wave of Orange County opposition to SB 54 that started in March when the Los Alamitos City Council passed an ordinance opting out of the law. Priscella.Vega@latimes.com Twitter: @vegapriscella On the same day the Trump administration said it planned to cancel $929 million in grant funds for Californias troubled bullet train project, Rep. Harley Rouda told constituents in Costa Mesa that he plans to fight like hell every day to help the state get back more of the taxes its residents pay into the federal government. The Laguna Beach Democrat drew more than 200 people to the Estancia High School gym Tuesday for his first town hall in his 48th District, fielding questions on national topics from the Green New Deal and the 2020 presidential election to the minimum wage and congressional gridlock. Closer to home, one question that drew a chuckle from the generally supportive crowd was if Rouda thinks it will be difficult to get federal dollars for the state given that Trump does not like California. The illustration of the moment: the bullet train. You can argue that the high-speed train doesnt make sense, Rouda said. And many have, as the fraught $77 billion line from Los Angeles to San Francisco drags on $44 billion over budget and 13 years behind schedule, leading Gov. Gavin Newsom to say he was reassessing the project which President Trump has seized upon, calling the train a waste as his administration bats around withholding remaining funds along with recouping $2.5 billion already dispersed. But when he talks about taking back his federal dollars theyre not his dollars, theyre our dollars, Rouda said about Trumps pronouncements. Were the taxpayers. We paid that money. In other local issues, he said noise from John Wayne Airport, homelessness and housing affordability, and sober living homes are among the top issues facing the 48th District, which includes Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach. Some of these are tied together, he said before poking at the number of sober living homes in Costa Mesa about 100 licensed by the city or state, according to city figures and how they curb patients at the end of their stays and add to our homelessness issues. What these fly-by-night organizations do, they literally recruit addicts from around the country to come here where they then receive six months of insurance benefits to provide less than adequate support for that addict, he said. A constituent holds up a sign stating Medicare-for-all as Rep. Harley Rouda (D-Laguna Beach) addresses a question about Medicare during Roudas first district town hall meeting in the gym at Estancia High School in Costa Mesa on Tuesday. (Kevin Chang / Staff Photographer) Rouda also vowed to join the Quiet Skies Caucus to address the noise impacts on cities neighboring JWA. This is a longstanding issue in Newport Beach and especially along the Back Bay, where departure paths have tightened up since the 2017 introduction of the Federal Aviation Administrations NextGen program. Newport leaders and residents regularly meet with congressional representatives and the FAA in Washington and with the carriers locally to ameliorate the impacts. Like his fellow Laguna Democrat, Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, Rouda said he was disappointed in the states lawsuit against the city of Huntington Beach that accuses the city of defying a state law that requires cities and counties to set aside sufficient land for housing development. While we have housing shortages across California, in our district and other places in our country as well, I dont believe the best way to solve it is with a lawsuit, Rouda said. I would prefer to see a greater effort done sitting around the table. You can have a private conversation that says, Look, weve got to get from here to there and if that doesnt happen, [then] were going to be forced to file a lawsuit. Rouda added that the state was too quick to jump out and sue. Police officers serving Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach arrested fewer people suspected of driving under the influence on St. Patricks Day than they did on that day last year, possibly because this years celebration fell on a Sunday, officials said. Huntington Beach police reported one DUI arrest Sunday, compared with four last St. Patricks Day, which fell on a Saturday. For the past five years, the Police Department coordinated the Know Your Limit program, which regularly sends officers to local bars where they offer free breath tests to patrons. However, officers didnt offer the tests Sunday. Costa Mesa officers didnt make any DUI arrests on St. Patricks Day but made five the day before, said Roxi Fyad, a Police Department spokeswoman. In addition, a driver suspected of DUI was arrested early Monday after his Mercedes-Benz crashed into a utility pole on Harbor Boulevard. Last year, Costa Mesa made four DUI arrests on St. Patricks Day, Fyad said. Sgt. Jim Cota of the Laguna Beach Police Department said the number of DUI arrests dipped from four last St. Patricks Day to one this year. He attributed that to having more patrol officers, the creation of three designated loading zones for ride-sharing apps and a strong anti-DUI campaign that includes Know Your Limit and social media. Newport Beach officers made four DUI arrests Sunday, the same as last St. Patricks Day, said police spokeswoman Heather Rangel. Daniel Langhorne is a contributor to Times Community News. Of the many efforts at backdoor gun grabs in California, the law requiring new handguns to have microstamps is among the most ridiculous. Thankfully theres a bill in the Legislature to overturn that requirement and return a bit of sanity to Californias otherwise out-of-control gun laws. Microstamping is a process in which a gun imprints a unique microscopic code onto the ammunition it fires. The goal is to enable detectives to collect shell casings at a crime scene, enter the code in a database and quickly track the firearm to its owner. The problem is that the technology is wholly unreliable and prohibitively expensive. Each time a gun is fired, it wears slightly, leaving a microstamp unreadable after a short period of normal use. On top of that, it would be easy for a criminal to swap out microstamped gun parts for ones with no markings. Because of Californias law requiring new gun models to use microstamping, no gun manufacturer has introduced a new handgun model to our state since 2013. That means handguns with the latest and most reliable technology are not available to Californias law-abiding gun owners. That is exactly what anti-gun legislators wanted when they passed the law. This, as with most gun control bills, does nothing to improve public safety. It wont get illegal guns off the street but will only drive up the cost of handguns made before 2013, making them unaffordable to Californians on a budget who wish to exercise their Second Amendment rights. It also does little, if anything, to aid police investigations. Law enforcement has all the tools it needs to trace a gun to its original owner. But legal firearms are rarely used in crimes. In most cases, years pass between the original sale of a firearm and the time it is used in a crime. Finding out who owned a firearm a decade ago does little to tell police who fired it criminally last week. The bill to eliminate Californias microstamp requirement, AB 2733, is making its way through the Legislature. It is time for Californias legislators to recognize and respect their constituents rights. AB 2733 is a common-sense law to ensure that good people can exercise their rights and protect themselves. MATTHEW HARPER (R-Huntington Beach) represents Californias 74th Assembly District. Now more than just elevation separates La Crescentas middle and high schools from other schools in Glendale Unified. Rosemont Middle School, along with Clark Magnet and Crescenta Valley highs three of the districts nine secondary schools were lauded as 2019 California Distinguished Schools programs. A total of 162 middle and high schools statewide were honored, along with 18 school districts. The state program recognizes outstanding educational programs and practices. Secondary schools are honored for exceptional student performance for two consecutive years or for closing the achievement gap between the past two years. I would like to commend these schools for fighting for a better future for our students, closing achievement gaps and improving academic performance, said Tony Thurmond, the new California State Supt. of Public Instruction, in a statement Monday afternoon. Different standards are set for middle and high schools. Rosemont passed all four qualifications in the Exceptional Student Performance category, which utilizes a color grading system. Red and orange are listed on the lower end of the spectrum, indicating under-performance, while yellow is in the middle and green and blue are the top two colors, highlighting best practices. An Exceptional Student Performance requires a green/blue color for English and math programs for the 2017 and 2018 fall semesters, a green/blue mark for low suspension rates during the 2017-18 school year, a green/blue rating for low absenteeism during the 2017-18 school year and 95% participation rate in English and math during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years. The award was the first for Rosemont in 12 years, said the schools principal, Scott Anderle. Were ecstatic to win this, and Im proud of the teachers, the staff and the students who make this possible, Anderle said. He pointed to his schools Rosemont ROCKS program that calls on the school community, including parents, to follow principles of respect, ownership, cooperation, kindness and safety. Anderle said his students have thrived because Rosemont has dedicated time to helping them cope with stress and anxiety. Students promoted from Rosemont almost always end up at either Crescenta Valley or Clark Magnet highs, two schools also honored by the state this year. The high school Exceptional Student Performance requirements also calls on green/blue marks in English and mathematics and low suspension rates, along with 95% participation in English and math. Those standards also call for two more green/blue requirements in graduation rates and college/career indicators. This award means a lot to me, Clark principal Lena Kortoshian said. Were so proud, and I just want to say this award is more than just me and assistant principal [Brian] Landisis hard work. Its the hard work of our students, high achievers were so happy for, and for our dedicated and caring teachers. The 2019 California Distinguished Schools honors are awards presented in alternating years, and theyre back after the state used the California Gold Ribbon Schools program in 2015 and 2017. andrew.campa@latimes.com Twitter @campadresports Inside one of Glendales newest restaurants, called Heritage Eatery, Alissa Asmarian serves dishes made by her grandparents and her mother as well as meals she prepares for her two daughters. I call it new American because Im an American as much as I am an Armenian, she said. Im just tweaking some of my moms recipes and my grandmas. For more than a dozen years, Alissa Asmarian ran Favorite Place, a popular tea shop on West Wilson Avenue, near Brand Boulevard, before she sold the business in 2014. The new owner closed their business endeavor a couple of years later. Just as Asmarian and her husband, Sarkis, were looking to open a new restaurant in Pasadena, they learned Favorite Places former location was available. To their delight, a repair of the ceilings water damage revealed two arched windows and a skylight where natural light now falls into Heritage Eatery the name suggested by their daughters because they felt she should cook food from her heritage. Heritage Eaterys Armenian bulgur salad wraps. (Raul Roa / Glendale News-Press) With a mostly organic menu that changes daily, the Asmarians serve dishes that are meant to be shared family-style. The plates are intended to introduce Armenias sweet and savory flavors to a new audience. Two such starters include the bulger lettuce wraps made with roasted red bell pepper and topped with tomatoes and cucumbers and the summer watermelon salad drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette, feta cheese and mint. Im proud to be an Armenian. We have amazing food that I think has been misrepresented. Were known just for our kebabs, and we have more than just kebabs. I just wanted to showcase that, and introduce that to our non-Armenian friends and say, Look, we have more than that. If pressed to choose, Sarkis Asmarians favorite dish is the roasted chicken, marinated overnight in garlic and yogurt, served with oven-baked fries. Heritage Eaterys oven-baked chicken with french fries. (Raul Roa / Glendale News-Press) Many of Heritages sauces and preserves are sourced from Armenia. The house salad features an apricot vinaigrette, made with apricot preserves, over fennel, sweet peas, blood oranges, celery and arugula. Additional menu items inspired by various nationalities include the international mac and cheese, as she named it, with mozzarella, Parmesan, American and feta cheeses. We can still keep our culture and our heritage, and introduce dishes that are still very much inspired by different nationalities, she said. All of it can be washed down with rosewater lemonade. Alissa Asmarians belief in foods ability to foster friendship and inspiration can be traced to her mother, Luiza, who years ago amped up her own familys traditional oxtail soup by pouring Armenian beer into it. The soup is now served at Heritage Eatery. My mom, if she goes out to dinner somewhere, if its an Asian restaurant, Mexican restaurant whatever shell come home and recreate it. She loves culture, she loves food, and she says, The way to get to know someone is through the food that they eat. kelly.corrigan@latimes.com Twitter: @kellymcorrigan Authorities have arrested three men they say are responsible for a shooting in October at a Glendale restaurant that left one man dead and another wounded. Vahagn Mkhitaryan, 33, Hrachya Azatyan, 41, and Arsen Grigoryan, 35, were arrested earlier this month on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, according to the Glendale Police Department. All three men are being held without bail. For the record: The original article omitted the name of a third suspect who was arrested in connection with the shooting. It has since been updated to include that information. Their arrests come about five months after an unknown person walked up and shot two men who were standing in the parking lot of the Maran Ararat restaurant on San Fernando Road. One man, identified as 48-year-old Suren Tahmazyan of Burbank, died at the scene while the other man, also in his 40s but not identified, was only grazed by a bullet and survived. The shooter fled from the area in a waiting, dark-colored SUV that sped northbound on San Fernando, according to police. Sgt. Dan Suttles, a department spokesman, said at the time that its unknown why the two men were shot and that there were no signs it was gang-related or an attempted robbery gone wrong. Based on security camera footage from the restaurant, he said the shooter looked purposeful. Its unknown if the three suspects had any connection to the two victims. Suttles could not comment further on the arrests because the investigation remains active and detectives are still working on it. andy.nguyen@latimes.com Twitter: @Andy_Truc A ceremony to mark the signing of a new book series called "Lao Pan's view of China" was held on March 20 in Beijing. The series will feature the true stories of American MBA professor William Brown's 30 years of life in China, and will be published by Foreign Languages Press for international audiences. Dr. William Brown is well-known to many people of Xiamen, who affectionately call him "Old Pan" (Lao Pan). He was Fujian province's first foreigner ever to receive Permanent Residence, and was honored with China's Friendship Award in 1992. The Chinese and English versions of Brown's book "Off the Wall: How We Fell for China," published by Foreign Languages Press last year, were well received by both Chinese and foreign readers. President Xi Jinping said in a congratulatory letter that Dr. Brown's story is a unique and intimate witness to China's reform and opening-up, and encouraged him to continue presenting the real China to the world. Lu Cairong, vice president of the China International Publishing Group (CIPG), expressed his appreciation for Dr. Brown and the book at the launch ceremony. "With his delicate words, Dr. Brown introduced China's historic changes in the recent decades of reform and opening-up," he said. "In terms of promoting Chinese culture and history, we hope to provide an effective platform for authors like Dr. Brown to offer a multidimensional interpretation of China and help people in the West gain a better understanding of China." During the ceremony, Brown shared his stories as an eyewitness to 30 years of transformation during China's era of reform and opening-up. Dr. Brown moved with his family to Xiamen and began teaching at Xiamen University in 1988, when he started sending out a newsletter, called "Off the Wall," to describe his life in China and his exploration of its lively culture and rich history. "We witnessed China's 40 years of economic transformation, and in some ways even participated in these changes." To mark the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up, his first book, "Off the Wall," a collection of these earlier newsletters, was published in 2018. Brown expressed his willingness to share more stories of China's unique changes with the world through his new book series. "China has learned much from the world, but we also have much to learn from China." He added that China's changes over the past 30 years are nothing short of miracles, proving that the Chinese Dream is possible, not just for China but for the rest of the world as well. Five Glendale police officers were enjoying an evening of live music with friends and family in Las Vegas last October when the night took a deadly turn after a lone gunman fired upon the 22,000 people gathered for the Route 91 Harvest festival. The outdoor venue quickly descended into chaos as concertgoers ran to find cover. The Glendale Police Department officers were near each other when the shots were first fired but soon became separated in the rush of people. For the record: A previous version of this story stated John Dishoian was the security guard who fired his gun in the Glendale Galleria in March. Its been corrected to reflect that it was Mike Romero who fired his gun. Though they were separated, Sgts. Manny Fernandez and Danny Fernandez, Dets. Matt Landsberger and Eric Meyer and Officer Christian Magarino jumped into action to help and protect the people around them while the gunman continued to fire at the crowd. In the end, a total of 59 people were killed in what has been called one of the worst mass shootings in modern American history. The mens actions were recognized during the Glendale Police Awards luncheon on Thursday. Hosted by the Glendale Police Foundation and presented by ABC-7 anchor David Ono, the event saw the five men honored with the Heroism Award. Rather than have each mens individual action singled out during the luncheon, the five decided to be attributed as a group. The officers helped take wounded strangers to safety, dismantled a barricade that blocked an exit and rendered medical aid to those who had been shot. Under great threat of injury or death to themselves, each of these five tapped into a deeper need to serve others and ignored self-preservation, Ono said. Other awards that were given out included the Glendale Police Departments Chiefs Awards of Excellence which were handed out to police cadet Argam Khoabahshian and Paul Schlossman, the schools dean of student affairs. Brittany Lerian was the recipient of the inaugural Youth Service Award. Lerian helped established a K9 tribute in the police departments lobby. The tribute consists of a granite wall inscribed with the Glendale Police K9 Tribute, the K9 badge and K9 prayer, Ono said. In front of the wall stands a life-sized bronze statue of a German shepherd. Sal Areyan, Bryant Ramos, John Dishoian and Mike Romero were honored with community service awards for their actions during an attempted robbery at the Bhindi jewelry store in the Glendale Galleria in March. Ono said the men helped capture one of the robbers, with Romero being the security guard who fired his gun toward the would-be thieves. Distinguished Service Awards were given to Detective Petros Kmbikyan and Officers Sharon Kim and Frank Segura as well as Communications Operator Michelle Lewis. Officer Michelle Gonzalez received the Glendale Police Officer of the Year award. andy.nguyen@latimes.com Twitter: @Andy_Truc Siding with public safety over preserving a centuries-old oak in questionable condition, the La Canada Flintridge City Council on Tuesday denied appeals against a Georgian Road homeowners tree removal permit that was previously approved by the city Planning Commission. The matter was heard by planning commissioners last month after two La Canada residents appealed Community Development Director Susan Koledas November approval of the permit. The permit called for removal of the 65-foot-tall oak tree due to its hazardous state of health, described in a report by Glendale arborist Bill McKinley. Appellants requested the city hire an independent arborist, as McKinley was hired by new property owner Al Frank and could have tailored his findings to precipitate a desired outcome. The protesters called attention to the fact that the permit application was filed by architect Dave Di Angelis, and asked the removal be postponed until Frank submitted building plans for 650 Georgian Road. Planning commissioners upheld Koledas approval in a Feb. 14 meeting, citing Franks adherence to processes outlined in the citys tree ordinance, and that decision was appealed to the City Council by two residents. Appellants Ed Johnson and Tipren Follett (who was out of the country but prepared a statement read aloud by friend Tonya Bray) asked the council to consider seeking an independent review and expressed dissatisfaction with there being no special protections for ancient heritage trees in the citys tree ordinance. We used to have in our tree ordinance something called a heritage tree, Johnson said. I would propose any tree of more than 200 years of age that means it was around 50 years before the devastating fire that almost cleared out all of La Canada in the 1880s those trees need to be dealt with different than regular trees. In her statement, Follett leveled claims against McKinleys making inconsistent tree assessments in the past, sometimes changing a determination when homeowners building plans changed. McKinley highlighted the trees many structural deficiencies and defended his reputation. I dont fabricate information, he said. My name is far too valuable for any contribution that anybody can make its my legacy, and I dont like to see it impugned. The City Council voted unanimously to uphold the Planning Commissions denial of the appeal and approve the removal permit. Councilman Jon Curtis said the city has created a process that considers closely all the factors of a trees health, risk and location. Youre not going to get a tree removal permit just because you dont like the way that tree is sitting there, and you think it should go out because thats where you want to put a house, Curtis said. We do have a health and safety issue here. Community meeting on Edisons tree trimming La Canada Flintridge and Southern California Edison will host a community meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. on April 8 at Lanterman Auditorium to explain aspects of the utilitys Wildfire Mitigation Plan, a document that details enhanced tree trimming guidelines that have caused some resident ire in recent months. Edisons mitigation plan was submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission in February and comes up for a vote sometime in May. Marissa Castro-Salvati, a government relations manager for Edison, appeared before council members Tuesday to invite community participation. We have been doing some vegetation management, some line clearing, throughout our service territory and La Canada has had some customer concerns, she said. Experts would be on hand to explain vegetation management plans as they pertain to wildfire risk, she said. Councilman Greg Brown encouraged residents to attend. This could involve some peoples yards and, depending on what kind of lines they have and where the trees are, it could be a very big change, Brown said. Lanterman Auditorium is located at 4491 Cornishon Ave. For more information on Edisons Wildfire Mitigation Plan, visit sce.com/safety/wildfire. Also Tuesday, council members: Approved a 20-year lease agreement with the La Canada Flintridge Chamber of Commerce and Community Assn. for a 730-square-foot space and storage site at the new City Hall building at 1 Civic Center Drive. The chamber will lease a suite and storage space for $1,100 per month and will have non-exclusive rights to use the nearby council chambers, a community meeting room and Olberz Park. In exchange, the chamber will provide reception services for the building Monday through Thursday, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and 25 hours of office services to the city each month. Introduced an ordinance establishing regulations for small wireless facilities in the public right of way that would forego regular discretionary hearings in favor of a resolution that could be quickly amended or changed, in the face of a new federal mandate to take effect April 15. Once the Declaratory Ruling and Third Report and Order is passed, utilities will have wider leeway to install facilities in cities so long as all reasonable and feasible municipal standards are accommodated. City Deputy Atty. Lona Laymon explained La Canada needs to get aesthetic standards on the books now, to the extent allowable and through an urgency ordinance, to prevent creating a legislative gap companies could take advantage of. A revised resolution and urgency ordinance will come back to the council April 2. sara.cardine@latimes.com Twitter: @SaraCardine Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department detectives are investigating a home burglary that occurred on the 500 block of La Canadas Georgian Road Tuesday night and was interrupted when the family returned home to find the suspects on the roof. Sgt. Alan Chu, a detective with the Crescenta Valley Sheriffs Station, said the homeowners returned home at around 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, noticing only that a white Buick SUV was parked in front of the property. They entered the residence without noticing anything out of the ordinary. Then, one of the family members spotted the suspects out back. A woman went to the kitchen to wash her hands and she saw them jumping from the roof to the backyard, Chu said Wednesday. They [then] jumped into the white Buick and drove off. It is believed the suspects may have gained entry into the property by breaking a door or window at the rear of the home. Chu said a phone and some currency were reported missing. On Tuesday, shortly before 10 p.m., several of the family members stood outside across from the home as deputies searched the property for any possible remaining suspects. No further information on the suspects seen by the homeowner was available at press time. Just hours earlier in a meeting of the La Canada Flintridge City Council, the Crescenta Valley stations acting captain, Lt. Mark Slater, reported 13 residential burglaries took place in February, bringing this years total to 23 about 28% above year-to-date figures from 2018. Of this months 13 reported incidents, Slater said four were attempts only and were thwarted before the suspects could enter the property. On the attempts, Ring cameras worked in one of the incidents. It scared off the potential burglars because the person communicated [to them] through their Ring camera device and said, Im calling the police. The video shows two men hopping the fence and running away. Tuesdays incident on Georgian Road marks the sixth home break-in so far this month, according to information from the online crime reporting site crimemapping.com. Another residential burglary occurred on the 300 block of Georgian on March 7. Anyone with information is encouraged to call the Crescenta Valley Sheriffs Station at (818) 248-3464. sara.cardine@latimes.com Twitter: @SaraCardine Kay Bahrami who helped spark a love for books and reading in the hearts of countless La Canada Elementary School students throughout more than three decades as school librarian died Saturday following a brief illness. She was 74. Principal Emily Blaney said she was notified earlier that week by Bahramis family members the beloved school employee had suffered a heart attack. Those who knew her sent letters of well wishes and encouragement while she was in the hospital. On Sunday, when campus staff and faculty learned Bahrami had passed, they reached out to school PTA members and parents, several of whom had served as library volunteers and vowed to keep the librarians post occupied through a substitute pool until arrangements for a replacement could be made. Thats what theyre doing right now, Blaney said. Theyre pulling books for kids, and theyre going to keep it going. When students arrived on campus Monday, school counselor Nancy DeBoer had bottled water and tissues at the ready for anyone who wanted to talk or share memories of the librarian. Hundreds wrote memorial tributes on several long pieces of butcher paper laid out on table tops. A crayon drawing of LCE librarian Kay Bahrami is one of hundreds of tributes created by students Monday after Bahramis passing that weekend. (Photo by Sara Cardine) There, children recalled Bahramis love of literature, of cats and of reading to kids. Best librarian ever. Legends never die, one student wrote in purple marker. You were the best librarian I ever had, read another, while a third proclaimed, Reading is my superpower! DeBoer recalled the librarians enthusiasm for connecting students and staff members with titles tailored to their interests and said practically everyone on campus has at least one book recommended to them by Bahrami. She was all about the books, DeBoer said with a smile. La Canada Elementary first-grade teacher Jan Rappleye who came to the campus in 1988, just one year after Bahrami started on as librarian, and developed a friendship with her over the years remembered her as a bright, multitalented person who never sought out the limelight and honored each book as something special. La Canada Elementary students drew memorial tributes Monday to longtime librarian and local resident Kay Bahrami, who died Saturday following a brief illness, recalling her love of books, cats and her personal influence on their lives. (Photo by Sara Cardine) Im sure she knew every title and author in the library, said Rappleye. That is Kays library. The school library will undergo a renovation later in the school year, thanks to a donation from the schools Parent Teachers Assn., according to Blaney. Rappleye said theres already been some talk about memorializing Bahrami upon its reopening. Weve all agreed we think it should be [named] the Kay Bahrami Memorial Library, she said. Bahrami was preceded in death by husband Ted and is survived by son Adam, daughter Lynne and sons Ben and Justin, along with grandsons Ian, 6, and 3-year-old Wilder. A La Canada resident and former sheriffs psychologist sentenced in January to life in prison for molesting his stepchildren now faces civil charges of gender violence, assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress, according to a lawsuit filed Friday. Michael Dane Ward, 46, is the named defendant in an Aug. 3 lawsuit filed with the Los Angeles County Superior Court by the mother on behalf of the minor victims, a boy named in the suit as E.M. and a girl referred to as C.M. The abuse began in 2012 when E.M. and C.M. were 8 and 7 years old, respectively and continued throughout the next four years, until the children informed their mother of what was happening in April 2016. Criminal charges were filed that May. Ward and the victims mother, now divorced, were married in 2012, at which time Ward became stepfather to his wifes biological children from a previous marriage. He maintained a rule in the familys La Canada home that no one was allowed to lock the bathroom door, including while showering, according to the suit. Sometime after the marriage, Ward approached E.M. and required he perform oral sex on him. Later, the suit indicates, he demanded reciprocal oral sex and copulation and would attempt to shower with the 8-year-old boy. Over the next four years, Ward is said to have repeatedly tied up E.M. against his will and raped him. The lawsuit claims the incidents of abuse took place in various locations throughout the family home. Also in 2012, the defendant began to engage in naked wrestling with female victim C.M., requiring her to get naked with him and shower with him. The suit says neither victim knew what was happening to the other and that the mother was not aware of the illegal sexual acts occurring in the home. Doug Rochen, an attorney representing the plaintiffs through Los Angeles law firm Abir Cohen Treyzon Salo, L.L.P. says his clients are demanding a jury trial, in part, to seek restitution pertaining to the ongoing trauma the children experience to this day. The lawsuit claims both victims continue to suffer from mental and physical pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, loss of self-esteem, disgrace, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life and suicidal thoughts and actions as a result of the abuse. E.M. allegedly attempted to take his own life at age 11 and struggles with his sexual identity, the document states. The criminal system can only do so much, Rochen said in a phone interview Tuesday. It doesnt often provide the emotional and financial support that helps these children in their healing, which is what a civil suit does. According to the suit, Ward served as an active duty psychologist for the U.S. Navy from 2000 to 2011 before taking a position with the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department as an operation psychologist and industrial organizational consultant. In August 2017, jurors found the La Canada man guilty of four counts of lewd acts on a child, two counts of forcible lewd acts on a child under 14, three counts of oral copulation of a child 10 years or younger and one count of sodomy with a child under 10, according to an Aug. 25, 2017 statement issued by the district attorneys office. Ward, whose work with the Sheriffs Department involved advising and training law enforcement officers, was relieved of his duty when he was arrested by the departments Special Victims Bureau in May 2016, the Los Angeles Times reported. A final status conference is scheduled for Jan. 17, but Rochen said Tuesday that after the lawsuit is served to Ward in prison the next steps involve conducting an initial discovery of facts and determining what kind of compensation might be sought. The mother has depleted much of what she has to live on to help these kids, he said. And shes really done nothing wrong, except bringing the wrong man into her life. sara.cardine@latimes.com Twitter: @SaraCardine The Chargers lost defensive lineman Darius Philon on Thursday as the four-year veteran signed a free-agent deal with Arizona. A sixth-round pick of the Chargers in 2015, Philon had his most productive season yet in 2018, starting 13 games and finishing with 33 tackles and four sacks. Philon joined the Cardinals on a two-year contract worth up to $12 million, with $5 million of that guaranteed. Sign up for our daily sports newsletter Advertisement jeff.miller@latimes.com Twitter: @JeffMillerLAT Santa Anita is inching toward its projected March 29 opening after having closed for live racing on March 5 following a dramatic increase in the number of horse fatalities. Since Dec. 26, 22 horses have died either in racing or training. What happened at Santa Anita has been a mystery that remains unsolved. When the track reopens, the stakes are very high and all eyes will be on horse safety. The Los Angeles Times gathered a roundtable of three well-known experts with more than a century of knowledge working in the horse racing industry to try and dig down into what went wrong at Santa Anita and where things go from here. On the panel are Alan Balch, a former Santa Anita executive who has also worked with other horse breeds, and is executive director of California Thoroughbred Trainers; Joe Harper, president and chief executive officer at Del Mar, who has been running the track since 1978; and Ryan Carpenter, one of the top equine surgeons in the country and who works on the backstretch of Santa Anita. Answers were edited for clarity and brevity. Advertisement Is this the biggest crisis in California racing history? Harper: I would say yes. I know Del Mar has ended up on the nightly news a couple of times with a similar problem. But this one seemed to get a lot of attention. Maybe the situations were a little different but I do think this is at the top of the list. Balch: I have to agree. The things that I can remember like this were when Santa Anita was shut down by the labor unions. We have had some integrity things from time to time, like when we wouldnt let the favorite for the Santa Anita Derby run because of cloudy ownership. But this, because it involves the horses, and people are questioning us about our care of the horses makes it far and away the most serious thing I can remember. Are horses any different than those of the past that might contribute to more breakdowns? Balch: I believe todays horse is more precocious, more brilliant at 2-years-old and 3 than they used to be, but theyre also more fragile. Even saying that, it cant explain the spike weve had here in injuries the last couple months. The media has in general put a lot of emphasis on the 3-year-olds. Some horsemen have too. But, Santa Anita used to have a whole series of races for 4-year-olds the following year. So, the auction market then was much more based on horses that would stay sound and race into their maturity. Now there is a collision of market economics, the breeders market and the sales market. What people want is a horse thats going to be brilliant at 2, and win the Triple Crown. Carpenter: The horses that Ive seen in the last decade have been very consistent. Were very much looking for a horse that performs very well in a 2-year-old in training environment. So early quick speed, those fractions of a second going a couple furlongs, could be the difference in a sellable horse or not. There are some people who think that maybe we need to get away from that pushing to shave off fractions of a second. What do you think has caused this sudden rash of deaths at Santa Anita? Harper: Its always hard to find that smoking gun. Its probably a lot of things. Certainly, you look at the weather and the way the track was, and even though [track consultant] Mick Peterson gave it high marks, you still had a track that was getting rained on and was sealed and unsealed. Thats got to take a toll. You add to that certain pressures that were put on the horsemen at the beginning of this meet to race. All of us in racing, if you look at the bottom line, its all about quantity, not quality, and the more horses you get in a race, the more money youre going to make. And the pressure was part of the problem. Bad luck. Bad karma, also played into it. Balch: We may not know exactly why, but we know what its not. Its not anything to do with Lasix. Dr. [Rick] Arthur has made it very clear that there is no relationship between Lasix and catastrophic musculoskeletal injuries (CMI). The real proof is Golden Gate Fields went through the same winter, maybe worse, with the same medication rules, the same racing rules, the same everything with a relatively lower purse structure and have five [deaths]. Were not saying thats great, but its five versus 22. Whats the difference? Its not medication, its not the rules. The principal difference is their racetrack, which happens to be an all-weather synthetic. Theyve had a much safer time of it and that points my attention to the race track. Carpenter: Injuries occur where there are inconsistencies in surfaces. Dirt is a very dynamic material. It does not stay the same. In an environment where you have to pack it down and seal it, where it takes on moisture, that is very difficult to create a one-mile surface that is consistent. The race track at Santa Anita has been sealed about 20 times, which sets things up for an inconsistent surface and was probably a contributing factor on the injuries we were seeing. Was this breakdown problem discovered too late, waiting until it was at a crisis point? Balch: My personal opinion is that there were many of us who saw the problem early and called it to managements attention. Hindsight teaches that all of us should have been much more aggressive, demanding, and objective, much earlier. Harper: I will say that in our first meeting with Santa Anita there was a recognition from them of that problem. Hopefully, weve all learned some lessons from this tragedy. How close to extinction did horse racing come over this latest crisis? Harper: Every time you go through one of these you wonder how long can this can go on before someone puts in a bill that would eliminate racing or takes some drastic steps. My concern during this whole thing is if Santa Anita would continue to race. I was at that first meeting with Belinda Stronach [president and chairman of the Stronach Group, which owns and runs Santa Anita] and she was very upset. She was under a great deal of pressure from some of her friends and the general public. I think what they put into place was her demands and I understand them. A lot of that stuff is good and I support it, not all of it, but most of it. Its in the back of our minds that something like this could lead to the cancellation of racing everywhere. If we just sit around and do nothing, its going to happen. I think its a crisis. Balch: We all feel Joes fear of the jeopardy because we are horse people. Were very, very concerned about it. This is a huge industry out here, not just racing. The latest study has a $13.3 billion economic impact [in California]. Huge number of employees. The backstretch community that takes care of the horses under the supervision of trainers. We have an obligation not just to the horses but all the people connected to the horses to do the right thing. Its our obligation to make sure the sport prospers. Does this Lasix rule make sense? Carpenter: Im in complete agreement that there is no association between Lasix and CMI. It is a therapeutic medication that is used to treat exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhaging (EIPH), which is a recognized disease and syndrome in the racing population. There is a lot of research that supports its use. To ignore science and research, I question if thats a responsible move on our industrys part. Sign up for our horse racing newsletter How does the sport come back from this crisis? Balch: Its an interdependent sport and everybody has to work together and that seems to be somewhat absent in the last month or so. We are all in this together and the way to make progress is to have all the people discussing these things together at the same time and in the same place. And thats been, shall we say, disappointing, when individual groups of people or organizations pretty much make announcements. The way to get out of this is to get back to this interdependent relationship. Carpenter: There needs to be teamwork among all parties and stakeholders moving forward. When medication issues come up, we have to look to the medical experts. There are different organizations that have put their heart and soul into putting the horse first, answering the questions and making appropriate recommendations. The amount of medication reform thats gone on in the last five to 10 years has been remarkable. And thats not because we decided to make some decisions based on a whim. If we can work together, if we can talk to each other, hone in on each persons expertise then we will be farther ahead than if we try and do it on our own. U.S. citizens will no longer need a visa to get into Brazil, Brazil Tourism said Wednesday. Beginning June 17, American citizens will no longer be required to obtain the passport stamp granting entry. Until then, they will need the permission, which can be done electronically. The cost of the e-visa is $40, plus a $4.24 service charge. As of Wednesday afternoon, however, the link to obtain that visa on the Visit Brasil website was dead, and the information about the change had not been updated. A fix was said to be in the works. Advertisement If you are traveling there in the meantime, you can visit the Los Angeles consulate site, where the link is live. As of Wednesday afternoon, however, the consulate website did not contain information reflecting the impending change. The changeover to the e-visa last year replaced a process that many visitors found slow, cumbersome and expensive at $160. Brazil Tourism said the number of visas issued had increased by nearly 60,000 after the e-visa introduction. Beginning June 17, U.S., Canadian, Australian and Japanese citizens can spend 90 days in Brazil from their date of entry, Brazil Tourism said in a statement. They can extend their stay for 90 more days, not to exceed 180 days in a year. travel@latimes.com @latimestravel Former Brazilian President Michel Temer has been arrested in connection with a widespread corruption investigation that has already ensnared scores of the countrys business leaders and politicians. He was taken into custody Thursday morning in Sao Paulo and flown to Rio de Janeiro to respond to accusations of corruption related to a construction contract for the Angra 3 nuclear power plant. That contract is a small piece in a wider investigation into the former president and several associates. Federal prosecutor Fabiana Schneider told reporters Thursday that Temer headed a criminal organization that received more than $473 million in bribes. There is a spreadsheet that shows promises of payments were made for over 20 years to the acronym MT, or Michel Temer, she said. Advertisement Temer has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. His party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement, released a statement defending the former president and calling for the justice system to restore individual freedoms, the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial and the right to a defense. Also arrested Thursday were Moreira Franco, a former minister of mining and energy, and Joao Baptista Lima Filho, a retired colonel and close friend of Temer. They are accused of soliciting with Temers knowledge a $260,000 bribe from the engineering and construction company Engevix in exchange for part of the $42-million contract to build the nuclear plant, located west of Rio. The bribe was allegedly laundered by way of a renovation on the home of Maristela Temer, the former presidents daughter. According to the Brazilian news portal G1, she told federal police the work on her apartment cost $183,000, but receipts obtained by authorities showed a total of more than $314,000. Temer is also named in nine other inquiries. As president, he was charged with corruption, racketeering, obstruction of justice and other crimes. He avoided impeachment proceedings thanks to his allies in the lower house. But when he left office Jan. 1, he lost the legal protections of a sitting president. Temer is probably best known for his role in the impeachment of his predecessor, Dilma Rousseff, who was forced out of office in 2016 for breaking budgetary laws to make her government appear more economically sound ahead of the 2014 presidential election. She accused Temer, her running mate in the 2010 and 2014 elections, of conspiring to overthrow her and called her impeachment a coup. He then went on to serve out the rest of her second term, which was mired in corruption accusations and unpopular austerity measures. According to the independent polling firm Datafolha, he left office with an approval rating of just 7%. Temer is among several politicians caught up in the investigation known as Lava Jato, or Car Wash, which began in March 2014 as an inquiry into allegations that executives at the state-run oil company Petrobras had been awarding construction companies contracts at inflated prices in exchange for bribes. It has unearthed a corruption scheme thought to be worth at least $1 billion. Other politicians targeted include former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption and money laundering. Langlois is a special correspondent. Langlois is a special correspondent. China and the United States will hold their eighth round of high-level economic and trade consultations in Beijing from March 28 to 29, the Ministry of Commerce (MOF) said Thursday. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were invited to visit China for the talks, MOF spokesperson Gao Feng told a news conference. Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chief of the Chinese side of the China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, was invited to visit Washington D.C. for the ninth round of talks in early April, Gao said. Recently, both sides have held several rounds of talks by phone on economic and trade issues and agreed on holding the eighth and ninth rounds of high-level consultations, he said. The wedding wasnt supposed to take place for more than a year. Then the presidential election happened. The winner, Jair Bolsonaro, is widely known for his hateful comments about gay people and his opposition to same-sex marriage, which has been legal in Brazil since 2013. And so Stefany Daltro and Debora de Cassia Brandao Silva, who have been together for four years, gathered with a few guests on the first Saturday of December for a simple ceremony at the office of a public notary here. Were in the dark, said Silva, 30. We dont know whats ahead of us now, what rights we could lose. Advertisement That kind of unease has fueled a surge in same-sex weddings in Brazil as couples, fearful that the new administration will try to block their unions, rush to get married before Bolsonaros Jan. 1 inauguration. The boom began in September, when the front-runner at the time, the leftist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was deemed ineligible, catapulting Bolsonaro to the top of the polls. It accelerated as his lead grew on the way to a resounding victory in late October. That month, according to Arpen, the national association of notaries, there were 831 same-sex marriages in Brazil, 54% more than in October 2017. The year-to-year November total jumped 66% to 986. Gay rights supporters from businesses that rely on weddings including disc jockeys, photographers and bakers have begun offering their services for free to same-sex couples who get married before Bolsonaro takes office. This campaign is to show our solidarity, says Rossanna Pinheiro, who owns Riot Karaoke in Rio de Janeiro and started the Facebook page Casamento LGBT, where merchants from around the country volunteer their services. These people are feeling embraced and will have the opportunity to have a celebration they otherwise wouldnt have been able to afford. Bolsonaro, a former army captain and longtime congressman, has made no secret of his longtime disdain for gay people. Stefany Daltro, 25, center, waits at the notarys office for her marriage authorization. (Gui Christ / For The Times) Back in 2002, after seeing a photo of the Brazilian president holding a rainbow flag at an event in support of gay marriage, Bolsonaro issued this threat: I wont fight against it or discriminate, but if I see two men kissing each other on the street, Ill beat them up. In a 2011 interview with Brazils edition of Playboy magazine, he said he would make no exceptions for family. I would not be able to love a homosexual son. Im not going to be a hypocrite here, he said. Id rather have a son of mine die in an accident than show up with someone with a mustache. To me he would be dead anyway. Bolsonaro also told the interviewer: If a homosexual comes and lives next door to me, it will devalue my house! If they walk hand in hand and kiss, it will lose its value. During the campaign, Bolsonaro did not make same-sex marriage an issue. But his views are widely known, based on a history of statements expressing outrage over Brazils marriage laws and arguing that gay couples have ruined the traditional family. They dont want equality, he said in 2013. They want privileges. A child adopted by a gay couple has a 90% chance of being gay too, he continued, with no evidence to support that claim. Do you think Im going to let my 6-year-old son play with another 6-year-old boy adopted by a gay couple? I wont let him! The law is not going to make my way of thinking any different. Bolsonaro and his team did not respond to requests for comment about his intentions. The big question for same-sex couples may not be whether he wants to undo their ability to marry but whether politics and the law would allow him to do so. Experts say its highly unlikely, but still possible. The legality of same-sex marriage rests on two decisions. In 2011, the Supreme Court changed the countrys civil code to give same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples when it came to recognition of common-law relationships. Then, two years later, the National Justice Council, a public institution that promotes transparency and can issue legal opinions, affirmed that those rights included the ability to convert common-law relationships to marriages. Those decisions cannot simply be overturned by presidential decree. Same-sex marriage could be banned only if Congress passed a law and the Supreme Court upheld it. None of that could happen quickly. But Renata Carraro, a law professor at Faculdades Rio Branco, said there are no guarantees, given the current political climate: The fear that the right to same-sex marriage in Brazil could be reversed during Jair Bolsonaros government is, in my point of view, very justified. Things had been moving in the other direction, as a bill to legalize same-sex marriage by removing any mention of gender in the marriage code had been under consideration by the Senate. But that effort now appears dead. When the new Congress takes office next month, it will shift decidedly to the right, with the number of seats held by Bolsonaros Social Liberal Party jumping from eight to 52. Only the leftist Workers Party, with a total of 56 seats, will have more. The election and the legal precariousness of same-sex marriage were ample reason for Aline Ferreira, a 28-year-old screenwriter, and Michelle Avila, a 29-year-old physiotherapist, to decide to get married. Their wedding in Sao Paulo was scheduled for Saturday. The two have been together for 12 years and had no plans to get married. After Bolsonaro was elected I started doing some research into same-sex marriage and found out that there isnt an actual law in place to guarantee us that right, Ferreira said. Without that law, our right could be revoked. Thats when I realized there was this threat, and that the time to get married was in these last two months of the year. The same day they marry, 100 same-sex couples were set to exchange vows in a group wedding in Sao Paulo organized by the LGBTQ group Casa 1. For their nuptials, Daltro and Silva and several friends crammed into a windowless room in the back of the notary. The rush meant just one relative Daltros sister could make it. But in other ways, it was a traditional wedding. The two women, both teachers, exchanged vows and rings and wore white. We used to be more worried about how we felt about marriage, about what some of our family members would think about our relationship, said Daltro, 25. But now were more worried about our rights. Langlois is a special correspondent. Police in Jiangsu Province announced on Tuesday that they have arrested a 13-year-old boy for allegedly killing his mother. According to a police statement, the body of the boy's 37-year-old mother surnamed Yang was found at her home in Yancheng City on Monday morning. Police believe the 13-year-old killed his mother during a fight on Saturday night. Their investigation is ongoing. Beijing Youth Daily reported claims by neighbours that the boy had a strict upbringing. Under China's current laws, a juvenile under the age of 14 cannot be held criminally liable. There has been ongoing debate on social media in China about whether this is appropriate, following several high-profile cases where juveniles have killed people. The Social Development Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress said it is working on a draft revision to the Law on the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency and plans to produce a draft within the year. A special department was set up by the Supreme People's Procuratorate to deal with cases involving minors last year. President Muhammadu Buhari has received yet another congratulatory message over his victory in the presidential elections held across the nation on Saturday, February 23. Presidential spokesmen Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu announced the arrival of the new message in a statement on Saturday, March 2. The statement read in full: READ ALSO: Akpabio: Court stops INEC from issuing certificate to PDP's Ekpeyong "President Paul Biya of Cameroon has felicitated with President Muhammadu Buhari on his re-election, wishing the Nigerian leader every success as he serves a new term. "In a congratulatory message, President Biya said: On the occasion of your re-election to the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as declared by the Electoral Commission of your country, I am very pleased to extend to you my sincere and warm congratulations. "Recounting the excellent relations between the two countries, President Biya said, I am already looking forward to working more closely with you to the continued promotion of the excellent relations of friendship and cooperation between Nigeria and Cameroon and to meeting together the major challenges of our two countries, especially those related to stability and security. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda Legit.ng reported earlier that former military president of Nigeria, retired General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (IBB) congratulated President Buhari on his re-election for the next four years. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android and read best news on Nigerias #1 news app IBB also praised the main challenger Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party for behaving in a respectable manner throughout the electoral process IBB issued a statement in Minna, the Niger state capital to convey his congratulations to Buhari. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have updated to serve you better INEC announces Buhari as 2019 election winner, Nigerians react - on Legit TV Source: Legit Nigeria - The contract for remediation of five more lots for the Ogoni cleanup was approved on Wednesday, March 20, by the federal government - The minister of environment, Suleiman Hassan, revealed that the contract was fixed at N3.039 billion - The decision was reached at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting held in Abuja on Wednesday The minister of environment, Suleiman Hassan, after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting on Wednesday, March 20, revealed that President Muhammadu Buhari approved the contract for remediation of five more lots for the Ogoni cleanup in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Speaking with newsmen in Abuja, Hassan said that the contract was fixed at N3.039bn, adding that with it, not less than 21 lots have been approved for the exercise, Daily Trust reports. READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda The minister said: Work is in progress in the 16 lots previously approved. We have made appreciable progress. Today (yesterday) we have now awarded contract for five more lots. The contractors will be mobilised as soon as possible. Also, the federal government has approved the contract for the building of the faculty of Arts of the Adamawa state University. Revealing this to newsmen on Wednesday, Adamu Adamu, the minister of education, said the contract was awarded through the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). PAY ATTENTION: Get the Latest Nigerian News Anywhere 24/7. Spend less on the Internet! Adamu added that the contract has been awarded to Spectrum Engineering Limited at N613m; going forward, the minister said that the presidency has formally signed the Safe Schools declaration to make Nigeria focused on implementing the guideline. Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that the federal government on Monday, October 8, revealed that it had raised the sum of $177m out of the $1bn needed for the cleanup of Ogoni land in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It said that refineries of crude oil were expected to raise the balance, adding that the $1bn was to be raised over a period of five years. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng: Same great journalism, upgraded for better service! EXCLUSIVE: Be patient with President Buhari, Femi Adesina tells Nigerians | Legit TV Source: Legit - Secretary of Uzo-Uwani local government area of Enugu state has been shot dead by suspected herdsmen - The suspected herdsmen reportedly attacked his vehicle on his way back from a peace meeting - Ogueche was said to have jumped out of the vehicle and ran into the bush for safety but the assailants allegedly pursued and shot him dead Suspected herdsmen have allegedly shot dead Nnamdi Ogueche, secretary of Uzo-Uwani local government area of Enugu state. This incident was reported to have occurred along Olo town in Ezeagu local government area of the state on Wednesday, March 20. Ogueche was said to be returning from a peace meeting between communities and the herdsmen terrorising parts of Uzo-Uwani local government area when the herdsmen allegedly ambushed his vehicle and shot him dead, Vanguard reports. READ ALSO: Atiku releases his own state by state result of presidential election (Full Report) He was said to be in the company of three others when the suspected herdsmen attacked their vehicle. According to the report, he jumped out of the vehicle and ran into the bush for safety along with the other occupants. However, the assailants allegedly pursued and shot him dead. Chairman of Uzo-Uwani local government area, Fidelis Ani, who reportedly confirmed the killing said he was killed along Olo community road. PAY ATTENTION: Install our latest app for Android, read best news on Nigerias #1 news app Meanwhile, Legit.ng had reported that the Edo command of the Nigerian Police Force confirmed the rescue of Enogie Godwin Aigbe, the abducted monarch of Ukhiri community, Ikpoba-Okha local government area of the state. DSP Chidi Nwabuzor, the commands public relations officer, confirmed the development in Benin on Thursday, March 21. Legit.ng gathered that Nwabuzor said that the monarch was rescued by officers of the Anti- kidnapping and Cybercrime Unit of the command, led by SP Balogun Richard, who acted on an intelligence report. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng: Same great journalism, upgraded for better service! Nigerians speak angrily about alleged kidnappers caught in Lagos - on Legit TV: Source: Legit - The Ohanaeze Ndigbo says it would investigate ownership of all oil blocks in Niger Delta area of the country - According to the group, this will be done to ensure fair distribution to all parts of the country - On the issue of leadership of the National Assembly, Ohanaeze said what Ndigbo needed most is restructuring of Nigeria and not who occupies leadership positions in NASS The Ohanaeze Ndigbo has revealed its intention to investigate the ownership of all oil blocks in Niger Delta. In a statement by the deputy publicity secretary of the group, Chuks Ibegbu, the apex pan Igbo organisation said the investigation will be done to ensure that no part of the country dominates the sector. READ ALSO: Atiku releases his own state by state result of presidential election (Full Report) It said it would also collect data on all positions and their distributions in all federal ministries, agencies and parastatals with a view to ensuring fair distribution to all parts of the country, The Nation reports. Going further, Ohanaeze advised the Federal Character Commission to ensure fair representation of all sections of the country in the countrys commonwealth without sacrificing merit. On the issue of Senate presidency or speakership of the National assembly, the group said what Ndigbo needed most is restructuring of Nigeria and not who occupies what position. We are not much interested in positions now but what our people, the common Igbo masses will benefit from the country in its entirety," the group insisted. PAY ATTENTION: Download our mobile app to enjoy the latest news update Earlier report had it that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has been under pressure from politicians and lawmakers from the northeast and north central geopolitical zones to allow them decide on who becomes the Senate president for the ninth assembly. Legit.ng had reported that some very popular APC senators-elects and some former governors are also pushing for the seat and other positions to be zoned to their areas. It was also gathered that the current Senate President Saraki and Speaker Dogara are also reportedly pushing to install those who will fill their seats when they are gone. NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng: Same great journalism, upgraded for better service! 2019 Election: Atiku heads to court to contest election result, can he win? | Legit TV. Source: Legit A Northampton County woman, allegedly killed by her son, was left bruised and bloody after a brutal beating and being stabbed twice, the county coroner testified. Philip Looby, of the 1000 block of East Fourth Street in Bethlehem, was in court Thursday morning for his preliminary hearing on a single homicide charge in the killing of his mother, Maryanne Looby. He has claimed it was self defense. Following the hearing, where three witnesses testified, the homicide charge against Looby was sent to Northampton County Court, where he faces possible trial. Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek testified Thursday about Maryanne Loobys extensive injuries and the blood-soaked scene in which she was found. Lysek said there was a considerable amount of blood underneath Maryanne Loobys body, as well as blood spatter on her and in the room. The victim had extensive wounds to her upper body, including cuts on her scalp and defensive wounds on her hands and wrists that she sustained during the beating, Lysek testified. Two stab wounds were found on her abdomen, but they were nonfatal injuries, he added. A bloody candlestick was found near the body, and a bloody box cutter-style knife found in the master bedroom, Lysek said. Maryanne Looby died from blunt force trauma to her head, and the candlestick played a role in her death, the coroner testified. A crowd of family members were in court for Thursdays hearing and sat behind prosecutors. One of them crossed himself during the graphic descriptions of Maryanne Loobys injuries. Lysek said he it waiting on additional testing, but he believes Maryanne Looby was killed the night of Feb. 3. Authorities said police were called the morning of Feb. 4 for a welfare check on Maryanne Lobby; a friend had called Bethlehem 911 and reported Philip Looby said he killed his mother. Philip Looby answered the door at his mothers home at 1997 West Point Drive with blood-stained hands, and told police officers they were not going to like what they found, investigators previously said. Officers found Maryanne Looby dead on the first floor, with what the Northampton County coroner said were sharp and blunt force injuries, including what appeared to be defensive wounds on her hands and forearms. There was blood and bloody footprints on the floor, and Looby had blood on his hands, feet and clothing, police said. The 49-year-old Looby reportedly told officers his mother came after him with a hobby knife and he defended himself. Philip Loobys friend and former brother-in-law testified on Thursday he was the second person Looby called that morning. The first person Looby called didnt want to talk to him and hung up. Paul Mclaine said Philip called him at about 8:45 a.m. and said he had something big to tell him. He thought he had killed his mother, Mclaine testified. He had picked up something and struck her in self defense in ongoing fight. Looby went on to say his mother came at him with a knife, and had bitten his hands during the altercation, Mclaine said. Looby reportedly said he had checked his mother for a pulse and couldnt find one, but wasnt sure she was dead. He was very upset about it and was planning to go to basement to hang himself with an electric cord, Mclaine said. Police said they found numerous pink pills in Loobys pockets, which he said were Valium. Mclaine, who was in New Jersey, testified he told Looby he couldnt help him, ended the call and called 911. Lower Saucon police officer Keith Bredbenner was dispatched with a second officer to the home. Bredbenner testified he knocked on the front door, and saw Looby talking on a cellphone as he came down from the second floor. Looby came out and Bredbenner said he had to do a double take because Loobys hands appeared purple. After getting a better look, Bredbenner said he realized the hands were discolored from what appeared to be dried blood. Looby came out on the front porch and initially tried to close the front door behind him. He reportedly told the officer his mother was inside, sleeping. Bredbenner said he then went inside the house, and Looby told him Youre not going to like what you find in there. The officer found Maryanne Loobys body and the bloody scene on the homes first floor. Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter@SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A flood watch will be in place from 8 a.m. Thursday until well into the night as up to three inches of rain is expected in the next 24 hours in the Lehigh Valley and northwest New Jersey, according to the National Weather Service. Bands of moderate to locally heavy rain will develop across the region today and continue through tonight, the weather services office in Mount Holly, New Jersey, forecasts. In areas of heaviest rainfall, urban and poor-drainage flooding may occur. A low pressure area over the Great Lakes will move into the Ohio Valley and merge with a developing low in off the East Coast, the weather service said. The low will intensify as it moves toward the Delaware coastline by evening, the weather service said. Onshore flow across the region ahead of the developing low will usher abundant low level moisture into the region, the weather service said. Bands of light rain in the morning will become heavier as the low organizes and lifts to the north, the weather service said. ... Flooding may be possible by this afternoon. As the low continues its march north -- it should by Friday morning be south of Long Island -- the heaviest rain will continue for the northern half of the forecast area. EPAWA Weather Consulting meteorologist Bobby Martrich said in his daily video forecast that rainfall totals should be limited to about an inch, with maybe an inch and a half at the edge of the mountains to the west. East/southeast winds are expected to shift as the low heads away but drier air may be delayed in arriving, causing fog overnight, the weather service said. Some snow could fall far to the north in Pennsylvania, but not much is expected to stick, Martrich said. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Chinese scientists developed robotic system inspired by a colony of ants that can collectively achieve complex tasks like gathering large prey. The study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics described the nanorobots fleet that have demonstrated potential for in-body diagnosis and treatment at the cellular or even molecular level. Xie Hui, a professor of Harbin Institute of Technology, who led the study, told Xinhua that a single robot is two micrometers in its diameter, 40 times smaller than a hair, thus capable of running through blood capillaries. The peanut-shaped iron microrobots can be energized by an alternating magnetic field, offering high flexibility to collectively perform multiple tasks in a confined environment, according to the study. By tuning the frequency of the rotating magnetic field and its polarization in three-dimensional space, the researchers obtained a series of well-controlled, fast, and reversible transformations, Xie said. Those formations include liquid, chain, vortex and ribbon. They can form narrow paths or channels to deliver heavy loads beyond a single robot's capability. Xie said the robotic swarm might be used to identify and attack pathological cells or even stay inside the body for health monitoring in the future, providing a new tool for early-stage detection and treatment. UPDATE: Palmer Township police explain how officer-involved crash occurred A Palmer Township police officer suffered minor injuries Wednesday night when the patrol vehicle he was driving collided with a Hyundai Elantra at Nazareth and Kingston roads, a news release says. The crash was reported at 9:14 p.m., records show. There is a traffic light at the intersection. The officer, who police did not immediately name, was on patrol in the SUV at the time of the wreck and was not responding to an incident, police said. The officer was treated at an area hospital and released, police said. The driver of the the Hyundai, who also wasnt named, wasnt hurt, police said. The police officer was driving west on Kingston and the Hyundai was headed north of Nazareth Road/Route 248, police said. Preliminary witness statements indicated the officer had the green light but that remains under investigation, police said. A Hyundai Elantra sustained front-end damage just after 9 p.m. March 20, 2019, in a crash with a Palmer Township police vehicle at Nazareth Road and Kingston Road, police say. The police vehicle sustained minor damage to the rear corner and tire, police say. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) Both vehicles were towed, police said. The investigation is continuing and witnesses are being interviewed, police said. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. This is in response to former Democrat Lt. Gov. Mark Singels column (Toomey, others in GOP put country before party.) Not true! This latest ploy by Congress was a continuation, since day one, of Trumps victory as president elect. Trump is overshadowed by congressional rage preventing a standing president to carry out his emergency declaration. The Senate passed a majority approved bill including 12 Republican defectors forcing Trumps veto. But this had nothing to do with these defectors defending the Constitution, as Singel claims. Instead, it has everything to do with obstruction of justice on the part of Congress, now preparing to override this veto. Trump has legal rights by the National Emergencies Act of Sept. 14, 1976, because our southern border is being invaded by caravans of law-breaking immigrants. Singel wrongly states illegals that drugs and human trafficking are not curbed by wall barriers, but are smuggled through our legal ports of entry. That being the case, are our 59,000 agents with support staff totally useless? I refuse to believe that. I do believe this childish Congress will continue to breach the rules of the Constitution that they pledged to protect. If these past two years are a reflection of the congressional crime of obstruction of justice through the next six years, then the biblical absolute, What you sow, you reap, will reign. Toomey and others did not do the right thing to support president Trump and the voters are fully aware. Philip H. Beach, Sr. Easton The reality of Brexit has led to the booking out of an event in Portlaoise this week to help business prepare for the change. The workshop, entitled 'Prepare Your Business for Customs', was hosted by the Laois Local Enterprise Office. It was billed as a way to help companies who will move goods to, from or through the UK after Brexit. The free one-day interactive event was designed to help companies when the UK leaves the Customs Union and Single Market, it will become a Third Country for customs purposes. Laois LEO says the aim is to help entrepreneurs to learn about the potential impacts, formalities and procedures firms will need to adopt when trading with a country which is outside the Single Market. It was open to businesses from all sectors, and covered areas such as what export and import procedures apply, how tariffs work and how to correctly classify goods. The event took place on March 21 in the Killeshin Hotel. Laois LEO says there is a waiting list for to get space and another event will be organised if there is sufficient demand. To register in the event of another event email sdoran_leo@laoiscoco.ie Meanwhile, another Brexit event in Portlaoise should be of interest for business people and members of the public who want to be more informed about what happens. Ireland, the EU and Brexit is the name of a talk to be delivered by Daniel Keohane, Head of Policy and Advocacy at European Movement Ireland at Portlaoise Library to discuss Brexit and the impact on both Ireland and the EU. This talk is taking place on Tuesday, April 9 from 7.30pm at Portlaoise Library. Booking is advised. To contact the library call 057 8622333 or you book your place by email: laoislibrary@laoiscoco.ie The event is free of charge and all are welcome to join. A new Government plan will help consolidate economic gains, according to Laois/Offaly TD and Minister for Justice & Equality, Charlie Flanagan. The Laois TD has also taken the opportunity to emphasise that jobs need to be brought to locations were people live. The Government says Future Jobs Ireland 2019, is the first in a series of annual reports as part of a multi-annual framework. Future Jobs Ireland outlines longer-term ambitions for the future of the economy out until 2025 taking account of the challenges ahead. The aim is that, each year, Future Jobs Ireland will set out the steps to deliver on the ambitions with the ultimate goal of increasing the resilience of economy and future-proofing it. Future Jobs Ireland is a new whole-of Government plan to secure Irelands economic success. It complements Project Ireland 2040 and Global Ireland 2025 as whole-of-Government strategies charting an ambitious course for Irelands future development, said the Laois TD. Future Jobs Ireland is about supporting business but also investing in the development of people. The world of work is changing. Advancing technology means society is always on. I have often said we need to bring jobs to our people not people to jobs. It is important that businesses consider new ways of attracting talent through remote and flexible working options: In doing so, people living in rural areas in County Laois can work for larger multi-national companies without having to commute to larger cities or urban areas, he said. Minister Flanagan said the latest CSO figures show that numbers on the live register in Laois havefell by 17.7% in the last year. He claimed that since the Action Plan for Jobs was launched in 2012 there has been a 54.3% decrease. He said more than 154,000 jobs have now been created since the Government was formed in 2016. Minister Flanagan said his party's deliver would continue. Fine Gael in Government is ambitious to build upon the gains we have made in recent years and to ensure our people enjoy higher standards of living and quality of life now, and into the future, he said. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider subscribing to our ePaper and/or free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. A total of 27 schools in Kildare are completing their projects for the Junior Entrepreneur Programme. The free nationwide programme gives children between the ages of 11 and 12 years of age, a real insight to the business world, by enabling them to convert their commercial ideas into real business opportunities, complete with management teams, sales and especially the thrill of running a successful and profitable business. The Kildare schools join more than 600 schools throughout the country who have signed up for the programme which was co-founded by Tweak.com founder and entrepreneur CEO Jerry Kennelly. The 14-week programme is led by Jerry Kennelly and supported by successful entrepreneurs across Ireland, including Sam McAuley, founder, McAuley Chemists, Frank Salmon (CMS Periperals), Peter Cosgrove, (ATA) and John Purdy (Ergo) among others. Over the last 9 years, 67,000 national school pupils have already benefited from the programme. All too often entrepreneurship programmes target transition year students at second level, but by then many career decisions and subject choices have already been made. The ideal time to open young minds to the thrill of business is at primary education level, when they are at their most creative and uninhibited in their approach to business ideas and solutions said Jerry Kennelly. The JEP programme is aligned with the primary school curriculum with JEP participants developing skills and confidence in presentation, drawing, technology, research, numeracy as well as problem solving, collaboration and brand awareness. A classroom and teacher kit is provided to schools free of charge, which includes the JEP Teachers Guide, posters, a school flag, pupil workbooks and classroom display. National school is the ideal time to introduce children to the world of entrepreneurship young children are creative and curious by nature, and these are just two of the skills required to be successful in business. Through JEP, we want to show kids just how much fun creating, working and succeeding in business can be he added. JEP is described as a great opportunity for all school children. There is no cost to the schools and the benefits are enormous. It has been proven that pupils who participate in entrepreneurship programmes demonstrate increased initiative and self-confidence. Fostering a love for business and a culture of entrepreneurship in children will not only provide opportunities in the future, but will also support job creation and economic development in Ireland. Schools who participate in the programme are invited to exhibit at the JEP All Ireland Showcase event, now in its second year at the RDS in Dublin on May 20, 2019. More than 5,000 children are due to participate. JEP is available free for parents, children and schools and features visits by local entrepreneurs to the classroom in each region. Learn more at juniorentrepreneur.ie Earlier today students from Patrician Secondary School, Newbridge and Maynooth Educate Together joined over 100 students from Leinster primary schools to participate in a Green-Schools/Irish Water Walk for Water event in Glendalough to mark World Water Day 2019. The students walked six kilometres carrying six litres of water to highlight water scarcity and experience the journey travelled every day by women and children to access clean water in affected countries. The theme for World Water Day 2019 is Leaving no one behind. This is an adaptation of the central promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: as sustainable development progresses, everyone must benefit. Today in Glendalough students learned about how important access to clean water is and what actions they can take to help ensure a clean water supply is available globally. Green-Schools Manager, Cathy Baxter, highlighted the importance of the event: This is our seventh year holding Walk for Water events to celebrate World Water Day. Each year we can see the difference the experience makes for the attending students; they go home with a greater awareness of what water scarcity is, how important conservation and sustainable development has become and, of course, with a greater appreciation for the beautiful surrounds of places like Glendalough. The event today is a key part of the Water theme of the Green-Schools programme, which is supported by Irish Water. The students from schools in Carlow, Dublin, Kildare, Wexford and Wicklow carried their water along a route to the Poulanass Waterfall and Lugduff Valley. For the next part of the walk the students climbed the steep steps of the boardwalk along the cliff of the Spinc. The Walk for Water is described as a creative way for the students to understand that clean water is a precious resource and that all need to take action to conserve it. Kildare had more planning permissions granted for houses and apartments than any other local authority area in Ireland last year, according to new planning permission figures for 2018 from the Central Statistics Office. There was permission granted for 3,225 residences, of which 67% were in multi-house groups, 27% in apartments and 6% one off houses. The equivalent figures for Meath, where 67% were multi-house permissions, and Wicklow were, 1,576 and 794, respectively. Permission was granted for a total of 1,990 homes in South Dublin and 1,866 in Fingal. In Dublin city it was 2,964 and 2,337 in Dublin city. Apart from Dublin hardly any county had a lower number of one off houses, with permission granted for 189 in the county Kildare. SEE ALSO: Naas residents seek junction box at estate entrance While there were 9,157 permissions granted in the Dublin councils in total, Kildare, with 3,225 was the top local authority. In Dublin city, 82% of the units granted permission were for apartments, compared to 40% for Louth, 37% for Kildares neighbour, Fingal and Galway city, 32%. In Meath and Wicklow, the apartment proportions were 12% and 14% respectively. Over the past three months the West Wicklow Youth Project worker and community artist Annette Woolley has worked with three groups of young people aged 12-21 from the towns of Baltinglass, Dunlavin and Blessington (Screaming Eagles, West Wicklow Whatchamacallits and Baltinglass Seniors). They had all expressed an interest in learning about the arts as well as building positive community relations. The creative process involved an introduction to art theory and practice, National Gallery of Ireland workshop, community mapping, interviews, photo shoots and the production of three large scale mixed media collaborative art pieces plus some smaller individual works. This is now culminating in a temporary exhibition at Russborough from March 30 until April 6. The artistic expressions reflect on the people and places past and present from the historical architecture to more recent sporting achievements, the spirit of volunteerism and entrepreneurship, culture and tourism through to the sense of pride and belonging associated with living and working on the west side of the Wicklow Mountains. For example the Baltinglass piece represents the abbey, the ancient hilltop burial grounds, Jenny Wise Power, Michael Dwyer, the Dice Man, Rosie and Margaret community volunteers, the choir, badminton players and Gaa champions to the local Turkish barber and the list goes on. Blessingtons exhibit includes the tidy towns, taekwondo, blacksmiths, butchers, bird of prey enthusiasts to young musicians, skater boys and the lifeboat rescue team alongside trams, churches and monuments. Dunlavins piece of art expresses representations of the people who make their village what it is - welcoming and friendly from the green grocer and the local garda to the librarian, scout master and coder dojo volunteers to the Dunlavin dairy. It features the religious life, historical links and culture. "We would like to thank Cruthu arts group for generously providing their gallery space until the art works can be displayed permanently in their own respective communities such as the tearooms in Baltinglass. And also the National Gallery of Ireland for providing a free workshop and tour," said the project. The West Wicklow Youth Project is managed by Kildare Youth Service and funded by the KWETB and DCYA under the Value for Money Scheme. It works with young people identified as needing extra support in fulfilling their potential and bettering their lives by providing one to one, group work, detached service, counselling and offer a range of programmes and activities that are designed to improve their wellbeing. Tsering Qoixi, a Qamdo Experimental Primary School teacher who was a student at the school from 1988 to 1994, believes tremendous changes have taken place at the school over the past decades. Tsering Qoixi said in an exclusive interview with China.org.cn on Tuesday, "When I was studying at the school, there were about 80 teachers and only one teaching building. Now, the school covers an area of 15,268 square meters and has nearly 150 teachers, some of whom hold postgraduate degrees." The school curriculum has expanded from Tibetan, math, and Mandarin to include all subjects required by the Ministry of Education, she added. The primary school is located in the downtown area of Qamdo, a city in the east of China's Tibet Autonomous Region. The school dates back to 1951 and is the first modern school founded by the Communist Party of China in Tibet. Headmaster Wu Xiaolong said that in the early days of the school, around 60 students were studying in shabby classrooms, but now it accommodates more than 2,200 students. The classrooms are now well equipped with electronic whiteboards and multimedia teaching machines. The school also established a digital classroom called "Future Classroom" in 2016, where four big TV screens replace a blackboard and students use laptops to interact with their teachers, Wu said. While promoting the application of information technology, the school also tries to preserve the local dialects and culture. "Apart from the Tibetan class, we hold various activities, such as speech and reading contests to improve the students' language proficiency," said Tsering Qoixi. She said that Xianzi, a style of traditional Tibetan dance which was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage in 2006, has been adapted and incorporated into the school exercise routine. After graduating from the school, Tsering Qoixi got a chance to study at Minzu College affiliated with Hebei Normal University. The Chinese central government initiated the program in 1985, which enables excellent primary school graduates in Tibet to continue their studies in inland regions of the country. When asked about the major differences between the education in Tibet and other parts of the country, she said most of the students are children of farmers and herdsmen who have received little education, so teachers in Tibet need to put more effort into preview and review of their lessons. "After seeing how education has changed the lives of many people and families, local parents are becoming more eager to send their children to schools than ever before," Tsering Qoixi said. Headmaster Wu, who has been working in Qamdo for 23 years, also said that local people's attitude towards education had changed tremendously. "In the past, schooling for children had to be ensured by administrative means, but in recent years, local parents queue for enrollment into our school, with the aspiration that their children can enjoy quality educational resources and become competent to study in more developed regions," Wu said. He attributed the substantial benefits to education and supporting policies introduced by the central government, saying that Tibetan farmers and herdsmen don't need to pay for the food, accommodation, and tuitions fees of their children in schools. In April 2016, China started another program to improve the quality of education in the region by dispatching teachers from developed regions to Tibet. By the end of 2017, about 5,400 teachers from 17 provinces or municipalities were allocated to 74 counties or districts in Tibet. Leitrim's Teapot Lane has secured a prestigious place on the Fab 50 - Irish Independent's 50 top places to stay in Ireland in 2019. The glamping village located on the Leitrim-Sligo border includes a treehouse, yurts, a caravan and a cottage as alternative places to lay your head. The beautiful vintage glamp site has been attracting attention for years and rightly deserves it's place on the list. However we were confused at first when there were no places listed under Co Leitrim at first glance. Teapot Lane is attributed to Co Sligo. Owner Kevin Haughesy clarified: We are definitely in Leitrim and proud of it, right on the Sligo-Leitrim border but according to An Post our postal address is as they reported Teapot Lane Glamping, Castlegal, Co. Sligo. He went on to say Sligo and Leitrim are both beautiful counties so we don't mind. Leitrim named in top scenic drives The scenic surrounds of north Leitrim recently scored a mention as part of the country's Top 10 scenic drives. The Yeats Country Drive was named as the best scenic roadtrip by Irish Independent columnist, Pol O Conghaile. The drive starts in Manorhamilton heading to the picturesque Glencar Waterfall before entering county Sligo. Mr O Conghaile praised the geographic-standard views of this fabulous drive - certainly one of our hidden gems. Also read: New holiday village in Manorhamilton attracting attention Three and a half million litres of water per week is the amount of water that has already been saved as a result of the leakage reduction programme works carried out by Irish Water, working in partnership with Leitrim County Council in Carrick-on-Shannon in a bid to improve water security, and reduce leakage. This positive news comes as Irish Water is set to commence a separate programme of works in St Patricks Park, Carrick-on-Shannon where 170 meters of new water main, and 780 metres of ageing and problematic backyard water mains with lead service connections will be decommissioned. These works will ensure a more secure water supply, improved water quality for residents in this area, and a reduction in the high level of leakage in the area. Irish Water held an information evening for the local community and elected representatives last November to inform them of the benefits of the project. The works have now commenced on site and will continue into June. Declan Cawley Irish Water commented: We would like to thank residents who have engaged with us on this important project, and on the other leakage reduction works in Carrick on Shannon. These works will have lasting benefits for the local community for years to come. The works in Saint Patricks Park are being carried out by Farrans Construction in partnership with Leitrim County Council on behalf of Irish Water. The leakage reduction programme will continue over the coming months. To date, in Carrick-on-Shannon 77 leaks have been repaired resulting in water savings equivalent to the daily usage of over 3,800 people. Some of the work has been undertaken at night time to reduce disruption to customers. These works on the South Leitrim Regional Water Supply are part of Irish Waters 500 million National Leakage Reduction Programme. This four year programme will assist to reduce the high level of leakage across the country by finding and fixing leaks or replacing ageing and problematic water pipes. The works were completed by Leitrim County Council and Farrans Construction Limited. Further information on Irish Waters Leakage Reduction Programme is available at www.water.ie Also read: Go at your own pace as you cruise Leitrim's waterways METROPOLITAN mayor Daniel Butler has welcomed a move by a local firm to donate a defibrillator to the Mungret playpark. Dock Road company Fleming Medical recently donated a cardiac science power heart. Its the only defibrillator on the market which provides customised shocks tailored to each patient needs to both include adults and children. It also provides faster shock times and real-time CPR feedback with a unique CPR Device that instructs the correct pressure to be applied when performing CPR. Cllr Butler said he went about trying to source a defibrillator after a recent park run in the area, for which he was a volunteer. The core directors led admirably by Tonya O'Neill brought up the need for a defibrillator for the parkrun. So I committed to try and explore it but also looking at locating in the park permanently for all the park users, he explained. Mark Fleming, who founded Fleming Medical 30 years ago, said: We are delighted to donate the Powerheart G5 to Mungret Park and Playground, this amazing facility is a fantastic example of a community coming together to promote exercise and healthy living for both adults and children. Cllr Butler added: The donation is a fantastic resource for the both young and not so young who use the Mungret Park and Playground on a regular basis knowing that there is a defibrillator close to hand provides great reassurance for those who use the park, I would like to thank Mark Fleming for his generous donation. This has helped me a achieve huge priority for me a local representative. AN alcoholic who took a bottle of wine from a Limerick store before fleeing on a stolen bicycle has been fined 300. Martin ODonnell, 35, of Derrynane, Old Cork Road, Limerick pleaded guilty to a theft charge as well as a charge under the Road Traffic Act relating to the bicycle. Sergeant Sean Murray told Limerick District Court both charges related to a series of events which happened shortly before 10am on April 5, 2018. He said gardai who were alerted to the theft of a bottle of wine, worth 7, from Tesco at Roxboro Road encountered the defendant on the stolen bicycle a short time later. He was on the bike which was recovered. The wine was not (recovered), he said. Solicitor Tom Kiely said his client, who is currently serving a lengthy prison sentence for a separate robbery offence, is an alcoholic and was inebriated at the time. He said the theft of the bicycle from outside a filling station was opportunistic and was not planned. He saw an unlocked bicycle and decided to take it. It was not damaged, he said. Judge Mary Larkin imposed fines totalling 300 with a default penalty of two days imprisonment. ONLY two months ago, 18-year-old Damien Carmody gave a moving eulogy at the funeral Mass of his beloved grandfather, Mikey Moloney. Tragically the Montpelier teenager was laid to rest beside his beloved grandad in OBriens Bridge cemetery on Monday afternoon following Mass in Castleconnell church. The son of loving parents, Shirley and Ger, passed away peacefully at home last Thursday. Damien was a regular reader at Mass and his younger brother Dylan bravely served at the requiem Mass. His sister Clodagh paid a lovely tribute to Damien in the presentation of the symbols representing his life, and also gave a reflection after communion. In his homily, Fr Willie Teehan, parish priest of Castleconnell, touched on the many strands of Damiens life that made him such a popular young man. He was a very bright student both in Castleconnell NS and in St Marys Secondary School in Newport. He had a very bright future ahead of him. He was loved by his teachers and his many friends. There was a great crowd of his friends in the church, where they gave a guard of honour, and in the graveyard. They were very loyal to him. A friend paid a lovely tribute to him at the end of the Mass, said Fr Teehan, who described it as a very respectful and very dignified Mass. The church was full to capacity. I think that was a great tribute to him and his family, said Fr Teehan. The gifts to the altar reflected the passions of Damiens life Limerick hurling, photography, music, his friends and family. He went anywhere and everywhere with his friends. He got a lot into his 18 years, said Fr Teehan sadly. In the days before his death Damien was looking forward to going to a friends 18th birthday party. On the Limerick Leader Facebook page, Rachel whose birthday it was, emotionally wrote, Rest in peace, Damien. You will never be forgotten. Weve been friends for the last 16 years and you were so looking forward to my 18th. Life will never be the same again. You always had a smile on your face no matter what. You were a true gentleman. Sleep tight angel. Love and miss you, said Rachel. Damiens father, Ger, is chairman of St Flannans Fishing Club. Charlie Lyons, vice-chairman, said Damien has gone fishing many times with his father. It is very hard to take. He was a quiet, pleasant, just a lovely young fellow. He didnt drink, he didnt smoke and was very popular. It is very sad for the whole family and all his friends, said Charlie, who on behalf of the club expressed their deepest sympathies to the Carmody family. Charlie said Damien gave the eulogy at his grandfathers funeral last January. You would be very proud of the way he spoke from the altar. He gave a lovely oration. For a young fellow he was so level headed, so composed and so well spoken. You really knew what his grandfather meant to him. He was a model son. He never put a foot wrong and was never a bother to his parents. It is very sad for the whole family. He had the respect of all of his neighbours, friends and everybody in school, said Charlie. St Marys Secondary School put support structures in place to help students cope with the loss of their friend. Damien had contributed a number of lovely photos to Limerick City Citizens Facebook page. It was created to act as a directory of amazing photos taken by Limerick photographers. One of its members, Fergal Clohessy dedicated a beautiful photo he took of Saturday nights fireworks display to Damien. Fergal said Damien contributed some lovely photos to Limerick City Citizens before his passing. He had a great eye for photography and the ones he took will not only preserve the moment but preserve his memory too. May he rest in peace, said Fergal. Creator of the group, Anthony Heaney has used one of Damiens fabulous aerial photos at the top of the page in memory of the young man. One of the many friends Damien made through Limerick City Citizens was Leah OCarroll. He had his whole live ahead of him after his Leaving Cert. He was passionate about plane spotting in Shannon and he had a love for the Irish Coast Guard. I loved chatting to him every day about planes, said Leah. Damiens spirit has taken wings. May he rest in peace. WITH more than 4m needed to provide vital free support services for cancer patients nationally, the Irish Cancer Society is appealing to the Limerick public to support its volunteers this Daffodil Day. Volunteers are preparing to take to the streets of Limerick this Friday, March 22 to raise vital funds for cancer patients, like Night Nursing which helps families during very difficult times. Last year, terminally ill cancer patients in Limerick received 438 nights of care, allowing them to remain at home during their treatment, according to the Irish Cancer Society. People of Limerick have always been generous in their support of Daffodil Day, Limerick organiser Maura O'Flaherty said. Not only will donations fund services like Night Nursing, but also cancer research to help more people survive cancer, she added. Please help us by volunteering to sell daffodils, or simply by buying a daffodil on March 22, she added. In order to fund life-saving research and to provide the night nursing service and other free supports, the Irish Cancer Society needs to raise over 4m nationally on Daffodil Day this year. Night Nurses create a supportive and calm atmosphere for families during very difficult times, according to Night Nurse manager Mary Ferns. Losing a loved one to cancer is heartbreaking. But Im privileged to hear afterwards from many families what a source of comfort it was to spend those precious final moments at home with their loved one. Daffodil Day pins can be purchased in local Boots Ireland stores or a 1 donation can be added when making a purchase. To get involved in Limerick, contact Lorraine on 087 7936499. For more information visit www.cancer.ie/daffodilday FORMER Newstalk presenter George Hook is to front at an upcoming anti-EU event in Limerick. The Irexit Freedom Party, which advocates for Ireland to leave the European Union, is to host the former Right Hook frontman at a conference to be held in the city next month. News of the Limerick conference comes as Brexit deliberations continue this week; On Wednesday night, a public petition to keep Britain in the EU crashed the UK governments petitions website as it amassed 1,500 signatures per minute. This Thursday, Mr Hook confirmed to the Limerick Leader that he has been asked by the group to give a lecture at the event, which will focus on the politically correct Irish media. George Hook, who retired from Newstalk last December after 16 years with the station, was suspended from the national radio station following his comments about rape in September 2017. The broadcaster drew further criticism in October 2018 following a series of tweets focused on an Irish schoolboy who was facing deportation because of his mothers Chinese nationality. The Irexit Freedom Party has held a series of conferences around the country, seeking support for Ireland to leave the European Union. Last week, the group was accused of sending a fake' election candidate to local papers in Kerry after it emerged that one of its candidates, a 72-year old retired nurse, does not exist. It also emerged that a photograph used of the candidate on the Irexit Freedom Party website was a stock image. The group later said that the profile on its website was created as an internal example and that the press release had been sent to local papers by someone as a political prank. Latest polls indicate wide range support for Ireland to remain in the European Union. A poll carried out by the European Movement in May 2018 found that nine out of ten surveyed believed Ireland should stay in the EU. The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has said that injuries and avoidable accidents that occur on highways are not always due to bad roads as claimed by many Nigerian road users. The Minister stated this when he spoke at a capacity building workshop on the activation of the five United Nations Convention on Road Traffic acceded to by Nigeria in Abuja yesterday March 20th. According to the Minister, over speeding and reckless driving are the main causes of accidents on Nigerian roads. In a statement issued by the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing on Wednesday, the minister noted that injuries and avoidable accidents that occurred daily on highways were regrettable. The statement said Fashola told participants at the workshop that there was no state in Nigeria that the Federal Government was not executing one road project or the other. The Greater Bay Area youth drone competition kicked off on March 13 in Shenzhen's Luohu Foreign Language School with a launch ceremony and a science and technology carnival. Nine cities in Guangdong province will take part in this competition along with participants from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. Wang Dong, an official with the Shenzhen Association for Science and Technology, and Shi Xingzhong, chairman of the Luohu Association for Science and Technology attended the event together with delegations from the nine cities. The competition is co-organized by relevant parties in Guangdong and Hong Kong. Delegations from both places as well as from Macau will take part in it. A qualification trial involving teams from nine cities in Guangdong will be held in Luohu from March to April. The best participants will then proceed to the finals, which will be held in Hong Kong. A total of 192 students from Shenzhen, 48 of whom are from Luohu, applied to take part in the qualification trial in Luohu. The competition consists of three parts that need to be accomplished by drones: shooting video, performing tasks and a science and technology carnival of smart cities . Luohu encourages its young people to take part in different science and technology competitions and its youth have achieved good results in some of these contests. Past competitions included building vehicle models, space flight and aviation models as well as marine models. In the last three years, Luohu won seven gold medals, four silver and six bronze in national youth contests. The drone competition is expected to become a platform for youth exchange and interaction in South China's Greater Bay Area and Luohu will host the finals for next year's competition. A prosecution witness, O. Kennedy, in the on-going trial of a former governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, on Wednesday, March 20, 2019, told Justice Mojisola Olatoregun of the Federal High Court, sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos State how the former governor bought properties in Lagos at the costs of N190m and $175,000, respectively. Fayose, alongside his company, Spotless Investment Limited, was arraigned by EFCC on October 22, 2018, on an 11-count charge bordering on fraud and money laundering. During proceedings, the seventh prosecution witness, (PW7), Kennedy, a lawyer, told the court that he drafted the documents with which Fayose bought a Charlet at No.100 Tiamiyu Savage, Victoria Island, Lagos for N190million and a property worth $175,000 through one Abiodun Agbele and J.J. Technical Limited. Led in evidence by the prosecution counsel, Rotimi Jacobs, SAN, Kennedy told the court that the parties to the agreement in respect of the transaction were Noga Hotels Nigeria Limited, as the signor and J.J. Technical Limited, as the signee. He further stated that he was briefed by his client, Agbele, on the transaction before he drafted the documents for the purchase of the property, adding that Agbele told him to increase the price of the property in the document. Kennedy upon cross-examination by the defence team, stated that he did not attend any meeting between the parties involved in the transaction; he, however, disclosed that he was getting privilege information from some staff of J.J. Technical Limited. When asked by Olalekan Ojo, SAN, counsel to the second defendant, if the statement he made to the EFCC on the transaction was entirely true, the witness said, "to the best of my knowledge, I did not lie. But a lie in error may have occurred." The witness admitted that he did not include in his statement to the EFCC that he was told to inflate the cost of the property in the transaction document he drafted. In his testimony, ninth prosecution witness, PW9, Joseph Cosen Michelle, Managing Director, J.J. Technical Limited, an Ondo-based construction company, told the court that the company was incorporated in 2007 by himself, his brother and brother-in-law. Michelle, an Arabian, said after the incorporation of the company, that contracts did not come their way, and that he did not know about any property bought by J.J. Limited. Upon cross-examination by the defence counsel, Michelle admitted having knowledge of a "Letter Of Authority" written to his brother, Maron Michelle, said to be given to Abiodun Agbele to help J.J. Technical Limited source for contracts. He told the court that he was a joint owner of J.J. Technical Limited, which is the company Fayose allegedly used for the purchase of the property, but told the court that he did not know that his company was involved in the purchase of any property until he was invited by the EFCC. In his own testimony, the tenth prosecution witness, PW10, Maron told the court that he was also a joint owner of J.J. Technical Limited, adding that, "he has some relationship with the Ekiti State government under the administration of Ayodele Fayose. According to Maron, "J.J. Technical Limited belongs to me, my brother and my brother-in-law. After we incorporated the company in 2007, there was no contract; so, I discussed with Abiodun Agbele to help us get contract and jobs. "Mr. Abiodun Agbele then asked me for a company in which we can use to get contract and I gave him the documents of J.J. Technical Limited. After giving him the documents, Agbele bought the property in J.J. Technical Limited's name and I signed for the property. "Afterwards, the EFCC froze my bank accounts, invited me to the office and seized my international passport after I was told that I was involved in a shady deal that has to do with the property. "I put a call through to Abiodun Agbele and I told him about the development and he said I should tell the EFCC that the property was truly mine. I made a statement to the EFCC on July 28, 2016, based on what Abiodun Agbele told me. "Afterwards, my lawyer came to the Commission that same day and asked me secretly if I told the EFCC the truth about the property. "I told my lawyer that I did not tell the truth and he immediately told me to go back and say the truth to the EFCC. I went back to write another statement in the EFCC, which stated the truth that I was not the owner of the property." Upon cross-examination by the defence team the witness admitted making two statements to the EFCC. He stated that, "my first statement did not state the truth, but my second statement did say the truth". When the prosecution counsel, Jacobs, raised an observation pertaining to Maron's second statement, Justice Olatoregun warned him that he should never re-evaluate her ruling. "Do not stand there with impetus and re-evaluate my ruling; your are incompetent to do so. If you have an objection, you go to the Appeal Court and stop blowing your wings in arrogance. You are extremely rude to have re-evaluated my ruling," the judge said. Jacobs, in his response said he didn't re-evaluate her ruling. Justice Olatoregun thereafter, adjourned the case to April 15, 2019 for continuation of trial. The acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Ibrahim Magu has again expressed the resolve to intensify efforts in ensuring that the war against vote buying remained sustained. Magu made the pledge today during a visit to the EFCC Ilorin Zonal Office, by a group of Foreign Observers from the European Union. Speaking through the Zonal Head, Isyaku Sharu, he noted that the EFCC had also taken its campaign against vote buying and selling, to the marketplaces, Bureaux de Change operators, and the Independent National Electoral Commission. Vote buying and selling is a serious criminal offence, and anybody found wanting would be arrested, investigated and prosecuted, he said, stressing that the Commission remained committed to eradicating electoral malpractice. Speaking on behalf of the delegation, Mashu Poulsen, long term observer, European Union Election Observation Mission in Nigeria, commended the EFCC for its roles in fighting vote buying and selling in the country. A Kenyan man made headlines in September 2016 when he spent a huge amount of money to celebrate his sons birthday. Sadly, he is now in deep financial distress and is asking for donations. The man, identified as Douglas Otieno Owila, from Kisumu in Kenya, reportedly spent KSh 500,000 ( over N1.7 million ) on his sons birthday almost three years ago and the celebration featured on local blogs. The extravagant birthday bash went on for three days and had the young boy entertained by traditional dancers while surrounded by heavy security men. But, on March 19, 2019, Owila was arrested and detained at Kodiago GK Prisons where he spent the night on Tuesday after he failed to raise KSh 100,000 (over N355K) bond to secure the release of a friend. The politician had given his motorbike logbook as surety which he later sold, prompting a Kisumu court to order his immediate arrest. His situation became worse when the accused person failed to show up for court sessions throughout the period in which the case went on. By close of business on Wednesday, March 20, his family and friends had only raised KSh 70,000. The plea for financial assistance continues on Facebook to secure his release. The Kaduna Zonal Office of EFCC on Thursday March 21, 2019 arraigned one Nurudeen Musa Abdullahi before Justice P. Mallong of the Federa High Court, sitting in Kaduna on a two-count charge bordering on conspiracy and obtaining money by false pretence to the tune of N113,490,000 (One Hundred and Thirteen Million Four Hundred and Ninety Thousand Naira). Nurudeen, was a consultant/software developer with Sofftech Computer Ltd, a company engaged by the Nigeria National Petroleum Company, NNPC, to develop and manage its billing software, used in the lifting of petroleum products in PPMC/ NNPC Depot, Kaduna. The defendant was responsible for overseeing the running of the billing software, taking care of any new report, training of NNPC staff and any update that may be needed on price changes or depot operational changes on behalf of the company. Nurudeen was arrested by the EFCC, following a complaint made by Bi-crude Products Limited, AL-Amin Emporium Limited, Alh Sa'adu Tsanyawa Nigeria Limited, Sabag Oil and Gas Nigeria Limited and Dan Abdulkadir Global Resources Limited, in which they alleged that they received demand letters from the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC sometime in 2018, requesting for the settlement of outstanding balance of various sums being money for products their companies lifted from the Kaduna Depot between 2008 and 2018 without payment. They further alleged that the defendant conspired with others, now at large and used their companies' names to defraud the NNPC. One of the count charge reads: "that you Nurudeen Musa Abdullahi sometime between 2011 and 2014 in Kaduna within the Kaduna Judicial Division of the Federal High Court, did retain a total sum of N113,490,000 (One Hundred and Thirteen Million Four Hundred and Ninety Thousand Naira) in your account No. 2002932756, domiciled in First Bank Plc, a sum which you knew or suspected to be proceeds of crime or illegal activity to wit: criminal breach of trust and you thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under Section 17(a) and (b) of the Money Laundering Prohibition Act 2011 ( as amended in 2012)." The accused pleaded not guilty to the charges. Following the no guilty plea, counsel to the Commission, J.Saidi urged the court to fix a date for commencement of trial as well as prayed that the accused be remanded in prison custody, while counsel to the defendant Adebola Fashola prayed the court to grant his client bail. After listening to both counsels, Justice Mallong ordered the accused to be remanded in prison custody and adjourned the matter to April 10, 2019 for hearing. On Tuesday (March 19), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the first-ever approval of a drug specifically meant to treat postpartum depression. But how exactly does the drug work, and what makes it different from other medications for depression? The drug, called brexanolone (brand name Zulresso), needs to be given in a health care facility under medical supervision and is delivered intravenously over the course of 60 hours (2.5 days), the FDA said. Brexanolone is "unlike anything else we have currently approved for depression," said Dr. Kristina Deligiannidis, director of women's behavioral health at Zucker Hillside Hospital in New York, who was involved with the clinical trials of the drug leading up to its approval. [7 Ways Depression Differs in Men and Women] The drug is a synthetic version of a steroid called allopregnanolone, which people make naturally in their bodies. Allopregnanolone is a breakdown product of the sex hormone progesterone, and is produced in the brain and ovaries, as well as in the placenta during pregnancy. It's known that blood levels of allopregnanolone increase during pregnancy and drop rapidly after childbirth. And it's thought that fluctuations in levels of the steroid may trigger changes in the brain that contribute to depression and anxiety in some women, according to Sage Therapeutics Inc., the company that makes brexanolone. It's unclear exactly how brexanolone works to treat postpartum depression. But it's thought that the drug modifies the body's stress response, which is abnormal in women with postpartum depression, Deligiannidis told Live Science. The drug binds to GABA receptors, which play a role in many brain functions. The binding may work to reverse or "reset" the brain activity tied to postpartum depression symptoms, the company said. A different type of treatment Brexanolone works in a different way than other drugs for depression, which typically don't bind to GABA receptors, Deligiannidis said. A class of drugs called benzodiazepines, sometimes referred to as tranquilizers, also bind to GABA receptors, but they bind to a different type of GABA receptor than brexanolone and have a different function, she said. Studies of brexanolone found that the drug had quick and effective results. Two clinical trials of about 250 women with postpartum depression showed that within 60 hours, 50 percent of the women who received brexanolone were no longer clinically depressed, compared with 25 percent of women who received a placebo, Deligiannidis said. (Clinical depression was assessed using a questionnaire that gave women a depression score.) It's still unclear how brexanolone works so quickly compared with other drugs for depression, which can take weeks to have an effect, she said. The effects from a single drug infusion of brexanolone appeared to last at least 30 days, the maximum time the women were followed during the studies. As doctors prescribe the drug, they'll get a better understanding of how long the effects last beyond 30 days, Deligiannidis said. But a monthlong period also gives doctors a chance to start other treatments for depression, such as talk therapy, she added. Because some women who received brexanolone experienced excessive sedation and sudden loss of consciousness, the drug needs to be administered under supervision, the FDA said. Sage Therapeutics is also working on a similar drug for postpartum depression that can be taken as a pill once a day. That drug is currently in clinical trials and is not yet FDA-approved. Originally published on Live Science. Materials that shaped a young Earth likely originated in the same protosolar nebula that birthed the sun. Our sun is a lifeless, fiery ball of gas fueled by a nuclear inferno. Earth, meanwhile, is a rocky, layered planet covered by water and teeming with life. Nevertheless, the elemental composition of these two celestial bodies is surprisingly similar. The elements in the sun and Earth are pretty much the same, though Earth had less of the sun's more volatile elements, which evaporate at high temperatures, a new analysis reveals. This suggests that Earth formed from material in the solar nebula the cloud of dust and gas that shaped the sun but volatile elements such as helium, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen were stripped away during our planet's formation. The tools used in the current study could also help reveal the composition of exoplanets orbiting distant stars, the study authors reported. [Spaced Out! 101 Astronomy Images That Will Blow Your Mind] First, the researchers analyzed elements that appeared in rocky meteorites that fell to Earth, known as chondrites. Chondrites, which also formed in the protosolar nebula, are often used as proxies for understanding the sun's chemical makeup, the researchers wrote. They also evaluated the sun's elemental composition from observations of radiation in the sun's photosphere the outer "shell" that emanates light and incorporated data from solar turbulence and theoretical models. Though the most abundant elements in the sun are hydrogen and helium, the researchers discovered a total of 60 elements was abundant in both meteorites and photosphere; these elements were probably also plentiful in the protosolar nebula before the sun's birth, according to the study. Then, the scientists compared their results to the elemental composition of Earth's core and primitive mantle, which can be gleaned through a combination of mathematical models, seismic data and rock samples. They found that while Earth shared most of the same elements as chondrites and the sun, Earth had "devolatilized" lost volatile elements over time and that this was "an inherent process" as the inner solar system took shape, the researchers wrote. "This comparison yields a wealth of information about the way the Earth formed," study co-author Trevor Ireland, a professor of geochemistry and cosmochemistry with the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, said in a statement. Similar evaluations could be done for planets orbiting stars other than our sun. "Rocky exoplanets are almost certainly devolatilized pieces of the stellar nebulae out of which they and their host stars formed," the researchers wrote in the study. Pinpointing the elemental makeup of faraway exoplanets will play an important part in determining if they can support human life, lead study author Haiyang Wang, a doctoral candidate with ANU's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, said in the statement. "The composition of a rocky planet is one of the most important missing pieces in our efforts to find out whether a planet is habitable or not," Wang said. The findings appeared online March 14 in the preprint journal arXiv, and will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Icarus. Originally published on Live Science. Veteran Jiang Yutao hugs his Kunming military dog named Black Panther on the last day as a soldier on Nov. 14, 2013 in Kunming, Yunnan Province of China. How does a provincial police department build a small army of detective dogs as savvy as Sherlock Holmes? Why, it's elementary, my dear Watson (and Crick). Simply clone the best dog on the force. Scientists in China are already on the case. According to a report on the state-owned news site Global Times, genetic researchers in Beijing have successfully used the DNA from a murder-sleuthing sniffer dog named Huahuangma a veritable "Sherlock Holmes of police dogs," Reuters wrote to create a clone puppy with a prodigious criminal justice career ahead. The idea is that by ensuring the "offspring" have the same strong sniffer and other sleuthing genes as the mother, these pups will also be top performers on the force. [8 Animals That Have Been Cloned Since Dolly the Sheep] By all accounts, Huahuangma is a very good girl. The 7-year-old Kunming wolf dog a German shepherd-like dog-wolf hybrid often employed by the police and military has helped crack multiple murder cases as a sniffer for the Yunnan province police, the Global Times reported. Her contributions to keeping the peace have earned her the title of "first-class meritorious dog," and hopefully many tasty treats. Huahuangma's mini-me a now-3-month-old puppy named Kunxun was born in a lab at the Beijing-based Sinogene Biotechnology Co. in December, following experiments conducted in tandem with researchers from the Yunnan Agricultural University and with support from the Ministry of Public Security. See more Tests show that Kunxun and Huahuangma are a "99.9 percent" DNA match, and the clone-pup has already outperformed other traditionally bred wolf dogs on several tests. Kunxun will now begin training in drug detection and crowd control, and is expected to be a full-fledged police dog at 10 months, the Global Times reported. If Kunxun has as bright of a future on the force as expected, it'll mean a huge reduction in the typical police-dog training time, which usually takes about 5 years and costs the equivalent of $60,000, the Global Times said. The ultimate goal, a Sinogene representative told the site, is to mass-produce high-performing police puppies that can be trained in a matter of months instead of years however, the current costs of cloning present a "bottleneck" to achieving this vision. Whether or not the plan proves viable in the long term, Huahuangma is not the first doggy detective to share her DNA with a new generation of cop pups. In South Korea, a litter of six cloned police dogs began patrolling the streets in 2008. In 2009, the same company produced five clone puppies from a German shepherd named Trakr a rescue dog who discovered the last survivor of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. The pups were reportedly trained as search-and-rescue dogs themselves. Originally published on Live Science. A newfound fossil site in China is teeming with bizarre, primitive species that have never before been found any place on Earth. The bounty of creatures includes a spiny, segmented animal known as a mud dragon, and several jellyfish with preserved tentacles. Paleontologists discovered this treasure trove of fossils, which are incredibly well-preserved, along the banks of the Danshui River in southern China. The dozens upon dozens of creatures date to the Cambrian Period (490 million to 530 million years ago), when Earth's animal diversity was booming at an unprecedented pace. Scientists collected hundreds of specimens and identified fossils of 101 animals. Of those, more than half are new species that have yet to be described, the researchers reported in a new study. [Image Gallery: Cambrian Creatures: Primitive Sea Life] "It is a huge surprise to find a new deposit of such incredible richness and with such a large proportion of species that are completely new to science," study co-author Robert Gaines, a professor in the Geology Department at Pomona College in California, told Live Science in an email. Researchers in China discovered the site while exploring early Cambrian rocks nearby. During their lunch break by the river, the scientists noticed "a striking pattern of alternating gray and black stripes" in the rocks of the river bank. This type of sediment pattern indicates areas where ancient mudflows once surged flows that may have buried and preserved ancient organisms, Gaines explained. The scientists started chipping away at the rock, and sure enough, they soon detected the first of the site's exceptional fossil remains, now known collectively as the Qingjiang biota, they wrote in the study. An unidentified species of Cambrian arthropod from the Leanchoilia genus has armlike appendages and long feelers. (Image credit: Xingliang Zhang) All told, the team uncovered fossils of more than 50 species unknown to science. Many of the fossils bell-shaped jellyfish, spiky worms, armored arthropods and more retain an astonishing level of detail in their preserved soft tissues, such as gills, digestive systems and even eyes. "Qingjiang is a new window on a different type of early Cambrian ecosystem," Gaines said. As in other rich fossil deposits of well-preserved Cambrian life the Burgess Shale deposits in Canada and the Chengjiang deposits in China's Yunnan Province the Qingjiang animals had been quickly swallowed by mudflows and then buried in fine-grain soils, Gaines said. As sediment "cemented" around the tiny bodies, it locked out microbes and halted the process of decay. This preserved "exquisite primary organic remains of creatures like jellyfish and worms that usually leave no fossil record," he said. In fact, jellyfish and sea anemones, which are among the earliest known animals, are far more numerous in the Qingjiang biota than in the Burgess Shale or Chengjiang sites, the researchers reported. One of the still-undescribed species from China is an ancient jellyfish known as a cnidarian; visible here are two layers of its "umbrella" and an array of tentacles. (Image credit: Xingliang Zhang) What's more, the Qingjiang fossils' condition is substantially better than that of fossils at the other Cambrian sites. At Burgess Shale, the formation of the Rocky Mountains heated and compressed the fossils; though anatomical details remained, the fossils were reshaped from their original forms, according to Gaines. And in Chengjiang, groundwater that flowed over the fossil deposits over millions of years also carried away some of the detail of their original shapes. "The Qingjiang fossils, however, are pristine, and appear much as they would have after they were fossilized in the Cambrian period," Gaines said. The findings were published online today (March 21) in the journal Science. Originally published on Live Science. A woman living in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, who was involved in drug cases, never expected that she would be "betrayed" by a toy poodle that she had kept for nine years when caught in a recent police raid. Police broke into an apartment where the woman surnamed Chen lived on the move on Sunday, but after they rummaged through the apartment they found no people there, except a toy poodle. The toy poodle drew their attention, because it kept staring in one direction. Feeling suspicious, the police followed the dog's gaze and found a simple-structured wardrobe, but the woman they were looking for was not there. They knocked again on the wardrobe carefully, but found the sound was bit strange. After they moved it away, a hidden compartment came into sight, and Chen was in it. Chen said she knew the police were searching for her when she heard them knocking on the door, so she hid herself in the compartment. Every time when Chen went out, the dog always stared at her lovingly, she said. The toy poodle has accompanied her for so many years that she has never thought it was a "traitor". The story went viral on the Chinese social media platform Weibo with over 140 million views. "I think the dog can be honored as a police dog now," said an internet user. Get ready to toast with your pup anywhere in Texas. The Texas senate Tuesday approved a bill that would allow restaurant owners to welcome patrons' dogs at their outdoor dining areas, a practice already allowed in San Antonio and other larger Texas cities. Republican Sen. Kelly Hancock authored Senate Bill 476, which is based off a 2006 Austin ordinance that granted that city's restaurateurs the same privilege. SB 476 includes certain guidelines: Only restaurants where food is not prepared on the patio can file for this permit. Canines are welcome only at patios, and only if they do not have to enter through a restaurant interior in order to access the outside area. Lastly, dogs must also remain leashed the entire time they're on the restaurant's premises. LIFESTYLE: High-rises highlight pet-friendly living In Houston, a similar order was passed in September 2011: Paws on Patios. Late Houston Planning Director, Patrick Walsh, in 2010 convinced the city council to adjust its health codes for the Paws on Patios grassroots effort. PoP made it legal for food-service establishments to become dog-friendly by obtaining city permits for a one-time fee of $110 per place. That initiative put Houston on par with other Texas cities that already had a similar permit program in place. Austin led the way in 2006, Dallas in 2007 and San Antonio in 2010. For some dog lovers, the move is a long time coming, but not everyone is pleased with the bill's approval. Some critics say this is another instance of the state infringing on decisions that should be made at the local level, since this state measure would overturn some city regulations. In fact, the lone "no" vote when this legislation was sent to the House comes courtesy of Republican Sen. Kel Seliger, who said states should not have the authority to instruct cities when it comes to commerce. NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. First Sandra Day O'Connor By Evan Thomas Random House. 476 pp. $32 --- At a party at her Arizona home in 1981, a middle-aged Sandra Day O'Connor, ever the consummate hostess, served enchiladas poolside with good cheer. But when she greeted a friend of her son who was soon to begin a clerkship for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, her mood shifted. As Evan Thomas describes the scene in "First," his illuminating and eminently readable biography of the Supreme Court's first female justice, O'Connor "conveyed an almost palpable sense of longing" for past opportunities denied her because of gender. With her appointment to the court weeks away, she launched into a stream-of-consciousness monologue about her envy decades earlier when Rehnquist, her Stanford Law School classmate (and former beau), had started his clerkship at the court, a steppingstone at that time reserved almost exclusively for men. Intelligent, ambitious women of O'Connor's vintage were thwarted at every turn. A Stanford Law Review editor in the top 10 percent of her class, she couldn't even get an interview with the big firms that recruited on campus in the 1950s. When she wangled a meeting in the Los Angeles offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Thomas writes, a partner told her "our clients won't stand for" being represented by a woman and suggested a secretarial job instead. By the time of the poolside chat, O'Connor had racked up an impressive series of achievements against the odds. She'd been the majority leader of the Republican-controlled Arizona state Senate and a state judge at the trial appellate level. But the doors slammed shut earlier in her career were not easily forgotten. Sexism stings. And it stung just as harshly for a Phoenix country club Republican like O'Connor as it did for a liberal Brooklynite like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Only a few weeks after that pool party, President Ronald Reagan made good on a campaign promise to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. O'Connor got the call and breezed through her confirmation with a 99-to-0 vote. That O'Connor found herself the highest-ranking woman ever in American government was no accident. Thomas vividly sketches the attributes she used to clear the high barriers to female ascendancy: a knack for brushing past insults, relentlessness belied by a pretty smile, an almost superhuman level of energy and, not least, a heroically supportive husband. John O'Connor was a successful lawyer in his own right but willing to take a back seat if it meant helping his wife achieve her lofty goals. This list of assets will sound familiar to Ginsburg aficionados. (Though unlike the kitchen-averse RBG, SDO could whip up a tasty salmon mousse when the need arose.) While Ginsburg in her pre-justice days distinguished herself by fighting to secure gender equality under the Constitution, O'Connor was no flaming feminist. If she had been, the Reaganites surely would have looked elsewhere. As a politician anxious to distance herself from women's libbers, she addressed a Rotary Club with the evocative line: "I come to you with my bra and my wedding ring on." In the state Senate, O'Connor played a key role in striking down hundreds of Arizona laws discriminating against women, but she didn't put her political weight behind passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. After the Supreme Court's 1973 (BEGIN ITAL)Roe v. Wade(END ITAL) opinion, she voted against a resolution calling for an antiabortion constitutional amendment but supported key measures restricting women's access to abortions. It was the same style of compromise - some might say fence-straddling - that O'Connor would employ as a Supreme Court justice. Some legal scholars have criticized her for seeking to decide cases on narrow grounds, leaving larger constitutional issues unresolved. In Thomas's more generous interpretation, O'Connor's judicial "minimalism" flowed naturally from a realpolitik she'd honed as, well, a real politician. In (BEGIN ITAL)Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education(END ITAL) (1986), four justices wanted to throw out a Mississippi plan to lay off white teachers with seniority before their less-experienced black counterparts, and four favored preserving the plan, designed to redress the city's clear history of racial discrimination. O'Connor, finding herself in the middle and undecided, initially proposed sending the case back to the lower court to be reargued. Eventually she joined most of Justice Lewis Powell's majority opinion striking down the layoff plan, but in her concurrence she left the door open to constitutionally permissible affirmative action. O'Connor went on to write key majority opinions on affirmative action herself. (BEGIN ITAL)Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena(END ITAL) (1995) ruled that affirmative action plans must be subjected to the most stringent level of judicial scrutiny, though O'Connor made clear that not all affirmative action is untenable. Later in (BEGIN ITAL)Grutter v. Bollinger(END ITAL) (2003), she wrote for the majority to uphold an affirmative action plan at the University of Michigan Law School. Thomas emphasizes the court's role in helping the American people, who "are divided and feeling their way," through tough issues. "The Court is an essential part of a long process of melding attitudes and mores with the law of the land." O'Connor was temperate on abortion rights cases, too, resisting numerous attempts by her conservative colleagues to strike down (BEGIN ITAL)Roe(END ITAL) but not issuing the ringing endorsement of reproductive freedom that liberals might have favored. Her split-the-difference standard: States can regulate reproductive rights so long as their rules don't place an "undue burden" on a woman seeking an abortion. In (BEGIN ITAL)Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey(END ITAL) (1992), which she co-authored with Justices David Souter and Anthony Kennedy, O'Connor's "undue burden" standard became the law of the land. Interspersed with the legal analysis in "First" is lighter fare: camaraderie and sniping among the justices, even a scene where two clerks come to fisticuffs in a Supreme Court fountain - over an abortion rights case. Some anecdotes are so juicy I found myself checking the footnotes to see where Thomas got them. Yes, as in most Supreme Court literature, there's plenty from the clerks. But some of his best material comes from interviews with former and sitting justices. And he makes strong use of the notes scrawled by justices in conference or in the margins of draft opinions. ("Very tent[ative]!!!" an apparently irritated Justice Harry Blackmun wrote by O'Connor's name in his (BEGIN ITAL)Wygant(END ITAL) conference notes.) But with an institution as insulated as the Supreme Court and a protagonist as discreet as O'Connor, there's a limit to how far inside one can get. As much as we'd love to hear what the first female justice was thinking as allegations of sexual harassment surfaced during Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings, the author can only speculate. "She was surely disheartened" by Anita Hill's testimony, he writes. He does provide a contemporaneous snippet from John O'Connor's diary about a political cartoon depicting Clarence Thomas in judicial robes with his hand on Justice O'Connor's knee. "It really is a funny cartoon," John wrote. (Actually, it wasn't). "First" gives us a real sense of Sandra Day O'Connor the human being. Cinematic scenes from her upbringing on the family ranch find young Sandra changing a tire all by herself as she struggles to get the chuck wagon to the cowboys before cattle-branding time. Thomas shows how well her flintiness served O'Connor in adulthood. She faces down Stage 2 cancer and a mastectomy with minimal self-pity, doing chemo on Fridays so she could be back on the bench for Monday oral arguments (a regimen passed on to the equally flinty Ginsburg when she too got cancer). Thomas also reveals O'Connor to be likable and quirky, a woman who yells "Hot diggity dog!" when she hooks a trout and gets a charge out of Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde." The scenes of O'Connor retiring early to help care for her husband as he struggles with Alzheimer's are poignant; the news of her own diagnosis with that same brutal disease even more so. A major biography like "First" draws its power not only from the people and events it depicts but also from the culture into which it's launched. The white-hot polarization in the age of Trump makes O'Connor's preference for cool civility and compromise seem especially appealing. And this era's struggle for women's rights, energized by the #TimesUp and #MeToo movements, makes this the right time to take stock of the country club cowgirl who managed to climb higher than any American woman had before. Thomas gives O'Connor the credit she deserves. Even if her sometimes-pallid support for (BEGIN ITAL)Roe v. Wade(END ITAL) makes you uneasy and her ruling with the majority to cut off the Florida recount in the 2000 (BEGIN ITAL)Bush v. Gore (END ITAL)case makes you nauseous, Thomas suggests, you owe her some respect. Without O'Connor's crucial fifth votes, both legalized abortion and affirmative action could well have lost their protection under the Constitution. And her strong work through a quarter-century on the Supreme Court paved the way for Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and the others who will follow. "The first step to getting power is to become visible to others, and then to put on an impressive show," O'Connor said in a 1990 speech (later quoted admiringly by Ginsburg). "As women achieve power, the barriers will fall . . . And we'll all be better off for it." To which so many women - millennial and older, progressive and conservative - might say in unison: "Amen, sister." --- Julie Cohen is the director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "RBG," along with her filmmaking partner Betsy West. A new attorney will be appointed to help represent the Border Patrol agent who is facing the death penalty for allegedly stabbing his lover and 1-year-old son to death in 2018. Ronald Anthony Burgos-Aviles appeared in court Wednesday for a hearing after his attorney, J. Eduardo Pena, filed 11 motions for discovery, asking prosecutors to turn over evidence in a timely manner before trial. Burgos-Aviles is charged with two counts of capital murder in the slaying of Grizelda Hernandez, 27, and their son, Dominic Alexander Hernandez. They were killed in April near Father Charles McNaboe Park in northwest Laredo. Pena filed an ex parte motion Jan. 29 to substitute Silverio Martinez, co-counsel, for an attorney who is on the list of lawyers qualified to represent defendants facing the death penalty. An ex parte motion is a sealed record filed with no advanced notice. The motion is only discussed between the court and the party that filed it. READ ALSO: District attorney seeking death penalty against Laredo BP agent On Wednesday, Burgos-Aviles asked to speak with judge in his chambers to address the ex parte motion. After the 30-minute meeting, 49th District Court Judge Joe Lopez signed an order granting the substitution of Martinez. It's unclear why Burgos-Aviles no longer wanted Martinez as an attorney. Lopez told Martinez that he remains under the order of the court to not speak to the media about the case. The judge granted a gag order in August at the defense's request, precluding all parties involved from publicly discussing the case. Lopez reiterated during the hearing that the gag order extended to all parties in the case, including potential witnesses. "My job is to make sure this case gets tried fairly, expeditiously and gets tried once," the judge said. "In an effort to try and do my job in making sure this case gets tried as fair as I can make it tried, the way it should be tried, we are sticking to that order." The 11 motions filed by Pena ask prosecutors for statements made by his client, a list of expert witnesses and their reports, scientific evidence, cell tower data, phone records, messages posted on social media, forensic analysis of different items and exculpatory evidence relative to his client's guilt or innocence or to mitigation of punishment. A motion for the disclosure of exculpatory evidence that requested that all potential exculpatory, impeachment or mitigating evidence known to the state be made available to defense counsel was granted. Lopez ordered the state to turn over any exculpatory evidence as soon as they could after they obtained it. "This one, under the new rules, any exculpatory evidence, if you have any, should be provided to defense as soon as you get it," Lopez said. "I'm not going to have any deadline on that. That one is granted and you give it to (defense) as soon as you can after it comes in your hands." Another motion asking for a hearing to determine the admissibility of scientific evidence or expert witness testimony was granted. The judge said the hearing would be scheduled outside the presence of the jury during the trial schedule. Pena's last two motions asked the prosecution to turn over AT&T cellphone records, Facebook, Snapchat and text messages, results of comparison testing of cast impressions of tire marks, cell tower data and the results of forensic analysis of miscellaneous items. Webb County Chief Assistant District Attorney Marisela Jacaman told the court that all the cellphone evidence has been provided to defense counsel. RELATED: Disturbing details presented in 'mini-trial' of Laredo Border Patrol agent "I explained to defense that there wasn't a phone dump from (the Snapchat messages)," Jacaman said. "They were images preserved of Snap messages. All the phone evidence has been provided to defense." As for the comparison testing of the cast impressions of the tire marks found on the dirt road where the body of Hernandez was found, defense counsel is asking for those results. Jacaman told the judge that the testing has been conducted but prosecution has not received the results yet. Prosecutors were ordered to turn over evidence no later than Dec. 6, 60 days before the trial start date. A motion hearing is set for April 23. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Feb. 3. Maria Salas may be reached at msalas@lmtonline.com Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday he will decide by April 15 on the fate of Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) officials over the water crisis in parts of Metro Manila. "I will decide before April 15 decide on, ano nangyari [what happened]. Who was responsible for it. Was there negligence or was there really something beyond the competence of the MWSS control," the President said in an ambush interview after the 122nd Philippine Army Founding Anniversary at Fort Andres Bonifacio in Metro Manila. Duterte earlier threatened to fire MWSS officials over the water crisis, and warned he will revoke the deals with water concessionaires Manila Water and Maynilad if they fail to end the water shortage in the metro. READ: Duterte threatens to fire MWSS officials, end Manila Water and Maynilad deals The President ordered MWSS to submit a report by April 10. MWSS Administrator Reynaldo Velasco said they will include a 50-year master plan on water source in their report. Water interruptions in parts of Metro Manila and Rizal began on March 7. Around 1.2 million customers of Manila Water have been experiencing low water pressure to no water supply. Velasco blamed the water shortage on the low water levels in the La Mesa Dam reservoir, as well as delays in the construction of the concessionaire's Cardona Water Treatment Plant. WASHINGTON - Democrats who have railed against President Donald Trump's national emergency as a manufactured crisis are facing a political dilemma as border apprehensions have spiked and are on pace for the highest level since 2008. Since Trump took office, congressional Democrats have sought to counter his hard-line immigration agenda by pointing to federal data that showed unauthorized crossings had, in recent years, fallen to "historic lows." But after making the fewest apprehensions in 46 years in 2017, the head of Customs and Border Protection has warned that a recent surge of Central American families has left the agency at its "breaking point." For Democrats eager to draw a sharp contrast with Trump ahead of the 2020 presidential election cycle, the growing number of migrants being apprehended threatens to puncture a reliable talking point and force them into a fraught choice: sound heightened alarms and risk affirming Trump's narrative of a border "crisis," or play down the rising numbers and risk appearing indifferent or negligent. "Yes, we are in a crisis situation at the border - a humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis. What Democrats are trying to deal with is: Is this an immigration crisis? Is this about illegal immigration? Not really," said Theresa Brown, a former CBP policy adviser who now works at the Bipartisan Policy Center. "Neither side is characterizing this accurately. But it's absolutely, 100 percent true that every part of our border management system is beyond capacity and completely overwhelmed right now." Over the first five months of fiscal 2019, CBP had apprehended 268,044 migrants, on pace for more than 643,300 this year. If reached, that total would be the most since 705,005 in 2008 and more than twice as high as the 310,531 migrants taken into custody two years ago. Trump and his supporters have been quick to use the new data to try to heighten tensions about threats at the border and paint Democrats as indifferent to an issue the president plans to make a central issue of his reelection campaign. "We're on track for a million illegal aliens to rush our borders," Trump said, exaggerating the numbers, when he vetoed legislation last week that would have scuttled his attempt to secure funding for a wall by declaring a national emergency. "People hate the word 'invasion,' but that's what it is." Democrats say they are determined to counter what they view as Trump's irresponsible fearmongering over the security risks of the migrants and slow his push for a border wall. Experts have said the barrier would do little to stop the flow of Central Americans who seek to surrender to authorities in hopes of winning asylum protections. In their fight, Democrats have pressed administration officials to acknowledge there is no emergency. During a Senate oversight hearing this month, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asserted that border crossings "are still at a historic low compared to other times in our nation's history." "No, Senator, they're not," CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan responded. "We're on pace for over 700,000 crossings this year - that's closer to historic highs than historic lows." After Blumenthal suggested the numbers were a fluke, McAleenan said: "We have to confront what's happened in these five months . . . This is new, different and potentially worsening." In fact, the high-water mark for unauthorized crossings came in 2000, when 1.68 million migrants were apprehended, according to CBP figures. During the peak rates in the 1990s and early 2000s, when more than 1 million apprehensions in a year was common, the influx was driven largely by Mexican men sneaking across the border in search of jobs. But over the past decade, the average number has plummeted to 400,751 per year. Federal officials attributed the steep decline to the start of the economic recession in 2007 and beefed-up border enforcement during the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. And the makeup of the immigrants has changed radically. Immigration analysts emphasized that the families, mostly from Guatemala and Honduras, are in many cases fleeing poverty, hunger and political unrest and do not represent a national security threat, despite Trump's rhetoric. "The Trump administration is cooking the books to justify a vanity project that won't keep Americans safe. The fact is we're far closer to the lowest number of border apprehensions we've ever seen than the highest," Blumenthal said in a statement. "I've long called for the Administration to step up and work with Congress to fix our broken immigration system and invest in strategic border security - but the Administration's fraudulent fear-mongering does not work." Blumenthal is far from the only Democrat to make that argument. In recent weeks, Reps. Ted Lieu of California, Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Sean Maloney of New York have issued tweets citing historically low numbers. In his State of the State address last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said: "Let us state the facts. We are currently experiencing the lowest number of border crossings since 1971." Nathan Click, a spokesman for Newsom, said the governor is not ignoring the situation at the border, noting he has put money in the state's budget to build shelters for the Central American families, as they await their asylum court hearings. "His point is these people are coming legally and using the system to flee violence and persecutions," Click said. "While CBP might dismiss that and lump everyone together, these are two very different things." Thompson, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, defended the committee's argument, made in a tweet on Feb. 15, that: "Undocumented border crossings are at *near historic* lows. There IS no emergency." In a statement, Thompson acknowledged the rise in asylum-seeking families and said lawmakers should be addressing it as a "humanitarian challenge we must take on, not using it to manufacture a nonexistent security crisis and drum up fear of immigrants." He criticized the Trump administration for making "hypothetical projections about border crossings off of a very short window of time" and for selectively presenting data "in its bad-faith effort to foster an anti-immigrant agenda." But federal immigration authorities, including career officials who predate the Trump administration, have grown alarmed by the posture of Democrats. CBP and other federal agencies, including Health and Human Services, which provides shelter to migrant children, have reported operating at maximum capacity, with Border Patrol agents being pulled from the field to perform administrative tasks to process the families. "I'm concerned about the lack of factual grounding in our political debate," said one senior U.S. official whose career has spanned multiple administrations. Democrats are "starting to not even believe data created by professionals," the official added, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal operations. Republicans have seized on statements from Democrats to paint them as turning a blind eye to the mounting problems and make the case that the rising numbers at the border have proved Trump right about a "crisis" - even though the situation also threatens to highlight the president's failure to make progress on his top campaign promise to reduce unauthorized immigration. The Republican National Committee posted a video clip of Blumenthal's exchange with McAleenan on Twitter, where it has racked up more than 92,000 views. "That argument's over," Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, said of the Democrats' talking point. Nowrasteh emphasized that dealing with the migrant families requires different solutions than Trump's wall, but he added of Democrats: "We should stop focusing on an argument that may have worked five years ago. We need to deal with reality now." The reality is that more than 66,000 migrants were apprehended at the southern border in February - three times the number from the same month in 2017 - and the numbers are on track to surpass that in March, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said this week. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy analyst at the American Immigration Council, said the Trump administration has failed to present the full picture. He noted that the number of undocumented immigrants in the country soared from an estimated 3 million to a peak of 11 million from 1993 through 2007 - meaning that, in addition to those who were apprehended, millions more successfully sneaked through. A federal study found the number of immigrants who have evaded apprehension at the border has been cut dramatically over the past decade. "Yes, we're currently at a moment, due to the humanitarian crisis in Central America, where the apprehension numbers are higher now," Reichlin-Melnick said. "But if you're looking at the broader context of just how insecure the border was pre-2008, compared to today, we are still at historic lows." WASHINGTON - Jewish House Democrats, eager to reassert party support for Israel following blowback over alleged anti-Semitic comments from colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar, unveiled a bipartisan resolution rebuking a global boycott movement against Israel. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York and Rep. Bradley Schneider of Illinois joined with two Republicans to introduce the resolution Thursday. It expresses opposition to any efforts to "delegitimize" Israel, including the boycott, divestment and sanctions, or "BDS," movement. Supporters of that movement say they're seeking to pressure Israel to change its policies toward Palestinians, but opponents argue the movement seeks "the elimination of Israel," as the two lawmakers wrote in a letter to colleagues Thursday. "The Global BDS Movement, despite deceptively presenting itself as progressive and pro-peace, in reality, advances neither of these principles," the resolution sponsors wrote. "The Global BDS Movement's overly-simplistic and one-sided approach do a disservice to the cause of peace and stability by unfairly placing blame entirely on one side and by seeking to delegitimize one party on the world stage. This does nothing to encourage either party to resume negotiations or enhance a better understanding of each other or the complexity of the conflict." The resolution also reaffirms the need for a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict in the Middle East. Many supporters of the BDS movement back a one-state solution combining both Israel and Palestinian territories, which opponents say would upend the existence of a Jewish state. House Democratic leadership has yet to schedule a vote on the legislation, but the sponsors of the measure have talked to leadership amid a quiet push for a vote. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who oversees the House schedule, believes the BDS movement must be condemned, according to a Hoyer aide. Such a roll call could reignite a firestorm within the Democratic caucus, in which newer liberal members have become more vocal in criticizing Israeli policies. In addition to Omar's criticisms of Israel, which many Jews have called grossly anti-Semitic, freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., a Palestinian American, has expressed support for the BDS movement, for example. In a statement for this story Thursday night, Tlaib's office said the congresswoman "obviously opposes this resolution because it is aimed at suppressing free speech and moves us no closer to peace and understanding." "Peaceful forms of speech, including economic boycotts, are constitutionally protected," her office said in the statement. "Where would civil rights in the United States be without the heroic Montgomery bus boycotts? . . . The economic boycott of Israel or any other government based on violations of human rights is about highlighting the injustices that need to stop." But the resolution's sponsors argue that most Democrats, even those who oppose Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, want a two-state solution. They said they expected widespread support for the resolution. The legislation comes just days before the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, a Washington event featuring speeches by pro-Israel lawmakers in both parties. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to attend and will meet with Trump at the White House early next week. Officials familiar with the drafting of the text, however, said the resolution has been in the works since January, when the Senate overwhelmingly passed an anti-BDS bill. Some Jewish House Democrats, including Nadler, took issue with the Senate version of the text and sought to write their own, concerned about First Amendment rights. AIPAC supports the resolution, according to an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss the group's legislative priorities. The resolution's introduction comes as Republicans have tried to accuse Democrats of turning on the Jewish state. Trump recently called Democrats "anti-Israel" and "anti-Jewish," and this week House Republicans' campaign arm sent several emails accusing vulnerable Democratic lawmakers of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism. Those attacks increased after Oman, a Minnesota Democrat, suggested that some lawmakers support Israel simply because of campaign donations and because pro-Israel individuals have an "allegiance to a foreign country." Some Jewish Democrats pushed their leaders to rebuke Omar by name and condemn anti-Semitism. But many liberals - including some Democratic presidential candidates - rallied around Omar and demanded House leaders expand the resolution to condemn all hate. At the same time, other progressive groups have taken a more aggressive stand toward Israel. MoveOn.org, for example, called on all Democrats seeking the party's presidential nomination to skip the AIPAC conference, arguing that the group has worked to "defeat the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by" President Barack Obama and "is headlined by Benjamin Netanyahu - under whose leadership Israel may have committed war crimes." Such comments have given Republicans fodder as they seek to peel off long-held Jewish support for Democrats. Trump on Thursday endorsed Israeli control of the disputed Golan Heights, a move favored by Netanyahu. Meanwhile, Republicans in the House have sought to pressure their Democratic colleagues on matters related to Israel, knowing full well the issue divides the party. House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said, for example, that Democrats "unfortunately, have departed from this American foreign policy cornerstone" of supporting the Jewish state. "Whether it's enabling anti-Semitic remarks from one of their own or refusing to condemn the BDS movement, a racist campaign aimed at delegitimizing the state of Israel, their party is going down a dangerous road that threatens this critical relationship," she said. Those accusations have infuriated not only Jewish Democrats but others in the party who have long supported Israel. At the AIPAC event this weekend, Democrats are hoping to reaffirm their commitment. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., said the Democratic caucus should not be afraid to put an anti-BDS resolution on the floor. "I don't think there's any reason to tiptoe around opposition to a movement that doesn't advance peace, that hurts the very people that it claims that it wants to help, and that discounts the many reasons that the United States and Israel have been such staunch allies since the founding of Israel," he said, noting that the movement doesn't support a two-state solution. "Having an opportunity to make that clear is important." The driver of a trash truck who authorities said went around the barrier at a railroad crossing and into the path of an Amtrak train carrying Republican lawmakers to a retreat had marijuana and a prescription drug in his system, the National Transportation Safety Board said this week. The NTSB has not released its final report on January 2018 crash near Crozet, Virginia, but it posted a probable cause report on the agency's website that said it was "the truck driver's decision to enter an active grade crossing and his inaction when he encountered obstacles while attempting to cross the railroad tracks, most likely due to his impairment from the combined effects of the drugs marijuana and gabapentin." Washington The chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee revealed information Thursday that he said showed Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner used private email accounts and a publicly available messaging service for official White House business in a way that possibly violated federal records laws. A lawyer for Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump's daughter, and Kushner, the president's son-in-law and senior adviser, told the committee late last year that in addition to a private email account, Kushner uses an unofficial encrypted messaging service, WhatsApp, for official White House business, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the committee's chair, revealed. That business includes foreign contacts, the lawyer, Abbe Lowell, told the committee. Cummings said Lowell also told the committee that Ivanka Trump did not preserve some emails sent to her private account if she did not reply to them. Democrats have barely been able to contain their frustration at what they see as a dark irony in the findings. Donald Trump made Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state a central line of attack in his 2016 campaign for president. Even after the FBI declined to charge Clinton for her practices and handling of classified information, Republicans in Congress have continued to pick away at the case. Lowell could not say if Kushner had communicated classified information on the messaging service, WhatsApp, telling lawmakers that was "above my pay grade." He argued that because Kushner took screenshots of the communications and sent them to his official White House account or the National Security Council, his client was not in violation of federal records laws. In a letter disclosing the information Thursday, Cummings said the finding added urgency to his investigation of possible violations of the Presidential Records Act by members of the Trump administration. He accused the White House of stonewalling his committee on information it had requested months ago, when Republicans still controlled the House. "The White House's failure to provide documents and information is obstructing the committee's investigation into allegations of violations of federal records laws by White House officials," Cummings wrote. He said he would "be forced to consider alternative means to obtain compliance" if documents he requested about White House communications and record keeping were not shared with the committee, an indication he could subpoena them. Steven Groves, a White House lawyer, said the White House would review Cummings' letter and "provide a reasonable response in due course." The Committee first began scrutinizing the use of private communications services at the White House in 2017 amid media reports Kushner had used a private email account for government business and then that Ivanka Trump had done the same. CNN reported in October Kushner had communicated with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia using WhatsApp. Lowell confirmed details of Kushner's private messaging usage during a December meeting with Cummings and the committee's then chair, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. Asked if Kushner had been cleared to use the messaging app to communicate with foreign leaders, Lowell recommended lawmakers ask the National Security Council and the White House, Cummings said. Cummings said after speaking to Lowell, he believed Ivanka Trump could also potentially be in violation of the Presidential Records Act because of her use of a private email account. He said Lowell had told the committee Trump forwards work-related emails received on her personal account to an official government account only if she responds to the email. Cummings wrote Thursday that he had also obtained documents apparently showing that K.T. McFarland had used a personal AOL account for official business while she served as deputy national security adviser and that Steve Bannon had done the same while a White House adviser. This year's annual political gathering of China's legislators, held against the backdrop of what Premier Li Keqiang characterized as "an extremely complex domestic and international environment," is expected to give a new turn to the Chinese economy and help revitalize the global economy. Despite downward pressure on China's economy, the weak foundations of agricultural and rural infrastructure, mounting pressure on its real economy, some paucity in high-quality development, regional disparities and potential risks, China's neighboring countries as well as the wider region are banking on China's ability to overcome its challenges. China's neighbors are confident because it knows that China can deal with unprecedented socio-economic challenges and work with other countries while respecting their sovereignty. This can be seen in China's conduct while implementing its flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Highlighting the role of China's ambitious BRI projects, Premier Li said, "We will step up cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, pursue high-standards as well as more thorough and comprehensive liberalization in more sectors." Li's statement made in the opening meeting of this year's NPC session represents China's call to its BRI partners for more collaboration and cooperation to bring about high-quality development and to lay a robust foundation for sustainable development. Likewise, China's emergence as the second largest economy with a GDP exceeding 90 trillion yuan (nearly US$13.4 trillion) is itself noteworthy especially to developing countries that have been receiving economic benefits from China's miraculous development. China's focus on major projects such as infrastructure construction, industrial-capacity cooperation, and its commitment to addressing key problems such as those relating to financial support, the investment environment, risk management, and security, is a welcome step for its BRI partners that are reeling from a financial crunch. China is also deepening its relations with its BRI partners, and partner countries have experienced improved people-to-people relations, economic ties and cultural exchanges, and have also seen an exponential growth in the number of Chinese tourists. For example, Nepal used to receive around 10,000 Chinese tourists annually in the early 2000s, but in the initial months of 2019 over 17,000 Chinese tourists visited the country. Not only does China have the highest number of outbound tourists globally, it is also the top FDI contributor to many countries and the top trading partner to almost all its neighboring countries as well as to several major economies in the world. China is currently the largest trading partner to Pakistan, Vietnam, Malaysia and a key trading partner of the EU, the United States and India. In addition, China is also the largest goods manufacturer globally and has had stable and consistent policies since it launched national reform and opening up some 40 years ago. This major reform program has helped China to grow by leaps and bounds to become the world's second largest economy. That is why the key decisions adopted by the recent session of the NPC to help Chinese companies "go global," to reform FDI laws and deepen collaboration with its neighbors hold great significance. Keenly aware of the importance of stable development, China has long contributed to maintaining peace in the region and the world, not merely through words, but by its actions. Many countries keenly await China's policy position and its programs for BRI partners and other countries. So China's announcement on key areas like its decisive fight against poverty and pollution, its calls for high-quality development, sustained economic growth, job creation, investment on R&D, digital technology and human resource development will benefit not only itself but also other countries in meeting the sustainable development goals (SD) set by the United Nations. Tapping into China's economic growth is in the broader interests of the receiving countries and the world at large. Mahendra Subedi is a social researcher and commentator from Nepal currently based in Beijing. Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. If you would like to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinion@china.org.cn. WASHINGTON - Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has scheduled what is expected to be the first of many hearings examining the Federal Aviation Administration's role in overseeing aviation safety in the wake of two fatal crashes that have killed more than 300 people. Cruz, chairman of the subcommittee on aviation and space, will convene a hearing called "The State of Airline Safety: Federal Oversight of Commercial Aviation," at 3 p.m. March 27. Those expected to testify include acting FAA Administrator Daniel Elwell, Department of Transportation Inspector General Calvin Scovel and National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt. The FAA's oversight of manufacturer Boeing has come under scrutiny after two high-profile crashes in less than five months involving the company's 737 Max 8 jets. In October, a Lion Air plane crashed shortly after takeoff into the Java Sea off Indonesia, killing all 189 people on the aircraft. Earlier this month, an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed shortly after it left the capital city, Addis Ababa, killing 157 people. On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao asked Scovel's office to conduct audit of the agency's process for certifying the aircraft. The Justice Department's criminal division has also launched a probe focused on the 737 Max, but the scope of that investigation is not clear. Investigators are still working to determine the cause of both crashes, but preliminary information garnered from satellite tracking data identified similarities between the two crashes. The information prompted the FAA to ground the jets, a move that came after civil aviation agencies around the world had already done so. Boeing officials have said they are preparing to update software and pilot training manuals. The change is meant to address an automated feature of the Max jets that Indonesian investigators say may have been a factor in the Oct. 29 crash. Cruz said the committee also plans to hold a second hearing to talk to industry representatives, including from Boeing, other aviation manufacturers, airline pilots. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said last week that he plans to hold one or more hearings on the Boeing crashes. On Tuesday, he and Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., who head the aviation subcommittee, also asked the Transportation Department's inspector general to examine questions concerning the FAA's approach to certifying the Max 8. "I have a long record of fighting to ensure safety is always the priority at FAA," DeFazio said Wednesday, "and, given the many questions about the recent Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines accidents, I am actively pursuing an investigation into the certification of this aircraft and the decision not to require additional pilot training. I am committed to using all of the tools at my disposal as chairman to get answers, including hearing." It is not clear how much new information about the investigation into the Ethiopian Airlines crash will come out of next week's hearing. While the NTSB is participating in the investigation, only Ethiopian authorities are authorized to discuss the probe. WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Wednesday escalated his unrelenting attacks on the late senator from Arizona and former GOP presidential nominee John McCain, who even in death has remained one of Trump's top targets for criticism as fellow Republicans have repeatedly begged him to stop. In a five-minute diatribe during an appearance at a General Dynamics tank factory in Lima, Ohio, Trump argued that McCain, a lifelong Pentagon booster and former prisoner of war in Vietnam, "didn't get the job done" for veterans; the president also groused not receiving proper gratitude for McCain's funeral in September. "I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which as president I had to approve," Trump said inaccurately, an apparent reference to allowing the use of military transport to carry McCain's body to Washington. "I don't care about this, I didn't get a thank-you, that's OK. We sent him on the way. But I wasn't a fan of John McCain." He added, "I have to be honest, I never liked him much. Hasn't been for me. I've really, probably, never will." The full-throated repudiation of a deceased and revered member of his party was remarkable even for a president constantly at war with his rivals, and it came amid an outpouring of statements in recent days praising McCain in the face of Trump's attacks. "It's deplorable what he said," Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, said in an interview with Atlanta-based Georgia Public Broadcasting earlier Wednesday, referring to previous Trump attacks on McCain. "It will be deplorable seven months from now, if he says it again, and I will continue to speak out. . . . We should never reduce the service that people give to this country, including the offering of their own life." Trump's comments are part of a longtime pattern in which he lashes into those he sees as challenging him - whether prominent or obscure, alive or dead. In recent days, the president has also attacked George Conway, the husband of senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway, calling him a "stone cold loser," "a whack job" and a "husband from hell" after Conway raised questions about the president's mental health on Twitter. Others who have drawn the president's ire in recent days have included weekend Fox News hosts and "Saturday Night Live" writers and performers. Some close to the president have attributed his frustrations to worrying over the looming report on Russian election interference from the special counsel's office - which he mocked Wednesday on the South Lawn of the White House en route to Ohio - while others said he simply has fewer advisers to restrain him from airing his grievances. Animosity between Trump, who received draft deferments from military service, and McCain stretches back decades and came to a head during the 2016 campaign, when Trump declared that McCain was "not a war hero," because he had been captured after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam. Aides say the new round of frustrations over McCain was fueled by a news report Trump saw recently about McCain's role in handing over a copy of an intelligence dossier to the FBI after the 2016 election. Trump inaccurately blames the disputed document for kicking off the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the campaign to help Trump. Trump has regularly railed about McCain in the nearly seven months since his death, complaining about the dossier and the senator's vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act. Exasperated advisers have encouraged him repeatedly to drop the issue, but his grudge against McCain is particularly visceral, according to current and former aides. Some of McCain's supporters said the criticism would amuse McCain, who would have appreciated that the president was still tormented by his legacy. Mark Salter, McCain's longtime friend and co-author, said that at first he was angered by the president's mischaracterizations. "It's reaching a point of boredom for all of us. McCain is getting some kind of amusement out of it that he's still in the guy's head somewhere," Salter said. "It doesn't help him, but he can't control himself. He obviously resents John. He obviously craves the admiration that John received in life. He may excoriate the establishment and fake news and everything else, but he craves its approval." At Trump's event in Lima, Fred Creech, a 61-year-old welder from Wapakoneta, Ohio, said he was a Trump supporter who appreciated the president's visit but said he was not thrilled by the extended anti-McCain diatribe. "I can understand what he was saying, but I don't know that it was totally necessary to explain all that to every single person out here," Creech said. Mike Phillips, 58, of Lafayette, Ohio, who works as a forklift driver at the plant, said he was a Trump supporter who appreciated the president's political incorrectness. "We've got a president up there right now that has backbone," he said. "And we're sorry if we hurt a few feelings, if that's the way it is, but we've got to be strong again." But Phillips was not eager to wade into the McCain controversy: "I do not have a comment on his comment. I'm not going there." Republicans have privately urged Trump to be more decorous about their late colleague, but most have done little in response to the continued attacks, aside from veiled criticisms. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., posted a tweet before Trump's Ohio speech that praised McCain but did not mention the president. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who was close to McCain and remains close to Trump, said at an event in South Carolina on Monday that he had repeatedly counseled the president against attacking his late friend, to no avail. "He's an American hero, and nothing will ever change that in my eyes. I want to help this president, I want him to be successful," he said. ". . . I think the president's comments about Senator McCain hurt him more than they hurt the legacy of Senator McCain." A number of Democratic presidential candidates on Wednesday sharply criticized Trump's attacks on McCain, including South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who said Trump "faked a disability in order to avoid serving," a reference to the president's disputed medical deferment for bone spurs. Beto O'Rourke, appearing at a campaign stop in Conway, New Hampshire, pointed to McCain's disavowal of racial attacks in the 2008 presidential race against Barack Obama. "I think that kind of dignity and civility and mutual respect in our politics is missing right now," O'Rourke said. "I hope that we go back to his example. Instead of focusing on the president's comments, I want to focus on Senator McCain and his example." The president is unlikely to change his posture toward McCain, aides say. He takes particular pride in the idea that GOP voters prefer him over McCain, and aides say he has bragged that Republicans might cringe but not punish him over the attacks. On the day of McCain's death, he scuttled a statement drafted by White House aides honoring the senator's life. He reluctantly lowered the U.S. flags over the White House briefly before they were raised - then, under a fierce backlash, lowered them again. The president also fumed about the wall-to-wall news coverage of McCain's death and that he was not invited to the funeral at Washington National Cathedral, current and former administration officials said. Trump said in Lima that he did not like McCain because he received a "fake and phony" dossier and handed it over to the FBI, "hoping to put me in jeopardy." McCain had said he handed over the document after it was provided to him on the sidelines of a security conference because he thought it was important for law enforcement to investigate. The president said, without providing examples or evidence, that McCain "didn't get the job done for our great vets at the VA, and they knew it." And he attacked McCain's status as a longtime defense hawk who advocated a robust U.S. presence in the Middle East and Afghanistan. "We're in a war in the Middle East that McCain pushed so hard," Trump said. After about five minutes of complaining about McCain, Trump seemed to realize he had flown to Ohio for another reason. Explaining his jeremiad, he said the news media had asked him about McCain - after he tweeted attacks on the late senator. "Not my kind of guy, but some people like him and I think that's great," he said. "Now, let's get back and get onto the subject of tanks and this economy." BEIRA, Mozambique - Ceaseless rain and widespread devastation hampered rescue operations Thursday as underequipped aid agencies struggled to cope with the extensive damage inflicted on central Mozambique by Cyclone Idai, which has killed 500 people here and in Zimbabwe and Malawi. Satellite images from the European Space Agency still show a vast inland sea of more than 1,000 square miles stretching away from the port town of Beira, where the cyclone landed Friday. The storm shattered this town of a half-million people, who already suffered from poor infrastructure. "It's quite tragic what we're seeing," said Hugo Du Plessis, an aviation operations official for the World Food Program. "My pilots are telling me that people are still up in trees, but so are snakes. Imagine, having to choose between a snake and drowning." While the waters are slowly receding, they are waist-level in many areas, and tens of thousands of people are still stranded, with aid agencies estimating that 400,000 people have lost their homes and will need to be housed in emergency shelters. Minister of Land and Environment Celso Correia told journalists Thursday that the death toll in Mozambique was 242, while 15,000 people still needed to be rescued. So far, 3,000 have been saved. Zimbabwe's defense minister said Thursday that the death toll in his country was 259. An additional 56 are believed to have died in neighboring Malawi. There are fears that the toll could soar into the thousands once some of the more remote affected areas are reached. "Our biggest fight is against the clock," Correia told a news conference, adding that rescuers were working 24 hours per day. "The situation is still critical." The plan is ultimately to create vast camps to house the displaced, but for now the immediate goal, six days after the cyclone hit, is still just to rescue people and feed them. For now the aid agencies and local authorities struggling to help people are woefully underequipped, with just two U.N. helicopters that arrived from Uganda and South Africa and one cargo aircraft. There is also an urgent need for flat-bottomed boats to venture out into the flooded areas to find people. Choppy seas and washed-out roads have made getting the necessary equipment to Beira difficult. Most of the rescues have been carried out by the overburdened helicopters that can take up to 30 people at a time. The Indian navy was the first to provide major sea power to the rescue effort, diverting three ships from another mission in Mauritius. A navy official, P.S. Sugesh, said that they had immediately begun training local commercial fishermen in rescue techniques and that now both they and the locals had rescued about 300 people each. Still, the going has been tough, and constant rain and the full moon have made Beira's drastic tides even more unpredictable. "In the first few days we saw many dead bodies in the water," said Sugesh. "It is hard to say how many, but the numbers will go up. The bodies are all in the sea, so it will take weeks or even years to know the real number." On a flight operated by Mission Aviation Fellowship delivering tents and sanitation kits to Beira on behalf of Save the Children, the extent of the damage came into stark relief. Vast stretches of farmland were inundated. The region's mango trees, apparently weaker than its palms, were uprooted as if a comb had run through them, plucking them out of the ground. Roads gave way to gushing, muddy water and the debris of thousands of tin roofs was everywhere. One of the saddest sights were the endless flattened corn fields, ruined right on the verge of their harvest. The annihilation of the crop by the floods ensures a prolonged humanitarian crises here. Dave Holmes, the flight's pilot, once surveyed floods for the U.S. Geological Service, including the epic ones that followed Hurricane Floyd in North Carolina in 1999. "That was nothing compared to this," he said, banking his Cessna left. "Flying over this is intimidating. This feels like flying out into the sea." While the port of Beira itself has reopened, allowing in much-needed supplies such as fuel, signs of the damage to the city are everywhere. Metal sheeting from roofs lies in piles, and trees have been robbed of their leaves and branches. There is also no power or running water. The aid agency Oxfam said 90 percent of the city was underwater. "Food prices are skyrocketing," Rotafina Donco, Oxfam country director for Mozambique, said in a statement. Some people in transit camps have not eaten for days, she added. Not everything was bad news. The first regular container ship left Beira's port today, and Zimbabwe's ambassador to Mozambique visited the port as a measure of confidence in his country's ability to continue to rely on it for precious fuel imports. Electricity and water and cell phone reception returned to parts of the city and cleanup crews made progress clearing roads within Beira. WASHINGTON - New Zealand moved with political urgency to ban military-style semiautomatic weapons in the wake of Friday's massacre at two Christchurch mosques, sparking a discussion in Washington: If a ban could happen there, could it also happen here? Democrats looking for a similar path will face different obstacles in a country where gun rights enshrined in the Constitution have been impervious to a row of mass killings. New Zealand has a tradition of hunting and shooting as sport similar to the United States, but there is no legal provision to own weapons for self-defense. But the velocity of change in New Zealand - less than a week for political winds to find their course after 50 people were killed - has become a rallying point for U.S. lawmakers who have failed to impose stricter gun regulations. "Sandy Hook happened 6 years ago and we can't even get the Senate to hold a vote on universal background checks w/ #HR8," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote Wednesday on Twitter, referring to a bill requiring background checks on all gun purchases. "Christchurch happened, and within days New Zealand acted to get weapons of war out of the consumer market. This is what leadership looks like." Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., assailed Republicans for a common reaction to gun massacres in the United States. "See @GOP - turns out you can respond with thoughts and prayers - AND ACTION," he wrote. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who became a leading Democrat on proposals for ramped-up gun laws after a gunman killed 26 children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in his home state. "See. It's not that hard," Murphy wrote on Twitter following the gun law announcement from New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., made similar remarks. "We must follow New Zealand's lead, take on the NRA and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States," he wrote on Twitter, referring to the powerful gun lobby group. In New Zealand, a buyback program will be launched to take weapons out of circulation, and those who do not comply will be subject to fines or jail time, Ardern said. "What we're banning today are the things used in last Friday's attack," she said Thursday. "It's about all of us; it's in the national interest, and it's about safety." Yet, to put the difficulty of similar action in the United States into perspective, there are an estimated 1.5 million guns in New Zealand among 5 million people, the Associated Press reported. There are 393 million in the United States - one for every person and a 67 million surplus. The New Zealand ban includes semiautomatic rifles and shotguns with detachable magazines that hold more than five rounds. Some smaller-caliber .22 semiautomatic rifles commonly used by ranchers will be allowed, along with semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns with nondetachable magazines that hold no more than five shells, the Guardian reported. Those shotguns would take more time to reload in the event of a mass shooting. NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch criticized the embrace of New Zealand's ban among U.S. lawmakers in a reply to Ocasio-Cortez's tweet. "That's also what an entirely different country that doesn't have the right to bear arms as a cornerstone of its constitution, in addition to numerous state laws," she said. "It's also what confiscation and banning most semi-auto looks like, too." And in reply to Sanders, Loesch said: "the US isn't NZ. While they do not have an inalienable right to bear arms and to self defense, we do." Other lawmakers directly targeted the NRA's influence on American gun law policy. Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., asked rhetorically how New Zealand moved so fast from tragedy to action. "Their politicians aren't bought and paid for by the gun lobby," he wrote on Twitter, tagging Republican accounts and the NRA. The latest round of talks between the United States and the Taliban has produced tangible results and all signs indicate that the two sides are now closer than ever before ending the deadly conflict that has spanned over 17 years. The talks started last month in the Qatari capital of Doha and went on for more than two weeks. U.S. chief negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad announced after the talks that both sides had agreed on a draft agreement on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan as well as the implementation of counter-terrorism measures. This is a huge achievement especially when compared to the situation a while back when both sides were not even ready to negotiate, and when the idea of peace between the U.S. and the Taliban looked more like a pipe dream. But time has changed and with it too, the attitude of both adversaries. Despite the big leap forward in talks, there is still some ways to go. Ambassador Khalilzad was right when he declared that there was agreement on the two key issues, but he also added that there were two other matters that needed to be tackled before a full resolution could be achieved. One of the unresolved issues is how to bring the different Afghan factions together for an intra-Afghan dialogue. Though the Taliban and the current Afghan government are the main parties in the conflict, other stakeholders should also be brought on board. Afghanistan is a complex and multi-faceted society and the leading tribes, local chiefs and other important leaders would also like to be consulted. It may not be possible to include everyone in discussions, but a mechanism should be created to make the process as inclusive as possible. The second key issue, which needs to be addressed to create lasting peace, is how to arrange a comprehensive ceasefire. This is tricky because until all groups endorse the final agreement, complete peace cannot be achieved. Since the U.S. and Taliban have already agreed to take steps to end the conflict, talks should immediately start for an intra-Afghan dialogue and ceasefire. Until there is progress on these two issues, political uncertainty will not go away. If the past can be a guide, we can say that local rivalries have been the main hurdle in bringing lasting peace in Afghanistan. Looking back, it seems easier for Afghans to unite and fight a foreign enemy than to come together for a domestic political agenda. After the USSR pulled out its troops in 1989, there was a golden opportunity for peace, but internal strife beset the former allies. The subsequent years saw the the nation descend into chaos, which was later characterized by shifting loyalties. The emergence of the Taliban as a strong force in 1990s also failed to end the problem and the country was painfully divided. The unrest continued until 9/11, which changed the course of Afghan history. Since NATO troops under American leadership toppled the Taliban government, Afghans have hardly witnessed a day of calm. For all intents and purposes, it seemed like the Afghan war was a fight between militants and foreign forces, but in reality Afghans were also fighting each other. It's good that the Taliban has reached some agreement with the Americans, but it remains to be seen if they can show the same spirit when dealing with fellow Afghans. This same rule applies to the Afghan government and other groups, they seem ready to work with foreign forces but can they truly accommodate Taliban? Let us hope that Afghans now better understand global politics and the unfortunate price they paid of being caught in the middle. Let's also hope that they will avoid bickering and petty politics, which will only delay the attainment of lasting peace. The people of Afghanistan deserve a safe and prosperous future, but they must know that this will only come through foresight, mutual tolerance, and open-mindedness. Another key point is that the reconstruction of Afghanistan should also be on the agenda. Massive resources and efforts are needed to transform the war-torn country into a normal economy and functional polity. The final draft should include international commitments to rebuilding Afghanistan, and all those countries which were directly or indirectly involved in Afghanistan since the 1970s should contribute financially to put it back on its rightful path of peace and progress. Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn. If you would like to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinion@china.org.cn. UPDATE: TPWD today tweeted "It's official! This 67 lb blue catfish caught by Brayden Rogers from Lake Tawakoni is now the junior state record, junior lake record, and the angler has received a Big Fish Award for this impressive catch from our Angler Recognition Program. Way to go, Brayden!" ORIGINAL STORY: A massive 67.1-pound fish caught by a 13-year-old may have set a new Texas record. On Saturday, Brayden Rogers of Cisco hooked the massive blue catfish while fishing at Lake Tawakoni with Michael and Teri Littlejohn's Guide Service. Fishing scandal: Fisherman charged with fraud after allegedly cheating at bass tournament Before a new state record can be declared, the genetic results of fish are under review by the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department (TPWD) Angler Recognition Program, according to a release from the TPWD. MORNING UPDATES: Get all the news you need to start your day delivered to your inbox As of now, a 66.2-pound blue catfish reeled in at Lake Worth in 2011 holds the Texas record for junior anglers, according to the TPWD website. Rogers' giant fish was kept alive and is currently being held at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens, the TPWD reported. It will remain in quarantine for at least 60 days before being placed in a large tank for public display. Marcy de Luna is a digital reporter specializing in social media, the famous, and food. You can follow her on Twitter @MarcydeLuna and Facebook @MarcydeLuna. Read her stories on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and on our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com. | Marcy.deLuna@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message They cast spells and engage in Nerf wars. They go on a "cookie capture mission," suspending themselves over a granite countertop in a handsome suburban kitchen to swipe their sister's baked goods. The siblings who appear in the blithe family comedy series "Fantastic Adventures," which has garnered nearly 800,000 subscribers and hundreds of millions of views on YouTube, exude wonderment and youthful joie de vivre. Police say that when the camera wasn't rolling, however, the seven adopted children were being starved and sequestered for days in a closet with a bare tile floor. Its color evoked a green room, almost like a staging area for their performances. They were being pepper-sprayed and beaten with belts, brushes and hangers. They were forced to take ice baths. They were required to stand with their arms raised above their heads from dawn until midnight. On more than one occasion, at least one of the boys bled when the tip of his penis was pinched. RELATED: A 13-year-old died after being told not to take insulin. Now the herbalist is headed to jail. The perpetrator of this catalogue of abuse, according to a statement of probable cause prepared last week, was their adoptive mother, Machelle Hackney, 48, who goes by her maiden name, Hobson, and runs the "Fantastic Adventures" channel, which has had more than 250 million views. The channel started in 2012 and features 10- to 15-minute videos of the children engaging in various make-believe scenarios, involving everything from zombies to spiders to s'mores. Several new videos appear each month. At the end of the segments, the children face the camera and ask viewers to like the videos and subscribe. Hackney was arrested Friday at her home in Maricopa, Arizona, along with her two biological sons. She was charged with molestation of a child, child abuse, unlawful imprisonment and child neglect. Her adult sons, Logan and Ryan Hackney, face charges of not reporting abuse. Machelle Hackney's biological daughter was the one who contacted authorities on March 13, prompting a welfare check at the home 30 miles outside of Phoenix, according to court records. "Fantastic Adventures" remained available as of early Wednesday, although YouTube said it had demonetized the channel when the company became aware of its creator's arrest. The video-sharing website, which is owned by Google, declined to specify how much money Hackney has made on the platform. A popular YouTube presence can be highly lucrative, with a channel netting almost $10 per 1,000 views, according to the business solutions company G2 Crowd. That suggests that Hackney could have grossed as much as $2.5 million from her exploits on the site. READ MORE: Trump says 'we have to do something' about social media "We take safety on YouTube very seriously," a company spokesperson said in a statement to The Washington Post. "We work closely with leading child safety organizations and others in our industry to protect young people. When we're made aware of serious allegations of this nature we take action, which may include suspending monetization, or, upon conclusion of an investigation, terminating channels." Hackney's arrest adds to questions about how the world's biggest video site polices its platform in a moment of intense scrutiny about the spread of misleading and hateful content. Last week, technology companies became unwitting accessories in the quest for publicity undertaken by the man accused of opening fire on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 50 people. YouTube struggled to keep up with users uploading new versions of the gruesome footage, which also spread on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. YouTube debuted in 2005 as a do-it-yourself platform with the slogan "Broadcast Yourself." Recently, the video-sharing behemoth has had to answer for its role in disseminating poisonous online conspiracy theories, terrorist recruitment videos and other content deemed harmful to children, such as suicide instructions interspersed with footage from a popular Nintendo game. The company has aimed to crack down in particular on pedophilic content, erasing tens of millions of comments from its site that a video blogger said amounted to a "soft-core pedophile ring" driving traffic - and revenue - to the platform. Sometimes, it has misfired. YouTube corrected itself last month after mistakenly deleting the accounts of several high-profile users who said they had been unfairly caught in the dragnet. But the prospect that a commercial endeavor on YouTube could be facilitating child abuse off-screen appears to present a relatively new challenge for the company. In responding to a query about Hackney's channel, YouTube emphasized its feature allowing users to flag inappropriate content but didn't explain how its drop-down option for reporting offensive material would have applied in this case, when no abuse was featured on-screen. For accusations of abuse happening offline, the company suggests that users notify the police. A spokesperson didn't return a query about whether the company saw fit to screen popular content creators who have vast platforms on its service. According to authorities in Arizona, Hackney's YouTube channel was the reason for her alleged mistreatment of her adopted children. She meted out punishment, they said, when the young actors didn't remember their lines or otherwise didn't perform as directed. Ricardo Alvarado, a Maricopa police spokesman, said the seven adopted children range in age from about 6 to 15. After the welfare check Wednesday, they were removed from their mother's custody by the state's Department of Child Safety. Hackney denied using pepper spray and ice baths to punish the children, according to the statement of probable cause. (Two cans of pepper spray were discovered in her bedroom.) She told police that she instead resorted to spanking and grounding them, as well as forcing them to stand in a corner. But the court filing paints a macabre picture of all-encompassing abuse, which flourished beneath the veil of "Fantastic Adventures." The children reported being removed from school several years ago to focus on the videos. When police interviewed them, they appeared malnourished, underweight, and had pale complexions and dark rings under their eyes. One of the children, when offered the chance to drink, guzzled three 16-ounce bottles of water in 20 minutes. Another child, provided a bag of chips, was reluctant to eat, fearful that her mother would smell the food on her breath. A third said she had not been allowed to eat in two days. In interviews with child safety officials, the children described being pepper-sprayed all over their faces and bodies, including their genitals, causing pain for four to five days. When they resisted ice baths, they said, their mother would force their heads underwater. They were frequently locked in the closet off their mother's master bedroom, sometimes for as long as a week. Hackney and her two biological sons were arrested at their home shortly before noon on Friday. Ryan Hackney invoked his Miranda rights, declining to speak with police. Logan Hackney admitted knowledge of the abuse, according to the filing, and said he and his brother had discussed reporting their mother. The adopted children said Ryan would sometimes sneak them food when they were locked in the closet. The videos in which the children appear have diverse themes, but a number revolve around "escape game" situations, where players have to solve puzzles to free themselves. They vanquish aliens and gingerbread men to find their way out. According to police, their real-life captor proved more difficult to elude. Flash U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Wednesday, and vowed to increase pressure against Iran. Pompeo praised the warm ties between Israel and the White House, publicly stressing Trump administration's support to Netanyahu in the latter's tight re-election campaign. Speaking in joint remarks after their meeting in Jerusalem, Pompeo praised the "unparalleled" U.S. military support for Israel. "With the threats of annihilation that Iran is making against Israel, we are committed to Israel's security and its right to self-defense," he said. "With rocket threats from Gaza and threats from the north, we are proud to stand by your side," he added. Pompeo said the purpose of the visit was to harden the pressure against Israel's arch-enemy, Iran. He hailed February's conference in Warsaw on the Middle East as "a historic conference," saying "Arab leaders and Israel discussed terrorism and how to stop Iran's campaign of destruction in the region." Netanyahu, on his side, used the opportunity to urge the international community to recognize Israel's sovereignty in the annexed Golan Heights, an original Syrian territory. Israel seized the land in a war in 1967 and annexed it in the 1980s, but the international community has never recognized the move. "Time had come for the international community to recognize the Israeli presence in the Golan Heights and the fact that the Golan will always remain part of Israel," Netanyahu told Pompeo. "Only last week, we exposed Hezbollah's efforts, backed by Iranian funding, to establish a military base in Syria on the border of the Golan Heights," Netanyahu said. On March 11, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham toured the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and vowed to lobby the White House to acknowledge the disputed territory as part of Israel. Earlier on Wednesday, the White House issued a statement saying Trump will host the prime minister at the White House next week. Netanyahu is seeking to be re-elected for a fifth term in the April 9 elections but he faces a tough fight from Israel's former Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz, and a series of allegations over fraud and bribery. On Feb. 28, Israel's Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit said he intends to indict Netanyahu on three separate corruption cases, pending a hearing that will be held after the elections. Look at the losers running, or considering a run, for the Democratic presidential nomination. I dont mean that pejoratively. I mean it literally. Beto ORourkes presidential candidacy is the ultimate expression of the participation trophy culture on the left. It used to be you had to win on the state level before taking the national stage. Barack Obama won a Senate seat from Illinois before immediately declaring his intention to run for president. At the time, that was considered pretty audacious. He hadnt accomplished anything in the Senate before he decided on a presidential run. But at least he won. ORourke lost his race to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, last year. He got a participation trophy. Apparently, he thinks that qualifies him to be the leader of the free world. Well, he must have some accomplishments other than almost winning a Senate seat, right? Not really. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was flummoxed when asked what ORourke had accomplished in Congress, saying he brought a great deal of vitality to his work preserving our planet and protecting our people. (In fact, ORourke passed a single bill, HR 5873, which renamed a courthouse in his hometown of El Paso.) Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa was questioned by Ed Henry on Fox News, What would you say is Beto ORourkes top accomplishment that he brings to the table? Hinojosa could not name a single one. Im not even talking about Congress, Henry said. What has he done in his life? Your question is meaningless, Hinojosa replied. So, if ORourke hasnt accomplished anything, he must at least have some clear ideas of what he wants to accomplish in the Oval Office, right? Nope. The Washington Post reports that unlike candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who launched their campaigns with clearly articulated policy platforms, ORourke focuses more on sweeping calls for unity and pitching himself as the best antidote to the countrys toxic politics. The motivation for his run, apparently, is him. As Vanity Fairs Joe Hagan explains in a recent profile, ORourke cant deny the pull of his own gifts. He tells a reporter, Man, Im just born to be in it. Hes not the only statewide loser taking the national stage. Stacey Abrams lost the governors race in Georgia in 2018, yet national Democrats tapped her to deliver the official rebuttal to the State of the Union a task normally given to those who actually won their races. And now, the Post reports, she is considering a race for president as well. I think that I am a skilled communicator, she said. I think Im a very good thinker. No, I know Im a good thinker. I know I have policy chops. I have foreign policy experience. Foreign policy experience? She served as minority leader of the state House of Representatives. Her official bio lists her as former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations (a temporary membership for young people) as well as a Council on Italy Fellow, a British-American Project Fellow, a Salzburg Seminar-Freeman Fellow on U.S.-East Asian Relations, a Salzburg Seminar Fellow on youth and civic engagement and a Yukos Fellow for U.S.-Russian Relations. That might qualify her for an entry-level job at a left-wing think tank, but it hardly qualifies her to be commander in chief. Even ORourke can claim experience on the House Armed Services Committee. Democrats point out that President Donald Trump had never won statewide office before running for president. Thats true. But he also had not run for state office and lost. He ran as a successful outsider, not as a failed insider. And unlike ORourke, he had actual accomplishments including a multibillion-dollar real estate empire. This is not to dismiss ORourkes chances. He raised a whopping $6.1 million in his first 24 hours as a candidate, just edging out Sanderss first day haul of almost $6 million. That is the best of any Democrat running for president so far. As the New York Times noted, In a single day online, he raised nearly a quarter of what Barack Obama, then a senator, did in the entire first quarter of 2007. Apparently, Democrats like losers. Well soon see if one can win the presidency. @marcthiessen You are here: World Flash Foreign ministers of Kuwait and the Untied States vowed Wednesday to boost bilateral relations. Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Sabah expressed his appreciation for the U.S. efforts to solve the Gulf crisis. "We appreciate the U.S. efforts and support to solve the Gulf crisis," Al-Sabah said during his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the capital Kuwait City. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt severed diplomatic ties with Qatar in 2017, accusing Doha of backing terrorism. Qatar has repeatedly denied the accusations. "Kuwait has strategic relations with the U.S.," said the Kuwaiti minister. On Yemen, he said Kuwait agrees with the United States that "it is essential to solve the Yemeni crisis." "We believe in the U.S. friendship with several countries of the region which would lead to an accepted solution to the Palestinian issue," the Kuwaiti minister added. Pompeo said that the United States is prepared to enhance relations with Kuwait in various areas. "We have used strategic dialogue in its third round to support and enhance the various aspects of bilateral political, economic, cultural, educational, security and cybersecurity relations," Pompeo said. He noted that the relations between the two countries at the defense level are "distinct." Kuwait hosts thousands of U.S. troops on its territory, which reflects the strength of the military cooperation between the two countries, he said, stressing that Kuwait is a strategic partner of the United States in combating terrorism. Artist residencies are all about supporting the artist and enabling them to create the work they want to create. But Backstage Theatre's new artist in residence Maisie Lee is all about helping children to create, and has been visiting schools in the county to introduce pupils to all aspects of theatre. With the help of actress and playwright Fionnuala Gygax, Maisie is working on a project called Luminaria, giving children the chance to have their say on how the performance should look. Fionnuala and I are interested in making work for young people that involves them in the process, so its not just us deciding what will work really well for the children; their ideas actually feed into the development process, Maisie explained. The pair are doing a series of workshops in St Matthews' NS Ballymahon, St Mel's NS Ardagh and St Michael's NS Longford, which involve the children in every part of the process, ensuring that the final performance is not only one created for the children, but also one in which children have had an input. The play will then be finished by professionals here in Longford and if it's a success, it will be toured to various other venues around the country. This play is a window into the creative process from the beginning of an idea to seeing something on stage. I think quite often children might get a bit of that - either putting on a play or writing a story - but actually to get to follow the journey through is very useful, said Maisie. In a similar manner, the girls did the Velveteen Rabbit last year and Fionnuala did some workshops with school children, followed by a work in progress to show the children how the play was shaping up. I think for the children, seeing the ideas that we've done in workshops on stage was really useful, even knowing that what they were seeing wasn't finished, Maisie explained. Read also: Hit play Wake in the West back in Longford by popular demand So then we had questions and answers with them afterwards, asking them is that what we imagined and if we were to do it again in the full version, what would we do next? So its all the steps along the way. Loads of them, when we asked them, are very interested in writing stories, so its just using that in a different form. Fionnuala agreed, adding that, while some of the children don't have experience in theatre or drama, storytelling is something that will be familiar to everyone. A lot of them probably would understand what it means to write a story because theyve done it in school. So were taking that form and showing that you can write a story and make it into something else, she remarked. Its a very unique idea and one that is quite new in Ireland, teaching children the language of theatre and showing them that their input as children is as valid as ours as adults. And general manager of the Backstage Theatre Mona Considine is thrilled to be bringing such a new and inspiring project to Longford through the Artist in Residence programme. To have that insight into the childrens interpretation of the work or reaction to the work or response to the work is really interesting to see. I think its great that theyre involved in some way in the making of the professional work for their own age group, however small that is, she told the Leader. The sharing was done with no set, because it was just a sharing of a work in progress. But they were asked what they thought should be in the set and what would they expect to be there. And their answers were really interesting - some things youd expect and some things you dont expect, but its nice that theyre informing every element of it. And theyre interested as well in the final production. Its a relatively new idea in terms of making work for childrens audiences and young audiences and involving the children in the process, according to Maisie. And I think thats the most important thing about this residency - the children being involved in the process, not just being expected to turn up as an audience member. Theyre there from the beginning and they feel an ownership of the work. Read next: Making theatre available to everyone in Longford A father-of-one has been sentenced to life in prison for murdering a fellow drug dealer, whod threatened his family over a 100 debt. He chased him across a busy street and stabbed him to death in broad daylight. The Central Criminal Court heard that Rihards Lavickis (26) admitted that he went out with a knife on November 1, 2016 to get Akadiusz Arik Czajkowski for threatening his family and breaking their windows. The Latvian native with an address at Annaly court in Longford pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty to the manslaughter of the Polish father-of-two outside Longford Shopping Centre at Rue Noyal Chatillon, Townspark in the town. The trial heard that both men had become friendly while neighbours in Annaly Court. However, the deceased had set a number of bins on fire, causing an electricity outage lasting several days in a number of apartments. The deceased had moved elsewhere in the town by the time Lavickis bought 300 worth of drugs off him on tic. However, the money wasnt paid on the day the deceased wanted. So, he went with an associate to the home Lavickis shared with his partner, her mother and sister and their three young children, and attacked him with a knuckle duster. Although Lavickis reported the attack to the gardai, he decided not to press charges, and the drug debt was reduced to 100 as a result. However, the trouble continued between the two men, with Lavickis holding the deceased responsible for his familys windows being broken on up to five different occasions. During one of these incidents, his sister-in-laws friend was sleeping in the room under attack. The night before the killing was Halloween and Lavickis was out and about with two friends. The jury saw CCTV footage of the three men standing behind a wall before a car pulled up and the deceased and two other men getting out. The footage then showed the first three men running away. One of Lavickiss friends, Michael Godla, told the court that the deceased had shouted at Lavickis: Where is the money? and that Lavickis had replied: I give you nothing because you beat me with a knuckle duster. Mr Godla testified that the deceased had warned that he would get out of the car and give Lavickis a beating. Then another guy get out of the back of the car so we run away all of us, he said, explaining that they were afraid. They were big guys, like both bodybuilders. There were three people inside. He said they were hiding for 15 minutes as the men in the car drove up and down looking for them. Mr Godla said that he was awoken by glass breaking around 3 oclock the following morning and saw that Lavickiss window had been broken. He later told Lavickis what he had seen. Gardai testified that Lavickis called them to report the broken window that morning. They went to his home and he nominated the deceased as a suspect, telling the officers that he would get him. They had warned him not to, that they would deal with it. However, he had gone out with a knife looking for the deceased. He later saw him walking down the street, hid in a gap in a wall and gave chase as he passed by. The jury saw CCTV footage of him chasing him with a knife raised, and heard that hed stabbed him three times just seconds later. The stabbing wasnt caught on camera. A post-mortem exam found that the victim died of a single stab wound to the heart. The other two wounds were not fatal, with one to his finger classed as defensive. The defence had argued that he did not have the intent necessary for murder when he stabbed the deceased. His barrister also said that, if the jury found he had the intent, it could then find that he had been provoked by the deceased. Both defences could reduce murder to manslaughter. However, the prosecution argued that the natural and probable consequences of sticking a knife into someones chest was death or serious injury, either of which could lead to a conviction of murder. The jury spent just over three hours deliberating and found him guilty of murder by unanimous verdict. Mr Justice Michael White thanked the jury of eight men and four women and imposed the mandatory life sentence on Lavickis. Local News, Crime, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: March 21 2019 Tommy Alvarado-Ventura, 33, pleaded guilty on February 13. Mineola, NY - March 21, 2019 - Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced that a Hempstead MS-13 member who was arrested in March 2017 for attempting to murder three people, including a two-year-old child he sexually assaulted, was sentenced today to 26 years to life in prison. Defendant Tommy Alvarado-Ventura, also known as Montana, 33, pleaded guilty on February 13 before Supervising Judge Teresa Corrigan to: Attempted Murder in the First Degree (an A-I felony) Two counts of Predatory Sexual Assault Against a Child (an A-II felony) Three counts of Attempted Murder in the Second Degree (a B violent felony) Four counts of Assault in the First Degree (a B violent felony) Two counts of Assault in the Second Degree (a D violent felony) Two counts of Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Third Degree (a D violent felony) Strangulation in the Second Degree (a D violent felony) Sex Abuse in the First Degree (a D violent felony) The NCDA had recommended a pre-trial sentence of 30 years to life in prison. This defendant sexually assaulted a helpless toddler and brutally stabbed and attempted to murder two women, including the childs mother, in a horrific and unconscionable spree of violence, DA Singas said The depravity of this defendant knows few parallels, and he should spend the rest of his life in prison for these despicable crimes. DA Singas said that at approximately 2:30 a.m. on March 22, 2017, the defendant tried to kill a woman outside El Mariachi Loco Bar in Hempstead by stabbing and slashing her. The woman had attempted to talk to the defendant about a disagreement in the bar. Alvarado-Ventura stabbed and slashed the woman in her back, thigh and hands. He then put the knife inside her mouth and slashed the corner of her face, leaving a scar. She was terrorized and permanently injured. As the defendant continued to attack the victim, his co-defendant, Antony Almendarez, prevented good Samaritans from intervening on her behalf. The two defendants fled the scene when they realized witnesses were calling 911. The victim sustained a collapsed lung, permanent scarring on her body and nerve damage to her fingers. After fleeing the scene, Alvarado-Ventura returned to his girlfriends apartment in Hempstead, while Almendarez went home. Alvarado-Ventura had agreed to watch his girlfriends children while she worked. The defendant tried to kill the womans two-year old daughter by savagely beating her about the face, strangling her and sexually assaulting her. The child suffered catastrophic injuries that required hospitalization and surgeries. When his girlfriend returned from work, the defendant attempted to murder her by beating and stabbing her on her arms, hands and neck. The defendant was arrested at the girlfriends home after police were called to respond by a neighbor The victims from the separate incidents were all taken to Winthrop Hospital, where Nassau County Police Department members connected the two incidents to the defendant. Almendarez pleaded guilty to two counts of Assault in the First Degree on April 5, 2018, and was sentenced to five years in prison for his involvement in the incident outside the bar. Almendarez was not involved in the later incidents. Local News, Crime, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: March 21 2019 Robert Van Wyen of Islip, 32, intended to resell the Motorola radio for $10,000 to a towing company, DA Singas says. Mineola, NY - March 22, 2019 - Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced the arrest of a Hempstead Village Police Officer for allegedly stealing a portable encrypted police radio from the Hempstead Village Police Department. Robert Van Wyen, 32, of Islip, surrendered this morning to the Nassau County Police Department District Attorney Squad and was arraigned today before Judge Meryl Berkowitz. He is charged with: Grand Larceny in the Third Degree (a D felony) Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Third Degree (a D felony) Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree (an E felony) Official Misconduct (an A misdemeanor) Unauthorized Use of a Computer (an A misdemeanor) Bail was set at $20,000 bond or $20,000 cash and the defendant is due back in court on April 16. If convicted of the top count he faces up to 2-1/3 years to seven years in prison. Listening to confidential, scrambled police communications can give a valuable advantage to a private towing company, or even imperil the safety of law enforcement, DA Singas said. This police officers alleged attempt steal a police radio and sell it for thousands in cash is a betrayal of his oath as an officer, a crime against the taxpayers, and our prosecutors will hold him accountable. DA Singas said that in January 2017 the NCDA received a tip that a Hempstead Village police officer had stolen a portable police radio from the Hempstead Village Police Department. After an extensive investigation, it is alleged that Van Wyen, a Hempstead Village police officer, stole the Motorola radio and intended to resell it for $10,000 to a towing company. Police radios in Nassau County are encrypted on proprietary software. The possession of an encrypted radio would bestow a business advantage on a tow-truck operator that could learn of automobile collisions and accidents before the competition. A towing company can earn approximately $2,500 per tow, a price that is inclusive of the work the company could expect to perform on the car following the tow. The investigation is ongoing. Senior Investigative Counsels Mary Ruddy and Donald Levin of DA Singas Organized Crime and Rackets Bureau are prosecuting this case. The defendant is represented by Anthony LaPinta, Esq. Bright, vivid colors decorate the bullet-riddled walls of Binnish, a town surrounded by fig and olive trees just a few miles away from Idlib. The street art there, like Daraa and Daraya before they were retaken by the regime, is a form of political expression, a peaceful and deliberately provocative weapon used to record the key stages of the revolution. "Binnish is like one big open-air art gallery. There is beauty in all this chaos. And when the residents discover a new mural, they say: Ah! Aziz struck again, Aziz al-Asmar tells LOrient-Le Jour (OLJ). Al-Asmar is a graffiti artist with a round face, shoulder length hair and gentle, optimistic look who is dedicated to graphic activism, an artform that has dwindled in the rest of Syria outside of Idlib. Since January, the opposition-held stronghold has been controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist group dominated by the remnants of al-Qaedas Syrian franchise. The region is also under regime and Russian bombardment despite being designated as a demilitarized zone in a Russian and Turkish brokered agreement last September. The regime has indicated that it wants to take back the area by any means necessary, and Idlibs population is forced to live under the constant threat of bombing raids on their cities. "When there are air raids on Saraqib (about twenty kilometers away), we say that tomorrow it might be our turn, says al-Asmar, who is 46 years old and has become popular outside of his town because of his art. At the end of February, a baby girl was killed after her mother was fatally wounded by shrapnel in Maarrat al-Nouman, another town in Idlib. The tragedy shocked the population. In an attempt to cope with what happened, al-Asmar painted a tribute to the martyred girl on a wall in Binnish. Under the reproduction of her photo he included the caption: The war against terrorism in Syria. "These are the drawings I prefer. It hurts, crushes my heart, but I must keep on painting the martyrs, al-Asmar says. He is motivated by a desire to leave a trace, even for a brief moment, of the victims of this eight year long war. In Binnish alone, 1,000 people are reported to have died since 2011 and another 200 are believed to be held in the regime's prisons. Not Tora Bora Al-Asmar is a storyteller, and he not only wants to send a message to his countrymen, but also to the rest of the world. He feels that people outside tend to overlook what is happening in Idlib, a region that is all too often perceived as only a stronghold for jihadists. "Some even likened Idlib to Tora Bora, al-Asmar says, referencing Osama Bin Laden's last refuge in Afghanistan, which has been controlled by the Islamic State since 2017. Why give only a bleak vision of our region? Idlib is anything but that. We love life, sports, music, art, he adds. Before the Syrian revolution began, like many others, al-Asmar struggled to find work in Syria and left for Lebanon at the age of 22. He comes from a family of scholars and artists: his father is a civil servant and calligrapher; his maternal uncle studied law and medicine, but decided to become artists. In Beirut, al-Asmar found work at a publishing house and stayed for 20 years. He would see his former school teachers from Syria forced to work menial jobs in Lebanon during the summertime to make enough money to survive back home the rest of the year . "An English teacher who sold vegetables one day answered a buyer in this language. Upon seeing his surprise, the professor said to him, Do not be surprised. The one who pushes the cart behind me is a professor of history, behind him, theres another of philosophy, and the last one there, he is the principal of our school, al-Asmar jokes. The story is funny, but it also shows the serious economic problems Syria was facing in the 2000s. "The government was unable to help the graduates. When the Arab revolutions broke out, I thought we would finally be rid of this regime against which we dared not express our anger, he adds. Al-Asmar followed the beginning of the uprising from his apartment in the Karantina neighborhood of Beirut, where he lived with his wife and their two children at the time. He spoke with his relatives in Binnish and sketched portraits of the martyrs from his city. In July 2015, the bombing in Binnish became more intense because of its proximity to al-Fuah and Kfarya, two Shia villages that were besieged by rebel forces. Al-Asmar was afraid for his familys safety to the point that he was losing sleep at night, and decided to return to his hometown. It was an unlikely decision at a time when thousands of Syrians were leaving the country to take refuge elsewhere. Al-Asmar partially felt guilty that he was not suffering the same way others who opposed Bashar al-Assad were, but he also watched a growing surge in anti-Syrian xenophobia in Lebanon that led to a series of laws that made life more difficult for expatriate workers. "Very often, there were police raids in the neighborhood. It was very stressful, al-Asmar recalls. While he at times experienced racial profiling first hand, his employer was quite generous and gave al-Asmar an end-of-service benefit of nearly $11,000. The money allowed him to return back home. "Saoufa nabqa" Al-Asmar and his family crossed the border and moved back in Binnish in September 2015. The city was unrecognizable. "Just two days after our arrival there were air raids as I was walking in the street. I did not know what to do, so I threw myself on the ground while others kept going normally. It took me a while to get used to that, al-Asmar says. Back in his hometown, he decided to participate in the revolution in his own way, by decorating the war-ravaged walls of the city. His first work, a simple slogan, "Saoufa nabqa" ("We're staying"), tagged on the roof of a destroyed building, went viral on social media. No matter what was happening elsewhere in Syria, the walls of Binnish, under constant threat of bombardment, became al-Asmars canvas. "I think of people who sacrificed their lives to pay for their homes, who may have died in them or who had to leave them because of the bombings, he says of his inspiration. Groups of children often join in to help al-Asmar with his paintings. They recognize him on the street and speak with him. He often goes to their schools to paint or goes to orphanages to try to brighten the childrens days, if just a bit. An unusual family Al-Asmar has also paid tribute to figures of the revolution who passed away recently, such as Syrian actress and dissident May Skaf, who died in Paris last June, and the emblematic Raed Fares, originally from Kfar Nabel, who is presumed to have been murdered by members of HTS, a group he fought as much as the regime. For his part, al-Asmar says that he hasnt had any problems with HTS and enjoys total freedom of speech, as do his nine brothers and sisters, all scholars and artist. Adnan, one of his two brothers who chose to remain in Binnish, is a sound engineer for an opposition media group and writes music in his studio. The other brother, Amer, is a calligrapher, cartoonist and English professor at the university. The rest of the family is dispersed between Germany, Turkey, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. Despite the desperation caused by the defeat of the insurgency, al-Asmar doesnt regret returning to his hometown, where he continues to live with his wife, who is a teacher, and now their three boys, including a two-month-old baby. Al-Asmars oldest son, Ahmad, is 13. Hes first in his class and appears to be talented in literature. Mohammad, 10, is a math whiz and is often described as a little genius. At age four, he was already able to do mental calculations and quickly became unbeatable at chess. "He learned the Quran by heart and is able to multiply up to several million," his father says proudly. Last Friday marked the eighth anniversary of the Syrian revolution. In Binnish, which means "son of man" or "humanity" in Syriac, several prominent figures, activists and artists who were displaced from Ghouta, Aleppo and Daraa met for a demonstration. Al-Asmar painted the flag of the revolution and wrote: "Slaughtered, but we continue". (This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour on the 20th of March) Flash The first flight of the new Russian military transport aircraft Il-112V will take place at the end of March or the beginning of April, local media reported Thursday. "Everything is ready, all issues with engines have been resolved," TASS news agency quoted a source in the defense industry as saying. Il-112V will be accompanied by an An-26 aircraft on its maiden flight. "The An-26 will fly in parallel, at the same altitude and speed, to monitor the operation parameters of different systems," the source added. Light military transport aircraft Il-112V is designed for the transporting and parachuting of light weaponry and equipment, as well as cargo and military personnel. High school students in Boston will be able to attend Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology without having to pay the cost of tuition, the mayors office announced Wednesday. BFIT, a college of engineering and industrial technologies based in the South End, is the first private school to participate in the citys Tuition-Free Community College program, which serves more than 300 students at Roxbury, Bunker Hill and MassBay community colleges. BFITs mission aligns with our commitment to providing a path to the middle class for Bostons young people, Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said. I am pleased to announce that we are adding BFIT to the list of colleges participating in our Tuition-Free Community College Plan, providing more opportunities for Bostons students to access higher education. Walshs office said BFIT aims to close the skills gap among Massachusetts employees. The school said more than 90 percent of its students graduate with either a well-paying job or plans to pursue an advanced degree. "The Tuition-Free Community College Plan will make the dream of a college diploma attainable for many more deserving students who otherwise would not be able to afford it, BFIT President Anthony Benoit said. The programs financial support will allow more of Bostons young people to earn a BFIT degree and qualify for rewarding careers, uplifting themselves, their families, and their communities. To be eligible, students must be Boston residents who have graduated from a high school in the city, graduated as a METCO student or earned their GED. Students must also be eligible for a Pell Grant and meet guidelines for having a low to moderate household income. There are 316 students -- 84.5 percent of whom identify as Hispanic/Latino or African-American -- in the program now, the mayors office said. Walshs office said the programs students have a graduation rate of 70 percent and the mayor has proposed a statewide replica of Bostons program TD Bank apologized Thursday for posting an advertisement that some said reinforced negative stereotypes about Dorchester, the citys largest, most racially diverse neighborhood. The ad states, When youre downtown, but your debit cards somewhere in Dorchester," a neighborhood with a higher minority population and lower median household income than the rest of Boston. Local Twitter users who saw the reference as a slight to the neighborhood questioned why TD Bank focused on Dorchester. This ad is bad enough, but to add insult to injury, TD Bank doesnt even have a branch in Dorchester, Bostons largest neighborhood," tweeted the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, which hosts the annual Taste of Dorchester event Bill Forry, managing editor of the Dorchester Reporter, called the ad racist on Twitter. He also said TD Banks message is just leaning on a hackneyed old trope about a gritty neighborhood that people like to demonize. As photos of the ad circulated on social media, some argued the ad wasnt racist. Others in the Greater Boston area condemned TD Bank. Wow. This is Samsung subway ad all over again. TD needs to take a hard look at inclusion & diversity experience of retail & marketing leadership who signed off on this. Also, TD Bank has no branches in Dorchester! Insane decision to avoid that mkt while branding the Garden. https://t.co/Pt3IP6mzEy Jason Harburger (@funkyjaybo) March 21, 2019 If you know Boston stereotypes, you know that lost in Dorchester is code for stolen. Which sucks, because to get stolen from Dorchester you need to go through the concepts of low-income and, most importantly, black and brown. Reilly --Abolish ICE-- Hay (@reillyhay) March 20, 2019 A 2017 Boston planning report on Dorchester states that nearly half of residents were black in 2015 and at least one-third were foreign born. The median household income in Dorchester was $47,200 in 2015, compared to Bostons median household income of $55,777. TD Bank apologized and removed the ad Thursday. We are sorry that an ad that appeared in one of our stores was insensitive to the Dorchester community," the company wrote in a statement, adding that the ad does not reflect its core values around diversity and inclusion. The vandalism of at least 59 gravestones tagged with swastikas and anti-Semitic language at the Hebrew Cemetery in Fall River over the weekend is now being investigated as a hate crime, police said. The police were alerted to the graffiti on Sunday after receiving a report about a car that had been parked by the cemetery on McMahon Street for two days, police said in a post on Facebook. Police Chief Albert Dupere told the Herald News that the Federal Bureau of Investigations has offered to help with the investigation. They could offer additional detectives, or investigators to help with interviews or technical assistance, Dupere told the newspaper. Were still canvassing the area looking for potential witnesses and video to make sure nothing was missed. After the discovery of the graffiti, which according to police accounts and photos, featured the phrases: Oy vey this is MAGA country, Expel the Jew, Hitler was right, and Heil Hitler, among other ethnic slurs. The Anti-Defamation League is offering a $1,500 reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect or suspects in connection with the defaced gravestones. On Twitter the group called the incident an Inexcusable act of #AntiSemitic hatred where we honor & remember the lives of community members. This apparent targeted attack impacts all corners of the community. We are grateful for the priority this apparent hate crime is being given by @FallRiverPD, the Anti-Defamation League wrote on Twitter. EAST WINDSOR, Connecticut Under the threat of renewed litigation and with a federal grand jury probing the matter, the U.S. Department of the Interior has given its final approval for the proposed Tribal Winds Casino in East Windsor, Connecticut. Today is a great day for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and the State of Connecticut, especially given our 400-year history together, Rodney Butler, Chairman of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, said in a prepared statement. I applaud the actions of the Department of Interior and extend my sincerest gratitude to assistant secretary Tara Sweeny and the Office of the Solicitor at the Interior Department for their assistance in resolving this matter." MMCT Venture, a partnership of the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes, has planned for years to build a casino at the former Showcase Cinema site 13 miles south of Springfield and the MGM Springfield resort casino. The tribes want to compete with MGM for Hartford-area gamblers. With federal approval in hand, Butler said Thursday that construction on the Tribal Winds Casino would move forward. MGM Resorts International, owner of the $960-million Springfield casino, has lobbied hard against the East Windsor plan. The tribes thought in 2017 that they were on the verge of getting required permission from the Department of the Interior to build the casino, only to be turned down by President Donald J. Trumps then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke. The tribes sued, saying Trump and Zinke bowed to pressure from MGM and Nevada Republicans to act in MGMs favor and block the East Windsor Casino. Last month, a federal appeals court revived that lawsuit. Also in February, The Washington Post reported that prosecutors are presenting evidence to a grand jury in Washington in a probe as to whether Zinke lied to federal investigators about the East Windsor project. Zinke resigned in December amid ethics investigations into conflict of interest on land deals. Citing two sources briefed on the matter, The Post reported the closed-door deliberations focus on Zinkes decision not to grant a petition in 2017 by MMCT Venture. The tribes say Tribal Winds will support 5,000 jobs from the start of construction through the grand opening, with at least 2,000 jobs for the building trades during construction and 2,000 permanent jobs at the facility once its operational. The casino is also expected to support 1,000 indirect jobs at small business vendors, according to the tribes. Mohegan and Foxwoods have said the East Windsor casino would be a $300-400 million project, featuring 100,000 square feet. I cant believe Im actually typing this, but some of the crazy new Peeps flavors are pretty good. Among those flavors? A Fruit Punch Peep. It looks like the Kool-Aid Man crossed with a rubber ducky. It smells like someones kid spilled Hawaiian Punch all over the kitchen table. Somehow, it tastes delightful. Generally, Peeps are a once-per-year Easter decoration that happens to be edible and is very fun to throw in a microwave. Not anymore, apparently. We now live in an environment when the sugar crystal-coated avian fluff floats have taken on an Oreo-esque pursuit of crazy flavors. We should have seen this Don Quixote-esque chase after flavor windmills when they trotted out a Pumpkin Spice Peep last year. With a couple weeks to go until Easter, were approach peak spring candy season. Between scoping out Cadbury Creme Eggs and giant chocolate bunnies, you may be tempted to roll the dice on one of these perplexing Peep options. I sorted through them all so you dont have to. Peeps: 9 flavors ranked worst to best I spent a day this week by taking what normal working adults would call lunch and replaced it with a pastel-tinged fever dream that involved eating about 18 Peeps for the sake of science, or something. It turns out that eating what like amounts to over a pint of condensed sugar clouds encased in crackly sugar armor is not the best thing to do with your body -- provided you didnt plan to crash and take a nap during the middle of your 3 p.m. meeting. Still, its probably not a great sign that as I tasted the rainbow of the Peeps flock, I still found myself taking that bit of delight in biting off a Peep head. If anything, my bird binge reinforced my theory that the best way to eat a Peep is to start with decapeeptation before devouring the body. So what do they taste like? Heres every flavor I could find in grocery stores around Worcester: Pancakes & Syrup, Sour Watermelon, Cotton Candy, Party Cake, Fruit Punch, Chocolate Dipped, Vanilla Dipped, Chocolate Caramel Swirl and regular Peeps for reference. (Note: There are also Blue Raspberry Peeps. But those are a Kroger exclusive and Im not driving out to the nearest Kroger in Albany to grab a box.) I went into this not having a terrifically high opinion of regular Peeps. Theyre fine, but I just dont go out of my way to eat them. They were the control in this experiment -- and wound up ranking on the lower end. 9. Vanilla Creme This is the greatest tragedy of the bunch. I didnt notice until the second Peep I tried, but the actual vanilla Peep here is delicious. It has this mellow, wonderful flavor -- kind of like a Rice Krispies Treat. Unfortunately, this Peep is inexplicably dipped in something called creme-flavored fudge," which by my guess is just a weird way of saying white chocolate. Its unfortunate, because the flavors of the fudge shell and the vanilla Peep completely negate each other, resulting in a pretty flavorless flop that only comes in a pack of three, making it may more expensive than the other flavors 8. Party Cake The bright array of sprinkles on top trick you into thinking youre about to bite into something special, only for your teeth to sink into a blank void of flavor. It tastes like the sensation of singing Happy Birthday at a party where you dont know anyone. It looks fun, but really youre just waiting for it to end. 7. Pancakes & Syrup In principle, this is a cool Peep. Theres a maple taste in there, but its barely noticeable. If youre getting a special edition Peep, you go on wanting something bombastic and fun. Theres a whiff of syrup that barely qualifies as a flavor. Really, its like a big bland marshmallow pancake that has way too little syrup on it. This Peep is an insult to breakfast. 6. Regular Peeps Yep, this is the classic, that little crunch of sugar on the outside, the synthetic fluff on the inside that also starts to dissolve when you bite in, presenting that sheen of pure sugar that you know cant be good for you. Its a Peep. Its OK. Lets get on to the good ones. A Sour Watermelon Peep. 5. Sour Watermelon This Peep is growing on me. Visually, its really fun to eat with the muted green exterior giving way to a brink pink inside when you bite in. Flavor-wise, its similar to a Jolly Rancher, with that bite of artificial watermelon flavor with a little cloud of sourness hanging overhead. Its a fun flavor. I wound up liking it a lot more than I thought I would. 4. Chocolate Dipped This is a regular Peep dipped in chocolate. It tastes exactly how it sounds: delicious, like half a smore. The sweet punch of the marshmallow mixes well with the chocolate. Its a little sweeter than a Mallo Cup. 3. Cotton Candy This Peep is everything the Party Cake flavor wanted to be. Its fun, bright, but not overdone. Its a dense cloud of that familiar cotton candy flavor, giving that satisfying little crunch of sugar on the outside when you bite down. A Fruit Punch Peep 2. Fruit Punch This Peep pulls no punches. As you as you open the package, you get hit right away with the smell akin to Hi-C or Hawaiian Punch. Its a nostalgic sensation for those who grew up on sugary fruit drinks. The flavor is spot-on nostalgia as well. Probably the oddest-sounding flavor of the bunch, the Fruit Punch Peep wound up being the best executed of all the flavors, giving this satisfying rush of that red-dyed sugar youd expect from a fruit punch drink. Its sweet, but not too sweet. It leaves room for you to want to go back for more. 1. Chocolate Caramel Swirl I had no idea how good this was going to taste. This barely counts as a Peep. Its basically a candy bar. Its a chocolate Peep dipped in chocolate and filled with caramel. Its a three-layered confection whose inclusion on this list belies its true identity as a genuine flavor bomb of chocolate and caramel. The soft squish of the marshmallow gives way to a satisfying crunch of chocolate when you bite down, with the two sides blending wonderfully with the bright drag of caramel that cuts through the middle. This is the king of Peeps. The final word The existence of good flavors of Peeps is a concept thats going to take some getting used to. If nothing else, it really threw a wrench into my plan of buying a bunch of Peeps, realizing they were all terrible and then throwing them in the microwave to watch them start to explode. At no point did I expect co-workers to come over and actually want to try them out. The fact that some of the flavors got cleaned out is a compliment to the new releases. But did that end up stopping me? Most microwave Peeps carnage. Nope. I ate it so you dont have to is a regular food column looking at off-beat eats, both good and bad. It runs every other Thursday-ish at noon-ish. You can send any praise/food suggestions to nomalley@masslive.com. Please send all criticisms and pictures of Peeps that blew up in a microwave to scroteau@masslive.com. You can check out the rest of the series here. Northampton - Florence Bank has hired a new bank officer and promoted two employees. Linda Haley, of Monson, will serve as commercial loan administration officer of the Commercial Loan Department in the main office in Florence; Andrew Tulis, of Northampton, was promoted to assistant Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) officer; and Heidi Hoover, of South Hadley, was promoted to the position of assistant vice president, Compliance. Haley joined Florence Bank on Oct. 2018 with over 30 years of banking experience. She currently attends the New England School for Financial Studies at Babson College. Tulis joined Florence Bank in Nov. 2011. Prior to his recent promotion, he had served as BSA administrator. Tulis earned a bachelors degree in journalism from New York University and graduated with honors from the New England School for Financial Studies. Hoover joined Florence Bank in May 2015 with nearly 20 years of banking experience. She holds a bachelors degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Prior to her recent promotion, she served as compliance specialist. Hoover proudly serves her community as a board member for the western Massachusetts Compliance Association, a member of the Baystate Medical practices Patient and Family Council, and she volunteers for Pioneer Valley Habitat for Humanity. The estates of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II will reportedly receive 90 percent of the songwriting royalties from Ariana Grandes No. 1 single 7 Rings. While the song is credited to a total of 10 writers, Rodgers and Hammerstein control 90 percent of the songwriting royalties under a deal struck with Grande, according to The New York Times. Grandes camp cut the deal with Concord, the music company that owns the Rodgers and Hammerstein song catalogs, because 7 Rings samples My Favorite Things from 1959s The Sound of Music. Grande, who will still earn a performance royalty, wanted that sample included in the song and was willing to pay Concord the requested 90 percent songwriting royalty. The remaining 10 percent of the songwriting royalty will be split by Grande and seven other co-writers. SPRINGFIELD The state gave its approval to an eight-year local property tax incentive to Big Y Foods for the expansion of its distribution center on Roosevelt Avenue. The incentive, already approved by the city of Springfield, has a value of about $4.2 million, according to a Office of Housing & Economic Development news release issued Wednesday. Springfield-based Big Y is nearing completion of a $46 million expansion and renovation of its distribution center. The supermarket chain is doubling the size of its warehouse, adding 232,000 square feet to make a new total of 425,000 square feet. The project is expected to be completed this year. Big has said it will create 32 new jobs. There are currently 92 employees working at the distribution center now and collectively they move 20 million cases of food a year, according to Big Y. The expansion in order to provide capacity for the next two decades, including 20 new supermarkets, Big Y has said. As it stands now, the chain operates 82 locations throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut including 71 supermarkets, 40 pharmacies, Fresh Acres Market, Table & Vine Fine Wines and Liquors and 9 Big Y Express gas and convenience locations with over 11,000 employees. The approval Wednesday was one of eight projects statewide representing $676 million in private investment and the creation of 692 jobs and the retention of 805 jobs. Big Y is not getting a state tax incentive. Other projects approved Wednesday include, according to the release: A car fire on I-93 southbound has snarled traffic in Canton Thursday morning. A photograph distributed by Massachusetts State Police shows a dark-colored sedan engulfed in flames on the side of the highway. No one was injured in the incident. Two lanes are currently open and the fire has now been extinguished, State Police said at 11:35 a.m. As of 11:20 a.m. there was a mile-long backup behind the burning vehicle, according to Google Maps traffic data. CHICOPEE A company proposing a marijuana facility in the Willimansett area said this week it anticipates investing more than $15 million in the project. Joseph Martins, project manager for Revolution Greencare LLC, said plans for the building at 30-60 Buckley Blvd. are for a marijuana cultivation, distribution and dispensary facility. The site is a former brewery building and has other business tenants. A community outreach meeting is scheduled from 6-8 p.m. March 27 at Moose Lodge 1849, 244 Fuller Road, to discuss the proposed marijuana facility and answer questions from the public. Adam Brady of Denver owns the Buckley Road property and is president of Revolution Greencare. Brady and David Peskin, of Holyoke, are co-owners of Revolution Greencare. Peskin is also the owner of Creative Chemicals of Holyoke. Revolution Greencare has a host community Agreement signed with Chicopee Mayor Richard Kos for the marijuana facility. The company will need a special permit from the City Council and a license from the state Cannabis Control Commission. The Buckley Boulevard property is a 65,000-square-foot building and is across the street from houses, Martins said. The company is planning a barrier in the front of property such as shrubs, hedge or trees, he said. The retail business will be in a section of the third floor of the building. The company expects to have 30 to 32 full-time employees and some part-time employees whose number will fluctuate, Martins said. The initial employment will grow as the business advances in phases, he said. There will be a focus on local hiring and training, Martins said. Nick Danais, who was born in New York City and raised in Santa Monica, California, is the master cultivator for Revolution Greencare, and has extensive experience in the cannabis industry, Martins said. Were very confident in our plans primarily because of the experience being brought on board proven already on the West Coast, Martins said. We want to bring all that experience and success here to the East Coast. Five companies including Revolution Greencare submitted plans for recreational marijuana shops by the August 2018 deadline. The city will allow up to four recreational licenses. The proposals for the retail businesses are at various stages of consideration, said City Planner Lee Pouliot. "I think we've been very steady in advancing efforts to bring this industry to Chicopee, and our review seems to be working efficiently," Pouliot said. In August, Mass Alternative Care Inc. opened a medical marijuana facility at 1247 East Main St. in Chicopee. SPRINGFIELD Jose Omar Ortiz sat in a Hampden Superior Court courtroom on Tuesday and heard a former co-worker testify Ortiz could not be the person who killed Eddy Reynoso in 1999 in Springfield. Wilbert Diaz took long pauses as he tried to stop crying while he testified about the killing 20 years ago. A week earlier, a man named Ramon Santana testified he killed Reynoso and that Ortiz, now 39, had nothing to do with the shooting. Santana is already serving life sentences after being convicted of two counts of murder for a Holyoke shooting in 2000. Reynoso was shot to death in his Liberty Street apartment. Ortiz, then 19, worked at Tonys Mini Market downstairs with Reynoso and Diaz. Reynoso and Diaz were neighbors. Ortiz was convicted in 2002 of second-degree murder by a Hampden Superior Court jury and sentenced by a judge to life in prison. He would have become eligible for parole 12 years later. A key piece of evidence at trial was a confession. But Ortizs lawyers now argue the alleged confession was the product of coercion by police after seven hours of interrogation. Ortiz spoke only Spanish but his signed confession was in English, his lawyers said. Hampden Superior Court Judge John S. Ferrara is now hearing testimony in Ortizs motion for a new trial. Ortiz is represented by Boston lawyer Chauncey B. Wood and Boston College law professor Charlotte H. Whitmore, a director of the Boston College Innocence Program. Students participating in the program are working on the case. Ortiz is listening to the proceedings through a Spanish-speaking court interpreter. Crowded into the courtroom for Tuesdays hearing were students from the Innocence Program, family members of Ortiz and Reynoso and observers. Handling the case for Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gullunis office is Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Shorey. For much of the Tuesday hearing, First Assistant District Attorney Eduardo Velazquez was present in the courtroom. Hampden Superior Court Judge Karen Goodwin came in to listen to part of the hearing. The defense team is arguing that Ortiz should get a new trial for a number of reasons, not only because of Santanas confession. Another witness at the hearing was Carlos Rodriguez, who was a 15-year-old friend of Ortizs at the time of the shooting. Rodriguez, through an interpreter, was adamant he never knew what he signed at the Springfield Police Department while being questioned about Ortiz shortly after the shooting. Rodriguezs police statement said he was with Ortiz when Ortiz shot Reynoso. On the witness stand this week, Rodriguez said police took him from his home even though no parent or relative was there and beat and screamed at him in an interrogation room at the police station. He said the statement was in English and he couldnt read it and it wasnt read to him. Officers told him he had to sign it and presented it as your way out. He testified officers told him Ortiz was trying to pin the blame on him for killing Reynoso. According to defense filings, police told Ortiz that Rodriguez implicated him in the shooting. Rodriguez testified that he was contacted by defense investigators several years ago where he lived in Ohio and gave a statement in Spanish saying Ortiz was with him all that evening and that Ortiz did not shoot Reynoso. Santana refused to name his accomplices in the shooting of Reynoso, which has prompted Shorey to file a motion seeking to have his testimony thrown out. Ferrara has yet to rule on that motion. Two police officers who interrogated Rodriguez are expected to be called at the continuation of the hearing March 26. One officer is still with the department and the other has left. The defense also wants to question Donna Donato, the prosecutor who tried the case. She no longer works in the Hampden district attorneys office. Shorey suggested Donato could testify by way of a sworn affidavit rather than coming to court. Ferrara said it may not be possible to answer one issue raised at the hearing by affidavit, and so Donato may be required to appear in person. Another factor cited by the defense team is that David Hodge, Ortizs lawyer in the murder trial, told the jury in his opening statement that Diaz, Reynosos neighbor, would testify that Ortiz couldnt have been the shooter. But Diaz never took the witness stand at trial. Hodge testified Tuesday that, at the time of his opening statement, he still hoped to find Diaz, who had moved to another part of the state. The only address Hodge had for him was the Springfield apartment where he had lived when Reynoso was shot. Wood said that, in reviewing discovery from the prosecution late last year, he found out that Donato, at the time of the trial, had an updated address for Diaz. Hodge said Donato never provided him with that updated address. Diaz testified Tuesday that he heard the shooter talking and the voice was definitely not Ortizs. Ortiz and Reynoso knew each other, Diaz testified, but the shooter said, Are you Eddy?" when Reynoso opened the door. EAST WINDSOR, Conn. The Mohegans and Mashantucket Pequots are ready to start construction of their Tribal Winds casino now that the Department of the Interior has given a final OK to the expansion of tribal gaming. Now its up to the small town where the $300 million to $400 million casino would be built to react and to prepare. The tribes plan to build on the former Showcase Cinema property of Interstate 91, but still need town approval. This is going to lift all of north central Connecticut, said Robert Maynard, first selectman of East Windsor. The two tribes said Thursday they are ready to proceed with construction and that the casino should be ready in 18 to 24 months after building begins. But the town will need time, maybe a few months, to review detailed plans before it can issue a building permit, Maynard said. "This was unexpected," he said. "I wasn't expecting the Department of the Interior to place this on the Federal Registry at this time." Neither were Connecticut lawmakers. On Tuesday, members of the General Assemblys Public Safety Committee advanced a proposal to allow the East Windsor casino without federal approval, something required under current state law. The town, with a budget of $42 million a year, expects to get $8.5 million a year from the casino. That number includes $5.5 million in property taxes and $3 million in impact fees. Neighboring towns and distressed municipalities in the state will get $750,000 a year each in impact payments, Maynard said. The towns that will get the $750,000 will include: Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford, East Hartford, Ellington, Enfield, Norwalk, South Windsor, Waterbury and Windsor Locks. That will do a lot of good all around, Maynard said. Especially, he said, coupled with enhanced CTrail service between New Haven, Hartford and Springfield that stops in nearby Windsor Locks. The MGM Springfield casino is much larger than the casino planned in East Windsor. MGMs gambling floor alone totals 125,000 square feet, making it bigger than the whole of Tribal Winds. MGM Springfield has 2,550 slot machines, 95 video poker machines and 120 gaming tables including a poker room and high-limit VIP gaming While the Mohegans and Mashantucket Pequots want to compete with MGM Springfield, Connecticut budget analysts have found that MGM is not having as large an impact on Connecticut casinos as had been feared. Connecticut budget planners had expected a 25 percent drop in slots revenues from Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods Resort Casino due to MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor. But in January, state officials revised this forecast down to 9.2 percent, even with Encore set to open later this year. EASTHAMPTON -- City officials have promoted a firefighter who is now the first female fire captain in the department. Sandra Kraus, a 12-year-member of the Fire Department was promoted by Fire Chief David Mottor and Mayor Nicole LaChappelle to a vacant captain position. The two announced the promotion on Tuesday. A swearing-in ceremony will be scheduled for a later date, Mottor said. Kraus is also a paramedic, an instructor for the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy and a member of the Western Massachusetts Technical Rescue Team, he said. She was recently recognized by Gov. Charlie Baker for her involvement with the Technical Rescue Team for a difficult recovery operation in Berkshire County, he said. Hundreds of teachers, parents, students and advocates are expected to come to the Statehouse on Friday to testify on a slate of bills that would update the states public education funding formula. The Joint Committee on Education hearing is scheduled for Gardner Auditorium, the room reserved for the largest hearings. It is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Friday, a day of the week when hearings are rare, and lawmakers tend to have few other responsibilities in the Statehouse. Although 16 education-related bills are up for discussion, the bills expected to attract the most testimony are proposals to revamp the states outdated Chapter 70 school funding formula. Leaders in the Massachusetts Senate released a plan that would cost between $900 million and $2 billion a year in additional funding for public schools. The money would address underfunding in employee health benefits, special education, English language learners and the additional cost of educating students in districts with high concentrations of poverty. Members of the New England Patriots are planning to testify in favor of the Senate bill. Also planning to attend the hearing to support that proposal are the mayors of Boston, Holyoke, Easthampton and other cities; the Suffolk District Attorney; the heads of various advocacy groups that help poor students; an association representing school administrators; progressive advocates; the NAACP regional president; students, teachers and parents. At the same time, Gov. Charlie Baker released his own bill that would add $1.1 billion to the education funding formula by 2026. Advocates for the Senate plan say Bakers proposal does not add enough money, and does not do it fast enough. At the same time, a large group of business leaders signed a letter to Baker and legislative leaders urging them not to just throw more money into the system but to use the money to run schools more efficiently and effectively. This includes allowing more innovation by educators, focusing on outcomes, changing governance in schools and other changes. Although the group did not directly take a position on either of the bills, Bakers bill includes more reforms most notably, giving the education commissioner more authority to improve low-performing schools. The group Stand for Children, which focuses on inequity in education affecting low-income children, said it will bring parents and educators to testify about how the lack of fair school funding is affecting their childrens education. Massachusetts Parents United, an urban-based parents advocacy group, is pledging to bring 200 parents to the Statehouse to testify about the need for more accountability for schools, improved teacher quality, longer school days and years, and other ways to close the achievement gap. In the wealthy Boston suburb of Weston, the average political contribution per resident in 2018 was $33.27. In Chicopee, a poorer city in Western Massachusetts, the average resident donated 91 cents to a state candidate. The Office of Campaign and Political Finance, which tracks campaign donations to candidates for state and some municipal offices, on Wednesday released a report in which it ranked every city and town in order of 2018 political fundraising. The report measured how much money residents donated per capita. It provides a measure of how politically active a community is and how wealthy its residents are. The most active fundraising communities were Weston, followed by Dover and Cohasset. Dover is a wealthy town around 25 miles from Boston, while Cohasset is a seaside community on the South Shore. The highest-ranked Western Massachusetts town was Longmeadow, which was ranked 11th out of the states 351 cities and towns, with average per capita political spending of $15.72 per resident. The tiny towns of Monroe, on the Vermont border, and Gosnold, which includes the Elizabeth Islands, did not have a single political contributor. In the small Western Massachusetts towns of Tolland and Florida, political contributions totaled less than $50 each. Chicopee was the lowest-ranked city in terms of political spending, coming in 324th. North Adams was ranked 322nd, with average per capita political donations of 95 cents. Most of the communities with lower political donations are small towns with populations of less than 10,000, many of them in Western Massachusetts. Springfield ranked 250th, with per capita spending of $2.01. Worcester ranked 175th, with per capita spending of $3.04. Boston ranked 30th with per capita spending of $11.16. Boston residents donated a total of $6.9 million to political candidates, compared to $550,000 donated by Worcester residents and $307,000 by Springfield residents. The map below shows per capita spending, by city / town. Massachusetts Sen. Donald F. Humason Jr. will run for mayor of Westfield, marking a high-profile entrance in a race with no incumbent. I love Westfield. And I look forward to speaking with the City Councilors, School Committee members, and Gas & Electric Commissioners with whom I hope to work side by side for Westfield, the city Republican said in his announcement. No person has all the answers. We govern best when we work collaboratively. There is nothing wrong with Westfield that whats right with Westfield cant fix. Humason said his priorities would include promoting economic development and jobs, growing the citys tax base and improving infrastructure. A state lawmaker for over 15 years, Humason was elected to the House in 2002 and to the Senate in 2012. He did not face a challenger in his 2018 re-election bid. His sprawling senate district the 2nd Hampden and Hampshire includes Westfield and Holyoke; several precincts in Chicopee; and Agawam, Easthampton, Granville, Montgomery, Russell, Southampton, Southwick and Tolland. Westfield Mayor Brian P. Sullivan said in January that he would not seek a third term. Nomination papers for the seat will be available at the city clerks office April 1. Humason said he will continue in his job as state senator during the mayoral campaign. His senate campaign committee account had a balance of $9,196.90 at the end of 2018, according to filings with the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance. Humason earned $117,547.94 as a senator in 2018, according to state payroll records. The figure includes a base salary of about $62,500, plus stipends for office expenses, travel to Boston and leadership positions. The mayors salary in Westfield is currently $100,000 plus a $5,000 vehicle stipend, but the City Council is mulling a salary increase. One proposal would raise the mayors pay to $120,000 effective Jan. 1, 2020, with a $5,000 increase upon each re-election for up to five consecutive terms. Former Republican state Sen. Michael R. Knapik, who previously held the 2nd Hampden and Hampshire seat, said there is no one better prepared today to be mayor" than Humason. Im thrilled for Don Humason, said Knapik, vice president of government and community relations for Baystate Health. Ive known Don the majority of his public service career. His decision to run for mayor is a natural extension of his commitment to Westfield and public service. Humasons connections to Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito along with his love of Westfield "are the ingredients for Don to be a successful mayor, Knapik said. BOSTON U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, said Thursday that he is supportive of the idea behind U.S. Sen. Ed Markeys Green New Deal. Neal, the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, has faced pressure from environmentalists over his lack of an endorsement of the environmental platform. Asked about the Green New Deal after an event in Boston, Neal said he has no latent opposition to it. I like the thrust of it. Im a supporter, a believer in it, Neal said. I do think there are some other things we can do on it that address the issue of the carbon footprint. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, joined Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., in releasing a blueprint for an environmental agenda, which calls for a series of economic, social and energy goals to be achieved in the next decade. It includes things like upgrading buildings for energy efficiency and removing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. Neal has been the only member of Massachusetts all-Democratic congressional delegation not to endorse the Green New Deal, and environmental advocates had been pushing him to voice his support. Neal said Thursday, We all acknowledge the role that climate change is playing on Earth. He said he has a strong pro-environment voting record. Ive indicated theres no opposition here from me as much as to say, this is an opinion and I agree with the opinion and that is that theres an earnestness that needs to be addressed as it relates to climate change, Neal said. He said he thinks there will be a series of plans ultimately released to address climate change. Asked whether he will attend a town hall Markey is hosting in Northampton this Sunday to promote the Green New Deal, Neal said it is not his district. Republicans have opposed the Green New Deal, saying it is an expensive plan with few concrete details and no way to pay for it. SPRINGFIELD A local business is proposing to open a marijuana facility for retail sales, cultivation and manufacturing at the former Macys at the Eastfield Mall. David Mech, president of Cannaworld Inc., of Springfield, said he is proposing to locate the retail store in a portion of the first floor at 1685 Boston Road, and the cultivation/manufacturing facility on the second floor. The public is invited to attend a community outreach meeting, scheduled Thursday, March 28, at 7 p.m., the Eastfield Mall Food Court, for details of the proposal and to ask questions. "I think it's just an amazing opportunity for the industry," Mech said. "This will be a rebirth for the mall." Mech said he wants to also rent part of the Macys building for cannabis-related products such as growing lights, tents, and cannabidiol (CBD) products. CBD is extract from hemp that lacks marijuanas psychoactive properties. Mech already sells those products at Potco, 522 Sumner Ave. The mall ownership is supportive of the plans, Mech said. A spokesman for the property owner was not immediately available for comment. Ownership is looking for a community-type place, and what were doing at Macys is a good start, he said. Currently, the Macys site serves as a multivendor weekend market operated by Bulldog Enterprises. The business has rented a large section of the first floor. The Macys store closed in 2016, and the 127,000-square-foot building was sold to Mountain Development Corp., based in New Jersey. Mountain Development owns the Eastfield Mall property and purchased the separately owned Macys building for $1 million. Mountain Development is seeking to redevelop the mall property, saying it is ideal for reuse with retail, housing and offices in a "main street" setting. Mech said his company, in addition to needing a special permit, would need a zone change to allow the cultivation and manufacturing uses. Separately, Mech has proposed to open a retail marijuana shop at The X in the Forest Park neighborhood. However, city officials have said that site, at the existing Potco store, is too close to a school to qualify for local and state approvals. Regarding the Eastfield Mall location, Mech said it offers great parking, and would be fully secure with cameras. No one under age 21 would be allowed in the store, as required under state law. Regarding the safety of the site, Mech said the mall venue will actually provide greater oversight of customers and prevent diversion of marijuana products. We will have cameras and increased staff on the entire Mall property which will allow us to monitor what happens to our product after other adult use retailers oversight stops, Mech said in an email. We will patrol parking lots to ensure there is no consumption on the property ... at least until the CCC (state Control Cannabis Commission) oks the Canna Cafes. The Springfield City Council approved an ordinance last year that will allow up to 15 marijuana stores in business and industrial zones. The council designated 58 streets within those zones where the stores could locate. The businesses need local and state approvals. SPRINGFIELD - Police arrested a 59-year-old man on carjacking and kidnapping charges early Thursday morning after he led police on a 20-plus mile chase from Springfield to Somers, Connecticut and back to Springfield. Angel Nararro is charged with seven separate offenses following the chase and arrest. They are armed carjacking, kidnapping, armed robbery, failure to stop for police, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, driving with a suspended license and possession of a class E narcotic. According to police spokesman Ryan Walsh, police were contacted just after midnight of an armed assault at the gas station at 514 Belmont Avenue. A man told police a man, later identified as Navarro, approached him, drew a knife and robbed him of cash. The assailant then got into the mans car with him and threatened to stab him uless the man gave him more money. When the man got out and ran away, Nararro drove off with the car, Walsh said. Police spotted the car a short time later at Whittier Street and Longfellow Terrace in Forest Park and attempted to stop it. Instead, the car sped off toward Sumner Avenue and then Allen Street with police in pursuit. Walsh said the pursuit continued into Hampden,and East Longmeadow, across the state line into Somers, then Longmeadow, and ultimately back to Springfield. The chase ended on Dwight Road when the car got a flat tire at around 1 a.m. Walsh said Navarro struggled with police when they took him into custody. WESTFIELD State Rep. John C. Velis, D-Westfield, said Thursday afternoon he will seek the Senate seat held by Sen. Donald F. Humason, R-Westfield, should Humason be elected mayor in November. The Westfield mayoral race is one to be decided by the voters," Velis said in a statement. "Should they favor Senator Humason as their next mayor, I will seek to earn the opportunity to do more for the people of our region as their next state senator. He added, In my service as a soldier, as a member of the United States Army Reserve, Ive learned that when an opportunity to better serve, to give your best, is presented, then it is the right thing to take up that responsibility. I know the people of this senate district well and I believe that I can meet that responsibility. Velis, an attorney and major in the U.S. Army Reserve, was elected state representative in a special election in April 2014. He serves at vice chair of the Joint Committee on Veterans and Federal Affairs, the House Committee on Ways and Means, Joint Committee on Financial Services, Joint Committee on Judiciary and Joint Committee on Ways and Means. Velis was deployed to Afghanistan twice and participated in military exercises in South Korea. Former longtime Sen. Michael R. Knapik, R-Westfield, said that Velis has his support. John in uniquely positioned to hit the ground running as the next state senator, Knapik said. I think he will be well-received by the 165,000 people in the 11 communities in the 2nd Hampden and Hampshire District. Knapik said the majority of the 40 members of the state Senate started out in the House of Representatives, including himself and Humason. It gives you a leg-up for the work that needs to be done, Knapik said. John knows the district and will be a very able spokesperson for all communities. Velis is already well-known throughout the district, said Knapik, and has participated in the re-districting that took place over the past two years. You never know when politics and timing will interact, he said. John is already out in the community and that, along with the work hes done and being a veteran, will serve the district well, whether its Easthampton, Montgomery or Chicopee. He added, I look forward to his work as the next state senator. Zrike Holyoke Superintendent of Schools Stephen Zrike HOLYOKE Superintendent of Schools Stephen Zrike delivered his State of Holyokes Public Schools address Wednesday night, calling for students, teachers and parents to participate in producing graduates who are active contributors in their community. Speaking at Enlace de Familias on Main Street, Zrike called for a diploma plus approach credentials that exceed a traditional education. He wants graduates who are effective communicators, critical thinkers, respectful of others and engaged, productive and mindful members of society. He said students should graduate with college credits, workplace certificates and a Seal of Biliteracy for students who are proficient in more than one language. We also want students who speak well, write well and listen well, Zrike said. We want them to think through and solve academic and real-world problems, and that theyre in the habit of being active contributors in their community. He added, Most of all, they are respectful, kind people who care about one another. His address covered the high school redesign, early-childhood education, embracing students and families, middle school progress and coming challenges. For the 2018-2019 academic year, the district introduced an academy model for the two high schools: Holyoke High School North and Holyoke High School Dean Campus. Stephen Mahoney oversees the academies, which are treated as one school with multiple pathways to graduation. The academies focus on individualized studies, dual enrollment and work-based learning, a melding of classroom and real-life experiences. Last spring, the district held a signing day, whereby incoming 10th-grade students selected one of four academies: Life Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Design, Global Studies, and Visual and Performing Arts. Students' schedules contain electives that relate to the academies. For example, students in Visual and Performing Arts take a newly launched theater arts class, while technology students enroll in a series of robotics and engineering courses. These academies are designed to motivate students to engage fully in learning while providing a high-interest lens for areas of focus, Zrike said. Students enter into vocational training in their freshman year. Applications to the Dean Campus tripled in the last three years, according to Zrike. The Dean Campus currently has a waiting list for enrollment. He said the academy model promotes a fair and equitable system for all students. Its a start. Were not there yet, but we are slowly bringing the two campuses together, he said. Dual-enrollment and work-based learning programs give students opportunities to earn college credits and gain valuable career experience. Around 220 students enrolled in the dual-enrollment program for 2018-2019. Zrike noted an overall 16-percent increase in graduation rates and a sharp decline in the dropout rate. We still have too many students not graduating with a high school education, he said. Early and prekindergarten enrollment has increased in the past five years. The district entered into a partnership with the Valley Opportunity Council to provide early and elementary educational services. Zrike said the goal is to provide universal prekindergarten for all of Holyokes children. Metcalf and E.N. White Schools offer an increasingly popular dual-language program for prekindergarten and elementary students. The students learn in English and Spanish, which builds a robust bilingual foundation. Seats in the program are limited. The application process for the program recently opened for the coming academic year. Zrike wants to form a Student Advisory Group, which give students a say in their education. For too long, students were left out of the conversation on their education, he said. He called for a deeper engagement with families. He continued to stress the need for two new middle schools. A northern Kentucky family is suing the health department there on religious grounds linked to abortion for not allowing their unvaccinated son to attend his Catholic school where a chickenpox outbreak has prompted a ban on unvaccinated students until the outbreak of more than 30 cases is contained. Jerome Kunkel, a senior at Assumption Academy in Walton, Kentucky, a Catholic K-12 school affiliated with the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, said in media reports that the vaccine is derived from aborted fetal cells and as a Catholic, we do not believe in abortion. We believe it is morally wrong and it would go against my conscience, said Kunkel, whose father compared the northern Kentucky Health Departments ban to the action of tyrants. Elective abortion is regarded as murder by the Catholic Church, but the Vatican ruled several years ago that Catholics could be immunized with vaccines developed in association with fetal cells from two abortions in the 1960s to avoid a serious risk to ones own children and perhaps more specifically, to the health conditions of the population as a whole in the absence of other alternative vaccines. Its Pontifical Academy for Life updated these guidelines in 2017, something noted by a Catholic New Service story this week that received the translation from the Italian, and the updated guidelines reiterate a moral responsibility to vaccinate to avoid serious health risks, that cell lines today are very distant from the fetal cells associated with vaccines and also states that vaccines are safe and effective and that no correlation exists between the administration of the vaccine and the onset of autism. The posting, Clarifications on the medical and scientific nature of vaccination, on the pontifical site states in part: In the past, vaccines had been prepared using cells from aborted human fetuses, however currently used cell lines are very distant from the original abortions. The vaccines being referred to, the ones most commonly used in Italy, are those against rubella, chickenpox, polio, and Hepatitis A. It should be noted that today it is no longer necessary to obtain cells from new voluntary abortions, and that the cell lines on which the vaccines are based in are derived solely from two fetuses originally aborted in the 1960s. From the clinical point of view, it should also be reiterated that treatment with vaccines, despite the very rare side effects (the events that occur most commonly are mild and due to an immune response to the vaccine itself), is safe and effective. No correlation exists between the administration of the vaccine and the onset of autism. As for the question of the vaccines that used or may have used cells coming from voluntarily aborted fetuses in their preparation, it must be specified that the "wrong" in the moral sense lies in the actions, not in the vaccines or the material itself. The technical characteristics of the production of the vaccines most commonly used in childhood lead us to exclude that there is a morally relevant cooperation between those who use these vaccines today and the practice of voluntary abortion. Hence, we believe that all clinically recommended vaccinations can be used with a clear conscience and that the use of such vaccines does not signify some sort of cooperation with voluntary abortion. While the commitment is to ensuring that every vaccine has no connection in its preparation to any material of originating from an abortion, the moral responsibility to vaccinate is reiterated in order to avoid serious health risks for children and the general population." WARE Selectmen at Tuesdays meeting chose to refer an Open Meeting Law complaint filed against them by the fire chief to the towns labor attorney, who is expected to write a response on their behalf by Friday. According to Ware Fire Chief Thomas Coulombes complaint, the board discussed accusations against him at a meeting last month, but did not invite him to be present to respond, and therefore violated the state Open Meeting Law. Coulombe has been on paid administrative leave since Feb. 20, when an investigation against him was commenced by the town. The previous day, selectmen met in executive session to discuss litigation and negotiations. Coulombes complaint alleges that selectmen violated his legal rights by deciding to take negative actions against him. His complaint says that meeting should be nullified and that selectmen should be fined for allegedly breaking the law. Selectmen did not respond to the chiefs complaint within the prescribed time frame. Ware Town Manager Stuart Beckley sought and was granted an extension until Friday from Attorney General Maura Healeys office. The Republican has filed a public records request for the Feb. 19 executive session meeting minutes. Beckley last week said selectmen would consider that request at their March 19 meeting. On Wednesday, he said the request is in the hands of the towns labor attorney. The town manager has not commented on the Coulombe investigation. On Wednesday he confirmed it is ongoing. An Easthampton man pleaded guilty this week in a Vermont federal court and was sentenced to 15 months in prison for his part in a plan to traffic fentanyl in the Manchester, Vermont area. Anthony Casiano entered a guilty plea on Monday to a charge of possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, according to federal records. Judge William K. Sessons III ordered him to serve 15 months in federal prison, to be followed by 3 years probation. Two other men, Branden Fournier, 24, and Jonathan Bovice Resto, 24, both from the Holyoke, have pleaded not guilty to the same charges and are awaiting trial, according to the Bennington, Vermont, Banner According to the Banner, Fournier, Resto and Casiano were arrested at the Four Winds Country Motel on Main Street in Manchester during a Dec. 20, 2017 raid by federal, state and local law enforcement. Officials recovered fentanyl, 22 grams of cocaine, packaging materials, and $4,100 in cash. A Massachusetts State Police trooper convicted of rape this week has been fired by the law enforcement agency. Robert A. Sundberg III was convicted on more than a dozen charges by a jury in Lowell on Wednesday. The charges included two counts of rape, strangulation, assault with intent to rape, three counts of assault and battery, five counts of assault and battery on a household or family member, stalking and malicious damage to motor vehicle. The charges stem from an incident in his then girlfriends home in April 2016. The woman, a fellow state police trooper, told investigators Sundberg had a long history of abuse. Upon receiving her report of the attack, Massachusetts State Police arrested and suspended Sundberg without pay, Massachusetts State Police spokesperson Dave Procopio said Wednesday. We hope todays verdict provides justice to the victim, he said, adding, We have absolutely no tolerance for domestic violence, and hope this case makes clear that any such allegations will be swiftly and decisively investigated. Sundberg is expected to be sentenced on Tuesday. With U.S. House and Senate lawmakers back home this week for in-district work, several members of Massachusetts congressional delegation have scheduled town hall-style events across the state to meet with constituents and discuss an array of hot-button issues. About half of the states congressional lawmakers are set to take part in public forums from Boston to Western Massachusetts, including U.S. Sen. Ed Markey and U.S. Reps. Seth Moulton, Katherine Clark, Lori Trahan, Jim McGovern. Clark, a Melrose Democrat and House Democratic Caucus vice chair, will kick off the series of Massachusetts town halls with a Thursday evening Womens Empowerment" event at Cambridge Community Center. The congresswomans office said the 6 p.m. forum will focus on policies that lift up women and families in Massachusetts and beyond, including raising the minimum wage, paid family leave and increasing access to quality affordable child care. In addition to addressing constituents, Clark will also lead breakout sessions and answer audience questions, according to organizers. U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Boston, was set to join Clark for the Cambridge town hall, but forced to cancel her appearance due to a knee injury. Lina Francis, a spokeswoman for the congresswoman, said in a Thursday morning statement that Pressley will be working from home and cancelling her public events scheduled for the remainder of the week as she recovers from the knee injury she sustained on Monday. Moulton, D-Salem, meanwhile, announced Thursday that he will hold a Saturday town hall-style meeting in Danvers. The congressman, who has traveled the country in recent weeks as he mulls a possible 2020 presidential bid, will meet with constituents and discuss his work in Washington during the 1:15 p.m. forum at Danvers Senior Center. Moulton said he looks forward to hearing about what matters most to our community at Saturdays town hall, adding that he believes being accessible and accountable to constituents is one of his most fundamental duties as a member of Congress. Congresswoman Lori Trahan, D-Westford, is also set to hold a town hall-style event in her district on Saturday. You're invited! Join me in Chelmsford this coming Saturday, March 23rd at 9:00 a.m. for my first Constituent Town Hall event. #MA3 Follow me and RSVP here: https://t.co/twCzeIx2tZ pic.twitter.com/c6vL6Aa2jO Congresswoman Lori Trahan (@RepLoriTrahan) March 21, 2019 Trahan, who officially joined the Massachusetts delegation in January, will hold her first constituent town hall meeting at Parker Middle Schools Cafeteria in Chelmsford. The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 9 a.m., according to organizers. On Sunday, meanwhile, Markey will be in Northampton for a town hall-style event focused on his proposed Green New Deal agenda. The Massachusetts Democrat, who is sponsoring the Senate version of the high-profile climate measure, will promote the legislation and answer constituent questions at the evening forum at Northampton High School. Markeys office noted that the Western Massachusetts event -- which will begin around 6 p.m. -- will mark the first in a series of town halls the senator plans to hold across the state on the Green New Deal. Congressman Jim McGovern, a Worcester Democrat who represents Northampton, is also expected to attend the Sunday town hall. Gov. Charlie Baker called the late Sen. John McCain a great man and a great American following President Donald Trumps disparaging comments this week. By any standard John McCain was a great man and a great American, period, Baker said on WGBH Thursday. I was brought up in a house where you dont speak ill of the dead. Baker was referencing recent remarks by Trump who complained that he was never thanked for the funeral for McCain, who died in August after a battle with brain cancer. I have to be honest: Ive never liked him much, Trump said Wednesday during a speech in Ohio, as reported by several outlets. Hasnt been for me. Ive really probably never will. Baker called the comments wholly, totally and completely inappropriate. Whether you agreed with him or disagreed with him hard you would be hard pressed to find anyone in the Senate to say he was a bad guy, Baker said. Shame on everybody doesnt understand what that man meant to this country. President Donald Trump mocked Michael Dukakis during a visit to an Ohio army tank plant on Wednesday, saying he would have climbed into one of the tanks behind him if it werent for the former Massachusetts governor. I want to get into them, but then I remember when a man named Dukakis got into a tank, Trump said, according to USA Today. And I remember he tanked when he got into the tank. Ive never saw anyone tank like that. During the 1988 presidential race Dukakis, then the governor of Massachusetts, was continuously criticized for his lack of defense and national security experience, in contrast to his opponent George H. W. Bush. Bush served in World War II and as the director of the CIA. While trying to prove his prowess, Dukakis toured a defense contracting facility in Michigan and put on a helmet - leading to one of the biggest political blunders of the campaign. In a 2013 interview with Politico, Matt Bennett, who worked for the Dukakis campaign recalled members of the press laughing so hard they were kind of doubled over. When the tank came out, there was just this kind of instant reaction and it wasnt the reaction we were hoping for, Bennett told Politico. "It was hilarity. They started laughing at him.I knew we were in trouble. Didnt know how much trouble but I knew we were in some trouble. The photo opportunity backfired, and Bush used the footage in campaign ads. Trump said he would probably not have the same problem as Dukakis because he is a little bigger, but did not want to take the risk. "The helmet was bigger than he was. That was not good," Trump said, according to USA Today. Dukakis, who is now a professor at Northeastern University, focused on Trumps lack of military service in an interview with the Boston Globe, following the presidents remarks. Dukakis served in Korea for 16 months. Trump claimed he had bone spurs in his heels, and he cant even remember where they were just another rich kid who used his fathers influence to avoid military service, Dukakis told the Globe. Family and friends of the twin 6-year-old boys and the 25-year-old man killed in a March 16 fire in Pittsfield have started funds to help with their services. Twin boys, Kasper and Sylas Stone, and Austin Grzelak died inside a fire at a mobile home located at 11 Lakewood Circle in Pittsfield. The fire started around 3:40 a.m. Investigators said the cause of the fire was either a candle or improper disposal of smoking materials in the master bedroom of the home. Two residents were able to escape the blaze and are expected to survive. Friends of Kasper and Sylas Stones aunt and uncle started a Gofundme to help the family pay for their services. The boys mother, Krystal Parody, and their older sister were the two people who escaped the flames, the fund says. Parody suffered serious injuries trying to save her son and remains hospitalized at Massachusetts General Hospital. The boys were getting ready to celebrate their 7th birthday. Everything was lost in this fire. The home is destroyed, and every physical memory of the boys is gone, the fund said. All of their toys, clothes burned. Lets help ease them financially as dad, mom, and sister have a long journey of healing ahead of them not only due to the emotional trauma of losing Kasper & Sylas but also the medical and moving expenses. We can never replace what has been lost but we can help them with their healing. As of Wednesday afternoon, just over $6,300 was raised for the family. Austin F. Grzelak died in a March 16, 2019 fire in Pittsfield. (Gofundme) A fund to help Grzelaks family, who is called a loving son, nephew, cousin, friend to many in the post has also been created. The fund is to help his mother pay for funeral expenses. Grzelak lived at 20 Larch St., in Pittsfield. Authorities continue to investigate the fire, but do not consider it suspicious. The Lancet: Experts set out targets to eliminate tuberculosis within a generation Tuberculosis can be treated, prevented and cured, yet it kills 1.6 million people a year, more people than any other infectious disease The savings from averting a TB death are estimated to be three times the costs, and may be much greater in many countries Despite existing treatments, global research investment must increase by four times to transform TB outcomes, according to major report published ahead of World TB Day Authors stress the need for accountability in TB - assessing progress in 10 high burden countries and announcing the launch The Lancet TB Observatory - an independent annual report evaluating progress towards the 2022 UN High Level Meeting targets A world free of tuberculosis (TB) is possible by 2045 if increased political will and financial resources are directed towards priority areas including providing evidence-based interventions to everyone, especially to high risk groups, and increasing research to develop new ways to diagnose, treat, and prevent TB. Funding this response will require substantial investments, and accountability mechanisms will be necessary to ensure that promises are kept and targets are reached. Published ahead of World TB Day (24 March 2019), The Lancet Commission on TB estimates that there are significant financial benefits of reducing TB mortality - the savings from averting a TB death are estimated to be three times the costs, and may be much greater in many countries. "This report is optimistic about ending TB - a disease that is preventable, treatable and curable However, there is no room for complacency in our work, and we must act quickly and strategically to save the next generation from TB," says lead Commissioner Dr Eric Goosby, UN Special Envoy on Tuberculosis, University of California San Francisco, USA. "In the wake of the UN High-Level Meeting on TB, the Commission views this report as a roadmap to help keep high-burden countries accountable for defeating this deadly disease." TB remains the leading infectious killer of our time, responsible for 1.6 million deaths worldwide in 2017, with drug-resistant forms of TB threatening control efforts in many parts of the world. In addition, in 2017, around a quarter of the world's population were living with TB infection. The World Health Organization (WHO) first declared TB a public health crisis in 1993, and in 2018 the first-ever UN High-Level Meeting (UNHLM) on TB made ending the disease a global priority. This included ambitious goals to treat 40 million people, and to prevent 30 million new cases between 2018-2022. The Lancet Commission on TB makes policy and investment recommendations to countries with high levels of TB and their development partners. The report is the work of 37 commissioners from 13 countries, and includes economic analyses, and modelling of interventions to counter treatment challenges (drug-resistant TB, HIV co-infection, and treatment within private health systems), which are published in detail in an accompanying research paper in The Lancet Global Health journal. The report is published with linked Comments from former UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, and Minister of Health and Family Welfare in India, Jagat Prakash Nadda, and a Profile of Nandita Venkatesan, who is a journalist, TB survivor, patients' rights activist, and co-author on the report. Scaling up existing interventions and reaching high risk groups The first priority for most high burden countries is to ensure that high quality diagnostic tests and treatments are available for all people with active TB. Many people with TB, especially the poorest, cannot access or afford services, and health systems are often slow to identify and investigate cases, meaning patients do not complete treatment or recover. Currently more than a third of TB cases (35%) are not diagnosed or treated. The authors call for universal access to drug susceptibility testing [2] at diagnosis to ensure that all patients are given appropriate treatment, including access to second-line treatment for drug-resistant TB. Estimates for this report suggest that increasing these interventions (drug susceptibility testing to 90% of people diagnosed, and second-line treatment to 85% of people with drug-resistant TB) in Moldova, where there are high levels of drug-resistant TB, could lead to a 73% reduction in TB deaths and a 43% reduction in new cases between 2018-2045. However, private health care is often the main route to diagnosis and treatment for patients in high-burden countries, meaning countries and donors must engage with the sector to improve care. Modelling demonstrates that subsidising tests and supporting patients to complete treatment in India, the country with the highest TB burden [3] and predominantly private health care, more than one-quarter (28%) of TB deaths could be averted over the next 30 years (an additional 8 million lives). This would cost an extra US$290 million each year, which is significantly less than India's US$32 billion losses associated with TB mortality each year. Identifying groups at high risk of TB infection (including people with HIV, people living in the same house as someone with TB, migrants, prisoners, health care professionals, and miners) and bringing them into care will be vital, including offering TB prevention, such as treating latent TB. This is particularly important in people with HIV, where risk of co-infection is high and TB is the leading cause of death. By making TB prevention available to 90% of people with HIV in Kenya, the authors estimate that TB mortality could be reduced by 17% (equivalent to 3 million lives saved) between 2020 and 2045, costing US$66 million a year between 2018 and 2045, which would be relatively modest compared with the economic costs of the avoidable deaths from not implementing this measure (US$2.7 billion each year). Once high-risk populations and those already in care have access to affordable, high quality services, introducing universal health coverage is needed to help countries find remaining TB cases. Investing in TB However, even if current treatments were extended to 90% of people with TB, and 90% were successfully cured, existing efforts would have failed to avert 800,000 deaths in 2017. Global research investment needs to increase by up to four times (from US$726 million in 2016) to develop treatments and prevention tools that would transform TB outcomes. Affected countries, donor nations, private sector, and philanthropies must also devise effective financing strategies to end the TB epidemic. The initial global costs to reduce TB deaths by 90% (from 1.7 million per year to less than 200,000 a year) could be in the order of US$10 billion a year [4], and investments would need to increase by about US$5 billion a year initially. However, this would be followed by reduced costs (diminishing to US$1-2 billion a year by the early 2040s) as the number of new cases reduces. Investing in TB has a strong return on investment, with an estimated US$16-82 return for every dollar spent on TB research and development. Similarly, TB control could produce considerable economic benefits for high burden countries, with savings three to seven times higher for every TB death averted. More public finances must be allocated to TB (from increasing GDP levels, taxing tobacco and alcohol, and by increasing health insurance) in addition to increased investment in local expertise and infrastructure. Estimates suggest that Bangladesh, Zambia, China, and Indonesia could increase their annual TB expenditures by more than five-fold over the next five years. Global donors also need to invest more wisely. Currently, only 24% of global health aid goes to global functions (compared with country-specific functions) that could help multiple countries, such as research and development, negotiating for lower prices for TB drugs, and leadership and advocacy. This funding should be extended to include a focus on reducing drug-resistant TB to avoid cross-border spread, and ensuring high risk groups are identified and cared for potentially through social insurance schemes. "While there are many challenges to ending TB, we have the potential right now to address this problem. We have rapid, sensitive diagnostic tools, and the promise of potent TB treatment strategies in the pipeline. In addition, TB control strategies, new health technologies, sustained global economic growth, increased commitment to achieve universal health coverage, and growing political momentum could all make ending TB within a generation more feasible than ever before. With sound science, political will, shared responsibility, TB is a solvable problem." says report co-author Dr Michael Reid, University of California San Francisco, USA. [1] Speaking about the report's role in India, co-author Dr Nalini Krishnan, Resource Group for Education and Advocacy for Community Health, India, says: "India has shown strong political commitment to ending TB, pledging to eliminate the disease by 2025. The TB Program has moved into high gear, prioritizing person-centered care, engaging the private sector and focusing on prevention. But India must now accelerate on three fronts: involving TB survivors and affected communities as key drivers of the TB response, improving the quality of care of TB services and integrating TB services into the primary health system to reduce diagnostic delays and out-of-pocket expenditure. The Commission's recommendations with reference to accountability, rapid scale up of proven technologies and investing in research, are important strategic directions to adopt." [1] Accountability: A shared responsibility for TB Increased accountability for TB at the local, national and global level is needed. Heads of government must be held accountable for their TB outcomes and report these biannually at the United Nations; donors must be accountable for drug-resistant TB and for research and development. To meet this need, the authors launch The Lancet TB Observatory - an independent annual report evaluating progress towards the 2022 UNHLM targets, and monitoring domestic and global financing. The authors also created individual report cards monitoring progress on TB, political will and TB financing for the ten highest burden countries. Writing in a linked Comment, Ban Ki-moon, former UN Secretary-General and Deputy Chair of The Elders, notes the importance of accountability and the role of TB control in the drive for universal health coverage (UHC). He says: "UHC may seem a rather broad goal for holding countries to account in tackling tuberculosis, but with its emphasis on rights, equity, and services allocated to needs, it is the ideal framework for tackling this persistently deadly disease. Tuberculosis kills more people than any other infectious disease; it disproportionately affects the poor and vulnerable; and drug-resistant strains threaten all of humanity. All of this means the case for prioritising tuberculosis elimination within UHC reforms is unchallengeable." Highlighting policies implemented in India to achieve TB elimination by 2025, India's Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Jagat Prakash Nadda, writes in a linked Comment: "The Lancet Commission reports the value of the loss associated with tuberculosis mortality to be an estimated $32 billion per year in India. New tools resulting from greater tuberculosis research and development (R&D) are essential to prevent those projected economic losses. With at least 30% of India's population infected with tuberculosis, we need accurate point-of-care diagnostics for detecting tuberculosis infection and effective person-centred treatment. We need an effective vaccine to prevent tuberculosis. Delivering strong advocacy, in close coordination with the Ministry of Science and Technology and research-oriented pharmaceutical companies, and global commitment and collaboration to tuberculosis R&D are essential to reach our targets... To end tuberculosis, governments of high-burden countries will need to propose bold plans to address tuberculosis rather than be content with moderate incremental gains." ### NOTES TO EDITORS This Commission was supported financially by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) through the University Research Company and the Stop TB Partnership. The Stop TB Partnership and University Research Company provided administrative support to the Commission. The labels have been added to this press release as part of a project run by the Academy of Medical Sciences seeking to improve the communication of evidence. For more information, please see: http://www. sciencemediacentre. org/ wp-content/ uploads/ 2018/ 01/ AMS-press-release-labelling-system-GUIDANCE. pdf if you have any questions or feedback, please contact The Lancet press office pressoffice@lancet.com [1] Quote direct from author and cannot be found in the text of the Article. [2] Drug susceptibility testing involves testing individuals to confirm which drugs their TB bacteria are sensitive to. [3] The ten countries with highest burden of TB mortality are: India (421,000 deaths in 2017), Nigeria (155,000), Indonesia (116,000), South Africa (78,000), Bangladesh (60,000), Pakistan (56,000), Democratic Republic of the Congo (56,000), Tanzania (49,000), Mozambique (48,000), and Kenya (43,000). [4] Based on 1.5 million lives saved multiplied by the cost of saving a life (US$7,000) IF YOU WISH TO PROVIDE A LINK FOR YOUR READERS, PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING, WHICH WILL GO LIVE AT THE TIME THE EMBARGO LIFTS: http://www. thelancet. com/ commissions/ tuberculosis-free-world Peer-reviewed / Systematic review, modelling **Report cards for 10 high burden countries available** This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) President Rodrigo Duterte announced Thursday that he has permanently ended peace negotiations between the government and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). "I am officially announcing the permanent termination of our talks between the government panel and the Communist Party of the Philippines," Duterte said at the122nd Philippine Army Founding Anniversary at Fort Andres Bonifacio in Manila. He said he is no longer entertaining any interventions or moves to persuade him to change his mind. "You can maybe talk to the next President of this Republic, one day," he said. The announcement comes a day after Malacanang terminated the services of its peace panel members, including chief government negotiator and Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III. Joma Sison: His mind is set Jose Maria Sison, CPP's founder, said Duterte is like an "old broken record" for repeating what he said when he signed Proclamation No. 360 in 2017. "Since then, what Duterte has been doing is merely driving more nails into the coffin of the peace negotiations," he said. Sison said he is using the armed conflict against communists to justify the extensions of martial law in Mindanao. However, the National Democratic Front (NDF) -- the umbrella organization representing communist rebels in the peace talks -- is also not closing its doors. "Negotiations can be resurrected in the future by a new administration. In that regard, Duterte is correct. The peace negotiations are dead as far as he's concerned," he explained. "His mind is set." Talks were shelved in November 2017 after government and the CPP accused each other of violating announced ceasefires. Duterte meanwhile, is pushing for localized talks with communist rebels. A bid aiming to tag the CPP and its armed wing the New People's Army (NPA) as a terrorist group is still pending before the court. While the American Red Cross is known for responding to large national disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, the majority of the organizations work occurs at the local level. After years of growth, the number of reported incidents most of which are home fires in the Red Crosss Chicago & Northern Illinois Region are down more than 10 percent over the last eight months. Students in the IEMS 365: Analytics for Social Good course turned to the data to find out why. Open to all Northwestern juniors and seniors, Analytics for Social Good annually features a nearly even split between Northwestern Engineering students and non-engineering majors from across the University. The course challenges students to use their unique academic backgrounds from industrial engineering to statistics to journalism to work together to gain insights from data that can benefit communities. During the courses culminating project, a 48-hour hackathon, students worked in interdisciplinary teams to apply quantitative and qualitative data analysis to explain why reported house fires have declined so significantly. Finding Connections Among the Data Junior Christina Parker and her team studied the drop in reported fires in relation to changes in population income averages across Chicago-area ZIP codes. Comparing the data with recent labor reports, the group found that the decrease in responses could be due to improved economic standing in Chicago-area neighborhoods. With unemployment down and per capita income up, its a sign that people are working and earning more money, said Parker, who majors in social policy and global health. Energy is also cheaper, meaning more people can afford central heating and move away from using space heaters, which is a leading cause of home fires. Parkers group was one of eight teams to present their insights at the hackathons final presentations on March 14. During the previous two days, students applied techniques in data analysis to several large datasets provided by the Red Cross, including records of Red Cross smoke alarm installations in Chicago neighborhoods and incident reports dating back to 2014. Teams bolstered their research through interviews with Red Cross volunteers and members of the Evanston Fire Department. Bringing Together Diverse Partners Northwestern Engineerings Karen Smilowitz has taught the class since it launched in 2015. She credits several collaborators for the courses success, including Jim McGowan, director of information management and situational awareness at the Red Cross; Tony Surma, Chief Architect - US One Commercial Partner at Microsoft and co-founder of Humanitarian Toolbox; Katie Freeman, director of operations at Hagerty Consulting, and Kelsey Rylan, geospatial and data analyst at Northwestern University Libraries. With their support, we have been able to engage students in challenging and impactful applications of analytics, said Smilowitz, the James N. and Margie M. Krebs Professor in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences. It's been amazing to see how the course continues to evolve and improve. Insights that Wont be Wasted Another team at the hackathon used the data to study trends in the number of categorized minor fires compared to previous years. The team plotted the location of minor fires on a map of Chicago-area ZIP codes and found an association between concentrated areas where the Red Cross installed smoke alarms through its Home Fire Campaign and a decrease in minor fires. The map also highlighted ZIP codes where multiple fires had occurred, signaling where additional Red Cross support could be beneficial. Red Crosss programs to install smoke detectors in repeat areas really work, said Jacob Stein, a junior studying learning and organizational change and statistics. A double-check policy where volunteers focus on ZIP codes that have experienced more than one fire could give the Red Cross direction as it works toward its goal to reduce fires. McGowan thanked the students for their hard work, and promised that their insights will be put to use. We posed a simple question, but its one I think you realize now is difficult to answer, McGowan said. The work youve done doesnt stop here. Your analysis will help us moving forward so we can continue to provide better services for our disaster prevention initiatives. by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 18, 2019 Safaricom formed a partnership with Western Union late last year, allowing customers of Kenyas biggest mobile operator to facilitate global money transfers and electronically make payments person to person in cash. The deal enabled cross-border money transfers for the company's mobile wallet users, who number approximately 28 million. M-Pesa, Safaricoms mobile wallet, already allowed customers to store and send money or make payments locally prior to the partnership, but now customers can send and receive money worldwide through Western Union and to Western Union network of accounts. In the first half of 2018, revenue from Safaricoms mobile wallet platform rose 18.2% to $349.7 million in the exchange rate at the time of reporting -- about 35.52 billion shillings. More transactions mean more customer data. Western Union's white-label technology in this partnership enables electronic wallet holders to send money internationally to 500,000 locations, 14 countries and 3 billion bank accounts. advertisement advertisement Nidhi Gupta, director of marketing and product partnerships at Western Union, believes the collaboration spurs new possibilities for mobile financial service operators to move money globally, but it does require the companys analysts to help its customers understand their customers behavior. To support customers like Safaricom, Western Union created a three-pillar data strategy to support Safaricoms M-PESA customers. Data & Programmatic Insider caught up with Gupta to talk about these types of partnerships and its commitment to support the flow of data. What follows are excerpts of the conversation. D&PI: How does Western Union analyze the customer behavior of its partners to help them learn more about their customers? Gupta: Data forms the backbone of our innovative solutions. We use analytics to understand the size of the various markets, the relevant customer base and their needs, as well as the vision and business requirements of the companies that connect to us. With these insights, our team makes projections and develops models to define the right solution. For instance, some of our offerings are only meant to serve key strategic remittance players that already own an end-to-end retail and/or digital money transfer service. D&PI: How does Western Union understand the market and partners customer base so well as to ensure the investment generates a return for both sides? Gupta: Jointly, we define a thorough customer journey, by walking in the customers shoes, conducting surveys, focus groups or other consumer research, to gather data on voice of the customer. Safaricoms M-PESA is used by a large portion of Kenyas adult population for many of their financial needs. In fact, the wallet did nearly everything but send money worldwide. And with our expertise, we could unlock a global reach for its users with a few swipes. To succeed in the global person-to-person money transfer industry, a company must be guided by what customers want, which includes supporting a variety of payments cultures and preferences of todays global money movers, amidst a mix of traditional infrastructure and the prolific adoption of smartphones. D&PI: How does Western Union focus on the customer feedback once the project gets underway? Gupta: Once the service is live, we monitor many types of KPIs such as the volume, channels cross usage, frequency and other factors. We also rely on product analytics, consumer research, and social listening tools to understand the customers feedback. We then apply what we learn to improve the service features and functions, and to improve the end consumers experience. D&PI: How does all this data help you to expand the mobile and white-label strategy, develop new services, implement the next stages and steps, and what are the next stages and steps? Gupta: While many of our customers are navigating a digital-first environment, we must recognize that a significant portion of the worlds population is still offline and many have no access to financial services at all. We are enabling third-party companies to access a global payout network nurtured over decades and expand their businesses. It also gives them immediate reach through Western Union to our network of bank accounts and mobile wallets. by Wayne Friedman , March 20, 2019 Viacoms stock closed sharply down on Wednesday after issuing a warning that its networks could be dropped from DirecTV this Friday. Viacom, which owns MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, was down 5.5% to $26.01. It has accused AT&T, which owns DirecTV, of unfair marketplace leverage after buying Time Warner. The company stated: AT&T is abusing its new market position by favoring its own content which significantly under-performs Viacoms to stifle competition. AT&T-DirecTVs behavior is also consistent with a recent pattern of gouging their customers by charging them higher prices for an inferior product with fewer channels. According to MoffettNathanson Research, in January, Viacom amassed an average 2.05 million prime-time 18-49 viewers in Nielsens C3 metric -- the average commercial-minute rating plus three days of time-shifted viewing. This was down 15% from the same month in 2018. advertisement advertisement By comparison, AT&Ts WarnerMedia networks were collectively down 21% to 1.88 million 18-49 Nielsen C3 viewers. DirecTV is the second-biggest U.S. pay TV provider with 20 million subscribers; Comcast Corp. is the biggest with 22 million. Analysts have been wary of Viacom and other cable TV network-focused companies such as Discovery Inc. and AMC Networks when it comes to declining cable subscribers. Overall, cable TV networks continue to see average annual subscriber reductions of 2% to 3% over the last few years. For its part, Viacom says it has renewed its network pay TV distribution deals in more than half its subscriber base over the last two years. Analysts also worry about lower prospects from new virtual pay TV providers pursuing low-cost skinny bundles of live, linear TV networks. Many big legacy cable TV companies have 10 to 15 or more networks in their group rosters. by Richard Whitman , Columnist, March 20, 2019 Creative and media agency veteran Matt Seiler, most recently president, brand solutions at Dentsu Aegis Network left the company at the beginning of 2019 after about a year in the role. As Seiler noted on his LinkedIn page, not the right fit. He is looking forward with the mantra Situation Fluid. Open Agenda. Weve all been there, right? As one commentator noted on his page: You always land on your feet. But Seiler, former CEO at Interpublics Mediabrands, hasnt been idle. In fact, he took what sounds like one awesome road trip in ski country with a friend, logging 1,700 miles across four states, eight mountains and 15 days on powdery slopes. As we were coming out of the mountains and back into civilization, what I needed to do in real life became clearer, he notes in his LinkedIn missive. THIS, I had discovered, was real life. What comes next is making certain I am doing what I really want to do. That I am following my passion, and doing it with the people with whom I most want to be. advertisement advertisement "It is too easy to be busy. To race from thing to thing without taking time to take some deep powder turns. To think about what matters most Id say thats good food for thought. Seiler ended his missive noting he was on a plane headed back home, Ready for all that is to come. How about you? When will it be your turn? Excellent question. Ive been so busy being busy I havent given it much thought. Something we should all think about. by Melynda Fuller , March 21, 2019 In January, Digital First Media, known formally as MNG Enterprises and a division of New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital, made a play for Gannetts stable of publications. Offering $12 a share, Digital Firsts offer marked a 23% premium over the publishers market closing price at the time. Soon after, Gannett struck down the bid as not credible, and stated that it did not believe Digital First could obtain the funds needed to buy out the publisher. advertisement advertisement This week, in another push forward, Digital First Media announced it had received a letter from Oaktree Capital Management, a subsidiary of Oaktree Capital Group, stating that Oaktree is highly confident that Digital First could obtain the $1.725 billion, if not more, to take over Gannett. The amount stated would allow Digital First to buy out Gannett at $12 per share and pay all related fees, costs and expenses related to the transaction. R. Joseph Fuchs, Chairman of the Board of MNG Enterprises, Inc., stated: Its time for Gannetts Board of Directors to stop blocking value creation opportunities for its shareholders and engage with MNG We are prepared to move quickly and believe if granted the ability to conduct confirmatory due diligence, we can complete our work and finalize a financing package within weeks. More information about the deal and Digital Firsts attempts to unseat members of Gannetts board with its own nominees can be found at the MNG-run site called savegannett.com. Following Digital Firsts announcement, Gannett issued a statement, reading in part: The letter that MNG has procured from Oaktrees distressed debt fund, Oaktree Strategic Credit, more than two months after MNG launched its unsolicited proposal, does not represent a contractual commitment or a legal obligation, and is highly conditional. "Furthermore, Oaktree Strategic Credit did not indicate that it was confident in its own ability to arrange committed financing or otherwise suggest it would even play a role in the financing, as would be customary in a letter of this kind. Digital First Media is known for buying up local papers across the U.S., then stripping them of resources and staff, frequently consolidating services far from a publications home office. Currently, the company owns around 200 newspapers and other publications, including the Boston Herald, which it won in a bankruptcy bidding war last year. Razer and Tencent, two of the biggest worldwide powers in the gaming business, have joined forces to work together. San Francisco and Singapore-based Razer makes everything from headsets and mouses to routers and laptops, targeted to the worlds 2.4 billion gamers, a crowd that shows no sign of thinning out soon. It also marketed the first smartphone specifically for gamers and operates Razer Gold, one of the worlds largest virtual credit services for gamers. Tencent, along with being a Chinese conglomerate with streaming music and social sites, is also a major game owner worldwide, and happens to have a 40% stake in Epic, the creator of Fortnite -- already the worlds most popular game -- and other titles. The two companies announced an alliance in which Tencent will work with Razer to optimize its games for Razer hardware, including the phone and mobile game controllers, and collaborate on software like Razers mobile platforms and Razer Cortex mobile game launcher. Theyll also work on new ways they may be able to help each other, using Mother Razer audio technology through its THX Ltd. subsidiary. advertisement advertisement With the strengths of Tencent and Razer combined, we are going to supercharge the mobile gaming industry, stated Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder and CEO. The deal should resonate with gamers. Razer calls itself the worlds largest lifestyle brand for gamers and its triple-headed snake logo is as ubiquitous in gaming circles as the Budweiser sign at every old-sport stadium in the U.S. Tencents immediate gaming plans may not be so clear. China cracked down on games last year, suggesting they were causing vision problems in youngsters -- so games like Fortnite and another worldwide hit Tencent owns, PlayersUnknowns Battleground (PUBG), havent even been marketed there yet. Razer just announced its earnings for 2018, reporting record revenues of $712.4 million, up 37.6%. by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, March 21, 2019 An ad industry watchdog has told Verizon to discontinue or revise three television ads touting a 5G network. One of the spots boasted that Verizon was first to 5G, while another said the company was building the first and only 5G ultra wideband network. Those ads convey the message that Verizon has achieved the important milestone of deploying the first mobile wireless 5G network, the National Advertising Division, a unit administered by the Better Business Bureau, wrote in an opinion made available Thursday. The commercials aired as wireless carriers and industry observers were increasingly discussing the benefits of 5G -- the next generation of wireless technology. But no carriers were offering mobile 5G service when the ads ran. Verizon currently offers 5G service for homes, and recently said it plans to roll out 5G mobile service in a few cities in April. advertisement advertisement The NAD recommended that Verizon either stop running the ads or modify them to make clear that Verizon is referring to its build-out of 5G technology for the future, or its release of 5G Home. The decision came in response to a challenge to the ads by AT&T -- which itself is facing a lawsuit by Sprint over 5GE branding on smartphones. Verizon argued that its ad campaign merely expresses pride in its technological achievements. One of the challenged ads features former Ameritech president Bob Barnett as he made the first commercial cell phone call in 1983. Verizon engineer John Foley says in a voiceover that he was present for that call. Im proud that I was part of that first call, Foley continues. And Im proud that Im here now, as we build Americas first and only 5G ultra wideband network, with unprecedented wireless capacity, that will not only allow for phones to be connected but almost everything, transforming how we all live, once again. The NAD said in its decision that Verizon is rightly proud of its history, but that the ad blurred past and present tenses in a way that conveyed 5G technology is currently available. The watchdog said Verizon plans to appeal the decision to the National Advertising Review Board. New research, which appears in The Journal of Physiology, examines the role that gut bacteria might play in preserving the health of our arteries. Share on Pinterest Your gut may control the health of your arteries and heart, suggests new research. An increasing number of studies suggest that the bacteria in our guts hold the key to healthy aging. For instance, a recent conference that Medical News Today reported on featured research in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans. The results suggested that colonizing the gut with specific strains of bacteria, for example, can delay aging and prevent a host of age-related chronic diseases. Now, research in mice strengthens the idea that gut bacteria mediate the aging process. Specifically, scientists have examined the link between the composition of the gut microbiota in mice and vascular aging. Vienna Brunt, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is the studys lead author. Doug Seals, a professor and the director of the universitys Integrative Physiology of Aging Laboratory, is the senior author. Studying gut bacteria and vascular health Brunt and colleagues administered a cocktail of broadspectrum, poorly absorbed antibiotics to a group of young mice and a group of old mice. They added the antibiotics to the drinking water of the rodents for a period of 34 weeks to suppress their gut microbiota. Next, the researchers examined the health of the rodents vascular systems by measuring their arterial stiffness and the health of the endothelium that is, the layer of cells that line the inside of the arteries. Brunt and her team also examined the rodents blood samples for markers of inflammation and oxidative stress, such as harmful free radicals. Oxidative stress occurs when the body produces too many free radicals and does not have enough antioxidants to degrade them. Studies indicate that this phenomenon contributes to hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and aging in general. The researchers also measured levels of nitric oxide, a compound that expands the blood vessels. Finally, they examined the age-related changes in each rodents gut microbiota. At the end of the study period, the scientists found that the old mice benefited greatly from the antibiotic treatment, while the intervention had no effect on young mice. Specifically, When you suppressed the microbiome of the old mice, their vascular health was restored to that of young mice, reports Prof. Seals. How old age influences gut health Next, the scientists set out to identify certain age-related changes in the microbiota of rodents. Their aim was to understand how suppressing the microbiota may preserve vascular health. To do so, they genetically sequenced the fecal samples of another group of old mice and compared them with those of young mice. In general, in the old mice, we saw an increased prevalence of microbes that are pro-inflammatory and have been previously associated with diseases, says lead author Brunt. These included taxa of microbes that previous studies had linked with gut dysbiosis an imbalance between the friendly bacteria in our guts and other pathogens. For example, the study found that the old mice had a higher concentration of proteobacteria a major class that includes well-known pathogens such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Campylobacter bacteria. The scientists also analyzed blood plasma levels of a compound called trimethylamine Noxide, or TMAO. This is a gut-derived metabolite, which means that it is a compound produced when microorganisms in the gut break down nutrients from food. Although the role of TMAO in chronic disease remains uncertain , some previous studies found high levels of TMAO in people with cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and cancer. Specifically, recent studies have suggested that TMAO interacts with platelets and raises the risk of stroke and heart attack. In the current study, the old mice had three times as much TMAO in their blood as the young mice, and the researchers found that antibiotic treatment suppressed TMAO levels. Brunt and her team conclude: The results of the present study provide the first evidence for the gut microbiome being an important mediator of age-related arterial dysfunction and oxidative stress. Health awareness Routine doctor visits are down. Heres why we shouldnt skip them Wondering when to go back to the doctors office again? The time is now. HURON COUNTY For the third consecutive year, the White House fiscal year budget is calling for the elimination of direct federal funding for libraries. The move would affect various capabilities at local libraries. The past two years, appropriators have wound up protecting the funding. The majority of this funding is provided through the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent grant making agency. It provides more than $189.3 million for libraries through the Library Services and Technology Act. The proposal also will also cut $27 million in funding for the Innovative Approaches to Literacy program. What it would mean for local libraries, such as the Harbor Beach Area District Library, is no more borrowing items from other libraries via MeL Catalog inter loans, no more access to MeL databases, and diminished grant opportunities. "Our library uses MeLCat a lot," said Harbor Beach Library Director Vicki Mazure of the inter-library loan system for the state of Michigan. Most of the libraries in Michigan participate in the program, which allows libraries to exchange each other's resources, and is 50 percent funded by the federal government. Last year, Harbor Beach library patrons borrowed 2,490 items in MeL, and sent out 1,483 items to other libraries to use. Mazure said if the library were to have to purchase those 2,490 items, it would cost around $50,000. She said the program offers huge savings to the library and offers patrons a lot more variety than they'd normally get. "If they cut that funding, more than likely we would no longer have MelCat," Mazure said. "It's probably not sustainable without money from the federal government." Added Mazure: "This resource that we have for sharing materials within all the libraries in the state of Michigan would be lost." For those reasons, many groups, such as the American Library Association, are asking people to contact their elected leaders to oppose the oppose the cuts and continue the federal funding for libraries. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) The communication filed by two former Filipino officials against Chinese President Xi before the International Criminal Court has no bearing on Philippine-China ties, President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday. "They are entitled to file a case. They are Filipino citizens. And I think we just also have to defend our position vis-a-vis sa kanila. They think they have a good case, and I would say that there is no jurisdiction over this country and of China. Mas lalo na sa [Especially with] China. We will just go along that line," Duterte said in an ambush interview after the 122nd Philippine Army Founding Anniversary at Fort Andres Bonifacio in Manila. Former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario and former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales filed the communication before the international tribunal on March 15, two days before the Philippines formally withdrew from it. They argued the ICC can have jurisdiction over the "crimes against humanity" committed by China over their encroachment, militarization, and illegal reclamation in the South China Sea. Duterte merely shrugged the communication off. "The Philippines is a democratic country. And anybody can bring a suit against anybody. But whether or not it would prosper, whether or not we have the jurisdiction, that's something else," he said. China is not a State Party to the Rome Statute, the treaty which forms the ICC. This strips the ICC of power to prosecute China, but the communication pointed out the ICC can do so since the crimes were committed within Philippine territory. Duterte argued the Philippines was never a State Party to the Rome Statute as well, since the law was supposedly not published in the Official Gazette. "Remember, China is not a member of the ICC. Dito [Here], we were never. We did not withdraw. Because there was no law at all," he said. The President is known to have warm ties with China. During his term, the Philippines saw an influx of Chinese workers, a multitude of bilateral agreements including infrastructure deals with Beijing, and a softer stance on the South China Sea dispute. ESSEX James Jim Parker has been named a vice president and trust officer at Essex Savings Bank. We are delighted that Mr. Parker has joined our expanding Trust Department as a Vice President & Trust Officer and will be working under the leadership of Ms. Moira Bessette Martin, Senior Vice President, Senior Trust Officer. With more than 20 years of experience in financial services primarily in personal trust administration, his depth of experience will be an asset for our Trust Department, stated Gregory R. Shook, President & CEO of Essex Savings Bank. Prior to joining Essex Trust, Mr. Parker was a Senior Fiduciary Advisory Specialist with a large national bank. In that role he was responsible for managing complex trust relationships including the management of several large private foundations. Additionally, he has assisted individuals and families with reviewing estate planning documents and working with attorneys to draft and execute their plan. Parker received his B.A. from Southern Connecticut State University and a J.D. from Quinnipiac University School of Law. Middletown Pride event is June 15 MIDDLETOWN The City of Middletown is taking part in the first Middletown Pride event on Saturday, June 15, 2019. The City of Middletown, the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce, and Wesleyan University are partnering together to ensure that the inaugural event will be a successful celebration of our diverse community and particularly the lives and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning residents. The parade starts a 2 p.m.Main Street at St. Johns Square, and will proceed down Main Street to Union Street. A festival will take place on the South Green immediately following the conclusion of the parade. The committee is seeking participants from local community groups, businesses, and individuals. Contact the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce for information on sponsoring the event, joining in the parade, being a merchandise and/or food vendor, or overseeing an informational booth. The Chamber can be reached by phone at 860-347-6924 or by email at haley@middlesexchamber.com. Wile & Scenic Film Festival coming up CLINTON The Madison and Clinton Land Trusts will host the Wild & Scenic Film Festival On Tour, one of the largest environmental film festivals in North America, on Saturday, April 27, from 6-9:30 p.m. at Andrews Memorial Town Hall, 54 East Main St, in Clinton. Wild & Scenic is a film festival with a purpose, bringing together storytellers and stories that reflect a love and appreciation of the natural world. The evening will feature a series of short award-winning environmental and adventure films from around the world. Festival-goers will see 11 short films about nature, community activism, conservation, water, energy and climate change, wildlife, environmental justice, indigenous cultures, and more. These films illustrate the Earths beauty, yet show the challenges facing our planet and the communities working to protect it, event organizers said. The evenings emcee is David Skelly, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. Doors open at 6 p.m. for a reception of light snacks, beer and wine before the show. Films begin at 7 p.m., with a break for refreshments and door prizes during the show. Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. The Wild & Scenic Film Festival was started by the watershed advocacy group, the South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL) in 2003. The festivals namesake is in celebration of SYRCLs landmark victory to receive Wild & Scenic status for 39 miles of the South Yuba River in 1999. Wild & Scenic focuses on films which speak to the environmental concerns and celebrations of our planet. The festival is building a network of grassroots organizations connected by a common goal of using film to inspire activism. In recent years, the festival and its On Tour Program has grown to more than 230 events, supporting organizations and their local community causes through outreach, fundraising, and education. The On Tour community is an incredible collection of organizations from every corner of the country that are open-minded, full of empathy, and eager to make a positive difference for the world, their communities, and the environment, said Sarah Muskin, WSFF On Tour Coordinator. The Wild & Scenic Film Festival works with environmental groups across the globe to host the film festival to engage their communities and bring together a diverse audience focused on conservation topics. Considered one of the nations premier environmental and adventure film festivals, this years films will combine stellar filmmaking, beautiful cinematography and first-rate storytelling to inform, inspire and ignite solutions to restore the earth and create a positive future for the next generation. The Madison and Clinton Land Trusts are non-profit volunteer organizations dedicated to conserving local natural resources. The festival is a joint fundraising effort to preserve open space and natural resources in both communities. Visit https://filmfestival.madisonlandtrust.org/ to purchase tickets and see the film festival trailer. Farm bureau accepting scholarship applications For the 34th year, Middlesex County Farm Bureau Agricultural scholarship applications are now available at county high school guidance offices and from the Middlesex County Farm Bureau office. The $500 award is to assist a student in the study of any field of agriculture. Applicants must be residents of Middlesex County OR be attending school in Middlesex County, or be a Middlesex County Farm Bureau family member. Current college students and high school seniors are eligible to apply for the scholarship. Applications must be postmarked by May 1. For further information, or an application, interested students should contact Middlesex County Farm Bureau, Inc. at 860-349-1250 or semintz43@gmail.com A new year brings new UFO sightings in Connecticut, according to National UFO Reporting Center. Last year, the center reported more than 100 UFO sightings across the state. The center, based in Davenport, Wash., says it makes no claims as to the validity of the information in any of these reports. Obvious hoaxes have been omitted, however most reports have been posted exactly as received in the author's own words. We hope that this information will prove to be useful to the general public and the UFO community at large. Here are the sightings from Connecticut reported this year: Greenwich, Jan. 11: I saw a bright object hovering outside my window that moved in a fashion unlike anything else I've seen I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep, when I looked out into the horizon and notices two white lights hovering lower than planes would be. The two lights were coming from a single saucer-like object. The object did not move in a linear fashion at first; it was almost moving in small circles. After about 30 seconds it moved quickly to my left and disappeared into the sky. My neighbors have a small farm, which is rare for Greenwich, and the object seemed be hovering around their property. Southington, Jan 11: UFO falling so fast, nothing wouldve couldve stopped in time before ground contact. Was traveling on Route 84 west, between exits 31 and 30, at 6:30am, when in front of me, off in the distance some three miles away one triangular shaped object (with three points aiming up) was descending rapidly straight down. It was bright white/silver thinking the sun was reflecting off of it. As it disappeared I expected a large sound thinking it was going to crash and explode. As I was driving on Route 84 towards where I figured it crashed. Kept looking for any orange glow and/or smoke but nothing. Tried to rationalize by thinking it was a satellite or other space debris. Nothing on the news. Storrs, Jan. 12: Disk with spokes of light Circular disk angled with face visible from my perspective, illuminated with glowing pattern of lights spreading like spokes from the center. The lights pulsated red and green with the top section of spokes red and the bottom section green. I was woken up by a sound like a helicopter and thought thats what I was seeing, but it remained in the same relative place for some time and the lights did not behave like any aircraft Ive seen before. It was reminiscent of a drone in some ways but definitely much larger. Brookfield, Jan. 21: Dog barking at round white light with orange flame around it in evening sky for about 10 minutes. It was a clear night with moon and stars. I was sitting on my front steps while my dogs were sniffing around in the front yard. One of the dogs started barking at the north eastern sky. I looked up and saw a cluster of round white lights with a wide orange circle around it, looked like a flame. My dog was barking like crazy and I called my husband to hurry and come out with his camera to see it. He took some pictures and some came out, but no orange flame. It looked like it was moving slowly to the east. After about 10 minutes the orange flame went out and there was just the cluster of round white lights. I am emailing images. you need to blow them up to see anything. The one withs the rings around it is closest to what we saw, except the outer ring was orange. If you want latitude and longitude, look up the Brookfield high school, that would be close. Stamford, Jan. 27: I had been admiring an orange moon out my balcony window, when I noticed something floating and tumbling in the sky. At first I thought it was a runaway kite or balloon, until I noticed there was a duplicate shape alongside it. They seemed to have a reflective surface on them where only the outer edges could be seen. They would fly normally for a few seconds and then they would fly in a tumbling motion. I grabbed my binoculars and when I looked at them they had very bright, but blurry white lights around them. However, when I looked up at them without the binoculars they didnt seem to have the same bright lights at all, just enough reflection to see their shape. If I had to guess their altitude, I would say 3500-5000ft. and a few hundred feet apart from each other. But I could be wrong since I didnt know what I was looking at or what their relative size was. Im an avid planes potter and usually watch planes through my binoculars. Planes that leave JFK or Newark are usually at 10,000-13,000ft. Incoming planes to White Plains airport, are usually 1800-2500ft, but much smaller jets. These UFOs were in the same sky where I watch all the planes pass by, however according to my planefinder app, there were no planes over my place when I saw these objects. They made no noise and flew out of sight within 30 seconds, which makes me believe they were small. A regular jet, on a clear night, would stay in sight for a few mins. Waterbury, Jan. 28: Formations started to come out in 2 directions from behind a mountain. Another formation of 3 were high, then descended and scrambled. Madison, Feb 6: I was walking my dog on Middlebeach Road around 6:00am this morning, when I noticed what appeared to be a strange round cloud with a trail behind it. It appeared to to be leaving a trail behind it. It stood out because in the Eastern sky, the sun was rising and I had just taken a few Photos and videos of sunrise. It was 29 degrees, under partly cloudy skies . A man happened to be jogging by me while I was seeing this and I stopped him to ask him what he thought it was. He was as perplexed as I was. I continued to photograph the object. It appeared to move extremely slowly and was leaving a cloud like trail behind it. There were no lights. There was no sound other than the sound of the water and at times I would seem to blend into the sky and then reappear. I would put the object somewhere over Long Island sound or over Nassau County, NY. I have at least 30 still shots taken with iPhone 10s Plus 256. NUFORC Note: We spoke via telephone with the witness, and he seemed to us to be quite sober-minded and eloquent. He occupies a very responsible job, and we suspect he is an exceptionally qualified, and reliable, witness. East Hartford: Feb. 22: Object was seen on Main Street in East Hartford, CT, above the city lights, large starlike bright light only shining in sky changed as it moved closer to large triangular lit aircraft with red and white lights at all 3 points, two bright white lights pointing forward on underside, when directly overhead the bottom appeared grid-like, slight humming sound, slow moving. I followed a distance from a distance. Noticed other red and white blinking aircraft at approximately same height but more distant. Continued to see one or more vehicles at a distance for about half an hour. North Branford: Feb. 24: Bright green slow flashes (2) one after another lasting 2-3 secs. through solid cloud deck. No aircraft heard in vicinity. Walking while looking directly north (clouds deck overhead no visibility of stars) first one slow 2 to 3 sec flash GREEN like maybe a meteor, but extremely bright to be able to see thru clouds, followed by a second slow 2-3 sec flash of equal brightness. Best guess 2 green meteors coming down. Both were lighting the sky from horizon up to 60' above north horizon and from northwest to northeast expansion. No sound or blast wave followed. But they did look close to be so bright through a solid cloud deck. I was standing just 50 yards north of highway 80 and totoket road intersection walking north in RV park. I am a pilot and amatuer astronomer and well versed in sky phenomenon. I only saw the flashes which were green and lit up the cloud deck above me as described above. No other visible indications. I waited but nothing followed. I can say by the color of flash etc... it was not a ground vehicle lights or any ground based lights causing this. Nothing to north but trees and countryside. Killingworth, March 3: Two bright greenish flashes illuminated the entire area greenish light. Second flash was very alarming and unnatural giving all three of us in vehicle a panicked bracing for impact feeling. No sounds at all heard. Silent. To see the list of all Connecticut UFO sightings click here NEWTOWN They dress in familiar school colors, verifying visitors identities in the lobby, and checking the campus perimeter for intruders. Their friendly demeanor stands out, whether theyre talking with students in the cafeteria or with teachers in the lounge or with parents who visit the school. But there is nothing casual about the mission of these armed civilian guards, who form the core of a special safety force in a school district that is turning the corner on the Sandy Hook shootings. It used to be if you were in a situation with (an active shooter) you would step back, but now, with our training, we go after the target, says Jim Pacific, 65, a retired Danbury police officer, and one of nine armed school security officers who work for the Newtown School District. We are going to go after this perpetrator with all that we have, to try to knock the problem down. Newtowns armed school guards all retired police officers who carry concealed sidearms are part of a 19-member civilian school security force that has become a model in Connecticut for districts that want more protection than video cameras and locked entrances can provide. If a group of state legislators have their way, Hartford would help fund armed school security officers in every district that wants them. We need a line item like we have for education cost sharing and special education that the state is willing to stand behind, said state Rep. Carol Hall, an Enfield Republican, and the chairwoman of a legislative group that recommended 18 school safety bills at the end of February. In some areas of the state that are anti-gun, you might get some pushback, but if (Hartford) offered money for armed school security guards, we would probably get a 90 percent buy-in. Some districts, such as Redding, have already bought in. We modeled our armed school security guards on the language used between the Newtown Police Department and the Newtown Board of Education, said Thomas McMorran, superintendent of Easton, Redding and Region 9 school districts. It clearly delineates that the ASSOs would receive ongoing training. Other districts that have launched armed school security officer programs in 2018 include Derby, Burlington and Harwinton. Armed school security officers are not to be confused with school resource officers armed, uniformed, active-duty employees of police departments who are assigned to schools, often for purposes beyond security. But under Connecticut law, passed in the months after the 2012 shooting of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook School, armed school security officers have all the resources of a police officer, except the power of arrest. Jim and all the other armed guys are retired police officers with at least 15 years of experience, says Mark Pompano a former Los Angeles Police Department field training officer, who is the director of security for Newtown schools. There is training they have to complete through the state of Connecticut, and we have an extensive background process before we bring someone like Jim to work in the schools. Arming teachers The spotlight on armed school security officers comes at a time of national debate about providing teachers with guns to protect schools from mass shootings, although there is little chance a Connecticut school district would opt to arm teachers. In some states people might think arming teachers is a good idea, but not here, says Patrice McCarthy, deputy director and general counsel for the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education. The one time an armed educator made headlines in Connecticut was when a Newtown Middle School teacher was arrested in 2016 for bringing a handgun to school. In the national debate, GOP President Donald Trump has suggested arming teachers, echoing the NRA position that a good guy with gun stops a bad guy with a gun. Connecticuts all-Democratic Congressional delegation disagrees. Last week, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy and U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, introduced companion bills to ban the use of federal money to train or arm school personnel with firearms. If it sounds as though Newtowns armed school security officers could be part of such a definition, they are and they arent, depending on who you talk to. Jeremy Stein, executive director of Ridgefield-based CT Against Gun Violence, disagrees with arming retired police officers in schools, saying there is no evidence they protect classrooms from gunmen. They had armed security at Parkland and it didnt work, said Stein, referring to the gunman who killed 17 students and staff at a Florida high school in 2018. I dont know of any stories where school security guards defended themselves successfully. Murphy disagreed, saying he supports the right of Newtown and other school districts to hire armed school security officers, and that his legislation aims to keeps guns out of the hands of teachers and other school support personnel. Po Murray, chairwoman of the home-grown gun violence prevention group Newtown Action Alliance, is somewhere in between opposition and support. I would prefer no guns in the schools, absolutely, said Murray, whose group opposes arming teachers. I had a personal discussion about this with the police chief and he made me feel very comfortable that these (Newtown guards) are trained professionals who are under the jurisdiction of the police department. Other high-profile groups, such as Newtown-based Sandy Hook Promise, were silent on the issue as of the middle of the week, inasmuch as at least two of the groups three founders said they did not know the district had armed school security officers. Murray said that probably goes for much of Newtown. How many know? I only found out about it recently, Murray said. I dont think many people in Newtown know. Pompano said the armed guard policy has been discussed regularly in open meetings and has been featured in publications ranging from the New York Times to Popular Mechanics. Newtown put armed guards in each of its school buildings the first day class opened after the 2012 shootings, and has had them ever since. For the first few months, the school district was paying off-duty police officers to patrol hallways and provide peace-of-mind to traumatized students and staff. Newtown replaced the off-duty police officers with armed retired officers after the state Legislature passed a sweeping school safety bill in early 2013. The result: what was once a four-person school security staff with a budget under $200,000 before the shootings, is now a 19-member staff with a budget of nearly $600,000. I dont know what we would do without them, said Lorrie Rodrigue, superintendent of Newtown schools, who said parents not only know about the armed security officers but support them wholeheartedly. They are part of our culture now, Rodrigue said of the armed retired police officers. If we ever tried to cut them from the budget it would not be pretty. It would be unheard of. Jims story Jim Pacific became a Danbury policeman in 1978 a job he held for 37 years. By far the worst day of his career came while he was at the front desk and news of a shooting came over the radio from Sandy Hook. It was totally demoralizing for us just horrible, you know, said Pacific, a grandfather of 10. It was the saddest day of my career. Pacific teared up several times during an interview this week when speaking not of that horrible day in 2012, but of how grateful he is to provide security for the 5th- and 6th-graders at Reed Intermediate School. It is just a tremendous joy to work with these kids, Pacific said. It provides me with satisfaction that maybe I have made a positive difference in their lives. Newtown police Lt. Aaron Bahamonde said Pacifics gracious disposition was as important in the hiring process as his career credentials. We are only picking the best officers, Bahamonde said. These are the officers who are ready to step down from the confrontation of the street cop to an attitude of working together with the schools. Bahamonde said an armed school security officer has not so much as drawn a sidearm on school grounds during the life of the program, much less fired a weapon. These are all previously certified law enforcement veterans who have retired from the job in good standing, Bahamonde said. This isnt a job for a guy who was a cop for three years. It remains to be seen how many Connecticut school districts follow the lead of Newtown and a half-dozen other districts. McCarthy, the CABE official, said the decision will always come down to a local one, even if the state provides money. It is very much going to be in response to the concerns and wishes of the community, McCarthy said. rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342 CROMWELL - Voters on Wednesday approved construction of a new combined public works/Water Pollution Control Authority garage. The result in the half-day referendum was 355 for and 203 against. Some 10,000 residents were eligible to vote. The 38,732-square-foot garage and office complex will be located on 13.5 acres of town-owned property off County Line Road. The project is estimated to cost $9.3 million and will be paid for by a combination of borrowing, money from the General Fund and fund balance (surplus) from the WPCA. Cromwell officials had wanted to vote on the garage at a town meeting. However, the town councils three Democratic members James Demetriades, Myron P. Johnson and Allan Waters submitted petitions to the town clerk to hold a referendum on the proposal instead, saying it would allow for more residents to have their say. The first effort to replace the garage began in 2004, with a proposed 63,000-square-foot facility that would have cost $9.5 million. Town officials blanched at the projected cost. However, in 2012, the WPCA which rents space in a small building behind police headquarters had exceeded its available space. WPCA officials contacted the town about merging the WPCA and the public works garage. In 2013, the town proposed buying land from the fire district off Evergreen Road as the home of a new facility. That proposal was rejected by residents at a town meeting. In 2016, the town received a state grant, which was used to widen County Line road and install water, gas and electricity. Last year, when the Scannell Properties sought land to build a 400,000-square-foot warehouse off County Line Road, the company and the town worked out a land swap. That cleared the way for construction of the warehouse and opened the door for the town to build the garage. The town is under orders from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to move and upgrade the transfer station, which adjoins the garage property. NEW LONDON Anyone who has ever enjoyed a NoRA Cupcake Co. creation has surely marveled at the lure of these almost too-pretty-to-eat, triple-packed decadent desserts. Those hopelessly hooked by these tiny cakes understand the truth of the bakerys slogan The cake life chose us. The Middletown-based flagship shop, at 700 Main St., which has been serving sweet treats in the citys North End since New Years Eve 2011, in addition to its food truck, festival and thriving catering business, opened a second, satellite shop in downtown New London on March 5. Middletowns kitchen bakes cakes for its various locations and incarnations said owner Carrie Carella, 43, of Portland. Located next to ONeills Brass Rail Cafe and in the same building as Ottos Barber on Bank, NoRA New London, at 60 Bank St., is a 750-square-foot shop, much smaller than Middletowns 3,400 square feet. Situated on a quaint, one-lane street, the new space is so beautiful and historic, and the building were in is turning 200 this year, Carella said. Hygienic Art is across the street and the Garde Arts Center nearby on State Street. Like Middletown, New London has a cornucopia of world cuisine, such as Mexican, Thai, wings, pub food, farm-to-table and various American restaurants. Carella said shes always enjoyed a huge receptive following in New London, and typically sells out the truck whenever its stationed at an event in the city. I love Bank Street. It has so much character, and it so reminded me of Middletown when I first started working at Elis (Cannons Tap Room) in the mid- to late 90s, and how there really wasnt a whole lot going on on Main Street, but it had so much potential because it was so beautiful, said Carella, whose New London location is in the former Berrys Ice Cream & Candy Bar, now in a larger shop down the street. Its nice to have a bakery in town, which we didnt have. I think Carrie fits in with our downtown community very well. Now we have ice cream and cupcakes, said Barbara J. Neff, executive director of the Downtown New London Association. NoRA is a coinage of the small neighborhood North of Rapallo Avenue, which also includes Eli Cannons Tap Room, ORourkes Diner, Krust pizza bar and Tesoro Artisan Gift Boutique & Gallery. Carella is energized by the prospect of focusing on these two shops both situated in thriving business, arts and culture districts. In 2016, Carella planned on moving to a new, 5,000-square-foot space in the city-owned R.M. Keating Historical Enterprise Park at 180 Johnson St., which would have served as its kitchen and distribution center. However, she said, that leaves Main Street kind of boring. The fun thing about the Middletown location is you see everything happening in real time, and thats the magic of it, she said. Thats what makes it fun, and exciting for customers, and I didnt want to have it just be a retail outlet. I wanted it to be more interactive. We built the whole place with the interaction in mind, and to take it out of that location would kill it. Formerly, she had a location in West Hartfords Blue Back Square, from November 2015 to December 2017. Originally intended as a four-month temporary space during the holiday season, the shop was so well-received, she was able to secure a one-year, special pop-up lease, followed by another. NoRA Canton at the Shoppes at Farmington Valley on Route 202/Albany Turnpike was open from November 2016 to December 2017. Carella closed the shop after a year because of less-than-anticipated foot traffic, she said. She embarked upon both endeavors in an effort to increase her brand exposure, which was greatly boosted when the Lil NoRA Cupcake Co. truck (with its distinctive pink-and-black color scheme) began criss-crossing the state seven days a week. What I really enjoyed most about the company is the ability to be mobile and the ability to go where stuff is going on keep it moving, said Carella, who originally managed Eli Cannons Tap Room, owned then by Phil Ouellette. I was banking on it being one of Phils crazy ideas, and Id be back to work at the bar. She said Oullette is brilliant and has been a huge mentor. I dont know if I would have done it if I hadnt had him kind of pushing me, she said. I feel like hes equipped me with the tools that I need. Its been fun creating this little path for myself. Carella said she still checks in with her former boss. Carella marvels at how the Whaling City has embraced NoRA. People are pumped. Theyre coming in just to say hi and see the space thanking us for taking a chance and opening in New London. Its a different feel than my openings in West Hartford or Canton, she said. The vibe in New London is wicked funky, very eclectic, very artistic, lots of hometown pride, very diverse: There are musicians, artists, tattoo artists, bars, cafes, a million art galleries, it feels like, Carella said. Theres something for everyone down there, she said. For information on NoRA Middletown, call 860-788-3150, visit noracupcake.com or its Facebook page, NoRA Cupcake Co. For the New London location, call 860-574-5860, visit the blog at noracupcake.com or Facebook Page at NoRACupcakeCoNewLo. Jessica DiMatteo, a plant science major at UConn, joined a crowd of students, faculty, staff and outside professionals at the Konover Auditorium on the last Monday morning in February to hear a talk by a renowned Israeli researcher. The junior from Bethany took notes as Hinanit Koltai, an eminent researcher whose nation is well ahead of the U.S. in cannabis science, described how cannabinoid compounds work together. Koltai talked about treating irritable bowel syndrome. Irritable bowel syndrome? Can it get more mundane than that? From the outside, no it cant and thats the point. If the event on the Storrs campus seemed like a routine academic seminar, call it a success for precisely that reason. In fact, it sprouted from a burgeoning, interlocking ecosystem of cannabis-related research and support activities in Connecticut the coming of age of an industry that wants to fit in. Connecticut marijuana sales fall somewhere between $50 million and $60 million a year at nine licensed, highly regulated dispensaries, according to one estimate. And thats without the General Assembly legalizing adult-use marijuana, which would instantly multiply sales several times and bring in perhaps $100 million annually in badly needed tax revenue for the state. Even without full legalization, business is expanding fast. The number of certified patients rose by 13,000 in the last two years; the state just licensed another nine dispensaries, crossed over 1,000 physicians who certify patients (dont say prescribe) and pushed the number of medical conditions treatable by marijuana to 31 for adults, and eight for patients under 18. The industry and the system around it botanical experiments, classes, production, related professional services, medical research, new products, expanding retail and even corporate takeovers march ahead as lawmakers debate the undeniable: A marijuana network is here to stay and grow. Were talking about much more than a seed-to-sale supply chain. That UConn seminar, for example, was organized by the universitys Plant Science & Landscape Architecture department, and by the Connecticut Cannabis Research and Innovation Center a new, independent nonprofit that will support cannabis technology. I really think we can make a difference in this state, says Eric Zachs, a West Hartford executive in a family-owned telecommunications and investment business who founded the center and is now hiring an executive director. Its medical research, and hopefully businesses come out of it. DiMatteo, a UConn junior, hopes to join the industry full time. Just a few years ago, when she was at Amity Regional High School in Woodbridge, spending summers at her grandmothers horse farm nearby, the idea of a cannabis career seemed more remote than self-driving cars. It never crossed my mind, which goes to show how quickly its advancing, DiMatteo says. Now shes well on her way. The day after Koltais talk, DiMatteo landed a summer job at one of the four licensed production facilities for marijuana in the state. And the day after that, she reported to her academic-credit job in the lab of UConn professor Gerald Berkowitz, helping conduct experiments on the effects of certain proteins on hemp seed germination. My whole experience so far has just been a ball of excitement, DiMatteo says. RELATED: CTs farmers want shackles taken off cannabis industry Lets view this ecosystem through the eyes of some insiders in a virtual tour of the state starting with DeMatteo in Storrs. Mara Lavitt The student Even last year, searching for academic direction, DiMatteo was only vaguely aware of cannabis as the core of a plant science major. She somehow heard about hemp research on campus. Then the idea just kind of came to me, she says. I wanted to end up somewhere where I could be helping people. I did not want an ordinary type of job, I wanted something exciting. Shes majoring in sustainable plant and soil systems, and cannabis holds her attention as a frontier therapy that she can help shape. You have these people with these conditions and they use one strain of cannabis and it works perfectly for them, and then they use a different strain and it doesnt work, and we dont know why. Its just very interesting the plant and I want to work on producing it, she says. RELATED: Accident turns recreational user into medical marijuana advocate Shes finding a lot of support from family and friends, whether or not they use pot. Zachs, at the nonprofit cannabis research center, and DiMatteo both have little or no interest in the stuff as consumers. Thats another sign of the industry maturing: unlike in the earliest days of legalization in Colorado and other Western states, led by enthusiastic stoners, nowadays a person in the industry is almost as likely to abstain as not. Sadly for DiMatteo, she had a scheduling conflict and couldnt take Berkowitzs class on cannabis cultivation which made national news in December as the first of its kind at a university. The professor Berkowitzs course attracted 400 students, he tells me in late February, but its a pretty rigorous course, so we have about 300 left. Its a safe bet that some of those students are looking to grow the psychoactive weed themselves, at home. Berkowitz had nothing to say about that, as hes focused on advancing academic scholarship on cannabis, not the culture of getting high. From his lab and classrooms at UConn, the microbiologist who has been chairman of the plant science department is a whirlwind. Hes had more than a dozen undergraduates at a time, plus grad students, involved in hemp-research projects, which is far more than I should handle. Last year he took eight students to Montreal, to a meeting of the American Society of Plant Biology, where they described some of their projects. The presentations made by the students were the first from any academic institution in the United States about cannabis, he says. Thats terrible that there isnt institutional scholarship going on. And hes sending students to work in the industry in Connecticut. Its expanding, but its not for everyone. One former student, Taylor Cheek, traveled to Montreal with Berkowitz and found a job at a production facility after she graduated last year but recently left, on good terms. It feels good to be part of a movement, Cheek says, but I think there are some people that are not taking it seriously and see it as a trendy thing. She realized she prefers working with many species of plants, adding that, in a male-dominated field, I wondered how it would be different if there were more women in the grow. Thats all part of the evolution of a highly interconnected business in Connecticut. The industry is becoming hooked up with us, Berkowitz says. The manufacturer In Portland, Rino (pronounced like the Nevada city) Ferrarese heads operations at Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions, one of the four licensed production facilities in the state, with 20,000 square feet of indoor growing space. He wont say how much the grow room at the heart of the operation yields. But its flagship proprietary brand, Lexikan, the most popular seller in the state, he says, accounts for thousands of pounds a year. Connecticut Pharma supports Berkowitzs lab with funding and material, and Ferrarese is proud that the states medical marijuana program uses a pharmaceutical model of regulation. That means every batch is tested in-state by certified labs for potency, purity and stray toxins. Sellers must be licensed pharmacists, or pharmacy techs with five years of experience. Theyre the only program in the country that defines pharmaceutical-grade marijuana, Ferrarese says. Mara Lavitt RELATED: CTs dispensaries are no-nonsense pharma facilities In the first week of April, hell be in Las Vegas along with Tom Schultz, president of Connecticut Pharma, sitting on a keynote panel and delivering a talk at Cannabis Conference 2019. He was at the talk at UConn as well, eager to relate his high-quality strains of cannabis indica or cannabis sativa, grown under intense, specialized lights, to fine points that make a difference in treating medical conditions. Hes working not only with UConn but also the Yale School of Medicine, where Tamas Horvath, chairman of comparative medicine, is looking at the effect of cannabinoids on cachexia, the weakening or wasting away of the body from cancer. Could the munchies actually help keep seriously ill patients alive? The volume of research in Connecticut alone is hard to follow. Everything is changing so fast, its like a tidal wave, Berkowitz says. But, Ferrarese says, Nobody is standardizing it. Thats partly because the growers are half-science, half-competitive business. No one wants to give away a great seed. Ferrarese comes from pharmaceutical manufacturing. Hes a certified Six Sigma black belt, the precision standard made famous at General Electric, and a lead auditor with the International Organization for Standardization. He worked at Alexion, the bio-pharmaceutical company formerly headquartered in New Haven, and at Wyeth in New York. He and Schultz worked together at American Distilling in East Hampton, maker of witch hazel, where Schultz was president of Dickinson Brands. American Distilling was, and remains, an original investor in Connecticut Pharma. In this state, its the producers who package everything for final sale, sealed so that dispensaries cant touch the actual flower buds. That means, for Connecticut Pharma, 70 different SKUs, or stock-keeping units: flowers in exact quantities and various forms of concentrates including hashish and dabs that patients take by vaping. In America, Ferrarese says, we expect our consumer products to be always the same. Photo courtesy of the state Department of Consumer Protection The regulator All this tightly controlled regulation lives in the state office buildings overlooking the Connecticut River in Hartford, at the state Department of Consumer Protection. We are the most restrictive state probably across the board, from what I understand, that allows marijuana, says Rodrick Marriott, director of drug control for the department. The state has, with no apology, the most rigorous rules on who can buy legal pot for a medical condition. Marriott, a licensed pharmacist, credits the General Assembly, which adopted a pure medical approach in passing the law in 2012. The idea was, lets get this to patients that really have medical conditions and lets let the medical community decide where to add conditions, Marriott says, instead of opening up the floodgates and trying to get it back later. Weve all heard stories about Californias loose rules back in the days before legalized adult use. For $45, you could call a number off a website, tell someone your back hurt and boom the card was in the mail. State regulation is basically all we have with marijuana because the federal government continues to classify ganja as a Class I narcotic. That means no federal research spending, it means dispensaries must take cash only, and it means nationally regulated banks cant take cannabis industry companies as customers. In a sign of change, last summer the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of CBD, the main non-psychoactive compound in cannabis, in treating children for certain types of seizures. Aside from that single use, Its rather ironic that the federal government has taken the position that theres no medical purpose, Berkowitz says. Federal stubbornness turns states such as Connecticut, rich in academia, investment dollars and business services, into mini cauldrons for advancing cannabis. The view in Connecticut is clear: A pure, rigorous medical model is better for patients and product development. How that changes when the state adopts legal adult-use sale is anyones guess. Among the 32 states with a medical marijuana program, only Connecticut and New Jersey dont include chronic pain as an allowable condition for certification, according to the Marijuana Policy Project and New Jersey is more lenient than Connecticut. Treatment of chronic pain has gotten us into some trouble in our society because its not as measurable, Marriott says, referring to the opioid crisis. You experience pain differently than I do. The argument rages on. The doctor Back in 2010, Dr. Andrew Salner had an older patient with colon cancer that had metastasized to her liver. She had severe nausea not from chemotherapy but from the disease itself and the usual drugs, including Zofran, didnt work. Her kids had gotten her marijuana on the street to smoke, Salner recalls. This is a 77-year-old woman who was dying. Salner, then and now the director of the Helen and Harry Gray Cancer Center at Hartford Hospital, visited the woman at her home. She felt stigmatized by the illegal pot smoking and felt badly that her children had to risk buying it. She says to me, Promise youll do what you can to make this available to people that need it. Ill do the best I can to make it a reality, he told her. RELATED: Yale doctor warns of dangers of pot legalization True to his word, he testified in the General Assembly and met with the governors staff. And when it became law, Salner was an early adopter. Hes also one of eight doctors on the state medical marijuana programs board of physicians, which advises the consumer protection commissioner and the legislature on allowable conditions. A lot of the patients who Ive certified would otherwise not be marijuana users, Salner says. I try and tell them that this is not your marijuana from when you were back in your 20s. They number in the hundreds, but theyre still just a small percentage of his cancer patients, he says maybe 2 or 3 percent, for whom marijuana is the right treatment. Five years ago, he says, there was still a stigma among his physician colleagues, some of whom asked what the hell he was doing. Today, cannabis has largely become accepted for palliative care of cancer patients. Salner, a calming figure at the center, is designing a study to look at how and whether cannabis acts on pain from neuropathy, or nerve damage. Hes a self-described champion for certifying patients, but hes cautious about it, describing the sorts of instructions he writes to the pharmacists. Patients dont want to smoke it and I dont want them to smoke it because it has a lot of carcinogens from the smoke, he says, preferring vapor, oils and capsules. And he cautions that the scientific proof just isnt there to expand to treatment of chronic pain or opiate addiction just as its not clear, as some claim, that marijuana can help shrink tumors. Salner, a radiation oncologist, has no opinion on legalization of adult-use marijuana and strongly favors Connecticuts strictest-in-the-nation medical model. As much as I would love to be part of the solution for the opioid crisis that we face, there really is no evidence, and there actually is some evidence that it might make the issue worse, not better. Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media The software guys Green Check Verified, a new start-up operating out of Science Park in New Haven, connects marijuana retailers to state-chartered banks and credit unions. Youre seeing this explosion of technology around the marijuana industry because its all about scale, says Paul Dunford, the firms director of customer experience. Human beings cant do the things that need to be done. The firm has 14 people and works with dispensaries, though they wouldnt say how many, in 14 states. These are legitimate businesses. Theyre being denied things that no other business is being denied, Dunford says. The focus now is, how do we make the existing industry stronger, more efficient? Green Checks co-founder and head of compliance is John Gadea, the former head of drug control at the Consumer Protection department, who wrote many of the marijuana program rules. Lost on no one is that this is an estimated $12 billion global industry of legal sale now, but its growing at least 30 percent a year and the potential could be $200 billion. Firms like Green Check are, as one partner puts it, like the guys selling picks and shovels in the California gold rush. Our job is to sit in the middle between the sales and inventory systems that a dispensary uses to manage their business, and the financial institutions and their systems, product strategy director Mike Kennedy says. Other services firms in law, accounting and building maintenance are quietly building up trades in cannabis as well. As with other firms in marijuana services, Green Check Verified shows no images of the telltale leaf or other visual signs of the culture not in the office, not on the website. Discretion remains common, especially in banking. The investors The race is on for consolidators and investors to advance the industry by doing what America does best: unify and organize. One of the largest owners of dispensaries is Acreage Holdings, a new, publicly traded company on the Canadian Stock Exchange with strong ties to Connecticut. Acreage was founded in 2014 as High Street Capital by Kevin P. Murphy, a New York investor and cannabis entrepreneur who was born in Connecticut and grew up in Madison, where he still owns a house. The company bought a Canadian firm and, in a reverse merger, took the Acreage name and the stock market listing. Reported to be the largest U.S. cannabis company, Acreage has licenses in 17 states including Connecticut, where it owns three dispensaries all acquired in 2018. That includes the one in Bethel, Compassionate Care Center of Connecticut, whose co-founder, Angela DAmico, is now the Acreage national vice president of community engagement. Acreage has made a splash with its powerful, seven-member board of directors including former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, and former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Eric Zachs, who co-organized the UConn seminar, is another investor in the industry. His view is that Connecticut can punch above its weight through research and spinoff companies, and the Connecticut Cannabis Research and Innovation Center will be his vehicle. Zachs is a former board president of the Hartford Dispensary, a drug addiction center now operating as the Root Center for Advanced Recovery, and he remains on that board. Hes concerned about social equity as the cannabis industry grows. Im really coming at it from trying to do the right thing, Zachs says. Its clearly moving ahead. How does it benefit communities? He adds, reflecting the idealism and fresh networking of this new industry, Were just trying to connect and build synergies. This article first appeared in Connecticut Magazine, a Hearst Connecticut Media publication. Click here to read the original article. Gov. Ned Lamont and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes said Friday Dominion Energy and Connecticuts two major electric utility companies, Eversource and United Illuminating, struck a deal Friday that will keep the companys Millstone nuclear facility in Waterford operating. Word of the deal came hours before a deadline that Virginia-based Dominion had to notify New Englands regional electric grid operator, ISO-New England, whether or not the nuclear plant would be shut down. Under the terms of the agreement, Dominion will supply Eversource and UI with electric power generated at Millstone for a 10-year period. The deal must still be approved by Connecticuts Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, which has 180 days to act on it. Ken Holt, a Dominion spokesman, said the date when Millstone begins supplying the power to the utilities and other details of the contract wont be released until PURA has ruled on the deal. The contract is for 10 years and calls for Millstone to produce 9 million megawatt hours per year for UI and Eversource customers. Millstone currently provides about half of the electricity that Connecticut uses and 19 percent of the power used in New England, Holt said. Dominion Energy had threatened to close Millstone if a deal could not be reached because the cost of natural gas has allowed power plants that operate on that fuel to run more cheaply than the aging nuclear plant, which is located on Long Island Sound. Paul Koonce, president and chief executive officer of companys Power Generation Group, called the agreement a huge win for Connecticut, the region, and our colleagues at Millstone. Not only does this preserve the vast majority of Connecticuts carbon-free electricity, it preserves good jobs for the 1,500 women and men who work at Millstone and keeps 4,000 other residents employed, Koonce said in a statement. Company officials said in a statement the contract represents a modest financial uplift. This result marks another significant milestone in Dominion Energys multi-year progression towards a more regulated and long-term contracted earnings profile and the resulting reduction in business risk, the companys statement said in part. Lamont said the loss of Millstone would have been catastrophic for our state and our region. The shutdown of the plant would have exposed the New England region to a nearly 25 percent increase in carbon emissions, increased risk of rolling blackouts, billions of dollars in power replacement costs, and the loss of more than 1,500 well-paying jobs, Lamont said in a statement. The deal the utilities have negotiated secures Millstones zero-carbon power for ten years, and reduces by nearly 50 percent the incremental ratepayer cost of the contract, as compared to the original bid selected. Millstone was one of the winning bidders selected by DEEP officials late last year to meet Connecticuts future energy needs. But a deal between UI, Eversource Energy and Dominion still had to be reached and in-person negotiations didnt start until earlier this month and DEEP officials had given the two Connecticut utilities a mandate to reduce the costs associated with the original bid. Lamont said he also has a commitment from all New England governors to evaluate regional mechanisms to help maintain critical nuclear and clean energy facilities. luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com HARTFORD It took a little-known board in an out-of-the-way meeting room in the State Capitol complex about 12 minutes on Thursday to reject the idea of potential pay raises for the governor, constitutional officers and the General Assembly. So the base salary for lawmakers will remain at $28,000 for at least two more years, while the cost of living continues to eat away at the take-home pay of state senators and representatives, whose last salary increase was in 2001. The meeting of the nine-member state Compensation Commission was so low-key the group had to round up votes over the phone during the course of the day, to reach a majority, 6-0 vote on the issue. But the panel, led by Richard Balducci, a former speaker of the House of Representatives, was in no mood to approve raises at a time when the state is in fiscal trouble. Its a part-time Legislature, Balducci said. Its been a part-time Legislature historically. Its become much more of a full-time Legislature because committees are meeting throughout the year, as opposed to when they used to meet just during the legislative session, with a few exceptions. Everyone is talking about being a little more frugal as we go forward this fiscal year and next, in trying to find dollars to save. There was no appetite among the three commission members who attended the meeting Balducci, of Deep River; Justin Bernier, of Plainville, and Richard Eriksen, of Durham for any increase. I think those rates are adequate for the statewide officials, Bernier said in a meeting room on the fifth floor of the Legislative Office Buidling. The $28,000 base salary is supplemented by $4,500 in unvouchered expenses for the 151 House members, and $5,500 in expenses for the 36 senators. In addition, lawmakers get 54 cents per mile for driving. Committee chairman and caucus leaders, such as deputy speakers of the House or deputy Senate leaders, also make a little more money. I know it isnt large amounts, but I think it sends the wrong message to the men and women out there who pay taxes every single day, and many of them living on fixed incomes that we give any of these folks more compensation, said Balducci, who served as speaker from 1989 to 1992. I think theyre fine where they are. Really, as a part-time Legislature they are possibly overpaid, and at least adequately paid Bernier said. If the state wants to turn this body into a full-time Legislature its another story. This is very commensurate with other states. But Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, who at $38,689 is the highest-paid of the 187 members of the General Assembly, said lawmakers have been losing money through the rising cost of living since that 2001 hike. The reality is that the effective legislative pay has declined substantially since 2001, Looney said. But people are skittish to do anything around this issue, and right now were in a holding pattern, it seems. Looney, a lawyer, said that with the advent of email, and the near 12-month legislative schedule, for many lawmakers its a full-time job. Our time commitments have been growing over the years, he said, recalling the yearlong budget fight of 2017. Veteran Rep. Bob Godfrey, D-Danbury, said this year he submitted legislation to raise the base salary to $40,000, to finally adjust the pay for inflation. The bill awaits action in the legislative Appropriations Committee. Im certainly not doing the job for the money or the raw power, Godfrey joked. But my job has been full-time for years. A lot of the time I can work from home, but Im still working. Godfrey, whose title of deputy speaker bumps up his salary to $34,446, plus the $4,500 and mileage, said that the low pay seems to be working against the General Assemblys self-proclaimed reputation as a part-time citizen government. When I started out in 1989 there was a plumber, a meter reader, a state representative from a manufacturing assembly plant. He said that more legislators are just out of college, have spouses who work, or are independently wealthy. So its no surprise that in recent years weve been enacting budgets by the rich and for the rich, said Godfrey, a member of the General Assemblys progressive caucus. First-year Sen. Norm Needleman, of Essex, who spent $600,000 to narrowly win, is not taking pay, according to a list of legislative salaries released Thursday under the state Freedom of Information Act. Gov. Ned Lamont, a wealthy investor who spent millions of his own money to get elected, has promised not to take a salary. His staff on Thursday said that Lamont is still trying to navigate the state law that requires he get $150,000 a year. The salaries for constitutional officers and the governor were last adjusted in 2003. kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT MADISON Whether youve gone swimming on hot summer days, watched wildlife from a beach-side perch or hopped on a boat and gone fishing, if youre a southern Connecticut resident, the Long Island Sound has probably featured in your life. But in a changing world, will your favorite fishing spot be usable 20 years from now? Representatives from a variety of organizations hope a project called the Blue Plan will make sure it is by protecting the states beloved watery resource. Proponents celebrated the release of its first draft Wednesday with a press conference at Meigs Point in Hammonasset State Park, where they didnt need to look far for inspiration in the sunlight, the Sound shimmered behind them. Beachgoers walked along the waters edge. Im hoping that the Long Island Sound will be one of the things that I can count on and that my children can count on, said Nathan Frohling, a BPAC member from the Nature Conservancy. He called the Blue Plan a big deal for the Sound. The Blue Plans goal is to protect what we care about, said Connecticut Sea Grant Director Sylvain De Guise, who spoke at the press conference. According to a release from DEEP, The Blue Plan, legislation created through Public Act 15-66, enables a process by which Connecticut can develop a marine spatial plan to protect Long Island Sounds natural resources and traditional human uses, while allowing for compatible future use and development. Though technically a DEEP project, the plan, as Commissioner Katie Dykes emphasized, is the product of teamwork, including the Blue Plan Advisory Committee, whose members represent a variety of Long Island Sound stakeholders, from fishermen and sailors to environmentalists. The Blue Plan consists of an inventory of Long Island Sounds resources and uses, Dykes said. Those working on the project have compiled relevant data to create more than 50 maps that exhibit the Sounds existing uses, said Frohling. This organized source of information should help determine when and how to permit new projects involving the Sound. Emily Hall, a NOAA Coastal Management Fellow at DEEP and a plan coordinator, said the Blue Plan is about avoiding detrimental impacts while making room for new uses. According to a video shown after the press conference, DEEP previously considered project proposals on a case-by-case basis, unable to take the broader implications for the Sound into account. With that in mind, the project was designed to be a tool that will help with the decision-making process. Because Long Island Sound stakeholders represent a wide variety of interests, from commercial fishing to marine conservation, the Blue Plan has challenged its creators to take part in a balancing act. But coordinators like Hall seem optimistic: I think weve been able to come up with some really beneficial solutions, she said. Its not only coastal fellows and environmental organizations who have shown their support. John Sieviec of the Guilford Shellfish Commission, which contributed some 50 years of data to the project, is excited about the Blue Plan, too. It will make certain projects easier to coordinate, he noted, by eliminating the need to hire consultants. Christine Nelson, who serves on BPAC as a municipal representative, said the challenge of coordination was extremely well met. Im blown away by how professional and thorough the first draft is, she said. The draft, however, will be continued to be made better with [public] involvement, Commissioner Dykes said. She emphasized the need for the project to exist as a living plan which will be updated in tandem with the evolution of the Sound. Wednesday marked the beginning of a 90-day public comment period. Input can be submitted on DEEPs website, where Blue Plan material can also be viewed. Comments can also be sent via email to deep.blueplanlis@ct.gov, or by mail to LIS Blue Plan, DEEP WPLR, Land and Water Resources Division - Planning, 79 Elm St., Hartford, CT 06106. meghan.friedmann@hearstmediact.com The Air Force's top general has ordered all commanders to review procedures and training for their aircraft across the service in the wake of the recent Boeing Co. 737 MAX-8 crashes. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen David Goldfein has "directed Air Force leaders to ensure we have adequate training in our aircraft emergency procedures and simulator training," Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Military.com Wednesday. The news was first reported by CNN. Goldfein also "tasked the Air Force Safety Center to analyze previous Air Force mishaps involving autopilot anomalies," Stefanek said. The review is precautionary, to make sure the service does "due diligence to make sure training and procedures are in place," Stefanek told Military.com. Most Air Force aircraft have some version of autopilot, with varying levels of complexity, Stefanek said. The review will most benefit airmen who rely on these autopilot systems. The Air Force said the assessment is not limited to certain fleets. Meanwhile, CNN on Wednesday reported the review initially targets the C-17 Globemaster III and KC-46 Pegasus tanker fleets, as well as the VC-25A, better known as Air Force One, which is based on the older Boeing 747 airliner. All three aircraft are made by Boeing. "At this time, the Air Force has had no indication of problems with Air Force aircraft similar to what has been reported with the Max," Stefanek said. Stefanek said there is no timeline for the review to be complete, but rather that commanders ensure the procedures are in place in "an abundance of caution." Goldfein has also offered the Federal Aviation Administration full support and assistance with the use of its safety resources. Last week, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will ground all Boeing 737 MAX-8 jets, effective immediately, after two crashes involving foreign airlines in less than six months killed nearly 350 people. Officials, who are relying on preliminary data recovered from the black boxes in the Ethiopia crash on March 10, say there are similarities to the Air Lion crash in Indonesia in October. Both instances point to a flaw in the aircraft's automated system that prevents stalls. The automation systems in Air Force aircraft differ from that in the 737 commercial plane, but additional learning can never hurt, according to an instructor pilot. "When it comes to military aviation, we try to learn from any available source, especially the civilian sector," said an Air Force instructor pilot who flies a mobility aircraft and agreed to speak to Military.com on background. "I think it is a good decision by [Goldfein] to take a look our training and standard for aircraft automation." The pilot added that block upgrades typically bring with them changes and updated procedures. "Our safety classes often include discussions on civilian mishaps and lessons that can be learned from them just as much as we draw on military aviation mishaps," the pilot said. "So when we see one and probably two mishaps that involve a lack of training or understanding of the automation systems contributing to fatal crashes, it never hurts to take a second to look at our training." -- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @oriana0214. A senior sergeant in the 75th Ranger Regiment was killed recently while participating in free-fall parachute training in Arizona. Sgt. 1st Class Ethan Carpenter, a reconnaissance specialist assigned to the Ranger Regiment's Special Troops Battalion, died March 15 while conducting "routine military free-fall training," according to a March 20 Army Special Operations Command news release. The release did not provide any further details about what may have caused Carpenter's death. "Sgt. First Class Ethan Carpenter was an exemplary soldier and Ranger leader, and a dedicated husband and father," Col. Joseph Ewers, commander of the Regimental Special Troops Battalion, said in the release. "He did the toughest jobs well and was the consummate team member when it counted the most, both in garrison training and in deployed combat. He represented our Nation's best, and we'll miss him dearly." Carpenter, a native of Trumansburg, New York, entered the Army August 31, 2007, according to the release. After completing one station unit training, Basic Airborne Course, and the Ranger Indoctrination Program at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was then assigned to 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, Hunter Army Airfield. Carpenter initially served as an assistant machine gunner and then progressed to team leader and squad leader, the release states. He deployed to combat eight times, once to Iraq and seven times to Afghanistan before he was assigned to the Special Troops Battalion in June of 2017, the release states. Carpenter's awards and decorations include the Purple Heart, Joint Service Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Ranger Tab, Military Freefall Parachutist Badge, Senior Parachutists Badge, Expert Infantryman Badge, and Combat Infantryman Badge. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Discussions over the Army's fiscal 2020 budget request have focused on cutting current programs to fund modernization, but the service also significantly lowered its recruiting goals for the next several years after missing last year's recruiting target by more than 6,000 soldiers. The Army plans to increase active end-strength by 2,000 soldiers each year over the 2020-2024 Future Years Defense Program, or FYDP. The fiscal 2020 request is 50 percent less than the service's fiscal 2019 budget request for 4,000 soldiers. The move comes after the service fell short of meeting its active recruiting goal for fiscal year 2018. "We missed last year; we missed by 6,500 people in the active force," Under Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy told an audience Thursday, a Center for Strategic & International Studies event. "We have reduced our end-strength goal effectively immediately ... and across the FYDP to 2,000 year-over-year." The recruiting shortfall prompted Army leaders to launch a massive new recruiting strategy that involves adding more recruiters, targeting 22 major cities and rethinking how the Army communicates with America's youth. "We looked at ourselves and we said we were kind of getting fixed to certain areas of the country, and we said we need to get back to the cities," McCarthy said, adding that the Army hired an outside firm to help with "micro targeting so we can go look at a geographic zip code and understand the demographics." The Army conducted a pilot program in Chicago, a city where only 4 percent of youth have a propensity to serve, compared to the 11-percent average nationwide, McCarthy said. "We brought the firm in, did a 100-day study, and they helped us improve leads by 10 percent within the first 100 days," McCarthy said. Despite the cuts the Army's active recruiting goals, leaders project that the slow growth will get the Army to 488,000 by the end of the FYDP -- growth that is needed for the Army to handle DoD requirements, McCarthy said. "We want to maintain quality and still be able to grow, because, as I mentioned earlier about demand -- it's not going to go away," McCarthy said. Rep. Anthony Brown, D-Maryland, also attended the CSIS event and said he applauds the Army for the steps it has taken to improve its recruiting strategy. "I want to commend the Army for not lowering its standards in order to meet a number; I think our superiority is in the quality of the soldiers that we recruit, we train and we retrain and that is our real competitive advantage," Brown said. Brown also said it may be time for the United States to reevaluate the number of worldwide commitments it places on the U.S. military. "Why are we in 80 countries in every region around the world?" Brown said. "Do we need to have such a strong military presence around the world, or should we be investing more in our diplomatic efforts?" -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Airmen Have Five Days to Get Immunized After Vaccine Exemption Is Denied or They Face Punishment, Air Force Says The service required all active-duty troops to become fully vaccinated by Nov. 2 after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in... The Marine Corps' top general is pleading with the Navy secretary to address several unplanned expenses -- including missions along the southwest border and hurricane damage to major East Coast installations -- that he says are posing "unacceptable risk" to combat readiness. Marine Commandant Gen. Robert Neller says his service is facing "rapidly accelerating risks," according to a memo dated March 18 that was sent to Navy Secretary Richard Spencer. The memo, which was first obtained and reported on by the LA Times, has been posted online. Military.com has confirmed its legitimacy. "Mr. Secretary, I am writing to seek your assistance in rectifying [fiscal 2019] budget shortfalls for the Marine Corps," Neller wrote. "... While FY-19 was supposed to be a 'good year' given an 'on-time'- enacted budget and higher topline, those positive attributes are now overcome by the negative factors below, imposing unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency." Related content: Neller details several exercises and training missions he said he'll be forced to cancel or reduce as a result of the budgetary problems. They include pre-deployment training for an infantry battalion, two artillery batteries, a tank company and others; reduced maintenance funding for combat equipment; the cancellation or downsizing of several major exercises in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region; and the cancellation of Reserve mobilizations. "The overall impacts of these cancellations and expected cancellations will result in three extremely negative impacts to the joint forces," Neller said. Fallout, he added, includes degraded combat readiness, money problems and bad messaging to allies and potential partners. "Marines will not participate in exercises in Indonesia, Scotland and Mongolia and will reduce participation in exercises with Australia and the Republic of Korea at a time where we are attempting to double down on strengthening alliances and attracting new partners," the memo states. A second memo, dated Feb. 19, shows Neller asked acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan for his support in funding hurricane repairs to several North Carolina Marine Corps bases after hurricanes Florence and Michael left significant damages to housing, training areas, railways and other infrastructure. The damage, Neller wrote, would cost $3.5 billion, and the Marine Corps could no longer self-fund recovery efforts. "Mr. Secretary, I am asking for your assistance," Neller said in the letter, which was sent through Spencer. "The hurricane season is only three months away, and we have Marines, sailors and civilians working in compromised structures." Aside from the storm damage and unplanned border-security missions, several other surprise expenses are posing security risks, according to the memos, including boosts to the size of a Marine rotation in Australia, civilian raises and adjustments to privatized housing allowances. A spokesman for Spencer's office confirmed the Navy secretary had received the memos, but said they had no public comments about a response at this time. In his memo from this week, Neller asked for Spencer's help in pushing Congress to fund hurricane recovery efforts. Canceling training and international exercises only harms Marines, he said. "Marines rely on the hard, realistic training provided by these events to develop the individual and collective skills necessary to prepare for high-end combat, while simultaneously building the experience and leadership of the [noncommissioned officers], [staff] NCOs and junior officers who will lead our Marines into harm's way," Neller said. "Although some effects can be mitigated, the experience lost by these units at a critical time in their preparation cannot be recouped," he added. When Neller was asked at the annual McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington, D.C., last week what extra funding he would request from Congress, he said it'd be money to fix the damage to Marine bases in North Carolina and Georgia. The hurricanes didn't cause the damage that you see from the outside of the building, he said. But as the hurricanes hovered over the bases, dumping several feet of water on the installations for days, their destruction was significant, he added. -- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said Thursday that he would likely be meeting next week with Google executives on his concerns that the work Google was doing with China on artificial intelligence and other technologies was undermining the U.S military. "This is not about me and Google, this about us looking at the second and third order effects of our business ventures in China [and] the impact it's going to have on U.S. ability to maintain a competitive military advantage and all that goes with it," Dunford said. Dunford said he had general concerns about other U.S. business ventures in China, but "In the case of Google, they were highlighted because they have an artificial intelligence venture in China." U.S. companies must realize that in doing business with China, "they are automatically required to have a cell of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in that company and that it's going to lead to that intellectual property from that company finding its way to the Chinese military," Dunford said. "There's a distinction without a difference between the CCP and the government and the Chinese military." Historically, one of the reasons for the U.S. maintaining a military advantage over other nations has been enduring partnerships between the Pentagon and industry, and Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken a similar path in China's effort to erase the U.S. advantage, Dunford said. Unless precautions are taken, U.S. business ventures in China could "enable the Chinese military to take advantage of the technology developed in the United States," Dunford said. The remarks at the Atlantic Council event echoed those expressed by Dunford and Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week on Google and other firms doing business in China while showing reluctance to work with the U.S. military. Last year, Google announced that it would not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work, following protests from employees who charged that the technology could be used for lethal purposes. At the Senate hearing, Shanahan said that Google has shown "a lack of willingness to support DoD programs." He added that China often uses technology developed in the private sector for military purposes. "The technology that is developed in the civil world transfers to the military world; it's a direct pipeline," Shanahan said. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said Thursday that it will be difficult to proceed with the sale and delivery of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to Turkey given Turkey's insistence on acquiring a Russian system designed to shoot them down. "It's a tough issue," Dunford said, and the U.S. "would have a hard time" justifying the F-35 sale to a nation that has Russia's S-400 advanced anti-air system. Dunford said he's worked hard to improve relations with NATO-allied Turkey, but the S-400s could be a deal-breaker on the F-35 sale. "We're hopeful to find a way through this, but it's a tough issue," Dunford said. In all, Turkey wants to buy 100 of the F-35A variant used by the U.S. Air Force, according to Joint Strike Fighter manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp. The country took delivery of its first F-35 last June, amid legislative efforts to halt future deliveries. Reuters reported earlier Thursday that the U.S. was eyeing a freeze in preparations to deliver the F-35 to Turkey in light of the country's efforts to acquire the S-400. "The S-400 is a computer. The F-35 is a computer. You don't hook your computer to your adversary's computer and that's basically what we would be doing," Katie Wheelbarger, acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, told the news outlet in an interview. Dunford made the remarks in a question-and-answer session at the Atlantic Council, at which he mainly focused on U.S. efforts to counter the rise of Russia and China. Dunford said that one of his main concerns was preserving the relationship with Turkey beyond the current dispute over the F-35s and the S-400 systems. "Turkey is an ally and a very important ally, and we have many more areas of convergence than divergence. As we look at five, ten years down the road, I want to make very sure that our Turkish allies are close to us," Dunford said. "And I worked that relationship very hard. And to that point, I think since I've been chairman, I've made 12 visits to Turkey. I'm not sure I've gone anyplace else even close to that many times." Regarding Russia and China, Dunford said both countries have been developing new anti-ship cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and other systems designed to prevent or limit the ability of the U.S. to defend allies and project power across the Atlantic and Pacific. He said that Beijing was aiming to achieve "preeminence, if not hegemony, in the Pacific," and added that China's rulers also "have aspirations beyond the Pacific." He cited the establishment in 2017 of the Chinese People's Liberation Army's first overseas military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa, next to the major base of U.S. Africa Command. Could the Russians prevent the U.S. from defending NATO allies by moving troops and supplies across the Atlantic? "The answer is 'No,' they can't," with their existing capabilities, Dunford said. But he added there was "absolutely no question" they could make it more problematic than it was in the past. "Yes, it would be more difficult to project power to Europe today," Dunford said. Dunford said he doesn't believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin "has the intent right now to attack a NATO ally," since he would have more to lose than to gain from the response of the alliance and the U.S. He also said that he does not as yet view Russia as an "adversary" of the U.S. "They're a competitor, that's the way I would describe them," he said. The term of the 63-year-old Dunford as Joint Chiefs Chairman and principal military advisor to the president expires in October. He gave no indication Thursday that he might step down early. President Donald Trump has already announced his intention to nominate Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to succeed him. -- Hope Hodge Seck contributed to this report. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com. For the second year in a row, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) will honor Vietnam veterans on National Vietnam War Veterans Day, March 29. In partnership with The United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration, AAFES will give away a free Vietnam Veteran Lapel Pin to everyone who served on active duty during the period from Nov. 1, 1955 through May 15, 1975. Along with the pin giveaway, many exchanges will be conducting ceremonies with local organizations. The United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration is a program administered by the DOD to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. The Commemoration was authorized by an act of Congress and launched by the President in 2012. For more information on the times of the March 29 ceremonies at local exchanges, visit shopmyexchange.com/community. Those without base access should contact their local exchange or the installation's visitor center for information on gaining access to a ceremony. If you can't get to the exchange for a lapel pin March 29, you can visit http://www.vietnamwar50th.com/events/ to find an event or commemorative partner in your local area. If there are no events in your area, or you can't make it to any local events you can still get a pin by contacting the United States of America Vietnam War Commemoration office directly at 877-387-9951 or whs.vnwar50th@mail.mil. Stay on Top of Your Veteran Benefits Military benefits are always changing. Keep up with everything from pay to health care by signing up for a free Military.com membership, which will send all the latest benefits straight to your inbox while giving you access to up-to-date pay charts and more. No matter who you are or how you were injured, the process to heal, retrain and get ready for the next fitness test is a long... Gary Sinise just published a new memoir called "Grateful American" and it's every bit as modest as anyone who has followed his years of support for the veteran community would expect. Except Gary's greatest talent shines through the humility with which he tells his story. To be sure, he's an extraordinarily gifted actor who has had a storied career both in serious theater and popular movies and television. But his most profound gift is his empathy for men and women who serve their country. Of course, his particular acting talent isn't unrelated to an ability to see the world through another's eyes. Still, there are plenty of performers who don't share that insight and not many Americans share the sense of mission that Gary's has given him. "Grateful American" is co-written with Marcus Brotherton, who also worked with Army veteran Travis Mills on his excellent autobiography "As Tough As They Come." Sinise knows Mills well from his work with veterans, and Travis makes an appearance in this book. When Sinise tells his life story, he talks about his own family's service in WWI and WWII and how his wife Moira's brothers both served in Vietnam. When he was artistic director of Chicago's influential Steppenwolf Theatre (a group he co-founded), he directed a powerful 1984 production of John DiFusco's Vietnam War play "Tracers." That work featured Sinise and fellow future stars Dennis Farina (Det. Fontana on "Law & Order"), Gary Cole (Lumbergh in "Office Space"), Terry Kinney (McManus on "Oz") and Tom Irwin (Angela's dad on "My So-Called Life"). Along the way, he talks about growing up with a dad in the movie business: Robert Sinise edited the early, notorious movies directed by splatter-film pioneer Herschell Gordon Lewis. Gary was a terrible student, an avid musician and enthusiastic participant in the counterculture of the early 1970s. Too young to serve in Vietnam, Sinise knew he wasn't college material and instead followed his instincts and became a driving force behind one of the most influential regional theater groups in American history. There are few actors with Gary's impact who've never received formal training. He credits a high school theater teacher with turning his stoner life around but he's done all the rest on his own. For the rest of the 1980s and the early years of the 1990s, Sinise continued to add to his creative and artistic credits. He directed and starred alongside fellow Steppenwolf founder John Malkovich in an overwhelmingly successful production of "True West" that played in both Chicago and New York. Sinise later directed and then re-teamed with Malkovich to star in a 1992 movie version of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." It wasn't a big hit at the time, but has come to be seen as a classic, a movie that's shown in high school literature classes all over the country. Everything changed with "Forrest Gump." Sinise gives the movie the attention it deserves and there are plenty of making-of stories included for fans of Lt. Dan Taylor. And, yet, it's the story of his nearly forty-year marriage to Moira, her battle with alcoholism and subsequent conversion to Catholicism that's the heart of the story. Gary and Moira's marriage survived the kind of rough times that end most relationships in the real world, and end Hollywood marriages virtually 100 percent of the time. Another gift Sinise displays is an ability to write about patriotism minus the politics. He writes eloquently about how 9/11 inspired him to take a more active role in supporting the men and women who serve and how the 2003 invasion of Iraq convinced him to sign up for USO tours. The second half of the book is devoted to tales of his work with the USO and with veterans groups. Fans of Detective Mac Taylor from "CSI:NY" won't be disappointed with the stories he tells about that role, but it's obvious that Sinise's life priorities have shifted to entertaining the troops with the Lt. Dan Band and working with his foundation. He talks about patriotism and service and never mentions the current president (nor his immediate predecessor). He does namecheck dozens of servicemembers and veterans and the people who run the charities who support them. Sinise is interested in common ground. If that's not what you want from a public figure, you'd best read something besides "Grateful American." Gary Sinise has instead written a book that can appeal to anyone who's interested in his theater and movie careers and -- at the same time -- inspire readers who know him best from his work in support of military members. It's a tough assignment to pull off, but this book delivers with generosity and ease. Just 10 days before the state plans to crack down on unlicensed medical marijuana shops, a state board approved a flurry of provisioning centers. There are now 72 licensed medical marijuana provisioning centers, and about 50 unlicensed shops will face cease-and-desist letters from state officials after March 31, said David Harns, spokesman for the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs. Theyve been allowed to temporarily operate without a license for the past year, selling untested weed grown by caregivers to patients. The Thursday meeting of the Medical Marihuana Licensing Board is its second-to-last gathering before it disbands due to an executive order from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The governor decided to reorganize the oversight for medical marijuana business licensing, shifting the responsibility to staff and eliminating a board appointed by former Governor Rick Snyder. The legislature still has the opportunity to reject Whitmers executive order. Thursday, the board went about its business as usual, handling a hefty agenda of 96 business prequalifications and 29 license applications. The board also approved allowing untested caregiver medical marijuana to be sold to provisioning centers, despite a plan to end that practice March 31. State regulators have allowed untested caregiver marijuana to fuel the entire medical marijuana industry for months, even as new regulations and taxes have been added. The practice was expected to end, however there is still not enough medical marijuana from licensed growers to meet patient demand, according to regulators. Whitmer had previously signed off on the resolution when it was proposed earlier this month. Board member Don Bailey voted against the resolution, stating it went against the intent of the law. Board chairman Rick Johnson said he agreed with Bailey, but voted for the resolution because it would ensure patients continued to have access to their medicine. After March 31, licensed provisioning centers can sell untested caregiver product until they run out -- but they cannot purchase additional medical marijuana from caregivers, according to the resolution. However, state-licensed growers and processors can still buy medical marijuana from caregivers without fear of retribution from the state -- as long as they have it tested, enter it into the states tracking database and use secure transporters. That will be allowed to continue until state regulators determine its no longer needed. Andrew Brisbo, director of the Bureau of Marijuana Regulation, said he would be continually monitoring sales information in the state tracking system to determine when there is enough medical marijuana grown by licensed businesses to meet patient demand. -- Amy Biolchini is the marijuana beat reporter for MLive. Contact her with questions, tips or comments at abiolch1@mlive.com. Read more from MLive about medical marijuana. Michigan would be one of two states in the country with a drunk driving threshold of less than .08 blood alcohol concentration under legislation introduced in the state House Thursday. House Bills 4420 and 4421, introduced by state Rep. Abdullah Hammoud, D-Dearborn, would lower Michigans blood alcohol concentration threshold for driving under the influence from 0.08 to 0.05. While many other countries have acceptable blood alcohol levels of .05 or lower for drinking and driving, Utah is currently the only U.S. state with a 0.05 limit. Another bill in Hammouds package would require first-time convicted drunk drivers to use an ignition interlock device on their vehicle, which requires drivers to take a breathalyzer test before the car can start. Hammoud said he was inspired to introduce the legislation in part by the deaths of the Abbas family of Northville, who were killed on their way home from a vacation after a drunk driver drove in the opposite direction of traffic on I-75 in Lexington, Kentucky. The drunk driver, 41-year-old Joey Bailey of Kentucky, had a .306 blood-alcohol-level at the time of the crash - well above the 0.08 limit. These proposals will help change behaviors, and they are backed by the science, and they are backed by the leading experts combating drunk driving across our country, he said. We know that the current policies in place are not working, which is why we must do more. Representatives of national groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the National Safety Council, the National Transportation and Safety Board and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety came to Michigan in support of the legislation. Supporters estimate lowering the threshold for driving under the influence nationwide could result in an 11 percent decline in fatal alcohol crashes in the United States. Helen Witty, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said its the first time the organization is backing state legislation supporting lowering the legal limit for drinking and driving to 0.05, and will be encouraging Michigan and other states to adopt the change. Research shows that critical driving skills are impaired at 0.05 BAC, significantly increasing the risk of a horrible, 100 percent preventable crash, Witty said. We want to do anything we can to support states that are trying to stop these tragedies and keep drunk drivers off the road. The American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade association based in Washington, D.C., came out against the plan Thursday, noting in a statement the focus of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and others supporting the proposals is now shifting to those who enjoy a drink or two over dinner - a group that is not overrepresented in traffic accidents. To become law, the bills would have to pass the state House, state Senate and be signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The bills were referred to the House Judiciary Committee. Hammoud isnt the only public official in Michigan to suggest policy changes after the deaths of the Abbas family. U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, has introduced federal legislation that would require all new vehicles to have interlocking breathalyzers. After a tornado caused an estimated $8 million in damages last week in Shiawassee County, the United Way of Genesee County, hundreds of volunteers, business leaders and more are coming together to help the victims. Officials assembled for a press conference Thursday morning, March 21, at the site of one of the more than 90 homes that were damaged or destroyed as a result of the twister, providing the community with an update on cleanup and recovery efforts that have been underway for the past several days. It was there, inside that now-destroyed home, that a family huddled together during the harrowing experience, said Emergency Manager Trent Atkins. The father laid on top of his 8-year-old daughter and wife and protected them throughout the entire storm," Atkins said. "And, as you can see, theres not much left of their home. They were very, very lucky" to have made it through the ordeal unharmed, considering the extensive damage to the house, said Shiawassee County Sheriff Brian BeGole. During the press conference, which was streamed live on Facebook, Atkins said of the more than 90 homes damaged by the tornado, 24 were left unlivable and will require significant repairs" or being rebuilt. Of those residents affected, 92 percent had insurance, he said. Unfortunately, we still have a few that remain that were under-insured or have no insurance whatsoever that the Red Cross, Salvation Army and others have worked hard to take care of their short-term needs: housing, food, water and other special needs, but that mission is a little bit narrow," he said. "When we look at the long term for those folks that are going to need assistance for months, weve had to look to other resources. And, today, were announcing that we have created a very strong partnership with the United Way of Genesee County. United Way has agreed to take all donations for long-term recovery efforts for Shiawassee County with no administrative fees, Atkins continued. In fact, the United Way has given us a seed of $10,000 to put into that account. In addition, Signal Restoration Services CEO Frank Torre, contributed $10,000 to the account, he said. United Way of Genesee County CEO Jamie Gaskin confirmed 100 percent of donations for this long-term tornado recovery effort will be returned directly to the community, there will be no administrative fees taken by the organization. Were going to do everything we can to ensure these families can be made whole and, quite frankly, hopefully be made stronger and better, Gaskin said Thursday. Donations can be made directly to the United Way of Genesee County, located at 111 E. Court St., in Flint, or the Shiawassee County Sheriffs Office, 201 E. McArthur St., in Corunna. Checks should be made out to United Way of Genesee County with Shiawassee County tornado relief written in the memo field, officials said. BeGole said numerous other organizations have been instrumental in this recovery process, including Salvation Army, Red Cross, Michigan National Guard, Shiawassee County Road Commission and others. As you know, this is day eight of our recovery for the tornado," BeGole said during Thursdays press conference. We have many, many hours to get us to this point and hundreds and hundreds of volunteers to thank. BeGole said affected homes sustained an estimated total of $3.5 million in damages and area businesses are estimated to have sustained an additional $4.5 million in damages. One such business, he noted, was Great Lakes Fusion, a construction company in Durand. Were a close-knit community. If we have the ability to help these people out that didnt have insurance or were under-insured, we certainly want to do that and not leave it to fate," BeGole told MLive after the press conference Thursday. Well see what kind of monies were able to raise and how we can help them. The tornado tracked 18 miles, damaging or destroying more than 90 homes, four businesses, 16 barns and 22 recreational vehicles, Atkins said. In most communities, this would take weeks and weeks to get cleaned up and theres a pretty good chance that were going to have this done by the end of the weekend, and its really thanks to the community. Those seated in the group were young and old, black, white, Jewish and Christian. Imam Abdullah Waheed looked out at the faces in the crowd assembled Tuesday night at the Flint Islamic Center in Clayton Township. This is what the killer, the perpetrator did not want to see, he said about the suspected gunman who shot and killed 50 and injured dozens others on March 15 as they gathered at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. We have rebelled that hate with true love, not just by words, by actions, and participating in something and showing support and solidarity for our victims and our family members and brothers and sisters in humanity who have been massacred." It was one of two Flint-area memorial services held to honor the victims in recent days. On Wednesday, a group of University of Michigan-Flint students gathered in part to put a spotlight on the situation. We think it's super important that when these things happen that we actually stand together and speak up, said junior Deema Bakleh, 20. Unity is one of the most important things when these types of events happen. We have to show that we're not afraid. Bakleh has spoken with some younger children who expressed fear since the shooting. They'd walk around and felt like they weren't protected or that anything could happen now, who knows, she said. But that's why we have to show people we're stronger together, Muslims and non-Muslims. Reverend Lauri Smith-Delpino of Interfaith Ministries called the gatherings an important step in the wake of the shooting incident. The Prophet Muhammad, peace upon him, once said if the day of judgement is suddenly upon you when you are planting a new tree, carry on and plant it. It doesnt matter that tree wont last anyway, she said. The value is in the act of planting it and in your intention. We live to do good to ourselves, to do good to others, and to do good to the earth, she added. This is not a time to remain silent to allow hate to take over the world. We need to speak up not just when were being treated unjustly but when our neighbors are being treated unjustly. Being willing to engage those who may express derogatory remarks is important, Waheed said. We are brothers and sisters of humanity. We have to remove all the skepticism and doubt that Muslims are here or immigrants are here to invade the country. Thats not true. Thats not a fact, he told the crowd. Were here to take our society to a greater level. Waheed was among a group of six people when the events unfolded Friday morning in New Zealand, which would have been Thursday night in the United States. When I woke up in the morning and I saw it was 49I was just so hurt, so much pain, so much grief and some of it was anger. Why would this happen? Why is this happening in the world overall? Waheed said. We want to make sure innocent people should be protected, you know children in school, people at sanctuaries. These are places that are supposed to be protected, and sanctified, and preserved. If hate is being brought into these (places) where families and community members try to find a safe haven at a mosque on Friday from all their workand then being rained on by bullets, he added. Its just so painful. Waheed noted its easy for those who have such thoughts to find other people they agree with on social media, however misguided and inaccurate the information. He also pointed toward find a fair representation of Muslims in other mediums. We have to have the media give fair representation to our community in the sense that when theres a terrorist attack, theres seven times more coverage on that attack if its a Muslim than compared to a Caucasian, noted Waheed. He said all are welcome to Friday prayer or to send an email or come into the center with any questions they may have about the religion. Waheed took some comfort in the communitys outpouring in recent days. We are not afraid. One, we know God is protecting us and two, we have so much support from everyone, he said. I think the haters, the bigots should be afraid. Despite the potential fear after the shooting and hatred from the shooter, Bakleh said, When we love and support each other, there is noting to be afraid of. GRAND RAPIDS, MI The Grand Rapids Board of Education canceled an interview Monday, March 25, with River Rouge Superintendent Derrick Coleman for its superintendent job after deciding he wasnt a good fit. There was information shared after the scheduling of the interview specific to the candidate that I think called into question some things, said school board president Kristian Grant, during a special board meeting called Thursday, March 21. The district does have second-round interviews scheduled with two candidates on April 8 to replace retiring Superintendent Teresa Weatherall Neal: Adrian Talley, Director of Community Schools for Prince Georges County Public Schools in Maryland. Devon Horton, Chief of Schools for Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky. On Monday, March 18, the school board decided to invite Coleman for an interview after a funeral prevented him from interviewing March 16, along with four other candidates. However, Grant said the school board heard from community stakeholders following that decision who had concerns about Coleman, who has been River Rouges superintendent since 2012 and a finalist for the Detroit Public Schools job in 2017. Coleman was contacted by Rod Green, executive search consultant for the Michigan Association of School Boards, hired to conduct the districts national search, specifically regarding a Las Vegas conference the 2013-14 school year. The conference attended by Coleman and approximately a dozen others came up in 2017. Critics questioned the use of a limousine and reference a receipt that showed an employee purchased condoms and alcohol. The trip was reported by Detroit media, including ABCs WXYZ. But Coleman told MLive that Las Vegas story was a politically motivated attempt to discredit him while he was pursuing the Detroit superintendent job. He said there was no misappropriation of funds and the one employee who purchased those items highlighted never sought district reimbursement. As for the limousine, he said the rate on the limousine was cheaper than paying for cabs or rental cars. Coleman, who approved over $100,000 in state travel that year, said it was a professional development trip that teachers found beneficial. He said if the school board had contacted his board they would have learned it was not an issue and audits revealed no wrongdoing. I am absolutely sure I would have been great for that community, he said, noting his highly effective evaluations. I have a job that I am in love with. People with ties and affiliations to the Grand Rapids community encouraged me to apply for the job. School board members Jose Flores, Tony Baker, Katherine Lewis, John Matias, Jen Schottke, and Grant, expressed frustration with MASBs vetting of Coleman and other candidates. The key concern is that we scheduled this interview with full expectation that if there was anything that the community should have been concerned about that the search firm would let us know, said Grant, who said there were other concerns.. Green said that in Michigan, candidates for any particular superintendency are entitled to confidentiality until they accept an interview. He said this means the majority of vetting is done after a candidate accepts an interview. "Any concern that is identified during the search is researched and findings are reported to the board of education,'' he said. "In this case, MASB notified the board that there was no wrongdoing on Dr. Colemans part related to the news article, district funds were not disbursed for the inappropriate items, but the board still had concerns with overcoming this situation and therefore decided to not go forward with the interview.'' Grant said she doesnt question what Coleman has accomplished in River Rouge, rather questions his fit for Grand Rapids. Coleman said he would discussed any concerns shared during his interview but wasnt given the opportunity. When were bringing in a new superintendent, we are bringing them into the best position possible to be able to get right to work and move the district forward,'' Grant said. "Because we didnt know things, it puts him in a bad position.'' The vote was 6 to 0 to cancel the interview. Board members Raynard Ross, Kimberley Williams and Kymberlie Davis had conflicts with the meeting Thursday. The school board is scheduled to meet at 5:30 p.m. Monday, March 25, to discuss the search process. The times for the April 8 candidate interviews are still being confirmed. FREEPORT, MI -- Aaron Snell was working to clear a log jam on the Coldwater River when he noticed the water turn murky, really murky, he said, unusually so. He traveled about four miles upstream and found the source. The water had turned black from manure. By the time we found where it was coming from and entered Messer Brook, there was no visibility in the water. It was ink blank, Snell said. It was enough to turn the water black, which I cant say that Ive seen before. Brook View Dairy, a Holland-based multi-facility dairy business with a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) at 10560 Freeport Ave., is being investigated by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for the March 6 manure spill. Regulators became aware of the spill after Snell found it two days later and reported it. At this time, the DEQ says there is no need for a no water contact advisory or fishing warnings. Manure processed through the farms anaerobic digester was spread on fields March 6 about three miles east of Freeport. The ground, snow-covered and frozen, didnt absorb it and the manure eventually ran into Messer Brook and then the Coldwater River. The Coldwater River, which is a prized trout stream, feeds into the Thornapple River about three miles east of Caledonia. The DEQ received reports that portions of the Coldwater River and Messer Brook had turned black in color and had an odor," said Mike Worm, supervisor of the water quality unit for DEQs Grand Rapid district. The recent incident is the dairy farms second spill into a tributary of the Coldwater River in just under a year. In April 2018, an estimated 5,000 and 10,000 gallons of liquid cow manure went into a tributary when a farm pipeline malfunctioned. This time, Brook View Dairy said about 10,000 gallons was spilled, according to Worm. But, Worm said, regulators are skeptical of that figure, pointing out the spills migration would indicate a larger volume. The farm did report to us what they felt was the volume of the spill, and were extremely leery of the validity of the claim, he said. Just the fact that it went from a wetland to Messer Brook and was noticed in the Coldwater River. Rain events around the time of the spill helped dilute the manure, he said. DEQ engineers are still calculating their own spill estimates, he said. Regulators will convene Tuesday, March 26, to discuss what, if any, criminal or civil actions they will impose on the farm. Phone messages left with Brook View by MLive/The Grand Rapids Press have not been returned. In the past year, the Coldwater River watershed has sustained three manure spills. For anglers and conservationists, thats a discouraging fact. I mean when you look at the Coldwater watershed over the decades, we have thousands and thousands of volunteer hours and dollars put into it, and its getting trashed, said Lance Climie, president of Schrems West Michigan Trout Unlimited. Sometimes I feel like were fighting a lost cause ... These manure spills are going to kill the streams. Snell, who is a fisheries biologist and co-founder of Streamside Ecological Services, said manure spills can endanger human health by increasing levels of E. coli bacteria in the waters. In addition, the spills can harm aquatic life and can, because of the nutrients, cause a downstream algae bloom, he said. As of Wednesday, March 20, state officials have not seen or had any reports of a fish kill associated with the recent spill, according Worm. Climie said he wishes farmers would cooperate more in the protection of water bodies. We dont want to close farms. We dont want to hurt farmers, he said. We just want to have a stream for the benefit of everybody, BLACKMAN TWP., MI One companys trash is another companys treasure. That's how U-Haul sees it, at least, as it cleans up the trail of vacated Kmart buildings across the country. Its next stop is Jackson County. Jacksons eastside Kmart, 3001 E. Michigan Ave., closed in late 2016. The 100,000-square-foot building sold for $2.1 million in February, as U-Haul plans to move in. The Blackman Township Planning Commission gave its unanimous go-ahead on a conditional use permit for U-Haul on Tuesday, March 19. Final approval of the permit is expected to go before the townships Board of Trustees on April 15. The company hasnt determined whether it will close its 1809 E. Michigan Ave. U-Haul location or make it a satellite for the new space, said Jon Gilmore, U-Haul of Western Michigan president. Frankly, weve just really outgrown the needs of the community where were at, Gilmore told the planning commission. In total, U-Haul plans to invest up to possibly $8 million into the space which is roughly five times larger than its current location, Gilmore said. It will employ about 10 to 12 people, he said. The facility should be ready to open in a year, Gilmore said, but wont be fully functional for two years. "Kmart didn't exactly do any maintenance on it for some time," Gilmore said. The building needs a new roof, new parking lot and has serious water line issues, he said. Once finished, it will have roughly 500 indoor storage units with drive-in access, so customers can load and unload items inside. The U-Haul location will also offer a 24/7 truck share, allowing customers to rent trucks from a phone and pick it up at any time. Another chunk of the building would be retail space for items like moving and towing supplies. A Kmart conversion is already complete in metro Detroit, with more planned in Lansing, Flint, Byron Center and Houghton Lake, Gilmore said. U-Haul is working on about 90 conversions of the former box stores across the country, he said. These Kmarts are perfect for this use, Gilmore said. It really limits anything that we have to destroy to rebuild. The Jackson area lost both of its Kmart stores within a four-month span. The westside location, 3555 ONeill Drive, was redeveloped into a Blains Farm and Fleet. Sears Holdings, Kmarts parent company, also closed its Sears location at Jackson Crossing in 2018. KALAMAZOO, MI -- An event to ensure every teen can feel like a princess on prom night will return to Kalamazoo for its 13th year this week. The Cinderella Project will be held from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, March 22, at the Girl Scouts Heart of Michigan, 601 W. Maple St. This annual event provides free prom dresses, shoes and accessories to local high school juniors and seniors who otherwise would not be able to afford to attend their own prom. The event is sponsored by Memories Bridal and Evening Wear, located in downtown Kalamazoo, and made possible through community donations of gently used prom dresses and accessories. On Friday, over 2,200 prom dresses will be available for high school students to choose from free of charge. Participants must be a junior or senior in high school. No proof of financial need or local residency is required to attend. Over 100 coordinators and volunteers are expecting to help about 200 teenagers pick their perfect dress this year, said Adrienne Wissner, owner of Memories Bridal and Evening Wear and founder of The Cinderella Project of Kalamazoo. Volunteer seamstresses will also be available to make minor alterations to dresses, she said, and Paris Cleaners and Laundry has donated free dry cleaning vouchers for those participating in the program. Its a really fun event," Wissner said. We get to help lots of girls do something they might not have been able to do because of various circumstances in their lives. Sometimes girls have financial issues or family issues that make it really difficult to afford a dress, so we are hear to help those ladies make that lifelong memory and do something just like the rest of their friends. Donations to the Cinderella Project are accepted year-round at Memories Bridal & Evening Wear, 203 E. Michigan Ave. in downtown Kalamazoo. KALAMAZOO, MI In the months after Michigan residents voted to legalize marijuana for adult use, Kalamazoo County is looking at a new policy that would allow testing of employees suspected of being under the influence. The Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners heard a recommendation at its Tuesday, March 19, meeting to update a policy to test non-union employees for the presence of marijuana in their bodies if use is suspected, in some cases. The proposed ordinance reads: Where management has reason to believe that an employee may be under the influence of a controlled substance, marijuana or alcohol, they may require the employee to submit to breath, urine or blood testing to determine the presence of a controlled substance, marijuana or alcohol. Refusal to submit to such testing may result in immediate dismissal, according to a presentation on the policy recommendation by Human Resources Director Kristine Cunningham. The board voted Tuesday to table the issue for consideration at a later time. Commissioners asked a variety of questions, such as the impact on employees with commercial drivers licenses, the reliability of the tests, and how the policy would be executed. Im just hoping that its not so subjective like its not consistent and fair across the board, Commissioner Stephanie Moore said. Commissioner Michael Quinn questioned the reliability of the tests. It makes me a little nervous using them as sole basis for decisions, he said, and suggested the county could consider other measures, like tests for balance and coordination. Cunningham said if an employee tests positive for marijuana, it would not mean the employee would have to be fired. We have to have a policy in place for those fringe situations where people are going to come to work under the influence of a drug and crash a car and its very apparent theyre wasted, she said, and the proposal is meant to protect the county from liability. We have a lot of fed dollars coming into the county and it is still against the federally so we have to kind of dance this middle ground, she said, calling the issue a grey area for many employers. The county employs about 590 non-union employees and 340 union employees, Cunningham said. Moore questioned how the tests would work, since marijuana stays in some peoples bodies longer than others. Tracy Hall asked about the possibility of using an updated test, like a saliva test, she said, which tests for more recent drug use compared to some other tests. Commissioner Meredith Place said she was concerned about the possibility of a lawsuit against the county related to Americans with Disabilities Act issues if employees are being identified as possible drug users based on observed behaviors. Place said the policy seems way too broad. VAN BUREN COUNTY, MI -- Rilynn Payne has spent all 26 months of her life needing a new kidney. Payne, 2, was born with auto recessive polycystic kidney disease, a rare genetic disease affecting about 1 in every 20,000 babies born, according to organ and tissue donation nonprofit Gift of Life Michigan. At only a few days old, Payne had both kidneys removed and has survived on dialysis every day since. The date was set for her kidney transplant when doctors found cysts on her liver. It was cancer. Now undergoing chemotherapy, Payne is back to waiting. But now she needs both a liver and a kidney. The rare disorder was discovered while Payne was still in her mothers womb, said Taye Wheeler, Paynes great aunt. Rilynn was delivered by emergency cesarean section a month before her due date because the disease caused her kidneys to enlarge, putting pressure on her lungs and heart, Wheeler said. In August 2018, Payne went to the doctors for a scan before she was scheduled for a kidney transplant. Doctors found cysts, which they discovered were cancerous, she said. Payne was put on a high-priority list for a liver at C.S. Mott Childrens Hospital in Ann Arbor, where her family will need to rush her when the call comes in that a liver is available. Its been a very long wait, Wheeler said. All of our hopes are very high, but every passing day the phone call doesnt come, as you can imagine, it gets discouraging. Every day you wake up and wonder if today will be the day." Payne must be cancer free before doctors will give her a new kidney, she said, for fear the cancer would only spread. Paynes mother, Emily, declined an interview with MLive, speaking instead through Wheeler, who is acting as a family spokesperson. Paynes mother has found support from other parents battling the same diagnosis and is kept afloat by her strong faith, Wheeler said. Despite the diseases she suffers from, the little girl is just a joy, her great aunt said. Payne experiences typical chemotherapy symptoms and has lost all of her hair, but continues to be talkative and fun, Wheeler said. Paynes family is holding a fundraiser 6 p.m. Saturday, March 23, at the Lawton Community Center, 646 N. Nursery St. in Lawton. The 2nd Annual Miracle Makers Gala will raise funds for Paynes family, Plainwell-based nonprofit DC Strong and for Childrens Organ Transplant Association. The money given to the association will pay for Paynes medical expenses from the liver transplant, Wheeler said. The event also seeks to increase awareness of a need for more people to register as organ donors. Presentations Saturday evening from the Gift of Life of Michigan and DC Strong will highlight the importance of organ donation, Wheeler said. A website is set up to raise money and awareness for Payne. Supporters can also purchase candles on the site or at various locations in the area. For more information on how to purchase tickets for this event, buy candles or read more about Payne, visit rilynnrosecandles.org. SAGINAW, MI A Catholic priest accused of sexually assaulting several young males took to the witness stand in his own trial, professing his innocence in front of a packed courtroom. Defense attorney Alan A. Crawford on Thursday morning, March 21, called his client, the Rev. Robert J. Father Bob DeLand Jr., as a witness. The previous day, two teens testified against DeLand, 72. One said the priest on May 14, 2017, had attempted to grab his penis in a coatroom within St. Agnes Church in Freeland during a memorial service for a classmate who had committed suicide. The other testified DeLand pulled him from class in Freeland High School on Nov. 16, 2017, took him to another room, gave him $20, then slid his hand down his back and touched his left buttock. Amid Saginaw Circuit Judge Darnell Jacksons standing-room-only courtroom, DeLand testified hes about to celebrate his 46th year as a Roman Catholic priest. He was suspended from his duties as a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw after he was charged last year. My job duties essentially is to announce the good news of Jesus Christ, DeLand said, as one woman in the gallery of his supporters, often with a rosary in her hands, proclaimed Yes! To do that, I am called to be their servant to show them the presence of Jesus in our world, in this courtroom. DeLand went on to say he had been part of the Hallway Heroes Program, which he described as a program that brings adults into schools to act as assuring presences to students. He said he worked in this capacity at Freeland High School, normally from 6:45 a.m. to 7:45 a.m., though he would infrequently be there for special situations as late as nighttime hours. He said he knew the teen who claimed hed grabbed his buttock. I met him essentially right after a very tragic incident in which one of the students died from a shotgun wound and (he) and four others were present, he said. So, I met (him) the day after. Thats really when I became acquainted with (him). As the teen had been drinking when the suicide occurred, he was charged with and later pleaded guilty to minor in possession of alcohol, as were some of his peers. The teen was sentenced to perform 25 hours of community service and he asked that DeLand supervise him as he performed the service, DeLand testified. On Wednesday, March 20, the teen denied that he had requested DeLands supervision. DeLand went on to say three other students completed their court-ordered community service with him relatively quickly, but the teen who would later accuse him was sporadic in his obligation. Crawford asked him how the teen was doing in school. (He) was challenged by school, DeLand said. There were lots of reasons for that. Saginaw County Assistant Prosecutor Melissa Hoover objected to the statement on schoolwork, and Jackson sustained it, meaning the jury cant consider that testimony. Crawford then asked DeLand if he had taken steps to get the teen on track. Oh, I did, the priest said. I did with the help of the counselors. Perhaps the most specific step we took, it was agreed (the teen) would call me, or I would call (him), to see if his homework was finished. Crawford asked if he called the teen 20 times per day, as the teen had alleged in his testimony. I dont have time to call (him) 20 times a day, DeLand answered. I encouraged him, very strongly, that this was an important thing to have done because it was an important matter. He simply didnt show up with the rest of the boys, often indicating he was coming but he didnt come. Crawford then asked him if he had pulled the teen from class, given him money, and touched his buttock. No, DeLand emphatically stated. No, I would not do that. I would never do that. I spent my life working with young people and I would never do that, especially not to (him). Crawford then asked him if he had attempted to grab the other teens penis at the May 2017 memorial service, which he said was packed with about 700 attendees. Mr. Crawford, DeLand said, before he engaged in a long pause, No, it did not occur. It would be the last thing on my mind at that moment because we were in such trauma and, um, I had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people to care for. That did not happen. Questioned by the prosecutor Assistant Prosecutor Hoover then leveled questions at DeLand during cross-examination. She asked why he needed to be at the high school past his regular morning hours on Nov. 16, 2017, the day one witness alleged the priest had touched his buttock. It isnt, Miss Hoover, sometimes a matter of needing, he replied. Sometimes, its a matter of missing students, so I would often go through the cafeteria and just say, Hello. Missing students as in wanting to be near them? Hoover asked. No, he replied, before adamantly disputing that he would have taken the teen out of class. When Hoover asked if someone else would be lying if they recalled him doing just that, DeLand said either that or he had forgotten doing so. Hoover then asked DeLand if he had smoked cigarettes with any of the other teens he had been supervising during their community service. He denied he had. She asked if he had gone to a judge and asked for his alleged victim to work with him. DeLand said he had not. Hoover then pressed and asked if he had any recollection of the teen asking to perform his community service with him. No, but yes he did ask, he said. My recollection is he did ask me. I dont recall the specific words. Hoover asked DeLand if he had been following the teen during school hours. The priest said he had not. Hoover continued by again asking DeLand if his plan to work with the teen included smoking cigarettes with him. An extended pause ensued. Thats a yes or no, Hoover prompted. No, DeLand said. DeLand went on to say he does not recall seeing or speaking with the other alleged victim or his father at the memorial service. Next, Hoover asked DeLand if the Freeland Community School District superintendent had told him to stop coming to school. Crawford objected to this, but Jackson overruled it. Im not sure why Im being asked this, but just before my arrest, DeLand said, He said they had to put together new rules of Hallway Heroes. He said he asked that of all Hallway Heroes. You dont recall telling him that youd go to the school board? I dont. You dont recall telling him, Do you want the full weight of the Catholic Church coming down on (you)?' DeLand answered Hoovers question in the negative. Hoover then asked DeLand if he typically hugs students. Sometimes. It depends whats going on. When Hoover finished, Crawford did not question DeLand again. Alleged victims recalled To rebut DeLands testimony, Hoover recalled both of the alleged victims who had testified Wednesday and ones father, who had also testified Wednesday. First up was the now-19-year-old who said DeLand had tried grabbing his penis at St. Agnes Church during the memorial service. The teen testified again he had attended the service with his father and that they had separated in the church. He said DeLand had asked him how he was doing and then asked him to accompany him into a coatroom. Had he been mistaken and not actually encountered the priest that day? Hoover asked him. I 100 percent spoke to him that day, he replied. Absolutely. Returning to the stand himself, the teens father broke down in a flood of emotion and tears. I should have called the police, he said. I didnt. I just know I failed as a father. There was so much I wanted to do and I couldnt. I still had to keep my job. My son told me wed lose my job. What could I do? The witness said he felt he could not call police due to his employment by the Saginaw Diocese as a maintenance worker. Hoover asked him if he had any doubt that he saw and briefly spoke with DeLand at the memorial service. Theres no doubt in my mind at all, he said. The other teen victim, the one who had been his community service under DeLands supervision, retook to the stand. He said he had missed appointments with DeLand, adding, I was very uncomfortable. I didnt feel safe. The teen said DeLand in the school hallways would hug him, whisper in his ear, pull him close, and step on his foot to prevent him from moving. Hoover directly asked him if he had requested to do his community service with DeLand. I believe he asked me, he said, adding he thought the priest then went to a judge and requested the duty. I know I did not go out and ask him. He reiterated DeLand had flooded his phone with calls. It was in the double digits, I can promise that, he said. I would get a phone call every five, 10 minutes. I couldnt even eat, sit down, relax. I had so many phone calls it was overwhelming. He would text me all the time. I would skip school just to get away from. Crawford then addressed the witness, focusing on the teens allegations that DeLand would grab him in the hallways. In the open hallway, he would get right in front of your face and whisper in your ear? Thats your testimony, correct? Crawford asked. Yes, sir. Closing arguments Hoover was the first to present her sides closing arguments to the 10-woman, four-man jury. Trust, isolation, betrayal, she said, addressing jurors from a podium. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been a short trial. However, it has been an important and informative one. She proceeded to remind the jurors of the witnesses testimony. In particular, she told how one victim and his father both testified to seeing DeLand at the memorial service, something DeLand said he did not recall. Had the teen in the coatroom not grabbed DeLands upturned palm, the priest would have grabbed his penis, Hoover said. She said the teen did not make a scene, but left to find his dad. He didnt tell his dad until they were out of the building because he didnt want his dad to do something hed regret, she said. They did not immediately notify police as they were afraid the father would lose his employment with the Saginaw Diocese and, as an extension, their family house, Hoover said. She told how the other victim had testified DeLand frequent invaded in his personal space, grabbed him, whispered in his ear, and stood on his foot, all things Deland disputed. He got up on that witness stand showed you what happened, she said. He was angry, he was embarrassed, and who wouldnt be? Hes in counseling now because of his experience with the defendant. Why on earth would you take someone to an isolated room to give someone a handshake or a hug? she rhetorically asked. She also said DeLand had something over both alleged victims one, his dad worked for the church, and, two, he was supervised by DeLand in his performing his community service. In his closing arguments, Crawford asserted the prosecution hadnt met its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Think about what they presented, he said. They presented no evidence, questionable witnesses, and absolutely no corroboration. This was not an honest and thorough investigation, he continued. Leads were not pursued. This was because this was an agenda. This was a desperate and deliberate attempt to destroy Father DeLand. Crawford referenced testimony from one of the teens, who said he did not immediately notify police of DeLand trying to grab him because I didnt think much about it. Are those the words of someone whos been sexually assaulted? Crawford posed. He said the teens fathers actions do not align with one whose son had been assaulted. He would have contacted police. Didnt happen. In her last time to address the jury, Hoover said Crawford had made a powerful argument, though it was not evidence. She attacked the defenses notion that former Tittabawassee Township Police Detective Brian J. Berg was carrying out an agenda against DeLand. It does not make any sense and youve not heard any evidence evidence that would support such a theory. After reading the jurors their instructions, Judge Jackson dismissed them for lunch at 12:45 p.m. and ordered them to return at 1:45 p.m. to begin deliberating. Background DeLand is charged with six felonies and one misdemeanor involving two male teens and one young man. The cases are proceeding in three separate trials, with the first trial involving two alleged victims. Police first arrested DeLand on the night of Sunday, Feb. 25, 2018, after hed conducted Mass at St. Agnes Church in Freeland, where he had most recently been assigned. The Catholic Diocese of Saginaw suspended his faculties. Police arrested DeLand a second time on April 5 on related charges. In this first trial, DeLand faces charges of second-degree criminal sexual conduct causing personal injury and attempted second-degree criminal sexual conduct. DeLand in September 2018 pleaded no contest to all charges against him. About a month later, he withdrew his plea because he did not want to accept the potential sentence he faced, said Saginaw County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Mark J. Gaertner. Before Thursdays testimony, Judge Jackson granted a request from Crawford to allow the jury to consider alternative counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct and attempted fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct as lesser counts. Hoover had objected to this. Beijing urges US to block Taiwan presidents stopover in Hawaii Beijing urges US to block Taiwan presidents stopover in Hawaii China urged the US on Thursday not to allow Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to stop over in Hawaii next week when she makes a tour of the islands diplomatic allies in the Pacific. Tsai said she will transit Hawaii on her way home from an eight-day visit to Palau, Nauru and the Marshall Islands, which began on Thursday, Reuters reported. Beijing has lodged stern representations over Tsais planned stopover in the US, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said. We have consistently and resolutely opposed the US or other countries which have diplomatic relations with China arranging this kind of transit, Geng said in Beijing. China urged the US not to send Taiwan independence forces any wrong signal, he added. The US, like most other countries, has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is the islands largest weapons supplier and most powerful international backer.Source : RT - Daily news Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign secretary, has revealed that the UK will oppose the United Nations Human Rights Councils (UNHRC) permanent agenda item on human rights abuses in Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories. Writing in the Jewish Chronicle, Hunt insisted that Britain will vote against all texts contained within the Item 7 resolution at the UNHRCs meeting this Friday, because elevating this dispute above all others cannot be sensible. The item has been a permanent fixture on the UNHRCs agenda, and debated at every session, since June 2007. Item 7 Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories Human rights violations and implications of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and other occupied Arab territories. Right to self-determination of the Palestinian people Also on rt.com Mainstream media on Gaza: Israelis get killed, but Palestinians merely die Hunt opposes the UNs focus on Israels human rights conduct in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories, because it suggests that one side alone holds a monopoly of fault. He claims that a dedicated agenda for one nation obstructs the prospect of any long-lasting peace in the Middle East. Ahead of Fridays vote, the 47-member council discussed seven reports concerning alleged human rights violations by Israel. In February, a UN human rights inquiry found that the Israeli military may have committed war crimes when 189 Palestinians were killed and 6,100 wounded during Gaza protests. Palestinian demonstrators did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot, nor were they directly participating in hostilities, according to the panels report, citing confidential information about those responsible for the killings. The commission said every use of live fire during the protests was unlawful, while also calling on Palestinians to cease the use of incendiary kites and balloons. Also on rt.com Israeli killings of Palestinians at Gaza protests last year may amount to war crimes UN inquiry Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media wont tell you. The first cross-border railway bridge between China and Russia over the Amur River has been connected from both sides. The bridge, which will be operational this year, is expected to take bilateral trade to new highs. The 2,209-meter-long (1.4 miles) structure links Russias Far East with Chinas northernmost Heilongjiang province. The full completion of the cross-border bridge (railway and highway parts) is scheduled for July. On the morning of March 20, the last steel beam was built in, with Russia completing construction works from its part. This means the first railway bridge between the two countries is generally successfully connected, Heilongjiang provinces administration said in a statement. Also on rt.com Cross-border bridge connecting Russia & China to open in 2020 The completion of the bridge will end the history when the Chinese and Russian borders did not have a cross-river railway bridge, said Li Huachao, a chief engineer of China Railway Major Bridge Engineering Group. According to him, the project aims to develop an international corridor connecting China's northeastern railway networks with Russias Siberian railway networks. The shipping capacities between the two sides will be greatly enhanced as they will no longer be affected by seasonal weather conditions, which often have an impact on river shipping, said Li, as cited by Ecns.cn. According to Song Kui, a researcher of the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, the bridge will play a significant part in promoting trade globally and in northeast Asia. Song said that in 2018 trade between Heilongjiang province and Russia amounted to 122 billion yuan ($18.2 billion). The figure represents 69.8 percent of the provinces total export and import value and 17.3 percent of Chinas exports and imports to Russia. Also on rt.com China tops list of Russias biggest trade partners Construction of the cross-border bridge officially started in 2016, following 28 years of negotiations between the two countries. Russia plans to export iron ore, coal, mineral fertilizers, lumber, and other goods via the link to China. The highway section of the bridge will be ready for traffic this year. Traffic capacity is expected to exceed three million tons of cargo and be used by 1.48 million people a year by 2020. It will greatly facilitate trade between the two countries, since the route will be roughly 3,500km (2,175 miles) shorter. For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section Ethiopian Airlines was one of the few companies that actually got their hands on the Boeing 737 MAX 8 simulator but the captain flying the crashed plane failed to do any training on it, a recent report suggests. The Ethiopian carrier set up a MAX 8 flight simulator in January, two months before the crash, but the captain of the doomed aircraft never used it, the New York Times wrote on Wednesday, citing people close to the airline. According to the report, the pilots last simulator training took place in September and October, when the company still didnt have the necessary equipment to teach its staff to fly Boeings newest aircraft. The next training course wasnt scheduled until after March 10 when the disaster happened. It is not clear whether the aircrafts co-pilot had gotten any MAX 8 simulator training either. At the same time, Ethiopian Airlines was one of the few carriers in the world who had MAX 8 simulators installed and was using it to prepare pilots. The Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed near the nations capital Addis Ababa minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 people on board. The disasters striking similarities with the recent deadly crash in Indonesia prompted many countries to ground its fleets of 737 MAX 8s, as Boeing now faces intense scrutiny over the safety of its planes. The growing concerns over Boeing also led some carriers to demand more simulators to train their crew. Prior to the disaster in Indonesia the pilots just took an iPad lesson for an hour to fly the 737-800, spokesperson for the American Airlines pilot union, Dennis Tajer told the media last week. Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! A grenade attack has injured three Indian police troops in Kashmir, including an officer. A riot reportedly erupted following the explosion. The incident happened on Thursday morning in the town of Sopore in the western part of the Indian-administrated section of the disputed region. Militants fired from an under-barrel grenade launcher at a group of security personnel, the police said. The grenade injured three people, including an officer from the police station in Dangiwacha, a small town in the same Baramulla district. Security forces have cordoned off the area and a search has been launched to nab the attackers, a police official said. Also on rt.com Indian Air Force seeks fresh replenishments of missiles to counter Pakistans F-16s report Following the attack clashes reportedly erupted between Indian police and people from the Muslim-majority community. The protesters pelted the police with stones as the security troops deployed tear gas to disperse them. The incident happened days after the controversial death of a man in Indian police custody in the nearby Pulwama district. Rizwan Asad Pandit, a private-school teacher, had been arrested as part of a terror case investigation, His death sparked outrage and rioting on Tuesday, to which police responded with tear gas. Kashmir has been disputed by India and its neighbor Pakistan since the partition of former British colony in the wake of World War II. The two nations fought three major wars over their differences and have since acquired nuclear weapons. The disputed area is largely divided into Pakistani and Indian-administrated parts, and is home to a long-time Muslim insurgency, which seeks independence from India and possible reunion with Pakistan. Earlier this month there was a major flare-up between New Delhi and Islamabad after an Indian air raid into Pakistani territory, which targeted a militant group that claimed responsibility for a deadly bombing attack on Indian security troops. Pakistan responded with a bombing sortie of its own, which escalated into a dogfight over Kashmir unseen since the 1970s. to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media wont tell you. Euroskeptic party, Forum for Democracy, is set to become one of the two largest groups in the Dutch Senate, stripping the ruling coalition of its majority after winning provincial elections on Wednesday. Forum voor Democratie (FvD) has scored a major victory and is set win 12 seats in the upper house of parliament as many as Prime Minister Mark Rutte's conservative VVD Party, Dutch broadcaster NOS reported after the majority of the votes were counted. The outcome also means the loss of its Senate majority for the ruling coalition, which comprises four center-right parties led by the VVD. The 75-seat Senate will be elected on May 27 by 570 members of 12 provincial councils whose composition was decided on Wednesday. The FvD scored slightly more votes than the VVD after receiving a surge of last-minute support following a shooting in Utrecht this week by a Turkish-born man. The party's leader Thierry Baudet immediately pinned the incident on the government's lax immigration policies. Also on rt.com 37-year-old Turkish terror suspect who killed three in Utrecht shooting arrested (VIDEO) If people want more deadly shootings like the one in Utrecht, then they have to vote for the VVD, he said a day before the elections. The voters in the Netherlands have spread their wings and shown their true power, Baudet boasted after the vote on Wednesday. We have been called to the front because we have to. Because the country needs us. The Euroskeptic party gained a political foothold in the 2017 general election, winning two seats in the House of Representatives. Since that immediate success, which resonated well with the public in the wake of an unprecedented refugee influx in Europe, FvD has also been seeking to join a similar Euroskeptic group (European Conservatives and Reformists) in the European Parliament. Unlike Geert Wilders ultra-conservative Party for Freedom (PPV), which traditionally attracted hardliners in the Netherlands, the FvD does not have clear Islamophobic tendencies and tends to position itself as the countrys lone defender of Western culture. The party, which seeks to represent a break from recent Dutch political culture, also supports easing income tax and speaks out in support of green initiatives. Besides being anti-immigration, Baudet and his supporters advocate the expansion of the armed forces and military spending. If you like this story, share it with a friend! Emmanuel Macron has ordered the closure of four organizations accused by officials of promoting jihad and anti-Semitism. Earlier, the French president pledged to fight an unprecedented surge of anti-Semitism in the country. The move comes at the request of Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, who said the groups foment hatred, call for discrimination and justify violence, and must be closed. The ministry separately said the groups advocated armed jihad and indoctrinating young people. They also promoted organizations like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah all listed as terrorist organizations by the EU, the ministry stressed. Also on rt.com Jewish graves vandalized in France as government vows tough response to rising anti-Semitism French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux labeled the groups as openly anti-Semitic and dangerous associations during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. The development comes a month after Macron pledged to the Jewish community to fight against what he called a resurgence of anti-Semitism unseen since World War II. He said France will redefine anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Semitism in line with the preferences of pro-Israel groups. The decision was welcomed by the government of Israel. The French government reported a 74-percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2018 in the country compared to previous year. The pledge from Macron came after thousands of people, including two former French presidents, rallied across the country to condemn anti-Semitism in response to the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in the Strasbourg area. The banned organizations are the Zahra Center France, the Shia Federation of France, the Anti-Zionist Party and France Marianne TV. Center Zahra France was targeted by an anti-terrorist raid in October, and was followed by the seizure of assets for six months. The French authorities accused the group, which is based in northern France, of being a vehicle for propagating radical Shiite Islam. The three others organizations are reportedly working under the centers umbrella. The man behind the Zahra Center and Anti-Zionist Party is Yahia Gouasmi. He is a Lebanese-born Shia Muslim, who has been living in France since the 1960s. An avowed critic of Zionism and Israel, his stated goal is to oppose the Israeli lobby in France and hold the Jewish state accountable for crimes against Palestinians and other nations. He launched the party in 2009 after the Israeli bombings of the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead. Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! Italys desire to build trade ties with China isnt a move against the US, but an effort to maximise its own interests, Italys former Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told RT, ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinpings Rome visit. Italy is expected to sign a non-binding memorandum in support of Chinas Belt and Road global trade and infrastructure network, dubbed the New Silk Road, during Xis visit, and has signalled its intention to play a major role in the grand plan, despite warnings about the project from Washington. The move will make Italy the first G7 country to back the initiative, which aims to link China by sea and land with the Middle East, Europe and Africa. Rome is hoping that its involvement can help revive the Italian economy by providing greater access to the Chinese market. Also on rt.com US advises Italy to steer clear of Chinas new Silk Road because its a National Security issue? Frattini told RT that the project is of very high significance for Italy and can be a real bridge linking Asia and Europe. Acknowledging the US warning to Italy to steer clear of what it called Chinas vanity project, Frattini said Italys involvement was not a message against the United States, but a message to maximise european interests. US threats were not surprising, Frattini said, since it is not a secret that the Trump administration considers China its biggest competitor. He also said it was likely that other EU countries would want to get involved in the Chinese project because these days, European nations are pursuing more independent policies and are less available to follow the wishes of their American allies. Nonetheless, Frattini assured Washington that Italy will remain loyal allies with the US and will never put its critical infrastructure in the hands of a foreign state. Frattini said he hoped that the increasing independence from Washington, seen in some European policies, could extend to the issue of sanctions on Russia, saying it is in Europes interest to progressively lift the sanctions which were imposed because of the demands and requests of the Obama administration. There has, however, been some heavy discussion within the Italian government with regard to the Silk Road project and Italy's relationship with China, chief editor of Pandoratv.it Giulietto Chiesa told RT. There is a big split inside the Italian elite with the more pro-American politicians and commenters more wary of such cooperation and the potential US reactions, he said. Chiesa believes there will be a deepening of differences between Europe and the US, which is trying to impose it own ideas about international commerce and not everyone in Europe agrees. Also on rt.com Western sanctions v Eastern promises: Russia's Crimea could become part of Chinas new Silk Road That thought was echoed by Italian journalist Alessandra Bocchi, who told RT that Italys decision to ignore US warnings showed a shift in Italys foreign policy and demonstrated that Washington no longer has the same power than it once had in Europe. Bocchi said Italys move could trigger a domino effect in terms of more European countries wanting to develop ties with China, adding that it appeared the US is trying to pressure Europe to choose between it and China and, since the two are major economic rivals in the middle of a trade war, Europe is part of that battleground. Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! John McAfee has been ordered to pay $25 million for the wrongful death of his former neighbour Gregory Faull in Belize, however much like several other lawsuits against him in the past 11 years he is refusing to pay. He was accused by Faulls estate of paying a man $5,000 to torture and kill his former neighbor in 2016 for allegedly poisoning several of his 12 dogs. McAfee has denied the accusation, refused to cooperate with authorities, and has refused to pay what he claims is the latest in a long line of frivolous lawsuits against him, which amount to some $200 million in judgments. The default judgement in the Faull case was made in absentia by a US federal district judge in Florida, as McAfee refused to respond. The lawsuit alleges that a hitman named Eddie McKoy, in conjunction with a female associate of McAfees managed to subdue, torture and murder Faull. Faull died of a single gunshot wound to the head and an autopsy found that Faulls body and, specifically, his genitals had been repeatedly tasered. Also on rt.com Incompetent enemies: John McAfee blasts poisoning attempt from his hospital bed (PHOTOS) When police arrived to question him, McAfee reportedly hid by burying himself on the beach and covering his head with a cardboard box. He then fled the country, first going to Guatemala before heading back to the US. He would later offer a $25,000 reward to find his neighbors killer. Also on rt.com I want the stage: McAfee will run for president in exile, with 1,000s of masked doppelgangers Meanwhile, McAfee is currently campaigning for the 2020 US presidential election while in exile as he says the IRS is pursuing charges against him. He claims he hasnt paid taxes in eight years and has dared the US government to come and find him. If you like this story, share it with a friend! New Zealand has rolled out a ban on military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles following last weeks massacre in Christchurch, which saw 50 people killed at two mosques in the worst mass shooting in the countrys history. High-capacity magazines and parts used to convert other weapons into the banned guns are also banned under the new laws, which PM Jacinda Ardern expects to take effect by April 11. A buyback scheme will also be put in place for weapons on the banned list. On 15 March our history changed forever. Now, our laws will too, Ardern said at a press conference on Thursday. New Zealand follows the example of Australia, which banned all semi-automatic weapons following a 1996 mass shooting in Port Arthur that killed 35 people. The most pronounced reactions came from Americans, many of whom believe similar laws are soon to be introduced stateside. Whether they want those laws is another matter entirely. Democratic pols praised the move, while gun control advocates looked westward with envy. Republicans were repulsed. Reports of New Zealanders voluntarily turning in their guns came in for particular derision. Many worried that the Christchurch shooting and subsequent crackdowns on guns, on speech, even on watching the livestreamed video of the slaughter are a form of dress rehearsal for a planned US clampdown. If you like this story, share it with a friend! Angry residents held sporadic rallies and trashed migrant-operated shops in Siberia after a man from Central Asia allegedly raped a local woman. The high-profile case prompted authorities to vow crack down on illegal immigration. Over the past few days, residents of Yakutsk in eastern Russia attacked and harassed migrants from Central Asia. They also targeted migrant-owned businesses. Young men barged into food booths and demanded that foreigners leave, police said. They came here and threatened us with a gun. They said: Shut everything down and go home. You wont live here anymore, one man told RT. There were rumors of some people being hospitalized and even killed but the police denied that such incidents happened. Officers were also deployed to safeguard a mosque after a fired-up crowd held a protest outside its entrance. The wave of anti-migrant anger was sparked by a recent case of a local woman abducted and raped. Though a suspect was quickly caught and pleaded guilty, locals became outraged after the media learned that he was a migrant from Kyrgyzstan. This was later confirmed by the governor. The news immediately led to sporadic unauthorized rallies by locals who accuse foreigners of stealing jobs and committing crimes in the city. Authorities later held their own mass rally, where Governor Aysen Nikolayev promised a crackdown on illegal immigration. We will identify illegals and deport them, he told the crowd. The police meanwhile warned everyone against stoking ethnic conflicts, and several people have been detained in connection with vigilante violence. Many migrant-operated cafes and shops, nevertheless, remain closed and around 100 buses stayed in their depots because migrant drivers were afraid to show up for work. Influential progressive activist group MoveOn.org has a favor to ask 2020s army of Democratic presidential candidates: steer clear of the AIPAC conference. Do not pass Go; do not collect hefty campaign checks. The activist organization with ties to controversial billionaire George Soros called on the growing swarm of Democratic candidates to boycott the pro-Israeli lobbyist conference, long considered a rite of passage for American politicians. While AIPAC itself only spent about $3.5 million lobbying last year, its influence lies in matching wealthy donors with favored candidates, bundling enormous sums to those it believes will do the most to advance Israels aims stateside. MoveOn listed four reasons to stay away from AIPAC, including its efforts to defeat the Iran deal which have found a sympathetic ear in President Donald Trump plus its Islamophobia, its refusal to condemn Republican anti-Semitism, and its tacit acceptance of Israels long history of alleged war crimes, as well as the increasingly overt racism of the Jewish state. The group specifically attacked Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for forging an alliance between his right-wing Likud Party and the even-further-right Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power Party. Citing the factions links to the Kach party, which the State Department has declared a terrorist organization and Israel has banned entirely, MoveOn slammed Netanyahu for cozying up to the Israeli KKK. Also on rt.com Meddling, anyone? Pro-Israel groups spent $22 million on lobbying & campaign contributions in 2018 While mostly symbolic, MoveOns boycott request points to a seismic shift in American politics, with the issue once considered the third rail of American politics criticizing or even acknowledging the Israeli lobby now becoming an asset. Responses to the gesture were largely positive, Though some felt the candidates would choose AIPACs cash over MoveOns endorsement. Others accused the Democratic party, MoveOn, or both of anti-Semitism ...and one clever Tweeter thought to check the roster for AIPACs Connected for Good conference, which lists none of the 2020 candidates though it does include some of the loudest voices to condemn anti-Semitism, real or imagined, in the Democratic Party, including Reps. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and Elizabeth Cheney (R-WY). While AIPAC has always boasted of its bipartisan influence, Democratic support for Israel is at historic lows even as Republicans remain staunchly pro-Zionist. With Netanyahu clinging closer than ever to Trump in the face of bribery scandal probes and looming elections, Democrats are finding themselves more alienated than ever from the Israeli government. A recent UN resolution condemning the Israeli sniping of unarmed Palestinian protesters has only strained the relationship further, and the willingness of freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to criticize the lobbys influence in US politics has emboldened others in the party to speak up. Also on rt.com #StandwithIlhan: Social media users defend Ilhan Omar after her forced apology over anti-Semitism Even if they dont keep the candidates away from the financial feeding frenzy, MoveOns demands will give a clear insight to 2020 candidates on where their base stands instead of prioritizing lobbying groups and policy people, said MoveOn campaign director Iram Ali. Like this story? Share it with a friend! The United States became the worlds top oil producer in February, and now it may use its leverage to reinforce its position as a geopolitical force. In a dynamic that shows just how far US oil production has come in recent years, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Monday that in the last two months of 2018, the US Gulf Coast exported more crude oil than it imported. Read more on Oilprice.com: US on the hunt for Iranian 'ghost tankers' Monthly net trade of crude oil in the Gulf Coast region (the difference between gross exports and gross imports) fell from a high in early 2007 of 6.6 million barrels per day (bpd) of net imports to 0.4 million bpd of net exports in December 2018. As gross exports of crude oil from the Gulf Coast hit a record 2.3 million bpd, gross imports of crude oil to the Gulf Coast in Decemberat slightly less than 2.0 million bpdwere the lowest level since March 1986. Also on rt.com Washington looking for anti-monopoly tool to kneecap OPEC oil cartel US oil production hit a staggering 12.1 million bpd in February, while that amount has been projected to stay around that production mark in the mid-term then increase in the coming years. The US is the new global oil production leader, followed by Russia and Saudi Arabia, while Saudi Arabia is still the worlds largest oil exporter - a factor that still gives Riyadh considerable leverage, particularly as it works with Russia, and other partners as part of the so-called OPEC+ group of producers. However, Saudi Arabia's decades-long role of market swing producers has now been replaced by this coalition of producers, reducing Riyadhs power both geopolitically and in global oil markets. In short, what Saudi Arabia could once do on its own, it has to do with several partners. Also on rt.com Qatar to launch Islamic banking giant focused on energy Meanwhile, US crude oil production, particularly in the Gulf Coast region, is still increasing. In November 2018, US Gulf Coast crude oil production set a new record of 7.7 million bpd, the IEA report added. However, since most of the oil produced in the US is light sweet crude, the US still has to rely on heavier crude blends from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and others since most American refineries are configured to process heavy crude. On the other hand, a surplus of light sweet crude allows the US to export more oil thus giving the country growing energy geopolitical power once enjoyed almost exclusively by Saudi Arabia and Russia. The increasing amount of US crude being exporter, along with the increasing amount of US LNG being imported (with exports of both fuels projected to increase) is changing energy geopolitics. US oil weapon possibilities Evidence of growing American energy clout was evident last week when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the oil industry to work with the Trump administration to promote US foreign policy interests, especially in Asia and in Europe, and to punish what he called bad actors on the world stage. Pompeo made his remarks at IHS Markits CERAWeek conference in Houston, where US oil and gas executives, energy players and OPEC officials usually gather annually to discuss global energy development. Pompeo's added that Americas new-found shale oil and natural gas abundance would strengthen our hand in foreign policy. He added that the US oil-and-gas export boom had given the US the ability to meet energy demand once satisfied by its geopolitical rivals. Also on rt.com Life after OPEC: Qatar to invest $20 billion into US energy in major expansion This is the first time, in at least recent history, that American officials have considered using oil production and exports for geopolitical advantage. One of the last times the country had such oil production clout dates back to the years just before World War II when the US held back oil exports to Japan. Consequently, this was one of the mitigating factors that provoked Japan to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941. Moreover, Pompeo's comments can be viewed as a reversal from the so-called oil weapon that Arab producers have used on the US and its western allies for decades, including both the unsuccessful 1967 Arab oil embargo and the 1973 Arab oil embargo that brought the US and its allies to their knees, driving up the price of oil four-fold and contributing to severe economic headwinds for the West and a geopolitical and economic shift that still persists to the current. This article was originally published on Oilprice.com Independent investors have been raising questions about the future of Volkswagens (VW) chief executive Herbert Diess after he evoked a Nazi phrase in a management meeting last week. The CEO reportedly told the companys managers that the high margins of VW Groups Porsche brand gave it more freedom than its other marques, such as Audi. Ebit macht frei, Diess told his managers, which translates as Profits will set you free. The phrase has echoes of Arbeit macht frei or Work sets you free, the slogan which hung on the gates of concentration camps during the Holocaust where millions perished. Also on rt.com Cash cow? After paying billions in fines Volkswagen accused by US stock regulator of massive fraud I think he is going to be fired, said one long-term US institutional investor as cited by the Irish Times. Im torn about it. On the one hand, hes one of the few managers that could probably move the company in the right direction. On the other hand, its so offensive I dont think its really excusable. Another Volkswagen investor in the US said that, Any shareholder would know that whatever his utterances, Diess is the best thing to happen to the company in the last 50 years. Ulrich Hocker, a director at DSW, a group representing small shareholders in Germany, called Diesss statement ridiculous, adding: Its not a sentence you can say in Germany. Also on rt.com VW investors seek $11bn in damages over emissions-cheating scandal Hocker said he planned to demand another apology at Volkswagens upcoming shareholders meeting, but was not sure it warranted the CEOs removal. [Shareholders were] very upset and shocked by the comments. We had high hopes for him for his ambitious strategy and focus on costs. But what changed last week is now there are big question marks over his judgment. Diess has issued an apology for what he described as definitely an unfortunate choice of words. Also on rt.com New act of Dieselgate: Over 300,000 Volkswagen owners sue company for damages over emissions fraud He denied referencing the Nazi phrase and explained that he was referring to the freedom afforded to VW brands in strong financial health. At no time was it my intention for this statement to be placed in a false context. At the time, I simply did not think of this possibility, he said. Experts say Diess who took the reins of the worlds largest carmaker has been making progress. He is the second CEO to run VW since the ouster of Martin Winterkorn in 2015 over the diesel scandal at the automaker. The company reported profit of 12 billion for 2018 despite paying out heavy settlements related to the Dieselgate emissions scandal. Founding member of Germanys corporate governance commission Christian Strenger said removing Diess after his full apology would be quite a mistake given the progress he has made getting the Porsche-Piech families on board with reforms. Hes been pretty successful in getting them moving. For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section The Russian military deployed a pair of Su-27 fighter jets to shadow a US Air Force B-52H Stratofortress bomber over the neutral waters of the Baltic Sea, they said after releasing a short clip of the intercept. The Defense Ministry said the nuclear-capable US bomber was detected long in advance and sent warplanes in response. The American aircraft later changed its course away from Russia, after which the two Sukhoi planes returned to base. A video of the encounter showed the strategic bomber apparently filmed from inside the cockpit of one of the Russian fighters. The Stratofortress is one of six which the US Air Force deployed to Europe for the latest string of training exercises with its NATO allies. The task force arrived to Britains Fairford airfield from the Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana last week, according to US defense officials. The European deployment is the largest for US strategic aviation since 2003, when the Allies on the continent were involved in the US-led invasion of Iraq. The US Air Force said four B-52s conducted flights to several places in Europe, including to the Norwegian Sea, the Baltic Sea/Estonia and the Mediterranean Sea/Greece on Monday. Also on rt.com Su-27 intercepts & chases US spy plane away from Russias borders (VIDEO) A separate training mission involving B-52s was conducted on Monday from Guam, with the bombers flying north along Russias Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East before returning to the Andersen airbase. Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site. 0108263 License for publishing multimedia online Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349 (CNN) About 1,600 people have been secretly filmed in hotel rooms in South Korea, with the footage live-streamed online for paying customers to watch, police said Wednesday. Two men have been arrested and another pair investigated in connection with the scandal, which involved 42 rooms in 30 accommodations in 10 cities around the country. Police said there was no indication the businesses were complicit in the scheme. In South Korea, small hotels of the type involved in this case are generally referred to as motels or inns. Cameras were hidden inside digital TV boxes, wall sockets and hairdryer holders and the footage was streamed online, the Cyber Investigation Department at the National Police Agency said in a statement. The site had more than 4,000 members, 97 of whom paid a $44.95 monthly fee to access extra features, such as the ability to replay certain live streams. Between November 2018 and this month, police said, the service brought in upward of $6,000. "There was a similar case in the past where illegal cameras were (secretly installed) and were consistently and secretly watched, but this is the first time the police caught where videos were broadcast live on the internet," police said. South Korea has a serious problem with spy cameras and illicit filming. In 2017, more than 6,400 cases of illegal filming were reported to police, compared to around 2,400 in 2012. Last year, tens of thousands of women took to the streets of Seoul and other cities to protest against the practice and demand action, under the slogan "My Life is Not Your Porn." In response, Seoul launched a special squad of women inspectors who have been conducting regular inspections of the city's 20,000 or so public toilets to search for spy cameras, though some critics have denounced the move as a superficial response to a societal issue. Lee Ji-soo, a computer specialist who helps women scrub the web of images taken without their consent, told CNN last year her company had seen a surge in demand since the protests drew attention to the issue. "The most common things that the clients are saying and they are quite heartbreaking are 'I want to die' or 'I cannot leave my house.' Especially the victims of spy cam or illegally taken videos say that when they encounter people on the street, they feel like they would be recognized," she said. In January, the co-owner of a South Korean revenge porn site was sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $1.26 million. Soranet, which was shut down last year, was a popular site for uploading videos and photos taken using hidden and upskirt cameras. This story was first published on CNN.com "Hundreds of hotel guests were secretly filmed and live-streamed online" China has a responsibility not to shield Pakistan, a senior Trump administration official has said, expressing deep disappointment over Beijing's decision to block a bid in the UN to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a "global terrorist". Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) led by Azhar claimed responsibility for the February 14 terrorist attack in Kashmir's Pulwama district which killed 40 Indian security personnel. "We think China has a responsibility to also not shield Pakistan and join the international community in calling on Pakistan to take action against terrorists operating on its soil," the senior Trump administration official said on Wednesday. After the Pulwama attack, the US, France and Britain moved a resolution in the UN Sanctions Committee of the Security Council to designate Azhar as a "global terrorist". The move suffered a setback as China put a "technical hold" on the proposal for the forth time, a move India termed as disappointing. "We believe that China and the US share a mutual interest in achieving regional stability and peace. And that any failure on the Security Council as part to designate Masood Azhar as a terrorist would run counter to this mutual goal that China and the United States have," the official said. "We don't really understand this. China should not be shielding Pakistan's support for known terrorist organisations. So, we're hoping that we can work together on a mutual goal in terms of countering terrorism and upholding our security council responsibility," the official said. The Trump administration's view on China's decision on Azhar came as Germany initiated a move at the European Union to list the JeM leader as a global terrorist. Noting that it was not the first time the JeM attacked India, the official said this was the reason the Trump administration thinks now is the time for Pakistan to crackdown on the terror group. This has been made very clear to the leadership of Pakistan, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. This same group was responsible for other attacks in India like the 2001 Parliament attack, which resulted in a six-month India-Pakistan mobilisation, the official said. The US is also working at the United Nations, urging Pakistan to uphold its responsibilities pursuant to its UN Security Council commitments to deny safe haven and support to terrorists and to freeze the funds and financial assets of entities on the UN Security Council 1267 sanctions list. According to the EOW, the accused colluded with the former promoters of Religare Enterprises, Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh. (Image: Reuters) live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More The Singh brothers may need close to a billion dollars to pay Daiichi Sankyos arbitration award and comply with the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBIs) order to return funds diverted from Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises, if they want to avoid a possible imprisonment. The Supreme Court on March 14 asked Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh, referred to as Singh brothers, to consult their legal and financial legal advisers and revert to the Court by March 28 as to how they propose to secure the award, which has been passed against them. The Japanese drug maker is trying to enforce an arbitration award of Rs 3,500 crore it secured from a Singapore tribunal against Singh brothers in January last year. Daiichi alleged that Singh brothers had concealed information about Ranbaxy regulatory problems with the US Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) while selling the company in 2008 for $4.6 billion, of which $2.4 billion went to the brothers. Meanwhile, back-to-back SEBI orders on March 14 and 19 directed Religare Enterprises and Fortis Healthcare to recover Rs 2,315 crore and Rs 403 crore, respectively, that were diverted by the Singh brothers and their related companies. The market regulator set a three-month deadline for Singh brothers to refund the money. Religare has already initiated the recovery proceedings through corporate insolvency resolution process under Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code, 2016 against Singh brothers and their entities. Not long ago, Singh brothers were on the Forbes richest Indian businessmen list, with a net worth of $1.4 billion in 2016. Now, they have lost most of that wealth. Their shareholding in Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises has now fallen to around a percent, Given the meltdown of their wealth, it looks a tall order for Singh brothers to arrange those funds. But a person who knew brothers told Moneycontrol said a significant portion of their wealth is locked in real estate assets. A large portion of the money the brothers received through sale of Ranbaxy was routed into buying real estate, said a person who didnt want to be named. But there is a problem, says the above person, as the investments into real estate was made through an intricate web of companies and its opaque. Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the spiritual head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), his family members and companies controlled by them are said to be in control of some of these properties. Dhillon is a father like figure for the Singh brothers. Malvinder Singh in his affidavit to the Supreme Court, alleged that Dhillon, his family members and companies controlled by him used funds from the Ranbaxy sale to buy real estate and loaned over Rs 6,000 crore. Singh brothers also blamed former Religare top executive Sunil Godhwani for the groups troubles. In a joint statement, they earlier said that Godhwani was the architect of the financial structures, including the loans to the Dhillon family and companies, that led to their financial troubles. Shivinder now blames his brother Malvinder solely for the troubles. He alleged his brother diverted funds from group companies while he retired from corporate life at 40 and was spending time doing spiritual and charitable work at RSSB. He also tried to distance himself from the whole Daiichi-Ranbaxy deal, saying that he was not involved in the negotiations and wasnt part of the arbitration proceedings. With so much at stake, its interesting to see what the next moves of the Singh brothers will be. File image India Thursday welcomed the arrest of bank fraud accused Nirav Modi by British authorities in London, and said it was engaged with the UK for his extradition at the earliest. Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India continued to actively follow up with the UK the case of Modi's extradition to India. "We welcome the fact that Nirav Modi has been arrested by the United Kingdom authorities pursuant to the arrest warrant issued by the Westminster Magistrate Court," Kumar said. "Government of India continues to actively follow up this matter with the authorities concerned in the UK, with a view to have Nirav Modi extradited to India at the earliest," he said. The arrest of Modi, the main accused in the USD 2 billion PNB scam case, came days after a London court issued an arrest warrant against him in response to a request by the Enforcement Directorate for his extradition in a money laundering case. On Wednesday, a court in the UK, remanded him in custody till March 29. Modi and his uncle, Mehul Choksi, are the main accused in the PNB scam and they both left India before the details of the fraud came to light in January 2018. Modi is one of India's richest men, worth an estimated USD 1.75 billion, according to Forbes. He launched his own eponymous brand in 2010 and he soon had stores across India, as well as in New York, London and Hong Kong. One of the scariest things about the internet is that people can spread misinformation and feelings over data and facts, and get other people to follow suit and adopt their beliefs. Things quickly become frenzied. The whole anti-vaxxer debate is the most recent example of people perpetuating feelings over facts, and its pretty terrifying. Ironically enough, I witnessed a Facebook friend post something just last week about her stance on not vaccinating her children, and everything spiraled out of control real quick. She stated her reason for not vaccinating is due to vaccines causing autism and she doesnt want her children to get autism. Listen, I am all for constructive debates, but how can you debate something that is being spread with no grounding in reality? How are you supposed to combat pseudoscience, which are beliefs and statements people try to pass off as science or facts, but are the complete opposite of data and science? The CDC has stated that there is no link to vaccines causing autism. On their website it says, Some people have had concerns that ASD might be linked to the vaccines children receive, but studies have shown that there is no link between receiving vaccines and developing ASD. A recently released study conducted in Denmark using all the children born in the country between 1999 and 2010 has also debunked this theory. The study strongly supports that MMR vaccination does not increase the risk for autism, the authors of this study wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine. We believe our results offer reassurance and provide reliable data. And then you read about things in the media such as the 6-year-old boy right in Oregon who got Tetanus because he wasnt vaccinated against the disease. He sliced open his forehead playing at home on a farm, contracted Tetanus, and ended up spending 57 days in the hospital (47 of which were spent in intensive care) to the tune of $811,929. Pinterest just announced that they are stepping up to shut down anti-vaxxers, and to combat the spreading of misinformation theyre going to stop returning any search results for vaccines or keywords related to vaccines. This is their temporary solution as they try to find something that works better long-term. I have to applaud Pinterest for making such a bold move. They make a great point about misinformation being spread online. When people spread misinformation about health related content, it puts the people that read and believe that at risk. In regards to social media, freedom of speech generally doesnt apply to hateful conduct or things that are considered dangerous, and it quite frankly shouldnt. It will be interesting to see how other social media platforms step up to address the spreading of pseudoscience. In the meantime, be sure to research anything you do read online, especially if it is medical or health related. Dont believe everything you read. Look at as many different sources as you can while trying to form opinions, and make sure those sources are credible. Bre is a female millennial go getter residing in New York. One part entrepreneur, one part geek, she obtained her degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology. She has held some exciting roles in both fashion as a designer working for brands like Victorias Secret and Henri Bendel, as well as in ad tech working for publishers like Ziff Davis. Today she operates her own luxury label Bre Avery, along with Chip Chick Media which reaches millions of women each month. Bre is passionate about teaching women how to build a business and be an entrepreneur, in addition to keeping her readers informed of the latest technology trends and exciting products to improve their lifestyles. You can send Bre a message here. Ravindra V Rao Cotton markets have recovered almost 6 percent from 11-month lows hit in February. Fibre crop is among the most hit commodity in terms of output in the 2018-19 season due to the drought situation in the major producing belts of Gujarat and Marathwada. Despite this, cotton prices have fallen consistently since October 2018 pressured by weakness in the global markets. The heightening trade tensions between the US and China adversely impacted global cotton markets, ultimately hampering overseas demand for high-priced Indian cotton. The recent rally in the domestic cotton prices is mainly on hopes of exports to China along with a further downward revision in the Indian cotton output estimates. Moreover, global cotton markets also have shown signs of recovery in the last one month on optimism over easing trade deals between the two cotton giants. The benchmark ICE cotton futures gained more than 8 percent over the last month. Domestic fundamentals continue to showcase an optimistic price picture as ending stocks in 2018-19 crop year (Oct-Sep) are lowest in more than a decade and are down 40 percent at 17 lakh bales. The latest estimates by the Indian Cotton Association pegs domestic cotton production at 328 lakh bales for the 2018-19 season, compared to its preliminary estimates of 348 lakh bales. The current year output is 10 percent lower than the 2017-18 season and is the lowest crop size in almost a decade. Another major component of the supply side is the carried-over stock from the last season. The 2017-18 season witnessed robust overseas sales which led to a 22 percent drop in ending stocks. Imports though doubled from last year, the total supplies still plunged 8 percent in 2018-19. Demand picture has not been so attractive for cotton this season and thus one of the reasons for the fall in prices since October 2018. Exports are estimated to decline 20 lakh bales in 2018-19 to 50 lakh bales compared to last year. Domestic consumption too is expected to fall by 30 lakh bales to 316 lakh. Thus total demand may drop 5.7 percent this season. It is, however, to be noted that Indian traders have recently signed fresh export deals with China, which is over and above the 6 lakh bales already shipped so far since October 2018. The global cotton market, which was earlier estimated to be in a deficit is expected to turn into a surplus in 2019-20. For 2019-20, the USDA expects a healthy increase in production to 126.5 million bales. Mill-use is projected to increase at a rate near the long-term average next crop year to 125.5 million bales. US-China trade relations would continue to play a major role and the main catalyst for global cotton prices. Nevertheless, domestic cotton prices should stay positive amid the recent developments over exports. Moreover, increasing probability of Elnino is a concern for Indian monsoon, and thereby for the Kharif grown fibre crop. The author is Head - Commodity Research & Advisory, Anand Rathi Shares and Stock Brokers. : The views and investment tips expressed by investment expert on moneycontrol.com are his own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. live bse live nse live Volume Todays L/H More Moneycontrol Contributor The Nifty on the weekly chart has formed the strongest bull candle since November 2018, signifying acceleration in the upward momentum as it surpassed our earmarked target of 11,400, supported by strong market breadth and above average volumes. The index continued with its positive momentum during the current week and formed a high of 11,556 on March 20. Going forward, we expect the bias to remain positive as long as the index maintains a higher low formation on the daily chart. The Nifty has rallied more than 950-points over the past four weeks, leading the daily stochastic oscillator to hover in the overbought trajectory (at 86), suggesting the possibility of a temporary breather cannot be ruled out. Going forward, we expect the index to consolidate in the broader range of 11,60011,400, amid stock specific action, which will make the market healthier. Hence, any temporary cool-off towards 11,400 should be used as an incremental buying opportunity, paving the way for the next leg of upmove. On expected lines, the Nifty Midcap and Smallcap indices extended gains over four consecutive weeks, leading to the faster pace of retracement of the last leg of decline, denoting a structural turnaround, boding well for the next leg of the upmove. We view the breather in the last six sessions as a secondary phase of consolidation and an integral part of the primary uptrend. Thus, corrective declines should be capitalised on as an incremental buying opportunity given that the broader structure remains positive. Correspondingly, both indices have maintained the rhythm of not correcting for more than 14 months each since inception. Also, the Nifty Midcap index has bounced from its 200-week Exponential Moving Average (EMA), which makes us believe that both indices have approached maturity of their price-wise, time-wise correction. Here is a list of top two stocks, which investors can look at for a period of one-to-six months: Kansai Nerolac Paints: Buy| LTP: Rs 459| Target: Rs 550| Stop Loss: Rs 405| Upside 20%| Time Frame 6 months The share price of Kansai Nerolac Paints is at the cusp of a falling channel breakout containing entire decline since high of Dec17 (Rs 614) signalling a reversal of the secondary corrective trend and offers fresh entry opportunity for the next leg of the upmove. The stock has already taken 14-months to retrace just 80 percent of the previous 12 months up move from Rs 319 to Rs 614, a slower retracement of the previous major rising segment signals positive price structure and indicates strength. The short-term support for the stock is placed around Rs 405 levels as it is the 61.8 percent retracement of the previous up move Rs 343 to 499. We expect the stock to resolve higher in the coming months. The favourable risk-reward set-up offers a fresh entry opportunity for upside toward Rs 560 as it is 80 percent retracement of the entire decline (Rs 614 to Rs 343). Sobha: Buy| LTP: Rs 457| Target: Rs 492| Stop Loss: Rs 422| Upside: 7%| Time Frame 14 days The share price of Sobha is at the cusp of a breakout above the last four weeks consolidation range of Rs 459-427, thus offering a fresh entry opportunity to ride the next up move in the stock. During the current week, the stock has rebounded from the major support area of Rs 425-430 as it is the confluence of the following: a) major trendline support joining the lows of November 2016 (Rs 216) and October 2017 (Rs 383)b) the 200 weeks EMA c) 61.8 percent retracement of the previous up move (Rs 380-514) The stock has formed a higher trough in the weekly chart and is likely to resume a fresh up move. Among oscillators, the weekly 14-periods RSI has generated a bullish crossover above its nine periods average, thus supporting the positive bias. We expect the stock to resolve higher and head towards Rs 496 as it is 80 percent retracement of the last corrective decline (Rs 514-426) placed around Rs 496 levels (The author is Head Technical, ICICI Direct.com Research) Disclaimer: The views and investment tips expressed by investment expert on Moneycontrol.com are his own and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions. Tata Steel is likely to offer to sell parts of its European packaging activities to secure regulatory approval for a planned joint venture with Thyssenkrupp, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The two steelmakers on March 20 agreed to an eight-day extension to a deadline for submitting remedies to the European Commission, which has been concerned that the combined entity could hurt competition in some areas. The people said no final decisions have been made and remedy proposals could still change or be amended before the new April 1 deadline. The Commission aims to wrap up its antitrust investigation into Tata Steel and Thyssenkrupp's tie-up by May 13. Thyssenkrupp and Tata Steel last year agreed to combine their European steel activities in a 50-50 joint venture to cut overcapacity and create a more powerful challenger to market leader ArcelorMittal. Offering some packaging steel assets would address one of the areas that have been singled out by the Commission in its antitrust review. Under their deal, both companies would own about half of the European packaging steel market, industry sources have said. Thyssenkrupp declined to comment. A spokesman for Tata Steel said it was not appropriate to comment or speculate on the process. "Both companies are committed to working closely with all relevant regulators to ensure the success of this transaction," he said. In the financial year 2017/2018, Tata Steel Europe made 1.03 billion euros ($1.2 billion) of sales from packaging steel for food, paint and aerosol cans, among others, accounting for about 13 percent of total revenues. This is only slightly less than the 1.16 billion euros generated by Thyssenkrupp's packaging steel unit Rasselstein in 2015/2016, according to the latest available company data. This business will not be part of the remedy offer, the people said. In packaging, Thyssenkrupp and Tata Steel are both active in the production of tinplate and blackplate. Another area of concern for the Commission is electrical steel, where Tata Steel last year put its Cogent business on the block. The companies hope that the disposal plans will be sufficient to avoid further remedies, the people said. Sources told Reuters earlier this month that Thyssenkrupp and Tata Steel would drive a hard bargain in their discussions with the Commission to not put at risk the strategic and economic rationale of the deal. US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that US tariffs on Chinese imports could remain in place for a "substantial period," dampening hopes that a new trade agreement would see them lifted soon. "We are talking about leaving them for a substantial period of time," Trump told reporters at the White House, a week before US and Chinese officials are due to begin a fresh round of talks in Beijing. "We have to make sure that if we do the deal with China, that China lives by the deal." Trump also said the trade talks were "coming along nicely." Washington and Beijing are battling over the final shape of an agreement that both sides have said they would like to reach, with American officials demanding profound changes to Chinese industrial policy. American officials have also insisted that any agreement have teeth -- including the ability to impose tariffs unilaterally should China begin backsliding on any commitments to end alleged unfair trade practices. Over the last eight months, the United States and China have slapped tariffs on more than $360 billion in two-way goods trade, weighing on the manufacturing sectors in both countries. On Friday, China's rubber-stamp parliament approved a foreign investment law to strengthen protections for intellectual property -- a central US grievance -- but critics said the bill was rammed through without sufficient time for input from businesses. China has expressed willingness to increase purchases of American commodities such as energy and soybeans but analysts say they will be reluctant to accede to American demands in ways that could weaken the communist party's hold on power -- such as fully exposing state enterprises to market forces. The government should appeal against Swami Aseemanand's acquittal in the Samjhauta blast case if Prime Minister Narendra Modi was really the "chowkidar" of the country, AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi said. Attacking Modi's "main bhi chowkidar" (I too a watchman) campaign, Owaisi at an election rally said, "What kind of a chowkidar are you? 25 Indians are also among the dead in that (Samjhauta blast). Bomb blast is a terrorist offence. How are you a chowkidar?" A special court in Haryana's Panchkula acquitted Aseemanand and three others in the Samjhauta Express blast case which had left 68 people, mostly Pakistanis, dead in 2007. "If Modi was really a 'chowkidar' he should immediately announce that the government would appeal against the court verdict," Owaisi said. The blast in the India-Pakistan train took place near Panipat in Haryana on February 18, 2007, when it was on its way to Attari in Amritsar, the last station on the Indian side. "What kind of a chowkidar are you? Why are you afraid of Aseemanand? Why this love? came to know that Aseemanand was associated with RSS at one point of time," the Hyderabad lawmaker said. Referring to the attacks in Pulwama, Uri and the Air Force base in Pathankot, Owaisi sought to know what kind of "chowkidar" was Modi. "This country does not need a chowkidar. This country needs an honest prime minister," Owaisi, who is seeking reelection from the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat, said. "The country needs a person who understands the Constitution, whose spirit is secularism, justice, fraternity and liberty," he added. Owaisi reiterated that China blocking a UN resolution to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar as global terrorist was a failure of the NDA government's "jhoola (swing) diplomacy". He was referring to Chinese president Xi Jinping and Modi sitting in a swing during their visit to Ahmedabad. He slammed BJP chief Amit Shah and some Union ministers for allegedly giving different figures on the number of dead in the Balakot air strikes. Accusing RSS of seeking to weaken the country's composite culture, he said the Hyderabad parliament seat "fights to shatter that". Owaisi said he knew Modi spent 25-30 years of his life in the RSS. "The books written by RSS veterans indicate that they were against the composite culture of the country," he claimed. "In his first speech, Narendra Modi stood up and said in Parliament that we got authority after 1,200 years of slavery. "An MP was sitting next to me, may be from the Congress, he asked me Owaisi saab, what is this 1,200 years. I said he (Modi) was referring to the time when Muslims were rulers of Delhi. The prime minister said that (period) was also a phase of slavery," he said. Owaisi asked if the period when Taj Mahal and the Red Fort were built was also a phase of slavery. The SCO's new Secretary-General Vladimir Norov has said that issues between India and Pakistan should be resolved bilaterally and their participation in the security grouping could become "impossible" without a commitment for an "unconditional" fight against terrorism and separatism. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) was established in Shanghai in 2001 with China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as founding members. It was expanded in 2017 with the inclusion of India and Pakistan. Addressing his first press conference here on Wednesday after assuming charge, Norov said that the Pulwama terror attack was a "direct provocation" by the opponents of peace between India and Pakistan. Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after a suicide bomber of Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed killed 40 CRPF personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district in February 14. "The recent situation between India and Pakistan, which has resulted in human casualties, I would like to note that there has been a direct provocation by the opponents of the Indo-Pakistani accord and peace," Norov, who was the former Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan, said in response to questions. Asked how the SCO mechanism could be used to resolve the recent tensions between India and Pakistan, he said: "before joining the SCO as full members, India and Pakistan committed themselves to strictly implement all the provisions of the legal framework that has been developed by the Member States of the Organisation". "One of the such fundamental obligation is not to bring bilateral contradictions and disagreements to the SCO family, as the SCO is not engaged in the settlement of disputable bilateral issues, whether border, water or other topics in relations between individual Member States," he said. These issues must be resolved and are being resolved through bilateral consultations and dialogue, goodwill and mutual reasonable compromises, he said. "The most important condition for participation in a multi-disciplinary cooperation within the SCO is the commitment to unconditional and consistent struggle against terrorism, separatism and extremism. Otherwise, it would be impossible for the two states to participate in the SCO," Norov said. The whole world has heard clear signals from the parties not to escalate relations and their readiness to fully understand and follow the principles established within the organisation, he said. "In addition, to offer mediation of the member states of the organization as there is an intention to resolve the differences in a bilateral format," Norov said. After joining the SCO, India and Pakistan have common ground and are ready to work in the SCO format to ensure regional security, joint counteraction to complex challenges and threats, sustainable socio-economic development, he said. This was stated by the leaders of India and Pakistan at last year's SCO summit in Qingdao in particular their intention to play an active and constructive role in the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group as peace and stability in Afghanistan is a matter of common concern for all the SCO countries, he said. Both India and Pakistan participated in the activities of the SCO as observers for 12 years and their accession to the SCO was preceded by a fairly long preparatory stage, he said. At present, representatives of India and Pakistan are actively working in two permanent bodies of the organisation which included the SCO Secretariat and the Executive Committee of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), Norov said, adding that the Indian and Pakistani sides also take part in the activities of all 29 SCO working mechanisms of the SCO. Also over 300 military personnel of India and Pakistan took part in the international anti-terrorist exercises "Peace Mission-2018", which took place at the at Chelyabinsk region of Russia last year. This "testifies to the joint and effective work of these two countries within the SCO," Norov said. The counter-terrorism exercises are due to be held this year again. The SCO will hold its summit in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, in June this year. Norov said the admission into the SCO of the "two large and influential states of South Asia" is of particular importance for the organisation and for the Eurasian region, as well to India and Pakistan themselves. "Being at the same negotiating table, and on a regular basis and in different formats, India and Pakistan are now in the process of a permanent dialogue on all issues which are currently in the agenda of the SCO," he said. He said that with the admission of India and Pakistan, the SCO has acquired a trans-regional character and in terms of its aggregate potential, the total population, territory, reserves of natural resources, GDP, it has become the largest organisation not only in the region, but also in the world. Many experts note that the SCO should be among the main "supporting structures" of the future world order, he said. Norov said that the SCO Charter defines joint counteraction to terrorism, separatism and extremism in all their manifestations as one of the important tasks. Countering terrorism, separatism and extremism in particular in identifying, preventing and suppressing the manifestations of these "three forces of evil" in the territories of the SCO member states has become a major work of the organisation, he added. BSP chief Mayawati Wednesday announced she will not contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, but stressed it was not necessary to be an MP to become a minister or a prime minister. The statement announcing her decision pointedly mentioned that a minister or a prime minister has six months to become a member of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha. The Bahujan Samaj Party chief has in the past indicated that she is not averse to becoming the country's prime minister and posters put up by her supporters in Uttar Pradesh have pitched her for the position. "In view of the present circumstances and the need of the country and the interests of the party, the movement and the public, it is the need of the hour that I do not contest the Lok Sabha polls, Mayawati said. The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister asked party workers to not get disheartened with her decision. "When I became UP Chief Minister the first time in 1995, I was not a member of either the UP Assembly or the Council, she said. It is a similar provision at the Centre, where a person has to become a Lok Sabha or a Rajya Sabha member within six months of holding office of a minister or the prime minister, she added. Don't get disheartened by my decision to not contest the Lok Sabha polls now," she tweeted. The Dalit leader added it would not be a problem if there is a need for her to enter Parliament later. "If it so happens that I have to get elected to the Lok Sabha later, I can contest from any seat by getting it vacated and becoming an MP. I will not face any problem," she said. Mayawati claimed that all she has to do is to file the nomination papers and her party workers will ensure her victory. The BSP chief suggested that if she contests now, party workers will focus on her seat even if she forbids them, affecting the campaign in other constituencies. "Hence, winning each and every Lok Sabha seat is more important than my personal victory," she added. The BSP, Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal have entered into an alliance in Uttar Pradesh for the April-May Lok Sabha polls. The Congress is not part of this pact, but the alliance has said it will not field candidates in Amethi and Raebareli, the two seats that are now with Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. The Congress, in turn, said it will leave seven UP seats for the SP-BSP-RLD alliance, an offer that was spurned by Mayawati. The mistrust between India and China can be overcome by engaging in all fields - from trade and industries to cultural exchanges between the two nations, Air Chief Marshal (retd) Arup Raha said here Wednesday. Stability in the world will depend on how the two countries handle relations with each other, Raha told newspersons here. The former Air Force chief, however, said that while nurturing relations with any neighbour or other nation, maintaining our strategic autonomy is very important." Regarding China's continued blocking of India's bid to designate Pakistan-based JeM chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN, he said "They (China) are losing on their image around the world." Thinktank CENERS-K held a day-long 'Calcutta Dialogue on Engaging People's Republic of China', where Chinese speakers, apart from distinguished Indian experts engaged in discussions on ways and means of building trust between the two countries, Raha, who is the president of the organisation, said. "Through this symposium, we want to increase contact between the two countries," former Army Chief General (retd) Shankar Roy Chowdhury, patron of CENERS-K, said. Indian Chamber of Commerce Director General Rajeev Singh said that connectivity in the east and north-east has improved significantly with new highways, railways and waterways, making it a gateway to a huge market in east and south-east Asia. "Better connectivity will make India a hub for investment in trade and manufacturing and China is a very important country in this regard," he said. The Congress on Thursday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for using the Balakot air strikes to woo voters ahead of Lok Sabha elections, saying his "snide remarks" reflect the bankruptcy of political discourse on his part. Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala also accused the Prime Minister of being a "habitual offender" in seeking credit for the valour and bravery of the security forces after having failed to deliver on key issues of jobs, agrarian and economic crisis and corruption. "Such snide remarks only reflect the bankruptcy of political discourse on part of a Prime Minister staring at defeat in 2019," he said. "Modiji is a habitual offender in credit seeking for the valour and sacrifice of our armed forces," he alleged. Surjewala said after having "scored a zero" on delivery on jobs, agrarian crisis, slump in economic indices, he is "politicising the bravery of our jawans". "Yet he fails to admit that Pulwama terror attack was a gross national security and intelligence failure as PM was busy shooting movies like a Bollywood star even hours after the attack," he alleged. The remarks come in the wake of Modi making a mention of the Balakot air strike in Pakistan to woo voters while interacting with watchmen. Modi's remarks came days after the Election Commission said parties should not make use of national security issues in elections. In Wednesday's interaction, Modi also attacked opposition parties over its response to the Indian Air Force's strikes on terrorist camps in Pakistan following the Pulwama terror attack, saying bombs were dropped in the neighbouring country but they were screaming in India. "Every Indian is proud, but people are sad and perplexed at the response of opposition parties. In fact, those supporting 'tukde tukde gang' are not able to digest that how our armed forced rained bombs on Pakistan," he said while addressing watchmen. Modi was apparently referring to Gandhi's visit to the JNU campus in support of students, some of whom were accused by police of raising anti-India slogans. Representative Image An Army soldier was killed when Pakistan violated ceasefire by heavily shelling forward areas and posts with mortar bombs along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district Thursday, officials said. Pakistani troops violated ceasefire in Keri belt of Sunderbani sector this morning, they said. One soldier was was killed in Pakistani firing, they added. Pakistani troops have violated the ceasefire over 110 times along the LoC since January. On Monday night, Pakistan army initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation by resorting to shelling with mortar bombs and firing of small arms along the LoC in Akhnoor and Sunderbani sectors, a defence spokesman had said. An Army soldier was killed and four others were injured Monday when Pakistan Army violated the ceasefire by resorting to heavy mortar shelling and firing along the LoC in Rajouri district. "Rifleman Karamjeet Singh was critically injured and later succumbed to injuries," the spokesman had said. The border skirmishes witnessed a spurt after India's air strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp in Balakot, Pakistan, on February 26 in response to the February 14 Pulwama attack that killed 40 CRPF personnel. The year 2018 witnessed the highest number of ceasefire violations -- 2,936 -- by Pakistani troops in the last 15 years along the Indo-Pak border. Pakistan continues to violate the 2003 ceasefire agreement with India despite repeated calls for restraint and adherence to the pact during flag meetings between the two sides. Finnish authorities will launch an investigation into claims that Nokia phones have been transmitting users' personal data to China, the country's data protection ombudsman announced on March 21. "Based on our initial analysis it appears that personal data has also been transferred (to China)," Reijo Aarnio, Finland's data protection ombudsman, told the news agency STT. The Norwegian broadcaster NRK published claims that data from Nokia's 7 Plus mobile phones, including location information and serial numbers, has been sent to servers of the state-owned company China Telecom. "The idea is that data moves freely within the EU, but when we go outside the EU, there must always be a legal basis," Aarnio said. "We are requesting information to try and find out whether there was a legal basis in this case. The second thing is how notification has worked, so were phone users aware that information about them is being transferred to China?" he said. The Finnish-owned company HMD Global, which manufactures Nokia handsets and has recently seen robust sales growth on the Chinese market, told NRK that some information from the 7 Plus handset has been sent to China, but denied that individual users can be identified from the data. It said customers have been sent a software update which corrects the issue. In recent years, data security concerns over smartphones and network equipment made by the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei have drawn warnings from western intelligence agencies and seen the company banned from selling its 5G network equipment to US, Australian and New Zealand markets. Its not surprising to hear Harry Potter fans say that they can never get enough of both the books and its movie adaptations. The 90s kids practically grew up with the characters played by English actors Daniel Radcliff, Ema Watson, and Rupert Grint, playing the lead cast. It held a super special spot in their hearts and continue to do so, helping them to find an escape to a world of power, magic and fantasy from time to time. And yet, some fans took to microblogging platform Twitter to troll the author JK Rowling. Heres why. The author, like the rest of the Potterheads, just can't seem to let go of Harry Potter. It is almost as if she is creating her own fan-fiction of the series. Turns out thats too much even for the fans to digest. The last book from the series -- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- was released in 2008 and the movie came out in 2011. Eight years have passed since and yet the author is refusing to stop milking the franchise dry, dropping random and irrelevant details about Hogwarts and its residents from time to time. Some of her recent additions to the storyline would include absurd claims such as the witches and wizards used to shit themselves before the castle had got plumbing work done; she also said once that Dumbledore and Grindelwald shared an intense and passionate sexual relationship. No one: J.K. Rowling: Dumbledore and Grindelwald actually met on an app called WizrD Zach Erhardt (@TakhomaZach) March 17, 2019 anyone: jk rowling: dobby assassinated princess diana emily (@theemiree) January 28, 2019 me: jonny sun (@jonnysun) January 28, 2019 if one day J.K rowling release a new book called 50 Shades Of Dumbledore I wouldn't be surprised adam (@ehhitsadam) March 18, 2019 person: the new avengers: endgame trailer looks so cool j.k rowling: dobby was supposed to be in the marvel cinematic universe Hoover (@Hooverr) March 17, 2019 Anyone else anxiously awaiting J. K. Rowlings list of muggle parents that scammed the sorting hat system? Mimi Torres (@Mimi_Can_Voice) March 14, 2019 No one: J.K. Rowling: Dumbledore was a closeted Mariah Carey fan and he often disappeared from Hogwarts to buy her albums in the muggle world. He saw her in concert in 1996 in London. Marcos (@MarcosCastilloB) March 18, 2019 Fans are done with these modifications and a bunch of these funny tweets where they vent out their frustration bear testimony to our claims. President Donald Trump on Wednesday launched a prolonged attack on the integrity of a huge probe into whether he or his election campaign colluded with Russia or obstructed justice -- but did say that the final report should be released. "If you want to let them see it, let them see it," Trump said of the report, which independent special prosecutor Robert Mueller is believed to be close to finishing. Trump has been investigated for almost two years, following suspicions that he or his team had improper ties to Moscow. Mueller will submit his findings to the Trump-appointed attorney general, who is not obligated to release the report. But pressure is intense for the contents to be made public. In anticipation, Trump intensified his long-running campaign to question the legitimacy of Mueller, who is widely respected, and to undermine confidence in the report itself. Trump referred to his 2016 election win as "one of the greatest... in the history of this country" and said by contrast that Mueller had no popular support. Mueller is "a man out of the blue" and "writing a report that never got a vote," Trump told journalists at the White House. Mueller, a former FBI director, was appointed in May 2017 with widespread bipartisan backing in Congress, four months into Trump's turbulent presidency. Trump has repeatedly attacked the probe into his Russia ties as "a witch hunt" and is expected to raise the volume as he starts campaigning for reelection in 2020. "My voters don't get it and I don't get it," he said of the Mueller probe. More than 700,000 people have rushed to sign a petition on the British parliament's website calling for the government to revoke its divorce notice to the European Union and remain in the bloc. Attracting thousands of signatures every few minutes, the petition took off in the hours after Prime Minister Theresa May made a televised address to the country late on March 20, criticising squabbling lawmakers for failing to agree on an exit strategy and telling parliament to make a final choice. "It is high time we made a decision," May said, telling Britons: "I am on your side." EU leaders will tell May on March 21 she can have two months to organise an orderly Brexit but Britain could face a disruptive ejection from the bloc on March 29 if she fails to win backing from parliament. More than 17 million Britons voted in favour of leaving the EU in a 2016 referendum while 16 million voted to remain, with May serving notice of the UK's intent to leave under Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty the following year. The "Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU" petition on the parliament website had attracted 706,096 signatures by 1048 GMT, backed by support on social media, although the site appeared to be regularly crashing due to the large numbers trying to sign. "The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is 'the will of the people'. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU," the petition said. Parliament must consider holding a debate on all petitions that gain more than 100,000 signatures. Supporters wrote on Twitter that the petition showed the strength of feeling against May's strategy while backers of Brexit said it needed to attract more signatures than the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the EU three years ago before anyone should take any notice. More than 1.8 million people signed a petition calling for US President Donald Trump to be prevented from making a state visit to Britain, leading to a debate in parliament in 2017. More than 4 million people signed another petition in 2016 which called for another EU referendum in the event that neither the remain or leave camps achieved 60 percent of the vote. Donald Trump has prioritised peace efforts in Afghanistan and his special envoy has initiated direct talks with the Taliban, but the US President will not accept a "bad deal" on efforts to end America's longest war, the White House has said. According to a senior Trump administration official, America has "contingency" plans, which might involve "military options" if the peace talks fail to yield desired results. As part of his efforts to garner international support for ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad will hold talks with counterparts from Russia, China and the European Union on Thursday and Friday. Khalilzad has held three round of talks with the Afghan Taliban in order to reach a settlement that would allow the US to withdraw its army and end the 17-year-old Afghan war, America's longest. "We are certainly prioritising peace efforts in Afghanistan. But as with all negotiations that involve vital US national security interests, we have contingency plans. The president has indicated he hopes for the best in these peace talks, but he will also not accept a bad deal," the official told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. The official explained that the US was hoping for the success with the peace process. "But it's not the only route that we are looking at in terms of protecting vital US national security interests in Afghanistan," the official said. The contingencies being talked about might involve "military options", the official said. Noting that the US still faces terrorist threats in Afghanistan, the official said America will continue to do what is necessary to protect its interests. The US has a lot of options, the official said, adding that while no decision has been taken on withdrawal of troops, president Trump would like to bring the troops back. "He also recognises that we have vital terrorism interests in Afghanistan and he certainly is focused on keeping American safe. So we will do what we have to do to ensure those vital national security interests are protected," the official said. The Trump administration, also recognises that for "any peace agreement to be sustainable the Taliban would have to sit down with the Afghan government" and other Afghan stakeholders to discuss political way forward, the official said. The US will not sacrifice the key gains of the last 18 years, including on human rights, particularly women's rights, at the negotiating table, said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We won't sacrifice those gains," the official insisted. Khalilzad is working hard to establish an inter-Afghan dialogue with the Taliban, sitting down with the government officials and other stakeholders, the official said. The top American diplomat believes that he is getting closer to that goal, the official noted. Referring to the State of the Union Address by President Trump early this year, the official said as the US makes progress in the negotiations, America would be able to look at reducing its troop presence and focusing more on counterterrorism mission. "The president said he didn't know if we would be successful in these negotiations, but it was certainly worth trying," the official said. Last week, the White House cancelled the meeting of its National Security Council with Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib, who launched a personal attack against Khalilzad. Responding to questions on outburst by Mohib against Khalilzad, which has resulted in tension between US and Afghanistan, the official said the administration has strong objection to the personal attacks by the Afghan national security advisor. The official, however, said that the issue was not going to affect the strong bilateral ties between the US and Afghanistan. "We deeply value this relationship. We are fighting shoulder to shoulder on the battleground with Afghan security forces, we are working to stabilise the country and defeat terrorists' threats there together," the official said. "But, they are a reflection of the Afghan frustration that they're not in room in these talks between the US and the Taliban. So it's, urgent that we convince the Taliban to sit down with the Afghan government and other Afghans and engage in a political process," the official said. The official reiterated that any settlement simply won't be sustainable unless the Taliban agrees to sit down with other Afghan stakeholders and work out a political settlement. "The Taliban must sit down with the Afghan government as well as other Afghans to work these issues out. I think it pointed up the need to put urgency on that aspect of the peace process," the official said. The White House official asserted that the US will be consulting closely with the Afghan government in with regard to the peace talks with the Taliban. "We can look at ways to improve the communication between our two governments," the official said, adding that the US will be looking at ways to enhance its coordination and cooperation moving forward. Sorry Donald. Angela is not listening. Instead of bowing to pressure, Germanys Angela Merkel is not blocking Huawei equipment from their 5G rollout. Huawei wont be bidding. The bidding for bandwidth spectrum is already underway by companies like Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone Group and Telefonica. But Merkel has said nothing about the equipment the above companies need to use. And since Huawei provides cheap, easy to install equipment, theirs is bound to wind up somewhere in the German 5G network. But China uses hardware to spy on Americans, Trump says. Not only that, China tells exchange students to gather whatever information they can and bring it back to Xi Jinping, according to some US intelligence officials. Merkel is not fazed, though. There are two things I dont believe in, she said. First, to discuss these very sensitive security questions publicly, and second, to exclude a company simply because its from a certain country. Not surprising, coming from one of the most accepting and inclusive leaders of today. In response, Trumps team said they might scale back the information they share with Germany. They have to look like theyre taking this Huawei threat seriously, after all. But is Merkel making a huge mistake? Is there something in this Huawei threat the Donald speaks of? Download your free report and learn the three biggest opportunities to profit from Chinas middle-class income boom in 2019 and beyond. Who would you like handling your data? Youve probably heard a lot about the Ban Huawei movement Trump is pushing. It was enough to get us Aussies on board. New Zealand is toeing the line. But countries in Europe are less obliging. Various security experts have said Huawei tech poses risks. But couldnt you say the same about any kind of tech? Google and Facebook watch where you go. Amazon, if you use it, knows what you like and what you buy. If youre the suspicious type, then this kind of data harvesting probably doesnt sit well with you. But its all in the name of harmless ads really. I guess things get a little different when lawmakers and governments start looking into private information. So maybe your heart should beat a little faster knowing that the Chinese want a bit of your information. But remember, the US government wants the same thing. In fact, theyve passed laws to make it easier to spy on the American populace. Ask questions about it and officials will say its for your own good. Theyre trying to weed out the bad people from the good people. Yet whos deciding on these subjective definitions? Id argue itd be better to give a bit of information to private companies rather than direct government institutions. The latter are the ones with the guns, after all. Theyre the ones always threatening violence or imprisonment if you make them upset. But lets say Germany does heed Trumps word and blocks Huawei. Well, youve just set back Germanys 5G ambitions, maybe for a few years. South China Morning Post (SCMP) writes: Jochen Homann, chairman of the German Federal Network Agency (BNA), said excluding Huaweis equipment would present significant problems for the auction winners. Huawei is an important supplier, already present in our previous networks it will be difficult to do without such companies and this is not at all what we want, Homann told German public broadcaster ARD. What I think is more likely though, is that this is just another cooked up crisis used to further political power. Trump says Huawei is a threat. And the security community says Yeahmaybeits possible. He uses this threat against the American people to push some legislation and keep China under the US trade thumb. Then, if all goes according to plan, he can say, See! I saved you all from the great Panda threat. Now vote me in for a second term. FOMO for Germany This is not to say Merkel is taking no precautions at all. Again, from SCMP: 5G technology is harder to police, and that is why Germany is tightening requirements for companies that want to supply the technology whether they are from China or elsewhere, Merkel said. So far, lots of countries have used Huawei technology, she said at the conference. Thats why the federal government has not taken the approach of simply ruling out any contractor or stakeholder, but we have set standards for those bidding for 5G technology. We will also write these standards legally into our telecommunications laws We will give everyone a chance, but shouldnt be naive; instead we see that there are very different laws in China. Of course were in a systemic competition with China, Merkel said in a separate speech at the same event. But the answer cant be that we fight those who are economically strong, we must stand up for fair, reciprocal rules and not give up on multilateralism. They just dont want to be left behind, either. And to make sure they build out this new connectivity infrastructure as quickly as possible, telecoms like Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone Group and Telefonica are going to need Huawei equipment. Without it, you push back so many other kinds of futuristic technologies. You also restrict the population to live with the current lack of data speeds and capacity. Germany is already uncompetitive as it is. Merkel doesnt want to miss the boat on what could be the next technology revolution Your incognito friend, Harje Ronngard, Editor, Money Morning Free Report: Revealed in our brand-new Money Morning report: Chinas New Boom: Three Aussie Investments Primed to Soar in 2019 and Beyond. Download now. Westpac banking Corp [ASX:WBC] will ditch its personal financial advice division after being slapped with further regulations and legislation, which has rendered the service unprofitable across all four banks. Westpac was the last of the major banks to close its financial advice sector. At the time of writing, Westpacs share price is trading at $26.20, down 0.53%. Related: Discover three in-house small-cap stocks that Money Morning experts are watching in 2019. Westpacs restructure moves into business and consumer divisions As part of Westpacs restructure, the bank is ridding itself of salaried and aligned advisers. Consumer Bank Chief George Frazis and BT Chief Brad Cooper will both leave the company under the changes. Meanwhile, its residual wealth and insurance divisions will be carried over to Westpacs business and consumer sectors. The reshuffle will also incur a one-off cost between $250 million and $300 million. However, shareholders will be pleased to know that Westpac expects gains of $20 million a year in productivity after the cuts. Westpacs Brain Hartzer was reluctant at first to get rid of the financial advice business, but remediation costs rising from the royal commission, as well as the recommendations by the commission, indicated higher costs and liabilities in future. He ultimately decided that the advice division which had a $53 million loss (excluding remediation costs) would continue to lose more in the future. Now the company is moving to a referral model for financial advice, using panel advisers and adviser firms, instead of the 803 salaried and aligned advisers now on its book, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald. Westpac is the only bank to maintain a wealth managing function within its business, which isnt surprising when you consider its successful wholesale of Panorama platform, housing $16 billion of funds under management, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Westpacs share price forecast news Westpacs share price has been shaky over the last five years, and after being raked over the coals in the royal banking commission, things arent looking great for Westpac. That said, Westpacs strategy is starting to reflect the changing landscape every other major bank has had to adapt to. Non-bank wealth managers, including those operating within banks, will have to, at some point, abandon, sell or rework to do the same as Westpac has. How this will impact the stock market is hard to say, but one thing to consider is that if Westpac has started this process now, the string of restructuring later down the track from other wealth managers might impact Westpacs share price positively in the long run. Regards, Ryan Clarkson-Ledward, For Money Morning PS: Free report: Aussie stock picker Sam Volkering reveals what he believes are his next four big potential winners. Click here to download your free report now to find out. Dike Ocha (50), the pastor of Assemblies of God Church in Kankia, was killed by a mob who torched both his home and the church. The incident took place on the morning of in Kankia, a local town in Nigeria. February 4th Local authorities expressed their sorrow for the incident. Before the burning took place, Ocha notified police after discovering the body of a six year old girl outside his home. The body was identified as that of Fatima Yusuf. However, as he was doing so, a mob of young men broke into his house and harassed him. World Watch Monitor was able to receive an eye witness account of what had happened: I was in the kitchen cooking, when suddenly we heard a noise outside, and when we ran outside, we saw a crowd of people shouting that they will kill all the Christians in Kankia. The witness explained. We saw more than two thousand youths rushing towards the pastors house so we ran for our lives. Although Pastor Ocha was taken to the Emergency Room for treatment, the mob pursued and ended up torching his body. The mob also burned his home along with another local church, Evangelical Church Winning All. Local authorities concluded that the incident was carried out by irresponsible youths and that the pastor did not bear any responsibility for the death of six year old Fatima Yusuf. They explained that the pastor was attacked because he was near the area the mob was most active and that they had some disagreement with the churchs activities or their religious orientation. Church leaders in Nigeria expressed great concerns over Christians relations to other religious communities, for Christians and Muslims have lived peacefully in Kankia before this incident. After event organisers and promoters for New Zealand's annual music festival, Jim Beam Homegrown confirmed that their event will still go ahead this weekend, they have also announced that the festival will also pay tribute to those who lost their lives in the Christchurch terror attacks. At 9:25pm, all five stages will fall silent as all bands and artists will cut their music. Homegrown chief executive Andrew Tuck said they wanted to express love and respect for the people caught up in the attack. "One of the best things about great music is that it's blind to things like race, culture and religion and brings people from all walks of life together to stand shoulder to shoulder," he said. "All of the Homegrown whanau, including all the performers, wanted to show respect to those caught up in the tragedy and give the audience the opportunity to come together as well." Police will maintain a presence at the festival. I thought Vanguard missed the mark with the two environmental, social, and governance exchange-traded funds it launched last September. That's because Vanguard ESG U.S. Stock ETF (ESGV) and Vanguard ESG International Stock ETF (VSGX) focus on exclusionary screening rather than on positive ESG integration. The typical passive ESG fund tracks an index that is constructed using company-level ESG analytics to tilt its portfolio toward companies that are doing a better job addressing the material ESG risks and opportunities facing their businesses. The Vanguard ETFs, however, don't reflect an ESG integration approach. They are throwbacks, evoking the pre-ESG era when "socially responsible" portfolios employed a more limited negative-screening approach that excluded companies based on their products or practices. RBC economist Josh Nye cautioned that the impact of this indebtedness will likely persist into the foreseeable future. It will take a long period of household incomes outpacing credit growth to deliver meaningful improvement in the debt-to-income ratio, Nye wrote in a client note, as quoted by GlobalNews.ca. Were not seeing that yet. Debt volumes have made themselves felt in lower household borrowing activity, which fell 19.5% annually by the end of 2018 to reach its lowest level since 2014. Research from BMO also revealed that 7.3% of Canadians income is being used to pay for interest charges, the highest this ratio has been in nine years. Read more: Consumer insolvency rate to continue growing CAIRP More high-rise buildings for commercial investment will soon arise in Toronto and Vancouver, with two leading developers announcing the erection of major office towers in the near future. Allied Properties REIT and Westbank said that their upcoming projects would reshape these markets downtown areas, as the structures will offer significant space to Canadas flourishing technology sector. Tech companies many of which have already taken roost in the countrys largest commercial markets have been hailed by observers like Marcus & Millichap as the main drivers of activity in the office property sector. It doesnt matter how perfect your home is if your listing photos dont stand out, potential buyers wont come by to take a look. In our series "Lessons From Listing Photos," we dissect the smart updates sellers have made to their homes, and how their listing pics highlight the homes best assets. This Houston home was built in 1989, and it showed. Its interiors checked all the boxes of bad design cliches of the '90s, including brass accents, shabby chic touches, and a color palette of beige tones. But it got a total makeover in 2016, and in 2018 it sold for $300,000 more than what the owners paid in 2015. Boo-ya! To find out how they pulled it offand how you can make that kind of profit on your remodel we went to the experts. Here's where they say the owners made the biggest impact. White it out: The biggest difference in the bathroom is a simple change in wall color; it's amazing how a few coats of white paint can modernize a space. "This bathroom received a very notable update just by repainting the walls white. Out with the old yellow walls and in with a fresh and clean palette of travertine, granite, and white," says Emma ODonnell of Coolabah Designs. "The fixtures in matte black suddenly pop with this new update." Property stylist Karen Gray-Plaisted of Design Solution KGP agrees: "Although the finishes are the same, this is a great example of how impactful color is when you sell." As for staging tips, O'Donnell also notes that the owners made a wise decision to nix the tchotchkes. "They removed all the decorative elements the flowers, the plate, and the old-fashioned rug and let the room speak for itself," adds O'Donnell. Big bedroom improvements: The blah-colored carpet and light yellow walls in the original bedroom were enough to make the space look dated. O'Donnell notes that the fresh light-gray paint and repainted ceiling fan do a lot to liven up the room. The new, wall-to-wall sisal carpet was a good replacement for the '80s-era brown carpeting, and it goes well with the natural bamboo blinds. Tiffany Cobb of Tiffany Rene Interior Design is a big fan of the new carpeting. "There are so many underfoot options out there these days, and its refreshing to see when homeowners venture away from the typical high-pile carpet installations to exploring more natural fiber, wall-to-wall alternatives," she says. "They're eco-friendly and a durable option for high-traffic areas." Good riddance to the rug: The den got a new color scheme and a new railing around the balcony, but the biggest triumph is the change in flooring. "This spacious den received a dramatic update with a fresh and clean, light gray and white motif. The old paintings and decorative elements are put away and replaced with a state-of-the-art smart TV above the newly tiled fireplace," says O'Donnell. "Most importantly, the oversized red and blue Persian rug, which overwhelmed the room, is gone, to highlight beautifully updated wooden floors." Gray-Plaisted was also happy to see the rug go away. "Reducing the size of the rug allows buyers to see how spacious the area is," she says. "A less formal style allows buyers to feel more at home." Modernizing the kitchen: One of the biggest and perhaps most important updates was in the kitchen. "Taking the kitchen from the 1990s to what buyers are looking for today was a smart move," says Gray-Plaisted. "The 'after' transformation shows a huge improvement to the flow of the kitchen and connecting rooms." O'Donnell says the new rectangular island and lighter walls did a lot to bring the kitchen into this decade. "The '90s light fixture was replaced with two transitional pendants, which instantly modernize the space," she adds. Cobb was impressed by the streamlined cabinetry. "Raising the cabinetry height to the ceiling maximizes the drama and visual interest of the field tile," she says. Curb appeal: "After all the updates on the inside of the house, the exterior needed to showcase the same design sensibility," says O'Donnell. "The brick was painted white, black-painted shutters were added to the front windows, and suddenly the house was a modern and refreshed version of itself." But the painted brick wasn't the only exterior enhancement that makes a difference. The landscape also got a major overhaul, and O'Donnell says that likely impressed buyers, too. "The front yard was further opened up by removing the old philodendrons and other smaller bushes. Those were replaced with pampas grasses, which require less maintenance and allow more light into the downstairs of the house," O'Donnell says. The post Lessons From Listings Photos: A Home Stuck in the '90s Gets a Major Glow-Up appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com. JGI/Jamie Grill The Region 18 Education Service Center informed its staff, via email, Wednesday morning that 5 1/2 positions would be eliminated from the Midland office effective Aug. 31. Region 18 ESC has always been transparent with its staff, with regards to financial struggles, Executive Director Dewitt Smith said in a press release. Michigan Technological University signs Memorandum of Understanding to explore and develop collaborative opportunities in northern Michigans Grand Traverse area. For more than a year, representatives from Michigan Tech and community leaders in the Grand Traverse (GT) region have discussed ways to partner and collaborate. For the GT community, a strong relationship with a world-class research university would attract new businesses, entrepreneurs and families. For Michigan Tech, a presence in the tech-forward, creative and industry-rich Grand Traverse area would attract new students, faculty and staff to the University. Earlier this month, they made it official. The two communities entered into a three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that outlines their commitment to communicating and coordinating on collaborative educational and research projects. This is an exciting time for Michigan Tech and those in the Grand Traverse area, said Les Cook, Michigan Techs vice president for strategic University partnerships, as we embrace opportunities that will add value and strength to the work we do, those we serve and the impact we have on our communities, the state of Michigan and our world. The MOU outlined five areas of mutual interest the parties agree to explore: K-12/pre-college engagement, higher education, industry, economic development and community development. Specifically, Michigan Tech and members of the Grand Traverse Area Michigan Tech Steering Committee will collaborate to develop research and technology commercialization partnerships, tailored talent development programs and student-teacher placements. They will also explore ways to provide educational opportunities and services with and through Northwestern Michigan College (NMC), a public community college in Traverse City. Founded in 1951, NMC enrolls approximately 4,000 students and offers associate degrees and professional certificates, along with bachelor degrees, through the Great Lakes Maritime Academy and the Great Lakes Water Studies Institute. The MOU outlines potential collaborative opportunities in business development, entrepreneurial training in association with 20 Fathoms and community development projects related to health and wellness, mobility and health technology. The Grand Traverse Region is intentionally creating a vibrant ecosystem to incubate and grow businesses that create value through innovation, said Bill Myers, chair of the Grand Traverse Area Michigan Tech Steering Committee and chief executive officer of Promethient, a Traverse City start-up that specializes in human scaled climate control technology. Traverse City was the birthplace of the third industrial revolution and digital manufacturing with the invention of numerical control by John Parsons and Frank Stulen in the late 1940s, Myers said. Businesses are now grappling with the challenges and opportunities presented by the fourth industrial revolution, including autonomous systems, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and sensors. Given their capabilities in these fields, it is the right time for an internationally recognized research institution like Michigan Tech to help our community build on its legacy of innovation. The Committee is an ad hoc, volunteer group of individuals interested in fostering Michigan Techs engagement in the GT region. Members will meet with representatives from Michigan Tech four times a year to evaluate the partnership and the status of projects and initiatives. The MOU does not empower the Committee to enter legally binding relationships. It also does not commit funds or other resources from either party. Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, the University offers more than 125 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure. A Winchester resident didnt expect her petition to bring a Target to Jacksonville to get much traction, but its now on-target to hit a 2,500 signature goal. Abby Smith of Winchester has been saying for years that, if Shopko were to close in Jacksonville, Target should buy the building at 1964 W. Morton Ave. and move in. After reading the news Monday that Shopko would in fact be closing, she thought it might be fun to put the idea out there on the internet. Honestly, it was more of a joke at first, Smith said. I made a post saying they should put a Target in there and I ended up making the petition. I thought that, maybe, five or ten people I know would sign it. And then all of a sudden it blew up. The petition, on Change.org at bit.ly/2HJM4b4, argues that a Target would greatly benefit residents in and around the Jacksonville area. Not only would it provide another shopping option locally saving shoppers a trip to Springfield if they want to shop at Target but it could bring an in-store Starbucks. As of Wednesday evening, the petition had more than 1,700 signatures with support continuing to come in. We need more options than just Walmart for an all-in-one-stop shop in Jacksonville, Danielle Donovan said in a comment. It would be great to have an alternative to Walmart in Jacksonville, Jan Buhrmann agreed. Target has a much better record of treating their employees well, which is important to me and to our community. Smith said that, while she hasnt heard from Target, shes hoping the big-box store will come to town because it has been a preference for her and her friends for some time. I know Target is really popular and most everybody I know loves Target, but I wasnt expecting the community to get on board like this, Smith said. All of their products are quality, they have good prices, and theyre always running some sort of deal. For me, the experience that Target gives is something that Walmart cant give. Target could not be reached on Wednesday. However, Target responded to Jacksonville City Council candidate Benjamin Coxs tweet asking about the possibility of a store in Jacksonville. Were so happy to hear that youd love a Target in Jacksonville, Illinois, responded @AskTarget. Well be sure to let our Real Estate team know so they can look further into this. The Shopko closure will occur sometime in the next 10 to 12 weeks, according to a Shopko announcement. The retail chain announced earlier this week that it will be liquidating all of its stores. Nick Draper can be reached at 217-245-6121, ext. 1223, or on Twitter @nick_draper. (CNN) The U.S Air Force recently deployed six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Europe for "theater integration and flying training" exercises with regional allies and NATO partnersa move viewed as sending a strong message to Russia, which is celebrating the five-year anniversary of its military annexation of Crimea. A bomber task force of B-52 Stratofortresses, airmen and support equipment from the 2nd Bomb Wing based out of Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, arrived at RAF Fairford late last week and has been participating in various training missions across Europe, according to the service. On Monday, four B-52s "conducted flights to several places in Europe, including to the Norwegian Sea, the Baltic Sea/Estonia and the Mediterranean Sea/Greece," the Air Force said. B-52 bombers from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, and RAF Fairford have also conducted "simultaneous theater familiarization training in the Indo-Pacific and Europe" as bombers "flew north to an area east of the Kamchatka Peninsula," near Russia. "Collectively, the flights from the Indo-Pacific and Europe demonstrated US commitment to allies and partners through the global employment of military forces," the Air Force said in a news release. Weighing 185,000 pounds, the B-52 first entered service in the 1950s during the height of the Cold War, originally designed to serve as long-range, high-altitude intercontinental nuclear bombers that could strike deep into the Soviet Union. The newest B-52 entered service in 1962, and the 159-foot plane became a Cold War icon. The planes have been modified heavily since the end of the Cold War and have been upgraded with precision-guided missiles, electronics and high-tech sensors. Each aircraft can carry up to 70,000 pounds of bombs, mines and missiles, according to the Air Force's official fact sheet. Tension with Moscow Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have steadily increased in recent months following Russia's seizure of Ukrainian ships and detention of Ukrainian sailors after a confrontation in the Kerch Strait in November. Russia's actions and its detention of the Ukrainian sailors prompted President Donald Trump to cancel a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G-20 summit in Argentina last year. Moscow has continued to ramp up its own military presence in the region, prompting the US to do the same. But the top U.S. commander in the region says it doesn't appear to be working. "I'm not comfortable yet with the deterrent posture that we have in Europe," Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti said earlier this month, warning that his command faced shortfalls with regard to land and naval forces as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets. "Of concern is my intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capacity given that increasing and growing threat of Russia. I need more ISR," he added. "In light of Russia's modernizing and increasingly aggressive force posture EUCOM recommends augmenting our assigned and rotational forces to enhance our deterrence posture," Scaparrotti said. This week, two Russian generals said Moscow plans to send nuclear-capable bombers and medium-range missiles to the peninsula -- but quickly retracted their statements. Still, NATO lashed out at Russia for its "wide-ranging military buildup in Crimea" and the U.S. National Security Council said Monday that Moscow's annexation of Ukrainian territory "continues to pose a threat to our regional allies." While Trump's long-standing criticism of NATO over burden-sharing costs continues to hang over the 29-member military alliance, the U.S. has increased its military presence in Europe during his administration as the US and Europe seek to counter Russia's actions in the region. Trump has been reluctant to publicly criticize Russia throughout his time in office but the U.S. Congress continues to introduce new sanctions and acts targeting Putin for various affronts, including the annexation of Crimea. But that has done little to deter Putin from insisting the Ukrainian territory rightfully belongs to Russia. Putin traveled to Crimea this week and rallied crowds by saying a new powerful Russia has emerged that will stand up for its interests. No military solution U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker said on Monday that "there is no military solution" through which Ukraine could reclaim Crimea. "That would be militarily a disaster. It would lead to the loss of thousands and thousands of lives. It's not something anyone should be contemplating," Volker said on the fifth anniversary of Russia's annexation of Crimea. "So there's no taking it back by force," Volker said during a news briefing delivered by video feed from Brussels, Belgium. Volker said the U.S. would be willing to provide additional arms sales "to help them develop a strong, capable, sustainable defense capability." He said "it's possible" that the US would provide more anti-tank systems as well as air and coastal defenses. On the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO in the near future, Volker said he couldn't predict. He noted it depends on "how quickly Ukraine can progress" on such issues as standards of democracy, anti-corruption and civil control of the military, as well as when NATO decides the appropriate time for a formal invitation. Volker said he hoped Russia would not react strongly when that happens. Volker said the international community would continue to sanction Russia until Crimea was restored to Ukraine. He also deflected criticism that the West is culpable for the annexation, saying Russia was solely to blame "What we have is not a lack of an appropriate format. What we have is a lack of political will from Russia," he noted of the political process. This story was first published on CNN.com, "U.S. Air Force deploys B-52 bombers to Europe in message to Russia." Governor Gavin Newsom View Photos Sacramento, CA Referring to the quality of water in some parts of the state as a moral disgrace and medical emergency, Governor Gavin Newsom would like to place a monthly tax of up to $10 on water customers. Newsom says the revenue would be used to clean up contaminated water in low income and rural areas. The plan is expected to face heavy opposition from Republicans, along with some Democrats, opposed to new taxes. It would take a two-thirds vote of the legislature to gain approval. Newsom argues that up to 1 million residents in the state have some type of contaminated or unclean water coming through their taps. There is also a competing proposal released by Democratic Senator Anna Caballero that would take money from the states surplus to create a trust fund for water improvement projects. Newsoms proposal would impact both residential and business customers. The tax would start at 95-cents and increase up to $10, depending on the size of the meter. Police are searching for a gunman who shot two people at a convenience store in east Houston Thursday morning. Houston police said the suspect shot a man and woman at the Golden Mart convenience store on the 400 block of Maxey Road. The couple had parked and walked to the front door of the store when the suspect who was standing there asked them if they knew someone's name, according to Metro Video Services. MORNING REPORT: Get the day's top headlines delivered to your phone at HoustonChronicle.com They said "no" and the man pulled a gun and start shooting at the couple, according to Metro Video Services Both the male and female were shot in the leg at around 1:30 a.m. and transported to a hospital, police said. They are expected to survive. NEWS WHEN YOU NEED IT: Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message | Sign up for breaking news alerts delivered to your email here. Texas tops for two taps on Instagram, according to a global list. Big Seven Travel, a website for adventurers, curated "America's Most Instagrammable States 2019," a global list where the Lone Star State beats out New York. However, San Antonio is not credited for helping get Texas to the No. 1 spot. While spots around the state's other big cities, like Houston, Dallas and Austin were mentioned, the Alamo City was not included. RELATED: Things that test even the most veteran San Antonians According to the website, the states were ranked by their "visual allure and popularity on social media." The site used a scoring system that looked at the amount of hashtags per place, surveyed their readership of 1.5 million and votes cast by a panel of travel experts. Somehow, the vibrant colors of Market Square, the River Walk and San Antonio's growing public art scene were not taken into account. "It's exciting to see Texas take the top spot as America's Most Instagrammable State for 2019. With its on-trend cities such as Houston, Dallas and Austin, as well as beautiful nature (Hamilton Pool Natural Preserve instantly comes to mind!), it's clear to see why Texas was such a favourite with both our readers and judges," Sarah Clayton-Lea, head of content at Big 7 Media, said in a news release. See which Texas spots made the list in the gallery above. Madalyn Mendoza is a breaking news reporter and general assignment writer. Read her on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | mmendoza@mysa.com | @MaddySkye An exchange of gunfire at a home Wednesday night in southeast Houston left a man dead and several questions for homicide detectives. Houston police officers near Hobby Airport rushed to a home in the 9000 block of Dexter Street around 9:30 p.m. When they arrived, they found Oscar Castro, 28, dead near a ditch outside the home. "It appears there was some sort of altercation with some people in the house," Houston Police Department Lt. Larry Crowson said. "There were some shots exchanged." BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: Get your Houston breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox As of late Wednesday, homicide detectives were having trouble piecing together what exactly happened, Crowson said. It wasn't immediately clear what sparked the gunfire or who shot whom. Officers who responded to the shooting noticed bullet holes on the front side of the home. They checked inside for any victims but found none, Crowson said. RELATED: More than 4 dozen arrest in Houston drug trafficking sting Crowson said several different weapons were used in the barrage of gunfire. Detectives interviewed several witnesses and are working to obtain nearby surveillance footage to help determine what happened. Anyone with information is urged to call HPD's Homicide Division at 713-308-3600 or Houston Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS (8477). Jay R. Jordan covers breaking news in the Houston area. Read him on our breaking news site, Chron.com, and our subscriber site, HoustonChronicle.com | Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan | Email him at jay.jordan@chron.com | Text CHRON to 77453 to receive breaking news alerts by text message Texas EquuSearch A woman who was missing since March 13 was found dead in Brays Bayou days later, police said. Officials with Texas EquuSearch had been searching for 21-year-old Adelaide Evergreen since she went missing near Griggs and Lawndale that Wednesday. On March 17, witnesses found Evergreen's body in the bayou, about a half mile north of where she was last seen. A Seguin man caught in an investigation of the worlds largest child pornography site, who pleaded guilty midway through his federal trial, was sentenced Wednesday to 14 years in federal prison without parole. Andrew Morgan Weathers, 35, had tried to blame his stepson for downloading child porn from Playpen, a site on the dark web. The FBI shut it down in 2015 as part of an international investigation and learned that at its peak, it had some 150,000 users worldwide. On ExpressNews.com: Trial begins for area man caught in probe into worlds largest child porn site Weathers went on trial in late November, but made an about-face after prosecution testimony focused on the images found on Weathers computer that included child porn and bestiality. During a break in trial, Weathers decided to plead guilty to receiving child porn and possessing it. At his sentencing hearing Wednesday, he apologized to the court and his family. I am incredibly, incredibly sorry, Weathers told U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez. What I did was incredibly wrong and it was immoral. ...I apologize that (the stepson) got dragged into the middle of this. Related: Child and bestiality porn defendant suddenly ends San Antonio trial by pleading guilty Besides imposing the 168-month prison sentence, Rodriguez also ordered Weathers to serve 20 years of federal supervision and told him to abide by sex offender restrictions after his release. Weathers was one of a handful of defendants charged in the San Antonio area after they were identified as visitors or users of the Playpen site, which used layers of servers, some outside the country, to disguise the originating server and keep visitors anonymous. But a mistake by the administrators of the site gave agents the location of the originating server, and after obtaining a warrant, the FBI gained control of the site for two weeks and used computer technology to identify each users internet protocol site before shutting down Playpen. Guillermo Contreras covers federal courts in San Antonio and international legal issues. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | gcontreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @gmaninfedland Fire officials said a fatal house fire near St. Mary's University Thursday morning appears to have been a cooking accident. Firefighters responded to the blaze in the 300 block of Plainview Drive just before 6:15 a.m. Flames were shooting out of the home's roof when they arrived and they discovered the body of an elderly man inside, Woody Woodward, a spokesman for the San Antonio Fire Department, said. FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox "It appears the victim may have been preparing breakfast and left the kitchen area unattended," Woodward said in a statement. The mans body was found in a different part of the home than where the flames originated. Woodward said the man may have tried to extinguish the fire, then escape the home but succumbed to the smoke. Firefighters found second-degree burns on his body. The fire has been ruled accidental. Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com Caleb Downs covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | cdowns@mysa.com | @calebjdowns An employee at a Southeast Side apartment complex found the body of a tenant hidden inside a closet on Thursday and investigators believe the corpse had gone undiscovered for months. San Antonio police responded to the 11th floor of the Fair Avenue Apartments in the 1200 block of Fair Avenue at about 9 a.m. San Antonio Police Chief William McManus described the circumstances surrounding the man's death as "very suspicious." FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox "It's safe to say this is beginning to look more and more like a homicide," he said. A foul odor coming from the victim's apartment was previously noted but dismissed as coming from a different source. On Thursday, an employee at the apartments noticed the smell again and decided to investigate, McManus said. "They checked again today and did some looking around and they found the body in the closet," McManus said. Initial evidence indicates the man, who has not been identified but is believed to be in his 40s, was killed by someone who knew him. McManus declined to go into further detail. RELATED: Mayor IDs city employee fatally struck by bus in downtown San Antonio Because the body went undiscovered for so long, investigators are working at a disadvantage, the chief said. "It's difficult but there are a number of things we'll look for that may help us figure out who was involved," he said. Text "NEWS" to 77453 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com Caleb Downs covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | cdowns@mysa.com | @calebjdowns An inmate in the Bexar County Jail is facing more charges after he assaulted a deputy and pushed him down stairs, authorities said. Damien Chapa, 18, was charged with assaulting a peace officer on Wednesday, jail records showed. FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox On Feb. 10, Chapa ignored a jailer's command to inmates in a day room to finish their phone calls or finish eating and return to their cells, according to Chapa's arrest affidavit. He "became belligerent," according to the arrest affidavit. "You're a punk a** b***h and I'll f**k you up," Chapa, who is in jail on multiple pending charges including aggravated sexual assault, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and robbery, allegedly told the jailer. The jailer was conducting cell checks during the exchange and began to walk up some stairs when Chapa walked toward him aggressively and continued threatening him, according to the affidavit. The jailer struck Chapa and Chapa then pushed him and fell on top of him, according to the affidavit. RELATED: Chief: Body was stashed for months in closet at San Antonio apartment complex The two continued struggling with each other until the jailer freed himself and activated a call for help on his radio. The jailer injured his pinky finger during the assault, according to the affidavit, while Chapa's right earlobe bled and his knuckles looked swollen and red, the affidavit says. Chapa admitted to investigators that he was in an argument with Cortez and shoved him while he was on the stairs, according to the affidavit. Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | fsabawi@mysa.com|@FaresInSA A woman was arrested and accused in a massive theft scheme Wednesday after the owner of the business where she worked noticed a discrepancy in his company's bookkeeping, according to Castle Hills police. Cindy Wojtaszek, 45, is charged with misapplication of fiduciary property of $300,000 or more, a first-degree felony, Bexar County Jail records showed. The driver of a pickup fled after causing a fatal motorcycle crash Wednesday on the West Side, San Antonio police said. The motorcyclist, 26-year-old Stephen Hernandez, was traveling in the eastbound lanes of Culebra Road at about 8 p.m. when the pickup pulled in front of him while trying to turn onto the westbound lanes of Culebra from 28th Street. The San Antonio Police Department is asking for the public's help identifying and finding a person of interest in an aggravated assault on the North Side. According to police, the victim in the assault was stabbed in the back by an unknown assailant on Feb. 8 in the 7600 block of McCullough Road. The victim said he was walking to a nearby store when he was stabbed. An Uber driver is in "dire" condition after he was shot Thursday by two passengers on San Antonio's Southwest Side, police said. The driver picked up the two suspects at an unknown location and took them to the 7400 block of New Laredo Highway, where they shot him, at about 8:20 a.m., officials said. The woman who was struck and killed by a tour bus Wednesday afternoon in downtown San Antonio was identified Thursday morning by Mayor Ron Nirenberg as a city employee. Officers responded to the intersection of Market and South St. Mary's streets around 4:25 p.m. Witnesses were performing CPR on the woman when police arrived but she was pronounced dead by paramedics around 4:40 p.m. The victim was identified at a Thursday morning city council meeting as Omega McKinnon, a department accounting supervisor with the Department of Human Services. FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox Witnesses told police that McKinnon had the right of way in the crosswalk when the bus made a left turn and struck the her. The bus was occupied only by a driver and and another employee. Both stayed at the scene and cooperated with police, officials said. "We believe this was just a tragic accident," San Antonio Police Sgt. Michelle Ramos said Wednesday. McKinnon has been employed by the city since 2016, when she was hired as a budget analyst. She was also part of the Women's Leadership Mentoring Program. RELATED: SAPD: Woman fatally shot after drawing weapon on officer It's unclear whether charges will be filed in the case. On Wednesday San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg expressed his condolences on Twitter. The tragic accident tonight is truly heartbreaking. Our prayers are with the family and loved ones, Nirenberg tweeted. Reporter Jacob Beltran contributed to this report. Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our breaking news site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com | fsabawi@mysa.com|@FaresInSA Now that Boeings 737 Max aircraft has been grounded worldwide, we can focus on why a plane celebrated as an industry leader has been involved in two fatal crashes. Earlier this month, Ethiopia Airlines Flight 302 crashed just after takeoff, killing 157 people on board the 737 Max 8 plane. In October, 189 people died when a 737 Max 8 operated by Lion Air, an Indonesian carrier, crashed just after takeoff. After studying satellite data for both crashes, Federal Aviation Administration officials found enough similarities to ground all Max aircraft. Across the globe, 42 other countries had already grounded the plane, so the United States was woefully and potentially dangerously late in taking action. To be clear: Investigators do not have enough information about what went wrong or why these planes have crashed. But we do know a number of questions have been raised about a computerized flight-control system and the potential lack of disclosure and training for pilots. We also know after the Lion Air crash, pilots unions complained about a lack of disclosure and training for the software update and that Boeing had promised a software fix last year. Following the Ethiopian Airlines crash, Boeing said it would soon be updating flight-control software, providing more training and enhancing external sensors. But several pilots have said they asked Boeing to implement these changes months ago. While these crashes are horrifying and grounding the Max was necessary, so is proper perspective. Its hard to imagine a safer form of travel than a commercial airliner. But until investigators understand what went wrong in the Ethiopian Airlines crash, whether there are meaningful similarities to the Lion Air crash, and then apply the correct training and technological fixes, the planes have to be grounded. Passengers, pilots and flight attendants must have confidence they are safe when they fly. The Alamo Colleges plan to forgive up to $1.8 million in debt for some 9,000 former students in hopes they will re-enroll and complete their course work is a sound financial investment. The community college district boards approval of the Fresh Start Program means former students who have a debt to the Alamo Colleges for $500 or less dating prior to the fall of 2017 can re-enroll without having to pay the outstanding bills. More important, the outstanding balance will be forgiven completely if the student completes six additional credit hours with grade of a C or above. The district gets to boost its completion rates, and students can earn the degrees and certificates they need to become more marketable. The debt students left behind has already been written off the community college districts books and wont affect the district budget. Though it was off the books, the district continued collection attempts and wouldnt release a transcript if the student had an outstanding bill. Debt forgiveness will now allow students access to their transcripts if they want to transfer. Giving former students this second chance allows many an opportunity to break out of the cycle of poverty. A high school education is no longer enough in todays job market. Those fortunate enough to land a job above minimum wage quickly find their opportunity for advancement is limited. Getting students on campus and enrolled in classes is no small feat, but the real challenge is student retention. In recent years the Alamo Colleges system has made great strides in increasing counseling and outreach to students as they adjust to the rigors of higher education. Still, there are about 277,000 Bexar County residents who attended classes, acquired some college credits but did not earn a degree or credentials. Getting the 9,000 students with outstanding debt to consider going back into the classroom is a step in the right direction. A debt of $500 is not huge, but for someone of limited means it might as well be tens of thousands of dollars. The path back to campus can get even more complicated when students must pay off an outstanding debt in addition to coming up with tuition. Reducing financial barriers to re-enrollment has high dividend potential. Re: Bills take aim at proposal to move Cenotaph, front page, Tuesday: I laugh at Land Commissioner George P. Bushs statements that lead someone who did not attend the dog-and-pony shows to believe the majority of people favor the Reimagine the Alamo plan. Nothing could be further from the truth. I attended many of these. The rooms were filled with a hundred or more people who didnt want any of the plan. Councilman Roberto Trevino just sat there smiling because he knew the fix was in from the beginning no matter what residents said. Much the same thing occurred at City Council hearings where numerous people spoke against this plan. Once again, it went in one ear and out the other. Its a shame when a City Council refuses to listen to its citizens. Perry Donop Jr. Dem republic Re: You mean republic, Your Turn, Tuesday: John Lamme objects to another letter writers use of the term democracy to describe our nations form of government. He is correct to point out we are a republic, but fails to realize that a republic is a democratic form of government, one in which power is derived from the governed. We are a republic, and a democracy. David Harcourt To protecting us Re: Senate votes against border emergency, front page, Friday: Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn are not protecting President Donald Trumps authority; they were protecting Texas citizens and our national sovereignty, which been ignored for decades. The $3 billion to $8 billion however much for the wall compared to the $4 trillion plus annual budget is insignificant. This is all politics to the detriment of our nation! Phil Ferro 101 Lajitas -- $925,000 Mission Inspired Luxury Custom Home in Beautiful Esperanza. This two story home with open concept is beautifully appointed with wood beamed cathedral ceilings, floor to ceiling stone fireplace, Wolf and Sub Zero appliances, high grade Granite counter tops, wrought iron double entry doors, light fixtures, and staircase. Master is complete with custom ceiling treatment and resort style on suite bathroom. All this in a beautiful Ranch Setting. Directions: IH-10 to Exit 542 (SR-46) to right on Herff Rd to Right on River Road (SR-46) to left on Esperanza Blvd to right on Lajitas. Mike established Mike Hollaway Custom Homes in 1992, since then, we have become one of San Antonio's most respected homebuilders, with a reputation for designing beautiful and unique homes that reflect the needs and desires of our homeowners. Look to us for individualized service tailored to meet your specific needs. From floor plan selection to blueprint design, financing, and professional interior design, we provide a complete array of quality services to our clients, some of whom are living in their second or third Mike Hollaway Custom Home. We invite you to explore our website to learn more about Mike Hollaway Custom Home quality and dedication. Contact us today about making your dream home a reality. Click here for more info: Mike Hollaway Custom Homes Esperanza 2019 Spring Tour Of Homes: April 6-7 & 13-14 Homes Open Saturdays 10am - 6pm and Sundays 11am - 6pm MDC leader Nelson Chamisa has cancelled the Thank You Rally that was supposed to be held in Bulawayo over the weekend. In a statement on Thursday, National Organising Secretary Amos Chibaya said, Kindly be advised that the President has advised that we postpone both the Bulawayo Provincial Assembly and Thank You Rally. In his wisdom, the President saw it fit that we concentrate on mourning our relatives in Manicaland who were affected by Cyclone Idai. Chibaya said a later date will be advised on when to have these two party programs. On Monday Chamisa was in Manicaland where he assessed the damaged caused by the cyclone and also donated some goodies to the victims. Cyclone Idai has killed close to 2000 people in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. United Nations has classified the cyclone as the worst climate-related disaster in Southern Africa. Byo24 Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News Zanu PF Mwenezi district chairperson, Rennias Muchoko (42) was last week arrested and arraigned before magistrate Honest Musiiwa on charges of stealing bags of maize and millet from Rutenga Grain Marketing Board (GMB) depot. Muchoko, of Stand Number 521, Rutenga growth point, was found guilty is also the partys provincial secretary for transport and welfare. He entered the ruling partys Mwenezi West parliamentary primary elections but later withdraw to support his relative Tafadzwa Shumba who went on to lose to current MP Priscilla Zindari Moyo. Muchoko was found guilty of theft after he pleaded not guilty but admitted that he took the grains as he believed it was normal to do so. He was sentenced to 10 months in prison, four of which were suspended on condition that he restituted GMB by March 22. The remaining six months were suspended on condition that he perfomed 210 hours of community service at ZRP Rutenga begining March 15. In his defence, Muchoko had said it was the norm that whenever the ruling party had a gathering, grains are taken from GMB and on this incident, he had expected President Emmerson Mnangagwa to address a rally in Mwenezi West. GMB officials who testified in court, however, nailed Muchoko arguing that the Zanu PF leader had acted with impunity and ignored all procedures to forcefully take the grain without doing any necessary paperwork. The State claimed that that on August 12, 2017 at around 08:45hrs, Muchoko went to Rutenga GMB depot and found a security guard, Warinda Kaurai at the premises. The accused demanded some bags of maize purporting that they were going to be used at a gathering. Kaurai advised Muchoko to first inform the deport manager Masiyambiri but the accused was defiant and he unlawfully took 10 x 50 kgs bags of maize and 2 x 50 bags of millet and went away. The security guard immediately advised the depot manager who then ordered him to file a police report leading to Muchokos arrest. All in all, the value of the stolen grain amounted to $220 and nothing was recovered. Caroline Pasipanodya is representing the State. TellZim Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News President Emmerson Mnangagwa hired a luxury jet from Dubai to fly him the hour-long journey from Harare to Bulawayo on Thursday, ZimLive can reveal. The Airbus A318-100 flew seven hours and 16 minutes from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday to position in Harare, ahead of Mnangagwas flight to Bulawayo this morning where he addressed civil society groups. The VIP fitted jet bearing registration A6-CAS is owned by Constellation Aviation Services, and would have been hired by Vice President Constantino Chiwengas wife, Mary, whose company East Town Holdings was controversially awarded a contract to provide government VIP travel services and other services in January 2018. The MDC said Mnangagwas decision to hire the 19-seater jet at a cost of US$12,500 per hour, just as the government is making international appeals in the wake of Cyclone Idai which had killed at least 139 people by Thursday, was abuse of office. The total cost of the hire is estimated at US$200,000. Jacob Mafume, the MDC spokesman, told ZimLive: If this is true, then it confirms what we have always known that we have an uncaring executive that is a firm disciple of primitive and conspicuous consumption. In a period when the government has brought out its begging bowl following the devastating cyclone for which they failed to plan, we now have to witness Mnangagwa going to great lengths to spend precious foreign currency in the same way a man buys a golden toilet seat but asks for donations to help him fix his leaking roof. Its now clear that he carried out a coup in order to have these luxury joy flights at the expense of the tax payer. This is abuse of office. Since assuming power in a military coup in 2017, Mnangagwa has made over 30 international flights all undertaken in luxury jets hired from various companies around the world. The same luxury has been extended to his deputies Chiwenga and Kembo Mohadi, who have made several medical flights for treatment in South Africa and India. The internet exploded on Wednesday after Mnangagwa, who was visiting hundreds of families displaced by flood waters in Manicaland, was caught up in another controversy after a truck was seen following the presidential convoy carrying sofas for his use in the disaster zone. ZimLive Breaking News via Email Loading... Related Zimbabwe Latest News And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? Revelations 5:1-2 Weve been more pessimistic than most commentators about the likelihood of the UK escaping the default of a no-deal Brexit. We may not have been pessimistic enough. EU officials had repeatedly made clear their condition for giving the UK an extension to the Brexit date of March 29: it had to give a reason, and that reason had to be persuasive. As most readers know well by now, Theresa May sent a letter into the EU Council on Tuesday requesting an extension to Brexit, a day later than planned. The content of the letter was also different than what the EU had been led to expect. May had intended to ask for a short extension to try again to get her Withdrawal Agreement passed, with the option of a longer extension if that failed. That was unlikely to have gone over well with the EU. Parliament had decisively reject the idea of holding a second referendum, which was the most plausible device for the UK breaking up its Brexit logjam. So even if May had gone down that path, the EU very likely would have rejected her request for longer extension, due to Mays inability to explain why the EU should believe the UK would come to a political consensus on Brexit, and on top of that, one that didnt amount to new versions of cakeism and unicorns. But Mays cabinet had a 90 minute row on Monday, with the hard Brexit faction telling her she needed to drop the request for a long extension or face large-scale resignations. So May sent in a missive that was still likely not to sit well with the EU. It asked for an extension through June 30 and gave a long litany of what she had done so far. But the letter didnt even clearly state why she was asking for more time, save she was still hopeful of getting the Withdrawal Agreement approved despite being barred from holding another vote. She asked for for formal approval of supplementary documents she and Juncker had settled on to help. And she also needed more time to pass a bill to amend the Withdrawal Act (which as reader David pointed out, is more cumbersome than using a Statutory Instrument). The EU reaction was harsh. Donald Tusk announced that the EU would consider a short extension only if the House of Commons approved the Withdrawal Agreement next week. May is going to Brussels to make her case on Thursday. But in another blow, Jean-Claude Juncker said the EU was unlikely to make any decision at this summit. And on top of that, Mays track record is that her charm offensives usually are just offensive. Moreover, the French magazine Le Point reported yesterday that Macron planned to tell the EU Council today that France would veto any Brexit extension. The French government basically ignored the question when asked about the rumor. If the story is true, then theres nothing to discuss with the EU and the ball is entirely in the UKs court. The Financial Times confirmed that France is not willing to cut the UK any slack: Frances pro-EU president Emmanuel Macron never wanted Brexit. But as the clock ticks down towards Britains intended March 29 departure date and with Theresa Mays government in open crisis over its plans Mr Macron is among the most hawkish of EU leaders in questioning why Britain should have more time to get its house in order.. Jean-Yves Le Drian, foreign minister, told members of the French National Assembly that France would oppose a Brexit delay without a credible plan from the UK. Mr Le Drian said France would be open to a technical extension of a few weeks to allow British institutions to finalise formal ratification of the UK-EU withdrawal agreement. But without a vote in the House of Commons to approve the deal, the central scenario is a no-deal exit we are ready for it, the foreign minister said An extension that would require Britain to take part in the EU elections which are due to start on May 23 would be a red line, said a person familiar with Mr Macrons EU strategy. Even if Macron was merely privately saber-rattling and does not take an extreme a position today, hes not the only hard liner. From the Telegraph: At least three European Union countries are ready to block any extension to the Brexit talks, unless Theresa May can convince them she has a credible plan to break the impasse in the House of Commons at Thursdays summit in Brussels Countries such as France, which has struck a consistently tough stance on Brexit, Spain and Belgium are thought to be among the countries signalling they will demand concrete assurances from Mrs May. A situation in which Mrs May is unable to deliver sufficient guarantees on the credibility of her strategy at the European Council meeting would lead to the request being refused and a preference for a no deal, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in the French parliament. This may explain Junckers pessimism that anything will be agreed this week, that it would take a full bore effort just to keep the tough trio from telling the UK to pound sand. Its also not clear what the legal implications would be if May has cut things so close to the wire that she manages to get her deal approved but the UK had not passed the legislation needed to extract itself from the EU legally as of Brexit day. What May said after she reached an agreement with the EU last November is still true. There are only three choice: her deal, no deal, or no Brexit. As well discuss, however, a lot of the UK press and punditocracy is still in unicorn land and thinks May can resurrect an opportunity that was never there, that of a long extension. The reason that was never on was the EUs clear position that the UK had to give a reason for an extension, and more specifically, lay out a strategy about how the UK would arrive at a different sort of Brexit, meaning what process it would take to change its red lines so it could find a different position on Barniers ladder. Parliaments firm rejection of a second referendum killed the only plausible case and Labour rejected it again last night. May would never offer to hold new general elections, and even if she did, with both parties divided, theres no strong reason to think it would lead to fundamental changes with respect to the UKs stance on Brexit. Now there is a popular push for an Article 50 revocation, with a petition already at over 400,000 signatures as of this hour. But as well discuss, May would have to do a complete reversal to revoke Article 50, which is within her power, not just a Prime Minister, but also implementing the motion by Parliament rejecting a no-deal Brexit. But as well discuss, May has given no sign she is considering that idea, but is stuck on her brinksmanship plan of getting Parliament to knuckle under and approve her deal. And she didnt help her cause with her speech to the nation last night, which alienated MPs she needs to win over (mind you, that doesnt mean they wont get over their pique by next week). Lets turn to the factors in play. The EU is really, really over Brexit. For months, there has been a subtext in reports from EU-oriented news outlets that European leaders feel they have more pressing matters than the never-ending Brexit. Our readers confirm that Brexit has gotten virtually no coverage in European media outlets over the last year. A poll in France found a significant majority thought the UK had already left. Voters dont see Brexit as an important issue: While the UK is self-obsessing about Brexit, its not really a priority forEuropeans. The UK has constantly and consistently overestimated its own importance in this endeavour.https://t.co/8EOBcHQPUt Ray Leonard (@aindiachiarrai) March 20, 2019 Despite the widespread antipathy for a crash out, Mays deal is still loathed, so it is not clear who will win the contest between Cinderallas ugly sisters. Note we are assuming Bercow will allow Meaningful Vote 3; our informed readers believe he does not have the stomach to risk going down in history as the man responsible for a no deal Brexit. On top of that, Mays letter to Juncker asked for formalization of their side agreements. If the EU takes that step, that would also allow Bercow to save face in reversing his earlier view. Why Mays deal looks likely to lose again. Admittedly, when the stakes werent quite this high, Robert Peston, who does actually seem to get out a lot and listen, was of the view that a third vote would fail. He thought that MPs who had voted twice against Mays deal would find it hard to justify changing their vote on the same treaty. While the DUP may relent, thats only 10 votes when May needs about 75. The Ultras are much less likely to defect than before since now a defeat for May means an almost-certain Brexit, when before she was threatening them with a long extension, which could eventually morph into no Brexit. So it would appear that the fate of Mays deal lies in Labours hands. Labour so far is still opposed. There are clearly Labour MPs who will defy the whips, but the tone of the press right now is its not significant numbers. Another reason why some MPs may vote against Mays deal despite the prospect of a no-deal Brexit is too many MPs are still in unicorn land and believe that a long extension is to be had. In other words, they think if they reject Mays agreement yet again, the EU will blink. Im not making this up. First, from a borderline unhinged editorial (yes, editorial, not op ed) from the Guardian that was published relatively early on Wednesday. It argued that May had blown her letter by not making a good case for a short or long Brexit. But it took the position that May could have asked to reboot Brexit if her deal failed again. That would never have worked. The EU is long over the UK faffing about. Various EU leaders all made the same demand: the UK needed to provide evidence that there was agreement to pursue a different type of Brexit, or at least a credible strategy as to how to get there. The key bit is the editorial still depicts a longer extension as a possibilityand makes no mention whatsoever of revoking Article 50. I fail to understand why cancelling Brexit is still being treated as a third rail issue, particularly since Parliament rejected a no-deal Brexit earlier this month (although we pointed out they really meant no no deal as of May 29, as opposed to doing a Brexit never mind). But we see the same sort of illogic here: .@lisanandy calls Theresa Mays statement today disgraceful and questions whether she can survive as PM #Peston pic.twitter.com/LAO0Vz8j6K Peston (@itvpeston) March 20, 2019 Notice specifically: We know the European Union is likely to offer a long extension if we dont vote for the deal. May only alienated more MPs with her address to the UK last night. The clip from Peston above is representative; if you look at his Twitter feed, he has clips from interviews with several other MPs who excoriate May for bullying Parliament. Ian Dunt (admittedly a reporter, not an MP) was foaming at the mouth while live tweeting her speech. For instance: Sweet mother of Gid she is the most hapless ghoulish buffoon. Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) March 20, 2019 Labour is also performing badly. Corbyn stormed out of a meeting with Theresa May because May had invited Chuka Umunna from the breakaway Independent Group. So hes wasted at least a half day when time is of the essence. A bigger picture take from Richard Murphy: And now the reality has really hit. And it is rightly said that we have no obvious way out of the situation that we (or at least Theresa May) has created. It is entirely possible that we will crash out of Europe as a result. Indeed, that seems the most likely outcome to me. And yet we still have no obvious political opposition. Was Labour demanding parliament sit all this coming weekend to deal with this situation as yesterdays fiasco unfurled? No, it wasnt. Was it demanding that emergency legislation be tabled now to address the issue? No, it want. Was it even very obviously backing one of the routes forward that the EU has offered, such as a second referendum? Again, no it wasnt: it did not agree on that approach with the leaders of the four political parties that asked it to do so. Has it published its own route through this crisis, saying what it wants to happen and when to prevent us crashing out? No, it hasnt. And whilst May has to take responsibility for this crisis, and nothing will prevent that being true, it has to be said that Labours failure to offer any coherent response to this is deeply disturbing. Everyone seems to have lost sight of the clock. Let us say May actually does manage to get her deal passed. The EU Council has an emergency session penciled in for March 28-29. May proposed a short extension to June 30 but the EU has signaled that May 23 is the limit so as to give a sufficiently wide berth to the European Parliament elections. This is still very tight in terms of agreeing a new Brexit and the UK getting all of its legislation passed, particularly since Mays letter indicates she intends to pass bills rather than rely on a Statutory Instrument. And we have the risk of the Ultras somehow jamming the controls. If the UK gets that far, it is still likely to scramble across the finish line, but there is still a risk of mishap. May is not going anywhere soon enough to make a difference. Lets say May blows it as badly in Brussels as she did in her address last night. Theres no changing horses now. Even if her ministers were to resign en masse, the only way to replace her quickly would be if the Tories had reached a consensus on her replacement. Our Clive points out that leadership contests routinely take weeks and weeks and a fortnight is on the fast end. No one in charge would pretty much guarantee a crash out. Could May blink? What happens if the EU, as expected, just reaffirms what Tusk said before the summit, that the EU might approve a short extension if the House approves the Withdrawal Agreement and Parliament again says no? Is it possible that submarine May would execute one of her U-turns on March 28 or 29 and revoke Article 50? By then, the petition for revocation could easily have 2 million signatures, giving her air cover in addition to Parliaments no no deal motion. Shes guaranteed to go down in history as the worst PM the UK ever had if she presides over a crash out. That might change even her fabulously rigid mind. It seems highly unlikely given her well-established pattern of carrying on despite repeated defeats (Richard Smith recalled a famous deportation case when she was at the Home Office) but it cant be ruled out. Quantum Machine Appears to Defy Universes Push for Disorder Quanta (David L) The worlds happiest countries REVEALED: Finland comes top while South Sudan is the bleakest Daily Mail Study shows IPCC is underselling climate change PhyOrg (David L) New Climate Change Visualization Presents Two Stark Choices For Our Future Earther (David L) Britain Will Have Water Shortages In 25 Years Thanks to Climate Change, Environment Chief Says Motherboard (resilc) Four Wikipedias To Black Out Over EU Copyright Directive WikiMedia Foundation Kentucky governor says he exposed his children to chickenpox NBC (Kevin W) Satellites just photographed Californias dazzling super bloom of spring flowers from outer space Business Insider (David L) San Francisco Moves To Ban E-Cigarettes Until Health Effects Known BBC Sex, Empathy, Jealousy: How Emotions And Behavior Of Other Primates Mirror Our Own NPR (David L) China? Trump Says Tariffs Will Stay Until China Complies With Deal Bloomberg Brexit Syraqistan Big Brother is Watching You Watch Imperial Collapse Watch Trump Transition 2020 We shouldnt be inviting bullies to our neighbourhood: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends her criticism of Amazon HQ2 in surprise Queens appearance Business Insider (Kevin W). Not wild about the framing. I should have written about this, but IMHO the issue was affordable housing in Queens. I would have had way less trouble with this deal if it had been in Hudson Yards. In Silicon Valley, cities are having trouble staffing schools and hospitals due to housing costs. Second issue is that its normal in NYC development deals for the locals to squawk and the developer to have to give sweeteners. But Amazon just picked up and left. Minn. lawmakers aim to reduce salt runoff from sidewalks Minneapolis Star-Tribune (Chuck L) AT&T CEO interrupted by a robocall during a live interview The Verge (resilc) State AGs put tech giants on notice: Something must be done with these companies they have become too big Business Insider (David L) MMT Powell Signals Prolonged Fed Pause as Inflation Lags, Risks Loom Bloomberg Monsanto risk takes root with Bayer investors Financial Times (J-LS) No More Fed Rate Hikes in 2019 Econospeak. Click through to see the chart. What FedEx Just Said About Europe and China Wolf Richter Class Warfare Antidote du jour (Kimberly R): And a bonus (Richard Smith): A mouse has been captured tidying up bits and bobs in a pensioner's shed. Stephen McKears from Gloucestershire says he couldn't understand how small metal items were returning to their box every night. So he set up a special night-time camera to find out pic.twitter.com/Gn1gvhTown ITV News Central (@ITVCentral) March 19, 2019 See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. On Friday, 22 March 2019, the NATO Secretary General, Mr. Jens Stoltenberg will meet the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia, H.E. Mr. Andrej Plenkovic at NATO Headquarters. There will be no media opportunity. Still images will be available on the NATO website after the event. Follow us on Twitter (@NATOPress, @jensstoltenberg and @NATO) Following a meeting with Prime Minister Zoran Zaev on Tuesday (19 March 2019), the NATO Secretary General said that the signature of the Accession Protocol for the Republic of North Macedonia in February was a historic moment for the country and for NATO. Your leadership helped make this happen, he said. By working with Athens you have shown what courage, commitment and diplomacy can achieve. Mr. Stoltenberg said that the agreement with Athens has already created a lot of positive political momentum and that NATO membership will further bring peace, stability and prosperity to South-Eastern Europe. He highlighted that several Allies have already ratified the Accession Protocol and that once all Allies have completed this process, North Macedonia will become the 30th member of the Alliance. Your country already has a seat at NATOs table, he said. Last month I welcomed Minister Sekerinska to the meeting of NATO Defence Ministers here. And next month, Foreign Minister Dimitrov will join us in Washington to mark the founding of our Alliance seventy years ago. The NATO Secretary General said that NATOs open door policy is one of NATOs great success stories and that welcoming new members into the NATO family has made Europe and North America more secure. Mr. Stoltenberg said that North Macedonia already makes important contributions to the Alliance, participating in NATOs training mission in Afghanistan, promoting regional cooperation in Southeast Europe and implementing major reforms. He encouraged North Macedonia to continue on the path of reform, stressing that this is important as the country prepares for full membership. I look forward to the day when North Macedonia becomes a full member of our Alliance. What once seemed a distant hope for your country is set to become a reality, he said. (Natural News) You want the best for your family, right? If your pets are the furry members of your family, then youre probably interested to know which states in America provide the best and safest environment for them. To give caring pet owners peace of mind and some relocation ideas, Care.com released a researched list of the best and worst American states for your pet to live. To come to their conclusion, researchers looked at data in four categories: The prevalence of diseases such as diabetes, heartworm, fleas, and ticks Accessibility to veterinary care The pets environment assessed by the percentage of protected land, air quality, number of parks, and walkability Amount of money spent on pets (veterinary costs excluded) Montana topped the list of best states for your pets health, followed by Nebraska, Colorado, and New Mexico. Just as the fresh Midwest mountain air seems to be ideal for people, your pet benefits from it too. Mississippi, followed by Southern states (including Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Arkansas) are the worst states for your pets health. Best states for pet health The researchers found the following states to be the most conducive to healthy pet living: Montana Nebraska Colorado New Mexico New Hampshire Idaho South Dakota Wyoming North Dakota Kansas Worst states for pet health Based on the research criteria, the following states scored the worst for pet health: Mississippi Alabama Louisiana South Carolina Arkansas Tennessee Texas Georgia Ohio North Carolina These results, interestingly, correlate with the worst states for humans. As mentioned by Tim Smart, executive editor of U.S. News & World Report, some Southern states (which also include Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas) dont do as well in education and health care as the more Northern states. According to Jessica Lockhart, an animal behaviorist from Dallas, this is partly due to the overall air quality in states with refineries, and the lack of pedestrian-friendly areas. Given its vast acreage of preserved wilderness, it is no surprise that Montana comes first. The more space your pooch has to play or your cat has to roam freely, the more active and healthy they are. Next to being surrounded by nature and room to play, the economics of a state also play a crucial role, according to Sally Morgan, a holistic physical therapist for pets and people. She explained that the economy in Southern states is a key factor in peoples ability to spend money on their pets. Youll find fewer veterinarians in areas where people cannot afford veterinary care. She added that some people dont even have enough money to feed themselves or access affordable fresh, whole foods, so their pets will suffer the same fate. Lastly, Dr. Judy Morgan, a veterinarian in New Jersey, said that the geographical area and the local climate could also make a huge difference in an animals health. For instance, heartworms, fleas, and other parasites are much more prevalent in hotter, humid climates. While moving to another state for your pets sake may be one crazy step too far, the take-home message is that you can overcome some of these issues to improve your pets health and happiness. There are many year-round preventative medicines available to prevent diseases and parasites. Furthermore, you can make your own DIY dog treats on the cheap, or enrich your pets environment with scratching and climbing posts or toys. Some of these preventative measures and toys, however, often come with a price tag some people cannot afford. My dog weighs about 60 pounds, and his yearly heartworm, flea, and tick treatment is upward of $200, noted Lockhart. Nonetheless, just as we try to improve our familys health, pets shouldnt be left out. Since pets bring so much love and joy to a family, arent they worth a little piece of the family budget too? Sources include: Realtor.com 1 Realtor.com 2 Care.com (Natural News) Elizabeth Warren has thrown her hat into the 2020 presidential election, and she is already pandering to voters with promises of reparations and housing as a human right. It is no secret that the housing market has blown out of proportion, but how involved the government should be remains up for debate. Under Warrens proposal, Big Government will take on housing much in the same way socialists propose we tackle healthcare. So if you think universal healthcare is a sign of government overreach, you can bet any movement towards universal housing will follow the same trajectory. Everyone in America has the right to own or rent a home, and in the truest sense of the word right, everyone in America already has the right to housing. Having the right to own something does not imply that you are automatically entitled to possess that thing. Every American has the right to own a gun (with a few exceptions, of course) and yet, you dont see Second Amendment supporters declaring that gun rights should equate to government-sponsored gun ownership. The right to housing does not guarantee you will own your own home. What Elizabeth Warren is talking about is not a human rights issue it is a government power issue. Housing rights are the next frontier Leftists are now touting housing and healthcare as human rights, but their intentions are not as benevolent as the media would have you believe. This is not to say that some people shouldnt have access to housing and healthcare; clearly, these are very important things. In an ideal world, everyone would have a home and no one would ever be sick or injured and unable to pay for care. But we do not live in an ideal world. Liberal politicians seem to thrive on the notion that if we just give the government enough power, suddenly all of our problems will disappear. Even Elizabeth Warren is guilty of painting a picture in which Big Government reigns supreme, providing equality to the little people who couldnt function or care for themselves otherwise. At a recent CNN townhall, Senator Warren declared, I have a proposal to build about three million new housing units across America. I just want to stop for a second, is anybody in here worried about the rising price of housing? Thats pretty much everybody, right? The idea is that we need to make a real investment in housing. In the same way that we think about health care as a basic human right, having a decent and safe place to live should be a basic human right. So I believe we should make a big investment in housing and by the way, if we do that, independent analysis says that we would lower rents across this country by 10%, and thats across the board and we create an opportunity for more people to become buyers. So housing is important, Warren stated further. Of course, the we Warren is referring to is the government not the people. Under Warrens proposed affordable housing bill, the federal government would dramatically increase its investment in public housing, to the tune of $450 billion over the next 10 years. And of course, the term investment is really just a nice way to say spending of tax dollars. Big Government is big trouble Between Warrens housing proposal and the Green New Deal, it seems the Democratic party is planning a soul-crushing 10-year tax extravaganza. How else will the federal government accrue the billions of dollars necessary to make these insane proposals a reality? Everyone has the right to own a home in America. But that right is not a guarantee. Warren and her ilk are not just proposing housing as a human right; they are proposing a total restructuring of American society. Warren claims that because of housing discrimination, whites are wealthier than blacks and further contends that only Big Government can fix Americas racial issues, through government acquisition of more social housing. There is no doubt that racism is a sore spot in the United States, but liberals pour salt into the wound for their personal gain. Warren has yet to explain exactly how government housing will suddenly turn poverty into prosperity. More to the point, guaranteed housing, guaranteed healthcare and guaranteed jobs are all hallmarks of a socialist society run by Big Government. The price we pay for freedom is uncertainty but the reward is the chance for success. See more coverage of stories like this at LeftCult.com. Sources for this article include: Breitbart.com Vox.com Breitbart.com (Natural News) The vast majority of Americans have come to expect biased coverage from the so-called mainstream media, and whats more, they have come to expect that coverage will be designed to advance the Democrats Left-wing agenda. Thats according to some of the most recent polling data available. But additional evidence also supports the contention that what the media tends to cover arent subjects that are of vital interest or importance to most Americans, and that the media covers narratives it helps create, failing intentionally to give equal weight to similar stories. The most recent example involves how American journalists initially covered the terrorist attack in New Zealand. Immediately after news of the attack first broke, the Democrat-aligned media filled their airwaves and bandwidth with far-Left pundits and politicians, as well as their own hosts and reporters, who were all quick to blame POTUS Donald Trumps anti-Muslim rhetoric. In the days that followed, the same Left-wing media outlets hammered on the narrative that 28-year-old alleged attacker Brenton Tarrant is a white nationalist and right-wing extremist who hates Muslims as though only white, right-wing extremists are behaving as terrorists these days and the only people they are murdering are people of Islamic faith. The fact is, however, that by far, the bulk of terrorist attacks this year and in recent years have been committed by Muslim extremists, and often against followers of other faiths. But our media doesnt often report those and when they do, reports are quick, superficial, and fact-based. No narratives, no outraged guest analysts, and no lecturing, finger-wagging hosts. (Related: How the media distorts the New Zealand shooting to protect radical Muslim jihadis while demonizing white people.) As reported by Natural News: On January 27, Muslim extremists bombed a Roman Catholic cathedral on the Philippine island of Jolo, killing some 20 people and injuring dozens of others. But you probably didnt hear about this horrific religious massacre because the perpetrators were violent Islamic terrorists that targeted Christians, which means the Leftist media pretty much completely ignored it. In all, there have been 453 Islamic terror attacks in 31 different countries so far this year and these are just the ones that have been reported, Natural News continued. In total, just in 2019 so far, there have been a shocking 1,956 people murdered by Islamic terrorists, and another 2,019 injured, according to TheReligionOfPeace.com. The new protected class While the vast majority of Americans are aware of what happened last week in New Zealand, probably an equal number are completely in the dark about the fact that there have been more than 450 terrorist attacks this year so far committed by Islamic extremists, including many against Christian believers. Thats because the American legacy media wont report on those stories; to do so would conflict with their carefully crafted narrative that Muslims are victims and most often die at the hands of white European/American nationalists. Naturally, if these attacks were reported with the same breathlessness, vigor, and depth, Americans would have a much different opinion of radical Islam, and would understand it poses a far more serious threat than they have currently been led to believe. According to The National Sentinel, it appears as though Muslims have become the American Lefts new protected class. The site quoted CAIR research director Dr. Abbas Barzegar, who launched an attack against the First Amendment during a press conference after the New Zealand shootings, implying that there should be no criticism of Muslims allowed. He said social and traditional media do not allow these people to exploit freedom of speech. And no one from the media pushed back. When our country was founded, patriots bequeathed us a free and independent press they believed was essential to protect our liberties, primarily by holding the powerful accountable. By allowing themselves to become agents of the powerful, todays establishment media have violated the founders intent. Read more about the medias blatant news and journalism bias at Journalism.news. Sources include: TheNationalSentinel.com NaturalNews.com InfoWars.com (Natural News) Who is to blame for the opioid epidemic that is currently gripping the nation and taking the lives of 60,000 Americans each year? Most people tend to blame the makers of these drugs, the doctors who prescribe them, and some even fault those who take these medications. However, now a very familiar name has been exposed as being the mastermind behind the opioid epidemic: Johnson & Johnson. While you might associate Johnson & Johnson with pure images like the squeaky-clean, soft skin of a baby thanks to years of effective marketing, it appears that something far dirtier is going on at the New Jersey-based multinational personal care brand. The accusation that it was the kingpin fueling the opioid crisis in the U.S. and acting as a major seller, provider and lobbyist carries a lot of weight as it comes from Oklahomas Attorney General, Mike Hunter. In May, his state will see the first major opioid epidemic trial take place, and it is expected to set the stage for litigation of a similar nature across the country, not to mention a nationwide lawsuit. Hunter requested that a state court release millions of pages of confidential documents to the public that were submitted by Johnson & Johnson during the cases discovery phase, writing that the public interest contained therein is urgent, enduring and overwhelming. J&J targeted vulnerable groups while downplaying dangers The state of Oklahoma is alleging that Johnson & Johnson targeted vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and children, for painkiller prescriptions. The company also funded groups that advocated to facilitate access to the drugs, such as the Pain Care Forum. In addition, they downplayed the drugs dangers; for example, a brochure made by a subsidiary of J&J geared toward senior citizens outrageously states that opioids are rarely addictive. The defendants in the case include Johnson & Johnson as well as Teva Pharmaceuticals, Purdue Pharma, and Allergan. Hunter says the firms deceived the public into thinking the drugs were safe to use over long periods. District Court Judge Thad Balkman recently denied a request made by the pharmaceutical companies involved to delay the trial, saying that its in the publics interest for this trial to begin as scheduled. Johnson & Johnson is being accused of using a web of domestic and foreign subsidiaries to provide the raw materials needed to manufacture opioids. While companies like Purdue Pharma, who produce OxyContin, certainly need to be held accountable for their extreme irresponsibility, J&Js culpability is also clear. They played a big role in producing the raw narcotics from poppy fields that are turned into active ingredients in top-selling opioids, boasting that their poppys morphine content was some of the highest in the world, according to an Axios report. The two subsidiaries that handled the opium poppy business, Tasmanian Alkaloids and Noramco, were sold by J&J for $650 million in 2016 to a private equity firm. A year earlier, they sold an opioid pill that they had previously marketed known as Nucynta, while they continued to sell the fentanyl patch Duragesic. According to a state court document, the company was a kingpin behind the public-health emergency, profiting at every stage. (Related: Johnson & Johnson to pay $2.2 billion for making false marketing claims and engaging in kickbacks.) Johnson & Johnson is also facing legal action for covering up the connection between asbestos-containing baby powder and cancer. More than 1,600 American cities and 36 states are currently suing the makers and distributors of opioids in hopes of collecting funds needed to deal with the opioid public health crisis. Everyone who has played a role in this devastating crisis deserves to be exposed and brought to justice, from those who put opioids in peoples hands to those who help pharmaceutical companies obtain the ingredients they need to make these deadly drugs. Sources for this article include: WakingTimes.com Axios.com (Natural News) Mung bean (Vigna radiata) is an excellent nutritive legume that can help treat or prevent chronic degenerative diseases, according to a critical review published in the journal Food Science and Human Wellness. In the article, researchers from China examined the nutritional components, phytochemical, and health-promoting effects of mung bean and its sprouts. Mung bean seeds and sprouts are widely consumed in Asian countries, including China, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, and Thailand. There is a growing interest in this legume because of its bioactive compounds that have promising potential in the prevention of degenerative diseases. For the review, the researchers gathered all data of in vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies of mung bean and its impact on human health. Based on the data they gathered, mung beans contain bioactive compounds such as polyphenols and other metabolites. These compounds have been frequently attributed to their antioxidant, anti-diabetic, antimicrobial, anti-hyperlipidemic and antihypertensive effect, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer, anti-tumor, and anti-mutagenic properties. The researchers concluded that mung beans have a health-promoting effect and can protect against various chronic degenerative diseases. Read the full text of the study at this link. To read more studies on the health benefits of mung beans, visit FoodIsMedicine.com. Journal Reference: Ganesan K, Xu B. A CRITICAL REVIEW ON PHYTOCHEMICAL PROFILE AND HEALTH PROMOTING EFFECTS OF MUNG BEAN (VIGNA RADIATA). Food Science and Human Wellness. March 2018;7(1):11-33. DOI: 10.1016/j.fshw.2017.11.002 (Natural News) The 53-year-old perfume entrepreneur Jo Malone who created the eponymous brand that was sold to the cosmetics giant Estee Lauder in 1999 can detect cancer just by using her nose. Just like a sniffer dog, she can recognize cancer by smelling subtle changes in chemicals. Her heightened sense of smell was discovered after she was put to the test by the Milton Keynes-based charity Medical Detection Dogs, where she ranked on a par with a highly skilled dog, named Ozzie. Ozzie is trained to sniff out diseases such as cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, and heart problems. Watch her take the test on the Good Morning Britain show below. At the Festival of Literature in Dubai, Miss Malone said that she took the test to see her incredible sense of smell in a different light. When she was asked to identify tiny doses of amyl acetate diluted in mineral oil, she was able to spot the chemical when it was present in one part in one million. Since most humans are not able to smell one part in a thousand, she really did a fantastic job. I knew she would do better than the average because she has got a very highly tuned sense of smell but we were still amazed at how well she did. I had never seen that with humans before, said Medical Detection Dogs CEO Claire Guest. While the perfumer scored beyond everybodys expectations, she didnt beat the superstar dogs who can spot the chemical when it is present in one part per trillion. To give you a better idea, that is about the amount of one teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic swimming pools. Malone believes her incredible sense of smell may be coming from a condition called synaesthesia. Synesthesia is a neurological phenomenon where the sensation in one of the senses triggers a sensation in another. She explained that when she sees white and purple, she smells eucalyptus and blackcurrant. Also, when she listens to jazz music, she interprets it through her smell. Sniffing out diseases before things turn for the worse When she was fighting breast cancer in 2003, Malone completely lost her sense of smell, which luckily returned after the cancer treatment. When her smell was restored, she knew that something was wrong with her husbands health from the changes to his natural scent. She couldnt stop smelling a strip of skin on the right side of his neck. While she couldnt put her finger to it, she knew something was wrong with him. While she kept telling his doctors she could smell something down his neck; they ignored her, saying no you cant. Later, tests confirmed that he was suffering from Addisons disease. Some of the dogs trained by Medical Detection Dogs charity can recognize the same adrenal gland condition Malone smelled on her husbands neck. Claire Guest explained that diseases cause biochemical changes in the body. These changes lead to a change in body odor that can help in early diagnosis of life-threatening diseases, such as cancer or heart disease. The charity is currently conducting the first canine trials in the U.K. to sniff out prostate cancer from urine samples, with a 93 percent success rate. Malone is apparently not the only human sleuth-hound out there. Scientists at Edinburgh University found a woman named Joy Milne whose super sense of smell could change the way Parkinsons disease is diagnosed. Six years before her husband was diagnosed with Parkinsons she noticed his smell had changed to a muskier smell. When the Scottish woman was put to the test, her accuracy to identify who had Parkinsons and who didnt was 11 out of 12. She misdiagnosed one person from the control group for having the disease while according to him and the scientists he was healthy. Eight months later, however, Milne was notified that she was actually right and scored 12 out of 12 since the person had been diagnosed with Parkinsons. Sources include: DailyMail.co.uk YouTube.com BBC.com (Natural News) Spinach is one of the healthiest vegetables available. There are many different ways of preparing spinach, but a recent study suggests that blending it in a smoothie or adding it to your green juice is the best way to maximize its lutein content. Lutein is an antioxidant found abundantly in dark green vegetables. Earlier research shows that this natural fat-soluble pigment can fight inflammation in immune cells from people with coronary heart disease. In addition, lutein can be stored in immune cells. This means that it is possible to have a reserve of lutein within the body. From this, the current studys researchers sought to determine whether it is possible to bolster lutein levels in the blood by increasing the intake of lutein through foods. The research team, who hailed from Linkoping University in Sweden, examined which method of preparation is the best way to obtain lutein in spinach a vegetable rich in this antioxidant and is consumed by many. The research team used preparation methods often used in home cooking, such as frying, steaming, or boiling for up to 90 minutes. Then, they measured the lutein content at different times. They also compared the effects of various temperatures and heating times. In addition, they examined preparation methods in which spinach is consumed cold, such as in salads and smoothies. The research team found that heat exposure affects the lutein content of spinach. The heating time is also important when boiling spinach. Spinach loses lutein when its boiled, and loses more as it is boiled longer. The cooking method used is also important. Frying spinach at high temperature degrades a large fraction of lutein, even after only two minutes. The researchers concluded that the best way to maximize the lutein content of spinach is by consuming it cold. It would even be better if it is added to smoothies because more lutein is released from the leaves when spinach is chopped into small pieces. Adding fat from organic dairy products to the smoothie would also help increase the solubility of lutein in the fluid. The findings of the study were published in the journal Food Chemistry. More reasons to blend spinach into smoothies Many people find it hard to eat enough vegetables for nutrition because they typically taste bitter. One of these veggies is spinach, which is rich in antioxidants and nutrients like vitamins A, C, and K1, folic acid, iron, and calcium. It is also a good source of B-vitamins, potassium, and magnesium. Fortunately, you can get the nutrients of spinach and mask its bitter taste at the same time by adding it to a smoothie. You can combine it with more pleasant and sweet-tasting fruits like mangoes, oranges, blueberries, and apples. (Related: 3 Spinach-Apple Smoothie Recipes Strengthen Bones, Improve Vision, Combat Cancer & Inflammation.) Adding spinach to smoothies increases your intake of carotenoids, which may reduce the risk of prostate cancer, according to a study published in the Journal of Nutrition. Spinach may also protect against other forms of cancer, such as ovarian, bladder, liver, and lung cancer because of its flavanoid, folate, tocopherol, and chlorophyllin compounds. The nutrient content of spinach is also beneficial for bone health. Vitamin K prevents osteoclast activation, which breaks down bones, and promotes osteocalcin activity which anchors calcium molecules inside of bones. Spinach also contains calcium and magnesium, which are two essential bone-building minerals. It also contains other bone-building nutrients that strengthen the bones and prevent osteoporosis. Studies have also shown that spinach can strengthen the muscles and prevent cardiovascular diseases like hyperlipidemia, heart failure, and hypertension. Find out how you can enjoy the nutritious goodness of spinach and other vegetables by going to Veggie.news. Sources include: ScienceDaily.com Healthline.com Livestrong.com A Legacy of Inaction Against the Modern Day Ministry of Truth Fact: President Trump is sitting in the White House, today, largely because of the Independent Media. Fact: President Trump just thumbed his nose to one of his biggest supporters, Alex Jones, when he refused to use the power of the President to reign in the illegal behaviors of the social media monopolies. Fact: One-time staunch supporter of Trump, Gary Heavin, retired owner of Curves, philanthropist and movie producer, stated on The Common Sense Show, that he no longer supports Trump and that he is clearly compromised. In the interview, I was shocked but I could not deny his supporting evidence. I desperately wanted Gary to be wrong! Sadly, everything he said was true. Is It Time to Forsake Trump? Am I jumping off of the Trump train? No, I am not, I am being pushed of off the train by his unexplainable inaction in moving to protect the only media that has been friendly to the President. There is no denying the many great economic accomplishments of the Trump administration. However, and for the time being, he has clearly deserted his base. This is my line in the sand for Donald Trump. If Trump does not move to undo the illegal censorship of the social media giants, it is time for the Independent Media to re-evaluate where we will place our efforts. The social media giants are low hanging fruit. They are in such blatant violation of Federal law, that prosecuting them is easy. Again, under the open forum laws that all social media giants claim membership status in, they are not allowed to discriminate and censor. Ted Cruz exposed the open forum umbrella that all the social media giants are operating under. Further, there is no question that the social media giants are monopolies. In fact, they are poster-children for this concept. However, monopolies cannot selectively censor without being in violation of anti-trust laws. Again, where is Trump? Where Will You Go For the Only True Version of the News? You are on this website, because you know you cannot trust CNN, ABC, MSNBC, the Washington Post, etc. By election day of 2018, you will not have many places to go to find out whats really going on. The following entities are actively censoring and banning the Independent Media: The country of New Zealand for canceling the planned appearances of Lauren Southern Google which should now be considered the face of the New World Order Twitter Facebook Snap Chat Instagram All of the MSM, print, radio and TV. Patreon Any and every form of social media. A man, who I suspect was an AI troll, sent me an email I want to share: Hodges, You and your kind are an absolute joke. You poor bastards in the alt right media deserve to go out of business. I am so happy that Alex Jones otherwise known as Bill Hicks is going out of business. Your sorry ass is next. You are lucky that we dont kill all of you and your families so you cannot reproduce your kind. Very soon you poor bastard you will have nowhere to go to spread your Christian BS. That will indeed be a good day when you are shipped off to a Fema camp I get emails like this all the time, but this one is important because it captures what many liberals are feeling in the present moment. The Goal of Censorship As I previously said I used to be marginalized by being labeled a conspiracy theorist. After several decades of employing that strategy, it no longer works. The globalists are attempting to permanently silence the Independent Media once and for all. In the election of 2016, they made a mistake and it cost Hillary the election. They are determined that our influence on the upcoming mid-term elections is negated. Heed my next words. The globalists have made another miscalculation. Even if every alt right media source was effectively censored the Blue Wave coming from the Democrats will fail. The damage has been done. Whats Coming? The answer to that question is another question in response. Blue Dawn, Red Dawn and the destruction of America is on the table. There is no hiding the agenda of the globalists. Many journalists are predicting widespread violence between now and the November election. Trump will be either a Hillary clone, at this point, or he will just fade away and become another New World Order puppet, or he can take some political viagra and act accordingly. Trump could still act, but I am not holding my breath. He needs us now in the midterm elections any by October many of us are going to be MIA. Donald Trump Jr. did talk about censorship yesterday, but hes not his father. Whats Next for the Media One must ask, if Trump continues to desert those that brought him to power, what lies next? Will the American people have anywhere to go to learn the truth about what is happening? The answer is yes, because nature hates a vacuum. Unless Trump acts decisively, and soon, there will be significant changes. You will not see any of us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, etc. The Independent Media (IM) will change form. The subscription model put forth by John B. Wells will very likely be repeated. With the revenues from Youtube, Facebook, etc., drying up, we will see the IM move to subscription services. At first the public, who are used to getting a free lunch (80%), will yell and scream at having to pay a subscription. However, after watching a week of CNN, they will return and pay a nominal subscription fee. What you will see in the future, if this censorship trend continues, are nothing but websites and radio shows generated from those websites. However, the IM will have to be on a platform that they cannot be removed from such as GoDaddy. I have already positioned myself in this manner and my radio show is not hosted by anyone that can be pressured. In the final analysis, we are witnessing the Great American Book Burning. Todays libraries are housed on the Internet. The Alex Jones wing of the library was burned down in this latest purge. And what is that saying..Where they burn books, they will soon burn people. We are no living under the American version of Maoism. What did Mao do to the Chinese people after the books were all burned and all information was controlled? He murdered 60 million of his own people. This book burning is a precursor to a Maoist style genocide. Look at George Soros, the man who betrayed his fellow Jews to the Nazi and tell me that it cannot happen here. The purge is already underway. It works the same in every purge. Googles actions and Trumps inaction is a prescription for genocide. First, they take away the 1st Amendment so the media cannot warn of the coming danger. Then, they take away the 2nd Amendment so the people cannot defend themselves against the unfolding tyranny. Then they begin to collect the people and it is an easy job because nobody can speak or defend themselves. Google will be at the epicenter of the next genocide. Read more at: TheCommonSenseShow.com (Natural News) Hospitals send too many patients in intensive care units (ICUs), where care is a lot more expensive and invasive, even if they dont need it, according to a study from the University of California (UC), Los Angeles. The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, identified the need for better and more efficient allocation of ICU resources after looking at data from 800 ICU-admitted patients from July 2015 through June 2016 at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Researchers determined that about 52 percent of the patients should have received hospital treatment outside of the ICU because they were either too sick or not sick enough to justify invasive ICU care. Specifically, 23 percent required close monitoring but not ICU-level care, while about 21 percent were classified as critically ill but with little hope of recovery. In eight percent of the cases, patients were unfortunately likely to die regardless of whether care was being rendered in the ICU or on a non-ICU basis. Our study found over 50 percent of patients admitted to the ICU were categorized into groups suggesting that they were potentially either too well or too sick to benefit from ICU care or could have received equivalent care in non-ICU settings, explained Dr. Dong Chang, a co-author of the study. This research indicates that ICU care is inefficient because it is devoting substantial resources to patients who are less likely to benefit from this level of care. These findings are a concern for patients, providers and the health care system because ICU care is frequently invasive and comes at a substantial cost, he added. While Chang and his team acknowledged that the research focused on only one medical facility, he suggested that ICU overuse could be going on at other hospitals. He also expressed concern about the number of patients with irreversible illnesses, such as advanced-stage cancer or dementia, who received aggressive care after ICU admissions. The study also suggested that healthcare providers more closely follow Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) guidelines which prioritize ICU admissions into categories starting with those patients who are critically ill. Clinical restraint and discussing care options with patients and their loved ones is also appropriate in this context, Dr. Chang added. I believe that for many physicians it is reflexive to admit patients who are very ill to the ICU. However, as a medical community, we have to recognize that for some patients this results in no substantial long-term clinical benefit at best, and invasive treatments that can be harmful at worst. He also acknowledged the necessity to gather more data about the tendency for doctors to admit patients to ICUs for care that may not necessarily be needed. As a practical mater, it would be expected in many instances for a layperson who falls seriously ill, or has an ill family member, to expect the most aggressive care available. No ordinary person really knows how he or she would react when faced with a potentially life-threatening scenario. In general, a disinterested cynic on the outside might wonder, however, if the purported ICU overuse in a given hospital, if or when it occurs, is profit driven or motivated by concerns about lawsuits, or both. Citing a study from the Health Affairs journal, Natural News previously reported that hospitals are allegedly marking up their medical services to the tune of over 1,000 percent above and beyond actual costs, running up the bills of the uninsured and out-of-network patients the most. Hospitals are also breeding grounds for drug-resistant superbugs, and about 75,000 people die in the U.S. ever year from infections acquired in medical facilities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sources include: News-Medical.net JAMANetwork.com DailyBreeze.com (Natural News) While parents of schoolchildren in California are being bullied into getting their kids vaccinated and shamed by the mainstream media, refugees are entering our country with highly contagious diseases and the media and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are barely batting an eye. In the span of five years, 296 cases of active tuberculosis were diagnosed among Somalian refuses in Minnesota alone. In fact, the 81 percent of TB cases that were diagnosed among foreign-born residents in Minnesota is much greater than the 66 percent of tuberculosis cases nationwide attributed to foreign-born residents. Its also worth noting that the number of tuberculosis cases reported in the U.S. climbed for the first time in 23 years in 2015, and much of that rise is being pinned on the jump in foreign-born population compared to the total population during the same period. Many of these Somali-born migrants came to the country through the federal refugee resettlement program. More Somalis are living Minnesota than in any other state. Around 20 percent of Somalis aged five and older speak little or no English, most are Sunni Muslims, and eight out of ten of them live in poverty. Tax payers in Minnesota spent an estimated $5 million treating active TB cases among refugees, spending roughly $3 million on the Somalian refugees diagnosed with the disease and $2 million on refugees from other countries with the illness. If this is the first time youre hearing about this tuberculosis wave, youre not alone; although sites like Natural News and Breitbart reported on this back in 2016, its hardly getting the coverage it deserves. The mainstream media, despite being all too eager to devote countless hours of coverage to measles outbreaks, has been completely ignoring it, with coverage these days coming mostly from more obscure outlets like The Israel Wire. Michigans culture of concealment surrounding TB in refugees Although Minnesotas TB problem isnt being widely reported on, at least the statistics are being made available. States like Michigan, on the other hand, are doing their best to ensure that word doesnt spread about the problem, with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services being accused of adopting a culture of concealment when it comes to hiding latent tuberculosis infection rates in refugees from the public. In fact, Michigan has not been collecting and keeping data on latent TB infection rates. County health departments and private refugee health screening services carrying out initial medical screenings are not sharing their screening data, even though the provision of such data is required by federal health statutes pertaining to refugee health screening. Identifying latent tuberculosis infections as refugees enter the country is essential as treatment must commence right away to prevent the disease from being spread. When latent TB activates into infectious TB, it becomes a public health risk. With 22 percent of the refugees who arrived in Minnesota testing positive for latent TB at their initial screening, its not a stretch to imagine a similarly high percentage being found in Michigan. Its interesting that kids in California are being banned from school until they get measles vaccines despite no cases of the illness actually being reported at their school, yet no one talks about the fact that migrants are bringing highly contagious diseases into the country in fact, the World Health Organizations fact sheet says that latent TB is the top infectious disease killer on the planet. These people are also bringing in diseases like diphtheria, whooping cough, and yes, measles. For all the overblown drama about vaccinated kids going to school with kids who havent been vaccinated against measles, where is the concern among the CDC and the media about people who are demonstrably importing contagious diseases into our country? Is their fear of being labeled racist for calling attention to the problem really worth putting the population at risk? Sources include: TheIsraelWire.com NaturalNews.com Breitbart.com (Natural News) The damage that one maniacs horrific act of terror is doing to New Zealands democratic processes will be irreversible that is, without major societal upheaval at some point in the future. When Brenton Tarrant live-streamed the murders of worshipers in two Christchurch mosques a week ago, he not only stole the life from innocent human beings, he stole the lifeblood of New Zealands peaceful, tranquil freedoms. In the aftermath, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern immediately called for new gun control laws that would ban the kind of semi-automatic rifle used by Tarrant, even though the country doesnt have a huge problem with firearms of the type or with gun crimes in general. Now, after several Western websites broadcast footage of Tarrants livestream, allowed it to be shown on their sites, or permitted it to be freely discussed (on sites like Dissenter and Zero Hedge), not only did New Zealand telecoms ban them, but now the same firms want more censorship from big tech platforms to protect consumers. That censorship has already begun. Facebook, which was Tarrants chosen live-stream platform, took the video down and then proceeded to delete some 1.5 million additional videos of the assault; 1.2 million of those were blocked at the time of upload. In the first 24 hours we removed 1.5 million videos of the attack globally, of which over 1.2 million were blocked at upload Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 17, 2019 The social media giant also said it had been in contact with the other big tech behemoths including Google, Twitter, and Microsoft via the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). Weve been in close contact with @Google, @Twitter, and @Microsoft since last weeks terrorist attack in New Zealand through the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT). Facebook Newsroom (@fbnewsroom) March 19, 2019 Zero Hedge noted on its site that the video could still be downloaded by anyone wishing to see it from BitTorrent. Twitter has also been at work aggressively censoring a lot of content related to the Christchurch attack perhaps most egregiously forcing journalist Nick Monroe to delete a large number of tweets as he covered the incident in real time, just one of which had links to footage of the shooting, Zero Hedge reported. Terrorists seek to have liberties and freedom restricted thats the definition of terrorism Besides merely reporting on and documenting the attack and its aftermath, Monroe has also noted the widespread censorship taking place as well. Examples include the New Zealand Herald quietly editing a March 15 story in order to remove mention of a well known Muslim local who chased the shooters and fired two shots at them as they sped off because authorities there dont want anyone getting the idea that guns can also be used for things like self-defense and protecting the public, and by ordinary citizens, not just armed police officers. Hi @nzherald I'm reaching out for comment: March 15th: https://t.co/pbwntJLya7 March 19th: https://t.co/UHu5VcKFbi Difference? Information about about a "well known Muslim local chased the shooters and fired two shots at them as they sped off" has been removed. why? pic.twitter.com/fe3TXxv0RW Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) March 19, 2019 But none of the big tech censorship has progressed far enough, at least according to the CEOs of New Zealand telecom companies. In a letter to Facebook, Google and Tweeter that was reported by the New Zealand Herald, execs from Spark, Vodafone, and 2degrees said they should be following European proposals that include censoring (taking down) of materials within a certain period and other proactive measures as well as imposing fins of up to $80 million for failure to act. (Related: Slate goes genocidal, says ALL white people of Australia are to blame for mass murder, echoes Third Reich calls for exterminating an entire culture of human beings.) Consumers have the right to be protected, whether using services funded by money or data. Now is the time for this conversation to be had and we call on all of you to join us at the table and be part of the solution, they wrote. The letter came as major New Zealand firms pulled their ads from the platforms. We call on Facebook, Twitter and Google, whose platforms carry so much content, to be a part of an urgent discussion at an industry and New Zealand Government level on an enduring solution to this issue, the wrote. Their solutions should be viewed as unacceptable to anyone who wishes to remain free. Yes, what Tarrant did especially live-streaming it was an awful, terrible thing. But punishing freedom and restricting liberties is exactly the kind of overreaction from governments that terrorists hope their attacks will accomplish. Read more about acts of terrorism and how they can lead to new restrictions by the tech giants at Terrorism.news and TechGiants.news. Sources include: ZeroHedge.com NZHerald.co.nz NaturalNews.com (Natural News) In the wake of the revelation that the mass shooting that took place at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand may have actually been a contrived act of terrorism committed by an attention-seeking nihilist intentionally trying to troll the public, some on the Left are now calling for chat boards like 4chan to be completely shut down as the solution to what they perceive as the problem of online free speech. A man named Thomas Wictor recently posted a video positing his theory that the deranged killer in this latest mass shooting incident isnt actually a racist, nor is he anti-Muslim. Instead, Wictor contends that, based on the information contained in the guys published manifesto that many mainstream news outlets are now trying to censor, he was merely seeking the attention and approval of his friends. People need to understand what this was, Wictor explains. This was not an act by a white supremacist. This was not an act of someone who is anti-immigrant. If you read the manifesto, you see that this was historys first trolling mass murder. He was not angry. He was motivated entirely by nihilism. He has no values whatsoever. The manifesto shows it absolutely clearly. Was Brenton Tarrants goal simply to mock the media and public? If Wictors observations are accurate, then this would mean that Brenton Tarrant, the suspect in question, purposely wrote conflicting information in his manifesto as a form of mockery against the mainstream media. It would also suggest that his primary goal wasnt actually to commit mass murder per se, but simply to get a laugh for pulling off this horrific stunt. He sees this act as a joke, Wictor says about the killer. In the manifesto, he makes several statements that are designed to mock any attempt to make sense of what he did. And thats the hallmark of the jokester nihilist. The prime minister and the police chief are expressing their horror this makes trolls laugh. Theyre all laughing. The mass murderer walked into a mosque full of unarmed people, and stood in the middle of the room and just unloaded magazine after magazine into huddling people. Mainstream media admits Tarrants manifesto appears to have been meant to troll Even The Atlantic wrote a story about how Tarrants manifesto was meant to troll, meaning it was never supposed to make sense, nor was it designed to give an accurate indication of any type of motive beyond simply giving a giant middle finger to whomever he was trying to troll. He had no situational awareness, Wictor says. He said afterward that he was in a firefight. A firefight is when people shoot back at you. Nobody was shooting at him. He dropped his weapon. He dropped his magazines. He was a buffoon. Whatever the case may be, Tarrants actions are already spurring Leftist jackboots into a frenzy over online free speech, including in New Zealand where the 4chan message board is now completely blocked from view. Internet users who attempt to access the site from a New Zealand-based IP address are greeted with the message: The URL has been blocked for security reasons. As someone who has had to spend a lot of time on 4chan and 8chan tracking threats of violence, both websites should be shut down, tweeted Ella Dawson, a senior social media editor for TED Talks. I dont know how, just do it. Just get rid of them. They have no redeeming value. They are a breeding ground for hatred and violence. For more related news on the New Zealand mass shooting, be sure to check out FalseFlag.news. Sources for this article include: TheGatewayPundit.com YouTu.be NaturalNews.com Twitter.com It's an epic journey for a tiny bird. For the first time, University of Guelph biologists have tracked an annual migration of up to 20,000 kilometres made by the 12-gram blackpoll warbler, one of the fastest declining songbirds in North America. The bird's trek between its breeding grounds in the central and western boreal forest of North America and its winter home in the Amazon Basin - one of the longest songbird migrations recorded -- is the topic of a new paper by a research team headed by U of G biologist Ryan Norris. The paper was published today in the journal Ecology. Describing a "great circle route" arcing across North America and including a transoceanic flight to South America, the study confirms an epic migration journey that scientists had long suspected but not yet proved. In 2015, Norris and other biologists were the first to show that blackpolls breeding in the Maritimes and New England complete a non-stop transoceanic flight of up to three days and about 2,700 km along the eastern coast of the United States. For this new study, they looked at the full migration of birds from central and western breeding populations. "It's amazing," said Norris, who worked on the study with Hilary Cooke, associate conservation scientist with Wildlife Conservation Society Canada. "A bird weighing a couple of loonies travels from the western edge of North America all the way to the Amazon basin - and, in between, traverses the Atlantic Ocean." Other co-authors were integrative biology professor Amy Newman and U of G grad students Bradley Woodworth, Nikole Freeman and Alex Sutton, as well as researchers from other universities, conservation groups and national parks in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. For the study, researchers tracked birds outfitted with tiny geolocators from four boreal forest sites across northern Canada and Alaska. Total southward migration took about 60 days on average over distances ranging from 6,900 km for birds breeding in Churchill, Manitoba, to 10,700 km for populations on the western edge of the continent in Nome, Alaska. Blackpolls from Nome took 18 days to fly across North America to the Atlantic coast of the Carolinas. There, the birds spent almost a month fattening up to double their body weight before a non-stop, 2 -day flight across open water to overwintering grounds in northern Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil. They covered between 2,250 and 3,400 km for that transoceanic hop. Norris said scientists had long believed that blackpolls followed the great circle route. Few of the birds have ever been found in the central or western States during fall migration. He said population numbers have fallen in recent years, perhaps caused by habitat loss and declines in insect prey related to climate change. "To understand what's causing the decline, we need to know their full annual cycle," he said. In their paper, the researchers say climate change may make extreme coastal weather events more frequent and more extreme, with unknown impacts on long-distance migratory birds. "As a conservation scientist, what strikes me most is that in a single year a blackpoll warbler has to navigate 20,000 kilometres across land and ocean, facing risks of cat predation, storms and collisions with buildings and vehicles, all while trying to find islands of habitat to rest and refuel in our human-dominated landscapes,"said Cooke. "In comparison, the boreal region of northern Canada provides safe and high-quality breeding habitat for this declining species. Protecting Canada's boreal forest is critical to saving this amazing songbird." Norris is now working with biologists in Colombia looking at the overwintering portion of the warblers' life cycle. He said learning whether populations from across the boreal forest overwinter separately or together in South American rainforests may help improve habitat management along the migration route. Ocean warming is threatening coral reefs globally, with persistent thermal stress events degrading coral reefs worldwide, but a new study has found that corals at or near the equator are affected less than corals elsewhere. The findings from Florida Institute of Technology Ph.D. student Shannon Sully and professor Rob van Woesik, along with colleagues at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Reef Check, were published March 20 in the journal Nature Communications. The work, which was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Zegar Family Foundation, was based on analysis of field observations from a 20-year global survey of over 3,500 coral study sites led by Reef Check founder and former director Gregor Hodgson. As expected, coral bleaching was most common in localities experiencing high-temperature stress, but it was significantly less common in those places with high monthly variation in temperatures. "We found that it took higher temperatures to bleach corals this past decade than it did 20 years ago," Florida Tech's Shannon Sully said. The authors suggest that bleaching at higher temperatures this decade is likely a consequence of the decline in temperature-sensitive corals during previous bleaching events and that the remaining populations now have a higher thermal threshold for bleaching. "We found that the reefs near the Equator were less affected by bleaching than elsewhere, despite similar thermal-stress levels at equatorial sites," said Deron Burkepile, a co-author from UCSB. Rob van Woesik, professor and director of the Institute for Global Ecology at Florida Tech, said even with the new analysis, some questions remain. "We are uncertain why equatorial reefs are more tolerant of recent temperature stress, but we do know that we must protect these equatorial reefs - and reefs everywhere - from other disturbances, lest we lose coral reefs that protect coastal inhabitants from storm waves and help feed millions of people worldwide," he said. Jan Freiwald, Reef Check's executive director, added that he was glad to see Reef Check's data put to good use. "Reef Check's citizen science divers work hard to survey reefs all over the world so that we have the data we need to understand our reefs and make effective management decisions in a changing planet," he said. Two isolated mountain lion populations in southern California's Santa Ana and Santa Monica Mountains are at risk of local extinction, perhaps as soon as within 50 years, according to a study published in the journal Ecological Applications. The study showed the extinction risk is due to low genetic diversity and mortality that affects the stability of the population. Mountain lion mortality is often caused by humans, but can also result from changes in the environment, such as wildfire and fluctuations in prey density. The two mountain lion populations in the human-dominated landscape of southern California are isolated by freeways and development. For the study, lead author John Benson of the University of Nebraska and co-authors at UCLA, the University of California, Davis, the National Park Service, the University of Washington, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Wyoming used population viability modeling to predict the possibilities of extinction from genetic and demographic risk factors. "It's easy to read our paper as yet another pessimistic story about wildlife threatened by human actions -- and in a sense that is true," said Benson. "However, there is also a more optimistic message in that our model predicted that these populations can persist with relatively modest increases in landscape connectivity. If we can maintain healthy populations of mountain lions -- a species that roams widely and requires such large spaces -- here in greater Los Angeles, that bodes well for our ability to conserve large carnivores anywhere." INBREEDING A CONCERN Both mountain lion populations have very low genetic diversity as a result of inbreeding, which is inevitable given the lack of connectivity between the mountain ranges and surrounding areas. Genetic diversity in these two populations is expected to rapidly decline over the next 50 years, which raises concern about inbreeding depression -- a phenomenon in which survival and reproduction of animals decline due to low genetic diversity. When the researchers simulated the effects of inbreeding depression in the two populations, the model predicted that rapid extinction was almost certain. The model predicted generally similar dynamics in the two populations, but the research also revealed differences driven by greater population size and higher mortality in the Santa Ana Mountains. EFFORTS UNDERWAY, MORE NEEDED "Our research has shown that the mountain lions in the coastal Santa Ana Mountain Range are primarily put at risk by restriction of their movement across Interstate 15, and their high mortality rates from vehicle collisions and being killed after they have killed unprotected pets or livestock," said T. Winston Vickers, report co-author and associate veterinarian at the University of California, Davis' Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center. "Efforts are underway with highway engineers to improve wildlife crossing structures or build new ones on both the I-15 and 101 freeways to enhance movement into and out of both mountain ranges." The research highlighted that conservation of large carnivores, including mountain lions, is achievable within urbanized landscapes. But this requires effort. Land protection, connection between the lands and strategies to promote coexistence with humans are necessary to prevent the extinction of these top predators. "It was interesting to see the differences between the two populations, such as the higher mortality rates in the Santa Anas, and sobering to see the fast rates of extinction predicted for both populations if serious inbreeding depression sets in," said co-author and National Park Service Wildlife Ecologist Seth Riley, who has been studying mountain lions in the Santa Monica mountains since 2002. "However, it's also really heartening to see how much of a difference increasing connectivity can make for these isolated populations." An array of underwater listening lines that detect passing giant Atlantic bluefin tuna previously caught and tagged by scientists has created a new system to monitor these enormous, fast, powerful and lucrative fish in the open ocean. A 10-year research project using the technology sheds light on the species' natural mortality as well as migration, important information for sustainable management of their populations. Results of the study, published today in the journal Scientific Reports (at https://go.nature.com/2W6gpEu) demonstrates that giant Atlantic bluefin gathers in hot spots for 3 to 4 months a year to feast on their favorite snack foods -- herring and mackerel. Based on this behaviour, an international team of scientists predicted they might be able to take advantage of their homing behavior to monitor the bluefin's coming and goings with Canada's Ocean Tracking Network (OTN) -- an array of underwater receivers on North America's east coast, including across the Cabot Strait and the Scotian Shelf off Nova Scotia, Canada. Additional receivers along the North American coastline logged visitation of the bluefin from Canada to the Bahamas, and as far east as Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea. Much like an electronic EasyPass collection system on tolled highways, the large bluefin "check in" as they pass across these acoustic "gates," providing an opportunity to monitor their behavior in consecutive years. "Atlantic Bluefin are big animals and it took a team of fishers to catch each one individually and pull it up on the deck of their boats so scientists could electronically tag them. By carefully handling the animals, the team was able to tag each tuna with a long-term wearable device, and then record the return of mature and sub-adult Atlantic bluefin tuna for 1-5 years. "The project utilized the OTN underwater receiver technology that was deployed in strategic locations to capture the coming and goings of multiple species of fish in Canadian waters," said Dr. Barbara Block of Stanford University, the leader of the project. Each tag emits a unique, coded "ping" which can be detected as an individual ID number, and stored by an array of underwater receivers - allowing them to identify the passage of an individual tagged tuna. One such receiver "gate" lies across the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence across the Cabot Straight, and a second line has been installed on the continental shelf off Halifax, Nova Scotia. Once a year, data collected on these receivers is downloaded by scientists from Canada's OTN. The data enabled the team to create a quantitative model of their natural survivorship -- a parameter difficult to directly measure empirically that provides information on how long bluefin tuna of the age class tagged (on average ~14 years old) survive in the wild. "It was a high risk project. No one was completely sure they'd come back with this precision as you have to be relatively close to the receiver to get the data," Block said. "By putting the acoustic tags out year after year in small numbers for almost a decade, and securing the tags tightly to the fish, we have been able to literally count the experimental fish coming into the Gulf of St. Lawrence in summer and detect their exit in the fall." Starting in 2009, scientists tagged 128 individual Atlantic bluefin tuna with acoustic tags. The first tags were placed on giant bluefin just as the receiver gate was constructed across the Cabot Strait, and this effort has continued ever since, with tags being deployed on approximately 4-25 fish per year and detections continuing to the present for more recent cohorts of tagged fish. Some of these fish were very large- including one whose length measurements on the deck of the vessel put it over 1,350 lbs (614 kg). Over 31,000 detections were picked up by receivers from Canada to the Bahamas, and all the way to Gibraltar. "Atlantic Bluefin has an uncanny ability to return with precision to the same ocean areas they were in the year before," said Dr. Mike Stokesbury of Acadia University. "We had observed this fidelity previously with satellite tags. We utilized acoustic tag technology created by Vemco, of Bedford, Nova Scotia, Canada, to track the fish as they passed above the receiver gates." The study results provide a novel way to monitor the adult bluefin tuna populations as fisheries quotas rise. These are the fish that primarily go to spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico and the Mediterranean Sea, and contribute to the next generation of bluefin tuna. A spatially-structured Bayesian mark recapture model was applied to the acoustic detection data for Atlantic bluefin tuna electronically tagged in the GSL to estimate the rate of instantaneous annual natural mortality. This analysis showed that tagged bluefin tuna had over 90% natural survivorship one year post tagging and the technique potentially has the capacity to keep track of an individual for 5-10 years. "Not many things are eating a giant bluefin," remarked Mike Stokesbury. He adds that the experiment demonstrates that acoustic tags can provide vital fisheries independent estimates for life history parameters critical for improving stock assessment models. Atlantic bluefin tuna are fished by over 50 nations and are currently managed by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). Current total allowable catches (TACs) are 28,200 tonnes in the eastern Atlantic and 2,350 tonnes in the West Atlantic. Significant increases in TACs are projected in the next few years, particularly in the eastern Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea where quotas are on target for 36,000 tonnes by 2020. Despite their economic importance, little is known about the natural survival of bluefin populations, a key parameter for building population models that predict their future numbers in the Atlantic Ocean. Natural survival has so far proven difficult to estimate, but this research provides a new way to refine this estimate. "The fidelity of these fish to the same spots combined with this large array of underwater receivers makes for a unique opportunity to learn about the survival of these fish under natural conditions, which is important for managing their populations sustainably," says Dr. Whitlock of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The scientists consider the project a "proof-of-concept" effort that demonstrates the strength of the technology and the novel capacity for building quantitative models that inform fisheries managers about the status of the populations. The team hopes to continue the study this coming year (dependent upon funding) and encourage an increased use of the electronic tag technology to improve modeling of tuna populations. Bluefin lives a long time (~40 years) for a tuna species, and understanding the fate of the adults is important to understanding their life history. "Bluefin tuna is full of surprises, and I am fascinated with how each individual tends to have preferred routes no different than you or I. Bluefin tuna have favorite fast food hot spots where they like to go, and Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence attracts fish from both the North American and European population of tunas" Block explains. The scientists emphasize that the work would not have been possible without the enormous cooperation of a small group of commercial fishers around Murphy's pond, in Port Hood, Ca. The scientists dedicated the paper to Captain Steve McGinnis, a major participant in the study, who tragically lost his life last summer in an accident unrelated to the study, when out at sea catching Atlantic bluefin tuna with charter clients in the same area. "Stevie was an amazing fisherman and his contributions made this project the success that it has been, it's a great loss for this fishing community," Dr. Block remarked. A former Mississippi Gulf Coast police officer told a judge Monday that she had sex with her supervisor and then fell asleep while her 3-year-old daughter was dying inside an overheated patrol car. Cassie Barker pleaded guilty Monday to manslaughter in a plea bargain after being indicted on a second-degree murder charge. The Sun Herald reports prosecutors recommend the 29-year-old Barker spend 20 years in prison. Harrison County Circuit Judge Larry Bourgeois said he wanted more time to consider the case and would sentence the ex-Long Beach officer April 1. Cheyenne Hyer died Sept. 30, 2016, after her mother left her strapped in a car seat for four hours while Barker was with her then-supervisor at his home. The car was running with the air conditioner turned on, but wasn't blowing cold air. The girl was unresponsive when Barker returned. Authorities say Hyer's body temperature was 107 degrees when she arrived at a nearby hospital. "I don't know what I could ever do to you that could be worse than what you've already experienced ... You will forever be entombed in a prison of your own mind," Bourgeois said to Barker. Barker had been free on bail but was arrested Monday after pleading guilty. Barker, who was working two jobs at the time, originally claimed she had been talking to Clark Ladner at his house early on a hot weekday morning when she fell asleep. Ladner and Barker were fired by the city of Long Beach within days. Ladner hasn't been criminally charged, telling officials he didn't know the girl was in the car. Reports at the time indicated Ladner told officials he had taken a sleep aid and also fallen asleep. The mother had left her daughter alone in a car at least once before, at a store in nearby Gulfport in April 2015. Police responded and child welfare officials took temporary custody of the girl at the time. Barker was suspended from the Long Beach police for a week without pay. The girl's father, Ryan Hyer, said he was never notified of that first incident. "Every time I close my eyes, I picture her suffering and then I picture her laying in this coffin," Ryan Hyer said Monday. "I still see her smiling and laughing in my head and I would assume that smile and laughter turned to pain and suffering in that instance." The father is suing the Long Beach Police Department and the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services for the wrongful death of his child, saying the child welfare agency should have taken stronger action after the first incident. "As a parent, you are supposed to protect your child, and Cheyenne is gone because her mother didn't protect her, not once but twice," Hyer said. Barker herself was hospitalized after the girl's death for what officials described as shock. A psychological exam showed Barker suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder attributed to childhood trauma and her daughter's death. She was found competent to stand trial. Searchers have found the body of a 5-year-old California girl who fell into a rain-swollen river in the Sierra Nevada foothills over the weekend. The Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department says Matilda Ortiz was found dead Wednesday afternoon. The child slipped off rocks and fell into the Stanislaus River Sunday evening at Knights Ferry, a sprawling recreation area. Her father jumped in but was unable to reach her because of the fast-moving current. Authorities have warned of dangers at California rivers resulting from the state's exceptionally wet winter. Members of the community pitched in to help search on Tuesday. The girl's mother, Marissa Vasquez, told the Modesto Bee she believed her daughter was gone but wanted her body found and returned to her family. "This tragic event has touched so many people, including the first responders that searched and continue to search for her," the sheriff's department said in a post to Facebook. "Please continue to pray for the family, that we can bring some closure. Our hearts break for them and little Matilda." Knights Ferry is located approximately 40 miles east of Stockton, California along State Route 120. A judge blocked oil and gas drilling on almost 500 square miles (1,295 sq. kilometers) in Wyoming and said the federal government must consider the cumulative climate change impact of leasing broad swaths of U.S. public land for oil and gas exploration. The order marks the latest in a string of court rulings over the past decade including one last month in Montana that have faulted the U.S. for inadequate consideration of greenhouse gas emissions when approving oil, gas and coal projects on federal land. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington, appeared to go a step further than other judges in his order issued late Tuesday. Previous rulings focused on individual lease sales or permits. But Contreras said that when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management auctions public lands for oil and gas leasing, officials must consider emissions from past, present and foreseeable future oil and gas leases nationwide. "Given the national, cumulative nature of climate change, considering each individual drilling project in a vacuum deprives the agency and the public of the context necessary to evaluate oil and gas drilling on federal land," Contreras wrote. The ruling coincides with an aggressive push by President Donald Trump's administration to open more public lands to energy development. It came in a lawsuit that challenged leases issued in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado in 2015 and 2016, during President Barack Obama's administration. Only the leases in Wyoming were immediately addressed in Contreras' ruling, which blocks federal officials from issuing drilling permits until they conduct a new environmental review looking more closely at greenhouse gas emissions. The case was brought by two advocacy groups, WildEarth Guardians and Physicians for Social Responsibility. WildEarth Guardians climate program director Jeremy Nichols predicted the ruling would have much bigger implications than a halt to drilling in some areas of Wyoming, assuming the government does what Contreras has asked. "This is the Holy Grail ruling we've been after, especially with oil and gas," said Nichols. "It calls into question the legality of oil and gas leasing that's happening everywhere." BLM spokeswoman Kristen Lenhardt said the agency was still reviewing the ruling and "determining a path forward regarding the implications." Burning fossil fuels extracted from federal land generates the equivalent of 1.4 billion tons (1.3 billion metric tons) annually of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, according to a November report from the U.S. Geological Survey . That's equivalent to almost one-quarter of total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. An industry group said the BLM already was analyzing emissions appropriately. "The judge is asking BLM to take a wild guess at how many wells would be developed on these leases," said Kathleen Sgamma with the Western Energy Alliance. Following previous court rulings over climate change, the BLM has gone back and reconsidered the effects of fossil fuels and then re-affirmed its approvals of projects. That could happen again in this case, with further studies done before drilling was allowed to proceed, said Harry Weiss, an environmental lawyer based in Philadelphia whose clients have included oil and gas companies. "This decision should not be interpreted as a ban on leasing activities," Weiss said. "The court is not ruling on whether it's thumbs up or thumbs down. The court is simply grading how the administration did analyzing the issues." A 44-year-old man died in a stabbing at San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf on Wednesday afternoon, police said Thursday. The victim, identified as Brook Pettyjohn, died after the stabbing was reported at 1:48 p.m. in the area of Jefferson and Taylor streets. Police said 56-year-old Bruce Edward Penn of San Francisco was arrested in connection with the stabbing. Penn was booked on the charges of murder and multiple counts of assault with a deadly weapon, police said. Investigators learned that both Penn and Pettyjohn frequented the Fisherman's Wharf area. The investigation is ongoing. The city of San Francisco is putting a $19 million proposal on the table to make it more of a "smart city" by adding street lights, raising concerns for those worried about their privacy. The Gold River-based anyCOMM Holding Corporation would install thousands of devices on street lights that can record videos and audio, the San Francisco Examiner reported. The devices cant hear conversations but could be used to detect flooding, gunshots and even glass breaking. About 60 lights have already been tested since May of last year, and concerns have been raised about the data being shared by the devices. The proposal could be impacted by a piece of legislation proposed by Supervisor Aaron Peskin, imposing a number of requirements when it comes to new technology entering the city, specifically how the technology would be used and who has access to the data. The legislation will be discussed Thursday night during a meeting with the committee on information technology. The U.S. Supreme Court appeared likely Wednesday to rule in favor of a Mississippi death row inmate who said the state prosecutor repeatedly kicked black people off the jury each time he was tried for the same murders, NBC News reported. Curtis Flowers, who is black, was put on trial six separate times for the 1996 murder of four employees at a furniture store in Winona, Mississippi, where he had recently worked. After the state supreme court threw out the first conviction over questions about evidence, Flowers faced five more trials. Two resulted in mistrials. But in two others, the state courts found that the prosecutor in the case, Doug Evans, wrongly excluded potential jurors on the basis of their race. In the case before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Flowers again accused the prosecutor of impermissibly removing blacks from the jury. Justice Clarence Thomas broke a three-year silence on the bench, asking a few questions in the last minutes of Wednesday's argument. As the race for Chicago mayor heads to the final stretch, it appears the Obamas won't be endorsing a candidate in the run-off election for mayor of Chicago. A spokesperson confirmed to NBC 5 Thursday the "Obamas do not plan to endorse in the run-off," despite reported calls for them to do so. Multiple sources said Thursday there were calls to former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama to endorse Toni Preckwinkle. The Obamas still own a home in the city's Kenwood neighborhood and voted by mail in the February 26th municipal election. Preckwinkle finished second and now faces Lori Lightfoot in the April 2 runoff. Preckwinkle and the Obamas have a long history. In 1995, Obama - then an attorney and professor at the University of Chicago - visited Preckwinkle, who was his 4th Ward alderman at the time, as he eyed a campaign for the Illinois Senate. Preckwinkle ultimately supported him in that race, a testy contest that ruptured many friendships and political alliances on the South Side. In 2000, she backed Obama again in his unsuccessful Congressional run against Rep. Bobby Rush. She also endorsed him in his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004. The Obama-Preckwinkle relationship has not always been rosy, though. Reports indicate Preckwinkle wasn't fully on board when Obama announced his run for the White House, though she did eventually serve as an Obama delegate. Obama has returned the favor in the past, endorsing her 2018 re-election campaign for Cook County Board president just days before voters cast their ballots in the Democratic primary. Preckwinkle has also already nabbed the backing of several former White House staffers and Obama confidantes in her mayoral race, including Valerie Jarrett, John Rogers, Ken Bennett and Tina Tchen - all members of the Obamas' inner circle. But will the former president - whose library is headed for Chicago, but has lived in Washington, D.C., full time since 2009 - personally step in to help out his longtime friend once more? It appears not. Attorneys who have represented clergy abuse victims across the United States released a report that lists the names of every Catholic priest and lay person in Illinois who has been publicly accused of sexual misconduct. On Wednesday, the attorneys released a 185-page report that includes background information and work histories of 395 priests and lay people accused in the state's six dioceses. Attorney Mark Pearlman says this is the first time such a comprehensive Illinois list has been compiled. It aggregates previously reported information and it's not clear how much is new. "This report is just the beginning," said attorney Jeff Anderson. Advocates say the list is far more extensive than the names already released by the state's six dioceses. Anderson and Pearlman said the disparity shows church leaders continue to conceal the scope of the clergy abuse crisis. They say that of the 395 names on the list being released Wednesday, only one is a priest still in active ministry. Dioceses throughout the state say they have taken major steps to address clergy abuse, including publishing the names of all credibly accused members of the clergy and reporting every allegation they receive to police. The new list pulls names from lawsuits, news articles and other public sources. In light of Anderson & Associates' released list, the Archdiocese of Chicago said it has identified 22 priests on the list and reported 20 of them to civil authorities. One of the remaining clerics was already arrested and the final remaining case involved an adult, not a minor, they said. "The Archdiocese of Chicago does not 'police itself,'" the archdiocese said in a statement. "It reports all allegations to the civil authorities, regardless of the date of the alleged abuse, whether the priest is a diocesan priest or religious order priest, and whether the priest is alive or dead." According to the Chicago archdiocese, many of the names listed in the recent release are "religious order priests," which are "separately governed entities in the Roman Catholic Church." The Diocese of Joliet said all of the allegations involving its area have already been reported to law enforcement authorities. "In addition to those priests already listed on our website, the list published by Attorney Anderson includes the names of some diocesan priests, living and deceased, who have been accused of abuse, but the claim was unsubstantiated or deemed not credible by the Diocese of Joliet Review Board, or the claim did not involve child abuse," said Dioces of Joliet said in a statement. "In addition to the investigation and conclusion by the Diocese of Joliet Review Board, each of these claims was forwarded to the civil authorities for investigation and potential prosecution." The Diocese of Springfield and Bishop Thomas John Paprocki offered their "profound sadness and deep sorrow for the shameful wrongs and evils perpetrated during a dark chapter" in church history. "The extreme hurt some of our clergy caused decades ago is a disgrace, and it grieves all of us to see the suffering these sins have caused," Diocese of Springfield spokesperson Andrew Hansen said in a statement. "The Diocese of Springfield pledges continued efforts to bring healing to the victims and survivors of this evil." The group said the names of 19 priests with credible allegations of sexual abuse of a minor, none of whom are in active ministry, and 13 of whome are deceased, have already been published. "Mr. Anderson claims that many credibly accused priests are still active in ministry, although there are none in the Springfield Diocese and Mr. Anderson was only able to identify one among his statewide list of nearly 400," Hansen's statement read. "The facts are clear in the Diocese of Springfield that the majority of instances of abuse occurred more than 30 years ago, and only one instance has occurred in the past 20 years." Hansen said while the report is an "impressive professional marketing brochure" it does not represent "a thorough and diligent review of the publicly available facts, and it is highly misleading and irresponsible." Anderson said the purpose of the report is to "let the public know who has been reported" and to "let survivors know they are not alone." The Diocese of Bridgeport has agreed to pay $3.5 million to five men who alleged in lawsuits they were sexually abused as children by priests. The settlements involving three priests announced Wednesday by the Diocese of Bridgeport were reached following mediation with the law firm, Tremont, Sheldon, Robinson and Mahoney, of Bridgeport, representing the plaintiffs. Two priests were diocesan priests and have died. The third was a Maronite who worked at a church not overseen by the diocese. The Maronites paid for most of that portion of the settlement. The suits alleged the abuse occurred from the late 1980s to the early 2000s in Bridgeport, Brookfield, Danbury and Ridgefield. It is our hope that these settlements bring a measure of healing and justice to victims, although we are fully aware that they can never be full compensated for their suffering and loss. The diocese also continues to work with victims/survivors through its survivors group, victims assistance coordinators, Mass of Hope and Healing, and other resources, a statement on the Diocese website says. A Connecticut native and former Army Ranger is on a mission to save those who save us. Jonathan Norton is climbing to new heights with new equipment to help first responders. Norton is a father of three and former Army Ranger who served in the 10th Mountain Division where he was deployed multiple times to Iraq. He also spent years training Ranger students. His life now is focused on a mission of safety. My mission is to protect those who are protecting and serving us every day, said Norton, who also owns Peak Safety Systems. It is literally suspending me from the edge of a 90-foot cliff. Thats how much confidence I have in this equipment, said Norton. Hes talking about RopeSafe, an edge protection system for load bearing ropes and cables. Norton designed RopeSafe to save first responders after he came close to losing someone himself. A Connecticut veteran started a company aimed at keeping people safe and he wants to hire veterans. It scared me. I was sitting on the edge of the cliff and this student lost his footing and he pendulumed. And the rope, our edge protector failed and the rope nearly sheered. And at that moment I responded. I reacted and fortunately, he did not fall to his death, but it was very, very close, said Norton. It was a close call that pushed him to this calling of creating all kinds of life-saving gear with his company Peak Safety Systems. I invented RopeSafe to solve for those problems, said Norton. Simply put, the point of RopeSafe is to protect this rope from jagged or sharp edges and to keep our first responders safe. Already Norton has sold products to the Army Rangers, Navy Seals and Green Berets. However, making this product is the just the first part of his mission. Norton also wants to help military members in the tough transition back to civilian life. My goal is to employ veterans. I want to create a bridge between the veteran who is leaving active duty and entering into the civilian work force, said Norton. Having a hard time coming home himself, this Connecticut native wants to be that safety net for our service members. Norton is working to get grant money to fund this mission. No matter how high the climb, hes motivated to reach this peak of success. If there is something I can do to make high risk professions, soldiers, first responders, military, little bit safer, actually exponentially safer, then I am all in, said Norton. You can follow Nortons story on Instagram and Facebook at @RopeSafeUSA and find out more information about his mission on his website. You can also text RANGER to 428-28 to be connected to updates and alerts on the mission. A worker for the Connecticut town where a woman was found dead in a suitcase is facing discipline for taking and sharing photos of the victim's body. Officials said the DPW employee admitted to taking photos of the body of 24-year-old Valerie Reyes after she was found in a suitcase off Glenville Road on February 4. Reyes had been missing for nearly a week when her body was discovered. Greenwich officials announced in a statement Wednesday that the employee will be demoted from a position at the Department of Public Works for six months, suspended without pay for five days, and lose five vacation days. The town did not publicly identify the employee. The employee will also be required to complete sensitivity training. There will not be criminal charges. Police have charged Reyes' former boyfriend in connection with her death. Mold, dirty water and heating problems are among some of the issues military families in southeastern Connecticut said theyre dealing with in their privately-run military housing. Sen.Richard Blumenthal (D) visited some of the homes in Groton on Wednesday to see the conditions first-hand. A Submarine Base New London spokesperson said there are 1,041 active duty families living in privately-run military housing units in Groton, some built as far back as the 1960s. He said all have some degree of rehab work done, or were built when the property management company took over in the early 2000s. But some Navy families said health and safety issues arent being addressed properly. Chief Petty Officer Chazwani Kelly and his wife Glenda Pelliccio showed Blumenthal mold under the drain in their bathroom sink and throughout the shower. Pelliccio said she cleans it often and it keeps coming back. The bottom of the fridge, the drawers were full of eggs of a spider, Pelliccio said, also noting that at one point the dirty water from the dishwasher was coming out of her kitchen faucet. Despite calling property manager Balfour Beatty Communities, they said the problems arent always fixed. Balfour Beatty has a contract with the Navy to provide public private venture (PPV) housing. When we go ahead and try to call the maintenance line for Balfour Beatty to actually get things taken care of, they just dont answer. It just continues to ring and ring, said a member of the Navy living in military housing, while in a discussion with Blumenthal. About 50 people were in attendance. About a dozen spoke. Among them, a woman who addressed concerns about peeling floors. My family, including my 10-month-old crawler cannot walk on the floor barefoot or crawl across the floor without getting splinters in their feet. Mold concerns was a common issue. Justin Anderson said her kids have severe asthma. Mold grew through the entire HVAC system, hospitalized my children and I to the point where they thought they were going to have to put my son on a ventilator, Anderson said. She said she has lived in military housing near the SUBASE for 10 years and had to switch to different units. Anderson said she hasnt had success with Balfour Beatty resolving maintenance issues. They told me that the mold growing in my home is because I take too hot of a shower. No, its the fans. They are not generating enough, Anderson said. Her family was unable to move, until now, because of credit and concern that Andersons husband wanted to relocate. Anderson, a real estate agent also handed Blumenthal housing listings around town and said that the military housing was overpriced. Another mom, whose house Blumenthal toured, said despite repairs to her shower and connected bathtub, theres still mildew because the property manager didnt seal the bathtub. She wont give her two young daughters a bath. My little ones two and she takes a shower like the rest of us because I dont want her to be in there and me to rinse her hair or anything and the little flecks to fall into her actual bathwater, said Tiaria Perrill, who did said military housing was significantly better than it was when her husband was stationed in Georgia. Blumenthal told her that as part of the Senate Armed Service Committee he has heard from families across the country about mold, asbestos, lead among other deficiencies in privately-run military housing units probably more common in other places than here, Im happy to say, Blumenthal said. Blumenthal said hes going to take the issue up with the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Justice and wants to see if there is any fraudulent activity from private housing contractors nationwide. One Navy man did speak in favor of Balfour Beatty at the meeting with Blumenthal. SUBASE Housing Director Donna Wilson and Capt. Paul Whitescarver, the commanding officer for Naval Submarine Base New London, were also on hand and said they are advocates for tenants who can turn to them when not getting the results they need. Whitescarver said hes confident Balfour Beatty will take up the issues. Balfour Beatty did a survey. They had a participation rate close to 50 percent where there was an 80 percent satisfaction rate. You know, thats pretty big, Whitescarver said. The SUBASE will conduct a Navy-administered survey as well. Balfour Beatty Communities corporate office released a statement that said, Delivering an exceptional living experience for every resident who calls our community home is our top priority. For our team this means providing a safe, quality home, well-maintained community amenities, responding promptly to service requests and resolving them quickly and completely, while consistently delivering the highest level of customer service. We acknowledge there are some residents who have had experiences that do not meet our standards, and we are working diligently to correct that. We are fully aligned with our Navy partners and actively working with them to make the necessary improvements to ensure all residents have a positive experience, quality home and clear channels to get immediate resolution when issues arise. Heather Babb, a DOD spokeswoman sent NBC Connecticut a statement that reads, Recent concerns raised by military families about DOD's privatized housing call for immediate action and underscore a need for greater accountability within the department and from our private partners. DOD is working with the military departments and our privatized housing partners to increase opportunities for ongoing, collective communication with residents and to improve our responsiveness to their concerns as we strive to ensure a positive experience for all military families living in privatized housing. The department is committed to improving the housing privatization program and our privatized housing to ensure safe, high quality and affordable housing and communities where service members and their families will want -- and choose -- to live." In her first two weeks on the job, Connecticuts new Housing Commissioner Seila Mosquera-Bruno says shes been inundated with information about the crumbling foundations crisis, first uncovered by NBC Connecticut Investigates in July of 2015. Thursday, for the first time, Mosquera-Bruno saw the problem in person, touring two homes with failing foundations in northeast Connecticut. Its just devastating. I wasnt expecting this, she said. Willington homeowner Tim Heim invited the commissioner into his basement to see what he and as many as 35,000 homeowners could be dealing with in the state. Heim first noticed cracks in the foundation of his home four years ago. Today, the cracks inside his basement are multiplying. We purchased the house for $329,000 and right now its worthless, said Heim. Astonished by the crumbling concrete and the bowing basement walls, Mosquera-Bruno learned of failed fights with insurance companies, and the financial burden the crisis is placing on communities. Weve lost almost $5 million in assessed values for our town. Thats huge for small towns. That goes to the taxpayers, and its hard to overcome that in your budget, Stafford First Selectman Mary Mitta told the commissioner. Heim pointed out how the home was starting to lift off of the foundation as the cracks widened. You can see the space up top, he pointed out on the tour. His spirits were lifted seeing the new commissioner take a hands-on approach to what he calls the biggest crisis in Connecticut. Shes two weeks into the job, shes in the basement looking at a crumbling foundation first hand and thats a great start, said Heim. Heim urged Mosquera-Bruno to call Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, who came to his home last summer, and Hein says promised help for homeowners. The commissioner said she plans to put pressure on Washington. Every time there is a natural disaster there are resources and thats what we are gonna plea, she said. The state has already requested funding from FEMA twice and been denied. FEMA says it considers this a man-made event. President Donald Trump's posthumous slam on Sen. John McCain flips reality on its head when it comes to who gave veterans the option to see a private doctor at public expense. "McCain didn't get the job done for our great vets," Trump said Wednesday. "I got it done." Actually, McCain got it done. Trump routinely takes full credit for enacting the Choice program, suggesting he had fulfilled a campaign promise to provide private-sector care for veterans while ignoring the fact that it was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2014. This time, his boast came as part of a broad-brush denunciation of McCain, the senator from Arizona, Vietnam war naval aviator and tortured prisoner of war who died in August of brain cancer. TRUMP: "The vets were on my side because I got the job done. I got Choice, and I got accountability. ... For many decades, they couldn't get it done. It was never done. I got it. Five months ago, I got it done. Choice." remarks at an Army tank factory in Lima, Ohio . THE FACTS: What Trump got done was an expansion of the program achieved by McCain and Sen. Bernie Sanders, most prominent among the lawmakers who advanced the legislation signed by Obama. McCain was a co-sponsor of the 2014 legislation to overhaul the Department of Veterans Affairs following the scandal at VA's medical center in Phoenix, where some veterans died while waiting months for appointments for medical care. He was a key negotiator for the legislation establishing the Veterans Choice program, working with Sanders, the co-author of the bill. Sanders was then chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. McCain didn't rest after the law was enacted. He fought to expand the program and achieved that, too, in his last months. Congress approved the expansion in May and Trump signed the legislation in June. It's named after three veterans who served in Congress. One of them is McCain. It's called the John S. McCain III, Daniel K. Akaka, and Samuel R. Johnson VA Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks Act of 2018. ___ TRUMP: "Instead of waiting in line for two days, two weeks, two months, people waiting on line they're not very sick, by the time they see a doctor, they are terminally ill we give them Choice. If you have to wait for any extended period of time, you go outside, you go to a local doctor, we pay the bill, you get yourself better, go home to your family and we got it passed. We got it done." THE FACTS: As he does routinely, Trump exaggerated what's been accomplished with his expansion. Veterans still must wait for weeks before they can get private care outside the VA system. The program currently allows veterans to see doctors outside VA if they must wait more than 30 days for an appointment or drive more than 40 miles (65 kilometers) to a VA facility. Under new rules to take effect in June, veterans are to have that option for a private doctor if their VA wait is only 20 days (28 for specialty care) or their drive is only 30 minutes. But the expanded Choice eligibility may do little to provide immediate help. That's because veterans often must wait even longer for an appointment in the private sector. Last year, then-Secretary David Shulkin said VA care is "often 40 percent better in terms of wait times" compared with the private sector. In 2018, 34 percent of all VA appointments were with outside physicians, down from 36 percent in 2017. The VA also must resolve long-term financing because of congressional budget caps after the White House opposed new money to pay for the program. As a result, lawmakers could be forced later this year to limit the program or slash core VA or other domestic programs. Also key to the program's success is an overhaul of VA's electronic medical records to allow seamless sharing of medical records with private physicians, a process expected to take up to 10 years. VA Secretary Robert Wilkie has said full implementation of the expanded Choice program is "years" away. What to Know A JetBlue crew member from Queens says she was sexually assaulted by a fellow employee in San Francisco, according to a lawsuit filed last week She also alleged that the NYC-based airline did nothing even after its investigation substantiated the physical assault The employee was forced to work alongside the accused or lose her seniority status as well as pay, the lawsuit said A Queens woman who works for JetBlue says she was sexually assaulted by a flight attendant after a night out with a few other coworkers --- and alleges the airline failed to take action even after its investigation substantiated her allegations, according to a lawsuit filed last week. The employee, only identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, is suing the New York City-based company and flight attendant Steven Tenorio for sex discrimination, gender discrimination, sexual harassment, hostile work environment and retaliation. In a statement, JetBlue told News 4 it could not comment on pending litigation but said it takes "allegations of violent or inappropriate behavior very seriously and investigates such claims thoroughly." "We work to create a respectful workplace for all our crewmembers where they feel welcome and safe," the statement said. According to the lawsuit, Jane Doe and Tenorio worked on a San Francisco-bound flight on Feb. 22, 2019, and they discussed plans to go out for dinner and dancing with other coworkers. The two later met up, grabbed something to eat and were then joined by another colleague, Ronald Banks. While waiting for Banks at their hotel lobby, Tenorio allegedly sat down and placed his head on Jane Doe's chest in a sexual manner. She asked, "Why are you laying on my chest?" and Tenorio got up and moved away. After Banks joined them, the three went out to dinner and another JetBlue employee, Andy Rawlins, joined them back at the hotel lobby. They talked until around 4 a.m. and decided to end the night, according to lawsuit. When they all got inside the hotel elevator, Tenorio allegedly grabbed Jane Doe from behind and pressed himself tightly against her body and said, in front of other JetBlue employees and hotel guests, "She don't know she going to my room tonight. We going to have some fun." Jane Doe was unable to overpower Tenorio and get away from his grasp and when the elevator stopped at his floor, Tenorio pulled her out of the elevator, picked her up off the ground and walked towards his room, the lawsuit claims. She managed to get her right hand free and dug her nails into Tenorio's neck to escape back to her room, according to the lawsuit. Later that day, Jane Doe told Banks what happened and called the police, as well as contacting Jet Blue Crew Services. The lawsuit said that Banks confronted Tenorio, saying Jane Doe felt like he violated her, to which he "repulsively responded, 'Oh no, I was just playing with her. Did she think I was trying to rape her?'" Jane Doe also contacted JetBlue's human resources departments. In response, she says she was pulled from the next flight but Tenorio continued working. Another JetBlue employee reportedly told Jane Doe that Tenorio kept his scarf on the entire flight, violating company policy, and they were unable to see if there were markings on Tenorio's neck. On Feb. 26, 2019, a Crew Relations investigator contacted Jane Doe and rather asking questions about the sexual assault, Julie Paulino asked her about sex, her divorce, and a dream she had told Banks about, the lawsuit said. Paulino then stated that JetBlue had substantiated that Tenorio had physically assaulted Jane Doe, but he was not going to be fired. She also allegedly indicated that the victim "be respectful and profession with him, and that she could try to avoid him based on seniority but there was nothing they could do to ensure [Jane Doe] would not be forced to interact with Tenorio." Having to check her schedule all the time to avoid contact with Tenorio caused Jane Doe mental distress and her only options were to call in sick or bid out of those flights, resulting in loss of seniority status and loss pay. Attorney information for Tenorio was not immediately known. The people of Okinawa voted Sunday on a plan for a U.S. military base relocation in a referendum that will send a message on how they feel about housing American troops in Japan, who many see as a burden on the group of tiny southwestern islands. The referendum is technically not binding but interest is high for testing the public sentiment about the plan to relocate Futenma air base, which is pushed by the national government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The plan has its beginnings in 1995, when outrage erupted against U.S. service members over the rape of a 12-year-old girl. Futenma was long criticized as dangerous, being in a residential area. Washington also agreed to transfer some personnel to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. A replacement base is on a coastal landfill in an area called Henoko. Critics say wildlife such as coral reefs and the dugong will be hurt. "There are so many American troops here. Of course, 99 percent of them are good people, but then there is that 1 percent who do evil things. It's hard for us," said Tomomichi Shimabukuro, who runs a seaside inn called Churaumi-kun. "I feel most people of Okinawa are going to vote in protest of the plan," he said in a phone interview. Japanese media surveys have shown voters are likely to reject the Henoko plan. Nearly 1.16 million residents were eligible to vote. Interest has been strong, not only in the rest of Japan but among pacifists internationally. The referendum asked: "On the landfill for the construction of the U.S. military base planned by the government in Henoko, Nago city, to replace Futenma air base," with the answers being: "I agree," ''I oppose," or "Neither." Although Okinawa makes up less than 1 percent of Japan's land space, it houses about half of the 54,000 American troops stationed in Japan, and makes for 64 percent of the land used by the U.S. bases, under a bilateral security treaty. Japan relies heavily on the U.S. for its defense, and the government has said it will not abide by the referendum, even if the Henoko plan is rejected. Over the years, Henoko has drawn countless protests and sit-ins. The election last year of Okinawa Gov. Denny Tamaki, the son of a Japanese woman and a U.S. Marine he has never met, has injected renewed energy to the movement. Skeptics are worried the costs for a landfill base like Henoko may keep growing, the runway may end up being too short and the government may not close Futenma, after all. Some in Okinawa are wondering why U.S. military operations can't be moved to other parts of Japan. Such plans have been repeatedly brought up with little progress, making some in Okinawa feel they are getting second-class treatment. Col. John Hutcheson, spokesman for U.S. Forces Japan, said the Henoko agreement is a bilateral deal aimed at closing Futenma, while maintaining what he called vital capabilities for regional security. He declined to comment on the referendum, saying it was a domestic political issue. "We are committed to maintaining good relations with local communities on Okinawa and do our best every day to balance their concerns with the necessity to maintain readiness in support of our treaty commitments," he said. The start of spring also marks the beginning of severe weather season in Texas. To make sure they're prepared for whatever Mother Nature throws their way, cities across the Metroplex took part in the region's largest-ever severe weather exercise Thursday. "Failing to plan is planning to fail," said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who is responsible for the county's emergency preparedness. "We do these practices so that we're ready for the real thing." The exercise brought together leaders, emergency responders, and representatives from mutiple local, state, and federal agencies -- as well as medical professionals and disaster relief organizations. They were presented with a scenario where a powerful EF4 tornado ripped through the heart of Downtown Dallas, leaving nearly a dozen people dead, hundreds of people injured, and still more people trapped and stranded within the area. "When you have something of this nature occur, it's very difficult to say that you're going to have enough people [to respond]," said Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown, who also participated in the exercise. "We can always use more resources. And so that's what's going to be the challenge for us in a setting like this." Although tornadoes more frequently strike the rural areas around DFW, Jenkins said the exercise scenario was not unrealistic -- pointing to both the tornado that hit Downtown Fort Worth back in 2000, as well as the more recent EF4 tornado in 2015 that leveled homes in the Garland/Rowlett area and killed several people. He and others also pointed out that the growth in North Texas continues to push out into those rural areas -- and the region is getting more densely populated each year. "Our urban footprint just keeps expanding," said Tom Bradshaw, Meterologist-in-Charge of the National Weather Service office in Dallas/Fort Worth. "There is a lot of real estate that weather can potentially impact from year to year." Brown noted that exercises like Thursday's force them to "think outside the box" so they're not caught off guard by any situation and have a plan in place to effectively respond to disasters. Officials in Tarrant and Denton counties also took part in the exercise. A body that was found covered in mud and debris south of San Ysidro after what may have been days in the Tijuana River, prompting a cross-border homicide investigation, has been identified. The San Diego Police Department believes the body of Francisco Pulido-Amaro, 48, a citizen of Mexico, may have pushed across the U.S.-Mexico Border due to recent storm runoff. The man's body was found on March 14 in the Tijuana River Valley south of the Las Americas Premium Outlets. It was not clear exactly when Pulido-Amaro may have died but SDPD believes he died while in Mexico. SDPD said, "the man appeared to have been there for some time." Mexican authorities are being contacted to coordinate an investigation south of the border, police said. SDPD refused to release details surrounding the circumstances of Pulido-Amaro's death but did say traumatic injuries were found during an autopsy that prompted their homicide investigation. SDPD and Mexican officials have not been able to locate any of Pulido-Amaro's relatives to inform them of the death. Anyone with information was asked to call SDPD's homicide unit at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477. Los Angeles County health officials said Wednesday they have confirmed another case of measles involving a passenger who arrived aboard a flight at Los Angeles International Airport. The newest case was a passenger on United Airlines flight 240 that arrived at the airport on Mar. 5 and may have been in the area of Gate 76A at Terminal 7 between 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The person also visited an Enterprise Rent-A-Car location at 1719 Wilshire Blvd. in Santa Monica the following day sometime between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Health officials previously reported a measles case involving a China Eastern passenger who arrived at LAX on Feb. 21. The two cases are not believed to be related. The county Department of Public Health urged anyone who may have been in areas visited by the latest patient to contact their doctor if they develop symptoms of possible measles. Health officials said common symptoms include fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes and a rash. As in the previous case, people who were aboard the patient's flight have been notified separately. Health officials said anyone who have been free of symptoms for more than 20 days of exposure are no longer considered at risk. "We may continue to see measles cases that travel through L.A. County, so it is important if you or someone you know has been exposed to or has measles to contact your healthcare provider right away before going in," said Dr. Muntu Davis, the county's health officer. In the earlier case, health officials said the patient arrived at the LAX Tom Bradley International Terminal, gate 133, at 9 a.m. Feb. 21 aboard China Eastern flight 583. The passenger had a layover at Delta Air Lines gate 32 in Terminal 3, eventually leaving aboard flight DL 5705. The owners of the Queen Mary Hotel are being sued by a couple who say they were bitten by bed bugs during a stay last year. According to the complaint filed Feb. 13 in Los Angeles Superior Court against Urban Commons Queensway LLC and Evolution Hospitality LLC, Rosemarie and Joseph Libertelli were "mauled" by bed bugs at the Queen Mary Hotel in February 2018. A Queen Mary representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The Libertellis endured severe pain and suffering from the bed bug attack and sustained physical, emotional and financial injuries as a result of unknowingly rented the bug-infested room at the Long Beach hotel and tourist attraction, the suit alleges. The New York couple, who were staying at the hotel while visiting California and preparing to go on a cruise, are seeking compensatory and punitive damages. "This was a situation where two unsuspecting people trusted the Queen Mary and were betrayed," said the couple's lawyer, Brian Virag, who alleged that the hotel was aware of complaints of bedbugs from previous guests. Rosemarie Libertelli was bitten throughout her body, including, her face, ears, neck, hands fingers, arms and back, causing her to have a severe allergic reaction that required her hospitalization, the suit states. Her husband sustained numerous bedbug bites all over his body, according to the suit. "Bed bugs don't discriminate, they don't check TripAdvisor before they attack," Virag said. "They are found in hotels throughout the country and worldwide. Bed bug infestation in hotels have reached an epidemic proportion and is perhaps the most serious issue facing the hotel industry, because of the harm to a hotel's reputation and brand." Gov. Andrew Cuomo said more than a month ago that he would try like heck to legalize recreational marijuana in the upcoming state budget. But with a little over a week until the April 1 budget deadline, it appears that he might be giving up. The governor said on March 19 that he was removing marijuana legalization or at least its projected revenues from his state budget proposal, surprising lawmakers and activists alike. While the governor said that legalization will likely have to wait until later in the spring, leading lawmakers in the state Senate and Assembly say that they are not done pushing for legalization through ongoing budget negotiations. "Budget negotiations are full of back and forth, state Sen. Liz Krueger said in a statement. There is no reason this cannot be a part of the final budget. Although Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins have raised doubts before that a deal on marijuana legalization could be reached by April 1, both chambers included legalization in their one-house budget resolutions earlier this month. Im disappointed that the governor appears to have indicated an unwillingness to keep this discussion in the budget, Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes a leading proponent of legalization in the Assembly told City & State. It was a surprise to me given that we are in conversations with his staff and I thought it was going pretty productively. Legislative leaders and the governor agree in principle that New York should join other states in legalizing recreational marijuana, but differ in how it should be done. Among the biggest outstanding issues are to what extent tax revenues should be invested in minority communities most affected by prohibition and what should be done with people already convicted of marijuana-related offenses. While Cuomo said in February that he would not accept deferral of the matter until after the budget, he blamed lawmakers this week for delaying legalization rather than himself. I think it was clear early on that the legislative leaders signaled that it was going to be (done) outside budget," he said. "I think the speaker was quite clear of that, that it would be best to do it outside the budget, that it was complicated and it will take time. By Cuomos own admission, waiting on legalization has its own risks. If the measure is included in the budget, lawmakers can avoid going on record as either for or against it. When its not done in the budget, then it is, in my opinion, harder to do as a stand-alone bill because its now just marijuana, Cuomo said. While a January Quinnipiac University poll found widespread support for legalization statewide, some counties have made moves to prevent the sale of marijuana in their jurisdictions, suggesting a political risk for upstate or Long Island lawmakers who might support it. Plus, waiting until after the budget could throw the proposal into a competition with other issues that will be debated this spring, such as single-payer health care. The governor is not the only barrier to passage, according to Doug Greene, legislative director of the Empire State National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Some members of the Assembly appear to be at odds with leadership on the issue, he said, but his organization is continuing efforts to focus like a laser beam on the chamber through phone calls and emails to lawmakers. However, it appears that the issue has become a bargaining chip in budget talks as far as the governor is concerned, Greene added. That does not mean though that it will fall out of the budget, according to Melissa Moore, deputy state director at the Drug Policy Alliance. I dont think its actually out (of the budget) she said. It seems like the thing that happens in Albany when people say things externally that are not really the reality. In a March 20 appearance on The Brian Lehrer Show, Cuomo did say that it would be great to legalize marijuana as part of the budget. While it was one of many issues that he outlined as critical parts of his political agenda in the first 100 days of his term, Cuomo has not pursued it with his same trademark gusto that has characterized his push for congestion pricing, criminal justice reforms and making the local property tax cap permanent. There is still time for Cuomo to deliver, Moore said, especially since marijuana legalization is intersectional with his other legislative priorities. It could help fund repairs to New York City subways, improve the lives of people harmed by drug laws, and add to the bottom lines of state and local governments. Why not actually hold true, she said, and have the governor do good on his word and get this over the finish line? Correction: Empire State NORML Legislative Director Doug Greene's name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and mayors from a dozen other major cities met with Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders in Sacramento Wednesday to call for more state resources in the 2019 budget for homelessness programs. According to Garcetti's office, the mayors highlighted the success of the Homeless Emergency Aid Program, which allocated $500 million in 2018 for homelessness programs. "Last year, California's mayors fought hard for hundreds of millions of state dollars to confront the humanitarian crisis on our streets -- and in Los Angeles, we have already committed that money to badly needed bridge housing and other emergency initiatives," Garcetti said. "But this is just the beginning. Cities need Sacramento to keep following Governor Newsom's example, and stepping up with the resources we need to end homelessness across California. We'll keep pushing toward that goal, with a spirit of partnership that's as strong as it's ever been." California's homeless population grew to 134,278 in 2017, an increase of 16 percent from 2015. Garcetti's office noted that half of the country's homeless population is in California, and nearly half of California's homeless are in the state's 13 largest cities. "Last year, the state laid the foundation to get thousands of people off the streets and into housing," said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, chairman of the Big City Mayors coalition. "We look forward to continuing to work with the governor and Legislature to increase that historic investment so cities can fund to scale the programs and strategies that are most effective at addressing the urgent crisis of homelessness." While the rain didn't seem all that impressive in some spots of Southern California, hail sprinkled down on Long Beach, Riverside and Orange County Wednesday, making the first day of spring seem more like winter. NBC4's Shanna Mendiola said rain would be light and off and on from Wednesday through Thursday afternoon, with rain amounts range from a trace to a half inch over the next two days. A winter weather advisory goes into effect at 5 p.m. lasting through 8 p.m. Thursday over the mountains, with up to six inches of snow will fall above 6,000 feet. Amid the sudden rainfall, lanes on the northbound and southbound 710 were closed due to heavy flooding near the 110 interchange. Some of the flooded areas included Compton, Long Beach, West Covina, Whittier, Montebello, and Cerritos. Not only were roads flooded in Long Beach, but hail began dusting roads. Viewers across the region from Placentia to Riverside snapped photos of hail making its noisy debut. What to Know The ACLU of Southern California filed suit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The lawsuit alleges the agencies refused to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act request. The railroad police have a history of stopping, arresting and detaining people who are then transferred to ICE facilities, the lawsuit says. The ACLU of Southern California filed suit Wednesday against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for allegedly refusing to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information on a purported collaboration between ICE and Union Pacific Railroad police. According to the suit, filed in Los Angeles federal court, the railroad police have a history of stopping, arresting and detaining people who are then transferred to ICE facilities for deportation. In a statement, Union Pacific said protecting its property remains a priority regardless of the immigration status of any potential offender. "At Union Pacific, safety remains our highest priority," according to the statement. "Trespassing on railroad property is illegal and creates a hazard for the public as well as Union Pacific employees. Union Pacific works with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to remove trespassers, without regard to immigration status of any kind, from its property in accordance with local ordinances and state law." The alleged collaboration is "often rooted in racial profiling in violation of constitutional rights" and can "separate families, harm communities, and prey upon people who are homeless," according to the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California. "In many cases the individuals arrested by the officers are held beyond the time they otherwise would have been released just so they could be picked up by ICE -- a violation of the Fourth Amendment," the ACLU alleges. Also Wednesday, a coalition of community and civil rights organizations delivered a letter to Union Pacific demanding it end the alleged alliance with ICE. The letter contends that the alleges collaboration causes harm that the California Values Act, which ensures that police and sheriffs do not help ICE round up and deport immigrants in California, was enacted to prevent. "Union Pacific is in the business of transporting goods and persons safely from place to place," said ACLU SoCal staff attorney Sameer Ahmed. "It should not be in the business of subjecting the most vulnerable members of our communities to intimidating interrogations, unlawful detentions, and the threat of deportation." The relationship between the railroad police and ICE officials has been shrouded in secrecy, the ACLU alleges. The FOIA request, originally filed last September, seeks information on the alleged collaboration. The suit was filed on behalf of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, the Western State College of Law Immigration Clinic, Public Counsel, and the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project. "The public has a right to know more about ICE and the Union Pacific Railroad Police's efforts to collude to increase deportations and immigration detention, which harm immigrant communities and undermine public safety," said Jennifer Lee Koh, professor of law and director of the Western State College of Law Immigration Clinic. Both the letter and lawsuit detail instances of Union Pacific's alleged collaboration with ICE, including a January 2018 incident in which a man riding his bicycle home from work along the San Gabriel River Trail in El Monte was stopped by an armed Union Pacific Railroad Police officer and asked if he had "papeles" (papers, in Spanish) to work in the U.S. The man was held under a railroad bridge for about two hours until he could be picked up by ICE officers, according to the ACLU. And in February 2018, according to the civil rights organization, a homeless woman was riding her bike in the Van Nuys area outside of Union Pacific property when she was stopped by an armed railroad police officer, who held her for about two hours until ICE officers arrived and took her into custody. During that time, she maintains she was never read her rights under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Other alleged incidents detailed in the documents occurred in Santa Ana, North Hollywood, Pacoima, and Whittier, according to the ACLU. A bright light over downtown Los Angeles Wednesday night that had people around the city wondering if a meteor or aliens were descending on Southern California turned out to be a stunt by Red Bull Air Force to celebrate the final supermoon of 2019. "As the third and final supermoon of 2019 rose over the iconic Los Angles skyline, the Red Bull Air Force a team assembled from the most accomplished and experienced skydivers in the world marked the occasion as only they can: springing into the air to get an up close and personal look at the phenomenon," the company announced. The team jumped from a helicopter 4,000 feet above the City of Angels and dove down at more than 120 mph in custom wingsuits, Red Bull said. This was the first wingsuit jump into downtown LA, according to Red Bull. The Los Angeles Police Department took to Twitter to calm public fears, "PSA: A meteor did not crash into Downtown Los Angeles, and no, it's not an alien invasion...just a film shoot. This is Tinseltown after all." After her fiance broke off their engagement, Amber Clisura gave back her ring, kicked him out of the house and tossed everything that reminded her of the ruined relationship. Except for one item: a polished steel barbecue smoker that he had fashioned for her from an old oil drum. "It sat there on the patio and rusted and rusted, and it became a sad symbol of the relationship," Clisura said. The four-legged smoker had been a treasured handmade gift, but eventually Clisura couldn't bear to look at it. She considered giving it to a neighbor or selling it for scrap but then read about a call for submissions at the new Los Angeles branch of the Museum of Broken Relationships. The original museum opened in Zagreb, Croatia, in 2010 after growing out of a touring collection that crisscrossed Europe, Asia and the U.S. On display in Zagreb are artifacts from failed unions, most of them mundane under ordinary circumstances. A single stiletto heel. A wine opener. A worn old Snoopy doll. But when isolated in a glass case or hanging on a white wall and accompanied by a caption, the objects become imbued with heartache or regret. Or freedom. In Los Angeles, there's a blue chiffon top a woman wore to a cafe where her husband told her he was leaving. An envelope of leaves mailed from Canada to San Diego so a long-distance paramour could experience changing seasons in Southern California. A jar of pickles purchased for a first love who, the donor explained, "stopped texting before I could give it to him." After some deliberation, Clisura, a textile artist and fashion designer from LA, decided to donate the smoker and drove it to the museum's warehouse. "A woman met me downstairs, and as I was handing it over, I burst into tears," Clisura said, laughing now. "It felt like a weight was lifted." The museum representative offered to give her a hug. Employees have embraced their share of brokenhearted donors eager for closure, said director Alexis Hyde at the museum's location on Hollywood Boulevard, a thoroughfare that, she noted, has been called the "boulevard of broken dreams." Hyde has been known to brush away her own tears as she opens boxes containing donations. "It's cathartic the way a good, sad movie is cathartic," she said. "On some level, you know this person's moving on, and they've survived." Hyde pointed out not all the fizzled unions represented in the 3,500-square-foot museum were romantic. One donor had an irreparable relationship with her father. Another split from a church. A California woman who donated a Texas license plate said she separated from the Lone Star State. "My broken relationship was with myself," said Andree Vermeulen, whose donated items are the museum's most talked about. The actress sent in a pair of breast implants she had removed after ending a toxic relationship with a man who made disparaging comments about her body. Vermeulen, who lives in Los Angeles, said the implants "never felt right," and since they've been out, she has "reached a place where I feel very grounded and confident." An outpouring of support on social media gave her further confidence to use the experience as fodder during storytelling performances in which she discusses body image and standards of beauty. Vermeulen said the donation, now displayed in a glass case in the LA museum's main room, symbolized the final chapter of the relationship, and her scars "mark a story and a time in my life that taught me a lot about myself." More than 2,000 items comprise the museum's two brick-and-mortar collections and touring shows, which have made stops in San Francisco, Helsinki, Finland and Hamburg, Germany. A show in Seoul, South Korea, featured a donated Jeep that had to be taken apart and brought in by crane. Donations arrive so regularly that the LA site hopes to continually cycle in new items to keep the exhibit fresh. Donors are anonymous or identified only by first name. They generally write just a few sentences as a backstory, but some items, including a simple green coffee mug at the LA site, come with explanations that go on for hundreds of words. The caption accompanying a group of old cassette tapes reads: "The music made me dream." Pieces are displayed across six exhibition rooms in the ground-floor location that lures tourists who stroll Hollywood Boulevard. Visitors pay $18 admission and are encouraged to pop into a private "confessional," where they can write about their own breakups. Olinka Vistica and Drazen Grubisic, the Croatian artists who conceived the original exhibition on a whim, are shocked by its staying power. Hyde isn't. "It's so resonant," she said. "The audience is so large for it." Clisura admitted she hadn't yet been to the museum to see the old rusted smoker. "I wasn't sure I was ready," she said. But she's since changed her mind and is planning a trip with her new boyfriend. Warning: The details of this story are extremely graphic and could be disturbing to some readers. Family members of a 14-year-old Pennsylvania girl who was gagged, raped and murdered said in court Wednesday that they remain haunted by her torture and excruciating death. They described for jurors their unrelenting pain at a hearing that will determine whether Grace Packer's killer will face life in prison or the death penalty. "It sickens me to know that Grace was abused, tortured and literally thrown away like she was a piece of trash," her cousin, Karie Heisserer, with whom Grace lived for a time in 2015, said in court. "Grace is in a better place now, free from evil and pain." Jacob Sullivan, 46, pleaded guilty to the July 2016 rape, murder and dismemberment of his girlfriend's daughter. Grace's adoptive mother, Sara Packer, pleaded guilty in exchange for a life sentence. Prosecutors painted a nightmare scenario inside the family's Quakerstown home. They said Sara Packer hated Grace, shared a rape-murder fantasy with Sullivan, watched as he sexually assaulted and strangled her in a hot attic outside Philadelphia, and helped hack up her body and dispose of it months later. Sara Packer took the stand Wednesday and said Grace had a tendency to be a "very difficult child. Grace had become, for lack of a better word, a non-entity, Packer said. She didnt exist anymore. I wanted her to go away. Sara Packer, who wore a red prison jumpsuit, also said she has a degree in psychology and an IQ over 140. Earlier in the week, Amy Adam, Grace's guidance counselor, said the teen got excellent grades but required emotional support. She said that a few months before Grace's death, Sara Packer had threatened to send her to foster care or to a residential center. That prompted Grace to write a "good-bye letter" to her family, Adam said. The letter was displayed for the jury. "I know that you guys are at your breaking point and I understand," Grace wrote. "I love you guys I always have and I always will." Jurors saw photos of the bubbly but troubled teen in happier times: Sitting in the cab of her uncle's big rig, frolicking in the sand at her first trip to the beach, delighting in birthday cake at a pool party. But all of that happened with relatives, not with Sara Packer, a former county adoptions supervisor who, prosecutors said, spent years physically and mentally abusing the little girl she fostered and then adopted. Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub told the jury that he agreed to a life sentence for Sara in exchange for her confession and guilty plea because the physical evidence against her was weak, because it was Sullivan who raped and killed Grace, and because her crimes did not qualify for the death penalty. In a confession to police, Sullivan said he and Sara Packer plotted Grace's death. Sullivan admitted he punched and raped Grace as Sara Packer watched, bound her hands and feet with zip ties and stuffed a ball gag in her mouth. I got wrapped up in Jakes fantasy, she said. I didnt think I could tell him no without losing him. Prosecutors said Sullivan and Packer also gave the teen what they intended to be a lethal dose of over-the-counter medication and left her to die in a sweltering attic. Grace eventually managed to escape some of her bindings and spit the gag out, but was unable to make it out of the house before Sullivan and Packer returned overnight some 12 hours later and Sullivan strangled her as Sara Packer watched. The couple stored her body in cat litter for months, then hacked it up and dumped it in a remote area where hunters found it in October 2016, prosecutors said. Sullivan told police he wanted the torture and death "to be fun" for the teen. Grace's younger brother, Josh Packer, now 14, told jurors the only way he can bear his loss is if adults know her story and then act to prevent child abuse. He said in a statement read by a detective that if his big sister was told she could save other kids' lives by giving her own, she would ask, "What do I have to do?" "Watch out for all the kids so that a loss like Grace's loss never happens again," Josh wrote. "Do your best to help kids who can't help themselves." That's not what happened in Grace's case. Sara Packer and her husband at the time, David Packer, adopted Grace and Josh in 2007. Their biological parents lost custody of the children because they could not provide a safe home for them due to mental illness and her husband's intellectual challenges, The Morning Call reported. The Packers, meanwhile, cared for dozens of children before David Packer was sent to prison for sexually assaulting Grace and a 15-year-old foster daughter at their Allentown home. Sara Packer lost her job as a Northampton County adoptions supervisor in 2010 and was barred from taking in any more foster children. But child welfare authorities did not remove Grace from the home, despite evidence of abuse. The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services launched an investigation after Grace's murder. Its findings have not been made public. Both Sara Packer and Sullivan survived suicide attempts in the months following the murder. A 78-year-old prisoner who says he killed about 90 people over nearly four decades as he moved around the country pleaded guilty to murder Thursday in the 1994 strangulation of a Texas woman. Samuel Little entered his plea in the West Texas city of Odessa, where the body of Denise Christie Brothers was discovered in a vacant lot about a month after she disappeared. He received another life prison term, Ector County District Attorney Bobby Bland said in a statement. "Due to the efforts of law enforcement agencies from around the country, dozens of victims' families now have answers," Bland said. "Although this is a conviction in Ector County, Texas, I hope it will serve as justice for all those atrocious murders committed across this nation in this unprecedented era of terror and mayhem caused by Samuel Little." Little was convicted in 2014 of killing three Los Angeles-area women in separate attacks in the late 1980s and was serving life sentences when authorities say he confessed this year to killing dozens more people in 20 states since 1970. Those confessions, which often included a level of detail and recall that authorities say was uncanny, spurred investigators from Florida to California to review old murder cases. An FBI spokesman said thus far, investigators have concluded that Little was the killer in 36 cases, including the killing of Brothers and the three in the Los Angeles-area that landed him in prison. But Bland said in his statement more than 40 cases have been confirmed. He later explained that he received that number from Texas Rangers, an elite investigative agency that has relayed details of Little's confessions to law officers in other states. Little explained the killings in a series of conversations with Ranger James Holland. Most recently, police in Tennessee linked Little to the death of Martha Cunningham, a Knoxville woman whose body was found in a wooded area by a road in 1975. Even though Cunningham was bruised and nude from the waist down when her body was found, detectives attributed her death to natural causes, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel. With at least three-dozen confirmed deaths, Little is already among the most prolific known serial killers in American history. Gary Ridgway, the so-called Green River killer who is serving life in prison, pleaded guilty to killing 49 women and girls, making him the deadliest serial killer in terms of confirmed kills, though he has said he likely killed more than 71 people. Ted Bundy confessed to 30 homicides from about 1974 to 1978 and John Wayne Gacy killed at least 33 young men and boys in the 1970s. Both of them were executed. Little, who is in poor health and relies on a wheelchair, offered his confessions as a bargaining chip to be moved from the Los Angeles County prison where he was being held, the FBI said last month. But Bland said Thursday that Little will return to California to serve his life term. Little, who also went by the name Samuel McDowell, targeted vulnerable women who were often involved in prostitution and addicted to drugs, authorities have said. Once a competitive boxer, he usually stunned or knocked out his victims with powerful punches before he strangled them while masturbating. "With no stab marks or bullet wounds, many of these deaths were not classified as homicides but attributed to drug overdoses, accidents, or natural causes," the FBI said. Uber riders in Pittsburgh can get a glimpse of the future by summoning a car capable of handling most of the tasks of driving on its own. Starting Wednesday morning, a fleet of self-driving Ford Fusions will pick up Uber riders who opted to participate in a test program. While the vehicles are loaded with features that allow them to navigate on their own, an Uber engineer will sit in the driver's seat and seize control if things go awry. Uber's test program is the latest move in an increasingly heated race between tech companies in Silicon Valley and traditional automakers to perfect fully driverless cars for regular people. Competitors such as Volvo and Google have invested hundreds of millions of dollars and logged millions of miles test driving autonomous vehicles, but Uber is the first company in the U.S. to make self-driving cars available to the general public. "That pilot really pushes the ball forward for us," said Raffi Krikorian, Director of Uber Advanced Technologies Center (ATC) in Pittsburgh, the company's main facility for testing self-driving vehicles. "We think it can help with congestion, we think it can make transportation cheaper and more accessible for the vast majority of people." Removing the cost of the driver is one way to make rides more affordable. But that prospect didn't sit well with some Uber customers. "It scares me not to have a driver there with an Uber," said Claudia Tyler, a health executive standing near the entrance of an office in downtown Pittsburgh. A reporter from The Associated Press tried out the service Monday. The ride through downtown Pittsburgh and over some bridges went smoothly, with the car waiting for oncoming traffic before making a turn and at one point stopping for a vehicle that was backing into a parking space. Parking, however, was a task the human driver had to perform. Approaches to driverless technology differ. Google, a unit of Alphabet, and Ford Motor Co. want to perfect the fully driverless car no steering wheel, no pedals before letting the public climb in for a ride. Others are adding autonomous features in phases, while relying on the driver to take over in certain circumstances. Many experts predict that it will be years, if not decades, before the public is being driven around in fleets of fully driverless vehicles under any condition. "Because vehicles are driving at seventy miles per hour on the highway, if something goes wrong, things could go wrong very bad, very quickly," said Carnegie Mellon engineering Professor Raj Rajkumar. "This technology needs to be ultra-reliable before we can take the human out of the driving equation." NuTonomy, a spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, got the jump on Uber globally three weeks ago when it began picking up passengers in self-driving taxis in Singapore. The company said Tuesday that its six taxis with backup drivers haven't had any accidents since the service launched. The Uber vehicles are equipped with everything from seven traffic-light detecting cameras to a radar system that detects different weather conditions to 20 spinning lasers that generates a continuous, 360 degree 3-D map of the surrounding environment. During the demonstration for reporters two engineers were seated in front one ready to take control in case the car encountered a situation it couldn't handle, the other monitoring the car's 3D map and scribbling notes on how to improve the car's software. The engineers must undergo a week of safety orientation or more to drive the cars, with additional training as the vehicles continue to be refined. Pittsburgh is a particularly good place to experiment, they said, because the city is a research hub of self-driving cars and has notoriously bad driving conditions, including snowstorms, rolling hills and a tangled network of aging roads and bridges. Uber executives are watching to see how the cars handle these challenges before saying when fully driverless vehicles will be ready to hit the roads. "We actually think of Pittsburgh as the double black diamond of driving," Krikorian said. "If we can really tackle Pittsburgh, that we have a better chance of tackling most other cities around the world." Pennsylvania also lacks stringent testing regulations at the moment, unlike other driverless car-testing venues such as California. The Uber trial is perfectly legal under current state law, Pennsylvania officials said. "There's no requirement that you be touching the steering wheel," said Kurt J. Myers, deputy secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. "But there is a requirement that you are a licensed driver and that you are in the driver's seat." A task force commissioned by the state is expected to make policy recommendations in November. Uber officials hope the initial trial will teach them how to ease public fears of adopting the bleeding-edge technology. "The Pittsburgh pilot is our opportunity for real world testing, so that we can learn more about what makes riders feel safe and comfortable," said Uber product manager Emily Bartel. Uber's Silicon Valley roots means it tends to pivot quickly and plan, experiment, and adjust direction within weeks, in contrast to longtime carmakers like General Motors or Toyota who have yearlong timelines when bringing out new features, Rajkumar and Uber officials said. When the drivers are removed from front seats, the cars will likely be restricted to driving in specific locations under good conditions at first. "I'd probably give them a little bit and let them work their kinks out," Patrick Holland, a Philadelphia-area student, said right before getting into a human-driven Uber. "But I think a product that's well tested and it's proven to work and safe I think that's where we're heading, and I think I'll eventually find myself in a driverless vehicle." President Donald Trump abruptly declared Thursday the U.S. will recognize Israel's sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, a major shift in American policy that gives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a political boost a month before what is expected to be a close election. The administration has been considering recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the strategic highlands, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, for some time and Netanyahu had pressed the matter with visiting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just a day earlier. U.S. and Israeli officials said Wednesday they had not expected a decision until next week, when Netanyahu is to visit the U.S. But in a tweet that appeared to catch many by surprise, Trump said the time had come for the United States to take the step, which Netanyahu warmly welcomed as a "miracle" on the Jewish holiday of Purim. "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Trump tweeted. The U.S. will be the first country to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, which the rest of the international community regards as disputed territory occupied by Israel whose status should be determined by negotiations between Israel and Syria. Attempts to bring Israel and Syria to the table have failed. It was not immediately clear how a U.N. peacekeeping force in the Golan might be affected by the U.S. move. That force's mandate expires at the end of June. There had been signals a decision was coming. Last week, in its annual human rights report, the State Department dropped the phrase "Israeli-occupied" from the Golan Heights section, instead calling it "Israeli-controlled." Pompeo had brushed questions about the change aside, insisting even earlier Thursday that there was no change in policy. However, in comments to reporters ahead of a Purim dinner with Netanyahu and his wife at their Jerusalem home, Pompeo hailed the shift. "Tonight, President Trump made the decision to recognize that that hard-fought real estate, that important place, is proper to be a sovereign part of the state of Israel," he said. Netanyahu, who is embroiled in a fierce re-election campaign ahead of April 9 voting, smiled broadly while delivering his own remarks. "We have the miracle of Purim," he said. "Thank you President Trump." Netanyahu has for weeks been stepping up longstanding Israeli requests for the U.S. and others to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan. He has bolstered Israel's traditional argument that the area has for all practical purposes been fully integrated into Israel by accusing Iran of trying to infiltrate terrorists from Syria into the plateau. "At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights," Netanyahu tweeted. Trump's announcement came as Pompeo was wrapping up a two-day visit to Jerusalem during which he lauded warm ties with Israel, met with Netanyahu on at least three separate occasions and promised to step up pressure on Iran. Pompeo's events with Netanyahu included a visit to the Western Wall that made him the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the Jewish holy site with any Israeli leader and appeared to further signal the Trump administration's support for Israel's control of the contested city. Trump has recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv, prompting the Palestinians to sever ties with the administration. Pompeo's presence also appeared to signal Trump's support for Netanyahu the political candidate. Netanyahu, facing a tough challenge from a popular former military chief and reeling from a series of corruption allegations, has repeatedly sought to focus attention on his foreign policy record and strong ties with Trump. "The Trump administration is absolutely endorsing Netanyahu," said Alon Pinkas, former consul general of Israel in New York. "It's very rare for a secretary of state to come visit an Israeli prime minister without any apparent diplomatic reason justifying it, without a peace process, without any regional agenda." Pompeo said his trip had nothing to do with politics or U.S. policy on Jerusalem, although for decades American officials refrained from visiting the Western Wall with Israeli leaders to avoid the appearance of recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the city's most sensitive holy sites. Israel captured east Jerusalem and the Old City in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. "I'm going to stay far away from the decisions that the Israeli people will make here in a few weeks," Pompeo told reporters. "It wouldn't be appropriate for the U.S. secretary of state to comment on Israeli domestic politics." The Old City is home to the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where tradition says Jesus was entombed and resurrected. Pompeo, a Christian, also stopped at the church. Next to the Western Wall is a hilltop compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The spot, which once housed the biblical Jewish Temples, is the holiest site in Judaism and today is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. The competing claims to the site are a frequent source of tension and lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, he said it did not determine the city's final borders. But the gesture was perceived as unfairly siding with Israel and prompted the Palestinians to cut contacts with U.S. officials. The Palestinians have already rejected a planned Mideast peace initiative by the administration. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Pompeo's visit added additional obstacles to peace hopes. "While they are claiming to be trying to solve the conflict, such acts only make it more difficult to resolve," he said. While previous secretaries of state have traditionally met with the Palestinians when visiting the region, Pompeo has no such talks planned. (CNN) Finland has a lot to celebrate. Not only does it have a capital city bursting with gastronomic creativity, the spectacular Northern Lights and Santa Claus's year-round home (plus the reindeer support staff) in Lapland. It's also the happiest country in the world for the second year in a row, according to the latest World Happiness Report. It's followed by Denmark, Norway, Iceland and The Netherlands. The World Happiness Report was released by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network for the United Nations on March 20, the date that the United Nations has declared to be the International Day of Happiness. The report ranks countries on six key variables that support well-being: income, freedom, trust, healthy life expectancy, social support and generosity. "The top 10 countries tend to rank high in all six variables, as well as emotional measures of well-being," says report co-editor John Helliwell, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of British Columbia. And that's not just about the native-born residents of those countries. "It's true that last year all Finns were happier than rest of the countries' residents, but their immigrants were also happiest immigrants in the world," says Helliwell. "It's not about Finnish DNA. It's the way life is lived in those countries." They pay high taxes for a social safety net, they trust their government, they live in freedom and they are generous with each other. "They do care about each other," he says. "That's the kind of place people want to live." Differences among the top eight countries are small enough that jostling among the top five is expected every year. Switzerland came in sixth place, followed by Sweden, New Zealand, Canada (the only country in the Americas) and Austria. The 2019 list only changed a little, with Austria nudging Australia out of the top 10 list. Australia dropped one spot to 11th place. Support in difficult times Ranking high in happiness doesn't protect a country's people from violence or trauma, as the recent attacks on mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand show. But the response of New Zealand's people to the attacks does. New Zealand came in eighth place this year, as it did last year. "What stands out about the happiest and most well connected societies is their resilience and ability to deal with bad things," says Helliwell. "After the 2011 earthquake and now the terrorist attack in Christchurch with high social capital, where people are connected people rally and help each other and (after the earthquake) rebuild immediately." The U.S. rank is dropping The United States came in 19th place, dropping one spot since last year and a total of five spots since 2017. Except for its 10th place ranking for income, the U.S. doesn't rank in the top 10 on measures that make up a happy country in the UN report. They include 12th place for generosity, 37th place for social support, 61st place for freedom and 42nd place for corruption. Addiction is partly to blame, says report co-author Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, who wrote a chapter focused on the U.S. epidemic of addictions and unhappiness in America, a rich country where happiness has been declining. This year's report provides sobering evidence of how addictions are causing considerable unhappiness and depression in the U.S.," says Sachs, in a press release. "Addictions come in many forms, from substance abuse to gambling to digital media. The compulsive pursuit of substance abuse and addictive behaviors is causing severe unhappiness." Social connections are weakening in the U.S. as social media usage is raising anxiety, especially among adolescents, says Helliwell. Superpowers are not super happy No other super powers made it into the top 10 rankings, either. The United Kingdom came in 15th place, up from 18th place, while Germany came in 17th place, down from 15th. Japan came in 58th place (down from 54th), Russia came in 68th place (down from 59th) and China came in 93rd place (down from 86th). People in South Sudan are the most unhappy with their lives, according to the survey of 156 countries, followed by Central African Republic (155), Afghanistan (154), Tanzania (153) and Rwanda (152). Bolstered by population growth, overall world happiness has fallen over the past few years, which has mostly been fueled by a sustained drop in India, which came in 140th place this year (versus 133rd place in 2018). There has also been an increase of negative emotions, which were also measured and include worry, sadness and anger. It began with Bhutan The prime minister of the tiny country of Bhutan proposed a World Happiness Day to the United Nations in 2011, which brought international attention to happiness as a metric. Bhutan came in 95th place (up two spots from last year) in this year's report. In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly declared March 20 as World Happiness Day, recognizing "the relevance of happiness and well-being as universal goals and aspirations in the lives of human beings around the world and the importance of their recognition in public policy objectives." This report is the seventh to come out since 2012. The rankings of the world's happiest countries came from an analysis of data from surveys in 156 countries, including the Gallup World Poll starting in 2005-2006. World's happiest countries 1. Finland 2. Denmark 3. Norway 4. Iceland 5. Netherlands 6. Switzerland 7. Sweden 8. New Zealand 9. Canada 10. Australia World's least happy countries 1. South Sudan 2. Central African Republic 3. Afghanistan 4. Tanzania 5. Rwanda 6. Yemen 7. Malawi 8. Syria 9. Botswana 10. Haiti This story was first published on CNN.com "This is the world's happiest country in 2019" Cookie Preferences Cookie List Cookie List A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website when visited by a user asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes: Strictly Necessary Cookies We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. 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What to Know Widows of police officers killed in the line of duty packed a courtroom for the sentencing of Lorraine Shanley, a fellow widow who they say spoiled their charity's reputation U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein sentenced the 69-year-old widow to two years in prison for stealing $400,000 from the Survivors of the Shield charity A woman who let Shanley handle finances say other widows now think she was in on it and won't talk to her anymore Widows of police officers killed in the line of duty packed a courtroom Tuesday for the sentencing of a fellow widow who they say spoiled their charity's reputation by stealing $400,000. Several widows told U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein about the damage done by Lorraine Shanley before he sentenced the 69-year-old widow to two years in prison for stealing from the Survivors of the Shield charity, formed in 1988 to aid surviving spouses and their children. Shanley pleaded guilty in September to bank and tax fraud, admitting to defrauding the charity from 2012 to 2017 of $400,000, more than 20% of the donations received during the time period. A defense lawyer said about $290,000 can be paid back of roughly $406,000 ordered owed as restitution to the charity. Prosecutors say she spent the money on personal indulgences, including concert tickets, shopping sprees, landscaping, taxis, groceries and family vacations. Defense arguments that she made errors in judgment in response to family hardships and financial pressures drew skepticism from prosecutors. To be sure, Shanley has faced terrible tragedy and many difficulties the premature death of her husband and several family members, as well as children and other relatives struggling, emotionally, physically, and financially through drug addiction, divorce, disability, and special needs, prosecutors wrote in court papers. But they added that her personal hardships are counterbalanced by her victimization of those very people who faced similar circumstances. She learned about their struggles, comforted them, and assured them that SOS was there to help. Yet all the while, she was pocketing the money that had been donated to support them, prosecutors said. Shanley apologized, saying she had no one to blame but myself, before several women who once trusted her to write checks for the charity spoke. Mary Beth O'Neill, a co-founder of the group whose husband was shot and killed by a career criminal in February 1984, said she was in disbelief when she learned of Shanley's crime. She has really stolen our reputation and that hurts, O'Neill told the judge. I do not speak out of anger or revenge. There's no happiness in this. There's no happy ending. Kathleen Vigiano, the group's president and the widow of a police detective, said she has worked for the past two years trying to restore the charity's reputation, including by tightening financial controls, by seeking legislation to provide scholarships for children and by reducing homeowners' taxes. Our reputation is ruined, she said. She stole from us. The women said they felt most hurt because of the damage Shanley did to the charity's ability to raise money, harming the aid to women who often must rely on small pensions. Marie Dziergowski said she considered Shanley her friend after she was the first widow to come to her home after her husband was killed in 1999, but she now feels betrayed because she and Shanley shared check-writing duties and some widows now think she was also to blame. Now, my reputation is ruined. I have widows who won't talk to me," she said. I say: Merry Christmas. They won't answer." She said Shanley had signed her name on some checks. Thank God the federal agents were able to see that wasn't my signature, Dziergowski said. Kiernan Clark is used to being in the hospital. Having been diagnosed with Hirschsprungs Disease, an illness which affects his colon, the 8-year-old boy has underwent 43 surgeries. And hell be forced to spend his 9th birthday on Friday at Wilmingtons A.I. duPont Hospital for Children where hell also likely stay for the next month. Its going to be a long month but weve been through it before, Clarks father, Kevin Clark, told NBC10. To help cheer him up, Kevin asked for the public to send his son a birthday card. He made the request on social media. Im trying to get him better and hopefully this whole thing will put a smile on his face and it will make me feel a lot better seeing him smile," he said. Despite his situation, Kiernan is constantly considerate of other kids dealing with illnesses. The third-grader has gathered up Christmas gifts and delivered them to sick children for the past two years. It was all his idea. He has all the credit for it, Kevin said. I picked stuff up and I drive it there but its all on him. The well-wishes and cards are now pouring in for Kiernan and he even got a message from the Philadelphia Flyers. "I can't believe that they know about me," Kiernan told NBC10. Kiernan is also hoping to get a messsage from a Philadelphia 76er. "I want JJ Redick to sign my jersey and I hope I meet him," he said. If youd like to give Kiernan a birthday card, please send it to the following: Kiernan Clark Nemours/A.I. duPont Hospital for Children Floor 2, West Room 6 1600 Rockland Road, Wilmington, Delaware 19803 What to Know Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is issuing guidelines to reduce the city's reliance on probation and parole. The new rules will be carried out at the discretion of attorneys and judges and seek supervision terms averaging 18 months for felonies. Philadelphia has more than 42,000 people on probation. By comparison, New York City has 12,700 citizens on probation. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is focusing on a new set of priorities heading into his second year in office ending the number of people on probation and parole. His new guidelines, unveiled Thursday, echoed similar changes enacted during Krasners first year. His office is already seeking shorter sentences and moving away from cash bail for low-level offenses. "When people are supervised for too long, they tend to fail," Krasner said. "They lose their jobs, they commit new crimes and we don't need new crimes." The new policy directs assistant district attorneys to seek supervision terms averaging 18 months with a cap of three years for people who committed a felony. For misdemeanors, the recommendation will be six months probation or parole, not exceeding one-year combined supervision. The guidelines, however, are just recommendations. Lawyers and judges will have the discretion to make exceptions when appropriate. Moving forward, Krasner said his office hopes to cut the number of people on supervision "by the thousands," including people who are currently in the criminal justice system and showing progress in their rehabilitation, the district attorney said. Last year, Philadelphia had roughly 42,000 people on county supervision compared to just 12,700 in New York City, according to the district attorneys office. That translates to roughly one out of every 22 adults on supervision at any given time, Krasner said. Pennsylvania, meanwhile, has the highest number of people under parole or probation in the Northeastern United States. Across the nation, Georgia has the highest number of people under supervision. "To me that's just stunning," he said. "It does not make us safer." North Philadelphia resident Khalif Jones agrees. He was first arrested at the age of 17. While he was in prison for a second offense, Jones received his GED and later met a probation officer who helped him get his life back on track. Now, he helps others going through the criminal justice system and says rehabilitation should be better incorporated into the overall approach. "You release someone from prison and you want them to feel free," he said. "But how am I free if every time I turn around, you're looking to throw me back in?" Currently, someone involved in a minor case might be sentenced to serve three months to 23 months behind bars, plus an additional two years of supervision. That translates to nearly 50 months of total supervision, including time served, for a low-level offense, Krasner explained. And under Pennsylvania law, probation can last as long as a prison sentence. "That is how Pennsylvania got to the be state in the United States that has the worst level of excessive parole," he said. "And frankly, I don't think that's how we should think about ourselves." Research has shown that probation and parole sentences lose efficacy after two years, the district attorneys office said. Thirty-seven states across the country have already reduced their supervised populations while at the same time lowering rates of recidivism, the office added. Krasner aims to do the same. North Philadelphia resident Khalif Jones experienced the system first-hand after he was first arrested at the age of 17. While he was in prison for a second time, Jones received his GED and later met a probation officer who helped him get his life back on track. Now, he helps others who have been incarcerated and says rehabilitation should be better incorporated into the system. "You release someone from prison and you want them to feel free," he said. "But how am I free if every time I turn around, you're looking to throw me back in?" Krasner painted a picture of what excessive supervision can do to a non-violent offender. That person might incur bail and court fees, plus wages lost while serving time, plus a potential fallout from employers if too much work is missed. If that person then misses appointments with a probation or parole officer, then they could easily land back in prison, Krasner said. It's that kind of cycle La Colombe owner Todd Carmichael sees too frequently. As a local business owner in one of the most incarcerated cities in the country, several of Carmichael's employees are embroiled in the criminal justice system, he said. Carmichael has also spent time in jail, he added. He was first arrested in college during a political protest and was arrested again a few more times after that. Those experiences showed him how hard it can be to pick up the pieces and start over, he said. "I don't see any winners in this oversight process that we have," he said. "It's not anyone asking for a second chance ... it's someone not wanting their one chance taken away." Krasner has come under fire in recent weeks for being soft on crime as the number of homicides in Philadelphia soars above Chicago's, which has long toiled with a high murder rate. But the district attorney's approach to criminal justice will take time to manifest, and it could be some time before the city sees positive effects, he said. "In any social movement that is seeking change ... at first they, frankly, take you for granted and then they make fun of you and then they fight you," he said of detractors. "But that's a good sign. That means we're getting stuff done." The Pentagon's inspector general has formally opened an investigation into a watchdog group's allegations that acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has used his office to promote his former employer, Boeing Co. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed an ethics complaint with the Pentagon's inspector general a week ago, alleging that Shanahan has appeared to make statements promoting Boeing and disparaging competitors, such as Lockheed Martin. Shanahan, who was traveling with President Donald Trump to Ohio on Wednesday, spent more than 30 years at Boeing, leading programs for commercial planes and missile defense systems. He has been serving as acting Pentagon chief since the beginning of the year, after James Mattis stepped down. The probe comes as Boeing struggles to deal with a public firestorm over two deadly crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliner within the last five months. And it focuses attention on whether Trump will nominate Shanahan as his formal pick for defense chief, rather than letting him languish as an acting leader of a major federal agency. Dwrena Allen, spokeswoman for the inspector general, said Shanahan has been informed of the investigation. And, in a statement, Pentagon spokesman Tom Crosson said Shanahan welcomes the review. "Acting Secretary Shanahan has at all times remained committed to upholding his ethics agreement filed with the DoD," said Crosson. "This agreement ensures any matters pertaining to Boeing are handled by appropriate officials within the Pentagon to eliminate any perceived or actual conflict of interest issue(s) with Boeing." During a Senate hearing last week, Shanahan was asked by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., about the 737 Max issue. Shanahan said he had not spoken to anyone in the administration about it and had not been briefed on it. Asked whether he favored an investigation into the matter, Shanahan said it was for regulators to investigate. On Wednesday, Blumenthal said that scrutiny of Shanahan's Boeing ties is necessary. "In fact, it's overdue. Boeing is a behemoth 800-pound gorilla raising possible questions of undue influence at DOD, FAA and elsewhere," said Blumenthal. Shanahan signed an ethics agreement in June 2017, when he was being nominated for the job of deputy defense secretary, a job he held during Mattis' tenure. It outlined the steps he would take to avoid "any actual or apparent conflict of interest," and said he would not participate in any matter involving Boeing. The CREW ethics complaint, based to a large part on published reports, said Shanahan has made comments praising Boeing in meetings about government contracts, raising concerns about "whether Shanahan, intentionally or not, is putting his finger on the scale when it comes to Pentagon priorities." One example raised by the complaint is the Pentagon's decision to request funding for Boeing 15EX fighter jets in the 2020 proposed budget. The Pentagon is requesting about $1 billion to buy eight of the aircraft. Shanahan, 56, joined Boeing in 1986, rose through its ranks and is credited with rescuing a troubled Dreamliner 787 program. He also led the company's missile defense and military helicopter programs. Trump has seemed attracted to Shanahan partially for his work on one of the president's pet projects creating a Space Force. He also has publicly lauded Shanahan's former employer, Boeing, builder of many of the military's most prominent aircraft, including the Apache and Chinook helicopters, the C-17 cargo plane and the B-52 bomber, as well as the iconic presidential aircraft, Air Force One. This is only the third time in history that the Pentagon has been led by an acting chief, and Shanahan has served in that capacity for longer than any of the others. Presidents typically take pains to ensure the Pentagon is being run by a Senate-confirmed official, given the grave responsibilities that include sending young Americans into battle, ensuring the military is ready for extreme emergencies like nuclear war and managing overseas alliances that are central to U.S. security. A Pennsylvania couple is offering a $500 reward for their missing pet pig, who also serves as a therapy animal at a rehabilitation facility for elderly people where one of its owners works. That would be Katie Manni, who works at the Beaver Elder Care and Rehab Center in Hopewell Township. Manni directs the nurses there. The pig a 7-month-old Vietnamese potbellied pig named Charlotte sits under Manni's desk when the animal isn't cheering up the patients. The pig was last seen July 11 when Manni's boyfriend brought some keys to her at work and noticed the pig was missing. The couple suspects someone might have seen the pig in the car while Manni's boyfriend was running errands and opened the car door out of curiosity. [[26343834, C]] After heavy rain led to a flood risk in neighborhoods across the Philadelphia area Thursday, the on and off precipitation will continue through Friday morning, as will gusty winds. The heaviest rain totals will be across northern Delaware, Philadelphia, north and west suburbs, Berks County and the Lehigh Valley. Our First Alert continues through 9 a.m. Friday. Friday will feature morning rain, gusty winds, and then another round of afternoon and evening rain showers. A few wet snow flakes may even mix in north and west of Philadelphia across the Lehigh Valley and Poconos. Highs Friday reach the lower 50s. Winds could gust over 40 mph. Our weekend starts brisk, chilly and windy. Highs on Saturday only reach the upper 40s. Sunday will feature plenty of sunshine, less wind, and highs around 60. Looking ahead to next week, rain will sweep through Monday evening. Chilly winds are around Tuesday. Opening Day for the Phillies Thursday looks beautiful with plenty of sunshine with temperatures in the mid-50s. FRI: Early morning rain tapers off, gusty winds develop along with a changeable sky. A few additional scattered afternoon and evening showers possible. High 52 SAT: Sunny skies and breezy. High 49 SUN: Sunny and milder. High 60 MON: Afternoon and evening rain. High 55 TUE: Mostly cloudy and blustery. High 43 What to Know The CDC recommends two doses of chickenpox vaccine for children, adolescents and adults who have never had chickenpox or been vaccinated Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said in a radio interview that he deliberately exposed his children to chickenpox so they would catch the highly contagious disease and become immune. During a Tuesday interview on Bowling Green radio station WKCT, Bevin said his children were "miserable for a few days" after contracting chickenpox but said "they all turned out fine." "Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox," Bevin said in the interview. "They got the chickenpox on purpose because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. They had it as children." Bevin and his wife, Glenna, have nine children, four adopted. Public health authorities strongly discourage the practice of deliberately exposing children to chickenpox, a medical expert said Wednesday. "It's unfortunate and not an example for any of us," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. "We should vaccinate all our children. It's a great triumph of public health in the United States. Let's not take a step backward," he added in a phone interview. Bevin's office did not immediately respond to an email request for additional comment Wednesday. Bevin is seeking a second term as governor in this year's statewide elections in Kentucky. The Republican governor said Tuesday that parents worried about chickenpox should have their children vaccinated. But he suggested that government shouldn't mandate the vaccination. "Why are we forcing kids to get it?" Bevin said in the interview. "If you are worried about your child getting chickenpox or whatever else, vaccinate your child. ... And in many instances, those vaccinations make great sense. But for some people, and for some parents, for some reason they choose otherwise." Kentucky requires that children entering kindergarten be vaccinated for chickenpox, but parents may seek religious exemptions or provide proof that a child already had the disease. Bevin's comments followed reports this week of a chickenpox outbreak at a Kentucky Catholic school. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends two doses of chickenpox vaccine for children, adolescents and adults who have never had chickenpox and were never vaccinated, according to its website. Children are routinely recommended to receive the first dose at 12 through 15 months old and a second dose at 4 to 6 years old, it said. "What the governor and other like-minded folks are unaware of is that there are potentially serious complications of chickenpox," Schaffner said. Complications from chickenpox can include bacterial infections, pneumonia and encephalitis inflammation of the brain, according to the CDC. Complications aren't common in healthy people with the disease, it says, but high risk groups for complications due to a serious case of chickenpox can include infants, adolescents, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems. An increasing number of San Diego schools are turning to well-trained dogs to help campus officials find what they can't see. Interquest Detection Canines, one of the largest companies of its kind in Southern California, contracts with nearly 2 dozen school districts in San Diego County. The handlers bring the dogs to campuses to sniff out illegal substances and items like drugs and guns. The company has five different dogs capable of detecting four categories of contraband: alcohol, drugs, medication, and gun powder. In their first ever demonstration for a news organization, Interquest San Diego Regional Manager Tonya Anderson showed NBC 7 how a 1-and-a-half-year-old Australian Kelpie named Astro could zero in on a splash of vodka hidden inside a locker. "I do this and I find it rewarding because I know we're keeping schools safe" Anderson said. The dogs are rewarded with their favorite toy when they alert their handler to a suspicious scent and consider the campus visits akin to a game of hide and seek. But administrators who rely on the service as part of their continuing effort to keep their campuses safe say the dogs are part of the larger plan to make students aware of the choices they make before arriving to school. Eric Solorzano, who oversees the program with the Escondido Union School District, said the feedback from parents has been pretty positive. Escondido Union brings the dogs to their middle school campuses once a month to search classrooms. The students are not inside the classrooms, when the dogs do the searches of backpacks, jackets, and desks. According to Solorzano, most of the time the dogs pick up on "residual smells" on the personal items of students. The smells could be leftovers from things like a drip of alcohol on a backpack or a purse which used to carry marijuana. "What that does is allows us to have a conversation with that family. Where is that residual smell coming from? What are the students having access to outside of school that is giving that smell onto the backpack or jacket?" said Solorzano. Anderson once had a dog alert to a blue plastic chair in a classroom. The administrator called the student who had been sitting in the chair moments before to the office only to find two bags of cocaine in the student's wallet. "The dog never had to sniff that student to smell that cocaine in the wallet," Anderson said. Interquest's dogs usually spend 1 to 3 hours on a campus searching classrooms, lockers, bathrooms, parking lots, and anywhere else where contraband could be hiding. Click here for a full list of Interquest Detection Canines' campus clients. The Navy SEALs called him by his code name -- Johnny Walker -- and they vowed the military interpreter from Iraq would one day be able to call himself an American. And on Wednesday, that promise came true. Watching Johnny Walker being sworn in as a U.S. citizen may have been the end of a long mission for this elite group of U.S. Special Forces. As he raised his hand during the ceremony in San Diego, Walker said all of the emotion from his countless missions more than a decade ago came flooding back. Memories, sweat, blood, everything -- everything came in the same second, said Walker. Retired Navy Capt. Steve Wisotzki felt similar emotions as he watched Walker take his oath. It was pretty powerful. We waited a long time for this, Wisotzki said. He and Walker worked together in Baghdad, Iraq. Wisotzki told NBC7 that Walker had special skills to find high-valued targets for U.S. Special Forces, making him a target too. He's extremely, extremely gifted, so we were able to pile a lot of missions, a lot of things onto him, and he performed them almost always flawlessly, Wisotzki said. Pete Turner served in the army and conducted missions with Walker in Mosul, Iraq. I have tears right now that I'm barely holding back on. It means so much -- I never thought he would live to see this day, Turner said. Walkers work with U.S. Special Forces began shortly after the start of the Iraq War. While the U.S. military rotated in and out of Iraq, Walker remained for whichever team needed him -- wherever they needed him. He's as much an American as anybody I know, retired Navy SEAL Ed Hiner said. Walker had a bounty put on his head for his service to U.S. Special Forces. He lost loved ones, including his brother. And a decade ago, Walker was allowed to come to the U.S. But the military interpreter could never really call America home, as his immigration case was wrapped in red tape for 10 years. But that didnt stop retired Navy SEAL Jason Tuschen and others from fighting for the man they called their brother. It's hard to quantify in words but, yeah, we're tight, so excited to see him finally get what he earned, Tuschen told NBC7. Now they could finally exhale. Mission complete. On Wednesday, Walker said all of his sacrifices were worth it. I dreamed of living in this country. Now I'm living here with my family, my brothers -- it's amazing, Walker said. Walkers daughter and son also became citizens alongside their father in the swearing in Wednesday. A semi-truck lost control on Interstate 5 and veered off the freeway, crashing onto a National City street Thursday and possibly taking out some power lines along the way. The driver told NBC 7 he was carrying a pineapple-filled Dole brand truck en route to Fullerton when one of his tires blew out and he lost control and crashed through the northbound I-5 guardrail at Main Street. The truck went down an embankment before landing on its side on a slope leading to Roosevelt Avenue, a National City street, California Highway Patrol said. CHP did not have any reports of injuries. San Diego Gas & Electric was called for possible downed power lines and Caltrans was called to fix the broken guardrail, CHP said. Aerial footage of the scene showed a large hole in the guardrail and tires separated from the crashed semi-truck. A tow truck was requested to get the truck back upright and crews had the vehicle back on its wheels just after 7 a.m. CHP asked National City police to shut down part of Roosevelt Avenue for several hours during the morning commute while they worked to remove the truck. No other information was available. Please refresh this page for updates on this story. Details may change as more information becomes available. Maryland authorities say a sixth suspect has been charged in the gang-related killing of a 16-year-old boy from Falls Church, Virginia. The body of Jacson Pineda-Chicas was found nearly two weeks ago in a wooded area in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Authorities believe Chicas was murdered in Prince George's County, Maryland. Four adults and a teen were arrested in the week after the slaying. Prince George's County Police say a sixth suspect, 26-year-old Jose Ortega Ayala of Greenbelt, was taken into custody Wednesday in Arlington, Virginia. Ayala is charged with first-degree murder and other charges in the slaying. Five others are also charged in relation to Chicas' death: Jose Ordonez-Zometa, 29; Jonathan Castillo-Rivera, 20; Kevin Rodriguez-Flores, 18; Jose Hernandez-Garcia, 25, and 16-year-old Christian Martinez-Ramirez, who is charged as an adult. Authorities say the suspects are members of an MS-13 clique operating in Fairfax County, Virginia, as was the victim. They say Pineda-Chicas was ambushed at a group meeting and stabbed some 100 times before his body was dumped along a roadside in Stafford County, Virginia, and set on fire. Chicas' mother said her son had been forced to join the MS-13 gang in El Salvador and that's why their family fled the country. But Chicas was unable to escape the gang's grip in America. "They threatened him and they would follow him to work. He worked at IHOP ... every day he would leave [the house] with fear," his mother, who did not want to be identified, told News4 earlier this month. She said Chicas was trying to leave the gang and he started living at a house in Prince George's County to spare his parents and siblings from danger. Chicas' mother told News4 that when gang members previously accused him of talking to police, they threatened to kill his family and he had told them to kill himself instead. "He had to take knives to defend himself, and screwdrivers. He had razors and he told me, 'Mom, I'm going to defend myself with them, but it's not going to be enough.'" Police have not confirmed a motive for the killing, but said Chicas and several members went to a meeting at the clique leader's home in the 7000 block of Varnum Street in Landover Hills on March 8. "During the meeting, a violent attack took place where our victim was stabbed as many as 100 times," said Major Brian Reilly of Prince George's County Police. Reilly said the suspects then drove Chicas' body to Stafford County, where they dumped it and set it on fire. Chicas was a student at Falls Church High School. "Jacson was an engaging young man, well-liked by all who knew him, and will be greatly missed by the Jaguar school community. I have been in contact with Jacson's family to offer them our condolences and support. They have allowed me to share the news of his death with you so that you may be prepared to support your child," Principal Ben Nowak said in a letter to parents. Police have asked anyone with information on the investigation to call detectives at 301-772-4925. Callers wishing to remain anonymous may call Crime Solvers at 1-866-411-TIPS (8477), submit a tip online at www.pgcrimesolvers.com, or use the "P3 Tips" mobile app. Virginia State Police have arrested a 50-year-old man from West Virginia in the suspected murder of a Loudoun County business owner who was shot and killed Sunday morning. Dale Lee Wright, of Charles Town, West Virginia, was arrested Wednesday, and charged with first degree murder in the death of Jeffrey B. Evans, 72, of Bluemont, Virginia, police said. Police said they obtained warrants in Clarke County, Virginia, and are waiting for Wright to be extradited from West Virginia. They also charged Wright with use of a firearm in commission of a felony and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Wright was identified as the man who Evans met in a gravel lot near the Loudoun County line on Sunday, police said. The two allegedly met at about 11:15 a.m. for a prearranged business transaction. Police previously said Evans drove to the lot on Castleman Road off Route 7 in Clarke County near the Shenandoah River where witnesses say they saw a man standing near his pickup truck. Minutes later, Evans was shot in the head and chest, police said. After he was shot, Evans was able to drive away from the lot, but crashed into an embankment at the intersection of Castleman Road and Route 7 at about 11:14 a.m. Witnesses said they saw a man run across Route 7 to Evans' car and then flee. Police said Evans died at the scene. His remains were taken to the Office of the Medical Examiner in Manassas. Police said an investigation remains ongoing and that West Virginia State Police, Pennsylvania State Police, Tennessee Highway Patrol and the Clarke County Sheriff's Office have assisted in the investigation. Friends of the victim said they remember him as a kind person. Melissa Reddy and Susan Carter, who knew Evans, stopped by the scene Tuesday to pay respects. Were in shock and we just wanted to be here because he was just such a great person, Reddy said. She and Carter said they first met Evans as clients of his auto service shop in Aldie, but they soon became friends. I just cant even imagine who would want to do this to him, Carter said. He was that guy that was always there and now hes not, Reddy said. And its weird. Its very weird. About 1,000 packages spilled across Interstate 495 Wednesday night after a UPS truck and tractor-trailer were involved in a crash. The crash was reported at about 10:30 p.m. in Chelmsford, according to Massachusetts State Police. Three people were rushed to Lowell General Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, officials said. Two victims were drivers of the UPS truck and the tractor-trailer while the third injured person was the driver of another car. A second UPS truck responded to the scene to pick up the fallen cargo and take them out for delivery. Two lanes of the interstate were closed for several hours while crews picked up the packages and authorities conducted an investigation. Details on what led up to the crash were not immediately available. Connecticut lawmakers in committee on Wednesday took a significant step in voting up a series of bills that would make tolls a reality in Connecticut. It is still very early in the process, with those bills now headed to the House and Senate. It remains unclear whether the full General Assembly will pass a tolling bill this year, considering many legislators have deep apprehension about levying a new tax on drivers. There was plenty of debate by lawmakers for and against the bills and some say there are still too many unanswered questions. We have gotten numbers with estimations So there is information out there on dollar figures. You may not like them, but the numbers are out there in terms of what tolls could potentially bring in, said Sen. Carlo Leone, the deputy president pro tempore. I need to know how much Im going to tell the constituent theyre going to spend. If I cant do that, I think its irresponsible to vote for that something, Rep. Gail Lavielle (R- Fairfield County) said. Debate over one of the three bills that would place tolls on several major Connecticut roadways drew strong opinions from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The Transportation Committee voted 23-13 to advance Senate Bill 423, which would charge drivers on I-84, I-91, I-95, and Route 15. The bill requires the state to create a plan to implement tolls before submitting it to the federal government. Lawmakers supporting tolls said as much as drivers may not want to pay another car-related bill in our state, tolls are inevitable to paying for fixing our crumbling infrastructure. But those opposed say passing the costs along to residents and anyone driving through our state isnt the way to solve these problems. I would ask every driver that drives in every other state on the eastern seaboard that goes through tolls if they have difficulty paying for those tolls. You pay for them and you contribute to the maintaining of the infrastructure of those states, Leone said. We have to have a plan in place to go to the feds, but I would submit to you we should get more of a plan in place before going to the feds, Rep. Tom ODea (R-New Canaan) said. If this were to pass the legislature, theres still planning and approvals that would need to happen, so it would still be several years before drivers would actually pay tolls on our states roads. Lawmakers also voted to move forward House Bill 7280, and House Bill 7202 which also regard electronic tolling. All three bills would toll both cars and trucks on Interstates 95, 91, 84 and parts of Route 15. Gov. Ned Lamont, who is in support of tolls and proposed one of the bills, released a statement on the votes, which read in part: A reliable, sustainable revenue source 40 percent of which will be paid for by people who dont even live here is necessary to make the infrastructure investment we need to get our state growing again. My plan includes discounts for Connecticut EZ-Pass holders and frequent commuters and assistance for low-income individuals and families, as well. Simply put, a 21st century economy cannot be supported by a 20th century transportation system. In a joint statement, Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano (R-North Haven) and Sen. Henri Martin (R-Bristol) expressed disappointment in the vote. Tolls are a tax and a regressive one at that. Approving tolls seals the fate of our transportation system by allowing the governor to bankrupt our Special Transportation Fund and put all new infrastructure projects on hold for at least the next five years. When toll revenue eventually starts to come in, it will have an immediate negative impact on the middle class and individuals with low and fixed incomes," the statement read in part. What to Know In February 2018, Katherine Hamelin discovered heating oil had seeped through her linoleum floor at her Sutton, Massachusetts home. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) oversaw the cleanup of an estimated 100 gallons of heating oil at the home. Hamelin then discovered her home insurance policy would not cover the damage and lengthy cleanup. Katherine Hamelin noticed something was wrong as she walked up the driveway to her Sutton, Massachusetts home in February 2018. She could detect the odor of oil in the air. Hamelin immediately headed down to her basement and discovered oil had seeped through her finished linoleum floor. The thick, red liquid covered her belongings and the stench was overwhelming. At the time, Hamelin thought it would be a minor inconvenience. "It looked like a mop and bucket job, to be honest," she recalled. "I thought we would just clean it up." But within hours, emergency crews and a disposal technology team had arrived at her house. They started tearing apart her finished basement, jackhammering the concrete floor, and scooping out contaminated soil 30 inches below the ground. Her home quickly transformed into a massive hazardous waste site. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) oversaw the cleanup of an estimated 100 gallons of heating oil. "It was a whirlwind," Hamelin expressed. "Nothing prepares you for that as a homeowner." The bills for the cleanup came fast and furious. Crews informed Hamelin the remediation project could cost anywhere between $50,000 and $250,000. Thats when she heard this stunning news: Her home insurance policy would not cover the damage and lengthy cleanup. "I was in shock," Hamelin recalled. "I wondered if I missed something. Did I refuse some add-on thing that I was offered? Instantly, I think thats what you start to do. You start to question everything that you did that brought you up to this that I wasnt covered." Hamelin is far from alone. The NBC10 Boston Investigators learned in February that homeowners often receive denial letters from insurance companies after heating oil spills. Susan Crane, an environmental attorney who has assisted people affected by heating oil spills, told the NBC10 Boston Investigators that the typical insurance policy has a pollution exclusion for these catastrophes. The attorney says clients have tapped into college savings and retirement funds for extensive home repairs that sometimes require moving the homes off their foundations. There are an average of 118 heating oil spills per year in Massachusetts, state records show. A legislative effort in 2010 tried to improve insurance coverage for families impacted by heating oil spills. However, that law had a loophole: insurance companies are only required to "make coverage available" rather that provide mandatory coverage. This means homeowners like Hamelin have to opt in to the additional coverage, and it seems many of them remain in the dark. State records the NBC10 Boston Investigators obtained show only about five percent of the estimated 750,000 Massachusetts homes with heating oil carry the insurance coverage. "Everything is wrong with this scenario," said state Sen. Anne Gobi, a Spencer Democrat. Gobi watched the NBC10 Boston Investigators February report, which featured a Blackstone mother of three who discovered she was on the hook for a costly oil spill cleanup, even though the incident happened years before she bought the home. "When I saw the report you did and hear that poor womans story, it was like, 'Wow,'" Gobi expressed. That is why the state lawmaker is proposing a bill that would require insurance companies to provide coverage for home oil spills. When the legislation gets a hearing, she is hoping those affected by the financial nightmare will share their testimony at the Statehouse. "Homeowners dont know this exists and I imagine most assume its covered," Gobi told NBC10 Boston. "That can be the difference between keeping their home or maybe losing it." The complicated cleanup at Hamelins home forced her to temporarily move in with her elderly parents in Southborough. The stress it put on them still moves her to tears. "It just breaks my heart," she said. When asked how much shes spent on the cleanup project, Hamelin said she stopped counting once the tab reached $80,000. Crews estimate there is still another $30,000 of remediation work needed before the DEP gives a stamp of approval. Hamelin has spent sleepless nights worrying about the value of her home. Having worked in real estate for many years, she is aware of the stigma that contamination or oil spills can have on a house. The widow lost her husband to cancer in 2012 and lives alone. She now feels trapped. "Im not happy here anymore," Hamelin said. "Its a constant worry. Its affected me emotionally and physically. Its affected my entire family. And the financial burden is just overwhelming." Ryan Kath can be reached at ryan.kath@nbcuni.com. You can also follow him on Twitter or connect with him Facebook. New Britain police have arrested a woman months after finding a crocodile monitor and two emaciated dogs in a home that officials said was in such poor condition that the New Britain Health Department condemned it. Officers responded to a home on Chestnut Street in New Britain on June 19 after someone reported a foul odor and flies coming from the residence, according to police. Officers could not reach anyone when they responded and feared someone might be dead inside so they went in through a window, according to police. Inside the apartment, officers found a crocodile monitor, which Connecticut residents are prohibited from owning. The estimated black market value for the reptile is approximately $15,000. The Central Florida Zoo describes the crocodile monitor as "one of the longest lizard species in the world," close in length to the Komodo dragon. Police said they also heard dogs barking from a separate room, police said. Police described the apartment as filthy and said there was feces throughout, it smelled of urine and was hot with no fans or air conditioners to cool the animals. New Britain Animal Control obtained a search warrant to seize the crocodile monitor and the dogs and determined that no person was living in the apartment, police said. They said there was water, but no food for the animals. Several aquariums and cages were piled up inside as well, according to police. Police said the property owner identified the renter of the apartment as 26-year-old Eileen Rodriguez, of Newington. They said she and her boyfriend, 33-year-old Carlos Colon were believed to harboring the animal in the apartment under filthy conditions. Colon was arrested on Nov. 21 and charged with three counts of cruelty to animals. He pleaded not guilty and is due back in court on April 17, according to online court records. Police said Rodriguez immediately relinquished ownership of the two dogs to the New Britain Animal Control and the Crocodile Monitor was turned over to the Connecticut Environmental Police. Rodriguez was arrested by warrant on March 19 and charged with two counts of cruelty to animals and illegal possession of prohibited species without a permit. A teenager in Rumford, Maine, is safe after a tense ice rescue by the town's fire department Tuesday. Shortly before 6 p.m. that afternoon, two teen boys were fishing when one of them got swept into the Androscoggin River just below a paper mill. Firefighters had to climb down a steep embankment to get to the river bank and a section of water they say has hazards like a dam, rapids and a water discharge from the mill on either side of it. Rumford Fire Chief Chris Reed says he had teams upstream and downstream of the operation to make sure the pair of firefighters who went into the water were safe and able to be saved should they have been swept away themselves. Luckily, the redundancies were not needed. Firefighter Chris Arsenault was able to reach the teen on the ice and hand him a life jacket. "When I reached him, I threw him a life jacket, and he asked what to do with it," Arsenault said. "I said, 'well put it on.'" Arsenault was tethered to shore on a rope line by fellow firefighter Ray Crockett. Crockett said he was concerned a piece of ice would get caught in the line and put Arsenault at risk of getting hurt. "If a piece of ice had floated down by and caught a safety line and took him further down, that would have been one more person that we had to rescue," said Crockett. "If it had caught enough that it pulled safety line out of my hands, it would have been a very different story." But the operation went completely as planned with firefighters pulling the ice chunk and teen to shore without him getting wet at all. Once onshore, the teens were evaluated by paramedics then released to their parents. While necn attempted to reach the teens through the Rumford Police Department, which also responded for the rescue, their names could not be released because they are juveniles. What to Know Sandy Nolan Cronin bought an Acer Chromebook from Amazon but discovered the touch pad would not work just for her. She tried to return the computer to Amazon, but was outside of the 30-day return window, so she called Acer which replaced the touch pad. After finally getting a refund, Nolan Cronin believes she has a condition referred to as "zombie finger." The world is at your fingertips when you're online, but when a viewer's finger was preventing her from logging on to the Internet, she reached out to NBC10 Boston Responds for help with an unusual consumer problem. Sandy Nolan Cronin, of Middleborough, Massachusetts, launched her interior design and repurposing business last year and needed a laptop so she ordered one online from Amazon. "It was a Chromebook with a touch screen, and I wanted it for my new biz, so I could take it with me on site, into people's homes, and snap pictures of before and snap pictures of after," explained Nolan Cronin. She paid close to $300 for the Acer Chromebook but didn't get around to setting it up for a month. When she did, she discovered an unusual problem. "I started having issues right away with my hand, and I thought if I push it harder, if I tap the touch screen a little more," said Nolan Cronin. But the Chromebook's touchpad wouldn't work for her just her! "Everyone that touched it, it worked, but when I touched it, it didn't work," explained Nolan Cronin. She tried to return the computer to Amazon, but was just outside of the 30-day return window, so she called Acer. "They blamed it on hand cream, soap that I was using, whether or not my fingernails were too long," said Nolan Cronin. "They did replace the touchpad and sent it back to me, and the exact same thing happened again, so, I asked again can I have my money back, and they would not give me my money back." Nolan Cronin then contacted NBC10 Boston Responds to see if we could help. "I thought I have nothing to lose, I'm going to give this one last shot, and see what happens, and you contacted me right away," said Nolan Cronin. NBC10 Boston reached out to Acer with her complaint, and they allowed her to return the Chromebook for a full refund of $289.99. Acer released a statement saying: "We believed the best option was for her to use an external mouse, which we offered, however she preferred a refund. Although there was nothing wrong with the touchpad or system, we gave her a refund for the system and she thanked us for making the situation right." Nolan Cronin bought herself another device that works for her. She has also done some research, and believes she has a condition referred to as "zombie finger." "There is some electrical impulse that needs to happen between the touch pad and me that doesn't happen," said Sandy. "I don't know about anyone else's world, but in my world it's a thing." Consumer Reports published an article on zombie finger a few years ago. It says that capacitive touch screens can also impact people who have thick callouses on their fingers, like guitar players and carpenters. A police standoff at a hotel in Revere, Massachusetts on Thursday afternoon has ended peacefully. Massachusetts State Police said they were called to the Quality Inn on Route 1 around 12:30 p.m. for a standoff with a "potentially armed and dangerous suspect." A hotel guest had reportedly locked himself inside his room and was refusing to come out. The suspect, identified as 44-year-old Anthony Bova, surrendered to police around 1:30 p.m. Police said he was wanted in connection with a serious domestic assault on a woman earlier in the day in Chelsea and will be turned over to Chelsea Police for booking. Guests were evacuated from the hotel while police attempted to apprehend the suspect. Malden police had said on Twitter that there was an "ongoing incident" on the east side of the Revere line and helicopters were hovering over the scene. They said there were no issues with school release and the incident was considered contained to the address outside the city. "He's facing serious assault charges, possibly up to and including assault with attempted murder," Massachusetts State Police spokesperson David Procopio said of Bova. The victim of the assault told NBC10 Boston she did not want to go on camera and that she feared for her life. But Newbury MP says deal would likely be defeated again RICHARD Benyon has said that House of Commons speaker John Bercow was wrong to block Theresas May twice-defeated Brexit deal from being brought back to MPs. The Newbury MP said that Mr Bercows decision on Monday to invoke a 400-year-old tradition to stop a third vote showed an inconsistency. However, Mr Benyon said there were other measures to get around the decision but that it added to the fevered atmosphere of Parliament. Should the deal come back the Remain-backing MP said: My gut feeling is that it would not succeed. We are now in a different place with a short-term extension. I am determined that we should continue to respect the result of the referendum. We now have to do that in a way that Parliament can agree to. If [the deal] comes back I will support it. I will support any measure that I feel respects a clear decision by this country to leave the European Union. As I have been saying to colleagues in the ERG (European Research Group), this deal offers the best deal for all of us. If they continue on voting it down we will end up with a softer form of Brexit. During the referendum campaign, people like Nigel Farage and other leaders of the Leave campaign were bigging up the idea of a Norway arrangement and I suspect thats where we will end up." When asked if he would support a Norway-plus arrangement, Mr Benyon said: If it came to a choice between no Brexit and a softer Brexit then yes. "Norway-plus or a Switzerland arrangement would mean businesses would still be able to trade on a free and open basis but we would not be part of the requirements under EU treaties to go for a closer union, which I think would please many people." Mr Benyon said that it would not be easy to exit the EU as it had taken 12 years to enter into the common market and more to incorporate EU laws in the UK. "I think many people understand but Parliament, like most of the country, is split down the middle. "It's deeply frustrating. Most of my colleagues want to find a solution that allows us to move on." Mr Benyon said he believed that "a huge amount of investment" could be released if Parliament could reach a deal. When asked whether he was under any pressure from members of the West Berkshire Conservative Association, he said: "There are those who make their views very clear to me, Brexiteers who have been wanting it for many years to others who are opposed to Brexit. "I try to explain that the actions I have taken have been to recognise the result of the referendum but not to leave with no deal. I am desperately working for us to leave with a deal." DERBY A Main Street building city officials feared was on the verge of toppling over has been given a reprieve from demolition. We have a professional report from the owners structural engineer which submits the building is sound but the facade needs to be shored up, said Andrew Baklik, chief of staff to Mayor Richard Dziekan. Baklik said the buildings owner, Derby Shores LLC, is expected to begin removing the outside stucco on the four-story structure at 195 Main St. We are told they will begin putting the scaffolding up as soon as noon Thursday, Baklik said. Because there is a bus stop adjacent to the building at the intersection of Main and Minera Streets, Baklik said he expected the owner would erect a cover over the sidewalk to protect people from falling debris. At that point, the citys firewatch crew will be recalled they initially were on the scene March 15 and the owner would be billed for 24/7 coverage. Last week, city officials said they were concerned that the building was collapsing and would have to be demolished after portions of the facade and the chimney began falling. They contacted Derby Shores. I think we will want to do a post-inspection once all the work is done, Baklik said. Michael Hillis, a local defense attorney and principal in Derby Shores, told Hearst Connecticut Media that the company paid about $250,000 to renovate the interior. Neither Hillis nor his structural engineer immediately returned requests for comment Thursday. The building is across the street from the ongoing demolition by the state as it prepares to widen Main Street,/Route 34 into a four-lane road next year. The only building still standing on the south side of Main Street is the former Friendly Bar at the corner of Factory and Main. Factory street is the site of a major planned development whose site plans will be presented to the Planning and Zoning Commission during its March 26 meeting. WASHINGTON Greenwich native Hope Hicks has agreed to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committees wide-ranging probe of alleged misconduct in office by President Donald Trump. Hicks was as close to Trump as any of his deputies, both prior to the election and afterwards up to her departure from the White House last year. The document request sent to Hicks earlier this month ran four pages long, asking the 30-year-old former model and Greenwich High School lacrosse team co-captain for information on a multitude of controversies involving her former boss. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said in his letter to Hicks he wanted documents on Trumps efforts to soften the blow against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, his dismissal of FBI Director James Comey and his pushing out former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from oversight of special counsel Robert Muellers Trump-Russia investigation. Nadler also asked for documents relating to the meeting of Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in New York on June 9, 2016. Among those present: Then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort of New Britain, who was just sentenced to a total of 71/2years for infractions relating to his representing Ukraines then-president and pro-Russia party. Nadler spokesman Daniel Schwarz confirmed that Hicks had agreed to cooperate. He provided no other details. Hicks, who took a job with Fox as chief communications officer, was one of 81 people who received letters from Nadler requesting documents. The others included a Whos Who of Trumps presidency and long career as a real-estate wheeler dealer in New York. Among them: sons Donald Jr. and Eric, former White House Counsel Don McGahn, son-in-law Jared Kushner and political consultant Roger Stone. President Trump and his administration face wide-ranging allegations of misconduct that strike at the heart of our constitutional order, Nadler said in his cover letter. Congress has a constitutional duty to serve as a check and balance against any such excesses. The investigation is one of many undertaken by the House since the 2018 midterm elections put it back in Democratic hands for the first time since 2011. Hicks has had to walk a tightrope between loyalty to Trump who referred to her variously as Hopee and the Hopester and entanglement in the ongoing investigations of Mueller and congressional committees. She comes from a Greenwich family well-schooled in politics. Her father, public relations executive Paul Hicks III, met her mother, Caye, while both were congressional staffers in Washington. Paul Hicks was chief of staff for Rep. Steward B. McKinney, R-Conn. Sage therapeutics Zulresso became the first drug approved for postpartum depression by the United States Food and Drugs Administration (FDA). This cause the shares of Sage to rise by over 5 percent on Tuesday this week. Image Credit: Tolikoff Photography / Shutterstock Brexanolone brand named Zulresso, is being approved for intravenous use in treatment of life-threatening postpartum depression. Postpartum depression or baby blues commonly occurs just before and right after childbirth and can be severely debilitating to the mother. There is a major depressive episode that may adversely affect the mother as well as the baby. Tiffany Farchione, M.D., acting director of the Division of Psychiatry Products in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research in a statement said, Women may experience thoughts about harming themselves or harming their child. Postpartum depression can also interfere with the maternal-infant bond. Postpartum depression affects one in nine mothers after delivery. At present the newly approved drug Zulresso is to have a restricted use and availability only. It would be given under a restricted program called the Zulresso Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) Program. The main reason behind this is the side effects of the drug such as excessive sedation and sudden unconsciousness when the drug is administered. The drug would be administered only by a health care provider at a certified health care facility only said the FDA in a news release. For this approval, the manufacturers presented the results of two clinical trials where Zulresso was found to be superior to placebo in improving the symptoms of postpartum depression after the first infusion dose. Brexanolone is a synthetic form of the compound allopregnanolone which is a hormone produced by the female hormone progesterone in the brain. Dr. Samantha Meltzer-Brody, director of the perinatal psychiatry program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the principal investigator of the brexanolone studies explained that this hormone can reduce the symptoms of anxiety and depression in the brain of the patient with postpartum depression. The approved dose of the drug is a single 60-hour intravenous infusion. The likely price of the drug would be around $20,000 to $35,000 per treatment according to the makers, Sage. Dr. Jeff Jonas, CEO of the Massachusetts-based biopharmaceutical company Sage Therapeutics who is also a psychiatrist, said that the drug would be available from June this year. He said initially the drug would be supplied only in hospitals but the team was also tapping the potential use among family practitioners, paediatricians and practicing obstetricians. The U.S. government claimed that ditching paper medical charts for electronic records would make health care better, safer and cheaper. Ten years and $36 billion later, the digital revolution has gone awry. A KHN and Fortune investigation found: Patient harm: Electronic health records have created a host of risks to patient safety. Alarming reports of deaths, serious injuries and near misses thousands of them tied to software glitches, user errors or other system flaws have piled up for years in government and private repositories. Yet no central database exists to compile and study these incidents to improve safety. Signs of fraud: Federal officials say the software can be misused to overcharge, a practice known as "upcoding." Some doctors and health systems are alleged to have overstated their use of the new technology, a potentially enormous fraud against Medicare and Medicaid likely to take years to unravel. Two software makers have paid a total of more than $200 million to settle fraud allegations. Gaps in interoperability: Proponents of electronic health records expected a seamless system so patients could share computerized medical histories in a flash with doctors and hospitals anywhere in the country. That has yet to materialize, largely because officials allowed hundreds of competing firms to sell medical records software unable to exchange information. Doctor burnout: Many doctors say they spend half their day or more clicking pulldown menus and typing rather than interacting with patients. An emergency room doctor can be saddled with making up to 4,000 mouse clicks per shift. This has fueled concerns about doctor burnout, which in January the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Massachusetts Medical Society called a "public health crisis." Web of secrets: Entrenched policies continue to keep software failures out of public view. Vendors of electronic health records have imposed contractual "gag clauses" that discourage buyers from speaking out about safety issues and disastrous software installations and some hospitals fight to withhold records from injured patients or their families. For an in-depth examination of electronic health records, read Death By 1,000 Clicks: Where Electronic Health Records Went Wrong. In a twist of fate, an Italian politician who was lobbying against mandatory vaccination laws, has come down with chickenpox and is now hospitalized. There has been several outbreaks of vaccine-preventable measles because of inadequate vaccine coverage of the population. Prime reason behind this is the anti-vaccination groups that propagate vaccination conspiracy theories. The Lorenzin decree was recently introduced in the country requireming ewborn babies born between 2001 to 2017 to be vaccinated for entry into school. Parents, under this law are warned that their unvaccinated children would be barred from attending nursery or preschool. Older childrens parents would have to cough up fines ranging from 100 euros ($A160) and 500 euros ($A800) if they fail to vavvinate their children. Massimiliano Fedriga, a member of Italys far-right League party had opposed this decree and now for the last four days he has been hospitalized with a vaccine preventable viral illness chickenpox. He had recently opposed compulsory vaccinations against 12 diseases including the one he contracted. Mr Fedriga is the president of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region and has said in a statement that his children are vaccinated. He said he was opposed to the idea of vaccination being made mandatory. Im fine, Im at home in convalescence, and I thank everyone, he said. After the social media noise on his being an anti-vaxxer and now ill with the very same disease, he has said, I have always said that I am in favour of vaccines and to achieve the result is necessary to form an alliance with families, not impose (it on them). (The critics) even said I would get chickenpox from my children, not realising that my children are vaccinated (as I have stated in many interviews). Experts have opined that it was good thing that the leaders children were vaccinated. They have said that these viral illnesses can become severe and even fatal when it affects adults. Pregnant women who get chicken pox for example may face a miscarriage or severe harm to their unborn baby. Similarly a person with a compromised immunity may also face severe consequences of these vaccine-preventable viral infections. It is important that large part of the population gets vaccinated, say experts. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that 95 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated against these infections to protect them from outbreaks. Italy has not met its 95 per cent recommended vaccination rate. As a result there have been 165 cases of measles this January. Can artificial intelligence (AI) help us understand how the brain understands language? Can neuroscience help us understand why AI and neural networks are effective at predicting human perception? Research from Alexander Huth and Shailee Jain from The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) suggests both are possible. In a paper presented at the 2018 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), the scholars described the results of experiments that used artificial neural networks to predict with greater accuracy than ever before how different areas in the brain respond to specific words. "As words come into our heads, we form ideas of what someone is saying to us, and we want to understand how that comes to us inside the brain," said Huth, assistant professor of Neuroscience and Computer Science at UT Austin. "It seems like there should be systems to it, but practically, that's just not how language works. Like anything in biology, it's very hard to reduce down to a simple set of equations." The work employed a type of recurrent neural network called long short-term memory (LSTM) that includes in its calculations the relationships of each word to what came before to better preserve context. "If a word has multiple meanings, you infer the meaning of that word for that particular sentence depending on what was said earlier," said Jain, a PhD student in Huth's lab at UT Austin. "Our hypothesis is that this would lead to better predictions of brain activity because the brain cares about context." It sounds obvious, but for decades neuroscience experiments considered the response of the brain to individual words without a sense of their connection to chains of words or sentences. (Huth describes the importance of doing "real-world neuroscience" in a March 2019 paper in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.) In their work, the researchers ran experiments to test, and ultimately predict, how different areas in the brain would respond when listening to stories (specifically, the Moth Radio Hour). They used data collected from fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) machines that capture changes in the blood oxygenation level in the brain based on how active groups of neurons are. This serves as a correspondent for where language concepts are "represented" in the brain. Using powerful supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), they trained a language model using the LSTM method so it could effectively predict what word would come next - a task akin to Google auto-complete searches, which the human mind is particularly adept at. "In trying to predict the next word, this model has to implicitly learn all this other stuff about how language works," said Huth, "like which words tend to follow other words, without ever actually accessing the brain or any data about the brain." Based on both the language model and fMRI data, they trained a system that could predict how the brain would respond when it hears each word in a new story for the first time. Past efforts had shown that it is possible to localize language responses in the brain effectively. However, the new research showed that adding the contextual element - in this case up to 20 words that came before - improved brain activity predictions significantly. They found that their predictions improve even when the least amount of context was used. The more context provided, the better the accuracy of their predictions. "Our analysis showed that if the LSTM incorporates more words, then it gets better at predicting the next word," said Jain, "which means that it must be including information from all the words in the past." The research went further. It explored which parts of the brain were more sensitive to the amount of context included. They found, for instance, that concepts that seem to be localized to the auditory cortex were less dependent on context. "If you hear the word dog, this area doesn't care what the 10 words were before that, it's just going to respond to the sound of the word dog", Huth explained. On the other hand, brain areas that deal with higher-level thinking were easier to pinpoint when more context was included. This supports theories of the mind and language comprehension. "There was a really nice correspondence between the hierarchy of the artificial network and the hierarchy of the brain, which we found interesting," Huth said. Natural language processing -- or NLP -- has taken great strides in recent years. But when it comes to answering questions, having natural conversations, or analyzing the sentiments in written texts, NLP still has a long way to go. The researchers believe their LSTM-developed language model can help in these areas. The LSTM (and neural networks in general) works by assigning values in high-dimensional space to individual components (here, words) so that each component can be defined by its thousands of disparate relationships to many other things. The researchers trained the language model by feeding it tens of millions of words drawn from Reddit posts. Their system then made predictions for how thousands of voxels (three-dimensional pixels) in the brains of six subjects would respond to a second set of stories that neither the model nor the individuals had heard before. Because they were interested in the effects of context length and the effect of individual layers in the neural network, they essentially tested 60 different factors (20 lengths of context retention and three different layer dimensions) for each subject. All of this leads to computational problems of enormous scale, requiring massive amounts of computing power, memory, storage, and data retrieval. TACC's resources were well suited to the problem. The researchers used the Maverick supercomputer, which contains both GPUs and CPUs for the computing tasks, and Corral, a storage and data management resource, to preserve and distribute the data. By parallelizing the problem across many processors, they were able to run the computational experiment in weeks rather than years. "To develop these models effectively, you need a lot of training data," Huth said. "That means you have to pass through your entire dataset every time you want to update the weights. And that's inherently very slow if you don't use parallel resources like those at TACC." If it sounds complex, well -- it is. This is leading Huth and Jain to consider a more streamlined version of the system, where instead of developing a language prediction model and then applying it to the brain, they develop a model that directly predicts brain response. They call this an end-to-end system and it's where Huth and Jain hope to go in their future research. Such a model would improve its performance directly on brain responses. A wrong prediction of brain activity would feedback into the model and spur improvements. "If this works, then it's possible that this network could learn to read text or intake language similarly to how our brains do," Huth said. "Imagine Google Translate, but it understands what you're saying, instead of just learning a set of rules." With such a system in place, Huth believes it is only a matter of time until a mind-reading system that can translate brain activity into language is feasible. In the meantime, they are gaining insights into both neuroscience and artificial intelligence from their experiments. "The brain is a very effective computation machine and the aim of artificial intelligence is to build machines that are really good at all the tasks a brain can do," Jain said. "But, we don't understand a lot about the brain. So, we try to use artificial intelligence to first question how the brain works, and then, based on the insights we gain through this method of interrogation, and through theoretical neuroscience, we use those results to develop better artificial Intelligence. "The idea is to understand cognitive systems, both biological and artificial, and to use them in tandem to understand and build better machines." Source: https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/-/brain-inspired-ai-inspires-insights-about-the-brain-and-vice-versa- Neuropsychiatric illnesses are common and highly impairing conditions that arise from abnormal functioning of the brain. These conditions - impulsivity, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) among others - can greatly impair the health of those affected by them and impact their ability to learn, work, and emotionally cope. With a focus on enhancing research to shed light on these disorders and their potential future health implications, Butler Hospital has been awarded a $12 million, five-year Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This creates key infrastructure and support a core group of interdisciplinary investigators to build a self-sustaining center of excellence in clinical-translational brain research. The overall goal of The COBRE Center for Neuromodulation (CCN) at Butler Hospital will be to address the pressing need for novel treatments for people struggling with neuropsychiatric disease, by understanding and testing methods to change the functioning of brain circuits underlying such illnesses. "This grant establishes Butler Hospital and The COBRE Center for Neuromodulation as a national leader in this field of translational medicine, expanding both research and clinical application of non-invasive brain stimulation across disorders of brain and behavior," said Benjamin Greenberg MD PhD, principal investigator on the grant, director of the OCD Research Program at Butler Hospital, and professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. "It will unify an interdisciplinary community in clinical-translational research on neuropsychiatric illnesses such as impulsivity, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), all focused on ultimately helping patients by developing new treatments." "This new NIH COBRE grant will advance understanding of neuropsychiatric conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and lead to research breakthroughs in mental and behavioral health," said Senator Jack Reed, a member of the Appropriations Committee who noted that this federal grant compliments a $12 million COBRE grant for Brown University's Center for Central Nervous System Function, part of the Carney Institute for Brain Science, that was awarded in December. "This federal funding will also help boost the state's growing biomedical research and innovation capacity, helping to bolster mentorship, advance the careers of young researchers, and support numerous jobs in the biomedical research industry." "There is so much we still don't know about managing relatively common conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder," said U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. "With this federal funding, Butler Hospital will lead pioneering brain science research to help patients whose lives are deeply affected by these conditions." "With this new federal funding, Butler Hospital will continue to enhance its life-changing research to help people suffering from neuropsychiatric conditions," said Congressman James Langevin. "I congratulate Butler Hospital for winning this competitive award, and I will continue to fight for increased investment to support important biomedical research." "As Rhode Island's oldest psychiatric hospital, Butler Hospital has always been a leader in treating and researching psychiatric illnesses and substance abuse. The awarding of this $12 million COBRE grant will allow the hospital to expand its critical work to include helping people throughout our state and New England who suffer from neuropsychiatric conditions," said Congressman David N. Cicilline. "The many achievements of Butler Hospital and top mental hospitals around the country highlight the importance of fully funding the NIH's many vital programs, and I'm proud of the work that our Congressional Delegation has done to make sure we can continue to create opportunities to bring valuable federal funds home to Rhode Island." Importantly, The COBRE Center for Neuromodulation will nurture the careers of exceptional young researchers in Rhode Island by providing them the infrastructure and expertise to administer brain stimulation and assess its effects on both the brain and behavior. The CCN, co-directed by Linda Carpenter, MD, a nationally recognized leader in brain stimulation therapies and research based at Butler Hospital, will provide the platform these exceptional Project Leaders and other early-career researchers need to make important discoveries and transform them into better treatments for patients with neuropsychiatric illnesses. The stimulation methods to be tested are noninvasive, meaning they affect the brain when applied on the scalp (transcranial magnetic and transcranial electrical stimulation); stimulation effects will be assessed with neuroimaging (MRI) and other methods. The first group of Project Leaders supported by the COBRE CCN will focus on impulsive behavior (a problem across multiple illnesses), PTSD, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). They will be supported in several critical ways, including in research administration and logistics, by experienced, highly skilled mentors and by new research infrastructure to aid them in the design and analysis of experiments and the practical use of stimulation and neuroimaging methods. This, plus a pilot grant program, will advance the careers of talented young researchers in Rhode Island towards making important independent contributions to science and health. Source: http://www.butler.org/news/cobre-grant-to-focus-on-clinical-translational-brain-research.cfm Scientists at the University of Cambridge have suggested that subtle changes to the drugs administered to mothers threatened with preterm birth or to premature babies could further improve clinical treatment and help increase their safety. While the current practice of using glucocorticoid therapy shows life-saving benefits for the preterm infant, the researchers say that combining them with antioxidants would overcome potential safety concerns associated with existing treatment. One in ten babies is born prematurely and up to three-quarters of these are at significant risk of death or long-term illness because premature babies are born with immature lungs and hence are at risk of dying from respiratory problems. The clinical use of glucocorticoids both in mothers at risk of premature labor and in premature babies has become common practice in the last 40 years. The treatment is based on research which discovered the important role played by glucocorticoids in fetal development and that giving premature babies synthetic glucocorticoids could accelerate the development of their lungs and respiratory system. Now, every mother at risk of preterm birth gets this treatment worldwide in developed societies. It is regarded as one of the best examples of successfully translating basic experimental science into efficient human clinical practice and it has saved millions of preterm children every year. However, despite the very clear life-saving effects of antenatal and postnatal glucocorticoid therapy to accelerate lung maturation in the infant, new research has identified some potential adverse side effects on the offspring's growth, central nervous and cardiovascular systems. Some of these effects will not be seen until the child is fully grown and is in adulthood. "The evidence supporting the life-saving benefits of glucocorticoid treatment for premature babies is overwhelming. Without it, preterm babies would mostly die or suffer significantly from conditions associated with prematurity, leaving them with significant disability," says Professor Dino Giussani from the Department of Physiology, Development & Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. "Unfortunately, there can be subtle adverse effects from the therapy that suggest we need to fine-tune current clinical therapy to maintain its beneficial effects but weed out any potential negative adverse effects later in life." In a review published online in the journal Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, Professor Giussani and PhD student Tessa Garrud propose that in future, combined therapy of glucocorticoids with specific antioxidants may be safer for the treatment of the premature baby. In their article, the researchers argue that while much is known about the physiological mechanisms via which glucocorticoids have a beneficial effect, far less is understood about those mechanisms by which the treatment can cause subtle negative effects. In part this is because it is difficult to ascertain which long term health problems are as a result of glucocorticoid treatment and which are due to the detrimental effects of preterm birth. Professor Giussani and Ms Garrud point to research that suggests one likely culprit mechanism is the capacity of synthetic glucocorticoids to induce what is so-called 'oxidative stress', caused by an imbalance in the body of unstable atoms known as free radicals. While the body needs a certain number of free radicals for cell signaling or to stimulate repair, an overabundance can cause damage. Oxidative stress has been shown to lead to restricted blood flow and can damage the cardiovascular system in the long-term. "When we bring together the research out there on this issue, we find strong evidence to suggest that combined antioxidant and glucocorticoid therapy may be safer than glucocorticoid therapy alone for the treatment of preterm birth," says Ms Garrud. Professor Giussani adds: "We believe it is time to study these further potential benefits in clinical trials. Glucocorticoid therapy is clearly a life-saver and is here to stay, but we support that treatment could be improved even further to maintain benefits while improving safety." Source: https://www.cam.ac.uk/ Almost half of all pregnancies are unplanned. In 2017, 12 733 abortions were carried out in Norway. The number of live births the same year was 56 600. In her doctoral work at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Alesund, Assistant Professor Marianne Kjelsvik interviewed 13 women between 18 and 36 who came to the hospital for an abortion, but who were so unsure about their choice that they went home again to think about it more. Between 10 and 20 per cent of women are still uncertain about whether they should have an abortion when they come in for the procedure. "The women said that they'd been very careful about whom they talked to about abortion. Some of them hadn't brought it up with the man they'd become pregnant by. They searched online to find stories about women who had been in the same situation. When I asked if there was anyone they would have like to talk to but were hesitant to, several said 'my mother,'" says Kjelsvik, who works in NTNU's Department of Health Sciences. Taboo over generations Among the women who had talked with their mothers, several mothers opened up and admitted that they'd had an abortion themselves. "When this is kept secret, even from the people you're closest to, it says something about how alone a woman can feel," says Kjelsvik. The PhD candidate is a trained nurse and has extensive experience as a supervisor with the counselling service Amathea, an independent health service whose goal is for women to be able to live well with the decision that they've had time to think through. The voice we don't hear Kjelsvik finds that the abortion debate lacks the voices of women who have faced the choice between terminating or completing their pregnancy. "Ideally, a woman who wants to have an abortion should be sure of her choice, but many women aren't. They find themselves in a situation that isn't conducive to having a child, and at the same time they find it difficult to go through with an abortion. Then they end up making the final decision at the hospital." "Healthcare workers have busy schedules, and several mentioned that they hadn't received training on how to help women who were in doubt." Religion often enters into the abortion debate. However, the women in this study did not bring up religion when they talked about their values. "Women have their own values, and the women in the study were concerned with the fact that their decision involved a life. They considered the possibility of life with a child. Everyone has an opinion about abortion, but for the women who were in this situation, figuring out right and wrong became a complex question," says Kjelsvik. Difficult for health care workers The 13 women in the study were recruited from six different hospitals around the country. The women felt well received at the hospital when they came for the abortion. They felt respected. But at the same time, they wished that staff could have dealt better with their doubts. Not necessarily by giving advice, but by listening to them. The women really needed someone to talk to. Someone who could tell the women how difficult it had been for them. The health care workers, on the other hand, were very careful not to be judgmental or to influence the women in any way. "Health care workers have busy schedules, and several staff mentioned that they hadn't received training on how to help women who were in doubt. If several conflicted women come in on the same day, it can mess up the schedule completely," says Kjelsvik. She thinks more time should be allotted for these appointments and that it shouldn't be solely up to the individual nurse to help. "Everyone benefits when a woman is confident that she's made the right choice. For health care workers to avoid appearing judgmental or influencing the decision, I'd suggest an open introductory question like, 'What has it been like for you to make your decision about this abortion?' That kind of question signals caring rather than judgment," says Kjelsvik. Lingering doubt Even after the women in the study had made their final decision, they still had lingering doubts. Kjelsvik did follow-up interviews four weeks and twelve weeks after the women had made their decisions. Everyone was relieved to have come through a difficult time, but at the same time some women were still unsure about whether they had done the right thing. Those who had chosen to carry their pregnancies to term had mixed feelings. Some were troubled because they didn't enjoy being pregnant and worried whether they would be able to love the child. The reason they had considered abortion had not disappeared. Some of those who chose to get an abortion later thought that they could actually have gone through with the pregnancy. Taboos shrinking Berge Solberg, professor of medical ethics at NTNU, believes the scepticism towards involving the outside world in the question of abortion has many causes. "We're seeing a demystifying and 'de-tabooing' of abortion. More and more people are coming forward and talking about having had an abortion. But even though we're having these big social debates, the issue is perceived as very private for the person who finds herself in this situation. Even people who regard abortion as unproblematic and not ethically difficult know that people can have strong opinions in the opposite direction. So, you become cautious about bringing up the topic," says Solberg. He is the deputy chair of the Norwegian National Committee for Medicine and Health Research Ethics. Fully human at birth Norway's Abortion Act came after a long historical battle for women's rights. Norwegian abortion law is based on the idea that a woman has the right to control her own body, which applies without restriction until the end of the twelfth week of pregnancy. After twelve weeks, a panel makes the final decision and weighs the woman's interests against the foetus' right to life. This may result in a conflict of interest. The panels are required to pay close attention to the woman's point of view, and in most cases her choice is honoured. The requirements for granting abortion becomes increasingly strict as the women gets closer and closer to term. Norway does not give the foetus legal status before birth, but recognizes an individual's "full human dignity" at birth. "But even if the law were to be interpreted that the foetus has full moral status as a person before birth, it doesn't mean that abortion wouldn't be allowed. The woman's rights over her own body can trump the foetus's right to life," says Solberg. Temporary freeze The debate on foetal reduction - aborting one foetus when a woman is carrying twins - became a hot topic after Norway's Ministry of Justice and Public Security interpreted the abortion law to mean that full self-determination also applied in these cases. The government's Granavolden platform, consisting of the Conservatives (H), the Progress party (Frp), the Liberals (V) and the Christian Democratic party (KrF), agreed to remove the possibility of self-determined foetal reduction and to temporarily freeze the Abortion Act and the Biotechnology Act. Professor Solberg believes that proposals to liberalize these two acts will be made when this period is over. "It's more likely that the Abortion and Biotechnology Acts will be liberalized than tightened. However, the support for today's Abortion Act is strong, and fights over it can contribute to sharper divisions," Solberg says. Abortion rate the same regardless of law According to the ethics professor, the number of abortions in practice is pretty consistent from country to country, even though legislation differs. Ireland had a ban on abortion until recently, but the consequence of the ban was that Irish women travelled to England get abortions. "We find that the legislation on the issue doesn't affect the choice of action. The consequence of a ban or very strict laws against abortion isn't fewer abortions, but far more dangerous abortions, and a lot of suffering. Unsafe abortions are a major global health problem," says Solberg. A shocking new report from a nonprofit organization called The White Coat Waste Project published this week found that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been conducting some abhorrent and bizarre experiments with cats and dogs. Image Credit: Shutterstock USDA experiments using cats and dogs questionably procured abroad include: 42 cats purchased at Chinese pet markets and meat farms, killed, and their hearts and tongues shipped to APDL in Beltsville, MD and injected into mice 48 stray cats rounded up in Ethiopia, killed, and their hearts shipped to APDL in Beltsville, MD and fed to mice 34 cats purchased at a Chinese meat market, killed, and their tongues, brains, and hearts shipped to APDL in Beltsville, MD and fed to ARS cats 309 dogs acquired from a shelter in Colombia killed and their brains, tongues and hearts shipped to APDL in Beltsville, MD and fed to ARS cats 120 unclaimed Brazilian shelter dogs killed and the tongue, brain and hearts of 20 of them fed to ARS cats 42 dogs destined for a Vietnamese meat market were purchased and killed. The hearts, brains and tongues of some of these dogs were shipped to APDL in Beltsville, MD and fed to ARS cats The USDA, the report claims, purchases cats and dogs from the meat markets for their experiments. The cats were fed to cats in the disgusting experiments and parts of them are being injected into laboratory mice. The USDA's Agricultural Research Service is allegedly performing these experiments with no perceivable benefits for the public says the report. The USDA claims to be performing these experiments as part of research for toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis is caused by a common parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Lead author of the report Justin Goodman who is also the vice president of The White Coat Waste Project said toxoplasmosis is a common parasitic infection. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says it is one of the leading cause of mortality due to a foodbourne illness. The infection can spread by consuming undercooked meat etc. which is contaminated with cysts of the parasite. Drinking contaminated unpasteurized goat milk is also a mode of contracting this infection. Cats consume rodents and birds infected with the parasite. From the cats the oocysts of the parasite can spread. The cats shed millions of these cysts in their stool for weeks. This makes spread of the infection likely among humans and other animals around them. Goodman explained the USDA was feeding hearts, brains and tongues of dogs and cats from abroad to the domestic cats to understand the spread of the infection. But these kitten cannibalism experiments have absolutely no relevance to human or animal health and, frankly, sound more like an entry in the diary of a burgeoning serial killer than anything else, he said. The report claims that these experiments began in 2003 and have been on till around 2015. Goodman said that they do not have reports of these experiments being still conducted. Goodman said along with these experiments were those conducted in the USDA's Agricultural Research Service's Animal Parasitic Disease Laboratory (APDL) in Maryland. The White Coat Waste Project alleged that around 4,000 kittens have been killed as a result of these experiments. The USDA allegedly spent $22.5 million on these experiments says the report. USDA kitten toxoplasmosis experimentation causes unnecessary animal pain and suffering, little or no scientific benefit, and wastes millions of taxpayer dollars as a consequence of non-competitive perpetual intramural federal funding, the report says. Goodman said, This is not experimentation that's being cited [or] that's improving public health, and it certainly doesn't deserve the support of American taxpayers. They don't need to ever touch a single cat again to continue studying toxoplasmosis research. Goodman pointed out that the USDA has not yet come forth with an explanation after this report was released. Axol Bioscience, a partner in the EU-funded MESO-BRAIN project (GA # 713140) has had a new proposal selected for funding by the EU through the FET (Future Emerging Technologies) Launchpad scheme. The COMMER-CELL Launchpad project provides a unique opportunity for the creation of a marketable product stemming from work already programmed within FETOPEN MESO-BRAIN opening up new opportunities for neurodegenerative research including Alzheimers and Parkinsons. Co-cultured in vitro cell models have the capacity to retain neuronal maturity and functionality for long periods of time. Such co-cultures, featuring only two or three different cell types have already been demonstrated to be effective models for researching the mechanisms of diseases such as AD and monitoring inflammation response, indicating consistent and reproducible results. As such, complex and consistently reproducible ready-made co-cultures will be promoted to pharmaceutical and biotech companies seeking to use iPSC-derived cells as a basis for building cell-based assays and drug screening based on the validated cells. As the FETOPEN MESO-BRAIN project already intends to grow the major neuronal cell types, complex, physiologically relevant 2D and 3D co-cultures featuring cortical neurones, astrocytes, interneurons and microglia can be developed within COMMER-CELL and made available for sale. The creation and mass-availability of a four-cell-type co-culture in an easy-to-use and pre-made form could not only allow for improved research into CNS-affecting conditions and drug testing, but also expedite such research by circumventing the need for research institutions and scientific industrial organization (such as pharmaceutical and biotech companies) to create their own time-consuming cell models. The proposed COMMER-CELL project harnesses results from MESO-BRAIN to deliver concrete added value by raising the technological maturity of the cells to demonstrator level. The fulfillment of the proposition, based upon anticipated positive feedback from the market, will lead to the commercialization of an innovation derived from FETOPEN MESO-BRAIN. MESO-BRAIN partners Aston University, working in conjunction with Laser nanoFAB GmbH, and Institute for Photonic Sciences, ICFO, Barcelona, were also successful in having their own FET Launchpad proposals selected for funding with SCAFFOLD-NEEDs and MAFIn respectively. The FET Launchpad scheme is available only to existing or recently ended FET projects to encourage development of innovative ideas emerging from a project to be accelerated through separate and dedicated, Launchpad funding. Source: https://www.axolbio.com/ The prognosis for older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is poor: very few achieve remission and for those that don't the option is largely palliative. Every year almost 1000 Australians die of the disease and clinical trials into new therapies for older patients have largely failed. A new Australian drug trial has achieved a remarkable result, clearing the bone marrow of leukemia in almost 60% of patients. The trial was considered so effective that the US Food and Drug Administration approved its use last November for the treatment of AML. Kaye Oliver, 74, was the first patient in the world enrolled on this trial at the Alfred Hospital in 2015 - the results of which are published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Given little hope of survival beyond a few months at diagnosis, Kaye remains well and without evidence of the cancer four years later. Associate Professor Andrew Wei, from the Alfred Hospital and Monash University Clinical School, commenced research in this area almost two decades ago at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. He is now the lead clinician/researcher on the international trial of the cancer drug, currently combined with cytarabine to treat older adults with AML. Taken separately these drugs achieve little, according to Associate Professor Wei. Venetoclax alone led to a 19% response rate in a US trial and cytarabine had a similar result, he said. "But combining LDAC with venetoclax in older patients led to a 54% response rate, with half the study population surviving longer than 10 months," he added. The trial tested 82 patients with a median age of 74 years and was conducted in Australia, Europe and the USA. The current research is supported by another trial in older AML patients, which combined venetoclax with another drug, azacytidine and led to a 71% remission rate with an average life expectancy of almost 17 months. Based on the early results of these two studies, the Food and Drug Administration in the US approved the use of these combination drug therapies in older people with AML on November 21 last year. The drug combination acts on a protein prevalent in leukemia cells called BCL-2 which controls the survival of the cells. Venetoclax acts by effectively switching off the protein and activating a self-destruct program in the cell. Associate Professor Wei said that a randomized trial of the therapy, where patients on the therapy are compared to those who are not, has recently been completed and the results are awaited to support a submission to the Therapeutic Goods Association in Australia. The findings are important not just because of the success of the treatment in a disease that, previously, was fatal, but because with an aging population AML is likely to become more prevalent in the future. "AML arises due to mutations accumulating in the bone marrow over time. It also arises in patients who have previously had chemotherapy. With an expected doubling in the number of over people over 65 in the next 30 years, the need to find more effective treatments for this disease is paramount," Associate Professor Wei said. "AML research used to be likened to a 'clinical trial graveyard' because trials of new drugs into AML were rarely successful," Associate Professor Wei said. "It was widely seen as an untreatable and inevitably fatal condition for older patients by most doctors. These two new trials have given real hope to patients who previously had little." Wonder Woman "Trial of the Amazons" crossover to elevate Themiscyra to Gotham City and Metropolis status Three of the masterminds behind DC's upcoming Woman Woman Trial of the Amazons crossover open up about what to expect GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more Sorry! This content is not available in your region (CNN) "The Scream" by Edvard Munch is one of the most famous images in the history of art, and even has its own emoji. If you thought the artwork showed a figure screaming, however, it turns out you may have misinterpreted Munch's work. With "The Scream" Munch is recalling a personal memory of a spectacular sunset in Oslo which gave the sky and clouds a dramatic red hue, according to Giulia Bartrum, curator of a forthcoming exhibition devoted to the artist at the British Museum in London. "The blood-red sky had the effect of making him feel hugely anxious," Bartrum told CNN via telephone. "The artwork is very much a reflection of Munch's personal mood." And the artist wrote an inscription in German on the black and white lithograph version which reads: "I felt the great scream throughout nature." Hands over its ears, the ghostly figure is in fact blocking out nature's scream. 'Moments of despair' The waviness of the figure is a visual representation of what he is feeling, said Bartrum, and the black and white bands behind are almost vibrating like a tuning fork. "It has an obvious emotive impact," said Bartrum, who added that it's very easy to misinterpret the artwork as a figure screaming. "You can associate it with your own mood," said Bartrum. "Everyone has had those moments of despair." Over the years the image has also been used in political campaigns, such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but Munch was expressing a personal emotion and did not intend it to be used as a public message. He was a private man, according to Bartrum, and even during his lifetime he feared that he had lost control of his work even though the reproduction of images was much slower than it is now. And it's easy to appropriate such an emotive image for a cause. "You could take it in a personal way, you could take it in a political way," said Bartrum. "The image is there and it will be used." Brexit coincidence However the curator warned against drawing any connection between the arrival of "The Scream" in the UK and ongoing wrangling over Britain's exit from the European Union. "We did not plan to have the exhibition at this time," said Bartrum, calling the timing "purely fortuitous." Work on the exhibition started five years ago, and it will run from April 11 until July 21. "Edvard Munch: love and angst" is a collaborative effort between the British Museum and the Munch Museum in Oslo, which has lent almost 50 prints from its collection. The upcoming show will be the largest exhibition of Munch's prints in the UK for 45 years, and will also feature other highlights such as "Vampire II," "Madonna" and "Head by Head." Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, March 21) President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday the federalism Moro National Liberation Front (MNFL) founding chairman Nur Misuari is seeking should fall within the bounds of the Constitution. "Maybe somehow we can craft a set-up within the federal structure, but it has to go into a process and I'm sure Chairman Misuari knows that everything must be in accordance of the Constitution," Duterte said, citing the federalism bill that was passed at the House of Representatives. In a speech Wednesday, Duterte said that Misuari told him that the Moro community wants federalism. The Moro leader refused to recognize the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) that would lead the newly crafted Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) amid rumors of dissatisfaction with the MNLF's representation in the body. "Sabi ni Misuari kagabi [Misuari said last night], 'If you do not give it (federalism) to me, let me be very honest. I will go to war," Duterte said. In a press briefing early Thursday, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo downplayed Misuari's statements, and said that he was not blackmailing the current administration. "It's not even a threat, he's just expressing what they will do. They're saying that if you force us against the wall, this is what we will do," the spokesman told reporters. The Senate has yet to pass it's respective federalism bill. Fairbanks, AK (99707) Today Occasional snow showers. Low 3F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Snow accumulations less than one inch.. Tonight Occasional snow showers. Low 3F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Snow accumulations less than one inch. New Delhi: Nirav Modi, the prime accused of Indias biggest banking scam, will be extradited to India much sooner and wont be delayed like absconding liquor baron Vijay Mallya. According to a report, India will be able to bring back Modi within six months. And unlike Mallya, Modi cant argue on the grounds of human rights and political motivation. A report in Times of India on Thursday said that since the UK Courts had struck down the human rights issue in Mallyas hearing, it would give advantage to the India probe agencies. The report also said that the extensive and water-tight investigation papers by Indian agencies show enough proofs to meet the dual criminality clause, which is required in the UK courts while dealing such cases. From the fake Letters of Intent to bank transfers, the chargesheets by both the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate have detailed account of Modis modus operandi. The agencies have already seized the diamantaires properties in India worth Rs 1,873 crore. The fugitive diamantaire, who was arrested in London in Rs 13,000-crore PNB scam case on Wednesday, told the Westminster Magistrates' Court that he is currently employed by Diamond Holdings Ltd the UK capital for a monthly salary of 20,000 pounds (more than Rs 18 lakh) and pays his council tax regularly. The court was told that Modi arrived in London in January 2018 before any of the allegations emerged and has maintained a very "visible" presence and offered to cooperate with the UK authorities since his arrival. The diamantaire also showed salary slips of 20,000 pounds and his National Insurance (NI) number as proof that he was paying tax. The court on Wednesday remanded Modi in custody till March 29, saying there are "substantial grounds" to believe that he would fail to surrender if granted bail. Modi was produced before the Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, where he contested his extradition to India. District Judge Marie Mallon, presiding over the hearing, said she was not inclined to accept Modi's bail plea due the "high value amount" attached to the allegations against him and that he would have "every incentive" to evade surrendering before the court. "There are substantial grounds to believe that you would fail to surrender before the court if bail were to be granted," the judge said and remanded Modi in custody till next hearing on March 29. He is likely to be held in a separate cell in Her Majesty's Prison Wandsworth, which is one of the largest prisons in western Europe. Modi, dressed in a plain white shirt and trousers, appeared in the dock where he spoke only to confirm his name and also to formally decline consent to be extradited to India. For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Biddeford-Saco-OOB Courier Mayor Alan Casavant notes the city's successes but says there are problems and all must work together to solve them. (CNN) An off-duty pilot in the cockpit of a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet jumped in to help crew disable a malfunctioning flight-control system as it experienced difficulties in October, according to Bloomberg. The next day, with a different crew, the same plane crashed into the sea off Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. On doomed Lion Air Flight 610, pilots searched in a handbook for a way to stop the plane from nosediving, according to an exclusive Reuters report. Reuters cites the information from three people with knowledge of the contents of the cockpit voice recorder that has never been made public. Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) has refused to comment to CNN on the content of the voice recorder as the investigation is still ongoing. Boeing also refused to comment to CNN on the matter Wednesday. Indonesian authorities found the cockpit voice recorder in the Java Sea on January 14 and said it could take up to a year to publish a full report into the crash. The revelation that an extra pilot saved the plane the day before the crash has never been reported before, according to Bloomberg. Aviation analyst and editor in chief of Airlineratings.com, Geoffrey Thomas, said it was not unusual for off-duty pilots, known as dead heads, to fly in the cockpit of planes. "It could well be that the flight is full and he needs to get back to Jakarta so as long as he is authorized to do so -- then it's absolutely fine," he said. However, the presence of the third pilot in the cockpit did not appear in the National Transportation Safety Committee's (KNKT) November preliminary report into the crash. Thomas said this fact should have been reported "as you could argue that the pilot was a distraction or an assistance," he said. CNN contacted Lion Air Group Captain Daniel Putut for comment and he directed questions to the KNKT. Soerjanto Tjahjono, the head of KNKT told CNN on Wednesday they were not aware of the details in the Bloomberg report. CNN continues to reach out to more officials at the KNKT. Investigators said the jet experienced problems on its last four flights -- including, crucially, the flight that crashed, according to Tjahjono. Indonesian authorities confirmed that the plane's angle of attack (AOA) sensor was replaced after a flight from Manado, in North Sulawesi to Denpasar, Bali on October 28. The Boeing 737 Max 8 then made another flight to Jakarta that same day, and the pilots reported further problems. The AOA sensors send information to the plane's computers about the angle of the plane's nose relative to the airflow over and under the wings to help determine whether the plane is about to stall. Software installed on Boeing's 737 Max 8 planes, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), automatically lowers the nose of the plane when it receives information from the AOA sensors that the aircraft is flying too slowly or steeply, and at risk of stalling. A preliminary KNKT report said the crew of Air Lion Flight 610 struggled to override the plane's automatic systems in the minutes before it plunged into the ocean. The system pulled the plane's nose down more than two dozen times, the report said. The report said the MCAS system was responding to incorrect data transmitted by an AOA sensor. A different flight crew experienced the same issue on a flight from Denpasar to Jakarta the previous day, but had turned off the MCAS and took manual control of the plane, the report said. Once in Jakarta, a Lion Air technician checked the plane again and gave it the green light to fly on its final flight, from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang on the Indonesian island of Bangka. The jet crashed 13 minutes after takeoff. Experts have pointed to similarities between the Lion Air crash six months ago and last week's Ethiopian Airlines crash, which killed all 157 people on board. Both were Boeing 737 Max 8 planes that were equipped with the same automated flight software and both crashed minutes after takeoff. The Ethiopian Minister of Transport said preliminary data recovered from the black boxes of the crash in Ethiopia showed similarities to the Air Lion crash. But the investigation is ongoing. Following the Ethiopian Airlines crash the second crash of a 737 Max 8 plane in less than five months -- countries and airlines around the world grounded their 737 Max planes. Boeing insists that the 737 Max 8 is safe to fly. "Safety is Boeing's number one priority and we have full confidence in the safety of the Max," Boeing said in a statement on March 12. "We understand that regulatory agencies and customers have made decisions that they believe are most appropriate for their home markets. It is also important to note that the Federal Aviation Administration is not mandating any further action at this time, and based on the information currently available, we do not have any basis to issue new guidance to operators." This story was first published on CNN.com "Extra pilot averted disaster on previous Boeing 737 Max 8 flight - report" New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah will contest Lok Sabha elections from Gujarat's Gandhinagar parliamentary seat, said senior party leader JP Nadda while announcing party first list of 184 candidates on Thursday. Shah's contesting from the Gandhinagar parliamentary seat apparently hints that party stalwart LK Advani's political career is over. This is the first time when Shah will be contesting the general elections. Currently, he is as a member of the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat. Earlier, the party had sent observers on Saturday to seek the opinion of party workers and leaders in Gandhinagar about the candidate from the seat. Most party workers reportedly told the observers that Shah was their choice for the seat. "BJP workers want party president Amit Shah to contest from Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat. I made this demand in front of the observers and it was supported by all," said Kishor Chauhan, a party MLA from Vejalpur, which is a part of Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency. He said Shah was earlier an MLA from Sarkhej seat, which is a part of the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha constituency. All BJP workers were of the view that the seat was held by a national leader so far, so someone from the central leadership should contest from here, another party observer Prithviraj Patel said. The Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat was won by Advani six times since 1991, barring the 1996 Lok Sabha polls. In the 1996 general elections, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had won the Gandhinagar seat as well as from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. The Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat comprises seven assembly constituencies, namely Gandhinagar North, Kalol, Sanand, Ghatlodia, Vejalpur, Naranpura, and Sabarmati. The Lok Sabha Elections 2019 will be held in seven phases, starting from April 11, while the results of all the phases will be declared on May 23. Announcing the seven-phase schedule for 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora also said 10 lakh polling stations would be set up this time as against about nine lakhs in 2014. In the first phase, 91 constituencies will go for polls, 97 constituencies in the second phase, 115 constituencies in the third, 71 in the fourth phase, 51 in the fifth phase, 59 in the sixth phase and 59 in the seventh phase. In the first phase, the polling will be held in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Sikkim, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep, Delhi, Puducherry, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand. With PTI Inputs New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to release its first list of candidates on Friday. BJP's highest decision-making body, met on Wednesday on selection of candidates. The party has met for the third time in last six days. On Tuesday evening, it had held a seven-hour-long discussion to deliberate upon the names of party's candidates in various states. Another meeting of the BJPs election committee has been called on March 22 to discuss various names. Earlier, on March 13, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter and had urged opposition leaders such as Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar, Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav and MK Stalin to encourage people for high voter participation. The prime minister Modi took to Twitter and wrote, I appeal to @RahulGandhi, @MamataOfficial, @PawarSpeaks, @Mayawati, @yadavakhilesh, @yadavtejashwi and @mkstalin to encourage increased voter participation in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. A high turnout augurs well for our democratic fabric. I urge my fellow Indians to enrich the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with their active participation. I hope this election witnesses a historic turnout. I particularly call upon first time voters to vote in record numbers," PM had said in another tweet. The Lok Sabha Elections 2019 will be held in seven phases, starting from April 11, while the results of all the phases will be declared on May 23. Announcing the seven-phase schedule for 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora also said 10 lakh polling stations would be set up this time as against about nine lakhs in 2014. In the first phase, 91 constituencies will go for polls, 97 constituencies in the second phase, 115 constituencies in the third, 71 in the fourth phase, 51 in the fifth phase, 59 in the sixth phase and 59 in the seventh phase. In the first phase, the polling will be held in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Sikkim, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep, Delhi, Puducherry, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand. New Delhi: The Election Commission of India is finally on Twitter. As nation celebrates Holi, the poll panel posted a special message to the voters, who will exercise their franchise in the crucial Lok Sabha elections next month. "Carryover the spirit of Holi to the polling day to colour your finger with the indelible ink, marking your presence in #DeshKaMahatyohar! Vote is your right, Vote is your responsibility," the Election Commission tweeted.A Earlier, on March 13, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter and had urged opposition leaders such as Rahul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Sharad Pawar, Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav and MK Stalin to encourage people for high voter participation. The prime minister Modi took to Twitter and wrote, aI appeal to @RahulGandhi, @MamataOfficial, @PawarSpeaks, @Mayawati, @yadavakhilesh, @yadavtejashwi and @mkstalin to encourage increased voter participation in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. A high turnout augurs well for our democratic fabric.a A Carryover the spirit of Holi to the polling day to colour your finger with the indelible ink, marking your presence in #DeshKaMahaaaaaaaa ! Vote is your right, Vote is your responsibility #GoVote pic.twitter.com/2pzqocKZjR a ECI #DeshKaMahaTyohar (@ECISVEEP) March 20, 2019 aI urge my fellow Indians to enrich the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with their active participation. I hope this election witnesses a historic turnout. I particularly call upon first time voters to vote in record numbers," PM had said in another tweet. The Lok Sabha Elections 2019 will be held in seven phases, starting from April 11, while the results of all the phases will be declared on May 23, the Election Commission of India announced on Sunday. The Election Commission on Sunday imposed 'Model Code of Conduct' with immediate effect for the Lok Sabha elections and announced that voter 'verifiable paper audit trail' will be used in all polling stations this time.A A Among other things, the model code of conduct bars the government from announcing any policy move that may impact voters' decision. Announcing the seven-phase schedule for 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora also said 10 lakh polling stations would be set up this time as against about nine lakhs in 2014. He said the Model Code of Conduct for polls has come into immediate effect from Sunday and all political advertisements on social media will need pre-certification. The EC said 91 constituencies will go for polls in the first phase on April 11, followed by 97 constituencies in the second phase on April 18. The second phase will be held on April 18, third on April 23 and fourth on April 29, fifth on May 6, sixth on May 12 and seventh phase on May 19. Counting of votes for all seven phases covering 543 Lok Sabha constituencies would take place on May 23, Arora said. In the first phase, 91 constituencies will go for polls, 97 constituencies in the second phase, 115 constituencies in the third, 71 in the fourth phase, 51 in the fifth phase, 59 in the sixth phase and 59 in the seventh phase. In the first phase, the polling will be held in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Sikkim, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep, Delhi, Puducherry, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand. New Delhi: The National People's Party (NPP) appointed former chief minister of Meghalaya Donwa Dethwelson Lapang as the national vice president on Wednesday. In the appointment letter issued, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma, also the national president of the NPP, said, In exercise conferred upon me under Article 11 of the constitution of the NPP, I am pleased to appoint you as national vice president of the party. Lapang, a five-time chief minister who was associated with the Congress for over four decades, headed the party in the Meghalaya till December 2017. He quit the Congress last year, accusing the leadership of adopting a policy of "phasing out" senior leaders. Lately the AICC has been embarking upon a policy of phasing out senior and elderly people. In my opinion it means the service and contribution of the senior and elderly people is no longer useful to the party, Lapang stated in his resignation letter. In 1972, he became MLA from Nongpoh constituency as an Independent candidate. In 1992 till February next year, he served as the state chief minister. On March 4, 2003, he was sworn in as the chief minister again. He resigned from the position on June 15, 2006 due to dissidence in the coalition government, reports News18. Lapang again became the chief minister in March 2007. After the Congress won in the March 2008 Assembly election, Lapang was sworn in again on March 10, 2008. But with support of only 28 members from the 60-seat legislature, he resigned on March 19. He became the chief minister for the fourth time on May 13, 2009, after the state was under President's Rule for two months. New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday released the first list of 182 candidates for Lok Sabha elections 2019. Names of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, and other senior leaders have appeared in the first list.A Out of 184 candidates, 28 are from Uttar Pradesh, 28 from West Bengal, 21 from Karnataka, 16 each from Maharashtra and Rajasthan, 13 from Kerala,10 each from Telangana and Odisha, 8 from Assam, 5 each from Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh,A Jammu & Kashmir, and Uttarakhand, 2 each from Manipur, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, 1 each from Mizoram, Sikkim, Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. Addressing a press conference in the national capital, senior party leader JP Nadda said that PM Modi will seek re-election from Varanasi parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh. Earlier, there were reports that the prime minister mayA pick another temple town Puri. BJP president Amit Shah will contest from Gujarat's Gandhinagar. Shah's contesting from the Gandhinagar parliamentary seat apparently hints that party stalwart LK Advani's political career is over. This is the first time when he will be contesting the general elections.A Currently, he is as a member of the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat. As expected, the BJP has filed Smriti Irani from Amethi, home turf of Congress president Rahul Gandhi. She has been active in the area despite losing the seat in 2014 general elections.A Film actress-turned-politician Hema Malini will again contest from her Mathura seat. A General (retired) VK Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs, will contest from Ghaziabad parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh. In 2014, Singh created history by winning the seat with a margin of 5.67 lakh votes. Other candidates from the seat were actor-turned-politician Raj Babber and journalist-turned-politician Shazia Ilmi. Ilmi, who contested on Aam Aadmi Party's ticket, later joined the BJP. Home Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow and another Union minister Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur. Both leaders had won from these seats in the last general election. Union minister Kiren Rijiju to fight from Arunachal East. The BJP has also renominated Union Minister Mahesh Sharma from Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida). The BJP has finalised names of all 17 party candidates from Bihar and sent the list to the state unit which will announce it jointly with allies, Nadda said.A The Lok Sabha Elections 2019 will be held in seven phases, starting from April 11, while the results of all the phases will be declared on May 23. Announcing the seven-phase schedule for 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora also said 10 lakh polling stations would be set up this time as against about nine lakhs in 2014. In the first phase, 91 constituencies will go for polls, 97 constituencies in the second phase, 115 constituencies in the third, 71 in the fourth phase, 51 in the fifth phase, 59 in the sixth phase and 59 in the seventh phase. In the first phase, the polling will be held in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Sikkim, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep, Delhi, Puducherry, Chandigarh, Uttarakhand. New Delhi: Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Ram Gopal Yadav on Thursday said the Pulwama attack was a conspiracy ahead of the Lok Sabha Elections to fetch votes. Ram Gopal said that there were no adequate security checks between Jammu and Srinagar national highway. There will be an investigation into the incident after the current NDA government changes and those behind the conspiracy will be caught, he said. On February 14, at least 42 CRPF personnel were killed in one of the deadliest terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district when a Jaish suicide bomber rammed a vehicle carrying over 30 kg of explosives into their bus in Pulwama district that also left many critically wounded. More than 2,500 Central Reserve Police Force personnel, many of them returning from leave to rejoin duty in the Valley, were travelling in the convoy of 78 vehicles when they were ambushed on the Srinagar-Jammu highway at Latoomode in Awantipora in south Kashmir. On Wednesday, Ram Gopal Yadav taking potshot at Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said the Congress General Secretary was visiting temples as she is "nervous" and the Congress is in "trouble" in Uttar Pradesh. "Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is nervous and therefore, she is temple hopping due to her nervousness. People run to temple only when they are in trouble. In Uttar Pradesh, Congress is in trouble," Ram Gopal Yadav told ANI. Priyanka was on a three-day long 'Ganga Yatra' from Prayagraj to Varanasi. Priyanka's tour focused on 'Sanchi Baat Priyanka ke Saath' in which she talked to people during her 140 kilometres long travel on a steamer boat to Assi Ghat in Varanasi. The Lok Sabha elections have been scheduled to start from April 11 and will go on till May 19 in seven phases. The polls in Uttar Pradesh will be held in all seven phases. The counting of votes will take place on May 23. Srinagar: Two policemen, including an officer, were injured in a grenade attack by militants in Sopore township of Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, the police said. Terrorists lobbed a grenade at a security forces party at Main Chowk Sopore in the north Kashmir district, a police official said. He said two policemen, including the station house officer of Dangiwacha police station, sustained minor injuries in the explosion.The injured have been hospitalised. Security forces have cordoned off the area and a search has been launched to nab the attackers, the official said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: An Indian Army soldier was killed in heavy Pakistani firing along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmirs Rajouri district on Thursday. The incident coincides with a grenade attack in Baramullas Sopore. Two policemen, including an officer, were injured in the attack. the unidentified terrorists lobbed a grenade at a security forces party at Main Chowk Sopore in the north Kashmir district, the PTI quoted as police official as saying. He said two policemen, including the station house officer of Dangiwacha police station, sustained minor injuries in the explosion. The injured have been hospitalised. Security forces have cordoned off the area and a search has been launched to nab the attackers, the official said. On February 14, at least 42 CRPF personnel were killed in one of the deadliest terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district when a Jaish suicide bomber rammed a vehicle carrying over 30 kg of explosives into their bus in Pulwama district that also left many critically wounded. More than 2,500 Central Reserve Police Force personnel, many of them returning from leave to rejoin duty in the Valley, were travelling in the convoy of 78 vehicles when they were ambushed on the Srinagar-Jammu highway at Latoomode in Awantipora in south Kashmir. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The death count in the building collapse in Dharwad has risen to seven and a total of 60 persons have been rescued so far, news agency ANI reported. The police said four people have been brought out from the debris while rescue operations are in full swing. As many as 10 ambulances and five fire tenders have been engaged to carry out rescue and relief operations. Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy said he was shocked to learn about the collapse of the under-construction building. "Shocked to learn about the collapse of an under-construction building in Dharwad. I've instructed the Chief Secretary to supervise rescue operations. I have also directed the CS to send additional resources and expert rescuers by a special flight to #Dharwad," tweeted Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy. Two more teams of #NDRF are being airlifted from Ghaziabad in addition to one team which was moved from Bangalore in connection with Dharwad building collapse, the NDRF tweeted. About 150 police, fire and emergency personnel have joined the rescue operations. No arrests have been made so far. Former Karnataka minister and Congress leader from the region Vinay Kulkarni said Tuesday that one of the partners in the building was his relative and that whoever was involved should face act For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Three fierce gun battles are underway in Jammu and Kashmir. An encounter broke out in Warpora area of north Kashmirs Sopore where one terrorist is reported to be trapped in the encounter. Firing is yet to start in the encounter as security forces are asking terrorists to surrender, according to reports. However, terrorists lobbed a grenade on the search party from outside where two cops including SHO got injured. Terrorists lobbed a grenade at a security forces party at Main Chowk Sopore. The second operation is going on at Hajin, where two foreign militants are reportedly trapped inside a house. Security forces trying to evacuate locals before starting operation, sources said. The third operation is underway in Kalantara Baramulla, where firing resumed again after a 12-hour lull. However, the exact location of the terrorists is yet to be ascertained. On February 14, at least 42 CRPF personnel were killed in one of the deadliest terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district when a Jaish suicide bomber rammed a vehicle carrying over 30 kg of explosives into their bus in Pulwama district that also left many critically wounded. More than 2,500 Central Reserve Police Force personnel, many of them returning from leave to rejoin duty in the Valley, were travelling in the convoy of 78 vehicles when they were ambushed on the Srinagar-Jammu highway at Latoomode in Awantipora in south Kashmir. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: India and the Indian diaspora are celebrating the festival of colours --- Holi ---- that marks the end of winters and the beginning of spring --- on Thursday. Celebrations began a night before on Wednesday with Holika Dahan, wherein people perform religious rituals in front of a bonfire and pray for the destruction of evil, just the way Holika, the sister of the demon king Hiranyakashipu, was killed in the fire. On Holi or Rangpanchami, people smear each other with colours and hurl water balloons and also gorge on lip-smacking delicacies such as Gujiya, Mathri, Dahi Bhalle, Alu Poori, Thandai, among others. It is believed that Krishna used to celebrate the festival with colours at Vrindavan and Gokul. However, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) will not officially celebrate Holi this year as a mark of respect to its 40 jawans killed last month in a suicide attack at Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir. Google Doodle also celebrated Holi by showcasing festivities and splashing of colours. The legend of Holi The legend has it that a young boy named Prahlad was devoted to lord Vishnu. Prahlads father, the evil king did not like his sons ardent devotion towards lord Vishnu and wanted him to give up his faith in the god and stop worshiping him. When Prahlad refused to do so and Hiranyakashyap tried to kill him. Hiranyakashyap's sister Holika had a divine blessing that she will not be burnt by fire. The king made Prahlad sit in Holika's lap and set the two on fire. With the blessings of Lord Vishnu, Prahlad, who kept chanting his name, remain untouched, but it was Holika who started to scream, the fire did not save her this time. Lord Vishnu appeared in his magnanimous Narasimha avatar and so the Holika Dahan puja is dedicated to the Narasimha avatar. In this avatar, the lord appears as half-man and half-lion. He took this unusual form to end all atrocities committed by the greedy Hiranyakashyapu. While some legend say that the blessing was applicable only when she sits alone in the fire, other legends refer to a shawl or a 'magical' piece of cloth that saved her from fire. It says that with the blessing of Lord Vishnu, a strong wind blew and covered Prahlad with that shawl, saving him, while Holika burnt to death. With this legend, the tradition of Holika Dahan came into practice signifying the victory of good over evil. Another legend of Holi celebrations that is extremely popular in south India is that of Lord Shiva and Kaamadeva. It is believed Kaamadeva, the god of passion, awoke Shiva from his deep meditation so he could save the world. For all the Latest Lifestyle News, Religion News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Google Doodle on Thursday celebrated the Festival of Colours --- Holi that marks the advent of spring. The doodle has been created by Chennai-based artist Chaaya Prabhat. The doodle showcased festivities and splashing of colours, which are the highlights of the festival. On Holi, people smear each other with colours and hurl water balloons at one another. They also dance to celebratory tunes and gorge on lip-smacking sweets and savouries. Her website says: "Chaaya Prabhat is a graphic designer, illustrator and lettering artist. After completing her M.A in Graphic Design from Savannah College of Art and Design, she is now working independently in Chennai, India. She has worked with several clients such as Snapchat, Google and The Obama Foundation. She has previously received awards for her portfolio and projects from Behance and Adobe." The Holika Dahan ritual was observed on Wednesday night when the effigy of Holika was burnt. On Holika Dahan, holy bonfires are burnt on open spaces, signifying the victory of good over evil. The legend of Prahlad, Holika and Hiranyakashyap is associated with it. Roasted cereals are offered to the bonfire and people sing and dance around it. Devotees offer water, turmeric, coconut to the bonfire and seek blessings for a joyous life (the offerings may vary from region to region). New Delhi: Boeing's ill-fated 737 MAX and federal regulators next week will face the first public grilling by Congress over the two fatal plane crashes in recent months. Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, called for a hearing of the Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation and Space, for March 27, with three transportation officials, notably the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration. Cruz intends to hold a second hearing to question Boeing officials as well as pilots and others in the industry, according to the statement. More than 300 people perished in the two crashes of 737 MAX 8s that occurred shortly after takeoff in Indonesia in October and in Ethiopia earlier this month. Boeing and the FAA are under investigation by the Transportation Department for how the rollout of the jet was handled, especially the a new flight system, the MCAS stall-prevention system, which was implicated in the Lion Air crash in October. Pilots have complained they were not informed about the new system, which can force the nose of the plane down if it gets an erroneous reading from a sensor making it appear the plane is at risk of stalling. The committee will hear next week from FAA acting chief Daniel Elwell, as well as the Transportation Department's chief investigator, Calvin Scovel, and National Transportation Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt. The FAA said Wednesday it will review the information from the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder from the Ethiopian Airlines accident as it becomes available. "Understanding the circumstances that contributed to this accident is critical in developing further actions and returning aircraft to service," the FAA said. Meanwhile, the question everyone is asking - Was the United States complacent in its certification of the Boeing 737 MAX? The question comes after Addis Ababa said flight recorded data showed "clear similarities" between last week's Ethiopian Airlines crash and that of Indonesia's Lion Air five months earlier. In service since May 2017, the 737 MAX 8, one of several variants of the 737 MAX, has now experienced two deadly tragedies, a scenario that is unprecedented for a new aircraft. The March 10 crash, south-east of the Ethiopian capital, claimed 157 lives, on top of the 189 who died when the Lion Air flight plunged into the Java Sea in October 2018. Investigations are ongoing but early evidence has pointed to a problem with the flight stabilization system designed to prevent stalling, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS. Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges said Sunday that a study of the flight data recorder retrieved from the Ethiopian plane had shown "clear similarities" to that of the Lion Air flight. While it may take months for definitive conclusions, experts are asking why the MCAS was green lit despite objections by American pilots who had voiced concerns with the system. The US Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) is in the line of fire because it authorizes the commissioning of airplanes. But for the past decade, it has outsourced the mission, entrusting the task to airplane manufacturers themselves and to external experts. Under this new program, known as the Organization Designation Authorization (ODA), employees of Boeing accredited by the FAA assist the regulator in approving the aircraft of their employer (from design, production, flight tests, maintenance and other systems) as well as signing off on the training procedures of pilots on new planes. The trend has accelerated due to budget cuts and the increasing volume of air travel, industry sources told AFP. In the case of the 737 MAX, Boeing expressed a case of urgency because of its medium-haul competition with the Airbus A320Neo that launched shortly before, the sources said. The original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA had "several crucial flaws", according to a report in the Seattle Times on Sunday. There were also strong differences of opinion between FAA staff in Seattle, where Boeing planes are built, and in the Washington D.C. headquarters, a government source told AFP. The agency defended itself Sunday, telling AFP in an email: "The 737 MAX certification program followed the FAA's standard certification process." Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing's CEO, said Sunday the company was finalizing a software update to the MCAS. Industry sources indicated to AFP it would be ready in about 10 days. Peter DeFazio, chairman of the House of Representatives' Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is planning to launch an investigation into the 737 MAX's certification, Congressional sources said, adding that public hearings have not been ruled out. "The FAA's credibility is really on the line here, as is Boeing's. And, the global system of aircraft certification reciprocity is at risk too," said Richard Aboulafia, an aeronautical analyst at Teal Group. Following the Lion Air crash, the FAA asked Boeing to modify its flight manuals and pilot training so they could recognize and respond to unexpected maneuvers initiated by the MCAS. Pilots had notably underlined the need for information and training beyond what had initially been provided. The 737 MAX was certified as a variant program of the its predecessor, the 737 Next Generation, despite major differences in the engine and the MCAS, according to documents available on the FAA's website. In a nutshell, the plane was not examined in its entirety. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: Who really gets under Donald Trumps skin? A man who has been dead since last year and another whom the president says he hardly knows. At least thats the bizarre picture painted by Trump this week in angry rants at the late senator John McCain and a Washington lawyer called George Conway. Trump lashed out yet again Wednesday at the broadly popular McCain, saying Ive never liked him much. I really probably never will. This followed a series of tweets and other statements in the last few days raging at the former senators politics, role in the Russia collusion probe, and personal intelligence. As for Conway, hes a whack job, Trump told journalists Wednesday. A stone cold LOSER, he wrote on Twitter a few hours earlier. The venom of the attacks was not unusual for a president who revels in put-downs. The targets of his ire, though, raised eyebrows. McCain is widely remembered by Americans as a hero for his courage during six years of often brutal captivity in Hanoi during the Vietnam war. More to the point, he died in August at 81. While he fell out over policy several times with his fellow Republican Trump, hes been buried for seven months. No less curious is the Conway obsession. A prominent lawyer in Washington circles but a nobody to ordinary Americans, Conway burst into the public eye because he is married to a senior White House aide and has begun loudly questioning Trumps mental stability on Twitter. In both cases, Trump could have avoided controversy. McCain, after all, can never clash with him again and Conway poses no real threatother than, perhaps, to the stability of his marriage to senior Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway. Even Trump says, I barely know him. Backing off from a fight, however, wouldnt be Trump: his entire presidency is based on being combative. Or, as Kellyanne Conway, told Politico: hes a counter-puncher. His base sees this as classic Trump behavior, said Rich Hanley, who teaches on politics and the media at Quinnipiac University. They expect Trump to swing at everybody, even ghosts. Trump enjoys landing pithy, sometimes humorous, sometimes what many would call poor taste verbal blows. And Twitter, where he has more than 59 million followers, is his principal weapon. The Twitter president has largely dispensed with formal news briefings, finding that a tweet alone can get everyone talkingwithout giving them much chance for questioning. Trump defended this method of communication on Wednesday as an antidote to what he calls the corrupt and fake media. By that, he means most standard news organisations. Its a way that I can get honesty out, he said. Its a way where Trump typically gets to punch first and punch hard, thereby dominating the news agenda. George Conway, however, has broken the mold. Leveraging his position as husband to a Trump aide and posting outrage-seeking tweets that claim to diagnose personality disorders, he effectively out-trolled the troller in chief. Trumps not used to that. Hes used to being the aggressor, the bully, the one who controls, Hanley said. Now hes finding that there are characters like Conway... who are more aggressive than he is and he doesnt know how to handle it. In a different sense, the same applies to McCain. Hes gone, but memory of the maverick senator, who was not afraid to break with Republican ranks or to hide his dislike for a president who ridiculed his capture in Vietnam yet never served himself, remains fresh. Clearly much too fresh for Trump, who has talked so much this week about his disagreements with McCain that it sounds as if they had been locking horns only hours ago. Trump just cant let go. My dad... would think it was so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death, McCains daughter Meghan said on ABC television Wednesday, demonstrating some put-down skills of her own. With Trump soon starting his 2020 reelection campaign and Democrats launching their own nomination battle, the ugly back and forth is set to intensify. But Mark Rom, a politics professor at Georgetown University, predicted that Democratic candidates will get surrogates to do the dirty work while they try to keep above it all. Their mantra, he said, will be modelled on the icily dismissive approach taken by the House of Representatives speaker, Nancy Pelosi: Ill just ignore that little man. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: Neomi Jehangir Rao, a prominent Indian-American lawyer, has been sworn in as US Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, becoming the second from the community to be a part of the powerful court considered next only to the US Supreme Court. Rao, 45, was sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Tuesday. She will replace US Supreme Court Judge Justice Brett Kavanaugh who was nominated by President Donald Trump for the top post. Before being sworn in as the US Supreme Court Judge, Kavanaugh, whose confirmation process was marred by sexual misconduct allegations, was a judge at the United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Joined by her husband Alan Lefkowitz, Rao took the oath on the Bible. According to a White House schedule, Trump participated in the swearing-in ceremony. Born in Detroit to Parsi physicians from India --- Zerin Rao and Jehangir Narioshang --- Rao is the second Indian-American after Sri Srinivasan to be part of the powerful court said to be next only to the US Supreme Court. Srinivasan was appointed during the previous Obama regime. Nominated by President Trump during Diwali celebrations last November, Rao was confirmed by the Senate last week by 53-46 votes. She is going to be fantastic. Great person, Trump had said about his nominee. In her previous role as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) of the Office of Management and Budget, she played a key role in regulatory reform. Raos confirmation and her swearing-in for the prestigious court has been a low key affair for the Indian-American community. This is in stark contrast to the nationwide celebration by Indian-Americans when Srinivasan was confirmed and sworn in as US Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit. Prior to her service as OIRA Administrator, Rao was a professor of structural constitutional law, administrative law, and legislation and statutory interpretation at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. She founded the Law Schools Center for the Study of the Administrative State and focused her scholarship on the political and constitutional accountability of administrative agencies and the role of Congress. She has served in all three branches of government, including Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to President George W Bush. Rao also served as counsel to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she was responsible for judicial nominations and constitutional law issues. In between government service, Rao practised in the London office of Clifford Chance LLP, specialising in international law and commercial arbitration. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. On the timeline of computer history, March 1969 does not carry the same cache as say January 1939, when Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard laid the foundation for Silicon Valley in a Palo Alto garage. Or October 1969 when the precursor to the internet first came online in California. But when it comes to Connecticut technology lore, March 1969 deserves a footnote in bold for the staying power of a Brookfield company that has kept pace for a half-century with the most rigorous technical demands created by computer engineers. For 50 years, Photronics has made photomasks, quartz or glass plates that concentrate light in a precision manufacturing process to create the tiniest patterns of circuitry on semiconductors and flat panel displays. It has been a remarkable run for a company founded less than a year after industry legend Intel, with Photronics plates used to produce chips for use in everything from microwave ovens and TV remotes to the newest smartphones and large-screen TVs. Photronics cranks out 1,500 plates a day on average, with the company producing record revenue of $535 million for its 2018 fiscal year ending last October. Before leaving Qualitron to start Photronics in 1969, Constantine Deno Macricostas worked for National Semiconductor, which was based in Danbury for a decade until 1968 when it designated Santa Clara, Calif., as its headquarters. Macricostas moved Photronics in 1978 to its current campus in Brookfield, and sold stock to the public for the first time in 1987. Macricostas stepped back into an executive chairman role in 2015, with the company promoting Peter Kirlin to CEO that year to run the company on a day-to-day basis. Macricostas remains a generous supporter of Danbury-area causes, including a $3 million pledge in 2014 to Western Connecticut State University. The house that Deno built In an industry that defined Moores Law Intel founder Gordon Moores prediction that computing power would double every two years Photronics may have the most exacting customers in the world, at least from Kirlins vantage of keeping the company at the forefront of those technological leaps. The chip industry is now on the cusp of a new evolution of equipment that can produce circuitry at 5 nanometers in scale, or about the quarter of the diameter of the human ribosome. If were making images that are one-10,000th the size of your hair and they keep getting smaller that is a tremendous challenge, Kirlin said. Another huge challenge we have every year is that the same product we build must be built cheaper. We have to not only innovate on the technology front, we have to innovate on the cost front. ... We do that better than anyone in our business. Thats the house that Deno built. As much as the computer industry begins to bump up against the physical limits of Moores Law, Kirlin notes the advances the high-tech industry is now making in how to package arrays of chips to maximize their output and minimize the heat they generate, allowing for ever-smaller digital devices. In our industry now, we are starting to hear people say more than Moore, Kirlin said. This concept of shrinking or getting smaller is running out of gas. ... Theres packaging technology being developed particularly for things like cell phones where you can literally mold the circuit board around the chips. A Connecticut legacy Photronics lists as its lone U.S. competitor Compugraphics, a Texas-based photomask maker whose parent entity MacDermid Alpha Electronics Solutions is based in Waterbury as a subsidiary of Platform Specialty Products. Both Photronics and Compugraphics have several rivals in Japan, Taiwan and China. In the past year, Photronics has opened a pair of new plants in China, one located next to a customer that needs the biggest photomasks that Photronics has ever designed to produce the newest flat-screen TVs. Photronics sees its busiest cycle at year-end, as mobile phone and tablet makers finalize chip designs that will go into fall product releases on the eve of the following holiday season. With that push now behind the company, Kirlin heads back to China next week to meet anew with the companys newest customers, with Photronics having doubled its revenues in China in the past year. Photronics has U.S. installations outside Dallas where Texas Instruments is based, and in Boise, Idaho, where customers include Micron Technology, but the significance of the companys continued commitment to its Connecticut birthplace is not lost on Kirlin, who grew up in Pennsylvania steel country where jobs evaporated as cheaper foreign imports flooded the U.S. market. Kirlin says he sees Photronics as not just a Connecticut treasure but a national one, given the companys legacy stretching back to the earliest days of the high-tech industry when companies like Intel, Xerox and IBM were hitting their stride. Photronics employs about 200 people today in Brookfield of about 1,800 workers globally. I think back to my childhood when we were the manufacturing masters of the universe, Kirlin said. Were still here, right? Weve made it, because weve made it cheaper, faster, better, as our customers have done, and we have run right along with them as an American company. Im very proud of our people. ... We have a spring in our step. Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman The imposing white house on the curve where Route 33 turns from Wilton toward Ridgefield often attracts the attention of passersby, says its proud owner Tom Grotta. The house is, in fact, part repurposed barn, originally built in 1895. But there is no sign to indicate it is even more remarkable as home to browngrotta arts, an international showcase for contemporary fiber arts. I always tell people were the biggest fish in the smallest pond you can find. Were the brand name, says Grotta, who runs the business with his lawyer wife, Rhonda Brown. Theres no place in the world that shows this caliber, in this field, in one space. Their roster of artists is star-studded; their work so wildly diverse and ingenious that the very term fiber arts is dangerously misleading. There are pieces on display inside the browngrotta house, which does double duty as gallery and residence, that strictly speaking are neither woven nor made of fiber. Hanging in a first-floor room sometimes used for parties is a piece that looks like a monochrome painting done in horizontal stripes. The stripes happen to be strips of dried fish skin sewn together by Annette Bellamy, an Alaska artist who also works as a commercial fisherman. She identifies the skins by species and type: halibut and salmon, both untreated and smoked. On the opposite wall, there is a circular honey-combed piece framed in glass by the California artist Karyl Sisson. She made it from tightly rolled up paper drinking straws. Sisson also makes pots from tape measures and bug sculptures from vintage buttons and hairpins. A focal point of the room is New Nebula, a piece that looks like traditional tapestry in the sense that it hangs, is large (roughly six-feet by four-feet) and composed of hundreds of swatches of fabric. The fabric is its own mixed media, though, coming from alpacas, silk worms and varieties of palm, onion and eucalyptus plants. The artists, Eduardo Portillo and Maria Eugenia Davila, grow everything the use on their property in Venezuela, Grotta says. They keep the location secret because of the unrest there. Last year, they were in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany. Josef was an hugely influential German-born painter and theorist who eventually taught at Yale. Anni, also German-born, was equally influential as a textile designer and weaver who made fabric an art form. Last year, the Tate Modern in London gave her a major retrospective. Summing up the transformation she fostered, Albers once said, When its on paper its art ... Galleries and museums didnt show textiles, that was always considered craft and not art. That certainly is no longer the case. The 100 or so artists listed on the browngrotta website are identified primarily by the museums which have them in their collections. Only three reside in Connecticut. One is the Swedish-born tapestry artist Helena Hernmarck, who moved to Ridgefield decades ago and whose largest works sell for hundreds of thousands. Another is Norma Minkowitz of Westport, who is known for her crocheted sculptures. The third and youngest is Kari Lonning of Ridgefield, whose trademark is double-walled baskets woven from dyed rattan. As a gallery, browngrotta operates mostly long distance. Private buyers or interior designers can view their artists work on line. If someone wants a piece for a specific room, photographs may be exchanged to give an approximation of how it might look. A sample price list from this January acts as a gallery guide, sorting pieces by the room. Among those in the older kitchen are the New Nebula by the Venezuelan artists for $24,000, Karyl Sissons drinking straws for $15,000 and Annette Bellamys fish skin Food Chain for $1,400. The single most expensive piece, listed at $48,000, is in the living loom. By the English artist Sue Lawty, it is a 10-foot long tapestry somehow woven from tiny river stones. Nearby is a gilded orb by Minkowitz, listed at $20,000. Tom Grotta and Rhonda Brown have been married 35 years, about as long as their business has existed. He graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology, with a degree in photography. It remains his personally favorite medium. He takes all the gallery photographs and produces its numerous catalogs. Really what I like to do is make books, he says. Rhonda worked for Womens World Magazine, then got a law degree from Yale. She still works as a lawyer for MacMillan publishing, while handling editorial duties for the gallery. They say their tastes are complementary rather than shared. Im very rigid in what I like, Grotta says. But theres not a thing in here both of us dont want to have. The combination of the two is us is what makes this work. One day during a photo shoot at their house in Maplewood, N.J., a curator observed the collection lacked examples of textile art. From there one thing led to another. Grottas mother would commission a piece from Mariette Rousseau-Vermette, a leading Canadian tapestry artist (she made the curtain for the Eisenhower Theater at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts). And Grotta would be dispatched to Canada to photograph a project for her husband, the painter and ceramicist, Claude Vermette. Instead of paying me in money, they gave me art. So I brought it home and people wanted to buy it and thats what started this whole thing. To say there was no plan is really an understatement, Grotta says. We were lucky to have Mariette to start with because she was an important name and she introduced us to other important names. Rhonda Brown says that exhibit was roughly equivalent to the 1913 Armory show, changing the conception of what textile arts could be just as the Armory show redefined modern art. The couple first moved to Wilton in 1985, when Brown started law school. They have been in their barn/house/gallery since 1999. The reason it has no sign is that it is open to the walk-in public only during its annual Art in the Barn exhibit. This years installment runs from Saturday, April 27 to Sunday, May 5. The opening day hours are 1 to 6 p.m. On the remaining days the hours at 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Culture writer Joel Lang is a frequent contributor to Sunday Arts & Style. In the mid-1970s, longtime Greenwich resident Mort Walker creator of comic strips Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois established the first home dedicated to the collection, preservation and exhibition of cartoon art. I remember when we first opened, someone came by asking what we were doing, says Brian Walker, son of Mort Walker, who died last year at 94. I told him it was a cartoon museum and he said, Whod want to see that? Back then people just didnt get it. Times have changed, says Walker who can almost guarantee whenever he does a cartoon exhibit, its a hit. But it took several decades for this realization. The collection had had a peripatetic history, when the Museum of Cartoon Art moved from the former Mead Mansion in Greenwich to the Wards Castle in Port Chester/Rye Brook, New York in 1977, and then to Boca Raton, Fla., in the 90s, which promised a world-class museum for the collection But its journey didnt end there. When the Boca Raton center closed in the early 2000s, the collection of more than 80,000 pieces returned to Connecticut and remained in storage in Stamford as it went looking for a new home once again. There was a proposal to feature the collection at the Empire State Building, but fundraising efforts for that project came up short. The Yale University Art Gallery was also interested in the collection, but with limited exhibition space, Mort Walker nixed that proposal, feeling the collection needed a home where it could be properly curated and displayed. It finally moved in 2008 to Ohio State University and its new multi-million dollar center the Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum which opened in 2013 and is open to the public. Now the best works from that collection are in Greenwich, where it all began. Masterpieces from the Museum of Cartoon Art continues through April 20. Walker is guest curator for the show. Connecticut was home to an amazing amount of cartoonists, says Walker, who grew up in Greenwich. He also mounts cartoon art exhibits, authors books on cartoon art and is a cartoonist, since the 80s working on the strips his father began in the 1950s. Back in 50s and 60s, cartoonists started gathering in Connecticut, where there was no state income tax and where New York City was just a train ride away, he says. The cartoonist population reached its peak in 60s and early 70s and among Western Connecticuts inhabitants were Bridgeports Walt Kelly (Pogo), New Havens Al Capp (Lil Abner), Stamfords Ernie Bushmiller (Nancy), Cos Cobs John Cullen Murphy ((Prince Valient), Westports Bud Sagendorf (Popeye), Leonard Starr (Little Orphan Annie), Dick Wingert (Hubert), Stan Drake (The Heart of Juliet Jones, Blondie), Jack Tippit (Amy), John Prentice (Rip Kirby), Mel Casson (Mixed Singles/Boomer) and Wiltons Dick Hodgins (Henry), Dik Browne (Hi and Lois, with Walker, (Hagar the Horrible) and New Yorker cartoonist Whitney Darrow Jr. But its a different comic strip world today, says Walker. Newspapers are not exactly a growth industry, he says, adding that he feels local newspapers will survive. As long as there are newspapers theyll have comics. But young cartoonists are looking beyond the funny pages. Jeff Kinney wanted to write comic strips, but instead found his fortune in drawings and stories which evolved into Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Then, he says, there are serious graphic novels like Alison Bechdels Fun Home and Art Spiegelmans Maus. Though some artists like Bloom Countys Berkeley Breathed who are turning to self-publishing (and merchandizing) on the internet. But its still a tough thing for most artists. Even the comic syndicates are turning to online opportunities and social media, but theyre still trying to find out how to make a profit out of it. He notes that most comic strips and cartoons have been created men, an historically true fact and awkwardly unavoidable. We got very criticized for not having any women in the Masters of American Comics exhibit that toured the country in the mid 2000s. But things are changing, especially in the field of graphic novels and alternative comics with Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel and Roz Chast. Walker says he is most encouraged when he comes across a kid at a Barnes & Nobles, sitting on the floor, his legs crossed, engrossed in a Calvin & Hobbs collection. It keeps getting re-discovered by new generations. And of course the older fans of comic strips characters they grew up with. People care about characters like Dagwood, Charlie Brown, Hagar and Beetle Bailey. They relate to these characters and like to check in with them every day and see what theyre doing. Its like visiting old friends. Frank Rizzo has covered Connecticut arts for nearly 40 years. DANBURY Local volunteer firefighters were recognized, honored and awarded during the 2019 Danbury Volunteer Fire Department Ball this past weekend. The annual event, presented by the Danbury Volunteer Firemens Council, took place at the Amber Room Colonnade on Saturday. Lt. Sean Stockle and Lt. Dave Bishop from Phoenix Hose Company and Capt. Rick Dohoney from Mill Plain Independent Hose Company were named Volunteer Firefighters of the Year. Top Responder awards were given out to the following members of the citys 12 volunteer fire companies: Capt. Jim Gay and Lt. Charlie Coakley Padanaram Hose Company No. 3 Lt. Joann Hornik Independent Hose Company No. 4. Capt. Mark Chory Wooster Hose Company No. 5. Capt. Rich Kaback Citizens Hose Company No. 6. Capt. Paul Salvatore Water Witch Hose Company No. 7. Lt. Sean Stoeckle Phoenix Hose Company No. 8. Capt. Edgar Martinez Beckerle Fire Hose Company No. 9. Firefighter Danny Beeman Germantown Volunteer Fire Company No. 10. Chief Brian Hatch Beaver Brook Volunteer Fire Company No. 11. Assistant Chief Eric Svege Mill Plain Independent Hose Company No. 12. Chief Jayson Sherwood Miry Brook Volunteer Fire Company No. 13. Chief Carmine Iapaluccio King Street Volunteer Fire Company No. 14. FP-23 Bob Brought Jr. Danbury Fire Police. The following firefighters were recognized for their years of service: 10 years of service: Bob Gilchrist, Ron Inconstanti and John Snow from Mill Plain Independent Hose Company. 30 years of service: William S. Coffey from Padanaram Hose Company. 40 Years of service: Joseph Doutney from Beckerle Fire Hose Company. 50 years of service: Charlie Chuck Brodie from Phoenix Hose Company, Karl Olson from Beaver Brook Volunteer Fire Company and Paul McAllister from King Street Volunteer Fire Company. 60 years of service: Dave Ryan and John Heering from Phoenix Hose Company. 65 years of service: John Marcy from Mill Plain Independent Hose Company. kendra.baker@hearst.com NEWTOWN The conspiracy extremist accused of crossing the line by defaming grieving Sandy Hook families will find out Friday whether he has crossed the line with a judge. Alex Jones, the frontman of the Texas-based internet show InfoWars, faces sanctions in state Superior Court in Waterbury for delays in turning over his business documents to Sandy Hook families suing him for defamation. Judge Barbara Bellis already warned Jones earlier this month that if he didnt honor a March 20 deadline to turn over marketing and business records to the Sandy Hook families, the judge could refuse to consider a motion by Jones to throw out the defamation suit. Jones missed the March 20 deadline. Now the families are urging the judge to deny Jones motion to dismiss. At this point the court must conclude that the Jones defendants have willfully disobeyed the courts discovery orders, write attorneys representing an FBI agent and seven families who lost loved ones in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. They have offered shifting rationales for their delay in production, misrepresented the status of compliance and refused to comply even after this court warned that non-compliance could result in sanctions. Jones attorney, New Haven-based Norman Pattis, did not return messages at his office Thursday seeking a comment. Pattis filed a response with the judge Thursday that argued for more time, saying an employee of Jones has spent many days searching through a database of 9.3 million emails to locate items responsive to the discovery requests. Pattis also argued against the most severe sanction the judge denying Jones request to dismiss the suit. The claims raised by the (families) represent a clear and present danger to the nations long history of tolerance and respect for diverse voices, Pattis wrote. The (families) seek to trample the First Amendments guarantee of freedom of expression, to hold it, in effect, to the standards demanded by sympathetic censors. The defamation case and a similar case brought against Jones in Texas by parents of two other victims of the Sandy Hook shooting is shaping the national debate between free speech advocates who say extremist expression is protected under the First Amendment, and civil justice advocates who say there is a price to pay for recklessly abusing the truth. The families argue that Jones business has profited by calling the worst crime in modern Connecticut history staged, synthetic, manufactured, a giant hoax and completely fake with actors, with inside job written all over it. Jones has argued in court papers that he no longer believes the shooting of 26 first-graders and educators at Sandy Hook School was a hoax and that he has a right to be wrong. Jones has also asked the judge to rule quickly to dismiss the families claim under a statute that tries to weed out frivolous defamation lawsuits. Leslie Levin, a law professor at UConn, says the statute Jones is invoking is designed to stop lawsuits that are most often brought by corporations against everyday people, to silence their criticism. [The] statutes were meant to protect individuals from this type of abusive litigation, Levin said. Ironically, in the Jones case, it is media figures and corporations that are trying to use (it) against individuals. The judge could refuse to entertain Jones motion for a quick ruling as a result of his delays. A legal observer said it wouldnt be a surprise to see the judge do so. She certainly has the power to do it, said David Schulz, a senior research scholar at Yale Law Schools Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. Pattis argued that Jones is shielded by journalistic privilege. (F)ree speech is always tested in the crucible of unpopular, even sometimes irresponsible speech, Pattis wrote to the judge on Thursday. These values ought not to be sacrificed for the sake of the tender sensibilities of the politically correct. rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342 Despite a light rain, people were strolling along the boardwalk at Silver Sands State Park two days after fire destroyed a large part of an ongoing $9.1 million state park improvement project. A temporary fence blocked access to three burned buildings that sit atop a raised boardwalk parallel to the beach, and keep out signs had been posted around the burned structures. The cause of the March 19 fire at the controversial public access improvement site remains under investigation. And while the entry gate was open, a posting on the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection website states the park is closed. Officials said late Thursday the park will officially reopen Friday. Parts of the park, near the burned wreckage, will remain closed and off limits. At this time of year the boardwalk is very well used, said Milford Mayor Ben Blake. For 12 months of the year, you have a tremendous amount of people walking down there. Its a public asset that everyone uses and enjoys. Tuesdays fire destroyed two of three buildings being built on an elevated boardwalk. One of the buildings housed a concession stand and dining area, and the other public restrooms. The third building that was largely damaged was for offices. On Thursday, officials were still trying to determine which parts of the construction were salvageable and which, if any, would be demolished. Milford Fire Battalion Chief Anthony Fabrizi said Wednesday that a ramp leading to the three buildings and pilings appeared to be the only things that could be saved from the wreck. Moving forward with the project depends on the police and fire investigation. We still need to know the nature of the event, said Jeff Beckham, a spokesman for the states Department of Administrative Services which was overseeing the construction project. Beckham said the general contractor, Scopes Construction of New Britain, was insured, but whether the contractor had enough insurance and the extent of coverage depends on the cause of the fire. Trooper Josue Dorelus, a spokesman with the Connecticut State Police, said it could be some time before investigators announce the cause and origin of the fire. Others have said that information may be released soon. Capt. Keith Williams of DEEPs Conservation Police said Wednesday that investigators are not ruling out arson but several sources at the scene Wednesday said there did not seem to be indications the fire was intentionally set. Sources, including State Rep. Kim Rose (D-Milford), said she was told that painting had been done in one of the buildings the day of the fire, and that some kind of heater may have been in use. Jim Quish, a member of Milfords Planning and Zoning Board, was at the scene Wednesday. He often walks in the park. He said when he walked along the boardwalk Tuesday, he saw a lot of contractors on the site. There were at least half a dozen different contractors, Quish said. When firefighters arrived on the scene Tuesday night at about 10:30 p.m., they found two of the structures fully engulfed and the third building about half in flames. The fire was brought under control in about two hours, but may have been burning for some time before firefighters were notified and arrived on the scene, Fabrizi said the morning after the fire. Williams said, Its devastating for the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to put this kind of effort into a project like this and see it go up in flames in a short amount of time, especially when it was projected to be open for Memorial Day weekend for the public to utilize. So its definitely a setback for us, for the agency. Space News space history and artifacts articles Messages space history discussion forums Sightings worldwide astronaut appearances Resources selected space history documents advertisements US Postal Service reveals stamps for moon landing 50th anniversary March 21, 2019 A new pair of United States postage stamps will mark the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. The United States Postal Service (USPS) on Wednesday (March 20) debuted the art for its two new stamps commemorating the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission flown by astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins half a century ago. "In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing on July 20, 1969, the U.S. Postal Service is pleased to reveal two stamp designs commemorating that historic milestone," the postal service described in a statement. The release date and the details for the Forever-denomination stamps' First Day of Issue ceremony are still to be announced. One of the two new stamps features an iconic Apollo 11 photo of Aldrin standing on the surface of the moon. Armstrong, as the photographer, can be seen in the reflection of Aldrin's helmet visor. The other stamp in the pair uses an image of the moon captured by amateur astronomer Gregory Revera of Huntsville, Alabama. Tranquility Base, the landing site of the Apollo 11 lunar module "Eagle" in the Sea of Tranquility, is denoted on the stamp by a bold yellow dot. Both stamps include the inscription "1969 First Moon Landing." An image of the lunar module will be included on the selvage, or border, of the pair. USPS art director Antonio Alcala designed the stamp art. The postal service (and its predecessor, the U.S. Post Office Department) has a history of honoring the first moon landing dating back 50 years. The first U.S. issue celebrating the Apollo 11 mission, a 10-cent "First Man on the Moon" airmail stamp designed by artist Paul Calle, was released on Sept. 9, 1969, less than two months after the triumphant return of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to Earth. The master die for the stamp was flown to the moon and back on board the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Two decades later, the USPS commemorated the 20th anniversary of the first moon landing with a $2.40 stamp depicting Armstrong and Aldrin planting the U.S. flag. Issued on July 20, 1989, the stamp was designed by Chris Calle, Paul Calle's son. Paul and Chris Calle were then commissioned to jointly create a pair of postage stamps for the 25th anniversary. The 29-cent and $9.95 commemoratives, each showing astronauts saluting the American flag, were released on July 20, 1994. Most recently, the USPS recognized the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission with a stamp issued as part of its "Celebrate The Century" program. The 33-cent stamp, titled "Man Walks On The Moon," featured an image of an astronaut's boot print in the lunar soil. It was released with other stamps celebrating the 1960s on Sept. 17, 1999. The "1969 First Moon Landing" 2019 stamps share a common design theme with the Apollo 11 50th anniversary commemorative coins introduced by the U.S Mint in January. The same photo of Aldrin on the moon used for one of the new stamps was reproduced as the tails-side artwork for the gold, silver and clad metal curved coins. The U.S. Postal Service will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing with a new pair of postage stamps. (USPS) 2021 collectSPACE.com All rights reserved. Facing a criminal investigation about political interference, the Trump administrations Department of Interior abruptly reversed course Thursday and announced it has accepted a gambling amendment necessary for the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes to jointly construct a casino in East Windsor to compete with MGM Springfield. The terse notice posted on Interiors website at 11:15 a.m. gives no rationale for the reversal, saying only that after further consultations with the Tribe, the assistant secretary for Indian Affairs signed off on the document on March 15 and that it would become effective after its publication Monday in the Federal Register. The notice removes the a key obstacle to the construction of Connecticuts first casino off tribal lands, but it invites the revival of a legal challenge by MGM Resorts International of the states authorization of the East Windsor casino without competition. MGMs original lawsuit was dismissed as premature. The states authorization of the East Windsor casino in 2017 was contingent on Interiors accepting amendments to the tribes agreements with Connecticut, a guarantee that the project would not violate an existing deal under which the tribes pay 25 percent of the slots revenue from their casinos, Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun. But the Interior Department, after lobbying by MGM of then-Secretary Ryan Zinke and the Trump White House, declined to act on the amendments. That prompted a lawsuit by the tribes and state and a congressional request for the inspector general to investigate the departments role in blocking the casino in East Windsor. The Interior Department partially relented in May, accepting an amendment to Mohegans gaming compact with Connecticut. But Zinke refused to act on the Mashantucket Pequot amendment, saying it was unnecessary due to technicalities relating to how Connecticuts original compact with them was struck. But, as officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Interior well knew that would block construction, as it was necessary under the 2017 state law. The previous suit by MGM, which was filed before passage of the authorization bill in 2017, claimed that the state could not exclusively deal with the tribes on a commercial casino license without violating the Equal Protection and Commerce clauses of the U.S. Constitution. It was dismissed as premature. MGM has since tried to bolster its legal standing to sue, contracting with a Bridgeport land owner for a casino site, should the General Assembly open the state to a competitive process for casino expansion. Even as cannabis legalization has spread throughout the country, the unexplored territory has been passing laws that allow people to smoke outside their homes. As things currently stand in states where marijuana is legal, you can only smoke in your home, whether thats stated explicitly or not. Using marijuana is not allowed in buildings, public spaces, cars (when youre driving, obviously, but even when youre not) or in hotels. Alaska recently took a step to change that. The state is the first to pass a law allowing so-called social consumption of marijuana at specially licensed retail locations. Essentially, it will allow people to both buy and smoke cannabis at cannabis cafes associated with dispensaries that get the proper licensing from the state. Related: Israeli Study Finds Marijuana Has Promise for Treating Autism Symptoms First statewide rules. But cant people already consume marijuana at licensed establishments in Denver and California? Yes, to an extent. The Coffee Joint in Colorado became famous as the first legal and licensed cannabis consumption lounge, although as they say on their site its vaporization and edibles only - no open flame. Colorado could have become the first state with laws in place governing cannabis cafes and social consumption, but then-Gov. John Hickenlooper vetoed it last year. In California, the cities of West Hollywood, San Francisco and Oakland also allow businesses to get a license that allows consumption on site, but Alaska is the first to pass a social consumption law at the state level. Its a major step toward allowing to consume marijuana in the same way people drink alcohol in bars. Related: Adult-Use Marijuana Is a 'No-Brainer' for Two Florida Lawmakers but Just a 'No' for Most What the law does. Alaska Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer, a Republican, signed the bill into law earlier this month allowing businesses that sell marijuana to also provide a space for people to smoke it. The rules require that the dispensary create a use area that is clearly separated from the retail shop by a wall, a secure door or placed outdoors. Also, the only shops that will be licensed to allow onsite use will have to be a freestanding building (that eliminates smoke drifting into other businesses). Becoming a cannabis cafe will require a second license. Applications are expected to start soon, with the new lounges possibly open by the summer of 2019. Alaska officials, knowing they are blazing a new trail for state officials, have taken their time creating these rules. Cary Carrigan, executive director of the Alaska Marijuana Industry Association, told the Associated Press that everyone involved is aware this is not happening anywhere else in the U.S. yet. As we start to develop this, people are really looking at us, so I know that everybody wants to get it right. I dont want to have to get this pulled back and revisited. In a blog item on the decision in Alaska, NORML Executive Director Erik Altieri said he expects more states to follow suit in the not too distant future. To stay up to date on the latest marijuana-related news make sure to like dispensaries.com on Facebook Related: Alaska Becomes First State to Legalize 'Cannabis Cafes' Florida Finally Allows Actual Marijuana Flower in Medical Marijuana Dispensaries This Week in Weed: How To Get High The "Proper" Way Copyright 2019 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Texas couple Vincent and Shelly Browning decided to take a 2,000-pound risk and test a Petco policy welcoming all pets. The Brownings brought their 14-year-old African Watusi named Oliver to the Atascocita store. They were impressed with how the employees and the customers were open welcoming a cattle Olivers size he weighs nearly a ton. People were able to pet him and take pictures with him. Vincent, who is a 1992 Bud Light World Champion Bull Rider, has raised Oliver since the bull was 6 months old. Oliver has traveled the southern states meeting new people and partaking in events, the Brownings said. Vincent and Shelly picked Petco because they wanted to take Oliver somewhere where he has never been before. We went in (Petco) and (an associate) came out to see (Oliver) in the trailer, and she said, Bring him in, and I said, Are you serious?' She talked to her manager and her manager said, Yeah bring him in as long as you clean up the mess. We brought him in there and he did great, Shelly said. We didnt take him down the aisles or anything. We just sat him up front and let everybody pet him. Petco has a policy that states all pets are welcome as long as they are on a leash, regardless of breed or pet type. The pet must be a properly leashed and domesticated animal. The Atascocita Petco has seen a variety of domesticated pets walk through its doors over the years, from pigs to young calves. Petco Associate Chrystal Armour said Vincent and Shelly are regulars, but they have never met Oliver. At a recent visit, they mentioned Oliver and that theyd like to bring him in one day. I said wed love to meet him and that he could come in any time, as long as hes domesticated and on a leash. Shortly after, they paid us an incredible visit that we wont forget any time soon. Getting to meet such a beautiful and sweet animal was an amazing experience for all of us. We love all of our guests animals and the wonderful bond they share, Armour said. Oliver is not the only Watusi Vincent and Shelly own. In fact they have 11 at their ranch in Liberty. The Brownings said they plan on bringing Oliver to Petco again in the near future. I didnt think a major chain like that would be open to us bringing him in, but we were just kind of testing the waters on that 'all leashed pets welcome' policy they have, Shelly said. It was exciting and just something we really wanted to do anyways. So it just really kind of fit that we got there (and) came at the right time when the right people were there. They welcomed him with open arms, everyone was so excited. Jonathan Williamson, Petcos vice president of animal care, education and merchandising, said he was glad the Atascocita associates were able to enjoy this experience with Oliver. At Petco, everything is guided by our vision for healthier pets, happier people and a better world, Williamson said. Were proud to celebrate the human-animal bond by welcoming all domesticated companion animals to our stores. Were so glad that our guests and store partners got to experience this fun and happy moment with Oliver, the African Watusi, because thats what Petco is all about. I just finished choosing the editorial cartoon for Friday (one of the fun parts of my job) its on the Opinion page a little farther back in the paper. And, yes, its about President Trump again. This week three of the other five cartoons have been about Trump his budget, his faux national emergency, his recent tweet barrage from the White House (50 on the weekend! Isnt there anything else the President of the United States has to do?) The other two cartoons this week poked fun at Democrats penchant for investigations and Beto ORourkes animated arm gestures. Usually, considering balance, I would look for a non-Trump toon, but his actions are so outrageous that they beg for parody, and commentary. On Wednesday when he was talking to a military audience at a tank plant in Lima, Ohio, Trump went off script and after Sen. John McCain whos been dead since August. Trump charged that the former prisoner of war didnt get the job done for our great vets and whined that he gave McCain the funeral he wanted, and I didnt get thank you. The speech that was supposed to be about manufacturing jobs. The sheer pointless obsession and appalling bad taste cannot be ignored. The political cartoon choice for Friday came down to two versions of the Trump vs McCain topic. (You can see the choices online with this column. Which would you have selected?) While a decent amount of thought always goes into selecting the cartoon for the next day Is it timely? Is the message clear? Is it sharply humorous? I have to admit Ive been more deliberative lately since hearing from readers. You may recall that my column last week was about reaction to the cartoon I had chosen the day after the Academy Awards that poked fun at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It linked the Oscars to the Green New Deal she co-sponsored. To recap briefly: Six women from Greenwich were so outraged by the political cartoon that they wrote a Letter to the Editor, which we published, outlining why they found it racist and sexist. Their perspective made me think; I emailed each of them and met with one, Laura Kostin. In the column, I explained why I didnt think the cartoon was blatantly racist, but agreed it was sexist. The response from readers was prodigious. Truly, in the many years Ive been writing columns this one drew the most emails, close to 20. The intersection of racism, sexism, political correctness and editorial cartoons touched a nerve. The debate, more disagreeing than agreeing, is too rich to leave in my email basket. The dialogue should be shared, and continued. Here are snippets from some of them. How we see things I read with some amusement and some concern, that you felt it necessary to be re-educated by the tribe from Greenwich. If I demanded that you meet with me every time I felt angry, hurt, or just plain ticked off while reading the politics of The Stamford Advocate, youd be having a meal with me 7 days a week, 365 days a year. ...By appeasing the tribe, instead of telling them the virtues of a free press, you now have created a bigger mess, Pamela McFeely wrote. (Laura had called her group a tribe; they didnt demand to meet, it was my idea.) Did you ask Ms. Kostin if she and her friends would have written the letter if the subject of the cartoon had been Kellyanne Conway or Betsy DeVos or Ivanka Trump or even Melania Trump? Ben Proto asked. Good question; no, I didnt ask that. Am I to understand that some DEMOCRAT women are upset because a political cartoonist took a logical shot at a political figure, who has labeled herself the boss (a reference to her self-assessment that she is the most important politician on the scene at the moment)...Like President Trump, she has made many illogical statements and she is certainly one of the most quoted/viewed politicians on the current scene. She is fair game, wrote Paul Stuken of the Stamford area. When I saw the cartoon, I understood that it was about her. I laughed. And I sighed at the same time. I didnt think that the cartoon was demeaning to me or to any other woman or to all women. Or to all people of color... To give cover by virtue of group status is whats truly demeaning, particularly to those who have fought so hard to be seen as individuals rather than poor, fragile members of a group that needs to be protected. Ive always thought the goal of feminism was to stand on our own, strong and independent, to be seen and appreciated for our own accomplishments. We cant have it both ways, wrote Janice Moy of the Danbury area. All the cartoon was doing was poking fun at her youthful naivete. And, because she was the co-author of The Green Deal, it was also suggesting that she was positively biased toward anything green. To call this racist would render virtually all satire, political cartooning, and most species of humor, racist and wrong, wrote Andy Greenfield of the Norwalk area. Are we as a society no longer going to be able to poke fun at someone because she is female? A person of color? Inexperienced at politics (as opposed to ignorant or stupid)? I fear that this would signal the end of comedy. Unless of course we are making fun of white males. Certainly your papers have published many cartoons depicting President Trump unfavorably. Why is doing that to AOC any different? I hope for comedys sake you will continue to choose a balance of all cartoons that are witty and relevant to the news of the day. AOC will be a fountain of fodder for comedians and cartoonists for years to come. Just like Trump, wrote Keith Coley of Trumbull. Like Trump, shes a cartoonists dream and brings it on herself. You need not make fun of her, just merely quote her. I read them for what they are. If one doesnt have a sense of humor change the page...Sorry Jacqueline, but every cartoon can be seen as demeaning to who ever is offended by it. Thats just the way it is. It served one of its purposes. Stay the course, wrote John OLeary of Stratford. If this represents an example of an editorial cartoon that is too potentially offensive to be published, then its probably time for all editorial cartoonists to put away their pens and start looking for other work. The field would be, for all practical purposes, dead, wrote Mike Morris, a New Haven area reader who describes himself as a lifelong political liberal, and of mixed-race heritage. To Mike and the others, I assure you we will continue to bring you editorial cartoons with wit and zing. They are a form of commentary that needs free rein, particularly when poking government and elected officials. Sometimes, they will offend. However, we will try to not cross the line of perpetuating stereotypes of gender, race or religion. Id like for the lingering thought on the cartoon debate to be from Harriet Liss of Stratford. The paragraph that begins: We each come from the perspectives of our upbringing is one I plan to save and share (especially with my grandchildren). Until now the best way I have explained our differences when viewing the same event or material has been to talk about the color aquamarine: Some will adamantly describe it as blue, others will insist it is green and, the sad part is, each cannot understand how the other could NOT see it the same way. This has never been more true than it is today. Jacqueline Smiths columns appear Fridays in Hearst Connecticut Media newspapers. She is the editorial page editor of The News-Times in Danbury and The Norwalk Hour. Email her at jsmith@hearstmediact.com A man who was accused of using a bowling ball to attack an employee was sentenced Tuesday to a year in jail. The victim, a bowling alley employee, had a concussion and needed seven staples in his head after the Oct. 10 incident at a bowling alley, according to WJBK-TV and The Detroit News. 5,900 hectares of claim applications have been lodged for the Sacanche area, located 44 kilometres south of the central and initial Tabalosos claim application; Hannan's mineral claim applications now cover 76 kilometres of combined strike (35,400 hectares) of the prospective host horizon within a 110 kilometre long basin (Figure 1); Sacanche delivers an additional 25 kilometres of host horizon strike under application, and is interpreted to be an extension of the mineralized position discovered in Hannan's Tabalosos claim applications where initial sampling by Hannan outlined four areas of high-grade copper and silver over 15 kilometres of strike within at least two structural corridors. Nineteen grab samples from mineralized float in river beds (>0.1% copper) ranged in grade from 0.1% to 8.3% copper and 0.2 g/t silver to 109 g/t silver with an average grade of 2.8% copper and 27.2 g/t silver. Historic prospecting at Sacanche identified both sediment-hosted copper and lead-zinc showings with multiple gossans up 80 metres in thickness with anomalous zinc, lead and copper and grab samples from creeks assaying significant copper and silver within the 25 kilometre strike of the claim application area (Figure 2). Michael Hudson, Chairman and CEO states, "San Martin demonstrates the initial makings of a high-grade sediment-hosted copper and silver discovery in north-central Peru. Hannan's first mover position has allowed claiming of a district-scale sedimentary copper-silver target over 76 strike kilometres in length and we look forward to a multi-team exploration program during 2019 to target areas of grade and thickness." Hannan's claim applications extend over a combined 76 kilometres of strike within a 110 kilometre basin scale trend. Early stage historic exploration at Sacanche identified both sediment-hosted copper and lead-zinc showings. Multiple gossans up 80 metres in thickness with anomalous zinc, lead and copper have been recorded over multiple kilometre strike (Figure 2). The thick lead-zinc gossans are interpreted to be developed at different stratigraphic positions than the interpreted location of the stratabound sedimentary-hosted copper-silver mineralized target zone. Scant historic sampling records grab samples from river float assaying significant copper and silver discovered intermittently along the 25 kilometre strike of the Sancache claim application area (Figure 2). Hannan interprets the separate copper and lead-zinc mineralized zones as products of an evolving basinal system, related to processes observed in other sedimentary-hosted copper districts where lead and zinc can be locally elevated. The Sacanche claims are an extension of the sediment hosted copper-silver mineralized position discovered in Gera and Tabalosos claim applications where initial sampling by Hannan outlined four areas of high-grade copper and silver over 15 kilometres of strike within at least two structural corridors within the Tabalosos claim application area. Nineteen grab samples from mineralized float in river beds (>0.1% copper) ranged in grade from 0.1% to 8.3% copper and 0.2 g/t silver to 109 g/t silver with an average grade of 2.8% copper and 27.2 g/t silver. Hannan has commenced the 2019 dry-season exploration program with field reconnaissance and plans to have a multi-team exploration program commence from mid to late April 2019. The areas under claim are sparsely populated. No indigenous land designation is recorded within Gera and Sacanche claim areas and only a small area (13%) of the Tabalosos application is defined as indigenous lands, which the Company views as a positive for future drill permitting. The Company has begun to identify and involve local stakeholder groups, and will continue to engage with communities and authorities during the 2019 field programs. The San Martin project lies in the Sub-Andean zone of Andean Cordillera. Since the 1970's the area has principally been explored for petroleum, delivering large seismic datasets similar to those being used by Hannan for targeting of zinc in Ireland. Seismically-defined basin structures and stratigraphy are now being interpreted in the context of sediment-hosted copper mineralization. The Sub-Andean zone is underlain by a series of retro-arc foreland basins that were inverted during the Mid-Eocene and the Miocene. The inversion exposed a rift sequence initiated in the late Permian, composed of red beds and thick basin-wide evaporites. These rocks are contemporary to the Pucara and Mitu Groups in western Peru. The geological history shows a strong similarity to sedimentary basins which host giant sediment hosted copper deposits with respect to the stratigraphy, basin architecture, presence of thick evaporites and long periods of quiescence. Copper and silver mineralization is hosted by the 150 Ma Saraquillo Formation, which was deposited in an intra-continental basin during the Jurassic-Early Cretaceous period. The Saraquillo Formation is 1.2-1.8 kilometres thick and extends for over 1,000 kilometres of strike. The Saraquillo Formation is spatially associated with salt domes which supports the seismic observations of widespread evaporitic strata, with several small artisanal salt and copper mines present in the area. Copper mineralization discovered to date is associated with the contact of fine-grained reduced carbonaceous sandstones with highly oxidized red beds of the Saraquillo Formation. Chalcocite is the dominant copper sulphide and it is always found together with carbonaceous material. Chalcocite occurs as fine disseminations, fracture filling and centimetre-sized massive aggregates. Secondary copper minerals are common on exposed surfaces. Albitization and silicification is associated with the mineralization, where the former dominates in more strongly mineralized samples. Management of Hannan have had significant prior experience in Peru, which is the world's second largest copper producer, with steady growth predicted over the coming years. The country's copper output is forecast to increase from 2.5 million tonnes ("Mt") in 2018 to 3.8Mt by 2027, averaging 4.7% annual growth. Sediment-hosted deposits are the world's second-most important source of copper accounting for approximately 20% of world production. About Hannan Metals Limited (TSX.V:HAN) (OTCPK: HANNF) Hannan Metals Limited is a base metal project generation company. It has 100% ownership of the County Clare Zn-Pb-Ag project in Ireland, which consists of 9 prospecting licenses for 35,444 hectares and has recently filed mineral claim applications for 35,400 hectares within the San Martin Province in Peru searching for copper and silver. Over the last decade, the team behind Hannan has forged a long and successful record of discovering, financing and advancing mineral projects in Europe and Peru. Mr. Michael Hudson FAusIMM, Hannan's Chairman and CEO, a Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical disclosure contained in this news release. On behalf of the Board, "Michael Hudson" Michael Hudson, Chairman & CEO Forward Looking Statements Certain information set forth in this news release contains "forward-looking statements", and "forward- looking information" under applicable securities laws. Except for statements of historical fact, certain information contained herein constitutes forward-looking statements, which include the Company's expectations regarding future performance based on current results, expected cash costs based on the Company's current internal expectations, estimates, projections, assumptions and beliefs, which may prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and undue reliance should not be placed on them. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the Company's actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projects of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statement. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: The Company's expectations regarding timing to complete field work and outcome of results, the granting of the claim applications in Peru, community relations, liabilities inherent in mine development and production, geological risks, the financial markets generally, and the ability of the Company to raise additional capital to fund future operations. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change except as required by applicable securities laws. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. SOURCE Hannan Metals Ltd. For further information: www.hannanmetals.com, 1305 - 1090 West Georgia St., Vancouver, BC, V6E 3V7, Mariana Bermudez, Corporate Secretary, +1 (604) 685 9316, [email protected] Boeing has delayed by at least three months its first uncrewed flight to the International Space Station under NASAs human spaceflight program and pushed its crewed flight until November. SpaceX has just successfully completed its first uncrewed test flight. If SpaceX completes its planned crewed mission in July, then SpaceX will be the only US option for manned missions for many months and possibly longer. Given the history of Boeing, it would not be surprising if it took them one or two years to get their uncrewed test and then their first crewed mission completed. NASA will not let them rusk because safety will be the top priority. SOURCE- Reuters Written By Brian Wang. Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology. Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels. A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements. HAMDEN Owners of The Rough Draft music venue and bar are looking for financial help to save their dream. High school teachers Chris Scionti and Karen Robinson, co-owners of the Hamden establishment, want to preserve the venue they have worked hard to keep alive, but after a deal to sell The Rough Draft and transfer ownership fell through, the venue is at risk of closing if they cant find an another investor or partner. I just want this place to succeed, however that happens, Robinson said. Theyve reached out to the community for interested partners, investors or buyers who would be willing to put some money into the venue so the shows might go on. Everybody who comes through loves it, Scionti said. The bands love it, the customers love it, but we need consistency and to invest in advertising and its tough not being able to put as much time into it. Scionti and Robinson opened The Rough Draft last June. When Steve Rodgers closed his venue trifecta The Space, The Outer Space and The Space Ballroom Scionti and Robinson opened their concert venue in the building that housed The Space, hoping to keep a bit of Rodgers legacy alive. When they opened, all but one of The Rough Drafts employees, including Robinson, worked at The Space, The Outer Space and The Ballroom. Scionti and Robinson even bought some of The Outer Spaces sound equipment, its sound booth and its tables, chairs and bar stools. They put their life savings into the venue along with blood sweat and tears, Scionti said. But even though the business has been doing well, he said they need more capital to keep it going. I believe in the business and I know if I had deep pockets wed be able to continue, he said. But time and money are obstacles and they need more time to build the business. Its been on an upward climb, but we need more of a cushion. Its been that way from the start, he said. Now were left with where we started, with this dream, this place and no money to push it forward, Robinson said. Were near the end. In the next week or two, Scionti said theyll have to make some tough decisions and be creative to find ways to continue. Since its opening, The Rough Draft has had somewhat of a rough ride at times. A flood in late September last year threatened to close The Rough Drafts doors, but with the help of the music community, the business weathered that storm and many area musicians came together to perform benefit shows. Robinson said at the time, the communitys support is what encouraged them to keep going. The venue does a lot to attract musicians and audiences to its stage, but the many concert venues in the New Haven area make the business competitive, Scionti said. We have a show that we think will do good but then a lot of other venues are having shows the same night and the audience gets split up, which is great for the music scene but hard on the venue owners, he said. But theres something those downtown venues dont have a parking lot. Robinson said this is really valuable for a venue in the area because its not an asset the downtown New Haven venues offer. If the only option Scionti and Robinson have is to sell their dream, Scionti said it would hopefully go to someone who loves the music scene and understands it. Preferably, it would be someone who keeps it somewhat with the vibe, but we dont have much say in that at this point, Robinson said. If somebody made us an offer, wed be at the point where we cant say no. She said theyre not looking to squander a potential investors money, but rather use it to build the business and create something sustainable. The person who comes in would have to have a desire and understand the potential thats not tapped into yet, Scionti said. Were doing pretty good considering we havent been spending money on advertising and if we had wed be doing much better. Scionti said theyve struggled with reaching a sustainable level for their business, but have always been on the cusp. Were almost there, he said. We probably, in retrospect, would have put this call out when we opened, and then wed be in a much better position. mdignan@hearstmediact.com HARTFORD Tweed New Haven Regional Airport backers got some important news Wednesday: a bill that would remove a restriction on the length of Tweeds main runway cleared the General Assemblys Transportation Committee. The bill still must be approved by both the House and the Senate. The committees approval was necessary before anything else could happen. State Rep. Roland Lemar, D-New Haven, the Transportation Committees co-chairman, stressed, however, that further compromise is necessary with the communities that border the airport New Havens Morris Cove neighborhood and several neighborhoods in East Haven. I have to be honest. This bill will not see the floor (for a vote) of the House or the Senate unless a more-robust community conversation occurs over the next few months, Lemar said. There are still numerous concerns felt by a number of neighbors, including elected representatives in both chambers. The two most powerful members of the state Senate Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, and Senate Minority Leader Leonard Fasano, R-North Haven both have said that the bill is unlikely to pass without a package of incentives or public improvements to address the concerns of airport neighbors in New Haven and East Haven. Airport supporters still took the committee approval as good news. Hundreds of area businesses and thousands of Connecticut residents stand to benefit from improvements at the Tweed New Haven Airport, said New Haven Mayor Toni Harp in a written statement Wednesday night. Im grateful for this endorsement of enhanced airport facilities by members of the Transportation Committee, Harp said. Earlier today, they voted out the legislation. Thats one hurdle, said Tweed interim Executive Director Matthew Hoey at Wednesdays afternoons monthly meeting of the Tweed New Haven Airport Authority. According to Hoey, who is Guilfords first selectman and a member of the authority, there wasnt much opposition, if any. Tweed Authority Chairman John Picard, speaking to the authority in New Haven, said, Were trying real hard to get the runway language changed. I think thats crucial to Tweeds success. Lemar, who co-chairs the Transportation Committee with state Sen. Carlo Leone, D-Stamford, said the vote was 18-3. The three no votes came from state Sen. John Kissel, R-Enfield, Sen. Tony Hwang, R-Fairfield, and state Rep. Jesse MacLachlan, R-Westbrook, he said. Lemar said the bill would remove the state law that limits the length of the Tweed runway. The settlement that led to the bill was negotiated in 2009 by then-mayors April Capone of East Haven and John DeStefano Jr. of New Haven. Whats happened in the past few years, however, is the FAA standards have changed and the number of planes that can utilize the current runway length has been limited, Lemar said. So youre seeing an absolute decrease in the number of flights and departures and arrivals that can take place on commercial jets. Theres no goal to extend the runway beyond the current footprint of the airport, Lemar said. The goal is simply to pave the runway safety area that exists on site thats currently unpaved with gravel. Hoey told the Transportation Committee March 4 that Tweed already has a commitment from Allegiant Air, which would begin service at Tweed were Tweed to lengthen its 5,600 main runway to at least 6,000 feet. Tweed is looking to add 600 feet, which would give it 6,200 feet, Hoey said at the time. Lemar said the additional runway length would allow current aircraft to operate at full capacity and allows additional commercial flights into and out of the location within the negotiated daily quota. Picard told the Transportation Committee March 4 that Tweed could reduce its city and state subsidies and save you money ... if you allow us to grow. Tweed officials also have had conversations with current tenant American Airlines, United, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit and Frontier about possible future service, Hoey said at the hearing. Tweed now is served by one airline, American Eagle, which flies regional jets between Tweed and two destinations: Philadelphia and Charlotte. The airport also is in federal court with the state to try to overturn the statute that limits the runways length, currently awaiting a decision. Tweed officials have said that more than 60 percent of the travelers within Tweeds primary market area use Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York rather than Tweed or Bradley International airports. mark.zaretsky@hearstmediact.com or kdixon@ctpost.com DURHAM A 17-year-old from Hartford was killed when the stolen car he was riding in crashed in Durham minutes after he was chased by Madison police, authorities said. Luis Martinez was thrown from the stolen Mercedes after it rolled over on Route 79 in Durham early Wednesday, state police said. The crash occurred at around 3:22 a.m., minutes after Madison officers pursued the vehicle, which had been stolen from an Island Avenue address in that town, state police said. The chase was called off in Madison, state police said. The car, a Mercedes Benz GL550 was headed north on Route 79, approaching the intersection of South End Avenue, when the driver lost control of the vehicle, state police said. The Mercedes left the southbound lane and drove onto 14 South End Avenue when it rolled over, ejecting Martinez, according to state police. Martinez sustained life-threatening injuries, state police said. He was taken to Middlesex Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The state police Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Squad was asked to take over the investigation at the request of the Middlesex State's Attorney, state police said. An autopsy will be conducted on Martinezs remains, state police said. Anyone who witnessed the crash or the moments prior is asked to contact Trooper First Class Albert Gorski at 203-630-5639 or albert.gorski@ct.gov. Reporter Ben Lambert contributed to this story. A court-ordered inspection of every inmate in the Oklahoma County Jail found that a 20-year-old woman had been wrongly incarcerated for two weeks on a warrant that had been dismissed months before, a lawyer said. Giselle Perez was jailed Feb. 26 after a traffic stop because of an outstanding arrest warrant on a 2015 juvenile theft charge that had actually been dropped in December. Perez said she never even went to court and that she lost her job while she was being held. Perez was released March 12 after the mistake was discovered. NEW HAVEN A lieutenant at the New Haven Correctional Center has been placed on administrative leave after an individual died Thursday following an incident in the shower area, according to the Department of Correction. The individual, referred to as an offender in a press release, refused to leave the shower area at approximately 6:45 a.m., causing staff members to respond, Public Information Officer Andrius Banevicius said. A New Haven man is among 29 people charged with federal narcotics offenses related to the distribution of heroin, cocaine and crack cocaine in and around Waterbury, according to federal authorities. The 29 people were charged as a DEA task force investigation dismantled a Waterbury drug ring, federal authorities said in a release. The release said that, as alleged in court documents and statements made in court, the arrests stem from a joint investigation headed by the DEA New Haven Task Force and the Waterbury and Naugatuck Police Departments. The investigation, which began last year and has included the use of court-authorized wiretaps, physical surveillance and controlled purchases of narcotics, revealed that Keith Jordan, also known as Knowledge, received large quantities of heroin and cocaine from various suppliers and sold the drugs to street-level distributors in and around Waterbury. On March 13, 2019, a grand jury in Hartford returned an indictment charging the 29 people, including Jermaine Foster, 48, of New Haven, with conspiracy to distribute, and to possess with intent to distribute, various quantities of heroin, cocaine and cocaine base, or crack cocaine: Keith Jordan, a.k.a. Knowledge, 50; Katina Reed, a.k.a. Tina, 46;, Domingo Alves, a.k.a. Mingo, 49; Carlos Morais, a.k.a. Los, 35, Jean Carlos Fabal-gonzalez, 24; Damon Davis, 24, (currently in state custody); David Flaherty, 48; Vina Frazier, 35; Bienvenido Gonzalez, a.k.a. Toto, 41; Jose Gonzalez, 30; Omar Hernandez, 39; Jordan Jamison, 23; Francisco Lopez, 32; Lliver Abreu-baez, a.k.a. Domi and Papi, 27; Junio Acevedo, 34; Michael Altieri, 28; Lance Baptiste, 40; Timothy Booker, a.k.a. Book, 60; all of Waterbury; and Sunji Cramer, 39, of Meriden; Larry Hall, a.k.a. Chuito and Bobo, 48, of Naugatuck; Rosemary Colon, 35, of Naugatuck; James Tyrone Hayes, a.k.a. Ty, 49, of Newburgh, N.Y.; and Nazariel Gonzalez, 39, of West Hartford Twenty-three defendants were arrested yesterday, and one was arrested this morning. One defendant has been in state custody. Four defendants are currently being sought, according to the release by John H. Durham, U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, Brian D. Boyle, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration for New England, Waterbury Police Chief Fernando C. Spagnolo and Naugatuck Police Chief Steven Hunt . In association with the arrests, law enforcement officers seized approximately 3,000 bags of heroin, 400 grams of cocaine, 350 grams of fentanyl/heroin mixed, 400 grams of heroin, 10 grams of crack, 20 pounds of marijuana, fentanyl patches, a one-kilogram press, four handguns, approximately $120,000 in cash and four vehicles. The indictment alleges that, between approximately February 2018 and March 2019, each defendant conspired to distribute various narcotics, the relase said. If convicted of this charge, based on the type and quantity of narcotics involved, Keith Jordan, Reed, Alves, Cramer, Hall, Bienvenido Gonzalez and Abreu-Baez face a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment of 10 years and a maximum term of imprisonment of life; Morais, Fabal-Gonzalez, Acevedo, Altieri, Booker, Campbell, Colon, Davis, Flaherty, Frazier, Foster, Nazariel Gonzalez, Hayes, Hernandez, and Lopez face a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment of five years and a maximum term of imprisonment of 40 years, and Baptiste, Jose Gonzalez, and Jamison face a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years. The indictment also charges Keith Jordan, Alves, Hayes and Jamison with one or more counts of possession and/or distribution of heroin. It is alleged that members of this drug trafficking organization distributed significant quantities of heroin and cocaine in and around Waterbury, said Durham, in the release. The opioid epidemic, which in large part has led to the deaths of far too many people from heroin and fentanyl overdoes, continues to destroy lives across our state. The United States Attorneyas Office is committed to doggedly prosecuting those who choose to profit from this deadly trade. We thank the DEA Task Force members, including the Waterbury and Naugatuck Police Departments, for their outstanding work in this investigation. Their efforts literally have saved lives. The 23 individuals who were arrested Wednesday appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judges Robert M. Spector and Sarah A. L. Merriam in New Haven. Nineteen of the 23 are currently detained, the release said. The investigation is being conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration New Haven Task Force, Waterbury Police Department and Naugatuck Police Department, with the critical assistance of the U.S. Secret Service, New York Field Office. The DEA New Haven Task Force includes participants from the U.S. Marshals Service, Internal Revenue Service a Criminal Investigation Division, and the New Haven, Hamden, West Haven, North Haven, Branford, Ansonia, Meriden, Derby, Middletown, Naugatuck and Waterbury Police Departments. DERBY Just say no to tolls. Thats what more than 120 people who packed City Hall on Wednesday for a public forum on proposed tolls in Connecticut told the Valleys Republican delegation of lawmakers, as well as GOP ranking members of the state Transportation Committee. Committee members Republican state Sen. Henri Martin and state Rep, Laura Devlin, R-Fairfield, along with state Rep. and Republican House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby, state Rep. Nicole Klarides-Ditria, R-Seymour and Republican, state Rep. Jason Perillo, R-Shelton and state Sen. George Logan, held the forum to better inform the public of whats being proposed, in terms of electronic tolling. The GOP panel was not shy about letting people know theyre opposed to Democratic Gov. Ned Lamonts proposal to install an electronic tolling system on the states major highways Interstates 84, 91 and 95 and Route 15 to bring in much-needed revenue to fix the states roads. The proposal calls for installing about 53 overhead tolling gantries on some 330 miles of roadway for cars and trucks, generating some $800 million annually, according to Lamont. The majority Democrats on the Transportation Committee on Wednesday hammered through three toll-related bills. Martin and Klarides said raising the necessary revenue can be achieved without tolling, but rather using general obligation bonding (staying within the bonding cap), and by prioritizing progress in the state by helping small towns with economic assistance, cleaning up the water and education, without slapping residents with yet another tax. And tax-strapped residents were quick to speak their minds. As a senior on a fixed income, I cannot afford daily tolls to Bridgeport and back ... lets get this stupidity knocked out, said Charlie Aspinwall, of Derby. Derby resident Larry Bussell said its likely tolls will go through, even though hed hate to see that, but he thinks having Connecticut residents buy an EZ Pass for a fixed fee like, $50, and not have to endure further costs, could work. He also is opposed to bonding, fearing his children will get stuck footing that bill years down the road. Dave Harduby, of Seymour, said theres no doubt that the states transportation system and infrastructure need work, but tolls arent the way to fix it. People are running out of Connecticut because we are so over-taxed ... tolls are just another way of taxing us, he said. Logan encouraged the crowd to call, email and write letters to their local state representatives, and let them know how they feel. We need to shut it down, we dont need tolls, he said. Shelton business owner Don North believes tolls will happen here, and encouraged the GOP lawmakers to help keep it reasonable for residents. Please hold the line the best you can, North said. Make sure Route 8 doesnt get in there, and cut down on the number of tolls. Stephen Behuniak, a Democratic member on Seymours Board of Selectmen, questioned some of the validity of the figures and information the GOP panel presented, including using an outdated map of Connecticut with the proposed toll roads and using revenue numbers that didnt include both cars and trucks. Youre using misleading facts ... so why should we believe any of your numbers? he said. Earlier in the day, but not in attendance at the forum, Democratic state Rep. Kara Rochelle, who represents Ansonia and Derby, told Hearst Connecticut Media: My sympathies are with members of the public who are seeking a full and balanced discussion with all parties at the table regarding tolls. On tolling, she added, With three different tolls proposals currently in progress regarding this matter, and a budget crisis on our hands due to decades of financial mismanagement, Ill be carefully watching negotiations between all parties. Until there is a finalized proposal I will be resisting the urge to jump to conclusions and will remain focused on careful analysis of these proposals, which will affect our economic development, our residents, and the future financial stability of our community. jean.sos@snet.net; @nhrvalley on Twitter NEW HAVEN Four people injured in connection with a Wednesday home invasion on Dickerman Street have been released from the hospital, police said Thursday. Capt. Anthony Duff said the victims are all between 22 and 26 years old. At this time, the home invasion is not believed to be connected to a Tuesday shooting on the same street, he said. A 46-year-old New Haven man was shot in the hip, police said. The preliminary investigation does not show a connection between the home invasion robbery and the shooting the previous day, Duff said. Both incidents occurred on the one block between Sperry Street and Orchard Street. During the Wednesday home invasion, two people were stabbed and two assaulted with punches, according to police. Two or three men wearing masks allegedly forced their way onto the third floor of the Dickerman Street home before assaulting the victims, police said. Police continue to investigate both incidents, according to Duff. Anyone with information about either is asked to call the New Haven Police Department Detective Bureau at 203-946-6304. william.lambert@hearstmediact.com Whatever his reasons, Gov. Ned Lamonts decision this week to backtrack on school regionalization plans should be recognized for what it is a significant reversal. The legislative session kicked off in January with a slew of proposals that aimed to take on costs that come with running separate school districts for most of the states 169 municipalities. One plan would have forced regionalization on schools that have fewer than 2,000 students, while another would have applied to towns below 40,000 population meaning nearly all of them. Lamont was his normal conciliatory self throughout the debate, but did not do much to clarify exactly what he wanted, other than to save money. In the meantime, suburban Connecticut erupted. Hands off our schools, came the call from residents, petitions, protest signs and even many representatives from around the state, especially in the southwestern corner. While no proposal at any time called for changes at the classroom level, the opposition was instant and sustained. Lamont might have expected as much. People tend to get worked up when it comes to local schools. Still, he insisted that he wanted only to encourage savings, not to force anything. But even that was too far for critics, and their pressure worked. This week, Lamont submitted a revised proposal that eliminated terms like redistricting and consolidation and instead focused on encouragement of shared services. But then, shared services are already encouraged. The bill continues to include plans for withholding funds for certain small school districts that dont combine superintendent positions, but its not much of a penalty, and given the trajectory it would seem likely that even that much of a push will fail to pass. Whatever Lamont hoped to gain by combining educational services is probably gone. The promise in Connecticut of potential cost-savings from consolidation has always run into the roadblock of home rule town residents want to make sure that their money is under their control and will benefit their community. Even as most town lines are fairly arbitrary and date back centuries, it has proven a formidable obstacle. Without a push from above such as penalties from the state government no major consolidations among towns was likely. That was ostensibly the reasoning behind the school plans, which would have affected back-office functions and administrators. But even that was too much. Nearly all the political oxygen in Hartford today is taken up by tolling. Some form of fee-for-driving plan appears headed toward approval, though nothing is certain. As controversial as tolls have proven, though, school consolidation may have been even more polarizing. Its possible that, rather than fight on two fronts, the governor is picking his battles. Still, it doesnt say much for his pledge to do whats necessary to cut costs. This was an unpopular fight, one that would require making a case against sustained opposition. But it was a fight that was worth having, and is now an opportunity lost. I would like to put in a word for what has been described as a hidden gem. I speak of Irelands Great Hunger Museum in Hamden ... a beautiful piece of architecture, with wonderful art and sculpture depicting the Irish potato famine of the mid 19th century, which resulted in mass starvation, disease and emigration. Up until now, Quinnipiac University has kept the museum going, but the school has given notice that it will re-evaluate its support next year. This would be a great loss to the greater New Haven community, and indeed to the state of Connecticut. The area, in fact, much of New York and New England, is home to the descendants of many of those immigrants. Attorney General William Tong said he knew what to expect at the U.S.-Mexico border, south of San Diego. It was his first visit, but hes heard the stories and hes seen abject poverty in the U.S. and around the world. Hes seen people living in deplorable conditions. That didnt make what he saw in Tijuana this week as he crossed the border with a group of fellow Democratic attorneys general any less jarring: a looming concrete and steel slab wall that reaches nearly 30 feet high in some places, just beyond the commercialized end of San Diego, and the makeshift tents on the other side where asylum seekers have taken refuge. Youre in California and San Diego and you literally drive into a mall parking lot where theres an H&M (clothing store) parking lot and on the other side of the H&M is this huge wall, Tong said. And that wall, even though its from before President (Donald) Trumps time, has come to symbolize what President Trump wants us to mean to the rest of the world. This wall, this barrier. This unwelcome physical statement. Get out and stay out. Seeing that. Its stark and very imposing and difficult to see. Tongs visit to the border was part of a conference hosted by the Democratic Attorneys General Association and Al Otro Lado, a nonprofit legal service provider. As part of the conference, which Tong traveled to earlier this week, the group crossed the border to observe the conditions on both sides of the San Ysidro port of entry. Once through the border checkpoint, Tong said he observed a refugee area where dozens of asylum seekers are waiting for their claims to be heard. He visited with some of the people whove been waiting to enter the U.S., and spent nearly an hour on the Mexican side of the border before returning to San Diego. Theres a makeshift tent and someone keeps an informal log in a composition type book that you or I might buy at Staples and they write down the names of asylum seekers, Tong said. We understand every day they take the next 40 names off that list in a dramatically different way than we did for decades and decades. These are people who believe theyre in imminent physical danger and risk if they stay in Mexico. We used to allow them to wait inside the U.S. while they waited for their case to be heard. Tong, the son of Chinese immigrants, has made defending against the presidents immigration policies a priority for his office, and he said the visit his first to any section of the U.S.-Mexico border humanized the work his office has already done on the issue. Connecticut has joined multi-state cases against Trumps emergency declaration, turn-back policy for asylum seekers, the discontinuation of DACA and family separations. Last December, prior to Tong taking office, a coalition of 13 Democratic attorneys general, filed a brief calling for a preliminary injunction to protect asylum seekers. The brief supported a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, Al Otro Lado and other organizations that challenges the Trump Administrations attempts to prevent people entering the country away from a port of entry from applying for asylum, even as access to ports of entry has been reduced. It is an attack on who we are as a country, Tong said. Its an attack on our constitutional principles. Providing asylum and considering peoples asylum claims is a core part of who we are. Being a beacon of hope and an opportunity is a core part of who we are. Its what this country offered to my family, and to see that cut off is a crime and its tragic. kkrasselt@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2563; @kaitlynkrasselt GUILFORD After spending five months at the Guilford Police Animal Shelter, two dogs allegedly abused in connection with the illegal procurement of opioids are now ready to be sprung. Their owner allegedly used the animals to illegally obtain pain medication from area veterinarians to use for himself and the animals The dogs, an American bulldog mix and a Labrador mix, are up for adoption. Lily is about 9 years old and is a bulldog mix. Wasabi, a Labrador Terrier mix, is about 5. Both dogs seem to be in good health and spirits, according to the Animal Shelter Facebook page. She (Lily) is an absolute love and adores any and all attention, reads a Facebook post. She is a quiet girl and moves a little slow due to a slight deformity on her leg. Wasabi, is full of energy and runs like the wind. He would great for someone who likes to take long walks or jogs as he has energy for days!!!! according to the Facebook post. It would be great if they could be adopted together but not required, the post continues. Interested applicants can call 203-453-8083 to schedule an appointment to meet the dogs. James Cunnington, 33, of East Haven, was arrested in October 2018 for allegedly harming his dogs to obtain opioids from veterinary offices along the shoreline, police said. He was scheduled to appear in court March 18. Cunnington could not be reached for comment. The charges against Cunnington include four counts of cruelty to animals, six counts of illegally obtaining a prescription drug and four counts of doctor shopping. The medications were prescribed to the dogs, which were suffering from suspicious reoccurring injuries that included lacerations, police said. Police did not provide more details on the injuries. At some point Mr. Cunnington agreed to relinquish ownership of the dogs, said Guilford Police Deputy Chief Butch Hyatt. We wanted to make sure that those dogs are going to end up at a home where this wasnt going to happen again. Two state Assembly members want New Jersey school districts to stop teaching Mark Twains novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn because of racist language and themes in the 134-year-old story. The book chronicles the travels of Huckleberry Finn, who ran away from his abusive father, and Jim, a runaway slave, along the the Mississippi River. Its set in the antebellum South but was written in the early days of the JIm Crow Laws. It contains more than 200 uses of the N-word and its depiction of racist attitudes can cause students to feel upset, marginalized, or humiliated and can create an uncomfortable atmosphere in the classroom, according to a resolution introduced Monday by Assembly members Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, D-Mercer, and Jamal Holley, D-Union. The inclusion of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the school curriculum in effect requires adolescents to read and discuss a book containing hurtful, oppressive, and highly offensive language directed toward African Americans, the bill says. The list of required reading in schools should be inclusive and considerate of all students, without content likely to cause students to feel uncomfortable and marginalized. But PIeter Roos, executive director of the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut, says that Twain was ahead of his time in terms of racism and inequality. To look at Huckleberry Finn the way most people do, is to kind of surface exam it, Roos said. When Twain started writing the novel, it was meant to be a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He wrote a few chapters and then set it aside for years. In the meantime, Twain traveled down the Mississippi River on a steamboat and wrote Life on the Mississippi. This was the early 1880s, less than two decades after the civil war and slavery ended. He sees the early editions of the Jim Crow laws and he is deeply offended by them, Roos said. So, he returns to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with the mission of exposing the Jim Crow laws. This is one of the earliest pieces of American literature to take a stand against racism and he does that by really showing Jim as a human being ... a fellow traveler with equal rights and he depicts Hucks growth, Roos said. Thats how the book should be taught. Reynolds-Jackson said its unclear how many school districts in New Jersey still teach "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but she said a friend of hers who lives in West Orange said her daughter read it last year. "When you look at how the book puts one group down and raises another up, in the climate we live in right now, its very, very cruel, the assemblywoman said. The resolution was spurred by an incident in Hopewell Township in which a white student reportedly used racial slurs and referenced lynching in social media posts. The parents of the victim in that incident reached out to Reynolds-Jackson, she said, and asked why the book was still part of the curriculum there. Students might think its OK to say these things, when its actually not, Reynolds-Jackson said. The resolution is non-binding. If it passes, a request would be sent to school districts across the state asking them to voluntarily stop teaching the novel and offering other books in its place that could teach the same issues but in a less offensive manner. Racism, Reynolds-Jackson said, is a difficult conversation even for adults to have. It takes a really strong teacher to be able to have that conversation so ... that its respectful to all, she said. A spokesman for New Jersey Education Commissioner Lamont Repollet declined to comment because the legislation is pending. He also pointed out that while the state sets overarching academic standards of what students should learn, the instructional materials and texts are selected at the local school-district level. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has long been a controversial book. Its history of being banned dates back to its publication year, 1885. The state Senate and Assembly both of which are controlled by Democrats would each need to pass the bill and then Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy would need to sign it for the measure to become law. Allison Pries may be reached at apries@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter@AllisonPries.Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us.nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. From the outside of 453 Martin Luther King Dr. on Friday nights, you might not even know what was going on, emcee and host Jessica Baggett said. Amid the hustle and bustle of Martin Luther King Drive, pressing the buzzer at the quiet storefront of Carrington Community Facility (AKA Chocolate City) leads to an open door and a social affair. What was once a fish fry to benefit Philip Carringtons Remarkable Mossi Youth Councils programs is now an evening of food, karaoke, dancing and music, from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. As long as someone buys something to eat or makes a donation, anyone is welcome. Mr. Carrington had the idea of (adding these elements), because he does line dancing lessons, then came the karaoke and the music, Baggett said. Baggett, who has contributed to The Jersey Journal as a freelancer, hosts and emcees the event as DJ Protajay. The karaoke and dance elements are not something that anyone is judgmental about, she said; people dont need to worry about the idea of not doing anything well. The website (http://philipcarringtonnj.tripod.com/) for Carringtons Remarkable Mossi Youth Council notes its dedicated to developing, motivating and guiding them to become productive citizens filled with self-worth and self-respect. Washington, DC is probably the countrys most Chocolate City (meaning with a substantial African-American population), though that moniker may no longer be accurate as longtime, under-served African-American residents struggle to find a positive foothold among an influx that has led to whats now dubbed Latte City." The Chocolate City moniker has generally been an aspirational one, a beacon of something positive in areas that were devastated economically by white flight just as things might have become more integrated. Back in an area of Jersey City that embodies the citys general lack of non-alcoholic and soundproof social options, the Friday Night Fish Fry is something rare, Chocolate City or not. For more information visit https://www.facebook.com/remarkable.mossi or email carringtonchocolatect@yahoo.com. Every 50 seconds, for nearly a year, about 2.5 gallons of water has flowed into Gerard and Penelope Garcias Summit home. You read that right: about 2.5 gallons of water every 50 seconds. Rain or shine. The Garcias have become water detectives, but their sleuthing hasnt solved the problem. Neither have attempts from the couples water company, New Jersey American Water (NJAW), nor have efforts from elected officials, inspectors and engineers from Summit, Gerard Garcia said. The water just keeps flowing into their basement, spewing from a source no one can find. Its costing us our home. Right now our home is worth nothing, Penelope Garcia said. Theres no way we can sell it. We cant even leave it for long periods of time because we dont know what will happen to the basement. The first water invasion The Garcias purchased their home in 2012, and the first sign of trouble came in April 2014. During a powerful rainstorm, the couples sump pump - which they never needed before - failed. The basement flooded with several inches of water, Gerard Garcia said. The couple assumed the water came from the heavy rains, so they fixed the sump pump. But that didnt correct the water problem. Instead, days after the rain stopped, the sump pump kept pumping water. Instead of the basement, the water now flooded into Garcias and a neighbors yard. Garcia contacted NJAW, the water company. NJAW didnt find a line break at the Garcia home, but it did find one at a nearby condo development. Garcia said he learned from NJAW that the home flooded in 2008 after a similar line break at the condos. Over the next several weeks, Garcia said and records show, fixes were made to multiple pipes at the development, but that didnt stop the water flow into the Garcias basement. Frustrated, we went to Summit City Hall where the Chief Inspector of the Department of Community Service refused our letter and dismissed us by saying it was not the problem of the city, Garcia said. The couple persisted, and while NJAW searched for more leaks, they contacted the mayor, public works and everyone else they could think to call. Nothing happened, they said. In June, the Garcias installed two large signs on their front lawn, begging for help. The signs posted on the front lawn of Gerard and Penelope Garcia in 2014. (Photo courtesy of Gerard and Penelope Garcia) Over 70,000 gallons of water down our drain!! Does anyone care? NJ American Water and 28 Morris Ave. Condo, stop wasting our water! the signs said. Within a few hours American Water came by saying, You have our attention, Garcia said. The company stepped in and the condos fixed another pipe, Garcia said. But again, it didnt solve the problem. They hired an attorney but by the end of July 2014, somehow, the water stopped. Water invasion, Part II On May 1, 2018, it started all over again. Water flowed in through the sump pump and out to the neighbors yard, Garcia said. This sump pump has not operated since 2014, Garcia said. We estimated the leak to be about 50 gallons per 24 hours. NJAW came back but couldnt find a leak, but the pump outflow increased to 90 gallons every 24 hours, Garcia said. On May 23, NJAW said there were more repairs at the condo development, the couple said. The Garcias were out of town, so they couldnt check the home until four days later. The amount of water coming through our sump pump, we measured, was now 800 gallons per 24-hour period, Garcia said. In June, the NJAW representative came to the home to test the water in the sump pump. The test could indicate whether the water was natural groundwater or treated water from the company. The first test found chlorine in the water - indicating it was probably from a broken pipe somewhere - Garcia said, but the second and third tests were inconclusive. The rep also did sound tests and searched for more leaks at the condos, but nothing was found. By July 10, the water had stopped, only to start up again on Aug. 13, Garcia said. Garcia said when he reported it to NJAW, the rep suggested recent rains were the cause, but he promised to survey the area again. After checking sensors American Water set up at the water mains, he could not find evidence of water leaking from pipes, Garcia said. He felt it was no longer an American Water issue. Trying for other solutions Garcia took matters into his own hands, digging a trench and installing pipes from the sump pump pipe, six inches under the soil, to guide the water to the street. Instead of flooding the neighbor, the water would flow onto the street, Garcia said. A look at water streaming into the street from a sump pump pipe at Gerard and Penelope Garcia's home in February 2019. (Photo courtesy of Gerard and Penelope Garcia) But the sump pump was still working on overdrive. We purchased chlorine test kits and found no difference between the water coming in with the water coming out of our faucet, he said. Then after heavy rains around Nov. 7, Garcia said, the flow of water became a waterfall, increasing from 2.5 gallons every 10 minutes to 2.5 gallons every minute. But weeks after the rains, the water kept coming, so Garcia reached far and wide for help. We did receive an acknowledgment from the mayor on Dec. 5, he said. We also received a letter from the New Jersey Bureau of Public Utilities (BPU) saying this was not their nor American Waters problem. Now that it was winter, the couple had to worry about the water, which now flowed across the entrance to their driveway and down the street, freezing. The couple erected a new sign on their front lawn on Dec. 26, saying: NJ American Water & City of Summit, Stop the Water Invasion to our home!!! In early January, the mayor and the city engineer visited the scene of the water invasion. Shortly thereafter, BPU said in a letter that water testing was inconclusive on chlorine, but did show a low level of orthophosphate. The substance, used in water treatment to inhibit pipe corrosion, would have been found at higher levels if the water was coming from NJAWs pipes, BPU said. The letter said the evidence supports groundwater as the source, and with no further evidence of leaks and NJAW monitoring the situation, there was nothing further BPU could do. A non-solution solution? On Feb, 14, the city engineer emailed to say the city was looking into additional diagnostic testing, including a sewer line camera inspection. He also had a new suggestion: The city was looking into the feasibility and cost of installing a new drain so water from their discharge pipe would go to the storm sewer system. the engineer wrote. That didnt sound right to the Garcias. Garcia responded via email: You are suggesting to install a drain near the discharge of my sump pump instead of rerouting the existing flow (that comes from under Edison Drive) to your underground drain? This is insane!! You really want to continue to use my home as a receptacle for this unidentified water? Then the engineer recommended they hire a hydrogeologist - someone trained to see how water flows underground. The Garcias went to a city council meeting in early March to plead their case, water still flowing at 2.5 gallons every 50 seconds, but nothing has come of it. They said the city engineer and one of the water testing companies independently suggested the couple try blocking the water pipe that leads to the sump pump to try to redirect the water away from his system. They decided to give it a try, but it caused the water to come through the side basement wall, flooding the basement with an inch of water. (The city later denied that the engineer ever gave that advice.) We are back to square one, Garcia said. Garcia also had the water tested himself, and it came back probable that its not treated water, meaning it may not be coming from an NJAW pipe. The testing company suggested it could be from a broken drain pipe because the flow doesnt change with the weather - rain, snow or dry conditions. Asking for answers After reviewing the couples long and detailed timeline, emails between the Garcias and city and state officials and other documents related to the water, we asked Summit Mayor Nora Radest for a status update. I believe the City of Summit has been responsive to Mr. and Mrs. Garcia in attempting to understand this difficult and stressful water issue, Radest, the mayor, said in a statement. She added she was hopeful a sewer line camera inspection will "help resolve the problem or indicate next steps. We checked in with NJAW, which said it has performed multiple leak detection surveys, determining there are no leaks from our pipes on or near Mr. Garcias property, As our company is not the cause of the water issue, unfortunately there is simply nothing else we can do, spokeswoman Denise Venuti Free said. And regulators? BPU said its staff performed a complete and thorough investigation of this matter and concluded that the water intrusion at the Garcia residence is a groundwater issue. A spokesman said NJAW was in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, no leaks were detected, and the board has no jurisdiction over groundwater. And still, the water keeps flowing. Were at a loss, Garcia said. "We feel so alone. Were stuck. What now? The couple reached out to all kinds of professionals - hydrogeologists, land gradient experts, waterproofers and more - hoping that someone could come up with a plan. Several suggested the water could be from a cracked drain pipe and its simply following the same path as water did in the past - something that could explain the varying water test results. They recommended the city perform a dye-tracing test, which would be cheaper and more informative than a camera line test, Garcia said. The Garcias made the request before the city council Tuesday night, and the council agreed to test the drainage and sewer system this month. They told us they are not responsible if the water comes from private property," Garcia said. As the Garcias await the results, they hope their sump pump doesnt burn out. If the sump pump stops working, 2.5 gallons every 50 seconds will go into our house, Penelope Garcia said. Our house will be destroyed by all this water. Any ideas, dear readers? Please share them in the comments section. Read more of NJ.coms coverage of New Jersey water issues here. One luxury apartment in Harrison was a short walk to the PATH station and Red Bull arena. The other one in Secaucus had a Bentley and a Range Rover parked outside. But inside those two apartments, police allege, were an opioid packaging center and a stash house the bases of operation for what authorities called one of the largest heroin and fentanyl mills in the state. State Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said Thursday police had charged three New Jersey men with running a narcotics production facility, effectively shutting down an operation that may be responsible for 227 overdoses 84 of them fatal. Grewals office on Thursday took the unusual step of publishing a list of 25 brands produced by the drug mill, warning drug users who consume the dangerous blends of heroin and fentanyl that your next fix very likely could be your last. The full list is published at njpublicsafety.com. The investigation is ongoing, Grewal said, and additional charges and arrests are possible. Police estimate the operation had been running for at least two years and was supplying 15,000 doses of fentanyl and heroin every day. A mill of this size requires more than three people to run it at this rate, Grewal told reporters. The investigation began last month, when drug analysts identified a number of brands of heroin -- stamped with pop culture references like Tom Brady, Fat Albert and Frosted Flakes -- linked to deadly overdoses, State Police Captain Gregory Demeter said. Detectives assigned to a new State Police-led opioid task force of local, state and federal law enforcement officials were directed to focus on finding the source of this fentanyl and heroin, Demeter said. Last week, Demeter said, detectives "caught a break" and learned a suspect they were already familiar with from a previous case was likely involved with producing the drugs. Combining police work with a little luck, they tailed the suspect to Harrison Station Apartments, a luxury complex that boasts spacious layouts and soaring windows in online listings. While conducting surveillance, police said they watched a 45-year-old Irvington man, Timothy Guest, emerge from the complex with a black duffel bag and enter a Cadillac sedan. When state troopers attempted to pull him over, authorities claim, Guest fled, hitting two trooper cars before his car was disabled and police arrested him. Two other men -- William Woodley, 27, of Belleville, and Selionel Orama, 25, of Cedar Grove -- also fled the apartment but were soon arrested, police said. The trio face charges including operating a narcotics production facility and a range of distribution charges. Guest was also charged with eluding police. Guest was being held Thursday pending a detention hearing and Woodley and Orama were released pending trial, authorities said. None could be reached for comment and it was not clear Thursday whether they had retained attorneys. We know New Jersey is home to far too many people struggling with addiction. But we ask that, no matter what challenges youre facing in your life - if you see heroin stamped with these markings below - please stay away from it. Your next fix could be your last. pic.twitter.com/uFjJUXRlGk AG Gurbir Grewal (@NewJerseyOAG) March 21, 2019 Investigators say they found 150 bricks of fentanyl in the duffel bag, and later recovered three kilograms of fentanyl, one kilogram of heroin mixed with fentanyl and another 500 bricks of fentanyl, as well as drug milling equipment including grinders and respirators. At a stash house at an undisclosed location in another luxury complex in Secaucus, police later seized around $200,000 in cash, a Bentley convertible worth about $400,000, and a Range Rover valued at $130,000, police said. There was obviously a lot of cash proceeds that came out of this, Demeter said. Authorities are urging opioid users and their loved ones to be on the lookout for the dozens of brands associated with the Harrison drug mill. Grewal said drug users can turn in the drugs and get access to treatment at many police departments and county prosecutors offices around the state no questions asked. Such brand stamps are common among drug dealers, who use the names to develop a reputation for potency the same way legitimate companies look to develop brand loyalty to their products in stores, police say. "Dealers peddle in specific brands of heroin because once they develop a reputation that their particular brand is stronger, unfortunately it attracts more addicts to that particular street-level dealer, Grewal said. There are of course knock-offs," he added. "If someone is selling a Tom Brady stamp, that does not prevent someone else from mimicking the Tom Brady stamp. And thatll be the challenge as we begin to unpack the next investigative steps. State authorities are now looking to tie a years worth of overdoses and deaths directly to the drugs seized at the Harrison mill. If successful, prosecutors could charge the three men under New Jerseys strict liability law, which allows authorities to pursue homicide charges against dealers for the deaths of their customers. S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Sometimes the allure of returning home is too much to overcome. According to a report from ESPNs Jordan Raanan, free agent defensive end Vinny Curry took less money to return to the Eagles, despite the Giants offering more. Vinny Curry wanted to return to the Eagles. Giants offered more. https://t.co/maz6CPDt3u Jordan Raanan (@JordanRaanan) March 21, 2019 The Eagles and Curry agreed on a one-year deal worth $2.25 million, reuniting Curry with the team that drafted him in the second-round in 2012 and won a Super Bowl with him in 2018. The Giants hoped to bolster one of the leagues worst pass rushes while trying to fill a hole left by trading outside linebacker Olivier Vernon to the Cleveland Browns. Only the Raiders had fewer sacks than the Giants did last season. Now, Giants general manager Dave Gettleman will need to look elsewhere to add to a pass rush that includes recent addition Markus Golden. Curry, 30, spent the first six years of his career with the Eagles before signing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a free agent last season. After signing a three-year, $23 million contract with the Buccaneers, Curry was released this offseason. A seven-year veteran, Curry has 24.5 sacks with 152 total tackles in 96 games. Last season, Curry was slowed by a knee injury that kept him out of four games. In 12 games with the Buccaneers, Curry had 21 tackles and 2.5 sacks. Matt Lombardo may be reached at MLombardo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattLombardoNFL JERSEY CITY A 12-year-old student at the Fred W. Martin Center for the Arts was arrested Wednesday after being found with a handgun at the school, according to police and school officials. Jersey City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione confirmed the sixth-grade student at the Wilkinson Avenue school was arrested at approximately 2:30 p.m. He was charged with a number of weapons offenses, including unlawful possession of a weapon in an educational institution and possession of a firearm by a minor, among others, Wallace-Scalcione said. Board of Education President Sudhan Thomas said the boy brought the loaded handgun into the school in his backpack, adding that the child had an ankle bracelet monitor that was issued by a judge. School district spokeswoman Maryann Dickar said she did not have information on why he was issued an ankle monitor. She added that even if she had information the district could not disclose the students private record. An email and phone calls to Wallace-Scalcione for more information were not returned. A juvenile may be fitted with an electronic monitoring bracelet if they have been charged with a serious offense, such as robbery or a gun charge, and the judge opted not to incarcerate them in a county youth house while the defendant awaited adjudication in Family Court, a court official said. They may also be fitted with a monitoring bracelet if they were released pending a court date and had not been complying with the terms of their supervision. In the case of a juvenile, electronic monitoring with home detention may include the ability to attend school, the court official said. On Wednesday, a teacher at the school heard a rumor that a weapon had been brought into the school, so a school-wide bag search was conducted toward the end of the day, leading to the discovery of the gun, Dickar said. Roughly 500 students attend the pre-K through grade 8 school. Parents on Wednesday were met with a police presence as they arrived to the school to pick their children up. Some parents felt the school did a good job of notifying them of the situation. The situation, I think, was handled well, one parent who declined to be named said on Thursday afternoon. Her son is in a special education program at the school. "The school handled it, and the parents were notified," she said. "It would be nice if it didn't happen in the first place that's on the family being more observant with the kid, that's not on the school." Other parents were alarmed by the police presence. It was alarming I came to pick (my son) up and they had the school on lock down, said Patrick Jean, whose 6-year-old son attends the school. "I believe this isn't the first time this year either, it's pretty scary," he added. Wednesdays arrest is the latest in a series of incidents involving guns at Jersey City schools in recent years. A 14-year-old student at School 38 was arrested last month after police said he brought a gun into the building on the same day as the schools career day. In January 2017, a 14-year-old student at School 15 was arrested after accidentally shooting himself in the leg a block from the school. Later that year, a 15-year-old student at School 4 in Downtown Jersey City was arrested after he was found with a with a gun at the school, authorities said. There are no broad policy changes in consideration right now surrounding additional security at the citys middle schools, although the board is looking to host a security summit to come up with an urgent plan to tackle this growing epidemic, Thomas said. Typically, when a gun is reported at a school, the police are immediately called and the child is isolated, board officials said. Police then attend to the situation, and district officials bring in counselors and other supportive services for the schools students. Temporary wand metal detectors are also put into use. All of the citys high schools have metal detectors and a police officer on duty, Thomas said. Why does a sixth grader bring a gun to a school? Weve got to get to the bottom of why he brings a gun and try to address the socioeconomic situation, Thomas said. As school leaders, our job is to find out what the socioeconomic situations are that are contributing to this and get to the bottom of it. Security at School 41 used wand metal detectors Thursday morning. Thomas said the school would be installing permanent detectors on Monday the first middle school in the city to have such security measures put in place. These, however, are only band-aid solutions, Thomas said. This story was updated to include new information. Journal staff writer Michaelangelo Conte contributed to this report. Corey W. McDonald may be reached at cmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @cwmcdonald_. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook. BAYONNE A Jersey City man was arrested and charged with robbery after stealing a pair of glasses from a local store on Broadway, police said. Police said Wilbie Rosario-Rodriguez, 43, entered Specs Optical at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday and removed three pairs of glasses from a display rack before running out of the store. Two employees, a 45-year-old and a 60-year-old man, tried intervening, but Rosario-Rodriguez pushed them out of the way and fled after a brief struggle, authorities said. Part of the incident was recorded by a passerby, and it was posted on a Facebook page. The two victims later showed officers where he had fled, and officers later located him behind the Polish-American Home on West 22nd Street, police said. He was arrested and charged with robbery, authorities said. The glasses were never recovered. JERSEY CITY The public school district will receive 24 percent of revenue from future tax abatements under a measure approved by the City Council last week. The measure is symbolic at this point the Fulop administration has not passed along any new long-term abatement requests to the council since 2017 and has signaled those tax breaks are over but its supporters say if the city starts awarding tax breaks again, they want the schools to benefit. The council approved the resolution by a 7-0 vote at its March 13 meeting. Not knowing if abatements are going to be coming back to the council during our term, I felt that it was prudent to put something in place to at least have a mechanism to give school funding for things like maintenance and facilities, said Councilwoman Mira Prinz-Arey. The law that governs long-term tax abatements allows the city to keep almost all of the revenue it receives from payments-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements. About 25 percent of a traditional property tax bill goes to schools. Critics have blasted Mayor Steve Fulop and his predecessor, Jerramiah Healy, for awarding abatements, saying the tax break deals starved the 30,000-student district of funds. Their abatement policy attracted statewide criticism, largely from Republican lawmakers who questioned why the state would give over $400 million in annual state education aid to a city as its leaders awarded major tax breaks to real estate developers. The local criticism grew more impassioned in recent years as the state mulled and then approved changes to the education funding that will lead to a dramatic cut in state aid to the school district over the next seven years. The city last year billed $137 million in payments in lieu of taxes, according to its budget. Its bad public policy that the city gets to take all the money, Councilman James Solomon said during the councils March 13 meeting. It creates a series of perverse incentives. Though the city has entirely backed off awarding tax abatements in the last two years, city officials believe the Bayfront property on the western waterfront may lead to a renewed interest in long-term tax breaks. In 2017, Fulop signed an executive order directing 10 percent of the revenue from future abatements to the schools. Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook. A school bus carrying 34 charter school students was involved in a crash that partially took down a utility pole in Jersey City Wednesday afternoon, but miraculously none of the students were injured, authorities said in an accident report. The BelovED Community Charter School students, ranging from kindergarteners to eighth-graders, were on the bus that was traveling north on Tonnelle Avenue at 4:03 p.m. when it struck a Toyota Camry that was going south in Tonnelle Avenue attempting to make a left onto Kennedy Boulevard, the accident report said. Neither of the drivers were injured in the crash and none of the students complained of pain or showed any signs of injuries, the accident report said. The 59-year-old bus driver from Jersey City told police that after striking the 2010 Camry, which was being driven by a New York man, he lost control of the bus and struck a utility pole on the east side of Tonnelle Avenue. The impact brought down wires, forcing the roadway to be closed temporarily. The students were taken off the bus and evaluated by Jersey City Medical Center EMS members, who confirmed that no one was injured. Police said 22 of the students were picked up by their parents and 12 were picked up by another school bus. Officials with the charter school did not return a call for comment. While no one hit Wednesday nights $562.1 million Powerball jackpot, someone who bought a ticket in New Jersey was one of six people across the country to buy a ticket worth at least $1 million. The next jackpot Saturday is worth an estimated $625 million with a cash option of $380.6 million. If someone wins it will be the seventh largest prize in U.S. lottery history and fourth biggest Powerball jackpot. The location where the lucky New Jersey ticket was purchased is expected to revealed later Thursday morning by state lottery officials. Three tickets sold in South Carolina, as well as one each in Florida and Kentucky, also matched five numbers but not the Powerball. Two of the South Carolina winners spent an extra $1 to exercise the Powerplay option and those tickets are worth $2 million. In addition, five tickets bought in New Jersey matched four numbers plus the Power Ball and are worth $50,000. Wednesdays winning numbers were: 10, 14, 50, 53 and 63. The Powerball drawn was 21 with a Powerplay of 2X. The Powerball jackpot was last won by David Johnson, a 56-year-old supermarket worker from Brooklyn, New York. He hit the $298.3 million jackpot on Dec. 26. Johnson chose the cash option worth $180,227,550 and received $114,091,248 after taxes were deducted. The odds of hitting the Powerball jackpot are 292,201,388 to 1. A player who buys a $2 ticket has about a 1 in 11,688,053 chance to match five numbers and win at least $1 million. Powerball is played in 44 states, Washington D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips EDITORS NOTE: On April 3, NJ Cannabis Insider will host an all-day live event, featuring industry leaders and the key voices who will shape the industry. Tickets are limited. More information. Perhaps the people who stand to benefit the most from marijuana legalization in New Jersey with the exception of potential business owners are the hundreds of thousands of people in the state with marijuana convictions. If marijuana is legalized here, those people would be able to have their pot convictions cleared much more quickly than they could previously. On Monday, they got an even bigger boost. Two state legislative committees advanced a bill that, in addition to legalizing marijuana, would allow people to clear convictions for distributing up to one ounce of marijuana and possessing up to five pounds of weed. (Yes, pounds.) The New Jersey Legislature is expected to vote on the legalization bill Monday, and Gov. Phil Murphy and top lawmakers are pushing hard behind the scenes to secure the votes to pass legal weed. Murphy said on Tuesday that, should the bill pass, he would continue working to make sure expungements have a positive impact on people. Monday, if we are successful, is not the end of history, Murphy said, adding that he was dedicated to making expungements easier for people. So if were successful, lets get by Monday and (consider) from me on down in the administration all-in on getting this as smooth as possible and as ironed out as possible. Expungements and other social justice provisions have been key to Murphys proposal on legalization. If New Jersey was ever going to successfully legalize marijuana through its Legislature, lawmakers were going to have to consider what to do about the hundreds of thousands of people in the state with marijuana convictions. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and others made sure that question was always near the top of the debate in Trenton. A lot of the work in the past few weeks on the legalization bill has been on expungements. Lawmakers like state Sen. Nia Gill, D-Essex, have said they wouldnt support a bill without progressive provisions on expungement. The current bill would allow people with marijuana convictions to apply for an expedited expungement, which would move their application along faster than in the past. It also puts the onus on the state to help move along expungement applications. The burden has been on the person applying and it has prevented a lot of people from clearing their records. Whether New Jersey is able to handle such an influx of expungement requests is still open to debate. If marijuana became legal, tens of thousands of people would be eligible for expungement almost immediately, potentially overwhelming the state Judiciary, which handles expungement petitions. The provisions in the bill call for the Judiciary to hire more employees to help with the expected increase in expungement requests. Over the past three decades, New Jersey police have arrested a staggering number of people on marijuana charges. Since 1990 nearly 1 million people have been arrested for marijuana in the state. Between 2015 and 2016, New Jersey had the biggest spike in marijuana arrests of any state in the country. Data also shows that marijuana enforcement hasnt been applied equally in New Jersey. A 2017 report from the ACLU of New Jersey found that black people are three times more likely to be arrested for marijuana in the state than white people, despite similar usage rates. For those reasons and others, Murphy and several state lawmakers have pushed for better expungement language to help ensure that the people most affected by marijuana prohibition would be helped by legalization. In previous versions of the legalization bill they called for marijuana conviction to be automatically expunged, but thats not a possibility in New Jerseys current expungement system. An NJ Advance Media report earlier this year found this and other problems with expungements in New Jersey. But by adding marijuana distribution as a conviction that can get cleared and raising the limit on possession convictions up to five pounds in the new bill, lawmakers may have overcorrected. Three Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday voiced concern about letting someone caught with that much pot be able to more easily clear their record. If you were convicted of possessing several pounds of marijuana, its almost certain you were a drug dealer and not a recreational user, said state Sen. Mike Doherty, R-Warren, said in a statement on Thursday.. "And you were probably pushing harder stuff, too, within our communities. Its outrageous that Democrats are willing to put drug dealers back on our streets to get the votes they need for legalization. Its unclear if those changes will get the support needed to pass the bill. As of Monday night, both chambers of the legislature were still short the votes needed to legalize marijuana. Payton Guion may be reached at PGuion@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @PaytonGuion. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Are you interested in the N.J. cannabis industry? Subscribe here for exclusive insider information from NJ Cannabis Insider. By now, you should know who the chief lawmaker behind legal weed in N.J. is. Hes Nicholas Scutari, the state senator whos been advocating for the expansion of medical marijuana, legalization of adult-use cannabis and a force behind ensuring social justice prevails once Gov. Phil Murphy signs the bill into law should it pass on March 25. Days later, Scutari will be among the featured speakers on April 3 at NJ Cannabis Insiders day-long live event at the Hamilton Stage of the Union County Performing Arts Center in Rahway. Whether New Jersey makes history on Monday or not, Scutari is the legislator who knows the most about whats next for the future of marijuana in the state. The event, which goes from 10 a.m. to just after 4 p.m., packs in a wealth of programming, panel discussions and networking opportunities. The keynote speaker is Hadley Ford, CEO of iAnthus, which is one of the largest multi-state operators in the cannabis space. There are a limited number of tickets left. The best value is on a special bundle offer of 20 percent off a one-year subscription to NJ Cannabis Insider and a ticket to NJ Cannabis Insider Live. For more information, visit the NJ Cannabis Insider Event page. NJ Cannabis Insider, an NJ.com premium industry trade journal, features exclusive weekly content geared toward those interested in the marijuana industry. View a sample issue. A suspended Middlesex County sheriffs officer lost an appeal to dismiss his conviction for a road rage incident but scored a legal victory when the same court denied the county prosecutors office attempt to make him forfeit his job because of it. The appeals court found Neil Racitis actions during the 2015 incident did not touch his employment, and denied the Middlesex County Prosecutors Offices efforts to have him forfeit his job and future public employment. Its unclear if or when Neil Raciti will get his gun and badge back though. But Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew C. Carey is clear on his position: It is incomprehensible that the court found that the officers behavior did not touch upon his employment." "He was tailgated, got out of his car, broke the windshield of the tailgaters, and showed his badge. (He later said he did not mean to break the windshield.) Raciti has been shown to be an overly-aggressive cop. And now, he gets to go back to work. One of Racitis attorneys, Joe Mazraani said his client remains suspended without pay, but they were ultimately satisfied with the state Appellate Divisions Wednesday decision. It is concerning that the Appellate Division chose to give short shrift to Mr. Racitis cross-appeal by barely including the procedural history that made his conviction on the disorderly persons offense reversible, said Mazraani. He leveled his own fiery comments to the Middlesex prosecutors: This prosecution, from its very inception, reeked of covert political machinations aimed at divesting Mr. Raciti of that which he always held in high regard, his employ as a Middlesex County Sheriffs Officer. We hope that this opinion brings closure to this charade but we are not optimistic," Mazraani said. In a separate decision, with the states Civil Service Commission last August, Raciti won back pay from the sheriffs office, contingent on the appeal. The confrontation occurred when a group of teenagers driving down a road in East Brunswick heading to South Brunswick began to tailgate Raciti, a then 14-year sheriffs veteran, and his wife, hoping they would speed up. His wife was driving their personal vehicle. However, at a light Raciti got out of the car and began cursing at the driver, who was identified in court documents only as A.M. However, as A.M. attempted to pull away from the sheriffs officer, the officer punched and cracked his windshield. A.M. got out of his car to confront the officer, and the officer, who was in plain clothes and had not previously identified himself as law enforcement, subsequently pulled out his badge and assumed an "arrest position." Raciti filed various complaints against A.M., including aggravated assault against the officer. The charges were later dismissed, the decision says. The prosecutors office later indicted Raciti on several felony crimes, and during a five-day bench trial, was found guilty of criminal mischief - a disorderly persons offense - for the windshield. He was sentenced to a year of probation in December 2017, court records show. Prosecutors had asked a judge to have Raciti forfeit his job, and a judge ruled against it, including a reconsideration of the order. So they took it to the appeals court. Much of the final decision on whether Raciti should have to forfeit his job surrounded arguments that Raciti, who was off-duty, acted in the capacity as an officer when he hit the drivers windshield as the driver attempted to pull away. Overall, the court ruled that the officer did not display his badge until after he damaged the victims windshield and he only pulled it out, to gain control of "the situation, rather [than] perform any official duty directly related to his responsibilities as [a] sheriffs officer. On Racitis attempts to have his criminal mischief charge be wiped out, he argued it was prejudicial because he didnt know that charge would be tried at the same time as his other more-serious felony charges. Ultimately the court cited a rule, saying Raciti should have been prepared to defend himself against all charges. Taylor Tiamoyo Harris may be reached at tharris@njadvancemedia.com. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. A Florida man who authorities say sent pipe bombs to prominent critics of President Donald Trump is expected to plead guilty Thursday. Cesar Sayoc is scheduled to enter the plea in Manhattan federal court. The change-of-plea hearing was revealed last week after a phone conference between prosecutors, Sayoc's lawyers and a judge. Sayoc's plea will avert a trial scheduled for July. Authorities say he targeted numerous Democrats, including former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the billionaire George Soros, former President Barack Obama and CNN, heightening tensions before midterm elections. No bombs exploded. Sayoc has been held without bail since his late-October arrest outside a South Florida auto parts store. He had been living in a van covered with stickers of Trump and showing images of some Trump opponents with crosshairs over their faces. Others targeted by the mailings included former Vice President Joe Biden, California Sen. Kamala Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Packages were also mailed to CNN in New York and Atlanta. Prosecutors say evidence against Sayoc includes DNA linking him to 10 of the explosive devices and fingerprints on two of them. Cesar SayocAP Without a plea deal, Sayoc faced charges carrying a potential penalty of mandatory life in prison. A court filing last Friday didnt indicate which charge or charges the plea would involve. Immigration officials are unsure exactly when Carlos Juarez-Sanchez, a native of Honduras, first illegally crossed the border into the U.S. But, they know he was deported in 2008. And again in 2013. And again in 2014. Juarez-Sanchez, who had a history of arrests for multiple criminal charges dating back to 2003, repeatedly re-entered the U.S. each time he was deported, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said. Last July, ICE officials said they tracked him down to Perth Amboy. While officers attempted to arrest him, Juarez-Sanchez ran, hid under a front porch and led ICE agents on a chase through a local neighborhood, according to the criminal complaint against him. During the chase, Juarez-Sanchez picked up a small metal tricycle from a yard, struck an ICE officer several times with it and attempted to take the agents gun, according to the complaint. Juarez-Sanchez, 33, was sentenced Monday in federal court in Trenton to 12 months in prison for assault and resisting or impeding federal officers. He was also sentenced to 15 months for illegal reentry into the U.S. The sentences will run concurrently. This individuals criminal and immigration histories show that he is clearly a danger to the community and has total disregard for U.S. law, said John Tsoukaris, field officer director for ICEs Enforcement and Removal Operations in Newark. Juarez-Sanchez was first arrested by border patrol agents in Texas in 2003, but failed to show up for his deportation hearing after he was released, according to court documents. He was picked up five years later and deported in 2008. Local news reports said Juarez-Sanchez was arrested in 2013 in New Jersey for running from police after providing false identification from Texas during a traffic stop. He was deported later that year. However, he returned to New Jersey and was convicted in 2014 in Middlesex County on charges of making terroristic threats, then was deported again. Local news reports said he was arrested again in 2016 in New Jersey after police found he had an outstanding warrant during another traffic stop. But he was released and was not arrested again until ICE officials picked him up in July. Juarez-Sanchezs conviction comes as ICE officials have been stepping up arrests in New Jersey under President Trumps directive to crack down on illegal immigration. ICEs Newark office, which covers all of New Jersey, arrested 3,409 people in fiscal year 2018, according to federal data. That is a 7 percent increase in arrests compared to the previous fiscal year and a 52 percent increase compared to when President Barack Obamas administration was still overseeing the agency. Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find her at KellyHeyboerReporter on Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Two female JetBlue crew members were drugged and raped by one of the airlines pilots in Puerto Rico before a flight back to Newark, according to a lawsuit filed Monday. The lawsuit was filed by two women, known as Jane Doe 1, of Riverton, Utah, and Jane Doe 2, of Fort Worth, Texas, against the pilots Eric Johnson and Dan Watson, and JetBlue. Jane Doe 1 said she was drugged, raped and intentionally given a sexually transmitted disease by Johnson, while Jane Doe 2 claimed that she was drugged by Watson but not raped because she vomited, which was a turnoff, the suit said. A third crew member, who was not identified in the suit, was also drugged and raped by Johnson, according to the suit. After a flight from Washington D.C., the three women checked in to Intercontinental Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and went to the beach. Once there, they saw Johnson and Watson on the beach, started talking with them and learned they were JetBlue pilots, according to the suit They trio then shared shared an open can of beer that Jonson pulled from a lunch bag, according to the lawsuit. The beer was laced with a drug, and after that point, the rest of the night became a blur for Doe # 1, Doe # 2and the other crew member, the suit stated. Jane Doe 1 said she woke up in a room at the hotel to find Johnson raping her and she has flashes of memory where he had sex with third crew member who was also drugged, according to the suit. He then told the women, Thank you for making my fantasy come true," the suit alleges. The next morning all three women felt groggy and numb, vomited on the flight back to Newark and discussed among themselves what they had experienced the previous night, according to the suit. They then reported their sexual assault, rape and sex and gender discrimination to JetBlue at their New York corporate headquarters and were told that the incidents would be investigated. However, no action was ever taken against the pilots, the suit said. A JetBlue spokeswoman said in a statement that she could not comment on pending litigation JetBlue takes allegations of violent or inappropriate behavior very seriously and investigates such claims thoroughly. We work to create a respectful workplace for all our crew members where they feel welcome and safe, the statement said. The women are suing an amount to be determined at the time of trial plus interest, damages, and attorneys fees and costs. Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrsheldon Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth is in confidential negotiations to join one of the states largest hospital systems, continuing a decade-long frenzy of mergers in New Jerseys fierce healthcare market, NJ Advance Media has learned. RWJBarnabas Health and the Catholic hospital signed an agreement about six months ago to explore a transaction, and conduct the research that both of us would agree would be needed to support a transaction if we wanted to do one," said Barry Ostrowsky, RWJBs president and CEO. Ostrowsky said he expected a decision would be announced within the next 90 days. There are 71 acute-care, full service hospitals in New Jersey, and all but 13 are part of a larger system of two or more institutions. A frenzy of mergers began about a decade ago, as rising premiums, market forces and the Affordable Care Act, shifted the focus away from inpatient treatment and to outpatient care and preventive health. In the not too-distant-future, independent hospitals will be an endangered species not because they are not great or are not attentive to the needs of the community, as they have been for generations. Its a difficult business to be in on a stand-alone basis, Ostrowsky said. Most independent hospitals in New Jersey are evaluating or choosing a system or partner. So those discussions are being conducted by many of the usual suspects," he said. In 2016, Moodys Investor Service identified Trinitas as one of the most vulnerable independent hospitals in the state. Its inner-city location and importance as a safety net for people who lack insurance or rely on Medicaid made Trinitas position that much more precarious, the report said. In its most recent report from October, Moodys maintained the hospitals stable credit rating but with a negative outlook. Trinitas will benefit from its important role as a safety net provider, but will continue to face challenging demographics and a weak payor mix, as well as high local competition, the report said, noting 68 percent of its patients rely on Medicare or Medicaid. It is the dominant player in the city, serving 40 percent of the market, the report said. Local competition will remain a key challenge for the hospital, contributing to declining utilization and stagnant revenue growth, according to Moodys report. Trinitas fared better with Standard & Poors, maintaining the hospitals stable credit rating with a stable outlook, a hospital spokesman noted. Trinitas CEO Gary Horan declined to comment on ongoing negotiations. We continue to evaluate all opportunities that may benefit our patients, hospital and community, Horan wrote in an email. A Catholic hospital, Trinitas is sponsored by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth. The order would have to agree to a merger involving a secular institution. The religious order has been receptive to discussions, Ostrowsky said. A representative from the Sisters of Charity deferred comment to Horan. RWJBarnabas Health is a $5.4 billion not-for-profit network of 11 acute care hospitals and the product of a hospital mega-merger between Robert Wood Johnson University Health and Barnabas Health in 2016. It is second only in size to Hackensack Meridian Health, a $5.5 billion network, which acquired its 12th acute care hospital last year, JFK Medical Center in Edison. Last fall, Saint Peters Healthcare System, the last independent hospital in Middlesex County, announced it was seeking a partnership with a larger hospital system. Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips A teen was shot and killed on a busy Irvington street Wednesday afternoon, officials said. Marquise Jenkins, 18, of Irvington, was shot on the 1100 block of Clinton Avenue around 3 p.m., Essex County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Prosecutor Thomas Fennelly said. The shooting occurred only blocks from Irvington High School around the time school was letting out for the day. Jenkins was rushed to University Hospital in Newark but was pronounced dead at 3:27 p.m.. Fennelly said There are many small stores and at least two houses in the area of the shooting which is close to Springfield Avenue, one of the towns major roads. No arrests had been made as of 9 p.m. Wednesday. The death was under investigation by the Essex County Prosecutors Homicide Task Force and was active and ongoing late Tuesday night, Fennelly said. Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrsheldon Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. A small New Jersey airport with big potential may change hands in an effort to help it expand, if some state lawmakers have their way. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey confirmed Thursday it is looking into taking Atlantic Citys airport under its wing -- a move that would restructure the airports management and take power away from the southern state agency that operates it now. Authority officials said they plan to look into taking the airport over from the South Jersey Transportation Authority (SJTA), which currently operates it. Weve had some internal discussions...we will explore it, said Kevin OToole, Port Authority board chairman, after the agencys board meeting in Jersey City Thursday afternoon. A letter was sent today to the Congressional delegation and to the airport that we will undertake a study. Representatives from the SJTA did not respond to requests for comment Thursday. The decision to study taking over the Atlantic City airport was prompted by requests from the South Jersey Congressional delegation and state legislative leaders, OToole said. Lawmakers cited the Port Authoritys success with Stewart Airport, a small airport it operates in New Windsor, New York. Stewart is one of five airports the PA operates in New York and New Jersey, including Newark airport. Were taking the delegations request very seriously, he said. For a number of years weve heard folks on the New Jersey side talk about how to move along Atlantic City airport and unlock the great potential in South Jersey. The airport is technically outside the geographic boundaries of the Port Authority region, which extends as far south as Monmouth County, but 2007 legislation allows operation of an airport outside the Port Area. The Port Authority ran the Atlantic City Airport earlier in the decade. Even after handing over the reigns to the SJTA, the PA had a previous agreement to provide operational support for the air facility for $500,000 a year, but the deal has since ended. You correctly point out that the demand for air travel in the NewYork/New Jersey region continues to grow and at the Port Authority we are committed to addressing this growing need, OToole wrote to the Congressional delegation. Right now, it is too soon to say how a takeover or other arrangement would be funded or financed, he said. Thats way down road. This is literally the first steps," OToole said. Im going in with open eyes and to see what it entails." Officials are seeking a turn-around to help the South Jersey airport, which has only one carrier, Spirit Airlines. Theres no sense in not trying because its a tremendous facility with the ability to host very large planes and could host a number of planes, U.S. Congressman Jeff Van Drew, D-N.J., said in a letter expressing support for the idea. This is a big airport, and it could be very productive for the area. I think its incumbent upon us to look at every possible way of increasing the economic viability of South Jersey. Last year, Atlantic City Airport ranked 101st out of 169 airports in the country and 676th worldwide in passenger traffic, with 1.164 million passengers using it, according to the Airports Council International Worldwide Airport Traffic Report. That was a 5.7 percent increase from 2017. In 2011, Atlantic City Airport underwent a $27 million terminal expansion, adding 75,000 square feet that created an international gateway, additional passenger gates, baggage carousel improvements and retail space. So far, according to the SJTAs January 2019 monthly figures, the number of passengers that went through the airport was up 8.3 percent, with 93,293 people flying on commercial routes. Last year, aviation was the Port Authoritys top revenue earner. NJ Advance Media Reporter Chris Franklin contributed to this report. Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @commutinglarry. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips. Get the latest updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. EDITORS NOTE: Entrepreneurs everywhere are eyeing the billion-dollar legal weed industry, an economic opportunity unrivaled in modern N.J. history. NJ Cannabis Insider features exclusive and premium weekly content geared toward those interested in the marijuana industry. View a sample issue. By Rick Fuentes Thanks to an aggressive campaign not seen since Big Tobacco marched out a conga line of cinematic heartthrobs to con a whole teenage generation into smoking, the recreational use of marijuana has been rendered harmless to 62 percent of New Jerseyans won over by a persuasive crusade fixated solely upon its benefits. Low public perceptions of its harm, however, do not override the fact that many of those same people (45 percent) get uppity at the mention of a boutique medical or recreational pot shop in their hometown. Furthermore, at least 60 municipalities have struck out ordinances banning such establishments. Marijuana legalization in New Jersey remains a wobbly stool set upon three legs: the promise of a tax windfall; reduced minority arrests for simple possession offenses and the elimination of the black market. Gov. Phil Murphy and Senate President Steve Sweeney continue to cross swords on the percentage to which the sale of an ounce of pot would be taxed. They have remained poles apart, with the governor pressing for 25 percent and the senator favoring half that amount. Following the example of California and Alaska, Senator Sweeney recently attempted to end the standoff with a proposition to tax marijuana by weight. That plan would set a fixed amount of tax on an ounce of marijuana, thereby ensuring a stable current of tax revenues regardless of sales price. This proposal is fundamentally flawed, however. It is intrinsic in the character of legal marijuana economies that as sales increase, prices drop. Closing the price gap between the legal and illegal markets puts those markets in closer competition. This puts pressure on street corner dealers and drug cartels, reducing their profits while risks from law enforcement remain the same. In legalized states such as Oregon and Washington, revenues from marijuana taxes fell along with sale prices. Loss of marijuana revenue impacts the general fund of a state treasury because regulating and enforcing the operations of a marijuana industry must continue regardless of the sale price. When the price of marijuana in Colorado fell precipitously in 2017, it robbed the Mile High state of millions in anticipated revenues. Taxing by weight eliminates the effects of falling sales prices, but it creates a price gap that drives thrifty users towards black market sales. No matter how cheap marijuana gets, illegal growers and street corner dealers will still hold the price advantage. Marijuana legalization will never replace the black market. Priceonomics, a popular blogsite and authoritative price guide for commodities, studied the marijuana legal-illegal price differentials in six states with the largest number of dispensaries and found that Almost everywhere, black market marijuana is less expensive than what is available legally. Former NJ State Police Superintendent Rick Fuentes says that neither legalization nor decriminalization has effectively suppressed the black market sale of marijuana in this country. (Chris Monroe| For NJ Advance Media)(Chris Monroe| For NJ Advance Me In the legalized states, marijuana supply has exceeded legal demand, creating a surplus that lowers prices. Excess product flows into the underground economy. In California, it has been reported that as much as 80 percent of marijuana is bought on the black market, raising four times more money than from legal sales. In Canada, where marijuana has been legal nationally since 2018, insufficient legal supply has surrendered 79 percent of sales to illicit growers and dealers. Where does the oversupply go? Almost $50 million of black market marijuana grown in Oregon has been seized in 37 other states in the past three years. The same can be said for Colorado and Washington, where criminal cartels grow marijuana in plain sight for export to states where it remains illegal. There is plenty of evidence to suggest the axiom that prosperous black markets are one of the significant drawbacks of state legalization initiatives. Popular media outlets and columnists are now beginning to question the efficacy of legalization, casting doubt if benefits outweigh consequences. Some New Jersey legislators are tapping the brakes and considering other alternatives to full recreational use. Instead of lining up behind the governor and the rest of their legislative cohort, they are holding their noses and huddling sotto voce, perhaps seeking a reconsideration of Senator Ron Rices decriminalization bill or even drop kicking the whole issue of recreational use onto the 2020 public ballot. The decriminalization alternative doesnt sit well with New Jerseys marijuana industry-in-waiting, who are feverishly lobbying the state legislature to approve full legalization. According to a 2018 poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University, when decriminalization is offered as an alternative, it draws away considerable public support for legalization. Decriminalization is a public safety and social justice solution, not an entrepreneurial opportunity. It talks of grams, not ounces or pounds. There is no legal growth and sales industry to tax. Ergo, an unopposed black market will continue to monopolize distribution and sales. Neither legalization nor decriminalization has effectively suppressed the black market sale of marijuana in this country. Pundits for legalized marijuana in the state legislature and executive branch must stop promoting the false narrative that allowing recreational use will break the back of, or even reduce, an untaxed and unregulated underground economy. If whats past is prologue, the shadowy black market will continue to plunder a flock of price-conscious users in the broad daylight of legalization. Rick Fuentes is a retired colonel and superintendent of the New Jersey State Police and a concerned resident of Rutherford. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox.Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters. New Jerseys largest state workers union has ratified a new four-year contract that awards annual raises and takes aim at stemming out-of-network health care costs. The Communications Workers of America announced Wednesday that union members agreed to the contract, which will run from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2023. We are proud to announce that our contract was overwhelmingly ratified," Hetty Rosenstein, CWAs state director said in a statement. It is a fair agreement. Once again, weve proven that collective bargaining and workers rights are at the core of American democracy. When the parties negotiate in good faith the results are always better, more long lasting and of greater value than when they are not bargained." As part of the deal with Gov. Phil Murphys administration, CWA members will get 2 percent raises annually, and the two sides agreed to devise a new health care plan that the administration estimates should save the state at least $70 million a year. The new health insurance plan will reduce reimbursements to out-of-network providers. In addition, the state will conceive a health care ombuds position to help state workers choose in-network providers and offer counseling in selecting a health care plan. Under the contract, the formula for determining how much state workers enrolled in this new plan contribute to the cost of their health care will change to a percentage of their pay. They have been paying a percentage of premium thats determined by their salary and plan coverage, equal to at least 1.5 percent of their total pay. Workers in the new CWA PPO will see a reduction in their premiums of between 1 percent and 3 percent of pay, Hetty Rosenstein said, adding that employees enrolled in the Aetna Liberty Plan and the Horizon OMNIA Health Plan whose premiums are set at 75 percent of the new new CWA PPO premiums should also see lowered costs. We did the things that would have the least amount of disruption and the greatest amount of savings to our members, she said. The contract also restores job security language and makes changes to the employee disciplinary process. The CWA represents nearly half of all state employees, including some of the its highest-paid psychiatrists earning $226,000 a year and more than 1,000 full-time employees earning less than $40,000. This deal comes less than a year after Murphy and the CWA closed the books on a long-running contract dispute that spilled over from former Gov. Chris Christies administration, with a deal to pay $148.9 million in back pay raises and retroactive longevity bonuses to some 32,000 workers who had been without a contract since 2015. Murphy, a Democrat, has already accounted for the reduced health care costs in his proposed budget, which he unveiled Tuesday. That budget included about $800 million in reduced spending on employee health care. Much of that is attributed to shifting retired educators to Medicare Advantage, audits and contract rebidding. But the administration also projected it would save $217 million in reduced costs through labor negotiations. Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @samanthamarcus. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook. Two months ago, Meghan Crilly was crossing a Linden street with her friends when she was struck by a red Jeep Grand Cherokee that kept driving. The 35-year-old Fanwood resident and elementary school teacher died 11 days later. And after eight weeks of investigation, authorities announced Wednesday theyve arrested and charged the Linden man they say was behind the wheel. Hed been drinking at a bar celebrating his birthday, authorities say. Ibn Collins, 39, was arrested at his home Tuesday and charged with aggravated manslaughter, death by auto while driving intoxicated within 1,000 feet of a school, hindering apprehension and tampering with evidence, acting Union County Prosecutor Michael A. Monahan announced. Ibn Collins, 39, of Linden, was arrested in connection to the fatal hit-and-run that left 35-year-old Fanwood resident Meghan Crilly dead. (Courtesy UCPO) Collins had been celebrating at a bar in Kenilworth that night and had several drinks before driving back home to Linden, officials said. At the same time, Crilly and her friends had taken an Uber to a bar, where they met with their designated driver. At around 2 a.m. Collins sped through a red light at the intersection of North Wood Avenue and Route 27 and hit Crilly, who was in a crosswalk on North Wood Avenue, Monahan said. Her body flew nearly 140 feet, and Collins did not slow down or stop following the impact, he said. Crilly suffered multiple injuries, including spinal damage, a broken pelvis, broken tibia, lacerated liver, and internal bleeding, and died on Feb. 1 at University Hospital. Meghan Crilly, the 35-year-old woman criticall injured by a hit-and-run driver last weekend died on Thursday. While this arrest doesnt bring her back, we believe its a first step in securing the justice Meghan and her loved ones deserve, Monahan said. In the meantime, as a critically injured Crilly remained hospitalized, prosecutors allege Collins was taking steps to conceal the damage to his car by leveraging his employment at the Brinton Autobody in Westfield to make repairs in an attempt to conceal any trail back to himself. He ordered replacement parts to fix the front bumper and grill of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, allegedly telling his boss hed hit a deer. Investigators traced the damaged bumper of his vehicle to a second hand auto parts facility in Camden, though they did not go into further detail about that part of the investigation. Collins is expected to appear in court Monday, where prosecutors will argue to keep him detained prior to trial due to the seriousness of the charges. He faces up to 30 years in prison. The Union County Sheriffs Office, the New Jersey State Police and Linden Police assisted in the investigation. Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snietomunoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at @snietomunoz. Find NJ.com on Facebook. An Elizabeth man faces up to 30 years in prison after admitting Wednesday he killed his 61-year-old neighbor during an early-morning robbery in 2016. Jimmy Kearney, 20, pleaded guilty Wednesday to first-degree murder in the slaying of Robert Rouse, the Union County Prosecutors Office said in a statement. Prosecutors say Kearney assaulted Rouse on the 400 block of Walnut Street just before 6 a.m. on Oct. 31, 2016, dashed to his home less then a block away and retrieved a gun. When Kearney returned, he found Rosue lying in the street and then shot him in the neck, officials said. Robert Rouse Kearney emptied Rouses pockets, taking his wallet, identification and credit cards, as well as train and bus tickets. Investigators found those items, as well as a .45 caliber handgun and Rouses backpack, after they obtained a search warrant and searched Kearneys home. Keaney also had Rouses DNA on his sneakers when he was arrested, the prosecutors office said. Rouse was a Marine who served in Vietnam, according to his obituary. He worked as a fork lift driver for Brazil Brothers and Associates, a Central Jersey electrical supply store. Kearney is scheduled to be sentenced May 10. He has been in the Union County jail since his arrest. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips New Orleans police arrested a 39-year-old man Wednesday (March 20) in connection to the fatal shooting of a man in the St. Claude neighborhood earlier this month. Kedrick Flemings faces a charge of second-degree murder after police say he fatally shot 45-year-old Arvise Martin on March 17. It was the same day that Arvise Martin started his new job as a cook that he was killed, said his older brother, Charles Martin. Police found Arvise Martin unresponsive, lying in the street near an empty lot in the 1700 block of Desire Street around 12:40 p.m., according to a preliminary report. Five days earlier, Arvise Martin had moved from Dallas back to New Orleans, where his two children an 18-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter live, his brother said. He loved his family, Charles Martin said. He was always supportive of anything that we did. He always expressed his love. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Arvise, one of seven children, grew up in New Orleans, his brother said. Charles Martin said he didnt see his brother often, but he remembered him as a very friendly person. He didnt meet a stranger, Charles Martin said. "He was always engaging new people. Bond for Flemings was set at $350,000 and he was appointed a public defender, jail records show. Coroner IDs 2 men killed in Treme, St. Claude shootings A New Orleans father and son convicted in an attempted armed robbery that killed an armored truck guard in 2017 were both sentenced Wednesday (March 20) to life in federal prison. Armstead and Jerome Kieffer were convicted last October in an attempted armed robbery at Campus Federal Credit Union on Tulane Avenue. Both addressed U.S. District Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle before he handed down their sentences, and both maintained their innocence in the case. Federal prosecutors said Jerome Kieffer and Deltoine Scott tried to rob two armored truck guards as they were servicing ATMs outside the bank on May 31, 2017. Armstead Kieffer acted as a lookout, prosecutors said. James Jimmy McBride was killed in the attempted robbery in an exchange of gunfire. His co-worker fired the fatal shot, according to testimony. McBrides mom, wife and sister addressed Lemelle before the Kieffers were sentenced, each telling the judge Jimmy McBride was a hardworking person who cared tremendously for his family and pets. Scott, 25, pleaded guilty three weeks before the Kieffers went to trial to his participation in the attempted robbery that killed McBride, and to an unrelated armed robbery of an armored truck at a Chase Bank in 2015. Scott testified against his co-defendants, and was sentenced in January to 16 years and eight months in federal prison. Lemelle sentenced both Kieffers to life in prison for their convictions on attempted armed bank robbery resulting in death and use of firearm during a violent crime causing death. He gave each five years for a conspiracy to commit bank robbery conviction. Lemelle sentenced Armstead Kieffer to an additional five years for perjury, and 10 years for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Lemelle said all of Armstead Kieffers sentences would run concurrent. Lemelle gave Jerome Kieffer an additional seven-year sentence for an attempted armed bank robbery conviction stemming from the 2015 Chase Bank armored truck robbery. He ordered that time to run consecutive to the life sentence. Jerome Kieffer labeled Scott a two-time perjurer and liar." He said Scott changed his story three times and only cooperated with prosecutors to avoid a life sentence. Kieffer said he didnt know who participated in the robberies with Scott, but was adamant the co-conspirator was not him. Kieffer said the descriptions the governments witnesses gave to jurors at his trial didnt match his physical description. The armored truck guard who was robbed in 2015 said the gunman was his height -- approximately 5 feet, 10 inches tall -- and Kieffer said hes only 5 feet, 5 inches. In the 2017 robbery, Kieffer said witnesses didnt remember a gunman with dreadlocks. Hes worn his hair in dreadlocks for years, he pointed out, and its chest-length. Im no initiator in this act, he told Lemelle. I did not participate in this act. My dad has nothing to do with this. Kieffer suggested Scott was the mastermind behind the Campus Federal robbery, and he told his dad Scott asked him to participate. Jerome Kieffer said Armstead Kieffer was only in the area of the credit union that day looking for him. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Armstead Kieffer also addressed Lemelle, telling the judge, I was looking for you to not be so biased in your opinions. Before he imposed their sentences, Lemelle denied motions filed by attorneys for both the Kieffers requesting a new trial and a post-verdict motion for acquittal. Jason Williams and Nicole Burdett represented Armstead Kieffer. John Fuller, Kevin Kelly and Gregory Carter represented Armstead Kieffer. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Haller said at Wednesdays hearing the Kieffers were living in a fantasy world in reference to their adamant pleas of innocence. These men were not framed, Haller said. The trial did nothing but cause hurt to their family and to the McBrides. They deserve to spend the rest of their life in prison. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael McMahon prosecuted the case along with Haller. Jimmy McBrides sister, Jillian, said it was hard to sit through the trial and watch the Kieffers smile and laugh together, and tell their family they loved them. Jillian McBride said she was glad the death penalty was off the table in the case because she wouldnt want anyone to go through what her family has been through. But, she said, I do think they deserve life in prison. Slain armored-truck guard was the protector of the family, his sister says Diane McBride said her son wanted to be a police officer, and worked two jobs to support himself and his wife. He was a nine-year cancer survivor, she said, and fought very hard to live. He deserved to be here, she said. A victim-witness coordinator spoke on behalf of McBrides wife, Erica, who appeared via video conference from Washington state. Erica McBride said her life has been hell on earth since Jimmy McBride was killed. People like my husband are a rare find in this world, she said. The world lost its brilliance without him. Correction: This story initially misidentified Jimmy McBrides sister, Jillian, as Joann. Detectives are searching for a silver-colored Ford Expedition seen fleeing the scene of Sundays (March 17) fatal shooting in the St. Claude neighborhood, New Orleans police said. The shooting occurred about 12:40 p.m. and left 45-year-old Arvise Martin dead at the scene in the 1700 block of Desire Street. Officers responding to a call of a male down found Martin lying in the street, unresponsive and with several gunshot wounds to his upper body, police said. Surveillance video showed the silver Expedition, believed to be a 1998-2005 model, leaving the scene. The SUV, deemed a suspect vehicle by the NOPD, appears to have a broken turn signal on its front passenger side. 1 killed in St. Claude shooting Sunday: NOPD Anyone with information on the fatal shooting or the whereabouts of the Expedition pictured above is asked to call NOPD Homicide Detective Rayell Johnson or any homicide detective at 504-658-5300. Anonymous tips may be submitted by calling Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111 or toll-free at 1-877-903-7867. Laura McKnight covers crime and breaking news for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and can be reached at 504-655-6571 or lmcknight@nola.com with tips. Two people were killed Wednesday night (March 20) when a car evaded a traffic stop and crashed into a well-known Broadmoor salon and beauty supply store, setting off a three-alarm fire, according to officials. The two people who died were in the vehicle, NOPD Chief Shaun Ferguson said at the scene. Their genders and ages were unknown. Police initially said a third person, a woman, was killed, but Thursday morning said she had survived. She was getting her hair styled inside Unity 1 Beauty Supply & Hair Salon at Washington Avenue and South White Street when the car crashed into the building, catching it on fire. Update: Woman pulled from burning hair salon survived Six others were injured in the crash and ensuing fire, including a woman, two children, two police officers and a firefighter. The woman and two children were rescued by police from inside of the business and taken to a local hospital, where staff were working to stabilize them Wednesday night, according to Ferguson and New Orleans EMS Director Dr. Emily Nichols. Two police officers suffered from smoke inhalation and were also taken to a hospital, where they were treated and released, officials said. The firefighter, also injured by smoke inhalation, was treated on scene. A total of about 60 firefighters responded to the three-alarm fire, which was not yet under control as of about 10:30 p.m., about two hours after it began, New Orleans Fire Chief Timothy McConnell said. The crash and blaze, which Ferguson called a very unfortunate and tragic incident, occurred about 8:30 p.m., after NOPD 6th District Task Force officers tried to stop what they believed was a stolen car spotted at South Derbigny and Toledano Streets. The vehicle reportedly made a U-turn at the intersection of South Derbigny Street and South Claiborne Avenue and traveled north. The officers then activated their lights in efforts to stop the vehicle but, instead of stopping, the driver accelerated, Ferguson said. At the scene, Ferguson said the officers did at some point disengage." However, when exactly the officers disengaged and how they disengaged as in, whether they stopped pursuing the vehicle along with deactivating their units lights remained under investigation, the chief said. We believe they deactivated their lights and allowed the individuals to go forward, he said. Late Wednesday, police said in a news release that the driver had fled down Toledano at a high rate of speed, at which time the officers were believed to have deactivated their lights and to not have pursued the vehicle." The officers then saw smoke in the distance on Washington Avenue and upon arriving at Washington and South White Street, found the vehicle had crashed into Unity Is two-story salon and beauty supply shop. In rescue mode, they helped pull a woman and two children from the building, Ferguson said. Though officers had disengaged, at least one bystander at the scene, Kevin Kenner, said he saw a police vehicle chasing the car that crashed into the salon. Kenner said he had just come out of a store at the nearby intersection of South Broad and Washington when he saw police following the car, which he said flipped on its side, slid and then caught fire. Firefighters had arrived shortly after the crash to find the salon heavily involved, McConnell said. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Given that the crash occurred after an attempted traffic stop by police, Ferguson said NOPDs force investigation team was on scene as a precaution to analyze the officers roles in the case. A crime camera is also in the area, and NOPDs Public Integrity Bureau will review the footage, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said. The NOPDs vehicle pursuit policy, which was updated in December 2015 with input from the U.S. Department of Justice and federal consent decree monitors, is on the restrictive side compared to some other police departments: It permits officers to chase offenders in vehicles only if the person is suspected of having just committed a violent felony. The scene of the dramatic fire and crash drew dozens of onlookers many of whom were familiar with the salon and, crowded near the yellow tape, lamented the losses caused by the blaze. At least a half-dozen fire trucks, along with police and other emergency vehicles, filled the two cordoned-off blocks of Washington Avenue between South Broad and South Dupre. Onlookers gaped at the heavily damaged and apparently burned vehicle, flipped on its side, wedged between a tree and the salon. About a block away, across South White Street from the salon, sat a light-colored sedan with heavy back-end damage. Pieces of the car were strewn about Washington Avenue. When asked if any other vehicles were involved in the crash, Ferguson noted the presence of the damaged car but said that also remained under investigation. Unity 1 Beauty Supply & Hair Salon has been open for at least 30 years, said Kioka Hampton, niece of owners Beverly and John A. Smith. The business takes up both floors of the building, with the salon upstairs and a barber shop and beauty supply shop on the first floor, she said. Hampton said she received phone calls from several people and rushed over to the salon to make sure her family was safe. This is the staple of hair salons, well-known throughout the city, Hampton said. Cantrell, during a press conference at the scene, expressed sorrow for the loss of those who died, especially at a place known as a haven. A beauty salon is a place of fellowship and real friendship, she said. Anyone with additional information on the crime is asked to call NOPD Traffic Fatality Unit detectives at 504-658-6205 or call Crimestoppers anonymously at 504-822-1111 or toll-free at 1-877-903-7867. Correction: NOPD initially said three people died in the crash and fire. Thursday morning, authorities said two people died. The woman who was rescued from the beauty salon lived. Laura McKnight covers crime and breaking news for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and can be reached at 504-655-6571 or lmcknight@nola.com with tips. Us, Jordan Peeles eagerly anticipated follow-up to his smash hit Get Out, cant help but be compared to that earlier movie. As a politically minded genre exercise combining horror and humor, its utterly of a piece with Peeles obvious fascination with cinematic grammar at its most ritualized and predictable, and what happens when you give it a swift kick in the social conscience. In "Get Out," Peele created a creepy, eerily effective reality-adjacent world in which racial animus and envy played out against "Stepford"-like perfection. In "Us," the setting is a more recognizable present-day America, in which a happy, well-adjusted family is thrust into existential battle with mysterious, suddenly ubiquitous forces. Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke play Adelaide and Gabe Wilson, who with their kids Zora and Jason (Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex) plan to spend a week or two at the family beach house in Santa Cruz. Gabe and the kids are excited -- he just bought a boat and they can't wait to hit the beach -- but Addie is bothered by a creeping sense of unease she can't shake, even when they meet up with their friends Josh and Kitty (Tim Heidecker, Elisabeth Moss). Julianne Moore soars in 'Gloria Bell,' but ... Usually a luminous, delicate presence on screen, Nyong'o here is hooded and wary, her jumpy movements and mistrustful glances darting out from under a curtain of twisted ringlets in her hair. Her entire physicality is one of worry and foreboding, an air of impending doom that is telegraphed by a man carrying a "Jeremiah 11:11" sign in the film's disquieting prologue. Thanks to that opening sequence, a flashback to a traumatic event in Addie's youth, viewers have a dim sense of what's bugging her. But it isn't until four strangers invade the Wilsons' cozy getaway that the truth is revealed. Taking a page from "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" here and the current "Purge" franchise there, Peele creates a tense, terror-filled domestic drama that becomes more brutal and bone-shattering as its life-and-death story unravels. As in "Get Out," he proves as adept with goofy jokes as in stoking fear. In "Us," however, the balance is far more in favor of blood and gore, with the humor showing up as brief, albeit sharply effective, trace elements. All by way of saying that the audience's enjoyment of "Us" is far more dependent on their love of scary movies than on pointed satire, which "Get Out" blended with such elegant finesse. Peele still wants to work out serious ideas in this movie -- about inequality, materialism, envy and disenfranchisement -- but they're far more bluntly expressed. Both simplistic and overcomplicated, "Us" depends on some of horror's most hackneyed cliches and gaps in logic. (By now, shouldn't all movie characters know never to go back into the house and to always stay together?) There are also a few windy speeches explaining why bizarre things keep happening. Viewers will begin to wish that Peele had given his script one more pass, either to pare it down or beef it up. As it stands, "Us" turns out to be an uneven, if intriguing, affair, one that engages a current pop culture interest in doubles ("Orphan Black," "Counterpart") and parallel universes ("Westworld"). Peele loads his movie with recurring motifs, not only in the form of that biblical quote, but also spiders and rabbits (so many rabbits). The symbolism is far from the most interesting thing about the film, though, and it ultimately collapses under the metaphorical weight. Far more compelling are the performances, which are consistently excellent throughout "Us," from Duke's bearish sweetness to Moss and Heidecker's hammily enjoyable turn as a bickering couple from hell. One of the film's chief weaknesses is that there isn't more interaction between the two couples. But it's Nyong'o who is most memorable and astonishing in "Us," delivering a strange, mannered performance whose weirdest details become clearly motivated once Addie's complicated history comes to light. Watchful one moment, monstrous the next, Nyong'o is a force of nature throughout a film that suggests the doppel-apocalypse is right under our collective nose. Full disclosure: "Us" gave me real-life nightmares, a testament to Peele's ability to illuminate the deepest and most dangerous shadow material of the American Dream. Ann Hornaday wrote this review, (c) 2019 The Washington Post. The east bank levee authority approved a $10.5 million contract for design and construction of a new safe house facility that would be used during hurricanes by the staff of the East Jefferson Levee District at its Thursday (May 18) meeting, clearing the way for construction to begin by June. The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East voted unanimously to award a contract for design and construction of the facility to New Orleans-based Sizeler Thompson Brown Architects. The contract also authorizes the levee authority president or chief executive officer to agree to change orders totaling no more than $1 million, if necessary to speed construction. The safe house complex will be built on the lake side of Reverend Richard Wilson Drive in southern Kenner on lots straddling Worth Street, near the Mississippi River and south of Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. Buildings on those lots have been recently torn down. The plan to build a facility that can withstand Category 5 hurricane winds and floodwaters began in 2009, but has faced repeated delays, including by area residents concerned the new building might disrupt their neighborhood. In 2015, design of the project had reached a 65 percent completion level, but at an estimated cost of more than $24 million for a building that included about 40,000 square feet of space, levee authority chief executive Derek Boese told authority board members in February. Environmental news in your inbox Stay up-to-date on the latest on Louisiana's coast and the environment. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up The authority board decided to scrap that version of the project, after a value engineering study and new cost estimate recommended that a smaller building be designed. The new design calls for about 26,000 square feet of space in a building that will be built at an elevation of 28 feet above sea level, or about 25 feet above the ground. Boese said in February that the safe house will double as the squad room for the East Jefferson Levee District's police force during normal operations. The East Jefferson Levee District has sufficient money in its budget to pay for the new building, Boese said then. On Thursday, Boese said the beginning of construction might have to slip, based on whether the Mississippi River remains near flood stage when its supposed to begin. The construction site is near the river levees and Army Corps of Engineers flood fight rules might prohibit the installation of pilings until the river drops. The most expensive coastal restoration project ever attempted in Louisiana will be delayed several months due to a series of permitting, design and engineering setbacks. On Wednesday (Mar. 20), the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority announced the $1.3 billion Mid-Barataria sediment diversion will likely not be completed until sometime in 2021. The CPRA had planned to finish the project in November 2020. The diversion is a cornerstone of the states $50 billion, 50-year Coastal Master Plan. Slated for the Myrtle Grove area of Plaquemines Parish, the diversion would allow a regulated flow of Mississippi River sediment-rich water through the west bank levee and into the Barataria Basin. The levee cuts the basin off from the river, starving it of sediment and nutrients. Since 1985, the basin has lost about 3,000 acres per year. The CPRA believes the diversion will revive wetlands and build new land in the basins increasingly wide expanses of open water. The state is planning a similar project, the Mid-Breton sediment diversion, near Wills Point in Plaquemines for $800 million. Punch a hole in the Mississippi River levee? The pros and cons Brad Barth, the CPRAs diversion manager, said the Mid-Barataria project delay would last several months. He could not estimate a specific number of months. The delay alarmed environmental groups. In a statement on Wednesday, Restore the Mississippi Delta, a coalition of national and Louisiana-based groups, said there is a need to act with urgency that our collapsing coast demands. Restore called on the state to develop measures to avoid further delays. CPRA Chairman Chip Kline said the project is too important to rush. Getting it right is more important than doing it fast, he said at Wednesdays CPRA board meeting. We will be behind schedule, but I will own that all day long. The project was delayed by the 35-day federal government shutdown, which made several regulatory agencies unavailable. The Army Corps of Engineers, Environmental Protection Agency and at least three other agencies are involved in the projects permitting process, Barth said. Environmental news in your inbox Stay up-to-date on the latest on Louisiana's coast and the environment. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up He said the unexpected complexity of developing and testing computer models also mired the process. The models predict the diversions effect on fisheries, flooding and other areas of concern. We need (the models) to be running correctly so the regulators can evaluate the project. Barth said. Producing design images of the diversion proved more time-consuming than initially thought. Barth said the graphics must be understood by a wide range of people, from scientists to politicians to the general public. Some CPRA board members expressed concern about the time and money going into a process that could be halted by federal regulators. Why spend all this money studying it if we dont know if can can build the thing? said Guy McInnis, a board member and St. Bernard Parish president. Its frustrating from a taxpayer point-of-view. For the past 10 years weve been spending money. Plaquemines oil terminal could reduce land-building sediment for Mid-Barataria diversion Board member Bill Bubrig said the project is unpopular in many of the areas it is supposed to help. This is a tough topic in Plaquemines Parish to discuss, said Bubrig, a Plaquemines resident. Shrimpers worry that the diversions will push shrimp into deeper, saltier water. Oyster growers say the diversion will be devastating, likely covering their lucrative oyster beds in sediment. Some communities, including Jean Lafitte, have expressed concerns that the added water in the Barataria Basin will exacerbate flooding problems. Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the estimated cost of the Mid-Breton sediment diversion. It is estimated to cost $800 million. An ugly fight over an audit that found the city of Zachary paid two vendors $3.5 million without having contracts in place has died down some, but the city councilman most upset about the matter has made clear he is not giving up on his quest for Two people are dead after a car, believed to be stolen, crashed into a hair salon at Washington Avenue and S. White Street Wednesday night (March 20) and caused a three-alarm fire, New Orleans police and fire officials said. Update: Woman who was rescued from burning building survived The two killed were in a car NOPD officers were trying to stop. Four other people in the building were rescued and taken to a hospital. Authorities initially said one of the women rescued from inside the salon died, but later said she survived. Two police officers and a NOFD firefighter also suffered from smoke inhalation. NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said police tried to stop what they believed to be a stolen car around 8:30 p.m. When the car sped away, the officers disengaged, Ferguson said. A short time later, the officers saw smoke and discovered the vehicle had crashed into a building, he said. A bystander said he saw the car go airborne, bounce, flip again in the air and slide, bursting into flames. Kevin Kenner said he had just come out of a store at South Broad and Washington avenues when he saw the crash. A heavily damaged light-colored car was on its side, between a tree and the building. Another car, damaged in the rear, was across Washington Avenue. Police did not immediately know if the second car was involved. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up At 9 p.m., smoke was pouring out of the top of the building, and there were more than a half dozen fire trucks and ambulances at the scene. Paramedics with an empty stretcher waited nearby. The New Orleans Fire Department tweeted that firefighters in the photo below were working to rescue a person trapped on the second floor. Unity 1 Beauty Supply & Hair Salon in the building has been open for at least 30 years, said Kioka Hampton, niece of owners Beverly and John Smith. The salon is upstairs and a barber shop and beauty supply shop is on the first floor, she said. The business was open when the fire began. Its a gathering spot for the owners family, Hampton said. This is the staple of hair salons, well-known throughout the city, she said. Washington Avenue was closed from S. Broad Avenue to S. Dupre Street. Correction: NOPD initially said three people died in the crash and fire. Thursday morning, authorities said two people died. The woman who was rescued from the beauty salon lived. Laura McKnight covers crime and breaking news for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and can be reached at 504-655-6571 or lmcknight@nola.com with tips. Today Thunderstorms this morning, then variable clouds during the afternoon with still a chance of showers. Storms may contain strong gusty winds. High 79F. SW winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Tonight Mostly cloudy. Low 52F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph. Tomorrow Partly cloudy skies. High 63F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. U.S. Reps. Joe Wilson from South Carolina and Rick Allen from Georgia held a joint press conference Thursday morning near the riverfront to talk about the fish passage project and the New Savannah Bluff Lock and Dam and what needs to be done to maintain the rivers pool level. Ive never seen the community come together like weve come together on this issue. Allen said. This is a two-state, bicameral bipartisan issue, he said. +2 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers addresses Lock and Dam situation at workshop Residents and leaders from both sides of the Savannah River had a chance to speak with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District during a workshop the Corps held in Augusta on Wednesday. Allen mentioned Wilson has had a meeting with Mark Esper, Secretary of the Army, and said after the public comment period they would meet with the Corps to come up with an agreement. We delivered a letter to the Secretary of the Army expressing our concern about the process and the fact that, you know, the Corps needs to listen to the community. So we went right to the top, Allen said. Wilson said that he, Allen and U.S. Senators from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, have all indicated support for the Water Infrastructure Improvement for the Nation (WIIN) Act, which required that the pool be maintained. Thats what we believe, that the law should be followed, which provides that there will be a pool, that there will be a proper level of water for this extraordinary community, whether it be for recreation, navigation, water use of all kind, Wilson said. Wilson said they support Alternative 1-1, which would retain the dam and provide fish passage on the Georgia side of the river. Since the WIIN Act deauthorized the Lock and Dam, Allen said there would have to be legislation that would repurpose and reauthorize the dam. Quail Mountains in the "Bowling Alley," transferred from BLM to NPS. NPS March 20, 2019 Contact: Abby Wines, 760-786-3221 Contact: Patrick Taylor, 760-786-3279 DEATH VALLEY, CA The largest national park outside of Alaska just got bigger. On March 12, President Trump signed public lands legislation that included several changes to Death Valley National Park. The John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act (Public Law 116-9) transferred approximately 35,000 acres of land from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to the National Park Service. Already nearly the size of Connecticut, Death Valley National Park increased by about 1% to 3,422,024 acres. One part of the transfer is a 6,369-acre lollipop-shaped section of land adjacent to the Big Pine Death Valley Road in the northern part of the park. It includes the Crater Mine, a colorful former sulfur mine. The 28,923-acre Bowling Alley is a long, narrow swath of land on the northern border of Fort Irwin National Training Center. This area includes a portion of the Quail Mountains. About 93% of the park is designated as the Death Valley National Park Wilderness, which is the sixth-largest wilderness area in the nation and the largest outside of Alaska. The Dingell Act added 87,999 acres of wilderness in North Eureka Valley, Panamint Valley, Warm Springs, Ibex, Bowling Alley, and Axe Head. The Act designated 5.3 miles of Surprise Canyon Creek as a Wild and Scenic River. The designation provides further protection to this rare desert creek and adjacent Panamint City, a 1870s silver mining ghost town. The Dingell Act authorizes the operation and maintenance of the existing microwave telecommunications infrastructure on Mormon Peak. AT&T owns this facility, which has been in legal limbo since the land it sits on was designated as wilderness in 1994. With the exception of satellite connections, the Mormon Peak facility relays all land-line telephone, cell phone, and internet connections for Death Valley residents and visitors. The green line indicates Death Valley National Park's former border. 1) Crater Mine 6,369-acre land transfer, 2) Bowling Alley 28,923-acre land transfer and wilderness addition, 3) North Eureka Valley 11,496-acre wilderness addition, 4) Panamint Valley 4,807-acre wilderness addition, 5) Warm Springs 10,485 wilderness addition, 6) Ibex 23, 650-acre wilderness addition, 7) Axe Head 8,638-acre wilderness addition, 8) Surprise Canyon Creek Wild River, and 9) Mormon Peak telecommunication relay facility. www.nps.gov/deva Death Valley National Park is the homeland of the Timbisha Shoshone and preserves natural resources, cultural resources, exceptional wilderness, scenery, and learning experiences within the nations largest conserved desert landscape and some of the most extreme climate and topographic conditions on the planet. About two-thirds of the park was originally designated as Death Valley National Monument in 1933. Today the park is enjoyed by about 1,300,000 people per year. The park is 3,400,000 acres nearly as large as the state of Connecticut. Learn more at Surprise Canyon Creek March 18, 2019 Christopher M. Amidon , 906-482-0984 HOUGHTON, MICH Isle Royale National Park is proud to announce the summer 2019 Teen Artist Exploration selections. This year, two teen artists and their families, along with an artistic mentor, will be traveling to Isle Royale at the same time to explore their art through wilderness. The chosen teen artists are: Abigail Bolli of Whitehall, MI Adelaide Lyons of Ann Arbor, MI Five alternates were also chosen: Allison Clarke of Sussex WI Daniel Grover, of Ann Arbor, MI Kolson Kytta of Chassell, MI Ava Raisanen of Buffalo, MN Madison Teddy of Mohawk, MI The Teen Artist Exploration, beginning its fourth year, received 56 applications from across Michigan and the United States. The high quality of applications made for a rewarding, but difficult jury selection process. The Teen Artist Exploration Jury included all past teen artists, the teen artist mentor, and an Isle Royale National Park representative. The jury examined four application elements: 1) Artistic skill, 2) Creativity, 3) Letter of Recommendation, and 4) The answer to Why Do You Want to Be an Isle Royale Teen Artist. The Isle Royale Teen Artist Exploration provides teens the opportunity to develop their art through experiencing wilderness, and is open to all visual and performing artists, writers, and composers ages 13 to 18 at time of participation. The program is co-sponsored by Isle Royale National Park, Isle Royale and Keweenaw Parks Association, and the Copper Country Community Arts Council. More information about the Teen Artist Exploration can be found on the parks website https://www.nps.gov/isro/getinvolved/teen-artist.htm. www.nps.gov About the National Park Service. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for the 417 parks in the National Park System and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Visit us at www.nps.gov, on Facebook www.facebook.com/nati onalparkservice, Twitter www.twitter.com/natlpa rkservice, and YouTube www.youtube.com/nation alparkservice. March 20, 2019 George Land , 760-367-5507 Park staff and a team from the University of Vermont will be conducting a historic preservation project on the Lost Horse Mill structure that requires temporary road and trail closure for public safety. Lost Horse Mine Trail will be closed Wednesday, March 27, from 6 am to 4 pm. Lost Horse Mine Road, off Keys View Road, will be closed from noon on Tuesday, March 26 to 4 pm on Wednesday, March 27. The Lost Horse Mine and Mill complex are part of the larger cultural landscape, representative of mining history in the area. Mining operations began at the site in 1893 and ran intermittently through 1936. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the 10-stamp mill at Lost Horse was moved to the site in 1895 to process ore from the adjacent mine. The current project will help preserve the historic structure for future generations. Visitors can help protect historic sites in the park like Lost Horse Mine by staying on maintained hiking trails and by leaving all objects as they are found. Firefighter using a drip torch to set a prescribed fire on the prairie. NPS Strong City, Kansas Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve announced its prescribed fire season beginning now through mid-April. Prescribed fire is one method used to promote a healthy prairie and maintain the cultural landscape of the preserve. It is also used by preserve land managers to remove woody and non-native vegetation, promoting native plant and animal diversity. Prescribed fire is a partnership operation involving The Nature Conservancy, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Learn more about fire by going to the preserves website and clicking on the Nature section. Weather conditions must be optimal before prescribed burns can occur. Due to the unpredictability of weather patterns, wind speed and direction, and relative humidity, there is usually not much advanced notice leading up to a prescribed burn. Some trails and areas may be closed during prescribed fire operations (on short notice). Visitors who are hiking or fishing may have their plans interrupted as a result of the burning activity, but this typically does not last more than a day. For safety, visitors are asked to not cross fire lines or venture beyond barricades and signs. The historic buildings and the visitor center will remain open during normal operating hours. Please call the rangers at 620-273-8494 for daily updates, check the Alerts on our website at www. nps.gov/tapr, or check out the Facebook page for Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve is located two miles north of Strong City on Kansas State Highway 177 (the Flint Hills National Scenic Byway) and is a unique public/private partnership between the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy. For more information, visit the preserves Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/NPS.TallgrassPrairie , website at www.nps.gov/tapr , email e-mail us , or call the preserve at (620) 273-8494. Kansas , visit the Conservancys website at To learn more about The Nature Conservancy in, visit the Conservancys website at www.nature.org/Kansas or Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TNCKansas March 20, 2019 Im Jordan Peele. Im the writer, producer, and director of the movie Us. Theres a family in our driveway. So here we have the scene where the tethered family arrives at the Wilson house for the first time. Jason, of course, says theres a family in our driveway. A line designed, giddily, to attempt to be an iconic line, like theyre here from the Poltergeist movie and sort of help congeal this sense of an Amblin-esque predicament with a black family in the center of it. - [heavy breathing] What? Zora, give me your phone. Im not on it. Zora! This is the point in the movie where I want the terror to really kick into a new gear for the audience. One of the techniques that I utilized to get that terror was that all of a sudden we go into real time. The movie before this has been going from some time dashes here and there. When we get into this moment where the four family members are standing holding hands outside, then we go into this sort of fluid we use a lot of the Steadicam with very few edits. Really trying to subliminally signal to the audience that this sort of relentless, real time event has begun and is taking place. Wait, wait, wait, just one sec Gabe. So we see Gabe leave. He goes out. Hes the dad, hes got to deal with it. This is kind of like probably pulled from my own anxieties of being a father and realizing, yeah, you got to man up sometimes. Hi. Can I help you? One of the things in this scene that really inspired me was the scene in Halloween where Michael Myers has the ghost sheet over him. And no matter how many questions hes asked, he just doesnt respond. The less response you get, the more impending and physical, I think, the threat gets. Probably after the second time someone doesnt respond, you know one of yous got to go down. [laughing] Aight, I asked you nice. Now I need yall to get off my property. One of the pieces of this scene that works really well is weve got Winston to this spot where hes code switching. You know, he goes back to some of his roots, as it were, to try and intimidate this mysterious family out there. That maybe if sort of reasoning with them doesnt work, a good old fashioned low register, throwing some bass into his voice, coming out with a little swagger and a bat might work. O.K., lets call the cops. Winston is just remarkable in this scene, and the audience really I think is in this tug of war between feeling the tension ratcheting up and the fear of whats to come and the little bit of a comic relief of watching this kind of goofy dad whos in over his head. Gabe. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. All right. Gabe! I got this. In addition, contrary to the fears of critics, people with expunged records break the law again at very low rates. Indeed, we found that their crime rates are considerably lower than those of Michigans general adult population . That may be in part because expungement reduces recidivism. But another likely reason is that expungement recipients arent high risk to begin with. Like most states, Michigan requires a waiting period before expungement (five years after a persons last interaction with law enforcement). Research in criminology indicates that people with records who go several years without another conviction are unlikely to offend again. To be sure, if expanded laws cut down waiting periods or otherwise loosened eligibility requirements, the broader pools of recipients might have a higher baseline crime risk. But even then, theres simply no reason to believe that expungement would increase those baseline crime risks. Again, if anything, access to jobs, housing and other benefits should reduce overall levels of crime. So heres the bad news: Hardly anyone gets expungements. According to information Michigan State Police provided to us, Michigan grants about 2,500 a year but thats a drop in the bucket compared to the number of criminal convictions there each year. Precise numbers are hard to come by, but we estimate that there are hundreds of thousands annually. Relatively few people with records meet the legal requirements but thats not the only problem. Even among those who do qualify, we found that only 6.5 percent received expungements within five years of becoming eligible. Michigan judges have discretion to reject applications, but thats not the big reason for this low rate. Rather, over 90 percent of those eligible dont even apply. Given the large potential benefits of expungement, why wouldnt someone apply? We interviewed expungement lawyers and advocates for people with records, whose insights pointed to a clear set of explanations. Most people dont know they can get an expungement, or dont know how to do it, and dont have lawyers to advise them. The process is long and complicated, requiring visits to police stations and courthouses. The fees and costs (which in Michigan usually total close to $100, not including transportation and time away from work) are a barrier for people in poverty. And people with records have often had painful experiences with the criminal justice system, making the prospect of returning to it for any reason daunting. The low rate of applications for expungement is consistent with broader findings about the difficulties that poor and middle-class Americans face in dealing with the legal system. When the state makes it too hard or costly for citizens to exercise a right or opportunity, its not that different from denying that right or opportunity. Most people wont be able to jump through all those hoops. When a terrorist massacred 50 people at two New Zealand mosques last week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern immediately grasped the nettle. I can tell you one thing right now, she told a news conference. Our gun laws will change. Thats what effective leadership looks like. New Zealands cabinet has now agreed in principle to overhaul those laws, experts are reviewing ways to make the country safer from firearms and, Ardern promised, within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism, we will have announced reforms. Contrast that with the United States, where just since 1970, more Americans have died from guns (1.45 million, including murders, suicides and accidents) than died in all the wars in American history (1.4 million). More Americans die from guns every 10 weeks than died in the entire Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined, yet we still dont have gun safety rules as rigorous as New Zealands even before the mosques were attacked. The N.R.A. (not to be confused with the vast majority of gun owners) will turn to its old smoke-and-mirrors standby, arguing that the killers hate, not his guns and bullets, were the real problem. In 2003, when Trump wanted to borrow another wad of cash, Deutsche Bank invited potential bond investors to come in and hear his pitch. Tons of people responded. The problem, as Enrich reports, was that the vast majority just wanted to get a glimpse of a celebrity and had no plans on entrusting him with their money. See? Sometimes the system works. However, eventually, the bankers did manage to find some buyers. After which Trump defaulted. And back again! Deutsche Bank gave him a $640 million loan for a skyscraper he wanted to build in Chicago. The bankers must have been nervous, but Trump made a great sales pitch he even promised to put Ivanka in charge of the project. Think about this. What was Ivankas best-known project to date? Jared. At this point the bank did a review of Trumps claim that he was worth about $3 billion and discovered it was more like $788 million. But hey. Hes friends with Mike Tyson. The skyscraper got built, but nobody seemed to want to live there. Trump, who had personally guaranteed $40 million of the loan, then went to court, pointing to a clause in the contract that said he wouldnt have to cough up the money in the event of a natural disaster. And what about the recession? Was that a natural disaster or what? Onward. More loans from Deutsche Bank. Some of which he used to pay back Deutsche Bank. Nobody seemed to think that was crazy. So, whats the problem here? Anat Admati, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, said she found it shocking that a corporation the size and complexity of Deutsche Bank is so poorly governed. The unusually large numbers are what caused agents in the Border Patrols Rio Grande Valley sector this week to release some migrant families at an early stage, the agency said. The releases bypassed the usual procedure in which newly arrived migrants are handed over after initial processing to another federal agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which may detain them or release them with some requirement that they will show up for future court appearances. Instead, migrants traveling in families are being released directly by Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrols parent agency, after being given papers instructing them to show up at a later date in immigration court. Local officials were told that Border Patrol facilities in the area were over capacity by about 2,100 migrants. The Border Patrol said in a statement that the recent increase in apprehensions led to a limited availability of space at the agencys facilities in the Rio Grande Valley sector. Out of concern for the safety of officers and migrants, the agency said it had begun to release families after giving them a notice to appear in immigration court. R.G.V. Sector will continue to coordinate with state and local stakeholders and nongovernmental organizations while these temporary measures are in place, the agency said. The recent releases resembled a similar series of unannounced mass releases of migrants late last year in El Paso and San Diego. This time, however, federal immigration agencies appeared to be coordinating more closely with local officials, who in December had been caught off guard. The mass release in McAllen has caused a ripple effect along the Texas border. Officials in Brownsville, 60 miles east of McAllen, were told by Border Patrol officials to expect releases there in the coming days as well. It appeared that the Border Patrol intended to ease pressure on the McAllen shelter network by putting migrants on buses and dropping them off in Brownsville. President Trump said Wednesday that he would support the public release of the special counsel report on possible Russian ties to his 2016 campaign, telling reporters that Attorney General William P. Barr should let it come out. Mr. Trump, who declined last month to commit to making the results of the investigation public, said tens of millions of Americans would want to read the report prepared by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Let people see it. Thats up to the attorney general, Mr. Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. He later added: There was no collusion. There was no obstruction. There was no nothing. [Update: Mueller delivers report on Russia investigation to attorney general.] The law does not require the Justice Department to publicly release a report on the special counsel investigation, and in the past the president has said he would not interfere in the departments decision about whether to do so. WASHINGTON The Defense Departments inspector general said on Wednesday that it was investigating complaints that the acting defense secretary, Patrick M. Shanahan, had been promoting his former employer, Boeing, and disparaging its military contractor competitors. The investigation will examine complaints filed last week by a watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Dwrena K. Allen, a spokeswoman for the inspector generals office, said that investigators had informed Mr. Shanahan of the inquiry. [Sign up for the weekly At War newsletter to receive stories about duty, conflict and consequence.] Mr. Shanahan told lawmakers last week that he supported an investigation. The investigation complicates what is already an uphill battle for Mr. Shanahans effort to become the next permanent defense secretary. As recently as last week, Defense Department officials believed that President Trump was about to formally nominate Mr. Shanahan for the job left vacant by Jim Mattis, who resigned in December. What Mr. Trump Said John McCain received a fake and phony dossier. Did you hear about the dossier? It was paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton. Right? And John McCain got it he got it. And what did he do? He didnt call me. He turned it over to the F.B.I., hoping to put me in jeopardy. This is misleading. Senator John McCain did obtain a copy of the so-called Steele Dossier, which outlined a range of often salacious but unproven misdeeds by President Trump and his associates and he did turn it over to the F.B.I. but this occurred after the 2016 presidential election. The information provided by Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier, had already reached F.B.I. agents investigating Mr. Trump in September, and he met with agents in October. What Mr. Trump Said McCain didnt get the job done for our great vets and the V.A. And they knew it. Thats why, when I had my dispute with him, I had such incredible support from the vets and from the military. The vets were on my side because I got the job done. I got Choice, and I got accountability. This is misleading. Mr. Trump did sign reforms to the Veterans Choice health care program. He also signed a law to encourage whistle-blowing and made it easier to fire bad employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs. But the Veterans Choice Act, which created the Veterans Choice program and allowed the V.A. to penalize or remove problematic workers, was first signed into law in 2014. And it was Mr. McCain and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, then the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, who sponsored the Senate version of the bill. Veterans and veterans groups have certainly criticized Mr. McCain over specific issues during his long career, but many took Mr. McCains side when Mr. Trump attacked him during the 2016 election. ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia Ethiopian Airlines surpassed many carriers by becoming one of the first to install a simulator to teach pilots how to fly the new Boeing 737 Max 8, but the captain of the doomed Flight 302 never trained on the simulator, according to people close to the airlines operations. The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Ethiopian Airlines had not authorized disclosure of the information, said the carrier had the Max 8 simulator up and running in January, two months before Flight 302 crashed. Boeing has said that experienced 737 pilots needed little training for the new Max 8, an assertion that has now come under close scrutiny by regulatory officials and pilots at other airlines. Two of the planes have fatally crashed in the past five months, and regulators around the world grounded all Max 8s last week. The pilot of Flight 302, Yared Getachew, who had 8,000 hours of flying experience including on the 737, took a refresher course on a different simulator in late September and early October, according to one person familiar with the airline, and was not due for another round of simulator training until after the crash on March 10. MAPUTO, Mozambique The fierce winds and torrential rains slammed into three of the poorest countries on earth, upending the lives of more than one million people in a matter of minutes. Then the floods from Cyclone Idai came and stayed. Nearly a week after southern Africa was hit by one of the worst natural disasters in decades, it was all rescue workers could do to try to reach the victims, let alone count them. People were clinging to trees, desperately waiting for some form of rescue. Around them, the remnants of homes sat in piles, collapsed as easily as if they had been houses of cards. Hundreds of thousands of people in Mozambique alone were displaced. And everywhere there was a vast inland sea where once there had been land. This is now a water operation, a fellow aid worker told Matthew Cochrane, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Mr. Alpers said the challenge for New Zealand would mainly be getting the ammunition and guns that already exist out of circulation. Half of Australias states had some kind of gun registration plan in place before the 1996 reforms, making it easier for the authorities to know what weapons were out there and what needed to be brought in. New Zealand only registers 4 percent of its weapons. According to the police, about 250,000 people in the country own an estimated 1.2 million to 1.5 million firearms. It is unclear how many of them would be affected by the ban. New Zealand is at a considerable disadvantage to countries that have had registries, because theres no way of tracing the firearms because they dont know whos got them, Mr. Alpers said. Were relying entirely on the honesty of the gun owner to turn it in. Ms. Ardern said that fair compensation would be paid to all those who participate. Noting that there would be some limited exceptions for specific purposes, especially in rural areas, she said she expected the new law to be in place by April 11, the end of Parliaments next session. In the interim, as of Thursday afternoon, a change in regulations would alter the licensing rules for the weapons that would eventually be banned. To avoid a rush on purchases, weapons that now require a basic A Class license will fall under an E Class gun license, which is already much harder to obtain, and which the prime minister said would now be impossible to get. I can assure people there is no point in applying for such a permit, she said. [Read more about the victims of the attack, who spanned generations and nationalities, and their families struggle for closure.] When the Islamic State raised its black flag over the Syrian city of Raqqa in early 2014, it began its transformation from fringe regional player to fearsome global threat. By the end of that year, it had seized large stretches of territory in Iraq and Syria, creating a rogue state the size of Britain. Now, the last of that territory a sliver of land along the Euphrates River in southeastern Syria has been retaken. Thousands of fighters remain in the region, but they have gone underground, carrying out quick strikes in the region and continuing to promote their ideology worldwide. Here are some of the major moments in the groups evolution: A fringe group rises to major player. The Islamic State traces its roots to Al Qaeda in Iraq, an offshoot of the terrorist group that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. The Iraqi affiliate started an insurgency that pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007, before it suffered defeat at the hands of American troops and local militias. By 2013, remnants of the Qaeda affiliate had rebranded themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and had identified opportunities in Syria, which was in the third year of its civil war. The Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, an Iraqi, was the architect of the groups push to seize territory and declare its own state. Our guide to dance performances happening this weekend and in the week ahead. BALLET HISPANICO at the Joyce Theater (March 26-27, 7:30 p.m.; March 28, 8 p.m.; through March 31). This troupe offers three works: Along with the return of Sombrerisimo, Annabelle Lopez Ochoas exploration of identity with hats that has an all-female cast this season, the program is rounded out by two premieres that look at issues of migration, immigration and assimilation. Homebound/Alaala, by the Filipino-American choreographer Bennyroyce Royon, takes on topics that include female resilience and overcoming hardship, and Edwaard Liangs El Viaje, set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams, focuses on the Chinese diaspora. 212-242-0800, joyce.org BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (March 27-30, 7:30 p.m.). The Israeli company returns to New York with Ohad Naharins Venezuela his first trip back to BAM since stepping down as the artistic director at Batsheva. Divided into two 40-minute acts and set to Gregorian chants, tango and rap, the esteemed Naharin explores what freedom of choice means today as he explores movement and the content it represents. One thing is certain: Gaga, Naharins rich movement language, will be front and center. 718-636-4100, bam.org ANN CARLSON AND RIRIE-WOODBURY DANCE COMPANY at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University in Montclair, N.J. (March 28-29, 7:30 p.m.; through March 31). As part of Peak Performances, Carlson, a choreographer and performance artist, teams up with Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company for her evening-length Elizabeth, the Dance. In this poetic, humorous tribute to modern dance, Carlson looks at the history of the art form, as well as the layers of information that a dancer holds in her or his body, to delve into the theme of homage. 973-655-5112, peakperfs.org In fact, we dont know for certain what his thinking was, and probably never will. Left with suspicions, I still find the Race Riot pictures stirring. In part, this is because their images are embedded in my personal history, as they were in Warhols, and because theyre reminders of a national crime that has yet to be stopped. Mustard Race Riot seems designed to accommodate its endurance. The painting is a diptych, with the right panel left empty, as if reserved for images of violence yet to come. Do I love this painting? Love is not a word I would use to describe my regard for Warhol, which is high. He and his art are too trouble-makingly elusive and embrace-aversive for that. But this is true of some of the best history painters over the centuries Goya, Gericault, Turner and a history painter is what Warhol is. Its a tough job, but every era in every culture needs someone to do it. And for late-20th-century and early 21st-century America, Warhol, like it or not, is the one. He still has his hand on our pulse, a hand encased in a latex glove. Andy Warhol From A to B and Back Again Through March 31 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, Manhattan; 212-570-3600, whitney.org. The exhibition travels to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (May 18-Sept. 2) and the Art Institute of Chicago (Oct. 20-Jan. 26, 2020). BETYE SAAR: KEEPIN IT CLEAN at the New-York Historical Society (through May 27). Saar has been making important and influential work for nearly 60 years. Yet no big New York museum has given her a full retrospective, or even a significant one-person show, since a 1975 solo at the Whitney Museum of American Art. As this exhibition demonstrates, the institutional oversight is baffling, as her primary themes racial justice and feminism (her 1972 breakthrough piece, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima, merges the two by transforming the racist stereotype of the smiling black mammy into an armed freedom fighter) are exactly attuned to the present. (Cotter) 212-873-3400, nyhistory.org SCENES FROM THE COLLECTION at the Jewish Museum. After a surgical renovation to its grand pile on Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Museum has reopened its third-floor galleries with a rethought, refreshed display of its permanent collection, which intermingles 4,000 years of Judaica with modern and contemporary art by Jews and gentiles alike Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and the excellent young Nigerian draftswoman Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. The works are shown in a nimble, nonchronological suite of galleries, and some of its century-spanning juxtapositions are bracing; others feel reductive, even dilettantish. But always, the Jewish Museum conceives of art and religion as interlocking elements of a story of civilization, commendably open to new influences and new interpretations. (Farago) 212-423-3200, thejewishmuseum.org TOLKIEN: MAKER OF MIDDLE-EARTH at the Morgan Library & Museum (through May 12). J. R. R. Tolkien did more than write books like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy; he invented an alternate reality, complete with its own geography, languages, religion and an era-spanning history. This exhibition of his artwork, letters, drafts and other material reminds visitors that the stories Tolkien wrote, however impressive, represent only a fraction of his efforts, and it highlights his unparalleled ability to create an immersive experience using only words and pictures. After a visit you, too, may find yourself believing in Middle-earth and the hobbits, elves, dwarves, orcs and wizards that live there. (Peter Libbey) 212-685-0008, themorgan.org T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR at the American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9, 2020). Everyones favorite 18,000-pound prehistoric killer gets the star treatment in this eye-opening exhibition, which presents the latest scientific research on T. rex and also introduces many other tyrannosaurs, some discovered only this century in China and Mongolia. T. rex evolved mainly during the Cretaceous Period to have keen eyes, spindly arms and massive conical teeth, which could bear down on prey with the force of a U-Haul truck; the dinosaur could even swallow whole bones, as affirmed here by a kid-friendly display of fossilized excrement. The show mixes 66-million-year-old teeth with the latest 3-D prints of dino bones, and also presents new models of T. rex as a baby, a juvenile and a full-grown annihilator. Turns out this most savage beast was covered with believe it! a soft coat of beige or white feathers. (Farago) 212-769-5100, amnh.org NARI WARD: WE THE PEOPLE at the New Museum (through May 26). The persistent and liberating message in Wards sculpture and room-size installations is that art can be made from virtually anything. In this midcareer retrospective, anything means old carpets, plastic bags, bottles, zippers, bed springs, keys and furniture. Although the exhibition includes a number of large installations, Mr. Ward is best as a creator of curious and discrete sculptures, ones that remind us that our world is filled with potentially magical objects. We enter museums expecting to be transformed, but if we shift our perspective and look around us, well see that everyday life is really just art waiting to happen. (Schwendener) 212-219-1222, newmuseum.org Last Chance VOICE OF MY CITY: JEROME ROBBINS AND NEW YORK at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (through March 30). The choreographer of West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof was born a little over 100 years ago, but this exhibition is so much more than a centenary obligation; its an openhearted, deeply moving showcase of Robbinss work, notes and diaries, full of the joy and anxiety of postwar Manhattan. Robbins, born Jerry Rabinowitz, made creditable paintings and drawings as a teenager, and in his 20s he hit it big with Fancy Free, set to a syncopated score by Leonard Bernstein, and evoked here through original footage and Robbinss sketches of jumping and prancing seamen. He bullied dancers, and infuriated friends when he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, but his engrossing journals, rich with watercolors and watery notes to self, reveal the intense self-doubt that his choreography obscured. What Robbins loved most was New York, the city that was his muse and his helpmeet and that has been transformed beyond recognition from the days of Jets and Sharks. (Farago) 917-275-6975, nypl.org ANDY WARHOL FROM A TO B AND BACK AGAIN at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through March 31). Although this is the artists first full American retrospective in 31 years, hes been so much with us in museums, galleries, auctions as to make him, like wallpaper, like the atmosphere, only half-noticed. The Whitney show restores him to a full, commanding view, but does so in a carefully shaped and edited way, with an emphasis on very early and late work. Despite the shows monumentalizing size, its a human-scale Warhol we see. Largely absent is the artist-entrepreneur who is taken as a prophet of our market-addled present. What we have instead is Warhol for whom art, whatever else it was, was an expression of personal hopes and fears. (Cotter) 212-570-3600, whitney.org If it werent for the Met Breuer, New Yorkers might never see exceptional shows like Siah Armajani: Follow This Line. Its career survey of this American artist is well-timed for an era of sundering moral confusion and offers ways forward from it. Mr. Armajani was born in Iran in 1939, arrived in the United States as a political exile in 1960, and has been here ever since. For more than 50 years, he has been producing public sculpture across the country theres a wonderful example installed in Brooklyn to coincide with the Met show yet his name still has low recognition value, even within the art world. In part, he is responsible for this. He has chosen to spend his entire career in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, rather than in the art capitals of either coast. And his architecturally scaled structures, though rich in visual texture, are far from being eye candy. Most of them seem to say welcome, when theyre really saying not so fast. Indeed, the Met Breuer show, his first major retrospective in New York (it debuted at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis), requires some effort, in the form of looking and label reading, to become fully accessible. Its well worth the effort. To take in the full span of his art at a lingering, inquiring pace means you get to spend time with a sharp social thinker, a wry (and increasingly melancholic) metaphysician and a plain-style visual poet. EAST LANSING, Mich. The trumpeter Etienne Charles stood in a Michigan State University classroom on a recent Tuesday evening about 2,000 miles north and 50 degrees Fahrenheit south of his native Trinidad and spoke to the undergrad big band that he directs here. The horns were having trouble nailing the inflections on Chega De Saudade, the bossa nova standard, so Mr. Charles sang the lines out loud, vocalizing a kind of hand-drum pattern. Then he told the horns to play back their parts, this time with the syncopation sharpened up. Right now were a little too far on the straight side, he said. Emphatic rhythm has always been the engine oil of a jazz big band, but Mr. Charles has original ways of addressing that history, inherited from his own homeland traditions. His earliest instructors taught primarily by ear, and built from the rhythm up. Whatever songs we were singing in the choir whether it was a Caribbean folk song, a chorale, a hymn we would always learn the lyrics first and then say the lyrics in rhythm. And then after that they would teach us the notes, he said over lunch at a restaurant near campus earlier that day. We were always rhythmically on, as a result. Mr. Charles, 35, has been uniting Trinidadian methods with jazz ideas since he moved to the United States in 2002. Hes found that if you let them, they combine organically. Along the way, Mr. Charles has developed a magnetic sound on trumpet clear and mellifluous, with a deep sense of economy; redolent of both Roy Hargrove and Chocolate Armenteros and hes becoming a composer to be reckoned with. Last year he became the newest member of the SFJAZZ Collective, contemporary jazzs premier all-star band. ALTERNATIVE GUITAR SUMMIT at various locations (March 21, 25 and 27-28, 7:30 p.m.). Organized by the guitarist Joel Harrison, the annual Alternative Guitar Summit gathers some of the most talented six-string improvisers in jazz, post-rock and world music. This years festival begins on Thursday with a 50th-anniversary celebration of the music of Woodstock, at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village. Harrison will play music from the Richie Havens and the Grateful Dead songbooks alongside the Everett Bradley Choir. The guitarist Ben Monder and the vocalist Jo Lawry will collaborate on music by John Sebastian and the Band. And the guitarist Nels Cline, whos best known for his work in Wilco, will revisit Santanas iconic Woodstock performance. The summits second concert takes place on Monday, when Cline, Leni Stern and others will pay tribute to the esteemed guitarist (and multi-instrumentalist) Ralph Towner at Drom, in the East Village. It concludes on Wednesday and Thursday at Jazz Standard with solo shows from Towner himself. (On the last two nights, there will be second sets at 9:30 p.m.) alternativeguitarsummit.com AARON DIEHL TRIO at the Baruch Performing Arts Center (March 28, 8 p.m.). Diehls piano playing has the same courtly, dapper flare as his wardrobe (hes usually attired in a crisp, dark suit, sometimes topped off with a pair of thick-framed glasses). Picking up the mantle of midcentury greats like Bud Powell, Barry Harris and Cedar Walton, he espouses the ideal of jazz as Americas classical music, whether hes performing standards or his own neo-traditionalist compositions. He may be best known for his work alongside Cecile McLorin Salvant, an eminent young vocalist, but at Baruch the spotlight will fall squarely on Diehl and his trio, which features the bassist David Wong and the drummer Aaron Kimmel. They will be playing music from his most recent album, Space, Time, Continuum, as well as some new pieces. 212-352-3101, baruch.cuny.edu/bpac FIRE! AND MADALYN MERKEY at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center (March 28, 8 p.m.). The tenor saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, one of Europes most uncompromising free improvisers, angles toward the void in Fire!, a trio that includes the bassist Johan Berthling and the drummer Andreas Werliin. Whether scrawling an illegible smear of notes across the top of a pounding beat or erupting in fury as the rhythm dissolves beneath him, Gustafsson keeps the intensity high and your ears alight even when his tone skews murky and dark. Fire! shares the bill here with Merkey, whose semi-ambient electronic music guides listeners into a kind of dreamlike state. This concert Fire!s first ever in New York is presented by the nonprofit organization Blank Forms. blankforms.org DEREK GRIPPER at Roulette (March 23, 8 p.m.). Gripper, a South African guitarist, has developed a virtuoso approach to playing Malian music that was originally composed for instruments such as the kora (a 21-string instrument, somewhere between a harp and a guitar) and the ngoni (a possible progenitor of the banjo). He fingerpicks his classical guitar in percussive swirls, producing a sound thats as enlivening as it is hypnotic. His repertoire includes music by the kora master Toumani Diabate and the guitarist Ali Farka Toure, as well as folk songs from South Africas Western Cape. This concert kicks off the fifth annual A World in Trance festival, which spotlights music from around the world with explicitly spiritual overtones. 917-267-0368, roulette.org MANUEL VALERA AND THE NEW CUBAN EXPRESS BIG BAND at Terraza 7 (March 28, 9 p.m.). Valera, a Cuban-born pianist with a blazingly fluent right hand and a mellifluous compositional style, has long led the New Cuban Express, a midsize band that integrates elements of contemporary New York jazz with Afro-Cuban forms. On Thursday he will premiere a big-band iteration of the ensemble, featuring the vocalist Sofia Rei and the alto saxophonist Roman Filiu, plus 16 other instrumentalists. 347-808-0518, terraza7.com WEBBER/MORRIS BIG BAND at the Jazz Gallery (March 22, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.). The tenor saxophonist and flutist Anna Webber recently put out Clockwise, an album full of atonality and friction and discomfited momentum not to mention, some of New Yorks premier improvising musicians. Angela Morris, a fellow saxophonist, shares some of Webbers style, while also drawing more heavily on the influence of Impressionist composers and jazzs most ancient styles. They have been playing their ambitious original compositions in this big band for a few years, and supposedly theres an album on the way but so far all we have to show for it are a few YouTube clips and a bit of buzz on the scene. To really hear the Webber/Morris Big Band, youve got to go in person. 646-494-3625, jazzgallery.nyc GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous nights highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If youre interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Whos He Going to Go After Next? President Trump this week returned to one of his old hobby horses: attacking John McCain. His latest remarks about the senator and war hero, who died last year from brain cancer, drew rebukes from the McCain family and some exasperated ridicule from Trevor Noah. Trump declared during a speech on Wednesday that he had never liked him much, then went on to exaggerate his involvement in McCains full-dress funeral. I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve, Trump said. I dont care about this. I didnt get thank you. Thats O.K. Murder! Espionage! Fashion! Weve got a fun grab-bag of books this week, from true crime (The Trial of Lizzie Borden) to memoir (Isaac Mizrahis I.M., Aatish Taseers The Twice-Born) to three different takes on groundbreaking women: an anthology of Andrea Dworkins feminist writings, a group study of five female novelists and a biography of the woman who organized a spy ring for the French Resistance. In fiction, Helen Oyeyemi has a new novel, and we recommend story collections from David Means and Christos Ikonomou alongside a debut novel from Novuyo Rosa Tshuma that explores Zimbabwes troubled history. Finally, something from one of our own: The Timess top newsroom lawyer, David McCraw, has written a spirited examination of truth, journalism and the First Amendment as it plays out in his job and in the culture at large. That book, Truth in Our Times, is a good bet for Times readers as much as Times employees, and for anyone who cares about the future of a free press. Gregory Cowles Senior Editor, Books Twitter: @GregoryCowles THE TRIAL OF LIZZIE BORDEN: A True Story, by Cara Robertson. (Simon & Schuster, $28.) Lizzie Borden, accused of killing her father and stepmother with an ax in 1892, has gone down in history as villain, victim, punch line and the media sensation of the Gilded Age. This new book about the case was nearly 20 years in the making, and it is enthralling, our critic Parul Sehgal writes. Robertson does not work for the prosecution or the defense. She marshals us to no conclusion. She only reopens the case and presents the evidence afresh, all those alluring details out of an Agatha Christie novel. LAST DAYS AT HOT SLIT: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin, by Andrea Dworkin. Edited by Johanna Fateman and Amy Scholder (Semiotext(e), $17.95.) Andrea Dworkin, who died in 2005, at 58, was determined to show how women could never be free as long as they lived in a world that was structured by mens ambitions, needs and desires. This new anthology collects pieces of her essays, novels and previously unpublished works. A new generation of feminists have reclaimed her, our critic Jennifer Szalai writes, seeing in Dworkins incandescent rage a source of illumination, even as they bristle at some of her specific views. This new anthology of her work, shows that the caricature of her as a simplistic man-hater, a termagant in overalls, could only be sustained by not reading what she actually wrote. GINGERBREAD, by Helen Oyeyemi. (Riverhead, $27.) For her new novel a meditation on family and what it means to be part of a community Oyeyemi has taken old fairy tales, seasoned them with 20th-century history and pop-culture references, and frosted them with whimsical detail. Her sentences are like grabbing onto the tail of a vibrant, living creature without knowing what youll find at the other end, Eowyn Ivey writes in her review. The novel is jarring, funny, surprising, unsettling, disorienting and rewarding. It requires the reader to be quick-footed and alert. And by the end, it is clear what has grounded the story from the start the tender and troubling humanity of its characters. SAVAGE FEAST Three Generations, Two Continents and a Dinner Table (A Memoir With Recipes) By Boris Fishman We should all be so lucky as to cook for Boris Fishmans grandfather, a macher with a liquor cabinet full of excellent cognac and a jovial disregard for the dietary restrictions recommended by the agency that assigned him Oksana, his home health aide. Oksana is the hub of Savage Feast, Fishmans memoir of food, family and identity. Her tables were the sublime distraction that allowed the old, well-grooved grievances to occasionally make room for something else. Having immigrated to America from Minsk in 1988 at the age of 9, Fishman feels the tension of being a liminal immigrant. He envies people with generations behind them in America all that compound achievement. But he also keeps his sense of otherness sharply tuned: He wants it both ways. Fishman would like to pass for native, to become wholly American, but he cant resist foreign habits, like bringing delicious tin-foil-wrapped treats to eat on a plane: Pieces of lightly fried whiting. Chicken schnitzels in an egg batter. Tomatoes, which I ate like apples. Fried cauliflower. Pickled garlic. Marinated peppers, though these could be leaky. Sliced lox. Salami. Image Oh, Fishman is hungry. Dont doubt it for a second. At a Passover Seder, overwhelmed by cognac and Oksanas tsimmes, he recalls a piece of advice he once read: that to achieve moderation in alcohol one should drink only when hungry. But I couldnt stop being hungry. If I could pause for 10 minutes, perhaps my brain would catch up to my stomach, but I couldnt manage to pause for that long. Fishman eats as his family eats: You come, he tells himself, from a people who eat. But the captain of the Max 8 that crashed this month in Ethiopia shortly after takeoff, killing all 157 people on board, never trained on the simulator, according to people close to the airlines operations . Another Max 8 crashed five months ago in Indonesia in a similar way. Background: Even after the crash in Indonesia, Boeing had said that pilots experienced with older models of the 737 did not need additional simulator training, and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration agreed. That thinking is set to come under official scrutiny. Also, many pilots were not originally informed of the existence of an automated system suspected of playing a role in both crashes. Top F.A.A. officials were not aware of the software system and special attention was not paid to it, according to people with knowledge of the safety certification process for the Max 8. The plane is now grounded worldwide as Boeing races to come up with a fix to the system, which can push the planes nose down if it approaches a stall. It was sold as a next generation aircraft. But it has now been involved in two fatal crashes in just five months. The Boeing 737 Max 8 entered the market in 2017, a part of the 737 Max class, and became an instant hit. Within the first six months, more than 4,000 Boeing 737 Max 8 planes had been ordered. It quickly became the companys best-selling plane ever. The new model was advertised as a rare win-win for both airlines and passengers. Its going to give them max efficiency, which leads to profitability; max reliability, and to the flying public: max passenger appeal. The demand for something new. Boeing debuted the new planes in response to market pressures. In late 2010, Boeings archrival, Airbus, had just announced a new fuel-efficient version of its best selling A320. Boeing countered with the introduction of the 737 Max The Max uses 14 percent less fuel than current 737s its own version of fuel- and cost- efficient aircrafts. Their message to customers was: These are new planes that arent that new. Boeing 737 Newest arrival in the Boeing family of airliners, the 737 attracts a crowd. Boeings first 737 model took off in 1967. A new queen of the sky. For the Max class, Boeing upgraded the engine and design. They added more cabin space, bigger windows and multicolored ceiling lights to help modernize the planes. But the company kept the 737 name because it evoked a legacy of reliability and built trust. Ill tell you what, its just a beautiful, beautiful airplane. Not only were they able to modernize the airplane with new engines, and new winglets, but they were able to keep that classic iconic 737 look. But that isnt the whole story. The new model was also designed to help carriers save money. Which means CEOs like the Max. Really like the Max. Major changes to the plane would have required pilots to be retrained. But Boeings position was that the new models handled enough like the old ones. Though the 737 Max 8 planes did actually have a number of changes, including the size and location of the engines. The higher and more forward position of the larger engines can cause the planes nose to pitch up, a potential danger. To compensate for this, Boeing added a computerized system called MCAS to prevent the planes nose from getting too high and causing a stall. But the F.A.A. initially said pilots did not need to be informed of this system update. Experts say that the lack of training for the new system may have helped cause a deadly crash with a Max 8 off the coast of Indonesia in October, killing 189 people. All of the Boeing 737 Max 8s in the world are believed to have been grounded, while a second crash in Ethiopia is investigated. Boeing said it supported the decision to ground the planes and is cooperating with investigators. Federal officials faced a choice about how to pass those savings on to taxpayers. One option would have been to make most people wait until they filed tax returns this spring, delivering a tax-season windfall but essentially delaying the cut by a year. Instead, the I.R.S. chose to begin withholding less from workers paychecks early last year. That put more money in workers pockets right away, but made the effects of the tax cut harder to see, since the savings amounted to just a few dollars per pay period for many people. The new law made numerous changes to the tax code eliminating and capping some deductions and credits while increasing others and the revised withholding rules did not account for every situation. As a result, government auditors warned last year that the withholding changes would reduce refunds for several million Americans. Treasury officials acknowledged on Friday that some people had struggled to navigate the new withholding setup, leading them to underpay their taxes. The department will not charge a penalty to those who paid at least 80 percent of their total tax liability during the year, the officials said. Previously, the penalty threshold was 85 percent. As of last week, I.R.S. statistics showed that the average refund had not changed for those who had filed. But total filings were down, and the share of returns producing a refund had declined by 0.5 percent age points, or about 300, 000 filers. (Experts caution against reading too much into tax statistics before the April filing deadline.) You can see people potentially being frustrated if the tax season isnt playing out the way they expected, said Michelle Meyer , chief United States economist for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Other people might be quite pleased. It is quite split how people are being impacted by the tax cut. Democrats have accused the Trump administration of political gamesmanship . The Treasury Department under-withheld taxes from millions of families paychecks to make the benefits of the tax law appear greater before the 2018 election, and the bill is now coming due, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon , the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, said in an emailed statement . Families who depend on annual tax refunds to pay down debt, cover medical expenses and afford car repairs are discovering their refunds are smaller or they owe money. Gawkers parent company, Bustle Digital Group, has named the journalist Dan Peres as the editor in chief of Gawker.com, the latest move in its bid to revive the dormant website brought down by a high-profile legal battle. Bustle and its chief executive, Bryan Goldberg, acquired the Gawker.com domain in July after an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit brought by the former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan and bankrolled by the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel left Gawker Media bankrupt in 2016. Gawker.com, the boundary-pushing news and commentary website, shut down that year, and the website appears to have been preserved in amber since then, with its farewell article still at the top of the page. Mr. Peres, who was editor in chief of the Conde Nasts mens fashion magazine Details for 15 years, will lead the effort to revive the website. It is expected to relaunch later this year. The king in a Super Bowl commercial for Bud Light may have just wanted to return some corn syrup to its rightful owners in the Coors Light and Miller Lite castles, but MillerCoors, which produces both beers, was not amused. MillerCoors sued Anheuser-Busch on Thursday over the ad, claiming that it purposely misled consumers into believing there is corn syrup in Coors Light and Miller Lite, when there is not. The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, comes nearly two months after the ad for Bud Light first aired, on Feb. 3, sparking a feud between the beer companies and anger from corn lobbyists. MillerCoors is asking for an injunction to stop Anheuser-Busch from continuing to air the ad, which it calls false and misleading. In the ad, the king of the Bud Light Castle mistakenly receives a barrel of corn syrup and travels far across the land to deliver it to the correct address. When he and his companions arrive at the Coors Light castle, its king says, Looks like the corn syrup has come home to be brewed. The lawsuit claims that this statement, in particular, makes it seem as if corn syrup may be the only ingredient in Coors Light. LONDON Nirav Modi, whose opulent necklaces have been worn by A-list celebrities, was in custody in London after being denied bail following his arrest this week in a bank fraud in India totaling nearly $3 billion. The Indian government wants to extradite Mr. Modi from Britain to face charges that he, his family and business associates assembled a global empire with money obtained illegally, mostly from government-run banks. Mr. Modi, whom the authorities had sought since early last year, was arrested in central London on Tuesday after trying to open a bank account, according to news reports. Mr. Modis lawyer, George Hepburne Scott, said at a bail hearing on Wednesday that Mr. Modi had been living lawfully in London since before the allegations were made last year, according to Reuters. But the district judge, Marie Mallon, was not persuaded and denied bail. In 2016, after a torrent of targeted Facebook ads helped lift President Trump to a surprise victory, it seemed like the dawn of a new age of digital-first campaigning. But three years later, online advertising by political campaigns is still largely an afterthought, according to a new report by Tech for Campaigns, a group of technology workers who volunteer to help Democratic candidates with digital outreach. On average, campaigns in the 2018 midterm election cycle spent no more than 5 percent of their overall media budgets on digital advertising, according to the groups report, which was compiled using political ad reports issued by Facebook and Google and publicly available spending data. Television ads and direct-mail campaigns remained the biggest expenses for campaigns, accounting for about half of all media spending, the group said. Want climate news in your inbox? Sign up here for Climate Fwd:, our email newsletter. Vast areas of the United States are at risk of flooding this spring, even as Nebraska and other Midwestern states are already reeling from record-breaking late-winter floods, federal scientists said on Thursday. Nearly two-thirds of the lower 48 states will have an elevated risk of some flooding from now until May, and 25 states could experience major or moderate flooding, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The flooding this year could be worse than anything weve seen in recent years, even worse than the historic floods of 1993 and 2011, said Mary C. Erickson, deputy director of the National Weather Service, in a conference call with reporters. The major flooding this month in Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa and elsewhere is a preview of what we expect throughout the rest of the spring, she said. Some 13 million people could be exposed to major flooding, making this a potentially unprecedented flood season, said Edward Clark, director of NOAAs National Water Center. Sandwiches, with all their permutations, are an invitation to overzealous tinkering. They can be stacked up toward heaven in multiple layers or stuffed with an entire Thanksgiving dinner. They can overflow with soupy meats and be eaten with a fork and knife. And then there was that time KFC used fried chicken instead of bread to do the hard work of containing sliced cheese and bacon. The risk is that a particularly kooky sandwich values shock over logic. At first glance, the Porkinator served at Pilar Cuban Bakery in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn seems to be one of these sandwiches, designed as a dare. It is named like a character in professional wrestling, and contains five different types of pig product. But instead of veering into carny-sideshow territory, it turns out to be far more clever and earnest. There are crunchy starbursts of chicharron, housemade chorizo that tastes as if someone bottled a smokehouse, and whole ham croquetas, their insides gently funky and hot-dog pink. A smooth ham-pimento spread acts as both condiment and stabilizer, keeping the thing from turning into a mess on the wax-paper-lined plastic boats that Pilar serves almost everything in. Its a wild sandwich that makes beautiful sense. The Baselworld watch and jewelry fair, to begin Thursday in the Swiss city of Basel, will be remembered as both the first of its kind and the last. The first because, for the first time in memory, no Swatch Group brands are registered to attend; its chief executive, Nick Hayek, announced last July that he would invest in other activities the $50 million it reportedly costs him to exhibit the groups 18 brands at Basel. The holes left by the likes of Harry Winston, Omega and Longines arent being filled: Swatch Groups floor space has been reassigned as a news center. (About 500 brands were registered for the fair this year, roughly a third of the total number that attended five years ago.) In the mid-1950s, when they were newly married and in their 20s, Judy and Robert Snow would often attend wedding receptions in the grand halls of the Plaza and Pierre hotels in New York. They sipped Champagne and nibbled on elegant canapes as they celebrated these marriages but in many cases, the brides and grooms were complete strangers to them. They would get dressed up and go to the cocktail hour and enjoy the food and the music and, when the guests were going to sit down for dinner, they would leave, said Linda Snow Gross, one of the Snows daughters. When anyone asked who they were, they would ask how the other person knew the couple, she said, and if it was through the bride, theyd say they knew the groom and if was through the groom, theyd say they knew the bride. While headlines focus on gangs and violence, Mr. Ramos who works for the investigative site El Faro in El Salvador knows that the reasons people are fleeing stretch far beyond any one cause. The migrant crisis in Central America is so complicated, Mr. Ramos said. People leave for one reason, or all the reasons at once. But the international media deals with it in a simple manner, but its not just simply because some gang wants to kill them. Traveling between Nicaragua and Guatemala over the years, Mr. Ramos has documented the human toll along the journey. Last October, he caught up with the migrant caravan in Guatemala City, and followed it into Mexico and north to Tijuana. He said the migrants who joined in the Guatemalan capital were fleeing a government in which corruption and impunity remain stubbornly entrenched. [Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.] MADE IN HARLEM: FILMS OF MADELINE ANDERSON at Shepard Hall, City College of New York (March 28, 6:30 p.m.). For womens history month, the Maysles Cinema and the Documentary Forum, a center at City College, will present three short films by Anderson, who will participate in a Q. and A. after the screening. Integration Report 1 (1960) examines the state of school integration in three cities; A Tribute to Malcolm X aired on TV two years after the civil rights leaders assassination; and I Am Somebody, from 1970, documents a strike in 1969 by workers at a Charleston, S.C., hospital. 212-537-6843, maysles.org WHAT THE FEST!? at IFC Center (through March 24). This newish festival highlights contemporary movies that have a focus on horror and other outre happenings. Emma Tammis The Wind, showing on Friday and scheduled to open on April 5, is not, as cinephiles have speculated, in any meaningful sense of a remake of Victor Sjostroms 1928 silent masterpiece The Wind, but a horror film that nevertheless like that Lillian Gish classic foregrounds a female protagonist (Caitlin Gerard) against an unforgiving landscape. There are also recent selections from the Sundance Film Festival: Greener Grass (on Friday) was received at that event as an off-kilter sendup of suburban living, while Hail Satan? (on Sunday) is a very funny documentary on the philosophy and political activity of the group that calls itself the Satanic Temple. 212-924-7771, ifccenter.com [Update: Cesar Sayoc was sentenced to 20 years in prison.] Speaking in a halting, raspy voice, Cesar A. Sayoc Jr., sat in a Manhattan federal courtroom on Thursday and described how he painstakingly assembled homemade pipe bombs that he sent to prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama and other critics of President Trump last fall. Each device, Mr. Sayoc said, consisted of a plastic pipe with a digital alarm clock and attached wires. He packed all of them with a potentially deadly mix: powder from fireworks, fertilizer, a pool chemical and glass fragments. Finally, he inserted into each package a photograph of the intended recipient, marked with a red X over the face. Mr. Sayoc, 57, paused his explanation and broke into sobs, finally collecting himself and speaking softly just before he pleaded guilty to the attack. I know these actions were wrong, and Im extremely sorry, he said. It was his first public explanation of the bombing campaign that gripped the nation just before the midterm elections in October. Mr. Sayoc mailed 16 devices to his intended victims around the country, who also included the actor Robert De Niro and CNN. After a four-day manhunt, he was arrested in Florida, where he appeared to be living in a white van plastered with conservative slogans and images. YONKERS [What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.] Across the suburbs north of New York City, clusters of luxury towers are rising around commuter rail stations, designed to lure young workers seeking easy access to Manhattan. In all, 16,000 apartments and condominiums are in the works in more than a dozen towns, along with spaces for restaurants and shops. But the boom unfolding in Westchester County is under threat not from any not-in-my-backyard opposition or a slumping real estate market. Instead, it is coming from something unexpected: a lack of natural gas. Con Edison, the regions main utility, says its existing network of pipelines cannot satisfy an increasing demand for the fuel. As a result, the utility has taken the extreme step of imposing a moratorium on new gas hookups in a large swath of Westchester, including for residential buildings planned in Yonkers, White Plains and New Rochelle. The only other places in the country with similar restrictions are in Massachusetts, gas industry officials said. [What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.] Lorraine Shanleys husband was a New York City police officer who died in the line of duty, and in the years after his death, she became active in a charity that supports the families of other officers who died on the job. She eventually volunteered to be a treasurer for the charity, Survivors of the Shield, and was in charge of nearly $2 million in donations. But prosecutors say a desire to help others was not her only motivation. They have accused Ms. Shanley of stealing about $410,000 over a seven-year period for her personal expenses, from dental work and landscaping to tickets to see Barbra Streisand in concert. She even pilfered the charitys coffers to pay for her sons criminal defense, according to a federal criminal complaint. Ms. Shanley, 68, of Staten Island, was arrested on Thursday after she surrendered at the Manhattan federal prosecutors office in Lower Manhattan, a stones throw from Police Headquarters. She was charged with bank fraud and aggravated identity theft, and was released on a $100,000 bond after a brief appearance in Federal District Court. She shook her head and declined to speak to reporters as she left the courtroom. If convicted, she faces up to 30 years in prison. This week came the very dispiriting news that despite years of agonized debate over how to diversify New York Citys specialized high schools, only a small percentage of black and Latino children gained admission to them for the upcoming academic year. A continuation of the status quo would have been bleak enough, but there were signs of regression. Even though, for example, the number of Latino children who took the entrance exam (the sole criteria for acceptance) increased this year, the number admitted actually went down. Of the 4,798 spots awarded in these schools in total, only 190 went to black students. As ever, the focus quickly landed on the gaping disparities at Stuyvesant. There, just seven of the 895 children admitted were black. Stuyvesant is the most selective of the eight schools in the specialized high school system; it requires at least a score of 557 (out of 800) on the entrance exam known as the SHSAT. This is the highest cutoff. Fewer than 4 percent of those who take the test qualify for admission to Stuyvesant, which accepts a smaller percentage of its applicants than Harvard, Stanford or M.I.T. That has given the school a disproportionate role in discussions of improving social mobility. Presumably, a Stuyvesant graduate will have a better than average chance at getting into Harvard. And a great number of people in the pundit class believe that a more equitably balanced Harvard leads to a more equitably balanced America. But even if every spot in the Ivy League were filled by an exceptional student from a low-income family, a mere 60,000 or so American undergraduates would see their fortunes rise. Something like six million others would be left struggling in underfunded community colleges with typically poor rates of graduation. It used to be said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. Today shes a liberal who tried to pay a babysitter without breaking the law. It is admirable that Democrats try to tackle societys thorniest problems with the often unwieldy tools of government, but that is not an excuse for programs that are too complex for their own good. The truth is that good public policy can actually be elegant and simple to understand, even when the social problem that its addressing is complex. Social Security, Medicare, bans on indoor smoking, the do not call list (when it worked) and public libraries are examples of government solutions that are easy to understand and to benefit from. Avoidance of complexity and minimizing choices are hallmarks of good design, as we have learned from the technological revolution in user interfaces. The age of impossible-to-use computers and incomprehensible TV remote controls has given way to the sleek and intuitive interfaces offered by pioneers like Steve Jobs of Apple. What progressives most need now is not more brains, but better policy designers. One major obstacle to simple, effective public policy is people like me the expert class. Many of us are in denial, seeing complexity as a necessary evil, an unavoidable feature of answers to hard problems, even a technocratic badge of honor. We criticize conservatives for relying on simplistic slogans like cut taxes and drill, baby, drill instead of nuanced, empirically informed assessments of economic growth and environmental management. Progressives are right to consider expertise essential to good policymaking. But policy experts are rarely good at interface design, for we have a bad habit of assuming that people have unlimited time and attention and that to respect them means offering complete transparency and a multiplicity of choices. Real respect for the public involves appreciating what the public actually wants and needs. The reality is that most Americans are short on time and attention and already swamped by millions of daily tasks and decisions. They would prefer that the government solve problems for them not create more work for them. Instead, Lilly decided to come out with a new offering, a so-called authorized generic. This type of product is made by or under an agreement from the brand manufacturer. The medicines are exactly the same as the brand-name drug often made in the same factory with the same equipment to the same formula. Only the name and the packaging are different. It is perhaps, a sign of how desperate Americans are for something anything to counteract the escalating price of drugs that Lillys move was greeted with praise rather than a collective Huh? Imagine if Apple sold a $500 iPhone for $250 if it was called, say, a yPhone, and simply lacked the elaborate white box and the little Apple on back. That would be patently absurd. An iPhone in a brown paper bag is still an iPhone. And Humalog with a new name isnt a generic except according to the bizarre logic of the pharmaceutical industry. Like so many parts of our health care system, its existence has more to do with convoluted business arrangements than health. Generics, as traditionally understood, are copies of brand name drugs made by competing manufacturers once the original patent protection has expired. To be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, they have to have the same active chemical ingredients as the brand drug, and be absorbed equally into the blood, though they could look different and contain different inactive additives. Historically and in practice they tend also to be far cheaper, because the advent of generics often introduces robust competition into the market. That is why brand manufacturers sometimes produce an authorized generic once they lose patent protection. That way, they can compete at the lower price point, while preserving the original for those with extreme label loyalty. Totaling the 2016 numbers, Sam Wang, a molecular biologist at Princeton who also runs a widely read election website, found that out of almost 400 campaign stops made after the conventions, neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump made appearances in Arkansas, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia or Vermont. It doesnt matter that Trump won millions of votes in New Jersey or that Hillary Clinton won millions in Texas. If your state is reliably red or blue, you are ignored. By contrast, under a national popular vote, the margin of your loss within a state matters as much as the size of your win. Democrats would have reason to maximize their share of the vote in the Deep South, and Republicans would see the same incentive in the Northeast (and the West for that matter). Still, you might argue, the Electoral College keeps large states from dominating small ones. If there were no such system, campaigns could win by focusing all their attention on the largest states. As a matter of math, that is unlikely. In 2016, New York, California, Texas and Florida cast about 35 million ballots, roughly a quarter of the total 137 million. Even if you somehow won every single one of those ballots, youd still have to campaign elsewhere for tens of millions more votes, assuming a 50 percent threshold. Take the total of 2016 presidential votes in the 10 largest states, and youd get only 71 million ballots, or about 52 percent of the vote. In the incredible event that a candidate won every ballot cast in those states, then yes, under a national popular vote, he or she could ignore the rest of the country and become president. But that isnt politically possible. Even an attempt to run up the score and retreat to the largest cities isnt viable there just arent enough votes. Compare that with what we have under the Electoral College, where hypothetically a bare majority in the 11 largest states is all it takes to win 270 electors and become president an actual instance of big-state domination . Beyond the numbers, it is a conceptual error to focus on states in a race for votes. Who wins Virginia has implications for down-ballot races for Congress, but its just a curiosity in the fight for the White House. What would count are voters and communities, and candidates would have multiple avenues for building majority coalitions across state lines. This gets to a larger point. As James Madison observed during the Constitutional Convention, the political interests of the states arent actually tied to size. Instead, whether states share interests will depend on shared conditions and connections. Massachusetts and Tennessee have populations of similar size but little in common otherwise; Massachusetts and Connecticut, on the other hand, are linked by history and geography. I have no idea whether the special counsel will conclude that Mr. Trump knowingly conspired with the Russians in connection with the 2016 election or that he obstructed justice with the required corrupt intent. I also dont care. I care only that the work be done, well and completely. If it is, justice will have prevailed and core American values will have been protected at a time when so much of our national leadership has abandoned its commitment to truth and the rule of law. I am rooting for a demonstration to the world and maybe most of all to our president and his enablers that the United States has a justice system that works because there are people who believe in it and rise above personal interest and tribalism. That system may reach conclusions they like or it may not, but the apolitical administration of justice is the beating heart of this country. I hope we all get to see that. The interests of justice will also be best served by maximum transparency about the special counsels work. I dont know all the considerations that will go into deciding precisely what to say about the completion of that work and when to say it. But because the Department of Justice is guided first and always by the public interest, it should provide details about finished investigations when the public needs to know them, as it traditionally has. I do have one hope that I should confess. I hope that Mr. Trump is not impeached and removed from office before the end of his term. I dont mean that Congress shouldnt move ahead with the process of impeachment governed by our Constitution, if Congress thinks the provable facts are there. I just hope it doesnt. Because if Mr. Trump were removed from office by Congress, a significant portion of this country would see this as a coup, and it would drive those people farther from the common center of American life, more deeply fracturing our country. To the Editor: Re Farms That Depend on Migrants Fear ICEs Toll (front page, March 18): Immigration opponents miss the point. Rural farming areas need people. We need farm workers to bring their families and fill our schools and places of worship. We need people not just to work but also to support our small-town economies, attend our events and make themselves at home. Automation and technology and even consolidation can make farm life easier, but these things wont do what is most needed: Build healthy communities. For too long our dairy farmers have had to hide their imported help, separate families by housing only male workers, and limit exchanges between workers and community because of fear of the immigration police. Anti-immigration policy is devastating to Americas small towns. Fear of the other is killing us. Laurie Morse Glencoe, Ill. The writer owns farmland in St. Lawrence County, N.Y. To the Editor: In McCain Death Hasnt Silenced a Trump Feud (front page, March 21), you report that Senator Mitt Romney wrote on Twitter that he couldnt understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God . Thats easy. John McCain was everything Donald Trump is not. John Wise Guerneville, Calif. To the Editor: President Trumps continued assaults on Senator John McCain seven months after his death aptly remind The Times of his attacks on a Gold Star father, Khizr Khan. But the most obvious comparison is to Mr. Trumps continued attacks on Hillary Clinton, long after he had beaten her and become president. He cant let go of Hillary Clinton. He cant let go of John McCain. These add more weight to the concerns that George Conway, the husband of Kellyanne Conway, has expressed about the presidents mental and emotional health. And its time for the Senate to step in and uphold the dignity of Mr. McCain by taking up a proposal by the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, to rename the Russell Senate Office Building (named for a mostly forgotten segregationist and white supremacist) for Mr. McCain. The murder of 50 Muslim worshipers in New Zealand, allegedly by a 28-year-old Australian white supremacist, will be long scrutinized for the way violent hatreds are spawned and staged on social media and the internet. But now the world should learn from the way Jacinda Ardern, New Zealands prime minister, has responded to the horror. Almost immediately after last Fridays killings, Ms. Ardern listened to her constituents outrage and declared that within days her government would introduce new controls on the military-style weapons that the Christchurch shooter and many of the mass killers in the United States have used on their rampages. And she delivered. On Thursday, Ms. Ardern announced a ban on all military-style semiautomatic and automatic weapons, parts that can be used to turn other rifles into such weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. Its about all of us, she said, its in the national interest and its about safety. Earlier in the week, she told Parliament that social media sites must address the ease with which the internet can be used to spew hate and images of violence. We cannot simply sit back and accept that these platforms just exist and that what is said on them is not the responsibility of the place where they are published, she said. It cannot be a case of all profit, no responsibility. To these groups, liberation rarely means more than the replacement of some form of foreign occupation with local despotism. They avow democracy but never hold a truly fair election. They create secret police, parallel security services, politburos, inner- and outer-party structures. They make war on their neighbors to distract from their inevitable failure to create prosperity at home. Their leaders preach struggle and martyrdom while living lavishly. Nor should you be surprised by the scantiness of Western coverage: It would complicate a convenient narrative of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that holds that the former isnt just the principal oppressor, but the only one. That feeds into the larger progressive fiction that the great crimes of the post-World War II world are the ones the West perpetrated on the rest of the world. In fact, far worse were the crimes of non-Westerners Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, Nicolas Maduro perpetrated against their own people. The same goes for the Palestinians. More have died in Syria in the last decade, mainly on account of the depredations of the ostensibly pro-Palestinian regime of Bashar al-Assad, than have been killed by Israel. And Palestinians continue to be the victims of leaders who see no reason to subject themselves to regular elections, or financial audits, or criminal investigations, or any other mechanism of political or moral accountability. That lack of accountability is chiefly a Palestinian failure. But its abetted by Western journalism that, with some honorable exceptions, for too long has been depressingly incurious about any form of Palestinian suffering for which Israel cannot be held responsible. That is sometimes a function of ideological bias, but it is also a failure of basic reporting. Israelis and their friends abroad often complain about slanted coverage that seems to find fault in everything they do, while finding excuses in everything their adversaries do. If the protests in Gaza demonstrate anything, its that Palestinians hardly benefit from the coverage, either. Palestinian lives and livelihoods should matter despite who harms them. A world that shrugs at Hamass abuse of its own people merely licenses the abuse to continue, unchecked. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Wed like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And heres our email: letters@nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. [Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.] The debate over how, when and why the Canary Islands were first populated arose in part from records made by Europeans in the 1400s, which claimed the native Canarians had no navigational skills. The texts have led scholars to wonder how the indigenous people, who consist of several different tribes such as the Guanches and Bimbapes, reached the islands. Were they brought by Romans or Carthaginians, or did they have the means and ability to sail there themselves? The case of the Canary Islands is of particular interest because the indigenous culture and language was lost after the European colonization, complicating our ability to know more about the past, said Laura Botigue, an expert in North African genetics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, who was not involved in the study. To investigate the early peopling of the Canary Islands before Europeans arrived and introduced the slave trade, Dr. Fregel and her colleagues collected nearly 50 mitochondrial genomes from remains at 25 sites. Mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from ones mother who inherited it from their mother and so on, offer population geneticists clues to help decipher ancient human migrations . Most of the sites were radiocarbon dated between approximately 150 and 1400 C.E., although a couple of them came after post-conquest periods. In the Canary Islands indigenous people, we find typical North African lineages, but also some other lineages with a Mediterranean distribution, and also some lineages that are of sub-Saharan African origin, Dr. Fregel said. That fits with the archaeological and genetic history of North Africa, she said: Previous studies have shown that by the time the Canary Islands were inhabited, Berbers from North Africa had already mixed with Mediterranean and sub-Saharan African groups. In their analysis, the team found that some of the islands did not have much genetic diversity, whereas others had a great deal, indicating that these ancient populations may have been large. The researchers found lineages that were known only from the central part of North Africa, as well as more common lineages from other parts of North Africa, Europe and the Near East. The team also found four new lineages exclusive to Gran Canaria and two eastern islands. In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science, the researchers raise the prospect of adversarial attacks manipulations that can change the behavior of A.I. systems using tiny pieces of digital data. By changing a few pixels on a lung scan, for instance, someone could fool an A.I. system into seeing an illness that is not really there, or not seeing one that is. [Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.] Software developers and regulators must consider such scenarios, as they build and evaluate A.I. technologies in the years to come, the authors argue. The concern is less that hackers might cause patients to be misdiagnosed, although that potential exists. More likely is that doctors, hospitals and other organizations could manipulate the A.I. in billing or insurance software in an effort to maximize the money coming their way. Samuel Finlayson, a researcher at Harvard Medical School and M.I.T. and one of the authors of the paper, warned that because so much money changes hands across the health care industry, stakeholders are already bilking the system by subtly changing billing codes and other data in computer systems that track health care visits. A.I. could exacerbate the problem. The inherent ambiguity in medical information, coupled with often-competing financial incentives, allows for high-stakes decisions to swing on very subtle bits of information, he said. The new paper adds to a growing sense of concern about the possibility of such attacks, which could be aimed at everything from face recognition services and driverless cars to iris scanners and fingerprint readers. But how would the butterflies be incorporated into the Netflix series, I wondered, with the subtly and grace of their appearances in the book? Would it be cheesy or overly symbolic? These are the kinds of questions many fans are asking about the future TV adaptation. This will be the first time the novel, published in 1967, will be adapted for the screen but its not for lack of interest. Gabriel Garcia Marquezs son, Rodrigo Garcia, who will be an executive producer on the project along with his brother Gonzalo, told The Times that his father, who died in 2014, had received many offers over the years to adapt the book for film. But he had never agreed to it, worrying that One Hundred Years of Solitude would not translate well or fit within a single movie. The Netflix deal means the narrative can be serialized. But there are bigger storytelling challenges inherent to the project. One of those is that the book doesnt actually have much dialogue, said Alvaro Santana-Acuna, an assistant professor of sociology at Whitman College and scholar of Garcia Marquezs work. The dialogue, as well as the plot and the characters development, are funneled through the books omnipresent narrator. Santana-Acuna added that the beauty of the story is also Garcia Marquezs use of magical realism, as well as how sensorial the novel is. The story contains a lot of smells, sounds and even touch. How do you capture something as simplistic but important to Mr. Garcia Marquezs work like heat? How do you capture emotions like solitude? Santana-Acuna said. And yet: There are very few shows that tell Latino and Latin American stories, and even fewer are actually told by Latinos. The success of Alfonso Cuarons Roma shows that people all over the world can resonate with our stories. Its Wednesday, July 11, at 1:34 p.m. in the great state of New Jersey , and Jane Smith , whose identity we are protecting for reasons that will become clear in the next six words, needs to go to the bathroom. Shy about using her workplace restroom for this specific, usually-once-a-day type of relief, she decides to reach out to her best friend from college for a little support. Across the Hudson River, in a conference room at Bustle Digital Group on Park Avenue, its Tina Kolokathiss turn to walk her companys executives ( of which I am one ) and colleagues through a report. Her boss is on vacation, so its Ms. Kolokathiss big moment, as she describes it, to present in her place. Nature is still calling Ms. Smith, 27, so she gets out her phone. The person running the meeting is calling on Ms. Kolokathis, 26, so she gets out her laptop. She pairs it with the rooms giant flat-screen TV and begins her presentation. She is poised and confident before this large group, who are settling in to enjoy her 20 minutes in the spotlight. Miles away , Ms. Smith hits send. A small gray and blue rectangle slides into frame on the top right of Ms. Kolokathiss laptop, and thus on the top right corner of the TV, too. Its an iMessage and its from Ms. Smith. Watch cases traditionally come in one of only a handful of shapes round, rectangular, square, oval but when the Los Angeles-born designer Ini Archibong came to make his first timepiece for Hermes, he wanted to create something out of the box, he says. The result is the Galop dHermes, a range of sleek womens watches, in either steel or rose gold (inlaid diamonds optional), with a stirrup-shaped face inspired by the luxury brands equestrian heritage. Archibong, 35, originally trained as an architect but is now best known for his work as a furniture and lighting designer, creating sculptural glass pendant lamps and curvy steel chairs with chubby upholstered seats. Four years ago, when he met Philippe Delhotal the creative director of Hermes Horloger, the Paris-based companys watch division his career took another unexpected turn. Delhotal invited Archibong, then a recent graduate of the prestigious LEcole Cantonale dArt de Lausanne in Switzerland, to create a timepiece for Hermes, and the designer subsequently spent time in the brands private archives outside of Paris before developing the Galop, whose case evokes the aerodynamic curves of a racehorse. Archibong lives and works in a converted factory in Neuchatel, Switzerland, and describes his home life as a quiet refuge where my creativity unfolds. But the results of his practice require a more adventurous season of salons, fairs, manufacturing, speaking engagements, press appointments and development meetings, he says, which recently took him from Paris to New York, London to Slovenia, Bratislava to Vienna and back again. We sent the designer an instant camera and asked him to document his travels. [Coming later this spring: the T List newsletter, a weekly roundup of what T Magazine editors are noticing and coveting. Sign up here.] The social network uses a variety of approaches to collect information about web users. One involves Facebook pixel, an invisible tracker that brands can embed into their websites. When you load a website for a brand, Facebook pixel sends information about the device and its browsing activities back to the company. The social network can then use that information to help brands target you. When I deleted Facebook, I wanted all of that ad targeting to go away. So not only did I erase my Facebook account, I also installed tracker blockers on my computer browser and mobile devices to prevent advertisers from using web cookies and invisible tracking pixels like Facebooks. (For instructions on how to shake ad targeting more thoroughly, see this previous column.) The extra steps worked. The onslaught of targeted online ads stopped. If you have the tracker blocker and deleted your Facebook account, youve exited, said Gabriel Weinberg, the chief executive of DuckDuckGo, which offers internet privacy tools including a web browser that blocks trackers. Facebook says it does not build profiles on people who are not on the social network, nor does it serve targeted ads to them. Sites and apps send us information about the people who visit them, regardless of whether that person has a Facebook profile, the company said in a statement. If you arent a Facebook user, we dont know who you are and dont build any kind of profile on you. Advertisers still have methods other than Facebook to chase me around, but there are economic reasons for them to give up. With Facebooks tools, it was relatively affordable and effective for them to track and target me. Without those, it gets a lot more costly. You might be too expensive for them to chase, said Michael Priem, the chief executive of Modern Impact, an advertising firm in Minneapolis. My spending dropped. A lot. Facebook has often defended targeted ads by saying that internet users are annoyed when they see irrelevant ads. I disagree. Yes, the ads I now see have nothing to do with me but the benefit was watching my spending drop immensely. As I watched I Married an Angel, the wan Encores! offering that opened on Wednesday night at New York City Center, my mind kept flashing to debates about Confederate monuments. What do we do with the troublesome products of our cultural past? Encores! is in the business of monuments. The series implicit argument is that old musicals, even with faulty books or politics, may offer meaningful pleasures. Failing that, they may offer history lessons. And its true, I was glad for both reasons to see I Married an Angel, a dance-heavy 1938 Rodgers and Hart fantasia unlikely to be revived on its own merits. Not only does it provide an opportunity to watch the New York City Ballet star Sara Mearns perform the choreography of her husband, Joshua Bergasse, and to hear a Richard Rodgers score suavely reincarnated, but it also makes you think about the role musical theater has often played in maintaining odious social norms even while advancing purely artistic ones. Still, Im not sure those excuses suffice anymore. If the problem were just a few lines, it might be swept away or ignored. But even after a thorough feminist scouring by the playwrights Sarah Saltzberg and Sandy Rustin, I Married an Angel is solid-state groan-worthy. You cant scour away Lorenz Harts lyrics. Phil Bryant, the Republican governor of Mississippi, on Thursday signed a bill largely banning abortions once doctors can detect a trace of a fetal heartbeat with an ultrasound, a milestone that can come as early as six weeks into pregnancy. Mississippi is only the latest state to press for the strict abortion limit the sort that has already been passed and then blocked in the courts in states including Kentucky, which approved it earlier this month, and Iowa, where a law passed last year was struck down by a state court in January. About 10 other states also are debating bills to ban abortions once fetal heartbeats are found, a point at which some women and girls are not yet aware that they are pregnant. In a signing ceremony in Jackson on Thursday, Mr. Bryant described a heartbeat as the universal hallmark of life since mans very beginning. Were going to try to protect that child whenever we can, said Mr. Bryant, who is barred by term limits from seeking another term as governor. We think that this is showing the profound respect and desire of Mississippians to protect the sanctity of that very unborn life whenever possible. When the New Zealand government announced on Thursday that it would ban military-style semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, a critical element of the new policy was a plan for the government to buy back the newly banned weapons from private owners. Gun buyback programs have often been mounted in American cities large and small that wanted to reduce gun violence and crime. Washington State just completed one on Monday specifically for bump stocks accessory devices that make ordinary guns capable of very rapid fire. A federal ban on bump stocks takes effect on Tuesday. The state had set aside $150,000 for the buyback program, which gave Washington residents a $150 voucher for each bump stock they turned in. All 1,000 vouchers were exhausted before the Monday deadline. But there are up to 500,000 bump stocks in the United States and therein lies the problem. Buybacks are popular but have not been very effective. Buyback programs are a relatively easy step for states and localities to try, since they are voluntary and generally require no legislation. But taking a few hundred or even a few thousand weapons out of circulation barely dents the national nonmilitary supply of 300 million firearms nearly one for every citizen and gun manufacturers have been adding about eight million more a year, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. President Trump declared on Thursday that the United States should recognize Israels authority over the long disputed Golan Heights, delivering a valuable election-eve gift to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but jettisoning decades of American policy in the Middle East. Mr. Trumps announcement, in a midday Twitter post, came after persistent pressure from Mr. Netanyahu, a close political ally who is fighting for his survival in the election scheduled for April 9, and has invoked his friendship with the American president as a prime argument for staying in office. But Mr. Trumps move, while popular in Israel and among some lawmakers in Congress, is likely to be condemned almost everywhere else. The United Nations has rejected Israels occupation of the Golan Heights since 1967, when Israeli troops seized the 400 square miles of rocky highlands from Syria during the Arab-Israeli war. [Sign up for the weekly At War newsletter to receive stories about conflict and consequence.] It will also reverberate throughout the Middle East and could undermine Mr. Trumps long anticipated peace proposal for Israel and the Palestinians. The White House has been enlisting support for the plan among Arab leaders who now face the prospect of acquiescing in the loss of land they had long claimed as Arab. The oversight committee first began scrutinizing the use of private communications services at the White House in 2017 amid news reports that Mr. Kushner had used a private email account for government business and then that Ms. Trump had done the same. Mr. Kushners use of WhatsApp was also reported earlier in at least one instance, but its scope was not previously known. CNN reported in October that Mr. Kushner had communicated with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, using WhatsApp. Mr. Lowell confirmed details of Mr. Kushners private messaging use though not his communications with Prince Mohammed during a meeting in December with Mr. Cummings and the committees chairman at the time, Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina. Asked if Mr. Kushner had been cleared to use the messaging app to communicate with foreign leaders, Mr. Lowell recommended that the lawmakers ask the National Security Council and the White House, Mr. Cummings said. On Thursday, Mr. Lowell said that contrary to what Mr. Cummingss letter asserted, he had not confirmed that the presidents son-in-law was communicating on WhatsApp with foreign leaders, merely that he messaged with some people. More broadly, Mr. Lowell said he had told lawmakers that he was not privy to many details of Mr. Kushners use of WhatsApp, instructing them, that is a question for the White House counsel, not me. Mr. Lowell also took issue with Mr. Cummingss account of what he said about Ms. Trump. In his letter, Mr. Cummings said that after speaking to Mr. Lowell, he believed Ms. Trump could also potentially be in violation of the Presidential Records Act because of her use of a private email account. Specifically, he said Mr. Lowell had told the committee that although Ms. Trump forwards work-related emails received on her personal account to an official government account, she only does so if she responds to the message. Mr. Lowell, though, said that was oversimplifying his response. In the exchange highlighted by the chairman, he had been referring to Ms. Trumps practices before September 2017, he said. Since then, he said, she always forwards official business to her White House account. Mr. Cummingss committee is separately investigating the circumstances under which Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, and other administration officials, received security clearances. The New York Times reported last month that Mr. Trump had personally intervened to secure a top-secret clearance for Mr. Kushner despite legal and national security concerns raised by his advisers. WASHINGTON President Trumps ability to get his revised North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress may hinge on a little-noticed provision governing intellectual property protections for new pharmaceutical products. Congressional Democrats have seized on measures in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that establish protections for drug companies, saying they are a boon to the pharmaceutical industry and could undermine efforts to make American health care more affordable. The issue is the latest complication in Mr. Trumps yearslong effort to rip up Nafta and rewrite the rules of trade with Canada and Mexico. While Mr. Trump secured Canadas and Mexicos signoff on the new agreement last year, the trade pact must be ratified by legislators in all three countries, including by Congress. Democrats, who now control the House, have already made it clear that they will not approve the new trade deal without significant changes to labor and environmental provisions. Now, they are also looking for revisions to the trade deals pharmaceutical provisions, in particular a measure providing an advanced class of drugs called biologics 10 years of protection from cheaper alternatives. A proliferation of digital spying tools in recent years has helped generate a surge in sophisticated espionage operations, once mostly the purview of major powers like the United States and Russia. Now, small countries, corporations and even simply wealthy people looking to settle scores can all hire private firms to conduct intelligence operations. A New York Times investigation detailed this new era of digital warfare and the multibillion-dollar industry behind it. Two firms NSO, an Israeli company, and DarkMatter, based in the United Arab Emirates have hired former government hackers to help their government clients not only hack criminal elements like terrorist groups and drug cartels but in some cases to also act on darker impulses, targeting activists and journalists. [Hackers for hire: How former American and Israeli government operatives conduct espionage on behalf of authoritarian governments] Fighting Crime Governments rely on surveillance as part of legitimate law enforcement investigations. NSO, selling technology created by graduates of Intelligence Unit 8200 Israels equivalent of the National Security Agency says it helps government agencies prevent and investigate terrorism and crime to save thousands of lives around the globe. Mexican officials have credited NSO technology as pivotal in helping to track and capture El Chapo, the drug lord convicted in New York last month. DarkMatter helps with internal security in the United Arab Emirates, former employees said, thwarting terrorism and helping the police solve crimes. WASHINGTON The Trump administration on Thursday ratcheted up pressure on North Korea, imposing new sanctions on two Chinese shipping companies that it says have been helping the country evade international sanctions. The sanctions linked to North Korea were the first that the Treasury Department has imposed since late last year and come less than a month after a summit meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, North Koreas leader, collapsed in Hanoi, Vietnam, without a deal. Mr. Trump wanted North Korea to fully denuclearize in exchange for sanctions relief, while North Korea favored a more gradual rollback of its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of sanctions that are most painful to its citizens. The United States and our like-minded partners remain committed to achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea and believe that the full implementation of North Korea-related U.N. Security Council resolutions is crucial to a successful outcome, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said in a statement. CHICAGO A judge on Thursday blocked a set of laws pushed through late last year by Republican legislators in Wisconsin that aimed to weaken the power of the states newly elected Democratic governor and attorney general, setting off a bitter fight in the state. The judge, Richard Niess of Dane County Circuit Court, issued a temporary injunction on the laws, which included curbing the authority of the incoming governor, Tony Evers, in the rule-making process and limiting the power of Josh Kaul, the new attorney general. The judge said that the Republican lawmakers last-minute meeting a December session just after the election but before the new Democrats could be sworn in did not meet the requirements of Wisconsin law. And so the measures that emerged from it, he said, cannot stand. The case had been brought to court by several individuals and groups, including the League of Women Voters, Disability Rights Wisconsin and Black Leaders Organizing for Communities. Efforts last year by lawmakers in Wisconsin and in other states, including Michigan, to weaken the power of new leaders who won elections in November set off a flurry of angry protests and, in Wisconsin, several lawsuits. Even before the full extent of damage from Cyclone Idai is known, government and aid officials are calling it one of the worst natural disasters to hit southern Africa, perhaps even in the Southern Hemisphere, in decades. The storm, which first struck Mozambique last Thursday before moving inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi, caused widespread flooding throughout the region. It has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Mozambique alone, and has affected more than a million lives in three of the worlds poorest countries. Central Mozambique was hit particularly hard. Aid groups estimate that 90 percent of Beira, a port city that is home to about a half-million people was destroyed. In Buzi, the United Nations warned, rising floodwaters may partially submerge the town. As rescue workers struggle to reach remote regions difficult to get to in even the best of circumstances, they are confronting obstacles like floods, debris and damaged roads and bridges. RIO DE JANEIRO Brazilian law enforcement officials on Thursday arrested former President Michel Temer as part of a bribery investigation, opening a significant new chapter in the yearslong corruption scandal that has roiled the countrys politics. The term of Mr. Temer, 78, expired in January. The end of his presidency left him exposed to numerous criminal investigations that he had kept at bay by availing himself of the legal protections afforded to elected officials in Brazil while they are in office. Televised images of heavily armed police officers taking Mr. Temer into custody riveted Brazilians on Thursday, nearly a year after the nation was gripped by the imprisonment of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption and money laundering. Mr. Temer, a veteran lawmaker who became a major power broker in Brasilia, the capital, has been a target of at least 10 corruption investigations in recent years. JAKARTA, Indonesia The families were still mourning relatives lost in the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia when they were crammed into a hotel conference room a few weeks after the crash. Sign this form, they were told by employees of the low-cost carrier, and they would receive 1.3 billion rupiah, or $91,600. For those who lost breadwinners in the crash on Oct. 29, the money, government-mandated compensation for loss of life in an aviation accident, was welcomed. But that amount, while not insignificant for desperate families with bills to pay and children to school, was roughly the minimum they were entitled to receive under Indonesian law. And the conditions imposed by Lion Air before it would disburse the payments were complicated and shocking, with some legal experts questioning their legality. A Christchurch teenager, whose name has not been released, was denied bail on Monday over charges that he had posted a photograph of Al Noor Mosque, one of the two that were attacked, a week before the shootings, with the caption target acquired. He was also charged with reposting the video. Each could spend as much as 14 years in jail if found guilty. And a woman in Masterton, on the North Island of New Zealand, was arrested over comments she made on her Facebook page after the attacks. The police told The New Zealand Herald that they had yet to decide whether to charge her under the Human Rights Act, a rarely used provision that prohibits writings that incite racial disharmony. If charged and convicted, she would face a fine of 7,000 New Zealand dollars, or about $4,800. Criminal charges were not the only possible consequence of having publicized the attack. An Auckland medical clinic said on Thursday that it had suspended a senior doctor, pending an investigation, after being alerted to anti-Islamic comments he made on a blog several years ago. Andrew Scott-Howman, a New Zealand employment lawyer, said he had seen a growing number of cases in which workers were accused of bringing their employers into disrepute, which he said was a more subtle charge than outright criminal activity. Its hard to know where the line is drawn, he said, adding that employment law was still developing in the area. The cases underscore the challenge that social media companies face in thwarting and deleting objectionable activity on their platforms. Analysts said there was often a mistaken assumption that white supremacist material is hidden away on parts of the internet that are difficult to reach. It was a powerful example of community and nimble democracy strongest Ive seen in years. What were some of the reporting challenges you encountered while on the ground in Christchurch? One of the big challenges in an environment like this a tragedy of global significance is how to deal with other media and the demands on the people who are affected by the tragedy. There are probably hundreds of reporters here all looking to get the story out to their part of the world, and while many of them are thoughtful, there are always a few I wont name names, but some Australians dont have a great reputation in New Zealand who err on the side of overdoing it, both with victims and their families, and with others (like gun shop owners) who are more tangential to the story. Its partly the demands of the news cycle and particular brands (television reporters often skip straight to how did you feel when ) and Im sensitive to the fact that our industry is in flux and people are just trying to do their jobs. But when a handful of journalists lack heart and humanity, it ends up hurting all of us who do what we do. It leads families to see us as the enemy and leads officials to cut off access, and then that means that people who actually want their stories told can end up silenced. I dont think that has happened too much here in Christchurch, but over time, its clear that some families have become more frustrated with some journalists behavior and are struggling with whom among us to trust. It means it takes more time and effort to build rapport and tell stories that have nuance and complexity. They share a name, and both espouse a love of guns, but beyond that, the National Rifle Association in New Zealand has little in common with Americas most powerful gun advocacy group. The New Zealand organization, which has no formal connection to the N.R.A. in the United States, is the countrys governing body for the sport of long-range target shooting. It does not engage in the sort of political lobbying for which the American group has built such a fierce reputation. And that helps explain why the New Zealand groups reaction to the massacre at two mosques in Christchurch last week has borne little resemblance to how the American N.R.A. has responded to recent mass shootings in the United States. On Thursday, six days after the Christchurch attacks, New Zealands prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced a national ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons, on parts that allow guns to be modified into such weapons, and on high-capacity ammunition magazines. OTTAWA Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada was selling, but it wasnt clear that anyone was buying. At a housing development in Ottawa on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trudeau pitched the wonders of his proposal to make home-buying easier, among a vast array of promises in a spending plan his government released this week. Rod Allen, a retired resident of the development, said he liked some of Mr. Trudeaus proposals. Still, he wants to hear more from Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former justice minister who has accused Mr. Trudeau and his top aides of improperly pressuring her on handling a criminal case against the Canadian multinational corporation SNC-Lavalin. Among other things, he would like to know why she resigned from Mr. Trudeaus cabinet. Mr. Trudeaus stop at the Cardinal Creek development on Ottawas eastern fringes was the first on what will be a cross-Canada trip to sell his spending plan, and to make his case for re-election this fall. LONDON Amsterdam is to ban guided tours of its notorious red-light district, the latest move by the city to tackle overcrowding and improve working conditions for prostitutes in the area. We are banning tours that take visitors along sex workers windows, not only because we want to prevent overcrowding in the red-light district, but also because it is not respectful to sex workers, Udo Kock, Amsterdams deputy mayor, said in a statement on Wednesday. It is outdated to treat sex workers as a tourist attraction, he added. The ban will come into effect on Jan. 1, as will bans on free tours and on soliciting visitors to take part in tours, the statement said. Although Amsterdam, the Dutch capital, has distinctive cultural gems galleries, museums, restaurants and its iconic canals, to mention just a few for decades, tourists have also been attracted to the city for the marijuana and prostitution, both of which are largely legal there. BRUSSELS European Union leaders on Thursday agreed to extend the deadline for Britains looming exit from the bloc in order to give Prime Minister Theresa May and the British Parliament more time to get their act together. Thursdays agreement effectively averted the possibility of a disorderly and possibly chaotic departure by Britain on March 29. Yet that still remains a possibility just a few weeks later. After hours of difficult and sometimes passionate talks, the leaders decided that Britains exit date will be pushed back to May 22 if next week Mrs. May can persuade lawmakers in Parliament to accept her plan for leaving the bloc, which they have already rejected overwhelmingly, not once but twice. If she cannot persuade lawmakers to accept her plan, Mrs. May will get a shorter delay in exiting the European Union until April 12. But Britain could stay in the bloc longer if it decides it needs more time for a more fundamental rethink of Brexit, as the process is known. The House of Commons, she went on to say, was simply prevaricating. Do they want to leave the E.U. with a deal? Do they want to leave without a deal? Or do they not want to leave at all? she asked. So far, Parliament has done everything possible to avoid making a choice. Then she turned on her heel and stalked off. It was an astonishing speech, first and foremost because Mrs. May desperately needs those lawmakers to vote for her plan next week. Her withdrawal agreement has been rejected twice: first on January 14 by a vote of 432 to 202; and then on March 12, by a vote of 391 to 242. She is struggling mightily, vote by intransigent vote, to cobble together a moderate majority to approve her plan before March 29. This speech, to employ a bit of British understatement, did not help. Over the hours that followed, lawmakers responded to the prime ministers words with fury, saying she had intentionally stoked popular anger toward them. Supporters of remaining in the European Union, in particular, have felt vulnerable since 2016, when a far-right activist, agitated by the Brexit referendum, fatally shot a Labour lawmaker, Jo Cox. Democracy loses when a prime minister who has set herself against the House of Commons, then blames M.P.s for doing their job, said a Conservative former minister, Sam Gyimah, who resigned from Mrs. Mays cabinet in November, saying he could not support her withdrawal agreement. On Twitter, he called her address toxic. LONDON Police officers and counterterrorism officials in Britain were investigating attacks on five mosques Thursday, including one in which a man took a sledgehammer to smash the windows of a house of worship in Birmingham, England. After the authorities received reports overnight of the sledgehammer attack in north Birmingham, a similar episode was reported nearby, according to the West Midlands Police. Officers discovered damage to two other sites and received a further report later on Thursday morning, all from places of worship within a few miles of each other and in an area with a large Muslim community. The motive behind the attacks, which are being treated as linked, is yet to be established, but West Midlands Police and the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit are investigating, the statement said. Birmingham is one of Britains largest cities and home to one of its biggest Muslim communities: More than one in five people there have declared Islam as their religion. LONDON Dutch prosecutors said on Thursday that they planned to bring terrorism charges against a man suspected of killing three people on a tram in the city of Utrecht, in addition to multiple counts of murder or manslaughter. In a statement, the public prosecutors office in the Netherlands suggested that the mental health of the suspect, Gokmen Tanis, was also under investigation, as well as his motives. Its being investigated if the suspect acted out of solely terrorist motive or that his actions came from personal problems in combination with radicalized ideology, prosecutors said. The Dutch Institute for Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology will be asked to conduct an investigation of the suspects personality. Mr. Tanis, 37, is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday in his first court appearance in connection with the shootings in Utrecht. ERBIL, Iraq A raft overloaded with people dressed in their holiday best to celebrate the Kurdish New Year sank in the Tigris River on Thursday, drowning at least 94 men, women and children, Iraqi security and health officials said. Families in Mosul had thronged onto the raft to take them to an island with a picnic ground and a small amusement park. As they crossed the Tigris, one of the metal cables pulling the raft snapped, and the raft capsized, dumping almost everyone into the water, according to eyewitness accounts. The water, high and swift because of the spring rains, swept them downstream in a matter of seconds. Videos taken by those on shore show passengers heads bobbing briefly above the water. People on shore rushed to help, said Mosuls mayor, Zuhair al-Araji. The Civil Defense force tried to save everyone they could in cooperation with the aquatic security forces and with fishermen and volunteers, he said. In late October 2017, Jared Kushner, President Trumps son-in-law and Middle East adviser, dropped into Saudi Arabia for an unannounced visit to the desert retreat of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was in the process of consolidating his power. The two men talked privately late into the night. Just a day earlier, Mr. Kushners younger brother, Josh, then 32, was flying out of the kingdom. Jared came to talk policy, but Josh was there on business. The founder of an eight-year-old venture capital firm, Josh Kushner had spent the three days before his brothers arrival at an investor conference, where Prince Mohammed had promised to spend billions of dollars on a high-tech future for Saudi Arabia. As others sat through speeches in a gilded conference hall, several participants said, the younger Mr. Kushner frequently ducked out for more exclusive conversations with Saudi officials. The whale sighting happened right away, minutes into Day 1. Jon, Dave and I had just been dropped off on a remote Alaskan shoreline, an hour and a half by boat from the closest speck of a town. Jon was working as a sea-kayaking guide that summer in Glacier Bay National Park, and he had invited us up for a seven-day excursion during his week off. As the boat that delivered us vanished, the drone of its engine dampening into a murmur and then finally trailing off, it became unthinkably quiet on the beach, and the largeness and strangeness of our surroundings were suddenly apparent. It was a familiar phenomenon for Jon from the start of all his trips: a moment that people instinctually paused to soak in. To me, it felt like those scenes of astronauts who, having finally rattled free of the earths atmosphere, slip into the stillness of space. Except we werent in space. We were on earth finally, really on earth. We were only starting to move around again, packing our gear into the kayaks, when we heard the first huff of a blowhole, not far offshore. Jon was ecstatic. It seemed to him as if the animal were putting on a show, swimming playfully in the kelp, diving, resurfacing, then plowing its open mouth across the surface to feed. He took it as a good omen. Though I had no idea at the time, he was anxious that Dave and I might feel intimidated about making the trip; such a big payoff, so quickly, would get us excited and defuse any apprehensions. For Dave, the whale-sighting had exactly the opposite effect. Once, when he was a kid, his dad took him scuba diving with dolphins. They were friendly, awe-inspiring creatures, purportedly, but they terrified Dave instead. He could still conjure the feeling of hanging defenselessly in that water while the animals deftly swirled around him, less like solid objects than flashes of reflected light, while he could move only in comparative slow-motion. Ever since, he had harbored a fear of large sea creatures a niche phobia, particularly for a young man who lived in the Bronx, but a genuine one still. And so, even as Dave understood that a chance to see whales up close like this was a major draw of a kayaking trip in Alaska, and though he feigned being thrilled, some second thoughts were kicking in: We were going out there, he realized. The whale left me exhilarated and gleeful, like Jon; but deeper down, I also remember feeling shaken, like Dave. Nothing about the animal registered to me as playful or welcoming. It just appeared in the distance, then transited quickly past us, from left to right. My uneasiness had something to do with the whales great size and indifference its obliviousness as it passed. Watching it made me feel profoundly out of place and register how large that wilderness was, relative to me. At the time, I was working at a literary magazine in New York City called The Hudson Review, picking poems out of the slush pile and mailing them to an outside panel of editorial advisers. I was trying hard in my letters to impress one of them: Hayden Carruth, a gruff and irreverent 81-year-old poet who lived far upstate. I loved Carruths work but was more enamored with his persona: his yeoman life in the woods, his intolerance for phoniness and, most of all, the precision with which he articulated common suffering, including one strain of his own suffering that I related to, particularly in those years, but wouldnt have had the courage, or clarity, to examine. I had always been aware, Carruth once wrote of his youth, that the Universe is sad; everything in it, animate or inanimate, the wild creatures, the stones, the stars, was enveloped in the great sadness, pervaded by it. ... Never then or now have I been able to look at a cloudless sky at night and see beauty there. A kind of grandeur, yes but not beauty. The profusion and variety of celestial lights have always frightened me. Why are they there? Why these instead of others? Why these instead of nothing? That was how I felt, watching the whale from the beach: afraid that everything was accidents. Then again, maybe its just hard to picture the start of the trip in retrospect without amplifying some feeling of foreboding. Something else Carruth wrote that has always stuck with me: The wilderness begins at the edge of my body, at the edge of my consciousness, and extends to the edge of the universe, and it is filled with menace. [Read about Aleksander Doba, the 71-year-old who kayaked across the Atlantic 3 times.] It was mid-August 2002, and we were 23, 24 and 25. We had graduated from college together two years earlier. Dave, whom I also grew up with, shot out of undergrad knowing he wanted to be a doctor and had just finished his first year of medical school. Any similar momentum I had after graduation was instantly sapped. Three nights after I returned to my parents house from school, I found myself driving my father to the emergency room. Three weeks after that, he died. My grief was disorienting and total; at a moment in life when everything is supposed to feel possible, making any single decision became impossible. I gave into that sadness for the better part of a year, resettling at home in New Jersey with my widowed mother and sliding back to the summer job I worked during school, glumly breaking down beef at a butcher shop two towns over. I coped with my fatherlessness and confusion in ways Im not proud of and still dont understand. I read a lot of books about Ronald Reagan, for example, even the collection of his love letters to Nancy. I also lashed out at Dave, who was living at home that summer, too, studying for the MCAT. He withdrew awkwardly after the funeral, and I suppose I was happy to hold that against him. It triggered some longstanding jealousy. A part of me always resented how he seemed unfairly exempt from the self-doubt and heaviness that I was prone to. Jon, meanwhile, was teaching at a rustic little boarding school in Switzerland, where his mother was from. The summer after graduation, before starting the job, he set out for Alaska with a friend, sleeping in the bed of their old pickup. In the minuscule town of Gustavus, the gateway to Glacier Bay, he picked up seasonal work in the warehouse of a kayak-tour company. Jon had little actual experience of sea kayaking but had always felt drawn to the ocean in the abstract. In college, he and another friend plotted out a paddling expedition near Glacier Bay, across the border in Canada and applied for a grant from our school to fund it. The grant was set up in memory of an alumnus who died in an avalanche while mountaineering. It was meant to encourage the responsible and conscientious pursuit of wilderness expeditions. Safety was key. But the committee rejected Jon and his partners application. They seemed insufficiently prepared. That wasnt surprising. Jon grew up doing a lot of backcountry camping and was a competent outdoorsman, but putting together a grant application required a kind of administrative fastidiousness he didnt always possess. He was bright but scatterbrained, forever picking up things and putting them down, both figuratively (music projects, conversations) but also literally. I can still picture him hustling around the house we shared in college, hunting for his keys or his soldering iron, having gotten in over his head rewiring some device. He was an artist; one piece I remember consisted of a half-peeled banana, implanted with circuitry and suspended in a jar of formaldehyde. Once, he grew grass in our upstairs bathroom a living bathmat, he said until the turf became muddy and flooded the downstairs. This was Jons third summer in Alaska, and hed worked his way up to leading expeditions, taking out vacationers for days at a time. Our trip, however, would venture beyond the typical circuit, into a remote corner of the park that hed never been to. Jon had no serious concerns about our safety, but he felt he bore responsibility for our emotional well-being. To enjoy ourselves, we would need to feel comfortable, not just in the wilderness but also with him as a leader. He suspected we wouldnt trust him entirely. We didnt. We knew him before he became a professional guide, and our perception of his expertise lagged behind the reality. With Jon, Dave told me, it was always unclear to what extent hed thought everything through. Dave remembered landing in Gustavus the night before we got underway and casually asking Jon a lot of questions: Where are we going, exactly? Do we have everything we need? Jon seemed to have solid answers for all of them. As we headed back to his place for a good nights sleep, he told us to wait in the yard. He was living alone for the summer in a house that an acquaintance was building in the woods. The structure was framed-up but largely wall-less, and Jon, to be safe, needed to check that no moose had wandered in. After a spectacular first day of paddling, we came ashore on a rocky tidal flat about two miles from where we were dropped. Jon gave us his detailed tutorial about bear safety while we set up our campsite. He taught us, for example, to holler Hey, bear! if we heard any rustling but also preventively, ahead of us, when we walked through the woods. The last thing you wanted was to come across a brown bear unannounced. Hey, bear! Jon kept hollering, by way of demonstration. He said it goofily, like a childrens TV host greeting some down-on-his-luck ursine neighbor at the doorway to their clubhouse. This was intentional. Jon had noticed that the people on his trips often resisted bellowing Hey, bear! into the wilderness. It was essential for their safety, but it felt silly or vulnerable somehow, like singing in public. So he learned to turn it into a shtick, spinning it into a stream-of-consciousness narration: Hey, bear, Im coming into the trees now. Hope youre having a fantastic evening, Mr. Bear! It loosened everyone up. They were performing for their friends now; the whole group was in on the joke. I had never seen a wild bear, though I have backpacked in bear country a handful of times. I felt comfortable with the animals in the abstract. But here, the bears werent abstract; they breached the material plane. There were bear trails everywhere, leading from the tree line to the water, and disquietingly close, I felt, to where we were pitching our tent. We found heaps of their scat. We saw trees where the animals had slashed off the bark to eat the inner layer, tufts of fur from their paws still plastered in the sap. I pretended I was having fun. But that evening I grew increasingly petrified, almost delirious. My eyes tightened, scanning for bears. The sound of the wind became bears, and so did the mossy sticks cracking under our feet. I gave myself a migraine, then phased in and out of sleep. At sunrise, I woke feeling foolish. While Jon cooked pancakes, I reasoned with myself, privately, in a notebook I brought on the trip. I tried to conceive of the situation as a geometry problem. Yes, some number of bears roved this landscape, I wrote: relatively tiny, independent blips, going about their business randomly, just like us. In all that empty space and confusion, a lethal collision of their moving blips and our moving blips would be an improbable coincidence. Id been distorting those odds, mistaking myself for the absolute focus of all bears attention, I wrote. It was embarrassing, really. To be afraid of bears, I concluded, is to be narcissistic. I was reminding myself that freakishly horrible things are, by definition, unlikely to happen. Even now, my reasoning feels sound. [Read about the search for a missing hiker in Joshua Trees wild interior.] Day 2 was a slog. We paddled through a spitting drizzle in an endless straight line, along the high granite walls of the coast. We talked less and less, just pushed through the emerald chop. Then eventually we gave up, hauling in our boats and making camp in a wide, crescent-shaped cove, short of the site that Jon originally picked out on his map. We had entered Dundas Bay, a rarely visited pocket of the national park that, Ive since learned, has a storied history as a hide-out for solitary misanthropes. In the 1930s, one prospector built a cabin not far from our campsite and brandished a gun at the Alaska Natives who passed through. We intuited that the scenery was beautiful, but we could see very little of it through the fog. Our guidebook explained that the east side of the bay where we were can get extremely rough during foul weather, since large waves roll in ... and batter this shoreline. That was happening now: The weather that plinked at us all afternoon was roiling into a storm. Soon, the big rain started. We rushed through dinner, then loafed in our tent until, eventually, the loafing turned to sleep. A local newspaper would later describe the storm as short but intense. In Gustavus, a creek swelled to about a foot higher than its previous record. Gale winds, with gusts up to 59 miles per hour, turned back two cruise ships in Skagway, about 85 miles north. Around 2 a.m., we woke to discover the wind had shorn the rain fly off our tent. Jons sleeping bag and mine were soaked, while Dave was snug and dry between us. We heard torrents of water lashing down and the waves crashing in the cove. We got up three or four hours later. The rain and wind no longer felt ferocious but were still too gnarly to paddle through; there was no question, Jon said, that we were staying put. We cooked breakfast and took turns playing chess in the tent. By late morning, the storm seemed to have passed. We were antsy. We figured we would take a look around. The terrain was crammed with thickets of alder and spruce, underlain by ferns and a furor of prickly things. Jon pointed out devils club: three or four feet tall and leafy, armored up and down with spines. The plant pierced fleece and hurt like fire. Jon, a friend of the author, at the start of the trip in Glacier Bay National Park. He was the most experienced of the three friends and was working as a guide in Alaska. From Jon Mooallem There were no trails. Wed been trudging for some time when we reached a fast-moving stream, maybe 10 feet wide. Jon was surprised; it wasnt on his map, most likely just a drainage bloated by the storm. We followed it downstream, looking for a way across, and eventually found it bridged by a hefty tree trunk. It seemed like an easy crossing. Jon stepped up and led the way, and Dave and I waited in a single-file line on the stream bank behind him. The creek was loud, like a factory with all its gears and rollers churning. Looking down, Jon realized there was more water than hed thought. Thats when I heard the snap in the woods behind me. After all my paranoia, I instantly understood that the many bears Id thought I heard before were absolutely not bears were nothing because this sound was so unmistakable and crisp, so explicitly something. I turned and hollered, Hey, bear! then waited a beat. Maybe I said Hey, bear! again; Im not sure. But I must have scanned those trees long enough to feel satisfied and safe, because I know I was turning my head, to go back to my friends, when I saw the dark shape rushing forward in my peripheral vision. What I heard must have been roots popping. If a tree is large enough, you can apparently hear them cracking underground like gunfire. The thud was seismic. The trunk crashed down right next to me. Mapping out bits of evidence later, we concluded that the tree must have been about 80 feet tall and perhaps two feet in diameter. It was some kind of conifer a spruce or cedar. I screamed, involuntarily, Look out! then watched Dave, a few steps directly in front of me, dive sideways and hit the ground. When I got to him, he was crouching, stunned but O.K. He looked up and said, Go get Jon. It hadnt clicked back in for me: There were three of us. The sight of Dave going down had canceled out everything else. I scrambled out over the creek, running across the tree that had just fallen, shouting Jons name, then spotted him in the water, tangled in a snarl of sheared-off branches near the bank behind me a cage, which kept him from hurtling downstream. He did not know hed been hit by a falling tree. It had narrowly missed his head, struck his left shoulder, shearing it from his collarbone and breaking many of his ribs. Later, a doctor would explain that the downward force had been so powerful that it had probably squashed Jons entire upper body, and all the organs inside, down toward his waist, momentarily compressing him like a bellows; for a split second, his shoulders headed in the direction of his bellybutton, before his torso sprang up again. Jon had heard nothing, seen nothing. He was turning around to help Dave onto the log again, feeling responsible for our safety and the next thing he knew, he was in the water. He tried to reach out his left arm but could not make it move. He could not move his legs. He felt a bolt of pain down his spine. Jon later described flashing through an idiosyncratic sequence of thoughts, all in a few milliseconds, as if watching a deck of cards fanning across a table. One was an image of himself in a wheelchair, sitting behind a mixing console in a fancy recording studio. I guess I can become a recording engineer in a wheelchair, he remembered thinking. He had never worked in a recording studio and, though he played music, he had no particular plans to. Still, this vision apparently felt like an acceptable future and freed him to resurface in the present. That was when he registered me, screaming his name. Jon told himself he shouldnt move. He knew from his many wilderness first-responder trainings that moving a person with spinal injuries risks paralysis. Then again, he also knew that most of his body was submerged in cold water, and he recognized that he risked dying of hypothermia if he didnt move. If Im already paralyzed, he concluded, I may as well move. He somehow hoisted himself out of the stream before Dave or I got to him, using his right arm and his chin and biting into something loamy with his teeth, for additional leverage. He reassessed the situation: better. Also: worse. He now realized that we were at least a mile inland from our camp. Suddenly, his body was walking; his legs just started working. Dave and I put him between us, supporting his frame. He was moving faster than we expected, but uncoordinatedly. Then he crumpled between us. We tried again; Jon was dead weight. Dave noticed that his breathing was shallow and his voice was low signs, Dave knew from med school, of a collapsed lung. He began battering Jon with a pep talk, telling him, firmly, that he had to get up, that we had to get out of here. Jon didnt need that explained to him; he was cogent and still trying to plot our next steps in his mind. He looked down to see why this log he was resting on was so lumpy and realized that he was, in fact, sitting on his left arm. The arm was slack, obviously broken; his sleeve, pierced up and down with devils club. Jon had zero feeling in it. He found it amusing, this sensation of complete estrangement from one of his limbs. Jon had been stressing that it was important to stay together. But this was another theory of wilderness survival that appeared to be breaking down in practice. Someone would have to get on the radio back at our camp. By chance, while marooned in our tent during the rainstorm the night before, Jon showed us how to use the device, though he did it almost as a formality; the hand-held VHF unit was merely a line-of-sight radio, he told us, meaning its range was small, its signal too weak to pass through most obstacles. You were unlikely to reach anyone you couldnt see, and we hadnt seen anyone since a faraway fishing boat, early on Day 1. There was a moment of discussion, or maybe just an exchange of looks between me and Dave. I told Dave he should go. I didnt trust myself to find my way back. I also knew that I lacked the courage to try; whether I was being sensible or cowardly, I still dont know. Besides, I took for granted that Dave would make it. He was more capable in my mind, less likely to cinch himself in indecisive knots. Recently, though, Dave told me: You probably had no idea how much in my own head I was. I know that you, growing up, definitely felt insecure about things, and I think you looked at me and thought, Dave has everything figured out. But I had so much anxiety. He brought up the tremor he used to have in his hands. I knew about it; in high school, we waited tables together, and I occasionally had to carry out Daves soup orders, so he wouldnt spill. But I guess I thought of the tremor as strictly physiological. I couldnt see the vulnerability causing it. Now, as Dave sprinted away from me and Jon, swatting devils club from his path with the rubberized sleeve of his rain jacket, his nerves rose up and rattled him. He worried he wouldnt be able to find the radio once he got back or know how to turn it on. What if he broke the radio, foreclosing whatever marginal chance we had of getting help? There were lots of ways to screw this up, Dave realized. More occurred to him as he ran. He found the radio. He turned it on. Then, having solved these problems, he encountered another he hadnt anticipated: What is the appropriate thing youre supposed to say? he remembered thinking. On TV, you see a lot of people saying Mayday. And so, Dave faced the open water and started broadcasting into the fog: Mayday, Mayday. Even in that moment, though, alone on a beach in the middle of nowhere, he felt slightly self-conscious about it. This is so goddamn cliche, he thought. Back in the woods, kneeling over Jon, I was having the same problem: I didnt know what to say. He was lying near a log on his injured side, his beard and glasses flecked with dirt and tendrils of moss. He seemed to be on the brink of losing consciousness. At no time would the possibility of Jons dying surface concretely in any of our minds. Still, I knew I was supposed to keep talking to him, to tether him to the world with my voice somehow. I started vamping platitudes: We were going to get out of here soon, and so forth. But I could feel myself treading water, even blundering, at one point, into a long-winded apology, worried I overstayed my welcome that one Christmas with his family. I was afraid that the helplessness in my voice might be counterproductive, unsettling Jon instead of steadying him. It was a tremendous silence to fill. What can a person say? I had two literature professors in college who made us memorize poems. You never knew when some lines of verse would come in handy, they claimed. One liked to brag that, while traveling through Ireland, he found that if he spat out some Yeats at a pub, he could drink free. This is how I wound up reciting a love poem to Jon. It was The Shampoo, by Elizabeth Bishop, a lyric poem about the enormity of time, which turns startlingly intimate at the end, when Bishop offers to shampoo her lovers silvering hair: Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,/battered and shiny like the moon. After that, I imagine I also did some W.H. Auden; I knew a fair amount of Auden back then. The stuff in rhyme and meter was always easiest to memorize Looking up at the stars, I know quite well/That, for all they care, I can go to hell which is why I had a lot of Robert Frost at my disposal as well: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, The Road Not Taken. For the most part, I trafficked in hits. Jon and I would spend about an hour and a half together alone on the forest floor. I ran through everything in my quiver Kay Ryan, A.R. Ammons, Michael Donaghy padding each poem with little prefatory remarks, while Jon said nothing, just signaled with his eyes or produced a sound whenever I checked in. I felt like a radio D.J. playing records in the middle of the night, unsure if anyone was listening. And heres one about owls by Richard Wilbur, I would tell Jon, and off we would go. I must have also done at least one by Hayden Carruth, my curmudgeonly pen pal at the literary magazine. Carruths poems didnt lend themselves to memorization, but Id worked hard to nail one of my favorites, in which he describes stopping to notice a deer standing in an apple thicket, then realizing the northern lights are flaring overhead. Hayden and the animal pass a moment in stillness together. We are proud to be afraid, he writes, proud to share/the silent magnetic storm that destroys the stars. Relative to that boundless violence above them, he and the deer are momentarily allied, though still not entirely connected: a glimpse, an acknowledgment/it is enough and never enough. Thats what I said to my friend, powerlessly, tenting my jacket over his face when it started to rain. The title of the poem is: I Know, I Remember, But How Can I Help You. The Coast Guard cutter Mustang wasnt where it was supposed to be. The 110-foot patrol boat normally spent its time coursing through the Gulf of Alaska, inspecting halibut-fishing vessels, or circulating, as a terrorist deterrent, near the oil terminals at Valdez. It was home-ported in Seward, hundreds of miles from Glacier Bay. But the crew was transiting to Juneau for a training when, a few days earlier, they were smacked by the same storm that later poured inland, over us. We had gotten absolutely pummeled, John Roberts, a petty officer on the Mustang, told me recently. For two days, the boat swished around in 15-foot-plus seas. Many on the crew had been hunkered in the mess deck, vomiting, while Roberts and a couple of his shipmates did their best to cover everyones watches. Finally, the Mustang slipped into Glacier Bay to find some protection. The weather started to ease. That afternoon, as Roberts piloted the Mustang east, toward Dundas Bay, his pallid crewmates were finally staggering back up to the bridge, asking where the hell they were. That was when Daves Mayday call came through. The signal on the Mustangs radio was thin and faint, barely edging into range. Another of the ships petty officers, Eamon McCormack, explained to me that in retrospect the connection feels mind-boggling. Glacier Bay National Park extends over more than 5,000 square miles. Our signal would have covered two or three miles at most. And yet, a boat a Coast Guard boat, no less happened to be passing through that exceedingly small window at precisely the right time. I dont know if, nine times out of 10, you play that over again and the outcome would be the same, McCormack said. A moment earlier or later seconds, potentially and we might have slipped out of alignment. The moving boat would have cruised out of range, uncoupling from us forever. It was 1:25 p.m. when the Mustang received Daves call, according to one of the subsequent Coast Guard reports. Roberts couldnt believe it. Come on, man, Im tired, he said aloud, wearily, to the receiver in front of him. Roberts waited for a moment, per protocol, on the off chance that the Coast Guards central communications center in Juneau would pick up the call instead. Then he turned and asked his watch commander to pull out all the standardized search-and-rescue paperwork. He was steeling himself, resummoning his professionalism. I guess were doing this, he said. Roberts was the crew member on the Mustang with the most current medical training; he would complete his E.M.T. certification the following month. As he started firing questions at Dave on the radio, he didnt like the answers that he heard coming back: the shallowness of Jons breathing, the likelihood of a punctured lung. More fundamental, Roberts remembered: Any time a tree falls on somebody, its not good. He was also unsettled to learn that Dave and I both lived in New York City a red flag, he had found, when someone winds up in trouble in the wilderness. We were 100 nautical miles from the nearest hospital; a half-day trip, even in ideal conditions. The Mustang requested that the Coast Guard Air Station in Sitka send a helicopter, but the immediate plan was for Roberts and three crewmates to peel toward shore in the ships Zodiac and track us down. Dave had found the flare in Jons emergency kit and now, at 2:20, with the Zodiac underway, the Coast Guard asked him to fire it. He was still in front of our campsite, facing the water. Hed never shot off a flare before. He aimed straight up, then watched as the bright tracer rose and arced somewhere far behind him, deep in the woods. He was uncertain whether this counted as a success. He started scanning the fog in front of him, but the Zodiac never appeared. Someone on the Mustang caught sight of the flare near the end of its arc and immediately directed the crew on the Zodiac toward it, steering them far away from Dave to the opposite side of the little peninsula wed camped on. And yet, this was lucky: they wound up coming ashore much closer to where I was waiting in the woods with Jon. Soon, whatever poem I was reciting was interrupted by whistles blowing and voices calling, and eventually three shapes, wearing hard hats and heavy orange rain gear, rushed toward us out of the trees. Roberts was especially impressive, a reassuringly large Boston-area native with a booming voice. He knelt and took Jons vitals. The information was troubling: his pulse was 60 beats per minute; his breathing, fast and shallow. They put his neck in a brace and eased him onto a kind of truncated backboard, called a Miller board, to move him out to the beach. Dave had returned by then. He and I crouched at one end of the board, near Jons feet, as someone presumably Roberts bellowed a count of three to lift. Later that night, lying down to sleep in a bed-and-breakfast in Gustavus stunned and depleted, but dry and warm Dave and I would talk and talk, reviewing the entire ordeal. We had drooped into a long silence, coasting toward sleep, when Dave spoke up with one last observation. When we were getting ready to lift Jon on the backboard, he said, it occurred to him that this was one of those crisis moments you hear about, like when mothers are suddenly able to lift a car off their baby. Dave expected we were going to have superhuman strength. We did not have superhuman strength. On Robertss command, the men raised Jon to waist height, swiftly and seemingly perfectly level, as though their arms and deltoids were hydraulic. Then, in one motion, they took off downhill, with negligible help from us. This cant be accurate, but I remember the sensation of being almost dragged, like children in a sled. A National Geographic television crew was embedded at the Coast Guards air station in Sitka, filming an installment of a thrill-ride reality series. The network had sent crews to other Coast Guard stations around the country too, though this assignment appeared to hold the most dramatic potential. Air Station Sitka was unique: Its pilots were responsible for 12,000 miles of coastline, a sprawling, treacherous wilderness riven with fjords, inlets and glaciers, often buffeted by implacably horrible weather. People who went into the backcountry in Alaska had a way of getting themselves into a different magnitude of trouble, too; as Roberts put it, When stuff happens in Alaska, its big. Still, this was the television crews eighth day in Sitka, and as the shows producer, Annabelle Hester, explained: I was having calls with my bosses at headquarters saying, Nothing is happening! We were scrambling to come up with Plan B. Then, the Mustangs call came in at 1:42. What type of injuries are we looking at? asked the dispatcher. She was taking the call from behind a semicircular counter, like the reception desk at a midlevel corporate branch office. She had a framed snapshot of a parakeet to brighten her work space, and a photograph of a dog with a heart that said, I Woof You. A cameraman stood conspicuously beside her, holding a tense, tight shot. Probable broken ribs, a definite broken arm, said the man on the other end. Then his voice faltered, seemed to give up: And whatever else would happen to you if a tree fell on you, he added. The dispatcher retrieved the appropriate paperwork and scribbled Tree fell on person on one line. She read the current weather aloud: 30 knots wind, 300 ceiling, heavy rain and one-mile vis. That would soon be revised: the ceiling had dropped to 100 feet. Entering the weather conditions on one of the Coast Guard incident reports, someone would write, in a kind of nihilistic catchall: Extremely terrible. The Coast Guards policy was to deploy a helicopter within 30 minutes of the initial request, but the Air Stations operations officer, Cmdr. Karl Baldessari, informed everyone that this mission would take longer to plan. Baldessari was a 25-year veteran of the Coast Guard, a fast-moving, sinewy man in a blousy flight suit, with a tidy mustache and spiky hair. His role at the air station was that of a firehouse chief. He was responsible for the safety of everyone working there, which meant making judicious decisions about what warranted sending them hurtling through the sky. That calculus got knotty in conditions like these, though there was a baseline volatility to flying in Alaska at all. The Coast Guard didnt let its helicopter pilots fly lead out of Sitka, no matter how much experience they had at other air stations, until they practiced difficult landings at specific locations in the region and got their egos battered a little by logging a full winter in the state. Visibility in Alaska was frequently poor; conditions changed quickly. One pilot told me about blindly tunneling through fog in the dark when his co-pilot got caged: The man lifted his eyes momentarily from his instruments and, without any visual references or a horizon to latch onto, found it impossible to reorient himself, lost all sense of direction and was felled by vertigo. During much of the year it was also cold enough, with sufficient moisture in the air, that ascending to clear the regions many minor mountains or even just flying through a cloud risked the aircrafts icing up. To mitigate this, the Coast Guard had laid out virtual track lines across the entirety of their range: a grid of GPS points and a network of paths connecting them, along which pilots could chart a course and fly at a relatively low altitude, confident they werent going to smash into a mountain. The system wasnt comprehensive; the track lines got the pilots close to their destination, but ultimately they had to diverge from this GPS superhighway and fly the remaining distance the old-fashioned way, with their radar and eyes. It was like taking an exit off the interstate, except there might be a granite wall in front of you wherever you chose to get off. It was possible the pilots would travel very far a half-mile away from whoever needed their help only to discover that the last leg was too risky and be forced to turn back. Baldessari gathered the two pilots on duty that afternoon and the Air Stations flight surgeon, then unrolled a large paper map. He pointed to our location, explaining: Thats probably one of the lousiest places we fly in and out of. This Inian Pass, right here, is the worst place we could possibly go. Inian Pass is a slim channel near the center of the Icy Strait, the long, interconnected system of waterways stretching through Glacier Bay. Conditions in the Icy Strait can be bad 300 days of the year, Baldessari recently told me; wind, rain and storm surges all push through it fast from the open ocean. But Inian Pass is a narrow keyhole at the center of the strait a mile-wide opening between a few uninhabited islands and a rocky point where all that weather speeds up. The only way for the pilots to reach us would be to fly straight through it. Nothing in the National Geographic footage, at this point, feels reassuring. The flight surgeon holds his hand over his mouth and bites his lip. The co-pilot, Chris Ferguson, only a few months into his posting in Alaska, mills around and fidgets with his ear. Its obvious Baldessari needs convincing. He wasnt eager to send his men up if he didnt have to and wasnt certain they would make it all the way there if he did. Its kind of funny, he told the pilots, pointing at the map. Youve got a boat right here. Lying on his backboard like a burl of driftwood, Jon was conscious and cognizant of his pain, but he had started to feel somehow buffered from his body, uninterested in connecting with the world beyond it. He would later describe himself as a thinking blob. It was a very passive experience. He didnt know what was happening but could tell our momentum had stalled. He was confused and felt impatient. In his mind, the three of us had solved the impossible problem: Wed managed to get help. This was supposed to be the simple part, when everyone rushed him to the hospital. Instead, his condition deteriorated. Within 10 minutes of reaching the beach, Jon threw up. Id never seen anything like it, a kind of dark purple gristle. I took out my wool cap to wipe his face, and he retched a second time, straight into my hat. I got that all over me, John Roberts told me recently. Hed seen vomit like that before; it meant Jon had ingested a fair amount of blood and signaled internal injuries. It made Roberts anxious. He had been on the Mustang for two and a half years at that point but had spent the previous four years in Palm Beach, a busy but less extreme posting that often involved rescuing weekend boaters from relatively close to shore and where, Roberts pointed out, the water is warm and wont necessarily kill you if you go in. Moreover, the bulk of the Coast Guards training is for maritime rescues, not rescues on land. Counterintuitive as it sounds, Robertss comfort level and confidence had dropped significantly once he hopped off the Zodiac and set foot on the beach. He reported back to the Mustang that Jon had thrown up, then soon radioed again, explaining that Jon was going into shock. He kept giving and requesting updates, trying to gauge how long this might take, and eventually started erecting a makeshift shelter out of plastic sheeting and medical tape, hoping to keep Jon out of the rain. Out of earshot of us, Roberts explained to his crew mate Eamon McCormack what the vomit meant: The possibility of Jon dying, here under their care, was real. At one point in the National Geographic footage, as Robertss calls are relayed to the air station in Sitka, you can see where the dispatcher clearly writes on her form: E.M.T. does not feel comfortable. By this time, the air stations flight surgeon had received enough information to be alarmed. It sounds like hes got a pretty significant chest injury, he told Baldessari. Baldessari understood they would need to launch a helicopter but warned the Mustang that the aircraft might not make it through the weather; ultimately it would be the pilots call, once they veered off their last track line and tried to shoot through Inian Pass. They would go and give it a look, Baldessari explained over the radio, but the outlook was iffy. The guys on the beach, he said, must be prepared to get Jon back on their cutter and haul him to a hospital themselves, as fast as they could. One evening this winter, my phone rang, and it was Karl Baldessari. Long retired from the Coast Guard, he was teaching aviation at a community college in Oregon, where I left a voice mail message earlier that day. I meanwhile had metamorphosed into a 40-year-old father of two and fumbled to explain to Baldessari that, as thrilled as I was to have tracked him down, I was, at the moment, racing to finish a risotto for my daughters before gymnastics practice and would have to call him back. Without missing a beat, Baldessari blared orders at me, joking, but still sounding as instinctually in charge as he did in the National Geographic footage: O.K., he said, you want to stir it constantly, but slowly! I didnt expect any of the Coast Guardsmen I was cold-calling to remember that day. However dramatic it remained for me, I assumed it would have been obscured in a yearslong wash of more sensational incidents. But everyone I spoke to did remember it, immediately and in detail. Baldessari had been involved in hundreds of rescue operations during his 30-year career, and yet, as I stood at the stove on the phone that evening, he told me: The moment I listened to your voice mail, I knew exactly the case! It was almost like it was yesterday. There was something about the supreme freakishness of the accident that left a lasting impression. For those who came ashore, the experience was also marked by a feeling of subtly escalating chaos and the pressure to surmount it. McCormack told me that ours was a story he retold endlessly, often to the younger Coast Guardsmen he was eventually tasked with training. In it was a lesson about not taking situations that look impossible at face value, he said. When things start to go wrong, dont panic or lose sight of what resources youve got. Keep working the problem until its absolute end even, McCormack added, if it means deviating from official policy. McCormack was not supposed to be landing an inflatable boat on an unforgivably rocky Alaskan shoreline, for example. But there he was, anyway, beaching the Zodiac as gingerly as he could, so that Roberts and the other men could load Jon aboard. They slid him in on his side like a folder into a filing cabinet, as Jon put it, and started motoring through the chop, very cautiously, back to the Mustang, about a mile away. As relieved as Jon had been when the Coast Guard first arrived, he also felt instantaneously more vulnerable. Strapped to the back board, his neck in the collar, he surrendered control of his body, however imperfect that control had been. He was being hauled around as an object now, with no ability to wriggle or shift positions, to manage his pain or even to turn his head and see what was happening. He was helpless, entirely dependent on the upright people operating around him, those voices he could hear discussing him on the far side of some gauzy divide. About 10 minutes into the trip on the Zodiac, Jon heard one of those voices say, Oh, shit, were losing air. A section of the Zodiacs sponson the inflatable fender that wraps around the boat had punctured. One side was completely deflated. Its a big deal, McCormack recently explained to me, sounding surprised that I had to ask. The sponson increases the boats buoyancy and stability, as well as keeping water from cresting over the side; under normal conditions, a Zodiac with a broken sponson would have been taken out of service automatically. Instead, McCormack found the puncture and wedged the nozzle of a small pump inside. Then steering the boat with one hand, operating the throttle with the other he started working the pump with his foot, essentially doing leg presses, to keep the fender partly inflated. The ride was already bumpy in four-foot seas. Now McCormack began tracing a slow, zigzagging course, doing what he could to tamp down the turbulence and the violence to Jons spine, as well as to guard against the possibility of the injured mans suddenly bounding over the side on his backboard. Roberts and the other Coast Guardsmen on the Zodiac leaned over Jon to shield him from the splash. The pain was heinous; Jon seemed to be passing out. Roberts talked to him, held his hand. Roberts felt crushed, he told me; he was torturing this guy in order to save him. When they finally reached the Mustang, rather than hoist Jon off the Zodiac, they swung the ships crane around and simply lifted the entire boat out of the water, level with the deck, and then carried him aboard, to keep from joggling him any more. McCormack eventually returned for me and Dave, and a half-hour later we were reunited with Jon in the Mustangs athwartship passageway, a cramped, steel hallway, like the space between two cars of a train. Jon was still battened to the backboard, wedged up to keep the weight of his body on his less-painful side. They had cut off his clothes, though hed murmured a plea not to he was wearing a brand-new Patagonia jacket that he had borrowed from a friend then swaddled him in a hypothermia blanket. Dave and I knelt and rubbed his feet. The coast guard rescue operation was documented by a National Geographic crew who happened to be in Alaska. Video stills from National Geographic Image Collection The helicopter was going to make it. I dont remember there being a grand announcement. Im not sure we were ever made aware of the possibility that it wouldnt. Now the crew got busy below: tying down anything that could be blown off by the rotor wash or stashing it in the mess. I also dont remember hearing the helicopter when it finally arrived. Instead, I remember only a heavy door to our left swinging open to reveal, like a scene from an action movie, the silhouette of a man in a blue flight suit, feet planted shoulder-width apart to steady himself as the ship rocked sideways. The cable hed been lowered on drew back into the ocean spray and fog behind him. Im flight surgeon Russ Bowman, he said and stepped inside. Bowman took Jons vitals and gave him several, successive shots of morphine. Soon, everyone was working to squeeze him back through the narrow doorway and onto the deck where the helicopter, an MH-60 Jayhawk, was idling overhead. Until recently, the story I told about the accident unfolded in two basic acts: the tree fell, instantaneously unleashing a kind of unfathomable chaos; then the Coast Guard appeared and, just as swiftly, regathered that chaos into order. It was like watching footage of an exploding object, then watching it run in reverse. The maneuver the Coast Guard was readying to execute now, on the deck of the Mustang, would be the climax of that progression. The helicopter hovered 30 or 40 feet over the boat, mirroring its speed and trajectory, while both vehicles moved slowly forward. Looks like youre heading for a rain squall, the co-pilot, Chris Ferguson, radioed the Mustang at one point, and asked the ship to adjust its course, to keep them in as forgiving weather as possible. Soon the flight mechanic was calling out instructions to tuck the aircraft into alignment: Forward and right 30. Forward and right 20. Forward and right 10. Then, finally speaking, in the flight recordings, with an almost galling air of imperturbability the lead helicopter pilot, Rich McIntyre, radioed the flight mechanic to begin the hoist. The whole procedure, from our vantage point, seemed seamless and routine. In a way, it was: After the agonized deliberation at the air station, the pilots exited off their GPS route into fairly manageable conditions around Inian Pass. The winds were workable; the water wasnt excessively choppy. Ultimately, scooping Jon off the deck of the Mustang would resemble a standard exercise that the pilots drilled in their trainings. Not to dumb it down, the co-pilot, Chris Ferguson, told me plucking someone with a spinal injury off a moving boat and hoisting them into a moving helicopter is a pretty insane thing to do. But we normalize what isnt normal. A few moments earlier, as the men scurried around Jon on his backboard, packaging and fastening him for the hoist, Jon worried that the second he got airborne he would start twirling uncontrollably, like the feathery end of a cat toy, and potentially thwack his head on the equipment on deck. But now, he was levitating smoothly a solitary, swaddled bale of a man, perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Dave and I watched it happen: our friend rising steadily away from us, improbably, to safety. As Jon floated higher, he could hear the Coast Guardsmen on the Mustang beneath him begin to cheer. He felt it was safe to open his eyes. When he did, he saw someone, hunched in the open cargo door of the helicopter, pointing a television camera at him. Video Clip From National Geographic Image Collection Jon was rushed into surgery at the hospital in Sitka that evening. Hed punctured both lungs, one to the point of collapse, sustained multiple fractures on eight of his ribs, broken several vertebrae, shattered his left shoulder blade and snapped his brachial plexus nerves. His spleen had been macerated into countless flecks. After awakening from surgery, Jon was disappointed that the doctors had swept those shards into a bag and thrown his spleen in the trash; he wanted to get a look at it, maybe even keep it preserved in a jar, alongside his cyborg-banana. Once back in Gustavus, Dave and I realized that we would need to call Jons parents in Switzerland. I didnt have to push the job on Dave this time; he was adamant. He felt he would need to face conversations like these if he was going to be a doctor. It was Jons father who picked up, and after absorbing the news, he paused and caught Dave off guard. Thank you, he said solemnly. You guys saved my sons life. Daves stomach dropped. I remember thinking about it, he told me recently, and realizing, Yeah. I guess, logistically, we did. I had the same reaction when Dave hung up the phone and, clearly shaken, relayed his conversation to me. Until that moment, the idea that we saved Jons life had never occurred to us, possibly because the idea that Jon might have died still hadnt occurred to us. We had zero sense of accomplishment, or even agency. In our minds, all we did was avoid screwing up until the real help could arrive and save him. But Jon hadnt absorbed the story that way. From the instant he willed himself out of the water, he felt all of us locking into that same seamless flow of order steadily displacing chaos that Dave and I only experienced once the Coast Guard arrived. It was amazing to him how the three of us managed to generate solutions for each successive problem. Even my reciting those poems, which to me had always felt like a moment of utter helplessness, became, in Jons telling, a perfect emblem of that streak of serendipitous problem-solving. You conveyed a calmness, he told me recently. I remember it being this nice moment. He added that if he ever has to spend two hours dying on a remote forest floor again, having me there to recite poetry would be one of his top ways to do it. The feeling of inevitability that day became only more pronounced for Jon as time passed and the entire story of our rescue receded into a prologue to the rest of his life. The surgery in Sitka was only the first of half a dozen, and it would take several years for him to regain 60 percent of the use of his arm, wrist and hand, as the nerves gradually regrew along his injured side. He was in good enough shape to go back to Alaska the summer after the accident repairing boats in the companys warehouse and occasionally helping out at the bed-and-breakfast but he struggled. He could repair kayaks but needed help lifting them. He was unable to wrestle the mattress corners into the fitted sheets when he made the beds. After that, he started working at a recording studio in Portland, just as he envisioned while stuck in the water, and he now runs his own audio-mastering company: Spleenless Mastering. Eventually Jon seemed to have recovered from the accident without any conspicuous disabilities. But his life has been quietly corroded by chronic pain and, almost equally, by the stresses of navigating the doctors, medications (and their side effects) to manage it. About two years after the accident, he learned he had PTSD. The trauma wasnt the falling tree, but his experience of powerlessness as a perpetual patient in the American medical system. It manifested as a kind of unbearable empathy for anyone who was suffering. Jon found himself shouting at doctors, on his own behalf but also on behalf of strangers in waiting rooms who werent being seen. He would hear interviews with natural-disaster victims or the homeless on NPR and have to pull his car over. There continued to be other tribulations, too more mundane ones. A few times a year, he still rebreaks a rib out of nowhere; once or twice, Jon told me, all it has taken is an especially affectionate hug from his wife. Jon found early on that he could cordon off this suffering, both in his own mind and in conversation, by making jokes about the accident itself and sticking to the happy ending of our rescue, a trick that got much easier after the National Geographic show aired later that year. Mission Rescue: Final Frontier, the program was called. The soundtrack was all heart-thwacking synth drums and shredding guitar. A foreboding, Ken Burns-effected snapshot of Dave and Jon looking joyful before the trip gave way to a whirring re-enactment of someone elses legs cast in the role of Daves legs sprinting through the blurry woods for our radio. A melodramatic narrator pondered the fate of Kayaker Jon Cohrs. Initially, the schlockiness of the production felt like a blessing. The show depersonalized the accident, giving us all a shorthand to convey how dramatic that day had been, without confronting how destabilizing and senseless it might have felt. At a party, you could lay out the basics a tree fell on Jon then say, National Geographic even made a TV special about it, and everyone would go wide-eyed but then move on, figuring you would unspool the real story some other time. Jon, in Sitka Community Hospital, celebrates his rescue with the author, center, and their friend Dave. From Jon Mooallem But we never realized the degree to which that kitschy shorthand started to obscure the real story then, gradually, to replace it. Im embarrassed to admit that, though Jon and I have remained close, I did not know the extent to which he has continued to suffer for the last 17 years until talking to him for several hours in order to write this account. The morning after the accident, Dave and I traveled back to Dundas Bay to pack up our campsite and collect the kayaks we abandoned the previous evening. We were shuttled there from Gustavus by the same boat captain who dropped us off three days earlier, a forbiddingly taciturn commercial fisherman named Doug Ogilvy. The tide in the cove was way out when we arrived; it was, as Ogilvy put it, a suck-ass beach. The approach was so shallow that he had to drop anchor a hundred yards or more from shore. He asked if we had waders. We did not. So Ogilvy put on his, climbed down the ladder and told Dave to get on his back. Then stoically, like an ox or an old-timey strongman hauling a safe, he trudged through the thigh-high water, dropped Dave on the gravel beach, then lurched back and hauled me the same way, as if I were a man-size infant in a papoose. Dave told me hed had a strange feeling on the ride out, as if we would discover that an even more massive tree had fallen on our tent since we last slept there and that all three of us would have been crushed and killed if wed spent another night in Dundas Bay, as planned. That is, he half-expected to find evidence that the accident had been fortuitous somehow, that there was a reason, or redemptive value, behind it. My mother had the same instinct when I called her the night before. On the phone I strained to emphasize for her she was only two years into her cruelly premature widowhood, and I was new at being the overprotective son of a widow that Jon was going to be all right, and that Dave and I were safe. She told me that my dad must have been up there looking out for us somehow. I resented all the supernatural thinking. If it comforted other people, fine, but Id somehow known right away that I didnt need a reason for the accident. It was senseless, but straightforward, as unequivocal a fact as my fathers death had been. A tree fell in the woods. It might not have, but it did. Jon could have died, but he didnt. Other possibilities spiraled infinitely outward from there, though apparently I wasnt too interested in contemplating them. As strange as it sounds, it was years before I realized that the tree could have hit me and only after a friend pointed this out, as I told the story around a fire one night. And it was only a few weeks ago, while on the phone with Jon, that it occurred to me that the tree could have hit all three of us we were standing in a single-file line, after all, waiting to cross the creek and that we all might have wound up clobbered and scattered in that river, dying slowly and watching each other die. Its also probably true that I helped preclude these possibilities by being so feverishly paranoid about bears, wheeling around at the sound of the snapping roots. Thats what allowed me to see the tree coming, just barely, and scream that infinitesimal heads-up for Dave. And so, the real meaning of the accident, if I felt compelled to find one, might be that it validated my most exaggerated fears. But instead, it somehow helped cleanse me of them. There was comfort for me in accepting the arbitrariness of what happened, in regarding it as a spasm of random damage in time and space that, just as randomly, a small number of human beings got the opportunity to repair. We were more capable than I had understood. We were also far more helpless. On the ride back to Gustavus with our gear, I pictured myself, again, as a small blip in empty space. The ride was rough and jumpy as Ogilvy impatiently pounded his boat through the last vestigial wave energy of the storm; Dave and I had to hold on, to plant ourselves on the bench behind him. But there was a moment when I felt so safe that I loosened my grip, leaned slightly into the motion of the boat, and, closing my eyes, felt myself lift off the seat. Jon Mooallem is a writer at large for the magazine who is working on a book about the great Alaska earthquake of 1964. His last feature for the magazine was about our climatological future. Modern fashion has always been obsessed with what comes next. Today, as captured in Ts latest digital cover story, designers visions are dark and sparse, hinting at some shadow of the truth. But not so long ago, the view was far less gloomy. IN 1909, THE GODFATHER of Futurism, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, published his manifesto in Le Figaro, the Paris daily. Glorifying virility, patriotism and war the only hygiene for the world the Italian poet envisioned a future shaped by speed and technology, but also by scorn for woman, and advocated a radical break with the bourgeois conception of the past, including the destruction of libraries and museums. We stand on the last promontory of the centuries! Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the impossible? More than a century later, this sounds quaint (and brutish), but its hard not to feel a twinge of tenderness for this wild love of progress, for deep-chested locomotives and racing cars adorned with great pipes, like serpents. While short-lived (about two decades) and somewhat blurry in principle (Marinetti later became a fascist, then an academician), Futurism would translate into a distinctive visual style with enduring influence, and not only in art. Futurism differed from other Modernist movements, like Cubism, in that it was meant to speak to the way we live, from politics to fashion. It was the Futurist painter Giacomo Balla who set out tenets for clothing design in 1914, promoting bold or even clashing colors, geometric patterns and freedom of movement; banished were symmetry, harmony and tradition. Before ready-to-wear came to dominate the industry, Futurists anticipated that perpetual obsolescence would be at the heart of fashion itself, requiring creativity on the part of designers to provide novelty for the wearer. Miu Miu top, $2,890, skirt, $1,200, belt, $525, socks, $185, and shoes, $950, top, $2,890, skirt, $1,200, belt, $525, socks, $185, and shoes, $950, miumiu.com Miu Miu top, $2,890, skirt, $1,200, belt, $525, socks, $185, and shoes, $950, Alexander McQueen jacket, pants, price on request, and shoes, $1,590, (212) 645-1797. Left:top, $2,890, skirt, $1,200, belt, $525, socks, $185, and shoes, $950, miumiu.com . Right:jacket, pants, price on request, and shoes, $1,590, (212) 645-1797. Alexander McQueen jacket, pants, price on request, and shoes, $1,590, (212) 645-1797. Early Futurist fashion could run light: The Modernist designer Sonia Delaunays simultaneous dresses were floor-length gowns made from variable fabric swatches that the artist began making in 1913, all geometric patchworks of vibrating color combinations green and gold, red and pink that resembled a walking Cubist painting. Futurism could also be dark, such as the metal bustier-like chest plate worn by Brigitte Helm as the Maschinenmensch in Fritz Langs classic 1927 film about dystopian class struggle, Metropolis. It could also be simply utilitarian: In 1919, the Futurist artist and fashion designer Ernesto Michahelles, otherwise known as Thayaht, introduced a commercially successful unisex jumpsuit called the TuTa, from the Italian word tutta (meaning all). (Thayaht also worked for Vionnet, the creator of the bias-cut dress, with its emphasis on the movement of the body.) Its not so great a leap from the TuTa to Carhartt overalls or even Yeezy Calabasas sweats, but as Futurism took hold of the 20th-century imagination, it would become less about functionality or technological innovation than our romance with the notion of the future itself: a fantasy of tomorrow for today. Though the formal movement itself ended, its obsessions endured. In the 1960s, space-age designers like Andre Courreges and Paco Rabanne were inspired by the aesthetics of satellites and rockets, resulting in sleek, shimmering minidresses for an era of youthful rebellion. In the 1980s, Thierry Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier, among others, designed clothes for a new generation of cyberpunk supervixens, inspired by films like Blade Runner and Tron: a darker, computer-age sexiness that gave us bold shoulders, body-con everything and transparent trench coats. The early aughts found retro-futurism at its most edgily gossamer in Nicolas Ghesquieres brilliant collections for Balenciaga, including floral dresses with the shape of Jane Jetsons evening wear, segmented leather pants and gilded leggings that called to mind Star Wars Stormtroopers or maybe C-3POs girlfriend. These were clothes infused with the optimism of a new millennium and the birth of the digital age: Androids could be lovely, too. All of these dreams of the future, with their built-in expiration dates, have become visual touchstones in their own right, in turn inspiring subsequent designers exactly the kind of system of historical precedent the original, anti-nostalgia Futurists, with their fixation on the shock of the new, would have shunned. Balenciaga coat, $11,500, (310) 854-0557. Left: Balenciaga coat, $11,500, (310) 854-0557. Right: Bottega Veneta coat and shoes, price on request, (800) 845-6790. Bottega Veneta coat and shoes, price on request, (800) 845-6790. Now that it can feel perilous to look ahead, the fact that contemporary designers are venturing back to the future is more fraught than it was. Ghesquieres spring 2019 collection for Louis Vuitton was almost quixotically upbeat, featuring floral jacquard flight suits, sci-fi prints of potassium lakes shot by drones and astronaut sleeves. Guccis Alessandro Michele referred to the feminist scholar Donna Haraways landmark 1984 text, A Cyborg Manifesto, in his fall 2018 show, in which models carried 3-D prints of their own heads. There were fabulous holographic pants at Balmains fall 2018 collection. With the exception of the hazmat suits and balaclavas at the fall 2018 Calvin Klein 205W39NYC show, it felt more or less as though fashion had taken a vow of innocence rather than confront the reality of climate change reports and border walls, presenting us not with an actual vision of the future but rather a longing for a time in which we still could feel hopeful about it. Fashion is, perhaps, not the place for a reckoning, and it never pays to be a literalist. Dystopia is a drag. But those of us wishing for a stimulating, thought-through vision of our present moment might wonder: Is this what well be wearing after we locate the wormhole, or when a SpaceX rocket jettisons the human race en masse to Mars? Will there be nightclubs in our terraformed colony in which to wear the excellent sequined mesh dresses? The problem with breaking down the mysterious doors of the impossible is that right now, no one really wants to think too hard about whats on the other side. FASHION IS A TERRIFIC time-travel machine. There is a kind of optimism built into the industry that makes the future a recurring theme, a kind of sustained argument that there will always be people who need to make a statement with what they wear. But one of its curious paradoxes is the way in which it can remix the past, or the pasts unique vision of the future, to create something that feels resonantly of the moment. Our current moment has resulted in what one might call an extended spell of beautiful eclecticism, a temporal salad of pasts and futures past. Instead of a coherent reflection of the now, we have an assortment of potent, deeply coded nostalgias: a kind of choose-our-own-era pastiche for troubled times. How, one wonders, can this be a way forward? Nothing and everything is anachronism; nothing and everything looks vintage. This is what we wear, one might think while looking at the collections of recent years, as we watch the world spinning gently out of time. Burberry dress, $1,750, and shoes, $750, dress, $1,750, and shoes, $750, us.burberry.com . Stylists own socks. Prada dress, $2,250, and socks, $170, (212) 334-8888. Burberry dress, $1,750, and shoes, $750, Prada dress, $2,250, and socks, $170, (212) 334-8888. Left:dress, $1,750, and shoes, $750, us.burberry.com . Stylists own socks. Right:dress, $2,250, and socks, $170, (212) 334-8888. Visions of futures past always feel almost willfully innocent in retrospect. Its not unlike the feeling of opening an old box and discovering ones first-grade class photo, when you still thought youd become an astronaut or win a Nobel Prize. But then, the retro-future is powerful precisely because it reveals to us the faultiness of those dreams, the seductive gap between our fantasies of what we thought the future should look like and what it turned out to be. A replicator should be delivering our meals by now, not Postmates; we should be getting around town by jet pack, not Segway. Its hard to look back at the midcenturys miniskirted sexual ebullience knowing that, a decade later, the Equal Rights Amendment would fail and, shortly after that, AIDS would wipe out entire communities. And remember all of the people who, as recently as 10 years ago, thought that the internet would save democracy? Wishful thinking is a powerful human instinct. In Gene Roddenberrys sweetly utopian original Star Trek, which ran from 1966 to 69 but was set in 2265 to 2269, the divisions of race and class didnt exist, nor did sexual harassment. Lieutenant Uhura and Captain Kirk who would share the first televised interracial kiss, albeit under the influence of telekinesis worked together in an atmosphere of professionalism and mutual respect. Her uniform as the starships communications officer: red micro-miniskirt. (Less sunny cinematic visions of the future tended to come from Europeans who grew up in the aftermath of two apocalyptic wars, like Andrei Tarkovsky and Chris Marker.) By the end of the 1960s, this vision of peace-and-love grooviness didnt hold up; Vietnam raged on, and the mod no longer seemed revolutionary but campy: a glittery sex-kitten wardrobe to be inflicted upon Jane Fonda in Barbarella (1968), in which the titular character comes from an idyllic Earth of the future, a place where war doesnt exist. Then the 1970s arrived and with it the womens movement; there were actual dark powers to be fought on the home front and in the professional sphere, and no one wanted to wear a silver lame bra and bootees while doing it. But thats the funny thing about the future: Just when you think youve got it figured out, it sprints away, leaving us and our dreams behind. Who could have foreseen then that, in the 21st century, progress wouldnt be about free love but about sharing stories of oppression? What would Uhura have to say about identity politics? We dont know if this is fashions last gasp of radiant optimism: There very well may be intergalactic peace and equality in the 23rd century. Perhaps women will occupy the majority of seats of power in the United Federation of Planets. Or maybe well still be here on Earth, in our UPF-fabric togas and full-body neoprene: a vision not so unlike that of the young French designer Marine Serre, whose idea of an evening look, as shown in her spring 2019 show, is a sheer scuba suit worn under a luxe scavenger dress made of upcycled silk scarves. Which, come to think of it, might not be a bad thing to be wearing when the sea laps at our doors. Tom Ford jacket, $5,690, and skirt, $4,250, jacket, $5,690, and skirt, $4,250, tomford.com Tom Ford jacket, $5,690, and skirt, $4,250, Vetements coat, $3,790, Balenciaga shoes, $1,890. Left:jacket, $5,690, and skirt, $4,250, tomford.com . Right:coat, $3,790, mytheresa.com shoes, $1,890. Vetements coat, $3,790, Balenciaga shoes, $1,890. coat, $3,790, mytheresa.com shoes, $1,890. Dior jumpsuit, $860, (800) 929-3467. Alexander McQueen boots. Model: Cyrielle Lalande at Wilhelmina Models. Hair by Soichi Inagaki at Art Partner. Makeup by Lauren Parsons at Art Partner. Set Design by Andy Hillman at Streeters. Casting by Madeleine Ostlie. The median hold period for a New Zealand property has driven down to 7.4 years, compared to the peak 8.2 in 2016 and trough 3.8 in 2007, according to analytics firm CoreLogic. Prompted by the relatively quiet residential property market, CoreLogic said it analysed residential properties that were resold over the quarter to see whether that has borne any relation to hold periods. It suggests that hold periods by buyer group remained stable up to 2015, with first home buyers and movers, who have resold, staying in their properties for shorter periods. Investors have not seen the same dip. In Auckland, the hold period was shorter than the rest of New Zealand, while first home buyers also tended to hold properties for less time than multiple property owners (i.e. investors). However, Aucklands hold period has started to rise again in the past few quarters compared to the downward trend over the past 2-3 years SELAMAT DATANG DI MESINSLOT. SITUS JUDI CASINO DAN SLOT TERBAIK DI iNDONESIA - Pemeliharaan Terjadwal: Global Gaming pada 2021-02-26 dari 10:00 AM sampai 2031-02-26 10:00 AM (GMT + 7). Selama waktu ini, Global Gaming permainan tidak akan tersedia. Kami memohon maaf atas ketidaknyamanan yang mungkin ditimbulkan. - Pemeliharaan Terjadwal: Asia Gaming pada 2021-04-07 dari 1:00 PM sampai 2021-04-08 11:00 PM (GMT + 7). Selama waktu ini, Asia Gaming permainan tidak akan tersedia. Kami memohon maaf atas ketidaknyamanan yang mungkin ditimbulkan. - Pemeliharaan Terjadwal: S128 Cockfight pada 2021-02-26 dari 12:00 PM sampai 2031-02-26 12:00 PM (GMT + 7). Selama waktu ini, S128 Cockfight permainan tidak akan tersedia. Kami memohon maaf atas ketidaknyamanan yang mungkin ditimbulkan. A new interactive study guide from Weber Shandwick attempts to crack the code of intelligent technology for people working in the communications industry. Media Genius, an outgrowth of Webers Solving for X tech newsletter, is an interactive guide that provides a rundown of the terms and concepts that have defined the current digital landscape. It also explains what those developments mean for communicators who want to make sure their messages get heard over the hype and the buzz. The guide covers a broad range of topicsfrom the difference between artificial intelligence and machine learning to the rise of synthetic content (such artificially created media as computer-generated influencers and augmented reality). In addition to giving capsule definitions of these developments, Media Genius takes a look at the risks and opportunities each of them represents. For example, while it notes that artificial intelligence gives communicators the ability to personalize content, deliver new customer experiences and create greater efficiencies, it also lists a few potential problems. Among them: changes in job requirements (along with the threat of job losses) and increasing consumer distrust when it comes to human/machine interactions. Though the guide presents a sizeable chunk of information, its interactive form gives users the ability to tailor the content to their specific needs. The table of contents offers the option of going directly to a specific section with one click, and options are provided to access a wealth of supplementary materials. There are also links to online courses at such institutions as Stanford, Rutgers and Boston University that address the subjects outlined in the guide. The overriding theme of Media Genius is that previous developments in digital technology are likely to be dwarfed by the effects of the new forms of machine-based intelligence. To respond to those effects, the guide says, communicators need to develop an understanding of how that intelligence works. Technology is no longer just a tool for communications directed by human intelligence, Weber Shandwick chief digital officer Chris Perry wrote in a March 18 post on Medium. It has its own intelligenceone that at times augments human understanding, and at other confounds it. The implicationsfor businesses, for society, for communicators, couldnt be greater. Philip Morris International has cut a $6.5M sponsored content deal with Vice Media, which focuses on the 18- to 34-year-old market, to promote e-cigarette vaping. The "PMI channel," which kicks off in April, has alarmed the healthcare community, according to a report in the Financial Times. Martin McKee, European public health professor at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the FT the PMI push could be the harbinger of more youth-targeted marketing campaigns to come. The maker of Marlboro cigarettes will sponsor programming that tackles some of the biggest issues facing the world in areas such as health, environment, energy and technology," according to a recruitment pitch. News of the PMI campaign comes on the heels of the decision of US Food and Drug Administration Scott Gottlieb to step down. He pushed for tighter controls on vaping products to reduce its epidemic use among teenagers. PMI is a separate company from Phillip Morris USA, which is owned by Atria Group. UK officials do not share Gottliebs concern about youth vaping. The No. 1 cigarette marketer contends that e-cigarette vapers pose a significantly lower risk of heart and lung disease than cigarette smoke. It is in the midst of a corporate transformation from producing cigarettes to manufacturing reduced-risk products. Vaping products generated 14 percent of PMI revenues in 2018. PMI expects that level to rise to 38 percent by 2025, Marian Salzman, who headed Havas PR North America since 2009, took the senior VP-communications post at PMI last April. A non-smoker, Salzman said she was attracted to the job due to PMIs commitment to smoke-free alternatives to cigarettes. Larry Weber Huawei Technologies enlisted Larry Webers Racepoint Global for PR and crisis support as it takes on the US law that bars governmental agencies and federal contractors from doing business with the Chinese firm. The US has orchestrated a global campaign to convince allied nations to ban Huawei technology from development of the next-generation 5G mobile networking systems. It claims China's government, which heavily subsidizes Huawei, uses its equipment to spy on other countries. Huawei, in turn, sued the US government in federal district court in Texas earlier this month, challenging the equipment ban, saying it is an unconstitutional infringement on Huaweis ability to do business in the US. Racepoints one-year contract, which went into effect October 2018, covers strategy, media/analyst relations, content, crisis, and social media. The goal is to educate policymakers and legislators via strategic media relations and content generation. The Boston-based firm is not involved in lobbying work. Weber, who bills at $320 per hour, Anne Potts (managing director/executive VP) and RJ Bardsley (chief strategist, global technology group/executive VP) lead Racepoints 13-member Huawei team. He told O'Dwyer's Huawei faces "one of the most interesting reputation challenges of our time." The managing director of Cosmic Bowl in Tullamore has confirmed that the bowling alley is set to re-open on Friday, March 22 after a short closure due to insurance costs. John Carroll slammed the culture of insurance claims and failing regulations after he was forced to close the popular bowling facility in early March. He said himself and the staff are "delighted to be back in business" after finding suitable insurance cover with a European underwriter. He said: "They take a different attitude over there and they've judged the business on its merits and its record." John had said that the bowling alley had operated without a claim for 16 years in the Sragh Business Park but had seen its premium rise from 12,000 in 2016 to 48,000 in 2019. John Caroll told the Offaly Express that he has not got suitable cover "at a fraction" of that cost and that he was looking forward to welcoming customers back through the doors. He insisted that companies like his in the leisure industry will be forced to go elsewhere for cover until "a lot of legislation is changed in Ireland." John is part of a wider group of leisure company owners who are lobbying for a tightening of regulations to address the legal and claim culture generally which he says has "gone mad" and will get worse with the next generation. The group met recently in Tullamore where it was revealed at least two similar businesses closed last week with a further three imminent due to insurance hikes. The group also travelled to the Dail recently to support a Fianna Fail motion aimed at tackling the problem which is set for mention. Cosmic Bowl, Tullamore re-opens on Friday, March 22. Haryana: Maths Professor loses job for teaching love formula to woman students Chandigarh oi-Madhuri Adnal Chandigarh, Mar 21: A mathematics professor at a women's college in Haryana's Karnal was suspended after he was seen explaining the very difficult subject of love through mathematical equations. The video of the entire incident was recorded on camera and showed it to the principal following which the professor, Charan Singh, submitted a written apology to the students. The professor was subsequently suspended. The video has been since then shared widely on various social media platforms. In the video, Singh can be seen writing three formulae on the blackboard. The first was "closeness - attraction = friendship", "closeness + attraction = romantic love" and the last of his formulae being "attraction - closeness = crush". India fully capable to act against terror: Ajit Doval The professor is seen teaching the formulae in Hindi with fervour to the students explaining each word to the girls. Singh also goes on to say how attraction dies down between husband and wife in old age and they become friends. The professor was on special deputation for only six months at the Government PG College in Sector 14. Here's the video: J&K: Grenade attack on CRPF party in Srinagars Kawdara area, two injured J&K: Grenade attack on security forces in Pulwama, four civilians injured Grenade blast near Pathankot, all check-posts put on high alert 2 policemen injured in grenade attack in Sopore India oi-PTI Srinagar, Mar 21: Two policemen, including an officer, were injured in a grenade attack by militants in Sopore township of Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday. Militants lobbed a grenade at a security forces party at Main Chowk Sopore in the north Kashmir district. Security forces have cordoned off the area and a search has been launched to nab the attackers. He said two policemen, including the station house officer of Dangiwacha police station, sustained minor injuries in the explosion. The injured have been hospitalised. J&K: Militants attack Shairbagh police station with grenade, seven injured Mobile internet has been suspended in the area. Earlier this month, a Class 9 student allegedly lobbed a grenade at a bus stand in Jammu, killing two people and injuring 32. The accused allegedly carried the weapon in his lunch box and concealed it under dry rice, police sources had told NDTV. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, March 21, 2019, 11:52 [IST] Army jawan martyred in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Sundarbani sector India oi-Madhuri Adnal Jammu, Mar 21: An army jawan was martyred on Thursday in the ceasefire violation by the Pakistan army along the LoC in Keri area of Sundarbani sector this morning. Earlier on Mar 18, an Army soldier was killed and three others injured as Pakistan violated the ceasefire for the second consecutive day along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district. The incident occurred in Keri Battal forward area in Sunderbani sector, sources said. The Army has provided advanced sniper rifles to its troops posted along the Line of Control (LoC) in the Kashmir Valley and Jammu region to retaliate ceasefire violation by Pakistan. J&K: Pakistan violates ceasefire in Akhnoor, Sunderbani sectors The troops have been provided two new advanced sniper rifles including the Barrett M95 .50 BMG and Beretta Scorpio TGT 'Victrix' .338 Lapua Magnum. The border skirmishes witnessed a spurt after India's preemptive air strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammad terror camp in Balakot on February 26 following the February 14 Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed. Four civilians, including three members of a family, were killed and several others injured as Pakistan targeted dozens of villages in over 100 incidents of ceasefire violations along the LoC in the state, especially in the twin districts of Poonch. As polling day approaches, astrologers across nation in high demand India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Mar 21: Amidst all the election heat, it is the astrologers who are in high demand. They are clearly the most sought after people as several politicians have rushed to them seeking advise on a variety of matters. With astrologers, politicians seek information on the solar and lunar phases. Further positive and negative impacts are calculated before their electoral fortunes are decided. New candidates and those seeking a re-election are all making a beeline to the astrologers. The sitting MPs want to know whether they would be as fortunate as they were in the previous elections. They are also seeking information on the time and date they should be filing their nominations. BJP releases list of 18 candidates for Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim Assembly polls Many have been advised to chant mantras to please the planets, especially Jupiter. Some astrologers in North have advised their clients to perform the Bagalamukhi ritual, which is undertaken to defeat their rivals. These rituals are not exactly cheap and require a huge amount of materials in order to be performed. Astrologers say that while some politicians consult with them all through the year, others meet them ahead of the elections. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, March 21, 2019, 15:44 [IST] Suicide not murder says Mamata Banerjee on death of BJP leader BJP MLA from Ayodhya sentenced to 5 years in prison for producing fake mark sheet to get college admission BJP MLA shot at during Holy festivities in UP, case registered India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P Lakhimpur, Mar 21: A BJP legislator from Uttar Pradesh was shot at during Holi festivities at the party office on Thursday. SP Lakhimpur Poona told news agency ANI That BJP MLA from Lakhimpur, Yogesh Verma, sustained bullet wounds on his leg. He is being treated at the hospital. He is out of danger. A case has been registered, investigation underway, according to news agency ANI. Civilian shot dead by terrorists in Pulwama S Singh, DM Lakhimpur Kheri, said, "Lakhimpur Sadar MLA Yogesh Verma was meeting some people when an argument broke out following which he was shot at. He is out of danger. He is in a state of shock and unable to give a statement right now. Investigation underway." The injured MLA has not issued any statement. Lakhimpur Kheri is the largest district in Uttar Pradesh, India, on the border with Nepal. Its administrative capital is the city of Lakhimpur. Last rites of actor Puneeth Rajkumar held with full state honours at Kanteerava studio in Bengaluru Gone too soon: From Puneeth Rajkumar to Sidharth Shukla, untimely deaths leave family and fans stunned Dharwad building collapse: Death toll rises to 13, engineer arrested India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P Dharwad, Mar 21: Police arrested the engineer of the 5-storey building that collpsed on March 19 at Kumareshwar nagar in Dharwad. Thirteen people were killed in the incident. The Engineer, Vivek Pawar, was arrested from a lodge in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. The death toll in building collapse at Kumaraeshwar Nagar in Dharwad rose to 13 as rescuers pulled out three more bodies on Thursday. Till now more than 60 people have been rescued. Rescuers have pulled out 60 people from the rubble of the four-storeyed under construction building, which collapsed Tuesday evening at Kumareshwaranagar in the heart of Dharwad,about 400 km from Bengaluru. In addition to 10 ambulances and five fire tenders deployed for relief and rescue operations, three teams of the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) have been engaged, two from Ghaziabad and one from Bengaluru. Will Ramalinga Reddy spoil Tejasvini's party in Bengaluru South? Former CM Jagadish Shettar, who visited the cite, sought Rs 10 lakh compensation to the kin of the deceased in the tragedy. He further asked the government to order a judicial probe into the incident. CM HD Kumaraswamy said, "The rescue work at Dharwad building collapse site is on. I spoke to the Revenue Minister who is on site and the DC and took stock of the progress in rescue operations. I have told the Chief Secretary to make a detailed inquiry into the accident." The rescue work at Dharwad building collapse site is on. I spoke to the Revenue Minister who is on site and the DC and took stock of the progress in rescue operations. I have told the Chief Secretary to make a detailed inquiry into the accident. H D Kumaraswamy (@hd_kumaraswamy) March 20, 2019 Former Karnataka minister and Congress leader from the region Vinay Kulkarni had said Tuesday that one of the partners in the building was his relative and that whoever was involved should face action. According to reports, most of those trapped were migrant labourers from north India who were engaged in laying tiles. A case has been filed under section 304 (punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the IPC against the owners of the building and a special team will be constituted to investigate the case and arrest the culprits. (With PTI inputs) With Advanis exit, will there be an end of poll road to BJP's Murli Manohar Joshi? Not delaying says Rajasthan Governor as he calls for assembly session Gehlot gets Governor snub again over demand for assembly session Former union minister Kalraj Mishra won't contest LS elections India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P Deoria, Mar 21: Senior BJP leader and former union minister Kalraj Mishra will not contest Lok Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh's Deoria. Kalraj Mishra, said, "I will not contest elections this time, I have been given a lot of other responsibilities by the party so my time will be devoted to that." Mishra is former Minister of state (independent charge) of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises from 26 May 2014 to 2nd of September 2017 in the BJP-led NDA government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Subsequently, seventy-seven-year-old Kalraj Mishra was appointed as the head of the parliamentary standing committee on defence replacing former Uttarkhand chief minister Bhuvan Chandra Khanduri. Will L K Advani contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections? Chances are bleak He was a member of Rajya Sabha and a MLA from Lucknow East assembly constituency. He was also President of Uttar Pradesh state unit of the BJP. As a minister, he handled the state public works department in the BJP-BSP government that came to power in Uttar Pradesh in 1997. A prominent Brahmin leader from Uttar Pradesh, Mishra is known for his strong organisational skills and soft-spoken nature and claims to have helped mobilise kar sevaks ahead of the Babri Masjid demolition. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, March 21, 2019, 12:18 [IST] Omicron 1st case in Maharashtra: What we know about it so, far? 12 facts In Maharashtra, will the OBCs back Ambedkar or BJP India oi-Vicky Nanjappa Mumbai, Mar 21: In Maharashtra the OBCs comprise over 250 castes and sub-castes. Their population accounts for nearly 52 per cent of the population and in the elections they can be a game changer. Eyeing a large chunk of these votes is Prakash Ambedkar, who heads the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, which will fight in all 48 seats in the state for the Lok Sabha elections. The party entered into a tie up with the AIMM and now the target clearly are the OBC, SC,ST and Muslim votes. Ambedkar says with the AIMM they have a combined vote bank of 40 per cent. This figure was arrived at on the basis of the crowds their rallies have drawn. BJP releases list of 18 candidates for Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim Assembly polls The question is who will the Ambedkar-Owaisi combine hurt more. Ambedkar says that the OBCs will not vote for the Congress-NCP. He said that the very fact that Sharad Pawar decided not to contest the Madha seat is a clear indication of this fact. However many believe that Ambedkar would have benefited more had he tied up with the Congress and NCP. He has won an election twice with the help of the Congress, but lost four when he did not have the support. On the other hand the OBCs are considered to be closer to the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. They identify the Congress-NCP as Maratha led parties. The BJP says that the OBCs will back them during this election as well. The government has extended several welfare measures to them. In the 2014 election, the BJP had won 122 assembly seats and in 23 Lok Sabha segments. The OBC representation was at 40 per cent, which is the highest ever. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, March 21, 2019, 17:57 [IST] In UP, who will be impacted by a solo fight by the Congress India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Mar 21: With the SP and BSP leaving the Congress out of their coalition in Uttar Pradesh, the big question is who will this decision impact. The votes of the Muslims, Yadavs, Jatav and Brahmin votes would be very crucial for all parties including the BJP. Both Mayawati and Akhikesh Yadav has said that the Congress will not impact their voter base. They feel that the Congress would in turn eat into the upper caste vote bank of the BJP. At least 67 per cent of the Brahmins are with the BJP, while the Congress has the backing of 12 per cent. Even here as per the 2014 data, the SP and BSP combine enjoy 21 per cent of the Brahmin votes. BJP's publicity looks good, but the reality is different: Priyanka Gandhi In this scenario, the Congress would bank heavily on the Muslim votes. While the SP and BSP enjoy 80 per cent of the Muslim votes, in the case of the Congress it is 20 per cent. However the Congress feels that the Muslims would back them heavily in this election. In the case of the Yadavs, the SP and BSP enjoy 80 per cent of support in comparison to the 4 per cent for the Congress. The BJP on the other hand enjoys 16 per cent of the Yadav votes. Among the Jatavs, the Congress got 3 per cent in comparison to the 79 per cent that the SP and BSP enjoy. For the BJP it is 17 per cent in this segment. In such a scenario, it would be the Muslim and SC votes that would make all the different. The Census data of 2011 suggests that Uttar Pradesh has 19 per cent Muslims, while the SC population accounts for 21 per cent. TMC delegation to meet Election Commission in Delhi today; To request for early bypolls in Bengal Interaction with TN students: Rahul didnt violate poll code says EC India oi-Oneindia Staff By Anuj Cariappa New Delhi, Mar 21: The Election Commission Thursday said Congress President Rahul Gandhi's interaction with students at a women's college here did not violate the model code of conduct, though it has sought a report on his speech. Tamil Nadu's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Satyabrata Sahoo said local election officials have reported that there was no violation in terms of permission obtained by Stella Maris College for Women to host the interaction on March 13. He said the District Electoral Officer (DEO) has informed him that "there was permission" for Gandhi's event. "So, there is no violation of MCC." However, Sahoo has sought "further information" on Gandhi's speech. Is Rahul Gandhi more likeable than PM Modi? Here's what this survey says "Have sought further information on what kind of speech was given... have asked the DEO to give report based on the speech content," Sahoo said. Earlier, the Tamil Nadu government had ordered an inquiry as to how the college gave its approval for Gandhi to interact with its students when the model code for elections was in force. The Director of Collegiate Education, R Sarumathi, had directed a subordinate official to inquire into the matter. In his interaction with the students, the Congress president had promised 33 per cent reservation in government jobs for women and answered several of their questions. He had also brought up the issue of the Rafale deal and reiterated his allegations about the pricing of the aircraft and the process. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, March 21, 2019, 17:35 [IST] J&K downgraded to UT from state, like a CM demoting to MLA: Ghulam Nabi Azad If normalcy to be brought in Kashmir, Article 370 has to be reinstated: Farooq Abdullah JKSSB SI Recruitment 2021: Last date to apply for 800 Sub Inspector posts, direct link here Jammu & Kashmir: Two terrorists, one hostage killed in encounter in Hajin India oi-Chennabasaveshwar P Bandipore, Mar 22: One more militant and the minor who as per police officials was held hostage have been killed in Hajin gunfight that started on Thursday. One militant was said to have been killed during the gunfight yesterday. Three militants who were engaged in a gun battle with the security personnel took two civilian hostages in Hajin area of Badipore in Jammu & Kashmir on Thursday. Army jawan martyred in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Sundarbani sector The security forces were able to secure one civilian on Thursday evening. Three security personnel were also injured by a rifle grenade that was fired in their direction by militants in Jammu & Kashmir's Sopore. Be present in Lok Sabha, RS says BJP in 3 line whip to its MPs Election expenditure: How much did BJP, Congress, DMK, CPI, TMC, AIADMK receive funds and spent during polls? Lok Sabha Election 2019: BJP first list out, PM Modi to contest from Varanasi India oi-Deepika S New Delhi, Mar 21: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday released its first list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest the Lok Sabha election from Varanasi, the seat he represents in Parliament, BJP president Amit Shah will fight from Gandhinagar in place of veteran leader L K Advani as the party Thursday announced its first list of 184 candidates for the general election. BJP heavyweights such as Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari have been fielded from Lucknow and Nagpur seats respectively with the party reposing its faith in all but one Union minister from the constituency they had won in 2014. Karnataka: List of BJP candidate for 21 Lok Sabha seats Senior party leader J P Nadda released the list at a press conference on the auspicious day of Holi following three marathon meetings of its central election committee (CEC). Union minister and fiery leader Smriti Irani will reprise her electoral battle with Congress president Rahul Gandhi from Amethi, where she had lost to him in 2014 but was seen to have put up a spirited fight. The biggest surprise in the first list is dropping of Advani, the 91-year-old party stalwart who called the shots in the BJP for decades before Modi's rise eclipsed him, from Gandhinagar and Shah's decision to make his Lok Sabha poll debut from there. Advani has been representing Gandhinagar in the Lok Sabha since 1998 and Shah was incidentally his poll manager in initial elections. Amit Shah to contest Lok Sabha election from LK Advani's Gandhinagar The BJP also renominated Union ministers V K Singh, Mahesh Sharma, Kiren Rijiju, D V Sadananda Gowda, Babul Supriyo from Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Arunachal West, Bengalore North and Asansol, respectively. They had won from the same seats in 2014. The party announced names of its 28 candidates from Uttar Pradesh and dropped six incumbent MPs, including Union minster Krishna Raj from Shahjahanpur and Scheduled Caste (SC) Commission head and Agra MP Ram Shankar Katheria. It has renominated former cine star Hema Malini from Mathura. It is locked in a tough battle with the SP-BSP alliance in the state and is expected to drop more sitting MPs in the days ahead as it announces names of its other nominees. UP sends the highest number of Lok Sabha MPs, 80, to the House and the BJP had won 71 of them in 2014. Nadda said the party has also finalised names of all 17 party candidates from Bihar and sent the list to the state unit which will announce it jointly with allies -- JD(U) and Lok Janshakti Party. Lok Sabha Election: Smriti Irani to take on Rahul Gandhi from Amethi Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is likely to be fielded from Patna Sahib and his ministerial colleague Giriraj Singh from Begusarai. In the first list of 184 candidates, 16 are from Maharashtra, eight from Assam, two from Arunachal Pradesh, five from Chhatisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir each, 21 from Karnataka, 13 from Kerala, 10 from Odisha, 16 from Rajasthan, five from Tamil Nadu, 10 from Telangana, five from Uttarakhand, 28 from West Bengal and two from Andhra Pradesh. The BJP has dropped former Union minister B C Khanduri from Garhwal and former Uttarakhand chief minister Bhagat Singh Koshyari from Nanital with Tirath Singh Rawat and Ajay Bhatt replacing them respectively. Union ministers Jitendra Singh and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore will contest from Udhampur and Jaipur Rural, the seat they represent in the Lok Sabha, respectively with Baijayant Jay Panda being fielded from Kendrapara in Odisha. The list has been finalised after a series of meetings of the BJP's central election committee in which intense deliberations were held on which candidates to field from which constituency for the April-May Lok Sabha elections. The saffron party's rival Congress has already released six lists for the national elections. The party, which is trying to stitch an alliance of opposition parties against the Modi government, released its sixth list on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, the BJP released a list of 17 candidates for the assembly elections in two states - six for Arunachal Pradesh and 11 for Sikkim. The counting of votes will take place on May 23. Lok Sabha elections 2019: In WB, Congress-CPI(M) breakup will help TMC India oi-Madhuri Adnal Kolkata, Mar 21: An India Today data analysis suggests that with the Congress-CPI(M) proposed alliance largely going their separate ways for the Lok Sabha elections in West Bengal, the stage is set for a four-cornered contest in which the main contenders -- the Trinamool Congress and the BJP - are in an advantageous position to consolidate the voters in their favour. The Congress has virtually called off its alliance with the Left Front, which looked like a triangular battle' for into a four cornered one. The TMC will now be directly pitted against the BJP. However, the development has brought cheer to the BJP camp, which has emerged as the main opposition of the TMC in the past few years. The party will be in a better position to find favour with a sizeable portion of the refugee voters in the border districts following its efforts to bring in the citizenship bill. Leaders of both the Congress and the CPI(M) agreed that the failure to clinch a seat-sharing deal would actually be a negative factor for both the parties and they might not win more than one or two seats in the state. Meanwhile, the electoral history of Bengal shows that it is the ruling party and the main opposition which become the main beneficiaries in the event of a four-cornered contest. It's advantage BJP, TMC in Bengal as Congress decides to go solo In 2014, the state again witnessed a four-cornered election in which the TMC won 34 seats, the Congress four and the Left and BJP two seats each. The TMC had then secured 39.05 per cent votes, the CPI(M)-led Left Front 29.71 per cent, while the BJP and the Congress had secured 17 per cent and 9.5 per cent respectively. After Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal seems to be turning into the biggest political potboiler before the polls with data showing that as many as 17 seats, where vote share margin was less than 10 per cent, there is bound to be a close contest between the TMC, the BJP, and the CPM-led Left Front in West Bengal. The CPI(M) was in power for decades, but now it seems to be struggling to even survive in the state. The CPI(M)-Congess seat sharing deal in the 2016 state assembly polls had failed to halt the return of the TMC to power, but it was successful in stopping the march of the BJP to an extent. But the alliance fell apart after the poll as the CPI(M) decided to part ways with the Congress since its central committee vetoed it. Since then the BJP has steadily taken over the opposition space in various by-elections and has emerged as the main opposition to the ruling TMC. And in 2019 upcoming polls, as per the data analysis, it shows that if the TMC go as per the data, then the ruling party in the state may be able to buck anti-incumbency and a belligerent BJP to dominate the elections and even win 22 odd seats adding 8 more seats than that of in 2014, to emerge as one of the key blocs of a non-BJP, non-Cong government. Lok Sabha polls will be held in the state in seven phases from April 11. Covid-19 confusion deepens as 25 per cent of new black fungus patients have no coronavirus record Which is the cleanest city in India? Here are top 3 cleanest cities in the country in 2021 Not contesting elections nor campaigning for any political party: Salman Khan India oi-Deepika S Mumbai, Mar 21: Bollywood actor Salman Khan on Thursday dismissed reports of him contesting Lok Sabha election 2019. He said he wouldn't even campaign for any political party. Salman took to his Twitter page and stated that he is not contesting elections nor campaign for any political party. Khan tweeted, "Contrary to the rumours I am not contesting elections nor campaigning for any political party.." As per the recent reports in PTI, Madhya Pradesh Congress has been trying to rope in Salman Khan to campaign for them in Indore. Pankaj Chaturvedi, MP's Congress spokesperson even stated that they are certain about Salman giving a nod to the campaign. 'Not interested'! Cricketer Virender Sehwag declines BJP's offer to contest Lok Sabha polls He stated to PTI, "Our leaders have already talked to Salman Khan to campaign for us in Indore. We are almost certain the actor will campaign for us." Meanwhile Bollywood actor Salman Khan has replied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's tweet urging him to inspire the youth to vote, after a week. Salman quote tweeted PM Modi's tweet and wrote, "We are a democracy and it is every Indian's right to vote. I urge every eligible Indian to exercise your right and participate in making the Government." Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged many Bollywood celebrities to create awareness about the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and ask their fans to vote. Modi tweeted, "Voting is not only a right but it's also a duty. Dear @BeingSalmanKhan and @aamir_khan. It is time to inspire and motivate youth in your own Andaz to vote so that we can strengthen Apna Democracy & Apna country." Samjhauta blast and the manufacturing of a Hindu terror conspiracy India oi-Vicky Nanjappa New Delhi, Mar 21: After years of trial and many more flip-flops, a special court acquitted Swami Aseemanand and three others in connection with the Samjautha Express blast case. The attack that took place on February 18 2007 left 68 persons dead. All the four accused, Naba Kumar Sarkar alias Swami Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajinder Chaudhary have been acquitted by the court, NIA counsel Rajan Malhotra said. When the probe into the case began, Safdar Nagori of the Students Islamic Movement of India had told investigators that the attack was carried out by the members of his outfit with the help of some elements from Pakistan. Four accused including Aseemanand acquitted in Samjauta Express blast case Nagori, who was arrested in 2008 told the police that the Mumbai train bombings and the Samjautha attack were carried out by the same set of people. He said that the primary idea of the Samjautha attack was to derail peace talks between India and Pakistan. It was not just Nagori, but two other operates Kamruddin and Amil Pervez who took the same link. All of them spoke about the link between the attack and the SIMI. At around the same time the United States too pointed out about the role of a Lashkar-e-Tayiba financier Arif Qasmani in the attack. The state department said that the blasts were funded by Qasmani. A further probe into this revealed that the SIMI operatives Ehtesham Siddiqui and Abdus Subhan were in touch with the Lashkar cadres and had planned this blast. The investigations also found that the Lashkar orchestrated this blast at the behest of the ISI to derail peace with India. However the case took a sudden turn after 2009. The Ajmer Dargah, Malegaon, Mecca Masjid and Samjautha Express blast cases were all blamed on the Hindus. Each of these cases had two chargesheets and two sets of accused. Many had even cried foul stating that the UPA had deliberately changed the focus of these probes. The BJP which was in the opposition at that time blamed the UPA's appeasement policy for this role reversal. Samjhauta express blast: Twist, turns and when the US blamed Lashkar All these cases were then handed over to the NIA. At the start of the probe, the NIA secured a confessional statement by Swami Aseemanand. In the statement he confessed to be part of the conspiracy to carry out the attacks including the one on the Samjautha Express. However, this statement did not pass legal scrutiny as it was made under duress. Subsequently the man the NIA termed as the prime accused in the case was acquitted in most of them. The case one could say is far from over. Recently a team of the NIA had sought information on Qasmani from the United States. The NIA would continue to probe that angle, especially in the wake of the four persons being acquitted by the special court on March 20. Be present in Lok Sabha, RS says BJP in 3 line whip to its MPs Separate religion demand for Ayya Vazhi raised in Kanyakumari, BJP's sole constituency India pti-PTI Nagercoil (TN), Mar 21: The head of 'Ayya Vazhi', a reformist spiritual sect that has a significant following in southern Tamil Nadu, has raised the demand for separate religion status ahead of Lok Sabha polls. Since a chunk of Hindu Nadars, who form the core of Ayya Vazhi, have traditionally supported the BJP in elections here, there is speculation if this stand of the sect could affect the saffron party's electoral prospects in Kanyakumari, the sole Lok Sabha constituency it won in Tamil Nadu in 2014. Ayya Vazhi has a significant following, especially in the southern districts of Kanyakumari, Tuticorin and Tirunelveli. Sporting a tilak and headgear, the sect has distinctive features in terms of offering prayers and conducting rituals and call their places of worship 'pathi.' The head of the sect, Balaprajapathi Adigalar said their demand for a separate religion was only to guard the "unique nature" of their denomination. "How can we lose our uniqueness,? We are firm on our demand. It is our appeal to the parties that they accept our demand," he told PTI. Kamal Haasan releases MNM candidates list, says he is interested in contesting The Ayya Vazhi chief said they do not want "intervention" from Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department. He said the devotees were "only making spiritual services while the department wanted to administer other affairs" at Swamithope, the sect's principal place of worship near here. Department officials were not available for comment. "We are unique. Be it culture, practices, or prayers, everything is different from the organised Hindu faith," Adigalar said. Adigalar, 72, claimed that even senior BJP leader and Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan had assured support to protect the uniqueness of the denomination and "ward off intervention" from the H R and C E department. Despite repeated attempts made to reach a host of BJP leaders, none of them came forward to comment on the matter. The head of the sect commands immense respect not only from the followers, but also from other sections of society. No political leader has missed an opportunity to visit Swamithope, which attracts followers from several parts of Tamil Nadu. During the early 1980s when the district witnessed a series of communal clashes between the Christians and Hindus in several villages, including the Mandaikadu riots, Adigalar worked towards restoring peace and foster harmony, his followers recalled. General Secretary, Nadar Mahajana Sangam, G Karikolraj, however said, "It is the leadership which is making this demand. The common Hindu Nadars of Kanyakumari district are not very keen about it." Tamil Nadu Congress Committee President K S Alagiri said their demand will be taken up with the high command, but declined to elaborate further. Hindutva ideologue B R Gauthaman claimed that this demand will have "zero impact" among the electorate. "Adigalar will be singled out by the community for making this demand since Ayya Vazhi is rooted in Hindu ideals and there are umpteen references to Hindu deities in the sacred text Akilathirattu," the right wing activist said. Verses of the sacred text end with "Sivaney Ayya," which means Shiva the Lord, he said. Citing poll data, he said in the 1984 elections- Hindu Munnani (a Sangh Parivar outfit) supported independent candidate V Balachandran was elected to the Assembly. Other Right wing candidates like M R Gandhi and Mohandoss lost the polls that year by wafer thin margins, he recalled. "During those days too, Adigalar was not on our side," he said and added that after 1984 elections too, poll data reveals the BJP's significant hold in Kanyakumari district. Even in the 1996 Assembly election, when the DMK combine had a landslide win in the wake of a popular wave against late J Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, BJP candidate C Velayuthan won in Padmanabhapuram in Kanyakumari, defeating Adigalar's brother and DMK nominee Bala Janathipathi, he recalled. "Ponnar Anna (elder brother and BJP leader Pon Radhakrishnan) winning the polls in 1999 and 2014 is well known from Kanyakumari," he said. Opposing the demand, Hindu Makkal Katchi chief Arjun Sampath said it cannot swing the decision of the electorate. The reformist sect founded by "the highly venerated Ayya Vaikundar over 200 years ago was to staunchly oppose religious conversions and to uphold equality and fraternity," Sampath said. The Hindu outfit leader said Ayya Vazhi is a "reformist Hindu denomination that upholds the key Hindu ideals and beliefs and this could be understood by a study of the sect's sacred scripture of Akilathirattu." Hindu Tamizhar Katchi leader Rama Ravikumar concurred with Sampath, saying it is a "non-issue". PTI Why India will boycott a bigger China led BRF for the second time India oi-Oneindia Staff By Anuj Cariappa New Delhi, Mar 21: India on Wednesday signalled that it will boycott China's second Belt and Road Forum for a second time, saying no country can participate in an initiative that ignores its core concerns on sovereignty and territorial integrity. India boycotted the first Belt and Road Forum (BRF) in 2017 after protesting to Beijing over the controversial China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which is being laid through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) overriding New Delhi's sovereignty concerns. Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently said that next month China plans to hold a much bigger, second BRF which will also be attended by Pakistan Prime Minster Imran Khan. Speculation is rife whether India would attend the second BRF as China has deepened its commitment to expand the USD 60 billion CPEC, which aims to connect China's Xinjiang province with Pakistan's Gwadar port with a host of road, rail, gas and oil pipelines. China has also undertaken a host of energy projects under the aegis of the CPEC. India's Ambassador to China Vikram Misri told the state-run Global Times that "above all, connectivity initiatives must be pursued in a manner that respects sovereignty, equality and territorial integrity of nations". "No country can participate in an initiative that ignores its core concerns on sovereignty and territorial integrity," he replied to a question about India's concerns over the BRI and whether India would take part in the second BRF meet. Come what may, we stand with Pak, says China as Islamabad raises Kashmir in top talks The Indian envoy's interview was carried by the daily on Wednesday. "To be honest, we have made no secret of our views and our position on the BRI is clear and consistent and one that we have conveyed to the authorities concerned. India shares the global aspiration to strengthen connectivity and it is an integral part of our economic and diplomatic initiatives. We ourselves are working with many countries and international institutions in our region and beyond on a range of connectivity initiatives," Misri said. "However, it is also our belief that connectivity initiatives must be based on universally recognised international norms, good governance and rule of law. They must emphasise social stability and environmental protection and preservation, promote skill and technology transfers and follow principles of openness, transparency and financial sustainability," the Indian envoy said. India along with the US and several other countries have been highlighting the concerns over the BRI projects, leaving a number of smaller countries in debt traps. The concerns grew louder after China took over Sri Lanka's Hambantota port on a 99-year lease as debt swap. Several countries including Malaysia and even Pakistan have wished to reduce the Chinese projects over debt concerns. Asked whether India-China ties are back on track, Misri said: "the bilateral relationship between India and China is of great significance not just to the two countries, but also to the larger region and the international community". He said that the Wuhan summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping in April, 2018 was a "milestone in bilateral relations during which the two leaders exchanged views on overarching issues of bilateral and global importance, and elaborated their respective visions and priorities for national development in context of the current international situation". Last year, the two leaders also met on the sidelines of multilateral summits. "These meetings have reinforced strategic communication between the two countries at the highest levels and helped in elaborating a road map for continuing contacts. China is India's biggest neighbour and we assign a very high priority to this relationship," the Indian envoy said. "Unlike some 50 years ago, when our relationship had a much narrower basis and there was not much communication, today we have what one would call a full-spectrum relationship. This has been possible because our respective leaders have realised that mutually-beneficial cooperation responds to the most urgent developmental needs of our people and these needs to be prioritised over other issues," Misri said. Asked about the impact of India's elections on India-China ties, Misri said: "my own feeling is that on foreign policy issues there is a broad political consensus in India on where our national interests lie. I do not think therefore that the outcome of the elections will impact the broad contours of India's foreign policy in general or the very important relationship with China in particular". For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, March 21, 2019, 6:03 [IST] Will L K Advani contest the 2019 Lok Sabha elections? Chances are bleak India oi-Oneindia Staff By Anuj Cariappa New Delhi, Mar 21: Suspense remains on whether BJP patriarch L K Advani will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls or hang up his boots. The 91-year-old, who served as home minister and deputy prime minister of the country, has won the Lok Sabha election from Gandhinagar seat six times. Advani, credited for crafting the BJP's rise to a pre-eminent position in the late 80s and 90s after it won just two Lok Sabha seats in 1984 Lok Sabha polls, has remained on the sidelines since he voiced his reservations on the nomination of Narendra Modi as the party's prime ministerial candidate in 2014. Asked whether Advani was keen on contesting the poll considering his age, his personal secretary Deepak Chopra told PTI, "It is not yet decided...he will decide when something (offer) comes." Party sources said there is no age bar for candidates and winnability will be the criteria when candidates are finalised by the party's central election committee. Asked if the party has urged Advani to contest from the Gandhinagar seat, Chopra said, "Neither has the party approached him nor has he approached the party so far." A section of Gujarat BJP leaders hold the view that Advani may himself decide not contest the elections due to the age factor. Will BJP field its veterans? 250 names finalised, list expected soon Advani did not make any representation to stake claim for his traditional Gandhinagar seat before the BJP observers here. "At his level, we do not need to do this," Chopra said. Advani brought a paradigm shift in Indian politics through his Rath Yatra in 1992 in support of the Ram temple in Ayodhya and played a key role in the BJP's evolution. State BJP spokesperson Bharat Pandya said the final decision about Gandhinagar will be taken by the party's parliamentary board. "Only the parliamentary board of the party can decide if Advaniji will fight or not," he said. A section of party workers has demanded that a national leader like president Amit Shah should contest from Gandhinagar seat in place of Advani, sources said. "During our meeting with party leaders and workers, no local leaders submitted their bio-data to contest the polls from Gandhinagar seat. They have demanded that our national leader should contest from here," BJP observer for Gandhinagar seat Nimaben Acharya said. After contesting the Lok Sabha polls from Gandhinagar seat for the first time in 1991, Advani retained the constituency in 1998, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014. Advani did not contest the elections in 1996 citing the Babri Masjid demolition case against him. However, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee contested from the seat, as well as from Lucknow, and won. Advani became the face of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that shaped, and continues to define the saffron party's electoral and political fortunes. It was under Advani's leadership that the BJP grew from a fringe party to a contender for power. In Patna Sahib, two former colleagues Shatrughan Sinha, Ravi Shankar Prasad set for a face-off Although Advani was the BJP's prime ministerial candidate in 2009, the party lost to the Congress. Before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP made Modi, Advani's one time protege, its prime ministerial candidate, a move which apparently did not go down well with the party veteran. Advani was made a member of 'margdarshak mandal' (group of mentors) after the BJP came to power in 2014, seen as an attempt to ease him out of any key decision-making process. The Mandal hasn't met once since it was set up. Several evacuated, some by chopper, from New Zealand floods Christchurch shooting: NZ bans assault, all military-style semi-automatic rifles, changes gun laws International oi-Madhuri Adnal Wellington, Mar 21: Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday has announced a ban on all military-style semi-automatic weapons and all assault rifles. She also announced immediate action to prevent stock-piling and a buyback scheme that could cost anywhere between $100m and $200m. Speaking in Wellington, announcing the stronger gun laws, she said changes to the laws after the Aramona massacre in 1990, and subsequent additions in following years, did not go far enough. Man who wanted Christchurch-like attack in India sacked, deported from Dubai All semi-automatic weapons used during the terrorist attack on Friday would be banned. "As I've said, what we've done here is taken out the guns out of circulation that are most critical to be addressed urgently and that's what we've announced, with essentially almost immediate effect," said Ardern. "There is more to be done and tranche two will look at issues around licensing, issues around registration, issues around storage. There is a range of other amendments that we believe do need to be made and that will be the second tranche of reforms yet to come." Meanwhile, the leader of the opposition Simon Bridges has released a statement welcoming the changes proposed by the government today to reform our firearms legislation. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, March 21, 2019, 9:38 [IST] Brexit trade deal reached between UK and European Union with just days to spare EU opposes UK PM May's plan to delay Brexit till June 30 International oi-Shubham Ghosh Brussels, March 21: The European Union (EU) has opposed British Prime Minister Theresa May's plan to delay Brexit until June 30, as per a leaked internal EU diplomatic note, Independent reported. "Any extension offered to the United Kingdom should either last until 23 May 2019 or should be significantly longer and require European elections," the report cited the leaked document as saying. "This is the only way of protecting the functioning of the EU institutions and their ability to take decisions." French minister names her cat 'Brexit' because of its indecisiveness The document, drawn up for European Commissioners, said that "any other option (as for example an extension until 30 June 2019) would entail serious legal and political risks for the European Union and would import some of the current uncertainties in the United Kingdom into the EU27". On Wednesday, March 20, PM May wrote to European Council president Donald Tusk requesting an extension past March 29, the day the UK is set to exit the EU. May said she was not ready to delay Brexit any further than the last day of June. The decision over extending the delay and by how long is not upto Brussels but 27 other EU member states who have to approve it unanimously. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Thursday, March 21, 2019, 6:38 [IST] Man who wanted Christchurch-like attack in India sacked, deported from Dubai International oi-Madhuri Adnal Dubai, Mar 21: An employee working with UAE-based Transguard Group was sacked and deported from Dubai after he allegedly celebrated the mass killing of Muslims in New Zealand last week. At least 50 people were killed and dozens wounded by a lone gunman at two mosques in Christchurch on Friday in what is the country's worst modern mass shooting. Taking to Facebook, the accused made an insensitive comment expressing his approval of the terror attacks and also suggested that such attacks should also happen in India. Don't blame me for NZ attacks, says US President Trump The company in a statement said that following an internal investigation it found that one of its employees had made inflammatory comments on his personal Facebook account celebrating the deplorable mosque attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. "Over the weekend, a Transguard employee made inflammatory comments on his personal Facebook account celebrating the deplorable mosque attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. This prompted an internal investigation, which uncovered the fact that the individual in question had been posting his views on social media under an assumed name", the company said in a statement posted on its website. The accused used a fake ID with the name Rony Singh to write the inflammatory posts. Hate, blame, contempt, tribalism: Australian PM's words after Christchurch hold so true for India "After verifying this person's actual identity, he was apprehended by Transguard, stripped of his security credentials, terminated from our employment and handed over to the relevant authorities as per company policy and UAE Cybercrime Law No. 5 of 2012", the company said. The security company neither disclosed the identity of its employee nor shared the message he had posted. However, the screenshot of the alleged message taking the round on social media revealed that the accused used a fake ID with the name Rony Singh to write the inflammatory posts. This is not the first time someone has been fired and deported because of a social media post. Last year a man in Dubai was sacked after he uploaded a video on Facebook in which he threatened to kill Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and rape his family. The 56-year-old, a rigging supervisor at an Abu Dhabi based company, was subsequently sacked. After Pak allows access, India says yet to decide on opening Kartarpur Corridor No construction to take place 30 acres around Kartarpur Gurdwara, says Pakistan International oi-Madhuri Adnal Islamabad, Mar 21: Pakistan PM Imran Khan agreeing to the Punjab Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu's proposal for preserving the land around Kartarpur Sahib corridor has decided not to construct any building on 30 acres used by Guru Nanak for farming. Pakistan information minister Fawad Chaudhry said this decision was taken at a meeting chaired on Tuesday by Prime Minister Imran Khan to review progress in work on the Kartarpur Corridor, which will be opened to Indian pilgrims in November. According to a The Hindu report, India will also urge Pakistan not to utilise the holy Kartarpur shrine for propaganda about the Khalistan issue. The issue is part of the security concerns that are being considered by the Indian side as paramount for the bilateral talks that will be held in Attari on Thursday. Pakistan surreptitiously usurped lands belonging to Kartarpur Sahib gurdwara says India In a historic decision, India and Pakistan agreed to open up a special border crossing linking Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan's Kartarpur - the final resting place of Guru Nanak Dev, with Dera Baba Nanak shrine in India's Gurdaspur district. Kartarpur Sahib is located in Pakistan's Narowal district across the Ravi river about four kilometres from the Dera Baba Nanak shrine. Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib, the first Gurdwara, was established by Guru Nanak Dev in 1522, where he is said to have died. The corridor would facilitate the visit of pilgrims to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur from the Indian side. The authorities of both countries are currently holding meetings and working out the modalities. Kartarpur corridor: Access mode for Indian devotees yet to be decided The project will also include a vast facility for the pilgrims on the Indian side which will be ready to host at least 5,000 pilgrims on any given day. It was learnt that India will also prepare for "surge" in pilgrims flow during special, festive seasons. Accordingly, facilities will be created for at least 10,000 more pilgrims on the facilities on the Indian side. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to reach Lucknow on July 16; Key meetings scheduled in Delhi before visit Members of farmers' body detained in Lucknow for trying to burn effigies of PM Modi, Shah Section 144 CrPC invoked in Lucknow in view of Christmas, New Year UP: Liquor smuggler, sub-inspector injured in exchange of fire Lucknow pti-PTI Muzaffarnagar, Mar 21: A sub-inspector and a liquor smuggler were injured on Wednesday in an exchange of fire in neighbouring Shamli district, police said. The incident occurred near Jalalabad when police tried to intercept a car and a truck carrying liquor cartons. The occupants of the vehicles opened fire at the police team, who retaliated. Sub-Inspector Lovik Tyagi and one Qurbaan were injured in the firing, Superintendent of Police Ajay Kumar Pandey said. [BJP govt changed UP's image, law and order a model for country: Adityanath] Two men were arrested and around 100 cartons of liquor were seized from the two vehicles. The injured persons have been hospitalised. A case has been registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Excise Act in this regard. Police have intensified anti-smuggling drive in the Kairana Lok Sabha constituency, which will go to polls on April 11. PTI Free Resources Stay Connected with your favorite Ministry Newsletters and Devotionals Running to Win Episode Reminder Get a sneak-peek into each new show, delivered straight to your inbox! In addition to your newsletter(s), you will receive email updates and special offers from Oneplace.com. Free Resources Stay Connected with your favorite Ministry Newsletters and Devotionals Wisdom for the Heart Episode Reminder Broadcast Reminder! Get a sneak-peek into each new show, delivered straight to your inbox! A Wisdom Retreat Waters of refreshment for the despondent, restoration for the delinquent, and reflection for every disciple who seeks to know God more deeply In addition to your newsletter(s), you will receive email updates and special offers from Oneplace.com. Global Mobile Wallet and Payment Tech Market Intelligence & Future Trends 2017-2026 https://www.mnemonicsresearch.com/download-brochure/global-mobile-wallet-and-payment-tech-market https://www.mnemonicsresearch.com/submit-rfp/global-mobile-wallet-and-payment-tech-market https://www.mnemonicsresearch.com/checkout/9-singleUser Global Mobile Wallet & Payment Tech Market was valued at USD XX Billion in the year 2018. Global Mobile Wallet & Payment Tech Market is further estimated to grow at a CAGR of XX% from 2019 to 2026 to reach USD XX Billion. North America region holds the highest market share in 2018 and Asia-Pacific market is considered as the fastest growing market in the forecasted period. At a country level, developed markets like the U.S. as well the emerging markets like China & India with highest population base holds the notable market share in 2018 and it is projected to grow at a gradual rate in the coming years.Get Free Broucher of this report:Deutsche Telekom AG (Germany), Paypal Holdings Inc (US), Apple Inc. (US), At&T Inc. (US), Vesta Corp. (US), are some of the key players in the Mobile Wallet & Payment Tech market with Paypal Holdings Inc holding the substantial market share because of its better global presence both at production and at an operational level. Rising research and development expenses to cater changing demand of end users, similarly, growth strategies such as acquisition, merger, and expansion of the distribution network were few techniques adopted by most of Tier 1 and Tier 2 manufacturers in recent years.Drivers:Increasing number of smartphone usersIntroduction of high-speed internet servicesRestraints:Resistance to changeOpportunities:The Rise of Bluetooth in transactionsChallenges:Lack of knowledgeable customersAmongst mode of Payment, Remote Payment type is holding highest market share because of the growing popularity and easy accessibility during the forecast period.Interested to get a proposal for this research report @The Near - Field Communication Devices segment is also expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the year 2018-2026.Key Benefits for StakeholdersMobile Wallet & Payment Tech Manufacturers, Distributors and RetailersResearch and Consulting organizationTechnology Standards Organizations, Forums, Alliances and AssociationsEnd-use industriesRegulatory bodies, policy actors, and consumers.By ApplicationMicropaymentMobile TicketingMoney TransferMobile CouponMobile CommerceBy Mode of PaymentRemote PaymentNear - Field CommunicationBy RegionNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificLAMEAKey Market PlayersDeutsche Telekom AG (Germany)Paypal Holdings Inc (US)Apple Inc. (US)At&T Inc. (US)Vesta Corp. (US)Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (US)Verizon Communications Inc. (US)(A brief overview of another 13 companies is also provided)Buy Now @Research Methodology:Mnemonics Market Research follows in-depth Research Methodology focused on reducing deviation in the collected data. Mnemonics Market Research offers the most precise evaluations and projection for the market numbers. Mnemonics Market Research engages following Market Engineering techniques Raw Market Data is collected and compared with the Existing in-house Data on a broad front.Both Bottom-Up and Top-Down approaches are analyzed for segmenting and estimating measurable aspects of the market.To avoid bias, we filter the collected data collected from authenticated sources.Mnemonics Market Research has a well proven Statistical Modeling System for estimates and forecasts.Further, the report findings are validated with the Industry Expert Panel on face to face or telephonic interviews.Panelists are approached from Leading Enterprises across the value chain including manufacturers, suppliers, technology providers, domain experts and buyers so as to validate a thorough and balanced market overview.Detailed customization is also available for you. Further, if the report listed above does not meet your key requirements. Our customized research report will analytically cover the required market information you need which will help you to plan your business decisions.About Us:Mnemonics Analytical Center for Research & Consulting is a commercial institute pioneering in market and socio research. We deploy best in class market and social research services plus consultancy programs for the betterment of society by implementing our innovations for the success of an organization. We always measure our success ratio with our clients success in terms of socioeconomic status.Mnemonics Analytical Center for Research & Consulting is a global reach market and socio research institute that serves a broad mix of leading and start-ups, private, public and social sector. The services and solutions offered by us help our clients make significant and lasting improvements to their performance and realize their most important goals.Contact Us:Mnemonics APAC Research Center,Paud Road,Pune 411038Call Us+91 70664 90051Mail Usinfo@mnemonicsresearch.com Telehealth Market Growing at a CAGR of 14% by 2022 | Key Players McKesson Corporation, Cerner Corporation, Medtronic Inc., GE Healthcare, Cisco Systems, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions etc Telehealth Market http://bit.ly/2GTU4G1 http://bit.ly/2XlmJJZ http://bit.ly/2BN6tbt Telehealth is the combined use of medical devices and communication technologies to diagnose, analyze and monitor diseases and symptoms. The Telehealth industry makes use of telecommunication technologies to deliver health care, health information or health education at a distance. Also referred to as telemedicine, e-health or e-medicine, Telehealth is the overall term for the world of virtual care delivery as it encompasses a broad variety of technologies and tactics to deliver virtual healthcare solutions. Telehealth consulting services make it easier for patients to get a consultation from healthcare providers irrespective of their location. The global Telehealth Market is estimated to be valued at USD 25.30 billion in 2022, growing at a CAGR of 14% during 2014-2022.Download a Sample Copy @Some of the major players in the telematics market are:McKesson Corporation, Cerner Corporation, Medtronic Inc., GE Healthcare, Cisco Systems, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions and Honeywell Life Care Solutions.Key growth factors:The incidence of chronic diseases requires continuity in treatment and care. Most patients are unable to make regular visits to hospitals because of their poor health conditions. So, the prevalence of chronic diseases serves as a major driver for the Telehealth market. Other key drivers are the emergence of mobile health hubs, advancement of healthcare technology and infrastructure and the expected growth in wearable technology.Technology Segment:Remote Patient MonitoringmHealthVideo TelemedicineThe Application Segment:TeledermatologyTeleradiologyTelecardiologyTelepathologyOthers (Teleaudiology and Teleophthalmology)Threats and key players:Although the global Telehealth Market shows positive growth, it is not free from obstacles and challenges. Some of the critical threats are high installation charges of the Telehealth devices and Telehealth systems, lack of reimbursement policies, problems in practice regulations and licensing and lack of awareness of the technology spread.Additionally, low internet penetration and lack of healthcare technology and infrastructure in some regions plays a significant role in restricting the expansion of global Telehealth solutions. Notably, most of the Middle Eastern and African countries face various infrastructural and economic challenges.Get Discount for this report:What's covered in the report:- Overview of the Global Telehealth Market- Historical, current and forecast market size data for Global Telehealth Market, Remote Patient Monitoring, mHealth, Video Telemedicine, Teledermatology, Teleradiology, Telecardiology, Telepathology and Others sectors- Historical, current and forecast regional (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East & Africa) market size data for Global Telehealth Market, Remote Patient Monitoring, mHealth, Video Telemedicine, Teledermatology, Teleradiology, Telecardiology, Telepathology and Others sectors- Telehealth market analysis consisting of telehealth services and telehealth devices-by value chain diagram- Analysis of the primary drivers and challenges affecting the Global Telehealth Market, Remote Patient Monitoring, mHealth, Video Telemedicine, Teledermatology, Teleradiology, Telecardiology, Telepathology and Others sectors- Analysis of the competitive landscape and profiles of major companies operating in the market- Market Trends in Global Telehealth MarketReasons to buy this report:1. Get a broad overview of the Global Telehealth systems which would help in further telehealth research2. Get region-specific drivers and challenges affecting the Global Telehealth Market.3. Device market-entry strategies by understanding the driving factors of the market4. Get relevant company profiles and start-up company profilesBuy This Report @About ReportsWeb:ReportsWeb.com is a one stop shop of market research reports and solutions to various companies across the globe. We help our clients in their decision support system by helping them choose most relevant and cost effective research reports and solutions from various publishers. We provide best in class customer service and our customer support team is always available to help you on your research queries.Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@reportsweb.com Europe Radiotherapy Market 2019 Competitor Analysis by Varian Medical Systems, Elekta, Accuray, CIVCO Medical Solutions, Brainlab, CR Bard, Nordion, RaySearch Laboratories Europe Radiotherapy Market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=europe-radiotherapy-market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/inquire-before-buying/?dbmr=europe-radiotherapy-market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=europe-radiotherapy-market The Europe Radiotherapy Market Analysis Report includes a detailed analysis of the Europe Radiotherapy Market value chain. Analysis of the value chain helps analyze major upstream raw materials, major equipment, production processes, downstream customer analysis and major distributor analysis. Porter analysis, PESTEL analysis and market attractiveness to better understand the macro and micro-level market scenario are detailed in this report. The report also comprises a detailed description, a competitive scenario, a broad product portfolio of key players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors together with their SWOT analysis. The report makes detailed segmentation based on the type of product, application and regional segmentation. The report also includes a detailed description, a competitive scenario, a broad product portfolio of key players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors with their SWOT analysis.Download A Free Sample Of The Report:Some of the prominent participants operating in the Europe Radiotherapy Market are:Varian Medical Systems, Inc., Elekta AB, Accuray, Inc., CIVCO Medical Solutions, Brainlab AG, C. R. Bard, Inc., IsoRay Medical, Inc., Nordion, Inc., RaySearch Laboratories AB, PRECISIS AG, Mevion Medical Systems, Inc., Technicas Radiofiscas S.L., Hitachi, Ltd., Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, ProNova Solutions, LLC, and ProTom International among others.Radiation therapy sole purpose is to treat tumors by targeting high beam of radiation on the affected region with minimal exposure to surrounding tissues. Modern radiotherapy uses high technology to try to achieve optimal local tumor control whilst minimizing treatment side effects to an acceptably low level. Aspects of the technology used for this goal include: computer systems for three-dimensional treatment planning and simulation, with accurate radiation dose deposition models and facilities for optimization of external radiation beam or brachytherapy source distribution; computer-controlled linear accelerators with dynamic beam collimation systems for external beam treatment or systems such as remote after loading for brachytherapy; and the use of radiation response models to characterize the treatment outcome and to enable the prediction of treatment outcomes for future patients treatments.Europe radiotherapy market is expected to reach at a CAGR of 7.2% in the forecast period of 2018 to 2025.Market Highlights in the Report1. The report offers market share appraisals for regional and global levels2. To gain detailed overview of parent market3. Information about key drivers, restraints, opportunities, and their impact analysis on the market size has been provided.4. Analyze and forecast Europe Radiotherapy Market on the basis of type, function and application.5. Company profiling of key players which includes business operations, product and services, geographic presence, recent developments and key financial analysis.Europe radiotherapy market is segmented into three notable segments which are therapy type, product type and application.On the basis of therapy type, the market is segmented into beam radiotherapy, brachytherapy and systemic radiotherapy. Beam radiotherapy segment is further sub-segmented into IGRT, IMRT, Stereotactic Technology, Tomotherapy, 3D Conformal Radiotherapy and VMAT. Brachytherapy segmentis sub-segmented into LDR and HDR. Beam radiotherapy segment is growing at the highest CAGR of in the forecast period of 2018 to 2025.On August 2016, Accuray announced the CE approval of Radixact Treatment Delivery System, Accuray Precision Treatment Planning System and iDMS Data Management System in Europe.On the basis of product type, the market is segmented into external beam radiotherapy, internal radiotherapy products, radiotherapy softwares and systemic radiotherapy. External beam radiotherapy is further sub-segmented into LINAC, Cyber Knife, Proton Therapy and Gamma Knife. Proton therapy segment is further sub-segmented into Cyclotron and Synclotron. Internal radiotherapy products segment is further sub-segmented into Seeds and Afterloaders. Radiotherapy softwares segment is further sub segmented into treatment planning softwares, dosage planning softwares, patient positioning softwares and image guiding softwares. External beam radiotherapy segment is growing at the highest CAGR of in the forecast period of 2018 to 2025.On June 2016, Elekta announces that Elektas Leksell Gamma Knife Icon has been cleared for clinical use by both the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the United States. Icon is the worlds most precise and sophisticated system for radiosurgery treatment of certain brain tumors, vascular malformations and functional disorders.On the basis of application, the market is segmented into prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, spine cancer, liver cancer, brain cancer and others. Breast cancer segment is growing at the highest CAGR of in the forecast period of 2018 to 2025.On Sptember 2016, Varian Medical Systems announced the launch of first of its kind 360 Oncology care management platform, the first software system designed to integrate and coordinate key elements of cancer care so patients and their cancer teams can collaborate on achieving the best outcomes.Inquiry before buying this report:Industry Insights in the report1. To describe and forecast the Europe Radiotherapy Market, in terms of value, by process, product type, and industry.2. To strategically profile key players and comprehensively analyze their market position in terms of ranking and core competencies, and detail the competitive landscape for market leaders3. To describe and forecast the market, in terms of value, for various segments, by region Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Turkey and Rest of Europe4. Market Development: Comprehensive information about emerging markets. This report analyzes the market for various Europe Radiotherapy Market across geographies.5. To strategically analyze micro markets with respect to individual growth trends, prospects, and contribution to the overall marketEurope Radiotherapy Market, By Therapy (Beam Radiotherapy, Brachytherapy, Systemic Radiotherapy), By Product Type (External Beam Radiotherapy, Internal Radiotherapy Products, Radiotherapy Softwares, Systemic Radiotherapy), By Application (Prostrate Cancer, Breast Cancer, Lung Cancer, Spine Cancer, Liver Cancer, Brain Cancer, Others), Country (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Turkey and Rest of Europe) Industry Trends and Forecast to 2025Reasons to buy this report:1. To get a comprehensive overview of the Europe Radiotherapy Market.2. To gain information about the top players in this industry, their product portfolios, and their key strategies.3. To gain insights about the major regional insights in which the Europe Radiotherapy Market is flourishing.4. Recent industry trends and developments5. Potential and niche segments/regions exhibiting promising growthDownload Detailed TOC @About Us:Data Bridge Market Research set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.Data Bridge adepts in creating satisfied clients who reckon upon our services and rely on our hard work with certitude. We are content with our glorious 99.9 % client satisfying rate.Contact:Data Bridge Market ResearchTel: +1-888-387-2818Email: sopan.gedam@databridgemarketresearch.com Global Integrated Practice Management Software (IPMS) Market Analysis With Top Companies profile like GENERAL ELECTRIC; Cerner Corporation; eClinicalWorks; Epic Systems Corporation; McKesson Corporation; athenahealth, Inc Global Integrated Practice Management Software (IPMS) Market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=global-integrated-practice-management-software-ipms-market https://databridgemarketresearch.com/inquire-before-buying/?dbmr=global-integrated-practice-management-software-ipms-market Global Integrated Practice Management Software (IPMS) Market report is a complete overview of the market, covering various aspects product definition, segmentation based on various parameters, and the prevailing vendor landscape. The market Report also calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of This Report and technologies by various application segments. In this Integrated Practice Management Software (IPMS) market Report various definitions and classification of the industry, applications of the industry, manufacturers, Sourcing Strategy and chain structure are given. The Integrated Practice Management Software (IPMS) market report also consists of the all the market drivers and restrains which are derived from SWOT analysis while also giving all the CAGR projections for the historic year 2017 base year 2018 and forecast period of 20198-2026.Global Integrated Practice Management Software (IPMS) Market is expected to undergo growth with a healthy CAGR in the forecast period of 2019-2026. The report contains data from the base year of 2018, and the historic year of 2017. This rise in market value can be attributed to the need for reduction of workload of administrative employees in healthcare organizations.For In-Depth Review | Get FREE Sample Copy@Key Market Competitors: Global Integrated Practice Management Software (IPMS) MarketFew of the major competitors currently working in the integrated practice management software (IPMS) market are GENERAL ELECTRIC; Cerner Corporation; eClinicalWorks; Epic Systems Corporation; McKesson Corporation; athenahealth, Inc.; NextGen Healthcare, Inc.; Allscripts; Greenway Health, LLC; Henry Schein, Inc.; AdvantEdge Healthcare Solutions; Accumedic Computer Systems, Inc.; CareCloud Corporation; Kareo, Inc.; AdvancedMD, Inc.; drchrono Inc.; CollaborateMD Inc.; OfficeAlly Inc.; Medical Information Technology, Inc.; EMIS Health; CompuGroup Medical SE and CEGEDIM GROUP.Market Definition: Global Integrated Practice Management Software (IPMS) MarketIntegrated practice management software (IPMS) is a type of medical/healthcare software solution that helps in the administrative duties and tasks involved in provision of healthcare services. Integrated version of this software provides the patients and healthcare providers with all the necessary tasks and helps in achieving ease of use such as, scheduling appointments, taking care of the remuneration from the insurance organizations, provision of bill, and various other tasks.Market Drivers: Increasing demand and focus on the administrative duties and responsibilities in healthcare institutions due to the prevalence of patient visits Reduction in costing of the overall process and increased efficiency and effectiveness in the entire process; this factor is expected to act as a driver for the market growthMarket Restraints: Concerns regarding theft of data and mishandling of personal and patient information through the implementation of this system; this factor is expected to act as a restraint to the market growthCompetitive Analysis: Global Integrated Practice Management Software (IPMS) MarketGlobal integrated practice management software (IPMS) market is highly fragmented and the major players have used various strategies such as new product launches, expansions, agreements, joint ventures, partnerships, acquisitions, and others to increase their footprints in this market. The report includes market shares of integrated practice management software (IPMS) market for global, Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, South America and Middle East & Africa.Key Developments in the Market: In April 2018, McKesson Corporation announced the launch of ExpressCoverage; it is a patient management and support platform that will enable connectivity options between patients, healthcare providers, payers and the life science market. In March 2018, Allscripts announced the launch of their EHR system Avenel at the Healthcare Information and Management System Society annual conference held in Las Vegas from March 5-9, 2018. The new software solution is the healthcare industrys first machine learning electronic health record, which makes it more effective and efficient.Inquire Regarding This Report @Reasons to Purchase this Report: Current and future of global integrated practice management software (IPMS) market outlook in the developed and emerging markets The segment that is expected to dominate the market as well as the segment which holds highest CAGR in the forecast period Regions/Countries that are expected to witness the fastest growth rates during the forecast period The latest developments, market shares, and strategies that are employed by the major market playersCustomization of the Report: All segmentation provided above in this report is represented at country level All products covered in the market, product volume and average selling prices will be included as customizable options which may incur no or minimal additional cost (depends on customization)Note: If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.About Data Bridge Market Research:Data Bridge Market Research set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.Contact:Data Bridge Market ResearchTel: +1-888-387-2818Email: sopan.gedam@databridgemarketresearch.com Cocktail Market Outlook (2019-2025): The Main Market Players Are Remy Cointreau, Bombay Sapphire Distillery, Siam Winery, Snake Oil Cocktail Company and Miami Cocktail Inc Research for Markets https://www.researchformarkets.com/sample/global-cocktail-market-475400 https://www.researchformarkets.com/inquiry/global-cocktail-market-475400 https://www.researchformarkets.com/reports/global-cocktail-market-475400 Cocktail market report provides the market potential for each geographical region based on the growth rate, macroeconomic parameters, consumer buying patterns, and market demand and supply scenarios. The Market is expected to grow at a substantial Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) during the forecast period 2019-2025. The Cocktail market research report is a resource, which provides current as well as upcoming technical and financial details of the industry to 2025.The Cocktail market research report is a resource, which provides current as well as upcoming technical and financial details of the industry to 2025. This Cocktail market study also analyzes the market status, market share, growth rate, future trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, risks and entry barriers, sales channels, distributors and Porter's Five Forces Analysis.Cocktail refers to an alcoholic drink, which consists gin, brandy, vodka, whiskey, tequila, or rum mixed with other ingredients such as fruit juice, cream, honey, milk, sugar, herbs, or other flavorings.Some of the key players in Cocktail Market include: Bols Captain Morgan kitchn, Siam Winery Cointreau Belvedere Rio Wine Snake Oil Cocktail Company Miami Cocktail Bombay SapphireGet Sample PDF Illustration Here at:The global Cocktail market is valued at xx million US$ in 2018 is expected to reach xx million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of xx% during 2019-2025.This report focuses on Cocktail volume and value at global level, regional level and company level. From a global perspective, this report represents overall Cocktail market size by analyzing historical data and future prospect. Regionally, this report focuses on several key regions: North America, Europe, China and Japan.At company level, this report focuses on the production capacity, ex-factory price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer covered in this report.Segment by Type Long Drink Short DrinkSegment by Application Wedding Ceremony Backyard BBQ Cocktail Party OthersMake an Enquiry Before Buying at:Table of Content1 Cocktail Market Overview2 Global Cocktail Market Competition by Manufacturers3 Global Cocktail Production Market Share by Regions4 Global Cocktail Consumption by Regions5 Global Cocktail Production, Revenue, Price Trend by Type6 Global Cocktail Market Analysis by Applications7 Company Profiles and Key Figures in Cocktail Business8 Cocktail Manufacturing Cost Analysis9 Marketing Channel, Distributors and Customers10 Market Dynamics11 Global Cocktail Market Forecast12 Research Findings and Conclusion13 Methodology and Data SourceBrowse Complete Report Here at:Reasons To Buy This Report:1. To get a comprehensive overview of the Cocktail market.2. To gain information about the top players in this industry, their product portfolios, and their key strategies.3. To gain insights about the major regional insights in which the Cocktail is flourishing.4. Recent industry trends and developments5. Potential and niche segments/regions exhibiting promising growthNote: If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.About Research for Markets:Research for Markets indulges in detailed and diligent research on different markets, trends and emerging opportunities in the successive direction to cater to your business needs. We have established the pillars of our flourishing institute on the grounds of Credibility and Reliability. RFM delve into the markets across Asia Pacific, North America, South America, Europe, Middle East and Africa.Contact:Mr. A NaiduResearch for MarketsTel: +44 8000-4182-37 (UK)Email: alan.naidu@researchformarkets.com Protein Engineering Market is projected to reach USD 2592 million by 2022 | Agilent Technologies, Inc., Biogen, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Bruker Corporation, Danaher Corporation, Eli Lilly, Fusion antibodies. https://www.researchcosmos.com/reports/global-protein-engineering-market-research-and-forecast-2017-2022/5999563 https://www.researchcosmos.com/request/global-protein-engineering-market-research-and-forecast-2017-2022/5999563 https://www.researchcosmos.com/inquire/global-protein-engineering-market-research-and-forecast-2017-2022/5999563 www.researchcosmos.com https://acutemarketinsights.com https://marketreportsweb.com/ Protein Engineering Market Size and Growth Rate:According to our research report, the Protein Engineering Market Size was valued at approximately USD 1,095 million in 2017 and is expected to generate around USD 2,592 million by 2022, at a CAGR of around 15.1% between 2017 and 2022.Browse details of 126 numbers of pages research report developed on Protein Engineering Market @Protein Engineering Market Growth Demands and Restraints:Protein engineering can be defined as the modification of protein structures with recombinant DNA technology or chemical treatments to serve a desirable function and be used for the better in many areas of application like medicine, industry and agriculture. Protein engineering is broadly used to circumvent weaknesses associated with drugs and possesses the potential to enhance affinity & efficacy of molecules for a wider range of applications, such as cardiac repair.The demand for protein engineering in developing countries is coupled with the preference of protein therapy over the gene therapy and expiry of top biologics drugs in the near future. Other factors include, increased demand for alternatives to chemical processes, increasing prevalence of protein deficient diseases and improved government funding. Pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies hold a dominant share in the global market and can be attributed to the increasing adoption of in silico models to develop new protein-based drugs in the following applications like cancer, diabetes, and central nervous system diseases.Protein Engineering Market Regional Analysis:Geographically, the market is divided into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, Middle East & Africa. North America is dominating the market mainly due to the rising prevalence of lifestyle associated diseases and increasing adoption of protein-based drugs in the regions. Growth of this market in these regions is also propelled by the increase in adoption of protein drugs over non-protein drugs, the high prevalence rate of lifestyle diseases, growth in funding for protein engineering and reduction in overall timeline and the cost for drug discovery. Expensive and high maintenance tools and instruments used in protein engineering and dearth of trained personnel are hindering the market in many under developed regions. The global key players are Agilent Technologies, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waters Corporation, etc.Ask Free Sample of the report @Protein Engineering Market Key Players:Some of the leading key players are Abbott healthcare, Agilent Technologies, Inc., Biogen, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Bruker Corporation, Danaher Corporation, Eli Lilly, Fusion antibodies, GE healthcare, Genscriptsusa, Inc., Genzyme, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis AG, Novo Nordisk, Perkinelmer, Inc., and Roche, Sigma-Aldrich Corporation.Protein Engineering Market Segmentation:By Type Instruments Services and Software ReagentsBy Protein Type Monoclonal antibodies Insulin Erythropoietin Interferon Colony-stimulating factor Growth hormones Coagulation factor Vaccines OthersBy Technology Rational protein design Irrational protein designEnd User Academic Research Institutes Medical Industry Food Industry OtherBy Region North America Europe Asia Pacific Latin America Middle East and AfricaFor any queries, inquire more @About Us:Research Cosmos is a provider of standard and customized market research, business intelligence and consulting services across more than 100 domains in different industries of the world. We host the trending market reports of the worlds top-notch publishing companies, offering services to a wide range of customers from students to fortune 500 companies and discloses the hidden opportunities in every leading industry of the world.Contact:Kevin StewartGlobal Sales ManagerResearch CosmosBlog:Blog: Are you sitting comfortably? Join SGSs webinar and discover EN 1022 the seat stability standard www.sgs.com/furniture www.linkedin.com/showcase/sgs-consumer-goods-&-retail SGS will host a free webinar on March 28, 2019 to explore Europes seat stability test method EN 1022:2018 and its updates.What does the new edition mean for your products?Priscille Galceran, SGSs International Furniture Technical and Business Manager, will host this event and open your eyes to the changes, in just 15 minutes. She will guide the audience through the applicability of EN 1022:2018, key modifications through comparison with the previous version and the impact of the revisions on their products.And if its not crystal clear, there will be a 15-minute Q&A session to complete the event.Why join this webinar?EN 1022 Stability test method for seats, was updated in November 2018. It is not always clear when the new standard is applicable and what its impact will be on products. This webinar will support listeners by answering several key questions relating to this update.Who should join SGS EN 022:2018 webinar?Product manufacturers, quality managers, research and development and all stakeholders active in the European furniture market.Its free!How can you register to join?Register here for the session on Thursday, March 28, 2019 >10:30, Europe Time (Paris, GMT+01:00)17:30, China Time (Beijing, GMT+08:00)For more information on the event, please contact:Stephanie PionchonGlobal Marketing Managert: +33 4 42 61 64 46To keep up to date with the latest news from SGS Consumer Goods & Retail, follow them on LinkedIn:SGS is the world's leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company. SGS is recognized as the global benchmark for quality and integrity. With more than 97,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 2,600 offices and laboratories around the world.1, Mons CalpeChitcombe RoadBroad OakRyeEast Sussex Automotive Powertrain Systems Market size to exceed $892 billion by 2026| Key Players: Delphi Automobile, Denso Corporation, GKN PLC, Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen AG, Toyota Motor Corporation, General Motors Company https://www.marketstudyreport.com/request-a-sample/1695209/ https://www.marketstudyreport.com/check-for-discount/1695209/ https://bit.ly/2FrVXss https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/asia-pacific-automotive-powertrain-systems-market-report-2017?utm_source=RR-SP https://www.marketstudyreport.com https://www.marketstudyreport.com/blog/ Market Study Report LLC adds 2018-2026 Global Automotive Powertrain Systems market report that offers an exhaustive coverage of the industry with brief analysis, data charts, figures, statistics that help take business decisions, company profiles and more.The significant increase in demand for passenger and commercial vehicles, and growth in global automotive industry boosts the demand for automotive powertrain system. The demand for automatic transmission has increased significantly, thereby supporting market growth. The growing trend of downsized engines further boosts the adoption. The introduction of stringent government regulations regarding carbon emissions has encouraged market players to launch efficient and eco-friendly automotive powertrain system. New emerging markets, emerging consumer demographics, and technological advancements would provide growth opportunities for Automotive Powertrain system market in the coming years.Request a sample of this premium report at:The global Automotive Powertrain System Market is anticipated to reach around USD 892 billion by 2026 according to a new research. The passenger vehicle segment dominated the global automotive powertrain system market in 2017. In 2017, Asia-Pacific accounted for the majority share in the global Automotive Powertrain System market.In 2017, Asia-Pacific accounted for the highest share in the global Automotive Powertrain System market. The governments in the region have introduced stringent regulations regarding vehicular emissions owing to environmental concerns. The growing demand for automobiles in the region, and technological advancements would accelerate the demand for automotive powertrain system systems during the forecast period. The increasing economic growth, and increasing demand from countries such as China and India further increases the adoption of automotive powertrain systems in the region. The high penetration of electric vehicles in the region further promotes the adoption of automotive powertrain systems.Request a discount on standard prices of this premium report at:The well-known companies profiled in the Automotive Powertrain Systems market report include Ford Motor Company, Hyundai Motor Company, Volkswagen AG, ZF Friedrichshafen AG, Toyota Motor Corporation, General Motors Company, Aisin SeikiCo., Ltd, Delphi Automobile, Denso Corporation, and GKN PLC. These companies launch new products and collaborate with other market leaders to innovate and launch new products to meet the increasing needs and requirements of consumers.Table of Content:1. Overview and Scope1.1. Research goal & scope1.2. Research assumptions1.3. Research Methodology1.3.1. Primary data sources1.3.2. Secondary data sources1.4. Key take-away1.5. Stakeholders2. Executive Summary2.1. Market Definition2.2. Market Segmentation3. Automotive Powertrain systems Market Insights3.1. Automotive Powertrain Systems Industry snapshot3.2. Automotive Powertrain Systems - Ecosystem analysis3.3. Automotive Powertrain Systems Market Dynamics3.3.1. Automotive Powertrain Systems Market Forces3.3.1.1. Automotive Powertrain Systems Market Driver Analysis3.3.1.2. Automotive Powertrain Systems Market Restraint/Challenges analysis3.3.1.3. Automotive Powertrain Systems Market Opportunity Analysis3.4. Industry analysis - Porter's five force3.4.1. Bargaining power of supplier3.4.2. Bargaining power of buyer3.4.3. Threat of substitute3.4.4. Threat of new entrant3.4.5. Degree of competition3.5. Automotive Powertrain Systems Market PEST Analysis, 20163.6. Automotive Powertrain Systems Market Value Chain Analysis3.7. Automotive Powertrain Systems Industry Trends3.8. Competitive Ranking Analysis4. Automotive Powertrain Systems Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Drive Type4.1. Key Findings4.2. Front-Wheel Drive Powertrain System4.3. Rear-Wheel Drive Powertrain System4.4. All-Wheel Drive Powertrain System5. Automotive Powertrain Systems Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Vehicle Type5.1. Key Findings5.2. Passenger Vehicles5.3. Commercial Vehicles6. Automotive Powertrain Systems Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2026 by Fuel Type6.1. Key Findings6.2. Gasoline6.3. DieselFor more information on this report at:Related Report:Asia-Pacific Automotive Powertrain Systems Market Report 2017In this report, the Asia-Pacific Automotive Powertrain Systems market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.About Us:Marketstudyreport.com allows you to manage and control all corporate research purchases to consolidate billing and vendor management. You can eliminate duplicate purchases and customize your content and license management.Contact Us:Market Study Report LLC4 North Main Street,Selbyville, Delaware 19975USAPhone: 1-302-273-0910US Toll Free: 1-866-764-2150Email: sales@marketstudyreport.comWebsite:Blog: Brazil Elderly Care Market 2019 Competitor Analysis by Koninklijke Philips N.V., Intel Corporation, Exceptional Living Center, Profilico Group Ltd and RIGHT AT HOME, LLC Brazil Elderly Care Market http://databridgemarketresearch.com/request-a-sample/?dbmr=brazil-elderly-care-market http://databridgemarketresearch.com/inquire-before-buying/?dbmr=brazil-elderly-care-market http://databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/brazil-elderly-care-market/ http://databridgemarketresearch.com/reports/global-elderly-care-market/ The report provides Porter analysis, PESTEL analysis and market attractiveness in order to better understand the scenario of the macro and micro markets. The report also contains a detailed description, a competitive scenario, a variety of market leaders and business strategies adopted by competitors with their SWOT analysis. It also provides explicit information on fusions, acquisitions, joint ventures and other important market activities in recent years. The report includes a comprehensive analysis of the statistics, market share, company performance, historical analysis from 2017 to 2018, volume, revenue, growth rate of YOY and CAGR forecast for 2026, the value chain analysis helps analyze major raw materials, major equipment, production processes, customer analysis and major Brazil Elderly Care Market distributors.Get Free Sample Copy of this Report @Brazil Elderly Care Market is expected to reach USD 93.7 Billion by 2025 from USD 61.5 Billion in 2017, at a CAGR of 5.5% in the forecast period 2018 to 2025.The major factors driving the growth of this market are increase in geriatric population, rising patient pool for chronic illness in ageing population, rising awareness of home care setting devices, increasing healthcare spending public and private in developed economies, government initiatives to provide cost-effective medical treatment for ageing population, and favorable reimbursement policies. On the other hand low penetration rate for elderly care products and high cost of elderly care services and products may hinder the growth of the market are the factors which will boost the Brazil elderly care market.The key market players for Brazil elderly care market are listed below: Koninklijke Philips N.V. Intel Corporation Exceptional Living Center Profilico Group Ltd. RIGHT AT HOME, LLC.Order a copy of Brazil Elderly Care Market Report @Segmentation of Brazil Elderly Care MarketThe market is further segmented into: Product Type Service Application RemunerationBased on product type: Pharmaceuticals Housing Assistive DevicesBased on service: Institutional Care Homecare Adult Day CareThe homecare is sub segmented into: Health Care Non-Medical CareThe healthcare segment is sub segmented into: Medical Care Physiotherapy Services Telehealth Palliative Care Hospice CareThe non-medical care segment is sub segmented into: Personal Care Rehabilitation OthersBased on application: Heart Diseases Cancer Kidney Diseases Diabetes Arthritis Osteoporosis Neurological Respiratory OthersBased on mode of remuneration: Government Insurances Private Insurances Out of Pocket ServicesBased on geography: North America Europe Asia-Pacific South America Middle East and AfricaView Full Report @Covered in this report:The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the Brazil elderly care for 2018-2025. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of the web conferencing and unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) and video conferencing, secondary resources and doing in-depth company share analysis of major 10 players in the market.You can request one free hour of our analysts time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.Table of Contents:1. INTRODUCTION2. MARKET SEGMENTATION3. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY4. PREMIUM INSIGHTS5. BRAZIL ELDERLY CARE MARKET, BY PRODUCT TYPE6. BRAZIL ELDERLY CARE MARKET, BY SERVICE7. BRAZIL ELDERLY CARE MARKET, BY APPLICATION8. BRAZIL ELDERLY CARE MARKET, BY MODE OF REMUNERATION9. BRAZIL ELDERLY CARE MARKET, COMPANY LANDSCAPE9.1. COMPANY SHARE ANALYSIS: BRAZIL10. COMPANY PROFILE10.1. KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V.10.1.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW10.1.2. KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V. : REVENUE ANALYSIS10.1.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO10.1.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS10.2. RIGHT AT HOME, LLC.10.2.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW10.2.2. RIGHT AT HOME, LLC. : COMPANY SNAPSHOT10.2.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO10.2.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS10.3. PROFILICO GROUP, LTD.10.3.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW10.3.2. PROFILICO GROUP, LTD.: COMPANY SNAPSHOT10.3.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO10.3.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS10.4. EXCEPTIONAL LIVING CENTER OF BRAZIL, LLC.10.4.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW10.4.2. EXCEPTIONAL LIVING CENTER AT BRAZIL, LTD. : COMPANY SNAPSHOT10.4.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO10.4.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS10.5. INTEL CORPORATION10.5.1. COMPANY OVERVIEW10.5.2. INTEL CORPORATION: REVENUE ANALYSIS10.5.3. PRODUCT PORTFOLIO10.5.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTSRelated ReportGlobal Elderly Care Market Industry Trends and Forecast to 2024Global Elderly Care Market By Type ({Home Care (Health Care, Non-Medical Home Care), Adult Day Care, Institutional Care (Nursing Homes, Hospital Based, Assisted Living, Independent Senior Living)}), Product Type (Pharmaceuticals, Housing & Assistive Devices, Technology); Geography (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East, Africa).Report Access:About Data Bridge Market Research:Data Bridge Market Research set forth itself as an unconventional and neoteric Market research and consulting firm with unparalleled level of resilience and integrated approaches. We are determined to unearth the best market opportunities and foster efficient information for your business to thrive in the market. Data Bridge endeavors to provide appropriate solutions to the complex business challenges and initiates an effortless decision-making process.Data Bridge adepts in creating satisfied clients who reckon upon our services and rely on our hard work with certitude. Get 10% Discount on Report by emailing sopan.gedam@databridgemarketresearch.com . We are content with our glorious 99.9 % client satisfying rate.Contact:Data Bridge Market ResearchTel: +1-888-387-2818Email: sopan.gedam@databridgemarketresearch.com PROLIM Global Corporation, a global leader for PLM, IT, IOT Consulting Services inaugurated its new office premises located on Gurgaon JMD Pacific Square, Sector 15. The effort is to accommodate the growing business needs of northern region and to serve our existing customers. PROLIM has witnessed great traction globally and this step will create great collaboration between different functions within our organization which will, in turn, benefit our customers and partners. As the deadline looms to file for Mays special elections, two school board seats in Gaston are without candidates. In Colton, Position 4 is up for grabs with nobody running. Same thing goes Gladstone, where no one has filed to run for Position 3. And in the Clackamas County community of Estacada, two seats are also uncontested. Same with Position 7 of the Multnomah Education Service District. The filing deadline for all of those races is 5 p.m. Thursday. All told, 82 school board terms will expire this year in the metro area. In addition to the six with no takers, 53 have drawn only one candidate. That means 72 percent of races are so far uncontested. Those statistics are similar to what school board races across the state saw four years ago, when only one in four contests statewide were competitive. In 2015, a total of 817 people ran for 696 school board positions in Oregon, a steep drop from the 2013 election cycles 972. This year, 23 metro-area school board races will be competitive, according to the latest numbers. Oregon City and West-Linn Wilsonville are the only school districts where every board race is contested. As it stands, in Portland Public Schools, only one seat of the four with terms expiring in June will be competitive. Thats the one currently held by Paul Anthony, who will not run for re-election. Three candidates have so far filed to run for that seat: Shanice Clarke, program coordinator for the Pan-African Commons Student Center at Portland State University; Carlos Jermaine Richard, Successful Families program director at the United Way of the Columbia Willamette; and Michelle DePass, the community engagement and policy coordinator for the director of the Portland Housing Bureau. Both Portland school board members who have declined to seek a second term cited the time commitment as a reason for doing so. Mike Rosen, who represents much of the Lents, Brentwood-Darlington and Woodstock neighborhoods, said he dedicates about 30 hours per week to board work. Anthony said he would commit up to 80 hours per week to his board duties. Still, Rosen said the work is fulfilling. Its not a thankless job, but its a tough job, he said. These are all of the races with only a single contestant, broken down by county: Clackamas County Clackamas Education Service District Zones 1, 2, 3 and the at-large seat All three Canby seats: Positions 1, 5 and 6 Colton Positions 1 and 5 Estacada Positions 6 and 7 Gladstone Position 3 Lake Oswego Position 5 Molalla Position 1 North Clackamas Positions 3 and 7 Oregon Trail School Zone 2 Multnomah County Corbett School District Position 1 David Douglas Positions 1, 4 and 7 Gresham-Barlow Positions 1, 2 and 6 Multnomah Education Service District, Position 7 Parkrose Positions 2 and 3 Portland Positions 1, 3 and 7 Reynolds Positions 5 and 7 Riverdale Positions 2, 3 and 4 Washington County Both Banks School District seats: Positions 3 and 5 All three Beaverton seats in Zones 3, 6 and 7 Both Forest Grove seats: Positions 4 and 5 Gaston Position 1 Hillsboro Positions 5 and 7 Both Sherwood seats: Positions 1 and 5 Tigard-Tualatin Position 4 The students at Beacon Heights University may be the best and the brightest, but a lot of bad things sure happen to them in the first episode of Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists," which premiered on Freeform Wednesday night. The spinoff of the popular Pretty Little Liars brings back some familiar names, including Sasha Pieterse as Alison DiLaurentis, Janel Parrish as Mona Vanderwaal, and executive producer I. Marlene King, who all worked on the original show, which was also based on books by Sara Shepard. Warning -- Spoilers are coming up, so if you havent yet watched, and dont want to know what happens, you know what to do. The pilot wasted no time in getting several mysteries started, introducing new characters who are already carrying around some deep, dark secrets, and raising questions about just whats going on in the supposedly peaceful town of Beacon Heights, Oregon. As if that wasnt enough, the pilot ends with somebody winding up dead. And it sure doesnt look like this was a demise from natural causes. Lets break down some of the bigger mysteries, questions, and take note of the line of the night. Here goes: Beacon Heights University looks good, but lets face it, its creepy: The campus is lovely (Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists filmed on location at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon, and also features scenes shot on Lake Oswego and at Lewis & Clark University). But in no time at all, Alison finds out shes been hired as a teaching assistant not because shes an academic whiz, but because she a) reminds Claire Hotchkiss (Kelly Rutherford), whose wealthy, powerful family seems to run things at BHU, of her late daughter; b) shes living in the house where the late daughter, Taylor Hotchkiss, lived before she died by suicide; and c) Mona thinks its funny to show up at the house brandishing a knife because -- ha! -- she brought pie. Whats the deal with Mona?: She tells Alison that she started working for Hotchkiss Industries to do game design, then she was hired to refine the recruitment and selection process for BHU, and thats why Alison is at the university. Riiiiiiight. So why is Mona talking to mirrors, saying things like, Alisons as determined as she ever was, dont you think? And why, at the climax of the episode, is she freaked out and talking into another mirror -- which is somehow connected to a control room, where huge surveillance screens cover the wall -- wondering why a student has just turned up dead? Janel Parris as Mona and Sasha Pieterse as Alison in "Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists." (Photo: Allyson Riggs/Freeform) Freeform OK, so why is Beacon Guard spying on people?: We see that the school security system has an eye on everybody, and that if students want to escape from the all-seeing BG, they have to sneak out to the woods. Claire even orders the security system to keep track of her son, Nolan (Chris Mason). What are they looking for? Chris Mason as Nolan in "Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists." (Photo: James Clark/Freeform) Freeform Is Nolan a total manipulative jerk, or actually trying to do something good?: Will we find out via flashbacks? Because the episode ends with the murder thats hinted at in the episode intro -- and the victim is Nolan, who lies dead, impaled on the spikes of a gate on campus. All through the episode, we see Nolan behave cynically, using people to get what he wants, and threatening to reveal secrets if his fake friends dont go along with his plans. But toward the end, we find out that his sister, Taylor, not only isnt dead, but she and Nolan are working to try and uncover the truth about the Beacon Guard spying thats going on. Who killed Nolan?: The way he dies echoes what Caitlin (Sydney Park) had suggested, which we saw in a moment of dark-humor bonding with her fellow victims of Nolans blackmail. When they gather at the gruesome scene of Nolans death, Dylan (Eli Brown) reminds Caitlin this is what she described. Real helpful, there, Dylan. And Ava (Sofia Carson), who had apparently loved Nolan, is weeping -- a lot -- at the admittedly awful sight of him. Before he dies, we see Nolan talking to someone, apologizing for acting badly, revealing that Taylor is alive, and asking for help. It looks like Nolan chose the wrong someone to confide in. But who? Line of the night: Among Nolans sleazy maneuvers is his insisting that Caitlin pretend to be his girlfriend. When she resists, he shows her a photo of her mom, cheating on her other mom. It if gets out, he says, the scandal will ruin Caitlins mothers political career. I guess two moms, he says, dont always make a right. Even when scheming and sneering, Nolan seems to think hes got a sense of humor. Uh, no. Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists returns next Wednesday, at 8 p.m. on Freeform; episodes will also stream on Hulu. -- Kristi Turnquist kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox. Life doesnt stop at 40. Thats a key message in the new musical We Met in Moscow, based on the romance between a Portland State University political science professor, Ralph Bunch, and a top Soviet computer programmer, Eleonora Andreevna. When they met in the early 1990s, they were long past 40, with adult or nearly-adult children, and were each in the process of dissolving their first marriages. People can fall in love in their 50s and 60s, and its beautiful and deserves a musical itself, said the musicals composer, Kevin Bryant Lay of Scappoose. When Bunch talks about the show, its clear that its essentially an extended love letter to his second wife. They met when he was a visiting lecturer in Moscow and the Soviet political scientist assigned to him decided to connect him with a friend who had some time off from work and wanted to practice her English. She agreed to show me around Moscow for a week, Bunch recalled. Everything was appropriate. We just had a very nice time, and I flew back and I guess both of us knew that there was something going on between us that was unusual. We talked on the phone and wrote letters and things just developed. (Speaking of letters: If Bunchs name rings a bell outside of his Portland State affiliation, its because his letters to the editor and opinion pieces have appeared in The Oregonian for years.) Andreevna died in 2012. A few years later, Bunch wrote what he calls a poem play about the start of their relationship. He showed the script to someone who showed it to someone else and it ultimately ended up in the hands of Dennis Britten, founder of Light Opera of Portland, a company that until then had produced only Gilbert and Sullivans 19th-century comic operas. Britten revised the script, wrote lyrics and brought Lay on board. The new version adds another message: That people arent so different from one another, even when their homelands are longtime political adversaries. At first the play seemed like it had a bit of American imperialism in it, Americas better than Russia, Bunch said. I said I didnt want that. I want this to be something between the people. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose parents were Portland State professors and close friends of Bunch and Andreevna, said, Whatever governments may think and however much governments may despise each other, people help each other, they fall in love, and they are fundamentally the same. And Ralph and Eleonora are testimony to a romance and marriage that bridged two countries that were often at odds. They were a really warm couple and a musical is a great way to capture it, Kristof said. We Met in Moscow When: 7 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, March 22-31. Where: Alpenrose Dairy Opera House, 6149 S.W. Shattuck Road. Tickets: $10-$18, $5 Arts for All tickets available, lightoperaofportland.org. UPDATE THURSDAY 10:25 a.m.: Closing arguments have concluded. Judge David Rees will now consider the evidence before reaching a verdict. The judge didnt set a date or time for announcing that verdict. Lawyers for two community leaders charged with sexually assaulting a woman in 2012 offered a clearer picture of their defense Wednesday in closing arguments: The woman encouraged the married men all evening and when she made it clear that she wasnt interested in sex, they stopped. Defense attorney Christine Mascal implied the woman and the defendants -- Charles McGee, 33, and Aubre Dickson, 44, -- may have had very different perspectives on what happened on the night of May 10, 2012. McGee and Dickson are fighting accusations of first-degree unlawful sexual penetration and other crimes, which would bring them a minimum of 8 years in prison if convicted. The two were indicted last year after Willamette Week published the allegations by Erica Naito-Campbell. McGee was running for Multnomah County commissioner at the time and dropped out of the race. He was working as CEO of the Black Parent Initiative then. Dickson was a chairman of the Oregon Housing Stability Council and a vice president at KeyBank. Defendants Aubre Dickson (left) and Charles McGee (right) listen to closing arguments on Wednesday, March 21, 2019. Both Mascal and defense attorney Stephen Houze told Multnomah County Circuit Judge David Rees that Naito-Campbell had given the men many signs that she was interested in sex. Mascal went further, implying that any alleged sexual activity ceased after Naito-Campbell says the men finally understood she wanted them to stop. Naito-Campbell had been drinking with the men that evening, gone to a strip club with them, talked about how a threesome was on her bucket list, continued to ride in a car with one of them after she says he twice put his hand on her knee and ultimately went to one of their homes, the attorneys said. Thats where Naito-Campbell says McGee and Dickson assaulted her. Mascal said she wasnt trying to attack Naito-Campbell. Rather, Mascal said she was thoroughly questioning an account that wasnt properly vetted by police or the prosecution. Its not about victim-bashing, said Mascal, who is representing McGee. And its certainly not about dragging her through the mud. ... Nobody has called her out. ... They took her at her word. The trial concluded its sixth day in front of a standing-room-only courtroom of more than 30 people. Some are supporters of Naito-Campbell, others of the two defendants. Defense attorneys called no witnesses, including their own clients. When asked by the judge, McGee and Dickson reaffirmed that they didnt wish to testify. Closing arguments will continue Thursday before the case goes to the judge to decide. Prosecutor Amanda Nadell said what defense attorneys have done to Naito-Campbell indeed amounts to victim-blaming. Nadell asked the judge to consider why Naito-Campbell would have gone through this ordeal -- all the probing questions and criticism -- if her account was all a lie. Nadell said Naito-Campbell has been adamant and consistent with her account: She didnt have as much to drink as the defense portrays; she never said she wanted to have a threesome with McGee and Dickson although she had talked openly about sex and considered strip clubs to be an enjoyable pastime with friends; and she made it clear that she had no sexual interest in either man. Twice, Naito-Campbell said she removed McGees hand from her knee and told him he was married. Naito-Campbell has said McGee was an acquaintance, but she felt comfortable going out with him that evening because she considered Dickson a friend who would protect her from anything bad happening. This case will ultimately boil down to the credibility of Erica Naito-Campbell, Nadell said. The state submits that Erica Naito-Campbell is credible and believable. The prosecutor said Naito-Campbells account is supported by years of documents, as well as testimony from friends, family and a therapist. They said she told each of them about the assault within days or weeks of it happening. Friends described Naito-Campbell, who had never been someone who cried much, as distraught, in tears and a changed person when she told them of the alleged assault. Her therapists records also documented how Naito-Campbell started seeing her within a few weeks of that night and how Naito-Campbell struggled with panic attacks, trouble sleeping and post-traumatic stress disorder, Nadell said. The prosecutor also said records show Naito-Campbell and her family spent more than $5,000 on therapy sessions in 2012 -- and Naito-Campbell and her family wouldnt have spent the money if the attack hadnt happened. Mascal said that Naito-Campbell listed reasons other than sexual assault on an intake form at her therapists office. Those reasons included that she was having trouble with her childs father and feeling abandoned. Houze, who is defending Dickson, contended that Naito-Campbell had consumed far more alcohol than she let on in her testimony, and she was too embarrassed to come to terms with what really happened that night with the defendants. When people get drunk, they often behave in a way that they regret, Houze said. ...Its human nature. Its a lot easier to blame other people for your shortcomings than accept responsibility for the poor choices one makes in life. Houze got in only part of his closing arguments before court concluded for the day and will continue Thursday. -- Aimee Green agreen@oregonian.com o_aimee Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox. Baltimore Ravens linebacker Patrick Onwuasor started emerging as one of the teams playmakers on defense during the final games of the 2018 season. The emergence of the former Portland State star, coupled with the departures of key players on defense, are two reasons why the Ravens reportedly placed a second-round tender on Onwuasor, a restricted free agent. LB Patrick Onwuasor received a second-round tender by the Ravens. Onwuasor, who enjoyed a breakout year in 2018, is a restricted free agent. Jamison Hensley (@jamisonhensley) March 8, 2019 The second-round tender is worth $3.095 million in 2019 and Onwuasor has signed the contract, according to spotrac.com. If another team had signed Onwuasor to an offer sheet, the Ravens could have either matched it or received a second-round pick in return. Onwuasor, in his fourth season, will likely play a much larger role on the Baltimore defense in 2019 after the Ravens lost veteran linebackers Terrell Suggs (signed free agent deal with Arizona) and C.J. Mosley (signed with the New York Jets). Onwuasor, who signed with the Ravens as an undrafted free agent in 2016, posted a breakout season in 2018. He started 12 games and posted 59 total tackles, 5.5 sacks, one interception and two forced fumbles. Onwuasor posted seven total tackles, a sack and a forced fumble during the Ravens loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in a AFC divisional playoff game last season. In other free agent news, the Los Angeles Rams cornerback and restricted free agent Troy Hill received an original-round tender from the team, according to a report. Hill signed a one-year deal worth $2.025 million for 2019, according to spotrac.com. The former Oregon star, entering his fifth season, appeared in 16 games - seven starts - and posted a 34 total tackles and posted the first two interceptions of his career. An evangelical Christian theology student said last week, after I asked his opinion of the death penalty, No, the Bible does not allow us to take another life; that judgment is in Gods realm. Its been educational to talk with those with different ideas than mine. Often, we agree on underlying values, like safety and respect, realizing that our ways to achieve those goals may look distinct. Beyond the morality of life-taking as punishment, many who champion the death penalty think again when they realize that no one in Oregon is being executed due to long delays in the appeals process, and the cost for due diligence in the appeals process is excessively expensive. The $20 million spent annually on the death penalty apparatus could be better spent on prevention, enforcement, victim assistance and support of communities suffering from crime. Regarding the March 17 editorial, Let voters decide on the death penalty, I share your concern about the way to abolish the death penalty. I also think that taking these legislative steps will stimulate dialogue. Imposing life without the possibility of parole meets the goal of safety while avoiding a moral dilemma. It also saves millions of dollars a year, with room for hope it could reduce suffering and crime. Tim Buckley, Salem By Dana Milbank OPINION Milbank is an op-ed columnist. He sketches the foolish, the fallacious and the felonious in politics. WASHINGTON -- It is rare that a leader takes the bull by the horns and corrals support for a cause in which all Americans have a steak. I'm not referring to Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang's cutting-edge decision to oppose circumcision, though voters may reward his foresight in defense of foreskin. No, today I celebrate Rep. Devin Nunes of California, top Republican on the Intelligence Committee and close Trump ally, who has just shown the world that he has the chops to sue a cow. Not just any cow: Nunes's defamation lawsuit names his own cow -- "Devin Nunes' cow" is its name on Twitter -- and a couple of other Twitter users, as well as Twitter itself, seeking $250 million in compensation because mean things were said about him on Twitter. Nunes tells Sean Hannity this is "the first of many" lawsuits to come, and Trump signaled support by tweeting about it Monday night. We must hope that Nunes's bovine broadside won't end until he sues cows into extinction. My friend Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine calls this "bonkers," and The Washington Post's Aaron Blake sees "ridiculousness" in the lawsuit, particularly given Nunes's co-sponsorship of a bill called the Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act. That's a bunch of bull! Nunes's naming of a cow as a "defamer" in his lawsuit substantially beefs up the GOP policy stable in otherwise lean times. People are only beginning to understand the threat posed by cattle, a docile-looking but murderous beast that tramples, gores or otherwise kills, in cold blood, 20 people a year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found -- way more than are killed in shark attacks. Cattle burps and flatulence are the largest component of livestock's 14.5 percent share of global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the United Nations -- as much as the entire transport sector. And then there are all the dangerous illnesses cows spread, such as lactose intolerance. These animals -- yes, I am not afraid to call them animals -- invade our country from Asia ("wagyu," they are called) and from Mexico in menacing herds. This is why we need to build a wall, or at least a 1,500-mile emergency cattle guard. Some suppose that Devin Nunes' cow is not really a cow, in the same way they suppose another account the congressman sued, "Devin Nunes' Mom," is not his real mom. No? Anybody who has read Doreen Cronin's illustrated work "Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type" knows that cows used a typewriter to organize a socialist collective, forcing Farmer Brown to give them electric blankets. Ruminate on that for a moment. The Nunes lawsuit states: "Like Devin Nunes' Mom, Devin Nunes' cow engaged a vicious defamation campaign against Nunes that lasted over a year. Devin Nunes' cow has made, published and republished hundreds of false and defamatory statements of and concerning Nunes, including the following: Nunes is a 'treasonous cowpoke' 'Devin's boots are full of manure. He's udder-ly worthless and its pasture time to move him to prison.'" (The cow, revealing its true species, spelled "move" as "mooove.") Cows were an obstacle to Nunes before this week's tipping point. Esquire's Ryan Lizza reported last year that the Nunes family dairy farm quietly moved from California to Iowa. Predictably, the cows went mad in response to the Nunes lawsuit (these black-and-white supremacists dominate the dark Web). Devin Nunes' cow, which had only 1,204 followers when the lawsuit was filed, had bred a herd of 119,000 followers by Tuesday afternoon. Spoof accounts proliferated: Devin Nunes Mom's Cow. Devin Nunes's Cow Psychiatrist. Devin Nunes's Mullet. Devin Nunes is a Whiny Baby. Hopefully, the lawmaker isnt cowed by being branded anti-bovine, for there is much work to be done to protect America from the coldblooded violence the cow is causing in the British countryside. According to the BBCs Countryfile magazine: "In 2014, Peter Jakeman, 62, from Callington, was trampled to death by a herd of stampeding cows while walking his dogs through a field in Derbyshire." "In 2009, Liz Crowsley, 49, from Warrington, was walking the Pennine Way in the Yorkshire Dales, when she too was trampled to death. Police believed that the cows had become aggressive after feeling threatened by Ms. Crowley's spaniel and collie." The BBC offered tips for "Avoiding a cow attack." But Nunes, a patriot, will stop the vicious cow in its tracks. So gird your loins, congressman. I've got your flank. And, before long, a grateful nation will say: Well done. Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank. (c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group By Greg Sargent OPINION Sargent writes The Plum Line blog. He joined The Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer. In this strange and unsettled political moment, one of the most unlikely Democratic presidential candidates of all is Pete Buttigieg. He's the mayor of a small city - South Bend, Indiana - checks in at a ripe 37 years of age, and is also openly gay. Yet in recent days, Buttigieg has had surprising success breaking through the din as the presidential field's voice of the millennial generation. Buttigieg has struck an earnest and authentic tone on big policy and moral questions, defending the Green New Deal as correct in the scale of its ambitions, and claiming that the way to win moderate voters isn't to project squishy centrism but rather to offer progressive solutions to real world problems. Buttigieg recently had a big viral moment in the wake of the New Zealand mosque massacre, when he released a brief but powerful letter to his city's Muslim residents, informing them that the city supports and loves them, and that they have an "equal claim on the blessings of life in this community." I interviewed Buttigieg this week, and while there's a lot to say about his unlikely odds, I kept the focus on policy and values. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited and condensed for clarity and length, follows. Question: What's the reaction been in your city to the letter you sent to the Muslim community? Buttigieg: Very positive. People in any community at a difficult time are looking for an expression of solidarity. The community really wants to wrap its arms around those who are hurting and make sure they feel welcome and supported. A couple of members of our congregation had relatives in the shooting. People here felt afraid and harmed. Question: There's a genre of half-baked punditry which holds that working class whites supported Trump in part because they perceive immigrants as a threat to them, economically or culturally. Indiana is a major Trump state . What's your perception of the view of immigrants in Trump country? Buttigieg: You might have followed this widely publicized case involving a small business owner from Granger, the next community over, very conservative. This guy was an important part of the community, undocumented, went in for an annual ICE visit and didn't come back out. The fiercely protective response came mostly from white members of the community who were conservative and largely voted for Trump, but did not view what he was talking about as going against somebody like Roberto, who they loved. Yes, you have a lot of people in my part of the country who feel we're spending too many resources on immigrants, even though that's inaccurate and immigration subsidizes us. But it doesn't necessary apply to people you actually know and meet and see. Question: We're seeing a rise in white nationalism and serious anti-immigrant fervor in some parts of the country, and also globally. Are you going to be addressing this in a comprehensive way? It occurs to me that the 2020 Democrats should go bigger on these issues. Buttigieg: Absolutely. We need to recognize 21st century threats. Cyber security, climate security, and security in the face of white nationalism are all clear and present security threats that folks on the other side of the aisle either refuse to acknowledge or decline to do anything about. It's extremely important for Democrats to very vocally talk about those threats. Question: How do you view white nationalism as a policy problem? Buttigieg: In the narrow tactical sense, it's something we need to stay ahead of and monitor the way you would any kind of violent radical movement from abroad. There's a deeper phenomenon going on. As we see dislocation and disruption in certain parts of the country, from rural areas to my home in the industrial Midwest, and in the economy, this leads to a kind of disorientation and loss of community and identity. That void can be filled through constructive and positive things, like community involvement or family. And it can be filled by destructive things, like white identity politics. This is one thing well-intentioned job training programs often miss: If we're not attending to that, then making sure somebody's income is steady or replaced after their place in the economy is disrupted, that's not really enough. Question: Can you talk about your broader sense of the role that this type of economic vulnerability plays in creating the conditions for the kind of communitarian collapse that creates an opening for sentiments like white nationalism to flourish? Buttigieg: I don't want this to slide into the idea that some of these racist behaviors can be excused because they can be connected to economic issues. But I do think it's easier to fall into these forms of extremism when you don't know where your place is. There's this very basic human desire for belonging that historically has often been supplied by the workplace. It's been based on the presumption of a lifelong relationship with a single employer. This isn't just a blue collar phenomenon. We've come to be pretty reliant on the way that your workplace explains who you are. That's breaking down. That doesn't have to be a soul crushing thing, provided that there are alternate sources for community, identity, and purpose. In South Bend, we focus a lot on enlisting people in the project of the city itself. The sense of belonging can be very powerful, and we're very fragile without it. It's not accidental that some areas that have seen the most disruption in our social and economic life are those that are most likely to produce a lot of domestic extremists. Question: Don't Democrats have to go bigger in rebutting Trump's arguments about immigration? I was struck by the phrase in your letter that said, whether you've been here all your life or for a year, you have an equal entitlement to the blessings of the community. That's a very robust pro-immigrant statement. Are the other Democrats meeting the challenge of the moment? How do you intend to meet the challenge of rebutting Trump on these very big topics? Buttigieg: One thing that's on my mind is: How does our rhetoric make people feel about themselves? In many ways, Trump appeals to people's smallness, their fears, whatever part of them wants to look backward. We need to be careful that our necessary rebukes of the president don't corner people into the kind of defensiveness that makes them even more vulnerable to those kinds of appeals. What we really need to do in some ways is talk past Trump and his sins, and generate a different nationalism that does the harder task of political rhetoric, which is to make people feel big-hearted and secure. There are ways we can psychologically lift people up. We need to present a different account of American greatness, that doesn't situate it in the past, that's really about how we become bigger and greater when we open our country. Question: That's civic nationalism, a traditional rebuttal to racial nationalism throughout our history. You would reverse Trump's efforts to restrict asylum seeking, and raise the cap he's imposed on refugees? On deportations, should all Democrats stand for reversing what he's done -- making it open season on everybody? Buttigieg: The beginning and end of this conversation has to be comprehensive immigration reform: a balance of border security, tune ups to the lawful immigration framework, a path to citizenship for the undocumented. We should be able to not only accommodate, but also benefit from, the fact that we're the place refugees turn to. A reasonable debate over what the manageable number is probably points to something more expansive than what we're doing right now. The current cap that the president has put in is the lowest in my lifetime. Given that our country has grown, given that we're a strong country, and given that at the right level, it's beneficial to us, it's natural to say that it's been brought too low, and that the level would have to go back up. Question: On asylum, I take it you'd reverse all his efforts to restrict the ways in which people can apply and so forth? Buttigieg: Policy-wise, we can look at whether there are any measures we need to take to better keep track of people who come through. But the sort of vetting that goes on is not trivial. The greatest nation in the world should not have much to fear from a family, especially children, fleeing violence. More importantly, children fleeing violence ought to have nothing to fear from the greatest country in the world. Question: Should the 2020 Democrats all pledge not to go into war without congressional authorization? Should they all forthrightly acknowledge Barack Obama's role in abusing that specifically, and empowering the imperial presidency more generally? Buttigieg: I don't know that there's much to be gained in relitigating that. It's certainly the case that Obama did many things that just followed from the approach of presidents before. I don't know if you ever want to tie your hands completely. But I think we've all learned the cost of Congress abdicating its responsibility. Question: But should the 2020 Democrats in some form pledge not to abuse this anymore? Buttigieg: I think that's appropriate. Probably the single biggest thing in foreign policy and security the next president has to do is clarify what the standard will be for the commitment of U.S. troops. It's frighteningly vague right now. Question: Do you have a voting rights agenda? Buttigieg: My voting rights agenda is not that different from what you'd see in H.R. 1. I would add to it openness to constitutional reforms -- potentially measures to reinforce the Voting Rights Act, if we can't get it right with statute alone, but also revisiting the Electoral College. Question: Electoral College reform -- what does that look like? Buttigieg: It's gotta go. We need a national popular vote. It would be reassuring from the perspective of believing that we're a democracy. But I also think it would be highly encouraging of voter participation on the national level. Question: That sounds like as president, you would try to rally support for a constitutional amendment to do away with the Electoral College? Buttigieg: Absolutely. It wouldnt be easy to do overnight, but it would also have the function of reminding everybody that structural reforms are an option, and encouraging us to have that level of intellectual ambition. By Elijah E. Cummings OPINION Cummings, a Democrat, represents Marylands 7th Congressional District in the House, where he is the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform. In November, the American people voted overwhelmingly to put Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives to start serving as a truly independent check and balance on the executive branch. Since then, President Donald Trump and his allies have complained of "Presidential Harassment," decrying Democrats for having the audacity to request documents and witnesses to fulfill our constitutional responsibilities. The problem is that the White House is engaged in an unprecedented level of stonewalling, delay and obstruction. I serve as chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, the primary investigative body in the House of Representatives. I have sent 12 letters to the White House on a half-dozen topics - some routine and some relating to our core national security interests. In response, the White House has refused to hand over any documents or produce any witnesses for interviews. Let me underscore that point: The White House has not turned over a single piece of paper to our committee or made a single official available for testimony during the 116th Congress. One of the most important investigations we are conducting is a review of White House security clearances. The White House argues that Congress is not entitled to any information about individual employees, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying about his communications with the Russians; current national security adviser John Bolton, who worked directly with the gun-rights group founded by now-convicted Russian spy Maria Butina; or the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was reportedly given access to our nation's most sensitive secrets over the objections of then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and others. Instead, the White House offered to let us read - but not keep - a few pages of policy documents that have nothing to do with the officials we are investigating, along with a general briefing on those policies during which they will answer no questions about specific employees. We are also examining the president's "hush money" payments to silence women alleging affairs before the election, as well as the president's failure to divulge these payments on his financial disclosure forms, as required by federal law. During our hearing with Michael Cohen, the former Trump lawyer provided copies of reimbursement checks signed long after Trump became president, but the White House has refused to turn over any of the documents we requested. Instead, it let us read 30 pages, about half of which were already public or entirely blacked out. The White House has also refused to produce documents or witnesses in response to our other investigations, including White House officials'alleged use of personal email in violation of federal law, allegations that the president may have violated the Presidential Records Act by destroying documents, and reports from whistleblowers that the administration allegedly rushed to transfer sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia in violation of the Atomic Energy Act. The White House is also refusing to provide documents relating to lower-profile issues, such as the use of taxpayer funds to pay for lavish private aircraft. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price had to write his own checks to reimburse the American taxpayers for his wasteful spending, but White House officials on some of those same flights, such as Kellyanne Conway, have refused to provide the documents we need to complete our review. As a reminder of what used to be "normal," previous presidential administrations turned over tens of thousands of pages of documents in response to Oversight Committee investigations under both parties just a few years ago. The George W. Bush White House gave us more than 20,000 pages relating to Hurricane Katrina, numerous documents and witnesses relating to the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity, and nearly 1,500 pages of emails between senior White House officials about the death of Pat Tillman. Similarly, the Obama White House produced many documents and emails relating to the Solyndra controversy, as well as witnesses and documents regarding the Benghazi, Libya, attack, including communication between top White House officials and National Security Council staffers. By contrast, the complete refusal by the Trump White House to produce any documents or witnesses to the primary investigative committee in the House reflects a decision at the highest levels to deny congressional oversight altogether. The president dictated this approach the day after the election, when he threatened a "warlike posture" against Democrats and then vowed that, at the end of two years, "I'm just going to blame them." Trumps actions violate our Constitutions fundamental principle of checks and balances. If our committee must resort to issuing subpoenas, there should be no doubt about why. This has nothing to do with presidential harassment and everything to do with unprecedented obstruction. SALEM Oregon lawmakers are considering raising their annual pay by nearly $20,000, a move the sponsors say will attract more diverse candidates to the statehouse. "We're a diverse state, we need a diverse legislature," Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, one of the legislators leading the effort, told Oregon Public Broadcasting. "Because of the low pay, we are automatically screening out people who really should be represented here." The move comes only a few weeks after a 28 percent legislative pay raise went into effect. Lawmakers were not behind that raise, and the increase was tied to collective bargaining agreements that affected nearly 40,000 state employees. Legislators now make $31,200, plus an extra $149 a day when the Legislature is in session. Burdick, a Democrat from Portland, said that the current pay isnt a living wage and makes it more likely that retirees or independently wealthy candidates pursue office. She noted that legislators make far less than some city and county elected officials. A recent series in The Oregonian/OregonLive highlighted ways that some lawmakers use money from campaign donors to supplement their pay, sometimes in particularly outrageous ways. Burdick is proposing a measure that would raise wages by 63 percent, to more than $50,000 per year. That would make Oregons Legislature one of the highest paid in the country, compared to other statehouses with lawmakers working for a similar amount of time. But it's unclear if the state has the money to fund a salary bump. The most recent pay raise will cost Oregon $1.6 million every two years, and the increase floated in the proposal will be much more. State budget leaders have already called for cuts across nearly all state programs and are trying to dig deep to come up with more money for schools and health care. Still, Burdick is undeterred. And although she concedes that the plan will likely be politically unpopular, she maintains that it's necessary to create a well-rounded statehouse that better reflects state demographics. "This is not a get-rich-quick scheme down here," she said. "This is public service. But if it gets to the point where you can't feed your family, that's where the problem is." -- The Associated Press A Sherwood piano teacher suspected of sexually abusing one of his students has been indicted on two-dozen charges, records show. Christopher M. Griffin, 29, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to 25 total counts of first-degree sodomy, unlawful sexual penetration and sexual abuse, records show. It appears prosecutors arent pursuing one of the sodomy counts, however. Griffin is a teacher at Lets Make Music and Dance, a music academy on the northeast edge of the Washington County citys downtown and just a block away from Sherwood Middle School. He was initially arrested March 9 on suspicion of sexually abusing an 8-year-old female student, records show. Griffin posted $25,000 bail the day after and was released from jail. He agreed he wouldnt have contact with the students family, according to records, but violated the no-contact order by emailing the students mother hours after his release. He was arrested for the second time March 12, records show. His indictment, filed this week, alleges he abused the child monthly beginning last summer and ending on or about Feb. 28. The director of the academy, Griffins mother, said her son is innocent in a message on the academys website. While we feel terrible for anything that happened to this child, Christopher is innocent, and he will be exonerated in court, the message reads. The safety of your children always has been and will be our first priority. Just to make everyone comfortable, Christopher will not be working here while the charges are pending. Griffins father is a Sherwood city councilor, according to KGW (8), which reported Wednesday about the additional charges. Griffin remains lodged in the Washington County Jail. -- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015 Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox. Timothy Spencer, DO, board certified neurosurgeon, recently joined McLaren Central Michigan's medical staff. The addition of Spencer to McLaren's medical staff brings a new service line to the community, neurosurgery. Spencer specializes and is focused on minimally invasive spine surgery utilizing state-of-the-art techniques for complex spinal surgeries, malformations, tumors, dislocations and other spine-related conditions. "My goal is to provide the most advanced minimally invasive approach to spinal surgery," Spencer said. "Less trauma leads to less pain and a faster recovery, allowing patients to return to their normal activities faster." McLaren Central Michigan President and CEO Martin Tursky believes minimally invasive spine surgery is a service that will provide the local residents with expert care close to home. "McLaren is committed to doing what is best for the community we serve. Patients needing spine surgery should not have to travel in order to have the highest quality of care, delivered by the latest technology," Tursky said. "Dr. Spencer is filling a service gap in the mid-Michigan area and we are grateful to have him in our community." Spencer graduated from Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, MO, and completed his fellowship in neurovascular and skull base surgery with the Neurosurgical Foundation in Illinois. His residency in neurological surgery was completed at Ohio University. Spencer's office is located at 4641 E. Pickard St., Suite A in Mount Pleasant. Rebecca Brumm recently earned the Certified Eating Disorder Specialist designation from the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals Foundation, after completing rigorous training in the evaluation and treatment of eating disorders. Established in 1985, foundation provides educational programs and training standards for eating disorder specialists and other medical professionals caring for those suffering from the full spectrum of disordered eating. The group offers the most widely respected certification process for specializing in eating disorder treatment. To date, only 499 professionals nationwide hold the CEDS credential. Brumm is the second in Michigan to achieve this specialized certification. This certification allows Brumm to offer clients the assurance and confidence that the highest standards of care will be provided throughout all stages of treatment. "Certification as an iaedp eating disorder specialist is evidence that both Brumm and iaedp are diligent in seeking advancement in training, education, research and competency to address the complexities involved in the treatment of eating disorders," said Tammy Beasley, director of iaedp Certification Committee. Brumm currently serves as the director of specialty services at Partners in Change in Midland where she sees clients and also supervises and trains other clinicians in the agency's eating disorder program. Brumm also serves as the president and founder of local nonprofit Mid-Michigan Eating Disorder Recovery Alliance, which promotes awareness and advocacy for those struggling with disordered eating. According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, 20 million women and 10 million men suffer from an eating disorder at some time in their life. Nationally 9 percent of the population is diagnosed with an eating disorder. Data collected in the 2016 Midland County Youth Study conducted by the Legacy Center for Community Success demonstrated an increase in eating disorder behaviors across all school grades and genders since 2011. The report suggests over 15 percent of female and 8 percent of male students in Midland County are engaging in eating disorder behaviors. Brumm and her colleagues at Partners in Change are committed to bringing evidence-based assessments and treatments to the Great Lakes Bay Region. MoneyTips It is an exciting time when you start your new business. You have so many things to think of that you may forget one of the most important aspects taxes. Before you dive into the business world, take a few minutes to consider the tax aspects of your new business. Your tax obligations are strongly affected by the type of business structure you choose. Typical business structures include sole proprietorships, partnerships, C Corporations, S Corporations, or Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs). Sole proprietorships, partnerships, and LLCs are reported using personal tax returns because profits are passed through to the owners. Other corporate structures require filing a corporate tax return. Corporate structures generally shield personal accounts from business debt but come with varying levels of tax reporting and complexity. For details on each structure and the proper corresponding tax forms and obligations, check these IRS-provided links. If your structure is anything other than a sole proprietorship, you will need to apply for an Employer Identification Number (EIN) that serves as your identifier for tax purposes. Sole proprietors may also choose to acquire an EIN to avoid having to use their Social Security Number as an identifier. See the IRS EIN webpage for assistance. Income Tax You must pay income tax on your business earnings, whether the structure requires that you report them through personal tax returns or corporate tax returns. Employment Taxes If your business has employees, you will have various employment taxes to pay. The primary employment taxes are Social Security and Medicare taxes (typically known as FICA taxes on pay stubs because they are required to be withheld under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act). You must pay the employer's contribution to each tax and withhold the employee's contribution. The Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) tax also applies. Check the business structures link above for structure-specific details. Self-Employment Taxes If you are self-employed, you are responsible for paying both the employer and the employee components of the FICA taxes on a quarterly basis. Excise Taxes Excise taxes are special taxes that relate to a particular type of business and business activity. They include such things as fuel taxes, environmental taxes, air transportation taxes, and specific manufacturer's taxes. Check resources within your industry along with the IRS website to determine what, if any, excise taxes apply to your business. You may need to pay certain taxes in increments throughout the year, such as self-employment taxes. Any tax that is not subject to withholding throughout the year must be paid in quarterly installments as an estimated tax. Failure to do so can result in underpayment penalties. See IRS Publication 505, "Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax," for details. After working through all your federal tax concerns, do not forget about your state and local obligations. Your local Chamber of Commerce should be able to help you with state and local tax considerations, and the website for your State Department of Revenue should contain information on business tax obligations. Be sure to ask about any changes introduced by recent tax law changes that may affect your business. The IRS offers useful links to state organizations here. Don't let unexpected tax obligations sneak up on your business. Take the time to do your research before you begin, and outline and schedule your tax obligations up front. After this, you can fully concentrate on the more important aspects of establishing and growing your business attracting customers and keeping them satisfied with your products and services. The IRS and Treasury Department have extended the 2021 tax filing deadline from April 15 to May 17July 15, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the interest of safety and to curb the spread of the coronavirus, all Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TAC) and face-to-face IRS services operate by appointment only. Taxpayers can call 844-545-5640 to schedule an appointment or find your local IRS TAC here. See the IRS Coronavirus Tax Relief page for the latest updates. Failing to pay your taxes or a penalty you owe could negatively impact your credit score. You can check your credit score and read your credit report for free within minutes by joining MoneyTips. Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels Advertising Disclosure Originally Posted at: https://www.moneytips.com/do-not-let-taxes-kill-your-new-business How To Save For Taxes If You Are A Freelancer Top 10 Home Office Tax Deductions When Credit Card Debt Is Tax-Deductible Artists are needed for a variety of art shows in this area. Art Walk Central Art Reach of Mid Michigan will again host Art Walk Central, an art competition featuring artists from across the state. This is a month long event and the competition is open to all artists over age 13. The event will give artists the opportunity to showcase their art publicly, and prizes will be awarded. Almost $11,000 in prize money will be awarded to artists in youth and adult categories. The public is invited to register and vote for their favorite art pieces. In addition to the art competition, there are events and activities throughout the month of August. This year Art Walk Central will take place from Aug. 5-30. Artists and venues are called to participate in a process months before the event, in order to prepare. Venues include many from previous years and new locations. Artists are called to register and will be required to choose at least three venues they feel best fitting for their pieces to be displayed. Art Reach is calling all artists to participate. Artists need to register and entries are to be submitted before 11:59 p.m. Friday, April 12. This year's judges are Donna St. John from Kendall College of Art and Design and Sandra Murchison from Eastern Michigan University. Artists interested in submitting a design may register on www.ArtWalkCentral.com. For more information on submissions and Art Walk Central visit www.artreachcenter.org or call Art Reach at (989) 773-3689. Saginaw Old Town Art Fair Applications are now available for art vendors to apply to the Saginaw Old Town Art Fair. Application deadline is midnight March 30, with applications are through Zapplication.org The Saginaw Old Town Art Fair set for 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 9, and for 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 10, will be located in the 400 block of Court Street in the historic Riverfront District of Saginaw. Community members can view and purchase artwork,participate in free activities, and see live demonstrations and performances. Information, email saginawartfair@gmail.com or Saginaw Art Fair on Facebook. Gladwin Area Artist Guild Spring Art Show Gladwin Area Artist Guild is looking for entrants for its Spring Art Show set for 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, April 13, a Beaverton Activity Center, 106 Tonkin St., Beaverton. Any area artist is extended an invitation to participate. There is no theme, no judging, no size limit, and all mediums are welcome. There is just one rule: each artist may only enter a single art piece. A People's Choice ribbon will be awarded in both student and adult categories along with generous cash prizes. Adult artists can register for $10, while students in grades 7 - 12 will not be charged. Registration is encouraged, but artists may also register from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, April 12, on the 2nd floor of the Activity Center in Beaverton. 1 and 2-D art must be framed or otherwise suitable for hanging. 3-D work must stand on its own.. Questions or to receive an application form via email or USPS, call 989-246-1030. More than a year after the completion of the streetscape reconstruction project in downtown Midland, road signs are starting to go up along Main Street intersections. As the frost clears and the ground begins to thaw, crew members are now able to dig into the ground and install posts for the new signs. "Now that the weather is starting to cooperate a little, (crew members) are out there in full force," said Selina Tisdale, community affairs director for the City of Midland. "So, hopefully that means we'll get this project wrapped up." Since the reconstruction of downtown, the area has lacked street names and permanent stop signs at seven different intersections. The lack of signage in downtown was discussed at a September meeting of the Downtown Development Authority, at which the board decided to install new stop signs that would incorporate the street names. This decision came after having to back-track on an initial plan of adding the signs to existing light poles. Since then, the new signs have arrived and staff has been waiting for the ground to thaw, before installing them, Tisdale said. Last week, the first signs went up at the intersection of Rodd and Main streets. Putting the signs in is a two-step process, Tisdale said. First, holes are dug and poles are installed by Fisher Contracting Co. Then, staff from the City's Engineering Department come in and finish installing the signs, Tisdale said. "It looks like they're down there working pretty concentratedly now," Tisdale said Wednesday. "So, I'm hoping that means they will be able to get what they need to get done on all of the corners, and then we'll be behind them quite quickly to set the signs." During its sixth annual Best In Business awards ceremony Friday, March 22, Saginaw Valley State University will recognize businesses and entrepreneurs as well as SVSU faculty, students and alumni dedicated to supporting the Great Lakes Bay Region business community. Business and alumni awards were chosen by an advisory board featuring leaders from SVSU's Scott L. Carmona College of Business & Management. Faculty honorees were selected by SVSU students. Regional businesses honored will include the following: Spence Brothers will receive the Outstanding Family Business Award, given to a family-owned company that demonstrates a commitment to community-minded business practices. Spence Brothers -- based in the Great Lakes Bay Region since 1893 -- was chosen for its support of important regional development projects in recent years. Tri-Star Trust Bank will receive the Outstanding Business Award, presented to a company with a record of steady employment and strong corporate citizenship. Tri-Star Trust Bank -- with offices in East Lansing, Frankenmuth, Midland and Saginaw -- is a wealth management institution that handles over $1.3 billion in assets for its clients. Business leaders honored will be as follows: JoAnn Crary, a member of SVSU's Board of Control and president of Saginaw Future Inc., a non-profit economic development organization, will receive the Outstanding Business Leader award. Among her recent accomplishments, Crary served as the 2015 board chair of the International Economic Development Council, where she focused on inclusive economic development. She was appointed in 2016 by Gov. Rick Snyder to serve on the 21st Century Economic Commission. Daniel Kehres, owner of Kehres Health & Chiropractic, will receive the Outstanding Entrepreneur Award. Kehres opened his first chiropractic practice in Saginaw in 2010, and later expanded to five offices in the region. Kehres also volunteered hundreds of hours teaching free health classes and attended community health-focused events. SVSU faculty members honored at the ceremony will include the following: Lawrence Kickham, professor of accounting, will receive the Excellence in Service Award. Kickham has chaired the accounting department at SVSU for over 20 years. Kickham served as treasurer and board member for the Saginaw Choral Society for 14 years and on the Audit Committee for St. Mary's Medical Center for over 16 years. Kellie Konsor, assistant professor of economics, will receive the Excellence in Research Award. Konsor joined SVSU in 2016 and completed her Ph.D. in economics from Purdue University in 2017. Her research interests involve industrial organization and media economics. Kevin Meyer, assistant professor of economics, will receive the Excellence in Teaching: Full-time Faculty Award. Originally from California, Meyer began teaching at SVSU after receiving his Ph.D. from Iowa State University. Gerald Nelson will receive the Excellence in Teaching: Adjunct Faculty Award. Nelson began as an adjunct faculty member in SVSU's Department of Accounting in 2015. He also is a three-time SVSU alumnus, receiving a master's degree in business administration in 2015, a bachelor's degree in professional accountancy in 2013, and a bachelor's degree in business administration in 1998. SVSU's Best In Business awards ceremony will recognize graduate students, undergraduate students and alumni at the ceremony. For more information on the college, visit www.svsu.edu/cbm. Northwood University's annual Values Emphasis Week began with a session featuring two veterans doing their best to answer the question of "is freedom worth protecting?" Cory Kastl, a Midland native, and Larkin O'Hern appeared in the packed Griswold Communications Center lecture hall Tuesday night to discuss their time in the military and how it enriched their lives and careers afterward. In 2008, Kastl graduated from the U.S. Military Academy with a degree in business management, and was later commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry. He would later be assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, where he served as platoon leader and company executive officer. Kastl was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. After several years in the military, Kastl was selected for the Army Congressional Fellowship, serving as the defense fellow for Rep. Paul Cook of California, and currently serves as a legislative liaison for army personnel. Born in Tacoma, Washington, O'Hern grew up in a military family. He was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in June 2010, where he was severely wounded the following December, losing both legs and a hand. He returned to active duty in 2013, and was selected as an Army Congressional Fellow in Washington D.C. He earned a master's degree in legislative affairs from George Washington University and served as the Defense Legislative Fellow for Sen. Patty Murray before being assigned to the Office of Chief Legislative Liaison as a liaison. O'Hern objected to the idea of freedom being a guaranteed right, rather comparing it to a monthly lease that needs to be regularly paid to keep it. "It's not of value if you won't give anything up for it," O'Hern said. "If you expect it to be cost-free, it's not a value." Sharing stories of their service and education at West Point, both men spoke about the importance of hard work and self-determination. "When you surround yourself with people who want to do good things -- people who are impressive in their own regards that makes you much better," Kastl said. Adding onto Kastl's point, O'Hern agreed that being around people who can both inspire and support you is an important part of personal growth. "You become the average of the people that you spend time with," O'Hern said. "You should ask yourself 'are these people making me better?' 'Are these people that are going to check me when I need it?'" Timothy Nash, director of The McNair Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship at Northwood University, introduced the two men before they spoke, and served as moderator for the discussion. "These fine young have outlined the Northwood idea as well as I have seen anyone do so in all my years at Northwood University," Nash said. The pair were the first of four speakers to be featured during Values Emphasis Week. "Values Emphasis Week offers a formal, yearly opportunity for students, faculty and staff to reflect on moral and ethical values relating to their personal lives, involvement in the community, and their work in the world of business," reads Northwood University's website. Maria Rose Belding, American University student, "CNN Hero" and creator of the Matching Excess and Need for Stability (MEANS) Database, a free online network connecting thousands of food pantries, soup kitchens and other non-profits with donors of surplus food, spoke Wednesday night. Cox Automotive president Sandy Schwartz will close out the week when he speaks at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at Riepma Arena. Kinshasa, DRC (PANA) - The leader of the opposition Christian Democracy (DC) party, Eugene Diomi Ndongala, was conditionally released on Wednesday following a presidential pardon, an official source told PANA here Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Predicting that the days ahead will prove foundational to the years ahead for Libyans and the region, the top United Nations official in the country told the Security Council on Wednesday that it was no exaggeration to describe the oil-rich nation as having reached a crucial juncture Kigali, Rwanda (PANA) Rwandas Meteorological Department Wednesday issued a red weather alert of strong winds across most of the country this week, with gusts of up to 18-25 Km/h, an official statement reaching PANA here said "Lost gift." "Cataclysm." "Death of a loved one." "Emptiness." "Chaotic movement." "Rock." "Guard." "Repairman. "Secondary character." Researchers at the University of Missouri say men often use descriptions such as these to cope with their partner's miscarriage and to describe their role in the experience. Although miscarriage is usually considered a "women's issue," men also grieve the loss of the baby. Women who endured miscarriage often use metaphors to make sense of and cope with the experience, and researchers wanted to expand that to include the men in the relationship. They hoped to also expand upon a communication model that claims people use narrative-like descriptions to organize and interpret their life experiences. The model was created by Jody Koenig Kellas at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Haley Kranstuber Horstman, a professor of communication in the MU College of Arts and Science. After interviewing 45 men, Horstman and her team found five metaphors often reflected the men's understanding of the physical, emotional and relational implications of their partner's miscarriage. These included lost gift, cataclysm, death of a loved one, emptiness, and chaotic movement. Unexpectedly, the researchers discovered these men also used four additional metaphors to describe their role in the experience -- rock, guard, repairman, and secondary character. "In describing the miscarriage itself, the men are speaking to a societal expectation that pregnancy is easy and smooth," Horstman said. "When describing their role in the experience, the men speak to the traditional expectation that they should be heterosexual and tough. But without intention, we see that men's emotions are being pushed aside to help their partner when in reality these men are also suffering." The researchers hope the study's findings will encourage couples to "co-cope" with the experience by using metaphors and other descriptive phrases when talking about miscarriage. They hope these findings will encourage men to find helpful ways to talk about their spouse's miscarriage. They also acknowledge that the study's participants were mainly highly educated heterosexual white men and look to expand future research with other ethnic and social groups. Horstman researches how couples talk about miscarriage. Her interest began when she and one of the study's co-authors, Amanda Holman, were in graduate school and witnessed many their friends experiencing infertility and miscarriages. "We noticed a lot of the men that were a part of the relationships didn't talk about miscarriage," Horstman said. "They didn't feel they had the space to talk about it, and didn't feel like they could cope with miscarriage because it is such a women's space." The study, "Men's use of metaphors to make sense of their spouse's miscarriage: Expanding the communicated sense-making model," was published in Health Communication. A third author on the study is Chad McBride. Holman and McBride are in the department of communication studies at Creighton University. Funding was provided by Creighton University's Dr. George F. Haddix President's Faculty Research Fund. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies. Sure, most of us go to SXSW for the music (or the gaming or the interactive whatever if thats what youre into), but dammit if I dont also go to Austin every year to stuff my face with BBQ and drink like a thousand Lone Stars too. Newsflash: There are other drinks besides Lone Stars in Austin and theres also other food besides BBQ. So follow along while I take you on this glorious ride of the best things I consumed in Austin, otherwise known as how I got this wicked heartburn that wont go away and loved it. The name is a mouthful and located at 601 N Interstate 35 Frontage Rd, its as cutty as the address would suggest. Served out of a trailer with an adjoining deck on the corner of a Chevron parking lot, this was like an oasis when I stumbled upon it empty-stomached on an early afternoon and heading into Downtown for another day of SXSW. I had a bacon & egg and a chorizo & egg taco and they were a simple, unassuming expression of the Austin breakfast staple. I added fresh green salsa and at first, questioned the shredded cheese heaped on top of the taco, unmelted. But as I wrapped the warm tortilla around itself to start eating, the cheese slowly melted as I ate and I realized right then and there [The Wonder Years narrator voice] that this was a perfectly constructed breakfast taco. I make a point to stop at a proper cocktail bar every year during SXSW and The Roosevelt Room mightve just become my yearly go to. The bulk of the cocktail menu is broken down by eras and I went for the Corpse Reviver #2 from the Prohibition (1920-1933) section, which made sense, cause dammit if I didnt feel like a corpse come Thursday. Made with Citadelle Gin, RR Triple Sec, Cocchi Americano, lemon and flamed Absinthe, it was the refreshing kick in the pants I need to start the evening. The presentation of the drinks at The Roosevelt Room is lavish, if not a bit over-the-top, but its more fun that way ya old horse! My #2 was served on an ornery copper coaster and a Luxardo cherry garnish rested on top of the glass through two crossed skewers. The large bar area was dimly lit and not too loud, exactly the type of atmosphere I want when taking a respite from the crowds over a fancy cocktail. Im convinced that Stiles Switch BBQ on N. Lamar Blvd is the best damn BBQ joint in Austin and maybe even the whole country (Hit me on Twitter to put me on blast if you disagree with the latter.) Housed in the same building as The Emporium from Dazed & Confused (seriously) its the most important 20 minute ride I take outside of Downtown every year. The gigantic beef rib is perfectly seasoned, crispy on the outside and falls right off the bone and the only thing more immaculate than the rib is the brisket, with pronounced grains, mellow smoke flavor and the right amount of delicious rows of fat in just the right places. I drool over their Instagram account all year waiting for my trip to Austin and when Im there, sitting on the patio in the sunshine with live music playing is where its at. Pinthouses flagship IPA has quickly become an Austin craft beer classic. Its a beer that has recently vaulted Pinthouse on the Texas craft beer map and sees the almost seven-year-old pizza-and-craft-beer staple with now three locations in Austin. Packed with Simcoe, Galaxy, Citra and Aacca hops, the hazy brew has crazy tropical notes, and I just wanna drink a million of em. Cant make it to one of their three brewpubs outside of the Downtown area? Look for them on draft around Austin and even at the airport (I had one before my flight home at 11amno shame in my game.) I went to this event put on by UberEats about LA hip-hop and Tacos where ace hip-hop journo Jeff Weiss guided a convo with Kogi-honcho and celebrity-ish chef Roy Choi about, you guessed it, hip-hop and tacos (lighten up, its South By.) Weiss prodded Choi about the music over the years that marked his gradual ascent to taco truck stardom and more, while Choi casually seasoned carne asada, grilled it on a Philips brand electric tabletop grill along with tomatillos, which he then put into a food processor for a salsa verde. Then (still mid-conversation) Choi heated corn tortillas on the same grill, chopped up the meat, onions, cilantro, and passed tacos into the crowd and holy shit they were incredible. Aaron Franklin even stopped by at one point with a brisket (This was ridiculous enough already, so why the hell not?), but Chois simple tacos stole the show. The dude didnt need much to make a taco as good as any of the others I had in Austin and straight up, hes a master. The best way to get through a week at SXSW? Feed your body and do it right. Oaxacan restaurant, El Naranjo, was the canvas for my nicest dinner of the week and Im still thinking about it. We ordered the Queso Oaxaca Fundido with mixed toppings, which is melty, stringy cheese, topped with chorizo, mushrooms and huitlacoche; the latter is a fungus that grows on organic corn and its a game-changer. I love trying unusual flavors and the extra umami of the huitlacoche provided a different profile to the familiarity of chorizo, mushrooms and the dense Oaxacan cheese. I should note that I also had a killer Costilla de Res, and the salsa macha that comes with the bread is the very essence of Oaxacan dishes like mole (I took a jar of it home, cause you can do that.) Plain and simple, Chef Iliana De La Vegas restaurant puts on one hell of an experience amidst cluttered Rainey St. Go there. Bangers on Rainey St is a beer lovers paradise. 200 beers on draft?! Each of the two 100 beer bars at Bangers is separated by a corral of sorts, with ample picnic style seating during the day and a large stage during SXSW. They claim to have the largest tap wall in Texas and if another establishment chooses to challenge this claim, then Im there! I came by to see Open Mike Eagle and De La Soul play at the StubHub showcase on Wednesday night and tried my best not to take forever to order as I stared at what felt like infinite options. I settled on a classic, Lone Pints Yellow Rose IPA, a Smash beer (single malt and single hopped; Mosaic) that I generally take a four-pack of bottles back home when Im in Austin and had never had on draft. Made two hours east of Austin in Magnolia, Texas, Yellow Rose has a pronounced malt bill and is a fine expression of the mosaic hop. At 6.8% ABV, it was a great starter for a hip-hop show and I came back later for the Dallas-based Community Mosaic IPA (can you tell I like Mosaic hops?) and then a Maui Coconut Porter. If you want 200 great beer choices, Bangers is your jam. The Torchys Northshore location right off of Downtown is something else. Its more of an elevated taco lounge with a full bar mixing craft margaritas, etc.. I got invited to an event put on by Edible where you could order any of the 12 Torchys tacos of the month. The Tokyo Drifter especially blew my mind with get this: Teriyaki glazed pulled pork with sweet and sour veggie slaw, fried wonton strips, sesame sriracha mayo, cilantro & a lime wedge served on a flour tortilla Not a traditional taco by any stretch of the imagination but its SXSW, cmon. If youre in the Downtown Area, Coopers is your best bet for legit Texas BBQ. Four of us ordered moist brisket, a ribeye steak, pork ribs, lots of sides and perhaps the best Jalapeno Cheddar Sausage Ive ever had (pictured up top). The gobs of cheddar cheese in the casing were gooey and the sausage was juicy and delicious. Give yourself a long walk around the block after visiting here though, youre gonna need it. I know, theyre just scrambled eggs and I dont have a picture, but I swear to you, they were everything! Having a 2am breakfast before bed at The Magnolia Cafe on South Congress was the most nostalgic way to end my week on Saturday night. This place is open 24/7 and the clientele that night were SXSWers from all different walks of life. It felt nothing short of poetic to be soaking up the sins of our respective evenings alongside each other with a plate of buttery scrambled eggs. See you next year Austin. Two stories broke in the last 24 hours about Qualcomm and Korea's Fair Trade Commission. The first is that the Korean regulator was forced by their Supreme Court to lower the fine against Qualcomm in one of the two fines against them. The fine goes from US$242 to US$200 million. Reuters reports that The second fine stands at US$854 relating to "unfair business practices in patent licensing and modem chip sales." The second story breaking in S. Korea is more complicated yet far more interesting in that Qualcomm is working to supress information in the Korean case from being used in the U.S. case that begins next month. In addition, Qualcomm is trying to unseal information in S. Korean case that could be damning to Apple. A Korean publication reports today that after Qualcomm filed an administrative lawsuit in 2017 after objecting against Fair Trade Commissions corrective order sentencing, it filed 40 lawsuits regarding limited access to lawsuit and court records for reasons such as confidential business information. It is basically asking the court to prohibit other domestic and foreign companies from looking into Qualcomm-related information. Qualcomm is stating within its lawsuits that it wants to prohibit FTC and supplement participants (LG Electronics, Apple, Intel, Mediatek, and Huawei) from viewing relevant information as lawsuit and court records contain its confidential business information. Supplement participants are companies that were harmed from Qualcomms unfair acts and they have basically formed a type of an alliance with FTC. What's relevant here is that Qualcomm want's it both ways. While they want to look at sealed evidence submitted by other companies to the Korea's FTC, such as Apple and Intel, it wants to keep materials related to Qualcomm to be made confidential. Industries are interested on how this behavior will impact discussions between South Korean and U.S. Governments. USTR (United States Trade Representative) requested a joint council conforming to FTA (Free Trade Agreement) between South Korea and the U.S. while stating that South Korean Government did not give enough defense right to American companies when it was investigating them for suspicion of unfair trades. As USTR requested South Korean Government to introduce data access right and cross examination right just like Qualcomm, it seems that USTR will make relevant statements during a joint council. Although USTR did not mention any particular business when it requested a joint council, it is likely that it kept Qualcomm incident in mind when it was requesting a joint council. FTC announced that it would fully accept USTRs request once there is a joint council. "We will be able to understand USTRs requests in detail once there is a joint council." said a representative for FTC. It appears that Qualcomm has friends in high places and they will try to twist the arm of S. Korea's FTC to comply with Qualcomm's requests to seal information that could hurt them in the U.S. trial while revealing what Apple and Intel provided as evidence to Korea's FTC. Obviously there is damning information against Qualcomm in the S.Korean FTC case that Qualcomm doesn't want entered into the U.S. trial that begins next month. About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or negative behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus. Patna: Police in Patna, in a joint operation with the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on Thursday, seized a truck carrying over a ton of ganja with an estimated street value of Rs. one crore. The dramatic turn of events took place on National Highway 30 near Rajbhatta in Patna district. Officials said the police was tipped off about the large consignment of narcotics passing through Patna by a man who was arrested with 700 kilograms of ganja in Nalanda district on Wednesday. A special task force was formed to intercept the truck carrying the contraband. Shortly after noon, police stopped a truck with three men in it. When searched, authorities found 1.1 ton of ganja neatly packed in brick-sized packets carefully hidden inside the chassis of the truck. The truck was coming from Agartala in Tripura to Fatuha near Patna from where it was to be sent to different parts of India as well as Nepal, police said. The arrested men were identified as Pradeep Yadav and Biplab Dasgupta of Tripura and Ashish Rai of Assam. Officials are questioning the arrested men to identify the gang behind the elaborate drug operation. Patna: Setting aside the demise of his own political career at the age of 69 following his convictions in a series of corruption cases related to the multi-crore rupees fodder scam that is likely to keep him in prison for the rest of his life, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) President Lalu Prasad Yadav, on Thursday, declared the 'end of the political career' of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in the backdrop of a series of communal flare-ups in the state in the last few days. Yadav, who complained of chest pain and other physical ailments forcing the prison officials to shift him from his jail cell to a much-comfortable hospital room only later to be referred to a Delhi hospital, shortly after arriving at the nation's capital, fired salvo at the Chief Minister saying Nitish Kumar was complicit in the communal uprising in Bihar since he was an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party responsible for all communal flare-ups in the country. "Nitish Kumar is now finished. BJP has set the whole Bihar on fire," Yadav, forgetting his heart problem and high blood pressure for a few minutes, told the reporters at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi. As reported, communal clashes broke out in Nalanda, Jamui, Samastipur, and Aurangabad during the Ramanavami procession earlier this week. Opposition has blamed the BJP, and by extension the Janata Dal U, of spreading communal hatred to gin up Hindu sentiments in the run up of the next year's General Election. Meanwhile, JD-U leaders in Patna accused Yadav of feigning sickness to get out of the jail. "The RJD chief is a professional jail bird and knows how to work the system. He realizes he is never coming out of the jail so he hatched this sickness scheme to spend his time in a top medical center where he will have all the luxury and amenities that are not available in the jail cell," said a party spokesperson Great software makes great hardware truly shine, and it seems like Intel graphics chief Raja Koduri knows it. Shortly after Koduri assumed control of the Radeon Technologies Group at his last job at AMD, the company rolled out a long-overdue revamp of its Radeon Settings application. On Wednesday, at GDC 2019, Intel revealed an overhauled Graphics Command Center app ahead of the hotly anticipated 2020 launch of its Xe discrete graphics cards. The company didnt disclose any additional information about Xe graphics card hardware itself at its GDC event, the kickoff for its new The Odyssey community-building initiative. But Intel provided PCWorld with an early build of its modernized Graphics Command Center app, and it shows that the team is serious about laying the groundwork for a bigger graphics push. The Intel Graphics Command Center isnt all about the future, though. Over 1 billion users already have Intels HD integrated graphics in their computers, and those gamers can start taking advantage of the new app right away. The Early Access version we tried is expected to be available immediately in Windows 10s Microsoft storebut note that youll need a 6th-gen (2015) or newer Intel processor to use it. Meet the new Intel Graphics Command Center Rather than waxing poetic about every minute detail of the new app, well simply show you what it looks like. To start, lets take a moment to appreciate just how much of an upgrade this is. The current Intel Graphics Control Panel functions well enough, but it definitely feels dated: Intel Now feast your eyes on every inch of the overhauled Intel Graphics Command Center. These images were all taken by my colleague Mark Hachman, and you can click any picture to enlarge it: Mark Hachman/IDG Mark Hachman/IDG Mark Hachman/IDG Intels graphics app can optimize your games to best fit your hardwares capabilities. A nice touch: If you hover over the question-mark tooltip next to the graphics options listed in the Advanced Settings for a game, the app explains what that option actually means, using illustrated examples of the feature when its on and off. Nvidias rival GeForce Experience offers similar guidance, and its a great help for gamers who arent graphics geeks. Intel Unfortunately, only 30 games currently support the Intel apps optimization feature, though the company says that more will be added constantly. Intels gameplay site lists graphics optimizations for a vast swath of games that could probably be added to the app in fairly short order. Lets continue with the display and video portions of the app, the other sections most likely to interest gamers: Mark Hachman/IDG Mark Hachman/IDG Mark Hachman/IDG The Intel Graphics Command Center also includes sections devoted to your system configuration, support, and preferences for the app itself. Pro tip: You probably want to disable promotions. Mark Hachman/IDG Mark Hachman/IDG Mark Hachman/IDG Mark Hachman/IDG The future Those newfangled Xe GPUs arent even close to launching yet, and this is just the beginning of Intels odyssey with the Graphics Command Center. While it sure is pretty, the app cant yet match the robust functionality of established software by AMD and Nvidia, which offer extras like video capture tools, performance monitoring, and per-app overclocking. Those sorts of tools seem better suited for powerful discrete graphics, though, so they could be added closer to Xes release in 2020. And while offering auto-optimization options is a huge bonus for gamers playing on integrated graphics, supporting a mere 30 games wont cut it for long, especially in the face of GeForce Experiences deep library. Heres hoping those promised additions start flying fast, furiously, and soon. Intels pledged to keep improving the app. The future will bring community-created skins to the Graphics Command Center, joining the Nebula skin shown above. The company plans to host dedicated community support threads and a Reddit AMA on April 25 for feedback from early adopters. Expect new features and continued improvements over time, the final slide of Intels press deck declared. Is there still room for improvement? Sure. But you get only one chance to make a first impression. The modernized Graphics Command Center is starting Intels graphics odyssey off on the right foot. A bill proposed in the Florida House would force censorship of books in public schools that have content harmful to minors. HB 855, proposed by Florida state Representative Mike Hill (R), would prohibit a public school employee or volunteer from providing certain materials to minors and those that so provide those materials would be committing a felony of the third degree. While the legislation was proposed under the guise of keeping pornography out of the hands of children, it has ulterior motives aimed at censoring popular literature as well as LGBTQ-themed books. The Legislation HB 855 redefines materials that are harmful to minors as: any reproduction, imitation, characterization, description, exhibition, presentation, or representation, of whatever kind or form, depicting nudity, sexual conduct, or sexual excitement when it: (a) Predominantly appeals to a prurient, shameful, or morbid interest; (b) Is patently offensive with respect to what is suitable material or conduct for minors; and (c) Depicts an image or text that meets the definition of deviate sexual intercourse. Explicitly, they mention that the only sex or sexual-related materials that can be allowed in public schools are materials used in a formal, scheduled sex education course. The legislation additionally states: (3) A person, including a public school employee or volunteer, may not knowingly sell, rent, or loan to a minor: (a) Any picture, photograph, drawing, sculpture, motion picture film, videocassette, or similar visual representation or image of a person or portion of the human body which depicts nudity or sexual conduct, sexual excitement, sexual battery, bestiality, or sadomasochistic abuse and which is harmful to minors; or (b) Any book, pamphlet, magazine, printed matter however reproduced, or sound recording that contains any matter defined in s. 847.001, explicit and detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement, or sexual conduct (5) An adult may not knowingly distribute to a minor on 109 school property, or post on school property, any material 110 described in subsection (3). As used in this subsection, the term school property means the grounds or facility of any kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, junior high school, or secondary school, whether public or nonpublic. This subsection does not apply to the distribution or posting of school-approved instructional materials that by design serve as a major tool for assisting in the instruction of a sex education subject or course by school officers, instructional personnel, administrative personnel, school volunteers, educational support employees, or managers as those terms are defined in s. 1012.01. (6) Any person violating any provision of this section commits a felony of the third degree. The Florida Senate has a similar companion bill making its way to a vote as well. In other words, any books that contain any references to sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, or other sex-identity-topics outside of a pre-approved sexual education curriculum would be banned. And anyone helping students gain access to these materials even if its a teacher helping a gay or lesbian student access educational materials on LGBTQ-specific health issues would face a felony conviction. Censorship Commenting on the attempt to censor divisive books, Book Riot noted: This bill comes because of concerns from the Florida Citizens Alliance, which has a history of attempted censorship in Florida schools. What makes this particular bill more terrifying for educators and librarians in the state is that its not just parents whod be empowered to recall a book any citizen could step forward, deeming a book unacceptable, putting not only educators and librarians at risk, but the entire system of education itself. The Florida Citizens Alliance has been known to speak up against climate change, charging science textbooks used in the classroom promote it, and theyve had a history of challenging a variety of texts throughout various counties in the state that they believe to be hindering a Christian agenda (this group has called explicitly for Religious education in the classroom), and/or are infused with pornographic content. Three books Florida conservatives have repeatedly targeted as containing pornographic material. They would be banned by HB 855. They added, offering succinct context: To be clear: the definitions provided in this bill would ensure that books discussing sexual assault, books that educate healthy sexuality, and especially those which discuss non-heteronormative sex or sexuality would be deemed pornographic. Books on the chopping block if this bill passes include The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Frank McCourts Angelas Ashes, and hundreds of other novels and textbooks. In addition to those books, conservatives in Florida have also attempted to ban Neil Gaimans Neverwhere (he actually pointed it out in response to hearing about this legislation). Literally hundreds of works of relevant and classic literature would be banned by HB 855 in addition to vital access to queer literature and LGBTQ-specific (physical and mental) health materials. And that doesnt touch on non-Christian religious narratives that could also be affected such as books discussing Islam in a positive light. Or science books describing the real dangers of climate change. Theyve all already been targeted by previous banning attempts, and would now be on the chopping block once again. To voice your opinion on this legislation, you can find the contact information for Florida representatives here and senators here. Peacock Panache readers: Tim Peacock is the Managing Editor and founder of Peacock Panache and has worked as a civil rights advocate for over twenty years. During that time hes worn several hats including leading on campus LGBTQ advocacy in the University of Missouri campus system, interning with the Colorado Civil Rights Division, and volunteering at advocacy organizations. You can learn more about him at his personal website. Like this: Like Loading... Related We hope you enjoyed reading this article! If you would like to support our ongoing work, please consider buying us a cup of coffee. It's not much, but we don't do this for the money. We do, however, need caffeine to keep going some days!If you do donate, send us a message through our Contact Us page or via social media so we can thank you! Last call turned deadly early this morning as a customer shot and killed a bar hand at closing time, Pa. police say. UPDATE: Suspect in fatal last call shooting at Pa. bar IDd; manhunt on It happened around 2 a.m. Thursday inside the Delmar Lounge along West Chelten Avenue in Philadelphias Germantown neighborhood, according to NBC10, which reports: The man having a drink pulled out a gun and demanded the bartender and his assistant hand over the money in the register, Philadelphia police said. The gunman then shot the assistant, known as a barback, once in the chest, police said. The 58-year-old, whose name was not immediately released, died a short time later at the hospital. He had worked for several years as support for the bartenders at Delmar. Surveillance video captured the entire incident, including the shooter running east on Chelten Avenue. The suspect is described as being his 20s or 30s and stands around 5-feet, 8-inches to 5-feet, 10-inches tall with a thin to medium build. His most descriptive feature is a long goatee that is long-enough to braid, police said. (Story continues below) Philly police are searching for a man with a long goatee after they say he shot and killed a bar worker during last call. @PamelaOsborne has the story -->> https://t.co/nP5I1iHvyH NBC10 Philadelphia (@NBCPhiladelphia) March 21, 2019 The manhunt continues, and police say it could be aided by DNA evidence left behind by the suspect at the bar on glasses and straws. Meanwhile, the gunman got away with about $200 apparently the going price of a hard-working bar hands life. The call came in at 7:15 a.m. Wednesday for a report of a man shot in a western Pennsylvania cabin. State police responded to find the body of Maximillian W. Halterman, 23. He had been shot dead in a log cabin-style home across from the McCullough Campground in Oakland Township, Butler County. Since then, state police have announced they are searching for suspect Alec Miller, 19. He is wanted on a homicide warrant in the case, KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh reports. UPDATE: Suspect Alec Miller is now in police custody, the Butler Eagle reported Thursday: Alec Miller is reportedly in state police custody, according to authorities, who confirmed he was apprehended in Franklin, Venango County on Thursday. Click here for more information:https://t.co/sTcBt8oRxh pic.twitter.com/cXXd6L4vjT Butler Eagle (@ButlerEagle) March 21, 2019 Few other details were being released, but here is what we know: (Story continues below) NEW: State Police issue arrest warrant for 19 yr old Alec Miller wanted for fatal shooting today of a 23 yr old man in Oakland Twp., Butler County. pic.twitter.com/MBABb3A7b9 Ralph Iannotti (@IannottiRalph) March 20, 2019 The Butler Eagle reports Halterman appeared to have suffered a single gunshot to his upper right shoulder, authorities said. Investigators confirmed that Halterman died from an apparent gunshot wound and that the shooting is believed to have occurred overnight Tuesday. Halterman had reportedly been living in the cabin-type home. Meanwhile, the investigation continues and the manhunt for the tattooed Alec Miller continues. Some of the biggest names in beer are coming to Hershey. The annual Meeting of the Malts, sponsored by the Brewers of Pennsylvania, will take place 6-11 p.m. April 25 at The Hershey Lodge in Derry Township with a panel discussion, dinner, silent auction and festival. The event, which has been ranked by Draft Magazine as the No. 12 rated beer experience on the industry bucket list, was previously held in Allentown. Meeting of the Malts will once again provide a critically important platform to address many of the issues facing the future of craft beer, said Dan LaBert, executive director of the Brewers of Pennsylvania. He said craft beer remains strong in Pennsylvania and the event provides brewers and others an opportunity to learn from each other. This year, panelists include Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery, Wendy Yuengling of D. G. Yuengling & Son, John Trogner of Troegs Independent Brewing in Hershey and Shaun OSullivan of San Francisco-based 21st Amendment Brewery. David Steinman, senior editor of Craft Brew News at Beer Marketers Insights, will emcee the panel discussion, which will run from 6-7:30 p.m. Before the panel, a new event, Bar Stool to Bar Stool, will examine the past, present and future of Pennsylvanias three-tiered distribution system with Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company and Craig Purser of the National Beer Wholesalers Association. Benj Steinman, president of Beer Marketers Insights, will emcee the discussion. Also new will be a craft beer economic update and forecast by Bart Watson, chief economist of the Brewers Association. A four-course dinner will be held 7:30 9:30 p.m., with each course paired with a beer from select panelists breweries. A beer silent auction will be held during the dinner with collectible items from breweries. The night will wind down with a BrewPub Festival from 9:30-11 p.m. featuring Pennsylvania brewpubs, 4-ounce pours and light appetizers. Tickets are $95 and available for purchase on the Brewers of PA website. For those who want to extend their beer experience, Harrisburg Beer Week will run April 26-May 5. One man in Delaware County really wanted a beer. Two of them, actually. The two Bud Ice cans together would have cost $2.50, but the damage he caused to the beer distributor to get those brews cost in excess of $15,000, NBC 10 of Philadelphia is reporting. Surveillance video from a beer distributor in Newtown Square shows a Ford SUV backing up and crashing through the front doors of Newtown Square Beverage on the 100 block of South Newton Street Road around 4 a.m. Wednesday. Through the crashed and partially-open door, the driver can be seen reaching in, opening a cooler near the door, and pulling out two beers before taking off. A man can be seen reaching through the crashed and partially-open doors of a Newtown Square beer distributor, taking two cans of beer from the cooler. "He's dangerous anyway you look at it," customer Mike Huhn told NBC10. "If he's willing to do something like that to back up into a store and rob it, well what's next? Running somebody over to get away from it? Running a policeman over? God only knows." Anyone who recognizes the suspect caught on video should call the police, 610-356-0602. Lifeway Christian Resources will close all 170 of its stores by years end, and instead focus on developing its digital business. The Christian book store has three locations in Pennsylvania, including one in Lower PAxton Township in Dauphin County, one in Lancaster and one in Chambersburg. All stores are expected to close by the end of the year, the company said. The company will continue to accept LifeWay gift cards and in-store credit through the end of its closing sales, but will not issue any new gift cards, according to information posted on its website. While we had hoped to keep some stores open, current market projections show this is no longer a viable option, said company President and CEO Brad Waggoner in a news release. In one month, Waggoner said, LifeWay interacts with five times as many people through its digital environment as it does through its stores. Our world and our customers are increasingly online, Waggoner said, Investing in a dynamic digital strategy allows LifeWay to better serve the Church in its mission and only enhances our ability to provide biblical solutions for life. In operation since 1891, LifeWay offers Bibles, books, Scripture reference tools, Bible studies, childrens products, Christian music and movies, gifts and church supplies. it has introduced a number of digital services, including online Bible studies, worship planning, live streaming of events and online training opportunities. Local llama, Conswala, wont be clucking alongside Cadburys bunny this year. Instead, Henri, a North Carolina bulldog, will star in this years iteration of the iconic Clucking Bunny commercial, which advertises Cadburys equally iconic cream-filled chocolate eggs. The news of Henris victory in the first Bunny Tryouts" came in a Wednesday announcement from The Hershey Company, which sells Cadbury products in the United States. That same announcement signified Conswala, the 14-year-old llamas, defeat. Conswala, who lives at Lucky Us Farm in York Springs, was among the 20 semi-finalists in the Bunny Tryouts contest, which was set up to select the newest animal to appear in Cadburys 2019 commercial. Those semi-finalists were selected from a larger pool of about 4,000 animals vying for the role. In both a photo and video of Conswala, the llama can be seen wearing rainbow-colored bunny ears. The 2019 Clucking Bunny commercial featuring Henri is to debut sometime next month. Henris owners also will receive $5,000, and Cadbury will donate $10,000 to the ASPCA. WILLIAMSPORT An Oklahoma man has been found guilty of illegal possession of a firearm in a case related to his alleged threat to kill President Trump and his family. Jeffrey R. Boyd, 56, was not charged with making the threats but with illegally possessing a loaded .45-caliber pistol and two loaded magazines. He was found guilty Thursday in a four-day U.S. Middle District Court trial in which prospective jurors were asked their opinion of gun control. Boyd is not permitted to possess firearms because of three emergency protection-from-abuse orders issued a year ago in Oklahoma. He claimed he was unaware he could not have guns because a sheriffs deputy did not tell him and he missed the ban when he read the court orders. State police arrested Boyd last July 31 in Berwick but withdrew the charges in favor of the federal prosecution. The gun and ammunition was found in the car in which Boyd was discovered sleeping. He had showed up the day before unannounced at the home of a Berwick woman with whom he had communicated via Twitter three times in 2017. She told him she could not see him then but agreed to have lunch with him in a restaurant the following day. During the luncheon he told her he drove 20 hours non-stop from Tulsa because he thought she may be in danger and that voices in his head advised him to kill Trump, his daughter and son-in-law. The woman, identified as a Trump supporter, recorded the conversation on her cell phone and notified state police about their conversation. The Secret Service was contacted because the president was scheduled for a political rally in the Wilkes-Barre area on Aug. 2. Boyd, who has been detained since his arrest and will remain so until sentenced, denied knowing about the rally. When PennLive writes about pedestrian safety in Harrisburg, some commenters immediately call for more enforcement against jaywalkers. But if you review the states vehicle code, said Harrisburg City Engineer Wayne Martin, there isnt a single reference to the word jaywalking. Instead, the code allows pedestrians in the street pretty much anywhere, Martin said, but they must obey illuminated pedestrian crossing signals, yield to vehicles if theyre not at an intersection and yield to emergency vehicles. Those are the only scenarios where police could write a ticket to a pedestrian for a violation, Martin said, and even then the ticket by law carries a $5 fine. A lot of people think things are violations by pedestrians that arent, Martin said. A crosswalk is anywhere a sidewalk intersects a street. They dont have to be marked. And if a person steps out into the intersection, that driver has to yield to them. There are a lot of misunderstandings regarding pedestrians and right-of-way, Martin said at a news conference Wednesday to unveil the citys Vison Zero action plan. The plan is designed to change the culture and decision-making for transportation projects in the city to prioritize safety, particularly for the most vulnerable road users: walkers, bicyclists and motorcyclists. The program also seeks to reduce traffic congestion. The city is one of three across the Commonwealth to adopt a Vision Zero plan. According to Harrisburgs plan, the city will zero out fatalities and serious injuries from crashes by 2030 through better engineering, education, collaboration and enforcement. To succeed, city officials will have to better educate pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers and get cooperation from residents and employers. This needs to be an all-hands on deck type of situation, Martin said. Were not just going to be cracking down on violators. Thats not how were going to get to 100 percent compliance. Harrisburg launched the program nearly one year ago, after four pedestrians and a bicyclist died within 17 months along a stretch of State Street less than a mile long. The bicyclist worked for Mayor Eric Papenfuse at a warehouse for his Midtown Scholar bookstore, the mayor noted Wednesday at the Vision Zero news conference. Papenfuse said he and other co-workers of Donald Welsh, 27, had previously pitched in money to buy the bicycle that Welsh was riding when he was killed. Welsh was riding home after working a shift in the warehouse when he was struck on the State Street Bridge at night on May 25, 2017. In all, vehicles killed 19 pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists in Harrisburg in the past five years. An additional 105 were injured. The general approach of the Vision Zero plan is that fatalities and serious injuries from crashes are not inevitable and are not the fault of individuals. Instead, better engineering, education and communication can prevent deaths and serious injuries and it doesnt have to cost a lot, Papenfuse said. The city adopted the program as part of its effort to reverse decades of auto-centric planning that considered the needs of vehicles alone or above other road users, Papenfuse said. The city is working to create a grid of connected city streets where walkers and pedestrians can get where they need to go safely even if its across the city. The city currently is in the final negotiations with PennDOT over drastic changes to State Street that would remove two lanes of traffic and add a protected bike lane. That area connects to Seventh Street, where another protected bicycle cycle track is planned with a bike lane extending uphill on Reily. That area connects to North Second Street, which will be transformed into two lanes of two-way traffic instead of the current three lanes of one-way traffic. A bike lane could be included, but that project is still in the design phase. Nearby Front Street already has a bike lane as part of recent improvements. Among the action plans revealed in the Vision Zero report was a plan to pursue automated enforcement, possibly through red light cameras, which would take photos of offenders and mail tickets to vehicle owners. The cameras work to stop red-light running, Martin said. The benefits are proven, he said. But it would take a change in state law for a third-class city such as Harrisburg to be able to employ the devices, or speed cameras. City officials also pledged to update the timing of all intersections in the city by November 2020 to allow more times for pedestrians to cross before traffic gets a green light. As it stands, several intersections across the city, including the series on Forster Street, are set with the expectation that pedestrians can walk 4-feet per second. The law states that the timing should be 3.5 seconds, because older residents or young children may not be able to walk that fast. Adjusting the timing for pedestrians likely will slow down traffic after the changes are made, Martin said. Some of the intersections havent been adjusted for three decades. As part of the Vision Zero effort, city officials also would like to host a special annual event, perhaps closing down Second Street for a weekend for an event that celebrates walkers and bikers. Additional enforcement by police is a key component for Vision Zero, but Papenfuse admitted Wednesday that persistent low-staffing in the police department would make it a challenge for officers to prioritize proactive enforcement for pedestrians and at top crash locations since they often run from emergency call to call. I think thats fair and true, he said of problems filling police vacancies. Ultimately, long term, weve got to solve this. Enforcement is just one component of Vision Zero but were not making any progress filling vacancies. Papenfuse said he didnt believe the city could make notable progress in filling police positions without a new union contract that addresses salary and raise deficiencies to be competitive with other area police agencies. You can read the entire Vision Zero action plan on the citys website. The canard of the government-union educratic establishment long has been that more state dollars spent on public education yield better academic results. But an exhaustive analysis of Pennsylvania school funding data, by district and through the 2016-17 school year, shows no positive correlation between the level of combined state and local district revenue and academic achievement, says Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy. Indeed, for the 49 districts receiving above $9,500 per student in state revenue (the state funds average for all districts was $6,578) and having total state and local revenues above the state average of $16,372, higher combined state and local revenue is associated with lower state academic ranking, says Haulk (in Policy Brief Vol. 19, No. 12). Additionally, further analysis of this group of districts also finds that higher state funding per student is not positively related to better school achievement as indicated by district rankings that are driven by state exam scores. State funding for the commonwealths 499 districts ranges from a low of $3,018 to a high of $17,741. Of the total, 287 districts received above average funding with 138 of those receiving more than $9,500. Meanwhile, 212 districts received $6,500 or less with 46 receiving under $4,000 and 12 less than $3,500. The lowest state-funded district received 17 percent as much funding as the highest and less than half the state average. As expected, based on preliminary examination, in-depth analysis of combined data for the high-spending districts and districts spending $15,000 or less (per student) with under $7,000 in state revenue show a marked negative relationship between the level of (state) revenue and achievement, says Haulk, a Ph.D. economist and senior advisor to the Pittsburgh think tank. That is to say that higher revenue is associated with worse achievement. Note that Peters Township was No. 1 in the state academic ranking but had revenue of only $14,831 per student with just $3,608 from the state. Meanwhile, revenue for the Duquesne School District was $20,000 per student with $17,741 from the state. Yet it ranked 589th or 14th worst academically among the 603 districts and charter schools that were ranked. Wilkinsburg had state and local revenue of $25,553 per student ($13,134 of that from the state) but ranked 542nd. Then theres the Pittsburgh public school district. It had revenue of+ $22,603 per student in state and local revenues ($10,475 of that from the state) yet ranked 471st academically. How can the state send so much money to some districts and get so little in return in academic achievement? Haulk asks. Is there no mechanism for accountability? As tragic as that is, theres a bizarre side to this funding matter the hold-harmless provision that for decades has kept state funding growing in districts with declining enrollment. That allows per-student funding to rise if such schools maintain local support at the same or a bit higher level, thus short-changing districts that have not had enrollment declines or have seen enrollments rise. (W)hat a perverse incentive, Haulk notes: Just lose enrollment and get more money per student from the state to pay employees more and start programs and hire all sorts of professionals. And talk about a vicious cycle. The additional money has done little to improve dreadful education outcomes that likely have helped to fuel those declining enrollments. In simplest terms, hold-harmless funding must end, Haulk says. It has made matters worse, education is not improving and it is unconsciously unfair to other districts that could actually put the money to better use. Or if they cannot put it to better use, cut the education budget, Haulk adds. The taxpayers could use a break. Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org) A Dallas Cowboys fan allegedly jumped by Philadelphia Eagles fans during a game at Lincoln Financial Field in 2014 has been awarded $700,000 in a lawsuit. Patrick Pearson, dressed in Cowboys gear, was waiting in line for the bathroom during an Eagles-Cowboys game in December 2014 when he said he was taunted by Eagles fans, then attacked, according to The Legal Intelligencer. Pearson suffered a fractured ankle, which required multiple surgeries to repair. Pearson then filed suit against the Eagles, the owner of Lincoln Financial Field and Apex, the security company handling the 2014 Eagles-Cowboys game, claiming they failed to guarantee his safety. A jury agreed with Pearson, awarding him $700,000. Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Teresa Sarmina subsequently asked Pennsylvanias Superior Court to uphold the ruling, saying that Apex should have been prepared for potential altercations between fans in the bathroom. It is foreseeable that, at a sporting event, when fans are drinking and engaging in enthusiastic banter and cheering for their teams, tensions may run high, Sarmina said. The Cowboys won that game 38-27. Two weeks after this incident, a Dallas Cowboys fan was jumped and killed by a Washington Redskins fan during a bar fight. The Redskins fan pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. All the news you need to start your day. Sign up for Good Morning, Pennsylvania A new lender is offering loans to young Alaska fishermen who want to buy into the halibut and sablefish fisheries, and repayment is based on their catches. The Local Fish Fund opened its doors this month to provide alternative loan structures to young fishermen as a way to help turn the tide on the trend called the graying of the fleet. The average age of an Alaska fisherman today is 50 and fewer recruits are choosing the fishing life. A big part of whats turning them away is the cost to buy into fisheries that are limited through permits, or in the case of halibut, catch shar... Well-oiled machine: Eta Nu's Dress for Chill program continues to provide warmth, smiles Thanks to the Boyne Eta Nu Charities' "Dress for Chill" program, a total of 187 Boyne City students will be dressed warmly this winter season. You dont get everything you expect in August Wilsons How I Learned What I Learned, through April 14 at the Arden Theatre Company. But take it on its own terms, and you actually get more. The Arden is moving through the entire Century Cycle, Wilsons 10-play, decade-by-decade panorama of African American life in the 20th century. With Gem of the Ocean, theyve done four of the 10. Running concurrently at the Arden are (through March 31), Gem of the Ocean, the second-to-last written (2003) though earliest-situated (1900-10) of the century plays; and How I Learned, as different as could be, a one-man monologue (co-conceived with Todd Kreidler) in which Wilson goes back to his formative years in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. My advice? See both, and see Gem first. After Wilsons characters talk to you in Gem, let him talk to you himself. Kesserack Khemnu inhabits Wilson: He looks like him, walks and talks like him, and, much like a Wilson character, strikes up an easy bonhomie with the audience, as he tells where and how he picked up the skills. What you will not get is an artistic bio. Wilson zig-zags in time and focus, but, again like his characters, he layers the tales into a rich picture. We meet Chawley Williams, poet and junkie; Cy Morocco, an African man lost in America; Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, letting Wilson know, for the first time in life, that he is always welcome; Snookie, an early amour whos nothing but trouble; Wilsons mother, Daisy Wilson (who teaches him that SOMETHING IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER THAN NOTHING, in other words, never settle); and his first real love, Catherine Moran (in a sweet, funny story about his abortive role in a Catholic school Christmas pageant). Lessons? Plenty, some SHUT MOUTH posted in big letters in Matt Webbs atmospheric lighting design. Other lessons are shown rather than told. Wilson, hungry and self-taught, ransacks the Carnegie free library, reading all he can get his hands on. Another lesson comes from Cy, who publicizes a big concert of himself on sax, but when he gets on stage, fails spectacularly. Dont force your soul through a horn you dont know how to play, Wilson realizes, and he works harder to learn language and writing. You wont get anything about his Army experience, or his three marriages (except for a poetic outburst about his third wife and life love, Constanza Romero). Not a word about the plays. But we dont need it, with Wilson played so well by Kesserack, in turn directed so well by Malika Oyetimein. We behold a murder in a dive bar. We join a crowd in the street, stunned to silence by the power of art, to hear John Coltrane playing inside a club. We see racism, how we, both black and white, are victims of our history: A woman tells the young black man mowing her lawn to get out, a bank teller hesitates to honor his perfectly good check, and a white man tells him, I dont see color. All is told in the American voice, Wilsons. See Gem of the Ocean, see How I Learned What I Learned and then welcome to the rest of August Wilsons century. THEATER REVIEW How I Learned What I Learned Through April 14 at the Bob and Selma Horan Studio Theatre, Hamilton Family Arts Center, Arden Theatre Company, 62 N. Second St. Tickets: $18-$52. Information: 215-922-1122, ardentheatre.org. The most powerful moment of Miss Saigon, one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history, came halfway through the first act during a duet between Kim (played by Emily Bautista), the orphan girl forced to work at a brothel, and Chris (Anthony Festa), the smitten American sergeant. Do you want to be told how my village was burned? Bautista sang to Festa, her face twisting with rage and pain. Want to hear how my family was blasted away? This moment was electrifying because it spoke to the trauma suffered by the Vietnamese as collateral damage in Americas war. It was also perhaps the only powerful moment in the entire musical. Based on Giacomo Puccinis 1904 opera, Madama Butterfly, the love story at the center of Miss Saigon, at the Academy of Music through March 31, is a tragic one. Kim and Chris fall in love as Saigon is captured by the Viet Cong. The lovers are separated as Chris returns to America without Kim and marries. Kim, on the other hand, gives birth to their son, holding desperately onto the hope that Chris will one day return for her. There were a lot of things to enjoy about the Kimmel Centers staging of the musical. The set by Totie Driver and Matt Kinley, chock-full of moving parts (including a helicopter), did a stellar job at transporting the audience. The lighting (Bruno Poet) was surprising and effective with its harsh spotlights during tense moments and washes of color capturing the chaotic streets of Saigon and Bangkok. The acting, convincing. The singing, lovely with few mistakes. But the problematic nature of the story itself arguably the most important part of a musical made watching the show a deeply unsettling experience. From the first flashy musical number, which features scantily clad Vietnamese bar girls draped over the laps of American GIs, to gibberish lyrics that are supposed to sound like Vietnamese during Kim and Chriss marriage ceremony, the stereotypes perpetuated throughout the entire musical were difficult to ignore. As Kim expired during the last scene, Chris wife, Ellen (Stacie Bono), scooped Kims son into her arms in preparation to take him to America, suggesting that Asian women are replaceable as wives, as mothers, and as human beings. Its hard to swallow but perhaps not surprising, in light of the origins and original audience for this musical. The question is whether there are ways to steer clear of these stereotypes and redeem the production. To be sure, Broadways relaunch of Miss Saigon in 2017 was an opportunity to stage the musical in a more respectful and nuanced way. Given our current political climate, the restaging could have made the show more inclusive, drawing on peoples desperation to immigrate to America from a politically unstable country. Or it could have added more nuance and strength to Kims character, instead of turning her into essentially a prop in Chriss redemption arc in Act 2. But because none of that was done, these opportunities were squandered. Theater Miss Saigon Through March 31 at the Academy of Music, 300 South Broad Street. Tickets: $20-$129. Information: 215-790-5800, kimmelcenter.org. The BNY Mellon Center is reflected in an array of shiny panels hanging from the ceiling of the Comcast Technology Center's 60th floor, which will be part of the Four Seasons hotel. Read more Whether you have a masters degree or never attended college, whether you have worked in hospitality or not, Philadelphias booming hotel industry may be looking for you. The industry opened three new hotels and added 4,900 jobs to the 272,000 hospitality staff in the Philadelphia area last year, according to the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau. The city is welcoming six new hotels this year, including the Four Seasons Hotel, which is planning a two-day job fair to hire more than 500 people. And hundreds of apartments throughout the city center are being converted into quasi-hotel rooms for guests seeking homier overnight stays. Developers were very smart when they rushed to invest and build hotels after 2015 when Philadelphia was awarded the first world heritage city in the nation, noted Jamie Cooperstein, adjunct instructor at Drexel Center for Food and Hospitality Management. The city saw more international tourists after then. Philadelphia became a must stop and its position in American history got recognized, Cooperstein said. Before that, tourists may have just visited New York and D.C. The city didnt have enough hotel rooms in the downtown area before, and when Philly was holding large conventions, visitors had to stay in South Jersey and near the airport, Cooperstein added. The World Heritage City designation had a humongous effect in making Philadelphia getting recognition in international tourism. One hotel planning a big recruitment effort is Four Seasons Philadelphia. Scheduled to open this summer on the top 12 floors of the Comcast Technology Center, Four Seasons will host a two-day job fair at the Pennsylvania Convention Center on March 25 and 26. This is a really great opportunity for someone to build their career" in hospitality, said Ben Shank, general manager at Four Seasons Philadelphia. They could build magnificent upward mobility by joining us this summer. Seventy-five percent of promotions at Four Seasons are internal, Shank said. People could join the team in any capacity and get promoted to elevated positions in Philly or other Four Seasons around the world. Citing himself as an example, Shank took advantage of the hotels upward mobility, starting as a part-time bus boy at Philadelphias old Four Seasons two decades ago. He moved to seven other locations, including New York, Hawaii and Arizona, and opened the Four Seasons Orlando Resort before returning to Philadelphia. The old site was built in 1983 and closed in 2014 for relocation construction. The new Four Seasons is the last component of the new Comcast Technology Center, with 219 rooms rising to the towers top from floors 48 to 60. It features a street-level lobby, restaurants by award-winning chefs Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Greg Vernick, and a spa. The 500-plus recruitment campaign seeks employees at all levels: from front desks receptionist, door attendants and housekeepers to spa therapists, fitness trainers and floral designers. The hotel is also trying to fill a few management positions. The targeted talent pool includes not only people with past experiences or hospitality degrees but also those with just high school degrees. For us, its more about how they are going to deliver an experience and who they are as a person, Shank said. We like it when people have technical skills, but we would much rather hire someone who has the right attitude and kindness, positive energy and true hospitality. We can train them on the technical skills. Shank said most full-time employees will work in eight-hour shifts. The company offers full timers health insurance benefits a matching 401(k) program, and paid vacations, Shank said. The company also offers complimentary meals and programs that allow every hotel employee to stay in other Four Seasons around the world for free. Philadelphia hotels pay well compared with other service industries, said Ed Grose, executive director at the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association. Most housekeepers make between $14 to $20 an hour if you dont consider tips on top. According to Grose, most banquet servers make more, about $50,000 a year. High-caliber tourism and hospitality jobs one of the largest employment sectors in the city are boosting Philadelphias economy, and we anticipate continued growth in the years to come, said Pennsylvania Convention Center president and CEO John McNichol in a statement. Applicants interested in Four Seasons jobs need to apply online by searching Philadelphia at jobs.fourseasons.com and attending the job fair. If selected, candidates go through several rounds of interviews after the fair. The five other hotels opening in Philadephia this year are Lokal Hotel Fishtown, Pod Philly, Hyatt Place Hotel Airport, Mainstay Suites, and Ascend Hotel Collection. There are also several existing hotels -- including Sofitel Philadelphia, Loews Philadelphia Hotel, and AKA Rittenhouse -- completing multimillion-dollar renovations. Update July 2, 2019: Judge Sontchi denied Wolfingtons bankruptcy discharge petition. March 21, 2019: Christopher M. Wolfington was born into business. His great-grandfather sold the first American convertible cars. His Uncle Eustace invented auto leasing as we know it. Extended family includes founders and bosses of bus-manufacturing, mining-supply and energy companies spread from their native Philadelphia around the country. Wolfingtons own career as a financial-technologies CEO hit a pothole in 2014. Thats when courts told his company to pay $10 million to a couple of Ojibwe tribal casino operators to settle claims that Wolfingtons formerly publicly traded payments-processing company, Money Centers of America Inc., hadnt handed cash over as expected. Wolfington countered that the tribes owed him money, too. But when Money Centers filed for bankruptcy, Wolfington lost his job, along with his home and marriage, he says. He filed for bankruptcy, too. Money Centers liquidated in 2017. By then, Wolfington was already running another company, King of Prussia-based FinPay, which helps doctors and insurers screen patients solvency and schedule payments for medical bills. FinPay has signed customers including cousin Brian ONeills Recovery Centers of America and Delaware County-based Pentec Health, hired 24 staff, and raised $2.7 million from doctors and other investors. State-funded Ben Franklin Technology Partners gave FinPay start-up guidance. Gabie Kur, a spokeswoman representing the company, says revenues handled by the firm could reach $19 million this year almost what Wolfingtons last company grossed in its best year. But Wolfington is still a contracted CEO, not an employee, at least until his bankruptcy is resolved. A trustee for the Ojibwe tribes and other Money Center creditors agreed last month to settle if Wolfington paid just $20,000, which he did, ending that case. If he can also get the U.S. Trustees office in Philadelphia to accept that his financial statements are accurate, discharging him from personal bankruptcy claims, he can start anew. But acting U.S. Trustee Andrew Vara wouldnt sign off on the personal claims. The trustees lawyer, David L. Buchbinder, filed court papers, accusing Wolfington of hiding assets including his interest in FinPay. And thats how Wolfington ended up in a Wilmington courtroom on March 12, giving the pitch of his life. Buchbinder argued that Wolfington didnt deserve bankruptcy protection. He noted in his trial brief that Wolfington hadnt put Money Centers into bankruptcy voluntarily. The federal judge in Minnesota found that he was using the company as his personal piggy bank," and challenged his credibility as a witness. Buchbinder alleged that Wolfington had fraudulently transferred" funds, and had underreported his income from Money Center (by $15,000). Plus, hed failed to tell the court about FinPay and other businesses that Wolfington owned. Under the bankruptcy law that gives the court plenty of reasons to deny a bankruptcy discharge, Buchbinder argued in court filings. A discharge would release Wolfington from legal liability to repay certain debts. Why does the government keep pursuing Wolfington, inasmuch as the tribes rep agreed to settle? Trustees dont talk about ongoing cases. But lawyers say its all about protecting the integrity of the bankruptcy system. "The U.S. Trustee is the bankruptcy police, said Paul Winterhalter, bankruptcy lawyer in Philadelphia at the firm Offit Kurman. Their lawyers will relentlessly pursue claims against plaintiffs that they dont think have come clean about their true financial condition. A denial of discharge means any debtor he has would forever be able to pursue his claim. If he went on to make a lot of money and start his life anew, those creditors would be able to pursue those claims. Sometimes trustees go further. When the trustee finds your claims unconvincing, you run the risk of perjury, said Ted Gavin, managing director of Wilmington-based bankruptcy consultancy Gavin/Solmonese. U.S. bankruptcy trustees referred more than 2,100 bankruptcy plaintiffs to criminal prosecutors last year, charging tax fraud, making false statements under oath, concealment of assets, and bankruptcy fraud all things Buchbinder had alleged, and Wolfington denied. Yet follow-up criminal prosecutions are comparatively rare: Fewer than one-half of 1 percent of referred cases in fiscal 2017 were prosecuted within that year, though 40 percent more were still under consideration, according to the trustees annual report. Wolfington represented himself at the trial before Christopher Sontchi, the judge who heads Wilmingtons bankruptcy court. He said lawyers at Ciardi & Ciardi in Philadelphia told him it would cost $50,000 to $100,000 to defend the case. Buchbinder noted that the companys bankruptcy involved hundreds of creditor claims. Wolfingtons said his personal bankruptcy, from which he seeks discharge, was a much smaller case with less at stake. If debtors do certain things, they are not entitled to a discharge, he reminded Sontchi. Wolfington, he said, did those certain things. He set up a new holding company to store assets, six days after the Minnesota court ordered his prior company to pay millions. He transferred assets, Buchbinder said, between entities that werent named in Wolfingtons bankruptcy filing. He intended to deceive creditors and the court. Wolfington told his own story, how I wanted to go into the digital-gambling business, but with the risk of litigation [from Money Centers], I couldnt make it happen. So, he built FinPay. He maintained he had declared his assets. If he didnt identify some of the companies, its because they were shells with no current value, not because he intended to deceive. And he doesnt own FinPay his 15 or so investors do" making Buchbinders description inaccurate and misleading. Pushed to recall details, Wolfington said, when someone is in bankruptcy, theres a lot going on in your life." And, the U.S. Trustee doesnt like me. And, finally, I acted as any reasonable business person would in confronting the situation at the time. He begged for a fresh start. Sontchi scolded Wolfington when he tried to add information that he hadnt provided pre-trial. Wolfington blamed a prior lawyer. Its not his job to make sure youre honest, said Sontchi. Its your job to respond to [pre-trial questions] under oath. Transparency is my best friend, Wolfington insisted. Sontchi questioned whether Wolfington practiced transparency in bringing a witness who wasnt deposed first. But he allowed Wolfingtons witnesses and his documents and most of his questions. In his closing statements, Buchbinder cited what he said were Wolfingtons insufficient arguments: 'Im the only person in the room who knows the truth. Everyone else is wrong. Im a victim. I was having a horrible time. ... Mistakes [were] inadvertent.' Undisclosed assets 'were worthless anyway.' And if any of those are wrong, 'its my lawyers fault.' But Wolfington, Buchbinder said, is not the victim. Hes a perpetrator. ... Discharge should be denied. Wolfington said he had come clean and was hiding nothing. To say theres some crazy nefarious thing going on? Its called real life! When youre trying to do a startup in business!" Judge Sontchi, who said he expected to file an opinion soon, congratulated Wolfington on his presentation, despite not being a lawyer. I always wanted to be a lawyer, Wolfington said. (Story updated 4/8 to clarify revenue figure and other points) Michael Steinhardt, a megadonor who gave the $2.5 million naming donation to the University of Pennsylvanias Hillel building, has been accused by multiple women of a decades-long pattern of sexual harassment, allegedly using his position of authority and wealth to solicit sex from younger women in a professional setting. According to a joint investigation by the New York Times and ProPublica, over the course of more than 20 years, Steinhardt repeatedly requested sex or sexual favors from female nonprofit workers who were relying on or seeking his financial support, and frequently made comments to women about their bodies and fertility. Steinhardt, a New York billionaire and hedge fund manager, is a major figure in Jewish philanthropy and founder of the Birthright Israel program. He has given millions to charitable causes, and buildings including Penns $12 million Hillel center across the globe bear his name. In 2001, the Wharton alum contributed the $2.5 million naming donation to the university building, known as Steinhardt Hall. A Penn spokesperson referred comment on the allegations against Steinhardt to Penn Hillel, which did not return phone or email requests for comment. But Campus Rabbi and Penn Hillel Executive Director Michael Uram said in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian that the organization had not received any complaints or concerns from Penn Hillel professionals, students, or alumni. "When these allegations first surfaced last fall, we asked our staff if they had any troubling interactions with him, and none said they did, Uram told the school paper. Currently, Penn Hillel is not receiving funds from the Steinhardt Foundation or family and there are no plans currently for future solicitation. The New York Times-ProPublica report did not indicate that Steinhardts alleged harassment was directed toward any women working for Penn. Spearheaded by the Philadelphia-based law firm Cozen OConnor, Hillel International began an investigation into Steinhardts behavior last year, according to the report. Amid the probe, the Jewish college outreach organization chose not to pursue a $50,000 donation pledge from the billionaire, and removed his name from its international board of governors. According to interviews in the report, Steinhardts harassing comments which allegedly ranged from requesting a threesome with a subordinate and her colleague to suggesting during a meeting that a nonprofit officer have babies with him were often brushed aside. Through a spokesperson, Steinhardt denied many of the specific claims made by the seven women in the report, but said in a statement to the Times and ProPublica that he regretted the boorish, disrespectful, and just plain dumb comments he said were made in jest. Steinhardt has not been charged with any crimes. Penn last year renamed Wynn Commons on its campus after casino mogul Steve Wynn, a former Penn trustee who donated millions to the Ivy League school, was accused of sexual misconduct. Esme Creed-Miles and Joel Kinnaman in a scene from "Hanna," which premieres its first season on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, March 29. Read more Director Sarah Adina Smith sounded gleeful last month as she spoke about working with the star of Amazon Prime Videos new series Hanna to shape a different kind of action hero, one who would be both vulnerable and going for the jugular as a young woman trained to survive a world that might just want to kill her. She and Esme Creed-Miles, who plays Hanna, had "talked a lot about not wanting to do sort of an action hero movie where you take a girl and then you teach her to fight like a man, and then she kills a lot of people, and then we go, Yay! Shes a strong female lead, Smith, a co-executive producer who directed the first two episodes, told reporters during the Television Critics Associations winter meetings. We wanted to specifically look at, like, first of all, how can girls be strong in girls bodies, rather than trying to take the girls body and make it fight like a mans, she said. Which means, like, being ruthless! Or as Creed-Miles put it, kicking guys in the [groin] and biting their ears off. Created by David Farr, who cowrote the screenplay for the 2011 film on which the series is based and who also adapted John le Carre's The Night Manager for television, Hannas eight-episode first season premieres on the subscription streaming service March 29. Its a fast-paced, sometimes bloody binge that features a strong (and, yes, vulnerable) performance by Creed-Miles as well as the reunion of The Killing stars Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman. Female directors were more in the spotlight than usual at the critics meetings, with Lifetime, for instance, touting the fact that 78 percent of the directors for its projects in the first half of this year are women, and Patricia Arquette making a pitch for The Mustang, a new film by French director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, who directed three episodes of Arquettes new true-crime series The Act, which premiered on Hulu on March 20. I got to see her film before we did this, and that was as much a big reason that I wanted to work on this as the story itself," Arquette said. But should it matter to viewers that Clermonte-Tonnere and two of Hannas four directors are women, other than as a sign of progress in a medium where, according to a study by San Diego State Universitys Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, as recently as the 2017-18 season, only 17 percent of directors were female? Clermonte-Tonnere, who began her career as an actress, thinks so. Women, she said, dont necessarily tell stories the same way as men, and especially when you have female characters, its such another angle of describing a sensibility. Smith isnt so sure. I think its about time women got these jobs. Its really hard to say if theres a difference or not because were just starting to get these jobs, said Smith, whose directing credits include episodes of FXs Legion, TBSs Wrecked, and HBOs Room 104, as well as the films Busters Mal Heart (which starred Rami Malek) and The Midnight Swim. We just went for the director who we felt would best tell the story in a way that was new for us, Farr said. Smith just had, as you can probably tell, this energy and this drive to tell it in her way. The key thing is to make sure your eyes are really open and to make sure that those people are coming through." The Night Manager, he noted, was directed by Susanne Bier. I would get asked the question a lot, Do you consciously choose women? as if somehow Ive chosen a very small section of the population in some mad way. A different perspective? Consciously choosing a woman made sense to George Clooney. Clooney, who produced and costarred in the six-part adaptation of Joseph Hellers Catch-22 that premieres May 17 on Hulu, initially planned to split directing duties with producing partner Grant Heslov, he told a group of reporters last month after a news conference. But "we looked around and we thought, well, this takes place in 1944 and its all men. We should do everything we can to involve women, he said. "So we called up Ellen [Kuras], and Ellen said shed love to come on board and direct. So I gave her two episodes of ours and she did an amazing job. We felt like we wanted to get more of a womans perspective in everything. Our editors were women. We wanted there to be a feeling that it isnt just from some, you know, 57-year-old guys perspective, Clooney said. When I asked what kind of difference having a woman in that role made, Clooney said Kuras, who directed the second and third episodes, brought a different kind of logic, adding: "Ellens just a good director. It has nothing to do with gender. But it also feels important to make sure were all participating in this, that were all part of the solution and not part of the issue. I really think its probably just that Im a different director. When I think about this story, for me, its a very universal story, Kuras said of Catch-22, a satire set during World War II. I was influenced by the fact that Im a cinematographer, and also very much about listening to the words and getting the meaning in the subtext rather than the text. And so I think I was bringing that perspective as a director much more than bringing kind of a female emotional [element]. I think its good to have balance because there were a lot of guys on set. But Im used to that." Monika Mitchell, one of the directors on Lifetimes panel, said, "The first time I stepped on a set was in 1999, and on that set, I was the writer, the director, and the producer. And I had never seen a woman director. There were so few women directors in January of 2000 that I remember sitting at the screening of my movie and there was a studio executive behind me. And when my name came up on the screen, he went, Monikas a funny name for a guy. Like some other directors I spoke to, Mitchell prefers the job to the label. "Personally, where I hope to go next is to be seen as an individual, she said. Not pigeonholed Janice Cooke, another of Lifetimes directors, has been directing episodic TV for nearly 20 years, with credits that range from Dawsons Creek and One Tree Hill to MacGyver and Grimm. "I put a lot of work into it. Ive been very fortunate that Im not pigeonholed, Cooke told me, describing how, before directing an episode of Grimm, shed spent a month catching up on previous seasons. Heres the great thing about directing every day theres a magical moment," she said. "Either the performance is grand, or either the tear drops one teardrop down that face, or the light is great, or the tempo is fabulous, or that car crashed well, and you killed someone well. Theres always a moment. Every day, theres a piece of magic. Emma Frost and Matthew Graham, showrunners for The Spanish Princess, set out to hire only women to direct the latest installment of Starzs Philippa Gregory adaptations, which is set to premiere on May 5, although one of the four had to drop out at the last minute because of a family tragedy, Frost said, and was replaced by a man. (Director Ava DuVernay has also focused on hiring women to direct her OWN series Queen Sugar.) Is there such a thing as a female gaze? Frost said. I think there probably is. Ive written enough shows with brilliant male directors, but male directors dont understand the female experience, particularly when it comes to sex. I wrote a film for the BBC once where the entire thing was from the female point of view. And when it came to the sex scene, the director fetishized the female body because he just could not get out of the head-set of being a man in that moment," Frost said. Yet for Caitriona Balfe, star of Starzs time-traveling drama Outlander, which is often praised for the woman-friendly love scenes between Balfes character, Claire Fraser, and her 18th-century husband, Jamie (Sam Heughan), maintaining the female gaze doesnt require the eyes behind the camera to belong to a woman. I think theres this idea that only women can tell womens stories; only men can tell mens stories. Thats complete rubbish, Balfe said. "Weve had some male directors who have been far more sensitive and far more in tune with their emotional sensitivity than some female directors. I think that its about respect and its about sensitivity. And I think that all people have the capacity for that. Hanna. Friday, March 29, Amazon. Jocelyn and Alex Garfinkel with their son at the new catering facility in Bridesburg. Read more Balboa Caterings Alex and Jocelyn Garfinkel, who run a popular series of dinners called Supper Club, are moving their operation from Fishtown into a renovated space at the former American Silk factory at 4325 Orchard St. in Frankford. The new space will be open for private events, cooking classes, and Supper Club dinners beginning in April. The building also features artist Steve Webers studio Method Craft Design, LLC on the first floor, as well as a studio for artists and filmmakers upstairs. Weber, along with woodworker Nathan Chase of Nathan from Maine, helped to design the space. In 2015, Garfinkel did the catering for the production of the movie Creed, serving lunch and breakfast for up to 100 people every day for nearly four months. Before the Creed contract, Garfinkel was running the business out of his parents house, and was able to move to Fishtown and rebrand the company thanks to the catering films catering job. It was the Creed production that led him to name his company Balboa Catering. A previous version of this article incorrectly located the neighborhood as Bridesburg. Parents who aren't anti-vaxxers but spread out their children's vaccines at a more gradual pace than doctors recommend. Pediatricians warn that could leave small children vulnerable to disease. Read more When Elyse Imamuras son was an infant, she and her husband, Robert, chose to spread out his vaccinations at a more gradual pace than the official schedule recommended. I was thinking, OK, were going to do this, said Imamura, 39, of Torrance, Calif. But were going to do it slower so your body gets acclimated and doesnt face six different things all of a sudden. Seven years later, Imamura says her son, Amaru, is a very healthy, active boy who loves to play sports. But delaying vaccines is risky. Many pediatricians will tell you a more gradual approach to vaccinations is better than no vaccinations at all, but they offer some hard advice to parents who are considering it. Every day you are eligible to get a vaccine that you dont get one, the chance of an invasive disease remains, said Charles Golden, executive medical director of the Primary Care Network at Childrens Hospital of Orange County (Calif.). Recent outbreaks of measles, mumps, and whooping cough have once again reignited a war of words over vaccinations. The squabble is often painted as two-sided: in one camp, the medical establishment, backed by science, strongly promoting the vaccination of children against 14 childhood diseases by age 2. In the other, a small but vocal minority the so-called anti-vaxxers shunning the shots, believing that the risks of vaccines outweigh the dangers of the diseases. The notion that there are two opposing sides obscures a large middle ground occupied by up to one-quarter of parents, who believe in vaccinating their children but, like the Imamuras, choose to do so more gradually. They worry about the health impact of so many shots in so short a period, and in some cases they forgo certain vaccines entirely. Alternative vaccine schedules have been around for years, promoted by a few doctors and touted by celebrities such as actress Jenny McCarthy. President Trump endorsed the idea during a 2015 Republican presidential debate. The concept gained a large following more than a decade ago, when Robert W. Sears, an Orange County, Calif., pediatrician, published The Vaccine Book, in which he included two alternative schedules. Both delay vaccines, and one of them also allows parents to skip shots for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), chickenpox, hepatitis A, and polio. Sears book became the vaccination bible for thousands of parents, who visited their pediatricians with it in tow. But his ideas have been widely rejected by the medical establishment and he was punished by the Medical Board of California last year after it accused him of improperly exempting a 2-year-old from all future vaccinations. He declined to be interviewed for this article. Imamura, who describes herself as definitely not an anti-vaxxer, says she and her husband followed Sears to a T. They limited the number of vaccines for their son to no more than two per appointment, compared with up to six in the official schedule. And they skipped the shot for chickenpox. She concedes, however: If there had been outbreaks like now, it would have affected my thinking about delaying vaccines. The ideas promoted by Sears and others have contributed to parents worries that front-loading shots could overwhelm their babies immune systems or expose them to toxic levels of chemicals such as mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde. But scientific evidence does not support that. Infectious-disease doctors and public-health officials say everyday life presents far greater challenges to childrens immune systems. Touching another human being [or] crawling around the house, they are exposed to so many things all the time on a daily basis, so these vaccines dont add much to that, says Pia Pannaraj, a pediatric infectious-diseases specialist at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. The same is true of some of the metals and chemicals contained in vaccines, which vaccination skeptics blame for autism despite numerous studies finding no link the most recent published earlier this month. In the first six months of life, babies get far more aluminum from breast milk and infant formula than from vaccines, public health experts say. When you look at babies that have received aluminum-containing vaccines, you cant even tell the level has gone up, said Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and director of the hospitals Vaccine Education Center. The same is true of formaldehyde and mercury, he added. (Offit co-invented Mercks RotaTeq vaccine for rotavirus, and CHOP sold the royalty rights to it for $182 million in 2008. CHOP declined to comment on what Offits share was.) Parents who are concerned about mercury, aluminum, or other vaccine ingredients should avoid information shared on social media, which can be misleading. Instead, check out the Vaccine Education Center on CHOPs website at www.chop.edu by clicking on the Departments tab. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also provides a detailed breakdown of the ingredients in every vaccine at http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines. If your child has a condition that you fear might be incompatible with vaccinations, discuss it with your pediatrician. The CDC gives very specific guidelines on who should not receive vaccines, including kids who have immune system deficiencies or are getting chemotherapy or taking certain medications. If your children are not among them, vaccinate them. That will help prevent outbreaks, protecting those who, for medical reasons, have not received the shots. When parents resist, Pannaraj says, she emphasizes that the potential harm from infections is far more severe than the risks of the vaccines. She notes, for example, that the risk of getting encephalitis from the measles is about 1,000 times greater than from the vaccine. Still, side effects do occur. Most are mild, but severe cases though rare are not unheard of. To learn about the potential side effects of vaccines, look on the CDC website or discuss them with your pediatrician. Emily Lawrence Mendoza, 35, of Orange, Calif., says that after her second child, Elsie, got her first measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot at 12 months of age, she spiked a fever and developed a full body rash that looked like a mild version of the disease. It took three visits to urgent care before a doctor acknowledged that Elsie, now almost 5, could have had a mild reaction to the vaccine. After that, Mendoza decided to adopt a more gradual vaccination schedule for her third child. Yet Mendoza says Elsies adverse reaction made her realize the importance of vaccinations: What if she had been exposed to a full-blown case of the measles? This KHN story was first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation. The crowds that turned out for mumps booster shots at Temple Friday exceeded those that got the free MMR vaccine on Wednesday, shown here. Both days, though, drew far more people than officials expected. Read more The number of mumps cases at Temple University has grown by the dozens at Temple University since an outbreak began earlier this semester, sparking concern and conversation. In the past weeks, officials have taken steps and issued warnings in efforts to prevent further spread of the contagious disease. While mumps is far less common than in the days before the MMR vaccine, outbreaks crop up every few years, especially in communal living situations like college dorms. Health officials believe the spread is largely confined to the school and dont expect the disease caused by a virus to make its way into the wider community. Heres the latest on what we know: Not familiar with mumps? Heres what you need to know about the disease. What is mumps and how do you get it? Mumps is contagious disease caused by a virus thats spread through close contact like sneezing, sharing cups, or kissing, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. People can begin to spread mumps a few days before they begin to show symptoms, according to the CDC. College students are at a higher risk than most people because they live in places like dorms, are more likely to share cups and utensils, and have again, close, personal contact with other people, Garrow said in a statement. The vast majority of people in the city dont have those risk factors. So outside of those extreme close quarters, theres less reason to worry. For instance, SEPTAs Broad Street Line runs through campus, but the outbreak hasnt caused alarm for riders, said spokesperson Heather Redfern. We have a rigorous, daily cleaning routine for all of our stations and vehicles throughout the system, she said in a statement. What are the symptoms? Mumps signature symptoms include puffy cheeks, a tender jaw as well as a fever, headache, achy muscles, fatigue, and loss of appetite. Symptoms could take more than two weeks to show up after an initial infection, while recovery typically takes about two weeks. Some peoples symptoms may be so mild that may just think they have a cold. Mumps can cause complications, including inflammation of the ovaries or pancreas, as well as encephalitis and meningitis, according to the CDC. Authorities say theres little risk of complication in generally healthy people. Are outbreaks common? Cases have nosedived 99 percent since the MMR vaccine was first introduced in the late 1960s. But theres been a resurgence in recent years, mostly on college campuses, and that could be because the vaccines potency may fade after a decade, the Inquirer reported earlier this month. Unlike with measles outbreaks, where most of the people are unvaccinated, in these cases, more than half have been vaccinated, Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and a professor of pediatrics at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Inquirer. Why is mumps back? Though mumps is no longer the rite of childhood it was before the vaccine was introduced in 1967, it never entirely went away. According to the CDC, at least 30 states have reported outbreaks since the beginning of the year. Since 2006, there have been several increases in cases and outbreaks about every five years. READ MORE: Mumps outbreak at Temple adds to growing number of cases on college campus What should you do if you think you have mumps? Theres no cure, but those with the disease can manage their symptoms by taking medications like Tylenol or Motrin. Self-isolation for five days is recommended, according to Temple. The school also advises those infected to cover their mouth when coughing or sneezing, wash hands often, and avoid sharing drinks. Our recommendations continue to be that anyone associated with that community who is experiencing fever, headache, pain along the jaw, neck, pelvis or testicle, weakness or fatigue sees their regular doctor or Student Health, Garrow said. They should get plenty of rest, drink water, and take over the counter anti-inflammatory and pain medicines as needed. They should stay away from other people for five days to avoid spreading it further. Ensemble Galilei played Irish and Celtic tunes for seven years at Walter Reed National Military Medical Hospital in Bethesda, Md. Read more Carolyn Surrick, poet and viola da gamba player in the Ensemble Galilei, has never been to war. But along with her fellow musicians, who played Irish and Celtic tunes for seven years at Walter Reed National Military Medical Hospital in Bethesda, Md., she has witnessed the toll of war, not only on the badly wounded, but also on families and communities. Based on that experience, Ensemble Galilei has joined with veteran NPR war correspondents Neal Conan and Anne Garrels to present Between War and Here, a program that combines music, poetry and memoir to explore honor, courage, loss and hope. A limited tour of churches on the East Coast will bring them to St. Pauls Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill on March 31. Walter Reed isnt a concert hall, said Surrick, 59. We played in the corner of the hospital lobby while people were having lunch. Patients or family members or staff would stop or sit a little away from us or hide at the top of the stairs or the balcony, sort of looking. Despite the unusual venue, she found the experience magical. Music transformed the space from a hospital to a beautiful hotel with music in the corner, she said. It was not only how people could hear the music in the back of their mind when the front of their mind was struggling, but music also somehow transformed the space. It also relieved anxiety. During that time, a study conducted by a Walter Reed psychiatrist had the musicians play two hours in the morning, then asked listeners to complete response forms on how they felt before and after a performance. He found that people came to the hospital full of anxiety, but after the music they felt, Oh, its going to be OK, said Surrick, of Annapolis, Md. From the onset, their playing led to revealing conversations. On the first day there, I met a wounded soldier and asked him what had happened to him. And he told me exactly what happened, literally and very graphically, Surrick said. Although Surrick is not a music therapist, she believes the calming music contributed to that transparency. In circumstances where youre not sitting across from someone and theyre asking, Tell me how you feel, you can really create an opening for people to actually tell you how they feel, she said. Youre not one of their practitioners and theres no judgment anywhere and we became just one of the guys. To honor and share the stories of those she met, Surrick published a book of poems titled Between War and Here in 2011. Some of those poems are included in the show. Each story is like a postcard, letting people on the outside see what I was able to see on the inside, she said. The poems are less about battle and more about process. One of the cool things about soldiers is that theyre very task oriented, said Surrick. In this case, their task is healing how they have to go to their appointments and rehab and get prosthetics. Its about how theyre moving forward in that process. And how it affects their families. She also observed how much the music helped soldiers express emotions. Many wounded soldiers are locked down emotionally. Music can break that boundary. Theyre as surprised as any of us when all of a sudden, theyre super emotional about something because they havent been able to be emotional about anything except being mad, she said. Anecdotally, a few soldiers shared with Surrick who gives them CDs and copies of her poetry book how the tunes played by the ensemble helped them to cope with their medical conditions. We had one guy with terrible headaches. When we saw him, he was wearing blue glasses that people who have headaches and brain injuries wear, she said. He was in awful shape and could barely see. He took the CDs home with him. The next time we saw him, he looked incredibly better, Surrick said. "He told us that he listened to our CDs before he rose in the morning. I dont even take medicine anymore, he said. The music calms me down. Others reported how listening to the CDs helped them sleep. Were the only group that takes pride in putting people to sleep, Surrick joked. Our music really makes you tired. Although Surrick admits that the topics covered in Between War and Here can be intense, she said the music can cut the anxiety. There will be some story that is really hard to hear, then it will blossom into a fully realized piece of music that somehow gives your heart a place to rest so you dont feel traumatized by these things at all. The music makes you feel like, Oh, I can walk on. Its another day. For Surrick, who notes how few people outside the military have been affected by ongoing wars, the performance appears particularly relevant. After the program, people want to talk, she said. Veterans who might be initially worried about it, leave affirmed. People who dont have military families feel stuff they may have never felt before. It crosses over the many political divides we have in this country people who are Fox News people and NPR people they're all there together. Playing in a concert hall, the sound may be better, but if I had to choose where to play, Id choose this. Between War and Here will be performed on March 31 at 3 p.m. at St. Pauls Episcopal Church at 22 E. Chestnut Hill Ave. For tickets and more information, visit www.EGmusic.com. All performances benefit the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Despite an opioid overdose epidemic that has killed thousands and stalled the lives of many more, Philadelphia still has plenty of treatment slots, both inpatient and outpatient, that are going unused. So on Tuesday, city officials announced an ad campaign to encourage more people to get started on what is considered the gold standard for battling an opioid addiction, medication-assisted treatment. The $200,000 campaign in English and Spanish, which will include TV spots, billboards, and ads on public transportation, encourages people in opioid addiction to get started on buprenorphine, one of the three most commonly prescribed medicines to achieve lasting recovery. Health officials said getting more people into treatment is crucial in a city where 1,217 people died of overdoses in 2017 and an estimated 1,100 died in 2018. While the city once was reputed to have particularly pure heroin, now contamination with the synthetic opioid fentanyl is behind the vast majority of the deaths. Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said that despite an encouraging decline in deaths, Philadelphias opioid epidemic is still at crisis levels. The new campaign is being aimed at the estimated 50,000 to 100,000 heroin users in Philadelphia. Although our public image of people who are using heroin is people who are homeless on the street in Kensington, thats not your typical people who are using heroin, he said. Most of the people who are injecting drugs are living at home, many are employed -- theyre in many ways a hidden population. A hidden population we need to reach. The ads follow a similar campaign last year that encouraged Philadelphians to carry naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug. The city is handing out some 40,000 doses of the drug a year now, and while Farley didnt have hard numbers on the results of that campaign, he believed naloxone use is increasing and saving lives. The new campaign features four Philadelphians who used buprenorphine, or bupe, as the ads call it, to treat their own addiction. Without bupe, I wouldnt be at the point Im at now. Ive been struggling with this disease over 35 years or more, and now I am grateful to wake up, said Ronald McAdams, 61, one of the people featured in the campaign. He started taking buprenorphine a year ago, and has since reconnected with family members and returned to school. Wiping away tears, he told the group gathered for Tuesdays news conference that he will finally get to hand his mother his high school diploma in June. Pete Kinzie, standing near a poster with his own face and the slogan Im living proof that bupe works," said hed tried abstinence-based treatment more than two dozen times before starting buprenorphine, which saved my life. Kinzie credits the medication with helping him get off the streets and reconnect with his family. Yet he was reluctant to admit using bupe. Medication-assisted treatment has incorrectly been stigmatized as trading one addiction for another, but years of research show that it gives people with addiction a far better shot at recovery than counseling alone. Health officials blame that stigma for the citys 3,000 empty MAT slots, which combine treatment drugs with therapy. Between the third quarter of 2015 and the third quarter of 2018, the number of Philadelphians getting treatment for opioid use disorder paid for by Medicaid increased sixfold. But about a quarter of the citys MAT slots are still empty, said David T. Jones, the commissioner of the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services. He called the new campaign an immediate and local call to action." If you are ready to participate in treatment, he said, we have a slot for you. The announcement of the new ad campaign came a day after Jennifer Smith, the secretary for the state Department of Drug and Alcohol, told a state Senate committee that opioid deaths around the state seemed to be plateauing. But, she said, cocaine and methamphetamine use, for which there are no federally approved medication-assisted treatments, are on the rise. Cocaine and methamphetamine deaths have also risen in Philadelphia over the last several years, though not as rapidly as opioid deaths; Jones said the city was focusing on prevention efforts surrounding those and other drugs. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner announced plans Wednesday to keep more juveniles out of the court system and keep many who are charged out of custody. Read more Over his first year in office, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner rolled out a series of internal policies described as an effort to end mass incarceration": seeking shorter sentences, diverting low-level offenses from the justice system, and charging crimes at a lower level. Now, hes looking to the next step. One of our big priorities this year," he said, "is to try to address mass supervision which, of course, would be both probation and parole. Philadelphia counted 42,000 people on county supervision at the end of 2017, or one in 22 adults. Statewide, Pennsylvanians are under correctional control at the second-highest rate in the nation, behind Georgia, and has the highest rate of parolees. I think people instinctively believed too much supervision is not enough. But it turns out too much supervision is too much. ... It does tremendous harm, and it costs a fortune, Krasner said in an interview outlining policies to be announced Thursday. Nationally, about 40 percent of people on probation are reincarcerated, making community supervision a major driver of incarceration. About 40 percent of Philadelphias jail population is being held on a detainer for a violation of probation or parole. His plan? To put his offices weight behind a push to drastically curtail terms of supervision, which can stretch on for years or even decades, long after prison and jail sentences have been concluded. Under the new policy, on top of any sentence of incarceration for a felony, assistant district attorneys will seek community supervision terms averaging 18 months, with a ceiling of three years. For misdemeanors, theyll seek probation or parole terms around six months, not to exceed one year of combined community supervision. And, going forward, Krasner said, Parole should not be longer than the period of incarceration. Under the new policy, someone facing a misdemeanor drug charge, who in the past might have a faced a sentence of three to 23 months in jail, plus a year on probation, would instead face just three to six months in jail, plus at most nine months probation. A person convicted of a felony who in the past may have received two to four years in prison plus two years probation would now receive that prison time plus six months or at most one year of probation. (The policies are presumptive, but supervisors will be able to make exceptions as needed. Theyll also have to work within state law, which requires that a maximum prison sentence be at least double the minimum.) Krasner said the shift is influenced by reforms taking place around the country that have rendered Pennsylvania an outlier, as well as by research thats found most recidivism and most benefits of probation occur within a few years after release from prison. Under the states unusual laws, probation can last far longer than in other states as long as the maximum legal prison term. A consensus statement by criminologists, probation officials, prosecutors and others convened by Harvards Kennedy School in 2017 recommended capping supervision terms at two years and creating provisions for early termination. What happens is, theres a period of time when the supervision for some people is useful and is a good thing, Krasner said. But after that, it just becomes a bunch of tripwires that very few of us could ever keep dancing over. Vincent Schiraldi, co-director of Columbia Universitys Justice Lab and former commissioner of New York Citys Department of Probation, would go even further. Theres good evidence that most of the impact of probation supervision comes in the first year," he said. "Thats when most crimes occur. But theres evidence that the impact of supervision wanes after a year. That means every day after a year, youre getting diminishing returns, and youre getting it on a system thats generally overburdened. In 2017 alone, more than 6,000 people in Philadelphia were sentenced to probation terms of four years or longer, according to an Inquirer analysis of court data. More than 600 of those are on probation for at least eight years. Schiraldi believes Philadelphia is the first city where the district attorney is leading probation reform efforts, though a similar policy is being developed in Dallas. There are limits on the District Attorneys Offices power to curb long supervision terms; Krasner expects this policy to have the greatest effect among cases that are resolved by agreement, which are the vast majority of the cases in Philadelphias justice system. Judges have the authority to approve or reject any negotiated agreements, and to accept or ignore the district attorneys recommendations. The court administration is interested in advancing the issue, according to Gabriel Roberts, a spokesperson for the First Judicial District. The court has been an active and willing partner in our citys mission to reduce both the number of individuals who are incarcerate and under court supervision," he said. "Were eager to continue this work, in conjunction with our justice partners, in order to advance the significant progress weve already made. But Krasners changes around community supervision have run up against judicial resistance in the past. The office in February of 2018 said it would not seek punishment of probationers for marijuana use, yet people on probation who test positive for marijuana continue to risk arrest. And, while Krasner announced a year ago he would seek only short punitive terms for violations no more than six to 12 months in prison for violations that are not new crimes, and no more than two years for violations involving new convictions some judges have been more receptive to those shifts than others. Some violators continue to face jail or prison terms of months or years for probation violations ranging from drug use to nonreporting to new criminal convictions. Even so, Krasner is seeking to push those changes further under the newest iteration of his policy. We want our ADAs to make recommendations at all violation hearings and not simply defer to the court. For technical violations, we are not recommending more than 30 to 60 days in custody and for most instances we are not recommending custody. For direct violations that is, new criminal convictions hes urging a rethinking of the philosophy of piling on and questioning whether an additional sentence is required. Schiraldi said that fewer people on probation will lead to more effective supervision. Current caseloads, which in Philadelphia average 145 probationers to one probation officer, are too high, he said. He said he spoke recently to Pennsylvanias probation officers association about similar reforms proposed in the state legislature. They did not run screaming from the room, he said. They know theyre not getting more resources, but they keep getting more bodies. In some respects, that washes out your ability to do the job. Krasner said he expects his changes to take time to be adopted. We have seen over and over that when we do things the right way, there has been some resistance, he said. But he pointed to collaborative efforts underway with the Defender Association to engage with the courts to create a more systematic approach to terminating probation early for those who no longer require supervision. Its our hope that the public will be safer and supervision by probation and parole will be more effective," Krasner said. "Whats required for that is very seriously downsizing the rolls of probationers and parolees, so it can be focused and it can be surgical as opposed to the current scattershot approach. Staff writer Dylan Purcell contributed to this article. President Donald Trump and visiting Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro shake hands as they conclude a news conference on the Rose Garden of the White House, Tuesday, March 19, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta) Read more The mass murderer of 51 worshipers in New Zealand mosques last week issued a manifesto in which he asked himself this question: "Were/are you a supporter of Donald Trump? His answer: As a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose? Sure. As a policy maker and leader? Dear god no. In other words, there was no linear connection between Trump and the New Zealand massacre, nor can he be directly blamed for the carnage. Yet Trump has become an important symbol for white nationalists and bigots in America, and for autocrats worldwide. The New Zealand tragedy is only the latest illustration. The United States, which inspired would-be democrats abroad for decades, is now led by a president who inspires anti-democratic movements. Look no further than his response to the New Zealand tragedy for the latest illustration of this dangerous trend. When asked if he viewed white nationalism as a rising global threat, Trump replied: I dont really. I think its a small group of people.... The president studiously ignores statistics from respected U.S. groups that track extremism. According to the New York-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL), there was a 182 percent increase in white supremacist propaganda incidents in the last year, with 1,187 cases reported, compared with 421 in 2017. At least 91 white supremacist rallies were held in 2018, up from 76 the previous year. The ADL also says that in the U.S. in 2018, every single extremist killing from Pittsburgh to Parkland had a link to right-wing extremism. There were 50 such murders. Add to that, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a diligent tracker of far-right extremists, says the U.S. had more hate groups last year than at any time in the last two decades, with a 30 percent increase with Trumps campaign and presidency. Get the trend? Yet rather than denounce far-right bigotry after the New Zealand slaughter, Trump tweeted a storm of support for Judge Jeanine Pirro, who was briefly suspended by Fox News for anti-Muslim slurs. He retweeted kooky far-right Trumpsters who promote the crazy QAnon conspiracy theory detailing a secret plot by an alleged deep state against him. Just before New Zealand, he told far-right Breitbart News that he had the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump, to play it tough against his opponents if need be, and "then it would be very bad, very bad. His fact-free tweets about stolen elections hint at future incitement to violence should he lose in 2020. A further yellow light to violent extremists. Of course, we have become inured to this behavior from a president who famously insisted some neo-Nazis at the torch-lit parade in Charlottesville, Va., were fine people. No need to reprise his support of the birther lies about President Barack Obama, or his racist comments about immigrants. But experts on extremism warn against downplaying the impact of the presidents words in egging on extremists. It modifies what is considered permissible, says Harvards Steven Levitsky, co-author of How Democracies Die. Trump is defining deviancy down, and things thought unimaginable are suddenly imaginable. A congressman body-slams a reporter, and this is praised by the U.S. president. That shapes opinion. Warns the ADLs deputy national director, Kenneth Jacobson: For a long time, the view was that [right-wing extremists] were a few extreme kooks. Its not clear their numbers are growing substantially, but there is the growing sense that this is their moment and they may be able to act things out. Rather than stem the tides of far-right extremism, Trump drives them higher like a bright new moon. The president has also become a lodestar for anti-democratic leaders and movements in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Weve gotten used to his fulsome praise for Russias Vladimir Putin, Chinas Xi Jinping, and North Koreas Kim Jong Un, accompanied by consistent nastiness to democratic allies. Trump is clearly far more comfortable schmoozing with a clone like Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an open admirer of his countrys past military dictators, than with democrats like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The damage done by Trumps autocrat envy to Americas image and influence cannot be overestimated. We prided ourselves in the 50s and 60s as a model for democracy, says Levitsky. If there are ugly folks in the White House, that can have the opposite effect. The anti-democratic example Trump sets worldwide is glaring. Example: his constant denigration of responsible media as fake news and the real enemy of the people. That term has been adopted by autocrats to persecute press critics, from Poland to the Philippines to Moscow (where many journalists have been murdered). Just this week, Trump said he was very proud to hear Bolsonaro use the term fake news. Such language has consequences. It inspires strongmen who jail or murder journalists. Think Jamal Khashoggi. So when the New Zealand killer cites the U.S. president as a symbol for white supremacists, pay attention. This is how low the presidency has sunk under Trump. Savannah Lindquist, who said she was sexually assaulted when she attended Temple University, talks about the assault and her support for gun rights at her home in Norfolk, Va. Read more Savannah Lindquist desperately tried to remember what shed learned in the womens self-defense class. She jerked her wrists, fighting to break her attackers grasp. She couldnt. Hed come over for a movie and a beer, and now he was pushing himself on her as she screamed at him to leave. They struggled across her North Philadelphia apartment, which shed moved into that fall for her senior year. She got close enough to the counter to grab her key ring, the one with the bright red whistle with Temple University emblazoned on it in white. She blew the whistle. No one came. Its really happening, Lindquist thought. You need to save yourself. He forced her onto her bed. She wished she could find a way to get to the knives in the kitchen, but it was too late. And as the man shed thought was a friend raped her, Lindquist thought of the handgun her grandfather had bought for her 10th birthday. The handgun sitting in her house in Virginia, nearly 300 miles away, instead of on her hip or at her bedside. The handgun Lindquist believes could have saved her. That night in 2016 became the dynamite that blasted away Lindquists life path, derailing her dreams of being her familys first college graduate. In an instant, her views on gun rights morphed from theoretical to rooted in traumatic personal experience: If carrying firearms on campus were legal, she believes, her KelTec gun would have been in her apartment and she would not have been raped. Now, Lindquist has a rising profile in gun-rights activism interviewed on NRA TV, invited to speak, writing opinion pieces. Last month, the 24-year-old testified at the first hearing in Congress on gun violence in years. She sat next to a student from Parkland, Fla., who saw classmates shot to death last February. As mass shootings like Parkland, Las Vegas, and Orlando have spurred urgent calls for gun control and alter the national conversation about gun laws, the voices in the debate often fall into predictable, polarized camps. But Lindquist doesnt fit into a political box. Some expect her to be a right-wing nut job because of her views on guns, she says, but she isnt a National Rifle Association member, doesnt believe everyone needs a gun, and criticizes advocates who portray firearms as a panacea. She advocates for the right to carry guns on campus and opposes proposals like universal background checks, but she also says the country needs to address sexual assault as an epidemic. Lindquist has found herself at the intersection of the debate on gun laws and the #Metoo movements dialogue about sexual assault. She has encountered liberals who support sexual-assault survivors but not gun-rights advocates; conservatives who downplay sexual violence but use it to promote gun ownership. Both sides have supported and dismissed her. In response, Lindquist, a libertarian, advocates for the gun-rights movement and pro-liberty politics to become more welcoming to women. She makes her call for gun rights as a woman, as a feminist and works for a libertarian group trying to bridge that gap between personal freedom and women, to show them why it matters uniquely to the female experience. Most of all, she wants women to have a choice in defending themselves in the best way for them. For her, because shes trained and comfortable, thats with a firearm. Guns arent a miracle cure, Lindquist said this month as she sat on the teal-and-pink plaid couch in her grandmothers living room in Norfolk, Va. But when it came to that moment. I couldnt fight him off no matter how hard I tried, but my gun serves as an equalizer. It doesnt negate his power, but it brings mine up to his level and I have a fighting chance. A feminist perspective About one in five American women owns a gun, according to a 2017 Pew Research Center study, compared to about two in five men. Of U.S. gun owners, women make up about one-third; 71 percent say their gun is for protection. The idea that guns are an equalizer is one long promoted by the NRA, part of a larger narrative that gun ownership empowers women. It casts gun-rights advocates as feminists, publishing articles like How the Second Amendment became a womens movement, posting Instagram memes showing women holding guns with slogans such as [like] if you agree a restraining order is just a piece of paper, and launching the NRA Women TV channel. Feminist activists and gun-control supporters criticize those tactics as manipulative, pointing to statistics showing that when guns are in their homes, women are more likely to be killed by one than saved. (The same study showed that if a victim has access to a gun but lives separately from her partner, it could slightly lower her risk of being killed.) Lindquists attack isnt reflected in any study. She never filed charges against her rapist or publicly named him. She has, however, detailed the assault in multiple interviews, including an hours-long talk with The Inquirer, and described it under oath before Congress. (The Inquirer also spoke with three people she privately told about the rape in the months after it occurred.) I do want people to know theyre not alone, Lindquist said, whether thats being sexually assaulted while in college, or straddling that really weird line where youre conservative but youre also a survivor. Growing up with guns Poppop was the one who taught her how to shoot and how to be responsible with a gun. After begging her grandfather to take her to the gun range, Lindquist got her wish when she turned 10. With her parents divorced, Lindquist lived with her father in Norfolk, and her grandparents helped raise her. She and Poppop would go to Bobs Gun Shop and shoot at the upstairs range Lindquist still visits. Afterward, theyd often eat at Doumars, a nearby diner that claims to have invented the waffle cone. It just became a thing, recalled Lindquist, who has Poppop tattooed on her arm in his own handwriting. It was like our time. Growing up in the aging military town, Lindquist couldnt wait to get out. The straight-A student wanted to make her family proud at college. Lindquist liked Temple University for its working-class roots as a night school. When she arrived in August 2013, it truly was her dream school. A neuroscience and religion double major, she also became heavily involved in campus activities. As a junior, she won Temples Diamond Award, the highest recognition from Student Affairs for leadership, service, and academic achievement. I just felt like I belonged there, Lindquist said. She proudly wore shirts with slogans like Self Made, Philly Made, Temple Made. Her grandparents bought her a 2017 class ring; she knew which diploma frame she wanted from the campus bookstore. But her gun stayed home. Public universities in Pennsylvania make their own rules about campus carry. Some allow firearms in certain open spaces on campus; Temple prohibits them everywhere. While we understand that there are, unfortunately, cases where a gun may have helped a victim ... theres nothing that indicates that allowing campus carry has actually decreased crime on campus. Julie Gavran of the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus Lindquist imagines her gun wouldve been easy to reach on her hip and couldve quickly scared off her attacker. She says the government and public universities shouldnt restrict gun rights or interfere with peoples personal freedoms. Im for campus carry because I believe it wouldve saved me, she said. Temple University declined to comment about campus carry or Lindquists case. Supporters of such bans say they can prevent suicide and accidents. While we understand that there are, unfortunately, cases where a gun may have helped a victim, we look at the other factors as well, said Julie Gavran of the Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus. Theres nothing that indicates that allowing campus carry has actually decreased crime on campus. Lindquist moved off-campus for her junior year, but didnt bring her gun. Though she legally could have had one in her apartment, she spent nearly all her time on campus and wouldve been prohibited from taking it anywhere she frequently went. She didnt want to leave it at home every day in a neighborhood where break-ins werent unusual. She never thought an assault would happen to her. Helplessness Poppop died suddenly in August 2016. Lindquist was still grieving two months later, when the student shed casually been dating came to her apartment. Lindquist wasnt thinking they would hook up. When the guy made a move, she said no. He pressured her; she told him to leave. Then he became violent, she said. As they struggled, there was a moment when Lindquist realized she would not be able to fight him off or escape that her goal had shifted from getting away to surviving. I have never felt so helpless in my life, she said. It was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. It ended in a blur. The man left her apartment; Lindquist was left devastated, thinking she would never be the same. She didnt want to be a rape victim, didnt want this to have happened. She tried to convince herself that maybe it hadnt. She took a bath, drained it, then stood under the running shower for what felt like hours. The only thing she could think to do was call her grandfather, and he was gone. I knew he wouldve driven right up to Pennsylvania and he wouldve gone to the police with me, she said. So she didnt call anybody, except a sexual violence help hotline. She decided no one could ever know. She felt like she couldnt prove it; she had scrubbed away evidence in the shower, and would only later wish shed gone for a rape test instead. In the following days, Lindquist became so scared to leave her apartment that she only sometimes made it to class or work. It was like holding my whole life in my hands and watching it crumble. I got my voice back After Thanksgiving at home, Lindquist never returned to Temple, though she didnt tell anyone why. If someone asked what was wrong, she blamed her grandfathers death. Lindquist often drove to a nearby beach to sit and look at the waves. She found comfort thinking about God and the expanse of the universe. She also found support in her church. As winter became spring, she told her womens group about the rape. That freed her to tell her grandmother the real reason she left Temple. Then she started confiding in friends and family. When that school year ended, Lindquist returned to North Philly to clear out her still-rented apartment. She moved in with her grandmother, with plans to attend Old Dominion University in Norfolk. With therapy, she worked toward recovery. But Lindquist felt a growing urge to scream, I told you so, at the top of my lungs she wanted to tell her story in defense of carrying guns on campus. In the fall of 2017, a friend pushed Lindquist to put pen to paper. She wrote an opinion piece that ended up in the Washington Examiner. I never, ever felt so free in my life, she recalled. It was one of those moments when I felt like I got my voice back. After that, Lindquist formed her mission to inspire women to defend themselves and advocate for victims of sexual assault. Finishing her degree online means she can work at the same time and also can avoid being unarmed on campus. Aside from doctors visits, Lindquist carries her handgun most places in Virginia. She believes a firearm is a good option for many women like her. Standing at 4-foot-9, having had knee surgeries as a teenager, and having gained about 100 pounds after the assault, Lindquist says she cant bust out kung fu if someone attacks her: I have to have a way to reliably defend myself, and for me, thats a gun that goes off when you pull the trigger. A reminder of humanity Lindquist wishes more people saw her side. She doesnt think theres a good middle-ground solution on gun laws or a policy fix that can please everybody. She wants the opposite of what most shooting victims want, and thats not going to change. But she says she tries to do her work with empathy. She wishes everyone would simply be nice to each other. Even the people that disagree with me with everything that they have, theyre still a human being. And something has happened in their life that makes them think the way they do, she said. During the March For Our Lives the March 2018 gun-control demonstration organized by Parkland survivors Lindquist was interviewed on CNNs The Van Jones Show during his segment with Parkland students. Backstage, she saw Samantha Fuentes, a teenager who had been shot in both legs during the Florida shooting, but didnt approach her, she said. My gun serves as an equalizer. It doesnt negate his power, but it brings mine up to his level and I have a fighting chance. Savannah Lindquist Lindquist said Fuentes walked up to her and held out both hands, palms up, inviting Lindquist to take them. She did. I know you think we have nothing in common, she said Fuentes told her. Lindquists heart sank. Then Fuentes smiled. But we have matching tattoos. She flipped Lindquists hand to expose the semicolon tattooed on her wrist, a mental health awareness symbol. Before I could say anything, she bear-hugged me, Lindquist said. (A representative for Fuentes did not respond to requests for comment.) It was one of those moments when you realize were all fighting the same battles, Lindquist said this month as she drove the streets of her hometown. I still think of her every single day, and I think about not only what she went through, but how she reminded me of my own humanity. I can swear Nearly a year later, Lindquist found herself standing in a Capitol Hill hearing room, raising her right hand before members of Congress. Shed been surprised to get an invitation from the committees ranking Republican to tell her story. After 2018s contentious Supreme Court confirmation hearings when some lawmakers attacked Christine Blasey Ford, who accused now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault Lindquist internalized the criticism: She worried about how she couldnt prove her rape allegation, how shed told half-truths at first when people asked her what was wrong, and how long shed waited to tell the complete story. She began to speak the words to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her God. As she stood there, she was hit with a thought: This may be the closest she would ever get to showing that her story was true. It was just really validating, being able to say: This happened and I cant prove it to you, but I can swear to you that Im not a liar, she said. Lindquist hopes to graduate from Old Dominion in December, but she has a hard time thinking about the future. She knows everything can fall apart in the blink of an eye. For now, shes continuing with her advocacy. Shes still writing, will be on a livestream talk about minority gun ownership this month, and was invited to an April rally in Washington state. When she talks about what she wants people to take from her story, its that theyre not alone. She wants someone keeping an assault a secret to feel empowered to find the support they need. She wants someone in pain to find strength to share their story maybe even with her, as two women have done since she first spoke out. Every time that that happens, it makes me sort of feel like not that everything happens for a reason, Lindquist said, but that theres a silver lining. Hannibal Lokumbe in the city he has spent the last few years listening to while writing Healing Tones Read more Hannibal Lokumbe cant occupy a space for long before doing his level best to get someone around him to open up. Sitting with a reporter at Parc restaurant recently, the composer turned to the waitress twisting cracked pepper over his omelet and asked her, apropos of nothing, what was the most beautiful thing shed ever seen in her life. My little brother. Him being born, she said. A few minutes earlier, he was being introduced to soprano Benita Valente, who happened to be at a nearby table. Whats the first song you ever heard? he asked her. Suddenly, she was standing in Parc at lunchtime, singing a lullaby her Swiss mother had sung to her, reaching out and touching Hannibals cheeks the cheeks of someone who had been a stranger seconds earlier. Joyful, charming, absolutely open and prone to emotional intimacy, Hannibal has a gift for drawing those same characteristics out of just about anyone he meets, and hes met a lot of Philadelphians in his three years as composer-in-residence for the Philadelphia Orchestra. His time here has produced Healing Tones, a kind of hymn to the city to be premiered by the orchestra, vocal soloists, and two choirs led by Yannick Nezet-Seguin at three concerts starting Thursday. The work marks the end of the Texans composer-in-residence term. It came to me right after I finished One Land, One River, One People, premiered by the orchestra in 2015. This new piece worked its way into existence through his walks in the forest and my being still and quiet. The ancestors came and gave me instructions to do as much healing as possible, that the people are in desperate need of healing. Who could argue? Hannibals presence here is another in a series of acknowledgments by the orchestra of the world outside the cloistered walls of the Kimmel Center, Carnegie Hall, and other concert venues. His history of visiting the city predates this Philadelphia Orchestra residency, but as part of his process for writing Healing Tones, he has gathered inspiration in the last few years in prisons, shelters, schools, and churches. The social strife and violence playing out in the larger atmosphere has found its way into Hannibals score, which he divides up into Veils. Pittsburgh hit me really hard, like Charleston, he said, "and as Im writing Veil Two, The Tones of War, it was so clear that there are opposing forces inside of me, inside of us as humans, the ones who say destruction is the way, revenge is the way, and the one that says forgiveness is the way. And so Hannibal worked Pittsburgh into the piece. It will include the sounding of the shofar by Audrey Glickman, who was leading services in the synagogue shared by the Tree of Life/Or LSimcha, New Light, and Dor Hadash congregations on the morning of Oct. 27 when a gunman entered the temple and murdered 11 worshippers. Its not a mournful thing, but more of a coming-together kind of thing, Glickman says of the symbolism behind the shofar sound. The first thing I thought of after the shooting was, We have to stand up and speak against this, we have to make our voices heard. This is, in fact, a way for spreading the word that we have to pay attention to this, and its a physical representation of it. Glickman says that she is honored to be appearing on behalf of her congregation and that she sees her participation as a step in her own healing. She also says she hopes she can meet the high standards of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The shofar is not the kind of instrument you can always hit on a downbeat. Im practicing like a maniac. Hannibal has constructed a piece that creates a dialogue between the Everlasting (a mezzo-soprano), the Eternal Mother (soprano), and the Shaman (tenor). The chorus takes the role of the ancestors, and the orchestra and conductor are the primordial force. None of us can exude spirituality and charm the way Hannibal does, says Philadelphia Orchestra vice president of artistic planning Jeremy Rothman. His message, for better or worse, is something we very much need. That Hannibal has become so closely aligned with this orchestra any orchestra strikes the composer/trumpeter as a significant development. In a recent meeting with orchestra staff, Hannibal reported, he said that This orchestra and most other orchestras were seen by people of color the same way we see the Confederate monuments. He recalled being 5 years old and accompanying his father to the courthouse in Bastrop, Texas, where he started looking at the sculptures outside. His grandfather addressed him in a way he never had before, Hannibal recalled. He scared me. He told me, Get away from that thing, its evil. Thats for white people. Dont you ever go near that. Thats how most people of color see orchestras, for the white people, and since our work here began, thats no longer the case because somebody had courage. Somebody believed in me, and they wanted to do something about it." Hannibals presence at the orchestra these last few years has created a sense that a door to the orchestra has opened, says J. Donald Dumpson, minister of music and the arts at Arch Street Presbyterian Church and artistic director of the Philadelphia Heritage Chorale, which joins the Morgan State University Choir in Healing Tones. I think without question the sense of inclusion in the programming, the sense of generosity that comes from Yannick, him just being approachable, has changed the general vibe of the orchestra itself and how our community sees the orchestra, said Dumpson. Yumi Kendall, a cellist who has worked with Hannibal as part of a program in which a string quartet from the orchestra workshops new pieces by young composers, says Hannibal has an intense focus that, when he looks in my eyes, its like hes seeing my innermost being. Thats what hes about getting to the core of the experience, hearing about a person and his or her heritage or culture. Its just a vulnerability that he opens up. Hannibal himself can seem vulnerable. In a note sent to this reporter just after the recent massacre in New Zealand, Hannibal wrote: There is a thread of hatred woven so tightly into the garment called humanity. It wove its way through the shroud called Wounded Knee, Nanking, Mother Emanuel AME, The Tree of Life Synagogue, The Mosques of Al Noor and Linwood. Where next its thread to weave? Healing Tones is a thread of love, joined to the eternal thread of love which will continue to weave the garment of peace for the world to wear when it grows too weary from the coldness which life can sometimes be. Anger is surely one response to mass shootings, hate, division, injustice, and all the other ills of the world eating at the conscience of millions daily. There is a certain kind of comfort that comes with being vengeful. Its so easy, says Hannibal. But its much like drug addiction. Its such a waste. If anger would serve a purpose other than what it always serves, and thats destruction, I would be interested in it. The composer answers instead with creation. Every time human destruction makes its move, it needs to be countered so that people will be reminded, especially the children, that this is a very precious thing we have inherited called life. CLASSICAL MUSIC Healing Tones Performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra in a program with the Sibelius Symphony No. 2 at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 28, and 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 29 and 30, at Verizon Hall in the Kimmel Center, Broad and Spruce Streets. Tickets: $10-$136. Information: philorch.org, 215-893-1999. John "Johnny Doc" Dougherty pleads not guilty, freed on bond in federal embezzlement, conspiracy case at Federal Court Friday February 1, 2019 Read more In his first in-court attack on his federal indictment, labor leader John J. Johnny Doc Dougherty has urged a judge to dismiss charges that he bought Philadelphia City Councilman Bobby Henons vote on key issues with a union salary, calling the allegations a feeble attempt at criminalizing the legislative process. Prosecutors may claim to have exposed a corrupt relationship between the men, but all they have accomplished, defense lawyers argued in filings late Wednesday, is to outline a normal and lawful lobbying of a City Council member. There is nothing out of the ordinary, let alone unlawful, about Mr. Henons continued employment from Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, attorney Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. wrote, referring to Doughertys union. He added later: Nothing about this employment arrangement amounts to bribery. The argument mirrors broad attacks launched in January by Henons lawyer, Brian J. McMonagle, at a news conference a day after prosecutors charged the Council member and Dougherty in a sprawling corruption case. But Wednesdays filing is the first time the defense has put forth such claims in court in an attempt to spare both men from a costly trial and the threat of prison should they be convicted. What U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl will make of their assertions remains to be seen. No hearing had been scheduled to consider the defense motion as of Thursday, and prosecutors had not yet responded to it in court. Still, government lawyers can be expected to push back hard. They have portrayed Henon, a union electrician elected in 2011 on a wave of Local 98 money, as a corrupt politician who sold his Council seat in exchange for a $73,000-a-year, do-nothing job. Prosecutors allege he then served as Doughertys puppet, backing votes and advancing government actions that benefited the labor leaders personal and professional interests. >> READ MORE: Feds say Johnny Doc used Local 98s money to buy influence, power In its motion Wednesday, Doughertys legal team scoffed at that depiction, arguing that at worst Henons salary posed a conflict of interest but one no different from those facing the seven other members of Council who hold outside jobs. City ethics rules allow Council members to hold such posts as long as they disclose them on legally mandated filings, something Henon routinely did. The indictment makes clear the government is attempting to punish a conflict of interest it (but not the City of Philadelphia) considers an inappropriate outside-employment arrangement between Mr. Henon and Local 98, Hockeimer wrote. Whats more, he argued, the governments theory of the case runs afoul of two key U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have limited the scope of public corruption prosecutions in recent years. The first, involving former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, held that such convictions must be based on evidence of bribes or kickbacks, not just a conflict of interest. Although prosecutors say Henons union salary and the little, if anything, he did to earn it is a bribe, Hockeimer maintained Wednesday that the timing doesnt add up. Henon assumed his post as Local 98s political director in 2003, eight years before he was elected to Council. If the job was meant as a bribe, the defense argued, it came well before Henon had anything to offer Dougherty in exchange. >>> READ MORE: Johnny Doc indictment: Whos indicted and what are the charges? The second Supreme Court ruling cited by Doughertys defense one centered on the case of former Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell has bedeviled prosecutors since it was issued in 2016. The justices held that federal bribery laws do not cover gifts exchanged for routine courtesies such as setting up meetings, hosting events, or making calls on behalf of constituents. To prove political bribery, prosecutors now must show that a politician took some official action in exchange for benefits received. The Dougherty indictment is filled with accusations that the union boss leaned on Henon again and again to back policies or actions that benefited his union. At Doughertys request, Henon allegedly forwarded a 2015 complaint that led to the shutdown of a nonunion installation project at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia. That same year, he purportedly put Dougherty in the room when Comcast renegotiated its franchise agreement with the city a deal that resulted in a lucrative contract for a company owned by one of the labor leaders friends. But in both instances, Doughertys lawyers maintained in their filing, prosecutors failed to link Henons decisions to a specific vote or action that went beyond something he would have done for any other constituent. In other instances, they said, the indictment draws on voluminous wiretap recordings to show Henon promising to take some action at Doughertys request but does not specifically say whether the Council member actually followed through. While these allegations may set forth the circumstances of a pro-union elected official taking pro-union actions, Hockeimer wrote, they fail in every respect to set forth an unlawful quid pro quo. Dougherty also is accused along with six other union officials and allies of embezzling more than $600,000 from Local 98s coffers. Defense lawyers plan to file motions attacking that aspect of the case in the coming weeks. Dougherty and his codefendants have denied the allegations against them. Governor Tom Wolf outlines his plan Thursday to remediate lead from Philadelphia public schools and others throughout the state at the Taggart Elementary in South Philadelphia. He is joined by William R. Hite, superintendent of Philadelphia district schools, and state Sen. Vincent Hughes, right. Read more Gov. Tom Wolf traveled to Taggart Elementary School in South Philadelphia to tout his proposed four-year, $4.5 billion Restore Pennsylvania initiative to fix crumbling schools, eliminate blight, repair storm damage, and expand high-speed internet across the state. Wolf estimated it would cost $100 million to repair and remove lead paint and other perils in Philadelphias 200 aging district schools. He said he wants to fund the initiative with a modest severance tax on natural gas extraction. The Republican-led Assembly would have to approve such a tax, which historically has been a tough sell in Pennsylvania. The governor said his push to find more money to fix Philadelphia schools came in response to The Inquirers 2018 Toxic City: Sick Schools investigation, which revealed how children got sick from environmental hazards, including lead paint, in their classrooms. When we go out to schools like this one that have problems with lead paint chips falling on the desks of students, when we get the question, What are we going to do about it? instead of saying, Theres nothing I can do about it, we can say, Heres what we are going to do about it. The newspapers investigation revealed the case of Dean Pagan, who was 6 when he ate lead paint chips that fell on his desk in his first-grade classroom at Watson Comly Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia. He was hospitalized with a blood-lead level nine times higher than the amount at which doctors worry about permanent brain damage. To uncover health hazards, reporters enlisted staffers at 19 of the districts most rundown elementary schools to conduct scientific tests for toxins. Tests revealed lead dust, at hazardous levels, on windowsills, floors, and shelves in classrooms. In response, Wolf directed $15.7 million last June for emergency cleanup to repair lead paint and other hazards in more than 40 schools, a move to safeguard 29,000 children. Of that, $7.6 million came from a state grant, with the rest from the Philadelphia School Districts capital budget. Taggart Elementary, a K-8 school in South Philadelphia built in 1916, was one of the 40. When district workers assessed the damage inside Taggart, they noted 17,400 square feet of damaged paint and plaster in almost 600 different areas, including classroom walls and ceilings. The repair work at Taggart is expected to be completed in April. After the series, Philadelphia enacted a law that requires school district officials to annually certify their buildings as lead safe, and be subjected to outside inspections, mandatory cleanup deadlines, and potential fines. For years, lead paint dangers were widespread in Philadelphias public schools. Roughly 80 percent of the districts schools were built prior to the 1978 ban on lead paint. Theres still a significant amount of work to be done. Thats why were advocating for a reliable source of funding, said school superintendent William R. Hite Jr. Since publication of the investigation, the School District of Philadelphia has completed lead repairs at eight schools A.S. Jenks, Barton, Emlen, Finletter, Jackson, Kirkbride, Logan, and Nebinger. Lead cleanup is ongoing at Taggart and nine other schools. By summers end, about 17,000 students at 30 schools will have safe and clean learning spaces, the district said in a news release Thursday. State Sen. Vincent Hughes (D., Phila.), who has made school conditions one of his signature issues, said he and other legislators have demanded a severance tax on natural-gas drilling companies for years. This is an industry that has not given its fair share, Hughes said Thursday. Its a modest assessment." Pennsylvania is the only major gas-producing state without a severance tax. The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a group representing the natural-gas industry, says drillers in Pennsylvania pay an impact fee that the legislature approved in 2012. Since then, the group says, Philadelphia and its four surrounding counties have received almost $54 million in such fees. Imposing additional energy taxes will cost consumers, hurt local jobs, especially among the building and labor trades, and negatively impact investment needed to safely produce clean and abundant energy thats ushering in a new era of manufacturing growth, Marcellus Shale Coalition president David Spigelmyer said in a statement Thursday. Mike Straub, spokesperson for the House Republican Caucus, and Jennifer Kocher, spokesperson for the Republican Senate Caucus, both said their members support more money for fixing schools and roads, but believe it should not be funded by a new severance tax. Wolf has said that the tax would generate $300 million per year that would be used to pay down about $4.5 billion in bonds. Temple University and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health announced Thursday they will be opening two clinics next week to provide free vaccines amid an outbreak of mumps. Read more Temple University and the Philadelphia Department of Public Health announced Thursday they will be opening two clinics next week to provide free vaccines after an outbreak of mumps has spread to 86 students over the last month. The walk-in clinics will be held on Wednesday, March 27, and Friday, March 29, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Temples Mitten Hall Great Court. All Temple students, faculty, and staff can get a dose of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine at no charge. Mumps is a contagious viral disease. Common symptoms include swollen salivary glands, fever, headache, muscle aches, and loss of appetite. While serious complications are rare, especially in people who were vaccinated as children, mumps can cause inflammation of the brain, deafness, or sterility. Its typically spread by sharing food, drink, or living in close quarters. The outbreak at Temple began in late February, just before the schools spring break. As of Thursday, the Philadelphia health department reported 16 confirmed cases of mumps and 70 probable cases; 82 are in the city, the other four from surrounding counties. None of the students has been hospitalized. One confirmed case and one suspected case have been reported in Chester County and Montgomery County, respectively. A student at West Chester University has a confirmed case of mumps, school officials said Thursday. The student reported symptoms on Monday following a visit to Temple, and has been told to remain at home since. The student lives off campus, university officials said. The Chester County Health Department is expected to contact the students roommates to recommend booster shots of the MMR vaccine. No other West Chester students have reported symptoms. In a letter to parents, Abington Senior High School said a student there had a suspected case of the mumps, 6ABC reported. The letter said the Montgomery County Office of Public Health is investigating and it urged parents to make sure their children are up to date with their vaccinations. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) announced he would postpone a town-hall meeting that was scheduled for Saturday at Temple. He acknowledged the risk to the wider community is low, but said he was taking the step to be cautious. Health officials say its unlikely someone could catch mumps simply by visiting campus. Mumps is typically spread through saliva among people living in close contact. Even riding a train with an infected person is unlikely to spread the disease. Most of the students at Temple with symptoms had been vaccinated, said James Garrow, a health department spokesperson. Since the outbreak, Temple announced a new policy that will require all incoming freshmen to be up to date on the MMR vaccination series. Previously, the university did not require immunizations for admitted or enrolled students. Some students are petitioning Temple to temporarily close the university to prevent more students from getting the virus, but the university is not considering it because health officials say it wouldnt help control the outbreak. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends children get two doses of the MMR vaccine: the first at 12 to 15 months old and the second at 4 to 6 years old. The vaccine is 88 percent effective when someone gets two doses. But there is evidence that its power may fade after 10 years, shortly before students are ready for college. The university has administered 173 doses of the MMR vaccine since Feb. 25, according to a Temple spokesperson. In recent years, there have been a number of outbreaks on college campuses. Researchers at Harvard University have suggested a booster shot for mumps might help protect students as they enter college. As of now, the CDC recommends a third dose only during an outbreak like the one at Temple. People who are vaccinated may get mumps, but their symptoms are less severe. For anyone who is already experiencing symptoms, Garrow said, the best plan of action is to stay home and rest. Limiting contact with others will help prevent the spread of the disease. In this Thursday, March 14, 2019, photo, William Josue Gonzales Garcia, 2, who was traveling with his parents, waits with other families who crossed the nearby U.S.-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. They are waiting for Border Patrol agents to check names and documents. Immigration authorities say they expect the ongoing surge of Central American families crossing the border to multiply in the coming months. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) Read more MCALLEN, Texas (AP) A mother cradled a crying toddler as she waited in line with 20 other women to shower. Dozens of fathers quietly held their children's hands in an enclosure made of chain-link fencing. While these families were held at an overcrowded Border Patrol processing center, a fresh wave of migrants crossed the nearby river separating the U.S. and Mexico and waited for border agents to bring them to the same facility. One Honduran woman carried a feverish 7-month-old baby. The cycle is repeated multiple times a day. Waves of desperate families are trying to cross the border almost hourly and entering an overtaxed government detention system. The Border Patrol has become so overwhelmed in feeding and caring for the migrants that it announced plans this week to start releasing some families onto the street in the Rio Grande Valley to ease overcrowding in the processing center, providing the immigrants with a notice to appear at an upcoming court date. "We have an unprecedented crisis upon us," Robert Perez, deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol's parent agency, said in an interview. The Border Patrol says it made about 66,000 apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally in February, including 36,000 parents and children, an all-time monthly high. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, meanwhile, said since Dec. 21 it has released 107,000 family members while they await court dates. Immigration authorities expect the number of parents and children to surpass 50,000 in March during the traditional spring spike in migration and potentially reach 180,000 in May, according to two U.S. officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about internal documents. The Border Patrol ordered expanded medical screenings after the December deaths of two children in its custody. The agency received $30 million to upgrade its South Texas processing center and additional funding to build a similar facility in El Paso. The autopsy results for Jakelin Caal and Felipe Gomez Alonzo have not yet been released, but Customs and Border Protection has said both children were hospitalized after developing high fevers and nausea. Children with fevers, colds and the flu arrive daily at the border with their parents and sometimes wait for hours for the Border Patrol to pick them up. On a recent Thursday, Carmen Mejia's 7-month-old, Lian, was feverish, one of four sick children in her group of 20. His mother had heard about Jakelin and Felipe before leaving her rural town in northern Honduras. "It made me sad," she said. "But imagine. I'm here, also looking for a future for my son." Mejia said she hoped to find work to support Lian and two older children she had left behind with her mother. While she spoke, two more waves of people arrived. The group grew to around 50 before the Border Patrol could load everyone into vans and take them into detention. Some migrants blamed extortion for forcing them to close small businesses. Others said gangs had killed close relatives and threatened to kill them. President Donald Trump's administration says most adult border crossers are economic migrants who count on being released if they bring a child and seek asylum. Immigration agency officials have called for Congress to change laws that would allow them to detain more adults and children and deport people from Central America quicker. Trump's signature solution and the reason for his declaration of a national emergency is a border wall, especially in South Texas, where there are comparatively few barriers. But a border wall would not stop families who aren't trying to evade immigration authorities. Those families typically stop after crossing the Rio Grande and wait to be caught. The Associated Press visited the South Texas processing center where many migrants end up. It's an old warehouse, with overhead lighting that stays on around the clock and chain-link fencing that forms large cages. Detainees are issued mats and foil blankets to sleep on the concrete floor. Each detainee receives a medical screening. Dozens of children waited on their own. Many were 10 years of age or older and kept separately from their parents, who are in another wing of the facility at the same time. Some of the children waiting on their own talked among themselves. Others tried to sleep on mats under the glare of the lights, their foil blankets crinkling. The facility received worldwide attention last June, during the Trump administration's enforcement of a zero-tolerance policy that led to thousands of family separations. Around 1,100 people were detained at the facility then, many of them children who had been separated from their parents. The facility opened in 2014 during the Obama administration to address another surge of thousands of unaccompanied teenagers arriving from Central America. Now the processing center and other facilities in the sector deal with parents bringing young children and pregnant women who sometimes go into labor in detention. "It isn't meant for families," said Carmen Qualia, an assistant chief patrol agent for the sector. "We're set up for individuals." Agency guidelines require that parents are detained for no longer than 72 hours before being released or transferred to long-term detention centers with beds and more facilities. The average detention time for families late last week was about 60 hours. Most families are eventually bused to a Catholic Charities facility in McAllen, where volunteers provide food and medical checkups before taking them to the bus station or airport. The future of that facility is in jeopardy after McAllen city commissioners last month ordered Catholic Charities to vacate it by May, after complaints from neighbors. But the Border Patrol is relying on the facility more than ever. While a few hundred people are sent there daily, immigration authorities dropped 800 migrants at Catholic Charities in just one day this week, leading to volunteers posting pleas on social media for donations and help. Inside a small clinic behind the main building, Dr. Martin Garza listened to the heartbeat and lungs of 1-month-old Cesar Manuel Romero, cradled by his mother, 21-year-old Lily Romero of Honduras. Romero said she gave birth to Cesar on a bus as it passed through Monterrey, Mexico. After crossing the border, Romero said they were taken to a smaller Border Patrol station what she and other Spanish-speaking migrants often refer to as "la hielera," or the icebox. She said another woman in custody loaned her a sweater so she could keep Cesar warm because agents had taken many of her belongings. She said they were given water that was "nearly frozen." Afterward, they were taken to the processing center and eventually released to Catholic Charities. The Border Patrol says its facilities follow agency detention guidelines and that it investigates any complaints of mistreatment. Garza said agents and medical professionals inside detention almost always diagnose major illnesses or injuries. But colds and fevers persist, along with conditions that aren't obvious, he said. "Infants are wheezing. Infants are having trouble breathing, and some of those things may not get picked up," he said. ___ Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Washington and Astrid Galvan in Phoenix contributed to this report. The Rock River crested its banks and floods Shore Drive, seen here on Saturday, March 16, 2019, from the Bauer Parkway bridge in Machesney Park, Ill. Many rivers and creeks in the Midwest are at record levels after days of snow and rain. Read more FREMONT, Neb. - Chris Sewall stood with a push broom in front of an emergency shelter he manages for at-risk children, sending water sloshing down the front steps Wednesday afternoon. It had been nearly a week since he had to evacuate 10 teenagers from this facility, and the floodwaters had finally receded. The basement still had about 4 inches of water, but Sewall was optimistic. "We look around," he said, gesturing to neighboring houses where soggy furniture had been hauled into muddy front yards. "We're feeling pretty lucky." Piles of damaged appliances, water-stained upholstery and black garbage bags stretched toward the roofs of single-story houses that had been flooded when rain and melting snow produced record-high river levels. One homeowner had placed a detached door under a sump pump's downspout, a makeshift ramp to redirect the flow into the driveway. Communities across the Midwest are facing massive cleanup efforts after last week's late-winter "bomb cyclone" caused at least four deaths, forced the evacuation of entire communities and drenched vast tracts of land with icy and often polluted water. Nebraska's emergency agency set the estimated cost of the destruction at $1.3 billion on Wednesday, including $400 million for dead livestock, $440 million in lost grain and $439 million in damaged infrastructure. Vice President Mike Pence promised prompt federal aid when he surveyed the destruction Tuesday and visited a shelter in Nebraska. But even as the floodwaters receded in some places, residents elsewhere tried to gauge the eventual impact of the relentless southward surge. Communities continued to issue new disaster declarations, putting three-quarters of Nebraska's counties under states of emergency. Officials in Iowa, Wisconsin and Mississippi have done the same, under threat from the historic flooding around the Platte and Missouri rivers. The stricken states issued warnings to residents about the dangers of driving around flood barricades, and provided checklists for cleanup supplies and information on disposing of dead livestock and where to obtain mental health support. But for many in the devastated region, the start of the cleanup was coupled with a realization that the recovery could take years, amid warnings that the current infrastructure of dams and levees will not be adequate to protect them from the increased frequency and severity of flooding that comes from climate change. "It will last for months," said Tom Waters, president of the Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association. In coming weeks, Waters expects, snow melt will add to the torrents still topping levees and inundating farmland, homes and businesses as they churn toward the Gulf of Mexico. In Lincoln, Nebraska, officials warned that floodwaters may have contaminated private wells and provided testing kits, recommending that people boil or add household bleach to their water and strain cloudy water through clean cloth. With the wells for the city's drinking supply near Ashland, Nebraska, still flooded, residents have been asked to cut their water usage in half. Along the streets, temporary signs flash messages: "Every drop counts." At Russ's Market, just south of the state Capitol, cases of bottled water were stacked high. Cashiers asked customers whether they were willing to round up their totals to give the change to flood relief efforts. Small towns used the resources they had to dig out from under the flood's aftermath. In Verdigre, Nebraska - population 575 - a week had passed since ice-cold waters filled basements and seeped into businesses. People were at work Wednesday, tearing out damaged interiors, vacuuming up the damp and smelly detritus and drying whatever belongings seemed salvageable. The village had invested in a truck with a new blade for snow removal last fall. Now it was proving its worth, hauling in 10 loads of sand and gravel to repair streets gouged by floodwater. "It's a dandy little truck," said Dave Wickett, a former chairman of the village board of trustees. "We will bounce back." But some Nebraskans worried about their ability to overcome the damage. Curt Richey and his wife, Sherrie, were ready to put their house on the market in Inglewood, Nebraska, last week when water surged into their neighborhood. "We had all the paperwork filled out and was one day away from sticking a sign in the yard," Richey said. When they returned days later, their finished basement - what Richey had hoped would be one of the home's main selling points - had 5 feet of standing water. His grandmother's antique hutch lay toppled and face down. On Wednesday, the sump pump was humming, but the piece of antique furniture was still floating in more than a foot of brown water. "Nobody is gonna buy this place now," Richey said, his eyes welling up. "If the levee ain't fixed, you're just sitting on a sand bar. That's all you're doing." Many parts of the vast watershed have yet to feel the full force of this first round of flooding. South of Saint Joseph, Missouri, Lanny Frakes, president of the Halls Levee District - which covers more than 18,000 acres and has never been breached since it was built in the 1950s - said farmers in the bottomlands had been sandbagging land that stayed so soggy through last winter that some crops could not be harvested. "This is the earliest flooding I've ever seen in this area," Frakes said, looking ahead to the threat of deluges in April caused by snow melt from the plains, then in May and June from the mountains, and then thunderstorms in the summer. Frakes was monitoring the situation closely and meeting with representatives from the Army Corps of Engineers and other levee districts on Wednesday, including the Rushville-Sugar Lake Levee, which protects about 8,500 acres. He expected the Missouri River to crest late Thursday or early Friday - and if the current projections hold, the levees will be overtopped in several places. "It's just what it is," Frakes said. The soil has to dry out, Frakes said, for repair work to be done, including rebuilding highways, filling the cavernous ravines the water channels cut through fields, and removing vast drifts of infertile sand that it churned up from the turbulent river's bed. Frakes is critical of recent policies that he said had put environmental concerns such as saving the habitats of endangered species ahead of flood control and farmers' economic needs. "We have a loaded gun pointed at our head," said Frakes, anticipating the river's coming crest. "Nobody has pulled the trigger yet." The Washington Posts Annie Gowen in Washington contributed to this report. In the Main Line parking lot, overdoses are common. Soon-to-be patients of a relatively new facility, Recovery Centers of America at Devon, drive up or arrive on foot, ready to check themselves in for inpatient drug and alcohol addiction treatment. But some decide to use one last time, to say goodbye to a drug before they try to get clean and sober. Its yet another example of addictions grip on those battling the disease and of the dire need for people to get help, said RCA at Devons leaders and Easttown Township officials. But for the local volunteer fire company, every call for help from RCA is another one for which it might not get paid. Last year, the Berwyn Fire Company responded to 102 total calls from RCA at Devon, billed $126,000, and collected only $40,000, he said. If something doesnt change with how medical reimbursement works, were going to have a problem, Berwyn Fire Chief Eamon Brazunas said, sooner rather than later. RCA employees arent dialing 911 unnecessarily, Brazunas said. Employees call for parking-lot overdoses, dangerous levels of intoxication in patients seeking treatment, and for seizures and other serious side effects that can occur during alcohol detoxification, a potentially fatal process, said Caroline McWilliams, the facilitys medical director. Brazunas attributes the nearly $86,000 in outstanding funds from last year not to RCA but to flaws in the way insurance companies handle medical billing reimbursement for out-of-network providers such as Berwyn Fire, which also provides EMS and advanced life support to Easttown and Tredyffrin residents. As RCA at Devon expands, calls there remain steady or increase, and the volunteer firefighter crisis continues, the problem could only worsen. This predicament in Devon exemplifies a larger battle nationwide. A million-dollar lawsuit in federal court has criticized insurance companies for sending reimbursement checks to patients who sought addiction treatment rather than directly to providers. In Easttown and Tredyffrin, given the number of calls from RCA and a growing number of senior living facilities in the area, the response time for residential fire and EMS calls could increase slightly, depending on the time and day of the week, Brazunas said. Police have been affected, too, responding to RCA at Devon roughly every other day, said Easttown Police Chief David Obzud. Were definitely there more than anywhere else in the township, he said. But more or less, thats what comes with having this type of facility. In the shell of an old nursing home, RCA at Devon sits on a hill along busy Lancaster Avenue near car dealerships, office buildings, and a bowling alley. But, as even its executives have noticed in talking to Main Line residents over the last 18 months, many passersby are unaware of what happens there. People dont know what goes on inside this facility, said Steve Wicke, chief executive officer of RCA at Devon. He and his colleagues want more people to know. We want people to understand addiction. Developer Brian ONeill created Recovery Centers of America in 2016 at a time when addiction treatment was becoming a hot investment sector. A New York private-equity firm backed the development with $231.5 million in equity and debt. ONeill invested $15 million. His vision, he said, was to establish a chain of facilities from Boston to D.C. and save a million lives. At the time, he told The Inquirer that he planned to spend $20 million a year on advertising to reduce the stigma surrounding the disease. RCAs number, 1-800-RECOVERY, was displayed on billboards and in commercials. Today, RCA operates seven centers, including outpatient facilities in Trenton and Voorhees and its Lighthouse location in Mays Landing that offers inpatient and outpatient care (Mays Landing Fire Company could not be reached for comment about whether it has been affected). RCA planned to build a 317-bed facility in Blackwood, Camden County, but a fight ensued with residents of the town, stalling the project. Recovery Centers purchased the 6.1 acres in Devon, previously Devon Manor, in 2016. RCA opened its doors there a year later and within hours, the first patient was admitted, Wicke said. After several phases of expansion, the complex is now able to treat nearly 300 people. As of earlier this month, about 121 patients were undergoing inpatient treatment, an intensive 15-hour-a-day program in a setting that looks more like a hotel than a hospital. In his experience, Wicke said, the comfortable rooms, nutritious food, nice gym, and other amenities help people stay in treatment longer, eliminating the excuses for why they cant complete the program. So does being close to home and being able to have a patients family involved in recovery, he said. The program is voluntary, and patients can choose to leave at any time. RCA accepts most major commercial insurance but not Medicaid. So for the insured, a stay can be relatively inexpensive the price of a copay or deductible compared with many well-known treatment centers across the country, Wicke said. A spokesperson for RCA at Devon declined to put a dollar amount on the cost of treatment for the uninsured but said those with Medicaid are directed to other facilities. RCA prides itself on being a neighborhood place, Wicke said, and as of January about 80 percent of patients came from within a 50-mile radius of the site. The inpatient section consists of neighborhoods for men, women, young adults, and older adults, as well as for trauma victims and first responders. Clinical director Luke English said he was especially proud of that. We help the individuals in our community who help our community, English said. Thats a huge victory. RCA has also donated to the firefighters, police officers, and EMTs who find themselves at the facility so frequently, recently giving $25,000 to the Berwyn Fire Company and $15,000 to the Easttown Police Department. Police responded to 150 calls to RCA at Devon last year, Chief Obzud said. Officers respond whenever an ambulance does, so many of those calls were medical-related. Other times, officers arrived for disturbances or to check on walk-offs, people who have signed themselves out of the facility and may be walking down Lancaster Avenue, he said. Residential neighborhoods in the area havent been bothered, he said. In January, a Collingswood man robbed a bank after checking himself out of RCA, but incidents like that are rare, Obzud said. Ultimately, he said, he would hesitate to say the uptick in calls has strained the police force, because officers are paid to respond. For the fire company, its a different story. We dont want to freak people out, Brazunas said, but they also need to know whats going on. Brazunas takes issue with how insurance companies send reimbursement checks to patients for out-of-network service. The patients are supposed to send the check on to the provider, Berwyn Fire, but not everyone does. Making this issue even more concerning in this case, the people receiving the checks are trying to recover from addiction and could use that money for alcohol or drugs, he said. Its astonishing, Brazunas said. If theres anything more screwed up with health care, I dont know what it is. This reimbursement process has put the fire company in a difficult position since RCA opened. They could track down a patient for not returning a check, Brazunas said, but they worry about whether that stress could prompt a relapse. Do you really want to take someone to court whos going through addiction? he said Brazunas has been outspoken about his concerns, talking with legislators, local officials, and residents. Realistically, he said, he knows theres a slim chance that anything will change with medical billing reimbursement anytime soon, barring an earthquake in Harrisburg. The directors of RCA at Devon said they have started telling patients what to do when they receive reimbursement checks: Send them along to the Berwyn Fire Company. However, once the patient leaves, theres little the center can do to ensure that that happens. Without the full lot of medical billing reimbursement, Brazunas said, the fire company has to rely more on its other sources of funding: private donations and municipal support. As of earlier this month, Berwyn Fire had responded to 22 calls from RCA at Devon since the beginning of the year. He said only 30 percent of the money billed for those calls had been collected. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents said Thursday that they had seized 1,185 pounds of cocaine from a shipping container at the Port of Philadelphia this week, a haul that authorities estimated was worth $38 million and called the largest cocaine bust at the port in 21 years. Joseph Martella, the customs agencys area port director for Philadelphia, said at a news conference that the drugs, discovered Tuesday, were packed as 450 bricks inside 13 large black duffel bags that had been tossed on top of cargo on a ship bound for the Netherlands. Martella said it was not clear when the drugs had been loaded into the shipping container, and authorities did not announce any arrests. In a statement, Customs and Border Protection agents said the shipping container was carrying natural rubber that had been loaded in Guatemala. The bust came less than two weeks after federal authorities at the Port of New York/Newark announced they had discovered 3,200 pounds of cocaine with an estimated street value of $77 million inside a shipping container, the largest cocaine seizure there in nearly 25 years. In Philadelphia, customs agents earlier this month said they had seized nearly 614 pounds of marijuana inside a shipping container, which they estimated had a street value of $2.5 million. In fiscal year 2018, Customs and Border Protection agents seized an average of 4,657 pounds of narcotics per day, the agency reported on its website. A report issued last year by the Drug Enforcement Administration said that cocaines availability and use in the United States continued to rise between 2016 and 2017, and that Customs agents seized more kilograms of cocaine in 2017 than any year since at least 2010. Store owner Elvis Nunez, 53, demonstrating how he defended himself in a shootout with an armed robber Mach 14, 2014. The robber died. Photo taken March 18. Read more The District Attorneys Office has ruled that a West Philadelphia grocery store owner was justified last week when he fatally shot a masked would-be robber who had first fired at him, a Police Department spokesperson said Thursday. "The case is cleared as a justifiable killing of a felon', police said in a statement. Police identified the victim as Jamil Jamal McCormick, 26, of Philadelphia. McCormick was on probation for drug dealing at the time of his death, according to court records. Between 2012 through 2018, he had two other drug-dealing and two simple-assault convictions, according to the records Just before 9 p.m. on March 14, McCormick entered the 54 and Wyalusing Food Market brandishing a handgun and wearing a black mask over his face, and fired a shot at store owner Elvis Nunez. Nunez, 53, dodged the bullet, pulled out his Glock handgun, and fired once into McCormicks abdomen, he told The Inquirer this week. After running from the store, McCormick fired three more shots at Nunez, who was uninjured. McCormick attempted to drive away but crashed his car a short distance from the store, where police found him, still wearing the mask and with the gun he had fired at the store owner, police said. He died that night at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. Nunez, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic in 1993, had been robbed twice before. The father of five said he continues to run his store. Of having to use deadly force, he said: It was the only way I could stay alive with my family. It was going to be me or the person. A longtime bar employee was shot and killed during a robbery at Germantown's DelMar Lounge at closing time early Thursday. Read more A robber shot and killed a worker at a Germantown bar early Thursday during a stickup at closing time, police said. The suspect had been drinking at the DelMar Lounge on the 300 block of West Chelten Avenue and waited until the other patrons left before pulling out a gun and announcing a robbery shortly after 2 a.m., police said. At an afternoon news conference, Homicide Capt. Jason Smith said surveillance video showed the gunman, whom police had not yet identified, firing one shot at the chest of 58-year-old bar worker Jeffrey Johnson after Johnson briefly hesitated when responding to the gunmans commands. Smith said the robber then stole about $200 from a witness and left. He was last seen running eastbound on Chelten and then south on Pulaski Avenue. Johnson was taken to Einstein Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 2:30 a.m. Smith said Johnson had presented no threat to the gunman. Police released video that showed the gunman entering the bar, pointing his weapon, and walking away after the shooting. Earlier Thursday, Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters that the suspect left behind fingerprints and possible DNA evidence on the glass from which he was drinking. Smith declined to comment on evidence investigators were examining. As with all homicides in the city, a $20,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the criminal. Disaster case managers and Puerto Rican evacuees share their experience and work at Taller Puertorriqueno, on March 20, 2019. Read more When thousands of Puerto Rican evacuees fled to Philadelphia after Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the Caribbean island in September 2017, it was something disaster response officials here had never really experienced before. We are used to responding to disasters where they happen, or when there is a presidential-declared disaster elsewhere," said Joseph DeFelice, regional administrator for Philadelphias Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) office. However, there were people coming in day by day, week by week, month by month, with language barriers. I dont think that we were necessarily prepared for that. The Greater Philadelphia Long Term Recovery Committee comprising more than 30 community groups, volunteer organizations, faith-based services, and government agencies with disaster response experience and cultural competency in Latino communities gathered Wednesday morning at Taller Puertorriqueno to talk about accomplishments and lessons learned in the last year as it worked to provide housing, education, jobs, and transportation to the displaced. Among the accomplishments since its inception, six months after the disaster: 74 families were assisted in locating housing resources. More than 8 million pounds of products were shipped from here to Puerto Rico. At the same time, the committee recognized there remains no standard for collecting data on the people who were evacuated from the U.S. commonwealth. For example, according to cell phone data, 5,357 people fled from Puerto Rico to Philadelphia between October 2017 and February 2018. In May 2018, there were 3,187 students in Pennsylvania public schools who identified as displaced, and 115 cases registered in the FEMA program that put up families in hotels. Also, by December 2017, 897 families had registered with the Office of Emergency Managements Disaster Assistance Service Center. Mabel Negrete, human rights activist and disaster case manager with Lutheran Congregational Services, said the crisis forced local authorities to reimagine the definition and boundaries of the city, and perhaps to reconsider a broader view of what a city might be able to offer or experience. There was no preparedness, no central hub where to find a unified support system, until this happened," she said. "So its been an experience to teach us that we need to find different ways to view our city in a more transnational experience. The upside: Philadelphias response to the crisis works as a unique model for other cities that could be impacted by natural disasters related to climate change, said Karl Jones, long-term recovery specialist and disaster coordinator for the United Church of Christ, one of the members of the committee. Some lessons he learned: A working relationship between the city and Latino organizations and traditional federal and voluntary disaster response agencies, like the Red Cross and Salvation Army, helped address immediate needs for a disaster that took place outside of the U.S. mainland. Spiritual and emotional care for the evacuees, especially children, has been important. There is a lack of quality case management in Philadelphia and across Pennsylvania, especially when it comes to disaster needs. Theyve been learning how to navigate a long-term recovery effort. How do you negotiate responsibilities between the city and the communities for evacuees over the next five years? In the mitigation process, we have realized that long-term recovery is not the citys business," Jones said. Its the communities business. The local government is our partner, but we have to figure out how the community plans to keep taking care of our neighbors." The committee was formed to provide a single contact for Hurricane Maria evacuees in Philadelphia to receive continued aid beyond initial FEMA assistance. The Stella Maris Retreat Center in Long Branch, NJ, which is slated to be demolished to make way for four new houses. Read more Before St. Katharine Drexel gave up a $7 million fortune to dedicate her life to religion and charitable works, she was a young heiress playing in the ocean waters of Long Branch, N.J., then a Gilded Age resort for the One Percent. The young St. Katharine and her family traveled from their house in Center City to the pristine shores of the Monmouth County beach town most summers, often staying at publisher George Childs chalet-like cottage next to the house where President Ulysses S. Grant spent his vacations. But for the girl who loved to swim and play at the beach, the Long Branch cottage that would eventually become the Stella Maris Retreat Center was more than the place where she hobnobbed with presidents and business moguls. It was the quiet spot for contemplation where Drexel considered trading in her material wealth for what the Bible calls spiritual treasures in heaven. I am not happy in the world, she wrote in a letter to Bishop James OConner while she was staying at the cottage. There is a void in my heart that only God can fill. For 141 years, the place that served as a refuge for St. Katharine, and later thousands of others, has stood on the six-acre stretch of beach as the towns oldest oceanfront property. But it will soon cede that position to the Ocean Beach Club next door. Stella Maris has been sold to a developer and is slated to be demolished. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, who have owned and operated the retreat center since the early 1940s, have sold it to the Chehebar family, of New York, for $18.5 million. The Brooklyn-based family owns the Rainbow Shops retail chain, which includes more than 1,300 stores throughout the nation. Local officials have approved the familys plan to build four houses on the parcel overlooking the ocean. The propertys fate, now a sad inevitability for preservationists, had been the subject of efforts to save some or all of it for months. >>READ MORE: Remains of St. Katharine Drexel to be moved to the Cathedral Its tough for historic-minded groups to save properties if development pressures are strong and property values are high," said Richard Fernicola, a local historian, author, and longtime resident of Long Branch. They cant raise enough money to buy and save them, Fernicola said. The original cottage was built in 1868 and purchased a year later by George W. Childs, publisher of the Philadelphia Public Ledger and a close family friend of the Drexels. President Grant eventually moved in next door. The white house, called Sea Cliff Villa, designed by Edward T. Potter, resembled a Bavarian-style chalet with wraparound porches that caught the sunlight and ocean breezes. Potter later designed Mark Twains house in Connecticut. Long Branchs whole history and rise during the Gilded Age stems from [Sea Cliff Villa], said local historian Beth Woolley, a trustee of the Long Branch Historical Association. During the late 1800s, the town would become known as the nations summer capital. Presidents Benjamin Harrison and Chester Arthur visited. President James Garfield died there. Actors Lily Langtry and Edwin Booth (half-brother of John Wilkes Booth), Pullman railroad car mogul George Pullman, and financier Diamond Jim Brady also vacationed there. It was in this rarefied air that St. Katharine wrestled with her sense of call, said Cordelia Frances Biddle, author of Saint Katharine: The Life of Katharine Drexel and an instructor at Drexel University. Biddles great-grandmother was St. Katharines cousin, Emilie Drexel Biddle, whose father Anthony founded Drexel University. In 1885, after a stay at a German spa (for what Biddle described as a nervous breakdown brought on by grief over the death of her father), St. Katharine returned to Sea Cliff and wrote OConnor about her calling. If Our Lord wishes me to go to a convent, I should be an idiot, did I not obey the call, she said in one of two letters sent from Long Branch about the tug of religious life. St. Katharines time at Sea Cliff was a huge turning point in her life, Biddle said. The bishop and her family tried to dissuade her from entering a convent, but in 1889 she did it, and two years later founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, headquartered in Bensalem. By 1941, Long Branch had fallen out of favor with the wealthy and become more of a vacation destination for middle-class families, said Randall Gabrielan, vice chair of the Monmouth County Historical Commission. That year, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace purchased Sea Cliffs and turned it into a retreat center, using an ancient title for the Virgin Mary as its name: Stella Maris (Star of the Sea in Latin). Over the next seven decades, as Long Branchs economic fortunes fluctuated, the nuns offered a seaside refuge for contemplation. They added two wings to the building and purchased the property next door that then contained Grants summer house, but demolished it when they couldnt afford to renovate. In 2014, the Englewood Cliffs, N.J.-based nuns, by then an aging and dwindling community, decided to sell. They sold the estate, which had been damaged by Hurricane Sandy, to the Chehebars in 2017, in the midst of a Long Branch building boom that has attracted investors including the family of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. The nuns inserted deed restrictions designed to preserve open space on the property. "We did the best we could in line with our values, said Sister Susan Francois, a leader of the religious community, Everyone that was there is sad that it is no more. Preservationists and government officials began negotiating with the new owners in hopes of saving at least some of the building, said Jim Foley, president of the Long Branch Historical Museum Association. In December, the Chehebars agreed to give preservationists at least two months to raise an estimated $150,000 to $250,000 to move the most historic section (the original cottage built in 1868) to a parcel adjacent to the museum associations nearby headquarters. When the association couldnt raise the money, the group moved to save interior woodworking, a downstairs floor-to-ceiling fireplace and mantels on the first floor the most significant items in a building that had been altered by the nuns, Foley said. The Chehebars agreed to donate the pieces, which have been removed from Stella Maris and will be used at a former Catholic school building that is being transformed into an office co-op. The historic items will be part of a conference room dedicated to St. Katharine, Foley said. If money were no object, if we had someone say, Heres $200,000, just move the whole building, we would have done that, Foley said. Even so, the board is very happy about the resolution, Foley said. The Chehebars donated $50,000 to pay for the woodwork removal and reinstallation, Foley said. But in January, Fernicola decided to launch a last-ditch effort to save the estate. He filed a petition with the New Jersey Historic Preservation Office arguing for the propertys historical and architectural significance, but his application was rejected. Fernicola and Foley will participate in a community discussion about the fate of the property at 7 p.m. March 27 at the Long Branch Free Public Library. The history of the Jersey Shore is undervalued, Fernicola said. People look at summering at the Jersey Shore and think of it just as a vacation spot, but its so much more. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in June 2017, just over a year before he died. President Trump has attacked the Senator's legacy multiple times this week. Read more President Trump has once again decided to attack his old political nemesis, John McCain, raising him from the dead like a perversion of the Lazarus story during this Lenten season. I have something to say about that. But first, a caveat. This column is not for the people who hate this president. Hate is not hyperbole here, because many of them have used the word (and worse), so its fairly clear hes their enemy. Nor is this column for the people who adore our president. Adore is not hyperbole, either, because many have bonded together in tribal allegiance and refuse to acknowledge that Trump has been ignorant, arrogant, and sometimes cruel. This column is for a group of people who may no longer exist, or sometimes feel like they never existed except in my mind. Its for those who havent allowed their fundamental decency to be corrupted by a desire to get back at the other side, and who are able to measure right and wrong independent of their political views. Trump has taken aim at McCain, who died seven months ago, multiple times over the last week. The Trump vs. McCain feud began before Trump even arrived in D.C. When then-candidate Trump lobbed insults at Sen. McCain in 2016, saying he preferred heroes who didnt get captured, I wasnt alone in feeling disgust. Trump and McCain continued to trade barbs throughout the campaign. But its over the past year that things got really ugly and personal. In 2018, when Trump nominated Gina Haspel to replace Mike Pompeo as head of the CIA, McCain was unequivocal in his opposition, citing her involvement in the agencys alleged torture practices under President Bush. Not only that, the former resident of the Hanoi Hilton lobbied other senators to oppose her nomination. Its not surprising that a man who was himself tortured by the North Vietnamese for more than five years would push back against a woman who helped implement the controversial post-9/11 policies. The White House reacted. Kelly Sadler, a special assistant to the president, reportedly quipped that it didnt matter how the senator, who had been diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer, voted because hes dying anyway." That same week, retired Air Force Gen. Tom McInerney implied on Fox News that McCain had been an informant while in captivity, calling him Songbird John. Its true that Trump didnt make either of these comments. But he never condemned them, either. And then, McCain, who knew the end was approaching, made it clear that he didnt want Trump at his funeral. I understood his desire to exclude the man who showed such disrespect and hostility toward him, even as I later criticized his daughter for her eulogy, which was a veiled attack on that same mans character. Still, I hoped that death had put an end to the hostilities. Trump decided to exhume the feud, angered at more details emerging about McCains role in sending the Christopher Steele dossier to the FBI. Trump tweeted about how the late senator graduated last in his class at the Naval Academy, said he wasnt a fan of John McCain, and seemed annoyed that the family hadnt thanked him for giving him the kind of funeral he wanted. Useless to explain that this president didnt give McCain anything to which he wasnt already entitled. And it is foolish to expect Donald Trump to curb the raging furies in his mind and speak with humility and humanity. Hes just not that kind of man. The people who love and make excuses for him call this plain talk, and love the fact that he speaks crudely and with the self-control of a kindergartner. But as I said, this column isnt for them. Its also not for the people whod hate Trump even if he spoke with the eloquence of Winston Churchill. Theyre lost causes, co-opted by passion. This is for the people who cringe when facts are made irrelevant, and when basic decency is thrown out the window. I know youre out there. Speak out and condemn this travesty of defaming a hero, once and for all. The mayor of Shamong sees thinks the cultivation of marijuana will be a boon to his community. Read more New Jersey has apparently resolved its tax issues and other infrastructure problems and is poised to legalize recreational marijuana. Im somewhat surprised that it took this long. Im even more surprised that at least 40 New Jersey towns have already passed laws that ban legal pot shops. Is this indicative of a relatively strong opposition to legalization before the big vote in the Legislature next week? On my radio show, Ive said that the reality of legal pot in New Jersey has forced people to consider some of the practical issues. In fact, I talked about somewhat tongue-in-cheek about an NJ.com article that talked about obesity rates in states that legalized marijuana. According to the article, researchers cited a new study from the University of Connecticut and Georgia State University that found that sales of potato chips, cookies, and ice cream all increased in the months after states such as Colorado, Oregon, and Washington legalized marijuana. The numbers are substantial. Chip sales increased 5.3 percent, cookie sales increased 4.1 percent, and ice cream consumption increased 3.1 percent. They note that these increased purchases were not temporary. The article concludes that a state not known for fitness might be on the cusp of a munchie-fueled obesity upsurge. I offer this downside only to make the point that even though I acknowledge the personal liberty of adults wh choose to use a substance for pleasure, there are no free lunches. However, because of my discussion of this, I found a South Jersey town that wants to be the pot capital of New Jersey. I spoke with Michael DiCroce, the Republican mayor of Shamong Township, N.J., and a politician who sees pot growing and selling as the gateway" to his towns future. Shamong is in the Pine Barrens. The name comes from Native American language and means Place of the Big Horn. It may have to be renamed Place of the Big Bong." The mayor and I discussed his editorial in the Shamong Sun and Pine Barrens Tribune. The mayor, channeling John Lennon, wrote: You may say Im a dreamer but Im not the only one Imagine: What if we could create 100 new jobs in Shamong, drastically cut property taxes, increase home values, help fund our schools and build a new community center complete with Olympic-size pool? In my interview, he even told me that it might be possible for Shamong residents to pay zero property taxes -- in a state notorious for obscene property taxes. He talked a lot to me about the benefits to farmers in his area. In the editorial, he wrote, A good farmer might find a crop where they can make a $20,000 profit on an acre of land. There are no crops or products, where a one acre plot of farm land can bring in $1.6 million in one year almost all of it profit. No fruit, vegetable, corn, or tomato can provide such a massive profit, except for one marijuana. The mayor also dismissed the notion that if his town is immersed in pot, it will be difficult to dissuade teens from greater pot usage. I think the mayor and the elected officials in New Jersey might want to take a look at former New York Times reporter Alex Berensons book Tell Your Children and his reporting on the link between extensive marijuana use and mental illness. I interviewed the author and found him not to be an anti- drug warrior, but a meticulous reporter concerned about the future of his kids. I predict that the vote on legalization next week will be close and that the world wont end in New Jersey. But expect more impaired driving, teenage pot use, and disappointments when big legal sales fail to materialize because of a potential tax of $42 an ounce, and because of a certain perception of seediness attached to pot shops. As far as the mayor is concerned, Shamong may prosper a bit and it fulfill his dream of becoming the pot-growing capital of New Jersey. However, be ready for its new nickname: Shabong. Teacher-turned-talk show host Dom Giordano is heard 9 a.m. to noon weekdays on WPHT (1210-AM). Contact him at www.domgiordano.com. On Twitter at @DomShow1210 Philadelphia Police check tents to make sure there are no people in them at the Emerald Street encampment in January. Read more As the encampments of homeless people in addiction in Kensington grew to the hundreds, they quickly became a devastating national symbol of the opioid crisis. Strewn with discarded needles, trash, and detritus, they were a heartbreaking picture of human misery. The city declared the encampments a disaster and began a plan to clear them. That plan generated public debate; on one side, Kensington residents saw the encampments as a nuisance and public safety risk. Public outcry grew, led by Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez who represents Kensington, fueled by the notion that the people who reside in the encampments were not from Philadelphia. On the other side, some advocates worried that encampment clearing would harm their inhabitants. One of the biggest risks of overdose death is using substances alone; once all the people were dispersed, there would be fewer people nearby with naxolone, the medication that reverses overdoses. . Now, according to a study published earlier this month, the citys efforts have seen success. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania who evaluated the effort found that almost all of the people who lived in the encampments were still alive and many were connected with treatment or shelter. The citys careful planning and implementation of the program, which ultimately cleared four sites, deserves credit. The researchers cited the heroic dimension to the initiative, in which modest resources were pitted against the daunting programs of homelessness and opioid abuse that were particularly intertwined and concentrated in the Kensington area. But ultimately, the massive clearing of encampments was the easy part. The hard part starts now how do we keep encampments from forming again? The new study sheds some light on what happened following the clearing, and points out that both sides of the debate were partially wrong. Contrary to popular opinion, the majority of encampment residents 65 percent were Philadelphians. Of the 35 percent not from Philadelphia, the majority had been in the city for more than a year. Thats a reminder that addiction and homelessness are problems that are native to our city and we cant scapegoat them on an other that brought them here. The advocates who argued that clearing the encampments would be sentencing people to death also were wrong. Researchers were able to engage with 189 encampment residents who were on a by-name list created before the clearing. Only two people of the 189 were deceased by Oct. 15. While there is no benchmark rate of fatal overdose in the encampment for comparison, there was no major city-wide spike in deaths. The most important takeaway from the study is that clearing encampments is not an easy fix to a much bigger problem. While the city was able to offer short-term resources, there are not enough long-term resources such as permanent housing to make a lasting impact that will prevent new encampments. The encampments in Kensington are a symptom of both the opioid crisis and the lack of social services for those who need them most. Investment in housing and resources is the best way to keep them closed. In the kitchen of her Haverford hone, Constance Bookbinder holds her father's pocket watch that connects her to the 1937 Hindenburg zeppelin disaster. On the wall behind her are framed photos of celebrities from now-closed Bookbinder's 15th Street restaurant in Philadelphia. Read more Her story opens with an 80-year-old pocket watch wrapped in mystery and linked to an infamous disaster. That story flows through the fracture of a famous Philadelphia family, and soon may continue in a Center City retirement home. The pocket watch, which Constance Bookbinder, 81, is holding in her hand, is engraved with a name famous like her own Graf Zeppelin. It belonged to her father, Louis F. Cunningham, who was director of public relations for Atlantic City for decades before and after World War II. Her dad told her that he happened to be at Lakehurst, N.J.. that fateful day in May 1937, and witnessed history the explosion and crash of the worlds fastest zeppelin, the Hindenburg, that killed 36 people. WLS radio reporter Herbert Morrisons legendary broadcast, including the words, Oh, the humanity!, told the world what had happened. Constance believes her father was given the watch as a souvenir before the crash. The front shows a zeppelin superimposed over a globe. The reverse is engraved to commemorate two trail blazers the Graf Zeppelin, which went around the world in 1929, and the 16th century explorer Magellan. When Constance found the striking timepiece in a drawer in her Haverford home, she wondered what it might be worth and what she might do with it. She is not looking for money; she wants to place it where it will be appreciated. Constance called me for help, and I went to her home, where she has lived since her husbands death about a dozen years ago. She is not happy rattling around in the four-bedroom condo, and wants to live in Center City. As soon as she can sell the condo, Im going to a retirement home right across from the cathedral, she tells me. Constance looks like a leading lady from a 1940s movie, and often sounds likes shes reading from a script. She was born in Atlantic City, and so was my mother and her mother and all the other relatives, on that tiny spit of sand, she says. Atlantic City was the playground of the world. After college, she moved to New York. I had a job at Young & Rubicam, the second-largest ad agency in the world. I had a date every night, she says, without bragging. In 1960, she married Samuel C. Bookbinder, of the restaurant family, who brought her to Philadelphia. She was 23. They had two boys and a girl, and once the children were in school, Constance became a model at John Wanamaker across from City Hall, doing what we today call greeting. Using her model voice, she says to me, Good afternoon, sir. Today we are having a sale of Omar ties in the mens department. She smiles warmly. They kept me for 30 years, she says, and you know they were happy years. Sams Jewish father known as Murph married a Catholic woman. Sam was raised Catholic and married Constance at St. Patricks Cathedral in New York City. Because of religious intolerance in the family, Murph was exiled from the original Bookbinders restaurant at 125 Walnut St. in Old City, Constance tells me. He retaliated by opening Bookbinders Seafood House at 215 S. 15th St. in Center City in 1935, sealing the schism in the family. The business at 125 Walnut was bought in 1945 by John M. Taxin, whose family owned it until it closed in 2009. Constances husband remained connected with the 15th Street restaurant until his death. It closed in 2004. Doing online research, I learned that her Graf Zeppelin timepiece is part of a series of watches that promoted the German dirigibles. They sell for between $200 and $1,200 depending on condition. I called the National Air and Space Museum in D.C. and the Franklin Institute to ask if either had any interest in the pocket watch. The Air and Space Museum says it wants only unique items, and the institute, which displays both aeronautics and watches, was not interested. When Constance goes to her Center City retirement home, it looks like the watch will be going with her. Oh, the humanity! Meek Mills son, Rihmeek Williams, and his mother, Kathy Williams (background to left), at a rally and sit-in last week. Read more After five years on probation stemming from 2013 drug charges, Jose Pacheco has been referred to almost every treatment program Philadelphia has to offer and he's done nine stints in county jail for technical probation violations, most recently for arriving "incredibly late" for court. Each time he violated, an order known as a detainer would be lodged against him by a probation officer. That meant he'd be locked up indefinitely, without bail, until a judge released him, usually three or four months later. On Monday, his probation officer, Craig Baumbach, showed up in Courtroom 505 to argue Pacheco's probation should be terminated. "I don't think what's going on necessarily warrants jail time," Baumbach told Judge Frank Palumbo. "He's a young man who can't beat his addiction. Personally, I think the more time he spends in jail on State Road, the more he is going to be in front of your honor for years to come." Palumbo disagreed. "The problem I face here," he said, "is I need leverage to hold over his head." Pacheco's probation would continue. The result of this cycle repeating in courtrooms across the city and the state is that Pennsylvania now has the highest rate of citizens under probation or parole supervision in the Northeastern United States, and the third-highest rate in the country, behind Georgia and Idaho, according to an analysis from Columbia University Justice Lab released Wednesday. That's 296,000 people under supervision statewide, and one in 22 adults in Philadelphia. People locked up on violations of parole or probation account for one-third of state prison inmates and more than half of the county jail population. "These numbers are not defensible," said Vincent Schiraldi, the report's author, a Columbia research scientist and a former commissioner of New York City's Probation Department. "They cost you enormous amounts of money. They're not good policy. And they're causing enormous deprivations of liberty that I would assume are making the system seem illegitimate in the eyes of a section of the population particularly, I suspect, young black men." In Philadelphia, 44,000 people are on probation. The most famous among them is, of course, the rapper Meek Mill, who was sentenced to two to four years in prison for probation violations related to a 10-year-old drug and gun case. Tuesday, the state Supreme Court ordered him released on bail. Although city leaders have reduced the jail population 32 percent since July 2015 and District Attorney Larry Krasner ordered his staff to seek shorter probation terms when he came into office the number of people on detainers for probation or parole in Philadelphia jails has fallen at a slower rate, down 21 percent as of March to 3,000, according to Julie Wertheimer, of the city's criminal justice office. In a memo to court leadership, the chief of Philadelphia's Defender Association, Keir Bradford-Grey, made public by WHYY in March, called the current detainer process illegal. She said no one should be detained without judicial approval. At a recent community meeting, she said that city and court leaders are exploring potential reforms: "There's still a presumption of innocence here. So for people to sit in jail for lengthy periods of time awaiting their trials, that's not justice." Why so many people are under supervision in the first place the parole rate, the highest of any state, is three times the national average has a lot to do with Pennsylvania's unusually harsh sentencing laws. Those laws require parole to continue until the end of a person's maximum sentence. (Consider Mill: Even if he were to serve out two years, he would still be on parole for two more.) They also allow for probation terms as long as the maximum legal sentence. According to the report, 31 other states cap probation at five years for most charges. (In any of those states, Mill's case would have been closed years ago.) As Krasner said Monday, during his budget address to City Council, long sentences "put so many hurdles in front of [people], they cannot help but trip." The result is, on any given day, Philadelphia criminal dockets may contain a hundred or so probation-violation listings. In the city's primary violation-of-probation courtroom, Palumbo handles about 60 such hearings in a day. About three-quarters of them are conducted via videoconference from the county jails, each probationer a forlorn figure in a blue prison uniform heard through a tinny speaker. The rest are permitted to walk in off the street. The city did not respond to requests for data on how many people currently in jail on detainers committed technical violations (like failing a drug test or missing a reporting date), as opposed to being charged with a new crime. Technical violators made up a significant number of those coming through Courtroom 505. One man, Bryant Dickenson, spent two weeks at the Detention Center for "absconding," or failing to report to his probation officer. He was homeless at the time. Palumbo quickly permitted his release. Others were charged with new crimes. For them, Palumbo suggested in the courtroom, detainers are useful in that they pressure defendants to take deals. "Even though you're presuming innocence, if [you're in on a detainer], you're either going to have to wait or you're going to take an offer." He added: "If all the detainers get lifted, these cases won't be resolved because people would fight [their cases] from the street." In a case like Pacheco's, probation also functions as leverage, but for a different end. Baumbach, the probation officer, said Pacheco had struggled with drug use Percocet, Xanax, marijuana. He recently nodded off while holding a lit cigarette. A 23-year-old man with a neck tattoo and a 3-year-old son, Pacheco said he wanted to get into treatment. "If you give me a chance, I can do this. I'm tired of going to jail," he told the judge, who warned him if he failed, a "long chill-out time" in state prison would be the next step. The judge expressed irritation with the Krasner administration's requests for less probation. "You need an adversarial system," he told the prosecutor on duty. "I'm not going to have your office lose its leverage." A probation reform bill introduced by State Sen. Anthony Williams in March would erode some of that leverage by limiting probation periods and banning back-to-back prison and probation terms. However, it has not yet advanced in Harrisburg. For now, advocates like ACLU policy counsel Nyssa Taylor are urging the court to simply follow its own rules, and ensure that any detainers are lodged by judges, not probation officers. Schiraldi said the state should go further, and rethink its use of probation and parole altogether. "You need to treat probation and parole like they're finite resources," he said. "There's no way they can supervise 296,000 people. That is too big to succeed." He pointed out that most recidivism occurs within a couple of years of release from prison. "Anything after two years, you get diminishing returns," he said. "That's what you're getting in Pennsylvania today: worse supervision for people who need it the most." On Monday, a few individuals learned their probation had been terminated. They looked shell-shocked, after so many years under the thumb of the system. They actually wept with joy. One was Cymenda Chambers, a 45-year-old phlebotomist who had spent 13 years on probation. "That was because I kept messing up," she said. "I kept running, because I knew I'd have dirty urine. But I was tired of going to jail. I was like, I've got to get myself together." She had been a cocaine user, but she's been clean a year and a half. "I feel so great!" she said. "It's over. I'm a free agent now." Staff writer Chris Palmer contributed to this article. [Editors Note: This story was originally published in fall 2018.] Gentrification has become synonymous with the pushing-out of established residents by newcomers, but a study released this week found no evidence of displacement among homeowners in gentrifying Philadelphia neighborhoods. The study, published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, researched the connection between tax delinquency, homeowner mobility, and gentrification over the last two years. Researchers found that while the increase in tax delinquency is about 4 percentage points higher in gentrifying neighborhoods than in those that have not seen a steep rise in property value, homeowners aren't moving out any more rapidly than they are in nongentrifying areas. In fact, the study found that in the last two years the probability that someone ages 55 to 84 will move actually went down 3.3 percent in those neighborhoods. "Elderly homeowners as well as homeowners with lower credit scores are no more likely to move out of gentrifying neighborhoods," the authors wrote. That's a surprising takeaway in a city seeing unprecedented development, rapid appreciation of home values, and dramatic changes to commercial corridors. The study credits city programs that help longtime homeowners, like the Homestead Exemption and the Longtime Owner Occupants Program (LOOP), with preventing displacement. LOOP was implemented after the city reassessed properties in 2013 and some homeowners saw properties jump in assessment by 300 percent. Under that program, homeowners were eligible for a 10-year tax break if they earned up to 150 percent of area median income, or no more than $124,800 for a household of four. City Council is considering a bill that would expand the program to cover families that make more money and with no limit on how long homeowners get the break. "Philadelphia's LOOP program is quite unique," Lei Ding, who coauthored the study, said. "It seems that in terms of preventing tax foreclosures or delinquencies, it has positive effects in gentrification relief." Another reason homeowners might be staying put despite increased tax costs is that there is less demand for homes in gentrifying neighborhoods. The study found the dip in home sales was potentially due to rising property taxes keeping buyers away. (The decrease could also be affected by 10-year tax abatements running out on certain properties and making them less desirable.) "This is a complicated issue," said Emily Dowdall of the Philadelphia Reinvestment Fund, "but the simple answer is homeowners are probably displaced less by gentrification than you might think." Dowdall has worked on two reports about gentrification in Philadelphia, one that mapped displacement risk citywide and one in 2015 for Pew that found only 15 of the city's 372 census tracts gentrified between 2000 and 2014. Homeowners in gentrifying areas might be more likely to hang onto their homes if they like the changes they see in their neighborhood, Dowdall said. Getting loans to refinance or pay for home repairs can also be easier for them. "If you live in Fishtown, and the bank looks at comparable prices in the neighborhood, they're going to see really high prices and they'll be more comfortable making a loan," she said. "If the applicant lives in an area where prices are falling, that bank may not make the loan at the same level." Another important caveat: Renters, who make up nearly half of all residents in the city and are vulnerable to displacement, are not factored into the study. Homeowners were tracked using credit scores, which is one of the best ways available to trace mobility, Dowdall said, but it doesn't include people who don't have credit. Even the definition of gentrification can effect studies like this. The Federal Reserve factored in median rent, home value and college education to its analysis of which neighborhoods had gentrified. The Reinvestment Fund, in its 2016 study of displacement, considered home prices over time compared to income at a fixed point in time. "If I could afford to buy a home here 10 years ago, and I can't today, then I'm not moving into this neighborhood anymore and I'm not going to stay here for very long," said Nora Lichtash of the community development organization the Women's Community Revitalization Project. "To me, that's good data." Lichtash, whose group builds affordable housing in gentrifying and low-income neighborhoods, said the findings just don't compute with what she's seeing: people foreclosed on or selling because housing repairs become too costly. "What I've seen, and I don't have a huge data set, this is just what I see every day, are people who are selling their houses because they can't repair them and there's someone at their door with cash in hand," she said. Lichtash is part of a team from the city working with the All-In Cities Anti-Displacement Policy Network, a collaboration among 10 cities, many that have gentrified faster than Philadelphia. Theyre telling us, Oh my God, you are so lucky. You have this opportunity to see the problem and get ahead of it, Lichtash said. People were saying theres no problem in Brooklyn for a really long time until they couldnt say it any more. FILE - In this Dec. 13, 2018 file photo, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington. A key House Democrat is renewing demands that the White House turn over documents about the use of private texts or emails by Jared Kushner, saying Kushners lawyer acknowledged that the senior aide used the non-secure WhatsApp application to communicate with foreign leaders. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) Read more (Bloomberg) A key House Democrat is renewing demands that the White House turn over documents about the use of private texts or emails by Jared Kushner, saying Kushners lawyer acknowledged that the senior aide used the non-secure WhatsApp application to communicate with foreign leaders. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said in a letter sent Thursday to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone that the administration has failed to produce documents tied to Kushner and other officials despite requests from the committee since 2017. Cummings also sought a briefing on how the official messages are being preserved. Kushners lawyer, Abbe David Lowell, disputed Cummings description of what Lowell said during a December meeting with oversight panel leaders. In a letter to Cummings on Thursday, Lowell said he told the leaders he didnt know any details about Kushners use of a private communications application, and that he told them to ask the White House counsel about it. I never said his communications through any app was with foreign leaders or officials, Lowell wrote, adding that Kushner has many friends and contacts overseas. I said he has used those communications with some people and I did not specify who they were, Lowell said. The White House didnt immediately respond to requests for comment. But in another stand-off with House Democrats, Cipollone on Thursday rejected a request renewed last week from Cummings and two other committee chairmen for information on Trumps communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin. WhatsApp Cummings, to underscore his concern about whether unsecured White House communications have included classified information, said in his letter that Lowell acknowledged during the December meeting that Kushner had used the messaging application WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders. Kushner is a senior White House adviser and the son-in-law of President Donald Trump, overseeing the administrations Middle East policies among other issues. Cummings said he and then-Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, a Republican who has since retired from Congress, met with Lowell in December. Cummingss letter said Lowell said that Kushner has been in compliance with the law, and that he takes screenshots of communications on his private WhatsApp account and forwards them to his official White House email account or to the National Security Council. Cummings wrote that when asked whether Kushner ever used WhatsApp to discuss classified information, Lowell replied, Thats above my pay grade. The focus on Kushner and others follows the earlier investigations by the Justice Department and Republican-controlled congressional committees of Hillary Clintons use of a private email server when she served as secretary of state during the Obama administration. Alternative Means In Thursdays letter, Cummings said the White Houses refusal to turn over documents is obstructing the committees investigation into allegations of violations of federal records laws and potential breaches of national security. He demanded that the White House say by March 28 whether it intends to comply voluntarily with the renewed requests. If you continue to withhold these documents from the committee, we will be forced to consider alternative means to obtain compliance, Cummings said. In fact, as you know, the White House has not produced a single piece of paper to the committee in the 116th Congress in this or any other investigation, Cummings wrote, referring to the current session of Congress, when Democrats took control of the House. Cummings said Lowell told the committee that Kushners wife, Ivanka Trump, continues to receive emails related to official business on her personal email account but doesnt forward them to an official account unless she replies to it. That would appear to violate the Presidential Records Act, Cummings said. Lowell said, in his letter, that the discussion of Ivanka Trump not forwarding emails to an official account unless she responded to them referred to the time period before September 2017. Now she always forwards official business to her White House account, Lowell said he told the committee leaders in December. K.T. McFarland Cummings also wrote that his committee has obtained new information about other White House officials that raises additional security and federal records concerns about the use of private email and messaging applications. His letter said others may have been involved in the practice while they worked at the White House, including former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland and former chief strategist Steve Bannon. Cummings said the committee obtained a document that appears to show that McFarland conducted official business on her personal email account. He said the document was related to efforts by McFarland and other White House officials to transfer sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia in coordination with Tom Barrack, a personal friend of President Trump and the chairman of President Trumps inaugural committee. The chairman said another document appeared to show that Bannon received documents pitching the plan from Mr. Barrack through his personal email account, at a time Bannon was at the White House and working on broader Middle East policy. Regarding Trumps communications with Putin, Cummings, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel say they are examining the substance of in-person meetings and phone calls, the effects on foreign policy, and whether anyone has sought to conceal those communications. In a written response Thursday, Cipollone wrote, While we respectfully seek to accommodate appropriate oversight requests, we are unaware of any precedent supporting such sweeping requests. The Constitution gives the executive branch exclusive power to conduct foreign relations, Cipollone said. Congress cannot require the president to disclose confidential communications with foreign leaders. (Updates with responses from Kushner lawyer, Cipollone starting in third paragraph.) To contact the reporters on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net;Shannon Pettypiece in Washington at spettypiece@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asseo 2019 Bloomberg L.P. Artist's rendering of Midwood's proposed Italian Market apartment building, as seen from Washington Avenue and Ninth Street looking east. Read more Midwood Investment & Development of New York has tweaked its proposal for an apartment building on Ninth Street in South Philadelphias Italian Market to include fewer units after some neighbors said the project was too big for the neighborhood. Midwoods latest plan for the site on the southeast corner of Ninth Street and Washington Avenue calls for a six-story building with 157 apartments, according to documents posted Wednesday to the website of the Philadelphia Civic Design Review Board. Thats down from the eight-story, 182-unit building proposed in October. When nearby residents led by the Passyunk Square Civic Association agreed not to oppose a 2015 zoning change that permitted the project, Midwoods plan had been for an even smaller building, with five stories and 70 units. So when the eight-story iteration was proposed in October, some balked at what they saw as a bait-and-switch by the developer. Sarah Anton, president of the Passyunk Square Civic Association, said the new version assuages most community members concerns about the projects height and density. But community members still oppose having the entrance to the buildings underground parking garage on Ninth Street, where they fear it could stunt the ongoing revitalization of whats sometimes called the Lower Italian Market, she said. Midwoods project would occupy a three-quarter-acre site thats now home to the Anastasi Seafood fish market and restaurant, which is moving elsewhere within the Italian Market, and surrounding vacant land. Much of the buildings ground floor is to consist of 15,600 square feet of street-facing shops or restaurants, with the buildings two-story, 120-space parking garage being built below ground, according to the plans. Midwood also owns the nearby building at Ninth and Christian Streets that is currently home to the restaurant Monsu and is a large owner of property on South Streets eastern end, where its holdings include the Sixth and South Street property where Federal Donuts recently opened. Its Center City holdings include the glass structure at 15th and Walnut Streets that accommodates a Cheesecake Factory restaurant. Midwoods Italian Market project is scheduled to be presented April 2 to the Civic Design Review Board, which offers nonbinding recommendations on Philadelphias biggest development projects. The first group of townhouses planned by Shovel Ready Projects is going up next to Penn Treaty Park on the Delaware River. The company plans another 58 homes where the white industrial building now stands. Instead of bringing density to the river, these two developments will feel like suburban enclaves. Read more When Philadelphia released its master plan for the Central Delaware waterfront in 2011, it changed the way the city thought about that chaotic junkspace of warehouses, strip malls, and gas stations. Instead of repeatedly trying and failing to imitate the elegant, skyscraper-lined waterfronts of Vancouver and Miami, the plan argued that Philadelphia should focus on attracting more modest residential projects to the river. Mid-rise apartments were what the market wanted, the plan concluded. It sounded like smart advice at the time. By spacing out those smaller buildings, the thinking went, the city would create the beginnings of a true urban streetscape along Delaware Avenue. The mid-rises would populate the river, bringing just enough people to Delaware Avenue to support retail and justify adding a trolley line. The waterfronts zoning was adjusted to make it easy to erect buildings under 25 stories, using a category called CMX-3. Yet despite considerable enthusiasm for the strategy, the story has played out very differently. Only one mid-rise has gone up over the last decade: PMCs 16-story One Water Street, next to the Ben Franklin Bridge. Virtually every other residential project has been townhouses. The problem on the waterfront today isnt overbuilding, said Matt Ruben, the longtime chairman of the Central Delaware Advisory Group. Its underbuilding. Townhouses have always been Philadelphias favorite housing form, so its not surprising to see them migrate to the Delaware. Compared to what exists on the waterfront, townhouses are a real improvement. Theyre a significantly better use than the Wawa gas stations and storage facilities that some developers have proposed. At the same time, those townhouses are doing little to further the master plans goal of creating a walkable, mixed-use riverfront neighborhood. The Delaware waterfronts greatest asset has always been its stunning views and the availability of large, empty tracts of land. The problem with building townhouses on those sites is that they consume lots of space, yet add little in the way of population. None of the new developments are dense enough to support retail. Worst of all, the townhouse designs generally follow a suburban model, one that results in self-contained, auto-centric enclaves. Take the two townhouse projects now going up in Fishtown on adjacent sites between Penn Treaty Park and SugarHouse Casino. Although the two clusters the Views at Penn Treaty and 1121 N. Delaware Ave. will be only a street-width apart, they will function as discrete islands of habitation. A quick look at the ground plan shows that a landscaped median strip will form a hard border between the Views and 1121. None of their interior streets will connect. That means, if you live at 1121 N. Delaware and want to visit someone in the Views at Penn Treaty, youll have to leave your compound and walk along Delaware Avenue. In a city defined by its street grid, no arrangement could be less urban. Both projects are the work of the same developer, Shovel Ready Projects. Because the company acquired the two sites in separate deals, it has treated them as unrelated projects, even though they are contiguous and could easily be combined into a single development. The houses even look alike. Despite their suburban configuration or maybe because of it the 19 houses at the Views, and the 58 planned for 1121, are already selling for $1.5 million to $2 million, according to George Polgar, Shovel Readys marketing director. But the same sites could have supported several hundred apartments or condos. The popularity of such low-density townhouse developments has become deeply concerning to the two groups charged with overseeing the master plan, the Delaware River Waterfront Corp. and the Central Delaware Advisory Group. Ruben said he worries the waterfront will end up with a string of suburban-style subdivisions. The townhouses could also undermine the expensive infrastructure investments the DRWC has been making to lure developers to the river. Because of the haphazard way the Central Delaware had developed in the past, the master plan called for a series of parks along the six-mile stretch there. The belief was that improvements would make the waterfront more attractive to developers, who would then build apartments overlooking the parks. The centerpiece of the plan is an 11-acre cap that will span I-95 between Market and Walnut Streets, reconnecting Front Street in Old City with the Delaware waterfront. The cap, which will be covered with a lush green park, is costing the city $225 million. The first phase of work started last summer. Yet the promise of that park was not enough to persuade an Old City developer to abandon the townhouse model at Front and Sansom Streets. Even though the site, a former parking lot, will have a front row seat on the new park, the developer, U.S. Construction, is now completing the construction of 19 townhouses. Thats not much of a return on a $225 million investment. Job Itzkowitz, who runs the Old City District, told me he was baffled by the developers thinking. This is the biggest park project in the city, he said. It should be more dense. Only a block away, in Society Hill, another developer has proposed a 31-story tower, 1 Dock Street. Its odd for two developers to see the market so differently. Ironically, the same developer, U.S. Construction, is now considering adding apartments to a townhouse development it plans to build on the Delaware in South Philadelphia. The Front Street site, like most of the land along the rivers edge, is zoned CMX-3, which allows for mid-rise development. But like Shovel Ready Projects, U.S. Construction chose to build less that what the zoning allowed. In a city where developers are always scouring the zoning code for ways to cram more onto their land, why would they build less? There are several possible explanations. Building apartments costs more per unit and take longer than townhouses, especially on the waterfront where the ground is marshy and requires expensive engineering. While housing developers are responding to market demand, they are also responding to the demands of their lenders. Those lenders want to see a quick profit. Townhouses ensure they get it. But Ruben believes there is another reason: Too many loopholes in the CMX-3 zoning classification. He has been working with city planners to revise the zoning code in the hope of encouraging more mid-rises on the Delaware. Its going to be tough to convince developers, said Polgar, of Shovel Ready Projects. Townhouses sell well," he said. "There is a demand for them. And thats what we do well. Changing the zoning code wont solve all the Delawares problems. But without it, the riverfront is in danger of turning into a long, endless suburb. The act of generosity has been shown to have several health benefits, but its also important to be generous to yourself. This is especially true during the holiday season when anxiety, tension and added pressure are common. Hold'em with Holloway, Vol. 102: Committing ICM Suicide with Overpairs March 20, 2019 Chad Holloway This past weekend I attended my first-ever Heartland Poker Tour stop as a live reporter. The $1,650 Main Event at Hollywood Casino St. Louis attracted 444 entries and ultimately saw 47-year-old attorney Bill Byrnes come out on top to the tune of $148,587. During my time at the event, I took note of three interesting hands I thought I'd discuss in this week's edition of Hold'em with Holloway. Hand #1 Protect Your Aces On Day 1b of the tournament, it was early in Level 4 (100/300/300) when Jeff Fielder opened for 800 from the hijack and Craig Casino, the HPT's all-time money leader, called from the cutoff. Andy Rogowski came along from the button, then the player in the small blind three-bet to 2,200. "This hand is indicative of what happens when you don't protect your aces." Fielder called and that priced in both Casino and Rogowski to make it four-way action to the flop. The small blind led out for 5,000 and both Fielder and Casino folded. Rogowski then raised to 11,000 and the small blind three-bet all in for approximately 30,000. Rogowski, who didn't have too much more than that, quickly called. Rogowski: Small Blind: Rogowski had flopped bottom set to pull ahead of the aces and he locked it up on the turn when the gave him quads. The meaningless was run out on the river and Rogowski was pushed the pot. The Lesson: This hand is indicative of what happens when you don't protect your aces. Granted, the small blind did put in a three-bet, but it wasn't nearly enough. By making it just 1,400 more over the initial 800 raise he was sure to get called. If called by the original raiser, in this case, Fielder, it would easily give the other two players the right price, which is exactly how it played out. Being out of position, the small blind needed to make it a lot more. I'd lean towards at least popping it to 4,000. That's a price more likely to either swipe the pot or get a couple of players to fold. It's much better to go heads-up to a flop holding the granddaddy of all hands. As it played out, the small blind probably should've known something was up when Rogowski raised. Being four-way action, that sort of flop was likely to hit one of the limpers. A better option may have been just to call the raise and check the turn to see what Rogowski did then. And if he were to bet big, it would be time to divorce those aces and fold. Hand #2 Thinking Too Long? Allen "Chainsaw" Kessler On Day 2 in Level 16 (2,000/5,000/5,000), action folded to Allen "Chainsaw" Kessler on the button and he raised to 13,000. Jerod Smith was in the big blind and three-bet jammed for 54,000 total. Kessler thought for a solid 90 seconds, maybe more, before making the call. Kessler: Smith: It was a flip and Smith was just looking to hold to stay alive. He did so through both the flop and turn, but then the spiked on the river to pair Kessler. "Take longer next time, Allen," Smith said before heading for the exit. The table then debated how long it took Kessler to act, with the man himself believing it was an appropriate amount of time given a call essentially cost him half his remaining stack. The Lesson: Having watched the hand, I understand Kessler's position and that a call was for a large portion of his stack, but he might've thought about what he'd do before putting in the initial raise. He was on the button after all with two short stacks in the blinds. There was a good chance a three-bet shove was coming, so to me, it's one of those spots where if you raise you should be doing so with a predetermined plan of either folding or calling a shove. I'm not a fan of raising without a plan. That said, I think Kessler was always going to call in this spot, but just needed a little extra time to do so. In the end, I don't think it was that big a deal or too inappropriate, but I could relate to Smith's frustrations. Hand #3 An Absolute Monster Pot Danny Hoeft Late on Day 2 in Level 21 (8,000/16,000/16,000) the biggest pot of the tournament up to that point went down and it contained about 25 percent of the chips in play. It began with 18 players remaining when Tim Burden raised to 40,000 and his neighbor to the left, Danny Hoeft, three-bet to 200,000. Action folded back to Burden and he called to see a flop. Burden check-called a bet of 200,000, then the dealer burned and turned the . Burden slammed down a bet of 500,000 and Hoeft called, then the river completed the board. Burden moved all in for 1.099 million and Hoeft, who had 1.04 million, opted to call off with . It was no good, though, as Burden, the 2018 MSPT Indiana State Poker champion, had flopped a set with his . Hoeft, who had been the chip leader with 18 players left, was barely covered at that point and took his leave in 18th place for $6,266. Burden went on to make the final table as the chip leader but ultimately fell in seventh place for $20,673. The Lesson: Like the aces in the first hand above, it's important not to get married to overpairs. Not only did Hoeft get attached to his ladies, he did so against the one player in the tournament who had him covered. He had multiple opportunities to ditch them after the big lead out on the turn, and especially facing the river shove and still have a big stack with which to work. But he couldn't find the fold button and dusted off a final table stack, as well as a lot of ICM value in one big game of chicken. By Lizbeth Diaz and Jose Gallego Espina TIJUANA, Mexico/SAN DIEGO (Reuters) Three asylum seekers due to be returned to Mexico after appearing in U.S. immigration court on Tuesday asked officials to let them stay in the United States because they feared for their safety while waiting out the process in Mexico. The requests are a new approach by migrants in response to President Donald Trumps recent policy that requires people seeking protection in the United States to wait for their U.S. court dates in Mexican border towns, part of his hard line stance to halt migration. Some 240 people including families have been returned to Mexico since late January under the program, dubbed Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), according to U.S. officials. Six Central American migrants who crossed from Tijuana through the San Ysidro port of entry had their cases heard at a San Diego courthouse in the programs first day of hearings on Tuesday. All were told to return to Mexico. Robyn Barnard, a lawyer from the nonprofit group Human Rights First, said she asked officials to let her two Honduran clients stay in the United States. Both are afraid of returning to Tijuana to wait for their next hearings in early August. Tijuana, like much of Mexicos northern border zone, has seen extensive bloodshed since the federal government began using the military against drug cartels over a decade ago. Mexico is not a safe place for all people, and there are vulnerable groups at risk, Barnard told reporters after the hearing. Her clients would remain at a U.S. Port of Entry on Tuesday night, ahead of interviews with asylum officers, likely the next day, Barnards assistant said. One client, 19-year-old Ariel, said he left Honduras because of gang threats and gave only his middle name because he feared reprisals. He was among the first group of asylum seekers sent back to Mexico on Jan. 30 and given a notice to appear in U.S. court in San Diego. God willing everything will move ahead and I will be able to prove that if I am sent back to Honduras, Ill be killed, he said prior to the hearing. Mariel Villarreal, an immigration lawyer with San Francisco-based Pangea Legal Services, said she asked that her client from Guatemala be allowed to stay in the United States. They are just being sent back to homelessness in Tijuana, she said, adding that Mexican officials are not explaining how returnees can earn work permits. U.S. officials have said they are working with the Mexican government to ensure migrants are safe while they wait in Mexico. But some Mexican officials have warned the countrys border cities would struggle to look after asylum seekers for long periods. GENEROUS LAWS The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups are suing in federal court to halt the MPP program, which is part of a series of measures the Trump administration has taken to curb the flow of mostly Central American migrants trying to enter the United States. The administration says most asylum claims, especially for Central Americans, are rejected, but because of immigration court backlogs people are often released and live in the United States for years waiting for their cases to be resolved. The government has said the new program is aimed at ending the exploitation of our generous immigration laws. Critics say the program violates U.S. law and international norms because migrants are sent back to often dangerous towns in Mexico where it is difficult to keep track of their U.S. court dates and to find legal help. Gregory Chen, director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said there are real concerns about carrying out this major shift in U.S. immigration policy. The government did not have its shoes tied when they introduced this program, he said. Immigration advocates are watching how the proceedings will be carried out this week, especially after scheduling glitches created confusion around three hearings last week, according to a report in the San Diego Union Tribune. The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which runs U.S. immigration courts under the Department of Justice, said only that it uses its regular court scheduling system for the MPP hearings and did not respond to a question about the reported scheduling problems. (Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Tijuana and Jose Gallego Espina in San Diego; writing and additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Daina Beth Solomon in Mexico City; Editing by Bill Trott and Darren Schuettler) 2.4k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) warned that more indictments are coming and that Congress is working to change the law so that Trump cant avoid indictment. Jon Cooper reported: BREAKING: "I do believe there are indictments waiting for this president, Congressman @EricSwalwell just said. Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) March 19, 2019 Swalwell confirmed that indictments are coming: Indictments are coming We're working to extend the statute of limitations, so that NO ONE is above the law. https://t.co/BbzXzH3ZzE Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) March 20, 2019 Trump could be indicted The possibility of Trump getting indicted is getting more real by the day. Rep. Eric Swalwell sits on both the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees. He knows what is going on more than anyone in the pundit class who spends their day speculating on Muellers next move. Indictments are coming. Its just a matter of who is going to be indicted. More indictments coming would explain why Trump is attacking John McCain and has generally been out of control. The hammer is about to come down, and Trump can sense it. If Congress could change the law it means that America might not have wait until a prosecutor decides to test whether or not a sitting president can be indicted. Trump could face indictment while he is sitting in the Oval Office. For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group. Follow Jason Easley on Facebook 1.6k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) The widow and daughter of John McCain on Wednesday criticized President Donald Trump and his online supporters for repeated attacks on the former U.S. senator, Republican presidential nominee and Vietnam War hero who was tortured during five and a half years spent as a prisoner of war. Speaking on Wednesday to an employee at an Ohio factory that makes military tanks, Trump again hammered McCain. So I have to be honest, Ive never liked him much, Trump said. I really probably never will. But there are certain reasons for it. Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late senator, spent the last few days defending her father and politely criticizing Trump. On Wednesday she said the president had reached a new, bizarre low attacking someone who is not here is a new low. She also said, If I had told my dad he would think it is so hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death. Barely six months after McCains death, Trump started the latest exchange between himself and the McCain clan on Sunday in a blast of Tweets, including one that attacked last in his class (Annapolis) John McCain. A spokeswoman for Meghan McCain said she was not immediately available for further comment. Cindy McCain, the senators widow, sarcastically urged her Twitter followers to see how kind and loving a stranger can be and shared with them an online message from someone who described John McCain as a traitorous piece of warmongering shit and Im glad hes dead. On Tuesday, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office while sitting next the president of Brazil, Trump added: I never was a fan of John McCain, and I never will be. The tweets and soundbites triggered a swirl of anti-McCain attacks and pro-McCain appeals on social media, like the one Cindy McCain shared, and cable TV discussion. Without rebuking Trump, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in a Tweet: Today and every day I miss my good friend John McCain. It was a blessing to serve alongside a rare patriot and genuine American hero in the Senate. Republican Senator Johnny Isakson was more critical. In an interview with Georgia Public Broadcasting on Wednesday, he called Trumps remarks about McCain deplorable. The White House had no comment on Trumps latest attacks. Trump on Wednesday expressed concern about McCains role in the handling of a dossier, compiled before the 2016 U.S. presidential election by a former British spy and paid for by lawyers for the Democratic Party and Hillary Clintons presidential campaign. The dossier alleged Russian financial dealings with Trump and included salacious personal details that remain unconfirmed. After the election, a copy of the dossier was given to McCain, who gave it to the FBI, according to court documents that were made public last week. Trump and his supporters have aggressively attacked the document ever since its contents became public. John McCain received a fake and phony dossier He got it, and what did he do? He didnt call me, Trump said during his visit to the Ohio factory. He turned it over to the FBI hoping to put me in jeopardy and thats not the nicest thing to do. (Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Dan Grebler and Nick Carey) 1.3k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard Rachel Maddow showed why Trump is setting himself up for failure by refusing to comply and turn over anything to Democratic investigators. Maddow said: In 1973 president Nixon tried to make history when he decided he tried not to hand over the congress anything that he did not want them to see that pertained to Watergate, specifically the white house tapes that they had learned of the existence of. That forced a subpoena on the white house for those tapes. Nixon defied the subpoena. That ended up in court. The special prosecutors demand for those materials, those tapes ended up going all the way to the U.S. Supreme court. And this is really famous. I mean, lets say you only know three things about Richard what are the three things you know? You know like Nixon had to resign the presidency, had a dog named Checkers, Supreme Court made him hand over the tapes, right? Even if you only know three things about Richard Nixon, even if you know nothing else about Richard Nixon, you know that unanimously in U.S. v. Nixon, the president was not allowed to say no, no, you cant visit. I say you cant. But that no, no, you cant have it policy today was rolled out by the trump administration. They plan to give no documents, no materials to make no witnesses available. And, again, well see how that works out. Honestly, in the courts, we know how it will work out. This has been tested before. This has been tried before. It doesnt work out well for a president who tries this. But in the meantime, while we are starting down the path to get there, in the meantime, if that is where this is heading, the speed at which this is all going to unfold and how everybody looks in the history books when its all over will depend in large part on whether Republicans in Congress, members of the presidents only party in Congress can summon the energy to care about a president who is trying to not only do this to Democrats but trying to do this to them as well. Video: #maddow shows how Trump is heading for an epic crash and burn in his latest showdown with Congress. https://t.co/grj0bGFgbf pic.twitter.com/WYfprJ3MSt Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) March 21, 2019 Trumps Just Say No Strategy Will Blow Up In His Face There is zero long-term planning in this administration. The Trump administration is fighting the document requests because Trump is stalling for time. Trump is trying to use his presidential power to obstruct investigations with delay tactics until after the 2020 election. Trump is hoping that he wins reelection, Republicans win back the House, and all of these investigations go away in January 2021. Presidents who have their backs against the wall and are fighting for the survival of their administration think about survival in terms of days and weeks, not years. Trump is hoping that if he stalls long enough, the House Democrats will go away, but we already know how this chapter of the story ends. Trump is going to get subpoenaed and he is going to lose. What should have been normal government oversight will be turned into a spotlight-stealing showdown, as the nation will watch Trump spectacularly crash and burn. For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group. Follow Jason Easley on Facebook 1.2k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) is looking to investigate Jared Kushner for leaking classified info through his use of WhatsApp. What Cummings is investigating should terrify the White House. Rep. Cummings is looking into whether Jared Kushner leaked classified information to foreign leaders through WhatsApp. Rep. Cummings wrote that the White House is obstructing investigations into violations of federal recordkeeping laws by members of the Trump administration, The White Houses failure to provide documents and information is obstructing the Committees investigation into allegations of violations of federal records laws by White House officials. The Committee requests that you confirm by March 28, 2019, whether you intend to comply voluntarily with its requests or whether the Committee should consider alternative means to obtain the information it needs to conduct its investigation. The Committee has jurisdiction over the Presidential Records Act and our oversight over compliance with the law will inform whether additional changes to strengthen the law are necessary. Cummings sent this letter to the White House: 2019-03-21.EEC to Cipollone-WH The White Houses position is to deny every document and witness request by investigators. The Trump White House is going to turn nothing over, and they are going to the extra mile to protect Trumps son in law, and national security risk, Jared Kushner. Rep. Cummings wants to know if Jared Kushner has breached national security. Trump can only delay and protect his son in law for so long. Eventually, Chairman Cummings will issue subpoenas, and he will get the information. It is just a matter of time before Jared Kushner will be facing justice for his potential crimes. For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group. Follow Jason Easley on Facebook 1.5k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough this morning agreed with George Conway that President Donald Trump no doubt shows evidence of cognitive decline. The Washington attorney, who is the husband of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, has been involved in a feud with the president, whom he suggests has a mental illness as well as other mental and physical disabilities. George Conway just tweeted a link to that decades-old interview between Tom Brokaw and Donald Trump, said Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski. Here is the tweet from Conway: Also possible. Theres a clip of Trump online talking to Tom Brokaw thirty years ago and Trump is speaking in complete, coherent sentences. Its quite a remarkable contrast to today, when all you get are these often incomprehensible word salads. Also possible. Theres a clip of Trump online talking to Tom Brokaw thirty years ago and Trump is speaking in complete, coherent sentences. Its quite a remarkable contrast to today, when all you get are these often incomprehensible word salads. https://t.co/7qvVeSU77C George Conway (@gtconway3d) March 21, 2019 MSNBC then showed the Trump-Brokaw interview from 1980 when Trump was 33. He appears very articulate and speaks coherently, unlike today. Flashback: 33-year-old Donald Trump talks NYC real estate in 1980 interview with Tom Brokaw: Flashback: 33-year-old Donald Trump talks NYC real estate in 1980 interview with Tom Brokaw: https://t.co/1HBbKxXUqV pic.twitter.com/ZO1JdXeGei MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 22, 2015 Scarborough said he agreed with Conways analysis of Trumps mental state. He said that Donald Trump today is much less mentally sharp and he speaks erratically, with jumbled syntax. There is no doubt that what George Conway is getting at is the case, the Morning Joe co-host explained. He rambles and speaks in word salads right now, unlike earlier tapes. Co-host Willie Geist said he was not able to diagnose the president with any specific mental illness, but he did agree that Donald Trump is noticeably different than he used to be when he was much younger. Im not a doctor, Im not going to make any medical diagnosis but you believe your eyes when you see two pieces of tape that are very different, Geist said. Donald Trump May Be Senile, Mentally Ill, Or Both MSNBC has done us a service today by showing the video of the way Donald Trump used to be. It is not unusual for men like Donald Trump to lose mental acuity and even suffer from progressive dementia as they age. In June our president will turn 73 years of age, and it is very likely that his mental and physical health will both continue to deteriorate during the rest of his presidential term. George Conway has had the courage to take on Donald Trump and tell the world through his Twitter account that our president has lost his mind. Even though he is married to a top Trump adviser, Conway has not backed down from a fight with Trump on social media. And most people agree that he has won that fight. Donald Trump Is Mentally Unfit to Be President Conway has not slandered Donald Trump because he has told the truth, and truth is a defense to a charge of slander. The truth is that Donald Trump is mentally ill, and is not fit to be the leader of the free world who is in charge of the U.S. nuclear codes. Donald Trump should be removed from office as soon as possible because he is a threat to the United States and to the entire world. CLICK HERE to watch the Morning Joe discussion on MSNBC 488 SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard Giving in to concerns about safety and overcrowding, the Trump administration has been forced to release hundreds of detained migrants from federal facilities as well as to stop detaining any more people attempting to enter the United States without documentation. This move proves that Donald Trumps zero tolerance policy of arresting and incarcerating migrants has been a failure which has caused many more problems than it solved. According to The Los Angeles Times, the U.S. Border Patrol has released several hundred migrants from detention centers in Texas due to severe overcrowding in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities. One group of 200 migrants, mostly families with children, was released into the Rio Grande Valley on Wednesday, while 50 more were released the day before, the Times reported. In addition, there will be more releases from ICE facilities every day until the number of detainees is reduced to manageable levels. It is a crisis, a Border Patrol official who remained anonymous told the Times. Its not a self-proclaimed crisis. Apprehensions of migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico increased in February to more than 66,000, a jump of 38 percent from the month before. This equaled the highest levels of migrant apprehensions at any time during the past ten years, according to government figures. It reached a breaking point, an official with ICE said. Volunteers with groups that assist migrants said that the Trump administrations decision to release migrants in large numbers now is an attempt to influence American opinion about the conditions at the Mexican border. I feel like theyre trying to put some stress on the volunteer and advocacy groups, all of us touting Theres no crisis down here, activist Elizabeth Cavazo told the Times. Maybe its for them to save face because theyve been calling this a border crisis and everythings peachy keen down here. Thats what it feels like. Trumps Immigration Policies Have Failed The new program is at odds with Trumps opposition to the practice called catch and release, in which families who are detained after crossing the border are later released. Trump has often railed against the policy, including when he said last year that border agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release. This is when he ordered Attorney General Jeff Sessions to put in place the zero tolerance program which required that all adults be arrested and detained, and their minor children removed from their custody. The move caused an international outcry and Trump was accused of kidnapping children in order to enforce his immigration policies. Although federal officials have said that overcrowding and safety concerns required them to change to the new program, there are other issues at play as well. Conditions at ICE detention facilities have come under scrutiny over the past year. There have been charges of abuse as well as the deaths of multiple children in the custody of the Border Patrol. Donald Trumps immigration policies have clearly failed. Nothing he has done has come close to solving any real problems that America has with immigrants. And, now he has been forced to admit that his policies have actually created additional problems, including abuse and deaths of children. Donald Trumps presidency has failed, and its time for new leadership to address and provide real solutions to the problems of our country. 1.1k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard CNNs Jim Acosta caught Trump is an epically dumb lie, as no presidential approval was required for John McCains funeral. Trump said in Ohio, I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I dont care about this. I didnt get thank you. Thats ok. We sent him on the way, but I wasnt a fan of John McCain. Video of Trump: President Trump on John McCain: "I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve. I don't care about this. I didnt get thank you. That's ok. We sent him on the way, but I wasn't a fan of John McCain." pic.twitter.com/hG4XwOiIBO CSPAN (@cspan) March 20, 2019 CNNs Jim Acosta found out that no presidential approval is required for government officials other than former presidents: According to the Washington National Cathedral, this is false: "Only a state funeral for a former president involves consultation with government officials. No funeral at the Cathedral requires the approval of the president or any other government official. https://t.co/x4llFGpwWQ Jim Acosta (@Acosta) March 21, 2019 Trump engaged in an incredibly stupid, petty, and easily disproven lie Trump did do one thing that John McCain wanted. He didnt show up. McCain intentionally did not invite Trump to his funeral. Donald Trump had nothing to do with planning or approving anything relating to McCains funeral. It was Trump who refused to order the flags lowered to half staff for McCain until a public outcry forced him to do it. Donald Trump is the only person in America who could fight with a dead man and lose. For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group. Follow Jason Easley on Facebook Charleston, SC (29403) Today Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 77F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Mostly cloudy this evening with showers developing after midnight. Low 56F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%. Participants make their way down Meeting Street to the finish line during the 41st annual Cooper River Bridge Run in 2018. Benefitfocus has agreed to be one of the event's top sponsors for the next three years. File/Brad Nettles/Staff Get the SC business stories that matter. Our newsletter catches you up with all the business stories that are shaping Charleston and South Carolina every Monday and Thursday at noon. Get ahead with us - it's free. Tony Bartelme, senior projects reporter for The Post and Courier, has earned national honors from the Nieman, Scripps, Loeb and National Press foundations and is a four-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Twitter: @tbartelme Signal: 843-412-2283. Adam Parker has covered many beats and topics for The Post and Courier, including race and history, religion, and the arts. He is the author of "Outside Agitator: The Civil Rights Struggle of Cleveland Sellers Jr.," published by Hub City Press. Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations. Political Reporter Caitlin Byrd is a political reporter at The Post and Courier and author of the Palmetto Politics newsletter. Before moving to Charleston in 2016, her byline appeared in the Asheville Citizen-Times. To date, Byrd has won 17 awards for her work. Assistant Columbia bureau chief Adcox returned to The Post and Courier in October 2017 after 12 years covering the Statehouse for The Associated Press. She previously covered education for The P&C. She has also worked for The AP in Albany, N.Y., and for The Herald in Rock Hill. NICOLLET, Minn. Finding support for a tax credit for farmland buffer strips, managing chronic wasting disease in deer, controlling Palmer amaranth called the No. 1 weed problem in the country improving public boat landings and finding a middle ground on the battle over mowing road ditches are just a few of the issues facing Minnesotas new top agriculture official and new Department of Natural Resources leader. Ag Commissioner Thom Petersen and DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen recently met with residents in Nicollet. Strommen said Gov. Tim Walzs budget proposal for the agency focuses on three areas: connecting people to the outdoors, focusing on public engagement and developing more partnerships between the DNR and other agencies, conservation groups and local governments. She said Walzs proposal for $4.6 million from the general fund to combat CWD would be the first time the agency got money for the effort outside of deer hunting license revenue. "We have a very narrow window to affect this disease." She said the state must act aggressively on controlling the deadly and highly contagious disease or have the problem grow out of control. Beyond protecting the herd and helping hunters, Strommen said controlling CWD is an economic issue for "all the communities that turn orange in the fall." She said Walzs budget would also increase funding for trail maintenance. "Everyone likes to fund new things," she said, but all the added trails over the years have increased maintenance needs, which havent seen increased funding. And the governor is calling for an increase in boat registration fees, which hasnt gone up since 2006, and for fees that fight aquatic invasive species, which has been the same since the 1990s. Peterson said helping farmers who have seen years of low crop prices is a top priority. He said his agencys proposed budget puts more focus on expanding trade opportunities for agriculture, protecting the food supply, controlling diseases in livestock and working with the Legislature to provide a property tax credit for farmers who were required to add vegetative buffers strips along ditches and waterways under a law passed during the Mark Dayton administration. Walz has supported providing a $50 per acre tax credit for land that was put into buffers. Frentz said he and others are pushing for a more generous effort that would cost taxpayers more. It would have counties eliminate property taxes on buffer lands and have the state then reimburse counties 100 percent to make up for that lost tax revenue. Petersen said his department is committed to battling Palmer amaranth, which has been found in five counties. It is a large type of pigweed that has devastated crops in the South and has spread to half of the counties in Iowa. He said Minnesota has been able to eradicate the weed so far and said finding and removing it is vital to protect crops. Petersen also said finding new trade partners for farm products is needed after tariffs have significantly cut trade with China. RED WING The March meeting of the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board will be held Monday at the St. James Hotel in Red Wing. The meeting will be preceded by an open house to gather information about conducting a general environmental impact statement on nitrates in the groundwater of the karst region of Southeast Minnesota. The EQB, which is made up of the heads of nine Minnesota state agencies the current board chairwoman is Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Commissioner Laura Bishop and eight citizen members. "Along with the governor, I believe that the state must continue its leadership on the environment, and climate action will be a top priority," Bishop said after being nominated to the post by Gov. Tim Walz. "These public meetings will help us a build shared vision for Minnesotas climate agenda and learn more about the actions people feel are most needed and that the public will support." In December, then-MPCA Commissioner John Linc Stine called for a general EIS on the nitrates in the groundwater of the karst region. In his budget proposal made in February, Walz recommended $2 million for the GEIS to study and address nitrate pollution of groundwater in the karst region of Southeast Minnesota. According to the MPCA, the GEIS would investigate sources of nitrate, evaluate ways to address nitrate contamination, and inform the review of new projects. The GEIS process will bring together state and local decision makers, technical experts, and members of the affected communities to better protect the karst region from nitrate contamination. The recommendation for a GEIS would need to be approved by the EQB, and funding would need to be passed by the state Legislature before any study would begin. Water quality, and particularly nitrate contamination, was cited by Stine as a reason to deny an MPCA permit for the proposed Catalpa swine facilty near Mabel. Also, concerns about nitrates in Winona County contributed to the decision not to grant a waiver of the animal unit cap to Daley Farms proposed expansion of its dairy near Lewiston. The Winona County Board of Adjustments denied the request at a Feb. 21 hearing. South Africa: DWS works to secure water supply amid power cuts The Department of Water and Sanitation says it is in consultation with a number of stakeholders and water entities throughout the country to ensure that their systems do not fail amid rolling power cuts. The departments Deputy Director-General for Special Projects, Trevor Balzer, said the department is monitoring the situation and will respond as required. Balzer said the power outages should, however, be reason enough for water users to double their water conservation efforts so that there is enough water for everyone. He stressed that at this stage, there have been no reported water disruptions attributable to load shedding. While the raised concerns are acknowledged, the department has urged water users not to panic with regard to water supply. In every 24-hour cycle of rotational load shedding, we can lose about four hours of pumping capacity. This is about 16% of capacity at a station, which would normally pump for 24 hours. So if we do indeed lose this type of capacity, we would require a similar reduction in consumption as we did during the past drought. Eskom has material interest in keeping our pump stations operational as they rely on our water supply to keep the power stations operational. We will be engaging with Eskom regarding protocol if we have to shut any station down. Some of our pump stations with variable speed motors need to go through an operational shutdown process and should not be subjected to a power failure, said Balzer. The Rand Water System, serving approximately 12 million people, is still stable but it will be monitored as some of its capacity has been lost due to high demand caused by high temperatures. In Limpopo, load shedding has affected bulk water supply operations in Phalaborwa, Marble Hall, Groblersdal and Polokwane. Lepelle Northern Water Board is engaging with Eskom to maintain power supplies to their installations during load shedding. Magalies Water reports that load shedding has affected three water treatment plants, thus affecting Bela-Bela, Modimolle-Mookgopong and Moretele Local Municipalities. Should the situation remain unchanged, a further negative impact will be on waste water treatment plants, where increased volumes of untreated effluent are expected to reach rivers and streams. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. WABASSO, Minn. Members of 4-H chapters from throughout southwest Minnesota gathered in Wabasso on Feb. 16 to hone their skills in animal sciences. They took part in seminars on livestock nutrition, common diseases found in dairy cattle, livestock and horses, and even took a dive into the meat industry looking at where the meat we eat comes from and how its processed and made. Melissa Runck with Murray County Extension coordinated the event. Runck said 14 different counties took part in the annual event. "We bring in veterinarians and other industry professionals," Runck said. "A lot of what we do is hands-on, so it really ties the kids to the industry, and getting that connection as far as potential careers." Runck said the hands-on part of the day is an important factor for the planners and the participants. This is the ninth year the event has been held. "An event like this is important," Runck said. "Not only do the kids get a chance to practice for the regional project bowl, but they get to see how to apply the knowledge they have." One of the more popular workshops was about livestock nutrition. The 4-H members looked at feed and its components protein supplements, fats, and carbohydrates. "Its nice to get to work with the students in small groups like this," said Brant Groen, a nutrition and production specialist with Form-A-Feed. "They get to see the complexity of the feed, the components that go into it, and how that impacts production." Baileigh Peterson, a 10th-grader from Sibley County, said events the 4-H day are important for students planning to pursue a career in todays ever-increasing technical agricultural industries. "The skill-a-thon workshops are vital," Peterson said. "We did one earlier in the day on grading manure and how that can be used as a tool for judging the health of the animal and how to adjust rations." Petersons family raises beef cattle, poultry and swine, and she shows cattle and swine in 4-H. Shes planning a career in the beef industry. "Ive looked into being a nutritionist, and different aspects of the meat industry," she said. "Taking part in a get-together like this one is important because it gives us a chance to see how what we are learning in 4-H can be applied in the real world. Its something that can really help us in planning for a future in a lot of different areas in agricultural." FARIBAULT, Minn. One downside of our current production of grain crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, oats and barley is that they are annual crops, meaning that they need to be planted each year. This also means that many of the fields where these crops are grown will spend at least some of the year with no plant cover protecting the soil from water and wind erosion. According to researchers, a new perennial crop could solve those problems and provide farmers with grain and animal feed while also keeping the soil covered. Two farmers in the Cannon River Watershed are helping to study Kernza, an intermediate wheatgrass, this year. In September 2018, two local farmers, Dan Honken and Kaleb Anderson, planted Kernza on their farms. Kernza is the registered trade name for an intermediate wheatgrass (scientific name Thinopyrum intermedium), that was developed by The Land Institute located in Salinas, Kansas. Despite the common name, it is not a species of wheat, but rather a grass species related to wheat. The grain has a sweet, nutty flavor making it a good fit for cereals, snacks and brewing. The kernel is smaller than wheat and has more bran and fiber, but fewer carbohydrates. Kernza also is a vegetative forage for livestock, and because its a perennial, it regrows year after year, and provides year-round soil coverage, reducing erosion. Through a Minnesota Department of Agriculture Sustainable Agriculture demonstration grant, the Cannon River Watershed Partnership and the University of Minnesota will be working with Dan Honken, a Rice County farmer, and Kaleb Anderson in Goodhue County to study how grazing of Kernza in the fall will affect the next years grain production of this perennial crop. The project began with planting in 2018 and will end in 2021. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will hold its annual youth firearms safety field day on April 13. This course is required for anyone age 11 to 16 to obtain a hunting license. Students must have completed an online course to attend the field day. Preregistration is required. Cost of the class is $7. The field day begins at 8 a.m. at the Southern Minnesota Sportsmans Club, 6510 County Road 143 SE, Rochester. DANVILLE, Vt. Maple syrup producers have more than the weather to worry about. Frenetic squirrels are chomping on equipment, crimping the flow of sap at some operations. Damage from wildlife deer, bears, woodpeckers, and squirrels is not unusual for maple producers, but this year an abundant population of squirrels is disrupting plastic sap tubing and spouts at some sugaring operations in New England. That means producers must go out into sometimes deep snow to find and replace the damaged lines that transport the sap from the maple trees or other chewed or missing equipment, which producers say can be time-consuming and expensive. "Occasionally they declare war. And it seems like they have this year," said Ruth Goodrich of Goodrichs Maple Farm in Danville, Vt., the largest maple producing state. The business, which also sells maple equipment, thins out other trees so the maples dont have competition and to remove the food source for squirrels. But on a parcel of state land it rents in Groton where other trees are mixed in, the squirrels did a number on the equipment. The boom in the squirrel population is mostly tied to an increase in food source, such as acorns from trees, said Mark Isselhardt, maple specialist with the University of Vermont Extension. But the squirrels arent causing problems for all producers, he said. The varmints havent been any worse than normal this year for Bascom Maple Farms in Alstead, N.H. "We havent had a lot of snow cover," said Bruce Bascom. "Weve only got about a foot of snow here. I think the squirrels are not having that hard a winter." But Lyle Merrifield of Gorham, Maine, said hes had to fix about 60 spots in his operation damaged by the chomping critters. The trouble is the squirrels could take one bite of tubing and move another 100 feet where they could take another bite, making the damage hard to find, said Merrifield, president of the Maine Maple Producers Association. "Ive heard a lot of people talk about squirrel damage so its probably the worst weve seen, combined with the deep snow, just that combination," he said. Theres no way to completely control the squirrels, Isselhardt said. Its best to wear gloves when handling the tubing so salt and oil from bare hands isnt left behind to attract wildlife. But he said it doesnt take many squirrels to affect the system. "Theyre able to cover ground and do some damage, and you can fix a line and theyll be right back to it the next day," Isselhardt said. The Minnesota House of Representatives has quickly moved to offer additional assistance to farmers and rural communities. The bill the House passed, HF232, provides money for the Farm Advocates Program, mental health counseling and a suicide prevention program. The legislation increases funding by $100,000 this fiscal year and provides for the hiring of an additional mental health counselor for farmers. The Senates version of the bill SF553 ought to receive the strong bipartisan support that led to unanimous support in the House. Its easy to be critical of the state government given the costly fiasco that the Minnesota Licensing and Registration System has proven to be. The Legislature last month kicked in another $43 million to fix it, which comes after millions of dollars has already been spent on it. Despite that, the Legislature has and can do a lot of good for rural Minnesota. The states Farm Bureau and Farmers Union priorities provide a blueprint that would benefit rural communities. Creating an environment that encourages more readily available and affordable health care is hugely important. It involves motivating more institutions, doctors and other health care professionals to set up shop in underserved rural areas. Programs to better protect Minnesotas invaluable natural resources is another area where a consensus for action seems apparent. Protecting water resources and conserving top soil are keys to maintaining a sustainable future. Improving broadband access to rural communities is another. Increasing broadband access would help motivate businesses and families to live and work in rural communities and improve educational opportunities. There is broad agreement on the need to reform property taxes to produce greater fairness for farmers. How to get it done without disrupting state finances continues to divide Republican and DFL lawmakers, but the differences arent so great as to make bridging the differences impossible. Property tax relief for farmers isnt merely a want, its a necessity. Lawmakers need to change the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit to open up the program so that existing farmers can use it to pass on a portion of the business to other family members. The Legislature needs to do all that it can to help the next generation enter farming. Without them, rural Minnesota cannot be sustainable. There remains a basic disagreement on how to provide adequate funding for road and bridge upkeep. Gov. Tim Walz has proposed a significant increase in the gas tax, while Republicans think bonding is the way to go. Regardless of it's funded, the state's deteriorating infrastructure desperately needs renovation. Farmers are aware that transportation impediments cost them money and increase safety risks. It appears that Walzs vision for the state extends far beyond the metro area. Former Gov. Mark Dayton was rightly and roundly criticized for his urban-centric focus. Walz outstate inclusive approach is welcome. This is a crucial time and you must get involved. Contact your elected officials to make sure your voice is included in the process. John Steinbeck wrote "Of Mice and Men" in the 1930s, but Joe Chase thinks the story is as timely as ever. "It just seems like we dont care enough about each other anymore," said Chase, who is directing the Wits End Theatre production of "Of Mice and Men." "This show is all about our mutual humanity. This is all about people looking after each other, coming together. Its an antidote for the meanness of our age." The show opens Friday, March 22 at the Chatfield Center for the Arts. "Of Mice and Men," the play, is based on Steinbecks short novel about George and Lennie, a couple of drifters looking for work during the Great Depression. George is the leader, while Lennie is an overgrown man-child who cant keep away from trouble. They seem to have finally found a good place to work, but their story ultimately ends in tragedy. "Theres not much more tragedy youll find on the American stage than at the end of Of Mice and Men," Chase said. The play was written by Steinbeck and closely follows the novel. The book is taught in many high schools, but has also been challenged by those who want to ban it. "Ive always loved the story," Chase said. "Ive always wanted to do the play. It has always appealed to me." "Of Mice and Men" is quite a change from the large-cast musicals normally produced by Wits End. "Were trying to do a winter show and change it up from what we do in summer," Chase said. "We want to do a serious piece, a tragic piece." Chase has cast Brian Bedard in the difficult role of Lennie, with Nathaniel Chase as George. One connection with the past that interests Chase is that Potter Auditorium, where the play will be presented, was completed just before Steinbeck published "Of Mice and Men." The auditorium was a Public Works Administration project, with construction costs shared by the federal government and the Chatfield School District. The Chatfield portion, $44,000, was approved by voters in 1935 despite the financial hardships caused by the Depression. "Now, 82 years later, were bringing together the art and the venue that the era created," Chase said. It is another reminder, he said, of how people pull together and support each other in the toughest of times. "It seems to me, the farther we get from the Depression, I think we lose the lessons we learned," Chase said. The play is not recommended for ages 12 and younger. This Sunday, head to a winter concert in the spring, courtesy of Resounding Voices. Its appropriate, then, that the senior choir will be joined by a group of fresh-faced youths. Resounding Voices, a choir made of and for people with dementia and their caregivers, was looking for a way to spice things up for their March concert, Suzanne Johnson, the artistic director for Rochesters Resounding Voices, said. So she began looking for community groups to sing with her group. The first collaboration, on display in Sundays concert, is a teen choir named Arioso. And the "mutually energizing" spark from each choir, Johnson said, means shell likely look for other high school-aged choirs to collaborate with Resounding Voices in the future. "Its always a high of music bringing us together and making us feel unified," she said. "I can see this being a really good thing in the future, again." Arioso is a Rochester audition-based choir comprised of home-schooled high school students. Johnson previously directed the group, and was familiar with its musical talent. What she didnt quite expect was the "big boost" the choirs gave each other in rehearsal which went far beyond the uptick in energy and enthusiasm shed seen when matching choirs of similar ages previously. "The people in my choir are really cool and wonderful, and its been great to see the students say, Yeah, theyre just like my grandparents," Johnson said. "And theyre going to get the energy of high-schoolers. Its hard to beat." The choirs will sing a mix of classic songs related to "Peace, Love, (and) Joy," the winter-spring concerts theme. Think "Peace in the Valley," "Thats Amore," and "Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee." The community is very welcome, and if you havent been to a Resounding Voices concert before, this one is a great place to start, Johnson said. "These are things that have stood the test of time," she said. "There are so many wonderful songs it was fun to incorporate those that we all know." NORRISTOWN A Norristown man is headed to prison after police and a Pennsylvania parole agent observed him illegally possessing a firearm in the borough. Joseph Wilson, 37, of the 100 block of Selma Street, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to 3-to-6-years in a state correctional facility after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of person not to possess a firearm in connection with a February 2017 incident in the borough. The sentence was imposed by Judge William R. Carpenter, who accepted a plea agreement in the case. Carpenter said the pink and chrome 9mm handgun that Wilson possessed will be forfeited to the county detective bureau. The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Laura Bradbury. Wilson was represented by defense lawyer Keith Harbison. An investigation began about 12:30 p.m. Feb. 16, 2017, when a borough police officer and a state parole agent were on patrol in the 600 block of West Marshall Street and observed Wilson, a state parolee to whom the state agent wanted to talk. The officer and state agent exited the patrol car to attempt to speak with Wilson, according to the criminal complaint. Wilson turned around and began walking away from authorities and then ran north on George Street, according to the arrest affidavit. Wilson ignored commands to halt and the police officer and state agent pursued him on foot as he entered a breeze way on West Marshall Street, according to the criminal complaint. While in the breeze way Wilson brandished a chrome and pink firearm in his right hand and continued to flee, not turning around, Norristown Police Officer Shalako Drabinsky alleged in the arrest affidavit. Authorities drew their firearms and Wilson did not comply with orders to stop, Drabinsky alleged. (The parole agent) stated he believed that Wilson had thrown the firearm but did not see where it went, Drabinsky alleged. Eventually, authorities forced Wilson to the ground with the use of a Taser. Other officers responded and the immediate area was searched for the firearm that Wilson had discarded, Drabinsky alleged, adding the 9mm firearm was found on the roof of a home in the 600 block of West Marshall Street. The firearm was recovered with a full magazine of silver Luger 9mm ball ammunition and also had one in the chamber. Due to prior convictions, Wilson was a person not to possess a firearm and did not have a concealed carry permit for the firearm, Drabinsky alleged. Other charges of resisting arrest, firearms not to be carried without a license, prohibited offensive weapons and recklessly endangering other persons were dismissed against Wilson as part of the plea agreement. We wrote last June about New Yorker fact-checker Talia Lavin, who falsely accused a disabled veteran of being a Nazi because she misinterpreted his military tattoo. It made quite a stir at the time, and the New Yorker fired Lavin. Her libel of the amputee veteran wasnt a one-off; she hates Republicans, or suspected Republicans, in general: The truth of the matter is that anyone who willingly declares themselves [sic] a Republican is aligning themselves [sic] with an administration whose official policy is to torment minorities, to empty the public purse both for private gain and for sheer cruel parsimony, to strip away healthcare from the afflicted and to comfort the wealthy. *** Anyone who is a current Trumpist might as well be an ICE agent ripping an 18-month-old child from its mothers arms, or shipping a five-year-old boy to Michigan to dream of his father and weep in a strangers house. *** One companion to the legion of Trump-voter-as-curious-oddity portraiture is the endless stream of op-eds prevailing upon liberals to be more tolerant. To cease being smug. To simply reach across the aisle, grasp a hand, and speak softly, leaving the big stick at home. To which I say: tough nuts, sugar. When they go low, stomp them on the head. Surprisingly, Lavins ignorant and baseless libel of a disabled veteran didnt end her career. On the contrary: she was immediately snapped up by Democratic Party propaganda outlet Media Matters to report on far right extremism. There is, many would say, an irony there. Not long thereafter, she embarked on an academic career. New York University hired her as a professor of journalism. Because insanely libeling people who might possibly be conservatives is just what NYU thinks journalists should do. New York University has hired Talia Lavin as an adjunct journalism professor less than a year after the former New Yorker fact checker resigned after falsely accusing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent of having a Nazi tattoo. What will Professor Lavin be teaching to NYU students who pay way too much for the privilege? You guessed it: Lavins undergraduate course Reporting on the Far Right will kick off in the fall semester of 2019 at NYUs Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. In its official faculty bio, the university billed Lavin as an expert in far-right extremism and social justice. A neutral observer might say that Lavin, having accused a veteran of being a Nazi because he had a U.S. military tattoo, is an expert on far-left extremism. Needless to say, NYU doesnt have any such course. While NYUs administrators and faculty are probably beyond hope, a few students, albeit liberals, retain a measure of common sense: At least one current NYU journalism student questioned the decision to hire Lavin. I sympathize with Lavins politics, but I dont know why someone who had to quit their journalism job for falsely implying someone is a Nazi should be teaching at NYU, said the student, who requested anonymity for fear of academic reprisal. I know there are plenty of reporters out there in need of work who havent made a mistake like that. For fear of academic reprisal. NYU, RIP. Ilhan Omar has refused to answer substantive questions regarding her marriage to husband number 2, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi. I think is fair to infer that Elmi is her brother and that she entered the marriage for some dishonest purpose. If so, the dishonest purpose would likely have something to do with student aid while she and Elmi went to college in Fargo at North Dakota State University. If Omar is not Elmis sibling, the marriage nevertheless appears to involve some serious dishonesty she has concealed. I originally raised the question regarding Omars marriage to Elmi in 2016. Through a criminal defense attorney, Omar responded by email and called me out: There are people who do not want an East African, Muslim woman elected to office and who will follow Donald Trumps playbook to prevent it. Ilhan Omars campaign sees your superfluous contentions as one more in a series of attempts to discredit her candidacy. I took that to be a nondenial denial. Perhaps mistakenly, I drew adverse inferences. I followed up with additional questions for Omar through the criminal defense attorney as the attorney had instructed me to do. Omar did not respond. Perhaps mistakenly, I drew adverse inferences. By the time the Star Tribune got around to asking Omar about it, she treated the question as a public relations crisis. A Democratic operative was flown in to assist Omar. He spoke on her behalf and issued an unilluminating statement or two in Omars name. He continued the personal disparagement that the criminal defense attorney had conveyed to me. When Star Tribune reporter Patrick Coolican called me for a comment, I asked him who they said Elmi was. They wont tell me, he said. Coolicans August 16, 2016 story is accessible here. Coolicans August 17 story quotes the formal written statement issued in Omars name. Omar campaign spokesman (now state representative) Michael Howard declared that the formal written statement would be Omars last word on the matter. Beyond the statement Omar would brook no more questions. The subject was closed. Perhaps mistakenly, I drew adverse inferences. Preya Samsundar picked up the story for the small online Alpha News outlet. Preya was able to follow up on the story in the traditional fashion and through social media. She got a copy of Omars 2009 marriage certificate and tracked Elmi down in London. When I met with Preya in 2016, she told me: I think social media prove without a doubt that there is a familial relationship [between Omar and Elmi] that is not that of a husband and wife. As I recall, Preya also told me (Im stretching my memory here) that the marriage certificate had not been signed by a Muslim cleric, but rather by some non-denominational Christian cleric. She had talked to him or her. [This is imprecise. See update below.] Omar continued to decline any responses to Preyas inquiries as well. Perhaps mistakenly, I drew adverse inferences. In November 2016, after her election to the Minnesota House of Representatives, Omar did have this to say to a friendly reporter at the local weekly City Pages: I look at the soap opera, the shit show of what people might consider to be in their discovery of things, there isnt anything to whats being insinuated or anything there to bite me in the ass, What Im surprised about are the particular things that are appropriate to insinuate without any legitimacy or facts. I think if certain factors werent in play, this wouldnt be considered acceptable. Omars implication regarding certain factors was more of the same. Omar was still married to Elmi at the time. Referring to Elmis residence in London, Omar also told the City Pages reporter: There are particular challenges to getting a legal divorce. One of those is getting the cooperation and presence of the other person who you are divorcing. This is simply false. No cooperation is required. Without any cooperation from Elmi, Omar easily dissolved the marriage in December 2017 as she was preparing to move on to bigger things. Perhaps mistakenly, I drew adverse inferences. Last year PJ Media New York editor David Steinberg picked up the thread in a series of four investigative columns that ran from August 8 to November 5. They are all accessible here. Omar has never responded to Steinbergs several requests for comment prior to publication. David has a fifth column in the works. He has also concluded that Elmi is probably Omars brother. Yesterday Glenn Beck interviewed Steinberg about his findings (video below). The interview provides a glimpse through the window Steinberg has opened on what I have been calling The curious case of Ilhan Omar. UPDATE: Speaking with Preya Samsundar this morning, I was told that the name on the Elmi-Omar marriage certificate is Walecia Harris. In 2016 Preya found Harriss name associated with an Eden Prairie church. Shortly thereafter she found a Hennepin County employee with the Walecia Harris nameplate on her desk at the Hennepin County Ridgedale office. Asked about the Elmi-Omar wedding, Harris said she knew nothing. I want to emphasize this. Omar and Elmi may not be brother and sister, but Omar has never acted in any manner other than one consistent with the implication that she has something to hide. I dont know for a fact what it is. I do infer, however, that she is hiding something. Dont ask me to explain why just now, but lately I reread Christopher Laschs last book, The Revolt of the Elites, published in 1995 shortly after his death. I recall disliking the book somewhat back then, in part because I had a bias against Lasch, who not only sympathized with the New Left in the 1960s, but whose 1978 book The Culture of Narcissism was said to be one of Jimmy Carters favorite books and the inspiration for Carters dreadful malaise speech of 1979. But 25 years later, most of The Revolt of the Elites reads like an indictment of todays dominant cultural left (Steve Bannon was reported to have been a fan), and a road map for Trumps 2016 victory and likely re-election next yearmuch more so than a famous passage from Richard Rorty that people like to cite.* Laschs description of the self-regarding liberal elites of the 1980s and 1990s reads even more strongly today. Heres one sample: Upper-middle-class liberals. . . have mounted a crusade to sanitize American society: to create a smoke-free environment, to censor everything from pornography to hate speech, and at the same time, incongruously, to extend the range of personal choice in matters where most people feel the need of solid moral guidelines. When confronted with resistance to these initiatives, they betray the venomous hatred that lies not far beneath the smiling face of upper-middle-class benevolence. Opposition makes humanitarians forget the liberal virtues they claim to uphold. They become petulant, self-righteous, intolerant. In the heat of political controversy, they find it impossible to conceal their contempt for those who stubbornly refuse to see the lightthose who just dont get it, in the self-satisfied jargon of political rectitude. Simultaneously arrogant and insecure, the new elites, the professional classes in particular, regard the masses with mingled scorn and apprehension. In the United States, Middle Americaa term that has both geographical and social implicationshas come to symbolize everything that stands in the way of progress: family values, mindless patriotism, religious fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, retrograde views of women. Middle Americans, as they appear to the makers of educated opinion, are hopelessly shabby, unfashionable, and provincial, ill-informed about changes in taste or intellectual trends, addicted to trashy novels or romance and adventure, and stupefied by prolonged exposure to television. They are at once absurd and vaguely menacingnot because they wish to overthrow the old order but because their defense of it appears so deeply irrational that it expresses itself, at the higher reaches of its intensity, in fanatical religiosity, in repressive sexuality that occasionally erupts into violence against women and gays, and in a patriotism that supports imperialist wars and a national ethic of aggressive masculinity. . . The growing insularity of elites means, among other things, that political ideologies lose touch with the concerns of ordinary citizens. . . In some quarters the very idea of reality has come into question, perhaps because the talking classes inhabit an artificial world in which simulations of reality replace the thing itself. Theres lots more in Laschs analysis, and some of it may make an appearance in a forthcoming lecture and article. Stay tuned. * For the record, heres the passage from the late lefty philosopher Richard Rorty that lots of people on the left have cited since Trumps election, from his 1998 book Achieving Our Country: Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments. Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future. The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking of to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workersthemselves desperately afraid of being downsizedare not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote forsomeone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will not longer be calling the shots. You can see some sense in this, but among its flaws is the simple fact that rather than overturn[ing] constitutional governments, Trump and his fellow populists in other countries are actually the agents for restoring constitutional government. PR-Inside.com: 2019-03-21 11:15:29 Press Information Published by ACN Newswire +65 6304 8926 e-mail https://www.acnnewswire.com/ # 845 Words ACN Newswire+65 6304 8926 HONG KONG, Mar 21, 2019 - (ACN Newswire) - NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited ("NetDragon" or "the Company"; Hong Kong Stock Code: 777), a global leader in building online communities, is pleased to announce that "The Fourth US-China Smart Education Conference" was successfully held at the University of North Texas on 18 March 2019. It was co-hosted by Beijing Normal University, University of North Texas and National Engineering Laboratory for Cyberlearning and Intelligent Technology, and co-organized by Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University and the College of Information of University of North Texas. In attendance were experts and scholars from the Ministry of Education of China, United States Department of Education, all levels of educational administration, eminent colleges and universities and research institutions, as well as senior executives and representatives of well-known information technology companies in China and the United States. As a partner of National Engineering Laboratory for Cyberlearning and Intelligent Technology and Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University, NetDragon has participated in this conference for four consecutive years. In the conference this year, NetDragon presented its global online education platform, Edmodo, which demonstrates NetDragon's experiences and achievements in digital education in the past years, as well as bringing new practices and ideas to the development of the industry.Since the successful hosting of "The First US-China Smart Education Conference" in 2016, the latest achievements and development trends in the field of smart education have become a key topic of focus of the conference. Conference organizers are committed to building an academic platform that connects China and the United States and integrates global smart education resources. The conference focused on eight major topics, including science education, educational robots, artificial intelligence (AI) and mixed realities in learning, and learning through gamification. In the conference, an academic report titled "Transforming Education through Intelligent Technology: A comparison report of China and U.S." was released and a smart education exhibition experiential event was hosted.The exhibition booth of Edmodo, the global online education platform of NetDragon, attracted a number of guests. Being one of the largest and most active global learning community platforms, Edmodo provides K-12 schools with a collaborative communication platform for teachers, students, administrators and parents. It allows users to share resources, and distribute quizzes and assignments. Currently, Edmodo has more than 100 million registered users covering more than 400,000 schools in more than 190 countries.Dr. Xiong Li, Associate Director of National Engineering Laboratory for Cyberlearning and Intelligent Technology and CEO of NetDragon, said, "NetDragon combines the online education platform Edmodo with its content, technologies and teaching tools to support various scenarios during the teaching process, including interactive lesson preparation and teaching, student collaboration, assignment check, communication between students, parents and teachers, as well as a full range of functions such as educational content stores and resource sharing." Dr. Xiong Li commented, "In recent years, NetDragon has continued to increase its strategic investments in the education industry, execute global deployment and integrate the best resources around the world, with an aim to provide the best one-stop digital education solution and a new teaching experience to educators and learners. NetDragon's ultimate goal is to create a 'life-long learning community for the world'. Since entering the education industry, NetDragon has devoted itself into building a solid foundation. Every step that NetDragon has taken is very practical, and every new initiative and movement that NetDragon has implemented is serving our ultimate goal." After years of expansion into overseas markets, NetDragon has achieved outstanding performance. For example, in Moscow, the Company provided the latest interactive learning technology to more than 7,600 smart classrooms in 2017, and then to another 13,000 classrooms in March 2018. In addition, NetDragon continued to expand into new markets across emerging countries, including Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Malaysia in 2018. To date, education business of NetDragon has expanded to more than 190 countries around the world, benefiting more than 100 million users and covering more than 1.3 million classrooms.About NetDragon Websoft Holdings LimitedNetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited (HKSE: 0777) is a global leader in building internet communities. Established in 1999, NetDragon is a vertically integrated, cutting-edge R&D powerhouse with a highly successful track record which includes the development of flagship MMORPGs including Eudemons Online, Heroes Evolved (formerly known as Calibur of Spirit) and Conquer Online. The company also established China's number one online gaming portal, 17173.com, and China's most influential smartphone app store platform, 91 Wireless, which was sold to Baidu in 2013 in what was at the time the largest Internet M&A transaction in China. Being China's pioneer in overseas expansion, NetDragon also directly operates a number of game titles in over 10 languages internationally since 2003. In recent years, NetDragon has emerged as a major player in the global online and mobile learning space as it works to leverage its mobile Internet technologies and operational know-how to develop a game-changing learning ecosystem. For more information, please visit www.netdragon.com For investor enquiries, please contact:NetDragon Websoft Holdings LimitedMs. Maggie ZhouSenior Director of Investor RelationsTel.: +852 2850 7266 / +86 591 8754 3120Email: maggie@ nd.com.cn Website: ir.netdragon.com At least 71 people died on Thursday in Northern Iraq when the ferry boat they were on sank, a security official said, as rescue operations were ongoing in the Tigris Rivers fast-flowing waters. Forty-five others, including 19 children, were saved, Interior Ministry spokesman Saad Maan told the official Iraqi News Agency. Initially, Hossam Khalil, a colonel and the civil defence chief in the Northern Province of Nineveh, had said that at least 40 bodies were retrieved after the boat capsized near the Northern city of Mosul The dead included women and children, Khalil added in a statement. The boat sank while it was carrying people celebrating Nowruz, which marks the Kurdish New Year, witnesses said. The tragedy, which took place near a tourist area, is believed to be the result of the ship being overcrowded. The capacity of the boat was 50 people, but it sank because the number of people aboard reached around 200, Iraqi lawmaker Abdel-Rehim al-Shamari said in a press statement. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi ordered an immediate investigation into the accident and the findings be reported in 24 hours, his office said in an online statement. He vowed to bring those behind the mishap to justice. A final tally of the victims is unlikely to be clear soon as fast-flowing waters were believed to have carried them away, local witnesses said. Water levels are also high in the Tigris as a result of heavy rains over the last weeks, they added. Mosul, the capital of Nineveh, was once the key stronghold of the Islamic State militant group in Iraq. In July 2017, then prime minister, Haider al-Abadi declared that all Mosul, Iraqs second-largest city, had been retaken from Islamic State after a devastating nine-month-old campaign. (dpa/NAN) The World Health Organisation committee on gene editing has called on all scientists conducting human genome research to open discussions with the committee so as to ensure that their work meets current scientific and ethical best practices. This call was made by the advisory committee set up by the health agency to develop a global standard for governance and oversight of human genome editing. The committee was set up after the birth of the first gene-edited babies the results of an experiment by a Chinese scientist, He Jiankui. Mr Jiankui had genetically altered human embryos and planted them in a woman who gave birth to twins last year. Mr Jiankuis action had caused alarm among researchers, ethicist, and policymakers because there is little known information about the safety and health effect of gene editing of a human embryo. Genome editing is a method that lets scientists change the DNA of many organisms, including plants, bacteria, and animals. Editing DNA can lead to changes in physical traits, like eye color, and disease risk. Scientists use different technologies to do this. More recently, a new genome-editing tool called CRISPR, invented in 2009, has made it easier than ever to edit DNA. CRISPR is simpler, faster, cheaper, and more accurate than older genome editing methods. Many scientists who perform genome editing now use CRISPR. Some of the concern raised is that the technology can be misused to create genetically altered human beings and heighten their physical features, intelligence among others. Among those who voiced concerns were Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and a philanthropist. In his 2018 wrap-up notes, Mr Gates warned that nobody is paying attention to gene editing, a new technology that could make inequity worse, especially if it is available only for wealthy people. Mr Gates expressed surprise that gene editing had not generated more attention from the general public. He said it might be the most important public debate we havent been having widely enough. I agree with those who say this scientist went too far but something good can come from his work if it encourages more people to learn and talk about gene editing, he said. Also in one of his tweets on the subject on his twitter handle last year, Mr Gates said Genome editing is one of the most powerful technologies of the 21st century. Its important that new tools such as CRISPR continue to be applied subject to rigorous guidelines so the world can continue to make remarkable progress. WHO guideline on gene editing Based on the concerns, the WHO committee on gene editing, after a two-day meeting in Geneva, agreed to work towards a strong international governance framework in the area. WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus, said gene editing holds incredible promise for health, but it also poses some risks, both ethically and medically. This committee is a perfect example of WHOs leadership, by bringing together some of the worlds leading experts to provide guidance on this complex issue. I am grateful to each member of the Expert Advisory Committee for their time and expertise, he said. The committee, after reviewing the current state of science and technology, agreed that it is irresponsible at this time for anyone to proceed with clinical applications of human germline genome editing. The panel advised that a central registry on human genome editing research is needed in order to create an open and transparent database of ongoing work and tasked WHO to immediately begin working to establish such a registry. Also, the panel has invited all those conducting human genome editing research to open discussions with the committee to better understand the technical environment and current governance arrangements and help ensure their work meets current scientific and ethical best practice. The committee will operate in an inclusive manner and has made a series of concrete proposals to increase WHOs capacity to act as an information resource in this area, Soumya Swamanathan, WHO Chief Scientist, said the committee will develop essential tools and guidance for all those working on this new technology to ensure maximum benefit and minimal risk to human health. WHO said over the next two years, through a series of in-person meetings and online consultations, the committee will consult with a wide range of stakeholders and provide recommendations for a comprehensive governance framework that is scalable, sustainable and appropriate for use at the international, regional, national and local levels. The committee will also solicit the views of multiple stakeholders including patient groups, civil society, ethicists and social scientists. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has outlined activities and timeline to resolve the electoral logjam in Rivers State. An INEC spokesperson, Festus Okoye, disclosed this at a press briefing at the commissions headquarters in Abuja. According to him, the activities began on the March 19 when the commission had engagements with major actors. This will be followed by an inter-agency meeting between the commission and other relevant agencies on March 29, in Rivers State. On March 30, the commission said it will have a meeting with critical actors after which the headquarters of the commission will release a guideline for the continuation of the process. Revalidation of observers, the commission said, will be done simultaneously in Abuja and Rivers State between March 25 and March 31. From April 2 to April 5, INEC will resume the collation of results in the state. The commission also said April 13 has been set should there be a need for a supplementary election after which declaration of the final results would be made between April 13 and 15. The issuance of the certificate of return will be done on April 19. The collation of the results for the election held on March 9 was suspended due to violence allegedly carried out by soldiers and armed thugs. More details soon. Deji Adeyanju has released an audio clip which he said exposed disgraceful collusion between Charly Boy and the Nigerian government, the same authority he blames for his ongoing ordeal as a murder suspect. A short audio clip obtained by Sahara Reporters appeared to carry a furious discussion between Mr Adeyanju and Charly Boy whose real name is Charles Oputa during which Charly Boy seemingly corroborated suspicion that he had been in touch with Festus Keyamo while Mr Adeyanju was locked away in Kano over a homicide probe that was concluded in 2009. Charly Boy could also be heard suggesting that he received financial support from Mr Keyamo while Mr Adeyanju was in custody, but swiftly added that there was no sinister background to the gift. Mr Adeyanju said the money was paid to Charly Boy to attack Atiku Abubakar ahead of the presidential election. When the audio was recorded could not be learned Thursday morning, but the encounter seemed to have taken place at Charly Boys residence in Abuja. It followed a week of confusion about the future of Mr Adeyanjus friendship with Charly Boy after the political activist tweeted on March 13 that he was severing ties with the sexagenarian due to multiple acts of betrayal. Mr Adeyanju was released from prison on March 1, after spending 78 days behind bars on a murder claim that rights activists said marked a fresh low in the deployment of state resources to stifle activism and general dissent. Mr Adeyanju had worked closely with Charly Boy to propel Concerned Nigerians and OurMumuDonDo as some of the most visible community organising entities around the Nigerian capital. Both groups shot into the limelight in 2017, after President Buharis extended medical vacation in England became a trending cause for national concern. Together, they held several rallies to highlight government shortcomings in human rights, anti-corruption, accountability, transparency and other critical issues of civic space. Both activists, alongside some of their fellow marchers, are known to have been arrested together and summarily released by the police in Abuja, who often treat them as irritants rather than critical components of a broadening civil society. Although many had reservations about the approach and intention of the activists, they were generally seen as united and coordinated. A concealed fissure laid bare But what unfolded following a rash of detentions which saw Mr Adeyanju spend all but one week as a free man between November 28 and March 1 appeared to cast the activists general public approval as a facade. After Mr Adeyanju was arrested and rearrested for leading a protest against growing indications of bias amongst security chiefs, he was finally picked up on December 13 on a more serious allegation of murder, which he said was calculated to send him months behind bars. Even though the matter for which Mr Adeyanju was arrested had been concluded by a competent court since 2009, he was transported to Kano after spending five days in Abuja without trial. He was arraigned before a chief magistrate in Kano, who admitted lacking jurisdiction to try homicide cases but nonetheless handed the activist an extended time in remand at Kano Central Prison. As a campaign for Mr Adeyanjus release intensified amongst his associates across the country, Charly Boy was notably missing. PREMIUM TIMES has now been told by members of the movement that Charly Boys decision to stay away was deliberate. For one, Charly Boy, 67 and leader of the pack, was accused of shirking accountability in his handling of finances of the agitators. They said Charly Boy allegedly mismanaged a huge grant that came from a prominent international development foundation. The groups members told PREMIUM TIMES they preferred keeping the funders name away from the media to avoid undue ridicule from the public, but this newspaper learnt that the funding was approved to enhance the groups activities. Prior to his prolonged incarceration, Mr Adeyanju was amongst the top-level members who mounted pressure on Charly Boy to be more transparent and accountable in his handling of the fund, PREMIUM TIMES learnt. When asked why he was reluctant to call for Mr Adeyanjus release, Charly Boy was said to have complained bitterly about Mr Adeyanjus conduct towards him but said he would open a back channel to communicate with government officials and demand for Mr Adeyanjus release. It was through the channel that Mr Keyamo was contacted by Charly Boy, and the pair later met to discuss the matter. Mr Keyamo himself had faced criticism from Mr Adeyanjus supporters on social media for not maximising his role as a spokesperson for President Buharis re-election campaign to mount pressure on the police to free Mr Adeyanju. Mr Keyamo informed PREMIUM TIMES the night of Mr Adeyanjus arrest on December 13 that he represented him in the murder trial during which Mr Adeyanju spent four years in remand from 2005 until 2009. The senior lawyer said the police did not appeal the Kano State High Court verdict at the time because they were satisfied that Mr Adeyanju was indeed not involved in the killing as the prosecutor alleged. But his silence afterwards placed Mr Adeyanjus friends on the edge, with many of them suggesting that Mr Keyamo colluded with the police to deprive the activist of his freedom to bolster the ruling partys chances at the looming presidential poll. PREMIUM TIMES learnt that Mr Keyamo described the attacks from Mr Adeyanjus friends as a blackmail during a discussion with Charly Boy and urged him to call his men to order. Charly Boy then confronted us later and asked us why we were blackmailing Festus Keyamo online, one of the groups members said. It was a shocking statement that we least expected from Charly Boy. Subsequently, contacts between Charly Boy and other members of the group deteriorated and the 67-year-old was kept out of further efforts to free Mr Adeyanju. Mr Adeyanju was briefed of Charly Boys activities while still in prison, but he was unable to do much about it. It was when he got out that he started gathering evidence of Charly Boys betrayal of the movement and its ideology, another source said. He confronted Charly Boy and he admitted that he was indeed in touch with Festus Keyamo during which money exchanged hands as could be gleaned from the viral audio. Mr Adeyanju specifically said Charly Boy collected money to feature in a video excoriating Mr Abubakar, Mr Buharis main challenger, a few days to the election in apparent furtherance of the deal between him and the ruling party. PREMIUM TIMES could not independently confirm the allegation. Mr Adeyanju was unavailable for comments on Thursday morning. In response to PREMIUM TIMES enquiry, Mr Keyamo said he was uncomfortable publicly discussing what transpired between him and Charly Boy. It is too laughable, too infantile, too inconsequential to deserve a response. With respect, there is nothing to which I should respond. I only join issues publicly on national issues, not on private issues. You can only question people about such alleged or purported transactions when they involve public officers or opposition political parties. I really have better things on which to spend my precious time than respond to whether I actually helped a friend of mine who purportedly solicited my private support (that is assuming 1. it ever happened at all and 2. assuming there is anywhere anyone admitted even giving or receiving money and 3. assuming the purported recording is real or is not playacting). Both individuals reportedly quarreling are my long-time friends and very close friends, so I have a duty to reconcile them privately, Mr Keyamo said. Charly Boy told PREMIUM TIMES he would not comment immediately by telephone but would call a press briefing later to defend himself against the allegations and present facts that would exonerate him and indict Mr Adeyanju as the villain. Quelling the rage Multiple sources within the movement told PREMIUM TIMES Thursday morning that the fallout, while it could not have been entirely avoided, could have been mitigated had Mr Adeyanju not been detained. It was the arrest and long time that Mr Adeyanju spent in prison that aggravated the disagreement over the funding for our group, a source said. But let me also admit that it might be difficult to entirely prevent the matter from breaking out even without the detention aspect. In the meantime, Ariyo-Dare Atoye, an activist with close ties to the embattled pair, admitted that serious damage had already been done, but said efforts had commenced to prevent the fallout from worsening. I want to urge Charly Boy and Deji Adeyanju to sheath their swords on the raging controversy and allow well-meaning Nigerians who have intervened to settle things, Mr Atoye said in a statement to PREMIUM TIMES. The damage is done but there is still much to fight for in terms of public confidence. I am distraught about what is going on, but hopefully it can help correct ourselves as individuals. Nothing is hidden forever so we much live each day very well, Mr Atoye said, urging Nigerians to disregard the ongoing setback and remain confident about the good intentions of the movement. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said it will obey a court order suspending the Adamawa supplementary governorship election. INEC stated this on Thursday afternoon during a briefing by its spokesperson, Festus Okoye. PREMIUM TIMES reported how a High Court in Adamawa on Thursday ordered the indefinite postponement of the governorship election in the state. The judge, Abdul-azeez Waziri, said the polls should be put on hold until he rules on an application for an interlocutory injunction barring INEC from conducting the polls. The judge then adjourned the matter to Tuesday to give the ruling. While speaking on Thursday, Mr Okoye said INEC would appeal the injunction to ensure it is lifted. Pending when it succeeds on that, however, the commission would obey the order and suspend the governorship election in Adamawa indefinitely. While the commission has also complied with the order, it has equally taken steps to vacate this and dismiss the action, Mr Okoye said. Adamawa is one of six states where INEC declared the governorship election inconclusive because the margin of victory was less than the cancelled votes in each state. The other five are Benue, Bauchi, Plateau, Kano and Sokoto. The supplementary governorship elections are set to hold in the remaining five states on Saturday. However, while the supplementary governorship election in Adamawa will be postponed, INEC says it will hold elections in two state assembly constituencies in the state. The two constituencies where legislative elections will hold are; Uba/Gaya and Nassarawo/Binyeri in Hong and Mayo-Belwa local government areas respectively. The Nassarawo-Binueri State Assembly election was deferred due to the death of the APC candidate before the election while the Uba/Gaya State Assembly election could not be concluded on March 9 due to the cancellation of results in some polling units. So in relation to Adamawa State, we are going to hold elections in two state constituency. Notwithstanding the legal action against the supplementary election, elections will hold in Nasarawa LGA in Myobawa constituents where the election had to be countermanded following the death of a candidate before the polls as well as the Uba/ Gaya state constituency, Mr Okoye said. Background The Adamawa governorship election held on March 9 was declared inconclusive by the electoral commission because the margin of victory was less than the cancelled votes in the state. Before this decision, Mr Fintiri of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was leading his closest challenger, incumbent governor Umar Bindow of the All Progressives Congress (APC). A political party, the Movement for Restoration and Defence of Democracy (MRDD) and its supposed candidate, Eric Theman, had asked a state high court to cancel the election on the grounds that the partys logo was not on the ballot paper. Despite the opposition by the PDP, it was the application by the MRDD that led to the order of the state high court in Yola for the election to be postponed indefinitely. The Nigerian government on Thursday closed its case against the suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT). Mr Onnoghen immediately notified the tribunal that he intends to make a no-case submission. The prosecution closed its case after calling three witnesses to the stand. During the session on Thursday, the counsel to the government, Aliyu Umar, said they have closed their case, despite listing six witnesses. Mr Umar said the three other witnesses could still be called to the stand if the defence wants to cross-examine them. I have called three witnesses. If the defence needs them I can call the other three, the lawyer said. Responding, the defence counsel, Adeboyega Awomolo, rejected the offer. I dont want them, I dont want them, he said. Mr Awomolo then informed the tribunal that the defence intends to file a no-case submission but they would need time to write an address. We intend to take advantage of section 303 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015 on no-case submission, he said. If your lordship permits me to write a written address, Im praying to be given proceedings of 18th and today. Thereafter, the three-member panel led by the chairman, Danladi Umar, ordered Mr Awomolo to serve his address on the prosecution next week Wednesday. Mr Umar then fixed March 29 as the day counsels will adopt their addresses. Mr Onnoghen is facing a six-count charge bordering on non-declaration of his asset as required by law. The anti-graft agency, EFCC, has criticised the U.S. government over a report by the State Department criticising Nigerias anti-corruption efforts. The U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2018 states among others that there is a climate of impunity in the President Muhammadu Buhari government that allows officials to engage in corrupt practices with a sense of exemption from punishment. The U.S. agency also said, In their prosecution of corruption cases, law enforcement and intelligence agencies often failed to follow due process and arrested suspects without appropriate arrest and search warrants. In a statement on Sunday by its management, the EFCC said the report is not only outdated and false but misleading. The anti-graft agency listed some of its achievements under President Muhammadu Buhari. Read the full EFCC statement below. US Report over anti-graft war false, misleading EFCC .Agency secured 943 convictions between 2015 and 2018 .Recovers Billions of Naira, Foreign Currencies, Properties The attention of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been drawn to a misleading report of the United States Department of Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour over Nigerias anti-graft war, published in ThisDay Newspaper of March 17, 2019 entitled: Nigeria: Massive, Pervasive Corruption At All Levels of Govt US Report. The report, among other things, said that there is a climate of impunity in the President Muhammadu Buhari government that allows officials to engage in corrupt practices with a sense of exemption from punishment. The Bureau, in its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2018, said Nigeria had made little progress in efforts to limit corruption in its public service. This report is not only outdated and false but misleading. The report is unfounded on the grounds of Nigerias remarkable achievements in the last four years as the war against corruption is on course. The EFCCs commitment to the fight against corruption in the last four years is not in doubt to any discerning and genuinely concerned observer. This commitment is benchmarked by the unprecedented record of convictions, non-conviction based forfeiture and stolen assets recovery. We are surprised that the US report could ignore or downplay our convictions in such a brazen manner when it claimed that the EFCC secured only 13 convictions in 2016. That is false and far from the truth. Remarkable Convictions For the avoidance of doubt, the EFCC has secured 943 convictions since 2015 till date. The agency recorded 103 convictions in 2015, secured 195 convictions in 2016, got 189 convictions in 2017. It is important to state that the EFCC secured 314 convictions in 2018 including two former state governors who were sentenced to 14 years imprisonment without option of fine. It is instructive to note that the two former governors serving their jail terms in prison are members of the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC). The Commission has so far recorded 142 convictions as at March 19 this year. These are verifiable facts. We wish to state unequivocally that these convictions being celebrated included high profile persons among who were top ranking military personnel and other politically exposed persons. It is instructive to state that no other agency in Africa has this record of convictions and recovery of stolen assets which were achieved in spite of great encumbrances faced by the Commission in the discharge of its assignment as it has come to be known that when you fight corruption, corruption fights back. Assets Recovery and Forfeitures As a quick reminder, the Supreme Court of Nigeria had on Friday, March 8, 2019 in a unanimous judgement, dismissed the appeal of a former First Lady and wife of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Patience, against the interim forfeiture order of a Federal High Court, Lagos, for $8, 400, 000 (Eight Million Four Hundred Dollars) traced to her by the EFCC and believed to be proceeds of illegal activities. Subsequently, on March 14, 2019, the Supreme Court dismissed another application by Mrs. Jonathan, seeking to upturn the interim forfeiture order by a Federal High Court, Lagos placed on the sum of N2.4 billion linked to her. Also of interest is the fact that the former Chief of Defence Staff, the late Alex Badeh forfeited six choice properties and $1, 000,000 (One Million Dollars) to the Federal Government, few days ago on the order of Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Abuja. It could also be recalled that the EFCC on Friday, March 1, 2019, secured the final forfeiture of the sum N732.85 million being proceed of fraud perpetuated by 17 individuals in the Presidential Amnesty Programme Office. These are no rhetoric, but hard facts! We further wish to state that in the area of convictions, Air Vice Marshall Tony Omenyi (retd), was jailed by Justice Nnamdi Dimgba of a Federal High Court, Abuja, on Thursday, February 28, 2019. He was found guilty of the amended three-count charge brought against him by the EFCC and was sentenced to seven years imprisonment without an option of fine. Justice Dimgba, also ordered Huzee Nigeria Limited, a concern owned by Omenyi being a corporate entity to forfeit N60, 000, 000 (Sixty Million Naira) to the Federal Government. Indeed, the EFCC has revolutionized the process of assets tracing and recovery. From the available records, the Commission recovered assets worth several billions of naira and different foreign currencies between 2015 and 2017. Breakdown of the recoveries for the three year period (2015- 2017) show that N676, 522, 889, 647.05 (Six Hundred and Seventy Six Billion, Five Hundred and Twenty Two Million, Eight Hundred and Eighty Nine Thousand, Six Hundred and Forty Seven Naira and Five Kobo); $254, 563, 877.27 (Two Hundred and Fifty Four Million Five Hundred and Sixty Three Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventy Seven Dollars, twenty Six Cents); 486, 736.82 Pound (Four Hundred and Eighty Six Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Six Pounds Eighty Two Pennies); Euro 8, 136, 071.13 (Eight Million, One Hundred and Thirty Six Thousand and Seventy One Euro and Thirteen Cents); 80, 931, 500 CFA; 3, 729.50 RMB/YUAN; 452, 175 DIRHAM; 90, 956SR; 117, 004 CAD$ (ONE Hundred and Seventeen Thousand and Four Canadian Dollar); 120, 141.50 YEN; 5, 000Francs and 2, 000 Ruppies. In 2018 alone, various sums amounting to billions in Naira and other foreign currencies were also forfeited to the Federal Government through the unrelenting efforts of the EFCC. The sums are: N171, 131, 700, 541.17 (One Hundred and Seventy One Billion, One Hundred and Thirty One Million, Seven Hundred Thousand Five Hundred and Forty One Naira and Seventeen Kobo); $14, 490, 174.49 (Fourteen Million, Four Hundred and Ninety Thousand One Hundred and Seventy Four Dollars Forty Nine Cent); 873, 278. 09 Pounds (Eight Hundred and Seventy Three Thousand Two hundred and Seventy Eight Pounds and Nine Pennies); 298, 055 (Two Hundred and Ninety eight Thousand, and Fifty Five Euros); 391, 838 (Three hundred and Ninety One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty Eight Riyals) and 10, 135 Dirham (Ten Thousand One Hundred and Thirty Five Dirham). These recoveries are unprecedented as no other agency can boast of such record. Judging by the dexterity with which the Commission has prosecuted its cases from the High Court to Court of Appeal up to the Supreme Court, the Commission is by far the major contributor to case law and jurisprudence in Nigeria. The major Law Reports are replete with successfully concluded cases by the Commission. Again, these facts are verifiable! Burden of Proof Now Resides With Defendant Until recently, the practice has been that the burden of proof in criminal prosecution resides with the prosecution. But that was overturned in FRN v. YAHAYA which was decided on January 25, 2019. SC.645/2014. This was a case in which the Supreme Court upheld the argument of the EFCC that the burden of proof had now been shifted from the prosecution to the defendant in terms of ill gotten wealth. The apex court further held that the defendant would have to show that his income was in tandem with what he acquired otherwise such ill gotten wealth and properties would be forfeited to the Federal Government. This is a landmark decision with potential to improve the fight against corruption in Nigeria. It is regrettable that this feat failed to impress the United States Departments Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour. Worrisome Report with Inaccuracies Indeed, the US reports portrayal of the work of the EFCC which is replete with inaccurate information is worrisome considering the close relationship between the Commission and some US entities. Agencies of the US Government, especially the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), US Securities and Exchange Commission, Post and Telecommunications Department and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) have very strong collaboration with the EFCC in the delicate task of tracing and seizing assets stolen but stashed abroad by rogue Nigerian officials. We also have FBI agent domiciled in the EFCC. Even as many of those assets are still stashed in US financial and property markets, these US agencies are familiar with the determination and passion with which the Commission is going about the fight against corruption. 10 Different Countries Seek Mutual Legal Assistance from EFCC Unfortunately, the US Report does not reflect this deep knowledge of the EFCC and its work, which is enough reason to be suspicious about the motives behind the publication. To underscore the important role which EFCC is playing in the fight against economic and financial crimes, no fewer than 10 countries on Monday, March 18, 2019, requested for Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) with the Commission. This is unprecedented in the history of any agency in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular. Malabus case The prowess of the EFCCs investigative power is worthy of note in the celebrated Malabus case. The historic trial of prominent major oil companies- Shell and ENI in Milan, Italy by the public prosecutor was made possible by the political will of President Muhammadu Buhari and dexterity of the EFCC. The comprehensive investigation of the commission and evidence generated in prosecuting the corrupt deal formed part of documents used in prosecuting the criminal aspects of the notorious deal by the Milan prosecutor. The EFCC recorded another first in Africa with its prosecutor appearing in the Milan trial as a witness, the first of such to happen in Italian prosecution. Some individuals including an Italian, Gianlura Di Nardo and a Nigerian, Emeka Obi, were last year convicted in the matter while the Dutch prosecutor just recently notified Shell of his readiness to prosecute the oil giant over the controversial deal. US Report, a Disservice to EFCC From the foregoing, it is clear that the report authored by the American agency has done a great disservice to the work of the EFCC in particular and the fight against corruption under the leadership of President Buhari, an administration that is globally acknowledged for the enormous political will it has brought to the fight against corruption in Nigeria. We are conscious of our past with previous government officials involvement in corrupt practices with impunity but that history is being re-written by this government and the commission. The rest of Africa appreciate the administrations work in terms of fighting corruption in Nigeria which was the impetus behind the designation of President Buhari as the Anti- Corruption Champion early last year by the African Union (AU). In that capacity, President Buhari is saddled with the responsibility of leading the rest of Africa out of the corruption quagmire. At the level of the EFCC, the Acting Chairman of the commission, Mr Ibrahim Magu, attained the leadership of the Heads of Anti- Corruption Agencies in Commonwealth Africa (HACACA) in May 2018. This was based on his antecedents and acknowledged track records in the fight against corruption. There can be no greater validation of the revolutionary impact of the fight against corruption in Nigeria in the last four years than these milestones achievements. But for those who cannot see any good in what Nigeria is doing, it is better to leave the country alone than distract it with bogus reports. The Abuja Division of the Federal High Court has struck out a case seeking to ensure the prosecution of former aviation minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, over the disappearance of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu. Mr Kanu who is facing trial for alleged treason disappeared in September 2017, five months after he was granted bail by the court presided over by a judge, Binta Nyako. About 13 months after his disappearance, in October 2018, Mr Kanu was seen in a video suspected to have been shot in Israel. While the news media was awash with news of Mr Kanus reappearance, Mr Fani-Kayode, a popular critic of the President Muhammadu Buharis administration, took to his Twitter handle to welcome the re-emergence of Mr Kanu whom he said would help in ensuring the removal of Mr Buhari. In a reaction to the comment, a Nigerian, Isaiah Ayugu, approached the high court to demand the prosecution of Mr Kanu and a senator, Enyinnaya Abaribe, who had undertaken to be a surety for Mr Kanu. The applicant also demanded the prosecution of Mr Kanus lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, who had accused the Nigerian Army of abducting and possibly assassinating Mr Kanu. In their response to the suit, Messrs Abaribe and Fani-Kayode described the application as an abuse of court process, citing the other ongoing cases related to the instant application. According to a report by Vanguard newspaper, the court presided over by a judge, John Tsoho, dismissed the suit on Tuesday, for the failure of the applicant to respond to preliminary objection describing his case as an abuse of court process. Mr Ayugus application had been brought by his lawyer, Oghenevo Otemu. The Nigerian Army on Thursday said it is deploying 197 soldiers and officers to Gambia for a peacekeeping mission. The Chief of Army Staff, Tukur Buratai, made the disclosure during the graduation of participants for the NIGCOY 4 ECOMIG pre-deployment training, held at the Lt-Gen Martin Luther Agwai International Leadership Peacekeeping Centre, Jaji, in Kaduna State. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports Mr Buratai was represented by the Commandant, Nigerian Army School of Infantry, Ali Keffi. NAN also reports that out of the 197 army personnel for the peacekeeping mission, 12 are officers while the remaining 185 are soldiers. Mr Buratai said the training further confirmed the commitment of the Nigerian Armed Forces to deploy quality peacekeepers as part of its contribution to the quest for global peace and security. According to him, the pre-deployment training is aimed at refreshing and polishing the knowledge and expertise of the participants in peace support operations. This is also to equip you with the requisite skills required to protecting yourself and equipment while carrying out the missions mandate. Generally, the techniques and procedures impacted on you during your training will put you in a good frame of mind to discharge your duties in the mission area. I caution you to avoid any ugly incident that can tarnish the image of the Nigerian armed forces in particular and the nation in general , he warned. Mr Buratai also charged them to discharge their duties in consonance with the missions mandate at all times. I must also remind you that the rules of engagement in the mission give you the latitude to exhibit utmost professionalism in the discharge of your responsibilities, he said. The army chief added that they must respect the cultural and religious sensitivity of the people of the host nation and must not involve themselves in the trafficking of illicit substances of any kind, such as alcohol and drugs as those negate the United Nations ethics. Please note that the UN maintains zero tolerance policy of sexual exploitation and abuse. The Nigerian armed forces and indeed the Nigerian government will also not tolerate the contravention of this policy, Mr Buratai stressed. Earlier, the Commandant of the Centre, Abubakar Tarfa, said the pre-deployment training lasted for four weeks, and that the troops were expected to be in Gambia for a year. Mr Tarfa said the training was intensive and comprehensive in line with the UN pre-deployment modules. Police and military authorities on Thursday, confirmed that 1,119 persons were arrested in connection with electoral offences during the February 23 and March 9 elections across the country. Police Spokesperson, Frank Mba, an assistant commissioner of police, made this known in Abuja at a joint news briefing by spokespersons of the police and the military at Defence Headquarters. Giving the breakdown, Mr Mba said 796 suspects were apprehended during the Governorship and Hose of Assembly elections, while 323 were nabbed during the Presidential and National Assembly polls. Mr Mba spoke on behalf of Onyema Nwachukwu, a colonel and Acting Director, Defence Information (DDI) and his counterparts of the Army, Navy and Air Force. He said 256 were arrested in Akwa Ibom State, 117 in Imo State and 109 in Kaduna State. According to him, as investigation proceeds, this number may either shrink or increase as the case may be. Some of the suspects may eventually be released without charge, while some of them may implicate or make statements that require us to make further arrests. So, this number is not sacrosanct, Mr Mba said. He explained that the briefing was to shed light on certain security challenges witnessed during all the elections before the supplementary elections. On the alleged encroachment into INEC collation centre in Rivers State by soldiers, he said it was a very serious matter and of concern to the military and police top hierarchy. Mr Mba said the military and police high commands had ordered a thorough probe of the incident and other isolated cases. He said already, several of the video footages that are in circulation on social and online media platforms have been compiled to assist in the investigations. On the crisis between the police and military over the Rivers incident, Mr Mba said it had been resolved, assuring that both agencies were no longer at loggerhead. The two security agencies are working in synergy to guarantee peaceful and secure environment for all law-abiding Nigerians to exercise their civic right of voting. In keeping to this mandate, we want to reiterate our joint commitment to the peaceful conduct of the forthcoming supplementary elections scheduled for March 23, 2019. He, however, warned that any person or group of persons who may attempt to truncate the supplementary elections would be made to face the law irrespective of status. Mr Mba commiserated with the relations, friends and associates of some Nigerians, civilians and security agents, who lost their lives during the elections. He said no election was worth the live of any Nigerian, be it security personnel or civilian, and prayed for the repose of their souls. Corroborating Mr Mba, the DDI restated that the military and police had resolved their differences arising from the incident in Rivers during the election. Mr Nwachukwu said that both agencies high commands had expressed serious concern about the alleged encroachment by some soldiers into the centre in Rivers. We want to assure Nigerians that we will remain non-partisan and apolitical; we will remain neutral, and of course, as professional as we have always been. Once again, that incident was a very unfortunate one. It is a major concern to the leadership of the armed forces and Nigeria police. We are also mindful of the fact that the role of the armed forces is complementary to that of the police force. We equally have no doubt that we are taking a back seat as the armed forces of Nigeria, while the police force takes the lead in the security architecture for the elections. He disclosed that the gaps that brought about the unfortunate incident had been addressed, saying the incident is being investigated and after exhaustive investigation, definitely, we will issue the report. So, we want to assure Nigerians that nothing will be swept under the carpet. We will be as transparent as possible, Mr Nwachukwu said. (NAN) The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in Kano State says it is ready to conduct the governorship re-run election across 28 affected Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the state. The state INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Riskuwa Arab-Shehu, disclosed this while briefing journalists on Thursday in Kano ahead of the Saturdays re-run election. According to him, across the 28 LGAs, there are 75 Registration Centres, 207 polling units and 279 voting points with the total number of 128,324 registered voters. Mr Arab-Shehu explained that the governorship election was cancelled across 15 LGAs due to violence and 116 polling units were affected, adding that in these affected areas, the total number of voters is 73,173. He further said, In 23 LGAs, the election was cancelled due to over voting and violence which disrupted the election process in those areas. In these affected areas, we have a total number of 55,151 registered voters in 92 polling units across the affected Local Government Areas. Earlier, we have 29 affected Local Government Areas, but we later realised that one of it, Bunkure where card reader was not used in one of the polling units, therefore it was declared as Invalid instead of cancelled, he said. Mr Arab-Shehu added that the commission after the conduct of the elections on February 23, had reviewed all the affected polling units and came up with the above as the authentic and the exact number of local government areas affected. According to him, the electoral body had received all the sensitive and non-sensitive materials for the re-run pointing out that the distribution of the election materials would commence on Friday, February 22. He assured all the political parties that INEC will do everything possible to ensure a free, fair and credible supplementary election in the state. Mr Arab-Shehu disclosed that three other RECs from Ogun, Kebbi and Zamfara States were deployed to Kano to support him in the conduct of the re-run election on Saturday. (NAN) The Nigeria Biosafety Management Agency (NBMA) has faulted reports that it has approved the distribution of genetically modified foods in Nigeria. The director-general of the agency, Rufus Ebegba, spoke on at a press briefing on Thursday in Abuja while reacting to calls for the scrapping of NBMA over its approval of Genetical Modified Organisms (GMOs). The claims by the media organisations that there are GM foods are completely false, Mr Egbeba said. The GMOs so far approved by the NBMA are not yet in the market, even though approvals have been given for their commercial release, he said. He said the GMOs still have to still undergo other instant procedures at the National Seed Service under the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. PREMIUM TIMES reported that NBMA was being criticised over its method of granting permits for commercialisation of GM food crops in Nigeria. Critics said the agency was hasty in granting approvals without considering the safety concerns raised by Nigerians. The Nigerian government established NBMA to regulate the potentials of modern biotechnology and its derivatives for the benefit of Nigerians. Nigeria officially signed the Biosafety Bill into law in 2015, making it eligible to join the league of nations already using genetic engineering (GE), also called genetic modification (GM), to boost food production. With the establishment of the NBMA, dumping of unauthorised GMOs into Nigeria is now at the barest minimum, the director-general of the agency said. The risk to human Health from modern biotechnology practice and the use of GMOs are at their barest minimum, he said. Mr Ebegba emphasised on the negative effect of the absence of Biosafety system, saying it will lead to the dumping of unauthorised GMOs on the country. Those calling for the scrapping of NBMA are directly paving way for dumping of GMOs in the country thus enriching the countries from which these crops are imported, he said. He said the agency has set up two committees to examine the application of the countries that import GMOs before recommending them to the agency. The two are the National Biosafety Committee (NBC) and the National Biosafety Technical sub Committee (NBTS). The agency will continue to ensure that only safe GMOs will be allowed in Nigeria as the agency has full structural and human capacity to ensure the safety of Nigerians, he said. The absence of a Biosafety system will amount to the dumping of unauthorised GMOs into the country with its attendant adverse effect on humans, animals, the environment and the economy, he said The Nigerian government has reportedly approved for use its first genetically modified crop: the Pod Borer Resistant Cowpea (popularly called beans). This was after it had been genetically modified to resist the pest Maruca Vitrata, and was developed by the Institute For Agricultural Research at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The cowpea, by this development, becomes the first genetically modified food crop to be approved in the country. Two months after it approved commercialisation of transgenic cotton varieties, a development heavily kicked against by environmental activist, the agency later approved GM cowpea, popularly known in Nigeria as beans. NBMA had warned stores across the country to desist from importing genetically modified foods without permits. The Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), Danladi Umar, on Thursday threatened to send the reporters of Thisday, The Guardian and Pilot newspapers to prison for alleged misrepresentation of facts in reporting proceedings at the tribunal. Mr Umar is presiding over the trial of the suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, for alleged breach of the Code of Conduct Bureau Act. According to Mr Umar, after the tribunals proceedings on Monday, the journalists had reported in their articles published on Tuesday that Mr Onnoghen alleged his two asset declaration forms were mutilated by the Federal Government. Mr Umar said Mr Onnoghen did not make the allegation. He said the counsel to the defendant, Adegboyega Awomolo, after going through the two forms admitted as exhibit 2 and 3, only said that it is loose. On Tuesday, these reporters made mischievous, distorted facts and misrepresentation of what transpired on March 18. You are lucky today, If not I would have used the full wrath of this tribunal to send you to prison. And they would remain there until I retire and that is 28 years from now, Mr Umar added. I would not hesitate to deal with any journalist who goes about misreporting statements adduced during this proceeding. I would bring heaven down on the journalists who misinterpret these proceedings. Carleton University has announced a memorial fund in honour of Pius Adesanmi, a Nigerian-born academic whose death on March 10 has continued to elicit tributes from all corners. Mr Adesanmi died in the Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa penultimate Sunday, all the remaining 156 passengers and crew were killed alongside the professor. He was 47. Although Mr Adesanmi was born in Nigeria, Carleton University and Canada, where he had lived for many years, are mourning him as a national loss whose replacement would be difficult to come by. Mr Adesanmi was the director of the Institute of African Studies at the Ottawa-based institution, which has now launched a literary fund in his memory. The fund will support students and continue Mr Adesanmis lifes work, an announcement said. A memorial was held for Mr Adesanmi at the school, where he was praised as an iconic professor who lived a life of dedication to work, family and humanity, In Nigeria, several memorial activities had been held in Lagos and Abuja. The events were well attended, including by Nigerias Senate President Bukola Saraki who hailed his ability to speak truth to power. As part of ongoing rites to mourn Mr Adesanmis death, Carleton also announced a poetry contest from the public. A guideline of the contest, which is expected to exorcize the pains of loss through provocative poems that pour out their beating hearts with all-consuming passion, was published here. Well-woven wreaths in the form of Requiems, Orikis, Spoken Word, Haikus, Limericks, Lyrics, Free Verse, etc. are welcome, the announcement said. Poems will be assessed by their poetic quality, thematic relevance, technical competence, and emotive force. His award-winning book Youre Not a Country Africa: A Personal History of the African Present was groundbreaking. One of the most important minds of the African diaspora, he inspired his Carleton colleagues with his brilliance and cemented his close ties to faculty, staff and students with his kindness, thoughtfulness, enthusiasm and unforgettable laugh. To honour his memory a fund is being established. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has postponed the supplementary governorship election in Adamawa State it earlier scheduled for Saturday. The decision is in compliance with the order of a state high court. Instead, INEC said it will only hold supplementary elections in two State House of Assembly constituencies in the state on the same day. INEC had fixed Saturday for supplementary governorship elections in Adamawa and four other states, after declaring the elections on March in the states as inconclusive. The four other states are Plateau, Bauchi, Kano, Sokoto. The commission later said it would collate the results of a local government area earlier left out in Bauchi, which could have led to a review of the decision to hold a supplementary poll in the state. But the state governor, Mohammed Abubakar, and his All Progressives Congress (APC) later got a court injunction against the planned collation exercise. This has forced INEC to suspend action on the governorship election in the state pending the determination of the suit by the governor and the APC. On Thursday too, a state high court in Adamawa also granted an injunction restraining INEC from holding supplementary governorship polls in the state. But the injunction did not affect the supplementary polls for the two state legislative seats in the state. According to a spokesperson of INEC, Festus Okoye, at a press briefing in Abuja on Thursday, the two constituencies where the elections will hold are Uba/Gaya and Nassarawo/Binyeri in Hong and Mayo-Belwa local government areas. The Nassarawo-Binueri State Assembly election was deferred due to the death of the APC candidate before the election, while the Uba/Gaya State Assembly election was not concluded on March 9 due to the cancellation of results in some polling units. So in relation to Adamawa State, we are going to hold elections in two state constituencies, Mr Okoye said. Notwithstanding the legal action against the supplementary (governorship) election, elections will hold in Nasarawa LGA in Myobawa constituency where the election had to be countermanded following the death of a candidate before the polls as well as the Uba/ Gaya state constituency. The Adamawa governorship election was declared inconclusive by the electoral commission because the margin of victory was less than the cancelled votes in the state. Before this decision, Mr Fintiri of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was leading his closest rival, Governor Umar Bindow of the APC. The commission stressed that the court judgment affected only the governorship election, not the state constituency elections. In these constituencies, elections will hold as it has nothing to do with the action before the court, Mr Okoye said. INEC also said it has taken steps to stop the court order barring it from holding the supplementary governorship poll. While the commission has also complied with the order, it has equally taken steps to vacate this and dismiss the action, Mr Okoye said. The United States government says it is disappointed by the scale of irregularities in the Nigerian 2019 general elections. The U.S. government said from the reports it garnered from observers groups; voter intimidation, vote buying, interference by security forces, and violence marred the electoral process in parts of the country. It said this in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Thursday. It, however, urged stakeholders and security services to ensure a free, fair, credible, transparent, and peaceful election process ahead of the Saturday supplementary governorship election and in future elections. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on March 12 announced supplementary governorship elections in states where it declared the polls inconclusive. The states include Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kano, Plateau, and Sokoto. But the supplementary governorship polls will hold in only five states on Saturday due to judicial interventions. Also in the statement, the U.S government extended its condolences to the families of those who lost their lives during the election process, adding that it would continue to support the national democratic process. As noted by many observer groups in their preliminary reports, we too were disappointed by the low voter turnout as well as credible reports of voter intimidation, vote buying, interference by security forces, and violence in some locations. As the 2019 electoral cycle comes to an end, we urge all stakeholders to work towards a free, fair, credible, transparent, and peaceful process, especially for the many Nigerians across the country who again will go to polls on Saturday. We encourage all stakeholders, including INEC, political parties, and the security services, to continue to improve the electoral process for future elections. We are saddened by those acts of violence and extend our deepest sympathy to the families of those who lost their lives, including those who worked for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the security services. The statement stressed that the United States has no preferred candidates in the election, adding that it would remain committed to working together to achieve a mutual goal for both countries. The United States supports a democratic process where the will of the Nigerian people is reflected in the results. As long-time friends of Nigeria, we continue to follow closely the still ongoing elections. We do not have a preferred party or candidate. We look to Nigeria as an important leader on the African continent. As a democratic partner of Nigeria, the United States remains committed to working together to achieve our mutual goals of peace and prosperity for the citizens of both our countries. The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the construction of a new faculty building at Adamawa State University, Mubi. This was revealed Wednesday by the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, at the end of the meeting of the council which held at the Presidential Villa, Abuja and chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari. The new building, which is for the Faculty of Arts, is to be constructed at a cost of N613,395,650. The project is being undertaken by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) and has been awarded to a company called Spectrum engineering. Mr Adamu also announced that the meeting has approved the adoption of the Safe Schools Declaration. The Safe School declaration is an inter-governmental political commitment by governments that was recommended for endorsement by all countries at an international conference held in Oslo, Norway, on May 28, 2015. Mr Adamu said with Wednesdays endorsement, Nigeria is now committed to implementing the Safe School guidelines. Explaining the modus operandi, Mr Adamu said the Safe School initiative will come in proper focus when there is some conflict and the federal government will come to their aid but they themselves are doing what they are supposed to do in all the places where they are affected by the conflict. A state high court in Yola has ordered the indefinite postponement of the governorship supplementary polls in Adamawa State slated for Saturday. The judge, Abdul-azeez Waziri, said the polls should be put on hold until he rules on an application for an interlocutory injunction barring the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from conducting the polls. The judge then adjourned the matter to Tuesday to give the ruling. A political party, the Movement for Restoration and Defence of Democracy (MRDD) and its supposed candidate, Eric Theman, had asked the court to cancel the election on the grounds that the partys logo is not on the ballot paper. Appearing for the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ahmadu Fintiri, in the matter, Joseph Gadzama, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN) leading eight other counsel, had filed a motion for Mr Fintiri to be joined in the suit. Counsel to the PDP, Okechukwu Udeze (SAN) leading six others, also applied for PDP to be joined in the suit. Adeyemi Pitan, counsel to MRDD and Eric Theman, however, opposed the motion of the two parties on grounds that the two applications were not served on him in due time. The MRDD counsel said the only business of the court for the day was the March 14 application for an interlocutory injunction to stop the supplementary election, not the hearing of any motion. Lead counsel to INEC, Tanimu Inuwa (SAN), however, prayed the court to discharge the injunction on grounds that it has no jurisdiction to entertain the case. He cited section 25 subsection 1 of the Constitution, saying that INEC being a federal organ, challenging its decision should be through a federal high court not a state high court. Mr Inuwa said the issues being canvassed before the court touched on the conduct of elections and that section 285 subsection 2 of the Constitution places conduct of an election in the purview of election tribunals. He said that MRDD has no locus standi to approach the court because it has not fulfilled all the electoral process, adding that it has no interest in the case. Adjourning the case to March 26, Justice Waziri ruled that he needed time to study the voluminous documents submitted by the counsel to the various parties. Background The Adamawa governorship election was declared inconclusive by the electoral commission because the margin of victory was less than the cancelled votes in the state. Before the decision, Mr Fintiri of the PDP was leading his closest challenger, incumbent governor Umar Bindow of the All Progressives Congress. The supplemntary election for Adawama was to be held on Saturday, alongside those of five other states. Should INEC abide by the court ruling, then the election in Adamawa would be postponed. The Akwa Ibom State governor, Udom Emmanuel, on Wednesday signed the 2019 budget of the state into law. Mr Emmanuel recently won re-election for a second term. The budget passed for implementation is N672 billion. The signing ceremony at the Government House, Uyo, was witnessed by the leadership of the Akwa Ibom House of Assembly, led by the Deputy Speaker, Felicia Bassey, according to a government house press statement. The Attorney General of the State and Commissioner for Justice, Uwemedimo Nwoko, and the Commissioner for Finance, Linus Nkan, were also present at the brief ceremony. The budget, christened Budget of Industrialisation for Poverty Alleviation is intended to help actualise the industrialisation and job creation agenda of the administration, the finance commissioner, Mr Nkan, told reporters at Government House after the signing ceremony. The Commissioner for Education, Victor Inoka, told reporters that the governor has granted approval for the states college of education to become a degree-awarding institution. Mr Inoka, a professor, said that the college was now affiliated to the University of Uyo. In the draft presented to the state House of Assembly in November last year by Governor Emmanuel, roads, works and transport was allocated N157.31 billion, the biggest sum in the budget. N53.6 billion was proposed for housing and urban renewal, while N13 billion was for agriculture. About N15 billion was for education, and N10 billion for law and justice. Akwa Ibom is one of Nigerias richest states. Its budget is funded largely from oil derivation fund. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has outlined activities and timeline to resolve the electoral log jam in Rivers State. An INEC spokesperson, Festus Okoye, disclosed this at a press briefing at the commissions headquarters in Abuja. The commission has outlined activities and timelines of resumption and conclusion of the process, he said. According to him, the activities began on March 19 when the commission had engagements with major actors. This will be followed by an inter-agency meeting between the commission and other relevant agencies on March 29, in Rivers State. The commission said it will have a meeting with critical actors on March 30, after which the headquarters of the commission will release a guideline for the continuation of the process. Thereafter the commission will issue guidelines for the resumption of collation of results and this guideline will be issued from the headquarters of the commission here in Abuja, he said. Revalidation of polling agents and observers, the commission said, will be done simultaneously in Abuja and Rivers State between March 25 and March 31. From April 2 to April 5, INEC will resume the collation of results in the state. INEC said the venue for this particular activity will be agreed upon within the commission and the critical stakeholders in the electoral process. The commission also said April 13 has been set should there be a need for a supplementary election after which declaration of the final results would be made between April 13 and 15. The issuance of the certificate of return will be done on April 19. On the 29th day of March, the commission will hold what we call the inter-agency consultative committee on security meeting. This will take place in Rivers State. Then thereafter on the 30th day of March 2019 in Port Harcourt, there will be a meeting of critical stakeholders in the electoral process. We are also going to have what we call the revalidation of polling agents and observers for collation of results. This revalidation will commence on the 25th day of March and end on the 31st day of March 2019 and it will take place simultaneously in Rivers and Abuja. Then thereafter there will be the resumption of collation and announcement of the result and this will take place between the 2nd to the 5th day of April 2019 and it will take place in Port Harcourt. Then on the 13th day of April, there will be supplementary elections where necessary then thereafter there will be an announcement of all rests between the 13th and 15th day of April 2019. And then on the 19th day of April 2019 will be the date for the Issuance of all outstanding certificate of return. The collation of the results for the election held on March 9 was suspended due to violence allegedly carried out by soldiers and armed thugs. Suspected cultists have killed two corps members and injured another during an attack on their residence in Bayelsa. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the incident occurred on Wednesday night along School road, Swali, in Yenagoa Local Government Area of the state. The Bayelsa Commissioner of Police, Olushola David, who visited the state NYSC Secretariat and met with the State NYSC Coordinator, Lotto Bolade, on Thursday in Yenagoa, described the killing as shocking. The CP assured the NYSC of a rejigged security strategy to ensure the safety of serving corp members in the state. The police have briefed the State Governor, Seriake Dickson on the incident; there is nobody that will hear of the incident that will not be shocked. The corps members in the state may be scared, but please assure them that there will be improved security under my watch, the CP stated. In her reaction, Mrs Bolade decried the incessant attacks on corps members in the state, saying it as worrisome. These hoodlums have been attacking corps members serially. The Director-General has had cause to write to the state governor and the matter reduced. There is no day we dont record cases of attack against corps members, she explained. Mrs Bolade, however, confirmed that the third injured corps member survived the attack. (NAN) The Bayelsa State Governor, Seriake Dickson, has launched a global campaign to address the ravaging effects of oil spills in parts of the state. The campaign is tagged Rise for Bayelsa Campaign. Mr Dickson also accused oil companies of fuelling insecurity in the region. He said the campaign is to attract global attention to the menace of oil spills, pollution and environmental degradation in the state. At the event held at the Gabriel Okara Cultural Centre in Yenagoa, the governor censured international oil companies (IOCs) operating in the state. He accused them of constituting the biggest threat to the security and stability of the state and the Niger Delta region under the guise of awarding crude oil pipeline surveillance contracts. Mr Dicksons Special Adviser on Public Affairs, Daniel Alabrah, quoted the governor as accusing the oil multinationals of funding terrorism, criminality and breakdown of law and order in the state. His words: They are not only polluting our land, creeks, waterways and communities, they are also taking their terrorist and criminal activities to yet another frightening level. All these cases of killings during elections, people terrorising Southern Ijaw, killing people and even affecting our democratic practices funded by Agip in the likeness of crude oil pipeline surveillance contractors and forming a parallel government in this state compromise all the layers of security in our country. They have been killing, maiming and terrorising people in Nembe Bassambiri. A certain Kodjo is working as an Agip contractor funded by the company. In Southern Ijaw, there is a certain David Lyon and his people whose activities are being funded by Agip. Agip is not interested in the stability and safety of our communities. This is how far they have escalated their terrorist activities. So when we talk of environmental terrorism perpetrated, funded and encouraged by IOCs, you come to Bayelsa and you see a classic case. The launch of the Rise for Bayelsa Campaign would herald the beginning of a long crusade by my government as a fulfilment of the commitment made during the last World Environmental Day to shift attention from education and infrastructure deficit to the scourge of environmental terrorism. Mr Dickson said the short documentary aired during the launch was a true reflection of the hardship the people of Bayelsa and the entire Niger Delta have been experiencing for over 60 years at the hands of a federal government that does not care about the wellbeing, welfare and survival of the people of the region beyond the oil. He chastised the federal government for its failure to enforce environmental and safety standards as well as regulations on the oil companies operating in the region. He called on all, especially the ICT-compliant youth of the state, to use the internet to portray the Bayelsa story so as to inform the Nigerian authorities and the world at large toward eliciting support and understanding. This has gone from that to terrorism against our poor, oppressed people who are left alone at the mercy of organised cartels and international oil companies. If you look at their (IOCs) practices and activities in this country, in this state and in the Niger Delta, they are carrying on as criminal gangs with their collaborators. Some local, some foreign, he said while urging Bayelsans at home and in the Diaspora to support the campaign. In a welcome address, the Commissioner for the Environment, Ebipatei Apaingolo, said the activities of IOCs have had colossal negative effects on the environment and the common wealth of the people of Bayelsa, who are mainly farmers and fishermen. Mr Apaingolo said there have been incessant oil spills and gas flaring without any form of environmental remediation or payment of adequate compensation to affected communities. He said despite the outcome of the Kyoto Protocol In 1997, it is unfortunate that oil companies still flare gas in Bayelsa and the Niger Delta region. Studies have shown that about 13 million barrels of crude oil have been spilled in the Niger Delta since the 1950s. For example, the Bayelsa State Ministry of Environment recorded over 3000 spills from Agip facilities between 2012 and 2018. According to him, oil spills have contaminated rivers and streams, the air, plants while farm produce in the Niger Delta are no longer consumable as elements of carcinogenic hydrocarbon are found in tuber crops. He said the UN Environmental Programme noted that continued exposure to contaminated water, air and soil have put life expectancy rate in the Niger Delta at approximately 10 per cent below the national figure. He added that in response to the environmental injustice, the Rise for Bayelsa Campaign was launched to attract international attention to the malicious and damaging operations of oil companies in the state. Mr Apaingolo said the fundamental demands of the campaign include the oil multinationals cleaning up the environment contaminated by oil spills, payment of adequate compensation to all affected communities, investing in the host communities, and providing a lasting solution to the perennial problems of oil spills. A 52-year-old man, Joshua Akanbi, has been sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by an Ado Ekiti High Court for manslaughter. He committed the crime during a communal clash over land between Ayede Ekiti and Itaji Ekiti in 2017. The convict was arraigned alongside Abiodun Ogundamisi, 40, and Segun Ogundamisi, 22, on a two-count charge of conspiracy and murder. The judge, Toyin Abodunde, held that evidence before the court proved that Mr Akanbi was guilty of manslaughter for opening fire on one Seyi Oladipupo during a dispute. Two communities were laying claim to Orisunmibare farm settlement which later caused the victims death. Mrs Abodunde ruled that evidence before the court was not enough to find the accused persons guilty of murder under Section 316 of Criminal Code Cap C16 Laws of Ekiti State 2012 and subsequently discharged them of the charge. The court consequently found the convict guilty of manslaughter for shooting the deceased contravening Section 319 and 326 Cap 6 Laws of Ekiti State 2012. The convict reportedly opened fire when an attempt was made to disarm him during an argument. The accused persons were first arraigned on July 6, 2017 when the charges were read to them to which they pleaded not guilty. When the incident occurred on January 31, 2017 at the farm settlement, the deceased was rushed to a nearby hospital after being shot but later died owing to excessive loss of blood. In his effort to prove the case of murder against the convict, the Solicitor General, Babatope Ojo, had called seven witnesses including the Investigating Police Officer (IPO) and a medical doctor. Exhibits tendered include one pump action gun, photographs taken at the scene of the incident, live cartridges and statements of the accused persons. The defence counsel, Sule Longe, called eight witnesses and also tendered photographs of the machete wounds sustained by the convict and the statements volunteered to the police. The Lagos State Task Force has arrested eight suspected cultists and miscreants who allegedly attacked one of its officers with cutlasses and broken bottles. Olayinka Egbeyemi, the task force chairman, said in a statement Wednesday that the incident happened in the Mile 12 area of the state. During the attack an officer of the agency (Sergeant Damilola Adeojo) was seriously injured with cutlasses and broken bottles and he was presently receiving treatment and under going series of test on his head at LASUTH, Mr Egbeyemi said. Mr Egbeyemi said the attack led to an enforcement operation which was executed on March 20, around Mile 12, to get rid of cultists and miscreants disturbing innocent members of the public as well as public officers. He added that there are series of Save our Soul at Mile 12 petitions submitted to his office by residents of Mile 12 and its environs and this also necessitated the enforcement operation which resulted in the arrest of the seven miscreants. Enough of these killings by cultists and miscreants across the State particularly around Mile 12, Bariga, Somolu and Lagos Island, Mr Egbeyemi said. During interrogation, one of the arrested suspects, Ojo Opeyemi, said they were given cultlasses and broken bottles by their group leaders at Akani-modo to attack task force officers, according to the statement. Mr Egbeyemi said the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Zubairu Muazu, has directed that all those arrested be charge to court for prosecution. He added that the government would not tolerate miscreants and cultists disturbing innocent residents at any parts of the state. The Ondo State Government has defended its proposal to create Local Councils Development Areas (LCDAs) amid criticisms that it is embarking on a wild goose chase. The government has already set up an 11-man committee to look into the proposal and make recommendations on the number and nature of the LCDAs to be created and has about 90 days to complete its work. The Lanke Odogiyan-led committee is expected to receive both written and oral memoranda from the public, screen all memoranda and make recommendations to the state government. The state governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, has explained that the proposed LCDAs would ensure rapid development and bring governance closer to the grassroots. But an Ondo State-based group, Sunshine Liberation Front (SLF), has stacked the state government for proposing to create LCDAs. The proposal, viewed by all political watchers as politics taken too far, is coming few months after Arakunrin Akeredolu and his government failed to conduct the council polls slated for December 1st, 2018 and a total of N2billion was earmarked for in the 2018 Appropriation Bill signed into law by the governor, the groups leader, Akinyele Akinwale, said in a statement on Wednesday. Would the governor now abandon the elections that the prospective candidates had parted with huge funds in mobilizing their supporters and getting nomination forms? This is a plot by the governor and his advisers to curry more political favour, score cheap points and share our limited funds amidst his party faithfuls at the expense of suffering Ondo State indigenes. Isnt it incredible and mischievous that the state governor, who has continued to abandon and starve Local Councils of funds and deny them of autonomy for several years, now remembers to create LCDAs out of them? Would these LCDAs not be given same treatment by the current government and the subsequent ones? SLF, therefore, will not look away while our political system, which should benefit the ordinary people, be rendered powerless to compensate a few, who worked and will be ready to work for their own political goals. The group rejects, in totality, the unreasonable plan by Arakunrin Akeredolu to create LCDAs while our legally recognized local councils, under the illegal chairmanship of committee caretakers, remain underfunded and largely unrecognized. Responding to the allegation, the commissioner for information, Yemi Olowolabi, told PREMIUM TIMES that the move to create LCDAs was in response to the demands of the people of the state, particularly, from affected local government councils. This is not about adding financial burden, it is essentially democracy, which is about the government of the people, said Mr Olowolabi. It is a case of the government listening to the people. He explained that some local governments were too large and others far removed from their constituent parts so that accessing the local government headquarters was a difficult task. When reminded that even the local government councils were ineffective in their current state, Mr Olowolabi said the councils in Ondo State were functional and had been given mandates to ensure the construction of roads and infrastructure within their domains. While also responding to the allegation of the failure to conduct local council elections, the commissioner said the tenure of the caretaker leadership of the councils would soon expire in a few months and the council elections would hold. We are going to hold the council elections once the tenure of the caretaker chairmen expires in a few months, he said. Ondo State currently has 18 local governments. Mr Olowolabi mentioned Ose, Owo, and Ile Oluji/Okeigbo as areas with obvious challenges. The number of the LCDAs would only be known when the committee submits its reports. For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME. Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire. Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever. Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation. View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union. Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history. Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words. The Company's 2018 year-end results met our expectations as set in the previous quarter; all the projects in development stages are progressing according to the expected timetable; expected to obtain a conditional license for the Aran project in the coming months; target price has risen to NIS 5.53 TEL AVIV, Israel, March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The TASE analysis project was launched in 2016 in order to raise investor awareness to TASE listed technology and life-science companies and the markets in which these companies operate, thus creating appropriate pricing and increasing the exposure of investors from Israel and abroad. Its goal is to encourage investments in these companies by improving understanding of their industries and markets. In order to maintain professional, independent and unbiased analysis, the companies signed an agreement with TASE to receive the analysis services for an obligatory period of two years. The companies cannot withdraw from the project during this period. The analysis is funded by the companies surveyed with funding from the Chief Scientist and TASE. Summary of Highlights Good financial results - an increase in revenues due to an increase in the price of electricity and green certificates as a result of a hedge by the company: Revenues for 2018 amounted to NIS 171 million, similar to our forecast of NIS 168 million given in Q2. In 2017, the Company's revenues amounted to NIS 141 million. The two significant developments during the reporting period were: 1) the connection of projects established in the framework of the first of its type tender in the photovoltaic field in Israel at a capacity of 90 MWp (the company has 94% ownership) 2) progress towards the financial close of four projects with a capacity of 85 MWp in Virginia are advancing along with talks with two US banks regarding binding agreements. The Aran Project - On February 25, 2019, the Planning Administration decided to approve the transfer of the project plan for comments and reservations (approval for a conditional license is expected in few months). The Company is updating its estimates regarding the cost of the anticipated investment in the project, which is expected to amount to between NIS 700-550 million and the projected annual income, which is expected to amount to between NIS 155-135 million per year. The main significance of this is further progress towards the start of the project. In view of the company's progress, the increase in the prices of electricity and green certificates, the expected electricity revenues at the beginning of 2019, and the Company's compliance with its plans, we are updating our estimate of Energix's value to NIS 2.2 billion / $602 million (our last estimate amounted to NIS 2.1 billion); Target price ranges from 5.25 to 5.84 and on average is NIS 5.53. Read the full report here. Last, please remember that you can contact us to receive additional details and insights on our covered companies at no cost: equity.research@frost.com About the company - Energix Renewable Energies Ltd. (hereinafter "Energix" or "the Company") is a renewable energy company, currently active in the field of solar (photovoltaics) and wind energies. As one of the largest Israeli Independent Power Producers (IPPs) with activities spanning Israel, Poland and the U.S., the company initiates, develops, constructs and owns long-term renewable energy projects. Once it has secured production rights through government tenders, Energix sells the generated electricity to utility companies who distribute electricity to end users. Today, Energix sells the electricity that is produced by the systems it owns to Israel's Electricity Corporation and in Poland, on the Polish Power Exchange, where its facilities were built under local regulation which supports the establishment of green energy facilities. Energix shares have traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange since 2011. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. For further information, please contact: Kristi Cekani Corporate Communications - Frost & Sullivan, Europe P: +39.02.4851.6133 E: Kristi.cekani@frost.com http://www.frost.com Related Links http://www.frost.com SOURCE Frost & Sullivan HONG KONG, March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Chinese leading biotechnology company 3SBio (01530.HK) today released its 2018 annual results, showing that the Company has been posting dramatic business growth, and has been gearing up R&D layout and investment in innovative drugs. Financial highlights showed that the Company's revenue increased by approximately 22.7% to approximately RMB 4,583.9 million; gross profit rose by approximately 21.2% to approximately RMB 3,706.6 million; Normalized EBITDA added by approximately 23.3% to approximately RMB 1,781.8 million; Normalized net profit attributable to owners of the parent advanced by approximately 29.0% to approximately RMB 1166.1 million. R&D expenses soared over 40% to approximately RMB 362.7 million. As of December 31, 2018, amongst the 32 product candidates within the Company's active pipeline, 22 were being developed as National Class I New Drugs in China, including 11 in oncology, 12 in immunology, 6 in nephrology, 2 in metabolic diseases and 1 in dermatology. After reaching separate partnerships with Japan's Toray and US-based Refuge Biotechnologies in 2018the Company also announced partnerships with Samsung Bioepis, Verseau and TLC as part of efforts to enrich its existing product portfolio and pipeline at the beginning of 2019. Market-Leading Products with Solid Growth The Company's core products include TPIAO, Yisaipu, as well as recombinant human erythropoietin ("rhEPO") products EPIAO and SEPO. All the four products remained market leaders in China in 2018. According to IMS data, the China market share of TPIAO, which is the world's only commercialized recombinant human thrombopoietin ("rhTPO"), increased to 65.3% for the treatment of thrombocytopenia, and its sales jumped 71.3% in 2018. Yisaipu, a product to treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis and psoriasis, owns a dominant market share of 64.0% in China, and its sales rose 9.7% in 2018. Two rhEPO products, namely EPIAO and SEPO, own a combined market share of 41.0% and their sales added 4.8% in 2018. The Company launched the first once-weekly anti-diabetes drug Bydureon on May 25, 2018, providing a new treatment option for patients in China. Rapid Advance in Product Pipeline The Company made important progress in R&D in 2018: The Company resubmitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the NMPA for the approval of 302H for the treatment of patients with HER2 over-expressing metastatic breast cancer, and the application was granted a priority review status by the NMPA. The Company completed Phase III trials of prefilled syringe of Yisaipu, and is preparing to apply for the manufacturing approval from the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) in the first half of 2019. In 2018, the Company was granted a new IND approval from the NMPA for clinical trials of TPIAO in pediatric ITP indication. Patient enrollment is expected to begin soon. Clinical trials for TPIAO in surgery patients with hepatic dysfunction at the risk of thrombocytopenia are ongoing. The Company has received IND approvals for an anti-VEGF antibody (601A) to conduct clinical trials in patients with RVO, mCNV and DME, and Phase I trial in DME patients is expected to begin soon. Patient enrollment in neovascular AMD trials is ongoing. The Company completed multiple Phase I clinical trials of NuPIAO (SSS06, the second-generation rhEPO to treat anemia) and obtained an approval for Phase II and Phase III clinical trials. The Group has completed a dose-escalating Phase I safety and pharmacokinetics study on RD001 in healthy volunteers, and is planning for Phase II trials in anemic patients. The Company completed Phase I clinical trials of a humanized anti-TNF antibody (SSS07) in both healthy volunteers and RA patients, and is preparing for Phase II trials in patients with RA and other inflammatory diseases. The Company completed Phase I trials of 602 (an anti-epidermal growth factor receptor antibody to treat cancer) and is planning Phase III pivotal trials in patients with colorectal cancer. The Company has started patient enrollment for the Phase I clinical trials for pegsiticase (SSS11) in refractory gout patients with high uric acid level. In the United States, the Company's business partner, Selecta Biosciences, Inc. ("Selecta") is actively pursuing Phase II clinical development for SEL-212 (consisting of pegsiticase, co-administered with SVP-Rapamycin to prevent the formation of anti-drug antibodies) as its lead program. On January 11, 2019, the Company received an investigation new drug (IND) approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for 609A, an anti-PD1 antibody, for clinical trials in patients with various cancers. The Company is submitting an IND application to the NMPA for clinical trial approval for 609A in China. Global Partnerships and Co-operations In 2018, the Company entered into an exclusive license agreement with Toray for the commercialization of TRK-820 ("Remitch"). The Company also achieved an agreement with BMT to acquire a calcium acetate tablet. In April 2018, the Company established research collaboration with Menlo Park, California-based Refuge Biotechnologies, Inc. ("Refuge") to develop Programmed Therapeutic Cells. At the beginning of 2019, the Company revved up external collaborations, including the collaboration with Samsung Bioepis Co., Ltd. ("Samsung Bioepis") for the clinical development and commercialization of multiple biosimilar candidates developed by Samsung Bioepis, including SB8 bevacizumab biosimilar candidate ("SB8") in China; the partnership with Verseau Therapeutics, Inc. ("Verseau") for the development and commercialization of novel monoclonal antibodies in the field of immuno-oncology for a broad range of cancers; and the partnership with Taiwan Liposome Company, Ltd. ("TLC") to commercialize two liposomal products in the therapeutic areas of oncology and severe infectious diseases in China. These collaborations demonstrated the Company's excellent expertise in international development and operation, while laying a key step-stone for its future globalization strategy. The Company will continue to pursue selective mergers and acquisitions and collaboration opportunities to enrich its existing product portfolio, in a bid to achieve sustainable long-term growth. Focus on Biopharmaceutical Innovation In the future, the Company intends to reinforce its position as a leading biopharmaceutical company in China by leveraging its integrated R&D, manufacturing and commercial platforms. The Company will also focus on developing leading biologics products to address unmet medical needs to benefit more patients. The Company will focus on developing leading biologics products, including NuPIAO, RD001, SSS07, Pegsiticase, product candidate 602, product candidate 601A, 609A,prefilled syringe of Yisaipu and other mAb products. The Company is developing a new set of biologics products, including monoclonal antibodies, bispecific antibodies, antibody fusion proteins, as well as cell therapies, by fully integrating multiple R&D platforms within the Company to promote product development and bring patients more treatment options. With approximately 38,000-liter capacity in mAb facility, mammalian cell-based, bacteria cell-based and small molecule manufacturing facilities, and its over 26 years of experience in manufacturing biologics medicines, the Company is able to manufacture high quality pharmaceutical products with scalable monoclonal antibodies manufacturing capacity at competitive costs to deliver on its strategic objective of creating a profitable CMO business. The Company is actively and selectively seeking opportunities to bring in clinical trial stage biologic products in order to provide commercial manufacturing services. At the same time, the Company's existing products are being registered in new countries, and new products are being registered in highly regulated markets through innovative or biosimilar-drug approvals, therefore further expanding its international business and benefiting patients worldwide. Dr. Jing LOU, Chairman and CEO of 3SBio, commented: "With the ongoing healthcare reform and the booming bio-pharmaceutical industry, 3SBIO has achieved strong growth for several consecutive years, and we now have an established system covering research, manufacturing and commercial with a proven track record of success. As we embrace a market environment with opportunities and challenges, 3SBIO will continue to focus on biological medicine and innovation, fully leverage our advantages by integrating research, development, manufacturing and commercial, and, at the same time, make the best of strategic mergers and acquisitions and commercial cooperation. We aim to become a globally leading Chinese biopharmaceutical enterprise and improve the accessibility of biological medicines so as to benefit more patients." SOURCE 3SBio Inc. "Many of our customers are incorporating cannabis into their lifestyle, and The High End meets this new need in a way that only Barneys New York can," said Daniella Vitale, Chief Executive Officer & President, Barneys New York. "We are thrilled for customers to visit The High End and its extraordinary selection of products. It's an experience they can't get anywhere else." Select products featured in The High End will also be available on Barneys.com starting March 29. Following the opening in Beverly Hills, Barneys New York plans to expand The High End to additional locations in the near future. The High End features an exclusive partnership with upscale cannabis company Beboe, and an extensive selection of accessories and lifestyle products. This includes a range of elevated wellness products and rare items across home, jewelry, beauty and more. Guests will be able to experience a selection of custom blown glass pipes, luxury rolling papers, one-of-a-kind vintage ashtrays, accessories including sterling silver grinders, and CBD-infused beauty. At The High End, Barneys New York Beverly Hills customers can learn about luxury cannabis company Beboe's distinct offerings. The collaboration includes an exclusive special edition silver Beboe vaporizer pen in celebration of the project. Customers who visit The High End can speak to Beboe representatives about its products, and purchase from Beboe through the white glove delivery service, Emjay. The High End is located on the fifth floor of Barneys New York Beverly Hills. Download images of The High End at Barneys New York here. Download images of select products available at The High End here. ABOUT BARNEYS NEW YORK BARNEYS NEW YORK (Barneys) is a luxury specialty retailer renowned for having the most discerning edit from the world's top designers, including women's and men's ready-to-wear, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, fragrances, and gifts for the home. Barneys' signature sense of wit and style is manifested in its creative advertising campaigns, original holiday themes, and celebrated window displays. Founded as a men's retailer in 1923 in downtown Manhattan, it became an international arbiter of high style for both women and men in the 1970s, renowned for discovering and developing new and innovative design talent. Today, Barneys New York operates flagship stores uptown on Madison Avenue and downtown in Chelsea in New York City, as well as additional flagships in Beverly Hills, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, and Las Vegas, along with a preeminent luxury online store, Barneys.com, as well as 14 other stores and outlets across the United States. For more information about Barneys New York, please visit www.Barneys.com and explore its luxury content site, The Window, for an insider's look into the Barneys world: a behind-the-scenes visit with exciting designers, fashion, events, and the Barneys team. ABOUT BEBOE Beboe is the Los Angeles-based leader in luxury cannabis. Founded in 2017 by friends and cannabis growers Scott Campbell and Clement Kwan, Beboe's mission is to destigmatize legal cannabis through heightened experience and education. With sleek packaging and social dosing, Beboe offers the sophisticated cannabis consumer an experience unlike any other on the market. In 2017, Beboe launched cannabis vaporizing pens and edible pastilles, each curated with a unique blend of THC and CBD. In Fall 2018, Beboe launched a CBD-only blend. Beboe. Each product is dosed to complement individualized social settings - ranging from afternoon tea to dinner parties to weddings - so cannabis can be safely and stylishly incorporated into every aspect of a lifestyle. In addition to developing quality-driven product, Beboe remains at the forefront of the industry through education and advocacy. Beboe is the inaugural brand from For Success Holding, a portfolio of cannabis brands co-founded by Campbell and Kwan in late 2014. For Success Holding endeavors to create a conglomerate of products, brands and experiences for today's cannabis consumer. Beboe THC/CBD blend products are sold through licensed distributors and delivery services throughout California and Colorado, and CBD products are available online and through select retailers. In 2019, Beboe entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Green Thumb Industries Inc. For more information, please visit www.beboe.com. SOURCE Barneys New York Related Links https://www.barneys.com A recent independent study 1 found that C Spire customers are far more likely to recommend the brand to friends, family and colleagues across all its lines of business because of the technology and telecommunications services firm's legendary, world-class customer service. C Spire, whose parent company got its start 60 years ago in the independent local phone business in rural Mississippi, has developed a reputation for superior customer service and putting the customer at the core of its products and services approach. The firm even incorporated customers directly into a 2011 brand name change from Cellular South to C Spire. "As a company that gets its inspiration from our customers, we appreciate the loyalty and the recognition for our efforts," said C Spire CEO Hu Meena. "This proves that you can be successful when you deliver great products and customer service and are laser-focused about being easy and simple to do business with." Meena said C Spire's Net Promoter Score, a customer loyalty metric that measures a consumer's satisfaction with a company's products and services and their willingness to recommend brands to friends, family and colleagues, is much higher than its major rivals in the wireless, broadband and managed information technology products and service categories. C Spire topped Comcast (ISPs and cable TV), Verizon and AT&T (wireless) on overall customer experience and NPS scores an accomplishment the firm attributes to its "customer-inspired" focus and its above and beyond "business as usual" approach. C Spire's wireless subsidiary scored an overall 57 on its Net Promoter Score, double the industry average and making its customers 158 percent more likely to recommend the provider to other consumers, unlike dramatically lower results for major competitors like AT&T and Verizon. "At C Spire, it's all about the customer," said Brian Caraway, general manager of the company's wireless unit, which has been a mobile industry trailblazer. "We are tightly focused on anticipating and meeting customer needs, creating a world-class experience and going above and beyond for each and every individual." C Spire's Home Services unit, which launched one of the nation's first Gigabit speed residential fiber efforts in 2013, finished with a whopping 69 NPS, well above the ISP and cable TV industry average of 0 and making the subsidiary's consumers 69 times more likely to recommend the company to others over competitors like Comcast, DirecTV and Dish TV. "We work hard to understand the needs of our customers and provide quality and high value broadband products and services that help them be successful and improve their quality of life," said Ashley Phillips, general manager of C Spire Home Services. "This level of customer satisfaction can only be achieved and sustained with dedicated employees who are inspired every day to put our customers at the center of everything they do." C Spire TV, honored by the cable TV industry in 2017 as the best television technology product in the U.S., delivers advanced cable TV features that consumers love in convenient and simple apps that are designed to run on popular streaming devices like Amazon Fire TV, Android TV and Apple TV eliminating the need to outfit every TV in the home with a set top box and saving several hundred dollars a year in rental fees. C Spire Business, with a 57 NPS rating that makes customers 138 percent more likely to recommend them to others, is the industry's first full-stack managed information technology solutions provider, but customers can count on far more than just gaining access to the latest and greatest technology, according to Don Monistere, general manager of C Spire Business. "Our loyal customers know that exceptional customer service is part of our company DNA. We deliver it all the time because that's one of our key differentiators," Monistere added. "That's why we have a team full of professionals with strong interpersonal skills and technical abilities. Because when customers are happy, we're happy." C Spire Business offers advanced connectivity, cloud, software, hardware, communications, professional services, cybersecurity, business continuity and technology support in a single, seamless, managed IT solution portfolio. To learn more or order wireless, broadband or managed IT products and services from C Spire, visit www.cspire.com and click on the respective tabs for each business unit. 1 Results based on comparison of C Spire Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey results with Temkin Group Third Quarter 2018 survey and CustomerGauge 2018 NPS and Customer Experience report. About C Spire C Spire is a leading technology and telecommunications services company that provides consumers, businesses and government agencies fiber-based ultra-fast internet access, live streaming TV, digital phone service, world-class, customer-inspired wireless communications and a full suite of dedicated internet, wireless IP Voice, data, cloud and managed IT services. The company is committed to preparing its communities for a better future through teaching and technology via its C Spire Tech Movement initiative. This news release and other announcements are available at www.cspire.com/news. For more information about C Spire, visit www.cspire.com or follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cspire or Twitter at www.twitter.com/cspire. SOURCE C Spire Related Links http://www.cspire.com MINNEAPOLIS, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- PULSE, a global, next generation ministry based in Minneapolis, will be moving into their new downtown headquarters this summer. Construction began this month to build out their 16,000 square-foot vintage space at 600 S 9th Street. The mission of PULSE is to awaken culture to the reality of Jesus, and plans for this new headquarters include leadership training intensives, an enhanced internship program, and a media studio/creative space for digital ministry efforts. New PULSE office located at 600 S. 9th Street in Minneapolis "We are investing in the next generationbelieving that they will bring revival. We're creating a culture that draws in talent, fosters creativity, and executes world-class campaigns," said Nick Hall, the Founder and Chief Communicator of PULSE. PULSE began on a college campus in North Dakota and first officed out of a church basement. Since those humble beginnings in 2006, PULSE has shared the message of Jesus with nearly five million students through live events. Today, PULSE is focused on multiplicationmultiplying their efforts to make Jesus known and multiplying the number of millennials and gen z'ers who are following Jesus and sharing His message. Nick Hall and his team at PULSE have hosted some of the largest Jesus gatherings of the past decade. Last year, PULSE organized an event at U.S. Bank Stadium called Pulse Twin Cities. The eighteen-month campaign brought together more than 700 partnering churches, trained 10,000 individuals to share their faith, and culminated with a 45,000 next generation event that included a world record breaking pillow fight. This spring, PULSE will hold UNITE on the National Day of Prayer at Grace Church in Eden Prairie on May 2. UNITE, an annual event in the Twin Cities, is a prayer and worship event for the next generation. This year's event includes music from Hillsong NYC worship and KB along with a message from Nick Hall. More information for this free event can be found at unitendop.com. About PULSE Founded in 2006, PULSE is a Minneapolis-based, millennial-led prayer and evangelism movement on mission to awaken culture to the reality of Jesus. For more than a decade, PULSE has hosted some of the largest Jesus gatherings for the next generation. They've impacted nearly five million students and young adults through live events and were in front of nearly one million in 2018 alone. PULSE Founder, Nick Hall, is a leading international voice in the cause of evangelism and the author of the book, Reset: Jesus Changes Everything. Learn more at pulsemovement.com. About Nick Hall Nick Hall is the visionary of the Together movement, author of the book Reset, and the Founder and Chief Communicator for PULSE, a ministry at the center of some of the largest millennial-led prayer and outreach efforts in the world. As an evangelistic voice to the next generation, Nick Hall has shared the Gospel at hundreds of events to nearly four million students and is regularly featured as a speaker for pastors' gatherings, student conferences, training events, and festivals around the world. Nick is the President and CEO of The Table Coalition (formerly Mission America Coalition), sits on the board of the National Association of Evangelicals, and is part of the student advisory team for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA). Nick, his wife, Tiffany, and their two children live in Minneapolis, MN. Facebook: /NickHallPulse Instagram: @nickhallpulse Twitter: @NickHall Media Contact: Susan Harris Phone: 612.559.4188 Email: [email protected] Related Images new-headquarters.jpg New Headquarters New PULSE office located at 600 S. 9th Street in Minneapolis SOURCE PULSE Related Links http://pulsemovement.com HELENA, Mont., Mar. 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Situated in northwest Montana is one of America's most breathtaking national parksGlacier. Known as the Crown of the Continent and the "Backbone of the World," Glacier National Park spans over 1 million acres. The park is open year-round, welcoming travelers to explore its glacial-carved terrain, expansive trail system, sparkling blue waters and the iconic Going-to-the-Sun Road. While summer is the peak season, spring is one of the most magical times of year to visit for a few reasons, one of which is biking. Bike through breathtaking panoramas in Glacier National Park. (Photo Courtesy: Visit Montana/Glacier NPS) Prior to the Going-to-the-Sun Road opening to vehicular traffic (which typically happens in late June), the road becomes one of the West's premier destinations for spring biking and hiking as the plows work to remove winter's snowfall from the road. With two entrancesone in West Glacier and one in St. Marybikers can pedal from west to east or east to west as they take in the many sights, sounds and smells of spring in Glacier National Park. While you can bring your own bikes to ride in the park, there are a handful of local companies from Whitefish to West Glacier that offer bike rentals, making it easy to add a day trip onto your Montana spring itinerary. In West Glacier, Glacier Guides and Montana Raft offers a variety of ways to bike the road. Choose from self-guided tours with their bike rentals, guided tours or their Paddle and Peddle package that includes a morning whitewater rafting trip followed by an afternoon bike ride with an interpretive guide. Their guided tours begin in mid-May and continue until park roads are open to vehicle traffic. Most self-guided and guided tours depart on the west side from Lake McDonald Lodge or Avalanche Creek, which is also where the road will be closed to vehicular traffic. For travelers wanting to help ease car traffic and catch an eco-friendly ride, a bike shuttle operates on the weekends from the Apgar Visitor Center. The shuttle drops bikers and their bikes at Lake McDonald Lodge during the initial plowing, and adds Avalanche Creek to their round-trip route once the road is open. Meanwhile, about 30 minutes west of West Glacier is the mountain resort community of Whitefish. Serving as one of the gateway communities to Glacier National Park, Whitefish has easy access to bike rentals for pedaling the Going-to-the-Sun Road, as well as various other trails and roads in the area. Rentals are available at Glacier Cyclery & Nordic, Great Northern Cycle & Ski and Sportsman & Ski Haus. Bikers and hikers in Glacier National Park will see vibrant shades of blue and teal in various creeks, as well as waterfalls that can be seen from the Going-to-the-Sun Road. When pedaling from the west side, be sure to keep your eyes open as you ride past McDonald Creek. While not many get the opportunity to see them, Harlequin ducks are drawn to the fast-moving waters of McDonald Creek and may be seen floating among the creek's rushing waters. Spring also brings ample wildlife-watching opportunities in Glacier National Park, including black and grizzly bears, bighorn sheep, mountain goats and yellow-bellied marmots. When biking or hiking, travelers are well-advised to carry bear spray, as bears are often moving across or along the road and hiking trails during the spring season. After spending the day biking in the Crown of the Continent, relax over a Montana brew at Backslope Brewing in Columbia Falls, taste Montana spirits at Glacier Distilling Company in Coram or fuel up at a variety of restaurants in Columbia Falls and Whitefish. Travelers looking to spend a few days in and around Glacier National Park will find comfortable accommodations on the west side in West Glacier, Hungry Horse, Columbia Falls, Kalispell and Whitefish. The east side offers lodging in Essex, East Glacier Park, St. Mary, Babb and Browning. These towns offer several ways to extend your stay with abundant outdoor adventures. Spend a day enjoying Whitefish Mountain Resort and the resort's zip line tours, Alpine Slide and mountain biking trails. Book a fishing trip or whitewater rafting trip with one of the knowledgeable guides in West Glacier or explore the Rails to Trails' route in Kalispell. You can also take a guided hike in Glacier National Park. Find more spring travel information, and start planning your trip to Montana and Glacier National Park, at WWW.VISITMT.COM. About The Montana Office of Tourism and Business Development (MOTBD) MOTBD markets Montana's spectacular unspoiled nature, vibrant and charming small towns, breathtaking experiences, relaxing hospitality and competitive business climate to promote the state as a place to visit and do business. For more information, go to VISITMT.COM . SOURCE Montana Office of Tourism and Business Development Related Links http://www.visitmt.com NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- HENRY The Dentist (HENRY) announced the closing of a $10 million Series A financing, led by Forerunner Ventures, to expand its fleet of mobile dental practices to companies in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, New York and additional states across the US. The funding will be used to accelerate growth of new vehicles to meet the demand from companies and patients for HENRY's services. Kirsten Green joins the Board of Directors of HENRY. Existing investors Brand Foundry and Trail Mix Ventures also participated in the financing. The group of investors shares the management teams' view that healthcare delivery is shifting towards a more patient-centric model of care. HENRY currently services over 70 of the most respected global companies - including ADP, Merck, Vonage, Audible, and CNBC - who are all committed to employee wellness and improved access to healthcare, solving a massive problem for businesses and patients. Research has shown that 36% of Americans have not gone to the dentist in over a year, leading to later-stage healthcare costs and complications. Every $1 spent on preventative healthcare saves $8 to $50 in later-stage care. The primary reasons cited for not using benefits is the inconvenience of finding and going to an in-network dentist as well as the fear that many patients feel about annual checkups. "At HENRY the Dentist, we're building a brand that is improving the health of employees, by providing greater access to patients' health benefits and significantly improving the patient experience," said Justin Joffe, Founder and CEO of HENRY. "Our corporate clients range across all industries, but most importantly they share a common understanding of the positive effects of taking care of their employees has on their organization." Collectively, over 60,000 employees work at the offices HENRY visits with their mobile dental practices, seeing 15-30% of employees utilizing the onsite services. By bringing an in-network dentist to employers, HENRY saves an average of 1,080 hours of employee time per year. "HENRY is reimagining how going to the dentist should be, by elevating the brand experience at every touchpoint before, during, and after their service," said Alexandria Ketcheson, Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer at HENRY. HENRY's providers are in-network with all major insurance carriers - including Delta Dental, Cigna, Aetna, MetLife, United, Guardian, and Horizon BCBS - and there is no cost to companies to bring HENRY onsite. ABOUT HENRY THE DENTIST: HENRY The Dentist (HENRY) brings a state-of-the-art mobile dental practice to corporate offices, providing employees with convenient in-network dental care with an elevated patient experience. HENRY's practices are equipped with the latest technology and patient amenities, including digital imaging, BOSE noise-cancelling headphones, and HBO & Netflix while sitting in massage-featured dental chairs. HENRY has redefined the dental experience with a patient-centric approach that saves time and improves healthcare outcomes. HENRY is currently available in New Jersey, with expansion in 2019 to Pennsylvania, Georgia, New York and additional states across the US. To learn more about HENRY visit www.HENRYthedentist.com . SOURCE HENRY The Dentist Related Links http://henrythedentist.com NEW YORK and BOSTON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- HLTH, the largest and most important conference for health innovation, announced today a partnership with Boston Children's Hospital focused on voice technology in health. HLTH 2019 will feature a Voice.HLTH track, a voice hackathon as part of HACK/HLTH and a showcase exploring the impact of voice technology in healthcare. The Voice Technology in Healthcare Initiative, born out of Boston Children's Hospital Innovation & Digital Health Accelerator, seeks to accelerate the adoption of voice-assisted technologies in healthcare. "The application of voice technology to the practice of health care completely changes the nature of how physicians provide and patients receive - and experience - health care," said John Brownstein Ph.D., Chief Innovation Officer of Boston Children's Hospital. "From consumers interacting through voice interfaces to learning about their health and engaging with the health system, to physicians using voice bots to assist in administrative tasks and care delivery, we are seeing the health industry reimagined by the adoption of voice technology." Jonathan Weiner, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of HLTH commented, "Voice technology is an incredibly exciting and rapidly developing area of innovation in health and we are honored to have Boston Children's Hospital as a partner to place focus on the latest voice solutions that are making a significant impact across the health ecosystem." Voice.HLTH will include presentations from industry experts who are pioneering voice transformation in healthcare, including how to address barriers and implementation challenges. In addition to the one-day Voice.HLTH track, the exhibit floor will feature a Voice Pavilion allowing attendees of HLTH the opportunity to personally experience the latest in voice technology. Over a dozen companies - from startups to well-established organizations - will display and demonstrate the latest use of voice technologies in the health industry. For more information, please visit https://hlth.com/voice-hlth. About HLTH HLTH is the leading event for innovation in the health industry. It's an unprecedented, large-scale forum for individuals, companies, and policymakers who are reshaping the health industry to learn, collaborate and evolve. The event is unique in bringing together all key stakeholders, ranging from established payers, providers, employers, and pharma services to disruptive startups and prolific investors, as well as representatives from government, academia, health associations and business groups, media, and industry analysts. By leading the development of a new dialogue and ecosystem, HLTH's mission is to drive substantial reductions in health costs and dramatic increases in health quality. HLTH takes place on October 27-30, 2019 at the MGM Grand's brand new conference facility. About Boston Children's Hospital Boston Children's Hospital , the primary pediatric teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is home to the world's largest research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center. Its discoveries have benefited both children and adults since 1869. Today, more than 3,000 scientists, including nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 members of the National Academy of Medicine and 11 Howard Hughes Medical Investigators comprise Boston Children's research community. Founded as a 20-bed hospital for children, Boston Children's is now a 415-bed comprehensive center for pediatric and adolescent health care. For more, visit our Vector and Thriving blogs and follow us on social media @BostonChildrens , @BCH_Innovation , Facebook and YouTube . Contact Carolyn Joyce [email protected] 347-871-0534 Bethany Tripp [email protected] 617-919-3110 SOURCE HLTH Related Links https://hlth.com IDAHO FALLS, Idaho, March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- International Isotopes Inc. (OTCQB: INIS) (the "Company") announces its financial results for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2018. The Company reported total revenue in 2018 of $10,368,823 compared to $7,420,390 in 2017, which represents an increase of approximately 40%. The details of the performance of the Company's significant business segments are discussed below. Cobalt products sales accounted for approximately 20% of the Company's total revenue in 2018 and approximately 7% in 2017. Revenue in this segment increased by about 302% in 2018, as compared to 2017. The significant increase in revenue is attributed to the resumption of cobalt product sales resulting from the Company's acquisition of cobalt from an alternate supplier. In 2015, the Company executed a ten-year production purchase agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for bulk cobalt produced in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), and material has been undergoing irradiation since that time. The Company expects to begin receiving and processing cobalt under that agreement later in 2019 and will start recognizing additional sales revenue at that time. From that time forward, the Company expects cobalt sales revenue to continue at a fairly steady pace. Cobalt products were historically the Company's largest revenue segment prior to a supply interruption in 2014 as previously disclosed. Revenue from the Company's Radiological Services segment increased by approximately 67% in 2018, compared to in 2017. This segment accounted for approximately 22% of total revenue in 2018, and approximately 18% in 2017. The increase in revenue in the segment is attributable to contracts awarded to the Company by the DOE and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for field service work involving the decommissioning of dis-used therapy devices. The Company already has contracts in place with the DOE and expects to see continued strong revenue within this segment in 2019. Sales of nuclear medicine standards accounted for approximately 37% and 44% of the Company's total revenue in 2018 and 2017, respectively. Revenue in this segment increased by approximately 17% in 2018, as compared to 2017. All of the revenue within this segment results from our sales to RadQual LLC (RadQual). The Company attributes the increase in revenue within the segment to the management change in RadQual brought about by a change in member ownership of RadQual and the Company assuming overall management responsibility for RadQual. The Company anticipates that sales to RadQual will continue to grow in the coming year through increases in the distributor network and through the introduction of new products. Sales of radiochemical products accounted for approximately 21% of the Company's total revenue in 2018, reduced from approximately 31% of total revenue in 2017. Revenue in this segment decreased by approximately 2% as compared to 2017. This decrease in revenue is primarily the result of supply interruptions that occurred early in the year. The Company expects to see improved revenue performance within this segment during 2019 as the result of the anticipated commercial launch of a new generic drug product. Cost of revenue for 2018 was $5,678,530 as compared to $4,182,705 in 2017, an increase of approximately 36%. Total operating costs and expenses decreased approximately 6% in 2018 compared to 2017 as a result of decreased general and administrative expense. The decrease in general and administrative expense was attributed to decreased legal expense related to a one-time arbitration proceeding which concluded in 2017. Net loss was $844,576 in 2018, compared to a net loss of $3,757,284 in 2017. This is a reduction in net loss of approximately 78%. The reduction in net loss was the result increased revenues, decreased costs of production, and decreased operating expenses. The Company believes it will continue to see similar improvements in performance in 2019. Steve Laflin, Chief Executive Officer of the Company, stated, "I am very pleased with our overall financial performance in 2018 and I believe each of our business segments has excellent potential for continued improvements in performance in 2019. The long-awaited resumption of cobalt products sales was a very important aspect to our improved performance last year and I expect to see that positive trend continuing into 2019 and beyond due to the restart of cobalt production from the ATR. We have been able to obtain additional contacts for radiological field service work with the DOE which should continue the positive trend in revenue performance for the radiological services segment in 2019. Strong domestic demand, the introduction of new products, and increased international sales should all contribute towards continued improvement in revenue growth for the nuclear medicine segment. During 2019, we also expect to see some positive improvements in financial performance in the radiochemical segment as a result of the anticipated commercial launch of a new generic drug product and other business initiatives that are under development within this segment." International Isotopes Inc. Year Ended December 31, $ % 2018 2017 Change Change Sale of Product $ 10,368,823 $ 7,420,390 $ 2,948,433 40% Gross Profit $ 4,690,530 $ 3,237,685 $ 1,452,845 45% Total Operating Expense $ 4,980,357 $ 5,303,258 $ (322,901) -6% Operating Loss Before Other Exp. $ (290,064) $ (2,065,573) $ 1,775,509 -86% Other Expense $ (373,882) $ (1,621,789) $ 1,247,907 -77% Net Loss $ (844,576) $ (3,757,284) $ 2,912,708 -78% Net (Loss) Per Common Share $0.00 ($0.01) Weighted Ave. Sh. Outstanding 411,071,598 406,361,656 About International Isotopes Inc. International Isotopes Inc. manufactures a full range of nuclear medicine calibration and reference standards, a variety of Cobalt-60 products, and provides a wide selection of radioisotopes and radiochemical for medical applications, calibration, and clinical research. The Company also provides radiological services including source installation/removal, and decommissioning of various radiation units on a contract basis to clients. International Isotopes Inc. Safe Harbor Statement Certain statements in this press release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including statements with respect to revenue expectations for the future within our business segments, our ability to launch new products, the timing for the start of commercial sales of new products, increased contract opportunities for services, and our long term revenue outlook. Information contained in such forward-looking statements is based on current expectations and is subject to change. These statements involve several risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements of International Isotopes Inc. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements of the Company expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Other factors, which could materially affect such forward-looking statements, can be found in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission at www.sec.gov, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018. Investors, potential investors, and other readers, are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements made herein are only made as of the date of this press release and International Isotopes, Inc. and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: David Drewitz Creative Options Communications Investor and Public Relations [email protected] www.creativeoptionsmaketing.com Phone: 972-814-5723 SOURCE International Isotopes Inc. CEO Richard Drach praised his team's collective effort in maintaining its status as an elite producer in the nation. "It's an honor that we never take for granted to be recognized for superior performance on behalf of the client," said Drach. "We look forward to more successful quarters of exceeding expectations." International Management Partners believes that direct, face-to-face customer interaction is the surest way to achieving marketing and sales solutions. The company builds strong relationships on behalf of Fortune 100 clients around the globe, partnering with well-known brands to increase market share while growing customer base through customized marketing and sales campaigns. Like International Management Partners on Facebook and follow them on Twitter. About International Management Partners Headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, is an outsourced marketing firm that partners with leading clients in various industries to increase market share. International Management Partners provides team members with abundant opportunities for leadership and growth while offering stellar service to the client and the customer. For more information, call 402-505-3732 or contact them at www.internationalmanagementpartners.net. Contact: Richard Drach 402-505-3732 SOURCE International Management Partners Related Links https://www.internationalmanagementpartners.net/ LOS ANGELES, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- MyCaliforniaOffice.com is pleased to announce our commercial Real Estate Agent and Tenant Advisor Candace Brown, a professional and talented commercial broker serving Southern California and beyond. Candace Brown's extensive knowledge of the local markets paired with her hunger to assist her clients and her strategic problem-solving abilities makes her a standout agent in a competitive market. Candace Brown wants to help companies make the right commercial real estate decisions. She helps her clients identify and align their needs with their financial goals and objectives to achieve the best real estate decisions for their business. She makes it her mission so that businesses of all shapes and sizes can reach their overall goals. Candace provides services to businesses who want to relocate, open an office, open retail or restaurant space, downsize, expand or renegotiate their current lease. Candace's primary focus is commercial tenant representation in the entire region of Southern California. In addition to her passion for commercial real estate, Candace is also enthusiastic about customer care and customer service. She does whatever it takes to always make her clients happy and confident in their commercial real estate decisions. Candace wants you to spend less time searching for your dream space and let her do the work for you. She also has an exceptional talent for space planning and best use consulting. Candace is extremely knowledgeable in market value changes, making sure her clients are always receiving the best and most fair prices possible. Candace's goal is to help companies reduce their cost on commercial space and utilize their real estate as a tool to help grow and define their business. Candace specializes in tenant representation and provides her services free of charge as they are included in the tenant's lease. She will be there with you from the very beginning; from working with you to understand your needs, finding you the best possible spaces for your business, touring the facilities, to signing your lease and finding your dream location, Candace will be there every step of the way on your real estate journey. Have Candace Brown help you find the best opportunity with the most value for you and your business. View her current properties for lease here. Contact: [email protected] 818-288-2131 Photo(s): https://www.prlog.org/12760340 Press release distributed by PRLog SOURCE MyCaliforniaOffice.com Related Links https://www.mycaliforniaoffice.com/ NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- IPC , a leading global provider of secure, compliant communications and networking solutions for the financial markets community, announces that institutional investors can now access an array of crypto-asset exchanges and OTC providers through the IPC Connexus Cloud, thanks to a new partnership with Omniex , an institutionally focused investment and trading platform for digital assets. The strength of the companies' joint end-to-end solution security protocols, combined with the expanse and composition of IPC's institutional community of over 6,400 global financial market participants, represents a groundbreaking milestone in the digital asset trading arena. "IPC is about access, community, and intelligence -- exactly what institutional investors want and need from digital assets," said Bob Santella, CEO of IPC Systems. "The interest, technology, and customers are robust, but until now, securely connecting all three has been a challenge for the market. Through our Connexus extranet ecosystem, the Omniex platform can provide the groundbreaking, secure, intelligent channel for cryptocurrency trading that the financial community has been clamoring for, including the vast number of major financial institutions IPC touches around the world." Transforming the Digital Asset Marketplace In the last two years there has been intense anticipation over the possibility of institutional investment flowing into crypto-assets. The infrastructure for institutional-grade solutions has been rapidly developing, and security is a primary concern for institutional investors accessing any new or existing asset class. IPC already has a robust community comprised of the world's top financial institutions, which rely on IPC's network for orders, intelligence, and other mission-critical resources. Moreover, this network is protected by Connexus' robust extranet, keeping essential financial transactions secure and private, be they crypto assets or otherwise. Omniex, meanwhile, is a complete investment and trading platform for institutional investors to seize the opportunities of the capital markets' newest asset class, crypto. Recently named the first ever "Best Crypto Trading Platform" by Fund Technology and WSL Award for 2019, the Omniex platform provides portfolio and risk management, trade execution, investment operations, and compliance solutions for institutions. "Omniex partnering with IPC Systems is a win-win for institutional investors," said Omniex co-founder and CEO Hu Liang. "Omniex was purpose-built to provide comprehensive order management and execution capabilities for investors to access crypto-assets. With the established and comprehensive financial ecosystem accessible through IPC's Connexus extranet, institutions can now easily and confidently make the leap into digital assets. As the sophistication level of investors increases, we strongly believe IPC's Connexus network along with Omniex's robust platform provide the right solution with the proper level of security for those institutional clients." About IPC IPC is a technology and service leader powering the global financial markets. We help clients anticipate change and solve problems, setting the standard with industry expertise, exceptional service and comprehensive technology. With a customer-first mentality, IPC brings together one of the largest and most diverse global financial ecosystems spanning all asset classes and market participants. As the enabler of this ecosystem, IPC empowers the community to interact, transact and react to market changes and challenges, and we collaborate with our customers to help make them secure, productive, compliant and connected. Visit ipc.com and follow us on Linkedin and Twitter (@IPC_Systems_Inc). About Omniex Omniex is a front-to-back office investment and trading platform for institutional investors to access the crypto-asset markets. Recently named the first ever "Best Crypto Trading Platform" by Fund Technology and WSL Award for 2019, Omniex's purpose-built technology provides portfolio and risk management, trade execution, investment operations and compliance solutions to buy-side, market-making and broker-dealer institutions. It was founded in the fall of 2017 by an experienced team of technologists, financial executives and crypto pioneers, and is backed by leading investors including Wicklow Capital, Jump Capital, Digital Currency Group, Sierra Ventures, Clocktower Technology Ventures, ThirdStream Partners and Alan Howard of Brevan Howard. https://omniex.io Certain statements contained in this press release may be forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projection and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from any future results expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Media Contacts: Patrick Chambeau Drew Pierson IPC Systems, Inc. Finn Partners for IPC +33 1 55 82 91 50 +1 212 529 4810 [email protected] [email protected] Hannah Townsend Patrick Sutton Finn Partners for IPC Paragon for Omniex +44 207 017 8422 +1.646.558.6226 [email protected] [email protected] SOURCE IPC Systems, Inc. Related Links http://www.ipc.com MILAN, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Kaleyra S.p.A., a rapidly growing cloud communications software provider delivering secure APIs and connectivity solutions in the API/CPaaS market, today announced an integration with the WhatsApp Business API. Kaleyra will now optimize its communication offerings for businesses by expanding to WhatsApp chats and moving away from conventional SMSes. By recognizing customer trends and adopting the latest technologies, Kaleyra will incorporate the WhatsApp Business solution to allow better management of conversations with customers and providing them with the exact information they need. This integration with the WhatsApp Business API is proof of Kaleyra's growing importance and impressive innovation. Kaleyra makes business communication seamless and serves as a comprehensive platform that provides messaging, voice and fintech solutions, for over 3,000 customers around the world. How does it work? Through Kaleyra's flexible and easy-to-use API, businesses can now easily send WhatsApp messages to their customers. "Adding WhatsApp to our existing channels of communication will allow businesses to enrich customer experiences through one easy step, without any lengthy coding requirement," said Aniketh Jain, General Manager BU Cloud Enterprise of Kaleyra. "We're delighted to expand the reach of our clients through WhatsApp, and we are watching to see the numerous ways in which this addition along with our other scalable services will benefit all our clients." The algorithm of Kaleyra smoothly converts the composed text message that needs to be sent out to WhatsApp messages. That's not all. Through just 1 API, businesses can include 7 different types of additions to enhance their communication. These 7 supported formats of the message include text, audio, images, contact, location, documents, and templates. This creates a two-fold benefit. From the perspective of businesses, they can now use Kaleyra's omnichannel platform to send messages on WhatsApp through the same API using desktops, mobile phones etc., On the other hand, customers can now get updates on the go and can interact with businesses at any time, from anywhere. With the WhatsApp Business solution, businesses can have genuine conversations with their customers and receive instant analytics including the number of messages sent, read etc. The solutions serve multi-purpose use for businesses depending on their need. Companies can send air tickets, QR codes and more. For instance, an e-commerce firm can send logistics information related to the delivery of products to customers and keep them informed at each step of the way. Food delivery businesses can allow their users to get updates on their order. The new era of communication "The mobile messaging market offers businesses an additional line of communication with their clients, and Kaleyra makes it possible. We also benefit in multiple ways, including expanding our global customer base, driving future revenue growth. We are here to empower businesses, providing them all the different communication tools they need to accelerate and strengthen their customer interactions. I am looking forward to seeing the success this step brings about for both customers and businesses. Being a WhatsApp Business solution provider clearly sets us apart from other businesses and gives us an opportunity to customize communication and meet the specific requirements of all clients. It will also enhance our product portfolio as we move forward with our proposed combination with GigCapital and become a public company." - said Dario Calogero, Chief Executive Officer of Kaleyra. WhatsApp has grown to become a go-to communication tool and through Kaleyra's platform businesses can build strong relationships with their customers by connecting with them on the same platform they use to chat with their friends and relatives. Thus, creating a more personalized interaction with each and every customer by adding an extra layer of connectivity. About Kaleyra Kaleyra is a global group specializing in providing mobile messaging services for financial institutions and multiple other types of enterprises of all sizes. Through its proprietary platform, Kaleyra manages multi-channel integrated communication services on a global scale, comprising messages, push notifications, e-mail, instant messaging, voice services and virtual assistants. Kaleyra's technology today makes it possible to manage huge volumes of messages, with some 2 billion notifications a month. For more information: www.kaleyra.com About GigCapital, Inc. GigCapital, Inc. (NYSE: GIG, GIG.U, GIG.RT, and GIG.WS), is a Private-to-Public Equity (PPE) company, (also known as a Blank-Check or Special Purpose Acquisition Company ("SPAC")), sponsored by GigAcquisitions, LLC, and sole-managed by GigFounders, LLC ( www.gigfoundersglobal.com ). All were founded in 2017 by Dr. Avi Katz. The companies are led by an affiliated team of technology industry experts, deploying its unique Mentor-Investors methodology to partner with exceptional privately-held technology companies of dedicated solid entrepreneurs. The companies offer financial, operational and executive mentoring in order to accelerate their path from inception, privately-held entity into the growth-stage as a publicly traded company. The partnership continues through an organic and roll-up strategy growth post the public offering. For more information, visit www.gigcapitalglobal.com . "Private-to-Public Equity (PPE)" and "Mentor-Investor" are trademarks of GigFounders, LLC, used pursuant to agreement. Additional Information About the Transaction and Where To Find It Additional information about the proposed business combination and related transactions is described in GigCapital's Current Reports on Form 8-K, definitive additional proxy soliciting materials filed as DEFA14A, and preliminary proxy statement relating to the proposed business combination and the respective businesses of GigCapital and Kaleyra, which GigCapital has or will file with the SEC. The proposed business combination and related transactions will be submitted to stockholders of GigCapital for their consideration. GigCapital's stockholders and other interested persons are advised to read, once available, the preliminary proxy statement and any amendments thereto and, once available, the definitive proxy statement, in connection with GigCapital's solicitation of proxies for its special meeting of stockholders to be held to approve, among other things, the proposed business combination and related transactions, because these documents will contain important information about GigCapital, Kaleyra and the proposed business combination and related transactions. The definitive proxy statement will be mailed to stockholders of GigCapital as of a record date to be established for voting on the proposed business combination and related transactions. Stockholders may also obtain a copy of the preliminary or definitive proxy statement, once available, as well as other documents filed with the SEC by GigCapital, without charge, at the SEC's website located at www.sec.gov or by directing a request to Tara McDonough, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, GigCapital, Inc., 2479 E. Bayshore Rd., Suite 200 Palo Alto, CA 94303, or by telephone at (650) 276-7040. Participants in the Solicitation Kaleyra, GigCapital and their respective directors and executive officers and other persons may be deemed to be participants in the solicitations of proxies from GigCapital's stockholders in respect of the proposed business combination and related transactions. Information regarding GigCapital's directors and executive officers is available in its Form 10-K filed with the SEC on December 6, 2018. Additional information regarding the participants in the proxy solicitation and a description of their direct and indirect interests will be contained in the preliminary and definitive proxy statements related to the proposed business combination and related transactions when it becomes available, and which can be obtained free of charge from the sources indicated above. Forward-Looking Statements On February 26th 2019, GigCapital, Inc., (NYSE: GIG, GIG.U, GIG.RT, and GIG.WS) ("GigCapital") a Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) Private-to-Public Equity (PPE) corporation, announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to combine with Kaleyra S.p.A. ("Kaleyra"), a profitable and rapidly growing CPaaS provider. This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. federal securities laws regarding the integration with WhatsApp Business API and the proposed transactions and GigCapital. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the closing of the combination and the expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions, plans, prospects or strategies regarding the business combination and future business plans of the Kaleyra and GigCapital management teams. Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. In addition, any statements that refer to projections, forecasts or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intends," "may," "might," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predict," "project," "should," "would" and similar expressions may identify forward-looking statements, but the absence of these words does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by the management of GigCapital and/or Kaleyra in light of their respective experience and their perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments and their potential effects on Kaleyra and GigCapital as well as other factors they believe are appropriate in the circumstances. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting Kaleyra or GigCapital will be those anticipated. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond the control of the parties) or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements, including that the GigCapital stockholders will approve the transaction, the ability of the post-combination company to meet the NYSE listing standards, that Kaleyra will have sufficient capital upon the approval of the transaction to operate as anticipated, and the intended impact of the integration with WhatsAppBusiness API. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of the assumptions being made prove incorrect, actual results may vary in material respects from those projected in these forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. Disclaimer This communication shall neither constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which the offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. SOURCE Kaleyra Related Links https://www.kaleyra.com NEW YORK, March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, a leading national securities law firm, reminds investors in Mobile TeleSystems PJSC ("Mobile TeleSystems" or the "Company")(NYSE:MBT) of the May 20, 2019 deadline to seek the role of lead plaintiff in a federal securities class action that has been filed against the Company. If you invested in Mobile TeleSystems stock or options between March 19, 2014 and March 7, 2019 and would like to discuss your legal rights, click here: www.faruqilaw.com/MBT. There is no cost or obligation to you. You can also contact us by calling Richard Gonnello toll free at 877-247-4292 or at 212-983-9330 or by sending an e-mail to [email protected]. CONTACT: FARUQI & FARUQI, LLP 685 Third Avenue, 26th Floor New York, NY 10017 Attn: Richard Gonnello, Esq. [email protected] Telephone: (877) 247-4292 or (212) 983-9330 The lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York on behalf of all those who purchased Mobile TeleSystems securities between March 19, 2014 and March 7, 2019 (the "Class Period"). The case, Salim v. Mobile TeleSystems PJSC et al., No. 19-cv-01589 was filed on March 19, 2019. The lawsuit focuses on whether the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws by failing to disclose that: (1) Mobile TeleSystems and its subsidiary were involved in a scheme to pay $420 million in bribes in Uzbekistan; (2) consequently, Mobile TeleSystems knew or should have known it would be forced to pay substantial fines to the U.S. government after disclosing in 2014 that the U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission were investigating its Uzbekistan operations; (3) Mobile TeleSystems' level of cooperation with the U.S. government and remediation was lacking; and (4) due to the aforementioned misconduct, Mobile TeleSystems would be forced to pay approximately $850 million in criminal penalties to the U.S. government. On November 20, 2018, the Company disclosed that it had reserved approximately $840 million USD (RUB 55.8 bln) as the potential liability concerning investigations by the SEC and the DOJ into its former operations in Uzbekistan. On this news, Mobile TeleSystems's share price fell from $8.09 per share on November 19, 2018 to a closing price of $7.45 on November 20, 2018: a $0.64 or a 7.91% drop. On March 7, 2019, the DOJ reported that the Company and its subsidiary entered into an agreement to pay $850 million in penalties to the United States to resolve charges arising from its role in a scheme to pay $420 million in bribes in Uzbekistan. On this news, Mobile TeleSystems's share price fell from $7.78 per share on March 6, 2019 to a closing price of $7.54 on March 7, 2019: a $0.24 or a 3.08% drop. The court-appointed lead plaintiff is the investor with the largest financial interest in the relief sought by the class who is adequate and typical of class members who directs and oversees the litigation on behalf of the putative class. Any member of the putative class may move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff through counsel of their choice, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision to serve as a lead plaintiff or not. Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP also encourages anyone with information regarding Mobile TeleSystems's conduct to contact the firm, including whistleblowers, former employees, shareholders and others. Attorney Advertising. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP (www.faruqilaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your particular case. All communications will be treated in a confidential manner. SOURCE Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP Related Links http://www.faruqilaw.com VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. (CSE: LDS), (OTCQX: LDSYF), (Frankfurt: LD6, WKN: A14XHT) ("LDS" or the "Company") announces its flagship product, CannaStrips, has been delivered to multiple new stores. Last week the Company's wholly-owned subsidiary, CSPA Group Inc., self-distributed CannaStrips into 3 new stores. One of the stores that received CannaStrips sold out of the product within several days of receiving the shipment and has placed another order for double the amount received the first time. Rise Distribution has placed a purchase order for CannaStrips THC, which is set to be filled and delivered on Monday, March 25, 2019. Rise Distribution is planning to sell CannaStrips in their 200+ stores as well as make it available through their home delivery service. Below is a current list of stores that now carry CannaStrips, with the ones in bold representing new stores that will receive CannaStrips. All About Wellness Horizon Collective Relief CCR Smartweed Beverly Hills Collective (BARC) 515 Broadway The Kana Co. Showgrow The Company's CBD CannaStrips have been formulated and are currently in production. Once produced and packaged, the CBD CannaStrips will have to go through a 3rd party California State Certified Testing lab prior to being sold. Once successfully tested, the Company will add this product to each of the stores that currently carry THC CannaStrips, as well as make it available through Rise Distribution channels. Casey Fenwick, President of LDS, stated, "Every retail store I go into that is selling CannaStrips is getting excellent feedback from the growing customer base. The first comment is usually how good the strip tastes compared to any other cannabis product that is taken orally. People are surprised at how little time it takes for them to start feeling effects and how long these effects last. I am hearing people of all ages enjoying the THC version of CannaStrips, and, with all of the CBD buzz going on, I am very excited to get the CBD CannaStrips into people's hands." About CSPA Group Inc. The Company is located in Adelanto, California and is a City-permitted and State-Licensed manufacturer and distributor/transporter in the California cannabis industry. Manufacturing extracted oils and distillates and producing CannaStrips under a license agreement with Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. a British Columbian corporation. About Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. is a technology company that licenses its technology to a state-of-the-art production and packaging facility located in Southern California. The Company's technology produces infused strips (similar to breath strips) that are not only a safer, healthier option to other forms of delivery but also superior bioavailability of cannabis constituents. Some strips will also include supplemental co-active ingredients such as nutraceuticals, vitamins and peptides. The technology provides a new way to accurately meter the dosage and assure the purity of selected product. From start to finish, the production process, based on the Company's technology, tests for quality and composition of all the ingredients used in each and every strip which results in a delivery system that is safe, consistent and effective. Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. Brad Eckenweiler CEO & Director FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: [email protected] Cautionary Disclaimer Statement: The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this news release. Information set forth in this news release contains forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's limited operating history and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. In addition, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug under the United States Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Although Congress has prohibited the US Justice Department from spending federal funds to interfere with the implementation of state medical marijuana laws, this prohibition must be renewed each year to remain in effect. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. SOURCE Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. Related Links https://www.lifestyledeliverysystems.com/ The new prototype, Moda, represents the evolution of the Microtel brand emphasizing modern efficiency and minimalism for today's guest and owner. The new exterior architecture and interior design elevate the brand's spaces to match the midscale experience it already delivers now at an even more competitive, efficient cost to build. Moda reduces Microtel's total footprint by 28 percent versus the prior prototype. The design also delivers more than 70 percent of rentable space one of the strongest in both the economy and midscale segments. "Microtel is the epitome of efficiency: it outperforms the segment, offers streamlined operations and leads its peers in guest satisfaction," said Keri Putera, vice president, Brand Operations, Microtel by Wyndham. "As we build on the brand's existing model, we've identified small, purposeful details which can drive large, incremental savings for developers and create a significant impact on the experience for our guests. Moda a term symbolizing both style and precision simplifies operations through design while tapping into the growing trend of minimalism, addressing the changing needs of today's travelers and owners." The first hotels leveraging the new prototype are set to break ground in 2019. Development Disruptor Microtel's transformative next step is the first of a multi-pronged growth strategy for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts as it builds the foundation for future expansion just over nine months into its tenure as a pure-play hotel company. Wyndham's new development strategy prioritizes quality and longevity in the economy and midscale segments via smart investment and partnering with growing entrepreneurs. Taking a page from the industry-leading practices of its newly acquired La Quinta by Wyndham brand, the company's strategy underscores new construction growth, design-driven conversions and a redesigned franchisee journey emphasizing added value over the lifetime of the investment. "Microtel is already a category-killer in the economy segment and is poised to disrupt in the midscale segment where it often competes, making it the perfect first step as we set out to transform the new construction landscape in both these segments," said David Wilner, senior vice president, New Construction Development, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. "With a focus on streamlined new construction models like Moda, we are paving the way for continued expansion across our economy and midscale brands and creating a foundation of long-term support for entrepreneurial hoteliers growing their businesses." A More Efficient Microtel by Wyndham Developed in collaboration with seasoned Microtel owners and award-winning architect firm, Hoefer Wysocki, Moda incorporates modern architecture, smart interior staples like wall-hung furniture and minimalist interior design trends to appeal to millennials and today's business and leisure travelers. According to Mayflower, millennials are leading the way when it comes to streamlined living spaces with the bare essentials, with 23 percent significantly more likely to say they're minimalists when it comes to purging things or belongings. The Moda prototype delivers a sleek, minimalist look and feel contributing to an elevated guest experience while also streamlining costs to develop. Exterior Highlights The new design includes a four-story exterior facade option and features a new, flat-roof design, elevating Microtel's visibility, signage and status from its previous pitched-roof design. The building itself is sleeker, reducing the total number of cut-outs in the foundation by modeling a Bauhaus architectural style at 34,700 to 35,700 square feet, it's saving developers significant square footage material costs. The design changes minimize the brand's land requirements by 11 percent, affording developers more freedom and flexibility to build. Interior Highlights The interior design delivers layout and maintenance efficiencies inspired by conversations with owners and operators across the industry. Leaner and more modular, Moda uniformly positions guestrooms by unit type suites, doubles and singles allowing for natural building breaks and flow. Wall-mounted headboards, desks and televisions help housekeepers turn guestrooms faster, maximize open guest space and appeal to the personal aesthetic of today's millennial travelers. Incorporating the Franchisee's Fingerprint Helping to ensure Moda fits the owner and guest bill at each stage of the design process from first conceptualization to final prototype is a team of Microtel owners and industry vets, including a 15-person Microtel Developer Advisory Council offering feedback and expertise. The brand tapped owners, operators and general managers from various brands, markets and segments to work hand-in-glove with designers integrating additional operational feedback into the design. Microtel owner and Franchise Advisory Board member Chad Moore is one of the first to sign executed agreements to build two new Moda prototypes in Milford and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware in 2019. "I like to keep things simple, especially in business, and Microtel lets me do this," said Moore, seasoned owner of the Microtel by Wyndham Georgetown in Delaware. "Moda streamlines the development and operations of the hotel while strongly upholding the defining design and service principles that have made Microtel the economy champion it is today making the new Microtel an even more attractive, lucrative and valuable long-term investment." As of December 2018, Microtel has 82 hotels in the development pipeline 59 in the United States and 23 internationally. Interested developers can visit www.buildmicrotel.com, or contact the Microtel Franchise Development team by email at [email protected] and by phone at (800)889-9710, for more information. About Microtel by Wyndham Microtel by Wyndham is an award-winning chain of more than 340 economy hotels located throughout North America, Mexico and the Philippines. Consistently over-delivering on both guest and owner expectations, Microtel is the only all new-construction hotel in the economy segment. Ranked best-in-class by organizations like The Harris Poll, Microtel's rich award-recognized heritage is backed by 15 J.D. Power honors the most of any hotel brand in the economy segment. Microtel prides itself on being an innovator, offering a midscale experience at an economy price with an array of complimentary amenities including free Wi-Fi and continental breakfast. Other amenities available at most hotels include meeting and fitness centers, swimming pools and the opportunity to earn and redeem points through Wyndham Rewards, the brand's guest loyalty program. Travelers can join the program for free at www.wyndhamrewards.com. About Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: WH) is the world's largest hotel franchising company, with approximately 9,200 hotels across more than 80 countries on six continents. Through its network of approximately 810,000 rooms appealing to the everyday traveler, Wyndham commands a leading presence in both the economy and midscale segments of the lodging industry. The Company operates a portfolio of 20 hotel brands, including Super 8, Days Inn, Ramada, Microtel, La Quinta, Wingate, AmericInn, Hawthorn Suites, The Trademark Collection, and Wyndham. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is also a leading provider of hotel management services, with more than 400 properties under management. The Company's award-winning Wyndham Rewards loyalty program offers approximately 61 million enrolled members the opportunity to redeem points at tens of thousands of hotels, vacation club resorts and vacation rentals globally. For more information, visit www.wyndhamhotels.com. SOURCE Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Related Links http://www.buildmicrotel.com BOSTON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Edtech firm MindEdge Learning today announced Chris Edwards will join the company as senior vice president of university partnerships, a newly created role. Edwards will develop and manage all aspects of MindEdge Learning's new U.S. University Partnership program. He will also become a member of the senior leadership team, participating in the company's strategic planning. Edwards assumed the role on March 18 and will report directly to CEO Jefferson Flanders. "We're delighted to add Chris to the leadership team at MindEdge. His deep edtech experience, and his focus on student success will greatly help us as we expand the company's presence in higher education," said Jefferson Flanders, CEO of MindEdge Learning. Edwards has a long-proven track record in the edtech field with a focus on achieving strong student outcomes through cutting edge technology and key partnerships. Prior to joining MindEdge, Edwards was executive vice president of partnerships at Yellowbrick.co, where he worked with large universities and brands. Prior to that, he worked at edtech firm Helix Education as vice president of strategic partnerships, where he led the strategic partnerships team. He also held business development roles at Civitas Learning and Canvas by Instructure. "I'm thrilled to join MindEdge, a company whose focus on student outcomes and experiences align exactly with my core expertise and beliefs," said Edwards. "I'm looking forward to building deeper connections in the university sector on behalf of MindEdge." Edwards holds an MBA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst's Isenberg School of Management and a bachelor's degree from Liberty University. About MindEdge MindEdge, a learning company based in Waltham, provides leadership, management, communication and educational solutions for organizations to help them meet their objectives. Founded in 1998 by Harvard and MIT educators, MindEdge specializes in higher education and professional development content and technology solutions and continues to innovate in the rapidly changing landscape of online education. The company's webtexts feature narrative, interactive learning case studies and simulations, as well as adaptive learning technology to maximize learner mastery of the content. Media Contact: Shayna Chapel InkHouse (for MindEdge) [email protected] SOURCE MindEdge Related Links https://www.mindedge.com VANCOUVER, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - NexGen Energy Ltd. ("NexGen" or the "Company") (TSX:NXE, NYSE MKT:NXE) is pleased to announce the appointment of former Saskatchewan Premier Mr. Brad Wall to the Company's Board of Directors. This appointment coincides with the retirement from the NexGen Board of Craig Parry, Chief Executive Officer of IsoEnergy and founding member of the Board of Directors at NexGen, who is moving onto the Technical Advisory Committee. Leigh Curyer, Chief Executive Officer, commented: "On behalf of the Executive and Board of NexGen we are very pleased to welcome Mr. Brad Wall. Mr. Wall brings to NexGen extensive national energy policy, political and economic experience and has demonstrated a very strong commitment, results and advocacy in the best interests of Saskatchewan and Canada over his entire career. Mr Wall in his capacity as a director to NexGen is joining a team dedicated to developing a Canadian energy project that will deliver significant generational benefits to Saskatchewan and Canada and set new standards in responsible project development. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank Craig Parry, one of our founding Directors, for his dedication and support during his tenure as a director. In his capacity as Chief Executive Officer of IsoEnergy, which recently made a significant uranium discovery, we look forward to Craig's continued valuable contribution to the group as he primarily focuses his efforts on the exciting Hurricane Zone with NexGen being a significant long-term shareholder." Brad Wall As the 14th Premier of Saskatchewan, Mr. Wall brings to NexGen's Board political experience spanning over a 20 year period. During his tenure as Premier, Mr. Wall led the province to unprecedented economic expansion, strong population and export growth, record infrastructure investment and the first ever and continuing AAA credit for the Province's finances. Mr. Wall worked successfully with the previous federal government to achieve nuclear cooperation agreements between Canada and both India and China opening up those civilian nuclear energy markets to Canadian uranium. He is an advocate for sustainable, inclusive economic development and provides strategic insight to the energy sector. About NexGen NexGen is a British Columbia corporation with a focus on the acquisition, exploration and development of Canadian uranium projects. NexGen has a highly experienced team of uranium industry professionals with a successful track record in the discovery of uranium deposits and in developing projects through discovery to production. NexGen owns a 100% interest in Rook I, location of the Arrow Deposit in the Athabasca Basin, Saskatchewan, Canada and a portfolio of prospective uranium exploration projects throughout northwest Saskatchewan. NexGen is the recipient of the PDAC's 2018 Bill Dennis Award and the 2019 Environmental and Social Responsibility Award. Technical Disclosure The technical information in this news release with respect to the PFS has been reviewed and approved by Paul O'Hara, P.Eng. of Wood., David Robson, P.Eng., M.B.A., and Jason Cox, P.Eng. of RPA, each of whom is a "qualified person" under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI-43-101"). The Mineral Resource Estimate was completed by Mr. Mark Mathisen, C.P.G., Senior Geologist at RPA and Mr. David Ross, P.Geo., Director of Resource Estimation and Principal Geologist at RPA. Both are independent Qualified Persons in accordance with the requirements of National Instrument (NI) 43-101 and they have approved the disclosure herein. All other technical information in this news release has been approved by Mr. Troy Boisjoli, Geoscientist Licensee, Vice President Operations & Project Development for NexGen. Mr. Boisjoli is a qualified person for the purposes of NI 43-101 and has verified the sampling, analytical, and test data underlying the information or opinions contained herein by reviewing original data certificates and monitoring all of the data collection protocols. All other technical information in this news release has been approved by Mr. James Hatley, a Professional Engineer, Senior Vice-President Project Development for NexGen. Mr. Hatley is a qualified person for the purposes of NI 43-101 and has reviewed the underlying the information or opinions contained herein on mine design. A technical report in respect to the PFS is filed on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and EDGAR (www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml) and is available for review on NexGen Energy's website (www.nexgenenergy.ca). SEC Standards Estimates of mineralization and other technical information included or referenced in this news release have been prepared in accordance with NI 43-101. The definitions of proven and probable mineral reserves used in NI 43-101 differ from the definitions in SEC Industry Guide 7. Under SEC Industry Guide 7 standards, a "final" or "bankable" feasibility study is required to report reserves, the three-year historical average price is used in any reserve or cash flow analysis to designate reserves and the primary environmental analysis or report must be filed with the appropriate governmental authority. As a result, the reserves reported by the Company in accordance with NI 43-101 may not qualify as "reserves" under SEC standards. In addition, the terms "mineral resource", "measured mineral resource", "indicated mineral resource" and "inferred mineral resource" are defined in and required to be disclosed by NI 43-101; however, these terms are not defined terms under SEC Industry Guide 7 and normally are not permitted to be used in reports and registration statements filed with the SEC. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of the mineral deposits in these categories will ever be converted into reserves. "Inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an inferred mineral resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian securities laws, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or pre-feasibility studies, except in rare cases. Additionally, disclosure of "contained pounds" in a resource is permitted disclosure under Canadian securities laws; however, the SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves" by SEC standards as in place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measurements. Accordingly, information contained or referenced in this news release containing descriptions of the Company's mineral deposits may not be comparable to similar information made public by U.S. companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements of United States federal securities laws and the rules and regulations thereunder. Technical Information For details of the Rook I Project including the quality assurance program and quality control measures applied and key assumptions, parameters and methods used to estimate the Mineral Resource please refer to the technical report entitled "Arrow Deposit, Rook I Project Saskatchewan NI 43-101 Technical Report on Pre-feasbility Study" dated effective 5 November, 2018 (the "Rook 1 Technical Report") prepared by Paul O'Hara, P.Eng., Jason J. Cox, P.Eng., David M. Robson, P.Eng., M.B.A., Mark B. Mathisen, C.P.G. each of whom is a "qualified person" under NI 43-101. The Rook I Technical Report is available for review under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and EDGAR (www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml) providing details of the Rook I Project including the quality assurance program and quality control measures applied and key assumptions, parameters and methods used to estimate the Mineral Resource and is available on NexGen Energy's website (www.nexgenenergy.ca). Forward-Looking Information The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. "Forward-looking information" includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future. Generally, but not always, forward-looking information and statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negative connotation thereof or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connotation thereof. Forward-looking information and statements are based on the then current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates and forecasts about NexGen's business and the industry and markets in which it operates. Forward-looking information and statements are made based upon numerous assumptions, including among others, that the proposed transaction will be completed, the results of planned exploration activities are as anticipated, the price of uranium, the cost of planned exploration activities, that financing will be available if and when needed and on reasonable terms, that third party contractors, equipment, supplies and governmental and other approvals required to conduct NexGen's planned exploration activities will be available on reasonable terms and in a timely manner and that general business and economic conditions will not change in a material adverse manner. Although the assumptions made by the Company in providing forward looking information or making forward looking statements are considered reasonable by management at the time, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be accurate. Forward-looking information and statements also involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors, which may cause actual results, performances and achievements of NexGen to differ materially from any projections of results, performances and achievements of NexGen expressed or implied by such forward-looking information or statements, including, among others, negative operating cash flow and dependence on third party financing, uncertainty of the availability of additional financing, the risk that pending assay results will not confirm previously announced preliminary results, imprecision of mineral resource estimates, the appeal of alternate sources of energy and sustained low uranium prices, aboriginal title and consultation issues, exploration risks, reliance upon key management and other personnel, deficiencies in the Company's title to its properties, uninsurable risks, failure to manage conflicts of interest, failure to obtain or maintain required permits and licenses, changes in laws, regulations and policy, competition for resources and financing, and other factors discussed or referred to in the Company's Annual Information Form dated March 2, 2018 under "Risk Factors". Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information or implied by forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or reissue forward-looking information as a result of new information or events except as required by applicable securities laws. SOURCE NexGen Energy Ltd. Related Links www.nexgenenergy.ca SEATTLE, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- OfferUp, the largest mobile marketplace in the U.S. for local buyers and sellers, today announced the appointment of Ameesh Paleja as Chief Technology Officer and Sarah Bilton as Vice President of Employee Experience. The announcement comes on the heels of Bill Carr (15-year Amazon veteran) joining the company as COO, and Rodrigo Brumana (previously from eBay) as CFO. The high profile additions to the executive leadership team underscores the company's dedication to providing buyers and sellers with the simplest and most trusted marketplace experience. "This is an exciting time for OfferUp with nearly a trillion dollars worth of unused items inside American households," said Nick Huzar, co-founder and CEO of OfferUp. "As a top five shopping app on iOS and Android, we're rapidly entering our next stage of growth by investing in maturing business lines, and continuing to build our executive roster with strong leaders who have proven experience scaling companies." Paleja, former CTO of Starz and co-founder and CEO of Atom Tickets, will oversee OfferUp's engineering and data science teams and will be responsible for all strategic aspects of the technology organization, including infrastructure, security, product engineering, and architecture. "To disrupt an entire industry, you need a simple idea that's brilliantly executed," said Paleja. "OfferUp is a marketplace leader because it is unwavering in its passion for delivering exceptional experiences for its users. I look forward to working with an incredibly talented team to provide buyers and sellers with products and services that have a direct impact on their success." Prior to joining OfferUp and as CTO of Starz, Paleja oversaw the modernization of Starz's technology platform, enabling their international expansion and managing the overhaul of the company's digital media publishing pipeline. Paleja spent more than 10 years at Amazon, where he was the founding employee of Amazon's digital research and development facility in Southern California, managing a team of over 550 employees for products including Amazon Prime Instant Video, Amazon's Appstore, Cloud Drive, and Kindle. As co-founder of Atom Tickets, Paleja continues to serve on its board as a strategic advisor. He has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego, and holds 24 patents in digital video and related fields. Bilton joins OfferUp as the Vice President of Employee Experience after having most recently served as the Vice President of People Practices at e-commerce start-ups Julep Beauty and Leafly. In her new role, she will lead the strategic development of OfferUp's employee experience initiatives to help drive business results, foster manager success, and increase employee engagement and retention. "I came to OfferUp because I believe in the passionate employees here and their authentic vision to empower people to prosper," said Bilton. "I'm excited to guide our path in creating a high-quality employee experience and invest in the company's most valuable strengths as it enters its next chapter: its people and its culture." Bilton has spent more than 13 years at startups in the Seattle-area tech community building people practices and culture. In 2005, she joined Zillow and helped guide the human resources group from start-up through IPO. She began her career in New York City working in fashion and technology and holds an honors degree in Sociology and American Studies from the University of Wolverhampton in the UK. More Information Career opportunities are available now across several OfferUp departments. See the Careers page , follow @lifeatofferup on Instagram, or check out the OfferUp blog for more details. About OfferUp OfferUp is dedicated to building the simplest and most trustworthy way for people to buy and sell in their communities. As the largest mobile marketplace for local buyers and sellers in the U.S., the company's iOS and Android apps have been in the top five most popular shopping apps lists for more than three years. The privately held company is based in Bellevue, WA and backed by top investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Warburg Pincus, GGV Capital, T Rowe Price and Coatue Management. For more information, visit our website and follow us on Twitter and Facebook . SOURCE OfferUp Last month, China unveiled its Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. While creating more opportunities for the development of the three places, the plan's implementation is also sure to meet some challenges. Under the practice of "one country, two systems," Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao are three separate customs territories with their own currencies and legal systems. This brings both advantages and challenges, and the details of the plan will need to be executed very carefully to ensure that the Greater Bay Area can develop into a world-class city cluster that also reflects China's distinct style. In the past, people have suggested that China should draw on the practice of the eurozone, using market principles to solve problems in the coordinated development of the plan-covered administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao and the nine cities in Guangdong province. However, it must be noted that the eurozone is a "union of diversities" comprising different countries, while the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area constitutes one united body, which we hope will make concerted efforts together. Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has never mechanically copied the development model of other countries. What it has done is, as an old Chinese saying puts it, "cross the river by feeling for stones." That's why China has made remarkable achievements today. The construction of the Greater Bay Area will also follow this approach. The overarching plan is made by the central government, and it can be fulfilled only through bold and flexible practice. The Bay Area certainly will be built into a world-leading region, suited to China's national conditions and demonstrating the vitality of its systems. In the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, scientific and effective administrative guidance can help newly established enterprises solve financing problems. It can also help start-ups seize new opportunities, promote the development of key industries, and avoid vicious competition. The slogan "strive to be a zebra, not a unicorn" has recently gained popularity among many enterprises. The statement illustrates one important point: Enterprises should not be bent upon profit only; instead, they must cooperate and coexist with others, just as zebras do in nature. Such administrative guidance is, in fact, nothing new. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in the New York Bay Area has played a role of decisive importance in the United States since its establishment in 1921. Similar examples are the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. and the Tokyo Bay Area in Japan. In each case, different government agencies provide oversight for the bay areas in their early stages, and let the market play a leading role as they move toward maturity. Successful precedents set by other countries have provided experience and wisdom for China to follow. At the same time, we firmly believe that the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area will keep a profoundly Chinese character even as it becomes a world-class city cluster. And with continuous innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity, the area will make new contributions to China and the entire world. China Mosaic http://www.china.org.cn/video/node_7230027.htm The Greater Bay Area ushers in vigorous development http://www.china.org.cn/video/2019-03/21/content_74596270.htm About China.org.cn Founded in 2000, China Internet Information Center (China.org.cn/China.com.cn) is a key state news website under the auspices of the State Council Information Office, and is managed by China International Publishing Group. We provide round-the-clock news service in ten languages. With users from more than 200 countries and regions, we have become China's leading multi-lingual news outlet introducing the country to the outside world. We are one of the country's authoritative outlets for government press releases and are authorized to cover various major events. "Live Webcast" is our online webcasting service to present State Council Information Office press conferences in both Chinese and English languages. We are reputed for timely and accurate delivery of news and information, and wide interactions with audiences. In addition, we are authorized to publish and live broadcast major events and press conferences of ministries, local government agencies and institutions as well as enterprises. In the era of mobile internet, we endeavor to create an array of products for mobile devices headed by the multilingual WAP platform and the mobile APP. We also use Chinese and international social media to publish information for different user groups. In the future, CIIC will continue to offer authoritative information about China, tell China's stories, voice China's opinions, and introduce a vivid, panoramic and multicultural China to the world through multi-language, multi-media and multi-platforms. SOURCE China.org.cn NEW YORK, March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The New York Wine & Grape Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to supporting the wine and grape industry across New York State, presented the first-ever Sustainability Award to Long Island Sustainable Winegrowing (LISW) for their outstanding sustainable viticulture certification program. This new honor is part of the organization's annual Unity Awards honors. The new Sustainability Award recognizes an organization or business that has demonstrated noteworthy sustainable practices and a commitment to conserving natural resources, protecting our environment, and contributing to the overall success of the New York State economy. Other top honors including the Winery Award and Phyllis Feder Unity Award were presented to Alice Wise and Bedell Cellars respectively, in part due to their exceptional efforts in creating and maintaining sustainable practices on Long Island and their contributions to LISW. "We decided to recognize Long Island Sustainable Winegrowing with our first Sustainability Award because they are at the forefront of sustainable production, essential education and the widespread standardization vital to this environmental movement here in New York," said New York Wine & Grape Foundation Executive Director, Sam Filler. "Long Island as a region is making considerable strides in adopting sustainable programs that better our industry and state. Both Alice Wise and Bedell Cellars are big players in sustainability for the New York wine and grape industry, and we have tremendous gratitude for their efforts." Many of LISW's participating wineries, including Bedell Cellars, Paumanok, Wolffer Estate Vineyard, and Channing Daughters Winery will show off a selection of their wines at the New York Drinks New York Grand Tasting event on March 26, 2019. The event will feature almost 50 participating wineries serving 200+ wines at the iconic Rainbow Room in New York City. Tickets for both trade and consumer participants are available for purchase here. Long Island Sustainable Winegrowing (LISW), established in 2012, is the only third-party certification for sustainable wine production on the East Coast. The program has grown to include more than 20 vineyards and wineries and over 1,000 acres of land under sustainable certification. The organization is made up of like-minded growers who have dedicated themselves to growing and production practices which reduce vineyard chemical inputs and improve wine quality region-wide. LISW has also been active in expanding its outreach regarding marketing and education, helping consumers as well as wine industry professionals understand the concept of sustainable wine growing. With support from the New York Wine & Grape Foundation, LISW continues to raise awareness and support those committed to sustainable wine production. The Unity Awards were presented at the New York Wine & Grape Foundation's B.E.V. New York Unity Banquet, a three-decades-old tradition recognizing, encouraging, and celebrating cooperation among grape growers, wineries, grape juice producers, and others in the industry throughout New York State. For more information, visit www.newyorkwines.org. SOURCE New York Wine & Grape Foundation Related Links https://www.newyorkwines.org PHILADELPHIA, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Pittcon 2019 -- Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, today announced it has received the Scientists' Choice Award for the Best New Separations Product of 2018 based on the votes of the global community of SelectScience readers and contributors, as well as special recognition for the company's leadership in the application and development of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) in life sciences as part of its ongoing collaboration with Diamond Light Source, the UK's national synchrotron and one of the most advanced scientific facilities in the world. SelectScience announced the Thermo Scientific Vanquish Duo UHPLC System as the winner of Best New Separations Product of 2018 at an awards ceremony held during the 2019 Pittsburgh Conference & Exposition (Pittcon 2019) at the Pennsylvania Conference Center, Philadelphia. The global community of SelectScience readers also celebrated Thermo Fisher's contribution to the development and application of cryo-EM technology through its collaboration with Diamond Light Source, including the opening of a dedicated national electron bio-imaging centre (eBIC). The eBIC was also noted by Nobel Laureate Dr. Richard Henderson as part of his video interview with The Scientists' Channel, which received the award for Analytical Science Video of the Year. "It is an honor that the value of our scientific solutions has been recognized by the SelectScience global community of scientists and researchers," said Dan Shine, senior vice president and president, analytical instruments, Thermo Fisher Scientific. "The support of the scientific community reinforces our continuous commitment to designing innovative, high performance technologies that enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer." "Our Scientists' Choice Awards recognize the instruments that have made a difference in 2018," said Kerry Parker, editor-in-chief, SelectScience. "The SelectScience global community of scientists and researchers are using these Thermo Fisher Scientific solutions to meet their research goals and advance their scientific endeavors." Additionally, at a separate ceremony held on February 5, 2019, during the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) International Conference and Exhibition, SelectScience announced that the Scientists' Choice Award for the Best New Drug Discovery & Development Product of 2018 went to the Thermo Scientific Q Exactive UHMR Quadrupole-Orbitrap Mass Spectrometer. About Thermo Fisher Scientific Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is the world leader in serving science, with revenues of more than $24 billion and approximately 70,000 employees globally. Our mission is to enable our customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer. We help our customers accelerate life sciences research, solve complex analytical challenges, improve patient diagnostics, deliver medicines to market and increase laboratory productivity. Through our premier brands Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Fisher Scientific and Unity Lab Services we offer an unmatched combination of innovative technologies, purchasing convenience and comprehensive services. For more information, please visit www.thermofisher.com. Media Contact Information: Laura Bright Thermo Fisher Scientific +1 562-335-8318 [email protected] Ronan Muir BioStrata +44 (0) 1223 627133 [email protected] SOURCE Thermo Fisher Scientific Related Links http://www.thermofisher.com PALM BEACH, Florida, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- An industry publication recently said that, in both Canada and the U.S.: "The future is very bright for property owners in North America as cannabis companies are on the hunt for cannabis retail locations." The article said that: "Cannabis retailers aren't very widespread in Canada as most provincial governments are slow to roll out the licenses needed to open the stores. In the US, things are somewhat different. Seeing how cannabis is still illegal on the federal level, making deals with cannabis companies comes with a bit more risk. However, that didn't stop some of the biggest mall operators in possibly making millions of dollars in the states where cannabis is already legal, such as California." It continued: "One mall developer said on Monday that they are partnering with an Ohio-based marijuana company to open 108 locations for selling CBD products. The stores will be located at (the developer's) U.S. malls, most notably the Roosevelt Field Mall in New York and The Galleria in Houston. (The marijuana's CEO) said: "That the company is already in talks with five other real estate developers and plans to have 300 stores open by the end of this year." Active companies in the cannabis industry include: Weekend Unlimited Inc. (CSE: POT) (OTC: WKULF), OrganiGram Holdings Inc. (TSX-V: OGI) (OTC: OGRMF), Liberty Health Sciences Inc. (CSE: LHS) (OTC: LHSIF), Emerald Health Therapeutics, Inc. (TSX-V: EMH) (OTC: EMHTF), Namaste Technologies Inc. (TSX-V: N) (OTC: NXTTF). In other developments in the industry, a recent headline projecting what will happen in the 2019 cannabis markets, used a tongue-in-cheek cliche: "High Times Ahead: Continued Dramatic Growth Expected For The Legal Cannabis Industry In 2019." High times are indeed projected. The article continued: "The legal cannabis industry is projected to continue its steady and consistent rise in 2019. Backed by growing medical sales and partnerships, the industry is poised to bring on more opportunities for investment and development." Weekend Unlimited Inc. (CSE: POT) (OTCQB: WKULF) (FSE: 0OS1) BREAKING NEWS: Weekend Unlimited announces that it has secured a retail location in Long Beach, California to launch the company's first US concept store. "It is essential to our growth plan that we establish multiple touch points for our offerings and one of those is at the retail level, where we can inform and learn from customers as they interact with our brands," said Mr. Paul Chu, Weekend Unlimited President and CEO. Highlights include: 5000 ft 2 space will feature 2500 ft 2 retail and 2500 ft 2 of Weekend LIVE, lounge space space will feature 2500 ft retail and 2500 ft of Weekend LIVE, lounge space Retail focus on CBD and wellness products, featuring Weekend brands among others Focus on the customer experience and customer feedback on products and brands Community outreach and education seminars to take place in Weekend LIVE space Weekend concept store to open 4/20, Weekend LIVE space to follow "This space has been designed to provide customers with multiple product lines, featuring Weekend brands, and elevating the experience by having an upstairs Weekend LIVE space that will hold events, education seminars and serve as a lounge with a hemp smoothie bar, coffee and CBD edibles," added Mr. Chu. Read this full announcement and more news for Weekend Unlimited at: https://www.financialnewsmedia.com/news-pot/ Additional cannabis industry related developments from around the markets: OrganiGram Holdings Inc. (TSX-V: OGI) (OTCQX: OGRMF) the parent company of Organigram Inc. (together, the "Company" or "Organigram"), a leading licensed producer of cannabis recently announced that subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV"), the Company will issue 41,000 Common Shares (the "Shares") in the capital of Organigram to 9250-5999 Quebec Inc. (the "Consultant") pursuant to an Advisory Services Agreement whereby the Consultant provided consulting and advisory services in respect to the cultivation of cannabis and related matters. The Shares will be issued at a price of $9.04 per Share. Organigram Holdings Inc. is a TSX Venture Exchange listed company whose wholly owned subsidiary, Organigram Inc., is a licensed producer of cannabis and cannabis-derived products in Canada . Liberty Health Sciences Inc. (CSE: LHS) (OTCQX: LHSIF) a provider of high quality cannabis, recently announced that the Company is continuing its expansion in Florida and is on schedule to open its 12th dispensary in Gainesville, FL on March 20, 2019, subject to the receipt of Florida Department of Health approvals. The Gainesville area is also home to two Liberty facilities that house an aggregate of 228,880 square feet of cultivation space. Located at 12 SW 2nd Street, Gainesville, FL, the new dispensary will be open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. The 1,934 square-foot Gainesville store will provide experienced staff who continue to guide patients through the purchasing process, provide private consultations and host monthly educational events open to the community to discuss the benefits of medicinal cannabis products. Emerald Health Therapeutics, Inc. (TSX-V: EMH) (OTCQX: EMHTF) recently applauded the Government of Canada for proposing to amend the excise tax calculation for cannabis announced in the recent federal budget. The implementation of the proposed revision announced in the federal budget would result in the calculation of the excise duty of ingestible cannabis and hemp products being based on the quantity of THC in the products, as opposed to the current tax set in relation to the product volume. Certain low-THC products would also be subject to lower excise duties, which would provide additional tax relief for cannabis products typically used by individuals for medical purposes. If implemented, the proposed changes are expected to come into effect on May 1, 2019. Emerald believes that these revisions are likely to improve its profit margins on the products it intends to produce from its contracts to acquire harvested hemp. As previously announced, Emerald has entered into contracts to purchase 500 acres of harvested hemp (which contains very low levels of THC) in 2018 and up to 1000 acres of harvested hemp per annum from 2019 to 2022. Namaste Technologies Inc. (TSX-V: N) (OTCQB: NXTTF) recently announced that it has completed the previously announced acquisition of 49% of the common shares of Toronto-based Pineapple Express Delivery Inc. ("Pineapple Express"). In June 2018, the Company announced that it had entered into a subscription agreement to acquire 15% of the common shares of Pineapple for $1,000,000 which comprised of $850,000 in cash and $150,000 in Namaste common shares (the "Subscription Agreement"). In December 2018, the Company announced that it had entered into a binding agreement (the "Purchase Agreement") with shareholders of Pineapple Express to acquire an additional 34% of the outstanding common shares of Pineapple Express. Pursuant to the terms of the Purchase Agreement, the Company issued the selling shareholders of Pineapple Express such number of Namaste common shares having an aggregate value of approximately $3.06 Million, based on the closing price of Namaste's common shares on the TSX Venture Exchange on December 14, 2018 (the "Transaction"). Following closing of the Transaction, Namaste now owns 49% of the issued and outstanding common shares of Pineapple Express. 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Contact Information: [email protected] +1(561)325-8757 SOURCE Financialnewsmedia.com Related Links http://www.financialnewsmedia.com PORT OF LOS ANGELES, Calif. and LONG BEACH, Calif., March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- On March 18, the United States Supreme Court decisively rejected an appeal to the case of the California Trucking Association v. [California Labor Commission] Julie A. Su, whose office has consistently ruled that port truck drivers are misclassified as independent contractors. "In rejecting the CTA's appeal, the highest court in the land has effectively closed the case on predatory trucking companies' efforts to dodge taxes and steal the hard-earned wages of drivers through a scheme that illegally classifies drivers as independent contractors," said Fred Potter, Vice President at Large, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and Director of the Teamsters Port Division. Click here for a summary of regulatory action and litigation in the port trucking industry. "Over the past four years, the California Labor Commissioner has ruled 36 separate times that my co-workers and I at NFI Industries are misclassified as independent contractors, awarding us $7.3 million in stolen wages. Most of these cases including mine are still under appeal by NFI. Now that the Supreme Court has rejected the industry's appeals, I hope that I can finally be properly classified as an employee so that I can be paid for all my hours worked, have decent health insurance for my family, and have the protections properly classified employees are entitled to like disability and workers' compensation," said Gustavo Villa, port truck driver, NFI Industries/Cal Cartage Express. Click here for a summary of regulatory action and litigation at NFI Industries port trucking and warehousing operations at America's largest port complex. Social Media Links - For more information on the port truck drivers' campaign, visit www.JusticeForPortDrivers.org. - Follow us on Twitter @PortDriverUnion and like us at www.facebook.com/Justice4PortDrivers. PRESS CONTACTS: Barb Maynard, (323) 351-9321; [email protected] Kara Deniz, (202) 497-6610; [email protected] SOURCE Justice for Port Drivers TOKYO, March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Nexvision Mobility (a division of Nexvision Technologies, Inc.) and Plug and Play Japan announced today that they will host "EcoMotion in Japan" as a preview for "EcoMotion Week 2019", a global-scale event that focuses on startups within the mobility sector, on Tuesday, March 26th, 2019 at Plug and Play Shibuya powered by Tokyu Land Corporation. This event in Japan will serve as an advance preview for "EcoMotion Week 2019", and as it is the first stop in EcoMotion's world promotion tour, Japan receives the extraordinary honor of getting to host the tour's initiation. Coming this June in Tel Aviv, "EcoMotion Week 2019" enables global exchange regarding the state of affairs within the autonomous driving and smart mobility sectors, and also demonstrates to the world the success of startups in Israel. Furthermore, this event presents a diverse networking opportunity for professionals in these sectors to exchange ideas with each other as they build the technology of tomorrow. This event in Japan will introduce the contents of "EcoMotion Week 2019" to the world, before the European previews start in May. Date: Tuesday March 26th, 2019 16:00-17:30 Location: Plug and Play Shibuya powered by Tokyu Land Corporation Capacity: 100 people Target Audience: Those involved in the autonomous driving, smart mobility, and automobile industries Attendance fee: Free Registration site: https://ecomotioninjapan.eventbrite.com/ We in Japan welcome Orlie Dahan, the Executive Director of EcoMotion, who has worked alongside Israeli startups, venture capitals and global corporations to refine EcoMotion into the prestigious event it is today. At this event in Japan, she will preview the contents of "EcoMotion Week 2019", present the current state of autonomous driving and smart mobility as well as Israeli startups, and introduce some outstanding startups in their respective fields. In addition, she will present how Israel launched and expanded its innovation in the automobile industry, explain the reasoning of global trends in the industry, talk about investments in mobility throughout the past years, and detail both the role of the Israeli government in creating an apt environment for the growth of these industries, as well as how Israeli startups have collaborated with global corporations. Lastly, the following startups will give their pitches to the audience. - Participating Startups Karamba Security ( https://karambasecurity.com/ ) https://karambasecurity.com/ Innoviz Technologies ( https://innoviz.tech/ ) Israel has proven to be a technological hub for hundreds of startups within the autonomous driving and smart mobility sectors, with many companies boasting cutting-edge technology calling the country their home. In recent years, due to this incredible showing, numerous companies seeking such technology have taken notice of Israel and the strengths it has to offer. In this rapidly advancing landscape, EcoMotion works to embolden this success even further by connecting Israeli startups to automobile manufacturing companies and their suppliers, as well as investors. Bolstered by the support of communities all over, ranging from startups to large corporations and investors, research institutions and universities to the government, EcoMotion leverages this support in order to complete its mission of driving the state of mobility technology, both within Israel and beyond, into the future. It aims to achieve this goal with the events it hosts, such as Hack-a-thons and Investor Seminars, as well as its main focus, "EcoMotion Week". About EcoMotion: EcoMotion is a joint venture of the Israel Innovation Institute (private NGO) together with the Israeli government - the Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Initiative (PMO office) and the Ministry of Economy. EcoMotion is a dynamic community with over 600 start-ups (constantly growing) and 8,000 members in the Smart Transportation sector. Understanding startups do not grow in a void, we bring together entrepreneurs, academics, government officials, local & global automotive industry representatives, investors and much more; providing a support platform for knowledge-sharing, networking and collaboration. Our mission is to support the growth of the Israeli Smart Transportation sector and enhance the implementation of innovation in our field, while simultaneously, positioning Israel as a global innovation center for Smart Transportation. EcoMotion has an extensive innovation toolkit to support public and private sector organizations in the implementation of innovation, such as Challenge Competitions, Adaptathons, Networking Events and more! About Nexvision Technologies: Nexvision Technologies supports the open innovation of Japanese Mobility Industries through our extensive global network. By teaming up with startups possessing cutting-edge technology, we contribute to the current technological revolution happening in Japanese society. Our focus area is the autonomous driving and sensing-related landscapes, and we pride ourselves in connecting global startups in these fields to Japanese corporations. Furthermore, our in-house engineers excel in machine learning and deep learning sectors, allowing Nexvision Technologies to develop our own algorithms as well as offer our clients insight into the technological capabilities of the startups they look at. For more information, please visit at https://nexvision.io About Plug and Play Japan: Plug and Play is a global innovation platform. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, they have built accelerator programs, corporate innovation services, and an in-house VC to make technological advancement progress faster than ever before. Since inception in 2006, their programs have expanded worldwide to include a presence in over 20 locations globally giving startups the necessary resources to succeed in Silicon Valley and beyond. Plug and Play Japan, the Japanese arm of Plug and Play, headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, opened its doors in 2017. We operate mainly in Tokyo and aim to establish the city as a world-class startup ecosystem. By connecting Japan to markets abroad, we will provide startups from Japan with global access like never before. SOURCE Nexvision Technologies WASHINGTON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- It's nearly unanimous among small businesses: Invest more in digital media with an emphasis on social media to boost brand awareness and generate customer leads. That is the finding from a new survey from The Manifest, a business news and how-to website. Ninety-five percent (95%) of small businesses are committed to spending more on digital marketing in 2019. Video and content marketing fall behind social media, email, and a website when it comes to small business digital marketing in 2019, The Manifest's survey finds. Small businesses will invest more in social media, their website, and SEO in 2019, according to new survey data from The Manifest. Nearly two-thirds of small businesses (63%) will increase spending on social media, and 54% will invest more in their business's website. SEO, however, appears to be less of a priority for small businesses: Only one-third (35%) will invest more in that channel. Robert Weiss, president of MultiVision Digital, a video production agency in New York, says digital marketing is a significant value-add for small businesses. "I'm a big believer of always starting with digital first because it's directly quantifiable, and you can turn it off like a light switch if it's not working," Weiss said. Small businesses can easily begin and discontinue digital marketing campaigns due to the low-cost of implementation and the ability to easily analyze digital marketing metrics. Digital Taking Bigger Share of Marketing Resources Among Most Small Businesses Nearly 90% of small businesses use traditional and/or digital marketing to promote their products and services. More than half of small businesses (58%) use digital marketing. The top six digital marketing channels small businesses invest in are social media (73%), website (73%), email marketing (57%), SEO (49%), video (34%), and content marketing (32%). "Digital marketing offers versatility and the freedom to experiment," said digital marketer Dipti Parmar. "Small businesses can spend a bit of money on each and quickly figure out which one works best for them." Experts agree that small businesses should use a variety of channels to maximize their digital marketing investment. Video Marketing Is Not a Priority for Most Small Businesses Currently, only about 34% of small businesses use videos to promote their services or products, even though video marketing has a high rate of engagement. Videos can explain information quickly and allow consumers to understand services and products easily. YouTube has more than one billion users, and small businesses should take advantage of this opportunity to engage clients with videos. Video marketing offers small businesses an ideal opportunity to stand out from competitors. "High-quality content takes time, money, and effort, but in the end, the results are worth every penny," said Brittany Gamble, a social media specialist at MyCorporation, a startup consulting business. The Manifest's 2019 Small Business Digital Marketing Survey included 529 small businesses from the U.S. Read the full report here: https://themanifest.com/digital-marketing/how-small-businesses-use-digital-marketing-channels-2019. For questions about the survey, a comment on the findings, or an introduction to the industry experts included in the report, contact Emily Clark at [email protected]. About The Manifest The Manifest is a business news and how-to website that compiles and analyzes practical business wisdom for innovators, entrepreneurs, and small and mid-market businesses. Use The Manifest as an approachable tour guide through every stage of the buyer journey. With three main offeringsdata-driven benchmarks, step-by-step guides, and agency shortlistsThe Manifest strives to make your business goals a reality. Contact: Emily Clark [email protected] (202) 840-6682 SOURCE The Manifest PHILADELPHIA, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The American College of Physicians (ACP) today announced the availability of an online mini-bootcamp to help graduating medical students prepare for the mental and physical demands of their upcoming internal medicine residency programs. The six-session video series, created by digital learning provider OnlineMedEd, is free to student ACP members and accessible from ACP's website. The availability of ACP's intern mini-bootcamp is timed to coincide with medical school students recently learning in which U.S. residency programs they will train for the next three years. ACP's goal in offering the free mini-bootcamp is to support medical student graduates with the soft skills necessary for a successful internal medicine residency. "OnlineMedEd's Intern Bootcamp empowers medical students to proactively position themselves for success during residency by providing valuable tools and resources to help them become effective, confident residents and strong, dynamic internists," said Philip A. Masters, MD, FACP, ACP's Vice President of Membership and International Programs. "We're thrilled to partner with OnlineMedEd to make this valuable content available to our membership." The ACP mini-bootcamp is a subset of OnlineMedEd's popular 40-session Intern Bootcamp learning series. Subjects in the series have been hand-selected to improve understanding of essential skills. Topics include: Your Usual Day : Plan your day and plan your rhythm to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. : Plan your day and plan your rhythm to maximize efficiency and effectiveness. Team Hierarchy : Learn the MD team hierarchy and learn your place as a resident. : Learn the MD team hierarchy and learn your place as a resident. Five Stages of Death and Dying in Residency : Learn what to expect at different points in your training and that there are people who can help, if you ask. : Learn what to expect at different points in your training and that there are people who can help, if you ask. Emotional Bank Account : Codification of your relationship with every person in your life, including patients, staff, colleagues and supervisors. : Codification of your relationship with every person in your life, including patients, staff, colleagues and supervisors. Finite and Infinite Games : Become more effective by changing the way you see the world and the people you work with. : Become more effective by changing the way you see the world and the people you work with. Phone Skills: Learn the proper etiquette for making phone calls, taking phone calls, and speaking to people that you don't know. "OnlineMedEd and the ACP share a common passionmaking physicians more effective and happier on the job through exceptional educational opportunities. The new ACP mini-bootcamp, based on OnlineMedEd's highly successful Intern Bootcamp series, is an incredible opportunity for young residents," stated Dustyn Williams MD, internist, founder and lead educator, OnlineMedEd. "Reviewing these free online videos will ease students' emotional and intellectual transition and enable them to hit the ground running on Day One." Free access to the ACP mini-bootcamp is available to ACP Medical Student Members. To learn more about the full OnlineMedEd Intern Bootcamp, go to https://onlinemeded.org/intern-bootcamp. About the American College of Physicians The American College of Physicians is the largest medical specialty organization in the United States with members in more than 145 countries worldwide. ACP membership includes 154,000 internal medicine physicians (internists), related subspecialists, and medical students. Internal medicine physicians are specialists who apply scientific knowledge and clinical expertise to the diagnosis, treatment, and compassionate care of adults across the spectrum from health to complex illness. Follow ACP on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. About OnlineMedEd OnlineMedEd is a digital medical education firm whose mission is to change how medical education is approached, delivered by medical schools and learned by medical students. Used by 80% of third-and fourth-year medical students in 191 countries, the OnlineMedEd clinical education platform is built around its proven four-step process that includes access to more than 400 pages of notes with diagrams, tables, tips and insight into topics (prime), over 70 hours of organized, high-yield content to prepare medical students for boards and clinical rotations (acquire), 1,200 board-style clinical vignettes that can be taken by topic or mix and match to prepare for the test (challenge) and 10,000+ flashcards to review and reinforce the most essential, high yield information (enforce). The peer-reviewed content is developed by physician educators and delivered in a way that makes learning faster, easier and more reliable by focusing only on content medical students must learn and providing the tools to improve retention, which frees them to spend their time using what they've learned to practice actual medicine. For more information, visit www.onlinemeded.org. SOURCE American College of Physicians The African Cannabis Report - the first detailed report on the legal cannabis industry in Africa, finds that the continent could reap significant rewards through the legalisation of cannabis. The report includes detailed market value forecasts, regulatory timeline analysis, consumption data and healthcare analyses for nine key markets, including Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Key findings of the report include: International demand offers a strong opportunity to unlock the potential value of Africa's legally produced cannabis, which could be worth up to $US 7.1 billion annually by 2023. legally produced cannabis, which could be worth up to annually by 2023. Annual prevalence rates of cannabis use in Africa (13.2%) cement the region as having one of the highest consumption rates around the world. (13.2%) cement the region as having one of the highest consumption rates around the world. Africa is home to five of the world's top 30 countries for cannabis prevalence among adult populations (aged 15-64) with over 76m users. is home to five of the world's top 30 countries for cannabis prevalence among adult populations (aged 15-64) with over users. The region has a long history of cannabis cultivation and many farmers have turned to illegal cannabis cultivation as the only means of subsistence since the decline in demand for other crops such as tobacco. Assuming there is full legalisation and regulation of the cannabis industry, South Africa and Nigeria potentially represent the region's two largest value medicinal cannabis markets going forward, worth US$667m to South Africa and US$75m to Nigeria by 2023. and potentially represent the region's two largest value medicinal cannabis markets going forward, worth to and to by 2023. Should the law change, NGOs, charities and other donors who provide a significant proportion of the region's healthcare supplies will be an essential partner in providing access to legal medicinal cannabis products due to the inaccessibility of healthcare services. Ahead of the launch of the report, Daragh Anglim, Managing Director at Prohibition Partners, explained: "A regulated legal cannabis market could be transformative to patients, farmers and economies across Africa. From a financial standpoint, Africa could reap significant rewards through the legalisation of cannabis, with international demand offering a strong commercial opportunity for cannabis cultivation. "Despite moves to legalise in several key markets, cannabis remains illegal across vast swathes of the continent as the great majority of African governments have yet to follow the trend of legalisation that is sweeping across Europe, North America and Latin America. "It is currently estimated that 38,000 tonnes of illegal cannabis is produced across Africa each year, with a market value of billions of dollars. This demonstrates the clear potential for an economic boom for African countries that actively seek to legalise and regulate their cannabis market." The report will be published on 21/03/2019, and can be downloaded on Prohibition Partner's website www.prohibitionpartners.com. About Prohibition Partners Within two years, we have become the world's leading provider of market insights and strategic consultancy for this emerging frontier. We firmly believe that data, insights and education will unlock the societal and commercial potential of cannabis. Our research and content teams routinely share the latest legislative developments and key trends in the industry - information that is regularly cited by political leaders, investment banks and Fortune 500 companies. Our consultancy team works with investors, operators and regulators to identify and execute opportunities across multiple jurisdictions. We advise our private clients on licensing, regulatory and business opportunities. Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/717815/Prohibition_Partners_Logo.jpg SOURCE Prohibition Partners Related Links http://www.prohibitionpartners.com/ CHICAGO, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- August Jackson, a leading brand engagement agency focused on branding, campaign development and multi-channel activation, has announced the addition of Jacque Patterson as Executive Vice President (EVP) to lead the agency's expansion of its Employee Engagement practice. Ms. Patterson's deep expertise in organizational effectiveness will help the agency's clients in the corporate, higher education and non-profit sectors align their people practices with their purpose. "We are the agency that helps organizations put their purpose into practice," explains Laura Shuler, August Jackson's CEO. "Bolstered by Jacque's experience in organizational design and talent development, we can help our clients build more engaged and empowered employee communities that truly deliver on their mission, their strategy, their brand promise however they define their purpose." In her 25-year career, Ms. Patterson has lead Human Resource efforts at agencies, including Jack Morton Worldwide (IPG) and Omnicom, and at ACT Assessment Technologies. Most recently, working independently and at Slalom Consulting, Ms. Patterson guided companies through organizational design, culture and behavior initiatives during times of transformation and change. In addition to her client-facing role, Ms. Patterson will direct the agency's internal People & Culture efforts, as the development of top-tier talent is essential to meeting the demands of rapid growth; in the last three years, the agency has doubled both its revenues and the size of its staff. "The world's best organizations use purpose as the springboard for inspiring, transforming and empowering teams," said Ms. Patterson. "It's a thrill for me to be able to apply that thinking to benefit both our internal community and those of our clients." Ms. Patterson will report to Ms. Shuler and be a member of the agency's eight-person Executive Team. She will work out of the agency's Chicago office. ABOUT AUGUST JACKSON For organizations that require highly-engaged people to realize their mission, August Jackson is the brand engagement agency that puts purpose into practice. Our work for corporate brands, hospitals, nonprofit organizations and higher education institutions includes branding, campaign development and multi-channel activation, with an emphasis on live events and technology-enabled engagement. Recognized in 2018 as a top agency by Chief Marketer and Event Marketer, and a 2019 Crain's Chicago Best Places to Work finalist, August Jackson is a 100-person agency with a presence in Chicago, NYC, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. www.augustjackson.com Media Contact: Anne Tolle 847-909-0318 [email protected] SOURCE August Jackson Related Links http://www.augustjackson.com WASHINGTON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2019/Air-King-America-Recalls-Wall-Mounted-Range-Hoods-Due-to-Injury-Hazard Recall Summary Name of Product: Air King Valencia Wall-Mounted Range Hoods Hazard: The wall mounting anchors provided with the range hoods do not adequately secure the hood to the wall, posing an injury hazard to the consumer. Remedy: Repair Consumers should immediately stop using and inspect range hoods per the instructions provided at www.airkinglimited.com/recall to determine if included in recall. Air King will provide customers with recalled units free replacement wall anchors and repairs by a qualified technician. Consumer Contact: Air King America toll free at 877-304-3785 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. E.T. Monday through Friday, email at [email protected] or online at www.airkinglimited.com and click on Product Recall for more information. Recall Details Units: About 5,000 (In addition, about 3,240 were sold in Canada) Description: This recall involves Air King Valencia wall-mounted range hoods in 30 and 36 inch widths. The Range hoods are approximately 18 inches high without the vertical exhaust duct cover. The affected range hoods are sold in the following finishes: stainless steel, white and black. The Air King name is located on the motor housing behind the removable grease filters. This recall only includes VAL and ESVAL series hoods. Incidents/Injuries: Air King America has received one report of a Valencia Range Hood coming loose from the wall soon after installation resulting in minor damage to the cook top. No injuries were reported. Sold At: Independent electrical supply distributors nationwide and online including HomeDepot.com, Lowes.com, Build.com and Amazon.com from 2009 through 2018 for about $550. Manufacturer: Manufacturer: Air King America, LLC, of West Chester, Pa.. Manufactured in: United States In Conjunction With: Canada Health Canada's press release is available at: https://healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2019/69004r-eng.php This recall was conducted voluntarily by the company under CPSC's Fast Track Recall process. Fast Track recalls are initiated by firms, who commit to work with CPSC to quickly announce the recall and remedy to protect consumers. About U.S. CPSC: The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with the use of thousands of types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction. Deaths, injuries, and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the nation more than $1 trillion annually. CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical or mechanical hazard. CPSC's work to ensure the safety of consumer products - such as toys, cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters and household chemicals contributed to a decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 40 years. Federal law bars any person from selling products subject to a publicly-announced voluntary recall by a manufacturer or a mandatory recall ordered by the Commission. For more lifesaving information, follow us on Facebook, Instagram @USCPSC and Twitter @USCPSC or sign up to receive our e-mail alerts. To report a dangerous product or a product-related injury go online to www.SaferProducts.gov or call CPSC's Hotline at 800-638-2772 or teletypewriter at 301-595-7054 for the hearing impaired. CPSC Consumer Information Hotline Contact us at this toll-free number if you have questions about a recall: 800-638-2772 (TTY 301-595-7054) Times: 8 a.m. 5:30 p.m. ET; Messages can be left anytime Call to get product safety and other agency information and to report unsafe products. Media Contact Please use the phone numbers below for all media requests. Phone: 301-504-7908 Spanish: 301-504-7800 Recall Number: 19-086 SOURCE U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Related Links http://www.cpsc.gov ARLINGTON, Va., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Diabetes Association (ADA) strongly supports the re-introduction of legislation to expand access to Diabetes Self-Management Training (DSMT) for Medicare beneficiaries. The ADA thanks House Diabetes Caucus Co-Chairs Congressman Tom Reed (R-NY) and Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-CO), and Vice Chairs Congresswoman Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Congresswoman Susan Brooks (R-IN), Congressman Raul Ruiz (D-CA), and Congressman Mike Kelly (R-PA) for their leadership in introducing the Expanding Access to Diabetes Self-Management Training Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. DSMT is an evidence-based program that teaches people living with diabetes how to cope with and manage their diabetes. The program teaches people how to reduce their risk for complications by monitoring their blood sugar, taking appropriate medication, healthy eating, and being active. DSMT has been covered under Medicare for more than 15 years. However, only five percent of Medicare beneficiaries with newly diagnosed diabetes use DSMT services. The Expanding Access to DSMT Act would strengthen this program for people with diabetes who are on Medicare. "Diabetes Self-Management Training (DSMT) is proven to provide positive results for people living with diabetes," said LaShawn McIver, MD, MPH, ADA's Senior Vice President of Government Affairs & Advocacy. "Unfortunately, it has been under-utilized for people with diabetes enrolled in Medicare. The ADA strongly supports efforts in Congress to strengthen DSMT and we applaud Congresswoman DeGette and Congressman Reed for introducing this legislation in the House. We look forward to working with them to advance this bill." About the American Diabetes Association Approximately every 21 seconds, someone in the United States is diagnosed with diabetes. Nearly half of the American adult population has diabetes or prediabetes, and more than 30 million adults and children are living with the disease. The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is the nation's leading voluntary health organization on a mission to prevent and cure diabetes, as well as improve the lives of all people affected by the disease. For nearly 80 years, the ADA has driven discovery by funding research to treat, manage and prevent all types of diabetes, while working relentlessly for a cure. Magnifying the urgency of this epidemic, the ADA works to safeguard policies and programs that protect people with the illness, those at risk of developing diabetes and the health care professionals who serve them by initiating programs, advocacy and education efforts that can lead to improved health outcomes and quality of life. To learn more or to get involved, call 1-800-DIABETES (1-800-342-2383) or visit us at diabetes.org. Information is available in English and Spanish. Join the conversation with us on Facebook (American Diabetes Association), Twitter (@AmDiabetesAssn) and Instagram (@AmDiabetesAssn). SOURCE American Diabetes Association Related Links http://www.diabetes.org ATLANTA, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Management consulting firm North Highland is pleased to announce that Amy Andersen will join the firm as vice president and will be based in the firm's San Francisco office. As vice president, Andersen will lead the firm's healthcare industry expertise. Her focus will be helping clients adapt and innovate, while navigating the changing healthcare landscape and developing strategies to drive value, quality, access and efficiency. "Amy is a skilled healthcare leader with experience advising high growth health and global technology companies," said John Norkus, managing director. "She is an industry thought-leader and subject matter expert that motivates teams to build partnerships and execute strategic growth." Andersen was the founder of Andersen Health Advisors, where she served as a principal advisor to Stanford University's Clinical Excellence Research Center. She previously held executive and leadership positions with IBM, Philips Healthcare, Booz Allen Hamilton and Kaiser Permanente. Andersen began her career in healthcare policy and regulatory affairs in Washington, D.C., with specific focus on Medicaid and Medicare, health information security and quality and performance improvement. Andersen is an advisory board member of Lightning Bolt Solutions and a board member of Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Association. Outside of work, she is an avid hiker, equestrian and youth mentor. Andersen is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and holds a master's degree from the University of Essex. About North Highland North Highland is a global management consulting firm known for helping clients solve their most complex challenges related to customer experience, performance improvement, technology and digital, and transformation. We add value and support our clients across the full spectrum of consulting, from strategy through delivery. We bring the big ideas, then we make them real. North Highland is an employee-owned firm, headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., with more than 3,000 consultants worldwide and 60+ offices around the globe. The firm is a member of Cordence Worldwide (www.cordenceworldwide.com), a global management consulting alliance. For more information, visit northhighland.com and connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Media Contact Jaclyn Proctor, [email protected] SOURCE North Highland Related Links http://www.northhighland.com HOUSTON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- ARCHER Systems, LLC ("ARCHER") announced today that is has acquired Providio MediSolutions, LLC ("Providio") to further solidify ARCHER's position as a leading provider of claims administration, lien resolution, qualified settlement fund, national bankruptcy and probate coordination, and other pre-settlement and post-settlement services to the legal industry for mass tort, class action and single-event litigation. As a result of the transaction, Integrated Financial Settlements and Ginger Susman have joined the existing ARCHER ownership group of Scott Freeman, Will Shapiro, Brian Polarek and LKCM Headwater Investments as equity owners of ARCHER. LKCM Headwater Investments joined the ARCHER ownership group in December 2018 following its completion of a strategic equity investment in ARCHER. Scott Freeman, an Executive Chairman of ARCHER, commented, "We are incredibly pleased to partner with the Providio and LKCM Headwater Investments teams and believe these transactions will enable us to further cement ARCHER's position as a leading technology-based provider of value-added claims administration, lien resolution, and other pre-settlement and post-settlement services to the legal industry. This transaction gives ARCHER the ability to further its core mission of empowering plaintiffs, defendants and other stakeholders to achieve their collective litigation and other business objectives." Will Shapiro, an Executive Chairman of ARCHER, commented, "We are very excited to welcome the Providio team to ARCHER. This transaction provides ARCHER with additional resources to further enhance and expand our service offerings in the areas of mass tort, class action and single-event litigation to better serve our clients. ARCHER remains steadfast in its commitment to providing a high-touch, white glove service model for our valued clients, and the addition of Providio's seasoned team of employees further elevates ARCHER's ability to do so." Ginger Susman, an Executive Chairman of ARCHER, commented, "We had been searching for a strategic option to expand our service offerings at the request of clients for some time, and when ARCHER and Providio commenced discussions it was an obvious match. Our cultures are uniquely aligned with an extreme focus on customer service to enable mass tort, class action and single-event firms to better serve their clients through effective and efficient pre-settlement and post-settlement administration solutions. I'm looking forward to working closely with Scott, Will and the entire ARCHER team." About ARCHER Systems ARCHER Systems, LLC, headquartered in Houston, Texas, is a provider of claims administration, lien resolution, qualified settlement fund, national bankruptcy and probate coordination, and other pre-settlement and post-settlement services to the legal industry. With over 200 employees operating out of offices in Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania, ARCHER provides valued-added service and technology-based solutions to empower plaintiffs, defendants, and other stakeholders to achieve their collective litigation and other business objectives in the mass tort, class action and personal injury marketplace. For more information about ARCHER Systems, LLC, please visit www.archersystems.com. About LKCM Headwater Investments LKCM Headwater Investments, LLC serves as the private equity arm of Luther King Capital Management Corporation, an SEC-registered investment advisory firm headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas with approximately $15 billion in assets under management. Founded in 1979, Luther King Capital Management Corporation provides tailored investment management services designed to meet the investment objectives of its clients, which include a wide range of high net worth individuals, institutional investors, investment companies, and private investment partnerships, including LKCM Headwater Investments, LLC and its affiliated private equity funds. For more information about LKCM Headwater Investments, please visit www.lkcmheadwater.com. About Integrated Financial Settlements Inc. Integrated Financial Settlements is a holding company with several industry leading subsidiaries that provide financial solutions to individuals and families who have experienced a personal injury. The IFS companies are the largest writers of structured settlement annuities in the United States. For more information about IFS, please visit www.ifscompanies.com. SOURCE ARCHER Systems, LLC Related Links https://www.archersystems.com DENVER, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Astanza ReSmooth diode laser was recently selected to be featured at the 2019 ASLMS Learning Lab as part of the hair removal instructional program. The annual ASLMS conference is dedicated to promoting excellence in patient care by advancing biomedical application of lasers and energy-based technologies. During this Learning Lab, participants will learn more about laser / light-based devices specifically related to hair removal, vascular treatments, IPL, and body contouring. Learning Lab participants will not only be introduced to different laser technologies, they will also learn how to optimize this variety of aesthetic technology to produce the best clinical outcomes for their patients. Topics covered during this Learning Lab will include: Vascular Lesions - Melanie M. Kingsley , Yakir Levin IPL - H. Ray Jalian , Brenda LaTowsky Hair Removal - Sandeep S. Saluja , Vineet Mishra , featuring the Astanza ReSmooth Body Contouring - Daniel P. Friedmann , Adam J. Wulkan Laser hair removal is one of the most consistently in-demand aesthetic procedures, and the Astanza ReSmooth's innovative technology helps practitioners meet their patients' needs efficiently and effectively. The ReSmooth's industry-leading spots size (as large as 9.1 cm2) allows for quicker treatments with the ability to cover larger areas of skin at a time, compared to other competing systems. It also features an 810 nm and 940 nm wavelength to effectively target deep follicles of all colors and stunt hair growth at its root. ASLMS attendees can learn more about the Astanza ReSmooth at the "Ski Lodge" (Booth #707) in the exhibit hall. "Our clients have been excited about adding the ReSmooth to their practices because they can treat their hair removal patients so much faster with less downtime," said Brent Nixon, Astanza Laser VP of Sales. "They're also not having to turn patients away due to hair thickness or skin type, meaning they have a much larger opportunity they're able to capture for their businesses." The ReSmooth's advanced diode technology also allows practitioners to treat skin types I - VI and any hair type, regardless of thickness or color. Its integrated skin cooling system and SmoothPulse mode also help minimize patient discomfort while providing safe, fast treatments. To learn more about the Astanza ReSmooth and its applications, join Astanza at the 39th annual ASLMS Conference in Denver, March 27 - 31, 2019 at the Colorado Convention Center. The ReSmooth will be featured during the Laser Learning Lab: Session #1A on Thursday, March 28 . Astanza Laser will be exhibiting at the 39th annual ASLMS conference in the "Ski Lodge" (Booth #707). Attendees are encouraged to visit Astanza at the Ski Lodge booth to learn more about the latest in their aesthetic laser lineup, including the Astanza DermaBlate, Etherea, and ReSmooth. Click here to register for ASLMS 2019 in Denver, CO. About Astanza Laser Astanza is the leader in lasers for tattoo removal, hair removal, and additional aesthetic procedures. In addition to developing cutting-edge medical laser devices such as the Duality, Trinity, DermaBlate and ReSmooth systems, Astanza offers its customers a complete range of training, marketing, and business consulting services specific to achieving success in this growing field. Astanza Laser is headquartered in Dallas, TX with customers throughout North America and Europe. For product, investor, or press information, call (800) 364-9010, or visit http://www.astanzalaser.com/ SOURCE Astanza Laser Related Links http://www.AstanzaLaser.com The campaign began by getting feedback from actual Texans on what it actually means to be a Texan. Loud and clear, participants in nine focus groups across the state wanted to see content that reflected the diversity in people and food that make up Texas. And it makes sense with some cities gaining as many as 66 new residents daily, the makeup of the state has changed. Consider this: nearly 85 percent of the state's population now dwells in a metropolitan area. Texas cities are also growing faster than cities in other states, according to the latest census estimates. Diversity of background brings diversity of palate. It's no secret that authentic, delicious Mexican food can be found throughout the state, but there's so much more. Houston, in particular, is one of the most diverse cities in the United States, which has manifested itself in the variety of cuisines available. And the diverse flavors aren't limited to one city. Each region of Texas has a unique culinary identity worthy of exploration. Beef can be found in all of it. 'For All Plates of Life' focuses on content that is not only positive and inclusive, but also mouthwatering. Today's consumer eats with their eyes. Many people want to try beautiful food they are familiar with, but also enjoy being introduced to new dishes and flavors that stretch their palates. From traditional Texan favorites like Smoked Brisket and Carne Guisada to some new-school flavors like Braised Korean Short Ribs and Mediterranean Steak, beef is a great choice for flavor, no matter what cuisine you're craving. The new Beef Loving Texans ads will appear on Hulu and various other programmatic streaming TV and video services beginning in March 2019, as well as streaming radio and display ads. Additionally, the "All Plates" campaign will extend online throughout Beef Loving Texans social media, digital content and website with beautiful, diverse and colorful food photography, stories and recipes. Get recipes and get inspired at www.beeflovingtexans.com. About Beef Loving Texans Beef Loving Texans is Texas Beef Council's consumer brand created to share unique recipes, stories, cooking and shopping tips and expert nutrition information. The Beef Loving Texans brand celebrates the pride and values deeply rooted in Texans through family, community and tradition. More information on the mission of Beef Loving Texans can be found at BeefLovingTexans.com. About Texas Beef Council The Texas Beef Council (TBC) is a non-profit organization funded by Texas farmers and ranchers through the national Beef Checkoff program and the Texas state Beef Checkoff program. Checkoff dollars are used to increase domestic and/or international demand for beef through programs of promotion, research and education. The organization is directed by a 20-member board of cattlemen, representing the state's 149,000 beef farmers and ranchers. SOURCE Beef Loving Texans Related Links http://www.beeflovingtexans.com Featuring a transitional, yet geometric design, the QUATRUS R15 1-3/4 Apron with low divide reinvents the classic farm sink look with a modernized style and functionality that meets the everyday needs of the most practical, yet beautiful kitchens. "The QUATRUS collection has been one of our most popular," states Tim Maicher, Director of Marketing for BLANCO. "The innovative low divide offers an incredibly useful asset for a workable, livable kitchen. The low divide blends the extra functionality of a double sink with the utility of a single bowl to manage large items while keeping cleaning and prep areas separate." BLANCO QUATRUS R15 Apron 1-3/4 with Low Divide 33" x 19 ", 9" deep, outside cabinet: 36" Accessories Grid Right Grid Left Grid Multi-Level MSRP: $1295 BLANCO QUATRUS R15 Apron Front and Undermount Series Details 18 Gauge Stainless Steel for exceptional durability and strength X-pattern drain grooves Easy-to-clean satin finish surface and generous R15 corners Rear positioned drain hole for maximum, usable space and under cabinet storage To download full press release and images, click here. About BLANCO For three generations, BLANCO has quietly and passionately elevated the standards for luxury sinks, faucets and decorative accessories. Proud of its European heritage and award-winning German engineering, BLANCO is steadfastly committed to their tradition of high quality, innovative design and unsurpassed service since 1925. Dedicated to quality without compromise, every sink is closely inspected many times before it receives the BLANCO name. A remarkable history of firsts emphasizes BLANCO's zeal for innovation including the first stainless steel sink to achieve a 10mm radius STEELART the first to market colored hard composite sinks in North America BLANCO's pioneering MicroEdge technology with its virtual flushmount edge and the first apron front sink in composite granite. BLANCO is also featuring a patented new sink material called DURINOX that is twice the hardness of stainless steel with a warm, velvety finish that is scratch and fingerprint resistant. BLANCO has a long tradition of environmental stewardship and their production facilities operate to strict DIN EN ISO 14001 environmental performance standards. BLANCO is the brand of choice in the luxury sink and faucet category for its unparalleled quality and an inspirational breadth of design possibilities. From the precision craftsmanship and artistic creativity of its STEELART brand to the stunning durability of its ground breaking SILGRANIT collection, BLANCO has proven that the sink is far more than a mere functional element in the kitchen. For more information, visit www.blancoamerica.com. SOURCE BLANCO Related Links http://www.blancoamerica.com SACRAMENTO, Calif., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Burns & McDonnell, a 100 percent employee-owned engineering, architecture and construction firm, was awarded a multimillion-dollar, five-year Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to provide multidiscipline design, architecture and engineering services for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' (USACE) South Pacific Division. The scope of the program includes the full spectrum of design disciplines on Military Design and Interagency and International Services (IIS) projects in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah. Work will include engineering studies, design and construction management services for new and existing structures like training, warehouse and storage facilities, as well as aircraft hangars, microgrids, marine terminals and renewable energy projects. USACE selected four firms to compete on multiple task orders for up to $44 million in design services. "The federal government has been a valued client of our firm for more than seven decades," says Renita Mollman, vice president and general manager for Burns & McDonnell in California. "We're honored to support and continue our long-term partnership with USACE as its missions evolve and its needs for innovative technologies advance." The USACE's South Pacific Division has four operating districts Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Francisco and Albuquerque providing federal military engineering support to secure the nation, promote economic growth and reduce risk from disaster. Burns & McDonnell has been involved in military projects since 1941. Since then, the firm's experience has expanded to include diverse projects and services for federal and military clients worldwide, including in Brea, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, California. Since 2012, Burns & McDonnell has successfully completed more than 300 task orders under 39 IDIQ contracts for the USACE. For photos and support materials, please visit our MEDIA KIT. About Burns & McDonnell Burns & McDonnell is a family of companies made up of 7,000 engineers, architects, construction professionals, scientists, consultants and entrepreneurs with offices across the country and throughout the world. We strive to create amazing success for our clients and amazing careers for our employee-owners. Burns & McDonnell is 100 percent employee-owned and is proud to be on Fortune's 2019 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. For more information, visit burnsmcd.com . Contact: Lydia Schroeder, Burns & McDonnell 812-630-0796 [email protected] SOURCE Burns & McDonnell Related Links http://www.burnsmcd.com AMERICAN CANYON, Calif., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Cal/OSHA has cited a Bay Area contractor for serious safety violations after a worker was fatally crushed at a San Rafael construction site on September 18, 2018. Investigators determined that West Coast Land and Development, Inc. did not follow regulations when it stacked plywood vertically without securing it. The accident occurred when two employees of the Concord company were framing and installing a shear wall on the third floor of a house under construction. One worker went to get a sheet of plywood from a stack of 26 panels stacked vertically and leaning against a wall. A foreman found the worker's body 20 minutes later with the stack of plywood on top of him. "Unsecured plywood, drywall and similar material stacked vertically create life-threatening hazards to employees," said Cal/OSHA Chief Juliann Sum. "As this tragic incident demonstrates, employers should store the materials flat or ensure the materials are secured when stored vertically to prevent serious and even fatal injuries." Cal/OSHA cited West Coast Land and Development $26,540 for eight violations. In addition to the serious accident-related violation for stacking plywood sheets vertically without securing the sheets against tipping or falling, serious citations were issued for the employer's failure to: Guard an opening on the house's second floor to prevent employees falling through it Protect workers from the hazard of impalement on exposed reinforcing steel projections Protect workers from falling when working on elevated surfaces at heights more than 15 feet A regulatory violation was cited for failing to obtain the required construction-related project permit, and general violations were cited for failing to evaluate worksite hazards and protect workers from loose rock or soil at an excavation site, and failure to provide handrails and stair rails along unprotected sides and edges of stairways. A serious violation is cited when there is a realistic possibility that death or serious harm could result from the actual hazardous condition. Violations are classified as accident-related when the injury, illness or fatality is caused by the violation. Cal/OSHA offers extensive information and resources on working safely in the construction industry, including hazard identification, hazard correction, and establishing and implementing an effective Injury and Illness Prevention Program. All employers in California are required to have an effective written injury and illness prevention program, a safety program to identify, assess and control hazards in the workplace. Cal/OSHA has online tools and publications to guide employers on how to establish an effective safety program. Cal/OSHA's resources on fall protection include safety and health factsheets, residential fall protection training and a construction safety pocket guide. Cal/OSHA helps protect workers from health and safety hazards on the job in almost every workplace in California. Cal/OSHA's Consultation Services Branch provides free and voluntary assistance to employers to improve their health and safety programs. Employers should call (800) 963-9424 for assistance from Cal/OSHA Consultation Services. Employees with work-related questions or complaints may contact DIR's Call Center in English or Spanish at 844-LABOR-DIR (844-522-6734). The California Workers' Information line at 866-924-9757 provides recorded information in English and Spanish on a variety of work-related topics. Complaints can also be filed confidentially with Cal/OSHA district offices. Members of the press may contact Peter Melton or Lucas Brown at (510) 286-1161, and are encouraged to subscribe to get email alerts on DIR's press releases or other departmental updates. https://www.facebook.com/CaliforniaDIR https://twitter.com/CA_DIR http://www.youtube.com/CaliforniaDIR http://www.dir.ca.gov/email/listsub.asp?choice=1 The California Department of Industrial Relations , established in 1927, protects and improves the health, safety, and economic well-being of over 18 million wage earners, and helps their employers comply with state labor laws. DIR is housed within the Labor & Workforce Development Agency . For general inquiries, contact DIR's Call Center at 844-LABOR-DIR (844-522-6734) for help in locating the appropriate division or program in our department. SOURCE California Department of Industrial Relations; Cal/OSHA Related Links http://www.dir.ca.gov DUBLIN, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Cannabis Market: Canada's Legalization of Recreational Marijuana is Boosting the Fortunes of Cannabis Stocks" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The cannabis market has great potential for generating more profits for investors and companies in the future. The industry has grown massively following the legalization of recreational cannabis use in Canada, making the country the trading center for legal marijuana in the world. At the moment, there are not many companies involved with marijuana exclusively making the competition fierce, leading the industry to grow even bigger. The three leading companies, Canopy, Aurora and Tilray, which are involved with marijuana exclusively, will lead the market to new levels; however, companies such as Anheuser-Busch, AbbVie and Alita which are involved with cannabis in a more indirect way, will influence the cannabis industry to a great extent as well. In the stock market, due to the nature of their business Cannabis stocks have been very volatile making them a risky investment at present. Pharmaceutical firms producing Marijuana for medical purposes were major driving forces in the industry. The share price for AbbVie and Altria reacted positively following the news that Canada had legalized recreational marijuana use. Canopy, Aurora and Tilray shares weren't the exception either, as they experienced high volatility due to short selling under a six-month period. Scope Assesses the cannabis market Examines the potential threats in the market Assesses the performance of cannabis companies Reasons to buy Did the cannabis market produce revenues? How likely is more countries to legalize recreational cannabis use? Which are the best cannabis stocks for 2018? Is Canopy Growth the best cannabis stock for 2018? Key Topics Covered: Overview Catalyst Summary The marijuana industry is booming as more countries are legalising recreational use Legalizing recreational use of marijuana on October 17 2018, made Canada the world's trading center Trading cannabis in the stock market can be highly profitable under the right circumstances Cannabis producing companies have experienced massive growth over a four-month period Cannabis stocks have experienced high levels of volatility due to short selling and fraud allegations Canopy Growth will potentially lead the market in the future Why Canopy Growth stands out from the majority of cannabis producing companies Analysis of Canopy shows that growth is set to continue in the future; however, investment has to be approached with caution Conclusions The cannabis market will grow even bigger if more countries legalize recreational marijuana use; however, as growth will increase potential issues will emerge Appendix Further Reading Ask the analyst About the Author Companies Mentioned AbbVie Alita Anheuser-Busch Aurora Canopy Tilray For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/v5pgrm/canada_cannabis?w=5 Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com ONE Cannabis, a Denver-Based Cannabis Franchisor, Exhibits at the Industry-Leading Event to Break Down Myths and Teach Franchising Pros about the Legal Cannabis Market DENVER, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - North American cannabis buyers spent $9.2 billion in legal markets in 2017. Flash forward to a decade from now and the global industry is poised to reach $80 billion with North American consumption leading the way. In this time span, countless industry rookies will enter the industry, vying for their piece of the pie. The growth vehicle driving those who will succeed? Franchising. It is the most viable option for newcomers to become a part of this development, while mitigating much of the risk. ONE Cannabis is painting this reality next week for attendees at the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference. Taking place March 24-27, the Las Vegas show is a must-attend event for multi-unit and multi-brand franchisees looking to build their businesses and flourish. The Denver-based cannabis franchisor is exhibiting at the conference to meet with prospective franchisees and franchise brokers about its franchise opportunities throughout North America. Interested parties can visit ONE Cannabis at Booth No. 123 or contact Justin at [email protected] to set up an introductory meeting. "ONE Cannabis offers multi-unit franchisees the opportunity to diversify their investments and grab stake at the ground floor of a nascent industry, with industry leaders by their side," said ONE Cannabis COO Mike Weinberger, who has two decades of experience in franchising with both large, global franchisors and emerging franchise concepts. "While marijuana legalization is increasing rapidly across the U.S.," he continued, "there are some established markets that are already seeing serious consolidation by large entities. If you've been thinking of investing in cannabis, now is the time to do it. A limited number of dispensary licenses are awarded in each market, so getting in early is key if you have a desired market in mind." ONE CANNABIS LEADS CANNABIS FRANCHISING IN NORTH AMERICA ONE Cannabis began franchising in early 2018 and currently has five franchise agreements signed for Colorado development, as well as several agreements in the works in other states and in Canada with different entrepreneurial teams. The company expects to add a dozen corporate and franchise locations in 2019 in multiple states. Recently, ONE Cannabis became the first marijuana business to earn a Franchise Times Dealmakers award. This recognition is presented to the boldest players driving mergers and acquisitions in franchising. JOIN THE BUDDING CANNABIS MARKET WITH INDUSTRY LEADERS ONE Cannabis team members have decades of experience in the legal cannabis industry, franchising and operations. With a proven business model in-hand, franchisees gain access to this knowledge including operational systems, best practices, depth of resources, exclusive award-winning products and hundreds of vetted business relationships as well as national brand recognition and marketing support. IDEAL FRANCHISE PARTNERS ONE Cannabis partners with both new franchisee investors and existing multi-unit franchisees who are looking to diversify their franchise portfolio. Franchise partner investment costs range from $750,000 to $2.5 million, including a $100,000 franchise fee for a single unit. Those interested in becoming a ONE Cannabis franchisee should have access to $750,000 in liquid capital. Franchisees may be owner-operators or passive owners with a designated, experienced manager running operations. To learn more about the ONE Cannabis franchise opportunity, contact Justin Livingston at [email protected] or visit http://ocginc.com. ABOUT ONE CANNABIS : ONE Cannabis is a Denver-based cannabis franchisor. The company's cutting-edge franchise offering stems from over a decade of proven cannabis operation combined with decades of franchise experience with industry veterans. With countless industry awards, the marijuana pioneers have now built the world's most powerful cannabis business franchise system. Through its franchise opportunities and SEED program, ONE eases the industry's barrier to entry, making cannabis entrepreneurship more feasible to a broader group. ONE Cannabis CEO and co-founder Christian Hageseth has been named an "Industry Trailblazer" by High Times magazine. His entrepreneurial journey in the cannabis industry is chronicled in his book: Big Weed: An Entrepreneur's High-Stakes Adventures in the Budding Legal Marijuana Business. For more information about the ONE Cannabis franchise opportunity, visit http://ocginc.com. SOURCE ONE Cannabis MCLEAN, Va., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- On Thursday, April 25, 2019, at approximately 4:05 p.m. Eastern Time, Capital One Financial Corporation (NYSE: COF) will release its first quarter 2019 earnings results. Additionally, the company will host a conference call at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time to review financial and operating performance for the quarter ending March 31, 2019. The call will be webcast live and the earnings release will be available on the company's homepage at www.capitalone.com. A replay of the webcast will be available 24 hours a day, beginning two hours after the conference call, until 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on May 9, 2019, through the company's homepage. About Capital One Capital One Financial Corporation (www.capitalone.com) is a financial holding company whose subsidiaries, which include Capital One, N.A., and Capital One Bank (USA), N.A., had $249.8 billion in deposits and $372.5 billion in total assets as of December 31, 2018. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, Capital One offers a broad spectrum of financial products and services to consumers, small businesses and commercial clients through a variety of channels. Capital One, N.A. has branches located primarily in New York, Louisiana, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and the District of Columbia. A Fortune 500 company, Capital One trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "COF" and is included in the S&P 100 index. Visit the Capital One newsroom for more Capital One news. SOURCE Capital One Financial Corporation Related Links http://www.capitalone.com MONTREAL and CHICAGO, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - La Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec ("CDPQ") has acquired a minority stake in Hilco Trading, LLC (d/b/a "Hilco Global"), an independent financial services company. Following the transaction, CDPQ will own 27% of Hilco Global. Through this new partnership, CDPQ will support the long-term strategy and continued growth of Hilco Global, a leading authority on asset valuation, monetization and advisory solutions across the world. Furthermore, CDPQ will target annual investments of approximately US$150 million, alongside Hilco Global, in distressed assets and other special situations. Jeffrey B. Hecktman, Chairman, CEO and Founder of Hilco Global said, "Our new partnership with CDPQ is a perfect fit for us both strategically and culturally. Management at CDPQ understands that our goal was to find a financial partner that would support our long-term growth plans. CDPQ will serve as a key strategic investor in the capital-intensive deals that will fuel our continued expansion into several sectors including real estate, intellectual property, account receivables and commercial and industrial asset transactions with both healthy and distressed companies." "Our investment is motivated by Hilco Global's excellent reputation, track record and strong management team," commented Stephane Etroy, Executive Vice-President and Head of Private Equity at CDPQ. "Hilco Global, whose role is to transition existing and often undervalued assets into profitable use, helps businesses to adopt new technologies and ajust to changing consumer habits. This is perfectly aligned with our long-term investment strategy." ABOUT HILCO GLOBAL Hilco Global (www.hilcoglobal.com) is a leading diversified financial services company. The company offers a unique platform of more than twenty integrated business units located around the world and focused on three core corporate solution areas: Valuation, Monetization and Advisory Services. Each Hilco Global company is recognized as a leader in its respective field and is led by subject matter experts. Hilco Global has earned its reputation by helping both healthy and distressed companies identify and derive maximum value for their tangible and intangible assets for over thirty years. Hilco can also provide capital to help facilitate many transactions, demonstrating its willingness to back its valuations with its own capital. Hilco Global worldwide headquarters is based in Northbrook, Illinois and has over 600 professionals located in 11 offices around the world. ABOUT CAISSE DE DEPOT ET PLACEMENT DU QUEBEC Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) is a long-term institutional investor that manages funds primarily for public and parapublic pension and insurance plans. As at December 31, 2018, it held CA$309.5 billion in net assets. As one of Canada's leading institutional fund managers, CDPQ invests globally in major financial markets, private equity, infrastructure, real estate and private debt. For more information, visit cdpq.com, follow us on Twitter @LaCDPQ or consult our Facebook or LinkedIn pages. SOURCE Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec Related Links https://www.cdpq.com/ PITTSBURGH, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation announced today a $1 million gift from Stephanie McMahon, WWE chief brand officer, and Paul "Triple H" Levesque, WWE executive vice president, Talent, Live Events & Creative, to establish a family centered MIBG Therapy Suite at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. MIBG (metaiodobenzylguanidine) is used to treat high-risk neuroblastoma, an aggressive cancer of the nerve cells that spreads quickly, striking mostly children under the age of 5. The newly constructed MIBG suite at UPMC Children's includes highly sophisticated equipment and the ability to provide care without needing to transfer a patient out of the room, even if the patient requires critical care. In an adjacent room, a family member can comfortably stay to provide support and yet be protected from radiation exposure during the treatment. UPMC Children's has the only pediatric MIBG therapy suite in western Pennsylvania. "MIBG is now at a point where it can offer true benefits to our patients with relapsed or unresponsive neuroblastoma," said Linda McAllister-Lucas, M.D., Ph.D., chief, Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, UPMC Children's Hospital. "With this gift from Stephanie McMahon and Paul 'Triple H' Levesque, we are now able to translate this therapy into life-saving clinical care." "Paul and I are extremely proud to support the cancer programs at Children's to ensure all patients and their families have access to the best care available," said Stephanie McMahon. "Our family's passion is to end all childhood cancers, and in an attempt to accelerate that goal, we are investing in the MIBG Therapy Suite for kids at UPMC Children's." "We want to celebrate Stephanie McMahon and Paul 'Triple H' Levesque's generous gift and the MIBG suite that they have made possiblea space that will be instrumental in advancing care and improving the patient experience for children with neuroblastoma and other rare pediatric cancers," said Rachel Petrucelli, president, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation. "As we help these kids achieve hope, or even just a few more precious moments with friends and family, we can share new knowledge and new hope for future patients," added McAllister-Lucas. Stephanie and Paul have been supporters of UPMC Children's for many years. They established Connor's Cure, a fund in honor of 8-year-old WWE fan, Connor Michalek, who battled medulloblastomaa rare tumor that affects the brain and spinal cord. To date, Connor's Cure has raised nearly $3 million and expanded its partnership with Children's Foundation to gain an important allyThe V Foundation for Cancer Research. Today, through The V Foundation's grant-making process, funds raised by WWE in support of Connor's Cure help to fuel promising cancer research studies at leading medical facilities throughout the country. Stephanie McMahon also is a member of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation Board of Trustees. About UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Regionally, nationally, and globally, UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh is a leader in the treatment of childhood conditions and diseases, a pioneer in the development of new and improved therapies, and a top educator of the next generation of pediatricians and pediatric subspecialists. With generous community support, UPMC Children's Hospital has fulfilled this mission since its founding in 1890. UPMC Children's is recognized consistently for its clinical, research, educational, and advocacy-related accomplishments, including ranking 13th among children's hospitals and schools of medicine in funding for pediatric research provided by the National Institutes of Health (FY2017). www.chp.edu/pressroom Contact: Andrea Kunicky Office: 412-692-6254 Mobile: 412-439-5264 E-mail: [email protected] Contact: Anna Radder Office: 412-692-3917 Mobile: 224-619-0650 E-mail: [email protected] SOURCE Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation Related Links https://www.givetochildrens.org ISTANBUL, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Cimsa, a subsidiary of Sabanc Holding, is becoming the global leader in white cement. Mexican company CEMEX, one of the world's leading cement producers, has agreed to sign a 'binding agreement' for the sale of its Bunol White Cement Plant in Valencia (Spain) to Cimsa for US$180 million. The sale is expected to be completed in the second half of 2019. Following this acquisition, Cimsa, which is already the prominent European white cement player, capacity wise, will become a global leader. Sabanc Holding CEO Mehmet Gocmen commented that, "As Sabanc, we are proud to become a world leader with our new investment in the cement sector, an industry in which we have been operating for nearly 50 years. Being present in new geographies, as part of the strategic roadmap we previously defined as 'Sabanc of New Generation', is a key priority for us. This investment, which brings our leadership role in Turkey to the international arena, is a very significant milestone when it comes to managing our portfolio in a more balanced and dynamic way. We are targeting global leadership positions by responding to the world's new developments and setting new industry operational benchmarks. With this approach, similar to what we have achieved with Composites in our Industry strategic business unit, we are now taking our cement business to the next level. We see it as our responsibility to create value not only for Sabanc Group, but also for our country. Beyond mere financial considerations, we will leverage our technical expertise to further contribute to the growth of the cement sector in Turkey. We will continue monitoring new opportunities to further enhance, in the short- to medium-terms, our global leadership." The most technologically advanced white cement plant in Europe Noting that the Bunol White Cement Plant is the most technologically advanced white cement plant in Europe, Tamer Saka, the President of Sabanc Holding Cement Group and Chairman of Cimsa, also said: "With its expertise in white cement, special products and wide distribution network, Cimsa is among Turkey's leading exporters. At Cimsa, in 2018, we have generated over 50 percent of our operational profit from our overseas operations. With the purchase of the Bunol White Cement Plant in Spain, we are upgrading our game in the white cement sector, the highest value-added business in the global cement market. With the integration of the Bunol White Cement Plant to our production and distribution networks, we will increase our white cement production capacity by 40 percent, translating into Cimsa becoming the world's largest white cement company." The transaction will be completed upon securing customary authorisations from regulators. SOURCE Sabanci Holding 30th Anniversary of Promaster In 2019 PROMASTER celebrates 30 years as the timepiece of choice by explorers and adventurers who enjoy the challenges, possibilities and wonders of nature. With a natural passion for environmental wellness, Citizen has selected this PROMASTER anniversary to highlight sustainability's unsung heroesthose who actively protect the environment every day. With the History Channel, we released a campaign to report those facts along with activists' stories in a series of short movies. The series highlights their ongoing efforts to save the world's most pristine environments and wildlife. As nature reaches its limits, conservation itself is the ultimate challenge. #SavetheBEYOND PROMASTER special website URL: https://citizenwatch-global.com/promaster/index.html - AIR series- Professional pilot watch high-end AIR series Rugged case, bold multi-layer face design and comprehensive specifications with aviation scale. Functions - Features high-end light-powered Eco-Drive movement with SATELLITE WAVE GPS Cal. 990. - Twice the spinning speed of hour and minute hands for HOME time corrections (compared to previous model) - High-speed twin-coil motor reduces the time required for hand movements forward or reverse (equivalent to 360 moving of minute hand) in less than one second. - Receives a time signal from GPS satellite in a minimum of 3 seconds. - Corrects time and calendar by syncing with GPS satellites (for any 39 cities) - Shows the time in two different world time zones simultaneously and function switches between home time and local time in one instant step. - 1/1 second chronograph measures 24 hours. - Light Level Indicator detects and displays the intensity of light striking the dial in seven sensitivity levels. - Features aviation scale and design using ground-air visual signal codes*6 to enhance the characteristics as a professional pilot watch. - Super Titanium*5 comes with special surface hardening technology combining Duratect MRK and Duratect DLC that resists scratches and damage. Design - Inspired by cockpit instruments and heads-up display. - Combines rugged case and bold-looking multi-layer face structure that features five separate layers of mechanics. - Ground-breaking design structure putting hands between base dial and clear dial that seems to float above. - Unique bezel design featuring ground-air visual signal codes. - Larger indexes and hands with luminescence and orange color accent ensure greater visibility. - 30th anniversary logo and serial number are stamped on the case back. Brand / Product Name CITIZEN PROMASTER / Eco-Drive SATELLITE WAVE GPS PROMASTER 30th Anniversary Limited Model Model CC7015-55E Launch(Projected) Autumn 2019 Price(Projected) USD 2,500.00 + Tax Quantity 1,989 (worldwide) Case/Band Super Titanium (Duratect MRK + Duratect DLC) Crystal Sapphire crystal glass with anti-reflective coating Case Size 47.0mm/18.0mm (design specification only) Specifications Cal. F990 / Accuracy of 5 seconds per month (without time signal reception) / Satellite Wave GPS running for 5 years on full charge (in Power Save mode) / W.R. 20 BAR -LAND series- Tough titanium exterior with newly developed "Duratect MRK Gold" Light-weight and robust Eco-Drive watch with analog altimeter for professionals. Functions - Altimeter measures 10,000m from ground level higher than the tallest mountain on Earth to minus 300m below sea level. - Displays all information in analog. - Displays altitude or orientation while maintaining display time. - Uses three hands to display altitude for more accuracy. - Super Titanium comes in gold-color case with newly developed surface hardening technology Duratect MRK Gold that resists scratches and damage. - Back lid contact layer cover prevents the wearer's skin from touching the cold metal of back lid for usage under extreme cold conditions. - Features synthesized urethane and nylon materials band for enhanced durability and comfortable wear. Design - Simple layout dial for enhanced visibility to display various information. - Stylish color scheme using navy, gold and black enhances functional beauty. - Features different colors between hour and minute hands and display hand information for intuitive operation. - 30th anniversary logo and serial number are stamped on the case back. Brand / Product Name CITIZEN PROMASTER / Eco-Drive ALTICHRON PROMASTER 30th Anniversary Limited Model Model BN4055-19L Launch(Projected) August 2019 Price(Projected) USD 975.00 + Tax Quantity 1,989 (worldwide) Case / Band Super Titanium (Duratect MRK Gold+ Duratect DLC/MRK) / Nylon + Urethane Crystal Sapphire crystal glass with anti-reflective coating Case Size 46.0 mm/14.8 mm (design specification only) Specifications Cal. J280 / Accuracy of 15 seconds per month / Eco-Drive running for 11 months on full charge / W.R. 20 BAR -SEA series- Authentic diver watch with Eco-Drive technology and specialized analog depth indicator Combines high performance for vigorous conditions, yet stylish for ordinary wear. Functions - Compliant with ISO and JIS*7, the watch features water resistance for diving to 200m. - Displays time and depth of up to 70m simultaneously in analog. - Features functions for enhanced safety, including power reserve indicator, dive alarm for excess speed in ascending, water sensor, screw-locking crown, screw-locking buttons and unidirectional bezel. Design - Features larger easy-to-read hands and simple index design. - Luminous for higher visibility using different colors, such as green for time indication and blue for depth indication. - Scale pitch of depth indicator wider from 0m to 40m below sea level for easier visibility and dynamic movement. - Stylish size and color tones that ideally fit sporty fashion for ordinary usage. - Includes a separate band extension for flexible adjustments for ocean wear and ordinary usage. - 30th anniversary logo and serial number are stamped on the case back. Brand / Product Name CITIZEN PROMASTER / Eco-Drive AQUALAND 200m PROMASTER 30th Anniversary Limited Model Model BN2037-03E Launch(Projected) June 2019 Price(Projected) USD 775.00 + Tax Quantity 6,000 (worldwide) Case / Band Stainless / Urethane Crystal Crystal glass Case Size 46.1mm /16.4 mm (design specification only) Specifications Cal. J250 / Accuracy of 15 seconds per month / Eco-Drive running for 11 months on full charge / 200m Water Resistance Citizen, a pioneer in watchmaking and innovative technology since 1918, promotes excellence and creativity with a deep-rooted respect for craftsmanship. Citizen advocates "Better Starts Now," searching for and accomplishing goals that are cause driven. In this respect, Citizen aligns with organizations and personalities that reflect the values of the brand including the Naismith Awards and Good360. For over 40 years, Citizen's Eco-Drive technology has served as the prime example of how the brand is dedicated to making the world and its environment a better place. A simple yet revolutionary concept, Eco-Drive harnesses the power of light from any natural or artificial light source and converts it into energy, eliminating the need for any battery replacement. *1: Eco-Drive is CITIZEN's proprietary technology that powers watches using any natural or artificial light source, eliminating the need to replace batteries. Certified as an Eco Mark product for the first time in the watch industry. *2: GPS satellite-synchronized watch captures the date and time signals sent by GPS satellites from space orbiting 20,000 kilometers above the Earth bringing ultra-precise timekeeping to wherever people are on the face of the globe. *3: Duratect is CITIZEN's proprietary surface hardening technology that enhances the surface hardness of metals such as stainless steel and titanium, protecting watch bodies from scratches and damage. This technology offers excellent abrasion quality and maintains luster of metals for long periods of time. Duratect DLC features smooth texture and glossy luster, and achieves Vickers hardness of 1,000-1,400 Hv. (Vickers hardness of stainless is approximately 200Hv.) With Duratect Gold, CITIZEN's proprietary technology makes three types of gold colors, including yellow gold, pink gold and sakura pink, available. Duratect MRK and Duratect MRK Gold achieves Vickers hardness of 1,300-1,500 Hv by instilling gas onto the surfaces of titanium materials to harden. *4: Light Level Indicator shows how much power the watch is generating through CITIZEN's proprietary Eco-Drive technology on seven levels by detecting the volume of light the dial is receiving. It can be used as a reference for choosing an ideal charging positions. *5: Super Titanium is CITIZEN's proprietary technology to treat solid titanium with surface hardening technology. It is at least 5 times harder than stainless steel, resistant to scratches, lightweight and gentle to the skin for comfortable wearing. *6: Ground-air visual signal codes: International reference signal used as air-to-ground emergency codes. *7: ISO: International Organization for Standardization. JIS: Japanese Industrial Standards. "ISO 6425 diver's watch" and "JIS B 7023 diver's watch" for all diver's watch for the safety of the divers. SOURCE Citizen Watch Company of America, Inc. Related Links http://www.citizenwatch.com SUZHOU, China, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CStone Pharmaceuticals ("CStone"; HKEX: 2616) today announced that China's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) has approved the clinical trial application to begin a Phase 1 trial in China for BLU-667 (CS3009), a highly selective and potent RET inhibitor discovered by CStone's partner Blueprint Medicines. The study is part of Blueprint Medicines' ongoing, global Phase 1 ARROW clinical trial for patients with RET-altered non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) and other advanced solid tumors. Trial objectives include overall clinical response, duration of response, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and safety. In June 2018, CStone and Blueprint Medicines entered into a license and collaboration agreement in which Blueprint Medicines granted CStone exclusive rights to develop and commercialize BLU-667 and two other drug candidates in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. Recently, BLU-667 was granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of RET-mutation-positive MTC that requires systemic treatment and for which there are no acceptable alternative treatments. Based on the early clinical data and regulatory feedback, Blueprint Medicines has announced plans to submit a New Drug Application (NDA) to the U.S. FDA for BLU-667 in the first half of 2020. "BLU-667 has already demonstrated its potential to produce clinical responses in several RET-altered tumor types, and there are currently no selective RET inhibitors approved globally," noted CStone Chairman and CEO Dr. Frank Jiang. "If the data generated in Chinese patients are consistent with global results, we plan to use the global and China data from the ARROW study to support NDA filings in China." CStone's Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jason Yang commented: "Currently available data show that non-small cell lung cancer and medullary thyroid cancer patients with RET altered tumors may benefit from BLU-667, with the potential to advance standards of care in these genetically defined populations. We will move forward on development of BLU-667 in China and hope to make this drug candidate available to Chinese patients as quickly as possible." About BLU-667 BLU-667 is an investigational, once-daily oral precision therapy specifically designed for highly potent and selective targeting of oncogenic RET alterations. In preclinical studies, BLU-667 consistently demonstrated sub-nanomolar potency against the most common RET fusions, activating mutations and predicted resistance mutations. In addition, BLU-667 demonstrated markedly improved selectivity for RET compared to approved multi-kinase inhibitors, including more than 80-fold improved potency for RET versus VEGFR2. By suppressing primary and secondary mutants, BLU-667 has the potential to overcome and prevent the emergence of clinical resistance. This approach is expected to enable durable clinical responses across the range of RET alterations, with a favorable safety profile. BLU-667 was designed by Blueprint Medicines' research team, leveraging the company's proprietary compound library. Blueprint Medicines is developing BLU-667 for the treatment of people with RET-altered NSCLC, MTC and other solid tumors. The U.S. FDA has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation to BLU-667 for the treatment of RET-mutation-positive MTC. About CStone CStone Pharmaceuticals (HKEX: 2616) is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing innovative immuno-oncology and precision medicine to address the unmet medical needs of cancer patients in China and worldwide. Established in 2015, CStone has assembled a world-class management team with extensive experience in innovative drug development, clinical research, and commercialization. The company has built an oncology-focused pipeline with a strategic emphasis on immune-oncology combination therapies. Currently, 4 late-stage candidates are at or near pivotal trials. With an experienced team, a rich pipeline, a robust clinical development-driven business model, and substantial funding, CStone's vision is to become globally recognized as a leading Chinese biopharmaceutical company by bringing innovative oncology therapies to cancer patients worldwide. For more information about CStone Pharmaceuticals, please visit: www.cstonepharma.com. Statement The forward-looking statements made in this article relate only to the events or information as of the date on which the statements are made in this article. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date on which the statements are made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. You should read this article completely and with the understanding that our actual future results or performance may be materially different from what we expect. In this article, statements of, or references to, our intentions or those of any of our Directors or our Company are made as of the date of this article. Any of these intentions may alter in light of future development. SOURCE CStone Pharmaceuticals Related Links http://www.cstonepharma.com NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Born in 1960s Paris, Le Meridien Hotels & Resorts continues to celebrate an era of glamorous travel today announcing a collaboration with sustainable French beauty brand La Bouche Rouge to bring a fresh face and an unrivalled rouge to its global guests. Beginning today, a limited-edition lipstick exclusively created for Le Meridien will be available on a custom 'lip service' menu as part of a suite package at participating hotels in the United States, Canada, Europe and New Caledonia. Available through September 2019, the ultra-chic French red lipstick is part of (avec amour) by Le Meridien, a global programme celebrating the romance of travel brought to life in a film series developed and produced by Atelier Dore. Le Meridien Hotels Signature Red Lip created in collaboration with La Bouche Rouge is available on-demand for its on-the-go, global travelers La Bouche Rouge Created Custom Lipstick for Le Meridien Hotels and Atelier Dore, both available as part of the brands (avec amour) global programme "There is romance in the journey of travel that is universal - whether business takes you from an overnight flight into a board meeting or an aperitif transitions your day to discover a new destination at night," said George Fleck, Vice President of Global Brand Marketing & Management, Le Meridien Hotels & Resorts. "This programme aims to inspire travellers to savour these moments in style." Fleck continued, "Our partnerships with Atelier Dore and La Bouche Rouge - brands who share our European spirit and effortless savvy to live the good life remind us that the signature French lip is a state of mind, and we are delighted to bring that mentality to our hotels around the world." J'adore Amour: Le Meridien Celebrates the Art of Love with Atelier Dore and La Bouche Rouge With French savoir-faire and a shared passion for image and attitude, Le Meridien looked to La Bouche Rouge Parisian-based makeup Maison that is equal parts: elegant, sustainable and adaptable to reimagine a rouge for travelers. Together both brands developed LM (avec amour) by La Bouche Rouge, a deep rouge that pays homage to the timeless French red of the mid-century, which also influenced Le Meridien brand's colour palette. "Embracing that certain Parisian elegance is one of our core values at La Bouche Rouge," said Nicolas Gerlier, Founder and President, La Bouche Rouge. "We are delighted to share this common vision with Atelier Dore and Le Meridien Hotels, while giving them the opportunity to create a unique and iconic red of their own." Following its light-hearted Au Soleil: a Summer Soiree programme, Le Meridien once again collaborated with Atelier Dore, this time to complement Le Meridien's signature lipstick shade with a shade inspired by creative lead and founder, Garance Dore. A fresh take on the classic rouge, Le DORE by La Bouche Rouge embodies the spirit of the Dore woman - a shade both bright and happy for daytime and playfully seductive for evenings. At Le Meridien hotels from Santa Monica to Rome, and from Barcelona and Noumea, guests who book the premium suite package will choose their lip shade from a branded 'lip service' menu: dial for 0 for the concierge and their rouge will arrive complimentary with a bottle of Sparkling. Packages begin at 305 euro. Beginning today, Le DORE by La Bouche Rouge will also be available for retail for usd $37 or with the leather case for usd $160 at laboucherougeparis.com. To punctuate Le Meridien's (avec amour) programme with panache, Atelier Dore developed and produced the second installment of their "Art Of" film series starring Garance Dore: The Art of Love. The film, comprised of three chapters, captures the dualities of romance with a playful elegance, in two iconic cities: New York and Paris, the birthplace of Le Meridien brand. "If you know me, you know I am a romantique I can't help it, I just love love!" says Garance Dore, creative lead and founder of Atelier Dore. "Like love, travel opens us up to experience the world in new ways sometimes even giving us butterflies! While our latest film "The Art of Love" celebrates the romance of travel, our first, "The Art of Life," takes us back to longer days, endless amounts of rose, and chasing eternal summers. Dore continued, "With a shared appreciation of the European spirit of savouring the good life, my team at Atelier Dore is delighted to keep telling stories with our friends at Le Meridien Hotels about exploring the world in style." Stay Avec Amour with Le Meridien Beyond Valentine's Day through April 2019, Le Meridien hotels will celebrate (avec amour) by Le Meridien with a global offer that features effervescent Kir Royale aperitifs and decadent dark chocolate amenities. The brand's signature Le Meridien Hubs, which transform from a bright and fresh coffee house by day to a sophisticated cocktail bar by night, will feature a curated soundtrack by French Bossa Nova collective Nouvelle Vague that puts a light-hearted, modern twist on the classic love anthems. As part of (avec amour) by Le Meridien, Le Meridien Versailles, Le Meridien Denver Downtown and Le Meridien Noumea Resort & Spa will offer exclusive Marriott Bonvoy Moments -- the company's ever-expanding travel experiences platform part of Marriott International's new travel program, which replaced Marriott Rewards, The Ritz-Carlton Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG). For more information about (avec amour) by Le Meridien programme, please visit www.lemeridien.com/avec-amour and follow along on social media with #LMAvecAmour. Le Meridien Hotels & Resorts Born in 1960s Paris during an era of glamorous travel, Le Meridien Hotels & Resorts continues to celebrate cultures around the world through the distinctly European spirit of savouring the good life. With more than 100 hotels and resorts in nearly 40 countries and territories, spanning from Mauritius to Monaco and from Santa Monica to Seoul, Le Meridien's engaging mid-century designed spaces coupled with chic signature programmes put a playful twist on art, coffee, sparkling cocktails, summer and family and inspire creative-minded travellers to explore the world in style. Stay connected to Le Meridien on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Le Meridien is proud to participate in Marriott Bonvoy, the new name of Marriott's travel program replacing Marriott Rewards, The Ritz- Carlton Rewards, and Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG). The program offers members an extraordinary portfolio of global brands, experiences on Marriott Bonvoy Moments and unparalleled benefits including earning points toward free hotel stays and nights toward Elite status recognition. To enroll for free or for more information about the program, visit MarriottBonvoy.marriott.com. About Atelier Dore Atelier Dore (atelierdore.com), founded and creatively led by Garance Dore, inspires a curious global community to pursue the art of living with intention through thoughtful storytelling, accessible humor and an elevated visual language. Born 13 years ago as garancedore.com and disrupting the world of fashion, Atelier Dore is the global media destination for a new conversation about fashion, lifestyle and beauty, reaching 14MM monthly. Beyond the website, Atelier Dore connects their community through creative retreats, events and interactive films. SOURCE Marriott International, Inc. Related Links http://www.marriott.com "Drug and device OEMs and distributors should prioritize their eCommerce strategy based on the maturity of their buyer/market using a mix of available digital tools for educating, researching product information, and order and payment management," said Kamaljit Behera, Industry Analyst, Transformational Health. Frost & Sullivan's recent analysis, Healthcare eCommerce Market in North America, Forecast to 2022, examines the key trends and developments in healthcare eCommerce with specific focus on the eCommerce market for pharma drugs and medical devices in North America. It also provides market projections, opportunity analysis by supply chain participants, strategic imperatives, and industry best practices or case studies for both segments. For further information on this analysis, please visit: http://frost.ly/3ak. "The convergence of healthcare with IT and retail industries has opened the market up to non-traditional players, which is disrupting the existing business channels and future revenue streams. For example, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft (GAFAM) in the West, and Baidu, Ali Health, and Tencent (BAT) in East will continue to make further headways in the healthcare industry," noted Behera. "Amazon will have a particularly high impact on emerging home or individual care concepts like telehealth, telemedicine, and direct-to-consumer (D2C) commerce." Some of the most prominent trends and growth opportunities in the healthcare eCommerce space include: Hospital buyers are more willing to repurchase from a B2B digital marketplace that offers transparency, personalization, and competitive pricing for stable medical devices, implants, and consumables. Selling, general & administrative ( SG&A ) expenses accounting for 35 percent to 40 percent of the overall healthcare industry cost, which creates a need for an efficient eCommerce distribution model by automating sales representatives' routine and tactical works. ( ) expenses accounting for 35 percent to 40 percent of the overall healthcare industry cost, which creates a need for an efficient eCommerce distribution model by automating sales representatives' routine and tactical works. Development of business models that support the integration of the product sale and service functions (maintenance, repairs) in the eCommerce channel. Furthermore, the integration of eCommerce channels with customer relationship management ( CRM) , business intelligence ( BI ), and social relationship management ( SRM ) tools will help standardize the purchasing process. that support the integration of the product sale and service functions (maintenance, repairs) in the eCommerce channel. Furthermore, the integration of eCommerce channels with customer relationship management ( , business intelligence ( ), and ( ) tools will help standardize the purchasing process. eCommerce platforms offering not only robust account management functionalities but also integration with warehouse and fulfillment software to provide real-time inventory updates and delivery status to customers. to provide real-time inventory updates and delivery status to customers. Apart from drug or device types and purchase volumes, factors such as market positioning, target end users, and reimbursement playing a critical role in eCommerce channel selection and success. Retail pharmacy , consumer devices, and medical supplies segments present a scope for large profit pool disruption by eCommerce. At the same time, digital marketplace and centralized contract management platforms such as OpenMarkets, Amazon Business, DST Pharmacy Solutions, and Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) are viewed both as an opportunity and threat by groups of purchasing organization (GPOs) and pharmacy benefit management (PBMs). , consumer devices, and medical supplies segments present a scope for large profit pool disruption by eCommerce. At the same time, digital marketplace and centralized contract management platforms such as OpenMarkets, Amazon Business, DST Pharmacy Solutions, and Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) are viewed both as an opportunity and threat by groups of purchasing organization (GPOs) and pharmacy benefit management (PBMs). eCommerce will solve the humongous medication adherence challenge and it presents an opportunity to increase transparency in drug pricing- a problem plaguing the United States healthcare system for decades. Healthcare eCommerce Market in North America, Forecast to 2022 is part of Frost & Sullivan's global Advanced Medical Technologies Growth Partnership Service program. About Frost & Sullivan For over five decades, Frost & Sullivan has become world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion. Healthcare eCommerce Market in North America, Forecast to 2022 K2AB-54 Contact: Mariana Fernandez Corporate Communications T: +1 210 348 10 12 E: [email protected] http://ww2.frost.com SOURCE Frost & Sullivan Related Links http://ww2.frost.com WASHINGTON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- President Trump's proposed budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 would slash the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's historically low budget by $23.7 million, which will make it harder for workers facing discrimination to get the help they need, the union representing EEOC workers said today. The union representing EEOC workers says President Trump's proposed 2020 budget would slash the civil rights agency's funding by nearly $24 million next year, even as the agency struggles to keep pace with rising workloads as more people file sexual harassment and other workplace discrimination claims. "The EEOC enforces federal laws barring workplace discrimination, including sexual harassment, and cutting our budget frustrates those efforts," said Gabrielle Martin, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 216, the National Council of EEOC Locals. "Victims of workplace discrimination will feel the punch of this cut when they can't get an appointment or an investigation of their complaint." The administration is proposing to slash EEOC's current budget from $379.5 million to $355.8 million in fiscal 2020, even while the agency is facing rising workloads. EEOC had a backlog of 49,608 cases in fiscal year 2018, and cases continued to pile up while EEOC was closed during the 35-day shutdown. It takes workers months to get an appointment with EEOC and over an hour to reach a live person by telephone. EEOC's workload this year included 200,000 inquiries, 76,418 charges, 40,000 interviews, and 105,600 calls. Sexual harassment claims were up 13.6 percent in 2018. While Congress modestly increased EEOC's budget in response to the #MeToo movement, the agency still has not been able to keep up with demand. Last year, the EEOC's workforce dropped below 2,000 employees for the first time since before 1980. The president's budget plan would slash another 180 positions, including mediators, judges, intake representatives, and 50 investigators. The agency's budget justification concedes there will be a "steady rise in pending inventory" as "there will be no replacement of staff." "In a time of rising awareness of sexual harassment in the workplace, it sends the entirely wrong message to cut funding and staff at the agency that handles those complaints," Martin said. One consequence of the massive workload and short staffing is a push by EEOC to swiftly close cases by tagging them as "C charges" under the agency's triage system. "Ravaging the budget will make matters worse," Martin warns. "The vast majority of workers who come to EEOC for help receive a dismissal with a 'right to sue' letter and are left to find help on their own. Likewise, federal employees with discrimination complaints are affected by EEOC pressing a shrinking unit of administrative judges to hit unattainably high quotas by closing cases through summary judgement or without discovery." Martin called upon Congress, civil rights groups, and concerned citizens to take action. "Contact your lawmakers to save EEOC from drastic cuts. Email the EEOC to request a budget in line with its workload. Tweet #StopEEOCbudgetcut. The #MeToo era is not the time to slash EEOC's budget." The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 700,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia. For the latest AFGE news and information, visit the AFGE Media Center. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. SOURCE American Federation of Government Employees Related Links http://www.afge.org LONDON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CleanEquity Monaco 2019, the forum for emerging sustainable technology and resource efficiency companies, hosted by Innovator Capital and the Monaco Economic Board, closed on Friday, 15th March with the Awards Ceremony in the presence of H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco. An independent panel of judges, chaired by His Serene Highness, selected eggXYt as winner of the award for Excellence in the Field of Environmental Technology Research. Mungo Park, Chairman of Innovator Capital commented: "Congratulations to eggXYt for their groundbreaking research in a field, which is finally, beginning to receive the attention it deserves." About eggXYt eggXYt addresses one of the egg industry's most pressing challenges, the culling and destruction of 7 billion male chicks each year. This groundbreaking technology meets the needs of today's ethical consumer and dramatically improves the sustainability of egg production. Yehuda Elram, Co founder & CEO of eggXYt said: "After being selected as one of the world's most innovative and sustainable technologies to present at CleanEquity Monaco 2019, eggXYt is honored to win the award of excellence in the field of environmental technology research by H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco." CleanEquity thanks, in particular: Prince Albert II of Monaco's Foundation, APCO Worldwide, Cision, Covington & Burling, Cranfield, Hobbs & Towne, Monaco Economic Board, Parkview International and Reliance Industries. The awards were created by Samuel de Gunzburg, the French based artist working and living in London. Gunzburg graduated in 2018 from City & Guilds of London Art School in Fine Art. Previous exhibitions include: Saatchi Gallery, Tripp Gallery, Zari Gallery and Four Corners Gallery. CleanEquity Monaco will be returning to the Principality of Monaco in March 2020. Follow us on twitter to keep up to date with the news: @CleanEquity. About Innovator Capital Innovator Capital, established in 2003, is a specialist investment bank advising emerging technology companies on corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions. Its expertise includes intellectual property and multi national strategic partnering. www.cleanequitymonaco.com SOURCE Innovator Capital Related Links http://www.cleanequitymonaco.com MADISON, N.J., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- ERA Real Estate , a leading global real estate franchisor, recently recognized ERA Sunrise Realty, based in Canton, Ga., as the winner of the organization's prestigious Jim Jackson Memorial Award for 1st IN SERVICE, Category One. Broker and owner David Moody accepted the award on behalf of his team at the 2018 FUEL ERA global conference held March 19-22 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Jim Jackson Memorial Award for 1st IN SERVICE is named in honor of the late ERA co-founder and former president. It is presented annually to the company that upholds Jackson's legacy of superior customer service and sales productivity. The award is divided into two categories based on transaction volume: Category One (companies with 500 or more transactions) and Category Two (companies with 100-499 transactions). "We are fiercely dedicated to serving our clients in every aspect, and our work does not end with the completion of the home search or selling process," said Moody. "We couldn't be prouder to receive recognition for the hard work our team has demonstrated this past year and this achievement will certainly propel us forward as we seek to surpass our 2019 goals." "Today's real estate consumers expect a high level of attention combined with local market knowledge and expertise," said Simon Chen, President and CEO of ERA Real Estate. "ERA Sunrise Realty's dedication to offering an exceptional customer experience sets the bar high and pinpoints their brokerage as a standout example of the ultimate residential real estate experience across the entire ERA network. I am delighted to honor their commitment to service and business growth this year with the Jim Jackson Memorial Award." About ERA Real Estate At ERA Real Estate , we don't adapt to change, we create it. We believe that our core business values of collaboration, innovation, diversity and growth are needed now more than ever. As a global leader in the residential real estate industry for more than 40 years, ERA was the first real estate franchise to expand internationally, the first to post listings online, and is the only national company that offers the Sellers Security Plan program. The ERA Real Estate network includes 40,000 affiliated brokers and independent sales associates and approximately 2,300 offices throughout the United States and 34 other countries and territories. ERA Franchise Systems LLC ( www.ERA.com ) which operates the ERA Real Estate system, is a subsidiary of Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE: RLGY), a global provider of real estate services. ERA Real Estate information is available at www.ExploreERA.com. Media Contact: Maggie Rohr 973-464-6642 [email protected] Katharine Dunn 502-419-8507 [email protected] SOURCE ERA Real Estate MADISON, N.J., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- ERA Real Estate, a leading global real estate franchisor, today announced that top-performing South Carolina-based brokerage, ERA Wilder Realty, is the winner of Cartus Corporation's most prestigious honor, the 2019 Masters Cup Award. The Masters Cup is presented annually to the Cartus Network affiliated broker who has demonstrated exceptional quality standards, surpassed goals, delivered outstanding service, and outperformed metrics in key areas such as effective marketing, inventory management and conversion. Eddie Wilder, president and CEO and Candy Welch, Relocation Director of ERA Wilder Realty, accepted the award on behalf of the company, which is headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina and has served areas of South Carolina for more than 24 years. "We are ecstatic an ERA affiliate was recognized as the winner of the 2019 Cartus Broker Network Masters Cup, and there's no brokerage more deserving of the honor this year than ERA Wilder Realty," said Simon Chen, president and CEO of ERA Real Estate. "ERA Wilder Realty is comprised of a dedicated and passionate group of agents, and we are proud to have them as a part of our ERA family." Among eight total finalists that were considered for this year's award, ERA represented nearly half, with ERA King Real Estate and Napier Realtors ERA joining ERA Wilder Realty in the final round. ERA Wilder Realty was founded with a vision to unite the area's leading real estate agents to provide the best quality service possible, with the goal of ensuring that every clients' home buying or selling process is a wonderful and rewarding experience. ERA Wilder Realty has also been a previous recipient of the Gene Francis Memorial Award, the highest honor given to an ERA company, and one that reflects the qualities most respected throughout the global ERA system and real estate industry. "We are honored to be named the Masters Cup winner this year," said Wilder. "Our brokers and agents work tirelessly each and every day in order to give our clients the best experience possible. This award is a testament to their efforts, and it's wonderful to be recognized on such a large scale." ERA Wilder Realty received the Masters Cup award after being nominated an unprecedented 5 times over 15 years, an especially notable feat as Cartus has made the requirements and deliberation process for the award more intensive in recent years. Wilder continues to lead the way in growth, agent development, implementation of effective products and services and charitable contributions. About ERA Real Estate At ERA Real Estate , we don't adapt to change, we create it. We believe that our core business values of collaboration, innovation, diversity and growth are needed now more than ever. As a global leader in the residential real estate industry for more than 40 years, ERA was the first real estate franchise to expand internationally, the first to post listings online, and is the only national company that offers the Sellers Security Plan program. The ERA Real Estate network includes 40,000 affiliated brokers and independent sales associates and approximately 2,300 offices throughout the United States and 34 other countries and territories. ERA Franchise Systems LLC ( www.ERA.com ) which operates the ERA Real Estate system, is a subsidiary of Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE: RLGY), a global provider of real estate services. ERA Real Estate information is available at www.ExploreERA.com. Media Contact: Maggie Rohr 973-464-6642 [email protected] Katharine Dunn 502-419-8507 [email protected] SOURCE ERA Real Estate Related Links http://www.era.com CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- As farmers and ranchers in the Midwest deal with the impact of historic flooding, Farm Aid has activated its Family Farm Disaster Fund to provide aid to family farmers in the affected region. "Farm Aid knows farmers and ranchers are being devastated by floods in the Midwest. We invite everyone to join us by donating to support farmers as they try to save their homes and businesses," said Farm Aid President Willie Nelson. "We've heard from farmers that they can't wait the months it takes for disaster assistance to come. We have too few family farms left to lose even one to a weather disaster." For more than three decades, Farm Aid has stepped in quickly after natural disasters, responding immediately to assist farmers and ranchers specifically. Farm Aid's relief efforts will focus on the family farmers and ranchers who have lost their barns, livestock, crops, fields, pasture and other essential farm infrastructure. Record rainfall, flooding and wind damage have left farmers under standing water at a time when they are already struggling due to low prices and farm and trade policies that cause extreme financial, legal and emotional stress. Every dollar raised by the Family Farm Disaster Fund will support local and regional organizations working on the ground to distribute emergency grants to farm families affected by the flooding in the Midwest and to offer resources that help farmers navigate their farm recovery options. Farm Aid grants will support Midwest farm organizations coordinating locally to: Make emergency grants to farm and ranch families; Help farmers and ranchers understand their farm recovery options; Support local and state farm service providers to help farmers navigate recovery options, from mental health resources to federal funding opportunities; and Advocate for needed disaster recovery funds and resources from the federal government. Farm Aid is also working with partners in disaster-affected areas to determine the long-term needs of impacted farmers and ranchers. If you are a farmer who has been affected by the Midwest flooding, please visit farmaid.org/disaster for a list of resources available. To donate, please visit farmaid.org/disasterfund. Farm Aid's mission is to build a vibrant, family farm-centered system of agriculture in America. Farm Aid artists and board members Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Dave Matthews host an annual festival to raise funds to support Farm Aid's work with family farmers and to inspire people to choose family farm food. For more than 30 years, Farm Aid, with the support of the artists who contribute their performances each year, has raised more than $53 million to support programs that help farmers thrive, expand the reach of the Good Food Movement, take action to change the dominant system of industrial agriculture and promote food from family farms. SOURCE Farm Aid Related Links http://www.farmaid.org DUNDEE, N.Y., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Missick family moved strategically into the canned wine market last spring, becoming the first Finger Lakes farm winery to can Finger Lakes wines, and introduced the new brand Can Do. By August, after three canning runs, the potential power of this still niche market became a reality, and their early entree into the market gave them the experience to make different decisions with the 2018 harvest. Perfect for a picnic - Can Do canned wines from New York. "Enjoy with a life well lived." We Can, You Can. Can-Do Introducing Patriot, the new canned wine blend from Can Do, the Finger Lakes' first canned wine brand. Enjoy with a life well lived. We Can, You Can. Can-Do As winemaker Christopher Missick states, "I'm dedicated to crafting authentic, site specific wines for Bellangelo," the family winery on Seneca Lake. Bellangelo earned more than forty-eight 90+ point scores in just the last two years, and was featured most recently in February's Wine & Spirits Magazine for its Riesling and sparkling wine. "But, I also saw a need for really well made ready to drink wines that could be enjoyed nearly anywhere, and that encouraged an active lifestyle and moderate consumption. As a veteran with experience in learning to overcome obstacles, the name Can Do just made sense." On the first day of spring, Can Do announced its spring and summer 2019 offerings. The Moscato and Rose return in 250 ml format, along with an exciting new blend called Patriot. Patriot is described as a regional take on an Alsatian blend, composed of Traminette, Cayuga, and Muscat. Can Do also introduced its new slogan "Enjoy with a life well lived." Its packaging, size, and life affirming motto is in line with what scholars perceive to be the crucial growth factor for brands in the canned wine market. According to Robert Williams, Jr., PhD., Marketing Professor at Susquehanna University, and his landmark report 2019 Wine-In-Can Market Implications , consumers are embracing the format for the following reasons: "convenience, occasion expansion, sustainability/cost savings, quality, portion control and variety, and visual image/branding." At a recent conference sponsored by Cornell University, Missick discussed canned wines before a crowded room. He noted, "We went back to the winemaking drawing board for the 2018 vintage. These wines were crafted for our Can Do brand, essentially for cans and kegs." Some of these decisions Missick described, pertained to SO2, CO2, alcohol, and residual sugar management. He also emphasized use of the region's hybrid varietals, which he noted, "was a great idea in a difficult vintage like 2018," as they produced a balanced, clean crop. Can Do will produce more than 4,000 cases this year, and the brand's focus on its blends moving forward, assures that grape supply will not be an issue as it grows. "We're introducing the beauty of these abundantly planted hybrid varietals, and I'm proud to be able to help growers who may have experienced a glut of such varietals in the past." Can Do is produced by Bellangelo on the West side of Seneca Lake in New York's Finger Lakes AVA. The brands are currently represented by Wright Beverage Distributing in Rochester, NY, and Luxowine in Puerto Rico, and are seeking strategic partnerships throughout the U.S. Instagram: @CanDoWine http://www.CanDo.Wine Media Contact: Mike Stein [email protected] (315) 325-4314 SOURCE Bellangelo Winery Related Links http://www.cando.wine The FTC Continuing Education division, with three campuses in Tampa, Kissimmee and Orlando, is comprised by more than 20 business and tech certification programs. The three locations bring the number of strategically located Florida Technical College campuses in the state up to seven. Some of the continuing education courses offered are: exam preparations for Ethical Hacker (CEH), Comp TIA A+, Internet Marketing Strategies, Agile Project Management, Microsoft Business Analyst Professional, Microsoft System Administration, Cisco Wireless specialist, and Human Resources Professional. For a complete list and full description of programs click here . For information, call 321-684-4034. "The addition of these programs to our offerings solidifies Florida Technical College as a well-rounded institution that meets the needs of many different kinds of adult learners," said FTC president, Dr. James Burkett. The school was accredited last year by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education as an academic unit of National University College, its Puerto Rico-based parent school. Accreditation ensures that institutions of higher education comply with rigorous quality standards, one of the key oversight elements governing the Higher Education Act's federal student aid programs. The sustained growth of Florida Technical College academic offerings includes the expansion of its electrical program to the Orlando campus, making it now available at four locations. The program is also offered in Kissimmee, Deland and Pembroke Pines. Moreover, a new HVAC/R with PLC diploma program taught fully in Spanish was launched earlier this year. Other programs taught in Spanish are Culinary Arts, Baking and Pasteleria, and Electrical. A Cosmetology program in Spanish is set to launch in April 2019. All of them are taught at the Kissimmee campus. The HVAC/R with PLC diploma program is 17 months long. It includes classroom instruction and hands-on training in specialized labs, which enable students to gain practical skills to perform installations, as well as service and repairs in heating, refrigeration, and air conditioning systems. The program incorporates training on Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), a computer system that controls machines and processes. At the end of the program, graduates are eligible to sit for the EPA 608 and OSHA 10 certification exams. "These programs are designed to help Spanish speakers earn a diploma while they are learning English, instead of putting their education on hold," Burkett said. "The sooner they can start actively participating in the job market and the local economy, the bigger the contribution they can make to their families and to the rest of the community that it is now home." FTC has flexible schedule in all its seven Florida campuses. The school is an academic unit of National University College, which is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. Financial aid is available for those who qualify. For additional information or to register, call 321-684-4034. About FTC: Founded in 1982 to provide private, post-secondary education in specialized fields, Florida Technical College is an academic unit of National University College (NUC), which is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), 3624 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 (267) 284-5000. The MSCHE is a regional accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. FTC offers associate and bachelor's degrees and diploma programs in a range of professions, including healthcare, construction trades, computer networking, criminal justice, culinary arts, and cosmetology. FTC campuses are located in Orlando, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Tampa, DeLand, Pembroke Pines, and Cutler Bay. Program availability varies by campus. For graduation rates, median debt of students who completed the program, and other important information, please visit www.ftccollege.edu/disclosures.html. SOURCE Florida Technical College Related Links http://www.ftccollege.edu CARMEL, Ind., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CNO Financial Group, a holding company for several national life and health insurance companies that serve middle-income Americans and retirees, announced Gail Mitchell, vice president of underwriting, as the recipient of CNO's Invested in Giving Back Volunteer of the Year Award. A pillar of CNO's Invested in Giving Back charity program, the Volunteer of the Year Award recognizes a CNO employee for their commitment to community volunteerism. In addition, the company recognizes a charity of the recipient's choice with a CNO donation of $10,000. Gail Mitchell Mitchell serves as the Vice Chair of the CICOA Aging & In-Home Solutions Foundation of Trustees and has chaired the organization's only public fundraising event, Signature Breakfast. Mitchell also serves as a member of the organization's philanthropic task force, raising funds for unmet needs and planning future capital campaigns. "Gail's business knowledge and experience with non-profit organizations has proven invaluable in directing the activities of the foundation board and the committees she serves on," says Orion Bell, president and CEO of CICOA. "Her commitment to our organization is clearly demonstrated in the passion, expertise and personal contributions she makes to help our organization empower older adults and people of any age with disabilities." Mitchell is also an avid volunteer in Bankers Life Forget Me Not Days, the company's signature fundraiser to benefit the Alzheimer's Association, which has helped raise more than $5 million for care, education and research programs since 2003. "Giving back to the communities in which our associates live and work is a core component of our company's culture," said Yvonne Franzese, chief human resources officer. "We are proud to recognize Gail's commitment to her community and will continue to support our employees in their volunteer efforts." Since 2010, CNO has awarded $180,000 to organizations where our associates volunteer their time and talent, recognizing more than 30 unique associate volunteers. To learn more about CNO's commitment to the community, please visit, https://www.cnoinc.com/about-cno/in-the-community/ About CNO Financial Group CNO Financial Group, Inc. (NYSE: CNO) is a holding company. Our insurance companies principally Bankers Life and Casualty Company, Colonial Penn Life Insurance Company and Washington National Insurance Company primarily serve middle-income pre-retiree and retired Americans by helping them protect against financial adversity and provide for a more secure retirement. For more information, visit CNO online at CNOinc.com . SOURCE CNO Financial Group Related Links http://www.CNOinc.com FELTON, California, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The global bike rental market is expected to reach USD 4.00 billion by 2025. Increasing penetration, easy access, attractive pricing, and support of local authorities are among the key driving factors driving the growth of bike rental services. Leveraging of digital platforms by service providers is also expected to add to the growing adoption of rental services in the coming years. Improvement in navigation technology is expected to be a focus area for service providers in the coming years. Operators are installing GPS system for tracking bikes in order to protect bikes from theft or loss. Over the past few years, global bike rental market has witnessed a substantial increase in venture capital investments. Majority of the players operating in the global market are raising funds through venture capital financing for expanding their business reach and deploying a larger fleet. For instance, ofo, one of the prominent players operating in the Chinese bike-sharing market raised USD 866 million from Alibaba to expand their business reach. The significant rise in venture capital funding across the market is expected to drive growth in the coming years. The penetration of dockless bike rental services has witnessed substantial increase on a global level. Furthermore, gaining popularity of income-based bike-share discount schemes coupled with the increasing awareness among consumers about the necessity to reduce carbon footprints is expected to increase the growth opportunity for bike rental services in the near future. Browse full research report with TOC on "Bike Rental Market Size And Forecast, By Product (Docked, Dockless), By Region (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Rest of the World) And Trend Analysis, 2019 - 2025" at: https://www.hexaresearch.com/research-report/bike-rental-market In 2017, docked rental services dominated the market accounting for more than 75.0% of revenue share. However, dockless bike rental service is expected to grow at a higher CAGR of over 19.0% in the coming years. The proliferation of internet of things (IoT), the global positioning system (GPS), and mobile app-based payment systems have eased locating, tracking, and payment activities, which is expected to add to the growing adoption of rental services. Asia Pacific was the largest market for bike rental services in 2017. The region held more than 42.0% share of the overall market with China being the leading contributor. China has witnessed the entry of several new players in the past few years. Investments from private equity players have enabled bike sharing operators to expand their business in the country. Request to download free sample report on global bike rental market analysis The global market is highly competitive in nature. Companies operating in the market are focusing on expanding their geographic reach through mergers & acquisitions and are leveraging the venture capital route to finance their operations. Mobike, ofo, and Lyft are some of the key service providers operating in the market. Mergers & acquisitions have been a key strategy among potential participants. For instance, in June 2018, Lyft completed the acquisition of Motivate, the operator of Citi Bike in New York City for a sum of USD 250 million. Browse related reports by Hexa Research: Automotive Sunroof Market - The global Automotive Sunroof Market was estimated at nearly USD 4.7 billion in 2014. The industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 10% from 2016 to 2024 (forecast period). The global Automotive Sunroof Market was estimated at nearly in 2014. The industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 10% from 2016 to 2024 (forecast period). Automotive Radar Market - The global Automotive Radar Market is anticipated to reach nearly USD 9 billion by 2024. The introduction of fully automated vehicles is projected to drive the industry during the forecast period (from 2016 to 2024). The global Automotive Radar Market is anticipated to reach nearly by 2024. The introduction of fully automated vehicles is projected to drive the industry during the forecast period (from 2016 to 2024). Aircraft Leasing Market - The global aircraft leasing market is anticipated to witness significant growth in the coming years owing to rising demand for aircrafts among airline companies across the globe. The global aircraft leasing market is anticipated to witness significant growth in the coming years owing to rising demand for aircrafts among airline companies across the globe. Ride Sharing Market - The global ride sharing market is expected to expand swiftly on account of growing popularity of online booking. Globalization, rapid urbanization, increasing disposable income, and growth of the tourism industry can drive the market in the years to come. Hexa Research has segmented the global bike rental market report based on product, and region: - Segmentation by product Docked bikes Dockless bikes Segmentation by region North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the World Key players analyzed: ofo Inc. Lyft, Inc. Social Bicycles Inc. Vancouver Bike Share Inc. Neutron Holdings, Inc. dba Lime Social Bicycles Inc. dba JUMP PEDL (Zoomcar) Ola Pedal Mobycy Yulu Bikes Pvt Ltd About Hexa Research Hexa Research is a market research and consulting organization, offering industry reports, custom research and consulting services to a host of key industries across the globe. We offer comprehensive business intelligence in the form of industry reports which help our clients obtain clarity about their business environment and enable them to undertake strategic growth initiatives. Contact: Michelle T. Corporate Sales Specialist Hexa Research Phone: +1-415-349-0058 Toll Free: 1-800-489-3075 Email: [email protected] Web: https://www.hexaresearch.com/ SOURCE Hexa Research DENTON, Md., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, will be opening a new retail store and donation center on Friday, March 29, 2019 at 9 a.m. The store is located at 54 Denton Plaza, Denton, MD 21629. It is Goodwill's 32nd retail location in Central Maryland and the Eastern Shore. The Denton Goodwill store will be open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. This is the 3rd retail store Goodwill has on the Eastern Shore and will create 15 jobs in Caroline County. Area residents will also be able to donate unwanted clothing and household items at the location. In addition to 29 retail stores, Goodwill operates 3 outlets. Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, Inc. is proud to celebrate 100 years in Maryland in 2019. The Baltimore Goodwill Industries was incorporated on February 27, 1919 and was the seventh Goodwill in the U.S. In 1998, the organizations' name was changed to reflect the expansion of its service area with its first location in Salisbury, MD. "As we celebrate a century of successes this year, we're very excited to open a new location in Denton and to continue our expansion on the Eastern Shore," says Lisa Rusyniak, president and CEO for Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake. "Our retail stores fund our job training and placement programs. Each store we open allows us to continue our mission of helping those in the community find jobs. This is all made possible through the support of the community." To celebrate the opening, the new Goodwill store will have a ribbon cutting ceremony, a raffle (49" Roku LED TV) and will feature the everyday great prices and selection customers know. About Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake: Since 1919, Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, Inc. has been serving Central Maryland and the Eastern Shore as a non-profit 501(c)(3) that provides job training, job placement and other human services for people who are unemployed or face other challenges to employment, including people with significant disabilities. Last year, Goodwill placed individuals into 2,084 jobs. Revenue generated from the sale of donated goods helps fund these programs. For more information on Goodwill, please visit www.goodwillches.org. Media Contact: Jonathan Balog Vice President, Marketing & Communications Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, Inc. 410-837-1800 ext. 175 [email protected] SOURCE Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake, Inc. Related Links http://www.goodwillches.org As CFO, Saurabh Tripathi will lead the Highmark Health enterprise's efforts to develop, plan, and implement a finance strategy that aligns with the organization's long-term strategic direction; serve as the primary liaison among regulators and ratings agencies; and oversee the Finance, Real Estate, Tax, and Procurement divisions. As a Fortune 50 executive, Tripathi brings with him 23 years of management experience leading global teams, managing multi-billion dollar profit and loss accounts, and serving as a strategic business partner at the c-suite level to drive profitable growth. He has served as Senior Vice president and CFO since 2015 for Fresenius Kidney Care, Fresenius Vascular Care, National Cardiovascular Partners, Fresenius Labs, and Fresenius Physician Practices at Fresenius Medical Care in Boston, MA. During his tenure as CFO of this $12 billion segment of Fresenius Medical Care, Tripathi provided financial leadership to more than 2,400 medical facilities across the U.S., and led a team of 1,000 finance professionals. Prior to Fresenius, his experience included working in various finance leadership positions at GE Healthcare, GE Capital, GE Appliances, and Procter & Gamble. He has an MBA in finance from the University of Leeds in the U.K., as well as a master's degree and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the National Institute of Technology in India. Karen Hanlon, who joined Highmark Inc. in 1997, will now transition to the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) role on a full-time basis, an expanded senior leadership position to which she was named in July 2018. As COO, Hanlon oversees HM Health Solutions and Highmark Health Analytics, Gateway Health, and the Penn State Health alliance, which was formed in 2017. She served as the company's Senior Vice President, Financial Planning & Analysis from 2009 to 2014, when she assumed the role of CFO. During this time, she oversaw the Highmark Health Finance organization, working closely with her peers at Highmark Inc. and Allegheny Health Network to advance the enterprise-wide strategy. Hanlon began her career in public accounting at KPMG Peat Marwick and since joining Highmark, she has held several positions within the finance division. Hanlon was a member of the Pennsylvania Institute of Certified Public Accountants for over 15 years and a former member of the boards of Leadership Pittsburgh and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southwest PA, where she also served as treasurer. Hanlon holds a Bachelor of Arts in accounting from Grove City College and is a Certified Public Accountant in Pennsylvania. "Saurabh Tripathi brings extensive strategic and finance leadership experience to Highmark Health, and we're looking forward to having him join our senior leadership team and make important contributions in our journey to get health care right for the customers, members, patients and communities we serve," commented David Holmberg, President and Chief Executive Officer. "I am very excited to be part of Highmark Health which is uniquely positioned to provide great health care experiences to our patients, through our various health care offerings. I am very impressed with the level of talent we have in Highmark Health and look forward to joining this team in advancing our mission," said Tripathi. "I am honored and excited by this opportunity to serve Highmark Health and our customers and look forward to working closely with Saurabh and the rest of the senior leadership team to successfully navigate a dynamic and evolving health marketplace and creating a remarkable health experience for those we serve, freeing everyone to be their best," stated Karen Hanlon. These changes will become effective April 22. About Highmark Health Highmark Health, a Pittsburgh, PA-based enterprise that employs more than 43,000 people who serve millions of Americans across the country, is the second largest integrated health care delivery and financing network in the nation based on revenue. Highmark Health is the parent company of Highmark Inc., Allegheny Health Network, and HM Health Solutions. Highmark Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates provide health insurance to 4.5 million members in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Delaware as well as dental insurance, vision care, and related health products through a national network of diversified businesses that include United Concordia Companies, HM Insurance Group, and Visionworks. Allegheny Health Network is the parent company of an integrated delivery network that includes eight hospitals, more than 2,300 affiliated physicians, ambulatory surgery centers, an employed physician organization, home and community-based health services, a research institute, a group purchasing organization, and health and wellness pavilions in western Pennsylvania. HM Health Solutions focuses on meeting the information technology platform and other business needs of the Highmark Health enterprise as well as unaffiliated health insurance plans by providing proven business processes, expert knowledge, and integrated cloud-based platforms. To learn more, visit www.highmarkhealth.org. SOURCE Highmark Health Related Links https://www.highmarkhealth.org WASHINGTON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Center for State and Local Government Excellence (SLGE) and ICMA-RC announced results from a new survey released today that finds nearly half of state and local employees approve of auto-enrollment in defined contribution plans, known as Supplemental Retirement Plans (SRPs), and 77 percent would choose to stay in a plan if auto-enrolled. Few states currently offer auto-enrollment in SRPs, a retirement plan feature that is widely available in the private sector. The research also finds that among those who would stay in the plan, higher default deferral rates result in respondents settling on a higher contribution rate. These findings are contained in new research conducted by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence (SLGE) and Greenwald & Associates, Nudging Deferral Rates Within Public Sector Supplemental Retirement Plans, from SLGE and ICMA-RC. The survey assesses public employee perceptions of auto-enrollment into SRPs and the impact of varying default deferral rates on an employee's likelihood to stay in the plan. It also examines the attitudes and behaviors of public sector employees regarding retirement savings, their progress toward financial security, and issues driving their plan participation. Download the report here. "The findings are critically important given that the responsibility of saving for retirement in the public sector is shifting from the employer to the employee in many jurisdictions," said Rivka Liss-Levinson, Ph.D., SLGE director of research and report author. "The fact that those presented with a seven percent default settled on a significantly higher rate than the group given the one percent default rate is important. This suggests that employers, retirement plan providers and policymakers should consider how small nudges such as changing the default rate for auto-enrollment in an SRP can combat inertia and impact an employees' ability to save for retirement," she explained. "ICMA-RC is pleased to partner with the Center for State and Local Government Excellence on this important study examining retirement preferences in the public sector," said Angela Montez, senior vice president, general counsel & chief legal officer for ICMA-RC. "Retirement savings plans complement traditional government defined benefit plans and auto enrollment makes supplemental plans stronger, thereby enhancing state and local government employees' ability to build retirement security." Other report key findings are as follows: Nearly half (47 percent) of respondents approve of auto-enrollment in an SRP, and 44 percent approve of employers setting an employee's default rate . Strong approval of auto-enrollment declines from 24 percent to 12 percent when the default is set at seven percent rather than one percent. . Strong approval of auto-enrollment declines from 24 percent to 12 percent when the default is set at seven percent rather than one percent. Respondents hold divided views on auto-escalation in supplemental plans, with slightly more disapproving (38 percent) than approving (30 percent) . Approval and disapproval are affected by default rate, with lower approval among those presented with a higher default rate. . Approval and disapproval are affected by default rate, with lower approval among those presented with a higher default rate. Nearly four in five participants (79 percent) are satisfied with their retirement plan. Most owe some type of consumer debt (84 percent) and have savings goals in addition to retirement (85 percent) . About two-thirds of these respondents (67 percent) say their debt or savings goals have prevented them from saving more for retirement. . About two-thirds of these respondents (67 percent) say their debt or savings goals have prevented them from saving more for retirement. A slim majority want more information about general financial issues and retirement planning. About three in ten would welcome an increase in one-on-one in-person communication by employers and financial services companies. SLGE and ICMA-RC will host a complimentary webinar on Tuesday, May 7, 2019, at 2:00 PM ET to review the findings. Register here. SLGE gratefully acknowledges ICMA-RC for their support of the research. The Center for State and Local Government Excellence (SLGE) helps local and state governments become knowledgeable and competitive employers so they can attract and retain a talented and committed workforce. SLGE identifies leading practices and conducts research on public retirement plans, health and wellness benefits, workforce demographics and skill set needs, and labor force development. SLGE brings state and local leaders together with respected researchers. Access all SLGE publications and sign up for its newsletter at slge.org and follow @4GovtExcellence on Twitter. About ICMA-RC Founded in 1972, ICMA-RC is a non-profit, independent financial services corporation with approximately $51 billion in assets under management and administration (as of December 31, 2018), focused on providing retirement plans and related services for over a million public sector participant accounts. ICMA-RC's mission is to help public sector employees build retirement security. For more information, visit www.icmarc.org or follow ICMA-RC on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. SOURCE Center for State and Local Government Excellence Related Links http://www.slge.org Company's sixth U.S. manufacturing location slated for 2020 opening TORONTO, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - IKO, a North American pioneer in the manufacture of residential and commercial roofing products has announced today that it will be constructing a new production facility in Hagerstown, Maryland. The 500,000 square foot manufacturing and warehouse site will mark IKO's first new location in the northeast since it began its U.S. operations in Wilmington, Delaware in 1981. The new plant represents a $70 million investment for the company, which anticipates starting production in mid-2020, and will create 40 jobs locally by the end of that year. "Hagerstown is another example of IKO's commitment to building the strongest and most state of the art production network in our industry," stated Guy Tremblay, IKO's Vice President of North American Operations. "No one in the industry has made the kind of investments in their manufacturing capabilities in the marketplace in the past 15 years that matches IKO. We're tremendously proud to be announcing this project, and equally as proud to be able to become a member of the business community in Hagerstown." The new IKO site is located at 100 Tandy Drive in Hagerstown, which was the former home of Radio Shack's facilities. About IKO For nearly 70 years, IKO has been a pioneer and leader in the global roofing and related waterproofing and insulation industry for residential and commercial markets. A family-owned business for four generations, IKO remains rooted in its founding values of integrity and performance and provides best-in-class products, services and value. IKO has a commitment to innovation that strives to meet the ever-changing needs of its customers. That commitment, along with a continual investment in technology, local sourcing and vertical integration is roofing, elevated. For more information on IKO and its full line of product solutions, visit www.iko.com. Copyright 2019 IKO. All rights reserved. For media or industry analyst support, please visit our website at http://www.iko.com. Follow us on: Linkedin | Pinterest | Houzz | Youtube | SlideShare SOURCE IKO Industries Related Links www.iko.com AUCKLAND, New Zealand, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Infotools , a global leader in market research analysis solutions, has released a new eBook that will help readers find the right market research software to help them achieve their goals. The free publication, called " A buyer's guide to market research analysis software ", outlines easy-to-follow considerations and questions to ask when deciding on technology investments. A buyer's guide to market research analysis software by Infotools "Making decisions about software, platforms and solutions in the market research space can be overwhelming and carry a significant amount of risk - especially if you make the wrong choice," said Ant Franklin, CEO of Infotools. "Our new guide condenses our team's decades of knowledge in creating and applying software to market research data, clearly outlining risks, challenges and benefits to take under consideration." "A buyer's guide to market research analysis software" provides a framework for sorting through the thousands of options available, so that the best choice can be made for all stakeholders. It covers the basics, alongside more in-depth navigation of issues, related to: Deciding the types of market research software that will fit each agency's unique client needs Understanding the risks and benefits of adopting new market research software Identifying the questions to ask and the features to look for when making a selection Making the transition to a new software as smooth as possible with step-by-step considerations New technology can help agencies meet demands for speed, efficiency and more. This guide provides an easy-to-follow path through the decision making journey for new market research software. Download the free eBook here: https://web.infotools.com/software-buyers-guide About Infotools Infotools is an award-winning software and services provider, with particular expertise in processing, analyzing, visualizing and sharing market research data. The company offers a powerful cloud-based software platform, Infotools Harmoni, which is purpose-built for market research data, together with the services of data experts who can drive research design and management, data design and organization, and insights discovery, analysis, visualization and reporting. Established in 1990, and with a presence in the US, Europe, South Africa and New Zealand, Infotools works with some of the world's best-known brands, including Coca-Cola, Orange, Samsung and Mondelez, as well as boutique and large research agencies such as MDI , Nielsen and Ipsos. For more information, visit www.infotools.com or follow on Twitter @infotools. Media contact: Marie Melsheimer, [email protected], +1-541-815-3951 SOURCE Infotools Related Links https://www.infotools.com AUSTIN, Texas, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Intiva Healtha company known for its healthcare career management platformannounced today its launch of Ready Doc, the first credential management and verification service to use hashgraph distributed ledger technology (DLT). "We're honored to be the first-ever healthcare platform running on hashgraph," said Intiva Health's CTO Sahir Ali, Ph.D. "This can truly reinvent healthcare management." Ready Doc leverages hashgraph to provide a more efficient, less expensive way to verify and share medical credentialsspeeding up the process from months to seconds. It does this by enabling innovative document security components and immutable "moment-in-time" snapshots that are faster, safer and more fair than current blockchain capabilities. The company has begun reaching out to hospitals and medical groups to test pilot Ready Doc. The first pilot at Austin Emergency Center (AEC) has been a success thus far. "It's making verifying the credentials and reputations of my doctors and nurses much faster and easier," said Jody Hardy, director of physician and patient relations at AEC. "Credentialing is just part of what I do, so Ready Doc is really helping free up time for other urgent tasks." About Intiva Health Intiva Health offers a free career-management platform for healthcare professionals. Thousands of doctors and nurses use the platform to manage credentials, take continuing education courses, find jobs, and send HIPAA-compliant messages. As the first in healthcare to use hashgraph, Intiva Health speeds up credentialing from months to minutes, saving the industry billions, improving provider satisfaction, and enabling better patient care. Intiva is using the hashgraph technology under license from Swirlds, Inc. The company is headquartered in Austin, Texas. Visit IntivaHealth.com for more information. SOURCE Intiva Health Related Links http://www.intivahealth.com DALLAS, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Jacobs (NYSE:JEC) was awarded an extension to the Aerospace Testing and Facility Operation and Maintenance IV (ATOM) contract at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The contract extension is a one-year option, and NASA estimates this brings the total value of the contract to $178 million and extends the period of performance through February 2020. "As NASA's largest services provider, we welcome the opportunity to continue our 20+ year relationship with Ames Research Center," said Jacobs Aerospace, Technology and Nuclear Senior Vice President Steve Arnette. "This extension allows us to continue enabling America's aeronautics, science and space technology programs during this exciting time of advanced innovation and to provide advanced R&D, scientific and technical solutions for a more connected and sustainable world." Under this contract extension, Jacobs will continue providing aerospace testing and facility operations and services in support of NASA Ames Research Center's arc jets, wind tunnels, hypersonic facilities and ballistics complexes. The work encompasses operation, maintenance, repair and management of Ames test facilities; planning, preparation, scheduling and execution of aeronautics and space technology tests; and design, implementation and checkout of advanced development projects. These tasks will support the Aeronautics Research Mission directorate, the Space Launch System and the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, including support to commercial entities and other government agencies. Jacobs leads the global professional services sector delivering solutions for a more connected, sustainable world. With $15 billion in fiscal 2018 revenue and a talent force of more than 80,000, Jacobs provides a full spectrum of services including scientific, technical, professional and construction- and program-management for business, industrial, commercial, government and infrastructure sectors. For more information, visit www.jacobs.com, and connect with Jacobs on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Statements made in this release that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements. We base these forward-looking statements on management's current estimates and expectations as well as currently available competitive, financial and economic data. Forward-looking statements, however, are inherently uncertain. There are a variety of factors that could cause business results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. For a description of some of the factors which may occur that could cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements please refer to our Form 10-K for the year ended September 28, 2018, and in particular the discussions contained under Items 1 - Business, 1A - Risk Factors, 3 - Legal Proceedings, and 7 - Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements made herein. For press/media inquiries: Kerrie Sparks 214.583.8433 Brian Morandi 720.286.0719 SOURCE Jacobs Related Links http://www.jacobs.com Hanspaul Pannu, current CFO, to assume role of President Nilda Rivera appointed CFO KELOWNA, BC, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - Liht Cannabis Corp. (CSE: LIHT) (OTCQX: LIHTF) ("Liht") or the "Company") announced today that the Company's current Chief Financial Officer, Hanspaul Pannu, has been appointed as President and Nilda Rivera has been appointed Chief Financial Officer. The effective date of change will be April 1, 2019. As the Company continues to grow and execute on its business plan, the addition of Nilda Rivera, former VP of Finance and Corporate Secretary of Aurora Cannabis Inc., will be instrumental in creating sustainable best in class business practices and ensuring good stewardship of our business as we transition deeper into our operational phase. Ms. Rivera has been with Aurora Cannabis Inc. from their reverse takeover transaction to becoming a publicly traded entity to having over 1,400 employees and making it one of the largest cannabis companies in the world. Ms. Rivera has over 20 years of experience in accounting, financial reporting and corporate governance with public companies in the resources, technology and cannabis sectors. Prior to joining Aurora, she had 5 years of CFO experience with TSXV companies and 15 years of Corporate Secretary experience with TSX and TSXV companies. There are no changes to our Board of Directors who continue to provide governance and corporate and operational oversight to the Company. Marcel LeBlanc, chairman of the Board, has significant experience and a proven track record of achievement and demonstrated successes, driving multi-million dollar revenue growth by designing and executing operational procedures and methodologies with a focus on cost control, asset utilization and value creation. "The Company has made the recent strategic turning point by transitioning into a producing cultivator and overall growth phase. Nilda's wealth of financial and industry experience is paramount to supporting our growth and the Company's commitment to generate long term, sustainable shareholder value" states Mr. Pannu. "Along with the implementation of governance, and corporate and operational oversight from Marcel, Nilda and I are excited to work together to implement best in class business practices and achieve our operational and financial objectives over the next 6 months." "I am delighted to join the Liht management team at this time as the Company continues to pursue its growth objectives," said Nilda Rivera. " I am excited for the opportunity to bring my background, skills and commitment to ethical standards to work to help the Company through its next stage of growth and increase shareholder value." Ms. Rivera has been granted stock options to purchase 250,000 common shares of the Company exercisable at $0.24 per share and 100,000 restricted share units of the Company. The options and RSUs vest over a period of one year. The Company will provide its operational objectives over the next 6 months in a news release to follow. ABOUT LIHT CANNABIS CORP. www.lihtcannabis.com Liht Cannabis Corp. is a publicly traded company investing in the medical and recreational cannabis space, since 2014. Liht has rapidly expanded to include cultivation, production and dispensary locations in the key North American states of Washington, Nevada, and California, and are seeking expansion opportunities worldwide. SOCIAL MEDIA: twitter.com facebook.com STOCK EXCHANGES: Liht trades in Canada, ticker symbol LIHT on the CSE, and in the United States, ticker symbol LIHTF on the OTCQX. The Company also trades on other recognized platforms in Europe including Stuttgart, Tradegate, L & S, Quotnx, Dusseldorf, Munich, and Berlin. Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider, nor the OTCQX has approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the CSE, nor the OTCQX accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. MARIJUANA INDUSTRY INVOLVEMENT: Canadian listings (CSE) will remain in good standing as long as they provide the disclosure that is rightly required by regulators and complying with applicable licensing requirements and the regulatory framework enacted by the applicable state in which they operate. Liht owns marijuana licenses in California and Nevada. Marijuana is legal in each state however marijuana remains illegal under US federal law and the approach to enforcement of US federal law against marijuana is subject to change. Shareholders and investors need to be aware that adverse enforcement actions could affect their investments and that Liht's ability to access private and public capital could be affected and or could not be available to support continuing operations. Liht's business is conducted in a manner consistent with state law and is in compliance with licensing requirements. Copies of licenses are posted on Liht's website. Liht has internal compliance procedures in place and has compliance focused attorneys engaged in jurisdictions to monitor changes in laws for compliance with US federal and state law on an ongoing basis. These law firms inform any necessary changes to our policies and procedures for compliance in Canada and the US. FORWARD - LOOKING STATEMENTS: Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which includes, the expected outcomes of its business, and other matters. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such information can generally be identified by the use of forwarding looking wording such as "may", "expect", "estimate", "anticipate", "intend", "believe" and "continue" or the negative thereof or similar variations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are based will occur. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not occur. Forward-looking statement are necessarily based upon a number of factors that, if untrue, could cause the actual results, performances or achievements of the Company to be materially different from future results, performances or achievements express or implied by such statements. These assumptions, risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the state of the economy in general and capital markets in particular, present and future business strategies, the environment in which the Company will operate in the future, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of the Company. While such estimates and assumptions are considered reasonable by the management of the Company, they are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive and regulatory uncertainties and risks. Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual events, level of activity, performance or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: that laws and regulations may become more onerous; the ability of the Company to obtain necessary financing; the economy generally; the future growth, results of operations, performance and business prospectus and opportunities; changes in and the effect of government policies; demand for products; competition; anticipated and unanticipated costs; reliance on management; claims and legal proceedings; conflicts of interest; and market price and volatility of the Common Shares. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions, the loss of key directors, employees, advisors or consultants, technology failures, failure to obtain a license from Health Canada or from other government agencies, failure to develop new and innovative products, failure of counterparties to perform their contractual obligations and fees charged by service providers. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations include, litigation, global economic climate, loss of key employees and consultants, additional funding requirements, changes in laws, competition, and failure of counterparties to perform their contractual obligations. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance or events and, accordingly are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to the inherent uncertainty of such statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date of this news release. Except as required by law, the Company disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additionally, the Company undertakes no obligation to comment on the expectations of, or statements made by, third parties in respect of the matters discussed above. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, nor approved the contents of this news release. SOURCE Liht Cannabis Corporation Related Links https://lihtcannabis.com/ WAKEFIELD, Mass., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- There are significant changes happening in Social Security. Boomers are retiring and taking their benefits later. Because of increased life expectancy and improved health benefits, for many, there is less incentive to retire early. This is coupled with the fact that for most workers, Defined Benefit Plans have largely disappeared; replaced by Defined Contribution Plans which are funded by employees. "Because these plans have been voluntary, retirees need other sources of readily available income. Still other boomers point to the fact that full retirement age has grown to 66 and in many cases, 67," said Susan Fisher, CFP, RICP is a Financial Educator, Speaker, and Retirement Income Specialist. For those who can wait to take Social Security; they are rewarded with as much as 132% of their Primary Insurance Amount (PIA). Social Security is just one factor. "Accumulating enough money to retire with confidence and peace of mind is a challenging feat that fewer and fewer Americans are able to accomplish. Many don't understand that the principles to successfully preserve, protect and pass on wealth are different than the principles to accumulate wealth," said Fisher. More than 44 million Americans over age 65 are facing stiff challenges to retire and stay retired. Susan educates and equips retirees against the little-known mistakes and costly missteps that can derail their lifestyle in retirement. Fisher continues, "Women, whether they are executives, professionals, or business owners face a different set of obstacles. As a result of widely held myths about Social Security, wealth and money, many are making some costly mistakes and are not even aware of it. It's my passion and mission to be sure that women are well-equipped to fully enjoy their lifestyle and leave a legacy they can be proud of." "AARP reported that 2 out of 3 older Americans fear running out of money more than dying. Imagine being 75 years old, in great health, full of life, and running out of money. The fear of running out of money is not unfounded and retirees deserve to live with greater peace and freedom in retirement," Fisher adds. Besides taxes, running afoul of IRS retirement account rules can cost retirees a bundle. According to Forbes, "Americans paid an estimated $5.8 billion in penalties on retirement account withdrawals. (That's in addition to the regular tax owed on those withdrawals.)" In addition, the Wall Street Journal reported that, "Uncle Sam is about to get a lot tougher on individual retirement account mistakes-and that could trip up investors who aren't careful." "It's my mission to educate 50, 60 and sometimes near 70 year olds about how to maximize their Social Security and retirement resources so they can more fully enjoy that wealth," says Fisher, "and more successfully preserve, protect and pass it on." About Susan Fisher: Susan Fisher, CFP, RICP is a Financial Educator, Speaker, and Retirement Income Specialist. Susan has a passion to show retirees how to more fully enjoy their hard-earned money during retirement. She has been helping retired women on their own, executives and professionals preserve, protect and pass on their wealth since 1988. Susan earned the Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and Retirement Income Certified Professional (RICP) designations, along with an MA degree in Education, from Tufts University and a BS degree in Music Education from Hartwick College. She shares her leadership skills with charitable organizations, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Education Advisory Committee and is a Past Board Member of The Opera Laboratory Theater Company in Boston. She is a published photographer and world traveler, who took part in an EARTHWATCH archeological dig in Queensland, Australia. Susan is an avid hiker, who as an Adirondack 46er and has climbed all the high peaks in New York State. In addition, she competes in triathlons to stay in shape and meet new friends. FINRA/SIPC. Additional advisory services offered through Flagship Wealth Advisors, LLC, who is not Securities, insurance, and advisory services offered through Royal Alliance Associates, Inc., member affiliated with Royal Alliance Associates, Inc. Contact Susan C. Fisher, CFP, RICP [email protected] 1-800-631-9997 x34 Ph 781-224-9924 x34 SOURCE Susan Fisher WESTMINSTER, CO, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - Maxar Technologies (NYSE:MAXR) (TSX:MAXR), a global technology innovator powering the new space economy, today announced the appointment of James C. Lee as General Counsel, effective April 1. Lee spent the past 15 years at Aramark Corporation (NYSE:ARMK), most recently serving as Senior Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, responsible for the legal functions of Aramark Uniform Services, the nation's second largest uniform services provider with 21,000 employees. Lee was instrumental in Aramark's $1 billion purchase of Ameripride in 2018. Prior to 2004, Lee was a securities and M&A attorney at O'Melveny & Myers LLP in Los Angeles, CA. He earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. in economics from Yale University. "Jim brings not only a wealth of public company and capital raising experience to Maxar but also a personal and professional passion that will energize us as we execute on our strategy for growth and return to sustained profitability," said Maxar CEO Dan Jablonsky. "Maxar's powerful culture of innovation and unique combination of assets and capabilities make it indispensable to government and commercial customers around the world," Lee said. "In addition, Maxar's mission resonates with me, and I'm looking forward to working with a team who is committed to building a better world." About Maxar As a global leader of advanced space technology solutions, Maxar is at the nexus of the new space economy, developing and sustaining the infrastructure and delivering the information, services, systems that unlock the promise of space for commercial and government markets. As a trusted partner, Maxar provides vertically integrated capabilities and expertise including satellites, Earth imagery, robotics, geospatial data and analytics to help customers anticipate and address their most complex mission-critical challenges with confidence. With more than 6,100 employees in over 30 global locations, the Maxar portfolio of commercial space brands includes MDA, Space Solutions, DigitalGlobe and Radiant Solutions. Every day, billions of people rely on Maxar to communicate, share information and data, and deliver insights that Build a Better World. Maxar trades on the New York Stock Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange as MAXR. For more information, visit www.maxar.com. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements and other information included in this release constitute "forward-looking information" or "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") under applicable securities laws. Statements including words such as "may", "will", "could", "should", "would", "plan", "potential", "intend", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate" or "expect" and other words, terms and phrases of similar meaning are often intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Forward-looking statements involve estimates, expectations, projections, goals, forecasts, assumptions, risks and uncertainties, as well as other statements referring to or including forward-looking information included in this press release. Forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results or expectations expressed in this release. As a result, although management of the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which such forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. The risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to, the risk factors and other disclosures about the Company and its business included in the Company's continuous disclosure materials filed from time to time with Canadian and U.S. securities regulatory authorities, which are available online under the Company's EDGAR profile at www.sec.gov, under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com or on the Company's website at www.maxar.com. The forward-looking statements contained in this release are expressly qualified in their entirety by the foregoing cautionary statements. All such forward-looking statements are based upon data available as of the date of this release or other specified date and speak only as of such date. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements in this release as a result of new information or future events, except as may be required under applicable securities legislation. Investor Relations Contact: Jason Gursky Maxar VP Investor Relations 1-303-684-2207 [email protected] Media Contact: Turner Brinton Maxar Media Relations 1-303-684-4545 [email protected] SOURCE Maxar Technologies Ltd. Related Links www.maxar.com DENVER, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Medicine Man Technologies, Inc. (OTCQX: MDCL) ("Medicine Man Technologies" or "Company"), a rapidly growing, vertically integrated cannabis operator, today announced it will be presenting at the Sidoti & Company, LLC, Spring 2019 Investor Conference being held on March 28, 2019, at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. Joe Puglise, COO of Medicine Man Technologies, will be delivering a corporate overview of the Company on Thursday, March 28, at 8:00AM ET. Mr. Puglise will also be available for one-on-one meetings with investors. "We've announced some recent corporate updates to our Company, including 150%+ year-over-year profitable growth and the pending acquisitions of MedPharm Holdings, LLC, and Medicine Man Denver, which would bring Medicine Man Technologies to an annual run rate of over $40 million," says Medicine Man Technologies CEO Andy Williams. "Along with our new COO's expertise in scaling up businesses, there are many reasons why we believe this is an exciting time to tell our story to the investment community." For more information about Medicine Man Technologies, please visit: https://www.medicinemantechnologies.com/ About Sidoti & Company, LLC, Spring 2019 Investor Conference Sidoti & Company, LLC, is a leading Wall Street provider of small- and micro-cap securities research, covering almost 200 equities. We help issuers in this sector build interest and visibility through our relationships with over 500 Institutional Investors, Family Offices and High Net Worth Individuals. Sidoti & Company, LLC, aims to unite publicly traded companies with quality investors. About Medicine Man Technologies Medicine Man Technologies is a fully integrated operator in the cannabis industry, offering consulting, retail pharma-grade products, and turnkey solutions for cannabis cultivators for over a decade. Medicine Man Technologies is leveraging its expertise and intellectual property to vertically integrate retail, cultivation, formulation, and distribution operations. The Company's client portfolio includes active and past clients in 18 states and seven countries. Forward-looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Such statements may be preceded by the words "intends," "may," "will," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "projects," "predicts," "estimates," "aims," "believes," "hopes," "potential" or similar words. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, are based on certain assumptions and are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control, and cannot be predicted or quantified and consequently, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, risks and uncertainties associated with (i) our inability to manufacture our products and product candidates on a commercial scale on our own, or in collaboration with third parties; (ii) difficulties in obtaining financing on commercially reasonable terms; (iii) changes in the size and nature of our competition; (iv) loss of one or more key executives or scientists; and (v) difficulties in securing regulatory approval to market our products and product candidates. More detailed information about the Company and the risk factors that may affect the realization of forward-looking statements is set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. Investors and security holders are urged to read these documents free of charge on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. The Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise its forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. CONTACT: Investor Relations Contact: [email protected], 1-866-348-1997 SOURCE Medicine Man Technologies Inc. Related Links http://www.medicinemantechnologies.com PHILADELPHIA, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Michael Baker International, a global leader in engineering, planning and consulting services, announced today that Francesco (Frank) M. Russo, Ph.D., P.E.., Vice President and Technical Director, Bridge Engineering for Michael Baker, was recognized by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) with its Special Achievement Award. He will receive the award April 3 during NASCC: The Steel Conference, in St. Louis. The Special Achievement Award recognizes individuals who have demonstrated notable achievements in structural steel design, construction, research or education. It honors those who have made a positive and substantial impact on the structural steel design and construction industry. Dr. Russo is recognized for his contributions to the advancement of knowledge in inspection and emergency rehabilitation of complex steel structures. He is considered one of the top engineers in structural steel bridge design and the behavior of complex bridges. Known for his collaborative way of bringing engineers together to tackle complicated engineering problems, Dr. Russo has worked on several high-profile and high-pressure failure investigations. In addition to his stature as a practicing engineer, he has distinguished himself as an educator through numerous steel bridge articles he has authored and the short courses and college-level courses he has taught. "Frank's exceptional work has directly contributed to our standard of excellence and to Michael Baker International's standing as one of the top providers of bridge services in the U.S.," said Scott Roux, P.E., S.E. (HI), Senior Vice President and National Bridge Practice Lead for Michael Baker. "He is one of the foremost individuals our firm turns to for senior technical oversight on our most complex bridge projects and is very deserving of AISC's Special Achievement recognition." A project in which Mr. Russo played a lead role, the Delaware River Bridge Emergency Response, was recognized by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Pennsylvania (ACEC/PA) with its 2019 Grand Conceptor Award for Michael Baker's emergency field and office support, including engineering analysis, design and plan review to support truss repair, on-site operations and non-destructive testing (NDT). The bridge project was the largest-ever in the United States to use NDT and materials testing to assess a damaged steel bridge. In his eight years with Michael Baker, Dr. Russo has helped to execute many of the firm's most challenging bridge projects for key clients. He is renowned for his involvement with national technical committees and professional development, serving as a mentor to many of the firm's early career professionals. In addition, he has been instrumental in the success of Michael Baker's development and delivery of its Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Bridge Training Courses. Since 2006, he has taught over 120 classes to department of transportation staff around the country and his award-winning work is known throughout the industry. About Michael Baker International Michael Baker International is a leading provider of engineering and consulting services, including design, planning, architectural, environmental, construction and program management. The company provides its comprehensive range of services and solutions to support U.S. federal, state, and municipal governments, foreign allied governments, and a wide range of commercial clients. Michael Baker's more than 3,000 employees across nearly 100 locations are committed to a culture of innovation, collaboration and technological advancement to help solve challenges for clients and communities throughout the country. To learn more, visit www.mbakerintl.com. Contact: Brian Peiritsch [email protected] (866) 293-4609 SOURCE Michael Baker International Related Links http://www.mbakerintl.com ROSWELL, Ga., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Data-driven decision making has never been more essential than it is in today's highly competitive business environment. Since 1999, MMR Research has helped businesses and organizations use data to truly understand their business issues and make informed decisions that support growth. The company is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a unique perspective about an industry whose relevance is at an all-time high. "Marketing research isn't just facts and findings," said Bill Denk, MMR Co-Owner and Managing Partner since 2014. "It's transformative. We're executing actionable research that drives real business impact." "Not all data is created equal," said Bruce Olson, Co-Owner and Managing Partner since 2014. "Data is more readily available from generalized sources than at any other time in history; but data without insightful analysis is just numbers. It doesn't tell a complete story. Our approach can elevate confidence in decision-making for our clients." Since its origins as a boutique marketing research services provider, MMR Research has evolved into a versatile, full-service firm with regional offices across the United States and a global support network performing customized research in almost any country in the world. The MMR Research team balances the demands for marketing research speed and quality by delivering best-in-class, high touch client service grounded in the practical realities of today's marketplace. Senior practitioners work on every project, and most MMR professionals have at least 15 years' experience in client-side and supply-side roles. "Clients have told us our client service, agility, and strong opinions add value for them," said Olson. "That confidence is humbling. We also take it as a challenge to keep pushing forward to do more." "Our 20th anniversary is truly a milestone," said Denk, "but we aren't resting on our laurels. We'll continue to bring innovative research practices to the forefront to help our clients achieve their goals. With all the changes taking place in our industry, in some ways, we're just getting started." MMR Research has planned a series of celebratory activities throughout 2019, including its annual MRX Impact Conference, a deep dive into the hottest practices in marketing research, which will be held in Fall 2019 in Atlanta. Sharable Highlights Social share #1: For 20 years, @MMRResearch has helped businesses and organizations use data to truly understand their business issues and make informed decisions that support growth. Social share #2: @MMRResearch believes actionable insights from marketing research can drive transformative business impact. About MMR Research MMR Research is a passionate team of forward-thinking experts who provide high-touch, customized, decision-focused marketing research. Since 1999, clients have relied on MMR to design and execute versatile, tailored solutions that shape business direction and inspire confidence. MMR operates as a research concierge, with an action-focused process and method-agnostic approach. For more information visit mmrresearch.com. Media Contact: Susan Cross [email protected] 419.913.9943 SOURCE MMR Research Related Links https://www.mmrresearch.com MESA, Ariz., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Myndshft, a technology company that specializes in blockchain and artificial intelligence in healthcare, today announced that it plans to triple its team from 30 to over 100 employees this year. To accommodate this growth, Myndshft relocated from its 4,000-square-foot space to a new 11,000-square-foot office in the Red Mountain Business Park at 3256 N. Higley Road, Mesa, AZ 85215. Mesa Mayor John Giles led the ribbon-cutting ceremony held March 20 and attended by Councilmember David Luna, Myndshft executives, staff, business neighbors, and local media. To download a photo of the ribbon cutting ceremony, click here. The move signals Myndshft's strong commitment to the Arizona technology community. "Myndshft is a great addition to the Falcon Business District and their exponential growth is bringing high tech jobs to Mesa," said Mayor John Giles. "Healthcare administration is changing and Myndshft is leading the way in using technology to simplify processes." "The City of Mesa has focused on making the Falcon District a hub for high-tech businesses, and to see a company like Myndshft not only continue to make it their home base, but also triple the company in size is a real win for District 5 and the City of Mesa," said Councilmember David Luna. "I am thrilled they will continue to call this area home and I look forward to watching them continue to grow and expand." Myndshft's new office will allow for future growth and expanded strategic partnerships within Arizona's burgeoning digital-health sector. Founded in 2015 with two employees, Myndshft has experienced hypergrowth rates of 400% with plans to aggressively recruit 75-85 employees over the next nine months across all its departments, particularly in sales, software engineering and operations. The open-concept office space, much like the Myndshft product, is designed to foster efficiency and collaboration among teams. "We decided to stay in the Phoenix/Mesa area because of its strong local workforce and high quality of living," said Ron Wince, founder and CEO, Myndshft. "There's a young and educated workforce in place, which helps to create a viable talent pool for a tech company like ours." "It's companies like Myndshft that have helped Arizona expand its reputation as one of the best places in the country to develop cutting-edge technologies," said Governor Doug Ducey. "We're proud to see an Arizona-based company continue to grow at such a phenomenal rate." "Myndshft's advancements have the potential to shape the future of telemedicine not only in Arizona, but around the world," said Sandra Watson, President and CEO of the Arizona Commerce Authority. "The rapid expansion of a company that is developing cutting-edge technology speaks to the abundance of skilled, educated talent in our state. We thank Myndshft for its investment in Arizona and congratulate the company on its growth." Arizona is ranked No. 9 among the 50 states in tech-industry employment (source: Cyberstates 2017 Innovation Score). It also ranks No. 14 in innovation among all states based on an analysis of tech startups, new tech business establishments and new tech patents. To view current job openings, visit https://www.myndshft.com/about-myndshft/careers/. About Myndshft Technologies, Inc. Myndshft Technologies is powering the next generation of healthcare administration with blockchain and artificial intelligence. Through their proprietary cognitive blockchain platform, Myndshft is simplifying claims management and prior authorizations, and leading the shift to value-based care. For more information, visit myndshft.com. Media Contact Marcia Rhodes Amendola Communications [email protected] / 480-664-8412 ext. 15 SOURCE Myndshft Related Links http://www.myndshft.com WEATHERFORD, Texas, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Situated just thirty-five minutes from the major metropolitan of Fort Worth, Texas is a new land buying opportunity Eagles Bluff. On Saturday, March 30th, interested buyers can be the first to see and own nicely wooded two plus acre homesites, featuring spectacular long-range, panoramic hill-top and ridgeline views and gorgeous mature trees, from only $79,900 during the Eagles Bluff Sneak Preview Land Sale. The prime location in Weatherford, Texas is one of the main factors drawing people to this community and is a huge selling factor for many looking to make the move to the country for their new primary or retirement home. STAMFORD, Conn., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Nestle Waters North America (NWNA) is celebrating World Water Day and embracing its 2019 theme of "Leaving no one behind" by engaging local stakeholders at many of its facilities throughout the United States and Canada on March 21 and 22. NWNA views transparency of its operations as a critical part of its relationships with the people in the over 140 communities where the company operates. As such, 15 NWNA sites in eight states and Ontario, Canada are opening their doors to neighbors by hosting tours of their facilities, holding roundtable discussions about water sustainability, and leading educational programs, such as globally recognized Project WET and Adopt-a-Stream activities. Furthermore, NWNA announced earlier today that it has committed to investing an additional $2 million into the Ice Mountain Environmental Stewardship Fund (IMESF) in Michigan. The IMESF supports the long-term sustainability of Michigan's Muskegon River Watershed and its ecosystems by funding environmental conservation projects and programs throughout the Watershed. NWNA founded the fund in 2002 and supported it with an initial $500,000 investment over a five-year period. The company has continued to provide donations to the fund, in varying amounts, over the past 17 years. "Water is our business and our passion at Nestle Waters North America. From the way we carefully manage our spring sources to our commitment to water education, protecting and preserving this precious shared resource is the most important part of what we do everyday," says David Tulauskas, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Nestle Waters North America. "World Water Day is an opportunity for all of us to reflect on what it means to be good water stewards, and to take action as companies, governments, non-profits and individuals to help ensure that our water resources are here for generations to come." Nestle Waters is on a continuous journey to seek out new ways and innovative technologies to further improve and maximize efficiencies in its operations. In fact, as a result of a number of initiatives the company has undertaken over the past year, NWNA saved nearly 80 million gallons of water in 2018. Recognizing that water is a shared resource that requires shared action, Nestle Waters continually engages local partners to address local water issues. In California for example, the company helped launch the California Water Action Collaborative (CWAC), a platform for diverse stakeholders - including food & beverage companies, agricultural producers, and others - to come together and pursue collective action projects that will improve the availability of water for California's people, business, agriculture, and nature. This includes a significant investment in an effort spearheaded by The Nature Conservancy to use more than 10,000 acres in Sierra Nevada at the American River Headwaters the source for the vast majority of Sacramento's drinking water to test innovative methods to reduce megafires and increase the state's water supply. The company is also working with the Northwest Florida Water Management District and Washington County Commissioners to provide for the long-term protection of Cypress Spring in Florida and its surrounding property through a conservation easement. The acquisition covers approximately 300 acres, more than 1,000 linear feet of shoreline along Holmes Creek, and Cypress Spring. Nestle Waters was also the first company in North America to certify its facilities through the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Standard. Its factory in Cabazon, California was also the first facility in North America to achieve an elevated Gold certification from AWS. Created and supported by prominent environmental conservation groups and industry leaders, the AWS Standard is the first comprehensive global benchmark for responsible water stewardship across social, environmental, and economic criteria. To date, 15 Nestle Waters sites in eight countries have been certified according to the AWS Standard, and the company has committed to certifying all of its sites globally by 2025. Globally, Nestle Waters is hosting events that focus on the importance of sustainable water management at almost all of its sites in 34 countries. Every country where Nestle Waters has operations will be holding at least one event. The United Nations started the observance of World Water Day in 1993 to highlight the significance of fresh water and advocate for sustainable resource management. About Nestle Waters North America Nestle Waters North America offers an unrivaled portfolio of bottled water brands for healthy hydration, including Poland Spring Brand 100% Natural Spring Water, Nestle Pure Life, Perrier and S. Pellegrino. The company also owns and operates ReadyRefresh by Nestle, a customizable water and beverage delivery service. Just Click and QuenchSM. Based in Stamford, Connecticut with approximately 8,000 associates located in North America, we manage natural resources for long-term sustainability, and we conserve nearly 21,000 acres of natural watershed area. We currently source water for our six regional spring water brands from 47 springs across North America. We are also committed to creating shared value and being a good neighbor in the 140 communities where we operate in the U.S. For more information, visit us at www.nestle-watersna.com/en and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook: @NestleWatersNA. SOURCE Nestle Waters North America Related Links http://www.nestle-watersna.com/company In her new role, Monaco will co-chair O'Melveny's Data Security and Privacy group with partner Steve Bunnell. She will also bring her experience to the firm's White Collar Defense and Corporate Investigations Practice Group. Drawing on her experience as a lawyer and counselor at the highest levels, Monaco will advise clients in the area of government and regulatory affairs, including on congressional investigations and executive-branch inquiries. Monaco will be based in the firm's Washington, DC, and New York offices. Monaco comes to O'Melveny after two decades of distinguished service in federal law enforcement and national security, most recently as President Obama's Homeland Security Advisor for the entirety of his second term. In that role, she led the federal government's response to a wide array of risks and challenges and was one of the most senior officials responsible for managing cybersecurity incidents. She chaired the Cabinet-level Homeland Security Principals Committee and coordinated policy development and crisis response to cyber threats, terrorist attacks, public health emergencies, and national disasters. Drawing on her experience as a trusted advisor, crisis manager, and national security leader, she will help clients navigate sensitive governance, legal, regulatory and policy matters. "We're delighted to welcome Lisa to the firm," said O'Melveny chair Bradley J. Butwin. "Having operated at the most senior levels of the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the White House, Lisa is uniquely equipped to guide our clients on their most pressing challenges, including corporate investigations, cross-border litigation, and regulatory compliance. She will also be enormously helpful to our clients in addressing complex legal issues at the nexus of technology, national security, and privacy. And she will strengthen our ability to advise clients on large, cross-border enforcement actions related to terrorism and national security issues." Before her White House appointment, Monaco spent 15 years in the Justice Department, where she gained extensive experience at the senior-most levels of law enforcement and national security. She served for three years as counsel and, later, Chief of Staff at the FBI, helping then-Director Robert S. Mueller III transform the Bureau after 9/11 into a national security organization focused on preventing terrorist attacks on the United States. Monaco received Senate confirmation as Assistant Attorney General for National Security, the Justice Department's top national security attorneythe first woman to serve in that role. There, she oversaw nearly 400 employees responsible for protecting the United States against international and domestic terrorist, espionage, cyber, and other national security threats, and supervised national security investigations and prosecutions nationwide. During her tenure, she made cyber threats a priority, creating the first nationwide network of national security cyber specialists. Monaco previously spent six years as a career federal prosecutor and has extensive trial experience as an Assistant United States Attorney. Monaco is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University Law School and at NYU's Center on Cybersecurity. She also co-chairs the Aspen Institute's Cybersecurity Group, a cross-disciplinary public-private forum comprising industry leaders, former government officials, Capitol Hill leaders, and respected voices from academia, journalism, and civil society focused on translating urgent cybersecurity conversations into action. Monaco is also a senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center on Science and International Affairs, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a leading commentator, regularly sought out by major media outlets, on national security and legal issues of the day. In 2017, she joined CNN as a Senior National Security Analyst. Monaco has received numerous awards for her public service career, including the Attorney General's Award for Exceptional Servicethe Justice Department's highest honor. She also received the Edmund J. Randolph Award, which the Attorney General bestows in recognition of outstanding contributions to the Department of Justice's mission. She began her legal career as law clerk to the Honorable Jane R. Roth, United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She is a graduate of Harvard and the University of Chicago Law School. About O'Melveny It's more than what you do: it's how you do it. Across sectors and borders, in board rooms and courtrooms, we measure our success by yours. And in our interactions, we commit to making your O'Melveny experience as satisfying as the outcomes we help you achieve. Our greatest accomplishment is ensuring that you never have to choose between premier lawyering and exceptional service. So, tell us. What do you want to achieve? Visit us at omm.com. SOURCE OMelveny Related Links https://www.omm.com/ LAS VEGAS, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- MODERN BUSINESS EXPERIENCE -- To celebrate standout HR professionals who are using technology to transform their business, Oracle today announced the winners of the Oracle HCM Cloud Rubies Award. The awards honor Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud customers who advocate for innovation, prioritize investment in employees, and have a vision to see the potential of tomorrow's human resources possibilities, today. The 2019 winners include: UnitedHealth Group, Hilton Worldwide, Hilton Grand Vacations, Mars Petcare, Grupo Bimbo, AfrAsia Bank, Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions, and Gruppo Mondadori. "Much of today's workforce is digitally-native and expects a personalized, seamless HR and employee experience," said Gretchen Alarcon, group vice president, Oracle HCM Cloud. "It's harder than ever for HR professionals to attract, onboard, and retain talent, so we're excited to recognize Oracle customers who are embracing emerging technologies to re-think what is possible." The global Oracle HCM Cloud Rubies Awards is a peer-driven program that recognizes HR professionals who have used technology to increase efficiencies, enhance the employee experience, and deliver tangible business results. Winners include: The 2019 HCM Cloud Rubies award winners were announced at Modern Business Experience in Las Vegas, Nevada. Modern Business Experience brings together finance, supply chain, and human resources professionals to explore how cloud applications and connected business processes can enhance business agility, drive new business models, and create breakthrough experiences for customers, employees, partners, and suppliers. For additional information on these winners, please visit the Oracle HCM Cloud Rubies Awards website. About Oracle The Oracle Cloud offers a complete suite of integrated applications for Sales, Service, Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Supply Chain and Manufacturing, plus Highly Automated and Secure Generation 2 Infrastructure featuring the Oracle Autonomous Database. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com. About Modern Business Experience 2019 Modern Business Experience arms professionals across HR, finance, and supply chain with the tools to create a connected enterprise and thrive in the Experience Economy. For more information, please visit https://www.oracle.com/modern-business-experience/ Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. SOURCE Oracle Related Links http://www.oracle.com SOMERSET, N.J., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- PrimeWork (https://primework.com/) Somerset is pleased to announce that the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) has approved all PrimeWork tenants for application to the NJ Ignite Grant. Governor Murphy's initiatives to create a stronger, fairer economy is reinventing New Jersey as a center for innovation. Empowering new businesses and assisting them in overcoming obstacles on their way to success is a crucial part of that dream. NJ Ignite supports entrepreneurs by providing rent grants, called the Ignite grant. In addition, this program provides shared workspaces with a new tool for attracting clients. This grant supports and supplements the rent charges for early-stage technology and science companies in New Jersey based shared workspaces. The EDA's grants will cover rent payments for 2, 4, or 6 months for approved organizations. Tenants of PrimeWork Somerset, the premier shared office space solution for Somerset county and her surrounding areas, are now approved to apply for this unique grant. Want to learn more about the Ignite grant? Visit the NJEDGA website. PrimeWork is an all-inclusive office space solution with 24/7 access to a fully-functional and furnished work environment. The magnificent space caters to everyone, from individual freelancers to mid-sized organizations, as well as small and large businesses in a variety of different sectors. Featuring concierge-level white-glove services, and amenities that live up to big-city standards - with all the convenience of a local workspace! CONTACT: AviO, CEO, PrimeWork PHONE: (917) 578-7408 EMAIL: [email protected] SOURCE PrimeWork Related Links https://primework.com "At Purina, we're guided by a core belief that people and pets are better together," said Joseph Sivewright, Purina CEO. "That's why we've stepped up our commitment to organizations and programs that help keep people and pets together, as well as those that bring people and pets together through pet adoption and programing that promotes the benefits of pet ownership." Enabling Healthier and Happier Lives Purina has long supported pet welfare organizations. In 2018 the company provided more than 12 million pounds of pet food and cat litter to pet shelters across the country. These donations provide high-quality nutrition to more than 187,000 pets through Purina's Shelter Champion partners. The company also supports the Petfinder Foundation through a number of annual campaigns that generate grants for Petfinder shelters and subsidize more than $100,000 in pet adoption fees. Last July 4th Purina Dog Chow launched the Service Dog Salute campaign to bring together rescue dogs with veterans experiencing PTSD, and guide veterans through a ten-month program to train dogs to become their own psychiatric service dog. As a longtime supporter of the U.S. military, Purina Dog Chow knows the impact service dogs can have on the lives of our veterans, providing them with stability and companionship as they readjust to civilian life. The brand donated $500,000 to the service dog training program at Tony La Russa's Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF) to help fund an expansion that will reach veterans in need. Providing Support to Local Communities Supporting communities in need when a natural disaster strikes continues to be a key priority for Purina. In 2018, the company partnered with GreaterGood.org to send more than $60,000 to aid victims of natural disasters, and also worked with Rescue Bank, a national pet food bank and program of GreaterGood.org, to distribute more than 60,000 pounds of pet food and litter to pet shelters and owners in need. Efforts included sending relief to communities affected by Hurricanes Michael and Florence, as well as the California wildfires. "As a pet care leader, we know it's our responsibility to improve the lives of pets and the people who love them," said Bill Etling, Director of Purina Public Relations and Community Affairs. "We support our community partners in many ways -- including through providing funding and pet food and contributing our expertise in pet care. We're fortunate to work with some of the country's leading nonprofit organizations that are making a measurable, positive impact in support of individuals, communities and our planet." The bond between pets and their owners is unbreakable, but the lack of pet-friendly domestic violence shelters leaves many victims with a heartbreaking decision stay in an abusive relationship with their beloved pet, or leave their pet behind. Today, only roughly 10 percent of domestic violence shelters in the United States allow pets, and nearly half of victims (48%) will stay with their abuser in fear of what will happen to their pet if they leave. In 2018, Purina joined forces with RedRover to raise awareness of the issue and develop a program to help bridge this gap. The Purina + RedRover Purple Leash Project, announced early this year, will provide grant-based funding to help domestic violence shelters become pet-friendly so domestic abuse victims can escape with their pets and begin to heal together as survivors. Purina is committed to serving youth through several programs that develop leadership skills through lessons in humane education. This work ladders up to Nestle's education and career acceleration initiative Project Opportunity, which helps people gain work experience and strengthen their development skills. Through supporting programs like the Mutt-i-grees Curriculum, Purina is helping develop calm, confident and caring kids to foster a more humane future for all. The social emotional learning curriculum was developed by Purina's partners at North Shore Animal League America (NSALA), in conjunction with Yale School of the 21st Century, and often includes bringing shelter pets into the classroom to help engage students. For more than 50 years Purina has been supporting the United Way in its mission to improve lives by advancing the common good in communities across the world. Purina's annual pledge drive supports local United Way chapters in St. Louis and its manufacturing plant markets. For the past 10 years, Purina and its associates have generated more than $1 million annually for the United Way of Greater St. Louis, 100 percent of which is passed on to local nonprofits serving the community. Protecting the Planet for Future Generations Nestle Purina continued its commitment to a healthier planet through contributions to organizations like The Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited. In May Purina collaborated with The Nature Conservancy and Cargill to launch a three-year water conservation project designed to reduce the environmental impact of row crop irrigation in Nebraska and ultimately improve the sustainability of the beef supply chain. This project is expected to provide a scalable irrigation solution for farmers across the U.S. In August Purina announced a partnership with Ducks Unlimited that will protect and improve 1,600 acres of wetland and grasslands across Iowa over the next three years through Ducks Unlimited's Living Lakes Initiative. Programs like these promote the efficient use of our natural resources to help ensure a healthier future for both pets and people. To learn more about causes Purina supports, visit www.purina.com/about-purina/supporting-communities. About Nestle Purina Nestle Purina PetCare promotes responsible pet care, community involvement and the positive bond between people and their pets. A premiere global manufacturer of pet products, Nestle Purina PetCare is part of Swiss-based Nestle S.A., a global leader in nutrition, health and wellness. SOURCE Nestle Purina PetCare Company Related Links https://www.purina.com ROCKVILLE, Md., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- RegeneRx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTCQB: RGRX) ("the Company" or "RegeneRx"), a clinical-stage drug development company focused on tissue protection, repair and regeneration, today announced the appointment of Alessandro Noseda M.D. to the Company's Board of Directors, effective April 1, 2019. He will be the sixth member of the Company's Board. Dr. Noseda is the Chief Scientific Officer of Leadiant Biosciences S.p.A. and has extensive scientific and medical experience in the global development of new medical technologies and drug products. He has held numerous managerial positions with the R&D and marketing organizations of multinational pharmaceutical companies during his career. Previously, Dr. Noseda was the Director of Scientific Office and Strategic Alliances with Sigma-Tau, where he managed key R&D projects and was involved in creating partnerships with Novartis and Debiopharm, among others. He has also been Chief Executive Officer of Leadiant Biosciences SA (formerly Sigma-tau Research Switzerland) from 2007 to 2017. While at Sigma-Tau and Leadiant, he developed proprietary technologies and guided the company through development of orphan drug designations and registration of new medical products. Dr. Noseda has served on the Board of Directors of numerous private biotech companies. "We are pleased Dr. Noseda has joined our Board of Directors. We believe his expertise will enhance our ability to develop additional strategic and commercial partners in the future, while also helping us manage our current partnerships. As we get closer to commercialization with our current product candidates, we have substantial territories that are yet unlicensed and look forward to Dr. Noseda's guidance in helping identify new opportunities," stated J.J. Finkelstein, RegeneRx's president and chief executive officer. About RegeneRx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (www.regenerx.com) RegeneRx is focused on the development of novel therapeutic peptides, including Thymosin beta 4 (T4) and its constituent fragments, for tissue and organ protection, repair and regeneration. RegeneRx currently has three drug candidates in clinical development for ophthalmic, cardiac and dermal indications, three active strategic licensing agreements in the U.S., China, and Pan Asia (Korea, Japan, and Australia, among others), and has patents and patent applications covering its products in many countries throughout the world. RegeneRx, through its U.S joint venture, ReGenTree LLC, sponsored its second Phase 3 clinical trial (ARISE-2) in approximately 600 patients with dry eye syndrome (DES) and reported positive clinical results with no safety issues. ReGenTree recently initiated ARISE-3, a follow-up Phase 3 trial in 700 patients with DES designed to confirm the positive results from ARISE-2. ReGenTree is also sponsoring a 46-patient Phase 3 clinical trial in patients with neurotrophic keratopathy (NK). Additionally, RGN-259 is being developed in patients with dry eye syndrome in Asia through RegeneRx's two Asian partnerships. RGN-259 has been designated an orphan drug in the U.S. for the treatment of NK. RGN-352, the Company's T4-based injectable formulation, is a Phase 2-ready drug candidate designed to be administered systemically to prevent and repair cardiac damage resulting from heart attacks and central nervous system tissue disorders such as peripheral neuropathy, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injuries such as stroke. It may also have applications in patients with severe septic shock. RGN-137, also designated an orphan drug in the U.S., is the Company's T4-based dermal gel formulation that is being developed for epidermolysis bullosa, a rare skin condition. The Company's licensee, GtreeBNT, has initiated a small, open clinical trial in the U.S. for this indication. For additional information about RegeneRx please visit www.regenerx.com. Forward-Looking Statements Any statements in this press release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements made under the provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from historical results or from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that any current or future animal studies or clinical trials, sponsored by the Company or its licensees, will start on time, be completed within a projection time-frame, or result in future value or approved products. There can also be no assurance that the Company or its licensees will apply for an NDA in the future or that if the Company or a licensee applies for an NDA, that it will be accepted by the FDA and/or that the product candidate will be approved for marketing in the U.S. or any other country. There can be no assurance that RegeneRx will be able to finance operations on a continual basis or through the completion of clinical development of its products by its licensees. Please view these and other risks described in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including those identified in the "Risk Factors" section of the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2017, and subsequent quarterly reports filed on Form 10-Q, as well as other filings it makes with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements in this press release represent the Company's views only as of the date of this release and should not be relied upon as representing its views as of any subsequent date. The Company specifically disclaims any obligation to update this information as a result of future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. SOURCE RegeneRx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. Related Links http://www.regenerx.com FIFTH CITY offers a one-stop shop for all beauty needs, inclusive of face, lip and eye makeup, brushes, and accessories. Each makeup item is exquisitely designed with rose gold and black packaging, adding elegance to the accessibly priced collection. FIFTH CITY marks a significant step in Saks OFF 5TH's overall strategy to continue to expand its exclusive merchandise assortment, serving as a strong complement to its designer products. More than 35 products will be featured as part of the launch, including: brushes with a modern, ultra-dense design and premium, cruelty-free bristles, such as the deluxe powder brush ( $22 USD ), the 360 foundation brush ( $16 USD ) and the conceal & line brush ( $8 USD ) ), the 360 foundation brush ( ) and the conceal & line brush ( ) face, eye and lip makeup, such as blush & highlighter sticks ( $20 USD ) and lip glosses ( $12 USD ) ) and lip glosses ( ) accessories, such as ribbon hair ties ( $4.99 USD ) and a towel turban ( $12.99 USD ) FIFTH CITY is exclusive to Saks OFF 5TH locations in U.S. and saksoff5th.com. Prices range from $4.99 to $60 USD. SOCIAL: @saksoff5th WHEN: March 21, 2019 WHERE: Select Saks OFF 5TH locations in U.S. and on saksoff5th.com [Stores include, but not limited to, New York 57th Street and Brooklyn (NY), Beverly Connection and Costa Mesa (CA), Washington D.C., The Gallery at Westbury Plaza, Woodbury Common Premium Outlets and The Outlets at Bergen Town Center (NJ)] ABOUT SAKS OFF 5TH As part of the Hudson's Bay Company brand portfolio, Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH is a world-class destination for top designer brands at extraordinary value. The retailer's 129 stores and e-commerce division, saksoff5th.com, combine the two great joys of shopping: the delight of discovering the best in luxury and the thrill of finding a deal. A modern shopping experience of carefully curated off-the-runway trends, exceptional service, and savings on the biggest names in fashion, Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5TH leads the market as the premier luxury-value destination. FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT: Katie Majeski 570.362.2474 [email protected] SOURCE Saks OFF 5TH CHULA VISTA, Calif., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Skyfire Consulting, the country's premier public safety UAV consultancy, announced today FAA approval for the first active emergency response Certificate of Authorization with a Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) provision for public safety as part of the FAA's IPP program. Working on behalf of the Chula Vista Police Department with the support of the City of San Diego, and in partnership with software company Cape, Skyfire authored an extensive safety and risk mitigation analysis that cleared the way for the police department to operate its drones over a much larger area within its jurisdiction. "This authorization truly pushes the boundaries of what's possible for public safety agencies with drones," said Ben Kroll, Skyfire's COO, and lead on the Chula Vista project. "It wouldn't have been possible without the immense support of the FAA's IPP team and our very dedicated and patient partners at CVPD, Cape, and the City of San Diego." Since October 2018, Chula Vista Police Department has operated the nation's first Drone as a First Responder program in partnership with Cape, where drones are integrated into daily emergency response operations as part of the San Diego Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration Pilot Program (IPP). Since its launch, CVPD drones equipped with the Cape Aerial Telepresence platform have conducted more than 300 flights, accounting for more than 80 hours of flight time without incident or accident, and have contributed to more than 40 arrests. The new authorization, which went into effect March 15, 2019, will increase the total footprint of coverage for emergency response operations from a three to nearly 40-square-mile area. Compared to the current regulation, which prevents the drone from being flown beyond the Pilot-in-Command's (PIC) line of sight, CVPD will now be able to operate drones up to three nautical miles from the PIC, or more than 10 times the previous coverage area. Today, Cape-enabled drones are dispatched to high-priority calls from the CVPD headquarters. The drone's onboard camera live streams HD video to the teleoperator in the command center, who can maneuver the drone and the camera remotely in real-time in order to gain the exact visibility needed. With the drone typically arriving on scene well before responding ground units, the command center can better identify and dispatch needed resources to the scene. Responding officers can also view the live stream en route to the scene on their mobile devices, giving them full visibility of the situation to which they are responding. "This COA is a recognition of the vision our industry has been striving for, to allow drones to arrive on scene before we put law enforcement officers and firefighters in harm's way," said Kroll. Skyfire's partnership with Chula Vista Police Department, Cape, and the San Diego IPP team is the latest example of the company's mission to improve the lives of first responders, and the safety of the public, using UAVs. Skyfire's team of pilots, project managers and intelligence analysts recently became the first team to provide live streaming aerial video to law enforcement agencies during the NFL's biggest game this past February. About Skyfire Consulting Skyfire Consulting is the nation's premier public safety UAV consulting company, specializing in drone sales, pilot training, FAA consulting, SOP development and service and repairs for public safety agencies around the country. Skyfire is a division of Atlanta Drone Group, Inc., and is headquartered in Decatur, Georgia. For more information on Skyfire, visit SkyfireConsulting.com or contact: Matt Sloane [email protected] 404-723-5621 Related Images skyfire-logo.png Skyfire Logo SOURCE Skyfire Related Links http://www.skyfireconsulting.com LAGUNA HILLS, Calif., March 21, 2019 /PR Newswire/ Sonendo, a market-leading dental technology company, and developer of the GentleWave System announced today three new additions to its leadership team in support of its rapid commercial growth. The three individuals joining the Sonendo team are: Jacqueline Collins, Vice President, General Counsel; Jane Metcalf, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs & Quality Assurance; and Sara Wissmueller, Vice President of Information Technology. Jacqueline Collins spent 15 years as Vice President, General Counsel at Nobel Biocare North America, a Danaher subsidiary, and a leading dental implant and digital dentistry medical manufacturer. Jacqueline holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Oregon , an MA in Political Science from Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute, and a JD from the University of Oregon School of Law. spent 15 years as Vice President, General Counsel at Nobel Biocare North America, a Danaher subsidiary, and a leading dental implant and digital dentistry medical manufacturer. Jacqueline holds a BA in Political Science from the , an MA in Political Science from Eagleton Institute, and a JD from the School of Law. Jane Metcalf brings nearly 28 years of experience in Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance in the medical device field. Before joining Sonendo, Jane was Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for Reverse Medical Corporation, a developer and manufacturer of neurological medical devices. She has held Quality and Regulatory Vice-Presidential positions at GE HealthCare and Conmed Corporation. Jane holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MBA from The University of California at Irvine. brings nearly 28 years of experience in Regulatory Affairs and Quality Assurance in the medical device field. Before joining Sonendo, Jane was Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for Reverse Medical Corporation, a developer and manufacturer of neurological medical devices. She has held Quality and Regulatory Vice-Presidential positions at GE HealthCare and Conmed Corporation. Jane holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the and an MBA from The at Irvine. Sara Wissmueller has over 25 years of Information Technology experience in various industries. Before joining Sonendo, Sara was VP of IT for Verizon Connect (Telogis), an industry leader in telematics and fleet management. Sara has managed IT departments at DB Schenker, Washington Mutual, and Tricon Global Restaurants. Sara holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Wisconsin in Management Information Systems & Accounting and a Master of Business Administration from Marquette University. President and CEO, Bjarne Bergheim notes, "We are thrilled to add these three talented executives to our leadership team. Jackie, Jane, and Sara will be critical players as we continue to build out the Sonendo opportunity and prepare the Company for future growth." About Sonendo Sonendo, Inc. is a privately-held company developing disruptive technology to transform dentistry by Saving Teeth Through Sound Science. The first commercially available product from Sonendo, the GentleWave System shows significant improvements in clinical efficacy and procedure efficiency when compared to standard root canal treatment.1,2,3 1Sigurdsson A et al. (2016) J Endod. 42:1040-48. 2Molina B et al. (2015) J Endod. 41:1701-05. 3Trope M et al. (1999) J Endod. 25:34550. Forward-Looking Statements This announcement contains forward-looking statements based on management's beliefs, assumptions and expectations and information currently available to management. All statements that address events or developments that we expect or anticipate will occur in the future are forward-looking statements, including without limitation our expectations on the timing and progress of research and development activities. Management believes that these forward-looking statements are reasonable as and when made. However, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements because they speak only as of the date when made. Sonendo does not assume any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements publicly, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Actual results, developments or events could differ materially from those disclosed in the forward-looking statements. Media Contact: Bob Guyatt Vice President of Marketing 949.766.3636 SOURCE Sonendo Related Links http://www.sonendo.com "Zoosk is one of the strongest dating apps in the North American market, which comprises half of the $5 billion global online dating opportunity," said Jeronimo Folgueira, Chief Executive Officer of Spark Networks SE. "Similarly, North America has been a key strategic market for Spark, and the focal point for our growth initiatives. Our deal with Zoosk creates the second largest online dating platform in North America and the second largest publicly-listed dating company in the world. Over the past 18 months, our management team has successfully integrated acquisitions and developed new brands. As a result of these efforts, our brand portfolio now includes SilverSingles, which continues to exceed our expectations, and the Christian Mingle, Jdate and JSwipe brands, which have all shown significant improvement since they were acquired in late 2017. Our acquisition of Zoosk is the most transformative deal in our history, and we expect the transaction to immediately strengthen our position in the online dating market. With the increased scale that results from the combination, we see a clear path to profitability improvements and greater opportunity to invest in innovation and growth initiatives that will drive shareholder value." With the addition of Zoosk, Spark will more than double in size and the combined business will be considerably more valuable than the two stand-alone entities: Following the completion of its integration plans, Spark expects to drive significant Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. In 2020, Spark expects Adjusted EBITDA to exceed $50 million . . Approximately two-thirds of the combined company's revenue will be generated in North America , advancing Spark's goal of building a growing and profitable presence of scale in the world's largest dating market. "We are excited to help create such a broad and powerful portfolio of brands that will address specific user needs in the dating market globally, while leveraging the best of both companies to create a world-class platform to serve customers across these brands," said Steven McArthur, Zoosk's CEO, who will be joining the Board of Directors of Spark. Transaction Details Under the terms of the agreement, Spark will acquire 100% of Zoosk's shares with a combination of cash and stock valuing the company at approximately $255 million based on the closing price of Spark Networks SE stock on March 20, 2019. Spark will issue 12.98 million American Depository Shares (ADSs) valued at approximately $150 million based on the closing price of Spark Networks SE stock of $11.53 on March 20, 2019. Additionally, Zoosk shareholders will receive net cash consideration of $95 million at closing and $10 million via a deferred cash payment in December 2020, which will be funded through a new $120 million senior secured debt facility. The transaction is expected to close early in the third quarter of 2019, subject to the approval of Spark Networks SE shareholders, receipt of a permit authorizing the issuance of the ADSs, and the satisfaction of other customary closing conditions. Over 75% of Spark shareholders have committed to vote in favor of the transaction. The transaction was unanimously approved by both the Spark and Zoosk boards of directors. Given the timing of this transaction and other considerations, Spark's 2019 outlook is no longer consistent with preliminary 2019 guidance provided on August 30, 2018 as part of Spark Networks First Half 2018 results. Spark is focused on completing the post-close merger integration work as efficiently as possible, and we believe our efforts will result in at least $50 million of Adjusted EBITDA in 2020. Piper Jaffray & Co. is acting as exclusive financial advisor to Zoosk on the proposed transaction and Fenwick & West LLP serves as legal counsel to Zoosk. In addition, Piper Jaffray & Co. arranged staple financing for Zoosk. Morrison & Foerster LLP served as legal counsel to Spark. Governance and Structure The existing Spark Networks SE executive team will manage the combined company. Jeronimo Folgueira, will continue to serve as Chief Executive Officer, Robert O'Hare, as Chief Financial Officer, Michael Schrezenmaier as Chief Operating Officer, Ben Hoskins as Chief Technology Officer, Luciana Telles as Chief Marketing Officer, and Gitte Bendzulla as General Counsel. Spark's headquarters will remain in Berlin, Germany. Upon the closing, Spark Networks SE will appoint Steven McArthur, Zoosk's CEO and Deepak Kamra, General Partner at Canaan Partners, Zoosk's largest shareholder, to Spark's Board of Directors. Conference Call Spark Networks SE will host a conference call at 8:00 AM Pacific Time (11:00 AM Eastern Time), on Friday March 22, 2019 to discuss the transaction. Following the prepared remarks, the call will include a question-and-answer session. Toll Free: 1-877-705-6003 Germany Toll Free: 0-800-182-0040 Toll/International: 1-201-493-6725 Spark Networks will also host a webcast of the call, which will be accessible in the Investor Relations section of Spark Networks website at https://www.spark.net/investor-relations/home A replay will be available approximately three hours after completion of the call, and will run until April 5, 2019. Replay: Toll Free: 1-844-512-2921 Toll/International: 1-412-317-6671 Passcode: 13689010 Non-IFRS Financial Metrics Adjusted EBITDA is defined as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, share-based compensation, impairment of intangibles, and non-recurring costs. Adjusted EBITDA is not a measure defined by IFRS. The most directly comparable IFRS measure for Adjusted EBITDA is net (loss)/profit for the relevant period. This measure is one of the primary metrics by which Spark evaluates the performance of its businesses, budget, and forecast and compensates management. Spark believes this measure provides management and investors with a consistent view, period to period, of the core earnings generated from ongoing operations and excludes the impact of items that Spark does not consider representative of its ongoing operating performance, including: (i) non-cash items such as share-based compensation, asset impairments, non-cash currency translation adjustments, (ii) one-time items that have not occurred in the past two years and are not expected to recur in the next two years, including severance, transaction advisory fees, and integration costs, and (iii) discontinued operations. Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as a substitute for net loss (as determined in accordance with IFRS) for the purpose of analyzing Spark's operating performance or financial position, as Adjusted EBITDA is not defined by IFRS. Spark's Adjusted EBITDA expectation for the combined company in 2020 does not include certain charges and costs. The adjustments to EBITDA in these periods are generally expected to be similar to the kinds of charges and costs excluded from Adjusted EBITDA in prior quarters, such as (i) non-cash items such as stock-based compensation, asset impairments, non-cash currency translation adjustments related to an inter-company loan and (ii) one-time items that have not occurred in the past two years and are not expected to recur in the next two years. The exclusion of these charges and costs in future periods will have a significant impact on the combined company's Adjusted EBITDA. Spark Networks SE and Zoosk are not able to provide a reconciliation of this non-IFRS financial guidance to the corresponding IFRS measure without unreasonable effort because of the uncertainty and variability of the nature and amount of these future charges and costs. Forward-Looking Statements This document contains "forward-looking statements" as defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. All statements in this press release other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause Spark Networks SE's or Zoosk's or the combined company's actual performance or achievements to be materially different from those described in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and neither Spark Networks SE nor Zoosk assumes any duty to update any forward-looking statements. We caution readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements using forward-looking terminology such as "will" and "expect;" statements about the benefits of the business combination to the existing brand portfolio and our positioning in the online dating market; statements about the ability to drive superior growth, achieve cost savings, increase margin expansion and improve scale; statements about the transaction providing a clear path to profitability improvements and significantly increasing our ability to invest in innovation and growth initiatives to drive shareholder value; statements about value of the combined company exceeding the value of Zoosk and Spark as stand-alone entities; statements about the strength of Zoosk's dating app; statements about the ability to leverage strengths of each company to provide exceptional user experience and drive shareholder value; statements about the expected size of the combined company; statements about the projected financial results of the combined company for 2020 and beyond; statements about the combined company's subscribers and revenue; statements about the combined company's plans, objectives, expectations and intentions and other statements that are not historical facts. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ from those set forth in the forward-looking statements: (i) the possibility that the proposed transaction does not close when expected or at all because required shareholder or other approvals and other conditions to closing are not received or satisfied on a timely basis or at all; (ii) changes in Spark Networks SE's share price before closing, including as a result of the financial performance of Spark Networks SE or Zoosk prior to closing, or more generally due to broader stock market movements, and the performance of peer group companies; (iii) the risk that the benefits from the transaction may not be fully realized or may take longer to realize than expected, including as a result of changes in general economic and market conditions, interest and exchange rates, monetary policy, laws and regulations and their enforcement, and the degree of competition in the geographic and business areas in which Spark Networks SE and Zoosk operate; (iv) the ability to promptly and effectively integrate the businesses of Spark Networks SE and Zoosk; (v) the reaction to the transaction of the companies' customers, employees and counterparties; (vi) diversion of management time on merger-related issues; (vii) lower-than-expected revenue, credit quality deterioration or a reduction in net earnings; and (viii) other risks that are described in Spark's public filings with the SEC. For more information, see the risk factors described in Spark Networks' Annual Reports on Form 20-F and other filings with the SEC. Additional Information About the Acquisition and Where to Find It The transaction will require the approval of Zoosk's stockholders, and the issuance of the ADSs comprising a portion of the consideration will require the approval of Spark Networks SE's shareholders. This announcement is not a recommendation in favor of a vote on the transaction, nor is it a solicitation of proxies in connection with any such vote. Spark Networks SE will hold a general meeting of shareholders in connection with the transaction. The parties intend that Spark Networks SE will issue ADSs in the transaction in reliance upon an exemption from registration provided by Section 3(a)(10) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, following a fairness hearing to be convened by the Commissioner of the California Department of Business Oversight. Stockholders of Zoosk are advised to read the Important information about the transaction and details about the fairness hearing, including a formal notice of the hearing, that will be published and made available to Zoosk stockholders in accordance with Section 25142 of the California Corporations Code, and shareholders of Spark Networks SE are advised to read the important information about the transaction provided in materials for the general meeting of shareholders. The information statement, fairness hearing notice, and other relevant materials (when they become publicly available) may be obtained free of charge by contacting Spark Networks SE at [email protected]. This communication does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities. ABOUT SPARK NETWORKS SE Spark Networks SE is a leading global dating company with a portfolio of premium brands designed for singles seeking serious long-term relationships. The company has a presence in 29 countries worldwide and is publicly listed on the NYSE American LLC exchange under the ticker symbol "LOV". Spark Network's portfolio of online dating brands includes EliteSingles , SilverSingles , Christian Mingle , Jdate , eDarling , JSwipe , Attractive World , Adventist Singles and LDS Singles , amongst others. The company was formed in 2017 through the merger of Affinitas GmbH (founded 2008) and Spark Networks Inc. (founded 1997). ABOUT ZOOSK, INC. Zoosk operates a leading global online dating platform, utilizing proprietary technology to connect millions of members located in countries around the world both online and via its mobile apps. Investors: Robert O'Hare Chief Financial Officer [email protected] Press contact: Denise Garcia Hayflower Partners [email protected] Phoebe Dunn [email protected] Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/839482/Spark_Merger_Announce_2.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/839480/Spark_Merger_Announce_1.jpg Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/839483/Spark_Merger_Announce_3.jpg SOURCE Spark Networks SE Related Links http://www.spark-networks.com COLUMBIA, Mo., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Three University of Missouri student composers will have their works played by musicians with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in a public reading session at 8:00 p.m. Wednesday, April 3, at Powell Hall in St. Louis. The public is invited to attend, with no admission charge or RSVP required. From left: Ben Colagiovanni, Libby Roberts, Mikkel Christensen As part of a joint educational venture between the orchestra and the Mizzou New Music Initiative, student composers Mikkel Christensen, Ben Colagiovanni, and Libby Roberts were selected last year by SLSO Resident Conductor Gemma New to write new works for a 40-piece chamber orchestra drawn from the musicians of the St. Louis Symphony. The resulting compositions are "The Lament of Orpheus" by Roberts; "Fourteen Trees" by Christensen; and "Slow Burn" by Colagiovanni. The three works were first read, played and critiqued in a private session in October, and the composers then had a chance to revise their music for this second, public reading. Colagiovanni, who grew up in the St. Louis area and attended Clayton High School, is a senior working toward an undergraduate degree in composition at Mizzou. Christensen, who's from Lockhart, TX, and Roberts, a native of Philadelphia, PA, both are in their second year of study for a master's degree. They are the second group of Mizzou students to take part in the composer reading program, following Dustin Dunn, Aaron Mencher, and Douglas Osmun in 2017-18. Celebrated as one of today's most exciting and enduring orchestras, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra is the second-oldest orchestra in the country, celebrating its 139th year in the 2018/2019 season. Widely considered one of the world's finest, the SLSO today builds on the institution's current momentum on all fronts, including artistic, financial, audience growth, and community impact, and looks toward the future with Music Director Designate Stephane Deneve. The Mizzou New Music Initiative (http://mizzounewmusic.missouri.edu/) is an array of programs positioning the University of Missouri's School of Music as a leading center for music composition and new music. The programs of the Mizzou New Music Initiative are made possible through the generous support of the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation, led by Dr. Jeanne and Rex Sinquefield (http://www.sinquefieldcharitablefoundation.com/). For more information: Mizzou New Music Initiative: http://mizzounewmusic.missouri.edu/ St. Louis Symphony: https://www.slso.org/ Sinquefield Charitable Foundation: http://www.sinquefieldcharitablefoundation.com/ Media Contact: Jacob Gotlib [email protected] 573-884-9478 SOURCE Mizzou New Music Initiative Related Links https://www.slso.org/ LAS VEGAS, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Switch (NYSE: SWCH), the global technology infrastructure corporation that develops hyperscale data center ecosystems for enterprise colocation, elite hybrid cloud, and industry-leading connectivity solutions, today announced that it has launched a new strategic sales team with the hire of Jocelyn McCaslin as Vice President of Global Sales. McCaslin joins Switch as part of its greater strategic initiative to build a new strategic sales team of senior data center sales specialists to drive the growth of large enterprise clients across Switch's national campus footprint. McCaslin joins Switch from RagingWire data centers where she was formerly the Director of Global Accounts and Director of Channel with a focus on driving strategic Fortune 100 client growth and managing key partnerships for the company. Prior to that, McCaslin worked for CenturyLink and IO Data Centers, contributing to her well-rounded sales experience in the data center industry, including construction, telecom, cloud, and channel. As Vice President of Global Sales for Switch, McCaslin will play a key leadership role on the new sales team with a focus on the development of strategic hyperscale relationships. "Switch is the most powerful technology ecosystem for facilitating hybrid IT, and it was CEO and Founder Rob Roy's vision for the Enterprise Elite Hybrid Cloud that attracted me to Switch," said Jocelyn McCaslin, Switch Vice President of Global Sales. "Switch has addressed the drivers for both hyperscale and enterprise requirements through its technology infrastructure that is uniquely prepared to meet and exceed massive client data growth demands in the most reliable, resilient and sustainable way." ABOUT Switch Switch (NYSE: SWCH), the technology infrastructure corporation headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada is built on the intelligent and sustainable growth of the internet. Switch founder and CEO Rob Roy has developed more than 600 issued and pending patent claims covering data center designs that have manifested into the company's world-renowned data centers and technology solutions. The Switch PRIMES, located in Las Vegas and Tahoe Reno, Nevada; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Atlanta, Georgia (opening in Q4 2019) are the world's most powerful hyperscale data center campus ecosystems with low latency to major U.S. markets. Visit switch.com for more information. SOURCE Switch Related Links www.switch.com Fares and flights are now displayed on popular search engine CALGARY, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - Swoop flights are now showcased on the industry's leading search engine, Google Flights. The addition of the distribution channel promotes the visibility of Swoop flights, which can also be booked direct through its website FlySwoop.com . "Teaming up with Google Flights is key to sharing our ultra-low-fares with more travellers," said Karen McIsaac, Senior Advisor of Communications at Swoop. "All of our flights are non-stop. This, in combination with our fares, is sure to surface Swoop flights as the most attractive option quite regularly in the markets we serve. We're especially excited about the fare-compare functionality, proving just how affordable we are." The agreement is great news for travellers, who can now use an interface they know and love to book Swoop Flights. To learn more about Swoop's destinations, schedule and ultra-low-cost model visit FlySwoop.com or connect with Swoop on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram . About Swoop Established in 2018, Swoop is Canada's leading ultra-low-cost airline, independently operated as part of the WestJet Group of companies, offering point-to-point scheduled service to 17 destinations in Canada, the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean. Swoop offers completely unbundled products and services, creating the unique opportunity for travellers to control their costs and customize their experience by purchasing only the extras they desire. Swoop operates a modern fleet of six Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft, equipped with in-seat power and Wi-Fi connectivity. A total of ten aircraft are expected in operation by the end of 2019. Swoop's mobile app allows travellers to quickly and easily book flights, manage bookings, check-in, view boarding passes, track flights and access Wi-Fi service in-flight. For more details on Swoop, including employment opportunities, visit FlySwoop.com . SOURCE Swoop Beginning from a late start in China's online game industry, Tencent has rapidly accumulated tremendous development, publishing and operational expertise to become one of the largest game companies in the world. According to AppAnnie, more than 200 million gamers outside China enjoy high quality interactive, immersive and instantaneous experiences every month from Tencent and its partners across a wide variety of genres and platforms. Today, Tencent and its partners offer 140 games in more than 200 countries. "Making games is a complex and risky art. We have tremendous admiration and respect for innovative game developers who drive the industry forward and deliver memorable emotional experiences to gamers," said Ma. "Tencent's role is to help game developers advance the art so they can succeed around the world. Our expertise, insights and tools liberate developers to create game experiences faster, with higher quality and lower risk." Game developers today face three key challenges. One, development cycles are shorter than ever, while gamers have higher expectations for quality and experience. Two, operating a successful game requires heavy investment and continuous management. Three, global games require on-demand access around the world, frequent updates, world-class security and a rich understanding of community behavior and dynamics. Tencent is dedicating significant resources and knowledge to helping game developers meet these challenges, so they can spend less time solving technical problems and more time doing what they do best: creating games. The company's robust set of technologies and solutions help game developers reach broader, more diverse global audiences, get deeper insight into those audiences, create new business models and better manage and monetize games. Tencent pioneered the concept of gaming as a service, providing players with free services and charging for value-added services within games. This innovation made gaming accessible to people worldwide, creating global hits like Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile. It also established mobile gaming as a mainstream phenomenon. Innovation Drives Quality--And Quality Drives Worldwide Success Tencent believes that sustainable industry growth requires the development of quality games. According to Ma, the company's investments, advanced insights and partner-focused approach to R&D allow game developers to drive quality by testing, exploring and developing innovative game genres, gameplay experiences and game services. Tencent offers game developers an advanced, end-to-end platform for development, publishing, operations, distribution, social networking and eSports. It collaborates with the world's best game developers to explore new game concepts and new frontiers for development and supports independent developers through innovative programs like the Tencent Game Innovation Fund and Game Without Borders. "We have a global, long-term view of the industry," said Ben Feder, President International Partnerships for North America. at Tencent. "That's why we're working with the best developers in the world, including Netmarble in South Korea, Garena in Singapore, Supercell in Finland and Epic Games and Riot in the United States, to dream big and deliver experiences that surprise and delight gamers." A Next-Generation Platform for High Quality Games Tencent technologies and solutions can help game developers with everything from R&D to operations and publishing--making it faster and easier to create and successfully operate games. Game developers benefit from rich insights based on big-data analysis and user-behavior research as well as tools to help test, optimize and improve games. "What we've learned is that gamers around the world are very similar. They want to play quality games and they want to share that experience with others," said Ma. "At the same time, gamers live in different cultures and play games in different environments. That's why we've created an open platform that allows developers to bring more high-quality games to more people around the world." Tencent also works with game developers to ensure a healthy, positive gaming experience, offering anti-cheating, anti-piracy and security solutions to ensure fairness and safety, including the ability to set time limits on daily play, and solutions to detect unauthorized or underage users. ABOUT TENCENT Tencent uses technology to enrich the lives of Internet users. Our social products Weixin and QQ link our users to a rich digital content catalogue including games, video, music and books. Our proprietary targeting technology helps advertisers reach out to hundreds of millions of consumers in China. Our infrastructure services including payment, security, cloud and artificial intelligence create differentiated offerings and support our partners' business growth. Tencent invests heavily in people and innovation, enabling us to evolve with the Internet. Tencent was founded in Shenzhen, China, in 1998. Shares of Tencent (00700.HK) are traded on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. SOURCE Tencent DALLAS, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- A Texas federal judge has ruled that key elements of a lawsuit filed by Performance Pulsation Control (PPC) against Sigma Drilling Technologies can proceed, clearing the way for a jury trial later this year on claims of trade secret theft, breach of fiduciary duty, unfair competition and other claims under the Federal Copyright Act. U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant's March 11 ruling rejected defendant Sigma Drilling Technologies' motion for summary judgment on the claims against Sigma. The judge said a jury should be allowed to consider PPC's claims that former employee Justin Manley used the company's proprietary trade secrets, filed patent applications, secretly worked to create a competing line of products, and secretly operated a competing business Sigma while Manley was still employed as PPC's director of sales and marketing. "Our economy is built on the fundamental understanding that small businesses such as Performance Pulsation Control must be allowed to protect their hard-earned trade secrets from theft and misuse," said PPC attorney John Palter of Dallas-based Palter Sims Martinez. "This ruling means that PPC has a fair chance to argue its case before a jury and protect its products from unfair competition." Performance Pulsation Control, based in Richardson, is an industry-leading designer and manufacturer of pulsation dampeners for pumps used in oil, gas and mining operations that protect components from damage and improve their efficiency, reliability and safety. The lawsuit seeks an injunction on Sigma's sale of the products plus monetary damages and a declaratory judgment establishing that PPC is the owner of copyrights and trade secrets in use by Sigma. For more information about PPC, visit https://www.pulsationcontrol.com/. The case is Performance Pulsation Control v Sigma Drilling Technologies et al., filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Case No.: 4:17-cv-00450-ALM. Palter Sims Martinez LLC is a Dallas law firm known for high integrity and trusted counsel on behalf of businesses seeking legal and business solutions to their litigation and transactional matters. For more information about the firm, visit http://www.palterlaw.com/. Contact: Robert Tharp Androvett Legal Media 214-559-4630 [email protected] SOURCE Palter Sims Martinez LLC From Air to Sea, The Bahamas' Tourism Business Is Stronger Than Ever NASSAU, Bahamas, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism & Aviation has heralded the highest number of international arrivals ever, resulting in record hotel occupancy levels and numerous tourism industry awards and media accolades. The Bahamas began 2019 strong with the launch of a new brand campaign highlighting the beauty and authenticity of its 16 islands in partnership with Lenny Kravitz, urging travelers to Fly Away to The Bahamas. The Ministry also announced exciting plans for the development of a state of the art cruise port in Nassau. "It is my great pride and pleasure to report that The Bahamas is experiencing its strongest tourism numbers ever on record," said Minister D'Aguilar. "We look forward to building upon the success of our progressive plans and continuing the momentum in 2019 as we forge ahead with exciting new initiatives." RECORD ARRIVALS The Ministry's data partner ForwardKeys, that tracks and reports inbound visitor data, reported international arrivals to The Bahamas grew by 15% in January 2019 versus January 2018. Several key markets registered double-digit growth. In February, international arrivals increased by 11.1% year-over-year. Air capacity grew by 20.0% in January and 21% in February year-over-year, with a solid seat growth from the best-connected international markets - the U.S.A (+23.9%) and Canada (+12.7%). CRUISE ARRIVALS Last year was a record-breaking year for cruise ship and stopover arrivals. By the end of 2018, foreign air and sea arrivals totaled over 6.6 million visitors, a drastic increase from the 6.1 million recorded in 2017. Stopover visitors alone had increased 16.7% in 2018, as compared to 2017, and Freeport saw a surge of sea visitors by 49%. HOTEL AND AIRLIFT SALES INCREASE The Nassau and Paradise Island hotel industry reported a spike in average daily room rates and revenue per available room in 2018 compared to 2017. The year ended with room revenues up 34%, gains not seen in the past ten years. ABOUT THE BAHAMAS The Islands Of The Bahamas have a place in the sun for everyone. Do everything or do nothing, just remember It's Better in The Bahamas. Call 1-800-Bahamas or visit www.Bahamas.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. CONTACT Anita Johnson-Patty Bahamas Ministry of Tourism & Aviation [email protected] SOURCE Bahamas Ministry of Tourism & Aviation Related Links http://www.Bahamas.com Dayana Morales de Soto was born on October 27, 1977, in Panama City, Republic of Panama. She comes from a large family, has 3 children and is married to Dennis Soto, currently residing at a military base in Missouri. She finished her secondary studies in 1995, two years ago at the University in Business Administration and two years in Law and Political Sciences, she has several Certificates and Diplomas in higher studies. She is a person who likes to learn new things and has always been very interested in writing stories, at the end of 2016, she started writing her first book, in 2017, with her book finished, she decided to try her luck and it was where she decided to publish her book: "The Tree Daughter," which ended thanks to his two daughters, who showed interest in knowing the end of it. The author comments: "It is an interesting book and I focused on the problems that the human being has had, still has and in what could become those same problems if we do not do anything. The story is based on a story full of fantasy and science fiction, but that speaks of what man can do by power, hatred and discrimination; what it is capable of destroying. There has always been evil and good, and we decide which side we are on. In the story, we talk about Milagros and the tree of life, inside the tree there was a wonderful world and therefore the girl had unimaginable powers, although there was a group of men who went from town to town destroying everything, and in that they kill many people, including the girl's parents. Being protected by the Tree until her adolescence, she decides to avenge her people; but, just as there is the tree of good, there is also that of evil. The evil gave power to that man, leader of the group, these became demons and the battle between the two began, earning good for that occasion. The story takes a turn and goes to the year 3015, where we can identify more with the current problems. The end of the discriminated class seems to come to an end, but hope re-incarnates in Genesis, who in reality is still Milagros, ready to fight and overcome evil. This occasion is very intense and we see again a world full of fantasy and science fiction, it makes us imagine a very different world. We can identify ourselves in certain situations and we can imagine how our current world might look, but once again good dominates evil. " It is a beautiful story, full of fantasy, but at the same time shows many social situations that we live as individuals; hate, arrogance, discrimination, the distance we have created among our friends, families and all this by technology, which they use to dominate the human being and obtain more power. Published by Page Publishing, based in New York City, the work of Dayana Morales de Soto, "The Daughter of the Tree", is a story based on hope and the power to defeat evil, but full of fantasy and science fiction. For readers who wish to live a magical and splendid experience, they can do so, through reading this wonderful novel, and can purchase "The Tree Daughter", at any book store, or at Apple's online stores iTunes, Amazon, Google Play or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708. About Page Publishing: Page Publishing is a traditional New York-based, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors' books, including distribution in the world's largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create - not overwhelmed with logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and the like. Its roster of accomplished authors and publishing professionals allows writers to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues to focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at www.pagepublishing.com. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/837671/Dayana_Morales_de_Soto.jpg SOURCE Page Publishing Related Links https://www.pagepublishing.com/ During Ed's four-year tenure TVC has achieved exponential growth in its federal Veterans Pro Bono Program cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and in other opportunities for its TVC National Volunteer Corps to serve veterans and their loved ones. Ed passionately stewarded TVC Staff through this change while strengthening alignment with TVC mission partners. Among his accomplishments, Ed was also responsible for leading the following initiatives and milestones: Launch of TVC's Discharge Upgrade Program in 2016, a national initiative to meet the legal needs of service men and women impacted by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injuries (TBI), which has completed more than 2,000 intakes to date; Launch of the annual TVC Legal Muster in 2016 and the weekly Veterans Pro Bono Legal Clinic at the DC VA Medical Center in 2017 as part of a Medical-Legal Partnership, where more than 1,000 veterans and their loved ones have been helped in its first 22 months; and Induction into the Catalogue for Philanthropy as "One of the Best" charities, recognition as "Best in America" with the annual Seal of Approval by America's Most Cost-Effective Charities, and award of the GuideStar Gold Seal of Transparency. "Ed leaves TVC in a very strong position for future growth and we sincerely thank him for his achievements and initiatives during his tenure as Executive Director. It has truly been my pleasure to work with him and witness, firsthand, his leadership and passion for helping veterans. Ed has had an enormous impact on TVC's mission accomplishment and on the staff and volunteers that worked with him. While he will no longer be a part of the day-to-day operations, we're happy that he will continue to support the mission as a Senior Fellow in an advisory role." Mary Ann Gilleece, Esq., Chairman of the Executive Board Effective immediately, Jim Carlsen will take the helm as Executive Director. Jim most recently served as the Director of Program Operations for TVC and prior to that he was a Senior Fellow in TVC's National Volunteer Corps. He brings a broad range of experience to the organization and will continue to do so in his new role. Jim started his career as an infantry officer in the United States Marines Corps in 1975, and later attended law school on the Funded Law Education Program at the University of Notre Dame, graduating in 1981. He served as Chief Defense Counsel for the 2nd Marine Division, Senior Trial Counsel for the main island of Japan, and as the senior Marine Defense Counsel before the U.S. military appellate courts. After active duty, Jim practiced in the Washington office of McGuire Woods LLP concentrating in government claims and civil litigation. He was recruited by one of his clients and served as Assistant General Counsel for Westinghouse Corporation. Following acquisition by Northrop Grumman Corporation, Jim served as Senior Counsel and spent his final ten years with Northrop as an executive in charge of Northrop's Underseas Systems division and later its International Systems division. He attended the LLM (Tax) program at Georgetown University Law School and is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School Executive Training program. He has been admitted to practice in the States of Indiana, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., and before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and the federal courts of Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland. He is also certified to practice before the Department of Veterans Affairs. "Jim has been a strong leader and an integral part of the major accomplishments and initiatives implemented by TVC in recent years. The entire Executive Board has every confidence in his vision and ample ability to lead TVC into the next chapter of our critical mission, ensuring our veterans obtain the care, benefits, and compensation they were promised and the best legal services, free of charge, to meet their challenges." Mary Ann Gilleece, Esq., Chairman of the Executive Board The Veterans Consortium Pro Bono Program (TVC) is the leading national 501(c)(3) charity providing free legal services in federal venues for veterans in need. TVC operates a global federal Veterans Pro Bono Program on behalf of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims to represent pro se veterans unjustly denied care, benefits, or compensation earned from military service. Our TVC National Volunteer Corps attorneys also litigate cases that are appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court. Our TVC Discharge Upgrade Program represents service men and women before military Discharge Review Boards and Boards of Correction for Military Records. For more information about TVC, how to get involved, how to support the organization and our national outreach initiatives associated with the federal Veterans Pro Bono Program please visit our website, www.vetsprobono.org or contact TVC via email at [email protected] SOURCE The Veterans Consortium Related Links http://www.vetsprobono.org HAMILTON, Bermuda, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Security Token Summit in Bermuda, sponsored by the Blockchain Token Association, attracted thought leaders and industry luminaries from over 14 different countries this week. Bermuda's Premier E. David Burt was in attendance along with members of Bermuda's Monetary Authority, Ministry of Finance, and FinTech Committee. And all those in attendance learned that Ad Tech startup tribeOS and its Digital Security Offering, FIRE, actually crossed the finish line first. The FIRE Digital Asset was given the regulatory green light under Bermuda's brand new digital asset law, the ICO Act (2018). Federal approval by the Bermuda Minister of Finance, Curtis L. Dickison, JP, MP has been a major catalyst for new interest and investment in tribeOS, the ad fraud-free marketplace built on the fully transparent blockchain. That interest accelerated in intensity as tribeOS CEO Matt Gallant and James Wallace, a co-founder of both tribeOS and Exponential Ventures, led an interactive presentation titled, "Spotlight on Bermuda STOs." The presentation was well-received at the Security Token Summit II, which took place March 19th and 20th in Hamilton, Bermuda and was organized by the Blockchain Token Association. The tribeOS co-founders revealed key insights on how to best structure and prepare a safe, secure, and fully compliant Digital Security Offering worthy of government approval. Matt Gallant, CEO of tribeOS, shared these remarks after their STO presentation, "Our presence at this Security Token Summit proved beneficial in many ways. First, to connect again in person with Bermuda officials that we worked so closely with to gain federal approval of the FIRE Digital Asset. Second, to share our blueprint for a Digital Security Offering to those in the growing digital security community. And finally, and most important, to be here on the leading edge of the emerging digital asset economy." Gallant's co-presenter James Wallace also added,"tribeOS FIRE, as the world's first federally approved digital security, ushers in a new era and creates a framework for startups to tokenize and gain traction in the new digital asset economy. This means that conventional capital can now migrate safely, securely and compliantly into that new tokenized, fractionalized world. Before that, capital went into that world in a totally unregulated way. Looking ahead, as TribeOS builds the first product/service platform and marketplace inside this new digital asset economy, our intent is to partner with other tokenized companies that emerge there." Other outcomes from the Blockchain Token Summit addressed a variety of topics, issues and concerns. For example, questions remain about how to best solve liquidity problems while creating a functional secondary market for digital securities. James Wallace, tribeOS co-founder, and also co-founder of Exponential Ventures, believes that his firm will architect a pathway to global liquidity in the near future. In addition, the country of Bermuda plans to further expand its leadership role in the digital asset world while continuing to apply its legacy of regulation to tokenized assets. And finally, those members of government on the front lines of digital securities compliance and adoption continue to display a keen interest in obtaining market feedback. These officials are open and receptive to updating the laws to be both compliant and safe while also remaining realistic as the growth of the digital securities market accelerates. To learn more about tribeOS and investing in the FIRE Digital Security, visit this page. For an expert quote on Digital Security Offerings, contact Matt Gallant or James Wallace here. ABOUT: tribeOS, is a blockchain-based digital advertising marketplace designed to help advertisers and publishers run secure, ad fraud-free campaigns online via a fully transparent platform. The tribeOS mission: create the fairest, most transparent, most profitable digital advertising marketplace in the world by ending ad fraud, increasing accountability, and ease-of-use for advertisers and publishers. http://www.tribeos.io/ MEDIA CONTACT: Marc Harty, Public Relations Director, tribeOS [email protected] 469-879-5323 SOURCE tribeOS Ilkov brings nearly 25 years of corporate banking experience, including 14 years as managing director and regional manager for the second largest corporate office of Bank of the West/BNPP USA in San Diego. Antrim served as vice president and director for 14 years with Bank of the West, where he was the highest performing relationship manager and oversaw one of that bank's largest middle-market portfolios. According to Richard Cabrera, executive vice president and head of commercial and corporate banking at Umpqua, Ilkov and Antrim represent two of the most trusted and skilled corporate bankers in the San Diego region, and their addition strengthens Umpqua's capacity to provide full-service support to middle-market companies. "San Diego is a priority market for Umpqua as we expand our presence across the region and offer growing companies a compelling, banking experience," said Cabrera. "Kris and Jason are tremendous talents with deep market relationships and proven records of helping companies succeed. We're thrilled that bankers of their caliber are on board to support our customers and to continue building on our success in Southern California and across the Southwest." Both Ilkov's and Antrim's expertise includes unsecured credits, C&I lending, M&A financing, debt capital markets and complex, multi-million-dollar syndications. Over the course of his career, Ilkov has built industry specialization in health care, defense, biotech, consumer goods, technology and aerospace. Antrim's primary industry specialization includes health care, technology, and consumer retail. About Umpqua Bank Umpqua Bank , headquartered in Roseburg, Ore., is a subsidiary of Umpqua Holdings Corporation, and has locations across Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California and Nevada. Umpqua Bank has been recognized for its innovative customer experience and banking strategy by national publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, Fast Company and CNBC. The company has been recognized for eight years in a row on FORTUNE magazine's list of the country's "100 Best Companies to Work For," and was recently named by The Portland Business Journal the Most Admired Financial Services Company in Oregon for the fourteenth consecutive year. In addition to its retail banking presence, Umpqua Bank owns Financial Pacific Leasing, Inc., a nationally recognized commercial finance company that provides equipment leases to small businesses. Umpqua Holdings also owns a retail brokerage subsidiary, Umpqua Investments, Inc., which offers services through Umpqua Bank stores and in dedicated offices throughout Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California and Nevada. Umpqua's Wealth Management Division serves high net worth individuals and nonprofits by providing customized financial solutions and offerings. Umpqua Holdings Corporation is headquartered in Portland, Ore. For more information, visit http://www.umpquabank.com . SOURCE Umpqua Bank Related Links http://www.umpquabank.com WASHINGTON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce today announced that U.S. and global communications veteran Michelle Russo will join one of the nation's largest advocacy organizations as chief communications officer, effective April 9, 2019. Russo will lead the Chamber's talented communications team to promote its free enterprise and pro-business mission. "We wanted a sophisticated, battle-tested leader who understands Washington and has been at important boardroom tables," said Chamber President and CEO Tom Donohue. "Michelle is one of the most accomplished and respected professionals in the business, and we are proud to have her join our leadership team. She was the clear choice to take on this critical role to help strengthen the future of advocacy on behalf of the business community. "Michelle's experience in the public and private sectors will be instrumental in helping the Chamber fully engage our vast network of businesses across the country and drive action in Washington," Donohue added. "We look forward to Michelle bringing her strong business acumen, international experience, and focus on innovation to lead our communications team into the future." Russo joins the Chamber following four years in London as executive vice president of Global Communications for Discovery, Inc., where she led communications and marketing teams across the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. In 2018, Russo led the top-to-bottom communications and public affairs strategy for the company's groundbreaking first broadcast of the Olympic Winter Games across Europe. Prior to Russo's relocation to London, she served as the company's senior vice president of Corporate Affairs & Communications in the U.S. There she built and managed Discovery's reputation as a global media leader, including its debut as a publicly traded company. Russo said: "Having spent most of my career in the private sector advocating for and representing companies large and small, I strongly believe in the power of business as a force for good in society. I am excited to join the Chamber and expand the impact of its important work on behalf of American businesses." Before joining Discovery, Russo was the primary spokesperson on media regulation at the Federal Communications Commission under both Democratic and Republican leadership. There she led public relations for major policy initiatives, including the relaxation of media ownership rules and regulatory reviews of industry mergers. She also served on the FCC crisis response team after the September 11 attacks. Russo earned a Master of Arts in Communication Management from the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies, with an emphasis in Business Administration, from UCLA. Russo was selected following a comprehensive international search conducted by the Chamber and Russell Reynolds Associates. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world's largest business federation representing the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations. U.S. Chamber Press Contact 202.463.5682 Contact: Eric Wohlschlegel PERMALINK SOURCE U.S. Chamber of Commerce Related Links http://uschamber.com PASADENA, Calif., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Western Asset Mortgage Capital Corporation (the "Company") (NYSE: WMC) announced today that its Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend of $0.31 per share for the first quarter of 2019. Today's dividend is payable on April 26, 2019 to common shareholders of record as of April 1, 2019, with an ex-dividend date of March 29, 2019. In addition, the Company estimates that its book value per share, as of February 28, 2019, was approximately $10.73. The February 28, 2019 estimated book value is unaudited, has not been verified or reviewed by any third party and is subject to normal quarterly reconciliation and other procedures. Further, the estimated book value is as of February 28, 2019 and does not include the dividend announced today. Book value will fluctuate with market conditions, the results of the Company's operations and other factors. The Company's current book value may be materially different from the February 28, 2019 estimated book value. ABOUT WESTERN ASSET MORTGAGE CAPITAL CORPORATION Western Asset Mortgage Capital Corporation is a real estate investment trust that invests in, acquires and manages a diverse portfolio of assets consisting of Agency CMBS, Agency RMBS, Non-Agency RMBS, Non-Agency CMBS, ABS, GSE Credit Risk Transfer Securities and Residential Whole, Bridge Loans and Commercial Loans. The Company's investment strategy may change, subject to the Company's stated investment guidelines, and is based on its manager Western Asset Management Company, LLC's perspective of which mix of portfolio assets it believes provide the Company with the best risk-reward opportunities at any given time. The Company is externally managed and advised by Western Asset Management Company, LLC, an investment advisor registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Legg Mason, Inc. Please visit the Company's website at www.westernassetmcc.com FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements." Operating results are subject to numerous conditions, many of which are beyond the control of the Company, including, without limitation, changes in interest rates; changes in the yield curve; changes in prepayment rates; the availability and terms of financing; general economic conditions; market conditions; conditions in the market for mortgage related investments; and legislative and regulatory changes that could adversely affect the business of the Company; and other factors, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of the Company's annual report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2018 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). The Company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this release, except as required by law. SOURCE Western Asset Mortgage Capital Corporation Related Links http://www.westernassetmcc.com DETROIT, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS) the leading non-profit organization connecting individuals from underserved populations with transformative career opportunities has joined forces with DTE Energy, a Detroit-based diversified energy company. As part of the partnership, WOS is spearheading the recruitment, training, and onboarding of a pilot group of underserved and/or veteran individuals from Detroit into positions with DTE Energy. Through the program, WOS will recruit and train candidates for a 26-week Utility Employee Program. The 3-week academic phase of the program will be conducted at an academic institution located in Downtown Detroit. "We know that having a diverse and inclusive workforce makes us a better companywith unique perspectives and insights that enhance our ability to be creative, solve problems and better serve our customers," says Diane Antishin, Vice President, Human Resources Operations and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, DTE Energy. "WOS offers a tangible solution to increase our diversity with talent from our local community, complementing DTE's efforts to eliminate the opportunity gap in the communities we serve." "WOS is thrilled to partner with DTE Energy, a company committed to supporting initiatives that strengthen the economic progress, education and employment opportunities in the greater Detroit area," says Dr. Art Langer, Founder, and Chairman, WOS. "DTE Energy is a world-class organization that values inclusivity and diversity, while also providing value and premier service to its customers. We look forward to a long lasting and fruitful partnership with DTE Energy and furthering our footprint in developing the local talent of the Detroit area." Interviews available. About Workforce Opportunity Services Founded in 2005, Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS) is a leading 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to developing the skills of untapped talent from underserved and veteran communities through partnerships with organizations dedicated to diversifying their workforce. Utilizing a scientifically-based model derived from research conducted at Columbia University, we recruit, educate, train, and place high-potential candidates with leading organizations around the world. To date, WOS has served 4,000+ individuals through partnerships with more than 65 corporations in 60+ locations worldwide. For more information, visit wforce.org. Additional Links WOS on Twitter ( www.twitter.com/wforceorg ) WOS on Facebook ( www.facebook.com/wforceorg/ ) WOS on LinkedIn ( https://www.linkedin.com/company/workforce-opportunity-services/ ) WOS on Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/wforceorg/ ) Media Contact: Laura Friedman 212.870.2241 [email protected] SOURCE Workforce Opportunity Services Related Links http://wforce.org YIWU, China, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Yiwugo.com, the official website of the largest commodities wholesale market in the world, has launched the AI-based function for product recommendations for both of its PC and app versions. Adopting the latest deep neural network technology, the function intelligently recommends matching commodities according to the different needs of commodity buyers, and thus greatly facilitates the sourcing of satisfactory goods for them. The development of Yiwu's physical market is also a process of orderly management and supply of commodities. In order to make it easy for buyers from all over the world to locate satisfactory sources of goods from the vast number of commodities in Yiwu's physical market, the market of Yiwu has adopted the method of setting up stalls according to the categories of commodities, i.e. commodities of the same category are arranged for sale in the same block. In this way, customers can quickly find the corresponding sections for goods they are looking for, compare similar goods at different stalls, and finally locate the goods they desire. In addition, such a method has also created an open, just and fair competitive environment for dealers of the same category of commodities and laid a solid foundation for the prosperity of Yiwu's physical market. With the development of information technology, Yiwu's physical market of commodities, which has been pursuing fine management, is putting continued efforts to improve the orderly management and supply of commodities using new technologies. As the official e-commerce website of Yiwu's physical market of commodities, Yiwugo has been committed to promoting the transformation and upgrading of the physical market using new technologies. One of Yiwugo's most important tasks is to match the sources of goods with their buyers more efficiently using the latest AI technology. A deep neural network is a pattern recognition system, which can learn to execute specific instructions through analyzing massive volumes of data. The neural network was invented in the 1960s. There were two reasons why it had not been widely applied before. The first was the lack of computing power to train data models; the other was the lack of a massive volume of valid data sets. This means that the completion of Yiwugo's AI-based function for product recommendation requires the combination of two capabilities, i.e. computing power and valid data of commodities. In 2014, Yiwugo established the Yiwugo Research Institute, which is focused on AI research and application. After years of development, Yiwugo Research Institute has achieved good results in the research of AI technology. In addition, since the Yiwugo e-commerce platform was officially launched in October 2012, it has accumulated more than 70,000 pieces of data on commodity suppliers, millions of data on commodities, and data on buyers' search history of commodities over the years. Using the latest technological achievements in the deep neural network and the accumulated professional data of commodities, Yiwugo conducted a large number of experiments to optimize the algorithm and model parameters under the "supervised learning" mode and finally launched the "Personalized" AI function for product recommendations. This is the result of the combination of research on deep neural network technology and the development of vertical industries in China, and plays a demonstrative role promoting the application of artificial intelligence to different industries. SOURCE Yiwugo HAIFA, Israel, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. (IL0065100443) (IL0065100856) (the "Company") hereby notifies, in accordance with the provisions of Section 4.03 of an Indenture entered into between ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. (the "Company") and Hermetic Trust (1975) Ltd. on July 16, 2014 (the "Indenture"), as follows: 1. The Company's audited consolidated financial statements for the period ended on December 31, 2018, the operating and financial review for such quarterly financial statements and a report on certain financial data as of December 31, 2018 (collectively, the "2018 Annual Reports") are available on the Company's website (https://www.zim.com/about-zim/reports) and (since the Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange is closed for business on March 21, 2019) commencing on Sunday March 24, 2019 also on the official website of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (http://maya.tase.co.il). 2. The Company will host on March 28, 2019 at 3:00 p.m. Israel time (2:00 p.m. CET), a conference call for the holders of its Series 1A, 2A, 1B and 2B Notes to discuss the 2018 Annual Reports. In order to participate, please use the following numbers (at least ten minutes before the scheduled start time): Israel: 972-3-9180687 USA: 1-888-407-2553 UK: 0-800-917-9141 Germany: 0-800-182-6846 France: 0-800-903-025 Contact: Avner Shats [email protected] SOURCE ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. Related Links https://www.zim.com/ Patriots in the hunt for third gold ball Coming off a 2020 season in which they went 1-5, the 2021 Mission Veterans Patriots football team may have caught some people by surprise by winning seven of their eight District 16-5A Div. II games and claiming a share of the district title. But while there is History repeats itself and that is what makes life on this earth equally predictable and very much unpredictable. Crimes happen today and it did happen in the past. When a situation from the past be it a murder, a theft, a kidnapping, or conspiracy connects with a happening of today, it creates an extra layer to the story. Its also a great construct that makes the story compelling. Another facet of such crimes is the dose of historical facts and perspectives it gives and also bringing lesser known historical happenings to the memory of today. Image Source: www.amazon.in Here we list some contemporary crime novels which could successfully and hence thrillingly connect crimes of the past and the present. Read on: 1. The Crossing Places, by Elly Griffiths (Mariner Books) Image Source: www.amazon.in Dr. Ruth Galloway is a forensic anthropologist who is happy with her life in the remote area of Norfolk, England, content with the companionship of her cats and her daily life of archaeology at an Iron Age site. While a typical day of her deals with ancient artefacts and remains, the calm of her ordinary life is lost forever as she finds the bones of a child, on the beach. The remains are believed to be that of a little girl named Lucy Downey, who disappeared ten years ago. Ruth gets entangled in the case as she is brought to identify the bones by Detective Chief Inspector Nelson, who is receiving strange, harassing letters by a person believed to be the kidnapper of the little girl. Then a second girl is reported missing and the details are eerily similar to the missing of Lucy Downey. Now Ruth must determine if the killer is the same person itself or whether someone new is copying the decade-old murder to secure himself. This book is the first of a series by Elly Griffith. 2. The Unquiet Dead, by Ausma Zehanat Khan (Minotaur Books) Image Source: www.amazon.in The culture of power versus the power of culture, he quoted. One side always loses. When Detective Rachel Getty and her boss, Esa Khattak is asked to investigate the apparent accidental death of a man named Christopher Drayton, the complete incident appears a little strange to Rachel, especially when they find Draytons fall not to be an accident. Its possible Drayton may actually be a former Serbian war criminal. As the investigating duo look more and more into the matter, the more complex it becomes, and the more they need to look inside their own hearts and into their own pasts the Sebrenica massacre of 1995. Set mostly in and around Toronto, Canada, the novel deals with the atrocities committed during the 1995 genocide of Bosnians by the Serbians where more than 8000, mostly men and boys were slaughtered. 3. In This Grave Hour, by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper Perennial) Image Source: www.amazon.in This is book number 13 investigator Maise Dobbs series a wonderful historical series about the adventures of this trained psychologist and investigator. Its September 3rd, 1939. Maisie Dobbs just listened to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declaring the second World war. But suddenly she is called home to her west London flat where she finds an agent waiting for her with an assignment. During the first World War time, a boy had escaped the then Occupied-Belgium and came to London as a refugee. This boynow a manhas been murdered, and the agent wants Maisie to look into the case, as he is afraid that more Belgians refugees in Britain will be killed. The agentss prediction turns out to be true as another Belgian is found murdered. Maisie searches into the pasts of the former refugees to understand why they are being targeted, and by whom. 4. The Unquiet Grave, by Sharyn McCrumb (Atria) Image Source: www.amazon.in Set across two timelines1930 and 1897this novel is inspired by true legend and deals with the memories of James P.D. Gardner, the first black lawyer in West Virginia. Mr Gardner, now an old man has recently been remanded to an insane asylum because he attemoted suicide. His doctor, wanting to try a new form of therapy, convinces Gardner to talk about his past cases. That is when he starts telling the tale of a white man, a blacksmith Erasmus Trout Shue who was charged with the murder of his young wife. It is the wifes mother who has accused him and the witness the mother has? the ghost of her daughter! The mother is convinced her daughter was murdered by Shue, and suspects he may have murdered before. The lawyer is now vested with the responsibility to save the blacksmith. Can he? 5. The Death of Kings, by Rennie Airth (Penguin Books) Image Source: www.amazon.in The fifth book in the John Madden series, former Scotland Yard detective Madden comes out of retirement as a jade necklace reappears, which went missing 11 years earlier following the murder of an actress. The murder was accused on a former convict in a swift trial and was executed. But when the jade necklace appears again in 1949, retired detective John Madden is talked into reopening the closed case once more. Thus ensues a thrilling and convoluted adventure involving the high-class, the Chinese underworld, and what not! Madden investigates in an attempt to provide justice what if the wrong man were executed for a crime he hadnt committed in the first place? 6. Bruno, Chief of Police, by Martin Walker (Vintage Books) Image Source: www.amazon.in In this first installment of the Bruno, Chief of Police series, Walker introduces Benoit Courreges, better known as Bruno. Bruno, once a soldier, is now very happy to be a country policeman in the sleepy village of St. Denis in the South of France, making his own wine and handling police matters where he never arrests anyone or uses his gun. But the murder of a North African man in the village, who fought with the French Army during the Second World War threatens to disrupt Brunos charmingly dull life. Now he has to charge up all of his old skills to find answers and protect his peaceful corner of the world. With the help of a young Parisian policewoman, Bruno starts digging into the case and the process takes him to uncharted waters to look into his countrys dark past, including the Nazi occupation and much more. Bruno feels lonely as ever! Rome, March 21 : A bus carrying 51 schoolchildren has allegedly been hijacked by its driver and set alight near Milan in Italy. The children, some of them tied up, were rescued through smashed windows at the back of the bus and no-one was badly hurt. Fourteen people suffered smoke inhalation, the BBC reported on Wednesday. The driver, a 47-year-old Italian citizen originally from Senegal, was arrested. "No-one will survive," the driver was alleged to have said. "It was a miracle, it could have been a massacre," Milan chief prosecutor Francesco Greco was quoted as saying. A teacher who had been on board the bus said the suspect was known to be angry about Italy's migrant policy. Some reports said the man had shouted "stop the deaths in the Mediterranean". According to reports, two classes of teenagers and their adult escort were being driven from a school in Vailati di Crema to a gym but took a different route on a provincial highway apparently heading for Milan's Linate airport. The ordeal then unfolded over the next 40 minutes. When the suspect allegedly began addressing the passengers with a knife, a boy phoned a parent, who alerted the police. It took some time before police tried to intercept the bus. The vehicle rammed into police cars before slowing down. Italian reports said petrol had been sprinkled around the bus but police were able to smash the rear windows and let the passengers off before it burst into flames. Milan prosecutors said they were investigating all possible motives including terrorism. Italy's right-wing Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, reacted with outrage, alleging that the man had a criminal record. Since coming into power in June, Italy's ruling right-wing League party and populist Five Star Movement have established a strong anti-immigration stance. Located at the frontline of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea into Europe, Italy has tried to close its ports to boats. On Tuesday, around 50 people were rescued by a charity ship from a rubber boat off the coast of Libya and taken to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa. Italian authorities ordered that the ship was seized and launched an investigation into the alleged aiding of clandestine immigration. A decree issued in September makes it easier to deport migrants and take away their citizenship if they commit serious crimes. Earlier this month, around 200,000 people attended an anti-racism march in Milan. Washington, March 21 : US President Donald Trump has attacked the late Senator John McCain, complaining that he "didn't get a thank you" for his state funeral. "We sent him on the way, but I wasn't a fan of John McCain," the President said during a visit to an Ohio tank factory, the BBC reported on Wednesday. Trump has repeatedly assailed the late Arizona senator in recent days, reigniting a feud that dates back to before his presidency. The Vietnam War veteran died of brain cancer last August at the age of 81. During his visit on Wednesday to the tank factory in Lima, Ohio, the president renewed his assault on McCain. "I gave him the kind of funeral that he wanted, which as president I had to approve," he told workers at the factory. "I don't care about this, I didn't get a thank you. That's OK." Trump approved the military flight of McCain's remains from Arizona to Washington, but it was Congress that accorded the late senator the honour of lying in state. The US president said McCain "didn't get the job done for our great vets and the VA" by refusing to repeal Obamacare and attacked him for "a war in the Middle East", in reference to the senator's support for the Iraq War. "Not my kind of guy," the president said. "But some people like him and I think that's great." The president revived his spat with McCain on Saturday by tweeting that the late senator had backed the so-called Steele dossier, an unverified 2016 document by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, claiming ties between Trump and the Kremlin. On Sunday, Trump went after McCain again, saying the "last in his class" senator had sent "the Fake Dossier to the FBI". Asked by a reporter about his attacks while hosting the Brazilian president at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said: "I was never a fan of John McCain and I never will be." Trump has regularly clashed with McCain going back to his presidential campaign. Wellington, March 21 : Military-style semi-automatics and assault rifles will be banned under stronger new gun laws announced by the New Zealand government on Thursday. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the gun law reforms at a press conference, New Zealand Herald reported. The government has banned the weapons less than a week after a shooter opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, killing 50 people, and injuring 50 others. The country's rules around guns have been in the spotlight since last Friday's mosque shootings in Christchurch. Attorney-General David Parker said over the weekend that semi-automatic guns would be banned and 70,000 people have signed a petition against these types of weapons. Washington, March 21 : US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad will host his counterparts of Russia, China and the European Union to discuss the Afghan peace process. A State Department statement on Wednesday said that the US envoy will meet Russian Presidential Special Representative Zamir Kabulov, Chinese Special Envoy Deng Xijun and EU Special Envoy Roland Kobia at the Department of State, Xinhua news agency reported The statement added that their discussion topics "include international support for the Afghan peace process, the role each party can play in bringing an end to the war and the progress to date in peace talks". Khalilzad said on March 13 that the peace talks between the US and Afghan Taliban have made progress after tough negotiations in Qatar and conditions for achieving peaceful settlement have improved. However, Afghanistan's National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib said later in Washington that "Ambassador Khalilzad ... doesn't know how to negotiate or in fact there may be other reasons behind what he is doing." He has reportedly refused to apologize for his remarks after the US State Department expressed dissatisfaction New York, March 21 : A $3 million India-based tech support scam that defrauded hundreds of Americans and dented India's reputation has been busted with a conspirator in the scheme admitting his role in court, according to US officials. Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski said on Wednesday that Bishap Mittal, 24, admitted his guilt in the tech scam conspiracy before Magistrate Judge David S. Cayer of the federal court in Charlotte, North Carolina state. The Department of Justice said in a statement that Mittal along with a person identified only as "Individial 1" - who owned a limited liability company called Capstone Technologies - and others used a call centre in India for the scam that used pop-up ads that would suddenly appear on the victims' computers and freeze the screens. The pop-ups would ask the victims to contact Capstone Technologies at a number shown on the ad, which would be answered by tech support based in India, according to the statement. The scammers would pretend to help them and remotely take control of their computers and come up fictitious reasons for the malfunction like malware or viruses infections and charge them between $200 and $2,400 to fix the computers, the statement said. "Mittal and his co-conspirators defrauded hundreds of victims throughout the United States, some of whom were elderly, of more than $3 million", the Justice Department said. Capstone also operated under various other names like Authenza Solutions LLC, MS-Squad Technologies, MS-Squad.com, MS Infotech, United Technologies, and Reventus Technologies, according to the statement. Mittal, who lived in Charlotte, is out on bail and a date for his sentencing on conspiracy charges has not been set. People who have been charged in a crime in the US sometimes admit their guilt in court to speed up the prosecution process, usually in return for recommendation of leniency or meeting other conditions such as testifying against fellow-accused. The Justice Department announced a nation-wide campaign against fraud against seniors this month. The tech-support fraud takedown is aimed combating an increasingly common form of fraud targeting seniors in which criminals trick victims into giving remote access to their computers under the guise of providing technical support, the department said. The plague of fake tech support ads and phone calls by Indians or using Indians to take advantage of India's reputation as a technology powerhouse is beginning to affect the nation's reputation among Americans. In the latest variation of the fraud, several people have received calls in recent days saying that the licence for Windows operating system or other programmes are expiring and they have to make immediate payment if their computer is to continue working. In 2014, Microsoft filed cases in the US against India-based companies accusing them of making calls pretending to be from it and taking control of their computers. At that time Microsoft said that that 3.3 million Americans fall victim to technical support scams every year and lose $1.5 billion. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis) Los Angeles, March 21 : Actress Mindy Kaling, who has Indian roots, is set to work on a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age comedy show. "I'm joining the Netflix family. Lang Fisher and I are working on a brand new Netflix TV comedy about the life of a modern day first generation Indian American teenage girl. Get ready for lots of relatable awkward teen moments. More coming soon," Kaling tweeted. Netflix has given a 10-episode series order for it, reported deadline.com. Kaling landed her first TV staff-writing job on the first season of "The Office". She became a rising star, ascending to an executive producer on the Emmy-winning series where she also played customer service representative Kelly Kapoor. The actress, who has authored two books, went on to create, executive produce and star in the praised TV comedy "The Mindy Project", which ran for six seasons. Kaling's feature "Late Night", on which she serves as producer, writer and star opposite Emma Thompson, made a strong debut at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Srinagar, March 21 : A gunfight started on Thursday between security forces and militants in Jammu and Kashmir's Sopore town. Police said that security forces began a cordon and search operation in Warpora area following information about the presence of some militants. One of the militants lobbed a grenade. "The militants suddenly fired at the security forces, triggering an encounter which is going on," a police officer said. As a precaution, authorities have suspended mobile Internet service in Sopore town. Jammu, March 21 : A Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) trooper shot dead three colleagues and then shot and seriously wounded himself in Udhampur district in Jammu and Kashmir, police said on Thursday. CRPF Constable Ajit Singh fired shot dead the three colleagues inside a camp in Battal Ballian area on Wednesday night after a heated exchange of words, a police officer said. The incident occurred around 10.40 p.m. Ajit Singh belongs to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh. The deceased were identified as Head Constables Umeed Singh of Rewari (Haryana), Yogendra Sharma (Delhi) and Pokarmal of Jhunjhunu (Rajasthan). This is the first fratricidal incident of this year in Jammu and Kashmir. Security forces have in the past engaged counsellors to address the problem which have been attributed to long duty hours in hostile environment, separation from families, lack of recreational activities and a weak command and control structure. Better command and control, frequent leave facilities to join families and adequate recreational facilities are some of the remedial measures suggested by counsellors to address the problem. Kabul, March 21 : Several people were feared killed or injured after three blasts hit New Year celebrations near a shrine in the Afghan capital Kabul on Thursday, witnesses said. "We heard a huge blast at the main traffic circle in Jamal Mina neighbourhood at 9.30 a.m. and it was followed by two consecutive explosions," a man, Mohammad Jafar, told Xinhua news agency. The bomb attacks came as Afghan security forces beefed up security across the country ahead of Nawroz Festival celebrations falling on Thursday which marks the Afghan New Year. "The area was closed for traffic as New Year celebrations were underway in Sakhi shrine but the blasts occurred as a big crowd of people were walking toward the shrine," Jafar added. Several warning shots were also fired by the security forces. "There are casualties. We still cannot provide details," a police officer told Xinhua. Mumbai, March 21 : Veteran filmmaker Shekhar Kapur says the soaring costs of multiplexes are driving filmmakers to digital platforms and with the high prices the theatres are ultimately killing themselves. Filmmaker Hansal Mehta had tweeted that he wanted to watch director Vasan Bala's film "Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota" in theatres, but no show was available in multiplexes. "Missed preview of the Vasan Bala madness called 'Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota'. Thought I'd buy tickets and celebrate his first theatrical release at cinema halls. Looks like the multiplex bullies have prevailed for now - the film doesn't show up on Bookmyshow. True Ronnie Screwvala?" Mehta tweeted. Replying, Kapur wrote on Thursday: "Saw 'Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota' at Macao Film Festival. Audience could not stop cheering. Cost of multiplexes driving people to online platforms. All new/best directors in India are finding that a better option. Theatres are ultimately killing themselves." "Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota" stars Abhimanyu Dassani, Radhika Madan, Gulshan Devaiah, Mahesh Manjrekar and Jimit Trivedi. The story revolves around a young boy played by Abhimanyu, who makes an unusual debut in Bollywood. New Delhi, March 21 : Actress Soundarya Sharma says Bollywood films are patriarchal but times are changing as women-centric films are now taking over. Talking about films being male dominated, Soundarya told IANS here: "Of course, yes. I have only done one film. In my movie, I was the lead and the hero but, yes, if you see all over the film (industry) it is the hero who is leading. That is in the mindset." Soundarya, who made her debut in the Hindi film industry with Anupam Kher starrer "Ranchi Diaries", says women-centric films have been a game-changer. "But in today's time, with content driven and women-centric films taking over, I think the time is changing..." she added. The actress was here to walk for designer Charu Parashar at the Lotus Make-up India Fashion Week. Kabul, March 21 : At least six people were killed and 23 others wounded after three blasts hit New Year celebrations near a shrine in the Afghan capital Kabul on Thursday, officials said. "Twenty-three people were wounded and six people were martyred in the explosions," government official Wahidullah Mayar was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency. The devastation happened in Police District 3 where thousands of Afghan citizens attended an event to mark Nawroz Festival celebrations falling on Thursday, which marks the Afghan New Year. "The first blast occurred at a main square in Jamal Mina neighbourhood at 9.30 a.m. The initial blast was followed by two consecutive explosions at the area, which is called Kart-e-Sakhi," eyewitness Mohammad Jafar told Xinhua. The blasts occurred as a large crowd was walking toward the Sakhi Shrine for the New Year festival, he said. The bomb attacks came even as Afghan security forces beefed up security across the country for Nawroz celebrations. The shrine has been hit by terror attacks in the past. The nature of the blasts was not known at this point. However, an official of the Ministry of Interior Affairs told the media that the blasts were caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted in multiple locations. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Kabul, with a population of nearly 5 million, has been hit by series of terror attacks over the past years. On March 7, 11 civilians were killed and 95 wounded after a mortar attack targeted a gathering at an open area in Dashti Barchi in Kabul. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. Kolkata, March 21 : It was a riot of colours for different political leaders and a great opportunity to reach out to the people ahead of the Lok Sabha polls on Thursday as West Bengal celebrated Holi -- or "Dol Jatra" as it is called in this part of the country. Political faces celebrated the day with traditional fervour through songs, dances and prayers. If Trinamool Congress' Birbhum candidate Satabdi Roy participated in prayer and a colourful procession smearing 'green colour', CPI-M candidate from Kolkata North Kaninika Ghosh was busy in wall painting for her campaign while mixing with everyone soaked in 'red colour'. Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee, however, didn't take part in the festivities as she sent a strong political message on the occasion. "Holiday greetings to all. May your life be filled with colours of joy and happiness. Your enjoyment should not bring sorrow to someone else. In memory of slain jawans in Pulwama attack and other brave martyrs, I have decided not to participate in Holi festivities this year," she tweeted. State Power Minister Sovandeb Chattopadhyay came out on the streets of Bhawanipur smearing colours, singing and sharing a self-written poem "Rong diye jao" dedicated to Lord Krishna and Radha. "This festival unites people of all cultures," Chattopadhyay said. Sharing a bright hued image, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Babul Supriyo tweeted: "Wishing you all a very Happy Holi." Several candidates and leaders of the Trinamool celebrated the festival of colour. Sreerampur constituency nominee Kalyan Bandopadhyay broke into a jig, while Howrah candidate Prasun Banerjee, along with State Minister Laxmi Ratan Shukla, participated in "Dahi-Handi" with the locals. Watch: Bollywood wishes their fans a colourful holi Chandigarh, March 21 : Tens of thousands of devotees converged in the Sikh holy town Anandpur Sahib on Thursday to offer prayers at Gurdwara Keshgarh Sahib during 'Hola Mohalla celebrations that coincides with Holi festival. Anandpur Sahib is home to the second most important Sikh shrine after Harmandar Sahib, popularly known as Golden Temple, in Amritsar. "Thousands of people have arrived here from across the region to participate in the Hola Mohalla celebrations," priest Davinder Singh told IANS over telephone. Wearing traditional dresses and carrying weapons, hundreds of Nihang Sikhs assembled for the celebrations and showed their mastery of the Gatka martial art, a treat to the visitors. The three-day celebrations coincide with the Hindu festival Holi. Anandpur Sahib town and shrine, located about 85 km from Chandigarh, are famous. It was here in 1699 that the 10th Guru, Gobind Singh, baptized five men and founded the Khalsa Panth, which is the modern day Sikh religion. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh greeted the people with a call for celebrating the traditional Indian festival with the colours of unity, tolerance, brotherhood and compassion. In a message, he urged people to celebrate the festival in harmony, brotherhood and amity. Elsewhere in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh, the festival of Holi was celebrated with a lot of enthusiasm. More than 1,000 police personnel and officials were deployed at various places in Chandigarh to manage rowdy crowds. Watch: Bollywood wishes their fans a colourful holi Vidisha : , March 21 (IANS) Four persons were killed and six others injured when the tractor-trolley in which they were travelling overturned here on Wednesday night, police said. The injured were referred to the district hospital. A police officer on Thursday said: "The incident occurred on Wednesday night when the driver lost control of the tractor-trolley and it overturned near Gulabganj here. The labourers were returning to their villages from a market in Patharia. Three people were killed on the spot and one succumbed to her injuries later in the hospital. The deceased have been identified as Killi Kol, Ramki Bai, Hiran Bai and Reshmi, he added. A case has been registered against the driver. Srinagar, March 21 : Protests were held on Thursday in Srinagar city and Awantipora town of Jammu and Kashmir against the custodial death of the private school teacher this week. National Conference leaders Ali Muhammad Sagar, Nasir Sogami and others took carried out a protest march from the Nawa-e-Subha party headquarters here demanding stern action against those responsible for the death of 28-year-old Rizwan Asad Pandit in police custody on Monday. Police intercepted the march at some distance from the party office, after which the protesters dispersed peacefully. Protests were also held in Pandit's hometown Awantipora, where family and relatives of the youth demanded exhumation of the body to show the torture marks it bore. The family has dismissed reports that he had tried to escape from police custody. Members of the local Sikh community joined the protests to demand justice for the youth. Authorities had earlier ordered a magisterial inquiry by Additional Commissioner, Srinagar, but after it became clear that the youth had died in police custody in Khrew area of Pulwama district, the inquiry will now be held by the Assistant Commissioner, Pulwama. Violence had broken out in Awantipora on Tuesday as the news of Pandit's death reached. Police had said that Pandit was arrested last week in connection with a militancy related case and died during Monday night. San Francisco, March 21 : Facing flak for failure to block the live broadcast of the New Zealand terrorist attack last week, Facebook on Thursday said that its Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools were not "perfect" to detect the horrific video. Vowing to improve its technology, the social networking giant, however, ruled out adding a time delay to Facebook Live, similar to the broadcast delay sometimes used by TV stations. "There are millions of Live broadcasts daily, which means a delay would not help address the problem due to the sheer number of videos," Guy Rosen, Facebook's Vice President of Integrity, said in a statement. "More importantly, given the importance of user reports, adding a delay would only further slow down videos getting reported, reviewed and first responders being alerted to provide help on the ground," Rosen added. Strapped with a GoPro camera to his head, the gunman broadcast graphic footage of the New Zealand shooting via Facebook Live for 17 minutes, which was later shared in millions on other social media platforms, including Twitter and YouTube. Fifty people were killed and dozens injured in the shootings at Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Avenue Masjid in Christchurch on March 15 after 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant opened indiscriminate firings. The circulation of the video on social media platforms attracted widespread criticism from different quarters. In a letter to CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson asked the technology companies to brief the US Congress on March 27 regarding their response to dissemination of the video on their platforms. Thompson also warned the technology companies that unless they do better in removing violent content, the Congress could consider policies to bar such content on social media. Facebook on Thursday said it was exploring how AI could help it react faster to this kind of content on a live streamed video. "AI has made massive progress over the years and in many areas, which has enabled us to proactively detect the vast majority of the content we remove. But it's not perfect. "However, this particular video did not trigger our automatic detection systems," Rosen said, referring to the New Zealand attack video. Washington, March 21 : NASA is inviting applications from start-ups to take part in a three-month pilot programme to develop new technologies for space. Applications will be accepted till April 7 and a total of 10 companies will be selected for the programme, the US space agency said. The accelerator programme will focus on technologies that can be applied to space -- including geospatial analytics, digital design coupled to advanced manufacturing, autonomous systems, applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). "We want to assist these companies in developing their own technologies and becoming commercial successes. NASA will also benefit by collaborating with these companies," said Tom Cwik, Manager of the Space Technology Office at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Based in Los Angeles, the accelerator programme begins on July 15. After developing their concepts and business plans over a three-month period, the teams will then pitch their results to the NASA community, co-sponsors and private investors at a demo day in October, NASA said. "Industry is developing new technologies rapidly, using new tools and methods in software development and other areas," said Cwik. "It's incumbent upon us to learn from developments in industry and contribute our vast expertise in technology as we prepare to use them in our future missions," Cwik added. Beijing, March 21 : The next round of negotiations to end a trade war between China and the United States will take place in Beijing on March 28 and 29, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced on Thursday. Ministry spokesperson Gao Feng said that US officials, led by Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, would visit China for the eighth round of talks with the Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier Liu He, reports Efe news. Later, Liu would travel to Washington for the next round of talks to be held in the US capital in early April, the spokesman said. The China-US trade war began last year after President Donald Trump imposed high tarrifs following complaints that China was stealing American trade secrets and forcing companies to transfer technology in exchange for access to its market. Trump imposed tariffs on a range of goods that the US imports from other countries, particularly China, in a bid to give American manufactuers a competitive edge. China retaliated with its tariffs. Trump and Chinese Presidet Xi Jinping during their dinner meeting in Buenos Aires on December 1 agreed to postpone escalating the trade war for 90 days while their administrations negotiated to establish common positions on assorted issues. The deadline was to expire on March 1. The US president in February announced that he was delaying the tariff hike on hundreds of Chinese import products again since the two sides had made "substantial progress" in the bilateral trade talks. The President then insisted that he would meet "in the not too distant future" with Xi to refine the details of an eventual agreement. Trump said the previous round in Washington was "very productive" and progress was made on key issues such as "protection of intellectual property, transfer (forced) technology, agriculture, services, foreign currency and many other issues." The trade war between the two largest world economies has generated uneasiness and volatility in international financial markets. Both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have lowered their forecasts of global economic growth as a result of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. Jeddah, March 21 : A court has ordered Saudi Arabian Airlines or Saudia to compenstate a passenger and his family with about $16,430 because their flight from Jeddah to New York was delayed by 21 hours. The Court of Appeals in Riyadh upheld a ruling issued by the Administrative Court and said that the airline had also changed the seat numbers of the passengers on the return flight, the Saudi Gazette reported. The court awarded the passenger compensation for psychological and financial harm he had sustained, in addition to legal expenses. Mohamed Abdullah Al-Shidi, the passenger, expressed happiness over the court ruling, the daily said. Dharwad: Rescue operations underway after an under construction multi-storey building collapsed leaving 10 people dead in Karnataka's Dharwad on March 21, 2019. 55 people have been rescued so far. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News Dharwad: Rescue operations underway after an under construction multi-storey building collapsed leaving 10 people dead in Karnataka's Dharwad on March 21, 2019. 55 people have been rescued so far. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News Bengaluru, March 21 : The death toll in the building collapse in Karnataka's Dharwad on Tuesday rose to 10 with five more bodies retrieved from the debris on Thursday, the third day of search and rescue operations, according to the police. Rescuers were still searching for people in the debris. Many people were feared trapped after an under-construction multi-storied building collapsed at Kumareshwara Nagar in Dharwad on Tuesday. "So far 10 people have died in the accident and 55 people have been rescued," Police Inspector M.I. Basapur told IANS from Dharwad, about 400 km northwest of the state capital. Those rescued were being treated at the district hospitals. A magisterial inquiry, to be headed by a Deputy Commissioner, has been ordered into the accident. The police have also registered a case against the building owners. According to residents, the under-construction building had developed cracks due to an "unstable" foundation. Personnel from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and fire and emergency services are conducting the rescue work. Lucknow, March 21 : A legislator of Uttar Pradesh's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was shot and injured by unidentified men during Holi festivities at the district party office in Lakhimpur-Kheri district on Thursday, police said. Yogesh Verma, who sustained a bullet injury in his leg, is being treated at a medical facility and is out of danger, a police official said. A brief altercation between Verma, who represents Lakhimpur Sadar, and some people preceded the incident. "A case has been registered and investigation is underway," Superintendent of Police Poonam said. The armed personal security officer of the MLA has since been suspended. Sopore: Security beefed up in the wake of a grenade attack in Sopore, Jammu and Kashmir on March 21, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News Sopore: Soldiers at the site of a gunfight that started between security forces and militants in Jammu and Kashmir's Sopore town on March 21, 2019. Police said that security forces began a cordon and search operation in Warpora area following informa Image Source: IANS News Srinagar, March 21 : A militant was killed while seven security men and three civilians injured on Thursday as security forces and militants battled each other in three places in the Kashmir Valley, authorities said. While the first gunfight erupted in Sopore town, two gun battles were reported later from Bandipora and Baramulla districts. Police sources said firing exchanges between the security forces and militants have stopped in Kandi area of Baramulla district. Sources said two militants had been killed while seven others - a para commando of the army, four policemen and two civilians - have been injured in this gunfight. However, the killing of two militants has still not been confirmed by officials. Police said one militant was killed in the exchange of fire between security forces and the militants in Mir Mohalla of Hajin area in Bandipora. "One militant has been killed so far. Another militant is still holed up inside a house where a 12-year-old boy is also believed to be stuck. Another civilian was safely evacuated from the house during the operation," a police officer said. According to a tweet by the police, the two civilians were being held hostage by the hiding militants. While one was rescued safely with the assistance of security forces and community members, the other, reportedly a minor, was still trapped. Police said security forces started a cordon and search operation in Hajin - once considered a zone "liberated" from militant control - following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there. The militants who were in hiding opened fire at the security forces in Mir Mohalla, sparking off the gunfight. Another gunfight started in Kandi area of Baramulla after security forces resumed on Thursday morning a search operation which was suspended due to darkness on Wednesday evening. "As the search operation was resumed, militants fired at the security forces, triggering an encounter," the officer said. In the third incident, two policemen - a Station House Officer (SHO) and his security guard - and a civilian were injured earlier on Thursday when militants hurled a grenade at security forces in Warpora area of Sopore town and then opened fire. "Both the policemen have been shifted to Srinagar for specialized treatment. The operation against the militants is going on," a police officer said. A civilian sustained bullet injury in his leg in the Sopore gunfight. He too was shifted to hospital and his condition was stated to be stable. As a precaution, authorities suspended mobile Internet service in Sopore town. New Delhi, March 21 : Maintaining a downward trend, India slipped to the 140th position, seven spots down from last year, in a happiness ranking of 156 countries this year, according to a new report which is unlikely to cheer up the ruling coalition in the run-up to the general elections. World happiness has fallen in recent years, driven by the sustained downward trend in India, said the World Happiness Report, released on Wednesday in conjunction with the United Nations' International Day of Happiness. As for emotions, there has been a widespread upward trend recently in negative effect, comprising worry, sadness and anger, especially marked in Asia and Africa, it added. Does happiness affect voting behaviour? A special chapter in the World Happiness Report 2019, produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a UN initiative, explored the relation between the two. The research showed national average life satisfaction is significantly related to the vote share subsequently received by parties that go into the election as part of the governing coalition. "There is a clear and significant positive relationship between national life satisfaction in the run-up to general elections and the subsequent electoral success of governing parties," the report said. A one standard deviation increase in national life satisfaction is associated with nearly an eight percentage-point increase in vote share, the findings showed. This year's happiness report focuses on happiness and the community -- how happiness has evolved over the past dozen years -- with focus on the technologies, social norms, conflicts and government policies that have driven those changes. Special chapters focus on generosity and pro-social behaviour, the effects of happiness on voting behaviour, big data, and the happiness effects of Internet use and addictions. As in 2018, Finland took the top spot as the happiest country in the world, according to three years of surveys taken by Gallup from 2016-2018. Rounding out the rest of the top 10 are countries that have consistently ranked among the happiest. They are in that order -- Denmark, Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, Canada and Austria. The US ranked 19th, dropping one spot from last year. The report, which is in its seventh edition, ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be, according to their evaluations of their own lives. Coimbatore, March 21 : In a twist in the Pollachi sexual abuse-cum-blackmail case, Tamil Nadu Congress leader Mayura Jayakumar on Thursday said that he had no links with main accused Thirunavukkarasu, but the latter might have visited him on the date of the crime as registered in the FIR. Speaking to reporters here, Jayakumar, who said he was here on summons from the Crime Branch's Crime Investigation Department (CBCID) to corroborate Thirunavukkarasu's statement, said that he had come here on February 12, and many party leaders had come to wish him becoming the state Congress's Working President. Denying any previous links with Thirunavukkarasu, he said it was local Congress leader Rajasekhar who had brought some people from Pollachi during his visit and he had given a statement to this effect to CBCID. On his part, Rajasekhar said about 20 people from Pollachi, including Thirunavukkarasu and his father Kanagaraj, had gone to Coimbatore on February 12 to greet Jayakumar at about 10 a.m. and started back at about 2.30 pm. Thirunavukkarasu had told the CBCID that he was at the Congress party office here along with his father and others to wish Jayakumar on his elevation. The Pollachi police had registered a FIR based on the complaint from a girl that she was sexually abused and robbed of gold chain by Thirunavukkarasu and his friends inside a car on February 12. Four persons -- Thirunavukkarasu, Sathish, Sabarirajan and Vasanthakumar -- all in their 20s, have been accused of sexually assaulting women in Pollachi and filming the act to blackmail them for money or for physical submission for over seven years. Aizawl, March 21 : Mizoram is going to be a dry state, once again, from April 1 this year. The Mizoram Legislative Assembly has passed the Mizoram Liquor Prohibition Bill 2019, which seeks to ban consumption, manufacture and sale of liquor for general public. Prohibition was one of the major poll promises of the Mizo National Front-led government that came to power in the state, replacing the Congress as ruling party last year, by winning 26 seats in the 40-member House. State Excise and Narcotics Minister K. Beichhua tabled in the Assembly on Wednesday the Bill, which was passed unanimously. "Lifting the ban on liquor in Mizoram has had a severe impact on the Mizo society. It led to untimely death of people in road accidents and increase in alcohol intake among the youth," said the Minister while tabling the Bill. Legislator from the Zoram People's Movement (ZPM), Vanlalthlana, referred to the recent liquor ban in Bihar and said the move had led to reduction in crime in that state. "While crime against women was reduced to 13 per cent after the liquor ban in Bihar, incidents of rape declined too," Vanlalthlana said while supporting the Bill. In the last year's Mizoram Assembly polls, while the MNF promised a total ban, the Congress opposed it. The BJP on the other hand was for partial ban with locally-produced liquor to be allowed. The Church bodies, which play a major role in the elections in Mizoram, favoured a complete ban. Mizoram was a dry state between 1997 and 2015, when the then Congress government lifted the ban. Following the lifting of ban, liquor shops thrived in the Christian-majority state. The Congress justified the move by stating that it generated revenue and reduced spurious liquor related deaths. Soon after coming to power, the MNF government had extended the dry days. Following the decision, the government banned sale of alcohol in government-owned shops and shut nine such shops. Sopore: Security beefed up in the wake of a grenade attack in Sopore, Jammu and Kashmir on March 21, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News Sopore: Soldiers at the site of a gunfight that started between security forces and militants in Jammu and Kashmir's Sopore town on March 21, 2019. Police said that security forces began a cordon and search operation in Warpora area following informa Image Source: IANS News Srinagar, March 21 : Three militants were killed while seven security men and three civilians injured on Thursday in three different battles between security forces and militants in the Kashmir Valley, authorities said. While the first gunfight erupted in Sopore town, two gun battles were reported later from Bandipora and Baramulla districts. Police sources said firing exchanges between the security forces and militants have stopped in Kandi area of Baramulla district and bodies of two militants found. A para commando of the army, four policemen and two civilians were injured in this gunfight. Police said one militant was killed in the exchange of fire between security forces and the militants in Mir Mohalla of Hajin area - once considered a zone "liberated" from militant control -in Bandipora. "One militant has been killed so far. Another militant is still holed up inside a house where a 12-year-old boy is also believed to be stuck. Another civilian was safely evacuated from the house during the operation," a police officer said. According to a tweet by the police, the two civilians were being held hostage by the hiding militants. While one was rescued safely with the assistance of security forces and community members, the other, reportedly a minor, was still trapped. Police said security forces started a cordon and search operation in Hajin, following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants there. The militants who were in hiding opened fire at the security forces in Mir Mohalla, sparking off the gunfight. Another gunfight started in Kandi area of Baramulla after security forces resumed on Thursday morning a search operation which was suspended due to darkness on Wednesday evening. "As the search operation was resumed, militants fired at the security forces, triggering an encounter," the officer said. In the third incident, two policemen - a Station House Officer (SHO) and his security guard - and a civilian were injured earlier on Thursday when militants hurled a grenade at security forces in Warpora area of Sopore town and then opened fire. "Both the policemen have been shifted to Srinagar for specialized treatment. The operation against the militants is going on," a police officer said. A civilian sustained bullet injury in his leg in the Sopore gunfight. He too was shifted to hospital and his condition was stated to be stable. As a precaution, authorities suspended mobile Internet service in Sopore town. New Delhi, March 21 : The Delhi Police, which had made adequate security arrangements to ensure peaceful Holi celebrations on Thursday, said it issued over 13,000 traffic violations tickets including for drunk driving and fielded over 4,000 calls reporting quarrels. According to Delhi Police's Additional PRO, Anil Mittal, the Police Control Room (PCR) received over 4,000 calls of quarrel-related incidents on Holi. "Total challans (tickets) issued today for traffic violations are 13,219 that including 431 for interception and 1,591 for drunken driving. Drunken driving cases reduced by about 300 this year," he said. Last year as per the Delhi Police data, over 9,300 people were challaned and 1,900 were booked for drunken driving. Adequate arrangements were made by the joint team of local districts and traffic police to ensure safety and security of people and teams with alcometers were deployed at major intersections and vulnerable points to detect and prosecute traffic violators, the officer added. Rome, March 22 : Italy's Premier Giuseppe Conte said he and France's President Emmanuel Macron will on Friday discuss a planned 8.6 billion euro high-speed train link between Turin and Lyon. "Tomorrow I have a bilateral meeting with Macron - that is news," Conte told reporters on the sidelines of a European Union summit in Brussels. Conte earlier this month helped draft a legal document to allow tenders for the delayed project to be launched by a March 11 deadline to avoid the loss of 300 million euros of European Commission funding. The legal letter sent to TELT, the Franco-Italian company in charge of the Tav, was described as a piece of "legal acrobacy" as it gives Italy and France another six months to reassess the project while keeping its European Union funding on track until any final decision is taken. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right League party, is a strong supporter of the Tav, while Luigi Di Maio, head of the grassroots 5-Star Movement - the League's coalition partner - opposes it. The project has been stalled for months due to 5-Star's opposition to it. France and the EU - which is paying for 40 percent of the tunnel - could seek damages from Italy if the project is binned. Yokohama : , March 22 (IANS/AKI) Japan has donated 69 million dollars to the United Nations World Food Programme to provide vital aid to 28 countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, with the biggest shares of the money earmarked for Yemen and Iraq, WFP said Thursday in a statement. "We are very grateful for the generous support from the government and people of Japan, which contributes to our work transitioning from humanitarian emergencies to longer-term development," said Naoe Yakiya, Director of WFP Japan's Office. "Today, we are facing a rise in the number of hungry people globally, reaching 821 million people...without peace and stability, we will not achieve our long-term goal of Zero Hunger," he added. The Japanese funding will go towards food, nutrition and initiatives to build resilience in vulnerable populations, the statement said. $18 million will be used to give continued support needy families in war-wracked Yemen where over 20 million people are struggling to get enough to eat each day, the statement noted. Japan continues to support the Sahel where conflict and climate change have left millions facing hunger and malnutrition, and the funds will also be used to promote children's full growth and the health of pregnant and breastfeeding women, in order to help change lives and break the cycle of poverty, said the WFP statement said. A total of $3.5 million of life-saving assistance will be given to Malian refugees in Mauritania and to people who have fled their homes due to conflict and food shortages in Mali. Host communities sheltering the Malian refugees and internally displaced persons will also receive aid, the statement added. Japan is one of WFP's top donors and has contributed $$958 million to the UN agency since 2014, said the statement. This week, all of the busiest suburbs for auctions are in Victoria, with Preston and Reservoir topping the list. Each suburb has 14 homes scheduled for auction each. They are followed closely by Bentleigh East, Cheltenham and Mount Waverley each with 13 scheduled auctions. Upcoming auctions There are 1,552 capital city homes set to be auctioned this week, down from the 1,875 auctions held last week. Over the same week one year ago, volumes were significantly higher (3,990) over what was the pre-Easter weekend, which is traditionally one of the busiest weeks for auctions each year. Both Melbourne and Sydney will see fewer homes taken to auction week-on-week, with Melbourne set to host 754 auctions, down 18 per cent on last week (920). In Sydney, 465 auctions are expected to take place; a decrease of 27.1 per cent over the week (638). Click here to enlarge: ASIC is assisting the Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom (FCA) in seeking to identify investors who may be eligible for restitution in the failed Reforestation Projects carbon credits scheme intended for land in Sierra Leone, Brazil and Australia. Following action in the High Court in relation to a series of unregistered collective investment schemes, the Financial Conduct Authority of the United Kingdom (FCA) is seeking to identify investors who may be eligible for restitution. It is not known how many Australian lost money in the scheme. ASIC is assisting the FCA to share this information, which may be of interest to Australians who had invested in either: African Land (also known as Agri Capital) which offered investments in rice farm harvests in Sierra Leone and was run by African Land Limited; or Reforestation Projects (also known as Capital Carbon Credits) which offered investments in carbon credits intended to be generated from land in Sierra Leone, Brazil and Australia and was run by Reforestation Projects Limited. This link contains information about the matter, including steps that can be taken to notify the FCA of details in relation to investments made. The FCA requires these details by 31 March 2019. The High Court decided in February 2014 that the schemes were collective investment schemes which could not be lawfully operated by the defendants. Some of the defendants appealed this decision. In March 2015 the Court of Appeal rejected the appeal. On 28 July 2015, the Supreme Court refused to give the defendants permission to make a further appeal. Following these rulings, the Court gave directions for a further trial to consider misleading statements, the extent of the defendants liability and the orders the Court should make. This trial took place over 22 days in July and October 2017 and the judgement was handed down on 26 March 2018. The High Court initially ordered the defendants to pay 16.9 million in restitution. Following further applications by the FCA to take into account further losses from the African Land scheme, the Court has increased the amount to 18.7 million. The defendants applied for permission to appeal the High Courts decision. In a hearing on 24 April 2018, the trial judge refused the defendants applications for permission to appeal. Some of the defendants then applied to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal, and these were all refused in October 2018. On 1 March, The High Court of Justice sentenced Robert John McKendrick to six months imprisonment for contempt of court. McKendrick had diverted funds and failed to disclose information about his assets in breach of freezing injunctions obtained by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Mark Steward, Executive Director of Enforcement and Market Oversight at the FCA, said: "In this case, Mr McKendrick misled investors and then, in contempt of court, failed to comply with court orders requiring him to properly account for the losses. The FCA will ensure that defendants who mislead investors are held to account to the fullest extent possible." The FCA launched legal action in July 2013 in respect of four unauthorised collective investment schemes promoted mainly by Capital Alternatives. McKendrick was the main Director and sole shareholder of African Land. The scheme was unlawfully promoted and operated without authorisation from the FCA. The Court found that McKendrick made misleading statements to investors and was knowingly concerned in misleading statements made by others. McKendrick was also knowingly concerned in the Capital Carbon Credits scheme in Sierra Leone, which was also operated and promoted unlawfully. The losses across the schemes in which McKendrick was involved exceed 15 million. In March 2018, the Court gave Judgment in the FCAs claim and ordered McKendrick to pay the losses to the FCA so they can be paid back to investors. McKendrick has since been declared bankrupt. When the FCA took action in 2013, it obtained a freezing order against McKendrick. Upon Judgment in March 2018, the Court made a further freezing order requiring McKendrick to disclose all his assets and preventing him from disposing of them. In breach of the freezing orders, McKendrick appointed his wife to manage his portfolio of buy-to-let properties at a commission rate significantly higher than he had paid to his previous letting agents. He then diverted the rental income from these properties to his wife. He did not disclose these arrangements. As a result, the FCA brought an application to Court with the primary aim of discovering what had happened to the money so it could recover it for investors. In response, McKendrick admitted his breaches of the freezing orders and finally provided an account of where the money went. The FCA will ensure that as much of it as possible is recovered for investors. In sentencing McKendrick, Justice Marcus Smith noted that McKendrick had admitted, and apologised for the breaches but they were many, varied and deliberate, and intended to thwart orders of the court. Monies were paid away and used by McKendrick for his own benefit. The Court indicated that McKendrick would have received a 12 month sentence but for his admissions and his genuine attempt to remedy his failures to provide full and accurate information. The defendants in the proceedings were: Erika has been an important part of Shepard Laws development into a premier toxic tort litigation firm. In addition to running the litigation department, she has mentored newer attorneys and paralegals, helping build a strong team here at Shepard Law. And the clients just love her! Shepard Law, one of the top asbestos personal injury law firms in Massachusetts, continues its growth trajectory with the recent elevation of Erika ODonnell to Equity Partner with the firm. Shepard Law made headline news in October 2018 for their victory in the Summerlin v. Philip Morris USA, et al. case (No. 1581CV05255, Mass. Super., Suffolk Co.)a notable case that brought co-defendants from an asbestos product company and a cigarette manufacturer to trial before a jury. After a five-week trial before the Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, Shepard Law secured a $43 million verdict on behalf of their client. Attorney ODonnell was involved in representing the case on behalf of the Summerlin family. Erika has been an important part of Shepard Laws development into a premier toxic tort litigation firm. In addition to running the litigation department, she has mentored newer attorneys and paralegals, helping build a strong team here at Shepard Law. And the clients just love her, said Michael Shepard Erika ODonnell joined Shepard Law in 2005 and her roots growing up in a blue-collar family from Worcester, Massachusetts steered her toward a career helping sick and injured workers get the compensation they deserve for their illnesses. The opening of the firms second office in Worcester in 2017 has allowed Shepard Law and ODonnell to return to her hometown and help other local families in that community. She is active in the Worcester Bar Association and is a founding member of a prestigious national group of female toxic-tort litigators. Erika is well respected by both her colleagues and her adversaries in the litigation field. She has achieved numerous multi-million dollar settlements and verdicts for Shepard Law clients. I am extremely honored to be named an Equity Partner at Shepard Law. In my expanded role, I look forward to continuing to work with our clients and their families to ensure that they feel fully supported and satisfied with the litigation process, while at the same time helping to shape the future of the firm as the preeminent toxic tort law firm in New England, said Erika ODonnell In addition to the Summerlin case, ODonnell was recently involved with an asbestos mesothelioma case involving a chemical engineer who was exposed to asbestos at a large plant in Springfield, Massachusetts. That case was notable in that she was able to successfully identify and bring suit against many defendants that had never been sued before in Massachusetts for their asbestos-containing products. In 2018, ODonnell also successfully litigated a case involving a client who worked spraying asbestos insulation in buildings as a teenager, and later developed mesothelioma as an adult in his 60's. ODonnell is a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Worcester Bar Association, and the American Association for Justice. About Shepard Law Shepard Law is a Boston-based law firm and one of the top personal injury law firms in Massachusetts focusing on major asbestos claims involving mesothelioma or lung cancer, tobacco, dangerous drugs, and defective product liability. The firm has been litigating mesothelioma lawsuits in both state and federal courts for over 20 years and has represented victims of asbestos exposure throughout New England and across the United States. http://www.shepardlawfirm.com An Airborne Response unmanned aircraft system takes to the sky during a disaster response exercise in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Public safety agencies are quickly embracing drones as a revolutionary tool offering a new set of capabilities to help in disaster and recovery efforts - Daniel Sanchez, Florida Sales Manager for Motorola Solutions The Airborne International Response Team (AIRT), a Florida-registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization, has teamed up with Motorola Solutions, a global leader in mission-critical communications, to present the 2019 UAS DRONES Disaster Conference (UASDISCON) at Florida International University (FIU) on April 11-12. In its second year, the UAS DRONES Disaster Conference series unites stakeholders from public safety, emergency management, government, industry, and academia to explore the evolving role of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) also known as drones for public safety and disaster response missions. The Miami UASDISCON event will focus heavily on how drones were used during the 2018 response and recovery efforts surrounding Hurricanes Florence and Michael, as well as other significant incidents. Public safety agencies are quickly embracing drones as a revolutionary tool offering a new set of capabilities to help in disaster and recovery efforts, says Daniel Sanchez, Florida Sales Manager for Motorola Solutions. We look forward to working with AIRT and FIU to help expand the knowledge surrounding the use of unmanned systems for emergencies and disasters. The UAS DRONES Disaster Conference in Miami will offer a robust, 2-day content program comprised of expert presentations, panel workshops, exhibits, and live UAS flight demonstrations showcasing the latest public safety drone technology. Conference participants will develop a better understanding of unmanned aircraft systems, the benefits they offer, and how to integrate UAS technology with other systems. Through their sponsorship, Motorola Solutions will offer special conference pricing to public safety and emergency response personnel who desire to attend the conference. The Motorola Solutions brand embodies a long legacy of successful innovation surrounding public safety and emergency communications, says Christopher Todd, Executive Director of the Airborne International Response Team (AIRT). This sponsorship represents a new milestone as we look to expand the UAS DRONES Disaster Conference series throughout the U.S. and internationally. Proceeds from the UAS DRONES Disaster Conference series will benefit the Airborne International Response Team (AIRT), a 501(c)3 non-profit, non-governmental organization that provides unmanned aviation and aerospace capabilities to help people prepare for, respond to, and recover from complex emergencies and major disasters. Registration for the UAS DRONES Disaster Conference in Miami is now open with special early bird ticket pricing available through March 31 or while supplies last. Public safety and emergency management attendees who register via miami.uasdrones.org before March 31 will receive the special price of $125, representing over 50% off the normal conference pass price. Motorola Solutions customers are encouraged to contact their local representative to learn more about special conference pricing available for public safety and enterprise customers. Additional conference presenters will be announced in the coming weeks. For more information on UAS DRONES Disaster Conference Miami please visit http://miami.uasdrones.org or contact Martha Donato at mdonato(at)uasdrones.org About AIRT AIRT (Airborne Incident Response Team) is a Florida-registered 501(c)3 non-profit corporation that provides innovative aviation and aerospace resources to help prepare for, respond to, and recover from complex emergencies and major disasters. AIRT is building the Worlds Largest Air Force for #aviationforgood. Our global remote pilot network is ready to #getup whenever disaster strikes. For more information, visit: http://airt.ngo American Family Care (AFC), the nation's leading provider of urgent care and accessible primary care has partnered with ApplePie Capital to offer new and existing franchisees access to up to $30 million in debt capital to drive continued expansion across the U.S. Over the past 36 years, AFC has pioneered the concept of urgent care and expanded its footprint to become one of the nation's leading health care providers. Each clinic features a high-tech, high-touch approach, including digital x-rays, on-site lab testing, state of the art diagnostics, and electronic medical records. American Family Care is excited to offer multi-unit franchise opportunities to individuals looking to develop a larger market while owning, operating, staffing, and overseeing training for multiple AFC franchise locations. We are excited to partner with ApplePie Capital as they understand American Family Cares business model, brand promise and core values. ApplePie is a proven leader in franchise finance, and like us, is focused on the sustainable, long-term growth of our franchisees. This partnership is a key step in our strategic initiatives to fuel the growth of new and existing franchisees and increase our brand awareness, said D. Bruce Irwin, M.D., Founder and CEO of AFC. "This partnership will also be critical to our ongoing mission to deliver compassionate, convenient health care to patients around the corner and around the nation." "ApplePie Capital is thrilled to add American Family Care to the franchisors we serve," said Denise Thomas, CEO and co-founder of ApplePie. "We are very selective in the brands we partner with and look for franchisors with strong unit-level economics, low closure rates, and successful franchisees. The track record for American Family Care in these areas made it an easy decision to begin a partnership. We look forward to supporting their franchisees long-term growth plans." About American Family Care: Founded by Dr. Bruce Irwin with a single location in 1982, American Family Care has pioneered the concept of non-emergency room urgent care. With its 2013 acquisition of Doctors Express, and its subsequent rebranding, AFC has become the nation's leading provider of urgent care, accessible primary care, and occupational medicine, with more than 180 clinics and 600 in-network physicians caring for nearly 3 million patients a year. Ranked by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S., AFC's stated mission is to provide the best healthcare possible, in a kind and caring environment, while respecting the rights of all patients, in an economical manner, at times and locations convenient to the patient. For more information, visit https://afcfranchising.com/ About ApplePie Capital ApplePie Capital is an innovative financial solutions provider dedicated to franchising. ApplePie provides a wealth of financial choices for franchise entrepreneurs at every stage of their development, with a diverse and growing network of capital providers and financing solutions, including growth capital, SBA and conventional loans, and equipment financing. ApplePie's franchise finance experts are focused on matching clients with the right option at the right time, maximizing their efficiency and reducing the headaches of working separately across individual lenders. For more information, visit http://www.applepiecapital.com. SOURCE American Family Care Related Links https://afcfranchising.com/ Faizan Sheikh, CEO, and Pablo Molina, CTO, of Avidbots with the Neo robotic floor scrubber Avidbots has been growing at a tremendous pace, and were excited to announce the financial support of world-class investors such as True Ventures, Next47, and GGV Capital. Avidbots, a company that brings robots to everyday life to expand human potential, today announced it has raised $23.6 million in Series B funding led by returning investor True Ventures. Other returning investors include GGV Capital, SOSV, Real Ventures, and 500 Startups Canada. New investors include Next47, BDC Capital, and KCPL. To date, Avidbots has raised $36 million in venture capital financing. Avidbots is a fast-growing company that designs and builds autonomous connected robots. Its first product is Neo, a robotic floor scrubber widely deployed in commercial locations around the world, including airports, warehouses, manufacturing sites, malls, and universities. Manufactured in Avidbots 40,000-square foot facility in Kitchener, Ontario, Neo is in use today in over a dozen countries, cleaning floors in locations such as Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, Torontos Eaton Centre mall, and Rochester Institute of Technology. To date, Neo has cleaned over half a billion square feet of floor space. With strong worldwide demand for our Neo industrial cleaning robot, Avidbots has been growing at a tremendous pace, and were excited to announce the financial support of world-class investors such as True Ventures, Next47, and GGV Capital as we enter into our next phase of expansion, said Faizan Sheikh, CEO and co-founder of Avidbots. With this new funding, we will accelerate investment in talent acquisition, engineering, marketing, and sales to bring our cutting-edge robots to more customers worldwide. Avidbots created Neo to solve a real-world problem: cleaning floors in large commercial spaces. Traditionally, a janitor must push a floor-scrubbing machine every night, taking hours to complete this tedious and back-breaking work. The job has high turnover, making it difficult for facilities to efficiently manage their cleaning operations. When Neo joins the maintenance crew, it frees up human coworkers to focus on higher-value tasks, such as cleaning bathrooms and common areas. Ground staff control Neo through an easy-to-use touch screen, while facilities managers can log into an intuitive web app called Command Center to access real-time and historical reporting and video streamsgetting clear visibility into cleaning operations and outcomes. We invest in industrial automation and robotics companies that have thought deeply about which types of work are best suited for machines, said Rohit Sharma, Partner at True Ventures. Repetitive, tedious work like commercial floor cleaning is an effective area of initial focus and were thrilled to support Faizan and his team as they pioneer this space. While most robotic floor-cleaning machines are simply existing manual models retrofitted with hardware and software that allows them to travel a few pre-programmed routes, Avidbots Neo is the first purpose-built commercial robotic floor scrubber that uses AI to optimize performance. Neo does not just follow a set path, but instead continually learns from its environment to change its route on the flyavoiding obstacles and adapting to new floor layouts. Neo has a vertically-integrated technology stack that incorporates proprietary software and a unique hardware design, as well as the most advanced 3D sensors and cameras. Connected to the cloud through WiFi and 4G, Neo includes 24x7 monitoring and automatically receives regular software updates to continuously gain new functionality. Neo is the only floor-cleaning robot that gets smarter and more effective over time. About Avidbots Avidbots designs and manufactures autonomous connected robots to expand human potential. Its first product is Neo, a robotic floor scrubber widely deployed in airports, warehouses, manufacturing sites, malls, universities, and other commercial spaces worldwide. With a rapidly-expanding customer base in over a dozen countries, Avidbots is a global leader in collaborative service robots. Founded in 2014 by robotics engineers from the University of Waterloo and headquartered in Kitchener, Ontario, Avidbots is backed by top global venture capital firms including True Ventures, Next47, GGV Capital, BDC, Felicis Ventures, Real Ventures, and Golden Ventures. For more information, visit https://www.avidbots.com About True Ventures Founded in 2005, True Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology startups. With more than $2 billion under management, True provides seed and Series A funding to the most talented entrepreneurs in todays fastest growing markets. The firm maintains a strong community that supports founders and their teams, helping True companies achieve higher levels of success and impact. To date, True has helped more than 250 companies launch and scale their businesses, creating over 10,000 jobs worldwide. The firm was awarded 2018 Venture Firm of the Year by the National Venture Capital Association. To learn more, visit https://trueventures.com Media Contact: Kristi Essick 415-407-8714 kristi (at) archwaypr (dot) com Backstop Solutions Group, the leading cloud-based productivity suite for institutional and alternative investors, has today announced significant growth across several areas of the organization over the past year. With over 800 clients managing over $4 trillion in assets using the Backstop platform, the company has continued to expand as demand grows for technology solutions that make investment and operations professionals more productive and effective. New releases to Backstops productivity technology suite Over the course of the past year, Backstop Solutions Group has introduced more new capabilities than ever before, including: Definable entities: Clients are able to implement and use their own nomenclature systems for fields, entity names and report titles. Cash holdings: Asset allocators have access to high transaction count configurations and more realistic reflections of cash holdings through visual insights within Backstop. Dated relationships: Users can easily track the dynamic nature of their individual relationships over time and across multiple organizations. Schedule-able reports: Backstop reports can be delivered at automatic intervals, allowing for greater data visibility. Revamped Preqin integration: Preqin has now been integrated directly into the Backstop screen. Users can control what Preqin data they see and how it is displayed. Pipeline analytics: Actionable analysis allows clients deeper insight into their research process. E-signatures: Enables simple, secure and fully digital workflow and approval processes. Self-service profile edits: Asset managers can enable investors to individually update their own profile information for improved data quality, compliance and workflow efficiency. Capital Raise In October 2018, Backstop Solutions Group completed a $20 million growth round of financing. Investors included Roger Kafker, a 30-year veteran investor in the asset management space, Tao Huang, former COO of Morningstar, David Bradley, President of Huizenga Capital Management, and Vistara Capital Partners. Key acquisition In December 2018, Backstop Solutions Group announced the acquisition of BarclayHedge, a leading provider of alternative investment data and indices. As a result, Backstop will now be able to offer institutional clients a proprietary combination of technology, tools, services, and data to help optimize their research management and due diligence workflows. Expansion to executive leadership and advisory board In 2018, Backstop Solutions Group welcomed two new executive team leaders and appointed three new members to the Board of Advisors, collectively bringing further acumen and experiential investment knowledge to the company. Executive hires include: - Nancy Wells, SVP, Global Sales - Chad Erwin, SVP, Asset Owners Advisory board member appointments: - Roger Kafker, a participating investor in Backstop Solutions Groups most recent round of funding, Kafker is currently a Senior Advisor at TA Associates, where he has also formerly served as an Executive Member and as Managing Director in his 30-year career at the company - Ana Gomez Chapman, Senior Relationship Manager Alternatives Lead at Allianz Global Investors - JJ Wilczewski, Managing Director, Head of Americas Institutional Coverage; Chairman - Global Institutional Practice at DWS Group Industry recognition Backstop was the recipient of key industry awards, further validating the companys commitment to excellence in product innovation and client service: Best Data and Technology Provider by Chief Investment Officer Magazine Best CRM System by HFM US Hedge Fund Services Awards 2018 Backstop Solutions Group also continued its focus on diversity with the companys Women in Tech (WIT) Program, which included hosting the panel event, The Impact of Impact Investing: How Diversity & Inclusion Have Bolstered Performance in Chicago, as well as participation in YWCAs TechGYRLS initiative, a youth empowerment program designed to raise girls interest and confidence in STEAM areas. The past 12 months were a banner year for us, said Clint Coghill, CEO, Backstop Solutions Group. Weve introduced several new features to make our software suite even easier for clients to use, made some key acquisitions to round out our service offerings, and welcomed some of the best in the business to our executive leadership and advisory board to ensure our path to success continues. We look forward to being able to continuously exceed our clients expectations in streamlining and enhancing their work. For more information, visit https://www.backstopsolutions.com. About Backstop Solutions Group, LLC Backstops mission is to help the institutional investment industry use time to its fullest potential. We develop technology to simplify and streamline otherwise time- consuming tasks and processes, enabling our clients to quickly and easily access, share, and manage the knowledge that is critical to their day-to-day business success. Backstop provides its industry-leading cloud-based productivity suite to investment consultants, pensions, funds of funds, family offices, endowments, foundations, private equity, hedge funds, and real estate investment firms. Charles Fay, M&A Advisor exceeding industry norms BMI Mergers & Acquisitions, a M&A and business brokerage firm, announced Charles Fay successfully completed the exams and requirements for the FINRA series 79 and 63. This brings an additional level of professionalism and protection for his clients and customers. Charles will handle securities transactions as a registered representative of StillPoint Capital, LLC, a FINRA Member firm and registered broker-dealer. Charles spent more than 30 years working with Fortune 200 companies in the high technology electronics industry. He was notably the key contributor that rebuilt and globalized a $1 billion business as well as seamlessly integrating numerous strategic acquisitions for Arrow Electronics. Charles brings a unique set of skills and extensive knowledge of the electronics industry to his clients. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University as well as a Master of Science in Computer & Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Tom Kerchner, Managing Director of BMI had this to say, With this accomplishment, Charles helps BMI continue its tradition of exceeding industry norms when it comes to licensing and certifications. This further enhances Charles credentials as he continues to work with small and mid-size firms in the electronics industry. About BMI Mergers & Acquisitions BMI specializes in the sale and acquisition of privately held businesses. Our process is designed to be thorough, confidential and attract a large pool of qualified buyers. The end result: Maximum Value for business owners. Our professionals include certified M&A Advisors and business brokers, as well as licensed holders of series 79 and 63, and licensed real estate representatives. With offices in Philadelphia, Stamford Connecticut, Allentown, Harrisburg and Reading Pennsylvania, BMI is a member of the M&A Source, ACG, International Business Brokers Association and Pennsylvania Business Brokers Association. http://www.bmimergers.com Securities transactions are handled thru StillPoint Capital, Member FINRA and SIPC, Tampa, FL. StillPoint Capital is not affiliated with BMI. We are fully committed to implementing programs which will see the introduction of additional employee resource groups to support veterans, members of the LGBTQ+ community, Latinos, Pan-Asians, women, young professionals and black employees. Catalent Pharma Solutions, the leading global provider of advanced delivery technologies and development solutions for drugs, biologics and consumer health products, today announced that it has signed the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion pledge, the largest CEO-driven business commitment for advancing diversity and inclusion in the workplace. This pledge recognizes that diversity and inclusion is not just a competitive issue, but a societal one that CEOs can play a critical role in addressing. John Chiminski, Catalents Chair and Chief Executive Officer commented, Research shows that diversity increases creativity and innovation, promotes higher quality decisions, and enhances economic growth. He added, We are fully committed to implementing programs which will see the introduction of additional employee resource groups to support veterans, members of the LGBTQ+ community, Latinos, Pan-Asians, women, young professionals and black employees. Mr. Chiminski joins more than 550 CEOs of the worlds leading companies and business organizations, with the aim of advancing diversity and inclusion. The CEO Action Pledge outlines a specific set of actions that participating organizations will take to cultivate a trusting environment where all ideas are welcomed, and employees feel comfortable and empowered to discuss diversity and inclusion. For more information on the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion program visit ceoaction.com. About Catalent Catalent is the leading global provider of advanced delivery technologies and development solutions for drugs, biologics and consumer health products. With over 85 years serving the industry, Catalent has proven expertise in bringing more customer products to market faster, enhancing product performance and ensuring reliable clinical and commercial product supply. Catalent employs over 11,000 people, including over 1,800 scientists, at more than 30 facilities across five continents, and in fiscal year 2018 generated approximately $2.5 billion in annual revenue. Catalent is headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey. For more information, visit http://www.catalent.com. More products. Better treatments. Reliably supplied. Teri Robinson, executive editor, SC Media, presented Sam Curry, chief security officer, Cybereason with a 30th Anniversary 'Visionary Award' recently. "Over the last three decades, the winners of our 30th Anniversary Awards have left an indelible imprint on the cybersecurity industry through their tireless work and Sam Curry has most assuredly earned this honor," said Illena Armstrong, VP, editorial, SC Media. Cybereason, creators of the leading Cyber Defense Platform, today announced that Sam Curry, Chief Security Officer, was recently honored with one of SC Media's 30th Anniversary Visionary Awards for his contributions in shaping the cybersecurity industry. It is very humbling to be recognized by SC Media during their 30th Anniversary celebration because there are thousands of distinguished individuals that make up the fabric of the security industry. In some respects, this feels like a lifetime achievement award, but at this point in my career I havent thought of planting any flags. There is so much more that I am working on, and I am passionately motivated to change the security game for the better of us all. Congratulations to all of my colleagues who received these distinguished awards, said Curry. As part of SC Medias year-long celebration for their 30th anniversary in the cybersecurity industry, they expanded the annual SC Awards to include several special categories honoring those who have shaped the industry as well as those who are beginning their journey and will influence the future. Winners were decided by SC Medias editorial team with the assistance of the SC Awards co-chairs. Over the last three decades, the winners of our 30th Anniversary Awards have left an indelible imprint on the cybersecurity industry through their tireless work and visionary leadership, said Illena Armstrong, VP, editorial, SC Media. Sam Curry has most assuredly earned this honor for his continued dedication to protecting enterprises from todays sophisticated threats. Sam Curry brings over 25 years of experience in security with a focus on deep technology and solving practitioner problems to his role as Cybereason CSO. He was previously CTO and CSO at Arbor Networks, SVP Engineering and CISO at Microstrategy, and he held a number of senior roles at RSA, the Security Division of EMC (GM, SVP Products and CTO). He has done work on national defense, public policy, and establishing standards and protocols in security. He has also held a number of senior leadership roles at McAfee and CA, in two successful startups, and is on three security organization boards. He is a frequent speaker with BBC, CNN, MSNBC and other media outlets, a published author, a highly patented inventor, and a widely quoted security expert. He contributes regularly as an industry expert and visionary to Forbes.com. About SC Media SC Media is cybersecurity. For over 30 years, they have armed information security professionals with in-depth and unbiased information through timely news, comprehensive analysis, cutting-edge features, contributions from thought leaders, and independent product reviews in partnership with and for top-level information security executives and their technical teams. In addition to their comprehensive website, SC Media offers magazines, ebooks, and newsletters. They also host digital and live events such as SC Awards and RiskSec Conference to provide cybersecurity professionals all the information needed to safeguard their organizations and contribute to their longevity and success. About Cybereason Cybereason, creators of the leading Cyber Defense Platform, gives the advantage back to the defender through a completely new approach to cybersecurity. Cybereason offers endpoint detection and response (EDR), next-generation antivirus (NGAV), and active monitoring services, powered by its cross-machine correlation engine. The Cybereason suite of products provides unmatched visibility, increases analyst efficiency and effectiveness, and reduces security risk. Cybereason is privately held, has raised $189 million from top-tier VCs, and is headquartered in Boston, with offices in London, Sydney, Tel Aviv and Tokyo. Learn more: https://www.cybereason.com/ Follow us: Blog | Twitter | Facebook Media Contact: Bill Keeler Director, Public Relations Cybereason bill.keeler(at)cybereason(dot)com (929) 259-3261 David Morris, a husband, father, and former Navy SEAL from Beaufort, South Carolina, has completed his book Coming Full Circle: Living with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: a searing and deeply personal memoir of war and its lifelong, often debilitating impact on those who serve. The story within recounts the life experiences of David H. Morris, a former Navy SEAL. In 1996 David was diagnosed with chronic severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This disorder was caused by events that took place in 1968 while serving as a member of Mike Platoon, SEAL Team One, in the Republic of Vietnam. The following is his story, told in his words. He hopes the words within will help those who have been diagnosed with this condition, and the thousands of others who walk around with undiagnosed PTSD. Some names have been changed. Published by New York City-based Page Publishing, David Morriss book is a heartbreaking window into the lives of combat veterans who suffer daily from the devastation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Readers who wish to experience this gripping and poignant work can purchaseComing Full Circle: Living with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708. About Page Publishing: Page Publishing is a traditional New York-based, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create - not overwhelmed with logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and the like. Its roster of accomplished authors and publishing professionals allows writers to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues to focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com. DHL Supply Chain hosted its annual Carrier Summit to recognize select carrier customers for their superior performance in 2018. DHL Supply Chain, the Americas leader in contract logistics and part of Deutsche Post DHL Group, hosted its annual Carrier Summit to recognize select carrier customers for their superior performance in 2018. Six carriers were honored with the 2018 Carrier Performance Award at the event in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which featured company overviews, carrier strategy alignment, and customer presentations designed to further engage DHL Supply Chains carrier partners and its customers. More than 70 North American carriers participated in the summit. This years Carrier Performance Award recipients included: LTL Carrier of the Year: Reddaway National LTL Carrier of the Year: SAIA TL Carrier of the Year: Arnold Transportation Services Canadian TL Carrier of the Year: Kriska Transportation IMC of the Year: Radiant Clipper Home Delivery Carrier of the Year: NVC Logistics Group Our Carrier Performance Award winners represent the best of the best in the supply chain, said Jim Monkmeyer, President, Transportation, DHL Supply Chain, North America. Their partnership to deliver, even under the most challenging conditions, continues to support our ability to consistently exceed customer expectations. We appreciate their shared commitment to operational excellence and are honored to recognize them at this years Summit. Event speakers included DHL Supply Chains Jim Monkmeyer, President, Transportation; Dennis Drinan, Vice President, LLP, Americas; and Tim Podvin, Sr. Director of Carrier Development. Panel discussions included carrier representatives from Radiant Clipper, SAIA, and Swift Transportation. DHL Supply Chains next Carrier Summit will take place in March 2020. For more information about DHL Supply Chains transportation and supply chain solutions, click here. End Media Contact: Nicole Porter DHL Supply Chain Phone: 614-865-8437 E-mail: nicole.porter@dhl.com On the Internet: dpdhl.de/press Follow us at: twitter.com/DeutschePostDHL DHL The logistics company for the world DHL is the leading global brand in the logistics industry. Our DHL family of divisions offer an unrivalled portfolio of logistics services ranging from national and international parcel delivery, e-commerce shipping and fulfillment solutions, international express, road, air and ocean transport to industrial supply chain management. With about 380,000 employees in more than 220 countries and territories worldwide, DHL connects people and businesses securely and reliably, enabling global trade flows. With specialized solutions for growth markets and industries including technology, life sciences and healthcare, energy, automotive and retail, a proven commitment to corporate responsibility and an unrivalled presence in developing markets, DHL is decisively positioned as The logistics company for the world. DHL is part of Deutsche Post DHL Group. The Group generated revenues of more than 61 billion euros in 2018. DigDev, South Floridas leading multi-channel data and digital marketing agency provide solution-based strategies to clients, globally. With extensive experience in this field, spanning more than a decade, the agency believes in offering customized digital packages that are meant to address every clients need uniquely. With email marketing now included in their digital packages, DigDevDirect gives clients a better chance of customer engagement. Because DigDev has such an extensive database, clients receive a higher conversion ratio as compared to their contemporaries. "You are the owner of a successful jazz studio in Deerfield Beach, with customers in the age group between 30 to 45 years. You now want to expand the reach to other parts of South Florida keeping in mind a similar target audience, but are unable to do so sitting in one corner. DigDev does a deep-dive into all those areas that you want to expand to and creates display advertisements aimed at specific age groups only. Here, we source data from various channels such as website enquiries, mailing lists, interest in jazz, etc. to give you the right kind of audience. This target audience is then sent customized messages via extensive email campaigns that are meant to entice them to join the studio," said a Media Direct Representative. DigDevDirect offers a wide database of consumers based on their preferences, age, gender, geography, marital status, political affiliations, etc. that makes it easier to segment the target audience. This search, when narrowed down, gives clients the means to reach out to their potential customers immediately. With Media Directs email marketing now part of digital packages, customers can send mailers on an on-going basis to create interest and generate leads continuously. An effort carried out on a large scale does not yield results instantly but requires consistent efforts to do so. This ensures a brands visibility and also gives them access to multiple potential clients or similar clients, across boundaries of the city. When they combine mobile and email marketing with social media and programmatic advertising the results are quite compelling to ignore. For more information regarding this feature, please contact Dennis John at djohn (at) digdev (dot) com. About DigDev Direct DigDev Direct utilizes a multi-channel marketing platform to cater to high-level services for customer acquisition and retention. Each channel comes with highly targeted strategies whether it be search engine optimization, pay per click, email marketing, mobile, data appending or more. Taiwan Tourism Bureau is promoting its tourism theme of the year The Charming Small Towns in Taiwan. A brand new Taiwan Pavilion is designed for the theme and is inspired by the iconic Zhiyang Gate of Miaoli Nanzhuang Lions Head Mountain (Mt. Shitou) with Hakka style decorations. Reputable partners including China Airlines, EVA Air, Mango Tours, J&V Travel, SITA and SuperValue Tours will join forces with the Bureau at the Santa Clara Convention Center to participate in the SF/Bay Travel & Adventure Show. Travel experts will be there to share unique itineraries to explore the charming small towns in Taiwan; current promotions for Taiwan tours and flights will be available. Lucky participants will receive itinerary planning service discount from Journy and a special offer to receive an exclusive gift from the 5-star Palais de Chine Hotel in Taipei (for direct booking); there will also be a raffle drawing for a chance to win round trip flight tickets (SFO to TPE) from China Airlines and EVA Air or $500 value Taiwan tour package discount from the Bureaus travel partners. CBSs popular reality show Survivor will be hosting a registration/casting call on the 23rd at 10AM. It will be held at the Santa Clara Convention Centers Great America Conference Room. Adam Klein, winner of the shows 33rd season, will be at the Taiwan Tourism Bureau booth for a meet & greet to share his winning strategies. One of the most popular items at this years Taiwan Lantern Festival in Dapeng Bay a special edition piggy bank handheld lantern will be giveaways for event goers. Jin Tea Shop created an interactive tea challenge game and will be offering tasting of the exquisite Oriental Beauty Cold Brew Tea, Oolong Cold Brew Tea as well as tofu pudding and herbal jelly. Boiling Point, a Taiwan specialty restaurant, will also be there to introduce their mini hotpot. This will be a fun experience for everyone to taste and learn about Taiwanese food culture in person. For music lovers, dont miss out on the Taiwanese Guzheng musical performance on Saturday 3/23 at 11AM and Sunday 3/24 at Noon. Hurry and join the Taiwan Tourism Bureaus official Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/TourTaiwan for the latest Taiwan travel information! This treatise features state-specific chapters on ABCs (assignments for the benefit of creditors) and receiverships. Financial Poise announces the 2019 edition of Strategic Alternatives for and against Distressed Businesses. The 2019 edition of Strategic Alternatives For And Against Distressed Businesses was just released by Thomson West Publishing Company. This 1,800+ page treatise, which is the product of a collaboration between more than 100 contributors, is the only resource available which provides a state-by-state comparison, on a chapter-by-chapter basis, of assignments for the benefit of creditors and receiverships. DailyDAC / Financial Poise founder, Jonathan Friedland, a corporate structuring and restructuring attorney, is editor-in-chief. Mr. Friedland noted that, "Through the collective efforts of our many expert contributors, this treatise provides an up to date understanding of the options available to a distressed business and its creditors and constituents, both in and out of bankruptcy." "Once we began our research, we realized that this methodology has even greater potential to increase our understanding of an individuals health. Imagine the transformative power of such practical, personalized insight. - Dr. Xiaonao Liu, CEO, NanoBioFab Dogs have great noses. They have an innate talent for sniffing out lost items or people, finding contraband, even signaling medical alerts for diseases such as epilepsy or cancer. The nose knows, and it helps us, too. This proven ability hints at the aromatic maelstrom swirling through our environment, beyond the scope of typical human olfactory senses. NanoBioFab, a biotech company based at the Frederick Innovative Technology Center, Inc. (FITCI) in Maryland, is working on a way to let people tap into those subtle vaporous signals to hone in on various health issues. Nanobiofab creates wearable nano-material based technologies using state-of-the-art customized inkjet printing nano-techniques. The nano-materials and bio-products detect minute molecules emitted from the skin for real-time tracking of fat consumption and potential disease diagnosis. Last year, NanoBioFabs research earned support from TEDCOs Rural Business Innovation Initiative (RBI2) and garnered first place in the US Eastern Entrepreneurship Contest, hosted by the Center for US-China Technology, Innovation, and Development. On March 19, owners and principal scientists, Drs. Xiaonao Liu and Ruoting Yang will present at MedTechs Military Pitch Event held in conjunction with US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) and the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC). MedTech Innovator is the industrys nonprofit global competition and accelerator for medical device, digital health and diagnostic companies. Their mission is to improve the lives of patients by accelerating the growth of companies that are transforming the healthcare system. Administrators chose NanoBioFab from a pool of more than 750 applicants this year, the highest number in event history. The company was selected to pitch during this special military-focused event as a way to identify and accelerate technologies that may be solutions to military needs. This event also serves as the qualifying round for the MedTech Innovator 2019 Program, giving participants like NanoBioFab the potential to earn part of $500K in cash prizes and awards. Dr. Liu is passionate about changing lives for the better. She says, A personal tragedy inspired us to start this company. Once we began our research, we realized that this methodology has even greater potential to increase our understanding of an individuals health. Imagine the transformative power of such practical, personalized insight. Kathie Callahan Brady, FITCIs CEO and a NanoBioFab advisor, has been following their progress from the beginning. Its exciting. The process of getting new biotech products and solutions into the market is notoriously long and expensive. So, being selected by MedTech to pitch is encouraging. It will give them national visibility and connection to some of the agencies that can help push this technology to fruition. The Military Pitch Event will be held at the Charleston Area Convention Center in South Carolina. The pitch session kicks off with one-minute introductions, including one slide/graphic, followed by a five-minute presentation. Candidates meet with up to five groups of judges, consisting of strategists, investors, and other industry stakeholders. For more information about NanoBioFab log onto http://www.nanobiofab.com or http://www.fitci.org. Heritage: a sweeping account of the history of alcohol in America. Heritage is the creation of published author Franko de Vaughn, a retired textile engineering professional with a passion for classic literature and philosophy. Vaughn writes, The definition of heritage may imply love for humanity, charity, empathy, and so forth. In giving or gifting something to someone, it may be something meaningful for a sole person or a collectivity. A king may give in heritage a castle or an estate of land to his or her subjects, or leave laws of protection for the well-being of the kingdoms citizens. Also, for the love of the community, a theater, stadium, library, or the like may be built that will show extraordinary goodwill for the people. He could give classics, artwork, an estate, or a tandem of oxen to till the ground and seed for foodoutstanding! Even gifts for regular folks, wills, or regular gifts for a market may show goodwill even in exchanging gifts. From 1920 to 1933, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, and Calvin Coolidge got a wonderful legislation approved. It was called the prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages and the like. Can you imagine such a monumental heritage for humanity? It lasted only thirteen years as the prohibition law was halted in 1933; this dream of living a pleasant life here on earth was gone. Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Franko de Vaughns new book is a staggering work of social importance that goes to show how not everything one can call a heritage is necessarily a blessing. Vaughn draws from fields beyond history to portray the complicated web American society is now trapped in, from sociological observation to moral and cultural analysis, ultimately appealing to those in the Christian spirit to shed the hypocrisy and take a stand against the misguided values of a drunken nation. View a synopsis of Heritage on YouTube. Consumers can purchase Heritage at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or inquiries about Heritage, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919. Foreign Professionals Are Often Limited by H-1B Visas EB-5 holders enjoy significant flexibility in terms of employment and education in any location in the United States. In this way, the EB-5 immigrant investor visa is generally less cumbersome than the H-1B Visa, commented Walter S. Gindin H-1B Program Continues to Face More Scrutiny. Foreign Professionals May Seek Green Cards through EB-5 Visa Investor Program On March 19, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced the start of the fiscal year (FY) 2020 H-1B cap season. The H-1B Visa allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign professionals in specialty occupations. Since the category was created in 1990, Congress has limited the number of H-1Bs made available each year. The current annual cap is 65,000 for new hires with a bachelors degree or equivalent, with another 20,000 visas for foreign professionals who graduate with a masters degree or doctorate from a U.S. institution of higher learning. Over the past several years, the number of immigration petitions received by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has far exceeded the annual cap for H-1B Visas. The filings start on April 1 and last until the visa cap is reached. In the recent years, the H-1B Visa cap has been reached within five days of the submission open date. As a result, the USCIS has conducted a lottery to determine which employers petitions for H-1B workers will be processed. More than 190,000 people applied for H-1B Visa in 2018. For foreigners seeking permanent residency in the United States, the H-1B Visa route has become increasingly difficult and uncertain. The process of transitioning from H-1B status to a permanent green card is often very complicated and protracted. Furthermore, recent proposed change to the H-1B program would remove work permits for all H-1B holders spouses (H4 Visa holders), which would eliminate an important income source for many foreign professionals and their families. In addition, new applicants are currently facing an all-time high rate of H-1B Visa denials, as the current administration seeks to overhaul the immigration system. The increasing difficulty of obtaining an H-1B Visa has led many foreign professionals to question whether it remains a viable path to permanent residency in the United States. Accordingly, these and other foreign nationals are exploring alternative routes to a green card, including, most notably, an immigrant visa through the EB-5 Program. The EB-5 Visa provides a path to lawful permanent resident status in the United States to qualified foreign nationals who invest $1 million, or $500,000 in a Targeted Employment Area, of lawfully derived capital in a new commercial enterprise that facilitates the creation of at least ten jobs for U.S. workers. The H-1B Visa suits short-term needs of high-skilled foreign professionals, but the many inherent constraints of the H-1B Visa would have been very limiting for someone like me who firmly intended to immigrate to the United States with a family. In contrast, the EB-5 Visa gave me and my family the freedom and flexibility to pursue all our goals in the United States, said Nilesh Shah, an existing EB-5 Investor from India and the Silicon Valley representative for CanAm. Unlike the H-1B Visa, the EB-5 Visa is granted not only to the investor but also to all eligible family members (spouse and children under the age of 21). The EB-5 Program is not exclusive to high-skilled workers or students, as it does not require any specific qualification or experience. EB-5 holders enjoy significant flexibility in terms of employment and education in any location in the United States. In this way, the EB-5 immigrant investor visa is generally less cumbersome than the H-1B Visa, commented Walter S. Gindin, Director and In-house Immigration Counsel at CanAm Enterprises. CanAm Enterprises, through its USCIS-approved regional centers, offers defined investment opportunities that are structured to comply with EB-5 Program requirements and preserve investors capital. CanAm Enterprises has financed 55 project loans and raised more than $2.8 billion in EB-5 investments leading to over 13,000 green card approvals. CanAm invites everyone pursuing permanent residency in the United States to read CanAms EB-5 Program overview and inquire about the EB-5 Visa options through one of various contact options. About CanAm Enterprises With three decades of experience promoting immigration-linked investments in the United States and Canada, CanAm has a long and established track record. Basing its business on a reputation of credibility and trust, CanAm has financed more than 55 project loans and raised over $2.8 billion in EB-5 investments. CanAm exclusively operates seven USCIS-designated regional centers that are located in the city of Philadelphia, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the county of Los Angeles, the Metropolitan Region of New York, the states of Hawaii, Florida and Texas. For more information, please visit http://www.canamenterprises.com "[The mainframe] is the global computing workhorse, running in the shadows powering much of what we do on the internet. Application quality delivered from z/OS plays a huge role in your daily internet experience." Infotel, international provider of data performance and optimization solutions for z/OS, recently issued guidelines for SQL code quality assurance for IBM z/OS in a latest thought-leading whitepaper. The whitepaper titled, SQL Quality Assurance on IBM z/OS offers actionable guidelines for best-practice code quality assurance to standardize SQL code and improve the quality of mainframe database applications. Since its introduction in 1983, IBMs Db2 on SQL has become the dominant DBMS and data management language respectively, and it is where the most critical data and apps reside for both government and commercial industry. Every year, more software programs are built with SQL, more data is managed by Db2, and more programmers are trained on the enterprise systems that run the largest IT environments in the world. With this massive workload, Db2 optimization is critical to the mainframes ability to deliver applications to service level agreements. In the whitepaper, Infotel advises organizations to make sure CPU consumption is optimized, and code quality assurance technology with automation is the best way to achieve this. If you swipe your credit card today, theres a 99.9 percent chance that transaction will go through a mainframe computer, said Carlos Almeida, business analyst at Tampa, Florida-based Infotel Corp. There is a reason we call the mainframe big iron in banking, finance, healthcare, and government. It is the global computing workhorse, running in the shadows powering much of what we do on the internet. Application quality delivered from z/OS plays a huge role in your daily internet experience. Infotels whitepaper is aimed at Global 1000 organizations in these mainframe-rich industries where it is common for a host of developers to be working on the same Db2 SQL application. These developers then bring many different coding styles to a project, and since the coding environment for SQL for is very rich, this means that code is often cobbled together in a less-than-ideal way that may work but does not necessarily as intended. Coding inconsistencies from this diversity of developers and coding styles can ultimately lead to app failure or other major performance problems down the line in production. DBAs address this problem with some coding standards but spend an inordinate amount of time manually checking to see that the code is up to preset standards set forth by the organization. Infotels SQL quality assurance whitepaper provides DevOps professionals, DBAs and developers some insight into the automated methodology it uses with clients to improve application delivery on Db2 for the mainframe. It is meant to arm database management professionals with the information they need to keep applications running on computers at top performance levels. To learn more about how Infotel helps clients enforce code quality standards for their mainframe applications, download the whitepaper SQL Quality Assurance on IBM z/OS at bit.ly/infotel-sql-wp, or contact us directly at software(at)infotel(dot)com. About Infotel Infotel Corp., based in Tampa, Florida, is a software vendor and IT consulting firm specializing in data performance and optimization solutions for the Mainframe z/OS platform. For more than 40 years, Infotel has delivered proven solutions to help clients improve their data management systems. For more information on Infotel Corp., please visit https://www.infotel.com/us/. Facebook Blueprint Certified Buyer Badge earned by Interact Marketings Social Media Department Head By achieving certification on Facebooks new program, our agency continues to meet our value promise to clients, and maintain the highest level of knowledge and service quality as possible, and set us apart from the vast majority of agencies in the region. - Joe Beccalori, CEO On March 9, 2019, head of Interact Marketings social media department, Kristen Semple earned the Facebook Blueprint Buyer Certification. This digital badge verifies that Facebook ad campaigns managed by Interact Marketing are optimized for campaign efficiency and maximum impact. Interact Marketings commitment to maintaining the highest certifications in the digital marketing industry, specific to each department is an integral part of how the 10-year old agency is positioned. All of Interact Marketings senior staff has either a marketing MBA or at least five years of commensurate experience. In addition to that, Interact is recognized as a Google Partner for maintaining Googles advertising certifications, managing over one-million dollars for clients annually, and for showing solid ad revenue and growth. Interacts Google Partner digital badge demonstrates the agencies advanced knowledge in both search and mobile advertising. Other certifications earned by the agency include Bing ads, Google Tag Manager, SEMRush Digital Marketing Certification, Hootsuite Social Marketing Certification, WordPress, and MySQL. Maintaining the highest levels of industry-recognized certifications was important to Interact Marketing CEO, Joe Beccalori from the start. The agency was founded in 2007 at a time when digital marketing was still in its infancy compared to what it is today. What Beccalori saw over time in the industry concerned him. Digital marketing was brand new and barriers to entry were low. Traditional marketing professionals started to enter the digital space without the technical know-how to really get results for clients, said Beccalori. Novices were selling (and frankly, still are) a bill of goods not backed up by experience. By achieving certification on Facebooks new program, our agency continues to meet our value promise to clients, and maintain the highest level of knowledge and service quality as possible, and set us apart from the vast majority of agencies in the region. With nearly twenty five years in digital marketing and thirty years of web technology and security expertise, Beccalori takes this commitment to quality seriously. Certifications are renewed by the team annually, and frequent research and development meetings among account managers help keep Interacts services a level above local agencies. Kristen Semples Facebook digital badge is publicly available to view and verify for more information. On making the certification official, Semple remarked, The Buyer digital badge was hard-earned and took months of preparation. To earn this certification, you have to pass two proctored exams and have at least half a year of agency experience as a prerequisite. Upon earning this certification, Interact enters an elite status of agencies with this level of expertise. About Interact Marketing Interact Marketing is a full-service New York digital marketing agency based in the Hudson Valley in New Windsor, NY. The agency specializes in organic search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising (PPC), website design and development, content and social media marketing, and online reputation management for brands and executives. Interact Marketing is also a Google Partner Agency. It is one of the fastest growing agencies in New Yorks Hudson Valley region with 472% organic revenue growth in five years (2010-2015). To bring next-gen wearables, medical devices and IoT-connected products to life, designers need a rechargeable, supremely flexible battery like J.Flexwhich can be bent and even scrunched like paper while maintaining its power and integrity. Jenax, inventor of flexible, fast-charging lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, has been invited to be a featured speaker at IDTechEx, taking place April 10-11, 2019 in Berlin, Germany. The companys managing director, EJ Shin, will discuss how the unmatched flexibility, power and safety of the J.Flex battery can unlock the next generation of high-performance wearables, tech fashion, user-friendly medical devices and other IoT-connected products. Attendees can also see J.Flex in action, in a wearable demonstration that powers portable electronics on the go, at Booth L08. Wearable designers, IoT innovators and medical device manufacturers have amazing ideas for smart, life-altering products. But theyre held back by clunky, rigid batteries that limit their options. To bring their ideas to fruition, they need a rechargeable, supremely flexible battery like J.Flexwhich can be bent and even scrunched like paper while maintaining its power and integrity, said Shin. Im excited to show IDTechEx attendees how J.Flex can uniquely fuel next-generation smart products. Shin will be presenting From Battery Constraints to Freedom of Design Innovation in Wearables on April 10, 2019 at 2:20pm in the Estrel Convention Center Exhibition Theater. IDTechEx attendees are also encouraged to visit Jenaxs booth L08 to learn more about J.Flexs capabilities and see it in a wearable demo. About Jenax Jenax Inc. (KOSDAQ: 065620) pioneered and manufactures J.Flex an ultra-flexible, fast-charging, high-performance lithium-ion rechargeable battery. Jenax partners with manufacturers of medical devices, apparel, electronics, and more to design completely customized and safe battery solutions in diverse sizes and shapes. Its broad applications include IoT, wearables, medical devices, and sensors. Founded in 1991, Jenax is based in Busan, South Korea. Visit http://www.jenaxinc.com for more details. ### John-Paul Doyle, Senior Creative Director, Bluedog Design "Bluedoggers have vision, grow strategic expressions, bring it to life through design, and then actually activate the vision in the market. Its the whole package from beginning to end for clients." As the growth of innovation in food and beverage continues in Chicago, leading growth consultancy and brand strategy firm Bluedog Design is attracting top talent to help clients transform their place in the market. The company is excited to welcome new Bluedogger John-Paul Doyle, formerly Senior Creative Director at Anthem Worldwide in New York, NY. The attraction to Chicago and Bluedog Design was hard to deny for John-Paul and his wife, a food stylist and food writer. I am fascinated by how much higher level the thinking and work is at Bluedog. Its really a new approach that I want to be part of, he said. Bluedoggers have vision, grow strategic expressions, bring it to life through design, and then actually activate the vision in the market. Its the whole package from beginning to end for clients. Great design shapes consumer value and it makes strategy visible, said Michelle Hayward, CEO and Co-Founder of Bluedog Design. John-Pauls presence at Bluedog gives our clients another reason to believe even more in our ability to innovate a product or brand in the market. Were very excited to call him a Bluedogger. At Bluedog, John-Paul will be responsible for driving clarity to solve clients transformation, innovation, brand strategy, and brand design challenges. He leads the way in unpacking complex problems and delivering focused, engaging strategies and team experience, and will be collaborating closely with the strategic and innovation teams to ensure brand and design are always front and center and are expressing value. They live and breathe innovative thinking at Bluedog, not just through design and strategic insights, but also in the unique culture theyve created. Im looking forward to making design a fundamental part of the success we create for clients. Doyle earned a B.Des in Visual Communications from Dublin's National College of Art & Design. His experience runs deep and wide, as he has worked in a variety of industries with companies and global brands that include Diageo, Unilever, Kraft, Nestle Waters, Bayer, and The Coca-Cola Company. Companions on my Journey: a moving account of a life redeemed, is the creation of published author Kathy McInnis, a multidisciplinary graduate, former chaplain, and litigation paralegal from Daphne, Alabama. She is a married grandmother who savors the peace and quiet of natural settings. McInnis writes, When I was a teenager, my mom told me that I walked around with a cloud over my head. She had no idea the truth in her statement, neither did she know the heavy weight of that dark cloud. The cloud cast deep shadows over every area of my life. Hiding in those shadows were sinister companions that would stalk me for years. This book, Companions on My Journey, is an attempt to share my messy journey through the darkness into the marvelous light of Gods love and grace. At the cross I found healing and peace, freedom, and restoration. I pray that my Heavenly Father will use my story to guide the hurting, the rejected, the abused, and the condemned into the miraculous light of his unfathomable love. Please take my hand and journey with me. Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Kathy McInniss new book is a touching personal story that shines a light on the varied relationships one acquires and loses along the way, both the supporting and the toxic ones and every shade in between. With frank insight and inspiring faith, McInnis illustrates through her journey that no matter how battered life leaves a person, transformative healing is never more than a prayer away. View a synopsis of Companions on my Journey on YouTube. Consumers can purchaseCompanions on my Journey at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or inquiries about Companions on my Journey, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919. In todays world, businesses seek a deeper understanding of the direct impact of their marketing and media efforts," said Adam Yansick Adam Yansick was named Senior Vice President, Director Media & Analytics according to Founders and Managing Partners, Ray Mayo and Jon Seitz. Adam had originally joined MayoSeitz Media in 2000 as one of its first employees, but had departed in 2014 for a senior role at Comcast Spotlight. He rejoined MayoSeitz Media in early 2018. Adam was one of the cornerstones of the agency in its early years, and contributed to our early success. Every client benefited by his work and focus on their success, said Ray Mayo, Co-Founder and Managing Director. We were sad when Adam left in 2014 but thrilled when he returned in 2018," said Jon Seitz, Co-Founder and Managing Director. "Adam is an extraordinary talent. We became an even stronger agency when he returned, added Mary Tyrrell, Executive Vice President, Chief Media and Operations Officer. In addition to spearheading several of the agencys largest accounts, Adam leads the fast growing Analytics group within MayoSeitz Media. In todays world, businesses seek a deeper understanding of the direct impact of their marketing and media efforts. MayoSeitz Media is on the forefront of providing the tools for a deeper understanding, said Adam Yanisck. About MayoSeitz Media MayoSeitz Media is one of the leading independent media agencies in the United States and was selected in 2017 and 2018 as one of the Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies in the U.S. MayoSeitz is also one of a handful of independent media agencies to qualify and be accepted to the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), the leading industry association. MayoSeitz Media clients include Visit Philadelphia, Philadelphia Phillies, Penn Medicine, Trex, among many others. In advance of National Robotics Week, Mediaplanet today announces the launch of its Business AI campaign. In advance of National Robotics Week, Mediaplanet announced the launch of its Business AI section. The campaign illustrates the advantages of artificial intelligence in the customer experience and offers examples of how AI streamlines workflows and complements human labor to ultimately improve the bottom line. The campaign advocates for increased investment in this technology to speed up the digital transformation of businesses and improve the ways our industries function. The print component of Business AI is distributed within todays edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, with a circulation of approximately 163,000 copies and an estimated readership of 500,000. The digital component is distributed nationally through a vast social media strategy and across a network of top news sites and partner outlets. To explore the digital version of the campaign, visit: http://www.futureofbusinessandtech.com/topic/business-ai This campaign was made possible with the support of AI Business, headline media partners for the campaign. The campaign will be featured at one of the worlds largest AI events for business in the upcoming AI Business Summit in San Francisco, this September 25-26. The campaign will also be featured at the AI Business hosted AI Summits in London (June 2019) and New York (December 2019). A special thanks to our other fantastic partners: Steve Chien, Robert Herjavec, Sherif Mityas, Melinda Gates, Martin Ford, Moon Javaid, AI4ALL, Manufacturing USA, SHRM, American Association of Advertising Agencies, Marketing AI Institute, American Association of Inside Sales Professionals, National Retail Federation, Institute of Business Forecasting, Nuance, Cisco, Pegasystems, LivePerson, LogMeIn, Dor, PandoLogic, Insidesales.com, IMerit, AB Tasty, Komatsu Mining, and Micron. About Mediaplanet Mediaplanet specializes in the creation of content marketing campaigns covering a variety of industries. We tell meaningful stories that educate our audience and position our clients as solution providers. Our unique ability to pair the right leaders with the right readers, through the right platforms, has made Mediaplanet a global content marketing powerhouse. Our award-winning stories have won the hearts of countless readers while serving as a valuable platform for brands and their missions. Just call us storytellers with a purpose. Please visit http://www.mediaplanet.com for more on who we are and what we do. Milgard Best of Houzz Design 5 Years in a Row Milgard Windows & Doors is proud to receive the Best of Houzz Design accolade for the 5th year in a row. Awarded annually, the Best of Houzz Design is awarded annually to the top architects, interior designers and remodeling professionals on Houzz. More than 40 million users save their favorite photos to Projects and Ideabooks which determines the winners. We are excited to see that the Houzz community has recognized Milgard for the 5th year in a row for our beautiful windows and patio doors, said Jeremiah Noneman, senior director of marketing at Milgard Windows & Doors. We enjoy sharing a variety of Projects and Ideabooks with the Houzz community to inspire homeowners who are creating the homes of their dreams. Design award winners receive a Best of Houzz badge on their profile page denoting they are a popular and top-rated professional in Houzz. Milgard Windows & Doors has three other Houzz badges in addition to the five received for Design: Knowledgeable and Valued Advisor, Community Recommended Professional and Over 10,000 Saves to Ideabooks. Best of Houzz is a true badge of honor as it is awarded by our community of homeowners, those who are hiring design, remodeling and other home improvement professionals for their projects, said Liza Hausman, Vice President of Industry Marketing for Houzz. We are excited to celebrate the 2019 winners chosen by our community as their favorites for home design and customer experience, and to highlight those winners on the Houzz website and app. Milgard collaborates with architects and builders to collect imagery from their remodeling, replacement and new home construction projects to feature them on the Milgard blog, which is also shared to Houzz, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Projects have included vinyl, fiberglass, wood and aluminum windows and patio doors in addition to Moving Glass Wall Systems. To see more beautiful images from this Best of Houzz winning home and view more Milgard projects, visit their blog: https://www.milgard.com/blog/home-entertaining-maximum-view About Milgard Windows & Doors Milgard Windows & Doors, a Masco company based in Tacoma, Washington, offers a full line of vinyl, wood, fiberglass and aluminum windows and patio doors for builders, dealers and homeowners, backed by a Full Lifetime Warranty, including parts and labor. The company has been recognized as Builders Choice for vinyl and fiberglass windows in the Western United States, in a yearly survey sponsored by Hanley-Wood Inc., publishers of BUILDER Magazine. Milgard is the highest online rated window and patio door brand, as measured by the 2018 NRS consumer sentiment study conducted by MetrixLab and commissioned by Masco. Milgard has approximately 3,800 dealer locations nationwide. For more information, visit milgard.com or call 1.800.MILGARD. About Masco Corporation Masco Corporation (NYSE: MAS), parent company of Milgard Windows & Doors, is a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of branded home improvement and building products. Our portfolio of industry-leading brands includes Behr paint; Delta and Hansgrohe faucets, bath and shower fixtures; KraftMaid and Merillat cabinets; Milgard windows and doors; Kichler decorative and outdoor lighting; and Hot Spring spas. We leverage our powerful brands across product categories, sales channels and geographies to create value for our customers and shareholders. For more information about Masco Corporation, visit Masco.com. About Houzz For more information about Houzz visit houzz.com. Germanys 5Bn MKS 180 Frigate Slides to Year-End The page you requested is only available to subscribers. 1. If you are a Premium Service subscriber, please log in here to access this story: Log-in : Password : 2. If you are not a subcriber, you can: -- buy access to this page: unlimited access for seven days costs 3.00 EUR + VAT (at 20%) if applicable. Clicking on the "Ok" button below will place the item in your shopping cart and return you to our home page, where you will be able to select additional stories. -- select additional stories and services from our home page and pay for them at the same time. -- see your shopping cart. You can also see the contents of your shopping cart at any time by clicking on the "Order" tab on the navigation bar at the top of any page, or by clicking on the "Your order" light blue link in the top right-hand corner of our home page, immediately under the log-on box. Sanctuary in the Sky is a truly sublime and singular creationits location, the panoramic nature of the views and its one-of a kind architecture, make Sanctuary in the Sky one of the regions most exquisite urban residences, said Moira Holley, co-founder, RSIR. Moira Holley and Scott Wasner, co-founding brokers of Realogics Sothebys International Realty (RSIR)and the preeminent luxury real estate brokers for Seattle and the Pacific Northwest regiononce again demonstrated their unmatched leadership within the luxury in-city property sector, with todays announcement on their record-breaking $12 million sale of Seattles Sanctuary in the Sky condominiuman architecturally arresting, two-level, 5,700 square foot urban oasis that boasts sweeping 270-degree views, 1,500 square feet of outdoor space, and bespoke interiors. This unique residence is ensconced in the Belltown neighborhoods most coveted high-rise community. Holley and Wasner represented the seller of the Sanctuary in the Sky residence, and Michelle Jewell of Windermere Yarrow Point represented the buyer of the penthouse. In 2005, Moira Holley represented the current seller during their purchase of the Sanctuary in the Sky residence. The 2005 sale, recorded at $5.6 million, was at that time, the largest sale of a Downtown Seattle property. The record breaking 2019 sale price of $12 million dollars, values the Sanctuary in the Sky residence at approximately $2,105 per square foot. Considered among the most innovative collaborations between architect Rick Sundberg (Olson Sundberg Kundig and Allen), and interior designer Gregory Carmichael, those who dwell at Sanctuary in the Sky will revel in a bi-level residence possessing custom features celebrating a Northwest aesthetic, as well as sweeping views of the Space Needle, the waterfront and the Seattle skyline. Sanctuary in the Sky is a truly sublime and singular creationits location, the panoramic nature of the views and its one-of a kind architecture, make Sanctuary in the Sky one of the regions most exquisite urban residences, said Moira Holley, co-founder, RSIR. RSIR Co-Owners Dean and Stacy Jones note the record sale is yet another validation of Seattles world-class stature on the rise. This impressive sale signals Downtown Seattle has joined its West Coast peer group of Vancouver, BC, San Francisco and Los Angeles for super prime condominium estates, said Dean Jones, president and chief executive officer, RSIR. We applaud Moira and Scott for this benchmark accomplishment. We also congratulate the new owners and their broker for the purchase of this crowning jewel in our expanding cityscape. According to the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS), no other residential resale condominium has closed above $10 million in downtown Seattle. The record sale follows another notable transaction. Wasner represented the buyer on a $9 million closing on March 12, 2019 at the Four Seasons Private Residences. The 5,111 square foot, two bedroom and three bathroom residence was tied for the third most expensive condominium sale in downtown Seattle. According to the NWMLS, either Wasner and/or Holley have been involved in one or both sides of six of the top eleven sales valued over $7 million in downtown Seattle since January 2000the majority of which occurred at Four Seasons Private Residences, followed by penthouse or sub-penthouse sales at Escala, One Pacific Tower, Market Place Tower, Millennium Tower and now, Bay Vista Tower. My luxury clientele ranged from downsizers to second homeowners, and includes locals and international citizens, adds Wasner. The common denominator is they are becoming increasingly comfortable with an investment at this level in downtown Seattle. The reality is that paying upwards of $2,000 per square foot or more is relatively modest compared with other gateway citiesthat tells me we still have plenty of runway for prices to climb. These in-city estates dont come around that often. ### ABOUT MOIRA HOLLEY (moirapresents.com): Moira Holley is a co-founder and senior global real estate advisor for Realogics Sothebys International Realty, a leading full-service brokerage. Ranked among the top 1% of the Seattle regions most successful luxury real estate brokers, Moira has represented many iconic luxury properties, including Seattles Four Seasons Private Residences, where Moira served as the co-listing agent. Moiras skillful negotiations, strategic counsel and insightful analysis of critical trends within the specialized property sector, have created thousands of successful outcomes for buyers and sellers of distinctive residences, locally and throughout the world. Contact Moira at moirapresents.com or telephone 206.660.4787 and discover the residence that expresses your own unique style. ABOUT SCOTT WASNER (cityorescape.com): Scott Wasner is a co-founder and senior global real estate advisor for Realogics Sothebys International Realty, based in Seattle, Washington. Scott also served as the co-listing agent and director of private residences at the Four Seasons Hotels Seattle, where he oversaw the sales and marketing of $40,000,000 in luxury real estate. While Director, Scott executed the sale of a Four Seasons residence which established the record as both the highest-value residential transaction and largest condominium sale within the Greater Seattle Region. Contact Scott at cityorescape.com or telephone 206.910.1410 to experience, artful, exceptional luxury living. ABOUT REALOGICS SOTHEBYS INTERNATIONAL REALTY (rsir.com): Artfully uniting extraordinary homes with extraordinary lives, Realogics Sothebys International Realty (RSIR) is a leading global sales and marketing brokerage firm in the Pacific Northwest. Recognized by the Puget Sound Business Journal amongst the fastest-growing private companies in Washington State in recent years and ranked #9 in the top ten largest residential real estate brands, according to Trendgraphix research. The boutique real estate firm of 235+ brokers service branches in downtown Seattle, Bainbridge Island, Kirkland, Issaquah and Madison Park. RSIR is a leading project marketing specialist currently representing more than $1 billion in new condominium developments planned throughout the Puget Sound region. Monster Energys Nyjah Huston to Represent the United States on the USA Skateboarding National Team in Skateboard Street at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games Monster Energy congratulates team riders Nyjah Huston and Tom Schaar on joining the first-ever USA Skateboarding National Team. Both skateboarders Huston in Skateboard Street and Schaar in Skateboard Park will compete in the 2019 qualifier season as official national team members for a chance to represent the United States in the premiere of skateboarding as a sanctioned Olympics event at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will feature male and female skateboarders in two disciplines: Skateboard Street (July 2425, 2020) and Skateboard Park (August 45, 2020). A total of 80 athletes from around the world the top 20 qualifying participants for each gender/discipline will compete in skateboarding at the Olympics. The 16 skateboarders chosen for the USA Skateboarding 2019 National Team were announced today by USA Skateboarding (USAS) during a media event at the CA Training Facility (CA|TF) in Vista, California. As the recognized governing body for skateboarding in the United States, USA Skateboarding (USAS) is responsible for the selection, training, and fielding of national teams that compete in the Olympic Games, Pan American Games, and other sanctioned team events. I believe that this industry and this lifestyle has all the makings to change the world. Introducing the first-ever U.S. Olympic Skateboarding team is really special, said Gary Ream, USAS Chairman. These skateboarders will receive the full USAS support during the 2019 qualifier season," said Josh Friedberg, USAS CEO, adding: We will have the chance to share everything that makes skateboarding great and special with 5 billion people at the Tokyo Games. Both Monster Energy team riders are part of a stacked field of top U.S. skateboarders in their respective disciplines: As the reigning SLS World Champion of Street Skateboarding and ten-time X Games gold medalist, 24-year old Huston from Laguna Beach, California, will represent the United States alongside Louie Lopez, Zion Wright and Chris Joslin in Mens Skateboard Street. Speaking on Hustons nomination, USAS CEO Josh Friedberg said: Ever since speculations about skateboarding in the Olympics started, there was never any question that this guy would be part of the team. In the Skateboard Park discipline, 19-year-old Schaar from Cardiff, California finished his 2018 season by taking third place at the 2018 Vans Park Series (VPS) Mens Pro Tour Finals in Suzhou, China. He will be battling for points in the 2019 Olympic qualifiers next to Team USA Mens Park Skateboarding riders Alex Sorgente, Tristan Rennie, and Jagger Eaton. In Womens Park Skateboarding, Team USA welcomed Jordyn Barratt, Nicole Hause, Bryce Wettstein and Brighton Zeuner. The 2019 Womens Street Skateboarding National Team consists of Lacey Baker, Jenn Soto, Alexis Sablone and Mariah Duran. Qualifications for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will be based on World Skateboarding Rankings maintained by World Skate. Created in 2017, World Skate is the international federation governing skateboarding recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). During the Olympic qualifying period beginning January 1, 2019 and ending May 31, 2020, skateboarders from around the world will earn points by competing in World Skate sanctioned events. On the international level, more Monster Energy skateboarder will be looking for a chance to take home a medal at the 2020 Olympics: Thanks to her dual citizenship, Lizzie Armanto will be representing Finland in Womens Park Skateboarding. As the latest addition to the Monster Energy skateboarding roster, Brazils Kelvin Hoefler will be representing his country, while European team rider Sam Beckett is on the United Kingdoms national team. Good luck to all our U.S. and international riders in the qualifiers! Download photos for editorial use. For more Monster Energy skateboarding visit http://www.monsterenergy.com and follow Monster Energy on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter for exclusive updates. For interview or photo requests contact Kim Dresser. ### About Monster Energy Based in Corona, California, Monster Energy is the leading marketer and distributor of energy drinks and alternative beverages. Refusing to acknowledge the traditional, Monster Energy supports the scene and sport. Whether motocross, off-road, NASCAR, MMA, BMX, surf, snowboard, ski, skateboard, or the rock and roll lifestyle, Monster Energy is a brand that believes in authenticity and the core of what its sports, athletes and musicians represent. More than a drink, its the way of life lived by athletes, sports, bands, believers and fans. See more about Monster Energy including all of its drinks at http://www.monsterenergy.com. Researchers from Mount Sinai and IBM have discovered a novel clue in explaining how cancer cells with identical genomes can respond differently to the same therapy. In a Nature Communications paper published today, researchers reveal for the first time that the number of mitochondria in a cell is, in great part, associated with how the cancer responds to drug therapy. Cancer is the second-leading cause of mortality worldwide, with approximately one in six deaths across the globe attributed to the disease. While treatments for cancer continue to improve as technology advances, researchers and clinicians have been unsuccessful in explaining the diversity of responses in cancer cells to treatments of oncological disease. In many cases, cancer cells with matching genetic makeup will respond differently to the same treatment. Mount Sinai and IBM researchers combined computational and biological methods to uncover a clue to this behavior. Cells die when met with bacteria, malnourishment, or viruses. But also, to promote normal function, our bodies eliminate billions of cells each daya process known as programmed cell death or apoptosis. Mitochondria, often referred to as the powerhouse of the cell because of their ability to produce cellular energy, can also act as a catalyst in the activation of programmed cell death, and certain anti-cancer drugs work by activating this process. This function encouraged researchers to explore the hypothesis that cancer cells with identical genetic makeup, but different quantities of mitochondria, may have varying susceptibility to death if exposed to the same drugs that promote apoptosis. In exposing various types of cells to six concentrations of a pro-apoptotic drug and measuring the abundance of mitochondria within the surviving cells, Mount Sinai and IBM researchers discovered that surviving cells had a greater amount of mitochondria than untreated cells. This strongly suggests that cells with fewer mitochondria are more likely to respond to certain drug treatments. To analyze this data, researchers used a mathematical framework called DEPICTIVE (an acronym for Determining Parameter Influence on Cell-to-cell variability Through the Inference of Variance Explained) to quantify variability in the survival or death of cells due to mitochondrial abundance. Overall, the framework determined that the variability of mitochondria explained up to 30 percent of the varying responses to the pro-apoptotic drug. Enhancing our understanding of the relationship between mitochondria variability and drug response may lead to more effective targeted cancer treatments, allowing us to find new ways to tackle the problem of drug resistance, said Pablo Meyer, PhD, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Genetics and Genomic Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Team Leader of Translational Systems Biology at IBM Research, and co-corresponding author of the publication. The outcomes of this study were truly multidisciplinary, and only made possible by the strong scientific collaboration established between Mount Sinai and IBM. About the Mount Sinai Health System The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City's largest integrated delivery system, encompassing eight hospitals, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. Mount Sinai's vision is to produce the safest care, the highest quality, the highest satisfaction, the best access and the best value of any health system in the nation. The Health System includes approximately 7,480 primary and specialty care physicians; 11 joint-venture ambulatory surgery centers; more than 410 ambulatory practices throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and 31 affiliated community health centers. The Icahn School of Medicine is one of three medical schools that have earned distinction by multiple indicators: ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report's "Best Medical Schools", aligned with a U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" Hospital, No. 12 in the nation for National Institutes of Health funding, and among the top 10 most innovative research institutions as ranked by the journal Nature in its Nature Innovation Index. This reflects a special level of excellence in education, clinical practice, and research. The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 18 on U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" of top U.S. hospitals; it is one of the nation's top 20 hospitals in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Geriatrics, Nephrology, and Neurology/Neurosurgery, and in the top 50 in six other specialties in the 2018-2019 "Best Hospitals" issue. Mount Sinai's Kravis Children's Hospital also is ranked nationally in five out of ten pediatric specialties by U.S. News & World Report. The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked 11th nationally for Ophthalmology and 44th for Ear, Nose, and Throat. Mount Sinai Beth Israel, Mount Sinai St. Luke's, Mount Sinai West, and South Nassau Communities Hospital are ranked regionally. For more information, visit http://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. About IBM Research For more than seven decades, IBM Research has defined the future of information technology with more than 3,000 researchers in 12 labs located across six continents. Scientists from IBM Research have produced six Nobel Laureates, 10 U.S. National Medals of Technology, five U.S. National Medals of Science, six Turing Awards, 19 inductees in the National Academy of Sciences and 23 inductees into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. For more information about IBM Research, visit http://www.ibm.com/research. Napa Valley Olive Oil Competition I appreciate the willingness of Napa to innovate. I have been able to use Napa as an incubator to develop and refine improvements, says Devarenne. The innovation and standards here impact other competitions in California and elsewhere." If youve ever found yourself in a market overwhelmed by the selection of olive oils and unsure of the difference, youre not alone. In fact, it might be fair to say that most consumers are more at a loss choosing olive oil than selecting a bottle of wine. The Napa Valley Olive Oil Competition is looking to change that. Ringing in its 9th annual tasting this year, The Napa Valley Olive Oil Competition is aiming for an experience beyond your run-of-the-mill olive oil tasting. The competition is rooted in the belief that like any food experience, olive oil should be treated as a sensory experience. Our goal with the annual competition is to bring some visibility to the industry, says Alexandra Kicenik Devarenne, who serves as the Head Judge of the competition since 2011. It has an extremely qualified judging panel that weve intentionally set up with the foundation of quality and integrity for these tastings. The competition has been an innovator, adopting improvements in the judging protocols such as a profile sheet designed specifically for the judging of flavored olive oils. Alexandra Kicenik Devarenne is an international olive oil consultant and educator. A published author on many facets of olive oil, her biggest asset to the Napa Valley Olive Oil Competition is her expertise in quality assessment and quality control in the olive oil industry. Alexandra is the co-founder and CEO of Extra Virgin Alliance (EVA); an international trade association dedicated to olive oil quality. Working in both the trade and consumer space, EVA works to educate and inform the public about quality extra virgin olive oil producers to share the rich culture and uses for olive oil. While Napa Valley is most widely known for its winemaking, the olive oil industry has a boundless opportunity to be better recognized in the food culture. The greatest value in this competition is yet to be recognized. I appreciate the willingness of Napa to innovate. I have been able to use Napa as an incubator to develop and refine improvements, says Devarenne. The innovation and standards here impact other competitions in California and elsewhere. I would consider Napa a highly underrecognized region for high quality olive oil. Since Devarenne has held the position of Head Judge for the competition, there has been a more critical evaluation of judging and impact protocols to increase consistency and a fairer rating system. This has allowed an opportunity to appreciate all styles and olive varieties instead of just the olive oils that tend to dominate based on fashions and preference among expert tasters. She adds, It takes special effort in a competition environment to honor diversity. This competition also provides a unique opportunity for producers to receive feedback. Olive oil in the competitive space is much younger than the wine industry, with a different growth curve, though the judge-worthy criteria is similar. In fact, the things that contribute to high quality wine contributes to high quality olive oil as well. Coast influences and micro-climates (like found in Napa, Sonoma, and Paso Robles) all contribute to a higher quality product. The caliber of extra virgin olive oils being produced in California is gaining recognition and this competition strives to contribute to the high-quality standards in the industry. Over 100 oils have been successfully and professionally judged year over year with this number likely to grow. Entries for this years competition are open to all California Olive Oil producers. All classes are judged single blind by 9 trained olive oil judges. This panel is rigorously evaluated, and the group is calibrated prior to the tasting for consistency. Oils are judged on Intensity, Complexity, and Harmony on a 100-point scoring system. The goal is not only the sake of competition, but also to increase public awareness and knowledge of extra virgin olive oil. A direct-to-consumer showcasing of the 2019 award-winning olive oils are made available at upcoming events. Award-winning producers are invited to sample their oils to patrons of the County Fair & Fiesta (May 4-5) and at the Napa County Fair & Fireworks (July 4). At the conclusion of the judging, and after being on display at the County Fair & Fiesta May 3-5, the complete list of award winners will be available online http://www.CelebrateNapaValley.org Tuesday, May 7, 2019. For producers interested in competing, entry forms, lab report, and olive oil(s) must be received on or before 4 p.m., Wednesday, April 10, 2019. The judging will be held on Thursday, April 18, 2019. Access to the online application can be found at https://www.celebratenapavalley.org/NVOOC. PerfectMind, British Columbia based innovator of the cutting-edge membership management, activity registration, and facility booking platform, has announced that it is expanding their talents, staff, and resources into Ontario, Canada. As of March 1, 2019 PerfectMind, has established an office with a team of Relationship Managers, Project Managers and Implementation Consultants in Mississauga, Ontario with additional remote resources available in Ottawa, Ontario. With their growing client base in Ontario, this development seemed fitting not only to PerfectMinds clients based in Eastern Canada but also for their neighbours in the United States. This extension into Ontario ensures PerfectMind can continue to effectively deliver projects across North America while upholding best-in-class customer service. We are very excited about our transition into the East and having the resources and extended team to meet our increasing business demands without compromising the customer experience. Our expansion into Ontario helps reinforce our growth and underscores our commitment to each client in ensuring that their experience with PerfectMind is impeccable at every step of their journey, says PerfectMind founder and CEO Farid Dordar. With this expansion, PerfectMind continues to build on over 18 years of uncompromising commitment to innovation and top-tier customer service which has led to recognition as one of the leading recreation management software providers in North America. The newest members of the PerfectMind family bring with them an extensive background in project management and implementation within the Parks and Recreation industry. ABOUT PERFECTMIND PerfectMind software is used by more than 5,000 organization in 21 countries. The enterprise-class software serves member-based organizations of all sizes across a broad range of markets, including municipalities, residents associations, school districts, academic institutions, and recreation centers. Small to medium-sized businesses like yoga studios, martial arts schools and gyms across the world use the PerfectMind to connect with their members and grow within their communities. The companys innovative platform empowers cities, parks, and recreation organizations, higher education and health and wellness businesses of all sizes to better connect with their client and communities. PerfectMind has been had the honour of twice being listed as the fastest growing companies by Profit100 within Canada and has been selected by city leaders throughout Canada and the United States to enhance increasingly diverse and mobile populations access to city programs and facilities to support healthy and active lifestyles. Find out more at http://www.perfectmind.com We are excited to expand our distribution footprint by making the solution available to project-based companies in Europe which will provide support for our partners customers with business operations in multiple regions. Plumbline Consulting is pleased to announce the launch of Progressus PSA in Europe, and is establishing the Partner Program building our Partner Network for Progressus Software in the European Marketplace, specifically the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden. Progressus Europe is headed by Staffan Nilsson, a veteran software professional with international experience for multiple Microsoft Partners. Nilsson and his team will be responsible for recruiting and training the European Partner Network, as well as providing localization of Progressus PSA Software for the individual European countries represented. Progressus software can now be ordered in these countries on Microsoft AppSource. Progressus PSA is an advanced business management solution built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and is designed specifically to meet the needs of small and medium-sized professional services and project-based businesses. Progressus adds powerful project management to Dynamics 365 capabilities without costly or complex integration including robust Service Management, Supply Chain Management, and Manufacturing, Sales and Marketing Management. The solution brings cloud power to emerging professional services firms and project-based businesses looking for a comprehensive, cloud-based, PSA solution. Progressus has been available on Microsoft AppSource in the United States since 2017 and is the leading Dynamics 365 Business Central solution for professional services firms and project-based businesses, said Joe Longo, President of Plumbline Consulting. We are excited to expand our distribution footprint by making the solution available to project-based companies in Europe which will provide support for our partners customers with business operations in multiple regions. Microsoft AppSource is an online marketplace for Microsoft business solution users to browse and purchase apps to extend their solutions functionality. With AppSource, customers can find new line-of-business apps for their industryplus apps that help them do more with the solutions they already use. AppSource is populated with both Microsoft and partner apps that all must go through a stringent approval process. Find Progressus Software on Microsoft AppSource here. For more information on Plumbline Consulting: http://www.plumblineconsulting.com For more information on Partner Network for Progressus Software in the European Marketplace: snilsson(at)pgseu.com About Progressus Software Progressus is a product of Plumbline Consulting. For over two decades, Plumbline has been the leader in developing solutions for Professional Services and Project-based businesses on the Microsoft Dynamics Platform. Plumbline leveraged deep industry knowledge and the experience of working with thousands of customers and Dynamics 365, Microsofts state-of-the-art ERP platform to develop Progressus the next generation in Dynamics solutions. In May 2018, California attorney Yi Tai Shao filed a lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia with the case number of 1:18-cv-01233, seeking a declarative relief to impeach Chief Justice John G. Roberts, and Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Beyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel Alito, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayer, and two supervising Clerks, Jeff Atkins and Jordan Bickell, based on the Supreme Courts failure to decide on her Requests for Recusal since September 2017 and de-filing of the Amicus Curiae motions of Mothers of Lost Children (in Petitions No. 17-82, 17-256, 17-613). Moreover, default was sought against each of them in October 2018 (1:18-cv-01233). Yet. Judge Rudolph Contreras unilaterally dismissed the lawsuit sua sponte against the Supreme Court Justices pending the default requests in January 2019. The case is pending appeal with the D.C. Circuit with the case number of 19-5014. In the same lawsuit where Judge Contreras was presiding, James McManis, Michael Reedy and McManis Faulkner, LLP were also sued for allegedly aiding and abetting the Supreme Court to violate the First Amendment in not to rule on Ms. Shaos Requests for Recusals, de-filing Amicus Curiae motions of Mothers of Lost Children, and altering Requests for Recusals. Such aiding and abetting was allegedly based on their relationship with the Supreme Court Justices through the American Inns of Court. Wisconsin Supreme Court held in State v. Allen, 2010 WI 10 at Page 35 (2010) that: An examination of recusal practice at the United States Supreme Court reveals that even while the Court has, as a matter of tradition or general practice, left recusal decisions to individual justices, the Court appears always to have retained jurisdiction over recusal motions and maintained the authority to guarantee a fully qualified panel of justice. At least once, the members of the Court have, by majority vote, curtailed another sitting justice (Justice William O. Douglas) from participation in the courts decision. On March 19, 2019, Ms. Shao filed a Petition for Rehearing on 18-800 alleging that the Supreme Court Justice ignored the lawsuit of 1:18-cv-01233 and ignored 28 U.S.C. 455(a) that requires them to recuse themselves when there are objective conflicts of interest, but continued not ruling on the Request for Recusal in 18-800, continued removing the Appendix from Request for Recusal in 18-800, continued de-filing the Amicus Curiae motion of Mothers of Lost Children, and further participated in the vote to deny certiorari in 18-800. According to the Courts records, 18-800 is an appeal from California Sixth District Court of Appeals dismissal of Ms. Shaos appeal from the vexatious litigant orders that James McManis obtained from Santa Clara County Court in June 2015, in the case of Shao v. McManis Faulkner, LLP, James McManis and Michael Reedy with the case number of 2011-1-cv-220571 with direct conflicts of interest. California Sixth District Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal on July 10, 2018 without giving Ms. Shao a notice. Court documents allege the dismissal as being fraudulent, as a result of direct conflicts of interest. According to the courts records, Santa Clara County Court issued an order of May 27, 2016 to use the prefiling vexatious litigant order to stall Ms. Shao from filing any motion at the family court to modify her parental deprival status, according to the courts records. Court document allege such application of prefiling vexatious litigant order on existing family case violated California Supreme Court's decision in Shalant v. Girardi(2011) 51 Cal.4th 116. As a result, Ms. Shao has been separated from her daughter for 8 years. The Request for Recusal in 18-800 that the Justices of the Supreme Court failed to decide includes discussion of the conflicts of interest arising from Ms. Shao's default requests against them in 1:18-cv-01233, and their alleged financial interest with American Inns of Court because of the Justices' sponsoring their clerks to receive Temple Bar Scholarship. The Justices did not deny such Request for Recusal but failed to decide that prompted rehearing to be filed on March 19, 2019. Attorney Yi Tai Shao owns Shao Law Firm, P.C. and has practiced litigation in California since 1996. She has sought judicial relief from her alleged injustice for 8 years, facing major issues of the courts' conflicts of interest, from Santa Clara County Court to US Supreme Court. We are excited to share our 2019 plans with supporters -- plans that we believe will advance the restoration of Yosemites Hetch Hetchy Valley, while assuring that not a single drop of water supply is lost Restore Hetch Hetchy today announced that National Park Service leaders David Mihalic, former Superintendent of both Glacier and Yosemite National Parks and Mia Monroe, Marin Community Liaison at Muir Woods, will keynote its 11th annual fundraising dinner on Saturday, April 13th. The dinner, which celebrates Restore Hetch Hetchys plans for returning Hetch Hetchy Valley to Yosemite National Park, will be held at the historic Berkeley City Club, a stunning venue designed by famed architect Julia Morgan, who also designed Hearst Castle. Tickets for the dinner are available at https://www.hetchhetchy.org/2019annualdinner. We are excited to share our 2019 plans with supporters -- plans that we believe will advance the restoration of Yosemites Hetch Hetchy Valley, while assuring that not a single drop of water supply is lost, said Restore Hetch Hetchy Executive Director Spreck Rosekrans. San Franciscos exclusive use of Hetch Hetchy is unprecedented and unacceptable. Park visitors, past, present and future, deserve better, and we are committed to returning Hetch Hetchy to public use. The annual dinner honors individuals for their contributions to Americas national parks, to Yosemite and to restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley. Mia Monroe will receive The Stephen Mather Visionary Award, named in honor of the founding director of the National Park Service. David Mihalic will receive The John Muir Heritage Award for having had a significant impact on the effort to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley to its original splendor. I can think of no better way to launch our 2019 campaign than to honor Dave Mihalic and Mia Monroe. After all, the National Park Service was created in the wake of the national outcry over damming Hetch Hetchy Valley, continued Rosekrans. Dave Mihalics tenure at Yosemite National Park may be over, but his commitment to restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley is as strong as ever. Mia Monroes inspired outreach at Muir Woods embodies John Muirs very spirit for 21st century park visitors. David Mihalics career in the National Park Service has included stints as Superintendent at both Glacier and Yosemite National Park. From 2016 until 2018, he served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of Interior. As a young man, Dave learned about Hetch Hetchys destruction as a reason not to allow proposed dams to flood Yellowstone and Grand Canyon National Parks. He doesnt believe we need to live with this century old mistake and is committed to restoring this national treasure. Mia Monroe is Marin Community Liaison at Muir Woods. She has long walked under the influence of John Muir and enthusiastically extols the value of nature twined with activism. Mia is presently charged with engaging local interest to restore health to the Redwood Creek Watershed while still welcoming the public. As a volunteer, Mia works for monarch butterfly conservation. She looks forward to the lush milkweed meadow habitat that a restored Hetch Hetchy Valley will provide. The 11th annual Restore Hetch Hetchy Dinner, which also includes a silent auction that is already available online at BiddingForGood, will take place on April 13th at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, CA. Reception begins at 6:00 pm, followed by dinner at 7:00 pm. For information on purchasing tickets, contact Julene Freitas: julene(at)hetchhetchy(dot)org / 510-893-3400 and for more information on Restore Hetch Hetchy, go to: http://www.hetchhetchy.org/. The online auction can be accessed at http://tinyurl.com/y28x5zd3. INTERVIEWS: We will gladly arrange interviews with Restore Hetch Hetchy Executive Director Spreck Rosekrans or former Yosemite Superintendent David Mihalic. ABOUT RESTORE HETCH HETCHY: The mission of Restore Hetch Hetchy is to return the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park to its natural splendor while continuing to meet the water and power needs of all communities that depend on the Tuolumne River. Contacts: Media Relations Melanie Webber, mWEBB Communications, (424) 603-4340, melanie(at)mwebbcom(dot)com Rocus Networks provides critical incident response support and also sets up a program to protect the organization from future attacks. Rocus Networks, a managed cybersecurity service provider, announced today that is has been named as a recommended business security solution by the Cybercrime Support Network (CSN) and CSNs FraudSupport.org program. The program partners with industry-leading cybersecurity providers like Rocus Networks to bring tools and services to assist cybercrime victims. Many small and medium businesses (SMBs) underestimate the threat and potential impact of a cyberattack and are inadequately prepared to deal with it when it happens. We created the FraudSupport.org program to provide resources to online victims, including SMBs, who need to quickly recover from a cybercrime event, said Kristin Judge, CEO of the Cybercrime Support Network. Cybercrime and online fraud losses for American small businesses is currently estimated at $8 billion annuallyand that number is expected to grow. Small businesses have struggled to find resources to help them respond to, recover from, and report a cybercrime. As a pioneering public-private, nonprofit collaboration, FraudSupport.org is bringing together federal, state, and local law enforcement and private sector partners to serve this struggling population. SMBs often lack the budget, time, and expertise to create and manage an in-house cybersecurity program and these challenges are compounded when attempting to quickly build a program in the aftermath of an attack. "Rocus Networks provides critical incident response support and also sets up a program to protect the organization from future attacks. We offer an effective and affordable solution so people can focus on their business, not worry about their cybersecurity, said Michael Viruso, Chief Strategy Officer at Rocus Networks. CSN is the first organization to connect victims to resources, increase incident reporting, and address the unmet needs of law enforcement and industry with national databases for reporting, response, and recovery resources. Rocus Networks is a leading managed cybersecurity service provider based in Charlotte and Raleigh, NC. More information can be found at rocusnetworks.com, linkedin.com/company/rocus-networks, facebook.com/rocusnetworks, twitter.com/rocusnetworks, and Instagram.com/rocusnetworks. Rocus Networks headquarters: 210 Delburg St, Suite 101, Davidson, NC 28036 Cybercrime Support Network (CSN) is a public-private, nonprofit collaboration created to be the voice of cybercrime victims. FraudSupport.org is a program created by CSN to provide assistance to both individual and small business cybercrime victims. FraudSupport.org will lead cybercrime victims through the Report, Recover and Reinforce process after an incident occurs. The response to SGF from the Tampa Bay community was overwhelmingly positive and it was clear there was a need for specialized fertility care in this area. Shady Grove Fertility (SGF), one of the nations leading fertility centers, announced today the opening of its newest full-service location in Brandon, Florida, located in the rapidly growing Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater region. SGF first expanded into Florida in August 2018 with the opening of the Tampa - Westshore office. The high demand and positive patient response prompted the opening of another convenient location and a second reproductive endocrinologist in the region. The response to SGF from the Tampa Bay community was overwhelmingly positive and it was clear there was a need for specialized fertility care in this area. Therefore, we knew we needed to invest in the community with another office to offer patients high quality and affordable fertility treatment options, says Mark Segal, Chief Executive Officer of Shady Grove Fertility. Shayne M. Plosker, M.D. will lead the medical team at the Brandon location. Dr. Plosker is board certified in reproductive endocrinology and infertility. He earned his medical degree from the University of Western Ontario, where he also completed his residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Following residency, he completed his fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at the University of California, San Francisco. I am most proud to be a part of SGF because the practice puts compassion and excellent patient care first. SGF is incredibly innovative and has been a leader rather than a follower in all aspects of reproductive care. The practice respects the needs and contributions of its patients and its team members, says Dr. Plosker. Prior to joining Shady Grove Fertility, Dr. Plosker was active in the Florida community as a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of South Florida, Morsani College of Medicine in Tampa. While at USF, he served as Division Director of USF IVF and Reproductive Endocrinology, and Medical Director of IVF at Tampa General Hospital from 2006-2019. I have met with Dr. Plosker on three separate occasions. I have never felt rushed during a visit with him and he explained everything in detail. He also kept finances in the picture which is important when you could be spending a lot of money. He truly did seem to care about making our dream of becoming parents a reality, remarked a former patient. He is the recipient of multiple scientific and teaching awards as well as awards for exemplary patient care, such as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Star Award, U.S. News and World Report Top 10% of Doctors Nationwide Distinction 2011-2014, Best Doctors in America in Obstetrics and Gynecology 2017-2018, and Tampa Magazines Top Infertility Physician in Tampa Bay 2017 as chosen by his physician peers. Dr. Shayne Plosker and his dedicated Brandon medical team will provide comprehensive fertility services, which include diagnostic infertility testing, low-tech and advanced treatment options ranging from timed intercourse and intrauterine insemination (IUI) to in vitro fertilization (IVF) with or without donor egg, preimplantation genetic testing, oncofertility, LGBTQ family building services, and egg freezing. Located at 112 Parsons Park Drive, patients may now schedule an appointment with Dr. Plosker in Brandon, FL by calling the Shady Grove Fertility New Patient Center at 1-888-761-1967 or submitting this brief online form. Appointments are also available for Tampa Bay-based patients in SGFs Tampa - Westshore location with board certified reproductive endocrinologist, Dr. Celso Silva. About Shady Grove Fertility (SGF) SGF is a leading fertility and IVF center of excellence with more than 50,000 babies born and counting. With 33 locations throughout MD, PA, VA, D.C., GA, and FL, we offer patients individualized care, accept most insurance plans, and make treatment affordable through innovative financial options, including treatment guarantees. More physicians refer their patients to SGF than any other center. Call 1-888-761-1967 or visit ShadyGroveFertility.com. A 28-year-old Chester man convicted of first-degree murder in January for the 2015 shooting death of 33-year-old Michael Collier was sentenced to life in prison plus 81/2 to 17 years Monday. Delaware County Common Pleas Court Judge James Bradley said the extra time was warranted due to the atrocity Vincent Clark committed outside Colliers sisters home on the 200 block of Engle Street on May 31, 2015. The court believes in this particular case that, obviously, it was a cold-blooded murder, said Bradley. But in addition to that, we have a situation where the defendant stood over the body of the victim and pumped a magazine of 14 rounds into the (victims) body. That turns a cold-blooded murder into an atrocity. The jury deliberated for less than two hours before convicting Clark, of the 1200 block of Clover Lane, on murder and weapons charges. He had previously been tried for the same murder in July, but the jury in that trial was unable to reach a verdict, requiring a retrial. Jurors heard from Colliers girlfriend, Leslie Roman, who said she was with him at the time of the murder. Roman said Collier had parked across the street from his sisters home at 232 Engle St. at about 9:45 p.m. and exited the car. Roman remained in the car, but said she saw sparks out of the corner of her eye and heard what sounded like fireworks. Roman looked up to see a black man in a hat, white T-shirt and shorts firing at Collier, who was on the ground in the street near the sidewalk, she said. Another witness told Assistant District Attorney Michelle Thurstlic-ONeill that Clark walked past him toward Engle Street and shots rang out seconds later. He then claimed to see Clark run down Engle toward Union Street, where he entered the Cadillac. The witness additionally said Clark had offered him $2,500 not to testify a week or two before the first trial, while they were both in the Delaware County prison in Concord. A third witness said he saw Clark later that night and that he had confessed to killing Sheets, Colliers street name. The witness said Clarkhad killed Collier because Collier had killed another man, Eshon Rahmir Mills, 19, of Peoples Street, about two weeks prior. Mills was found shot dead shot on the 1100 block of Pine Lane May 10, 2015. The third witness also testified that he later told detectives Clark told him he had shot Collier after learning it was actually Clark who killed Mills. County Detective Thomas Scarpato said there are currently no suspects in Mills death. Thurstlic-ONeill provided testimony from Colliers mother and sister Monday, who said his loss had been devastating to the family. He took a good friend from me, a child of mine and the love of my life, Colliers mother said. Defense attorney William Wismer did not add much, other than noting his client is single with an 11-year-old child. Clark did not say anything. Thurstlic-ONeill noted Clark had prior brushes with the law, including an acquittal for third-degree murder in 2009, drug charges, weapons charges and a December 2015 murder case that was later dropped. She asked that the additional time be added to Clarks mandatory life sentence to send a message to any future governor or board that might be considering leniency or commutation. District Attorney Katayoun Copeland commended Thurstlic-ONeill, county Detective Thomas Scarpato, Chester Police Detective Victor Heness and the Chester Police Department for the conviction. Mr. Clark now faces life in prison without the possibility of parole for gunning down the victim in a residential neighborhood and leaving him for dead in the street, she stated in a news release. While we know that that a guilty verdict will not undo the trauma this act of violence has caused to his family, as the result of excellent team work, this individual will spend the rest of his life facing the consequences of his actions. Arteris IP, the worlds leading supplier of innovative, silicon-proven network-on-chip (NoC) interconnect intellectual property, today announced that Case # 11-cv-5311-SBA was dismissed with prejudice by the Northern District of California Court with support of all parties involved. This litigation was launched by Sonics Inc. in November of 2011 alleging infringement of seven Sonics patents by Arteris, Inc. Arteris vigorously denied any infringement while challenging the validity of Sonics patents. The case was stayed for patent re-examination by the US Patent and Trademark Office in June of 2014 and was dismissed in March of 2019. The stipulated dismissal with prejudice is now part of the public record. Arteris IP will, as always, continue to compete strongly in the interconnect IP market for the benefit of the entire semiconductor industry and our nearly 120 customers, said K. Charles Janac, President and CEO of Arteris IP. About Arteris IP Arteris IP provides network-on-chip (NoC) interconnect IP to accelerate system-on-chip (SoC) semiconductor assembly for a wide range of applications from AI to automobiles, mobile phones, IoT, cameras, SSD controllers, and servers for customers such as Baidu, Mobileye, Samsung, Huawei / HiSilicon, Toshiba and NXP. Arteris IP products include the Ncore cache coherent and FlexNoC non-coherent interconnect IP, the CodaCache standalone last level cache, and optional Resilience Package (ISO 26262 functional safety), FlexNoC AI Package, and PIANO automated timing closure capabilities. Customer results obtained by using Arteris IP products include lower power, higher performance, more efficient design reuse and faster SoC development, leading to lower development and production costs. For more information, visit http://www.arteris.com or find us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/arteris. Arteris, FlexNoC, Ncore, and PIANO are registered trademarks of Arteris, Inc. Arteris IP, CodaCache, and the Arteris IP logo are trademarks of Arteris, Inc. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners. The premier event for discussions of innovative treatments, alternative methods and state-of-the-art advancements in pain relief. Beginning on July 26th, expert physicians from a wide array of pain management and neuroscience fields will gather for the event to discuss innovative treatments, alternative methods and state-of-the-art technologies in relation to pain relief topics. Dr. Michael Esposito of Florida Pain Institute is an invited faculty member who will be participating as a panel speaker on several topics, including advanced interventional pain treatments such as Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS) and Dorsal Root Ganglion (DRG) Stimulation for the treatment of painful nerve conditions. Specifically, Dr. Esposito will be discussing "DRG Stimulation: Lessons Learned, Advancing the Therapy and Expanding Indications." He will also be speaking about "Salvaging failed SCS Systems with new Waveforms, Targets and Frequencies." Additionally, Dr. Esposito will speak about new treatments for lumbar spinal stenosis in a session called "An Algorithm for Spinal Stenosis and Minimally Invasive Treatments including: Spacers, minimally invasive decompression and injections." Finally, Dr. Esposito will serve on the Young Innovators Panel to discuss how young physicians can continue to advance the field of Interventional Pain Management in order to best treat those who suffer from chronic pain. The conference is a powerful opportunity for pain management experts to exchange ideas, expand awareness and gain additional knowledge about advances in pain relief. This year's event will focus primarily on spine and nerve pain, with sponsor exhibits, courses, speakers and panel discussions. Topics discussed during the conference will fall under the following categories: Recent Innovations Establishing Protocols Neuromodulation: The Spine Neuromodulation: The Body Complicated Cases in Interventional Pain Practice Intrathecal Drug Delivery Fact or Fiction Debates Conflicting Evidence Breaking Research Florida Pain Institute is proud to be represented by one of our top pain management physicians, who will return from the conference with even more innovative tools to further benefit area patients who are living with chronic pain. In support of improving patient care, this activity has been planned and implemented by Dannemiller and ASPN PAIN, 2019. Dannemiller is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Edu-cation (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Cre-dentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team. Event details: Dates: Jul 26 - 28, 2019 Location: Loews Miami Beach, Florida Presented by: The American Society of Pain and Neurosciences (ASPN) and WVSIPP ABOUT DR. MICHAEL ESPOSITO Dr. Esposito has presented at numerous national anesthesia and pain medicine conferences, served as an instructor for multiple conference workshops and devoted his time to various local, state, national and international organizations. He has also spent time in our nation's capital discussing health policy with U.S. congressmen and advocating for patient safety with the American Society of Anesthesiologists Advocacy Division. In addition to providing expert, personalized care for Florida Pain Institute patients, Dr. Esposito currently holds a position as Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology in the University of Central Florida (UCF), College of Medicine. Learn more about Dr. Esposito's background and credentials here ABOUT FLORIDA PAIN INSTITUTE: At Florida Pain Institute, our board-certified, fellowship-trained physicians serve hundreds of patients daily while remaining committed to personalized care. Our physicians take a multidisciplinary approach to advanced pain management, addressing each patient's unique condition in order to customize an effective treatment plan that's right for them. Florida Pain Institute believes that open communication between our specialists and referring physicians is key to becoming pain management partners and providing quality care for the patient. Our goal is for physicians to refer with confidence, knowing that our pain management specialists are dedicated to relieving your patients pain and restoring their quality of life. For more information, contact Florida Pain Institute at (321) 784-8211 or visit http://www.FloridaPainInstitute.net. Giovanni Fernandez, Ph.D., executive director of Graduate Programs and associate professor of finance, teaching a graduate level class in the School of Business Administration at Stetson University. The transformation of the M.B.A. program addresses two very critical student needs, explained Giovanni Fernandez, Ph.D., executive director of Graduate Programs and associate professor of finance. Stetson Universitys School of Business Administration Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) Program has undergone a comprehensive redesign that allows unprecedented flexibility, personalization and program accessibility for students with differing lifestyles. This redesign of the M.B.A. is an important step in enhancing the accessibility of Stetsons business graduate programs to meet the goals of students in Central Florida and beyond who want to build their business acumen, said Neal Mero, Ph.D., dean and professor of management in Stetsons School of Business Administration. Three major curriculum changes taking affect for the Fall 2019 semester help students intentionally plan a personalized course of study that will translate into success in the real world. The first, and perhaps most significant, change is tied to the recognition that many students who pursue an M.B.A. do not have an undergraduate business degree. Whether a student wants to transition to a new career, move up the management ladder or enter the business world from a different background Stetsons redesigned M.B.A. program can work for them. Instead of going back to school for the undergraduate degree, these students are able to begin their M.B.A. experience by taking two foundation courses designed to prepare students of all backgrounds with both the business acumen and graduate-level rigor needed to succeed in the 36-credit-hour M.B.A. program. Following completion of the foundation classes, students dive into their core M.B.A. courses and more elective offerings giving them the ability to concentrate their program of study in the areas they are most interested in. In addition, the term structure has morphed into two, eight-week terms per semester giving students flexibility to respond to lifes demands. This is particularly useful for working professionals who in the past may have had to take a break from school for work commitments. The next change is related to the delivery format which will now be 100 percent online. The combination of pre-recorded lectures and live online sessions affords students, including working professionals, the ability to more seamlessly juggle work, family and school responsibilities through a mixture of synchronous and asynchronous classes. The transformation of the M.B.A. program addresses two very critical student needs, explained Giovanni Fernandez, Ph.D., executive director of Graduate Programs and associate professor of finance. First, a majority of our students are working full-time while taking classes, so an online format is essential for their busy lifestyle. Shifting to this model of delivery also allows students with different learning styles the ability to shape the courses to their own mode of learning, promoting a successful experience for each student. We are thrilled to add this online option for pursuing an MBA to our portfolio of graduate programs and believe these students will experience the superb business education for which our business school has been known for well over a century, explained Mero. The redesigned M.B.A. program will still be offered to both full-time and part-time students. Stetson University is one of 187 elite institutions worldwide with both its business school and accounting program accredited by AACSB International - The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The Stetson University School of Business Administration offers several distinct graduate programs for students looking to expand their career opportunities in the business world. The Executive M.B.A. program provides business leaders with the business acumen for senior leadership success while the J.D./M.B.A. is an avenue for those looking to provide a legal context for managerial activities and an M.B.A. to sharpen administrative and managerial decision-making skills. In addition, Stetsons hybrid M.B.A. being restructured and expected to re-launch in Spring 2020 is designed to bring high-touch, high-value, face-to-face experiences with faculty while providing asynchronous online content as well. About Stetson University Founded in 1883, Stetson University is the oldest private university in Central Florida. Stetson focuses on intense learning experiences in a supportive community that allows students to develop their voice in a connected, inclusive environment. Stetson University ranks No. 5 on U.S. News & World Reports 2019 list of Best Regional Universities (South) and has been recognized as one of The Princeton Reviews 384 Best Colleges, 2019 edition. Stay connected with Stetson on social media. ### SurgeonGate is committed to educating people about popular cosmetic surgeries and connecting patients with board-certified plastic surgeons in Michigan. By using a service like SurgeonGate to find a surgeon, you can ensure that you will be placed with a leading and highly trained professional in the surgery you are undergoing. "At SurgeonGate, our mission is to place you in the hands of experienced and vigorously trained cosmetic surgeons, and to educate you on the risks and benefits of the most popular procedures available. We are at the heart of cosmetic medicine and we are here to help you make informed decisions about your body. Choose a procedure below to learn more about the science behind it and find a leading plastic surgeon who specializes in your specific treatment. Life changing cosmetic surgery in Michigan starts here, at https://www.surgeongate.org/." Today, SurgeonGate has announced that they will now be working with some of the top breast augmentation surgeons in Michigan to help women enhance their bodies safely and professionally Breast augmentation is one of the most popular plastic surgeries performed in the united states and there are many different techniques and types of implants that can be used to add volume to the breasts and create a more youthful appearance for women. The types of implants used include saline and silicone implants. SurgeonGate has extensive articles on their website which will educate you deeply on the types of implants and which ones are the best for you. In short, saline implants are made of a plastic shell and are filled with sterile salt water, while silicone implants are filled with a highly cohesive silicone compound. There also exist different shapes, such as round implants and teardrop shaped implants which can affect the results and how the breasts appear after surgery. Silicone breast implants can also be smooth or textured on their surface. Smooth breast implants provide a more natural feeling for patients while textured implants can reduce complications and help to keep the implants in place. Teardrop implants, for example, are almost always textured as these implants should never rotate or move from original insertions position. If you decide to have breast implants, it is crucial that your doctor is among the most experienced in your area. An inexperienced breast surgeon can leave you self-conscious about your results or spending time and money on a second procedure to reach your original goals. When performing a breast augmentation, it is so important that your plastic surgeon is both a highly trained surgeon as well as an anatomical artist. Properly modeling youthful and balanced yet natural-seeming breasts is a task many surgeons can struggle with making it a job best done by a breast augmentation Michigan specialist rather than a general plastic surgeon or general surgeon for that matter. Visit https://www.surgeongate.org/michigan-plastic-surgery/michigan-breast-augmentation/ to request a consultation today to be promptly contacted by an experienced breast augmentation specialist in Michigan, ensuring your results leave you feeling comfortable and confident in your body. The Strategic Rivermont OZ Fund seeks to revitalize underutilized downtown districts - Ricky B. Novak The Strategic Group, a boutique investment firm that focuses primarily on investment strategies that also provide tax benefits as a source of returns, today announced the launch of the Strategic Rivermont OZ Fund. This fund brings a unique strategy of partnering with local municipalities to greatly transform downtown urban districts that are located in designated opportunity zones. The Strategic Group has partnered with Rivermont Capital, a North Carolina firm who has a longstanding track record of success in public-private partnerships. Rivermonts principals were most notably instrumental in the decade long turn-around of downtown Durham NC, a once struggling district that now boasts strong economic fundamentals attracting large employers, downtown living, and a robust retail environment. The Strategic Rivermont OZ Fund seeks to revitalize underutilized downtown districts while leveraging our collective experience and relationships with public-private partnerships to mitigate downside risk and position the fund for success, said Co-Managing Partner of Strategic Group Ricky B. Novak. Paramount to this fund is the protection of investors capital, and we believe our strategy will do just that, while our robust pipeline of underwritten projects will ensure the efficient use of capital. The Strategic Rivermont OZ Fund will tap into a pipeline of projects found in markets with a strong public tax bases that are close to primary and secondary MSAs. Many of the projects are through the due diligence process and have already received significant commitments from local governments. The CEO of Rivermont Capital, Michael Lemanski said, The Opportunity Zone program was fortuitous for our Firm. The majority of the projects in our pipeline happened to be located in Opportunity Zones, so we are excited about being able to fund more of these shovel ready projects and be socially and economically impactful in these communities. The launch of the Strategic Rivermont OZ Fund follows a series of strategic decisions the firm has made over the past few years of expanding the its footprint in tax-advantage investing. The Strategic Group recently launched an updated website that better reflects the growing lines of business. Steve Rothschild also joined the firm recently for his expertise in commercial real esate and to expand the tax credit platform and Mike Fields joined to serve as Chief Operating Officer. To learn more about the Strategic Group please visit http://www.TheStrategicGroup.com About The Strategic Group The Strategic Group is a boutique investment firm that focuses primarily on investment strategies that also provide tax benefits as a source of returns. We work closely with high net worth investors, family offices and their trusted advisors, as well as corporations, and banks. We have four primary lines of business that include: Opportunity Zones: Target investments in real estate and other private equity opportunities in designated Opportunity Zones that can mitigate the taxation of capital gains and all future appreciation may grow tax free Conservation: Consults and structures green, sustainable, and socially responsible conservation projects with the potential to mitigate tax liabilities while generating other private equity returns 1031 Qualified Intermediary: Consults and serves as a qualified intermediary for 1031 tax-free exchanges, including strategies resulting from partnerships, lease buy-backs, and other complex structures Federal & State Tax Credits: Consults, invests, and brokers transferable Federal and State tax credits such as film, low-income housing, historic rehabilitation, renewable energy, and various state and federal programs that mitigate tax liabilities For questions or more information contact Allen Taylor at 678.882.2160. Disclosures: This is not an offering to subscribe for units in any fund and is intended for informational purposes only. Admission as a Non-Managing Member in the Strategic Rivermont OZ Fund (referred to herein as the Fund) is not open to the public. An offering can only be made by delivery of the Confidential Private Placement Memorandum to qualified purchaser or accredited investors within the meaning of U.S. securities laws. Copies of the Confidential Private Placement Memorandum may be obtained by contacting The Strategic Group at 404.963.6657. Investment Partnerships are speculative investments and are not suitable for all investors, nor do they represent a complete investment program. The Fund is NOT registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended, pursuant to certain exemptions in such Act. Key Risk Factors: An investment in the Fund and an indirect investment in the Investments involve a high degree of risk, including the risk that the entire amount invested may be lost. Limited Operating History of the Fund; Lack of Operating History of the Advisor Funds; the Funds Dependence on the Manager its principals and the Investment Committee; The Fund may have a limited number and type of investments; The Fund may make Investments that may not be advantageously disposed of prior to the date that the Fund is scheduled to be dissolved; Reliance on Key Personnel of the Manager; Absence of Liability; Anti-Money Laundering; Conflicts of Interest; There are risks related to blind pool offerings; There is very little governmental guidance exists regarding the Qualified Opportunity Zone Program, and there can be no assurances the Fund meets the Asset Test and may face penalties for lack of compliance. Investors risk the loss of their entire capital. The foregoing risk factors do not purport to be a complete enumeration or explanation of the risks involved in an investment in the Fund. Prospective Non-Managing Members should read the entire Confidential Private Placement Memorandum and the Limited Liability Company Agreement of the Fund and consult with their own advisers before deciding whether to invest in the Fund. Please carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, and charges and expenses of the Fund before investing. Please read the Private Placement Memorandum carefully before investing as it contains important information on the investment objectives, composition, fees, charges and expenses, risks, suitability, and tax obligations associated with investing in the Fund. Copies of the Private Placement Memorandum may be obtained by contacting The Strategic Group at 404.963.6657. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All securities are offered via Bridge Capital Associates, Inc., a registered broker dealer and member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). Important disclosures may be found at the following website: http://www.bridgecapitalassociates.com/disclosures.htm Matts Revelation: a striking story of conformity and conviction, is the creation of published author Timothy Brown, an industrial machinist and a deacon of Eternal Life Ministries. He is a married grandfather from Ohio who loves spending time amid Gods creation. Brown writes, Mathew Kemp, a model citizen of the new world, turned against organized religion. Following the Elite Society Watchers plan to erase all things religious, he embarks on a quest to find those that do not conform to the new world order. Working for the Harding News, the countrys largest news agency, gives him the chance to become a roamer reporter, getting close to those that do not conform. In a world where computer chips are put in the right hand to identify and track all human activities, Matt is willing to risk his life to expose the nonconformist groups. His eagerness puts him in harms way and introduces him to the Christian life. Christians are being rounded up and executed. Matt is involved, yet learns his enemy is his friend. Matts journey exposes the truth in a world where his thoughts and beliefs have betrayed him. This leads to Matts Revelationone mans journey through life-changing events that show him the truth in a world turned against religion. Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Timothy Browns new book is a riveting portrayal of the impending tribulation and the eternal consequences of each souls decision to believe or disbelieve. View a synopsis of Matts Revelation on YouTube. Consumers can purchase Matts Revelation at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble. For additional information or inquiries about Matts Revelation, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919. Sara and Jacob have undeniable chemistry and tenacity.Documenting this imaginative undertaking for their following is a huge privilege. - Series Executive Producer, Kevin Pereira. Former G4 "Attack of the Show!" Co-hosts Sara Underwood and Kevin Pereira are teaming up again to launch CABINLAND: A new youtube series following influencer-model Sara Underwood and self-proclaimed Cabin Freak Jacob Witzling as they attempt to build a jaw-dropping collection of one-of-a-kind cabins in the Pacific Northwest. The next installment of the Cabinland journey premieres Friday, March 22nd at 12pm PST as a live event where fans can interact and engage with Sara and Jacob as they watch along here. Were putting everything on the line to make this happen, says Sara Underwood. Im putting all of my money into this build and Jacob took a two-year hiatus from teaching. Its terrifying, to be honest, but were moving forward and we hope that by documenting this journey and interacting with fans we can inspire others to go after their dreams. The Cabinland Channel launched on February 13, 2019 with a video introducing the concept and has since covered the design and groundbreaking of the first cabin, as well as giving viewers a peek into the couples personal lives as they live and work in the rainforest. In addition to the series, the channel also offers meme worthy build tutorials hosted by Jacob and Q&As where the pair answers fan questions. Sara and Jacob have undeniable chemistry and tenacity. says series executive producer, Kevin Pereira. Documenting this imaginative undertaking for their following is a huge privilege. To catch up on Sara and Jacobs journey head over to the Cabinland Channel and to interact live during the next episode head over to the Cabinland Live Premiere on Friday March, 22nd at 12pm PST! About Attack Media Attack Media is a full service creative agency founded by producer, host, serial-entrepreneur and new-media-darling, Kevin Pereira. The company specializes traditional and digital production, talent management, app development and whimsey-generation. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles and can be found online by pointing a digi-machine to http://www.attack.media ### Her leadership skills, experience and track record of success will help pave the way in the next exciting chapter that our company is about to write. Title Alliance, Ltd, a RESPA-compliant ESOP leader in joint ventured title insurance agencies, announced today it has appointed Lindsay Smith as Chief Strategy Officer for the company. The announcement comes after the recent appointment of Maria Deligiorgis as General Counsel and Compliance Officer and Sharon Lontoc as Chief Human Resources Officer for the company, marking the companys third C-Suite announcement within the last two weeks. A graduate of LaSalle University, Smith joined Title Alliance in 2005 and has held multiple roles throughout her tenure with the company ranging from Project Manager to Director of Sales and Marketing. Smith, additionally, has had responsibility for all Western Growth within Title Alliance since 2015, doubling their portfolios profits annually under her leadership in Arizona and New Mexico. As Chief Strategy Officer, Smith will be responsible for assisting Title Alliances CEO, Jim Campbell, in developing, communicating and executing both corporate and JV strategic initiatives as the company continues to move forward with a significant growth trajectory. Lindsays incredibly strong communication skills, her passion to deliver exemplary results combined with her strategic mindset make her a natural fit for this role says Jim Campbell, CEO of Title Alliance. Our company is poised for another extensive growth spurt thanks to Lindsays efforts. Her leadership skills, experience and track record of success will help pave the way in the next exciting chapter that our company is about to write. Campbell concludes, Im looking forward to continuing to work with Lindsay in her new role and I know that she will represent our company well as we navigate the challenges and opportunities in our ever changing market. Smith will focus on developing strategies to strengthen their family of companies and to position them for success. Her emphasis will be on overall growth, communication and strategic development from both a corporate and joint venture perspective. Through implementation of the companys strategy both internally and externally, Smith will ensure that all employees, partners, and vendors understand the company-wide vision and goals so that all work in alignment. Smith will be accountable for positioning the company for strategic growth, by entering into new markets and saturating the existing markets with joint ventured relationships. Smith will be prominent within the industry as the companys representative at industry events including trade shows, conferences, seminars and others identified to maintain and build relationships and continued organizational presence. My passionate commitment to making a difference in both the lives of our partners and team members is what fuels me. Thats always been my Why. says Smith, We are in the business of forming partnerships that provide opportunities for Brokers and their Agents to have passive income streams while controlling the closing process. And with each new company we set up there is an opportunity to impact the lives of more potential employees through the creation of jobs, to allow our partners to have additional revenue streams and to ultimately grow our ESOP which impacts all of our team members. She concludes, In this role, I look forward to thinking strategically to allow our company to enter into unexplored territories and to enhance the customer experience in order to have the greatest possible impact. Smith joins Chief Executive Officer, Jim Campbell; Chief Financial Officer, Lillian ReDavid; Chief Human Resources Officer, Sharon Lontoc and General Counsel and Compliance Officer, Maria Deligiorgis as the senior most leadership team providing collective guidance and governance over Title Alliance and their family of companies. Smith can be reached at lsmith@titlealliance.com. About Title Alliance: Title Alliance, Ltd, an ESOP Company is located in Media, PA and has been creating RESPA compliant title joint ventures since 1983 with lenders, mortgage bankers, realtors, builders and credit unions. Their roots date back to 1948 when their first agency, which is still in existence today, was formed. For more information or to find out how a Title Alliance partnership or title management skills could benefit you visit them online or contact Lindsay Smith at 800-220-3901 x 165. 'We aim at becoming like the WSET system... VIA aims to be the gold standard of Italian wine learning, coupled with an alumni programme that has built a global network of highly qualified Italian Wine Ambassadors to promote and support Italian wine throughout the world.' -- Stevie Kim, VIA Founder From March 16 to 20, 2019, the Vinitaly International Academy (VIA) returned to Chengdu for its reformatted Italian Wine Ambassador Certification Course. This was VIAs second time in Sichuans capital. The 5 day in-depth course was held at the Xanadu Hotel, where 30 Chinese wine professionals delved deep into Italian native grapes and territories, under the guidance of VIA Faculty Sarah Heller MW and Henry Davar. After four days of lectures, guided tastings, tasting labs, and a thorough examination featuring a written test, a blind tasting, and a group video presentation, four wine professionals achieved the title of VIA Italian Wine Ambassador: Long Zhang, Wine Educator at Ease Scent Marisa Wu, General Manager at M&B Wine Co. Yong Xue, Wine Training Manager at Vats Liquor Chain Store Guangshuai Zhang, General Manager at Pro Italy international trading Co., Ltd. The overall count for VIA-certified Italian Wine Experts and Ambassadors after the Chengdu course has now reached 181 professionals and of which 168 are Ambassadors and 13 Experts. Flavio Innocenzi, Commercial Director of Veronafiere, who opened the ceremony praised the entire class for the work they are doing in the market promoting Italian wines, and gave words of encouragement to those unsuccessful on this try, reminding them that being part of the community of passionate Italian wine lovers makes them ambassadors in their own right. A passion for wine education was a particular feature of the VIA Chengdu 2019 cohort with seven of the candidates certified wine educators, with a further 10 holding WSET Level 3 and three being WSET Diploma holders. In the 2018 academic year, the Wine and Spirits Education Trust (WSET) recorded an 11% increase in global candidates, with Chinese candidates numbering 21,986, a 9% increase on the previous year and the greatest single represented country. These figures confirm China as WSETs strongest international market and an optimal market for a pioneering wine educational project such as Vinitaly International Academy. The parallels of WSET and VIA were highlighted by Stevie Kim, Managing Director of Vinitaly International and founder of the Vinitaly International Academy, during the presentation of the VIAs Ecosystem in Chengdu: We aim at becoming like the WSET system. Just as WSET qualifications are globally recognised as the international certification in wine and spirit knowledge, VIA aims to be the gold standard of Italian wine learning, coupled with an alumni programme that has built a global network of highly qualified Italian Wine Ambassadors to support and promote Italian wine throughout the world. A particular appeal of higher level WSET courses is the variety of the wines tasted. VIA take this aspect to the next level. Students not only taste a vast number of wines, they also get to encounter extremely rare Italian grapes. An example of this intense tasting approach was seen in VIA Chengdu: during the week of classes and tasted labs students have tasted 35 single expressions of grape varieties, and thanks to the generosity of VIA SupportersFamiglie del Vino, Italian Signature Wines Academy, Consorzio Vini del Trentino, Sicilia DOC and Italia del Vinothis edition has managed to show those such as Tintilia, Prie Blanc, Oseleta, Nosiola. This is a considerable achievement and of significance when educating about those grapes harder to find represented outside of Italy, giving greater context for the theoretical session. Overall, when including blends, students have tasted 45+ different grape varieties and around 150 wines. The next VIA Italian Wine Ambassador courses include: the flagship edition in Verona, Italy, in the lead-up to Vinitaly from March 29 to April 2; New York City from June 24 to 28 (registrations are open), as well as a number of additional locations in the United States and Asia soon to be announced. ABOUT: Vinitaly International Academy (VIA) aims to be the gold standard of Italian wine education. It offers a complete educational path with standardized courses that will teach professionals and educators to master the diversity of Italian wine in a rigorous, organized manner. VIAs main objective is to foster a global network of highly qualified professionals such as Italian Wine Ambassadors and Italian Wine Experts: in turn, they will support and promote Italian wine throughout the world. VIA was founded by Stevie Kim, Managing Director of Vinitaly International. The new VIA ecosystem avails of the guidance of Italian trade associations Federdoc, Federvini, Vignaioli Indipendenti FIVI, and Unione Italiana Vini as members of the Institutional Advisory Board. Italian vine genetics scholar, Prof. Attilio Scienza, oversees VIAs scientific and educational direction as the Chief Scientist. VIA Faculty Sarah Heller MW and Henry Davar teach the flagship Italian Wine Ambassador course. The following trade associations in the Italian wine industry have also joined as VIA Supporters: Italian Signature Wines Academy; Italia del Vino; Consorzio di Tutela Vini del Trentino; Consorzio di Tutela Sicilia DOC; Franciacorta, Le Famiglie del Vino; Consorzio di Tutela Vini dAbruzzo. To date the VIA community comprises 168 certified Italian Wine Ambassadors and 13 Italian Wine Experts. Since its foundation in 2014, over 500 candidates from all over the world have taken VIAs courses. For all of these reasons, Discount Filter Store earns its first-place ranking among retailers offering Water Filters in 2019. TopConsumerReviews.com has recently awarded their highest five-star rating to Discount Filter Store, an industry leader in Water Filters. Water Filters come in all shapes and sizes, from whole-house systems that treat every drop that comes out of the faucet, to individual models that are installed just on the sinks that are used for drinking water. Having a Water Filter in the home is an excellent way to get clean water that tastes great - without the constant expense and hassle of buying bottled water or lugging big jugs of delivered water into the house and onto a dispenser. Although the most common reason for having a Water Filter is usually water hardness, many people like knowing that what they drink is free of contaminants and has fewer chemicals than what comes straight from the tap. The best source of all types of Water Filters is the internet, where customers can typically find the industrys best selection and at the best prices. For every imaginable type of Water Filter, Discount Filter Store is the place to shop, according to Brian Dolezal of TopConsumerReviews.com, LLC. In business for over a decade, this retailer carries more than 100 brands on their easy-to-use website. From refrigerator filters to whole-house water filter systems, youll find everything you need at prices that are extremely competitive. Discount Filter Store loves happy customers, so they offer a 90-day return policy, free shipping on every order over $39, and a price match guarantee. For all of these reasons, Discount Filter Store earns its first-place ranking among retailers offering Water Filters in 2019. To find out more about Discount Filter Store and other online retailers of Water Filters, including reviews and comparison rankings, please visit the Water Filters category of TopConsumerReviews.com at https://www.topconsumerreviews.com/water-filters/. About Discount Filter Store Discount Filter Stores mission is to provide easy to find filter products for water, air purification, pools, spas, and appliances at low prices that everyone can afford. The company currently has hundreds of thousands of loyal customers including end users, Fortune 500 companies, universities, government agencies, and other institutions. Discount Filter Store provides their high quality products and service to great companies and organizations throughout the U.S. and the world. The company is based out of Holly Springs, North Carolina. About TopConsumerReviews.com TopConsumerReviews.com, LLC is a leading provider of reviews and rankings for thousands of consumer products and services. From Water Filters to Swimming Pool Supplies and Home Security Systems, TopConsumerReviews.com delivers in-depth product evaluations in order to make purchasing decisions easier. Wayback Burgers, Americas Favorite Hometown Burger Joint and one of the nations fastest-growing burger franchises, is revolutionizing the food delivery market with Viddl-It a compact, electric vehicle and app that combines the convenience of delivery with on-site cooking. This new initiative is Wayback Burgers CEO John Eucalittos solution to the soggy fries problem. From packaging solutions to cars with miniature ovens, restaurant owners and managers have long battled the challenge of delivering quality food to customers located miles away from a restaurants kitchen. Working with Tropos Technologies, Wayback Burgers has created a new solution to this perennial challenge a 5-and-a-half by 8-foot mini electric food truck that brings the kitchen to its customers. Using the Viddl-It app, customers can reserve a vehicle (with the same name) for catering needs or simply order a meal that will be delivered to them and cooked on the spot. Its basically private catering on demand, explains John Eucalitto, CEO of Wayback Burgers. The food is made fresh on the spot, he says, and added that it addresses the two biggest complaints from customers about quality or that a driver forgot something. The Cheshire, Connecticut-based burger franchise tested the first Viddl-It vehicle near its headquarters before unveiling the new program to franchisees at the Wayback Burgers Convention in October of last year. The compact vehicles will cost franchisees who choose to include Viddl-It in their operations around $35,000, come outfitted with refrigerators, freezers, griddles, fryers, etc. and run on electric and propane with a battery that gets about 80 miles per charge. They are striving to have this service more widely available by Q3. To celebrate the launch of the revolutionizing Viddl- It delivery vehicle, Wayback Burgers is going on a cross-country tour. The Wayback team will depart from the headquarters in Connecticut, trek across the U.S. to Vegas to attend the Multi-Unit Franchising Conference and then return home again. The truck will be making pit stops along the way so Wayback Burgers fans will have a chance to experience Waybacks legendary fresh burgers at their convenience. Stops will include: Wednesday, March 20, 2019 from 9 a.m. 10 a.m. in Matamoras, PA Wayback Burgers 111 Hulst Dr., Matamoras, PA Wednesday, March 20, 2019 from 4 p.m. 6 p.m. in Wadsworth, OH Wayback Burgers - 1090 Williams Reserve Blvd. Wadsworth, OH Thursday, March 21, 2019 from 12 p.m. 2 p.m. in Oakbrook Terrace, IL & Naperville, IL Wayback Burgers - 17W420 22nd St Oakbrook Terrace, IL Wayback Burgers 2775 Showplace Dr., Naperville, IL Friday, March 22, 2019 from 4 p.m. 6 p.m. in Englewood, CO Wayback Burgers 5098 S Federal Blvd., Englewood, CO Boys & Girls Club: J. Churchill Owen - 3480 Kentucky Ave Denver, CO Saturday March 23 Tuesday, March 26 in Las Vegas, NV Multi-Unit Franchising Conference at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NV Thursday, March 28, 2019 from 4 p.m. 6 p.m. in Nashville, TN Wayback Burgers 7050 Charlotte Pike, Nashville, TN Boys & Girls Club: Preston Taylor - 915 38th Ave N Nashville, TN Friday, March 29, 2019 from 4 p.m. 6 p.m. in Mechanicsburg, PA Wayback Burgers 25 Gateway Dr., Mechanicsburg, PA Boys & Girls Club: Cumberland Road Clubhouse - 1227 Berryhill St. Harrisburg, PA The Wayback Burgers teams commitment to the highest quality levels, using only the freshest ingredients, and to unrivaled customer service is matched only by their commitment to their franchisees. We are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to support our franchisees and offer revenue generating solutions they can then pass on to customers, says Eucalitto. Everyone wins. For more information on Wayback Burgers and all 2019 promotions/limited time offers, please visit their website (https://waybackburgers.com/) and social media profiles Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For more information on the Wayback Burgers franchise opportunity, please visit https://franchise.waybackburgers.com/. About Wayback Burgers Founded in 1991 in Newark, DE, Wayback Burgers is a Connecticut-based fast-casual franchise with a reputation for cooked to order burgers and thick, hand-dipped milkshakes, served in an environment that hearkens back to a simpler place and timewhen customer service meant something and everyone felt the warmth of the community. Wayback Burgers currently operates in 30 states with over 166 locations nationally and internationally in Argentina, Brunei, Sudan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Through its executed master franchise agreements, Wayback Burgers plans to open in 38 provinces/countries in the Middle East, Northern Africa, South Africa, Argentina, Pakistan, Brunei, Bangladesh, Ireland; Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada; and the Netherlands, with a pending letter of intent sent out to Western Germany. For more information about Wayback Burgers, please go to https://waybackburgers.com/. For franchising information about Wayback Burgers, please go to https://franchise.waybackburgers.com/. WilMarc recognized as a top 10 Contact Manufacturer - 2019 We combined our experience of 32 years in manufacturing PVC free medical device components to offer our first line of Anesthesia circuits that are completely PVC free Developing PVC Free Medical Devices As sustainable and green initiatives gather momentum across industries, the healthcare sector has woken up to realize the hidden health hazards associated with PVC-based medical devices. Compounds such as plasticizers present in these products produce a range of toxic effects and perilous health problems that affect the functioning of the human body. Numerous reports have substantiated the environmental impact of toxic chemicals in plastics, which has led to public pressure on hospitals for accountability. Acknowledging the potential risks of PVC-based medical products on patients and physician health, there is a surging demand among hospitals and medical facilities for clean and green alternatives. Supporting this call for reform, woman- owned company and U.S based manufacturer of medical devices, WilMarc specializes in creating medical devices using alternative materials that are PVC free. We combined our experience of 32 years in manufacturing PVC free medical device components to offer our first line of Anesthesia circuits that are completely PVC free, says Marcia Coulson, CEO of WilMarc. The materials performed better than the current PVC products and we are also able to match the price point of PVC, she adds. The company ensures that the products are DEHP and PVC free with a definite emphasis on patient health and safety. As WilMarc embraces the new materials available in the industry, the team is constantly on the search to innovate and find manufacturing methods that can improve and enhance medical devices. The WilMarc team works proactively with clinical specialists to ensure that there is a continuous quality improvement that is incorporated into all of WilMarcs processes. With a brand new 93,000 square foot facility built at Fort Collins, Colorado, WilMarc provides contract manufacturing to other companies that are looking to have their PVC free devices manufactured within the country. This eliminates the costs and other concerns that companies usually face related to importing from different locations. Coulson then explains, One cannot manufacture PVC free devices in the same factory where you manufacture the PVC devices. PVC material attacks other plastic resins and causes them to breakdown. Ours is a clean facility that does not manufacture PVC devices. Other processes carried out within the state-of- the-art-facility include injection molding, extrusion of tubing, and ultrasonic welding. For the fourth time at the trade show CleanMed which is to be held at Nashville this year, WilMarc will be showcasing itself as a manufacturer of PVC free medical devices. Besides being the only U.S manufacturer that produces PVC free anesthesia breathing circuits in the country, WilMarc manufactures corrugated tubing, masks, gas sample lines, and fittings that are put together to form a kit that can be customized and built for anesthesiologists. The companys centralized location has given it easy access to the coast on either side for product distribution. The products are distributed to hospitals through the well- connected network of distributors and representatives that help WilMarc widen its customer reach. WilMarc has brought about a change in the way the disposable medical device market functions by designing and manufacturing PVC free products that are environmentally safe when disposed of. In the quest to make its mark in the healthcare sector, WilMarc is working to launch new products into the market and their distribution across the U.S to increase the customer base. The WilMarc team is committed to helping hospitals move toward a healthier PVC free medical industry and support the green initiative. https://manufacturing.medicaltechoutlook.com/vendors/top-contract-manufacturers-rid-25.html To learn more about PVC Free products and WilMarc's contract manufacturing opportunities visit us at http://www.WilMarcMedical.com. Test drive an exciting hybrid or electric vehicle at Miller Honda! The large and ever-growing automotive world changes every year. In fact, there have been some big changes in recent years, especially with the rapid growth of hybrid, electric and even autonomous, self-driving cars. Even though some of this technology is still a few years away from large market appeal, there are still great hybrid and electric models already available in the Honda lineup. Thats why Miller Honda, a Honda dealership in Winchester, is highlighting their new hybrid and electric vehicle inventory for drivers looking for a new driving experience. For Honda fans looking for an environmentally-friendly vehicle, Miller Honda offers plenty of great hybrid and electric models such as the exciting new Insight, Accord Hybrid, as well as the Clarity family of vehicles which includes the Clarity Plug-In Hybrid, Clarity Electric and Clarity Fuel Cell. Along with the Clarity and popular Accord variation, many drivers have been excited about the new Insight, a model Honda brought back into production for the 2019 model year. Since many of these models and technologies are so new, drivers might not be as well informed about them. Lucky for car shoppers, Miller Honda offers various research pages on these and other Honda models which give drivers essential information about each vehicle. The dealership also posts comparison pages so car shoppers can compare these vehicles to similar ones from Honda and even other manufacturers. Miller Honda is a full-service dealership that specializes in new and used Honda vehicles. Drivers interested in a hybrid or electric Honda model can contact the dealership at http://www.mymillerhonda.com or by dialing 855-463-5452 for more information. If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity. PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move. If you havent noticed, the typical comic book fanusually thought to be a teenage dudehas changed. And major comics publishers like DC know they must change as well. In a response to a changing fan base, DC is releasing the first titles from DC Books for Young Readers, a new publishing unit composed of DC Zoom (for middle grade readers) and DC Ink (for young adults) imprints. The first YA graphic novels from DC Ink are now being released. DC Books for Young Readers marks a major reorientation by the publisher to deliver a line of graphic novels aimed at girls and young women as well as young men, marketed to the book trade as well as the comics shop market. DC has recruited a stellar lineup of young adult and middle grade prose authors to write those graphic novels, a lineup that includes such acclaimed authors as Laurie Halse Anderson, Danielle Paige, Lauren Myracle, Meg Cabot, Ridley Pearson, and Gene Luen Yang . In April, DC Ink will release Mera: Tidebreaker by Danielle Paige and artist Stephen Byrne, a YA origin story focused on the relationship between Aquaman and Princess Mera; and in May the imprint will release Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale by acclaimed YA author Lauren Myracle with artist Isaac Goodhart. Michele Wells, v-p, executive editor of DC Books for Young Readers, comes to DC from the book tradeshe was formerly executive editor at Disney Worldwide Publishing, worked in editorial at Penguin Random House and has 20 years of experience in the book tradeand she talked with PW about the vision behind the new imprints. Graphic novels are one of the bright spots in publishing right now, Wells said, noting that the launch of the DC Books for Young Readers provided DC with the opportunity to produce out-of-continuity comics stories that push the storytelling boundaries of our iconic heroes for new fans. Were looking for stories that are authentic, she continued, stories about school problems, relatable narratives that use our characters as a lens through which to view these issues. The key to the strategy, she said, has been the recruitment of a lineup of proven and acclaimed authors like Lauren Myracle, using their expertise with this fan base to tell those stories. Wells cited the importance of the 2015 launch of the DC Superhero Girls line. The line, now a part of DC Zoom, identified a wave of middle grade girl fans excited about the superhero genre. We saw an opportunity because of its success at identifying an audience that wanted more of our heroes, Wells said. And we wanted authors with a POV like Lauren. Her books ttyl and ttfn [YA novels written in the form of text messages], her dialogue and relationship to her audience was really authentic. We feel that way about all the authors [at Zoom and Ink]. Under The Moon: A Catwoman Tale is an origin story about the teenager Selena Kyle, who grows up to become Catwoman, a complex female super hero who is both foil and love interest to Batman (in the story a teenage Bruce Wayne is a classmate and teen crush at Gotham High). But Selena and her mother are trapped in a dysfunctional, violently abusive family situation that forces Selena to run away and become homeless. Ultimately, she finds a new kind of family/team on the streets of Gotham City that also leads to a dynamic adventure. Myracle has written many books for young readers (at least 17 novels), but Under the Moon is her first attempt at writing comics. Im completely a 100% newbie and, knowing how passionate comics fans can be, its a little scary, she said. Myracle grew up in Atlanta, and attended a Christian prep school where comics just werent present, though she did read Richie Rich and Archie comics. I did not know about the countercultural and subversive world of comics until my own kids started reading graphic novels, she said. Her five children were her real introduction to comics. My kids fell in love with graphic novels so I began reading them and appreciated them, she said. Nevertheless, she said, Im a words girl, and when I read I gobble up the words. Now I had to slow down and read pictures. I felt a bit hobbled at first, she said about reading comics and about writing them. Yes, there was a learning curve when it came to writing her first graphic novel. I dove into reading about comics. I read Scott McClouds Understanding Comics, and all the graphic novels I could get my hands on, she said. I tried to absorb and learn about comics just the way I did when I got my MFA in writing fiction, Myracle said. DC Comics helped by providing an online tutorial in writing comics, connecting her with more experienced comics writers, among them Mariko Tamaki, people who know what theyre doing and explained the little things, Myracle said. Like how much characters can talk. Comics are more like a poem in a way and its fun to have to fit your creativity into a certain structure. But it was the character of teenage Catwoman15 year-old Selena Kyle is a student at Gotham Highthat captured Myracles imagination. At first DC offered Poison Ivy, another Gotham anti-heroine, but eventually suggested she take on Selena. My stomach jumped, Myracle said. Catgirl or Catwoman spoke to me: shes tough, shes a feminist, and she has skills. And my books dont usually have sociopathic killers in the plot so the whole idea of writing this big story was really amazing. Even better, she explained, DC did not want a writer who was overly indebted to the characters comic book legacy. The publisher wanted a story, she said, that rings true and can go anywhere. In Under the Moon, Selena grapples with such issues as domestic violence, cutting, homelessness, and the cruelty of adolescents toward social stigmas. Gotham is a gritty city and I wanted to tell the best story, the most true story, I could tell about Selena, she said. Most people, Myracle said, dont want stories that offend anyone, but to me thats not what fiction is about. I cant kowtow to social pressure. Selena is a broken girl who finds a way to get past challenges despite what shes had to go through. My job as a writer is to tell an authentic story that other kids can look at and say I can relate to her. Under the Moon: A Catwoman Tale by Lauren Myracle with artist Isaac Goodhart. DC Books for Young Readers, $16.99 May 7 ISBN-13: 978-1401285913 Dartmouth College physicist and astronomer Marcelo Gleiser is the 2019 Templeton Prize winner, the Templeton Foundation announced. Born in Brazil, Gleiser is the first Latin American to be awarded the prize, which recognizes living individuals for their contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, according to a statement from the foundation. In addition to his role as Appleton professor of natural philosophy and a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth, Gleiser is the author of five books, including The Dancing Universe (Plume, 1998) and The Island of Knowledge (Basic, 2015). Gleisers work has expressed skepticism of the quest to find mathematical perfection in the universe and rejects any certainty that physics has solved the question of the universes origin. As a result, he is being recognized as part of the John Templeton Foundations efforts to drive discoveries relating to the deepest and most perplexing questions facing humankind, according to the statement. Professor Gleisers work displays an undeniable joy of exploration, said Heather Templeton Dill, president of the foundation. In a past interview with PW, Gleiser praised efforts to learn more about the universe, despite what he described as limitations, mistakes, and surprises. It seems presumptuous to me that we humans, with our finite brains, could actually know everything, he said. The way knowledge advances is by finding mistakes; we need to be wrong to know what questions to ask next. To me, the fact that there is this element of surprise, that we cant be sure exactly if were going in the right direction, is a wonderful thing. Named after British entrepreneur John Templeton, the Templeton Prize is one of the world's largest annual individual monetary awards, currently valued at over $1.4 million. Previous winners include Mother Teresa, Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and most recently, His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan. Two months after announcing the closure of some stores, LifeWay Christian Resources has announced that it will shutter all 170 locations by the end of the year, according to a statement issued by the company on Wednesday. According to acting president and CEO of LifeWay Brad Waggoner, the difficult decision is part of a new retail strategy that is focused on digital channels which are experiencing strong growth, he said. LifeWay is moving into a new era with a strategic digital focus that will prepare us for the future and allow us to better serve our customers. A timeline for the store closings depends on local circumstances, according to the statement, but the chain expects all outlets to shutter by the end of the year. LifeWay will continue to offer resources through LifeWay.com and serve customers through its network of church partners. The stores, which first opened in 1891, sell Bibles, books, Scripture reference tools, and more. As the market continues to change, primarily through shifts in brick-and-mortar retail, we are taking steps to meet the customer demand for digital shopping experiences and to expand our reach globally, Waggoner said. Mark D. Taylor, chairman/CEO of Tyndale House, said the publisher is "very sad" about the closures. "On the other hand, we understand that the changing pattern of retail shopping has made it impossible for LifeWay to move forward with their brick-and-mortar locations," he said in a statement PW. LifeWay is the second Christian retail chain to close due to changing consumer behavior; Family Christian Stores closed all locations in 2017. The combination of the closing of LifeWay and FCS has resulted in the loss over 400 Christian retail locations in the last two years. WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the largest management and technology consulting companies in the U.S., has established space in Purdue@WestGate and is collaborating with Purdue Universitys Discovery Park to develop solutions to address some of the countrys key national security challenges. Booz Allen, which has served the U.S. government for more than 100 years and supported some of the nations most critical missions, opened its Indiana office at Purdue@WestGate, an economic development accelerator in the southwestern part of the state, on Jan. 1, 2018. The Booz Allen Hamilton collaboration with Purdue creates a unique opportunity to jointly serve our countrys security and protect our citizens and our allies across the globe, said Dan DeLaurentis, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics in Purdues College of Engineering and director of Purdues Institute for Global Security and Defense Innovation in Discovery Park. Booz Allen is teaming with Purdue professors, students and researchers to look initially at novel approaches to solving some of todays most complex cybersecurity challenges ...working with faculty in the Center for Education and Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), another unit of Discovery Park. Booz Allen is committed to helping tackle the toughest security issues of today and tomorrow, Booz Allen Principal Adam Weiner said. We are proud to grow our collaboration with Purdue, and look forward to teaming with the educator and students pursuing important research as part of the Purdue@WestGate initiative. DeLaurentis said future projects might touch on other Booz Allen and Purdue strengths in microelectronics; hardware solutions; anomaly in video and other data streams; and testing and evaluating anti-tamper systems. Purdue@WestGate and its location by the Crane naval base is fast becoming a strong bridge for companies serving the defense of our country, said Jason Salstrom, director of the Purdue Foundry at WestGate. The work and research aligns with Purdue's Giant Leaps celebration, recognizing the universitys global advancements made in health, space, artificial intelligence and sustainability as part of Purdues 150th anniversary. Those are the four themes of the yearlong celebrations Ideas Festival, designed to showcase Purdue as an intellectual center solving real-world issues. About Purdue@WestGate Purdue@WestGate is an economic development accelerator formed by the partnership between WestGate Authority, Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division (NSWC Crane), Purdue University and Purdue Research Foundation. The Indiana-based collaboration combines strengths to advance educational, research and development, and technology commercialization across Indiana and elsewhere. Purdue@WestGate offers tools for startups, entrepreneurial experts, programs, educational opportunities and workforce development to help southern Indiana businesses grow and thrive. For more information about the resources available to businesses, visit Purdue@WestGate. About Purdues Discovery Park Purdue's Discovery Park solves global challenge issues through interdisciplinary research and innovation, enabled by collaborations developed in its Centers and Institutes. Two of these are featured in this article. The Institute for Global Security and Defense Innovation (iGSDI) converge Purdue's interdisciplinary resources to bring timely, responsive and transformative solutions to the most pressing security and defense challenges facing the nation and the world. The Center for Education and Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS) is currently viewed as one of the worlds leading centers for research and education in areas of information security that are crucial to the protection of critical computing and communication infrastructure. CERIAS is unique among such national centers in its multidisciplinary approach to the problems, ranging from purely technical issues to ethical, legal, educational, communicational, linguistic, and economic issues, and the subtle interactions and dependencies among them. Writer: Chris Adam, 765-588-3341, cladam@prf.org Sources: Dan DeLaurentis, ddelaure@purdue.edu Jason Salstrom, jdsalstrom@prf.org Peninsula will look to win its third consecutive CIF-SS Open Division title Friday when it takes on Westlake, which beat the Panthers twice during the regular season. A Marcus Hook man was given four years of county probation Monday after pleading guilty in three separate cases including making false rape allegations against a fellow inmate at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility. Stephen Michael Giampetro, 25, of the first block of Chestnut Street, entered negotiated guilty pleas to terroristic threats, false reports and tampering with evidence, all misdemeanors. Court records indicate Giampetro was arrested Oct. 4 on the terroristic threats charge, which he said Monday involved his girlfriend. Delaware County Sgt. Kenneth Bellis and Detective Ed Pisani spoke with Giampetro at Crozer-Chester Medical Center Oct. 11. Giampetro claimed to have been anally raped in the prison by a cell mate the night before. Giampetro was reportedly acting erratic during the interview, and made statements that he was going to sue everyone, that he did not believe he was speaking with police officers, and that he was hallucinating. Although he initially consented to a sexual assault examination, he did not allow a full exam to be completed. Giampetro posted bail in the terroristic threats case Oct. 12, according to court records. Detectives also spoke with the alleged assailant, who denied ever sexually assaulting Giampetro and consented to a sexual assault kit. Investigators later learned that Giampetro admitted to another person that he had made up the rape allegation because he wanted to get out of his cell. County detectives attempted to speak with Giampetro about the alleged rape Oct. 30, but he refused to provide further details, became agitated and stormed out of the interview. He was arrested on the false report charge Nov. 5 and charged with tampering with evidence Nov. 27, according to court records. Under the negotiated guilty plea worked out by Assistant District Attorney Diane Horn and defense counsel Brian Malloy, Giampetro received 48 months of probation for the terroristic threats charge, and two concurrent 24-month probationary sentences in each of the other cases. He will also have to comply with the recommendations of psychological and psychiatric evaluations, complete anger management classes, pay $694 restitution for DNA analysis and perform 120 hours of community service. Malloy said his client, who works fulltime for Comcast, is a good father and has been making strides to correct his behavior. Its not going to happen again, your honor, Giampetro told Delaware County Common Pleas Court Judge Barry Dozor. Im going to keep moving in the right direction, doing the right things. GERMANY: Commissioner for Rail and Parliamentary Secretary of State for Transport & Digital Infrastructure Enak Ferlemann has said that a new 300 km/h line needs to be built between Bielefeld and Hannover. NETHERLANDS: ProRail, Arriva and Stadler have started a week-long trial of automatic train operation on the Groningen Zuidhorn line in the north of the country, with a modified GTW DMU successfully undertaking a first run on the evening of March 15. Repost: Monday, Oct. 28, 2019 Editor's note: Michael Flynn's legal team last week alleged that FBI officials manipulated Flynns FBI 302 to make it appear that President Trump's former national security adviser was lying. The 302 form is used by agents to report or summarize interviews, which are not recorded verbatim. And Eric Felten reported on longstanding problems with them back in March. By Eric Felten, RealClearInvestigations March 21, 2019 At 10:38 on the morning of Feb. 4, 2019, the deputy for United States District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said, Good morning, Your Honor. This is a sealed proceeding, and the courtroom has been locked. Paul Manafort: no transcript, video or audio of what he was accused by Robert Mueller's team of lying about. It was a hearing at which lawyers for Special Counsel Robert Mueller would argue that Paul Manafort had lied to them during 12 interviews, both before and after striking his plea bargain on foreign lobbying and money laundering charges. We know what was said behind those locked doors because a word-for-word transcript was made of the courtroom proceedings. Strangely, there was no such transcript of what Manafort had said in his interviews. This made it difficult to reconstruct what his responses to questioning had been, let alone determine whether they were truthful. But if there was no transcript, surely the court could consult a videotape of his interrogation, the sort of recording that is standard practice for local police who are interviewing, say, a suspected car thief. And if there was no videotape for the judge to watch, surely there was, at the very least, an audiotape. But no. The bureau has insisted instead, for more than half a century, on summarizing its interrogations, of everyone from witnesses to targets, in a type of memo designated an FD-302 or just 302. Those memos have been used in recent high-profile investigations to summarize the statements of Manafort, Hillary Clinton, and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, among others. Many were shocked to learn that Clintons interview with the FBI about her handling of classified emails was not tape-recorded. They may be more shocked to learn that is standard FBI procedure. Amy Berman Jackson: Judge frustrated by having to consult an FBI 302 memo rather than verbatim testimony. Judge Jackson, who would ultimately side with Muellers team on the question of Manaforts truthfulness, was flummoxed at first. She didnt quite know what to make of the accusations Manafort had lied after he had pleaded guilty and promised to cooperate. Flummoxed, because she was trying to reconstruct from 302s what had and hadnt been said. That's not the way the 302 read to me when I read it, she said in response to the prosecutions characterization of Manaforts testimony. This is the problem with not having grand jury testimony, but having to look at a 302. Clearly frustrated, the judge added, I may not be able to resolve it on the face of the 302. Although some media coverage has suggested otherwise, a 302 is not a transcript. Heres how a standard FBI interview works. Two agents sit down with the person to be interrogated. One agent does the questioning, the other takes notes by hand. After the interview is over, back at the bureau office, the agent who took notes uses them to construct a memo summarizing the conversation. That summary, then, is twice removed from the actual interview. The notes are not an exact rendering of the dialogue; and the memorandum is not an exact copy of the notes. Yet the summary is treated as the official record of the interview. The 302 is a record to which the interviewee is held even though it is not close to a verbatim rendering of what was said neither questions nor answers. Those who regularly deal with 302s seem unsurprised when they are missing crucial information. In Jacksons courtroom, lead Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann was declaring Manafort had been caught in another false statement. The proof, said the prosecutor, was found in paragraph 17 of a declaration made by an FBI agent involved in the interrogation. But it would be reflected in the 302, also? the judge asked. I dont think it is, Weissmann responded. I think its only in the declaration. The hearing moved on. But lets pause to consider what just happened. The special counsels team was accusing Manafort of a specific lie, but the document ostensibly detailing what Manafort said -- the 302 -- did not have any record of the statement in question. So the prosecutor fell back on a supplemental declaration by an FBI agent. The 302, in other words, was so unreliable that it lacked key information on which prosecutors were basing their case. Thomas Zehnle: Manafort attorney argued the absence of an "evidentiary basis for finding that Mr. Manafort intentionally misled the investigators. At least Manaforts lawyer, Thomas E. Zehnle, was paying attention. In a post-hearing memorandum, Zehnle and his co-counsels wrote to the court: Finally, even if one has some concern about how the FBIs summary report reads, it does not provide the evidentiary basis for finding that Mr. Manafort intentionally misled the investigators. Pointing to the 302, they added, The governments summary is not a grand jury transcript that identifies specific questions and answers; it remains ambiguous. By their very nature, 302s are ambiguous not just because they may be unreliable narrations, but because they may include information beyond just what was said. In response to an inquiry from RealClearInvestigations, an FBI official explained, The FD-302 form, in pertinent part, is used to memorialize interviews as well as other information that may become the subject of testimony. Asked what exactly other information means, or for an example of such information, the official replied, Were not able to provide any specifics or further comment for you. But Jacksons courtroom provided some inkling of what other information might be. Weissmann called the judges attention to Exhibit 10, page 6, which is the 302 of one of the Manafort interrogations. The prosecutor asked the judge to look at the 302 and I'd just like to quote some of it to you, because some of it is factual about what the facts were, not just intuiting what was in someone's head. In this inadvertent admission, Weissmann declared that some of the government memo being used as evidence is factual about what the facts were. And that this part of the memo was not just intuiting what was in someones head. But doesnt that suggest that other parts of the 302 passed along information that wasnt factual or intuited what was in someones head? A 302 purports to be an accurate account of what was said in an interview. How accurate are agents intuitions about their interviewees states of mind? Are we willing to convict people and send them to prison for false statements based on what agents intuit? An Old Habit These problems are behind a decades-long campaign to have all law enforcement -- from small-town deputy sheriffs to deputy directors of the FBI -- make the recording of interviews standard policy. One of the leaders of that effort has been civil liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, author of the book Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. He argues that 302s present a pervasive and unnecessary temptation for agents to bend the truth. A fundamental flaw in the FBIs truth-gathering apparatus, Silverglate wrote in 2011, is the long-defended Bureau-wide policy of not recording interrogations and interviews, a practice that allows the FBI to manipulate witnesses, manufacture convictions, and destroy justice as we once knew it. That may sound like strong stuff, unfair even. But the FBIs own intransigence in the face of the electronic recording movement lends credence to Silverglates critique. An FBI response to this proposed reform has become notorious in civil libertarian circles. In 2006, the bureau produced a written rebuttal to the on-going debate in the criminal justice community whether to make electronic recording of custodial interrogations mandatory. Robert Mueller: Infamous 2006 policy memo was issued under his watch as FBI Director. The policy memo offered several reasons why the FBI resisted recording, including the telling admission that, when people get a look at FBI interrogations in action, they dont like what they see: As all experienced investigators and prosecutors know, perfectly lawful and acceptable interviewing techniques do not always come across in recorded fashion to lay persons as proper means of obtaining information from defendants, the memo states. Initial resistance may be interpreted as involuntariness, and misleading a defendant as to the quality of the evidence against him may appear to be unfair deceit. The bottom line is that FBI agents feel empowered lie to witnesses or suspects, but when those targets lie to the FBI they are charged with crimes. And being allowed to produce 302s, instead of taped interviews, allows this practice to continue. Its worth noting that when that memo was produced, the FBI director was Robert Mueller. The practice of using memos instead of actual transcripts became standard procedure a long time ago, and dates to precedents established by founding FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Sometimes the 302 reports reflected noble work. But not always. In the 1950s, 302 forms were filed by special agents probing the private lives of suspected Communists. In the 1960s, 302 reports were used as a record-keeping tool by FBI agents penetrating the Ku Klux Klan. When Special Agents James P. Hosty Jr. and James W. Bookhout interrogated Lee Harvey Oswald on the day of John F. Kennedys assassination, they summarized the questioning in a 302 they dictated the next day. It was a measure of the artificiality of the memos, and the agents skewed sense of what was important, that they stated in the first paragraph of their report that Oswald made many uncomplimentary remarks about the FBI. Mark Felt: "Deep Throat's" 302 report suggested leaks were coming from elsewhere. During the Watergate scandal, 302s played a crucial rolea role that allowed for manipulation and misdirection. Deputy FBI Director Mark Felt filed a memo suggesting leaks to The Washington Post were coming from a Miami prosecutor who had access to 302 reports. Yet it was Felt who was Bob Woodwards infamous Deep Throat. There are more recent examples. Immediately after assuring President Trump in private meeting, I dont do sneaky things, I dont leak, I dont do weasel moves, then-FBI director James Comey went to his car, got out his laptop and immediately began writing a 302-style memo. Which he later leaked. According to his own congressional testimony, Comey did the same thing to former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Yet Comey seemed surprised anyone would see those as weasel moves or sneaky things, the obvious irony being that we only know about the weasel moves quote because Comey put them in his 302-type memo. The Bureau cherishes its procedures and lives by them, Andrew McCabe, another fired top FBI official, wrote in his recent memoir. The official write-up on my own application interview, conducted in Philadelphia more than two decades ago, can be found somewhere in the personnel files at the J. Edgard Hoover Building. Its a form known as a FD-302. Every interview conducted by an FBI agent is reported or summarized on a 302. This form is the most basic building block of an investigation. Brian Boetig: When interviews and interrogations arent recorded, any number of things can go wrong. Not all FBI agents believe they should be. Around the same time as the controversial misleading a defendant explanation was being promulgated, Special Agent Brian Boetig co-authored an article, Revealing Incommunicado: Electronic Recording of Police Interrogations, for the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. In it, he and his fellow authors made the case for recording all interviews. (Boetig is not squeamish: His crime-fighting bona fides are solid enough that he was recently promoted to be assistant director of the bureaus Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.) Testimony regarding what transpired inside the interrogation room, they wrote, can become tainted if only the participants witnessed what occurred. Boetig and his co-authors argued that when interviews and interrogations arent recorded any number of things can go wrong: First, problems associated with recollection can contribute to conflicting statements. Interrogations often last for hours and exact transcripts cannot precisely memorialize everything. Furthermore, a trial may not occur for years after the interrogation, reducing the ability to cognitively recall all of the specific details and circumstances not recorded in notes or reports. Beyond that, note jotters and memo writers can simply get things wrong. It would be a remarkable feat of note-taking to capture every word that is said in a fluid conversation; so to start with, pertinent dialogue is missing even in the most scrupulously produced 302. There may also be things that the note taker mishears, misunderstands, or scribbles down incoherently. Again, remember that the notes arent the finished product: They are used as a reference by the agent as he or she perhaps days later reconstructs the interview in summary form. Such summaries might be useful for agents and case managers to keep track of investigations, but the use of 302s goes far beyond that. They become the official record of what was said in an interview. If one contradicts that record in subsequent interviews or testimony, the 302 can be used as evidence that one has lied to the government. The Michael Flynn Case Its one thing to be held accountable for what one says in a tape-recorded interview, where there is a complete record of what was said on both sides of the conversation. But how confident can we be that a memo summarizing handwritten notes is accurate, even assuming agents best good-faith efforts? Confident enough to send someone to the penitentiary for many years? Michael Flynn: Mistakes were made in his FBI interview, but not only by him. Consider Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to making materially false statements and omissions to FBI agents because the 302s of his interview did not match other evidence the bureau had collected. It turns out that mistakes were made -- and not only by Flynn. For starters, one of the two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017 was Peter Strzok, who was later removed from the investigation because of deep anti-Trump animus he expressed in texts with a fellow FBI employee. Even then, according to congressional testimony, Strzok and the other agent didnt really believe Flynn lied to them. And, of course, they had no tape recording to help them weigh the facts. As McCabe himself wrote in a memo, [I]t was not a great beginning of a false statements case. That aspect of the saga received some media attention. But another one did not. Late last year, District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the special counsel to release the FD-302 memorializing the interview with Flynn. On Dec. 17, the Mueller team complied: the government hereby files two redacted versions of the FD-302 report summarizing the FBIs interview of the defendant on January 24, 2017. Two versions? The first had been originally filed Feb. 15, 2017, three weeks after the interview with Flynn. Three weeks seems an awfully long time for recollection, especially of subtle details that may lead to a man being prosecuted for lying to the FBI. Is three weeks common or even consistent with official policy? Its hard to say, because the publicly available version of the FBIs Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide reads, Any matter that may be testimonial must be documented using an FD-302 within [REDACTED]. Peter Strzok: He and the FBI agent with him didnt really believe Flynn lied to them, according to testimony. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta Lets put aside the question of how it could possibly be the case that the standard deadline for filing a 302 is some sort of secret that warrants redaction. Lets assume that three weeks is within the window. But even if three weeks doesnt seem like a long time, thats nothing compared to how long it took to file the second, final version of the Flynn 302 3 months. Heres how Robert Mueller explained what happened: The content of both versions of the report is identical, except that the first version, which was digitally signed and certified in February 2017, inadvertently contained a header labeled DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL. Once that error was recognized, Mueller said, the header was removed and a corrected version, omitting only the header, was re-signed and re-certified in May 2017. How did the words DRAFT DOCUMENT/DELIBERATIVE MATERIAL find their way onto the 302? And dont those words suggest that the document was still open to revision? The one thing we can be quite sure of, however, is that inaccurate claims were made in an official FBI record of an interview: Isnt that the sort of thing that gets people in trouble? But lets be more generous than aggressive prosecutors tend to be and accept that the error was inadvertent, as Mueller claims. That would be proof of an astonishing tendency to error in the creation of FD-302s. Here we have a crucial 302 of the highest importance -- one providing the pretext to prosecute the White House national security adviser. And it not only has an error at the top of the page, that inadvertent text is centered and written in bold, all-capital letters. If thats the sort of supersized mistake that happens in a high-priority case, what does that tell us about the accuracy and reliability of the average FD-302? FD-302 from the Warren Commission investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The concern isnt a new one: You can have a conversation with an agent, Robert Kennedys press secretary when RFK was attorney general, once told journalist Victor Navasky, and when it is over he will send a memo to the files. Any relation between the memo and what was said in the conversation may be purely coincidental. You would think you were at different meetings. It was that sort of reputation that led the Department of Justice in 2014 to issue a new Policy Concerning Electronic Recording of Statements. Promulgated by then-Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, the document opens with this declaration: This policy establishes a presumption that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the United States Marshals Service (USMS) will electronically record statements made by individuals in their custody. There was great anticipation that the new policy would finally be the end of commemorating interviews in memos derived from handwritten notes. This policy change is an important step in the right direction, the Harvard Law Review declared in 2015, reflecting a growing movement that has recognized the benefits of recording interviews; however, the new policy puts in place little express accountability for failure to comply with the presumption. Not only is there little express accountability for not recording interviews at the FBI, the bureau has made it policy to interpret the presumption of recording in the narrowest possible way, while obliging agents to file 302s as a matter of course. DOJ policy notwithstanding, FBI interviews with witnesses are rarely recorded, says one prominent white-collar Washington, D.C., defense lawyer. About 99 percent of the time agents take notes during the interview and then turn those notes into a 302. That 99 percent may be a slight exaggeration, but what is the real ratio of taped to typed interviews? If the bureau knows, it isnt willing to share: The FBI does not maintain statistical information about the aggregate number of electronic recordings or FD-302s prepared in a given window of time, an FBI official told RealClearInvestigations. Asked why 302s are still standard operating procedure, the bureau is coy. The electronic recording of non-custodial interviews is not required, the same FBI official said in an email exchange. But that covers a lot of suspects and witnesses, as any number of FBI targets can attest, including Michael Flynn. Although the current DOJ written guidelines call for video or audio recording of interviews of persons under arrest, it also includes this caveat: Interviews in non-custodial settings are excluded from the presumption. And non-custodial is an interesting term of art. There is a presumption that statements made by persons in FBI custody must be recorded, the bureau instructs agents in the 2016 edition of the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. But that leaves a lot of running room to interrogate people without cameras or recording devices. To the FBI, custody only applies following arrest and prior to initial appearance when the arrestee is in a place of detention with suitable recording equipment. That means for those who have not yet been arrested when they are interviewed-- as was the case with Lt. Gen. Flynn -- FBI policy is to rely on 302s to memorialize what was said and done. The same holds true of those who have been arrested and then have been arraigned, which explains why the special counsels office and the FBI didnt feel obliged to record any of their dozen interviews with Manafort. The FBI does allow agents to consider recording non-custodial interviews, but requires the interviewing employee to consider a range of factors. One such factor is [w]hether the interviewees own words and appearance (in video recordings) would help rebut any doubt about the meaning, context or voluntariness of his/her statement or confession raised by his/her age, mental state, educational level, or understanding of the English language; or is otherwise expected to be an issue at trial, such as to rebut an insanity defense; or may be of value to behavioral analysts. The other factors similarly focus on the question of whether a recording will help get a conviction rather than whether it will help get at the truth. Recordings are not always perfect representations of what happened in interviews, either. (There is, for example, literature on how camera placement can affect viewers interpretations of a subjects demeanor.) But electronic recording is clearly superior to the 302 process with its invitation to error and risk of baked-in bias. Yet, in a society where any and all of ones movements are captured on videotape (just ask Jussie Smollett), the one situation in which there is likely not to be a camera running is in an official FBI interview. What will it take to have the FBI give up its stubborn commitment to the scribble-and-type method of memorializing interviews? A decree from the attorney general or the president would likely get the job done. Or legislation from Capitol Hill, which controls the FBIs funding. Concern about retaining the publics confidence in the bureau certainly hasnt been enough. Nor have humiliating courtroom defeats. Noor Salman, second from right, with her lawyers. She was acquitted of lying to the FBI concerning the Orlando, Florida, nightclub massacre carried out by her husband. A year ago, a jury in Florida acquitted Noor Salman of all charges against her in the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. The wife of Omar Mateen, the mass murderer who carried out the attack, Salman was charged by federal authorities with obstruction of justice and aiding and abetting her husband in the attack. The Justice Departments case was based almost solely on the confession FBI agents got Salman to sign after questioning her for 18 hours without a lawyer and, crucially, as it turned out -- without a tape recorder. At the end of that interrogation, she signed a statement based on information fed to her by the two investigating FBI agents, a statement the agents wrote themselves. Some of that information would be disproven at trial, meaning that the prosecution relied on a confession that contained information fed to her by FBI agents that the government subsequently found out to be untrue. Moreover, at the trial, the agents contradicted each other on significant portions of what she said. These discrepancies might have been resolved by a tape or transcript of the interview, but of course, nothing of the kind existed. The FBI must join the rest of law enforcement and record all statements, one of Salmans attorneys, Charles Swift, said after the acquittal was announced. Its ridiculous if they dont. The jury foreman agreed. In a statement issued afterward to the media, the foreman said the jury was convinced that Noor Salman did know what her husband was planning to do. But based on the incomplete method the FBI used to collect evidence, they couldnt in good conscience convict her. I wish that the FBI had recorded their interviews with Ms. Salman, the foreman added, as there were several significant inconsistencies with the written summaries of her statements. Mobile World Congress recently convened in Barcelona, the worlds largest exhibition of mobile technology. Weve come a long way since the first exhibition, and are now knocking on the door of the rollout of fifth generation (5G) technology. Looming large over the conference was the race between the U.S. and China to be the global leaders in 5G, and to be the first to bring it to market. Given the actions and rhetoric of those on the U.S. side, though, it would seem they want to let the Chinese telecommunications giant, Huawei, win the race. American policymakers have emphasized security concerns, and pushed for big government solutions. This only signals to the Chinese that we have conceded their alleged centrally planned economic model as more efficient. Sadly missing in this discussion is the free market. Recent reports indicate that advisors in the Trump administration are suggesting the creation of a nationalized 5G network. The U.S. fostered the growth of the Internet through a light touch regulatory framework. American companies won the race to roll out 4G technology, and the government allowed the market to do the work. What greater sign of submission could the U.S. show in the late stages of the 5G race than to abandon this winning framework in favor of the nationalization model that the Chinese, and other non-market economies have utilized for years? The largest companies in the world, like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are all American tech companies. The laissez faire tendencies that faux free marketeers like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich like to deride are the same ones that allowed these companies to thrive and create immense wealth for the United States. Policymakers should cheerlead these tendencies, not scorn them. There have been numerous instances of local governments trying to operate their own municipal broadband networks. In most cases these networks end up mired in insolvency, or create exorbitant costs for local taxpayers. Government-run networks do not serve as inspiration for innovators around the world. It is our private sector that drives growth and innovation. U.S. lawmakers are also citing security concerns. They are seeking to lure international investment away from China by saying Huawei will lead to the Chinese government spying on their devices. Any casual observer of public policy knows that big government initiatives are almost always precipitated by the invocation of some sort of national security threat. The fact that the U.S. is choosing this line of argument, instead of pointing to the endless potential of our free market in contrast to the Chinese command and control model is evidence of just that. Huawei shot back with an effective response. At the Barcelona conference, Guo Ping, the chairman of Huawei said that anyone with concerns about government spying on their devices can go ask Edward Snowden. He is referring, of course, to the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower who revealed massive government spying on American citizens without warrants. Unfortunately, this is a completely valid point. The U.S. has not updated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) in decades. Tech privacy is still being governed by a legal framework passed during the Reagan administration. The tech sector has evolved far beyond the point where such a framework is acceptable. Naturally, government operatives are using the language to say it does not apply to todays technology and the privacy of modern devices remains in doubt in the U.S. Section 215 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) has also lacked any significant reforms since Snowden pointed out the abuses. It is due for reauthorization this year. Policymakers need to enact reform, or even refuse to reauthorize the program altogether to ensure a better privacy framework for American businesses, and the American people. With such uncertainty about the privacy and security of new tech devices, investors may see the U.S. as an investment that is just as risky as China. If the U.S. wants to have any moral high ground on this issue, it needs to end the hypocrisy surrounding Huaweis privacy concerns and instead fix the ones within our own borders. This will provide needed certainty for investors, and deprive Huawei of rhetorical ammunition to use against the U.S. and its tech sector. There are other affirmative steps the U.S. government can take to empower our private sector to create jobs and develop the worlds first and the worlds best 5G technology. It can approve mergers like the one between T-Mobile and Sprint. This would give them more spectrum assets and tower location to build out a wider network to deliver 5G to the American people, and with more resources to develop innovative ways to do so. The government also needs to further deregulate the tech sector, so companies can create plans and policies that enable them to be most effective in building out 5G. This includes liberating bands of broadband spectrum currently being hoarded by the federal government. The U.S can certainly beat China in the race to 5G deployment, which would create massive GDP growth and investment. However, the U.S. cannot beat China by becoming it and using the force of the government to stifle the market. With progressive leaders fomenting anti-Semitism, conservatives must keep their ranks and publications free of this evil. 2019 already has been a very anti-Semitic year for progressive leaders. Representative Ilhan Omar accused American Jews of dual loyalty and using money to buy Congressional support for Israel. Rep. Rashida Tlaib followed the Instagram page of free.palestine.1948, which traffics in comparisons of Jews to rats and other virulently anti-Semitic material until she was exposed by the Capital Research Center earlier this month. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez retweeted and responded to a tweet from the executive director of the US Center for Palestinian Rights, an organization that supports the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a State Department-designated terror organization since 1997. Conservatives have rightly excoriated these progressives for their anti-Semitism. Their criticism advances the conservative movements core principles of individual liberty and religious tolerance. Conservatives are well-positioned to address anti-Semitism and advance these principles because they follow in the footsteps of William F. Buckley, Jr. For decades, Buckley marginalized anti-Semites and excluded them from positions of influence in the modern conservative movement that he founded. In 1990, conservative author and pundit Patrick Buchanan made a series of anti-Semitic statements. Buckley responded with In Search of Anti-Semitism, a National Review issue devoted to his essay condemning Buchanans anti-Semitism (as well as that of another conservative author, Joseph Sobran, and leftist author Gore Vidal). As conservatives since Buckley have recognized, their movement must maintain a zero-tolerance policy against anti-Semitism in their ranks. In June 2018, however, this policy missed a beat. Conservatives allowed one of their most prominent institutions, ironically National Review, the magazine that Buckley founded and where he waged his fight, to publish Ed Condons The Spanish Inquisition Was a Moderate Court by the Standard of Its Time. As the title suggests, this article attempts to excuse and downplay the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. In case anyone has forgotten, the Spanish Inquisition was Spains multi-century war against Jews. It resulted in the murder of thousands, torture of untold more, expulsion of over 160,000 who refused to become Catholics, and oppression of Jews for hundreds of years. Was the Spanish Inquisition less horrendous for Jews than other European anti-Semitic persecutions of the same era? Perhaps. But the conservatives at National Review must know that publishing a sympathetic assessment of the Spanish Inquisition is as counterproductive as publishing material that attempts to downplay and excuse Hitlers extreme crimes as somehow less evil than those of Stalin or Mao (because the Holocaust killed fewer people than Stalins purges or Maos Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution). To be fair, National Review does not shy away from the fight against anti-Semitism. In October 2018, after the Pittsburgh synagogue murders, it published How to Fight Anti-Semitism, and in December of that year, it reported on the anti-Semitic leadership of the Womens March. Nonetheless, the publication of Condons article was a step in the wrong direction. It not only did nothing to advance the conservative movement, individual liberty, or religious tolerance, it helped opponents cast them as tainted by or even infused with anti-Semitism. And the damage may continue for decades. For example, in 1990, a Washington Post article, Pat Buchanan The Jewish Question, focused on Buchanans anti-Semitic statements shortly after he made them. In 1993, a New York Magazine article, The New Anti-Semitism, showed that the statements had not been forgotten and also suggested that Republican National Committee Chairman Rich Bond, former Secretary of State James A. Baker, and Vice-President Dan Quayle had expressed anti-Semitism. And in 2016, over a quarter century after Buchanan made the statements, a Vox article, Paleoconservatism, the movement that explains Donald Trump, explained, prominently cited Buchanan for the contention that paleoconservatism (a.k.a. the Old Right) at least in the past certainly had an anti-Semitism problem. The message is simple and clear. Conservatives must follow Buckleys path and keep their ranks and publications free of anti-Semitism to most effectively advance their movement, individual liberty, and religious tolerance. David M. Simon is a Chicago lawyer. The views expressed in this article are his own and not those of the law firm with which he is affiliated. For more, please see www.dmswritings.com. Bogged down by a feckless political elite and deep structural flaws, the European Union will continue to hollow out These are not happy times in Europe. The ongoing spectacle of a British political class hell-bent on performing political seppuku over Brexit continues to dominate the headlines. Regardless of Brexits final outcome, the damage done to Labour and Conservatives alike will change British politics for decades to come. It will alter party loyalties and shift the baseline expectations of the electorate. Most important, it will permanently color the perception of the elites competence to govern. Still, the political farce unfolding in London should not overshadow a more fundamental ongoing transformation: the hollowing out of the European Union. The United Kingdom is not only Europes second-largest economy, but also the most powerful EU nation not part of the common currency zone. There was already an imbalance between the eurozone and the non-euro countries, and as Britain exits the Union, that imbalance will accelerate the process of Europes bifurcation. As the essential political linkages that anchor the European project continue to fray, the quasi-federalist design articulated in the Lisbon Treaty is increasingly out of sync with Europes political realities. More important, its increasingly irrelevant to the rapidly changing security environment in and around the Continent. Europe has yet to fully recover from two shocks that have shaken it over the last ten-plus years. The first was the 2008 economic crisis, which exposed the eurozones fundamentally flawed construct: that of a centralized monetary policy paired with fiscal decisions left to individual governments. The second was the mishandling of the surge of immigration from the Middle East and North Africa in 2015-2016, which fractured the neoliberal political consensus across Europe and showed that the European Union was unable to secure its borders. In the aftermath, elite conversation in Europe has not addressed the fundamental structural weaknesses that these crises exposed, especially on immigration. Instead, the conversation has veered into a debate about liberal vs. illiberal values, as though populism were the cause of the two crises rather than a manifestation of the Unions underlying problems. To aggravate matters, Europe is heading for turbulent economic times that will fuel political instability and public discontent. The yellow vests protesting in France are not an isolated phenomenon. Their actions express a deepening and widespread dissatisfaction over stagnating economies. That discontent has already transformed the electoral map of Italy, and it is reshaping political landscapes across Europe. The jury is still out on whether Europes policy elites will be able to shake off their established assumptions about the ideal future of the European megapolis and instead confront the challenges of immigration, slow growth, and deepening structural deficits. Time is running short to face those challenges, for even Germany is looking at a potentially rocky economic path ahead. But it is external security which presents a truly intractable problem for Europe. This is because the European Union is not structured to become a serious military actor, and it probably never will be. Thus far Europe has proved unable to come to grips with the depth of the challenge that a revisionist Russia and surging China pose to its future. Sure, leaders debate a European Army or an Army of Europeans. They have launched initiatives such as PESCO, CARD, and EDF that are meant to allow EU member-states to jointly plan, develop, and invest in shared military capability projects, so as to enhance the readiness of their forces. There has even been talk of building a European aircraft carrier. But no amount of institutional tinkering can address the fundamental reality that the European Union rests on pooled sovereignty. This structure by design makes it all but impossible to generate consensus about the Continents defense, beyond regional security considerations. Historically, this institutional deficiency in the common European project has been offset by the United States strategic guarantee to Europe. This guarantee by necessity presupposed that in NATO, the United States is primus inter pares, able in a time of crisis to lead the willing, but also to push the reluctant, into action. That dynamic played out during the Balkan wars. The current state of flux in transatlantic relations undermines Europes ability to think and act cohesively. Some EU governments, including Germany and France, increasingly see the United States pressure on defense spending, Nord Stream 2, and tariffs as contributing to discord. Meanwhile others such as Poland, the Baltic States, and the Scandinavians seek a deeper strategic alliance with Washington against Russia. This leaves Europe even less capable of addressing the deteriorating security along its eastern and southern borders. In addition, the de facto demilitarization of Europe over the past two decades and the imminent EU departure of the United Kingdom, one of Europes few viable militaries, have left the Continent more dependent on the American military for its security than at any time since the end of the Cold War. At the same time, the Unions inability to check Russias neo-imperial drive into Eastern Europe makes the United States even more the adjudicator of what the geostrategic landscape along the Continents eastern flank will look like in the next five years. China arguably presents an even greater national security threat to Europe than does Russia. Beijings continental strategy has successfully leveraged Europes post-2008 stresses and the capital needs of poorer Europeans. It has done so through infrastructure investments and asset acquisition in Southeastern Europe and the Balkans, while also moving into the more developed economies of Central Europe. Now, Beijing is pushing into Europes West with strategic investments targeting technologies China finds difficult to acquire in the United States. The European Union is simply not structured nor sufficiently resourced to offset the growing financial pressure from China. Capital needs among smaller countries will continue to favor China, while even the largest economies, such as Germany, already find it difficult to resist Beijings targeted-acquisition strategy. The EU legacy institutions no longer match the shifts in regional and global power distribution, nor are they suited to respond to the fracturing political consensus within individual states. It will not be easy for the United States to remain the military guarantor of Europes security in this rapidly changing geostrategic and political environment. If, instead of addressing the urgent need to become fully invested in rebuilding NATO, Europe continues to float ideas for security and defense structures of its own, it will become harder to keep the United States involved. Washingtons security needs in Asia and our own hemisphere require more attention all the time. The challenge for the United States in Europe is to ensure not just that extended deterrence against Russia holds along the eastern flank of NATO, but that China does not economically influence and control ever-greater portions of the Continent. Andrew A. Michta is the dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. The views expressed here are his own. Save for the conflicts opening salvos in the middle of 2014, the Libyan Civil War has largely been contained to pockets of violence. Prolonged battles decimated cities such as Benghazi, Derna, and Sirte, but the majority of the country has been spared large-scale destruction. That could change soon, however. The Libyan National Army (LNA), a coalition of forces led by general Khalifa Haftar, recently expanded into southern Libya. Their moves have been followed by responses and mobilizations from anti-Haftar forces in the countrys west, and large-scale military confrontation is now a distinct possibility. Any conflict between Haftars forces and the powerful western militias -- particularly those from the coastal city of Misrata -- could be catastrophic for the already unstable country and could have dire security and migration ramifications for Libyas neighbors and for Europe. Despite the current threat of widespread violence, 2019 began with glimmers of optimism regarding Libyas security file. In late 2018 the head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, Ghassan Salame, brokered new security arrangements in Tripoli intended to dilute the power of the capitals dominant militias and vest it in the state institutions of the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA). Additionally, Cairo hosted multiple negotiations throughout 2018 aiming to unite the GNA-aligned militias in the west and the self-titled Libyan National Army in the east to form sovereign Libyan armed forces. However, rival militias continue to impede Tripolis security arrangements, and the Egyptian-sponsored negotiations broke down due to Haftars refusal to submit to civilian oversight of the military. After negotiations faltered, the threat of military confrontation grew when Haftar launched his operation into southern Libya in January. Heralded as a campaign to purge the south of terrorists, gangs, and armed tribal elements, the operation saw Haftars LNA seize Libyas largest oil fields -- al-Sharara and al-Feel -- as well as the souths de facto capital, Sabha. The LNA fired nary a shot, instead negotiating with and paying off local armed groups. However, these groups function on a transactional basis, and whether they will remain loyal to Haftar remains to be seen, especially if and when the LNAs main forces vacate the south. It is highly unlikely that Haftars core units will remain in the south for long, and reports are already circulating that LNA elements are redeploying to Jufra in central Libya, with their sites likely set on Bani Walid, 110 miles southeast of Tripoli. Bani Walid has long been a thorn in Haftars side. Opposing forces, namely the Benghazi Defense Brigades (BDB) and the militia headed by Ibrahim Jadhran, have used the town as a base to launch multiple operations against the LNA. Jadhran is subject to U.S. sanctions for disrupting Libyas vital oil-exporting capabilities and costing the country billions of dollars, and Haftar considers BDB to be a terrorist group. Furthermore, after being expelled from its stronghold in Sirte in December 2016, ISIS has regrouped in the areas surrounding Bani Walid. Haftar could justify his thrust toward the town as a move to take out terrorists -- this is what he did in the south. However, Bani Walid would also serve as an ideal staging area for a push toward Tripoli. For their part, the powerful western militias, particularly those in Misrata and Zintan, are monitoring Haftars maneuvers with growing apprehension. On March 4, Misratas Military Council and Council of Elders released a statement affirming their opposition to Haftar and labeling him a war criminal. That same day, notables from 17 western towns, including Zintan, signed a joint statement rejecting military rule and foreign meddling in Libyan affairs. Both positions are dog whistles for anti-Haftar groups, who see the general as striving to re-establish Gaddafi-era military rule with the backing of foreign actors, namely the United Arab Emirates and France. Since issuing these statements, Misrata has reportedly sent forces to central Libya to reinforce Sirtes Protection and Security Force, which itself has called up its reservists. Despite the bellicose posturing of multiple armed actors, military confrontation between the LNA and opposing groups is not certain. The myriad armed actors in Libyas west are hardly a united front. Some tentatively support Haftar, and western militias have spent more blood and treasure fighting each other since 2014 than fighting Haftar. However, if they see his move on the west as a threat to their financial and political interests, they may coalesce and mount a staunch resistance to Haftar, who is unlikely to defeat a cohesive opposition. Instead, to seize control of the west, Haftar would likely have to negotiate and buy off powerful forces in Misrata and Zintan, as he did in the south. But if Haftar does begin a military attempt to subdue the forces in Libyas west and march on Tripoli, it could have dire consequences for the entire country, as well as for Libyas neighbors and Europe. An eruption of violence could upend the fragile stability that is currently stemming migrant flows from Libya across the Mediterranean. Moreover, as it did in 2014, ISIS could thrive in the ensuing chaos and ramp up its already active insurgency in central and western Libya. Should LNA forces abandon their recently won territory in the south to wage war in the west, exacerbated ethnic and tribal tensions could again ignite in the south. Indeed, instances of ethnic violence have already flared in the southern town of Murzuq, following the LNAs withdrawal from the town. To avert a potential military confrontation between Haftar and the wests powerful armed groups, the United States could re-insert itself into the Libyan crisis as a neutral mediator, untainted by active support for any one side or by the baggage of a colonial past in Libya. The United States could pressure Haftars international backers to rein him in, or, as it has done with other destabilizing actors, Washington could threaten sanctions against Haftar, should he march on the west and risk all-out war. The United States could also reaffirm its support for the United Nations Support Mission in Libya and re-invigorate its diplomatic efforts to resolve the Libyan crisis. Without such action, Libya could backslide into widespread violence, and the stage could be set for renewed migrant and terrorism crises across the region. Nathan Vest is a research assistant and Middle East specialist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. The views expressed are the author's own. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada. Search Real Estate , We're sorry, this article is not currently available Videos Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos. Athens, GA (30605) Today Cloudy with showers likely during the afternoon, and possibly a thunderstorm. Storms may contain strong gusty winds. High 71F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%.. Tonight Cloudy with light rain this evening. Low 39F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%. According to Nasscom, engineering services exports had grown at 13 per cent in 2017 compared to six per cent rise in IT services exports and eight per cent in business process management (BPM). It had also recorded the highest growth in the last three years, reports Debasis Mohapatra. IMAGE: An outsourcing centre in Bengaluru. Photograph: Vivek Prakash/Reuters Engineering services have emerged as the next growth segment for Indian IT services players with most firms taking aggressive steps to corner a larger share of the outsourcing deals. For instance, companies such as Infosys, with lesser presence in some segments of engineering services, have now reoriented their strategy to clinch more deals from marquee clients. Many analysts are of the opinion that Infosys's wining contract from Rolls-Royce is an outcome of such strategic moves. According to an HFS Research report released last year, HCL Technologies was at the top spot among domestic IT services players, while it was ranked number four globally in this segment. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) had been placed at sixth spot, followed by Wipro at seventh in the global list. According to the research firm, French company Altran was the global market leader in the engineering services space. "With maturing technology and good talent base, the engineering segment is showing a lot of momentum in recent years. "Sensing the opportunity ahead, all Indian IT firms now want to grab a larger share of this pie," said Pareekh Jain, founder of Pareekh Consulting, an engineering services consultant. "From Infosys perspective, it's a big win as getting a new account is very difficult in the engineering services space," he added. With this win, Infosys has been able to enter the aero-engine segment, where the company had less presence earlier. According to IT industry body Nasscom, engineering services exports had grown at 13 per cent in 2017 compared to six per cent rise in IT services exports and eight per cent in business process management (BPM). It had also recorded the highest growth in the last three years. IMAGE: Employees of Indian software company Infosys walk past Infosys logos at their campus in the Electronic City area in Bangalore. Photograph: Vivek Prakash/Reuters Apart from growth prospects, even engineering services deals give better operating margins to IT firms despite being smaller in size. Typical deals in this segment range from $10 to $20 million, annually. At a time when most Indian IT services players are facing pricing pressure from traditional business, which contributes major share of their revenues, it has become a business imperative for them to opt for high growth areas like the engineering services segment. Globally, major clients which outsource engineering services works include Boeing, Airbus, Spirit AeroSystems, Rockwell, Pratt & Whitney in aerospace; Nissan, Ford, Toyota, Volvo, Volkswagen, Harman, Faurecia, Delphi, Continental in automotive space; Ericsson and Nokia in telecom industry and Dell & HP in hardware space, among others. According to sources, while TCS works with General Electric, Nissan, CISCO, and Rolls-Royce, among others, Infosys's current engagement include Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems apart from other large players. In the mid-tier IT services space, companies like L&T Technology Services, Cyient, Quest Global, Persistent Systems and Mindtree have sound expertise in engineering services domain with good client base. "Engineering services is the backbone of most digital work. So, with rising focus on digital revenue, this segment will see greater momentum. Also, increasing application of software services in consumer electronics to automotive sector is another growth driver," said a Bengaluru-based IT analyst. While the addressable R&D services market is currently worth nearly $1 trillion, only about six per cent is currently outsourced, he added. However, smaller deal sizes and lack of niche skill sets are the key challenges for Indian IT services players for driving growth in this segment. "Deal sizes are small as compared to traditional IT outsourcing deals. Also, companies have to build up capabilities to clinch such deals through skilling people and acquisition," Jain added. According to the revised plan, promoter Naresh Goyal, his wife Anita Goyal and the directors nominated by the promoter would be asked to step down from the board, and the lenders, as part of the resolution process, will infuse around Rs 1,200 crore into the airline as emergency funding. Lenders of Jet Airways are likely to take management control of the airline by superseding the current board, it is learnt. A consortium of lenders, led by State Bank of India, would operate the airline managed by a professional board, a source in the know said. The move follows Etihads refusal to infuse additional funds in Jet under the current terms of the bank-led resolution plan. The lenders will sell their stake in Jet at an appropriate time. According to the revised plan, promoter Naresh Goyal, his wife Anita Goyal and the directors nominated by the promoter would be asked to step down from the board, sources in the know said. The promoter-appointed directors include Nasim Zaidi and Gaurang Shetty, whos also an executive at the airline. The lenders, as part of the resolution process will infuse around Rs 1,200 crore into the airline as emergency funding. State-owned banks including State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank are the main lenders to Jet, which is now operating only one-third of its fleet of planes as the rest have been grounded due to non-payment to lessors. Its unfortunate that both the owners have not been able to reach a consensus. But banks have decided that the company will not be allowed to fail and will take control of the airline, said a senior banker leading the resolution process. A resolution is expected before the end of this month. According to the plan, the airline will issue additional 114 million equity shares. After the restructuring, the lenders consortium led by the SBI, along with national sovereign fund National Infrastructure Investment Fund (NIIF) will hold around 51 per cent stake in the airline. The lenders had to redraw the resolution plan after Etihad Airways CEO Tony Douglas refused to agree on the contours of the deal. Etihad, which holds 24 per cent in Jet, informed the lenders consortium that it would not participate in the rights issue or infuse fresh funds under the current terms and conditions of the resolution plan. However, bank executives maintained that talks are still on with Etihad as no ''conclusive'' decision to exit has been taken by the Abu Dhabi-headquartered airline. There are multiple examples in the world where banks have taken over operations of the company and sold its stake to a suitor subsequently. We are definitely not going to run the company for a long time. This is a transitory holding, a top banker said. Its important to have a resolution process by end of this month because if theres no agreement by April 1 (180 days from January 1), Jet Airways will have to be declared a Non-Performing Account (NPA). On January 1, Jet Airways had informed the stock exchanges that it had defaulted on debt repayment to its consortium of lenders. SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar, who met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, along with senior officials including Nripendra Misra, principal secretary to the Prime Minister, on Wednesday, said taking Jet Airways to the insolvency court was not an option as it would lead to complete value erosion of the company. There are Rs 4000 crore worth of creditors, nobody wants to take Jet Airways through the insolvency process, said Kumar. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), in case of service industry like an airline is the last option, according to Kumar. Under IBC, the resolution of a service industry entity is nearly impossible and would mean we are grounding the airline. We will keep trying.... We have not reached a point where we can say enough is enough and nothing else can be done, the SBI chairman said. Photograph: Abhirup Roy/Reuters. If (by the end of the deal) the talent that owns the customer relationships is not there, will L&T still get the value it is looking for? While Mindtree and Larsen & Toubro continue to battle it out in what is being described as a hostile takeover attempt, different stakeholders seem to be divided on what the deal would mean for the two companies. The old guard of company executives sees this as an emotional issue, largely agreeing with the Mindtree promoters line, but roots for an agreeable solution. There is a difference between being a founder and an employee. Founders have a right to be able to have a say in which way the company goes. We dont know the situation in which the founders are being forced to sell. The intention of L&T is good. There is value in Mindtree. They should be talking and arriving at an amicable solution, said Raman Roy, considered the father of Business Process Outsourcing in India, and chairman of Quattro. Engineering major L&T on Monday made a hostile bid to take controlling stake in Mindtree. It has entered into an agreement with Mindtrees single-largest investor, V G Siddhartha, to purchase his entire 20.32 per cent stake for Rs 3,269 crore. It is also eyeing an additional 46 per cent through market purchase and an open offer. Mindtree on Tuesday appealed to the larger Indian tech community, with co-founder Subroto Bagchi saying that L&Ts move will be taken as a bad precedent for the whole information technology (IT) sector and also for start-up entrepreneurs who aspire to build large institutions. Start-up founders, however, are looking at the subject with a more practical lens. This is being looked at as an insider (Mindtree) versus outside (L&T) issue, said a Bengaluru-based technology start-up co-founder. In their quest for expansion, getting funds for the next big project, bringing in a bigger player to make their product a success, younger companies seem more amenable to the idea of a takeover. Unlike the older tech players, they are more used to the idea of change. It seems everybody is looking for a better deal, the start-up co-founder added. The tussle is expected to stretch out as Mindtree looks unwilling to cede control. Mindtree employees even tweeted #MindtreeMatters over the last two days, making emotional appeals to not dilute the culture of themed sized IT firm. Experts are looking at it as a financial deal and question if Mindtree will be worth the value that L&T wants to pay for it. I dont see it as a hostile takeover, said Sanjoy Sen, senior research fellow in strategy and governance, Loughborough University, UK. It was initiated by a Mindtree shareholder (Siddhartha) making an offer to L&T, so the entire chain was triggered by a key stakeholder. He added though that the entire tussle shows the value of smaller IT firms, and the key will be to see if it impacts employee morale at Mindtree. If (by the end of the deal) the talent that owns the customer relationships is not there, will L&T still get the value it is looking for? 'Overnight, with zero qualification whatsoever for the responsibility of prime ministership, Priyanka is being projected as an alternative to Narendra Damodardas Modi!' says Nazarwala who predicted Mayawati's win in the 2007 UP elections, forecast her rout in the 2012 polls, and called right the 2017 UP assembly election result. IMAGE: Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra arrives at the Bade Hanuman temple in Prayagraj, March 18, 2019. Photograph: PTI Photo Rahul Gandhi is desperate to revive the Indian National Congress. He has an indisputable, abnormal, advantage in the form of pedigree -- right from his great, great grandfather Motilal Nehru to father Rajiv Gandhi. This is one well-known family which accounts for three prime ministers of India that is Bharat. The duration of their combined regime is enough to keep the Guinness Book of Records editors busy in cross-checking the dynasties of other democracies. The Nehru-Gandhi surname's magic is unprecedented. In addition to three prime ministers, the family has also been twice blessed with 'extra-Constitutional authorities', with even a foreign-born who acquired the surname proving powerful enough to control India that is Bharat for 10 long, scam-laden, years. Truly, the surname confers immunity from all charges of corruption and misgovernance. Don't believe me? Ask Subramanian Swamy who is still struggling to prove the blatant corruption in the National Herald case. The Nehru-Gandhi surname's magic does work wonders. So much so that even a nonentity can superciliously humiliate the prime minister of India by publicly tearing to shreds an official document -- merely to impress the media. Now, another Nehru-Gandhi offspring, the charming Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, has been ceremoniously re-introduced to the nation. She too has got a double whammy -- 'Nehru' and 'Gandhi' -- of surname inheritance. 'Vadra' is an embarrassing hangover which she may want the eastern UP-wallahs to overlook. Priyanka Vadra has an enterprising husband, to say the least. No doubt, when bureaucrat Ashok Khemka's facts emerge on the national consciousness, some tears will be shed by her family. Meanwhile, the Congress sycophants are working overtime to pit her against Ajay Singh Bisht aka Yogi Adityanath in Gorakhpur, while others are propping her up for the big fight of Varanasi, because she has already visited a temple and done Durga darshan there. The strategists think that her label will fool the voters. She would do well to spurn their advice, or else prepare for another label -- April Fool. Overnight, with zero qualification whatsoever for the responsibility of prime ministership, Priyanka is being projected as an alternative to Narendra Damodardas Modi! Merely resembling grandmother Indira, and aping her gestures and gimmicks, is no qualification. At most they may be good for grabbing TV bytes, but certainly not for vote-catching. The electronic and print media boys are busy planning their coverage, and coining sensational headlines. Nothing more to it. And the sooner the Gandhi trio realises it, the better for them. Sticking to Amethi to safeguard Rahul's seat may be a saner option. 'Chest-thumping on-air theatrics on television are no consolation for families who've been forced to embrace the price of war,' notes Nikita Puri. Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com What: The dizzying downfall of India's television channels was a subject well-discussed on social media platforms across the globe. Claims of objectivity were gone with the wind faster than we could Google Balakot, the town in Pakistan alleged to be a camp for Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists. This group had claimed responsibility for the attack on a convoy carrying Indian security personnel in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, on February 14, which left 40 CRPF personnel dead. When: Television newsrooms in India have only grown louder in the last few weeks, an event that no one thought was possible. Riding on unnamed sources, journalists quoted unverified figures, from 300 to 650, citing the number of militants killed in Pakistan by Indian forces in retaliation for Pulwama. The sense of decorum, dignity and sensitivity was missing even when Abhinandan Varthaman, a wing commander in the Indian Air Force, was captured in Pakistan. When questioned by the Pakistani army, the officer stoically declined to share any details. But if Pakistan needed anything, all it had to do was look to the Indian media, which had already tracked down the officer's family and residence details for the world. How: Even as defence chiefs deliberated on how to proceed after Pulwama, our microphone-wielding brigade was ready to go to war, but only as long as it could do it from the newsrooms. Okay, some of them did go beyond their studios -- to Twitter -- to display their all-consuming love for the motherland. One Hindi news anchor, in a performance that would have got a standing ovation at the National School of Drama's recently concluded annual theatre festival, went on to stage a dramatic piece, now called Tauba Tauba on social media, as she spoke about bombs being dropped in terrorist territory. Then, while mocking how Pakistani citizens talk, she went on to mock even children born in Pakistan. Other headlines screamed: '(Pak's) Blackmail falls flat'; 'Pak folds in fear'. If only such things didn't matter, but the fragility of man's easily inflatable ego mustn't be tested -- certainly not at such a sensitive time. Such has been our coarse coverage that it had Anand Mahindra asking a newsman to tone it down. 'I rarely comment on media postures. But the prime objective now is to allow our soldier to come home safely. This isn't the time to jeopardise that event with such calls for celebration... Arnab, please, we must exercise restraint,' Mahindra tweeted to the original custodian of TV studio-led nationalism. Now: Ask anyone who has even remotely felt the ravages of war, and they'll tell you they'd prefer the oft-tedious Doordarshan treatment of news over anchors celebrating hyper-nationalism. It comes as no surprise that Indian media is being compared by many to Fox News on steroids, which isn't exactly high praise. But when news channels run tickers that would fit better in a Sunny Deol movie -- 'Dushman ko mitti mein milana mumkin hai (you can make your enemy bite the dust)' -- - and give airtime to panelists who seem gleeful about someone's death, perhaps it's a comparison we deserve. Chest-thumping on-air theatrics used on television are no consolation for families who've been forced to embrace the price of war. And, they endanger the lives of those wrapped up in ongoing conflict. One wonders if the flak the Indian media has received will change anything at all. After all, in a political climate where wearing your patriotism on the sleeve is de rigueur, the much-required moment of contemplation has lost its way. 'Prior to Pulwama, the BJP appeared to be on the defensive, uncertain of its stop-and-go development programmes, fearful of growing discontent among agriculturists and unemployed youth, and nervous of gathering steam among Opposition parties across regional and caste alliances,' says Sunil Sethi. Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com The fraught fortnight of February that raised India-Pakistan hostilities to fever pitch may have subsided, but their effects won]t easily go away. They are now the central focus of Narendra Modi's election campaign as he galvanises nationalist fervour during breathless nationwide tours. Gone is the development-for-all promise of 'Sabka saath, sabka vikas' underpinned by a plea to voters of 'Ab ki baar, Modi sarkar' that swept the Bharatiya Janata Party to power in 2014 with an unprecedented mandate. In an avalanche of advertising aimed at winning hearts and minds, the new slogan is 'Namumkin ab mumkin hai' (The impossible is now possible) -- a line as vague as its dream of la-la land. What happened to the all-consuming issues of spiralling joblessness, farmers's distress, the lingering pain of demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax, and the alleged corruption in the Rafale aircraft deal? They are off the BJP's radar; as to the persisting thorn in its flesh of the Rafale deal, the government's overbearing response has been to try suppressing The Hindu's investigations under the Official Secrets Act. Between Pulwama and the heralded return of fighter pilot Abhinandan Varthaman, came the Balakot air strikes, an event now obscured in a miasma of lies or half-truths. Only future historians will tell us how many died in the Jaish-e-Muhammad terrorist camps -- 'a very large number', as the foreign secretary said, or 250 as BJP President Amit Anilchandra Shah claims, or 300 as some of the clairvoyant media -- firmly aboard the nationalist bandwagon -- repeatedly announced. Swathes of the media, cocooned by the anonymity of unnamed sources, have had a field day. Balakot remains, in Churchill's wartime phrase, 'a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.' Whatever the amount of ammunition India dropped inside the LoC, it spent a great deal of ballast in mustering international support to blackball Pakistan's furtive provocations in Kashmir. Whereas much of the democratic world unanimously condemned Pakistan as the home base of jihadi terrorism, the glow of India's 'guest of honour' invitation to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation's summit in Abu Dhabi -- and Pakistan's ensuing protest -- was dulled by its insistence on drumming up Kashmir and Indian atrocities in the valley. The OIC is a 57-member oil-rich club with each country holding the right of veto; not much gets done without its call to Muslim brethren and distributing largesse among the faithful. A few days after Pulwama, Saudi Arabia's sinister strongman Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman landed in Pakistan with a no-strings-attached gift of $20 billion, the first, he said, of a package that will 'grow each month and every year'. Imran Khan drove him personally to his official residence. Oil-dependent India, with nearly three times as many Indian workers in Saudi as Pakistan, also welcomed MBS warmly. But If OIC leaders equivocate with cash injections to pep up Pakistan's failed economy, China, its other patron and exacting money-lender, has impassively sat on the fence during the Pulwama-Balakot face-off. The inescapable fact is that, like Lady Macbeth's 'damned spot', the blood stains in Kashmir show no sign of vanishing. According to Ajai Shukla, 45 military personnel, including the 40 in Pulwama, have already died in the first two months of 2019 -- that is already half the number of 90 in all of 2018. The number of terrorists 'neutralised' may have doubled since 2014 -- the year the BJP came to power -- but civilian deaths have tripled -- from 28 in 2014 to 86 in 2018. In the surge of election rhetoric, however, the Balakot narrative is being projected by Mr Modi as not only a triumphant vindication of Pulwama, but as the successful taming of Pakistan. As the post-Pulwama backlash against Kashmiris grew, his words of balm were: 'Children of Kashmir are suffering because of terrorists... They are standing with us to eliminate (terrorists) and we need them.' Some of his utterances have been off-colour -- terming the captured wing commander 'a pilot project' or distinctly off the mark -- the claim that India would have been more effective if we had the Rafale aircraft. Will this have a cumulative influence on more than 800 million voters in a few weeks's time? The election story is bound to change; the question how much? Prior to Pulwama, the BJP appeared to be on the defensive, uncertain of its stop-and-go development programmes, fearful of growing discontent among agriculturists and unemployed youth, and nervous of gathering steam among Opposition parties across regional and caste alliances. On a packed Jaipur-Delhi flight some days before Pulwama, I happened to sit next to Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar (in a back seat and mildly surprised that he refused to occupy Row A). Although he defended his party's proficiency in conducting door-to-door campaigns he was silent when a woman passenger sharply asked, 'Chief Minister sahib, what was the need to change Gurgaon's name to Gurugram?' Today, he would be aggressively cock-a-hoop as the BJP leadership goes into battle to reap the benefits of Pulwama-Balakot and woo the electorate to jump on the nationalist bandwagon. Sab kuch mumkin hai (Everything is possible). The United States has warned Pakistan that another terror attack on India will prove to be "extremely problematic" as it asked Islamabad to take more "concrete and sustained" actions to rein in terror groups including the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Tayiba. Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after a suicide bomber of Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district in February 14. India launched a counter-terror operation in Balakot. The next day, Pakistan Air Force retaliated and downed a MiG-21 in an aerial combat and captured its pilot, who was handed over to India on March 1. Addressing reporters at the White House on Wednesday, a senior administration official said: "We need to see Pakistan taking concrete and sustained action to rein in the terrorist groups, mainly the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Tayiba in order to ensure that we don't have re-escalation (of tensions) in the region". "If there's any additional terrorist attack without Pakistan having made a sustained, sincere effort against these groups, it would be extremely problematic for Pakistan and it would cause re-escalation of tensions, which is dangerous for both countries," he said on the condition of anonymity. Asked about the steps being taken by Pakistan in the aftermath of the Balakot air strike by Indian fighter jets, the official said that the US and the international community needed to see "irreversible and sustained" actions against the terror groups. "It's early to make a full assessment," he said. In the recent days, the official said Pakistan has taken some "initial" actions. They have frozen the assets of some terrorist groups and made some arrests. They have taken administrative control of some of the JeM facilities, he said. "But we clearly need to see more. We need to see irreversible action because in the past, what we've seen is they made some arrests and then a few months later, they released these individuals. The terrorist leaders are sometimes still allowed to travel around the country, hold rallies," the official said. Reiterating that the US is looking for "irreversible action", he said America is working with its international partners to increase pressure on Pakistan. "Because it has been too long that these groups have been able to operate," he said. Observing that Pakistan has economic concerns as well, the official said the Financial Action Tasks Force is one area which demonstrates the need for them to take these actions against terror groups. "Otherwise, they're at risk within the system and the FATF to be grey-listed," the official said. Pakistan needs to decide if it wants to be viewed as a responsible international player and have access to all the financial mechanisms that are available or is it going to continue to fail to take the steps necessary against these terrorist groups and see itself further isolated. "The choice is Pakistan's," the senior administration official asserted. While the situation between the two south Asian neighbours have de-escalated, the two armies are still on high alert and that concerns the US, the official said. "So, we realize that if there, God forbid, would be another terrorist attack that you could quickly see the escalation in the situation once again. So that's why, we're making clear that any additional military action by either side runs an unacceptably high risk, for both countries and for the region," the official said. The Trump administration, he said, has taken sort of a "zero tolerance policy" on the issue of safe havens to terrorists. "The terror terrorist attack on February 14th on India was a demonstration that Pakistan's continuing provision of sanctuary for any terrorist group is not acceptable," the official said. During the height of the crisis -- February 26-28 -- the US was in continuous contact with Indian and Pakistani officials, both on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad. "They were working on the phones continuously and were deeply engaged in seeking to deescalate what was a very dangerous moment in India-Pakistan relations," he said. The United States has also reached out to influential countries to have them help deescalate the situation, the senior administration official said. Some of these countries are China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and Australia. IMAGE: 24-year-old Rifleman Yash Paul lost his life in ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Sunderbani sector earlier on Thursday. Photograph: ANI An Army jawan was killed as Pakistani troops shelled forward areas and Indian posts with artillery and mortar bombs heavily along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district on Thursday, officials said. Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire in Keri belt of Sunderbani sector on Thursday morning, they said. The soldier, killed in the Pakistani firing, was identified as 24-year-old Rifleman Yash Paul, a resident of Mantalai village in Udhampur district of Jammu and Kashmir. The firing in Sunderbani sector continued till last reports came in, they said. In Nowshera sector, the ceasefire violation started around 1445 hours and was going on, they said. In Akhnoor sector also, Pakistani troops resorted to firing and shelling, they said. Indian Army is retaliating befittingly, they said. Pakistani troops have violated the ceasefire over 110 times along the LoC since January. On Monday night, Pakistan army initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation by resorting to shelling with mortar bombs and firing of small arms along the LoC in Akhnoor and Sunderbani sectors, a defence spokesman had said. An Army soldier was killed and four others were injured Monday when Pakistan Army violated the ceasefire by resorting to heavy mortar shelling and firing along the LoC in Rajouri district. "Rifleman Karamjeet Singh was critically injured and later succumbed to injuries," the spokesman had said. The border skirmishes witnessed a spurt after India's air strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp in Balakot, Pakistan, on February 26 in response to the February 14 Pulwama attack that killed 41 Central Reserve Police Force personnel. The year 2018 witnessed the highest number of ceasefire violations -- 2,936 -- by Pakistani troops in the last 15 years along the Indo-Pak border. Pakistan continues to violate the 2003 ceasefire agreement with India despite repeated calls for restraint and adherence to the pact during flag meetings between the two sides. Sopore: 2 policemen injured in grenade attack Two policemen, including an officer, were injured in a grenade attack by terrorists in Sopore township of Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, police said. Terrorists lobbed a grenade at a security forces party at Main Chowk Sopore in the north Kashmir district, a police official said. He said two policemen, including the station house officer of Dangiwacha police station, sustained minor injuries in the explosion. The injured have been hospitalised. Security forces have cordoned off the area and a search has been launched to nab the attackers, the official said. IMAGE: Girls dance as they celebrate Holi in Guwahati on Thursday. Photograph: PTI Photo People in several states across the country smeared each other with colours, exchanged greetings and savoured sweets to celebrate Holi. IMAGE: A girl is smeared in colours as she celebrates Holi in Ahmedabad. Photograph: PTI Photo IMAGE: People play with colours in Guwahati. Photograph: PTI Photo Revellers hit the streets, danced to popular songs and to the beat of drums as children ran with sprinklers and water balloons to celebrate the festival of colours. IMAGE: Foreigners celebrating Holi at Khasa Kothi in Jaipur. Photograph: PTI Photo 'Holi hai!' rent the air as revellers zoomed their motorcycles across the streets and danced to popular songs. IMAGE: Mumbaikars play with colours at Shivaji Park in Mumbai. Photograph: Sahil Salvi Colours of all hues and the smell of 'gulal' pervaded the streets as people of all ages celebrated the festival. IMAGE: Tourists play Holi in Pushkar, Rajasthan. Photograph: PTI Photo The famous Holi fair in Sujanpur town of Himachal Pradesh's Hamirpur district was cut to a three-day affair instead of four days due to the one-day national mourning after the demise of former Goa chief minister Manohar Parrikar. IMAGE: People pose for group photo during Holi celebrations in Lucknow. Photograph: PTI Photo President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi wished the people. IMAGE: People celebrate Holi in Kolkata. Photograph: PTI Photo 'Greetings and best wishes to fellow citizens in India and abroad on the auspicious occasion of Holi. IMAGE: Devotees play Holi at a Temple in Howrah district of West Bengal. Photograph: Swapan Mahapatra /PTI Photo 'The festival of colours, Holi is a celebration of spring and fraternity in our society. May it bring peace, joy and prosperity to everyone's lives,' the official handle of the President tweeted. IMAGE: People splash coloured water at each other in Chennai. Photograph: PTI Photo 'Holi is a celebration of the victory of good over evil. It is a festival that expresses joy and camaraderie,' Naidu said. IMAGE: Revellers celebrating Holi in Bhopal. Photograph: PTI Photo Modi hoped that the festival of colours would bring peace, harmony, prosperity and happiness in the people's lives. IMAGE: Revellers play with colours in Bengaluru. Photograph: Shailendra Bhojak/ PTI Photo West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi said the festival of colours was to strengthen the secular fabric of the country and spirit of friendship-fraternity among all sections of the society. IMAGE: People play with colours in Allahabad. Photograph: PTI Photo Leaders of various political parties wished the people on the auspicious occasion. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she would not be celebrating Holi this year in memory of the CRPF soldiers killed in the Pulwama attack. IMAGE: A cop checks a motorist for drunk driving during Holi celebrations in Mumbai. Photograph: Sahil Salvi Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur celebrated Holi at his residence in Shimla. Congress leader and former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, Aam Aadmi Party leaders Sanjay Singh and Gopal Rai wished the people on Holi. The Election Commission on Thursday said Congress president Rahul Gandhi's interaction with students at a women's college in Chennai did not violate the model code of conduct, though it has sought a report on his speech. Tamil Nadu's Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo said local election officials have reported that there was no violation in terms of permission obtained by Stella Maris College for Women to host the interaction on March 13. He said the District Electoral Officer (DEO) has informed him that 'there was permission' for Gandhi's event. "So, there is no violation of MCC." However, Sahoo has sought 'further information' on Gandhi's speech. "Have sought further information on what kind of speech was given... have asked the DEO to give report based on the speech content," Sahoo said. Earlier, the Tamil Nadu government had ordered an inquiry as to how the college gave its approval for Gandhi to interact with its students when the model code for elections was in force. The Director of Collegiate Education, R Sarumathi, had directed a subordinate official to inquire into the matter. In his interaction with the students, the Congress president had promised 33 per cent reservation in government jobs for women and answered several of their questions. He had also brought up the issue of the Rafale deal and reiterated his allegations about the pricing of the aircraft and the process. WASHINGTON After the mass shooting killed 50 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, last Friday, that nations prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, acted quickly in announcing a ban on military-style, semi-automatic weaponry and high-capacity ammunition magazines leading Connecticut lawmakers and gun-violence prevention advocates to wonder: Why not here? They were able to do in six days what we couldnt do in six years, said Jeremy Stein, executive director of CT Against Gun Violence. Although gun measures such as expanded background checks have long been stymied on Capitol Hill, Connecticut adopted one of the nations strictest sets of firearms laws in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Dec. 14, 2012. American voters last November gave control of the House to Democrats, many of them elected on a platforms including background checks and restoration of the assault-weapon ban that expired in 2004. The House already has passed legislation expanding background checks and ending a loophole that effectively limits the time the FBI has to check backgrounds of prospective gunbuyers. But the measures appear unlikely to get votes in the Republican-controlled Senate, and President Donald Trump has threatened to veto them if they arrive on his desk. If measures like these are stalled by Republicans, it may take a change in the composition of the Congress, specifically in the Senate as well as a change in the person sitting in the Oval Office before we can implement gun laws, said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District. But unlike recent years when Republicans in control of both House and Senate scuttled gun bills, the new landscape gives some Democratic lawmakers cause for hope. Were elevating voices, and people are electing leaders who favor common sense gun reform, said Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District. Background checks should not be a partisan issue. We should still be able to make reforms while protecting Second Amendment rights. She added: Im optimistic the Senate will pass the legislation. Even so, Connecticuts all-Democratic congressional delegation can only envy the process in New Zealand, in which the prime ministers pledge is likely to win swift approval in the nations Parliament. The leading opposition party has given its nod. Its frustrating to see New Zealand respond to bloodshed so quickly, but we cant do the same because of our warped politics, said Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th District. In Himes view, the chief culprit is the National Rifle Association and firearms manufacturers eager to stoke fear of gun laws in order to sell more weapons a rogues gallery of opponents, he said. Gun-rights advocates counter that broad brushstroke solutions run afoul of the Second Amendment, which states the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Though our society may not be perfect, our system of government at least recognizes an individual's right to self-protection, said Scott Wilson, president of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League. To be sure, gun culture and gun ownership is ingrained in the politically and ethnically diverse United States, more so than in relatively homogenous New Zealand, with its population of 4.7 million. Gun ownership in New Zealand is 30 per every 100 residents, according the Australia-based GunPolicy.org. In the U.S., the comparable figure is 101 guns for every 100 people. The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment as giving all Americans the right to own a gun in their home for self-protection. But the court ruling in that case, D.C. v Heller in 2008, made it clear that like all rights, the Second Amendment has limits. Legislative bodies are free to place limits on gun buying and possession as long as they dont ban it outright, the court said. New Zealands weapon ban and offer to buy back weapons from the public represent a model to consider emulating, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. New Zealand did in six days what we still have failed to accomplish years after Sandy Hook, Blumenthal said. There is no rational reason for weapons of war to be sold legally. dan@hearstdc.com Every March, we look forward to taking the time to celebrate the power of women. From everyday women to the celebrities we admire, we're always up to get schooled on girl power. So, when it comes to Women's History Month, we have some questions, like why is it in March, and how did it even come to be in the first place? We've answered that (and more) below. In March 1910, the Second International Conference of Women was held in Copenhagen, according to the University of Chicago. In the United States, 17 countries were represented by nearly 100 women who advocated for their gender through various clubs, unions and socialist parties. They also formed demonstrations that pushed for voting rights, in addition to better working conditions and pay for female-dominated trades, like the textile industry. At the gathering, it was decided the next year would mark the world's first International Woman's Day (later changed to "women's" day) and it was officially celebrated on March 8, 1911. Then Women's Day grew from a day to a week. Due to its popularity, over half a century later in 1975, the United Nations officially began sponsoring International Women's Day with the UN's General Assembly declaring that the day would be held "to recognize the fact that securing peace and social progress and the full enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms requires the active participation, equality and development of women; and to acknowledge the contribution of women to the strengthening of international peace and security." However, according to the National Women's History Alliance, by 1978, a California-based organization (the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women) became frustrated with the lack of information about women's history available to the public or in grade school curriculum. Branching off of the initial celebration, they initiated the creation of Women's History Week, starting March 8. It was an instant hit. "Over one-hundred community women participated by doing special presentations in classrooms throughout the country and an annual 'Real Woman' Essay Contest drew hundreds of entries," the NWHA website states. And a week became a whole month. In 1979, NWHP member Molly Murphy McGregor was invited to The Women's History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. There, after sharing the success of the celebratory week, the national leaders in attendance wanted to bring back a version of Women's History Week to their own communities. Because of the wide-ranging interest, efforts began to secure judicial support. Success came in February 1980 after President Jimmy Carter declared in a presidential proclamation that the week of March 8 was officially National Womens' History Week; congressional support soon followed, according to the NWHP. As a result of its country-wide recognition and continued growth in state schools, government and organizations, by 1986, 14 states had gone ahead and dubbed the third month of the year Women's History Month. A year later, it sparked congress to declare the holiday in perpetuity. Now, let's fast-forward to 2020. The NWHP always declares an annual theme. This year's is "Valiant Women of the Vote." "Our 2020 theme celebrates the women who have fought for womans right to vote in the United States. In recognition of the centennial of the 19th Amendment, we will honor women from the original suffrage movement as well as 20th and 21st century women who have continued the struggle (fighting against poll taxes, literacy tests, voter roll purges and other more contemporary forms of voter suppression) to ensure voting rights for all." Roughly a generation ago, seemingly every adventure story and quite a few psycho-dramas had that moment, a climax of blaring orchestral horns accompanied by a discordant clash of cymbals when the protagonist, possibly accompanied by a dog or horse with an antagonist in hot pursuit, fell or stumbled or jumped unwittingly into quicksand. The slow sinking struggle into an apparently bottomless pit of sticky oatmeal-like substance--the breathless audience whispering in unison "Don't struggle! You'll sink faster!"--provided crucial minutes of suspenseful bookends to lucrative commercial breaks. And yet, adult life proved less interesting. "I always thought that quicksand was gonna be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be," famously quipped comedian John Mulaney in his show "New in Town (2012)." And now it's as if quicksand never existed. It rarely if ever makes even a cameo in modern adventure stories. So what happened? How did quicksand fall off the list of plot-twist mechanisms ready at hand for script writers? We may never know. Perhaps it was just a more innocent age when nature's threats were quaint and limited to a few square yards of hidden danger instead of the global-scale catastrophes we're all now painfully fretting over. Quicksand is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the things that used to occupy our minds and news cycles that have since faded from mass-public worry. Of course, some things keep their place in our common understanding of the dangers we face: earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic eruption, asteroid strikes, hurricanes, bigfoot, UFOs and so forth remain popular in our cultural understanding of the things that might kill or just frighten us. Check out the gallery above for our list of the things we used to worry about but that no longer register in our daily news cycle. Jake Ellison can be reached at jakeellisonjournalism@gmail.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. An activist in an orangutan costume takes part in a protest outside the Chinese consulate in Medan, Indonesia, against the construction of a dam that environmentalists fear will damage the habitat of an endangered orangutan species, March 1, 2019. Indonesias leading environmental group said Wednesday it was seeking a meeting with Bank of China representatives to discuss a Chinese-funded dam project in North Sumatra province that, activists and scientists warn, could threaten the worlds rarest orangutan species. The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) asked for the meeting after officials from the bank, which is financing the U.S. $1.6 billion hydropower project, announced they would evaluate it in response to concerns raised by conservationists. The banks move was encouraging but direct talks were critical for reaching a common understanding of the issue, said Dana Tarigan, Walhis executive director for North Sumatra. Many of the environmental, social and biodiversity risks are fairly complex, and so we hope a meeting can help clarify and dispel common misconceptions regarding the dams real impacts, Dana told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy (NSHE), an independent power producer in which Chinas ZheFu Holding Group owns a majority stake, is building the 510-megawatt hydropower dam in the Batang Toru rainforest on Sumatra Island. The plant will divide the habitat of about 800 Tapanuli orangutan and increase the risk of their extinction, environmental groups and scientists have said. The Batang Toru Ecosystem is the only known home to the Tapanuli orangutan, which was discovered in 1939. It has been identified as a distinct species, and was recently listed as a critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy denied that the project would threaten protected animals. Dana said Bank of China had sent an email to Walhi last year promising to investigate the concerns raised by environmentalists, but the bank had never informed the group of the findings. We hope that we will get firm answers, not just normative platitudes from officials of the Bank of China, he said. We appreciate the statement, but its meaningless if construction is going ahead, he added. Construction would destroy some of the most critical low-altitude habitats of the orangutans, cutting the connection between the eastern and western block of the habitat, according to Erik Meijaard. He directs the conservation program at Borneo Futures and is a professor at the Center of Excellence for Environmental Decisions at the University of Queensland in Australia. Bank of China could not be immediately reached for comment. But a statement on its website that was posted on March 4 said officials had taken note of the concerns expressed by some environmental organizations about the hydroelectric dam project. We attach great importance to corporate social responsibility in our global operations and ensure that our business activities abide by local laws and regulations. We are committed to supporting environmental protection globally and upholding the principles of green finance, the bank said. Bank of China will evaluate the project very carefully and make prudent decisions by duly considering the promotion of green finance, the fulfilment of social responsibility as well as the adherence to commercial principles, the statement went on to say. Project expected to be finished in 2022 Part of Beijings One Belt, One Road (OBOR) plan, the project in the Sumatra rainforest underscores how Chinas global infrastructure drive can threaten the environment, said Bill Laurance, director of the Center for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University, which is also in Queensland. The director general for electricity at Indonesias Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, Rida Mulyana, said the project was on track to be completed by 2022, local media reported over the weekend. The project has attracted criticism from environmentalists worldwide, as Chinas aims to link Beijing with Asia, Europe and Africa by building massive highways, railways, ports and other infrastructure under OBOR. The Alliance of Leading Environmental Researchers and Thinkers (ALERT), led by Laurance, sent a letter to Indonesian President Joko Jokowi Widodo last year, urging him to stop dam-related development in the orangutan habitat. Earlier this month, a provincial administrative court in North Sumatra rejected a petition filed by Walhi demanding that the permit for the project be revoked. The court ruled that construction could proceed. NSHE said the plant would cover an area of 122 hectares (301 acres), or only 0.07 percent of the Batang Toru ecosystem. Only a small part of the project area is in the home range of up to seven orangutans, it said. The project is backed by the China Export & Credit Insurance Corp., also known as Sinosure, a major Chinese state-owned enterprise, and the Bank of China. Beijing-based engineering firm Sinohydro hydropower has been awarded the contract to build the dam. The hydropower plant is one of the priority projects under the Jokowi governments drive to upgrade the countrys infrastructure. Jokowi is up for reelection in mid-April. The hydropower plant is not the only China-funded project that has triggered controversy in Indonesia. Greenpeace blamed the Celukan Bawang coal-fired power station in Bali, a U.S. $700 million project built by China Huadian Corp., for poisoning the island that is a top tourist destination in the country. In August, a court threw out a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace and local people against Balis governor and the company, ruling that the local governments decision to issue a permit for the project was lawful. Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. Philippine drug enforcement agents said Wednesday they had arrested four suspected narcotics traffickers from China and seized a huge cache of crystal meth with a street value of 1.1 billion pesos (U.S. $20.3 million). The illegal stash, comprising more than 163 kilos, (353 pounds), was stuffed inside tins of Chinese biscuits that had also been used as packaging for drugs in other Southeast Asian countries, according to the Philippine counter-narcotics chief. The drugs likely came from the geographical area in Asia called the Golden Triangle, which includes parts of northern Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, he said. Based on the packaging, these drugs came from the Golden Triangle of drug syndicates, said Aaron Aquino, chief of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA). This is the same packaging seized by other nations such as Thailand and Vietnam. Three Chinese nationals were picked up during a sting operation outside a mall south of Manila late Tuesday afternoon, Aquino said. The suspects were identified as Kei-Kei Go, 40; Emmanuel Pascual, 79; and Kian-Kok Chua, 43. A second raid was carried out an hour later inside the exclusive Ayala Alabang Village near the mall. It led to the arrest of 19-year-old Wu Yi (also known as Li Zhaoyang), Aquino said. The suspects in custody were being interrogated to determine other details of the criminal operation, Aquino said. The house is actually used for storing drugs. This is not being used for living or sleeping. We found a small store, but it is not permitted inside the subdivision.... You'd think that things were being sold, but theyre actually shabu, Aquino said, referring to another name for crystal methamphetamine. The PDEA is now more focused on high-end subdivisions, clubs, hotels, warehouses. That is our focus now, he added. The drug haul was the biggest in recent months, and came at a time when the Philippine government has had to defend President Rodrigo Dutertes drug war, which he launched when he took office in 2016. Police estimate that more than 5,000 suspected drug pushers and addicts have been killed in legitimate counter-narcotics operations, but rights groups have said that the figure could be four times as high. Rights groups have said that the continuing entry of large amounts of drugs into the country proves that Dutertes war has not helped in stopping the crime. In fact, officials in his government admitted that a huge shipment of meth, worth some 6.2 billion pesos (125 million dollars), had passed through the customs bureau. Philippine Sen. Panfilo Lacson, a former police chief, expressed surprise at the size of the haul considering that strict protocols had been put in place when Duterte became president to stop imports of illegal drugs. How the hell did that volume pass through Customs and the police check points? And the Chinese nationals? WTF!, the senator said in comments posted on Twitter. Last month, two Chinese nationals were killed in a shootout with Philippine drug enforcement agents in a suburban area just south of Manila. That operation led to the recovery of some 274 kilos (604 pounds) of meth valued at some 1.9 billion pesos. It was not clear, however, if the two incidents were connected or if those Chinese nationals were part of the same criminal syndicate. Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. Two years after his initial 'disappearance' on , 2017, Taiwan rights activist Lee Ming-cheh has endured ill-treatment and is suffering declining health in prison, a rights group says. "Since then, Lee has endured ill-treatment and deteriorating health; according to his wife ... he has lost 30 kilograms," the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported. "Authorities froze his commissary account, necessary to buy better food, after two unnotified and unexplained prison transfers, and does not allow his wife to send items, including clothing," it said. It said Lee is also prohibited from sending letters or receiving a phone card or books, even those that meet government approval. Lee Ming-cheh, a lifelong activist with Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), was sentenced by Hunans Yueyang Intermediate People's Court to five years in jail for "attempting to subvert state power in . He was accused of setting up social media chat groups to vilify China. Under China's Prison Law, prisoners are entitled to family visits at least once a month, but Lee Ching-yu has only been allowed to visit her husband six times since his sentence began, and has been turned back at the Chinese border four times, HRW said. Authorities banned Lee Ching-yu from visiting her husband in January after she spoke out about his treatment in Chishan Prison in the central Chinese province of Hunan, following her most recent visit last December. "[They claimed] public statements she made following her last visit in December had 'disrupted the prisons standard operations for upholding the law and impeded [Lis] reformation'," HRW said. U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom Sam Brownback called for Lees release during a visit to Taipei on March 12. "Since 2016, the Chinese government has forcibly disappeared and prosecuted citizens of other countries for helping Chinese activists or speaking critically of the government, including Swedish activist Peter Dahlin, British bookseller Lee Bo, and Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai, whose whereabouts remain unknown," HRW said. 'A very strange experience in Stockholm' Media reports emerged this week that Sweden's former ambassador to China has been appointed a criminal lawyer in an ongoing investigation of her 'secret' meeting with the daughter of imprisoned bookseller Gui Minhai, the details of which were reported on Angela Gui's blog. Anna Lindstedt was recalled from her post after Angela Gui accused the diplomat of having invited her to a "very strange" meeting with Chinese businessmen who claimed they could assist Gui's father. Sweden's foreign ministry said it had not been informed of the meeting in advance. She is now under investigation for "crimes against the security of the realm," Swedish media reported, cited court documents. Lindstedt's lawyer was quoted as saying that Lindstedt denies the allegations and welcomes the investigation. In her article, Angela Gui recounted "a very strange experience in Stockholm" after she was contacted by Lindstedt, who set up a meeting with two unnamed businessmen to discuss her father's case. "What I thought was going to be a meeting about the Swedish governments latest efforts to win my fathers release turned out to something quite different," she wrote, detailing a meeting in which her movements were restricted to a hotel VIP lounge. During the meeting she was also quizzed about her personal life, and then asked not to speak out about her father's case if she wanted it to be resolved at an unspecified point in the future. Sweden's foreign ministry said at the time that the meeting was unofficial, and that it knew nothing about it. More than three years after he was taken to mainland China from his holiday home in Thailand under murky circumstances, Gui Minhaia Hong Kong-based publisher with Swedish nationalityis believed to be detained in the eastern port city of Ningbo on suspicion of "leaking state secrets overseas." Reported by Ng Yik-tung and Sing Man for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Han Jie for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie. North Korea is continuing to send its citizens to work in China to earn cash for the state despite sanctions limiting the issuance of new visas. Sources say that groups of newly dispatched female workers are being spotted at Chinese customs stations along the North Korea China border. The sanctions, aimed at depriving Pyongyang of cash to fund its prohibited nuclear weapons and missile programs, call for a freeze on new working visas for North Koreans and the complete repatriation of North Koreans currently working abroad by the end of 2019. I saw a group of [North Korean] female workers going to China, passing through customs again today. They were being dispatched to manufacturing companies in Hunchun, [a border city in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture located in Chinas Jilin province,] said a source from North Koreas North Hamgyong province in an interview with RFAs Korean Service. Workers returning to China on existing work visas after visiting North Korea would not be a violation of sanctions, but the source indicated that the group of women seemed to be first timers. [They] appeared to be in their early 20s, and groups of 20 or so were leaving together. Unlike existing workers who travel back to North Korea just to renew their visa, these women were carrying huge amounts of baggage, the source said. Its not uncommon for workers doing a visa run to travel without baggage because the visa can be replaced at customs and they would then be free to leave North Korea right away, added the source. While the source believed these were newly arriving workers, he did say it was possible that they had other purposes in China. [They] took a big bus that was waiting for them at the Hunchun customs station, but I dont know where they were going. Its not confirmed whether they are students leaving the country with an education visa or if they are labor force hired by Chinese companies, said the source. A second source, also from North Hamgyong noted that the sanctions seemed to be working until recently. It was quiet for a while bit it seems like they are sending workers to China again. I saw a group of female workers leaving for China today, passing through Namyang customs, the source said. There were about 50 workers in the group. Most of them seemed like they are in their early 20s so they will probably work as seamstresses or as electronics assemblers. I can tell from the young womens outer appearance that they wouldnt [be sent to] work at the farms, the source said. Sending Labor overseas is of vital necessity to the North Korean regime as it is a major source of foreign cash. But the U.N. sanctions would put an end to the steady flow of income into North Korea from foreign sources. To comply with the UN sanctions, all our workers dispatched to China reportedly have to come back home by the end of June. However, overseas workers are raising funds for the Workers Party. Would they give up on sending workers overseas? the sources said. While the exact wording of the sanctions mandates that U.N. member nations repatriate all North Korean workers on existing visas by the end of 2019, the source was referring to an internal North Korean policy to bring back all the workers from China by the end of June. Not many groups of workers passed through customs for a while. However, groups of dozens of women are often spotted recently leaving the country. So its not a stretch to say that North Korean workers are still being sent overseas, the source said. Reported by Jieun Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong. An estimated 125 families from seven villages in Vienthong district of central Laos Bolikhamxay province, who would be displaced after construction of a new dam are refusing to accept compensation from the developer, saying what they have been offered is not enough. Construction on the Nam Theun 1 hydroelectric dam began in 2016 and so far about 40 percent of it has been completed. The project is scheduled to be completed in 2022. The developer has plans to relocate a total of 624 families by November this year. They are scattered about the proposed flood zone in Ban Thadeua, Ban Phiengton, Ban Sombath, Ban Kokton, Ban Vangmark, Ban Nammeut and Ban Phonhong villages. The Nam Theun 1 Power Group, which has private and public backing from both Laos and Thailand, offered payments to villagers to vacate their land. Most villagers have already accepted the offer except a small number of them, maybe 120 households or so, perhaps 20 percent, said an official from a village administration authority in an interview with RFAs Lao Service on Tuesday. The official said that the developer had offered each family $8,000 per hectare but the villagers are demanding between $10,000 and $14,000. An official from the energy and mines department of Bolikhamxay told RFA Its not possible [to offer them more] because the amount they were offered is in compliance with provincial policy. They all signed contracts determining the [amount] of payment. Under that contract, most people have accepted the offer, but only 20 percent are opposed, said the energy official. Hydroelectric dam projects disrupting the lives of rural villagers is not a unique issue in Laos. Villagers from 132 families in Phongsaly provinces Khoua district are demanding that the developer of the nearby Nam Ou 5 dam build them a new temple because the old on had to be demolished last year for the dam project. Theres no more place to worship or reflect on our merits. The Nam Ou dam project demolished it, said the chief of one of the villages, adding, Before there was a Buddhist temple by the road in the village. Now its gone. The chief lamented that even the local government was unhelpful in their efforts to replace the temple. We dont even have land for a new temple, he said. That part of land now belongs to the project. Right now we dont know what to do, and weve made a request to the districts office but theyve refused to help us, said the chief. Many villagers say they need the new temple soon so that they can properly celebrate Pi Mai (Lao New Year) next month. The chief noted that none of the 132 families are being relocated for the Nam Ou 5 dam project, but the temple had to be demolished because a road to the construction site had to go through the land it was sitting on. Reported and translated by RFAs Lao Service. Written in English by Eugene Whong. Myanmar peace negotiators hold talks with delegates from ethnic armed organizations that have not signed the government's nationwide cease-fire accord, in Naypyidaw, March 21, 2019. Members of Myanmars peace team and delegates from eight ethnic armed organizations that have not signed the countrys nationwide cease-fire accord have agreed to continue meeting frequently to work towards resolving their political differences and ending armed conflicts, according to a joint statement the parties issued on Thursday. The meeting at the National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC) in Naypyidaw marked the first time that the government invited the groups to attend collective discussions in a bid to make headway on Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyis goal of ending seven decades of warfare and creating a democratic federal union that includes ethnic minorities. But the talks came with a warning from NRPC vice chairman Tin Myo Win, who cautioned that one of the groups battling Myanmar forces in western Myanmars war-ravaged Rakhine state posed a challenge to peace and security. Hostilities between the Arakan Army (AA), a Buddhist Rakhine military fighting for autonomy in the state, and the government military reignited late last year and has continued into 2019. The government military branded the AA a terrorist organization after soldiers attacked police outposts in northern Rakhine in early January, killing 13 officers. A similar assault on another police outpost in early March killed nine officers. Conflicts in Rakhine state are not about accepting or not accepting an ethnic armed group, Tin Myo Win said, adding that the state is a white area, a term for a non-insurgent active area. Trying to establish a foothold in the white area is a threat to the peace and security of the country, he said. The government will take necessary action to maintain security. All parties need to understand that. Tin Myo Win, the long-time personal physician of State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, also said that continued fighting would not end the countrys 70 years of armed conflict that ensued after independence from colonial ruler Britain nor improve the destitute conditions of people in Rakhine, an impoverished and ethnically and religiously divided state. The goal of resolving the political problems that are the root causes of Myanmars armed conflicts is to create a federal union whose nature will be shaped by all stakeholders, he said. Tin Myo Win also urged the ethnic armed groups to openly discuss any concerns or problems they have before they consider signing the government's nationwide cease-fire agreement (NCA), which 10 other ethnic armies have already inked. AA secretary Colonel Kyaw Han, who represented the Arakan force during the talks, said only a Rakhine Army could ensure stability and development in the state and that armed conflicts would cease only through well-intended negotiations. In our view, the military doesnt accept the presence of the Arakan Army in Rakhine state, he said. But for us Rakhine people, the presence of the Arakan Army is the main goal of [the AA's political wing] the United League of Arakan. We are doing the right thing since we believe that only the Arakan Army will able to take care of the security and development of Rakhine state, he said. We are actually doing it now in Rakhine state. Causing trouble for locals When asked to comment on the talks, Zaw Htay, director general of President Win Myints office, emphasized the problems that ongoing hostilities are causing for civilians. It is not about which armed groups should or should not be present in which regions, he told RFAs Myanmar Service. The problem is the ongoing conflicts are causing trouble for the local populations. Tourists can no longer travel freely in the ancient Rakhine town of Mrauk-U, where fighting between the AA and Myanmar Army in recent months has resulted in a number of civilian deaths and driven thousands of villagers from their homes. Regarding the AA, Zaw Htay said the government has opened the door for negotiations with the Arakan fighters while doing what it needs to do ensure regional security. Now there are armed conflicts that are spreading, so the government will do what it has to do, he said. The other ethnic armed organizations invited to the talks were the United Wa State Party (UWSP), Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), Monglas Eastern Shan State Peace and Solidarity Committee (PSC), Shan State Progressive Party (SSPP), Kokangs Myanmar National Truth and Justice Party (MNTJP), Palaung State Liberation Front (PSLF), and Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP). Myanmars military negotiation team will meet separately with each of the groups on Friday. Reported by Win Ko Ko Latt for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Myanmar villagers who fled their communities when government soldiers conducted door-to-door searches for members of an ethnic armed group take shelter in Aung Mingalar Monastery in Mrauk-U township, western Myanmar's Rakhine state, March 20, 2019. Thousands of fearful villagers have fled communities in Myanmars war-ravaged Rakhine state, where a Myanmar military unit has been conducting door-to-door searches for rebel ethnic soldiers, residents of the affected villages said Wednesday. The searches for Arakan Army (AA) troops took place all day in Myo Chaung and Pan Myaung villages on the border between Mrauk-U and Minbya townships in the northern part of the state, where hostilities between AA and Myanmar soldiers have escalated since late last year, they said. Yesterday was really bad, said Kyaw Myint, a resident of Pan Myaung village. They [government soldiers] started from Myo Chaung village with their search and reached the edge of Pan Myaung village. The government soldiers changed into civilian clothing and entered the village firing their guns. All the villagers ran for their lives. The search operations along with some shooting incidents by government soldiers caused more than 500 local residents to take sanctuary on the grounds of Aung Mingalar Monastery, while more than 2,000 others sought safety inside the Shwe Phaung Tin Monastery compound, villagers said. An IDP [internally displaced persons] camp has been opened in Shwe Phaung Tin monastery compound, Kyaw Myint said. Its already harboring a large number of people. When Myanmar soldiers entered villagers homes, they beat some, detained others, and stripped more then 130 of them of their shirts and made them stay outside in the burning sun, said Abbot Pyinnyar Wontha of Shwe Phaung Tin Monastery. Then they asked where the AA soldiers were located, he said. Now the villagers are scared of the soldiers and have fled their homes. During the search, Myanmar soldiers took away four villagers Khin Maung, 30, and Kyaw Aye Maung, 25, both from Myo Chaung village, and Soe Win Naing, 22, and Maung Myint Hlaing, age estimated to be about 30, from Ywa Thit ward for supposedly having connections to the AA, residents and family members said. They took two villagers from Myo Chaung village and two from Ywa Thit ward, Kyaw Myint said. We havent heard anything from them since. Kyaw Kyaw Hla from Aung Mingalar Monastery said that government troops fired indiscriminately at villagers. The soldiers entered the villages and did whatever they wanted, he said. They fired their guns at random and apprehended the villagers for questioning. They caused so much panic. The Myanmar Army views Rakhine villagers as AA sympathizers, Kyaw Kyaw Hla said. So, they brutally questioned the villagers if they found them in the village, he said. They got angrier if they were not in the village. They said they would torch the houses if nobody was found in the village. The AA, a Buddhist Rakhine military fighting for autonomy in the state, was branded a terrorist organization by the Myanmar government after it carried out deadly attacks on police outposts in northern Rakhine early this year, leaving 13 dead. A similar assault on another police outpost in early March killed nine officers and wounded two others. RFAs Myanmar Service was unable to reach Colonel Win Zaw Oo, spokesman for the Myanmar military's Western Command, to confirm the arrests. RFA was also unable to contact AA spokesman Khine Thukha to confirm if AA soldiers were hiding in villages on the border between Minbya and Mrauk-U townships. Meanwhile, the influx of residents from Pan Myaung and Myo Chaung villages who have left their homes has stretched the two monasteries housing them to their limits. Abbot Pyinnyar Wontha said he does not know how long Shwe Phaung Tin Monastery can host the IDPs. We requested that they go back home in one or two days, but their numbers have swelled to over 2,000 since yesterday, he said. Villagers look at an unexploded rocket from fighting between the Myanmar military and Arakan Army in Mrauk-U township, western Myanmar's Rakhine state, March 16, 2019. Credit: AFP Mrauk-U villagers still missing One month has passed since six people from Mrauk-U township were detained by the Myanmar military during clashes with the AA, their family members said, adding that they haven't been heard from since then. Maung Win Sein, 35; Aye Thein, 33; Maung Shwe Soe, 29, from Thar-Zi village; Sein Thar Kyaw, 46, from Taung Oo village; and Hla Htun Chae, 61, from Yan-Aung-Myae village disappeared on Feb. 19 during an intense battle in the townships Yan Chaung region. Myo Min Zaw, 19, from Kya-Nat-Kan village in Kyauktaw township, north of Mrauk-U, also went missing the same day. Tun Nu, the head of the townships Taung Min Kular village also disappeared during the skirmishes. The relatives of the six detained men insisted that their relatives have no ties to the AA. They said they filed missing person reports at two police stations but have heard nothing from officers. RFA was unable to reach the police stations in Mrauk-U and Kyauktaw townships for comment. Oo Myint Htay, wife of Maung Win Sein, said a stranger with a mixed Myanmar-Rakhine accent answered her husbands cell phone when she called his number. He told me not to call him if its nothing urgent, she said. With all the fighting going on, I was very worried because it was not my husband answering the phone, and a stranger was answering it. I called a second time, but no one answered. Since then, the phone has been turned off so that it cant receive calls anymore. Dar Sein, wife of Hla Htun Chae, said her husband was arrested by the Myanmar militarys 22nd Division. When she went to the army compound to inquire about him after he didnt return home from cattle herding, she found him being tied up, she said. They tied my husband up, she said. When I got there, my husband, Hla Htun Chae, asked me to redo his sarong. After a while, he was summoned by the captain, and soldiers asked Dar Sein to leave. I said Id go home with my husband because he has hypertension and is not in good health, she said. The soldiers told me not to worry and asked me to leave. I left and havent heard from my husband since then. They had done it Hla Htun Chae is the only one of the missing men confirmed as detained by the military, while the fates of the other villagers remain unknown. Some believe the missing men may be among three charred bodies discovered in a valley east of Yan Aung Pyin village on Feb. 21. I went there to investigate with the village head and elders of Kyar Nat Kan, but we saw only the piles of ashes, said Sein Hla Maung, head of Yan Aung Pyin village. It was where military troops had been stationed, so we concluded that they had done it. RFA could not independently confirm that the charred bodies found near Yan Aung Pyin village were the work of government troops. A spokesman for Myanmar militarys information committee told RFA on Feb. 25 that soldiers apprehended local residents only as part of investigations and that they have not forcibly detailed any civilians. The AA also denied detaining civilians. Tun Thar Sein, a lawmaker who represents Mrauk-U township in the Rakhine state parliament, said state officials should inform the families about their missing relatives. The state government is responsible for protecting its local citizens, he said. The government needs to give an explanation to the family members of those who have been missing for a month. AA joins talks The AA is one of a handful of ethnic armies fighting the government military for autonomy in their respective states. The Myanmar governments peace commission has invited eight organizations that have not signed a nationwide cease-fire accord including the AA and its political wing, the United League of Arakan to attend collective peace discussions for the first time on Thursday. Some delegates from the various groups and a Chinese representative arrived in Myanmars capital Naypyidaw on Wednesday. Colonel Kyaw Han is leading the AA delegation. After holding talks with government peace negotiators, delegates from each ethnic armed group will meet individually with representatives from the Myanmar military on Friday. The talks are an effort to jump-start the countrys stalled peace process to end decades of armed conflict in Myanmar. Reported by Kyaw Thu, Min Thein Aung, and Khin Khin Ei for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung and Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. China and Myanmar must implement more effective and coordinated prevention, law enforcement, and assistance to victims of trafficking in women for marriage, an international rights group said Thursday in a new report detailing the bride trade across the countries shared border. In its report entitled Give Us a Baby and We Will Let You Go, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said women from families affected by fighting between Myanmars military and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Kachin state and the northern part of neighboring Shan state are routinely trafficked into China under the guise of employment to fill a shortage of women across the border. HRW interviewed 37 trafficking survivors who fled poverty in Kachin state and northern Shan statewhere fighting has displaced an estimated 107,000 people over the past seven yearswith the promise of a lucrative job offered through networks of friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and relatives, only to find themselves held captive in China as wives to Chinese husbands. Most said they were recruited by someone they trusted, were drugged along the way across the border, and bought by families who were more interested in having a baby than a brideincluding some who were explicitly told they were free to go, as long as they left their children behind. Many said they were raped frequently and subjected to other physical and emotional abuse, as well as forced labor in the fields or homes of the families that bought them. After returning to Myanmar, many of the women dealt with trauma and, in some cases, medical complications as a result of the abuse they suffered, but they often faced stigma from their communities in an environment where very few services existed to help them recover from their ordeal. HRW said that law enforcement officers on both sides of the border, including within areas controlled by the KIA, has done little to recover trafficked women, often turning away telling families seeking missing loved ones or telling them that they would need to pay for help. In cases where women escaped and sought assistance from Chinese police, they were sometimes jailed for immigration violations, rather than treated as victims, or simply dumped at the border. Meanwhile, many trafficking victims are reluctant to share their stories because those who trafficked them remain free, HRW said, noting that when authorities in Myanmar do make arrests, they usually only target the initial brokers, while police in China almost never arrest people who knowingly bought trafficked brides and traffickers in KIA-controlled areas are sometimes punished with a reprimand. Police in both Myanmar and China, and in KIA-controlled areas made little effort to coordinate with one another or make trafficking cases a priority, the group said. Numbers unclear While it is difficult to estimate how many women are being trafficked from Myanmar to China for sale as brides, HRW cited the Myanmar Human Rights Commission as saying 226 women were trafficked to China in 2017, while the Myanmar Department of Social Welfare provides assistance to between 100 and 200 female trafficking victims returned from China each year. But HRW said the numbers likely represent only a small proportion of the total number of cases because many cases of missing women are never reported, or women who escape keep their experience a secret due to stigma. In December last year, Myanmar authorities launched an investigation into an apparent human-trafficking operation that recruits women as brides and birth surrogates for Chinese men through advertisements posted on the streets of Muse, a major trading town in northern Shan State, an anti-trafficking official said. One ad with a headline reading Invitation for Marriage in Chinese and Burmese, gave the height, income, and address of an unnamed Chinese man looking for a Myanmar bride between the ages of 26 and 32. Other advertisements with the headline Surrogate Mothers Wanted said a company was looking for women under the age of 25 to carry the babies of Chinese men in exchange for payments of 13,000 yuan (U.S. $1,900) a month plus meals and accommodations. A report published in December by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health measured the prevalence of trafficking for forced marriages and childbearing among women and girls from Myanmar, specifically from Shan and Kachin states to Chinas Yunnan province. It found that 7,500 of the estimated 171,000 women and girls who migrated to China between 2013 and 2017 were in forced marriages, while 5,100 of the migrants were forced to bear children. Recommendations In Thursdays report, HRW recommended that both Myanmar and China improve implementation of agreements to provide effective and coordinated anti-trafficking prevention, law enforcement, and assistance to victims, while collaborating to develop formalized and government-monitored recruitment pathways for people from Myanmar to legally obtain employment in China. It also called on the two governments to collaborate on strengthening efforts at the border to raise awareness of the risk of trafficking, detect it, assist victims, and maintain a watchlist of suspected traffickers. HRW said Myanmar and the KIAs political wingthe Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO)should develop and implement public awareness campaigns to inform people in high-risk areas, and those crossing the border, of the risk of trafficking and measures to protect themselves, as well as provide comprehensive services to trafficking survivors. China should end its practice of jailing trafficking survivors for immigration violations, assist their return to Myanmar, and provide them with a safe means by which to travel back to China to assist in the investigation and prosecution of crimes committed against them. Lastly, the rights group called on international donors and organizations to pressure the Myanmar and Chinese governments, and the KIO, to do more to tackle the bride trade, while also supporting NGOs experienced in providing services to trafficking victims in both government and KIA-controlled areas. A young Rohingya refugee spreads out fire wood for drying on the roof of a shack, next to a solar panel, at the Hakimpara refugee camp in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar district on Nov. 18, 2018. Myanmars military rejected as one-sided accusations on Thursday a call by U.S. senators to slap sanctions on Myanmar's army chief for the 2017 campaign that drove some 740,000 Muslim minority Rohingya into Bangladesh in what the United Nations and rights groups said was an act of ethnic cleansing. Four U.S. senators wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday that said Myanmar has shown "no credible signs of progress" in seeking accountability for killings, sexual violence and other atrocities against members of the mostly Muslim minority, AFP reported. "The Trump administration has taken no action against these senior officials even though sanctions designations would send a strong message that the United States supports accountability for those perpetrating well-documented human rights abuses against the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities," wrote the Democrat Senators Dick Durbin, Republican Senator Todd Young and others. They called on the Trump administration to go beyond sanctions the U.S. Treasury Department imposed in August on four commanders accused of orchestrating massacres and slap sanctions on Myanmar's military chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and other top officers under the Magnitsky Act. The Magnitsky act, a U.S. law named after a Russian accountant and corruption whistleblower who died in prison, calls for the seizure of assets and a U.S. travel ban for foreign officials who violate human rights. In August, a year after the atrocities against the Rohingya, a fact-finding mission working under the U.N. Human Rights Council said the situation in Myanmar should be referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. It recommended Min Aung Hlaing, and five other generals for prosecution. Asked about the U.S. senators call for sanctions Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun of Myanmar's military information committee, repeated the militarys stock response to international critics. Our military chief has told local and international organizations, including the U.N. Security Council member countries when he met them, to give us concrete evidences instead of one-sided accusations, he told RFAs Myanmar Service. If they do so, we will carry out investigations based on it. We have also said the same in our (previous) statements, he said. Attacks on guard posts by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a Rohingya militant group, on Aug. 25, 2017, triggered a campaign of violence by Myanmar forces targeting the Rohingya, including killings, torture, rape, and village burnings in Rakhine. The U.S. and the United Nations have said the atrocities amount to ethnic cleansing, though the Myanmar government has denied the allegations and prevented a U.N. team of investigators from entering the country to probe reports of the crimes. Access to the area by independent journalists is largely forbidden. The Myanmar government has defended its military actions in Rakhine, calling them part of a legitimate counterinsurgency operation against ARSA. Rights groups welcome move Human rights groups welcomed the pressure on the military. When the international community looked at Myanmar, it didn't see any action against violations by the military, and we think it is an obstacle for Myanmars democracy process. We welcome U.S. senators efforts as it is a step towards actions against the ones who violated human rights, said Nickey Diamond, a Myanmar human rights specialist at Fortify Rights, an NGO. The military had all the time denied charges by the international community and has not done anything [about] these issues, so the international community has taken it as Myanmar's lack of willingness to safeguard human rights, said Cheery Zahau, an ethnic minority Chin human rights activist. Human rights groups estimate that between 6,000 and 10,000 people died in the military campaign, in which soldiers were aided by Rakhine Buddhists in attacking the Rohingya. Buddhist-ruled Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as an indigenous ethnic group, denying them citizenship and work opportunities and has pejoratively described them as illegal Bengali immigrants. Aye Nu Sein, vice chairwoman of the Arakan National Party, which represents Rakhine Buddhists, echoed the military line on the call for accountability. We need concrete evidence for all the charges made. I dont like accusing [someone] without evidence, she told RFA. I want justice according to the truth. If the U.S. found any violations by the military, appropriate action should be taken accordingly, added Aye Nu Sein. A U.S. Senate committee approved a bill in February 2018 to make it easier for the Trump administration to impose targeted sanctions and travel restrictions on Myanmar military leaders responsible for committing human rights atrocities against the Rohingya. Last week the U.S. State Department faulted Myanmars government and military for its treatment of the Rohingya in the 2018 edition of the annual "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices." Independent investigations undertaken during the year found evidence that corroborated the 2017 ethnic cleansing of Rohingya in Rakhine state and further detailed the militarys killing, rape, and torture of unarmed villagers during a campaign of violence that displaced more than 700,000 Rohingya to neighboring Bangladesh, it said. Some evidence suggested preparatory actions on the part of security forces and other actors prior to the start of violence, said the report, which said that an additional 13,764 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh between January and September 2018. The government prevented assistance from reaching displaced Rohingya and other vulnerable populations during the year by using access restrictions on the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies, it said. Reported by Kyaw Lwin Oo for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Paul Eckert. Blogger Truong Duy Nhat and his wife and daughter at Vinh airport in 2015 A Vietnamese blogger for Radio Free Asia, Truong Duy Nhat, who disappeared in Bangkok in late January amid suspicions he was abducted by Vietnamese agents, is in a Hanoi jail, his daughter and a local writer said Wednesday, in the first word of his fate since he went missing. Canada-based Thuc Doan Truong told RFA's Vietnamese service that her mother was informed by prison authorities that Nhat was arrested on Jan. 28 and thrown into a jail in central Hanoi district on the same day. Rights activists had suspected that Nhat was detained by Thai authorities on the outskirts of Bangkok and handed to Vietnamese agents on Jan. 26 after he had fled to Thailand to seek political asylum with a U.N. refugee agency. "They (the prison authorities) told my mom that my father was arrested on January 28 and admitted to the detention center on the same day," Truong told RFA by telephone. "In fact, he was missing since Jan. 26 in Thailand but now he is in Vietnam," she said. "It's clear that my father did not voluntarily go back to Vietnam." Cao Thi Xuan Phuong, Nhat's wife and Truong's mother, went to jail to visit her husband on Wednesday but prison authorities refused to allow her to meet with him, saying investigations were not completed yet, according to Truong. But they collected part of the food supplies and clothing she brought for him. Truongs account is the first confirmation that Nhat, a weekly contributor to the Vietnamese service of RFA, a U.S. funded broadcaster, has been taken to Vietnam after being last seen in Thailand. He last communicated with Washington-based RFA editors on Jan. 24 over his commentary on the growing opposition movement in Venezuela and the prospects of change in Communist-ruled Vietnam. Nhat vanished at a shopping mall on the outskirts of Bangkok after going to the Bangkok office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Jan 25. She flew to Hanoi to meet with her husband on Wednesday after gaining permission from the Da Nang local authorities. Former Hanoi Writers Association head Xuan Nguyen Pham said he had taken Phuong to the jail to meet with Nhat. "The prison authorities provided Nhat's wife with a booklet that would enable her to visit her husband in the future. In the booklet, it was written that Nhat was arrested on January 28 and on the same day transferred to T16," Pham wrote on his Facebook page. RFA has reported Nhat's case to the U.S. State Department and staff of several U.S. lawmakers. His disappearance had sent a chill through the Vietnamese refugee community in Thailand, which had ordered an investigation into the issue. The State Department had welcomed the Thai governments investigation, saying it was monitoring the situation closely. The authoritarian Vietnamese government of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc is at present holding more than 200 political prisoners, including rights advocates and bloggers deemed threats to national security, according to Nguyen Kim Binh of the California-based Vietnam Human Rights Network. The government controls the news media, censors the internet, and restricts basic freedoms of expression. Nhat himself served a two-year-imprisonment in 2014-2015 for his activism after being arrested in May 2013 and held in detention until his trial. Phil Robertson, HRW's Bangkok-based deputy Asia director, had told RFA last month that if it turned out that Vietnam and local Thai officials were found to be involved in Nhat's disappearance, "there needs to be serious consequences for everyone responsible. Robertson accused Vietnam of "consistently engaging in hostile surveillance and harassment of Vietnamese and Montagnard [minority] who fled the country to escape political and religious persecution, and this includes activities in Bangkok." "Pursuing dissidents and demanding the Thai government shut down events about human rights and democracy in Vietnam is just part of what makes Hanoi stand out as one of the worst rights abusing regimes in ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations]," he said. Reported and translated by An Nguyen for RFAs Vietnamese Service. Written in English by Parameswaran Ponnudurai. A court in the southern Vietnamese district of Binh Thuy sentenced activist and Facebook commentator Le Minh The to two years in prison for dividing the people from the (Communist) Party, his sister told RFAs Vietnamese Service, calling the sentence too harsh. Police in Binh Thuy arrested The, 56, a member of pro-democracy group Hien Phap, in October 2018 for his posts on Facebook. They held him incommunicado and charged him with abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to infringe upon the interests of the state, the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and individuals under article 331 of the penal code. The sentence is too harsh, even the lawyer thinks its unacceptable, Thes sister Le Thi Binh, told RFA by telephone phone after the trial in the Binh Thuy district peoples court in Can Tho city. First of all, no body sued him. Second of all, he did not disrupt public order. They arrested him when he was driving, she said. He only talked about what upset him. Nobody could imagine a two-year prison sentence, added Le Thi Binh. Our neighbors were very shocked to hear this. They thought hes been detained long enough and even in a worst-case scenario, he would only get a suspended sentence, she said. According to the NGO Vietnam Human Rights Defenders, Thes group, Hien Phap (Constitution) aims to educate the public about the human rights they are entitled to under Vietnams 2013Constitution. Many of its members played key roles in in the mass protest against two bills on Special Economic Zones and Cyber Security in Ho Chi Minh City in mid June 2018, and nearly ten members of the group have been detained and charged since September. In a March 15 appeal for the release of The and five other prisoners of conscience, Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson called for pressure on Vietnam to drop the cases against the six and end its persecution of activists peacefully campaigning for democratic rights. Vietnams deepening rights crackdown is targeting independent political associations and individual activists who dare to demand that the government respect rights and restore democracy, Robertson said. Since Vietnams new cybersecurity law went into effect in January, police have arrested at least three people for dissent after they posted critical comments on Facebook. In another case of legal retaliation for Facebook posts, police in Bac Ninh detained Nguyen Ba Manh on March 19 for a comment on the social media platform the previous day saying that pork affected with trichinosis worms have been consumed in his village, state media said. The online state media outlet Tuoi Tre quoted Bac Ninh police as saying they are preparing to prosecute him under the article 288 of the penal code for spreading or using illegal information on the internet. According to Tuoi Tre, at the police station, Manh admitted that he had spread fake news and took the post down on Monday. Last week, Vietnamese state media reported that more than 200 children from Bac Ninh have been found out to be infected with trichinosis worms after eating pork provided by a local kindergarten. Reported by RFA's Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Paul Eckert. Hiding in Thailand, Vietnamese human rights campaigner Bach Hong Quyen fears hes in the cross-hairs of two nations: Vietnam which he fled two years ago to escape arrest for his activism, and Thailand which he had hoped would provide him sanctuary. Quyen was instrumental in helping Radio Free Asia blogger Truong Duy Nhat, who disappeared in Bangkok in late January, make an ill-fated bid for political asylum. Suspicions that Nhat was abducted by Vietnamese agents with Thai cooperation have only deepened after RFA Vietnamese service confirmed on that the blogger is in jail in Hanoi. That confirmation, provided by Nhats daughter, was the first word on his fate since he went missing nearly two months ago. Nhats case has further eroded Thailands long-standing reputation as a haven for refugees in Southeast Asia. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Busadee Santipaks declined to comment on the latest news on Nhat, beyond saying that the matter was being handled by Thai police. I am at the moment very worried for my safety and my familys safety, Quyen, 29, a husband and father of three young children, told RFA in an exclusive interview. Although he has U.N. refugee status which should protect him from arrest and deportation, he says he now lives in hiding, separated from his family to escape detection. If the Thai government arrests me they will definitely give me to Vietnam, he said. His fears are rooted in what happened to Nhat, a prominent critic of the Vietnamese government whom rights activists suspect was detained by Thai authorities at a shopping mall on the outskirts of Bangkok and handed to Vietnamese agents. He was a weekly contributor to the Vietnamese service of RFA, a U.S.-funded broadcaster. Bui Thanh Hieu, a popular Vietnamese blogger who lives in exile in Germany, alleged in a posting on Facebook that Thai police had taken Nhat to a bar outside Bangkok where Vietnamese personnel bundled him into a vehicle and drugged him--an account that was repeated by two rights activists who are familiar with Nhats case. RFA was not immediately able to verify the details of that account. Thailands government says they are still investigating the case, which has drawn strong expressions of concerns from U.S. congressmen. The response from the Trump administration has been muted. The administration has generally steered clear of tough criticism of the human rights record of Asian allies like Thailand and Vietnam, which last month hosted a U.S.-North Korea summit. For his part, Quyen says he feels like a marked man because of his inside knowledge of Nhats disappearance. He said he helped him find accommodation in Bangkok and submit his application for asylum with the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the Thai capital on Jan. 25--the day before he disappeared--and has some insight into what compelled the prominent writer and well-connected government critic to flee Vietnam in the first place. Thais want to 'erase all evidence' Nhats daughter, Canada-based Thuc Doan Truong, said that her mother and Nhats wife, Cao Thi Xuan Phuong, was informed by prison authorities that Nhat was arrested by Vietnam on Jan. 28--two days after abduction in Bangkok. He is now being held at Hanois T16 detention center. Phuong has not yet been allowed to visit him. "It's clear that my father did not voluntarily go back to Vietnam," Truong said. Quyen articulates his own fears related to this high-profile case in chilling terms--that Thai police and Vietnam want to erase all evidence in Nhats case to cover up what happened. He cites concerns expressed by human rights activists that the governments of Vietnam and Thailand, which holds its first elections this weekend since a 2014 military coup, may exchange dissidents each are reportedly seeking in the other country. At the moment, I cant live with my family because I know Thai government is following my wife to trace me, said Quyen in the interview which took place before word on Nhats fate emerged. RFA agreed not to disclose the time and location of the interview because of Quyens concerns for his safety. We have not lived together for about 10 days. My wife told me that some policemen parked their car near the building where my family stays. evening, someone knocked on the door and went in to check if I was in but they could not find me so they left. They told my wife that they were building security but they did not wear uniform, they wore plain clothes, said Quyen. He is seeking urgent resettlement in Canada, which has emerged as the leading destination for asylum seekers as the United States has drastically reduced the numbers of refugees it accepts. Quyens appeal for asylum to the Canadian government, a copy of which was obtained by RFA, pleads: I am currently in an extremely dangerous situation. RFA called the number listed on the website of Vietnams embassy in Bangkok to seek comment on Quyens allegations that Vietnam wants him deported. The number did not appear to be functioning. Thailands immigration authorities denied any knowledge of any efforts to deport Quyen, who had originally fled to Thailand in because of an arrest warrant issued by Vietnamese police the previous month for disturbing public order after he organized a march to mark the anniversary of a 2016 waste spill that polluted the coast of central Vietnam. The environmental disaster sparked major protests. "We dont have this Bach Hong Quyen in our system. He was not received here," Pol. Col. Tatpong Sanawarangkoon, the supervisor of the deporting section of the Immigration Bureau, told BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service. He said he could not comment on Quyens claim that Vietnam had sought Thai police help to go after him. Traditional hub for refugees Although Thailand is not a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention it has been traditionally been viewed as a hub for refugees fleeing war and oppression in neighboring countries. Instances of refoulement--or the forcible deportation of refugees or asylum seekers with a legitimate fear of persecution--have in fact been relatively rare from Thailand since it sent more than 100 Uyghur Muslims back to China in 2015, sparking an international outcry. But refugees still face a precarious situation. Nearly 10 percent of the more than 5,000 U.N.-registered persons of concern in Thailand are currently languishing in immigration detention. Rights group Reporters Without Borders last week said that following a raid on Quyens home on , it fears Thai authorities could allow Vietnamese agents to abduct him. We urge the Thai government to respect the status of Bach Hong Quyen and his family as refugees and to stop intimidating Quyen in any way, said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSFs Asia-Pacific desk. Aside from the obligation to respect the fundamental rights of an individual whose only crime was to have informed his compatriots, Thailands credibility on the international stage is stake, he said. Quyen has been living in Thailand with his wife, Bui Huong Giang, and their daughters Bach Yen Nhi, 6, and Bach Gia Han, 3, and 6-month old son Bach Joseph, who was born in Thailand. He says he has no regret for assisting Nhat, who told Quyen he had fled Vietnam because he feared he would soon be arrested. Nhat also confided that he was privy to insider information that could have proved damaging to Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong--information that he had intended to publish once he found asylum in another country. Quyen explained that he was no stranger to harassment for his activism in Vietnam. When I was in danger, many people had helped me, said Quyen. When Truong Duy Nhat told me that he was in danger, its normal as a Vietnamese and an activist to help a friend who used to be jailed for what he wrote in his blog and now is in danger. I dont regret what I have done, Quyen added. Im in danger but at least Im still free. Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, and translated by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Russian President Vladimir Putin has accepted the resignations of two regional governors amid an ongoing shake-up of regional leadership. Putin on March 21 accepted the resignation of Orenburg Oblast Governor Yury Berg, who held the post since 2010. The same day, he accepted the resignation of Murmansk Oblast Governor Marina Kovtun, who had held her post since 2012. Both officials submitted their resignations on March 20. Also on March 21, Putin named politician Denis Pasler as acting governor of Orenburg Oblast, replacing Berg. Pasler was chairman of the cabinet in Sverdlovsk Oblast from 2012 until 2016. The announcements came after Putin on March 20 replaced the governor of the southern region of Kalmykia, Aleksandr Orlov, with professional kickboxer and former police officer Batu Khasikov. On March 19, Putin appointed Russia's Deputy Energy Minister Aleksei Teksler as the acting governor of the Chelyabinsk region. Teksler replaced Boris Dubrovsky, who resigned on March 19. Eighteen of Russia's 83 administrative regions are due to hold elections in September. The daily newspaper Kommersant reported on March 18 that up to six regional governors could be replaced in the coming days. Based on reporting by TASS, Kommersant, RBK, and Interfax At least 83 people have died after an overloaded ferry sank in the Tigris River in northern Iraq, local officials say. The tragedy took place near the city of Mosul on March 21 during celebrations marking Norouz, the pre-Islamic Persian new year. Colonel Hussam Khalil, head of civil defense in Nineveh Province, said that many of the dead were women and children. He added that search operations were still under way on the Tigris River. Reports said the boat was packed with men, women, and children heading toward a tourist area as part of Norouz celebrations. Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Saad Maan said that 55 people had been rescued. The boat sank because there were too many passengers on board -- more than 100," an unidentified security official based in Mosul was quoted as saying. Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi decreed three days of national mourning as he visited the site of the accident. He also ordered an "immediate" investigation into the accident, his office said. In 2017, Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul from the extremist group Islamic State following a devastating campaign. Based on reporting by AFP, AP, dpa, and the BBC Iran's president called for an end to infighting among the country's political factions and said they should unite against foreign enemies Hassan Rohani made the comments in a speech broadcast on state TV on March 21, on the eve of the Persian New Year holiday, Norouz. Rohani has been under pressure from hardliners following U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the 2015 landmark nuclear deal, and reimpose sanctions on Tehran. Rohani had backed the deal, which was controversial within some factions inside Iran. The Iraninan leader defended his leadership record, blaming the country's economic problems on U.S. sanctions. In a separate New Year's speech, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the country had successfully resisted "unprecedented, strong" U.S. sanctions, and he called on the government to boost industrial production to help the economy. Based on reporting by Reuters The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. Police in the Kazakh capital, Astana, have arrested about 20 people who protested on March 21 against the decision to rename the city "Nursultan" after Kazakhstan's former president. Nursultan Nazarbaev unexpectedly resigned on March 19 after nearly 30 years in power. MOSCOW -- Police in Moscow are searching for a man who walked around almost completely naked inside the Tretyakov Art Gallery -- the same Moscow museum where a man in January removed a valuable painting from a wall and walked out with it in broad daylight. Video footage posted on social media shows the man clad only in a red thong on March 20 walking inside several halls of the museum before leaving the building. He was not stopped by officers from the National Guard of Russia who've been posted there to bolster security since the theft of the painting in January. The man also had painted his body gold, leading museum officials to conclude that his stroll was "an unsanctioned performance." They say another person, described in Russian media reports as a "co-conspirator," also left several "gifts" in the museum that looked like artworks while staff and visitors were distracted by the stunt. Valery Gribakin, a spokesman for the National Guard of Russia, said security officers never saw the man on March 20 because he walked in parts of the museum where they were not present. The National Guard's press service said museum employees who witnessed the escapade did not activate an alarm. On January 28, a man who walked into the Tretyakov Gallery casually lifted a 1908 painting by Arkhip Kuindzhi called Ai Petri, Crimea off a wall and carried it out the building by walking through rooms filled with visitors. Denis Chuprikov, a 32-year-old Russian citizen who was born in Crimea, was later detained and charged with theft. The painting, valued at $1 million but insured for only about $185,000, was recovered later at a construction site near Chuprikov's home in a village near Moscow. The Tretyakovka, one of Russia's leading art museums, has been targeted by criminals several times in recent years. In May 2018, a famous 19th-century painting by Russian realist Ilya Repin was damaged at the Tretyakovka by a man who struck it with a metal rod. With reporting by TASS and Interfax The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. The Persian celebration of Norouz welcomes spring in many countries around the world. In Kyrgyzstan, the joy spills out into the streets of the capital, Bishkek. U.S. President Donald Trump called for the public release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's final report on his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. In comments to reporters March 20, Trump also repeated his frequent criticism of the two-year probe, saying calling its very existence "ridiculous." "Let it come out, let people see it," Trump said. "Let's see whether or not it's legit." The comments come amid speculation that Mueller's nearing the end of his investigation into interactions between Trump associates and Russian officials. Mueller is required to produce a confidential report and submit it to the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr. That report is expected any day. Barr is then expected to produce his own report for Congress and has said he wants to make public as much of Mueller's findings as he can under the law. Trump has repeatedly railed against Mueller's probe. "I just won one of the greatest elections of all time in the history of this country. ... And now I have somebody writing a report that never got a vote?" Trump said. "It's called the Mueller report. So explain that because my voters don't get it. And I don't get it, he said. The anticipation of Mueller's report comes as Democrats who control the House of Representatives accelerate their investigations into the Trump White House. The House voted unanimously last week for a non-binding resolution calling for any report in Mueller's investigation to be made public. Given the partisan divide in Congress, it's rare that any measure or resolution garners a unanimous vote. Based on reporting by AP, Reuters An antiterrorism court has sentenced two people to life in prison for the lynching of a university student in northwestern Pakistan. Mashal Khan, a 23-year-old journalism student at the Abdul Wali Khan University in Mardan, was killed by a mob at the university on April 13, 2017. He was accused of posting "blasphemous content" on social media. The lynching sparked a wave of protests by civil society and rights activists forcing the government to arrest the accused. Arif Khan, one of the two people convicted by the court on March 21, is a local counselor and belongs to the ruling Tehrik-e-Insaaf party of Prime Minister Imran Khan. The other man was identified as Asad. Two other suspects identified as Sabir Mayar and Izhar were acquitted by the court. In February last year, one person was sentenced to death and five other people to life imprisonment over Khan's lynching, and 26 people were acquitted in the case. The attack on Khan, which was recorded on mobile phone cameras and posted online, shocked Pakistan and led to widespread condemnation -- including criticism from prominent Islamic clerics. An official investigation later determined that Khan was falsely accused. It said the killing was instigated by members of a secular student group who felt threatened by Khan's growing prominence as a critic of rising fees and alleged corruption at the university. Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws, which seek death for insulting Islam or the Muslim Prophet Muhammad, were introduced by former military ruler General Muhammad Zia-ul Haq during the 1980s. Rights activists argue that Pakistan's blasphemy laws are often misused by people trying to settle personal scores, mainly against the members of minorities. In a separate case in the eastern city of Bahawalpur, a college student stabbed and killed a professor on March 20 for allegedly planning a party to which both men and women would be invited. Police said the student was angered, believing it was un-Islamic for women to attend. The student, Khateeb Hussain, was arrested on March 20 after being held at the scene of the incident by fellow students. Police said he would be charged with murder. With reporting by AP and Dawn KYIV -- The U.S. State Department has denied an explosive claim by Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko that U.S. Ambassador to Kyiv Marie Yovanovitch gave him "a list of people whom we should not prosecute" during their first in-person meeting. "The allegations by the Ukrainian prosecutor-general are not true and are intended to tarnish the reputation of Ambassador Yovanovitch," a State Department spokesperson told RFE/RL in e-mailed comments on March 21. "Such attacks redouble our resolve to help Ukraine win the struggle against corruption," the spokesperson added. Lutsenko did not say when the purported meeting with Yovanovitch took place. She was nominated to be ambassador by President Barack Obama in May 2016 and was sworn in in August of the same year. The back and forth comes less than two weeks ahead of a Ukrainian presidential election in which challengers have sought to paint incumbent Petro Poroshenko as failing to combat corruption and abuses of power since taking office in mid-2014. "The statement of Ukraine's prosecutor-general does not correspond to reality and is meant to weaken the reputation of Ambassador Yovanovitch," the State Department said. Lutsenko's assertion came in an interview broadcast by The Hill's TV arm on March 20. Lutskenko also reportedly told The Hill's John Solomon that Ukrainian authorities would "launch a criminal investigation" into whether Ukrainians sought to interfere in the U.S. election in 2016. The question of Kyiv's actions in the run-up to Donald Trump's election as president in 2016 took on added significance with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort's U.S. prosecution for crimes connected with advisory work he did in Ukraine. On March 20, Trump cited Solomon in a tweet repeating the allegation that Ukrainians had tried to "help" his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, in 2016. Poroshenko's administration was caught off-guard by Trump's election two years ago and pivoted abruptly to downplay perceived criticisms from Ukrainian officials of Trump during the campaign. Kyiv has tried hard to maintain Western diplomatic and financial support as a simmering conflict continues in eastern Ukraine against Russia-backed separatists. Lutsenko, a former interior minister who served jail time for charges that he and European officials described as politically motivated before a presidential pardon freed him in 2013, has served as an adviser to Poroshenko and is widely seen as the president's staunch political ally. He was named prosecutor-general in 2016 despite having no law degree -- forcing parliament to amend legislation before approving his nomination. He has since faced repeated calls from critics for his dismissal, and even announced his resignation as recently as November 2018. In the halls of Ukraine's parliament after the reports of Lutsenko's comments about the U.S. ambassador, deputy speaker Oksana Syroyid said Poroshenko should either receive written, documented confirmation backing up the prosecutor-general's claim or fire Lutsenko. "President Poroshenko this morning can only have [one of] two documents: either one substantiating the claim of Prosecutor-General Lutsenko or his submission to parliament that Lutsenko be dismissed as Ukraine's prosecutor-general," she said. Lutsenko told Hill.TV that "from the first meeting with the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, [Yovanovitch] gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute," adding that such a thing was "inadmissible." The State Department spokesperson said that "such allegations only serve the corrupt." "The United States is committed to engaging with our partners in Ukraine, including on efforts to roll back the persistent corruption that continues to threaten Ukraine's national security, prosperity, and democratic development," the spokesperson continued. "Where there is a lack of political will on Ukraine's part, such as by the prosecutor-general's office, we exercise our fiduciary responsibility to the U.S. taxpayer and move assistance funds to where they can make a positive difference." Yovanovitch in a recent speech was blunt in her criticism of Kyiv's anticorruption efforts, one of the key criteria for billions of dollars in lending from international institutions since the eastern Ukrainian conflict broke out in early 2014. Yovanovitch also said that the chief of Ukraine's Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, Nazar Kholodnytskiy, should be replaced to ensure the integrity of the anti-corruption institutions. Kholodnytskiy has been embroiled in a corruption scandal over allegations that he helped officials suspected of corruption evade prosecution. The war of words between Lutsenko and the United States adds to a politically charged environment in the run-up to next week's presidential vote in Ukraine. Polls consistently show Poroshenko trailing comic and television personality Volodymyr Zelenskiy and neck-and-neck with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko ahead of the March 31 vote, which will go to a two-candidate runoff in April if no one surpasses 50 percent. Poland has refused to invite a Russian delegation to a ceremony to commemorate 80 years since the outbreak of World War II. Krzysztof Szczerski, an aide to President Andrzej Duda, told the Polish news agency PAP on March 20 that Russia had not been invited to the events in September because of its actions in Ukraine. Russia has been hit with numerous international sanctions for its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014 and ongoing support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it was "bewildered" by the snub. "Despite the critical contribution of our country to defeating Hitler's Germany and liberating Poland from Nazi invaders, there is no place for Russia there," the statement said. Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Poland in 2009 and delivered an address at a ceremony to mark 70 years since the start of the war, despite tensions at the time between Moscow and Warsaw. On September 17, 1939, less than three weeks after Nazi Germany attacked Poland, triggering World War II, the Red Army also invaded the country, carving it up jointly with Germany. Based on reporting by AP and AFP By Yahoo , March . 16, 2019 Imagine living in a place where every two hours someone is shot, and every 14 hours someone is murdered. It isnt Iraq or Afghanistan, but one of the biggest and most sophisticated cities in the world: Chicago. On the citys south side, which is considered the heart of black America, gang rivalry is tearing its people apart. It has become so brutal that both police and the perpetrators agree this urban warfare is out of control Read More: Join us - become an Elderado today at: LarryElder.com Follow Larry Elder on Follow Larry Elder on Twitter "Like" Larry Elder on Facebook By Daily Wire , March . 18, 2019 In the summer of 2018, roughly two dozen professors at the University of Wyoming (UW) railed against the schools new slogan, The world needs more cowboys, making claims that the term "cowboy" had racist, sexist, homophobic and genocidal undertones. But instead of backing down, the universitys Board of Trustees stood unwavering, voting unanimously to keep the slogan, and that decision paid off. As The Wall Street Journal reported: Read More: Join us - become an Elderado today at: LarryElder.com Follow Larry Elder on Follow Larry Elder on Twitter "Like" Larry Elder on Facebook Short-span bridge handed over to Army by Larsen & Toubro New Delhi, Mar 21 (PTI) In another example of indigenisation of defence equipment, a five-metre short-span bridge was formally handed over to the Indian Army on Wednesday at a ceremony at the Talegaon facility of Larsen & Toubro, the Defence Ministry said. The bridge is indigenously designed and developed and is the result of close coordination between the Corps of Engineers and the DRDO laboratory in Pune, the ministry said. "The equipment has been manufactured by Larsen & Toubro Limited and has been delivered three months ahead of schedule. All stakeholders have put in concerted efforts to overcome challenges and realise the 'Make in India' initiative of the government, which aims to ensure self sufficiency in our defence needs," a statement said. Advertisement The bridge will meet the important requirement of providing mobility to own forces by speedy establishment of bridges. The bridge is one of the numerous indigenous projects of Corps of Engineers which have made significant progress. Donald Trump Washington, Mar 21 (PTI) Donald Trump has prioritised peace efforts in Afghanistan and his special envoy has initiated direct talks with the Taliban, but the US President will not accept a "bad deal" on efforts to end America's longest war, the White House has said. According to a senior Trump administration official, America has "contingency" plans, which might involve "military options" if the peace talks fail to yield desired results. As part of his efforts to garner international support for ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, US special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad will hold talks with counterparts from Russia, China and the European Union on Thursday and Friday. Khalilzad has held three round of talks with the Afghan Taliban in order to reach a settlement that would allow the US to withdraw its army and end the 17-year-old Afghan war, America's longest. Advertisement "We are certainly prioritising peace efforts in Afghanistan. But as with all negotiations that involve vital US national security interests, we have contingency plans. The president has indicated he hopes for the best in these peace talks, but he will also not accept a bad deal," the official told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. The official explained that the US was hoping for the success with the peace process. "But it's not the only route that we are looking at in terms of protecting vital US national security interests in Afghanistan," the official said. The contingencies being talked about might involve "military options", the official said. Noting that the US still faces terrorist threats in Afghanistan, the official said America will continue to do what is necessary to protect its interests. The US has a lot of options, the official said, adding that while no decision has been taken on withdrawal of troops, president Trump would like to bring the troops back. "He also recognises that we have vital terrorism interests in Afghanistan and he certainly is focused on keeping American safe. So we will do what we have to do to ensure those vital national security interests are protected," the official said. Advertisement The Trump administration, also recognises that for "any peace agreement to be sustainable the Taliban would have to sit down with the Afghan government" and other Afghan stakeholders to discuss political way forward, the official said. The US will not sacrifice the key gains of the last 18 years, including on human rights, particularly women's rights, at the negotiating table, said the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We won't sacrifice those gains," the official insisted. Khalilzad is working hard to establish an inter-Afghan dialogue with the Taliban, sitting down with the government officials and other stakeholders, the official said. The top American diplomat believes that he is getting closer to that goal, the official noted. Referring to the State of the Union Address by President Trump early this year, the official said as the US makes progress in the negotiations, America would be able to look at reducing its troop presence and focusing more on counterterrorism mission. "The president said he didn't know if we would be successful in these negotiations, but it was certainly worth trying," the official said. Last week, the White House cancelled the meeting of its National Security Council with Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib, who launched a personal attack against Khalilzad. Advertisement Responding to questions on outburst by Mohib against Khalilzad, which has resulted in tension between US and Afghanistan, the official said the administration has strong objection to the personal attacks by the Afghan national security advisor. The official, however, said that the issue was not going to affect the strong bilateral ties between the US and Afghanistan. "We deeply value this relationship. We are fighting shoulder to shoulder on the battleground with Afghan security forces, we are working to stabilise the country and defeat terrorists' threats there together," the official said. "But, they are a reflection of the Afghan frustration that they're not in room in these talks between the US and the Taliban. So it's, urgent that we convince the Taliban to sit down with the Afghan government and other Afghans and engage in a political process," the official said. Advertisement The official reiterated that any settlement simply won't be sustainable unless the Taliban agrees to sit down with other Afghan stakeholders and work out a political settlement. "The Taliban must sit down with the Afghan government as well as other Afghans to work these issues out. I think it pointed up the need to put urgency on that aspect of the peace process," the official said. The White House official asserted that the US will be consulting closely with the Afghan government in with regard to the peace talks with the Taliban. "We can look at ways to improve the communication between our two governments," the official said, adding that the US will be looking at ways to enhance its coordination and cooperation moving forward. Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. WILTON, N.Y. A Hudson Falls couple was arrested for attempting to steal merchandise at a local retailer by using a prohibited device to subvert security devices in the store. New York State Troopers responded to Best Buy in the Town of Wilton on March 18 to a larceny in progress. Upon their arrival, they located Robert H. Heckmann, 30 and Victoria Lippus, 42, exiting the store. Both subjects were found to be in possession of items they had just stolen. Also found on their person was a prohibited device they had just used to subvert security devices while in the store. Both Heckmann and Lippus were charged with petit larceny, conspiracy sixth degree and possession of burglars tools. The Saratoga County Sheriffs Department assisted on scene. Both were released to appear in the Town of Wilton court at a future date. A global research team including scientists from La Trobe University have identified specific locations within plants' chromosomes capable of transferring immunity to their offspring. The findings could lead to new ways of preventing disease in crops -- of great potential benefit to farmers. Led by the University of Sheffield (UK), the research team identified, for the first time, specific locations (loci) within a plant's chromosomes that impart disease resistance to their offspring by undergoing a reversible biochemical modification known as DNA methylation, in response of pathogen attack. Published in the journal eLife, the research identifies four DNA loci that control disease resistance against a common plant pathogen called downy mildew. Importantly, this resistance was not associated with any negative effects on growth or resistance against other environmental stresses. La Trobe University Research Fellow Dr Ritushree Jain said that when plants are repetitively attacked by pathogens, they develop a 'memory' (known as priming in plants) of this encounter which enables them to fight efficiently when attacked again. "One of the mechanisms for transferring this 'memory' to their next generation via seeds is DNA methylation," Dr Jain said. advertisement "It is an epigenetic phenomenon -- meaning there is no change in the DNA sequence." Dr Jain explained the potential benefit to farmers these findings offer. "Not only could this significant discovery lead to new ways of preventing disease in important crops, but it could also help reduce our reliance on pesticides," Dr Jain said. Lead researcher Professor Jurriaan Ton from the University of Sheffield's P3 Plant Production and Protection Centre said findings from the study pave the way for further research into how epigenetics can help to improve disease resistance in food crops. "We now hope to use this study to carry out further research to understand how these epigenetic loci control so many different defence genes," Professor Ton said. "We are also keen to participate in more translational studies, in order to find out whether epigenetics can be used to prime disease resistance in crops that are vital to food supplies around the world." Led by the University of Sheffield in the UK, the research was conducted in collaboration with La Trobe University, PSL University (Paris) and the Technical University of Munich (Germany). Salads were recently in the news -- and off America's dinner tables -- when romaine lettuce was recalled nationwide. Outbreaks of intestinal illness were traced to romaine lettuce contaminated with Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. These bacteria occur naturally in the intestines of warm-blooded animals. Because crops are grown in the natural environment, E.coli may get into the fields, contaminating produce. The results are potentially deadly for people who eat that produce. Cooking kills E. coli, removing the danger. But lettuce and other leafy greens are generally eaten raw, so they present special safety issues. To protect the public, strict rules require producers to test their irrigation water to see if it is contaminated with E. coli or other microorganisms that can cause illness. The produce industry implements these food safety measures to keep people safe and grow a reliable, nutritious product for consumers. Are the irrigation water tests consistent enough to prevent future widespread recalls? Researchers are comparing tests to see. In 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed ten EPA-approved tests to detect generic E.coli in irrigation water. One of these methods, mTEC, is an excellent test for generic E. coli but has not been commonly used in the water testing industry. A commercially available test kit, Colilert, is much simpler to use. It is also offered by hundreds of water quality testing laboratories nationwide, compared to only a handful of laboratories that offer the mTEC assay. Research scientist Jean E. McLain and colleagues at the University of Arizona felt it was important to discover how good laboratories are at using these tests, and whether test results are consistent from lab to lab. Each month, a technician collected a water sample from irrigation canals at the university's research farms near Yuma and Maricopa, AZ. Each water sample was divided into thirds: one-third was delivered to McLain's lab and the remainder was delivered to two collaborating labs for testing. advertisement "This study used a side-by-side comparison of both methods, across three laboratories, to test how well the method results were reproduced across labs," says McLain. "Both methods have shown excellent results as long as water samples are clean. But because these methods were developed for drinking water, they may not work as well with environmental water samples, which can contain salts, sediments, and naturally-occurring microbes." Field samples of irrigation water can include salts and sediments when rivers are muddied from rain. Because the Arizona water samples were usually very clean, the researchers sometimes added sediment, salts or bacteria like E. coli to the samples before sending them off for testing. Each lab put its samples through the two certified methods to identify the amount of generic E. coli in the sample. Both tests performed very well when there were no additions to the water as well as when salts and sediments were added. "But when microbes were added, the consistency fell apart," McLain reported. "For both the mTEC and Colilert tests, two labs found the levels of generic E. coli were very high -- way above the safety standard. But for each test, one of the three labs showed that the water quality was within the safety threshold." "The Colilert test is so straightforward that labs generally get same results," McLain said. "But in this study comparing the two methods, we are not seeing the same results with each test and each lab. Why would labs have such disparate results? That will be the focus of the rest of the study." One suggestion is that some of these methods are very subjective, requiring highly-trained technicians to evaluate the test results. All water testing completed by the leafy greens industry must be conducted at a certified laboratory, and any presumptive positive results for pathogens must be tested a second time to confirm their presence. In the next phase of research, McLain and her collaborators will gather more data about the varying conditions that may affect test results, including environmental factors and technician training. The team's goal is to develop a user-friendly guide for industry that will help ensure consistently accurate test results. McLain presented her research at the Annual Meeting of the Soil Science Society of America, Jan. 6-9, in San Diego, CA. This work is funded by the Arizona Department of Agriculture, Specialty Crop Block Grant Program. Most people who immigrated to the United States for a chance to live the "American Dream" are more satisfied with their lives in the "land of the free" than those who were born here, according to new research from Florida State University. A team of researchers, including FSU Assistant Professor of Sociology Dawn Carr, found immigrants from white, Hispanic and other racial groups have higher levels of happiness and overall life satisfaction than those born in the United States. Their findings were recently published in the February 2019 print edition of the Journal of Aging and Health. "We discovered that people who are foreign-born and living in the United States do have higher levels of life satisfaction," Carr said. "We examined life satisfaction because it is a useful global measure for understanding how people are doing on the whole with regard to how they feel about their life. It's a good way of capturing their overall well-being." Scholars found Hispanic immigrants in the United States had the highest overall life satisfaction of any other racial group. Study participants had lived in the United States for an average of about 30 years. "The older adult immigrants in our sample adjusted to life in the United States, and they're thriving more than their native-born counterparts," Carr said. "This is particularly true for Hispanics, who maintain their well-being despite having fewer resources than their native-born counterparts. They seem to have developed a life that provides a good old age." In the past 50 years, scholars have examined a concept known as the "Hispanic Paradox," which refers to the observation that older Hispanic immigrants in the United States tend to have better health outcomes than non-Hispanic whites despite their more limited socioeconomic resources. advertisement "We wanted to see if this was also true for overall well-being," Carr said. The paradox is believed to stem from cultural and social factors specific to immigrants of Hispanic origin. "It might be that those cultural factors are quite beneficial in terms of maintaining well-being," Carr said. "For instance, it may be their overall spirituality or sense of community. Studies have shown there are expectations for support in the Hispanic culture. However, we were unable to identify specific mechanisms that explain these effects." Researchers examined data from more than 7,000 participants 60 years and older who were surveyed for the most recent wave of the Health and Retirement Study in 2014. This study is the largest and most comprehensive study of older adults in the US. The team also found that foreign-born blacks did not report the same increases in overall life satisfaction as compared to other races. advertisement "It was very discouraging to see this outcome for the black sample," Carr said. "Blacks in general have lower levels of life satisfaction than everybody else and foreign-born blacks do not experience any better outcomes." Carr and her colleagues also studied how levels of education were linked with overall life satisfaction. For whites, higher levels of education translated to higher levels of life satisfaction. However, they found for both native and foreign-born blacks, the more education they had, the lower their life satisfaction. "That was a puzzling discovery," Carr said. "This means that education does not seem to enhance the lives of minorities like we might expect. We do not know the reasons for these trends, but we might guess that factors like discrimination are involved, detracting from their overall happiness. For instance, someone who has a college degree, who is in a job with similarly educated individuals who are not minority, might be more overtly aware of the discrimination they're experiencing." Researchers found higher levels of education for native-born Hispanics also was associated with lower life satisfaction. Carr said further research needs to take place to determine what factors are at the root of these varying levels of happiness in later life. Carr's co-authors include associate professor and lead author, Rocio Calvo, and Associate Professor Christina Matz, both of Boston College. San Francisco State University will hire a coordinator of Jewish student life as part of a settlement of a lawsuit accusing the school of tolerating anti-Semitism on campus. The suit was filed in Superior Court by students from the Jewish group Hillel, who blamed religious discrimination for the groups exclusion from a Know Your Rights student fair in February 2017. They also alleged that San Francisco State has a history of institutionalized anti-Semitism and that Jewish students face racist slurs and epithets and are often afraid to wear stars of David or yarmulke skullcaps on campus. A similar suit in federal court was dismissed in October by a judge who said the students claims, even if proven, would not show religious discrimination by the university. He also said Hillel had been barred from the 2017 fair by student organizers, not school officials. The Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel group that supported both suits, was preparing to take the Superior Court case to trial this week before announcing the settlement Wednesday. We have ensured that SFSU will put in place important protections for Jewish and Zionist students to prevent continued discrimination, Lawfares executive director, Brooke Goldstein, said in a statement. We are confident that this will change the campus climate for the better. The settlement included several provisions aimed at preventing discrimination on campus, including a $200,000 university fund to promote viewpoint diversity and equity on the basis of religious identity, but did not contain any admission by San Francisco State that it had promoted or tolerated anti-Semitism. In a statement, the university said many parts of the agreement build on efforts already initiated by SF State toward improving campus climate. It allows SF State to reiterate its commitment to equity and inclusion for all including those who are Jewish and reaffirms the values of free expression and diversity of viewpoints that are so critical on a university campus, the school said. One provision requires the university, after consultation with its Jewish Studies Department, to hire a coordinator of Jewish Student Life, who will be funded for at least four years. The coordinator is to address issues of anti-Semitism on campus along with other aspects of the lives of Jewish students. The university also agreed to hire an independent consultant to review its non-discrimination policies and make nonbinding recommendations for any needed improvements. Another provision requires the school, for the next two years, to refer all complaints of religious discrimination to an outside investigator. San Francisco State promised to issue a statement guaranteeing the right of religious freedom on campus and acknowledging that for many Jews, Zionism is an important part of their identity. The settlement also commits the university to paying for a campus mural about religious liberty, to be designed by student groups of differing viewpoints. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. In addition, the university promised reasonable efforts to create a more formalized and centralized programming system for campus events. This was in response to protests that disrupted a campus speech in April 2016 by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.. University officials had moved Barkats talk away from the center of campus after being warned of protests. Six minutes into his talk, he was shouted down by pro-Palestinian students. Jewish students claimed in their federal court suit that the university had acted out of religious bias in moving the talk and allowing it to be disrupted, but the judge who dismissed the suit said other controversial speakers had also been sent to remote locations. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko City College of San Francisco students and instructors say the colleges administration could soon put computer science, foreign language and music classes on the chopping block as it seeks to minimize under-enrolled courses. The college says it is not cutting classes, but a written statement released Wednesday from City College Chancellor Mark Rocha also said, The college must finally grapple with age-old operational issues, including a class schedule that maintains too many under-enrolled courses. We are re-allocating resources to develop new programs and support students in existing programs to reach graduation and transfer, Rochas statement said. He also said the school can no longer afford to direct resources toward courses with single-digit enrollment, especially when there is such high demand for additional courses that lead to graduation and transfer. AFT 212, the faculty union, accused Rocha of creating a top-down agenda that would increase class sizes and force students into online classes if the college cuts its in-person class offerings by a third. City College, which enrolls about 63,000 students and had an operating budget of about $267 million in fiscal 2018, has had financial problems. The college has offered free tuition to San Francisco residents for the past two years, a program supported by the city. Though popular with students, the Free City program lost about $5 million through 2018, college officials have said. An independent audit completed in December reported that City College spent $22.6 million more than it collected in revenue in fiscal 2018, and that its budget for the current fiscal year includes a general fund deficit of $11.5 million. The college ended fiscal 2018 with reserves of $13.7 million, and is in jeopardy of falling below the required reserves set by the California Community Colleges Board of Governors, the auditors wrote. Gwendolyn Wu Roughly 75 percent of its revenue comes from property taxes and state funds. Students and teachers gathered Wednesday afternoon at the colleges Chinatown/North Beach campus to protest potential cutbacks. The courses that could be affected, students and teachers said, include credit classes crucial to completing associate degrees and noncredit classes for vocational skills. The more we lower noncredit classes, the more we have a non-educated democracy, said Lynn Yagle-Snead, a child development instructor. Some departments could see up to a 40 percent cut in the number of in-person classes offered, according to a union analysis based on information union officials said they got from department chairs. Marcos Cruz is working toward an associates degree in electronics, but he said that was nearly delayed after one of the last classes he needed to graduate was almost cut. Cruz spent the beginning of the fall 2018 semester speaking with officials one-on-one and repeatedly attending college board of trustees meetings to advocate for the class. Its supposed to run even if theres low enrollment because its part of the associates degree, he said. Class records indicate that the class filled up to the maximum-allowed 20 students that semester, which is the state-recommended class size. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. The college did not specify which departments might be impacted. The school intends to increase class sizes in popular subjects that are essential for graduation and to transfer to a four-year universities. The union alleged that administration caught wind of Wednesdays news conference and restored Asian American studies and LGBT studies classes from a reported cut list. Activists said its not enough for the college to restore classes piecemeal. Offering a wide variety of courses is crucial to students from all walks of life, students said. Not everyone has the privilege to go to a four-year college, said Lucy Lao, a student studying English as a second language at CCSF. We have jobs, we have to make a living. Cruz said that reinstatement of his electronics class inspired him to come out and rally for the other courses the union says could soon be gone. That tells me there are ways administration can have more discretion in what they can be doing, Cruz said. An earlier version of this story misspelled Marcos Cruzs name. Gwendolyn Wu is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: gwendolyn.wu@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @gwendolynawu Editor's Note: This story has been amended since it was originally published to reflect that Jacob Nikolau was not at the table on the UC Berkeley campus when Hayden Williams was punched, and that Nikolau says he was never a member of the Berkeley College Republicans. The debate over free speech on college campuses moves into the White House on Thursday, and as has often been the case over the past 50 years, UC Berkeley will be front and center. President Trump is expected to issue an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal funding and four past or present members of the Berkeley College Republicans, the conservative student organization that helped provoke a nationwide debate over free speech on college campuses, say theyve been invited to witness the signing. The group has organized numerous events featuring or promising conservative headliners, including provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, whose speech was canceled in February 2017 by the university after protesters many of whom were non-students affiliated with local anarchist groups broke through barricades, stormed the building, broke glass and lit fires. That incident led to protests, counter-protests and sometimes violent confrontations on the streets of Berkeley and in Civic Center Park downtown. While much of the tension over the free speech issue on the Berkeley campus has eased, it hasnt disappeared. Last month, Hayden Williams was punched in the face while recruiting for a conservative organization at a table on Cals Sproul Plaza. The attack was captured on video, went viral on the Internet and was played and commented on repeatedly on Fox News. Williams attacker was later arrested. Neither man is a UC Berkeley student. Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ condemned the attack as reprehensible and having no place here. The university has spent $4 million in the last year to ensure the right of conservative students to safely and successfully hold events, Christ said. It settled a lawsuit last fall with the nonprofit Young Americas Foundation, pledging to accommodate conservative events even if protests are threatened. Still, earlier this month, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump welcomed Williams to the stage, suggested that he sue the university, and promised an executive order requiring universities and colleges to assure free speech if they want to continue receiving federal money. No specifics have been mentioned. Critics have said such an order is unnecessary. Matt Ronnau, president of the Berkeley College Republicans, said he supports the presidents order and is thrilled that hell be able to see it being signed. Ronnau and three present or former members of the conservative campus group, were invited Monday to the signing ceremony. Being invited is a huge honor, Ronnau said. Ive never been to D.C. or seen the president up close. Obviously free speech on college campuses is something very close to me. Im really glad President Trump is taking some action on addressing this issue. Im fully supportive. Naweed Tahmas, the groups former vice president who graduated in May; Troy Worden, the groups past president; and Jacob Nikolau, a current student, also were invited to attend. The anticipated executive order would come the week after a federal judge in Oakland again dismissed four other conservative students lawsuits against UC Berkeley and its officials but allowed them to sue two UC police officers for their actions in the 2017 riot that prompted the cancellation of Yiannopoulos speech. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. The students say that the police allegedly put them in danger by locking the doors to Martin Luther King Center, blocking a possible escape route as the violent protest raged outside. Wednesdays court ruling will allow the conservative students attorney to question UC officials, including President Janet Napolitano and police officials, about the orders given officers, said Shawn Steel, an attorney in the case and a Republican National Committeeman. Thats going to be fun, Steel said. UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said the university is prepared to vigorously and successfully defend our position in court. On Wednesday night, the Associated Students of the University of California was considering a resolution supporting free speech, condemning violence and noting that UC Berkeley, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, has come under a misconception ... that depicts the University to be one that is against free speech. Chronicle staff writer Bob Egelko contributed to this report. Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan Jordyn Williams, a 9-year-old fourth-grader at Emerson Elementary School in North Oakland, meets with a volunteer from Reading Partners, a childrens literacy nonprofit, twice a week. On one day she sharpens her comprehension skills, the next focuses on phonics. Jordyn began the school year reading at third-grade level. Shes one of thousands of Oakland Unified School District students who need more help learning to read than theyre getting in classrooms. For the third year in a row, more than half of the districts students who took the Scholastic Reading Inventory test, an assessment of reading performance, are reading below grade level. About 16 percent of students who arent reading proficiently by the end of third grade dont graduate from high school on time, according to a 2012 study on literacy by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a charitable organization that works to boost the lives of disadvantaged children. If by fourth grade you dont have those skills to know how to read, youre going to very quickly fall behind, said Aarika Riddle, senior executive director at Reading Partners. By fourth grade, students start reading to learn, Riddle said. Reading impacts comprehension in subjects like history, math and science. Think about it: How frustrating would it be not to be able to read and understand words youre already supposed to know? If students arent getting up to grade level by the end of first, second (grades) not just in our system, but the research has shown across the country theyre much less likely to get up to grade level at another point, said Wesley Jacques, the school districts executive director of academics and instructional innovation. Paul Chinn / The Chronicle In 2017, the average reading score of fourth-graders in California was six points lower than the national average, according to the U.S. Department of Educations National Assessment of Education Progress. When you look at proficiency rates, theyre not particularly high across the country and we know almost everywhere achievement gaps exist around race and socioeconomic status, Jacques said. Some of the things were trying to tackle are structural. Jacques said about half of the districts students speak a language other than English at home. Thats why he said programs like Reading Partners are critical to improving reading because some students are going to need more support to get to grade level. Jacques said the district doesnt have a concrete answer to why 50 percent of students are reading below grade level. But the district does acknowledge that students need more support. Critical for the school district is finding money to pay for supportive services. It costs $100,000 per year for every reading center that Reading Partners runs and it runs 17 centers in the Oakland district. Typically, the organization asks for $25,000 from each school and it raises the remainder to cover expenses. Riddle said a majority of partner schools in Oakland use supplemental funds allocated by the district for high-needs students to pay for the program. Schools have discretion on how to spend the funds. Theres not enough money to get all of the students the help they need, the help they deserve. The cash-strapped district is slashing programs as part of a $22 million cut from next years budget. Among the positions on the cutting board are kindergarten reading tutors and library technicians. Reading Partners isnt part of the districtwide cuts because it deals directly with individual schools. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. I would love to see Reading Partners expanded, to be in more schools, but its really just a matter of if we had a funder or if our schools had the resources, Jacques said. Reading Partners, founded in the Bay Area 20 years ago, links with schools that receive Title I funds, schools where at least 40 percent of the students come from low-income homes. It has volunteers working one-on-one with students at 32 Bay Area schools, including the 17 in Oakland. Last month, I went to Emerson Elementary where 62 students are enrolled, including Jordyn. After almost three months in the program, shes close to where she shouldve been last summer and shes on track to catch up to her classmates by the end of the school year. Jalyn Lang used a whiteboard to sound out words Jordyn struggled with. A retired environmental attorney, Lang was an English teacher before studying law. Shes volunteered with Reading Partners for five years. Her daughter and son-in-law also volunteer with the organization. I really believe in reading, because its a fundamental building block, Lang told me. Its like a little key that opens up the world to (students). You just assume that when little kids can speak that theyll be able to read. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr A decade after four Oakland police officers were fatally gunned down in a single day, the horror of March 21, 2009, still burns in the memories of the fallen officers family in blue, as well as their loved ones and the community they sacrificed their lives to protect. Acting Deputy Chief Roland Holmgren, then a member of the SWAT team, remembers racing to the scene following a call that two officers were shot during a routine traffic stop. The second broadcast came as he arrived: two more officers were down. The fallen Sgt. Mark Dunakin, Officer John Hege, Sgt. Ervin Romans and Sgt. Daniel Sakai were honored by surviving family, current officers and supporters Thursday, which marked the 10-year anniversary of their deaths. About 200 people paid their respects at a morning Mass at St. Benedict Catholic Church in Oakland. Police officers, outfitted in crisp navy blues, hugged and mingled alongside the victims families and the families of other fallen officers. This is really a day all about remembrance, Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said, noting that few departments in the country have experienced such a high death toll in a single day. Its tragic, but were really here to love on each other right now. On that afternoon a decade ago, 26-year-old wanted parolee Lovelle Mixon opened fire on Dunakin, 40, and Hege, 41, after they pulled him over during a traffic stop at 74th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard. A SWAT team stormed the apartment where Mixon was hiding about two hours later and Mixon opened fire with an assault rifle, killing Romans, 43, and Sakai, 35. Mixon was later shot to death by police. Mayor Libby Schaaf, who at the time worked as an analyst for Oaklands city council, recalls how the air was taken out of the lungs of City Hall. Schaaf recalled the first person she spoke to that day who knew all of the officers. And all she could keep saying to me over and over was, They were the best of the best, Schaaf said. The mayor remembered feeling slightly embarrassed that day, sitting in her office, thinking about how her public servant gripes seemed so trivial in comparison. Now these officers gave the ultimate sacrifice, Schaaf said. Holmgren, a 20-year veteran of the department, knew each officer and worked closely with Romans and Sakai on the SWAT team. Since their deaths, he said, Romans and Sakais families have become intertwined with his own, and their children have grown up together. It really hits home when you come back 10 years later, Holmgren said, adding that Sakais little girl is not so little anymore. The acting deputy chief smiled as he remembered his brothers. Romans, a former marine, always sported a close-cut haircut, and was very by the book, Holmgren said. He was regimented and stern in his role as a firearms instructor. Sakai, a graduate of UC Berkeley, had the warmest of hearts. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Dunakin was a big, gentle giant with a contagious smile and Hege would always be there when you need him, any time of day, Holmgren said. The department tries to support the officers families, especially during milestones and holidays, when the void can be especially painful. Thats our obligation to them, Holmgren said. If we call ourselves a family, its more than just a date. ... Its that were there for them when they lose their first tooth, or graduate from high school or have their first boyfriend. The support network for families of surviving officers extends beyond the department, said Will and Mary Ann Tonn, whose son, Kevin Tonn, was killed in the line of duty in 2013 while serving with the Galt Police Department just south of Sacramento. The parents paid their respects to the Oakland officers Thursday morning Will wore a miniature replica of his sons badge as a pin, and Mary Ann donned hers as a necklace. Since their sons death, the couple said, theyve gained a blue family. They attend retreats for the loved ones of slain officers and have gotten to know Nicole Romans, Ervins widow. Its one of the most exclusive clubs in the country that nobody wants to be in, Will Tonn said. Our daughter said shes lost a brother, but she gained hundreds of brothers and sisters. Megan Cassidy is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meganrcassidy San Francisco Chronicle The wife of an East Bay principal nearly shot to death over the weekend has been charged with attempted murder, prosecutors said Thursday. Marta Vides, 39, was arrested by Pittsburg police after she allegedly shot her 45-year-old husband, Paul Shatswell, with a handgun early Saturday morning in their home on Barrie Drive. He is currently in a coma. A 2016 sexual exploitation scandal involving a teenage girl and multiple Bay Area law enforcement agencies resulted in the Richmond Police Department suspending one officer for sexual misconduct and firing another for dishonesty, according to recently released records. The initial report, released Wednesday as an index of records, falls short of illuminating and accounts for just two of some 12 officers who officials previously said would be fired or disciplined after a teenage girl who went by Celeste Guap said she had sex with 29 officers across the Bay Area, including some encounters that occurred when she was underage. Officer Terrance Jackson engaged in a sex act while on duty, resulting in a suspension, and Officer Jerrod Tong was found to be untruthful during an administrative investigation, leading to his termination, according to the report. The disclosure makes Richmond one of only a handful of local law enforcement agencies to release a portion of personnel records made public for the first time by a new police transparency law. SB1421 lifts the curtain on what had been among the most fiercely guarded police records in the country, unsealing personnel files related to serious uses of force, or sustained findings of dishonesty or sexual assault. The document lists two other officers who were fired or retired in 2014 after sustained findings of dishonesty, but the index makes no mention of some 10 other officers who were reportedly set to be punished. Richmond Police Chief Allwyn Brown told The Chronicle that all of the officers disciplined in the Guap case had sustained findings of misconduct, but not necessarily for sexual assault or dishonesty. Brown described the other indiscretions as misconduct, generally, but not of a nature that would fit the definition of 1421 as related to sexual assault. The law, SB1421, defines sexual assault as the commission or attempted initiation of a sexual act with a member of the public by means of force, threat, coercion, extortion, offer of leniency or other official favor, or under the color of authority. A proposition for a sexual act on duty is also considered sexual assault. Other forms of misconduct can involve a wide range of scenarios, Brown said. He defined it as any actions that are outside of what we would expect of a police officer, on or off duty, that would bring discredit to an organization. Richmonds disclosure is a reminder of the limitations of the new law, which was narrowly written in order to get it passed through the Legislature, according to several sources familiar with the bill. The lack of reported discipline regarding the teenage sex abuse case raises questions on how police are policing their own, said Melanie Ochoa, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. I think the law does have limits, but the larger problem that this uncovers is agencies are disciplining officers perhaps for conduct that falls far below the severity of the wrongdoing, she said. The ACLU pushed for the new transparency law and has requested records from hundreds of agencies, while also fighting police unions efforts to block the laws in court. Unfortunately, 1421 will not allow us to get to those records to see what is happening, and the level of discipline that is meted out to these officers, Ochoa said. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. The law only allows for the release of cases involving sustained misconduct findings, meaning an officers record is still protected if he or she successfully appealed the case. Richmond officials said they would release fuller reports on the cases at a later date. News reports and lawsuits, however, offer a few details of the officers included and missing from the report. Jackson met the girl while she was in high school and he was a school resource officer, according to a lawsuit filed by the teen, who now goes by the name Jasmine. The lawsuit stated that Tong met her through social media. Richmonds report does not mention other officers named in the suit, including Lt. Andre Hill; or sergeants Armondo Moreno and Mike Rood. Jasmine claimed that she had sexual relationships with all three men, who allegedly knew she was a sex worker and coerced her into having sex in exchange for confidential police information or protection from arrest. Wednesdays release comes after Richmonds police union failed in a legal attempt to block the city from publicly releasing records created before the law took effect in January. Police unions in Concord, Antioch, Martinez and Walnut Creek, as well as the Contra Costa County Deputy Sheriffs Association, also unsuccessfully fought the disclosures. Brown said he is supportive of the release, even though it notes one of the worst incidents in the Richmond Police Departments history. I think in this transparency era of policing I believe it certainly will be the case with Richmond that a lot of the public will learn police departments go out of their way to police themselves, he said. Megan Cassidy is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meganrcassidy A Russian national has been extradited from northeastern Europe to face 52 criminal charges relating to an alleged scheme to smuggle sophisticated electronics from the United States and into Russia, federal court officials said Wednesday. Valery Kosmachov, 66, is accused of enlisting the help of his co-conspirator, Sergey Vetrov, 66, to use their respective Estonia-based companies as fronts to get microelectronics from the United States by misrepresenting that the end-users for the components were located in Estonia, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney David Anderson of the San Francisco-based Northern District of California. Officials said the two obtained programmable computer chips that could be operated in civilian or military applications. Kosmachov was extradited last week. Kosmachov and Vetrov used two companies as fronts to carry out the scheme, officials said. He was owner of an electronics manufacturer called Adimir OU and co-owned an electronics distributor named Eastline Technology OU with Vetrov. Electronics were smuggled into Russia by funds federal officials say were raised through money laundering activities. Its unclear how the computer chips were used after they were smuggled. Kosmachov, who is also a naturalized citizen and resident of Estonia, was extradited to the United States nearly six months after he was arrested in September 2018 in Estonias state capitol, Tallinn. Vetrov, of Russia, is still at large, federal officials said. The two men and their companies are charged with: one count of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and one count of conspiracy to commit international money laundering. Kosmachov and Vetrov are also charged with 12 counts of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 19 counts of smuggling, and 17 counts of international money laundering. They could face a maximum of 20 years in prison for each International Emergency Economic Powers Act and money laundering charge, and a maximum 10-year sentence for each smuggling charge. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Kosmachov appeared for a detention hearing on Wednesday morning before Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero. He will remain in federal custody until his next court date with U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick, scheduled for March 28. Detectives from multiple federal agencies contributed to the investigation, including U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Department of Commerces Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Marshals Service. Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor When the youth crime rate started to drop in the late 1990s, it wasnt a surprise to law enforcement experts. Crime is cyclical, with spikes and declines spurred by social, political and economic conditions. But no one expected the large decrease in juvenile crime to linger, or to continue to dip for the next 20 years across a range of offenses from violent assaults and homicides to minor theft and truancy with no indication that the trend will be reversed. Experts who have struggled to explain the phenomenon have offered several theories, but have found no definitive answer for the historic lows in youth crime now seen across the country, regardless of demographics or local policies. Among the theories they point to: Decline in crack cocaine use The rise of the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s has been definitively linked to increased crime and violence. Many youths were pulled into the labor-intensive drug trade, one conducted largely on street corners. Drug dealers often recruited juveniles for street sales of crack because juveniles provided less expensive labor, were not subject to prosecution under adult drug laws, and were less risk averse than adults, a 2012 University of Pennsylvania report found. As the market for crack faded, youth crime began to drop as well. The decrease has continued long after the crack era, however, despite the surge of other drugs, including opioids. Decreased exposure to lead Exposure to lead through paint and gasoline resulted in high levels of the toxic metal in childrens blood toward the latter half of the 20th century, with low-income and urban children accumulating the highest amounts. High exposure can impact brain development, including impulse control and behavior regulation and ultimately lead to criminal activity, according to research. The use of lead in gas and paint was phased out between 1970 and 1990, which could help explain the subsequent drop in crime as children reached adolescence in the 1990s and beyond. Im absolutely convinced the incredibly sharp decline in violent crime weve seen all across the country since 1990 is a reflection of the sharp decline in childhood lead exposure that began in the early 1970s and accelerated after 1980, researcher Rick Nevin said in a 2002 interview with Environmental Health Perspectives. Researchers, however, debate just how much lead exposure contributed to both the crime spike and decline. Mass incarceration of adults Between 1971 and 1991, the countrys adult prison population tripled as the criminal justice system focused on incarceration rather than rehabilitation. It then increased an additional 150 percent over the next decade. With 1 of every 142 people behind bars across the country by 2000, experts suggest career criminals were unable to recruit susceptible youths. It is hypothesized that substantial increases in the prison population contributed to the decrease in juvenile violence beginning in 1993 through general deterrence and the incapacitation of young adult recruiters, a 2012 University of Pennsylvania report said. The research on the impacts of this tough-on-crime era is mixed, however, with some showing that children of incarcerated parents are more likely to land behind bars as well. Improvements in education In the 1980s and 1990s, significantly more children enrolled in preschool and after-school programs. Head Start enrollment, for example, reached 451,000 in 1989, up from 349,000 in 1975, and continued to increase during the next 10 years. U.S. high school graduation rates, meanwhile, have been on the rise for the past two decades, with the national average hitting an all-time high of 85 percent in 2017. Research typically shows that access to preschool and after-school programs and the earning of a high school diploma reduce the odds a child will end up in the juvenile justice system. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. The nation needs to focus dollars and efforts on reforming school climates to keep students engaged in ways that will lead them toward college and a career and away from crime and prison, Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, said in 2013. The school-to-prison pipeline starts and ends with schools. But while implementation of education programs and high school graduation rates vary across communities and states, the decline of juvenile crime has been fairly consistent across the country. The rise of community policing In the mid-1990s, police agencies across the country increasingly adopted community policing policies to combat crime, a practice that increases routine contact between residents and law enforcement through foot patrols, the addition of local substations, one-on-one interaction with youths and other ways. These efforts have been fueled by $14 billion in Department of Justice grants and other awards distributed to 13,000 law enforcement agencies across the country. In general terms, community policing is not a program; it is not a set of activities; it is not a personnel designation, a 2013 UC Berkeley School of Law report stated. Rather, community policing is a law enforcement philosophy, a way of thinking about improving public safety. Its actual effectiveness in reducing youth crime, however, is not certain. More theories Technology and security: With increased access to technology, it has become easier and faster to report crimes, and with better alarm systems and other security technology, to prevent it. In addition, video games could be keeping kids inside rather than on the streets where they could get in trouble. Decline of unwanted pregnancies: The legalization of abortion and increased access to birth control have reduced unwanted and teen pregnancies, reducing the number of children born into poverty or dysfunctional homes. Leah Millis/The Chronicle For Kayoko Akabori and Yoko Kumano, something has always been missing from their downtown Oakland shop, Umami Mart. The space is gorgeous in its Danish-designed minimalist style of white walls and pale wood, all showcasing an obsessively curated selection of imported Japanese glassware, bar tools, kitchen wares, food and drinks. But guests often want to sample Umami Marts Japanese beer, sake and shochu before purchasing a bottle, and permits would never allow it. Police are violating no clearly established rights when they steal someones property after seizing it with a legal search warrant and, therefore, cant be sued in federal court, an appeals court ruled Wednesday. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco refused to reinstate a suit against Fresno police by two people whose homes and business were searched in 2013 during a gambling investigation. After the search, three officers signed an inventory sheet saying they had seized about $50,000. But the two owners, Micah Jessop and Brittan Ashjian, who operated automatic teller machines at various locations in the Central Valley, said the officers had actually taken $276,000 $151,000 in cash and $125,000 in rare coins and pocketed the difference. Darrell York, Jessops and Ashjians attorney, said police and a city attorney denied that a theft occurred. He said his clients were not charged with any crimes after agreeing to forfeit the $50,000 in alleged gambling proceeds. York also noted that one of the officers, Detective Derik Kumagai, pleaded guilty to taking bribes from a suspected drug dealer in a separate case and was sentenced to two years in prison. Even if Kumagai and his fellow officers stole money and coins from Jessop and Ashjian, the appeals court said, the owners could not sue in federal court to get their money back. Such a suit would require proof that their constitutional rights were violated, the court said, and suits against police must clear the additional hurdle of showing that those rights were clearly established. The allegation of any theft by police officers most certainly the theft of over $225,000 is undoubtedly deeply disturbing, Judge Milan Smith said in the 3-0 ruling. Whether that conduct violates the Fourth Amendments prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures, however, is not obvious. Smith said other appeals courts have ruled that officers who obtain property with a search warrant do not violate the owners rights by refusing to return it. Although the allegations in this case were different, Smith said, at the time of the incident there was no clearly established law holding that officers violate (the Constitution) when they steal property that is seized pursuant to a warrant. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. Not all conduct that is improper or morally wrong violates the Constitution, Smith said. He said Jessop and Ashjian may be able to pursue their case under California law, but York said the deadline for such a suit had already expired when they went to federal court. The ruling gives them basically a license to steal if they get a search warrant, the lawyer said. He said his clients would appeal. Representatives of the police and the city declined to comment. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko Startling stories about police misconduct have emerged since the passage of SB1421, authored by state Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley. SB1421 opened up police personnel records to the public for serious cases use-of-force incidents, sexual assaults, and dishonesty, for example. The Chronicle has used records newly released under SB1421 to cover stories about multiple Fairfield officers who engaged in sexual misconduct with members of the public, had sustained findings of dishonesty, and used levels of force sufficient enough to kill people. SB1421 also led to the Tuesday launch of the California Reporting Project, a partnership of 33 newsrooms across the state to review the now-public internal police records. The collaborative has filed requests with more than 600 agencies. KQED reported that a Rio Vista police officer was fired after entering a home in 2017 and immediately putting a man in a potentially deadly chokehold, for example. Other news outlets have reported about law enforcement officers in their communities who werent prosecuted after embezzling funds or stealing thousands of bullets. Yet the campaign to dismantle SB1421 has only been growing more persistent and powerful. A number of police unions have filed lawsuits to prevent the release of records dating before 2019, and some individual law enforcement agencies have tried to avoid releasing pre-2019 records. Some law enforcement agencies are trying even more aggressive tactics. On Monday, KQED reported that the city of Fremont destroyed a large archive documenting four decades worth of citizen complaints and internal affairs investigations. The person who would be best positioned to get to the bottom of the Fremont situation is the same person who is best positioned to demand all law enforcement agencies comply with their duties under SB1421 Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Instead of urging law enforcement agencies to follow the law, Becerra has supported their dubious claim that theres no need to release pre-2019 records. Hes being sued by the First Amendment Coalition for this intransigence, but hes not budging. However, there may be some hope that Becerras office will investigate the records purge in Fremont. When asked about it, Becerras office said in a statement: You may want to note that our office issued a law enforcement bulletin in January specifically reminding law enforcement agencies that they should preserve all records as obligated under California law. Were well aware, Attorney General. Were waiting for you to enforce the law. This commentary is from The Chronicles editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters. Charter schools have become a politically complicated issue in recent years highly contentious yet sometimes a little overblown. But theres no question its time to slow their growth, which has been fueled by many states allowing for a virtually unlimited number of charter schools to open. Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, dont compare well overall with traditional neighborhood schools. Charter schools close more often, pay teachers less and are more segregated and less transparent about spending taxpayer money while generally performing about the same on standardized testing. But the big reason for limiting their numbers is that theyre draining funds from public school districts. In cities such as Chicago and Oakland, theyre even beginning to threaten the existence of neighborhood schools. Nationwide, funding for public education is drying up. Total state and local K-12 funding per student is well below what it was before 2008. (California increased funding for education by 10 percent between 2013 and 2015, but still spends less per student than the national average.) Priorities have shifted as well, with students from poor and working families suffering as a result. Spending on prisons and jails has increased at triple the rate of public education funding in the past three decades. Seventeen states send more education dollars to wealthier districts than to high-poverty ones. More than 1.5 million students attend a school that has a law enforcement officer but no school counselor. Yet, in states such as California and Arizona and cities including Washington, D.C., more public money is being invested in charter schools as alternatives to neighborhood schools. The sharpest example might be Oakland, which has the highest percentage of students in charter schools in California. Striking teachers there recently achieved demands that youd expect, like higher pay and more resources for students. Yet they also forced district leadership to hold a vote on whether to demand that state leaders pass a moratorium on new charter schools. In January, striking teachers in Los Angeles all but forced their district to call for such a moratorium. Days later, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the creation of a statewide panel to study the fiscal effect of charter school growth. Some of that work already has been done. Research by In the Public Interest has shown that charter schools cost San Diegos school district $66 million a year. This has led to cuts in counseling, libraries, special education and other critical services in that citys schools. In Oakland, where district leadership is proposing to close 24 of its 86 neighborhood schools, charter schools cost $57 million a year. West Virginias teachers didnt want to get to that point. Last month, they walked off the job to protest now-dead legislation that would have opened up the state to charter schools. When a student leaves a neighborhood school to attend a charter school, all the public funding for that student say $10,000 a year leaves with the student. But all the costs do not. The students old school cant easily reduce it expenses by $10,000 it cant spend less on fixed costs, like air conditioning and toilet paper, and its principal cant work part time. As more students attend charter schools, neighborhood schools are forced to make cuts that take resources from students. Most charter school leaders and supporters recognize this problem. They acknowledge that charter schools originally were intended to allow educators to test innovative ways to teach students. Yet, some supporters and funders openly aim to replace neighborhood schools. They fund school board candidates who support creating more charter schools. The Walton Family Foundation, for instance, has spent more than $1 billion nationwide pushing charter schools. And Netflix founder Reed Hastings wants charter schools to educate 90 percent of Californias students. Ultimately, parents just want a great education for their children. Most dont care whether its in a neighborhood school or charter school. Teachers want a living wage and enough resources to best educate and care for their students. States must learn from the decades-long experiment with charter schools and reform their laws to ensure that all public school students can attend great schools. Jeremy Mohler is a Washington-based writer with the national nonprofit In the Public Interest, a research and policy center on privatization and responsible contracting. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Painting campuses as a hotbed of liberal indoctrination, censorship and coercion, President Trump signed an executive order Thursday requiring colleges and universities to protect free speech or lose federal funding for research. Today were delivering a clear message to the professors and power structures trying to suppress dissent and keep young Americans, and all Americans from challenging rigid far-left ideology, Trump said during a signing ceremony at the White House. The order, which makes a commitment to free inquiry a condition of research grants handed out by 12 federal agencies, is a largely symbolic souvenir for Trumps political base. It directs public universities to uphold the First Amendment and private institutions to ensure they are following their own speech codes, which they already must do to receive federal student aid or participate in other U.S. Department of Education programs. The Trump administration did not offer details on what might amount to a violation of the order or how the government would enforce it. A senior official told reporters during a briefing that the administration may provide guidance in the coming weeks or months. In America, the very heart of the universitys mission is preparing students for life as citizens in a free society, Trump said. Universities that want taxpayer dollars should promote free speech, not silence free speech. The order was prompted by complaints from conservative students and activists that their views have not been respected on college campuses across the country. UC Berkeley has been at the center of the controversy. Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from the university in February 2017 after campus police shut down a planned speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative commentator and provocateur, amid a chaotic protest outside the venue. Five people were injured, and a lawsuit is moving forward against UC police for how they handled the incident. UC Berkeley settled another lawsuit in December with conservative groups that had accused university officials of discriminating against their campus speakers. The school agreed not to charge security fees or relocate events based on speakers views, a policy that the campus argued it has always followed. Tensions flared again last month when a recruiter for Turning Point USA, a conservative political organization, was punched in Sproul Plaza. Neither the man nor his attacker was a UC Berkeley student. Video of the assault was shown repeatedly on Fox News and conservative websites, and Trump invited the victim onstage with him at the Conservative Political Action Conference this month. The president referred to the incident again Thursday before signing the executive order. You turn on the news and you see things that are horrible, Trump said. You see people being punched hard in the face. But he didnt go down. Charlie Kirk, the founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, wrote on Twitter that the order was HISTORIC. Other people applauded the president for protecting conservatives from what they called long-standing hostility and even violence by liberals on college campuses. In a joint statement, however, higher education groups including the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges & Universities called the order a dangerous solution to a largely nonexistent problem that is more likely to stifle than encourage free expression and diversity of opinion. University of California President Janet Napolitano said in a statement that UC does not need the federal government to mandate what already exists: our long-standing, unequivocal support for freedom of expression. Trumps order also directs the Department of Education to develop a policy placing more of the financial risk for federal student loan debt on colleges, rather than the government, and to create a scorecard comparing graduates debt to their earnings for every degree or certificate program. The Obama administration established a similar rule to withhold federal student aid from career training programs that turn out students who dont make enough money to pay back their loans. The Trump administration revoked it amid complaints from for-profit colleges that they were being unfairly targeted. Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff SACRAMENTO Whats a California Democrat to do when he gets a letter from Vice President Mike Pence? Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, for one, didnt take too kindly to a recent message from the Trump administration wishing the state a productive and successful legislative session. We value the opportunity to work with you to build on our successes in the year ahead, Pence wrote in the Feb. 28 letter. We recognize that when California succeeds, America succeeds. Rendon cranked up the snark in his response, which he posted Tuesday on Twitter. I would have to say you and the President have already done quite a bit to help us with that, Rendon, D-Paramount (Los Angeles County), wrote in his reply. Thanks to your policies, voters in California added five Democrats to the Assembly in the last election. In addition, one Republican has decided to jump to the Democratic Party, citing the Presidents extreme positions. We now have a three-quarters majority plus one. Assemblyman Brian Maienschein, who held onto his San Diego-area seat in November by 603 votes, flipped his party registration from Republican to Democratic in January. That gave Democrats 61 out of 80 seats in the Assembly, seven more than they need to pass tax increases or any legislation that requires a two-thirds vote. Rendon also asked Pence, probably rhetorically, how the administration thought it was respecting states rights by waging constant legal battles, such as trying to revoke Californias ability to set stricter car emission standards than the federal governments. Although you probably know this, I would add that your Administration has been largely unsuccessful in its court attempts to take away our rights as a state, Rendon wrote, pointing in particular to the Justice Departments legal losing streak in trying to overturn Californias sanctuary state law. Nati Harnik/Associated Press California, meanwhile, has sued the Trump administration 47 times in the past two years most recently over new restrictions on family planning funding for organizations that perform abortions. We appreciate your recognition that the success of the United States is dependent on Californias success, Rendon added, before getting it one last dig at a list of federal agency liaisons that Pence included in his letter. If you are interested in diversifying that list beyond its current makeup roughly 75 percent male and between two-thirds and 95 percent white be sure to look to California, Rendon wrote. Our success is built on diversity. Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff A trove of rare moon rocks, preserved untouched for nearly half a century, will be unsealed by Bay Area scientists this summer and used for experiments that NASA hopes will solve lingering mysteries about the lunar surface and pave the way for future habitation of Earths natural satellite. Nine research teams, including two at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View and one at UC Berkeley, were selected this month to conduct high-tech studies of a special collection of rocks that astronauts dug up during the last Apollo mission in 1972 and placed in hermetically sealed containers. The rocks, which have never been exposed to Earths atmosphere, will undergo a variety of tests that will help scientists identify elements and pinpoint places on the lunar surface that could be useful for humans on future missions. The ultimate goal is to locate and squeeze out water, mine materials and use the moon as a jumping-off point for expeditions to other planets. For me its huge, said Alexander Sehlke, a geologist and research scientist at Ames who is leading a team of researchers. We are learning what our nearest neighbor is made of and how it can help us spread out from Earth to the moon and beyond into the solar system. The moon is the perfect laboratory to figure this out because it is so close. The selected teams are gathering at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the samples are stored, to make plans and begin coordinating activities and logistics before beginning the experiments this summer. Each team will have a share of the $8 million awarded by NASA to conduct its research. The moon rock research is possible only because NASA had the foresight nearly a half century ago to put core samples in vacuum-sealed canisters or helium vessels, or store them frozen at minus 30 Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), to create what are essentially lunar time capsules. The samples will be divvied up from 1.8 pounds of material collected by astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Gene Cernan during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, the last manned mission to the familiar sphere gracing Earths night sky. In the early 70s, the state of technology wasnt what it is right now, Sehlke said. Now we are able to do much more sophisticated analysis. The idea was to save the samples for future generations to study by protecting them from interacting with air, oxygen, nitrogen or other materials not on the moon. The two teams at NASA Ames will use the rocks to calculate the thermal history of the lunar surface and determine the impact of solar wind and radiation on the moons basic elements. The experiments will, by necessity, be limited. Sehlkes team will receive 15 frozen packets, containing a total of only 1.5 grams of rock, less than a teaspoon full. It is consequently very important to extract as much data as possible from every morsel, he said. Sehlkes plan is to heat the grains to 400 to 500 degrees Celsius (752 to 932 degrees Fahrenheit) and measure thermoluminescence, essentially the light intensity emitted by the rock. The technique will help researchers figure out the maximum temperature the rock was exposed to on the lunar surface since it was created out of a molten stew. The other Mountain View group, led by Richard Walroth of the Universities Space Research Association and David Blake of Ames, will use a stratified core sample stored in a vacuum-sealed drive tube to determine how the solar wind made up of charged particles carrying hydrogen from the sun impacts iron and other metals on the moon. The UC Berkeley team, led by Kees Welten, an associate research chemist at the universitys Space Sciences Laboratory, will use two tablespoons of material to study how cosmic rays, along with the impacts of meteorites and micrometeorites, affected the geology of the lunar surface. Humans are always looking for new things further out in the solar system, Welten said. Wed like to go to Mars sometime in the future, and going to the moon is one step toward that goal. The studies are important because NASA wants to put humans back on the moon by 2028. The agency sees it as a first step toward a manned flight to Mars. The space agencys ambitions were bolstered this year by Congress, which budgeted $21.5 billion for NASA during fiscal year 2019, a 3.5 percent increase over last year. The windfall, which was a good deal more than President Trump requested, is considered the best NASA budget in a decade. And the moon has recently taken on extra importance, thanks to a series of remarkable findings. It started with the discovery by the Lunar Prospector in 1998 of unusually large concentrations of hydrogen at the moons poles, particularly in the basins of craters, many of which had probably not seen sunlight in billions of years. In 2009, NASA deliberately crashed a spent rocket into a crater called Cabeus in an effort to kick up enough dust to determine whether there is water in the moons soil. Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts. We found that the hydrogen was in the form of water. We also found argon, mercury, gold a whole bunch of material there, said Kimberly Ennico Smith, a lunar scientist at the Ames Research Center, who pointed out that hydrogen can be used for fuel and metals can be used to build things. It renewed an interest in these special places of the moon that could actually be resources, she said. In 2013 and 2014, the structure and composition of the moons thin atmosphere was studied by an orbiter called the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, and an Indian moon mission found large quantities of hydroxyl oxygen bonded to hydrogen an integral component of organic chemistry. Without hydroxyl, certain substances humans rely on, such as sugars and alcohols, would not exist. The bottom line was that its not your grandfathers moon, Smith said. Its no longer dry, like we once believed. Its actually quite dynamic with molecules jumping around, and we havent explored an incredible amount of territory on the surface. Ames Research, one of 10 NASA field centers, is a leader in lunar exploration, managing three of the past five robotic missions to the moon. Researchers there recently developed a smart autonomous instrument to monitor carbon dioxide and other environmental factors, a sort of robotic caretaker that will be on a privately financed launch next month to the International Space Station. The center is also developing a yeast-filled device that will allow them to study the effect of cosmic rays on the human body and figure out what is the best material to block potentially damaging deep-space radiation. This month, NASA introduced its plans for a space station or command module, called Gateway, that would orbit the moon and make repeated lunar missions more convenient. Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: pfimrite@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @pfimrite Every once in a while in wine there is a paradigm shift. The reference points move. New heroes emerge. With the polarizing force of a swinging pendulum, the measurements of quality transform. One decade, we might prize opulent fruit flavors in a wine; the next, we fetishize high acidity. Right now, within a certain subset of California wine, a realignment is under way. Chances are, youve tasted it. Have you noticed that some red wines are creeping lighter and lighter, to the point of translucence? Fruit flavors in these wines are bright, crunchy, tart and often red-hued more pomegranate and raspberry, less blackberry and fig. Whole-cluster fermentation, in which stems are not removed from grapes, is increasingly common. Extraction is gentle. Aroma is privileged. Weight is not. The model for these wines is not, as has been the case for many of Californias great Cabernet Sauvignons, Bordeaux. Its not even really Burgundy. To the extent that there is a French corollary for these the new translucent reds of California its a region much sleepier and far less prestigious: Beaujolais. If Burgundy is the older sibling who had a successful career on Wall Street, Beaujolais is the freewheeling, quirky younger sibling who decided to go to art school. Located at the southern end of Burgundy, the Beaujolais region is home to Gamay, a grape that recalls a simpler version of Pinot Noir. Many Americans know Beaujolais for its nouveau wines, released just after harvest each November, but recent years have seen a surge in popularity and quality for the more serious, age-worthy cru Beaujolais. Just how influential is Beaujolais for some of Californias boundary-pushing producers today? Heres a sampling of sentiments that winemakers have recently offered to me. (I didnt put them up to it, I swear.) I love Beaujolais, says Kristie Tacey, who makes Tessier Wines. Its what Im inspired by and what I want to do. We make Pinot Noir, but we found ourselves not drinking much Pinot Noir, says Mikey Giugni, who with Michael Brughelli makes the Scar of the Sea label. We found ourselves drinking Beaujolais. Beaujolais is what we drink the most, says Matt Naumann, who makes Newfound Wines with his wife, Audra Chapman. We took our Counoise a grape from Frances Rhone Valley and said, Lets make this like Gamay. I barely have to explain myself to Abe Schoener, of the Scholium Project, before he interjects. Oh, new-school Beaujolais? he says. Yeah. That has become the paradigm. The paradigm. Russell Yip / The Chronicle Lets be clear. This is by no means to say that every winery in California is doing this, nor (crucially) that they should be. But the rise of these translucent reds, these California cru Beaujolais wines, has taken hold among a group of winemakers here in a very strong way. To those of us paying attention, the movement has become impossible to ignore. Hardy Wallace, of Dirty & Rowdy Family Wines, deserves a lot of credit for that. When Wallace began making wine, in 2010, he set out to look for Gamay. But there was still is very little of the grape planted in California. (Edmunds St. John in Berkeley was getting most of the states haul.) What Wallace could find, though, was Mourvedre, which in the southern Rhone produces a meaty, rich style of wine. A wine not at all like Beaujolais. Wallace wasnt deterred. We thought: What if we took this Beaujolais-like approach whole cluster, whole berry, minimal crushing but not full carbonic, he says, with a grape variety that is not normally produced in this way? Colleagues told him he was crazy, but he loved the results. We were blown away by how expressive the wine was aromatically, and how crystal-clear it showed the soils where it grew, he says. Dirty & Rowdy has since evolved into a Mourvedre-as-Beaujolais specialist, working with nine Mourvedre vineyards and treating them all in a relatively similar way, with 100 percent whole-cluster fermentations and gentle extractions. If you get caught up on whether Wallaces wines taste like Mourvedre should taste, you wont get very far. His have little in common with the classic Mourvedres of Domaine Tempier or Chateau Beaucastel or even Tablas Creek. I dont think about varietal correctness at all, says Wallace. But youd have to be an ascetic to not find his wines delicious. The Dirty & Rowdy reds smell juicy, energetically fruity, their aromas sometimes verging on candied apple or raspberry preserves. They feel tactile, grippy, raw against the mouth. They sacrifice not a bit of complexity for their translucence and feather-light weight. They go down easy. How did we get here? None of this happened out of the blue. We have witnessed a gradual lightening of wines in California over the last decade. Groups like In Pursuit of Balance preached, almost literally, the gospel of lower alcohol levels. The burgeoning natural wine movement celebrates glou glou wine meant for quick guzzling. Chillable reds are in. Carbonic maceration, including in nouveau wines, is now a standard tool in the California winemakers kit. Consider the European wines that are now in vogue with wines hipster elite: Mencia from Bierzo, Spain. Frappato and Nerello Mascalese from Sicily. Mission from Chile and the Canary Islands. Trousseau and Poulsard from Frances Jura region. (Gamay from Beaujolais that goes without saying.) All these wines cut a similar profile: light-bodied yet structured. Those are the wines that were drinking, says Jessica Stolpman, whose family owns Stolpman Vineyards in Santa Barbara County. We started wondering: Why arent we making wines like that? In addition to their long-standing line of more traditional, meant-to-age Syrahs and Roussannes, Stolpman Vineyards has now introduced a line they call So Fresh, which includes a vibrant Gamay and a carbonic-maceration Sangiovese, plus a spicy Trousseau under the new Combe label. Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more. I hadnt seen a lot of stuff like this when we started in 2010, Wallace says. Now youre starting to see this movement really go places. Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle Does this strong stylistic vision to make a wine like Beaujolais conflict with the idea of expressing terroir? Maybe. But Wallace truly believes that his method is the best way he can express a vineyards personality, even if all of his Beaujolais-inspired Mourvedres seem to have a distinctive Dirty & Rowdy personality, too. Or maybe California terroir can rewrite our understanding of what varietal correctness is. Take the Bechthold Vineyard in Lodi, for example, the subject of my column last week. The closest analog for Bechthold Cinsault is definitely cru Beaujolais, says Birichino winemaker John Locke. Do Bechtholds Cinsaults taste like French Cinsault? No, but they certainly convey a sense of place. In the hands of a dozen different winemakers, the wines unfailingly taste like Bechthold. Like Wallace, Locke has a strong style that permeates his lineup of wines. He makes varieties as disparate as Carignan and Pinot Noir, and all wear a Birichino signature of light extraction, crunchy fruit and intense savory qualities. (Interestingly, for a small portion of his Besson Vineyard Grenache, Locke performs appassimento, a process of drying grapes commonly used for Amarone.) Ive moved from thinking that the process creates flavor, says Locke, to thinking that these processes reveal flavor. If you grew up on the California classics, an appreciation of these pale red wines requires a palate recalibration. You might wonder: Wheres the oomph? Wheres the concentration? Will these wines age like the best California Cabernets? We dont really know yet. Birichino, Dirty & Rowdy and their cohort have been around for only about a decade. It helps that the wines are getting better and better. While it would be easy to make a low-extraction red wine in a style that ends up feeling anemic, stingy, flavor-depleted, the best of the California translucent reds are generous: explosively aromatic, richly textured and plenty fruity. A wine like Scar of the Seas Santa Barbara County Pinot Noir might look weedy alongside your prototypical concentrated, dark-fruited Russian River Valley Pinot, but to my palate its far more flavorful. Still, I have concerns. None of the components that make these new-cru Beaujolais wines successful the whole-cluster fermentations, the soft extractions, the low alcohol levels should be taken to their extremes. Too many light-bodied wines for the sake of light-bodied wines, too many bubblegum-laden carbonic experiments it all threatens to levy the same result as overripe grapes and excessive oak-barrel use, the qualities that many of todays progressive winemakers decry: homogenization. Thats the beautiful thing about wines swinging pendulum. It never stops moving. Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicles wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob All of a sudden, were seeing them everywhere: magenta and cranberry-hued, semi-transparent, explosively aromatic, filled with crunchy, tart flavors. Could this model of the ever-lighter red wine be the logical extension of the trend toward lower alcohol levels that weve been witnessing in California for the past decade? The tasting notes below represent a diverse set of California red wines in this distinctive, modern vein. All fall somewhere on the lighter, crunchier end of the spectrum, but within that general space they offer a range of colors, weights and flavor profiles. Most employ a large degree of whole-cluster fermentation, which can add an important textural component to a softly extracted wine. Some winemakers working in this vernacular explicitly cite cru Beaujolais as an inspiration. (For more on why, see my main story on this trend.) Many others dont, and their inclusion in this list reflects my own interpretation of their wine style. Finally, this list merely scratches the surface of the exciting, lighter red wines being made in California right now. Look also for wines from Edmunds St. John, Martha Stoumen, Jolie-Laide, Pax, RPM, Arnot-Roberts, Cruse, Purity and Scholium Project. All of the wines from Lodis Bechthold Vineyard, which I wrote about recently, would feel at home here. Dirty & Rowdy Mourvedre Antle Vineyard Chalone 2016 ($49, 12.6%): The Antle Vineyard, now known as Rodnick Farm Vineyard, is one of the best showcases of winemaker Hardy Wallaces Beaujolais-inspired style. Its at once delicate and muscular, and relentlessly floral bergamot, roses and juniper endure from the nose to the finish. Newfound Counoise Scaggs Vineyard Mount Veeder 2017 ($30, 11.5%): After a decade with Failla Wines, Matt Naumann left to start his own Rhone-focused project. For now, most of his wines come from musician Boz Scaggs small property on Mount Veeder in Napa. The Counoise, a minor red grape in the Rhone, is an exemplary translucent red: leafy, sanguine, floral and textured. It holds big, gamey Rhone flavors in an extraordinarily light frame. Scar of the Sea Pinot Noir Santa Barbara County 2017 ($28, 13%): Co-winemakers Michael Brughelli and Mikey Giugni are making some of the most exciting wines in Santa Barbara County right now. (They also make great cider.) This, their entry-level Pinot, is based on several Santa Maria Valley vineyards. Despite a little reduction, its hugely aromatic right now, exuding cranberry, lavender and mint, with a burst of candied cherry yet the wine feels almost weightless. Earth persists. Russell Yip / The Chronicle Birichino Grenache Besson Vineyard Central Coast 2016 ($25, 14%): From a century-plus-old vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains, this wine perfectly showcases the style of Birichino, a partnership between Bonny Doon alumni John Locke and Alex Krause. The Grenache recalls evergreen trees, cloves, herbal tea and underripe plum. Ten percent of the wine undergoes appassimento, a process of drying grapes (common in Amarone wine), but you wouldnt know it; the fruit qualities remain fresh and lively. Two Shepherds Carignan Trimble Vineyard Mendocino County 2016 ($30, 13%): A little bit heftier and darker-fruited than some of the other wines in this list, Two Shepherds Carignan sings with bright, crushed cranberries and a hint of baby powder. Idlewild Nebbiolo Fox Hill Vineyard Mendocino County 2015 ($50, 13.9%): Of the many Piedmont-inspired wines that Sam Bilbro makes from Mendocino County vineyards, several fit a translucent-yet-structured bill. (If thats your style, look for Idlewilds Dolcetto and Barbera.) But Bilbros Nebbiolo may be his best output. Brick-colored and diaphanous, the wine smells like leather and sandalwood, with red fruit and delicate floral notes singing back-up. The tannins are monstrous in spite of the wines delicacy, in classic Nebbiolo fashion. Russell Yip / The Chronicle Tessier Cabernet Franc Alegria Vineyard Russian River Valley 2017 ($38, 12.4%): Microbiologist-turned-winemaker Kristie Tacey makes one of Californias few Gamays, from the Barsotti Vineyard in El Dorado County. But this unusual wine, a Russian River Cab Franc, showcases that Beaujolais-like style just as beautifully. It smells and tastes like Christmas, with pine cone, ginger and licorice flavors. That signature Cab Franc green pepper flavor is present, but far more integrated than you might expect at this alcohol level. Deux Punx Pinot Noir Elk Prairie Vineyard Humboldt County 2015 ($36, 14.4%): This idiosyncratic wine label is the side project of two San Francisco engineers, Dan Schaaf and Aaron Olson. Their Elk Prairie Pinot tastes much lighter than its alcohol level would suggest, with candied cherry, cranberry and prickly pepper flavors and refined, long tannins. Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more. Sandlands Trousseau Sonoma County 2016 ($28, 12.7%): Tegan Passalacqua, also the winemaker for Turley Wine Cellars, says that the Turley Bechthold Cinsault, which I discussed in my column last week, was the first Sandlands wine. He means that the Bechthold profile delicate weight, crunchy fruit, earth and flowers inspired him to seek out plantings for his Sandlands label like this Trousseau from the Bohan Vineyard on the Sonoma Coast. The Trousseau is more about aroma than flavor, showing sweet strawberry and wildflowers, tiptoeing across the palate rather than embracing it. Russell Yip / The Chronicle Stolpman GDG Gamay Ballard Canyon 2018 ($30, 12.5%): This family estate in Santa Barbara County is launching its So Fresh line of wines on April 1. Designed as lighter-bodied, early-drinking counterparts to their more traditional (and also excellent) Rhone-focused portfolio, these offbeat varietals are still sourced from Stolpmans Ballard Canyon estate. The So Fresh Gamay is full of sweet, tart cherry and mint with an impression of forest floor. It would do well with a slight chill. In addition to the other So Fresh wines, look out for Trousseau from Stolpmans new Combe label. Prie Mencia Silvaspoons Vineyard Lodi 2017 ($33, 11.8%): This represents the first known planting in California of Mencia, the grape of Spains Bierzo region. Though usually fuller-bodied than Gamay, Mencia tends to share that grapes balance of bright fruit flavors and earthiness. Prie Winerys rendition is very light, with a suggestion of cured meat on the nose. Its savory, feral and stony, with quiet red fruit flavors. Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicles wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob The Ventura County Sheriff's Office released images dated March 14 showing the filthy interior of a rat-infested home in Ojai, Calif., where a 96-year-old man was living with his daughter. Catherine Ann Vandermaesen, 65, was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of felony elder abuse and misdemeanor animal neglect, the Sheriff's Office said in a statement. The images show floors caked with animal feces, cages filled with rats, a kitchen piled high with dirty dishes and garbage, and a urine-stained bed strewn with bottles, newspapers and napkins. ALSO: Hoarder gets rid of stuff to move into a tiny home Vandermaesen didn't want to allow deputies inside the home during a welfare check last Wednesday in Ojai, a small city in a rural valley northwest of Los Angeles, the statement said. A sheriff's task force returned the next day and encountered multiple pets and urine and feces throughout the residence. Eight dogs, two rabbits, a cat, an African gray parrot and 55 pet rats were removed. Animal Control estimated the house was infested with another 200 to 700 rats, roaming the two-bedroom house, its walls and garage. Vandermaesen's elderly father and her 74-year-old sister, who deputies described as a "possible victim," were taken by ambulance to a hospital. Their conditions were unknown. County welfare authorities assumed custody of Vandermaesen's father, who uses a wheelchair. Officials also helped the sister get temporary housing services. Vandermaesen had "willfully caused or permitted the health of her elderly father to suffer" by allowing him to live at the home, officials said. The city has yellow-tagged the home and declared it "unlivable and a danger to the occupants and animals." The Associated Press contributed to this story. A number of changes to future Burning Man events are being recommended by the Bureau of Land Management, and it seems many of the suggestions aren't sitting well with the Burning Man staff, who are calling the new measures "unreasonable." A 372-page draft version of the annual Environmental Impact Statement was released last week by BLM. The Burning Man staff took to its website Wednesday to call attention to various points in the document, which the staff felt would "negatively change" Burning Man and substantially raise ticket costs. "Our initial assessment of the Draft EIS determined many of the measures recommended by BLM are unreasonable," the staff wrote in a blog post on its site. "Some are in direct conflict with our community's core principles and would forever negatively change the fabric of the Burning Man event." BURNING MAN 2018: Police report 44 arrests, 1 death, armed car jacking and plane crash Among the contested changes suggested by BLM in the draft report, according to the Burning Man website, were: Federal oversight over certain parts of Burning Man's operations 10 miles of either plastic or cement barriers around the perimeter fence Dumpsters within the city and along Gate Road for the 80,000 participants BLM-approved private security funded by Burning Man who would be screening for weapons and drugs for anyone entering Black Rock City. One suggestion, labelled as "brazen" in the Burning Man staff statement, was that the group would pay for the maintenance of County Road 34, which takes participants to the entrance. "We know of no other instance in the United States where a private entity is required by the federal government to pay for maintenance of a public county road that is also used year-round by residents, tourists, and businesses," the Burning Man group said in its statement. "In addition, Nevada and Washoe County include a gas tax allocated in part for road repair (which participants have contributed to for 29 years) and Burning Man Project is already working closely in collaboration with Washoe County to find a more permanent solution for CR34." Burning Man is not without its issues, as setting up a temporary city for 70,000 comes with its own set of headaches. Among the issues that the suggested changes seem to be addressing are arrests (most having to do with drug possession and trafficking of drugs), ongoing trash issues on the playa and in nearby towns following the event, and security. Burning Man organizers estimated the additions to the Burning Man event would cost nearly $10 million a year and that the cost of tickets could be raised as a result. "BLM would benefit financially from these increased expenses," the group wrote, pointing out that BLM takes a percentage of Burning Man's gross revenue already which the Reno Gazette-Journal noted was a 3-percent use fee. Further, the Burning Man organizers already compensate for labor and operations performed by BLM staff, a cost recovery fee that the Gazette-Journal reported reached $2.5 million in 2017. When reached for comment by SFGATE, Burning Man organizers said they did not have any further statements to add beyond its post on the topic. HISTORY LESSON: Burning Man has been ruined. But it was doomed from the beginning. Further complicating matters is the fact that organizers are seeking a 10-year permit with BLM to continue to hold the event at Black Rock Desert, which has been "home" to Burners for 27 years. The environmental impact statement was done in part to look at the potential outcome if the event grows to hold up to 100,000 people, versus its current attendee numbers of 70,000, or not holding the event at all. The field manager for the Bureau of Land Management's Black Rock Field Office said its suggestions are "attempts at trying to solve problems" in comments to the Gazette-Journal, emphasizing that the report is not yet finalized. Public comment on the environmental impact statement is currently open until April 29 via BLM's website and two public meetings scheduled for April 8 in Reno and April 9 in Lovelock. Read Dianne de Guzman's latest stories and send her news tips at ddeguzman@sfgate.com. Start receiving breaking news emails on wildfires, civil emergencies, riots, national breaking news, Amber Alerts, weather emergencies, and other critical events with the SFGATE breaking news email. Click here to make sure you get the news. When President Trump signed a large package of tax cuts into law in 2017, the IRS moved to make sure the savings showed up quickly in paychecks. Doing so probably lifted consumer spending last year, but it may have hurt Republicans politically, new polling suggests. Administration officials, it appears, underestimated Americans love of tax refunds. Nearly 4 in 5 people say they would rather overpay their federal income taxes and get a refund every spring effectively making an interest-free loan to the government than to underpay and owe money come tax season, according to a poll for the New York Times by San Mateo online research firm SurveyMonkey. That preference appears to be influencing how Americans view Trumps signature cuts: Among people who have already filed their returns, those who said they received a bigger refund this year are far more likely than others to approve of the law. But many people are reporting that their refunds are smaller this tax season, or that they owe money. In addition to being more likely than other Americans to say they oppose the law, those people feel worse about the economy overall. They are also significantly more likely to disapprove of Trumps performance in office. The findings suggest that the administrations decisions on withholding may have hurt the law politically. I was hopeful that the rhetoric for once was going to match expectations and it did not, said Tony Mendes, 61, a federal employee in Denver. I got back less than I would have anticipated. Bigger paychecks for most but smaller refunds for some: Independent analyses consistently show that the 2017 law gave most Americans a tax cut, and few families will end up paying more than under the previous rules. Federal officials faced a choice about how to pass those savings on to taxpayers. One option would have been to make most people wait until they filed tax returns this spring, delivering a tax-season windfall but essentially delaying the cut by a year. Instead, the IRS chose to begin withholding less from workers paychecks early last year. That put more money in workers pockets right away, but made the effects of the tax cut harder to see, since the savings amounted to just a few dollars per pay period for many people. Administration officials this week stood by their decisions on how to update withholding tables. They said their goal was to make the tables as accurate as possible, and to encourage taxpayers to use a calculator on the IRS website to estimate their liability or refund at the end of the year and decide whether to change how much was being withheld. But for some people, the IRS decision has resulted in a nasty shock come tax season. The new law made numerous changes to the tax code eliminating and capping some deductions and credits while increasing others and the revised withholding rules did not account for every situation. As a result, government auditors warned last year that the withholding changes would reduce refunds for several million Americans. It is not yet clear how many Americans will end up paying more. As of last week, IRS statistics showed that the average refund had not changed for those who had filed. But total filings were down, and the share of returns producing a refund had declined by 0.5 percentage points, or about 300,000 filers. (Experts caution against reading too much into tax statistics before the April filing deadline.) Smaller refunds could be hurting support: Among people who have already filed returns, 32 percent said their refunds had shrunk from a year ago, compared with 22 percent who said their refunds had grown, according to the Times survey. Another 11 percent said they owed money this year. Refunds reflect the difference between what taxpayers had withheld during the year and what they actually owed. They reveal next to nothing about whether a given household got a tax cut under the 2017 law. Still, it is not always easy for taxpayers to figure out how they are affected by policy changes, and many people may draw conclusions based on the size of their refunds. Among respondents who said their refunds were smaller or that they owed money, just 35 percent believed they had gotten a tax cut as a result of the law. Among those whose refunds grew or stayed the same, on the other hand, 49 percent said they had gotten a tax cut. Cause and effect is not always straightforward in public opinion surveys. It is possible that people who already approved of Trump and his policies are more likely to believe their refunds had grown, or are at least more likely to report that to pollsters. Surveys in recent years have revealed growing partisan splits on views of the economy and other issues. Laura Wronski, a researcher for SurveyMonkey, noted that Republicans were more likely to say their refunds had gotten bigger. Its just unlikely that it aligns that perfectly along partisan lines, she said. Its more likely that people are going to stick to the side theyre on. Still, partisanship is not the whole story. Even among Republicans, those who said their refunds had shrunk were significantly less likely to believe they had received a tax cut. Low earners are not the only ones affected. Alan Abraham, who works in medical research in Pittsburgh, said he used his tax refund every year to buy season tickets to the Penguins. This year his refund was much smaller, and he has not decided whether to renew. Abraham said he paid more under the new tax law because of its cap on the deduction for state and local taxes, which hit him particularly hard because he owns two homes. A political independent who supports a flat tax, Abraham said he mistrusted politicians of both parties and did not vote in 2016. But he said the tax law had made him less likely to support Trump next year. At the beginning I was, like, Well, lets see how he does, Abraham said. Based on the fact that my tax bill has gone up, I actually wouldnt vote for him. The tax law has gotten more popular: Despite the skepticism of people like Abraham, the tax law has gained support in recent months. Half of the surveys respondents said they approved of the law, up from 45 percent in September and the highest share since February 2018. (The Times has not asked about the tax law every month.) There are signs that as more people file returns, they are discovering that they benefited. Among those who had filed before completing the survey, 43 percent said they definitely or probably received a tax cut, compared with 35 percent of those who had not yet filed. It seems like people are realizing as theyre going through the process of doing their taxes that, Oh, things did improve for me, and I wasnt expecting that, said Wronski, the SurveyMonkey researcher. Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley are New York Times writers. As more businesses have started going cashless, a backlash to the trend is brewing, and now Amazon Go stores could be banned from San Francisco if a proposed change to the police code comes to pass. District Five Supervisor Vallie Brown introduced a resolution banning cashless stores last month over concerns that such businesses aren't accessible to people who can't obtain debit and credit cards. On Tuesday, she modified the proposal to include Amazon Go among the ranks of stores that would need to modify their payment practices or be banned, Curbed reported Wednesday. ONE WOMAN'S REVIEW: I wanted to hate SF's new Amazon Go store. I loved it "For many City residents (for example, those who are denied access to credit, or who are unable to obtain bank accounts), the ability to purchase goods and services depends on the ability to pay for those goods and services in cash," Brown explained in a memo last month. "This is especially true of the very poor." The memo went on to cite a study finding that nationwide, 17 percent of African American households and 14 percent of Latino households had no bank account in 2017. "In short, denying the ability to use cash as a payment method means excluding too many people," wrote Brown. ALSO: What's the deal with the Amazon 4-Star store in Berkeley? For their part, some businesses argue that going cashless makes them less vulnerable to robbery and accounting errors and encourages patrons to tip more consistently. San Francisco's first Amazon Go store opened on the corner of Battery and Kearney in the Financial District back in October. Customers need to download an app, link it to their Amazon accounts and scan the app to enter the store. Once a customer is inside, the store tracks what items he or she picks up. When a customer leaves with items, he or she receives a receipt via email. There are no cashiers, no currency exchanged, no lines. MORE: Legislation could force stores to take your cash A second location opened on Post and Kearny Streets, two blocks from Union Square, in January. As originally proposed last month, Brown's ban on cashless businesses would apply only to brick and mortar retail, exempting food trucks, pop-ups and Amazon Go, with the reasoning that these types of businesses don't have enough employees on-site to handle cash. But Brown shifted her stance on Amazon Go stores at Tuesday's meeting, saying that Amazon should hire employees to accept cash at its stores, according to Curbed. "They can afford it," she said. If Brown's legislation passes, San Francisco will not be the first to take such a step. Philadelphia made the move to ban cashless stores earlier this month, and New Jersey has followed suit, becoming the second state to ban cashless stores (Massachusetts was early to the party, with a ban passed back in 1978). This article, The secret to better cheese might be hip-hop, scientists say, originally appeared on CNET.com. Here's a cheese pairing for you: Emmental cheese and hip-hop. Researchers in Switzerland undertook an experiment to see how exposing cheese to different types of music would affect the aging process. Or as the Bern University of Arts described it, the "bio-acoustic impact of sound waves affects metabolic processes in cheese." Turns out, hip-hop has the most desirable effects. SEE ALSO: Coleman ACS program to explore link between music and the brain The process, which Reuters reported earlier in the month, involved 22-pound wheels of Emmental put in wooden crates last September. Mini transmitters conducted the energy of songs like Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, We Got it from Here by A Tribe Called Quest and even Mozart's Magic Flute, 24 hours a day for 6 months. Michael Harenberg, one of the researchers, told Reuters, "All the energy is directly resonating inside of the cheese." A culinary jury did a blind taste-test twice and both times preferred the cheese that was exposed to hip-hop, citing texture, taste and appearance, according to Reuters. READ MORE: Beloved Mountain View grocery store closing after 45 years in business That doesn't necessarily mean cheese makers should start bathing their cheeses in music. More for you Beloved grocery store closing after 45 years in business In a report summary, researchers said they'll need to conduct more testing in order to determine if there is, in fact, a link between sound waves and the aging process. For now, they're calling the confirmation of their hypothesis "conceivable but not compelling." Originally published at 7:22 a.m. PT. Update at 9:30 a.m. PT: Adds information from Bern University of Arts. Police in Palo Alto are looking for a man who allegedly entered a woman's bedroom, turned off the lights, sat on her bed and tried to talk to her before leaving. According to the Palo Alto Police Department, police were contacted at 3:45 a.m. Sunday about an intruder in an apartment on the 3900 block of El Camino Real. Police interviewed two women in their 20s who said that a man "wearing gloves and holding a flashlight" entered one of their bedrooms while she was trying to study. The woman said the man turned off the lights, sat next to her in her bed and tried to have a conversation with her. She left the room to find her roommate, and the suspect left the apartment. RELATED: California man, 96, found in home with 700 rats Police said the suspect did not touch the woman, make any threats or steal anything during the encounter. Officers were unsure of a motive, and said he likely gained entrance to the apartment through an unlocked front door. The suspect is described as a Hispanic male in his 30s who is 5 feet and 8 inches tall and weighs about 180 pounds. He wore a dark hooded sweatshirt and black pants during the incident. ALSO: Man uses nude mannequins to send message to 'nosey' neighbor Anyone who has information on the suspect is encouraged to call 650-329-2413 or email the police department's anonymous tip line at paloalto@tipnow.org. Eric Ting is an SFGATE staff writer. Email him at eting@sfchronicle.com and follow him on Twitter Start receiving breaking news emails on floods, wildfires, civil emergencies, riots, national breaking news, Amber Alerts, weather emergencies, and other critical events with the SFGATE breaking news email. Click here to make sure you get the news. Several months ago I moved to an almost offensively idyllic block in Rockridge. Having strolled College Avenue many times in the months before my move, I was aware that this neighborhood was packed to the gills with high-quality dogs. But it was only when I began walking my own dog on the surrounding side streets that I started noticing the many, many signs imploring my dog not to pee and poop. A large share of these signs were not on front lawns an area I think of as a clear, cut and dried extension of someones house and therefore domain but instead in the more liminal area between the sidewalk and the street, or sometimes in the sidewalk islands that house trees. EAST BAY DEBATE: When is it ok to steal your neighbor's produce? The signs say things like "BE RESPECTFUL." Others make jokes that are mildly upsetting, like "Warning: Electrified grass activated by dog poop." It would almost be easier to deal with the signs if their subtext was made text, if they came right out and said, You are a bad person if you let your dog do his or her business on the tree-island in front of my house, which I have been empowered to maintain by the City of Oakland, although it is still technically public property. But no, the signs do not state. They merely imply. They are like a lady from the South saying Bless your heart when she clearly means I hope you choke on your own bile. The platonic ideal of the Dont pee here sign was spotted by my boss in the North Bay. It does not verbally reference peeing, pooping, or even dogs. Instead, it says only: Non, merci, with a silhouette of a dog. Non, merci!!! French is the language of diplomacy, after all, the anti-pee sign-owner probably thought smugly before hammering that sign into the dirt. Many of the signs will not deign to mention poop and pee themselves, instead just gesturing at them vaguely, like relics from the Victorian Era. To this, I would like to offer a piece of advice: If youre not direct enough to talk about poop and pee, youre not going to tell me where my dog can poop and pee (when it is also public property). ALSO: These are the new etiquette rules San Francisco needs I am not unsympathetic to the plight of the homeowner here. My friend Steve meticulously tends to the plant situation around his house, scrupulously maintaining his verdant lawn at great personal cost, only to have the same neighbor bring her dog to poop on it every day, like clockwork. To have one's labor pooped all over is certainly not an ideal situation. "One time I was in my garage getting ready to leave for work, and the girl with the dog walked by my house to wait at the end of the street, and was just waiting there with the dog," he recalled. "Then as I was driving away I saw, in the rear view mirror, her walk back to my lawn and let her dog poop." While, again, I do not let my dog poop or pee on lawns, I can see how this sort of situation could embitter a person towards dogs and the people who let them out to do their business willy-nilly all over a neighborhood. But there's also an air of hostility and paranoia, an air of Panopticon-lite, cultivated by placing finger-wagging signs on what is functionally property reserved for public use the sidewalk. There is a gulf in how reasonable it is to insist that people clean up after their pets in such areas (very reasonable) and to insist that their pets should not go to the bathroom at all (less reasonable!). Alas, it seems there is a long-simmering cold war between the dog owners and the people with delicate bushes and flowers in the sidewalk zone, if a number of heated threads on NextDoor are any indication. In my neighborhood, a recently shared comic shows a person who did not pick up after their dog being ushered into the depths of hell. "Exactly where they belong! Ha!! Ha!!" one person replied. "Exactly!" chimed in another. Indeed, a cursory look at Twitter suggests the trend exists across cities, with one woman from Denver describing a controversial Nextdoor post in which a person shared a photo of their dog pooping next to a piece of anti-poop signage, spawning a thread in which people unsurprisingly "lost their s." Look, I will always steer my dog away from your lawn, and its impressive range of flowering bushes and tasteful drought-resistant succulents. But I cannot help it if, at some point on the three quarters of a mile between me and the dog park the closest one available near my apartment, which does not have a yard she has to pee somewhere on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. This does not warrant being shamed by a tiny, yet potently judgment-loaded, placard. That strip is a bathroom for animals. It is the least objectionable place for them to possibly pee. I guarantee various raccoons and squirrels are already peeing there, and some of them literally have the plague! Think of it from the dog's perspective imagine having a full bladder and being forced to walk past a half-mile of perfectly acceptable toilets arrayed in a line, taunting you. Imagine making your way past all those suitable bathroom spots before you reach another, virtually identical place where peeing is allowed. Could you do it every day? I could not! Isn't the point of choosing to live in a city, acknowledging that we don't have complete control over our surroundings, that that lack of control is one source of the dynamism and vitality of the urban landscape? Isn't it the essence of being a good neighbor to acknowledge that we are all doing the best that we can, that the messiness of life (sometimes literally) is an inevitability that we can all face more gracefully with kindness? WASHINGTON The chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee revealed information Thursday that he said showed that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner used private email accounts and a publicly available messaging service for official White House business in a way that possibly violated federal records laws. A lawyer for Ivanka Trump, President Trumps daughter, and Kushner, the presidents son-in-law and senior adviser, told the committee late last year that in addition to a private email account, Kushner uses an unofficial encrypted messaging service, WhatsApp, for official White House business, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the committees chairman, revealed. That business includes foreign contacts, the lawyer, Abbe Lowell, told the committee. Cummings said Lowell also told the committee that Ivanka Trump did not preserve some emails sent to her private account if she did not reply to them. Democrats have barely been able to contain their frustration at what they see as a dark irony in the findings and in earlier media reports about the couples use of private email accounts. Donald Trump made Hillary Clintons use of a private email server while she was secretary of state a central line of attack in his 2016 campaign for president. Even after the FBI declined to charge Clinton for her practices and handling of classified information, Republicans in Congress have continued to pick away at the case. Lowell could not say if Kushner had communicated classified information on the messaging service, WhatsApp, telling lawmakers that was above my pay grade. He argued that because Kushner took screenshots of the communications and sent them to his official White House account or the National Security Council, his client was not in violation of federal records laws. In a letter disclosing the information Thursday, Cummings said the finding added urgency to his investigation of possible violations of the Presidential Records Act by members of the Trump administration, including Kushner and Ivanka Trump. He accused the White House of stonewalling his committee on information that it had requested months ago, when Republicans still controlled the House. The White Houses failure to provide documents and information is obstructing the committees investigation into allegations of violations of federal records laws by White House officials, Cummings wrote. Nicholas Fandos is a New York Times writer. WASHINGTON Earths ultimate survivors can weather extreme heat, cold, radiation and even the vacuum of space. Now the U.S. military hopes these tiny critters called tardigrades can teach us about true toughness. These water bears are pipsqueaks, only about the size of a period. Under a microscope they look like some combination of chubby bear and single-eyed alien. And they are the closest life gets to indestructible. No water? No worries. Tardigrades survive. Antarctic cold, 300-degree heat, a lack of oxygen, even punishing radiation doesnt stop these animals. They are so resilient in the face of so many dangers that scientists think their unique biology may hold clues to how we can make crops more resistant to drought, better preserve blood and medicines, and even make more effective sunscreen. When the going gets tough for tardigrades, they curl up, dry out and wait. Then, when the environment gets better and they get water, they spring back to life. Scientists say they can stay dormant for decades before reanimating. In 2007, scientists put two species of tardigrades in containers, launched them into orbit and opened them up to cold, airless space full of punishing radiation from the sun and stars. If you were put into that same thing, you would explode, said tardigrade expert Randy Miller, a biologist at Baker University in Kansas. They lived and later multiplied, and the offspring from those tardigrade astronauts are still alive, Miller said. There are as many as 1,200 species of tardigrades, and they live all over Earth, from mountain tops to ocean depths to driveways. In December, the Defense Departments long-term research arm gave University of North Carolina biologist Thomas Boothby a nearly $5 million grant to figure out what in tardigrade genes might help human health. Tardigrades are so otherworldly that some theorize that they could easily exist on planets outside the solar system. Seth Borenstein is an Associated Press writer. LIMA, Ohio President Trump returned Wednesday to Ohio, the state that foretold his 2016 victory, with a tour of a tank plant, where he touted its revival and told cheering workers we are rebuilding the American military, we are restoring American manufacturing and we are once again fighting for our great American workers. Trump could not resist using the visit to criticize the late Sen. John McCain, saying McCain didnt get the job done for our great vets in the VA and claiming that he badly hurt the Republican Party and the nation with his vote against repealing the health care overhaul put in place under President Barack Obama. McCain died last year of brain cancer. Trumps visit to Ohio marked his first trip to the state since last years midterm election campaign , when the state was a rare bright spot for Republicans in the upper Midwest. But with Trumps path to another four years in the White House relying on a victory in the state, his nascent campaign is mindful of warning signs that Ohio can hardly be taken for granted in 2020. Perhaps no state has better illustrated the re-aligning effects of Trumps candidacy and presidency than Ohio, where traditionally Democratic-leaning working-class voters have swung heavily toward the GOP, and moderate Republicans in populous suburban counties have shifted away from Trump. Its for that reason, administration officials said, that Trump keeps returning to Ohio this weeks visit marks his 10th to the state since taking office. The visit is part of a 2020 Trump strategy to appear in battleground states in his official White House capacity as much as possible this year, said a person with knowledge of the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly. Trump is expected to make similar trips throughout the year as he seeks to boost enthusiasm to counter an energized Democratic base. Its a strategy employed by previous presidents, both to leverage the prestige of office for political purposes and to offset the steep costs of presidential campaign travel with corresponding taxpayer-funded events. Trump visited the Lima Army Tank Plant, which had been at risk for closure but is now benefiting from his administrations investments in defense spending. Hell also hold a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Canton. You better love me, he told workers. I kept this place open. In this heavy manufacturing state, Trump cited efforts hes taken to negotiate new trade agreements and enact tariffs to protect steel manufacturers. He described how his administration has confronted China on its trading practices because the days of stealing American jobs and ideas have come to an end. Zeke Miller and Darlene Superville are Associated Press writers. An investigation has been launched to determine whether acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan violated ethics rules by promoting products made by his former employer, Boeing, while serving in his current role at the Pentagon, the Defense Department's inspector general announced Wednesday. Shanahan, who worked at Boeing for more than 30 years prior to taking a job at the Pentagon, has faced accusations of being overly warm toward the company and claims that he "disparaged the company's competitors to his subordinates" from a federal watchdog called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). CREW filed a complaint last week asking the inspector general to launch a probe into whether Shanahan's actions violated his signed ethics agreement, which aims to ensure there are no conflicts of interest with Boeing while he is at the Pentagon. "The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General has decided to investigate complaints that we recently received that Acting Secretary Shanahan allegedly took actions to promote his former employer, Boeing, and disparage its competitors, allegedly in violation of ethics rules," a spokesman for the office said in a statement. "In his recent Senate Armed Services Committee testimony, Acting Secretary Shanahan stated that he supported an investigation into these allegations. We have informed him that we have opened this investigation," the statement said. A defense official told CNN Wednesday that the IG precisely chose to use the word investigation because there is enough credible initial information beyond the complaint filed by CREW to warrant a probe into whether Shanahan violated his ethics agreement. The IG has not yet come to a conclusion as to whether a violation occurred, the official emphasized. "It is extremely disturbing that acting Secretary Shanahan appears to be using his public office for Boeing's private gain," Noah Bookbinder, executive director of CREW, said last week. "Ethics rules make clear that government employees cannot abuse their offices to promote a private company, much less work on official matters involving their former employer," he added. Lt. Col. Joe Buccino, a spokesman for Shanahan, said in a statement that "Acting Secretary of Defense Shanahan welcomes the Inspector General's review of the complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington." "Acting Secretary Shanahan has at all times remained committed to upholding his ethics agreement filed with the DoD. This agreement ensures any matters pertaining to Boeing are handled by appropriate officials within the Pentagon to eliminate any perceived or actual conflict of interest issue with Boeing," he said. Last week, when Shanahan was asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal whether he supports such an investigation by the IG, Shanahan said, "yes, I do." Shanahan has been one of the names under consideration to be nominated by President Donald Trump as the full-time secretary of defense. Mr Eimutis Misiunas, the Lithuanian Minister of Interior, visited Eurojust, the EU's Judicial Cooperation Unit, at its premises in The Hague today. Mr Misiunas met with Ladislav Hamran, President of Eurojust, to discuss the benefits and prospects of judicial cooperation at European level. Mr Misiunas stressed the importance of smooth and effective cooperation not only among Member States' and third States' national authorities but also among all Justice and Home Affairs agencies and other key partners in the area of safety and security. The Lithuanian Minister of Interior acknowledged the significant bridge-making role of Eurojust between different national jurisdictions and legal systems and praised the President for the concrete results produced by Eurojust over the last decades in fighting cross-border organised crime. Mr Misiunas showed particular interest in understanding how Eurojust works in practice and was introduced, inter alia, to the main features and functionalities of Eurojust's unique judicial cooperation tools, i.e. coordination meetings, coordination centres, and most importantly, joint investigation teams. Mr Misiunas said: 'As I used to be a judge myself, I absolutely recognise and value the role of Eurojust in creating an area of freedom, security and justice in the European Union. Countries differ in their judicial systems, structures and procedures, as well as standards and rules. Eurojust represents an example of how effective cooperation and coordination can be managed and sustained. To maintain security and stability in the European Union and beyond, we share the responsibility to prevent, identify, investigate, and prosecute organised crime. In this regard, I firmly believe that EU agencies can serve Member States and their national authorities in fighting transnational crime, especially now, facing the new challenges of terrorism and cybercrime. Therefore, I strongly support the position of securing today an adequate and sustainable budget for EU agencies for the years to come.' Mr Hamran stated: 'I warmly welcome Mr Misiunas' visit to Eurojust as Lithuania is an important member of the Eurojust family. I was pleased to present to Mr Misiunas our facilities and explain on the spot how we work, which tools we offer to Member States, and how we improve judicial cooperation across the European Union on a daily basis. Today's visit is a step forward in consolidating the mutual trust between Eurojust and Lithuania, building on Lithuania's commitment to continue investigating and prosecuting cross-border organised crime from a European perspective.' Photo Eurojust RICHMOND (BCN) Richmond City Council took their staff's advice Tuesday night, opting not to move forward toward the annexation of North Richmond, an island of unincorporated Contra Costa County land within city limits, because there was low public support and it would be costly for all parties involved. At stake is about 900 acres filled mostly with single-family residences housing an estimated 3,700 people. For those living in the areas under consideration, property, sales and utility taxes would all increase -- and broadly speaking those residents reported they were not in favor of annexation during a public outreach campaign that included holding public meetings and going door to door. The campaign also included a mail survey sent to roughly 3,500 recipients including 1,300 registered voters. Out of 235 respondents, 199 of them were against annexation. City staff also assumed the process might get bogged down by protests. Moreover, the annexation would lead to budget deficits. "It would cost us annually $2.2 million to annex," said city analyst Lashonda White. The financial impact that deficit would have on the city's finances might adversely affect Richmond's ability to provide services to current residents from the police and fire departments. That concern was also echoed by some residents of unincorporated North Richmond, who worried that the city may be unable to provide services at an adequate level, White said. Community members who spoke during public comment were largely opposed to annexation, with one woman citing fears of the Richmond Police Department in the black and brown communities. Councilmember Jael Myrick said he was glad to see the city finally go through the long process of evaluating the annexation of North Richmond with an eye toward what would best benefit the people living there. But he also acknowledged the role that racism and segregation had played in the historical exclusion of North Richmond's predominantly black residents. "The history of how we got to this, how North Richmond got to be unincorporated, is a history of injustice. It is a history of racism," Myrick said. "The problem is that things have changed," he added. "In order for North Richmond to become a part of this city, that means the cost to the people that live in North Richmond is going to increase. And what I've heard them say pretty clearly they would rather that not happen." "At that point the injustice becomes forcing them into a situation that they don't want," Myrick said. He moved to follow staff's advice and not annex North Richmond. Before the vote Mayor Tom Butt responded, agreeing that the city had avoided annexing the unincorporated island of county land because it had been one of the few places black families could purchase homes during the Post-War Era. He also speculated that negotiations with Contra Costa County might address any budget deficit stemming from annexation, as county agencies are currently on the hook for the cost of providing services to North Richmond. He raised concerns, however, about the way the public outreach process had been set up by past councils, saying that it was not done in the manner described by state law. "I think it was phony, it was doomed to fail," Butt said. Myrick pushed back against that assertion, however, saying that he and Butt had been in agreement about the process as most of it played out. Councilman Demnlus Johnson III pointed out that no other city has the option to annex North Richmond, and asked what he referred to as a "rhetorical question." "What's the rush?" he said. The council had a healthy debate, which included one member of the audience being escorted out by police at the direction of Butt, who called the man "out of order." Myrick's motion passed with the mayor casting the sole dissenting vote. Copyright 2019 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. PLEASANT HILL (BCN) Contra Costa County District IV Supervisor Karen Mitchoff, speaking at a Monday evening meeting of the Pleasant Hill City Council, expressed regret that some constituents felt plans to temporarily close and replace the city's library were inadequately publicized, but reiterated her fiduciary responsibility to the county at large. "As you know, there (have) been a few concerns," Mitchoff said, responding to criticism over one aspect of the library project calling for closing the current library roughly 18 months before opening the new one. The county owns the property at 1750 Oak Park Blvd., and Mitchoff said that asset's "best and highest use" would be to put it on the market. "Real estate prices are slowing down in the Bay Area, and in order to maximize the taxpayer asset that belongs to us .... We're hoping to sell the land for between $10 and $15 million dollars," Mitchoff said. "We are planning on closing the library in August," she added. "We hope to have the property on the market this fall." Mitchoff pointed out that development plans call for adding 34 new residences to the region's housing stock. "We're getting a lot of pressure from Sacramento on housing, granted the housing there will not be what you would consider affordable," Mitchoff said. City and county officials plan to build a new library on adjacent land, with an anticipated opening in spring 2021. A temporary library with a reduced inventory will be opened at the Pleasant Hill Senior Center, roughly 1.5 miles away at 233 Gregory Lane. This aspect of the project has also faced criticism, with questions being raised about how that distance could limit access to current users like students from a nearby school. Mitchoff was followed by another presentation on plans for the library, this time from project designers Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. Current mockups include designated areas for youth collections, early literacy and after school hangouts. They also include a secure outdoor area for louder activities and programming involving live animals, like petting goats. Mitchoff's comments and the presentation by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson were items on the agenda. Council members made no motion and there was no vote to be recorded on the matter. During public comment, Karen Yapp argued that Mitchoff is predicting a recession, but that land "more than likely would be worth more in two years" when the new library opens. "The decision to close our library comes down to money and only money," Yapp said. "The county doesn't want to wait two years ... they want to cash out now." She asked city officials to negotiate a way to keep the current library open until the new one is finished. Pleasant Hill resident Dick Offerman also asked city officials to keep the old facility open until the new one is complete. He criticized Mitchoff, as he did last week at a meeting of the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, over what he described as "a complete lack of public discussion" on this matter until recent weeks. Mitchoff had addressed that point during her appearance earlier in the meeting, acknowledging that communications had broken down somewhere. "Many of us thought the word was out," Mitchoff said, who represents Pleasant Hill at the county level. She has invited members of the public with concerns about the library project to contact her office or make an appointment. The supervisor's staff can be reached by phone at (925) 521-7100. Copyright 2019 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. An Alameda County sheriff's deputy was injured Wednesday morning near Oakland International Airport, a sheriff's spokesman said. The deputy was injured in a traffic crash at about 7:30 a.m. on Ron Cowan Parkway as he was in his vehicle responding to a separate crash, sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Ray Kelly said. "It looks like he'll be okay," Kelly said of the deputy. A K-9 in the vehicle also appears it's going to be okay. The dog was checked out by a veterinarian, Kelly said. The deputy was stopped on the side of the parkway after responding to a crash when the driver of another vehicle was apparently driving too fast and lost control of their vehicle. The vehicle hit the deputy's vehicle causing all the airbags in the deputy's vehicle to deploy. Kelly said the deputy complained of pain to a hand, blurred vision and burns from the airbag deployment. The deputy was taken to a hospital and has been released. Kelly said neither drugs nor alcohol appear to have played a role in the crash. Kelly said California has a law that requires drivers to slow down and move over a lane when approaching an emergency or towing vehicle on a road. "That's designed to protect first responders," he said. Copyright 2019 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) A Sonoma County man's case against Monsanto Co. continued in federal court in San Francisco Wednesday as a jury began hearing evidence on whether the agrochemical company is legally and financially liable for the man's cancer. On Tuesday, the six-member civil jury unanimously concluded that Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller was a "substantial factor" in Edwin Hardeman's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. That finding cleared the way for a second phase of trial in which the jury must decide whether Monsanto is legally liable and if so, whether and how much it must pay in a financial damages award. Hardeman, 70, whose lymphoma was diagnosed in 2015, claims his illness resulted from 26 years of spraying Roundup to kill poison oak and weeds on properties in Gualala and Forestville between 1986 and 2012. His lawyers claim Monsanto should have warned him of the dangers but instead sought to counter studies that might show a link between Roundup and cancer, even to the point of ghost-writing some papers. Monsanto maintains it acted responsibly and that as of 2012, no regulatory agencies or health organizations banned the herbicide. Monsanto attorney Brian Stekloff told the jury during an opening statement Wednesday, "It's not a popularity contest. Monsanto, consistent with science, did act responsibly and should not be held liable in Phase 2." Hardeman's case is the first to go to trial of more than 760 lawsuits that were filed against Monsanto in federal courts around the nation and transferred to the court of U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of San Francisco. Hundreds of other lawsuits against Monsanto are pending in state courts. Last year, a San Francisco Superior Court jury awarded $289 million, later reduced by the trial judge to $78 million, to cancer-stricken former school groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson of Vallejo. Monsanto, now a subsidiary of Bayer AG of Germany, is appealing that verdict. Copyright 2019 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. OAKLAND (BCN) A 22-year-old man has been charged with murder and assault with a firearm for a shooting at a bar in downtown Oakland earlier this month that killed one man and left another man wounded, police and prosecutors said. Deontre Brown of Oakland was charged for the shooting that occurred at the Liege Spirits Lounge at 481 Ninth St., between Broadway and Washington Street, at about 7:35 p.m. on March 10. Cassius Stroman, 42, of San Francisco, died at a hospital a short time later and a Sacramento man was wounded, police said. The Sacramento man transported himself to a hospital, where he was treated for injuries that weren't life-threatening, according to police. Brown was arrested in Sparks, Nevada, on March 12, and the Alameda County District Attorney's Office filed charges against him the same day, police and prosecutors said. Copyright 2019 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) Renowned English musician Phil Collins will be hosting a concert at the soon-to-be-open Chase Center in San Francisco this October, Golden State Warriors and arena officials announced Thursday morning. Collins, who has sold 100 million records during his career, will perform in the city on Oct. 17 at the 18,064-seat arena located in the Mission Bay neighborhood, team officials said. Tickets will go on-sale to the general public on March 30 at 10 a.m., with a presale available on March 29 from 10 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Those wishing to register for the pre-sale should visit https://philcollins.ontouraccess.com. Chase Center officials at 2 p.m. Thursday will be announcing another major event at the facility, with another scheduled for Friday at 4 p.m. There have been other acts revealed all week, starting Monday with the announcement that Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony will perform at the arena's inaugural event on Sept. 6. For more information on the Chase Center, people can visit www.chasecenter.com. Copyright 2019 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Officials in the South Bay are addressing homelessness at a local and statewide level this week, with the city of Mountain View declaring a shelter crisis and San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo traveling to Sacramento Wednesday to request additional funding in the state budget. Mountain View council members declared the crisis Tuesday after finding more than half of its homeless population does not have access to shelter. This year's homeless count is expected to be well over 400, while the city only has about 200 cold weather and non-emergency beds. At the same time, the City Council voted to ban recreational vehicle parking on city streets, drawing protests and pushback from homeless advocates. The city plans to draft a safe parking resolution in the coming months as a response to the crisis, and says there are currently about 250 occupied vehicles in the city. City staff have pointed to safe parking resolutions passed throughout the state as references, including one the San Jose City Council green-lighted in late February. Mayor Sam Liccardo advocated for the safe parking program in his city, and called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to prioritize funding for innovative homelessness solutions during a meeting with the mayors of Sacramento, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego and several others on Wednesday. He touted San Jose's budding "tiny homes" program and said the city is receiving state grants to prevent families from being evicted. The tiny homes have been criticized by advocates of sanctioned encampments, who say the structures lack privacy and are expensive, but Liccardo stands by the program as a temporary fix for over 6,000 homeless people in Santa Clara County. During a news conference Wednesday, Newsom said the state needs to "step up our game" and assist cities that have made concerted efforts to curb rampant homelessness. He said the state will be more "intentional" about directing funding toward homelessness in the state budget this year, including prioritizing short-term solutions like shelters, along with long-term housing. The state has currently set aside $500 million to help homeless populations, estimated to be over 130,000 people statewide. "The budget just changed," Newsom said after the meeting, though he did not specify by how much. "This was an important meeting, I did not just listen, I took notes and I'm taking direction." Copyright 2019 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. A woman surrendered on Wednesday afternoon on two counts of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated for a collision on Altamont Pass Road in unincorporated Alameda County near Livermore last October that killed two people, the California Highway Patrol said. Courtney Lynne Peterson was driving her 2016 Ford F-250 on Altamont Pass Road east of Dyer Road at about 4:50 p.m. on Oct. 14 when, due to her intoxication, she allowed her vehicle to veer into oncoming traffic, resulting in a collision with a motorcycle carrying two people, according to CHP spokesman Tyler Hahn. Mark Nida, 63, of Pleasanton, who was driving the motorcycle, and 64-year-old Kathleen Seifert, who was his passenger, were taken to Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley to be treated for their injuries but Nida was pronounced dead a short time later and Seifert died later that night, Hahn said. Peterson was arrested after the collision but she was released while officers from the CHP's Dublin area and Golden Gate offices completed an extensive investigation, according to Hahn. The investigation was presented to the Alameda County District Attorney's Office on March 7 and prosecutors charged her with two counts of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, Hahn said. It's expected that Peterson, who turned herself in at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin at 2:20 p.m. on Wednesday, will be arraigned later this week, according to Hahn. Capt. Christopher Sherry, the commander of the CHP's Dublin area office, said in a statement, "This collision was a preventable tragedy. Two innocent lives were lost because someone chose to drive under the influence of alcohol." Sherry said, "I am pleased that the suspect in this crime has been arrested. Nothing can bring back the lost lives, but I hope this arrest brings some comfort to the victim's family and friends." He said, "More than one-third of all traffic-related deaths in California involve alcohol. As a community, we will not tolerate it." Copyright 2019 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Mr. Valua Gremson (1st from left) with the 12 terminated employees of Vanuatu Cargo and a staff from Labour Office after receiving their payouts on Monday this week This Page Is Under Construction - Coming Soon! Why am I seeing this 'Under Construction' page? As construction of NASA's heavy-lift rocket continues to face delays, Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Wednesday the agency might launch the Orion spacecraft around the moon on the back of a commercial vehicle. The first launch of Orion the spacecraft being built to take humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972 on the Space Launch System rocket was scheduled to happen by June 2020. But the agency this month acknowledged that timing is no longer feasible, signaling yet another delay for the problematic rocket. "I think we, as an agency, need to stick to our commitments," Bridenstine testified at a Wednesday hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. "If we tell you and others that we're going to launch in June 2020 around the moon, I think we should, and I think we can get it done." MISSION MOON: Learn how 50 years of space exploration defined Houston on HoustonChronicle.com Despite its numerous problems, NASA for years has defended the Space Launch System rocket, saying it was a necessary backbone of their human exploration portfolio. The rocket was a brainchild of President Barack Obama's administration and initially was supposed to launch in 2017. So, the kind of paradigm shift Bridenstine suggested Wednesday is a good sign, said Keith Cowing, editor of NASA Watch, a website devoted to space news. "I think this is recognition that in order to achieve the goals the White House has set for NASA, some creative thinking is required," Cowing said. President Donald Trump's administration wants to send U.S. astronauts back to the moon as a stepping stone for a mission to Mars with the help of international and commercial partners. The goal is to put humans on the lunar surface again by 2028. Calling on commercial companies Wednesday marked the first time the idea of launching Orion on anything other than SLS has been publicly floated. Bridenstine admitted he is unsure what commercial rockets would be used for this endeavor or how much it would cost. He told committee members he would have a better idea in a few weeks. "I tasked the agency with figuring out how to make that an objective," he said. Cost "is another discussion, but we might need to request help from the Congress." If NASA flies the first Orion mission aboard a commercial rocket, Bridenstine said, two rockets would actually be used. One would launch the Orion capsule into low Earth orbit, he said, while another would launch a fully-fueled upper stage which provides the propulsion needed to throw Orion around the moon. Then, the two would dock and continue on the mission around the moon, he added. The Orion capsule does not have hardware for docking, he said, so that would need to be added. "Here's the glory of the United States of America," Bridenstine said. "We have amazing capability that exists right now that we can use off the shelf in order to accomplish this objective." EARLIER COVERAGE: Government shutdown causes two month delay for test of Orion's emergency system NASA has two missions scheduled for the Orion-SLS team. The first Orion spacecraft mission, Exploration Mission-1, is meant to go up without a crew. The second, Exploration Mission-2, will launch humans around the moon and is supposed to fly no later than 2023. Bridenstine's comments raise the question: If the agency sends the first mission up successfully on commercial rockets, will the second mission pivot to do the same? A new mission for SLS? Cowing is confident the SLS rocket will never take humans into space. Instead, he thinks it will be used for cargo missions or, perhaps, unmanned missions to other planets. "I'm sure the rocket will work, it's just taking forever to build," Cowing said. "This could open up missions to the outer planets." But the White House signaled Monday that isn't the plan at least not for now. In the budget proposal for fiscal year 2020 released Monday by the White House, President Donald Trump suggested postponing an upgrade to increase the rocket's performance. Under the Trump proposal, NASA would continue with the initial version instead, while the agency would remove from the rocket's manifest a mission to study Jupiter's moon, Europa. That mission, called Europa Clipper, would instead launch on a commercial rocket. Budget documents state that this will save the U.S. $700 million. The upgrade to the rocket's performance also was important to launch the different elements of the mini-space station NASA wants to build orbiting the moon, called the Lunar Orbital-Platform Gateway. With this delay, those elements will instead be sent into space on "competitively procured, vehicles, complementing crew transport flights on the SLS and Orion," budget documents state Boeing was awarded a contract in 2012 to build two Space Launch System cores for NASA, one for the first, uncrewed Orion flight and one for the flight that would carry Americans around the moon. At that time, the uncrewed flight was expected to launch in 2017. But that timeline didn't work out as the project has been plagued with construction delays and cost increases. Boeing declined to comment. So far, the rocket has cost NASA about $12 billion. Still, Bridenstine vehemently defended the rocket, both on Monday and Wednesday. "I want to start with a point of emphasis: SLS is the largest rocket ever built in American history and it's a critical piece of what needs to be built," Bridenstine said. "But SLS is struggling to meet schedule ... and now we are understanding better how difficult the project is and that it's going to take additional time." Alex Stuckey writes about NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey. Canada on Thursday became the first country to partner with NASA on its planned moon space station -- the foundation of NASAs objective for a sustainable return to the moon as a stepping stone for a mission to Mars. The space station, called the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, would allow astronauts to live and work while orbiting the moon. Canada is going to the moon, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a Thursday news conference at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters near Montreal. Were stepping up. Canada, already a partner with NASA on the International Space Station, will build a robotic arm for the gateway. Called Canadarm3, it will be the successor to the one now in use on the space station. Canadarm was essential to the Space Shuttle, Canadarm2 built the International Space Station, so its only fitting and right that the arm that will repair and maintain the lunar gateway will yet again be made in Canada by Canadians, Trudeau said. He pledged to invest $2 billion Canadian dollars (about $1.5 billion in the U.S.) over 24 years to grow Canadas space program. NASA officials hope to have the gateway ready for human habitation by 2023 and Administrator Jim Bridenstine said he is thrilled that Canada agreed to be a partner on the project. Our new collaboration on the gateway will enable our broader international partnership to get to the moon and eventually to Mars, Bridenstine said in a statement. NASAs reliance on international partnerships has now expanded to include more than 700 agreements with more than 120 nations. Returning to the moon with help President Donald Trumps fiscal year 2019 budget for NASA, signed in February, sets into motion several initiatives to return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972 including funds to develop the foundation for the gateway. When completed, the gateway will allow crews to live and work in the moons orbit for 30 to 60 days at a time, as well as act as a stop-over for astronauts eventually traveling to Mars. NASA officials have said that international and commercial partnerships are crucial to the gateways success. Additionally, the agency announced just last week the first round of 12 experiments that will head to the moon on lunar landers built by commercial companies, including Houston-based Intuitive Machines. Agency officials say they hope to begin launching the landers as early as this year but no later than Dec. 31, 2021. Officials also hope to begin testing landers that would carry humans to the moon beginning in 2024, in the hopes that a crew could be sent to the lunar surface by 2028. We want to go fast. Its important we get back to the moon as fast as possible, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a Valentines Day media roundtable in Washington, D.C. An announcement from the Trump administration this week may complicate that plan, however. Russ Vought, acting head of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote an article Monday stating that Trump intended to propose a 5 percent cut to all non-defense discretionary spending in next year's budget. That, of course, would include NASA. Canadas space presence Canada has been active in space exploration since the early 1960s, as the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union raged. In 1962, it became the third country to launch a satellite, Alouette 1, into Earths orbit, which it did with the help of the U.S. The robotic arm, Canadarm, which was attached to the Space Shuttles, flew for the first time in November 1981 and operated for 30 years. Canadians then built Canadarm2, attached to the Space Station, which performs maintenance, moves supplies and equipment and attaches visiting vehicles to the station. Canadarm2 conducted critical repairs on Hubble Space Telescope, credited with altering humankind's understanding of the solar system during its almost three decades orbiting Earth. And the country also is working on the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble's successor. But the nations human spaceflight program has been less robust. The first Canadian to fly in space, Marc Garneau, went up on the October 1984 Space Shuttle Challenger. He is one of only 14 astronauts the country has had since 1983, according to the Canadian Space Agency. Canadas David Saint-Jacques currently is living on the International Space Station. He is the seventh Canadian astronaut to live on the space station, according to the countrys agency. But the countrys involvement in the gateway is hugely important for its space program. Our participation in the lunar gateway ushers in a new era of Canadian excellence in space and it is the cornerstone of the next phase of Canadas space program, Trudeau said Thursday. Alex Stuckey writes about NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey. Israel's first moon-bound probe is headed to the lunar surface after a successful launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., Thursday night -- putting the tiny nation one step closer to becoming the fourth country to land on the moon. The probe -- called "Beresheet" or "in the beginning" in Hebrew -- launched at 7:45 p.m. on the back of a SpaceX rocket. It is expected to reach the moon by April 11 and, if successful, will be the first commercial lander to reach the moon. Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL -- the only Israeli contestant competing in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition that ended last year with no winner -- built the lander for just $100 million. It is not carrying humans to the surface "We punch far above our weight," said Sylvan Adams, a SpaceIL donor and Canadian-Israeli businessman and philanthropist, during a Wednesday night news conference in Florida. "With Israeli innovation, with Israeli can-do, we've managed to do this on a shoe-string budget and it's something we're very proud of." The United States remains the only country to leave human footprints on the moon. The other two countries that have sent probes to the surface are the Soviet Union in September 1959 and China in December 2013 and January 2019. NASA has signed an agreement to "cooperatively utilize" Israel's probe, which will conduct experiments to measure the moon's magnetic field. The agreement essentially means both countries will benefit from this mission. "We can get all kinds of data and information and good science that NASA needs but we can do it for a fraction of the cost," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told Fox News on Thursday. For example, NASA officials said in October that Israel will share data about the magnetic field of the landing site with the U.S., which will be available publicly via NASA's Planetary Data System. Additionally, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter a probe launched in 2009 that is mapping the moon's surface will try to take measures of the probe as it lands. Also Thursday, a Japanese probe briefly touched down on an asteroid 200 miles away from Earth, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency announced, grabbing a sample of dust in the process. Japan launched the probe in 2014 and sample will return to Earth late next year. Israel's historic launch comes as NASA shifts its focus to returning to the moon as a stepping stone for a mission to Mars. President Donald Trump's $19.9 billion NASA budget for the current fiscal year tasks the agency with launching the first flight without a crew for Orion -- the spacecraft meant to take humans to the moon -- by 2022, followed by a launch of Americans around the moon in 2023. Additionally, it allows the agency to begin working on the foundation for a mini space station orbiting the moon, known as the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, which will involve cooperation with commercial companies and other nations. "We are building a coalition of nations to return to the moon sustainable and I think Israel can be a big piece of that sustainable return to the moon," Bridenstine told Fox News. NASA also is relying on commercial companies to build its lunar landers, which they hope will launch as early as this year but no later than Dec. 31, 2021. The space agency in November tapped nine companies, including Houston-based Intuitive Machines, to build the moon probes. On Thursday, the American space agency announced the first round of 12 experiments that will head to the moon on these landers. They include instruments to measure the radiation environment on the surface, the hydrogen abundance and the magnetic field. NASA officials said they will work with U.S. companies on reusable system to take astronauts to the surface of the moon. Human-class landers will be tested on the moon beginning 2024, in the hopes that a crew could be sent to the surface by 2028. Alex Stuckey writes about NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuckey@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey. NASA would face a $500 million cut in the coming budget year under a spending plan released Monday by President Donald Trump's administration, but space agency officials say the budget remains focused on human exploration, specifically to the moon. "This is a really good budget for NASA," Mark Geyer, director of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said Monday. "We're blessed with this budget." Just last month, Trump signed the budget for the current year, allocating $21.5 billion to the history-making space agency. The proposal released Monday for fiscal year 2020, which starts Oct. 1, would only provide $21 billion. The cut comes as Trump has touted the ambitious goal of returning humans to the moon for the first time since 1972 MISSION MOON at HoustonChronicle.com: How 50 years of space exploration defined Houston Budget cuts would come to projects such as the Space Launch System rocket, which will carry the Orion spacecraft to the moon, the education office and a new telescope, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). But during a livestreamed speech from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Administrator Jim Bridenstine avoided discussing the programs that would be cut. Instead, he talked about returning sustainably to the moon, as a stepping stone for a mission to Mars. The Lunar Orbital-Platform Gateway, a mini-space station orbiting the moon that NASA wants to build, is a huge part of this plan. The budget fully funds it. "Gateway is about sustainability ... it's going to enable a sustainable, human presence on the moon," Bridenstine said. "We won't be flying there and back, but we'll be exploring and learning about the moon." Congress still must approve the budget proposal, which some Democratic lawmakers have called dead on arrival. Half-a-billion-dollar cut Just a few weeks ago, federal budget officials announced that non-defense, discretionary spending would face a 5 percent cut in the 2020 budget year. That, of course, would include NASA. The cut ultimately recommended is less deep. "Recognizing the importance of controlling excessive spending, President Trump directed federal agencies to identify how they can cut a nickel out of every dollar they spend," Russ Vought, acting head of the Office of Management and Budget. wrote in an op-ed last month. "Hard-working American families make these sorts of tough decisions every day. The president believes Washington should be no different." The cuts came down Monday. And for the space agency, the most notable came to the SLS rocket, which will carry Orion -- the spacecraft being built to carry humans back to the moon. Trump's budget request postpones funding for upgrades to the rocket that would increase its performance, instead focusing on completing the initial version. SLS has faced major cost and scheduling setbacks and NASA now plans on launching it with Exploration Mission-1, the uncrewed flight of Orion, by 2020. The crewed Orion flight, Exploration Mission-2, is set to fly in 2022. Bridenstine on Monday addressed the criticism of SLS, saying that it is vital to the country's plans to return to the moon. "On this point I want to be crystal clear: SLS is not reusable but it is a critical piece of the architecture that enables us to deliver re-usability to the moon," Bridenstine said. The proposal also removes a payload from SLS's planned manifest. A mission that will study Jupiter's moon, Europa -- called the Europa Clipper mission -- would be removed from SLS, and instead launched in 2023 on the back of a commercial launch vehicle. Budget documents state that this will save NASA $700 million. LISTEN: The latest from the Cigarettes & Rocket Fuel podcast The James Webb Space Telescope -- the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that has orbited the Earth for 28 years -- would be fully funded with $352.6 million under the proposal. Initially expected to launch in 2007, Webb has since been delayed until March 2021 after it breached the $8 billion spending cap set by Congress in 2011. Scientists say they now need $9 billion to finish the telescope. Bridenstine, however, defended the mission. "This administration is committed to the James Webb telescope and our number one agenda is mission success," Bridenstine said. "This mission is so important to the United States of America and here's why: it will establish us as the leader in physics for the next 30 years." While Trump's budget calls for fully funding the Webb telescope, it's successor, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), wouldn't receive any money. The budget propsoal also eliminates funding for the Office of Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics Engagement -- previously known as the Office of Education -- and two Earth science missions. The Trump administration tried to cut the Office of Education in fiscal years 2018 and 2019, but Congress nixed that idea. Returning to the moon Despite these proposed cuts, many NASA personnel said the budget supported the agency's goals. "Everybody loves to have a destination and the gateway provides that," Flight Director Jeff Radigan said Monday at the Johnson Space Center in Houston after Bridenstine's speech. The budget proposal fully funds the gateway, for example, and provides $363 million to support commercial development of a moon lander that will take cargo -- and later humans -- to the surface. Additionally, it funds a human return to the moon in 2028. "For the first time in over 10 years, we have money in this budget for a return to the moon with humans," Bridenstine said. "Human-rated landers, compatible with the gateway, can go back and forth to the moon. And we're funding them to go to the moon." The proposal also includes $1.5 billion for the International Space Station, while also funding new commercial capabilities to facilitate a transition to commercial activities in low Earth orbit, where the space station flies. Last year, Trump proposed ending federal funding for the space station at the end of 2024, allowing commercial companies to take over operations in 2025. This proposal was met with resistance from Congress, with many questioning whether commercial companies could step up to fill the government's funding role. In fiscal year 2017, NASA spent $1.45 billion on the space station, and that doesn't count costs to transport astronauts and supplies there. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, last week filed a measure to extend U.S. operations of the space station until 2030. A similar measure was filed last year by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, another Texas Republicanbut it failed to make it to the president's desk. Even Bridenstine has said that kind of timeline likely isn't feasible. The budget documents released Monday, however, appear to make no reference to ending federal funding for ISS. SPACE JUNK: Sign up for Mission Moon updates and out-of-this-world space news. "By 2025, the Budget envisions commercial capabilities on the International Space Station as well as new commercial facilities and platforms to continue the American presence in Earth orbit," budget documents state. Alex Stuckey writes about NASA and the environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at alex.stuceky@chron.com or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey. The catastrophic flooding that has wrought havoc on more than a dozen Midwestern statesclaiming at least four lives, displacing thousands, and causing perhaps more than a billion dollars in damageswill also upend local real estate markets, perhaps for years to come. The flooding, caused by a deadly combination of heavy rains and large accumulations of snowmelt overwhelming rivers, will likely continue through May as the weather warms up, meteorologists say. Flood warnings have affected more than 8 million residents in 14 states. The devastation was so extensive that Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Nebraska and Iowa on Tuesday to take stock, along with the governors of those states. "The hearts of the American people are with those who have been impacted across the Midwest!" he tweeted from Omaha. Beyond the vast, immediate human toll, the flooding is expected to place substantial long-term pressure on real estate markets that are already experiencing their share of challenges, including shortages. Homes and neighborhoods that were ravaged by water, similar to wildfires and hurricanes, are likely to lose value as buyers seek higher ground. Untouched areas suddenly become more desirable. Meanwhile, the already limited supply of affordable housing, particularly rentals, is likely to dry up as folks whose homes were ravaged compete for replacement housing. The overall flooding will continue all spring, says meteorologist Andy Foster of the National Weather Service. But although this is a major disaster, the region has experienced bad flooding before, such as in 1993, 2008, and 2011. "For some areas, the worst is over. In other areas, its getting worse. ... It really depends on where you are and what river you're on." 'I've never felt helpless like this before' For many of the residents living through it, the storm is a life-changing event. Shawn Starry, 45, and his wife are currently living in an evacuation centersleeping on cots in the cafeteria of a community collegeafter their three-bedroom home in Freeport, IL, was flooded with 4 to 6 feet of water. Their two dogs are in an animal shelter. "The house is gone. All of our stuff is gone," says Starry, a security guard. My couch, my personal effects, all [of] my wifes kitchen stuff is floating in water. He lives about two blocks from the overflowing Pecatonica River. He's hopeful that financial assistance from the city will be enough to get himself and his wife out of the evacuation shelter and eventually into a new home. That would enable his 16-year-old daughter, who's currently staying with her older sister in Colorado City, CO, to come back home. "I've never felt helpless like this before," says Starry, who lost one of his cars in the flooding. "I don't know what we're going to do. ... [If the money doesn't materialize,] we're going to be on the streets." Homeowners in others states also suffered steep losses. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts told reporters on Monday the flooding was "clearly the most widespread disaster we have had in our states history." Plumber Justin Cash, 35, considers himself fortunate. His four-bedroom home in Fremont, NE, outside Omaha, escaped the 3 to 4 feet of flooding that swamped his neighbors' homes downhill. But his wife and children have been virtually trapped in the home since last week, when the floodwaters overtook the lane from his house to the main road. "It got pretty close," he says of the water, which got within 50 feet of his home. He expects he'll be out a few thousand dollars purchasing crushed concrete to make the swampy lane from his property to the main road drivable again. "Our house and our family is OK," says Cash. "So I consider us lucky. A home in Hamburg, Iowa Scott Olson/Getty Images After a flood: What happens to local real estate markets The nightmare isn't finished once the floodwaters recede. Some would say the real pain is just beginning. "It's going to be bad. There's no way to sugarcoat it or understate it," says real estate appraiser Randall Bell, who runs the Landmark Research Group. He's worked all over the country assessing properties damaged by natural disasters. After a flood, homeowners can face repair costs topping $100,000. Oftentimes, not all of that is paid out by flood insurance claims or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There's also generally a lag in how quickly those checks are cut. Those who decide to rebuild need to find alternate accommodations until their homes are inhabitable again, and that isn't cheap. "While they're gone, they still have to pay mortgages, property taxes, and other costs," Bell says. Meanwhile, the cost of temporary housing typically goes up in response to surging demand. Some people gouge and double and triple their rent. And then they have to worry about their home carrying the stigma of flooding. Theres no question that a property with a flooding history can be looked at negatively, says Bell, adding that buyers "dont want to pay full value with this flood risk. Just how much the home is discounted depends on a host of variables: Has the property or the community flooded before? Has the home been elevated? Have actions been taken to deal with future flooding? Areas that weren't touched by the disaster and sit on higher ground suddenly become very popular with buyers who have been displaced, while values in flood zones plummet. And when it comes to rebuilding efforts, floods present long-term challenges that are different from other disasters, like wildfires. With a flood ... the land itself is tainted," says Bell. "It cant be fixed with boards and nails and drywall. Says real estate broker Jennifer Bixby of Don Peterson & Associates Real Estate, in Fremont, NE: Right now, were still trying to assess the total damage, whether homes are completely uninhabitable or if we can fix them up before the mold starts growing. We already have a housing shortage in town. This is obviously going to magnify this issue. Those with means whose homes are uninhabitable are already scouring the market looking for untouched homes for sale, she says. Those who can't afford to buy until their insurance checks come in will likely be looking for rental housing nearby. Some untouched Midwestern communities still fear the worst The devastation is expected to get worse before it gets better. Fargo, ND, is bracing for flooding as the weather is expected to warm up into the 40s, melting the high snowdrifts. Mayor Tim Mahoney declared an emergency and asked locals to fill 1 million sandbags starting next week. "If we get too fast of a melt, everything will head to the rivers," says Vicky Matson, president of the Fargo Moorhead Area Association of Realtors. She's helped with previous efforts to stuff sandbagsshe even threw out her elbow the last time, in 2011. This year, she plans to help out on the lunch committee. "Right now, I'm saying a lot of prayers," she says. The post The Floods Ravaging the Midwest Will Wreak Havoc in Housing Markets, Too appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com. TravelSkills on SFGate is brought to you by Visa Passengers on some Southwest Airlines flights might be alarmed when looking into the seatback pocket and finding a safety information card for the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 737-800. They may wonder which plane they are flying on. Have no fear: Even if the safety card says 737 MAX 8, you will not be flying on one any time soon. Southwest simply uses the same safety card for both jets. We reached out to Southwest to find about its combo card. A spokesperson said, "All 737 MAX 8 aircraft are temporarily grounded, and you will not be traveling on a MAX 8 aircraft while that grounding is in place. The Safety Information card for the 737-800 and the MAX 8 contains safety information applicable to both types of aircraft. This does not mean that you are on a 737 MAX 8." He said that he was not aware of any plans to change the cards yet. See the slideshow at the top of this post for a closer look at the safety cards. Last week the FAA ordered the Boeing 737 MAX 8 out of the sky and by now, every traveler likely knows about the grounding of the MAX 8 and MAX 9 aircraft in the US and around the world. But not every traveler may know that the similar-sounding aircraft are in fact very different. (Learn more about how to spot a 737 MAX jet here.) Don't miss a shred of important travel news! Sign up for our FREE bi-weekly email alerts. Worldwide, there are about 5,000 Boeing 737-800s currently flying-- more than any other type of 737. It's the most common single-aisle jet in the world. So while you won't be flying on a Southwest 737 MAX 8 any time soon, it's highly likely you'll be flying on a 737-800: Southwest has 207 of them, out of an overall fleet of 755 jets. (Southwest only has 34 737 MAX 8 aircraft.) United flies 171 Boeing 737-800s; Delta flies 77 of them, American, 304. Southwest's Boeing 737-800 has 175 all-economy class seats that are 17 inches wide and provide 31-32 inches of pitch. It has been flying since the 1990s. Southwest introduced 737 MAX 8 jets in 2018; they also have 175 seats that are slightly wider at 17.8 inches with 32-33 inches of pitch. How do you feel about the 737 MAX 8 grounding? Has it affected your flying yet? Please sound off in the comments! Read all recent TravelSkills posts here Get twice-per-week updates from TravelSkills via email! Sign up here Chris McGinnis is the founder of TravelSkills.com. The author is solely responsible for the content above, and it is used here by permission. You can reach Chris at chris@travelskills.com or on Twitter @cjmcginnis. Finding a decent fare to Hawaii is getting increasingly complicated now that there are so many players, and so many fares in the market. If you don't check fares for a living like I do, it can feel overwhelming. And you nearly always walk away thinking, "did I get ripped off?" Here's a cheat sheet that can help avoid the angst, cover all your bases, and get a good fare. Some overall advice: To get the best deals you must be flexible and travel midweek- this usually means departing the mainland on a Tuesday or Wednesday and then returning from Hawaii on a Wednesday or Thursday. Summertime and Christmastime flights are the most expensive so bargain hunters should set their sites on flying in spring (before June 10 or so), late summer (after August 18 - September, or fall (October, early November) or in the "dead weeks" of early December and most of January. You'll likely pay twice as much if you can only travel on weekends during peak seasons. Using Google Flights. -Use Google Flights, which I think provides the broadest look at available airline fares except Southwest Airlines. It takes a while to get the hang of it, but hang in there, because it's an especially good tool for bargain hunters! Google Flights helps you easily determine what a good "ballpark" fare to Hawaii is, but I'll lend a hand here. During the slower spring or fall seasons, any roundtrip, midweek fare at or around $300 roundtrip between the West Coast and Hawaii is a good deal. During peak summer and winter seasons, if you can get a fare at or around $500 roundtrip you are doing great. -FROM/TO FIELDS: Enter multiple airports if you live in an area that has more than one. Since I'm in the Bay Area, I always enter San Francisco SFO, Oakland OAK and San Jose SJC in the "from" field. If I don't have a specific island to visit, I'll enter all of them (Honolulu HNL, Maui OGG, Kauai LIH, Hawaii KOA) to see which one comes up with the best fares. Lately, the cheapest fares have been into Maui or Hawaii (The Big Island). -BAGS TAB: To avoid the airlines' irritating "basic economy" or "saver" fares, look for the "Bags" tab add a one carry-on bag, which will filter them out. Currently, United and Alaska offer these stripped down fares, which don't make much sense for flying to Hawaii because you can't reserve a seat to sit with your companions and or you can't use the overhead bin (on United). Currently Hawaiian Airlines does not offer basic economy fares, but has said it will do so later this year. -STOPS TAB: Also, look for the "Stops" tab and filter to nonstops only for the most convenient flights. However, if getting a rock bottom fare is important, open it up to one-stop flights. Sometimes airlines will offer the best deals if you are willing to stop first in in Southern California or Phoenix. From the Bay Area, Alaska, Hawaiian, United and Sun Country fly nonstop. (Southwest does, too but you won't find it on Google flights- see below) -ECONOMY DROP DOWN: Go ahead and check first class, especially during summer peaks. Look for the drop down tab that defaults to "Economy" and move it to "First." If you are paying the big bucks for an economy seat anyway, you may want to consider paying a bit more to fly in first class, where fares generally run in the $800 to $1,000 range. (Find out more about how to fly in first class to Hawaii here.) -DATES FIELD: If you have broad flexibility, scan monthly calendars. You can do this on Google Flights by clicking on the date or calendar field. When you do, a full month calendar pops up. Then you can toggle between months using the arrows on the side of these calendar popups. Don't miss a shred of important travel news! Sign up for our FREE bi-weekly travel alert emails! Chris McGinnis -COMPARE: Once you've entered your destinations and dates, added a carry on bag, checked for cheaper one-stop flights, click on the "Price Graph" tab to see how the fare you see compares to fares on different dates. You may find something cheaper. -GET FARE ALERTS: Fares change all the time, so if you don't like what you see, click on the "Track Prices" button to set up a fare alert which will be sent to you via email along with a link to a Google Flights fare search page. Easy! -BOOK IT: Find a fare you like? Click all the way through to the airlines' booking site to be sure it exists and is not basic economy. Then book it and enjoy your trip! Searching on Southwest.com Booking on the Southwest.com site is not as easy as on Google Flights, but it's always worth looking. The most important thing to remember about Southwest flights to Hawaii is that it thankfully does not offer a basic economy or saver fares to Hawaii, so what you see is what you get. Southwest allows you to check two bags for free, and bring a carry-on if it the fits in the overhead bin. But it does not allow you to reserve a seat ahead of time. -LOW FARE CALENDAR: To get your ballpark fare, go straight to Southwest's "Low Fare Calendar" which you'll see at the bottom of the BOOK field (or just click on the link I've provided). Enter your departure city (if in the Bay Area, that will be OAK for now, SJC later. Southwest does not have plans to fly to Hawaii from SFO.) Then you can get a good idea of fares by month- and zero in on the best deals. (A quick scan shows some remarkable deals to Kona KOA right now-- in late May you can go for just $205 roundtrip!) -DEPART AND ARRIVE: If you have specific dates for your trip, go to Southwest.com. Right now Southwest is only offering flights from Oakland to Honolulu, Kona and Maui. Eventually it will add San Jose and Kauai. Unlike Google flights, you can only enter one depart and arrive airport. In the Bay Area, enter OAK and then HNL or OGG (Maui) and your estimated dates. I hope this has helped you find a great deal to the islands! Tell us about the great fare you snagged in the comments. Read all recent TravelSkills posts here Get twice-per-week updates from TravelSkills via email! Sign up here Chris McGinnis is the founder of TravelSkills.com. The author is solely responsible for the content above, and it is used here by permission. You can reach Chris at chris@travelskills.com or on Twitter @cjmcginnis. CHIMANIMANI, Zimbabwe A week after Cyclone Idai lashed southern Africa, flooding still raged Thursday as torrential rains caused a dam to overflow in Zimbabwe, threatening riverside populations. The confirmed death toll in Zimbabwe, neighboring Mozambique and Malawi surpassed 550, with hundreds more feared dead in towns and villages that were completely submerged. Aid agencies and several governments continued to step up their deployments, with helicopters in short supply for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the cyclone. Spokesman Herve Verhoosel of the World Food Program told reporters in Geneva of the alarming news that the Marowanyati dam in Zimbabwe was hit by heavy rains overnight, putting populations in the region at risk. Zimbabwes defense minister said more than 120 bodies had been washed into neighboring Mozambique, where residents there buried them, and more bodies were still being recovered in rivers, raising the official death toll in the country to 259. Meanwhile, the confirmed death toll in Mozambique rose to 242 the Portuguese news agency Lusa reported, and in Malawi, at least 56 people were killed. But that was sure to rise. WFP said Malawis government had reported more than 920,000 people in the country were affected by the floods. Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi has estimated that 1,000 people could have been killed in his country alone. Zimbabwean officials have said some 350 people may have died in their country. Homes, villages and entire towns were submerged across central Mozambique, where flooding created a muddy inland ocean 30 miles wide. The U.N. food aid agency said 400,000 people were displaced and in urgent need of life-saving assistance in Mozambiques coastal city of Beira and flooded areas along the Pungue and Buzi rivers. The persistent rains lifted in some areas on Thursday, and floodwaters began to recede in Beira, the worst-hit city, and in the countryside, according to a Mozambican government report. Yesterday, 910 people were rescued by the humanitarian community, said Caroline Haga of the International Federation of the Red Cross in Beira. She said 210 were rescued by five helicopters and 700 were saved by boats. Aid groups were continuing to work nonstop to rescue families desperately clinging to tree branches and rooftops for safety from the surging waters. Farai Mutsaka is an Associated Press writer. CARACAS, Venezuela Masked security forces detained a key aide to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido in a raid on his home early Thursday, arriving in a convoy of vehicles and breaking down his door in a show of force that escalated tensions with the United States. Lawyer Roberto Marrero was taken away by intelligence agents in an overnight operation that was promptly condemned by Guaido as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called for the immediate release of the opposition figure. We will hold accountable those involved, Pompeo tweeted. The U.S. has imposed oil sanctions on Venezuela as well as individuals linked to President Nicolas Maduro in an attempt to force him from power. President Trump has said tougher sanctions could occur and that all options are on the table, a remark that Maduro and his ally, Russia, have interpreted as a possible prelude to military intervention. The Venezuelan government had no immediate comment on Marreros detention, which represented a sharp increase in police pressure on the opposition after a period of relative calm. Guaido had even said that the government was ignoring him in an attempt to sap the energy of the opposition, though Maduro has often described his adversary as a puppet and a clown. Marrero reported the raid in a telephone call whose recording circulated on social media soon after the operation occurred. As he described how a large group of intelligence officials was entering his home, heavy thuds could be heard in the background. The neighboring home of opposition lawmaker Sergio Vergara also was searched. Vergara said he was woken up by heavy banging at his door and that agents pointed weapons at him. The security forces broke through a metal screen door and a wooden door to get into Marreros house, and left drawers open during their search, said Carlos Berrizbeitia, another opposition lawmaker who later visited the residence. Dozens of security forces were involved. Vergara and Marrero both accompanied Guaido on a recent Latin American tour to build international support for his efforts to oust Maduro. Marrero heads the office of Guaido, who is leader of Venezuelas National Assembly. The opposition leader, who had defied a travel ban to leave the country, returned to Venezuela on March 4. The United States had warned the Venezuelan government against taking action against Guaido, who has staged frequent demonstrations in an attempt to remove Maduro. The U.S. and about 50 other countries support Guaidos contention that he is the rightful leader of Venezuela and that Maduros re-election last year was illegitimate. Fabiola Sanchez and Christopher Torchia are Associated Press writers. A London-based artist created this magical time-lapse of a hyper-realistic watercolour painting of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Japan. In the video, captured on March 19, Yorkshire-born Matthew Phinn paints a pretty winter scene of Shirakawago, a village of 150 old thatched farm buildings in northern Gifu Prefecture. The time-lapse video shows the progress from blank canvas to the finished work of art. "This painting demonstrates a traditional transparent watercolour technique, using English paints and paper with both English and Japanese brushes," explains Phinn. "After the initial pencil, I use masking fluid to mask out the lightest areas then apply the paint, finishing with a fixative to protect the surface. "Various effects can be achieved through painting onto wet paper, dragging a large dry brush across the paper and varying the type of brush and gesture," he adds. Since 2011, Phinn has been a permanent member of Japanese Watercolour Society, with which he exhibits annually. He lives in west London and regularly visits Japan to paint, teach and exhibit. "Shirakawago has often been recommended to me during my time painting and exhibiting in Japan," he explains. "The remote mountain village of traditional thatched houses is blanketed in snow through the winter and is also a popular beauty spot during the autumn. Ive always been drawn to painting snow scenes, particularly with water so I found the perfect place here!" "Portrait in Georgia" by Jean Toomer Let's take another stab at "defamiliarization." This time let's take a gander at a poem called "Portrait in Georgia" and at a human body that stays, well, human (you know, as opposed to bug). Jean Toomer was an African-American poet who lived at the turn of the twentieth century in Georgia. He wrote a book called Cane, which is a collection of poems and prose-poems that gives a picture of African-American life in the south during the time of the Jim Crow laws, which lasted from 1876 to 1965 (though he wrote the book in 1923). Here's one of the poems from that very volume. Logging out... You've been inactive for a while, logging you out in a few seconds... The Tonkin Gulf Encounter The USS Maddox was a hulking battleship: 2,200-tons, and armed with machine guns, torpedoes, and depth charge anti-submarine weapons. Cruising along the North Vietnamese coast in the summer of 1964, it cast an intimidating shadow in the Tonkin Gulf, one that distressed authorities in Hanoi. For nearly a decade, American support for the South Vietnamese government had been increasing. U.S. military advisors, American weaponry, and economic aid sustained Saigon and helped strengthen combat units in the South. For leaders in the North, the battleship served as an irksomeand potentially dangerousreminder of the Saigon-Washington alliance. On August 2nd, 1964, as the Maddox passed near two small islands that had been attacked by South Vietnamese gunboats, a fleet of North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats charged the ship, chasing it out to the middle of the Gulf. The U.S. naval officers opened fire on the PT boats, forcing them to veer from their target and return to shore. The Maddox escaped the attack without damage or human casualties, but leaders in Washington were unwilling to allow the "deliberate and unprovoked" assault on the battleship to go unpunished. A Warning from Hanoi But had the USS Maddox been on a peaceful tour in the Tonkin Gulf? Was it simply patrolling international waters with no knowledge of the South Vietnamese gunboats, and unaware of the Southern campaign to attack the North? Officials in Hanoi were certain that not only had the United States known about the raids, but it had helped the South carry them out. Just a few days before, North Vietnamese leaders had approached the International Control Commission, a mediating organization set up by the 1954 Geneva Accords. In July, the officials reported, South Vietnamese gunboats had fired upon fishing vesselssome containing familiesnear the northern coast of Tonkin Gulf and assaulted two North Vietnamese islands. The American naval destroyer, the USS Maddox, they claimed, had provided protection for the gunboats and, therefore, condoned the attacks. Though it had been patrolling international waters and hadn't fired shells, the Maddox had violated the Geneva peace agreement. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara denied that the Maddox helped the South Vietnamese gunners in any way, insisting, "our Navy played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any." It was, in essence, a blank check for military operations in Vietnam. Careful What You Wish For But the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was not a declaration of war, for Johnson planned to bring Hanoi to its knees before full-scale warfare could develop. The assumptions underlying his scheme, however, were deeply flawed. Johnson's administration concluded that leaders in Hanoi controlled the rebel organizations in the South who sought to overthrow the Saigon government. North Vietnam, Washington believed, funded the National Liberation Front (NLF), armed the Viet Cong (VC), and delegated the rebel military campaigns carried out in South Vietnam. If leaders in Hanoi chose to surrender, it was presumed they would be able to halt all hostilities in the South. Civil war in Vietnam would end. President Johnson and his military advisers discovered, however, that severe assaults on the North had little to no bearing on the strength and determination of Vietnamese guerrilla forces in the South. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was one of several major U.S. foreign policy decisions in Vietnam based on poor judgment and misinformation. And the bombing raids that followed marked one of many moments in which such policy decisions led not to an end in fighting, but to the escalation of warfare. Whether he'd intended to or not, Johnson had bargained with Congress for war, and he got exactly that. A skirmish that the president had expected to win within the year became a full-scale, decade-long struggleone that the U.S. ultimately lost. Page Content Twenty-five years ago, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was passed, requiring large organizations to offer workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new baby or sick family member. Today, U.S. employers face a growing patchwork of state paid-leave laws, while momentum is building for federal paid-family-leave legislation. Employers should ensure that state and federal lawmakers hear their opinions about proposed legislation, urged Lisa Horn, vice president for congressional affairs at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), and Adrienne Schweer, leader of the Paid Family Leave Task Force at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank. They spoke March 19 at the 2019 SHRM Employment Law & Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C. "Paid leave and flexible work options help attract and maintain an engaged, productive workforce," Horn said, "but a fragmented patchwork of state and local leave requirements creates a compliance conundrum, [and] rigid government mandates stifle employer flexibility and innovation." A 2016 study by the Pew Research Center found that Americans largely support paid leave for new mothers and fathers, as well as for workers who need to care for a family member with a serious health condition or deal with their own medical issues. But the public is sharply divided over whether the government should require employers to offer this benefit or let employers decide for themselves, Horn noted. According to SHRM's 2018 Employee Benefits survey of more than 3,500 HR professionals, 27 percent of organizations offer paid family leave of some kind. Most employers doing so are outside the states that have imposed paid leave, she said. Employers offer these benefits because they recognize that paid leave is a top concern among Millennials, who are raising families and caring for aging relatives and who will represent more than 75 percent of the workforce within the next decade. State Mandates Vary Currently, five states mandate paid family leave. California and Rhode Island fund their programs through an employee payroll tax, while New Jersey, New York and Washington impose payroll taxes on employees and employers. Wage replacement rates among the states range from 50 percent to 90 percent, while the length of family leave varies from four to 12 weeks (with longer periods for medical disability). Washington, D.C., enacted but hasn't yet implemented a paid-leave law, with the details still being worked out by the City Council. These initiatives, however, only hint at what's coming, Horn and Schweer said. In 2018, 21 states were considering paid-family-leave laws, and in 2019 even more are expected to consider legislation, they pointed out. Multistate Employers Face Challenges In an earlier conference session, Jonathan A. Segal, a partner at Philadelphia-based law firm Duane Morris, highlighted the challenge faced by multistate employers dealing with different state family-leave mandates. An HR professional in Segal's session noted that his company is on the Oregon/Washington border, "with employees on both sides of the river." Washington has a paid FMLA law, but Oregon doesn't, and the company wasn't sure what to do. When operating in states with different leave requirements, Segal said, employers can choose to follow the most generous paid-leave policy nationwide or have different paid-leave benefits based on location. If they choose the latter option, "it's often bad for employee relations" when employees learn that their access to paid leave is less than co-workers' in other states, he said. While there are also administrative and legal issues in overseeing different policies in different states, "your employee relations issues may be bigger than your legal issues," he noted. A uniform national policy on paid family leave could resolve many of the challenges now faced by multijurisdictional employers, Segal said. A National Interest Momentum is building for a federal paid-leave initiative, Schweer said, but a deep partisan divide will likely prevent legislation from being passed by the current Congress, where Democrats hold the House and Republicans control the Senate. But paid-family-leave proposals could become an issue in the 2020 presidential and congressional campaigns. Some of the measures that have been introduced or may be reintroduced in Congress include: The Working Parents Flexibility Act, which establishes tax-exempt parental-leave savings accounts for child care that can be funded by employees and employers. This measure has some bipartisan support. The New Parents Act, which allows new parents to draw from Social Security for paid leave that lasts one, two or three months in exchange for delaying or reducing future Social Security benefits. Parents also could choose to keep working full-time or part-time and use the extra funds to pay for childcare expenses. Similarly, the Child Rearing and Development Leave Empowerment (CRADLE) Act would let parents receive up to three months of paid leave by giving them the option to postpone Social Security benefits, but would require parents to take leave from work in order to receive the benefit. Neither measure has Democratic co-sponsors. The Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act, which provides partial wage replacement for all FMLA qualifying events funded by a payroll tax on employers and employees. With 179 Democratic co-sponsors to date and no Republican support, the measure "is expected to pass the House but then to have little chance in the Republican Senate," Horn said. If Democrats take both the House and Senate as well as the presidency in 2020, however, enactment of this or a similar measure would be likely. In addition, presidential advisor Ivanka Trump has made paid family leave a top priority. The administration's fiscal year 2020 budget includes a proposal to establish a federal state-parental-leave benefit program that would provide six weeks of benefits for mothers, fathers and adoptive parents, funded within the unemployment insurance program. Legislation has not yet been introduced, and the measure isn't expected to attract Democratic support, Schweer said. A 2018 survey of 1,700 adults by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that 74 percent of respondents support a new federal government program to provide 12 weeks of paid leave to new parents or to people dealing with their own or a family member's serious medical condition. Support slips, however, after costs are considered, Horn and Schweer noted. While 54 percent would be willing to pay $200 a year in new taxes to fund a 12-week federal paid-leave program, most oppose establishing a federal paid-leave program if it would cost them $450 a year or more. [SHRM members-only toolkit: Managing Family and Medical Leave] Shaping Policy With state activity picking up speed and the growing potential for passing federal legislationif not now, then after the 2020 elections"the HR community needs to be in the discussion to help guide good policy," Horn said. Both Democrats and Republicans "agree that we need a federal policy on parental leave. Family care is a tough issue" for working parents and those with caregiving responsibilities, Schweer said. "We understand why employees want it and why it makes sense," but the approach and the detailswhether the employee, employer or government pays; what share of their salary employees receive; and how much time off employees should getare points of contention. Nevertheless, "the Republican Senate is talking about it for the first time, and the Democratic House is moving forward with legislation," Schweer said. Particularly at the state level, the employer community "isn't always at the table" when legislation is taking form, she observed, but by engaging in advocacy with lawmakers and becoming part of conversation, "you can help shape policy so it makes sense for your employees and your companies." Added Horn, "We're all advocates for paid family leave if we can get the policy right so that it works for both employers and employees." [Visit SHRM's resource page on paid time off.] Related SHRM Articles: GOP Rolls Out New Parents Act to Provide Paid Family Leave, SHRM Online, March 2019 State Legislators Say They Want to Hear from HR on Paid Family Leave, SHRM Online, March 2019 Support for New Parents Can Keep Employees On Board, SHRM Online, March 2019 How Much Parental Leave Is Too Much?, SHRM Online, February 2019 Page Content An employer that grants schedule adjustments that aren't required under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) may later stop allowing such changes when the employee declines to help the employer identify a reasonable accommodation, a recent 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision shows. Time Warner Cable Texas LLC hired the plaintiff in October 2012 as a workforce analyst. In June 2013, the plaintiff made an accommodation request under the ADA to lie down while at work due to dizzy spells related to her pregnancy. While the company found that her request did not technically qualify as an ADA accommodation, it nevertheless granted it. Shortly thereafter, the plaintiff asked her supervisor for a temporary modification to her work schedule that would allow her to leave the office early to avoid panic attacks brought on by stress associated with heavy traffic. While she did not submit a formal accommodation request, and the company had concerns that she would be unable to perform certain aspects of her job while at home, it nevertheless allowed her to leave the office in the early afternoon and work from her home for the remainder of the day. Following the birth of her child in December 2013, the plaintiff took 12 weeks of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave. After exhausting her FMLA leave in March 2014, she asked to work from home due to difficulties transitioning her child to bottle feeding. Once again, the company agreed and allowed her to work from home from March 2014 until December 2014. In December 2014, the plaintiff's new supervisor made it clear that in the absence of an approved accommodation under the ADA, she was expected to be in the office beginning in the new year. In response, again citing anxiety and panic attacks resulting from heavy traffic, the plaintiff submitted an accommodation request for a modified in-office schedule, from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., working from home in the afternoons. The company denied her request, noting that her position required her to work from the office during normal business hours, including the afternoons. However, the company offered her the option of leaving work at 4 p.m. Ultimately, she refused this proposal and instead sought intermittent FMLA leave that would allow her to leave at 2 p.m., and she immediately adjusted her schedule accordingly. Initially, the plaintiff's FMLA paperwork indicated that she required the ability to leave early when she experienced her traffic-related anxiety "flare-ups." In response, the company requested additional information regarding the number of episodes the plaintiff experienced per week and the duration of the episodes. The company did not receive information in response to this request. As a result, the company approved the plaintiff's use of one hour of FMLA leave per week for a period of six months. It also designated the majority of the plaintiff's leave previously taken in January and February 2015 as non-FMLA-qualified leave. On Feb. 24, 2015, the company issued the plaintiff a written warning as a result of poor attendance unrelated to FMLA-approved absences and advised that failure to improve her attendance would result in disciplinary action. The same day, the plaintiff left work early, resulting in the company's issuance of a final written warning. Shortly thereafter, the company terminated the plaintiff's employment after she failed to report to work due to child care issues. The plaintiff filed suit, alleging discrimination and failure to accommodate under the ADA, as well as retaliation under the FMLA. [SHRM members-only toolkit: Accommodating Employees' Disabilities] In holding that the ADA discrimination and FMLA retaliation claims could not proceed to trial, the court noted the company's legitimate basis for its termination decisionnamely, excessive absenteeism and the well-established principle that "an employee's failure to show up for work is a legitimate reason for firing her." Furthermore, the court reasoned that the plaintiff had not produced evidence suggesting that the company's reason for terminating her employment was untrue. In this regard, the court observed that Time Warner had "a record of granting [the plaintiff's] numerous accommodation and FMLA leave requests back to 2013, even when it was not required to do so by law." In concluding that the plaintiff's ADA failure-to-accommodate claim also could not proceed, the court pointed to her failure to engage in the interactive process required by the ADA, including her refusal to try leaving the office at 4 p.m., as proposed by the company, or explore public transportation options to address her traffic-related anxiety. The court concluded that her response to the company's proposal to leave at 4 p.m. was "not the stuff of flexible [and] interactive discussions." Trautman v. Time Warner Cable Texas LLC, 5th Cir., No. 18-50053 (Dec. 12, 2018). Professional Pointer: Employee use of FMLA leave, particularly when the leave taken is intermittent, can be one of the more challenging leave-related situations employers face. Employers that follow the technical requirements of the statute, demonstrate flexibility and document their compliance put themselves in the best position in the event of litigation. Jonathan E. O'Connell, SHRM-SCP, is a labor and employment attorney practicing with the federal government in Washington, D.C. [Visit SHRM's resource page on the Americans with Disabilities Act.] Page Content As more states legalize medical and recreational marijuana use, HR continues to struggle with the challenges presented by applicants and employees who use the drug, said Vantaggio HR President Lauraine Bifulco, speaking March 19 at the 2019 Society for Human Resource Management Employment Law & Legislative Conference. Bifulco began her presentation by outlining some eye-opening statistics: U.S. marijuana production has increased tenfold over the last 25 years. Next to alcohol, marijuana is the second most frequently found substance in drivers involved in fatal car accidents. Employees who test positive for marijuana have 55 percent more industrial accidents, 75 percent higher absenteeism and 85 percent more injuries than those who test negative for the drug. There are 1.2 million authorized users of medical marijuana in the United States. [SHRM members-only HR Q&A: What laws should companies be aware of when implementing a drug testing program?] While marijuana use remains illegal at the federal level, 33 states have legalized medical use, and 10 states have also legalized recreational use, Bifulco noted. And state legalization "is definitely something we will continue to see," she said. Among the states that have legalized marijuana, there are "red" states as well as "blue" states, said Jonathan A. Segal, an attorney with Duane Morris in Philadelphia who also spoke at the conference. "We live in a world where we disagree on so many things, but not on weed," Segal joked. Medical Marijuana "People mistakenly think that if you have a medical marijuana identification card (MMID), you [are allowed to] be under the influence at work, but this is wrong," Bifulco said. No law requires an employer to accommodate a worker who's under the influence at work, she explained. However, other legal questions arise with regard to employee medical marijuana use. For example, she asked, "Can you terminate or [not] hire an employee for testing positive on a medical marijuana test if that person has a legal MMID?" The answer, she said, is maybe. Several courts have ruled that employers can uphold workplace drug-free policies because marijuana use violates federal law. However, 13 states have passed laws to explicitly prohibit workplace discrimination against patients who use medical marijuana. And while the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) does not protect illegal drug use, which includes marijuana use because it is illegal under federal law, many states have nondiscrimination laws similar to the ADA. These statutes do not mention medical marijuana, and court decisions under these state laws are divided. Courts in eight states have ruled in favor of employers, while four have ruled in favor of employees, Bifulco said. More recent rulings, however, show a shift toward protecting employees, she said, suggesting that even employers in states with pro-employer rulings should be cautious. "I think we are moving into a brave new world," she said. In the 33 states where medical marijuana is legal, "if you want to have a zero-tolerance policy, be very careful," she advised. Formulating policies on medical marijuana may be particularly troublesome for multistate employers, Segal said. "How do you have a universal rule when laws differ so much from state to state?" he asked. More multistate employers are therefore saying, "This is too thorny. We will not test for cannabis, except where required by law," such as where Department of Transportation regulations require testing, Segal noted. Recreational Marijuana Bifulco posed another question about recreational marijuana use: If it's legal in your state, can you fire or refuse to hire someone for testing positive if that person does not have an MMID? Again, she offered the same answer: maybe. In many of the states that have legalized recreational marijuana, the laws allow employers to continue to maintain zero-tolerance policies based on federal law. Several states, however, are silent as to whether employers may limit or regulate an employee's use of marijuana outside the workplace. Unlike with medical marijuana, the state laws that may come into play with regard to recreational marijuana use are not disability bias laws but are laws regarding invasion of privacy and laws protecting employees' off-duty conduct, Bifulco said. In 2018, Maine became the first state to protect employees' use of marijuana (not just medical marijuana) outside the workplace. Under the law, employers can't even test applicants for marijuana. They can, however, still prohibit its use at work and discipline employees for being under the influence while on duty. Bifulco said that she expects other states to follow Maine's example and pass laws prohibiting drug testing for marijuana. Challenges of Drug-Testing Programs Under most drug-testing programs that employers now use, a positive marijuana test will not indicate if the marijuana use happened on or off duty, Bifulco said. In fact, urine testing, the most commonly used method, may detect use that occurred as many as 90 days before the test was taken. With that in mind, HR should ask a variety of questions before deciding whether to test applicants and employees for marijuana, she said. These include: How much of a concern is safety in our workplace or in certain positions? Is medical marijuana legal in our state, and, if so, are MMID holders protected from employment discrimination? Is recreational use of marijuana legal, and, if so, can employers enforce zero-tolerance polices? Does our state have off-duty conduct or relevant privacy laws? Recommendations While recognizing the complexity of the problems raised by the many new laws regarding marijuana use, Bifulco concluded by offering a few suggestions for HR: Start thinking of marijuana in the workplace as you would think of alcohol in the workplace. Accommodate MMID holders, assuming there is an underlying disability. Focus on prohibiting the use or possession of marijuana while at work or being under the influence at work. Focus on safety and testing when there is a reasonable suspicion of workplace impairment. Joanne Deschenaux, J.D., is a freelance writer in Annapolis, Md. Page Content California is a state where one tiny mistake can lead to class-action claims and seven-figure verdictsbut the good news for HR is that understanding California law is a career builder, said Brenda Kasper, a founding attorney at Kasper & Frank in Carlsbad, Calif. It's nearly impossible to go over all of California's employment laws in an hour, Kasper told attendees at the 2019 Society for Human Resource Management Employment Law & Legislative Conference on March 19. "Employers must remember that California state law is quite different than federal law in many respects," she said. For example, wage and hour laws are more expansive, and employees have a right to take leave for more reasons than outlined in federal law. Furthermore, employers can't ask job applicants about their criminal background until a conditional job offer is made, nor can they ask applicants about their salary history. Employers must also pay attention to California's local laws, as many of the state's cities and localities have different minimum-wage and sick-leave laws, Kasper said in an interview with SHRM Online. MJ Forbes, a conference attendee from Pleasant Prairie, Wis., said her company has about 900 employees in California. As an HR manager, she wanted to attend the session to be a better business partner to her company's HR team in California. "There's so much to know," she said. Here are some of the latest legal developments in California that may cause compliance issues for HR professionals. Independent-Contractor Classification In Dynamex Operations West v. Superior Court, the California Supreme Court adopted a three-factor testcalled the ABC test to determine whether workers are employees or independent contractors under the state's wage orders. The worker is presumed to be an employee unless all of the following factors are met: The worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity. The worker performs tasks that are outside of the usual course of the hiring entity's business. The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity. The first factor has always been a test, but the second and third are problematic for employers, Kasper noted. "If you have any contractors who perform the same work as your employees, they're not contractors." Workers also have to have their own business to be independent contractors. The decision made it very difficult for employers to properly classify workers as independent contractors, "and it is likely that the California Legislature this year is going to codify this case," she said. Anti-Harassment Laws The California Legislature passed several anti-harassment measures that went into effect in 2019. Businesses with at least five employees must provide sexual-harassment-prevention training to all workers by Jan. 1, 2020, and every two years thereafter. Employers should note that there are different training requirements for supervisory and nonsupervisory employees. "If you trained your people in 2018 under the old laws, you have to train them again," Kasper said. State lawmakers recently introduced a bill that would clarify that businesses that provided the appropriate training after Jan. 1, 2018, would not need to do so again until after Dec. 31, 2020. But the bill is still working its way through the legislative process. [SHRM members-only toolkit: Complying with California Sexual Harassment Training Requirements] Additionally, the new requirements limit when an employer can use confidentiality provisions in settlement agreements and clarify an employer's obligation to prohibit sexual harassment and other forms of harassment. Tracking Time Worked Last year, in Troester v. Starbucks, the California Supreme Court ruled that employers must pay workers for routine, off-the-clock activities, such as setting the alarm and closing the store at the end of the day, even if the amount of time is minimal. Under federal law, businesses can require employees to work small amounts of time each day without compensation if the time is administratively difficult to track. But the state high court said the federal "de minimis" rule didn't apply in the Starbucks case because it hadn't been adopted under California wage and hour laws and didn't otherwise apply to the case under state law. Still, the court didn't go as far as saying that every second worked must be captured and compensated. "We do not decide whether there are circumstances where compensable time is so minute or irregular that it is unreasonable to expect the time to be recorded," the court said. So California employers can expect more class-action litigation over small periods of time that employees work, Kasper noted. Review for Compliance Employers that are new to the state are often surprised about how well California employees know their rights. They're "not afraid to complain about employer compliance in an active and vocal manner," Kasper said, noting that California's government agencies rarely side with employers. When federal, state and local laws differ, employers should comply with the law that's most favorable to employees. "Definitely have someone look at your policies and practices," she said. "There are a number of things that you're probably going to have to do differently" in California. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A firefighter and a civilian suffered minor injuries during a fire early on Thursday morning at the West Brighton Houses, according to the FDNY. The fire was called at 12:52 a.m. for the third floor of the eight-story building at 780 Henderson Ave., according to a spokesman for the FDNY/EMS. The injured were taken to Staten Island University Hospital in Ocean Breeze and the blaze remains under investigation, according to a spokesman. About 60 firefighters and 12 units brought the all-hands fire under control in less than an hour, according to the FDNY Twitter feed and emergency radio communications. WASHINGTON - A federal judge ruled late Tuesday (March 19) that the Interior Department violated federal law by failing to take into account the climate impact of its oil and gas leasing out west. The decision by U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Rudolph Contreras marks the first time the Trump administration has been held to account for the climate impact of its energy dominance agenda, and it could have sweeping implications for the president's plan to boost fossil fuel production across the country. Contreras concluded that Interior's Bureau of Land Management "did not sufficiently consider climate change" when making decisions to auction off federal land in Wyoming to oil and gas drilling. The judge temporarily blocked drilling on roughly 300,000 acres of land in the state. The initial ruling in the case brought by two advocacy groups, WildEarth Guardians and Physicians for Social Responsibility, has implications for oil and gas drilling on federal land throughout the West. In the decision, Contreras faulted the agency's environmental assessments as inadequate because they did not detail how individual drilling projects contributed to the nation's overall carbon output. Since greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change, the judge wrote, these analyses did not provide policymakers and the public with a sufficient understanding of drilling's impact, as required under the National Environmental Policy Act. "Given the national, cumulative nature of climate change, considering each individual drilling project in a vacuum deprives the agency and the public of the context necessary to evaluate oil and gas drilling on federal land before irretrievably committing to that drilling," he wrote. While the Interior Department began to take into account the climate impacts of federal oil, gas and coal leasing toward the end of President Barack Obama's second term, Trump officials jettisoned those plans right after President Trump took office. Trump and several of his top deputies have dismissed recent federal findings that the United States and other countries must curb their carbon output in the next decade or face potentially disastrous consequences from climate change. The Bureau of Land Management could not be immediately reached for comment Wednesday. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A former worker at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Bloomfield is filing charges against the online retail giant, alleging that he was fired for speaking out. Justin Rashad Long, who was recently employed as a worker at Amazon, is filing charges of unfair labor practices against Amazon, according to Progressive Cities. The charges were filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Wednesday morning. Long was recently fired after emerging as a leader in a closely-watched campaign to organize his co-workers and generate support for unionization at Amazons facility on Staten Island. Mr. Longs allegations are false, said Amazon spokeswoman Rachel Lighty. His employment was terminated for violating a serious safety policy. All employees, including Mr. Long, are trained from day one on the importance of safety and their role in maintaining a safe workplace. In charges filed Wednesday on his behalf by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), Long says his firing was an act of retaliation by Amazon for speaking out against problematic working conditions and organizing his co-workers. Recently, Amazon fired me after I spoke out about bad working conditions at their Staten Island Fulfillment Center along with some of my co-workers. My getting fired is a clear act of retaliation by Amazon. The incident that Amazon cites as the reason for my firing is bogus, said Long. Im filing charges of unfair labor practices because its unfair and wrong that Amazon fired me for speaking out and organizing at my workplace. I plan to continue to support Amazons workers in New York City as they fight to improve their workplaces, their jobs, and their lives. Its a fight they can and should win, he added. Lightly stressed that Amazon already offers what unions are requesting for employees: industry-leading pay, comprehensive benefits and opportunities for career growth -- adding that associates at the Staten Island facility make $17 to $23 an hour. At Amazon, these benefits and opportunities come with the job, as does the ability to communicate directly with the leadership of the company, she said. We encourage anyone to compare our overall pay, benefits, and workplace environment to other retailers and major employers in the community and across the country. The RWDSU is rallying around Long and Amazon workers. Rashad was right to speak out about terrible conditions at the Amazon facility in Staten Island where he worked, and to raise legitimate concerns about health and safety issues, hours, and arbitrary treatment by management. Instead of firing Rashad, Amazon should have listened to him and addressed the specific issues that he and other workers raised, said RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum. ....We are prepared to file more unfair labor practices charges on behalf of any Amazon workers here in New York who are mistreated or fired by their employer for organizing or speaking out. We urge New Yorks elected officials to condemn Amazons firing of Rashad, and the companys retaliation against him for organizing and speaking out, he added. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Puff, puff, psychosis? A recently-unveiled study claims that daily marijuana consumption and the rise of stronger pot strands increase the likelihood of a psychotic episode. The findings, courtesy of The Lancet Psychiatry, used data from 901 participants with first-episode psychosis across 11 sites and 1,237 population controls from those same sites. The sites refer to cities and include Paris, Madrid, Amsterdam, and London. The study found that those who used pot daily were three times more likely to have a psychotic episode compared with someone who never used the drug, writes NPR, one of dozens of media outlets to report on the study. In the three sites with the greatest consumption of high-potency cannabis, daily use of high-potency cannabis was associated with the greatest increase in the odds for psychotic disorder compared with never having used: four times greater in Paris, five times greater in London, and more than nine times greater in Amsterdam, reads the study. The findings come as states across America continue to weigh legalization of marijuana. Just this week, Florida legalized smokable medical marijuana. More locally, New York has recently weighed legalizing pot in the Empire State, and New Jersey is rapidly nearing a similar measure. You can read the complete report here. The Tweed Courthouse, opened in 1881 and named after Tammany Hall Boss William Tweed, became synonymous with corruption through Boss Tweeds use of the buildings construction to embezzle public funds and provide kickbacks to his cronies. In some ways its fitting that the old and notorious courthouse is now home to the New York City Department of Education, which misspent nearly $1 billion in taxpayer funds on the failed Renewal Schools program and has recently been exposed for providing lucrative contracts for friends of the former chancellor and the wining, dining and travel by the agencys executives, paid for by school lunch vendors. With the state looking to allocate another $11 billion in the state budget for education aid to New York City, the legislature has a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers, and a moral one to our 1.1 million public school children to investigate and demand answers to questions about DOEs spending practices before Mayoral Control is extended. Thats why Im pushing the Assembly Education Committee, of which I am a new member, to hold public hearings and have also introduced a bill to require a hearing in each of the five boroughs prior to a vote to extend Mayor Control. A few months ago, Comptroller Scott Stringer released an enlightening report revealing that the DOE had wasted roughly $20 million of taxpayer dollars on expensive and luxurious travel expenditures, 93 percent of which violated the agencys own regulations. But thats not all. Equally as troubling as the DOEs spending on lavish travel were the free trips to Miami, Las Vegas, San Antonio and Los Angeles that the agencys executives received over the past few years from the same suppliers that had been awarded lucrative school lunch contracts under the citys $750 million school lunch program. Some of these same vendors provided inedible lunches with discolored meat, moldy juice and chicken containing metal or bones. Then there is Mayor de Blasios School Renewal Program, which, as part of its bloated budget, provided salaries for 72 bureaucrats assigned to the program, plus $40 million in annual fees for high priced consultants; some of whom were paid up to $1,400 a day, while the schools crumbled. Over $774 million later, the program is being dismantled after many of the turnaround schools failed to meet their graduation goals. While the Renewal Program had a short and expensive run, it provided three years of lucrative paydays for a few of former Chancellor Farinas closest friends; including her co-author of A School Leaders Guide to Excellence. Ive called on the citys Department of Investigations to take action. Most recently, United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Michael Mulgrew reinforced what Ive been saying for two years that school discipline in our schools has become a joke as students face zero consequence for disrespecting teachers, bullying classmates and bringing drugs to school. Someone needs to be held accountable for the tens of millions of dollars squandered on vendors and consultants while our teachers are forced to pay for classroom supplies out of their own pockets. Someone needs to take responsibility for children with special needs that are not receiving the attention they require, for overcrowded classrooms that are bursting at the seams and for those students who are being taught in mold-infested classrooms. I brought up these concerns with current Chancellor Carranza during the state budget hearings in Albany earlier this month and he assured me that, under his watch, the agency is making changes and improving accountability. We should all hope so, because, sadly, it has become all too apparent that the taxpayers have been scammed and the citys children have paid the price by receiving a sub-standard education. The time has come for transparency, accountability and education funds being spent on our children, not on feathering the nests of longtime bureaucrats and overpriced consultants. The public deserves answers. Thats why its imperative that the state legislature hold hearings before we give Mayor de Blasio an extension of control. (Nicole Malliotakis represents portions of Brooklyn and Staten Island in the New York State Assembly and was the Republican nominee for NYC Mayor in 2017.) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. The Eltingville man accused of slaying reputed Gambino crime family boss Francesco (Frank) Cali had this bit of advice for a reporter who tried to talk to him in a New Jersey jail: You shouldnt believe in stories. Dont believe in fairy tales, the Daily News quoted Anthony Comello, 24, as saying. When the reporter asked if that meant he didnt gun down Cali, 53, in a hail of bullets on March 13 outside Calis Hilltop Terrace home, Comello responded, I dont need to clear my name, the News reported. Comello said little else before terminating the interview Wednesday in the Ocean County Jail. The suspect was arrested Saturday in Brick, N.J., at a home owned by his family. He is expected to be brought back to Staten Island and arraigned Monday in Criminal Court. Robert Gottlieb, Comellos lawyer, hasnt commented on a possible defense and told the Advance on Wednesday he is thoroughly investigating the case. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Is a mass exodus in the cards? For a third of New Yorkers, yes. According to a new Quinnipiac University Poll, 35 percent of New Yorkers say they will be forced to move in the next five years for better economic opportunity. The scientific poll, published March 20, took the temperature of more than 1,200 New York state voters. The results also showed 55 percent of respondents said they can afford to live in New York City. The findings may not come as a surprise to folks living here, as the price tag to reside in New York City has been increasing for some time now. On Tuesday, 1010 WINS noted that the Big Apple is now the seventh most expensive city in the world -- up from 39th just five years ago. Other financial concerns that have appeared in the Advance have touched on rising property taxes. On Staten Island, a recent study said folks need to earn between $108,000 and $140,025 annually to own a home in the borough. Heck, even dating in New York City is apparently more costly than any other city in the country. The Quinnipiac study primarily focused on the New York City-Amazon deal, but provided findings related to quality of life, expenses, marijuana legalization and top state elected official approval ratings, including that of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who received a 50 percent approval rating, his highest since May 2018, according to the results. You can read the entire report here. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! The allegation of the bonus arrangement for Mr Michel-Verdier comes at a time when the union-backed industry super sector has hit out against remuneration pay packets for chief executive officers and other staff in corporate Australia. Mr Michel-Verdier was subject to a disciplinary panel assessment at IFM that reviewed complaints by Ms Abildgaard. Court documents show IFM had considered cutting 100 per cent of Mr Michel-Verdier's short-term bonus for 2018 and advised him to not drink for 12 months at work events after an internal investigation into his alleged conduct. After the investigation, it is alleged his short-term bonus was eventually reduced to a maximum of 57.5 per cent of his potential bonus. Despite that action, several senior sources inside the industry super and union movement have expressed outrage over the size of the long-term bonus that was alleged to have been available to Mr Michel-Verdier. That number is an order of magnitude that is ten times higher than any number I have heard of in the sector. Senior industry superannuation sector source "That number on the face of it is an order of magnitude that is ten times higher than any number I have heard of in the sector," said one senior source at a large industry super fund that is a shareholder in IFM. Another senior source working at an IFM shareholder industry fund said: "I've never heard of a bonus that is anything like that much [in the industry superannuation sector]. That's an extraordinary amount of money for a group that is supposed to take care of the battlers." Another senior source at a large fund said the case showed the "attitude and aggression" of some parts of the industry super sector. "There is a lot of hubris in the [industry fund] super sector, but we're not perfect," they said. "It's not a good look. You can't sell that. That's why we hate long-term incentives," another senior industry fund source said. Despite denying the alleged $36 million figure, IFM would not clarify the size of Mr Michel-Verdier's bonus and has tried to limit discussion of the bonus in the London legal hearings. A spokesman for AustralianSuper declined to comment when questioned about potential excessive remuneration at IFM. First Super - which shares an external media consultant with IFM - also declined to comment. The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI), which represents the industry funds, has been a vocal critic of excessive executive remuneration in Australia's corporate sector but declined to comment, referring all questions to IFM. ACSI has railed against excessive CEO remuneration in several forums including in its annual report on CEO pay where it has described large payments in spite of conduct issues "tone deaf". Club Bling Bling in Madrid where IFM staff attended after work drinks. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten - a one-time director of AustralianSuper - has also hit out against "fat cat bonuses". He did not respond to questions on IFM's alleged pay packets this week. As part of her claim, Ms Abildgaard has provided the court with a series of WhatsApp messages between herself and Mr Michel-Verdier from the early hours of March 17, 2018 both during and after the work drinks at club Bling Bling. According to her claim, Mr Michel-Verdier said to Ms Abildgaard: "We could have a lot of fun'' and ''if I was 20 years younger I would be all over you''. Ms Abildgaard also alleges Mr Michel-Verdier told her that evening: "You do not understand, I am so much older than you. You are so young. I can teach you a lot about sex''. She also alleges her internal complaint following her resignation was not properly dealt with by IFM and that the group is beset with a sexist and bullying culture. She cites IFM documents that allegedly say 19 out of 25 voluntary departures at IFM over a six-month period were women. Mr Michel-Verdier denies he harassed Ms Abildgaard and has said he was sending her his room number at her request to assist with her hotel checkout in the morning. The employment tribunal heard Ms Abildgaard resigned from IFM to take a job at another fund manager about a month after the work trip to Madrid. Ms Abildgaard alleges Mr Michel-Verdier is lying about his behaviour towards her to protect his rights to his bonuses. She has also claimed that IFM has acted aggressively towards her in its defence of the matter. IFM is defending the allegations brought by Ms Abildgaard. It is not yet known what caused the crashes of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10 and Lion Air Flight 610 five months earlier, both after erratic takeoffs. But investigators are looking at whether a new software system added to avoid stalls in Boeing's 737 MAX series may have been partly to blame. Faulty data from sensors on the Lion Air plane may have caused the system, known as MCAS, to malfunction, authorities investigating that crash suspect. That software system takes readings from two vane-like devices called angle of attack sensors that determine how much the plane's nose is pointing up or down relative to oncoming air. When MCAS detects that the plane is pointing up at a dangerous angle, it can automatically push down the nose of the plane in an effort to prevent the plane from stalling. The cockpit of a grounded Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 in Indonesia earlier this month. Credit:Bloomberg Boeing's optional safety features, in part, could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings. One of the optional upgrades, the angle of attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another. Boeing will soon update the MCAS software, and will also make the disagree light standard on all new 737 MAX planes, according to a person familiar with the changes, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they have not been made public. The angle of attack indicator will remain an option that airlines can buy. Neither feature was mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration. All 737 MAX jets have been grounded. Loading "They're critical, and cost almost nothing for the airlines to install," said Bjorn Fehrm, an analyst at the aviation consultancy Leeham. "Boeing charges for them because it can. But they're vital for safety." Earlier this week, Dennis A. Muilenburg, Boeing's chief executive, said the company was working to make the 737 MAX safer. "As part of our standard practice following any accident, we examine our aircraft design and operation, and when appropriate, institute product updates to further improve safety," he said in a statement. Add-on features can be big moneymakers for plane manufacturers. In 2013, around the time Boeing was starting to market its 737 MAX 8, an airline would expect to spend about $US800,000 ($1.13 million) to $US2 million on various options for such a narrow-body aircraft, according to a report by Jackson Square Aviation, a consultancy in San Francisco. That would be about 5 per cent of the plane's final price. Boeing charges extra, for example, for a backup fire extinguisher in the cargo hold. Past incidents have shown that a single extinguishing system may not be enough to put out flames that spread rapidly through the plane. Regulators in Japan require airlines there to install backup fire extinguishing systems, but the FAA does not. "There are so many things that should not be optional, and many airlines want the cheapest airplane you can get," said Mark H. Goodrich, an aviation lawyer and former engineering test pilot. "And Boeing is able to say, 'Hey, it was available'." But what Boeing doesn't say, he added, is that it has become "a great profit centre" for the manufacturer. Both Boeing and its airline customers have taken pains to keep these options, and prices, out of the public eye. Airlines frequently redact details of the features they opt to pay for - or exclude - from their filings with financial regulators. Boeing declined to disclose the full menu of safety features it offers as options on the 737 MAX, or how much they cost. Loading But one unredacted filing from 2003 for a previous version of the 737 shows that Gol Airlines, a Brazilian carrier, paid $US6,700 extra for oxygen masks for its crew, and $US11,900 for an advanced weather radar system control panel. Gol did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The three American airlines that bought the 737 MAX each took a different approach to outfitting the cockpits. American Airlines, which ordered 100 of the planes and has 24 in its fleet, bought both the angle of attack indicator and the disagree light, the company said. Southwest Airlines, which ordered 280 of the planes and counts 36 in its fleet so far, had already purchased the disagree alert option, and it also installed an angle of attack indicator in a display mounted above the pilots' heads. After the Lion Air crash, Southwest said it would modify its 737 MAX fleet to place the angle of attack indicator on the pilots' main computer screens. United Airlines, which ordered 137 of the planes and has received 14, did not select the indicators or the disagree light. A United spokesman said the airline does not include the features because its pilots use other data to fly the plane. Boeing is making other changes to the MCAS software. When it was rolled out, MCAS took readings from only one sensor on any given flight, leaving the system vulnerable to a single point of failure. One theory in the Lion Air crash is that MCAS was receiving faulty data from one of the sensors, prompting an unrecoverable nose dive. In the software update that Boeing says is coming soon, MCAS will be modified to take readings from both sensors. If there is a meaningful disagreement between the readings, MCAS will be disabled. Customers of the high-end tailors Rhodes & Beckett are being refused refunds for shirts and suits they bought but never received after the business was quietly moved into a new company - controlled by the same owners - and then put into administration. It comes amid an ongoing battle between the suit maker and a private equity group which helped revive the company when it last collapsed just two years ago, with the store's owners saying its website had been "held to ransom and taken offline. Control of Rhodes & Beckett has moved to a new company. Credit:Simon Schluter Its unbelievable really," said one customer, Julian, who did not want his last name used due his position in a leading corporate firm in Melbourne. He said he bought about $1400 worth of suits and shirts on Christmas Eve but has still not received the order or a refund. Tesla filed a lawsuit on Thursday against a former engineer at the company, claiming he copied the source code for its Autopilot technology before joining a Chinese self-driving car startup in January. Tesla alleges engineer, Guangzhi Cao, copied more than 300,000 files related to Autopilot source code as he prepared to join China's Xiaopeng Motors. Credit:Bloomberg The engineer, Guangzhi Cao, copied more than 300,000 files related to Autopilot source code as he prepared to join China's Xiaopeng Motors, the Silicon Valley carmaker said in the lawsuit filed in a California court. Separately, Tesla lawyers filed a lawsuit against four former employees and US self-driving car startup Zoox, alleging the employees stole proprietary information and trade secrets for developing warehousing, logistics and inventory control operations. In a statement, Xiaopeng spokeswoman Marie Cheung said the company was not aware of Cao's alleged misconduct and that the company has started an internal investigation on the matter. By the time he was 19, hed become a station hand, learning to horse ride, muster sheep, press wool and break in horses before turning to droving, at the same time learning how to crack a stockwhip to control cattle. Wills, an adult educator for 40 years, first came to Australia in 1955 as an assisted migrant a 'five-pound Pom'. Travelling to the UK to train polo ponies, he met Argentinian gauchos who taught him how to plait and make simple knots for whips. But a few years later when he and his wife, Judy, were working as driver and cook with a team of geologists in Queensland, one of them asked him: Mate, when are you going to do something with your brain? So he entered university as a mature-age student and qualified as a teacher, teaching primary school for 10 years. But during his long-service leave he was offered tutoring in literacy in the faculty of teacher education at Charles Sturt University at Bathurst. He later acquired a masters degree, researching the implementation of the curriculum in small one or two-teacher schools in NSW. He found that, on the whole, the teachers altered and tweaked the curriculum in what he describes as wonderful schools, just the place youd like to send your kids, where many of his students went on to teach. With his life working in 10-year cycles he attained a full-time lecturing position in literacy in the faculty of education at the University of Tasmania in Launceston, and completed a PhD on single-sex classes in government schools. The Berejiklian government's decision to move the Powerhouse Museum, restrictions on live music and the adequacy and integrity of arts funding have become lightning rod issues for dissent within the arts community on the eve of the election. The National Association for Visual Arts (NAVA) has called for transparency in arts funding decisions and investment in artists as it became the latest peak industry group to release a ''report card'' on the major parties' arts policies ahead of Saturday's election. Protesters at the Don't Kill Live Music rally at Hyde Park in February. Credit:James Brickwood The move comes after the extraordinary intervention of the Balnaves family foundation which this week placed full-page ads in national media pointing to a disparity in arts funding - "a miserable $542 million" - compared with the sector's economic contribution and asking voters to consider the state's ''cultural future'' at the ballot box. The philanthropic foundation - which supports the Museum of Contemporary Arts, Story Factory and Bangarra Dance Theatre among other leading arts organisations - claimed the NSW Liberal government ''doesn't get the arts''. If we agree with Laurences green politics and her commitment to conservation and ecological issues, does that automatically mean we have to love her art? Ive been looking at Alexander Calders work in preparation for a forthcoming show at the National Gallery of Victoria, and the disarming simplicity of those sculptures stands in stark contrast to Laurences crowded, rhetorical installations. It reflects, in part, the difference in our expectations of the art being made today, as opposed to the heyday of Modernism. In the 1940s and '50s the most radical work may have been nothing but a set of purely abstract forms. While theres no shortage of contemporary abstract art theres also a vast amount of work like Laurences in which content is crucial. This is not to say Laurence doesnt think about form. She is conscious of the poetic aspects of a piece and adopts devices such as the vitrine or "cabinet of curiosities" to create a range of historical and conceptual associations. Yet the immediate impression one takes away from such works is one of congestion and clutter. There are too many diverse objects and specimens laid out in case after case like some fantasia of natural history. When we see such items in the Australian Museum or the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, they are carefully labelled and classified. In Laurences installations the borrowed museum items are used to create a poetic effect. She employed chemical symbols in the same way in an earlier series of works on the theme of alchemy, as may be seen in a work from the Periodic Table series of 1993. In brief, she creates a fiction of science and natural history for artistic purposes, but the visual impact of such accumulations is rather dull. Its like looking at museum display cases jumbled together in a random manner. Somehow we are expected to experience a eureka moment in front of these works, suddenly realising the importance of trees, the fragility of the Great Barrier Reef or the reparations we owe to the environment. Brisbane-born Dumas has had an unusual professional trajectory, starting out as a musical comedy performer in the 1960s with that behemoth of Australian commercial theatre, J.C. Williamson, before moving to England where he danced for a number of venerable ballet companies including the Royal Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater. Anyone who cares about dance in the broadest sense should see Russell Dumas' Cultural Residues 2020. It is a learning experience: this is what dancers can do in the hands of a brilliant artist. It is the human body at its most profound. Anyone who cares about dance ... should see Russell Dumas' Cultural Residues 2020. However, it was in the freedom and humanism of New York's postmodern dance that he found his spiritual home, dancing with Trisha Brown and Twyla Tharp, and returning to Australia in 1976 to disseminate what he learnt through his Sydney-based company Dance Exchange, and later the Dancelink program. Today, Dumas' influence can be seen in everything from the physical vocabulary of local choreographers such as Lucy Guerin or Becky Hilton, to the enduring influence of New York on generations of dance artists. Cultural Residues 2020 is a semi-improvised collection of reworked duets and trios, some decades old, on nine mostly very young dancers. It is performed in silence, in slacks, lit only by a film projection, footage of dancers Josephine McKendry and Nick Sabel circa early 1990s, dancing many of the same choreographies. Ostensibly, the piece is about representation and fake news, but it really is just an ode to the beauty of uncomplicated, natural movement. Tender balances, walks and runs and lunges and rolls, bodies folding in on one another and straightening again - nothing acrobatic or spectacular takes place. Good morning Canberra, It's Friday and in the words of that old club song from my childhood: "I can't wait for the weekend to begin". But before it's quitting time, Friday is backing a high chance of showers and possible thunderstorms throughout the day with a top of 26 degrees. Here are our top stories for Friday, March 22. Towers of Belco: more high-rise developments on the way When an Australian gunman allegedly opened fire on two mosques in Christchurch, the violence was live-streamed along with his ideological manifesto. His motivation, it seems, was to attack the Muslim community in a challenge to the place of Islam in the West and to assert white supremacy. At the accused's first appearance before the Christchurch Law Courts, only a single charge of murder was filed. Further charges of murder will inevitably follow in order to accurately reflect the scope of violence, however there has been no indication that New Zealand authorities intend to use their terror laws. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been praised for her handling of the tragedy. New Zealand does have relevant legislation, the Terrorism Suppression Act, that can be applied to acts that are "carried out for the purpose of advancing an ideological, political or religious cause" with the intention "to induce terror in a civilian population". Max Petrie of Palm Beach is happy to report that a good friend of his has "solved the daylight savings conundrum: set the clocks to 30 minutes ahead and leave them for the whole year to achieve an average to suit both sides of the argument". A very busy T-intersection in the Makati business district in Manila in the 1970's had the most effective method of traffic control (C8) that Warwick Artis of Bathurst had ever seen. "At evening peak a police officer would wheel out a wooden platform to the centre of the intersection. With him on the platform was a substantial quantity of small rocks that were used to toss at any motorist who dared to disobey the officer's instructions given by very large white glove and whistle." Never fear, there is an alternative to all the mundane place names (C8) that have been mentioned of late. This town, 33 kilometres north of Salzburg in Austria, has a name that is so interesting it is not fit to be published. You'll just have to look it up for yourselves. Thanks to Steve Cornelius of Brookvale, Ingo Weinberger of Campsie and Gerhard Engleitner of Bangkok for alerting us to it. "I have to confess to telling Siri (C8), in very unladylike words, to keep her comments to herself," writes Kerry Giuffre of Daceyville. Granny suspects that it would be rare to find someone who hasn't done the same thing. However it's the response that Kerry received from Siri: "A more courteous way to say that would be please go away'" that is passive-aggressive dynamite and probably a contributing factor for the number of Apple devices requiring repairs for broken screens. With all the attention given to the NSW election ballot paper (C8), Alan Bell of Bradbury believes an equivalent problem is the design of the ballot box itself, in particular "the size of the slot in which this tome of electoral nightmare has to be inserted. I witnessed many an early voter struggle to fold it small enough to fit. The curses from those trying to jam it into the ballot box were a true expression of electoral thoughts". Crossword puzzles cause disorderly meeting Pandemonium prevailed for the greater part of a meeting held by the Citizens Freedom League in Maylands Town Hall in Perth to protest against the government's recent suppression of newspaper crossword contests. During the first three quarters of an hour men frequently took their coats off and threatened to fight and several women on the verge of fainting were escorted from the hall. A policeman and two commissionaires could not keep order and a posse of police had to be summoned. Police search for girl escapee Detectives were combing Sydney for Nellie Cameron, whose name had been mentioned in many underworld affairs, after her escape from Newcastle Hospital just a few hours before police intended to arrest her. It was believed that Frank Green, who had returned especially from Queensland where he had gone after being charged with consorting with reputed criminals, and another man, helped her to escape in a motor car stolen from Hamilton, which was later found abandoned in Pyrmont. Ban on Alsatians A Sydney magistrate has denied "mauling" a teenage boy, having a "sexual desire" for the teenager that he couldn't control, and having a "weakness" for boys generally, during evidence at his indecent assault trial. Graeme Bryan Curran, 68, has pleaded not guilty to nine counts of assault with an act of indecency after he allegedly befriended the boy's family before assaulting him between 1981 and 1983. Graeme Curran outside court this month. Credit:AAP Mr Curran does not deny that he sometimes slept in the same bed as the boy, but has denied any inappropriate behaviour and previously told the court that the boy and the boy's brother were like sons to him. On Thursday, giving evidence in the NSW District Court for a second day, Mr Curran denied a suggestion that he was "quite aroused" and "kissed and mauled" the boy after picking him up from a dance. Work to build a new access road for Melbourne Airport's Terminal 4 set to begin within months is putting the Andrews government under pressure to decide on the location of the long-promised airport train station. Motorists sitting in traffic jams on their way to the airport will soon be able to use a $60 million road designed to stop queues from spilling onto the Tullamarine Freeway. How the new Terminal 4 access road will look. Between October and December this year, Melbourne Airport plans to start building an elevated road linking the freeway and the Terminal 4 car park, which is scheduled to open by 2021. Fresh plans for the road were released on Thursday. It's the start of a major $350 million road revamp being rolled out over the next four years to deal with a doubling of passengers between now and 2040. On the flip side, #MelbourneExpress reader Georgie has labelled her morning commute "the worst train ride I've ever had in Melbourne". "The doors opened at South Kensignton and we were told to get off the train," she told us. "There were no bus replacement services and we had to walk to a random tram stop in North Melbourne in Arden Street. By the time we all got there we were sweating and could hardly breathe (the humidity didn't help anyone this morning). "This has possibly been the worst train ride I've ever had in Melbourne. No one even assisted us, we were left fending for ourselves with our google maps." Not a great start to the day. Hope your day improves now, Georgie. Nineteen cases of flu have been confirmed across three Victorian prisons as an influenza outbreak sweeps the state. Melbourne's Metropolitan Remand Centre has been worst hit, with 13 cases of influenza and another 64 of flu-like symptoms recorded by 7pm on Wednesday. A van arrives at the Melbourne Assessment Prison last month. Credit:Joe Armao There's been four confirmed cases at Port Phillip Prison and two at Melbourne Assessment Prison in the city's west. On Friday it was revealed that a child had died after contracting the flu, amid one of the biggest summer seasons of influenza the state has seen. Police say they've been impressed by the public's response to the case of a missing WA mother and one of her daughters who have not been seen in over 20 years. But detectives say they are still wanting more people to come forward who may know Veronica Philomena Lockyer and her daughter Adell Sherylee Partridge. Veronica Philomena Lockyer and her daughter Adell Sherylee Pertridge were last seen in the Merredin/Burracoppin area in late 1998. Credit:WA Police Detectives have told WAtoday while they've received a steady flow of information since making a public appeal last week about the missing mother and daughter, they are no closer at this stage to locating them. The pair were last seen in WA's Merredin region in late 1998 when Ms Lockyer was 33 years old and her baby was just seven months old. Today they would be aged 54 and 20 respectively. In outlining the opportunities in its interim report, Westport noted facilities at Kwinana could be designed to handle throughput for the next century, which may be in the range of 6 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) and accommodate the next generation of ships up to 13,000 TEU or beyond. A map of the current outer harbour at Kwinana and areas in the Western Trade Coast. 1: Alcoa Alumina Refinery Jetty. 2: Kwinana Bulk Terminals. 3: BP's Oil Refinery Jetty. 4. Kwinana Bulk Jetty. 5. Kwinana Grain Jetty. Credit:Westport taskforce Even without investing in new facilities, relatively minor upgrades to (Kwinana Bulk Terminals) and (Kwinana Bulk Jetty) would enable significant increases in trade, the report reads. The report claimed there was land available at Latitude 32, to the north-east of the current jetties and terminals, but noted land for new heavy industries was limited in the Kwinana Industrial Area. Westport taskforce independent chair Nicole Lockwood said the team knew from the outset a social license was needed to proceed with any project, which has in turn seen the approach to developing new infrastructure flipped. Theres no part of our work thats not aware of (the environmental impact), she said. And everything were doing is starting with that environmental question and saying right, whats the solution thats going to be the least impact? Snapper, seagrass and the sound From his bait and tackle store in Guildford Tim Barlow is rallying a troupe of like-minded fishers and environmentalists behind his Fish Army organisation, taking to social media and public forums to argue the case for preserving Cockburn Sound. Mr Barlow says the sound is a valuable breeding ground for pink snapper among the biggest breeding ground in the state. But dredging and reclamation work that would come with an expanded outer harbour would stir up decades of heavy metals and contaminants, he says, impacting the seagrass needed for snapper to spawn, and destroy reef structures in front of the area of the proposed port. He also fears visiting dolphins, whales and other marine life would be hit by the development, while cultural sites along the coast, including Aboriginal sites and depression-era shacks, would also face an uncertain future. Mr Barlow has fought in the past to get to the bottom of fish kills and pollution in the sound, and is adament the plans would severely impact recreational fishers and the broader community that utilises the stretch of coast from Coogee down to Cape Peron. He has found allies in the Maritime Union of Australias WA branch, and the fishing community is galvanising behind him. To me Bunburys the logical extension, he says. If ever you wanted to build another port, Bunbury as a regional port would be the perfect solution; theres reasonable employment, youre decentralising, and youre saving freight for the South West. But thats all a moot point because Freo, with minimal modification, is good for another 30 to 50 years at least. Westports interim report identified 79 environmental and social values at all three ports, both on the water and on land. Stage two of the study will look closer at those values, and factor them into a multi-criteria assessment for each option. Fremantle Port is currently the only container port in WA. It is also among the most efficient in the country, and those arguing to keep container trade at the port say it will be many years before it hits capacity. Credit:Philip Gostelow Ms Lockwood says it is a working with nature approach and would outline the potential and pitfalls of each approach. Bunbury, for example ... might fare higher on the environmental side, but it might be lower on the economics and the logistics side because of the distance, she says. Kwinana might have a different impact on the environment, but fare a lot higher because its closer and has good transport links and other things. Western Harbours Alliance chair Kim Dravnieks believes environmental impacts could be mitigated, and such concerns shouldnt put the brakes on sensible planning for the future. Ms Dravnieks said the alliance had spoken to environmental experts about the ecological footprint of an expanded outer harbour, and pushed for Westport to factor in sustainability initiatives when considering its options. Were looking at solution-based ways of handling this instead of saying oh no, theres a problem, stop, she said. Because we know that that outer harbour will happen at some time in the future, so lets get it right to start with, whether its in five years, 10 years, 50 years. Good planning takes 10 years, so thats why its absolutely it has to be done now a now or never sort of thing. Talking trade and transport The Western Harbours Alliance, spun out of the Rethink the Link campaign with which Ms Dravnieks was a co-ordinator, believes WA could be more than just a state that digs up minerals and ships them out. Ms Dravnieks says an expanded outer harbour could lead to much higher-value exporting and would take advantage of synergies between industries along the Western Trade Coast the stretch of land comprising the Kwinana Industrial Area, Rockingham Industrial Zone, Latitude 32 Industry Zone and Australian Marina Complex along the Cockburn Sound coast. Kwinana Industries Council director Chris Oughton is also among the supporters of the expanded outer harbour, and says the harbour is currently nearly as busy as Fremantle. He believes work could be done on existing infrastructure with minimal impact on Cockburn Sound. The states interest is best served in having an internationally competitive port with a large industrial hinterland, deep-water access and good freight transport networks and links, he says. Mr Oughton also says an efficient transport network out of the port, focusing heavily on Tonkin Highway and Rowley Road, would alleviate pressure on Leach Highway where truck congestion was previously cited in support of the Perth Freight Link and Roe 8 projects. Kwinana Industries Council director Chris Oughton believes an expanded outer harbour could utilise roads such as Tonkin Highway to send trucks to distribution centres in Kewdale. Credit:Erin Jonasson The truck debate about those inner suburbs goes away because they go around those suburbs down freeway-style roads, he says. Mr Oughton also threw his support behind a WHA report released last week, put together by economic developer and urban planner Caitlin Cain and arguing for the creation of a special economic zone in the Western Trade Coast. Loading Ms Cains report Accelerating Global Competitiveness: Special Economic Zones claims much of the exports going out of the outer harbour are unprocessed, meaning the region is not capturing that enhanced value and is instead exporting to other countries who then capture this incremental value-add opportunity. Special Economic Zones, the report outlines, are designated geographical areas governed by a single managing body, but supported and recognised by government, and attempt to boost trade by offering incentives to business and industry, such as streamlined approvals and a dedicated customs area. It is important to note that the proposed SEZ is not intended to usurp any existing state or federal compliance, the report reads. The SEZ should be seen as a tool to streamline and strengthen governance (created by jurisdictional overlap) rather than a means of bypassing existing industrial regulatory controls. The MUA fired back at the report, arguing the special economic zone as set out amounted to little more than another layer of bureaucracy, and feared the proposal could lead to a back-door attempt to privatise our publicly-owned port. The union stands by its claim the expanded outer harbour is not needed in the near-term, and throwing public money at a project when there are cheaper efficiencies that could be found at Fremantle doesnt make sense. But Mr Oughton said planning for a move from the inner harbour to the outer harbour had been going on in some form or another for a quarter of a century when people say it takes 20 years to plan a port, I say were 25 years into that already. The opportunity in our South West To a casual observer, the debate about WAs ports seems to focus heavily on Kwinana and Fremantle, with the associated arguments on environment and capacity dominating the conversation. Westport Taskforce independent chair Nicole Lockwood. Credit:Westport Taskforce But further south, Bunbury Port is handling its share of trade about 16.3 million tonnes in 2017/18 according to Westports interim report. That trade is expected to remain relatively constant over the coming 50 years, and the interim report noted the port had the space to accommodate new berths and the capacity to become a container port if needed, or when Bunbury and the South West had a big enough population to sustain a trade in its own right. Yet as the transport logistics limit Fremantle, they tyranny of distance is a hurdle for Bunbury. Ms Lockwood says a key question lies with the ability to establish an efficient link from Bunbury to Perth, and whether the South West city could have enough demand to facilitate its own container trade. It was a moment of near-perfect equilibrium on the campaign trail as the two politicians vying for the state's top job pulled off quintessential campaign moments at roughly the same time. Can one confidently say an election has taken place if, at some point prior to voting, a politician has not held a single baby or patted even one pooch with at least a dozen photographers on hand to capture the incident? Gladys Berejiklian holds baby Jordan Hiley alongside mother Lauren Mitchell during the Premier's visit to Blacktown Hospital on Thursday. Credit:AAP Fortunately both boxes were ticked on Thursday as Labor leader Michael Daley got friendly with Tiki a groodle puppy (a golden retriever cross with a poodle) while on the hustings in Surry Hills. In Sydney's west, the Premier Gladys Berejiklian cooed over newborn baby boy Jordan, whose father correctly recounted his son's weight (4.1 kilograms) when quizzed by the Health Minister. The National Party is directing its supporters to preference the Liberal Democrats, a pro-gun party which believes in fully legalising semi-automatic weapons and arming citizens to keep government power in check. As voters prepare to go to the polls on Saturday, National Party MPs vying for re-election across the state will be handing out How-to-Vote cards which recommend preferencing the Liberal Democrats second in the NSW Legislative Council. John Barilaro is among the National Party MPs whose How-to-Vote cards direct voters to put a "2" next to the Liberal Democrats. It comes after Premier Gladys Berejiklian has repeatedly condemned Labor for brokering a preference swap with the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, claiming the minor party "wants to give guns to 10-year-olds". The Liberal Democrats, whose lead candidate for the upper house is former NSW Senator David Leyonhjelm, have a more extreme policy platform on guns than the Shooters party. The terror attack at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch during Friday prayers on March 15 was an act of unfathomable hatred. Apparently driven by a confused and violent alt-right ideology, the attack took white-supremacist extremism to its logical conclusion in the most peaceful and unlikely place. Almost a week later, as the bodies of the dead are still being washed and buried in Christchurch, this act, allegedly carried out by a 28-year-old Australian, has prompted dozens of different discussions, all of which seem urgent. Among those discussions are gun control, the role of social media in radicalising the perpetrator, and broadcasting his act, the growth of right-wing extremism, its infiltration into mainstream politics, and even the merits and morals of egging a sitting senator. The government's foreign influence transparency scheme faces an early test as universities ignore pressure to register their Confucius Institutes the Chinese government-funded and administered education centres that have been highlighted as a focus for the new accountability regime. None of the 13 host universities have registered the cultural and language institutes after they were warned they might be subject to the scheme. Their position sets up a potential showdown with the government, which could seek to use newfound powers to probe the centres and forcibly register them. None of the universities which host a Confucius Institute is planning to register under the foreign influence transparency scheme. Credit:Bohdan Warchomij Confucius Institutes are joint ventures between the universities and Hanban, a Chinese government entity that provides funding, staff and other support. While the arrangements and focuses vary across institutions, critics are concerned about China's censorship of sensitive issues and broader influence at host universities. The 13 institutes were among hundreds of organisations to be directly contacted by the government over the new laws. Labor has dumped its candidate in Higgins in favour of a high-profile lawyer who party officials believe has a better chance of wresting the blue-ribbon seat vacated by Minister Kelly O'Dwyer. Dumped Labor candidate for Higgins Josh Spiegel. Josh Spiegel has been replaced by Fiona McLeod, SC, who the party believes has the requisite star power to mount a serious challenge to claim the seat in Melbourne's inner-east. The move comes after months of debate within Victorian party headquarters over whether the young and inexperienced Mr Spiegel had enough electoral appeal to defeat the Liberals if the vote in Higgins tightened. Mr Spiegel said he had always been a strong supporter of Labor's efforts to preselect more women. It has been a long and uninspiring campaign but the best outcome at the election tomorrow would be a third term for the Coalition and Premier Gladys Berejiklian. In contrast to the contest in 2015, which was a tightly focused referendum on Premier Mike Baird's plans to sell off the electricity system, the debate in the past few months has often meandered and the major parties have struggled to find a clear point of difference. The case for endorsing Gladys Berejiklian arises not from anything she has done during the campaign Credit:Wolter Peeters For most voters the only memorable day of the campaign was when Opposition Leader Michael Daley promised to sack radio broadcaster Alan Jones from the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust over what the ALP regards as the government's extravagant decision to reconstruct Allianz stadium in Moore Park. On the strength of that viral moment the ALP has redoubled its campaign under the slogan "schools and hospitals before stadiums" which promises a more egalitarian formula for funding the infrastructure which Sydney desperately needs, especially in the western suburbs. Beijing: Australian officials are increasingly concerned that trade negotiations between China and the United States will lead to a special deal between the two countries that displaces Australia's exports, including coal, to its biggest market. China is likely to significantly increase imports of American coal from West Virginia, Donald Trumps electoral heartland, if it strikes a trade deal next month. Mr Trump made an election pledge to revitalise the coal industry in that state. China has reportedly slowed down imports of Australian coal through Dalian port. Credit:Phil Hearne The looming US-China trade deal coincides with Australian coal experiencing an import slowdown at Chinese ports, and China revoking the licence of Canadas biggest canola exporter, prompting speculation that Chinese authorities may be clearing the way for special US supply deals in both energy and agriculture. Australia is in the dark over trade negotiations between China and the United States, leading to anxiety about what is being discussed between its security ally and its biggest trading partner. Hong Kong: Vladimir Lenin. Mao Zedong. And now: a giant reptile. Vietnam has embalmed a turtle that many saw as a symbol of the country's independence and longevity until its death in 2016, the state-run media reported. The move catapults the animal, known as Cu Rua, or Great-Grandfather Turtle, into an elite club of famous figures embalmed and put on display by communist regimes. That list includes Lenin, Mao, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il of North Korea, and Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's own revolutionary hero. A child visits Ngoc Son temple, home to a large sculpture of Hoan Kiem Lake's revered resident, a giant turtle, a mythic symbol of Vietnamese independence and longevity, in Hanoi in 2015. The turtle has now been plastified. Credit:The New York Times "The extremely rare giant turtle has been plastinated and lodged in a temple" at Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi, the capital, where it once lived, news site VnExpress reported on Tuesday. Plastination, a method of preserving bodies by infusing them with resins, was developed by a German anatomist in the 1970s. London: The Bishop of Durham has attacked the Home Office for rejecting an asylum seeker after it quoted the Bible to argue Christianity is "not a peaceful religion". A Bible. The Iranian man sought entry to the UK in 2016 but was rejected by officials who said his conversion from Islam was inconsistent with his claim that Christianity was a peaceful religion. The Home Office wrote a lengthy and "unbelievably offensive" refusal letter, quoting six instances in the Book of Revelation of "revenge, destruction, death and violence", concluding: "These are inconsistent with your claim you converted to Christianity after discovering it is a 'peaceful' religion, as opposed to Islam 'which has violence, rage and revenge'." Nathan Stevens, a solicitor handling the case, said he was shocked to read such "unbelievably offensive diatribe" and would appeal against the ruling. Baghdad: A ferry overloaded with people celebrating the Kurdish new year and Mother's Day capsized in the Tigris River near the Iraqi city of Mosul on Thursday, killing at least 94 people, officials said. Many of the dead were women and children who could be seen struggling to swim against a strong current, their heads bobbing in the water opposite restaurants and an amusement park where people had been celebrating. An image taken from a witness's video shows boats trying to rescue people in the Tigris River after a overloaded ferry sank. Credit:Mohammed Issam/AP Colonel Hussam Khalil, head of the Civil Defense in Iraq's northern Nineveh province, said the accident occurred as scores of people were out in the tourist area celebrating Nowruz, which marks the Kurdish new year and the arrival of spring. Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Saad Maan said the number of passengers on the ferry exceeded its capacity. The vessel was meant to carry 40 to 50 people but was reported to have more than 100 on board. 94 people died, and 55 have been rescued, including 19 children. Bikie gangs in New Zealand have promised to guard mosques in New Zealand on Friday following the Christchurch massacre last Friday. Various chapters of the Mongrel Mob, as well as the King Cobra and the Black Power, have shown their support. Mongrel Mob Waikato president Sonny Fatu with Hanad Ibrahim from Jamia Mosque in Hamilton. Credit:Dominico Zapata/Stuff.co.nz Waikato Mongrel Mob president Sonny Fatu has committed to guarding Jamia Mosque in Hamilton during Friday prayers. The head of the Waikato Muslim Association, Dr Asad Mohsin, said he hoped gang members would join Muslims inside the mosque for Friday prayers. Christchurch: New Zealand will urgently ban the sale of all semi-automatic assault rifles, its government has announced after a shooting at two mosques killed 50 people. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Credit:AAP The country will also ban assault rifles and high capacity magazines, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on Thursday. "In short, every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country," she said. "We are confident as a government that the vast majority of New Zealanders will support this change." ~Ministers not giving clear answers at the budget debate. ~ PHILIPSBURG: ---Ministers that reported to parliament on Wednesday did not give clear cut answers to the questions posed to them regarding the draft 2019 budget. Prime Minister Leona Romeo Marlin basically beat around the bush when providing answers to questions that regard the Ministry of General Affairs. The Prime Minister even went as far as telling MP Christopher Emmanuel he should ask the management of PJIAE about the financing they are seeking outside of the World Bank. Regarding the amount of money that was paid out by the insurance company specifically for the Philipsburg Jubilee Library building, the Minister simply did not address but says she could provide parliament with details on the current discussions and where they are. As for the 7 vehicles, the government wants to buy for Ministers Romeo Marlin said that the government would be saving money by purchasing the vehicles which she said is needed. The Prime Minister when cornered said she would provide the answers to some of the questions in writing, but she was told by the Chairlady of Parliament that she should bring those questions along when she returns to parliament as the questioning session is not over. Romeo Marlin told parliament that from the year 2014 t0 2018 there were 1,182 court cases filed against the government. In response to the question posed on the allotted budget for security for Ministers, the Prime Minister said that drivers while driving cannot provide security to the Ministers. Several MPs had to basically demand specific answers to their questions hoping that when the Prime Minister returns to parliament they would get those answers. Members of Parliament basically pleaded with the Ministers to tell them what is really going on with the draft budget because the budget and figures provided are not realistic. MP Rolando Brison even asked the Ministers if they are being bullied by the Minister of Finance for his own budget interest. Brison asked what their wish lists were and asked why they did not object to the meager budget given to some of the Ministries. Did the Minister bully some of the Ministers so he could pay Bearing Point.? The Ministry of VROMI, TEATT, and Education needs more money, at least two of those Ministries can increase the spending power of the country.Minister, I want you to tell parliament at least one thing that the people of this country complain and talk about on a daily basis? The dump is health, environment and economic hazard that is in the middle of Philipsburg but not a dime has been budgeted for it. These are some of the questions that were posed to the Minister of VROMI. Minister of TEATT Stuart Johnson told parliament that the Ministry is busy working on a development plan for his Ministry. Johnson said when the plan is completed it will be made public. With regards to calibration, the Minister said that his Ministry does not have the funds to create a new department since they have a limited budget. Johnson said when the economy rebound then the government will seek to create this department. MP Jurendy Doran in his clarifications ask the Minister to provide more information on how much the new department will cost? How many staff members will be needed and to provide parliament with all relevant data that he used to make a decision? Johnson also told parliament that some NAF 330,000.00 was given to the St. Maarten Carnival Development Foundation (SCDF). NAF 350,000.00 to Heineken Regatta, while NAF 180,000.00 is still to be paid for the Music Festival. Regarding the recruitment for a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for PJIAE, Johnson said he stays out of the operations of PJIAE but already indicated that a St. must be given preference for the vacation position. MP Emmanuel asked the Minister to give parliament his personal opinion on the kidnapping of suspended MP Theodore Heyliger, he asked the Minister if the plane that transported Heyliger was registered to land on St. Maarten. I need to know what your opinion on this matter is. Minister of Justice Cornelius de Weever in responding to questions said he provided copies of the agreement he signed with the Dutch Ministers of Justice. De Weever told Brison that his proposal on hiring drivers that are qualified or capable to provide security for Ministers are in their plans for the future. With regards the SOREMAR building purchased from SOREMAR Real Estate NV. The sale negotiations began in 2014 and since the sale went through a real estate agency, they did not expect commissions. He said that he also could not find any documents that had anything to do with commission. In the clarification, MP Emmanuel asked the Minister to state which company was contracted for the ankle bracelets. He further asked the Minister to state whether the contract ended and who was contracted now and if there are any outstanding fees. Emmanuel asked the Minister to give parliament more information on his capital expenses that is budgeted for NAF 17M. He asked the Minister how much the prison will cost to bring it up to standard. I cannot understand St. Maarten is facing a predicament with the prison and here you have NAF 17M while the Minister of Finance has a NAF 84M budget. I need to know if you fought for your budget. I also need to know if you know about the International Transfer Program to which the Netherlands is a signatory. I am asking you this question because we have a colleague that was taken or kidnapped and taken to Bonaire. I am referring to MP Theodore Heyliger I need to know when you were informed of this transfer. Was the Minister of Justice of the Netherlands contacted prior to the transfer? Were all international treaties followed prior to the transfer? MP Brison broke down the budget for the Ministry and asked the Minister how come he does not have any money budgeted for consultants compared to the other Ministers. He asked the Minister to explain his salary cut which stands at NAF 27.000.00 while his cabinet staff got raises that amounts to NAF 71,000.00 Who is robbing Peter to pay Paul Minister. What I am seeing here dont look good. PHILIPSBURG:---The ROBALO investigation begun subsequent to an official complaint filed and a request made by the then Justice Minister Edson Kirindongo to investigate possible criminal offenses taking place within the Immigration and Border Protection Department. The complaint accused U.A., as the Immigration and Border Protection (IBP) Director, of human smuggling. U.A. htraveledled to the Dominican Republic for a visa conference and upon return was accompanied by N.M.C., whom U.A. allowed to enter the island without having her passport stamped and bypassing immigration clearance. The Public Prosecutor referred to a witness who told that U.A. stated "make your adjustment and say: the director told you to". Consequently the then Minister of Justice Kirindongo filed a complaint against U.A. and the National Detectives started the ROBALO investigation. In his complaint letter, Kirindongo mentioned a number of incidents including the entry of persons without a visa and the signing of documents by U.A. on behalf of the Minister without being authorized to do so. The National Detectives conducted an investigation into these facts at the request of the Procurator General and this eventually resulted in a sizeable dossier, which in the opinion of the Public Prosecution Service, shows that U.A. and fellow suspect E.H. had committed serious criminal offences. The common denominator of these criminal offences is that U.A. and E.H. were in a position to use their power to bypass the law. Suspects U.A. and E.H. were tried for two cases of human smuggling, forgery, abuse of office today, Wednesday. U.A. was prosecuted for possessing two pistols, which could not be differentiated as real or not. These pistols were 'suitable for mutilation' and therefore firearms referred to in the Firearms Ordinance. All official offences on the indictment revolve around an extra-statutory exemption from visa obligations, namely a so-called Decision To Allow Entry (DTAE). During the hearing, the Public Prosecutors elaborated on the DTAE and why this instrument was used unlawfully in the opinion of the Public Prosecution Service. "However, the accused U.A. has always taken the position that he was permitted to grant an exemption because that authority was mandated to him. If we look at Article 3 of the Immigration Mandate Regulations 2012, we see that the director of the Immigration and Border Control is authorized to take decisions that are listed in the mandate register. This mandate register shows that, although the Director of the IBP is mandated to grant temporary or permanent residence permits, he is not authorized to waive any of the requirements to be eligible for a residence permit, including the visa requirement. "To put it simply, the director can issue a residence permit, provided the conditions are met or refuse if the conditions are not met. However, he cannot issue the permit if the conditions are not met. The DTAE is nothing more than an exemption. After all, it is issued precisely because the applicant does not have a visa. It further seems that the system of DTAEs had to be kept out of sight of the (then) Minister of Justice Kirindongo." Considering an adequate punishment for these acts, the Public Prosecutors said, "In a small society like Sint Maarten, with a small and vulnerable government apparatus of which the IBP is a part, such criminal offences are also particularly harsh. Suspects could and should have known this, in view of their position within the IBP. The fact that the director of the IBP is guilty of human smuggling can be seriously blamed on him. And the fact that this is happening in the sight of several employees of the IBP makes it even worse." The Public Prosecutors have asked for U.A. to be sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment, 6 months of which are to be suspended. For E.H. a community service of 240 hours and a suspended prison sentence of 6 months were requested. For both suspects, the Public Prosecutors have asked for their removal from office for a period of 5 years. The Public Prosecutors supported their request by stating, "It is worrying that the country of Sint Maarten does not take any legal measures if civil servants commit serious criminal offences. There are now a few examples of this. For that reason, the Public Prosecution Service demands the removal of these suspects from office. After all, it is not desirable that these suspects go back to work for the government, whereby it should be noted that until now suspect E.H. has only been denied access to the building, but he is still in the service of the government. The Public Prosecution Service should also contribute from its viewpoint to an honorable government of Country Sint Maarten, and therefore the barring is called for." Prosecutor's Press Release. After the Nature Foundation St Maarten recently established the presence of Tissue Loss Disease on several local coral reefs in October 2018, the Foundation was able to establish through further investigation that in many locations some 90% of coral is either infected or dead. The disease is a relatively new issue that has been plaguing coral reefs in the Atlantic Basin for the last few months. The coral reef disease manifests itself through the creation of white blotches on stony coral, eventually leading to the loss of tissue and eventual death in the coral colony. The disease affects 20 different species of coral and is able to kill colonies within several weeks or months. Unfortunately, the spread and lethality of the disease is being facilitated by poor water quality at several locations surrounding the island. The Nature Foundations recommends all divers and dive schools to be vigilant to not spread the disease. The disease appears to be water borne and may potentially be spread by divers their gear according the Florida Disease Advisory Committee. They advice scuba divers in the Caribbean and Florida to soak their gear in a 5% chlorine bleach solution for 30 minutes, and rinse well after, especially when moving in between locations. We also advise all divers to be aware of their fins and to not touch any diseased or healthy coral; as you will probably transmit the disease to other corals! Warning for scuba divers: 1) In order to protect our coral reefs and prevent the spread of the disease a 100% NO TOUCH policy is in effect on all St Maarten dive sites. Scuba divers touching St Maarten coral reefs could risk a fine. 2) All scuba diving gear leaving our island (or being used on another island) should be soaked in a 5% chlorine bleach solution, be rinsed in a lot of fresh water and dried in the sun. This is mandatory, Dive Schools will need to forward this message to their customers, and we recommend visiting divers to use the gear of our dive schools. 3) Please do not use any single-use plastic item on board of the boat or close to the ocean. Single-use plastics are not allowed to enter the Man of War Shoal Marine Protected Area dive. Recently the Nature Foundation also located large amounts of single-use plastics on local reefs, research has found a link between plastic and disease on coral reefs. The likelihood of disease increases from 4 percent to 89 percent when corals are in contact with plastic and it suggests that ocean waters with lots of plastic waste might also carry other pollutants that could also be contributing to higher rates of coral disease; therefore please leave the single-use plastics at the supermarket! We hope that together we can stop the spread of this disease any further, as the situation is very critical at the moment and we dont want islands around us to experience the same conditions!! The disease first appeared in Florida off the Miami-Dade County area in September 2014. The outbreak area has since progressed 175 km to the northern limit of the Florida reef tract and southwest to Looe Key in the Lower Keys. Numerous coral species (except acroporid coral) have been afflicted, disease prevalence has reached 80% of all colonies present at a site, and a number of coral diseases have been observed. Meanwhile, sick and dying corals are found on Jamaican and USVI reefs with similar signs of disease and overlap with the reports from Florida. Also in Mexico, a severe outbreak of coral disease affecting similar species and exhibiting similar patterns as those in Florida has been recorded. Sint Maarten can unfortunately now be added to the list of affect areas for tissue loss disease. The Nature Foundation is continuously monitoring the disease in St Maarten waters and is counting on your support. PHILIPSBURG:--- On Thursday March 21st colleagues from the French Police Municipal represented by the Chief of Police Jacqueline Rodriguez and the assistant chief Raymond Lake, Ricaldo Gumbs representing the French Carnival Foundation, Arlston Lourens representing the SCDF and KPSM represented by Chief Inspector Benjamin Gout and Rudolph Bloeiman as promised held a meeting at the Police Head Quarters in connection with the Unity Jump-Up which is scheduled to be held on Friday March 22nd. For unforeseen circumstances, no representatives of the French gendarmerie could attend the meeting. The Unity Jump-up which is expected to pull a very large crowd will start in Marigot at 08.00 PM sharp and will end in front of the Festival Village on the Soualiga Boulevard. Details such as the inspection of the vehicles taking part in the jump-up, public safety, road closures, and traffic diversion were some of the main topics that were discussed. The meeting was very informative and fruitful due to the fact that the working relation and cooperation between the police and the carnival foundations from both sides of the island has grown and become much stronger. The community is there for asked to pay very close attention to all the information that is available in connection with the Unity Jump and all other upcoming Carnival events. KPSM Press Release. ~ Why was the audit at SMMC not conducted? Emmanuel~ PHILIPSBURG: --- Members of Parliament basically caught the Minister of VSA Emil Lee with his pants down as he gave conflicting answers to several questions posed to him. The Minister provided those answers on Thursday afternoon during the Central Committee meeting on the draft 2019 budget. At one point the Minister said he got vehicles from a secret donor for his Ministry post-IRMA While answering questions Lee said at one point that the vehicles were leased, then purchased and even donated to the Ministry, when confronted Lee said the vehicles were leased and he also informed parliament it was the BZK that they were leased from. He further told parliament the vehicles were equipped with GPS which allowed government to save money. MP Christopher Emmanuel asked the Minister to inform parliament if those vehicles came in with the GPS, or were they fitted locally if locally was there a bidding process conducted and what is the cost of the GPS tracking. Emmanuel also posed several questions to the Minister of Social Affairs on the shelter he intends to construct. Emmanuel asked where the shelter would be constructed because he wants to know where is the land space for such a building. As for the St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC), the NA MP asked the Minister about the pending audit that was supposed to be conducted since 2016. If not, he asked the Minister who stopped the audit. He asked the Minister whose responsibility it is for the deteriorating healthcare status at SMMC. He asked the Minister to provide parliament with the original copies of the Van Kemmard report which was conducted at SMMC, the Inspectorate and Department of Public of Health. Emmanuel said the Dutch consultant was paid 25,000.00 Euros for the investigation he conducted at the three departments that fall under the Ministry of VSA. Emmanuel asked the Minister about the policy to improve the minimum wage, he added that the Minister told parliament that his department is blessed with hardworking civil servants. Emmanuel asked the Minister if his hardworking staff is working on a policy to amend the civil code so that the minimum wage could be increased. He said its time the civil servants stop working on these policies and legislation and they should finish them and get them to parliament. Goliath Gold Project Achieves Permitting Milestone Posted by Publisher Internet Treasury Metals Inc. (TSX: TML) (?Treasury? or the ?Company? https://www.commodity-tv.net/c/search_adv/?v=298722) is pleased to provide an update on recent advances related to the permitting process at the Company?s Goliath Gold Project in Northwestern Ontario (the ?Project?). Federal Environmental Assessment Update: As part of the Federal Environmental Assessment (?EA?) process, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (?CEAA?) accepted the Company?s submissions on March 14, 2019, and resumes the federally legislated timeline to approve the EA and register a decision. CEAA has undergone an extensive technical review of the draft documentation. Under the EA process, the remaining legislated timeline includes a formal review along with a 30-day final public comment period on a draft EA Report and potential conditions of approval, and up to 60 days for a ministerial decision at which point the federal government renders a decision notice. Community Update: Treasury continues to focus on community relations related to the EA process to ensure local stakeholder inputs are reflected in the EA process and as part of the overall development of the Project. The Company is also pleased to announce the signing of an Engagement Agreement with Wabauskang First Nation (?Wabauskang? or the ?Community?). The purpose of the agreement is to establish a framework for meaningful information sharing and communication and forms a roadmap for continued engagement with the Community. This engagement will facilitate the Community?s ability to understand the impact of the project and allows for the Company to better understand the Community?s viewpoints moving forward as part of Goliath?s development and design process.? To view further details about the Goliath Gold Project please visit the Company?s website at www.treasurymetals.com. About Treasury Metals Inc.: Treasury Metals Inc. is a gold focused exploration and development company with assets in Canada and is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (?TSX?) under the symbol ?TML? and on the OTCQX? Best Market under the symbol TSRMF. Treasury Metals Inc.?s 100% owned Goliath Gold Project in northwestern Ontario is slated to become one of Canada?s next producing gold mines. With first-rate infrastructure currently in place and gold mineralization extending to surface, Treasury Metals plans on the initial development of an open pit gold mine to feed a 2,500 per day processing plant with subsequent underground operations in the latter years of the mine life. Forward-looking Statements This release includes certain statements that may be deemed to be ?forward-looking statements?. All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address events or developments that management of the Company expect, are forward-looking statements. Actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Treasury Metals disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, save and except as may be required by applicable securities laws. Maple Gold receives permits and begins final preparations and mobilization for drill campaign Posted by Publisher Internet Maple Gold Mines Ltd. (?Maple Gold? or the ?Company?) (TSX-V: MGM, OTCQB: MGMLF; Frankfurt: M3G https://www.commodity-tv.net/c/search_adv/?v=298248) has received permits for drill roads and drill pads and is now cleared to commence a planned 5,000 ? 6,000 metre drill program. New mineralized zones defined during 2018 drilling at Nika, and in several areas with higher-than-expected grade intercepts at the Porphyry zone, both offer significant opportunities to add to the deposit resource base at higher-than-deposit average grades. This focused winter drilling campaign will also include two drill-holes more than 1km south of the resource area, where several narrow intervals of high-grade (up to 17.5 g/t Au) contact-style mineralisation similar to that at the Porphyry zone were intersected in a historical hole (see press release February 20, 2019). The Company has selected two drill contractors, Forage Orbit Garant Drilling (?Orbit Garant?), a large locally-based and internationally active drilling company, and Forage Pikogan, a smaller local company with majority First-Nations ownership. Initial mobilization and drill preparations are now underway, with equipment for Orbit Garant?s first drill rig having just arrived at the Douay Project today. Drilling is expected to commence at the Nika Zone in approximately one week to test the up-dip and down-dip extensions of last year?s new discovery (see press release May 14, 2018). Maple Gold?s VP, Exploration, Fred Speidel, commented: ?This is a very exciting time for our technical team as we drill some of our high priority holes after nearly 18 months on the Project, with the benefit of more data, knowledge and new models in place. We have significantly improved targeting ability thanks to our 3D model, and arefocused on testing new exploration targets and adding quality ounces to the resource base. An updated resource estimate is underway with RPA and we anticipate initial results early in Q2.? Click here to watch brief video highlighting top-priority drill-hole locations and the Company?s new 3D model. Qualified Person The scientific and technical data contained in this press release was reviewed and prepared under the supervision of Fred Speidel, M. Sc, P. Geo., Vice-President Exploration, of Maple Gold.?Mr. Speidel is a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.?Mr. Speidel has verified the data related to the exploration information disclosed in this news release through his direct participation in the work. Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) Maple Gold implements strict Quality Assurance (?QA?) and Quality Control (?QC?) protocols at Douay covering the planning and placing of drill holes in the field; drilling and retrieving the NQ-sized drill core; drill-hole surveying; core transport to the Douay Camp; core logging by qualified personnel; sampling and bagging of core for analysis; transport of core from site to the analytical laboratory; sample preparation for assaying; and analysis, recording and final statistical vetting of results. For a complete description of protocols, please visit the Company?s QA/QC page on the website at: http://maplegoldmines.com/index.php/en/projects/qa-qc-qp-statement About Maple Gold Maple Gold is an advanced gold exploration and development company focused on defining a district-scale gold project in one of the world?s premier mining jurisdictions. The Company?s ~392 km? Douay Gold Project is located along the Casa Berardi Deformation Zone (55 km of strike) within the prolific Abitibi Greenstone Belt in northern Quebec, Canada. The Project benefits from excellent infrastructure and has an established gold resource3 that remains open in multiple directions. For more information please visit www.maplegoldmines.com. ON BEHALF OF MAPLE GOLD MINES LTD. ?Matthew Hornor? ?B. Matthew Hornor, President & CEO NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS PRESS RELEASE. Forward Looking Statements: This news release contains ?forward-looking information\ and ?forward-looking statements? (collectively referred to as ?forward-looking statements?) within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation in Canada, including statements about the prospective? mineral potential of the Porphyry Zone, the potential for significant mineralisation from other drilling in the referenced drill program and the completion of the drill program. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions, uncertainties and management?s best estimate of future events. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company?s expectations and projections. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding timing and completion of the private placement. When used herein, words such as ?anticipate?, ?will?, ?intend? and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on certain estimates, expectations, analysis and opinions that management believed reasonable at the time they were made or in certain cases, on third party expert opinions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, and uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual events, results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future events, results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. For a more detailed discussion of such risks and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, refer to Maple Gold Mines Ltd.?s filings with Canadian securities regulators available on www.sedar.com or the Company?s website at www.maplegoldmines.com. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to, update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Fission 3.0 Drills Strong Alteration in Multiple Holes at Key Lake South Posted by Publisher Internet FISSION 3.0 CORP. (?Fission 3? or ?the Company? https://www.commodity-tv.net/c/search_adv/?v=298149 ) is pleased to announce results from the first pass drill program at its Key Lake South properties (Karpinka Lake and Hobo Lake projects) in the south-east Athabasca Basin region of Saskatchewan, Canada. A total of ~1300m was drilled in eight completed holes, all of which encountered variably intense hydrothermal alteration and six holes with anomalous radioactivity.? Of note, holes KL19-005, KL19-006 and KL19-007, drilled in the northern part of the extensive land package, encountered the most significant hydrothermal alteration and paleoweathering, which are considered important factors for hosting high-grade uranium mineralization and will be prioritized for follow up. With $6M in the treasury, Fission 3 is well poised to continue to explore on its extensive property portfolio. Winter program at Key Lake complete: Eight holes in 1300.8m in the Key Lake South projects (Karpinka Lake and Hobo Lake) located on the south-east region of the Athabasca Basin, 40 km south of the basin margin in a geological setting analogous to Fission Uranium?s Triple R deposit at PLS. Drilling intercepted multiple anomalous and narrow radiometric anomalies and strong alteration: drill holes located in the northern area of the property (holes KL19-005, KL19-006 and KL19-007) have exhibited the strongest hydrothermal alteration and paleoweathering profile. Prospective for high-grade mineralization: KL19-005 intersected over 100m of strong clay alteration and faulted rock, which is interpreted to represent a major structural dilation zone. Such settings are important in the genesis of structurally hosted uranium deposits as they provide a pathway for large amount of hydrothermal fluid flow and can develop traps for localizing mineralized fluids.? Most of the Athabasca Basin?s major uranium deposits are situated in similar geological settings. Cree Bay exploration upcoming: Fission 3.0?s ongoing portfolio exploration program will now move to Cree Bay, conducting ground geophysics surveys to assist with the planned summer drill program. Ross McElroy, COO, and Chief Geologist for Fission, commented, ?The drill program at Key Lake is the latest step in the ongoing exploration of our prospective uranium projects. With radioactivity and strong alteration in multiple holes, we are looking at very encouraging first pass results that warrant follow up drilling. The winter program will now progress with a ground geophysics DC resistivity survey on our Cree Bay property in the northeast basin area, as we focus on developing high-priority drill targets to be tested during the summer exploration program.? ? About Key Lake South: The Key Lake area is an important historic mining district.? The Key Lake operations is owned by Cameco Corp. (83%) and Orano Canada Inc. (17%) and hosted the former Key Lake mine, which produced 208 million pounds of uranium between 1975 to 1997 and is home to one of the largest uranium mills in the world.? The Key Lake mill processed ore from the McArthur River uranium deposit, until Cameco announced in 2018 that McArthur River mining would be suspended indefinitely due to low uranium prices.? The area is considered highly prospective to discover significant new uranium occurrences. The 100% owned Key Lake South Projects consist of two projects (Karpinka Lake and Hobo Lake) covering 19,377 ha in 42 mineral claims. The properties are located approximately 40km south of the historic Key Lake mine. The projects are geologically situated within the extremely prolific Wollaston-Mudjatic Transition Zone ?WMTZ?, notable for hosting the majority of the major high-grade uranium deposits on the eastern side of the Athabasca Basin.? To the north, the Key Lake Deposit is hosted within the northern portion of northeast-southwest trending litho-structural feature known as the Key Lake Shear Zone ?KLSZ?.? The KLSZ continues southward through the Karpinka Lake and Hobo Lake projects.? Together the properties cover approximately 50km of trend of the KLSZ, where a number of geochemical uranium anomalies have been discovered and where a network of EM conductors exhibit structural complexity including off-sets, breaks, folding and other geophysical features such as gravity and resistivity lows.? These features are often associated with uranium mineralization occurrences. Key Lake South Projects ? Drilling Summary KL19-001 KL19-001 was an angled drill hole oriented parallel to the intermittent, weak, calc-silicate hosted radioactivity intersected in historic hole RO-01.? The purpose of KL19-001 was to test the radioactive calc-silicate from the top of bedrock down to a depth of approximately 150m. Bedrock was intersected at a depth of 18.0m down hole and was comprised of variably clay, hematite, graphite and chlorite altered schist, cataclasite and calc-silicate.? A strongly hematized calc-silicate was cored from 126.8m to 132.5m down hole which returned weak radioactivity up to 590 cps on a RS-125 handheld scintillometer.? No other anomalous radioactivity was intersected, and the hole was terminated at a depth of 149.0m in weakly altered graphitic schist. KL19-002 KL19-002 was an angled drill hole targeting the Key Lake Shear zone (KLSZ) approximately 950m south of KL19-001. Bedrock was intersected at a depth of 43.0 m down hole and was comprised of weakly altered orthogneiss and calc-silicate gneiss to a depth of 72.9m.? From 72.9m to 80.3m a strongly sheared biotite-garnet gneiss was cored with a central 5.2m wide graphitic brittle-ductile fault zone. The hole was terminated at a depth of 101.0m in fresh orthogneiss. KL19-003 KL19-003 was an angled drill hole targeting the weakly radioactive calc-silicate approximately 75m below that intersected in KL19-001.? The drill hole aimed to assess the variability in previously intersected calc-silicate thickness and radioactivity with depth, and to test for parallel radioactive calc-silicate lenses.? Bedrock was intersected at a depth of 15.3m down hole and was comprised of a thick sequence of biotite schist to a depth of 182.5m where a sheared, graphitic schist was intersected.? A weakly radioactive calc-silicate lens was cored from 222.2m to 224.5m which returned up to 410 cps on a RS-125 handheld scintillometer. The hole was terminated at a final depth of 251.0m in fresh orthogneiss. KL19-004 KL19-004 was an angled drill hole testing the southern extent of a large left stepping electromagnetic conductor trace ~7km north of KL-001.? This flexure is interpreted to reflect a dilational zone in the KLSZ caused by sinistral strike-slip movement. Bedrock was intersected at a depth of 37.0m down hole and was comprised primarily of weakly hematite altered orthogneiss.? An intercalacted sequence of weakly graphitic biotite-garnet schist and cataclasite was cored from 42.7m to 66.9m down hole. No anomalous radioactivity was intersected, and the hole was terminated at a depth of 125.0m in fresh orthogneiss. KL19-005 KL19-005 was an angled drill hole testing the same large, left stepping KLSZ VTEM conductor trace as KL19-004, approximately 1 km further to the north. Bedrock was intersected at a depth of 39.0m down hole as was comprised of moderately to extremely bleached, clay, hematite, chlorite and graphite altered orthogneiss.? A strongly graphitic, clay and chlorite altered cataclasite was intersected from 85.5m to 94.5m down hole. Thin limonitic fractures in the graphite altered orthogneiss at approximately 78m down hole returned elevated radioactivity up to 200 cps on the RS-125 handheld scintillometer. The hole was lost due to ground conditions at a depth of 128.8m in strongly chlorite and graphite altered orthogneiss. KL19-006 KL19-006 was an angled drill hole testing the up-dip projection of the graphitic cataclasite in hole KL19-005.? Bedrock was intersected at depth of 56.0m down hole and was comprised of weakly clay and chlorite altered orthogneiss. The drill hole is interpreted to have overshot the graphitic cataclasite which down-dropped the bedrock surface to the east (normal faulting). No anomalous radioactivity was intersected and the hole was terminated at a depth of 101.0m in weakly chlorite and clay altered orthogneiss. KL19-007 KL19-007 was an angled drill hole testing the down-dip projection of the structural damage zone and strong alteration in KL19-005.? Bedrock was intersected at a depth of 29.0m down hole and was comprised of extremely clay and chlorite altered graphitic cataclasite, variably altered graphitic schist, biotite schist and orthogneiss. Weak elevated radioactivity up to 160 cps was recorded on the RS-125 handheld scintillometer at 119.0m hosted in intercalated quartzitic and graphitic schist.? Apart from the upper cataclasite no structural damage zone was intersected below KL19-005 and the hole was terminated at a depth of 152.0m in fresh orthogneiss. KL19-008 KL19-008 was an angled drill hole testing for the northern extension of the historic DD-Zone where previous historic drilling returned up to 0.78% U3O8 over 0.5m.? Bedrock was intersected at a depth of 7.3m down hole and was comprised of a thick intercalated sequence of graphite altered amphibolite and calc-silicate to a depth of 136.8m.? Below 136.8m, the hole encountered weakly altered to fresh biotite-garnet schist and graphitic schist.? A 0.20m granite intrusion at 90.5 m depth returned elevated radioactivity up to 540 cps. The hole was terminated at a depth of 293.0m in fresh biotite-garnet schist. Natural gamma radiation in drill core that is reported in this news release was measured in counts per second (cps) using a Mount Sopris PGA-1000 Natural Gamma Probe and a hand-held RS-125 Scintillometer manufactured by Radiation Solutions. The reader is cautioned that scintillometer readings are not directly or uniformly related to uranium grades of the rock sample measured and should be used only as a preliminary indication of the presence of radioactive materials. Samples from the drill core are split in half sections on site. Where possible, samples are standardized at 0.5m down-hole intervals. One-half of the split sample will be sent to SRC Geoanalytical Laboratories (an SCC ISO/IEC 17025: 2005 Accredited Facility) in Saskatoon, SK. Analysis will include a 63 element ICP-OES, and boron. All depth measurements reported, including radioactivity and mineralization interval widths are down-hole, core interval measurements and true thickness are yet to be determined. Cree Bay Exploration: In 2017 a ground DC Resistivity survey was completed in 2 separate grids centered on sections of strong conductivity interpreted from a historic airborne GEOTEM electromagnetic survey on what was then the Cree Bay property. Fission 3 subsequently staked additional ground to cover the most conductive part of this anomaly. The winter 2019 exploration work will thus continue to extend the ground geophysics survey over the anomaly, to determine the highest priority drill targets. The program will consist of a winter 21 line-km ground DC Resistivity survey and 2 lines of Moving Loop TDEM survey will be conducted during April to cover the most geophysically prospective area identified from a historic GEOTEM electromagnetic survey. About Cree Bay: The Cree Bay property, located 20km south of the town of Stony Rapids, consists of 16 claims totaling 14,080 ha and sits on the inside edge of the north-eastern Athabasca Basin.? The property is located along the major SW-NE trending Virgin River Shear Zone.? Locally the conductive corridor is bound by the Black Lake Fault to the north and East Channel Fault to the south.? The historic Nisto uranium mine, is located ~7.5km to the northeast, along the Black Lake fault. The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with the Canadian regulatory requirements set out in National Instrument 43-101 and reviewed on behalf of the company by Ross McElroy, P.Geol. Chief Geologist and COO for Fission 3.0 Corp., a qualified person. About Fission 3.0 Corp. Fission 3.0 Corp. is a Canadian based resource company specializing in the strategic acquisition, exploration and development of uranium properties and is headquartered in Kelowna, British Columbia. Common Shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol \FUU.\ ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD?????????????????????????????????? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? \Ross McElroy\? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Ross McElroy, COO???????? Investor Relations Ph: 778-484-8030 TF: 844-484-8030 ir@fission3corp.com www.fission3corp.com? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? In Europe: Swiss Resource Capital AG Jochen Staiger info@resource-capital.ch www.resource-capital.ch? Cautionary Statement: Certain information contained in this press release constitutes \forward-looking information\, within the meaning of Canadian legislation. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as \plans\, \expects\ or \does not expect\, \is expected\, \budget\, \scheduled\, \estimates\, \forecasts\, \intends\, \anticipates\ or \does not anticipate\, or \believes\, or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results \may\, \could\, \would\, \might\ or \will be taken\, \occur\, \be achieved\ or \has the potential to\. Forward looking statements contained in this press release may include statements regarding the future operating or financial performance of Fission 3.0 Corp. which involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which may not prove to be accurate. Actual results and outcomes may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in these forward-looking statements. Such statements are qualified in their entirety by the inherent risks and uncertainties surrounding future expectations. Among those factors which could cause actual results to differ materially are the following: market conditions and other risk factors listed from time to time in our reports filed with Canadian securities regulators on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements included in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and Fission 3 Corp. disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable securities legislation. BIXOLON Showcases a Range of Unique Logistics Printing Solutions at SiTL 2019 SiTL (26th ? 28th March, Paris France) ? BIXOLON Europe GmbH, a global leading Mobile, Label and POS printer manufacturer will be partnering with CipherLab in Hall 1, stand C39 to demonstrate its comprehensive range of Transport, Logistics and Warehouse printing solutions. Demonstrating the role label printing technology plays in the logistics automatic identification, tracking and shipping process, BIXOLON will be showcasing a range of desktop labelling solutions. Including the SLP-TX400 4-inch (116mm) barcode label printer with external paper supplier for high volume labelling. The SLP-TX420 4-inch (110mm) Thermal Transfer and SLP-DX420 4-inch (110mm) Direct Thermal label printers for packaging and shipping label solutions. The SLP-TX220 and SLP-DX220 2-inch (60mm) printers for label tracking and banding identification. The SRP-E770III 4-inch (106mm) economical direct thermal label printer. Plus a first look at the TX5-40 4-inch (114mm) industrial label printer supporting 203, 300 and 600dpi print resolution launching in April 2019. BIXOLON will also be inviting visitors to explore the latest innovations in mobile printing, through its growing range of 2-inch, 3-inch and 4-inch mobile receipt, ticket and label printing solutions. Including the next generation SPP-R310plus, 3-inch (80mm) mobile receipt and linerless label printer featuring Bluetooth 4.1 and dual-band connectivity. The SPP-L3000, BIXOLON?s first 3-inch (80mm) heavy label mobile printing solution and the NEW SPP-L310 3-inch (80mm) label mobile printer for medium volume label printing applications. Complimented by its comprehensive range of charging and carrying accessories. ?The Logistics market has always been an important sector for BIXOLON. SiTL provides us with the platform to connect directly with the key players within the European Logistics industry,? explains Charlie Kim, Managing Director, BIXOLON Europe GmbH. ?Partnering with Cipherlab throughout the event provides our visitors with the opportunity to see our printing solutions working in tandem with their industry leading range of Automatic Identification and Data Capture/Collection (AIDC) products to give a true representation of their purpose within a Logistics environment.? To find out more, visit BIXOLON at www.BixolonEU.com or contact sales@Bixolon.de to make an appointment to meet the team. Councilman Bruce Kraus presents South Side Planning Forum Chair Hugh Brannan with a proclamation naming March 12 as "Hugh Brannan Day" in the City of Pittsburgh. Mr. Brannan, executive director of the the Brashear Association, chaired his last meeting of the Planning Forum that evening and will retire from Brashear at the end of the month. Sitting in Brashear's Museum Room, where much of South Side's history took place over the last 36 years and the Association's namesake is chronicled, it seemed appropriate Hugh Brannan was discussing his upcoming retirement considering he has played such a large part in both over that span. A Baltimore native, Mr. Brannan left to train for the ministry at a Lutheran university in Columbus, Ohio where he went to seminary but was not ordained. An internship then brought him to Pittsburgh at the Zion Lutheran Church in Mt. Washington. It was there he decided on a career change and began working as a member of the Consultation and Education staff at Southwest MHMR out of a satellite office on Paul Street in Mt. Washington. In 1980, he became the director of the Allentown Senior Center on Warrington Avenue. A position he still holds. In early 1983, Brashear had begun the search for a new executive director after less than two years under the ED at the time. Mr. Brannan, a Brashear Board Member at the time, was encouraged to apply for the position by Robert Foltz, president of Goodwill. Marty Uram, a new Brashear Board Member, was part of the selection committee for the new executive director. "It became clear to us that Hugh was the best choice for the position. We were impressed by his answers to our questions, his stability under fire, and his calmness. He was the unanimous choice of the committee and later the Board," Mr. Uram explained. Mr. Brannan remembered he was relatively new to the Allentown Senior Center position and still had much work to be done. A "shared directorship" was suggested, with the majority of his time spent at Brashear and a lesser amount at the senior center. The shared directorship arrangement continued until today, but will end with Mr. Brannan's retirement from Brashear. Although he expects to remain at the senior center. "Hugh took over as executive director on Friday, April 1, 1983 when both Brashear and South Side were beginning to experience their most serious crises in a generation. For South Side, it was the closing of the LTV (i.e. J&L) steel mill the major employer for the community," Mr. Uram said. "For Brashear, it was the potential loss or reduction in funding from its major source, the United Way. It's no wonder Hugh often kids about his start date it was both Good Friday and April Fools' Day." Mr. Uram said Mr. Brannan responded "superbly," justifying the Board's confidence in him during the difficult period and responding to the increased needs of the community due to the mill closing. He also moved the association to solid financial footing with the United Way. "Both of these efforts led to Brashear's recognition as one of the preeminent agencies within the United Way family. Hugh's leadership qualities led him to be named head of the South Side Planning Forum, where his peerless work helped lead South Side through the mill downturn to its transformation into a city destination spot with the redevelopment of the LTV Steel Site into the SouthSide Works," Mr. Uram said. Mr. Brannan noted that from the beginning he benefitted from a lot of goodwill toward Brashear and a level of trust associated with the Association. He would often say Brashear was like Switzerland and anyone or any group could come into the (Brashear) Center and feel comfortable. When he speaking about his career Mr. Brannan rarely uses "I" in referring to his accomplishments, it's always "we," "the association" or "the Board." Through his tenure, he has led the association through the challenges of the closing of the mills, moving from more recreational activities at the association such as dance, sewing and driving classes and boys and girls' clubs to distributing government commodities (surplus cheese and butter), job training along with services and programs for families. Brashear currently operates out of five locations in South Side, Arlington (South Side Slopes), Mt. Oliver and Allentown providing case management services, employment services and afterschool programs for children. Additionally, they operate food pantries at the Brashear Center and the Henry Kaufmann Center in the South Side Slopes/Arlington area. Mr. Brannan explained Brashear has had a tradition of working with community organizations, to help build those organizations. He personally has been involved in much of the redevelopment that has happened throughout South Pittsburgh. Through the years, he has sat on the Board of Directors of the South Pittsburgh Economic Revitalization Team, the Allentown Civic Association, South Side Local Development Company, and the South Side Chamber of Commerce among others. Although, some of his more remembered contributions came through his work as the chair of the South Side Planning Forum. "I've had the privilege of knowing him since the early 1980s," says Gene Ricciardi. "All that time I remember him as being a true gentleman." In the late 80s, the South Side community came together to address the parking problem at the time and formed the South Side Parking Task Force with members from all the community organizations at the time. The South Side Planning Forum was an outgrowth of the Task Force and was formed to address overall concerns of the neighborhood in addition to parking issues. Mr. Ricciardi says Mr. Brannan was able to bring the neighborhood together. He was able to reach across the spectrum and respected people's opinions, treating everyone with dignity and respect. "I've tried to follow in his footsteps," Mr. Ricciardi said. In the formation days of the South Side Planning Forum, Mr. Ricciardi said he was asked to chair the fledging group. Instead, he suggested a co-chair arrangement with Mr. Brannan. It wasn't long before Mr. Ricciardi said he recognized Mr. Brannan's communication skills and his ability to move things forward. Mr. Ricciardi would soon resign as co-chair, leaving Mr. Brannan as the chair of the group. In his role as chair of the Planning Forum, Mr. Brannan has sat on: the LTV Site Steering Committee, guiding the development of the SouthSide Work Master Plan: the UPMC South Side Steering Committee, working with the health care giant to ensure access to health care during the transformation of a community hospital into an outpatient center; and, the SSLDC's Development Review Committee (which merged with the LTV Steering Committee with the sunsetting of the SSLDC), overseeing major building projects in the neighborhood. He was and continued to be an integral part of the South Side Neighborhood Plan from the beginning, one of the first in the City of Pittsburgh, and was involved in the designation of the East Carson Street Historic District. Mr. Brannan minimizes his role in the Development Review Committee, saying the committee mostly consists of architects making technical suggestions to developers. However, he was often the calming voice in the room, referencing the South Side Neighborhood Plan the document that has guided development in the neighborhood since the early 1990s to both committee members and developers as what the community wanted in its neighborhood. Dr. Barbara Rudiak, president of the South Side Community Council and a Brashear Board Member, says there are two things that stand out about Mr. Brannan: his nonjudgmental demeanor and knowledge of South Side over time. "As the facilitator of the Planning Forum, I don't recall him ever taking sides during a discussion. He would attempt to direct the discussion to a positive conclusion," she said. Ms. Rudiak added whenever she needed to understand how or why something evolved or happened in South Side, Mr. Brannan or Christine Gaus, Brashear's now retired director of services, were her go-to people. Councilman Bruce Kraus, who served on the Brashear Board for a decade before rolling off the Board at the end of last year, noted Mr. Brannan's calm and steady voice in community discussions. "He's such a steading force and we've always looked toward him for that." "With Hugh's retirement as executive director of The Brashear Association, departs a leader unparalleled. It's impossible to measure the positive impact he has had throughout South Pittsburgh over the last 36 years. If one were to look up the definition of a gentleman, one would find the name, Hugh Brannan," Mr. Kraus said. "When all is said and done, we've stayed true to our settlement house roots," Mr. Brannan said. He added the Association and its planned expansion in the Hilltop is positioned to explore ways to provide much needed services in the Hilltop. "I never thought I would spend the rest of my career in South Side, but that's the way it worked out," he stated. "A Sweet Send-Off," a dessert reception celebrating Mr. Brannan's retirement will take place at the Brashear Center, 2005 Sarah Street, on Friday, March 22 from 4-7 p.m. All are welcome to come and share their memories of and gratitude for his 36 years of service to Brashear. Two studies completed in 2018 highlight the necessity to support the basic needs of college students in the two critical areas of food and housing. Focusing on the needs of students in southwestern Pennsylvania, the studies were conducted through grants from Eden Hall Foundation and have implications for institutions of higher education nationally. The study on college food insecurity conducted by Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and the University of Pittsburgh Office of Child Development titled The Campus Cupboard Study: Needs Assessment of Collegiate Food Insecurity in Southwestern Pennsylvania collected responses from more than 6,000 students across 14 college campuses in southwestern Pennsylvania. It is among the largest samples studied in research on food insecurity among college students. Eden Hall Foundation believes a strong safety net is essential for all people to thrive. Individuals may experience food, housing and economic insecurity at various points in their lives, but college students are extremely susceptible to these challenges, stated Sylvia Fields, executive director. Food pantries, campus cupboards, innovative housing solutions can play a critical role in meeting students most basic of needs, providing a foundation from which students can learn, grow and flourish. The schools that participated in the food insecurity study are: California University; Carlow University; Carnegie Mellon University; Chatham University; Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC); Duquesne University; Indiana University of Pennsylvania; Penn State University, regional campuses; Point Park University; Seton Hill University; and, University of Pittsburgh The results are startling: 29 percent of students from 14 college and university campuses in the Pittsburgh region face moderate or high levels of food insecurity. This level of food insecurity is more than twice the 12 percent national rate for U.S. adults. The most frequently cited experience of food scarcity was inability to afford balanced meals; 71 percent of students reported this experience. About half of students had run out of food and couldnt afford to buy more (46 percent), cut the size of or skipped meals (52 percent) or ate less than they should because they lacked money to purchase food (48 percent). Forty-one percent had gone hungry because they could not afford food. Food insecurity affects student health and wellness. A majority of students experiencing food insecurity indicated that limited food supply affected their mental (52 percent) and/or physical (61 percent) health. The reality of childhood hunger is well-known, and fortunately school-based and summer food programs are in place to address this need. What happens to students that complete high school and goes on to college is not as well-known, said Lisa Scales, president and CEO of Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. While the results are staggering, I am also filled with hope. With a better understanding of the challenges college students are facing, I know that working alongside our regions colleges we will ensure that students have access to the nutrition they need to be successful. The study on college housing insecurity conducted by the Department of Community Engagement at Point Park University and the Pittsburgh Council on Higher Education (PCHE) titled Examining Housing Insecurity Among Pittsburgh-Area College Students engaged college administrators in focus groups and interviews about their perception of housing insecurity and basic needs on their campuses and collected survey responses from more than 1,800 students across nine PCHE member college campuses throughout the greater Pittsburgh region. PCHE Pittsburgh Council on Higher Education and its member institutions continue to look for ways to support the success of our students. This means that partnering with outside agencies, committing resources and outreach efforts and establishing best practices in tackling food and housing insecurity are a priority, said Karina Chavez, executive director of PCHE Pittsburgh Council on Higher Education. The partnerships that exist with Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and the support from the Eden Hall Foundation has allowed us to be proactive in identifying and assessing those students in need through our latest study. This has led to establishing food pantries on campuses and implementing other support resources that could address challenges facing students including housing, transportation, counseling or employment. The schools that participated in the housing insecurity study are: Carlow University; Carnegie Mellon University; Chatham University; Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC); Duquesne University; LaRoche College; Point Park University; Robert Morris University; and, University of Pittsburgh. Campus administrators who participated in the focus groups and interviews identified several basic needs including food insecurity, textbooks, hygiene products, child care, transportation and legal assistance. Additionally, administrators indicated a desire for more institutional data regarding housing insecurity to further understand the scope of the problem in southwestern Pennsylvania. Of the students who participated in the housing insecurity study, 19.8 percent reported sleeping in non-traditional housing such as a shelter, couch surfing, transitional or group homes in the last 12 months. Additionally, 12.2 percent reported to have lacked a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence since starting college. The largest population of survey respondents were first-generation college students. These students were more likely to take out credit card debt to pay for living expenses, be responsible for financially supporting family members and were more likely to have lacked a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence since starting college. Both food and housing insecurity among college students affect other areas of their lives. The most commonly cited problem identified by surveyed students was academic performance; 59 percent of students surveyed in the college hunger study stated that food insecurity was a barrier to performing to their full academic ability. Additionally, 53 percent of students reported that their job performance suffered. While most students experiencing food and housing insecurity expressed a willingness to use campus services they also expressed that they have not done so because they either felt that their situation was not serious enough to warrant using the services or because of a fear of stigma. To address the issue of food insecurity among college students, Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank is working directly with colleges and universities to establish campus pantries and to address the issue of stigma that exists on campuses. Of the institutions that participated in the study, the campuses that have an existing campus pantry are California University, CCAC, University of Pittsburgh and Point Park University. Following the completion of this study Carnegie Mellon University opened a pantry on campus. To address student housing insecurity, PCHE is working with its member institutions to implement PCHE-wide student assistance programs; PCHE-wide training for students, staff and faculty to increase awareness of issues and resources; and to build PCHE-wide campus-community partnerships that will build networks between housing insecure students and local rental companies as well as partner with local agencies and organizations. The complete food insecurity report is available at pittsburghfoodbank.org. The complete housing insecurity study is available at pche-pa.org/collegiate-basic-needs. Georgetown, SC (29440) Today Partly to mostly cloudy. High 78F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight A few showers this evening, becoming a steady light rain overnight. Thunder possible. Low 52F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Scientists hunting for signs of alien life shouldn't be so quick to dismiss carbon monoxide (CO), a new study suggests. The substance is highly poisonous to people and most other animal life here on Earth because it latches firmly onto hemoglobin, preventing this blood protein from carrying vital oxygen in the required quantities. And the gas hasn't typically rated as a promising " biosignature " that astrobiologists should target in the search for ET. Indeed, many researchers regard CO as an anti-biosignature, because it's a readily available source of carbon and energy that life-forms should theoretically gobble up. So, finding lots of CO in an exoplanet's atmosphere would suggest the absence of life as we know it, according to this line of thinking. Related: 10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life But it may be time to revise such reasoning, the new study said. In it, researchers used computer models to better understand the atmospheric chemistry of Earth about 3 billion years ago, when our planet's air contained very little oxygen. Microbial life was common on Earth back then, but animal life was a long way off. (The earliest fossils of multicellular organisms date to about 600 million years ago.) The team's results indicated that CO could have accumulated in significant quantities in those long-gone days, reaching concentrations of around 100 parts per million (ppm), or about 1,000 times higher than current levels. "That means we could expect high carbon-monoxide abundances in the atmospheres of inhabited but oxygen-poor exoplanets orbiting stars like our own sun," study co-author Timothy Lyons, a professor of biogeochemistry at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), said in a statement. The scientists also applied their models to exoplanetary systems specifically, those centered on red dwarfs, the small, dim stars that make up about 75 percent of the Milky Way galaxy's stellar population. The team found that inhabited red-dwarf planets with lots of oxygen in their atmospheres likely sport high levels of CO as well. In fact, CO concentrations on such worlds could be as high as several percent. "Given the different astrophysical context for these planets, we should not be surprised to find microbial biospheres promoting high levels of carbon monoxide," study lead author Edward Schwieterman, a postdoctoral researcher in UCR's Department of Earth Sciences, said in the same statement . "However, these would certainly not be good places for human or animal life as we know it on Earth," he added. The new study, which was published last week in The Astrophysical Journal , serves as a reminder that the hunt for alien life is a very complicated endeavor. Given the incredible abundance and diversity of alien worlds, there's certainly no reason to assume that ET will look like Earth life or employ the same biochemical pathways. So, researchers, such as Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are greatly expanding the list of possible biosignatures beyond the handful (such as methane and oxygen) that work for Earth-like life. Such work will likely have practical applications, and soon. NASA's $8.9 billion James Webb Space Telescope will search for biosignatures in the air of some nearby exoplanets after the observatory's planned March 2021 launch. And three huge, ground-based scopes scheduled to come online in the mid-2020s the Giant Magellan Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope will do some atmosphere-sniffing as well after they come online in the mid-2020s. Can two versions of reality exist at the same time? Physicists say they can at the quantum level, that is. Researchers recently conducted experiments to answer a decades-old theoretical physics question about dueling realities. This tricky thought experiment proposed that two individuals observing the same photon could arrive at different conclusions about that photon's state and yet both of their observations would be correct. For the first time, scientists have replicated conditions described in the thought experiment. Their results, published Feb. 13 in the preprint journal arXiv, confirmed that even when observers described different states in the same photon, the two conflicting realities could both be true. [The Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics] "You can verify both of them," study co-author Martin Ringbauer, a postdoctoral researcher with the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, told Live Science. Wigner's friend This perplexing idea was the brainchild of Eugene Wigner, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963. In 1961, Wigner had introduced a thought experiment that became known as "Wigner's friend." It begins with a photon a particle of light. When an observer in an isolated laboratory measures the photon, they find that the particle's polarization the axis on which it spins is either vertical or horizontal. However, before the photon is measured, the photon displays both polarizations at once, as dictated by the laws of quantum mechanics; it exists in a "superposition" of two possible states. Once the person in the lab measures the photon, the particle assumes a fixed polarization. But for someone outside that closed laboratory who doesn't know the result of the measurements, the unmeasured photon is still in a state of superposition. That outsider's observation their reality therefore diverges from the reality of the person in the lab who measured the photon. Yet, neither of those conflicting observations is thought to be wrong, according to quantum mechanics. Altered states For decades, Wigner's mind-bending proposal was just an interesting thought experiment. But in recent years, important advances in physics finally enabled experts to put Wigner's proposal to the test, Ringbauer said. "Theoretical advances were needed to formulate the problem in a way that is testable. Then, the experimental side needed developments on the control of quantum systems to implement something like that," he explained. Ringbauer and his colleagues tested Wigner's original idea with an even more rigorous experiment which doubled the scenario. They designated two "laboratories" where the experiments would take place and introduced two pairs of entangled photons, meaning that their fates were linked, so that knowing the state of one automatically tells you the state of the other. (The photons in the setup were real. Four "people" in the scenario "Alice," "Bob" and a "friend" of each were not real, but instead represented observers of the experiment). The two friends of Alice and Bob, who were located "inside" each of the labs, each measured one photon in an entangled pair. This broke the entanglement and collapsed the superposition, meaning that the photon they measured existed in a definite state of polarization. They recorded the results in quantum memory copied in the polarization of the second photon. Alice and Bob, who were "outside" the closed laboratories, were then presented with two choices for conducting their own observations. They could measure their friends' results that were stored in quantum memory, and thereby arrive at the same conclusions about the polarized photons. But they could also conduct their own experiment between the entangled photons. In this experiment, known as an interference experiment, if the photons act as waves and still exist in a superposition of states, then Alice and Bob would see a characteristic pattern of light and dark fringes, where the peaks and valleys of the light waves add up or cancel each other out. If the particles have "chosen" their state, you'd see a different pattern than if they hadn't. Wigner had previously proposed that this would reveal that the photons were still in an entangled state. The authors of the new study found that even in their doubled scenario, the results described by Wigner held. Alice and Bob could arrive at conclusions about the photons that were correct and provable and that yet still differed from the observations of their friends which were also correct and provable, according to the study. Quantum mechanics describes how the world works at a scale so small that the normal rules of physics no longer apply; over many decades, experts who study the field have offered numerous interpretations of what that means, Ringbauer said. However, if measurements themselves aren't absolutes as these new findings suggest that challenges the very meaning of quantum mechanics. "It seems that, in contrast to classical physics, measurement results cannot be considered absolute truth but must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement," Ringbauer said. "The stories we tell about quantum mechanics have to adapt to that," he said. Originally published on Live Science. THE WOODLANDS, Texas NASA is considering funding a mission that would send a satellite the size of a mini-fridge to the asteroid belt to examine an unexplored world, a massive asteroid scientists call Pallas . The decision will be announced in mid-April. If the mission, dubbed Athena for the Greek goddess the asteroid is named for, is approved, it would follow in the path of NASA's Dawn mission . That spacecraft explored two other giant objects in the asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres, before its mission ended this fall. "Pallas is really the only other object in the main asteroid belt that's like Vesta and Ceres not just an asteroid, but a protoplanet, a real world," Joseph O'Rourke, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University and principal investigator on the Athena mission proposal, told Space.com at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference being held here this week. "I see this as a way to go do a lot of the same science that Dawn did, but at a dramatically cheaper price, and Pallas is the sort of place that might be worth sending a much bigger mission to someday." Related: It's Sunset for NASA's Dawn, But Asteroid Probe's Legacy Lives On If selected, the mission would launch in August 2022, riding piggyback with NASA's Psyche mission that is bound for an asteroid made nearly entirely of metal. "We would race Psyche to Mars, use Mars as a gravity assist, and then catch Pallas," O'Rourke said. The Pallas flyby would come about a year after the launch. During the maneuver, Athena would take an extremely precise measurement of just how massive Pallas is and snap a bunch of images of the asteroid, which scientists could then use to piece together how water and impacts may be shaping its surface. "There's hints on the ground that it might have bright spots like Ceres," O'Rourke said, referring to features Dawn scientists believe may represent salty patches on that asteroid's surface . "So it could potentially be a place with a lot of interesting chemistry going on." With a price tag about a tenth the size of the $467 million Dawn mission , and a single flyby instead of long-term visits, Athena likely won't produce as comprehensive a package of science results as the Dawn mission has. But it should be enough to begin to understand this little-known world, according to O'Rourke. "This mission is going to pluck a lot of the low-hanging fruits scientifically," he said. "Hopefully, it will showcase the fact that we're beginning a new era of planetary exploration," in which cheap probes can precede flagship missions. The Athena team would also post all its images soon after downloading them from the spacecraft. "In fact, one of my biggest worries about the mission is that the mission team will get scooped on the science," O'Rourke said. "Everyone will be able to make our discoveries right along with us, so we'd better be ready to bang out some papers." NASA's decision, whether it chooses Athena or not, will come just a few months after the first tiny satellites to venture beyond Earth's orbit proved just how valuable small spacecraft can be to planetary scientists. Two cubesats the size of bread boxes hitchhiked with NASA's Mars InSight lander as the Mars Cube One (MarCO) mission. The little satellites captured stunning images of the Red Planet and in November, they acted as communications relays, saving scientists from hours of agony about whether the main spacecraft had touched down safely. Athena would be larger the size of a miniature refrigerator and about 400 lbs. (180 kilograms) but would still represent a new mindset for planetary science, one that relies on dramatically less complicated spacecraft than traditional missions. "I think the asteroid belt is a really great target for smallsats because there are so many targets that are interesting , we're not going to send these half-billion-dollar-plus missions to every single one," O'Rourke said. "So we have to get good at building these small flight systems that are versatile and can be used to explore." Less than two years from now, Rosalind Franklin will roll off Kazachok onto the red dirt of Mars. Rosalind Franklin is the European rover that will hunt for signs of Red Planet life after touching down in February 2021. The moniker, which was announced last month , honors the pioneering crystallographer who helped figure out the double-helix structure of DNA. And Kazachok is the newly revealed name of the Russian-built landing platform that will serve as Rosalind Franklin's base, while also doing a lot of science work of its own. Related: How the European-Russian ExoMars Missions Work (Infographic) "Kazachok literally means 'little Cossack,' and it is a lively folk dance," European Space Agency (ESA) officials said in a statement today (March 21). That dance, in turn, takes its name from the Cossack people. The Cossacks originally hailed from "the northern hinterlands of the Black and Caspian seas. They had a tradition of independence and finally received privileges from the Russian government in return for military services," according to the Encyclopedia Britannica . Together, Rosalind Franklin and Kazachok comprise the second phase of the two-part ExoMars program , a collaboration between ESA and Roscosmos, Russia's federal space agency. Phase 1 launched the methane-sniffing Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and a landing demonstrator called Schiaparelli in March 2016. TGO arrived safely and is studying Mars from above. Schiaparelli, however, slammed hard into the Red Planet in October 2016 after suffering a data glitch . (And since we're talking about names, the lander took its moniker from Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who cataloged many Martian features through a telescope in the 19th century. Among these were channels, or "canali" in Italian; this term was mistranslated into English as "canals," helping spur speculation about intelligent life on Mars .) Rosalind Franklin will search for signs of ancient Red Planet life, aided by a drill that can reach up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) underground. The stationary Kazachok will study the Martian climate and atmosphere, measure radiation levels, and look for evidence of water in the platform's surroundings, ESA officials said. The platform destined to land on Mars as part of the next ExoMars mission arrived in Italy from Russia for final assembly and testing on March 19, 2019. (Image credit: Roscosmos) Kazachok arrived in Turin, Italy, from Russia on Tuesday (March 19). The landing platform and the rover have already passed a number of tests, but many more await the duo before their planned launch from Kazakhstan in July 2020. "We have now a very challenging schedule of deliveries and tests both in Italy and France," Francois Spoto, ESA's ExoMars team leader, said in the same statement . "The coordination between the Russian and European teams is key to ... reach[ing] the Baikonur Cosmodrome [on time] in 2020." NASA plans to launch its own life-hunting rover in July 2020. That robot is currently known as Mars 2020, but it will soon be named by a schoolchild following a nationwide competition, as has happened for other NASA rovers. BRIDGEPORT The Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport has agreed to pay $3.55 million to five men who claim in lawsuits they were sexually abused as children by priests. The claimed abuse occurred from the late 1980s to the early 2000s by three priests, the Rev. Walter Coleman, the Rev. Robert Morrissey and the Rev. Larry Jensen, in Bridgeport, Brookfield, Danbury and Ridgefield. The settlements were reached following mediation with the law firm, Tremont, Sheldon, Robinson and Mahoney, of Bridgeport, which represented the five plaintiffs. As a result of countless hours of effort and hard work over the past 25 years, our law firm has been able to develop a collection of materials and information which we use to get our clients compensation for the abuse they have suffered, said attorney Douglas Mahoney. While the money can never take away their pain, we hope that the resolution will allow them to take a small step forward with their healing. The settlements come as Pope Francis is being lauded for directing the church to finally take responsibility and make amends for decades of abuse by priests, amid reports if misconduct from around the country and the world. I admire the bravery and tenacity of the survivors. They came forward with the truth and persevered through what had to be a very stressful trial process, said Gail Howard, Connecticut co-leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. The priests who abused them wounded innocent children. These men are lucky that the statute of limitations for prosecution of sex crimes is short. I hope that changes soon. Bringing cases to light Bridgeport Bishop Frank J. Caggiano has gone to the forefront of a movement by the church to become more transparent, revealing in a report last October that the diocese has paid $52.5 million to settle 156 allegations of sexual abuse by priests since 1953. Caggiano also appointed a retired judge to look into claims that the diocese covered up priests sexual abuse of children for decades. Institutions, such as the diocese, must understand that the only ways to combat and prevent the horrors of child abuse is through transparency, vigilance and accountability, attorney Cindy Robinson said. This is a fight that we will continue to wage on behalf of all survivors. It is our hope that these settlements bring a measure of healing and justice to victims, although we are fully aware that they can never be fully compensated for their suffering and loss, said Brian Wallace, director of communications for the diocese. The diocese also continues to promote healing and reconciliation by working with victims/survivors through its survivors group, victims assistance coordinators, Mass of Hope and Healing, and other resources. Wallace said that between December and February, the diocese participated in mediation to resolve the lawsuits together with a co-defendant in one case (the Maronite Order) and its insurer for four of the cases. The diocese resolved these cases through this mediation process and was able to cover the vast majority of the exposure through insurance proceeds, Wallace said. The Bridgeport law firm has represented a majority of the people involved in the settlements. Connecticut has a five-year statute of limitations on criminal charges, but in 2002 extended the limit on filing lawsuits until the alleged victims reach the age of 48. Legislatures in New York and Pennsylvania are debating similar laws but are facing stiff opposition from the church. Decades of claims The diocese lists 26 priests on its website who have credibly been accused of sexual abuse in the diocese. Since the 1960s, according to the dioceses own records turned over to the courts, abuse allegations against priests were hidden and the priests accused were moved from parish to parish. Bishop Walter Curtis hid priest abuse in the 1970s and his predecessor, Bishop Edward Egan, who later became New Yorks cardinal, continued the practice into the early 1990s, the records show. Since 1993, the Tremont law firm has represented dozens of abuse victims in lawsuits against the diocese, resulting in more than $35 million in settlements. The coverups have caused harm to so many children who loved their church and revered their parish priest, said Jason Tremont, urging the diocese to release all documents regarding sexual abuse by its priests for real transparency to occur and allow victims to heal. Coleman, who died in October 2016, served in 12 parishes in the diocese since 1960, according to diocese records. Diocese officials first began getting complaints about him abusing children in the 1970s. Court records show that Monsignor Laurence Bronkiewicz, the assistant to then-Bishop Egan, was informed in 1994 about accusations that Coleman had abused children. Coleman was allowed to retire in 1995 after the first lawsuit was filed against him. But after he retired, Hearst Connecticut Media discovered Coleman was serving as a priest in the Archdiocese of Miami. His authorization to practice as a priest was removed by Bridgeport Bishop William E. Lori in 2002. Denial and admission Two of the men in the new lawsuits were altar boys at St. Patricks Church, now known as The Cathedral Parish in Bridgeport, and students at St. Patricks School when they were allegedly abused in the 1970s and 1980s by Coleman, who was pastor of the parish. The third man claims he was sexually abused by Coleman at St. Josephs Parish in Brookfield in the 1980s, when Coleman was reassigned there as pastor. The fourth plaintiff was allegedly sexually abused by Morrissey at St. Marys Parish in Ridgefield in the 1990s. In 2001, Morrissey angrily denounced accusations of abuse against priests as a witch hunt from the pulpit of St. Marys. He resigned a year later after two men filed suit claiming Morrissey abused them at parishes in Stamford and Greenwich in the 1970s and 1980s. Removed from ministry in 2004, Morrissey died in December 2014. The fifth alleged victim first met Jensen in the early 2000s at an Emmaus retreat. Emmaus is a youth ministry operated by the diocese for decades, and thousands of children throughout Fairfield County have attended its overnight retreats. Jensen, the spiritual director of the dioceses Danbury program, is accused of abusing the plaintiff at St. Anthony Maronite Catholic Church where the program was held. Emmaus is supposed to be a retreat where the youth focus on their faith and relationship with God; instead we have seen predator priests use religion as a means to groom and ultimately abuse them, Jason Tremont said. Jensen served eight years at the Danbury church before being transferred to St. Joseph Maronite Catholic Church in Waterville, Maine. He was removed from the priesthood in 2017, after the Tremont firm reported the claim and the Eparchy of St. Maronite of Brooklyn, N.Y., determined it was substantiated. Our role in the case was not central and I am grateful the case was given the respect it was due, said Jensens lawyer, Philip Russell, said. Jensen said in the 2006 interview that he tried to get youth more involved in church, starting a youth play for Christmas and a Passion play for teenagers and young adults. Children need to feel at home at their church, Jensen said at the time. It is supposed to be a family feeling when they are here. STAMFORD A one-time senior official in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, who testified in 2017 to the U.S. Senate about the agencys response to the opioid crisis, is now reportedly working as a consultant for OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, which faces hundreds of lawsuits tied to its alleged role in the epidemic. Demetra Ashley, the DEAs former acting assistant administrator, is advising the Stamford-based company, according to unnamed sources cited by NBC News. She left the DEA in March 2018 and started Dashley Consulting LLC, as one of the nations leading experts on pharmaceutical regulatory compliance and investigation, according to her LinkedIn page. I have been consulting for members of the industry and I began my consulting business in June 2018 after I retired, Ashley told NBC. She said she could not confirm or deny the identities of her clients unless they say its OK. There is no indication that Ashleys consulting for Purdue is illegal, NBC said. It quoted experts, however, who expressed concerns about former federal officials working for companies that they once regulated. A Purdue spokesman said Wednesday that the company does not comment on its consultants or experts, but it is standard practice across all industries and for both sides, plaintiffs and defendants, to consult with appropriate experts. The company certainly has a right to defend itself against such misleading and inaccurate (legal) claims. The spokesman was referring to more than 1,000 lawsuits including ones from Connecticuts attorney general and about three dozen cities and towns in the state that have alleged that Purdue fueled the opioid crisis by deceptively marketing opioids such as OxyContin. Purdue denies the allegations. Ashley also told NBC News that she had been subpoenaed to be deposed in a consolidated group of approximately 1,500 complaints involving Purdue and several opioid makers, to discuss her work at the DEA to help combat the opioid crisis, according to NBC. Those lawsuits are being processed in a federal court in Cleveland, with the first trial scheduled to start in October. In her December 2017 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ashley covered a number of DEA initiatives to tackle the epidemic of opioid abuse, including measures to counter the writing and filling of illegitimate opioid prescriptions. She also cited the proliferation of illegal opioids including heroin. Our nation has been devastated by the opioid abuse, with more than 300,000 opioid-related deaths, Ashley said. The epidemic has created a generation of abusers, currently estimated at 12 million. While prescriptions for Schedule Two opioids have begun to decline, making Schedule Two opioids less accessible, Mexican drug cartels have filled the void by producing cheap heroin and counterfeit pills, often mixed with fentanyl. The results are tragic. OxyContin, Purdues top-selling drug, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1995. But its federal regulation has done little to dissuade prosecutors across the country from suing. As the company faces jury verdicts or settlements that could amount to tens of billions of dollars, Purdue CEO Craig Landau confirmed last week that it was considering bankruptcy a move that could help contain its liability. pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; Twitter: @paulschott The Cryptometrics Inc. bribery scandal in Canada has resulted in two more convictions under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act (CFPOA). Robert Barra, an American citizen, and Shailesh Govindia, a UK national, were both convicted of offenses under the CFPOA in January. Previously, Nazir Karigar, a Canadian-Indian businessman, was convicted after a trial and sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the same scandal. The latest convictions were registered after the second ever trial under the CFPOA, even though there was no evidence that a bribe was ever paid to a foreign public official and no contract was awarded by Air India. The judge held that offense required proof that the accused had knowledge that the potential recipient of the bribes were foreign public officials as defined by the CFPOA. After a review of the evidence, the judge held that there was not sufficient evidence that the Air India employee was known by the two accused to be a foreign public official but that the government Minister was. The defense attacked the reliability of a cooperator and co-accused, Dario Berini, who tape recorded a conversation of the alleged conspiracy to bribe Air India officials. The trial judge, Justice R.J. Smith, of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice held that the evidence of the co-operator was sufficiently reliable to prove the allegation beyond a reasonable doubt. Govindias also defended the charge at trial on the basis that although it was an error of professional judgement to agree to bribe Indian Minister of Civil Aviation Praful Patel, that he was not really serious, and simply he wanted to secure the $500,000 as a consulting fee by dishonest means. The trial judge said, at paragraph 60: I do not believe Mr. Govindias evidence that he was only pretending to agree to pay a bribe to the minister. I find this evidence, that he confessed to Mr. Barra the following morning at breakfast that the money was all for him and that he was only pretending to agree to pay the bribe of $500,000 to the Indian minister during their tape-recorded meeting, to be completely unbelievable. The reasons from the trial judge are instructive for those who advise clients on compliance with the CFPOA, Barra was convicted of two offenses, one of agreeing to pay a bribe of $250,000 to a foreign public official, and the second offense of agreeing to pay a bribe of $500,000 through Govindia, to the same Indian Minister of Civil Aviation. Shailesh Govindia was convicted of one count of agreeing to pay a bribe to a foreign public official under the CFPOA. The punishment and sentencing phase of the trial is yet to be finally resolved at the time of writing. ____ A n editor of this newspaper said years ago that the way to keep readers loyal was to enrage them at least once a fortnight so they would say that they would never buy the publication again and it was buy in those days. That way they would always come back to see what further calumny or idiocy would unfold. The City Grump Rides Out, a selection of almost 10 years of articles by the City Grump, aka Stephen Hazell-Smith, works the same way. He is a one-time fund manager with over 30 years experience. There must be 100 of his articles in this collection, and much of the City stuff has a sureness of touch which is quite special. But then he goes on political diatribes which leave this reader cold. Just as my former editor would have wanted. His muse was Henry Root, aka journalist William Donaldson, who back in 1980 published in book form a series of letters from a supposed nonentity called Henry Root, which was, of course, Donaldson and his then girlfriend. He unleashed them on the great, the good and the famous, employing very politically incorrect suggestions to see how people would react. The idea was to spotlight these targets a bit like Ali G did with his TV interviews and spoofs to prick their pomposity and reveal their inner thoughts. Hazell-Smiths book is divided into sections, from powerful people, corporate governance, regulation, politicians, the monarchy and Brussels. There is no shortage of targets when the City is so cowed by regulators and others that it rarely stands up for itself. His particular love is SMEs and his particular hate is for the regulators, politicians and bankers who make their lives difficult. His major beef is the shortage of equity to help small firms grow, when the world is instead awash with debt. Where is 3i, which once filled that role before it succumbed to private equity blandishments and almost blew up? Where are the cuts in capital gains tax to help firms get established? Why are peer-to-peer finance and crowdsourcing not encouraged more? Why are there not more angel investors who could provide share capital? And where-oh-where is the regulation of debt and taxation of interest on that debt, so equity is no longer at a disadvantage? He makes very good points but no one seems to be listening. But there are things which could be done. The Financial Conduct Authority for one, could be less penal in the way it regulates small caps. It says that they are very risky, so financial advisers do not normally allocate any to retail investors. Instead the FCA thinks investors should go into WPP, or Marks & Spencer, or Sainsburys. It says they are relatively safe: it is utterly mad. Small businesses are never consulted by government, never make up committees of inquiry, and government has no real ideas about what makes them tick. They dont lobby, they dont make political donations, they dont provide sinecures for retired mandarins, so they dont really figure in spite of being a significant sector of the economy. Politicians say they want to help, but leave it to banks who have long-since stopped lending serious money. Normally less than 3% of lending goes to the small cap sector. Banks would rather lend on domestic mortgages. Fund managers are blasted too. They could buy small caps but instead too many are losing themselves in a sea of speculation and hypothetical returns. Speculative trading of this sort conveys no sense of responsibility, and if they are not responsible they are unlikely to care. Fund managers ought to think of society as a whole and think long-term. Few do. One final point. There is no problem with pay, provided it is earned though entrepreneurship. Small company bosses generally do that and are much more concerned with the business and innovation but big company bosses generally dont. The latter he regards as sloths not fat cats because the contents of the full stomach of a sloth is two-thirds of its body weight. They are far more involved with office politics, getting one up on a colleague and delivering financial rewards for themselves, than they are about sustained growth. In short, sloths are far more damaging to the economy than the prospect of a China slowdown, or a Trump tweet. Amen to that. P ersimmon made a bid to rebuild its battered reputation on Thursday by giving customers the chance to keep part of their cash for new homes until faults are fixed. The housebuilder has had a turbulent time amid rows over corporate pay and complaints over the quality of its homes, leading to speculation that it could even be kicked out of the Governments Help to Buy subsidy scheme which has boosted industry profits. Under plans announced today, from July homebuyers solicitors will keep 6% of the build cost of every new home equivalent to an average of 3600 per property until any faults identified are fixed. Persimmon sold 16,500 homes last year, so the homebuyers retention initiative could cost company cashflow up to 60 million a year. The efforts to rebuild its brand come amid widespread criticism of its build quality and weeks after it made 1 billion in profits for the first time. Of nearly 750 reviews on the TrustPilot website only 36% rated the firm as excellent, and 58% rated their homes poor or bad. Reviews in the past week range from Do not buy Persimmon to another customer waiting 15 months for snagging works to be completed, saying the whole build screams of shoddy materials and shoddy work. Persimmons new chief executive Dave Jenkinson said: We need to continue to raise our game in customer care We are determined that the experience is not overshadowed by teething problems and providing a homebuyers retention is an important step towards achieving this. Chairman Roger Devlin added that the move was a clear and unambiguous signal of cultural and operational change. One industry insider pointed out that the construction industry was moving away from adversarial retention payments, but said of Persimmon: Theyve been under massive pressure from Government about their quality and reputation. The new chairman is driving big changes and the new chief executive has been tasked with delivering improvements there was also a commitment in their last statement to drive improvements in their customer satisfaction survey scores so its very welcome all round. A dministrators to the collapsed bond firm London Capital & Finance on Thursday said they may attempt to recoup more than 50,000 which one of the men arrested over the firms demise gave to the Conservative Party. Finbarr OConnell, administrator at Smith & Williamson, said if it can be proved that the money donated by Simon Hume-Kendall stemmed from LCFs 11,600 bondholders, they would be demanding the party pays the money back. LCF collapsed in January, leaving its largely elderly list of bondholders facing losing nearly all of the 236 million they had invested. Hume-Kendall is the wealthy businessman who originally founded the firm which was later renamed as LCF. He was named today alongside LCFs chief executive Andrew Thomson as being one of four men arrested as part of a Serious Fraud Office investigation into the affair. OConnell said if it could be proved the funds stemmed from bondholders I will write to the Conservative Party on the bondholders behalf and ask for it back. Hume-Kendall declined to comment. Sources close to him say the funds came from his personal wealth rather than company funds. Electoral Commission records show Hume-Kendall gave seven party donations between October 2017 and January 2019, all in cash except two payments totalling 6,400 in the form of sponsorship. The biggest borrower from LCF, an oil investment company called London Oil & Gas, was run by Hume-Kendall and collapsed into administration earlier this week. LoG borrowed 123 million from LCF. Companies House records show LoGs holding company London Group LLP also borrowed from LCF. Deeds for the loan were signed by Hume-Kendall and fellow London Group director Elten Barker and LCF chief executive Thomson. OConnell has said that all but 40 million of the 236 million of LCF bondholders money is probably unrecoverable. A s Islamic State loses its last stronghold at Baghouz in eastern Syria it retains the ability to spread terror because memories of its past atrocities are still fresh. Abdel Salaam, a survivor of the three-year-long IS occupation of the city of Raqqa, which served as its Syrian capital, told me that Daesh [IS] is in our hearts and minds. Five-year-old children have seen women stoned to death and heads chopped off and put on spikes in the city centre. Other survivors spoke of sons who killed their fathers, and fathers who had done the same to their sons to show their loyalty to the self-declared caliphate. Some of these atrocity stories may be exaggerated but most are unfortunately all too true. IS had a strategy of spreading fear among its enemies and it saw the whole world as full of hostile forces by publicising its savage cruelty through the internet. It was an effective approach: I was in Iraq in June 2014, just after IS had captured the northern capital of Mosul and was advancing swiftly on Baghdad. To spread terror, its executioners took 1,700 young Shia Iraqi Army recruits and shot them amid the ruins of some old palaces of Saddam Hussein on the banks of the Tigris river. Videos of the mass slaughter were uploaded to terrify anybody planning to resist the IS attack. Later on, the killings were in revenge for IS defeat or setbacks. The movements first big failure was in 2015, when it was unable to capture the Kurdish city of Kobani because of heroic Kurdish resistance backed by US air power. Months later, IS fighters disguised in Kurdish uniforms infiltrated the town and launched a killing spree in which 146 civilians were murdered. The prospect of similar revenge attacks by IS to show that it is still in business after losing the battle for Baghouz will worry many governments. Already an IS spokesman has threatened retaliation for the bombing of Baghouz, as well as revenge for the killings of Muslims in the mosque attacks in New Zealand. IS will certainly want to show that it remains capable of guerrilla and terrorist actions. But this should not detract from the magnitude of the defeat it has just suffered: the self-declared caliphate that once stretched from the outskirts of Baghdad to the Mediterranean an area the size of Great Britain is no more. The significance of this is very great. What made IS terrorism so menacing was the fact that it was backed by the resources of a well-organised de facto state that, at its peak, ruled eight million people. It had armies totalling tens of thousands of experienced soldiers and could arm, train and finance IS cells almost anywhere in the world. "Islamic State has permanently now lost some of the most important advantages that let it to win spectacular victories" Movements inspired by the IS caliphate emerged in countries from Afghanistan to Libya, though they were never as powerful as in Syria and Iraq. From an early stage, IS leaders foresaw that their territories might one day be overrun but made plans for their fanatical cult to survive elsewhere. I was once told by a former IS fighter that he had heard from my emirs [commanders] that Isis would win even if it had been defeated militarily in Iraq and Syria. At first he thought they were saying this to keep up the morale of their men after many defeats, but he later found that they were sending veteran fighters to other countries where they would be at the core of movements pledging loyalty to the caliphate. Could this plan succeed, and can IS live on in other parts of the world despite the extinction of the original caliphate? It is important here to keep a sense of proportion and to take a realistic view of ISs future capabilities. The group will still be able to carry out terrorist attacks on civilians and ill-defended military targets in Iraq and Syria. Its remaining fighters can hide out in the vast deserts of the region where they were previously operating, and where they have hideouts with stocks of weapons and other supplies. But one should not overestimate IS capacity: it has permanently lost some of the most important advantages that enabled it to win spectacular victories five years ago. At that time, its explosive expansion caught everybody by surprise, but today nobody is going to underestimate its potential for demonic violence. At one time, IS could also count on the tolerance or covert support of neighbouring states. Between 2012 and 2015 jihadis and their supporters had no problems in crossing the Turkish border into Syria, as Shamima Begum discovered. But IS soon showed that it wanted no friends and was a danger even to those who allowed it to operate. IS may have lost its caliphate but many commentators suggest that it will have the ability to resurrect itself, so long as it has true believers and the military pressure against it has relaxed. IS itself would certainly like to believe this. But it also knows it can no longer claim that success on the battlefield shows it is divinely inspired, since for three years it has known nothing but defeat. Sadly, IS has left the territories it once ruled physically devastated and its people psychologically damaged. Many have lost their lives and many more their homes and their livelihoods. The inhabitants of ruined cities such as Raqqa and countless other towns and villages all have the same stunned look, as if they cannot believe their nightmare is finally over. IS may have been defeated but it leaves behind a legacy of fear that will take decades to pass away. T here are two types of people in the UK: those who think the upcoming internet porn block is a terrible idea and the majority 76 per cent, according to YouGov who have no idea its happening at all. The plan was to prevent children stumbling across pornography online, and to that end, commercial porn sites will be required, as of April 1, to request proof of age, via an uploaded passport or driving licence, or a newsagent-purchased porn pass. Those who hate the idea point out it wont work on the internet-savvy (horniness has always been a key driver of tech innovation), but will mean back-door censorship and a major privacy risk for everyone else. Theyre probably right. But consider this: not all unintended consequences are bad ones. If internet porn is to healthy sexuality what fast food is to healthy nutrition, then our current situation is like having a greasy burger van on every UK corner, plus three on any road with a school in it. Whats more, with sex education as patchy as it generally is, its as if our childrens daily lunch and dinner provision had also been outsourced to KFC. Individual choice is all very well but our homo sapiens brains just arent evolved to defend themselves against the onslaught of supernormal stimuli porn, junk food, push notifications that is modern life. Protecting under-18s, might mean over-18s have to work a bit harder to get off, but is that really such a bad thing? It wont be the end of porn (I once found a stash of ancient 20th-century artefacts known as jazz mags under a loose seat cushion on the 7.58 to Enfield Town). It wont even be the end of internet porn (never heard of VPNs?), but it will introduce a longer delay between impulse and action, a delay in which the conscious mind might just prevail over temptation. As for the privacy risk? Well, yes, and shouldnt you have thought of that earlier? Since the 2015 Ashley Madison data breach and long before, its been sensible to assume our every online action is surveilled, stored and will one day be shared. "With a longer delay between impulse and action, the conscious mind might just prevail over temptation" Privacy campaigners want you to imagine a terrifying future in which prospective employers and mortgage lenders can easily discover all our pervy peccadilloes. Why not imagine further: a future in which you arrive for a job interview, get handed a printout of your recent Pornhub searches, then just shrug and say, So? Do I get 30 days paid holiday with this position or what? This could be the puritanical measure that ushers in a new era in which individuals are freed from repression, and sex scandals no longer have the power to derail otherwise promising political careers. The swirling debate around privacy rights, government censorship and free speech may yet coalesce into a single decision, liberating in its simplicity: either dont do the things youre ashamed of, or dont be ashamed of the things you do. Your daily commute neednt be hellish Cars and trucks and things that go. But also Tubes, trams, folding bikes, pedestrians listening to podcasts and Ubers for the morning after. Is it just me, or does the morning rush hour in London feel more like an illustration from one of Richard Scarrys Busytown books for children with each passing day? Right down to the animals driving the lorries? OK, its possibly just me. But our streets may turn more Scarry and zoo-like following the Department for Transports review of existing road laws, launched this week. Mooted changes include lifting the road ban on electric scooters and electric skateboards so they can share the tarmac with everyone else, and raising the 15.5mph speed limit on electric bikes. Hoverboards and flying cars are surely next. Will this mean social acceptance at last for those grown men who tootle about town on two-wheeled toys? Lets hope not. But even if youre not planning to revolutionise your routine drastically, the DfT review is a useful reminder that getting about London neednt be miserable. Your commute sets a tone for the whole day, and too often that tone is %$@! FML. Would an overground train be more pleasant than driving, even if it takes 20 minutes longer? Could you replace gym sessions with a brisk walk to work? Our transport options may be limited, but most daily drudges have room for manoeuvre. *If you've been thinking about that fascinating man in a tuxedo gown ever since he sashayed on to the red carpet at this years Oscars (havent we all?), youll soon have the chance to get better acquainted. Thats because Pose, Ryan Murphys new series about the LGBT ballroom scene of Eighties New York, starts on BBC Two tonight, featuring Billy Porter (for it was he), and breakout stars Indya Moore and Mj Rodriguez. Billy Porter / Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP On Thursday afternoon Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank made their first official engagement since their royal wedding. The 28-year-old donned a cream dress by Maje, a Parisian label which has become known for its feminine silhouettes. The couple were joined by Prince Andrew as they visited the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London to open the new Stanmore Building. The princess underwent surgery at the hospital when she was a young girl in order to correct her scoliosis, the scar of which she revealed with a backless dress on her wedding day. Eugenie wore Maje's 315 tweed-style trapeze dress, featuring demure three-quarter sleeves, a V neckline and toile A-line skirt. Princess Eugenie visits the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London / PA Wire/PA Images Drawing similarities to her wedding day, Eugenie wore a statement hair accessory; this time swapping the dazzling tiara for one of spring/summer 2019's biggest accessory trends: a knotted headband. PA Wire/PA Images It's currently hard to turn a London corner without seeing someone with the oversized band adorning their tresses. Eugenie opted for an edgy leather design, which you can recreate for as little as 7.99 on the high street. Princess Eugenie also accessorised with a designer handbag / PA Wire/PA Images I f there was ever a time to push the boat out, its Mothers Day. When it comes to showing our mums how much they mean, a card and a box of economy chocolates just won't cut it. Thankfully, there are plenty of places in London hosting fantastic events to spoil your mum with. From bottomless brunches to craft workshops and speedboat trips up the Thames, these are the best Mother's Day events on in London this year. SUSHISAMBA If lobster and Champagne sound like your thing, then the SUSHISAMBA brunch should be the ideal way to kick off Mothers Day. The menu is among the most glamorous youre likely to find about town, and the Liverpool Street venue is going all out with a special Bossa Nova Brunch from 11.30am to 4.30pm on March 31. The 55 offer features fresh fruit tiraditos, mini lobster brioche rolls, causa benedict and a Champagne cart, and there'll be a live band providing the soundtrack. EC2 and WC, sushisamba.com OXBO If youre after a brunch that packs a boozy punch, OXBO is one of the best in the city. Hit up the Pimp Your Prosecco station, mixing up unlimited fizz with all kinds of syrups and fresh fruit. Youll need something to soak it all up. Head to the open kitchen for unlimited servings of eggs benedict, eggs royale, omelettes, waffles and malted pancake, before sharing three main courses sirloin steak, haddock and pumpkin and jackfruit korma. The two hour brunch with unlimited fizz is 45 and as a bonus, diners will also receive a Mothers Day goodie bag, full of artisan chocolates to take home. Hilton London Bankside, 2-8 Great Suffolk Street, SE1 0UG, oxbobankside.co.uk Camino Bankside Get crafty at Camino Bankside, with a special jewellery-making masterclass. Choose between making a ring, broach, earrings or a necklace pendant at the event, which runs from 11am to 1pm on Sunday. Design and create the piece on the day, before sending it off to be cast in sterling silver. The perfect way to add a little personality to your Mother's Day gift. Tickets are 75 and include a glass of fizz on arrival. 5 Canvey St, SE1 9AN, camino.uk.com The Savoy Those looking for an unforgettable experience are well catered for at the Savoy on Mother's Day and throughout the rest of the year, in truth. The recently launched 65 vegan afternoon tea in the Thames Foyer, offering a plant-based treat in one of Londons most beautiful dining rooms. Or, keep it classic with a trip to the Beaufort or American Bar. Both are among the glitziest places to enjoy a drink in the city, and perfect for marking a special occasion. Thames Rockets If your mum likes to feel the wind in her hair, Thames Rockets could be the way forward. A speedboat tour of the Thames is one of the quirkiest ways to spend March 31. The Mother's Day Dash is a chance to blast up and down the river for 50 minutes and take in the sights of the city. Best of all, on the day, mums go totally free in groups of two or more. The London Eye Millennium Pier, SE1 7PB, thamesrockets.com The Petersham If there's anything better than a luxurious four-course meal, it's a free luxurious four-course meal. Richmond hotel the Petersham is letting mums eat without paying a penny this year, welcoming them to a lovely meal in a charming setting by the Thames. The restaurants light and airy dining room is a great place to enjoy the crab and quinoa salad and pan-fried cod with crab tortellini, before tucking into chocolate forest gateau, cherry and rum sorbet or sticky toffee pudding. For every four guests booked after 4pm, one mum can eat for free. Nightingale Ln, Richmond TW10 6UZ, petershamhotel.co.uk Boom Cycle Boom Cycle is shaking things up with this quirky event on March 31, involving a bike ride, a delicious brunch and a florist workshop imagine a Mothers Day version of the pentathlon, but with buckets of prosecco. Start off at midday from Boom Cycle Battersea, shaking things over to Mother restaurant to enjoy fresh salads and selections of roast veg, fruit and pasta dishes, as well as their trademark sourdough pizza. Then, finish with a hands-on session at Moyses Stevens luxury florist. The entire experience costs 105, with mums able to enjoy the day for free with a paying guest. Units 1&3 Arches Lane, Circus Village West, SW11 8AB, boomcycle.co.uk London Shell Co. Cruise down Regents Canal on floating seafood restaurant London Shell Company, which is hosting a special Mothers Day menu. Expect seasonal dishes on the charming converted barge, which offers amazing views of the surrounding park and London Zoo. Cured trout and smoked roe croustade, as well as mussel and saffron soup with fried curry leaves, are among the highlights of the five-course menu, which is 50 a head. It could be the very best way to float your boat this March 31. The Prince Regent Sheldon Square Central, W2 6PY, londonshellco.com Wild By Tart One of the centrepieces of Victorias impressive Eccleston Yard redevelopment, Wild by Tart is teaming up with Darjeeling Express founder and celebrated Chef's Table star Asma Khan for a special Mothers Day brunch. Expect fresh dishes including Tart's baked eggs with okra, aubergine and coriander green chutney on offer, all prepared by Khan and Wild by Tart staff. Tickets are 45 and include gift bags with chocolate truffles. Vanuatu is on the European Union blacklist: Why should we care? Dubai has been recently lambasted as a money laundering paradise by Transparency International and theres no doubt that Dubai and the UAE in general are lagging in the world of compliance and regulation. So TIs assertion did not take me by surprise. Lets face it, the UAEs approach to the rule of law can be puzzling to those of us on the outside looking in. Take the case of Asa Hutchinson, for example, a British woman jailed for three months in Dubai last autumn. Shed witnessed an altercation involving a Swedish national and some of her friends. But after her friends returned to the UK, and despite her only witnessing the alleged assault, the Swede in question transferred all the blame and allegations onto Ms. Hutchinson, simply because she was resident in the UAE, rendering her responsible under their laws. Staggeringly, the Dubai legal system works on an assumption that whoever makes the first complaint is most likely to be believed. Similarly, the UAE is loath to extradite suspects from its shores. My UK-based investigator has had two experiences of UK suspects fleeing to the UAE and then issuing bouncing checks, knowing that this is a criminal offense in that region. Once the suspects were under investigation by the UAE authorities, they could not be extradited because they were under criminal suspicion there. In the case of the bouncing checks, this is a classic delaying tactic almost without risk given that a wrongdoer will have likely issued the check to an accomplice. When the case nears conclusion, all the subject may need to do is to settle the debt (if there ever was one) and they are no longer under a UAE investigation. This tactic can be highly effective. One of the main reasons that UAE authorities refuse to extradite a suspect is the issue of time lapse: the opinion that the historical nature of the alleged crimes precludes the suspects from facing the UK courts for trial. So any means of delaying extradition may see this threshold breached and a potential prosecution elsewhere fail. I have no issue in regard to how the Emirates views the topic of bounced checks: in fact I wish we in the West were as strict with those who use them here. What I do have an issue with is the scenarios depicted here, where legislation is clearly being manipulated for ulterior motives. In several of the cases where extradition has been declined, the individuals have been suspects in a multi-million pound Missing Trader Intra Community Fraud, also known as a Carousel Fraud. The sums lost to this form of Value Added Tax fraud can be vast, in several instances in excess of 100 million ($130 million) or more. If the suspects have successfully moved some of their money to the UAE, they can flee there with near-impunity. The losses to the UK and EU purse for this type of fraud are estimated to be in the region of $68 billion per annum (Europol figure). This is not some low-end breach. It is a truly nefarious crime, robbing the UK and EU residents of funds that could be used to build schools, hospitals, or other public infrastructure. In fairness, the UAE is not alone when it seeks to apply its own rationale to the issue of extradition. Many jurisdictions, when faced with harboring such suspects, will acquiesce to the request wherever the law of extradition requires it. By declining to do so, the UAE is effectively providing safe harbor to these suspects. In turn, by allowing them to purchase properties in the UAE, they are complicit in the money laundering process. But worryingly, the issue of money laundering isnt restricted to acquisitive crime insofar as the UAE is concerned. Sadly, there are also significant indicators that suggest others in the wider Middle East region are knowingly or unknowingly complicit in laundering money for terrorist organizations. David Aufhauser, a former legal advisor to the U.S. Treasury, spoke on a recent panel concerning money laundering and money transfers. He explained that the Financial Action Task Force had issued a report in November singling out Saudi Arabia for not doing enough to tackle the issue of terrorist financing, and accused the UAE of being the main hub for the transfer of funds used in terrorist acts. Aufhauser continued to explain that more than 80 percent of wages in the UAE were transferred to foreign workers countries of origin. As these fund transfers may be used to finance terrorism, he questioned the ability of the UAE authorities to monitor all these financial operations. Dubai and the UAE in general are wealthy and rapidly developing corners of the globe. Given that they have the resources to implement change, including stepping up to the standards of financial regulation in place elsewhere in the world, the UAE really does need to get its fiscal governance house in order. As the saying goes, Rome wasnt built in a day. But change is needed, and it is to be hoped that those with the power to do so make these changes sooner rather than later. Because right now it is simply unacceptable for the Emirates to provide succor to criminals fleeing their own jurisdictions in order to escape justice. It is also wrong of them to permit these crooks to manipulate legislation to their own ends. With thanks to Tony McClements, Senior Investigator at Martin Kenney & Co, for his assistance with this post. _____ Martin Kenney, pictured above, is Managing Partner of Martin Kenney & Co., Solicitors, a specialist investigative and asset recovery practice based in the BVI, focused on multi-jurisdictional fraud and grand corruption cases www.martinkenney.com | @MKSolicitors. In 2014 he was the recipient of the ACFEs highest honor: the Cressey Award for life-time achievement in the detection and deterrence of fraud. He was selected as one of the Top Thought Leaders of the Legal Profession in 2018 and 2019 by Whos Who Legal International and as the number one offshore lawyer for asset recovery in 2017 and 2018. H unted by Arne Dahl It begins, as these things so often do, with a letter. In this case it is sent to detective Desire Rosenkvist in Stockholm: Someones spying on me. Im in darkness, it says. Meanwhile, in deepest Lapland, two disgraced cops called Berger and Blom the former in hiding from a rogue member of the secret services who has already framed him for murder are hunting a serial killer who targets mothers and sons. It takes far too long to reunite Rosenkvist and Blom and then an unconscionable amount of time to identify and catch the killer. Arne Dahls novels have sold more than three million copies worldwide. Hunted provides no clue as to why this might be. The main problem is that this story relies far too much on the first novel in the series, Watching You. Constant recaps kneecap the confusing narrative. Then, to cap it all, Islamic State pops up in the final pages. Enough already! The result feels synthetic, second-hand and clunky. Perhaps style is what gets lost in translation. Theres a lot of high-tech talk, the requisite torture scene (naked woman in grave danger), blizzards of endless questions and snow, snow and more snow. It certainly left me cold. The Whisperer by Karin Fossum Inspector Sejer, Karin Fossums long-term detective, has fans in more than 40 countries even though hes not exactly a barrel of laughs: Ive never been that bothered about happiness. This gripping tale does not, however, represent business as usual. It comprises a series of interviews in which Sejer attempts to discover what made mousey shop assistant Ragna Reigel, 46, do a Very Bad Thing. A botched throat operation has left Ragna unable to speak normally. As she reluctantly opens up to the kindly cop, a picture is painted of a dreadfully circumscribed life. The redheads parents are dead, her son has long since left Norway for Berlin and she lives alone in quiet desperation. One day, returning from work, she finds a note in her letterbox: YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. T odays Google Doodle has a musical touch to it as it celebrates German composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach. The interactive Doodle allows users to compose their own music with the press of a button, using machine learning to harmonise the custom melody into Bachs signature music style. This is the first Google Doodle powered by artificial intelligence, mimicking the technique of Bachs four-part harmony. The talented musician is remembered as one of the most influential composers of the Baroque era, putting his name to famous works including the Brandenburg Concertos, The Well-Tempered Clavier and The Art of Fugue. Google Who was Johann Sebastian Bach? German composer Johann Sebastian Bach was renowned for his four-part melody (Getty ) / Getty Bach was born on March 21, 1685, in a small town in Germany called Eisenach. His large family had strong musical roots, with his father working as a director of the towns musicians. Bach started out as a chorister before learning the violin. He would later go on to master the organ, an instrument towards which much of his genius is attributed. Whilst prolific of his time, Bach would only live to see a handful of his works published. Now, more than 1,000 pieces of his work that survived in manuscript form are published and performed all over the world. Why is he being celebrated with a Google Doodle? The Google Doodle created in his honour centres on the four-part harmony for which Bach is renowned. The four main voices are typically represented as soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Using the interactive Doodle, users can pick notes and assemble them. Once happy with their selection, they can press a harmonise button which adds in all four tones to create a more sophisticated and rich melody. Google Doodle art director Matt Cruickshank's favourite Doodles 1 /26 Google Doodle art director Matt Cruickshank's favourite Doodles The doodle marking the 155th anniversary of the London Underground Google The doodle celebrating the 255th anniversary of the British Museum Google The doodle marking India's Republic Day in 2013 Google The doodle marking the 160th anniversary of the first Indian passenger train Google The doodle marking Earth Day 2018 with Jane Goodall Google The doodle marking when the NASA Juno probe reached Jupiter The doodle marking when the NASA Juno probe reached Jupiter Google The doodle marking Hannah Glasse's 310th birthday, the creator of the Yorkshire Pudding Google The doodle celebrating Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak, who died in 2013 Google One of Matt Cruickshank's doodles, marking the 93rd birthday of Saul Bass, the American graphic designer and Oscar-winning film maker Google The doodle marking Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka's 120th birthday Google The doodle marking Shakespeare's 400th birthday, which also takes place on the same day as St George's Day Google The doodle celebrating the Japanese poet, Kobayashi Issa Google The doodle marking marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Louise Carson on her 107th birthday Google The doodle marking Columbian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 91st birthday, Google The doodle marking Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's 95th anniversary Google An amalgamation of all the different Google Doodle gifs marking 100 years since the completion of the Trans-Siberian railway Google The background for the doodle game celebrating Doctor Who's 50th anniversary Google The doodle celebrating Doctor Who's 50th anniversary Google The doodle marking 155 years of the Pony Express - when horseback riders would deliver letters between California and Missouri Google A man has been left with life-changing injuries after he was repeatedly shot at a block of flats in Dagenham. Armed police were deployed to the scene at Hawkwell House in Gosfield Road after the attack on Thursday afternoon. Scotland Yard said the victim was taken to an east London hospital with life changing injuries. A Met Police spokesman said: Police are currently on scene at Hawkwell House, Gosfield Road, Dagenham dealing with an incident whereby a male has sustained multiple gun shot wounds. He remains in an east London hospital with life changing injuries. Police including armed police remain at the scene. T he best friend of Stephen Lawrence does not believe any more suspects will face justice for the killing. Speaking before a documentary he presents on knife crime, Duwayne Brooks said there was no way the remaining suspects could be convicted of the 1993 racist murder. Mr Brooks, who was with the teenager when he was attacked in Eltham, told of the trauma suffered by relatives and friends caught up in the spiral of violence on UK streets. In tonights film Stabbed: Britains Knife Crime Crisis he calls for a public health approach to the problem along the lines of the Violence Reduction Unit in Glasgow, an approach backed by an Evening Standard campaign. He interviews three families who have lost children, including the mother of 18-year-old Azaan John Kaleem who was stabbed in broad daylight in Luton in March last year and the parents of DJ Nana Banger, real name Elyon Poku, who was knifed at a party in Stamford Hill last September. Mr Brooks told the Standard: In this film we see partial justice for some families but there is no remorse. The same trauma is there for me because those I know are involved have not been found guilty while the ones who have been found guilty are not expressing any remorse and that makes it worse for us as victims. Five men have been arrested over Stephens murder but only two have been convicted. Gary Dobson and David Norris were jailed for life in 2012. Mr Brooks said only someone very close to the group could lead to further convictions and he did not believe that would happen, adding: I do not even think about it because it just causes pain. He described how he changed his view on how to tackle serious violence after visiting the VRU in Glasgow, which helped to halve the number of homicides since 2008. Its approach involves using a range of services including mental health, education and charities rather than just police-led enforcement. He said: Just sending people to prison and releasing them and then sending them back to prison does not change anything. Mr Brooks, 44, said there should be more recognition of the trauma caused by violence as well as the fear being felt by children today. He added: I do not remember growing up with the fear of being stabbed, or fear of my friends being stabbed, on a daily basis. This must be having a negative impact on them. I think we need to create safe spaces where our young people can come and express their fears and feelings without being judged. R emain-backer Anna Soubry has revealed she is unable to go home to her constituency this weekend because she is facing serious death threats. A day after the Prime Minister blamed MPs for failing to implement the result of the Brexit referendum, the former business minister spoke of the importance of the language used by politicians. Ms Soubry, who quit the Conservative Party to join The Independent Group last month, said she was facing "very, very serious death threats, especially when people know your home address". Speaking outside the Cabinet Office where she and TIG spokesman Chuka Umunna held talks with David Lidington, Ms Soubry was asked about Theresa May's choice of language during her speech to the public on Wednesday night. She told reporters: "I can't go home this weekend, I'm not able to go home this weekend, I am not safe. British parliamentarian and member of The Independent Group, Anna Soubry. / AFP/Getty Images "When a senior police officer tells your partner that if it was his wife in the situation that I am in he would say 'I am frightened for her safety' I think that tells you everything. "I'm not alone in this - I mean Chuka has obviously had death threats, so many of us have had that - but this is the reality of it, that's why the language that politicians and indeed everybody uses, including the media, is so important. "We are tired of being called traitors. When people use that language the next thing that happens is that I get an email that says 'Traitors get beheaded, that's what should happen to you'." Other MPs have also raised safety concerns after the PM's comments on Wednesday. Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown. / PA Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle told Sky News he was involved in an altercation on a street in his constituency. When I said he was an MP he then started to get rather irate, called me a traitor, saying that I was one of the ones trying to stop the will of the people, he said. The Brighton Kemptown MP said he told the man his constituency voted remain and his view was to continue to represent the diverse views of the people. That agitated him even more saying he didnt care about the people of Kemptown, he said. It was a heated discussion then he lunged for my face, grabbed my glasses then I grabbed his hand and pulled him close to me, one so he didnt run away with my glasses and two so he couldnt then hit me. It took about three men who came over prised him away from me, got my glasses back. It was a moment where I definitely felt shook. T heresa May sparked fury among MPs ahead of her visit to Brussels where she will appeal to EU leaders to grant her a delay to Brexit. Mrs May delivered a statement last night in which she blamed MPs for failing to implement Brexit. She also insisted to voters that she is on their side. But her speech was described as a "low blow" by one former Tory minister and it sparked fierce criticism. Labour's Stephen Doughty said: "She blames everyone else and yet it is she who is responsible. She has put her party and her prospects first." Theresa makes a statement inside 10 Downing Street on Brexit / AFP/Getty Images MP Wes Streeting accused the prime minister of putting MPs lives in danger with her incendiary address. Former Conservative minister Sam Gyimah said that engaging in a blame game was a low blow. Jeremy Corbyn was also under fire after pulling out of a meeting between Mrs May and opposition party leaders because party defectors who are now members of the Independent Group turned up. The behaviour of the Labour leader, who was also heading to Brussels on Thursday to hold talks with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, was described by one of their number - Chuka Umunna - as "juvenile" at a time of national crisis. TODO: define component type apester The Prime Minister will appeal to EU leaders to accept an extension to the Article 50 withdrawal process until June 30 as she speaks at a summit later today. Her meeting with leaders comes as time is running out for her to secure Britains position, with just eight days before the UK is due to leave the block on March 29. Ahead of the meeting, European Council president Donald Tusk said a "short" delay should be possible - but only if MPs finally back her deal before the deadline day on March 29. Former European Commission president and ex-Italian prime minister Romano Prodi said this morning that he believed EU leaders could potentially back a longer extension. He told Today: "I still think that there will be more time... there will be some compromise in order to get more time because really the common will against a hard Brexit is real." With fears in Brussels growing that the UK is heading for a no-deal break, he said he would not hesitate to call an emergency summit next week if that proved necessary. Mrs May formally made the request for an extension to the end of June in a letter to Mr Tusk on Wednesday. Brexit: What happens next after Theresa May requests Article 50 extension? The Prime Minister had previously indicated she would seek a longer delay after her deal went down to a 149-vote defeat in last week's second "meaningful vote". However, she reportedly backed down after the threat of Cabinet resignations by Brexiteer ministers, who feared it could spell the end of their hopes of leaving the EU. In Brussels on Wednesday, Mr Tusk said the question of how long an extension the remaining EU 27 were prepared to grant "remains open". European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker warned Britain would have to leave by May 23 if it did not want to hold elections to the European Parliament - which start on that date - something Mrs May said she is determined to avoid. PM Theresa May exits after making a short statement in 10 Downing Street on Wednesday / AFP/Getty Images Amid exasperation at the political deadlock in London, German foreign minister Heiko Maas said that if they were to extend the deadline, "then we would like to know: Why, why, why?" France's foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said Mrs May would need to convince EU leaders that any delay was to "finalise the ratification of the deal already negotiated" and that it "won't be renegotiated". With Mrs May struggling to build a majority to back deal when she brings it back to the Commons for a third time, she made an extraordinary attempt to appeal over the heads of MPs to the public to back her. Theresa May arrives at Parliament on Wednesday / EPA In a televised address on Wednesday, she blamed MPs for failing to implement the result of the 2016 EU referendum, and told frustrated voters: "I am on your side." "Of this, I am absolutely sure: You the public have had enough," she said. "You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. I am on your side. It is now time for MPs to decide." While she said she would "work night and day" to secure support for her deal, her comments infuriated many of those MPs she needs to win over. Statement Theresa May says Parliament has done 'everything possible' to avoid making a choice on Brexit Pro-EU Tory Sam Gyimah, who quit as a minister over her deal, described her remarks as "toxic". "Resorting to the 'blame game' as the PM is doing is a low blow," he said. "Democracy loses when a PM who has set herself against the House of Commons then blames MPs for doing their job." He added that it was "all part of her strategy to run down the clock and rule out other options". Anna Soubry, who quit the Tories to join the breakaway Independent Group, described it as the "most dishonest and divisive statement from any Prime Minister". Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who spoke with Mrs May on Wednesday evening, said: "The Prime Minister has shown tonight she is in complete denial about the scale of the crisis we are facing and unable to offer the leadership the country needs. Corbyn: PM is in denial about the scale of the Brexit crisis / Getty Images "To continue to bring back her damaging and twice rejected deal without significant changes, while threatening a no deal outcome ruled out by MPs, is unacceptable and reckless. "I made clear to the Prime Minister tonight that we must move immediately to agree a compromise alternative that supports jobs and living standards, can win the support of Parliament, be negotiated with the EU and bring the country together." Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn was himself under fire after pulling out of a meeting between opposition party leaders at Westminster and the Prime Ministers after members of the Independent Group turned up. "We will be legally and politically at the mercy of Brussels, since we will be obliged to accept all EU legislation, during the so-called implementation period: the first time since the Norman Conquest that a foreign power has passed the laws of this country. "Worst of all, the Irish backstop arrangement gives the EU an indefinite means of blackmail, so that they will be able to keep us locked in the customs union and large parts of the single market, unless we are prepared to abandon Northern Ireland; and they will use this blackmail to get their way throughout the negotiations, notably over the free movement of people. "If we agree this deal and unless we have a radical change in our approach to the negotiations we face an even greater humiliation in the second phase." J ohn Bercow and Andrea Leadsom traded blows in the Commons again today after she criticised him for telling a Tory MP to "grow up." Their latest row came after Labour MP John Cryer branded Theresa May's speech last night, in which she criticised Parliament's handling of Brexit, as "one of the most contemptuous statements I have ever heard". Mr Cryer was then heckled by Tory Sir Peter Bottomley, which led Mr Bercow to intervene and angrily tell him: "Let's grow up. Do grow up, for goodness sake. "This is not a matter of party political hackery. Let's have some seriousness of purpose and mutual respect The honourable gentleman is an experienced member of the House, hes asked an honest question to which the leader I know will honestly reply. For goodness sake, lets raise the level. But Ms Leadsom retorted: Mr Speaker may I just say that your response does not raise the level. Speaker of the House John Bercow speaks in Parliament / REUTERS The Commons Leader was then told to sit down by Mr Bercow, who added: My response sets out the constitutional position that is applied to the Commons over generations. "I cannot see or believe that there is anything remotely controversial about what I have said. MP Diana Johnson said she has been accused of being a traitor / Parliament TV Mr Bercow then passionately defended Parliament and the role of MPs. Mr Bercow told MPs that none of you is a traitor after a number of them hit out at the Prime Ministers speech on Wednesday, in which she blamed Parliament for the Brexit crisis. Mrs May's statement was branded toxic and irresponsible, with Sam Gyimah writing: Democracy loses when a PM who has set herself against the Commons then blames MPs for doing their job. On Thursday, Labour's Diana Johnson said during Business Questions that "in recent weeks I have been accused of being a traitor", before revealing she has received messages saying that along with the two other Hull MPs we should be shot and hanged. Speaker of the House John Bercow / EPA Commons leader Ms Leadsom responded by saying she agreed all MPs "need to be treated with respect". Mr Bercow then intervened, saying: All of you are doing your best. This should not be a matter of any controversy whatsoever. Let me say that I believe passionately in the institution of Parliament, of the rights of members of this House and the commitment to their duty. The soul duty of every Member of Parliament is to do what he or she thinks is right. There is nothing, in my judgement, to be added. Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom / Parliament TV The Prime Minister is today appealing to EU leaders to accept an extension to the Article 50 withdrawal process until June 30 at a summit in Brussels. T he 27 European Union leaders are considering a short extension to Article 50 on the condition that Theresa May's Brexit deal is approved by Parliament next week. The Prime Minister travelled to Brussels on Thursday to appeal for a delay to Brexit beyond March 29. But draft conclusions being considered by EU leaders this afternoon fell five weeks short of the PM's original request of June 30. An early draft suggested that the EU 27 were considering agreeing to extend Article 50 until May 22. This would give Mrs May a postponement until the eve of European Parliament elections on May 23. But reports later emerged that these documents were being revised as different dates had been put forward by various EU 27 leaders. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council president Donald Tusk are set to give a press conference later tonight confirm the decision. Theresa May arriving in Brussels on Thursday afternoon / AFP/Getty Images It came as a spokeswoman for the PM said she "will not countenance" revoking Article 50, despite a public petition calling for the Brexit deadline to be cancelled passing one million signatures. When asked for Mrs May's view on the petition, No 10 said she worried failing to deliver Brexit would cause "potentially irreparable damage to public trust". Arriving in Brussels for the summit, the PM issued a call for Parliament to deliver on the decision of the British people and take the UK out of the European Union. With just eight days before the UK is due to leave the EU, Mrs May then made the case for an extension to June 30 to the other 27 EU leaders in a 90-minute presentation at the opening of the two-day summit, before leaving them to discuss their response in her absence. President of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker greets the Prime Minister / AFP/Getty Images Mrs May met European Council President Donald Tusk for a one-to-one meeting ahead of the summit, but plans for for formal talks with French President Emmanuel Macron had to be put off. Macron issued a strong warning of a no deal Brexit today / EPA Mr Macron earlier warned that Britain will head for a no deal Brexit "for sure" if Mrs May's agreement is defeated for a third time. He cautioned that it was the British Parliament's responsibility to make sure Britain does not crash out of the bloc without a Brexit deal. He said: "In case of a no vote (in Parliament) ... it will guide everybody to a no deal for sure," Macron said, speaking in English. "This is it." Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel agreed, warning MPs that "if next week you are not able to find agreement in the House of Commons, we are going in the direction of no deal." TODO: define component type apester Their words come after Mrs May refused to rule out a no-deal Brexit as she arrived at the EU summit in Brussels. Asked if she was preparing to crash the country out of the EU next week if she is defeated again in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister said her priority was to leave the bloc. Whats important is that Parliament delivers on the result of the referendum and that we deliver Brexit for the British people, she said. I sincerely hope we can do that with a deal. I am still working on ensuring that Parliament can agree a deal so that we can leave in an orderly way. What matters is we deliver on the vote of the British people. She added: It is now the time for Parliament to decide. Meanwhile she was coming under intense pressure after a poor reception from some of her own MPs to her Downing Street statement on Wednesday, when she blamed MPs for failing to implement the result of the 2016 EU referendum and told frustrated voters "I am on your side". The televised message was described as a "low blow" by former minister Sam Gyimah. But Number 10 defended her comments, saying they had been intended as a "message to the public" to explain why she had decided to seek an extension to the Article 50 withdrawal process. Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn met with the EU Brexit negotiator in Brussels on Thursday / AFP/Getty Images Jeremy Corbyn held what he described as "very constructive discussions" in Brussels with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier and European Commission secretary general Martin Selmayr which he said had focused on the means to prevent a no-deal Brexit next Friday. Leaders setting off for the talks on Thursday said they would back a short extension of Britains EU membership. Irish premier Leo Varadkar said there is an openness to an extension across the board. The Bank of England warned that Brexit uncertainties continue to weigh on economic confidence. With fears in Brussels growing that the UK is heading for a no-deal break, Mr Tusk said he would not hesitate to call an emergency summit next week if that proved necessary. The Prime Minister had previously indicated she would seek a longer delay after her deal went down to a 149-vote defeat in last week's second "meaningful vote". However, she reportedly backed down after the threat of Cabinet resignations by Brexiteer ministers, who feared it could spell the end of their hopes of leaving the EU. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Britain would be faced with three options if Mrs May's deal is defeated again next week: revoke Article 50; leave without a deal; or, he said, a longer extension could be granted at an emergency EU summit, but with "onerous conditions". "The choice that we have now is one of resolving this issue or extreme unpredictability," he warned. A No 10 spokeswoman acknowledged Mrs May is facing some "extraordinarily difficult challenges", but said she is working "tirelessly" to get her deal "over the line". F ewer than one in five people think Theresa May now can pull off a good Brexit deal, an exclusive poll reveals today. The public is more critical than ever of the Prime Ministers handling of Brexit and less confident that she can succeed, new research by Ipsos MORI for the Standard has found. Jeremy Corbyns ratings are also dire - and Labour has slipped behind the Conservatives despite the crisis engulfing the Government. The findings will set alarm bells ringing in Conservative HQ because they include the worst satisfaction ratings for any Government since the civil war under Sir John Major that ended with the Conservatives being cast into opposition for 13 years. The poll shows: An overwhelming 86 per cent of Britons are dissatisfied with the way Mays Government is running the country, including seven in 10 Conservative supporters. Mrs May receives her worst scores since she became PM, with 65 per cent dissatisfied, a decline from 58 per cent a month ago. Even among Conservative supporters, a third are dissatisfied. Some two-thirds think Mrs May personally has done a bad job of handling Brexit, up from 50 per cent a year ago. And 85 per cent think the Government as a whole is handling Brexit badly, up from 54 per cent a year ago. More people say that it will be the Governments fault if Brexit ends in no-deal, up from 35 per cent in December to 48 per cent now. Only 32 per cent think the EU would be to blame. A mere 18 per cent of the public have confidence in Mrs May to get a good deal - compared with 79 per cent who do not. A year ago the gap was 37-59. Labour leader Mr Corbyn has lost peoples confidence in recent months. Just 21 per cent think he could get a good deal, down from 28 per cent in September. An overwhelming 76 per cent do not think he could secure a good deal. Loading.... Labour MPs will be dismayed that party supporters are divided about Mr Corbyn, with 42 per cent satisfied and 40 per cent dissatisfied. Moreover, the opposition party has slipped in voting intentions. The Conservatives stand unchanged at 38 per cent, with Labour down four points to 34, the Liberal Democrats down two to eight, and Ukip up three to seven. The Independent Group scored two per cent, despite not yet being launched as a political party. The research found the country is still gloomy about the prospects for the economy in the year ahead, with just 16 per cent thinking it will get better and 58 per cent predicting things will get worse. Gideon Skinner, head of politial resarch at Ipsos MORI said: In forty years of our polling, the only other government to reach this level of dissatisfaction was also beset with European troubles John Majors, after Black Wednesday, which isnt an encouraging precedent. Loading.... Amify, an Alexandria, VA.-based company providing a solution for brands seeking to maximize their selling potential on Amazon, raised $5.8m in Series A funding. The round was led by Mercury Fund with participation from Dundee Venture Capital, CincyTech, SaaS Venture Capital and Capital One Co-Founder Nigel Morris. The company intends to use the funds to increase recruiting efforts to broaden the senior-level management team, expand marketing and branding initiatives and to further develop its proprietary next-gen data insights platform for brands to derive insights on the Amazon Marketplace. It is also finalizing logistics for a formal opening of a second office in Cincinnati in close proximity to the Amazon Prime Air Hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Led by Ethan McAfee, Founder and CEO, Amify offers a solution that allows brands to maximize their potential on the Amazon marketplace via account management, brand protection, sales acceleration and content enhancement strategies. The company has partnered with over 1,000 brands across a wide spectrum of consumer goods vertical industries and sold more than $100 million on Amazon for its customers. FinSMEs 21/03/2019 F rench President Emmanuel Macron has warned that Britain will head for a no deal Brexit "for sure" if Theresa May's agreement is defeated for a third time. Mr Macron cautioned that it was the British Parliament's responsibility to make sure Britain does not crash out of the bloc without a Brexit deal. He said: "In case of a no vote (in Parliament) ... it will guide everybody to a no deal for sure," Macron said, speaking in English. "This is it." Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel agreed, warning MPs that "if next week you are not able to find agreement in the House of Commons, we are going in the direction of no deal." Macron issued a strong warning of a no deal Brexit today / EPA Their words come after Theresa May refused to rule out a no-deal Brexit as she arrived at an EU summit in Brussels. Asked if she was preparing to crash the country out of the EU next week if she is defeated again in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister said her priority was to leave the bloc. Whats important is that Parliament delivers on the result of the referendum and that we deliver Brexit for the British people, she said. I sincerely hope we can do that with a deal. I am still working on ensuring that Parliament can agree a deal so that we can leave in an orderly way. What matters is we deliver on the vote of the British people. She added: It is now the time for Parliament to decide. Mrs Mays words gave weight to the impression that she is willing to let a chaotic Brexit happen if her own blueprint is thwarted. Prime Minister Theresa May leaves Downing Street today / PA However, leaked briefing notes prepared for Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng ahead of an interview showed that he was guided to say that if Mrs May is defeated, MPs will have to decide how to proceed. Mrs May arrived early to hold a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the summit. Sir Oliver Letwin's group has redrafted an amendment designed to let MPs take control of Brexit / Rex Features She was due to plead with other EU leaders this afternoon to agree to postpone Brexit beyond March 29, now just eight days away. EU leaders setting off for the talks said they would back a short extension of Britains EU membership. Irish premier Leo Varadkar said there is an openness to an extension across the board. The Bank of England warned that Brexit uncertainties continue to weigh on economic confidence. One of the UKs major toilet tissue importers revealed it had been stockpiling to ensure it can maintain supplies in the event of a no-deal Brexit. German-owned Wepa said it had stockpiled an extra 600 tonnes of finished product, or about 3.5 million rolls, in UK warehouses. Earlier in the day it became apparent that Mrs Mays attempt to bully MPs into supporting her Brexit deal had backfired spectacularly as Parliament moved to kill it off and seize control of what happens next. TODO: define component type apester Sir Oliver Letwin, the architect of a cross-party plan to find a stable policy, told the Evening Standard his group has redrafted an amendment designed to let the House of Commons take over the Brexit process and is confident of getting the number of MPs needed. At the same time, Mrs May was being deserted by some of the Right-wingers she has attempted to appease by increasing the threat of a no-deal exit, prompting senior MPs to speculate she could lose her third attempt at a meaningful vote by an even greater margin than last weeks 149-vote defeat. The Prime Minister was described as under extraordinary pressure by Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Another minister said she seemed to be overwhelmed by frustration when she made a televised address attacking Parliament last night. In other key developments: Former education secretary Nicky Morgan said the Cabinet and the Tory backbench 1922 Committee executive should tell the embattled Prime Minister its time to go if her deal is defeated a third time. The Democratic Unionist Partys Brexit spokesman Sammy Wilson said his bloc could not back a plan that would open a gap between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, something that an IRA terrorist campaign could not do. Mark Francois, vice chairman of the European Research Group of Tory Brexiteers, said Mrs Mays speech last night risked backfiring if it was aimed at winning over MPs for her deal: You dont do that by insulting them. German chancellor Angela Merkel expressed frustration, telling German MPs: I regret to say that eight days before the UKs departure from the EU, we still dont have an answer to the Brexit issue. EU sources said Mrs May would probably be denied the three-month extension she has demanded to June 30, being offered only a six-week delay to May 22, to avoid British uncertainty contaminating European elections. Theresa May today refused to rule out a no-deal Brexit as she arrived at an EU summit in Brussels / AFP/Getty Images Thousands of troops have been put on high readiness to be deployed in a no-deal crisis, military sources said. Sir Oliver said MPs will have a chance to restore order on Monday with a new amendment that would empower the Commons to vote on alternative options, such as a Norway-style soft Brexit deal. Labour MP Hilary Benn is expected to be the lead name on the amendment, which has been significantly altered and simplified since a similar plan was lost by just two votes last week. The changes are thought to have won over five more MPs, achieving a majority. Sir Oliver said: While I welcome the Prime Minister seeking the extension to June 30, it is vital that whatever time the EU allows should be used to ensure that if the Prime Ministers deal is defeated there is an alternative that can secure a majority in Parliament and enable us to leave the EU in good order by June 30. He said the debates would consider any option backed by MPs, but he believed there was support for a Common Market 2.0, keeping the single market and customs union. During her TV address from Downing Street last night, Mrs May said the public was tired of infighting and political games and it was high time MPs made a decision on Brexit. Afterwards potential Labour switcher Lisa Nandy told ITVs Peston show: Theres absolutely no chance she is going to win over MPs in sufficient numbers after that statement. I will not support a government that takes such a reckless approach. P olice have warned Brexiteers planning go slow protests on Britains motorways that they could face prosecution. Pro-Brexit campaigners aim to cause gridlock using a convoy of slow-moving vehicles, targeting between 30 and 40 locations over the weekend. One page in Somerset is targeting the A303 near Taunton, but just seven people have confirmed their attendance. Other roads targeted are the M25, M6 and M1, which is partially policed by Derbyshire Police, which said it has "been made aware of the protest" and is "liaising with organisers. A file image of the M1, which protesters are targetting / Steve Parsons/PA A Derbyshire Police spokesman said: "Those taking part in any protest - on a high-speed road - should be aware that if the manner of their driving endangers other road users then they may be liable to prosecution." Organiser Ian Charlesworths original group allegedly had over 21,000 members, but it appears to have been taken down from Facebook. He said the protests could cause "serious gridlock" and believes MPs and the Home Office "will be looking at it", but added he does not know how effective the protests will be. The 55-year-old said: "The ultimate aim is to make sure come hell or high water that Britain leaves on March 29. "May said last night that she was with the people, blaming the MPs, I expect her to be with me at the North Wales events to show solidarity with the general public against the MPs. Mr Charlesworth, from Flintshire, Wales, said some of the most popular "go slow" events have between 200 and 250 attending online, which he believes will amount to around 150 vehicles in their convoy. He said he has "no worries at all legally" because "you have a legal right in this country to peaceful protest. "Generally police will facilitate these things but they draw the line when someone starts getting violent. "But we are peacefully protesting and trying to get our point across in a sensible and rational manner." Mr Charlesworth said he is "not a fan" of the Prime Minister or any other MPs as they "don't care about the public", and said he wants the Government to honour the UK's "democratic decision" on Brexit. M ore than two million people have signed a petition demanding Article 50 is revoked as Theresa May was forced to beg EU leaders for a delay to Brexit. An influx of people jumped to sign it following a night of political chaos as the Prime Minister turned on MPs in an impassioned speech to the nation on Wednesday night. The 100,000-signature threshold for the petition to be debated in Parliament was quickly surpassed and the phrase "revoke Article 50" became a global trend on Twitter. Just before midnight on Wednesday, the petition had received 300,000 signatures. It continued to build throughout the early hours on Thursday. Just before 3pm it passed the one million mark and by 10.40pm it reached two million. The website for the petition briefly appeared to have crashed shortly after 9am, showing only an error message but was later reinstated. Countdown to Brexit: Eight days until Britain leaves the EU The petition read: The government repeatedly claims exiting the EU is 'the will of the people'. We need to put a stop to this claim by proving the strength of public support now, for remaining in the EU. A People's Vote may not happen - so vote now. TODO: define component type apester As of 2.45pm on Thursday, the constituencies with the highest number of signatures - above a threshold of 5,101 - included Islington North (represented by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn), Edinburgh North and Leith (Deirdre Brock, SNP), Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire, Lab), Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner, Lab), Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West, Lab) and Brighton Pavilion (Caroline Lucas, Green). Under pressure: Theresa May / AFP/Getty Images Mrs May had said that it was "a matter of great personal regret for me" that Brexit will not go ahead on March 29 after she had to ask the EU for a delay. She blamed MPs for failing to agree a means to implement the result of the 2016 referendum and said she believes voters just want this stage of the Brexit process to be over. Brexit: What happens next after Theresa May requests Article 50 extension? Mrs May has asked the EU to allow the UK's withdrawal date to be delayed to June 30 and threatened to resign as Prime Minister if MPs demand a longer postponement. European Council President Donald Tusk then said the EU would grant a "short extension" but only if MPs back the Prime Minister's deal in the Commons during a third meaningful vote next week. In the Commons on Wednesday, Mrs May set out plans to prevent Speaker John Bercow blocking a third vote on her deal, which was rejected by MPs by 230 votes in January and 149 votes earlier this month. Westminster was in turmoil with MPs, who were granted an emergency debate in the Commons by Mr Bercow, desperate to hear Mrs May's plans as to how she will seek to get the deal through after two staggering defeats. A hotel owner arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after three teenagers died outside a St Patrick's Day disco in Northern Ireland has been released on bail. Students Lauren Bullock, 17, Connor Currie, 16, and Morgan Barnard, 17, died after a crush at the Greenvale Hotel in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, on Sunday. Michael McElhatton, 52, who owns the premises, will return for "further questioning at a future date", the Police Service of Northern Ireland said. He was further arrested on suspicion of possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply but fast-tracked forensic analysis swiftly ruled out the possibility, and he was subsequently de-arrested. Connor Currie, 16, was one of those killed in the crush / PA Another suspect arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of manslaughter is a member of the popular nightspot's door staff. Hundreds of mourners have left written and floral tributes to the three teenagers. Morgan Barnard was one of those killed in the hotel crush On Wednesday DUP leader Arlene Foster signed a book of condolence in Cookstown. She said: "I cannot begin to comprehend the pain and anguish the families of Lauren, Connor and Morgan are going through at this time. Tributes at the scene in Northern Ireland / PA "As a mother of two teenagers, this is the news no parent should ever receive, particularly as young people go out for an evening of enjoyment." She added: "The tragic loss of life has been felt across the entire area of Cookstown, Dungannon and beyond. Police at the entrance of the Greenvale Hotel / PA "There are many homes in Northern Ireland who have been devastated by tragedy over the bank holiday weekend." Up to 400 people were present as the tragedy unfolded, and detectives said it was fortunate more were not killed. Police confirmed some were trampled underfoot as they waited to enter the disco. Buses let youngsters off outside before the disaster happened. Counselling services are being provided to those affected and prayer services have been held. P olice in Los Angeles had to reassure residents after what appeared to be a fiery meteorite was seen hurtling towards the ground. A streak of flame shot across the sky in downtown LA on Wednesday night, leaving some residents wondering if they were witnessing a potentially devastating meteorite strike. However, the Los Angeles Police Department were quick to dismiss the rumours, telling residents it was a filmed stunt organised by Red Bull. Police said: "A meteor did not crash into downtown LA. And no, it's not an alien invasion... just a film shoot. This is Tinseltown after all." A meteor-like object was seen over Los Angeles yesterday / dennis hegstad/@dennishegstad The stunt organised by Red Bull involved a team jumping from a helicopter 4,000 feet above the city wearing custom wingsuits. A Red Bull spokesman told NBC the event was to celebrate the final supermoon of 2019, adding: "Red Bull Air Force marked the occasion as only they can: springing into the air to get an up close and personal look at the phenomenon." Although the fireball rumours turned out to be false, LA residents shared what they thought the object was after footage was posted by Dennis Hegstad. One person wrote: "I thought it was a rock or a torn off piece of metal so I frantically called my mom and my friend in the area." "Decepticons have finally arrived," another added, with others suggesting it was maybe a "small plane or drone crash". P rince Charles and Camilla were met with torrential rain during their visit to the sunshine islands of St Kitts and Nevis. Governor Generals receptions on both islands were washouts and Prince Charles was forced to cut short his visit to historic Brimstone Fort on St Kitts due to the heavy rain. Instead of spectacular views of the island and natural park, little could be seen beyond the thick great cloud. He did, however, stop to speak to several large crowds of soaking well-wishers who had waited to see him. One woman gave him a book of food and drink recipes. "Are these the ones that blow your head off?" Charles joked. He also laughed when he was told by one man that he wished he could "live forever". "I rather hope not," the 70-year-old royal chuckled. Prince Charles greets Children in Brimstone Hill Fort, St Kitts / Getty Images Charles was introduced to a group of Nevis schoolgirls at the first reception at Government House from sixth Form College who had just won an international debating award. He asked the girls: "Is it just a natural talent? What were you debating and do you get to choose your subjects?" The girls told him that they had been debating LGBTQ issues. He commended them and added jokingly that he hoped it wouldn't get in the way of their work and exams. One young fan very eager to meet the Prince was Junior Persaud, who turned nine today. Thoughtful aides noticed his special birthday badge and nudged the Prince in his direction. The Prince wished him happy birthday and asked how old he was. He enquired: "Will you be having a birthday cake? What's your favourite kind of cake?" Junior replied that it was Red Velvet, to which Charles nodded approvingly. Later the Prince met Dahlia Joseph-Rowe, who is the President for the St Nevis and Kitts Bar Association. He asked her, 'do you have enough solicitors and barristers over here,' before joking to her husband about whether he ever got to see her. The couple stood and listened to a special song by the Bath Village Community Tourism Foundation choir, which had been written especially for them. Featuring lyrics describing some of the inspirational figures, the chorus went: "Nevis lovely Nevis, the land of people smiling." They also enjoyed a dazzling performance from the Combine Masquerade featuring dancers wearing multicoloured ribbons and peacock feathers. P rince Charles and Camilla received a warm welcome when they touched down on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts today. The Prince of Wales and his wife The Duchess of Cornwall were greeted by a guard of honour after their RAF state plane touched down. The couple, who are on a 12-day Caribbean tour, began the latest leg with a handshake from the Queens representative, Governor General Sir Samuel Weymouth Tapley Seaton. Following tradition, the heir to the throne inspected the waiting troops passing along their lines in the shadow of the grey RAF Voyager. The couple were greeted with an official welcome ceremony after landing / REUTERS Later, Charles will launch a project to give Commonwealth students the chance to study subjects at Cambridge University he has deeply cared about for decades. Scholarships under Charles name will be offered in global issues he has championed like climate change, sustainability and the blue economy to mark the 70th anniversary of the family of nations and the Prince turning 70 last year. The Royals are undertaking a 12 day Commonwealth tour / Getty Images Charles will make the announcement at a reception hosted in honour of the royal couple by the Governor General. Before heading off to the capital Basseterre Timothy Harris, the prime minister of St Kitts and Nevis, introduced the couple to his cabinet. Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall visits Basseterre town in St Kitts and Nevis / REUTERS Yesterday, the couple visited Barbados,with Prince Charles meeting Lionel Richie and Tom Jones. At a welcoming parade in St. Lucia on Sunday, the Prince said the Commonwealth is vital to the health of the world and the future of humanity. J acinda Arden has said she expects a ban on military-style guns like those used in the attacks on mosques in Christchurch to come into force within three weeks. New Zealand's Prime Minister said she expects the new legislation to be in place by April 11. The countrys gun laws have been in the spotlight since 50 people were killed in mass shootings at two mosques last Friday. "Six days after this attack, we are announcing a ban on all military style semi-automatics (MSSA) and assault rifles in New Zealand, Ms Arden told a conference on Thursday. Mourners lay flowers near the Linwood mosque in Christchurch. / AP "Related parts used to convert these guns into MSSAs are also being banned, along with all high-capacity magazines." Ms Arden said an amnesty buy-back scheme would be imposed which she estimated could cost between $100 million (52 million) and $200m. But that is the price that we must pay to ensure the safety of our communities, she said. All of those killed in the attacks in Christchurch have now been formally identified, Police Commissioner Mike Bush confirmed. New Zealand PM vows never to say gunman's name Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant has been charged with murder. The 28-year-old is next scheduled to appear in court on April 5. Ms Ardern said she and her Cabinet would work through legal exemptions to the ban, such as for farmers needing to cull their herds but said any exemptions would be "tightly regulated". New Zealand PM vows to change gun laws in 10 days "For other dealers, sales should essentially now cease. My expectation is that these weapons will now be returned to your suppliers and never enter into the New Zealand market again," she said. One of New Zealand's largest gun retailers, Hunting & Fishing New Zealand, said it supports "any government measure to permanently ban such weapons". "While we have sold them in the past to a small number of customers, last week's events have forced a reconsideration that has led us to believe such weapons of war have no place in our business - or our country," chief executive Darren Jacobs said in a statement. A n exclusive all-girls private school in New Zealand is facing a backlash after banning Muslim students from wearing the hijab. Diocesan School for Girls in Auckland said the hijab was not allowed under their uniform code. Responding to criticism, the $19,000-a-year school conceded that girls could wear hijabs only for a "Scarves in Solitarity" event on Friday in the wake of the terror attack targeting Muslims in mosques in Christchurch. Diocesan School Principal, Heather McRae said in a statement: "Any girl or person who wants to show their respect for Muslim families affected in Christchurch by wearing a hijab to school on this day is most welcome to do so." She explained that their uniform code is strict with girls prohibited from wearing jewellery or nail polish, long hair must be tied back and school blazers worn outside the grounds. Ms McRea said: "Diocesan is a choice for an outstanding education by many parents. "As a private girls' school, we celebrate diversity and inclusion. "Our uniform policy is developed to help create a sense of oneness and family and is worn with pride by our students. "All parents sign up to the Uniform policies when they join the school." New Zealand's prime minister Jacinda Ardern was praised for wearing traditional Muslim clothing as she met survivors immediately after the attack. A former student also told Newshub that she was not surprised the school had a strict dress code and during her time there she was unware of anyone wearing a hijab. NZ PM details plans for ban on military-style guns However, the school may be contravening human rights rules, which say discrimination on the grounds of religious belief is not allowed under both the Human Rights Act and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. In a statement to the New Zealand Herald a school spokeswoman said: "The hijab has never been banned at Diocesan but that it is simply not part of the long standing school uniform code. D onald Trump has said it is time for the US to back Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights territory Israel seized from Syria during the 1967 Middle East War. In a tweet the US president said: After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognise Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Israel applied its administration and law to Golan in 1981, an act that was not recognised by other governments. Syria has consistently sought to regain sovereignty over the area. Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu thanked Mr Trump on Thursday. "At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump!" Mr Netanyahu has warned about the military "entrenchment" of his country's arch-enemy Iran in the Syria conflict. There was no immediate response from the Syrian government. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has thanked Donald Trump. / AP The recognition of the disputed area would mark a major shift in US policy a week before Mr Netanyahu arrives in Washington to meet with Mr Trump and address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The Prime Minister faces an election in Israel on April 9 and has been pressing for the United States to recognise its claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Golden Gate Ventures, a venture capital firm in Southeast Asia, and Hanwha Asset Management, a global asset manager headquartered in Seoul, Korea, have teamed up to invest together in Southeast Asias Series B stage startups. The firms will invest together on consumer-centric platforms and services, such as marketplaces, financial inclusion technologies, tech-enabled healthcare, and logistics-as-a-service platforms challenging the Series B funding gap Southeast Asia startups are facing. According to Preqins data (See Figure 1), even as the number of regional startups searching for Series B funding grows, there is still little to no venture capital funds capable of filling that gap. Startups seeking Series B financing often find themselves in the difficult position of syndicating rounds from multiple Series A investors or appealing to alternative, often unconventional sources of later- stage capital, such as family offices and global PE buyout firms. In the US and Europe, according to SVCA, 50% Series A-funded companies receive Series B funding. In contrast, the rate of follow-on financing in SEA was less than a third for the same cohort. This decline can be largely attributed to a lack of growth-stage funding within the region (see Figure 2). Singapore based investment firm Golden Gate Ventures has been investing in early-stage consumer-focused technology companies in Southeast Asia since 2012. It has invested in such regional companies as Redmart, Carousell, Carro, Funding Societies, and Ruma (now Go-Pay); Hanwha Asset Management is a global asset management company with US$80B in AUM and has been investing in growth stage deals globally It has backed notable startups such as Zymergen, N26, Yanolja, and Grab. Together, they will invest in technology platforms that can take advantage of the regions rapidly growing middle class; accelerating rates of internet, mobile phone, and technology penetration; and increasing online consumer spending. FinSMEs 21/03/2019 P M to make case for Brexit delay Theresa May is to make the case for a delay to Brexit as she travels to Brussels amid growing fears of a no-deal outcome. The Prime Minister will appeal for EU leaders to accept an extension to the Article 50 withdrawal process until June 30 She is to address a summit later today, which comes just eight days before the UK is due to leave the bloc on March 29. Mrs May was last night accused of pitting Parliament against the people by hitting out at MPs in her speech at Downing Street. Addressing the nation, Mrs May said that MPs have done "everything possible" to avoid making a choice on Brexit. It comes after EU leaders agreed to only consider a delay to the divorce process if the PM can force her deal through Parliament. NZ to ban military-style guns after attacks New Zealands Prime Minister has said she hopes a ban on military-style guns to come into force by April 11. The countrys gun laws have been in the spotlight since 50 people were killed in mass shootings at two mosques last Friday. Ms Arden said an amnesty buy-back scheme would be imposed which she estimated could cost up to $200 million. But that is the price that we must pay to ensure the safety of our communities, she said. Battle to find survivors of Cyclone Idai Rescuers have been rushing to reach Cyclone Idai survivors in Mozambique as the full scale of the disaster became clearer. Charities have said thousands of people were left stranded by catastrophic flooding. The death toll is expected to rise after about 300 people were confirmed dead in Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Handcuffed mans body found in river A man's body has been found in a river still wearing police handcuffs two months after he ran away from officers. Reece Hillier, 22, ran off after being detained by officers in Southampton on January 12. His death is not being treated as suspicious and Hampshire Police have launched an internal review. Final supermoon of 2019 dazzles stargazers Stargazers have been treated to the third and final supermoon of the year. The Super Worm Moon lit up the night skies across the world and appeared in the UK in the early hours of today. It coincided with the Spring Equinox and completed a hat trick of supermoons visible in skies over winter. On this day 1556: Thomas Cranmer, first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, was condemned as a heretic under Catholic Queen Mary I and burned at the stake in Oxford. 1918: The last major German offensive of the First World War began on the Somme. 1933: The first Nazi concentration camp was completed in Germany. It served as a prototype and model for the others that followed including Auschwitz. 1960: The Sharpeville massacre took place in the Transvaal, South Africa, when police fired on a demonstration against Pass Laws, killing 69 people. 1963: Alcatraz, the notorious maximum security prison in San Francisco Bay, was closed. 1991: The poll tax was ditched as Environment Secretary Michael Heseltine unveiled a new property tax to replace it. 1993: The IRA claimed responsibility for two bomb attacks in Warrington which killed a four-year-old child. F ilms and novels have been promising us a glittering future for aeons, and were finally seeing it come to life. From a cinema you wear on your head to smartphone-based archery, the future is here and its bonkers. MERGE Cube Looking like some kind of ancient artefact, the MerGe Cube is actually a way to physically interact with the digital world. Through your phone or tablet the object in your hand becomes a playable rubiks cube, a living planet, a 3D guide to the human body it just depends which app you choose. Until Star Wars-style holograms arrive, this does the job nicely. 24.99 | Amazon | Buy it now Samsung Galaxy Fold Table-sized smartphones you can fold up and put in your pocket are now a reality. OK, theyre not on sale until later this year, but before long everyone will have one and while Samsungs book-like handset will no doubt be one of the most beautiful, itll also likely be one of the most expensive at around 1,800. Coming soon | Samsung | Pre-register here Royole Moon 3D mobile theatre Why go to the cinema when you could wear it on your head? OK, thats not a question anyone has ever asked, but youre guaranteed not to have kids kicking your seat or throwing popcorn in your own private head-mounted theatre. Full hD curved screens and noise-cancelling headphones mean you can lose yourself in Say Anything, anywhere. 749 | Selfridges | Buy it now Nintendo Labo VR Its not the most realistic virtual reality kit on the market but its probably the most fun. Nintendos unique take on Vr uses the Switch console and controllers as the wtech inside some bonkers game accessories a blaster gun, camera, even an elephant and a bird. The future hasnt really arrived until it starts getting silly. Labo VR Kit (requires Nintendo Switch), 69.99 | Nintendo | Buy it now Kano Harry Potter coding kit Tech is the closest weve got to real magic, which makes coding the equivalent of casting spells. This kit teaches harry potter fans of six and up (adults included!) to build their own magic wand that works with a tablet to make magic happen on screen when you wave it about. 99.99 | Kano | Buy it now Virtual Archer In the same way Guitar hero made us feel like instant rock stars, this daft smartphone accessory uses your phone to transform you into robin hood. Actual archery skills are not required and nor are real arrows making it a fair bit safer for indoor play. It includes free augmented reality games for Android and iphone. 22.99 | Prezzybox | Buy it now HiMirror Mini This touchscreen mirror doesnt just tell you whos the fairest of them all it helps you become even fairer. It can analyse and track skin features like fine lines and pores over time, so you can see if those fancy creams really work. plus you can watch YouTube or browse Instagram while youre getting ready, which is sometimes nicer than forensically examining your face using its three levels of zoom. G emma Collins has begged Sir David Attenborough to let her come on his next adventure after she posted an impassioned plea to fans about respecting Mother Earth. The reality star told Attenborough she wanted to travel the continent with him as part of his next series after falling in love with whales while out at sea. The most MAGICAL MAGNIFICENT moment we must look after our beautiful animals and treasure them LET them BE FREE, Collins wrote alongside her video. @David_attenborough please let me come on your next ADVENTURE. FREE all animals let them be in their NATURAL HABITAT and be happy SAY NO to animals in captivity. The 38-year-old asked her fans if they know of any animal charities she can get involved with in a bid to use her voice to get animals out of cages. Collins concluded: I feel very passionate about this. #respectmotherearth #noplasticwaste. Swimming: Gemma Collins and Arg / Instagram / Gemma Collins The star also shared a picture of herself and on-off boyfriend James Arg Argent swimming, backed by Under The Sea from the Little Mermaid soundtrack. Collins and Args deep sea getaway snaps comes just a day after Collins sparked wedding rumours with a recent modelling job. Gemma Collins poses in wedding-style dress The Dancing On Ice star showed off a new design from her collection which resembled a lace bridal outfit. Fans rushed to comment on the stunning snap and complimented her latest lines for sale. Gemma Collins - In pictures 1 /41 Gemma Collins - In pictures PA Gemma Collins on Instagram @gemmacollins1 Gemma Collins on'Celebs Go Dating' Channel 4 Gemma Collins on 'The Only Way is Essex' ITV Gemma Collins on 'I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!' in 2014 ITV/Rex Gemma Collins on'Celebs Go Dating' Channel 4 Gemma Collins on'Celebs Go Dating' Channel 4 Gemma Collins on 'I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!' in 2014 Rex Features Nominated: Gemma Collins and Danniella Westbrook are up for Tuesday's eviction along with Stephanie Davis Channel 5 Gemma Collins appearing on Celebrity Big Brother Channel 5 Gemma Collins arriving at the ITV Gala 2017 held at the London Palladium Getty Images Gemma Collins makes US TV on Wendy Williams after her Radio 1 Teen 2017 Awards fall Gemma Collins is helped by Amber Davies, Jamie Jewitt and Marcel Somerville as she falls on stage during the BBC Radio 1 Teen Awards 2017 at Wembley Arena Getty Images Gemma Collins makes fun of her Radio 1 Teen 2017 Awards fall on Instagram @gemmacollins1 Gemma Collins attending BBC Radio 1's Teen Awards 2017 PA Gemma Collins attending the European premiere of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets at Cineworld in Leicester Square in 2017 PA Gemma Collins appearing on Celebrity Big Brother Channel 5 Gemma Collins.in 'Sugar Free' ITV Gemma Collins on 'I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!' in 2014 ITV Gemma Collins on 'The Only Way is Essex' ITV Getty Images Exciting: the GC teased new plans for a trip to Los Angeles Getty Images 'Standing on ice': Gemma Collins was mocked by viewers ITV Rex Features ames Argent with Gemma Collins PA Channel 4 @gemmacollins1 @gemmacollins1 @gemmacollins1 @gemmacollins1 @gemmacollins1 Collins and Arg briefly split last month after he shared a video of her snoring on his Instagram page. Although he quickly deleted the offending upload, it was claimed that Collins kicked him out before he bombarded her with a slew of fat-shaming texts. He told Good Morning Britain: Im absolutely on [with the GC]. Were okay, were fine, weve had a bit of a tough time recently. If we remained stable and we were in a healthy place then its something I would consider. J eff Brazier has praised his teenage sons for marking the 10th anniversary of their mother Jade Goodys death with a charity event. The 39-year-old presenter revealed that Bobby, 15, and Freddie, 14, have organised a quiz night to raise money for Marie Curie and Great Ormond Street Hospital to mark a decade since the reality star died of cervical cancer. Posting a series of emotional tweets, Brazier wrote: Staggeringly, its been 10 years since my children have had to do without the most important person in their life. Remembering Jade Goody ten years on from her death To their absolute credit, they want to mark the occasion remembering their Mum by raising money for charity at their private quiz night amongst family and friends. He went on to tell followers that his sons had personally chosen to donate the proceeds to Marie Curie because of how fantastic they have heard the nurses were in caring for their Mum, and to Great Ormond Street for their work with the bravest of children. Your support offers more than a wonderful donation, he continued. It grants the encouragement to know they are being brave and that their efforts are seen. It tells them they are not alone in their grief and that others, friends they are yet to meet are keeping an eye on their journey. He praised the teens for their bravery in daring to remember joyfully, and said that they had created an evening that their Mum would have loved to have been at the heart of. Tribute: Jady Goody's sons will mark ten years since her death with a charity event / Claire Greenway/Getty Images This for us is how you truly pay respect, he concluded. Goody died at the age of 27 in March 2009, when her sons were aged just five and four years old. W hen Apple ditched the headphone jack back in 2017 it was a sure sign that wired headphones were on their way out. The success of those signature white AirPods, the best selling earbuds in the world according to research by Counterpoint, has meant more and more tech companies are coming up with their own wireless variation too. Samsung commenced battle earlier this year with its Galaxy Buds, featuring wireless charging and six hours of battery life. Chinese tech brand Mobvoi has an AirPod lookalike with dangerously similar specs and crucially a much lower price tag. Competition is coming from inside Apple Park too with the Beats PowerBeats Pro, the perfect workout accompaniment. The real question now isnt whether to go wireless, but which one to go for. This is low-down on cutting the cord in 2019. 1. Apple AirPods 2 Apple USP: The iPhone in an earbud: slick and seamless with super-fast charging. Best features: The AirPod embodies everything Apple is known for: minimal design, instant pairing and high-quality audio. Connection with your iPhone (or Android) is impressively instant, and its packed with cool features such as smart pausing: take one pod out of your ear to talk to someone and the music pauses. Put it back and the music restarts. Charging is fast: the original AirPods gave you just three hours power in just 15 minutes (theyll hold five hours charge in one sitting) and Apple says the AirPods 2 will give you 50 percent more hands-free talk time, plus their new case lets you charge wirelessly. The second-gen model also comes with hands-free Siri and was expected to get a fitness upgrade: Apple filed a patent in July for biometric sensors, which could allow them to measure heart rate and stroke volume, but it seems thats being saved for a future model. Downsides: The price tag. AirPods were already some of the most expensive earbuds on the market and the second model costs an extra 40 if you want the Wireless Charging Case. Not everybody is a fan of Apples trademark stem sticking out of their ear. 2. Beats Powerbeats Pro Beats' new Powerbeats Pro come in four colours: Moss (pictured here), Ivory, Black and Navy / Beats / Apple USP: Beats styling with Apples engineering prowess, these earbuds are like the Airpods but perfectly suited for workouts. Best features: It has to be battery life with the new Powerbeats. Each earbud has up to nine hours listening time, and more than 24 hours of combined playback with that gorgeous magnetic closure case. New Pros claim to have enhanced sound quality too. The earphones are smart as well as stylish: they power on when taken out of the case and power off, as well as charge, when placed back inside thanks to motion accelerometers which detect when they are idle. Beats has also made a decision to ensure there is a snug fit with this range of Powerbeats the Pro earphones are 23 per cent smaller and 17 per cent lighter than the previous generation, and come with four sizes of ear tips and that adjustable earhook to ensure they fit properly. And, they are sweat and water-resistant for workouts, with volume and track controls on both earbud. Downsides: Probably only the price. The earbuds are significantly more expensive than the other options, coming in at 219.95. Also, those earhooks are helpful for keeping the headphones secure when you work out but could end up in a fierce battle between hair and hook on a regular basis. 3. Mobvoi TicPods Free (Mobvoi ) / Mobvoi USP: Budget AirPod clones for every phone type. Best features: Everyone will think youre wearing AirPods. Chinese brand Mobvois attempt at rivalling Apple looks very similar, featuring those familiar white stems containing the battery and touch controls (they come in dark blue or red if youd rather not look like an Apple disciple). The design is slightly clunkier than AirPods but the quality is impressive: the TicPods offer rich, bass-heavy sound; four hours battery life (better than average for wireless in-ears); and, unlike AirPods, theyre enabled for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, as well as Siri not bad for 40 cheaper. Downsides: The clunkier design means the fit isnt as secure as that of AirPods (especially for those with small ears), and the lack of app means you cant customise gesture controls. The max volume is a little low, but your ears will probably thank you for that. 4. Jabra Elite Active 65t Jabra USP: Workout wonder buds with fitness tracking and noise cancellation. Best features: Jabra released its Elite Active 65t last year and theyre still the highest-spec fitness earbuds on the market. They have an integrated accelerometer that monitors time elapsed and steps-per-minute, and are IP65-rated against sweat and dust for taking them to the gym. For outdoor workouts, the Jabra Sound+ app lets you choose how much noise the HearThrough mode lets in. Noise-cancelling in-ear tips block out sound, even on busy Tube platforms. Battery life is five hours the same as Apples but Jabras design is more subtle: unlike AirPods, no one will notice the sleek black buds sitting in your ears (though they also come in racy red, for the exhibitionists). Downsides: Fitness tracking doesnt yet include heart rate and calories, and water resistance is limited: currently, theyre only able to withstand sustained low-pressure water jet sprays, so fine for rain but dont go taking them in the shower. 5. Samsung Galaxy Buds Samsung USP: Super-sounding earphones with wireless charging and six hours of power. Best features: Samsungs new Galaxy Buds were released this month and are tailor-made for the brands sparkling new flagship phone, the S10: like AirPods, they pair with your phone as soon as you lift the lid, plus they feature wireless charging. To power up, just pop the case onto the back of your Galaxy phone (useful for emergencies and showing off to your friends). Once youre set up, the sound is high-quality: Samsung worked with acoustics company AKG on the audio and added dual microphones for better call quality. There's also Ambient Sound Mode, which lets in noise from your surroundings so you can still hear traffic or voices while youre on the move. Crucially, battery life is head and shoulders above the competition. The Galaxy Buds come with six hours of music playback an hour longer than the AirPods and Jabra Elite and the case offers 24 hours worth of power. Downsides: If youre not a Samsung owner, youll miss out on some cool extra features. The app is Android-only so iPhone users wont be able to customise touch controls or use the Find My Earbuds tool, and it might impact how you use voice commands with Samsungs personal assistant, Bixby. Its not one for runners: music and performance are high quality but this comes at the expense of fitness tracking, and the Buds are barely water-resistant. 6. Sony WF-1000XM3 wireless headphones Sony's earbuds come in silver and black / Sony USP: Sony's excellent trademark noise-cancelling tech transplanted to an earbud. Best features: Noise-cancelling. Earbuds are great because they're small but that can be at the expense of the tech you'd find in overheads. Sony has made no compromises here. Its exceptional noise-cancelling tech, courtesy of the HD Noise Cancelling Processor QN1e and the Dual Noise Sensor Technology, is now in a smaller format, so you can listen to your music or podcast and nothing else. A newly developed Bluetooth chip ensures each bud receives audio content at the same time (instead of the conventional left to right relay), offering up a more stable connection. There's six hours of playback with noise-cancelling but if you're low on juice, just pop them back into the case which offers up to four charges. The wearing detection feature also pauses your music when you remove one earbud, and Google Assistant integration means you can control everything with your voice. Venture capital firms provide financial help to other businesses. This assistance may be in the form of startup or growth equity capital. In this field, a custom software solution can help businesses in this sector organize their operations better than before. Here are a few key benefits of using custom software for your VC: Tailor-Made to Meet Specific Needs A custom software platform can help firms research in different niches and business sectors. VCs can benefit from the custom-made application in various vital aspects of the business. The program may help in areas like: Inputting data of general and limited partners View and edit relevant data about partners and investment decisions Create detailed reports about investments and other business ventures Tally management fees and compute carried interests Increase productivity by helping administrative personnel in creating scalable strategies and actions The services of a tailor-made software solution for your VC creates and fine-tunes digital solutions for the benefit of your companys entire operations. No one else can use your custom application but you and your business staff members. Reduce Costs and Increase Workflow Optimization Automating individual tasks and placing those jobs in the hands of a custom-made software solution can lessen workforce costs for your VC. The application may handle complex calculations and other intricate operations to streamline tasks and reduce expenditures. It may also help formalize and optimize business processes. Workflow for your VC may also increase with the help of the custom program. The software may handle tasks like the simplification of data processing, a reduction of the number of routine tasks, review product manager resumes, and notify key staff members. For example, SFW Capital Partners placed a strategic investment to Greenshades Software with an undisclosed amount. The software firm intends to use the additional funds in expanding the companys portfolio. If the private equity firm decides to take advantage of the new partnership in other ways, then the new relationship helps the business come up with new software. This application may help streamline several tasks like redeploying qualified employees to high-value activities and fulfill cash collection promises. It may also help SFW Capital Partners with other functions like expense approvals, financial consolidation, and order management. Improve Visibility Real-time visibility for VCs is essential. The pieces of information gathered from leads, prospects, and clients allow you to make timely informed decisions. Consult with a reliable custom software developer to help you access data instantly from anywhere. App developers no longer restrict their expertise in desktop environments. These professionals may help you take advantage of software solutions for various operating systems like Windows, Mac OSX, Android, and iOS. A multi-platform application may allow you to access pieces of relevant data instantly when you have an Internet connection. It may also help reduce resources on data extraction and assist you in tying all the acquired information together for a coherent and easy-to-read report. Employees in your VC may also take advantage of this pool of data to create faster and more accurate decisions. Centralized Operations VCs and other businesses can fulfill different requirements in a centralized digital setup instead of relying on multiple programs. Maintaining numerous programs is a hassle and can waste valuable time and resources. VCs can integrate several business processes in one custom application with the help of a skilled developer. The software developer can work with your VC to fine-tune the programs features to accommodate all the required expertise levels. Communicating with the developer addresses the creation of additional modules, which may become useful for your company to achieve short and long-term objectives. Personalized Support and Maintenance Software solutions made by trustworthy developers allow you to take advantage of a technical support plan. Companies with skilled software developers help your VC in eliminating bugs and glitches in your custom application. In comparison, off-the-shelf software solutions mean youre practically at the mercy of the customer service representative of the program-developing company. Getting the help of a custom software provider gives you the opportunity to generate user-driven innovation. You can process changes quickly, so theres no significant downtime in operations should an issue in the program arise. Several custom software companies are available to help your VC achieve different objectives. Still, its essential to choose the right custom software development firm. Youre going to work with that business for the long-term, hence, you need to make sure youre not going to waste your valuable time, money, and effort in dealing with an unreliable app development company. 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Baza solicitarilor noastre, care sunt inaintate de peste o luna, le-am reluat de fapt de cand a venit actualul ministru Cuc; inainte se cunosteau, dar, la fel, nu au fost nicicum luate in seama. Sunt probleme legate de personal, de numarul de angajati care lucreaza in siguranta circulatiei, avem o lipsa din ce in ce mai vadita, datorita faptului ca nu te poti descurca in conditiile actuale, cand numarul de calatori este in crestere, cand avem circa 700.000 de calatori pe zi, iar noi folosim oameni care nu au calificarea necesara pentru a intretine", a afirmat Ion Radoi.Liderul USLM a criticat faptul ca Metrorex accepta punerea in circulatie de garnituri de metrou neperformante."O alta problema este cea pe care dvs. ati vazut-o si ieri (garnitura de metrou deraiata de la statia IMGB, n.red.), datorita acestei lipse de personal, datorita modului in care fac licitatii si aduc echipamente si trenuri in metrou fara ca acestea sa aiba performantele necesare, ati vazut riscurile care existau daca ar fi fost in circulatie, pentru ca la ore de varf avem 2000 de oameni intr-un tren, si acel tren pe care l-ati vazut pe peretii tunelului, nu raspunde nimeni de el, nimeni nu spune nimic, dar costa 6 milioane de euro, care sunt banii Romaniei", a acuzat Ion Radoi.Acesta a plasat conducerii Metrorex responsabilitatea metroului deraiat de la statia IMGB. Citeste si: PSD, pe urmele FIDESZ? Explicatiile lui Dancila dupa sedinta socialistilor europeni . "Ancheta asta a inceput dupa 26 ianuarie si nimeni nu a spus nimic. Eu nu cunosc nimic in plus. De vina (pentru deraierea garniturii de la statia IMGB, n.r.) sunt exact cei care au facut licitatia, cei care au coordonat din punct de vedere tehnic, cei care au facut receptia, acestia sunt de vina. Sa nu uitam ca la acelasi tip de trenuri a trebuit sa taiem peroanele, ca sa aiba loc gabaritul. Adica nu esti in stare nici asta sa urmaresti? Si dam atatia bani ai tarii asteia pe ce? Pe cele 18 trenuri care sunt de acelasi tip si care nu sunt in siguranta", a declarat Ion Radoi. Liderul de sindicat a respins acuzatiile aduse USLM de conducerea Ministerului Transporturilor, privind interese ale sindicalistilor fata de licitatiile pentru spatiile comerciale de la metrou. "Domnul ministru Cuc, la fel ca si ministrul Sova, daca nu au raspunsuri si daca sunt nepregatiti total, ce sa spuna? Nici nu este in minister acum, este iar pe santiere. Domnul Cuc sa nu uite ca acolo este un proces pe rol, si atat. Pai de aia este metroul ala agatat pe peretii tunelului, pentru ca avem probleme cu licitatia spatiilor de la metrou? De asta nu avem numarul de personal necesar pentru siguranta circulatiei? De asta a sarit de la acelasi tip de trenuri bieleta, care, bine ca s-a intamplat in statia Pipera, ca daca era in circulatie erau 2.000 de oameni in pericol! Domnul Cuc sa invete carte!", a reactionat Ion Radoi. Presedintele USLM a subliniat ca siguranta calatorilor este in prezent in pericol. "In momentul de fata, cu aceste tipuri de tren CAF siguranta calatorilor este in pericol, dupa cum v-am spus mai devreme, sunt probleme din punct de vedere tehnic. Se pare ca in fiecare saptamana avem cate un incident, ori de ordin mecanic, ori de ordin electronic", a afirmat Ion Radoi. Referitor la inaugurarea in acest an a magistralei de metrou din Drumul Taberei, acesta s-a declarat sceptic. "Nu va grabiti, ca trebuia din 2015 sa fie deschisa noua magistrala din Drumul Taberei. Noi muncim. Dar ce fac cei care trebuie sa raspunda, dar vad ca nu raspunde nimeni, si nu ia nimeni nicio masura. Cine trebuie sa dea in exploatare? Eu am spus din 2012 ca angajamentul ca din 2015 se va da in exploatare Drumul Taberei, le-am spus ca trebuie sa ne gandim spre 2020. Colegii dvs. mi-au spus: 'Dar ce, tu esti noul Brucan?' Nu, dar eu cunosc realitatea. Banii de la Banca Europeana de Investitii s-au dus, dar garantia Romaniei nu exista la ora actuala. Iata ca am ajuns in 2019 si inca nu stim daca anul acesta se va da in exploatare", a incheiat Ion Radoi. Circa 100 de sindicalisti de la Unitatea-Sindicatul Liber din Metrou (USLM) au pichetat joi sediul Ministerului Transporturilor, o delegatie condusa de Ion Radoi, presedintele sindicatului, intrand la discutii la minister. Miercuri, presedintele Sindicatului USLM a declarat ca toate cele 13 trenuri de metrou CAF ar trebui retrase din circulatie, intrucat au probleme la computerul de bord care le poate face imposibil de controlat si care au dus la deraierea unui tren in ianuarie. Acestea sunt cele mai noi trenuri achizitionate de Metrorex, care circula cu preponderenta pe Magistrala 2 Pipera-Berceni. Corpul de Control al ministrului Transporturilor va efectua in perioada urmatoare un control tematic la Metrorex cu privire la aspectele semnalate de membrii USLM, a reactionat ulterior ministerul de resort, printr-un comunicat remis AGERPRES. Joi, la sediul Ministerului Transporturilor, o delegatie a sindicalistilor de la metrou, care protestau in fata Ministerului Transporturilor, a fost primita de secretarul de stat Dragos Titea, responsabil cu atributii pe domeniul feroviar. "In urma discutiilor, cele doua parti au convenit ca Ministerul Transporturilor, prin reprezentatii din Adunarea Generala a Actionarilor (AGA), va solicita Consiliului de Administratie al Metrorex sa intocmeasca evaluarea activitatii directorului general, potrivit OUG nr. 109/2011, si sa prezinte in cadrul urmatoarei sedinte AGA un raport asupra activitatii de administrare care sa includa si informatii referitoare la executia contractului de mandat al directorului general al societatii. Totodata, in perioada urmatoare, Corpul de Control al ministrului va efectua un control tematic cu privire la aspectele semnalate de catre membrii organizatiei sindicale", se mentioneaza in comunicat. The North-Atlantic Treaty Organisation should "implement a long-term inclusive, comprehensive and consistent strategy, to support Black Sea Security," Minister of Defence Gabriel Les stated on Thursday at the "Atlantic - Black Sea Security Forum, according to Agerpres. "Russia has reached a new level of its strategic approach and it's ready to use direct aggression, in order to achieve certain political and security goals," said the Minister. He spoke, on the same occasion, about the "aggressive" developments in the Black Sea area, most of them doubled by the "lack of transparency and predictability." Les also mentioned "the militarization of Crimea," and the movement in the area of "some modern military systems and capabilities, including offensive ones.""All these things really worry us and we believe that the Alliance should leave behind its passive deterrence approach in the region and implement a long-term inclusive, comprehensive and consistent strategy to support security in the Black Sea," he said.Les reminded about the military drills of Russia at the NATO border and spoke about "an aggressive and challenging dynamics that has become almost like a everyday routine.""The strategic goals are obvious - to install and maintain military dominance and deny Western world's access to the region, to undermine the European and Euro-Atlantic aspirations of Georgia, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova," added the Minister.In such a complex context full of challenges, he continued, the Black Sea has become "an area of a strategic importance for the security of the Alliance," and not only "a regional problem."The Minister of Defence went on to speak about Romania's approach in terms of military security, in the context in which our country is currently holding the rotating presidency of the Council of EU.According to Les, Romania's objectives are "pragmatic," as they consider the complementarity, in the defence field, between the EU and NATO."The European Union must adapt to the everyday realities and perform better in the defence and security field," said the Minister, who claimed that "NATO remains the essence of European defence."In another line of thoughts, Les said that there are also challenges "which are not and will never be of NATO's concern." "European Union must strengthen itself here," he highlighted. Romania is one of the key-players in terms of the security in the Black Sea region, where, over the past years, there have been "several hybrid-type activities," Foreign Affairs Minister Teodor Melescanu stated on Thursday in the opening of the "Atlantic-Black Sea Security Forum, according to Agerpres. "From our point of view, the gravitational center moves from the Atlantic area to a small region, called the Black Sea," the head of the Romanian diplomacy stated. He mentioned that the reasons of this "shift" are the fact that the Black Sea is located at the eastern border of NATO, but also the hybrid activities in the area. "Over the past 10 years we had several hybrid-type activities in our region. I am talking about Georgia, Ukraine and I'm thinking about the frozen conflicts in Transnistria, Armenia and Azerbaijan and many other places," he pointed out.Thus, Melescanu also referred the situation in Crimea."The Black Sea has always been one in which there have been cooperation, cultural exchanges, economic links from ancient times to the present. What happened was the Russian Federation's move to eastern Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea. It is not a simple annexation of Crimea, it is a step towards having a strong space for military equipment in the Black Sea," he argued.Furthermore, Melescanu highlighted that the Black Sea region is "one of the energy transmission corridors from Central Asia and Asia, in general, toward the EU.""Romania is one of the key-players in the Black Sea," he stated, mentioning our membership to NATO and several military bases of the Alliance on Romanian soil.The Foreign Affairs Minister also talked at the summit about the current context in terms of worldwide security."Unfortunately, the security which existed during the Cold War is out of the question. Unfortunately, very important agreements for disarmament, such as the INF (...) and many others, are no longer in place. This thing has created a vacuum at the legislative level regarding Defence in our world," he said, adding that these changes led to the creation of regional powers."With all modesty, Romania is one of the key-topics in the region," he said while also addressed the subject of a current change in the war tactics."We have to understand that the very essence of war is changing. Before, when we had conventional wars, the armies were fighting, we were talking about weapons, planes and others. Today, we are very aware that the classic war, as it used to be, no longer exists. We are now talking about hybrid warfare, strategic communication, building resilience," the minister said.The transatlantic relation was another topic tackled by Minister Melescanu."When talking about the existing conflicts, whether they be economic or of any other nature, we have to admit that the European Union and European countries, in general, are basically a natural ally of the United States of America. We have to admit that and, this is why, for Romania, the transatlantic relation is one of the basic pillars of its security," Melescanu argued."We have an advantage, we are on the good side of the barricade. All NATO and the EU members promote in general the idea of totally observing the rules outlined by international law and we are also strong believers of the idea that each country has the right to be free to determine its future. These are basic agreements from our point of view for everything we do in the future," the head of Romanian diplomacy underscored.Furthermore, he also mentioned Article 5 of the Treaty."If you take a look at countries and most recent military operations, you see that everybody tries to maintain below what is outlined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. NATO is the most important and most successful alliance in the world. Everyone is trying not to cross the red line marked by Article 5," the Foreign Affairs Minister stated. AGERPRES special correspondent Florentina Peia reports: Romania is "fully devoted" to a strong transatlantic relation and a close cooperation between the EU and the US and between the EU and NATO, President Klaus Iohannis said on Thursday. "A strong transatlantic cooperation has always been and will remain an essential prerequisite for our economies' and our citizens' prosperity. The transatlantic partnership remains the essential strategic relation on the global arena. Together, our countries represent by far the group of countries with the highest influence in the world, which shouldn't represent, nonetheless, a reason for negligence. Romania is fully devoted to a strong transatlantic relation, a close cooperation between the EU and the US, as well as between the EU and NATO. As a strategic partner of the US, Romania believes its mandate at the Presidency of the EU Council represents an opportunity to promote a positive cooperation agenda between the European Union and the United States," the head of state maintained at the Annual Transatlantic Conference, organised by AmCham EU in Brussels. He underscored that the transatlantic relation is an "anchor" of global stability and "the engine" of common prosperity."A strong, united Europe, with a successful economy remains a necessity for the US. Europe's security and prosperity cannot be separated from America's security and prosperity. The economic relation between the US and Europe is the most comprehensive and the most important in the world," Iohannis said.Iohannis pointed out that commercial exchanges take place each year worth one trillion dollars in goods and services on the transatlantic relation, with round 7 million jobs created in the US and 5 million in the EU. He added that over 70 percent of the foreign direct investments in the US come from Europe."Europe is good for US business and we are glad to see this. (...) It is true that the EU exports more goods to the US than it imports, but the situation compensates when it comes to services. Each side benefits from competitive advantages, but together we are stronger than the sum of parts," Iohannis maintained.He pointed out that the EU would have to adapt its commercial policy to defend the strategic interests of its members and to reflect the new realities in the world economy, including in the context of the situations involving anti-competitive practices.In context, the head of state pointed out that Romania supports the modernisation of the World Trade Organisation."More transparency is needed, as well as establishing some mechanisms meant to approach, in incipient stages, the commercial tensions among partners," Iohannis mentioned.He showed that a renewal of the US commitment in Europe is needed in strategic areas such as energy, new technologies and critical infrastructure, as well as strengthening cooperation in the cyber security and digital infrastructure area. Iohannis also said that additional measures are required in order to support entrepreneurship and competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises and the strategic cooperation in the energy area must be intensified."The US can play an essential role in regards to our continent's energy security. US companies have started a true energy revolution in America, and this evolution can prove essential for Europe's energy security from the perspective of the energy options of the region. I am encouraging US companies to seriously and on long-term shift their attention to their counterparts in Europe and to the business opportunities on this coast of the Atlantic," Iohannis said.According to the Romanian President, the world is confronted with serious challenges such as climate changes, migration, terrorism and populism. He added that the security and defence area becomes increasingly more important."The real economic difficulties are felt by far too many citizens, on both sides of the Atlantic. We must act together and show there's a future for all and that no one will be left behind," the President said.In his opinion, the world will further face challenges and difficulties, however these could be overcome with "a little wisdom and collective moderation.""Our close political, economic and strategic alliance is the result of our common interests in our recent history, but what truly connects us is sharing the same values," Iohannis pointed out.President Klaus Iohannis will participate in the European Council meeting on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, he will also participate in the EPP Summit and have a meeting with European Council President Donald Tusk. President Klaus Iohannis stated on Thursday that an orderly Brexit would be the most advantageous for all member states of the European Union. "I hope we eventually have a common stance, that will also help the British partners. (...) An orderly Brexit benefits us all. (...) The EU's message is that we want an agreement and an orderly withdrawal and to build a future relationship to everybody's benefit. (...) The ball is in the British court, not in ours," the president said in Brussels, before participating in the meeting of the European Council. MEP Laurentiu Rebega, at the time of the deeds Vice-President of the Prahova County Council, was prosecuted by the anti-corruption prosecutors in a case in which he is accused, among other things, of incitement to defraud with European funds and money laundering, the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA) informs on Thursday. According to a DNA press release sent to AGERPRES, the prosecutors within the National Anti-corruption Directorate - the Anti-Corruption Department ordered the prosecution of Laurentiu Rebega, at the time of the deeds Vice-President of the Prahova County Council, and the person who controlled the activity of several agricultural companies, and now a member of the European Parliament, for incitement to the use in bad faith of false documents for unfairly obtaining European funds, instigating to unlawfully changing the destination of European funds, improper participation in the use in bad faith of documents to unlawfully obtain European funds, two money laundering offenses, two crimes of financial operations incompatible with the position held and complicity in bad faith use of false documents for obtaining European funds. "As way of committing the deeds, in a concise formulation, Rebega used a person he controlled so as to draw up the necessary formalities to obtain EU funds to finance a fictitious apicultural project, appropriating over 90 percent of the criminal product (the fraud in 2014), and in the period 2012-2013, the defendant acted as a partner of other people through a front-end company that he was managing in fact, participating in falsifying and using documents, concealing and distributing the criminal fraud product, keeping a share of about 10 percent," the investigators point out. DNA informs that the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Administration and the Agency for Rural Investment Financing have become involved as civil parties. The file was sent to the High Court of Cassation and Justice. Romania exported last year cereals worth EUR 1.018 billion to the EU countries, according to data released Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS). More than half of these exports (EUR 577.9 million) went Spain, Italy and Germany, as follows: Spain imported cereals from Romania worth EUR 255.3 million, Italy - EUR 202.2 million and Germany - EUR 120.4 million. Moreover, in 2018 Romania exported to the community countries products of the milling, malt and starch industry worth EUR 10.9 million, the main countries of destination being Bulgaria (EUR 2.6 million) and Austria (EUR 1.9 million). According to the INS, Romania imported cereals worth EUR 293.4 million, while the milling, malt and starch industry goods' imports were EUR 99.5 million. In this context, Romania ended 2018 with a surplus of EUR 724.6 million as regards its international cereal trade and a deficit of EUR 78.6 million in the milling, malt and starch industry's products. Senate President Calin Popescu-Tariceanu says that however "imperfect" the European Union may be, it could be improved, a reason why he calls on the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to "postpone the Brexit forever", according to Agerpres. "Please, postpone the Brexit forever. However imperfect the EU may be, we can work together to make it better," Popescu-Tariceanu wrote on Thursday in Brussels on his Twitter account The European Union's trade policy can boost not only the competitiveness of the Community agricultural sector also its stability and attractiveness for new generations of farmers, Trade and Entrepreneurship minister Stefan-Radu Oprea told at an event in Brussels on agri-food trade. "We have to promote not only our products but our values as well. Identifying a fair balance and choosing the right partners for EU trade agreements that include the agri-food sector is a matter of utmost importance," said Stefan-Radu Oprea, quoted in a press release sent to AGERPRES. The Romanian Minister for Business Environment attended Thursday, alongside European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom and European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan the event "Beyond Trade for All: Time to Promote the Benefits for Agri-Food Trade", organized by CELCAA (European Liaison Committee for Agriculture and Agri-Food Trade) in Brussels. Oprea opened the conference works and conveyed the message of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union alongside Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom. During the presentation, Oprea referred to the priorities of Romania in the field of international trade, as the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, among which the promotion of a European trade agenda beneficial for citizens and economic operators, especially for SMEs. In the context of the debate on the main outcomes of the EU Trade for All strategy, Minister Oprea recalled the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, which entered into force on 1 February 2019. "The EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement lays the foundation of the largest free trade area in the world, eliminating most of the annual taxes paid by EU companies exporting to Japan in the amount of 1 billion euro, as well as a series of obstacles regarding regulation," Minister Oprea said in his address. There is a saying attributed to the French banker Nathan Rothschild that "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws." Conservative opinion in the United States has long suspected that Rothschild was right and there have been frequent calls to audit the Federal Reserve Bank based on the presumption that it has not always acted in support of the actual interests of the American people. That such an assessment is almost certainly correct might be presumed based on the 2008 economic crash in which the government bailed out the banks, which had through their malfeasance caused the disaster, and left individual Americans who had lost everything to face the consequences. Be that as it may, if there were a modern version of the Rothschild comment it might go something like this: Give me control of the internet and no one will ever more know what is true. The internet, which was originally conceived of as a platform for the free interchange of information and opinions, is instead inexorably becoming a managed medium that is increasingly controlled by corporate and government interests. Those interests are in no way answerable to the vast majority of the consumers who actually use the sites in a reasonable and non-threatening fashion to communicate and share different points of view. The United States Congress started the regulation ball rolling when it summoned the chief executives of the leading social media sites in the wake of the 2016 election. It sought explanations regarding why and how the Russians had allegedly been able to interfere in the election through the use of fraudulent accounts to spread information that might have influenced some voters. In spite of the sound and fury, however, all Congress succeeded in doing was demonstrating that the case against Moscow was flimsy at best while at the same creating a rationale for an increased role in censoring the internet backed by the threat of government regulation. Given that background, the recent shootings at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and at mosques in Christchurch New Zealand have inevitably produced strident demands that something must be done about the internet, with the presumption that the media both encouraged and enabled the attacks by the gunmen, demented individuals who were immediately labeled as white supremacists. One critic puts it this way, Lets be clear, social media is the lifeblood of the far-right. The fact that a terror attack was livestreamed should tell us that this is a unique form for violence made for the digital era. The infrastructure of social media giants is not merely ancillary to the operations of terrorists it is central to it [and] social media giants assume a huge responsibility to prevent and stop hate speech proliferating on the internet. Its clear the internet giants cannot manage this alone; we urgently need a renewed conversation on internet regulation It is time for counter-terrorism specialists to move into the offices of social media giants. It's the wrong thing to do, in part because intelligence and police services already spend a great deal of time monitoring chat on the internet. And the premise that most terrorists who use the social media can be characterized as the enemy du jour white supremacists is also patently untrue. Using the national security argument to place knuckle dragging counter-terrorism specialists in private sector offices would be the last thing that anyone would reasonably want to do. If one were to turn the internet into a government regulated service it would mean that what comes out at the other end would be something like propaganda intended to make the public think in ways that do not challenge the authority of the bureaucrats and politicians. In the US, it might amount to nothing less than exposure to commentary approved by Mike Pompeo and John Bolton if one wished to learn what is going on in the world. Currently I and many other internet users appreciate and rely on the alternative media to provide viewpoints that are either suppressed by government or corporate interests or even contrary to prevailing fraudulent news accounts. And the fact is that the internet is already subject to heavy handed censorship by the service providers, which one friend has described as Soviet era in its intensity, who are themselves implementing their increasingly disruptive actions to find false personas and to ban as hate speech anything that is objected to by influential constituencies. Blocking information is also already implemented by various countries through a cooperative arrangement whereby governments can ask search engines to remove material. Google actually documents the practice in an annual Transparency Report which reveals that government requests to remove information have increased from less than 1,000 per year in 2010 to nearly 30,000 per year currently. Not surprisingly, Israel and the United States lead the pack when it comes to requests for deletions. Since 2009 the US has asked for 7,964 deletions totaling 109,936 items while Israel has sought 1,436 deletions totally 10,648 items. Roughly two thirds of Israeli and US requests were granted. And there is more happening behind the scenes. Since 2016, Facebook representatives have also been regularly meeting with the Israeli government to delete Facebook accounts of Palestinians that the Israelis claim constitute incitement. Israel had threatened Facebook that non-compliance with Israeli deletion orders would result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country. Facebook chose compliance and, since that time, Israeli officials have been publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders. It should be noted that Facebook postings calling for the murder of Palestinians have not been censored. And censorship also operates as well at other levels unseen, to include deletion of millions of old postings and videos to change the historical record and rewrite the past. To alter the current narrative, Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all have been pressured to cooperate with pro-Israel private groups in the United States, to include the powerful Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL is working with social media to engineer new solutions to stop cyberhate by blocking hate language, which includes any criticism of Israel that might be construed as anti-Semitism by the new expanded definition that is being widely promoted by the US Congress and the Trump Administration. Censorship of information also increasingly operates in the publishing world. With the demise of actual bookstores, most readers buy their books from media online giant Amazon, which had a policy of offering every book in print. On February 19, 2019, it was revealed that Amazon would no longer sell books that it considered too controversial. Government regulation combined with corporate social media self-censorship means that the user of the service will not know what he or she is missing because it will not be there. And once the freedom to share information without restraint is gone it will never return. On balance, free speech is intrinsically far more important than any satisfaction that might come from government intrusion to make the internet less an enabler of violence. If history teaches us anything, it is that the diminishment of one basic right will rapidly lead to the loss of others and there is no freedom more fundamental than the ability to say or write whatever one chooses, wherever and whenever one seeks to do so. Photo: Flickr Regardless of whether one loves or hates President Trump at least we can say that his presidency has a unique flavor and is full of surprises. Bush and Obama were horribly dull by comparison. Trump as a non-politician from the world of big (real estate) business and media has a different take on many issues including NATO. Many, especially in Russia were hoping that The Donalds campaign criticism of NATO would move towards finally putting an end to this anti-Russian alliance, which, after the fall of Communism really has no purpose, as any real traditional military threats to Europe have faded into history. However, Trump as President of the United States has to engage in the realpolitik of 21st century America and try to survive and since Trump seems rather willing to lie to get what he wants, who can really say which promises from his campaign were a shoot and which were a work. So as it stands now Trumps recent decision to maintain and build US/NATO bases across the world and make country X pay for it could mean anything from him trying to keep his campaign promises in some sort of skewed way, to an utter abandonment of them and submission to the swamp. Perhaps it could simply be his business instincts taking over in the face of wasteful spending. Making allies have to pay to have US/NATO forces on their territory is a massive policy shift that one could only predict coming from the unpredictable 45th President. The one thing that we should all understand, and which Trump perfectly and clearly understands, is that the members of NATO (and other allies) are a captive audience, especially Germany, Japan and South Korea, which coincidentally are the first set of countries that will have to pay the cost + 50% to keep bases and US soldiers on their soil. Japans constitution, written primarily by American occupation forces forbids them from having a real military which is convenient for Trumps plan. South Korea, although a very advanced and wealthy nation has no choice but to hide behind the US might because if it were to disappear overnight, then Gangnam would be filled with pictures of the Kim family within a few weeks. In the past with regard to these three countries NATO has had to keep up the illusion of wanting to help them and work as partners for common defense as if nuclear and economic titan America needs countries like them to protect itself. Trump whether consciously or not is changing the dynamic of US/NATO occupation of these territories to be much more honest. His attitude seems to be that the US has the possibility to earn a lot of money from a worldwide mafia-style protection scam. Vassals have no choice but to pay the lord so Trump wants to drop the illusions and make the military industrial complex profitable again and God bless him for it. This level of honesty in politics is refreshing and it reflects the Orange Man's pro-business and America will never be a socialist country attitude. It is blunt and ideologically consistent with his worldview. On the other hand, one could look at this development as a possible move not to turn NATO into a profitable protection scam but as a means to covertly destroy it. Lies and illusion in politics are very important, people who believe they are free will not rebel even if they have no freedom whatsoever. If people are sure their local leaders are responsible for their nation they will blame them for its failings rather than any foreign influence that may actually be pulling the real strings. Even if everyone in Germany, Japan and South Korea in their subconscious knows they are basically occupied by US forces it is much harder to take action, than if the lord directly demands yearly tribute. The fact that up to this point US maintains its bases on its own dime sure adds to the illusion of help and friendship. This illusion is strong enough for local politicians to just let the status quo slide on further and further into the future. Nothing is burning at their feet to make them act having to pay cost + 50% could light that fire. Forcing the locals to pay for these bases changes the dynamic in the subconscious and may force peoples brains to contemplate why after multiple-generations the former Axis nations still have to be occupied. Once occupation becomes expensive and uncomfortable, this drops the illusion of friendship and cooperation making said occupation much harder to maintain. South Korea knows it needs the US to keep out the North but when being forced to pay for it this may push them towards developing the ability to actually defend themselves. Trumps intellectual honesty in regards to NATO could very well plant the necessary intellectual seeds to not just change public opinion but make public action against US/NATO bases in foreign countries. Japan has had many protests over the years against US bases surging into the tens of thousands. This new open vassal status for the proud Japanese could be the straw to break the camels back. Predicting the future is impossible. But it is clear that, changing the fundamental dynamic by which the US maintains foreign bases in a way that will make locals financially motivated to have them removed, shall significantly affect the operations of US forces outside the borders of the 50 States and make maintaining a global presence even more difficult, but perhaps this is exactly what the Orange Man wants or is just too blind to see. Photo: Flickr In early 2019 China announced that it had moved some of its road-mobile DF-26C ballistic missiles to Western China (the Gobi Desert near Tibet) and had, during the first week of the year put them on alert for possible use against American warships, which were at that time preparing to conduct a FONOP (freedom of navigation operation) in the South China Sea that would take a U.S. destroyer through waters claimed (illegally) to be part of China. It was also revealed that the DF-26Cs had been moved 2,000 kilometers inland so they could not be intercepted as they launched (the boost phase). Boost phase is when a missile is more vulnerable to interception because it is moving more slowly. The DF-26C is a 20 ton two stage IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile) that has a range of about 4,000 kilometers and was based on the earlier DF-21. According to China, the DF-26C uses a larger version of the maneuverable warhead used in the DF-21. Or so it is claimed. China has never tested either missile against a static or moving target at sea. Such a test could easily be arranged, using a large (carrier size) retired tanker or container ship, moving and maneuvering under remote control in a designated (to keep any ships and aircraft out of harms way) portion of the ocean. Other nations could use their photo satellites to observe. Either the DF-26C maneuverable warhead hits the target or it doesnt. So far China has not conducted such a test. That said, such ballistic missile maneuverable warhead technology is possible and had already been used. While the DF-26C officially entered service in 2018, in 2016 China indicated that it had equipped a larger ballistic missile (the DF-26) with this warhead technology and that it could hit U.S. carriers or small land targets over 3,000 kilometers away. The various components of such a system began to surface over a decade earlier. By 2010 the U.S. believed that China had a version of their smaller DF-21 ballistic missile with a conventional warhead that could hit a moving American carrier at a distance of 1,500 kilometers. There was no proof that such a system actually existed in a workable form. But over the previous few years, the necessary pieces of this mystery weapon began to show up in working condition. The DF-26 was not only a potential threat to carriers at sea but was most definitely a threat to major American bases in the Pacific, particularly Guam. This all began in 2014 when China revealed (apparently by accident) the existence of the DF-26. There had been reports of such a missile since 2007 and the DF-26C appeared to be available for testing sometime after 2010. The DF-26C is notable because it has the range to hit American military bases on the Central Pacific island of Guam. Armed with a maneuverable conventional warhead a DF-26 could take out key American military installations on Guam if enough of them were used at the same time. That would overwhelm existing American anti-missile systems there. Current ballistic missile guidance technology makes it possible for warheads (nuclear or conventional) to land less than a 100 meters from a specific location. This is the CEP (circular error probable), the distance from the aiming point that at least 50 percent of warheads will land. American ICBMs have long had 90 meter CEPs plus shorter-range ballistic missiles with CEPs of 50 meters. Russian missiles had CEPs of about 200 meters. A maneuverable warhead gives you a CEP of a few meters against a static target but a much larger CEP against a moving target that the warhead guidance can track during its final phase. That is the technology China claims to have developed but, apparently never tested. In early 2016 China revealed that they had perfected this technology for a maneuverable ballistic missile warhead. This came a little after it was revealed that since 2014 China had conducted six tests of a maneuverable gliding warhead for ballistic missiles. Five of the six tests were successful and this hypersonic glide vehicle is officially known as the DF-ZF. In effect, this hypersonic glide vehicle is a warhead that can glide rather than merely plunging back to earth and is maneuverable enough to hit small moving targets in space or down on the surface. The DF-ZF was initially developed as China sought to perfect a version of the DF-21 ballistic missile that could hit moving warships at sea. DF-21 is a 15 ton, two-stage, solid fuel missile that is 10.7 meters (35 feet) long and 140cm (4.6 feet) in diameter. The DF-21D (the carrier killer version) missile using the DF-ZF warhead is also more difficult for anti-missile missiles to hit and can also be used against low orbit satellites as well as land targets and moving warships. China has to take into account anti-missile defenses because the U.S. navy has about 40 warships equipped with this Aegis-based technology ABM (anti-ballistic missile) technology and has tested it successfully many times. Yet without more data on how the Chinese maneuverable warhead actually performs (especially its incoming speed) the American SM-3 ABM interceptor might have problems intercepting the Chinese anti-ship warheads. As far back as 2008, there were rumors that the Chinese had reverse engineered, reinvented or stolen the 1970s seeker technology that went into the U.S. Pershing ballistic missile maneuverable warhead. This 7.5 ton U.S. Army missile had a range of 1,800 kilometers and could put its nuclear warhead within 30 meters of its aim point. This was possible because the warhead was maneuverable and had its own targeting system using radar. This kind of accuracy made the Russians very uncomfortable as it meant many of their command bunkers were suddenly very vulnerable. The Russians eventually agreed to a lot of nuclear and missile disarmament deals in order to get the Pershings decommissioned in the 1980s. Until 2013 there was no evidence that the DF-21D system had been tested using a maneuverable warhead. Then satellite photos showed a 200 meter long white rectangle in the Gobi Desert (in Western China) with two large craters in it. This would appear to be a target for testing the DF-21D, and two of the inert practice warheads appear to have hit the target. American carriers are over 300 meters long, although the smaller carriers (amphibious ships with helicopter decks) are closer to 200 meters long. It appeared China was planning on using the DF-21D against smaller warships, or perhaps they just wanted to see exactly how accurate the missile could be. Then in 2014, an even more maneuverable and gliding version of the carrier killer warhead appeared in the form of the DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle. China has not tested or claimed to have a hypersonic glide vehicle type warhead for use against ships. Russia and the United States have also developed hypersonic glide vehicle technology but neither deployed it in the form the Chinese appear to favor. The original work in this area was by the Germans during World War II. The U.S. and Russia both investigated the concept more during the Cold War but never deployed anything. In the 1990s the United States proposed reviving work on hypersonic glide vehicle for its Prompt Global Strike system. This would put hypersonic glide vehicle warheads, using high-explosive and not nuclear explosives, on ICBMs producing a very expensive weapon that could hit a target anywhere on earth in less than an hour of the order being given. In any event, the United States successfully tested its version of the hypersonic glide vehicle in 2011 but with the defense budget shrinking the project was halted. This was encouraged when a 2014 hypersonic glide vehicle test failed. Meanwhile, Russia has resumed hypersonic glide vehicle development in 2013 but financial problems are preventing much progress. The U.S. Navy has to take these trends seriously even though there is no proof, yet, that such a system has been tested at sea against a large, moving ship or a small target on a distant land area. But it is known that China has a lot of the necessary components and the U.S. Navy has to plan for the sudden appearance of a carrier killer ballistic missile, one that could also wreck U.S. military facilities on Guam. Over the last year China has admitted that it has such technology but without realistic testing, they cannot be certain it will actually work. For the moment China is content to possess the threat of having such technology. GRAFENWOEHR, BY, GERMANY 03.12.2019 - The 1st Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Infantry Division provides air support with CH-47 Chinooks during the Bulldog Battery, Field Artillery Squadron, 2d Cavalry Regiment air raid at the 7th Army Training Commands Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, March 12, 2019. Six M777 Howitzers were leveraged as part of the mission. (U.S. Army photo by Matthias Fruth) X 0 20 Help Keep Us Soaring We need your help! Our subscription base has slowly been dwindling. We need your help in reversing that trend. We would like to add 20 new subscribers this month. Each month we count on your subscriptions or contributions. You can support us in the following ways: A major project for the army in 2019 is to eliminate tribal rebel units from areas in Shan and Rakhine states where China will be working on its CMEC (China-Myanmar Economic Corridor). This deal was signed in late 2018 and some of the 1,700 kilometer long transportation corridor from southern China (Yunan province) to central Burma (Mandalay) and then west to the coast at the Kyaukpyu SEZ (Special Economic Zone) will be built in Shan and Rakhine states. China is aware of the tribal rebel activity and the Burmese have assured China that these rebels would be kept away from the construction sites. The CMEC corridor would improve roads, railroads and build, as needed, pipelines and electrical transmission lines. This would be financed by China and built mainly by Chinese construction firms using Chinese workers. Burma needs the investment and since 1988 China has been the major foreign investor in Burma with projects totaling $20 billion so far. Shan State contains another complication as it is the center of the Burmese illegal drug production and the tribal rebels depend on the drug-related income to finance their armed forces. The drug business has been booming, especially the demand for methamphetamine. Production of meth, mainly in Burma, has gone from 30 tons in 2016 to over a hundred tons in 2018. Shan state, which is on the Chinese border, remains the largest source of illegal drugs in the region. Opium and heroin used to be the major source of income but those old staples are being displaced by methamphetamine. The Burmese methamphetamine production is a major regional problem that is worth billions of dollars a year to the tribes and that is a tremendous incentive for tribal drug gangs and corrupt government officials to help keep it going, The meth (usually in pill form) is called yaba locally and is the most popular drug in Southeast Asia and China. Most (nearly half) of yaba goes to China, followed by Thailand. The Burmese meth has become hugely popular in China, which is pressuring the Burmese government to do more about the problem and that has resulted in more police activity up there, but not enough to put a dent in the drug business. The only real competition in the region is North Korea, which continues to produce and export the meth despite promises to China that North Korean meth would not go to Chinese dealers. Taiwanese gangsters have taken control of much of the meth distribution throughout East and Southeast Asia and are a growing presence in northern Burma. Unlike the Chinese form China, the Taiwanese tend to be a lot more discreet about what they are up to. Chinese operating commercial (rather than Chinese government) enterprises in Kachin and Shan states are a major source of complaints in Burma. There seems to be no end of illegal schemes the Chinese come up with that profit at the expense of Burmese in the north. Two of the recent rackets is enticing or kidnapping Burmese women to China and selling them to Chinese men to be wives. There a growing shortage of Chinese women has created a market for young foreign women. China's "one child" policy of the last few decades and the ability to determine the sex of the child before birth led to more (20 percent more) boys than girls being born in China. There's a growing shortage of potential brides, and desperate Chinese men are willing to buy a kidnapped tribal girl from northern Burma (or anywhere else). And then there are the Chinese banana plantations. Some are legitimate and registered in Burma to operate. But nearly all these Banana operations break the law in one way or another, usually by illegally expanding into state or locally owned forests and illegally using pesticides and fertilizer. For the northern tribes, China has rarely been a good neighbor. Forever War For The Arakan The tribes have been mistreated by the military for so long it is difficult to generate a lot of trust and put an end to the armed resistance. The AA had been avoiding soldiers since a series of clashes in late 2015 ended badly for the rebels. Clashes resumed in early 2016 as troops moved into territory where AA rebels were known to operate. All this was unexpected because the northwest coast has not had as much tribal violence as states to the east. In this case, the AA had help from Kachin State tribal rebels and have become a problem on both sides of the Bangladesh border. The government ordered the army to increase its efforts to destroy the AA and the successful clashes in late 2015 led to the military now working with police to find and arrest the many AA supporters in the area. Unlike most tribal militias in the north, the AA was never given official recognition, in large part because the AA was more of a gangster operation than tribal rebels. All this police activity is unpopular but at least it is less arbitrary and lawless as in the past when soldiers would torture and kill people they picked up. That sort of behavior has always been illegal but now some of the worst violators are prosecuted. AA leaders believe they are winning and have announced they are establishing a base camp and headquarters in Rakhine state. That did not happen as the army continued advancing, despite losses from occasional ambushes. The soldiers were seeking to find and arrest (and often murder) rebel supporters or young men suspected of being rebel fighters. In some towns and villages, the civilians will take refuge in local Buddhist temples and monasteries, which the soldiers tend to keep away from. Casualties among local civilians and rebels are higher than those suffered by the security forces but receive a lot less publicity. March 20, 2019: In the northwest (Rakhine state) AA (Arakan Army) rebels continue fighting a losing, but bloody, battle with the army. Today troops report they were fired on as they entered Mrauk U, a town noted for its large Buddhist temples and large number of tourists (both Burmese and foreigners). The army warned the tourists to stay away until the troops were finished searching for rebels. This sort of thing has been going on for a year as the soldiers drive the AA out of territory along the west coast (Rakhine and Chin states). In the last month, military operations have been particularly intense and thousands of civilians have fled their homes. So far this year some 20,000 civilians have become refugees as the army added 8,000 to the forces already in the area. Additional artillery, armed helicopters and ground attack aircraft arrived as well. The AA insists they have not attacked troops since March 15th and any army reports of attacks are one-sided actions when troops open fire on civilians or each other. March 11, 2019: In the northwest (Rakhine state) AA (Arakan Army) rebels killed nine policemen. March 2, 2019: In the northwest (Sagaing Region and nearby Rakhine state), troops shut down a dozen AA (Arakan Army) camps the tribal rebels had established in Burma just over the border from Indian Nagaland. This operation took about a month. The Burmese troops coordinated their operations with Indian forces on the other side of the border. The Indians blocked their side of the border when the Burmese troops were searching for or destroying a camp. The Burmese troops also shut down a major base camp established by Naga rebels in the Sagaing Region. Most Naga live on the Indian side of the border but the Naga rebels set up their camps on both sides of the border. March 1, 2019: Bangladesh has stopped accepting refugees from Burma. Over a million Burmese Rohingya Moslems have fled to Bangladesh since the anti- Rohingya violence began in 2012. Only 16,000 arrived in 2018 and in 2019 the number of Rohingya seeking to enter Bangladesh has dwindled to nothing some weeks. Bangladesh has told the UN that any additional refugees will be stopped at the border and at that point Burma and the UN can work out where the refugees will go. Efforts to persuade refugees to return to Burma have largely failed as the anti- Rohingya attitudes still exist in Burma. February 28, 2019: In the northwest (Rakhine state), AA (Arakan Army) rebels ambushed a police convoy and killed two policemen. February 26, 2019: In the northwest (Rakhine state), an army officers wife was killed when she came upon a pipe bomb in a house she and her husband had recently moved into. The bomb went off while furniture was being delivered. TICKERS: ZNG; GRLVF Source: Clive Maund for Streetwise Reports (3/21/19) Technical analyst Clive Maund explains why he sees this zinc explorer as a good value. To be sure, Group Eleven Resources Corp.'s (ZNG:TSX.V; GRLVF:OTCQB) stock looks cheap here and good value. It is an advanced zinc explorer based in Ireland, the Emerald Isle, and it is understood that it is very much liked by Peter Megaw, of MAG Silver Corp. (MAG:TSX; MAG:NYSE.MKT) fame. MAG Silver in fact owns 21.4% of its stock (fully diluted) while Teck Resources Ltd. (TCK:TSX; TCK:NYSE) owns 4.3% fully diluted. An 18-month chart is sufficient to show the entire history of the stock. After starting trading in December of 2017 it wasted no time in going straight into a bear market, which persisted until last November when a trading range started to form that is believed to have evolved into a Triple Bottom. With the current quite tight bunching of the price and its moving averages, the conditions are ripe for a reversal here, with the stock trading at less than a third of its price at inception. We would like to see stronger volume indicators, but these sometimes improve with the price rather than ahead of it. Although it is of limited use technically, the 6-month chart shows recent action in more detail, and on it we can see that the stock is oversold here near to the bottom of its trading range and cheap. It is completely "off the radar" of most investors, which is a big reason why it is good value. The attractive and interesting Corporate Presentation includes pages showing the long-term course of the zinc price and current low LME inventories as well as the capital structure and usual details about projects, management etc. The conclusion is that Group Eleven is an attractive, good value zinc investment here, which due to its low price must be classed as speculative Because it is still in a basing phase, we cannot and do not expect it to go storming out of the gate two days after we buy it, but on the other hand it is certainly not overvalued, and when it does decide to move it should make good percentage gains from the current price. A disadvantage for company employees recruited from overseas is the rotten cloudy damp maritime climate in Ireland, but this can be mitigated by listening to Irish music in pubs, assisted by drinking Irish beer, songs such as The Orange and the Green, which is about a lad who turns the apparent misfortune of having a Catholic (Irish Republic) mother and a Protestant (Ulster) father to his advantage. Here is a clearer version with lyrics and a version including the U.S. Army Band in Florida. Group Eleven Resources website. Group Eleven Resources Corp ZNG.V, GRLVP on OTC, closed at C$0.12 on 18th March 2019. Clive Maund has been president of www.clivemaund.com, a successful resource sector website, since its inception in 2003. He has 30 years' experience in technical analysis and has worked for banks, commodity brokers and stockbrokers in the City of London. He holds a Diploma in Technical Analysis from the UK Society of Technical Analysts. [NLINSERT] Disclosure: 1) Clive Maund: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: None. CliveMaund.com disclosures below. I determined which companies would be included in this article based on my research and understanding of the sector. 2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: MAG Silver. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. 3) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of the author and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The author is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. The author was not paid by Streetwise Reports for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports requires contributing authors to disclose any shareholdings in, or economic relationships with, companies that they write about. Streetwise Reports relies upon the authors to accurately provide this information and Streetwise Reports has no means of verifying its accuracy. 4) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports. 5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article until three business days after the publication of the interview or article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases. Charts provided by the author. CliveMaund.com Disclosure: The above represents the opinion and analysis of Mr Maund, based on data available to him, at the time of writing. Mr. Maund's opinions are his own, and are not a recommendation or an offer to buy or sell securities. Mr. Maund is an independent analyst who receives no compensation of any kind from any groups, individuals or corporations mentioned in his reports. As trading and investing in any financial markets may involve serious risk of loss, Mr. Maund recommends that you consult with a qualified investment advisor, one licensed by appropriate regulatory agencies in your legal jurisdiction and do your own due diligence and research when making any kind of a transaction with financial ramifications. Although a qualified and experienced stock market analyst, Clive Maund is not a Registered Securities Advisor. Therefore Mr. Maund's opinions on the market and stocks can only be construed as a solicitation to buy and sell securities when they are subject to the prior approval and endorsement of a Registered Securities Advisor operating in accordance with the appropriate regulations in your area of jurisdiction. TICKERS: CHKAQ Source: Streetwise Reports (3/21/19) A Raymond James report recapped the energy company's Q4/18 and discussed what is expected in 2019 and 2020. In a March 18 research note, analyst John Freeman reported that after Raymond James revised its estimates on Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK:NYSE), it reiterated its Outperform rating and increased its target price on the company to $4.50 per share from $4. Chesapeake's stock is currently trading at around $3.24 per share. Freeman noted that Raymond James updated its model of the energy firm to reflect newly available data, all of which he covered. Regarding Q4/18 earnings, they were as expected, the analyst wrote. Pricing and costs were mixed, leading to an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) that was in line with Raymond James' forecast and above the Street's. Earnings per share fell in between both entities' projections. Guidance for 2019, announced with Q4/18 earnings, included production of 475,000505,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (475505 Mboe/d) versus Raymond James' new estimate of 485 Mboe/d. Management anticipates oil volumes of 116122 Mboe/d and reaching an oil mix of 25% by Q4/19, whereas Raymond James forecasts 118 Mboe/d and just under a 25% oil mix. Chesapeake guided to 2019 capital spending of about $2.4 billion, which is similar to that of 2018. Raymond James forecasts a bit less spending at $2.3 billion. With the new data in hand, Raymond James lowered its 2019 forecast and scaled back rig count in 2020 to 19 from 22, "resulting in a cash flow neutral drilling program under NYMEX strip pricing," Freeman pointed out. In 2020, however, Chesapeake could become cash flow neutral in 2020, "a very positive step as the firm looks to continue paring down debt." Freeman touched on Chesapeake's operations, indicating that "the integration of WildHorse Resource Development's assets looks to be progressing well, with significant cost savings already being realized." Chesapeake will operate five rigs in the Permian Basin, concentrating primarily on the Turner Formation. He highlighted that the company "placed online its highest producer yet in the Permian Basin, delivering an IP24 of 2,387 boe/d (78% oil) (note that we model an IP30 of 1,344 boe/d [52% oil])." [NLINSERT] Disclosure: 1) Doresa Banning compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an independent contractor. She or members of her household own securities of the following companies mentioned in the article: None. She or members of her household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. 2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: None. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. 3) Comments and opinions expressed are those of the specific experts and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. 4) The article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports. 5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article until three business days after the publication of the interview or article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases. Disclosures from Raymond James, Chesapeake Energy Corp., March 18, 2019 ANALYST INFORMATION Analysts Holdings and Compensation: Equity analysts and their staffs at Raymond James are compensated based on a salary and bonus system. Several factors enter into the bonus determination, including quality and performance of research product, the analyst's success in rating stocks versus an industry index, and support effectiveness to trading and the retail and institutional sales forces. Other factors may include but are not limited to: overall ratings from internal (other than investment banking) or external parties and the general productivity and revenue generated in covered stocks. The analyst John Freeman, primarily responsible for the preparation of this research report, attests to the following: (1) that the views and opinions rendered in this research report reflect his or her personal views about the subject companies or issuers and (2) that no part of the research analysts compensation was, is, or will be directly or indirectly related to the specific recommendations or views in this research report. In addition, said analyst(s) has not received compensation from any subject company in the last 12 months. RAYMOND JAMES RELATIONSHIP DISCLOSURES Certain affiliates of the RJ Group expect to receive or intend to seek compensation for investment banking services from all companies under research coverage within the next three months. Raymond James & Associates, Inc. makes a market in the shares of Chesapeake Energy Corporation. Simon Bridges National Party Leader simonbridges.co.nz Last weekend I had planned to attend the Multicultural Festival at Tauranga Historic Village, to celebrate our communitys diversity. Like many events around the country, this was cancelled after the shocking situation in Christchurch. On Saturday I visited Christchurch alongside the Prime Minister and other party leaders and met with the Islamic community, some of the affected families and emergency responders. It was important that party leaders and all of parliament showed a united front. There are no words that can describe what these families and the community are going through. My deepest condolences, thoughts and prayers go to all of those directly affected. Like the rest of New Zealand, I am grieving too. We have never seen anything like this on our soil, and it is heart-breaking. I also want to thank our emergency responders, our police and our medical staff. You are heroes. I met with some of them in Christchurch, and nothing could have prepared them for what they faced. Our first priority is supporting the families, the victims and the Islamic community of New Zealand - they are Kiwis. No one in this country should live in fear no matter their race or religion, their politics or their beliefs. Soon it will be time to ask questions about what happened, but right now is not the time for politics, it is a time for unity. We will never forget this tragic event. It has changed us. We now need to work together to ensure it never happens again. Bay of Plenty Are you looking to step up and become Supervisor? Well, my client might just have the position for you.Based in Mount Maunganui... View or Apply on GoodWork.co.nz Rotorua Police are continuing to investigate an armed robbery at Kawaha Point Superette and are asking the public for assistance in identifying the offenders. Two men entered the Superette at around 1.45pm on Tuesday with a firearm and demanded money. An amount of cash and cigarettes was taken, says a police spokesperson. "The men left on foot, walking down Kawaha Point Road toward Fairy Springs Road. "The two men were described as wearing black hoodies. One wore dark coloured shorts. The other man wore long black pants, a pair of scuff sandals, and carried a backpack." Police want to hear from anyone who may have information about the identities of the offenders, or witnessed the incident and suspicious activity in the area around this time. "Police are also asking for anyone who has noticed individuals with a large amount of cigarettes or who may be selling them at a reduced price." Information can be provided by contacting Rotorua Police on 07 3480099 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. At least four pallets of donations were sent to the Spencer community via a Bomgaars truck this morning (Friday) to assist flood victims. Donations included bottled water and cleaning supplies. While Cheyenne County needed the weekend to dig out of snow, the eastern portion of the state is trying to hold back the water. The Nebraska State Emergency Operation Center (SEOC) was opened Wednesday, March 13, to address the record-setting flooding for much of the state. As of 1 p.m. Saturday, March 16, 52 counties and two tribes had issued emergency declarations. By 3 p.m., evacuation centers were established and travel through much of the state was defined by NEMA as "extremely dangerous." A Nebraska Game and Parks press release Wednesday, March 20, says state parks, historical parks,... The impact of the March 13 blizzard is still being felt, and Region 21 Emergency Manager Ron Leal wants Cheyenne County to be prepared. Part of that preparation came about Tuesday with the Board of Commissioners holding an emergency meeting to consider a Disaster Declaration. The meeting was held with County Clerk Beth Fiegenschuh, County Attorney Paul Schaub and Leal, with commissioners Randal Miller, Darrell Johnson and Philip Sanders present by teleconference. The declaration reads that Cheyenne County faced blizzard conditions March 13 and 14, and and will continue for several days t... E-volutions hull arrived yesterday at the Italian shipbuilders from their yard at Yildiz in Turkey. After her delivery in 2020, she will form part of a series architected by Perini Navis in-house team alongside American performance yacht specialists Reichel/Pugh. The 42m cruising yacht is the first hull in the E-volution line, and represents the beginning of an exciting new era for Perini Navi. The vessel is sloop-rigged, built from aluminium with a carbon-fibre mast, boom and rigging. Perini Navis Style & Design Director Franco Romani is the mind behind her crisp exterior styling. Romani has not been tethered by convention, introducing a terraced aft deck which provides space, functionality and a closeness with the water. Meanwhile, naval architecture by Reichel/Pugh has achieved perfect harmony between comfort and capability. The yacht is equipped with a lifting keel to enhance performance, and is both powerful and user-friendly. S/Y E-volution is a boat built with sustainability and the environment in mind. It is Perini Navis first yacht with hybrid propulsion, meaning that it uses an eco-friendly e-motor to offset the use of the main diesel engine. Furthermore, the diesel-electric drivetrain delivers silent cruising and a range of 3,000 nautical miles at nine knots. Perini Navi Chairman and CEO Lamberto Tacoli commented on the project: It is always big news to see yet another yacht taking shape at our yard. The 42m E-volution is part of a new product range that we have invested heavily in and is enjoying notable success on the market. We sold the second 42m unit last November, in fact, and its hull is now building in Turkey. There are also interesting developments in the pipeline for the future. We look forward to bringing you the latest on the construction of this exciting sailing yacht. ... Our regional footprint means we are at the centre of all major yachting markets in Asia. Headquartered in Hong Kong since 1984 and celebrating 35 years on the market this year, Simpson Marine is Asias biggest yacht dealership, with 12 sales offices and 10 service centres in 7 countries. Stratton begins, painting by numbers a clear picture of the brokerages impressive territory. But these numbers dont come without the events and strategic partnerships that benefit all those involved. Simpson Marine has based themselves, not only at the heart of Asias yachting scene, but they are fully immersed in the lifestyle and culture that surrounds it. Their shipyard partner, Sanlorenzo (Asia Division) recently signed a partnership with Rolls-Royce for the regional Cullinan SUV launches, which the group have now completed together in Japan, South Korea, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila and Jakarta; just one example of the all-encompassing outlook. Nick explained the strategy; The brands share many similarities in being at the top of their class, so this was a natural tie up. It has allowed clients in new markets to be exposed to Sanlorenzo whilst in more mature yachting markets, clients can share fun experiences across the yachting and motor industries [...] Its a great partnership indeed. Though the partnerships dont stop there, Sanlorenzo will further exhibit at Art Basel Hong Kong on 29-31 March as the exclusive yachting partner; part a Global Art Engagement plan. In fact, Sanlorenzo Asia & Simpson Marines list of partnerships also includes one with famous local designer, Steve Leung, who has collaborated with the team for a very special edition of SX88. Steve Leungs contribution will also extend throughout the range, giving the Asian market a very unique design. Nick reflects on the past year in partnerships; 2018 was a strong year for Simpson Marine with steady growth throughout all markets. Sanlorenzo especially has gained a strong following with a number of new yachts delivered and in build. We expect several new deliveries over the next months and that contributes to significant brand growth in Asia. Looking further into the Asian market activity, this interview is continued in Part 2. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- When it comes to a proposal to make marijuana legal in New York state, Onondaga County Sheriff Eugene Conway said he still has questions: Will residents be able to grow marijuana? Will there be an age restriction? Will the decision to greenlight recreational marijuana be left to each county? And until he has more answers, Conway said he is against legalizing marijuana. For now, its no, the sheriff said. It could possibly change. Conway shared his concerns with the community Thursday morning during Thursday Morning Roundtable, a forum hosted by Syracuse University at the Nancy Cantor Warehouse in downtown Syracuse. The talk came a month after many sheriffs across the state and in Central New York spoke out against legalizing marijuana. Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday dropped the proposal to make marijuana legal from his 2019-2020 state budget proposal, giving lawmakers more time to iron out a bill. During his talk Thursday, Conway told the audience he believes marijuana will eventually be legal in New York state. Legalization will impact law enforcement, Conway said. Deputies will have to be on the lookout for an increased number of drivers impaired by marijuana, he said. And police will also be called to respond, he said, when residents phone in complaints to 911 about neighbors growing the plant. But the sheriff said lawmakers rarely consult law enforcement before passing new laws that police will inevitably have to enforce. Conway said he is concerned about the potential public health impact of recreational marijuana. He pointed to a possible a spike in drug-impaired driving and marijuana laced with dangerous synthetic drugs. If marijuana becomes legal, Conway said there could be a positive impact: Police departments could have a chance to free up the resources currently dedicated to dealing with marijuana. That depends on how the law is written, he said. Above all, Conway told the crowd he wants more facts. I guess, if youre pushing me, Im against it because I dont know whats going to be in the language of the law, he said. Steve Vandewalle, deputy chief of Roc NORML, the Rochester chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law, attended the Thursday Morning Roundtable. He said he appreciated that Conway was willing to have a conversation about legalization. Hes got a lot of expertise and hes seen things weve never seen, Vandewalle said. To ensure New York has the best recreational marijuana law, Vandewalle said all parties -- including law enforcement and the marijuana industry -- need to work together. A Syracuse man who was shot by police as he tried to flee a Mattydale burglary in a stolen PT Cruiser in 2014 is allowed to continue his lawsuit against police officers, a judge ruled this month. Police said Donald Martin, 51, was shot as he tried to ram his way out of a traffic stop following a burglary at the Quickway on East Molloy Road on Dec. 1, 2014. Martin, who was living in a mens shelter in Syracuse at the time, later admitted to participating in the burglary. He and another man broke into the Quickway and stole cigarettes, court papers said. As police arrived to investigate, Martin tried to drive away in a stolen vehicle. Three officers, Matthew Carey, Andrew Costello and Daniel Klasen -- all in separate vehicles -- boxed Martin in at a nearby intersection, according to the court papers. Donald Martin was shot in the top of the head by Deputy Matthew Carey after, according to police, he tried to ram his way out of a roadblock after a burglary. Martin disputes the police account.Provided Photo Police said Martin tried to get out of the jam by reversing his vehicle and accelerating back and forth, placing the officers in danger. Thats when Carey fired into the vehicle for fear of his and the other officers safety, police said. Martin, who is representing himself in the civil lawsuit against Onondaga County and the three officers, claims he did not attempt to escape once the officers had him boxed in. He contends he never placed the officers in any danger. Martin pleaded guilty to the robbery and an assault charge related to his conduct with the vehicle. Martin claimed he admitted to the assault as part of a plea deal, but maintains that his actions did not warrant the use of force by the officers. U.S. District Court Senior Judge Thomas McAvoy dismissed Martins claims against the county. Martin had tried to show that the sheriffs department failed to train its officers. But McAvoy allowed Martin to continue his lawsuit against the three officers. He ruled it was up to a jury to decide whether it was reasonable for the officers to use deadly force against Martin. The judges order means Martins case is likely headed to trial. Martin is also now eligible for a free lawyer to represent him for the rest of the case. Martin so far has drafted his own legal arguments and filings to the court from the Orleans Correctional Facility in Western New York, where he is serving an eight-year prison sentence. Public Affairs Reporter Julie McMahon covers courts, government, education and other issues affecting taxpayers. She can be reached anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992 A jury today found a Syracuse man guilty of threatening to kill California Congresswoman Maxine Waters and former President Barack Obama. The jury convicted Stephen Taubert, 61, after a three-day trial before U.S. District Court Chief Judge Glenn Suddaby. Taubert now faces up to 20 years in prison, prosecutors said. Taubert was convicted of three charges, threatening to assault a federal official, making threats against a former president and using interstate commerce to make a threat. The charges stemmed from a series of phone calls he made to Congressional offices in 2017 and 2018. In 2018, Taubert called Waters office and told an official who answered the phone that he was going to kill the congresswoman and every member of her staff. In 2017, Taubert called the office of former Sen. Al Franken and said he was going to hang Obama. In both calls, he used racial slurs and vile language, the U.S. Attorneys Office said in a press release. Members of the offices testified at trial and recordings of the calls were played to the jury. The jury concluded Taubert had selected his victims because of their race, prosecutors said in the press release. That means the judge can consider Tauberts offenses to be hate crimes at sentencing. Taubert is due to be sentenced in July. A Hollywood couple is calling it quits seven years after they first met in Syracuse. ET, E! News and Us Weekly report Emma Roberts and Evan Peters have called off their engagement and are now just friends. An insider told E! that they amicably split shortly after Valentines Day after trying to make their on-again, off-again relationship work. Another source told Us Weekly that Peters moved out and Roberts is now dating Tron: Legacy star Garrett Hedlund. Roberts and Hedlund, who currently stars in Netflixs Triple Frontier with Ben Affleck, have reportedly been spotted on several dates in recent weeks. Roberts and Peters met on the set of Adult World, filmed in Syracuse in February 2012. The couple played love interests in the quirky indie comedy, which also starred John Cusack and Cloris Leachman. Roberts character was a Syracuse University graduate who starts working at a porn shop when her career as a poet doesnt take off; Peters played the store manager. Emma Roberts, left, and Evan Peters arrive at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Sunday, March 4, 2018, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)Evan Agostini/Invision/AP Roberts and Peters first got engaged in 2014, but the relationship hit some bumps along the way. The 28-year-old niece of Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts was arrested for domestic violence in an alleged fight with Peters, 32, at a Canadian hotel in 2013. They split in 2015, but reunited later that year and got engaged again. Since Adult World, both Roberts and Peters have appeared on the TV series American Horror Story. Roberts also starred on Scream Queens," Little Italy and Were the Millers. Peters played Quicksilver in two X-Men movies and next appears in Dark Phoenix. Adult World producer Justin Nappi previously said the Central New York winter may have helped foster their relationship. I dont know if its the Syracuse weather or what that was keeping them close together, Nappi told syracuse.com. Both young stars later said they had a crush on each other while filming Adult World, but Peters was awkward and stupid while attempting to flirt with Roberts. Peters told Chelsea Handler in 2014 that he especially screwed up when he compared their first kiss, filmed during a party scene at the Gear Factory in Syracuse, to the lips of a 90-year-old actress. It was good, but it was super awkward and so I felt weird about it, he said. So I was like, That was like kissing Cloris Leachman. And she was super pissed off. This blog covers software patent news and issues with a particular focus on wireless, mobile devices (smartphones, tablet computers, connected cars) as well as select antitrust matters surrounding those devices. Mead, one of the oldest alcoholic beverages in the world, is the latest to receive a legal boost from the state of New York. Makers of this honey-based wine, and its cousin, braggot, will now be able to apply for a state farm meadery license. Thats similar to the farm winery, brewery, distillery and hard cidery licenses that have been credited with spurring the boom in the craft beverage industry across New York in recent years. With a farm license, mead-makers who use 100 percent New York honey will qualify for these benefits: Theyd be allowed to offer onsite tastings, sell their products by the glass in their tasting rooms (in addition to takeout packages), offer other New York farm-produced beer, wine, cider and spirits and open branch locations. Those benefits have helped the ongoing boom in New Yorks craft, or small-scale, alcohol business. The state now has more than 400 wineries, 300 breweries, 100 distilleries, and 50 hard cider makers. In each case, the number of manufacturers escalated quickly after farm licenses were created. The farm winery license was created in 1976, the farm distillery license in 2007 and the farm brewery license in 2012. In each of those four beverage categories, New York ranks among the Top 5 nationally in the number of producers. (Its No. 1 in hard cider makers). Also, for the first, time, there will be a general meadery license -- until now, mead has been made primarily by those holding a winery or farm winery license. A mead-maker who does not exclusively use New York honey can get that license. The lack of a meadery license has made it difficult to determine exactly how many mead-makers currently operate in New York. Its probably about a dozen. There are a few standalone mead-makers, like Helderberg Meadworks in Duanesburg, southwest of Albany; 810 Meadworks in Medina, between Rochester and Niagara Falls; and Salt Point Meadery, in Dutchess County in the Hudson Valley. Some wineries make mead under their own label, like Montezuma Winery near Seneca Falls. There are also cases like Earle Estates Meadery, which is housed within the CK Cellars winery in Penn Yan. The farm meadery license will apply to makers of mead, a honey-based beverage that has roughly the same alcohol strength as wine (typically 10 to 12 percent). It is often infused with fruits, spices, herbs or flowers to create different flavors. It would also apply to makers of braggot, a beverage made from honey and barley malt, and which typically has a strength closer to that of beer -- 5 or 6 percent alcohol. Mead or braggot under 8.5 percent alcohol also enjoys an additional benefit under existing law: Like hard cider, it can be sold at both grocery and convenience markets and in liquor or wine stores. (Wine and liquor must be sold at liquor store, while beer can only be sold at grocers or convenience marts.). As with the other farm beverage licenses, the farm meadery program is intended to boost New Yorks agriculture industry as well as the alcohol business. By creating this new license, we are building on New Yorks nation-leading craft beverage industry while capitalizing on our standing as the number one honey producer in the Northeast, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a news release about the new license. Don Cazentre writes about craft beer, wine, spirits and beverages for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook. Steven Gillette and Bruce Lane met in 1983. It didnt take long for them to realize they never wanted to be apart. The Upstate New York natives grew up in an era where it was hard to be openly gay, said Sara OToole, the couples niece. And when they met, marriage was not a legal option. But the men were not deterred: They were fiercely dedicated to each other, their niece said, and very much" in love. They helped me realize that when you love someone," OToole said, you love them no matter what. The couple spent 27 years together, living in Baldwinsville and Syracuse before retiring to Florida. They complimented each other, OToole said: Gillette cooked and Lane made dessert. Then, their time together was cut unexpectedly short. Gillette died in 2010 after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 57 years old. Lane died in 2018 of complications from the flu. He was 66. But the men found a way, in death, to help others and keep their story alive. Gillette and Lane left more than $2.5 million to the Central New York Community Foundation. Starting this year, the foundation will use the gift to help nine organizations in CNY and Florida: Binghamton University Foundation Jefferson Community College Foundation, Watertown Pet Project, a Florida charity that assists the people who are terminally ill, disabled, low income care for their pets. Poverello Center, a Syracuse clinic that primarily helps the uninsured and people on Medicaid. Broward House, a Florida charity that provides services to improve the quality of life of people with chronic health issues including HIV. Hospice of CNY CNY SPCA Humane Society of Broward County Gay and Lesbian Community Center of South Florida The organizations the couple chose to support reflect what they were passionate about in life: helping animals and people. Lane and Gillette loved their pet dogs like children, OToole said. They were strong social justice activists -- particularly Gillette, who once served as the chairman of the board of AIDS Community Resources (now ACR Health) in Syracuse and frequently penned letters to local newspapers. They were really passionate about caring for others who were perhaps less fortunate, OToole said. They were both very proud gay men and wanted to support others who maybe didnt have the support they should or couldve had. Lane was born in Maryland but grew up in Liverpool -- graduating from Liverpool High School in 1969, according to his obituary. He started his career at Paper Conversions in Syracuse after graduating from college. Lane worked as the companys chief financial officer before he retired in 2002. Gillette was raised in Copenhagen, a small village in Lewis County. For 23 years, he worked for United Technologies in Syracuse as a director of information and business systems, according to his obituary. He retired from Syroco in Baldwinsville in 2003. As a kid, OToole said her uncles taught her to be open and have fun. As an adult, she said her relationship with them grew into a friendship. When Gillette found out he had cancer, he asked his niece to be his trustee. OToole said she knew her uncles planned to leave money to the CNY Community Foundation, but she had no idea how large the gift would be. Her family was pleasantly surprised when they found out the couple had gifted $2.5 million to help others, OToole said. Part of the Bruce K. Lane and Steven E. Gillette Fund will be invested annually by the foundation, allowing the gift to grow over time. I originally thought it was a one-time gift, OToole said. I had no idea that it would benefit people and animals forever. Denise Adams, the CNY SPCAs shelter manager, said the money will help the organization expand its spay/neuter clinics and offer low-cost veterinary care to low-income pet lovers. This work ensures that all pets in our region are cared for properly," she said. Gillette and Lane were not attention seekers, OToole said. She said she thinks her uncles did not realize how meaningful their gift would be to the communities they loved. They just liked to help others, she said, and be together. When Steve died, it was hard for Bruce, OToole said. When Bruce died last year, there was some solace in knowing they were hopefully together." SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- It didnt take long for Mayor Ben Walshs new police chief to find himself on the wrong side of the cop union. After four months on the job, Chief Kenton Buckner has landed in the unions crosshairs, taking heat for comments hes made about officers, for efforts to encourage diversity in department leadership despite seniority, and for snubbing officers in an elevator by not saying hello. The simmering feud between police brass and union leadership burst into the public sphere this weekend, when scores of cops refused to march in the annual St. Patricks Parade. That left Buckner, in his first parade, surrounded by a sparse detail of cops, instead of the usual throng of uniformed officers. Buckner said he felt the protest was a result of policy changes hes making in the department, and angst those changes are causing among the rank-and-file. Hes rewriting use-of-force policies in the wake of several cop brutality lawsuits the city has lost and is reining in officer overtime. But union president Jeff Piedmonte said the tension stems from Buckners personality, not his policies. Officers were incensed by the chiefs comments to a community group in which he said there are some rotten apples in the department and he wants to weed them out. On WSYR radio Monday, Piedmonte offered several grievances to host Bob Lonsberry: In his first departmentwide email, Buckner said 20 percent of cops do 80 percent of the work; Buckner often doesnt greet officers with a hello on elevators or in hallways; Buckner doesnt routinely attend roll calls for patrol officers; Buckner once asked a newly hired woman about applying for a promotion without asking the same of the more senior men standing within earshot. All of that, Piedmonte said, shows a pattern of disrespect for Syracuse cops. Because of it, he wants Buckner gone, and is hoping the chief doesnt last until the end of the year. Buckner downplayed the dispute when questioned by reporters Wednesday. He described it as expected turbulence, and said there will be resistance whenever a new leader brings change. Hes planning to cut overtime spending, rewrite use-of-force policies and leave a higher percentage of officers working patrol shifts instead of more coveted jobs inside the Public Safety Building. The union is gearing up for a fight when it comes time to negotiate some such changes. The rift has laid bare a struggle for power atop the department, as a longtime union boss finds himself at odds with a chief brand new to town with no allies in the department. The feud has taken an ugly turn, and already the union is saying it wants Buckner out of the job. The unions displeasure puts extra pressure on Buckner and Mayor Ben Walsh, who hired him. Walsh picked Buckner over Joe Cecile, a longtime deputy chief who was the favorite in the department and the union. (He and Piedmonte joined the force together in 1985.) Walshs choice was a clear message that he sought to disrupt the status quo. Buckner will now be under the gun to prove Walsh picked right, by showing results and winning over the cops frustrated with his supposedly terse management style. *** Within the department, some officers refer to Buckner as the communitys chief." Hes been criticized for holding many public events with community groups early in his tenure, while meeting less frequently with his officers. Piedmonte said Buckner has attended few roll calls since joining the department and hasnt made an effort to get to know his men and women. While many community groups have responded positively to Buckners approach, officers in the department arent thrilled. Rumors about Buckner have run rampant in some city circles, including that hes not a real cop (he is) or that he cant carry a gun or badge (he can). Since he is new to the state, Buckner is serving as chief on a provisional basis until he gets certified as a New York officer, according to City Hall. He has one year from his hire date to get certified by the Department of Criminal Justice Services, according to a spokeswoman there. That involves several hundred hours of additional training, which he is taking. There are no state laws prohibiting Buckner from carrying a gun and badge or making an arrest while hes serving on a provisional basis. In an interview with Spectrum News, Piedmonte said the union doesnt think Buckner will complete the classroom and physical training by December and will then be ineligible to remain chief. The union has filed multiple grievances against Buckner already. Specific issues with Buckner primarily concern his attitude toward officers and a comment he made about there being some bad apples in the police department -- cops who are rotten to the core. Piedmonte asked Buckner to retract that statement, calling it upsetting, since Buckner wouldnt name which officers he thought were rotten. Buckner refused and said he stood by his full remarks, in which he said the department is like a family and nearly all the officers in the department were good cops. On Lonsberrys show, Piedmonte brought up Buckners email about 20 percent of cops doing 80 percent of the work. He said it was insulting and a bad way to start off a relationship with employees. Buckner said that comment was not specifically directed at the SPD, but rather referred to a general business axiom that says in any organization the biggest share of results come from a fraction of the workforce. Thats not to say a person in the 80 percent is not doing a good job, Buckner said. When you see that 20-80 split, those are your hard-chargers who are in fifth gear every day. Not everyone is Michael Jordan, which is what makes Michael special ... Its just a fact of reality that there always is separation in degrees of productivity in any workforce. Piedmonte also described an instance in which the chief once walked by a group of male officers and asked a younger female officer if she wanted to take the civil service exam necessary to be promoted to sergeant. Piedmonte said that upset some male officers. One of the girls was less than two weeks out of the police academy, and he asks her if shes going to take the sergeants exam. But he ignored her training officer whos obviously 10 years older than her. Its insulting," Piedmonte said. It puts the females in a bad position because theyre being singled out, asking if theyre going to take the test. And it makes the males feel like theyre not worth anything: Why isnt he asking me if I want to take the test? ... He cant acknowledge that walking past one group of people to another group and asking them to take the test is a problem." At a Common Council meeting Wednesday, Buckner said he is making incremental steps to increase diversity among the department and its leadership. He will promote 14 officers Friday. Of the five officers being promoted to lieutenant, two are women. All nine officers being promoted to sergeant are men. Piedmonte also said Buckner sometimes walks past officers without acknowledging them. On the elevator, if the officer gets on and hes on the elevator, youve got a 50-50 chance hes going to say hi to you, Piedmonte said. Detectives were doing background investigations, he got off the elevator, put his head down, walked past eight or 10 of them without saying a word. Its unheard of that the chief of police is going to treat people this way. Piedmonte added that its hard for anyone whos not in the department to understand what the officers are going through with the new chief. Buckner said he expected turbulence when he took over because hes making changes in the department. Its familiar territory for him. He experienced the same thing when he became chief in Little Rock, Ark., five years ago. He came there from Louisville and irked some officers when he recommended consolidating the departments two unions, one of which was exclusively for black officers. He faced backlash from black officers, who felt he was trying to dismantle their union. That led to discrimination lawsuits against him from some black cops. (Buckner is also black.) On Wednesday, Buckner laid out some of the changes hes making to reduce overtime hours, which cost nearly $9 million in the last fiscal year. Twenty-two officers doubled their salaries last year, due in part to large sums of overtime. Piedmonte insists the dispute has nothing to do with overtime and is instead about Buckners refusal to respect the officers. He also said the union is prepared to protect its members legal rights, earned through negotiations and collective bargaining. The chief just doesnt seem to want to have a relationship with anybody, and thats, I think, the biggest problem, he said. He doesnt want to get to know who his officers are and doesnt show them respect. Piedmonte did credit Buckner with standing by an officer after a recent officer-involved shooting, although he said the case was cut-and-dry. Mayor Walsh declined an interview request about the situation. In a statement, he said he appreciates the officers and the chief. Chief Buckner and members of our police department have tough jobs to do, and I appreciate their work, Walsh said. Change is difficult, but it needs to happen. Its occurring across city government. I know Chief Buckner strongly supports our officers, and so do I. We all want what is best for the people of our city. *** Buckner took the job in December and set to work building support among residents immediately. Before he started on the job he hosted a community forum at City Hall Commons. Hes attended meetings of Tomorrows Neighborhoods Today and spoken to many active neighborhood groups. Hes made himself accessible to reporters. Thats won him favor among some groups that have had strained relationships with previous brass. On Saturday, the National Action Network is organizing a rally in support of Buckner. NAN President Twiggy Billue, who organized the event, said shes been impressed with Buckners responsiveness. Hes been consistent with coming to events, calling us up, inviting us to participate and I get a call right back when I reach out, she said. Thats a different responsiveness than what Im used to in a chief of police. The rally is also aimed at supporting Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens, who was in charge of the yearlong search process that led to Buckners hiring. Mayor Walsh had final say on who would get the job. But Billue said shes seen and heard more negative comments directed at Owens for Buckners hiring than at Walsh. Its not Ben that they blamed, she said. They blamed Sharon. And Im standing behind my sister." During the search, city hall staff held dozens of meetings with community groups to solicit input on what people wanted in a chief. The most popular response, by a long shot, was improved community policing and a better relationship between cops and neighbors. SYRACUSE, NY -- Curtis Tall Bucks McDowell combined two passions in his life -- working with troubled kids and writing and performing hip hop music. McDowell, a father of three young children, died over the weekend at age 35, according to several friends and fellow musicians. The cause is not known. His death is being mourned throughout the music community in Syracuse, where he was a well-known hip hop artist. He won the Syracuse Area Music Awards (SAMMY) in 2014 for best hip hop /rap album (Angels & Demons) in 2014. His style was real -- he didnt fabricate nothing, said Warren Nipper, aka DJ Geda, who often performed with McDowell. He basically gave messages in all his raps, uplifting stuff. In addition to writing and performing, he recorded, produced and engineered his own music and that of other artists in his home studio in Eastwood. McDowell, a graduate of Nottingham High School who attended Buffalo State, also worked as a student support specialist, employed by Onondaga County. He was assigned to the Syracuse City School District. He took his experience and put it both in his raps and in his work with kids, Nipper said. "He saw troubles and turned that pain into his music." Along with his hip hop act, McDowell occasionally rapped while fronting the Brownskin Band, a well known R&B group in the city. He was definitely well established in the local music community, said Joe Driscoll, a Syracuse common councilor and fellow musician who has also worked with Brownskin. His records were getting a lot of love in the local hip hop scene. And, Driscoll said, he did a lot of mentoring with kids. McDowell was scheduled to appear along with artists such as Emanuel Washington and DJ Big Boy in a Hip Hop Night March 28 at Funk 'n Waffles at 307 S. Clinton St. in Armory Square. That show will go on and there will likely be tributes to McDowell during the night, said Ian LaRochelle, aka Ian Brutal, who worked with McDowell on the music scene and often helped him book gigs. In addition, Funk 'n Waffles will host a tribute/celebration of life for McDowell on May 2, with many local artists participating, LaRochelle said. More details are coming. That will be the night that we come together to pay our tribute, LaRochelle said. McDowell, joined by LaRochelle, appears on an upcoming Stick To Syracuse podcast that was recorded March 1. In it, McDowell talks about local hip hop, his style and discusses his role as a local mentor. The podcast will be posted at syracuse.com on Monday, March 25. Note: The following video from Curtis Tall Bucks McDowell contains language that some viewers may find offensive: To the Editor: How many mass shootings have we suffered over the past few decades? How many lives lost? How many lives permanently changed or destroyed? We take pride in being a world leader, and enjoy living in this land of opportunity and promise. Yet we continue to fall prey to massacres perpetrated by our own citizens upon others of us who are at school, work, play or even at worship. It follows a pattern the outcry, the mourning, the discussion about what must be done to prevent this from ever happening again. Nothing is done, because the gun lobby is too strong. And too many of our career politicians know that they must vote in line with the power brokers who control the money and the votes. New Zealand experienced a tragedy, and its leaders acted. Within a week, they instituted a ban of assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons. Will it prevent another horrible incident like this happening again? Sadly, probably not. But this definitive action will be one approach of the many that must be taken to make sure these mass murders dont continue to devastate our communities. Invariably, the gun lobby will protest about their protection under the Constitution. We all have the right to bear arms, and that is a right we must fight to protect. The wise framers of our Constitution knew it was important for a citizenry to be able to protect itself from assault. A citizen should have the right to possess their musket or breech-loader, and to use it to protect home, family or themselves. We are guaranteed that right today, to use our pistol or rifle to protect ourselves. But the wise men who drafted our great Constitution had no conception of a gun that could be used as a weapon for maximizing the kill in a crowd. The threat of using a gun is often as effective as actually using one. A trained shooter can use his pistol or rifle to ward off danger, and this is as it should be. But the purpose of semi-automatics and assault rifles is to maximize the kill to extinguish the life or wound as many people as possible in the most efficient way. The term assault rifle describes its purpose it is not a weapon used for protection; it is a weapon used for someone on the offensive; someone whose intent is to kill or wound as many as he can. The average citizen has no need for one. New Zealand showed wisdom in acting quickly to try to make sure the tragedy they experienced never happens again. Sad to say, we have had many, many such tragedies. Our solution is to continue to debate the issue and do nothing ... until the next tragedy. And then, once again, we will have the outcry, the mourning and the discussion about what must be done. And then we will do nothing, again. Anne K. Richter Syracuse WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump continued Wednesday to attack the late Sen. John McCain, even as a growing number of Republican senators rose to McCain's defense, calling him a war hero and a patriot - although most were careful not to criticize the president directly. During a White House event at a manufacturing facility in Lima, Ohio, on Wednesday, Trump lashed out at McCain, saying, "I endorsed him at his request, and I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which as president I had to approve." "I don't care about this," Trump continued. "I didn't get a thank-you. That's OK. We sent him on the way. But I wasn't a fan of John McCain." Presidents don't "approve" the funerals of members of Congress. To lie in state, one needs the approval of Congress. The funeral would have been approved by the Washington National Cathedral. Trump did approve the military transportation of McCain's remains from Arizona to Washington, military pallbearers, a band and military horses. Comments like Wednesday's and those that have preceded it were too much for Sen. Johnny Isakson. The Georgia Republican called the duration of the White House's tribute to McCain "unthinkable" last year, after it lowered its flag to recognize the death of McCain on a Saturday, then raised it again by Monday. Trump rejected his staff's suggestions and refused to follow a tradition of leaving the flag at half-staff until the senator was laid to rest. Isakson has said that moment and others fit a troubling pattern, and after an escalation of bitter words from the president this week, the senator took to the airwaves in a rare moment for his party: a stinging rebuke of Trump. "It's deplorable what he said," Isakson said Wednesday on Georgia Public Broadcasting, as he decried the public criticism of McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent years in brutal captivity in Vietnam. "There aren't Democratic casualties or Republican casualties on the battlefield," he said. His comments follow an interview with the Bulwark, a conservative news website. "I just want to lay it on the line, that the country deserves better, the McCain family deserves better. I don't care if he's president of United States, owns all the real estate in New York, or is building the greatest immigration system in the world," Isakson told the site. "Nothing is more important than the integrity of the country and those who fought and risked their lives for all of us." Trump unloaded on the legacy of McCain, who died of brain cancer last year, in several tweets this week. On Tuesday, he attacked McCain's vote against repealing Obamacare. "I think that's a disgrace, plus there are other things," Trump said in the Oval Office. "I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be." Meghan McCain, a co-host of ABC's "The View," blasted Trump and defended her father on Wednesday. Her father "would think it was hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death," she said. Trump's attacks have also appeared to unleash trolls targeting the McCain family. Soon after the president's Oval Office remarks, Cindy McCain posted a profanity-laced message she received on Facebook. A woman called John McCain "traitorous" and celebrated his death. "I want to make sure all of you could see how kind and loving a stranger can be," Cindy McCain wrote on Twitter, referring to the woman. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, rallied to McCain's defense Wednesday. "I can't understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God," Romney wrote on Twitter. Sen. Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican appointed to McCain's former seat, also defended the former senator. "Everyone should give him and his family the respect, admiration, and peace they deserve," she wrote on Twitter. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., a Trump ally, praised McCain in a tweet but did not address the president's attacks against him. Isakson, chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, is a general supporter of Trump but often extends more criticisms of the president than many Republican lawmakers. After last year's controversy over the flag raising, lowering and re-raising, he took to the Senate floor to blast the perceived insult to McCain, although he did not single out the president in his remarks. "Anybody who in any way tarnishes the reputation of John McCain deserves a whipping because most of those who would do the wrong thing about John McCain didn't have the guts to do the right thing when it was their turn," he said. The focus has since narrowed to Trump. Isakson watched Trump's Tuesday remarks and their impact. These kids are out there listening to the president of the United States talk that way about the most decorated senator in history who is dead, it just sets the worst tone possible, he told the Bulwark. NEW YORK (AP) A Lithuanian man who duped Google and Facebook into transferring over $100 million into accounts he controlled pleaded guilty to wire fraud Wednesday. Evaldas Rimasauskas, 50, of Vilnius, Lithuania, entered the plea in federal court in Manhattan, where Judge George B. Daniels set a July 24 sentencing date. The charge could carry as many as 30 years in prison and a fine of as much as $1 million or twice the crime's proceeds. The plea deal he reached with prosecutors said Rimasauskas faces almost certain deportation once he finishes behind bars. Rimasauskas was extradited in August 2017 to New York from Lithuania after his arrest there in March 2017. He has been detained since. According to court documents, Google sent over $23 million and Facebook nearly $100 million to bank accounts he controlled. Google, of Mountain View, California, has said it has recouped its money. Facebook, of Menlo Park, California, has said it recovered most of its money. According to a plea agreement, Rimasauskas has agreed to forfeit $49.7 million, including money in financial accounts in Cyprus and Latvia. The plea agreement also recommends that he be sent to prison for at least nine years. In a release, U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said Rimasauskas devised "a blatant scheme to fleece U.S. companies out of $100 million, and then siphoned those funds to bank accounts around the globe." "Rimasauskas thought he could hide behind a computer screen halfway across the world while he conducted his fraudulent scheme, but as he has learned, the arms of American justice are long, and he now faces significant time in a U.S. prison," Berman said. In court, Rimasauskas said he carried out the scheme from October 2013 to October 2016. Prosecutors said he created a company in Latvia that bore the same name as an Asian-based computer hardware manufacturer and then sent fraudulent phishing emails to Google and Facebook to steer money to his accounts that were supposed to go to the legitimate hardware company. Once the money arrived, Rimasauskas transferred funds to bank accounts in Latvia, Cyprus, Lithuania, Hungary and Hong Kong, prosecutors said. He then used forged invoices, contracts and letters to make it appear that executives at Facebook and Google had authorized the transactions, the government said. I fully understand these actions were fraudulent, Rimasauskas told Daniels through an interpreter. Lucas Popes Return of the Obra Dinn won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game at the 21st annual Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards tonight. The ceremony, which honored some of the most innovative and excellent independent games of the past year, took place as part of the 2019 Game Developers Conference (GDC) at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. In addition to the Grand Prize, Return of the Obra Dinn also received top honors for Excellence in Narrative. Return of the Obra Dinn is an innovative and uniquely stylized murder mystery from Lucas Pope, creator of 2013s acclaimed Papers, Please, which took home the IGF Seumas McNally Grand Prize during the 16th Annual IGF Awards. The full presentation of the Independent Games Festival Awards (IGF Awards), can be viewed on the GDC Twitch channel. Overall, the 2019 IGF Awards featured an eclectic and impressive group of winners. Excellence in Visual Art winner Mirror Drop, from developer Ian Lilley, is a psychedelic 3D puzzle game where players maneuver a reflective sphere in a world full of mirrors, over-saturated colors and infinities. The Excellence in Audio award went to Arbitrary Metrics Paratopic, a horror-tinged adventure game that experiments with non-linear, fragmented storytelling. Opus Magnum by Zachtronics, the open-ended puzzle game where players design and build machines to carry out alchemical processes, earned the Excellence in Design award. The Nuovo Award, which honors the title that makes jurors think differently about games as a medium, went to developer Cassie McQuater for Black Room, a browser-based narrative game about falling asleep while on a computer connected to the internet. Players are put into the role of an insomniac on the verge of sleep, moving through shifting states of consciousness, joined by a cast of classic female video game sprites while they move through hallucinatory, pixelated landscapes. The Best Student Game Award was given to Bahiyya Khan, Claire Meekel, Tim Flusk and Abi Meekel for their work on after HOURS, a full motion video (FMV) game about a night spent alone with a young woman suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder and experiencing the world from her unique perspective. The Audience Award was given to the hand-crafted navigation puzzle game, ETHEREAL by Nonsense Arts developers Nicolas Recabarren and Tomas Batista. The [email protected] Gaming Heroes Award was awarded posthumously to Jerry Lawson, inventor of the first cartridge-based home video game system, for his contributions to games and the industry. Finally, the alt.ctrl.GDC Award for the title nominated as the best from the GDC 2019 on-site showcase of alternative control schemes and interactions in games, went to the co-operative ship-sailing survival game, HOT SWAP: All Hands On Deck by Peter Gyory and Clement Zheng. All IGF titles, including both finalists and winners, are playable for any GDC pass holder at the IGF Pavilion located on the GDC Expo Floor in San Francisco's Moscone Center through Friday, March 22nd. The winners of the 21st annual IGF Awards are: Excellence in Visual Art ($3,000) Mirror Drop (Ian Lilley) Excellence in Audio ($3,000) Paratopic (Arbitrary Metric) Excellence in Design ($3,000) Opus Magnum (Zachtronics) Excellence in Narrative ($3,000) Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope) Nuovo Award ($3,000) Black Room (Cassie McQuater) Best Student Game ($3,000) after HOURS (Bahiyya Khan, Claire Meekel, Tim Flusk, Abi Meekel) Audience Award ($3,000) ETHEREAL (Nonsense Arts - Nicolas Recabarren and Tomas Batista) [email protected] Gaming Heroes Award Jerry Lawson alt.ctrl.GDC Award ($3,000) HOT SWAP: All Hands On Deck (Peter Gyory, Clement Zheng) Seumas McNally Grand Prize ($30,000) Return of the Obra Dinn (Lucas Pope) The IGF which includes the two-day Independent Games Summit as part of GDC was established in 1998 by the UBM Game Network to recognize the best independent game developers and encourage creativity and excellence in independent games. Organizers would like to thank the generous supporters of this years IGF, including [email protected] (Platinum Sponsor), Valve (Platform Sponsor) and Gamasutra.com (IGF Media Partner). For more information on the Independent Games Festival, please visit the official IGF website. For more details on GDC 2019 visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa Why it matters: Court documents in the case against Michael Cohen show the FBI was authorized to use and collect almost every detail of his digital life. This includes his email accounts, address books, cookies, search history, GPS location, cloud file storage, and more. Cohen, the former fixer and personal attorney for President Trump, has been convicted on several charges of fraud and lying to Congress. To obtain evidence for these convictions, the FBI surveilled almost every aspect of his digital life. This week, almost 1,000 pages of search warrant applications were unsealed giving new details to what information the FBI had access to. They are available in eight separate exhibits: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, and Part 8. Some portions of the document are redacted, but they show that Mueller was watching Cohen more than a year before he was charged. In addition to standard channels like email and GPS data, the FBI was also authorized to unlock Cohen's mobile devices using his body. They were allowed "to press the fingers of the user of the Subject Devices to the devices' Touch ID sensor, or hold the Subject Devices in front of the user's face to activate the Face ID sensor, in an attempt to unlock the devices for the purpose of executing the search authorization by this warrant." This is a relatively new area and the legality of these searches is still in question. Privacy advocates worry about violations of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, while law enforcement officials see it as an avenue to get useful information when a subject is not cooperating. In Cohen's case, the warrant stated that it was necessary to force him to unlock his phone because "the government may not otherwise be able to access the data." The documents also show that law enforcement officials used the infamous Stingray triggerfish device to track Cohen's precise location. The case against Cohen was not just confined to the United States. Investigators in the Southern District of New York tried to obtain information on Cohen from Google, but this request was initially denied since some of the data was stored on overseas servers. During the investigation, the CLOUD Act was passed which allowed such overseas data to be obtained in some scenarios. Law enforcement officials went back to Google with an updated warrant and were able to obtain the information they wanted. Lead Photo Credit - Mary Altaffer/Associated Press The YouTube duel between PewDiePie and T-Series just got more intense. On Monday morning, Indian YouTube channel T-Series got ahead of Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie for more than two hours, with T-Series getting 1,100 more subscribers than his competition. This means PewDiePie, who has reigned supreme as the YouTuber with the most subscribers for six years straight now, lost his title briefly to the Bollywood production company. The competition between the two YouTube channels has been so ardent that it has warranted a real-time countdown. As of writing, PewDiePie has regained his lead with 90.227 million subscribers and counting while T-Series currently has 90.219 million and counting. PewDiePie vs T-Series The feud between PewDiePie and T-Series began around six months ago. Whoever gets to 100 million subscribers first will reign supreme. T-Series is an unlikely challenger. At the beginning of 2018, T-Series became one of the fastest growing YouTube channels with 30 million subscribers. Its follower count jumped to 70 million subscriber in just six months. Social Blade, a website that contains subscriber predictions, projected that T-Series will gain 100 million subscribers by May 2019. Meanwhile, Social Blade also predicted that PewDiePie will gain 98 million subscribers around the same time, which puts T-Series ahead by a few millions. The Bollywood channel has surpassed the Swedish YouTuber at least three or four times, but it has never maintained its lead. Unlike PewDiePie, T-Series is a record label and production house. The content that T-Series uploads are music videos that have gotten popular in India, a country that has recently provided free internet and boasts a population of 1.339 billion as of 2017. The person who runs T-Series is Bhushan Kumar, the son of record label founder Gulshan Kumar, who was killed in 1997. Khamar tweeted to his audience to help propel the channel to become the most subscribed channel in history. "We're on the brink of becoming the world's biggest @YouTube channel. We can make history. We can make India win. Subscribe to @TSeries #BharatWinsYouTube," he said. PewDiePie's Notoriety PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, is best known for his brand of comedy and his gaming videos. However, his fame is largely controversial. For instance, in the spirit of competition, PewDiePie created a diss track against T-Series and some Indians took it to mean that he was insulting their country and their culture. What's more, PewDiePie's channel has been criticized for some of its content. According to The Guardian, the channel has often been in the news because of a novelty or a scandal. For instance, in 2018 he drew heavy criticism when he paid two Indian men to hold a sign that said "Death to all Jews." Months later, he drew criticism again when he apparently mentioned the "N" word while playing a video game and streaming it live. PewDiePie has apologized for the content in his videos, but recently, his brand was once again dragged into controversy when the suspect in the New Zealand shootings mentioned his channel in a video and said, "Subscribe to PewDiePie!" In a recent tweet, PewDiePie thanked his fans for the 90 million subscribers, but said he feels weird celebrating. He then said he felt sickened that his name was uttered by the suspect in the shootings and sympathized with the families of the victims. The Swedish gamer's friends and family came to his defense and told him he had nothing to do with the attack. "You had nothing to do with this. Full stop," his fellow YouTuber Markiplier tweeted. Markiplier, whose real name is Mark Fischbach, said the shooter "is only trying to create division." "Anyone that believes or spreads the message that you were associated with this in any way is doing exactly what the shooter wants," he added. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released alarming new data on the HIV epidemic in the United States. In a new report, the public health agency reveals that about eight in 10 new infections come from people who are not receiving the care they need. HIV Transmitted By People Who Are Undiagnosed, Untreated HIV, which stands for human immunodeficiency virus, is transmitted through certain body fluids. It attacks the body's immune system, preventing it from fighting off infections. If left untreated, HIV could lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS. While there is still no cure for HIV, the virus can be controlled and suppressed through medication. The CDC says that taking HIV medicine as prescribed can make the amount of virus in the body very low, allowing the infected patient to stay healthy and prevent transmission. Getting care is the key to ending the epidemic, but many who have the virus might not know. The CDC estimates that only half of the people who have HIV are in care and are virally suppressed. "Some of that is because there are still people who don't know they have HIV, there are people who have HIV that aren't accessing the treatment necessary, and some of the people who are eligible for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), this pill that prevents you from getting HIV, aren't getting it," explained Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention. Ending The HIV Epidemic In The US The government is rolling out a new initiative to control and end the HIV epidemic in the United States. The CDC hopes to cut the number of new infections by at least 90 percent in 10 years. The public health agency says that it can be done through immediate and effective treatment. "Diagnose, treat, protect, and respond: These are the key strategies in our historic initiative to end the HIV epidemic in America by engaging all the people at risk into comprehensive prevention strategies," stated Robert R. Redfield, CDC director. The new initiative recommends that everyone aged 13 to 64 should be tested at least once. People who are more sexually active or at a higher risk of infection should be tested more frequently. Those who have been diagnosed with HIV should take medication as prescribed in order to prevent transmitting the virus to others and to avoid experiencing health complications. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Windows 7 is nearing its end of life, and Microsoft has announced when it's shuttering support and security updates for the operating system. Mark the date: It's Jan. 14, 2020. Windows 7's Last Day Of Support Recently, Microsoft launched a Windows 7 patch (aka KB4493132) that comes with a new prompt that reminds or, in some cases, nags users to upgrade to Windows 10. It also has a warning that tells users that security updates and the like will stop coming starting on Jan. 14. "After 10 years of servicing, January 14, 2020, is the last day Microsoft will offer security updates for computers running Windows 7 SP1," the summary of the patch notes reads. Microsoft promised 10 years' worth of support for Windows 7 when it launched the OS back in October 2009. Now, as the company explains, it's discontinuing any form of assistance and software updates so that it can focus on "supporting newer technologies and great new experiences." Support for Internet Explorer on Windows 7 is also ending on the same day. It's worth mentioning that Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise users can avail Extended Security Updates to prolong support until 2023. No Rush To Upgrade For those who are still on the fence about upgrading to Windows 10, there's plenty of time left before the deadline arrives. On top of that, users can even put it off well beyond Jan. 14 since the option to upgrade will still be available then, though it's not recommended because of the security risks it entails. On a related note, Microsoft has been slowly chipping away at Windows 7 as of late. As evidence to that, Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center have lost features here and there not too long ago. It's no secret that the company has been pushing users to switch to Windows 10, telling them that it's for security purposes. Despite that, some people still want to stick with the old OS. It was only recently that Windows 10 managed to overtake the Windows 7 as the most popular OS in the world, after all. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A new study has shown that multiple versions of reality can exist at the same time, at least at the quantum level, the world of subatomic particles. Researchers were able to show that two people seeing the same particle can come up with different conclusions about its state and still both be correct. Wigner's Friend In 1961, Eugene Wigner, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963, introduced a thought experiment that later became known as "Wigner's friend." It involves two people observing a photon, a particle of light. When one observer who is in the isolated laboratory measures the photon, the particle's polarization, or the axis on which it spins, is either vertical or horizontal. Before the photon is measured, however, the photon displays both polarization at the same time, existing in a superposition of two possible states. The particle assumes fixed polarization once the person in the lab measures it, but for someone outside of the laboratory who is not aware of the results of the measurements, the unmeasured photon remains in a state of superposition. This outsider's observation then diverges from the reality of the person inside the lab, but neither of the conflicting observations is wrong, according to the laws of quantum mechanics. Testing The Wigner's Friend Scenario In new experiments reported in the preprint journal arXiv on Feb. 13, Martin Ringbauer, from University of Innsbruck in Austria, replicated the conditions described in the thought experiment. They designated two "laboratories" for the experiments and introduced two pairs of entangled photons, entangled particles linked in a way that actions performed on one affect the other even when the two particles are separated by distances. The researchers also introduced four observers in the scenario designated as "Alice," "Bob," and a "friend" of each. The friends were the ones located inside the lab, while Alice and Bob were outside the lab. The interference experiment doubled the scenario in that of the Wigner's friend, and it was able to replicate the results. "In a state-of-the-art 6-photon experiment, we here realise this extended Wigner's friend scenario, experimentally violating the associated Bell-type inequality by 5 standard deviations. This result lends considerable strength to interpretations of quantum theory already set in an observer-dependent framework and demands for revision of those which are not," the researchers wrote. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Two people have died in the last week in electric scooter crashes in California, prompting new safety concerns as the mobility devices become more common on city streets.A 53-year-old man died in San Diego after he lost control and hit a tree. The victim, who had been riding on the sidewalk, suffered serious head injuries, police said. He was not wearing a helmet.A 41-year-old man on an electric scooter died in Santa Monica last week when he fell off a scooter and was hit by a car.In Sacramento, where the Jump bike and scooter company recently introduced 100 motor-assisted rental scooters, there have been early reports of some riders falling when traversing midtown railroad tracks, and one reported injury crash in the street two weeks ago near Memorial Auditorium.Jump is the sole e-scooter rental company in Sacramento. Several other scooter companies are active in a handful of cities around the state and have expressed interest in bringing their services to the Capital City.The Sacramento City Council on Tuesday is set to adopt regulations controlling those companies. The regulations would include fees the city would charge the companies to operate in Sacramento. The city would then use that revenue to build parking spaces that can be used by scooters and bikes.The city rules also would control the number of scooters allowed on city streets.Kirin Kumar of WalkSacramento, an advocacy group for alternatives to cars, said the scooter crashes should prompt officials and scooter rental companies to engage in a deeper review of risks, as well as discussions of more rider education and training.Many people have had little or no experience riding scooters, especially motorized scooters, he said. The smaller front wheel likely makes them less stable than bicycles, Kumar said.It is a new potential safety concern, both for users of the devices, but also for drivers and pedestrians, he said. We need to be talking about the fact that we are seeing a litany of new forms for transportation (devices), but still sharing the same limited right of way.California law requires electric scooters be ridden in the street, not on sidewalks. It limits scooter use to streets where the speed limit is 25 mph or slower, unless the street has a designated lane for bikes and scooters.Notably, a recent change to California state law makes it legal for adults to ride a motorized scooter without a safety helmet.Sacramento Police on social media recently posted rules and advice about scooter usage, saying users are not allowed to ride two abreast, cannot be under the influence of alcohol and must use hand signals to alert others about turns and stops.Uber, the parent company for Jump scooters, said it is looking into ways to keep riders safe.We are very focused on safety as we introduce new mobility options like bikes and scooters, Uber said in an emailed statement toWe are currently teaming up with road safety experts on ways to contribute to safer roads, such as promoting the use of helmets among our customers, as well as providing in-app resources to encourage safe riding when using JUMP products.The company provides free helmets when it launches in a new city. In Sacramento we gave away 500 helmets on day one, and had brand ambassadors on the street for several weeks handing out helmets and providing tips on safe riding, the company said.The company and city of Sacramento have placed a safe riding video on the citys website. Jumps smartphone app includes safety tips. The company has posted its own safety tip website that instructs riders to make sure they understand the scooters braking systems and apply the brakes gradually.Epidemiologists nationally are begging to analyze scooter crashes.The University of California, Los Angeles, recently conducted a study based on scooter injuries at two L.A. hospitals and found that head injuries were the most common injury, followed by broken bones. Lesser injuries were less likely to involve a hospital visit. Several scooter riders hit and injured pedestrians, but most crashes involved the scooter rider running into an object. In some cases, the scooter was hit by a car.Recently, at the request of the city of Austin, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched an epidemiological study of risk factors for e-scooter crashes. That starts, CDC officials said, with finding ways to count the number and type of injury crashes. Preliminary data is expected to be released this spring.Austin has had electric scooters in use for a year, Austin Public Health official Jeff Taylor said, and city officials were getting reports of injuries. I refer to this as an outbreak investigation, Taylor said. We dont know where, how, what type, how severe. This is basic epidemiology about who, where and when.Taylor said early analysis suggests a lack of helmet use is leading to head injuries and that many crashes involve just the scooter, not another vehicle. They may hit a pothole, a root on the street, some loose gravel, they may try to use their cellphone.He has rented scooters and said balancing the device is a learning experience.In a statement tothe CDC said: CDC expects that the findings of the investigation in Austin can be applied to other cities and states to be able to help prevent injuries related to electric scooters. Irish outfit WarDucks has raised $3.8 million to expand its studio and develop a location-based augmented reality game. As reported by VentureBeat, the Dublin-based developer secured funding from investors including EQT Ventures and Suir Valley Ventures. In a notable move, the studio has brought in Doom co-creator John Romero to help shape its mystery project. The veteran designer will serve as a creative consultant, and will offer advice on how the build-out the augmented reality title. WarDucks has also hired Doug Kaufman of Civilization II fame as its lead designer, and has appointed The Elder Scrolls Online writer Lawrence Schick as its new narrative lead. Speaking about the deal, WarDucks chief exec and founder Nikki Lannen -- who previously served as a leading member of Facebook's gaming team -- claimed the cash injection will allow the studio to capitalize on the "huge opportunity" presenting itself in the augmented reality game space. Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission Mosaic Fertilizer recently stopped draining a giant threatened lake of acidic water atop its waste pile in St. James Parish that some feared could break open and release its hazardous contents to harm surrounding swamps. The company says it's confident water levels in the lake have now dropped to a depth that make the remaining water very unlikely to escape the troubled lake even if a crack opens up in the mountainous gypsum pile. +5 Mosaic halts pumping aimed at stabilizing troubled acid lake while new storage reservoir readied Faced with rainy skies and shrinking room in a key reservoir, Mosaic Fertilizer has halted pumping out a lake filled with acid water, at least But others aren't ready to give the "all clear" signal just yet. State regulators said they'd prefer that Mosaic keep pumping down the lake, but don't have the authority to require it to do so because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in charge. Some experts contacted by The Advocate have also questioned the underlying analyses driving the decisions of the company and regulators because so much remains unknown. Rune Storesund, a civil and geotechnical engineer at the University of California-Berkeley, said that "given the uncertainties associated with this situation, the prudent approach would be to lower the water levels so that" the safety level is, at a minimum, nearly double what the company says its current efforts have attained. With a few brief stoppages since early to mid-January, the company had been pumping down the water in the 140-acre lake through large siphons into neighboring lakes on the 960-acre waste pile at the company's "Uncle Sam" complex outside Convent. The efforts were part of an emergency bid to remove weight from the lake's northern containment wall and halt unexpected slippage of the 200-foot-high slope of waste gypsum that helps contain the lake. +23 Potential disaster at huge St. James waste pile has crews racing to prevent massive wall collapse CONVENT Hundreds of trucks a day will be traveling this week through a mushy cane field north of Mosaic Fertilizer's huge phosphogypsum wast With the pumping and the construction of an earthen berm designed to brake the slipping wall now finished, Mosaic says it's now preparing for the next phase of its response. This involves building a kind of levee through the length of the rectangular lake to separate the remaining water from the north wall, further reducing pressure on the slipping slope of gypsum. The gypsum is a largely unusable waste byproduct from Mosaic's production of phosphoric acid, which is used to make fertilizer for corn and other crops. The lake, which rests inside of bowl carved from the top of the massive mound of waste gypsum, contains trace amounts of heavy metals and radioactive elements. Records show Mosaic has been presenting its plans to regulators since the emergency started. It's not clear, though, if any state or federal regulatory agency monitoring the emergency response specifically authorized Mosaic to stop pumping out the lake. "We would not do it if we didn't have permission to do it," Callie Neslund, Mosaic spokeswoman, said Friday evening, shortly before the halt occurred. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up But Greg Langley, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Quality, said the state agency would like the pumping to continue, at least while the slipping gypsum wall is still moving. It's been moving about 0.3 to 0.5 inches per day, on average. He said the EPA is the lead agency responding to the two-month-long emergency. Mosaic remains under a consent order reached with the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice in 2015 over how the company previously handled the acidic water, known as process water, at plants and in Louisiana and Florida and also prepared for long-term closure of its waste piles. Mosaic agreed to pay a $2 billion settlement of longstanding alleged violations. An EPA spokeswoman said Tuesday that Mosaic didn't need the federal agency's blessing to halt pumping into the siphons draining the lake. "Mosaic is not required to get EPA authorization to stop siphoning," said Jennah Durant, EPA spokeswoman. According to Mosaic's reports to regulators, the company has lowered the lake's water level by 13.4 feet since it started pumping in early January and reached a key threshold water level for safety, at slightly less than 180 feet above sea level. At that height, the acid water about 400 million gallons in all remains 30 feet deep at its deepest point in the lake. That is believed to be below the depth that any potential crack could slice open the gypsum pile's wall. Company officials and regulators can't say yet when the movement will halt, but Mosaic says daily monitoring data show the wall's movement has slowed. EPA agrees with this assessment and, in late February, declared in a letter that the risk of a catastrophic failure of the gypsum wall and a release into the swamps is negligible. +5 Risk falling for potential environmental disaster from slipping waste pile, Mosaic officials say Officials with Mosaic Fertilizer, which owns an unstable pile of waste phosphogypsum and a 140-acre lake of acidic water atop it, are encourag Storesund, the executive director of the U.C. Berkeley's Center for Catastrophic Risk Management who is also a licensed civil engineer in Louisiana, has questioned this assessment. Based on the publicly available reports on the Mosaic gypsum pile, Storesund said, it does not appear Mosaic or regulators have done the kind of advanced, and expensive, analysis to model with greater precision what is happening with the gypsum pile. He called the EPA's declaration that the risk of catastrophic collapse is negligible "a very dangerous line of belief" because the agency can't yet answer threshold questions about what is happening. "You'll be lucky, or it's not going to end well," Storesund said. Stupp Corp. said Thursday it is expanding its pipe manufacturing facilities in north Baton Rouge and hiring 128 people, a project driven by increased demand for oil and gas pipelines tied to an ongoing boom in shale formation production. The move comes three years after Stupp laid off 114 workers amid a slumping oil industry, when Stupp said its industry was going through a rough period. The company is spending $22 million upgrading its two steel pipe manufacturing plants at its site on Ronaldson Road in north Baton Rouge, near the Baton Rouge Zoo. The companys last major expansion was in 2009, when it spent $90 million on a new spiral weld mill, a move that doubled its workforce to roughly 400. Privately-owned Stupp currently employs 338 at the site, and the new hiring is expected to lift that number to 466. The company previously employed 600 at the site in 2012, when oil was trading above $100 a barrel. At the time of the layoff three years ago, oil was trading at $33 per barrel. Pipe fabricator Stupp Corp. of Baton Rouge laying off 114 workers with slowdown in oil and gas industry Stupp Corp., a Baton Rouge-based pipe fabrication company, said it will lay off 114 workers because of low demand for pipeline from the oil an The price of oil has been increasing sharply since Christmas Eve, when it was at just over $42 per barrel and is now hovering near $60. That rebound follows a 44 percent plunge from a high in October of just over $76 per barrel. The jobs announced Thursday will have an average annual salary of $60,567, plus benefits, according to Louisiana Economic Development. The expansion will create 296 indirect jobs. Construction activity will support 93 jobs. Ultimately any decision like this to make a major capital investment comes down to the economics, said Chip McAlpin, Stupps vice president for corporate strategy and development. The economics of the oil and gas and associated business really justifies the investment. The vast majority of Stupps business is making oil and gas transmission pipelines, McAlpin said. The boom in shale oil and gas production in recent years, especially in Texas, has dramatically increased the demand for pipelines, as drillers in west Texas fields are unable to get the product out fast enough. The bottlenecks have led companies to flare large amounts of natural gas and take steep price discounts. As a result of that it drives the economics for pipeline growth because theres more product than there is available that exists to get to market or to get to processing plants, McAlpin said. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Louisiana Economic Development promised the company a $500,000 performance-based grant to offset the cost of roadway improvements for increased truck traffic associated with the expansion. The company also is expected to receive FastStart workforce benefits, as well as incentives through the states Quality Jobs and Industrial Tax Exemption programs. McAlpin declined to comment on whether the company was considering another site for the facility, but the Baton Rouge site is the only place where St. Louis-based parent company Stupp Bros manufactures oil and gas pipes. It also has facilities in Kentucky, where it makes girders for bridges, and others that make products for construction projects. Stupp also has been affected by President Donald Trumps trade policies. Since Trump added tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, Stupp has filed several objections to requests by other companies that were asking to be excluded from the tariffs. Companies have sought exclusions from the tariffs because they said they cannot find the needed steel products domestically. Stupp has objected to such requests where it can supply the products, McAlpin said, adding the company thinks the tariffs have been a benefit for the domestic steel business, even though its costs have increased. Mayor Sharon Weston Broome, who lauded the expansion at a press conference at Stupps facilities Thursday, threw her support behind the companys Industrial Tax Exemption, or ITEP, request. The program has garnered controversy locally as the school board and other authorities have exercised newfound discretion over the tax breaks. Broome said the expansion attests to Baton Rouges booming business climate. McAlpin declined to comment on the investigation into the death of a 29-year-old Stupp worker, Stephen Deggs, who died in an industrial accident in September. He said the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation, as well as an internal probe, are ongoing. The expansion also comes as Georgia-Pacific is laying off 600 of its roughly 900 workers at its Port Hudson paper mill nearby. A small chemical plant operated by BASF and a Thompson Pipe Group fabrication plant nearby also are leaving dozens without work with their closures. Adam Knapp, president and CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, said Stupps hiring is an opportunity for those workers who were laid off. For those of you that have been affected in the community by layoffs, for example that happened in the earlier part of this year, this is a great opportunity to stay in Baton Rouge, stay employed in manufacturing and continue to have a very vibrant quality of life here in Baton Rouge, Knapp said. Stupp has been in business in Baton Rouge since 1952. It moved to its current site at Ronaldson Road in 1967. But the 48 people hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Thursday was down 12 from the 60 that were hospitalized last week. The chairwoman of the state House Education Committee was at the White House on Thursday when President Donald Trump signed an executive order that he said is aimed at ensuring free speech on college campuses. The order requires federal agencies that provide research grants to make sure schools are complying with federal laws and policies that give students and others the right to speak out. The issue has sparked debate nationwide, including charges that conservative speakers are targeted at campuses an inordinate amount of time, sometimes forcing cancellation of speakers and events. Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoes campus speech and highway bills; signs controversial name change Gov. John Bel Edwards announced Tuesday that he vetoed campus speech and highway bills and signed a hotly-debated measure to change the name o Before the event, House Education Committee Chairwoman Nancy Landry, R-Lafayette, chided Gov. John Bel Edwards for vetoing a bill in 2017 touted as a way to protect campus speech. Exciting to be there today as @realDonaldTrump signed exec order protecting #FreeSpeech on campuses. Pres: We will not stand idly by and let public institutions violate their students constitutional rights. (Violations will result in loss of federal funds.) pic.twitter.com/BVVNaZkf3Q Nancy Landry (@Nancy_Landry) March 21, 2019 In a tweet, Landry noted that "sadly," that measure was struck down by Edwards. In another tweet, the governor's office quickly noted that, in 2018, Edwards signed a similar bill. Campus free speech measure becomes law in Louisiana, a year after similar plan vetoed Gov. John Bel Edwards has signed a bill aimed at ensuring free speech on college campuses, one year after he vetoed similar legislation sponso Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up The 2017 legislation was sponsored by House Republican Caucus Chairman Lance Harris, of Alexandria, a frequent critic of the governor on budget and other issues. The measure last year signed by Edwards was sponsored by state Sen. Rick Ward III, R-Port Allen. That state law requires colleges and universities to spell out free speech rights, publicize those rights in student handbooks and on school websites and make clear that students cannot expect colleges to shield them from opinions they find objectionable. Campus speech legislation endorsed by House A Senate-passed bill touted as a way to ensure free speech on college campuses was approved Tuesday night by the Louisiana House 58-26. The governor, in his 2017 veto, criticized the fact that the Harris bill included a 15-member commission to oversee the rules in that measure. Edwards office said last year that the measures were "two very different bills." Christina Stephens, deputy chief of staff for the governor, said in a tweet Thursday that, as the veto letter said, the legislation "created an overly burdensome structure for the evaluation of the freedom of speech on college campuses, which is already protected in the bedrock principles declared in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution." Landry could not be reached for immediate comment. Check back with The Advocate for more details. Controversial Iowa Congressman Steve King, who has faced repeated backlash over his extreme views on race and immigration, cited Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans as an example of bad disaster victims, compared to his Iowa constituents, during a town hall Thursday. King, a Republican who was stripped of his committee assignments earlier this year after questioning why "white supremacist" and other racist language is deemed offensive, told the crowd in Charter Oak, Iowa, that an unnamed FEMA official told him that Katrina victims only looked for government help, as opposed to Iowans who take care of each other." In a video that King posted on Facebook and that was first reported by HuffPost, King says he made four trips to New Orleans in the wake of the catastrophic and deadly 2005 hurricane. He sets up the anecdote to explain why hes proud that Iowa, which is currently experiencing massive flooding, has a better reputation. Heres what FEMA tells me: We go to a place like New Orleans and everybodys looking around saying, whos gonna help me, whos gonna help me? he tells the crowd. Theyre just always gratified when they come and see how Iowans take care of each other. Its a point of pride that spreads across the country. King doesnt explicitly mention race in the exchange. His district in Iowa is about 95 percent white. About 67 percent of the population of the city of New Orleans was black when Katrina hit, and poor people and black people were disproportionately more heavily impacted by Katrina. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who is running for re-election this year, called King's remarks "disgusting and disheartening." "When communities are affected by disasters, we come together to help each other, not tear each other down," he said. The Advocate reached out to the six U.S. House members who represent Louisiana for comment Thursday evening and will update with responses. U.S. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, who represents a suburban New Orleans district, swiftly condemned King's remarks. "His comments about Katrina victims are absurd and offensive, and are a complete contradiction to the strength and resilience the people of New Orleans demonstrated to the entire nation in the wake of the total devastation they experienced," Scalise said. The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Rep. Cedric Richmond, a New Orleans Democrat who has been a vocal critic of King in the past, called his latest remarks about Katrina unsettling. "When people show you who they are, believe them," Richmond tweeted. "Steve King is a white supremacist and I wont stand for it." Rep. Ralph Abraham, a northeast Louisiana Republican who is running for governor against Edwards, also condemned King's remarks. "Louisianians have faced our fair share of adversity, and Im always amazed at how quickly we rally from across the state to help one another when disaster strikes," Abraham said. "Anyone who would say otherwise doesnt know the real Louisiana. I wholeheartedly reject the comments that disparaged our state and her people during one of the most difficult times in Louisianas history. We experience hardship together, and we rebuild together because there are no more resilient people in this country than Louisianians." Baton Rouge businessman Eddie Rispone, a Republican also challenging Edwards in the governor's race, also roundly condemned King's comments. "Rep. Kings portrayal of New Orleans and the victims of Katrina is illogical and offensive," he said. "Louisianans are well-known for their compassion and cooperation when confronted with disaster. Perhaps King missed President Trumps praise of the Cajun Navy during the 2018 State of the Union. Trump has repeatedly praised the Cajun Navy, a loosely-organized band of Louisiana residents and boaters who voluntarily assist with rescues during natural disasters. U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, a Bossier Parish Republican who is chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, also cited the heroic assistance that the Cajun Navy has given during disasters in his condemnation of King's remarks. Louisianians are some of the strongest, most committed and most resilient people in the world, and we have proven that over and over again. We certainly proved it in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina," he said. "Not only do we step up to help our neighbors at home, we deploy countless citizen-led efforts, like the 'Cajun-Navy,' to areas all across this country to help other Americans in need. Any suggestion otherwise is absurd and deserves to be universally denounced." U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Port Barre, had searing words for King, who he said should have resigned before even making the Katrina remarks. "Rep. Steve King is burning himself down. Ashes," he said. "Louisiana is predominately Catholic by faith. Recently, we received our anointed ashes on Ash Wednesday. A sign of humility and submission to Gods will. That would have been a good day for Congressman King to resign... before he said disparaging things about Louisianas heritage and culture. "Its apparent that Mr. King knows little about the people of Louisiana," Higgins continued. "Our state has proven for generations to be resilient in the wake of disasters. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Ike, Gustav, and the floods of 2016. Weve weathered every storm and rebuilt together. When Hurricane Harvey left Southeast Texas underwater, Louisiana was there with boats and supplies. Our community knows adversity, and when it strikes, we come together. Americans helping Americans regardless of color, creed or ideology. Louisiana Democratic Party Chairwoman Karen Carter Peterson, a state senator and New Orleans native, called King's remarks appalling. Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana leaving 1,800 dead with tens of thousands more homeless and impoverished. He has no right to comment on what our people have been through or continue to spread these falsities," she said. "His dog whistle comments today are a further display of his racist, white supremacist beliefs and call on prejudiced, hate-filled stereotypes that he has no problem displaying. There is no place for this sort of hateful rhetoric in our government and we need our leaders to show that they will not tolerate it. It appears the competition to face off against Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards in the Louisiana governors race is heating up with one announced Republican candidate beginning to take jabs at the other, who has reaffirmed his dedication to only attacking Edwards. Louisiana needs a conservative outsider to help create jobs and improve our state's economy, Baton Rouge businessman Eddie Rispones campaign tweeted Wednesday around the same time that a post went up on a conservative blog attacking Abrahams conservative credentials. The post on the Conservative Intelligence Briefing website describes Rispone flatteringly as an outsider in the race and takes aim at comments Abraham made amid reports on then-candidate Donald Trumps lewd Access Hollywood tape remarks. The Conservative Intelligence blog says Abraham crossed a line by calling for Trump to remove himself from the GOP ticket and calls him a "top #NeverTrump target." Hoping to unseat the only Democratic governor in Deep South, national Republicans pitch GOP candidates The two Republican candidates for governor joined Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday to try to make their case for a Republican to win election Additionally, Abrahams abysmal voting record gives conservatives and Trump supporters yet another reason to be wary of him, the post continues. Politico has described the Conservative Intelligence site as being owned by a Republican consulting firm that rents email lists and conducts fundraising for GOP candidates. The Detroit News has described the Conservative Intelligence site as one that promotes (prominent Michigan Republican strategist John Yob's) candidate clients and critiques their opponents." Yob didn't immediately respond to The Advocate's request for comment as to whether he's working for the Rispone campaign or an affiliated political action committee. The Rispone campaign said that an Advocate reporters tweet was the first he had seen of the anti-Abraham posting but that Conservative Intelligence is one of several email vendors the campaign has used. The campaign sent out a "news alert" linking to the conservative blog's post after seeing it on Twitter. Fundraising emails linking to the Rispone campaigns website also have been sent from addresses on the conservativeintel.com domain. Abraham campaign spokesman Lionel Rainey called the Conservative Intelligence report attacking Abraham fake news. It's a sloppy attack that confirms our poll numbers - Abraham is the Republican frontrunner by a wide margin, Rainey said. Abraham was one of the first members of the Louisiana delegation to endorse President Trump and has been one of the presidents biggest supporters ever since. When Doc says we're focused on defeating Governor Edwards and not attacking other Republicans, he means it. The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up GOP leaders heading into this years election initially talked of having one single candidate that the party could get behind to defeat Edwards re-election bid and curb the intraparty fighting that they credit for the partys loss last cycle. Both Rispone and Abraham entered the race and had largely focused their attacks on Edwards up to this point. Gov. John Bel Edwards officially receives Louisiana Democratic Party endorsement for re-election Gov. John Bel Edwards has accepted his party's endorsement for a second term in office, as he attempts to retain his position as a Democratic The top Republican candidates in the 2015 governors race David Vitter, Scott Angelle and Jay Dardenne -- spent much of the campaign knocking each other, rather than focusing on Edwards, the only major Democrat in the race who kept a relatively low profile and skated into the primary. Too much is at stake for Republicans to repeat the same mistakes that got John Bel elected three years ago, Rainey continued. Louisiana families are hurting and in desperate need of conservative leadership. Thats the message were bringing to voters. Earlier this week, Rispone and Abraham appeared together at events organized by the Republican Governors Association, where they noted subtle differences in their candidacies but didn't take direct aim at each other. The Edwards campaign, for its part, has continuously attacked Rispone and Abraham since the two Republicans entered the race. Edwards campaign spokesman Eric Holl said it's "no surprise" Abraham has been attacked from the right. "From breaking promises on salary donations to flip-flopping on criminal justice reform, it's clear Ralph Abraham will say anything to get elected," he said. Note: This post has been updated with additional context from the Rispone campaign. The panel charged with updating anti-sexual harassment policies in state government has finished its final piece of recommended changes: A proposal that aims to protect outsiders lobbyists, reporters and others conducing business at the State Capitol from harassment. The third-party sexual harassment prevention policy now goes to the Legislative Budgetary Control Council and House and Senate leadership for final approval. If anyone does feel aggrieved, were going to have some very clear provisions as to how we address this," Rep. Gregory Miller, R-Norco, said during a sexual harassment prevention task force meeting at the Capitol on Thursday. After #MeToo movement hits Louisiana government, sexual harassment policies under review A task force charged with tracking the states efforts to discourage sexual harassment held its first meeting Tuesday, with officials vowing to Lawmakers set out last year to update state law and policies on harassment, amid a national examination of misconduct issues propelled by the exposure of allegations against high profile figures across several industries, including Hollywood and the media. Two high-profile financial settlements in state government spawned by allegations made against then-deputy chief of staff to the governor Johnny Anderson and then-Secretary of State Tom Schedler further highlighted the issue in Louisiana government. Both Anderson and Schedler resigned after faced with harassment claims. Multiple reviews of workplace sexual harassment policies all highlighted the state's lack of a uniform sexual harassment policy. That prompted legislation at the State Capitol during last year's session, but the task force set out to further examine areas for improvement. The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up New Orleans' Helena Moreno proposes new rules to stop sexual harassment in city government New Orleans City Councilwoman Helena Moreno will introduce an ordinance Thursday intended to stop sexual harassment at all levels of city gove Anti-sexual harassment legislation back on track after audit reveals $5.1M+ paid in decade A bill that seeks to establish stricter policies against sexual harassment in state government is moving forward at the Capitol, as new data s The latest piece sets out a procedure for third parties to report if they have been harassed by legislators or legislative staff. Under the proposal, reports can be made to the House Speaker or Senate President or they can be made to the chambers' respective human resources directors. It provides for confidentiality and a swift investigation into the allegations. The task force also agreed to recommend that the state's anti-sexual harassment training videos, which government employees are required to view, be made available on the Legislature's website to inform outsiders about their options. Additionally, the panel is recommending that new state contracts entered by the Legislature include language that outlines the harassment policy and requires contractors agree to cooperate in harassment investigations if needed. We (will) show that we can treat people with respect and the dignity that they deserve, Miller said. Jen Lefebvre Mouch spent an hour Thursday weaving around the back roads and alternate highways west of the Mississippi River in her effort to take her 2-year-old son to a medical appointment in Baton Rouge 16 miles from her Addis home. Jamie Gaspard toiled over how to drive her eighth-grader from the familys Brusly home to University Laboratory School in Baton Rouge on Thursday morning. Then how she or her husband would get back to Port Allen in time for work. Then how they would do it again in the afternoon. Even before Thursday, trouble on and around Interstate 10 was already causing significant delays for tens of thousands of drivers in the region, with the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development trying to soothe tension with temporary fixes. And the trouble grew Thursday. An improperly set section of concrete on I-10 eastbound near the College Drive exit early Thursday morning marked another headache-causing delay as DOTD was forced to shut two interstate lanes for much of the morning. The state said in a statement that contractor Coastal Bridge had been working overnight and was supposed to have finished the project before rush hour traffic started, but the improperly set concrete caused a pothole that, once identified, was determined unsafe to drive over. The morning commute was frustrating for thousands of people, said DOTD Secretary Shawn Wilson. This was supposed to be an overnight job which would have minimized travel impacts. However, when the concrete did not set properly it led to an unforeseen closure. Unfortunately in construction, we have to be responsive and time does not always allow for conditions to remain normal during an emergency repair. The contractor will be held accountable and under state law the contractor will be charged for lane usage fees. Closing two of the three lanes slowed eastbound traffic to a crawl as far back as Grosse Tete 18 miles away, according to DOTDs traffic site. It was another hit for drivers on the west bank who had been reeling from construction on northbound La. 1 this month, only to have problems pop up for southbound traffic this week. Gaspard, who needs to travel both directions of the bridge daily, said there has always been a traffic problem on the west side, but things have only grown worse. Coming and going has been a nightmare for some time and now to add the southbound lane closure is a bigger nightmare, she said Thursday. One problem is that DOTD feels its OK to stop La. 1 south traffic to ensure the bridge and the interstate continue to flow smoothly because that backing up is a safety issue. (Its) once again making the people that live in West Baton Rouge completely irrelevant. West Baton Rouge Parish officials called a last-minute meeting two weeks ago when backups along La. Highway 1 northbound were compounding due to DOTDs scheduled work reinforcing 57 joints along the intracoastal bridge. .@BRPD arriving on scene of an accident involving two 18-wheelers I-10 E at College. There are extensive delays on the interstate today, avoid it if possible @theadvocatebr pic.twitter.com/OshNejzFcO Hilary Scheinuk (@hscheinukphoto) March 21, 2019 Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up A dump truck driver then hit a portion of the southbound Intracoastal Waterway bridge Tuesday night, damaging the structure enough that DOTD determined it unsafe. The outer lane of southbound La. 1 has been closed since then, ensnaring drivers in even further delays. A representative of Perrault's Trucking the truck company involved in the collision Tuesday evening said via phone Thursday that the company is not commenting on what happened. +3 Intracoastal bridge damage to cause heavy delays that could last a month, officials say Motorists frustrated by construction-related delays on a northbound section of La. 1 near Port Allen had new trouble Wednesday. A dump truck d The intent of the initially scheduled DOTD work was to secure the joints to prolong the life of the bridge until theres enough funding to replace it, but the need to place 1-inch-thick steel plates over open holes in the road was causing drivers to come sometimes to a complete stop before driving over them for fear of damaging their cars. Officials at the time put temporary measures in place like law enforcement presence, barricades and service road blocks, but the collision Tuesday night sent that plan awry. DOTD redistributed emergency funds to repair the damaged girder beneath the southbound lane, but are expecting the outer lane of the highway to be closed for approximately a month before its deemed safe to drive over. In the meantime, drivers coming off the I-10 bridge onto southbound La. 1 are trying to merge with drivers headed south on the same highway form Port Allen, causing heavy delays on both roadways at peak times. West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriffs Office deputies and State Police are rotating shifts to be on site at that merge point at peak times hoping to alleviate some of the issues, and as of Thursday afternoon sheriffs office spokesman Maj. Dale Simoneaux said traffic was moving smoothly. Congestion on La. 1 southbound is expected to continue for at least a month as crews repair the damaged girder. Check the latest traffic map here. Stupp Corp., a Baton Rouge-based pipe fabrication company, said it will lay off 114 workers because of low demand for pipeline from the oil and gas industry. Its a rough period in the oil and gas business and the steel business as well, said Chip McAlpin, vice president of corporate strategy and development for Stupp. Neither McAlpin nor the Louisiana Workforce Commission, which sent out a notice of the layoffs Friday, had an exact figure on the number of people currently working at Stupp. But the number of people affected by the layoffs was at least one-third of the workforce, because Stupp had to file a worker adjustment and retraining notification with the state agency. According to the notice, the layoffs started Monday and will wrap up by March 14. Our projection numbers are cyclical and driven by projects, McAlpin said. We flex up or down. The Stupp employees who are being affected by the layoffs are primarily manufacturing workers, because that makes up the bulk of the workforce. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Crude oil is trading below $33 a barrel. In 2012, when McAlpin said Stupp hit an employment high of 600 workers, oil spent much of the year trading above $100 a barrel. Stupp has been in business in Baton Rouge since 1952. It moved to its current site at Ronaldson Road in north Baton Rouge in 1967. In 2009, it dedicated an $80 million expansion that doubled its workforce to just under 400 employees. McAlpin said Stupp is committed to being in business. The company is actively bidding on jobs, but there will be limited opportunities for business until oil and gas prices improve. Were looking forward for opportunities for more work in the future, he said. We hope to win those jobs and have a need to bring people back to staff shifts and run pipe. Follow Timothy Boone on Twitter, @TCB_TheAdvocate South Africa: President wants urgent action on Prasa President Cyril Ramaphosa has instructed the Minister of Transport, Dr Blade Nzimande, to urgently address challenges plaguing commuter rail agency, the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa). The President held a meeting with Nzimande at Tuynhuys in Cape Town on Tuesday following the Presidents first-hand experience on the difficulties regularly experienced by commuters when he boarded a train from Mabopane to Tshwane CBD on Monday. Among the challenges raised at the meeting was the deterioration of infrastructure and unacceptable delays of train services, which often result in commuters arriving late for work, school and other commitments. Passenger and driver safety also received attention. The President stressed the need for a safe, reliable and integrated public transport system to support the countrys economic development aspirations. While appreciating that Prasa is currently implementing one of the largest urban rail modernisation programmes in the world, the President said the agencys failure to implement its turnaround plans and, in the process, pay due attention to critical rail operational functions, is a cause for concern. He has directed immediate action to strengthen governance by stabilising the leadership at board level and filling critical vacancies, including that of the Group Chief Executive Officer. The President has also called for practical and urgent action to bridge the gap between the turnaround strategies developed and their day-to-day implementation. He has directed that a capable and skilled team of specialists should be established to conduct due diligence on the rail network to determine the extent of challenges. Urgent action is required to accelerate the implementation of the R172 billion modernisation programme meant to eliminate challenges occasioned by aged infrastructure. Nzimande is expected to make announcements in due course on the delivery of these commitments and other actions to be undertaken to restore service performance at Prasa. The President has further welcomed the imminent introduction of 24 new train sets in Gauteng to augment the 18 new sets delivered last year. He said this intervention will go a long way to improve train availability and performance. The increase in rolling stock availability from 160 to 260 sets during the current financial year is expected to alleviate the burden in other parts of the country. President Ramaphosa accepts that there are longstanding challenges at Prasa that will require substantial resources and several years to address. He believes, however, that there are immediate steps that can be taken to increase efficiency and improve the daily experiences of commuters. There is no reason commuters should have to endure frequent delays or feel unsafe on our trains. This is a problem that we can work together to solve, President Ramaphosa said. SAnews.gov.za This story has been published on: 2019-03-21. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. An Orleans Parish grand jury handed up indictments against three men who are facing life in prison if convicted on Thursday, including a man accused of abducting and raping a series of women at gun or knifepoint. The lengthiest indictment was for Daniel Meridy, a 35-year-old man who authorities say has been linked by DNA evidence to five sexual assaults in New Orleans from 2015 to 2018 and another three assaults in Kansas City from 2004 to 2005. Meridy was arrested in December after a joint investigation by the District Attorneys Office and Police Department. DNA linked the same unknown assailant to four rapes in September -- but Meridys DNA was not yet on file, authorities said. Prosecutors said NOPD Detective Kevin Richardson linked to Meridy to the DNA profile through a license plate one victim reported to police. Authorities allege that he raped the women after using weapons to force them to secluded locations across the city. Meridys total bail now stands at $7.5 million on five counts of aggravated or first-degree rape and five counts of aggravated kidnapping. Authorities in Missouri have not yet charged him, prosecutors said. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Separately on Thursday, the grand jury charged Tyrone Fountain, 40, with second-degree murder in the Dec. 17 beating of talent agent Marla Belin in the 7th Ward. Prosecutors said Fountain became enraged after Belin refused his sexual advances. She died in the hospital 11 days after the attack after slipping into a coma. Meanwhile, 40-year-old Erik Beasley was charged with aggravated arson and first-degree murder in the smoke inhalation death of his mother Sarah Beasley, 78. Investigators suspect that Beasley set fire to his familys home in the 4700 block of Corinne Street on Nov. 23. Beasley is currently receiving treatment at the psychiatric unit of the state Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors said they do not intend to seek the death penalty against him. Authorities in Texas this week arrested a man who had been charged more than a year earlier in the 2013 robbery that left a Loomis armored truck guard dead outside a New Orleans bank. The arrest of Robert Earl Brumfield III, 25, ended a 16-month search for a man whom the FBI described as one of its most wanted fugitives. Constable Mark Hermans office said deputies received a tip that Brumfield was at a home in Spring, Texas, just north of Houston, on Monday. When deputies arrived at the home, Brumfield nicknamed Lil Rob attempted to flee but was quickly captured, Hermans office said in a Facebook post. Brumfield now faces a transfer to New Orleans, where five others charged in the slaying of Loomis guard Hector Trochez are awaiting a federal court trial scheduled to start Nov. 4. A Kenner resident, Trochez was shot to death Dec. 13, 2013, outside the Chase Bank branch at South Carrollton and South Claiborne avenues. A group of masked men fired pistols and a rifle at Trochez as he was bringing money to the banks ATMs. Trochez, a 45-year-old native of Honduras, returned fire but died after being shot in the head. Trochezs killers took a bag containing about $265,000 and fled in a stolen Chevrolet Tahoe. In view of a witness who followed them, the group then ditched the Tahoe about 10 blocks away and escaped in another car. Investigators identified one suspect Lilbear George after finding his DNA on a screwdriver left in the Tahoe. George then allegedly used a car belonging to his girlfriend, Jasmine Theophile, to drive out of Louisiana with a group of other men. In November 2017, a federal grand jury indictment charged George, Theophile, Brumfield, Chukwudi Ofomata, Curtis Johnson Jr. and Jeremy Esteves with roles in the robbery that claimed Trochezs life. Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Brumfield was the only member of the group who was still at large when the indictment was unsealed. He and Esteves face life imprisonment if convicted of having a hand in the murder of Trochez. Prosecutors have indicated that they intend to seek the death penalty for Ofomata, George and Curtis Johnson Jr. Theophile faces a lesser sentence because she is accused only of obstructing justice after the fatal stick-up. The feds singled out Ofomata as the man who fired the bullet that killed Trochez, and local authorities have separately charged him with two 2008 killings at a 7th Ward car repair shop. George also is accused of taking part in a December 2007 armored car robbery less than a mile from where Trochez was later slain. In that incident, a shootout between the robbers and a guard erupted as well. However, no one was killed, and the statute of limitations to prosecute the robbery case expired before charges were filed. Trochez was one of two Loomis armored truck guards to be killed on-duty in New Orleans in recent years. Jimmy McBride was fatally shot during a robbery attempt outside a Mid-City bank on May 31, 2017. Correction: This post initially incorrectly said that Theophile allegedly drove George and the other men out of Louisiana. However, authorities have alleged George used a car belonging to her to drive himself and a group of other men out of Louisiana. Hermes International has become the latest fashion industry victim of men's casual dress, seeing its silk business struggle as neckties lose their allure. Revenue from silk and textiles rose 3 per cent in 2018, the slowest growth of the French luxury-goods maker's business units. Chief Executive Officer Axel Dumas said on Wednesday the company has been shifting production to adjust to men's new preferences. Suit and tie used to be the wardrobe staple for businessmen - but times are changing. Credit:Jessica Hromas "There's a structural decline" in neckties, Dumas said on a call with reporters. "We have a lot of novelties coming. We're launching more scarves for men." As even Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs pushes a freer dress code, makers of formal wear have been changing tack to maintain sales growth. In my younger years, when conversations with colleagues were a lot less professional, it was not uncommon to hear a very specific comment whispered about an otherwise cranky manager who arrived at work surprisingly jolly. Must have gotten some last night, theyd mutter in jest. Highly inappropriate, to be sure, and grossly unfair and immature, but perhaps not entirely wrong (theoretically, that is) when you consider the findings of fresh research published this month in one of the worlds most respected academic journals. For the first time, researchers have looked at the effects of sex at home on engagement at work. Led by Associate Professor Keith Leavitt from Oregon State University, his team was driven to embark on this study based on two realisations. The first was that sex outside of work has mostly been excluded from management research oftentimes derided as taboo and the second is that most adults do indeed do the deed on a regular basis. As such, Dr Leavitt found it worthwhile to investigate whether one act influences the other. This was especially the case when taking into account prior scientific analyses that discovered the release of oxytocin, opioids and dopamine during sexual activity all of which are famously known as love hormones. Surely that explosion of chemicals would have a lingering effect overnight, yes? Australian property stocks are proving largely immune to the worst housing slump in a generation, rallying to the highest in almost three years. Despite their strong performance, some analysts fear that tough times are ahead. Credit:Bloomberg Diversified revenue streams, the demand for offices in a growing economy and low bond yields have propelled the S&P/ASX 200 A-REIT Index up 13 per cent this year, compared with the nation's benchmark index, which has climbed 9.2 per cent. Fifteen of the 18 stocks on the gauge are in the green, with Charter Hall Group and Goodman Group leading the rally. The last time real estate shares were higher, Australia's housing prices were climbing after the Reserve Bank of Australia cut borrowing costs to record lows in 2016, fuelling demand for property. Those rates have since remained untouched. Australia's property slump deepened in February as housing prices fell 0.7 per cent, and are now down 6.8 per cent from their peak in October 2017. Stricter lending standards have dried up the flow of credit to both investors and owner-occupiers. Forrest Gump screenwriter Eric Roth, who picked up an Oscar for the 1994 film starring Tom Hanks, is revealing what was planned for the sequel and why it was never made. Roth, 73, told Yahoo Entertainment the follow-up film wouldn't have followed Forrest Gump author Winston Groom's second novel Gump & Co. that closely. Roth turned in a script in 2001. "Literally, I turned it in the day before 9/11," said the writer, who also co-wrote last year's remake of A Star Is Born, as well as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Horse Whisperer. He recalled, "Tom and I and (director Robert Zemeckis) got together on 9/11 to sort of commiserate about how life was in America and how tragic it was. And we looked at each other and said, 'This movie has no meaning anymore, in that sense.'" One of the biggest adjustments for a breakout musician isnt the endless travel or larger crowds, but effectively becoming a small business owner. Its doubly weird if youre performing under your own name. Thats the case for Lucy Dacus, the American songwriter who has released two acclaimed albums, 2016s No Burden and 2018s Historian. Its definitely weird. Im the boss of the company Lucy Dacus, the 23-year-old says. ''Its really changed my relationship to my name [and] also makes it so my job title is just my name, so thats confusing. Its hard to know when Im on the job and off the job. Lucy Dacus: "I really try to look at people [at gigs]. Especially people who are singing [along to] the songs." Credit: Dacus grew up in Richmond, Virginia, playing solo shows as a teenager. At 19, studying film at nearby VCU, she took a semester off to travel Europe and never went back. I became disillusioned by the American academic world, how expensive university is. So, I came home, dropped out, got a job. Every adult person in my life was like How dare you! Youll never get a job! You need a degree! My parents stopped supporting me, got really mad at me. But I just got a job and supported myself, then they chilled out. It helped that her music career took off quickly: No Burden was released when Dacus was just 20. Even playing to ever-growing audiences, she feels like the host of a party, making sure her guests have a good time. I really value eye-contact, she says. I really try to look at people. Especially people who are singing [along to] the songs.'' Last year, Dacus formed the band Boygenius with friends Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers. Playing in the trio, she felt grateful to share the burden of hosting: When one of us is tired, the other two can come in. When one of us is confused, the other two have clarity. Whenever any of us are faltering, the others will compensate for that. It was such a positive experience that, following Dacuss first Australian tour, shes flying straight to Nashville, where the trio will get matching tattoos. I think were all gonna get a tooth somewhere on our hands, which references [our song] Bite The Hand, Dacus says. In Australia, Dacus will be testing new material. All the audiences this year will be guinea pigs, she laughs. Part of playing them is working out what the songs are actually about. The bougie trend at Celine. Credit:AP Of all the trends most likely to stick around after the fashion month circus has left town it's this: bougie lady. After seasons of streetwear, sneakers and dresscodes that allow for activewear at just about any occasion there's been a decided shift to something a little more ... prissy. Indeed dressing up might just be the new dressing down. Harper's Bazaar this week pegged "bougie dressing" as the next "major trend" of 2019. Urban dictionary defines bougie as: "Aspiring to be a higher class than one is. Derived from bourgeois - meaning middle/upper class, traditionally despised by communists." Access Canberra is investigating almost 200 possible cases of shoddy building work on Canberra construction sites, it has been revealed. In the past nine months, the regulator has also dished out 139 demerit points to construction licence holders and issued a rectification order at a multi-unit housing block in Canberra's north. Minister for Building Quality Improvement Gordon Ramsay said Access Canberra was investigating 187 cases of alleged breaches of ACT building and planning rules. Credit:Karleen Minney Minister for Building Quality Improvement Gordon Ramsay revealed the statistics during a speech in the Legislative Assembly on Thursday, during which he also outlined the next phase in the rollout of the government's building quality reforms. Industry groups and trade experts have heavily criticised the government's apparently lax approach to regulating building quality in the ACT, claiming it was partly responsible for the problems plaguing developments across Canberra. It took profits from Woodsides 2018 annual report and compared them to the current cost of a federal government carbon credit and the two projects publicly reported carbon emissions. North West Shelf Gross Profit $AUD1.165b (total sales revenue minus operational costs, not counting capital depreciation, last financial year) 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 (17 per cent of NWS total as Woodside is 17 per cent owner, sole operator.) $13.87/tonne to offset 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 = $17.7 million, 1.5 per cent of gross profit. Pluto Gross profit $AUD2.18b 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 (90 per cent of Plutos total, as Woodside is 90 per cent owner, sole operator.) 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 (90 per cent of Plutos total, as Woodside is 90 per cent owner, sole operator.) $13.87/tonne to offset 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 = $24.5 million, 1.1 per cent of gross profit. TAI further calculated that even if the much higher shadow carbon prices being used by BP and Shell came to pass ($AU56 a tonne), the cost would only rise to 6.2 per cent of NWS gross profits and 4.6 per cent of Plutos. In its annual report Woodside said its high margin, low cost projects were generating cash flow for the business. That ready flow of cash gives it some resilience against the risks of transition to a low-carbon economy, as shown in research released in November from UK-based CDP. The Carbon Disclosure Project, a voluntary disclosure platform for carbon risk to inform investors, ranked the worlds top 24 oil and gas companies, ranking their readiness for transition. The report showed the company was well placed to cope with risk, whether transition risk such as electric vehicles destroying oil demand, or physical risk from climate change. But it ranked very poorly 18th of the 24 biggest oil and gas majors in terms of its proactive steps towards opportunities, such as investing in low carbon assets, research and development and embracing innovative technologies. The report placed Woodside as similar to Russias Gazprom, and nowhere near industry leaders such as Equinor and Shell, in terms of seeking opportunities. Woodside also ranked 11th out of the 24 in climate governance, the ranking for action on emissions reductions strategies. Institute climate and energy program director Richie Merzian said being such a low-cost, high margin producer Woodside was actually an ideal candidate to invest in the offset market. This report is more proof that they can afford to pay, he said. Woodside has already told investors it faces climate change-related risks including changes in product demand, carbon pricing, uncertainty surrounding future regulatory frameworks and increased stakeholder expectations in its annual report. The Norwegian government recently instructed its sovereign wealth fund, the Norwegian Oil Fund, to divest itself of its 1.4 per cent share in Woodside. While the fund is also shedding shares in many other oil and gas exploration and production companies, they are holding onto investments in some of the biggest companies to take advantage of future earnings from renewable energy. Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman recently declared 2019 "the year of the deal" as the company prepared to sell a stake in Scarborough and add infrastructure at Pluto. But its quest to find major global partners and customers for Scarborough has not been helped by the EPA guidelines furore exposed the risks surrounding Scarborough and Browse emissions. Browse, a much more carbon intensive project than Scarborough, is expected to emit up to 7 million tonnes a year of CO2 at its peak, averaging 4 million tonnes a year over 50 years. The AFR has reported that based on current carbon credit prices, it would cost Woodside on average $56 million extra a year if credits were available, but probably significantly more. Wood Mackenzie research analyst David Low told the AFR the CO2 profile could be a concern for some partners who had global company CO2 targets to meet. Following the EPAs backdown, the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility released a statement saying the episode confirmed the overwhelming power of the fossil fuels lobby. Premier McGowan has confirmed who really runs climate policy, climate and environment director Dan Gocher said. The great hypocrite in all of this is Woodsides Peter Coleman, who was happy to swan around in November last year calling for a price to be put on carbon, only to aggressively lobby against guidelines that would effectively set such a price. The events of the last week have sent a very clear signal: these companies are not afraid to get their hands dirty, and they will fight tooth and nail against sensible climate policy, as they have done for the last 20 years. A Woodside spokeswoman said the company's position on the proposed EPA Greenhouse Gas Guideline had been consistent. "The guideline was inconsistent with the timelines envisaged under Australias Paris Agreement goals, creating significant uncertainty for investors," she said. "If applied, the guideline would put Western Australian industries at a serious disadvantage to those elsewhere in Australia. City House infestation : Bonn politicians discuss job offer for cat to hunt mice Bonn To combat the plague of mice in the City House, Bonn politicians are discussing the purchase of an "official cat". The city administration has a clear opinion on the topic. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken In order to combat a mouse plague in the town house, the purchase of an "official cat" is being discussed in Bonn. A small council faction(fraction) has made a corresponding request and argues that the use of cats to hunt mice has been "practiced for several thousand years". In addition, in London cat Larry is successfully doing his job in the official residence of Prime Minister Theresa May as the top mouse hunter of the British cabinet. The parliamentary group "Die Sozialliberalen" therefore demands that such a cat also be purchased for the Bonn City House, which is plagued by mice. But presumably no "Supreme Mice Hunter of the City of Bonn" will scurry through the corridors of the town house on his paws in the future. The administration recommends to reject the application of the social liberals. "Open-plan offices or similar rooms are not a suitable hunting ground for cats," says the administration's statement. For safety reasons alone, the purchase of an official cat is not possible. Fire protection doors with cat flap probably do not correspond to the regulations. Also the scenario to find a dead mouse on the desk chair at the beginning of the work day is probably repugnant to the employees. Wollongong priest Father Ron Peters has been charged with historical indecent assaults. Father Peters, a co-founder of Illawarra People for Peace, was arrested in Berkeley on Tuesday. The 61-year-old priest, who is chair of the Diocesan Schools Council and works in many Illawarra school communities, was charged at Lake Illawarra Police Station with three counts of aggravated indecent assault and aggravated indecency. Wollongong priest Father Ron Peters has been charged over alleged historical indecent assaults in Sydney's west. Credit:Illawarra Mercury The charges follow an investigation launched in 2018 by Fairfield police after they received allegations of indecent assaults on a 15-year-old boy at a high school in the Fairfield area in 1993. Father Peters has been granted conditional bail to appear in Port Kembla Local Court on May 15. He is suspended from the church, according to NSW Police. A three-year-old-girl has died after being hit by a car at a BP petrol station north of Brisbane on Thursday evening. The child was struck at the Burpengary station on the Bruce Highway about 5pm. A child died after being struck by a vehicle at the BP petrol station north of Brisbane on Thursday. Credit:Nine News Queensland Paramedics worked to save the girl but she died at the scene. The driver of the car was taken to the Caboolture Hospital suffering from shock. A man accused of firing a shot into a Brisbane church on Friday, before being found with amphetamine and explosives, has appeared in court. Johannesburg-born labourer Keiran David Rocke, 20, is accused of firing a single gunshot into the wall of the St Paul's Lutheran Church in Nundah, 10km north-east of the Brisbane CBD. St Paul's Lutheran Church has been assured it was an isolated incident. He was later allegedly found to be in possession of ammunition, amphetamine and a firearm that had been shortened. The man appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Wednesday on charges including possessing dangerous drugs, unlawful possession of a weapon and discharging a weapon in a public place. A 71-year-old man was thrown to the ground, kicked and robbed during a home invasion at Logan on Sunday afternoon. The man was assaulted at his Regents Park home, about 30 kilometres south of Brisbane, and police were looking for a 45-year-old man "who may be able to assist with investigations". Police are looking for this 45-year-old man and this car to help investigate a violent home invasion. Credit:Queensland Police Service "Shortly after [the assault], the mans car keys and his car were taken before his mobile phone was smashed," a police spokesman said. The man police were looking for was described as Caucasian, about 170 centimetres tall, muscular with short brown hair and blue eyes. A Queensland man has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for the manslaughter of his wife after a judge doubted his claims she died accidentally during an argument. Edmund Ian Riggs was acquitted of murdering Patricia Riggs but convicted of manslaughter after telling his Brisbane Supreme Court trial she died after hitting her head when he pushed her in September 2001. Patricia Riggs' partial remains were found in 2016 by a new owner of the property she was buried on. Credit:AAP Image/Darren England Justice Peter Flanagan said on Thursday his post-offence conduct in burying her body twice was "out of all proportion" with an accident, and that she instead died "a violent and sudden death". Riggs pleaded guilty to two counts of interfering with her corpse at the start of his trial and was also sentenced for four counts of perjury for lying for two decades to authorities. Brisbane City Council's planned zipline at Mt Coot-tha could be delayed for months after the state government confirmed it will not make a final decision on the development until after a court appeal concludes. The Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy has been assessing the council's land management plan for Mt Coot-tha, which includes state-owned land under a Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT), and was expected to make a decision within 20 days. A concept image of the planned new viewing platform at Mt Coot-tha. Credit:Brisbane City Council However, last week an appeal against the zipline was lodged in Brisbane's Planning and Environment Court by the Mt Coot-tha Protection Alliance, a community group opposed to the project. A Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy spokeswoman confirmed the department would wait to see the final result of the court appeal before making a decision on the land management plan. A 14-year-old boy has been charged with making threats to kill after a Geelong mosque received a series of violent and concerning messages online. Police are investigating the messages which were directed towards a mosque in the suburb of Manifold Heights at the weekend, around the same time mosques across the state opened their doors to the public for the annual Open Mosque Day. A series of online threats have been made against the Geelong mosque. Credit:Nine News The boy, from a suburb in Geelong, was arrested and charged by investigators from the counter-terrorism command and bailed to appear at Children's Court at a later date. The threats came in the wake of the massacre at mosques in Christchurch, which killed 50 innocent worshippers. Police have suspended their search for a missing man who has not been seen since the weekend. James disappeared from his house in Toodyay on Sunday. Credit:WA Police James Winston Harrison was last seen leaving his Toodyay home on Sunday afternoon. The 37-year-old has not been seen since, despite a massive search operation. On Friday police said the land search for Mr Harrison had been suspended pending any further information coming to hand. Two Tactical Response Group snipers from the WA Police were part of the response team to last weeks Christchurch terror attack, it has been revealed. The two TRG officers just so happened to be in the city last week as part of a snipers training course when the mass shooting - which claimed 50 lives - unfolded last Friday. Due to their critical role the two WA police officers cannot be identified. Credit:AP Police Minister Michelle Roberts revealed some details in state parliament on Wednesday about the roles the officers played following the massacre. When New Zealand's worst ever terror attack unfolded on Friday, some of the world's best law enforcement marksmen were in Christchurch as part of a joint agency sniper course, Ms Roberts said. A major expansion of the lobbyist register governing contact between Canberra's local politicians and lobbyists seeking their ear could be shelved until after the 2020 election, despite being part of the Labor-Green deal to form government. A committee inquiry investigating the proposed expansion on Thursday tabled its report in the Legislative Assembly, essentially ruling out any expansion until the next Assembly begins after the October 2020 election. Speaker Joy Burch tabled the committee inquiry report on the lobbyist register on Thursday. Credit:Dion Georgopoulos It comes despite expanding the lobbyist register beyond only third party lobbyists being a key item in the Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement reached after the 2016 election, and Chief Minister Andrew Barr committing to expanding it. In a recent half-term progress report on the Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement, the expansion of the lobbyists was categorised as "on track", but the committee's recommendation could derail the proposal altogether. Shopping at the main station : How the Maximiliancenter in Bonn looks on the inside Bonn For project planners, the basement is the heart of the Maximilian Center at Bonn Central Station. The underground shopping arcade opens at the end of April. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken Every day around 100,000 passengers arrive at Bonn's main railway station. From there they continue by bus and underground or walk to the city centre. "This is one of the most frequented places in the city," says Moritz Tank. The project manager at real estate company Ten Brinke is on line 16 and is holding on to the yellow poles in the cabin. It's not worth sitting down when he travels from the Bonn office at the Juridicum to the main station - the journey takes two stops and just under five minutes. When he gets off the train, he has "the heart" of the new Maximilian Center that he is looking after right in front of his eyes: The underground shopping arcade that is to open at the end of April. No matter where the people come from: Almost every way leads past the future shops. Two tunnels connect the Deutsche Bahn tracks with the city. The trams stop one floor below. A third passage, the actual shopping arcade, ends with a ramp at the bus station. This promises good business - above all because there is public traffic around the clock. "Which is also independent of the weather," says Tank. Over the past few days, Tank has come by more often to take a look at the progress on the construction site. So far, the average citizen only sees that the so-called station forecourt on Maximilianstrae is paved with light grey stones through the coarse meshes of the construction fences. The beige-coloured facade with its large, reflecting windows has been finished for some time. Inside, the Primark fashion chain has been in operation for a week now: the company plans to sell textiles at competitive prices on three floors starting in autumn. Despite criticism that keeps coming up again and again, Primark is regarded as a magnet for customers. However, the furnishings will not differ from those in the other stores. Living in Bonn for many years "What's most exciting is what happens underneath," Tank says. He has lived in Bonn for many years and knows the old southern development, which was completed in 1978 and demolished in 2017, only too well. "That was quite derelict, it wasn't nice." With the Maximiliancenter this is supposed to change. A high proportion of gastronomy will ensure the quality of the customers stay. "But that also presupposes a certain small-scale nature. How small, two figures reveal: On an area of just 3000 square metres, 22 shops are being built. The largest tenants in terms of space are Rewe, the drugstore dm and the fast food chain KFC - "the basic structure of important brands", as Tank calls it. There are also Backwerk, Le Crobag, a kiosk, a pharmacy, Dean & David, an ice cream parlour, branches of "Pommesfreunde", "Haferkater" and Wonder Waffle, the Pizzeria Kiss and two Asian restaurants, including "Hotalo". The tenants list also includes a shoe shop and a nail studio. Theoretically, they are allowed to open 24 hours a day. Fevzi Salici, who opens with "Essah Anatolia, a snackbar with kebab and oriental specialities, finds the mixture good - even if there are too many bakeries for his taste. "Finally this construction eyesore is gone, that is a good deed for Bonn", he says. And it shows a lack of understanding bythe critics who wanted to preserve the area around the neighbouring Bonner Loch. Salici was one of the many owners from whom Ten Brinke bought the southern development. The man from Dusseldorf used to rent out a shop, but now he rents it himself - and promises himself a good deal "because people will love being here". The shops will have no walls facing the passage, but either large glass facades that can be completely folded in, or roller shutters that can be raised. High demands on building technology This places high demands on the building technology, which is already installed just like the lifts and escalators. "All the fumes from the cooktops in the restaurants have to be extracted," explains Tank. Actually, the planners would have liked to have set the ceilings even higher - just under a metre is required for the technology. Nevertheless, passers-by will have more headroom in future than before. That's because Ten Brinke had the former ceiling removed and built in a new one. The light shaft has disappeared; instead, LED spots bring light into the passage. This is reflected in light grey tiles on the floor and stone slabs on the walls. One detail that Tank says has been much discussed is the bird's nest-like ceiling panels made of fine metal strips suspended between the white panels. "Real design material," he says. The people of Bonn will be able to take a look at it by the end of March: Ten Brinke will then put the staircase to the tunnel between the main railway station and the city centre into operation, which means that the current temporary scaffolding will become obsolete. There will be no opening ceremony. "We'll stick to a quiet opening for now." It will be lively and loud anyway. Health Minister Meegan Fitzharris has faced her second no-confidence motion in a year, as the ACT Opposition pursues the minister over her alleged mishandling of the portfolio. Labor and the Greens used their numbers to defeat the Canberra Liberals' latest motion, which came after an independent review into ACT Health's workplace culture highlighted deep cultural problems within the ACTs public health system. Health Minister Meegan Fitzharris. Credit:Dion Georgopoulos The motion was supposed to go ahead last month but was postponed after the minister was unwell. It follows another no-confidence motion last May, after Canberra Hospital failed 33 key standards, some of which placed patients at "extreme risk". Opposition Leader Bill Shorten faces calls to abolish a multi-billion dollar subsidy to the private health insurance industry, which critics describe as a "privatisation of Medicare" by stealth. Grattan Institute health economist Stephen Duckett said the $6 billion annual subsidy to insurers through premium rebates could be reinvested in the public system. Bill Shorten says Labor is 'the party of Medicare'. Credit:Rebecca Le May "You could open a hospital the size of the Alfred in every capital city for that amount," Dr Duckett told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. It comes as Mr Shorten prepares to fight an election campaign in which health will be a key battleground, positioning Labor as "the party of Medicare", with the cost of health insurance premiums a major concern among voters. The political staffer accused of writing Fraser Annings infamous "final solution" speech and holding an obsession with Nazi Germany is employed by the federal government agency managing Australias immigration program, it has emerged. The staffer, Richard Howard, is on unpaid leave from the Department of Home Affairs and has left the door open to returning should Senator Anning fail to be re-elected in May. However Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo on Friday said if any staff member was found to hold extremist views his department would not hesitate in "turfing them out". Richard Howard is employed by Senator Fraser Anning and may return to his position at the Department of Home Affairs. Credit:AAP Senator Anning prompted global condemnation for links he made between the Christchurch terrorist attack and Muslim immigration. At the time of writing almost 1.4 million people had signed a petition calling for him to be expelled from Parliament, and Labor and the Coalition plan to vote together to censure him in a Senate motion when MPs return to Canberra in April. London: On Thursday, the Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi will receive a petition signed by more than 1.3 million Australians calling for Senator Fraser Anning's removal from Parliament. While there are no powers for such an expulsion under the constitution, Kate Ahmad's petition has garnered the largest number of signatures in the history of online petitions in Australia. The British Parliament would have dealt with the Fraser Anning petition very differently. Credit:Andrew Meares Such was the disgust at Anning's heinous claim that the Muslim victims of the Christchurch attack were to blame for the violence perpetrated against them, that in the petition's first three hours it had amassed 120,000 signatures. That's roughly 6000 signatures for every below-the-line vote Anning received at the ballot box in the 2016 election. One Nation is not just another political party. It is defined by racism. Hanson has taunted Muslims by wearing a burqa in the Senate, an appalling stunt designed to provoke and alienate part of the Australian community. She has called for a ban on Muslim migration, promised no more mosques on her election material and demanded a royal commission into Islam. She appeals to the worst in the Australian character the fear of the new migrant and the aggressive desire to return to the White Australia Policy, in total denial of the success of an immigration program that does not discriminate on race or religion. If the rise of the far right in Europe and the United States has any lesson for Australia, it is that helping an ugly extremist is a path to destruction for any major party that claims to govern from the political centre. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Yet the Coalitions latest defence in negotiating preferences with One Nation is that the party is merely another option on the political spectrum. This is used to justify giving preference to Hansons team in the same way Labor may trade with the Greens. In its most ludicrous form, this defence claims the Greens are equally pernicious because they advocate death duties, or weaker border protection, or an end to coal, or school lessons on fluid gender identity. This is a total confusion of political and moral values. It says: I will turn a blind eye to racism, ethnic hatred and social division because I am anxious about energy policy, or modern sexuality, or the erosion of Christian values. No political party is free from blame about what it stands for. The anti-Semitic streak in the political left has been a dangerous madness for years. Australians see a hint of it whenever a Greens MP posts a Nazi-sympathiser image of a Jewish banker or stands on a platform alongside those who say the state of Israel should cease to exist. The schism over Jeremy Corbyns leadership in the United Kingdom shows that anti-Semitism can be just as debilitating a disease for the left as Islamophobia is for the right. Yet none of the Greens in Australia have engaged in the extremism of Hanson. None has called for an end to Jewish migration to Australia, or worn Jewish garb in Parliament to mock people of faith. The temptation to help One Nation in order to hurt an opponent will be strong at this election, and not only for the Liberals and Nationals. Queensland Council of Unions secretary Ros McLennan told voters in the Longman by-election last year to put the LNP last a position that meant giving preference to One Nation as well as right-wing racist Jim Saleam. GetUp also faced claims that its telephone call sheet said voters should put the LNP last, although the GetUp how-to-vote card put the LNP ahead of One Nation and Saleam. All sides are likely to face a higher test on how they treat One Nation. Loading The torment over Hanson has been more than two decades in the making. The firm response of the past, when John Howard ruled the Liberals would place the minor party last, has given way to a gentler approach. Tony Abbott, who once funded legal action against Hanson in the name of protecting the Liberal Party, stands alongside her last year to launch her latest book. What does Abbott stand for now? His excuse for racism two years ago Islamophobia hasnt killed anyone was wrong and repugnant at the time and now stands out like a neon sign above a pile of rotting fish. The Liberal willingness to accept Hanson, to the point of appeasing her, has coincided with her rising power. Playing nice has made things worse. Howards stronger approach was not only wiser on principle but smarter on politics. History has a lesson for the Liberals: they have more to lose from Hanson than they ever have to gain. Former West Australian Liberal premier Colin Barnett regrets a preference deal with One Nation at the March 2017 state election because it drove away voters and meant he was asked questions every day of the campaign about a One Nation policy or candidate. Former Liberal National Party leader Tim Nicholls suffered in the same way from seat-by-seat decisions to put One Nation ahead of Labor at the Queensland state election in December 2017. Liberals say this weakened his primary vote. In both cases the parliamentary leaders were made to answer for decisions taken by party officials. Why would Morrison want to put himself in the same predicament? If the LNP or others give their preferences to a One Nation candidate a former bankrupt, or porn shop owner, for example Morrison may be asked daily why his team favours that individual. The Liberals and Nationals are anxious for good reason about Hansons appeal to their base, at the same time they try to recover from their leadership breakdown last year. This is enough to tempt them into punishing Labor candidates by placing them last. Outgoing Labor MP Michael Danby charged taxpayers more than $10,000 to spend a week in northern Australia with his wife following a parliamentary junket to inspect a gas plant. Mr Danby, who has been forced to pay back previous travel claims, was part of a delegation of eight Labor MPs who spent in excess of $27,000 in public funds to tour a LNG project owned by Japanese oil giant INPEX. Michael Danby was one of eight Labor MPs who attended the delegation to INPEX in October. Credit:Andrew Meares The whirlwind tour to Broome and Darwin in late October included Labor's three federal parliamentarians from the Northern Territory, two from Perth and three from the east coast: Matt Thistlethwaite, Julian Hill and Mr Danby. According to attendees, Mr Danby was the only MP who brought his spouse, and records show he was the only one who charged taxpayers for family reunion travel related to the trip. When Duncan Spender is sworn in as a senator on Tuesday week, he intends to affirm his allegiance while holding a copy of the constitution. Not just any old copy, mind you he's bringing one from home. "Its my own personal copy," he says. "Ive scribbled [improvements] all over it." Liberal Democrat senator Duncan Spender, who has replaced David Leyonhjelm - but likely not for long. Credit:Janie Barrett Rewriting Australia's federation document was among Spender's "not very popular range of policies" when he first tried his hand at politics by contesting the seat of Brisbane in 1998. In a week or so he will finally enter Parliament as the replacement for Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm, who quit to contest Saturday's NSW state election. Milo Yiannopoulos and his touring manager attempted to use their network of powerful conservatives including Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones to lobby the Morrison government to overturn a decision to deny the notorious political commentator a visa. The concerted effort to influence Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and others in the government allegedly included Liberal National MP George Christensen and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. The revelations are contained in an explosive transcript of WhatsApp messages Mr Yiannopoulos intends to file today as part of a court action taken by celebrity agent Max Markson against former tour promoter Damien Costas. Controversial political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos (L) poses for a photo with radio broadcaster Alan Jones. Credit:2GB Mr Yiannopoulos has earned notoriety for anti-Semitic trolling, Islamophobic rhetoric and controversial remarks about relationships between younger boys and older men. One of the hottest issues for parents in NSW in recent years has been the rising temperatures in school class rooms, especially in many state schools that lack air-conditioning. Labor tapped into this disquiet and has unveiled a popular though costly policy to put air-conditioning into every classroom over an unspecified period, pledging $800 million towards this goal. The Coalition has a $500 million program to put air-conditioning into about 900 schools. A new demountable classroom with solar panels, insulation and air conditioning at St Christopher's Primary School, Holsworthy. Credit:Janie Barrett But there are many unknowns about both policies, as neither party has released analysis of the running-cost implications of their plans, nor do they have specific commitments to reduce these costs by adding solar panels and insulation into the mix. Running a modest-size unit on a hot day can increase your daily energy bill by up to seven times. Schools may find they have to cut teaching resources to keep their classrooms cool. Petersburg Dialogue : Merkel to meet Putin on the Petersberg Bonn The Petersburg Dialogue will take place in July on the Petersberg in Konigswinter. For the first time since the Crimean crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin are to take part. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken In mid-July, a new phase in German-Russian relations may begin. For the first time since the Crimean crisis, both Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to take part in the St Petersburg Dialogue. Ronald Pofalla, co-chair of the civil society dialogue event, confirmed that the next meeting will take place from 18 to 20 July at Petersberg in Konigswinter. On the evening of the 18th, NRW Prime Minister Armin Laschet will welcome the approximately 300 participants from Germany and Russia to Schloss Drachenburg. "Russia was and is a key partner in international cooperation," Laschet told our editorial team. There were clear differences, for example in the annexation of the Crimea in violation of international law, which had to be expressed openly in the spirit of a meaningful and honest dialogue. "The more tense the times, the greater the dissent, the more important the dialogue is," the CDU politician stressed. He was therefore pleased that the Petersburg Dialogue had come to North Rhine-Westphalia this year as the central format for dialogue with Russia. He had worked to bring this civil society platform of German-Russian cooperation to NRW under the patronage of the Chancellor and the Russian President. "Appreciation for the Petersburg Dialogue According to our editorial staff, Russian co-chair Viktor Zubkov has invited Russian patron Putin to return to dialogue after years without the participation of the front row. In accordance with diplomatic practice, such an invitation will only be issued if there is a high probability that it will be accepted. Accordingly, the German delegation has also asked Chancellor Merkel to come to the Petersberg. Pofalla remained cautious about the confirmation. "We expect high-ranking representatives of the German and Russian governments," he told our editorial staff. But he, too, apparently assumes a high probability that the event will be upgraded by Putin and Merkel: "This shows the appreciation for the St. Petersburg Dialogue and its relevance for our relations", explained Pofalla. The only thread of conversation worth mentioning The most recent participants were the Chancellor and the President as patrons of the dialogue event in Moscow in 2012 initiated by Federal Chancellors Gerhard Schroder and Putin in 2001. Even then, both sides had been very critical of the policies of the other state. After the annexation of the Crimea, the St. Petersburg Dialogue was at times the only thread worth mentioning. But even there, both sides read each other the riot act every year.Putin's and Merkel's participation will probably also depend on the general political climate situation in July. "We want to be a good host in order to promote the diverse exchange between Germany and Russia," Laschet explained. Partnership conference in Aachen The Petersburg Dialogue will be atmospherically prepared by another major event in German-Russian relations, which will also take place in NRW: The German-Russian Town Twinning Conference, which will take place from 25 to 28 June in Duren and Aachen with several hundred guests from both states and will also be supported by the state government. The ceremonial opening of the conference is scheduled for 25 June in the Coronation Hall of Aachen City Hall. According to reports, a high-ranking cast is also expected here: The two Foreign Ministers Heiko Maas and Sergei Lavrov are supposed to have the event already in their respective calendars. But also the probability of this meeting taking place will be determined by whether the efforts to reach an understanding between Berlin and Moscow in the run-up to the meeting will go in the hoped-for direction. NSW Labor leader Michael Daley might have emerged as the loser from the leaders' debate, but on Thursday he made every effort to resurrect his campaign. Standing outside Allianz Stadium in Moore Park, he said everyone made mistakes and both he and Premier Gladys Berejiklian made errors during the debate. Michael Daley toured Surry Hills and spoke about the Sydney light rail project and its effects on the community. Credit:Wolter Peeters He said he struggled to provide costings on the spot because multiple figures were running through his head and he did not want to pick the wrong one. "Under the forward estimates the grants to TAFE are $3 billion and [funding for public schools] is $2.7 billion," he said, recalling the monetary figures that eluded him in the debate. The semi-secret deals successive Victorian governments have done with Transurban, one of the worlds biggest toll road companies, are an insult to taxpayers and motorists, who will be paying billions of dollars for decades with little way of knowing if they are getting fair value. Transport Minister Jacinta Allan (left) and Premier Daniel Andrews tour the West Gate Tunnel site in December. Credit:AAP To be sure, a dramatic increase in infrastructure investment is needed, and the Andrews government has garnered community support for getting projects done, but the public must be given sufficient information to assess the investment of their money. The governments refusal to release details relating to the $6.7 billion West Gate Tunnel is unjustifiable. It contravenes essential requirements of proper public policy transparency, accountability and cost-effectiveness. There was no tender; the project was suggested by Transurban, which is investing $4 billion in return for almost $40 billion in tolls from that project and from an associated extension for a decade of tolling on CityLink. So there is no credible argument that the financial details are subject to commercial or cabinet confidentiality. Today the Crimean peninsula is a human rights black hole. The occupation regime is harshly persecuting the indigenous Crimean Tatar population, which enjoyed considerable freedom with the Ukrainian state. The Kremlin held a sham referendum and installed a puppet government. These events shocked the world community and created the dangerous precedent which undermined the law-based world order. On March 27, 2014, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 68/262 Territorial integrity of Ukraine condemned occupation of Ukraines Crimean peninsula and all western democracies including Australia imposed sanctions on Russia. Russian President Volodymyr Putin at first brazenly denied his countrys involvement, then later admitted that it was an under-cover operation by Russian special forces. This month marks five years since Ukraines Crimean peninsula was invaded and subsequently occupied by Russia. The occupiers who came from across the border would come to be known as Putins little green men Russian troops with their military insignias hidden. Now dissidents are routinely abducted and tried in kangaroo courts. 60,000 former Crimean residents have been internally displaced to mainland Ukraine. The main representative body of Crimean Tatars, called the Mejlis, which fully supports Ukraine, has been banned by Russia. The human rights situation on the Crimean peninsula is so poor that Australia and over 20 countries co-sponsored very important UN GA resolutions: Situation of human rights in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine. Russias occupation of the Crimean peninsula has resulted in a militarization of the region and violation of basic principles of freedom of navigation. Ukraine treated its Crimean region as a resort, but Russia treats it as a military base. Russia has introduced to the peninsula a tremendous amount of weaponry, which poses a danger to the whole Black sea region. Russia built a bridge to the occupied peninsula and then used it as a barrier, firing on and seizing Ukrainian sailors and warships that were navigating in international waters. All the worlds main democracies, which understand the dangerous precedent set by such lawless piracy, including Australia, have imposed sanctions on Russia, and UN GA resolution 73/194 expresses grave concern over the progressive militarization of Crimea, condemning Moscows building of the Kerch Bridge and the recent attacks on Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov. We cannot forget that the Russian occupation of the Crimean peninsula was the prelude to a broader campaign of aggression that includes Russias invasion of eastern Ukraine, using both its regulars and mercenaries, which has killed almost 13,000 Ukrainians and 298 international passengers on flight MH17, including 38 Australians, who were shot down by a Russian military missile. Washington: US President Donald Trump endorsed permanent Israeli control of the occupied Golan Heights, saying on Thursday that the area seized from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war is "of critical strategic and security importance" to Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pressed the United States to formally recognise Israel's annexation of the land, including making a public appeal for US help as he welcomed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) had pressed Donald Trump (left) to formally recognise Israeli control of the Golan Heights. Credit:AP Pompeo has refused to discuss the Golan request with reporters travelling with him. "After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognise Israel's Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Trump wrote on Twitter. Christchurch: A person allegedly murdered by the accused Christchurch mosque shooter has turned out to be alive and well. When the alleged gunman appeared in the Christchurch District Court on Saturday he faced one charge of murdering a woman whose name was then suppressed by Judge Paul Kellar. Police at the memorial to the victims of the Al Noor Mosque shooting. Credit:Jason South The name has caused much confusion with the media which have been trying to compose a list of the fatalities. Because the woman's name was included in the list, the number of fatalities came to 51. However police were adamant that the true number of victims was 50. Detective Superintendent Chris Page on Thursday said police had made a mistake, by charging the alleged gunman with killing a person who was connected to the shootings but was still alive. Carvana Debuts Second Pennsylvania Car Vending Machine PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Carvana , a leading e-commerce platform for buying and selling used cars, unveiled its newest Car Vending Machine today in Pittsburgh. The newest addition to the Steel Citys skyline stands eight stories tall and holds 27 vehicles, creating a memorable and customer-centric pickup experience for customers who purchase a vehicle on Carvana.com and choose to pick it up from the Car Vending Machine. Additionally, today Carvana launched two more markets in Pennsylvania, now offering as-soon-as-next-day vehicle delivery to Erie and Reading. Area residents can also sell their current vehicle to Carvana, even if they arent purchasing a vehicle, receive a real offer in just minutes and schedule as-soon-as-next-day pickup of that vehicle. In as little as 10 minutes, customers can shop more than 15,000 vehicles on Carvana.com, finance, purchase, trade-in, and schedule as-soon-as-next-day delivery or Car Vending Machine pickup of that vehicle. Customers that choose to pick up at the Car Vending Machine receive a commemorative, oversized Carvana coin to activate the vending process. The pick-up process takes only minutes, compared to an average of four hours at the dealership. Additionally, every Carvana vehicle comes with a seven-day return policy, giving customers the peace of mind and time to ensure the vehicle fits their life. Every Carvana vehicle is Carvana Certified, having passed a rigorous, 150-point inspection, has never been in a reported accident and has no frame damage. Features, imperfections and updated information about open safety recalls are listed on every cars vehicle description page. We first brought Pittsburgh the new way to buy a car in 2016, when we launched as-soon-as-next-day vehicle delivery in the area, said Ernie Garcia, founder and CEO of Carvana. Were rapidly increasing our presence in Pennsylvania, and as we launch in Reading and Erie today, while also debuting our Pittsburgh Car Vending Machine, were appreciative of our customers and how Pennsylvania has welcomed our easy, transparent online car buying experience. Pittsburgh is the second Carvana Car Vending Machine location in Pennsylvania and the 16th in the U.S. Additional Car Vending Machines are located in cities across Texas, Tennessee, Florida, North Carolina, Maryland, Arizona, Ohio and Indiana. Located at 1300 Brockwell St. in Bridgeville, the Pittsburgh Car Vending Machine is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET. Vehicle pickup at any of Carvanas Car Vending Machines is free for all Carvana customers. About Carvana Founded in 2012 and based in Phoenix, Carvanas mission is to change the way people buy cars. By removing the traditional dealership infrastructure and replacing it with technology and exceptional customer service, Carvana offers consumers an intuitive and convenient online car buying and financing platform. Carvana.com enables consumers to quickly and easily shop more than 15,000 vehicles, finance, trade-in or sell their current vehicle to Carvana, sign contracts, and schedule as-soon-as-next-day delivery or pickup at one of Carvanas patented, automated Car Vending Machines. A 17-year-old female was airlifted from Blumenort to Winnipeg late Wednesday afternoon after falling from the back of a pickup truck. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A 17-year-old female was airlifted from Blumenort to Winnipeg late Wednesday afternoon after falling from the back of a pickup truck. Police said in release on Thursday morning that the trucks tail gate was open as she and a 17-year-old friend were exercising a dog, with it running alongside the truck. The vehicle, driven by her friends 49-year-old father, accelerated and she fell out of the back of truck, suffering head injuries. The teen was flown to Health Sciences Centre in critical condition but has since stabilized. Her injuries are now considered non-life threatening. Police said alcohol is not considered a factor. There are two geysers on the Fly Ranch property. The first was created nearly 100 years ago as part of an effort to make a part of the desert usable for farming. A well was drilled, and geothermal boiling water (200 degrees) was hit. Obviously not suitable for irrigation water, this geyser was left alone and a 10 to 12-foot calcium carbonate cone formed. In 1964 a geothermic energy company drilled a test well at the same site. The water they struck was that same 200 degrees. Hot, but not hot enough for their purposes. The well was supposedly re-sealed, but apparently, it did not hold. The new geyser, a few hundred feet north of the original, robbed the first of its water pressure, and the cone now lies dry. This second geyser, known as Fly Geyser, has grown substantially in the last 40 years as minerals from the geothermal water pocket deposit on the desert surface. Because there are multiple geyser spouts, this geyser has not created a cone as large as the first, but instead an ever-growing alien looking mound. The geyser is covered with thermophilic algae, which flourishes in moist, hot environments, resulting in the multiple hues of green and red that add to its out-of-this-world appearance. Fly Geyser Fly Geyser, also known as Fly Ranch Geyser is a small geothermal geyser located on private land in Washoe County, Nevada, about 20 miles (32 km) north of Gerlach. Fly Geyser is located near the edge of Fly Reservoir in the Hualapai Geothermal Flats and is approximately 5 feet (1.5 m) high by 12 feet (3.7 m) wide, counting the mound on which it sits. In June 2016, the non-profit Burning Man Project purchased the 3,800 acres (1,500 ha) Fly Ranch, including the geyser, for $6.5 million. The Burning Man Project began offering limited public access to the property in May 2018. The geyser contains thermophilic algae, which flourishes in moist, hot environments, resulting in multiple hues of green and red coloring the rocks. Location Fly Geyser is located on the Fly Ranch in Hualapai Flat, about 0.3 miles (0.48 km) from State Route 34 and about 25 miles (40 km) north of Gerlach, Nevada. It is due east of Black Rock Desert. Formation of Fly Geyser The source of the Fly Geyser fields heat is attributed to a very deep pool of hot rock where tectonic rifting and faulting are common. The first geyser at the site was formed in 1916 when a well was drilled seeking irrigation water. When geothermal water at close to boiling point was found, the well was abandoned, and a 1012-foot (3.03.7 m) calcium carbonate cone formed. In 1964 a geothermic energy company drilled a second well near the site of the first well. The water was not hot enough for energy purposes. They reportedly capped the well, but the seal failed. The discharge from the second well released sufficient pressure that the original geyser dried up. Dissolved minerals in the water, including calcium carbonate and silica, accumulated, creating the cones and travertine pools. The geyser has multiple conic openings sitting on a mound: the cones are about 6 feet (1.8 m), and the entire mound is 25 to 30 feet (7.6 to 9.1 m) tall. An AT&T logo is seen at an AT&T building in New York City on Oct. 23, 2016. (Stephanie Keith/Reuters) AT&T CEO Says Chinas Huawei Hinders Carriers From Shifting Suppliers for 5G WASHINGTONAT&T Inc Chief Executive Randall Stephenson said on March 20 that Chinas Huawei Technologies is making it very difficult for European carriers to drop the company from its supply chain for next-generation 5G wireless service. If you have deployed Huawei as your 4G network, Huawei is not allowing interoperability to 5Gmeaning if you are 4G, you are stuck with Huawei for 5G, said Stephenson at a speech in Washington. When the Europeans say we got a problemthats their problem. They really dont have an option to go to somebody else. The United States has been pressuring other countries to drop Huawei from their networks. Stephenson said the U.S. government could do a better job explaining the security risks of Huawei. The biggest risk is not that the Chinese government might listen in on our conversations or mine our data if we use their equipment, Stephenson said. Within a decade, 5G will drive all U.S. factories, utilities, refineries, traffic management and help underpin autonomous vehicles. If that much of infrastructure will be attached to this kind of technology, do we want to be cautious about who is the underlying company behind that technology? We damn well better be, Stephenson said. Huawei did not respond to a request for comment March 20. The United States warns that next-generation 5G equipment, which some telecom experts see as more vulnerable to attack than previous technology, could be exploited by the Chinese regime for spying if supplied by Huawei. Huawei has grown rapidly to become the worlds biggest maker of telecom equipment and is embedded in the mobile networks and 5G plans of many European operators. It denies that its technology represents a security risk. In the United States, 5G networks will largely be built by Nordic equipment makers Ericsson and Nokia, and Strayer said there were safer alternatives to Huawei. The United States has also alleged Huawei violated its sanctions on Iran and stole intellectual property. Several Western countries have restricted the firms access to their markets. Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday Germany was not planning to exclude any one company from its 5G auction per se, but rather wanted bidders in the mobile spectrum auction to meet certain requirements. Huawei Background Huaweis chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested by Canadian authorities at an airport in Vancouver in December 2018 on behalf of the United States, which seeks to prosecute her on charges related to fraud. In a 13-count indictment, U.S. attorneys accuse Meng, Huawei, and several of the companys subsidiaries of violating sanctions against Iran. Meng herself is charged with bank fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud. Meng will remain on bail, subject to her existing conditions while court proceedings are underway. Canadian authorities set the next hearing for May 8, which is when the court will hear an outline of how the extradition proceedings will move forward. In a separate 10-count indictment, U.S. prosecutors accuse Huawei of stealing trade secrets, committing wire fraud, laundering money, and obstructing justice. In the indictment, prosecutors allege that Huawei managers encouraged stealing competitors technology, including the designs of a T-Mobile robot named Tappy. Speaking at a press conference where the charges against Huawei and Meng were unsealed, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the Trump administration is taking a tougher stance against those who violate trade sanctions. For years, Chinese firms have broken our export laws and undermined sanctions, often using U.S. financial systems to facilitate their illegal activities, Ross said. This will end. By David Shepardson. Epoch Times reporter Margaret Wollensak contributed to this report. Australian Convicted Pedophile With Dwarfism Could Avoid Jail A convicted pedophile with dwarfism could avoid time behind bars due to fears hell be targeted by other inmates because of his diminutive stature. Daniel James Knuth, the son of Australian politician Shane Knuth, was found guilty in December 2018 of committing 35 child sex offenses. When the 21-year-old faced a court in Townsville, he admitted to using a fake Facebook account to coax underage girls into sending him nude photographs of themselves, the Courier Mail reported. #AusPol he should be given the same consideration he gave those children absolutely zero https://t.co/sa0rigdyrr Free Australian (@den2114) March 21, 2019 Judge Greg Lynham said at the time that the sheer number of victims and the details of the crimes committed suggested an appropriate sentence would be jail. Knuths lawyer, Bruce Gillan, argued at an initial sentencing in December, according to the Daily Mail, that jail would be a very difficult environment for him because of his small size. Lynham in December postponed sentencing in order to gain a better understanding of the vulnerabilities of someone with dwarfism in jail. On March 20, Knuths case was heard in court, where Lynham ordered the Director of Public Prosecutions explicitly to explore the suitability of the Townsville Correctional Center for someone with Knuths condition. They can accommodate (some) sorts of conditions quite well, Lynham told the court, according to the Daily Mail, but we have unique features here that Im not sure whether the Townsville Correctional Centre has been confronted with before. In fairness to them, they need to have an opportunity to consider how they might accommodate, Lynham said. Meanwhile, Knuth remains out on bail. He may avoid jail over fears he'll be targeted by other inmates because of his size Daily Mail 2019321 The Case Against Knuth Crown prosecutor Dominique Orr was cited by the Courier Mail as alleging that Knuth used a fake Facebook profile to engage in sexually explicit conversations with 27 child victims between October 2016 and September 2017. Orr called Knuth a sexual predator who preyed on vulnerable children as young as 12 years old. She alleged Knuth posed as a personal trainer named Jack Thomason on the fake Facebook profile, and would bait the young girls with photographs of naked male models, pretending they showcased his own physique. (On one occasion he sent) show me your [expletive] so I know you are serious, Orr said in court testimony, describing the sexually explicit messages Knuth was accused of sending to minors. The prosecutors alleged Knuth even threatened one of the girls with a beating and rape. Knuth pleaded guilty to 27 counts of using the Internet to procure a child, seven counts of involving children in making child exploitation material, and one count of possessing child exploitation material, according to the Daily Mail. Knuths father gave a statement to reporters outside the courthouse: We love our son, obviously we dont condone what hes done well move on from here but obviously I cant say anymore because its before the court. Pedophile With Dwarfism Spared Jail in Wales Knuths case recalls the story of Bryan Anthony Bowen, a Welsh man with dwarfism who was found guilty of inciting young girls to perform sex acts but was spared jail due to his size. The judge said he would have a very hard time in prison. New York Post 20171116 Bowen contacted two girls, aged 13 and 15, on Facebook and asked them to send nude photographs and have sex with him, according to The Metro. Judge Rhys Rowland was cited by the New York Post as saying during Bowens sentencing that he found the 26-year-old small in stature and emotionally inadequate to do hard time behind bars. Rowland handed Bowen, who had no prior convictions, a 48-week prison sentence suspended for two years. He also ordered the convicted pedophile to register as a sex offender for 10 years. Bayer Shares Slide After Latest Roundup Cancer Ruling FRANKFURTShares in Germanys Bayers fell more than 12 percent on March 20 after a second U.S. jury ruled its Roundup weed killer caused cancer. The March 19 unanimous jury decision in San Francisco federal court was not a finding of Bayers liability for the cancer of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman. Liability and damages will be decided by the same jury in a second trial phase beginning on March 20. Bayer, which denies allegations that glyphosate or Roundup cause cancer, said it was disappointed with the jurys initial decision. Bayer acquired Monsanto, the longtime maker of Roundup, for $63 billion last year. Bayer shares drop was the biggest intraday loss in 16 years, wiping some 8 billion euros ($9.1 billion) off its valuation. This looks like 2-0 plaintiffs, and clearly not helpful for the overall payout calculus and resolution of the litigation, said Bernstein analyst Gunther Zechmann. Glyphosate is the worlds most widely used weed killer. Monsantos Roundup was the first glyphosate-based weed killer but is no longer patent-protected and many other versions are now available. Bayer does not provide sales figures for the product. We are confident the evidence in phase two will show that Monsantos conduct has been appropriate and the company should not be liable for Mr. Hardemans cancer, the company said. The case was only the second of some 11,200 Roundup lawsuits to go to trial in the United States. Another California man was awarded $289 million in August after a state court jury found Roundup caused his cancer. That award was later reduced to $78 million and is on appeal. Under Pressure Baader Helvea analyst Markus Mayer noted that Bayer management announced ambitious targets in December. (It) is now under pressure to deliver and trying to avoid becoming a target for activist or strategic buyers. Activist investor Elliott already holds a stake of less than 3 percent in Bayer, Reuters disclosed last year. Brokerage Warburg lowered its recommendation to Hold from Buy, arguing that the with the renewed setback upcoming glyphosate court cases would remain a drag on the share price. Bayer had claimed that jury was overly influenced by plaintiffs lawyers allegations of corporate misconduct and did not focus on the science. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria called such evidence a distraction from the scientific question of whether glyphosate causes cancer. He split the Hardeman case into two phases: one to decide causation, the other to determine Bayers potential liability and damages. Under Chhabrias order, the second phase would only take place if the jury found Roundup to be a substantial factor in causing Hardemans non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The jury found that it was on March 19. Union Investment fund manager Markus Manns cautioned that it was too early to read anything into individual rulings in courts of first instance. What will be important for Bayer is the outcome of the appeals hearings, he told Reuters, adding that Bayer should not yet engage in settlement talks. Chhabria has scheduled another bellwether trial for May and a third trial is likely to take place this year. All three cases will be split into causation and liability phases. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Chemicals Agency and other regulators have found that glyphosate is not likely carcinogenic to humans. But the World Health Organizations cancer arm in 2015 reached a different conclusion, classifying glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans. By Jim Christie The logo of German car manufacturer BMW on the hood of a vehicle in Kiev March 27, 2012. (Reuters/Str) BMW Plans to Cut Costs After Warning on Profits MUNICHBMW expects group pretax profit to fall by more than 10 percent this year and plans a sweeping 12 billion euro ($13.6 billion) savings and efficiency plan to help offset higher technology investment and currency costs. The German carmaker last week reported a 7.9 percent fall in 2018 operating profit and said it would step up efficiency measures in anticipation of a difficult year in a sector grappling with the shift toward electric vehicles, Brexit uncertainty, and global economic worries. Group earnings before tax are expected to be significantly below 2018 levels, the company warned on March 20, leaving analysts wondering about a broader downturn in auto industry profitability. BMW shares fell 5 percent. If BMW is facing this kind of difficulty and feels the need to guide this cautiously, what does this tell us about the rest of the sector?, Bernstein Research analyst Max Warburton said. Mercedes has far fewer new products, while Audi seems to be facing more pricing pressure and VW is surely raising its development spending faster, Warburton added. BMW was the only German premium automotive brand to buck a downturn in demand in China and the United States last year and reaffirmed it expected vehicle deliveries to rise again in 2019 thanks to the rollout of new BMW 3-series, X5, and X7 models. Depending on how conditions develop, our guidance may be subject to additional risks; in particular, the risk of a no-deal Brexit and ongoing developments in international trade policy, BMW Chief Financial Officer Nicolas Peter said. Brexit Expectations BMW continues to expect an orderly Brexit and said disruptions from a disorderly Brexit would be likely to normalize after four to six weeks. The company sought to play down the prospect of a looming production shift from its plant in Oxford, England toward other plants in continental Europe if cross-border tariffs are introduced after Brexit. If tariffs are in the range of zero and 5 percent, the business case would not dramatically change, BMW production chief Oliver Zipse said, referring to Oxfords status as a production and export hub for the Mini. A disorderly Brexit could result in tariffs of up to 10 percent and even then BMW would cope, given that it has built up production capacity in the Netherlands, BMW said. BMW produced 211,660 cars in the Netherlands last year, a 39 percent increase. BMW uses contract manufacturer VDL Nedcar to build the BMW X1, the Mini hatch, Mini convertible and Mini Countryman models at a Dutch plant in the town of Born. BMWs Mini plant in Oxford made 234,501 Minis last year. Cost Measures BMW said it plans to save 12 billion euros by the end of 2022 by cutting the number of available engine and gearbox combinations by 50 percent and slashing vehicle development times through increased software simulation. The carmaker also said it will make structural changes at its plants and headquarters to trim overheads, and cut the size of its management board to 7 members from 8, following the retirement of Peter Schwarzenbauer. BMW will seek to reduce the size of its workforce but ruled out forced redundancies. About 1,500 staff have taken early retirement and another 2,500 are eligible for retirement and early retirement, the company said. Using software for developing vehicles will also help speed up development of new models by as much as a third. Among other savings, digital simulations and virtual validation could eliminate the need for some 2,500 expensive prototype vehicles by the year 2024, BMW said. BMW said it expects the operating margin in its automotive division to fall to between 6 percent and 8 percent this year, below its 8-10 percent target. Last years automotive operating margin after special items, was 7.2 percent, making BMW the most profitable premium carmaker. By contrast, Mercedes-Benz Cars delivered a 6.4 percent margin, while Audi delivered a 6 percent margin, analyst Marc-Rene Tonn said. CEOs Contract BMW sidestepped questions about whether Chief Executive Harald Krueger, 53, would receive a contract extension, which is due to be discussed this year if the supervisory board agrees. Krueger was hired for a five-year term in May 2015 and it is customary for German companies to communicate a year before contract expiry whether a board members contract will be extended. Kruegers health was called into question after he collapsed on stage during his first major press conference in 2015. BMW blamed Kruegers fall on dizziness at the time. BMW spokesman Maximilian Schoeberl said succession was not a topic being discussed. BMW production chief Zipse and Klaus Froehlich, the companys board member responsible for development, as well as finance chief Peter, are seen as potential replacements if Krueger does not remain as CEO. By Edward Taylor Firefighters stand by the gutted remains of a bus in San Donato Milanese, near Milan, Italy, on March 21, 2019. (Daniele Bennati/ANSA via AP) Bus Driver Abducts 51 Children, Sets Vehicle on Fire MILAN, ItalyA bus driver in northern Italy abducted 51 children and their school chaperones Wednesday, March 20, threatening the hostages lives for 40 minutes and setting the bus on fire at a Carabinieri blockade. Officers from the national police force broke windows at the back of the bus to reach the passengers and got all of them out without serious injuries before flames destroyed the vehicle, authorities said. The driver was apprehended and treated for burns. Prosecutors described him as a 47-year-old Italian citizen of Senegalese origin and said he told authorities he wanted to vindicate Europe-bound migrants who have died in the Mediterranean Sea but did not plan to hurt anyone. #italy #Milan Italian bus hijacked, set on fire after children & people managed to escape pic.twitter.com/AsXQRvsSgR iixxii (@iixxii) March 21, 2019 However, prosecutors said the suspect, identified as Ousseynou Sy, made preparations that showed his actions were premeditated, such as buying a canister of gasoline and restraints on Tuesday. He also sent a video to friends in Italy and Senegal indicating plans for a bold action and with the message, Africa, Rise up, they said. Sy was being investigated on suspicion of kidnapping, intention to commit a massacre, arson and resisting law enforcement, with terrorism as an aggravating circumstance since the event caused panic. Prosecutors said they have found no evidence of Islamic radicalization or ties to extremists, saying it appeared the bus driver acted alone. Chief prosecutor Francesco Greco praised the Carabinieri for moving swiftly to block the bus and remove the children. They carried out an operation that we see in films with special agents, Greco said. Thank goodness, because by then the intent to massacre had ignited, and the man was starting to set fire to the bus, as he did, he said. Video footage of the attack where the Senegalese man attempted to set a bus full of kidnapped children on fire. Video is not graphic but you can hear the screams. Im surprised that such a brazen hijacking in Italy is not getting wall-to-wall coverage. pic.twitter.com/1DFaHYJdeJ Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) March 20, 2019 Milans provincial Carabinieri commander, Luca De Marchis, told broadcaster Sky TG24 that the bus was ferrying two middle-school classes between school and a nearby gym in Cremona province, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Milan. The driver threatened the passengers, telling them no one would survive today as he commandeered the bus, De Marchis said. Italian news agency ANSA quoted one of the students as saying the driver everyones phones and ordered the chaperones to bind the students hands with cable ties, threatening to spill gas and set the bus ablaze. ANSA said the chaperones only loosely bound several students hands with the zip ties, not everyones. One of the middle school students described his terror in an interview with La Repubblica TV, his face obscured due to his age. His name was not given. We were all very afraid because the driver had emptied the gas canister onto the floor (of the bus.) He tied us up and took all the telephones so we could not call the police, the student said. One of the telephones, belonging to a classmate, fell to the ground, so I pulled off the handcuffs, hurting myself a bit, and went and picked it up. We called the Carabinieri and the police. Authorities said that an adult called an emergency operator, while one of the students called a parent, and they alerted authorities, who set up roadblocks. The bus was intercepted on the outskirts of Milan by three Carabinieri vehicles, which were able to force it into the guardrail, De Marchis said. While two officers kept the driver busyhe took a lighter and threatened to set fire to the vehicle with a gasoline canister on boardthe others forced open the back door, breaking two windows, De Marchis said. While the evacuation was still underway, the driver started the blaze. De Marchis credited the officers swiftness and courage, for getting out all the children and their teachers with no tragic consequences. He wanted to kill us. He said he lost three daughters at sea NTD Television 2019320 Some of the passengers were treated at a hospital, mostly for cuts and scratches related to the evacuation, he said. Prosecutors confirmed that Sy, who became an Italian citizen in 2004, had been convicted in 2007 and 2011 of drunken driving and sexual molestation of a minor. Sky TG24 said that the driver had worked for the bus company for 15 years without any employment-related issues. Investigators must clarify how the transport company permitted such a delinquent to drive a bus, especially one carrying children, said Riccardo De Corato, a Milan provincial official for security. Video showed firefighters dousing the bus that had been completely gutted by flames, leaving only the charred metal frame. By Colleen Barry China Clones Police Dog, Ethical Issues May Follow China has cloned its first dog with the intent of using it as a police service animal, according to a Chinese state media report on March 19. The report uses time and money as justification for cloning. It said that training a police dog can take up to five years. The cost could also be over $75,000. The worlds first cloned dog came from South Korea in 2005. Cloned dogs were put to work as sniffer dogs for South Koreas border security in 2009. China seems to be following the model. China has already created gene-edited monkeys with debilitating hereditary diseases, as well as gene-edited twins which caused an outcry among scientists and ethicists worldwide. The international scientific community has strict protocols against using cloning or gene editing technology on human subjects. Observers believe that this experiment could only happen under the environment of atheism and moral lawlessness created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chinas Canine Clone The three-month-old female pup is named Kunxun and it is known as a Kunming Wolfdog, appearing similar to the German Shepherd. The Yunnan Agricultural University and Beijing Sinogene Biotechnology Company processed the cloned procedure. The Ministry of Public security supported the effort, accord to the Chinese state media report. The Biotechnology Company cloned 20 dogs in 2018, and this is the first time one of the dogs will be specifically used for police service, the report said. The deputy General Manager of the Biotech company, Zhao Jianping, said that they hope to realize large-scale cloning of service dogs in the next ten years. He said he hopes that it will shorten the training time of the dogs, according to the Global Times. The technique used for cloning the dog has been used in many other cloning cases. The technique is known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. An egg cell is removed from a female dog. The nucleus of that egg is removed. A skin cell is also harvested from the dog that they wish to clone. The nucleus from the skin cell is moved to the ovum. It is then placed in a surrogate mother dog. Kunxun was removed from the surrogate mother by cesarean section. The report said that there is a 99.9% similarity between Kunxun and the host dog. Unethical Dilemma Already in the first few months of 2019, China has used cloning and gene editing in ethically questionable ways. The first pair of crab-eating macaque monkeys cloned were born in 2017. Five more macaques were cloned in 2019but the group had their genes edited, giving them debilitating hereditary diseases. The macaques are afflicted with circadian disruption, which causes their natural sleep cycle to not function correctly. This causes other health issues such as anxiety, depression, and even schizophrenia. The tragic result for these monkeys was not coincidental, as they were kept in a room where lights were always on, according to a report by National Science Review. Chinese scientists used this sort of gene editing on human babies. He Jiankui edited two female embryos by using similar gene editing techniques. He made the news public in November 2018 but received condemnation from scientists around the world. He was fired from his workplace, the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), later in January. He claimed his actions were to help the girls have immunity from the HIV virus. Chinese state-run media accused him of evading oversight and breaking ethical boundaries. This may have been a display put on by the Party mouthpiece. He received seals of approval from public hospitals and ethics committees. Others have observed that He may have secretly received funding from high level officials. He was on unpaid leave from February 2018, but still had the funding to edit the baby girls genes. The World Health Organization also published a statement on March 19 about creating an advisory committee on gene editing. It has agreed to work towards a strong international governance framework in this area, according to the release. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen attends a ceremony to sign up for Democratic Progressive Party's 2020 presidential candidate nomination in Taipei, Taiwan on March 21, 2019. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters) China Urges US to Block Taiwan Presidents Hawaii Stop-Over BEIJING/TAIPEIChina urged the United States on March 21 not to allow Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to stop over in Hawaii next week when she makes a tour of the islands diplomatic allies in the Pacific. Tsai said she will transit Hawaii on her way home from an eight-day visit to Palau, Nauru and the Marshall Islands, which began on Thursday. Tsais tour comes amid heightened tension between Taipei and Beijing, which has stepped up diplomatic and military pressure to assert its sovereignty over self-governed Taiwan. Taipei is battling to prevent its remaining 17 allies from switching allegiance to China, almost all small, less developed nations in Central America and the Pacific, such as Belize and Nauru. Tsai said in a statement before setting off on the tour that it was her duty to promote Taiwan internationally. Letting the country advance down the right path, and letting Taiwan continue to shine on the world stage, are all things that must be done as president, and I will go all out, she said. Taipei has accused Beijing of offering generous aid and loan packages to lure its allies away. Last year, China persuaded the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso and El Salvador to forge relations with Beijing in what Tsai called increasingly out of control behavior. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China had lodged stern representations over Tsais planned stopover in the United States. We have consistently and resolutely opposed the United States or other countries which have diplomatic relations with China arranging this kind of transit, Geng told reporters in Beijing. China views Taiwan as merely a wayward province, with no right to state-to-state relations. The United States, like most other countries, has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is the islands largest weapons supplier and most powerful international backer. China and the United States are trying to end a bitter trade war and they also have differences over Chinese activity in the disputed South China Sea, as well as over human rights. Chinese leader Xi Jinping said in January Beijing reserved the right to use force to bring Taiwan under its control but will strive to achieve peaceful reunification, though democratic Taiwan has shown no interest in being run by Beijing. Chinas hostility to Taiwan has grown since Tsais election in 2016 as Beijing fears she wishes to push for the islands formal independence. Tsai says she wants to maintain the status quo, but will defend Taiwans democracy. On March 11, Tsai called a national security meeting, during which she urged the administration to counter Xis one country, two systems proposal that Beijing uses to push for reunification with Taiwan. Tsai called on government officials to come up with measures to counter Chinas renewed efforts to interfere and to absorb Taiwans capital and talents. The Beijing authorities continue to utilize our open and free system of democracy to interfere with Taiwans political, economic and social developments, which has become the biggest risk in Taiwan, Tsai said in a statement. By Yimou Lee & Twinnie Siu A Chinese bride poses for a wedding photographer as her groom looks on, on a section of the Great Wall of China near Beijing on October 28, 2014. China's marriage rate decreased continually for the past five years and reached the lowest point in 2018. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images) Chinas Marriage Rate Drops Again, Fueled by Social Problems Plaguing Youth Chinas marriage rate in 2018 was 7.2 per 1,000 inhabitants, representing the fifth consecutive year with a decline, according to recently published official data. State-run newspaper 21st Century Business Herald reported on March 19 that Chinas 2018 marriage rate reached its lowest level in the past decade. Although Chinas recent marriage rates are higher than U.S. rates during the same period, the U.S. rate has incrementally increased in the past five years, according to U.S. census data. Out of the entire country, Shanghai had the lowest marriage rate in 2018, at 4.4 per thousand. At the same time, according to a report released by Chinas Ministry of Civil Affairs in August 2018, Chinas divorce rate has continually climbed in the past seven years. Chinas divorce rate grew from 2.0 per thousand in 2010 to 3.2 in 2017. One of the primary causes behind the high divorce rate is the prevalence of extramarital affairs, commonly seen among public officials. Pan Suiming, a professor at Renmin University, published a survey result in May 2018, which showed that China had the greatest proportion of people engaged in extramarital affairs compared with other countries. In Beijing and Shanghai, there are classes to train mistresses and potential mistresses how to perfect their art of seduction. The state-run Beijing News previously reported that Chinas average marriage length was 9.59 years in 2010, which is 0.7 years shorter than the average length just five years prior. Why are more Chinese choosing not to get married? The Chinese Communist Partys mouthpiece Peoples Daily conducted an online survey of 33,330 single netizens, and published the results on March 20. In the survey, 29.5 percent of respondents said they havent meet the right one, while 23.4 percent said they have no ability to raise a family. Of the respondents, 16.5 percent said they enjoyed being single, 12.3 percent said they dont have a stable life, 8.8 percent said work pressure is too much to think about marriage, and 5.1 percent are still studying in school and dont plan to marry before graduation. In todays Chinese culture, young couples feel pressure to own an apartment before getting married. However, Chinas soaring real estate prices have made it increasingly difficult for young couples to rent an apartment, let alone own one. Meanwhile, job opportunities remain scant, prompting many youth to pursue a higher education degree in hopes of increasing their job prospects. I graduated from Peking University, the second best university in China, but I am still unemployed, a bachelors degree graduate complained on social media recently. Experts such as independent economist He Qinglian have explained how Chinas unemployment rate is likely far higher than government estimates and would soon reach a crisis. Zaed Mustafa, in wheelchair, brother of Hamza and son of Khalid Mustafa killed in the March 15 mosque shootings reacts during their burial at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 20, 2019. (Mark Baker/AP Photo) Christchurch Shooter Had Planned a 3rd Attack: Police CHRISTCHURCH, New ZealandA father and son who fled the civil war in Syria for the safest country in the world were buried before hundreds of mourners Wednesday, March 20, the first funerals for victims of shootings at two mosques in New Zealand that horrified a nation known for being welcoming and diverse. The funerals of Khalid Mustafa, 44, and Hamza Mustafa, 15, came five days after a white supremacist methodically gunned down 50 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurcha massacre that he broadcast live on Facebook. Police said Wednesday they believe he was on his way to a third attack when officers ran him off the road and arrested him. They declined to release any more details, citing the active investigation. During the funerals, Hamzas high school principal described the student as compassionate and hardworking, and said he was an excellent horse rider who aspired to be a veterinarian. Those present included Hamzas younger brother, 13-year-old Zaed, who was wounded in an arm and a leg during the attack. The boy tried to stand during the ceremony but had to sit back in his wheelchair, one mourner said. We tried to not shake his hand, and not touch his hand or his foot, but he refused, he wanted to shake everybodys hand, he wanted to show everyone that he appreciated them. And thats amazing, said Jamil El-Biza, who traveled from Australia to attend the funeral. The Mustafas had moved to New Zealand last year after spending six years as refugees in Jordan. Mustafas wife, Salwa, told Radio New Zealand that when the family asked about New Zealand they were told: its the safest country in the world, the most wonderful country you can go you will start a very wonderful life there. She added, But it wasnt. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the family should have been safe. I cannot tell you how gutting it is to know that a family came here for safety and for refuge, she said. Four other burials were underway on Wednesday evening. Those victims include Junaid Ismail, Ashraf Ali and Lilik Abdul Hamid. The fourth victims name was suppressed by court order. Families of those killed had been awaiting word on when they could bury their loved ones. Police Commissioner Mike Bush said police have now formally identified and released the remains of 21 of those killed. Also on Wednesday, a man accused of sharing video footage of Fridays massacre was jailed by a judge until his next court appearance in mid-April. And Bush said he believes police officers stopped the gunman on his way to a third attack. Ardern has been arguing against giving the accused gunman notoriety followed his move to represent himself in court, raising concerns he would attempt to use the trial as a platform for airing his racist views. She revisited that concern during a visit Wednesday to the high school Hamza and another victim attended, where she asked students not to say the attackers name or dwell on him. Look after one another, but also let New Zealand be a place where there is no tolerance for racism, she told students at Cashmere High School. Thats something we can all do. Another Cashmere student, 14-year-old Sayyad Milne, also died in the attack. Brenton Harrison Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian man, has been charged with murder and is next scheduled to appear in court on April 5. Police have said they are certain Tarrant was the only gunman but are still investigating whether he had support from others. Ardern previously has said reforms of New Zealands gun laws would be announced next week and she said an inquiry would be convened to look into the intelligence and security services failures to detect the risk from the attacker or his plans. New Zealands international spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, confirmed it had not received any relevant information or intelligence before the shootings. Philip Arps, 44, appeared in a Christchurch court Wednesday on two charges of distributing the killers live stream video of the attack on the Al Noor mosque, the first mosque that was attacked, a violation of the countrys objectionable publications law. Each charge carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison. Arps, heavily tattooed and dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants, hasnt entered a plea. He remained expressionless during the hearing, his hands clasped behind his back. Judge Stephen ODriscoll denied him bail. Charging documents accuse Arps of distributing the video on Saturday, one day after the massacre. Most details of bail hearings are suppressed under New Zealand law. The judge made an additional suppression order regarding the police summary of facts in the case, limiting reporting of the accusations to the charges themselves. Bush, the police commissioner, said they believe they know where the gunman was going for a third attack when officers rammed his car off the road but wont say more because its an active investigation. In a 74-page manifesto he released before the attack, Tarrant said he was going to attack two mosques in Christchurch and then one in the town of Ashburton if he made it that far. Bush also revised his timeline, saying officers rammed the suspects car 21 minutes after the first emergency call, rather than 36 minutes. Bush said FBI agents have traveled to New Zealand to help with the investigation. Abizar Valibhai, of Christchurch, said Wednesdays burials marked an important moment. Its not only for the Muslim community, but for the whole of New Zealand, and the world as well, he said. If we dont show our support at this time, when are we going to show it? He said there would be many waves of emotions to come for the families of the victims. They are fathers, they are mothers, they are brothers, they are sisters, they are wives, he said. There are a lot of things that will be shattered. By Nick Perry, Juliet Williams, and Kristen Gelineau Thierry Baudet of the Forum for Democracy party gives a speech during election night in Zeist, the Netherlands, on March 21, 2019. (Bart Maat/AFP/Getty Images) Dutch First Party Shocks Political Establishment with Win in Netherlands A Dutch political party that opposes immigration and promotes Dutch first policies will become the joint largest party in the countrys Senate, shocking the political establishment. The Forum for Democracy party, led by 36-year-old Thierry Baudet, will now have as many seats in the Senate as Prime Minister Mark Ruttes Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). In a speech, Baudet said the arrogance of the elites had been punished. We are standing in the rubble of what was once the most beautiful civilization in the world, he said, according to Reuters. We won because the country needs us. Baudet criticized the ruling center-right coalitions border policies. Successive Rutte governments have left our borders wide open, letting in hundreds of thousands of people with cultures completely different to ours, he said, according to the BBC. After the shooting on a tram in the city of Utrecht on March 18, Baudet pointed to the governments lax immigration policies as one cause, saying that Dutch people were being destroyed by the people who are supposed to be protecting us. Police have since arrested a 37-year-old Turkish-born man in connection with the shooting, and police say he could have had terrorist motives. Ruttes coalition will now need to seek outside support to pass laws, although the prime minister may look to left-wing parties such as Labour and Green Left instead of Baudets party. We have to talk with other parties so we can continue to lead this country well, Rutte said, according to the BBC. He told supporters that he would look for constructive parties from the left or right. This means drinking a lot of coffee and making even more phone calls, Rutte told supporters, according to Reuters. So Im counting on it that the country will remain well manageable with this result. However, Baudet has said his party will not cooperate with Ruttes coalition. Other options for Rutte include religious parties and one aimed at voters over the age of 50. It was predicted well in advance that Ruttes party would lose its majority, but pollsters believe more people were motivated to cast their vote following the incident in Utrecht. Previously, Forum for Democracy held just two seats in Parliament, but after the March 20 vote, that grew to 12 in the 75-seat Senate, based on early estimates. Ruttes center-right party fell to 12 seats from 13, with the coalition as a whole falling from 38 to 31 seats. The Dutch Senate is less powerful than the lower house but has oversight on laws that the lower house intends to pass. Recently there has been debate on meeting international climate change goals, with many supporters of conservative parties in the leading coalition being skeptical of government spending. Baudet opposes the euro and believes the Netherlands should exit the European Uniona so-called Nexitalthough he has since said he will see how the UKs exit turns out first. In photos posted to his social media accounts, he has been seen with British politician and Brexit supporter Boris Johnson, and conservative philosopher Roger Scruton. Wild horses roam free on state and some private land, outside federal disengaged horse management areas outside Milford, Utah, on May 31, 2017. (George Frey/Getty Images) Feds Offer $1,000 To Adopt Wild Horses Because They Cant Cull Them The Department of the Interior is offering up to $1,000 to people willing to adopt a wild horse or burro, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has announced. BLM, which runs the federal governments wild horse and burro adoption program, launched the new incentive program on March 12. The goal of the program is to reduce BLMs recurring costs to care for unadopted and untrained wild horses and burros while helping to enable the BLM to confront a growing over-population of wild horses and burros on fragile public rangelands, the BLM press release says. The number of wild horses and burros on federal lands passed most areas holding capacity years ago. The BLM currently manages roughly 82,000 animals in pastures that cannot sustainably support more than about 27,000, according to BLM data. The federal government is required by law to remove animals over the limit that the land can support, but federally controlled corrals and private partners are at or nearing their limits. The cash incentive for adoption is aimed at taking away excess animals currently held in the corrals. The BLM adoption and sales programs have declined over recent decades. In 1995, the government placed, either through adoption or sales, about 9,700 wild horses and burros into private homes. In 2005, the number had dropped to 5,700, and in 2017, just 4,099 animals were removed from federal holding corrals to private homes. Federal law prevents BLM officials from selling the animals for slaughter or giving or selling animals to individuals who intend on killing them. To control the burgeoning population, BLM officials rely on PZP, a drug used to prevent contraception. Officials must administer the drug to each mare at least once a year for four years before the effects begin to become permanent. An amendment proposed in Congress last year would have lifted the restriction on horse and burro euthanasia. The BLM issued a statement in support of the amendment, though the amendment was later dropped. With few natural predators and limited tools for controlling herd growth, our nations wild horse and burro herds are chronically overpopulated and increasing exponentially, the BLM said. Given the extensive overpopulation, wild horses and burros routinely face starvation and death from lack of water. The high number of excess wild horses and burros causes habitat damage that forces animals to leave public lands and travel onto private property or even highways in search of food and water. Tim Pearce/Energy Reporter Follow Tim Pearce on Twitter Iraqi rescues are seen near the site where an overloaded ferry sank in the Tigris river near Mosul in Iraq, on March 21, 2019. (Stringer/Reuters) Ferry Capsize Kills Nearly 80 in Iraqs Mosul: Medics MOSULAt least 79 people died when an overloaded ferry carrying families on an outing sank in the Tigris river in Mosul in northern Iraq, medical sources told Reuters on Thursday, March 21. Most of the casualties on the ferry were women and children who could not swim, said the head of Mosuls Civil Defence Authority Husam Khalil. He said the ferry had been loaded to several times its capacity. It can normally carry 50 people. There were 250 on board before the incident, he said. Ferry capsize kills nearly 80 in Iraqs Mosul: medics https://t.co/FwDgH5OII3 pic.twitter.com/7PbvXM3Brv Ted Bolt (@NewsCable) March 21, 2019 Five ferry workers were arrested after late on Thursday, security sources said. Rescue workers were still looking for missing passengers. The boat was ferrying people to a man-made island used as a recreational area by families, according to one witness. I was standing near the river back when suddenly the ferry started to tilt left and right, and passengers began screaming before it capsized, said Mohamed Masoud, a local civil servant. I saw women and children waving with their hands begging for help but no one was there to rescue them. I dont know how to swim. I couldnt help. I feel guilty. I watched people drown. Ferry capsize kills nearly 80 in Iraqs Mosul: medics https://t.co/hjW1kAGuLj pic.twitter.com/ZZFDS05zyt Creatiview (@creatiview_net) March 21, 2019 Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi ordered an inquiry into the accident and said on Twitter that those responsible would be held accountable. Mobile phone footage showed the ferry sinking into the muddy water and people shouting for help. Among the dead were some 19 children and at least 52 women, medical sources said. Ferry capsize kills nearly 80 in Iraqs Mosul medics https://t.co/aMvLdhi1l1 RANJAN BUDA. (@Ranjanbuda) March 21, 2019 Reconstruction of Mosul, much of which was destroyed in a military campaign to recapture the city from Islamic State militants in 2017, has barely begun and is haphazard. Residents say they feel abandoned by the central government, but have returned and started to rebuild their own homes. The citys infrastructure remains largely damaged. The rescue team was retrieving survivors and had rescued 12 people so far, Khalil said. Police and medical sources said earlier at least 40 people had drowned. A source in a nearby hospital and another in a morgue said the toll had risen to 79. At least 40 killed as overloaded ferry sinks in Iraqs Tigris river https://t.co/Z9cO7XyNfH The Daily Star Lebanon (@DailyStarLeb) March 21, 2019 The accident took place to the north of the city, near a recreational area popular with families. By Jamal Al-Badrani, Salih Elias and additional reporting by Hesham Hajali Heavy smoke rises following an airstrike by the US-led coalition aircraft in Kobani, Syria, during fighting between Syrian Kurds and the ISIS terrorists, as seen from the outskirts of Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border, on Oct. 18, 2014. (Gokhan Sahin/Getty Images) Final ISIS Stronghold Reportedly Liberated The last bastion held by ISIS has reportedly fallen, just a day after President Trump said the terrorist group would be taken out imminently. According to Fox News, which had a reporter on the scene in Baghouz, Syria, the so-called ISIS caliphate has crumbled. A reporter on the scene said troops in the town are bringing down ISIS flags, which will no longer fly there. BREAKING NEWS: The ISIS caliphate is conquered, as the final stronghold of the empire that once ruled over 8 million is liberated, Fox News has learned. Fox News 2019321 A clearing operation is now underway in the townand an announcement is expected soon, Fox reported. The main leaders of ISIS who still survive have not yet been captured. They reportedly abandoned their men in advance. On March 21, Kurdish forces said they were searching for ISIS fighters. Our force is still carrying out combing operations and searches for hidden jihadists, SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali told AFP. As soon as we are done, we will announce the liberation of Baghouz, he added. President Donald Trump on March 20 that the ISIS terrorist group will be gone by tonight. Holding a map in his hand, Trump said that were leaving 200 people there, and 200 people in another place in Syria, closer to Israel. When I took it over, it was a mess, Trump declared to reporters in Washington. Asked about eliminating ISIS in Syria, Pres Trump pulls out two maps that show ISIS sites in red on the day he was elected, and the bottom map shows only a tiny red spot for ISIS that he says will be gone by tonight. pic.twitter.com/aqA0V9pkRv Mark Knoller (@markknoller) March 20, 2019 Pointing to the bottom of the map, which showed virtually no territory controlled by ISIS, there is no red, the president added. There is a tiny spot which will be gone by tonight, he added. This just came out 20 minutes ago, he said. Thats the way it goes, he added. Trump on Wednesday said ISIS will be gone by tonight and held up a pair of maps to reporters that he claimed shows the dramatic reduction of the Islamic States presence in Syria since his election in 2016 https://t.co/u7WqOVz8gn pic.twitter.com/3YzQn6Gyv1 POLITICO (@politico) March 20, 2019 In February, he called on European countries to take back ISIS terrorists who have been captured, saying they should be put on trial. The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany, and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial. The Caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them, Trump tweeted last month. Reuters Update Reuters reporters overlooking Baghouz from a hill on the bank of the Euphrates at the Iraqi border said the area was calm, and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) militia searched for tunnels and landmines, an SDF official said. The SDF on Tuesday captured an encampment where the jihadists had been mounting a last defense of the tiny enclave, pushing diehard fighters onto a sliver of land at the Euphrates riverside. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drain, whose country has participated in the campaign, said in Paris he expected the announcement of the final territorial defeat to be made in the next few days. There was no immediate update from the SDF on Wednesday on the fate of these remaining militants. A group of women and children were seen being evacuated from the Baghouz area. ISISs defeat at Baghouz would end its territorial control over the third of Syria and Iraq it held in 2014 as it sought to carve out a huge caliphate in the region. While it would represent a significant milestone in Syrias 8-year-old war and in the battle against ISIS, the jihadist group remains a threat. Some of the groups fighters remain holed up in the central Syrian desert and others have gone underground in Iraqi cities to wage an insurgent campaign to destabilize the government. For the SDF, it would cap a four-year, U.S.-led military campaign in which its fighters drove ISIS from swathes of northeastern Syria, taking the city of Raqqa after a months-long battle in 2017. Reuters contributed to this report. Blue Ford oval badge in the grill of a pickup truck on the sales lot at Butler County Ford in Butler, Pa. On Nov. 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic) Ford Adds Production of Electric Vehicles at Second North American Site DETROITFord Motor Co. said on March 20 it is adding production of a fully electric vehicle at a second North American plant as part of its $11 billion investment plan set last year. The No. 2 U.S. automaker said it is investing about $900 million in southeast Michigan and creating 900 jobs through 2023 as part of its electric vehicle push. That includes a plan to invest more than $850 million to expand production capacity at its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant to build EVs. When we were taking a look at our $11 billion investment in electrification, it became obvious to us that we were going to need a second plant in the not-too-distant future to add capacity for our battery electric vehicles, Joe Hinrichs, Fords president of global operations, said in a telephone interview. Ford is negotiating an alliance with Germanys Volkswagen AG to work together on electric and autonomous vehicles. Hinrichs said those talks have been positive, but that there was nothing to announce. Ford in January 2018 said it would increase its planned investments in electric vehicles to $11 billion by 2022 and have 40 hybrid and fully electric vehicles in its model lineup. That investment figure was up from the previous target of $4.5 billion by 2020. Of the 40 vehicles, Ford said at the time that 16 would be fully electric and the rest would be plug-in hybrids. The Flat Rock plant, which currently employs 3,400 people, builds the Ford Mustang and Lincoln Continental cars. The plant investment includes adding a second shift and funding to build the next-generation Mustang. Ford already was planning an all-electric sport utility vehicle in 2020 that will be built at its Cuautitlan, Mexico, plant. The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker also said on March 20 that it will build its first self-driving vehicles for use by commercial customers at a new manufacturing center in southeast Michigan starting in 2021, and will build its next-generation North American Transit Connect commercial and passenger van in Mexico starting that same year. The next-generation Transit Connect small van will be built at Fords Hermosillo, Mexico, plant and increases U.S. and Canadian vehicle content consistent with the proposed new North American trade agreement, the company said. The vehicle is now built in Spain. Hinrichs said he is optimistic Congress will approve the proposed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). By Ben Klayman Good France Festival Offers a Taste of Provence NEW YORKThe international food festival Good France returns to New York this year, with events that celebrate Provence. It runs through March 23, offering tastings, dinners, and classes. Anne-Claire Legendre, New Yorks French Consul General, said in a press release, We want New Yorkers to feel as if they were actually on the old port of Marseille, sharing a Bouillabaisse made with Mediterranean fishes, to drink a rose wine with the same leisurely pleasure as if they were having an aperitif at the Calanques. Make them travel with a plate and a glass. Let them remember how the Mediterranean Sea has been a fantastic crossroads of influence. A little sun, a lot of friendship, tons of talent, thats the recipe! she added. Events include a five-course wine dinner pairing with Pascaline Lepeltier at Racines NY (March 22, 7 p.m.); a six-course gala dinner to benefit the Food Dreams Foundation with Chef Dan Bessoudo (March 22, 7:30 p.m.); an advanced wine boot camp with Lepeltier at La Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels (March 23, 3:30 p.m.); a seven-course dinner to benefit City Harvest with Chef Gerald Passedat and Chef Eric Ripert at Le Bernardin Prive (March 23, 6:30 p.m.); and an after-dark wine tasting with Lepeltier at Aldo Sohm Wine Bar (March 23, 9 p.m.) For more information, visit https://newyork.consulfrance.org/Good-France-is-bringing-the-taste-of-Provence-to-New-York-City Tickets are available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/gout-de-france-2019-tickets-55429022699 New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks to the press in New York, New York, on June 20, 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Illegal Released by De Blasio, Bites Off ICE Agents Finger The White House is strongly condemning New York City after it says sanctuary city policies led to the release of an illegal immigrant who later bit off the finger of an ICE agent trying to apprehend him. New Yorks dangerous sanctuary policies are directly responsible for the egregious and violent harm suffered by this courageous ICE officer, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement to The Daily Caller. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokeswoman explained to The Daily Caller that Dominican national Christopher Santos Felix entered the United States on a visitors visa in June 2015, but failed to leave within the required timeframe. Felix then racked up a litany of criminal charges, including driving while intoxicated, before he was arrested for assault by the New York City Police Department on Sept. 29, 2018. The ICE spokeswoman continued that they requested a detainer be put on Felix so that he could be taken into federal custody, but as a result of New York Citys sanctuary city policies, he was then let go. On March 3, 2019, Santos Felix was arrested by ERO for immigration violations. At the time of the arrest, Santos Felix allegedly assaulted an ERO officer and is now facing federal prosecution, the spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman added, the officers injury was the direct, foreseeable and entirely avoidable result of New Yorks criminal alien sanctuary policies. Proponents of sanctuary policies claim they make communities safer, but in many cases they are causing more harm than good. The criminal complaint against Felix reviewed by the Caller notes that he attacked ICE officers after his handcuffs were temporarily removed so that he could put on some clothing. Officers quickly moved to secure Felix and while they were restraining him, he bit the officers finger. By Saagar Enjeti | White House Correspondent Intravenous Fruit Juice: Womans Homemade Health Creation Almost Ends Her Life A woman nearly died after she hooked herself up to a homemade intravenous drip of fruit juice for intended health benefits. Many of her internal organs were damaged and she had to be rescued at a hospital, according to a March 17 report from the Xiaoxiang Morning Herald. The woman, family name Zeng, was admitted to the intensive care unit at a local university, in Hunan province, China. Zeng, now 51, became focused on living a healthy lifestyle in recent years. It was reported that if she heard that something was healthy, she would immediately try it. Fruit Juice IV Fluids On Feb. 22, Zeng had the idea to make a juice from 20 different fruits. She filtered the juice, and then poured it into an intravenous drip-bag. She then inserted a needle and let the juice slowly drip into her bloodstream. After the drip was finished, she felt her skin was itchy and temperature was high. However, she acted as if nothing was out of the norm. Her husband asked her several times if she was alright, having sensed that something was not quite right with Zeng. She eventually told him about her fruit juice IV. Her husband was scared to death and immediately took her to the hospital. Since her condition was complex and never seen before, she was transferred to a university hospital to receive more advanced treatment. In the early hours of Feb. 23, an ICU doctor said that Zengs whole body had been affected. Her bodys ability to clot blood was blocked. Her heart, liver, and kidneys had all suffered varying levels of damage. Since her organs were out of normal function, she was diagnosed with sepsis. Had Zeng not received treatment, she may have experienced hemorrhaging, organ failure, and septic shock. Zeng had to undergo hemopurification to clear out her blood stream. She was also given treatment to assist with blood clotting. Further treatments were done for her heart and liver, which all together, allowed her to make a full recovery. I had thought that fresh fruit juice had plentiful health benefits, Zeng told the Morning Herald with regret. If it goes into the body, there are only benefits and no harm. How could I have known it would have brought such a crisis? The doctor mentioned that injecting things at random into the bloodstream can cause serious liver and kidney damage, enough to be life threatening. IV dripsA Chinese Catch-All Medical Solution For years, treatment of choice in Chinese hospitals has been an IV drip. Many mainland Chinese have come to regard this as the standard for general medical treatment. A 2012 report from the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed this belief. The prevailing belief in China is that IV fluid gets to the source of illness and disease more quickly, the report said. As a result, a forest of IV fluid stands can be seen in many hospitals and community health centres. A Chinese report in 2009 revealed that 10.4 billion bottles of IV fluid had been consumed that year, according to the WHO. At that time, the figure represented roughly eight bottles of IV fluid per person over the year. The national average had previously been around 3 bottles per year. Generally, the IV drips are to administer antibiotics. Chinese health officials urged people to use less IV drips in 2009. However, a student reported in the medical journal The Lancet in 2015 that 70 percent of Chinese hospital inpatients had been receiving antibiotic IV drips. Chinese people consumed ten times the amount of antibiotics compared to Americans in 2011. Chinese people also used three times as much penicillin compared to other nations. CGTN, the English version of the Chinese state-funded CCTV, suggested in a 2017 report that this IV craze was beginning to gain attention in the United States. According to the report, some individuals had reportedly been receive IV drips on a daily basis, for vitamins and fatigue alike. In another report, a man in Kansas recently died three days after receiving an IV vitamin infusion at a wellness spa. According to The Kansas City Star, the unidentified 64-year-old started feeling the same itchy skin sensation 10 minutes after receiving the infusion, after which he started throwing up. At home, his fever spiked to 103 degrees Fahrenheit and the next morning, he was admitted to hospital with symptoms of organ failure. Sadly, the man died three days later. Epoch Times reporter Xin Jian contributed to this report. Jihadi Brides Family Challenge Government Decision to Strip Citizenship Jihadi bride, Shamima Begums family has formally launched a court challenge against the British governments decision to strip her of citizenship, arguing that other Britons that joined ISIS have been allowed back into the country. Tasnime Akunjee, the lawyer representing Begums family, told The Guardian that revoking her citizenship and blocking her return to the UK violates her human rights. We are arguing the decision is wrong because it renders Shamima Begum stateless, it puts her life at risk, exposes her to inhumane and degrading treatment, and breaches her right to family life, Akunjee told the Guardian. Citing a persistent security risk posed by the unrepentant Begum, British Home Secretary Sajid Javid revoked her citizenship in a move allowed under law if it does not leave the individual stateless. Javid wrote in a letter to Begums family that he believed she would be eligible for Bangladeshi citizenship. Bangladesh Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam said there is no question of his country opening its doors to Begum, who in interviews said she did not regret joining ISIS and seemed to excuse terror attacks on civilians. Begum ran away from her London home in 2015 and at the age of 15 traveled to Syria with two other girls to join the ISIS terror group. She married a Dutch terrorist fighter and gave birth to three children, all of whom have died due to malnutrition and illness. The 19-year-old Begum surfaced in a refugee camp last month, where she appealed to be allowed back into the UK, claiming in an interview with Sky News that during her four years with the jihadis she was just a housewife and never did anything dangerous. No Regrets Begum said in an interview with The Times of London that while she did not agree with everything the terror group had done, she has no regrets about joining ISIS and suggested that air strikes against the terror group in Syria somehow justified the Manchester Arena terror attack. Its a two-way thing, really, she told the BBC, adding that the suicide bomber that killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester was a kind of retaliation for bombardments of ISIS-held enclaves, adding, So I thought, ok, that is a fair justification. "I didn't want to be IS poster girl" London teenager Shamima Begum, who fled to join Islamic State group in Syria, says she now wants the UK's forgiveness [Tap to expand] https://t.co/9KwR4TYUqA pic.twitter.com/JWsgeHHppl BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) February 18, 2019 Asked about her take on the particularly graphic atrocities the jihadi extremists are known to have carried out, Begum told The Times of London that seeing beheaded heads in bins did not faze her. When asked by a Sky News reporter, Did you know what Islamic State [ISIS] were doing when you left for Syria? Because they had beheaded people. There were executions, she replied, Yeah, I knew about those things and I was okay with it. Potentially Very Dangerous Security experts such as British intelligence service head Alex Younger have warned, however, that would-be returnees like Begum were potentially very dangerous because they were in that sort of position, people like her were likely to have acquired certain skills or connections. Survivors and other victims of the murderous cults reign of terror, meanwhile, are furious at the prospect of ISIS women getting a sympathetic hearing in the Western press, or worsea free pass. Ali Y. Al-Baroodi, who survived ISISs bloody occupation of Mosul, told the Jerusalem Post that claims on the part of jihadi brides that they were just housewives, as Begum has insisted, are not credible. It was hell on Earth and every single one of them made it so, he said, asking sarcastically if perhaps local victims of the jihadi women should apologize for disturbing their stay there. [ISIS] demolished cities and hundreds of mass graves, [and left] thousands of orphans and widows, he added. Its impossible to muster sympathy for her, author and academic Idrees Ahmad wrote in reference to Begum, according to the Post. She went to Syria as a colonizer, several months after ISIS beheaded journalists and aid workers. The Familys Appeal Begums family lawyer said that the decision to strip her of citizenship is unfair because hundreds of British citizens who went to ISIS territory have been allowed back into the UK. The government has accepted that 400 people have picked up a gun and actively fought for ISIS and then been allowed back to Britain, Akunjee said, according to The Metro. So how can it be proportionate for a 19-year-old girl who had a child not to be allowed to return, when the others have been allowed to return? The British Home secretary, meanwhile, has stood behind the governments decision to revoke Begums citizenship and keep her out of the country. Javid was cited by the BBC as saying he would not shy away from using those powers at my disposal to protect this country and urged British citizens never to support the cause of terror. Kentucky Governor Signs Bill Banning Abortion on Basis of Race, Sex, Disability Republican Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin signed a bill that bans getting abortions on the basis of sex, race, or disability of a fetus. House Bill 5 was passed last week by the state Senate 32-4 after the House passed it 67-25 in late February. It was signed into law by Bevin on March 19. Since the bill carried an emergency clause, it took effect immediately. It mandates that doctors performing abortions certify in writing that the patient didnt want to get an abortion because of the unborn childs sex, race, color, national origin, or disability. If a doctor violated the law, they would face felony prosecution and the loss of their medical license; the prospective mothers would not face any penalties. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the bill on March 15, claiming that women have a right to have an abortion and that the bill infringes upon that right. Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin speaks in the Capitol building in Frankfort, Ky. Kentuckys Republican-led legislature on March 13, 2019. (Bryan Woolston,/AP Photo/ File) In a response filed in the U.S. District Court in Lousiville on March 19 published by WYMT, Bevins office said the governor signed the law and said the legislation bans eugenics-based abortions. Imagine that a woman in Kentucky wants an abortion merely because she wants a girl rather than a boy. Or imagine that the woman wants an abortion because she does not want her child to be a certain race or nationality. Or imagine that the woman wants an abortion because her unborn child has a non-lethal disability like Down syndrome. Until now, abortions like these have been legal in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, wrote Adam Meier, secretary of Health and Family Services in Kentucky, in the filing. EMW and its abortionists have responded with a novel claim: Women have a constitutional right to undergo race-based abortions, gender-based abortions, and disability-based abortions. In (the) plaintiffs view, somewhere in the Fourteenth Amendments penumbra lies a secret protection of eugenics. In this July 17, 2017 file photo, escort volunteers line up outside the EMW Womens Surgical Center in Louisville, Ky. (AP Photo/Dylan Lovan, File) Eugenics is the practice of attempting to improve the human population by blocking the births of people considered to be inferior, including, historically, certain races. Hitler was a strong proponent of eugenics. Republican Rep. Melinda Gibbons Prunty, the bills lead sponsor, said after the state House passed the bill that abortions in such cases are reminiscent of the social evil of eugenics. Kentucky has one abortion clinicEMW Womens Surgical Center in Louisvillewhich stopped performing abortions March 15, reported the Lousiville Courier-Journal, but resumed doing them March 16 after U.S. District Judge David Hale temporarily blocked enforcement of another bill, Senate Bill 9, which banned abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected. In its filing, the ACLU wrote: Plaintiffs will prevail on their claim that the Bans are unconstitutional under 46 years of Supreme Court precedent, beginning with Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), which unequivocally holds that the State may not ban abortion before the point of fetal viability, regardless of the womans reason for her decision. Ultrasound film of a thirteen-week fetus. (Kornn Photo/iStock) The Bans will cause immediate irreparable harm to Plaintiffs and most of their patients by criminalizing abortion, it added. But Kentucky officials said that the plaintiffs were not able to establish House Bill 5 as unconstitutional. Roe protects a womans right at certain stages of pregnancy to choose whether to have a child, not to decide whether to have a child with attributes that the woman finds desirable, Meier said. In light of their weak merits arguments, Plaintiffs also cannot prove irreparable harm, nor can they establish that the public interest favors temporarily enjoining a law overwhelmingly passed in bipartisan fashion by the Peoples representatives. Plaintiffs also cannot overcome the fact that enjoining House Bill 5 will cause substantial harm to othersprimarily unborn children but also the medical profession. From NTD News A man watches a JetBlue airplane take off from John F. Kennedy International Airport, on June 2, 2010. (Seth Wenig/AP Photo) Lawsuit: Two JetBlue Pilots Drugged, Sexually Assaulted Three Female Crew Members Two JetBlue pilots are accused of drugging and sexually assaulting three female airline workers, according to a lawsuit. The incident allegedly occurred during a layover in Puerto Rico, said the lawsuit that was filed in Brooklyn, New York, reported the New York Post. After crew members met Flight Officers Eric Johnson and Dan Watson on the beach, they found out they were JetBlue pilots, said the report. They drank beer together. The beer was laced with a drug, and after that point, the rest of the night became a blur for [the women], said the lawsuit that was filed earlier this week. The women were identified as Jane Doe 1 from Riverton, Utah; Jane Doe 2 from Fort Worth, Texas; and a third unnamed crew member with no hometown. According to the lawsuit, they ended up at the Intercontinental Hotel with the pilots. Jane Doe 1 claimed that Johnson assaulted her and the third crew member. [Jane Doe 1] felt the influence of the drug that [Johnson] laced the beer with, and was unable to react to the situation, but was simply aware that it was happening, said the lawsuit, as reported the Post. [Her] flashes of memory included Johnson having sexual intercourse with the other crewmember who was also under the influence of the drugs, according to the lawsuit. Jane Doe 2 became sick from the drugs and vomited, said the lawsuit. The Daily News, citing the lawsuit, reported that Watson left the scene after having been scratched. He is accused of feeding the drug to the women. On a flight to Newark, New Jersey, the women said they felt groggy and numb and expressed to each other that they were stunned by what had happened, according to the Post. The women reported the rape to JetBlue, but they said the airliner did nothing. What happened to my clients is truly horrific, and Jet Blues failure to take appropriate action is appalling, said a lawyer for the women, Abraham Melamed. They are suing for $75,000 each in damages along with attorneys fees. JetBlue said it cannot comment on pending litigation, saying it takes allegations of violent or inappropriate behavior very seriously and investigates such claims thoroughly, the Post reported. A representative for the firm told Fox News that we work to create a respectful workplace for all our crewmembers where they feel welcome and safe. Other details about the case are not clear. Violent Crime Down Despite the recent spike in gun crime in Atlanta, violent and property crimes have seen a downward trend, according to statistics collected by the FBI. Some areas, however, have significantly deteriorated and others, despite improvements, still need attention. The violent crime rateincluding offenses such as murder, robbery, and aggravated assaultdropped by almost 1 percent and is still about 4 percent above the 2014 rate. The murder rate dropped by 0.7 percent. The decline in crime, albeit small, cut short a worrisome spike in violence in previous years. Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate had increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968. The rate of property crimes, such as theft and burglary, has declined 3.6 percent since 2016 and is down more than 26 percent since a decade ago. Andrew Fiacco, who was arraigned on April 28, 2017, along with his girlfriend, Eevette MacDonald, on charges related to the slaying and mutilation of Stephen McAfee, an acquaintance who went missing in March 2016 but whose body parts were found just this week in a shallow grave in a vacant field north of Detroit. (Macomb County Sheriff's Office via AP) Man Sentenced for Murder in Shooting, Mutilation of Friend MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich.A 21-year-old man will spend 50 to 70 years in prison for the shooting death and mutilation of his childhood friend in a field north of Detroit. Andrew Fiacco was sentenced Thursday, March 21. A jury convicted him last month of second-degree murder, using a firearm during a felony, dismemberment and lying to a police officer. Andrew Fiacco, 21, given 50-70 yrs for 2016 murder of best friend Stephen McAfee, 19, of Macomb Twp, during a pot buy in a field in Bruce Twp, hiding the body for a year, then cutting it up and reburying it on family property in Ray Twp: I take full responsibility. @WWJ950 pic.twitter.com/vRZ5XbZn3g Mike Campbell (@reportermikec) March 21, 2019 Parents of teen shot, dismembered, and buried in Ray Twp await sentencing of sons killer in Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens. Andrew Fiacco, 21, was convicted of 2nd Degree Murder of 19 yr old Stephen McAfee while trying to buy marijuana in March 2016. @WWJ950 pic.twitter.com/RIR9egoi5i Mike Campbell (@reportermikec) March 21, 2019 Prosecutors said Fiacco shot 19-year-old Stephen McAfee twice in the head in a remote Bruce Township field in March 2016 then dismembered his body and buried some remains on family property. Andrew Fiacco sentenced in 19-year-old Stephen McAfees murder https://t.co/HQqKQVd0sJ FOX 2 Detroit (@FOX2News) March 21, 2019 McAfees family reported him missing about three days after authorities believe he was killed. Fiacco said nothing for a year, and twice told an investigator that he had no information on the location of his friend. In April 2017, he showed investigators where they could find McAfees remains, in two shallow graves about 10 miles apart. Mark Morfino, Macomb County Sheriffs detective, told a district court in 2017 that Fiacco took his 20-year-old ex-girlfriend, Eevette MacDonald, to the vacant, privately owned field where McAfee was shot, to show her something about a month after McAfee was killed. Andrew Michael Fiacco and Eevette Renee MacDonald are charged with multiple felonies. pic.twitter.com/E0I5lhnbkh Local 4 WDIV Detroit (@Local4News) April 28, 2017 A female associate later told sheriffs deputies that MacDonald had told her Fiacco was responsible for McAfees death. MacDonald pleaded guilty in December to being an accessary and to exhumation and mutilation of a body. A third charge of lying to police is to be dismissed at sentencing, which is set for March 7. The "Supermoon" rises over the Rio de la Plata as seen from Buenos Aires on Feb. 19, 2019. (Alejandro Pagni/AFP/Getty Images) Meteor Spotted Over Los Angeles Turns out to Be Stunt for Supermoon A streak of light was spotted over downtown Los Angeles on the night of March 20, but it wasnt a meteor or a missile. The Los Angeles Police Department wrote: PSA: A meteor did not crash into Downtown Los Angeles, and no, its not an alien invasionjust a film shoot. It added that this is Tinseltown after all. What is this flying item on fire above downtown Los Angeles? pic.twitter.com/3tUu0jKL8L dennis hegstad (@dennishegstad) March 21, 2019 But a number of videos and tweets speculated as to what the streak was. What is this flying item on fire above downtown Los Angeles? wrote Dennis Hegstad on the social media network. Did anyone else see that meteor over Downtown Los Angeles??, asked Twitter user @elliseckles. Saw a meteor burn through the sky of LA today. WILL (@genericwill) March 21, 2019 Added another: Saw a meteor burn through the sky of LA today. The LAPD tweet didnt address actually what it was, so Red Bull clarified. Energy drink maker Red Bull said its Red Bull Air Force celebrated the third supermoon of the year by placing skydivers in suits to jump from a helicopter. Did anyone else see that meteor over Downtown Los Angeles?? #crazy Ellis (@elliseckles) March 21, 2019 In order to mark the occasion, some of the most experienced skydivers, BASE jumpers and freeflyers on the planet in the Red Bull Air Force took to the skies above the famous American city for the aerial flight, it said. To add a touch of Hollywood glitz, the suits were fitted with LED lights and sparking pyrotechnics that lit up the night sky as the sun set and the supermoon rose, said Red Bull. Despite the clarification from police and Red Bull, people still believed it was a meteor. Massive meteor falling on downtown Los Angeles tonight pic.twitter.com/IPxh34YS5R THESE DAYS (@thesedaysla) March 21, 2019 Massive Meteor Explosion Went Unnoticed Hurtling towards the earth 30 times faster than a rifle bullet, a 1,400-ton fireball exploded with the energy of 10 Hiroshima bombs in a blinding flash on the night of Dec 18, 2018, becoming the third largest meteor impact in modern times. However, the explosion, 15.5 miles above the remote Bering Sea, had no witnesses and was picked up only on NASA instruments, which had held onto their secret until now. On March 8, meteor scientist Peter Brown pointed to the latest data release, which showed the massive explosion near the Kamchatka Peninsula, in Russias far-east, just before midnight. Object was 10 meters (33 feet) diameter, mass 1400T, and impacted with an energy of 173 kilotons of TNT, Brown wrote on Twitter. It would have been quite spectacular, Alan Fitzsimmons of Queens University Belfast, UK, told the New Scientist. When you see these infrasound waves, you know immediately that there has been an impact or a large release of energy. The Epoch Times reporter Simon Veazey contributed to this report. Monster Cyclone to Slam Western Australias Pilbara Region Tropical Cyclone Veronica has intensified to a Category 4 storm and is heading for Western Australias Pilbara Coast with the potential to turn into a Category 5 cyclone before landfall, the Bureau of Meteorology said on March 21. The bureau says the region could be severely impacted over the weekend. Severe Tropical Cyclone Veronica continues to intensify! This loop shows it develop from a Category 1 to Category 4 over the last 24hrs! ???? It will approach the Pilbara coast during the weekend. Keep up to date with the latest at https://t.co/L0mHbEKftg #CycloneVeronica pic.twitter.com/sjqPImFnQz Bureau of Meteorology, Western Australia (@BOM_WA) March 20, 2019 Overnight on March 20, Veronica was well north of the Pilbara Coast but was moving southwest. It is expected to intensify on Friday, March 22. There is still some uncertainty in the forecast track but there is the potential for a severe tropical cyclone impact along the Pilbara Coast over the weekend, a BOM alert said. Gales with gusts up to 100 kilometres per hour are expected between Pardoo and Mardie from as early as Friday night, March 22. Warning issued for Pilbara coast as Severe Tropical Cyclone Veronica (Category 4) tracks towards the coast. A severe impact along the Pilbara coast is likely over the weekend. #CycloneVeronica https://t.co/B1MVXBYXhh pic.twitter.com/lt3VK5lpdU Bureau of Meteorology, Western Australia (@BOM_WA) March 21, 2019 Very destructive winds with gusts over 165 kilometres per hour are possible as the cyclone nears the coast, as well as heavy rain, major flooding, and possible storm surges. Excessive high tides are expected as the cyclone is expected to make landfall at the height of the spring tide. People near Mardie and Pardoo, including Port Hedland, South Hedland, Wickham, Roebourne, Point Samson, Karratha, and Dampier are being warned to prepare for cyclonic weather. Tropical Cyclone Trevor (Category 1) is located just offshore from Weipa over the Gulf of Carpentaria. Severe Tropical Cyclone Veronica (Category 4) is located northwest of Broome, Western Australia, March 21, 2019 (Commonwealth of Australia, Bureau of Meteorology) The Department of Fire and Emergency Services has issued a blue alert of Karratha, Port Hedland, and the surrounding towns, and have urged people to prepare their emergency survival kits. Supermarket shelves in the Port Hedland region have already been cleared out by residents preparing for the storm, including bottled water supplies. The local Woolworths told The West that its next delivery of water is expected on Saturday morning at the latest. Were pretty stocked on most things, but the water has gone AWOL, a Woolworths spokesperson told The West. Stores in Hedland run out of water ahead of Cyclone Veronica Spirit Karratha 2019320 BHP told The West that it had sent home all non-essential fly-in fly-out employees from Port Hedland and was clearing the port as it prepared to close on March 22. Safety is our top priority and we continue to monitor the movement of the cyclone, a representative told The West. As a precautionary measure, the ports of Cape Lambert and Dampier are being cleared. All other operations are continuing, subject to ongoing monitoring of weather conditions. The bureaus State Manager James Ashley told The West that they have already seen wind gusts of around 250 kilometres per hour from Veronica. With the coastal crossing expected over the weekend and the cyclone remaining as a severe system the rainfall totals will be very high, we are talking hundreds of millimetres, and it is fairly slow moving so that makes rainfall even heavier, he said. That will lead to flooding through those coastal areas in particular. As it approaches the coast, depending on the tidal movement, it can create very dangerous storm surges as well which again can lead to flooding of coastal areas. The last Category 5 system to hit the Pilbara Coast was Cyclone George in 2007, which killed three people and caused $8 million worth in damages in the Port Hedland region, The West reported. Meanwhile, in the northeast, Cyclone Trevor has triggered mass evacuations as the currently Category 1 cyclone is forecast to gain momentum to become a Category 4 as it travels across the Gulf of Carpentaria headed for the east coast of the Northern Territory. Heres a satellite pic of #CycloneTrevor, now a Category 2 system in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Its a very large TC, with gale force winds extending 200-300km from its centre. Its expected to intensify to Category 3 overnight, and Category 4 on Friday. https://t.co/aW8HS4xVs7 pic.twitter.com/s4CBGyoBh6 Bureau of Meteorology, Northern Territory (@BOM_NT) March 21, 2019 Its a very large tropical cyclone, with gale force winds extending 200-300 kilometres from its centre. Its expected to intensify to Category 3 overnight, and Category 4 on Friday, the bureau said on March 21. The bureau is predicting that the cyclone will make landfall between Borroloola and Groote Eylandt on March 22 as a Category four severe tropical cyclone. Read More State of Emergency Declared as Cyclone Trevor Barrels Towards North of Australia The evacuations are the largest since cyclone Tracy in 1974. AAP contributed to the report. From NTD.com Mother Scolds Airlines for Forcing Her Unaccompanied 9-Year-Old to Sleep in Airport Lounge The content is not available due to expiration. New South Wales Priest Charged With 1993 Teen Assaults A Catholic priest has been charged with indecently assaulting a teenage boy at a school in Sydneys west more than 25 years ago. New South Wales Police in 2018 began an investigation after receiving a report that a 15-year-old boy was indecently assaulted at a high school in Fairfield in 1993. Officers arrested a 61-year-old man at a house in Berkley on March 19. He was charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault and aggravated indecency of a victim under 16 under authority. The priest was granted conditional bail and is due to appear in Port Kembla Local Court in mid-May. He is currently suspended from the church. New York Dem Apologizes to Jewish Constituents for Ilhan Omars Anti-Semitic Tropes Freshman Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) apologized to his Jewish constituents during a town hall in Staten Island, New York, on March 19, for failing to protect them from Rep. Ilhan Omars (D-Minn.) recent anti-semitic remarks. Omar, a freshman Democrat, received backlash for perpetuating antisemitic tropes in early February, when she implied a prominent pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), paid off lawmakers for their support of Israel. Her comments received bipartisan condemnation and the congresswoman subsequently apologized for her comments. Earlier this month, the House passed a watered-down resolution that was meant to censure Omars comments. The resolution (pdf), approved by a vote of 40723, was expanded to include other forms of bias but does not include Omars name. As a young congressman, Ive got to tell you Im sorry, Rose told the audience gathered by the Council of Jewish Organizations (COJO), reported the Jewish Insider. You sent me to Congress to take responsibility. You sent me to Congress to have your back and I failed you. Because I know that Congresswoman Ilhan Omars comments really caused you all a lot of pain by bringing up anti-Semitic tropes. Along with her comments in February, Omar also received criticism for a 2012 post where she wrote: Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. Omar sparked a fresh uproar in late February when she accused some politicians in Washington who supported Israel as having dual loyalty. These comments even earned praise from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Dr Duke & Eric Striker: By Defiance to Z.O.G. Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress! https://t.co/R4d4X81xdv pic.twitter.com/C083V57VQp David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) March 7, 2019 I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country, Omar said. I want to ask why is it OK for me to talk about the influence of the NRA, of fossil fuel industries, or big pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobby that is influencing policy. In reference to Omars dual loyalty comments, Rose, who is an U.S. Army veteran of the war in Afghanistan, denied that his Jewish faith affected his allegiance to America. He said, I have allegiance to the flag. I have allegiance to the United States of America. Rose said that although he was horrified and sad by Omars comments, he still accepted her apology as well as defended the Democratic leaderships decision to not remove her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee, saying that her removal would be escalating the situation. I was horrified and sad when she made the comments, Rose said. So horrified that as a freshman member of Congress I stepped in front of my partys leadership and I was the first member of the Democratic Party to criticize her. I did say that I accepted her apology. You know why I did that? Because I am an adult. Because my goal was to continue the quiet and non-glamorous actions of coalition-building and trying to protect the people in this room from those comments being made. The New York congressman said he was also not satisfied with Omars rhetoric. Rose said, I am not satisfied with what Ive seen thus far, Im not. To equate Jewish organizations with the NRA, of course Im upset. Of course Im not satisfied and I dont know any who are either. Thats why the first thing that I said is that Im sorry, Im sorry because I couldnt protect you from this. And that takes a lot to say, he added. During this saga, President Donald Trump has spoken out against Omar and the Democratic party on numerous occasions. He told reporters in February that her comments were terrible and that he didnt think her apology was adequate. He added that she should be ashamed of herself, reported The Hill. On March 8, a day after the House resolution was passed without Omars name, the president criticized the Democrats calling them an anti-Israel party. He said, I thought yesterdays vote by the House was disgraceful, because its becomethe Democrats have become an anti-Israel party. Theyve become an anti-Jewish party. And I thought that vote was a disgrace and so does everybody else if you get an honest answer. President Trump: I thought yesterdays vote by the House was disgraceful, because its become the Democrats have become an anti-Israel party. Theyve become an anti-Jewish party. And I thought that vote was a disgrace and so does everybody else if you get an honest answer. pic.twitter.com/TNmPRMwNJA CSPAN (@cspan) March 8, 2019 Mark Morgan, then-chief of the US Border Patrol, testifies at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on "Initial Observations of the New Leadership at the US Border Patrol" on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Nov. 30, 2016. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images) Obama Border Patrol Chief Says Border Crisis Absolutely a National Emergency A former Border Patrol chief in the Obama administration, who was fired by the Trump administration in 2017, told national television on March 21 that there is absolutely a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border. Mark Morgan, who served as Obamas Border Patrol chief for most of 2016, told Fox Businesss Mornings with Maria that there was an undeniable state of crisis at the border. Its absolutely a national emergency, Morgan said during the interview. What we are talking about right now is part of the continued catch and release. Its a little bit different than before. He explained that previously anyone caught by border patrol agents would be turned over to ICE, who then releases them according to immigration policies. But now this does not happen because of overcrowding at border patrol and ICE detention facilities. Border crisis is absolutely a national emergency: Former Obama administration Border Patrol Chief https://t.co/5sE2wOxuj7 Mornings with Maria (@MorningsMaria) March 21, 2019 Now, border patrol agents are having to release illegal aliens into the interior of the United States. Theyre overwhelmed, Morgan said, adding that after the illegal aliens are released you never hear from them again. This week, border patrol released 250 migrants and are expected to release hundreds more because of an influx of Central American families causing overcrowding in immigration facilities, reported Los Angeles Times. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen warned lawmakers earlier this month that illegal immigration is simply spiraling out of control and threatening public safety and national security. In February, we saw a 30 percent jump over the previous month, with agents apprehending or encountering nearly 75,000 aliens, Nielsen told the House Committee on Homeland Security. This is an 80 percent increase over the same time last year. And I can report today that CBP is forecasting the problem will get even worse this spring as the weather warms up. Morgan, who was also a former FBI agent, thinks loopholes in asylum laws and the incentives of being in the United States are generally to blame for the level of crisis. The intelligence will show you theyre not fleeing violence and persecution like a lot of the talking points, he said. Actually violence in Guatemala, [and] all Central American countries, are way downhomicide rates overall. He continued, Theyre coming for two reasons economic equality [and] family reunification. And they know because of our asylum laws, they step one foot in American soil, theyre allowed in never to be heard from again. The former border patrol chief said in order to handle the crisis, asylum laws should be amended to require anyone who wishes to seek asylum in the United States to make their applications in Mexico or their country of origin. National Emergency President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in relation to the crisis on the southwest border on Feb. 15, citing the influx of illegal aliens, drugs, and guns into the United States. The president had previously promised to use his legal national emergency powers if Congress failed to appropriate $5.7 billion for border wall construction as requested by the Department of Homeland Security. His declaration had enabled the transfer of $3.6 billion from the military construction budget toward wall construction. The president also ordered the shifting of an additional $3.1 billion, which did not require declaring a national emergency. Hans A. von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow from the Heritage Foundation, wrote on Feb. 25, that Trump acted only after Congress refused to fulfill its duty to protect the country and provide the resources necessary to secure the border. Anyone who believes this isnt a genuine crisis is ignoring reality. It approaches what many consider an unchecked invasion: thousands of illegal aliens, dangerous criminals, drug smugglers and sex traffickers crossing the border every day, Spakovsky wrote in his article. Anyone who believes this isn't a genuine crisis is ignoring reality. It approaches what many consider an unchecked The Heritage Foundation 2019225 On March 14, the Senate voted 59-41 on a resolution to terminate Trumps emergency declaration, where 12 Republicans joined all of the Democrats to pass the measure. The same resolution was already passed in the House on Feb. 26. In response to the resolution, Trump issued the first veto of his presidency on March 15, to override the congressional resolution. He made the announcement in the oval office surrounded by law enforcement officials and mothers of people killed by illegal aliens. Today I am vetoing this resolution. Congress has the freedom to pass this resolution and I have the duty to veto it, Trump said, calling the congressional resolution reckless and dangerous. People hate the word invasion, but thats what it is, the president said, adding that there is nowhere left to hold all of the people that were capturing. Mark Morgan, a former Border Patrol chief in the @BarackObama administration who was removed by President @realDonaldTrump, joined the experts supporting a #BorderWall. Morgan said that border walls absolutely work. The president is right.https://t.co/MMun7BPv1A NTDNews (@news_ntd) January 8, 2019 Moreover, Morgan previously told Fox News Tucker Carlson Tonight, that he supports a border wall. If you look in the past, you dont have to go too far back in history, that bipartisan legislation that was passed, the Secure Fence Act in 2006 and 2012, bipartisan legislation passed where they built the wall or fence or physical barrier, whatever you want to call it, its a wall. It works, Morgan said on Jan. 7. The Epoch Times Reporter Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report. People enjoy at the Lake Michigan at 31st Street Harbor in Chicago, on Jan. 30, 2019. (Nam Y. Huh/AP) Photos: Lake Michigan Covered in Stunning Ice Shards Photos of piles of ice shards along Lake Michigan have gone viral in recent days. Rising temperatures in the area caused the lake to thaw, producing the formations. The ice pieces are pushed together by the water beneath the lake, and it contributes to the display, according to USA Today. Simply stunning !!!https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/lake-michigan-frozen-pictures-spring-ice-shards-a8832631.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1553115543 Geomorphology Rules 2019321 The U.S. Coast Guard said that people shouldnt get too close to the ice. No ice is safe ice, especially this time of year, U.S. Coast Guard boatswains mate Chief Petty Officer Grant Heffner told MLive on March 20. The ice is certainly deteriorating and breaking up. MLive noted that as of March 8, about 56 percent of Lake Michigan was covered with ice. Looks like Elsa got loose on Lake Michigan! The frozen Great Lake starting to thaw in an amazing display of shards of ice. #fox35 http://ow.ly/2dSN30o8hB1 Bob Frier FOX 35 2019321 Temperatures in South Haven, Michigan, where the photos were captured, got above freezing this week. Huge shards of ice amassed earlier this week on Lake Michigan, along the shore of South Haven, Michigan: https://t.co/iftbl3yk9N pic.twitter.com/HPys27ol54 ABC News (@ABC) March 20, 2019 This is mesmerizing. The frozen water of Lake Michigan has started melting and is pushing up these shards of ice. Im obsessed! pic.twitter.com/ZXPXRSanfK myob. (@xSaltsicle) March 21, 2019 According to the Coast Guard in an alert last year, people should follow the acronym ICE if one plans on going out on frozen Lake Michigan or any other body of water, Fox17 reported. I is for information to let others know youre heading out on the ice. They recommend not to go alone. C is for communication, meaning people should have a cellphone handy in case they need to call for help. E is for environment, which means dress appropriately and be prepared if you get stranded. Unprecedented Spring Flooding Possible, Say Forecasters The stage is set for unprecedented major flooding this spring for most of the nation, U.S. weather officials said Thursday, according to The Associated Press. More than 200 million Americans are at risk for some kind of flooding, with 13 million of them at risk of major inundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its spring weather outlook. About 41 million people are at risk of moderate flooding. Major flooding now occurring in Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri, and other Midwestern states is a preview of an all-too-wet and dangerous spring, said Mary Erickson, deputy director of the National Weather Service. In fact, we expect the flooding to get worse and more widespread, she said. This years flooding could be worse than anything weve seen in recent years, even worse than the historic floods of 1993 and 2011, she said. Those floods caused billions of dollars in damage, and officials said this years damage in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota has already passed the billion-dollar mark. Forecasters said the biggest risks include all three Mississippi River basins, the Red River of the North, the Great Lakes, plus the basins of the eastern Missouri River, lower Ohio River, lower Cumberland River, and the Tennessee River. This is the broadest expanse of area in the United States that weve projected with an elevated risk that I can remember, said Thomas Graziano, a 20-year weather service veteran and director of the Office of Water Prediction. Is this the perfect storm? I dont know. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Physicians Are People Too: The Case for Conscience Commentary No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority, said Thomas Jefferson in 1809. Theres a powerful drive to strip physicians, and other health care professionals and institutions, of conscience exemptions. Physicians arent conscript soldiers, goes the argument, so they dont need to be exempted from certain expectations of the job they find morally objectionable. If theyre unwilling to abide by the conditions of the government that funds them, theyre free to quit their jobs. As the movement for state control of health care gains strength (supported by the medical establishment, the bioethics movement, Democrats, and even professional associations), the autonomy and professional judgment of physicians are constrained. The right to be exempted, on grounds of religious conviction or strong moral belief, from actions that the physician or institution (say, a Catholic hospital) considers gravely wrong (such as terminating the life of an unborn child) is under dire threat. The right to protection against the enterprises of the civil authority, so dear to Jefferson and once to advocates of civil liberties, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, is set aside. Physicians must agree to practice according to government specifications if the Medicare for All Act of 2019 (H.R. 1384), which, in this respect, reflects medical establishment opinion, ever becomes law. Even when these provisions require violation of the Hippocratic Oathas understood and sworn to for more than 2,000 yearseven when they involve killing rather than healing (e.g., through abortion and abortifacient drugs), participating physicians must surrender their moral agency to the government and the will of patients. If the treatment is legal and in accord with accepted medical practice, whether right or wrong, the practitioner must do what the patient wants. There has been a rapid shift from condemning to tolerating abortion in certain circumstances, to making it optional for patients and mandatory for professionals. The legally binding U.N. Declaration of Human Rights and Declaration of the Rights of the Child affirm the rights of the child before as well as after birth. But U.N. officials now pressure sovereign member states to establish abortion as a legal right. Now, the U.N. Human Rights Committee says that governments must provide safe, legal and effective access to abortion where carrying a pregnancy to term would cause the pregnant woman or girl substantial pain or suffering. Ominously, in terms of conscience rights, the committee asserts that no laws or measures may be enacted that could compel women and girls to resort to unsafe abortion, including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers. But does your legal right to an abortion imply a legal right to demand its provision, let alone a physicians duty to assist you? The argument against conscience exemptions in health care is often framed as a conflict between a patients right to treatment and a professionals (or institutions) right to refuse treatment. Coercing Conscience In this way of talking, the personal is contrasted with the professional, the idea being that a professional has a duty to provide whatever services are legal and demanded by clients. The supposed right of the pregnant woman to treatment invariably prevails over the conscience of the professional. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that pro-life physicians must refer patients seeking an abortion to other providers and, in emergency cases involving the patients physical or mental health, must actually perform abortions. This is what the Medicare for All Act would impose, and its the law in some jurisdictions, such as Victoria, Australia. This approach treats conscience as one value among others, a value that can and should be overridden in the interest of other obligations that outweigh it in a given circumstance. Private beliefs or personal conscience must give way, in this view, to public duties. Where conscience is considered at all in these rulings, its seen as a private, purely individual thing, like an inner voice with no greater claim to legal or constitutional protection than the voices in the head of a schizophrenic. This account of conscience runs counter to the traditional understanding of the term, according to which conscience is your final, best practical judgment, all things considered, about the right thing to do in the situation. It involves a claim to truth, one that can be defended in the public sphere, not a private vision. If I say abortion is a grave evil, Im not simply expressing a private preference. Forcing me to collude in or perform an abortion would be coercing me to do evil, to do what in my best judgment is morally wrong. It places a heavy burden on me that is unnecessary to public order and the protection of others rights, unlike, say, constraining someone from acting on a belief that it is a duty to kill heretics or sacrifice children. Whether or not the First Amendment protects all conscience claims (I dont believe it does), its good policy and conducive to a harmonious society to, wherever possible, bend over backwards to protect the rights of conscienceespecially those of dissenting or unpopular minoritiesagainst the enterprises of the civil authority. A Duty to Refer? A frequently overlooked aspect of this new drive to force health care providers to subordinate their consciences to the wishes of patients is that it fundamentally shifts the balance of rights and powers between professional and patient. It strips professionals of their full moral responsibility and reduces them to a kind of robot or machine that delivers what the customer demands. Professionals right and duty to use their judgment about what is required, indicated, or morally permissible in the situation is stripped away in favor of a kind of patient empowerment that radically disempowers, even dehumanizes, the health care professional. Is it a reasonable compromise to require a pro-life physician who refuses, on grounds of conscience, to perform an abortion to then refer that patient to another provider who will do it? No. If its gravely wrong, as the Hippocratic Oath affirms, for a physician intentionally to kill a person, by abortion or any other means, its also wrong to get someone else to do it. If its a heinous evil for you to murder your spouse, its no less wrong to hire someone else to do it for you. If its wicked for me to help you kill your inconvenient and demanding child, its also wrong for me to refer you to a professional hitman. Paul Adams is a professor emeritus of social work at the University of Hawaii and was a professor and associate dean of academic affairs at Case Western Reserve University. He is the co-author of Social Justice Isnt What You Think It Is and has written extensively on social welfare policy and professional and virtue ethics. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman, 19, of El Salvador, talks to his public defender and interpreter during his initial appearance in Carson City Justice Court in Carson City, Nev., on Jan. 24, 2019. (Scott Sonner/AP Photo) Police Say Immigrant Suspect Killed for Drugs RENO, Nev.A detective says a Salvadoran immigrant charged with four Nevada murders told police he robbed and killed his elderly victims during a 10-day rampage in January because he needed money to buy methamphetamine. The detective told the grand jury, which indicted Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman in Reno last week, the 20-year-old who is living in the United States illegally broke into tears and repeatedly called himself an idiot before confessing to the murders during an interrogation hours after his arrest in Carson City on Jan. 19. According to the grand jury transcript obtained by The Associated Press, Washoe County Sheriffs Detective Stefanie Brady testified March 13 that Martinez-Guzman initially denied any wrongdoing and was smiling and giggling through part of the questioning. But after she confronted him with several contradictions in his story during a nearly three-hour interrogation, he said through a Spanish interpreter he had done something thats unforgivable. She says he told her he shot the victims because of the drugs. He said he needed the money for the meth and it was the meth, Brady testified, according to the 268-page transcript filed late March 19 in Washoe District Court. The grand jury indicted Martinez-Guzman last week on four counts of murder with the use of a deadly weapon, three counts of burglary while in possession of a firearm and one count each of burglary, burglary while gaining possession of a firearm and possession of a stolen firearm. BREAKING: Prosecutors will seek the death penalty against accused killer Wilber Ernesto Martinez-Guzman. https://t.co/p4K0sRERqp pic.twitter.com/sraaaIKia0 KRNV (@KRNV) March 14, 2019 A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf during an arraignment Tuesday. His trial isnt scheduled to begin until April 2020. His public defense attorney, John Arrascada, said in an email to AP he didnt receive the grand jury transcript until Wednesday, was reviewing it and had no immediate comment. Federal officials have said Martinez-Guzman is in the United States illegally but they dont know how or when he crossed the border. The case has drawn the attention of President Donald Trump, who says it shows the need for a border wall. District Attorneys Chris Hicks of Washoe County and Mark Jackson of Douglas County announced last week they are seeking the death penalty but that Martinez-Guzmans immigration status had nothing to do with that decision. BREAKING: A Washoe County District judge today set a trial date of April 6, 2020 for accused killer Wilber Martinez-Guzman. https://t.co/ydDCkU6yDK pic.twitter.com/WKrbMtysS5 Fox Reno (@fox11reno) March 19, 2019 The four slaying victims include Gerald David, 81, and his 80-year-old wife, Sharon David, a prominent Reno Rodeo Association couple who had employed Martinez-Guzman as a landscaper last summer at their house where they were found dead Jan. 16. Police say they were shot with a .22-caliber handgun that Martinez-Guzman stole from them earlier. Court documents allege that Martinez-Guzmans DNA was found on the same gun that was also used to kill Connie Koontz and Sophia Renken in their homes in Gardnerville south of Carson City. Detective Brady told the grand jury that Martinez-Guzman was engaging and made lots of eye contact during the early stages of the interrogation at the Carson City sheriffs office. He smiled, kind of giggled through some of the questions. But he was very engaged in the conversation, she said. After she read him his Miranda rights, he actually acknowledged that he was fine not having an attorney because he hadnt done anything wrong, she said. He indicated he had buried a bunch of stuff that he found by a river in Carson City. But when she confronted him about several contradictions, his answers became slower, his body posture was more slumped and he started touching his face uncontrollably. Accused murderer Wilber Martinez-Guzman is scheduled to be arraigned in court later today. https://t.co/MZAXXGBBD6 pic.twitter.com/bPIQXdDH13 KTVN 2 News (@KTVN) March 13, 2019 When she asked him about some fishing poles that had been stolen from the Davids, there was a really long pause. And at that point, he had dropped his head and began to cry with long deep breaths. He talked about how he was an idiot. He repeated that several times, Brady testified. He talked about how he had done something thats unforgivable. He said something about if he tells me what he did, its not going to bring back the people that he shot, she said, and then shortly after that blamed the killings on his need for money to buy drugs. She said he initially denied he killed Renken, but ultimately acknowledged he shot her too. By Scott Sonner Prosecutors: Clear Dead Serial Rapist of 1983 Florida Murder FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.Florida prosecutors want a deceased serial rapist cleared of a 1983 murder, saying DNA evidence shows the killer was actually a man executed for a similar murder. Ronald Stewart would not have been charged with murder if DNA testing had been available at the time. https://t.co/1nT0wGwC25 Miami New Times (@MiamiNewTimes) March 21, 2019 Broward County prosecutors asked a judge Thursday, March 21, to dismiss Ronald Stewarts 1985 conviction for the murder of 20-year-old Regina Harrison. They say the real killer was Jack Jones, who was executed in 2017 for a 1995 Arkansas murder. Jones also pleaded guilty to a 1991 Fort Lauderdale murder. Stewart was arrested in 1983 for serial rapes in the Fort Lauderdale area. He pleaded guilty to three and no contest to second-degree murder for Harrisons slaying and sentenced to 50 years. He died in prison in 2008. Prosecutors say Stewarts serial rape convictions and the evidence behind them stand. A serial rapist took the blame for South Florida womans murder. A serial killer was really the culprit. https://t.co/drMq0bCCzj pic.twitter.com/TtiuQ2Hyx4 South Florida Sun Sentinel (@SunSentinel) March 21, 2019 Crime Statistics Crime declined in the first half of 2018 compared to the first half of 2017, the FBI said in February. Preliminary statistics show nearly all offenses in the violent crime category declined. Robbery offenses decreased 12.5 percent, murder and nonnegligent manslaughter offenses decreased 6.7 percent, and aggravated assault offenses declined 2 percent, the agency said. Rape, however, increased 0.6 percent. When comparing data from the first six months of 2018 with the first six months of 2017, all property crime categories showed a decrease. Burglaries were down 12.7 percent, larceny-thefts decreased 6.3 percent, and motor vehicle thefts declined 3.3 percent. The full 2018 crime report will be released later this year. The FBI previously said that both violent crime and property crime decreased in 2017, the last year that full statistics are available for, compared to 2016. Overall violent crime decreased 0.2 percent from 2016 to 2017, while property crime decreased 3 percent during that time, the agency said in September 2018, releasing data from the previous year. There were more than 1.2 million violent crimes reported to UCR nationwide in 2017. There was a 0.7 percent decrease in murders and a 4 percent decrease in robberies from 2016 to 2017. Aggravated assaults increased by 1 percent in 2017. The FBI began collecting data solely on an updated rape definition last year, and 135,755 rapes were reported to law enforcement in 2017, the FBI stated. The report also showed there were more than 7.7 million property crimes last year. Burglaries decreased 7.6 percent and larceny-thefts decreased by 2.2 percent. Motor vehicle thefts increased by 0.8 percent from 2016 to 2017. The figures were compiled from more than 13,000 law enforcement agencies around the United States that submitted their crime data to the FBI. Murders and Violent crimes The number of murders and violent crimes committed in the United States dropped slightly in 2017, according to new crime statistics released in September 2018. Crime declined nationwide last year, consistent with our earlier analyses of 2017 data in the nations 30 largest cities, Ames Grawert, senior counsel for the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, told the Washington Times. Thats the good news. The bad news is that even while crime is falling, the number of Americans incarcerated remains near-record highs. Now is the time to address the problem. The number of cases of manslaughter and murder dropped 0.7 percent in 2017 from the prior year, the report said. Rapes rose by 3 percent and aggravated assault rose by 1 percent, but overall violent crimes dropped 0.2 percent, the report added. In Pennsylvania, in 2017, the violent crime rate was lower than the national rate last year at 313.3 per 100,000 residents. That includes 739 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters. The murder rate in Pennsylvania was 5.8 per 100,000 people, higher than the national rate of 5.3, Patch.com reported. Two Pennsylvania cities were listed as Murder Capitals of America in 2018. Chester in Delaware County and Harrisburg, the state capitals, were named as such, Patch.com reported, citing website NeighborhoodScout. Chester came in second in the United States after notorious East St. Louis, Illinois. In Chester, a city of 34,000, there were 23 murders in 2016, which has the latest data. In Harrisburg, which has 49,000 residents, there were 13 murders in 2016. Senator Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally to kick off his 2020 US presidential campaign, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on March 2, 2019. (JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty Images) Report Shows Cable Networks Cover Sanders, ORourke More Than Anyone Else A new report revealed that major cable networks cover and discuss Beto ORourke and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) more than the other contendersdespite a crowded field of now more than a dozen 2020 candidates. FiveThirtyEight, a Democratic-leaning polling site, tracked data from cable networks CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC to measure their mentions of Democrat candidates. Using the Internet Archives Television News Archive and the GDELT projects Television Explorer, the pollsters analyzed how many times the networks mentioned a candidate in the days leading up to and after their campaign announcement. Bernie Sanders and Beto ORourke saw dramatic, mountainous peaks in mentions immediately following their announcements, and in some cases still days after, the report said. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren saw more modest bumps. And otherssuch as Pete Buttigieg, John Hickenlooper and Jay Insleesaw molehills. Bernie Sanders and Beto ORourke saw dramatic peaks in cable news mentions after their 2020 announcements. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren saw modest bumps. Pete Buttigieg, John Hickenlooper and Jay Inslee saw molehills.https://t.co/GZvijluNoE pic.twitter.com/q9YssOHAdu FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) March 20, 2019 The cable networks mentions of Sanders and ORourke were roughly twice the amount of the other candidates. Both men hovered around 4 percent of total news coverage while the rest of the candidates gained around 2 percent or less. Although all three networks focused more on the two candidates, there were some differences in the level of coverage. Fox News mentioned Sanders more than any other network and MSNBC spoke about ORourke more than the other networks. Both men also raised hefty sums in the 24 hours following their formal 2020 bid announcements, suggesting that the coverage helped them generate even more buzz around their campaigns. Sanders raised $5.9 million in the 24 hours following his announcement on Feb. 19, and ORourke reportedly raised $6.1 million after announcing his bid on March 14. Nate Silver, founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, detailed the order of the candidates press coverage in a post on Twitter. He said Sanders was the highest, followed by ORourke, Harris, Warren, Booker, and Klobuchar before a big gap and then everyone else. Which candidates announcements got the most press coverage? Looks like the order is roughly speaking 1. Bernie 2. Beto gap 3. Harris 4. Warren gap 5. Booker 6. Klobuchar big gap Everyone else.https://t.co/oIyRNEnjnn pic.twitter.com/1yhiOkR05x Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 20, 2019 The report also measured the words most likely to indicate that coverage was about a particular candidate. For Sanders, the words most specifically associated with him were socialism, socialist, and 2016. For ORourke, those words were congressman and fair. For candidate Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who gained around 0.1 percent of media coverage, the words most associated with him were mayor and guy. In an average of early 2020 Democratic primary polls tallied by Real Clear Politics, Sanders polled at second place with 23.4 points, not far behind former Vice President Joe Biden, who led at 29.4 points. ORourke trailed further behind with 8 percentage points. Biden has not yet formally announced running for president but is widely expected to do so. Biden reportedly called six of his supporters on March 19 and told them he is running for president, and asked them to line up major donors so he can quickly rake in millions in contributions. Biden told the supporters that he wont be able to quickly raise enough contributions from small donors to outpace Sanders and ORourke. With examples of Russian-created Facebook pages behind him, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) questions witnesses during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing titled 'Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online' on Capitol Hill, October 31, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) Russian Disinformation OperationI Am Outraged, Am I Alone? Commentary Another Russian disinformation operation has recently been reported in the news. There have been rumors for decades that childhood inoculations cause children to have autism. Those rumors and other vaccination debates have been stirred up by Moscow and the SVR, which is the successor organization to the KGB. Make no mistake, its the same Russian intelligence officers and the lessons theyve learned through the decades running these types of disinformation campaigns. The purpose of the social media bots and trolls is to sow discord and sap resources. Children who get sick use medical resources, and it impacts the parents and possibly even their place of employment. At the state level, medical professionals, nurses, and doctors use thousands of hours to go to community meetings and to conduct one-on-one meetings with parents to explain that inoculations are safe. Most pediatricians are also fully aware of this problem, and have to take time away from treating patients to speak to parents and explain. Millions upon millions of dollars and countless hours of time are spent in the United States alone to combat this issue. The outrage from the left here in the United States will never be forthcoming, since it would mean taking a stance against Russia, which they still see as the heir of the Soviet Union and their darling. However, in this case, where is everybody else? The intelligence community, which claims so loudly to be fully accountable to the public, is silent. They could actually be useful here, yet do nothing. I am outraged; am I alone? Successful Campaigns Other similar and effective Russian propaganda operations, while usually aimed at the United States, arent always run in the United States. Take, for example, two long-term propaganda operations started by the Soviets in the 1980s. Both mainly existed outside of the United States and are virtually unheard of here. Both targeted the underdeveloped world, and both had measurable success. The first is extensive and targeted HIV and AIDS. HIV is thought to have originated from eating monkeys that carried a similar virus; it spread from Africa to the rest of the world and has been a deadly scourge. From the beginning, the United States has led the charge to cure and treat AIDS. The Russians quickly realized this presented them with the opportunity for a twofer. They published through the press, which they control or influence, hundreds of articles that claimed AIDS was created by the U.S. military as part of weapons research, and that the disease escaped their control and was inflicted on the world. Lots of people in developing nations still believe this to be true, and it takes away any credit the United States might have garnered by fighting AIDS. The second example concerned the overseas adoption of babies. Extensive negative press was run against adoption overseas by U.S. citizens. The claim was that Americans were adopting babies to harvest their organs for transplants as part of a disgusting money-making scheme. There were actual riots in the streets in Latin America over exactly this issue. You can bet your bottom dollar those riots werent spontaneous and were organized and paid for as part of the operation. I wrote an article on propaganda, called Great Disinformation Campaigns from History That Live On and Prosper Today. In it, I outlined a Soviet disinformation campaign that for many decades has successfully convinced people that the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) was something other than a socialist party. I pointed out that the Nazi Party even has the word socialist in its name and is yet somehow not supposed to be socialist. I argued that this is the most successful disinformation campaign run ever. The political left in the United States, which was always friendly to the Soviet Union, has picked up this Russian propaganda piece and made it their own. They are the useful idiots Stalin loved to use for his own ends. Academia in the United States has been so fully duped by this particular Russian propaganda campaign that almost every political science faculty in almost every university in the United States teaches that political systems are somehow circular by nature, and conclude that the Nazis and the USSR, who were nearly identical in their organization and methodology, were somehow magically opposites. Hopefully, you are asking yourself why educated people, many with doctorate degrees, would teach something so silly and obviously false. The answer is simple enough: They are willing dupes because it fits their leftist political agenda. Since the left doesnt allow debate and conservatives arent well represented in academia, it goes unchallenged. The Nazis are still so hated by everyone that the left has to have some way to distance itself from them. The USSR, which had the exact same problem, gave them the solution. Stalins words still flow from the mouths of our political science faculties. Brad Johnson is a retired CIA senior operations officer and a former chief of station. He is president of Americans for Intelligence Reform. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Rescue workers are seen near smoke following an explosion at a chemical industrial park in Yancheng City, China on March 21, 2019. (Reuters) Six Killed in Chinese Pesticide Plant Explosion BEIJINGAn explosion at an industrial park in eastern China killed six people on March 21 and seriously injured 30, authorities and state media said. State media said authorities were investigating the cause of the blast. Video footage and images on state media showed a fire and shattered windows in nearby buildings. Among the injured were children at a kindergarten near the industrial park, state media said. Public anger over safety standards has grown in China over industrial accidents ranging from mining disasters to factory fires that have marred three decades of swift economic growth. The Chinese regime has pledged to improve safety in factories, though explosions and other incidents are still commonplace. In November, two people were killed and 24 others injured in an explosion at a machinery plant in the northern Chinese province of Jilin. And in the city of Ningbo, two people were killed in a factory explosion. In August, five people were killed in an explosion at an aluminum plant in the eastern city of Jiangsu. In July, 19 people died in a blast at a chemical plant in the southwestern province of Sichuan. By Se Young Lee & Min Zhang. The Epoch Times contributed to this report. Supreme Court OKs Native Indians Fuel Tax Exemption WASHINGTONA divided Supreme Court ruled 54 that an 1855 treaty between the U.S. government and the Yakama Indian tribe prevents Washington state from levying a fuel import tax on businesses owned by the tribe, a decision that could embolden tribal businesses nationwide to challenge states authority to collect taxes from such operations across the United States. The March 19 ruling, in which Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, joined four liberal justices on the court, came in the case of Washington State Department of Licensing v. Cougar Den Inc. Native American-owned Cougar Den Inc. in Washington state brings in gasoline to the Yakama reservation for sale at Yakama gas stations from nearby Oregon over 27 miles of Washington state highway that overlaps with traditional Native American trading routes. In March 2013, Cougar Den began shipping motor vehicle fuel from Oregon to the reservation to sell at tribal gas stations. Cougar Den paid the relevant federal and tribal taxes on the gasoline sold but didnt pay taxes to Washington state. The state of Washington sued the business in December 2013 for failing to pay $3.6 million in excise taxes on the fuel. Cougar Den fought the tax assessment, asserting that, because it was owned by a Yakama tribe member, it was not required to pay certain taxes under the right to travel guaranteed in the treaty. The treaty does not mention taxes, fuel, or off-reservation trading rights, although it does provide tribal members with the right, in common with citizens of the United States, to travel upon all public highways. The three-justice plurality opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, concurred by Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, held the treaty guaranteeing the Yakama the right, in common with citizens of the United States, to travel upon all public highways, preempts a tax imposed as motor fuel enters Washington state. The justices determined that the right to travel with goods for sale or distribution was an essential component of the treaty, and because the state slapped a tax upon traveling with certain goods, that treaty right was infringed. Although Gorsuch joined his liberal colleagues in the pro-tribe judgment, he issued his own concurring opinion, in which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined. Really, this case just tells an old and familiar story, Gorsuch wrote. The State of Washington includes millions of acres that the Yakamas ceded to the United States under significant pressure. In return, the government supplied a handful of modest promises. The State is now dissatisfied with the consequences of one of those promises. It is a new day, and now it wants more. But today and to its credit, the Court holds the parties to the terms of their deal. It is the least we can do. Gorsuchs expertise in tribal law and predisposition to respect tribal sovereignty gained him the endorsement of the Native American Rights Fund and National Congress of American Indians during his 2017 confirmation process. Before being elevated to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch was a member of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers 76 federally-designated Indian tribes in six western states. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a dissenting opinion. Because Washington is taxing Cougar Den for possessing fuel, not for traveling on the highways, the States method of administering its fuel tax is consistent with the treaty. L-R: Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost, Marie Vega, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Chief Rodolfo Karisch, and Paul Perez, vice president National Border Patrol Council, stand by the new sign at the Javier Vega, Jr., Border Patrol checkpoint in Sarita, Texas, on March 20, 2019. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times) Texas Checkpoint Renamed to Honor Fallen Border Patrol Agent SARITA, TexasHundreds of Border Patrol agents, sheriffs, and law enforcement officials joined the family of slain Border Patrol agent Javier Vega Jr. on March 20 to dedicate a checkpoint in Vegas honor. Vegas K-9 partner, Goldie, was also present. That day, he did what his heart told him to dothe very same thing he was trained to do. The very same thing he loved to do, said Vegas mother, Marie, in an emotional speech. The very same thing he took that oath forthe oath to defend and protect. Vega was shot and killed on Aug. 3, 2014, while out fishing with his wife, children, and parents near Santa Monica, Texas. As two illegal aliens approached the family and attempted to rob them, Vega attempted to draw his weapon, but was shot in the chest. His father was also shot and wounded. Both assailants fled the scene and were arrested a short time later. In 2016, Vegas murder was re-determined to have been in the line of duty. Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol Chief Rodolfo Karisch thanked Border Patrol officials and Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Their efforts in reclassifying agents Vegas murder as a line-of-duty death, and in moving legislation forward to rename the checkpoint in [his] honor, are greatly appreciated, Karisch said. The dedication of this checkpoint today will preserve his legacy for generations of agents who will continue to serve this great nation. Cornyn sent a letter to the Customs and Border Protection Commissioner in 2015 to request Vegas death be reclassified as line-of-duty, allowing his family to receive the benefits of such a classification. A year later, he sent another letter, along with Reps. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and John Carter (R-Texas), and was that time successful. In 2017, a bill introduced by Cornyn and co-sponsored by Cruz to rename the Sarita checkpoint in Vegas honor passed the Senate. Everyone in law enforcement knows you never truly go off-duty. Once youve taken the oath, it doesnt end at your front doorstep. Harvey truly represented the best of Texas, Cornyn said, using Vegas nickname. Cruz said Vega spent his life defending others, first as a Marine and then as a Border Patrol agent. He tragically gave his life doing what he had spent his entire life doing, which is defending others, defending his family, from two criminal illegal aliens who had been deported previously, Cruz said. Were today with a moment of sadness, but also with deep, deep gratitude. Vegas widow, Paola Andrea Brown, said Vegas fellow Border Patrol agents have been by the familys side since day one. Were grateful for each and every one of you, she said. My boys lost their father, I lost my best friend. Everyone tells me that Ive done such a great job in raising these boys, but little do they know, these boys have raised me. I know your father is so proud of all three of you. The Javier Vega Jr. Border Patrol checkpoint is situated on U.S. 77 in southeast Texas, between Brownsville and San Antonio. A steer on a leash was brought into a Houston-area Petco on March 18, 2019. (Shelly Lumpkin) Texas Man Brings Steer to Shop to Test All Pets Welcome Policy A Texas couple brought an exotic horned steer to a Houston-area Petco store to test the all leashed pets welcome policy. The massive African Watusi steer named Oliver plodded into the store in a video shared by Vincent Browning, the animals owner, on Monday, March 18. Browning posted about the experience on Facebook, saying the pet steer was welcomed with open arms. The staff members here are always super friendly and courteous to us, he captioned the post. We really enjoy coming to this location our favorite Petco BY FAR!! Posted by Vincent Browning on Monday, March 18, 2019 Browning posted a video of him walking the animal on a leash through the parking lot toward the store, with the steer pausing a moment in front of the sliding doors before stepping inside. No China shop, one commenter joked about the video, which showed the steer calmly looking around the store. A staff member can be seen cautiously approaching the animal, saying Hi and petting the steer on its horned head. At the time of reporting, over 495,000 people have viewed the post. Oliver is owned and trained by Browning for shows and rodeosthe steer even has its own Facebook page. Cattle of Kings While its not clear exactly how much Oliver weighs, Oklahoma State Universitys Department of Animal Science states that African Watusi bulls typically weigh between 1,000 and 1,600 pounds. Ankole-Watusi cattle are the show-stoppers of the bovine kingdom, OSU states, adding, These regal animals can easily trace their ancestry back more than 6,000 years and have often been referred to as cattle of kings. The Department of Animal Science adds that many of this breed of cattle were first imported from Africa to European zoos in the late 19th and early 20th centuries because of their striking appearance, and the resulting ability to attract paying customers. Then as the focus at European zoos shifted from spectacle to conservancy, more Watusi specimens became available for purchase. American zoos and breeders began to import the animals in the 1920s and 1930s. In January 1983, North Americans interested in the breed established the Ankole Watusi International Registry to gather and store pedigree information to help maintain this unique species. These members shared a strong commitment to the breed, OSU states, adding though they had different priorities for it. Some wanted to concentrate solely on the prevention of breed extinction; some selected for their utility in the production of superior cross-bred roping animals. Still others championed the low-fat and low-cholesterol meat values after these were discovered. New Bill Criminalizes Pet Abandonment During Hurricanes Meanwhile, thanks to a new bill passed by the Florida Senate Agriculture Committee, pet owners will face fines or even jail time if they abandon their pets during extreme weather evacuations. As reported by WPTV, the new bill, approved on Monday, March 18, 2019, states that pet owners who abandon or restrain their pets during evacuations could face a hefty fine of up to $5,000. They could also face jail time. Pet abandonment, under the new bill, is classified as a first-degree misdemeanor. Recent hurricanes Irma (2017), and Michael (2018) saw an alarming rise in the number of owned animals being abandoned or tied up and left behind. A Senate staff commentary on the new bill stated: The Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control director reported that many pets are left chained to trees and parked cars, they said, as their owner left them behind to ride out the storm on their own. Distressing statistics from hurricane Irma showed 49 dogs and two cats being left behind to be picked up by animal control officers. Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control Director Dianne Sauve told USA Today that some were tied up, and others were caged or enclosed with no means of getting out. There is absolutely no excuse for doing that, Sauve shared. *This story has been corrected to indicate that Oliver is a steer, not a bull. Epoch Times reporter Louise Bevan contributed to this report. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish boys wearing costumes read the book of Esther at a synagogue in the Israeli city of Bnei Brak near the costal city of Tel Aviv on March 4, 2015 during the feast of Purim. MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images The Lessons of Purim Are Still Relevant Today Commentary As Jews around the world celebrate the festival of Purim (March 20 to March 21 this year), gentiles have cause for celebration, too. Purim teaches universal lessons especially relevant today: the courage to embrace a politically disfavored identity, the righteous use of force against mass murder, and the duty to obliterate the wicked names of murderers and would-be murderers. The Purim story is told in the Book of Esther, which is part of the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament). One day, Persian King Ahasuerus decided to pick his wife by holding a beauty contest. Ahasuerus is sometimes identified as Xerxes I, who reigned from 486 B.C. to 465 B.C. The winner and new queen was a gorgeous young woman named Esther. She was Jewish, but the king didnt know that. A wicked counselor named Haman convinced the king to order the destruction of all the Jews. Messengers were dispatched throughout the kingdom to announce the extermination of the Jewish people that would take place several months later. Esthers wise cousin Mordecai urged her to petition the king, but Esther was afraid that she, too, might be killed. Mordecai replied that Esther, despite her privileged position, would not escape what would befall the rest of the Jews. Who knows? Maybe you were made queen for just such a time as this, he said. So Esther invited the king and Haman to a banquet, which Haman thought was in his honor. At the banquet, Esther told the king how Haman was plotting against Mordecai the Jew, who had earlier saved the king from an assassination attempt. She then accused Haman of trying to kill her, because, Esther confessed, she herself was a Jew. The enraged king ordered that Haman be hangedironically, on the gallows that Haman had been building for Mordecai. According to Persian law, a kings decree could not be rescinded. So the king dispatched throughout Babylon a second decree allowing the Jews in every city to gather themselves together, and to stand for their life, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish, all the power of the people and the province that would attack them (Esther 8:11). The language to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish precisely matched the previous decree that had ordered the destruction of the Jews. On the day the destruction of the Jews was scheduled to begin, the people who hated the Jews attacked. The Jews fought back, assisted by provincial governments that sought Mordecais favor. Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them (Esther 9:5). Yet, although the anti-Semites had planned to plunder the Jews, the Jews did not plunder the property of their enemies. According to Yoram Hazonys book God and Politics in Esther, by fighting so effectively, the Jews convinced the king, to whom Jews had previously been of little concern, that the Jews were formidable, and were dangerous when threatened. Forever after, Jews have celebrated the 14th day of the month of Adar as the Feast of Purim. It is a joyous springtime festival, full of childrens games, taking place several weeks before Passover. Esther is the only book of the Bible in which God is not mentioned. Esther thus makes the point that in an age without prophets or public supernatural miracles, it is humanssuch as wise Mordecai, brave Esther, and the fighting Jewswho carry out Gods work on Earth. According to rabbinic commentary in the Talmud, Esther is the key book for understanding miracles. Even the worst of anti-Semites may belatedly have to confront the power of Purim. Nazi Julius Streicher was publisher of the ultraanti-Semitic weekly newspaper Der Sturmer. Even within the context of Nazi politics, Streicher was an extremist in his early, frequent, and insistent demands for Jewish extermination. At the Nuremberg trials, he was convicted of crimes against humanity for inciting the murder of Jews. As he was dragged to the gallows in his underwear, he screamed, Purim Festival 1946! In the synagogue at Purim, the Esther scroll is read, and the congregation uses noisemakers and shouts to blot out every mention of the villain who wanted to kill all the Jews. Persons who refuse to grant notoriety to mass killers are following in this laudable spirit. So, too, are those who risk death to protect innocents, and who fight back against murderers. David Kopel is the author of The Morality of Self-Defense and Military Action, on which this article is partly based. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. The Panda, Now a Symbol of Chinas Dark Secret Czech artist Barbora Balkova is on a crusade PRAGUEOne day, an artist from central Europe heard a news story about Chinese prisoners of conscience being used as living donors for organ transplantswithout their consent. After her own research, she uncovered reports of abuse in China that inspired her to create a unique artistic project that has drawn international attention. When I heard about this issue in a Czech Radio broadcast in 2015, I started looking for more information, says Czech artist Barbora Balkova, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. The fact that some people are locked up in prison and then serve as a living organ bank was really overwhelming information for me. My first inclination was not to believe it, but then I started to learn about the details from sources at home and abroad, and that became a strong impetus for the panda project, the artist said. As soon as I heard about it, I knew I wanted to react. Balkova has traveled all over Europe with her exhibitions, which she lists on her website. Her work, among other things, is in reaction to both historical and contemporary events in the world that deeply influence society. Wanting to attract attention and raise consciousness about Chinas large-scale system of involuntary organ harvesting, she decided to use the panda bear for her new project. I wanted to take their symbol of this protected animal and show the absurdity of how unimportant human life is for them, as compared to the strictly protected bear, she said. Making the Bears For the production of panda bears, I used an imitation of human skin made of silicone. Silicone used as skin is a powerful visual medium used to tell the viewer that the artist is talking about living human sacrifices. Ive shown the pandas as a very positive and well-known Chinese symbol, but in a totally different context, one which the Chinese regime is trying to conceal. The fact that the bears bodies are made of imitation human skin indicates that something is not entirely right. The artist uses obvious cuttings and stitchings on each panda to symbolize the transplant surgery abuse. The art project, called Communism With a Pandas Face, contains 150 bears. Each one represents 1,000 human victims. The production of one bear takes 14 hours. Balkova spent a full 150 days to make the bears. Getting Attention Her exhibition drew the attention of Chinese surgeon Enver Tohti, one of the few to give direct testimony on how he personally carried out an organ transplant from a prisoner in China who was still alive. He was commanded to do so by his chief physician, so he had hoped that everything was legal and ethical. When you live in a communist regime such as China, you cant think independently. You have to follow orders, Tohti said in his testimony to the British Parliament in 2015. After spending years in England, he realized he had committed a crime. Then, like artist Barbora Balkova, he learned that the abuse of prisoners for transplants in China is widespread, and that his experience was only one of a thousand others. In 2014, he stepped out to publicly testify about what he had personally witnessed. He met with the artist and her pandas in Prague in 2017. The exhibition also attracted the attention of Canadian lawyer David Matas, who lectured in Prague in 2017 at a congress organized by the Faculty of Law of Charles University in Prague. Matas is one of the first investigators of abusive transplant surgery in China. Through Tohti and Matas, the story of Balkovas panda bears came to England. From there, it traveled through Ms. Yukari Werrell, the manager of the Japan Initiative at The International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, to Japan. In Japan, one Japanese nongovernmental initiative, Stop Medical Genocide (SMG), decided to use her panda bear in its logo. The Japanese SMG initiative originated in the Chamber of Governors of Japan at the beginning of 2018. Since then, its work has been supported by 26 national and 28 prefectural councils. The chairman of the initiative is a Japanese journalist and human rights expert on China, Hataru Nomura. What is happening today in China seems to me to be a parallel to what was happening during the Second World War in Europe in Nazi Germany, Balkova said. I always wonder how it was possible that it was happening, and that the world did not stand up against it, she said. No one wanted to believe it. Only after the concentration camps had opened were the shocking atrocities shown. The credibility of reports about state-supported organ removal from prisoners of conscience was confirmed in 2013 by the European Parliament and by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016. Five reports or books have already been published: Bloody Harvest, The Slaughter, WOIPFG, B.H.S. An Update, and State Organs. The most abused groups are, according to the conclusions of the investigative reports, Falun Gong practitioners (a peaceful meditation practice), the Uyghurs, the House Christians, and the Tibetans. I dont know what further evidence will be needed to change things fundamentally, as a result of public pressure or diplomatic ties, Balkova said. I would definitely be happy if my project could contribute to a wider awareness that hundreds of thousands of people are dying in China just [so someone can profit from] their organs, she said. The artist intends to continue creating the bears, as she says, until organ harvesting in Chinese prisons definitively ends. Theater Review: Alice by Heart Falls too far down the rabbit hole NEW YORKOne of the greatest joys of fantasy is the escape it brings from the everyday world. But when flights of fancy become a desperate attempt to fend off reality, truth can appear in the most unexpected places. This is the underlying theme of the new Off-Broadway musical Alice by Heart, presented by the MCC Theater. In 1941 London, during attacks by the German air force, teenage Alice Spencer (Molly Gordon), along with dozens of others, takes nightly shelter in an underground tube station. Their hiding place has been converted into a makeshift hospital and refugee camp, with inhabitants that include shell-shocked veterans, doctors, and nurses with no time for cheerfulness, and people wondering what, if anything, will await them when they emerge the next morning. With pain and fear all around her, Alices only refuge is in the pages of her favorite storybook, Lewis Carrolls Alice in Wonderland. Alice has read the work so many times, she intimately knows each scene and character. On this particular night, Alice is shocked to learn that her dear friend Alfred (Colton Ryan), whom she has known from childhood, is dying from tuberculosis and has been moved to a quarantine ward. Refusing to let Alfred be taken from her, Alice makes her way to his bedside and transports him into Carrolls tale, a place the two have visited many times before in happier days. Once there, Alice attempts to stop the forward motion of the story to ensure the two will remain safely within its pages forever, untouched by events in the world beyond. (Alices attempts to straddle her past and present are also reflected in the fact that she is physically becoming a woman, a change that causes her to see Alfred in a new light.) Yet, its not long before the characters in the novel begin to rebel against what Alice has been trying to do. Some accuse her of no longer caring about them. Others point out how she doesnt belong in the story anymore, now that she is growing up. With Alice by Heart, bookwriters Steven Sater and Jessie Nelson have set out to create a morality tale that shows, while you cant hide in the memories of childhood forever, it is possible to take those experiences and use them to shape the future. Alice learns this herself as she bonds with others in the shelter as they wait for the bombs to stop falling. Notwithstanding an insert in the show program that explains the different Lewis Carroll characters, the audience really needs to have a firm grasp of Alice in Wonderland to really appreciate this account. Whats more, the elements of the musical dont come together as cleanly as they should. Parts of the show feel rather rushed and uneven. While the entire cast is enjoyable, with many other than Alice and Alfred playing multiple roles, none are particularly fleshed out, with the fantasy sequences in particular often failing to connect on an emotional level. This fault turns out to be ironic, as it is in these make-believe sequences that Alice learns the lessons that prepare her for what she is trying to deny. Its as if the shows creative team invested so much in the framing sections of the story to get the audience ready for Alices journey, that they failed to give the journey the same weight. Gordon is excellent as Alice, a girl who wants nothing more than to save the one person nearest and dearest to her. Her pain and hope provide an invitation for the audience to follow her on a voyage of self-discovery. Ryan is fine as Alfred, at times a polar opposite of Alice: too deeply caught up in the reality of his situation to even consider an alternative. Kim Blanck is fun as the mysterious Cheshire Cat, a creature with a long-lasting grin and couched words of wisdom for those who take the time to listen. She also works well as Tabatha, one of the people Alice interacts with in the tunnels. Also striking a good note is Wesley Taylor as a wounded soldier. The music by Duncan Sheik is enjoyable, if not memorable, though after a while its hard not to feel the sameness of it all. The music is not aided by the miked instruments, which, at times, drown out Saters lyrics. Jessie Nelsons direction works nicely, especially in the more emotional early and final scenes. Edward Pierces set design, particularly that of the underground tube, is well done, as are the costumes by Paloma Young. Alice by Heart is a story about the importance of remembering the past while not hiding away in it. Sadly, the production does not leap off the page, at least not yet. Alice by Heart MCC Theater 511 W. 52nd St. New York Tickets: 646-506-9393 or MCCTheater.org Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (no intermission) Closes: April 7 Judd Hollander is a reviewer for Stagebuzz.com and a member of the Drama Desk and the Outer Critics Circle Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi Oct. 22, 2015 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Top Prosecutor Probing Ukrainian Plot to Boost Clinton in 2016 Election Ukraines top prosecutor has opened an investigation into whether the countrys law enforcement illegally leaked information in order to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton. Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko told The Hill that the probe was prompted by the release of an audio recording of a top Ukrainian law enforcement official saying his agency released damaging information on then Trump-campaign chairman Paul Manafort in order to damage then-candidate Donald Trump and boost Clinton. The dirt on Manafort made it into the hands of U.S. media in 2016 and prompted Manaforts removal from the campaign. The information continued to be at the center of allegations against Trumps campaign beyond the election. Manafort was sentenced in early March to seven years in prison for crimes relating to his work in Ukraine that predated his stint with Trumps campaign. News of the investigation in Ukraine arrived as the public waits for special counsel Robert Mueller to deliver the final report on his Russia collusion investigation to the Justice Department, which is widely expected to be soon. Like the conclusions of two congressional investigations, Mueller is not expected to charge Trump with any wrongdoing. A Ukrainian court ruled in late 2018 that the release of information on Manafort amounted to an illegal attempt to influence the election in the United States. Lutsenko told The Hills John Solomon that the release of the information was particularly troubling because the Ukrainian law enforcement agency involved was in frequent contact with the Obama administrations U.S. Embassy in Kiev. The FBI investigated Manafort in 2014 but declined to prosecute him. The bureau had set up an office in the Kiev embassy during the investigation. Two years later, dirt on Manafort surfaced in U.S. media, followed closely by the FBIs infamous Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump campaign, which revolved largely around a dossier on Trump compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and paid for by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign. The bureau eventually terminated Steele for talking to the media, but he continued to feed information to the FBIs Crossfire team through senior Justice Department official Bruce Ohr. According to Solomon, Steeles quest to compile the dossier on Trump began as a series of conversations with Ohr in late 2015 and early 2016 while seeking information on Manafort. President Donald Trump spotlighted Solomons report on Twitter. Lutsenko also accused the Obama-era U.S. Embassy in Kiev of interfering with his ability to prosecute corruption cases. Lutsenko claimed to have received from the U.S. ambassador a list of people whose prosecutions the ambassador advised not to pursue. The U.S. ambassador then declined to cooperate in an investigation of misappropriation of U.S. aid, a claim Lutsenko substantiated with a letter addressed to Ukraines deputy prosecutor general. We are gravely concerned about this investigation for which we see no basis, wrote U.S. embassy official George Kent. The State Department issued a statement on March 20 that called Lutsenkos claim about the do-not-prosecute an outright fabrication. The department also stated that it no longer provides financial support to Lutsenkos office. Lutsenko isnt the only one to complain about the U.S. embassy in Kiev. In 2018, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asking to recall Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. According to Sessions, Yovanovitch has spoken privately and repeatedly about her disdain for the current administration in a way that might call for the expulsion. Sessions wrote that he had concrete evidence of Yovanovitchs conduct. Before becoming the chief prosecutor, Lutsenko was a prominent activist against Russias influence in Ukraine during the tenure of Russia-backed President Viktor Yanukovych. One of the early stories on Manaforts business dealings with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska was published by Yahoo News. The author of the article, Michael Isikoff, worked with Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American operative working as a consultant for the DNC. As part of her work, Chalupa met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington. In addition to Manafort, Mueller has charged two others in relation to Ukraine-tied work: Manaforts business partner, Rick Gates, and Belgian-born Dutch national Alex van der Zwaan. On March 20, Fox News reported that prosecutors are close to making a decision as to whether to charge former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig for failing to register as a foreign agent while working on behalf of Ukraine. The case centers on work Craig did for Yanukovich in 2012 as part of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flomthe firm that formerly employed van der Zwaan. U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a joint news conference with Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 19, 2019. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque) Trump Says Mueller Report Should Be Made Public President Donald Trump said he wouldnt mind having the upcoming Mueller report publicly released. Let it come out, let people see it, Trump told reporters on his way to leave the White House for Ohio on March 20. Thats up to the Attorney General and well see what happens. Special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed in May 2017 to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign in such interference, as well as any matters that arose from the probe. The scope of the probe was provided by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and was revised in August 2017, most of which remains heavily redacted (pdf). As a result, the full purpose of this memo remains unknown to the public . Mueller has secured indictments against some two dozen Russians, who are unlikely to ever appear in court, for alleged election meddling and cyber intrusions. He also indicted several Trump campaign associates for process crimes or violations unrelated to the Russian interference. The collusion allegations remain unsubstantiated. Several prominent prosecutors left Muellers office in recent months, hinting his final report is about to drop. Former-Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said in on Jan. 28 he thought the probe is close to being completed. Trump previously said hed defer to the Attorney General to decide whether it will be released. When asked on March 20 whether the American public has a right to see the report, Trump replied, I dont mind. I mean, frankly, I told the House, if you want, let them see it. Man to Write a Report Trump emphasized the unusual circumstances of Muellers appointment. Normally, a special counsel would be appointed by the Attorney General in cases where the Justice Department needs to ensure greater independence of the investigation. Yet Mueller was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, who was only authorized to do so because then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation. A deputy, thats appointed, appoints another man to write a report. I just won an election with 63 million votes or so. and Im saying to myself, Wait a minute, I just won one of the greatest elections of all time in the history of this country and now I have somebody writing a report that never got a voteits called the Mueller report, Trump said. Still, the President said, he look[s] forward to seeing the report. Opponents of the president have speculated that Trump obstructed the Russia investigation, though theres no indication that any obstruction charges are forthcoming. Trump has repeatedly slammed the Mueller probe as a witch hunt. There was no collusion, there was no obstruction, there was no nothing, Trump said on March 20. Wow! A Suffolk/USA Today Poll, just out, states, 50% of Americans AGREE that Robert Muellers investigation is a Witch Hunt. @MSNBC Very few think it is legit! We will soon find out? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2019 Angry Democrats Of Muellers team, most worked at the Department of Justice or FBI headquarters during the Obama administration. At least 13 are registered Democrats, according to The Daily Caller. Thats why Trump dubbed the Mueller team 13 Angry Democrats. The Rigged Witch Hunt, headed by the 13 Angry Democrats (and now 4 more have been added, one who worked directly for Obama W.H.), seems intent on damaging the Republican Partys chances in the November Election. This Democrat excuse for losing the 16 Election never ends! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2018 At least 11 of them made campaign contributions to Democratic candidates, mostly Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. None are currently registered as Republican. At least two people were removed from or left the Mueller team due to bias against Trump in their internal communications. One was former FBI Deputy Assistant Director Peter Strzok and the other was identified by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) as Kevin Clinesmith, an FBI attorney. Lisa Page, former special counsel to then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, left the Mueller probe before texts with Strzok emerged, revealing strong animus against Trump. She was also Strzoks mistress. Trumps new attorney general, William Barr, committed during his Jan. 15 confirmation hearing to releasing as much of the Mueller report as laws and regulations allow. Probe the Probe Barr said he was shocked to see the text messages between Strzok and Page. Upon a request from Justice Committee Chair Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), he committed to find out if the FBIs Russia investigation, which Mueller eventually took over, was conducted appropriately. In 2016, the FBI obtained a FISA warrant to spy on Trump 2016 presidential campaign associate Carter Page, and in the warrant, the FBI used the Steele Dossier, a collection of unsubstantiated claims about Trump-Russia ties compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, who was commissioned by the Democratic National Committee and the 2016 presidential campaign of former State Secretary Hillary Clinton. Evidence has since emerged that officials were aware the dossier is unverified and its source politically biased. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Wash., on March 14, 2019. (Jim Young/File Photo via Reuters) Trump Says Time for US to Recognize Israeli Sovereignty Over Golan WASHINGTONPresident Donald Trump said on Thursday, March 21, it was time to back Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights that Israel seized from Syria in 1967, providing a boost to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the middle of his re-election campaign. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Trump wrote on Twitter. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 21, 2019 The recognition of the disputed area, seized by Israel in the Middle East war of 1967, would mark a major shift in U.S. policy a week before Netanyahu arrives in Washington to meet with Trump and address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It was the most overt move made yet by Trump to help Netanyahu, who faces an April 9 election. Trump remains popular in Israel, and his advisers have been developing a Middle East peace proposal for release sometime after the Israeli elections. Netanyahu has been pressing for the United States to recognize its claim to sovereignty over the Golan Heights. He thanked Trump for the gesture. The prime minister had been expected to raise the issue with Trump during his visit to Washington next week, an Israeli official said. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Thank you President Trump! @realDonaldTrump, Netanyahu wrote in a tweet. Israels annexation of much of the Golan was not endorsed internationally. Netanyahu raised the possibility of U.S. recognition in his first White House meeting with Trump in February 2017. Netanyahu had tried to take White House national security adviser John Bolton to see the region during a January visit, but bad weather forced cancellation of the trip. The Golan announcement could help Trump improve his standing in Americas pro-Israel camp, especially among his base of evangelical Christians, just ahead of next weeks annual convention in Washington of AIPAC, the nations most influential pro-Israel lobbying group. By Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick President Donald Trump signs an executive order to protect free speech on college campuses during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on March 21, 2019. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) Trump Signs Executive Order Protecting Free Speech on College Campuses President Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 21 instructing colleges across the nation to protect free speech on their campusesor else risk losing federal research funding. Were here to take historic action to defend American students and American valuestheyve been under siege, Trump told reporters in the East Room before signing the order. Universities that want taxpayer dollars should promote free speech, not silence free speech. An estimated 150 people were in attendance, including Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. A group of students stood next to Trump on stage. The president said the days signing was the first in a series of steps to defend students rights. Trump said he would give his support to all college students whove had their First Amendment rights taken away from them. You refused to be silenced by powerful institutions and closed-minded critics, of which there are many, he said. You faced down intimidation, pressure, and abuse, you did it because you love your country and you believe in truth, justice, and freedom. Im with you all the way. The order directs 12 federal grant-issuing agencies to ensure that schools are abiding by the First Amendment. The White House Office of Management and Budget also will work to ensure institutions that receive the grants promote free inquiry through compliance with all applicable federal laws, regulations, and policies, a senior Trump administration official told reporters on a March 21 conference call. The idea was first proposed by Trump during a speech earlier this month at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Trump talked about the many incidents in recent years of conservatives being silenced on campuses, bringing up on stage Hayden Williams, a conservative activist who was recently punched in the face at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley as he was recruiting for Turning Point USA. At the conference, Trump said it will be very costly if universities do not comply with his order. The government awards universities more than $30 billion annually in research funds. On March 21, Trump said colleges have become increasingly hostile to free speech and the First Amendment. You see it all the time, he said, referring to Williamss assault. You see people being punched hard in the face. But he didnt go down. The debate surrounding the silencing of conservative voices on campuses has ramped up in recent years due to a number of high-profile cases in which conservative speakers were heckled or forced to cancel their events at colleges such as UC Berkeley and Middlebury College in Vermont. Trumps order applies to certain education grants and wont affect federal financial aid that covers tuition and fees for students. Specifics on how the federal government would enforce the order were not given by the senior official, who said the details would be figured out in the next few weeks and months. Public colleges and universities already are legally bound to uphold the First Amendment. The senior official said that the order would be broader than the current free-speech protections already in place, but didnt go into specifics. Private colleges, meanwhile, will be required to comply with their stated institutional policies regarding free inquiry, the official noted. Trump said his policy will send a powerful message to professors and power structures that want to keep young Americans and the general public from challenging rigid, far-left ideology. The order also directs the Department of Education to expand data available on the departments College Scorecard, including program level earnings, debt, and loan default and repayment rates, in order to better help students. The Trump administration said they will explore options to find a common-sense approach to the mounting problem of student debt. Culture of Silencing Trumps executive order will not just give a voice to conservatives, but help to fundamentally change the culture on campuses, Anna Paulina, the director of Hispanic engagement at Turning Point USA, told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. Paulina said that campus administrators will now have to make a decision. They are going to think twice about it, they are not going to be able to enforce the same policies as they were before, she said. That funding is something that these colleges take very seriously. College staff often participate in silencing or intimidating conservative students, Paulina said. A lot of the time, it will come from their professors having reactions to them wearing pro-Trump hats or different clothing items. Many students complain that their grades are directly impacted if they speak out, she said. They are bullied not only by professors, but by other students. Paulina said she herself has been afraid at times to visit campuses because of the number of protests from radical groups, and that she has been personally slandered by campus organizations. Faculty members have tried to remove Turning Point USAs members from public property and have even threatened to have them arrested. I could only imagine what being a student at these universities would be like, she said. In one incident at the University of Virginia, Paulina said, a group on campus coordinated a protest against Turning Point USA, with about 30 to 40 participants. She said the group made flyers with her face on them and physically intimidated her. Paulina believes the new executive order will help restore respect and dialogue to educational facilities across the country, regardless of peoples different views. I think what [Trump] is doing is really for the future of America, establishing a precedent in that you might not have the same ideas but you cant punish someone because they differ ideologically from you, she said. It will allow people to express themselves and really reestablish the dialogue that we lost on our college campuses. Trump Visits Ohio, Praises Revival of Economy LIMA, OhioPresident Donald Trump returned Wednesday to Ohio, the state that foretold his 2016 victory, with a tour of a tank plant, where he praised its revival and told cheering workers we are rebuilding the American military, we are restoring American manufacturing and we are once again fighting for our great American workers. Trumps visit to Ohio marked his first trip to the state since last years midterm election campaign when the state was a bright spot for Republicans in the upper Midwest. Perhaps no state has better illustrated the re-aligning effects of Trumps candidacy and presidency than Ohio, where traditionally Democratic-leaning working-class voters have swung heavily toward the GOP. Trump is expected to make similar trips throughout the year as he seeks to boost enthusiasm. Trump visited the Lima Army Tank Plant, which had been at risk for closure but is now benefiting from his administrations investments in defense spending. Hell also hold a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Canton. President Donald Trump arrives to deliver remarks at the Lima Army Tank Plant, in Lima, Ohio. March 20, 2019, (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) In this heavy manufacturing state, Trump cited efforts hes taken to negotiate new trade agreements and enact tariffs to protect steel manufacturers. He described how his administration has confronted China on its trading practices because the days of stealing American jobs and ideas have come to an end. Hes a fighter, said Ohio GOP Chair Jane Timken, and thats one of the reasons why if you look at the Mahoning Valley, thats become a Republican portion of the state. The Republican National Committee, in laying the groundwork for the Trump campaigns field program, has maintained a constant presence in Ohio since 2012. Former RNC co-chair Bob Paduchik, who ran Trumps 2016 effort in the state, is repeating his role. Trumps visit comes days after he railed against the closure of a General Motors plant in Lordstown, a significant contributor to the economy in the eastern part of the state. The plant, which produced Chevy Cruze sedans, closed earlier this month despite bipartisan pressure on the automaker, which claimed it was responding to consumer demand for larger vehicle types. President Donald Trump arrives to deliver remarks at the Lima Army Tank Plant, in Lima, Ohio. March 20, 2019, (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Trump said General Motors should re-open the plant or sell it to somebody who wants it. Get it open now, dont wait, he said. Trump allies acknowledged that he may be limited in what he can accomplish for the Lordstown plant, but they said his vocal advocacy signaled to his supporters in the area that he is fighting on their behalf. On Sunday, Trump criticized a local union leaders handling of the closure after the leader was quoted on Fox News discussing the episode and after the president had a phone conversation with GM CEO Mary Barra. Democrat UAW Local 1112 President David Green ought to get his act together and produce, Trump said. He later tweeted of his conversation with Barra, She blamed the UAW Union, though the company disputed the presidents account. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a statement, at 10 Downing Street, in London, on March 20, 2019. (Jonathan Brady/Pool Photo via AP) UKs May Asks a Wary EU to Delay Brexit Until June 30 LONDONExactly 1,000 days after Britain voted to leave the European Union, and nine days before it is scheduled to walk out the door, Prime Minister Theresa May hit the pause button on March 20, asking the bloc to postpone the U.K.s departure until June 30. EU leaders, who are exasperated by Britains Brexit melodrama, will only grant the extension if May can win the U.K. Parliaments approval next week for her twice-rejected Brexit deal. Otherwise, the U.K. is facing a chaotic no-deal departure from the bloc within days, or a much longer delay that May says she will not allow while she is in power. May, who has spent two and a half years trying to lead Britain out of the EU, said it was a matter of great personal regret that she had to seek a delay to Brexit. In a televised statement from 10 Downing St., May said she shared the frustration felt by many Britons who have had enough of endless Brexit debates and infightingthough she did not accept a role in causing it. Instead, she blamed Parliament for the deadlock, and warned that if lawmakers did not back her deal it would cause irreparable damage to public trust. It is high time we made a decision, May said. In a letter to European Council President Donald Tusk, May acknowledged that the Brexit process clearly will not be completed before 29 March, 2019the date fixed in law two years ago for Britains departure. May asked to delay Britains withdrawal until June 30, and said she would set out her reasons to EU leaders at a summit in Brussels on Thursday. Her longshot plan is to hold a third vote in Parliament on her deal next week, then use the EU-granted extension to pass the legislation needed for an orderly departure from the EU. As prime minister I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than June 30, May told the House of Commonsa hint she could quit if Britain is forced to accept a longer pause. Tusk said he thought a short delay to Brexit will be possible, but it would be conditional on a positive vote on the withdrawal agreement in the House of Commons. Mays requestand Tusks responseleaves Britain and the bloc facing Brexit uncertainty right up to the deadline for departure. Withdrawing without a deal could mean huge disruptions for businesses and U.K. residents, as well as those in the 27 remaining EU countries. Even if the hope for a final success may seem frail, even illusory, and although Brexit fatigue is increasingly visible and justified, we cannot give up seeking until the very last moment a positive solution, Tusk said in Brussels. Tusk made clear what other EU leaders have long hinted: The EU is unwilling to give Britain more time unless the government can find a way out of the Brexit impasse. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that if the (EU) Council is to decide on extending the deadline for Britain, then we would like to know: Why, why, why? French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said a delay could only be granted if May guaranteed that its purpose is to finalize the ratification of the deal already negotiated. EU leaders are united in saying that the divorce deal it spent more than a year and a half negotiating with Britain cant be renegotiated. But the deal has twice been rejected twice by hefty margins in Britains Parliament, amid opposition from pro-Brexit and pro-EU lawmakers. May had planned to try again this week to get the agreement approved, until the speaker of the House of Commons ruled that she cant ask Parliament to vote on the deal again unless it is substantially changed. May told Tusk that despite the ruling it remains my intention to bring the deal back to the House. Shes likely to do that next week within days or hours of Britains scheduled departureby arguing that circumstances have changed and the speakers bar on a third vote no longer applied. But she faces a struggle to overturn the huge margins of defeat for her deal in previous votes in January and last week. Tusk did not say whether the EU would be willing to grant a long delay to Brexit if Britain changed course and abandoned Mays deal for a new approach. British opposition politicians, and pro-EU members of Mays Conservative government, have urged a longer extension, saying a delay of just a few months could leave the country once again facing a no-deal Brexit this summer. They want to commit to a close post-Brexit economic relationship with the bloc to ease disruption for businesses and citizens. Opposition Labour Party lawmaker Angela Eagle said May should stop banging her head against the brick wall of her defeated deal and seek cross-party support for a new Brexit strategy. But a shift to soft Brexit would infuriate the pro-Brexit wing of Mays divided party, and a long delay would require Britain to participate in May 23-26 elections for the European Parliament. May said postponing Brexit beyond June would result in Parliament spending endless hours contemplating its navel on Brexit. Any delay that required Britain to take part in European parliamentary elections would be a major headache for the bloc. Britains seats already have been allocated to other countries to fill in the May election. Britain believes it would not have to participate if it got a three-month delay, because the newly elected European parliament is not due to convene until July. Some EU officials take a different view and want any extension to end by May 23, the first day of the European elections. Juncker said Britains Parliament needed to decide whether it would approve the only deal that is on the table. If that doesnt happen, and if Great Britain does not leave at the end of March, then we are, I am sorry to say, in the hands of God, he said. And I think even God sometimes reaches a limit to his patience. By Jill Lawless and Lorne Cook Unnamed Party Asks Court to Keep Epstein Documents Sealed An unidentified party is asking a federal appeals court to keep documents under seal that could provide new evidence about alleged child sex trafficker Jeffery Epsteins international activities, as well as those of his unknown alleged co-conspirators. Epstein is a wealthy, politically connected financier who is accused of molesting dozens of underage girlssome as young as 13at his Palm Beach, Florida, mansion and private island estate in the Caribbean. Despite ample evidence and witnesses, he received a controversial plea deal in 2007 that allowed him to serve only 13 months in a private area of the Palm Beach County jail. That arrangement is now under investigation at the U.S. Department of Justice. The dispute about potentially illuminating documents stems from a related civil case brought by one of Epsteins alleged victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, against his former partner, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. Giuffre alleged Epstein and Maxwell directed her to perform sex acts on their guests while she was a minor. Maxwell publicly denied the allegations, and Giuffre sued for defamation, saying that she was subjected to public ridicule, contempt, and disgrace. The suit was filed in 2015, and Maxwell settled two years laterbut not before 18 hearings and 15 related decisions generated an estimated 1,000 documents that have remained either sealed of redacted. The Miami Herald, with the support of 32 other media organizations, has spearheaded an effort to make those documents public. The Herald lost a lower court decision, with the judge citing a lengthy and tumultuous discovery process with extreme sensitivities and privacy interests as the basis for keeping the documents from becoming public. However, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York City appears to be more sympathetic. On March 11, a three-judge panel gave all parties involved in the case until March 19 to provide a compelling case for why any of the documents should remain sealed. Maxwell, who settled the case to avoid the scrutiny of a trial, continued her effort to keep the summary judgment and discovery documents private. But a mysterious third party, identified only as John Doe, filed an amicus brief in support of her objections on March 19 and asked the court to keep the documents out of the public eye. Amicus objects to the unsealing of the Summary Judgment Materials until appropriate protections are imposed (specifically, the redactions of names and personal identifying information) to protect third persons whose privacy and reputations are jeopardized by the release and publication of unadjudicated allegations, the anonymous brief reads, which was filed by the New York law firm of Nicholas J. Lewin, Paul M. Krieger, and Nicholas F. Bolz. The John Doe filer said he isnt affiliated or associated with any party in the case and is unaware of any legal proceeding or law enforcement report in which Giuffre has identified him as either a co-conspirator of Epstein or a person with whom she had sexual relations. A footnote states that no related party in the case paid to have the brief written or submitted. So if he didnt do anything, then why doesnt he want to be identified? asked Sanford Bohrer, attorney for The Miami Herald. We know that John isnt a victimso his best scenario is he believes he is wrongly accused. But thats the purpose of this processyou dont get to seal it for that reason. We should have facts, compelling facts, that indicate a legally protectable interest that is so compelling that it justifies denying public access, Bohrer said on March 20. According to the Herald, all parties in the case have agreed to redact the names of minors and any other identifying information regarding alleged victims. Bohrer also has outlined a process for a prospective document release where representatives from all parties would participate in determining what information should remain undisclosed. It may be embarrassing for Ms. Maxwell to have the world know the scope of her involvement in trafficking underage girls internationally for sexual purposes, Giuffres lawyers wrote in response to Maxwells attempts to keep the documents hidden. But her involvement in a criminal enterprise does not remotely approach any legitimate ground for sealing. Speculation about Epsteins rumored guests is wide-ranging. Giuffre herself has said Epstein and Maxwell ordered her to perform sex acts on Alan Dershowitz, the famed Harvard professor and civil libertarian who also represented Epstein during his 2007 plea negotiations. Dershowitz has emphatically denied the allegations and has filed his own motion to unseal the case documents to prove his innocence. On March 2, Dershowitz said Democratic lawyer David Boies was representing Giuffre and another of his accusers, and that Boies admitted in private that Dershowitz was falsely accused. David Boies, the lawyer for both of my false accusers, has admitted in private that his client has falsely accused me: Your belief referring to his clientis wrong. Your conclusion is simply wrong. I challenge Boies to deny this admission under oath, he wrote on Twitter, adding that [they] made up their false stories about me only after being pressured by their lawyers. Another high-profile person associated with Epstein is former President Bill Clinton. According to court documents obtained by Fox News in 2016, subpoenaed flight logs show Clinton took at least 26 trips aboard Epsteins private jet, at times without his Secret Service detail. US Warning to Germany to Ban Huawei or Else Also a Caution to Canada, Expert Says The United States recent warning to Germany and other countries that they can expect less intelligence sharing if they allow Huawei into their 5G network is also a caution directed at Canada, says a veteran intelligence expert. I think the cautions offered by the U.S. ambassador to Germany and others concerning Huawei and the 5G network are the most immediate of warnings to Canada about our countrys prospects vis-a-vis Canada-U.S. relations, said David Harris, a lawyer and 30-year veteran of national security and intelligence affairs. He is currently the director of the International Intelligence Program of INSIGNIS Strategic Research. According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. Ambassador Richard Grenell issued a letter to German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier on March 8 telling him that the United States wouldnt be able to maintain information sharing at the current level if Germany allowed the inclusion of Huawei or other Chinese equipment providers in the development of the countrys 5G network. Germany has announced that it wont ban Huawei from the countrys upcoming 5G auction. Instead, it has increased security requirements that vendors need to meet. Responding to a question on the warning to Germany, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News Radio that the presence of Huawei and equipment by other Chinese vendors in a countrys network could mean that the Beijing regime would have access to data that the Americans dont want them to have. When you talk about this happening in countries like Poland or Germany or the U.K., were very concerned about that, not only for American security because we have information stored, too, but for the security of their own people, said Pompeo. Pompeo also recently warned countries he visited on a European tour, including Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland, against using technology from Huawei due to the companys close links to the Chinese Communist Party. Both Canada and the U.K. are part of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that also includes the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. The latter three have already banned Huawei from their 5G networks. The U.K.s BT Group, one of the largest telecom companies in the country, has rejected using Huawei in its 5G network. However, the agency in charge of Britains cyber security has said it could manage risks from Huawei. Ottawa has said it is still reviewing whether to allow Huawei to provide equipment for Canadas emerging 5G networks, the next generation in internet technology. Harris said given the threat to Canadas interests, Ottawa should have banned Huawei a long time ago. Which interest are being met, or which interests might be deemed met, by the kind of delay that we have been witnessing? he said. Some, apparently reflecting the Chinese governments interests, assure us that Huawei technology must in some form or other be opened to technical review. However, most experts are completely unconvinced by this kind of assurance, particularly given the history of Beijings manipulation of technology in foreign lands. Harris adds that its reasonable to assume that the United States has a full-court press under way behind the scenes, warning Canadian officials at all levels about the risks of Huawei. Because China is developing as the major strategic foe of the United States, Canada, and other Western nations, the gravity of the situation is overt and dramatic. The Globe and Mail reported last year that according to a government source, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton has directly told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the risks posed by Huawei. The Globe said Trudeau is reportedly alarmed about the national security threat the telecom giant poses. U.S. senators from both the Democratic and Republican parties have also urged Trudeau to ban Huawei, with Democrat Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Republican Marco Rubio, a member of the committee, telling the prime minister in a letter that there is ample evidence to suggest that no major Chinese company is independent of the Chinese government and Communist Party. The Epoch Times contacted Global Affairs Canada, Public Safety Canada, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service on whether Canada has received a similar letter as Germany has, warning about the impact on intelligence sharing if Huawei is not banned. A spokesperson for the Communications Security Establishment, which is administered by the Department of National Defence, said in response that theres no comment at this time. He added that Canadas security and intelligence agencies have a strong working relationship with our Five Eyes security and intelligence partners. A walk, especially in nature and in silence, can be excellent for creative inspiration. (GoodFreePhotos) Want to Be More Creative? Go for a Walk. Get creative juices flowing through moving your arms and legs Walking is as healthy as it is simple. This easy, natural movement has proven neurological and physiological benefits, but it can also help you to think more creatively. For author Nita Sweeney, walking helps spark ideas in her writing. She says the rhythmic movement and the physical distance away from her work provide clarity to concepts that previously seemed too difficult to articulate. Once I let go of the thing Im worried about or trying to figure out, often a solution will arise. It will often just pop up into my consciousness, she said. Sweeney is not alone. Lots of writers use walking to stimulate new ideas or to refine the ones theyre struggling with. Tim Tamashiro says he began walking when he was the host of Tonic, a music show on Canadian radio. Tamashiro said short walks would help him find the words he needed to fill the program. My daily routine would have me writing 12 to 16 short stories that I would prepare for the radio show. As you could imagine, I was often stuck with writers block. I learned that if I stood up and took a 10-minute walk outside, I would return refreshed and ready with a fresh approach to the story I was working on, Tamashiro said. Tamashiro says he still goes for walks every chance gets, and it continues to inspire his creativity. He says walking proved to be a reliable tool when he wrote his first book. A brisk walk always helped me clarify ideas and come up with new approaches. Walking can also help with other creative endeavors. Jeff Wilson, host of Real Rail Adventures on PBS, said that when he was a music major in college studying classical piano, he used to practice hard for a couple of hours and then take a break with a long walk, no matter the weather. I always came back to the instrument fresh and ready to play, with some of the problems Id been experiencing in my playing ironed out from having just thought a bit about them, Wilson said. Wilson found that, when it came to walking and music, he was in good company. Ludwig Van Beethoven, Gustav Mahler, and Benjamin Britten all took long walks to spark their compositional ideas. Creativity is encouraged by walking, Wilson said. Wi-Fi Security Concerns Raised in Taiwan After Contractors Suspected Links to China Security concerns are being raised about the Wi-Fi provided on Taiwans mass transit network, after revelations aired at a recent parliamentary hearing. Taiwanese legislator Cheng Pao-ching said that Speedlinkthe Taiwanese company contracted to provide free 4G Wi-Fi on parts of Taiwans metro, railway, and high-speed railwaycould, in fact, be controlled by Chinese company Comba Telecom Systems Ltd., given that both companies are registered at the same address. Cheng raised the concern at a transportation committee hearing on March 18, according to local media. The legislator, however, didnt say how he obtained this information. Comba, founded in 1997, is a public company listed on Hong Kongs stock exchange, headquartered in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. According to its website, Comba has a registered office located in the Cayman Islands. It is not known if Speedlink is also registered in the Cayman Islands. According to a 2015 company press release published on PR Newswire, a press release distributor headquartered in New York, Speedlink is Combas product agent in Taiwan. Speedlink has exclusive rights to sell Combas cellular stations and digital storage devices called DAS. The primary concern about Comba stems from the fact that its current president Xu Huijun is a former executive vice president of Chinese tech giant ZTE Corp., according to Cheng, who added that ZTE has links to the Chinese regimes People Liberation Army (PLA). The Chinese regime considers Taiwan as a renegade province, despite the fact that the latter is a de facto independent country with its own elected officials, constitution, military, and currency. Beijing has never renounced the use of military force to unite the island country with the mainland. Chinese news portal Sohu reported in August 2018 that Xu decided to take up Combas executive position for an annual salary of more than 3 million HKD ($439,368). According to the news site, Xu worked at ZTE from 1998 to July 2018, during which time she once held the position of chief technology officer. ZTEs ties with the Chinese military run deep, as detailed in a July 2018 article by Foreign Policy. ZTE is partially owned, indirectly, by two state-run entities: China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and China Aerospace Industry (CASIC). Both of these entities are directly owned by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), an agency under Chinas cabinet-like State Council. While the CASC and CASIC sit under the SASAC, they report to the PLA, which maintains liaison offices inside various units within both organizations, according to Foreign Policy. U.S. officials have long raised security concerns about ZTEs products, as well as those concerning fellow Chinese tech giant Huawei, which they say can be used by Beijing for espionage. In April 2018, the United States banned U.S. suppliers from doing business with ZTE. The export ban was imposed after it was found that the company violated the promises it made in court to rectify its behavior, after it pleaded guilty to breaching sanctions against Iran in 2017 by illegally shipping U.S. goods and technology to the country. The ban was later lifted after the Chinese tech giant agreed to pay a $1 billion fine. The Overseas Chinese and Foreign Investment Commission, an agency under Taiwans Ministry of Economic Affairs, said in a March 19 statement that it screened and reviewed Speedlinks shareholders in 2011, and found that none of them were based in China, according to Taiwans Central News Agency (CNA). The Commission said it will launch an investigation into the matter, and demanded that Speedlink disclose its investment sources and the names of all of its shareholders. Taiwans security bureau and investigation arm of Taiwans justice department will also assist with the investigation. An unnamed official at Taiwans National Communications Commission (NCC) told CNA that it was the NCCs position that telecommunications equipment made in China must not be used on 4G or 5G networks across the countrys rail systems. Chang Kuo-cheng, a professor of political science and international relations at Taipei Medical University, said in an interview with the Taiwanese edition of The Epoch Times that if Speedlink is found to be an agent of Comba, this could be a violation of Taiwans cross-strait relations law. The law sets limits on what Chinese companies can do in Taiwan. Chinese leader Xi Jinping (L) and his wife Peng Liyuan get down their plane after landing at Rome's Fiumicino airport on March 21, 2019. (Tiziana FABI / AFP/Getty Images) Xi Arrives in Italy to Sign Landmark Deal as EU Mulls Stronger Action Against China Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrived in Rome on March 21, beginning a three-day visit. In a move that worries the United States and its allies, Xi is set to sign an accord to make Italy the first major democracy to join Chinas massive One Belt, One Road initiative. Italy, which seeks new export deals to boost its stalled economy, will become the first major industrialized nation in the Group of Seven to join the multi-billion-dollar project, which is designed to widen Beijings economic and geopolitical reach. Meanwhile, European Union leaders are mulling a more defensive strategy on China ahead of an EUChina summit on April 9 to discuss concerns about the regimes unfair trade and investment practices. This marks the first time the EU has discussed at the highest level how to deal with the communist regime. Italy Xi will meet Italian President Sergio Mattarella on March 22 and is set to sign the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on March 23 before traveling to the Sicilian capital Palermo. More than 30 deals, worth up to 7 billion euros, are also expected to be agreed upon during the trip in an array of sectors including infrastructure, machinery, and finance. Michele Geraci, undersecretary of the Italian economic development ministry, wrote in a Financial Times op-ed that Italys Belt and Road agreement with China could be a blueprint for other European countries. However, the prospect of the accord has caused ructions both within the coalition government and among Italys alliesnotably in Washington, where the White House National Security Council urged Rome not to give legitimacy to Chinas infrastructure vanity project. On the eve of his visit, Xi penned an article titled A Strategic Pact with Italy in Milan newspaper Corriere Della Sera, celebrating the deal while drawing upon the two countries cultural and historical ties. The Chinese leader wrote that the deal includes contributing to Italian port building projects, and launching new initiatives in the fields of navy, aeronautics, aerospace, and culture [to] develop the potential for cooperation in port logistics, maritime transport, telecommunications, and the medical-pharmaceutical sector. Xi previously published a letter to teachers and students from Convitto Nazionale, a high school in Rome, on March 17 in which he encouraged the students to go to China to pursue their dreams, and become future ChinaItaly envoys. While Xi did not state which ports fall under the agreement, Conte previously indicated that its eastern coastal city of Trieste and western coastal city of Genoa, which houses Italys largest port, are likely candidates for funding. The South China Morning Post reported on March 19 that four Italian ports will be funded by Beijing: Genoa, Trieste, Palermo, and Ravenna. Italian transportation networks, including ports and railways, are considered by Beijing to be important for its maritime economic corridor under the Belt and Road project, linking southern Europe with ports in Southeast Asia and eastern Africaeventually reaching China. However, Beijings initiative has been criticized for burdening developing countries with massive loans that they cannot pay off. This debt trap has already occurred in Sri Lanka and the Maldives due to Belt and Road projects. Monaco and France Xi Jinping will visit Monaco on March 24 before heading to France on the same day. Monaco Telecom, the main telecommunications provider in the city-state, signed an MOU with Chinese telecom giant Huawei on Feb. 27 pledging that the two companies will work together to develop Monacos 5G capabilities, including for the Internet of Things, Big Data, and cloud services. Meanwhile, the U.S. administration has warned its EU allies against using Huawei telecommunications equipment in next-generation wireless networks, which it says could be used by Beijing for espionage purposes. Unlike its southern neighbor, France will not sign on to the One Belt, One Road project, although the two countries are set to sign deals in areas including energy, transportation, agriculture, and finance. French president Emmanuel Macron said in early March that China would buy 184 Airbus A320 jets, worth around $18 billion. Chinese media have reported the contract with Airbus will be signed during the visit. EU and China On the same day of Xis arrival in the continent, European Union leaders in Brussels considered adopting a more defensive strategy toward China, having branded on March 12 the worlds second-largest economic power a systemic rival. The European Union has grown increasingly frustrated by what it sees as Chinas slowness to open its economy and by a surge of Chinese takeovers in critical EU sectors, accusing it of distorting local markets. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of a European awakening that China is seeking to produce sophisticated products that will compete with those made in Europe. The EUs trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom, a Swedish liberal, meanwhile argued that the international economic order had changed. Since the beginning of my mandate, Ive been calling for a real awareness and for the defense of European sovereignty, Macron told reporters as he arrived for the summit. Id say that finally we have it for an issue as important as China. According to a draft April summit statement seen by Reuters, the EU seeks deadlines for China to make good on trade and investment pledges that have been repeatedly pushed back. Reuters contributed to this article. A new East Side train station and thousands of new apartments could be in Bridgeports future, according to a draft of the 10-year Master Plan of Conservation and Development. It gets right to the point of what the city is trying to achieve, said Lynn Haig, director of Bridgeports planning and zoning commission, referring to the 171-page document. City officials will be holding a public hearing at 6:30 p.m. Monday at 45 Lyon Terrace presenting details and giving the public a chance to weigh in on what Bridgeport should look like in the next 10 years. Improvements to public transit and walkability among other things play a major role in development and growth plans for the city, according to the draft. That includes securing funding and building the Barnum Station between Seaview Avenue and Pembroke Street which has been touted for years as another economic driver for Bridgeports regrowth. The draft also calls for an overhaul of housing development around the city, with a large portion centered near the downtown area. The city wants around 4,300 housing units less than a mile from the downtown train station. The trove of housing would also include hundreds of new affordable housing units and more almost 2,000 units of mixed income living outside of the downtown area. Overall liveabilty in the city over the next decade has become a priority for officials as well, according to Haig. When the city first announced its need for a new master plan, there was a focus on getting public feedback on what residents would want and need to see covered. The city and its consultant, Hartford-based Fitzgerald and Halliday Inc., under the Plan Bridgeport initiative, attended local summer events like the Caribbean Jerk Fest and the annual picnic at Seaside Park for senior citizens asking questions. Six meetings on different topics open space, transportation, quality of life, arts, housing and economic development were scheduled in neighborhoods around the city. From doing the outreach, people didnt just want to talk about buildings and roads, said Dean Mack, project manager for the citys Planning and Zoning commission. Issues that really impact people in the city are equity and health care and public safety, so it felt strange to do a comprehensive plan on the city and not touch on the things that most worry about. Points within the draft call for improved education and employment opportunities for residents while protecting vulnerable populations such as the economically disadvantaged, racial and ethnic minorities, those with alternative lifestyles, low-income children, the elderly, the homeless, and those with chronic health conditions, including severe mental illness. This plan introduces health and social issues, Haig said. Those are concepts that are generally not addressed in plans of conservation and development, but we are doing it here because there is such an integral part of how our city operates and functions. For residents unable to attend Mondays meeting there is another public hearing on April 22, and a new website with more details on the draft is slated to launch in May. For more information, call 203-576-7221. Jordan.grice@Hearstmediact.com Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said in a radio interview that he deliberately exposed his children to chickenpox so they would catch the highly contagious disease and become immune. During an interview Tuesday on Bowling Green radio station WKCT, Bevin said his children were "miserable for a few days" after contracting chickenpox but said "they all turned out fine." "Every single one of my kids had the chickenpox," Bevin said in the interview. "They got the chickenpox on purpose because we found a neighbor that had it and I went and made sure every one of my kids was exposed to it, and they got it. They had it as children." Bevin and his wife, Glenna, have nine children. Public health authorities strongly discourage the practice of deliberately exposing children to chickenpox, a medical expert said Wednesday. "It's unfortunate and not an example for any of us," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. "We should vaccinate all our children. It's a great triumph of public health in the United States. Let's not take a step backward," he added in a phone interview. Bevin's office did not immediately respond to an email request for additional comment Wednesday. Bevin is seeking a second term as governor in this year's statewide elections in Kentucky. The Republican governor said Tuesday that parents worried about chickenpox should have their children vaccinated. But he suggested that government shouldn't mandate the vaccination. "Why are we forcing kids to get it?" Bevin said in the interview. "If you are worried about your child getting chickenpox or whatever else, vaccinate your child...and in many instances, those vaccinations make great sense. But for some people, and for some parents, for some reason, they choose otherwise." Kentucky requires that children entering kindergarten be vaccinated for chickenpox, but parents may seek religious exemptions or provide proof that a child already had the disease. Bevin's comments followed reports this week of a chickenpox outbreak at a Kentucky Catholic school. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends two doses of chickenpox vaccine for children, adolescents and adults who have never had chickenpox and were never vaccinated, according to its website. It is routinely recommended that children receive the first dose at 12 through 15 months old and a second dose at 4 to 6 years old, the CDC said. "What the governor and other like-minded folks are unaware of is that there are potentially serious complications of chickenpox," Schaffner said. Complications from chickenpox can include bacterial infections, pneumonia and encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, according to the CDC. Complications aren't common in healthy people with the disease, it says, but high-risk groups for complications due to a serious case of chickenpox can include infants, adolescents, pregnant women and people with weakened immune systems. The man charged with kidnapping a woman outside a Boston bar, holding her hostage for several days, and repeatedly raping her, has pleaded not guilty. Victor Pena, 38, was indicted by a Suffolk County grand jury on one count of kidnapping and 10 counts of aggravated rape for allegedly holding a 23-year-old woman against her will and sexually assaulting her at his Walford Way home, the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office said. The woman was found alive and later reunited with her family. Pena appeared in Suffolk Superior Court and was held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing that is scheduled for next month. Prosecutors said the victim told police Pena forced her to drink alcohol and fed her nothing but canned pineapple. Pena allegedly took multiple cellphone photos of and with the woman. Officials said they plan to use the photos as evidence in the case. Prosecutors say he threatened to kill her when she tried to leave. He's very unhappy. He's not doing well, and this is very distressing to him, defense attorney William Barabino said. Prosecutors said Pena told the woman several times that he had rescued her and that they would start a family together. Penas brother said he has a history of mental issues, beginning from his childhood in Puerto Rico. Time will go by, and you guys are going to see that this is going to be clear. Our lawyer is going to do an excellent job. We have a great lawyer, Penas brother, Jose, said. Pena has a history of being accused of violence against women, according to information obtained by WCVB. At his initial arraignment in January, a mental health specialist testified Pena had acted bizarrely when she spoke with him. NORWALK A suspected drug dealer is in police custody after a tactical team raided his home Thursday afternoon. Norwalks Special Services Division and Emergency Services Unit tactical team executed the raid on the Center Street home of Tyler Singewald, 23, after receiving a search warrant from a lengthy investigation. Police said the raid yield an undisclosed amount of marijuana, drug paraphernalia and three guns, including a loaded sawed-off shotgun, a loaded 9-millimeter handgun and a loaded .38-caliber handgun. Investigators also found several rounds of ammunition and $1,300 in cash. Stolen electronics were also recovered, police said. Singewald, a convicted felon on supervised release for prior robbery convictions, was home at the time and was taken into custody without incident, police said. He was charged with two counts of criminal possession of a pistol, two counts of criminal possession of a firearm and ammunition, possession of marijuana with intent to sell and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was held on $350,000 bond and his court date was unlisted. Police said charges for the stolen electronic equipment are pending. Mark Ojakians biggest strategic error may have been dubbing his initiative to consolidate Connecticuts 12 community colleges as Students First. Even the whisper of rankings reliably sparks competitiveness in some quarters. Board of Regents First! No, Taxpayers First! Wait, Legislators First! This should not be a spoiler alert: No one likes consolidation. Not even Ojakian, who is under fire as architect of the plan in his role as president of the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities (CSCU). If he had his way, he would surely prefer to keep the colleges whole. Which is essentially what hes trying to do. The systems finances just havent been cooperating. As any business professor will tell you, sentiment belongs in the history department. Ojakian is positioned as the villain but could be painted as the hero trying to prevent the closure of some of the 12 campuses. The obstacle is a financial gap estimated at $57 million. Theres been an admirable resistance from stakeholders (those would be the educators and students) who protested at the Capitol last week and collected some 1,300 names on a petition. Now lawmakers are trying to climb to the top of the scrum with proposed bills that would empower them to nix the deal. Within the fine print is that if the General Assembly failed to act within a year of receiving notice, their silence would be deemed as approval. Weve seen this before. The General Assembly has a dismal record of voting on union contracts that were automatically approved after 30 days of legislative ignorance. Not surprisingly, Ojakian would prefer the lawmakers mind their own business, reasoning that the governor appoints the Board of Regents for Higher Education (which Ojakian heads). He also fears the process becoming politicized. Both bills won unanimous support in the Higher Education Committee last week. The first bill, which would enable lawmakers to stop the plan, is evidence that politics is already an obstacle. Giving lawmakers the power to stop the plan is going too far. The second bill seeks to have the Board of Regents provide quarterly reports to the Higher Education Committee on the status of the proposal. Its worth further discussion and scrutiny, as it could provide the transparency and data needed to earn more support. The Board of Regents doesnt have the power to act cavalierly, as they have to earn approval by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which rejected the last draft of the concept. Meanwhile, Ojakian and Co. are in the process of hiring three regional presidents to replace individual heads of each college. The campuses would each retain a chief executive officer, chief financial officer and a chief academic office. More importantly, they retain a campus. We dont like consolidation either. But the General Assembly should be looking under other rocks for savings instead of throwing stones at leaders accepting the realities that tough choices have to be made in Connecticut. MARYVILLE In advance of National Stop the Bleeding Day on May 23, Edwardsville and Maryville are making preparations to communicate the importance of the event. Maryville Deputy Fire Chief May asked to buy a Stop the Bleeding training kit for village use at the March 20 board meeting. Today, we live in a world where terrorism, the actions of unstable people and the dangerous impulses of friends and relatives are very real and becoming increasingly more frequent, May said. Massive bleeding from any cause but particularly from an active shooter or explosive event where a response is delayed can result in death. Similar to how the general public has learned and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) over the years, May says the public must now learn proper bleeding control techniques, including how to properly use their hands, dressings and tourniquets. May took the Stop the Bleed instructor class and with a training kit, he would be able to teach the same lessons to the Maryville fire, police, street and water departments, and to community members. Maryville isnt the only area municipality using the kit. Edwardsville firefighter/medic Derek Huber got his fire department involved more than a year ago. Huber mentioned that the department is in the early stages of partnering with Anderson Hospital on a Stop the Bleed event but all of the details have not been set. I took my instructor class at Anderson Hospital in late 2017, led by instructors from Barnes-Jewish and Saint Louis University hospitals, he said. This was the first time the class was taught in downstate Illinois. I urged the Edwardsville Fire Department to purchase teaching materials and began by contacting local civic organizations. He explained that most of the $1,200 purchase price was obtained through donations from the Edwardsville and Glen Carbon Kiwanis clubs, Troy-Edwardsville Shriners Club, Edwardsville Rotary and Women of the Moose. Within about two months, we received our kit, Huber said. Classes are free and take roughly 60-90 minutes. Since offering Stop the Bleed classes, I have taught roughly 27 classes, or about 300 people. Eventually, I would like to teach one class each month or two, he said. He said he led eight to 10 of the initial classes with District 7 staff. Huber explained that before community classes can begin, the department must activate an online sign-up portal to automate the process for both Stop the Bleed and CPR classes. He said he had added certain items to the original kit, such as tourniquets, which have come in handy when teaching larger classes. According to the national Stop the Bleeding website, uncontrolled bleeding is a major cause of preventable deaths. Approximately 40 percent of trauma-related deaths worldwide are due to bleeding or its consequences, establishing hemorrhage as the most common cause of preventable death in trauma. The average time to bleed out is two to five minutes; average time for first responders to arrive is seven to 10 minutes. Bystanders can fill the gap with Stop the Bleed. The training kit Maryville bought contains the following components and are packaged in a large, black plastic case: Instructional booklets on bleeding control (10) Blue training C-A-T tourniquets (5) QuikClot Moulage Trainers (8) Z-Medica Hemorrhage Control Training legs (2) Protective gloves (12 pairs) BleedingControl.org supports Policy Directive 8, which targets preparedness as a shared responsibility of the government, private and nonprofit sectors and individual citizens. BleedingControl.org is an initiative of the American College of Surgeons and the Hartford Consensus. Its shared goal is to provide a one-stop, online resource to credible information and tools on bleeding control. For more information, visit nationalstopthebleedday.org email at info@controlbleedingkits.com Reach Charles Bolinger at (618) 656-4700, ext. 31 Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Fachry Ali (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 13:34 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8312382 3 Opinion democracy,politics,BJ-Habibie,Indonesia,Indonesia-president Free In todays intensifying political tension that seems to split Indonesian society, where could we find a mirror to reflect our democratic experience? One of the answers could be found in the experience of B. J. Habibie, the Indonesian president in 1998-1999, in cementing the countrys democratic foundation. This experience unfolds in his interview by the authors of Democratic Transitions: Conversation with World Leaders, edited by Sergio Bitar and Abraham F. Lowenthal (2015). Apart from Habibie, the authors interviewed several other leaders of democratic transition countries such as Ghana, the Philippines, Spain, Poland and South Africa. In the case of Indonesia, none else is recognized by the world as a democratic pioneer other than Habibie. Although having a radically brief time in government, Habibies leadership was crucial on the fate of Indonesian democracy. Why? As stated by political scholar Bahtiar Effendy and Mutiara Pertiwi in this book, there was another scenario should Habibie, who replaced Soeharto who stepped down in May 1998, have failed to run the country. General Wiranto as defense minister and commander of the armed forces, held Soehartos undisclosed instruction to rescue the nation by all means necessary if there were a political emergency. In other words, there was an existential uncertainty concerning not only Habibies presidential position, but also the future fate of democracy at the national level. In the first part of his interview, Habibie said he was never interested in becoming president of Indonesia. I, he adds, even never. Im never interested in becoming a minister. What he wanted was to bring technology into Indonesia to produce airplanes. In this case, Habibie reached a deal with Soeharto in 1974 to build airplanes in Indonesia through a government-owned enterprise which was run like a private enterprise. I did, he says and I delivered on schedule. Uninteresting to be a president and totally concentrate himself in technological realm are clues in understanding his lone fight for democracy. In my book, Esai Politik tentang Habibie (Political essay on Habibie, 2013 [1999]), I chose the phrase knowledge is power in interpreting why Habibie had reached the power at a high pitch in Indonesia. I tend to insist that Indonesian politics has transformed dramatically from the mass-based politics to the knowledge-based politics. In this context, by observing Habibies path to power, the mass-based support has not yet prevailed in the political struggle as the possession of knowledge has gradually taken over its place. The future political struggle, therefore, would not be based on the masses supporting expressions, but on the war of ideas. This mirrors Clifford Geertzs politics of meaning. But lately I know it is a big mistake. The fall of Soeharto in 1998 brought about two politically important things. First, the reversal of the mass-based politics that has automatically dwarfed the role of the erudite persons within it. Second, the desertion of people who used to be close to Soeharto. The latter refers to Habibie. It was a public secret that Habibie was the protege of Soeharto. This desertion had left Habibie alone. Unlike Soeharto who built a wide and complex political networks for 32 years, mainly within the military, for concentrating himself in technological development, Habibie from the beginning had no opportunity to follow his guru. When he replaced Soeharto as president, therefore, Habibie found himself deserted. Neither the military nor the remnants of Soehartos supporters fully supported him, let alone the opposition. Suddenly, Habibie says in the interview, a lot of conflicting information and advice poured in. This sentence concludes Habibies previous story. That is, when he started his job as a president, Habibie came to realize how powerful he was. He received intelligence reports from the army, air force, navy, police and the intelligence agency itself. Besides, various information also came from the home ministry, foreign ministry as well as Golkar Party. He gives comment on these: I read these very detailed reports, which did not match each other. It is the mismatch of those information that gave birth to the aforementioned Habibies sentence. Then, he continues: If I had followed some of this advice, there would have been a violent revolution. The people would have been most adversely affected by such a revolution where the innocent people who just want a normal life, and I could not allow that to happen. It is the effort of getting accurate information that drove Habibie to impose democracy. I decided, he says, to lift the laws restricting the freedom of the press. Why? Habibie answers: By allowing freedom of expression, I could receive accurate information on the attitude of the people toward my administration. At this stage, we understand why Habibie took a different political system from Soeharto, his predecessor. Inaccurate information produced by a non-democratic regime had become a basic cause for the regime fall. However, there was a fundamental point a view that Habibie stressed, which is his idealism to give power back to the owners of the state. Who are they? Habibie answers: The people of Indonesia. The power does not belong to a family, a man, me, my children, but the people. Not only did he lift laws restricting the freedom of expression, Habibie released political prisoners. In his thought, the prisoners did not deserve bad treatment simply because they opposed the president in power. He continued his democratic action by organizing a free general elections in 1999. In this endeavor, Habibie even officially recognized the election results although his party Golkar lost to the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) which was led by Sukarnos daughter Megawati Soekarnoputri. To convince the world, Habibie invited former US President Jimmy Carter and a number of American and European Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to directly observe that democracy fiesta. It is the determination of not taking the power for himself and his family that turns to be the Habibies legacy to the nation. This is invaluable. If the alternative scenario to rescue the nation by all means all necessary such as tacitly held by Wiranto really happened, we would not have seen the democratic life. However, as we have been witnessing since 2014, the way we practice democracy is not as strong as Habibies determination in creating and maintaining it. Habibies legacy has been treated so badly. Instead of filling the democracy with great ideas that could be intellectually accounted for, most political actors have reduced it to a mere struggle for power, void almost totally from genuine intellectual visions. Democracy must be rescued from the parochial treatments of the political elite. *** The writer is a co-founder of the Institute for the Study and Advancement of Business Ethics (LSPEU Indonesia). Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Evan A. Laksmana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 09:22 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8302e7a 3 Opinion Indonesia,TNI,military,Insight Free The Indonesian Military (TNI) has come under heavy fire in recent months for its proposal to expand its force structure and assign more officers to civilian agencies and ministries. The proposal is meant to address the growing promotional logjams within the officer corps, which has left hundreds of officers without billets. Civil society groups charge that the TNI seems bent on resurrecting the now-defunct dwi fungsi (dual function) doctrine that allowed the military to have both socio-political and security roles. Scholars also wonder whether the proposal reflects the growing militarization of Indonesian democracy. But the logjams are not some poorly constructed excuse to resurrect the New Order. The organizational problems are real and they require immediate solutions. The TNI claims that at the moment, 150 general-rank officers and 500 colonels are without jobs commensurate to their rank and qualifications. This problem did not happen overnight. Between 2011 and 2017, around 30 general-rank officers and 330 colonels had their careers put on hold every year because there were no billets available. This problem stems in part from the extension of the retirement age from 55 to 58 in 2004, which kept older officers within the TNI structure longer, even as non-military positions were abolished after the end of the New Order. It also in part comes from the TNIs messy personnel management system, from the lack of transparency and political interventions, to the absence of an up-or-out policy (giving officers a limited time to get promoted). Todays logjams can be traced to the proliferation of horizontal rotation under the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono: moving officers from one equivalent-ranked post to another and allowing officers from the same academy class to hold the same post at least twice. Therefore, more officers were rotated laterally than were promoted vertically or retired. To address this problem, the TNI slowly expanded its structure and began assigning hundreds of officers to non-TNI institutions during Yudhoyonos second term. Under the 2004 TNI Law, active duty officers could be assigned to 10 different non-TNI agencies and ministries, including defense, search and rescue, maritime security and other branches. In many ways, the recent proposal is merely an extensioneven if in expanded formof an ongoing practice. The proposal is also likely to be a short-term solution to reduce the genuine problem of promotional logjams, rather than a systematic push to bring back the New Order. After all, dwi fungsi was a specific set of policies, involving issues from doctrinal concepts and seats in the legislature, to holding a variety of political and public offices. Thus far, there is no evidence that the TNI is promoting those ideas or is seeking to undo the 31 organizational changes it has made since 1999 to shed dwi fungsi and to depoliticize its role. It is not clear that the TNI or a majority of officers want to go back to the New Order days. Many within the younger generation who rose through the ranks in the 1990s and 2000s privately disapprove of the New Order-style expansive political presence. These men, who were at the forefront of the New Order in the 1990s as junior officers or soldiers, complained of the deteriorating respect they had in society thenand how they were castigated for every government failure. This is why the TNI spokesperson claimed that dwi fungsi had more pitfallsand negativity than promises or positive values. That being said, the TNI leadership is generally content with retaining pockets of influence on some policy issues and gradually consolidating its organizational prerogatives and autonomy, like most militaries in the world. This brings us to the difficult question of the militarization of Indonesian democracy. Some have viewed the TNIs proposal within the broader growing role of retired officers under President Joko Jokowi Widodo, despite the fact that by the late 2000s, the TNIs involvement in national and local political institutions fell to its lowest level since the 1950s. While hundreds of retirees have joined political parties since 1999, most of those running for local office have lost. Retirees have only won fewer than 4 percent of all local elections since 2015. At the national level, only 16 out of 560 people, fewer than 3 percent, elected in the 2014 elections were retired military personnel. In each post-Reform Era administration, on average only 11 percent of Cabinet-level appointments (around five men per administration) were retirees. These trends fit the demographic profile of the broader post-New Order political elite, where one study recorded that only around 10 percent of its members came from the military. Further, while retirees entered politics for either idealistic (e.g. public service) or pragmatic reasons (e.g. employment), nearly all did so without specific instructions from TNI headquarters. We should not assume that they will always and only fight for the TNIs corporate interests. In short, the TNI is facing serious organizational challenges. While the proposed solution is short-sighted, one should not jump to the conclusion that there is a concerted effort to resurrect either dwi fungsi or the New Order. Indonesian democracy is certainly fraught with challenges but the label militarization seems unwarranted. *** The writer is a senior researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Jakarta. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Editorial Board (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 08:54 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8300769 1 Editorial #Editorial,corruption,bribery-case,Indonesia,politics,Romahurmuziy,KPK,government Free Last weeks arrest of United Development Party (PPP) chairman Muhammad Romy Romahurmuziy who has since resigned from the post for allegedly accepting bribes for promotions at the Religious Affairs Ministry shows once again the vulnerability of the bureaucracy to fraudulent practices, regardless of reforms aimed at transforming the public service sector into a merit-based system to realize clean government and good governance. The fact that bribery still occurs today, not only in yesteryears when corruption, collusion and nepotism were the norm, indicates that internal control mechanisms that were meant to support reforms have hardly helped. In this latest case, the alleged bribery went undetected, likely due to acute resistance within the bureaucracy to the new merit system, in addition to trading in influence by a political bigwig like Romy, who has access to President Joko Jokowi Widodo, because the PPP is part of the ruling coalition. Prior to the sting operation leading to Romys arrest, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has unveiled bribery in connection with job promotions in several regions. The modus operandi in those cases was identical, with certain officials paying tens or hundreds of millions of rupiah to win regional leaders favor and the desired posts. The bribes were mostly brokered by family members or people close to the leaders. In January 2016, KPK investigators arrested then-Klaten regent Sri Hartini over bribery in the Central Java regency. The Semarang Corruption Court found Hartini guilty and sentenced her to 11 years of imprisonment in September 2016. The antigraft body arrested Taufiqurrahman, the regent of Nganjuk, East Java, in September 2017 and Sunjaya Purwadi Sastra, the regent of Cirebon, West Java, last November for similar abuse of power. For sure, the failure of internal supervision to detect, let alone prevent, fraud within the bureaucracy both at the national and regional level is cause for concern. The government cannot simply rely on the KPK in upholding bureaucratic reforms, as the commission lacks the human resources needed to help the bureaucracy prevent graft and act against corrupt officials. Internal control mechanisms are in place in the bureaucracy, namely in the form of the inspectorate division, on top of the Development Finance Comptroller (BPKP) when it comes to the use of budget funds. But as we know, the inspectorate unit is toothless. Many even dub it a place for officials nearing the end of their career to preserve some pride. The reason for the inspectors failure to live up to their name is the fact that they have no independence vis-a-vis regents, governors or whoever controls the bureaucracy. They may be people of impeccable integrity but seem helpless when their bosses decide to cover up irregularities. In response to a series of KPK arrests of government officials, President Jokowi said he was aware of the ineffective internal control mechanism, but unless he initiates transformation of the inspectorate into an independent body, corrupt-minded officials will escape internal control. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Retno LP Marsudi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 16:53 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee831fefc 3 Opinion Indonesia,south-pacific,partnership,bilateral-cooperation,economy,economic-development,geopolitics Free Indonesians and the people in countries of the South Pacific belong to one family. We call the Pacific Ocean our home. And our cooperation in developing the South Pacific will define the future that we want to create together for our next generation. Indonesia and South Pacific countries face growing, common challenges that directly impact our communities. They stretch from the rising of sea levels to the pursuit of welfare through economic development. In short, aligning our interests to cope with these perennial and vital challenges will continue to be the basis of our future engagement. And the most effective form of engagement is a partnership that is inclusive, comprehensive, mutually beneficial and mutually respectful. Over the years, this engagement, this partnership has been steadily bolstered at every level bilateral, regional and global. For instance, at forums such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Indonesia and the South Pacific countries have together pushed for a stronger global commitment to overcoming the devastating impact of climate change. As maritime states, Indonesia and the South Pacific countries will suffer the most from rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions. At the bilateral level, Indonesia continues to strengthen its cooperation with South Pacific economies. Maximizing on Indonesias positive economic growth, President Joko Jokowi Widodo has stressed the need to invest in international development programs, including in the South Pacific. Among the prominent programs are technical cooperation and capacity building, which will grow more significantly in the years to come. At the same time, there is tremendous untapped potential on the economic front between the two economies. Indeed, trade relations remain relatively small at US$450 million and there are factors challenging increased investment cooperation. However, as a family, we must unlock this potential. Indonesia and the South Pacific must redouble our efforts to overcome hurdles, most notably the tyranny of distance. Herein lies the importance of developing connectivity. Not only physical connectivity, but also the enhanced connectivity of hearts and minds. Indeed, improvements in connectivity have taken place over the years. As Indonesias Global Maritime Fulcrum initiative takes shape, we have expanded and upgraded strategic ports in the eastern part of the country. Our aim is to establish greater sea connectivity, which will bring Indonesia closer to the South Pacific. People-to-people and business contacts have also steadily intensified, as interest in the South Pacific grows among Indonesias business community. On the one hand, such trends will situate Indonesia as a strategic gateway for the South Pacific to interact with other countries in the Asia-Pacific. While on the other hand, they open more opportunities for Indonesian businesses to participate in the economic development of the South Pacific. We are also seeing emerging geopolitical trends in the region, including the Indo-Pacific cooperation. This new trend must be anticipated in order for Indonesia and the South Pacific to seize new opportunities. In this regard, engagement between Indonesia and the South Pacific becomes ever more significant. A new form of partnership must be forged accordingly. There are two possible approaches or steps to realize the new partnership. First, expand and deepen the layers of interactions and dialogues. More platforms for dialogue between Indonesia and the South Pacific are needed. Currently, there are a number of those outside of the United Nations, such as the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) and the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). While these forums have provided a vibrant platform for dialogue between Indonesia and the South Pacific, there is an urgent need for a framework of cooperation that will allow Indonesia to have a more meaningful dialogue with the South Pacific. A framework that identifies common challenges and opportunities, and explores areas of concrete cooperation. The Indonesia South Pacific Forum (ISPF) in Jakarta today is a timely initiative to fill that need. The ISPF provides an avenue for Indonesia and the South Pacific countries to meet in an informal setting, to chart the future and accelerate the delivery of the benefits of our cooperation. Second, we will diversify the engagement between Indonesia and the South Pacific beyond government-to-government relations. This could be achieved by extending the cooperation toward businesses, academics and civil society. To this end, as part of the ISPF, Indonesia is also hosting a Business Engagement that brings together Indonesian and South Pacific businesses an economic partnership showcase for Indonesian businesses and an entrepreneurial training program for South Pacific business persons. Additionally, on the margins of the ISPF, Indonesia will explore the potential for Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) with Fiji and Papua New Guinea. The PTAs are expected to transform our similar sociocultural traits, historical traditions and political partnership into concrete economic benefits for the peoples of Indonesia and the South Pacific. All in all, the ISPF provides an avenue for dialogue for Indonesia and the South Pacific, which benefits all the governments and the peoples. This robust avenue is the new dawn, which opens a new era of Indonesia-South Pacific engagement, an era that has been long overdue. *** The writer is Indonesias foreign minister. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Abdul Somad (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 Government representatives from 16 countries in the region met in Bali recently to continue negotiations for a new regional trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). If successful, the deal will create the worlds largest free trade area, covering more than half the worlds population. It includes China, India, all ASEAN countries as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. Trade agreements like the RCEP are designed to make it easier for foreign multinational corporations to invest and do business. In doing so, they put the rights of citizens and workers second to profits. Agreements usually include commitments to cut government regulations on corporations (like setting price limits, quality guarantees or staffing levels). They also include investor protection that allows foreign multinational companies (but not local companies) to sue our government at international tribunals if the government applies any regulation or policy that the investor thinks has reduced their profit or might reduce their profit. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Bambang Muryanto (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 21:01 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee832895d 2 Interview sexual-abuse-on-campus,lecturer,students,UGM,#KitaAgni,#NamaBaikKampus Free In the wake of a case of an alleged sexual assault against a Gadjah Mada University (UGM) student known by the pseudonym Agni, the university has set up a team tasked to draft a comprehensive rectors regulation for the prevention of such assaults in the future. Muhadjir Darwin, chairperson of the drafting team for the UGM Rectors Regulation on the Prevention and Response to Sexual Violence, recently spoke with The Jakarta Posts Bambang Muryanto about the matter. Question: How is the drafting of the rectors regulation progressing? Answer: Alhamdulillah [Thank God], the draft of the Rectors Regulation on the Prevention and Response to Sexual Violence is complete. The draft has gone through several revisions and we have also asked for advice, criticism and input from the National Commission on Violence Against Women, as well as gender experts from the University of Indonesia, Sebelas Maret University, UGM and the Rifka Annisa Womens Crisis Center. Lastly, we asked for input from student organizations on campus. After this we will finalize the draft. It should be finalized by the end of February as per our mandate. However, since it still needs revisions and input from various parties, the mandate has been extended to the end of March. I think we will submit it on the first or second week of March. After that, it will depend on the rector for its implementation as it contains articles on how to develop the prevention system and the handling of sexual violence, as well as the institutions tasked to respond in the case of violence. In the context of prevention on campus, many campus members are still blind and sometimes insensitive to gender issues. Decision makers are often caught up in words that reflect their ignorance about gender, which causes such problems to be less manageable. We will also push for the mainstreaming of gender issues in university policies through training for campus leaders, lecturers, students and teaching staff. We also propose the inclusion of gender issues in lectures so that everyone will understand and be gender sensitive. This is a preventive step. We are also setting up a task force and establishing gender-issue focal points in each school, each department and the student communities so that whenever there are elements of sexual harassment or sexual violence, they would be immediately taken care of. What is the focal point exactly? There are certain people students and lecturers mandated to oversee the issue and take proactive measures in cases of sexual violence. By having focal points among students and lecturers, gender equity awareness will spread equally and help prevent violence, rape cases and other crimes against women. When the draft is finished, will UGM be the first university in Indonesia to have such a standard operating procedure for the handling and prevention of sexual violence? If the rectors regulation is confirmed then it would become a benchmark. We will then invite gender experts from other universities for a seminar here to discuss operational measures to handle and overcome the gender problems. So, will the rectors regulation change gender perceptions on campus? Hopefully, because such a rectors regulation is considerably late as gender-issue mainstreaming has been in existence since the Abdurrahman Gus Dur Wahid administration and was already adopted by all government institutions, including the Education and Culture Ministry and the Research and Technology and Higher Education Ministry, which have formally and legally included gender-issue mainstreaming in education policies, but its implementation is weak because not all institutions under the ministry have explicitly adopted it. You mention gender-issue blindness. What do you mean? There is no understanding of gender inequality. For example, there were officials who said that the rape of Agni was natural, while equating the rapists act with the attitude of cats being provided with salted fish that they would certainly ingest it without hesitation. This kind of perspective shows that they [officials] are unaware of systemic gender inequality and put the blame on the victim, instead of the perpetrator. This is a sensitive issue and hurts women. Will this rectors regulation be a strong rule? Hopefully so because it does not only regulate, but also leads the development of the system and instruments for its implementation so that it becomes a systematic pattern rather than symptomatic. We want to have a system that will continuously exist. UGM will perhaps be the first university in Indonesia to develop a system like this, but many foreign universities developed it quite a long time ago. Will the rector adopt the draft in its entirety? I do not know. We were asked to draft the rectors regulation because we were considered to have the competence to perform the task. We make it truly professional. Hopefully, it would be adopted in its entirety. The final draft will then be brought by the rector to the senate meeting. The senate will decide whether it could become a policy. There is the possibility of a critical review by the senate on the substance, but logically we were the ones mandated to draft the regulation, so it should be adopted. Is this draft in line with the sexual violence bill being drafted in the House of Representatives? Yes, the bill is one of the references, including the definition of sexual violence. If it is adopted as a rectors regulation, can it be retroactive? There was a discussion on whether the rectors regulation could be retroactive. We expect that this regulation could become a legal umbrella, including for cases of the past. However, this regulation is basically future-oriented as it is meant for preventive and healing purposes. Why do many cases of sexual violence occur within the university environment? I dont think sexual violence is university specific as it also happens in government and private offices, as well as in public spaces. However, we cannot let something inhumane happen. We must control it because it violates the rights of others. In a rape case, morality is violated, so it must be regulated. Some schools medicine and psychology already have their own [mechanisms] to handle such cases. If there are cases in the respective schools, they handle them internally. However, there is not yet such a mechanism at the university level, which is necessary because rape cases could happen across different schools, such as in the case of Agni. Such cases could also happen both on and off campus. In the case of Agni, it occurred within the campus compound, while in Maluku [Muhadjir did not specify which case] it happened outside campus. Moreover, there is a power relationship between lecturers and students that even when a rape case occurs outside campus, it would still be considered an internal issue. For example, if a lecturer asked a student to come to his home at 10 p.m. for thesis-writing guidance and a rape occurred, it would then still be considered a campus problem. The place where the crime occurs is not a limitation [for a follow-up on the case], but the [identity of the alleged] perpetrator [is the defining factor]. Basically, we only handle cases involving civitas academica of the UGM internally, but if the victims decide to bring the case to court, we will surely provide assistance. So is this an internal mechanism? Yes and the sanctions are internal, such as suspensions, temporary lay-offs and termination of employees, lecturers or students, depending on the identities of the perpetrators. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Inquirer.net/Asia News Network) Thu, March 21, 2019 16:32 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee831f543 2 Entertainment Gemma-Chan,Bess-of-Hardwick,casting,white-woman,people-of-color,actress,Hollywood,Mary-Queen-of-Scots Free Gemma Chan sees no problem in her casting as Bess of Hardwick, a noble white woman who historically became one of the wealthiest women in England during her lifetime. Chan was criticized for playing the role in the historical drama Mary Queen of Scots because of her Asian heritage. The film has been hit for its historical inaccuracies. The British actress said in an an Allure feature on Tuesday, March 19, Why are actors of color, who have fewer opportunities anyway, only allowed to play their own race? And sometimes theyre not even allowed to play their own race. In the past, the role would be given to a white actor who would tape up their eyes and do the role in yellowface. She added, John Wayne played Genghis Khan. If John Wayne can play Genghis Khan, I can play Bess of Hardwick, she said. She cited the hit Broadway musical Hamiltonwhich historians have also slammed for its historical inaccuraciesfor allowing diverse actors to play white historical figures. I feel like Hamilton opened minds a lot. We have a black man playing George Washington, she said. Read also: Crazy Rich Asians actors slam 'People' for identity mix-up I think our art should reflect life now, she added. She also discussed in the interview how racial minorities, including the Chinese, have been erased from history books. If we portray a pure white past, people start to believe thats how it was, and thats not how it was, she said. Though Chan is Chinese by blood, she said in the interview that she feels British, and European, and English, and Chinese, and Asian. Chan has been advocating for representation of Asians and other minorities in films. She was part of the cast of Crazy Rich Asians, the first Hollywood film in over two decades to feature an all-Asian cast. Topics : This article appeared on the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 10:37 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee830815d 1 Food Hotel-Mulia-Senayan,Orient8,Good-France,French-cuisine,food Free Its that time of year again, when food festival Gout de France (Taste of France) returns to please the citys foodies. Indonesia is undoubtedly no exception as a participating country, featuring 60 eateries in six cities. Jakartas Hotel Mulia Senayan is one of the 60 restaurants featured, represented by Orient8 that serves French and Pan Asian cuisine. This year will mark Orient8s third participation in Gout de France, with a specially crafted menu highlighting authentic French dishes from March 21 to 28 for lunch and dinner. Read also: Gout de France food festival to promote sustainable gastronomy According to a statement from Hotel Mulia Senayan, the executive French chef of the establishment aims to promote better understanding of French cultural identity and its culinary diversity by utilizing a range of ingredients such as sea urchin, duck liver, caviar, truffle and gold leaf. There would be two types of set menu, namely bistro and fine dining. The former leans more to a touch of comfort food, while the latter offers more sophisticated and modern tastes and presentation. Filet mignon de boeuf, foie gras and jus Rossini (Hotel Mulia Senayan/File) Mousse doursin, topped with caviar and fouille dor is a warm appetizer for the fine-dining menu, for instance. Meanwhile, filet mignon de boeuf, foie gras and jus Rossini is the main course. Those who prefer combining their own menu, however, may find the most suitable choices from the a la carte menu. (mut) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 14:15 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8314ff4 1 Entertainment Toto,Africa,Java-Jazz-Festival,bni,meme,cartoon,pop-music,pop-star,pop-culture Free Nowadays it is cool to like Toto, an aging pop band that was once the butt of jokes in western pop culture. In 1998, the American animated series South Park aired an episode in its second season called Gnomes. In the episode, the four main primary school aged protagonists give a public presentation to the towns mayoral committee on the need to stop a Starbucks-esque coffee shop from being allowed to open in the small mountain town, as it would threaten small businesses. The episode is a humorous and interesting take on the benefits and drawbacks of capitalism. During the preparations for the event, the mayor asks for a band to play, suggesting that it be, you know, a band that everyone likes. Like [] uhhh [] Toto! The mayors aides trade brief poker-faced reactions. Later in the episode a cartoonified Toto is seen finishing its set. Give it up for Toto, ladies and gentlemen! says the events host, to which only one person in the big crowd enthusiastically shouts Wooo! Totoo!! Totoooo!. But as he shouts, he realizes he is the only one doing so. The rest of the crowd looks at him funny. This was 1998, mind you, a year when Toto was not part of the publics consciousness, having fallen from its heights in the 1980s. In the west, older pop bands, performing 40th anniversary concerts, are usually seen as washed up, with only a certain demographic still caring about them. However, thanks to a recent surge in interest driven by internet culture, Toto has done what many of its non-indie-approved peers have failed to achieve; appeal to a younger generation and once again become part of the publics consciousness. A meme of Toto based on the song Africa. (-/-) However, Toto has always been popular in Indonesia, performing in Jakarta in 1992, 1996, 2004, 2006 and most recently in 2019 for this years edition of Java Jazz. The band also planned to visit in 2008 for a Surabaya show but cancelled because of the promoters negligence. The frequency of the bands visits to the country, as well as the constantly positive response it receives tickets for the 2004 Jakarta show were reportedly sold out demonstrates how big of a deal the band is here. For one, the bands 1982 smash hit Africa, as well as Ill Be Over You and Stop Loving You remain Indonesian classic rock radio staples and have been a part of many Indonesians childhoods and adolescents. The crowd at Totos Java Jazz 2019 performance was an interesting mix of young and old. It could be that Totos music has been passed down from fathers to their children or from uncles to nephews and nieces. Or it could be that in the past three years, the band has experienced an unlikely resurgence thanks to internet meme culture. With the internet essentially using meme culture as a means of mainstream commentary and expression for the past five years or so, somewhere along the line, Africa was turned into a meme. But the memes of Toto mostly view the band in a positive light, albeit sometimes ironically. It became cool to endlessly praise Africa. It became part of online social currency. Sometimes, the memes' impacts have gone too far though, like when one German artist in 2018 planned to erect a stupid, almost neo-colonialist solar-powered installation in Africas Namib Desert that would play the song on a non-stop loop until the end of time. But stupidities aside, the divinity of Africa is one that is well deserved. The song, even though it describes the continent from a rather simplistic Caucasian point of view, is a versatile piece of rock, funk and synthpop packed with a singalong chorus that begs to be sung over and over again. Sometimes at shows, the band stretches Africa to great lengths, as was the case at Java Jazz, with the band stretching the five-minute song to 10 to 15 minutes. Here is a band that has for decades showcased its musical mastery of rock, pop, jazz and funk. The bands members have performed individually and collectively as session musicians on no less than 5,000 20th century records, ranging from Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan to Give My Regards to Broad Street by Paul McCartney to Thriller by Michael Jackson. In fact, founding member and keyboardist Steve Porcaro wrote Michael Jacksons hit Human Nature. Quite rightly, Human Nature was part of the bands setlist that night, albeit a shorter version. The rest of the setlist was peppered with the bands classic hits such as Hold the Line, Ill Be Over You, I Will Remember and a staggering performance of Rosanna, coupled with warmly received new material such as English Eyes and Devils Tower. The ensemble of middle aged men, bodies and instruments and hair chiseled from decades of experience and expertise, were immaculate in their execution. Frontman and guitarist Steve Lukather never let the audiences eyes move away from him. Porcaro played it cool while vocalist Joseph Williams came off as a bit adorable at times in between his attempts to sing like he did 40 years ago. Touring members Lenny Castro and Shannon Forrest were living metronomes on the drums and keyboardist Dominique Xavier Taplin, well, stole the show at times. Lukather, Porcaro and Williams are the only original members in the lineup. Founding keyboardist and backing vocalist David Paich did not join them on this tour. In the past, Toto has also had its share of tragedies, with the deaths of the two Porcaro brothers Mike and Jeff, who founded the band with Steve. But their spirits were given a tribute as at one point in show, Williams tried to rouse cheers from the amazed Jakarta crowd: Give your love to our two brothers up in the sky, Mike and Jeff! We love you! But of course, it was that song called Rossana that caused biggest commotion and the most positive energy to radiate from the audience. Sure, even if it was their best performance of the night, it did not matter. Jakarta was yet again blessed by Totos rain. If only they had not blessed the city so much. Before and after the bands set, it rained heavily. The natural phenomenon seemed to pause just for the performance. (hdt) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 13:39 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8313139 1 Entertainment Kuambil-Lagi-Hatiku,Azhar-Kinoi-Lubis,Produksi-Film-Negara,film,local-movie,India Free Kuambil Lagi Hatiku (I Take My Heart Back) marks the return of State Film Company (PFN) to the movie industry after 26 years of inactivity. The last movies the company produced were Pelangi di Nusa Laut (Rainbow on the Island of the Sea) in 1992 and Surat untuk Bidadari (Letter to an Angel) in 1994. Helmed by Azhar Kinoi Lubis and scheduled to be released on Thursday, Kuambil Lagi Hatiku is a joint effort of PFN in collaboration with state-owned PT Taman Wisata Candi Borobudur and Wahana Kreator Nusantara, a story development company co-founded by scriptwriter Salman "Aris" Aristo. Aris also serves as the movies producer. Cut Mini (left) and Ria Irawan (right) are two renowned Indonesian actors featured in 'Kuambil Lagi Hatiku'. (Kuambil Lagi Hatiku/File) At first, I was approached by Aris when he told me he was working with PFN. I was surprised, as I knew PFN was in a state of dormancy, Kinoi told The Jakarta Post during a phone interview on Tuesday. I told him that was very positive. PFN should revive itself, produce films and compete with other production houses. Set in India and Indonesia, the movie follows Indian-Indonesian girl Sinta (Lala Karmela), who is about to marry Vikash (Sahil Shah). However, Sintas mother Widi (Cut Mini) suddenly disappears, returning to her hometown in Indonesia. Sinta decides to follow her mother and bring her back to India, though she does not know where in Indonesia her mother may be. For her role in 'Kuambil Lagi Hatiku', Lala Karmela had learn to speak her mother tongue in the more formal way foreigners typically speak Indonesian. (Kuambil Lagi Hatiku/File) Sinta stumbles across some old photos of her parents at the Borobudur temple, which she believes will lead her to Widi. She uses the photos as her guide to find Widi, but little does she know that she is embarking on a journey into her mothers complicated past. PFN director Mohammad Abduh Aziz said in a statement that the story had been created by PFN. It was then developed further in cooperation with Wahana Kreator Nusantara and Taman Wisata Candi. Read also: National Film Day to celebrate diversity Dimas Aditya (left) also plays in 'Kuambil Lagi Hatiku'. (Kuambil Lagi Hatiku/File) India was selected as Taman Wisata Candi had a connection to Taj Mahal in the city of Agra, though Kinoi was unable to shoot the movie inside the monument of love. People were celebrating a religious ceremony at the time, hence it was difficult to gain permission [to shoot inside the Taj Mahal], said Kinoi, adding that they eventually filmed several scenes outside the monument and in Agra. Kuambil Lagi Hatiku features Dimas Aditya, Ria Irawan, Dian Sidik, Tarzan and Ence Bagus. The movie offers a new collaboration between two renowned Indonesian actors: Cut Mini and Ria Irawan. As for the main character, the team chose Lala Karmela, as the actor-musician is said to be able to own the character as if it were a part of her. Mother-daughter duo: Widi (Cut Mini, left) and her daughter Sinta (Lala Karmela, right) appear together in a still of 'Kuambil Lagi Hatiku'. (Kuambil Lagi Hatiku/File) Kinoi said the experience of working with PFN was quite different from his previously work with production house Starvision Plus on Kafir. [PFN] was honest by telling me that its still learning to create proper production systems, as not everyone in the company is a filmmaker, Kinoi said. When working with Starvision, they understood their market and the industry well and gave us a deadline. PFN, meanwhile, followed [our timeline]. We said the pre-production would take five months; so they gave us five months. During the process, Kinoi challenged himself to make the film enjoyable to the general public but still interesting enough to be watched by other filmmakers and movie buffs. The films premise is about being grateful for anything we have and not lying about it. Its actually a satire on the current situation as well, said Kinoi. (kes) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Corinne Gretler (Bloomberg) Thu, March 21, 2019 12:36 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee830f105 2 Lifestyle Patek-Philippe,watchmakers,switzerland Free The 180-year-old Swiss watchmaker Patek Philippe SA is not for sale, according to the companys chairman. The maker of $10,000-plus Calatrava timepieces is staying in hands of the Stern family, which has owned it for four generations, Chairman Thierry Stern said in an interview. He said he hopes his children, who are still teenagers, will someday inherit the company. Read also: Patek Philippe debuts latest collection for women in Milan If its not my children, then therell be a new CEO, but for sure its not in our plan to sell Patek, Stern said at the Baselworld watch fair. Speculation about a possible sale of one of the last big independent watchmakers arose in January when Berenberg analysts pointed to chatter at the Geneva watch salon that a sale could be approaching. They said a deal could fetch 7 billion to 9 billion euros ($8 billion to $10 billion). Many of the brands rivals have been snapped up in recent years by luxury companies Richemont, Swatch Group AG and Kering SA. Patek Philippe says on its website that the companys intention is to independently pursue the path that led to its success. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 07:47 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82fde13 1 National 2019-presidential-election,security,Wiranto Free As Indonesians prepare to cast their votes in simultaneous presidential and legislative elections slated for April 17, the government has stepped up measures to provide security in the remaining campaign period and on voting day. Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto said the National Police and the Indonesian Military (TNI) had deployed hundreds of thousands of personnel to secure the election process, including the large campaign rallies that will precede it, starting on Sunday. A total of 593,812 police and military personnel have been deployed to secure the elections. All of them have received instructions regarding their respective duties, Wiranto said on Wednesday. An index released by the Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) for the 2019 general election listed 15 provinces as the ones most prone to disruption that could hamper free and fair elections, with West Papua, Yogyakarta and West Sumatra topping the list. The central government has instructed local administrations to immediately assess the situation in their respective regions and to find ways to curb any possible threats, Wiranto said. [Disseminating] hoaxes is an act of terror, and we have instructed the security apparatus to take stern action against the terror that may cause public unrest, Wiranto said. The campaign season of the 2019 election, which pits incumbent Joko Jokowi Widodo against rival Prabowo Subianto, will soon enter the final phase. Starting on Sunday, the two presidential candidates and their running mates will enter a three-week period in which they are officially allowed to address the public in large-scale campaign events across the country. The campaign period will last until April 13, before the cooling-off period prior to voting on April 17. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 08:42 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82ff568 1 City brawl,Instagram,record Free The Jakarta Police have revealed that participants in a brawl on Jl. Swadaya 3, Cakung, East Jakarta, on Sunday, live-streamed the brawl on the Instagram social media platform. They used cellphones to record the brawl live on Instagram, Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono said on Wednesday, kompas.com reported. He said the police had arrested 13 suspects in the brawl. After our investigation we found 13 suspects, three of whom are underage and 10 are adults. They are members of the Tiga Serangkai, or Tiga Kampung group, from Kayu Tinggi, Pedurenan, and the Rawa Jahe apartment complex, Argo said. He said the 10 adult suspects would be charged under Article 170 of the Criminal Code (KUHP) on mass public brawling and unauthorized possession of a weapon, which carries a maximum sentence of 12 years imprisonment. For the underage suspects, they will be charged under the Child Protection Law. They will receive different treatment. We have also contacted the correctional facility, Argo said. The brawl occurred between the Tiga Serangkai group and the Warjenk group on Jl. Swadaya 3, Cakung, on Sunday. Tiga Serangkai came to the site on motorcycles and bearing weapons. After the brawl, four members of the Warjenk group suffered multiple stab wounds. The wounded were taken to the Colombia Hospital and Persahabatan Hospital to receive treatment. They have since been discharged. (ami) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 13:03 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee830fd93 1 City ATM,skimming,Prabowo-Subianto,Jakarta-police,Gerindra-Party Free Police say the suspect in an ATM skimming case, Ramyadjie Priambodo, a distant relative of presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto and former treasurer of the Gerindra Party's youth wing, acquired bank account data from an online black-market community. [He acquired bank account data] from a black market on the internet, Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono said on Tuesday, kompas.com reported. Argo said the 37-year-old suspect had learned skimming techniques and acquired the victims bank account data from the online community. The police raided his apartment on Jl. Sudirman, South Jakarta, on Feb. 26, and confiscated Rp 300 million (US$21,000), ATM cards, a mobile phone, laptop, white card that stored the data of bank customers and an ATM. Read also: Prabowo's distant relative arrested for alleged ATM skimming scheme Ramyadjie told the police that he got the ATM from a friend and had used it to study how the machine worked and to assess its weaknesses that were susceptible to skimming. We do not know who this friend is. We are still investigating, Argo said. Ramyadjie reportedly told the police that he conducted ATM skimming alone while dressing as a woman wearing a hijab. He has done it [skimming] 91 times. Meanwhile, he got Rp 300 million from the practice, Argo said. He added that the suspect used the money to trade bitcoin cryptocurrency but did not mention how much money had been traded into bitcoin. Prabowo campaign team spokesperson Sufmi Dasco Ahmad has acknowledged that the suspect is a distant relative of the presidential candidate. Reports have claimed that the suspect is also the former treasurer of Gerindras youth wing, Tunas Indonesia Raya. (ami) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 15:33 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8319a71 1 National #Indonesia,#Terrorism,Sibolga,bomb-blast,suspect,arrested,East-Kalimantan,terrorism Free Police have arrested a man they refer to as both M and Abu Arkam in Berau, East Kalimantan, accusing him of involvement in the explosions in Sibolga, North Sumatra, that have been linked to the banned Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) group . Densus 88 [counterterrorism squad] has arrested M aka Abu Arkam in Berau, East Kalimantan on Tuesday, National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Dedi Prasetyo said on Wednesday, as quoted by the Antara news agency. Dedi said Abu Arkam was allegedly plotting an attack against the police, which he believed had been vilifying the Islamic State (IS) movement. Last week, an explosion rocked a neighborhood in Sibolga after the wife of suspected terrorist Abu Hamzah affiliated with the homegrown pro-IS JAD detonated a bomb at their residence, killing herself and her 2-year-old son. The police have so far arrested six suspects four men and two women. They are all suspected of being affiliated with the terrorist group. One of the suspects, Y, a 35-year-old woman who was arrested at her parents house in Klaten, Central Java last week, died by apparent suicide while in custody on Monday. The police said Y was suspected of being the initiator of the terrorist acts on Java together with Putera Syuhada, Abu Hamzah and Syaefuddin Hidayat. Densus 88 is still pursuing Syaefuddin Hidayat, who has been posting videos on social media containing threats against the police. (das) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Sydney, Australia Thu, March 21, 2019 09:09 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee83024e7 2 World #Turkey,#Australia,Prime-Minister,Scott-Morrison,Recep-Tayyip-Erdogan,New-Zealand,mosque-attack Free Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday welcomed some "moderation" in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's comments in the wake of the Christchurch massacre. Trying to take the sting out of a diplomatic row that has threatened relations between Australia, New Zealand and Turkey, Morrison pointed to a recent Erdogan column in the Washington Post as progress. "Overnight, progress has been made on this issue and overnight we've already seen a moderation of the president's views," Morrison said, citing the article in which Erdogan stepped away from direct criticism of New Zealand. The Turkish leader -- who is in full campaign mode ahead of local elections -- still used the article to accuse Western countries of meeting Islamophobia with "silence". But Morrison took it as a diplomatic off-ramp nonetheless. Morrison -- who is also in full campaign mode, ahead of a general election -- had on Wednesday pilloried Erdogan for his comments in the wake of the Christchurch massacre, describing them as "reckless" and "highly offensive." Erdogan has repeatedly used video footage of the massacre shot by the attacker who killed 50 people and painted the attack it as part of an assault on Turkey and Islam. He had also warned that anti-Muslim Australians and New Zealanders would be "sent back in coffins" like their grandfathers at Gallipoli, a blood-drenched WWI battle. His office on Wednesday said the remarks were taken out of context. More than 8,000 Australians died fighting Turkish forces at Gallipoli, which has a prominent place in Australia's collective memory. Morrison had summoned the Turkish ambassador over the comments, dismissing the "excuses" offered and warning that relations were under review. "I am expecting, and I have asked, for these comments to be clarified, to be withdrawn," he said. 'Context' The gunman's so-called "manifesto" -- a 70-plus page rambling question and answer -- mentions Turkey and the minarets of Istanbul's famed Hagia Sophia, now a museum, that was once a church before becoming a mosque during the Ottoman empire. Three Turkish nationals were wounded in the rampage that killed 50 worshippers at the mosques in the southern New Zealand city. "President #Erdogan's words were unfortunately taken out of context," Fahrettin Altun, communications director for the Turkish presidency, claimed on Twitter. Altun said Erdogan's comments were in "a historical context of attacks against Turkey, past and present." "Turks have always been the most welcoming & gracious hosts to their #Anzac visitors," he added, referring to Australian and New Zealand veterans and families who are expected to travel there for the anniversary on April 25. Erdogan has built his political base on being a champion of Muslim Turks. For most of the last century, the country's government has been avowedly secular. Like leaders in Iran and Russia, Erdogan has also played on a sense that Turkey -- the inheritor of the once-mighty Ottoman Empire -- has not been given enough respect on the international stage. 'Totally unfair' Erdogan had earlier been sharply rebuked by New Zealand for his comments and for using gruesome video shot by the Christchurch mosque gunman as an election campaign prop. New Zealand's Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters protested on Monday that such politicisation of the massacre "imperils the future and safety of the New Zealand people and our people abroad, and it's totally unfair". New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has sent Peters to Istanbul to meet with Turkish leaders on the issue this week. In the Washington Post article Erdogan praised Ardern's "courage, leadership and sincerity" in handling the crisis. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Japan News/Asia News Network) Tokyo, Japan Thu, March 21, 2019 08:38 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82feae7 2 World #Japan,#abdication,Emperor-Akihito,crown-prince,Prime-Minister,Shinzo-Abe Free The details of ceremonies related to the Emperors abdication and the crown princes accession to the throne have been decided at a meeting of the panel overseeing the ceremonies. For the Oct. 23 banquet to be hosted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife, the panel decided on Tuesday to appoint kyogen play actor Nomura Mansai as general adviser for cultural events at the party. At the Taiirei Seiden no Gi abdication ceremony on April 30, the Emperor will speak after Abe delivers the address of the national representatives. After the abdication ceremony, the magatama comma-shaped jewel and a sword that validates the throne will be returned to the place where they are kept at the Imperial Palace. When the Kenji to Shokei no Gi a ceremony where a new emperor inherits the Imperial Regalia is held on May 1, the sacred objects are to be brought to the site of the ceremony again. This is intended to avoid a situation in which the Emperor who does not have powers related to government could give the impression that he passed the throne to the crown prince through his own will by directly passing him the regalia. The decision is appropriate on the basis of the purport of the Constitution, Cabinet Legislation Bureau Director General Yusuke Yokobatake said during the panel meeting on Tuesday. Leaders from foreign countries will be invited to the Sokuirei Seiden no Gi ceremony slated for Oct. 22, during which the new emperor will proclaim his enthronement at home and abroad. To encourage foreign guests to deepen their understanding of Japanese culture, the government plans to hold kabuki and noh performances. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 10:59 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee830976b 4 Business Indonesia,EU,IEU-CEPA,review,palm-oil,Dispute Free Indonesia has said it is now reviewing negotiations over the Indonesia-European Union Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IEU-CEPA) in response to a recent European Union proposal to put a cap on palm oil-based biofuels. We are reviewing [the IEU-CEPA] comprehensively, Trade Ministry international trade negotiation head Iman Pambagyo said on Wednesday as quoted by kontan.co.id. Indonesian and EU delegates met from March 12 to 15 in Brussels to hold their seventh round of negotiations of over the IEU-CEPA. In the meetings, the European Commission announced a draft of a supplementing directive to an EU directive on renewable energy. Under the draft, palm oil-based biofuels were listed as unsustainable and, as such, the EU would phase them out. Indonesia threatened to take the issue to the World Trade Organization, as it believed that palm oil production was more environmentally friendly than the production of other vegetable oils like soybean oil, sunflower oil and rapeseed oil. Iman said that during the latest negotiations, the two sides could not agree on trade and sustainable development plans. There is one chapter, namely trade and sustainable development, in which it was difficult to reach an agreement. The discussions included vegetable oil, Iman added. According to data from the Indonesian Palm Oil Association (GAPKI), Indonesias palm oil exports to the EU were valued at around US$19 billion in 2018. EU Ambassador to Indonesia and Brunei Vincent Guerend said the EU renewable energy directive was flexible and the union would be ready to help Indonesia to have its palm oil products meet sustainable development standards. He said the directive could be revised in 2021 or 2023. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) Semarang Thu, March 21, 2019 10:57 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee83088aa 1 National KPK,Semarang-Corruption-Court,Taufik-Kurniawan,Indonesian-House-deputy-speaker,bribery-case Free The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has accused House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Taufik Kurniawan of accepting Rp 4.8 billion in bribes from two Central Java regency administrations in 2016 and 2017. The accusations were made during a case hearing at the Semarang Corruption Court, Central Java, on Wednesday. Prosecutor Eva Yustisiana said Taufik accepted Rp 3.6 billion in 2016 from Kebumen to help the regency obtain a Rp 93.3 billion special allocation fund. It was also claimed that he accepted Rp 1.2 billion in the following year from Purbalingga for the disbursement of the regencys Rp 40 billion special allocation fund . Defendant Taufik as a deputy speaker of the House of Representatives offered a special allocation fund to Purbalingga in 2017, said Eva. Taufik and the National Mandate Partys (PAN) Central Java chapter chairman, Wahyu Kristianto, met with Purbalingga Regent Tasdi on March 18, 2017, she said. The defendant reportedly promised at that time to help the regency obtain a special allocation fund with a 5 percent fee in return. Eva said Taufik then asked the House of Representatives budget committee and House Commission XI overseeing banking and finance to add Rp 40 billion for Purbalinggas special allocation fund in the revised 2017 budget. The Rp 1.2 billion of fee was reportedly handed over to Taufik at Wahyus house in Wanareja, while another Rp 600 million allegedly went to PAN member Haris Fikri and the rest to Wahyu. For Kebumen, the proposed special allocation fund was Rp 100 billion but only Rp 93.3 billion was disbursed. The bribe was set at Rp 3.6 billion. The trial was adjourned until next week, when witnesses will be questioned. (swa) The 30 million residents of Greater Jakarta can hope to enjoy improved mobility in the future with the government agreeing to accelerate infrastructure development through a 10-year plan worth Rp 571 trillion (US$40.8 billion) in Jakarta and its satellite cities. President Joko Jokowi Widodo said the government approved the plan after it was proposed by the Jakarta administration during a limited Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, following a similar meeting held in January. The infrastructure projects cover transportation, clean water and sanitation, housing and flood control. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 15:16 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8316136 4 National Polish-tourists,Poland,biodiversity,Kalimantan,forest Free Four Polish nationals have been arrested for allegedly collecting flora and fauna samples from Bukit Kelam Nature Park in West Kalimantan, a conservation official said on Wednesday. Bharata Sibrani, head of Sintang Conservation District II at the West Kalimantan Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA), said park security had arrested the four Poles for entering the area without permit and discovered the animal and plant samples upon searching their belongings. They entered [the area] without a permit. Also, they only have tourist visas. They took plant and animal samples from Bukit Kelam Nature Park, said Bharata as quoted by kompas.com on Wednesday. He added that among the samples were orchids, spiders and scorpions. From the samples we found, we cannot say yet whether [the four] had taken samples of protected animals or plants, Bharata said. The Embassy of Poland in Jakarta declined to comment when The Jakarta Post contacted them on Thursday, saying they needed more official information regarding the incident. (gis) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Gisela Swaragita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 18:56 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8324ed1 1 National KNKT,Boeing-737-MAX,Boeing-737-Max8,Lion-Air-JT610,Ethiopian-Airlines-ET-302 Free The National Transportation Safety Committee (KNKT) has confirmed the presence of an off-duty pilot on board Lion Air flight JT043 from Denpasar to Jakarta on Oct. 29, 2018, whose actions have been cited in media reports as having saved more than 100 lives. The flight suffered problems but landed safely in Jakarta. The next day the same aircraft, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, on flight JT610 from Jakarta to Pangkal Pinang in Bangka-Belitung Islands crashed into the Java Sea shortly after take-off with the loss of all on board. Regarding flight JT043 from Denpasar to Jakarta, which had problems after the replacement of an angle of attack [AOA] sensor, the KNKT confirms that another pilot was present in the cockpit of the plane, head of the KNKT Soerjanto Tjahjono said. The KNKT has not identified the pilot. The pilot is Boeing 737 MAX 8 qualified. The pilot in question has been interviewed by the KNKT, Soerjanto went on. However, Soerjanto declined to elaborate on the role of the off-duty pilot in saving the aircraft. He also denied that there was any recording of flight JT043 in the cockpit voice recording (CVR) of flight JT610. Earlier, media reports quoting sources who were close to the case said the so-called dead-head pilot on the flight from Bali to Jakarta told the crew to cut power to the automated system designed to lower the nose of the plane when it receives information from the AOA sensors that the aircraft is flying too slowly or steeply, and for them to take back manual control of the plane. According to analysts this is part of a checklist that all pilots are required to memorize. On Mar. 10 a similar Boeing 737 MAX 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines on flight ET302 crashed in similar circumstances to JT610. However, the KNKT has said it is too early to say whether the same problems that caused the crash of JT610 occurred on ET302. The KNKT will provide data [to assist the investigation into the] ET302 crash and if there are any more developments we will study and analyze them thoroughly to complete our data on the Lion Air JT610 crash, Soerjanto said. The KNKT also said that media reports supposedly quoting details of the conversation between the pilots recorded by the CVR of the ill-fated flight JT610 should be treated with caution. "The KNKT thinks the reports contain interpretations made by some parties rather than precise transcripts of recordings from the CVR," the committee stated at a press conference, stressing that the KNKT had not released any CVR recordings. Other media reports, again reportedly quoting sources, have said the JT610 pilots frantically searched for a solution during the last minutes of the flight. (mai) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 08:09 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82fe874 4 Business halal-certificate,food-and-beverage,cosmetic,medicine,mandatory-regulation,2019,MUI Free The Indonesian Ulema Council (MU) has reminded all food, medicine and cosmetics manufacturers that they must obtain halal certificates for their products because new halal product legislation will begin to take effect this year. Based on the law on halal product assurance, halal certification is mandatory this year. Therefore all products that enter [the Indonesian market] should have halal certificates, said the MUI's Food and Drug Analysis Agency (LPPOM) director Lukmanul Hakim in Semarang, Central Java, on Tuesday. He was referring to Law No. 33/2014 on halal product assurance that mandates the Halal Certification Agency (BPJPH) to start implementing mandatory halal certification. Halal certification by the MUI has been taking place for a long time, but before this year it was entirely voluntary, used by many producers of food and beverages, cosmetics and medicinal products looking to ensure customer confidence in their products. Lukman said halal certification was good both for producers and customers. He said the certified products would improve product competitiveness because customers would be more confident in consuming such products. Halal certificates will improve the competitiveness and branding of the products, he said, as quoted by kompas.com. adding that the MUI had cooperated with authorities in many countries in preparation for the implementation of mandatory halal certification. With the MUIs cooperation with authorities in many countries, he added, the products that had been certified by the MUI could be exported to those countries without any new process of halal certification. Meanwhile, to support the implementation of the law on halal products, the government issued a number of derivative regulations, including Presidential Regulation No. 83/2015 on the establishment of the Halal Certification Agency (BPJPH). (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Wellington, New Zealand Thu, March 21, 2019 10:10 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8308028 2 World #NewZealand,#mosque-attack,Prime-Minister,Jacinda-Ardern Free New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an immediate ban on the sale of assault rifles and semi-automatics Thursday in a muscular response to the Christchurch terror attack that killed 50 people. "Today I am announcing that New Zealand will ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons. We will also ban all assault rifles," Ardern said, while announcing interim measures that will stop a rush of purchases before legislation is enacted. "The effect of this will mean that no one will be able to buy these weapons without a permit to procure from the police. I can assure people that there is no point in applying for such a permit," she said. She added that high capacity magazines and devices similar to bump stocks -- which make rifles fire faster -- will also be banned. "In short, every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country," she said. For the guns that are still out there, Ardern announced a buyback scheme that will cost between Nz$100 million and $200 million (between US$69 million and $139 million), depending on the number of weapons received. To "the current owners of the weapons we have moved to ban, I acknowledge that many of you will have acted within the law," Ardern said. "In recognition of that and to incentivise their return, we will be establishing a buyback scheme." Anyone who keeps the guns after an amnesty period will face fines of up to $4,000 and three years' in jail. Ardern brushed aside suggestions of opposition to the ban. "The vast majority of New Zealanders will support this change. I feel incredibly confident of that," she said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 17:53 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee83227c6 1 City drug-raids,North-Jakarta,gunfire Free A drug raid in Kampung Bahari, Tanjung Priok, has been met with gunfire from a crowd, an official at the North Jakarta National Narcotics Agency has said. No personnel were reportedly harmed in the incident. It seemed like a rifle. We heard blasts like that, so we fired a warning shot for the crowd to disperse, the agencys head Sr. Adj. Comr. Yuanita Amelia Sari said on Wednesday, tempo.co reported. Yuanita said the shot was triggered by the raid. [The raid also] provoked the public, she said. The agencys personnel called the North Jakarta Police for help, which then deployed 110 police officers to the scene. From the raid, the agency and police officers confiscated sharp weapons, tools to consume drugs, and drugs, which comprised marijuana and almost 1 kilogram of methamphetamine. Police also detained 12 people. Two have tested positive for narcotics use based on a urine test. However, police did not name them suspects as they were reportedly not part of the traders' network. North Jakarta Police Sr. Comr. Budhi Herdi Susianto said police have not yet been able to identify the person who was in possession of the drugs. (sau) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 13:13 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee83110a7 1 Business SOEs,certified-internship,Rini-Soemarno Free A certified internship program is being offered to 9,000 university students to provide them with first-hand job experience. State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) Minister Rini Soemarno said on Wednesday the six-month internship program was designed to prepare students to be competitive in the job market. The program is included in the SKS (semester credits system) of their schools, Rini said on the sidelines of an event in Tasikmalaya, West Java, as quoted in a press statement by the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry. She said the program, which involves the participation of SOEs, took place successfully last year, providing students with professional experience. Furthermore, she expressed hope that the participants of this year's program could work in SOEs after they graduate from university. The program was designed to bolster the relationship between industries and private and public universities. In addition to obtaining certificates after completing the internship program, students would also receive a payment and have the opportunity to work in SOEs, the minister said. Last year, the program began on May 20, involving 1,687 university students and 40 SOEs. This year, it will invite 9,000 students from 231 universities. A total of 4,280 students have already been selected to intern at 113 SOEs. Rini said the program would recruit 20,000 participants by 2020 and involve 142 SOEs in all parts of the country. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Thu, March 21, 2019 17:04 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8321295 1 National illegal-logging,Papua,Indonesian-forests Free The Environment and Forestry Ministry announced on Wednesday that five people, including three directors of different timber companies, had been named suspects in connection with the inspection of hundreds of shipping containers containing Intsia bijuga logs in separate locations of Jayapura, Papua. The ministrys law enforcement director general, Rasio Ridho Sani, identified the three directors only as DG, DT and TS. DT, who is the director of PT MGM, allegedly had 61 containers of the illegal teak, while TS of PT RPF allegedly had 38 containers and DT of PT EAJ allegedly had 31 containers of the same type of timber. The other two suspects were arrested in West Papua. Rasio said the ministry had arrested the suspected illegal loggers after following up on the arrest of 57 shipping containers in Makassar, South Sulawesi, and 199 containers in Surabaya, East Java, in January. We are now conducting further investigation following their arrest, Rasio said in a statement. He added that the three directors had violated the 2013 law on forest protection. They could face 10 years of imprisonment and a fine of Rp 100 billion, Rasio added. Illegal logging is one of the primary causes of deforestation in Indonesia, posing a threat to the environment. The director general said the ministry would continue to dismantle illegal timber trade networks that caused huge losses to the country. (das) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung, West Java Thu, March 21, 2019 14:14 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee83147d4 1 Business ikea,outlets,West-Bandung,West-Java,ridwan-kamil Free West Java Governor Ridwan Emil Kamil has pledged to assist IKEA in acquiring land for its new outlet in West Bandung, as the Swedish multinational furniture retailer planned to break ground on the new outlet at the end of the month. We will receive investment of Rp 1 trillion [US$70.81 million]. IKEA will hold a groundbreaking ceremony [for the new outlet] in Kota Baru Parahyangan, West Bandung, Emil said on Wednesday, following a meeting with Indonesian Ambassador to Sweden Bagas Hapsoro at his office. I will make serious efforts to help find the land, so IKEA will not go somewhere else, he said. Emil said IKEA's plans to open an outlet in Bandung reflected the good ties between the province and Sweden. He said he had been informed that IKEA saw good prospects in the retail furniture markets of West Bandung and nearby cities, particularly Cimahi and the provincial capital of Bandung. The governor added that he planned to invite more Swedish businesses to invest in West Java, particularly in the three major industrial areas of Cirebon, Majalengka and Subang. We have [Kertajati] International Airport that serves the three areas, and we have been developing Patimban Port, which will support smooth [distribution] of our exports," said Emil. Emil added that ambassador Bagas had also extended an invitation for West Java to participate in the Kampung Indonesia cultural festival, which would be held in Stockholm in July. Representatives from West Java took part in a similar event last year [and] were greatly welcomed by the [local] people. We plan to send a cultural delegation to [Sweden], he said. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Stockholm Fri, March 22 2019 Flavors of the archipelago: Swedish journalists enjoy Indonesian food after finishing a photo session seeking to capture the story of traditional Indonesian cuisine for a Swedish media outlet. (Photo courtesy of the Indonesian embassy in Sweden) A group of Swedish journalists, headed by Ann Margareta Lofberg who is deeply interested in the flavors and stories of Indonesian cuisine, recently organized a photo shoot of traditional Indonesian cuisine for their local publication. According to the Indonesian Embassy in Sweden, the photo shoot, which will be published as a photo essay in the local publication, also seeks to familiarize Swedish people with the diversity and stories behind Indonesias culinary traditions. to Read Full Story SUBSCRIBE NOW Starting from IDR 55,000/month Unlimited access to our web and app content e-Post daily digital newspaper No advertisements, no interruptions Privileged access to our events and programs Subscription to our newsletters We accept Register to read 3 premium articles for free Already subscribed? login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Thu, March 21, 2019 10:07 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee8307274 2 News British-Airways,travel,Business-Class,Airlines Free British Airways has pulled back the curtain on its new business class seat which features a sliding door for privacy, flat-bed seats, vanity and increased storage space. Ahead of its July debut aboard the A350, BA unveiled the Club Suite, designed in response to customer feedback. Each seat features direct-aisle access -- no climbing over seatmates to go to the bathroom -- a door for greater privacy, and lie-flat beds. Units are also designed to offer 40 percent more storage; vanity and mirror; Wifi; PC and USB power outlets; and 18.5-inch hi-def screens. Step on board our upcoming, state-of-the-art @Airbus A350 and discover new levels of privacy and comfort in our Club Suite. #BritishAirways #ClubSuite #A350 pic.twitter.com/LoVj9kajUy British Airways (@British_Airways) March 18, 2019 Bedding is supplied by The White Company. Read also: Garuda Indonesia introduces new business class product The newest addition to BA's fleet, the A350 claims to offer an improved flight experience with reduced noise levels, high ceilings, and ambient lighting meant to complement the time of day and outside light. Cabins have also been designed to feature higher levels of humidity and refreshed air: cabin pressure is equivalent to an altitude of just 6,000 feet. The A350 is also one of the more fuel-efficient aircrafts in the industry. British Airways' first A350 will debut in July flying between London and Madrid, before being dispatched for long-haul flights beginning in October. Another three A350 aircraft are also scheduled to join the fleet in the fall. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Beijing Thu, March 21, 2019 07:05 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee82fd43c 2 News goth,China,metro,selfie,subway,travel,passenger,gothic Free China's goth community posted selfies wearing black lipstick and sombre white makeup in an online protest over a peer who was forced to remove her makeup before boarding a subway car. The social media blitz prompted an apology from the transport company in the southern city of Guangzhou. Goths are a subculture known for their black clothes and makeup -- with a popular segment known as "Gothic Lolita" whose members dress in dark outfits inspired by Victorian dolls. Writing about the encounter on her Weibo social media account, the woman, who goes by the username EIGA-In My Heart, said she was stopped by a female security officer at a Guangzhou metro station on March 10 after her makeup was deemed "too scary". "On the basis of what law am I being stopped and my time being wasted? "If there is, I will make a banner for the station of my own expense stating: thick makeup and goth outfits are prohibited on the metro," she wrote, adding that it was not the first time this has happened to her. China's goth community posted selfies wearing black lipstick and sombre white makeup in an online protest over a peer who was forced to remove her makeup before boarding a subway car. https://t.co/IphBYBaAMi The Straits Times (@STcom) March 19, 2019 Read also: Japan train departs 25 seconds early, company apologizes for 'truly inexcusable' mistake The community jumped to her defense on social media, posting selfies in full make up on Twitter-like Weibo using the hashtag, #ASelfieForTheGuangzhouMetro. In a country where anything deemed subversive and counterculture can be subject to censorship, the hashtag has quickly gained traction, attracting thousands of posts and some nearly 5.8 million views. The Guangzhou Metro apologized last Saturday, admitting an "improper handling" of the situation. "We are deeply remorseful and strive to improve," the operator said in a post on Weibo. "At the same time, we apologize to the affected user." This was not the first time security officers have stopped passengers for having overly thick makeup, members of the goth community said. Self-identified goth Laora Gein, who posted a selfie in support, told AFP that she had been stopped at another Guangzhou subway station last November, after she had cosplayed for a Harry Potter movie. "I eventually had to take the taxi home," she said. But other users were less supportive, accusing posters of using the hashtag to simply put up pictures of themselves. "Since you have to take the subway and go to public places, you have to consider the perception of others," one user wrote. The style grew out of so-called gothic rock in the 1980s in Britain. Followers, many of whom cultivated a pale and gaunt look, wore black clothes and were typically immersed in the macabre and supernatural. In recent years, it has gained a following in Asia, particularly in Japan, and has a nascent community in China. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Paris Thu, March 21, 2019 09:01 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee83015b3 2 News France,North-Korea,travel,guidebook,tourism,destination,publisher,Book,#book Free A French travel publisher presented Tuesday its first guide book for North Korea, offering 190 pages of tips for getting the most out of a trip to experience the "survival of a totalitarian communist state". "The guide wasn't conceived to defend the current regime or to cast judgment, but to show the genuine touristic interest of the country," Jean-Paul Labourdette, a co-founder of the "Petit Fute" guides, said in Paris. He said 4,000 copies had been printed -- more than enough for the estimated 400 French tourists which head each year to the pariah state, which has been isolated from the international community for decades. North Korea has endured harsh UN sanctions to pursue its nuclear weapons programme under the Kim dynasty, which implemented a dictatorship that has been accused of provoking widespread hunger and human rights abuses. The French foreign ministry strongly discourages tourists from visiting, while the US State Department only rarely grants exceptional permits for Americans hoping to travel to North Korea. But Labourdette said "there are no security issues" for travellers, though he admitted "very restrictive" conditions, not least tight surveillance that limits foreigners to just a handful of hotels and restaurants. And while tourist visas are readily granted, the guide warns that missteps are costly: "The punishments can be severe... as was the case for the American student Otto Warmbier." Warmbier, an Ohio native who studied at the University of Virginia, was pulled away from his tour group at the Pyongyang airport in 2016 and charged with crimes against the state for allegedly taking down a propaganda poster in his hotel. Read also: 5 things you need to know before traveling to North Korea He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour. After lengthy negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, Warmbier was released in a vegetative state in 2017 but died a few days later on American soil. 'Don't take pictures' Mainstream travel guides have steered clear of the repressive nation, with English-language stalwarts like "Lonely Planet" limiting their coverage to a few chapters in their Korea books. "Don't take any pictures of airports, road, bridges or train stations," the "Petit Fute" warns, and make sure you don't throw away or even fold any newspaper with a picture of former or current leaders. "Roll it up instead," the guide advises. The book comes as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump are holding halting talks on ending the country's nuclear weapons efforts. "We launched this project four years ago, we didn't wait for Donald and Kim to start their little friendship," Labourdette said. "But it took quite a while to find qualified French writers." "Petit Fute" aims to publish guides on all the world's countries, or 204 instead of the 175 it covers now. "We still don't have Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Liberia," Labourdette said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Thu, March 21, 2019 21:04 996 dcc1aefb9780f102b77c720ee83293c2 2 News Hong-Kong,island,travel,destination,tourism,China,artificial-island Free Hong Kong plans to build one of the world's largest artificial islands with an eye-watering $79 billion price tag, city officials announced Tuesday. The government's HK$624 billion proposal to reclaim 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) of land around the territory's largest island, Lantau, has been touted as a solution to the pressing housing shortage in the city, which is notorious as one of the least affordable markets on the planet. Authorities said they hope to start work on reclaiming land in 2025, with an eye on allowing residents to move to the island in 2032. The artificial island -- the city's most expensive infrastructure project to date -- would be four times the cost of building Hong Kong International Airport, which opened on Lantau in 1998, and far outstrip Dubai's famous palm-tree shaped Palm Jumeirah, which reportedly cost $12 billion to build. The man-made island would be nearly three times the size of New York's Central Park and provide up to 260,000 flats, more than 70 percent of which would be used for public housing, the government has said. But critics say the vast reclamation project is too costly and could damage the environment, especially marine life, with many also expressing frustration over the lack of a public say in the plans. "When all aspects of Hong Kong's public services and facilities are on the brink of collapse, will the (Lantau project) -- as the government's panacea -- solve problems or create a bigger crisis?" pro-democracy lawmaker Eddie Chu said on his Facebook page. Read also: Dutch build artificial islands to bring wildlife back He estimated the cost of the project could balloon to more than $112 billion by 2025, when reclamation work is expected to start. Authorities are also planning to build another 700-hectare artificial island around Lantau, but have not released any further details about that project or its cost. Lantau island is also home to a new mega bridge launched last year -- billed as the world's longest sea bridge -- connecting Hong Kong to neighbouring Macau and mainland China at a time when Beijing is seeking to tighten its grip on its semi-autonomous territories. Thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest the plans for the artificial island. Campaigners have also warned that the dwindling number of much-loved pink dolphins in waters surrounding Lantau may disappear altogether due to large-scale infrastructure projects. Monsantos Roundup weedkiller contributed to US mans cancer: jury CALIFORNIA: The weedkiller Roundup was a substantial factor in the cancer of a US man who developed a lump in his throat after decades of spraying his garden the second major legal defeat to agrochemical giant Monsanto in a year. By AFP Thursday 21 March 2019, 09:04AM The verdict was the second major defeat in US courts for Monsanto in cases related to its Roundup weed killer within the space of a year. Photo: AFP Edwin Hardeman, 70, treated his property in Sonoma County, California, regularly with the herbicide from 1980 to 2012 and was eventually diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. His lawyers Aimee Wagstaff and Jennifer Moore said in a joint statement their client was pleased with the decision. Now we can focus on the evidence that Monsanto has not taken a responsible, objective approach to the safety of Roundup, they added. Instead, it is clear from Monsantos actions that it does not particularly care whether its product is, in fact, giving people cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about the issue. Jurors had been asked to decide whether the ingredient glyphosate the worlds most widely-used herbicide that has long been linked to cancer by environmentalists was a substantial factor in Hardemans condition. Hardeman and his lawyers hugged as the jury announced its decision, which came after a week of deliberations and follows a groundbreaking state-level trial last year brought by another plaintiff with the same condition as Hardeman. The trial now moves to phase two deciding whether Monsantos conduct makes it liable. We look forward to presenting this evidence to the jury and holding Monsanto accountable for its bad conduct, Hardemans legal team added. Monsanto, which has sold Roundup worldwide for more than 40 years, contends that scores of studies show the products are not dangerous if properly used. The case is the first in US federal court on the alleged cancer risk posed by Roundup and will be seen as a test case, with thousands of other similar lawsuits already underway in the United States. It follows the groundbreaking state trial last year brought by school groundskeeper Dewayne Lee Johnson. In August, California jurors unanimously found that Monsanto acted with malice and that its glyphosate weedkillers Roundup and Ranger Pro substantially contributed to Johnsons terminal illness. Monsanto was initially ordered to pay $289 million (B9.17 billion) to Johnson, who has two young sons and is in the end stages of his cancer before the damages were reduced to $78.5 million (B2.5 billion.) Germanys Bayer, which bought Monsanto last year, filed an appeal. Hardeman testified that he sprayed Roundup on his property on the outskirts of San Francisco to get rid of poison ivy, which causes an irritating, sometimes painful rash. Monsanto has argued that Roundup was not to blame for Hardemans cancer, citing his age 66 when he was diagnosed and the complicating factor that he suffered from Hepatitis C. Hardemans lawyers countered that as he had been cured of Hepatitis C, it could not have been a factor in his development of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. One of the experts called by Hardemans team suggested that Roundup is even more dangerous than glyphosate on its own, because of additives in the weed killer. Look at all the studies, all the data, Hardemans lead attorney Aimee Wagstaff told the jury. Studies are pieces of a puzzle you have to put together. Unlike the US Environmental Protection Agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer which is part of the World Health Organization has listed glyphosate as probably carcinogenic. Bayer expressed disappointment with the decision but maintained that the science confirmed that glyphosate-based herbicides do not cause cancer. On Feb 13, Thailand's Pharmacy Council Assoc Prof Jiraporn Limpananont released a statement calling for a ban on glyphosate as well as paraquat and chlorpyrifos. She said the three chemicals were extremely poisonous. A few teaspoons of paraquat were lethal. Researchers had found paraquat contamination in the blood of pregnant women, umbilical cords, meconium (a newborns faeces), water, plants and food. Fifty-three countries had already banned its use, including the biggest producer of paraquat, China, she said. (See story here.) However, on Feb 14 the national committee on hazardous substances rejected the request to ban the use of the three chemicals. (See story here.) Watertown Lakers' varsity girls, boys hockey teams each win Friday games The Watertown Lakers overcame a 3-0 deficit after the first period to defeat the Huron All-Stars 7-4 in a South Dakota Amateur Hockey Association varsity girls game Friday night in the Maas Ice Arena. Researchers have found the US had the highest number of healthy life years lost due to mental health disorders between 1990 and 2017. A recent study found the US lost 2,221 healthy life years per 100 thousand residents to mental health disorders, for a total of over 181 million healthy life years lost to conditions of this kind. Researchers from the Delphi Behavioural Health Group analysed data from the World Health Organization between 1990 and 2017. They wanted to see how mental health disorders and substance abuse impacted countries around the world. The US was found to be particularly impacted by mental health disorders. With over 181 million healthy life years claimed by mental health disorders, we were alarmed to find the US lost more healthy life years than Canada, the U.K., Germany, Japan, Australia, Sweden, and Switzerland combined. Comparatively, Japan experienced the second largest loss at over 59 million healthy life years lost, a spokesperson for Delphi Health Group told Theravive. Countries analysed in the research included the US, Australia, Netherlands, France, Sweden, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Canada and Japan. Switzerland had the lowest rate of healthy life years lost to mental health disorders with 4,318,799 healthy life years lost. Japan has the second highest after the US with over 59 million healthy life years lost, and Germany was ranked third with over 46 million healthy life years lost. In the United States, mental health disorders came at an economic cost of 7.6 trillions dollars between 1990 and 2017. The researchers note that with that amount of money, the United States could pay for 60 years of cancer treatment for every person in the world. In every country studied, the researchers found that women lost more health life years to mental health disorders than men. Experts acknowledge that disorders like anxiety and depression are more common in women, but the researchers argue the reasoning behind the disparity could have cultural rather than biological explanations. Across each nation studied, more female healthy life years were lost to mental health disorders than male. While were aware of national cultural factors that may contribute to high stress levels such as industry pay and traditional roles within households, we were surprised to see this trend prominently echoed by each nation studied. As mentioned by the World Health Organization-- the data source we analyzed for this project-- more research is needed to conclusively determine whether the higher stress levels associated with females are rooted in biological differences, cultural differences, or some combination of factors, they said. As well as mental health disorders, the past few decades has seen a notable increase in substance abuse challenges in the United States. According to the CDC, an average of 130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. The researchers found that between 1990 and 2017, the United States lost over 80 million healthy life years to substance abuse disorders, a figure 10 times higher than any of the other countries studied. The United States is an outlier in terms of drug related abuse and deaths, say the researchers, seeing a significant increase in opioid related deaths since the late 1990s. Other countries by comparison have seen an improvement in healthy life years lost to drug use disorders. Portugal had the lowest number of healthy life years lost to drug use both in total and per capita. Portugal legalized drugs in 2001 and experts suggest the policy which focuses on free treatments rather than criminal penalties is working. In 2017, 198 per cent fewer healthy life years were lost to drug use disorders in Portugal when compared to the United States. Unlike the data on mental health disorders, men lost more healthy life years to drug use disorders than women in every country studied. In the US, men are more likely to use illegal drugs and die from an overdose. Since 1990, the US saw a 259 per cent increase in drug use disorders. The researchers say this is likely attributed to addictive prescription opioids from the 1990s and surges in methamphetamine use twice in the period studied. The cost of drug addiction in the US is significant, with the researchers finding the US lost 3.4 trillion dollars to drug use disorders between 1990 and 2017. That could fund the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 600 years, or fund a free public education program in the US for 72 years. Dr. Neeraj Gandotra, a Chief Medical Officer at Delphi Behavioral Health Group, says the impact of drug use disorders has far reaching consequences. Addiction does not just damage ones own mind and body, it sacrifices dreams. A person with a substance use disorder will lose productivity in several key areas, but most affected is their trajectory to contribute. Instead of the adult being productive for his or her family, community, and nation, the disorder erodes their social capital. They cannot contribute as well to their family responsibilities. They are less likely to contribute to their communities. Their behaviors are influenced by both psychological and physiological forces that seemingly trap their choices between only unfavorable decisions of self betrayal, he said. The researchers argue the significant rise of drug use disorders in recent times calls for a new approach, starting with eliminating stigma. Primary prevention is our greatest opportunity to reverse the course, but unfortunately by the time the disorder has taken hold, treatment must be the focus. If our findings prove anything, it is that these widespread disorders are a matter of medical need and not a moral failure, they said. Woodstock50 has released their lineup and we're here to help you filter through the acts that you most probably never heard of. We'll be going through the list according to the order of the Woodstock50 lineup and will be excluding acts from the original lineup. BlackRock Inc. funds are wading into the fast-growing cannabis industry as institutional investors grapple with betting on weed. Five actively managed BlackRock funds have become the largest institutional investor in Curaleaf Holdings Inc., the dispensary operator that announced plans Wednesday to sell its hemp-derived products in more than 800 CVS Health Corp. stores. With a market cap of about $2.3 billion, Curaleaf is the third-most valuable U.S. cannabis firm and has risen 45 per cent this year through Wednesday. It runs 42 dispensaries in 12 states. While BlackRocks Curaleaf stake is worth just $11 million, it makes the firm an early mover in a sector struggling to win institutional investment. Even though marijuana is legal in Canada, the federal prohibition on pot in the U.S. has created hurdles for domestic cannabis companies and the firms that seek to invest in them. The U.S. classifies marijuana as an illicit substance, even though its legal for recreational use in 10 states. Thats made many banks and institutional investors steer clear of pot in the U.S., even as sales of legal weed last year surged north of $10 billion. Most institutional investors and banks have stayed on the sidelines for investing in cannabis businesses that touch the plant, said John Brecker, a partner at Altitude Investment Management, a New York-based cannabis venture fund. Of BlackRocks five funds that report holding Curaleaf stock, the $878 million BlackRock Resources & Commodities Strategy Trust owns the most shares, according to SEC filings. It held about 1.1 million shares as of Dec. 31, according to the funds 2018 annual report. Curaleaf comprised 0.6 per cent of the funds net assets at year-end, the annual report shows. The fund invests in companies that work in natural resources and commodities, mostly in the mining and energy industries. Its top holdings are fertilizer maker Nutrien Ltd. and energy producers Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA. The fund is managed by Alastair Bishop, Kyle McClements, Christopher Accettella and Tom Holl. Farrell Denby, a spokesman for BlackRock, declined to comment. Curaleaf shares surged as much as 19 per cent on the heels of the CVS deal. They advanced to C$10.70 at 11:20 a.m. in trading in Toronto on Thursday. While Curaleaf has been a high-flying stock this year, the Wakefield, Massachusetts-based companys shares are down from when it went public through a reverse merger last October. The stock is listed on an alternative exchange based in Toronto, called the Canadian Securities Exchange. Curaleaf currently operates dispensaries in states including New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. The company has also been expanding through acquisitions, pushing into Nevada and California with recent deals valued at roughly $100 million. Some U.S. investors looking for ways to put money into the pot industry have gravitated to companies that dont deal directly with growing, distributing or processing the marijuana plant, which may make it be easier for compliance teams at large money managers to stomach. While Canadian marijuana companies have enjoyed more complete access to capital markets, the prospect that the U.S. ban could be lifted may give large asset managers and public companies reason to move further into the industry. Several Democratic presidential candidates favour legislation that could open the banking system to cannabis. Earlier this year New Jersey Senator Cory Booker reintroduced the Marijuana Justice Act, to remove the drug from the federal list of controlled substances. Fellow 2020 Democratic hopefuls, including senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, sponsored it. Investors in Canadas debt market are becoming more convinced that the next interest-rate move from the countrys central bank will be down, with bonds due in more than a decade now yielding less than cash. An investor has to be willing to lend for around 14 years to get more than the 1.75 percent rate that the Bank of Canada currently has as its overnight benchmark. While Canadian bonds due in 2033 yielded around 1.8 percent on Thursday, securities maturing in June 2029 offered just 1.68 percent. Local yields have fallen in recent weeks amid weakening economic data, a more downbeat assessment from the Bank of Canada and a global rally in bonds. Wednesdays dovish shift by the Federal Reserve and the markets more gloomy view on prospects for the U.S. buoyed sovereign bonds and supported the view that policy makers in Ottawa will need to cut rates. With the bulk of the curve being below the overnight rate, it really says that the BOC will be reluctantly led to cutting rates, said Ryan Goulding, a fixed-income manager at Vancouver-based Leith Wheeler Investment Counsel Ltd., which manages around $19 billion. But it may not happen until after a long, disappointing wait for capital spending to pick up, he said. Chances of a rate cut by the BOCs meeting in September have risen to about 20 percent, from 12 percent a week ago, according to swaps. Traders assign close to a zero percent chance of a hike by then. Canadas 10-year yields have dropped below the overnight rate for the first time since 2008, when central banks including the BOC were cutting rates to shield their economies from the financial crisis. Evident sign The yield curve inversion up to 10 years is an evident sign that the BoC is done in its tightening cycle, said Dominique Lapointe, an economist at Laurentian Bank Securities Inc. If you consider the consumers sensitivity to higher rates, a lack of business investment in recent quarters and weak growth in non-energy exports, despite a buoyant U.S. economy and a respite in trade tensions, this view has some legs. There may be a silver lining for companies from the decline in government bond yields: It makes it more attractive for them to tap the market. On Thursday, Inter Pipeline Ltd., with credit ratings in the lowest tier of investment grade, is seeking to issue $750 million of hybrid bonds with final maturity in 60 years at a yield of around 6.9 percent. Thats more than triple the yield on Canadian government bonds due in 2064. SOUTHFIELD, MICH.General Motors Co. will throw a bone to President Donald Trump on Friday by announcing an investment in its electric-car plant north of Detroit after enduring days of intense criticism for idling an Ohio factory. GM said in a media advisory that it will announce news on Friday along with the United Auto Workers union and local government officials at its factory in Orion Township, Michigan. The company said only that its making major new investment focused on the development of GM future technologies at the facility that builds fully electric Chevrolet Bolt cars. Chief executive officer Mary Barra is expected to attend, a company spokesperson said. Its probably an electric car, said Jeff Schuster, a forecasting analyst at LMC Automotive who expects GM to add up to four new EVs to the plants manufacturing mix over the next several years to make good on promises to electrify more of its lineup. Its essentially an all-electric story with an investment in EVs across several brands. Building an all-new electric vehicle in Orion would underscore GMs gradual shift away from gasoline-fuelled cars toward battery-powered models. The investment announcement will come at a time when the company is wrangling with the UAW and Trump over ending production at a car plant about a four-hour drive away in Lordstown, Ohio. After lambasting GM on Twitter over the weekend, Trump held a rally Wednesday in Lima, Ohio, where he again told the carmaker to either reopen the factory or off-load it to a company that will. Get that plant open or sell it to somebody and theyll open it, Trump said. Get it going now. GMs plans for Orion may not be enough to appease Trump, whose lashing out is probably linked to efforts to keep Ohio voters in his corner for the 2020 election. But the investment its announcing Friday is expected to create new jobs or transfer opportunities for workers at plants including Lordstown and another in the Hamtramck area near Detroit that are scheduled to be idled or closed by early next year. Trump has targeted GM for criticism ever since the company said it had no future product allocated to five North American plants four of which are in the U.S. and cut upwards of 14,000 jobs. Not all of those employees have been dismissed, with some having to move to plants in Michigan, Tennessee or Texas to stay employed. GM already has relocated 1,000 of the 2,800 affected U.S. hourly workers to other plants, including 500 from Lordstown. In anticipation of Trumps visit to Ohio, GM sought the help of the Center for Automotive Research to help build a defence against the presidents barbs. A GM spokesperson shared data compiled by the non-profit researcher showing the carmaker invested about $21 billion in the U.S. since 2010, the year it after it emerged from bankruptcy. That was about a quarter of the total investment made by all automakers. At the same time, GM has ramped up its operations in Mexico. Last year, the company imported almost 1 million vehicles into the U.S. from NAFTA neighbours, with most coming from Mexico. Its now the leading U.S. importer of vehicles built south of the border. In a move that may have amped up the pressure on GM to respond to Trumps attacks, rival Ford Motor Co. on Wednesday announced a $900 million investment planned for southeast Michigan facilities, the bulk of which will go to producing electric vehicles at a plant in Flat Rock, south of Detroit. That news landed hours before Trump started his rally in Ohio. GMs Orion plant builds the gasoline-powered Chevy Sonic subcompact and could continue to make conventional internal combustion engine cars, but the facility has tooling is in place to handle battery packs. Its also allowed to delegate non-assembly work to lower-wage union workers. The factory operates at only about 40 per cent of production capacity, making it likely that GM will add a new EV to better utilize assembly lines, Schuster said. The factory is in proximity to GMs headquarters in Detroit and its R&D centre in Warren, Michigan, which could help toward working out any kinks as it expands output of battery-powered cars. GM has already pledged that they have more EVs coming, said Kristin Dziczek, vice-president of the labour and industry economics group at the Center for Automotive Research. It makes sense to build it where they are already making EVs. GM announced in October 2017 that it planned to sell 20 fully electric vehicles by 2023, using a new battery platform that GM president Mark Reuss has said will enable the company to sell the cars at a profit. Schuster expects GM to debut small Chevy and Buick crossover electric vehicles and two more EVs for its upscale Cadillac brand coming after 2022. The Chevy and Buick EVs could use the current Chevy Bolt drive system, and the Cadillacs may be built on GMs next-generation plug-in system, he said. They will make them crossovers, which is what the consumer wants, Schuster said. Read more about: Canada will extend military training missions in Ukraine and Iraq, the countrys defence and foreign ministers said Monday. Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan and Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland made the joint announcement in Ottawa, saying Canada will extend a training mission in Ukraine until March 2022, in a continued sign of support amid Russian aggression in the region. Canadian forces will also continue a mission in Iraq to train, advise and aid that countrys security forces until March 2021 in its fight against Daesh. The two-year extension includes a shift toward capacity building in the region, Sajjan said in a statement. The current Iraq mission includes about 250 Canadian Forces personnel right now, while the Ukrainian operation includes about 200 personnel. Read more about: Torontos real-estate market welcomes criminals, giving them an easy way to invest dirty money and driving up housing prices for regular people, according to a report published today by Transparency International Canada. Our laws and regulations are full of cracks that can be exploited by criminals, and they appear to be doing so in growing numbers, the report says. Domestic criminals have known for decades that Canada is la la land for financial crime, but word has spread internationally too. Canadian real estate has attracted the attention (and money of dubious origin) of corrupt government officials and organized crime syndicates from across the globe. In the federal budget released this week, the government announced measures to combat money laundering through property in British Columbia, but ignored the Toronto market. Transparency International Canada studied all residential property transactions in the GTA since 2008 and discovered more than $20 billion in anonymous money entered the real estate market without any oversight or due diligence. During this period, more than 50,000 homes were purchased by corporate entities, which can easily hide their real owners behind straw men directors people paid a nominal fee to put their name on corporate documents. More than two-thirds of the money used to buy these residences came from untraceable sources: $9.8 billion was in cash and $10.4 billion was in the form of mortgages from unregulated lenders, which arent subject to anti-money laundering reporting rules. A worrying amount slips past regulators who dont really know who owns what, nor how much is being used for money laundering and tax evasion, states the report, titled Opacity: Why criminals love Canadian real estate (and how to fix it). For individuals looking to buy real estate undetected, corporations are extremely effective camouflage. Companies can register title to property in Ontario without disclosing any information about their directors, owners or even their country of registration. All that needs to be disclosed is the companys name and an address a post-office box or a lawyers address will suffice. In cases where the company cannot be located, it is practically impossible for the police or tax authorities to investigate suspicious activity, states the report. While its impossible to quantify how much dirty money has been invested in the property market, and to what extent that criminal activity has driven up housing prices, the report states it is clear that real estate is attractive to criminals with money to launder, and basic economics suggests that prices increase in response to added demand. Average housing prices in the GTA have more than doubled in the last decade, and the impacts have been felt far and wide: Condos sit empty, or are rented out night-by-night on Airbnb, contributing to a shortage of rental housing. Rising prices push workers out of the city and large mortgages have driven household debt to record levels, according to Statistics Canada. The Star has reported extensively on how Canada has developed a reputation as a tax haven and a destination for dirty money. In the Panama Papers, Canadian companies were sold by the now-defunct law firm Mossack Fonseca as vehicles to avoid tax. This activity was facilitated by a large number of loopholes in Canadas anti-money laundering rules. Getting real estate professionals to comply with the law has also been a challenge. A Star investigation published last year revealed that Canadian real-estate agents submitted suspicious transaction reports in less than 0.008 per cent of property sales made between 2013 and 2017. While the proceeds of crime can be laundered through any strand of the economy, there are several characteristics of the real-estate sector that make it particularly attractive for money laundering, states the report, listing weak regulation, lax enforcement, and the ability to hide in plain sight through anonymous ownership structures. The report found that anonymous owners are concentrated in the high-end luxury market, far more likely to buy homes with cash, and when they do take out a mortgage, they rely on alternative lenders, which are not subject to the same anti-money laundering rules as banks. While only 4 per cent of GTA residential property transactions involved a corporation, the report found the more expensive the house, the more likely it has an anonymous owner. Only 3.5 per cent of residential properties bought for under $1 million have corporate owners. But 54 per cent of homes purchased for $7 million $10 million are owned through a company. A Star investigation into the Four Seasons Private Residences Toronto found that nearly one-quarter of the units in the Yorkville luxury condo development were held by private corporations. Anonymous owners are more than three times as likely as individuals to pay for their homes in cash, which enables a buyer to avoid the scrutiny of financial institutions, the report says. While alternative lenders only account for 3 per cent of mortgages taken out by individuals, they provide 49 per cent of mortgages held by corporations, which means these loans were not subject to reporting rules, nor the federal stress test designed to ensure the loan can be repaid. Potential solutions for Canada and Ontario are already being implemented in real estate markets around the world, where it is becoming more difficult to anonymously own property. In 2016, the United States Treasury Department started tracking real-estate purchases by shell companies in Manhattan and Miami. In the months that followed, cash purchases by corporations dropped 70 to 95 per cent, and the monitoring program has now been expanded to six other areas including San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Antonio. British Columbia has plans to establish a public registry of the real owners behind companies that purchase real estate. The U.K. has proposed a ban on real-estate ownership through shell companies. It already has a public registry of the real owners of every company incorporated in the country, and will soon extend that registry to include the many island tax havens under its jurisdiction, including Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands. In January next year, all EU members will have to make their corporate ownership registries public. In Canada, the provincial finance ministers have pledged to collect more information without making it public on who owns corporations and make that information available to authorities, though there is no timeline on when that will happen and little urgency to get it done. In the meantime, anonymous ownership is still a reality in Torontos property market, the Transparency International Canada report states, attracting dirty money from far and wide. By hiding behind companies, trusts or straw men, criminals can enjoy the spoils of their crimes in plain sight while making it exceptionally difficult for law enforcement agencies to detect, investigate and prove their ultimate ownership. HALIFAXMayor Mike Savage says the municipality needs more control over policy to ensure immigrants come to Halifax and stay in Halifax. Savage highlighted his position on the matter at the National Metropolis Conference hosted at the Halifax Convention Centre on Thursday, involving talks on national immigration trends, policies and other issues. The bottom line: We want more newcomers to make Halifax home, he told a large crowd of academics, policy-makers and front line workers from the field of immigration settlement. But as Savage put it, he and other municipal leaders often feel like the kids at the table when it comes to making policy decisions that affect the attraction and retention of immigrants. One example: In 2014, Halifax council voted in favour of a motion from Savage to allow permanent residents to vote in elections. It hasnt happened because the province hasnt granted permission. Thats despite the fact that the practical benefits and challenges of immigration are felt potently at the local level. People from other parts of the world are key to our success and our future, Savage said, pointing to the potential for stabilizing the population and growing the economy. The power of the municipality to manage that intake is limited, as the formal responsibility for opening borders and providing services to immigrants is shared by Ottawa and the provinces. In 2013, Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) started a Local Immigration Partnership to encourage collaboration between local settlement organizations. The HRM website notes that such partnerships are common in Canadian cities, numbering about 60. Roberto Montiel, the co-ordinator of the Halifax Immigration Partnership (HIP), told the Star that the program has changed significantly since it started six years ago. Montiel is the only full-time employee on the team. At the beginning, (significant) immigration was more of an aspiration for Halifax. Right now, it is a reality, he said. Montiel who started with HIP in 2015 said the programs original goal of connecting immigration settlement services has been achieved. Now hes creating new goals, including increasing civic engagement of immigrants. The mayor had that in mind, too, with his motion to allow permanent residents to vote. It is a ridiculous anachronism of the past that we still have a lot of governance rules that hold cities back from doing things, Savage said. The feds have the money, the provinces have the jurisdiction, but the cities have the problem. Savage said he coined that aphorism for housing issues but found it fitting for immigration, too. For Jennifer Watts, the CEO of the Halifax-based Immigration Services Association of Nova Scotia (ISANS), the problem in HRM is a moving target. (The challenge) might have actually been retention, of keeping people here. But were seeing that thats changing, she said in an interview. According to the Nova Scotia Office of Immigration, the province has the highest retention rate in Atlantic Canada, at about 71 per cent. Still, that hasnt changed since 2005 and it remains below the national average of 86 per cent. Municipalities, according to Watts, have a huge role to play in retaining and integrating immigrants. The municipal governments and local governments play such a tactile role in terms of the relationship with citizens, she said. When we have cities engaged and looking at immigration and really trying to work on how to settle people, it just has such a greater impact whether for refugees or immigrants when they come to this country. Theres a paucity of data to indicate how cities are doing in their efforts to affect the state of immigration within their limits something Montiel would like to see change. We need to measure whos staying here and whether were retaining people for the right reasons and also whether people are staying here longer than five years, he said, noting that five years is the federal statistical standard for measuring immigrant retention. So that immigration can really contribute to a thriving city, it needs to be much more than five years. You need to have families settling here, people staying here for the long haul and really being committed to growing this city, to making this city vibrant and feeling that they have ownership. Montiel said HIP doesnt have the capacity to look more closely at retention, nor does he think its the necessarily the right focus for the program. The conference continues until Saturday. Read more about: Workplace Safety and Insurance Board staff rallied outside their own downtown Toronto offices Thursday, calling on their employer to address chronic staffing shortages and issues with a new call centre model criticized by some for compromising service to vulnerable injured workers. The protest comes after numerous complaints by workers and their union about unmanageable workloads and internal chaos, according to documents previously obtained by the Star through a Freedom of Information request. Fred Hahn, Ontario president for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents WSIB staff, said employees are under enormous stress as a result of staffing reductions and repeated organizational change at the board. They are the backbone of this system he said. Without these workers, there would be no workers compensation system. By noon Thursday, around 100 WSIB employees had gathered on their lunch break to rally outside the building the first of 13 protests organized for the coming weeks at WSIB offices around Ontario. As previously reported by the Star, a 2018 poll conducted by the union found that 90 per cent of the 263 employees surveyed said work-related stress was impacting their personal lives and 92 per cent attributed workload issues to understaffing at the WSIB. In July, the board unrolled a new service delivery model that removed dedicated case managers from injured workers files. Under the new model, claimants now go into a general pool and are triaged based on the complexity of the case. We recently empowered more of our staff to make decisions and work to their full professional capacity so that people who need our help get it faster. Now eligibility decisions are being made sooner, first payments delivered faster, and calls answered the first time, said board spokesperson Christine Arnott in a statement. We know these types of internal process changes can be thrilling for some and challenging to others. We will continue to support staff through this transition. In internal communications obtained by the Star, employees have blasted the new call centre model, which they claim is creating service issues that could have life and death implications for injured workers. Accident rates are going up while resolutions to (injured worker) claims are going down, said one employee. There are not enough people to process work and queues keep piling up, while people that are disabled from a workplace injury are waiting for someone to get back to them. I find that embarrassing. Karl Crevar, who injured his back on the job in 1987 and has been an injured worker advocate ever since, attended Thursdays rally because of the emotional and financial impact on accident victims caused by reduced staffing and the new service model. The records obtained by the Stars Freedom of Information request show there has been a 33 per cent increase in allowed lost-time injury claims between 2015 and 2018, from 51,500 to almost 70,000 projected claims this year. But despite this increased volume, the number of front-line staff at the board fell by 9 per cent over the same period. There are currently 785 case managers and adjudicators at the board, down from 815 in 2015. CUPE staffer Fred Ho said the result is amazingly large numbers of staff on short-term disability leave and reduced service for some of the most vulnerable injured workers. While the board used to employ 12 advanced practical nurses who work directly with critically injured workers, some of whom have terminal occupational diseases, it now employs two for the entire province. CUPE said it has asked the board to conduct a workload study, but said the organization has so far refused. The WSIB did not respond to the Stars questions about whether it had agreed to conduct a workload survey, or whether it had hired any additional staff to address front-line shortages. Should a father in his 40s receive a harsher adult sentence for committing a knifepoint rape in downtown Toronto in 1990, or should he be sentenced as the gangly, troubled 17-year-old he was at the time of the vicious crime? The man, known as R.D.M., was convicted last year under the Youth Criminal Justice Act of charges he raped, threatened and robbed a young woman, known as S.W., based largely on a DNA match made in 2016. Crown attorney Cara Sweeny is asking the trial judge to sentence him as an adult to 10 years in prison. (A second man who participated in the attack has never been found.) Under the YCJA, R.D.M.s identity is covered under a publication ban that could lift if Sweeny is successful. On Thursday, Sweeny told Superior Court Justice Brian OMarra that the maximum 16-month sentence under the YCJA would not be sufficient to hold him accountable. Obviously, that sentence is far too low, she argued, given the prolonged and horrific nature of the crime. Sweeny recounted that S.W. was a sex worker in August 1990 when two men grabbed her off the street, told her to close her eyes, and held her down while they took turns raping her, before stealing her money and leaving her naked and terrified near Church St. and Carlton Ave. Her whole life was turned upside down and she left Toronto not long after it happened, Sweeny said. At the time, R.D.M. was six months shy of the 18th birthday that would have made him an adult under the law, she noted. Nor has he lived an unblemished life since he has committed numerous offences, including robbery, aggravated assault, criminal harassment and two assaults with a weapon, in addition to several breaches of court orders. Except for a 2014 drug charge that led to his DNA being taken, he has had no convictions since 2005. Defence lawyer Lisa Jorgensen asked OMarra not to use R.D.M.s later bad decisions to give him a harsher sentence. She urged the judge to sentence him as he was in 1990, a young kid gangly, (with) no record who had a textbook, difficult, horrible childhood and was living on the streets at the time. Thats the child you need to sentence today, Jorgensen said The YCJA, she added, recognizes that young people are vulnerable and has sentencing tailored to give them a chance to live healthy and productive lives. Jorgensen argued 16 months under the YCJA is a fit sentence, though if OMarra sides with the prosecution and sentences R.D.M. as an adult, a three-year term would be appropriate. She said her client has taken significant steps to get his life on track, eschewing alcohol and working full time. I think the man before you now is, after a long struggle, rehabilitated and the court should have confidence there is a very low likelihood of these offences, or any offence, ever being committed again. The case is unusual but not unprecedented. In 1983, a 70-year-old woman in southwestern Ontario was raped and murdered. The crime went unsolved until a thumbprint left at the scene was linked to Christopher Ellacott. He was 15 at the time. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 2012 as a middle-aged man with a job, two children and no other criminal convictions. The judge agreed with the Crown that he should be sentenced as an adult not a youthful offender. He received a life sentence with a seven-year parole ineligibility period and lifetime supervision. In 2017, Ontarios highest court upheld the judges decision, saying the adult sentence was not demonstrably unfit. The appellant committed a gruesome crime at the age of 15. He sexually assaulted and murdered his elderly, vulnerable neighbour. He went on as though nothing had happened, avoiding justice for nearly 30 years. There is no explanation for his crime; no sense of what motivated him to have committed so heinous an act, the Court of Appeal judges wrote. OMarra will hear further arguments in the 1990 Toronto rape case in May. Mayor John Torys executive committee voted Thursday to ask the Ontario government to publish advice its received from the provinces special adviser on its plan to take over Torontos subway. Although the report debated by the committee was intended to provide councillors with an update on talks between the city and the province about the subway upload, much of the discussion centred around how little is still known about how the proposal would work. Key questions such as how much of the network the province would take over and how transit funding responsibilities would be split remain unanswered, even though Premier Doug Fords Progressive Conservatives have said the province plans to introduce legislation on the upload by June. The city is also set to launch public consultations on the proposal in the coming weeks. In what he described as an effort to shed light on the plan, Councillor Michael Thompson introduced a motion asking for Queens Park to release the report provided to cabinet by Michael Lindsay, the expert Ford appointed in August to advise his government on the upload. I do think we all need more information to help us to be much more informed in terms what it is that were going to be dealing with, and the decisions that we make thereafter, Thompson told the committee. His motion passed unanimously. The committee also voted to approve spending $2 million to participate in the talks, an expense the city hopes to recoup from the province. The decisions wont be final until council votes on them at its scheduled meeting next week. A spokesperson for Transportation Minister Jeff Yurek immediately shot down the idea of releasing Lindsays advice however, saying councillors had misunderstood the advisers work. The motion assumes that the special adviser was hired to write a report, when in fact, he provides ongoing advice to cabinet, said Mike Winterburn in an email. Winterburn pointed out that at least some of Lindsays work is already public. He said Lindsay collaborated with city officials to produce terms of reference for the upload discussions and that document was released on the morning after it was signed. Tory and the councillors on his executive deferred any decision on a proposal to implement a public-relations campaign highlighting the importance of retaining control of Torontos subways that would include advertisements on the transit system. The proposal was first introduced at council last month by councillors Joe Cressy and Josh Matlow, neither of whom are on the mayors executive. On Thursday the committee voted to send the proposal back to council next week with no recommendation. Although the mayor and a majority of council have voted to register their opposition to the upload, Tory argued it would be premature to launch a campaign against the provinces plan before any firm proposal had been put forward. I can assure you that this is the beginning, not the end, and if we get to the stage where we have an actual proposal on the table or an ultimatum that were either for or against, Ill be the first one to say Im supportive at that time of a campaign that either supports or opposes something, he said. The committee asked staff to come to council next week with a date for the first consultations. Councillor Gord Perks said so little is known about the upload plan he didnt see how the city could consult the public on it. He said he himself wouldnt know how to respond if asked to weigh in. You might as well ask me to explain the mathematics behind Heisenbergs uncertainty principle, he said. According to the terms of reference released last month, the city and province are reviewing three options, all of which could significantly alter the oversight of Torontos transit system. The provinces preferred option is to take ownership of the subway network, while leaving day-to-day operations and fare collection to the TTC. Fords government argues this arrangement would ensure new transit is built faster because the province has greater financial powers to invest in infrastructure. The two parties will also review the possibility of the province only taking ownership of new transit projects, or a realignment of transit responsibilities that could see changes to governance and funding but wouldnt necessarily result in subway assets transferring to Queens Park. City manager Chris Murray told reporters after the meeting that talks with the province so far had been professional and cordial, but the city had raised concerns about whether the province would need to own the subway in order to provide the benefits the PCs say the upload would deliver. Murray noted the TTC recently released a report saying the subway has about $22 billion in capital needs over the next 15 years, most of which is unfunded, and said a primary concern of the citys is securing sustainable transit funding. How is it that we can look after a system thats in need of significant repair, as well as expand it? he said. Ben Spurr is a Toronto-based reporter covering transportation. Reach him by email at bspurr@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @BenSpurr Read more about: Four out of every 10 arrests Toronto police officers made between 2014 to 2016 involved strip searches an inherently degrading police practice that a landmark Supreme Court decision ruled should never become routine. The staggering number of strip searches performed in Toronto a rate 40 times that of five other Ontario police forces of comparable size is described in a comprehensive report released Thursday by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD). The systemic review which grew out of the unabated number of individual strip-search complaints to the police watchdog concludes that police officers across Ontario continue to conduct unnecessary or even unlawful strip searches. This, despite the nearly 20-year-old guidelines on when and how strip searches can be conducted. The parameters were established in the Supreme Court ruling in R v. Golden, a case that involved a Toronto police strip search that judges found went too far. As a result of these serious issues of police compliance, courts in Ontario all-too-regularly toss cases or evidence due to unlawful or unreasonable searches, and too many people are humiliated by the intrusive searches, the OIPRD report finds. Over the years, there has been a continuous stream of reported cases involving unconstitutional strip searches. Put simply, the issue has not abated despite the passage of 18 years since the Golden decision, writes OIPRD director Gerry McNeilly, in the report, called Breaking the Golden Rule. Read more: Whats changing in Fords new police oversight law and why it matters Watchdog rapped after secret chats with Toronto cops led to nixed misconduct findings Under the Supreme Court definition, a strip search is the removal or rearrangement of some or all of someones clothing to allow for an officer to visually inspect genitals, buttocks, breasts or undergarments. Because they are inherently humiliating, the top court ruled they cannot be carried out simply as a matter of routine policy. She felt that it was sexual in nature she felt violated, said Audra Root, whose daughter Megan Anoquot filed a lawsuit against the Toronto police services board and four officers in 2013 after what she called a humiliating search that came after Anoquot was charged with shoplifting. The case is still ongoing according to Root, though it has recently stalled after her daughters sudden death from an overdose last year, at 28. Root says her daughter was distraught after the search. Root is relieved that the OIPRD report has shone a light on how common strip searches are. Its about time that this matter is addressed, Root told the Star in an interview Thursday. After requesting data from Ontarios 53 police services, the report concludes Toronto police is an outlier, conducting far too many strip searches compared to others of their size. Toronto police conducted 17,654 strip searches in 2016 roughly 37.5 per cent of all 47,050 arrests made that year. In 2014 and 2015, Toronto police conducted strip searches in more than 40 per cent of all arrests. That rate is 40 times higher than the less-than one percent rate of strip searches conducted in police services during the same time period 2014 to 2016 inclusive in Hamilton, Durham Region, Ottawa, and Windsor as well as the Ontario Provincial Police. An analysis of the underlying documentation makes it clear that the disparity between Toronto Police Service rates and those of other large police services cannot be explained simply by differences in methodology or definition, reads the report. Its not simply explained through differences in statistical collection, said Mark Sandler, lawyer for the review, at a press conference Thursday. In our view, it did represent a difference in practice between the Toronto police service and other police services. Meaghan Gray, a spokesperson for the Toronto police, said in an email that Toronto police had been addressing the challenges and sensitivities associated to strip searches for the last few years. That has included a review of procedures and training to ensure these searches are not conducted arbitrarily. She noted Toronto police also recently launched a full body scan pilot, an initiative aimed at reducing strip searches. Preliminary results indicate our goals have been met. We have decreased the level of intrusiveness for those being searched. We have addressed issues of wellness for our members who do these searches. And not one complaint has been received as a result of a full body scan. Gray added that the issue of strip searches is more complex than simply looking at the numbers, and that when done appropriately, they can be a necessary safety requirement resulting in the seizure of weapons and drugs which pose a significant risk to the person and those around them. Andy Pringle, chair of the Toronto police board, said in an email that the board and the service are reviewing OIPRD report. The board views this as an important issue and we will engage the chief, as we do on all significant issues. As appropriate, and after the board obtains further information, it may comment further, she said. Toronto police were also involved in 40 of the 89 criminal court decisions since the Golden ruling, where a judge found a police strip search violated of the defendants charter rights. In 74 of the cases 83 per cent the defendants rights were violated based on the absence of, or inadequacy of, grounds justifying a strip search, the report finds. This represents an alarming number of cases. It is made worse by the fact that in 18 cases, trial judges specifically commented on how the police treated strip searching as a matter of routine, the report states. Among those cases was a 2016 incident where a judge called out an entire North Toronto police detachment, 32 division, when tossing a mans impaired driving charges after she found he was forced to remove his pants for no reason. Sadly, the evidence before me reveals that the unconstitutional strip search of (the defendant) was not an isolated incident. Indeed, the evidence highlights troubling systemic issues relating to strip searches at 32 Division, Ontario Court Justice Heather McArthur wrote in her ruling. McNeillys report makes 50 recommendations, first among them that every Ontario police service in Ontario ensure that they are made aware of judicial findings of charter violations in strip search cases, and proactively take measures to address the issues raised when appropriate. Such measures may involve anything from counselling, guidance, added supervision or training to prevent future violations to disciplinary proceedings in more egregious cases, McNeilly writes. Another central finding of the report came after his office requested strip search data from Ontarios 53 police services. Many dont keep data, let alone reliable and detailed information, including about total arrests, the number of strip searches conducted, and what was found as a result. The majority of services indicated that they did not keep strip-search statistics at all. Nor did they have a process to collect such statistics since most of the information sought was only to be found, if at all, in officers notes. As a result, information could not be extracted in a timely or accurate manner, the report states. Sixty-two per cent of police services could provide some statistics about what, if any, strip searches were done during the requested time period 2014 to 2016 inclusive although 17 per cent of those police services provided such information based on memory alone, the report states. The remaining 38 per cent of police services did not provide any such data. Additionally, because Ontario police services have generally failed to keep race-related statistics, oversight agencies such as the OIPRD cannot conduct evidence-based (rather than speculative) evaluations of the role that race plays in whether and how strip searches are conducted, McNeilly writes. This type of evaluation is long overdue, the report states. The report recommends that all police services in Ontario ensure that they keep accurate statistics of the number of persons they arrest or detain, the number of persons strip searched and the justifications provided for such strip searches. The statistics should also identify, among other things, the race of the person subjected to such a strip search, the report states, adding the statistics should be made available to the public in an annual report. Wendy Gillis is a Toronto-based reporter covering crime and policing. Reach her by email at wgillis@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @wendygillis Read more about: An escalating war of words between the leadership of the provinces dental watchdog and its employees has prompted calls for an independent investigation into an alleged toxic workplace culture of bullying and harassment that is undermining the public interest. On Dec. 30, 16 anonymous current and former staff of the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario (RCDSO) sent provincial government and opposition politicians as well as the Public Appointments Secretariat of Ontario a list of allegations. Bullying and harassmentpersist, reads the letter from the 16 authors, who say they have kept their identities secret for fear of repercussions. Swearing, shouting, racist and sexist remarks, intentional marginalization of female and racialized staff and sexualized behaviour are all ongoing problems. No one bothers to report such incidents to (human resources) because they have been normalized and no remedial action would be taken anyway. The authors say they are the tip of the iceberg. Many others were and are too afraid to participate but support us in spirit and hope we succeed. We only remain in the shadows for fear of retaliation, but we are not going away and we are not giving up. The letter followed a Toronto Star investigation published in December that detailed allegations from more than two dozen current and former staff, senior executives and former executive council members claiming they had been targeted with legal threats and were bullied for expressing opinions critical of college leadership. In a written statement after the story was published, then college president Ron Yarascavitch (whose term ended in January) dismissed the Star investigation, saying it improperly relies on bald, unfounded allegations leveled in letters containing material false statements. The statement said the college has a robust complaints reporting system, which the anonymous critics did not use to the best of the colleges knowledge. Yarascavitch declined comment when contacted by the Star for this story, referring all questions to the colleges communications staff. In response, the 16 wrote that any attempt by the RCDSO to verify or refute our allegations has been cursory at best, since not a single one of us or any of our colleagues has ever heard about or been interviewed for any investigation. The assertion in the (Yarascavitch) statement that the Star improperly relied on bald, unfounded allegations is therefore disingenuous. Read More: Ontarios dental watchdog bares sharp teeth against critics Ontarios dentist watchdog plagued by toxic culture, lawsuit alleges The radical paradigm shift thats changing Ontarios oversight system for health professionals In January, the group of 16 wrote again to the politicians, saying the situation is spiralling downward, with morale at the RDCSO sinking to new lows while its leadership spends massive amounts of membership fees trying to cover up rather than fix the problems. College registrar Irwin Fefergrad declined interview requests. A written statement from college counsel Linda Rothstein a partner in Toronto firm Paliare Roland calls the allegations inaccurate, or false, or misleading, on numerous issues. There is no truth to these allegations. The college takes allegations about its workplace culture extremely seriously, the statement reads. It is apparent that the anonymous group prefers to publicize their grievances, rather than engage in constructive work-place mechanisms to address them. The statement also says that following the Star investigation, the college, which is the provincial regulator for Ontarios dentists, created a hotline for staff to register specific complaints with an independent investigator. NDP health critic France Gelinas, says she has been aware of internal strife at the college for two years and is calling for a formal investigation. Now that I know this is continuing, we need to have an independent third party overseer to get to the bottom of it. I know that if the college is going to be able to protect the public, we need to clear the air, said Gelinas. Gelinas says she became aware of dissent inside the college in the fall of 2017 when she received letters from staff and met with dentists complaining of intimidation, harassment and bullying that impeded the colleges ability to protect the public, she said. In February 2018, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath wrote to then-premier Kathleen Wynne and then-health minister Eric Hoskins urging them to take immediate action to investigate these serious allegations. Gelinas says she will now be raising the issue with health minister Christine Elliott to remind her of her important responsibility to make sure the public continues to have confidence in the college. Questions for Elliott from the Star were referred to a health ministry spokesperson, who said the government strongly supports that all workplaces should be respectful and free from bullying or harassment. A spokesperson for labour minister Laurie Scott, who was also sent the allegations, said she would not comment on an internal (human resources) matter. In one case reported by the Star in October, college lawyers pursued a former college staff member who they suspected leaked documents to the Star. He did not. The former staff member was threatened with legal action if he refused to be interviewed and submit his computer for examination. In her statement to the Star, Rothstein said the college is taking steps to investigate and address the potential confidentiality breach, which is a matter that the college takes very seriously. The Star story also detailed three libel notices college lawyers served a former college president, vice president and a third dentist in 2013 after each criticized the college in a newspaper story. These were legal steps to protect the institution from serious wrongdoing, Yarascavitch wrote. The college carefully considers and investigates matters that arise before taking any legal steps. But the 16 current and former staffers counter that it was all part of the colleges culture of silencing critics. I am a longtime RCDSO staff member and have both witnessed and been a victim of the bullying, harassment, threats and intimidation, said a current college employee on condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. It took a lot of courage for RCDSO staff to come forward with our concerns and we have acted honourably at all times, only escalating the situation when our voices were not heard by those who were supposed to be protecting us. We are not the ones spreading misinformation and I am outraged that our integrity is being impugned by the RCDSO PresidentDentists and the public should be asking themselves why the RCDSO is fighting so hard to avoid an independent review. A former senior staff member called Yarascavitchs statement laughable. I have never worked at nor heard of another work place that is so toxic and poorly governed, he said. If the Premier or Ministry of Health ever intervenes, they will learn a great deal about how the self-governance model for health professions in Ontario is brokenIt was governed by fear and intimidation during my tenure and it appears that nothing has changed. In response, college lawyers say the college can not comment on statements by unknown parties about unspecified incidents. It says the college is not aware of any employee who was a victim of bullying, harassment or intimidation who was not protected and none who were silenced or had their employment threatened. Another allegation levelled by the anonymous critics is financial impropriety. The Star previously reported Fefergrads salary in 2017 was $607,497. And the colleges annual legal bills have risen from about $672,000 in 2012 to more than $1 million this year. The college attributed this primarily to an increase in legal costs for regulatory oversight of dental misconduct. Documents obtained by the Star show Yarascavitch, who has an active dental practice in St. Catharines, earned a total of $80,506 in 2016 for his college work, including a $50,000 annual honorarium set aside for college presidents. The remainder is paid for the presidents work on committees. In 2017, Yarascavitch earned $67,260. Last year, he was paid $80,121 as of Sept. 30. The college had budgeted $60,000 for his earnings in 2018. The college did not provide his full remuneration for 2018. In a statement, it said any exceedances in the presidents remunmeration relate to the number of days he was entitled to a per diem based on his time commitment to college business. This cannot be accurately predicted in the budgeting process. The statement acknowledges the colleges operating budget has jumped by $2.17 million from last year. It attributes the increase to $1.6 million in expenses related to staff resources to deal with increasing complexity and volume of work, upgrading technology and an increase in legal fees principally related to the colleges regulatory mandate. The reality is that the college is an extremely high-performing organization, and it is a positive, inclusive work place. With files from Kenyon Wallace GROUNDED: A woman dubbed a serial stowaway. Marilyn Hartman, 67, was sentenced to 18 months of probation after pleading guilty to sneaking past Chicago airport security last year and flying to London without a ticket. Shes been nabbed in airports dozens of times. CORRALLED: A robbery suspect who was not dressed to blend in. Maryland police say a 28-year-old wore a pink unicorn costume as he smashed a convenience store register with a crowbar. After a getaway car crash led to serious injuries, a discarded unicorn costume was found in the bushes. STEPPING OUT: NFLer Haloti Ngata. His retirement after 13 seasons was announced in style from the peak of Kilimanjaro. Just a man standing on top of the world with a heart full of gratitude, said the 35-year-old defensive tackle. He was most recently a Philadelphia Eagle before retiring on top. KICKED OUT: Danish MP Mette Abildgaard. She brought her baby to parliament when her child-care plans changed, and was surprised when the Speaker asked her to take her daughter out, the Washington Post reports. She gave the baby to an assistant and returned for a vote. TARGETED: Parents in Nigeria who refuse to send their kids to school. The education minister is warning parents theyll be prosecuted, BBC reports. Many parents cant afford to pay for schooling; an estimated 10.5 million Nigerian children aged 5-14 are not in classes. PROTECTED: A raised middle finger, as free speech. A court ruling allowed a driver who gave a police officer the finger to sue. A middle finger salute by Debra L. Cruise-Gulyas in Michigan, to a cop whod written her a ticket, led to a new ticket which courts said was unjustified. PROMOTING SEXISM: Peppa Pig, at least according to Londons fire service. The London Fire Brigade criticized the childrens book character for out of date stereotypical gender specific wording, to wit, an episode of the cartoon that referred to a firefighter as a fireman. PROMOTING EQUALITY: A leading actresss idea for redressing the balance in acting history. Gemma Chan (Crazy Rich Asians, Mary Queen of Scots) says actors of colour should play white historical figures, a la Hamilton. If John Wayne can play Genghis Khan, I can play Bess of Hardwick. SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - El Salvadors Supreme Court has approved making an extradition request for ex-President Mauricio Funes, who is living with his family in Nicaragua and is being sought by Salvadoran prosecutors for an array of alleged corruption-related crimes. The extradition request itself will be made to Nicaraguas representatives in El Salvador at a later date but will likely have little effect since Nicaragua granted Funes and his family asylum in 2016. Funes called the action irrelevant Thursday via Twitter. Salvadoran prosecutors allege that during Funes 5-year administration from 2009-2014, some $351 million in government funds were diverted to accounts tied to him and family members. CARACAS, Venezuela - The Latest on the political crisis in Venezuela (all times local): 1:50 p.m. The United Nations says it learned with concern about reports that Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidos chief of staff has been detained, and it renewed a call for all parties to lower tensions and refrain from any action that could lead to further escalation. U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq issued the appeal Thursday at U.N. headquarters in New York after being asked about Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reaction to the detention of Roberto Marrero, a key Guaido aide who was detained overnight by Venezuelan intelligence agents. He noted that U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet also expressed concern at Marreros detention. Haq said the United Nations still believes a dialogue between Guaido and President Nicolas Maduro is crucial to help the parties step back from the brink of heightened escalation. No one wants to see the society fall apart in any way, and its crucial therefore that the leaders engage in dialogue with each other, Haq said. We have called, of course, on all parties including the security forces to take steps to de-escalate the situation and we are continuing with that call. ___ 12:15 p.m. The International Monetary Fund says its not ready to make a determination on recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela. IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters at a press conference Thursday: At this point there is not yet clarity. He also said the IMF continues to monitor the situation very closely. He says, Member countries are in the process of establishing their position, and adds: We are listening carefully. The Inter-American Development Bank was the first international financial organization to recognize Guaido as the legitimate president of the South American country, a stand taken by the U.S. and about 50 other countries that contend Nicolas Maduros re-election last year was rigged. ___ 11:55 a.m. President Donald Trumps special envoy for Venezuela says he believes Venezuelan authorities are concerned about what the international reaction would be if they try to detain opposition leader Juan Guaido. Elliott Abrams said Thursday that he believes the government of President Nicolas Maduro is instead targeting Guaidos aides. Roberto Marrero is a key figure in Gauidos camp and was detained overnight by Venezuelan intelligence agents who raided his home. Abrams says the group of countries that support Guaido must immediately respond to Marreros detention. The U.S. has imposed oil sanctions on Venezuela as well as individuals linked to Maduro, and President Donald Trump has said tougher penalties could occur. The U.S. and about 50 other countries support Guaidos contention that he is the rightful leader of Venezuela and that Maduros re-election last year was illegitimate. ___ 11:45 a.m. Opposition leader Juan Guaido says the Venezuelan government is weak and doesnt dare to detain him. Guaido spoke Thursday after intelligence agents staged an overnight raid and detained Roberto Marrero, his key aide. The leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly said the chain of command in the government of President Nicolas Maduro is broken. In his words, Maduro doesnt dare to jail me, or hes not in charge. Maduro has described Guaido as a puppet in a U.S. scheme to overthrow him. ___ 11 a.m. Masked security forces detained a key aide to Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido in a raid on his home. Lawyer Roberto Marrero was taken away by intelligence agents Thursday in an overnight operation that was promptly condemned by Guaido as well as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called for his immediate release. We will hold accountable those involved, Pompeo tweeted. The Venezuelan government had no immediate comment on Marreros detention, which represented a sharp increase in police pressure on the opposition after a period of relative calm. Guaido had even said that the government was ignoring him in an attempt to sap the energy of the opposition. PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - An American security contractor at the centre of a mysterious case roiling Haitian politics says that he and a group of fellow veterans were sent to Haiti on a mission to protect a businessman signing a more than $50 million contract at the countrys central bank. Chris Osman, a 44-year-old retired Navy SEAL, told The Associated Press that he and six fellow contractors were arrested by Haitian police during what was supposed to be a simple Sunday afternoon reconnaissance of the route their client would take to the bank the following day, Feb. 18. It went bad for us, he said in the first on-the-record interview by any of the arrested men. I dont know what the real truth is. Osman said he and his fellow contractors carrying a dozen semi-automatic rifles and pistols, along with satellite phones and other gear had pulled away from the bank when they were stopped by police and detained for three days before they were set free by Haitis Justice Ministry and allowed to fly home to the U.S., where they were released without charges. The contractors unexplained release and the still-murky nature of their mission have helped fuel political chaos in Haiti, where President Jovenel Moise has faced months of protests over his governments failure to prosecute the theft and mismanagement of $2 billion in subsidized oil aid from Venezuela under the administration of his predecessor and political patron, Michel Martelly. Neither Moises administration nor the American ambassador in Haiti, Michele Sison, has offered any explanation of the U.S. contractors mission in Haiti or the reason for their release, which appeared to violate Haitian criminal procedure. Moises allies in the lower house of Parliament dissolved the Haitian government by dismissing Prime Minister Jean-Henry Ceant on Monday hours before he was due to testify in the Senate about the American contractors case. Communications Minister Jean-Michel Lapin was being named interim prime minister Thursday, but there seemed little likelihood that the government would be able to bring stability to a country gripped by rising inflation, energy shortages and popular discontent. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio flew to Haiti Wednesday for meetings with the president and opposition in which, the senator said on Twitter, he discussed the formation of a new government and the need for good faith dialogue and parliamentary elections scheduled for October. News site The Intercept reported Wednesday, citing anonymous sources, that one of the contractors, 52-year-old Marine veteran Kent Kroeker, had been told the mission was to escort presidential aide Fritz Jean-Louis to the Haitian central bank, who would electronically transfer $80 million from the governments Venezuela oil fund to a second account controlled solely by the president in order to give Moise greater power over the governments limited funds. Osman said that report did not match his experience in several key ways. Osman said he received a call from Hawkstorm Global, a security company based in Dallas, Texas, about a job in Haiti to provide private security for a client of the Bank of the Republic of Haiti for $1,000 a day. He said he didnt know the client until he arrived in Haiti on a commercial flight on Feb. 16 and was introduced to Josue Leconte, a Haitian-American businessman with ties to the Moise administration. Lecontes civil engineering firm, Preble-Rish, has done millions of dollars of business with the Haitian government over the years, according to Jake Johnston, a research associate at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research who recently published a three-week investigation into the contractors case. Lecontes partner is related by marriage to former president Martelly. These are not just acquaintances, but people who for decades are basically family, Johnston said. The only Haitian arrested in the case, Michael Estera, is a driver who has worked for Preble-Rish for many years, according to his lawyer. Leconte told the AP when reached by phone that he could not talk about the case and had no comment before hanging up. Meanwhile, spokesman Jean Baden Dubois said the governor of Haitis central bank was on a business trip in Qatar and unavailable for comment. The contractors were told that they would be escorting Leconte from his Port-au-Prince home to the central bank to sign an infrastructure deal with Moises administration, Osman said, adding that the deal required the signature of at least one high-ranking central bank official, hence the location. We were all told that it was a huge contract with (Lecontes) company ... and that his company provides engineering contracts for the government of Haiti and that they were really close friends with the president and that the money was for infrastructure and rebuilding Haiti, Osman said. On the day they were arrested, the group of four Americans, two Serbian nationals and two Haitian drivers got into two cars owned by Jean-Louis for a reconnaissance mission and to swing by the bank so some team members could talk to people there and let them know what they were doing, he said. The actual job didnt even start until the next day, Osman said, adding that he never met or saw Jean-Louis during his time in Haiti, and that the only time he heard the name was when police asked if he knew Jean-Louis while he was in jail. He said team members Dustin Porte and Talon Ray Burton got out of the car to speak with bank officials or security while the rest of the group stayed inside with weapons nearby. Porte and Burton could not be reached for comment, and Burtons brother did not return a message for comment. As they pulled away from the bank, Osman said a group of Haitian police officers stopped them and called their superiors. At that moment, Leconte and another man whom Osman identified as team leader and retired Navy SEAL Mike Phillips showed up in one car, and then Kroeker showed up in another car. Osman said police told Leconte and Phillips they could leave, and that Kroeker, a former KC-130 pilot, stayed with the group. They literally abandoned us, Osman said of Leconte and Phillips. Phillips declined to comment and referred requests for interviews to Kroeker, who did not respond to a request for comment. The group was released Feb. 20. Osman said a police officer simply opened the cell doors, led them to diplomatic vehicles that took them to the airport. He said he didnt know who ordered their release or authorized it. Once they arrived in Miami, he said the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security interviewed everyone separately for several hours. We asked what was going on, Osman said. They said, Nothing, man, youre not going to be charged with anything. ... Welcome home. _____ Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico. _____ Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein When New Zealands prime minister Jacinda Ardern announced last Saturday that the countrys gun laws would change, less than 24 hours had passed since the right-wing terrorist attack that killed at least 50 in Christchurch. On Thursday, she confirmed that her government had banned military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles and a buyback program was being set up. The changes were supported both by the coalition government and the center-right main opposition party. To U.S. observers in particular, the almost immediate response might have appeared surprising for a country that shares more similarities in its approach to guns with the United States than with the rest of the Western world. On social media, some ironically remarked earlier this week that New Zealand had not even tried thoughts and prayers yet. Used to express condolences, that term to many Americans now also stands for the chronic policy inaction of U.S. politicians following mass shootings. Q: How similar were gun laws in New Zealand and the United States until now? A: On the surface, New Zealand and the United States appeared to have a relatively similar approach to guns until Friday morning. Both are among the only nations without universal gun registration rules, and both have strong gun lobbies that have stalled previous attempts to rein in gun owners liberties. In New Zealand, the gun lobby dictates policy to the government, Philip Alpers, founding director of gun legislation research tool GunPolicy.org, told Australias ABC last week. They are listened to far too acutely by the government, and they have managed to water down every single attempt at improving the gun laws. The gun lobby is directly responsible for having defeated the amendments that could have prevented this crime. Sound familiar? New Zealands gun lobby shares many of its goals with the Americas National Rifle Association, the worlds biggest gun lobby organization, which supports aligned politicians financially and uses social media to attack its opponents. Some of the NRAs frequent arguments may also apply in New Zealand, with an estimated quarter of a million gun owners in a country of only 5 million people. Given that there are so many law-abiding gun owners who do not commit violence, said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, referring to the United States, the conclusion that many people draw is that mass shootings are due to evil or deeply disturbed individuals and not due to the wide availability of guns. In theory, that argument would work even better in New Zealand, where mass shootings and murders are far rarer than in the United States. Q: So, how could New Zealand ban some weapons so quickly? A: The answer is multi-faceted. - Unlike the NRA, New Zealands interest groups have predominantly lobbied the government quietly, rather than threatening politicians with the scorn of its powerful voter base. The perceived silence of those lobbying organizations led to some calls from gun enthusiasts for a bolder and more vocal stance. New Zealands gun lobbies were probably well aware, however, that they are not the NRA and will never be, despite the aspirations of some of their members. The countrys lobby mainly represents a core of rural supporters, whereas more than 86 per cent of New Zealanders now live in urban areas and form a largely liberal majority. In the United States, the ratio of citizens living in urban areas is slightly lower. More importantly, however, the U.S. system of representation and the way congressional districts are drawn increase the significance of rural Republican voters disproportionately. That helps explain why the NRA can pressure politicians into following its demands, even though NRA supporters account for only a fraction of all U.S. voters. - Electoral systems: Our form of government, with a Senate that gives extraordinary power to rural states over urban states and is deferential to states rights, makes it difficult to advance relatively modest gun-control measures, much less more sweeping measures, said gun policy expert Webster. In contrast, New Zealands election system is designed in a way that the number of lawmakers a party has in Parliament is aligned with its share among all votes cast. The mixed member proportional voting system which is also in place in countries such as Germany is supposed to prevent small interest groups from being able to gain disproportionate influence over lawmakers. - The power of courts: Ardern is also less likely to face challenges from the courts than politicians would in the United States, where the Second Amendment has been interpreted by the Supreme Court as giving individuals the right to own guns. Those legal hurdles have been exacerbated by a gun lobby that has conveyed a perception that tighter laws are by definition a violation of the Second Amendment. The gun lobby has been very influential in convincing people the [Second Amendment prohibits any] form of gun control, which affects the politics over even modest measures, Webster said. As a result, the United States is likely to remain an outlier on gun reform. Whereas New Zealands prime minister was able to say, Our gun laws will change, without having to fear her government would fall apart, the response after the next U.S. mass shooting will continue to be: Our gun laws wont change, but we can definitely offer thoughts and prayers. JAKARTA, INDONESIAThe families were still mourning relatives lost in the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia when they were herded into a hotel conference room a few weeks after the crash. Sign this form, they were told by employees of the low-cost carrier, and they would receive 1.3 billion rupiah, or $91,600. For those who lost breadwinners in the crash on Oct. 29, the money, government-mandated compensation for loss of life in an aviation accident, was welcomed. But that amount, while not insignificant for desperate families with bills to pay and children to school, was roughly the minimum they were entitled to receive under Indonesian law. And the conditions imposed by Lion Air before it would disburse the payments were complicated and shocking, with some legal experts questioning their legality. To collect the money, families had to sign a pledge, called a release and discharge, that they would not pursue legal action against Lion Air, its financial backers and insurers, as well as Boeing, which manufactured the nearly brand-new 737 Max 8 plane. Moreover, the signers promised not to disclose the terms of the agreement itself, a copy reviewed by The New York Times shows. Yet an Indonesian aviation act from 2011 specifies that when heirs receive the government-mandated payment, they do not give up their right to pursue legal action against a carrier or other entities that may have been involved in an air accident. The heirs of the victims have no obligation or duty to sign any requirements, including release and discharge, said Ahmad Sudiro, dean of the law faculty at Tarumanagara University in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. It could be that the company is trying to be tricky. This signing has no jurisdictional basis but this is what the company is trying to force the families to do. The document that relatives signed included an eight-page list of hundreds of other companies, many subcontractors for Boeing, which also could not be sued if relatives were to claim the money. Boeing officials declined to comment on the agreements terms. This is a very unorthodox document from Lion Air, said Charles Herrmann, an American lawyer who is representing clients from the Lion Air crash and who has litigated aviation accident lawsuits for decades. Ive never seen anything like it. Nearly five months after Flight 610 hurtled into the Java Sea, many questions remain about what caused the accident, which was followed on March 10 by the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, another nearly new Boeing Max 8, outside Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. Investigations have centred on whether pilots may have been foiled by an automated system designed to prevent stalls in the Max 8 that could have pitched the plane forward into a fatal nosedive when triggered by false data. But for the families of the 189 people who died on Flight 610, some say their grief has been exacerbated by an effort to pressure them to accept low compensation and renounce all rights to sue. Families said they were not allowed to take home copies of the release form to study it before signing. Some said they were prohibited from bringing their own lawyers into the room to scan the paperwork, even though the form said they had been given the opportunity to consult with a lawyer. A Lion Air official videotaped the family members who signed the form, some of the signatories said. There was no time to read it carefully or check it, said Latief Nurbana, a high-ranking civil servant whose 24-year-old son was killed in the crash. It is cruel and it is illegal. Latief is among those who refused to sign. The amount is small, said Dedi Sukendar, a relative of one of the crash victims who said the family agreed to sign the release form so that the dead mans two children could afford to continue their schooling. But we wanted the psychological pressure to stop. The Indonesian Ministry of Transportation has sent letters to Lion Air reminding the carrier of its obligation to conform to aviation regulations. A few days ago, the ministry received a reply from Lion Air saying they would comply, transportation officials said. Lion Air officials did not respond to questions about the form. More than 20 relatives of those who died on Flight 610 have sued Boeing in the United States, including the family of the planes co-pilot, Harvino, who filed a suit claiming that the plane was defective and in a condition that rendered it unreasonably dangerous for its intended use. Following the Ethiopian Airlines crash earlier this month, countries around the world grounded the 737 Max 8. The U.S. Department of Transportation has begun looking at investigating the Federal Aviation Administrations certification of the bestselling plane model. Pilots who flew the Max 8 said they were not adequately informed about the new automated stall-prevention system, nor were they instructed how to disable it should incorrect data prompt it to seize control of the plane and propel its nose down. Having two horrible accidents within months of each other has put the focus in the United States on what is going on with the Max 8 and it strengthens our position on Lion Air, said Herrmann, who is also considering pursuing legal action against the Federal Aviation Administration for certifying the plane model. Vinni Wulandari, the sister of Harvino, the co-pilot, said that since her family sued Boeing, Lion Air has refused to pay out his pension and has not honoured a verbal agreement to fund his childrens education. The company no longer is willing to meet with her, she said. Theyve blocked my number, Vinni said of Lion Airs senior management. Its awful how the company treats us. We are victims, too. Lion Air did not respond to requests for comment on her accusations. Latief, whose son, Muhammad Luthfi Nurrandhani, was among the Lion Air 610 victims, took notice at how Tewolde GebreMariam, chief executive of Ethiopian Airlines, quickly travelled to the Flight 302 crash site and that other senior airline employees were seen comforting grieving family members. His son, Latief said, left behind a pregnant wife, who has since given birth to a boy. In November, the family took Luthfis remains that were recovered from the Java Sea and buried them in Jakarta. Two months later, health officials called and said they had more remains that they had neglected to give Latief earlier. Did he want them? Latief said he did not want to upset his wife so he had a second, tiny coffin constructed and quietly buried it without telling her. We are humans, not animals, he said. We deserve dignity. Read more about: CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand - Only a week after attacks on two mosques in New Zealand killed 50 worshippers, the country has banned sales of military-style semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. In the world of politics, its a lightning fast response, especially when compared to the deeply contentious, long-running gun control debate in the United States. The suddenness of Thursdays ban, which came as the dead were being buried, has raised many questions, especially for those not familiar with firearms. Heres a closer look: ___ WHATS BEING BANNED? Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack last Friday will be banned. Ardern said a sales ban was effective immediately to prevent stockpiling and would be followed by a complete ban on the weapons after new laws are rushed through. The ban includes any military-style semi-automatic guns or shotguns that are capable of being used with a detachable magazine that holds more than five rounds. It also extends to accessories, such as bump stocks, used to convert guns into what the government called military-style weapons. Military-style semi-automatics have been defined under New Zealand law as rifles with magazines exceeding seven shots, or with pistol grips, folding or telescopic butts, bayonet attachments or flash suppressors at the end of the barrel. Many different types of firearms, from pistols to rifles and shotguns, can be semi-automatic. Semi-automatic refers to a firearms ability to self-load, not only firing a bullet with each trigger pull, but also reloading and making the firearm capable of firing again. ___ WHATS NOT BEING BANNED? The ban does not include semi-automatic .22 calibre or smaller guns that hold up to 10 rounds or semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns with non-detachable magazines that hold up to five rounds. The guns not banned are commonly used by farmers and hunters. Calibre is the measurement of the diameter of the inside of a gun barrel. A higher calibre firearm uses larger rounds that can do more tissue damage and are more lethal. The government said the police and military would be exempt, as would businesses carrying out professional pest control. Access for international shooting competitions would also be considered. ___ WHAT HAPPENS TO BANNED GUNS? Ardern said people could hand over their guns under an amnesty while officials develop a formal buyback scheme, which could cost up to 200 million New Zealand dollars ($140 million). New Zealand police said on their website that the transitional period would allow people to arrange to hand over their unlawful firearms to police without penalties. It encouraged people to fill out an online form and said after that police would be in touch to make arrangements. There could be legal exemptions to the ban, such as for pest controllers, but Ardern said any exemptions would be tightly regulated. For other dealers, sales should essentially now cease. My expectation is that these weapons will now be returned to your suppliers and never enter into the New Zealand market again, she said. ___ HOW MANY GUNS ARE AFFECTED? There are nearly 250,000 licensed gun owners in New Zealand, which has a population of 5 million people. Officials estimate there are 1.5 million guns in the country. Sydney University gun policy expert Philip Alpers estimated that only 6 per cent of all weapons in New Zealand were registered. He said there could be 500,000 semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. But, he added, only a small proportion of those would be capable of taking a large-capacity magazine. So thats the number that everyone is trying to guess. ___ DO NEW ZEALANDERS SUPPORT IT? The ban is widely supported and puts New Zealand almost exactly in line with Australia, the United Kingdom and somewhat with Canada, according to Professor Kevin Clements, chairman of Peace and Conflicts studies at the University of Otago and a firearms expert. One of New Zealands largest gun retailers, Hunting & Fishing New Zealand, said it supports any government measure to permanently ban such weapons. The company said it would no longer stock any assault-style firearms of any category and would also stop selling firearms online. What (Arderns) done is a very brave move, and its the kind of move that can only be done in a common-law country where guns are not a right. Guns are a real privilege. If there was a legal right like there is in the United States, this would be much more difficult, said International law Professor Alexander Gillespie of Waikato University. But, he added, its going to be expensive, and theres going to be a lot of pushback. ___ WHATS NEXT? Alpers noted that New Zealand, although it requires handgun registration, is still the only country apart from the United States and to some degree Canada that doesnt have (firearm) registration as its third pillar of gun control along with licensing and treating possession as a conditional privilege. Alpers said rifles and shotguns arent registered in the country. He called that a very important loophole but said Ardern has flagged her determination to pursue registration. Whether shell be able to do it completely or not ... is another question. ___ Klug reported from Seoul, South Korea. Associated Press writers Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul contributed to this report. Theresa May gambled on a desperate bid to get her Brexit deal approved by Parliament, as a standoff with the European Union drove Britain to the brink of an economically disastrous no-deal divorce. The premier heads to the European Council meeting in Brussels on Thursday to push a demand her EU counterparts have already said she cant have until she persuades the U.K. Parliament to support the Brexit deal they struck with her: a one-off, three-month delay to Britains departure. The deadlock over how long to delay the U.K.s exit from the EU plunges the country deeper into a political crisis that now seems likely to push the Brexit endgame into the final hours before next weeks deadline. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, was also slated to travel to Brussels on Thursday to make the case for an alternative to Mays withdrawal plan. Under pressure from euroskeptic Conservatives, the prime minister formally proposed delaying Britains exit from the EU until June 30. But the bloc warned if she cant persuade members of Parliament to vote for her deal in the next nine days, the choice will be a prolonged extension or leaving without a deal. In an address to the nation from her 10 Downing Street office on Wednesday, May hinted she could even resign rather than agree to a lengthy postponement that would keep the U.K. in the bloc beyond the middle of the year. I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than 30 June, May said. The fact that the U.K. wont leave the bloc on schedule on March 29 is a matter of great personal regret for me, she said. Of this I am absolutely sure: You the public have had enough, May said. You want this stage of the Brexit process to be over and done with. I agree. Read more: UKs May asks a wary EU to delay Brexit until June 30 Trump tells a made-up story about Brexit, then twists a tale about John McCain in 42-false-claim week EU leaders open to Brexit delay if May can push deal through European Council President Donald Tusk said such a short Brexit extension would only be possible if Parliament agrees to enact the existing divorce deal which its twice overwhelmingly rejected by the existing exit day of March 29, giving May just over a week to convince members of Parliament to change their minds and vote for her plan. Early signs are that May has repelled MPs she needs to convince. Lisa Nandy, a Labour lawmaker who has previously suggested she could be won over, told ITVs Peston show that there is absolutely no chance May will win support after Wednesdays statement. And Tory rank-and-file lawmaker Phillip Lee told the same show that Mays approach had backfired. The EU has already pencilled in an emergency summit for next week when it could propose a long extension to the negotiations, but with conditions attached, potentially including ripping up Mays proposal, calling a British election and even a second referendum. Despite the warnings from Brussels, EU officials said averting a calamitous no-deal split is now the priority. The bloc is very unlikely to push the U.K. out on March 29 with no safety net because a chaotic exit would damage them too, the officials said. May appeared to have ignored advice from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in making her decision. He told the prime minister in a telephone call on Wednesday morning that the latest end-date for a short extension was May 23, when EU Parliament elections start, according to his spokeswoman, Mina Andreeva. EU ambassadors in Brussels discussed on Wednesday what the conclusions of Thursdays summit on Brexit should say, according to a person familiar with the matter. The envoys agreed that the statement will be friendly but tough, the person said, asking not to be named. EU leaders are likely to be asked to agree the wording of the summit conclusions themselves instead of having a draft prepared by aides in advance. That means its likely to be a long night, the person said. In Parliament on Wednesday, May was accused of reneging on pledges she and her ministers made a week ago. Then, in order to help win crucial votes in Parliament, the government indicated that if the House of Commons hadnt approved her Brexit deal by now, shed request a longer extension. One of the most excoriating critiques during a debate forced by the opposition Labour Party came from the normally mild-mannered former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, a member of her own Conservative Party. He accused her government of fast running out of integrity and said Mays question-and-answer session in Parliament on Wednesday was the worst moment in his 22 years as an MP. I have never felt more shame to be a member of the Conservative Party or to be asked to lend her support, Grieve said. She spent most of her time castigating the House for its misconduct. At no stage did she pause to consider whether in fact it is the way she is leading this government which might be contributing to this situation. He added that he could have wept to see her reduced to these straits, and wept to see the extent to which she was now zigzagging all over the place rather than standing up for what the national interest must be. Before her address to the nation, May met with opposition leaders, including those of the Scottish National Party, the Welsh party Plaid Cymru, and the Liberal Democrats. But main opposition Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn walked out apparently in protest at the presence of Chuka Umunna, who quit Labour last month and now speaks for an 11-strong group of former Labour and Conservative lawmakers. Those who did attend said the premier showed no sign of budging. She remains astonishingly intransigent, and continues to try to bully MPs into a choice between her deal or no deal, said Liz Saville Roberts, Westminster leader of Plaid Cymru. Corbyn later held a 20-minute call with the premier, after which he said she is in complete denial about the scale of the crisis we are facing and unable to offer the leadership the country needs. He called her approach unacceptable and reckless. The government has promised MPs it will put forward a motion in the House of Commons on Monday, which they can use to explore different models of Brexit, and a government official indicated a third vote on the Brexit deal may be held on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. Read more about: BRUSSELS - Worn down by three years of indecision in London, European Union leaders on Thursday grudgingly offered the U.K. more time to ease itself out of the bloc, delaying by several weeks but not eliminating the threat of a chaotic British exit. After a meeting that stretched through the afternoon and over dinner, the bloc said Britain could postpone its March 29 departure to May 22 if the U.K. Parliament approves Prime Minister Theresa Mays divorce deal with the bloc next week. If the twice-rejected deal is thrown out again, the bloc says Britain has until April 12 to indicate a way forward. Now it is finally up to the British political system to provide a clear answer, French President Emmanuel Macron said, adding that any final decision must come ahead of the May 23-26 European Parliament election. May who has spent almost three years telling Britons they will leave the EU on March 29, 2019 put a positive spin on the delay. She said the EU decision underlines the importance of the House of Commons passing a Brexit deal next week so that we can bring an end to the uncertainty and leave in a smooth and orderly manner. EU summit host Donald Tusk expressed relief that a cut-off date had been delayed. I am really satisfied, especially that we have still open so many options, Tusk said. It is a good sign. The late-night offer eased some of the deep uncertainty among leaders at an EU summit in Brussels, which was exceeded only by the high anxiety being felt by politicians, businesses and citizens in Britain. The British military has even set up a command post in a bunker under the defence ministry in London to help co-ordinate no-deal planning. The House of Commons is split, both among and within its political parties, over whether and how to leave the EU. It has twice rejected the deal May brokered with the blocs leaders late last year. This week, May finally acknowledged the Brexit gridlock and asked the EU to delay Britains departure until June 30, to create time to win parliamentary approval for her deal in a third attempt and then pass the legislation necessary for a smooth departure. But opposition to Mays the agreement among British politicians appeared to be hardening, rather than softening, after she blamed Parliament for the Brexit impasse. In a televised address Wednesday night, May accused lawmakers of infighting, political games and arcane procedural rows, but acknowledged no personal error in creating the deadlock. A lawmaker from Mays Conservative Party called the speech toxic. Legislator Anna Soubry, of the breakaway Independent Group, described it as the most dishonest and divisive statement from any prime minister. May struck conciliatory note at a late-night Brussels news conference, saying I know MPs on all sides of the debate have passionate views, and I respect those different positions. Last night I expressed my frustration. I know that MPs are frustrated too. They have difficult jobs to do, she added. But May also refused to change course, calling on lawmakers to back her agreement and refusing to rule out a no-deal exit if they did not back her. May said that if the deal falls, by April 12, we would either leave with no deal, or put forward an alternative plan that involved participating in EU Parliament elections. I believe strongly that it would be wrong to ask people in the UK to participate in these elections three years after voting to leave the EU, she said. Businesses and economists say a no-deal Brexit would cause huge disruptions and billions in costs to the economies of both Britain and the EU. Underscoring the sense of dread gripping the nation, one of Britains biggest business lobbies and a major trade union federation said in a rare joint appeal that the country is facing a national emergency. The Confederation of British Industry and the Trades Union Congress warned May that if Britain crashes out of the EU, the shock to our economy would be felt by generations to come. Britains military said the command post under the ministry of defence was set up as part of Operation Redfold, a plan to minimize disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The ministry said in a statement it had 3,500 troops on standby to help with any disruptions if the government asks for assistance. Worry about a chaotic departure has been rising among EU leaders, who fear May no longer has the clout in Parliament to get her way. Nobody wants no-deal here, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told reporters. German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to work until the last hour to try to ensure that Britain doesnt leave without a deal, even though her government has enacted emergency measures to deal with such a scenario. May plans to make a third attempt to get her deal through Parliament next week. But many pro-Brexit legislators still oppose it, saying it does not deliver the clean break they long for. And Pro-EU lawmakers will try to derail May and wrest away control of the Brexit process to steer Britain toward a close relationship with the bloc. Its a struggle that has been going on for almost three years and brought the U.K. to within eight days of a chaotic Brexit. Macron said that risk remained. The European Union is not holding all the cards because everything depends on the British vote, he said. The European Union is clearly facing a British political crisis. British politicians are incapable of implementing what their people have asked for. Some EU leaders felt sympathy for Mays quandary. I have the highest respect for her, said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Her tenacity is enormous. But she is working in an extremely difficult situation. Its not her mistake that we are where we are its because too many people have so far played party politics on this issue. ___ Associated Press writers Samuel Petrequin and Lorne Cook in Brussels, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Danica Kirka and Gregory Katz in London and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed. ___ Follow APs full coverage of Brexit at: https://www.apnews.com/Brexit ZARQA, Jordan - Jordans King Abdullah II is vowing to keep protecting Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, calling it a red line for his country. Abdullah said Wednesday, during a visit to the Zarqa governorate outside Amman, that hes under pressure to alter his countrys historic role as custodian of the Jerusalem holy sites but that he wouldnt. Abdullah says: I will never change my position toward Jerusalem in my life. He added that all my people are with me. He did not specify what kind of pressure he was encountering. A Jordanian-appointed council oversees Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. It claims exclusive authority over the Noble Sanctuary, or Temple Mount, compound and says it is not subject to Israeli jurisdiction. Tensions often escalate at the site. JERUSALEM - President Donald Trump abruptly declared Thursday the U.S. will recognize Israels sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, a major shift in American policy that gives Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a political boost a month before what is expected to be a close election. The administration has been considering recognizing Israels sovereignty over the strategic highlands, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, for some time and Netanyahu had pressed the matter with visiting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just a day earlier. U.S. and Israeli officials said Wednesday they had not expected a decision until next week, when Netanyahu is to visit the U.S. But in a tweet that appeared to catch many by surprise, Trump said the time had come for the United States to take the step, which Netanyahu warmly welcomed as a miracle on the Jewish holiday of Purim. After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israels Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability! Trump tweeted. The U.S. will be the first country to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, which the rest of the international community regards as disputed territory occupied by Israel whose status should be determined by negotiations between Israel and Syria. Attempts to bring Israel and Syria to the table have failed. It was not immediately clear how a U.N. peacekeeping force in the Golan might be affected by the U.S. move. That forces mandate expires at the end of June. There had been signals a decision was coming. Last week, in its annual human rights report, the State Department dropped the phrase Israeli-occupied from the Golan Heights section, instead calling it Israeli-controlled. Pompeo had brushed questions about the change aside, insisting even earlier Thursday that there was no change in policy. However, in comments to reporters ahead of a Purim dinner with Netanyahu and his wife at their Jerusalem home, Pompeo hailed the shift. Tonight, President Trump made the decision to recognize that that hard-fought real estate, that important place, is proper to be a sovereign part of the state of Israel, he said. Netanyahu, who is embroiled in a fierce re-election campaign ahead of April 9 voting, smiled broadly while delivering his own remarks. We have the miracle of Purim, he said. Thank you President Trump. Netanyahu has for weeks been stepping up longstanding Israeli requests for the U.S. and others to recognize Israels sovereignty over the Golan. He has bolstered Israels traditional argument that the area has for all practical purposes been fully integrated into Israel by accusing Iran of trying to infiltrate terrorists from Syria into the plateau. At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Netanyahu tweeted. Trumps announcement came as Pompeo was wrapping up a two-day visit to Jerusalem during which he lauded warm ties with Israel, met with Netanyahu on at least three separate occasions and promised to step up pressure on Iran. Pompeos events with Netanyahu included a visit to the Western Wall that made him the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the Jewish holy site with any Israeli leader and appeared to further signal the Trump administrations support for Israels control of the contested city. Trump has recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital and moved the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv, prompting the Palestinians to sever ties with the administration. Pompeos presence also appeared to signal Trumps support for Netanyahu the political candidate. Netanyahu, facing a tough challenge from a popular former military chief and reeling from a series of corruption allegations, has repeatedly sought to focus attention on his foreign policy record and strong ties with Trump. The Trump administration is absolutely endorsing Netanyahu, said Alon Pinkas, former consul general of Israel in New York. Its very rare for a secretary of state to come visit an Israeli prime minister without any apparent diplomatic reason justifying it, without a peace process, without any regional agenda. Pompeo said his trip had nothing to do with politics or U.S. policy on Jerusalem, although for decades American officials refrained from visiting the Western Wall with Israeli leaders to avoid the appearance of recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the citys most sensitive holy sites. Israel captured east Jerusalem and the Old City in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state. Im going to stay far away from the decisions that the Israeli people will make here in a few weeks, Pompeo told reporters. It wouldnt be appropriate for the U.S. secretary of state to comment on Israeli domestic politics. The Old City is home to the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where tradition says Jesus was entombed and resurrected. Pompeo, a Christian, also stopped at the church. Next to the Western Wall is a hilltop compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The spot, which once housed the biblical Jewish Temples, is the holiest site in Judaism and today is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. The competing claims to the site are a frequent source of tension and lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital, he said it did not determine the citys final borders. But the gesture was perceived as unfairly siding with Israel and prompted the Palestinians to cut contacts with U.S. officials. The Palestinians have already rejected a planned Mideast peace initiative by the administration. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Pompeos visit added additional obstacles to peace hopes. While they are claiming to be trying to solve the conflict, such acts only make it more difficult to resolve, he said. While previous secretaries of state have traditionally met with the Palestinians when visiting the region, Pompeo has no such talks planned. ___ Riechmann reported from Washington. CAIRO - The head of the U.N.s World Food Program says progress has been made in Yemen, months after he accused Houthi rebels of stealing food from the hungry by diverting aid. David Beasley, the executive director of the WFP, nevertheless told The Associated Press in Cairo on Thursday that Yemen is far from being out of the deep, dark abyss. As the WFP is scaling up its operations in Yemen, covering almost 10 million people described as severely food insecure, the agency has been sending special teams to monitor aid delivery. In December, the WFP threatened to suspend some aid shipments if the Houthis did not investigate and stop theft and fraud in food distribution. The Iran-backed Houthis have been at war with a Saudi-led coalition for four years. ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Five people arrested at a ramshackle New Mexico compound where one of the suspects sons was found dead pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal terrorism-related charges and other counts that their attorneys say the group would not be facing if they werent Muslims. The two men and three women have been charged of conspiring to support planned attacks on U.S. law enforcement officers, military members and government employees while living on the outskirts of Amalia, just south of the Colorado border. They have been in federal custody since last August on firearms charges that accuse them of conspiring to provide weapons and ammunition to Jany Leveille, one of the five and a leader of the group who is from Haiti and had been living in the country illegally. The group had travelled in late 2017 from Georgia to New Mexico, where they built their compound in an area dotted with some of the regions signature earthship self-built homes. This case is about freedom of religion, freedom of association and the right to bear arms, said Billy Blackburn, an attorney for Subhanah Wahhaj. He and other defence attorneys said their clients are innocent of the charges. The groups makeshift settlement had consisted of a camping trailer wedged into the desert and surrounded by stacked tires before authorities raided it and found 11 hungry children, guns and ammunition, a firing range. They also found the remains of 3-year-old Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, who had suffered from severe medical disabilities that caused seizures. The boy had been reported missing in Georgia in late 2017 and died at the compound after he was denied medication because Leveille believed it suppressed Muslim beliefs, authorities said. She and the boys father, Siraj Ibn Wahhaj, had held hours-long prayer rituals over the boy in the days leading to his death. The results of an autopsy for the boy are still pending. Others charged in the case include two sisters and a brother-in-law of Wahhaj. All, except Wahhaj, are charged in the kidnapping of his son. Federal statutes generally only allow for charging parents with abducting their own children in international cases. Authorities also have accused Wahhaj and others of transporting weapons across state lines, and training children at a firing range on the property to carry out shootings and other attacks that never occurred. SEATTLE - Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado has said Central America should not be satisfied until Nicaragua holds free elections and re-establishes a free press, democracy and human rights guarantees. We should not be tranquil until those (are) re-established there, he said in an interview with The Associated Press last week during a tour of two western U.S. states. Its in the interest of the region that we have a political institutional solution for Nicaragua. Alvarado said the turmoil in Nicaragua is having a negative impact on Central American immigration and the regions economy. A political standoff has lasted nearly a year between the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and a coalition of students, businesses and civic groups called the Civic Alliance. Talks between the two sides broke down earlier this month over the governments imprisonment of opposition members. The alliance has not specified if its demanding the release of some or all of the estimated 770 people jailed by the Sandinista government following the protests that started nearly a year ago. Since late February the government has freed more than 100 on a form of conditional release, and the opposition now puts the number still held at 640. Alvarado said the alliance has a point in asking for their release, especially journalists who have been detained. Ortegas government and the opposition resumed negotiations Thursday after authorities announced the previous night that all detained protesters would be released within 90 days. More than 25,000 Nicaraguans have crossed the border into Costa Rica during the turmoil, according to the Costa Rican government. During the interview, Alvarado also pledged that Costa Ricas judicial system will fairly address sexual abuse allegations against former Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias. At least seven women have accused Arias of sexual abuse or harassment. One of the most recent accounts came from Arias one-time personal trainer. In Costa Rica, we profoundly believe in the judicial system, Alvarado said. The people accusing ex-president Arias will have legal protections.Ex-president Arias will also have the opportunity to present his defence and the courts will determine the truth. Alvarado said Costa Rica must recognize that machismo is still widespread in the country, but said his government is promoting gender equality. Same-sex marriages will become automatically legal in Costa Rica in 2020 after the constitutional court ruled that a ban was illegal, but Alvarado said he expects his government to take legislative action to legalize it before that. We are, as a government, do everything that (same-sex marriage) is respected as a right, he said. Costa Rica does not have a military and Alvarado said there should be no military intervention in Venezuela by foreign powers amid the countrys deep economic and political crisis. Alvarado visited Washington state and California, pitching Costa Ricas workers to tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google. He said that Amazon is among the largest foreign employers in the country, accounting for more than 8,000 jobs. He also met with officials at Starbucks, which has had a long-standing relationship with Costa Ricas coffee industry. Alvarado promoted his countrys goal of decarbonizing its economy by 2050. Thats in contrast with current U.S. policy, with President Donald Trump repeatedly questioning climate change. He said governments that advocate moves to prevent climate change are teaming up with allies in the private sector. We have to support each other in this ambitious agenda, he said. JUNEAU, Alaska - Gov. Mike Dunleavy has declined for now to fill a seat on the Palmer Superior Court, citing questions with the process used in sending nominees to him for consideration. Dunleavy sent a letter to the Alaska Judicial Council saying he believed there were qualified candidates that the council inexplicably did not nominate. The council advanced three names for two open seats on the Palmer Superior Court. Dunleavy appointed to one of the seats John Cagle, an assistant district attorney in Anchorage who was on the list. He left the other spot vacant. I will not be selecting a second candidate from this truncated list, the governor wrote. The judicial councils website shows there were 13 applicants for the two seats. Two of the applicants withdrew, and a third was appointed to another judgeship, the site shows. Under the Constitution, when there is a superior court vacancy, the council is to nominate at least two candidates for the governor to choose from. The council says on its website that it is to advance the most qualified. The Alaska Supreme Court has held that the council is within its right to send to the governor one more nominee than the number of positions to be filled. In this case, there would have been three candidates to choose from for one of the Palmer seats and two for the remaining seat. Dunleavys letter states that the council declined to nominate for the Palmer Superior Court a candidate it had previously nominated for the Anchorage Superior Court and the Anchorage District Court. The letter states that Dunleavys office had requested more information from the council on candidates not recommended, including the councils reasoning. Thus far you have declined to provide me more information, he wrote. Dunleavy wrote he wants to review the councils reasoning to determine if additional qualified candidates could be nominated for the still-open position. Susanne DiPietro, the councils executive director, said she provided additional information but was not asked about the councils reasoning. Following up on Dunleavys letter Thursday, she said she checked with the administration to see if she had missed something. She said she was told there was a clerical error resulting in a letter from Dunleavys chief of staff seeking the councils reasoning, dated Monday, not being sent. She ultimately received that Thursday afternoon. DiPietro said now that she has that request she would share it with the council. WASHINGTON - The Latest on the spring flood threat in the U.S. (all times local): 12:05 p.m. U.S. weather experts say the stage is set for unprecedented major flooding this spring for most of the nation. In Thursdays spring forecast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says more than 200 million Americans are at risk for some kind of flooding, with 13 million of them at risk of major inundation. National Weather Service deputy director Mary Erickson said the current flooding in Nebraska, Iowa, and the South is a preview for an all-too wet and dangerous spring. She expects flooding to get worse and widespread, reaching most of the eastern two-thirds of the nation. Forecasters say the biggest risks include all three Mississippi River basins, plus the basins of the Red River of the North, the Great Lakes, the eastern Missouri River, the lower Ohio River, the lower Cumberland River and the Tennessee River. ___ 11:25 a.m. Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say flooding could reach unprecedented levels in parts of the U.S. later this spring, as winter snow melts and swollen rivers rise. Mary Erickson, deputy director of the National Weather Service, said during a conference call Thursday that existing flooding along the Mississippi River and other waterways is expected to get worse, possibly even worse than historic floods in 1993 and 2011. NOAA said in an advisory that the threat of flooding in Southern states this spring is potentially historic. Forecasters have said that rapidly melting snow in the upper Midwest is contributing to flooding that will eventually make its way downstream to the Gulf Coast. ___ 1 a.m. Scientists are warning that historic flooding could soon deluge parts of several Southern states along the lower Mississippi River, where floodwaters could persist for several weeks. The flood threat in the South will be discussed Thursday, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration releases its 2019 spring outlook. Experts plan a briefing on their flood forecast at the National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Thursdays report is aimed at helping emergency managers and other safety officials to prepare for flooding. NOAA said in an advisory that the threat of flooding in Southern states this spring is potentially historic. Forecasters have said that rapidly melting snow in the upper Midwest is contributing to flooding that will eventually make its way downstream to the Gulf Coast. WASHINGTON - A Russian-born former business adviser to President Donald Trump will speak to two House committees next week as Democrats begin to gather information in multiple wide-ranging investigations of the president. Felix Sater, an off-and-on adviser to Trumps business for several years, will testify publicly before the House intelligence committee on March 27 and then behind closed doors to the House Judiciary Committee on March 28. The intelligence panel announced the public hearing on Thursday, and Sater confirmed the closed-door interview. Sater is of interest to investigators because he worked with Trumps former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, on an ultimately unsuccessful deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Sater and Cohen also discussed having Trump visit Russia during his presidential campaign. The interviews come as special counsel Robert Mueller appears to be near the end of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and as several Democratic-led committees begin probes of Trumps political, personal and business dealings. Cohen spoke to the House intelligence and oversight committees last month, in addition to the Senate intelligence committee, and the the Judiciary and Oversight panels have sent out dozens of document requests related to all facets of Trumps life. Sater, a former Mafia informant who was convicted in connection with a stock fraud scheme, was involved in the effort to try to jump-start the Trump Tower project in Moscow. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the project. He told lawmakers the Moscow venture was abandoned by January 2016 when, in reality, work on it persisted deep into the presidential campaign. Sater was also involved in trying to get the White House to look at a Ukrainian peace proposal that favoured Russia. BOSTON - Could Aunt Becky be headed to prison? It could go either way, experts say. Some of the wealthy parents accused of paying bribes to get their kids into top universities may get short stints behind bars, if convicted, to send a message that the privileged are not above the law, some lawyers say. But others predict that most, if not all, will end up with probation and a fine, particularly if they quickly agree to accept responsibility and co-operate, which observers anticipate many will do. If the parents are well represented, it is reasonable to expect that possibly none will go to jail, said former federal prosecutor Jacob Frenkel. These are not the type of offences for which judges exercising their discretion would normally put people in jail, he said. The parents ensnared in what prosecutors have called the biggest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department include Hollywood stars Lori Loughlin, who played Aunt Becky on the sitcom Full House, and Felicity Huffman of Desperate Housewives. Other parents are prominent figures in law, finance, fashion, the food and beverage industry, and other fields. Prosecutors have said, though, that they believe other parents were involved and that the investigation dubbed Operation Varsity Blues continues. The parents are charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud, a count that carries up to 20 years in prison, although defendants, especially first-time offenders, typically get far less than that. Attorneys for at least some of the parents are likely already negotiating deals with prosecutors, experts say. And authorities have lots of leverage to push parents to plead guilty by promising to bring more charges, like tax evasion or money laundering, if they dont. Frenkel, now a white-collar defence attorney at Dickinson Wright in Washington, said he suspects many parents could wind up pleading guilty to a tax charge, for deducting the bribes from their income taxes, and get probation. Most parents could get merely a fine and community service, agreed Jeffrey Cramer, who was an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago. But those who went to great lengths to participate in the scam or enlisted their children help them carry it out may spend a few months behind bars, because judges may not see a financial penalty as sufficient punishment, he said. If you told (the parents) at the beginning of this that in addition to the bribe, youd have to pay a $200,000 penalty and have to work at the Beverly Hills food bank, theyd probably take that deal, said Cramer, now managing director of Berkeley Research Group consulting firm. You cannot have a criminal justice system where at the end of the day, he said, the crime was worth doing. The parents are accused of paying admissions consultant Rick Singer to rig standardized test scores and bribe college coaches and other insiders to get their children into selective schools. Coaches at schools including Yale University and the University of Southern California are also charged with accepting bribes. Singer secretly recorded his conversations with the parents after agreeing to work with investigators in the hopes of getting a lesser sentence. He pleaded guilty last week to racketeering conspiracy and other charges. Loughlins lawyers declined on Wednesday to comment. An email was sent to a communications firm hired by Huffman. If any parents decide to fight the charges, they could argue they believed the services they were paying for were legitimate and didnt realize what Singer was doing, lawyers say. They could also try to paint Singer as a liar who is trying to take them down in order to save himself, experts say. A high-on-the-food-chain co-operator is now reaching down below, and that gives an opportunity for the defence to exploit that the co-operator is facing a lot of time and therefore he is fabricating things, said Boston criminal defence attorney Brad Bailey. But the mountain of evidence against them, which includes recorded phone calls, emails, bank records and flight records, will be difficult to overcome, attorneys say. The defences are about as viable as each of the benefiting kids making the varsity sports team, Frenkel said. The parents will likely try to stay out of prison by arguing they believed they were doing what was best for their children and have already been punished enough by being publicly humiliated and losing jobs, attorneys say. But some experts say they doubt such a strategy would be successful. This is not the most sympathetic case, and I dont know how many judges want to bend over backward for any of these individuals, said Ilene Jaroslaw, a former federal prosecutor who is now a white-collar defence attorney at Phillips Nizer in New York. I expect that youre going to see a number of these people spend some time in jail to send a message, she said. Lawyers who have seen less affluent clients go to prison for crimes seemingly less egregious say it would only be fair. Youve already got a case that really illustrates the power of the privileged in the first place, said New York criminal defence lawyer Matthew Galluzzo. If you dont send them to jail then youre going to be proving the point which is that you can get away with anything if you have money. ___ Follow Alanna Durkin Richer at http://www.twitter.com/aedurkinricher NEW YORKI dont need to clear my name, the Staten Island man accused of gunning down Gambino boss Frank Cali told the Daily News in a brief jailhouse interview on Wednesday. Anthony Comello, 24, who once tried to make a citizens arrest of Mayor Bill de Blasio, wore a green-and-white striped jumpsuit as four officers escorted him to a video phone screen at the Ocean County Jail. He is accused of pumping a barrage of bullets into Calis chest in the driveway of the mob boss Staten Island home last Wednesday. Before any questions could be asked of Comello, he blurted out, You shouldnt believe in stories. Dont believe in fairy tales. When asked if that meant he didnt do the shooting, Comello responded, I dont need to clear my name. Have a good night. Be careful going home. He stared at the screen for about 20 seconds, saying nothing, then picked up the phone and said, I cant talk to no press. I cant. He hung up, and the video call screen went black. Police sources said the alleged killer may have been angry that the 53-year-old Cali had tried to prevent Comello from dating his niece. Comello waved to reporters at a court appearance in New Jersey on Monday, showing off political slogans scribbled on his hands United We Stand, MAGA Forever, Patriots in Charge and a large, blue Q. Thats the symbol of the far-right conspiracy theory movement known as QAnon, which believes that U.S. President Donald Trump is fighting a secret war against the deep state and a pedophile ring that includes several prominent Democrat politicians. In February, he showed up at the federal courthouse in Manhattan, then at Gracie Mansion the next day, asking to make a citizens arrest of several elected officials and the mayor, police said. TRENTON, N.J. - Days ahead of a planned vote in the Legislature that would make New Jersey the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana, Gov. Phil Murphy said Thursday that the measure is short of the votes needed to pass. The Democrat spoke Thursday during a news conference alongside more than a dozen supporters of the bill, including the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, and said he and legislative leaders are making progress, but we have a ways to go. Murphy and fellow Democrats, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin and Senate President Steve Sweeney, support the measure, which would legalize recreational cannabis for people 21 and over. But lawmakers have expressed reluctance, and the votes outcome Monday is uncertain. Forty-one votes are needed in the Assembly and 21 in the Senate. Murphys push Thursday comes after the bills advanced Monday in Assembly and Senate committees more than a year after Murphy took office on a promise that he would legalize recreational weed. New Jersey is already one of more than couple of dozen states that has legalized medical marijuana. The bill would bring in an estimated $60 million initially in new tax revenues, which has led to criticism that Murphy wants to legalize the drug as a tax grab. But Murphy on Thursday rebutted those attacks and cast the bill as unmistakably tied to relieving racial injustice, citing a higher rate of marijuana-related arrests among black people. He also aimed at lawmakers who worry about the exposure of marijuana to young people. Our kids are exposed with no regulations. The bad guys run the business. Thats the status quo, he said. The status quo is the alternative. If the measure passes, New Jersey would become the 11th state, along with the District of Columbia, to legalize recreational cannabis. Most states have used ballot initiatives to do so, but New Jersey is pushing it through the Legislature. Legislators have said a law makes it easier for them to tweak, compared with a ballot initiative to change the constitution. The 176-page measure imposes a $42 per ounce tax, sets up a regulatory commission and expedites marijuana-related expungements. The measure aims to incentivize women and minorities to participate in the legal marijuana market by requiring 30 per cent of licenses go to them, and it calls for an investigation on the influence of cannabis on driving and for funding drug-recognition experts for law enforcement. FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - For almost 40 years, no one doubted serial rapist Ronald Stewart murdered Regina Harrison in a South Florida park not police, not prosecutors and not her family. He pleaded guilty in Fort Lauderdale to three rapes, was convicted of other attacks in Mississippi and when accused of Harrisons 1983 slaying, he pleaded no contest to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison, where he died of cancer in 2008, never disputing he killed Harrison, a 20-year-old college student. But on Thursday, the Broward County state attorneys office asked a judge to throw out Stewarts murder conviction, saying he didnt do it. Her killer, they say, was Jack Jones, a serial murderer executed by Arkansas in 2017 for a womans 1995 rape and slaying. Jones confessed to Harrisons killing in a letter to his sister that he told her to open a year after his death. In it, Jones told her to give the letter to the detective who investigated a 1991 Fort Lauderdale murder he confessed to in 2003 he had told the detective hed killed a third woman and would eventually tell him who. The sister forwarded the letter last year and DNA testing confirmed Jones, not Stewart, killed Harrison at a Hollywood, Florida, park. Prosecutors say confessions, identifications and other evidence show Stewart did commit the rapes and that those sentences would not have allowed his release before his death. The Broward State Attorneys Office and Hollywood Police Department regret the roles our agencies played in Stewarts conviction, the agencies said in a statement. Although Stewart is now deceased, it is appropriate that the record be corrected. They said Jones DNA is now being tested against other slayings in Florida and elsewhere. Richard Harrison, the victims brother, said Thursday that he and their parents, who are now elderly, were stunned to learn the man they thought killed Regina was innocent of her death. He said Stewart came up for parole in Mississippi but never denied guilt. Harrison, a Tampa attorney who represents municipal governments, said he understands why prosecutors now must correct the record. If this did not involve my family personally, this would be a fascinating episode of CSI, he said. But it doesnt make Stewart any less evil and it certainly doesnt make him any less dead. And Jones has already been executed ... and we can only execute people once. He said his sister was a kind, deeply religious young woman who was attending Palm Beach Atlantic College, a Christian school in West Palm Beach. He said she hadnt figured out her career but would have taken a job helping others. She was a really sweet kid, he said. Regina Harrison had gone for a dinnertime bike ride from her parents home on May 2, 1983, but didnt return. A witness told detectives she had been riding on a popular path that runs along Hollywood Beach with a skinny, long-haired man on a black bike. Her body was found the next day in a nearby park. She had been raped and strangled. No arrest was made for five months until a Fort Lauderdale detective saw a television story about the killing. He had been part of a task force that had arrested Stewart for a series of rapes and when captured, the skinny, long-haired man had been riding a black bike. The woman who had seen Harrison at the beach picked Stewart out of a photo lineup. An acquaintance said Stewart had confessed to killing a woman in a park. Stewart was indicted and the plea deal closing the case finalized. He went to Mississippi to serve his sentence, where he stayed until he was sent to Florida a year before his death. Jones was arrested in 1995 in Arkansas for the rape and strangulation of a 34-year-old accountant, Mary Phillips, in her office and the beating of her 11-year-old daughter. He was convicted and sentenced to death. In 2003, DNA connected him to the 1991 rape and strangulation at a Fort Lauderdale hotel of Lorraine Barrett, a 32-year-old Pennsylvania tourist. He co-operated, pleaded guilty and was sent back to Arkansas to await execution. He gave the letter to his sister to hold in about 2007. In it, Jones says he was haunted by Reginas ghost for three years. She forgave me. I never forgave myself, he wrote. He said he wanted the Harrison family to know I am deeply sorry, that I couldnt rest easy until they knew. By his execution, Jones had lost a leg to diabetes and said he was ready to die. But why he confessed to two murders but not Harrisons until his own death is knowledge he took to the grave. ___ This story has corrected the name of who was indicted to Stewart. BOISE, Idaho - David Lunsford is an avid gun owner with a firing range on his Texas spread. With bump stocks about to be banned by the U.S. government, he grudgingly decided to sell off his and let someone else figure out what to do with them. If I get caught with one, Im a felon, and it seems like to me thats entrapment in the biggest way. I bought that thing legally with my hard-earned money, said the 60-year-old Lunsford, who has at one time owned six AR-15 rifles that he built from kits, as well as a World War II German submachine gun. The bump stock the attachment used by the killer during the 2017 Las Vegas massacre to make his weapons fire rapidly like machine-guns will become illegal on Tuesday in the only major gun restriction imposed by the federal government in the past few years, a period that has seen massacres in places like Las Vegas; Thousand Oaks, California; Sutherland Springs, Texas; and Orlando and Parkland, Florida. Unlike with the decade-long assault weapons ban, the government isnt allowing existing owners to keep their bump stocks. They must be destroyed or turned over to authorities. And the government isnt offering any compensation for the devices, which can cost hundreds of dollars. Violators can face up to 10 years in prison and thousands of dollars in fines. Lunsford bought three bump stocks over the years and wanted to recoup at least some of the money he shelled out, but it bothers him that he and others have been put in this position. Ive never committed a crime with it, and just because of that one killer up in Las Vegas that used one that killed a bunch of people, theyre going to make people pay for it, he said. But Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, said: It was because of bump stocks that the gunman in Las Vegas was able to kill 58 people from a hotel window. ... It just goes to show the incredible lethality and dangers of these accessories. The prohibition goes into effect less than two weeks after the mosque shootings in New Zealand that left 50 people dead. New Zealands prime minister reacted swiftly to the bloodshed by announcing on Thursday a ban on military-style semi-automatic firearms and high-capacity magazines. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives first ruled that bump stocks were legal in 2010, and since then, the government estimates more than 500,000 have been sold. They were originally created to make it easier for people with disabilities to fire a gun. The device essentially replaces the guns stock and pistol grip and causes the weapon to buck back and forth, repeatedly bumping the trigger against the shooters finger. Technically, that means the finger is pulling the trigger with each round fired, a distinction that led the ATF to allow the devices. They were considered by most gun owners to be a novelty and werent widely known until a gunman attached bump stocks to several of the AR-type rifles he used to rain bullets on concertgoers outside his high-rise Las Vegas hotel room. The attachments were swiftly condemned by even ardent gun supporters, including President Donald Trump, who directed the Justice Department to rewrite the regulations to ban them. The impending ban was announced in mid-December. Owners are being advised to either destroy them by crushing, melting or cutting them up or set up an appointment with the ATF to hand the devices over. A week before the ban was set to take effect, bump stocks were being sold on websites and by at least one company that took over the inventory of Slide Fire, the Texas manufacturer that was the leading maker and has since shut down. Ryan Liskey, of Virginias Shenandoah Valley, said he isnt sure what to do with his bump stock. He said he got the device as a lark after trying it on the range with some friends. Do they have authority to do this? No. Is it a machine-gun? No, the 30-year-old Liskey said. So do I follow an unconstitutional edict from the Department of Justice or do we stand our ground? ATF spokeswoman April Langwell said a number of people have already turned in their devices to ATF offices across the U.S., but she wouldnt say how many. Starting next week, a person in possession of a bump stock can face federal charges of illegally possessing a machine-gun. Were going to enforce the law and those in possession will be subject to prosecution, Langwell said. The rule was met almost immediately with resistance from gun rights advocates. A federal judge in Utah refused to block it last week, and in February, a judge in Washington said the Trump administration can move forward with it, saying it was reasonable for the ATF to determine a bump stock performs the same function as a machine-gun. An appeals court is set to hear augments in the case on Friday. Gun Owners of America, a gun-rights group, is among those challenging the ban. GOAs executive director, Erich Pratt, said the measure is an abuse of power and an end run around Congress. We think its really dangerous for a regulatory agency to be able to just turn on a dime. For 10 years they said that bump stocks fit within the law, they were perfectly legal. And then they reversed themselves and said, Oh, this piece of plastic is a machine-gun, Pratt said. If they can do that and wave the magic wand, they can say anything is a machine-gun. Its like banning smoking by declaring cigarettes are sticks of dynamite. Gun-rights advocates and gun-safety activists agree on one thing: The ban would have been seen as more acceptable had Congress tackled the issue and enacted a law, rather than relying on a federal agency to do it administratively. ___ Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report. In late October 2017, Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trumps son-in-law and Middle East adviser, dropped into Saudi Arabia for an unannounced visit to the desert retreat of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who was in the process of consolidating his power. The two men talked privately late into the night. Just a day earlier, Kushners younger brother, Josh, then 32, was flying out of the kingdom. Jared came to talk policy, but Josh was there on business. The founder of an eight-year-old venture capital firm, Josh Kushner had spent the three days before his brothers arrival at an investor conference, where Prince Mohammed had promised to spend billions of dollars on a high-tech future for Saudi Arabia. As others sat through speeches in a gilded conference hall, several participants said, the younger Kushner frequently ducked out for more exclusive conversations with Saudi officials. Some government ethics lawyers say those conversations never hidden, but not previously reported create the appearance of a potential conflict of interest. Although Jared Kushner severed his ties with his brothers company and divested his interest in his brothers funds around the time he entered the White House, he was nonetheless discussing American policy with the rulers of the kingdom at virtually the same time that his brother was talking business with their top aides. A spokesman for Josh Kushners firm, Thrive Capital, said that it was not in a formal fundraising period at the time of the conference. A year later, however, the company raised $1 billion. And two people who spoke with Josh Kushner at the conference said he had been actively promoting a health insurance startup he founded in 2012, Oscar Health, which five months later announced a fresh $165 million round of financing. A spokesman for Josh Kushner said the management of Oscar Health knew of no direct investment by Saudis. But the spokesman, Jesse Derris, declined to disclose whether Saudis had invested in any Thrive funds. Derris said only that Thrive had received no money since the presidential election from any Saudi who had not previously invested in its funds. Out of an abundance of caution, Thrive instituted a policy shortly after the 2016 election to prohibit investments from new foreign investors with business in front of the current administration, Derris said in a statement. It has abided by that prohibition. But he declined to answer whether Thrive has continued to receive money from Saudis who began investing before November 2016. Jared Kushner appears to have been closely involved in Joshs venture capital firm, having sat on the board and investment committees of Thrive Capital until January 2017, his financial disclosure forms show. He also received at least $8.2 million in capital gains from various Thrive funds while working in the White House, according to a financial disclosure form filed in May 2018. Whether Jared Kushner was aware of his brothers visit to Riyadh or of any Saudi investment in his brothers funds could not be determined. Spokesmen for the White House and for Jared Kushners lawyers declined to address those questions publicly. Jan Baran, a Republican lawyer specializing in government ethics, said an investment in a fund run by Thrive Capital did not appear to pose legal problems for Jared Kushner, unless his role in the White House gave him oversight over matters related to the Saudi investment. But Kathleen Clark, an expert on government ethics and a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said Saudi discussions with Josh Kushner raised issues for his brother. The timing looks bad, OK, but the bigger issue is his brothers business, she said. It is reasonable to question Jared Kushners ability to be impartial in dealing with the Saudis. At the time of the conference, Prince Mohammed was basking in favourable attention from many in the West for having taken preliminary steps to open up the kingdoms economy and relax its social codes. The New York Times was one of several media companies that co-sponsored the 2017 investment conference. Several Times journalists attended, and one spoke briefly with Josh Kushner. But the bond between Jared Kushner, 38, and Prince Mohammed, 33, has drawn more scrutiny as the crown prince has displayed more aggression. A week after the Kushners left the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Prince Mohammed ordered the extrajudicial detention of about 200 businessmen and former officials in a Ritz-Carlton hotel, some of whom were evidently tortured. He was also behind the bizarre kidnapping of Lebanons prime minister. And months later, he directed the arrests and, according to relatives, torture of prominent womens rights advocates. Then, last October, his agents killed and dismembered the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside a consulate in Istanbul on the orders of Prince Mohammed, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded. The crown prince has led a four-year military intervention in Yemen that has brought on a humanitarian catastrophe with no end in sight. At the same time, he has sown division among U.S. allies in the region by trying to isolate Qatar over policy disagreements. Jared Kushner, though, has steadfastly supported the prince. From the start of the administration, Kushner has argued persistently that Prince Mohammed can become a vital ally, especially in bringing the Palestinians into agreement with a promised American peace plan. He pushed past the objections of Cabinet members and senior officials to persuade Trump to visit Saudi Arabia on his first trip abroad as president. And even after a bipartisan backlash over the killing of Khashoggi, Kushner argued successfully that Trump should stand by the prince. Last month, the White House defied a congressional deadline for a report from Trump about who directed the killing, sidestepping pressure to acknowledge the intelligence findings about Prince Mohammeds role. Clark said that ethics laws could require Jared Kushner to recuse himself from White House deliberations about the response to those congressional demands or other specific proceedings involving the Saudis. Not long after the congressional deadline expired, Jared Kushner flew to Riyadh for his first face-to-face meeting with Prince Mohammed since Khashoggis death. Critics of Trump have often argued that a tacit financial interest hovers over his administrations dealings with the oil-rich rulers of the Persian Gulf, if only because they are major investors in American real estate. Both Trump and Jared Kushner are expected to go back into the business of selling real estate investments when they leave the White House. Josh Kushner, however, has largely escaped the scrutiny that has fallen on the Trump administration, in part because he kept his distance. He stepped away from the family business to found his venture capital firm, and he is a Democrat who has said he voted against Trump despite the family connection. Supporters of Josh Kushner note that his young firm has scored early wins like a timely investment in the photo-sharing app Instagram and that he was regularly invited to major tech investment conferences before 2016. But the Riyadh conference drew Wall Street titans, and some attendees questioned how a relatively small player enjoyed high-level access to Saudi officials. On a list of the top 100 venture capitalists compiled by the trade publication CB Insights in collaboration with The New York Times, Josh Kushner appeared for the first time in 2018, entering at 99. One of those he met, during an opening night party for VIP guests, was Yasir Al-Rumayyan, an aide to the crown prince and the managing director of the kingdoms vast Public Investment Fund. Another was Al-Rumayyans son Faisal, a student at New York University, and two of his associates said that after returning from Riyadh, they socialized together. (A person close to Josh Kushner said the two met face to face only once after the conference.) Read more about: MADISON, Wis. - The Latest on a judge blocking Wisconsin Republicans lame-duck laws (all times local): 3:25 p.m. Democratic lawmakers are asking their Republican counterparts to stop paying outside attorneys representing the Legislature after a judge blocked the GOPs lame-duck laws. Republican lawmakers passed laws limiting Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kauls powers. The laws allow lawmakers to intervene in lawsuits and hire their own attorneys rather than use Kauls Justice Department lawyers. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess blocked the laws Thursday, ruling the Legislature passed them during an illegal session. Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz and Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling sent letters to GOP leaders Thursday afternoon asking them stop paying outside attorneys hired under the lame-duck laws. Republicans hired Misha Tsyetlin at $500 an hour to defend the lame-duck laws in two lawsuits. Theyre also planning to hire outside counsel to defend Wisconsins abortion restrictions in a federal case. Aides for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald didnt immediately respond to emails. ___ 2:50 p.m. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers says he needs more time to decide how to use powers a judge restored to him by blocking Wisconsin Republicans lame duck laws. Wisconsin Republicans passed the laws limiting Evers powers including his ability to pull the state out of lawsuits in a December lame-duck session. The GOP also confirmed 82 of former Republican Gov. Scott Walkers appointments during the session. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess found the lame-duck session illegal Thursday and voided the laws and confirmations. Evers moved within hours of Niess order to pull Wisconsin out of a multistate lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act, fulfilling a campaign promise. But he told reporters he needs more time to digest the ruling before making any further moves. The clock is likely ticking for Evers. Republicans have vowed to appeal and its likely theyll ask an appellate court to seek a stay of Niess order soon. ___ 1:10 p.m. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has filed a motion to withdraw the state from an ongoing federal lawsuit seeking repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Kaul filed the motion Thursday after fellow Democrat, Gov. Tony Evers, ordered him to withdraw Wisconsin from the lawsuit. Kaul had been blocked from taking action under a law passed by the Republican Legislature in a lame-duck session shortly before he took office. But a Dane County circuit judge on Thursday ruled that the laws were unconstitutionally passed, giving Evers and Kaul a window to take action. Republicans say they will appeal the ruling, which could result in a higher court putting Thursdays decision on hold. Both Kaul and Evers campaigned on wanting to withdraw from the multi-state lawsuit. ___ 12:20 p.m. Gov. Tony Evers is pulling Wisconsin out of a multistate lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act after a judge blocked lame-duck laws prohibiting him from withdrawing the state from legal actions. Evers had promised during his campaign last year to pull Wisconsin out of the ACA lawsuit. Republican lawmakers stopped him cold, though, after passing lame-duck bills in December that prohibited him from withdrawing from lawsuits without legislative approval. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess issued a temporary injunction Thursday blocking the lame-duck laws, ruling that the Legislature had convened illegally when it passed them. Evers attorney sent a message to the state Department of Justice less than two hours after Niess issued the ruling ordering the withdraw from the ACA action. ___ 12:05 p.m. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers says a ruling blocking Wisconsin Republicans lame-duck laws is a victory. The GOP passed the laws in a December extraordinary session. The legislation limits both Evers and Democratic Attorney General Josh Kauls powers. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess ordered a temporary injunction Thursday blocking the laws, ruling that extraordinary sessions are illegal because the state constitution doesnt provide for them. Republicans have vowed to appeal. Evers issued a statement calling the ruling a victory for the people of Wisconsin. He accused Republican lawmakers of overplaying their hand by using an illegal process to accumulate more power for themselves. He says he hopes the state can move beyond this disappointing chapter. ___ 11:45 a.m. Republican legislative leaders are vowing to appeal a judges ruling blocking lame-duck laws limiting the governor and attorney generals powers. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess issued a temporary injunction Thursday blocking the laws. The injunction is part of lawsuit a coalition of liberal-leaning groups filed in January. They argue that the Legislature passed the laws during an illegal extraordinary session. Thats an unscheduled floor period that majority party leaders can call. Niess found that the state constitution doesnt provide for such sessions. The Legislatures attorneys argue Niess ruling leaves thousands of statutes passed during extraordinary session over the years vulnerable to legal challenges. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald issued a joint statement saying theyll appeal and Niess ruling creates legal chaos. Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke tweeted that he isnt surprised a Dane County judge has issued a partisan ruling. ___ 11:10 a.m. A judge has issued a temporary injunction blocking Wisconsin Republicans contentious lame-duck laws limiting the powers of Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, both Democrats. Dane County Circuit Judge Richard Niess issued the injunction Thursday. He refused the Legislatures request to put the order on hold. Republicans passed the lame-duck laws during an all-night extraordinary session in December just weeks before Evers and Kaul took office. An extraordinary session is a previously unscheduled floor period initiated by majority party leaders. A coalition of liberal-leaning groups filed a lawsuit in January arguing such sessions are illegal. They contend the Wisconsin Constitution allows legislators to convene only at such times as set out in a law passed at the beginning of each two-year session or at the governors call. NEW YORK - The Latest on a Florida man charged with mailing explosives to critics of President Donald Trump (all times local): 4:43 p.m. A Florida man has pleaded guilty to sending a wave of pipe bombs to CNN and prominent critics of President Donald Trump. Cesar Sayoc entered the plea Thursday before a federal judge in New York. He had been scheduled to go on trial this summer on charges that he mailed explosives to 16 targets, including Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, the billionaire George Soros, several members of congress and the actor Robert De Niro. Although no bombs exploded, each new report of a device found heightened the tension in the weeks before last years hotly contested midterm elections. Sayoc had been held without bail since his late-October arrest in Florida. Hed been living in a van covered with Trump stickers and images of Trump opponents with crosshairs over their faces. ___ 1:11 a.m. A Florida man who authorities say sent pipe bombs to prominent critics of President Donald Trump is expected to plead guilty Thursday. Cesar Sayoc is scheduled to enter the plea in Manhattan federal court. The change-of-plea hearing was revealed last week after a phone conference between prosecutors, Sayocs lawyers and a judge. Sayocs plea will avert a trial scheduled for July. Authorities say he targeted numerous Democrats, including former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the billionaire George Soros, former President Barack Obama and CNN, heightening tensions before midterm elections. No bombs exploded. Sayoc has been held without bail since his late-October arrest outside a South Florida auto parts store. He had been living in a van covered with Trump stickers and images of Trump opponents with crosshairs over their faces. PITTSBURGH - A white former police officer said Thursday he thought a weapon was pointed at him when he shot and killed an unarmed black teenager outside Pittsburgh last summer. Former East Pittsburgh Police Officer Michael Rosfeld took the stand at his homicide trial and insisted he was in fear for his life when he gunned down 17-year-old Antwon Rose II. Rosfeld, 30, got choked up and dabbed away tears as he recounted finding the mortally wounded Rose on the ground. I was upset, shocked, Rosfeld said. He was moaning, trying to breathe. The former officer testified after the prosecution rested its case earlier Thursday. Prosecutors said Rosfeld gave inconsistent statements about the shooting, including whether he thought Rose had a gun. A prosecution witness has said that after the shooting, he heard Rosfeld say repeatedly, I dont know why I shot him. I dont know why I fired. But another prosecution witness said he heard the officer ask, Why did he do that? Why did he take that out of his pocket? Rosfeld fired three bullets into Rose after pulling over an unlicensed taxi he suspected correctly, as it turned out to have been involved in a drive-by shooting. Rose, a passenger in the car, was shot in the back, arm and side of his face as he fled. Rosfeld followed proper procedure that day, according to defence witness Clifford W. Jobe Jr., a retired state trooper and use-of-force expert. I cant fault Officer Rosfeld, said Jobe, calling the officers actions textbook. The trial will resume Friday with Jobe back on the stand for cross-examination. Rosfeld testified the car that Rose was riding in had its rear windshield shot out. He chirped his siren and turned on his police lights, and the driver complied and pulled over. Rosfeld said he got out of his car with his gun drawn and ordered the driver to the ground. Thats when he said Rose and another occupant, Zaijuan Hester, jumped out of the car. Demonstrating for the jury what threatening gesture he believed he saw, Rosfeld stood up, raised his right arm to shoulder length and fully extended it as if pointing a weapon. It happened very quickly, Rosfeld said. My intent was to end the threat that was made against me. I just wanted to end the threat to me. I followed the threat and fired. I just saw that person moving, so I assumed the threat was still there. Asked by his attorney, Patrick Thomassey, why he fired his gun and did not simply let the suspects get away, Rosfeld said: Because I thought one of them was pointing a weapon at me. They were dangerous felon suspects. They had just fired a gun at someone. Rose had been riding in the front seat of the cab when Hester, in the backseat, rolled down a window and shot at two men on the street, hitting one in the abdomen. Hester, 18, pleaded guilty last week to aggravated assault and firearms violations. Hester told a judge that he, not Rose, did the shooting. Earlier Thursday, Judge Alexander Bicket rejected a defence motion to acquit Rosfeld on the murder counts he faces. Prosecutors charged Rosfeld with an open count of homicide, meaning the jury can convict Rosfeld of murder or manslaughter. The defence argued a murder charge wasnt appropriate in the case. What we have is a police officer doing his duty. Theres not a hardness of heart required for first- or third-degree murder, Thomassey argued in court. We have a burst of three shots in one second on a fleeing felon and were going to charge him with murder? Its not fair. Prosecutor Daniel Fitzsimmons said the fact that Rosfeld shot a fleeing Rose in the back was evidence of malice, and the judge ruled the murder counts would stand. Rosfelds decision to testify wasnt unusual. At least three other white officers charged in the on-duty fatal shootings of black people have taken the witness stand in recent years. In October, a Chicago jury convicted former officer Jason Van Dyke of murder in the shooting death of teenager Laquan McDonald. After the trial, jurors said Van Dykes testimony hurt his defence. Van Dyke got fewer than seven years in prison. An officer in Balch Spring, Texas, was convicted of murder last August and sentenced to 15 years after a jury didnt buy his explanation that he was trying to protect his partner when he fired into a car full of black teenagers, striking a 15-year-old. And in 2017, a former South Carolina patrolman was sentenced to 20 years in prison for killing an unarmed motorist. The officer pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges following a state trial at which he testified and the jury deadlocked. ___ Associated Press writer Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this story. RUTLAND, Vt. - Officials at a Vermont hospital say the information of more than 72,000 people may have been exposed during an email hack. Rutland Regional Medical Center says the email accounts had information such as patient names, medical records and contact information, as well as more than 3,500 Social Security numbers. The breach was first discovered in December after an employee noticed a large number of spam emails sent from their account. Affected patients received letters from the hospital earlier this week. Loyal Wescott, who received a letter Wednesday, tells WCAX-TV that he should have been notified weeks ago. Hospital officials have not confirmed whether any information from the affected email accounts was accessed. RRMC President and CEO Claudio Fort says the system has taken steps to prevent this from happening again. ___ Information from: WCAX-TV, http://www.wcax.com MCALLEN, Texas - A mother cradled a crying toddler as she waited in line with 20 other women to shower. Dozens of fathers quietly held their childrens hands in an enclosure made of chain-link fencing. While these families were held at an overcrowded Border Patrol processing centre, a fresh wave of migrants crossed the nearby river separating the U.S. and Mexico and waited for border agents to bring them to the same facility. One Honduran woman carried a feverish 7-month-old baby. The cycle is repeated multiple times a day. Waves of desperate families are trying to cross the border almost hourly and entering an overtaxed government detention system. The Border Patrol has become so overwhelmed in feeding and caring for the migrants that it announced plans this week to start releasing some families onto the street in the Rio Grande Valley to ease overcrowding in the processing centre, providing the immigrants with a notice to appear at an upcoming court date. We have an unprecedented crisis upon us, Robert Perez, deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrols parent agency, said in an interview. The Border Patrol says it made about 66,000 apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally in February, including 36,000 parents and children, an all-time monthly high. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, meanwhile, said since Dec. 21 it has released 107,000 family members while they await court dates. In this Thursday, March 14, 2019, photo, Border Patrol agent Hermann Rivera drives in McAllen, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border on a patrol searching for immigrants who have entered the country illegally. The agency says apprehensions along the border have surged, particularly of migrant parents and children from Central America. Immigration authorities expect the number of parents and children to surpass 50,000 in March during the traditional spring spike in migration and potentially reach 180,000 in May, according to two U.S. officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about internal documents. The Border Patrol ordered expanded medical screenings after the December deaths of two children in its custody. The agency received $30 million to upgrade its South Texas processing centre and additional funding to build a similar facility in El Paso. The autopsy results for Jakelin Caal and Felipe Gomez Alonzo have not yet been released, but Customs and Border Protection has said both children were hospitalized after developing high fevers and nausea. Children with fevers, colds and the flu arrive daily at the border with their parents and sometimes wait for hours for the Border Patrol to pick them up. On a recent Thursday, Carmen Mejias 7-month-old, Lian, was feverish, one of four sick children in her group of 20. His mother had heard about Jakelin and Felipe before leaving her rural town in northern Honduras. It made me sad, she said. But imagine. Im here, also looking for a future for my son. Mejia said she hoped to find work to support Lian and two older children she had left behind with her mother. While she spoke, two more waves of people arrived. The group grew to around 50 before the Border Patrol could load everyone into vans and take them into detention. Some migrants blamed extortion for forcing them to close small businesses. Others said gangs had killed close relatives and threatened to kill them. President Donald Trumps administration says most adult border crossers are economic migrants who count on being released if they bring a child and seek asylum. Immigration agency officials have called for Congress to change laws that would allow them to detain more adults and children and deport people from Central America quicker. Trumps signature solution and the reason for his declaration of a national emergency is a border wall, especially in South Texas, where there are comparatively few barriers. But a border wall would not stop families who arent trying to evade immigration authorities. Those families typically stop after crossing the Rio Grande and wait to be caught. The Associated Press visited the South Texas processing centre where many migrants end up. Its an old warehouse, with overhead lighting that stays on around the clock and chain-link fencing that forms large cages. Detainees are issued mats and foil blankets to sleep on the concrete floor. Each detainee receives a medical screening. Dozens of children waited on their own. Many were 10 years of age or older and kept separately from their parents, who are in another wing of the facility at the same time. Some of the children waiting on their own talked among themselves. Others tried to sleep on mats under the glare of the lights, their foil blankets crinkling. The facility received worldwide attention last June, during the Trump administrations enforcement of a zero-tolerance policy that led to thousands of family separations. Around 1,100 people were detained at the facility then, many of them children who had been separated from their parents. The facility opened in 2014 during the Obama administration to address another surge of thousands of unaccompanied teenagers arriving from Central America. Now the processing centre and other facilities in the sector deal with parents bringing young children and pregnant women who sometimes go into labour in detention. It isnt meant for families, said Carmen Qualia, an assistant chief patrol agent for the sector. Were set up for individuals. Agency guidelines require that parents are detained for no longer than 72 hours before being released or transferred to long-term detention centres with beds and more facilities. The average detention time for families late last week was about 60 hours. Most families are eventually bused to a Catholic Charities facility in McAllen, where volunteers provide food and medical checkups before taking them to the bus station or airport. The future of that facility is in jeopardy after McAllen city commissioners last month ordered Catholic Charities to vacate it by May, after complaints from neighbours. But the Border Patrol is relying on the facility more than ever. While a few hundred people are sent there daily, immigration authorities dropped 800 migrants at Catholic Charities in just one day this week, leading to volunteers posting pleas on social media for donations and help. Inside a small clinic behind the main building, Dr. Martin Garza listened to the heartbeat and lungs of 1-month-old Cesar Manuel Romero, cradled by his mother, 21-year-old Lily Romero of Honduras. Romero said she gave birth to Cesar on a bus as it passed through Monterrey, Mexico. After crossing the border, Romero said they were taken to a smaller Border Patrol station what she and other Spanish-speaking migrants often refer to as la hielera, or the icebox. She said another woman in custody loaned her a sweater so she could keep Cesar warm because agents had taken many of her belongings. She said they were given water that was nearly frozen. Afterward, they were taken to the processing centre and eventually released to Catholic Charities. The Border Patrol says its facilities follow agency detention guidelines and that it investigates any complaints of mistreatment. Garza said agents and medical professionals inside detention almost always diagnose major illnesses or injuries. But colds and fevers persist, along with conditions that arent obvious, he said. Infants are wheezing. Infants are having trouble breathing, and some of those things may not get picked up, he said. ___ Associated Press writers Colleen Long in Washington and Astrid Galvan in Phoenix contributed to this report. WASHINGTON - The White House on Thursday rejected a Democratic request for information on private conversations between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, including an interview with an interpreter who sat in on their one-on-one meeting in Helsinki last summer. In a letter earlier this month, the House intelligence, foreign affairs and oversight committees asked for the substance of Trump and Putins conversations in person and by phone. They also asked for any documents related to the conversations, information on whether the talks had any impact on U.S. foreign policy, and information on whether Trump tried to conceal any evidence of them. On Thursday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone sent a letter to the Democratic chairmen of the three committees rebuffing all those requests. The president must be free to engage in discussions with foreign leaders without fear that those communications will be disclosed and used as fodder for partisan political purposes, Cipollone wrote, adding, No foreign leader would engage in private conversations with the president, or the presidents senior advisors, if such conversations were subject to public disclosure (or disclosure to committees of Congress). Citing Supreme Court precedent, Cipollone wrote that the conduct of foreign affairs is a matter that the Constitution assigns exclusively to the President. The three House chairmen responded Thursday with a statement saying Cipollones letter continues a troubling pattern by the Trump Administration of rejecting legitimate and necessary congressional oversight with no regard for precedent or the constitution. The March 4 letters to the White House signed by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel and House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings requested interviews with linguists, translators or interpreters who in any way listened to Trump and Putins conversations. The two leaders met privately in Helsinki in July for more than two hours with only interpreters present, and the White House has not said what they discussed. Multiple Democratic-led committees are battling with the White House over documents as they launch broad new investigations of Trump and his personal and political dealings. On Tuesday, Cummings accused the White House of perpetrating an unprecedented level of stonewalling, delay and obstruction in response to congressional requests for documents and witnesses. Cummings wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that he has sent 12 letters to the White House on a range of topics ranging from security clearances to the use of taxpayer funds for lavish private aircraft. Since then, he wrote, the Trump administration has not turned over a single piece of paper to our committee or made a single official available for testimony. As a 23-year employee of SNC-Lavalin, I cannot tell you anything about the current debate swirling in Ottawa around my company. What I can tell you is, I and my many colleagues across Canada and around the world, wouldnt still be working at SNC-Lavalin if we didnt believe it was a world-class engineering, construction management and operations and maintenance company with the kinds of values an emphasis on safety, integrity, innovation and collaboration that align with our own. A lot is being said about SNC-Lavalin, that it is scandal-plagued and corrupt. That is not what I see or live day to day at SNC-Lavalin. My colleagues, including the nearly 2,800 working in Ontario, are honest, hard-working and talented professionals. They are engineers, experts in 3D computerized drafting systems, safety and quality assurance professionals, construction supervisors, and lawyers and accountants who take great pride in working on complex and meaningful projects that help make Ontario a better place to live and work. Our work is not always visible, but it is integral to the infrastructure of this province. It includes extending the life of the OPG Darlington and Bruce CANDU nuclear power plants, which produce 60 per cent of Ontarios power; a major air quality improvement project in Sudbury that has dramatically reduced emissions from smelting operations, and maintaining back up power for Torontos Pearson Airport. We are part of the consortium building the Eglinton Crosstown LRT in Toronto, operate a number of courthouses across the province, and our team in Ottawa maintains about 100 of the Canadian Navys auxiliary fleet off both coasts. We continue to work hard and to persevere. But I wont lie. These past few years, never mind the last few weeks, have been extremely difficult for morale. Our competitors exploit the challenges the company has faced to dissuade clients from hiring us, our clients and business partners insist on greater guarantees to work with us, and we have lost talent. What is harder to quantify is the deep personal toll this situation has taken on each one of us, as the daily media onslaught looks to put a malignant spin on anything associated with SNC-Lavalin. Every past transgression is being dredged up as if it is a reflection of the company today. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am in no way minimizing the mistakes of the past. And I can assure you that if Canadians are disappointed in the behaviour of a small number of former senior leaders, then SNC-Lavalin employees, who put their trust and professional credibility in their hands, feel that disappointment all the more keenly. Like all Canadians and employees, I seek justice, where the prosecutors are determined to bring to court the wrongdoers, who have all left the company years ago and let the company and its innocent employees grow and prosper to the benefit of all. What I and my colleagues dont understand however, is why armchair pundits, media and our politicians insist on punishing us a second time. A company is not some disembodied entity. It is nothing more than its employees, and its shareholders. To destroy the company, is to destroy the thousands of well-paying jobs that go with it, along with the savings of hard-working Canadians and pensioners. Some argue that the impacts to SNC-Lavalin or the Canadian economy are overstated. But to hypothesize that the company could survive a 10-year ban on federal contracts is to miss the point; it is the uncertainty, caused by years of a protracted legal proceedings, that causes the harm. We have seen the evidence of that already. Our Canadian employee base has shrunk from 20,000 to 8,500 in just five years, and we have lost some $5 billion in business, with a large impact on our supply chain as well and that was before the events of the last month. Others argue that our jobs will simply be filled by the market. To a degree that may be true. What is also true is that we are the only Canadian company that has the scale, breadth of expertise and financial strength to bid on the countrys largest and most complex projects. Without us, that void will be filled by foreign companies employing foreign engineers. Furthermore, a majority of SNC-Lavalins revenues are earned outside Canada. If SNC-Lavalin is brought down, that overseas work, presently serviced in part by engineers and other professionals from Canada, will in future be done by foreign competitors not by Canadians. It took more than 100 years to build SNC-Lavalin to what it is today. And we all know that Canada only has a few truly global champions that are leaders in their industries. SNC-Lavalin is one of them. Why would we throw away all that homegrown expertise, know-how and talent that has taken generations to build? I am a proud Canadian; I love our country and our values, which is why this has been so difficult. No other country seems to beat up on its own homegrown talent like we do in Canada, and for what reason, and for what gain? It is of no benefit to Canada, our companies or the people who work for them. Dale Clarke is head of SNC-Lavalins Operations and Maintenance business unit and is based in Toronto. He lives near Fergus, Ontario with his wife and two children. Read more about: I completed surgical training at the University of Toronto 36 years ago and nothing that I learned in residency is done the same way today. The only constant about surgery is that it is constantly changing. And change in how surgeons work is an important innovation that contributes to the sustainability of our publicly funded health system. Technology, improved patient education and responsive home care have allowed Ontario hospitals to shorten the length of time that patients spend in hospital after operations. Less invasive surgery and anesthesia have reduced the cost of care and, more important, have made recovery from surgery easier for the patient. There is more opportunity. Capitalizing on less invasive surgery requires a new environment of surgical care. However, private interests are hoping to profit from this new environment and are suggesting that they should take this activity over from the hospital. About 50 Ontarios hospitals now do major volumes of surgery. Most of these centres have central operating rooms (with most patients staying overnight) or hospital-based day units where the patient is discharged the same day as surgery. Experience in the United States has shown that a different structure outside the hospital called an ambulatory surgery centre (ambulatory centres) can increase productivity of surgical care by doing more surgeries in a given day of OR time. The physical design of the ambulatory centre space and all clinical processes are focused on moving the patient efficiently through surgery and toward discharge. Parking, changing facilities, OR and recovery room design, anesthesia and nursing protocols are all focused on increasing patient throughput. Experience in Ontario suggests that we could realize up to a 20 per cent productivity gain if more hospitals developed surgery ambulatory centres. The Queensway Health Center of Trillium Health Partners, Riverside Hospital as part of The Ottawa Hospital, Hotel Dieu as part of the Kingston Health Science Center are all examples of stand-alone ambulatory surgery centres that are managed by hospitals. The Kensington Eye Center in Toronto is another example of a publicly funded ambulatory centre that is not hospital managed but has also increased productivity and reduced costs. The alternative to moving more surgery to hospital managed ambulatory facilities is to expand the role of privately-owned independent health facilities (IHFs). These facilities are mainly used today for eye surgery or plastic surgery that is not funded by OHIP. Owners of IHFs (generally physicians) are now suggesting that they should be allowed to do publicly funded surgery in their facilities and take over this activity from hospitals as suggested in the London example cited above. This expansion of surgery within private facilities should not be allowed unless there is absolutely no alternative. Instead, Ontario hospitals should further develop ambulatory surgery within their operational plans to maintain a full range of surgery programs. Hospitals should not be left with only difficult, expensive in-patient surgery while private operators benefit from more profitable ambulatory procedures. And, moving OHIP funded surgery to private facilities opens the door to fully privatized surgical suites like Vancouvers Cambie Clinic that charge patients above public rates to jump the queue for surgery. Hospitals should manage the move to ambulatory surgery since they have the established services that underpin excellence in surgical care quality committees and infection control for example as well as the resources that patients need when something goes wrong. As private surgery centres have increased scope of practice in America, fatal complications have occurred because of the lack of hospital back up. Unlike hospitals, private ambulatory centres also have a history of up selling their services by charging extra fees to patients, even when procedures are funded by the health ministry. Ontario has an opportunity to increase productivity of surgical services by moving more care to same day discharge and by performing these services in purpose-built ambulatory surgery centres. The Kensington Eye Institute experience suggests that 20 per cent more cases can be done in a dedicated facility compared to hospital care. Keeping this opportunity within the governance of publicly funded hospitals capitalizes on the infrastructure already present in the hospital, prevents the hospital from losing part of its surgical budget as well as ensuring that private operators do not sell patients extra services. Ontario hospitals are among the most cost-effective institutions in the world and they should capitalize on the trend to ambulatory surgery. Bob Bell worked in Ontario health care for more than 40 years as a GP, surgeon, hospital CEO and Deputy Minister of Health. Follow him on Twitter: @drbobbell Read more about: Doug Fords Progressive Conservatives relied on a variety of slogans in last years Ontario election campaign from buck-a-beer and the six-million-dollar-man, to fixing hallway medicine and the ubiquitous for the people. Is it possible, then, that we missed a few? Vote PC for bigger school classes, for example. Or, elect Ford for fewer teachers. For those are the placards that should have been held high during the campaign to justify the changes the Ford government is now making to Ontarios education system. But no one was marching around with those signs and the election was not fought over the crisis in our education system, for the simple reason that there isnt one. Or at least there wasnt until this government got elected. Despite Education Minister Lisa Thompsons repeated statements that the Liberal government failed our students, thats simply not the case. Under Liberal governments the on-time high school graduation rate in Ontario rose from a dismal 56 per cent in 2004 to an all-time high of 80 per cent in 2017. But never one to let facts get in the way of trashing anything associated with the Liberals, the Ford government unveiled plans last Friday to modernize education. Inexplicably (from an education standpoint anyway), that includes increasing average class sizes, particularly in high school, to the point that education experts predict some 10,000 teaching positions in the province will disappear. What makes that modern is anyones guess. This the biggest change in Ontarios education system in a decade was mentioned in passing, down page, in the governments announcement, which gave top billing to banning cellphones and overhauling sex education and the math curriculum. Going back to basics in math, banning cellphones (sort of) and rolling back sex ed are questionable to downright terrible ideas. But they at least have the merit of having actually been mentioned in Fords election platform. Cutting an estimated $1 billion from education over four years was certainly not mentioned. Nor was some broad crisis in education that paradoxically could be remedied with far larger high school classes and less teacher attention for every student. The crisis, such as it is, is a financial one manufactured by Ford and his finance minister, Vic Fedeli. Through a series of accounting changes they inflated the provincial deficit from $6.7 billion under the Liberals to the current claim of $13.5 billion. That, coupled with Fords ridiculous boast about how easy it would be to find $6 billion in savings, is what these changes to class sizes are really about. Most of the money spent by the province goes to health care and education, and so thats where Fords efficiencies were always going to be found. Ford is not fixing education; hes fixing a budget problem of his own making. Or, as the government puts it, hes seeking to better balance student success and system sustainability. Ford and Thompson are busy pretending that cutting so many teachers from the system with no involuntary job losses means that it somehow doesnt count. But people wont be fooled by that sleight of hand. Increasing high school classes from 22 to 28 students on average means six more raised hands for every teacher to get to or, as will inevitably be the case, not get to. And since 28 is the new average, the number in some classes could be considerably higher than that. Strong students will probably be okay in larger classes, but many others wont. And these changes are also bound to mean fewer course options, which will make for a less interesting school experience, hurting both the very best students and those on the fence about even being there. As usual, there is still much we dont know about this plan because the government rolled it out without the necessary details. Those are to come in April and beyond. But its already clear this will amount to less critical thinking and fewer choices in schools. It will also make it more difficult for students to succeed with less teacher attention and quite possibly more distractions, when students with autism arrive for classes without the supports they need thanks to another terribly misguided program overhaul by this government. Even trying to claim that adds up to student success takes an advanced degree in politics far more than anything to do with education. No wonder Thompson stumbled through a CBC Radio interview on Wednesday, suggesting that more hardship for teens during their high school years would make them more resilient when they hit the workforce. So the governments plan to modernize education is really about returning to the school of hard knocks? This is just the first of many knots the government will tie itself into trying to pretend that something theyre clearly doing to save money will somehow benefit students. The truth is it wont. Read more about: Some finance ministers leave legacies. Paul Martin, a Liberal, will be remembered for gutting the welfare state in his battle against deficits. Michael Wilson, a Conservative, will be remembered for introducing the hated but fiendishly efficient value-added tax known as the GST. Jim Flaherty, another Conservative, will be remembered as the reluctant Keynesian who ran huge deficits in an effort to pull Canada from recession. What legacy will Bill Morneau, the current Liberal federal finance minister, leave? In terms of this weeks budget alone, the answer is: not much. Tuesdays budget is wide-ranging and often useful. But it is not dramatic. At times, it may prove to be counterproductive. At the macroeconomic level, Morneau continues his charmingly insouciant approach to deficits. The Liberals came to power in 2015 saying that deficits dont much matter and that as long as the ratio of government debt to gross domestic product is falling, things will sort themselves out. This was an about-face from their previous position. But in purely economic terms they were correct. For an economy as big as Canadas, the fact that the federal government faces a shortfall of $19.8 billion next year is largely irrelevant. Politically, however, deficits can be dangerous. Many voters find the idea that governments can operate perpetually in the red counterintuitive. As the Liberals should remember from their own experience, it is easy to use the deficit as a bogeyman to justify slashing social services. At a more specific level, Tuesdays budget is a typical pre-election grab bag aimed at sewing up different voting blocs. Young people will face lower interest rates on their student loans. Impoverished seniors will be able to take low-wage jobs without losing as much of their Guaranteed Income Supplement or Allowance benefits. Workers between the ages of 25 and 64 will be eligible for a training allowance of $250 a year, to a maximum of $5,000. Most of this is worthwhile. There are some caveats. The training allowance, for instance, can work only if the provinces change their labour laws to let workers take re-education breaks without forfeiting their jobs. But at least its a start. Measures designed to let young people break into the housing market are less useful. The budgets centrepiece here is a scheme that would see the governments Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. assume up to 10 per cent of the equity in a home purchased by a first-time buyer. This may sound good, but in tight housing markets such as Toronto and Vancouver it will almost certainly drive up real estate prices further, with most of the benefit accruing to the sellers. The government is expanding another program aimed at increasing rental supply. But the take up on this so-called Rental Construction Financing Initiative is agonizingly slow. Since its implementation in 2017, only five projects representing 500 rental units have been announced. There had been speculation that this budget would focus on pharmacare. But that was never in the cards. Morneau is wary of introducing a pricey, publicly funded, universal drug coverage program and had arranged for an advisory body to deliver its final pharmacare recommendations in May or June, well after the budget. On Tuesday, Morneau did announce spending on measures that could be used in a universal pharmacare system, such as helping to finance the expensive drugs needed to fight rare diseases. But these measures could also be used in a much less ambitious drug program designed to fill in the gaps left by Canadas current hodgepodge of pharmaceutical plans. What will Morneaus legacy be? He may want to be remembered for the innovation agenda he first announced in 2017 and keeps on reannouncing. But nothing much is happening on the innovation front so thats unlikely. He may have to be satisfied with being remembered as the man who delivered the popular Canada Child Benefit back in 2016. Or as the guy who persuaded the provinces early on in the Liberal mandate to increase the Canada Pension Plan, a crucial source of income for retired workers. Everything since then, while often important, has been less memorable. OTTAWAWho decides whos in and whos out of Liberal caucus? Is it the prime minister? Is it caucus? You can be forgiven for not knowing. As the governing Liberals have tried to figure out what to do about former cabinet ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, even they dont appear to be sure. It should not be this way. Under a law passed by Parliament in 2015 all parliamentary caucuses were obliged to decide by internal vote at their first meeting the extent of the powers of the prime minister and members of the caucus to decide key issues like membership and expulsion. Read more: Celina Caesar-Chavannes quits Liberal caucus Opinion | Thomas Walkom: Jody Wilson-Raybould still controls the SNC-Lavalin narrative Who is Jane Philpott, the Trudeau cabinet minister whose sudden resignation has rocked Ottawa? Conservative MP Michael Chong, who sponsored the changes in a private members bill that became the Reform Act, believed the Liberals, and the New Democrats, were in clear violation of that law because he has tried for three years and failed to get the results of their caucus votes after the last general election. However, the Liberal party disputes there was ever any breach. Nonetheless, in the Liberal partys case, it has all led to much confusion over how to decide the fate of Wilson-Raybould and Philpott. The Conservatives did vote on the measure. And one of its votes determined that only the Conservative caucus, elected MPs and senators, can decide on the fate of a fellow caucus member, not the leader. One can resign, but leader Andrew Scheer cant kick anyone out without a vote of caucus. On Wednesday, Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes quit caucus, in apparent regret over having disappointed her caucus colleagues when she gave an interview critical of Justin Trudeau at the height of the SNC-Lavalin affair. She tweeted an apology over the unintended effects her interview had. It fuelled the Conservative Oppositions attacks Wednesday on Trudeau as a fake feminist who drives out strong women or silences them in his cabinet and caucus. Yet two higher-profile players in the SNC-Lavalin drama MPs Wilson-Raybould and Philpott remain in the Liberal caucus fold despite having quit cabinet. Each has protested the Trudeau governments handling of allegations the PMO tried to politically influence the SNC-Lavalin prosecution. But their reasons for quitting cabinet have still not been publicly detailed. Philpott told the Star in a brief interview Wednesday it was not the time to speak at length about why she quit cabinet but remains in a caucus led by Trudeau. My letter made it clear that I believe that the Liberal party has the best plan for our country and I am fully supportive of our party and our approach on a range of important issues, she said. Caucus sources say discussions in caucus meetings were heated Wednesday, with Liberals venting concerns about the damage the past few weeks have done to the Liberal party, however the MPs in their sights were not ousted. Senior officials in the PMO told the Star in recent weeks it would be up to Liberal caucus colleagues to decide their fate. Yet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested it would be his call, telling reporters he was reflecting on their future. By Wednesday, he had clearly decided that to lose them entirely would be more damaging. Without naming Wilson-Raybould or Philpott, Trudeau suggested bygones could be bygones, but left open the possibility that all wounds werent healed. Any member wanting to run for us in the next election obviously believes in what we want to do and the two members in question have been saying, thus far, they wish to run for the Liberal party in the next election, Trudeau said Wednesday. He also praised Caesar-Chavannes work for the party and wished her well. Trudeau tried to make a virtue of necessity, saying it is a strength of our party that there is a diversity of opinions and perspectives. Yet Michael Chong draws a thread through what he sees as the Liberal governments disdain for the independence of the attorney generals role in overseeing prosecutions in the SNC-Lavalin affair, and the Liberals refusal to publicly state whether and how it complied with the Reform Act that required votes to determine the mechanisms to expel caucus members. In fact, Chong wrote Wilson-Raybould when she first took office, and her successor David Lametti, before the SNC-Lavalin affair broke on Feb. 7, to flag the failure of the governing party to follow that law. Neither replied to him, Chong said. After the Star sent an inquiry to Lamettis office Wednesday, spokesperson David Taylor replied by email: The letter was received. The Government will be providing a written response to Mr. Chong in due course. The law has practical effects, says Chong, as it determines the power of the prime minister and the powers of caucus. But more important, Chong says These matters concern the independence of our judicial system and the balance of power at the heart of our democracy. Late Wednesday night, the PMO told the Star it is wrong to say the Liberal caucus was in breach of the law. Trudeau spokesperson Chantal Gagnon refused to release publicly any results of any caucus votes, but said caucus did send a letter in 2015 to the Commons Speakers office, as required, advising of the governing partys caucus position. She said there were votes, but would not reveal the outcomes citing confidentiality of caucus discussions. After the Liberals first came to power, news reports of the day said the Liberals had punted the question to their next convention. Chong asked the Speakers office to release any Liberal letter early in the Liberals mandate, but says his request was denied. The Speakers office confirmed late Wednesday it received a letter from the Liberal caucus, but could not disclose what it said. If it was clear to Liberal MPs who has the last say on who gets to stay and who goes, several appeared to be in the dark Wednesday morning. Read more about: OTTAWA Nearly 24 hours into a marathon parliamentary voting session that the Conservative Opposition forced in protest over the SNC-Lavalin scandal, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau almost lost his government. It was a riveting moment in yet another nerve-wracking day for the Trudeau government, which is under round-the-clock fire over its alleged political meddling in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. Conservatives, angered that Liberal MPs on Tuesday shut down the justice committees probe into the SNC-Lavalin allegations, have moved to start another committee investigation this one by the Commons ethics committee. And they are using a procedural move to require MPs to stand and vote on every line in a money supply bill. Every one of 257 line items in the bill is considered a confidence vote, meaning if the Liberals dont have enough members in the Commons to win each and every vote, the government would be defeated after losing the confidence of the House. Late Thursday afternoon, after vote #125, several dozen Liberal MPs and cabinet ministers, punch-drunk with fatigue, ties hanging loose, and irritated at yet another damaging headline earlier that day, were mingling near or outside the Commons chamber, when the next question to be voted was read aloud by the Speaker. Liberals MPs and ministers rushed back into the chamber. The Conservatives and New Democrats howled in outrage, repeatedly demanding the Speaker discount their votes. A Liberal deputy speaker, Anthony Rota, was chair as mayhem erupted. For nearly an hour, the governments fate hung in the balance. The Conservatives claimed to have identified 51 Liberal MPs who were not in their chairs in time to legally vote and demanded the Speaker review videotapes. Conservative House leader Candice Bergen slammed the Liberals for sitting on cots, taking naps, hanging out in Camp Cover-up outside the chamber, saying they could not now claim the right to vote because Liberals are not above the rules in this place. The NDP said the same question at the heart of the SNC-Lavalin scandal was at play on the floor of the Commons: was there one set of rules for Liberals and another set for everyone else? This is about the credibility of the vote, said the NDPs Charlie Angus. Those are the rules we work under. Trudeau appeared 12 minutes into a brouhaha that went on for an hour. With a grim look on his face, he straightened his tie, strode to his seat and waited as arguments and insults flew, with Opposition MPs hollering Liar, liar across the aisle. In the end, Speaker Rota said he would leave it up to the honour of individual MPs to self-identify and withdraw their votes. Trudeau, who hadnt voted, left the chamber. Only about half a dozen of his MPs withdrew their vote, including cabinet ministers Melanie Joly and Harjit Sajjan. Several Opposition MPs stood and withdrew their votes. When the recounts were done, the Liberals won 95-62, a narrow 33-vote win. If the Conservatives count of 51 ineligible Liberals had been deemed correct, the Liberal government would have fallen. Trudeau shrugged it off, telling reporters he was not at all worried at the time. But his government was battered again on Thursday when Macleans magazine published an interview with ex-Cabinet minister Jane Philpott who said there is much more to be told about the Liberals mishandling of the SNC-Lavalin affair. She has sided with Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former attorney general who has accused Trudeau and his top officials of hounding her in an inappropriate effort to politically pressure her into cutting a deal with SNC-Lavalin on bribery and fraud charges. However, both have said they are bound by cabinet confidentiality from revealing further details about the scandal, now dogging the government for six weeks. The Opposition has demanded Trudeau waive any limits on their ability to talk about why they quit cabinet something Trudeau says is not relevant to the issue of what happened when Wilson-Raybould was attorney general, before he shifted her to veterans affairs. Now, in a week when the government had hoped to turn the page on the scandal with the unveiling of its budget and $22.8-billion in new spending, Philpott who quit cabinet on March 4 fanned the flames of the SNC-Lavalin controversy and angered her caucus colleagues all over again. Liberal MP John McKay expressed the mood of many when he told the Star, If theres more to be said, say it. He said nothing prevents Philpott from speaking freely in the House of Commons, and while the rest of the caucus has decided they must hang together or hang separately, they were concerned by Philpotts decision to do the Macleans interview. Its the drip-drip, and there are political consequences to these stories so lets get it out there, said McKay. He said while her and Wilson-Rayboulds presence in caucus is the prime ministers call, confidence is ultimately your issue. On core issues you cant have confidence for this, and not confidence for that. Philpott told the magazine she quit as Treasury Board president because that she felt there was evidence of an attempt to politically interfere with the justice system. She told the Star her resignation letter, which she posted on her website, made it clear that I believe that the Liberal party has the best plan for our country and I am fully supportive of our party and our approach on a range of important issues. Philpott and Wilson-Raybould say they intend to run as Liberals. But the scandal has also cost Trudeau his top aide Gerald Butts who resigned to defend the PMO against the allegations. And on Monday, Canadas top civil servant Michael Wernick said he would retire as Trudeaus privy council clerk. On Thursday, Trudeau deflected questions about how Philpott could remain in Liberal caucus while knowingly hurting the governments chance at re-election. He said the Liberals recognize diversity of perspectives, of experiences, of opinions. Within the same party we can have, absolutely, differences of opinion, Trudeau told reporters at a news conference in Mississauga. Celina Caesar-Chavannes, a Whitby MP who has been a vocal and public defender of Wilson-Raybould, also quit the Liberal caucus Wednesday. Featured stories: Ontario failed to build a reliable vaccination tracking system and for now uses the honour system, Star investigation finds More provinces warning cancer risk of textured breast implants Bite-mark analysis has been shown to be flawed science. So why is it allowed in Canadian courts? Developer cancels Danforth condo due to unforeseen circumstances Canada set to begin collecting data on travellers leaving country Mark Gerretsen, the chair of the Liberals Ontario caucus, refused to discuss caucus issues, which are typically confidential, but said hes disappointed with the friction between Liberal MPs. Im always going to be disappointed when our team doesnt appear to be functioning as cohesively as it could, Gerretsen told the Star Thursday. When people feel the need to go speak outside about whats going on in terms of their feelings, and how that affects team members, yeah, absolutely theres going to obviously be a concern about how what one says about the team affects that team ... as they prepare for an election. NDP MP Charlie Angus said that Philpotts comments raise fresh questions about what Canadians dont yet know about the SNC-Lavalin affair and he called on Trudeau to allow the Commons ethics committee to investigate. How long is he going to carry on this charade that we dont need any more answers, Angus said. Damage control doesnt cut it. We need to get to the bottom of it. With files from Bruce Campion-Smith Tonda MacCharles is an Ottawa-based reporter covering national politics. Follow her on Twitter: @TondaMacC Alex Boutilier is an Ottawa-based reporter covering national politics. Follow him on Twitter: @alexboutilier Read more about: Jane Philpott has been quietly getting out the word in recent days that she will be doing interviews within the coming weeks. Its a good idea, because the former minister has only hinted in her newest interview with Macleans magazine about what led her to quit Justin Trudeaus cabinet at the beginning of March. Why wait a couple more weeks, though? My sense is that Canadians would like to know the whole story, Philpott told Macleans columnist Paul Wells. Indeed we would. The saga of former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and SNC-Lavalin has now consumed six full weeks of federal politics. It has eclipsed the federal budget and pretty much anything else that may be on the Trudeau governments agenda. Remember those Canadians being held in China, including one facing the death penalty? The international panel warning that the world has 12 years to get its act together on climate change or face environmental catastrophe? Well, as the automated answer machine says: Please hold, your call is very important. Read more: Canadians want whole story on SNC-Lavalin, says Jane Philpott The political casualties of the SNC-Lavalin affair Conservatives filibuster in House of Commons after Liberals shut down Wilson-Raybould motion Philpott and Wilson-Raybould may be correct, that whatever led them to quit cabinet on a point of high principle is worth all the collective, breathless attention of the political class in Canada and a voting marathon in the House of Commons (which they were sitting out, granted immunity from cranky caucus mates.) These two ex-ministers keep telling us they have more to say. So lets have it. If the truth is this urgent and all-consuming, worth putting every other issue on hold, why does it keep hiding behind some obscure, debatable rules? Lately Ive been imagining how something like this would play out in the United States even Donald Trumps United States. If two senior members of the U.S. cabinet had quit their posts amid allegations of corruption at the top levels of government, they would probably hold a news conference, maybe on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Thats what speaking truth to power looks like. It doesnt dance behind anonymous leaks, cryptic interviews or polite, No I couldnt possibly break the rules evasion. It doesnt issue vague statements and then shrink from interviews and hard questions, including sharp ones from their caucus colleagues. Up to now, the only thing that Wilson-Raybould and Philpott have sacrificed are their ministerial perks and salary for the sake of their principles. Certainly thats no small thing. But again, if what theyre alleging is as serious as they keep hinting, why not risk the punishment of breaking the rules they keep talking about some of which have been waived already? What would happen if they convened a news conference and told the whole story? Do they think they would be led away in handcuffs? Philpotts interview with Macleans, with no disrespect to interviewer or interviewee, was baffling in many parts. She confirms that she knew a full month before the SNC-Lavalin story broke and warned the prime minister that Wilson-Raybould would see this as the cause for bouncing her out of her job as justice minister. I think Canadians might want to know why I would have raised that with the prime minister a month before the public knew about it, Philpott said. Again, yes we would. Moreover, quite conveniently, we are allowed even entitled to know that. Trudeau waived solicitor-client privilege for the period of time during which Wilson-Raybould was justice minister. She was still justice minister when Philpott spoke to him. Trudeau has spoken freely about this meeting, and did again on Thursday, in the hours after the Macleans story was published. He said, intriguingly, that Philpott herself had offered to help him soften the career blow to Wilson-Raybould in moving from justice to the Indigenous services portfolio, which was the original idea of the now-infamous cabinet shuffle. She then mentioned it might be a challenge for Jody Wilson-Raybould to take on the role of Indigenous services and I asked her for her help, which she gladly offered to give, Trudeau said. Featured stories: Ontario failed to build a reliable vaccination tracking system and for now uses the honour system, Star investigation finds More provinces warning cancer risk of textured breast implants Bite-mark analysis has been shown to be flawed science. So why is it allowed in Canadian courts? Developer cancels Danforth condo due to unforeseen circumstances Canada set to begin collecting data on travellers leaving country From that account, it doesnt sound like Philpott left the meeting with an urgent need to tell Canadians of what she knew about SNC-Lavalin, or call the police or some parliamentary authority. She still hasnt said what she knows. Why not? Philpott was asked in the Macleans interview why she hadnt taken advantage of other ways to tell her truth, whether thats in Parliament, where she enjoys privilege, or some other forum. Its complicated, she answered. Actually, its not. Theres much more to the story that should be told, Philpott said. Agreed. So lets move up those proposed interviews a couple of weeks, or just call a full news conference on Friday. Thats what the power of truth looks like. Susan Delacourt is the Stars Ottawa bureau chief and a columnist covering national politics. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt Read more about: Larger high school classes prepare teens for the real world and boost their resiliency, Education Minister Lisa Thompson says. Were hearing from professors and employers alike that they are lacking coping skills and they are lacking resiliency, she said Wednesday on CBC Radios Metro Morning. By increasing class sizes in high school, we are preparing them for the reality of post-secondary, as well as the world of work. Thompsons comment drew the ire of educators, with one calling it outlandish. There is no evidence that larger class sizes increase resiliency, said Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation, adding that as class sizes have shrunk in recent years, student achievement and graduation rates have shot up. The minister, he said, hedges, obfuscates and spins to avoid talking about the cuts being made to education, accusing the Ford government of being willing to sacrifice quality to save money. Last Friday, Thompson unveiled a number of education reforms, including hiking average class sizes in secondary schools from 22 to 28. Because those are averages, many classes for teens are already well into the 30s, which offsets smaller, specialized classes and educators worry classes could soon hit 40. Thompson said the bigger classes will be phased in over the next four years, and promised no teacher will be laid off despite estimates from critics that more than 10,000 positions will be eliminated. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath accused the Ford government of cutting $1 billion from education, cramming more students into crowded classrooms and turning the system into the Hunger Games. I mean, if students are being told theyve got to make it on their own, theyve got to fight for (teacher) attention, the government is bringing the Hunger Games into our schools, she said, referring to the popular books and movies about a dystopian society where youth are forced to fight one another to the death. The government has estimated it will save about $250 million in the first year alone with the loss of teaching positions. When asked to explain the resiliency comment at Queens Park on Wednesday, Thompson said its coming from consultation that we did through the fall and into the spring we heard from employers loud and clear that their new hires, their young hires, were lacking resiliency and coping skills. She cited the example of one young candidate who couldnt handle a job interview, and cried. The employer was emphatic that this young person was a bright light and a good hire, Thompson told reporters. But again, they havent had that exposure, the coping skills to deal with stressful situations and so we need to make sure that students have an environment whereby they are communicating, they are learning how to discuss difficult subject areas and working through with people. When asked if she was saying larger classes mean stressful situations, she said she rejected that premise. What Im saying is what were hearing is when we take a look at aligning our mature students in high school with class sizes with other jurisdictions across Canada, were enabling more group work, were enabling more opportunities for people to work with each other and actually build the skills that employers are looking for. Thompson also said teachers have told her that for group work, or teamwork, having between 26 and 28 students is the ideal number. Liz Stuart, president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association, said the huge concern for us is the impact its going to have on the programming made available for students with the estimated loss of about 5,000 Catholic teachers alone over the next four years. The move, she added, will negatively impact students every day in schools and will especially hurt smaller, rural schools that may no longer have the staff to offer a class like Grade 12 physics. In the past, because the board had a 22-to-1 ratio, it may have been able to make that happen, she said. Now, it will be increasingly difficult to do that. With files from Robert Benzie An ethics report into the Progressive Conservatives failed bid to install Premier Doug Fords friend Ron Taverner as OPP commissioner proves the bogus hiring process was rigged, charges the lawyer for former deputy commissioner Brad Blair. Blair took a bullet for the service, said lawyer Julian Falconer, when he was fired by the government after exposing possible conflicts in Taverners appointment as well as the Tories attempt to get an Ontario Provincial Police van with $50,000 of customized upgrades for Fords use. While integrity commissioner J. David Wakes 101-page report concluded Ford did not breach the law himself, it revealed the hiring process was fraught with problems and that the premiers office was intimately involved. Falconer said Wakes review released Wednesday is a searing indictment of the provincial government. The finding that ... what was supposed to be an independent hiring process was in fact a sham rigged for a certain result is nothing to be proud of, he told reporters Thursday. Brad Blair did this in the first place to protect the OPP, the lawyer said of Blairs legal battle to force the Ontario ombudsman to probe the Taverner hiring. His lawsuit exposed the premiers unsuccessful efforts to get a customized OPP van with a powered reclining leather sofa, 32-inch TV with Blu-ray DVD player, and a mini-fridge. For his trouble, the 32-year OPP veteran, who was briefly interim commissioner of the force, was sacked by the Tory government. He is considering a wrongful dismissal suit. Falconer said his clients case is bolstered by Wakes report. The ethics watchdog wrote that there were some troubling aspects of the recruitment process and ultimately made the finding that the process was flawed and that the field appeared tilted in Taverners favour. The 72-year-old Toronto police superintendent, a Ford family friend, withdrew his name from consideration for the post on March 6 amid outcry over his hiring. York Regional Police deputy Chief Thomas Carrique, 51, who has no connection to the premier, was appointed the new commissioner last week. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said Wakes report is damning in every way and that is why it is absolutely necessary that we have a public inquiry to shed light on what went on behind the scenes to ensure such appointments are conducted more transparently in the future. There were emails that were missing, said Horwath, referring to a concern from the integrity commissioner that he did not receive all of the materials he sought during his three-month probe. This report speaks volumes about the inside deals and the backroom shenanigans that went on during this process. It stinks all the way around, still, she said. But Community Safety Minister Sylvia Jones accused the NDP of a politically motivated hatchet job that sullied the reputation of Taverner, a 51-year police veteran who did not meet the original qualifications threshold for the job until the government lowered it. Its clear from the beginning that this complaint was frivolous and without merit. The integrity commissioners report clearly shows that, Jones said But Jones ducked repeated media questions about why the government claimed there was an independent hiring panel overseeing the appointment when Wake found that was not the case, thanks to emails and texts between Dean French, Fords chief of staff, and Steve Orsini, then the secretary of cabinet. The integrity commissioner noted anyone examining these messages would have serious doubts as to the fairness of the process to the other candidates, such as Blair. Orsini, who was head of the Ontario public service, announced his retirement in December amid concerns about the installation of Taverner. He had warned French against claiming it was an independent process. Independent of who? Im the deputy minister to the premier and Ron reported to Mario (Di Tommaso, a deputy minister hired by Ford) when he was at TPS (Toronto police service), Orsini wrote in a message included in Wakes report. I would drop the word independent and just call it recruitment selection panel where no political staff were involved. Robert Benzie is the Star's Queen's Park bureau chief and a reporter covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @robertbenzie Read more about: Theresa May's European counterparts have lost faith in her just when she needed them most. As she fights in London and Brussels to avoid a catastrophic crash out of the European Union in just eight days, European officials find themselves asking in private whether Britains prospects might have looked a lot less perilous with someone else in charge. Just this week, May blindsided her European partners with mixed messages about extending the Brexit process. EU officials, speaking privately, said it was yet another example of the unreliability that has steadily eroded the trust between the two sides. That makes them nervous as they head into the final days, and means they can't rule out a no-deal exit, no matter how determined they are to avoid it. This week her de facto deputy, David Lidington, told EU officials on Monday that she would send a letter requesting a flexible Brexit delay that would involve a potentially long postponement, according to people familiar with the situation. The EU penciled in an offer of between nine and 15 months. On Tuesday night word reached Brussels that May wouldn't in fact be sending a letter but would instead appeal to leaders directly at Thursday's summit. By Wednesday morning, British officials told Brussels the request would be for a three-week delay. Then on Wednesday afternoon a letter arrived. May, who had come under pressure from Brexit hardliners in her Cabinet, was asking for three months. Her position on the extension - hugely contentious at home - changed as often as the British weather, one EU diplomat closely involved in the Brexit process remarked. Since the deal between Britain and the EU was finally struck in November, European officials have been irritated that she hasn't defended it as she promised to - and as she asked them to. Within days, she was requesting more concessions in a failed bid to win over pro-Brexit politicians in her own party and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionists. Her chief-of-staff, Gavin Barwell, also told the EU that May planned to allow Parliament to hold non-binding votes if her deal failed, in order to gauge what kind of relationship lawmakers might support, a senior diplomat said. That hasn't happened, though May has indicated Parliament will have a chance on Monday. Officials on the European side also say she's putting the interests of her Conservative party before the interests of the country - they suspect that she could find cross-party support for a closer post-Brexit relationship with the EU, but shies away from it for fear of creating a fatal rift within her own tribe. EU diplomats are also angry that she hasn't been able to put to rest suspicions at home that a better leader would have got a better deal. The irony, EU diplomats say, is that she got a good deal, but she just hasn't been able to sell it. May frequently tells Parliament that the agreement she got is the only one on offer, but she enraged the EU when she backed an amendment drafted by a rank-and-file lawmaker that sought to rip it up in the interests of party unity. Despite it all though, EU leaders still want to help May get the Brexit deal over the line. The last thing they want is to start all over again with another British prime minister. When EU President Donald Tusk on Wednesday suggested the options were May's deal or no-deal, that was intended to give her ammunition. What he didn't mention, because it doesn't help her cause, is what would happen if her deal doesn't pass next week. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who said he admired May and never got frustrated with her, also declined to say what would happen if she fails next week. "I don't help her by going into that speculation." Hungary's prime minister declared victory after Europe's biggest political family suspended his party for eroding democratic standards, a bid to save face as he keeps open the options of repairing ties or joining like-minded populists after European Parliament elections in May. Viktor Orban's vast network of pro-government media -- a juggernaut of hundreds of print, broadcast, radio and online outlets run by a ruling-party loyalist -- portrayed Wednesday's decision by the center-right European People's Party to suspend his Fidesz party as his own voluntary act instead of political humiliation. A pro-Orban expert on state television called the rebuke a "huge victory" for defeating calls to have Orban ejected. Both sides agreed to decide on future ties after the elections, making the ballot's results crucial to whether he'll lose his unique perch in the Christian-Democrat EPP. If the umbrella party garners strong support, it may be able to form a coalition with the Socialists, Liberals or the Greens without Orban. Alternatively, the EPP may need his votes remain ascendant in the face of even more euroskeptic forces who want to upend how the EU works. The post-election decision on whether to suspend Fidesz will probably be weighed against "the risk that its continued participation may encourage the more liberal-leaning parties to leave the group or jeopardize the EPP's chances to lead the European Commission," said Otilia Dhand, a senior vice president at the political risk-consultancy Teneo. The four-term premier has used his seat alongside the likes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to legitimize his polarizing positions on issues such as immigration while lobbying for acceptance of his expanding control over state institutions, the media and civil society. While his suspension signals greater resolve by the EU's establishment to confront a euroskeptic ideologies that have fueled watershed decisions, including the U.K.'s planned departure, at home Orban portrayed it as a voluntary move by his party. "The EPP made a good decision, because it salvaged unity," Orban told reporters in Brussels. The suspension of Fidesz followed years of EPP efforts to paper over differences with Orban as he championed the creation of an "illiberal" state. It also had an immediate impact by denying Orban the chance to take part in a meeting of EPP leaders on Thursday in Brussels before an EU summit. Under the penalty, the EPP will create an "evaluation committee" to monitor Fidesz's respect for the rule of law and other EU values. "This is quite a strong rebuke of Orban even though it stops short of ejecting his party," said Andras Biro-Nagy, co-director of Policy Solutions, a Budapest-based think tank. "But it also kicks the can down the road when it comes to a final decision by both sides on Fidesz's membership." Orban said the result of the European Parliament elections will dictate his next move. Keeping the door open to leaving to join a more nationalist camp, he praised Italian Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini for his anti-immigration stance. Movements like Salvini's League party aim to make enough gains in the May 23-26 ballot to disrupt EU business, raising the stakes for the likes of Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron. That helped re-focus attention on Orban, under whom Hungary was slapped with an unprecedented EU censure last year for democratic backsliding. Some members of the bloc have also floated linking the billions of euros in aid -- of which Hungary is a large beneficiary -- to rule-of-law standards. Negotiations for the next seven-year EU budget will kick into high gear following the elections, and an ejection from the EPP would complicate Orban's ability to negotiate a good deal. ALTON A bill in the House would force municipalities to get approval from voters before selling public assets like water and wastewater treatment plants to private companies, potentially stalling Altons pending sale of its plant. Water companies like Aqua Illinois and Illinois American Water have been offering municipalities in the state cash for the ownership of their water systems and wastewater systems. The private companies then can seek approval from the Illinois Commerce Commission to raise water rates for customers. The bill would be effective immediately upon enactment into law. If Gov. J.B. Pritzker signs the bill before the city of Alton can complete the pending sale of its wastewater treatment plant to Illinois American Water in June, the municipality could be forced to put it on hold and seek approval from local residents and residents in neighboring municipalities that use the public wastewater system. Alton has police and fire pension debt of around $113 million and needs the $53.8 million from the sale to pay that down that debt or risk triggering a state law that would allow local pension boards to seize state funds meant for city services if Alton falls delinquent on payments. The village of Godfreys plant is also pending a sale to American Water. Its currently in the process of obtaining state regulatory approval. Illinois American Water has bought seven public systems since laws were enacted that allowed them to do so. A recent change to state law allows private companies like Illinois American Water to seek rate hikes not only for the upkeep of the systems, but also for acquisition of new ones. The company is opposed to Connors measure. Based on what we know today, we do not anticipate House Bill 2392 to be voted on this current legislative session, but that can obviously change at any point, said Terry Mackin, director of communications for Illinois American Water. We continue to work on this issue and others. State Rep. John Connor, the Lockport Democrat who sponsored the bill, said the legislation would require a ballot referendum to approve the sale and it wouldnt just be for the residents of that municipality. It would be anyone who gets water from the utility, he said. Craig Blanchette with Aqua Illinois told the committee that local officials who were elected by the public should maintain the authority to sell public assets. Municipal officials are charged every day with making decisions in regard to their constituents, he said. Telegraph producer Nathan Woodside contributed to this story. Cole Lauterbach reports on Illinois government and statewide issues for INN. Lauterbach has managed and produced shows for news/talk radio stations in both Bloomington/Normal and Peoria, and created award-winning programs for Comcast SportsNet Chicago. Washington, DC, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) is asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit to halt enforcement of the federal ban on bump stocks before it becomes effective March 26th because there is no statutory authority for the ban. NCLA expects a ruling on its emergency stay motion within 48 hours. Bump stocks are controversial, as they allow semi-automatic weapons to shoot more rapidly. However, this litigation is not about whether bump stocks should be outlawed but concerns whether a federal agency can outlaw them without Congress. NCLAs Emergency Motion for Injunction Pending Appeal explains that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (better known as ATF) cannot declare bump stocks to be machineguns retroactivelyand without a valid statutory basis. NCLA contends that only Congress, not an administrative agency like ATF, can write criminal laws such as the Final Rule. The lawsuit also raises key issues about the scope of administrative power. Dozens of previous federal court decisions have held that this statute is not ambiguous, which deprives the Department of Justice and ATF of the ability to rewrite it. Furthermore, the longstanding Rule of Lenity commands that any ambiguity in the definition of machinegun be construed in favor of a potential criminal defendant. By making the ban retroactive, ATF also creates an unfair surprise for over 500,000 innocent citizens who purchased these devices legally and may not hear about the ban before it turns them into felons subject to 10-year prison sentences. Congress historically has shied away from retroactive bans and crafted shorter prison sentences for owning banned accessories than for owning banned weapons. The Congress that wrote the National Firearms Act in 1934 would not have considered bump stocks to be machine guns. The text of this statute is very clear. ATF had no power to issue the Final Rule because there was no ambiguity for it to resolve. It is our hope that the Tenth Circuit will agree. Caleb Kruckenberg, NCLA Litigation Counsel This case is much bigger than whether bump stocks are banned. If agencies like the ATF can rewrite statutes by administrative fiat every time the political tide changes, then we no longer have rule of law in this country. We have rule by agency. Steve Simpson, NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel Last week Judge Jill N. Parrish of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, denied preliminary injunctive relief to NCLAs client, plaintiff Clark Aposhian, in his lawsuit against the ATF challenging the Final Rule. About NCLA NCLA is a nonprofit civil rights organization founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the administrative state. NCLAs public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unchecked power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans fundamental rights. For more information visit us online: NCLAlegal.org WASHINGTON - The Defense Department's independent watchdog has opened an investigation into allegations that acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan violated ethics rules by taking actions to promote Boeing after leaving the aerospace company and accepting a top job at the Pentagon. The Department of Defense inspector general, in a statement released Wednesday, said it had decided to investigate the matter and had informed Shanahan of its decision. "The Department of Defense Office of Inspector General has decided to investigate complaints we recently received that Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan allegedly took actions to promote his former employer, Boeing, and disparage its competitors, allegedly in violation of ethics rules," the statement said. Shanahan, who spent more than three decades at Boeing before joining the Trump administration in 2017, has denied favoring Boeing during his time as deputy defense secretary - the No. 2 post at the Pentagon, which oversees acquisitions, procurement and technology development across the military. The probe comes as the former Boeing executive hopes to receive President Donald Trump's formal nomination to serve in the Defense Department's top post and replace Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned in December. It is unclear how the investigation will affect his prospects of receiving the nomination and winning Senate confirmation. Lt. Col. Joe Buccino, a spokesman for Shanahan, said the acting secretary welcomed the inspector general's investigation and would fully comply with the probe. "Acting Secretary Shanahan has at all times remained committed to upholding his ethics agreement filed with the (Department of Defense)," Buccino said. "This agreement ensures any matters pertaining to Boeing are handled by appropriate officials within the Pentagon to eliminate any perceived or actual conflict of interest issue with Boeing." The investigation comes after the government accountability organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter to the inspector general saying that, according to news reports, Shanahan appeared to have "made numerous statements promoting his former employer Boeing and has disparaged the company's competitors before subordinates at the agency." CREW cited news stories saying Shanahan had criticized Lockheed Martin, a rival to Boeing, and had urged the Pentagon to buy more Boeing-manufactured F-15X fighter jets in defiance of Air Force acquisition preferences. The Washington Post has not independently confirmed those reports. In the Pentagon's budget request to Congress this month, the Air Force proposed buying eight upgraded versions of the F-15, which would mark the first time it has bought the plane since 2001. Pentagon plans call for additional purchases of the aircraft coming years. Shanahan called suggestions of favoritism "just noise" during his first public news conference as acting secretary in January. He rejected the notion that his criticism of the F-35 - which is made by Lockheed-Martin - amounted to a bias. "I am biased towards performance," Shanahan said. "I am biased towards giving the taxpayer their money's worth. And the F-35 unequivocally I can say has a lot of opportunity for more performance." Upon entering the Pentagon as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' deputy in 2017, Shanahan signed an ethics agreement that required Boeing matters be handled by another Pentagon official, an effort to avoid potential conflicts of interest with his longtime employer. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., asked Shanahan during an appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week whether he would welcome an inspector general probe into his conduct regarding Boeing while at the Pentagon. Shanahan said he would. "In his recent Senate Armed Services Committee testimony, Acting Secretary Shanahan stated that he supported an investigation into these allegations," the Defense Department inspector general said in its statement Wednesday. "We have informed him that we have initiated this investigation." A spokesman for Boeing said the company respects and adheres to Shanahan's decision to recuse himself from all matters involving the company. He declined to comment further. During his time at Boeing, Shanahan ran the company's commercial aviation division, overseeing the turnaround of the 787 Dreamliner, and managed the firm's missile defense unit. He also served as general manager of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems, which produces the Apache, Chinook and Osprey aircraft for the U.S. military. In recent days, Shanahan has also faced questions about crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8, because he worked in the firm's commercial aviation division. A senior defense official familiar with Shanahan's career there said he had profit and loss responsibility for airplane programs already in production, but those under development, such as the 737 Max, were the responsibility of another Boeing executive. "I firmly believe we should let the regulators investigate the incidents, and I would just say my heart goes out, condolences to the families and employees involved in the Lion Air incident in the Ethiopian airline incident," Shanahan said last week during his Senate testimony. - - - The Washington Post's Aaron Gregg contributed to this report. GLEN CARBON Valeria Zeda Pinto, an SIUE student from Bolivia, will be the program speaker at the International Womens Organization meeting at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2 in the community room at Eden Village, 200 S. Station Rd. in Glen Carbon. Pinto is currently a first-year student at SIUE and is seeking a degree in biology. I am eager to share the story about the richness in diversity and culture that Bolivia has, Pinto said. In spite of the fact of having only a fraction of the territory of the United States, Bolivia has a very diverse range of climate as well as a large diversity of flora and fauna species. With approximately 36 ethnic groups living under a common state, Bolivias culture is just as rich as its biodiversity. Through her power point presentation, Pinto will be giving us a window into the lifestyle, diversity, traditions and the extraordinary nature and geography of Bolivia. The International Womens Organization (IWO) provides cross-cultural opportunities, educational programs and social activities for American and International women of the Metro-East Area. Women gather and share life experiences; network; learn about other cultures and traditions; build new global friendships and help create international understanding. IWO is a sister organization to the International Hospitality Program at SIUE and is affiliated with the SIUE International Affairs Office. Refreshments will be served and everyone is welcome. For additional information, call Esther at 618-406-0259, Barbara at 618-830-5804 Jodi at 312-399-0694 or Joyce at 618-931-0041. Unauthorized border crossings have soared in recent months to their highest level in a decade, largely because of families seeking asylum in the United States. President Donald Trump has declared a "national emergency," calling for billions of dollars in additional border wall funding. This photo, released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, shows why U.S. border barriers won't stop the families from reaching U.S. soil and exercising their legal right to seek asylum. The Rio Grande spans about two-thirds of the U.S.-Mexico border, and nearly all of the new border wall the president wants to build is along the river. Border walls are linear and need a solid base, but the river banks are unstable and follow a circuitous course. So the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is building new barriers along the river levee. The walls create a strip of U.S. territory between the river and the fencing. In the photo, migrants are shown lined up outside the wall in El Paso on March 7. This group of 127 Guatemalan migrants had waded through the river to turn themselves in to U.S. agents, the first step in initiating the asylum process. They crossed the border illegally, but they have the legal right to seek asylum because they reached U.S. soil. Border Patrol agents must take them into custody and begin processing their claims. The barrier in the photo is about 10 years old. Though it is not the steel bollard design that Customs and Border Protection is adding along the river elsewhere, this is considered a relatively modern span of border fencing. Like the new sections the government is building, there is a gate here to give U.S. agents and others access to both sides of the wall - all on U.S. land. U.S. Border Patrol agents open a gate in the fence as they check migrants' documents and bring them through. Vans and buses are arriving to take the migrants to a nearby border patrol station for additional processing. They will be transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which in most cases releases families from custody after a few days. They then wait inside the United States to see an immigration judge - which could take several months or longer. Homeland Security officials want lawmakers to grant them new authorities to hold families in custody until their asylum claims are adjudicated. They have launched a limited, experimental program to require others to wait for their court hearings on the Mexican side of the border. But in private, they acknowledge that the migration surge is likely to continue with or without a wall, and they fear it possibly could accelerate without changes to the U.S. asylum system. SPRINGFIELD Legislators, advocates and hundreds of Illinoisans crowded the rotunda of the Capitol on Wednesday to condemn a package of reproductive health measures that would revise abortion law. The bills are proposed by four Democrats from both chambers of the General Assembly. One would allow a minor to get an abortion procedure without notifying her parent or guardian. The other would repeal and replace the states abortion statute with language supporters say is more up-to-date. Politicians who do not put life first cannot be trusted, Mary Kate Knorr, executive director of Illinois Right to Life Action, said. So we are here today to tell our legislators that if they do not put life and women first in the State of Illinois, they do not have a place in our Statehouse. Knorrs group was one of the organizers of the rally. The others were the Pro-Life Action League and the Illinois Family Institute. The coalition opposes legislation to repeal the Parental Notification of Abortion Act, which mandates a minor consult her parent or guardian before having an abortion. Parents should not be kept in the dark about medical decisions their children are making, or procedures they are getting, said Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Action League. Adolescents simply lack the judgment and experience necessary to make critical medical decisions all by themselves, he said. They should not be abandoned when it comes to those decisions. Democrats voted the Senate version of the bill out of committee Tuesday. It is now before the full chamber. The House version of the bill appears to be stalled. The group more fervently protests the Reproductive Health Act, a bill that, among other things, would create reproductive health care as a fundamental right in Illinois; require private health insurance companies that cover pregnancy-related benefits to also cover abortion procedures; and allow physician-assistants to perform abortions. I feel a little bit like Ive fallen through the rabbit hole, Rep. Terri Bryant, a Republican from Murphysboro, said. Everything is upside down, backwards and inside out in just using the name. The bill, she argued, has nothing to do with reproductive health. Bryant asked everyone in attendance to fill out an electronic witness slip on the Illinois General Assemblys website in opposition to both pieces of legislation. She said she would request each of the thousands of names be read on the floor of the House. The Secretary of States office estimates about 4,000 people were inside the Statehouse during the anti-abortion demonstration, both attending the event and an unrelated lobbying effort. According to a news release, people were brought to the Capitol by bus from across the state. Friends, I believe theres a sleeping giant thats been awoken and its called the Church of Illinois, Republican Rep. Darren Bailey, from Xenia, said to a cheering crowd. Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, although never commenting on whether he supports this specific legislation, has vowed to make Illinois the most progressive state in the nation for access to reproductive health care. Reach reporter Rebecca Anzel at ranzel@capitolnewsillinois.com SAN DIEGO - The Trump administration's focus on the southern border has closed some gaps in immigration enforcement but expanded a challenging problem, law enforcement officials here said Wednesday: undocumented immigrants sneaking into California by sea. The migrants enter in various ways, including on personal watercraft and small, open-top motorboats known as pangas that often arrive under cover of darkness, said Jeremy Thompson, Customs and Border Protection's director of marine operations in San Diego. On Sunday, the 87-foot Coast Guard patrol boat USCGC Petrel stopped a vessel with 12 migrants from Mexico aboard near California's southern maritime border. On Tuesday, a Customs and Border Protection team on a high-speed coastal interceptor vessel stopped another group, disabling a boat with gunfire after it failed to stop, and detaining eight more migrants, Thompson said. Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott, who oversees CBP operations in San Diego, said that he expects smugglers to adjust their tactics as U.S. officials alter theirs, and he believes that the United States is taking away most of the "low-risk ways" to get into the country. "We've been busy out here," Scott said. "Once the rhetoric started with the wall, it definitely picked up in the maritime." The intercepts are carried out by both the Coast Guard and CBP, which has an Air and Marine Operations branch. They coordinate plans through a Joint Harbor Operations Center at Coast Guard Air Station San Diego, where personnel scan computer screens that display images from dozens of cameras, watching the coastline for watercraft that look out of place. Across Southern California, 1,022 migrants were intercepted at sea in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, Coast Guard officials have said. That was up from 213 in 2017 and 142 in 2016. Capt. Joseph Buzzella, the Coast Guard's sector commander in San Diego, said that in the past year, 158 smuggling operations in the area have been stopped, leading to the arrest of more than 500 undocumented migrants, including 108 who are believed to have been organizing the smuggling efforts. Those numbers are small compared with the 521,090 apprehensions CBP reported at the southern border in 2018. But the practice at sea is lucrative for those who facilitate it. Smugglers charge about $10,000 per person to get into the United States, and even more for Chinese migrants, who fly to Tijuana first. "It's all about money," Scott said. "They're never going to stop coming." Adm. Karl Schultz, the Coast Guard commandant, said during an interview Tuesday that the Coast Guard patrols the region constantly, and he sees the situation as manageable. "Things kind of wax and wane out there," he said. "I would tell you that right now, we're paying attention, we're actively patrolling and it's part of the comprehensive border solution so it doesn't become an end-around run." SAN DIEGO, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MatriSys Bioscience, Inc., a clinical stage biotechnology company developing rationally designed microbiome therapeutics to treat the top five skin diseases, today announced it has successfully completed a pre-IND (Investigational New Drug) review with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA provided positive feedback regarding the planned initiation of clinical trials for MSB-01 under a U.S. IND for MatriSys lead microbiome-based candidate, MSB-01, for the treatment of Atopic Dermatitis (AD). An Investigational New Drug Application (IND) is a request for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorization to administer an investigational drug to humans. The positive feedback received from the FDA is encouraging and paves the way for submission of an IND application to the FDA and a Phase 2 trial for Atopic Dermatitis, said Mark S. Wilson, MatriSys Bioscience Chief Executive Officer. We appreciate the FDAs guidance as we pursue our mission of bringing a novel and effective treatment to the 18 million Americans suffering with AD. MatriSys plans to conduct a Phase 2 clinical trial with 150 patients over a 12-week treatment period. The trial will include a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled safety, tolerability, and efficacy study using MSB-01 to treat atopic dermatitis. Atopic Dermatitis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease which poses a significant burden on patients' quality of life. AD affects up to 30% of children and up to 3% of adults and those numbers continue to increase worldwide. Compared to healthy individuals, subjects with AD have a lower bacterial diversity that translates to an inability to resist colonization by the pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. MSB-01 is a proprietary topical bacterial formulation containing a stabilized lyophilized topical preparation of Staphylococcus hominis, universal strain A9 (Sh-A9). The topical formulation is applied to the skin of patients, and the lyophilized bacteria Sh-A9 return to an active state and kill Staph. aureus. This approach is a dramatic improvement over broad-spectrum antibiotics that destroy pathogenic bacteria but also kill beneficial bacteria by friendly fire. About MatriSys Bioscience MatriSys Bioscience, Inc. is a clinical stage Specialty Biopharmaceutical Company focused on developing and commercializing rational microbiome therapies for the top five dermatology and skin care conditions. MatriSys foundational microbiome therapeutics platform is based on the pioneering work of Richard L. Gallo MD PhD, Distinguished Professor and Founding Chair, Department of Dermatology, University of California, San Diego. Mark Wilson +1 (858) 752-9003 Hearings were scheduled in Springfield this week for proposed legislation that would designate penicillium the official state microbe and Ski the states official soft drink. Another measure under consideration at the state capitol calls for the secretary of state to start a contest to create a new design for the official Illinois state flag. And the state senate could vote soon on proposed legislation that would prevent qualified candidates for U.S. President from appearing on an Illinois ballot unless they provide five years worth of tax returns. Whether you think any of these measures are worthy of lawmakers time likely depends on your personal preferences and in at least one of the examples whether you know what penicillium is. (I had to look it up.) I think we all can agree, however, that none of these elevate to the level of urgent state business. Certainly, Illinois fiscal health isnt dependent on an up-or-down vote on any of them. An issue that is of vital importance to the states financial fortunes has drawn little attention from lawmakers this session. The growing pension crisis and the reforms needed to solve it have garnered barely a whisper. And that spells big trouble for future taxpayers. The states five public pension systems are underfunded by at least $134 billion. I say at least because thats a conservative estimate based on overly optimistic returns on pension fund investments. Some place the pension debt at closer to $200 billion. By contrast, the budget proposed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker seeks to spend $39 billion next fiscal year. Even using the conservative $133 billion figure, the state would have to spend every dollar it collects for the next three-and-a-half years just to pay down its pension debt. Of course, thats an impossibility because vital state services need to be funded. But Illinois already spends more than 25 percent of its budget just to fund retiree pensions. Why has the pension crisis disappeared from the conversation in Springfield? The governor and his supporters would rather hike taxes than talk about serious states issues, Rep. Allen Skillicorn, R-East Dundee, said. Pritzker, House Speaker Michael Madigan, Senate President John Cullerton and others apparently are counting on a progressive income tax and other tax hikes to solve the states fiscal problems rather than address the drivers of out-of-control costs. Thats a dangerous proposition. First, a progressive tax, which taxes higher earners at higher rates, is no guarantee. The Illinois Constitution requires a flat tax, where all income earners pay the same rate (currently 4.95 percent). To change that, a supermajority of lawmakers need to approve a constitutional amendment to be placed on the ballot statewide. The earliest that can happen is 2020. Then, a supermajority of voters must approve the amendment. If voters reject it, nearly two more years will have passed with no progress made on the pension crisis. Approving the change actually could be worse, but thats a column for another day. If Pritzker, Madigan and company are so adamant to change the state constitution to allow for a progressive tax, why not also change the constitution to eliminate the pension diminishment clause, which says that pensions earned cant be diminished and has been used to kill pension reform measure in the past. I have a handful of bills that would address the pension crisis [including a constitutional amendment], but they have not been called, Skillicorn said. If were going to talk about partisanship, why isnt that part of the discussion. Illinois pension crisis has been worsening for decades. Politicians in Springfield have known about it for just as long. Addressing it should be priority No. 1. Instead, its not even on the radar. Designating an official state soda is more important. Dan McCaleb is editor of Illinois News Network and the digital hub ILNews.org. He welcomes your comments. Contact Dan at dmccaleb@ilnews.org. Under the directsupervision of the Public Affairs Officer (PAO) and Information Officer (lO),the Specialist will initiate and manage public awareness campaigns by assistingin planning, organizing, and implementing outreach campaigns, including a mediaplan and regular press contacts, in support of health programs. The Specialistwill lead an analysis of communications needs and proactively promote thehealth program to raise awareness of health assistance provided by Americantaxpayers in Uganda. The Specialist will work closely with the Public AffairsSection (PAS) in the development of communications and messaging for healthevents. Under the supervision of the PAO/IO, and in close consultation with thePEPFAR Coordination Office and the IAHT, the Specialist will plan events andproduce speeches, press releases, podcasts, and videos on USG health efforts,particularly their successes and achievements, for dissemination to the Ugandanpress, media outlets, government officials, civil society leaders and thepublic, as well as the State Department, agency headquarters, and U.S. Congress.Much of the material produced by the Specialist will be posted to U.S. Missionwebsites. TORONTO, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- World Class Extractions Inc. (formerly, CBD Med Research Corp.) (World Class or the Company) is pleased to announce that the Canadian Securities Exchange (the CSE) has provided final approval to list the Companys common shares (Common Shares) for trading. The Common Shares will commence trading at the opening of the market on Thursday, March 21, 2019 under the stock symbol PUMP. As noted in the Companys press release of March 11, 2019, the net proceeds of the Companys $23,000,000 subscription receipt financing have been released to the Company, which leaves it well-capitalized for the conduct of business. World Class provides complete stationary and mobile cannabis and hemp extraction systems in North America and Europe. Using patent-pending technology, World Class anticipates higher yields of full spectrum cannabis oil at faster rates and larger volumes then current extraction technologies. Its technology was influenced by the petroleum processing industry, and is designed to be an industrial, scalable, continuous flow extraction process that can use both wet and dry cannabis/hemp as inputs. Michael McCombie, Chief Executive Officer of World Class, stated, Listing on the CSE is a major milestone for World Class, it allows us to provide liquidity for our loyal existing investors and gives us enhanced access to the capital markets. With our listing achieved, our team can now turn its entire efforts to what really matters building out our core business, with a view to becoming a leader in the extraction sector. Corporate Secretary The Company is also pleased to announce that, effective immediately, it has appointed Shimmy Posen as its Corporate Secretary. Mr. Posen is a lawyer at Garfinkle Biderman LLP, focused on helping companies go public and raise funds in the capital markets. His areas of expertise are corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and securities law. Mr. Posen has previously acted for public and private companies, securities dealers and financial institutions on a number of public and private financings and commercial transactions. Mr. Posen holds a J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School and a B.A. in Political Science from York University. Stock Options and Warrants In addition to the CSE listing, the Company also announces the grant of an aggregate of 10,600,000 stock options and 5,600,000 Common Share purchase warrants to certain directors, officers, employees and consultants. The stock options and warrants each entitle the holders thereof to acquire one Common Share for a period of two years. About World Class Extractions Inc. The Company is a Canadian based developer of an innovative extraction process for both the hemp and cannabis industry. The Company intends to provide single step continuous flow extraction services to the hemp and cannabis industry. Using patent pending technology, the Companys results produce higher yields and better-quality crude hemp oil at faster rates. The technology allows the extraction of CBD Oil and other related extracts from wet or dried natural plants. The Company can save its clients floor space, utility drying costs, equipment and processing labour costs. Information concerning the Company and its previously announced business combination can be found in the Companys listing statement dated March 14, 2019, which is located at the Companys profile at www.sedar.com and on the Companys profile on the CSE website. For further information please contact: Michael McCombie Chief Executive Officer Email: mike@wcextractions.com Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements included in this press release constitute forward-looking information or statements (collectively, forward-looking statements), including those identified by the expressions anticipate, believe, plan, estimate, expect, intend, may, should and similar expressions to the extent they relate to the Company or its management. The forward- looking statements are not historical facts but reflect current expectations regarding future results or events. This press release contains forward looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and various estimates, factors and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. Neither the CSE nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The Marketing Manager will be responsible fordeveloping and implementing marketing and communications strategies to drivetop and bottom line growth. This marketing leader will be responsible forpublic affairs and delivering greater exposure for FINCA, for internal andexternal audiences, through all communications channels, including earned andplaced media, social media and digital. The effective management of marketingcomponents such as pricing, promotion, distribution and product/serviceofferings/features as well as the overall customer experience shall bestrengthened to impact FINCAs performance. This position will be responsiblefor customer service, interpretation and implementation of customer researchinto effective marketing strategies.. CHARIHO: Charihos girls and boys soccer teams both won Division II titles in dramatic fashion. The girls won in penalty kicks and the boys in the final two minutes of double overtime. The football team reached the D-III title game, as did the field hockey team. The girls volleyball team played in the D-II semifinals. Erin vonHousen was All-State in girls cross country. STONINGTON: Stoningtons boys soccer team earned its second straight Class M state title, closing the season with 21 straight victories. The field hockey team lost in the Class S title game. WESTERLY: Westerlys girls volleyball team reached the Division III semifinals, losing to eventual champion Scituate. The football team played in the D-II semifinals. The girls soccer team reached the D-III semifinals. Jake Serra and Kaya West were All-State in cross country. WHEELER: Wheeler boys and girls soccer teams qualified for the Class S state tournament. Vote View Results NEW YORK, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pawar Law Group announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of shareholders who purchased shares of Wirecard AG (OTC: WCAGY, WRCDF) from April 7, 2016 through February 1, 2019, inclusive (the Class Period). The lawsuit seeks to recover damages for Wirecard investors under the federal securities laws. Pawar Law reminds investors of the April 9, 2019 lead plaintiff deadline. To join the class action, go to http://pawarlawgroup.com/cases/wirecard-ag/ or call Vik Pawar, Esq. toll-free at 888-589-9804 or email info@pawarlawgroup.com for information on the class action. According to the lawsuit, defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) for the period spanning from 2015 to 2018, a senior Wirecard executive in Singapore had been accused of forging and backdating contracts, including falsifying accounts and money laundering; (2) an external law firm commissioned to investigate Wirecards Singapore office had reportedly found evidence of serious offences of forgery and/or of falsification of accounts; (3) Wirecard had downplayed weaknesses in its internal controls over financial reporting and failed to disclose the true extent of those weaknesses; and (4) as a result, defendants statements about Wirecards business, operations and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than April 9, 2019. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. If you wish to join the litigation, go to http://pawarlawgroup.com/cases/wirecard-ag/ or to discuss your rights or interests regarding this class action, please contact Vik Pawar, Esq. of Pawar Law Group toll free at 888-589-9804 or via e-mail at info@pawarlawgroup.com . No class has been certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you hire one. You may hire counsel of your choice. You may also do nothing at this time and be an absent member of the class. Your ability to share in any future recovery is not dependent upon being a lead plaintiff. Pawar Law Group represents investors from around the world. Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. ------------------------------- Running a public company can be harsh. Investors are impatient, especially when it comes to technology firms where earnings can be bumpy. But hiding behind private equity ownership is rarely the best answer. Last July, UK satellite pioneer Inmarsat bravely showed American rival Echo Star the door on the grounds that an offer worth 532p a share (some of it paper) undervalued the Silicon Roundabout-based group. Chief executive Rupert Pearce spoke confidently of the firm's strategy on a stand-alone basis. In August of last year UK satellite pioneer Inmarsat bravely showed American rival Echo Star the door on the grounds that an offer worth 532p a share undervalued it Recently, Inmarsat has provided upbeat briefings on its progress on beaming wifi into aircraft in flight, having already signed up carriers such as Emirates. Just eight months later, Inmarsat looks as if it is ready to flog itself off to a consortium headed by UK private equity outfit Apax, Warburg Pincus of the US, and a bunch of Canadian pension funds at a not-much-improved price of 544p. The future for Inmarsat should not just be settled on price alone. The would-be buyers look a relatively benign bunch and there is no sign of a Chinese or Russian marauder around the corner. But once in private equity hands and out of sight and mind who is to say that a company important to national security will not end up in the wrong hands overseas. Inmarsat already is the repository of significant shipping and aircraft movement data. Its innovative wifi applications could offer a wonderful intelligence opportunity. Just as worrying is the potential loss to the UK of advanced technology developed here and paid for by taxpayers through our research-based universities. At a time when Germany is working to tighten the national grip on cutting-edge technologies, Britain too easily waves them goodbye. Softbank's stewardship of ARM has been disappointing, with the sale of the Chinese operations to a Beijing-controlled entity. Earlier this week we saw former RBS offshoot Worldpay land in the US at a phenomenal price. The May Government rightly has been referring an increasing number of tech sales to the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) for scrutiny. Inmarsat's current investors, including Lansdowne Partners and UK funds Aberdeen and Jupiter, should show steel and back the project for the longer-term. And Business Secretary Greg Clark should break from Brexit machinations and immediately refer it to the security services and CMA in the national interest. Snagging list Someone had to take the blame for the failure of Kingfisher to deliver on its 2015 promise of 500million of extra profits. So waving goodbye to chief executive Veronique Laury is the easy answer. Truth is that firms that set themselves ambitious financial markets are always on a hiding to nothing. This is especially true in fast-changing retail and do-it-yourself, which have fallen out of fashion. A positive consequence of Britain's open borders to European migration has been the arrival of skilled and hardworking Polish and other Eastern European tradesman. They have supplanted DIY and the British botching specialists who would rather be on their tea breaks or down at the boat club. The struggles of B&Q come as no surprise. Its main UK rival Homebase has changed hands at least four times in recent years and finally ended up being sold for 1. Keeping B&Q up and running, if shrunken in size, makes sense. Even a shrinking B&Q provides useful cash flow while the star in the firmament, Screwfix, which serves the trade online and through trade counters, is allowed to grow. Laury reportedly found life in London less than ideal. It might have been easier if chairman Andy Cosslett and the board were more supportive and investors willing to give her more time. Instead, Laury's hold on the job was undermined by blame-shifting and rumours of impending exit. Unfortunate. Pension ruse Lloyds chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio is in need of better advice. When under fire it is critical to get ahead of the criticism with a grand gesture. Hortsa-Osorio's belated waiving of 3,000-a-year from a final salary pension backfired badly. It shifted focus to his excessive cash-in-lieu pension payment of 33 per cent of pay worth 419,000 a year. Horta-Osorio should volunteer to cut the cash allowance to the standard Lloyds pensions contribution a generous 13 per cent. Otherwise he risks widening employee and investor scrutiny of an aloof management style. Shares in Inmarsat rocketed higher after a group of suitors from the UK and overseas launched a 2.5billion bid for the satellite technology giant. The FTSE 250 company revealed it is in talks with a consortium of investors, including US-based Warburg Pincus, London-based Apax and two Canadian pension funds. But the deal faces opposition amid concerns about a major British satellite operator falling into the control of foreign owners. Takeover mission: Inmarsat revealed it is in talks with a consortium of investors, including US-based Warburg Pincus, London-based Apax and two Canadian pension funds And the takeover bid is expected to face scrutiny from ministers, after the Government last night confirmed it was monitoring the talks. Satellites are classed as important national infrastructure and Inmarsat counts the UK and US militaries among its customers. Critics of the deal warned the sale would be yet another example of Britain allowing one of its most successful technology companies to be snapped up by foreign rivals. Sir Vince Cable, leader of the Liberal Democrats and a former business secretary, called on ministers to take a close interest in the takeover. He said: 'I am seriously concerned that one of the UK's last major technology companies, and a major part of our successful space industry, could disappear. The secretary of state should use his powers to intervene.' Howard Wheeldon, a defence and aviation analyst, said: 'With the Government having set out its space policy and the Royal Air Force now actively engaging in space strategy, it is absolutely crucial that we maintain and enhance our sovereign satellite capabilities. Inmarsat is a very important player and we need to ensure it gets the correct level of protection. German fund to fight foreign takeovers Germany plans a state-owned fund to protect key firms from hostile foreign takeovers. The move is a response to a flood of investment by Chinese state-owned companies into critical infrastructure and high-tech firms across the West, which has unnerved many European governments. Senior officials in the German government said the fund would work with the private sector to buy stakes in companies that were targets of unwelcome takeover attempts. It comes after Germany was left rattled by a 2016 Chinese raid on robotics firm Kuka. It also saw off an attempt by China's State Grid last year to buy into power network operator 50Hertz, with state-owned bank KfW stepping in to buy a 20 per cent stake instead. 'As with all takeovers in defence and aerospace, we need to be very, very careful. If there is sufficient reason to do so, we should be willing to block the deal.' Last night a Government spokesman said: 'This is a commercial matter, but we are monitoring the potential takeover.' Shares in Inmarsat closed 13.1 per cent higher, or 57.5p, at 495.3p after the company revealed talks were under way. It is thought other bidders could enter the fray. Inmarsat dates back to 1979 when it was part of the UN-controlled International Maritime Organisation. It was privatised in the 1990s after member countries refused to pay for upgrades to its network. The company operates 13 satellites and more than a third of its business comes from the maritime sector, with the firm providing tracking and communication services to ships. The latest offer for the company comes just eight months after it fought off bids by France's Eutelsat and American rival Echo Star, which offered 532p per share. Echo Star's bid was just 2.3 per cent less than what the consortium is offering in the current talks. Rupert Pearce, Inmarsat's chief executive, previously dismissed suggestions of a sale after claiming Echo Star's bid 'significantly undervalued' the business. At that time, he said: 'We don't feel weak about our future and we don't feel the need to engage in a merger even with somebody in our industry at this point in time. We don't think that will drive exceptional value for shareholders. So, that's why we did not engage.' However Inmarsat has now revealed it has been in talks with Apax, Warburg and others since January, with the talks dubbed 'Project Triton' by staff at the satellite firm. Some analysts speculated its announcement about the consortium's interest was an attempt to coax a higher offer out of its suitors. 'The decision to unilaterally disclose the consortium's six-week-old bid, almost identical in value to the rejected Echo Star bid, feels like a well-advised 'stalking horse' that could now result in a revised bid from either suitor,' analysts at Jefferies wrote. The consortium, made up of Apax, Warburg, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, is thought to be interested in Inmarsat's growing business supplying internet connections to planes. Its customers include British Airways, Emirates and Norwegian, but the division is expected to need significant investment. Lloyds boss Antonio Horta-Osorio stands accused of 'obscene symbolism' after his huge pension payments were cut in a botched bid to dodge criticism. The bank has trimmed Horta-Osorio's final salary pension by just 3,000 a year in response to fury from staff over how much he is paid. It is also reducing extra cash pay-outs given to the 55-year-old every year towards his retirement pot from 573,000 to 419,000. Token gesture: Lloyds has trimmed chief exec Antonio Horta-Osorio's final salary pension by just 3,000 a year in response to fury from staff over how much he is paid But this still amounts to 33 per cent of his base salary far more than the maximum 13pc pension contribution available to most Lloyds staff. And at the same time, Lloyds is increasing other parts of Horta-Osorio's pay by 175,000 a year. Rather than placate his critics, the move appears to have spectacularly backfired and shone a light on Horta-Osorio's lavish earnings like never before. His pension deal now looks set to fall foul of guidelines set by the powerful Investment Association (IA), meaning he could face a revolt at the annual meeting of shareholders in May. And in a sign of growing anger among staff over the paltry cut to his pension deal, Mark Brown of trade union Affinity said: 'Mr Horta-Osorio's gesture is an obscene piece of symbolism designed to distract attention. 'This gaming of the system epitomises all that is wrong with executive pay and clearly demonstrates the distance of the citadel from those placed below the salt.' Brown said the sacrifice was just 'smoke and mirrors' as Horta-Osorio is still getting enough in his cash pension allowance 'to buy a Ferrari every year, or, if he wants, two or three'. Earlier this week the Lloyds boss who has been dubbed 'two pensions Osorio' came under fire because final salary payments were limited for everyone else in 2014. He has now agreed to take a 3,000 cut so he is in line with other staff. It means that, on retirement, he will get annual payments of 73,200 rather than 76,139. Luke Hildyard, of the High Pay Centre, said: 'There should be consistency in pension arrangements across all staff. The reduction in Horta-Osorio's final salary pension scheme is trifling. He was paid 6million last year and they're talking about taking a few thousand pounds off his pension figure. It's a bit insulting.' Horta-Osorio has also accepted a reduction in the amount he gets as a cash payment, from 46 per cent of his salary to 33 per cent meaning he will be handed 154,000 a year less. But this reduction will not be enough to bring Lloyds into line with IA guidelines that state pensions for existing bosses should be no more than 24 per cent of their salary. It means the IA, which represents the City's biggest investors who manage 7.7trillion of assets, is likely to issue an 'amber top' formal warning about the bank's pay in a notice to members ahead of Lloyds' annual meeting. This would be a major blow to the bank's reputation and could trigger an embarrassing rebellion when shareholders are asked to vote on the lender's pay report. IA stewardship director Andrew Ninian said: 'We've been clear that any company at 25 per cent or over will still be amber-topped.' Lloyds could also face criticism from the IA for increasing other aspects of Horta-Osorio's pay packet in a way that more than offsets the reduction in his pension. He is getting a 150,000 increase in annual fixed share payments, plus a 25,000 rise in his base salary. Lloyds has said the increase is chiefly driven by new regulations which have seen its retail arm split into a legally separate 'ringfenced' bank. It claims this means Horta-Osorio now has bigger responsibilities and needs a raise. However, other big British banks have also been through this process and none has given their chief executive a similar pay boost. Horta-Osorio's 33 per cent contributions are lower than some rivals. Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Ross McEwan gets 35 per cent, or 350,000 of his 1million base salary. Jes Staley at Barclays gets 34 per cent of his cash salary, or 396,000. More than half of Footsie firms were over the 24 per cent pension limit last year. The worst offenders include holiday business Tui, drug-maker Astrazeneca and drinks firm Diageo. Another day, another outsourcer reporting bad news. After seeing Interserve hog the spotlight for most of this month, it was Kier Groups turn to return centre-stage yesterday as it revealed it had swung to a loss for the first half of the year. The FTSE 250-listed construction and maintenance giant said administrative costs related to its debt-cutting turnaround plan helped push it to a 35.5million loss. This compared with a profit of 34.3million in the same period last year. Revenues at Kier, which builds and maintains roads, hospitals, schools and prison facilities, rose 3 per cent to 2billion and, while it managed to save 4million over the six months, the cost-cutting programme itself cost 14million to implement. FTSE 250-listed construction and maintenance giant Kier Group said administrative costs related to its debt-cutting turnaround plan helped push it to a 35.5m loss Shareholders in the HS2 contractor have now been given a little less love from the company with the dividend falling to 4.9p a share from 23p a year earlier. The results came a day after Kier announced that Andrew Davies, the man who was due to take over at Carillion before it went bust last January, will step in as chief executive next month. Shares fell 11.3 per cent, or 54.6p, to 429.4p around half what they were just six months ago. There was better news for fellow FTSE 250 stock TI Fluid Systems. Shares in the car parts maker, which counts Ford and Aston Martin among its customers, surged as it not only came out with good growth but said it expects to outperform the car market again this year. Stock Watch - Aquis Exchange Listing on the London Stock Exchange isnt cheap and so it has proven for equities trading platform Aquis Exchange. Costs of 1million related to its float last June were part of why its pre-tax loss widened to 3.7million, from 3.3million a year before. This was despite revenue doubling to 4million. Chief executive Alasdair Haynes hailed a transformational year and investors seemed to agree, as shares rose 2.2 per cent, or 12.5p, to 585p leaving them well up on their float price of 269p. TI is helped by its growing emphasis on making parts for electric and hybrid electric vehicles. Profit before tax rocketed from 136million in 2017 to 187million last year although profits in 2017 were knocked by 34million worth of costs related to its float. Revenue at TI was flat in its first full year as a listed firm. The group hiked its full-year dividend and investors responded in kind, with shares rising 12.1 per cent, or 20.8p, to 192.5p. The FTSE 250 as a whole slipped lower yesterday shedding 0.35 per cent, or 162.31 points, to 19,388.98. The FTSE 100 was dragged down by mining stocks as Brazilian company Vale said it was close to reopening its largest iron ore mine triggering a plunge in iron ore prices. Rio Tinto lost 2.3 per cent, or 101p, to 4204p, and Antofagasta lost 0.7 per cent, or 7.4p, to 958.2p, as it was also hit by a HSBC rating downgrade to reduce from hold. The Footsie ended its rising streak as it lost 32.99 points, taking it down to 7291.01. Resources stocks were some of the other major movers on the main and AIM markets yesterday. Kurdistan-focused Genel Energy said it will pay its first dividend next year even though it fell to a loss in 2018. Genel intends to pay shareholders at least 30million a year from 2020. It posted a pre-tax loss of 215million in 2018, down from a profit of 206million in 2017. Shares dived 5.3 per cent, or 12p, to 213p. Oil and gas company Highlands Natural Resources said it had raised around 1.6million through a share placing to help fund a new cannabis business. Highlands is moving into the booming market for natural remedy cannabidiol oil made from cannabis plants. Its new subsidiary, Zoetic Organics, will lease a 33,000 square foot facility in Colorado to grow the cannabis plants using hydrogen from its gas operation in Kansas as a fertiliser. Shares lost 8.5 per cent, or 0.82p, to 8.88p. And Greenland-focused Bluejay Mining has quashed speculation that it will soon be fundraising, saying it has enough cash to last until spring 2020. The firm is working towards a study of its Dundas project, which it says is the worlds purest resource for ilmenite used in white paint. Shares rose 7.2 per cent, or 0.66p, to 9.76p. Victims of a 1billion bank fraud have been urged to share their stories with retired judge Dame Linda Dobbs as she investigates claims of a cover-up. Business owners who lost money in the scandal at the Reading branch of HBOS are being asked to set out how they were treated, so those who made mistakes can be brought to book. In the run-up to the financial crisis, a gang of criminal bankers deliberately wrecked entrepreneurs' businesses and spent the proceeds on prostitutes, holidays and luxury goods. Probe: Retired judge Dame Linda Dobbs is investigating claims of a cover-up at HBOS and wants victims of the fraud to come forward HBOS was then bought by Lloyds in 2008. Dobbs is looking at how senior bankers dealt with complaints after that. The gang was eventually jailed in 2017, amid allegations Lloyds had sought to cover up what happened. Victims have claimed that they were stonewalled and bullied by Lloyds when they tried to expose the truth. The bank even repeatedly tried to evict some of those affected from their homes. Dobbs said: 'We want to know not only what Lloyds knew but also what it should reasonably have known about the fraud. 'This is a chance for you to tell your story about how you were treated. It is very important that we can fully assess how you were dealt with in your communications with Lloyds. 'This message is really a final call to potential witnesses to come forward to assist me and the team.' Lloyds is funding the Dobbs review as part of an effort to put the past behind it. She will write a report setting out if there were any failings in how the bank dealt with victims, and who was responsible. This document will be given to Lloyds, which is likely to come under pressure to make the full details public. Dobbs started work in 2017 and her report has been repeatedly delayed. It is not likely to be finished until next year. More than half of British blue-chip firms are under fire from shareholders over the massive pension deals handed to bosses. As many as 54 companies in the FTSE 100 have been handing chief executives cash payments worth at least a quarter of their salary every year towards their retirement. Some chiefs receive a pension top-up worth more than a third of their salary with Tui chief executive Friedrich Joussen handed 489,000 a year, or 51 per cent of his basic pay. Tui chief executive Friedrich Joussen handed 489,000 a year in pension contributions, or 51 per cent of his basic pay This flouts tough new guidelines from the powerful Investment Association that state pension payments should be worth no more than 24 per cent of salaries. And for new chief executives the figure should be in line with what staff receive typically below 15 per cent. The IA which represents the Citys major investors who manage more than 7trillion of assets looks set to issue a string of warnings over companies breaching the code. It sets the scene for major investor rebellions as companies put their pay schemes to shareholders at annual general meetings in the coming weeks. IA members include Schroders, Legal & General, Invesco, Prudential, Aviva and Aberdeen. Andrew Ninian, corporate governance director at IA, said: Members have been clear this is an issue of fairness and pension contributions should be aligned with the majority of the workforce. And the worst offender is... TUI The boss of travel firm Tui enjoys a bumper pension scheme bigger than any other in the FTSE 100. Friedrich Joussen got a contribution of 489,000 to top up his pension pot and cover associated fees last year. That represented 51 per cent of his 953,000 salary and was the highest contribution in percentage terms in the FTSE 100. The boss of travel firm Tui enjoys a bumper pension scheme bigger than any other in the FTSE 100 German-headquartered Tui claims that the costs cover a payment of 394,000 a year which goes into a pension fund the 55-year-old can access in seven years time when he hits retirement age, with the rest covering costs associated with looking after his money. Joussen was given this lucrative pension agreement in 2014 as part of a new contract at Tui. It dwarfs the contributions for junior staff, who get a maximum of 5pc of salaries. Even pilots only get 15 per cent. Luke Hildyard, of the High Pay centre, said: With vast pay awards, top bosses would rake in much higher pension payments than ordinary workers, even if they were paid on the same terms. But most chief executives receive a much bigger proportion of their salary. Such blatant double standards leave a sour taste in the mouth of ordinary workers. Most chief executives get a cash lump sum every year towards their pension, calculated at a specific percentage of their salary. Unlike regular staff members whose funds are locked away until they retire they can invest this cash in the market or spend it as they would with normal pay. Research for the Mail shows that in 2017 a total of 54 FTSE 100 businesses paid their bosses contributions of 25 per cent or more. Major offenders include Ross McEwan at bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland, who gets 35 per cent or 350,000 of his 1million base pay; Pascal Soriot, of drugmaker Astrazeneca, who picks up 30 per cent or 375,000 of his near 1.3million salary; and Ivan Menezes at drinks firm Diageo, who gets 30 per cent or 351,000 of his 1.2million wage bill. Others receiving 30 per cent or more include Rakesh Kapoor of Reckitt Benckiser, Marco Gobbetti of Burberry and Mike Coupe of Sainsburys. The IA crackdown has triggered panic in boardrooms, with some already announcing pension payments will be cut. At Aviva, contributions for chief executive Maurice Tulloch were cut from 28 per cent to 14 per cent when he was promoted to the job this month, in line with other staff. But other firms have been accused of trying to get around the guidelines. Lloyds faces backlash after it cut boss Antonio Horta-Osorios pension payments to 33 per cent of his salary or 419,000 still more than the IA limit. It also increased his other fixed pay by 175,000, offsetting the cut. The IA has warned tricks to boost pay will not be well received. Those who move to Britain or are yet to get on the property may not realise just how important credit scores can be. Alexandra Cheung, a tech consultant who falls into both categories, has lived here for six years and applied for a credit card a year ago. But she was shocked when she was turned down for having a poor score - read her story below. Now, a free tool that allows renters to use monthly payments to build a credit profile has joined forces with Britain's biggest building society to help first-time buyers and those who have moved from overseas potentially find it easier to get onto the ladder. The new relationship between Credit Ladder and Nationwide Building Society should allow buyers to access finance at a better rate and improve credit scores. Since launch in 2016 Credit Ladder has reported over 50m in rental transactions to Experian Tenants who meet Nationwide's criteria and pay rent on time will be introduced to apply for a mortgage and discuss various options with the lender. Credit Ladder, which was awarded a prize of 500,000 by HMRC last year, and Nationwide will use data accessed via open banking to help tenants establish if they are eligible for a home loan. My hard lesson with credit following move to the UK Alexandra Cheung was rejected by a lender and had to start her credit history from scratch Tech consultant Alexandra Cheung didn't realise the importance of credit scores in Britain. The late 20-something arrived in the UK six years ago after being brought up and living in Beijing, Hong Kong and the United States. She initially settled into a life of renting and working in London, more recently moving to the central district of Marylebone. But just over a year ago she applied for her first credit card in the UK and was rejected by the lender involved, which told her she had a 'terrible credit score' although its call centre staff couldn't understand why. After investigating what had gone wrong, she discovered that credit reference companies had become confused over the difference between her full Chinese name and the shortened version she had used to pay for utility bills and other standing orders. Alexandra realised she had 'zero' credit history in the UK and needed to start from scratch. After attending a personal finance event at which CreditLadder was present, she signed up for its service and now has her rent recognised by Experian via the platform. 'It's important that I improve my credit score because my husband and I are planning to buy our first home together in London most likely later this year, depending on what happens after Brexit,' she says. 'When I first arrived here I didn't realise how important a good credit score was going to be, although it was even worse in the US where I had to wait three years before my bank in Chicago would give me a credit card.' Sheraz Dar, chief executive officer of Credit Ladder says: 'With the service already live, the relationship is the first of its kind between a rent reporting service and a mortgage provider in the UK. 'Working with Nationwide Building Society is a key plank in our plans to help those who dream of owning their own home to realise their aspirations.' Credit Ladder can analyse the income and expenditure data of its users and overlay them against Nationwide's qualifying mortgage criteria. It then puts the rental payments data on the tenants' Experien credit file to boost their credit score. Sheraz Dar CEO of Credit Ladder says the company's relationship with mortgage lender Nationwide is the first of its kind Since launch in 2016 it has reported over 50million in rental transactions to Experian. Access to the rental reporting offering is free, but Credit Ladder also has two other paid for options Standard and Premium which you can opt to pay monthly or yearly. At the time of writing the Standard option has been discounted from 4.99 per month to 4.10 per month and the Premium version from 8.99 to 6.58 per month (pictured below). The paid for version includes other perks such as a free monthly hot drink, cinema discounts and mobile phone insurance among others. But this is not the only way in which the platform makes its money. Dar says: 'Credit Ladder also offer paid products and services to landlords and letting agents. 'Where we can help tenants get onto the property ladder with Nationwide, we would also earn a payment for our work.' Access to the rent reporting service is free but Credit Ladder is also offering two other plans where customers enjoy perks When asked what criteria the building society was are looking for Dar explains: 'Rent payments typically take three months to show on the Experian statutory report - this is a key report that many businesses look at before making lending decisions. 'Lending criteria for mortgages will typically look for a deposit and lenders will typically let you borrow a multiple of your income. 'We can't help with the deposit or how much you could borrow, but we can highlight tenants to Nationwide who have shown good rental behaviour and who we believe could qualify for a mortgage.' A survey of Credit Ladder's internal data showed that more than 20 per cent of existing tenants could have qualified for a mortgage. Dar says that this figure is likely to be higher if they were looking to buy with a partner. One downside to the service is that only the customer paying the rent will benefit from credit improvements. Dar says: 'Currently, credit improvements are for those who pay the rent. 'If you rent with someone and pay the rent from one account, you would need to have the rent payment coming from your own individual account to see improvements in your credit position. 'If tenants on our platform are looking for a mortgage, but they are paying rent from a join account, we can still look to help them - they would simply need to get in touch with us.' Dar admits that the service could also help first time buyers that aren't employed on a full time basis get a mortgage as well. 'All tenants can improve their credit score by having their rent reported through Credit Ladder - whether they run their own business or work full or part time doesn't matter. 'As additional criteria applies for mortgages, their broader personal finances are more likely to impact their ability to get a mortgage as opposed to the type of role they have.' Tenants are not required to bank with Nationwide in order to use CreditLadder's service or be introduced for a mortgage. The rental credit platform currently supports Barclays, Co-Operative Bank, First Direct, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, Monzo, Nationwide, Natwest, RBS, Santander, Starling and TSB. Dar adds: 'There is no requirement for participants to bank with the Nationwide. We can typically work with 95 per cent of bank accounts. But Dar doesn't rule out working with other banks in the future. 'We are looking to extend this service out and work closely with a small number of banks that share our vision of helping tenants.' Lorraine Kelly has escaped a 1.2 million tax bill after a judge described her as an 'entertaining lady' who is her own boss. Kelly, 59, locked horns with the tax authorities over claims that the company through which she provides her services to broadcasters is just a front. In 2016 HM Revenue and Customs presented her with an income tax bill for almost 900,000, plus national insurance contributions of over 300,000. Lorraine Kelly A vision: Lorraine was born and raised in Glasgow but has been familiar with the City of Discovery since meeting her husband Steve Smith in the 1980s. The house was put on the market by Savills in April last year- with the firm asking for offers over 825,000 Lorraine Kelly attended the RTS Programme Awards at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London last night But now she has scored a victory after a tax judge described her as an 'honest, intelligent' woman who is a super-talented freelancer. Working for numerous broadcasters, she picks her own work - once even turning down Elton John for an early hours interview that didn't meet her schedule. She had created her own 'persona' and 'brand' and that is what broadcasters wanted when they took her on, said Judge Jennifer Dean. The dispute hinged on a contract the Scottish star signed with ITV Breakfast in 2012 to present the 'Daybreak' and 'Lorraine' shows. In 2016 HM Revenue and Customs presented Lorraine (pictured with her daughter Rosie and husband) with an income tax bill for almost 900,000, plus national insurance contributions of over 300,000 The dispute hinged on a contract the Scottish star signed with ITV Breakfast in 2012 to present Daybreak and Lorraine (pictured, with Kelly interviewing Stacey Solomon in March) shows She did the deal through her services company, Albatel Limited, but HMRC insisted she in reality became an ITV employee (Lorraine pictured rehearsing her show) She did the deal through her services company, Albatel Limited, but HMRC insisted she in reality became an ITV employee. Kelly told Judge Dean she was 'baffled' by HMRC's attitude and denied that tax and national insurance should have been deducted from her income under the PAYE system. She said she had been 'freelance' since 1992 and had since then worked for the BBC, Channel 4, Scottish TV, Sky and ITV, also writing weekly columns for the Sun newspaper. Working for numerous broadcasters, she picks her own work - once even turning down Elton John (seen on February 24) for an early hours interview that didn't meet her schedule She considered it an 'honour and a responsibility' that she is one of the handful of TV stars whose names are in the titles of their shows. She can endorse commercial products however she likes, launching a clothing range for JD Williams, acting as a brand ambassador for Avon and appearing in an online advert for furniture company, Wayfair. Giving an example of her independence, she said she had refused to interview Elton John on a live link from Australia at 4am as she was filming with the BBC later in the day. Explaining the 'give and take' in her relationship with ITV, she said she had been absent from the broadcaster's morning schedule for four weeks in 2017 when she went on an expedition to Antarctica Judge Dean said: 'Ms Kelly explained she was baffled by HMRC's reluctance to accept that she is an entertainer....she explained her frustration at the manner in which HMRC had conducted the inquiry.' An HMRC spokesperson said: 'We are disappointed that the First Tier Tribunal has decided that the intermediary rules (also known as IR35) did not apply in this case. 'We will carefully consider the outcome of the tribunal before deciding whether to appeal.' Kelly on This Morning in 2004, left, and on talk-show Live Talk with Kaye Adams, Carol McGiffin and Kathryn Apanowicz Insisting her role was nothing like Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, Kelly said she 'dressed up for comedy sketches' with, amongst others, Aled Jones. Describing herself as a 'theatrical artist', she told the First-tier Tribunal that 'she acted every day as a version of herself.' She has he own stylist, her own Twitter account and her presenting work has ranged from the Scottish BAFTAS to the Chelsea flower show. Kelly also pointed out that she received none of the 'perks' available to ITV employees. She gets no pension from the broadcaster and she's not obliged to attend think tanks and training 'away days' like ITV staffers. The tribunal was told that Kelly is a 'unique broadcaster' and that, for her, 'ratings are revenue'. Her 'Lorraine' show - described as 'akin to Oprah' - 'has her DNA, she is the show, it could not happen without her and could not exist without her ideas and input.' When is a person classified as in employment or self-employed? Last year, regional presenter Christa Ackroyd, 61, was ordered to pay almost 420,000 in unpaid tax after she was 'encouraged' to set up a 'personal service company'. The broadcaster was the anchor of BBC Look North in Yorkshire for 12 years until inquiries into her tax affairs led to her being taken off air in 2013. Here we explain when a person is typically classed as a freelancer or an employee... A person IS typically classed as employed if... They have an agreement to provide personal work or services They turn up to work even if they do not want to There is work for that person as long as the contract or agreement lasts A person is typically classed as self-employed if... They are responsible for the success or failure of their business in regards to profit and loss They get to chose the hours they work, when they work and how they work If that person can hire or fire workers That person is free to work for other companies or take on other work Advertisement Upholding Kelly's appeal, Judge Dean praised her 'honest and cogent evidence' and rejected claims that she was ITV's 'servant.' She added: 'ITV was not employing a 'servant', but rather purchasing a product, namely the brand and individual personality of Lorraine Kelly. She was not entitled to sick pay, holiday pay or other benefits which are generally due to employees. Overturning the tax bills, the judge concluded: 'The relationship between Ms Kelly and ITV was a contract for services and not that of employer and employee.' Judge Dean also ruled that, as a 'theatrical entertainer', Kelly was entitled to deduct fees she paid her agent, Roar Global Ltd, from her tax bills. 'She presents herself as a brand, and that is the brand ITV sought when engaging her,' the judge said. 'All parts of the show are a performance, the act being to perform the role of a friendly, chatty and fun personality. 'Ms Kelly presents a persona of herself...quite simply put, the programmes are entertaining, Ms Kelly is entertaining. 'She may not like the guest she interviews, she may not like the food she eats, she may not like the film she viewed, but that is where the performance lies, as no doubt with other entertainers such as Ant and Dec or Richard and Judy. 'We do not doubt that Ms Kelly is an entertaining lady, but the point is that, for the time she is contracted to perform live on air, she is public 'Lorraine Kelly'.' Judge Dean said she had 'no hesitation in concluding that Ms Kelly is a 'theatrical artist' and that her agent's fees were deductible from tax. NEW ORLEANS, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC (KSF) and KSF partner, former Attorney General of Louisiana, Charles C. Foti, Jr., remind investors that they have until March 29, 2019 to file lead plaintiff applications in securities class action lawsuits against Vale S.A. (NYSE: VALE), if they purchased the Companys securities between April 11, 2017, and January 28, 2019, inclusive (the Class Period). These actions are pending in the United States District Courts for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York. What You May Do If you purchased securities of Vale and would like to discuss your legal rights and how these cases might affect you and your right to recover for your economic loss, you may, without obligation or cost to you, contact KSF Managing Partner Lewis Kahn toll-free at 1-877-515-1850 or via email (lewis.kahn@ksfcounsel.com), or visit https://www.ksfcounsel.com/cases/nyse-vale/ to learn more. If you wish to serve as a lead plaintiff in these class actions, you must petition the Court by March 29, 2019. About the Lawsuits Vale and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws. On November 5, 2015, Brazilian authorities reported that a mine co-owned by Vale had burst, killing dozens of people and devastating the local community. Then, on January 28, 2019, news sources reported that Brazilian authorities were pursuing criminal prosecutions and that Brazilian securities industry regulator CVM has opened a probe into miner Vale SAs filings, both relating to the disaster. On this news, the price of Vales shares plummeted. The first-filed case is Rauch v. Vale S.A. et al, 19-cv- 19cv526. About Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC KSF, whose partners include the former Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr., is a law firm focused on securities, antitrust and consumer class actions, along with merger & acquisition and breach of fiduciary litigation against publicly traded companies on behalf of shareholders. The firm has offices in New York, California and Louisiana. To learn more about KSF, you may visit www.ksfcounsel.com . Contact: Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC BALTIMORE, March 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Henrietta Lacks, LLC, and Dr. Keenan Kester Cofield, the Supreme GRAND Bishop, may own your .app or .com domain name. Henrietta Lacks, LLC and Bishop Cofield of Henrietta Lacks.com owns more than 3000 plus domain names, .apps and .coms between Godaddy and 2 other companies worldwide. Recently, Google paid 25 Million dollars for the .apps domains registry. Several months ago, .apps was made available for the first time to everyone in the world. Originally, only developers and other domain BIG name insiders like early shareholders for stock had any right to bid as part of the pre-registration process until now, at the direction of Google. Henrietta Lacks, LLC just released over 300 plus domains from the master list of our domain name properties to the public for viewing, said Bishop Cofield. Dr. Cofield states his .coms and .apps are some of the worlds most powerful names, locations, to quotes, to just name to his portfolio listings. Henrietta Lacks, LLC and Supreme GRAND Bishop Dr. Keenan Cofield had his domains portfolio appraised that exceeded millions of dollars, for several domains in his custody. President Donald Trump, his companies, properties, names, along with his son-in-law's New York businesses have gotten the most calls or emails, to the tune of over 200. Everyone wants a piece of this! Out of respect for the President and his family business, President Trump has first shot to acquire every domain I own in his family business names. Everyone I talked to by phone or email, wants to pay BIG money to keep President Trump's hands off of his many domains I own. I have two business matters with the President, that 'do not' include money. The United States government came in second of hot domains people wanted to buy from me. There is nothing like owning a piece of power, wealth and influence in the United States of America. This is better than any real estate deal! All companies want to have an application version of their site properties on the internet so customers, clients and others have direct access and use of their smartphones and tablets. When anyone, individual, company to organizations has your .app or even .com, there are many risks associated with someone owning your domain name or names in any combination or variation thereof. Clearly, this is all about business... Henrietta Lacks, LLC total domain name listings exceed over 3000. CLIK HERE FOR THE EDITED SHORT LIST OF OUR OWNED DOMAIN NAMES - https://medium.com/@supremegrandbishop/henrietta-lacks-llc-com-and-dr-keenan-cofield-domain-name-short-list-for-sale-96b6c98f0259?source=friends_link&sk=500d29d539b74a209e0dc09f809b32bb If you are interested also in our cause and wish to give a donation of any amount, CLICK HERE http://gofundme.com/hela-cell-legal-defense-fund to proceed to the GoFundMe page link for the Hela Cell-Legal Defense Fund. Henrietta Lacks.com shall issue an official Press Release launching the Hela Cell-Legal Defense Fund GoFundMe page sometime after this PR. Henrietta Lacks LLC and .com ask that you share these links and our legal defense fund campaign with family, friends and business associates. Please CLICK HERE- https://www.henriettalacks.com/ on this link to go to the Henrietta Lacks.com new web site. This site is still under some construction and work is being added, daily. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN AND WATCH HENRIETTA LACKS, LLC AND DR. KEENAN COFIELD YOU TUBE VIDEO ON DOMAIN NAMES- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgZVPJAnaLs CONTACT : Office of the Supreme GRAND Bishop Dr. Keenan Cofield, DD/JD/Ph.D./Psy.D Founder & CEO of Henrietta Lacks. LLC, .com & .app Hela-Cells.com, and Dr. Oscar Phillips Baltimore, MD Email: hela@henriettaLacks.com or Psychdoctor101@gmail.com 443-554-3715 Seattle, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WatchGuard Technologies, a leader in advanced network security solutions, today issued its quarterly Internet Security Report for Q4 2018. It found that network attacks targeting a vulnerability in the Cisco Webex Chrome extension increased in popularity dramatically, rising to be the second-most common network attack after being almost nonexistent in early 2018. Phishing campaigns showed a dangerous increase in sophistication in Q4, with new attacks utilizing advanced methods such as threatening to release recordings of users visiting adult content online, customizing emails for specific targets and creating fake banking login web pages. Based on data from tens of thousands of active WatchGuard Firebox appliances around the world, the complete report examines the top malware and network attacks targeting midmarket businesses and distributed enterprises today. There was a noticeable increase in advanced phishing attacks targeting high-value information this quarter, said Corey Nachreiner, CTO at WatchGuard Technologies. Now more than ever, its vital for businesses to take the layered approach to security, and deploy solutions like WatchGuards DNSWatch that offer DNS-level filtering designed to detect and block potentially dangerous connections and automatically refer employees to resources that bolster phishing awareness and prevention. A combination of security controls and human training will help businesses avoid becoming hooked by phishing attacks. The insights, research and security best practices included in WatchGuards quarterly Internet Security Report help organizations of all sizes understand the current cyber security landscape and better protect themselves, their partners and customers from emerging security threats. The top takeaways from the Q4 2018 report include: New network attack targets Cisco Webex Chrome extension A new network attack targeting a remote code execution vulnerability in the Chrome extension for Cisco Webex exploded in popularity last quarter. This vulnerability was disclosed and patched in 2017, but WatchGuard detected almost no network attacks targeting it until now. Detections grew by 7,016 percent from Q3 to Q4. This spike shows just how important it is to install security patches as soon as they are available. A new network attack targeting a remote code execution vulnerability in the Chrome extension for Cisco Webex exploded in popularity last quarter. This vulnerability was disclosed and patched in 2017, but WatchGuard detected almost no network attacks targeting it until now. Detections grew by 7,016 percent from Q3 to Q4. This spike shows just how important it is to install security patches as soon as they are available. New customized sextortion phishing campaign on the rise A new sextortion phishing attack was the second-most common attack that our malware engines detected in Q4 2018, mainly targeting APAC. It accounts for almost half of all of the unique malware hashes detected in Q4 because the email phishing message is tailored to each recipient. The message claims the sender has infected the victims computer with a trojan and recorded them visiting adult websites. It threatens to send these compromising images to their email contacts unless they pay a ransom. WatchGuard saw a significant amount of this malware in Q4 and all users should be on the lookout for these fake emails. A new sextortion phishing attack was the second-most common attack that our malware engines detected in Q4 2018, mainly targeting APAC. It accounts for almost half of all of the unique malware hashes detected in Q4 because the email phishing message is tailored to each recipient. The message claims the sender has infected the victims computer with a trojan and recorded them visiting adult websites. It threatens to send these compromising images to their email contacts unless they pay a ransom. WatchGuard saw a significant amount of this malware in Q4 and all users should be on the lookout for these fake emails. 16.5 percent of all Fireboxes were targeted by CoinHive cryptominer The most widespread malware variant in Q4 came from the popular CoinHive cryptominer family, showing that cryptomining remains a popular attack type. Two of the top ten most common pieces of malware detected in Q4 were also cryptominers, carrying over from past quarters. The most widespread malware variant in Q4 came from the popular CoinHive cryptominer family, showing that cryptomining remains a popular attack type. Two of the top ten most common pieces of malware detected in Q4 were also cryptominers, carrying over from past quarters. A major phishing attack leverages a fake bank page Another widespread piece of malware in Q4 sent a phishing email with a fake, but highly realistic Wells Fargo login page to capture victim emails and passwords. Overall, WatchGuard saw a rise in sophisticated phishing attacks targeting banking credentials in Q4. Another widespread piece of malware in Q4 sent a phishing email with a fake, but highly realistic Wells Fargo login page to capture victim emails and passwords. Overall, WatchGuard saw a rise in sophisticated phishing attacks targeting banking credentials in Q4. One ISPs filtering error routed Google traffic through Russia and China for 74 minutes The report includes a technical analysis of a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijack in November 2018 that inadvertently sent most of Googles traffic through Russia and China for a short time. WatchGuard found that a Nigerian ISP called MainOne made a mistake in their routing filters, which then spread to Russian and Chinese ISPs and caused much of Googles traffic to be routed through these ISPs unnecessarily. This accidental hijack highlights how insecure many of the underlying standards that the internet is based on are. A sophisticated attack targeting these flaws could have potentially catastrophic consequences. The report includes a technical analysis of a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) hijack in November 2018 that inadvertently sent most of Googles traffic through Russia and China for a short time. WatchGuard found that a Nigerian ISP called MainOne made a mistake in their routing filters, which then spread to Russian and Chinese ISPs and caused much of Googles traffic to be routed through these ISPs unnecessarily. This accidental hijack highlights how insecure many of the underlying standards that the internet is based on are. A sophisticated attack targeting these flaws could have potentially catastrophic consequences. Network attacks rise after historic lows in mid-2018 Network attacks rose 46 percent by volume and 167 percent in terms of unique signature hits in Q4 compared to Q3. This follows a trend seen in previous years with attacks ramping up during the holiday season. The Q4 ISR also includes a granular analysis of source code for the Exobot banking trojan. This highly sophisticated malware attempts to steal banking and financial information from Android devices. The WatchGuard Threat Labs analysis includes a list of the 150 sites such as Amazon, Facebook Paypal and Western Union that Exobot can automatically target, as well as a detailed look at the UI an attacker using Exobot would use to push commands to infected devices. These finding are based on anonymized Firebox Feed data from over 42,000 active WatchGuard UTM appliances worldwide. In total, these Fireboxes blocked over 16 million malware variants (382 per device) and approximately 1,244,000 network attacks (29 per device) in Q4 2018. For more information, download the full report here. To access live, real-time threat insights by type, region and date, visit WatchGuards Threat Landscape data visualization tool today. Subscribe to The 443 Security Simplified podcast at Secplicity.org, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc. WatchGuard Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in network security, secure Wi-Fi, multi-factor authentication, and network intelligence. The companys award-winning products and services are trusted around the world by nearly 10,000 security resellers and service providers to protect more than 80,000 customers. WatchGuards mission is to make enterprise-grade security accessible to companies of all types and sizes through simplicity, making WatchGuard an ideal solution for distributed enterprises and SMBs. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. To learn more, visit WatchGuard.com. For additional information, promotions and updates, follow WatchGuard on Twitter, @WatchGuard on Facebook, or on the LinkedIn Company page. Also, visit our InfoSec blog, Secplicity, for real-time information about the latest threats and how to cope with them at www.secplicity.org. Colonie State lawmakers and Capital Region business leaders on Thursday added to the chorus of voices seeking further debate before the legalization of recreational marijuana in New York, expressing concerns over impairment testing and marijuana use among youths. The panel of 15 lawmakers and local employers focused on the difficulty employers may have in dealing with on-the-job marijuana use should the drug be legalized, and pointed to what they say is a lack of research surrounding the issue. "To jump in and say this is OK...We don't really know for sure what all of the different dangers are," Dr. Carolyn Jones-Assini of Ellis Medicine said. "One of the issues that we're missing here is really a push to try to get more studies and to try to educate both our general population and our medical population of what the dangers are." Representatives from companies including General Electric, CAP COM, ARC and the Capital Region Chamber of Commerce, said it may be problematic to test for impairment following an accident in the workplace. Because marijuana stays in someone's system for days after use, it could be difficult to tell if marijuana played a part in the accident. Assembly Member Patricia Fahy said her two biggest concerns regarding marijuana legalization are the increase in use among youth, and the intensity of usage increasing. She referenced a study by the National Academies of Sciences "pointing to some very, very troubling trends, especially with psychoses and schizophrenia," she said. "I think we are putting the cart a little bit before the horse in terms of impaired driving," Fahy added. "We do not yet have a good mechanism for judging impaired driving." Jones-Assini said advertising for marijuana could become akin to the near-ubiquitous tobacco advertising of the 1950s and 1960s, even though she says it's unclear how unsafe marijuana may be. "If the state moves forward and someday we have legalization of marijuana, we don't want (it) to be a (large) advertiser, because that still is an important way to get it in people's head that this is a cool thing to do," Jones-Assini said. Fahy and fellow Assembly members John McDonald, Carrie Woerner and Mary Beth Walsh, said they support decriminalization of marijuana, if not immediate legalization. That could include the expunging or sealing of records of potential employees who have been convicted of marijuana-related charges. "There's a number of concerns I've had," Fahy said. "That said, I very much want to see full decriminalization. I want to see us tackle the social justice issues because there have been so many historic wrongs on this." Frank Kerbein, director of the Center for Human Resources at the Business Council of New York State, said his group would support that, but also said employers will treat on-the-job marijuana use just as they would alcohol consumption in the workplace. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. All four Assembly members supported the removal of marijuana legalization from the budget negotiation process to allow more time for debate and analysis something Gov. Andrew Cuomo agreed to do earlier this week. Cuomo said it could be worked out after the budget is passed, but before the legislative session ends June 19. McDonald and Fahy said the establishment of a task force before marijuana is legalized may help solve some of the potential problems associated with legalization. "There needs to be more dialog," McDonald said, adding that things like training for Drug Recognition Enforcement officers has to be established and funded among many other smaller kinks legislators have to work through. "I'd rather see an adult-use marijuana legalization task force established, have representatives from the legislature, all parties, to work with the executive to put this proper framework together so we can come back to vote on it in its entirety," he said. But how these concerns may be addressed and when the legislation will be crafted remains up in the air at this point. "It's Albany," McDonald said, "anything can happen." Troy It's Sept. 25, 1950 and a New England, Berkshire & Western passenger train has just pulled into Troy Union Station. It stretches out over both Broadway and Fulton, temporarily blocking traffic while passengers board for a trip east through the Hoosac Tunnel en route to Boston. The W. & L.E. Gurley precision instrument factories are next to the brick and granite station on Fulton, while on Broadway, the offices of The Record newspapers are a half block away. Troy in 1950 is a bustling place, and the 4,000-square-foot layout of the Rensselaer Model Railroad Society strives to faithfully capture that moment in time. Until now, not many people could see the decades of effort that have gone into creating the fictional railroad in its historic setting. Housed in the cramped basement of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Davison Hall dormitory since 1972, the layout could be hard to find. "There have been students who spent four years in Davison Hall and never knew we were downstairs," club director John Nehrich told the Times Union's Paul Grondahl in a 1990 interview. The basement was a step up from the club's three previous campus homes, two of which were subsequently demolished. And now even the basement space was filled. "It's 'wall-locked,' " said Claude Rounds, Rensselaer's vice president, administration. "It winds between three different rooms." But that's all about to change. "We'll be giving them as much as 50 percent more space," Rounds said. This fall, the club will open in its newest location, a nearly new office building at 258 Hoosick St., where Rensselaer rents a considerable amount for storage. RELATED: Check out this virtual tour of the Rensselaer Model Railroad at RPI created by Troy's Hudson Reality Capture. Rounds envisions not only space for visitors, but even some "then-and-now" photos of historic views and how they've changed. Rensselaer, the nation's oldest engineering school, has produced graduates who made major contributions to the railroad industry. Among them were Theodore Judah, a civil engineering graduate who designed the transcontinental railroad, and Alexander Cassatt, the Pennsylvania Rail Road president who oversaw the construction not only of the Hudson River and East River railroad tunnels, but also of Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station, where those tunnels terminated. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Railroad author and photographer Jim Shaughnessy, also a Rensselaer civil engineering graduate, published lavishly illustrated histories of the Delaware & Hudson Railway and The Rutland Road, both of which served Troy. Shaughnessy died in August. "Jim Shaughnessy's research and writing and expertise very much contributed to the knowledge and the work of the club over the years," Rounds said Thursday. The railroad layout extends to the Hudson Valley, Lake Champlain and Adirondack and Berkshires communities, as well as towns closer to Troy. Club members relied on historic photos as they created realistic models of buildings throughout the region. The move is being undertaken to permit asbestos remediation at the half-century-old Davison Hall and to replace aging pipes. "The first thing we need to do is to be very careful about how we document, remove it and store it," Rounds said. "There was no way we could protect the exhibit with the work we needed to do in Davison Hall." The new location for the railroad layout will be more accessible, with parking available. They hope to open it to the public on a regular basis. "This move is uncovering a hidden gem and elevating it to a position of prominence in the community," said Dalton Slegel, the president of the Model Railroad Society, in a statement. "We are honoring the historical connections between Rensselaer alumni and railroading heritage, as well as the immense contributions of club members over many decades." For $1,790 a month, you can rent a master bedroom in San Francisco's West Portal with ocean views and easy access to public transit. The major catch: No cooking allowed. In North San Jose, you'll get a master bedroom suite with a walk-in closet and a private entrance for $1,400 a month. But read the fine print of the Craigslist ad: "No cooking, No drugs, No marijuana/pot, No smoking, No pets, No overnight guests." Some Craigslist ads forbid kitchen use, but give tenants microwave and hot plate privileges. Others lack kitchens entirely, and even more say cooking isn't forbidden outright, but discouraged. A listing near Stanford University for a $1,500-a-month "fully furnished" studio lacks some obvious furnishings; namely, a stove and oven. Though the Craigslist ad says a "fridge, microwave, and toaster" come with the rental, there is "no cooking inside the room or kitchen access." But concessions can be made: "An outdoor area is set up with cabinet/countertop, microwave and electric outlet right outside the room for light cooking." ALSO: SF renters reveal secrets for snagging rooms in a crazy market In an expensive city like San Francisco, tenants must sometimes take desperate measures like renting apartments where food preparation is forbidden. It's not just renters feeling the pinch. Some homeowners may feel compelled to rent rooms in their private homes to simply stay afloat. In this case, a landlord might ask a tenant to abstain from using common spaces, like the kitchen, especially if there are other occupants in the home, including children. A recent Bay Area Craigslist search with the term "no cooking" returned 93 hits, some of which specified "no cooking" in the unit or, less rigidly, "light cooking," for which no definition was given. SFGATE reached out to some of these Craigslist posters, asking for clarification and explanation, but none responded. We included some of the listings in the above gallery. The legality of renting units without kitchen access or cooking abilities appears to vary among jurisdictions. No federal law enforced by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires rental units to have kitchens, a spokesperson for the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Office told SFGATE. At the state level, things get more complicated. California Health and Safety Code (2.17920.3) says tenants must have access to necessities like a working toilet, heat, running water and a "kitchen sink" made of non-absorbent material. It does not specify if tenants must have access to cooking facilities, nor does it provide a definition of "kitchen." California law does not require landlords to supply appliances, such as refrigerators and stoves. Different rules apply to single-room occupancy units, which are considered residential hotels. SAY WHAT? 69 percent of San Franciscans think their rent is a 'good deal' By this token, if a master tenant or landlord advertises a room in a unit that has a kitchen, he could ostensibly forbid the tenant from cooking or using the kitchen as long as the restriction is clearly stipulated in a contract, and the tenant continues to have access at least to the kitchen sink, said Joseph Tobener, an attorney specializing in tenant law and the managing partner at Tobener Ravenscroft in San Francisco. In theory, this applies even in cities whose housing codes require that every dwelling unit comes equipped a kitchen, including municipalities like San Francisco and San Jose. "Kitchen" is defined as "any room used, or intended or designed to be used, for cooking and preparing food" in the San Jose Municipal Code (20.200.590). Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. To add to the complexity of the cooking issue, California law requires all rental units to have certificates of occupancy, a precedent established in the 1978 case Gruzen v. Henry. To qualify for a certificate of occupancy, the unit must have a kitchen, Tobener said. Without a certificate, the landlord cannot legally collect rent. In the case that a landlord rented a unit with a kitchen, then took kitchen privileges away, the tenant could file a "decrease in housing services" complaint with the city, said Jennifer Rakowski, a San Francisco Rent Board supervisor. In San Francisco, the Rent Board "has no authority to compel the landlord to restore the service," according to documents on the agency's website, "but can only order a rent reduction for the loss of the housing service." It's wise to know your rights, and to be aware that not every listing on Craigslist and similar sites meets legal requirements, Rakowski warns. "If a landlord is renting a unit without kitchen facilities," she said, "it may be that the space is un-permitted." Read Michelle Robertson's latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfgate.com. Start receiving breaking news emails on wildfires, civil emergencies, riots, national breaking news, Amber Alerts, weather emergencies, and other critical events with the SFGATE breaking news email. Click here to make sure you get the news. English Lithuanian Head of Business to Business (B2B) and acting Head of Business to Consumer (B2C) at Telia Lietuva, AB (hereinafter Telia Lietuva or the Company) Mindaugas Ubartas decided to leave the Company from 12 April, 2019. He was leading B2B unit at Telia Lietuva from April 2017 and B2C unit from October 2018. Before running the current position, Mindaugas Ubartas (born in 1978) headed Telia Company owned mobile operator Tcell in Tajikistan for a couple of years. M. Ubartas started his career in telecommunications in 2001 at Lietuvos Telekomas (now Telia Lietuva), later he worked at Bite Lietuva and Tele2 units in Lithuania, Estonia and Kazakhstan. Till the new Heads of Business to Business and Business to Consumers are appointed, Business to Business unit will be temporarily led by Daniel Karpovic, current Head of Segment and Product Management at B2B. Business to Consumers activities will be covered by Elina Dapkeviciene, Head of Offering and Pricing at B2C and Vaida Jurkoniene, Head of Marketing. HUDSON A Hudson police officer was injured Wednesday when his police car was struck by an allegedly drugged driver, Chief Edward Moore said. City police were called to the intersection of North Sixth and Columbia streets for a two-car crash involving a police vehicle at 3:08 p.m. Monish D. Patel, 18, of Hudson was driving a 2016 black Honda Accord when he struck Officer Jacob Hoffman's police vehicle in the intersection, Moore said. Hoffman, who is the department's school resource officer for the Hudson City School District, was driving a city-owned 2000 BMW sedan decorated with an American flag paint job and anti-drug messaging at the time of the crash. The "D.A.R.E." vehicle was seized from a drug dealer. Patel complained of pain but declined medical treatment at the scene, the chief said. His passenger, a 16-year-old boy from Hudson, reported no injuries but was taken to Columbia Memorial Hospital to be evaluated. Hoffman suffered unspecified injuries and was also taken to Columbia Memorial. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. "It appears the injuries are minor, and it certainly could have been worse," Moore said. Patel has been charged with driving while ability impaired by drugs, unlawful possession of marijuana and several vehicle and traffic law violations. Hudson police and state troopers are investigating the incident, the chief said. SARATOGA Despite town planning board Chair Ian Murray's January 2016 public vow to not reap any benefit from the proposed Witt Construction project Cedar Bluff, residents who oppose the 31-home subdivision insist Murray has a conflict of interest and should not be involved in deciding the fate of the project. They argue Murray's past work as a landscaper with developer John Witt precludes him from making any decisions on the proposed project, intended to be perched on a ridge above Saratoga Lake and therefore he should recuse himself from voting on the plan's approval. John Cashin, who is among those fighting Witt's Cedar Bluff, said the last few years the Saratoga Showcase of Homes has highlighted Murray's involvement with Witt and other developers, like La Femme Home Builders, which also builds luxury homes in the town. "Sooner or later these developers will be appearing before the planning board, the zoning board of appeals or some other town official for an approval of one sort or another," Cashin said. "And it is simply good for business to throw a bone to Ian Murray from time to time to get things done." Murray, owner of Brookside Nursery, in a January 2016 statement preserved in planning board minutes, admitted he has worked for the developers, but is not currently doing so. "I have no ongoing contractual relationship with Witt Construction and no knowledge or expectation of receiving any contractual benefits from this subdivision," the minutes quote Murray, who did not return a Times Union phone call on Wednesday for comment. "I have worked on properties that have been built and/or developed by Witt Construction. All my contractual relationships have been directly with the homeowner, separate and apart from Witt Construction." The owner of a 2015 award-winning Witt home on Brown Road, says that is not the case. The owner, who would only identify herself as S. Clements, said her house, which won the Saratoga Showcase of Homes People's Choice Award, was landscaped by Brookside Nursery. She also said that she never wrote a check to Brookside. Rather, she said all payments were funneled through Witt who charged her for all of the home's "extras" like landscaping. Brookside Nursery, according to the Saratoga Showcase of Homes website, also did the landscaping for three other Brown Road homes, built by La Femme Home Builders, that won the showcase in 2016, 2017 and 2018. All of them were built in the town of Saratoga. However, in 2014, when the Brown Road lots went to the planning board, minutes show that Saratoga Development LLC along with Michael LaMorgese and David DePaulo were named as the parties seeking subdivision approval, not Witt nor Lisa Breen of La Femme Home Builders. Neither Witt nor Breen returned Times Union phone calls seeking comment on their business relationships with Murray and his nursery. Saratoga Supervisor Tom Wood stands behind Murray and said there is no conflict of interest. "Ian is above board," Wood said. "Ian is a professional in every regard. I don't believe there is any conflict of interest." Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Earlier this month, Wood and the town won a lawsuit, brought forth by the proposed Witt development neighbors, to remove Murray from the planning board. The neighbors argued that Murray currently lives in Ballston Spa, not Saratoga, and thus is ineligible to hold a seat on the town planning board. State Supreme Court Judge Ann C. Crowell dismissed the suit, ruling that Murray's permanent residence is Saratoga because he intends to move back to the town after he builds a house. In court documents, Murray said he expects to begin living in Saratoga again this summer. Wood also said there is no reason for Murray, who has chaired the board since 1994, to recuse himself. "That is not an issue," Wood said. "He will go forward in all cases, not recusing himself." In addition to working with Witt, in March 2018, Murray and Witt met privately with town engineer Ken Martin to discuss the controversial Cedar Bluff proposal, as previously reported in the Times Union. Tom Yannios, whose property borders the proposed Cedar Bluffs site, said Wood and other Saratoga elected officials, who just reappointed Murray to another seven-year term as the chair of the planning board, are ignoring Murray's business dealings. "These issues have been shoved under the table," Yannios said. "He will continue to do work for Witt and other developers. They form a cabal, one supporting the other. We all know that is happening." SCHENECTADY A suspect was taken into custody following reports of shots fired Thursday morning on Emmett Street, between South Brandywine Avenue and McClyman Street, police said. Schenectady police received a call around 10:20 a.m. about gunfire in the area of 931 Emmett St., in the Hamilton Hill neighborhood. When officers arrived they found multiple shell casings, police said. ALBANY A panel of lawmakers on Wednesday examined Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's proposal to lower campaign contribution limits and create a statewide public matching system, and raised familiar concerns about cost and enforcement. Cuomo's plan, contained in his executive budget proposal, would match each dollar of a private contribution, up to $175 per donor, with $6 in public funds. The system would be significantly less restrictive in terms of dollar amounts and who could do the giving than New York City's public financing program, but it would dramatically overhaul New York's political system. The legislation includes a cap on available public matching funds, ranging from $350,000 for Assembly candidates to $18 million for a gubernatorial candidate, but places no limits on how much those candidates could fundraise or spend in total. A number of legislators raised questions about the qualifying threshold of small donations from within the district that would allow legislative candidates to participate in the system under Cuomo's proposal. A recent study by the Campaign Finance Institute and the University at Albany found that more than 70 percent of state candidates last year wouldn't have qualified for public funding under the governor's plan. "The question of where the qualifying threshold is set is a critical one. ... It is the expertise of legislators like yourself that can decide where that threshold should be," said Chisun Lee, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, in her testimony at the Capitol. Cuomo told WNYC's Brian Lehrer on Wednesday that he is "cautiously optimistic" that the plan will be included in the 2019-20 state budget, which is due at the end of the month. The Democrat-controlled Legislature in January closed the state's infamous "LLC loophole," which has allowed companies and individuals to contribute virtually unlimited funds to candidates by forming numerous limited liability companies. Proponents of a public financing option argue that the system and tighter contribution limits would boost the power of small donors over wealthy interests and encourage electoral competition. The Senate and Assembly majorities indicated support for a public matching program in their budget resolutions, but some in the Assembly have expressed concerns about onerous penalties and enforcement. The Assembly was a longtime proponent of public matching back when Republicans blocked the proposals from advancing in the Senate. But with three-way Democratic control in Albany, much of the opposition is now emerging in the lower chamber. Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, following a leaders' budget meeting on the second floor of the Capitol on Wednesday, was cagey about where his conference stands on the legislation. "It's a topic on the table; we're discussing what to do," he told reporters. In New York City, candidates have complained of burdensome post-election audits by the city's Campaign Finance Board, saying they can drag out for years. "Two years after the election, you can be fined $10,000 but because it's two years after the election, you don't have any money left," Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, D-Mount Vernon, told the Times Union last year. CFB officials, who oversees the city's decades-old public matching system, sought to address those concerns. "We do understand there are gradations of violations, and I believe we have gotten better over time," CFB Chairman Frederick Schaffer said at Wednesday's hearing. Concerns were also raised about the peril of being outspent by opponents backed by independent expenditure committees, third-party groups or individuals that are legally barred from coordinating with candidates. CFB officials, however, noted that many New York City candidates have prevailed over well-financed opponents with the help of public financing. "The point is to give them enough to get their message out," said Amy Loprest, executive director of Campaign Finance Board, noting that anyone who fears being harmed by the public matching system can opt out. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Manhattan Sen. Brian Kavanagh questioned how the city ensures the system isn't being exploited by those seeking funds for frivolous campaigns, whether to "alter the candidate pool in a particular race, or for vanity." Loprest said that in order to get more than 25 percent of matching funds, candidates must make a statement of need that meets certain criteria. "Running for office is a lot of work. I don't think we've seen any vanity candidates, because it's hard," added Schaffer. The Brennan Center's Lee said the absence of spending or aggregate fundraising limits in Cuomo's proposal allows for "modern, competitive campaign." Funding for the program remains an open question, but implementation will take several years. State Board of Elections commissioner Todd Valentine testified that it would take at least two years for the agency, which is tasked with monitoring the program, to implement necessary auditing software. Operating a statewide public matching system is projected to cost the Board of Elections $60 million annually. Publicly financed elections would deal a blow to the real estate industry, which in past years has flooded the campaign accounts of state lawmakers with millions. Since Democrats seized the Senate in November, real estate interests who push for more lax rent regulations and generous development incentives have begun moving their campaign donations to the Democratic side. "They are bipartisan bribers, and we are tracking the money they give to Democrats and particularly Senate Democrats," said Mike McKee, president of the Tenants Political Action Committee, at the hearing. Government reformers who testified noted that the concept of a public matching system has been examined and analyzed for decades, and urged lawmakers to act. Nearly 30 years ago, the state Commission on Public Integrity convened by Gov. Mario Cuomo called New York State's campaign finance laws "a disgrace and an embarrassment" and recommended public financing of elections. The current governor's short-lived Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption in 2013 came to the same conclusion. Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Group, noted that current legislators will not be in office forever, and urged them to overhaul the system that has allowed corruption to fester. "Make history act now," he said. The number of riders killed in snowmobile crashes in New York has nearly tripled over last winters total. A Hadley mans death earlier this week marked the 20th fatality so far this season, according to the New York State Snowmobile Association. Jon Brockway, 50, was found a short distance from his home on Wednesday after being reported missing when he didnt return from a ride on Tuesday. State Police are investigating the death but have called the incident a low speed accident. During the previous season, only seven riders were killed in the state, but 24 riders died in the 2016-2017 season, according to the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Dominic Jacangelo, executive director of the snowmobile association said hes not sure how to explain the jump over last seasons fatalities, noting that conditions were similar to last winters weather. This year was a particularly difficult year, he said. The crystal ball isnt revealing anything on why that is. Most of this season's deaths have involved riders either driving too fast or failing to take other safety precautions. Four of this years deaths have happened in the town of Webb, in Herkimer County. Jacangelo said the association urges riders not to drink and ride and to pay attention to the trail conditions theyre riding on. Speed in particular has played a role in several crashes this year, he said. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. The reality is that when you come off a sled, everything you hit is hard, he said about riders being thrown off snowmobiles during accidents. Earlier this month, the state parks office sent out a release reminding riders that the most common factors in snowmobile crashes are alcohol and speeding. "We urge snowmobilers to avoid alcohol, drive within your abilities, within speed limits, and to reduce speeds during inclement or nighttime operation, said State Parks Acting Commissioner Erik Kulleseid. Overall the number of crashes and fatalities have dropped over the last 15 years. The 2003-04 season saw over 500 crashes and 19 fatalities, which fell to 158 crashes and seven fatalities in 2017-18 season. All seven fatalities last season were due to drivers hitting trees or other vehicles. Alcohol was involved in two of those crashes, officials said. ALBANY In 2003, Daniel Williams was shooting baskets outside his Buffalo home when the 16-year-old hoops star was struck by a bullet. It was a case of mistaken identity. On Wednesday, it became a case before the state's highest court. Williams' attorney asked the Court of Appeals to grant him jurisdiction to file a negligence lawsuit in New York against the Ohio gun dealer who sold the weapon later used to shoot Williams. He contends the dealer knew, or should have known, he was supplying the criminal gun market in New York. The lawyer, Jonathan E. Lowy, wants the court to reverse a ruling by the Appellate Division in Rochester that found in favor of the dealer, Charles Brown, who sold the weapon and more than 180 others at gun shows to James Nigel Bostic, who later sold the weapons in the Buffalo market. Bostic was later convicted of federal gun trafficking crimes. Brown's attorney argued that under the due process clause of the constitution, a civil defendant from another state would need to avail themselves of New York to put them within the legal jurisdiction of the Empire State. The manufacturer of the pistol used in the shooting, Beemiller Inc., sold it to MKS Supply Inc., which sold the gun to Brown. Beemiller and MKS, two other defendants in Williams' suit, have not disputed the case has jurisdiction in New York. Lowy said Brown admitted in "extraordinary testimony" in a deposition that Bostic admitted to Brown that he was originally from Buffalo and would like to open a shop in New York. In doing so, Lowy contends, Brown purposely availed himself of the New York market. Lowy said he was unaware of any other due process case in New York or before the U.S. Supreme Court in which such a statement was made. "If you shut the door on this case, then you have completely shut the door to the case with a more crafty gun trafficker who does not avail himself," Lowy told the court. "We have the testimony of plans to open a store, and I would say that that is all your honors should look at," he said. Scott Braum, the Dayton, Ohio-based attorney for Brown, asked the court to uphold the appellate ruling. He downplayed Brown's remarks about planning to sell in New York. Braum told the judges that Brown testified during the deposition that Bostic said he planned to open a gun shop in Columbus, Ohio, and that he "wouldn't mind having a shop in Buffalo, also." Braum noted his client lived in Ohio at the time. "The fact that you're from Buffalo is irrelevant from a jurisdictional analysis," he told reporters following the arguments. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Asked if his client's remarks opened the door to New York jurisdiction, Braum said, "Absolutely not." During the oral arguments, Associate Judge Jenny Rivera noted to Braum that guns were inherently dangerous instruments compared to other commercial products. Braum replied, "A felon intentionally shooting somebody is clearly dangerous. I would take issue with characterizing guns as an inherently dangerous instrumentality." Associate Judge Eugene Fahey suggested to Braum the gun market is somewhat different than other commercial realms, as it revolves around direct contact at gun shows. "We're not selling chocolates here," Fahey said. Braum reminded Fahey that guns are a legal product that is subjected to higher restrictions, such as criminal background checks. In response, Fahey revealed that he is the son of a Buffalo police officer and, in fact, has owned a gun. The court is expected to rule in early May. Lima, Ohio President Donald Trump on Wednesday brought his re-election campaign to Ohio a state essential to his 2020 strategy touring a military tank plant and telling many of its cheering workers: "You better love me. I kept this place open." Trump's visit to Ohio was his first since last year's midterm election campaign, when the state was a rare bright spot for Republicans in the upper Midwest. But with Trump's path to another four years in the White House relying on a victory here, his campaign is mindful of warning signs that Ohio can hardly be taken for granted in 2020. Perhaps no state has better illustrated the re-aligning effects of Trump's candidacy and presidency than Ohio, where traditionally Democratic-leaning working-class voters have swung heavily toward the GOP, and moderate Republicans in populous suburban counties have shifted away from Trump. It's for that reason, administration officials said, that Trump keeps returning to Ohio this week's visit marks his 10th to the state since taking office. The visit is part of a 2020 Trump strategy to appear in battleground states in his official White House capacity as much as possible this year, said a person with knowledge of the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly. Trump is expected to make similar trips throughout the year as he seeks to boost enthusiasm to counter an energized Democratic base. It's a strategy employed by previous presidents, both to leverage the prestige of office for political purposes and to offset the steep costs of presidential campaign travel with corresponding taxpayer-funded events. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter. Trump visited the Lima Army Tank Plant, which had been at risk for closure but is now benefiting from his administration's investments in defense spending. He also attended a re-election campaign fundraiser in Canton. In this heavy manufacturing state, Trump cited his efforts to negotiate new trade agreements and enact tariffs to protect steel manufacturers. He described how his administration has confronted China over its trading practices and the "stealing" of American jobs and ideas. For both parties, the results of the 2018 midterms have become a sort of "choose-your-own-adventure" moment for 2020 prognosticators. Republicans contend that the election of the state's GOP governor, Mike DeWine, largely mirrored Trump's 2016 path to victory and proves the strength of his coalition. They believe Trump's coattails in the state are long, as incumbent Republican congressional candidates in suburban counties like Reps. Steve Chabot and Troy Balderson won re-election last year in no small part because of the president's frequent visits. New York State Police MOREAU - A wanted parolee was arrested Wednesday after he gave police a false identity and was found to have hidden crack cocaine in his mouth, State Police said. Antonio Fisher, whose age was not given, was charged with tampering with physical evidence, felony drug offenses and criminal impersonation for lying about his identity to police. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Since 2013, the amount invested by Canadians abroad has increased 73.7 per cent while the amount invested by foreigners in Canada has declined by 55 per cent, finds a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank. Investment by foreign companies and individuals is vital to increasing productivity and improving living standards for Canadian workers, so when the level of investment drops, Canadians suffer, said Steven Globerman, Fraser Institute senior fellow and author of Canadian Foreign Direct Investment: Recent Patterns and Interpretation . The study finds that, from 1990 to 2014, the average annual investment by foreigners in Canadaknown as inward foreign direct investment or FDImeasured as a share of the Canadian economy was markedly higher than the United States and the OECD. However, that trend has changed, and from 2014 to 2017, Canadas level of foreign investment declined while it increased substantially in the U.S. and the OECD more broadly. (See chart below for percentages.) And the drop in foreign investment affected multiple sectors in Canada including manufacturing and utilities. In other words, its not just an oil and gas problem. Moreover, during that same period, Canadas level of outward FDI (investment in other countries by Canadians) increased. When you see less money coming in from foreigners at the same time Canadians are increasingly investing abroad, its a strong indication that Canada is not a good place to invest, Globerman said. Unfortunately for Canadian workers, Canada has become a less attractive location for direct foreign investment. Annual average inward FDI as a percentage of GDP 1990 - 2017 1990 - 2014 2015 2017 Canada 2.76 % 2.78 % 2.62 % U.S. 1.56 % 1.46 % 2.39 % OECD 2.23 % 2.15 % 2.91 % MEDIA CONTACTS: Steven Globerman, Senior Fellow Fraser Institute To arrange media interviews or for more information, please contact: Mark Hasiuk, (604) 688-0221 ext. 517, mark.hasiuk@fraserinstitute.org Follow the Fraser Institute on Twitter | Like us on Facebook Speciality wheel supplier Starco is planning to improve and expand its Croatian manufacturing facility to meet the growing demand from OEMs, primarily for its products used in agricultural and industrial applications. According to the company, there is a growing demand for its dual wheels and made-to-measure (MTM) products for the agricultural industry, from both private end users and major tractor manufacturers. ') } // --> ') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // --> ') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write(' ') } // --> ') } else if (width >= 425) { console.log ('largescreen'); document.write('') } else { console.log ('nompuad'); document.write('') } // --> Starco anticipates that a 75% increase in capacity output will be necessary over the next four years across all wheel types pressed, spun, made-to-measure and dual wheels. We will strengthen the current steel wheel manufacturing setup in Croatia by investing US$8.17m (7.2m) over a four-year period, while investing in our team and processes, said Richard Todd, CEO. Key investments are already in place, giving excess capacity for pressed and spun wheels. In addition, the new MTM/dual wheel production unit has been operational since February. We have experienced a growing demand from farmers all over Europe for customized wheel solutions for their tractors, commented Axel Werner, segment director for tractor and national distributors. Also, the demand is growing, and partnerships are developing with major tractor manufacturers. Starco has been a market leader in duals for many years and it is hoped the strategic focus on partnerships with distributors and OEMs, in addition to the investments, will drive huge growth within this business. We will partner with the big tractor manufacturers, offering custom-made solutions, support with training, and development and documentation, strengthening our sales of dual wheels to farmers, explained Werner. The first round of upgrades in both equipment and facilities were completed ready for the 2019 high season. Work will be done gradually over the four years, but most of the changes will be implemented in the first few years. Tips for Improving Schedule Adherence in the Contact Center One of a call center managers most important jobs is the creation of the schedule. The schedule which is often created inside the companys workforce management solution -- is the framework that supports the entire contact center operation. Hours of planning, forecasting, studying historical precedent and making educated guesses based on available information goes into it. But the best schedules in the world wont do you or your customers much good if agents arent adhering to the schedule. Schedule adherence, an important metric for contact centers to track, is simply the percentage of time that customer support agents adhere to their scheduled shifts. The higher the schedule adherence, the more efficiently the contact center is operating. Better efficiency may even enable the contact center to reduce headcount without customer relationships suffering. So how do you improve adherence? There are a few ways to better the metric. Determine Whats Causing the Lack of Adherence It might be the fault of your employees. Perhaps theyre poorly trained, perhaps theyre suffering from a lack of motivation and chronic lateness. If this is the case, some remedial training and performance management is necessary. Consider implementing an incentive system that rewards employees who stick to their schedules. If agents are trying their best but still cant stick to schedules, it may be the fault of the schedule. Is it building in realistic amounts of time for breaks, lunches and training sessions? Does the schedule fall apart if one agent calls in sick or is late returning from lunch? If so, you may have a critical lack of flexibility in the schedule. Give Employees Some Flexibility Workers who have a little give in their schedules are more likely to stick to them. A workforce management and scheduling solution that allows agents to adjust their shift times by 15 minutes to can hour can help improve adherence. In addition, a WFM solution that allows agents with similar skills to swap shifts without a lot of paperwork or managers approval can ensure that there are always the right number of people with the right skills handling customer contacts. Offer Incentives, and Reward Adherence Given the right incentives, employees will often work hard to improve their own adherence. Give recognition to employees who do a good job sticking to schedules, and provide small rewards to workers who improve their adherence. Punishing tardiness tends to lower morale, so put some positive methods into place to boost the schedule. Employees who are late, for example, can be given the opportunity to make the time up during the busiest shifts when extra help is needed. Ensure youre using a good WFM and scheduling solution that can help you build the kind of flexibility you need and your agents need to keep to schedule. Edited by Maurice Nagle [March 21, 2019] Banks Partner to Award $750K for 124 Low-Income Housing Units A $750,000 Affordable Housing Program (AHP) grant from The First, A National Banking Association (The First) and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas (FHLB Dallas) will assist with the demolition and construction of 124 new apartment units in Laurel, Mississippi. The grant was awarded to LHA Enterprise Development (LHA), a nonprofit that develops affordable housing projects by renovating Laurel Housing Authority's portfolio of public housing units and community enhancement projects. This is the organization's first AHP grant. The Triangle Homes will provide new, modern and affordable housing for 124 families. The $17.4 million project includes the demolition of 124 existing units originally built in 1941 and new construction of larger, more energy-efficient units. The Triangle Homes project covers approximately 25 percent of Laurel Housing Authority's stock of housing units. Construction for the apartment units will begin in mid-2019 and be completed in 2020. "This project represents hope for a more comfortable, decent home for many families and could not have happened without the AHP grant," said Ailrick Young, executive director at LHA. "We'd like to thank all who put in the time and energy into securing funding for this project." Jerome Brown, senior vice president and director of Community Development at The First said the AHP has enabled the bank to make an impact on the communities it serves. "Part of our role as community bankers is to ensure that residents in our community have access to safe, decent and affordable housing," said Mr. Brown. "The AHP and our partnership with FHLB Dallas facilitate that rle and we are very excited about The Triangle Homes project." In 2018, the AHP, offered through FHLB Dallas member institutions, awarded $14 million in grants to 29 affordable housing projects. Since the program's inception in 1990, more than $278 million in AHP funds were awarded to assist 51,000 households. "When you've got a larger-scale project such as The Triangles Homes, programs like the AHP can bring a lot more certainty to a timeline," said Greg Hettrick, first vice president and director of Community Investment at FHLB Dallas. "This wouldn't be possible without The First's dedication to community development." AHP funds are intended to assist FHLB Dallas members in financing the purchase, construction and/or rehabilitation of owner-occupied, rental or transitional housing for homeless individuals in their community. Funds for the program are targeted to benefit households with incomes at or below 80 percent of the median income of an area. Visit fhlb.com/ahp for more information on the AHP. About The First, A National Banking Association The First, A National Banking Association, headquartered in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, began as a dream on a back porch in South Mississippi. A group of local businessmen talked about creating a bank that would take care of business by taking care of people one customer at a time... and The First was born. Now, that dream has grown from a back porch to cities and towns all over South Mississippi, South Alabama, and Louisiana. The First is more than a bank...because it is still a group of friends building relationships and taking care of business one customer at a time! The First currently has 73 locations and assets of $3 billion. About the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas The Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas is one of 11 district banks in the FHLBank system created by Congress in 1932. FHLB Dallas, with total assets of $72.8 billion as of December 31, 2018, is a member-owned cooperative that supports housing and community development by providing competitively priced advances and other credit products to approximately 825 members and associated institutions in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas. Visit fhlb.com for more information. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005494/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] DataCandy Gift Card Platform to Be Implemented at Parkland's Chevron-Branded Fuel Stations in Canada DataCandy, a North American leader in gift card and customer loyalty solutions for retailers, restaurants and petroleum companies, has been chosen by Parkland Fuel Corporation ("Parkland") to implement a gift card program at Parkland's 180 Canadian Chevron (News - Alert)-branded fuel stations. Parkland is a retail branded distributor for Chevron in Canada and acquired Chevron Canada R & M ULC on October 1, 2017. "We have already experienced first-hand the numerous benefits of collaborating with DataCandy through its work enabling gift card capabilities at our Ultramar-branded locations," said Ian White, Senior Vice President, Strategic Marketing & Innovation at Parkland Fuel Corporation. "DataCandy's industry expertise and innovative software features make implementing its solution at our Chevron-branded locations the logical next step." DataCandy's gift card solution is designed to easily integrate with the hardware that North merican businesses use most, including the existing Bulloch point-of-sale systems in use at Chevron-branded stations. "We are pleased to be expanding our relationship with Parkland Fuel Corporation and look forward to helping Parkland offer gift cards at all its Canadian Chevron-branded locations," said Lorne Schwartz, President and CEO of DataCandy. "Successful initiatives such as these are the reason why DataCandy is quickly becoming the petroleum industry's gift card solution provider of choice." About DataCandy DataCandy is a leading North American provider of affordable customer loyalty and gift card solutions for businesses of all sizes. The company's secure, user-friendly platform is used at over 10,000 locations across Canada and the United States by over 800 companies, including the ALDO Group, The Source (News - Alert), Ultramar, Familiprix, Kernels Popcorn and 40 of the MTY Food Group's restaurant brands. To find out how better insight into your customers' buying behaviour can improve your bottom line, visit www.datacandy.com. About Parkland Parkland is Canada and the Caribbean's largest, and one of America's fastest growing, independent suppliers and marketers of fuel and petroleum products and a leading convenience store operator. Parkland services customers in 25 countries through three channels: Retail, Commercial and Wholesale. Parkland optimizes its fuel supply across these three channels by operating and leveraging a growing portfolio of supply relationships and storage infrastructure. Parkland provides trusted and locally relevant fuel brands and convenience store offerings in the communities it serves. Parkland creates value for shareholders by focusing on its proven strategy of growing organically, realizing a supply advantage and acquiring prudently and integrating successfully. At the core of our strategy are our people, as well as our values of safety, integrity, community and respect, which are embraced across our organization. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005088/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 20, 2019] Frelii Enters Strategic Agreement to Advance Cutting-edge Genomic Science and Applications Frelii Inc. (OTCQB: FRLI) ("Frelii" or "The Company") today announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with NewPath Health Care Solutions, Inc. of Ontario, Canada; Mercator Biologic, Inc. of Centerville, Utah; and True DNA Story, LLC of Centerville, Utah. The purpose of the MOU is to strategically explore the full capabilities of each company to identify synergies and opportunities in order to leverage the unique skillsets of the collective. The intention of the MOU is to build a cooperative venture capable of leveraging the strengths of each company to enhance and further the science of genetics, markets and potential clients' quality of life. It also includes mutual cooperation in expanding and improving on the established product portfolios and future plans. "The four companies that are a part of the agreement have each developed technologies, methodologies, processes and solutions that are unique and powerful and lend themselves to game-changing collaborations and innovations," said Ian Jenkins, CEO of Frelii Inc. "Frelii will offer its highly advanced artificial-intelligence-based technology platform to the group, and also benefit from their technology and expertise to further our corporate growth and market objectives. By working together, we will collectively continue to outpace competitors and more rapidly advance the science and real-world practicality of leveraging genetic data for the good of humanity." The parties in the MOU also have agreed that there is an opportunity to participate in a pilot research initiative which is of mutual interest and may present an opportunity for each entity to validate its technology and provide a means to significantly advance each other's commercial capabilities. If enacted, this initiative will be finalized in a statement of work that will define the phases of the initiative and the roles of each participant. About Frelii Inc. Frelii Inc. is a medical technology company that uses gene sequencing and artificial intelligence to determine risk and lifestyle modifications. Its technology anayzes the most comprehensive markers (60,000,000+) on the market to date. Frelii's technology generates accurate and profoundly valuable insight into DNA. It opens opportunities never before realized in health care, precision medicine, insurance, corporate wellness as well as personal health and risk identification. For more information, please visit www.frelii.com. Frelii (OTCQB: FRLI) trades on the #OTCQB Venture Market for early stage and developing U.S. and international companies. Companies are current in their reporting and undergo an annual verification and management certification process. Investors can find Real-Time quotes and market information for the company on www.otcmarkets.com. Follow Frelii online at: Frelii Facebook (News - Alert) Page https://www.facebook.com/livefrelii/ Frelii Twitter Feed @livefrelii Frelii Instagram Page @livefrelii Frelii LinkedIn (News - Alert) Page linkedin.com/company/frelii/ Safe Harbor Statement: This release contains certain "forward-looking statements" relating to the business of the Company. All statements, other than statements of historical fact included herein are "forward-looking statements" including statements regarding: the continued growth of the e-commerce segment and the ability of the Company to continue its expansion into that segment; the ability of the Company to attract customers and partners and generate revenues; the ability of the Company to successfully execute its business plan; the business strategy, plans, and objectives of the Company; and any other statements of non-historical information. These forward-looking statements are often identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believes," "expects" or similar expressions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, they do involve assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, and these expectations may prove to be incorrect. Investors should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this news release. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including those discussed in the Company's periodic reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on its website (http://www.sec.gov). All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors. Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does not assume any duty to update these forward-looking statements. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190320005857/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Oracle Applauds Creators of Legendary Customer Experiences LAS VEGAS, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- MODERN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE -- To celebrate the creators of truly great experiences across the entire customer journey, Oracle today announced the winners of the Markie Awards. The awards showcase Oracle Customer Experience (CX) Cloud customers who have delivered standout customer experiences across marketing, sales, service and commerce. This year's winners include Bonnier News, Samsung Business, Things Remembered, Movember Foundation and the City of Albuquerque, New Mexico. "The Markie Awards have celebrated the art and science of digital marketing for more than a decade and to reflect the changing way customers interact with brands, we have expanded their scope to celebrate sales, service and commerce professionals as well," said Christina Cavanna, vice president, Corporate Marketing, Oracle. "The Markies are our way to recognize the people and organizations that push the boundaries of innovation to create outstanding experiences. The results achieved are incredible and Oracle congratulates all of this year's winners." Spanning several categories, the Markie Awards recognize the movers, shakers and experience-makers from across industries. The winners of the 2019 Markie Awards are: The Apex Award for Best Overall Customer Experience: Panasonic Computer Products Europe The Thinker Award for Best Innovation in CX: Best Innovation in Marketing: Snap Tech Best Innovation in Sales: Aon Best Innovation in Service: City of Albuquerque, New Mexico The Insight Award for Best Use of Data: Cisco The Heartstrings People's Choice Award: Health Resources in Action The Upshot Award for Best Demonstrated ROI: Best Demonstrated ROI in Marketing: Bonnier News Best Demonstrated ROI in Sales & Service: Kenya Revenue Authority The Cultivator Award for Best Lead Management Program: Samsung Business The Omni Award for Best Omnichannel Experience: Things Remembered The Borderless Award for Best International Marketing Campaign: Movember Foundation The Pinpoint Award for Best Account-Based Marketing Strategy: Hewlett Packard Enterprise The Convert Award for Best Commerce Experience: Livelo Wednesday, March 20 , during Oracle Modern Customer Experience in Las Vegas . Every year, Modern Customer Experience brings together thousands of leading brands, industry visionaries, product experts and customer experience professionals to discuss the latest trends and best practices in marketing, commerce, sales and service. About Oracle The Oracle Cloud offers a complete suite of integrated applications for Sales, Service, Marketing, Human Resources, Finance, Supply Chain and Manufacturing, plus Highly Automated and Secure Generation 2 Infrastructure featuring the Oracle Autonomous Database. For more information about Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), please visit us at oracle.com. About Modern Customer Experience 2019 Modern Customer Experience arms professionals across commerce, marketing, sales, and service with the tools to deliver legendary customer experiences and exceed in the Experience Economy. For more information, please visit https://www.oracle.com/moderncx/ Trademarks Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oracle-applauds-creators-of-legendary-customer-experiences-300816164.html SOURCE Oracle [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] NOVI, Mich., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Learning Care Group, Inc. announces today that Chief Executive Officer Barbara J. Beck will be retiring at the end of the companys fiscal year, June 30, 2019 and will be retained as an Executive Advisor to the Company until June 30, 2020. Effective July 1, 2019, Mark Bierley, LCGs current President and Chief Operating Officer, will be promoted to the role of Chief Executive Officer. Learning Care Group is the second largest for-profit early education and care provider in North America, operating more than 900 schools in 36 states, the District of Columbia and internationally. Since Beck joined Learning Care Group as CEO in March 2011, the company has transformed the early childhood education experience for families while establishing a platform for its sustained success. Under Becks leadership, the company has become known for its signature offerings, most notably: proprietary curricula, individually customized to each child, to prepare children for academic, physical and social success innovative technologies that enhance safety, enrich learning, and provide convenience and connectivity for busy families an award-winning healthy lifestyle approach that prioritizes wholesome nutrition and physical activity an emphasis on sustainability, teaching children how to nurture the planet while investing in products and technologies to reduce LCGs carbon footprint It has been a true privilege to lead this dedicated team of caring professionals who are so committed to serving our families while preparing their children for success in school and in life, said Barbara Beck. I am incredibly proud of the strong performance LCG has delivered throughout my tenure and remain fully confident in the companys future success under Mark Bierleys leadership. Bierleys career encompasses more than 25 years of executive financial and operations leadership experience. He joined Learning Care Group in 2012 as Chief Financial Officer and most recently served as President and Chief Operating Officer, a role he has held since July 2016. Previously, Bierley served as CFO and Senior Vice President of The Pantry Inc., and held a variety of senior leadership positions at Borders Inc., including Executive Vice President, CFO and COO. Bierley holds a bachelors degree in Accounting from Michigan State University and an MBA from the University of Michigan. He is a certified public accountant. Mark Bierley has been a remarkable partner in driving strategies that deliver on our customer promise and yield outstanding results for our business. Guided by his deep financial and operational acumen as well as his passion for our mission, Im confident the company will achieve continued solid growth and further enhance the LCG experience for our students, school families and employees, said Beck. I joined Learning Care Group because I wanted to be part of a company that makes a meaningful difference in the lives of thousands of children every day and enables these future leaders to achieve their full potential, said Mark Bierley. Today I am more convinced than ever that Learning Care Group does just that, through the shared commitment and dedication of each of our talented employees. Im honored to lead the LCG team in continuing to deliver the highest levels of safety, quality, and service as we further grow our business. Replacing Bierley as Chief Operating Officer is Nicholas Strange, who joins Learning Care Group on April 1, 2019 with nearly 25 years of leadership experience in retail organizations. Previously, he held executive roles at PVH Corporation, most recently serving as Group President of Calvin Klein Americas, a position he held since September 2015. His prior roles at PVH Corp. included serving as President of Calvin Klein North America Retail and Executive Vice President of Tommy Hilfiger North America Retail. Strange began his career with Saks, Inc., where he ultimately held Senior Vice President roles. He also held executive positions at Kohl's, The Limited, Polo Ralph Lauren and Old Navy. Strange holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Human Ecology from the University of Tennessee, with a major concentration in Retail Management and a minor in Business Administration. We welcome Nicholas Strange to the company and look forward to leveraging his operational expertise and sharp perspective to deliver an outstanding customer experience, said Bierley. Joining the senior leadership team at Learning Care Group provides me with a wonderful opportunity to create exceptional customer experiences while educating our youngest learners, said Nicholas Strange. I look forward to leveraging my past experience and my passion for LCGs mission to build strong relationships with families and pave the way for their childrens future success. About Learning Care Group Learning Care Group is a leader in early child education, with more than 50 years of experience in inspiring children to love learning. Headquartered in Novi, Mich., the company provides early education and care for children ages 6 weeks to 12 years through seven unique brands: Childtime Learning Centers, The Childrens Courtyard, Creative Kids Learning Centers, Everbrook Academy, La Petite Academy, Montessori Unlimited, and Tutor Time Child Care/Learning Centers. It operates more than 900 schools (corporate and franchise) across 36 states, the District of Columbia and internationally, and has a capacity to serve more than 130,000 children. Learning Care Groups proprietary School Readiness Pathway supports the development of the academic and social skills needed for a smooth transition to elementary school. For more information, please visit www.learningcaregroup.com [March 21, 2019] Wake County Voters to Cast Ballots on New, ES&S Secure Voting Machines OMAHA, Neb., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Election Systems & Software (ES&S) is honored to announce that Wake County, North Carolina, is extending its partnership with ES&S as its election management vendor of choice. Wake County includes voters in the city of Raleigh as well as 13 other municipalities. More than 710,000 registered voters in Wake County will continue to cast their ballots on ES&S federally-certified voting systems. "We were very excited about our Board's decision to go with the DS200 and the DS850," said Gary Sims, director of the Wake County Board of Elections. "Both machines tested favorably with our officials and voters. We have also had a proven success record of support from ES&S since 2006. We look forward to providing the same level of service and confidence in the elections process to our voters in Wake County." The county made its selection after a comprehensive assessment of their options. Through their assessment, county election officials determined that ES&S provides a voting solution that is easy for both poll workers and election officials to navigate and manage. DS200 This precinct scanner and tabulator includes physical security features to secure sensitive components and election files. The DS200 operating system controls, limits and detects unauthorized access to all critical data, and includes safeguards that help protect sensitive data and verify authenticity. DS850 This high-speed scanner and vote tabulator is the fastest central scanner in the election industry, capable of processing 300 double-sided 14-inch ballots per minute. Equipped with ES&S' patented IMR and PTRAC technology, the DS850 continuously scans and intelligently sorts ballots, ensuring ballots are read accurately and consistently. Wake County continued its partnership with ES&S following a history of quality service and support. ES&S has utilized Printelect as its maintenance and service partner for the existing Wake County tabulation system, implemented in 2005. With Printelect service offices in Raleigh and New Bern, N.C. , the proximity to local, skilled and certified technicians has helped extend the useful life of the existing equipment to more than 12 years. The maintenance and field service capabilities, as well as a comprehensive existing relationship with Wake County personnel, give the Printelect and ES&S partnership a proven formula for success and longevity in Wake County elections. "We are honored to serve and partner with Wake County," said Mac Beeson, ES&S regional vice president of Sales. "We take immense pride in the quality of our products and services and in delivering on our vision of maintaining voter confidence and enhancing the voting experience. We look forward to continuing a successful long-term partnership." ABOUT ES&S: Election Systems & Software's visionary approach to election equipment, software and solutions has helped improve the voting experience throughout North America for nearly 40 years. We are committed to developing integrated voting solutions that improve the marketplace and are flexible enough to meet multiple jurisdictions' needs and voter preferences. Learn more about ES&S at www.essvote.com and on Facebook at facebook.com/essvote. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wake-county-voters-to-cast-ballots-on-new-ess-secure-voting-machines-300816604.html SOURCE Election Systems & Software [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 20, 2019] AHF: Healthy Housing Foundation Buys Skid Row Properties to Build New Affordable Housing The Healthy Housing Foundation powered by AHF (HHF) closed escrow last Friday (March 15th) on the purchase of a commercial property with two retail spaces and adjacent undeveloped lot in downtown Los Angeles on Skid Row. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190320005850/en/ AHF's Healthy Housing Foundation purchased 2 properties in downtown Los Angeles, including 431 East 7th Street and an adjacent vacant lot, with plans to build new, affordable housing to address the homeless and affordable housing crises. The 2 parcels are next to Healthy Housing Foundation's Madison Hotel, a 202-room single room occupancy (SRO) hotel which AHF renovated and repurposed as homeless and extremely low-income housing. (Photo: Business Wire) HHF plans to build new affordable housing units for the homeless and extremely low-income individuals on the parcels, which are adjacent to its Madison Hotel. The Madison is an almost century old 202-room single room occupancy (SRO) hotel (built 1924)-and the first property that the Healthy Housing Foundation purchased, renovated and repurposed as affordable housing as part of it mission to help house the homeless and extremely low-income individuals. The Healthy Housing Foundation also plans to build new as economically as possible and upend the head scratching Los Angeles norm of spending over half a million dollars per unit for 'affordable' housing. As reported in Los Angeles Magazine this month, "The average total cost for a unit of homeless housing in the HHH program - first projected at $350,000 - was more than $502,000 by the latest count, an increase of 43.4 percent."('Will a Measure to Help L.A.'s Homeless Become a Historic Public Housing Debacle?' March 2019). "This is the first time in Los Angeles that Healthy Housing Foundation will build new rather than renovate and repurpose older un- and/or under-occupied SRO hotels and motels," said Michael Weinstein, President of AHF. "Our target is to build this complex, which will have relatively small apartments and micro-units, for roughly $100,000 or less per unit, as compared to the $500,000 cost per 'affordable' unit under Measure HHH. The property we build here will eventually house hundreds, help revitalize a tough area of downtown and become the sixth complex in our affordable housing portfolio in greater Los Angeles." The two Skid Row properties HHF closed on last week include a commercial property located at 431 East 7th St. comprised of a 7,182 square foot lot with 2,894 square foot, two-unit commercial building. One of the spaces is currently leased to a retail market; the other retail space is vacant. The other property purchased is an adjacent undeveloped lot around the corner at 653 San Julian Street, a 3,969 square foot dirt lot. HHF's intentions are to eventually raze the partially occupied commercial building and develop the properties-including the existing and adjacent parking lot of its Madison Hotel into extremely low-income or affordable housing units. Healthy Housing Foundation powered by AHF was created last year to address the rampant affordable housing crisis sweeping the nation by providing fast, easy and compassionate access to affordable housing with a focus on addressing the needs of low-income individuals, struggling families and youth, with priority housing placement offered to those with chronic health conditions. Properties repurposed to Healthy Housing Foundation's mission include: the Madison Hotel1, in Downtown L.A., purchased in October 2017, followed quickly by the January 2018 purchase of the former Sunset 8 Motel, a 27-room motel2 in the heart of Hollywood now known as the Sunrise on Sunset. The purchases and repurposing of the King Edward Hotel and the Baltimore Hotel, both in downtown L.A., followed later in 2018 (April and August, respectively). And in February 2019, Healthy Housing Foundation cut the ribbon on Casa del Corazon, a 37-room motel on Whittier Boulevard in East L.A. - the Foundation's first housing venture on the Eastside-that it is repurposing as affordable housing. In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, HHF is under way with plans for a newly-built, state-of-the-art affordable housing complex that will include micro-units. "We're deploying several different approaches to address the housing crisis - new construction, micro-units, renovation of existing structures - we're looking at all possibilities," added Weinstein. "Bottom line: we need innovative, workable solutions that are economical and fast. Communities can't wait any longer; the situation is simply too dire." AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over one million individuals in 43 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook (News - Alert): www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us @aidshealthcare. 1 The purchase price for the Madison Hotel was $7,575,000, (the parking lot was $450K - total $8,025,000.00 less a repair credit of $25K and a donation of $50K to AHF - net price $7,950,000) or approximately $36K per room or unit. 2 The purchase price for the 27-room Sunset 8 Motel was $4.6 million, or $170,370 per room or unit. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190320005850/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 20, 2019] Tencent Helps Game Developers Level Up for Worldwide Success SAN FRANCISCO, March 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In an appearance at this year's Game Developers Conference, Tencent Senior Vice President Steven Ma highlighted the company's commitment to helping developers create the next generation of quality games, which will be shaped by innovative gameplay, advanced online systems and a deep understanding of what gamers want and how they play. Beginning from a late start in China's online game industry, Tencent has rapidly accumulated tremendous development, publishing and operational expertise to become one of the largest game companies in the world. According to AppAnnie, more than 200 million gamers outside China enjoy high quality interactive, immersive and instantaneous experiences every month from Tencent and its partners across a wide variety of genres and platforms. Today, Tencent and its partners offer 140 games in more than 200 countries. "Making games is a complex and risky art. We have tremendous admiration and respect for innovative game developers who drive the industry forward and deliver memorable emotional experiences to gamers," said Ma. "Tencent's role is to help game developers advance the art so they can succeed around the world. Our expertise, insights and tools liberate developers to create game experiences faster, with higher quality and lower risk." Game developers today face three key challenges. One, development cycles are shorter than ever, while gamers have higher expectations for quality and experience. Two, operating a successful game requires heavy investment and continuous management. Three, global games require on-demand access around the world, frequent updates, world-class security and a rich understanding of community behavior and dynamics. Tencent is dedicating significant resources and knowledge to helping game developers meet these challenges, so they can spend less time solving technical problems and moe time doing what they do best: creating games. The company's robust set of technologies and solutions help game developers reach broader, more diverse global audiences, get deeper insight into those audiences, create new business models and better manage and monetize games. Tencent pioneered the concept of gaming as a service, providing players with free services and charging for value-added services within games. This innovation made gaming accessible to people worldwide, creating global hits like Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile. It also established mobile gaming as a mainstream phenomenon. Innovation Drives Quality--And Quality Drives Worldwide Success Tencent believes that sustainable industry growth requires the development of quality games. According to Ma, the company's investments, advanced insights and partner-focused approach to R&D allow game developers to drive quality by testing, exploring and developing innovative game genres, gameplay experiences and game services. Tencent offers game developers an advanced, end-to-end platform for development, publishing, operations, distribution, social networking and eSports. It collaborates with the world's best game developers to explore new game concepts and new frontiers for development and supports independent developers through innovative programs like the Tencent Game Innovation Fund and Game Without Borders. "We have a global, long-term view of the industry," said Ben Feder, President International Partnerships for North America. at Tencent. "That's why we're working with the best developers in the world, including Netmarble in South Korea, Garena in Singapore, Supercell in Finland and Epic Games and Riot in the United States, to dream big and deliver experiences that surprise and delight gamers." A Next-Generation Platform for High Quality Games Tencent technologies and solutions can help game developers with everything from R&D to operations and publishing--making it faster and easier to create and successfully operate games. Game developers benefit from rich insights based on big-data analysis and user-behavior research as well as tools to help test, optimize and improve games. "What we've learned is that gamers around the world are very similar. They want to play quality games and they want to share that experience with others," said Ma. "At the same time, gamers live in different cultures and play games in different environments. That's why we've created an open platform that allows developers to bring more high-quality games to more people around the world." Tencent also works with game developers to ensure a healthy, positive gaming experience, offering anti-cheating, anti-piracy and security solutions to ensure fairness and safety, including the ability to set time limits on daily play, and solutions to detect unauthorized or underage users. ABOUT TENCENT Tencent uses technology to enrich the lives of Internet users. Our social products Weixin and QQ link our users to a rich digital content catalogue including games, video, music and books. Our proprietary targeting technology helps advertisers reach out to hundreds of millions of consumers in China. Our infrastructure services including payment, security, cloud and artificial intelligence create differentiated offerings and support our partners' business growth. Tencent invests heavily in people and innovation, enabling us to evolve with the Internet. Tencent was founded in Shenzhen, China, in 1998. Shares of Tencent (00700.HK) are traded on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tencent-helps-game-developers-level-up-for-worldwide-success-300816126.html SOURCE Tencent [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 20, 2019] Dassault Systemes and IPACS Sign MoU to Create Industrial IoT Demonstrator for Key Industries in Australia Dassault Syst e mes and IPACS have identified each other as partners for technical and business collaboration in key industries in Australia , namely natural resources, defence, marine and offshore, cities and territories. The industrial Internet of Things (IoT) demonstrator will leverage IPACS' sensing technologies and Dassault Syst e mes' 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The collaboration further extends Dassault Syst e mes' successful partnerships with local companies in Australia for industry capability development and expansion. ADELAIDE, Australia, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Dassault Systemes and IPACS, an Australian technology company specializing in the collection, monitoring and reporting of real-time asset performance in various industries, signed a Memorandum of Understanding ("MoU") to jointly pursue technical and business opportunities in key industries in Australia, namely natural resources, defence, marine and offshore, cities and territories. Dassault Systemes and IPACS went through a value assessment during a pre-qualification phase for the South Australian Government's marine and defence industry supply chain program, the "Virtual Shipyard", to develop a strong domestic defence industry that will support the Federal Government'sFuture Submarines and Future Frigates programs set to commence in 2020. In the course of the assessment, Dassault Systemes and IPACS identified each other as partners with strong and desired skills for technical and business collaboration as they explore opportunities in natural resources, defence and other key industries in Australia. Under the terms of the agreement, Dassault Systemes will collaborate with IPACS to create a first-of-a-kind industrial demonstrator in Internet of Things ("IoT") for joint exploration of these business opportunities, which will leverage IPACS' IoT sensing technology and Dassault Systemes' software solutions on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. "IPACS currently operates South Australia's pioneering Remote Operation Centre for the state's resources industry," said Kailash Nath Sriram, Managing Director and CEO of IPACS. "This new industrial IoT demonstrator will be a fantastic platform for IPACS in expanding our expertise to service other major industries. We look forward to working with Dassault Systemes to explore new opportunities in natural resources, defence and other key industries in the state." The collaboration also further extends Dassault Systemes' ongoing successful partnerships with local companies in Australia for industry capability development and expansion, notably the "Virtual Shipyard" program in South Australia to help the state's enterprises build their digitalization capabilities for future defence projects and global supply chains. Said Masaki Sox Konno, Managing Director, Asia Pacific South, Dassault Systemes. "As a technology partner to IPACS, already an established player in South Australia's resources sector, Dassault Systemes brings its global expertise and best practices in industrial processes and digitalization solutions to the collaboration. We look forward to working together with IPACS to jointly expand our technological capabilities to serve the natural resources sector, defence and our other key industries in Australia." Social media: Share this on Twitter: Dassault Systemes is a proud sponsor of GMG Forum in Adelaide hosted by @GMGorg with @UniofAdelaide IMER and @Austmine, where we signed an MoU with IPACS to create an industrial #IoT demonstrator for key industries in Australia. #3DEXPERIENCE Connect with Dassault Systemes on 3DS ANZ Twitter Facebook LinkedIn YouTube For more information: Dassault Systemes' 3DEXPERIENCE platform, 3D design software, 3D Digital Mock Up and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions: http://www.3ds.com About Dassault Systemes Dassault Systemes, the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, provides business and people with virtual universes to imagine sustainable innovations. Its world-leading solutions transform the way products are designed, produced, and supported. Dassault Systemes' collaborative solutions foster social innovation, expanding possibilities for the virtual world to improve the real world. The group brings value to over 250,000 customers of all sizes, in all industries, in more than 140 countries. For more information, visit www.3ds.com. 3DEXPERIENCE, the Compass logo and the 3DS logo, CATIA, SOLIDWORKS, ENOVIA, DELMIA, SIMULIA, GEOVIA, EXALEAD, 3D VIA, BIOVIA, NETVIBES and 3DEXCITE are registered trademarks of Dassault Systemes or its subsidiaries in the US and/or other countries. About IPACS IPACS are leaders in Australia in the collection, monitoring and reporting of real-time asset performance in industries including mining and resources, defence, energy and manufacturing. IPACS provides secure, reliable and low-cost collection and transmission of remote sensor data - across any enterprise and from anywhere in the world. IPACS' suite of technologies - which include IT infrastructure management, asset data management, analytics and dashboards - provide real-time feedback on the performance of critical assets, wherever they are located. For more information, visit http://ipacs.net.au/. Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20190321/2407439-1 Logo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20181026/2280776-1LOGO Logo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20190320/2407439-1LOGO SOURCE Dassault Systemes [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 20, 2019] 2019 Chain Plus Asia Pacific Blockchain New Finance Summit (Singapore) Set to Educate Visitors on Blockchain Finance SHANGHAI, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- 2019 Chain Plus Asia Pacific Blockchain New Finance Summit (Singapore), one of the most influential blockchain summits organized by The Blockchainer, is about to be held from April 11-12th 2019 at Mandarin Oriental Singapore, with the prediction of 500 participants, 30+ traditional financial institutions, 80+ quality projects, 50+ investment institutions, and 50+ digital currency exchanges from worldwide. The conference not only received positive responses from global top investment institutions, exchanges, world-famous blockchain media, industry leaders, and high-quality blockchain companies, but was also strongly supported by traditional financial giants. This is really surprising that these traditional banks which once ignored blockchain are now turning to this industry. Like Vitalik Buterin pointed out: "Finance is actually most likely the first area where blockchain will be widely used." In fact, not only Buterin but also many traditional giants have entered the blockchain financial industry. As mentioned above, traditional financial giants have been eyeing the big cake of blockchain new finance, and the guests who will give a speech at Chain Plus this time include: Karan Seth , vice-president of global payments product strategy at JP Morgan, one of the largest US financial services firms; , vice-president of global payments product strategy at JP Morgan, one of the largest US financial services firms; Piotr Jan Pietrzak , chief innovation officer at ING, the world's 11 th largest asset manager; , chief innovation officer at ING, the world's 11 largest asset manager; Zhukuang Lee, head of product innovation at standard chartered bank, "World top 500 brands 2018" ranked no. 250. Kelvin Tan , head of capital marketinnovation & technology operations department of DBS bank, the largest commercial bank in Singapore ; , head of capital marketinnovation & technology operations department of DBS bank, the largest commercial bank in ; Andrew Pudovikov, software development engineer at the blockchain laboratory of sberbank, Russia's largest state-owned commercial bank These big banks will share their ideas on what blockchain has to offer the financial industry and what changes they will want to make to lead a brand new future. Like any conference, besides these unprecedentedly luxurious banks, cryptocurrency exchanges are also attending . And this time, the stage in Chain Plus is for Southeast Asia exchanges; Satang Corporation, Bibox, Bitfinex, Securitize, Remitano, Vietnam's bitcoin exchange, and Indodax will all present. No market can survive without the support of capital, and investment never misses out on an opportunity. Chain Plus has attracted more than 30 top investment institutions in the industry, including HashKey capital, Node Capital, J One Capital, huobi global, Sora Ventures, NGC, JLAB, OK Blockchain Capital , JRR Crypto, True Global Ventures, and Taipan Investment. Although the blockchain is decentralized, government supervision and guidance are essential. Financial Science and Technology Association of Sri Lanka, Fintech Association of Singapore, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, and the former monetary authority of Singapore will also be in attendance. During the conference, participants and audience members will have the opportunity to converse with industry experts from global companies, such as R3, Stellar, Onchain Custodian, Bitkan, TontineTrust, Maecenas, NEO, Ontology, Swarm Fund, Goldlinks, and InvestaCrowd. They will also learn from conglomerates who did excellent business with blockchain technology like Onchain Custodian, a global standard third-party digital asset Custodian platform committed to cooperating with customers and partners to establish digital asset Custodian; Goldlinks, a global gold industry blockchain alliance; Bit-z, one of the world's famous blockchain asset trading platforms; ontrade, famous digital assets trading platform; UniDAX, a global digital asset trading system; Global public chain system HTDF; Distributed Earth, a blockchain project established by Singapore DBE foundation; Elastos, the world's first Internet operating system; and Lbank, the world's leading digital asset trading platform. The conference covers almost the entire ecology of blockchain. Global leaders from around the world will attend to discuss and present various topics about the blockchain industry, cryptocurrency, decentralized networks, economics, finance, and more. Attendees will gain a wealth of insights and information about the state of the blockchain industry through discussion and networking parties. If interested individuals want to delve into the new blockchain finance, this summit cannot be missed. For more info, please check: http://chainplus-finance.com/ For media enquiries: Rae Mao PR Manager Mobile: +86 15821816854 Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/rae-mao Telegram:@Raemao Email: [email protected]/ [email protected] Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20190320/2408852-1 SOURCE The Blockchainer [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Project BankNorth Selects nCino to Provide Leading-edge Digital Banking Platform to Drive Exceptional Customer Experience in SME Lending UK challenger to utilise nCino's cloud-based Bank Operating System to develop seamless and effective processes for its SME lending business LONDON, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- nCino, the worldwide leader in cloud banking, today announced a relationship with newly launched, UK-based start-up, Project BankNorth, to set a new standard of excellence in the way SME funding is delivered. In an increasingly competitive SME market, the Project BankNorth team recognises the demand for offering an unmatched customer experience that effectively, proactively and flexibly serves the unique borrowing needs of business owners and entrepreneurs. Through a combination of BankNorth's strategic approach and nCino's innovative technology, the collaboration will deliver the speed, convenience and digital experience that today's consumers have come to expect, while also providing the BankNorth team with real-time, 360-degree access and insight into the entire customer journey to better serve individual needs. "Delivering an agile, digital and personalised customer experience is at the heart of our strategy at Project BankNorth," said Jonathan Thompson, Founder and CEO. "It's critical we provide a smooth and innovative interface for our customers and introducers in order to deliver a fantastic customer experience. Working with nCino early on in our development allows us to tailor our whole business around delivering an engaging and differentiated customer experience, and I am confident nCino will be the perfect partner for our success in gettin these elements right." Ewan Hutton, CTO at Project BankNorth adds: "The choice of nCino for our Commercial Loan Origination system is perfectly aligned to our technology roadmap as nCino has set a new 'bar' for vendor solutions in this space both in terms of product and client engagement. We will operate almost entirely using Cloud/SaaS technology and will leverage the Salesforce platform as the foundation for the bank which will enable best of breed integration with complementary tech plus rapid innovation from the Salesforce APP exchange partners." nCino's Bank Operating System will empower BankNorth employees and leaders with a cloud based platform that provides true insight into the bank through an end-to-end solution that combines customer relationship management (CRM), customer onboarding, deposit account opening, loan origination, workflow, credit analysis, enterprise content management and instant reporting capabilities. In addition, the system will help drive revenue and enable data analytics that will strengthen the broker journey to compress the time to cash and deliver at a pace to give a true competitive advantage. Project BankNorth is targeting to launch in 2020 and is the creation of six founders all hailing from the finance industry with combined experience from Atom Bank, Santander, RBS, First Direct, International Personal Finance and Metro Bank. With nearly 6 million SMEs in the UK, the BankNorth team understands customers' expectations and the importance of removing friction in the way SME finance is delivered. For more information, please see: https://info.growthfunders.com/banknorth Pullen Daniel, Managing Director International at nCino, said: "The BankNorth team is extremely experienced and well-regarded, and were able to identify a gap in the SME market upon which to build their unique offering. As an up-and-coming challenger, we're delighted to be working with them at such a pivotal stage in their launch to help shape their processes and raise the bar for convenient and flexible delivery of personally-tailored services to SME owners." About Project BankNorth Project BankNorth is a start-up challenger that is being developed to serve the UK SME lending market. The team is taking its deep insight into the market for lending to UK SMEs and using this to place the customer right at the heart of its business model. The result will be flexible, fast-paced and borrower-friendly. About nCino nCino is the worldwide leader in cloud banking. With its Bank Operating System, built on the Salesforce Platform, financial institutions can deliver the speed and digital experience that customers expect, backed by the quality and transparency that bankers need. Follow @nCino or visit www.ncino.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] SMS Assist Hires Graham Blackwell as Chief Strategy and Revenue Officer SMS Assist announced today the hiring of Graham Blackwell as chief strategy and revenue officer. A deeply experienced operating executive, Blackwell will lead SMS Assist's strategy, pricing, marketing, and sales organizations and help the company continue to innovate and evolve its strategy as it rapidly grows. Blackwell, most recently an executive vice president with Bain Capital's North American Private Equity Team, has spent nearly two decades building businesses through the sharpening of strategy and execution. His experiences have been particularly focused on technology, retail, and the business services industries. "SMS Assist has grown into the company we are today because of our novel technology, smart strategy, and a relentless dedication to service," said Taylor Rhodes, CEO of SMS Assist. "Graham will make all those qualities even stronger, allowing us to accelerate our next phase of growth." With numerous rankings on the Forbes Cloud 100, SMS Assist has been one of Chicago's fastest-growing techology companies for years. The company enhances how customers experience some of the nation's biggest brands, streamlining facilities management services with a technology platform that offers real-time quality assurance and transparency across more than 186,000 service locations. "SMS Assist's use of technology and scale to drive value in an overly complicated and costly industry represents the exact approach necessary to deliver results in today's competitive market," Blackwell said. "I look forward to working with the entire SMS Assist leadership team, our customers, and our nationwide network of affiliates to take our offerings to the next level." While with Bain Capital, Blackwell worked closely with the boards, management teams, and broader organizations of portfolio companies to define and execute enterprise-wide strategic transformation. His efforts resulted in accelerating revenue growth and strong investor returns across wide-ranging businesses. Recent companies where he spent considerable time include Blue Nile, an e-commerce jewelry retailer, and BMC Software, a global software provider. Before then, he was an associate partner with McKinsey & Company (News - Alert), specializing in retail, and a consultant with Accenture. Blackwell's hiring represents the further strengthening of SMS Assist's executive ranks. Earlier this year, long-time SMS Assist leader Marc Shiffman was promoted to president. The company also opened a second Chicago-area office in Naperville last fall. Blackwell holds a bachelor's degree in finance from Ohio University and earned an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. About SMS Assist SMS Assist is on a mission to deliver a better experience in the facilities management industry. We're doing this by delivering optimum levels of quality, timeliness, and cost to more than 186,000 properties across retail chains, restaurant chains, banks, residential communities, and more. The industry knows us for our proprietary cloud technology, easy access to more than 20,000 vetted service providers, and a customer service organization available 24/7/365. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005115/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Martin Energy Group Closes Strategic Capital Partnership With Orion Energy Partners to Fund Distributed Generation Infrastructure Martin Energy Group ("Martin Energy" or the "Company") has announced a strategic capital partnership with Orion Energy Partners, L.P. (together with its affiliated funds, "Orion Energy") to accelerate the growth of its distributed generation platform focused on owning combined heat and power ("CHP") assets that provide more efficient and reliable onsite power and thermal energy to commercial and industrial customers across North America and the Caribbean. The senior secured credit facility from Orion Energy will provide Martin Energy with capital to fund Martin Energy's "CHP as a Service" platform. The first project, which consists of the construction and operation of a CHP facility in Puerto Rico, is backed by a long-term offtake agreement with Coca Cola Puerto Rico Bottlers. Headquartered in Tipton, Missouri, Martin Energy is a developer, owner, operator and supplier of distributed generation assets and products in North America that has been building and operating distributed generation facilities since 1976. Orion Energy provides creative capital solutions to middle market energy infrastructure businesses across North America and select international markets. "Our partnership with Orion Energy will provide Martin Energy with a strategic and financial partner who can support the ongoing expansion of our business in core target markets," said Marcus Martin, Martin Energy's CEO. "This capital will allow Martin Energy to support additional enterprises with customers who are seeking to optimize their energy needs with a more reliable, high quality, efficient and environmentally friendly source for thermal energy and power." "We are very pleased to start working ith Martin Energy towards bringing alternatives for effective power solutions into our island," explained Julio Bravo, Vice President of Coca Cola Puerto Rico Bottlers. "Martin Energy's new CHP facility will allow us to improve our day-to-day operations, business continuity and efficiency." "Martin Energy's first CHP as a Service project in Puerto Rico will both improve energy resiliency and eliminate the impacts of any grid-related issues, resulting in daily operational reliability to Coca Cola Puerto Rico Bottlers," said Gerrit Nicholas, Managing Partner of Orion Energy. "We look forward to supporting Martin Energy as it capitalizes on the fast-growing needs for more efficient distributed generation infrastructure in North America." Capstone (News - Alert) Headwaters LLC acted as exclusive placement agent to Martin Energy in connection with the term loan from Orion Energy and Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale, P.C and Reichard & Escalera LLC acted as legal counsel to Martin Energy. Latham & Watkins LLP and McConnell & Valdes acted as legal counsel to Orion Energy. About Martin Energy Group Martin Energy Group, LLC develops, owns, operates and provides distributed generation assets and systems in North America since 1976. The Company designs, engineers and packages electric generators, co-generation systems and associated equipment and operates and maintains a complete range of power generator solutions. The Company also sells electricity and thermal energy to a range of commercial and industrial customers such as manufacturing facilities, hospitals, hotels, food processing, supermarkets, and others via long-term offtake agreements at zero capital cost to the customer. The Company is based in North America with branches across the globe. For more information, please visit www.martinenergygroup.com About Orion Energy Partners Orion Energy is a credit-oriented private equity firm with over US$ 1 billion of investable capital. Orion Energy is focused on providing creative capital solutions to middle market energy infrastructure businesses across North America and select international markets with a focus on downstream, midstream, conventional electric power, renewable energy and storage, asset-heavy energy services and other energy subsectors. Its management has substantial experience leading successful energy companies and energy infrastructure investments. For more information, visit www.OrionEnergyPartners.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005190/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Resumes, Robots & Racism: The Truth about AI in Hiring SALT LAKE CITY, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- WHAT: A virtual roundtable and Q&A, sponsored by Utah based HireVue, to discuss the implications and learnings around the application of AI in hiring. The session features leading external experts in algorithmic bias and data science to share the perspectives on how AI is and will continue to impact hiring. As the industry's most comprehensive AI-driven candidate assessment and interviewing platform, HireVue experts will also share the methodology and experience behind their Assessments platform. Roundtable panelists include: Dr. Suresh Venkatasubramanian - Member of the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Utah , Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Utah , and founding member of the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability nd Transparency. - Member of the Board of Directors of the ACLU of , Professor in the School of Computer Science at the , and founding member of the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability nd Transparency. Ben Taylor - Chief AI Officer and co-founder at Ziff.ai with over 14 years of machine learning experience, known for his research on bias and for pushing the boundaries of what is possible with deep learning. Chief AI Officer and co-founder at Ziff.ai with over 14 years of machine learning experience, known for his research on bias and for pushing the boundaries of what is possible with deep learning. Loren Larsen - As Chief Technology Officer at HireVue, Loren is responsible for guiding HireVue's product direction through the product management, user experience, and engineering teams. Larsen is an award-winning technology veteran with more than 20 years of engineering and research experience. As Chief Technology Officer at HireVue, Loren is responsible for guiding HireVue's product direction through the product management, user experience, and engineering teams. Larsen is an award-winning technology veteran with more than 20 years of engineering and research experience. Dr. Nathan Mondragon Serving as HireVue's Chief Industrial Organizational Psychologist, Dr. Mondragon brings more than 20 years' experience of blending talent management and technology solutions. He is recognized as one of the pioneers in creating web-based assessment tools for professional hiring at leading organizations including Oracle, Dell and Taleo. In addition, he was the lead IO on a team that delivered the first ever integrated online selection assessment in 1996. WHERE: Online - Details to be shared once RSVP is received WHEN: Wednesday, March 27, 2019 11am -12 NOON Pacific / 2-3 PM Eastern WHY: AI has significant potential to improve hiring for both companies and candidates -- if done properly. As the AI landscape evolves quickly and companies from Amazon to Google to many others scramble to harness the positive benefits, it is important to understand the collaboration between data sources, machine learning, IO and the validation process. RSVP: [email protected] (spaces are limited) View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/resumes-robots--racism-the-truth-about-ai-in-hiring-300816044.html SOURCE HireVue [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] AWIP Expands National Network, Opens Boston Chapter to Promote Diversity in Tech Advancing Women in Product (AWIP), the organization empowering high-potential female product and tech leaders through equality of opportunity, is announcing the launch of a new chapter in Boston. The chapter will work to empower more women and other underrepresented groups into product and technology leadership roles through career development workshops and networking opportunities. "AWIP is excited to launch a network in Boston, a hub of innovation that boasts a vast network of world-class universities and a large technology workforce," said Nancy Wang, CEO and co-founder of AWIP. "Establishing a strong presence in a thriving tech-centric city enables AWIP to get in on the ground floor and promote diversity among swiftly growing companies." AWIP was founded in 2017 to address the widening diversity gap in tech management roles and has quickly grown to more than 7,000 members worldwide. The AWIP Boston Chapter, led by Bindu Tuli, Boston chapter lead and director product management at Dell (News - Alert) EMC Corporation, will focus on providing skill-based training, networking opportunities and executive mentorship through an ambassador program. AWIP Boston will also host multiple events featuring local, prominent tech leaders sharing their personal career journeys to foster and develop the chapter community. "My main goal is to provide our members with access to valuable workshops, training sessions and mentoring programs to encourage and enable women to advance in their field and grow into leadership roles," said Tuli. "We want to build a strong community that shapes the continuously growing technology industry in the Greater Boston area." To launch the Boston chapter, AWIP will host a panel discussion "Amplifying Your Voice as a Woman in Tech," followed by a Q&A session. For the panel, AWIP has invited female executives with diverse backgrounds to provide insight into their careers, as well as offer advice on how to break barriers in tech and advocate for oneself in the workplace. "Gender diversity in technology and product leadership is an important business need. We're happy to support Advancing Women in Product in their mission to close the gender gap in technology leadership positions," said Fidelma Russo, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Iron Mountain. WHAT: AWIP to host inaugural chapter meeting and panel discussion "Amplifying Your Voice as a Woman in Tech" WHO: Panel moderated by Shirley Leung, Interim Editorial Page Editor, Boston Globe Panelists include: Fidelma Russo, EVP & CTO, Iron Mountain Asa Kalavade, General Manager, Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) Vanessa Ferranto, Head of the Product, The Grommet Monica Brady-Myerov, Founder & CEO, Listenwise WHEN: March 21, 2019, 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. EDT WHERE: Iron Mountain Incorporated One Federal St. Boston, MA 02110 For ticketing information to attend the event, please visit here. About AWIP Co-founded by two Google (News - Alert) and Amazon PMs, Advancing Women in Product (AWIP) empowers tech leaders through equality of opportunity in career advancement for both men and women. AWIP believes in the power of equal opportunity to propel the technology industry forward. To learn more and to join AWIP, visit www.advancingwomeninproduct.org, @theAWIP on Twitter (News - Alert), and @AdvancingWomenInProduct on Facebook (News - Alert). View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005012/en/ MOSCOW, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mechel PAO (MOEX: MTLR, NYSE: MTL), one of the leading Russian mining and metals companies, announces 2018 operational results. Mechel PAOs Chief Executive Officer Oleg Korzhov commented on the 2018 operational results: Global coking and thermal coal prices remained at a fairly high level in this accounting period. This trend was due to two key factors a stable demand for steel and so for steel commodities in Asia Pacific as well as occasional problems with supply from exporter countries due to infrastructure limitations. Experts expect that global coal trade turnout will go up 10% in the nearest 8-10 years. India, China and several other Asia Pacific states will continue to be this markets key drivers. In response to circumstances caused by an overall shortage of gondola railcars and thus stock accumulation, as well as the necessity of conducting stripping works at an accelerated rate to catch up with the lag of the past few years, operations at our mining facilities in the second half of 2018 and early 2019 were planned as to yield best results in mid-term perspective. In this accounting period our stripping volumes greatly exceeded 2017 results as mining and sales somewhat declined. At the same time we took advantage of a favorable market situation and redirected our coal sales to more profitable markets. For example, in 4Q2018 we diverted our coking coal concentrate in favor of more marginal consumers Japan and South Korea, increasing our quarter-on-quarter sales to each country by 15%. We also redirected our thermal coal exports to Vietnam, South Korea, India and Thailand. Our sales to Vietnam in particular went up by record 400%. In 4Q2018 we also increased anthracite sales to France by 84% and Germany by 110%. By early 2019, the railcar situation stabilized, which enabled us to start decreasing our accumulated coal product stocks. Our technical upgrade program continues which helps revamp our mining fleet and replace aged mining machines, to ensure efficient operations at our mining assets. Elga Coal Complex has demonstrated significant growth on all key counts. We brought mining volumes up to 4.9 million tonnes (+19% as compared to 2017). Sales volumes amounted to 3.2 million tonnes, which is a 14-percent increase. At Korshunov Mining Plant which faced a shortage of rolling stock and the need for a major increase in stripping, we decided on a path similar to those of our other mining assets of redirecting resources in favor of boosting stripping works. Our production and sales of finished products reflected this as iron ore concentrate sales went down by 21%. The plant also reduced sales to Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant, which had less need of iron ore due to equipment repairs. The steel division also demonstrated a minor decline in last years operational results due to major repairs conducted at Chelyabinsk Metallurgical Plant and Izhstal. This year the repair program will continue, but is not likely to have a negative impact on our production and sales results. With our steel production reduced, we focused on more marketable products. For example, in the second half of 2018 we more than quintupled stainless steel output as compared to the first half of the year. We see ample opportunities for import substitution in this segment and plan to continue restoring our position in the stainless steel market. We also focused our efforts on producing and selling sections which are currently more profitable than rails. In 2018 our universal rolling mill mastered output of 17 new profiles which brings the total of those mastered since 2013 to nearly 70. Worthy of note is that most of these profiles are new for Russia and enable us to successfully substitute imports. In 2019 we plan to master production of 10-11 profiles more. Stable demand for railroad axles creates a good basis for increasing supplies of components for rolling stock production and repairs. In 2018 Urals Stampings Plant boosted stampings sales to wagonbuilders by half. The minor decline in hardware sales (-5%) was mostly due to a decrease in sales of third-party products. In 2018, Beloretsk Metallurgical Plant completed the investment project launching production of import-substituting multi-strand polymer-coated wire ropes, which will enable the plant to expand its position on the domestic hardware market. Polymer-coated ropes are due to replace their imported counterparts for Russias mining and oil industries as well as bridge construction and shipbuilding. Last years situation in the ferrosilicon market was characterized by good prices and stable high demand. Bratsk Ferroalloys Plant was working at nearly its full capacity, which also led to an 11-percent increase in its overall sales volumes. The increase was noted in both domestic sales and exports. Electricity generation by our power facilities went down by 5% in 2018 due to repairs at South Kuzbass Power Plant. The three-percent increase in heat output was due to a colder winter and an extended heating period. Production and sales for 2018 Production: Product Name 2018, thousand tonnes 2017, thousand tonnes % 4Q2018, thousand tonnes 3Q2018, thousand tonnes % Run-of-Mine Coal 18,813 20,638 -9 4,341 4,781 -9 Pig Iron 3,600 4,029 -8 872 889 -2 Steel 3,881 4,274 -9 905 925 -2 Electric power generation (thousand kWh) 3,250,599 3,427,430 -5 882,525 625,884 +41 Heat power generation (Gcal) 5,741,320 5,581,204 +3 1,799,234 665,938 +170 Sales: Product Name 2018, thousand tonnes 2017, thousand tonnes % 4Q2018, thousand tonnes 3Q2018, thousand tonnes % Coking coal concentrate 7,149 7,942 -10 1,747 1,881 -7 Including coking coal concentrate supplied to third parties 4,258 4,797 -11 990 1,207 -18 PCI 1,237 1,465 -16 245 312 -22 PCI supplied to third parties 1,237 1,465 -16 245 312 -22 Anthracites 1,169 1,613 -28 291 230 +26 Including anthracites supplied to third parties 968 1,400 -31 244 183 +33 Thermal coal 5,290 6,141 -14 971 1,298 -25 Including thermal coal supplied to third parties 4,538 5,404 -16 819 1,144 -28 Iron ore concentrate 1,972 2,510 -21 574 551 +4 Including iron ore concentrate supplied to third parties 140 30 +362 98 24 +301 Coke 2,440 2,686 -9 609 616 -1 Including coke supplied to third parties 697 771 -10 195 196 -1 Ferrosilicon 74 67 +11 20 17 +18 Long rolls 2,731 2,919 -6 621 699 -11 Flat rolls 481 581 -17 91 119 -24 Hardware 622 651 -5 143 165 -13 Forgings 44 45 -3 11 11 +6 Stampings 143 96 +48 33 38 -13 Key investment projects progress Universal rolling mill: 2018, thousand tonnes 2017, thousand tonnes % 4Q2018, thousand tonnes 3Q2018, thousand tonnes % Sales of rails 244 357 -32 61 90 -32 Sales of sections 282 268 +5 71 69 +3 Elga coal complex: 2018, thousand tonnes 2017, thousand tonnes % 4Q2018, thousand tonnes 3Q2018, thousand tonnes % Run-of-mine coal 4,923 4,154 +19 1,024 1,359 -25 Mechel PAO Ekaterina Videman Tel: + 7 495 221 88 88 ekaterina.videman@mechel.com Mechel is an international mining and steel company. Its products are marketed in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa. Mechel unites producers of coal, iron ore concentrate, steel, rolled products, ferroalloys, heat and electric power. All of its enterprises work in a single production chain, from raw materials to high value-added products. Some of the information in this press release may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of Mechel, as defined in the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We wish to caution you that these statements are only predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. We do not intend to update these statements. We refer you to the documents Mechel files from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 20-F. These documents contain and identify important factors, including those contained in the section captioned Risk Factors and Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements in our Form 20-F, that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements, including, among others, the achievement of anticipated levels of profitability, growth, cost and synergy of our recent acquisitions, the impact of competitive pricing, the ability to obtain necessary regulatory approvals and licenses, the impact of developments in the Russian economic, political and legal environment, volatility in stock markets or in the price of our shares or ADRs, financial risk management and the impact of general business and global economic conditions. [March 21, 2019] Chief Marketers Identify Strategic Areas Of Focus For 2019 SAN JOSE, Calif., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- A global audit of chief marketers indicates a resolute intention to being active advocates and agents for marketing technology migration, digital skills development, and more effective go-to-market processes in 2019. The CMO Council Outlook + Intention Audit gathered insights early in the year from more than 100 Advisory Board Members across seven regions, including North America, Europe, APAC, MENA, India, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. The global knowledge transfer and peer mentoring group includes 15,000 chief marketers in 110 countries controlling nearly $1 trillion in annual, aggregated marketing spend. View findings at: https://cmocouncil.org/thought-leadership/infographics/cmo-council-2019-outlook-and-intentions Key insights and input from strategic conversations with 100 marketingleaders reveal serious commitments to: Upgrading digital and go-to-market capabilities -- improving proficiency, process and technology to gain both revenue and customer relationship growth Overcoming obstacles to marketing technology deployment -- expediting digital transformation by addressing internal skills, competencies and change readiness, as well as data cleanliness and quality Finding smarter ways to more effectively align and collaborate across C-suite by delivering richer, deeper customer insight and market intelligence Developing marketing team acumen and know to overcome digital deficiencies and improve talent performance More detailed findings are represented in a research infographic, which can be downloaded here from the CMO Council web site. Profiles of CMO Council advisory board members can be viewed from this link: https://cmocouncil.org/advisory-board About the CMO Council The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is the only global network of executives specifically dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide range of global industries. The CMO Council's 15,000-plus members control approximately $500 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include more than 65,000 global executives in more than 110 countries covering multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, India and Africa. The council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Brand Inspiration Center, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, Digital Marketing Performance Center, and the GeoBranding Center. More information on the CMO Council is available at www.cmocouncil.org. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/chief-marketers-identify-strategic-areas-of-focus-for-2019-300816212.html SOURCE CMO Council [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] UCLA Health Cyber Attack Class Action Settlement LOS ANGELES, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Class-action litigation arising from a cyber attack announced in July 2015 by UCLA Health has been settled by mutual agreement of the plaintiffs and The Regents of the University of California. On February 21, 2019, the judge overseeing the case granted preliminary approval of the proposed settlement, which provides long-term protection for the current and former patients whose personal information was in the attacked computer network. Under the proposed settlement, UCLA Health admits no wrongdoing. It maintains that it was not liable for the cyber attack and that, following an extensive investigation, there continues to be no evidence that the cyber attackers actually accessed or acquired personal or medical information. The parties are entering into this agreement to avoid the expense of further litigation and to provide benefits to the individuals whose information was maintained in UCLA Health's computer network. The proposed settlement terms include: Two years of fee credit monitoring, identity protection services, an insurance package and related benefits available to all settlement class members even if they previously obtained the one-year credit monitoring package offered by UCLA Health in 2015. A $2 million fund that will be used to reimburse settlement class members who incurred costs seeking to protect against, or remedy, identity theft. fund that will be used to reimburse settlement class members who incurred costs seeking to protect against, or remedy, identity theft. $5.5 million beyond currently budgeted spending plus any money remaining in the claims reimbursement fund for the purpose of expediting and implementing cybersecurity enhancements to the UCLA Health computer network. www.UCLAHealthCyberSettlement.com, as well as a customer service line at 1-888-262-4479, to provide information regarding the settlement, including how to register for credit monitoring and identity protection services and how to submit claims for reimbursement. Protecting patient privacy is essential to UCLA's mission. Maintaining data security requires constant vigilance, and UCLA Health applies extensive resources and works with leading experts to enhance preparedness and combat the ongoing threat of cyber attacks. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ucla-health-cyber-attack-class-action-settlement-300816140.html SOURCE Superior Court, County of Los Angeles [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Tyto Athene Announces Appointment of Kay Kapoor and John Johnson to Its Executive Advisory Board Tyto Athene, LLC, backed by Arlington Capital Partners, has announced today that both Kay Kapoor and John Johnson have been appointed to its Executive Advisory Board (EAB). The EAB will assist in implementing the company's strategy to capitalize on future growth opportunities by providing counsel with respect to acquisition strategies, Government relations and market capitalization opportunities. The EAB will also provide Government outreach programs to facilitate the company's business plans worldwide. Kay Kapoor is the founder and CEO of Arya Technologies, LLC. Ms. Kapoor brings to the Tyto Athene EAB more than 27 years of industry experience in technology driven companies serving Government markets. Prior to her role at Arya Technologies, Ms. Kapoor served as President of AT&T's Global Public Sector organization. Prior to joining AT&T, Ms. Kapoor served as chairman and CEO of Accenture (News - Alert) Federal Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Accenture, LLC. Before that, Ms. Kapoor spent 20 years with Lockheed Martin Corporation, serving in roles of increasing responsibilities, leading business units as well as Government relations functions. "I am honored to join Tyto Athene's executive advisory board," said Ms. Kapoor. "Building on Tyto's rich heritage and combining innovative solutions and client focus, the Company is poised for significant growth." John Johnson is a partner in the renowned and highly respected government consulting firm, Deep Water Point, LLC. Mr. Johnson brings over 33 years of Government Information Technology (IT) and IT Acquisition experience - spanning the Department of Defense (DoD) and the General Services Administration (GSA (News - Alert)) - to his new role as a member of the Tyto Athene EAB. Prior to joining Deep Water Point, Mr. Johnson was the first Assistant Commissioner for the GSA's Federal Acquisition Service - Integrated Technology Service (ITS) - where Mr. Johnson managed the U.S. Government's largest "Fee for Service" IT procurement and services operation. "Tyto Athene's lineage positions it well for growth across a broad spectrum of Government," said Mr. Johnson. "With strong past performance, experience working very demanding challenges, and a suite of solutions that are both innovative and timely, I am confident that the Company will be highly successful going forward." "It is a tremendous honor to have such great industry leaders join our Executive Advisory Board," said Jeff Murray, CEO of Tyto Athene. "Kay and John bring diverse experience, enthusiasm, innovative approaches, and proven leadership that will help position us as a market leader for solving complex customer operational issues today and well into the future." Michael Lustbader, a Managing Partner at Arlington Capital Partners, stated that "We are excited to partner with Kay and John, who bring a wealth of experience from across the private and public sector. On the Executive Advisory Board, they will guide the strategic vision of Tyto Athene and serve as a valuable sounding board to the management team as they achieve their growth objectives." About Tyto Athene Tyto Athene, LLC is a full service systems integrator focused on helping clients accelerate their ability to make decisions by providing ubiquitous and secure access to enterprise information throughout their operating environment. Tyto Athene uses a myriad of technologies, innovative thinking, and proven processes to deliver successful outcomes for its clients worldwide. To learn more about Tyto Athene please visit www.gotyto.com. About Arlington Capital Partners Arlington Capital Partners is a Washington, D.C. area private equity firm that has managed $2.2 billion of committed capital via four investment funds, including Arlington's fourth and most recent $700 million fund. Arlington is focused on middle market investment opportunities in growth industries, including: government services and technology, aerospace/defense, healthcare, and business services and software. The firm's professionals and network have a unique combination of operating and private equity experience that enable Arlington to be a value-added investor. Arlington invests in companies in partnership with high quality management teams that are motivated to establish and/or advance their company's position as leading competitors in their field. www.arlingtoncap.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005360/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Investment in Midwest Healthcare Companies Remains Steady at $2.5 Billion in 2018, Validating Record Increase of 43% in 2017 Investment in Midwest healthcare companies remained steady in 2018, with $2.5 billion in capital raised by 438 companies. That amount of investment validates the record increase of 43% seen in 2017, demonstrating the sustained interest among investors in biomedical companies in the Midwest. These were the findings of the 2018 Midwest Healthcare Growth Capital Report, published annually by BioEnterprise, which tracks capital investments made in biomedical companies across 11 Midwestern states in three sectors - medical device; biotechnology and pharmaceuticals; and health IT/software and services. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005361/en/ 2018 Midwest Healthcare Growth Capital Report Highlights (Photo: Business Wire) "The significant increase in the number of Midwest biomedical companies receiving funding over the last two years shows that there is a healthy and growing pipeline of startups that will continue to fuel this industry's growth," says Aram Nerpouni, president and CEO of BioEnterprise. "Over the last five years alone, investment in Midwest healthcare companies has risen by 40%, evidence that investors are finding the Midwest as an ideal location for startups." 2018 MIDWEST HEALTHCARE GROWTH CAPITAL REPORT HIGHLIGHTS Health IT Leads Sector Performance: Total investment in health IT/software and services companies reached $968.3 million (39%) in 2018, followed by biotech and pharma at $780.4 million (31%) and medical devices at $750.3 million (30%). Total investment in health IT/software and services companies reached $968.3 million (39%) in 2018, followed by biotech and pharma at $780.4 million (31%) and medical devices at $750.3 million (30%). Five-Year Performance: Investment in Midwest healthcare companies has increased by 40% over the last five years, and the number of companies receiving funding has increased by 80%. Investment in Midwest healthcare companies has increased by 40% over the last five years, and the number of companies receiving funding has increased by 80%. Top-performing States: Minnesota led the Midwestern states in the amount of investment dollars attracted in 2018 with $690 million, followed by Ohio with $562 million and Illinois with $560 million. Ohio led the pack for the number of companies receiving funding with 121 (28% of total companies), followed by Minnesota with 89 (20%) and Illinois with 56 (13%). Minnesota led the Midwestern states in the amount of investment dollars attracted in 2018 with $690 million, followed by Ohio with $562 million and Illinois with $560 million. Ohio led the pack for the number of companies receiving funding with 121 (28% of total companies), followed by Minnesota with 89 (20%) and Illinois with 56 (13%). Top-performing Regions: The five Midwestern regions attracting the most investment dollars were Minneapolis ($664 million), Chicago ($551 million), Cleveland ($294 million), Columbus ($163 million) and Detroit-Ann Arbor ($125 million). The five Midwestern regions attracting the most investment dollars were Minneapolis ($664 million), Chicago ($551 million), Cleveland ($294 million), Columbus ($163 million) and Detroit-Ann Arbor ($125 million). Later-stage Funding Dominates: Later-stage investments made up the majority of the capital raised by Midwest healthcare companies in 2018, though more than half of the deals were in the seed stage. Of the total $2.5 billion raised, 61% consisted of later-stage investments (138 deals), followed by early-stage (20%; 164 deals) and seed funding (13%; 256 deals) Click here to view the full report. BioEnterprise compiles the annual Midwest Healthcare Growth Capital Investment Report with the support of regional partner organizations such as MATTER, Medical Alley Association, BioOhio, Rev1Ventures, CincyTech, JumpStart and others. The report is funded in part by the Fund For Our Economic Future, the Cleveland Foundation and the Burton D. Morgan Foundation. METHODOLOGY The Midwest Healthcare Growth Capital Report compiles data from Pitchbook, SEC (News - Alert) Filings, company press releases, news items and regional Midwest biomedical organizations and accelerators. The report details investments in three biomedical sectors: medical device, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and healthcare IT/software and services. Investments include seed, venture, individual and group angel funding, private equity, bridge funding, convertible debt, foundation funding with an equity component, strategic and corporate investment, secondary offerings and PIPEs. Funding is broken into three main categories: Seed (includes: Accelerator/ Incubator, Friends and Family, and Seed), Early (includes: Early stage VC, Series A, and Series B) and Late (includes: Later stage VC, PE Growth & Expansion, PIPE, Series C, Series D, etc.). Convertible debt, Angel, and Undisclosed funding rounds are included within one of these three categories based on the company's life stage. ABOUT BIOENTERPRISE BioEnterprise is a business formation, recruitment, and acceleration effort designed to grow the Northeast Ohio healthcare industry. Located in Cleveland, at the Global Center for Health Innovation and in University Circle, BioEnterprise provides management counsel and support services to health IT, medical device, and biopharmaceutical companies. In addition, BioEnterprise convenes and leads strategy for industry-building initiatives such as the Medical Capital Innovation Competition, HIT in the CLE and the Global Center for Health Innovation. BioEnterprise partners are Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Clinic, The MetroHealth System and University Hospitals. Additional technology partners include the NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland State University and BioOhio. Since 2002, BioEnterprise and its partners have created, recruited and accelerated more than 350 health IT, medical device, and biopharmaceutical companies, and have helped these companies raise more than $3 billion in new funding. To learn more: www.BioEnterprise.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005361/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Measure Drone Solutions Now Available on Carahsoft's SEWP V Contract Expert Drone Services and Software Now Available to Public Sector WASHINGTON and RESTON, Va. , March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Measure UAS, Inc , the leader in aerial intelligence, and Carahsoft Technology Corp. , The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider, today announced a formal partnership. Under the agreement, Carahsoft will serve as Measures Master Government Aggregator, providing proactive sales and marketing assistance for Measures solutions in the public sector marketplace and adding Measures drone solutions to Carahsofts contract vehicles. Carahsofts reseller partners and public sector customers will now have access to the only national Drone as a Service company via Carahsofts NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V contract and National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO) ValuePoint, National Intergovernmental Purchasing Alliance (National IPA), and National Cooperative Purchasing Alliance (NCPA) cooperative purchasing vehicles. Carahsoft has built a reputation as a customer-centric organization dedicated to serving the technology and service needs of the government, said Dan Rothfield, Chief Operating Officer at Measure. By leveraging a variety of contract vehicles, Measure will be able to provide our suite of drone-related services and software across federal, state and local government agencies and education institutions. Measure designed the Drone as a Service (DaaS) business model with the understanding that most customers do not have the time, expertise or resources to scale their drone-based projects. By partnering with Measure, organizations can leverage training, data analysis, and software to advance internal drone programs or delegate their aerial intelligence operations to Measure pilots and data engineers who work directly with existing workflows and objectives. With an expansive and comprehensive platform of drone technology and software solutions, Measure is a valuable addition to our vendor and end user ecosystem, said Lacey Wean, Manager of Carahsofts Geospatial an UAS Solutions Team. We look forward to expanding our drone hardware and software portfolio and supporting federal, state and local governments needs for unmanned aerial vehicles. Measures latest aerial intelligence solution is Ground Control 2.0, a next-generation drone software platform. Ground Control acts as an all-in-one solution that allows users to better: Manage people and equipment Schedule and plan flights Fly and collect data Track and report activity Store and use information Measures portfolio of drone software and services are available immediately via Carahsofts SEWP V contracts NNG15SC03B and NNG15SC27B and NASPO ValuePoint, National IPA and NCPA cooperative purchasing contracts. For more information, contact the Measure team at Carahsoft at (877) 722-8436 or [email protected] ; or register for Drones: Elevating Government Intelligence , a free seminar including a panel discussion with Burton Putrah, VP of Data Engineering for Measure, being held at 8 a.m. (EST), March 26, 2019. About Measure Measure is an aerial intelligence company that enables enterprises to realize the transformative benefits of drone technology. Through our comprehensive software solution, specialized data engineering team, and highly skilled flight operations, we help corporations deploy drones at scale, saving thousands of hazardous manhours and providing millions of dollars in operational benefits. Learn more at https://www.measure.com/ or follow us on LinkedIn . About Carahsoft Carahsoft Technology Corp. is The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider. As a top-performing GSA Schedule and SEWP contract holder, Carahsoft serves as the master government aggregator for many of its best-of-breed technology vendors, supporting an extensive ecosystem of manufacturers, value-added resellers, system integrators and consulting partners committed to helping government agencies select and implement the best solution at the best possible value. The company's dedicated Solutions Divisions proactively market, sell and deliver Measure, VMware, AWS, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, Veritas, Dell, Adobe, F5 Networks, Google Cloud, ServiceNow, Open Source, Micro Focus Government Solutions, SAP, Salesforce, and Innovative and Intelligence products and services, among others. Carahsoft is consistently recognized by its partners as a top revenue producer and is listed annually among the industry's fastest growing and largest firms by CRN, Inc., Forbes, Washington Technology, The Washington Post, Washington Business Journal, and Bloomberg Government. Visit us at www.carahsoft.com or follow us on Twitter and Facebook . Contacts Carmen Smith Measure UAS, Inc [email protected] 202-793-3052 Mary Lange Carahsoft Technology Corp. (703) 230-7434 [email protected] [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Equipping "Good Village Doctors" with AI technology BEIJING, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The ceremony of "Village Warming with Blossom -- Funding Presentation Ceremony on Countryside Poverty Alleviation" was held in Beijing. A total of 400 poverty alleviation pioneers from rural areas (100 each from the groups of poverty alleviation representatives, village doctors, village school principals, and village teachers) were recognized as the "Leading Persons in Poverty Alleviation and Support", and each of them will receive poverty alleviation fund of RMB 10,000 provided by Ping An. The purpose of this funding presentation ceremony is to implement the spirit of the speech of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping, which said we should "start poverty alleviation with those with ambitions" and "support education in order for poverty alleviation". The event is to recognize the pioneers in poverty alleviation from rural areas, in order to inspire more people to contribute to the poverty alleviation and development. The event was jointly established and hosted by the People's Daily National Party Media Information Public Platform, China Soong Ching Ling Foundation and China Ping An. Jing Dunquan, Vice Chairman of the Soong Ching Ling Foundation of China, Xie Guoming, former Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the People's Daily, and Sun Jianyi, Senior Vice Chairman of China Ping An Group, attended the funding presentation ceremony. As the main force of health enhancement and poverty alleviation, village doctors are playing an important role in preventing poverty due to illness, returning to poverty due to illness, and safeguarding the health of villagers. Their task is arduous with tremendous responsibility. According to introduction, the event selected 100 "Good Village Doctors" from 15 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi and etc. They all are highly praised by the villagers with their noble medical ethics, good service and superb medical techniques. At the event, Zhu Hongqun, one of the "Good Village Doctors" from Cangzhou City of Jiangxi Province, said that the villagers in his area have been eager to have better medical conditions and services. He hopes to get further learning and training opportunities to provide more medical care services for the villagers. In October 2018, he received the professional training by the team under the "Village Doctor" program of China Ping An. Now he has learned to use the App developed specially for village doctors b Ping An Good Doctor, and he can interpret the health test reports, and utilise the healthcare instruments, including health testing all-in-one machine and medical camera all-in-one machine. As an important part of the "Three-village Project" of Ping An Group, the "Village Doctor" program was jointly initiated by Ping An Healthcare and Technology Company Limited ("Ping An Good Doctor", or the "Company"; stock code: 01833.HK) in conjunction with other China Ping An subsidiaries. Through consolidating national's high-quality doctor resources and the donation of advanced medical and health equipment, the program helps village doctors to transform from the traditional "barefoot doctors" into the "village health gatekeepers" with general medical service capabilities. In 2018, the "Village Doctor" program provided professional training for more than 5,000 village doctors in Guangxi, Jiangxi, Inner Mongolia and other regions. Supported by Ping An Good Doctor's mobile medical platform and AI technology, the village doctors were assisted to provide more scientific and quality medical and health services for local villagers. It is estimated that by the end of 2019, the "Village Doctor" program will help upgrade 1,000 village clinics nationwide, empower more than 10,000 village doctors, and provide health check-ups and medical consultation services to more than 100,000 villagers. According to Ping An Good Doctor, through the application of the world's leading mobile medical and AI technology, the Company is transferring high-quality doctor resources, medical equipment and pharmaceutical resources to poor rural areas, and thus improving comprehensively the professional competence and service level of the village doctors. Currently, with its in-house medical team of 1196 members and over 5,000 external doctors, Ping An Good Doctor has been able to assist village doctors to provide online counseling, referral, registration, hospitalization, and second consultation advice to the villagers. The AI-assisted medical consultation system developed by Ping An Good Doctor can also assist the village doctors to automatically generate structured case information, thus be able to effectively standardize the consultation route, avoid omission of effective information, and improve the efficiency and accuracy of the consultation. According to statistics, Ping An Good Doctor's AI-assisted medical consultation system has collected nearly 410 million consultation data, covering over 3,000 diseases. About Ping An Healthcare and Technology Company Limited (01833.HK) Ping An Good Doctor is the leading one-stop healthcare ecosystem platform in China. By combining "mobile health + AI technology", the Company strives to provide every family with a family doctor, every person with an e-health profile and everyone with a healthcare management plan. Ping An Good Doctor has established a comprehensive, one-stop healthcare ecosystem covering family doctor services, consumer healthcare services, a health mall as well as health management and wellness interaction. As of the end of December 2018, there were 265 million registered users and the Company's MAU reached 54.7 million. Ping An Good Doctor is today the largest mobile medical application in China in terms of user scale. Ping An Good Doctor employs more than a thousand medical personnel (Assistant Supervisor Level or above from Class III Grade A Hospitals) in its in-house medical team and contracts with 5,203 renowned external doctors. This in-house medical team, empowered by our proprietary AI technology, provides users with 24 x 7 online consultation services. In our offline partnership network, Ping An Good Doctor collaborates with over 3,000 hospitals (including more than 1,200 Class III Grade A hospitals) to provide services such as hospital referral, appointment and inpatient arrangements. Ping An Good Doctor also partners with more than 2,000 healthcare institutions, including physical examination centers, dental clinics, cosmetic surgery institutions and more than 15,000 pharmacy outlets, to provide relevant health and wellness services to our users. By integrating our AI-empowered medical team, external doctors and offline network, Ping An Good Doctor has established a closed-loop healthcare ecosystem which enables our users to enjoy online consultations and online drug purchases, as well as online consultations and offline follow-up treatment, thereby providing convenient, high-quality and efficient family doctor services. In April 2015, the App "Ping An Good Doctor" was officially launched. In May 2016, the Company completed an A round financing and raised US$500 million. In December 2017, the Company completed the pre-IPO financing from Softbank Vision Fund, during which it raised US$400 million. On 4 May 2018, Ping An Good Doctor became the No.1 listed internet health-tech company in the world when it joined the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, stock code 1833.HK. Our IPO cornerstone investors include Blackrock, Capital Group, GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Swiss Re and CP Group. Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20190321/2410419-1 SOURCE Ping An Good Doctor [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Clean Works announces new way to clean food products without using water Could have major impact on agri-food industry BEAMSVILLE, ON, March 21, 2019 /CNW/ - Clean Works is a company in the Niagara Region of Southern Ontario that has developed a new innovative technology that cleans food without using water. The revolutionary process represents a paradigm shift in the way food products are cleaned. "Our process, with our strict operating procedures, gets rid of almost all contaminants, bacteria and pathogens on food," says Paul Moyer, co-owner of Clean Works (https://cleanworkscorp.com/). "It reduces health risks by making fruits and vegetables safer to consume, increases their shelf life, and saves significantly on water." Clean Works is pleased to make the announcement on the eve of World Water Day which this year falls on March 22. World Water Day is coordinated by UN-Water the United Nations inter-agency for all freshwater-related issues. The organization's Sustainable Development Goals include having available and sustainable water management for all by the year 2030. That means water that is readily accessible and free from contamination. "This aligns perfectly with what we are doing at Clean Works," says Mark VanderVeen, President of Clean Works. "Our waterless process helps clean fruits and vegetables to much higher levels of sanitation than traditional systems. It's all about making the wold a better place. We understand the effect our process can have on the agri-food industry. It is game changing, here in North America and for the developing world." Moyer is a 9th-generation farmer in the Niagara Region whose family has been working the land since 1799. He co-founded Moyers Apple Products which won recognition as an innovator when it received the 2017 Premier's Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence from the Government of Ontario, and in 2018 it won an Ontario Centre of Excellence award. The process developed by Clean Works called Clean Verification kills harmful pathogens and mold, and helps prevent contaminants from entering the water system. While water alone is only around 50% effective, this process is up to 99.9% effective under the specific conditions. It has been validated by the Food Science Department at the University of Guelph, Canada's leading agri-food institution. The method is organic and waterless, and can take less than 30 seconds. Using ultraviolet light and vaporized hydrogen peroxide to kill up to 99.9% of pathogens like Listeria, based on Clean Works' controlled operating procedures, it also allows for compliance with regulations. It kills pathogens which create health risks. With the process, Moyers Apple Products has seen the shelf life of its products increase by up to 25%. Dr. Keith Warriner, a University of Guelph food scientist who is considered one of Canada's top authorities in the field, said this takes cleaning to the "microbiological level." Benefits accrue for the entire agri-food industry growers, packers, processors, wholesalers, and retailers. Clean Works is attracting attention as its innovation moves from lab to market as farmers, processors and retailers learn of the remarkable sanitizer. Interest has come from industry leaders across North America. This includes installations in Ontario, and citrus growers and grape producers in California. The new process has already helped Moyers Apple Products increase sales to more than 4,000 grocery stores across North America. Says Warriner: "Finally, there's a scientifically validated alternative to washing. I think of Clean Verification as a firewall between the field and the dinner plate." View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clan-works-announces-new-way-to-clean-food-products-without-using-water-300816280.html SOURCE Clean Works [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Randstad North America's chief human resources officer Jim Link to keynote SHRM-Atlanta's SOAHR 2019 ATLANTA, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Who Jim Link, chief human resources officer, Randstad North America What Join Link as he addresses the " 5 Barriers You'll Need to Break for Success in 2020 and Beyond " at SHRM-Atlanta's SOAHR 2019 . Link will discuss the steps HR leaders can take to rethink and redesign their workforce strategies to ensure business sustainability. He will speak on disruptive trends contributing to the erosion of the traditional workplace, leadership traits needed to succeed in the post-digital workplace and much more. When Link's session will take place on Wednesday, March 27, 2019, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. EST. Where Cobb Galleria Centre 2 Galleria Pkwy SE Atlanta, GA 30339 Details During his keynote, Link will highlight major factors impacting the future workplace and the five barriers companies must overcome to thrive in 2020 and beyond. Session attendees will: Learn how to shift from leading toward action to leading toward decompression. The pervasiveness of technology and how the resulting fast-paced, 24/7 world will greatly impact decision-making. Leaders will need to learn to help employees "decompress" from the digital and balance the pressures f real-time response and immediate tasks with long-term, strategic decision-making. Understand which needs in Maslow's Hierarchy can be supported through technology in the workplace and which are at risk. Gain insight on how neglecting to adapt to a more agile work environment will cause some companies to miss out on skilled talent. Identify which high-touch and high-tech skills will be valued and required in an increasingly automated and robotic business landscape. Learn how to configure your workplace to best engage Gen Z and millennials in the workplace and how to further develop your organizational culture to take advantage of their strengths, passions and interests. Uncover the business metrics every HR leader should know to develop a strong workforce strategy. SHRM-Atlanta SOAHR 2019 website to register for the event. About SHRM-Atlanta SHRM-Atlanta is the premier professional community for those in Human Resources and people management. Our mission is to empower Atlanta's HR professionals and people managers to create best-in-class Atlanta workforces and workplaces by enhancing their HR skills and knowledge, developing their business acumen, and increasing their leadership capacity. We accomplish our mission by fostering community, promoting professional development, celebrating excellence in Human Resources and people management and advancing thought leadership. SHRM-Atlanta is one of the largest affiliates of The Society for Human Resource Management, and our 2,000+ members include Professional Practitioners, Professional Consultants, Faculty, Attorneys, Professional Associates, Students and Honorary members who represent more than 1,300 greater Atlanta area businesses. More information is available at www.shrmatlanta.org . About Randstad Randstad North America, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Randstad N.V., a 23.8 billion global provider of flexible work and human resources services. As a trusted human partner in the technology-driven world of talent, we combine the expertise and passion of our employees with some of the most innovative HR technologies on the market today to advance the careers and business success of our candidates and clients. Randstad's North American operations comprise 5,700+ associates and a deployed workforce of more than 100,000 in the U.S. and Canada. In addition to staffing and recruitment, Randstad offers outsourcing, consulting and workforce management solutions for generalist and specialist disciplines, including technology, engineering, finance and accounting, clinical and non-clinical healthcare, human resources, legal, life sciences, manufacturing and logistics, office and administration and sales and marketing. Global concepts available to North American client companies include RPO, MSP, integrated talent solutions, payrolling and independent contractor management and career transition services. Learn more at www.randstadusa.com or www.randstad.ca . View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/randstad-north-americas-chief-human-resources-officer-jim-link-to-keynote-shrm-atlantas-soahr-2019-300816095.html SOURCE Randstad US [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] PayLogic and eCurrency partner to deploy a new generation of retail payment solutions globally DUBLIN, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- PayLogic, a premier payment systems technology company, and eCurrency, a leading Digital Fiat Currency (DFC) technology company, announce a partnership to deploy a new generation of National Retail Payment Solutions (NRPS) comprising the Digital Fiat Currency, payment switch and e-money wallets with unsurpassed security, usability, interoperability, and settlement efficiency. The joint solution significantly reduces risks of payment processing and promotes financial inclusion for the businesses and people across the globe. Rich interconnectivity and instant settlement. Leveraging the versatility and the reliability of PayWay, the PayLogic technology, and the advanced security, performance, and reliability of eCurrency DFC technology, this partnership enables fast and secure payments between banks, e-money services providers, and merchants. The solution can be connected with banking networks and existing e-money systems. Transactions and settlements between the senders and recipients will be instant and final, executed in DFC issued by the central bank, also known as CBDC (central bank digital currency). Full interoperability and security. The solution will significantly enhance the interoperability between e-money and banking services and reduce the risks associated with digital payments. Transaction reconciliation will be streamlined, and consumer funds will have additional protection against fraud and counterfeiting. Service operators will be able to offer richer use cases and enhanced user experience. The joint solution will improve AML and CFT protections and is expected to reduc the use of physical cash, providing convenience and a reduction of the significant costs associated with the handling of physical notes and coins. "The benefit of our partnership is twofold," said Mohamed Mekouar, Chairman of PayLogic. "First: synergies of both platforms on how they address the needs of the financial community. Second: Increased global presence of both companies thanks to leveraging on each one's customers' portfolio." "Our products have long track records of reliable field operations in many countries around the world. They complement one another, and their combination is not merely additive, but rather creates a new class of financial solutions drastically increasing security and efficiency of payments," added Thomas Kudrycki, CTO of eCurrency. About PayLogic: PayLogic is a leading EFT company. It provides payment switch systems managing front to back interbanking transactions flows. Its flagship PA-DSS certified solution, PayWay, has numerous references in Africa and the Middle East. PayWay has been winning strong momentum thanks to its agility and customization features. PayLogic also developed a mobile switch platform, AMA, connecting various operators: MNO, banks, microfinance, fund transfer companies, and aggregators. Each operator leverages on other's assets thus expanding its distribution network and operational offer. AMA received praise from Central Banks and Government Bodies because it enhances financial inclusion and improves tax revenues. AMA received the Award of Best Innovative Mobile solution in APID 2018. For more information visit www.pay-logic.com About eCurrency: eCurrency Mint (eCurrency) is the leading provider of digital currency security systems for central banks. eCurrency enables central banks to securely and efficiently issue digital fiat currency to operate alongside notes and coins. eCurrency has pioneered the world's first end-to-end solution for digital fiat currency issuance and circulation. The company combines hardware, software, and cryptographic security protocols to provide central banks the tools they need to preserve their charter and doctrine as the sole issuer of the national currency in an increasingly digital economy. By enabling more secure and efficient digital transactions, eCurrency supports the vast economic opportunities presented by the global shift to digital payments, including increased transaction efficiency, financial inclusion, and economic growth. For more information visit: www.ecurrency.net. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/paylogic-and-ecurrency-partner-to-deploy-a-new-generation-of-retail-payment-solutions-globally-300816298.html SOURCE eCurrency Mint Limited [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Toronto Quantum Summit to Highlight Looming Cybersecurity Threat, Showcase Breakthrough Quantum and Autonomous Security Technologies Exclusive Event Focuses on Defending Against Current and Future Cyber Attacks SAN FRANCISCO and TORONTO, March 21, 2019 /CNW/ -- The inaugural Quantum Summit, to be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre April 24-25, 2019, brings together leading private and public sector experts to share insights on the latest advances in quantum computing as well as measures that can be taken now to safeguard society against potential post-quantum attacks that could unravel global communication networks, banking systems, power grids and other critical infrastructure, threatening our national security and undermining personal privacy. Keynote and additional speakers include: Gen. Harry Raduege , USAF, (Ret), who served as the first DOD Commander of the Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations as well as CIO of the North American Aerospace Command, U.S. Space Command, Air Force Space Command, and U.S. Central Command. , USAF, (Ret), who served as the first DOD Commander of the Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations as well as CIO of the North American Aerospace Command, U.S. Space Command, Air Force Space Command, and U.S. Central Command. Dr. Robert Sutor , Vice President IBM Q Strategy and Ecosystem, IBM Research, responsible for rapidly extending the footprint of IBM Q as the industry-leading quantum computing hardware/software platform. , Vice President IBM Q Strategy and Ecosystem, IBM Research, responsible for rapidly extending the footprint of IBM Q as the industry-leading quantum computing hardware/software platform. Dr. Davide Venturelli , founding team member, NASA Intelligent Systems Division's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL). , founding team member, NASA Intelligent Systems Division's Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL). Dr. Ron Marquardt , Vice President of Technology at Sprint responsible for Sprint's long-term technology strategy as well as the company's advocacy in US and global industry forums and standards bodies. , Vice President of Technology at Sprint responsible for Sprint's long-term technology strategy as well as the company's advocacy in US and global industry forums and standards bodies. Christian Weedbrook, Founder and CEO of Xanadu, responsible leading efforts to provide quantum on demand using quantum processor chips powered by laser light. Professor Shohini Ghose, theoretical physicist at Wilfrid Laurier University studying ow the laws of quantum physics can transform computation and communications. studying ow the laws of quantum physics can transform computation and communications. Dr. Atefeh Mashatan, Director, Cybersecurity Research Lab, Ryerson University . . Jay Fallah , Chief Technology Officer, NXM Labs. Jay Fallah , CTO, NXM Labs. "This gathering will not only be thought provoking but will also showcase some of the most novel and promising new approaches to confronting the challenge of rapidly evolving security threats." Tackling the Quantum Cybersecurity Threat The first day of the event will examine the implications of quantum computing on existing national security and IT infrastructures. These sessions will examine the latest technology trends, including quantum machine learning and AI, as well as measures that can be taken now to safeguard and future-proof existing infrastructure. The day will end with a roundtable of industry and academic thought leaders discussing Y2Q (Years-to-Quantum) and preparing for a post-quantum world. Autonomous Security and Next Generation Networks The second day will focus on the security challenges of current and future 5G networks, highlighting breakthrough Autonomous Security (AS) systems that enable connected devices to manage their own security without human intervention. These talks will focus on deploying scalable, trustworthy networks of intelligent, self-governing edge devices that ensure the integrity of machine data and the protection of personal, private, confidential information. Quantum Summit, sponsored by NXM's Center for Autonomous Security and Data Integrity (CASDI), will be attended by cybersecurity experts, researchers, business and IT executives, investors, media and industry analysts. For more information visit summit.nxmlabs.com. About NXM Labs NXM Labs develops advanced security and data integrity software that leverages data from connected devices to provide business intelligence and insights. NXM is engaged in ongoing research efforts with global leaders in communications, semiconductors, automotive, enterprise software and other sectors. NXM Labs is a member of the Linux Foundation and MOBI Alliance. The Company is headquartered in San Francisco with R&D facilities in Toronto. For more information visit www.nxmlabs.com. About CASDI CASDI is NXM's corporate laboratory focused on research initiatives and industry collaborations to enable new ways of creating secure, trusted devices and systems. It aims to lead collaborative research efforts involving a diverse group of experts from a wide range of industry sectors, academic disciplines and government agencies to advance visionary solutions to real-world threats. Media Contact: Shelly Sofer [email protected] 647-767-9420 View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/toronto-quantum-summit-to-highlight-looming-cybersecurity-threat-showcase-breakthrough-quantum-and-autonomous-security-technologies-300816492.html SOURCE NXM Labs Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] English Finnish Fingrid Oyj Stock Exchange Release 21 March 2019 at 12:55 EET Fingrid Oyjs Annual General Meeting was held today, 21 March 2019, in Helsinki. The Annual General Meeting approved the financial statements for 2018 and discharged the members of the Board of Directors and the CEO from liability. The Annual General Meeting elected Fingrid Oyjs Board of Directors for the term that ends at the close of the next Annual General Meeting. Juhani Jarvi continues as Chair of the Board of Directors and Paivi Nerg as Vice Chair. The other Board members are Anu Hamalainen, Sanna Syri, and Esko Torsti. A more detailed presentation of the board members is available on the companys website. The Annual General Meeting decided to pay a dividend of max. EUR 67.650,00 for each Series A share and max. EUR 24.750,00 for each Series B share, totalling max. EUR 171.439.950,00 . The first dividend instalment is EUR 47.550,00 for each Series A share and EUR 17.400,00 for each Series B share, totalling EUR 120.506.700,00. In addition, the Annual General Meeting authorised the companys Board of Directors to decide on the payment of a possible second dividend instalment after the half-year report has been confirmed, when the Board of Directors has assessed the companys solvency, financial position and financial development. The second dividend instalment is max. EUR 20.100,00 for each Series A share and max. EUR 7,350.00 for each Series B share, totalling max. EUR 50.933.250,00. The authorisation remains valid until the next Annual General Meeting. PricewaterhouseCoopers Oy, which appointed Heikki Lassila, APA, as the principal auditor, was elected as the auditor of the company. Further information: Jukka Ruusunen, President & CEO, tel. +358 30 395 5140 or +358 40 593 8428 Jan Montell, Chief Financial Officer, tel. +358 30 395 5213 or +358 40 592 4419 [March 21, 2019] Jahia commemorates CDP Apache Unomi's graduation as a Top Level Project (TLP) of the Apache Software Foundation and launches new enterprise subscription WASHINGTON and GENEVA, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Jahia, a leading provider of open-source content management and digital experience applications, today commemorates the graduation of Apache Unomi as a Top-Level Project (TLP) of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) as it announces an offering to support its enterprise deployment, the Jahia Customer Data Hub subscription. Jahia leverages Apache Unomi for profile-based personalization in its Digital Experience and Web Content Management applications, and with the Apache Unomi TLP graduation, launches an enterprise subscription, the Jahia Customer Data Hub (CDH), to provide enterprise grade services for Apache Unomi. The Jahia CDH subscription includes support provided by Jahia's Apache Unomi experts, who developed the original software and continue to contribute code to the ASF. Prioritized fixes and new feature development, consulting, training and technical support with guaranteed response times provide the support required for enterprise deployments of this standard-setting, open-source software with privacy by design. Jahia customers and partners are already generating significant value with their use of Apache Unomi: Al-Monitor, a global newsroom headquartered in Washington, D.C. with a network of over 160 authors and analysts around the world, uses Apache Unomi to personalize the deep insight it provides into the Middle East for its subscribers. Valerie Voci, Head of Digital Strategy and Marketing at Al-Monitor, said Apache Unomi "helps us create a very cohesive marketing message and a great overall digital experience. Al-Monitor readers can be driven towards additional personalized content that corresponds, via content tag profiling and automated segmentations, to what they have already accessed. This data follows our customers where they go, so it's a consistent experience whether they are getting these recommendations in their inbox or on the website or both. And if a change takes place on one, that change is immediately reflected on the other." Lars Petersen, Co-Founder at Jahia partner Altola, says that the Apache Unomi CDP helped them deliver a progressive web app (PWA) for an important client in record time. Altola used Apache Unomi "to store customer insights, such as behavioral and explicit customer dat. Privacy was table-stakes for us, along with the flexibility to customize data schema and the open API. Using the Jahia Cloud offering, we had the Apache Unomi CDP up and running on Amazon Web Services in less than 30 minutes. We are very impressed with the maturity of the platform, its privacy by design and how easy it is to work with." Elie Auvray, Head of Business Development at Jahia, tells the story of how Apache Unomi came into being: "Jahia CTO Serge Huber and I initiated this project back in 2014 with the clear goal to make it an Apache Top Level Project. We announced and submitted it as an Apache Incubator project at the 2015 ApacheCon Budapest," he said. "This was the very beginning of ethical, data-driven marketing that would respect the privacy of customers and leverage the power of unified customer data. We are proud to congratulate the Apache Unomi team at ASF on its powerful, open source Customer Data Platform becoming the 199th Top-Level Project. We are grateful to the Apache Foundation for its work and we know this is the beginning of a lasting marriage between unified customer data and important, global privacy protection." According to the ASF news release (https://s.apache.org/brS6), "Apache Unomi is a standards-based, customer data platform that manages online customer data, leads, and visitor information to provide personalized customer experiences that adheres to visitor privacy rules such as GDPR and "Do Not Track" preferences. "Apache Unomi features privacy management, user/event/goal tracking, reporting, visitor profile management, segmentation, personas, A/B testing, and more. It can be used as a: personalization service for a Web CMS analytics service for a native mobile application centralized profile management system consent management hub Laurent Liscia, CEO of OASIS, the standards body, said, "The Customer Data Platform Specification, being established within the OASIS Context Service Technical Committee, for which Apache Unomi aims to be the reference implementation, lies at the crossroads of many solution providers needs such as WCM, CRM, Big Data Platforms, Machine Learning, IoT and Digital Marketing. At a time where client data interoperability and built-in data privacy are mandatory foundations for legal, consistent, and personalized experiences across channel markets and systems, the 'data privacy by design' at the core of the CDP Specification and now, Apache Unomi, is a clear and welcome answer to end-user concerns." For more information the Jahia Customer Data Hub Subscription to support Apache Unomi cloud or on-premise deployment, as well as DX and WCM applications using Apache Unomi please visit www.jahia.com/apache-unomi. About Jahia Jahia makes digital experiences simpler. Our open-source applications snap-in to your existing stack to make your organization stand out. Start with content management and expand to personalize, optimize and scale all digital experiences -- with unified customer data, everywhere. Jahia customers are digital experience virtuosos: More than 150 mid-to-large sized, regional and global companies and government agencies, ranging from great brands like Ben & Jerry's, to Sodexo, one of the world's largest multinational corporations, to top financial services including Nationwide, and government institutions like the European Parliament. Follow us on LinkedIn, read our blog, and visit our website @jahia.com. Contact: Diane Berry OutsideView [email protected] +1-908-627-5470 The Apache Software Foundation. "Apache", "Unomi", "Apache Unomi", and "ApacheCon" are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. Jahia is a registered trademark of Jahia Solutions Group SA View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jahia-commemorates-cdp-apache-unomis-graduation-as-a-top-level-project-tlp-of-the-apache-software-foundation-and-launches-new-enterprise-subscription-300816520.html SOURCE Jahia Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Cynthia Hetherington Shortlisted as Women in IT -- NY Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 WANAQUE, N.J., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Cynthia Hetherington, founder and president of Hetherington Group (Hg), has been shortlisted with nine other global women for the prestigious 2019 Women in IT NYC Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Organized by business technology site Information Age, the awards were launched as a platform to celebrate women in technology. "The Women in IT Awards has grown significantly since its inception five years ago. We have been blown away by people's passion and enthusiasm for this cause. Last year's event in New York was spectacular and this year's event will dazzle," said Nick Ismail, content editor, Information Age. "This year, we received over 500 nominations, showcasing an amazing array of talent across North America's technology industry. All of the finalists deserve a massive congratulations for the achievements that have resulted in them being shortlisted for an award. We can't wait to welcome everyone for one of the biggest nights in technology on March 28." "It is an honor to be shortlisted with such an outstanding group of women tech leaders," stated Ms. Hetherington. "Given the limited number of women in this ever-expanding industry, opportunities to celebrate women's achievements in and contributions to information technology serves as a beacon of light, calling young women to join us as we make our way into frontiers previously closed off to us." Headquartered in New Jersey, Hg is a consulting, publishing and training firm that leads in due diligence, corporate intelligence and cyber investigations. For the past three years, Hg has shown a consistently strong 50 percent growth and is on track to expand operations with a 50 percent increase in investigators and a 20 percent expansion in support staff. Ms. Hetherington has authored three books on how to conduct cyber investigations and annually trains over 7,200 intelligence professionals on best practices. She shares her expertise in this increasingly data-intensive, cyber-focused world through the publication of an industry newsletter and an online blog. Since its launch in 2015, the Women in IT Awards have showcased women in technology in London, New York, Ireland and Silicon Valley. This year, the awards series will expand to celebrate women in technology in Asia, Berlin and Canada for the first time. This grwing awards series acts as a flagship and high-profile platform to support the industry in its mission to move the dial on gender. According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, the number of women working in IT in 2017 was a mere 26 percent, with women of color representing only 10 percent of that number (five percent Asian, three percent African-American and one percent Hispanic). Cybersecurity Ventures estimates that by the end of 2019, a mere 20 percent of women will be in the global cybersecurity workforce, up from 11 percent in 2013. The Women in IT Awards series aims to tackle this issue and redress the gender imbalance by showcasing the achievements of women in the sector and identifying new role models. About Cynthia Hetherington, MLS, MSM, CFE, CII Cynthia Hetherington, MLS, MSM, CFE, CII, applies her expertise of library science and information systems to provide clients with strategic insight into research and complex investigations. During her career, she has assisted clients on thousands of cases with internet investigations related to employees, intellectual property and reputation management. With a specialization in the financial, pharmaceutical and telecommunications industries, her cyber investigations have recovered millions of dollars in high-profile corruption cases, assisting on the investigations of the top two Ponzi cases in United States history. As a former librarian, Ms. Hetherington entered the security profession in the 1990s when most, if not all, security role models were men. She had to learn quickly, often on her feet, that she had the same skills they possessed and, sometimes, even more finely honed skills. Her early and challenging experiences are the foundation of her deep commitment to help more women enter the IT and security industries. Ms. Hetherington shares her experiences and expertise as a keynote speaker and contributor at women-focused technology events and conferences across the U.S. She is an active member in the Women in Security Forum and collaborates with The National Center for Women and Information Technology on drawing young girls into the profession. Ms. Hetherington serves as a lecturer and mentor to CybHER.org and RocketGirls at CyberSpace Camps held at the Kennedy Space Center. In 2012, she was awarded the James Baker Speaker of the Year by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. Enterprising Women Magazine honored Ms. Hetherington with a 2019 Enterprising Woman of the Year Award and she is the recipient of the 2019 CybHER Warrior Award. About the Hetherington Group With over two decades of expertise, the Hetherington Group is a leader in investigative due diligence, corporate intelligence and cyber investigations. Headquartered in Wanaque, New Jersey, Hg's investigators and analysts track down and expose vital data on national and international investigations; train thousands of investigators in the public and private sectors annually; and share their expertise in this increasingly data-intensive, cyber-focused world through the publication of an industry newsletter and recognized investigative reference books. Hg is a certified National Women Business Owned Corporation, a certified Women's Business Enterprise, a NJ Women Business Owned Corporation and NY-NJ Port Authority Women-owned Business Enterprise. About Information Age Information Age was founded in 1995 as a print magazine. The brand launched a website in 2001 and evolved into a fully digital proposition in 2017. The Data Leadership Summit was launched in 2011, expanding into the awards event, together with the launch of the Tech Leaders Summit the following year. The Tech Leaders Awards was launched in 2017. Contact: Paul Atkinson Phone: 973.706.7525 Email: [email protected] Related Images cynthia-hetherington-finalist.jpg Cynthia Hetherington, Finalist Entrepreneur of the Year 2019 Women in IT Awards Related Links Hetherington Group Cynthia Hetherington, MLS, MSM, CFE, CII View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cynthia-hetherington-shortlisted-as-women-in-it--ny-entrepreneur-of-the-year-2019-300816294.html SOURCE Hetherington Group [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] UFile and SmartSAVER Partner to Broaden Access to Post-Secondary Funding Tax preparation software will identify families for the nonprofit organization to reach Canadian students who are eligible to receive education funding from a federal government program 3.4 million Canadian children are eligible for the Canada Learning Bond but 2.4 million have not registered for it according to the most recent federal government data. The Canada Learning Bond is a government education grant, which contributes up to $2,000 in a child's RESP to fund post-secondary education with no personal contributions required. UFile's updated Tax Saving Ideas section prompts tax filers to open a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) to access the Canada Learning Bond, if eligible, and the Canada Education Savings Grant through the use of SmartSAVER's online platform. 77% of Canadians do not think enough is done to educate children about taxes, banking, and spending. Nearly three quarters are 'proud' to pay taxes to support public services and the majority said education is the most important public service to fund with tax dollars. TORONTO, March 19, 2019 /CNW/ - UFile and SmartSAVER have partnered to broaden access to government education funding for eligible Canadian families who need support to save for post-secondary school. The tax preparation software's Tax Saving Ideas section prompts eligible tax filers to open a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) to access the Canada Learning Bond, if eligible, as well as the Canada Education Savings Grant through the use of SmartSAVER's online platform. According to Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), 3.4 million Canadian children are eligible for the Canada Learning Bond but 2.4 million have yet to receive their grant, as of December 2018. The Canada Learning Bond (CLB) is money provided by the Government of Canada and deposited into a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) for children from low-income families. No personal contribution is required in order to access the funds, which help to pay the costs of a child's full- or part-time studies after high school at apprenticeship programs, CEGEPs, trade schools, colleges, and universities. "SmartSAVER's mission to make government education funding more accessible deserves more attention than it receives," says Sylvain Fortin, marketing manager, UFile. "Income tax season is when most Canadians are reflecting on their personal financial situations and our software now prompts eligible tax filers to sign up for the Canada Learning Bond through SmartSAVER who may have otherwise not been aware." "Less than 40% of eligible children have accessed their Canada Learning Bond, with many families unaware of their eligibility because it can be difficult to confirm whether or not they fall under the income level to receive the grant," says Luke Connell, executive director, SmartSAVER. "UFile can mediate this uncertainty and provide parents with a straightforward path to take the first steps to getting access to the Canada Learning Bond and begin to think about their child's post-secondary education future. In an age where income disparity and equitable access to opportunity is a growing issue, UFile and SmartSAVER are in agreement that a powerful remedy for this is education." New research carried out for UFile by Forum Research says that 77% of Canadians do not think enough is done to educate children about personal finance matters like taxes, banking, and spending. Of the 1,019 surveyed, 73% say they are proud to pay taxes to support public services and the majority identified education as the most important public service to fund with tax dollars. However, 45% of Canadians are not confident about their financial future, a statistic that increases as education levels decrease. About SmartSAVER SmartSAVER is a non-profit community project that helps Canadian families start saving for their children's education with information on free government money and online access to get savings started. Our goal is to make it easier for families to understand and access the government money that is available for education after high school using a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP). About UFile UFile is the Canadian consumer tax program from Thomson Reuters, located in Montreal, Quebec. It is a leading provider of tax preparation products and has served the professional tax community with tax products for more than 25 years. UFile products include UFile ONLINE, UFile for Windows, UFile PRO, and UFileT2 for corporations. To register for this year's tax return, please visit www.ufile.ca and connect on Facebook and Twitter @UFile. SOURCE UFile [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Broadband Forum showcases Deutsche Telekom's vision for NETCONF/YANG standardization in future broadband networks at quarterly meeting WARSAW, Poland, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The importance of standardization within future broadband networks has been highlighted by Deutsche Telekom at Broadband Forum's Q1 Meeting as it demonstrated a NETCONF/YANG proof-of-concept for network management built on standardized APIs and data models. Enabling faster time-to-market for new services, increased efficiency and lower operating costs, this network configuration and management with service delivery aims to address existing and emerging networking challenges. These sometimes include complex and slow interfacing between different management systems and vendors' protocols, inflexibility as a result of proprietary management systems and M2M management which often lags behind features. With Deutsche Telekom now looking to expand the architecture's applicability, Demonstration Leader Mikael Abrahamsson said it must be standardized 'as much as possible' to ensure that automated networks can be built at scale. According to Abrahamsson, this will potentially allow operators to manage every aspect of their networks via a single protocol stack, enabling greater flexibility and efficiency, saving time and money. "We are fully supportive of standardized APIs and models like NETCONF/YANG as they will allow operators to configure and manage many different things," said Abrahamsson. "As we continue this work, we are working towards having standardized modules as much as possible and with open source development and cooperation between vendors and operators becoming more crucial, we believe Broadband Forum has an important role to play." Deutsche Telekom is now looking for more collaboration with other operators, Standards Defining Organizations (SDOs) and vendors. Broadband Forum's Q1 meeting, which took place on 18-21 March in Warsaw, Poland, was chosen as the platform for the debut of the proof-of-concept due to some of its parallels with Broadband Forum's ongoing work, including Open Broadband Broadband Access Abstraction (OB-BAA) and User Services Platform (USP). OB-BAA enables standardized, automated and accelerated deployment of new cloud-based access infrastructure and services, facilitating co-existence, seamless migration and the agility to adapt to an increasingly wide variety of software defined access models. Meanwhile, USP addresses interoperability in the connected home, bringing a unified, common approach to securely deploy, manage, and control network-aware consumer electronics, in the home and enterprise including: Wi-Fi, Internet of Things (IoT), gateways and more. "We were delighted to host this Deutsche Telekom demonstration at our Q1 meeting and as expected, many of our members were interested in these proposals due to its close relationship to projects like OB-BAA and USP," said Broadband Forum CEO Robin Mersh. "The more you can standardize data models and protocols, the easier it wil be for operators to address the expanding market they are working in both in terms of rising subscriber numbers and the proliferation of devices in an IoT era. Of course, that is what OB-BAA and USP are also trying to do and Deutsche Telekom's initiative aligns with this approach." Ongoing work around the connected home, 5G and Open Broadband also continued at Broadband Forum's Q1 meeting. This included progression on the next version of USP, continuing collaboration with 3GPP on Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) and developments in the Broadband QED project. "As operators look to ease and speed up new network deployments and quicken the time it takes to launch new services, this demonstration by Deutsche Telekom shows the potential of automated networks," said Geoff Burke, Broadband Forum Chief Marketing Officer. "Deutsche Telekom's approach to standardized YANG models confirms the work Broadband Forum is already doing in OB-BAA. With this in mind, Broadband Forum's latest quarterly meeting was the ideal place to showcase this innovative work and it inspired much discussion among our members." Elsewhere at the meeting, a number of industry stalwarts were also recognized for their contributions to the broadband industry at its annual awards. Tim Carey, of Nokia, received a Distinguished Fellow Award in recognition of his significant, long-standing contributions to the worldwide development and advancement of broadband. Among his most recent work is Open Broadband Broadband Access Abstraction (OB-BAA), which has just published its second code release. Two Circle of Excellence Awards were presented, with the first going to Marco Spini, of Huawei Technologies, for technical excellence, outstanding contributions to the FMC work and fruitful cooperation with 3GPP. The second was given to Ning Zong, of Huawei Technologies, recognizing technical excellence and outstanding contributions and Project Stream leadership to Cloud Central Office (CloudCO) and Open Broadband which drove forward the architectural framework and Open Broadband Labs. Finally, Outstanding Contributor Awards were presented to Ken Ko, of Adtran, Tim Spets, of Greenwave Systems, Vincent Buchoux, of LAN, Stephane Bryant, of MT2, Kota Asaka, of NTT, Herman Verbueken, of Nokia, Dean Cheng, of Huawei Technologies, Mauro Tilocca, of TIM and Kenneth Wan, of Nokia. Les Brown, of Huawei Technologies, also received a Leadership Award. To watch a video interview with Demonstration Leader Mikael Abrahamsson, visit: https://youtu.be/1mLcYgWAzRg. For more information about all of Broadband Forum's work, visit: https://www.broadband-forum.org/ About Broadband Forum Broadband Forum is the communications industry's leading organization focused on accelerating broadband innovation, standards, and ecosystem development. Our members' passion delivering on the promise of broadband by enabling smarter and faster broadband networks and a thriving broadband ecosystem. A non-profit industry organization composed of the industry's leading broadband operators, vendors, and thought leaders, our work to date has been the foundation for broadband's global proliferation and innovation. For example, the Forum's flagship TR-069 CPE WAN Management Protocol has nearly 1 billion installations worldwide. Broadband Forum working groups collaborate to define best practices for global networks, enable new revenue-generating service and content delivery, establish technology migration strategies, and engineer critical device, service & development management tools in the home and business IP networking infrastructure. We develop multi-service broadband packet networking specifications addressing architecture, device and service management, software data models, interoperability and certification in the broadband market. Our free technical reports and white papers can be found at https://www.broadband-forum.org/. Follow us on Twitter @Broadband_Forum and LinkedIn. For more information about the Broadband Forum, please go to https://www.broadband-forum.org or follow @Broadband_Forum on Twitter. For further information please contact Brian Dolby on +44 (0) 7899 914168 or [email protected] or Jayne Brooks on +44 (0) 1636 704 888 or [email protected]. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/broadband-forum-showcases-deutsche-telekoms-vision-for-netconfyang-standardization-in-future-broadband-networks-at-quarterly-meeting-300816544.html SOURCE Broadband Forum [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Zinnov's Conference, a 'Confluence' of Technologists, Thought Leaders and Influencers to Discuss how Platform-Centricity is Driving Technology, Business and People Decisions Platforms are increasingly being leveraged to accelerate market access, drive customer centricity, and de-risk outcomes while in parallel, creating a moat for businesses Zinnov's event Confluence will explore the why, the what, and the how of companies leveraging Platform Intelligence to power business acceleration in a digital platform economy Zinnov's Confluence 2019 will be hosted on the 28th March 2019 at Hyatt Regency, Santa Clara SANTA CLARA, California, March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Platforms today are open, intelligent, collaborative, and modular, enabling an easier transition from a traditional digital enterprise into a digital platform one. Yet, traditional enterprises are struggling to make the shift due to inherent challenges around talent, technology, ecosystem, and data security and management. These challenges that are limiting the pace at which enterprises are becoming platform-centric, are some of the dimensions that will be discussed at Zinnov's Confluence 2019. Technology is increasingly impacting platforms. Apart from APIs and Microservices Architecture, the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in particular, is having a profound impact on platformization. Platforms today, as a result of AI, are intuitive, intelligent, and selfhealing. AI-powered platforms are enabling businesses to give customers personalized recommendations, resulting in customer centricity and transformative customer experience. Because platforms can be deployed in modules, a complete overhaul of the existing technological infrastructure isn't necessary. In fact, Confluence 2019, in addition to AI, will also focus on how enterprises can build an extensible technology infrastructure by leveraging APIs and Microservices architecture, which can help accelerate platform-centric use cases. Speaking about this, Pari Natarajan, CEO, Zinnov said, "Platformization is now a part of every future narrative and is redefining the way businesses work. This year, at Zinnov Confluence, we will have 250+ leaders from over 100+ companies to discuss the platform play, identify the inherent challenges, and look at the key levers of talent, process, technology, and ecosystem in platformization. 25+ senior leaders and technology stalwarts will take center stage and share their perspectives and insights on platformization. Together, we aim to bring forth the platform playbooks that transformative enterprises are leveraging to create a bias towards speed, scale, and customer experience in the platform economy." For more details of the event, visit: https://confluence.zinnov.com/santa-clara About Zinnov: Founded in 2002, Zinnov is a global management and strategy consulting firm, with a presence in Silicon Valley, Houston, Bangalore, and Gurgaon. Over the past 16 years, Zinnov has built core expertise in Product Engineering and Digital Transformation by successfully consulting with over 250+ Fortune 500 customers. Zinnov assists clients by: Providing research and strategy consulting for Technology Service Providers; Enabling companies to develop and optimize a global engineering partner strategy to achieve higher throughput, innovation, and productivity; Growing revenue for companies' products and services in India and other emerging markets; Helping MNCs expand and/or consolidate their globalization footprint. Zinnov serves clients from across software, semiconductor, consumer electronics, automotive, storage, telecom & networking, healthcare, banking, financial services, and retail verticals in the US, Europe, Japan, and India. For more information, visit http://zinnov.com . Media Contact: Nitika Goel CMO, Zinnov [email protected] [email protected] +91-9845016255 https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/694742/Zinnov_Logo.jpg [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] REX Expands Service to Philadelphia, Southern New Jersey As the Spring home sales season gets going, REX, the most effective and least expensive way to buy and sell a home, is extending its service to Philadelphia and surrounding areas, including Southern New Jersey and, soon, Delaware. REX is the first licensed residential real estate brokerage to successfully circumvent the outmoded Multiple Listing Service (MLS) real estate agent model through its use of AI and big data. REX offers a fixed 2 percent commission covering both sides of the transaction - compared to the 6 percent charged by traditional realtors. The professional team at REX handles everything from listing to close, including escrow, titling, mortgages and insurance shopping. Open in New Jersey since September 2018, REX is broadening its presence beyond the New York metro area to better serve consumers who want more affordable but still cosmopolitan living within reach of New York City and Washington DC. Median home prices in the Philadelphia metropolitan area are just under $250,000 and growing by 9% annually. The average days-on-market in the area is, at 55 days during the Spring season, lower than the national average due to strong demand and limited supply. "REX saves consumers up to 70 percent of what they would pay with a traditional agent," said Jack Ryan, co-funder and CEO of REX. "Technology has transformed the way we work and live and by combining cutting-edge data science with the human touch that consumers want and expect, REX is making home transactions more affordable, convenient and transparent." With the addition of Philadelphia, REX now operates in California, Colorado, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Texas. In 2018, the company increased listings by 300 percent year-on-year, representing homes cumulatively valued at over $1 billion and in the process, saved customers over $12 million in fees they otherwise would have paid traditional brokers. For every fifty homes it sells, REX builds one new home for a family in need. To date, the company has raised $75 million from prominent private investors including Scott McNealy, co-founder and former CEO of Sun Microsystems, Dick Schulze, founder of Best Buy (News - Alert), Gordon Segal, founder of Crate and Barrel, Amit Singhal, former SVP of search at Google, Diana Nelson, chair of Carlson, Jack Greenberg, former CEO of McDonald's and Muneer Satter, chairman of Satter Investment Management. About REX REX is the first licensed residential real estate brokerage that uses AI and big data to push past the outmoded business practices of traditional realtors by providing dramatically better outcomes and experiences for both buyers and sellers at dramatically lower cost. To find out more about how REX saves consumers money and hassles in what's typically the most stressful transaction of their lives, visit rexhomes.com and follow REX on Twitter (News - Alert) @rex_change, Facebook, or Instagram. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005556/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] INVESTIGATION REMINDER: The Schall Law Firm Announces it is Investigating Claims Against Mobile TeleSystems PJSC and Encourages Investors with Losses in Excess of $100,000 to Contact the Firm The Schall Law Firm, a national shareholder rights litigation firm, announces that it is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Mobile TeleSystems (News - Alert) PJSC ("Mobile TeleSystems" or "the Company") (NYSE: MBT) for violations of 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The investigation focuses on whether the Company issued false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose information pertinent to investors. The DOJ announced on March 7, 2019, that Mobile TeleSystems and its wholly-owned subsiiary agreed to pay $850 million in penalties to resolve charges in a $420 million bribery scheme in Uzbekistan. The bribes were to facilitate the Company's entrance to the Uzbekistan market and gain various telecom assets. Based on this news, shares of Mobile TeleSystems fell more than 3% the same day. If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate. We also encourage you to contact Brian Schall, or Sherin Mahdavian, of the Schall Law Firm, 1880 Century Park East, Suite 404, Los Angeles, CA (News - Alert) 90067, at 424-303-1964, to discuss your rights free of charge. You can also reach us through the firm's website at www.schallfirm.com, or by email at [email protected]. The class in this case has not yet been certified, and until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. If you choose to take no action, you can remain an absent class member. The Schall Law Firm represents investors around the world and specializes in securities class action lawsuits and shareholder rights litigation. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and rules of ethics. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005609/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] DEINOVE passes the first milestone of the AGIR programm and receives 1.5m from Bpifrance DEINOVE passes the first milestone of the AGIR programm and receives 1.5m from Bpifrance The robotic platform for extracting and screening antibiotic activities from bacterial strains is now operational for the analysis of several hundred strains monthly; Bpifrance paid 1.5m to DEINOVE as part of the first milestone payment of the AGIR Programme. DEINOVE (Euronext Growth Paris: ALDEI), a French biotech company that uses a disruptive approach to develop innovative antibiotics and bio-based active ingredients for cosmetics and nutrition, announces that it has successfully completed the first key milestone of the AGIR program - Antibiotics against Resistant Infectious Germs - which is supported by the Investments for the Future Program. This milestone triggered the payment of 1.5m. The AGIR program aims to explore the antimicrobial potential of rare bacterial strains with the objective of identifying new antibiotic structures and developing innovative treatments to address the health challenge of increasing antimicrobial resistance. The goal for DEINOVE is to accelerate the screening of antibiotic activities of multiple strains under various conditions in order to quickly detect new antimicrobial structures. The first stage of the AGIR program led to the development of a robotic platform for extracting and screening strains. The high-tech equipment has been consolidated and the experimental protocols validated. "With our robotic platform, we now have a unique tool to explore the potential of many rare microorganisms, both from our proprietary library, our targeted collection activities, and samples provided by our research partners1. First bacterial extracts of interest have been identified and are currently being dereplicated2, in order to identify the molecule that is causing the antibiotic activity and verify its innovative character. We want to move fast because antibiotic resistance is progressing rapidly throughout the world and represents a major danger to mankind with projections on deaths amounting to 10 million from 2050 onwards3," says Georges GAUDRIAULT, Scientific Director of DEINOVE. The division Next-generation anti-infectives which is one of DEINOVE's strategic pillars was initially developed by DEINOBIOTICS, a subsidiary wholly-owned by DEINOVE. A decision was taken to merger DEINOBIOTICS into DEINOVE through a total asset transfer on November 1, 2018, after which DEINOBIOTICS was removed from the Trade and Companies Register. ABOUT THE AGIR PROGRAM TheAGIR program Antibiotics Against Resistant Infectious Germs was selected in 2017 by the Investments for the Future Program and receives from Bpifrance a financial support of 14.6m over 5 years. AGIR, a platform dedicated to the search for unprecedented antibiotic structures from rare bacterial strains The AGIR program aims to explore a wide-ranging biodiversity, mainly rare micro-organisms in order to identify and develop a portfolio of drug candidates. While the world lacks new antibiotics, research is still predominantly focused on a small number of micro-organisms of interest or on the construction by chemical synthesis of molecules derived from existing drugs. Conversely, the AGIR program is developing new methods of collection, culture, evaluation of the antibiotic potential of rare bacterial strains, and optimization of the molecules of interest. The AGIR program is run with the Charles Viollette Institute which brings its expertise in microbial and enzymatic engineering as well as identification of molecules. An ambitious collaborative project strengthened by targeted strategic partnerships to broaden the scope of research Capitalizing on its technology that allows it to automate and accelerate the analysis of large quantities of strains, DEINOVE aims to maximize the opportunities to discover new antibiotic structures by expanding its field of research beyond its own bacterial library. The Company has entered into partnerships with several companies, including bioMerieux and Naicons, with portfolios of diverse strains collected as part of their pharmaceutical activities. ABOUT DEINOVE DEINOVE is a French biotechnology company, committed to innovate in a radical way, in order to help meet the challenges of antibiotic resistance and the transition to a sustainable production model for the cosmetics and nutrition industries. DEINOVE has developed a unique and comprehensive expertise in the field of rare bacteria that it can decipher, culture, and optimize to disclose the untapped potential and induce them to produce biobased molecules with activities of interest on an industrial scale. To do so, DEINOVE has been building and documenting since its creation an unparalleled biodiversity bank that it exploits thanks to a unique technological platform in Europe. DEINOVE is organized around two areas of expertise: ANTIBIOTICS, new-generation anti-infectives : DEINOVE is preparing to enter a first antibiotic candidate into Phase II. The Company is also pursuing the systematic exploration of biodiversity to supply its portfolio with new leads, drawing notably on partnerships with Naicons and bioMerieux (AGIR program supported by Bpifrance). : DEINOVE is preparing to enter a first antibiotic candidate into Phase II. The Company is also pursuing the systematic exploration of biodiversity to supply its portfolio with new leads, drawing notably on partnerships with Naicons and bioMerieux (AGIR program supported by Bpifrance). BIOACTIVES, Active ingredients of natural origin with cosmetics as the first market and potential in nutrition and health: DEINOVE already markets a first innovative active ingredient, a second in partnership with Greentech, while two others are in development with Oleos (Hallstar Group). It also runs a program in animal nutrition with Groupe Avril. Several other partnerships are also ongoing. Within the Euromedecine science park located in Montpellier, DEINOVE employs 62 employees, mainly researchers, engineers, and technicians, and has more than 300 patent applications internationally. The Company has been listed on EURONEXT GROWTH since April 2010. CONTACTS Investors Coralie Martin Communication, Marketing and Investor Relations Ph.: +33 (0)4 48 19 01 60 [email protected] Media ALIZE RP Aurore Gangloff / Catherine Megelas Ph.: +33 (0)1 44 54 36 66 [email protected] 1 DEINOVE has initiated research collaborations with the Italian biotech company Naicons and the diagnostic specialist bioMerieux, which provide the Company with a range of diverse strains. Other partnerships of this nature are under discussion. 2 Analytical process of an active mixture to discard known substances 3 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-30416844 Attachment PR in English [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] KBRA Releases Report Assigning AA- Rating with a Negative Outlook to the State of Connecticut GO Bonds and Taxable GO Bonds (2019 Series A) On March 18, 2019, Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) assigned a long-term rating of AA- with a Negative Outlook to the State of Connecticut General Obligation Bonds (2019 Series A) and Taxable General Obligation Bonds (2019 Series A). Additionally, KBRA affirmed the long-term rating of AA- and Negative Outlook on the State's outstanding general obligation bonds as well as the long-term rating of AA- and Negative Outlook on the State of Connecticut General Fund Obligation Bonds 2014 Series A issued by Connecticut Innovations, Incorporated. Issuer: State of Connecticut Assigned Rating Outlook General Obligation Bonds (2019 Series A) AA- Negative Taxable General Obligation Bonds (2019 Series A) AA- Negative Affirmed Rating Outlook General Obligation Bonds AA- Negative Issuer: Connecticut Innovations, Incorporated Affirmed Rating Outlook State of Connecticut General Fund Obligation Bonds 2014 Series A AA- Negative The rating actions are based on KBRA's U.S. State General Obligation Rating Methodology and an assessment to the following rating determinants identified therein: Management Structure, Budgeting Practices and Policies Debt and Additional Continuing Obligations Financial Performance and Liquidity Position State Resource Base To access the report, click here. CONNECT WITH KBRA Twitter LinkedIn Download the iOS App YouTube About KBRA and KBRA Europe KBRA is a full service credit rating agency registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as an NRSRO. In addition, KBRA is designated as a designated rating organization by the Ontario Securities Commission for issuers of asset-backed securities to file a short form prospectus or shelf prospectus, is recognized by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners as a Credit Rating Provider, and is a certified Credit Rating Agency (CRA) by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). Kroll Bond Rating Agency Europe Limited is registered with ESMA as a CRA. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005631/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Domtar Corporation Employees Read to Students at Wasson Elementary School and Donate Books Domtar Corporation (NYSE: UFS) (TSX: UFS) announced that employee volunteers from the company's converting facility in DuBois, PA visited Wasson Elementary School and read to students to commemorate the company's donation of 225 books to the school. The employees read to Second Grade students and handed out activity bags filled with bookmarks and coloring books. Each student received a brand new book to take home, and the remaining books were given to the school library. Domtar makes a wide variety of every day products from sustainable wood fiber, and it is one of the world's largest producers of uncoated freesheet papers, as well as a complete line of absorbent hygiene solutions. The company's DuBois converting facility employs 80 people in the local community. "Domtar treasures the wonderful relationship that we've developed with the students and faculty of Wasson Elementary school, and we are especially honored to be able to make a difference in children's lives," said Domtar Corporate Responsibility Manager, Heather Alverson Stowe. "Literacy is one of Domtar's core corporate giving pillars, which is why it's so important for us to foster a love of reading and to help put books in the hands of children in our local communities." Domtar's book donation was made possible through the company's partnership with First Book, a nonprofit social enterprise that provides books to children in need. As part of its Powerful Pages campaign, Domtar has partnered with First Book since 2012 to provide more than half a million dollars in grants to schools and programs in towns that are home to Domtar facilities. Domtar's grants provide funding to educators to purchase books through the First Book Marketplace, a website available exclusively to First Book programs. About Domtar Domtar is a leading provider of a wide variety of fiber-based products including communication, specialty and packaging papers, market pulp and absorbent hygiene products. With approximately 10,000 employees serving more than 50 countries around the world, Domtar is driven by a commitment to turn sustainable wood fiber into useful products that people rely on every day. Domtar's annual sales are approximately $5.5 billion, and its common stock is traded on the New York and Toronto Stock Exchanges. Domtar's principal executive office is in Fort Mill, South Carolina. To learn more, visit www.domtar.com. About First Book First Book is a nonprofit social enterprise that has distributed more than 100 million books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income families throughout the United States and Canada. By making new, high-quality books available on an ongoing basis, First Book is transforming the lives of children in need and elevating the quality of education. For more information, please visit us online or follow our latest news on Facebook and Twitter. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005643/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Monaco, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Eight year fixed-term charter to new customer Endesa for existing uncommitted newbuild vessel, the GasLog Warsaw 1 , commencing in May 2021 , commencing in May 2021 Latest generation vessel will be available for charter to other customers during a period of expected strong LNG carrier demand prior to commencement of term charter to Endesa Combination of initial spot exposure and fixed-term charter to Endesa expected to generate attractive returns for GasLog shareholders GasLog Ltd. ("GasLog") (NYSE:GLOG) is pleased to announce the signing of a new long-term charter party agreement with a wholly owned subsidiary of Endesa, S.A. (Endesa) for its existing uncommitted newbuild vessel, the GasLog Warsaw. GasLog is scheduled to take delivery of the 180,000 cubic meter Mark III Flex Plus vessel with low pressure two stroke propulsion (LP-2S) from Samsung Heavy Industries in July 2019. The eight year fixed-term charter to Endesa will commence in May 2021. Paul Wogan, Chief Executive Officer of GasLog, stated We are delighted to charter this vessel to Endesa, a leading European utility and very high-quality counterparty. This charter expands our customer base and we look forward to further developing our relationship with Endesa. Before commencing its long-term charter to Endesa in May 2021, the vessel will be available during a period when we expect the spot market to be strong, especially during the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 winters. The combination of the vessels size, highly efficient LP-2S propulsion and industry-leading low natural boil-off rate of 0.07% all combine to produce an extremely competitive transportation cost that should make it particularly attractive to potential charterers. Combined with the recent delivery of the GasLog Gladstone2, which immediately commenced its 10-year charter to a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell Plc., it has been a very successful start to the year for GasLog. Since our April 2018 Investor Day, we have ordered or chartered six newbuild vessels on long-term contracts with three high quality counterparties, further strengthening our confidence in delivering the target we announced that day to more than double consolidated run-rate EBITDA by 2022. Jose Bogas, Chief Executive Officer of Endesa stated Contracting the GasLog Warsaw on long-term charter represents another important step in delivering a flexible and competitive LNG carrier solution to service our contracted LNG volumes over the next 20 years. We are pleased to partner with GasLog and look forward to developing this relationship further. The GasLog Warsaw is scheduled to deliver to Endesa in May 2021 for a fixed eight-year term, with two optional periods of six years each. The rate of hire for the charter is in line with mid-cycle rates. GasLog expects that the combination of the vessels near-term earnings in the spot market and the earnings from the Endesa time charter will deliver attractive returns for its shareholders. Following the commencement of the eight-year charter to Endesa, GasLog Partners LP ("GasLog Partners", NYSE:GLOP) will have the right to acquire the GasLog Warsaw pursuant to the omnibus agreement between GasLog and GasLog Partners. As a result, GasLog Partners potential dropdown pipeline will increase to 12 LNG carriers with charter length of five years or longer. 1 Previously HN 2212 2 Previously HN 2131 About GasLog GasLog is an international owner, operator and manager of LNG carriers providing support to international energy companies as part of their LNG logistics chain. GasLog's consolidated owned fleet consists of 34 LNG carriers (including 26 ships on the water and eight on order). GasLog also has an additional LNG carrier which was sold to a subsidiary of Mitsui Co., Ltd. and leased back under a long-term bareboat charter. Upon closing of the sale of the GasLog Glasgow, GasLog's consolidated fleet will include 15 LNG carriers in operation owned by GasLog's subsidiary, GasLog Partners. GasLog's principal executive offices are at Gildo Pastor Center, 7 Rue du Gabian, MC 98000, Monaco. Visit GasLog's website at http://www.gaslogltd.com About Endesa Endesa is an energy and utility company, present in both power and gas markets. The company is the second largest gas marketer in Spain with a market share in 2018 of 16.3%. Endesas gas sales in 2018 reached 103 Terawatt hours (TWh), a 2% increase from 2017, of which 75 TWh was sold to the retail market, 12 TWh to wholesale markets and 16 TWh to Combined Cycle Gas Turbine power plants for power production. Endesas total customers increased by 3% in 2018, reaching 1,604,000. Contacts: Alastair Maxwell Chief Financial Officer Phone: +44-203-388-3105 Phil Corbett Head of Investor Relations Phone: +44-203-388-3116 Joseph Nelson Deputy Head of Investor Relations Phone: +1 212-223-0643 [March 21, 2019] Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP Alerts Investors to Securities Class Action Against Mobile Telesystems PJSC Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP ("Scott+Scott"), a national shareholder and consumer rights litigation firm, is notifying investors that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Mobile TeleSystems (News - Alert) PJSC ("Mobile TeleSystems" or the "Company") (NYSE:MBT) and other defendants, related to alleged violations of federal securities laws. If you purchased Mobile TeleSystems securities between March 19, 2014 through March 7, 2019, you are encouraged to contact a Scott+Scott attorney at (844) 818-6982 for more information. The lawsuit alleges defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose information to investors, specifically: (1) Mobile TeleSystems and its subsidiary were involved in a scheme to pay $420 million in bribes in Uzbekistan; (2) consequently, Mobile TeleSystems knew or should have known it would be forced to pay substantal fines to the U.S. government; (3) Mobile TeleSystems' level of cooperation with the U.S. government and remediation was lacking; and (4) due to the aforementioned misconduct, Mobile TeleSystems would be forced to pay approximately $850 million in criminal penalties to the U.S. government. On November 20, 2018, Mobile TeleSystems disclosed that it had reserved approximately $840 million USD (RUB 55.8 bln) as the potential liability concerning investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice ("DOJ") into its former operations in Uzbekistan. On this news, shares of Mobile TeleSystems fell $0.64 per share, nearly 8%, to close at $7.45 per share on November 20, 2018. Then, on March 7, 2019, the DOJ reported that Mobile TeleSystems and its subsidiary entered into an agreement to pay $850 million in penalties to the United States to resolve charges arising from its role in a scheme to pay $420 million in bribes in Uzbekistan. On this news, shares of Mobile TeleSystems fell $0.24 per share, over 3%, to close at $7.54 per share on March 7, 2019. What You Can Do If you purchased Mobile TeleSystems securities between March 19, 2014 through March 7, 2019, inclusive, or if you have questions about this notice or your legal rights, please contact attorney Joe Pettigrew at (844) 818-6982, or at [email protected]. The lead plaintiff deadline is May 20, 2019. About Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP Scott+Scott has significant experience in prosecuting major securities, antitrust, and employee retirement plan actions throughout the United States. The firm represents pension funds, foundations, individuals, and other entities worldwide with offices in New York, London, Connecticut, California, and Ohio. Attorney Advertising View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005656/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Top K12 ERP Solution Provider Grows as New School Boards Join the Sparkrock Community Today, software company Sparkrock announced new K12 customers, Keewatin Patricia School Board, Halton District School Board and Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board. Sparkrock has been actively supporting and implementing Sparkrock ERP since 2004 with more than 21 school board customers today. Sparkrock provides finance, HR, payroll and scheduling solutions to nonprofits, K12 educators, health and human services, and other social benefit organizations. It is the #1 solution for Ontario school boards. "It's an era of effective collaboration today for Ontario school boards. Ontario school boards aspire for efficiency and collaboration across their operations including finance, human resources and payroll. Shifting their work from clerical to analytical is necessary for sustainability. We are thrilled to be enabling this movement," says Nicola Dickinson, Sparkrock co-founder and VP of Sales and Customer Success. "The benefits to the school boards will be seen far beyond the back office to truly impact their teachers, students, and support staff." These boards are currently implementing Sparkrock's integrated ERP solutions which will replace multipl legacy solutions and shadow spreadsheets that the organizations are currently using to meet their finance and HR requirements. The Sparkrock implementation will enable the boards to operate more efficiently and effectively, to better serve their staff and students. Together these school districts serve more than 100,000 students and almost 200 schools. Halton District School Board is based in Burlington, Ontario and oversees 93 schools serving more than 64,000 students and more than 6000 staff. Keewatin Patricia School Board encompasses 24 schools, 18 elementary and six high schools and is based in Kenora, Ontario. With more than 32,000 students across 86 schools, Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board is headquartered in Peterborough, Ontario. "Sparkrock's strong existing K12 client base gave us trust in their solution and from our first discussion their understanding of the sector and experience with other school boards gave us confidence in the process and support they offered," says Chris Arnew, CPA, CGA, Superintendent of Business and Treasurer of Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board. "The built-in Ministry reporting is going to be a big advantage for our team and I'm excited to see what we're able to achieve with these new tools." About Sparkrock Sparkrock is a Microsoft (News - Alert) Gold Partner that has been dedicated to serving non-profits in Canada and the US since 2003. It was started to help bridge the technology gap between nonprofits and commercial enterprises and now helps over 30,000 nonprofit, K12, and human services users run their organizations and improve the quality of life for the people, families and communities they serve. By understanding what makes these organizations unique, our purpose-built ERP and CRM solutions and certified implementation consultants help reduce complexity and enable our customers to operate more predictably, effectively, and affordably. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005695/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Employers Holdings, Inc. Appoints John M. de Figueiredo to Board of Directors Employers Holdings, Inc., (NYSE:EIG) today announced the appointment of John M. de Figueiredo to the Board of Directors, effective April 1, 2019. "We are very excited to welcome John de Figueiredo to the Employers Holdings, Inc. Board," said Douglas D. Dirks, President and Chief Executive Officer of Employers Holdings, Inc. "John brings a wealth of knowledge, research, and expertise in areas of competitive strategy, disruptive and incremental innovation, strategy implementation and organizational change, data analytics, and corporate regulatory and political strategy. We will benefit greatly from John's insights and look forward to his contributions to our Board." Joao (John) de Figueiredo is currently the Russell M. Robinson II Professor of Law, Strategy, and Economics at the Duke University Law School and Fuqua School of Business. Prior to joining Duke, Dr. de Figueiredo held faculty positions at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, UCLA Law School, and MIT (News - Alert) Sloan School of Management. He has also served as a strategic management consultant at Monitor Company. His research specializes in business and innovation strategies in egulated industries. His scholarly articles, papers, and reviews on strategy, innovation, economics, and business-government interactions have appeared in numerous scholarly and management journals in a variety of disciplines. Dr. de Figueiredo received a Ph.D. in Business and Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.Sc. degree in Economics from the London School of Economics, and an A.B. degree from Harvard University, and he has been a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research since 2007. About Employers Holdings, Inc. Employers Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:EIG) is a holding company with subsidiaries that are specialty providers of workers' compensation insurance and services focused on select small businesses engaged in low-to-medium hazard industries. The company, through its subsidiaries, operates in 45 states and the District of Columbia. Insurance is offered by Employers Insurance Company of Nevada, Employers Compensation Insurance Company, Employers Preferred Insurance Company, and Employers Assurance Company, all rated A- (Excellent) by A.M. Best Company. Additional information can be found at: www.employers.com. Copyright 2019 EMPLOYERS. All rights reserved. EMPLOYERS and America's small business insurance specialist are registered trademarks of Employers Insurance Company of Nevada. Insurance is offered through Employers Compensation Insurance Company, Employers Insurance Company of Nevada, Employers Preferred Insurance Company, Employers Assurance Company. Not all insurers do business in all jurisdictions. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190321005684/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2019] Sikorsky-Boeing SB>1 DEFIANT Helicopter Achieves First Flight WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., March 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Sikorsky-Boeing SB>1 DEFIANT helicopter achieved first flight today at Sikorsky's West Palm Beach, Florida site. This revolutionary aircraft, developed by Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin Company (NYSE: LMT), and Boeing (NYSE: BA), will help inform the next generation of military helicopters as part of the U.S. Army's Future Vertical Lift program. View the video. "DEFIANT is designed to fly at nearly twice the speed and has twice the range of conventional helicopters while retaining the very best, if not better low-speed and hover performance of conventional helicopters," said Dan Spoor, vice president, Sikorsky Future Vertical Lift. "This design provides for exceptional performance in the objective area, where potential enemy activity places a premium on maneuverability, survivability and flexibility. We are thrilled with the results of today's flight and look forward to an exciting flight test program." With its two coaxial main rotors and rear-mounted pusher propulsor, DEFIANT is unlike production rotorcraft available today. It represents a leap forward in technology to achieve the U.S. government's desire for vast increases in speed and range, while improving maneuverability and survivability in a cost-efective way. DEFIANT aircraft's use of X2 Technology will allow the Army to penetrate from strategic standoff and exploit gaps created in complex Anti-Access Area Denial systems against near-peer adversaries. "The design and development of DEFIANT has revealed the capability advancement that is truly possible for Future Vertical Lift," said David Koopersmith, vice president and general manager, Boeing Vertical Lift. "Clearly, the performance, speed, and agility of DEFIANT will be a game changer on the battlefield and we look forward to demonstrating for the U.S. Army the tremendous capabilities of this aircraft." The helicopter is participating in the Army's Joint Multi-Role-Medium Technology Demonstrator program. Data from DEFIANT will help the Army develop requirements for new utility helicopters expected to enter service in the early 2030s. This flight marks a key milestone for the Sikorsky-Boeing team, and is the culmination of significant design, simulation and test activity to further demonstrate the capability of the X2 Technology. X2 Technology is scalable to a variety of military missions such as attack and assault, long-range transportation, infiltration and resupply. DEFIANT is the third X2 aircraft in less than 10 years. For more information, visit www.lockheedmartin.com/defiant and www.boeing.com/defense/future-vertical-lift/. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 105,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. About Boeing For more information on Boeing Defense, Space & Security, visit www.boeing.com. Follow us on Twitter: @BoeingDefense and @BoeingSpace. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sikorsky-boeing-sb1-defiant-helicopter-achieves-first-flight-300816781.html SOURCE Lockheed Martin [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] (Image credit: Shutterstock) Samsung has been revealing new memory products at a steady pace over the last few months. It added one more to the list with today's announcement that it's made what it claims is the industry's first third-generation, 10nm-class (1z-nm) 8Gb DDR4 DRAM. For background, 10nm-class represents 10-19nm. Here's why that matters: Samsung wants to prepare for "an accelerated global IT transition to next-generation DRAM interfaces, such as DDR5, LPDDR5 and GDDR6." 1z-nm is said to enable that by offering an increase to manufacturing productivity over the previous generation of 10nm-class 8Gb DDR4 of more than 20 percent. The company plans to start mass producing 1z-nm 8Gb DDR4 memory by the later half of 2019 "to accommodate next-generation enterprise servers and high-end PCs expected to be launched in 2020." Samsung will also increase production at its Pyeongtaek, South Korea site to "meet the rising demand for state-of-the-art DRAM products." It's not clear where exactly that demand is supposed to come from. DRAMeXchange reported earlier this month that DRAM prices dropped nearly 30 percent over the current quarter--the "sharpest decline in a single season since 2011"--and that it expected such drops to continue until memory companies worked through their oversupply. DRAMeXchange had also said that Samsung would open a second fab in Pyeongtaek, though, so the company's announcement that it would "increase the portion of its main memory production" at the site doesn't come as a complete shock. Even though the company had previously said it would slow production to keep prices stable. Samsung said that it's working with "a CPU manufacturer" to validate 8GB DDR4 modules using 1z-nm DRAM. Once that's done, it will be "actively collaborating with global customers to deliver an array of upcoming memory solutions." It also plans to expand 1z-nm with higher capacities and better performance in the future. This announcement comes after Samsung showed off its first DDR5 product in February, announced that it's mass producing its first embedded magnetic random access memory (eMRAM) product in March and revealed its new Flashbolt High Bandwidh Memory (HBM) at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) on March 20. FREDERICTON, New Brunswick, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Teledyne CARIS is pleased to announce they will be delivering a full software solution to the South African Navy Hydrographic Office. The solution, provided through Teledyne CARIS official distributor Unique Group , includes software that will be implemented as part of a larger project to be executed by Southern African Shipyards (SAS) where a new hydrographic survey vessel is being built. Three additional survey motor boats are also slated for manufacture, all of which will be equipped with HIPS and SIPS to process acquired hydrographic data. During the project, the shore based South African Navy Hydrographic Office will be refurbished and Bathy DataBASE (BDB) and Hydrographic Production Database (HPD) will be implemented to manage hydrographic data and produce nautical products like paper charts, ENCs and other digital products. The implementation phase is set to commence shortly, and will begin with the installation of the software and a number of training sessions. Charles de Jongh, Account Manager at Teledyne CARIS, commented: We are pleased to deliver an integrated software solution to manage the hydrographic and charting information at the South African Navy. For us, this is an important new client on the African continent and we very much look forward to building a strong, long-term relationship. Teledyne CARIS is part of the Teledyne Imaging group. For 40 years, Teledyne CARIS has been the leading developer of marine mapping software. We offer a highly effective solution for near real-time processing, robust quality control of sonar data, and the creation and distribution of maps, charts, and digital datasets. Teledyne Imaging is a group of leading-edge companies aligned under the Teledyne umbrella. Teledyne Imaging forms an unrivalled collective of expertise across the spectrum with decades of experience. Individually, each company offers best-in-class solutions. Together, they combine and leverage each others strengths to provide the deepest, widest imaging and related technology portfolio in the world. From aerospace through industrial inspection, radiography and radiotherapy, geospatial surveying, and advanced MEMS and semiconductor solutions, Teledyne Imaging offers world-wide customer support and the technical expertise to handle the toughest tasks. Their tools, technologies, and vision solutions are built to deliver to their customers a unique and competitive advantage. For more information, contact: (Image credit: UL Benchmarks) UL Benchmarks is showing off the power of Google's game streaming platform, Stadia, at GDC 2019 with a real-time tech demo. You probably guessed from its name that UL Benchmarks focuses on developing--wait for it--benchmarks. The company offers a variety of tests meant to put everything from smartphones and tablets to laptops and desktops through their paces. It's often quick to adopt new tech, which is why it's already made a demo for Stadia. Here's a video of the demo as it's being presented at GDC 2019: UL Benchmarks explained in its announcement: "In our demo, one GPU handles most of the traditional geometry rendering. Additional GPUs are called in as needed to enhance the scene with dynamic fluid simulations and complex particle effects." Stadia makes such multi-GPU setups available to everyone via Google's cloud platform. This is part of the appeal of cloud-based platforms like Stadia. While they have their own challenges, foremost among them being the added latency present even with decent internet connections, they also give people access to powerful hardware they'd never use otherwise. (Which is exactly why cloud services became popular.) UL Benchmarks said it's been working on this demo with Google "for the last few months." It'll be interesting to see how the company approaches a benchmark for Stadia and similar platforms once they've actually, you know, launched. In the meantime, maybe this demo will convince game developers to give the services a shot. UMKC fraternity provides positive experience for LGBTQ+ men On college campuses across America, Greek life has cultivated a reputation and culture of its own. But for UMKC's newest fraternity, breaking into this world poses unique challenges. Members of the LGBTQ+ community have long existed within the margins of society, and Greek culture on college campuses is certainly no exception to this. According to many critics, for far too long the "Greek" system on the city college campus was the last vestige of old school patriarchy. Now, a new option offers not only diversity but a "safe space" for LGBT dudes who want to experience fraternity life among people who identify similarly.TKC never joined a frat but this actually seems like a nice idea and possibly a way to challenge the allegedperception of binge drinking and date rape that usually encumbers college campus party people associations . . . For what it's worth, it's very hard to TKC to distinguish betwixt the branding of any frat given that I don't like hanging around a bunch of dudes in the first place . . . And even the "classic" tenants of fraternities always seemed a bit homoerotic And so, before haters get too carried away . . . Here's a look at nothing more controversial than some college guys who wanted to start their own club. Checkit: JoCo Catholic school ban on child with gay parents was wrong | The Kansas City Star Archbishop Joseph Naumann has written a defense of the decision to bar a kindergartner from St. Ann Catholic school in Prairie Village because the child's parents are gay. The decision lacks compassion. He's the last old school pundit still standing at this dead-tree media institution and today he offered his op/ed on last weeks' news whilst calling out cafeteria theology of St. Ann administration and supporters. Read more: File this one underas Golden Ghetto & KCMO adopt road side behavior so that they can enforce conformity under the guise of nanny state safety precautions which will soon require a helmet for everybody who dares to step outside of their house. Read more: TV news covers more social media beef and mostly complaints from online trolls looking for a way to make somebody else's life miserable. Take a look at the controversy that's easily solved by a trip to another restaurant. Read more: Kansas City Netlix Journalism 'Queer Eye' fever takes over Kansas City KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Kansas City's star role in the third season of the popular Netflix series "Queer Eye" has topped the charts. In this week's edition of the , hosts Taylor Hemness and Lindsay Shively begin with a quick update on flooding along the Missouri River in northwest Missouri. KC TV Guide KSMO-TV to install new antenna; some may see disruption in service FAIRWAY, KS (KCTV) -- KCTV5 News and KSMO-TV engineers are in the process of replacing the antenna that services the KSMO viewing audience. This change is underway, so the station can begin broadcasting on its newly assigned frequency, mandated by the Federal Communication Commission. Sign Of The Times: Vaporware Debuts At Nearly Empty Golden Ghetto Office Park Soon To Be Selling Out Sprint Opens New 5G Experience in Kansas City Headquarters Sprint has opened the Sprint 5G Experience, a dedicated immersive center designed to showcase and explain how 5G works and to help change the way people live, work, and play. The company held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its headquarters to unveil the space ahead of its 5G commercial service launch expected to begin in Kansas City and other markets in May. Kansas City Comfort Food Operation BBQ Relief on way to flood-impacted areas in Nebraska, Illinois A Kansas City charity - Operation BBQ Relief - is heading to Nebraska and Illinois to provide warm meals in the aftermath of historic flooding."We are headed to Nebraska to start feeding a few hundred people in shelters north of Omaha," Operation BBQ Relief said on Instagram. "This is a level one deployment. Spicy Journalism Minsky's teaming up with Joe's KC for gourmet pizza SOURCE: Minsky's Minsky's Pizza announced on social media Wednesday that it is teaming up with Joe's Kansas City Bar-B-Que for a distinctly Kansas City pizza.The new gourmet pizza will feature pulled pork from Joe's KC and will be offered for a limited time, according to the Kansas City Star.More details are expected to be released soon. Kansas City Fashionista Profile Kansas City Fashion Week 2019 Preview: Meet Designer Duane Topping - In Kansas City Listen up, style mavens! Kansas City Fashion Week 2019 is less than a week away. To get you geared up for the metro's fashion extravaganza, we're introducing you to one of the designers you'll see unveiled on the runway. Meet Duane Topping-a retired veteran who found peace in the creative process of haute couture. Foodie Drop For Tonight Ragazza has reopened: Laura Norris on the much-loved midtown Italian kitchen and wine bar April Fleming It's been a long six months for Laura Norris. The original plan was to seamlessly transition her beloved Westport Italian restaurant, Ragazza, into a bigger space at 43rd and Main, without ever really closing for business. Due to a variety of construction issues with the new location, though, that didn't happen, and since last fall, we've had no Ragazza. Lots of news to check this evening but first a glimpse at a rising star power player hottie who is making a culture shift work for her . . .Closer to home, here are the news links worth checking for late night readers . . .And this is thefor right now . . . Kansas City Contracting For Old School Airport Terminal Destruction Edgemoor announces local contractors for KCI terminal demolition - Kansas City Business Journal The team behind the $1.5 billion single-terminal project has selected subcontractors for the early work on the project. Nine of the 10 are local minority- or women-owned businesses and 55 percent of the contract dollars on this portion of work will go to those nine businesses. Watching Waters Rise Near KCMO Congressman Cleaver tours flooded farms east of Kansas City ORRICK, Mo. - It's a scene now common across Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri: Farm lands have turned into what looks like rivers. On Wednesday, Tom Waters, chairman of the Missouri Levee and Drainage District Association, gave a tour to U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D - Missouri) of flooded farm lands near Orrick, Missouri, east of Kansas City. Show-Me The Future Looking To 2030, Gov. Parson And Tech Leaders Aim To Put Missouri On Top Gov. Mike Parson set the bar high for the technology sector in the state during the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry 2030 Technology Conference on Wednesday. According to the Missouri Chamber Foundation's Technology 2030 report, technology is one of the greatest areas of opportunity for the state and is growing in a way that opens the door for Missouri to be recognized as a leader. Rock Chalk Tax Talk Gov. Kelly says tax cuts 'would be a U-turn' for Kansas TOPEKA, Kas. - Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said Wednesday that a proposed tax relief bill would be a U-turn for Kansas, leading the state in the wrong direction as it continues to work to recover from financial issues. Tax cuts under former Gov. Sam Brownback left the state cash-strapped. Here's How To Help Flood Vicitms Salvation Army seeks donations to help with flooding relief The Salvation Army is asking for donations to help flooded communities asking for supplies.Since Monday, the organization has collected 200 cases of donated bottled water, which has been delivered to communities up north."We have currently provided assistance to date for 100 individuals. KCK Mexican Cuisine Tour Where to eat on Central Avenue, quite possibly the most exciting culinary thoroughfare in the metro Chase Castor Cruise down the seventeen or so blocks that make up Central Avenue, near downtown Kansas City, and you'll see what can happen when an immigrant community finds a welcoming home. This commercial stretch is largely free from the dull and oppressive hand of corporate influence. Kansas City Living In The Past Royals are brimming with optimism despite 100 losses last season KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Few teams coming off 100-loss seasons head to spring training full of confidence. The Kansas City Royals are an exception. Fresh off a strong finish to 2018, and after a quiet offseason for the first time in years, the Royals believe they are poised to take another step toward contention. One of our favorite old school hotties inspires a #TBT glimpse at girl power among mature ladies. Take a peek:Closer to home, we're giving these local news links a look for right now . . .is the #TBT song of the day and this is thefor right now . . . How Internet Shopping Is Helping Kansas City Pay For More Cops As Kansas City council members get ready to approve a new budget, the city finds itself with a couple of million dollars more than expected. City budget officer Scott Huizenga told the Finance and Governance Committee Wednesday that the city has about $2.5 million extra coming in this fiscal year. This legacy media hype report argues as much in a neat profile that doesn't really offer much info about more hiring. Read more: Kikagati hydropower project in western Uganda has received US US$27million funding from the Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund (EAIF), according to the developer, Kikagati Power Company Limited (KPCL) which runs the ongoing 16MW run-of-the-river hydro electricity generating station project. The hydro power project consist of an 8.5m-high dam of 300m in length, creating a 4,000 square meters (0.99 acres) reservoir lake. The plant will also have three turbines of 5.5MW each and associated earthworks, control plant rooms and allied infrastructure connecting the plant to switch yards in Uganda and Tanzania. Initially, the Chinese company China Shan Sheng, was issued the construction license for the project in 2008. At that time, construction costs of the entire project were estimated at US $25m. In 2013 the Chinese opted out of the deal and development rights were taken up by TronderEnergi, a Norwegian power company, with a Ugandan Subsidiary Stories Continues after ad In July 2013, TronderEnergi advertised for suitable firms to bid on the construction of Kikagati Power Station and SBI International AG turned out as the best bidder and was awarded the construction contract with a new cost of US $50m. The contractor started work on the site in February 2018, with commissioning date planned for the first half of 2021. 100 per cent of the energy generated will be bought by the Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited (UETCL). A 33kV transmission line that will connect the power from the station to the Uganda national electricity grid has already been constructed. Under arrangements made through the East African Community UETCL will sell half the energy on to Tanzania. The Kikagati hydro power station will strengthen the economic development foundations of Uganda and Tanzania and provide good jobs in construction and operation. Approximately 250 people are involved in construction work and around 10 permanent staff will run the plant once operational, said Emilio Cattaneo, EAIF Executive Director. SEATTLE, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- CFN Media Group (CFN Media), the leading agency and financial media network dedicated to the North American cannabis industry announces publication of an article featuring Aleafia Health Inc. (TSX: ALEF) (OTC: ALEAF) (FRA: ARAH). The company recently announced the completion of its merger with Emblem Corp. Under the terms of the agreement, Aleafia Health acquired all of Emblems common shares and formed a new wholly-owned subsidiary that will keep the name Emblem name. The completion of the merger marks a key milestone for both companies as they work to build long-term shareholder value. In this article, we will take a closer look at the implications of the merger and why investors may want to take a closer look at Aleafia Health following the transaction. Click Here to Download Aleafia Health Inc.s Investor Presentation Creating a New Leader Aleafia Healths merger with Emblem creates Canadas largest medical cannabis clinic with more than 60,000 patients with access to unique cannabis oils, capsules and sprays. In addition, the companys three dedicated cultivation facilities provide an ample cannabis supply to provinces, retailers and export markets. These operations are already generating significant revenue under the largest LP-to-LP supply agreement in the industry. The acquisition of Emblem rapidly accelerates the execution of Aleafia Healths strategy and positioning as a vertically-integrated, diversified cannabis company with an integrated, highly differentiated consumer ecosystem, says Aleafia Health CEO Geoffrey Benic . Emblems product leadership in the medical and adult-use sectors and highly coveted supply agreements will perfectly complement our cannabis production and clinic operations. During the third quarter of 2018, Emblems revenue grew 281 percent to $2.3 million with an industry-leading $10.67 of revenue per gram equivalent. The company also reported a 20 percent quarter-over-quarter increase in its patient population to over 4,800 active patients. On the product side, the company launched an innovative oral dose-metered spray, Atmosphere, and its first adult-use cannabis brand, Symbl. Numerous Catalysts Ahead Aleafia Health has been making tremendous progress on its own initiatives apart from the Emblem merger. During the third quarter of 2018, the company indicated that the fully-funded retrofitting of its 160,000 sq. ft. Niagara greenhouse facility and outdoor expansion was on schedule. Management anticipates that these efforts will result in an annual production capacity of 98,000 kilograms, making it one of the larger licensed producers in Canada. In addition to improving production capacity, the company continues to invest in patient education as a key differentiator. The company has developed and implemented a proprietary training program for all of its staff to help those with chronic medical conditions that have failed first, second, and often, third line approaches. The training program extends to both internal and partner clinics to service a maximum amount of patients. The company also continues to make waves in the medical cannabis research space. With more than 60,000 patients, the company has amassed one of the largest medical cannabis datasets in the world, enabling researchers to validate cannabis sciences, product teams to develop innovative new products, and management to build a strong IP portfolio. In the third quarter, this division contributed $612,000 to revenue. Click Here to Download Aleafia Health Inc.s Investor Presentation Looking Ahead Aleafia Health Inc. (TSX: ALEF) (OTC: ALEAF) (FRA: ARAH) is well positioned within Canadas nascent cannabis industry following its merger with Emblem. With robust patient growth, high margin products, and growing revenue, investors may want to take a closer look at the combined company ahead of several potential catalysts. For more information, visit the companys website at www.aleafiahealth.com . Please follow the link to watch the full interview: https://www.cannabisfn.com/aleafia-health-emblem-merger-creates-a-new-cannabis-leader/ About CFN Media CFN Media (CannabisFN) is the leading creative agency and media network dedicated to legal cannabis. We help marijuana businesses attract investors, customers (B2B, B2C), capital, and media visibility. Private and public marijuana companies and brands in the US and Canada rely on CFN Media to grow and succeed. Learn how to become a CFN Media client company, brand or entrepreneur: http://www.cannabisfn.com/featuredcompany Download the CFN Media iOS mobile app to access the world of cannabis from the palm of your hand: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cannabisfn/id988009247?ls=1&mt=8 Or visit our homepage and enter your mobile number under the Apple App Store logo to receive a download link text on your iPhone: http://www.cannabisfn.com Disclaimer CannabisFN.com is not an independent financial investment advisor or broker-dealer. You should always consult with your own independent legal, tax, and/or investment professionals before making any investment decisions. The information provided on http://www.cannabisfn.com (the Site) is either original financial news or paid advertisements drafted by our in-house team or provided by an affiliate. 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Please follow the link below to view our full disclosure outlining our compensation: http://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/ Frank Lane 206-369-7050 Flane@cannabisfn.com With a warming climate, the remains of unlucky mountaineers are beginning to rise from the ice. Like a scene straight from a horror film, in 2017 the hand of a dead mountaineer emerged from the ground at Mount Everest's camp one. Because along with hundreds of thousands of pounds of empty beer bottles, food cans, torn tents, and empty oxygen bottles ditched by climbers, there's something else that gets left behind: The bodies of those who have died on the mountain. Some 300 mountaineers have perished on the peak in the last century, and it is estimated that two-thirds of the bodies remain, buried in the ice and snow. But as Sandra Laville writes in the The Guardian, "bodies previously entombed in ice have been made accessible due to global warming." "Because of global warming, the ice sheet and glaciers are fast melting and the dead bodies that remained buried all these years are now becoming exposed," Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of Nepal Mountaineering Association, told the BBC. "We have brought down dead bodies of some mountaineers who died in recent years, but the old ones that remained buried are now coming out." It appears that most of the dead bodies have been emerging from the Khumbu icefall, a spot noted for being particularly dangerous, as well as in the final camp area. Officials say that they have been gathering the ropes left behind from the climbing season, but the bodies are a bit trickier. Professional climbers from the Sherpa community are on the job, but as one might imagine, they say it's not easy. Nor is it cheap; removing a dead body can cost up to $80,000. As morbid as it sounds, however, some dead bodies serve a purpose: They act as landmarks. "One such waypoint had been the 'green boots' near the summit," writes the BBC. "They were a reference to a climber who died under an overhanging rock. His green boots, still on his feet, faced the climbing route." Much like the WWII-era anthrax-laden reindeer that were unleashed from the ice after a Siberian heatwave a few years ago, who knows what other gory surprises a warming planet may have in store for us. Suffice to say that as Earth's ice melts, we can expect more strange things to emerge unlucky mountaineers may be just the tip of the iceberg. Dallas, TX, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Zenergy Brands, Inc. (OTCPK: ZNGY), the nations next-generation utility, is pleased to announce today, that it has completed the installation obligations for two Zero Cost Customer Agreements with U.S.-based cryptocurrency mining operation, known as BitPlus, LTD. Zenergy first announced execution of its first Zero Cost Agreement with BitPlus on July 12, 2018 news release can be accessed here. BitPlus and Zenergy entered into two additional Zero Cost Agreements in November of 2018. Today, Zenergy is pleased to announce that two of three contracts are now installed and operational; the Company is making plans for installation of the third facility in the second quarter of this year. Each of the Zero Cost Agreements is responsible for producing a steady 10 Million annual kilowatt-hours in support of each of BitPluss mobile mining units. Each of these Zero Cost Agreements represents a contracted revenue stream over a 48-month period; paid in monthly service payments. We are thrilled to see these facilities up and operational. Moreover, we are looking forward to Zenergy to provide new and innovative energy solutions for us in the near and long-term future, said Tom Blasen, CEO and Co-Founder of BitPlus. BitPlus is utilizing an innovative energy sourcing strategy encompassing a micro-grid approach, giving them a unique competitive advantage in the cryptocurrency mining industry, when sourcing the cheapest price of electricity. Ever since I first learned of BitPluss unique mobile-mining approach, I have been fascinated with this project. We are excited and thankful for being named as their energy solutions provider, said Alex Rodriguez, CEO of Zenergy. Prospective clients wanting to learn more about the Zero Cost Program can do so by visiting Zenergy online at www.whatiszenergy.com. ABOUT ZENERGY BRANDS, INC. Zenergy Brands, Inc. (OTCQB: ZNGY), is a next-generation energy and technology company operating in the emerging smart energy/utility industry. The Company provides energy conservation, smart controls, and efficiency-based products and services as a fully integrated energy company. Zenergy is a public company, fully reporting to the SEC and currently trading on the OTCQB, a venture market designed for early-stage and developing U.S. and international companies. To learn more, visit www.whatiszenergy.com. and connect with the Company on its social media accounts: Facebook: whatiszenergy Twitter: @whatiszenergy Instagram:@whatiszenergy FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release may contain forward-looking statements. The words believe, expect, should, intend, estimate, projects, variations of such words and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that a statement is not a forward-looking statement. These forward-looking statements are based upon the Company's current expectations and are subject to some risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Among the critical factors that could cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements are risks detailed in the Company's filings, which are on file at www.OTCmarkets.com. editorial@tribune.com Brussels, March 20 European Union regulators have hit Google with a 1.49 billion euro ($1.68 billion) fine for abusing its dominant role in online advertising. Its the third time the commission has slapped Google with an anti-trust penalty, following multibillion-dollar fines resulting from separate probes into two other parts of the Silicon Valley giants business. The EUs competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, announced the results of the long-running probe of Googles AdSense advertising business at a news conference in Brussels on Wednesday. Todays decision is about how Google abused its dominance to stop websites using brokers other than the AdSense platform, Vestager said. The commission found that Google and its parent company, Alphabet, breached EU anti-trust rules by imposing restrictive clauses in contracts with websites that used AdSense, preventing Google rivals from placing their ads on these sites. Google prevented its rivals from having a chance to innovate and to compete in the market on their merits, Vestager said. AP The case file rchopra@tribunemail.com Istanbul, March 21 Indias budget carrier IndiGo has launched its flight on the Delhi-Istanbul sector and announced to use its expanding fleet of A320neo and A321neo aircraft to connect more Indian cities to countries such as China, Vietnam, England, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia. William Boulter, Chief Commercial Officer of IndiGo, said here on Wednesday, We are looking very seriously into other points in South East Asia, notably the obvious ones of Vietnam and Myanmar. We also want to operate shortly to Saudi Arabia on the west side. We are seriously interested in getting in China as soon as we can. We are still selecting precise destinations, he said. India operates only five flights from here to China per week, whereas China operates 42 flights to India per week. Its basically time that we start readdressing that balance. I am convinced that there is a huge amount of traffic in India-China axis. We have not yet tapped that, Boulter said. The airline plans to add 125 A321neo aircraft in its fleet over a number of years. In 2019, it will receive 20-25 of these aircraft from Airbus, he said. IndiGo has around 40 per cent domestic passenger market share. Boulter said, Once we get more A321s, we will do longer routes. A321neo aircraft has the capacity to carry around 230 passengers while A320 neo carries around 180 passengers. While Delhi-Istanbul flight is being operated in A321neo aircraft having 222 seats, Boulter clarified that the flights to China would be based on A320neos. Talking about IndiGos plan to connect Delhi to London, he said, We are still hoping to operate to London this year. We havent chosen yet what the midpoint is going to be whether Baku or Tsblisi or Istanbul. We had some slots in Gatwick airport last winter but they have lapsed. So, we are again looking at which airport we can operate to in the UK. Its not yet confirmed. We are very keen to get into the UK market this year. We also have a plan to put A321 aircraft domestically because in slot-limited airports in Delhi and Mumbai and increasingly, other airports too, A321 gives you that additional capacity, Boulter said. The Delhi-Istanbul flight plans to connect 20 forward destinations using the codeshare pact that was signed between Indias largest airline and Turkish Airlines on December 21 last year. Codeshare pact allows passengers to travel on a single ticket on flights operated by the partner carrier. Boulter said Delhi-Istanbul is a strategic route and the permission for six forward destinations had already been received by the respective countries governments. We have got six in place but we expect the others to be approved over the next few weeks. And they will be in your system for sales as IndiGo destinations. Once the Pakistan issues are gone away, which we hope they will, then this Delhi-Istanbul flight would be our longest flight operated by A321 aircraft, he said. Pakistan has closed its airspace since the Indian Air Force carried air-strikes on a terrorist camp in Balakot in the wake of the Pulwama terror attack. IndiGos Delhi-Istanbul flight was supposed to be direct with around seven-hour journey. However, as Pakistan airspace remains closed, it halted at Doha for refuelling, increasing the total journey time to around 11 hours. Boulter said whenever Pakistan opened its airspace, Delhi-Istanbul will start operating as a direct flight. He clarified that he couldnt comment in detail on how the Delhi-Istanbul flight would be different from the domestic flights when it came to passenger amenities. We are not in a position to announce what would be the product changes. But there will be a number of changes--in terms of food, drinks and some comfort-related opportunities. We are looking for some changes in our product (flights) to cope with the longer sectors. But there wont be anything like a separate class. We are not going to put a premium class, he said. We still believe that what we stand for is the on-time performance, courteous and hassle-free service. Our most important point of low prices would stand us in good stead even as we extend the range, Boulter added. PTI editorial@tribune.com New Delhi, March 20 Lenders, led by the SBI, are trying to revive debt-laden Jet Airways by change in management as they feel collapse of the airline will not be good for consumers and competition, a source said after the SBI chief met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today. With Jet flying just about a third of its fleet, defaulting on interest payments and delaying salaries to pilots, SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar along with Aviation Secretary Pradip Singh Kharola and Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Nripendra Misra met Jaitley today. Kumar said the meeting was to apprise the government, which is an important stakeholder, about the happenings in what was once Indias second-biggest airline, and not to discuss a bailout package. He, however, emphatically stated that it was in the interest of the lenders and consumers to keep Jet Airways flying, and dragging the debt-ridden firm under bankruptcy proceedings is the last option. Though Kumar refused to share details of the lenders resolution plan, the source said that the lenders have proposed to change the management of the beleaguered air carrier as they feel it is not possible to run the company with present management. Jet Airways is headed by Naresh Goyal, who currently holds 51% stake. Abu Dhabi based Etihad Airways has 24%. There were media reports that Etihad has approached the SBI to purchase its 24% stake in the airline. On getting a new player in Jet Airways, Kumar said, No possibility is ruled out. The dialogue with Etihad is on. It is not that they have conclusively decided that they will go out. But there are certain conditions which they want to be fulfilled and it is nothing but that the airline should be professionally managed and without any interference, he said. Lenders of Jet Airways have been working on a resolution plan for the past five months and it is almost ready, Kumar said, adding We will make every effort to keep Jet Airways flying and in no manner it is a bailout for any individual or any promoter whatsoever. The SBI chief said resolution of a service industry, like airline, is nearly impossible under Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and is the last option. PTI Resolution plan Jet Airways has a debt of over Rs 8,200 crore and needs to make repayments of up to Rs 1,700 crore by the end of March. In case the airline collapses, 23,000 jobs would be at stake A source said the lenders have proposed to change the management of the beleaguered carrier as they feel it is not possible to run the company with present management There were reports that Etihad has approached the SBI to purchase its 24% stake in the airline Unused slots to be given to others editorial@tribune.com Naina Mishra Tribune News Service Chandigarh, March 20 Despite the 8 per cent fee hike cap under the Punjab Regulation of Fee of Unaided Educational Institutions Act, 2016, private schools in Chandigarh have increased their fee by more than double the limit up to 19 per cent. Information on fee hike by private schools gathered by The Tribune revealed that of the 66 schools, three schools Chandigarh Baptist School, Sector 45, Playway Model School, Sector 27, and Kulwant Rai Sarvhitkari Vidya Mandir, Sector 43, have increased the fee by more than 8 per cent. As many as 11 private schools have not submitted the comparative fee hike information sought by the Education Department. The Ministry of Home Affairs issued a notification on April 13, 2018, regarding the applicability of the Punjab Regulation of Fee of Unaided Educational Institutions Act, 2016, to the Union Territory of Chandigarh. As per the Act, the increase in fee should not exceed 8 per cent of the fee of the previous year charged by an unaided educational institution. Baptist school increases fee by up to 19% As compared to the fee in the previous academic session 2018-2019, Chandigarh Baptist School, Sector 45, has increased the fee for all classes in the current session regardless of the fee cap. The worst hit are students of classes IV to VIII, who have witnessed an increase of Rs 6,000. From Rs 30,800 in the last session, the fee has been increased to Rs 36,840 (19.61 per cent). For the pre-nursery class, the fee has been increased from Rs 48,220 to Rs 54,440, resulting in a hike of 12.90 per cent. Similarly, there is an increase of 12.01 per cent for UKG to Class V and 11.82 per cent increase for Class IX and X. School Principal Sarojni N Masih argued that the school had not increased the fee in the past two years, which was why there was a need to increase the fee this time. Masih said. We have only increased 4 per cent fee in the past two years. Even the CBSE guidelines say that the schools can hike the fee if their expenditure is not being met. However, the school did increase the fee by more than 8 per cent for Class I to V in the previous session as well. There was an increase of 8.59 per cent last year as against the Principals claim of 4 per cent hike in previous years. Playway, Kulwant school violate Act by thin margin Playway Model School, Sector 27, has increased the fee by 8.2 per cent, whereas Kulwant Rai Sarvhitkari Vidya Mandir, Sector 43, has increased the fee by 8.3 per cent for 2019-2020. There has been an increase of Rs 3,120 in the fee for playway and nursery class from Rs 37,680 in the previous session to Rs 40,800 in the current session. School Director K Kumar said, There is an increase of 8.2 per cent after rounding off the fee amount. Kamal Sandhu, Principal of Kulwant school, said, We will reduce the fee to bring it on a par with the fee cap of 8 per cent. Penalty for violation of act If any unaided educational institution contravenes provisions of the Act, it is punishable with a fine, which may extend up to Rs 30,000 in case of unaided educational institutions of the primary level and Rs 50,000 in case of the middle level and up to Rs 1 lakh in case of the secondary and senior secondary-level institutions for each contravention. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Macarthur Minerals Limited (TSX-V: MMS) (OTCQB: MMSDF) (the Company or Macarthur) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a binding Life-of-Mine Off-Take Agreement (Agreement) with Glencore International A.G. (Glencore) for sale of iron ore to be produced from the Lake Giles Iron Project (Project) at Lake Giles in the Yilgarn region of Western Australia from the commencement of commercial production. Cameron McCall, Executive Chairman of Macarthur Minerals commented; I am extremely excited to see Glencores commitment to purchase Macarthurs production over the long term. Securing this approximately US$4 billion purchase arrangement ensures consistent long-term revenue to the Company. Seeing a commitment of this size validates our resource and project and puts Macarthur in a position to maximize value to our shareholders. Macarthurs management is pursuing debt financing discussion with European banks and international financial institutions. Achieving this key milestone is the beginning for Macarthur to transition into a large scale global resource production company. A project of this size will provide long term Western Australian job creation for a generation, especially in the local region of the proposed iron ore mines and for the port workforce in Esperance. Transaction Highlights: Glencore secures life-of-mine of the project with commercial terms for approximately 4 million tonnes per annum average for the first 10 years, with the option to extend for a following 10 years for all tonnes of future Lake Giles iron ore production. Glencore agrees to release up to 70% of their off-take volume where Macarthur secures project financing from a Strategic Industry Investor, subject to their securing off-take of the product produced. This Agreement with Glencore positions Macarthur to go forward to complete their project financing. The Agreement is currently valued at approximately US$4 billion in revenue over the first 10-year term ensuring Macarthur long term revenue and consistent sales per year. Terms and conditions have been competitively negotiated reflecting strong forward demand. High grade iron ore prices: Metallurgical test work on the Lake Giless Moonshine Magnetite Project indicates that an export product of high margin +65% Fe can be achieved. Current market price for 65% Fe product is quoted at US$98/tonne (A$140 per tonne).1 The value of the initial 10-year Glencore off-take at current market price for Moonshine iron ore would be ~US$4 billion. About the Lake Giles Iron Project: On December 13, 2018, Macarthur announced that its Lake Giles Iron Project is a significant Australian iron ore project adjacent to highly developed infrastructure suitable for iron ore exports. There is considerable spare port and rail capacity that can be utilized by the Project, with the Port of Esperance having total iron ore export capacity of 11.5 million tonnes. The Capex for a combined Moonshine Magnetite and Ularring Hematite operation is now estimated to be US$335 million. Magnetite Opex costs are estimated to be A$55/tonne free on board (FOB) and Opex costs of A$42/tonne FOB for hematite. Macarthur owns 100% of the Moonshine Magnetite Project, with an Inferred and Indicated Mineral Resource Estimate consisting of 1,316 million tonnes (Mt) @ 30.1% Iron (Fe). Initial metallurgical test work from core at Moonshine indicated that a very high-grade iron ore product ranging from 68.5%-69.1% Fe, can be achieved as an export quality target. The Inferred Mineral Resource estimate for the Moonshine Magnetite Project was initially prepared by CSA Global Pty Ltd (NI43-101 Technical Report filed December 17, 2009, titled NI43-101 Technical Report on Lake Giles Iron Ore Project: Western Australia) and was updated by Snowden Mining Industry Consultants (NI43-101 Technical Report filed March 25, 2011, titled Macarthur Minerals Limited: Moonshine and Moonshine North Prospects, Lake Giles Iron Project, Western Australia, NI43-101 Technical Report Preliminary Assessment). Macarthur also owns the Ularring Hematite Project, with a Mineral Resource Estimate consisting of Indicated 54.46 Mt @ 47.2% Fe and Inferred 25.99Mt @ 45.4% Fe, previously announced on August 16, 2012 (NI 43-101 Technical Report filed October 1, 2012, titled NI 43-101 Report, Macarthur Minerals Limited, Pre-Feasibility Study, Ularring Hematite Project, Western Australia). The Pre-feasibility Study focused on utilising all Probable Mineral Reserve of 42.95Mt @ 47% Fe hematite, producing a 60.1% Fe sinter fines product. ABOUT GLENCORE INTERNATIONAL A.G. Glencore is one of the worlds largest globally diversified natural resource companies and a major producer and marketer of commodities comprise around 150 mining and metallurgical sites, oil production assets and agricultural facilities. Glencore industrial and marketing activities are supported by a global network of more than 90 offices located in over 50 countries employing around 158,000 people, including contractors. Glencore has a strong footprint in Australia, operating for nearly 20 years and hold significant interest across all mainland states and the Northern Territory. ABOUT MACARTHUR MINERALS LIMITED (TSX-V: MMS) (OTCQB: MMSDF) Macarthur Minerals Limited is an iron ore development, gold and lithium exploration company that is focused on bringing to production its Western Australia iron ore projects. The iron ore projects are Ularring hematite (approved for development) and the one plus billion tonne Moonshine magnetite. Macarthur Minerals has prominent (~1,130 square kilometer tenement area) gold, lithium, nickel, cobalt exploration interests in Pilbara region of Western Australia. In addition, Macarthur Minerals has lithium brine Claims in the emerging Railroad Valley region in Nevada, USA. On behalf of the Board of Directors, MACARTHUR MINERALS LIMITED Cameron McCall Cameron McCall, Executive Chairman Company Contact Joe Phillips, CEO and Director Email: jphillips@macarthurminerals.com Telephone: +61 448899247 Website: www.macarthurminerals.com For further information please contact: Investor Cubed Inc.: Neil Simon E-mail: nsimon@investor3.ca Telephone: (647) 258-3310 Fax: (416) 363-7977 THIS NEWS RELEASE IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES Caution Regarding Forward Looking Statements Certain of the statements made and information contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, forward-looking statements) within the meaning of applicable securities laws. The forward-looking statements in this press release reflect the current expectations, assumptions or beliefs of the Company based upon information currently available to the Company. With respect to forward-looking statements contained in this press release, assumptions have been made regarding, among other things, the timely receipt of required approvals, the reliability of information, including historical mineral resource or mineral reserve estimates, prepared and/or published by third parties that are referenced in this press release or was otherwise relied upon by the Company in preparing this press release. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct as actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include fluctuations in exchange rates and certain commodity prices, uncertainties related to mineral title in the project, unforeseen technology changes that results in a reduction in iron ore demand or substitution by other metals or materials, the discovery of new large low cost deposits of iron ore, uncertainty in successfully returning the project into full operation, and the general level of global economic activity. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to the inherent uncertainty thereof. Such statements relate to future events and expectations and, as such, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and except as may otherwise be required pursuant to applicable laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. _________________________________ 1 Custeel Iron Ore Price Index G Parthasarathy G Parthasarathy former diplomat Ever since Independence, India has sought to derive maximum strategic advantage by avoiding moves that could draw it into the vortex of global rivalries. The initial years were spent in seeking good relations with both the Soviet Union and the USA. There were, however, instances like the 1971 conflict, when relations with the US were strained with the emergence of a Sino-American quasi-alliance. This was also a period when the adoption of Soviet-style centralised economic planning led to Indias declining role in global trade and economic affairs and a relatively slow rate of growth. The near-collapse of the Indian economy in 1991 coincided with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It was the vision of PM Narasimha Rao that led to the dismantling of our licence, permit, quota raj. A new era of liberalisation and rapid growth enabled us to emerge as one of the fastest growing economies. It was during his tenure that we combined liberalisation with economic integration, adopting an imaginatively crafted Look East Policy. It has been invaluable in promoting Indias interaction with and access to trade, investment and technology from countries like Japan, China and South Korea. What we appeared to lack in this period was a clearly enunciated policy beyond our western land and maritime frontiers, extending across the Indian Ocean to east Africa, and to the shores of the oil, gas and cash-rich Persian Gulf. The approach to our western neighbourhood was myopic and fixated on Pakistan. This only increased with the post 9/11 developments in Afghanistan. But, our imaginative economic assistance in areas, ranging from hydroelectric and irrigation projects to electricity transmission and support for education and training in Afghanistan, received extensive international acclaim. This demonstrated the positive role India could play even in a country being torn apart by Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. While the Islamic world is beset by sectarian (Shia-Sunni), religious, and civilisational (Persian-Arab-Turkish) rivalries, India has skilfully conducted its diplomacy, advocating reconciliation between contesting states. New Delhi has stayed away from rivalries that have led to civil wars and incredible human suffering in Yemen and Syria. India has also made efforts to not yield to US pressure and has continued oil imports from Iran. Imaginative diplomacy enabled India to get the US to waive sanctions for the development of the Chabahar Port. Moreover, Iraq is now emerging as a significant energy partner. Its leadership needs to be carefully cultivated. The most crucial relationships for India, however, pertain to its ties with the Gulf monarchies all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). They provide 42 per cent of Indias oil requirements. There are an estimated 7.6 million Indian nationals in GCC states, remitting back around $40 billion annually. Around 5.5 million Indians work in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The annual trade with GCC countries is around $104 billion. The last decade has seen a remarkable transformation in our earlier myopic approach. Recent years have been marked by high-level visits by PM Modi to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. These two countries work closely on virtually all crucial regional issues. The Saudi-UAE relationship is marked by high dependence on the US, especially on issues of regional security. The US uses their substantial influence to promote its interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This was evident in the role of these countries in facilitating US dialogue with the Taliban, and even in recent tensions between India and Pakistan. Indias rise in high-tech sectors is reflected in the increasingly senior positions of Indian experts in the Gulf, where Indians are engaged in huge numbers in the knowledge-based economic sectors, such as Dubai Internet City, Dubai Media City and Jebel Ali Free Zone. The India-UAE ties have evolved into a significant partnership in the economic and commercial sphere. India-UAE trade is around $52 billion (2016-17), making India the largest trading partner of the UAE, while the UAE is Indias third largest trading partner after China and the US. The UAE is the second largest export destination of India (over $30 billion) for the year 2016-17. Modis visit to the UAE was the first by an Indian PM after Indira Gandhis 1981 visit. Modi paid a second visit to Abu Dhabi in 2018 after welcoming the UAE Crown Prince in New Delhi in 2016. The red carpet was similarly laid out for the Saudi Crown Prince last month. Respecting New Delhis sensitivities, the Crown Prince did not visit New Delhi immediately after his visit to Pakistan. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been forthcoming in promptly deporting/extraditing Indian and foreign nationals wanted for serious crimes in India. There appears to be greater readiness in not only avoiding partisanship on issues like Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, but also in welcoming India as an honoured guest to meetings like that of the OIC, while overruling Pakistani objections. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are poised to expand investments in India substantially. While much noise was made about the $20 billion investments pledged when the Crown Prince visited Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have expressed readiness to invest $44 billion in the Ratnagiri refinery and petrochemical project, which will add to our existing annual exports of $40 billion of petrochemical products. The commercially wise Arabs know the difference between investing money and sharing profits in viable refineries on the one hand, and dishing out aid for a perpetually bankrupt recipient on the other. Rasheed Kidwai Rasheed Kidwai Senior Journalist & Author Madhya Pradesh is witnessing a protracted battle among three key players - Digvijaya Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamal Nath over the ensuing Lok Sabha polls. Nath, Chief Minister of the state, set the ball rolling when he recently went public, asking Digvijaya and Scindia to contest from "difficult seats" and wrest parliamentary seats like Bhopal and Gwalior from the BJP. Scindia, AICC general secretary in charge of western Uttar Pradesh, is currently the Lok Sabha MP from Guna while Digvijaya, two-time former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, is a Rajya Sabha MP. While Scindia kept mum, refusing to be drawn by Nath's challenge, Digvijaya took the Twitter route to respond to the Congress Chief Minister. He first talked about his bond with Rajgarh which had elected him as the Lok Sabha MP in 1977 and then wrote again, thanking Kamal Nath for considering him worthy of contesting from a seat which the party has not won since 1989. Diggy Raja, as he popularly called, has been two-time Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh during 1993-2003. In the Madhya Pradesh political circles, the former Raja of Raghaogarh is considered as an equal to Chief Minister Kamal Nath and enjoys a "Bada bhai- Chhota bhai" (Nath being elder) relationship with the new Chief Minister . In fact, it is a bit of role reversal between Nath and Digvijaya as during the 1993-2003 Congress rule, Nath's wishes were treated as command and Digvijaya used to publicly acknowledge Nath as the real power behind the throne. Nath's son Nakul is in the fray from Chhindwara, a parliamentary constituency that has elected Kamal Nath nine times since 1980. Madhya Pradesh has several seats such as Bhopal, Indore, Vidisha, Damoh and Bhind that have remained with the BJP for decades. Nath wants to win these seats in order to make a strong political statement that the state Assembly poll victory of December 2018 was not a fluke. Nath has reportedly promised 20 out of 29 parliamentary seats to his party chief Rahul Gandhi. The task of winning 20 seats is rather insurmountable in the wake of the Balakot airstrikes resulting in hyper-nationalism. But sources close to Nath are still confident of netting 14-15 Lok Sabha seats. In 2014, the Congress had won two out of the 29 Lok Sabha seats that were earned by Nath and Scindia. Bhopal can be a tricky turf for Digvijaya. On the positive side, he can count on the bulk of over three lakh Muslim votes and the presence of his son as state urban development minister. Digvijaya's support base supposedly cuts across caste lines and his oratory skills are an asset. He has a huge network of party workers, religious leaders, bureaucrats and other influential members of society who reside in Bhopal. But on the flip side, Digvijaya's candidature can lead to religious polarisation. In recent years, some of Digvijaya's utterances have been against "saffron terror." He had publicly expressed doubts over the Batla House encounter and the death of anti-terror squad chief Hemant Karkare during the 26/11 Mumbai attack. These remarks were used by the RSS and Sangh Parivar to dub the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister as "anti-Hindu." Interestingly, Digvijaya has been getting some free advice from the opponents. Former state BJP Chief Minister Babulal Gaur has gone on record dissuading Digvijaya from opting for Bhopal. Gaur, who holds a record of sorts, winning the Govindpura assembly seat 10 times, has cautioned Digvijaya against contesting from Bhopal. Speaking in Hindi, Gaur addressed Digvijaya through the local media and said, "Bhool kar bhi aaisi galti na karna" (do not commit the folly even by mistake). Sources close to Digvijaya said he would wait for party chief Rahul Gandhi's nod or insistence to contest from Bhopal. Outgoing BJP MP Alok Sanjar has not been a popular figure, so there is a likelihood of some BJP bigwig, like union minister Narendra Singh Tomar, contesting from the Madhya Pradesh capital. Tomar is currently the MP from Gwalior. The options before Scindia are few. Given his preoccupation with Uttar Pradesh, Scindia supporters want him to field wife Priyadarshani from Guna or Gwalior and focus on battleground Uttar Pradesh. But Scindia has remained non-committal, pointing that he would go by Rahul Gandhi's decision. Nath's interest in Digvijaya and Scindia's seats has generated a lot of attention in the Congress circles both within and outside Madhya Pradesh. One way of looking at it is a sign of measuring the electoral strength of Digvijaya and Scindia, who never tire of projecting themselves as regional satraps. There are over a dozen ministers in the Nath cabinet who flaunt their allegiance to either Digvijaya or Scindia. A poor performance by either of them would weaken their hold in state politics and indirectly strengthen Nath, while electoral conquests would increase the Congress tally. vinaymishra188@gmail.com SYDNEY, March 20 Australia on Wednesday cut its annual intake of immigrants by nearly 15 per cent, and barred some new arrivals from living in its largest cities for three years, in a bid to ease urban congestion. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is trailing badly in the polls ahead of a federal election in May, hopes to tap into rising voter frustration over house prices and congestion, which some see as a consequence of population growth. This is a practical problem that Australians wanted addressed, Morrison told reporters in Canberra, the capital, after announcing the annual immigration intake would be cut to 160,000 people, with effect from July 1, versus 190,000 before. The policy change comes at a time of national reflection over Australias attitude towards migrants after the shooting of at least 50 people at two mosques in New Zealands city of Christchurch. Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, was charged with murder on Saturday after a lone gunman opened fire at the two mosques during Friday prayers. My great frustration is that, in addressing these issues of population and immigration programs, these debates often get hijacked by those of competing views who seek to exploit them for other causes, Morrison added. I reject all of that absolutely. A ReachTel poll published in September showed that 63 per cent of Sydney residents supported curbs on the number of migrants moving to Australias biggest city. Morrison said the cap would include places for up to 23,000 people who could migrate to Australia under a new skilled visa. Such arrivals could gain permanent residency after living outside of Australias largest cities for three years, he added. They will be barred from living in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney or the Gold Coast, where infrastructure is overutilised, said Immigration Minister David Coleman. Reuters No restriction on student visas rchopra@tribunemail.com Washington, March 21 Prominent Indian-American lawyer Neomi Jehangir Rao (45) has been sworn in as US Circuit Judge for the powerful District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, replacing the controversial Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Joined by her husband Alan Lefkowitz, Rao was sworn in by US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Tuesday. She took the oath on a Bible. According to a White House schedule, President Donald Trump had participated in the swearing-in ceremony. Born in Detroit to Parsi physicians from IndiaZerin Rao and Jehangir Narioshang RaoNeomi Rao is the second Indian-American after Sri Srinivasan to be part of the powerful court said to be next only to the US Supreme Court. Nominated by President Donald Trump last November, Rao was confirmed by the Senate last week by 53-46 votes. In her previous role as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) of the Office of Management and Budget, she played a key role in regulatory reform. Raos confirmation and her swearing-in for the prestigious court has been a low-key affair for the Indian-American community. This is in stark contrast to the nationwide celebration by Indian-Americans when Srinivasan was confirmed and sworn in as US Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit. Prior to her service as OIRA Administrator, Rao was a professor of structural constitutional law, administrative law, and legislation and statutory interpretation at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. She founded the Law Schools Center for the Study of the Administrative State and focused her scholarship on the political and constitutional accountability of administrative agencies and the role of Congress. She has served in all three branches of government, including Associate Counsel and Special Assistant to President George W Bush. She also served as counsel to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where she was responsible for judicial nominations and constitutional law issues. In between government service, Rao practised in the London office of Clifford Chance LLP, specialising in international law and commercial arbitration. PTI rchopra@tribunemail.com New York, March 21 An Indian-origin businessman has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in federal prison for orchestrating a USD 1.3 million Ponzi scheme that caused losses to more than 40 victims. According to court documents, Amrit Jaswant Singh Chahal (31) of Fairfax operated an investment fraud scheme through a company established by him. Chahal held out the company as a private capital investment group that sought to earn profits and investment returns on behalf of its clients by purchasing, trading or otherwise investing in commodities for future delivery and other financial instruments, the documents stated. Chahal executed this fraud through falsely representing that his company had earned returns of roughly 28 to 34 per cent annually, when in fact, Chahal had suffered substantial losses in managing investors funds, the court documents said. The businessman also created falsified brokerage statements to conceal the losses he had sustained and siphoned off some of his investors funds by transferring the money to accounts he controlled or by spending the funds on personal items, the documents added. When investors asked for returns on their investment, Chahal frequently used money from newer investors to pay disbursements to older investors, without disclosing this fact to his investors. In addition, Chahal opened an unauthorised bank account in the name of one of his investors to further divert funds to his personal use. PTI vinaymishra188@gmail.com Ottawa, March 20 Indian-origin Jagmeet Singh has created political history in Canada, when he made his debut in the House of Commons as the first non-white leader of a major Opposition party in the country. The arrival of the turbaned leader into the House on Monday, cheered by all members, coincided with the induction of a senior woman member into Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus cabinet. Singh, 40, the leader of the New Democratic Party, placed his hand over his heart as he walked into the House of Commons, the Lower House of Parliament, before the daily question period. He was elected in the federal byelections held on February 25. Singhs first words as an elected lawmaker were about last weeks terrorist attack on two mosques in New Zealand. I want to begin by expressing our solidarity with the people of New Zealand, who are mourning the attack on Muslim brothers and sisters, he said. He then launched his first question about housing in Burnaby-South. I met a mom in Burnaby. She bought a home, but cannot afford to live there anymore. Her daughter has a good job, but only gets by because she lives in the basement. Her son does not see a future. Like too many Canadians, he has lost all hope, Singh said. However, the Prime Minister is telling families like theirs to wait for help. I believe that better is possible. Will the government commit to building half a million new affordable homes? he said. Prime Minister Trudeau responded by congratulating Singh for his entry into the Commons, before touting the governments record on fighting poverty. Speculations are rife that the last budget of the Trudeau government with an eye on the general elections in October is expected to have several attractions for the middle class. PTI Sikh Awareness Month in Delaware Washington: Delaware Governor John Carney has signed an executive proclamation naming April 2019 as the Delaware Sikh Awareness and Appreciation Month in recognition of the contribution of the small but influential Sikh community in the economic and social milieu of the state. Attendees included Anurag Kumar, Indian Embassys minister of community affairs. PTI sanjiv@tribunemail.com A silver jubilee year for what was once the success story of Indian economic liberalisation drive has turned out to be a bleak one, as Jet Airways is buried under a mountain of debt and seeks relief from reluctant lenders. The Naresh Goyal-led airline had once set standards for superior service, but has suffered straight losses for the past 12 months. Even as the founder chairman seeks to palm off the losses on the macro-economic challenges high fuel prices and a depreciating value of the rupee that buffeted the aviation industry in the country, his own business decisions exacerbated the situation. Indeed, all Indian airlines lost money for some time, but others like SpiceJet and IndiGo, managed to recover soon. These low-cost airlines, it could well be argued, have contributed significantly to eroding the bottom line of the full-service airline, which Jet is, and surely Goyal would be ruing the day, 15 years ago, when he dismissed the challenges of the then newly-launched airlines. They prospered, and Jet needs nearly Rs 8,500 crore to meet its funding gap. This is not the first time that the airline has required a bailout, only this time it is more serious. Emergency meetings between government officials, banks and other lenders, as well as Etihad, which is offering to sell its 24 per cent stake in Jet Airways to the State Bank of India and is willing to take a significant haircut, all signal Jets precarious finances, as does the depletion of its fleet, and its failure to pay salaries to even key employees like pilots. Naresh Goyals grip on the airline is unmistakable, but the stakeholders and lenders are not moving in to take control. The question of whether they will be able to bail out the cash-strapped airline remains. The banks and public institutions should ensure that they dont throw good money after bad. The airline must be helped, but only after there is a clear plan leading to its recovery, and a strong management that can deliver. Seat-of-pants flying will not do any longer. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Kurukshetra, March 20 Kurukshetra University on Wednesday rusticated 17 students, including eight girls, for allegedly manhandling university staff during an agitation on February 28. The affected students are members of the Joint Student Struggle Committee, a body comprising unelected members of the campus students organisation. Of the 17 students, 13 have been barred from entering the university indefinitely. The other four have been rusticated and barred from entering the campus for the current session only. The entry of two youths, identified as outsiders, has also been prohibited. A university spokesperson said the disciplinary action was taken after a group of students allegedly created ruckus near the VCs office and manhandled university staff on February 28. The KU authorities had to call the police to control the protesters. Members of the Joint Student Struggle Committee were protesting in support of their demands, including allowing e-rickshaws on the campus, strong Wi-Fi connectivity and better food quality in the hostel mess. Student leader Vinod Gill termed the KUs decision as arbitrary, stating that activists were legitimately protesting for their demands. The agitation will be intensified as students are being harassed. The university administration is insensitive towards the demands of the protesting students, he added. editorial@tribune.com Sandeep Rana Tribune News Service Chandigarh, March 20 The 24 patients who suffered eye infection following botched cataract surgeries in Kurukshetras Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Civil Hospital (LNJPCH) would have lost their eyesight had they not been operated upon immediately in the PGIMER here, said Dr MR Dogra, head of the Advanced Eye Centre, PGIMER. It seemed there was a problem with the solution used in the cataract surgery at the LNJPCH. The operation theatre in the Kurukshetra hospital should have been closed after the initial cases of eye infection were reported, he said. Dr Dogra further said, It is a very serious matter. Had the patients not come for operation in time here, they would have lost their eyesight completely. Several solutions are put in the eyes during a cataract surgery. Some are used to clean the eyes and some to protect the eyes. This problem (the use of wrong solution) doesnt seem to be restricted to Kurukshetra only, as we have received a couple of similar cases from other parts of Haryana, he added. About 100 cataract surgeries were reportedly performed between February 27 and March 11. At least, 24 patients reported irritation after the operation. All of them were shifted to the PGIMER later. Some patients also came from private hospitals for the same problem in the past couple of weeks. Several of them had been operated upon, but their families said many of them were yet to gain vision. PGIMER doctors said patients were gradually gaining vision, but the infection may spread again. We are working on a war footing. We have formed special teams. We have deployed staff for surgery and asked them everybody should be treated, Dr Dogra said. Dinesh Kumar, whose mother Bimla Devi underwent a cataract operation on March 9 at Agarwal Nursing Home in Kurukshetra, said: It seems the supplier of materials used in the operation of all hospitals is the same. The material has caused the problem. Even after the operation at the PGIMER, my mother has not gained vision. pardeepdhull@gmail.com WASHINGTON: Practising meditation as part of a school curriculum can improve the students social-emotional competency and reduce psychological distress, a study has found. Social-emotional learning (SEL) is gaining increased recognition as an important goal of education. Competencies include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and goal-directed behaviour. Developing these skills may help students perform better academically and enjoy enhanced emotional and social well being. Theres a strong body of research supporting the clear value of developing social-emotional competency for students, said Laurent Valosek, Executive Director of the Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education (CWAE) in the US. Middle school is an especially formative time and poses a major opportunity to provide students with the tools to develop positive social relationships, responsible decision-making, and healthy behaviours, said Valosek, lead author of the study published in the journal Education. Were encouraged by the results demonstrating the value of a Quiet Time programme to enhance social-emotional learning and mental health in middle school students, Valosek said. The study compared over a four-month period 51 sixth-grade students who took part in a Quiet Time programme with twice-daily practice of Transcendental Meditation to 50 students from a matched control school within the same West Coast urban public school district. The study found a significant increase in overall social-emotional competency in the Quiet Time group compared to controls. The effects were particularly pronounced with high-risk subgroups, which experienced a significant increase on social-emotional competency and a significant decrease on negative emotional symptoms compared to controls. Results on the individual items indicate improvement in the Quiet Time group compared to controls in the areas of decision-making, goal-directed behaviour, personal responsibility, relationship skills, and optimistic thinking. These results have implications for schools looking to implement evidence-based programmes for student social-emotional learning and mental health, researchers said. PTI VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Triumph Gold Corp., (TSX-V: TIG) (OTCMKTS: TIGCF) (Triumph Gold or the Company) is pleased to announce the results from the 2018 surface sampling program conducted at the Drone, Granger and Blue Sky zones, within the 6-kilometre-long multi-element soil anomaly that encompasses the Revenue and Nucleus deposit areas on Triumph Golds 100% owned, road accessible, Freegold Mountain Property, in the Yukon Territory, Canada. Highlights of results include: At the newly discovered Drone Zone grab and chip samples within a 100 X 25 metre area of exposed altered and mineralized bedrock and regolith contain local bonanza grade gold (Au) concentrations up to 450 grams per tonne (g/t) * and consistently anomalous to high grade copper (Cu) up to 2.09%. * and consistently anomalous to high grade copper (Cu) up to 2.09%. Within the Blue Sky Zone 13 new grab samples* have an average grade of 4.5 g/t Au, ranging up to 16.8 g/t Au . The Blue Sky zone was identified in 2016 as prospective for gold-rich porphyry mineralization and in 2017-2018 the high grade, gold rich Blue Sky Porphyry was discovered (e.g. RVD18-19 with 316 metres @ 1.10 g/t Au, 0.27% Cu). The 2018 grab samples were collected 400-800 metres southeast of the Blue Sky Porphyry discovery area identifying the surface expression of a new and previously untested mineralized zone. . The Blue Sky zone was identified in 2016 as prospective for gold-rich porphyry mineralization and in 2017-2018 the high grade, gold rich Blue Sky Porphyry was discovered (e.g. RVD18-19 with 316 metres @ 1.10 g/t Au, 0.27% Cu). The 2018 grab samples were collected 400-800 metres southeast of the Blue Sky Porphyry discovery area identifying the surface expression of a new and previously untested mineralized zone. At the Granger Zone oxide-gold target, samples from two new trenches define gold mineralization in highly oxidized rock at surface and demonstrate continuity of mineralization between surface and intersections made in 2018 drill holes that tested beneath the trenches. Results from trenches include: In TR18-04, 0.70 g/t Au over 18.5 metres** including 3.26 g/t Au over 1 metre ** on the southern end of the trench, leaving the highest grade portion of the mineralized body open to the south. In TR18-03, 1.04 g/t Au over 3.5 metres ** and 0.89 g/t Au over 4 metres **. The 2018 surface sampling program in the Revenue-Nucleus area was designed to explore for, test and validate near-surface targets within a six-kilometre-long multi-element soil anomaly that encompasses the Revenue and Nucleus deposits (Figure 1). Triumph Gold geologists believe that the entire soil anomaly is underlain by rocks affected by a gold-rich hydrothermal system related to a large buried porphyry intrusion that has yet to be tested by drilling. The surface sampling program tested three main areas with a total of 164 linear chip or channel samples collected from exposed bedrock or in excavated trenches, and 35 grab samples of bedrock, regolith or locally sourced float. Figure 1 Drone Zone The Drone Zone was discovered in 2018 as a result of local placer mining operations that exposed a roughly 100 X 25 metre area of altered and mineralized outcrop at the bottom of the Mechanic Creek valley (news release PR#18-11 dated October 16, 2018). This new zone is located 500 metres east of high-grade drill intercepts in the Nucleus gold deposit, and 500 metres west of drill holes that intersected the Keirsten Zone porphyry. Mineralization encompasses the entire area of exposure, which consists of granite hosting large xenoliths of biotite schist, and cross-cut by irregular quartz-feldspar-porphyry dykes and thick gouge-rich faults. Mineralization comprises disseminated sulfides and quartz-sulfide veins with pyrite, chalcopyrite, and lesser arsenopyrite, bismuthinite and visible gold. The Drone Zone was tested with 49 chip samples and 21 grab samples*. Sample F00032970 which assayed 450 g/t Au and 19 g/t Ag contained abundant visible gold and was collected from locally sourced rock debris at the eastern side of the placer mining cut where the zone appears to extend beneath overburden. Mineralization with anomalous to bonanza grade gold and copper concentrations is consistent though the Drone Zone; assay highlights are reported in Table 1. The zone is open in all directions and has never been drilled or previously explored. Table 1: Significant Grab and Chip Samples from the Drone Zone 2018 Drone Zone Grab Samples* Sample ID Northing*** Easting*** Au g/t Ag g/t Cu % F00032970 6913542 380057 450.41 19 0.023 F00032968 6913543 380057 3.67 <2 0.033 F00032952 6913529 380032 1.77 25 2.090 F00032967. 6913525 380032 0.35 2 0.552 F00032956 6913526 380046 0.26 3 0.182 Drone Zone Chip Samples Sample ID Trench ID Sample Length** Au g/t Ag g/t Cu % F00032915 DZT-2 2.0 1.20 <2 0.077 F00032916 DZT-2 2.0 0.58 <2 0.054 F00032921 DZT-2 2.0 4.82 <2 0.017 F00032936 DZT-3 2.0 0.56 <2 0.105 Blue Sky Zone The Blue Sky Zone covers the eastern side of the six-kilometre-long Revenue-Nucleus soil anomaly. Drill testing for porphyry mineralization in 2017 and 2018 confirmed high-grade gold-rich mineralization within the Blue Sky Zone on the western slope of Bowlidden Ridge (e.g. RVD18-19 with 316 metres @ 1.10 g/t Au, 0.27% Cu; see news release PR#18-09 dated Sept. 12, 2018). Surface sampling in 2018 focused on the eastern slope of Bowlidden Ridge approximately 400-800 metres from the Blue Sky Porphyry discovery area (Figure 1). The 2018 surface sampling program included 86 chip and channel samples from three trenches and thirteen grab samples collected mainly from disturbed bedrock along new access roads. Of the thirteen grab samples, eight contained greater than 2.0 g/t Au, to a high of 16.8 g/t Au (Table 2)*. Trenches returned anomalous gold concentrations (Table 2), including 1.46 g/t Au over 1 metre** in BST18-01 and 0.31 g/t Au over 8 metres** in BST18-02, which is contained within a 52.50 metre** section of 0.15 g/t Au (the full length of the trench). Most mineralized samples comprise phyllic altered granite with quartz veins that contain trace bismuthinite molybdenite chalcopyrite arsenopyrite. These new samples, as well as two grab samples* of quartz veins collected from the area in 2017 that graded 3.76 and 5.77 g/t Au, define an approximately 400-metre-long corridor of mineralization that is open in all directions and is untested by drilling. A single 2017 drill hole tested the southern side of Bowlidden Ridge (RVD17-09). It was collared on the far southern edge of the newly defined mineralized zone and was oriented southwards, away from the new surface samples. Results from that hole include ten intersections that graded over 1.0 g/t Au, within a 269 metre interval of highly anomalous gold (0.24 g/t Au; see news release PR#17-13, dated November 2, 2017). Table 2: Significant Grab and Chip/Channel Samples from the Blue Sky Zone 2018 Blue Sky Zone Grab Samples* Sample ID Northing*** Easting*** Au g/t Ag g/t Cu % Mo % C00029002 6913001 383748 16.79 <2 0.009 0.002 C00029001 6912991 383728 11.9 4 0.047 0.002 C00030446 6913004 383714 9.49 5 0.018 0.003 C00029036 6913005 383715 6.96 <2 0.013 0.003 C00030442 6912754 383895 4.51 3 0.011 0.116 C00030443 6912754 383895 3.38 <2 0.004 0.142 C00048133 6912999 383717 2.46 <2 0.020 0.001 C00030444 6912754 383845 2.09 4 0.003 0.017 C00048132 6913012 383703 0.44 <2 0.006 0.000 Blue Sky Zone Chip and Channel Samples Trench ID From-To (m) Sample Length (m)** Au g/t Ag g/t Cu % Mo % BST18-02 0.00 - 52.50 52.50 0.15 <2 0.012 <0.001 Including 30.00 - 38.00 8.00 0.31 <2 0.027 <0.001 BST18-01 9.00 - 10.00 1.00 1.46 <2 0.022 0.002 Granger Zone The Granger Zone is a shallow oxide gold exploration target that is located between the Revenue and Nucleus deposits near the center of the Revenue-Nucleus soil anomaly. Historical exploration in this zone included trenching, rock sampling, with grab samples up to 45.5 g/t Au*, and percussion, reverse circulation and limited diamond drilling. Historical drilling made multiple shallow oxide gold intercepts, including 5.29 g/t Au over 13.71 metres** in GRRAB-091 (from 3.05 metres to the bottom of the hole at 16.76 metres). Drilling in 2018 intersected variably oxidized near-surface mineralization in every hole, delineating a mineralized corridor over 200 metres strike-length and to a depth of at least 74 metres (News Release PR#18-12, dated October 24, 2018). The mineralized zone is open in all directions and to depth. Highlights of the results from 2018 Granger Zone drilling include: RVD18-33 with 18.39 metres** of 0.98 g/t Au (2.95 21.34m) RVD18-29 with 18.00 metres** of 0.61 g/t Au (53.00 71.00m) RVD18-30 with 55.21 metres** of 0.45 g/t Au (18.84 74.05m) Twenty-nine chip and channel samples covering 46.80 meters in two newly (2018) excavated trenches tested strongly oxidized rock in the center of the mineralized corridor. Samples form the trenches contain a similar tenor of gold mineralization as that intersected at depth by drilling, indicating continuity from surface to a depth of approximately 45 metres. Trench results include 1.04 g/t over 3.5 metres** in TR18-03, and 0.70 g/t Au over and 18.5 metres** including 1.72 g/t Au over 3.5 metres** in TR18-04 (Table 3). The southern edge of trench TR18-04 has some of the highest grade mineralization (e.g. 3.26 g/t Au over 1 metre**) demonstrating that the zone is open and highly prospective to the south. Table 3: Chip and Channel Samples from the Granger Zone 2018 Granger Zone Trench Samples Trench ID From-To (m) Sample Length (m) ** Au g/t TR18-03 1.00 - 5.00 4.00 0.89 TR18-03 10.00 - 13.50 3.50 1.04 TR18-04 1.50 - 20.00 18.50 0.70 Including 16.50 - 20.00 3.50 1.72 Including 19.00 - 20.00 1.00 3.26 Tony Barresi, Vice President of Exploration for Triumph Gold Corp. comments As we advance exploration in underexplored portions of the 6-kilometre-long soil anomaly that surrounds the Revenue and Nucleus deposit areas, we are continually impressed by the world-class scale of the of the underlying gold-rich hydrothermal system. Each of the surface exploration target areas yielded exciting results. Newly discovered mineralization at the Drone Zone and in the Blue Sky Zone reinforce our belief that Revenue and Nucleus are only small parts of a much larger mineralized body. Both of the new showings represent high quality drill ready targets with potential for high grade gold intersections. In addition, new trenches in the Granger Zone demonstrate continuity of oxide gold mineralization between surface and underlying drill intersections, building a case for a near-surface heap leachable oxide gold resource. Notes: * Grab samples are selective in nature, and the reported mineralization and assay results may not be representative. ** Length/interval refer to sample length. True widths have not been determined. *** Coordinates are given in North American Datum 83 (NAD83), Zone 8. Methods Linear chip and channel samples ranged between 0.25 and 2 metres in length. Chip samples were collected with a rock hammer and channel samples were cut from outcrop with a portable diamond saw. The samples were analyzed by SGS Canada of Vancouver, British Columbia. They were prepared for analysis according to SGS method PRP89: each sample was crushed to 75% passing 2mm and a 250g split was pulverized to better than 85% passing 75 micron mesh. Gold was tested by fire assay with atomic absorption finish on a 30g nominal sample (method GE FAA313), and samples that tested over 10 g/T Au were retested using a 30g nominal sample and gravimetric analysis (method GO FAG303). An additional 35 elements were tested by ICP-AES using a four-acid digestion (method GE ICP40B). Quality assurance and control (QAQC) is maintained at the lab through rigorous use of internal standards, blanks and duplicates. An additional QAQC program was administered by Triumph Gold: at minimum three quality control samples, consisting of blanks, certified reference standards and duplicates, were blindly inserted into each 75 sample batch. QAQC samples that return unacceptable values trigger investigations into the results and reanalyses of the samples that were tested in the batch with the failed QAQC sample. Qualified Person The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Tony Barresi, Ph.D., P.Geo., VP Exploration for the company, and qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. About Triumph Gold Corp. Triumph Gold Corp. is a growth oriented Canadian-based precious metals exploration and development company. Triumph Gold Corp. is focused on creating value through the advancement of the district scale Freegold Mountain project in Yukon. For maps and more information, please visit our website www.triumphgoldcorp.com On behalf of the Board of Directors Signed "Paul Reynolds" Paul Reynolds, President & CEO For further information please contact: John Anderson, Executive Chairman Triumph Gold Corp. (604) 218-7400 janderson@triumphgoldcorp.com Nancy Massicotte IR Pro Communications Inc. (604)-507-3377 nancy@irprocommunications.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release contains forward-looking information, which involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual events to differ materially from current expectation. Important factors - including the availability of funds, the results of financing efforts, the completion of due diligence and the results of exploration activities - that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations are disclosed in the Company's documents filed from time to time on SEDAR (see www.sedar.com). Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The company disclaims any intention or obligation, except to the extent required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/cc81e95b-ab4f-4ac6-85eb-c69d16c4c868 editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Shimla, March 20 In view of the resentment brewing in the BJP following recommendations of the core committee to re-nominate all four sitting MPs for the Lok Sabha elections, the party high command has decided to deliberate on the issue. BJP president Amit Shah has convened meeting of Central Election Committee after Holi on March 22 and Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, state party chief Satpal Singh Satti and general secretary (organisation) Pawan Rana are leaving for Delhi to attend the meeting. Some ticket aspirants, including Hira Nand Kashyap, head of election cell of the party, have cautioned that re-nomination of sitting MP Varinder Kashyap from Shimla can be detrimental to interest of the party. The names of Suresh Kashyap, MLA from Pachhad and Shashi Bala from Rohroo are also taking rounds for Shimla seat. Former Union minister and tallest leader of Mandi Sukh Ram is demanding BJP ticket for his grandson, Ashray Sharma while former MP Maheshwar Singh and Brig Khushal Singh are also in the run putting spokes in re-nomination of sitting member Ramswaroop Sharma. Sukh Ram is reportedly in Delhi, lobbying for BJP ticket for Ashray. The Congress has also not decided its candidate and in case former chief minister Virbhadra Singh agrees to contest from Mandi, the BJP would have to field some strong candidate against him. The BJP is waiting for the Congress list to be out to formally announce the candidate, insiders say. Veteran BJP leader and former Chief Minister Santa Kumar (84) has reportedly expressed willingness to seek re-election from Kangra but a section of party leaders are unhappy and demanding ticket for some new face. laxmi@tribune.com Bhanu P Lohumi Tribune News Service Shimla, March 20 Spread over six out of 12 districts, the sprawling Mandi parliamentary constituency has the distinction of having the highest number of eight out of 17 reserved Assembly segments and the worlds highest and the second highest polling booths. Area-wise, Mandi is the second largest constituency in the country with high mountain passes. All three tribal Assembly segments of Kinnaur, Bharmour and Lahaul-Spiti and five constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes fall in Mandi. The reserved SC Assembly segments are Rampur (Shimla), Anni (Kullu), Nachan, Karsog and Balh (Mandi). It comprises all four Assembly segments of Kullu district, nine out of 10 segments of Mandi district, Rampur in Shimla district, Bharmour in Chamba district, one tribal segment each in Kinnaur and Lahaul and Spiti districts. The Schedule Caste and Schedule Tribe population constitutes 36.8 per cent of the total voting population in Mandi constituency. The constituency shares the international border with China, inter-state border with Jammu and Kashmir and inter-district borders with Shimla, Hamirpur and Bilaspur. The maximum number of 2,079 polling booths has been set up for the constituency this time against 1985 in 2014. Mandi also has the distinction of having the worlds highest polling booths at Tashigang village at a height of 15,256 ft catering to twin villages of Tashigang and Gete with 48 voters (30 men and 18 women), located close to the China border and the second highest polling booth at Hikkim at 14,567 ft, both in Lahaul-Spiti. The total number of voters in the constituency is 12,26,268 which includes 6,19,436 males, 6,06,829 females and three third gender voters. The maximum voters are in the Jogindernagar Assembly segment (91,402) while the least number of voters are in Lahaul and Spiti (23,407). The first voter of India, Shyam Saran Negi, who has exercised his franchise in all the Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections held since 1951, lives at Kalpa in Kinnaur district. Mandi parliamentary constituency has diverse climatic zones and hostile terrains and is dotted with mountain passes like Rohtang Pass (3,978 mts), Kunzum Pass (4,590 mts), Baralacha La (4,890 mts), Hamta Pass (4,270 mt), Rupin Pass (4,650 mts), Chandrakhani Pass (3,660 mts), Saach Pass (4,420 mt), Shingo La (5091 mts), Debsa Pass ( 5360 mts) and Pin Parbati Pass(5319 mts) fall in Mandi. Mandi constituency has elected scions of erstwhile princely states in 12 out 17 elections, including byelection in 2013. Mandi was double member constituency in 1952 and Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur won the seat along with Gopi Ram. Joginder Sen from Suket state won in 1957, Lalit Sen, also from Suket, won in 1962 and 1967. Virbhadra Singh was elected in 1971, 1980 and 2009, former ruler of Kullu Maheshwar Singh in 1989,1998 and 1999. Rani Pratibha Singh emerged victorious in 2004 and 2013 (by-election). However, former Union minister Sukh Ram, who was elected from Mandi thrice in 1984 ,1991 and 1996, Ganga Singh, who defeated Virbhadra Singh in 1977, and Ram Swaroop Sharma, who defeated Pratibha Singh in 2014, were exceptions and did not hail from royal dynasties. Indias first voter from Kinnaur The first voter of India, Shyam Saran Negi, who has exercised his franchise in all Lok Sabha and Assembly elections since 1951, belongs to Kalpa in Kinnaur district. Highest polling booth The Mandi constituency also has the distinction of having the worlds highest polling booth at Tashigang village at a height of 15,256 ft catering to twin villages of Tashigang and Gete with 48 voters (30 men and 18 women), located close to the China border and the second highest polling booth at Hikkim at 14,567 ft, both in Lahaul-Spiti. Hostile terrains Mandi parliamentary constituency has diverse climatic zones and hostile terrains and is dotted with mountain passes like Rohtang Pass (3,978 mts), Kunzum Pass (4,590 mts), Baralacha La (4,890 mts) andHamta Pass (4,270 mt) sanjiv@tribunemail.com Ehsan Fazili Tribune News Service Srinagar, March 20 The scenario for the PDP has changed from 2014 to the upcoming 2019 General Election, thanks to its unholy alliance with the BJP and the rising graph of violence, particularly in its bastion of South Kashmir in the past three years. For the first time in 2014, the PDP emerged victorious on all the three seats from Kashmir valley Srinagar, Baramulla and Anantnag due to a wave for change. Though the PDP had represented Anantnag constituency after getting elected in 2004, the first time after it was constituted in 1999, the party secured a sweeping victory from the NC bastions of Srinagar and Baramulla also in the last General Election. But its representation could not continue for the full term. The PDPs Anantnag MP, Mehbooba Mufti, had to resign in 2016 after taking over as Chief Minister following the death of her father Mufti Mohammad Sayeed earlier on January 7, 2016. The byelection could not be held due to the trouble that began immediately after due to the killing of militant commander Burhan Wani on July 8, 2016. The longest-ever Kashmir unrest continued its hold in the South Kashmir districts of Anantnag, Pulwama, Kulgam and Shopian that comprise the constituency, having 16 Assembly segments. The region had turned out to be the bastion of PDP, giving it the highest number of seats. These kept on increasing from 16 in 2002, 21 in 2008, to 28 seats in the 2014 Assembly elections. The situation in South Kashmir worsened following Burhans killing. It continues to be strife-torn with the highest number of militancy-related incidents during the past few years. The IED blast hitting a CRPF convoy on February 14 took place in an area falling in Anantnag constituency. The situation has been influenced by violence during the past three years hardly has anybody thought about participation in elections, said Mohammad Rafiq, a businessman in Anantnag. The central Kashmir constituency comprising Srinagar, Budgam and Ganderbal districts was represented by NC president Farooq Abdullah, who was elected in the 2017 byelection after PDP member Tariq Hameed Karra resigned from the Lok Sabha seat and party late in 2016 in protest against the PDPs policies and its unholy alliance with the BJP. However, the byelection was marred by violence that spilled out of the 2016 unrest, registering the lowest-ever turnout of 7%. Baramulla, comprising Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipore districts of North Kashmir, remained the only seat represented by PDPs Muzaffar Hussain Beg for the full term. Like other areas, it has been influenced by the discourse on PDP-BJP unholy alliance. There have been attempts to fiddle with Article 370 and 35-A during the past five years of BJP rule at the Centre. These issues are sensitive to the people of Kashmir, said Nazir Ahmad. The voter is also looking towards addressing public issues and the law and order situation. The most important issue is the safety of the people within the state and outside, he added. The bonding & divorce vinaymishra188@gmail.com Dinesh Manhotra & Amit Khajuria Tribune News Service Jammu, March 20 After hectic parleys, the National Conference and the Congress today announced a seat-sharing deal for three of the six Lok Sabha seats in Jammu and Kashmir. Both the parties will have friendly contests in the constituencies of Baramulla and Anantnag in Kashmir Valley and the lone Ladakh seat. While the NC will support Congress in Udhampur-Doda and Jammu-Poonch seats, the latter will support NC for the Srinagar seat, where Farooq Abdullah will be the coalition candidate. Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said, We have entered into an alliance to strengthen secular forces in J&K. Friendly contests means that there will be no cut-throat contest between coalition partners. We will ensure that only coalition candidates will emerge victorious. The NC has already announced the candidates for the three parliamentary constituencies of Kashmir valley. Farooq Abdullah will contest from Srinagar, Akbar Lone from Baramulla and Justice (retired) Hasnain Masoodi from Anantnag. Though the Congress has not officially announced any candidate, the name of royal scion Vikramaditya Singh has already been cleared for Udhampur-Doda Lok Sabha seat to challenge the sitting MP and MoS in PMO, Jitendra Singh of BJP. The NC and Congress had contested three seats each in the 2014 election, but both failed to open their account with the BJP and PDP winning three seats each. pardeepdhull@gmail.com Srinagar, March 21 Security forces, with the help of locals, on Thursday rescued one of the two civilians held hostage by militants after a search operation in the Hajin area of Jammu and Kashmis Bandipora district, police said. Security forces launched a search operation in the area following information about the presence of militants there, a police spokesman said. Two civilians were held hostage by the terrorists. With the assistance of security forces, police and community members, one civilian has been rescued while efforts are on to rescue another, he said. The spokesman said the hostage still with the militants is reportedly a minor. PTI editorial@tribune.com Arteev Sharma Tribune News Service Jammu, March 20 With PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti announcing to contest all six parliamentary seats of Jammu and Kashmir, the party is banking on the decisive vote of tribal communities Gujjars and Bakerwals in two parliamentary constituencies of the Jammu region. In a bid to strike an emotional chord with the two communities and exploit sensitive issues, the party claimed that Mehbooba as Chief Minister during the previous PDP-BJP coalition regime, tried her best to ensure justice to the Bakerwal family after the infamous Kathua rape-murder case and to protect their rights on forest land. The PDPs attempt to woo Gujjars and Bakerwals is set to upset the NC-Congress alliances applecart as the party, which had garnered over 1.68 lakh votes from the Jammu-Poonch seat during the 2014 parliamentary elections, has managed to penetrate various Assembly segments, particularly Rajouri and Poonch districts. The party had won three Assembly seats Rajouri, Poonch and Darhal in the last elections. The NC has already alleged that it had credible information about the PDP soliciting the advice and direction of the BJP for fielding candidates, convenient to it, for the Jammu-Poonch and Udhampur seats to facilitate division of anti-BJP votes in order to ensuring the victory of BJP candidates. A senior PDP leader, who wished not to be named, said, We were not in favour of entering into a pre-poll alliance with any party because we did not want to dishearten the PDP cadre. Our party president, as the CM, worked tirelessly and fearlessly for the betterment of Gujjars and Bakerwals in the region. The people of these communities are wholeheartedly supporting the PDP because Mehbooba ji tried to protect their rights through the Tribal Affairs Ministry after she directed the administration that no tribal will be harassed during any anti-encroachment drive on forest land. She also did not budge from her stand on delivering justice to the Bakerwal girl from Rasana who was brutally raped and murdered last year, the leader said. Another senior leader said the PDP had been conducting special interactions with the heads of all hamlets of Gujjars and Bakerwals to ensure large-scale their mobilisation for the upcoming poll. According to Gujjar scholar Javaid Rahi, there are around 5 lakh votes of Gujjars and Bakerwals communities on the Jammu-Poonch seat, while the number of their votes in the Udhampur-Doda seat is around 3 lakh. The Jammu-Poonch constituency has 19,83,136 voters while the number of electors in the Udhampur-Doda seat is 16,47,403. They (Gujjars and Bakerwals) will not only play a decisive role but also prove to be a winning factor on both the seats if they are supported by other community voters, Rahi said. Mufti seeks support of religious heads As the Lok Sabha elections are inching closer, the PDP has started mobilising Muslim religious heads, seeking their support in the polls. Mehbooba Mufti visited a shrine at Kalakote in Rajouri district on Wednesday and sought the support of its religious head in the parliamentary elections. The religious head has been associated with the PDP since long, a party source said, adding that the party has begun mobilising Muslim religious heads to garner support for the party candidates on both seats of the Jammu region vinaymishra188@gmail.com Manpriya Singh Technically, the French dont really have much to do with Holi; sure, closer in the region they have the Orange Battle in Italy, which is pretty much like the La Tomatina in Spain. Just replace the tomatoes with oranges! South Korea has the mud festival, but France and our traditional Holi? A day before Holi, at Alliance Francaise, gujiya is spread out at the table for every visitor to get in the mood. While director Sylvain Choin corrects you, Just Google Holi and France, and you shall know that its quite popular back in our place. He has experienced it all, thrice in a row - right from a morning Holi with an Indian family in Chandigarh to the more hardcore one in Jaipur. I like the fact that everyone is friendly and polite. Just put some colour on each other and you connect. I also like the fact that so far, theyve always taken permission before putting colour on me. He adds, Not to forget the fact that its quite artistic. Colours coming together. Guests from Kenya Truly, it is about all colours coming together; both metaphorically and even literally. The bond that it forges with mankind and natures joyous is what the festival stands for. Something Wemsley W. Okuku, a Kenyan citizen, experienced in the city a few years ago. I was travelling from Delhi to Chandigarh via a Haryana Roadways bus, when at the Chandigarh bus stand I met these young children who sought permission to put colour on me. When I asked them about the significance of this festival, they said it was to celebrate the end of the winter and onset of summer. But personally for me, its about the connection we form with each other. They splashed coloured powder on me and we connected, thereby also celebrating diversity, but unity, adds the assistant professor of English at the International Divine College of Education. Safe celebration Alexia Poidevin, a city-based communications trainer, knows and has heard about Holi. I am going to play it too. Back in France, while her best friend is aware of the festival, her parents are not. There are only a few things she has in mind to ensure safe celebrations. I am not going to do the street thing. I will also only go to those places where the entry is paid and for couples only. But yes, its my first time in India and I am looking forward to it. Tell her about the festival in the Holi heartland comprising the ones in UP and she says, I dont think anybody in the city plays like that. Lets see! Unifying force Actor Mark Benington, who will soon also be seen in Kesari, finds something about Holi a little extra special. I like the fact that there is no divide. Everyone plays it young, old, kids. Back in the United States, we have Halloween, but we grow out of it. Holi is something people here never grow out of. Its for everyone. Of all the Holis that he has celebrated so far, his first one in Mumbai like all the firsts will always be a little special. It was fun; there was lot of dancing in the rain. I had bhang and didnt know what it was. Though I could feel it! I had new friends around and everybody played. manpriya@tribunemail.com rchopra@tribunemail.com Mumbai, March 21 An artiste must venture into films in different languages to catch the pulse of the country, especially the interiors, believes actor-producer Akshay Kumar. The actor, who has produced movies in Hindi, Marathi and Punjabi, said he is open to backing more films in the same space. I think best content comes from Marathi cinema...I have made two Marathi films and both of them have won awards. I have also made a Punjabi film. I think to reach into the core of India you have to get into the regional cinema, Akshay said in an interview here. The actor said he wanted to make Bhojpuri and Tamil films. I have tried making a Telugu film but we couldnt complete the script, he added. Akshay, 51, may have worked in a string of patriotic and issue-based films recently, but he said he wanted to continue doing films in different genres. In his 28 years of acting career, Akshay has managed to successfully switch to different genres from action to romance and comedies to socially relevant cinema recently. The actor said he is doing so to keep reinventing himself. If I am changing my image, it is because I am having fun with it. It is not that I have to prove anything to anyone. I want to enjoy my work so I keep doing different things. Initially in my career I was only doing action films and no one would offer me to do any other kind of work. I am glad I got the opportunity to keep changing my image with every film, he said. The actor was recently roped in for Amazon Prime Videos action thriller series, tentatively titled The End. Akshay, who rose to fame as an action star with the Khiladi series in the 1990s, said he would want to continue doing stunts for the next five years. I am 51, I think I can do action till the age of 56. God knows after that. If I am able to maintain myself, I will continue. Otherwise, there are other things one can do. The actors latest release Kesari released on Wednesday. Akshay also has Housefull 4, Good News, Sooryavanshi and Mission Mangal in the pipeline. PTI editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Khanna, March 20 The police claimed to have arrested a foreign national and recovered 1 kg of heroin and 5 gm of cocaine from his possession. The heroin is worth Rs 5 crore on the international market. The suspect has been identified as Harrison Chinedu Naji, a resident of Nigeria and at present residing at Bhagat Singh Marg in New Delhi. Khanna SSP Dhruv Dahiya said a police party was checking suspected vehicles and persons at a naka near Pristine Mall on the GT Road. The police signalled a Toyota Camry bearing a Delhi number that was coming from the Gobindgarh side. However, the car driver tried to escape. The police nabbed him and recovered 1 kg of heroin, 5 gm of cocaine, four mobile phones and one silver chain from his possession. A case under Section 21/61/85 of the NDPS Act has been registered at the Sadar police station. During preliminary investigation, it was found the suspect had brought the drugs from Delhi and was going towards Ludhiana to deliver it to some person. The car driver had no driving licence. The SSP said the Khanna police had arrested 21 Nigerians and recovered 10 kg of heroin besides other drugs from them since July 13, 2018. rchopra@tribunemail.com Beijing, March 21 SCOs new Secretary-General Vladimir Norov has said that issues between India and Pakistan should be resolved bilaterally and their participation in the security grouping could become impossible without a commitment for an unconditional fight against terrorism and separatism. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) was established in Shanghai in 2001 with China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as founding members. It was expanded in 2017 with the inclusion of India and Pakistan. Addressing his first press conference here on Wednesday after assuming charge, Norov said the Pulwama terror attack was a direct provocation by the opponents of peace between India and Pakistan. Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after a suicide bomber of Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed killed 40 CRPF personnel in Jammu and Kashmirs Pulwama district in February 14. The recent situation between India and Pakistan, which has resulted in human casualties, I would like to note that there has been a direct provocation by the opponents of the Indo-Pakistani accord and peace, Norov, who was the former foreign minister of Uzbekistan, said in response to questions. Asked how the SCO mechanism could be used to resolve the recent tensions between India and Pakistan, he said: Before joining the SCO as full members, India and Pakistan committed themselves to strictly implementing all the provisions of the legal framework that has been developed by the Member States of the Organisation. One of such fundamental obligations is not to bring bilateral contradictions and disagreements to the SCO family, as the SCO is not engaged in the settlement of disputable bilateral issues, whether border, water or other topics in relations between individual Member States, he said. These issues must be resolved and are being resolved through bilateral consultations and dialogue, goodwill and mutual reasonable compromises, he said. The most important condition for participation in a multi-disciplinary cooperation within the SCO is the commitment to unconditional and consistent struggle against terrorism, separatism and extremism. Otherwise, it would be impossible for the two states to participate in the SCO, Norov said. The whole world had heard clear signals from the parties not to escalate relations and their readiness to fully understand and follow the principles established within the organisation, he said. In addition, to offer mediation of the member states of the organisation as there is an intention to resolve the differences in a bilateral format, Norov said. After joining the SCO, India and Pakistan had common ground and were ready to work in the SCO format to ensure regional security, joint counteraction to complex challenges and threats, and sustainable socio-economic development, he said. This was stated by the leaders of India and Pakistan at last years SCO summit in Qingdao, in particular their intention to play an active and constructive role in the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group as peace and stability in Afghanistan is a matter of common concern for all the SCO countries, he said. Both India and Pakistan participated in the activities of the SCO as observers for 12 years and their accession to the SCO was preceded by a fairly long preparatory stage, he said. At present, representatives of India and Pakistan are actively working in two permanent bodies of the organisation which included the SCO Secretariat and the Executive Committee of the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), Norov said, adding that the Indian and Pakistani sides also took part in the activities of all 29 SCO working mechanisms of the SCO. Also, over 300 military personnel of India and Pakistan took part in the international anti-terrorist exercises Peace Mission-2018, which took place at the at Chelyabinsk region of Russia last year. This testifies to the joint and effective work of these two countries within the SCO, Norov said. The counter-terrorism exercises are due to be held this year again. The SCO will hold its summit in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, in June this year. Norov said the admission into the SCO of the two large and influential states of South Asia is of particular importance for the organisation and for the Eurasian region, as well to India and Pakistan themselves. Being at the same negotiating table, and on a regular basis and in different formats, India and Pakistan are now in the process of a permanent dialogue on all issues which are currently in the agenda of the SCO, he said. He said that with the admission of India and Pakistan, the SCO has acquired a trans-regional character and in terms of its aggregate potential, the total population, territory, reserves of natural resources, GDP, it has become the largest organisation not only in the region, but also in the world. Many experts noted that the SCO should be among the main supporting structures of the future world order, he said. Norov said the SCO Charter defined joint counteraction to terrorism, separatism and extremism in all their manifestations as one of the important tasks. Countering terrorism, separatism and extremism in particular in identifying, preventing and suppressing the manifestations of these three forces of evil in the territories of the SCO member states had become a major work of the organisation, he added. PTI AUSTIN, Texas, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alegion , a leading training data preparation platform for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, today announced the appointment of Ryan Suneson as the companys new vice president of finance. In his role, Suneson will provide financial advisement for Alegions expansion in Austin and abroad. Prior to joining Alegion, Suneson served as director and senior director of financial planning and analysis for Spredfast, an Austin-based social media software company. Under his leadership, the company raised a $50 million series F funding round and completed a $440 million acquisition/merger with Vista Capital & Lithium Technologies. Suneson also helped scale the companys finance processes while revenue grew by 700 percent over three years. I want to welcome Ryan to the Alegion team, and look forward to working closely with him, said Nathaniel Gates, chief executive officer of Alegion. "Our continued success and business growth has driven the need for enhanced finance and corporate governance initiatives. Ryans sterling record of achievement at fast-growing technology companies makes him an ideal fit. Organizations implementing AI have increased by 270 percent over the last four years, according to a recent survey by Gartner . With AI becoming a clear priority, enterprise data science teams are under tremendous pressure to deliver AI projects in a timely fashion, but are battling data quality challenges at scale. Alegion addresses this challenge by building large-scale custom training data sets for enterprise AI projects through the application of human judgment and intelligence. It supplies the labor-intensive labeling, classification, clean-up and normalization of data at a very large scale that cant be completed by internal enterprise teams. This data is then used to train AI, making projects more reliable, while saving enterprises time, money and staff. I am honored to join Alegion during this exciting time of growth, said Suneson. AI is a burgeoning market, and Im thrilled to have the opportunity to expand Alegions industry presence as the company aims to make AI more accessible for enterprises. In addition to his work with Alegion, Suneson is an active member of his community. He currently serves as treasurer and board member of the Austin Diaper Bank, a local nonprofit that provides free diapers to families in need. Suneson holds a Bachelor of Arts in mathematical economics from Pomona College. About Alegion Alegion is an Austin-based technology company that provides an AI training data platform and services that span the AI lifecycle, integrating human intelligence into the creation of high-quality training data, model scoring and validation, and exception handling. The Alegion platform helps enterprises accelerate confidence in their AI initiatives and mitigate their risk using proven approaches. For more information, visit www.alegion.com . harinder@tribunemail.com New Delhi, March 20 Two years, three acquittals and Aseemanand, the self-confessed monk with many aliases and one saffron identity, is now a free man after a special court in Panchkula on Wednesday let him off in the 2007 Samjhauta train bombing case. Wearing multiple identities of religious preacher, science student and terror accused, the saffron-robed Aseemanand, once known as the most wanted man in India, was the alleged link between the series of three bombings that ripped through India in 2007. The chain began on the intervening night of February 17-18 when a bomb exploded on the Samjhauta Express, the only train link between India and Pakistan, killing 68 people. On May 18, a blast in Hyderabads Mecca Masjid killed nine people. And in October the same year, an explosion in Ajmers famed Khwaja Chishti shrine claimed three lives. The bespectacled, saffron clad almost cerebral looking 67-year-old, who has been out on bail, has emerged unscathed from all three terror incidents. Born Naba Kumar Sarkar in Kamaarpukar village in West Bengals Hooghly district, he has many aliases including Jatin Chatterjee and Omkarnath. The man of several names, but committed to one shade of saffron came to be popularly known as Swami Aseemanand after he stepped into the national spotlight in 2010 when he was arrested by the CBI for his alleged role in the Mecca Masjid blast. The story of the man who grew out of his humble beginnings began somewhere in the 1970s. He had completed his graduation in science in 1971, but his interests lay elsewhere and he became involved with rightwing groups from school, going on to work full time with the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in Purulia and Bankura districts in the state. It was at the ashram that Naba Kumar Sarkar was christened Swami Aseemanand in 1981, investigators said. The fiery speaker soon became known for his anti-minority speeches and his relentless campaign against Christian missionaries. In the late 1990s, he settled down in Gujarats Dangs district where he started a tribal welfare organisation called Shabri Dham, a Hindu rightwing organisation. According to a confessional statement given to a judge in 2010, Aseemanand said he was famous for his anti-minority statements. In 2002, things changed after the killing of 30 devotees at the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar by terrorist suicide bombers and he wanted to avenge the deaths, he said. Aseemanand spoke of his association with others accused in terror-related cases but retracted the statement later. The NIA did not press perjury charges against him. PTI rchopra@tribunemail.com Washington, March 21 The United States has asked Pakistan to take sustained, verifiable and irreversible action against the perpetrators of terrorism, while warning the country that another terror attack on India will be extremely problematic. We need to see Pakistan taking concrete and sustained action to rein in the terrorist groups, mainly the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, in order to ensure that we dont have re-escalation (of tension) in the region, a senior administration official told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. And if theres any additional terrorist attack without Pakistan having made a sustained, sincere effort against these groups, it would be extremely problematic for Pakistan and it would cause re-escalation of tensions, which is dangerous for both countries, the official said on condition of anonymity. Asked about the steps being taken by Pakistan in the aftermath of the Balakot air strike by Indian fighter jets, the official said the US and the international community needed to see irreversible and sustained action against the terror groups. Its early to make a full assessment, the official said. In the recent days, the official said Pakistan had taken some initial actions. They had frozen the assets of some terrorist groups and made some arrests. They had taken administrative control of some of the JeM facilities, the official added. But we clearly need to see more. We need to see irreversible action because in the past, what weve seen is they made some arrests and then a few months later, they released these individuals. The terrorist leaders are sometimes still allowed to travel around the country, hold rallies, the official said. Reiterating that the United States is looking for irreversible action, the official said America is working with its international partners to increase pressure on Pakistan. Because it has been too long that these groups have been able to operate. Observing that Pakistan had economic concerns as well, the official said the Financial Action Tasks Force (FATF) is one area which demonstrated the need for them to take these actions against terror groups. Otherwise, theyre at risk within the system and the FATF to be grey-listed, the official said. Pakistan needed to decide if it wanted to be viewed as a responsible international player and have access to all the financial mechanisms that are available or is it going to continue to fail to take the steps necessary against these terrorist groups and see itself further isolated. The choice is Pakistans, the senior administration official asserted. While the situation between the two south Asian neighbours had de-escalated, the two armies are still on high alert and that concerned the US, the official said. So, we realise that if there, God forbid, was another terrorist attack you could quickly see the escalation in the situation once again. So thats why, were making clear that any additional military action by either side runs an unacceptably high risk, for both countries and for the region, the official said. The Trump Administration, the official said, had taken sort of a zero tolerance policy on the issue of safe havens to terrorists. The terror attack on February 14 on India was a demonstration that Pakistans continuing provision of sanctuary for any terrorist group is not acceptable, the official said. During the height of the crisis--February 26-28--the United States was in continuous contact with Indian and Pakistani officials, both on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad. They were working the phones continuously and were deeply engaged in seeking to deescalate what was a very dangerous moment in India-Pakistan relations, the official said. The United States had also reached out to influential countries to have them help deescalate the situation, the senior administration official said. Some of these countries are China, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and Australia. PTI harinder@tribunemail.com Bhartesh Singh Thakur Tribune News Service Chandigarh, March 20 In addition to the witnesses turning hostile one by one, the defence relied on the narco-analysis report of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) chief, Safdar Nagori, to prove the innocence of Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajinder Chaudhary in the Samjhauta blast case. On February 18, 2007, two IEDs had exploded on the Samjhauta Express train. Nagori was arrested in Indore on March 27, 2008. The defence told the court that Nagori had categorically stated in his test report in Samjhauta blasts that some persons from Pakistan had come and they had purchased a suitcase cover at Kataria market in Indore. It was pointed out that Nagori had said that one Taslim had helped them get the suitcase cover stitched. The NIA Court was told that Nagori had further said that Abdul Razak, a resident of Indore and SIMI activist, had helped the Pakistanis in the blasts. He had claimed that before the blasts, Razak had informed him that he had taken the help of Misbah-ul-Islam of Kolkata. On the basis of the report, the then Investigating Officer (IO) of SIT on September 19, 2008, had obtained a production warrant for Abdul Razak. Razak was then involved in a criminal case, registered on March 30, 2008, under the Unlawful Activities Act and Section 133 A of the IPC at Indore. The SIT IO had sought his remand, but later on he was got discharged on December 10, 2008. As the case was leading nowhere, the National Investigation Agency took over the case on July 26, 2010. editorial@tribune.com New Delhi, March 20 The BJP today finalised a seat-sharing deal with the BDJS and Kerala Congress in the southern state for the Lok Sabha poll, party leaders said. The BJP would field candidates for 14 seats in Kerala, while the Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) would contest five seats and PC Thomas-led Kerala Congress one, said Muralidhar Rao, national general secretary of the BJP. Announcing the seat-sharing pact, Rao said the BJP-led NDA was getting support from all sections in the state. The three parties have also finalised the seats they want to contest, he said. Sources said former Mizoram Governor Kummanam Rajasekharan was likely to be BJP candidate from Thiruvananthapuram against Congress Shashi Tharoor. BDJS chief Thushar Vellapally was likely to be candidate from Thrissur, they said. Kerala has 20 Lok Sabha seats and the state will go to the polls on April 23. The BJP is aiming to open its account in the state, where its ideological mentor, the RSS, has a significant presence. In the Assembly poll of 2016, the BJP made inroads in parts of Kerala, which has alternatively been ruled by the CPM-led LDF and the Congress-led UDF. PTI gspannu7@gmail.com Vibha Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, March 21 The BJP on Thursday fielded Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi constituency and its president Amit Shah from Gandhinagar in place of LK Advani as it announced its first list of 184 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will again be contesting from Varanasi. Party chief Amit Shah will, however, replace veteran leader and member of the margdarshak committee LK Advani in Gandhinagar in Gujarat. Read: BJP's first list of candidates The BJP announced candidates from 20 states and so far it seems that quite a few candidates from Uttar Pradesh have been retained. The 91-year-old, Advani, has won Gandhinagar for five consecutive terms. It is unlikely that Advani will be fielded from some other constituency. This also means curtains for the senior leader who had a long and distinguished career, leading the BJP from a party of two members to the centre stage. As per BJP leaders, there could not be a better way out for Advani, being replaced by none other than Amit Shah. It is surprising though that Shah, who BJP leaders earlier said was going to remain the backroom strategist, will be contesting the Lok Sabha for the first time. Senior party leader JP Nadda told a press conference that the party also decided to field Home Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow and another Union Minister Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur. Both leaders had won from these seats in the last general election. Union Minister Smriti Irani has been re-nominated from Amethi and will take on Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Union Minister Kiren Rijiju will fight from Arunachal East. The BJP has also re-nominated Union Ministers VK Singh and Mahesh Shamra from Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida), respectively. The BJP announced its candidates from many states, including Uttar Prdesh, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura. The BJP has finalised names of all 17 party candidates from Bihar and sent the list to the state unit which will announce it jointly with allies, Nadda said. In Uttar Pradesh, Sakshi Maharaj will contest from Unnao and Sanjeev Balyan from Muzaffarnagar. In the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP announced candidates for the five Lok Sabha seats. Khalid Jahangir will contest from Srinagar while Jugal Kishore Sharma has been given ticket from Jammu. Dr Jitendra Singh will contest from Udhampur and from Baramulla MM War will be the party candidate. In Anantnag, Sofi Youssaf has been given the ticket. Newly-inducted BJD member Jay Panda will contest from Kendrapada. In Bikaner, Union Minister Arjun Meghwal will contest and from Jaipur Rural Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Dushyant Singh from Jhalawar. Nadda said the states were discussed one by one in three meetings. In a surprising move the BJP chose today evening to announce the names. Sources say that apart from the fact that time was running out for the first two phases, the BJP appears to have also taken other considerations, perhaps astrological, while choosing the day and date to announce the first list. The BJP conducted surveys at the grassroots to decide the names of candidates to determine winnability factor of each and every candidate. The winnability factor was determined on the basis of feedback on their response to the various central schemes, personal popularity and caste combinations. Lok Sabha elections will begin on April 11 and continue for over a month till May 19 across seven phases, followed by counting of votes on May 23. The polling will be held on April 11, April 18, April 23, April 29, May 6, May 12 and May 19 for 543 Lok Sabha seats across the country in which nearly 90 crore voters would be eligible to vote. rchopra@tribunemail.com Washington, March 21 China has a responsibility not to shield Pakistan, a senior Trump administration official has said, expressing deep disappointment over Beijings decision to block a bid in the UN to designate Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist. Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) led by Azhar claimed responsibility for the February 14 terrorist attack in Kashmirs Pulwama which killed 40 Indian security personnel. We think China has a responsibility not to shield Pakistan and join the international community in calling on Pakistan to take action against terrorists operating on its soil, the senior Trump administration official said on Wednesday. After the Pulwama attack, the US, France and Britain moved a resolution in the UN Sanctions Committee of the Security Council to designate Azhar as a global terrorist. The move suffered a setback as China put a technical hold on the proposal for the fourth time, a move India termed as disappointing. We believe China and the US share a mutual interest in achieving regional stability and peace. And that any failure on the Security Council to designate Masood Azhar as a terrorist would run counter to this mutual goal that China and the United States have, the official said. We dont really understand this. China should not be shielding Pakistans support for known terrorist organisations. So, were hoping that we can work together on a mutual goal in terms of countering terrorism and upholding our Security Council responsibility, the official said. The Trump administrations view on Chinas decision on Azhar came as Germany initiated a move at the European Union to list the JeM leader as a global terrorist. Noting that it was not the first time the JeM attacked India, the official said this was the reason the Trump administration thought now is the time for Pakistan to crack down on the terror group. This has been made very clear to the leadership of Pakistan, said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity. This same group was responsible for other attacks in India like the 2001 Parliament attack, which resulted in a six-month India-Pakistan mobilisation, the official said. The US is also working at the United Nations, urging Pakistan to uphold its responsibilities pursuant to its UN Security Council commitments to deny safe haven and support to terrorists and to freeze the funds and financial assets of entities on the UN Security Council 1267 sanctions list. PTI editorial@tribune.com Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service New Delhi, March 20 BSP supremo Mayawati today perplexed the Opposition ranks with her decision to withdraw from the Lok Sabha fray and her remarks that she was still not out of the potential prime ministerial race should numbers favour the anti-BJP camp after the elections. It all began with Mayawatis cryptic message to her cadres this morning where she said, I will not be contesting Lok Sabha elections. Lest anyone imputed to her statement motives she didnt mean, Mayawati later told her workers not to lose heart over her not fighting LS poll now. She also indicated that the race for the PM post was very much open and she was a clear claimant. When I became the UP CM for the first time in 1995 I was not member of either UP Assembly or Council. Similarly is the provision at the Centre where a person has to be a Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha member within six months of holding office of minister/PM. Dont be disheartened by my decision not to contest LS poll now, Mayawati said on Twitter after her decision not to contest created consternation in BSP camps. Her clarification triggered a series of reactions from jubilant BSP followers who started hailing Mayawati as PM material on Twitter. Only few hours ahead of Mayawatis clarification on whether she was out of the PM race having decided not to contest, the Congress had projected itself as the beneficiary of the prevailing anti-BJP sentiment. Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Singh said, BSP is a separate political party and this is Mayawati jis personal decision. The Congress is the pan-national party which will form a government at the Centre and bring like-minded parties together in a coalition like it did post 2004. Mayawati was however quick to puncture Congress move of staking an unchallenged claim to the PMs chair when she pointed out that she could enter LS or RS after the poll and still be in the race for PM. That said, Mayawatis withdrawal from the poll fray surprised many leaders both in the Opposition and ruling BJP circles alike. In the ruling camp leaders one thought was that Mayawati was anticipating a tough LS contest from the BJP; the second thought was perhaps she has reconciled to the surge in nationalist sentiment that could benefit the BJP after Pulwama. The fact that two Opposition titans have decided not to run for the Lok Sabha - NCP Chief Sharad Pawar and now Mayawati doesnt bode well for Opposition unity or morale and certainly doesnt make good optics. This is a psychological dampener and does place the BJP at an advantage to that extent. When your top generals withdraw from the battle, enemy forces are bound to get emboldened even before the battle has begun, a senior opposition leader said. vinaymishra188@gmail.com London, March 20 Nirav Modi, the main accused in the $2 billion PNB scam case, has been arrested in London, where a court today remanded the fugitive diamantaire in custody till March 29, saying there are substantial grounds to believe that he would fail to surrender if granted bail. Nirav Deepak Modi, 48, was arrested on behalf of the Indian authorities on Tuesday in Holborn, the Metropolitan Police said. His arrest came days after a London court issued an arrest warrant in response to a request by the Enforcement Directorate for extradition in a money-laundering case. Modi was produced in the Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, where he contested his extradition to India. District Judge Marie Mallon said she was not inclined to accept Modis bail plea due to the high value amount attached to the allegations against him and that he would have every incentive to evade surrendering. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), representing the Indian authorities, told the court that Modi was wanted in India for fraud and money laundering. Under UK domestic law, the CPS said he is liable on charges of conspiracy to fraud, which has a maximum jail term of seven years, and conspiracy to conceal, which could result in anywhere between seven, 10 and life term in jail. Modis legal team was headed by Barrister George Hepburne-Scott and his solicitor, Anand Doobay, is the same legal expert hired by former Kingfisher Airlines boss Vijay Mallya in his extradition proceedings against India. Modis team made a case for bail, offering 500,000 pounds as security and an offer to adhere to stringent conditions. PTI In net, finally Modi was arrested from a Metro Bank branch by uniformed officers on Tuesday, when he went there to open a new bank account A bank clerk alerted Scotland Yard as a result of the high publicity surrounding the case Modi was in possession of at least three passports, all since revoked by India Art works auction New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate has obtained permission from a local court to sell 173 paintings valued at Rs 57.72 crore and 11 high-end vehicles beneficially owned by Nirav Modi. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service New Delhi, March 20 As the country prepares for the general elections, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu today said media should present a report card on the performance of parties in an objective manner so that people can make an informed choice and cautioned against fake news. Delivering the first Atal Bihari Vajpayee memorial lecture on Role of media in moulding enlightened electorate, Naidu said if the media could present a report card, people would demand accountability from political parties vis-a-vis promises, raising resources and how they intended to spend them. Our country can boast of not only being the largest democracy in the world but also one of the most vibrant, cleanest democracies in the world, he said in his address at the lecture organised by the Indian Institute of Mass Communication.The Vice President said media should act as a mirror reflecting reality, neither magnifying nor diminishing, neither distorting nor mystifying facts. Expressing his concern over the evil of paid news, Naidu advised the media to shun this tendency lest money power is used to influence voters through manufactured views and opinions of paid news. Media organisations, he said, should also devote space and time to report on the antecedents of politicians, their past work, participation in debates in state legislatures and Parliament. While the electorate, he said, should vote for their representative based on their character, caliber, capacity and conduct he observed instead some people were trying to replace these qualities with cash, community, caste and criminality. We must foresee that these 4Cs are coming and must be careful, he cautioned. vinaymishra188@gmail.com Aditi Tandon Tribune News Service New Delhi, March 20 Bihars Patna Sahib Lok Sabha segment appears to be bracing for an interesting contest. While reports from the BJP indicate that the party may field Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from the seat, the Congress is going all out to woo rebel BJP member Shatrughan Sinha for the segment. Sections of Bihar Congress today claimed that Sinha will join the party in Patna on Friday and reveal his parliament poll plans. Sinha has personally not opened his cards and is learnt to be in touch with the RJD also. A senior Congress leader, however, indicated that Sinhas candidature from Patna Sahib had been sealed as part of the grand alliance talks, where the RJD and Congress are leading discussions with other smaller parties. The alliance is also likely to be announced on Friday in Patna. It was earlier to be unveiled on March 17. Shatrughan Sinha, for his part, has been evidently looking for a space in the Opposition, having joined two anti-BJP rallies, including the latest one which West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee hosted in the state this January. The actor-turned-politician has been more than caustic in his tweets against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has repeatedly attacked the PM on Rafale. Sinha has represented Patna Sahib in Lok Sabha in 2009 and 2014. He, however, fell out with the BJP midway into PM Modis tenure just like his colleague from Bihar Kirti Azad, who also joined the Congress recently. Sinha, 72, was Health and Shipping Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government and has been in the Rajya Sabha before as well. English French MONTREAL, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Knight Therapeutics Inc. (TSX: GUD) ("Knight"), a Canadian specialty pharmaceutical company, today announced that it has initiated a lawsuit in District Court Center-Lod in Israel against Medison Biotech Ltd. ("Medison"), its CEOMeir Jakobsohn, and Tzalir Holdings Ltd (Tzalir), Mr. Jakobsohns personal holding company. Knight, on behalf of Knight shareholders, is seeking to prevent Mr. Jakobsohn from using Medisons cash reserves to fund his personal activist campaign against Knight. Mr. Jakobsohn has been a director of Knight since 2015 when Knight became a 28% shareholder of Medison, a private Israeli company. As part of the agreement, Mr. Jakobsohn was appointed to Knights board of directors (the Board) as a representative of Tzalir. Mr. Jakobsohn, Tzalir and Medison hold in total approximately 7% of the shares of Knight (the Knight Interest) and over 85% of the economic interest of this holding traces personally back to Mr. Jakobsohn. On September 20, 2018, after Knight rejected Medisons separation terms which would have had Knight shareholders suffer a significant financial loss and Mr. Jakobsohn enjoy a significant gain, Medisons board of directors passed a resolution introduced by Mr. Jakobsohn authorizing Medison to fund up to US$1,000,000 of expenses related to Mr. Jakobsohns activist campaign against Knight. Subsequently, on March 4, 2019, Mr. Jakobsohn informed the Medison board that he was likely going to request that they approve an additional US$1,000,000 of activist expenses. This is after Medisons board voted to breach its contractual obligation to pay Knight a dividend based on Medisons 2018 financial results, a position that they reversed only under threat of legal action. As detailed in the lawsuit, Knight alleges that the resolution is oppressive and unfairly prejudicial to Knight shareholders who own 28% of Medison on the basis that over 85% of the Knight Interest is held beneficially by Mr. Jakobsohn personally and yet Medison is paying 100% of the activist expenses to fund his campaign. Mounting an unnecessary and self-serving proxy fight against Knight is disappointing enough to our shareholders but filtering Medisons already limited cash to Mr. Jakobsohns personal campaign is inexcusable. On behalf of all Knight shareholders, we will not allow Mr. Jakobsohn to use Medisons limited cash to fund his campaign against Knight, said Knight CEO Jonathan Ross Goodman. If Mr. Jakobsohn is going to carry out an activist campaign to benefit himself personally, it is only fair that Mr. Jakobsohn pay personally. His ongoing actions continue to illustrate that his interests arent aligned with other Knight shareholders. Our Board and management will continue to fight for the rights of our shareholders. Knight shareholders should understand that every dollar that Medison spends on this campaign is a dollar that could otherwise increase Medisons net profit and Knights participation therein. Advisors Knight has retained Kingsdale Advisors as its strategic shareholder and communications advisor and Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP as its legal advisor. About Knight Therapeutics Inc. Knight Therapeutics Inc., headquartered in Montreal, Canada, is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on acquiring or in-licensing and commercializing innovative pharmaceutical products for the Canadian and select international markets. Knight Therapeutics Inc.s shares trade on TSX under the symbol GUD. For more information about Knight Therapeutics Inc., please visit the companys web site at www.gud-knight.com or www.sedar.com. Forward-Looking Statement This document contains forward-looking statements for Knight Therapeutics Inc. and its subsidiaries. These forward-looking statements, by their nature, necessarily involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Knight Therapeutics Inc. considers the assumptions on which these forward-looking statements are based to be reasonable at the time they were prepared, but cautions the reader that these assumptions regarding future events, many of which are beyond the control of Knight Therapeutics Inc. and its subsidiaries, may ultimately prove to be incorrect. Factors and risks, which could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations are discussed in Knight Therapeutics Inc.'s Annual Report and in Knight Therapeutics Inc.'s Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2018. Knight Therapeutics Inc. disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information or future events, except as required by law. CONTACT INFORMATION: Investor Contact: Knight Therapeutics Inc. Samira Sakhia President & Chief Financial Officer T: 514-678-8930 F: 514-481-4116 info@gudknight.com www.gud-knight.com Media Contact: Kingsdale Advisors Ian Robertson Executive Vice President, Communication Strategy Direct: 416-867-2333 Cell: 647-621-2646 irobertson@kingsdaleadvisors.com pardeepdhull@gmail.com Kathmandu, March 21 Various scholars from India and Nepal on Thursday called for the preservation and promotion of Sanskrit language and literature for their common benefit and establishing a study centre for the language with a joint governing board. The scholars, who took part in a three-day long International Sanskrit Conference that concluded on Thursday, called for the set up of Indo-Nepal Centre for Sanskrit Studies with a joint governing board with necessary facilities in Kathmandu. Titled Sanskrit a common treasure of Nepal and India, the conference was jointly organised by the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu, Indias Ministry of Culture in collaboration with the Balmiki campus of Nepal Sanskrit University. More than 45 working papers on different aspects of Sanskrit language, literature and philosophy were presented by the scholars during the conference, according to an official statement. During the conference India was also urged to provide scholarships through its embassy in Kathmandu to Nepalese students for higher studies in yoga and Ayurveda, noted the declaration. PTI harinder@tribunemail.com Tribune News Service Chandigarh, March 20 Mohd Usman of Karachi was not a witness travelling by the Samjhauta train that fateful day, but the one who threw two suitcases containing bombs outside the train. In a statement recorded under Section 164 of the CrPC on February 21, 2007, before Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Panipat, HS Dahiya, he stated, Around 11:45 pm, the train stopped with a jolt. One woman who had two children came, shouting at us to leave luggage and get down as the train had caught fire. Panic spread in our bogie. He heard that another bogie had caught fire. He claimed that he helped three persons get down from the train. After that, I took a blanket and slept. After that, the train received another jolt. I peeped outside and saw fire tenders being used to extinguish fire. I was relieved that the fire had been extinguished, he said in his statement. He then went back to sleep. Between 4 am and 4:30 am, a railway employee shouted at him to get down as he was closing the bogies. As per Usmans statement, he noticed a suitcase in the bogie. He thought that someone had forgotten it and he would take it with his luggage. He pulled it, but as it was heavy, it fell and opened. There were bottles inside it, which he threw outside. He noticed an indicator blinking in the centre of the suitcase handle. He threw the suitcase outside. He had some water. He noticed a light blinking in the centre of another suitcases handle. He dragged, kicked and pushed it out of the train. He told the magistrate that after some time, people came and brought his luggage down. He heard that IPS officer Bharti Arora had reached the spot. Arora had by then called for the bomb disposal squad. He told Arora the sequence of events. The defence counsel submitted in court, The perusal of his statement reveals that Usmans conduct was highly suspicious and unnatural. The possibility that he was connected with the explosive-laden suitcases cannot be ruled out. Usman never came to depose in court. harinder@tribunemail.com Mumbai, March 20 Transgender activist Gauri Sawant has been appointed one of the goodwill ambassadors of the Election Commission in Maharashtra. This is for the first time a transgender has been appointed as a goodwill ambassador. Till 2014, there was no separate classification of transgenders as voters. In 2014, transgenders were first enrolled as voters along with males and females. While 918 voters had enrolled themselves as transgenders in Maharashtra in 2014, the number has now gone up to 2,086. The highest enrolment of transgenders (324) is in Mumbai North Lok Sabha constituency. Then there are 113, 184 and 123 transgenders registered as voters in Bhiwandi, Kalyan and Mumbai North East constituencies respectively. As a goodwill ambassador, Sawant will visit the houses of transgenders and appeal to them to enrol themselves as voters and also explain to them the need to exercise their franchise, the officials said. PTI editorial@tribune.com Vibha Sharma Tribune News Service New Delhi, March 20 Attempting to turn the tables on Congress chief Rahul Gandhi for his chowkidar chor hai jibe on a day the BJP claimed victory with chowkidar netting fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi in the UK, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told security guards to wear the abuse (of thief) like a gehna. I realise you all are pained, hurt upon repeatedly being called a chor. I have learnt to wear all abuses like a gehna. You should also do the same, he said, while interacting with 25 lakh security guards across the country on the eve of Holi via audio bridge under his partys 2019 poll campaign main bhi chowkidar. While Rahul is persisting with his chor jibe, the campaign too has been at the receiving end of the Opposition. However, turning the attack against him into an insult to all security men, including jawans of armed forces, Modi said he was aware that security guards were feeling belittled and insulted on being called a thief. But you should learn from my past experiences from being at the receiving end of such abuses from naamdaars (read Rahul) and continue performing your duty as kaamdaars. Giving Rahuls chor jibe a wider connotation, he said a doctor who saved a patient was also a chowkidar and a jawan who saved the country from the enemy was also a chowkidar. Chowkidars are now being discussed not just in India but also abroad. Everywhere people are saying I am also a chowkidar. I salute all watchmen who perform their duties despite all adversities and hardships and without thinking about themselves or their families, he said. gspannu7@gmail.com PK Jaiswar Tribune News Service Amritsar, March 21 A 13-year-old boy was kidnapped on Thursday from a school playground where he along with several other children was celebrating Holi. The victim was identified as Harsh, a resident of Jastarwal village falling under Bhindi Saida police station in the rural belt. According to information, the victim, a seventh standard student, was kidnapped by two youths with shorn hair and taken away in a car here at around 4.30 pm. Immediately, the onlookers informed the police and his family members. The police swiftly swung into action and cordoned the entire rural belt and installed checkpoints in various parts of the district. SSP Amritsar Rural, Parampal Singh said due to intensive checking, the unidentified accused abandoned the boy on roadside near Radha Soami Satsung Bhavan at Hothia village. He was rescued by the police and later handed over to his family. His father is a farmer. The SSP said the police registered a kidnapping case in this regard. The police was working on different theories to crack the case. editorial@tribune.com Ravi Dhaliwal Tribune News Service Dera Baba Nanak, March 20 The protest by farmers whose land is to be acquired by the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) for the Kartarpur corridor project ended following an assurance of adequate compensation by the government. Cabinet minister and Dera Baba Nanak MLA Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and SDM Gursimran Singh Dhillon, who has been designated as the Competent Authority for Land Acquisition (CALA) by the NHAI, have assured the farmers that they will be adequately compensated and will not get a rupee less that the rate decided by the authorities. The work on the construction of the Integrated Check Post (ICP), spread over 50 acres, continued for the third day with JCB machines flattening the standing wheat crop. Local farmers had yesterday tried to meet officials of the NHAI and the Land Ports Authority of India. Gurnam Singh of Pakhoke Taali Sahib village said they wanted the NHAI to treat them on a par with farmers whose land was taken over in 2015 for the Bathinda-Tarn Taran-Amritsar national highway project. The farmers got anything between Rs 80 lakh and Rs 1 crore per acre. We should be paid a similar price, he said. Randhawa said farmers should understand that there were technicalities involved in awarding compensation at that rate. I stand by the farmers, but they should not raise illogical demands, he said. Dhillon today met a delegation of farmers. The exact rates will be finalised by Friday after which we will take possession of the land, he said. An official said, Going by rules, the average rates of land sold in the last three years will be taken into consideration. A 100 per cent solatium, an amount given in compensation for inconvenience, will be added to the average rate. For example, if the average rate over three years is pegged at Rs 20 lakh per acre, an equal amount will be added as solatium. This means that the farmers will get Rs 40 lakh per acre. editorial@tribune.com Lahore, March 20 As Pakistan and India discuss the alignment of Kartarpur corridor, some 600 villagers who are facing forcible eviction due to the project say they will block the development work if denied compensation of their land on commercial rates. The entire population (600) of Kothay Khurd village, where Gurdwara Dera Sahib Kartarpur is located (some 125 km from Lahore), has been ordered by the district administration to vacate their houses immediately for the development of the corridor to facilitate the Sikh pilgrims from India. My ancestors had settled in the village even before the partition and now our fifth generation is living here. Some officials told the residents that the government was planning to build Kartarpur corridor on our land, therefore we will have to vacate it, Mohammad Arshad of Kothay Khurd said. We are living in the area for centuries and it is not possible for us to leave the area and the graves of our ancestors, another villager Zaeem Hussain said, adding that the government officials had only told them that they would be compensated after their land and houses had been acquired. Hussain said there had been consensus among the villagers to sacrifice their agricultural land, but none of them was ready to leave their ancestral houses. He said the villagers would protest and not let the government develop the corridor if it forcibly evicted them from their houses. We want compensation of our land on commercial rates, he demanded. The Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee has demanded immediate compensation for farmers at commercial rates. It said no ordinary compensation would be accepted and the affected families be given one job each. Deputy Commissioner Waheed Asghar says the government is acquiring the land under Section 4 of the Punjab Land Acquisition Act 1894, and it will pay compensation for the crop and land. He denied that the government was forcefully evicting the villagers. We are trying to resolve the matter peacefully, he said. Evacuee Trust Property Board spokesman Asif Hashmi said almost 40 per cent of the work on the corridor had been completed. It will be completed by November to observe the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev, he said. PTI vinaymishra188@gmail.com Jupinderjit Singh Tribune News Service Chandigarh, March 20 Gun house owners in Punjab are making hay with the Election Commission ordering residents to deposit weapons ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. With the state accounting for one-fifth of the total arms licences held by Indians, Punjab Police are facing a daunting task of making space for safely storing nearly eight lakh weapons. Many have chosen to deposit their firearms with gun houses for Rs 2,000-2,500 rent fee. Police sources say they have to make extra space at malkhanas in around 300 police stations across the state to store these weapons. On an average, each police station will have to store nearly 3,000 firearms. As per the EC records, around 2.5 lakh weapons of different make have already been deposited. A person can keep three weapons on him on a single arms licence. India has nearly 21 lakh registered arms licences, of which around five lakh are with Punjab alone. The high number of arms licences had figured prominently in the 2017 Assembly polls when the Congress accused Akalis of issuing licences to their workers without proper verification. Police sources say they have adequate space for around 1,500 weapons in each police station. Well make some adjustments for more. Police are not entrusted with safe-keeping only. We have to inspect weapons every week, an official said. The EC doesnt have the exact number of weapons deposited with gun stores but they estimate it is high. Sources say an estimated 20 per cent of the total weapons have so far been deposited with gun houses. At Rs 2,500 per weapon, it is a windfall for some gun house owners in big cities, a police official said. editorial@tribune.com Tribune News Service Bathinda, March 20 Sikhs from various parts of New York City area have raised $1,00,000 for the first-ever documentary on Guru Nanak Dev. The documentary will be shown on 200 TV stations all over America during 2019, when the Sikhs will be celebrating the 550th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism. As per a release, members of Gurdwara Baba Makhan Shah Lobana in New York showed their enthusiasm for this cause and they backed the plan presented by the National Sikh Campaign (NSC). The NSC is spearheading this national project of the Sikhs in America and will be organising premier shows of this film in the US and other parts of the world. It has hired Auteur Productions to make this documentary to be shown on TV stations. The fund raising event started with a gatka show by children. Second generation US-born Sikh youth expressed their enthusiasm and support for this project. Tarlok Singh Chugh, an internet sensation on Punjabi jokes, came from Calgary, Canada, and made every one laugh. Over 20 youth members displayed their gatka skills. Dr Rajwant Singh, senior adviser, NSC, who gave a detailed presentation on the documentarys plan, said, The goal is to reach out to Americans. We are trying to make sure that we go beyond the traditional way of celebrating this important occasion. vermaajay1968@gmail.com Buenos Aires: A five-year-old boy who went missing during a family walk in Argentina was found safe and well after 24 hours lost in a desert in the west of the country. Authorities in San Juan province and some 1,000 volunteers went searching for the boy with a former Dakar Rally motorcyclist finding him 21 kilometres (13 miles) from where he was last seen.The child was hospitalised for slight dehydration. AfP Europes first underwater restaurant opens Baaly: Europe's first underwater restaurant opens in Norway on Wednesday with more than 7,000 customers booked in to eat among the fish. Situated on the southern tip of Norway, it looks like a large concrete tube partly submerged in the North Sea. It is called Under, which also means "wonder" in Norwegian. Entering Under initially feels like going into a sauna, but an 8-metre flight of stairs leads down to a large dining area, walled by a gigantic transparent window to the ocean. rEUTERS Labra fetches top US dog breed honour for record 28th yr New York: The loyal and dependable Labrador Retriever hung on for the 28th year in a row to the title of America's most popular dog in 2018, the American Kennel Club said on Wednesday.The top 10 dog breeds in the United States in 2018 remained unchanged from last year except for the rise of the German shorthaired pointer and the decline of the Yorkshire terrier, which swapped ninth and tenth ranks, said the AKC, the world's largest purebred dog registry, based in New York City. After the Labrador, America's nine most popular dogs in 2018 in descending order were the German shepherd, Golden retriever, French bulldog, standard bulldog, beagle, poodle, rottweiler, German shorthaired pointer and Yorkshire terrier, according to the organisation that registers more than 1 million dogs and litters a year. REUTERS TORONTO, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nevada Zinc Corporation (the "Company" or "Nevada Zinc") (TSX Venture: NZN) announces that on March 8, 2019, the Company sold its 25,000,000 common shares of Generic Gold Corp. (Generic Gold) for cash consideration of $300,000 (the Distribution), pursuant to a private agreement. Prior to the Distribution, the Company owned 25,000,000 Common Shares, representing approximately 66.34% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares on a non-diluted and partially diluted basis. Following the Distribution, the Company owns no Common Shares, representing 0% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares on a non-diluted and partially diluted basis. The Company reviews its holdings from time to time and may increase or decrease its position as future circumstances may dictate. The Company, after reviewing market and other conditions, decreased its holdings in Generic Gold pursuant to the Distribution. Concurrently with the Distribution, Don Christie and Bruce Durham also resigned as directors of Generic Gold. Subsequent to the Distribution, the Company has entered into an Option and Right of First Refusal Agreement with Generic Gold, dated March 14, 2019, whereby the Company may purchase the shares of the company affiliated to Generic Gold that holds Generic Golds Yukon properties (see the Companys press release dated June 29, 2017) during the period ending March 14, 2020 at a cost of $200,000. The purchase price may be paid in either cash or shares of Nevada Zinc at the discretion of the Company. In addition, the Company has a right of first refusal expiring March 14, 2021 with regard to the sale of the Yukon properties owned by Generic Gold or its affiliates. This press release is being disseminated pursuant to National Instrument 62-103 The Early Warning System and Related Take Over Bids and Insider Reporting Issues with respect to the filing of an early warning report by Nevada Zinc. About Nevada Zinc Nevada Zinc is a discovery driven mineral exploration company with a proven management team focused on identifying unique mineral exploration opportunities that have the potential to provide significant economic value to its shareholders. The current focus of the Company is the development of the Lone Mountain Zinc Project comprised of 231 claims covering over 1,619 hectares (4,000 acres) near Eureka, Nevada. The Lone Mountain Project is located in east-central Nevada and is easily accessible via paved and gravel roads northwesterly from Eureka where all essential services are available. The Project includes options, leases or purchase agreements to acquire 100% interests in all properties along the entire key structural trend which extends for more than four kilometres. The Company is currently preparing a preliminary economic assessment for the Lone Mountain Project with completion scheduled for Q2 of this year. The Company has completed 85 reverse circulation drill holes and 13 core drill holes. Results from the drill programs have shown numerous broad intersections of medium to high grade, non-sulphide, zinc mineralization in two locations both of which are located between surface and a depth of approximately 250 metres, most of which may potentially be mined using open pit methods. Bruce Durham P.Geo, President and CEO of Nevada Zinc is a Qualified Person, as that term is defined by Canadian regulatory guidelines under National Instrument 43-101, and has read and approved the technical information contained in this press release. Additional information about the Company is available on the Companys website: www.nevadazinc.com . For further information contact: Nevada Zinc Corporation Suite 1660, 141 Adelaide St. West Toronto, Ontario M5H 3L5 Tel: 416-504-8821 Bruce Durham, President and CEO bdurham@nevadazinc.com Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs, geological interpretations, receipt of property titles, potential mineral recovery processes, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results relating to, among other things, results of exploration, project development, reclamation and capital costs of the Company's mineral properties, and the Company's financial condition and prospects, could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by the Company or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. vermaajay1968@gmail.com Moscow, March 20 The speaker of Kazakhstans parliament was sworn in as interim president on Wednesday, a day after longtime leader Nursultan Nazarbayev abruptly resigned. Nazarbayev surprised many by announcing in a televised address on Tuesday that he would step down after nearly 30 years in office that had included the whole of Kazakhstans time as an independent nation. The 78-year-old Nazarbayev attended Kassym-Jomart Tokayevs inauguration on Wednesday, entering to lengthy applause from assembled dignitaries before taking a seat on a podium behind the lectern where Tokayev gave an address. Minutes after Tokayev was sworn in, he suggested that the Kazakh capital Astana be renamed Nursultan to honour the outgoing President. Tokayev in his speech praised Nazarbayev as an outstanding reformer who was widely expected to continue to wield influence as the chairman of the security council and head of the ruling party. Nazarbayev is not stepping down; he is stepping up, Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Center in Moscow, tweeted. He will oversee power transit over the next few years. Trenin said Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose fourth term in office endes in 2024, was also likely to use the option of the president mentor later on. Rumours about Nazarbayevs resignation and a possible plan for succession have been swirling for years. Some speculated that the president might be grooming his daughter, who had served as the deputy prime minister and was a lawmaker now, for succession. Nazarbayev had not indicated that he had a successor in mind. Nazarbayev took the helm in Kazakhstan as its Communist Party chief of the republic in 1989 when it was part of the Soviet Union, and he was first elected its president weeks before the 1991 Soviet collapse gave the country its independence. AP vermaajay1968@gmail.com Christchurch, March 20 Bodies of victims from New Zealands mosques mass shooting were carried in open caskets on the shoulders of mourners into a large tent at Christchurchs Memorial Park Cemetery on Wednesday the first burials of the 50 victims. The majority of victims from Fridays attack in the South Island city were migrants or refugees from countries such as Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Somalia, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The youngest was a boy of three, born in New Zealand to Somali refugee parents. The first two victims buried, father and son Khaled and Hamza Mustafa, came from war-torn Syria. I cannot tell you how gutting it is...a family came here for safety and they should have been safe here, said Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, visiting the city for the second time since the massacre. Wrapped in white cloth, the bodies were laid to face Mecca, and, after jenazah (funeral) prayers, were carried towards their freshly dug graves. Seeing the body lowered down, it was a very emotional time for me, said Gulshad Ali, who had travelled from Auckland to attend the first funeral. Reuters rchopra@tribunemail.com Islamabad, March 21 Pakistan has claimed to have rescued four kidnapped Iranian soldiers from terrorists in the restive Balochistan province bordering Afghanistan. The Pakistan Army said the security forces carried out an operation following a tip-off that extremists from a banned outfit had brought soldiers from Afghanistan to a transitional hideout in Amori area of Chaghai district of the province. After an exchange of fire, four Iranian soldiers were rescued, it said on Wednesday. At least 12 Iranian security personnel, including members of the Revolutionary Guards, were kidnapped near the Pakistan border in October last year. Jaish al-Adl, an anti-Shiite and anti-Iran terrorist group, had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. The kidnapping led to a public spat between Pakistan and Iran, which accused extremists hiding in Pakistan of carrying out attacks inside Iran. PTI vermaajay1968@gmail.com London, March 20 Britain has asked EU leaders to delay Brexit until June 30, Prime Minister Theresa May told parliament on Wednesday, on the eve of an EU summit in Brussels. May said she had written to EU President Donald Tusk informing him that the UK seeks an extension to the Article 50 period to June 30. I dont want a long extension, she said, warning that a longer delay would mean Britain having to hold the European Parliament elections at the end of May. The idea that three years after voting to leave the EU, the people of this country should be asked to elect a new set of MEPs is, I believe, unacceptable, she said. As prime minister, I am not prepared to delay Brexit any further than June 30, she said. In the letter to Tusk released by Downing Street, May said she intended to bring the Brexit deal she had negotiated with the EU back to parliament even though MPs had rejected it twice by overwhelming margins. If the motion is passed, I am confident that parliament will proceed to ratify the deal constructively. But this will clearly not be completed before 29 March 2019, she wrote, adding that the timetable for passing the necessary legislation to allow Brexit was inevitably uncertain. I am therefore writing to inform the European Council that the UK is seeking an extension to the Article 50 period... until 30 June 2019. AFP/Agencies UK lawmaker: IT will betray peoples mandate A Conservative eurosceptic lawmaker, Peter Bone, told Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday that she would betray the British people if she pursued a delay to Brexit, calling on her to change tack. Prime minister, if you continue to apply for an extension to Article 50, you will be betraying the British people. If you dont, you will be honouring their instruction, he said in parliament. No-deal exit not ruled out Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday that delaying Brexit by extending negotiations did not rule out the possibility that Britain could leave the European Union without a deal. Its time to move on: Theresa May British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday she was opposed to a long extension to the countrys negotiations on leaving the European Union, saying it was time to move the national debate on to other subjects. Labour will press its plan: Spokesman Britains opposition Labour Party will continue seeking talks on its alternative Brexit plan and believes a proposed three-month delay to the countrys European Union exit will be long enough to agree a new deal, a party spokesman said on Wednesday. Watson Duke has been given three months to relinquish his position as president of the Public Services Association (PSA). This is according to Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Chief Secretary Farley Augustine, who also said yesterday, for the first time in the history of the THA, the position Duke holds as Deputy Chief Secretary will be a titular one. Golden, Colorado, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Epilog Laser, the leading producer of CO2 and fiber laser engraving, cutting and marking systems, announced today the launch of a new corporate brand identity including a redesign of the companys website, logo, graphics, communications, and correspondence. Since our inception in 1988, Epilog Laser has built a strong reputation for innovation and quality. We want our logo to tell the story of the manufacturing technology company that we have grown to be, said Mike Dean, vice president of sales and marketing for Epilog Laser. The new logo design reflects the modern technologies and advanced features that we are incorporating into our new product lines. We believe at Epilog that the brand has evolved during the past thirty years. We want the brand and the logo to best reflect the technological achievements weve accomplished during those years and where were going in the future, explained Devon Posey, graphic designer at Epilog Laser. Not only does the rebranding feature a sleeker look for Epilogs corporate identity, but the new horizontal and vertical logos are also more streamlined for digital and print mediums. The new logo features a more modern look, but also maintains a familiarity in terms of color and the iconic E that encompasses all that Epilog is known for: high-quality machines and top-notch customer support before, during, and after the sale. For more information and to check out Epilogs new look, please visit www.epiloglaser.com. ### About Epilog Laser Since 1988, Epilog Laser has been designing and manufacturing flying-optics-based CO2 and fiber laser systems that can engrave and/or cut wood, acrylic, metal, plastic, fabric, rubber and many other materials. Epilog specializes in developing laser systems that create unprecedented marking and cutting quality on all types of products. The company produces versatile and reliable systems that are affordable and easy to use. For more information, visit www.epiloglaser.com. Everyone is born free and equal in dignity and rights. However, racism, discrimination and intolerance are still very present in all societies. We in T&T must stand up for our rights, and the rights of others. Equality, injustice and freedom empower us all, and prevent violence and sustain peace. - Global carmaker Nissan has announced plans to establish an assembly line in the country - It will become the eighth top vehicle manufacturer to set up an assembly plant in Kenya - President Kenyatta has gone all out to boost local car manufacturing as part of his Big Four agenda - He has ordered all state agencies to buy locally-made cars in line with the Buy Kenya Build Kenya policy - A policy that will reduce car imports underlines governments commitment to boost local manufacturing Kenya is set to become a continental vehicle manufacturing giant if the spirited undertaking by President Uhuru Kenyattas administration to revive the automotive industry is anything to go by. Only this week, global car maker Nissan has announced plans to invest Sh2 billion in a local assembly line, a move that will make Kenya only the 21st country where the company manufactures it vehicles. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens Nissan will become the eighth company to set up an assembly plant in the country, with many other top global vehicle makers having already expressed interest of manufacturing locally. READ ALSO: William Ruto vows to punish chiefs revealing number of people dying from hunger In a bid to boost the Big Four Agenda in manufacturing President Uhuru Kenyatta has resorted to boost vehicle assembly sector. Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Study ranks Kenyans the happiest in Eastern Africa This will be a major boost for Kenyas automotive industry which is growing at an impressive 11% per annum. The country is expected to hit a motorisation rate of 56% by 2030, far outstripping Africas rate of 42%. Last week, President Uhuru Kenyatta and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron unveiled a locally-assembled Peugeot 3008, SUV, the second model assembled in Kenya by the Thika-based French vehicle manufacturer, PSA Groupe. President Kenyatta and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron unveiled a locally-assembled Peugeot 3008, SUV, the second model assembled in Kenya. Source: Facebook READ ALSO: Tanzania sends relief food to flood-ravaged African countries as Kenya battles devastating starvation The firm which is the second largest car manufacturer in Europe inaugurated the Peugeot 508 saloon in 2017. Manufacturing of two additional models is expected to start later in 2019, with the manufacturer hoping to soon assemble at least 15,000 vehicles in the country annually for both the local and regional markets. Toyota, Isuzu, Tata, Hyundai and recently Volkswagen are among the other top manufacturers with established local production lines. Uhuru directed all ministries and other state agencies to buy locally assembled cars and spare parts in a bid to support the local manufacturers. Once successful, the plan will see a greater reduction in number of imported cars on Kenyan roads. Source: UGC READ ALSO: Balozi wa Zambia nchini Kenya Brenda Muntemba afariki kufuatia ajali mbaya barabarani He ordered the executive decree be strictly adhered to as an affirmation to his commitment in supporting the Buy Kenya Build Kenya policy. This policy directive is intended to promote our agenda on manufacturing, creating good jobs for our people, and enhancing technology transfer to our country, the President said. To further boost local manufacturing, the government has gone all out to ensure a conducive environment for automakers. It is already working on a national automotive policy that will see among other things, a reduction of the age of imported used cars from the current eight years to five years later this year and ultimately to three years by 2021. The import limitation is expected to significantly escalate the cost of imported vehicles, subsequently pushing buyers to the local market. According to Tim Jaques, the Nissan Kenya chairman, such regulation will also mean safer and cleaner cars on Kenyan roads. Besides providing locally assembled vehicles, the governments plan will see new jobs created for the youths. Source: UGC READ ALSO: KWS posts cheeky tweet with photo of rhinos mating in Nairobi National Park The once-thriving local car assembly sector has in recent years choked under the weight of a booming second-hand car imports market. Currently, none of Kenyas three motor vehicle assembly plants utilise more than 35% of their capacity. Associated Vehicle Assemblers in Mombasa is operating at a 35% capacity, Nairobis Isuzu East Africa Limited at 23% while the Thika-based Kenya Vehicle Manufacturers is operating at a measly two percent. Laban Dundo a manager at KVM, revealed that the assembly plant has the capacity to assemble 6,500 vehicles annually in a single shift but currently produces not more than 400 vehicles annually. Nissan is expected to first assemble Nissan pickups from semi-knockdown kits on the condition that the government agrees to waive a 25% import tax. The company will submit a proposal to the government once market studies and due diligence studies have been completed and is expected to have an operational assembly line by the end of 2019 if it receives the green light. Do you have an inspirational story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690. Follow us on Telegram: Tuko news Source: Tuko.co.ke - The president travelled to Namibia to attend the country's 29th independence anniversary - He was invited by his Namibian counterpart as the guest of honour during the special ceremony - Namibian president was the guest of honour during Kenya's Mashujaa Day Celebrations on October 20, 2018 President Uhuru Kenyatta on the morning of Thursday, March 21, jetted out of the country to join the people of Namibia in celebrating their 29th independence anniversary. Accompanying the president to Namibia for the state visit was his dazzling and happy-looking daughter Ngina. READ ALSO: State House spokesperson Kanze Dena outlines Uhurus Mashujaa Day celebrations in Kakamega President Uhuru Kenyatta standing next to his daughter Ngina Kenyatta (R) during the 29th independence anniversary in Namibia on March 21, 2019. Photo: State House Kenya. Source: Twitter READ ALSO: Uhuru mezani kuomba mkopo wa KSh 368 bilioni kutoka Uchina kukamilisha mradi wa SGR Uhuru, who TUKO.co.ke understands was the guest of honour at the special ceremony was spotted standing next to his daughter at the Independence Stadium in Windhoek with smiles on their faces. "President Uhuru Kenyatta arrived at the Independence Stadium in Windhoek to join the people of Namibia for celebrations to mark 29 years of their country's independence," State House Kenya confirmed the state visit through Twitter. READ ALSO: Kenya returns to China for additional KSh 368 billion loan to finance Phase 2B of SGR It is understood Namibia's president Hage Gottfried Geingob had invited his Kenyan counterpart to attend the function as the guest of honour. Uhuru returned the favour after President Geingob also joined Kenyan during the Mashujaa Day Celebrations on October 20, 2018. Just like Uhuru, the Namibian head of state was the guest of honour during the Kenyan Independence Day celebrations which took place in Kakamega county. READ ALSO: Kenyas SGR loan repayment to China shoots up to KSh 82.85 billion as 5 year grace period expires The two countries enjoy what can be described as excellent bilateral ties dating back to 1990s when they established diplomatic relations. During the state visit, Uhuru is expected to discuss with his Namibian colleague bilateral relations and also deepen cooperation between the two countries. The discussions are expected to revolve around transport, fisheries and marine resources, trade and commerce, information communication technology, agriculture among other areas. Do you have a life-changing story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news. The Kenyan Woman With a Million Dollar Closet :Sonal Maherali - On Tuko TV Source: Tuko - The NYT reported the pilots did not step in the latest simulator to train despite the airline having installed one - Ethiopian Airlines termed the report by NYT as misleading, uniformed and irresponsible - Investigations into the crash are currently underway in France by a joint team of experts - It is not the first time the US based media house is being accused of irresponsible reporting after a disaster Ethiopian Airlines has dismissed reports that pilots who were at the helm of the new Boeing 737 Max-8 that crashed on Sunday, March 10, killing all 157 people on board were not well trained. In a statement, the airline on Thursday, March 21, countered a story filed by US based New York Times (NYT) that claimed the pilots never stepped in the 737 Max simulator even for a single day to sharpen their skills as required. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it READ ALSO: Ethiopian Airlines crash: Kenyan man who lost 5 family members refuses to bury soil from scene Ethiopian Airlines has termed the report by NYT as misleading, uniformed and irresponsible. Photo: UGC Source: UGC READ ALSO: Uhuru Kenyatta drives himself to church in personal Mercedes G-Wagon The contested report was filed by NYT on Wednesday, March 20, but majority of sources quoted were anonymous. "Ethiopian Airlines surpassed many carriers by becoming one of the first to install a simulator to teach pilots how to fly the new Boeing 737 Max 8, but the captain of the doomed Flight 302 never trained on the simulator, according to people close to the airlines operations," the article by NYT read in part. READ ALSO: Wanandoa chokoraa waliuza vifaa vyote vya nyumba, wakakataa ajira Mpiga picha Muchiri In defence of its pilots, the airline affirmed the crew completed required training adding that they were also well equipped with skills needed to respond to emergencies. "Ethiopian Airlines pilots completed the Boeing recommended and FAA approved differences training from B-737 NG aircraft before the phase in of the B-738 Max fleet to the Ethiopian operation and before they start flying the B-737-8 Max. "Pilots are also made aware and well briefed on the Emergency Airworthiness Directive issued by the FAA following the Lion Air Accident. The content of the airworthiness directive has also been well incorporated in all pilot training manuals, operational procedures and working manuals," the strongly worded statement said. READ ALSO: Ukweli kuhusu picha ya 'mhubiri' aliyewaonesha waumini 'njia panda kuelekea Canaan' READ ALSO: Ezekiel Mutua amkosoa Linus Kaikai, asema serikali haina uwezo wa kuingilia Makanisa TUKO.co.ke understands speculations have been rife over alleged similarities of the Ethiopian crash to that of a Lion Airline plane that killed all 189 people in it after it crashed in the Java Sea. The crash happened moments after take off from Jakarta Airport in Indonesia. The Ethiopian Airline plane crashed about 60 kilometers from Addis Ababa based Bole International Airport, six minutes after take off. A malfunction of the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) was attributed to the first crash. READ ALSO: Agriculture expert firm Agrieal organise conference envisioning to expel the ghost of hunger from Kenya It is being rumoured that the same issue brought down the second plane but the airline insisted that an answer will only be arrived at after close of investigations. The MCAS is an automated safety feature on the 737 Max 8 fleet with capacity to prevent a plane from entering into a stall or losing lift. In its statement, the iirline, however, stated the B-737 Max simulator was not designed to simulate malfunctions of the MCAS. "The B-737 Max full flight simulator is not designed to simulate the MCAS system problem. We urge all concerned to refrain from making such uninformed, incorrect, irresponsible and misleading statements during the period of the accident investigation. International regulations require all stake holders to wait patiently for the result of the investigation," Ethiopian Airlines cautioned. Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news. The pain of losing Five Family members in the Ethiopian Airline plane Crash| Tuko TV. Source: Tuko Breaking News Latest Wakefield, MA, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today Apache Unomi as a Top-Level Project (TLP). Apache Unomi is a standards-based, Customer Data Platform (CDP) that manages online customer, leads, and visitor information to provide personalized experiences that adheres to visitor privacy rules such as GDPR and Do Not Track preferences. The project was originally developed at Jahia, and was submitted to the Apache Incubator in October 2015. "I am truly thankful to our community, especially our mentors, who have helped us achieve this milestone," said Serge Huber, Vice President of Apache Unomi. "The original vision behind Unomi was to ensure true privacy by making the technologies handling customer data completely Open Source and independent. Since it was submitted to the Apache Incubator, developing Unomi using the Apache Way will ensure the project grows its community to be more diverse and welcome new users and developers." Apache Unomi is versatile, and features privacy management, user/event/goal tracking, reporting, visitor profile management, segmentation, personas, A/B testing, and more. It can be used as: a personalization service for a Web CMS; an analytics service for native mobile applications; a centralized profile management system with segmentation capabilities; and a consent management hub Apache Unomi is the industry's first reference implementation of the upcoming OASIS CDP specification (established by the OASIS CXS Technical Committee, which sets standards as a core technology for enabling the delivery of personalized user experiences). As a reference implementation, Apache Unomi serves as a real world example of how the standard will be stable, and is quickly gaining traction by those interested in truly open and transparent customer data privacy. Apache Unomi is in use at organizations such as Al-Monitor, Altola, Jahia, Yupiik, and many others to create and deliver consistent personalized experiences across channels, markets, and systems. "When Serge and I announced the launch of the Apache Unomi project at the 2015 ApacheCon Budapest, Apache Unomi, at that time, was the first proposal among the rising Customer Data Platform industry's segment, positioned as an 'ethical data-driven marketing' product that would respect the privacy of customers while leveraging the power of unified customers data," said Elie Auvray, Head of Business Development at Jahia. "Jahia's digital experience management solutions are based on Apache Unomi, and we can't wait to see how the project will now evolve with its growing community. Seeing today Apache Unomi becoming a Top-Level Project is a great reward for us as Open Source software believers. We are proud of this milestone, grateful to the Apache Software Foundation and our mentors, and we know it's only the beginning of a new hopefully long and successful journey." "Under development at OASIS, the Customer Data Platform specification for which Apache Unomi aims to be the reference implementation lies at the crossroads of many solutions providers needs such as WCM, CRM, Big Data Platforms, Machine Learning, IoT and Digital Marketing," said Laurent Liscia, CEO of OASIS. "At a time when client data interoperability and built-in data privacy are mandatory foundations for legal, consistent, and personalized experiences across channel markets and systems, the CDP specification, together with Apache Unomi, is a clear and welcome answer to end-user concerns." "Apache Unomi is the perfect solution to implement a user profile platform," said Jean-Baptiste Onofre, Fellow at Talend. "It fully addresses the user trust and privacy needs, allowing to easily create user profile and Web marketing features. As Unomi is powered by Apache Karaf, it's also a great platform for several use cases, such as digital marketing in Web applications, managing user profiles on IoT devices, and more." "Apache Unomi enables Al-Monitor readers to be driven towards additional personalized content that corresponds, via content tags profiling and related automated segmentations, to what they have already accessed," said Valerie Voci, Head of Digital Strategy and Marketing at Al-Monitor. "This data follows our customers where they go, so it's a consistent experience whether they are getting these recommendations in their inbox or on the Website or both. And if a change takes place on one, that change is immediately reflected on the other. It helps us create a very cohesive marketing message and a great overall digital experience." "As we were developing a progressive web app (PWA) for a client, we were looking for a Customer Data Platform (CDP) to store customer insights, such as behavioral and explicit customer data," said Lars Petersen, Co-Founder at Altola. "Privacy was table stake for us, along with the flexibility to customize data schema and open API. We selected Apache Unomi based on these parameters, we had it up and running on AWS in less than 30 min. and are very impressed with the maturity of the platform, its privacy by design and how easy it was to work with." "In a digital world, customer data is very important to offer a better experience to users. However, data privacy and trust is not an option for users," said Francois Papon, CTO at Yupiik. "Apache Unomi is the best solution for our clients because it's an Open Source project managed by an independent foundation, there is no vendor lock-in. It's also based on other solutions like Apache Karaf that made it ready for modularity, scalability, cloud, devops, and more." "Apache Unomi is poised to disrupt the Customer Data Platform market," said Thomas Sigdestad, CTO at Enonic, and co-chair, with Serge Huber, of the CDP standards work at OASIS open. "The CDP marketplace is lacking from a standard way of exchanging data, and the vendor space is over-represented by closed source and proprietary cloud offerings. This effectively limits the potential and adoption of CDP in general. Apache Unomi is not merely Open Source, but also the reference implementation of the imminent CDP standard from OASIS. Companies using Unomi will benefit from faster and simpler integrations without locking their customer data into yet another proprietary silo." "Graduating as an Apache Top-Level Project is only the beginning," added Huber. "Unomi has a lot of potential that it still to be developed, and is a perfect opportunity for those interested in Customer Data Privacy to participate through our mailing lists and Slack channel, and to learn more about the project on our Website and presentations." Catch Apache Unomi in action at ApacheCon North America (9-12 September 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada), and ApacheCon Europe (22-24 October 2019 in Berlin, Germany) http://apachecon.com/ . Availability and Oversight Apache Unomi software is released under the Apache License v2.0 and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project's day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. For downloads, documentation, and ways to become involved with Apache Unomi, visit http://unomi.apache.org/ About the Apache Incubator The Apache Incubator is the entry path for projects and codebases wishing to become part of the efforts at The Apache Software Foundation. All code donations from external organizations and existing external projects seeking to join the ASF enter through the Incubator to: 1) ensure all donations are in accordance with the ASF legal standards; and 2) develop new communities that adhere to our guiding principles. Incubation is required of all newly accepted projects until a further review indicates that the infrastructure, communications, and decision making process have stabilized in a manner consistent with other successful ASF projects. While incubation status is not necessarily a reflection of the completeness or stability of the code, it does indicate that the project has yet to be fully endorsed by the ASF. For more information, visit http://incubator.apache.org/ About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees more than 350 leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server --the world's most popular Web server software. Through the ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," more than 730 individual Members and 7,000 Committers across six continents successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation's official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is a US 501(c)(3) charitable organization, funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Aetna, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Anonymous, ARM, Baidu, Bloomberg, Budget Direct, Capital One, Cerner, Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Handshake, Hortonworks, Huawei, IBM, Indeed, Inspur, Leaseweb, Microsoft, ODPi, Pineapple Fund, Pivotal, Private Internet Access, Red Hat, Target, Tencent, Union Investment, Workday, and Verizon Media. For more information, visit http://apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/TheASF The Apache Software Foundation. "Apache", "Unomi", "Apache Unomi", and "ApacheCon" are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. - Teenage Nollywood actress, Regina Daniels, has decided to acquire a new property - The young star recently bought a duplex which she gifted to her mother - Regina shared lovely photos of the property on social media Teenage Nollywood actress, Regina Daniels, can be counted as one of the successful thespians in the industry going by the things she has achieved at her young age. The movie star recently took to social media to show off a new house she acquired for her mother which she claimed was just a token of appreciation for her mama. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: University student fakes kidnap to go spend the night with boyfriend The grand looking house Regina Daniels bought for her mom Photo: @regina.daniels / Instagram READ ALSO: Church of Satan attacks media personality who claimed marriage vows are satanic The young actress has now joined the league of entertainers who have luxury properties to their name. "Just a little thank you for mama, she wrote. The grand looking house Regina Daniels bought for her mom Photo: @regina.daniels / Instagram The star seems to have built quite a brand for herself that she was even appointed as presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar's youth campaign coordinator during the February 2019 election Daniels is also reported to have recently acquired a brand new Mercedes Benz ML350 Jeep for herself and it is said to have cost about N7 million (KSh 1.96 million) READ ALSO: Gospel MC Alemba, wife expecting second baby The move wowed many of her followers who thought it was noble of her to think of gifting her mother at such a tender age. "God bless you darling, at your age you did not think of the latest car but to make your mother happy. God bless you always supermom, enjoy the fruits of your labour," said an Instagram user. "Congrats dear, as you put a smile on your Mum's face, you shall live long and your own children will shower you with surprises," said Esther Dotcom. Do you have a life-changing story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news. The girl who planned her own funeral Source: Kenyan Breaking News - Bilal Kimali was arrested in connection with trafficking drugs between Kenya and Madagascar - He was released after the prosecution failed to provide sufficient evidence to warrant his detention - The magistrate noted Kimali was not arrested with any drug and prosecution only relied on photos that did not link him directly to the case A Mombasa Court has dismissed charges against a businessman arrested in connection with trafficking heroine worth KSh 28 million which was found in a yacht named Baby Iris some years back. Bilal Kimali, who was dramatically arrested in Madagascar and deported to Kenya was arraigned in a Mombasa court where he was charged with two counts of storing and facilitating transportation of illegal drugs to a foreign country. Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens READ ALSO: Hunger, snakes gang up against hapless Baringo children as death stares at them Mombasa court released Bilal Kimali who had been accused of trafficking worth KSh 28 million. Photo: Kevin Nthiiri Source: Original READ ALSO: Kisumu man who splashed KSh 500K on son's birthday released after friends raise KSh 100K bond In his ruling, Mombasa Senior Principal Magistrate Henry Nyakweba stated the prosecution failed to produce tangible evidence to convince the court to take any legal action against the accused. The prosecution although they brought the drugs in court during the hearing, they failed to bring the original photos of the car and the yacht that was said to be storing the drugs and instead brought photocopies that were not admissible in court, stated Nyakweba in his ruling The court also noted the prosecution failed to connect Bilal to the drugs since he was not arrested in possession of the narcotics but was arrested in Madagascar, few months after the said substances were nabbed in Kilifi County. READ ALSO: Autopsy shows lawyer Assa Nyakundi could have intentionally shot dead his son Nyakwemba said the prosecution relied heavily on information given by police officers who had collected evidence on the ownership of the drugs from the four suspects who were also facing similar charges, but failed to avail them in court to testify against Bilal. In the first count the man was accused of trafficking by storing 7, 600 grams of heroin worth KSh 22.8 million which were found inside the Baby Iris yacht in Kilifi boat yard ready to be sailed to Madagascar. In the second count, he was accused of trafficking by storing 2, 028 grams of heroin worth KSh 6,084,000 which were found in a vehicle that had four occupants. Others who faced similar charges but were prosecuted separately included Ahmed Said Bakari, Seychellois Clement Serge Bristol, Mohammed Bakari, Shariff Mzee Mohammed and Ahmed Hussein Salim. Soty by Kevin Nthiiri- Tuko correspondent Do you have a life-changing story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news Governor Sonko's mega donation for hunger stricken Kenyans I Tuko TV Photo captions: Source: Tuko.co.ke COSTA MESA, Calif., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- eyeBrain Medical Inc., maker of neurolenses, the only prescription lenses that add a contoured prism to bring the eyes into alignment, announced today the introduction of neurolens Office. The new lens incorporates the revolutionary neurolens contoured prism design with a smooth power progression optimized for intermediate and near zones for a clear field of view, providing relief from digital eye strain. Prevent Blindness , the nation's oldest eye health and safety nonprofit organization, has declared March Workplace Eye Wellness Month, underscoring the impact that near work has on the eyes. Optometrist Dr. David Geffen said, Most of the major brands of office lenses are very similar. The difference with neurolenses is that the lens incorporates a contoured prism, which no other office lens has. By correcting the underlying eye misalignment, neurolenses provide relief from the symptoms so many people experience when using digital devices or doing near work. The revolutionary neurolens Office provides clarity and comfort for indoor office use, maintaining the same proprietary contoured prism as the traditional neurolens design. No adjustments or additional calculations are needed for the prescription of the neurolens Office design. neurolens Office lenses provide a smooth power progression comfortable for all indoor distances, incorporating the office design with our proprietary contoured prism provides patients relief where they are impacted the most, in the office and at the computer, neurolens COO Danny Perales said. Patients are confirming that neurolens Office provides greater comfort and efficiency for office work. I wore office prescription lenses for 15 years for computer work, but then would have to change my glasses when I moved on to do other things at my desk. With neurolens Office, I dont even notice theyre on. I just keep going, said Ralph Cordova. The Invention of a Contoured Prism Results from a series of clinical studies on headache and eye strain patients revealed that symptomatic patients shared a common trait: a misalignment in their vision that was believed to put continual stress on the trigeminal nerve the largest and most complex nerve connected to the brain, and the one responsible for head, eye and neck sensations. neurolenses are the first prescription lenses that add a contoured prism to bring the eyes into alignment. Contoured prisms have been shown in studies to relieve the headaches, neck/shoulder pain and eyestrain that many people experience when using digital devices, reading or doing detail work. The need for measuring eye alignment at all distances led eyeBrain medical, Inc to develop the neurolens Measurement Device, which uses breakthrough eye-tracking technology to objectively and accurately measure the degree of eye misalignment for distance and near vision. During a three-minute measurement exam, patients focus on a single point while a dynamic display of rotating planets and stars activates peripheral and central vision to measure distance and near eye alignment. These unique measurements, with calculations to the one-hundredth of a prism diopter, provide a recommended prescription range for the neurolens contoured prism lens design. To learn more about neurolenses and the new Office lens or to find a neurolens eye care provider, visit neurolenses.com . The following is a release by the Elections and Boundaries Commission on the recount request Corning Advanced-Flow Reactor Technology Co., Ltd. to be headquartered in Changzhou CORNING, N.Y.; MARCH 21, 2019 . -- Corning Incorporated (NYSE: GLW) announced today that its subsidiary, Corning Singapore Holdings Private Limited, signed an investment agreement with the Changzhou government in China to establish a new headquarters for Corning's Advanced-Flow(TM) Reactors (AFR) business in Changzhou Science and Education Town. As part of the agreement, Corning received support to establish a headquarters and build the infrastructure for the business, including a technology development center and a manufacturing operation in the Changzhou region. Concurrently, Corning announced the establishment of Corning Advanced-Flow Reactor Technology Co., Ltd. to manage Corning's global AFR business. Corning expects to complete the reactor manufacturing facility before the end of this year and have the new headquarters fully operational by late 2020. "This is a significant opportunity for us," said Dr. Yi Jiang, president and general manager, Corning Advanced-Flow Reactor Technology Co., Ltd. "Establishing our AFR business headquarters in Changzhou will enable us to operate more effectively in China, which is the leading global market for flow reactor application technologies. It will also position us to be near our customers in the region, give us the ability to focus more attention on customer value realization, and grow larger faster." Corning has had a presence in China for 38 years. The new entity will strengthen the company's presence in the region. As a global leader in flow reactor technology, Corning has successfully promoted AFR innovation in China over the last eight years by investing in comprehensive marketing, building a technical demonstration center in Changzhou, collaborating with local universities, and focusing on the regional development of talent. Compared with traditional batch reactors, Corning's reactors enable at least 100 times enhancement in mixing; 1,000 times improvement in heat transfer performance; and seamless, efficient scale-up from the lab to full-scale production of chemicals for the pharmaceutical, specialty, and fine chemical industries. "Corning's AFR technology provides inherently safer chemical process solutions to China's pharmaceutical and chemical industries, which have been growing quickly over the past few years," said Li Fang, president and general manager of Corning Greater China. "China has committed to high-quality development and inherently safer manufacturing practices in future economic and regulatory initiatives, and Corning is ready to help deliver on that commitment." Caution Concerning Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995), which are based on current expectations and assumptions about Corning's financial results and business operations, that involve substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include: the effects of acquisitions, dispositions and other similar transactions by the Company, the effect of global business, financial, economic and political conditions; tariffs and import duties; currency fluctuations between the U.S. dollar and other currencies, primarily the Japanese yen, New Taiwan dollar, euro, Chinese yuan, and South Korean won; product demand and industry capacity; competitive products and pricing; availability and costs of critical components and materials; new product development and commercialization; order activity and demand from major customers; the amount and timing of our cash flows and earnings and other conditions, which may affect our ability to pay our quarterly dividend at the planned level or to repurchase shares at planned levels; possible disruption in commercial activities due to terrorist activity, cyber-attack, armed conflict, political or financial instability, natural disasters, or major health concerns; unanticipated disruption to equipment, facilities, IT systems or operations; effect of regulatory and legal developments; ability to pace capital spending to anticipated levels of customer demand; rate of technology change; ability to enforce patents and protect intellectual property and trade secrets; adverse litigation; product and components performance issues; retention of key personnel; customer ability, most notably in the Display Technologies segment, to maintain profitable operations and obtain financing to fund their ongoing operations and manufacturing expansions and pay their receivables when due; loss of significant customers; changes in tax laws and regulations including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017; and the potential impact of legislation, government regulations, and other government action and investigations. For a complete listing of risks and other factors, please reference the risk factors and forward-looking statements described in our annual reports on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the day that they are made, and Corning undertakes no obligation to update them in light of new information or future events. Web Disclosure In accordance with guidance provided by the SEC regarding the use of company websites and social media channels to disclose material information, Corning Incorporated ("Corning") wishes to notify investors, media, and other interested parties that it uses its website (http://www.corning.com/worldwide/en/about-us/news-events.html) to publish important information about the company, including information that may be deemed material to investors, or supplemental to information contained in this or other press releases. The list of websites and social media channels that the company uses may be updated on Corning's media and website from time to time. Corning encourages investors, media, and other interested parties to review the information Corning may publish through its website and social media channels as described above, in addition to the company's SEC filings, press releases, conference calls, and webcasts. About Corning Incorporated Corning (www.corning.com) is one of the world's leading innovators in materials science, with a more than 165-year track record of life-changing inventions. Corning applies its unparalleled expertise in glass science, ceramic science, and optical physics along with its deep manufacturing and engineering capabilities to develop category-defining products that transform industries and enhance people's lives. Corning succeeds through sustained investment in RD&E, a unique combination of material and process innovation, and deep, trust-based relationships with customers who are global leaders in their industries. Corning's capabilities are versatile and synergistic, which allows the company to evolve to meet changing market needs, while also helping our customers capture new opportunities in dynamic industries. Today, Corning's markets include optical communications, mobile consumer electronics, display technology, automotive, and life sciences vessels. Corning's industry-leading products include damage-resistant cover glass for mobile devices; precision glass for advanced displays; optical fiber, wireless technologies, and connectivity solutions for state-of-the-art communications networks; trusted products to accelerate drug discovery and delivery; and clean-air technologies for cars and trucks. Media Relations Contact: Pamela W. Porter (607) 974-9980 porterpw@corning.com Investor Relations Contact: Ann H.S. Nicholson (607) 974-6716 nicholsoas@corning.com Follow Corning: RSS Feeds | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube Rebecca Potter, director of the University of Dayton sustainability studies program and associate professor of English, was a panelist discussing sustainable education last week at the United Nations Environmental Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya. The assembly, comprised of environmental ministers from all 193 U.N. member states, is the world's highest-level decision-making body on the environment. The panel discussion sponsored by the U.N. Science and Technology Working Group "Can Sustainability Education Impact Sustainable Consumption and Production?" identified the role education can play in furthering the U.N.'s sustainable development goals, transforming lifestyles and inspiring new career paths. "I discussed the need for open dialogue and broad participation by educators in developing core competencies in sustainability for higher education," Potter said. "Our session attracted interest from more than a dozen nations." She attended the assembly as part of this year's National Council for Science and the Environment delegation. The council advances environmental policy and decision-making through scientific research, assessment, information-sharing, training and curriculum development. Potter, who is working on the launch of an undergraduate major and graduate program in sustainability at the University of Dayton, has examined engaged-learning at the master's and undergraduate levels. Her current research project The Cassandra Effect is working to understand the public response to climate change. The study examines narratives of doubt, uncertainty, risk, skepticism and denial of climate change, and the challenges of moving social concern to social and political actions that address climate change and its impacts. For interviews, contact Shawn Robinson, associate director of news and communications, at srobinson1@udayton.edu or 937-229-3391. Defense Minister of Ukraine Stepan Poltorak has met with the delegation of the US Congress in Kyiv. "The parties discussed the security situation in Ukraine and the world, the growing scale of threats from the Russian Federation, as well as the topical issues of further bilateral defense cooperation between Ukraine and the United States," the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine reports. As noted, Stepan Poltorak informed the delegation members about the preliminary results and prospects of the defense reforms. He also underscored the importance of the assistance, which Ukraine receives from its strategic partners, including the United States of America. "As the military aggression of the Kremlin continues to affect the national economy and claim the lives of Ukrainians, we need the support of both chambers of the US Congress for the continuation of the successful sanctions policy against the aggressor state. I want to express gratitude to the members of the two chambers of the US Congress, the US Government, the American people for their consistent political, financial, advisory and logistical support for Ukraine," the press service quotes minister Poltorak as saying. In turn, the representatives of the US Congress assured the Ukrainian side of the continued support for Ukraine in its struggle for territorial integrity, independence, and aspirations for further Euro-Atlantic integration. Senator Mike Crapo, the head of the American delegation, highlighted the importance of the concerted efforts for creating a stable security environment in the region and the further support for Ukraine. As reported, on March 20, three U.S. senators and two U.S. Congress members arrived in Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian high-ranking officials and discuss the U.S.-Ukraine partnership. ol The officials of the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry and representatives of the DAI company discussed opportunities for improving the USAID assistance package on developing the cyber security system in Ukraine. The meeting was held to exchange experience and discuss issues on improving the future assistance package for Ukraine to enhance cybersecurity, as well as possible cooperation in implementing projects on strengthening Ukraines cyber security system, the Energy and Coal Industry Ministrys press service reported. It is noted that the delegation of the DAI company arrived in Kyiv as a potential executor of the USAID program. State Secretary of the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry Maksym Nemchynov has said that the ministry is currently working on strengthening the cyber defense of critical energy infrastructure objects and cyber security of the ministry itself as a central executive body. During the meeting, the parties agreed on the development of proposals for further possible cooperation. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the US Federal Government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. The main areas of the agencys work include, in particular, support for trade, agriculture, economic growth in more than 100 countries around the world. iy The leading Ukrainian producers of food and agricultural products plan to expand business cooperation with the UAE. This was stated during the Gulfood Briefing held at the Kyiv Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an Ukrinform correspondent reported. During the event, the results of participation of Ukrainian companies in the GULFOOD-2019, the worlds largest annual food, beverage and equipment exhibition held in Dubai, were summed up. "In 2018, Ukraine significantly expanded the export geography of its agricultural products, our producers opened 85 new markets. However, in order to radically increase export deliveries and sign long-term contracts, it is extremely important to take part in international exhibitions and forums attended by food market participants from the whole world, said President of the Kyiv Chamber of Commerce and Industry Mykola Zasulsky. The briefing was attended by Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Arab Emirates Salem Ahmed Al-Kaabi, Director of the state enterprise Export Promotion Office Andriy Demchuk, officials of the Kyiv Chamber of Commerce, as well as business representatives of Ukraine and foreign countries. Salem Ahmed Al-Kaabi noted that the UAE seeks to make economic cooperation with Ukraine even more dynamic and productive and added that the volume of trade in goods and services between the two countries reached $1 billion in 2018. iy The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has sent nine trucks carrying humanitarian aid to the temporarily occupied territories in Donbas, according to the press service of the State Border Guard Service. Nine trucks carrying humanitarian aid from the mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross to the temporarily occupied territories crossed the Novotroitske checkpoint, reads the report. It is noted that the trucks were carrying 140 tonnes of humanitarian cargo consisting of food, stationery, construction materials and equipment to the residents of the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. iy More than UAH 2 billion has been allocated from the state budget to increase the level of road safety in Ukraine. Deputy Infrastructure Minister of Ukraine Yuriy Lavrenyuk said this during a meeting regarding the implementation of the tasks and measures of the State Program for Improving the Level of Road Safety in Ukraine in 2019, the Infrastructure Ministry reported. This year, more than UAH 2 billion was provided for the implementation of the State Program for Improving Road Safety in Ukraine, he said. According to him, funding will be spent on the following measures: introduction of driver control and verification of the fulfillment of basic safety elements; ensuring the functioning of systems for automatic fixing violation of traffic rules for public roads of national importance; purchase of stationary speed control devices on public roads; procurement of mobile devices for monitoring compliance with traffic rules with photo and video recording functions to be installed in special vehicles of the patrol police of Ukraine. ish The European Union and the European Training Foundation together with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine launched the fifth round of the Torino Process in Ukraine in order to analyze in 2019-2020 the country's vocational education and training reform. The Torino Process will also support the EU Programme EU4Skills: Better Skills for Modern Ukraine, which will be launched soon. The EU and its member states Germany and Finland will provide EUR 58 mln under this programme to support development of professional and educational standards according to the labour market needs, drafting new curricula, retrain teachers and management staff in Ukraine, promote vocational education, and to modernise VET infrastructure, reads the statement of the EU Delegation to Ukraine posted on Facebook. Ukraine as a member of the European Training Foundation has participated in the Torino Process since its establishment in 2010. In particular, Ukraine actively cooperates with the European Training Foundation to improve the national vocational education and training system as regards the implementation of European standards. ol | By Office of Communications and Public Affairs The University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) and the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) campuses in both Essex and Catonsville, Md., have launched an agreement of dual admission that will enable a smooth transition from CCBCs Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN) program to UMSONs Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program. As part of UMSONs continued effort to increase the number of collaborative pathways to earning a BSN in Maryland, CCBC becomes the 13th community college in the state where students can apply to, be admitted to, and begin taking classes in UMSONs BSN program while still working toward their ADN, saving them time in completing both degrees. CCBC students will also receive transfer credits from UMSON for completed coursework at the community college. In addition, UMSON is currently covering the cost of its BSN courses for students participating in the dual-admission partnership while they are still enrolled in the ADN program, an opportunity made possible with funds from a gift from Bill and Joanne Conway through their Bedford Falls Foundation. CCBC is one of the largest community colleges in Maryland, serving a wide geographic area, and has an established ADN program on the Essex and Catonsville campuses. The dual-admission agreement with UMSON provides CCBC ADN students the opportunity to begin their BSN coursework without having to take courses toward both degrees concurrently from their first day in college, allowing them to ease into their nursing coursework. Aimed at increasing qualified nursing candidates, the agreement is helping to further the mission of the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the AARP to transform health care through nursing. The campaign, based on the goals set forth by the Institute of Medicine report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health report, aims to increase the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree to 80 percent by 2020. As UMSON continues to expand the available opportunities for nursing academic progression, we are proud to launch an agreement with CCBC. This partnership allows for additional ways ADN students in Maryland can prepare for and complete their BSN, said Linda Murray, DNP 16, MS 84, CPNP-Ped, assistant professor and director, RN-to-BSN program, UMSON. To matriculate to UMSONs BSN program, students must graduate with an ADN from CCBC and satisfy UMSONs progression criteria. The theme of this years World Water Day, is Water for All. Water is a key measure of inequality and poverty and expanding access to water is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This is particularly important in the Arab region, which has 14 of the worlds 20 driest countries. The regions rainfall is well below the world average, with the average person getting just one-eighth the renewable waterthat generated through the hydrological cyclethat the average global citizen enjoys. By 2030 the effects of climate change could possibly reduce renewable water by a further 20 percent. This has consequences for poor and crisis-affected communities, who suffer the most from lack of water, and stand to benefit the most from new initiatives to achieve SDG 6. UNDP has scaled up its support in recent years to address this challenge. One example is a regional partnership to manage the Nubian Aquifer, the world's largest fossil aquifer system, which stretches for over 2.6 million square kilometres under Sudan, Libya, Egypt and Chad. Growing pressures on the aquifer poses threats to sustainability and could lead to tensions unless action is taken. UNDP is working with these countries to produce a diagnostic assessment of the Nubian Aquifer and a regional Strategic Action Programme. UNDP is launching a new regional project for Rational and Equitable Use of the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in concert with UNESCO, FAO, IAEA and partner countries. With US$3.9 million from the Global Environment Facility the initiative will help enhance scientific understanding of the shared resource and develop regional and national institutional skills for managing it. It will also come up with plans to align water resource management with poverty eradication, womens empowerment, climate adaptation and other development objectives, and achieve equitable and sustainable water use of the aquifer. UNDP is increasing cooperation in countries, including water for communities affected by war. In Yemen more than 19 million people, close to 80 percent of the population, dont have clean drinking water and sanitation, and the country faces the largest and fastest spreading outbreak of cholera in modern history. UNDP administers the Emergency Crisis Response Project, with more than US$300 million from the World Bank. It has been able to get water for more than two million people through more than 300 water harvesting and supply projects and building 70,000 cubic metres of water reservoirs. In Iraq, millions of IDPs are returning to homes newly liberated from the Islamic State. UNDPs Funding Facility for Stabilization, with over US$400 million from 20 donors, is working on some 1,000 development and stabilization projects. One focus is rehabilitating water facilities in Ramadi, Ninewah Plains, and Mosul. These and other projects are helping to get water to hundreds of thousands of people. In neighbouring Jordan and Lebanon, the challenge of hosting Syrian refugees converges with high levels of water insecurity. UNDP supports a programme on Enhancing Resilience of Host Communities in Jordan by Promoting Sustainable Water Solutions, supported by US$300,000 from the OPEC Fund for International Development. It focused on Mafraq, Irbid, Zarqa, Jarash and Ajloun, regions of the country with the most refugees, and helps improve water supplies in host communities. UNDP helps generate rainwater harvesting and reuse of waste water, while enabling local communities to collect and conserve water. In Lebanon, in response to the rapid rise of Syrian refugees UNDP has supported a comprehensive Host Communities Support programme, which gets water to vulnerable communities. With more than US$8 million from Germany, Switzerland and the US, UNDP and partners have helped improve water networks and household connections for villages across the Akkar region of North Lebanon, along with supplying water pumps, and rehabilitating water reservoirs and wastewater networks. UNHCR officials, Volker Turk, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, and Dominique Hyde, Director of External Relations, visit recently-arrived Rohingya families as they are registered using the Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) at Kutupalong camp, Bangladesh. UNHCR/Caroline Gluck Volker Turk, the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, concluded his visit to Bangladesh today, following high-level discussions with the Government of Bangladesh on the pursuit of solutions to the Rohingya refugee crisis. During his five-day visit, Mr. Turk was accompanied by the Agencys Director of the Bureau for Asia and the Pacific, Mr. Indrika Ratwatte, and the Director of External Relations, Ms. Dominique Hyde. Mr. Turk met with many Rohingya in the Kutupalong refugee settlement the worlds largest and discussed how they see their futures. He also met with the key Government officials, who have led the Rohingya response in Coxs Bazar District, to review the challenges they are facing and the opportunities they see as the response evolves. In Dhaka, Mr. Turk held high-level talks with the Government of Bangladesh that focussed on finding solutions fostering the development of conditions for the voluntary, safe and dignified return of refugees to Myanmar. They also discussed ways to expand opportunities of the Rohingya refugees to build their skills and knowledge, particularly so they will be able to contribute to society in Myanmar when they are able to return. Following the talks, Mr. Turk said, I was encouraged by and deeply appreciative of the Governments unrelenting commitment to finding solutions and improving the situation for the Rohingya." "UNHCR and the Government have agreed to focus and strengthen collective efforts that can lead to tangible improvements in their lives, in particular women and girls at risk," he added. UNHCRs discussions with the Government also focused on the importance of supporting Bangladeshi host communities. Mr. Turk said: The people of Bangladesh, and especially those living in Ukhiya and Teknaf in Coxs Bazar District, were the first responders in 2017, and they have continued to show a tremendous humanitarian spirit and generosity. The impacts of the Rohingya refugee presence on their lives must be recognized and addressed. While in Coxs Bazar, Mr. Turk visited one of five centres in the Kutupalong settlements where a joint Government of Bangladesh-UNHCR registration exercise is being scaled up to provide biometric ID cards for all Rohingya. The cards provide enhanced protection and make the delivery of humanitarian assistance and services more effective and efficient. Registration and documentation will also play a key role in confirming that individuals who have been displaced from Myanmar have the right to return to their country when it is safe for them to do so. So far, more than 125,000 refugees have been registered and issued with ID cards. The Rohingya are a stateless people as well as refugees, said Mr. Turk. These cards are important means to protect their identity and their right to return to Myanmar. The Rohingya represent the largest group of stateless refugees in the world. Many have never had proper identity documents. This is a big milestone in protecting their identity, he added. The Assistant High Commissioner also saw what the Government and humanitarian community, including UNHCR, have delivered on the ground, including community-based protection projects that help refugees to develop skills, confidence and their ability to meet their own needs, as well as preparations ahead of the upcoming cyclone and monsoon season. Im very impressed by how much we have all managed to achieve together, but also the way the refugee themselves are leading change within their community, said Mr. Turk. If you look around, it is very clear that the response is much more robust than what I saw a year and a half ago. The refugees tell me that they feel more secure, which is extremely important. He added: With more than half a million young girls and boys in the camps, we now need to give more refugees more opportunities to channel their energy into meaningful and productive activities and secure the future of the Rohingya population once they are back home Mr. Turk leads UNHCRs refugee protection work globally. He last visited Myanmar and Bangladesh in October and November of 2017. Media contacts Square Chain Plans for More Growth Newport Beach, CA, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- Square Chain Corp. (OTC Pink: SQCC; "Square Chain" or the Company) announces that it purchased M Line Holdings, Inc.s real estate assets and its 55% interest in the Caravel Group using stock of the Company. The stock being issued to M Line Holdings, Inc. for these companies gives M Line a controlling interest in SQCC. Furthermore, Mr. Jeffrey Parker has resigned from his position as a director and CEO of SQCC and Mr. Anthony Anish has been appointed CEO and Mr. Jitu Banker CFO and Directors of the Company. Future plans include appointing additional Directors in the near future. The new management of SQCC is planning to continue working to grow the business and potential opportunities that previous management were working on. The two opportunities are in the block chain industry and a DRTV opportunity which current management believes has fantastic growth potential. The management of SQCC are negotiating the purchase of an additional 20% of the Carvel Group, Inc. The company has moved its head office from Florida to Newport Beach, California Tony Anish, CEO of M Line, commented: These acquisitions bring immediate revenues to SQCC and start the growth of the Company. They also bring strong assets to the Balance Sheet. SQCCs parent Company is M Line Holdings, Inc. who will keep a controlling interest even after distributing some of its SQCC shares as a dividend to M Lines shareholders, subject to regulatory approval. These actions will have a very positive impact on SQCC as it will increase the number of shareholders of SQCC and generate more interest in SQCC. Tony continued: Caravels primary products are Vea proactive hydration and caffeinated sparkling water beverages and the Torque line of energy drinks as well Larry Caputo wine, our first imported wine line. Forecasted revenues for Caravel are expected to be over $20 million dollars in the next twelve months and we anticipate net profits to exceed 35%. Our significant orders in Mexico include deliveries through our distributors to Walmart Mexico and OXXO. In the US we will be delivering to many of the major grocery and convenience store chains to be announced in the near future. The property being purchased is 38 acres in Golden Valley, Arizona and 0.5 acres in Dolan Springs, Arizona. Both sites have operating businesses on them that will be paying rent at market rates. SQCCs Financial Statements will be filed separately and consolidated with the revenues of M Line Holdings, Inc. Management plans to change SQCCs year end to April 30 and audit the Financial Statements so that we can file a registration statement and become fully reporting. As always, Management intends to improve shareholder value significantly. About Square Chain Corporation Square Chain has designed a multi-faceted business model to take advantage of the significant emerging opportunities being developed utilizing blockchain technology, and to invest in projects that can help define those opportunities. The initial opportunity identified is the DRTV industry. The Company has now purchased a controlling interest in the Caravel Group, Inc., a company involved in the Beverage Branding and Distribution business. In addition, SQCC purchased land for redevelopment in Arizona. The Company will continue to look for opportunities in related businesses or other opportunities that make sense to the management of the Company. Safe Harbor and Informational Statement This press release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 21E of the Security Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act), including all statements that are not statement of historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of the company, its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) the company's financing plans; (ii) trends affecting the company's financial conditions or results of operations; (iii): the company's growth strategy and operating strategy; and (iv) the declaration and payment of dividends. The words "may", "would", "will", "expect", "estimate", "anticipate", "believe", "intend", and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statement is not a guarantee of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's ability to control, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors including the risk disclosed in the company's statements and reports filed with the OTC Markets. The Company claims the safe harbor provided by Section 21E(c) of the Exchange Act for all forward-looking statements. For more information contact Tony Anish E Mail: info@squarechain.io Follow us on Twitter @sqcccorp Follow us on Twitter: @mlinehc Caravel Web site: www.drinkvea.com / @DrinkVea Torque site: www.drinktorque.com / @DrinkTorque Web site: www.mlinehc.com For months after fleeing violence in Myanmar, Rohingya refugee Nurul Salam and his wife Lalu Begum drew water from a hand pump that frequently left their family with sore throats and diarrhoea. The water point was near a drain. We never knew if it was pure water or not. The area was really dirty and we got sick very often, says Nurul, 35. Now, thanks to a recently installed solar-powered water system, they are among thousands of people in the crowded Kutupalong refugee settlement in Coxs Bazar who can walk to a stand, turn on a tap and fill a jug with potable water. With access to a deep well and a system that chlorinates the water, the couple and their neighbours in the settlement have fewer health issues. My wife had diarrhoea and sometimes she had fever. Now, things are very different. She hasnt been sick in the last few months, says Nurul, who also relies on clean water for the tea stall he runs at the sprawling settlement. The water point was near a drain ... The area was really dirty and we got sick very often. The couple are among some 745,000 refugees who fled to Bangladesh after a government crackdown in August 2017 drove them from their homes in Myanmars northern Rakhine State. The family originally settled in a waterlogged section of the settlement, but were relocated to a new extension area where they are among 3,500 children, women and men benefitting from clean water. Where we lived before, if there was a heavy storm, the drain water levels rose and entered our shelter," Nurul recalls. "Water was a curse then. Now, water is a blessing. The children arent sick anymore. Three out of 10 people worldwide do not have access to potable water according to the UN World Water Development Report 2019, Leaving no one behind despite safe drinking water and sanitation being recognized as basic human rights, indispensable to health and human dignity. Rohingya mother Lalu Begum, 32, collects water at the solar-powered tap near her house in Kutupalong refugee settlement, Bangladesh. UNHCR/Caroline Gluck Rohingya parents Lalu Begum and Nurul Salam stand in front of their tea shop in Kutupalong refugee settlement, Bangladesh, with two of their children. UNHCR/Caroline Gluck Nurul Salam, 35, sits with his eight-year-old daughter, Janatara, in the tea shop he runs in Kutupalong refugee settlement, Bangladesh. UNHCR/Caroline Gluck A young Rohingya boy sits on a water pipe in Chakmakul refugee settlement in southern Bangladesh. UNHCR/Chris Melzer A worker empties sewage for treatment at a plant in Kutupalong refugee settlement, Bangladesh. The facility is the largest of its kind ever built in a refugee camp. UNHCR/Firas Al-Khateeb The solar-powered water system is one of eight new networks jointly completed by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, OXFAM, Medecins Sans Frontieres and the Bangladeshi non-governmental agency BRAC, which have been installed in the last half year, supplying a total of 40,000 people across the site. There are plans to install another 10 networks in the coming year, which will benefit 80,000 more refugees. The systems run entirely on electricity generated through solar panels. Motorized pumps draw water from deep boreholes to newly installed 70,000-litre tanks where chlorine kills bacteria and other harmful microbes. It is then piped to collective water points strategically installed throughout the Kutupalong-Balukhali site. Its much less difficult, more convenient than before, says Lalu, who also helps as a hygiene volunteer with UNHCRs partner BRAC, as she collects water at the taps. We used to have long queues and devote a lot of energy towards getting water, (but now) I can get all the water on my own. See also: Disease threatens refugees in Bangladesh in unplanned sites Among refugees benefitting from the new supply is hygiene volunteer Mohammed Baser, 20, his wife and their baby daughter, Shomima. We also used to live in an area where rubbish gathered," he says. "The smell was really bad. My daughter used to get sick all the time: she had fever, diarrhoea and throat infections. The water smelled and the surroundings were not good. The water here is good Before, we didnt realize we were getting sick because of the water. More than 900,000 Rohingya refugees are living across 34 different locations in Coxs Bazar, Bangladesh. Efforts to provide enough safe drinking water for refugees across all the heavily congested sites has presented a massive challenge for humanitarian agencies, requiring the drilling of deep tube wells, building water networks including the installation of pipes, dams, canals, filtering mechanisms and chlorination systems. Additionally, UNHCR and Oxfam earlier this year put into service the biggest human waste treatment facility ever built in a refugee settlement. The plant is able to process the waste of 150,000 people. Chlorinating water helps in maintaining safe water and eliminates any risk of spread of disease. In most locations, water is scarce. In the dry season, especially in areas like Nayapara, often the only solution is water trucking, which is very costly. It has been challenging to secure adequate water sources for the whole refugee population. In response, UNHCR and partners, working closely with the Government of Bangladesh, have stepped up their efforts in the past year to look at lasting solutions for water and sanitation. The new solar powered water networks reduce energy costs and fuel emissions, says Murray Wilson, head of UNHCRs water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes in Coxs Bazar. UNHCR and its partners aim to provide 20 litres of chlorinated water per day to every individual refugee ensuring safe water for all. Chlorinating water helps in maintaining safe water and eliminates any risk of spread of disease, Wilson says. Previous water sources, mainly boreholes fitted with hand pumps were often highly contaminated by waste water penetrating the aquifer from which the wells drew water. "This is a fundamental step-change in the way we approach delivering services for refugees. Income from dairy exports down in Ukraine The highest share of milk and cream exports was to Qatar (42%, or $1.4 million) and Moldova with 24%, or $814,000. If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter Russian company plans to terminate contract with Ukraine on production of Zenit carriers media The first "Sea Launch" was set to be held in December of this year, three more starts in April, July, and December of 2020, and four launches in 2022 (March, June, September, December). If you see a spelling error on our site, select it and press Ctrl+Enter Gazprom should not withdraw its assets from the jurisdictions of England and the Netherlands. The British High Court has suspended its case in a dispute between Russia's Gazprom and Ukraine's Naftogaz until an appeal process at a Swedish court is complete, Gazprom said in a statement on Thursday. The London court had granted a request by the Ukrainian state oil and gas firm to freeze the British assets of Gazprom to enforce an earlier arbitration ruling from Sweden, Reuters said. Read alsoNaftogaz pays US$5 bln in taxes to Ukraine's budget last year, 40% of the amount won from Gazprom Naftogaz said in a separate statement that despite the case suspension, the court had told Gazprom not to withdraw its assets from the jurisdictions of England and the Netherlands. "Gazprom is obliged within 28 days from the time the request is granted to provide cash collateral to the court account or escrow account of one of the London banks as a guarantee of compliance with the court requirements," Naftogaz added. Kyiv and Moscow have been in a complex dispute over gas for years. This came to a head when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 when its pro-Russian president was toppled. In 2018, the Stockholm court ordered Gazprom to pay more than $2.5 billion to Naftogaz over a different contractual dispute, but Gazprom appealed the ruling. The participants in the mini-summit agreed to accelerate the launch of the EU program on social and economic assistance to the Ukrainian Pryazovia. The Ukraine-EU mini-summit was held in Brussels on March 20. It gathered Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, President of the European Council Donald Tusk, President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani, as well as key profile members of the European Commission, Poroshenko's press service said. The main goal of the event was to harmonize the approaches to the development of relations between Ukraine and the EU for the near future and coordinate joint counteraction to the existing challenges. The leaders welcomed a significant progress made in deepening bilateral relations since 2014, including the conclusion and implementation of the Association Agreement, successful operation of the DCFTA and introduction of visa-free travel for Ukrainians. Read alsoPoroshenko: Ukraine is getting stronger in energy independence The EU leaders stressed the importance of the irreversibility of Ukraine's course towards rapprochement with the EU. The importance of ensuring free and fair presidential elections in Ukraine was highlighted as a result of which the course of integration into the European Union and implementation of comprehensive reforms will be maintained. In this context, Poroshenko outlined key priorities for the development of the Ukrainian state and its relations with the European Union based on the process of achieving criteria for the EU membership. The leaders agreed to coordinate efforts to counter external interference in electoral processes both in Ukraine and in the European Union, in particular in the area of cyber security and resistance to misinformation. In the context of the 5th anniversary of the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia, the Ukrainian president reaffirmed unconditional commitment to the policy of ending the occupation of the peninsula and its return under Ukrainian sovereignty politically and diplomatically. He thanked the EU for its clear position regarding the non-recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea and the maintenance of the regime of sanctions against Russia for its brutal violation of international law. Poroshenko called on the European Union to extend the sanctions pressure on Russia to release all Ukrainian sailors and other hostages, as well as to completely liberate the territories of Ukraine from Russian occupation. He welcomed the decision of the EU to introduce a new "Azov package" of the EU sanctions for violating the freedom of navigation and creeping occupation by Russia of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait. He also urged to increase pressure on the Russian Federation to immediately release Ukrainian prisoners of war. The participants in the mini-summit agreed to accelerate the launch of the EU program on social and economic assistance to the Ukrainian Pryazovia. Poroshenko paid special attention to discussing the ways to strengthen Ukraine's energy security in cooperation with the European Union, particularly by ensuring gas transit and launching the EU-Ukraine energy bridge. He called on the EU leaders to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which poses a threat to the energy security of the entire European continent. The U.S. Department of State says Ukraine needs committed government officials and strong anti-corruption institutions. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko told Hill.TV's John Solomon in an interview aired on Wednesday that he has opened a probe into alleged attempts by Ukrainians to interfere in the United States' 2016 presidential election. "Today we will launch a criminal investigation about this and we will give legal assessment of this information," Lutsenko said last week, The Hill reported. Lutsenko is probing a claim from a member of the Ukrainian parliament that the director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Artem Sytnyk, attempted to the benefit of the 2016 U.S. presidential election on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Read alsoAmbassador Yovanovitch: SAPO chief must be replaced A State Department spokesman told Hill.TV that officials aware of news reports regarding Sytnyk. "We have always emphasized the need for deep, comprehensive, and timely reforms that respond to the demands the Ukrainian people made during the Revolution of Dignity: an end to systemic corruption, faster economic growth, and a European future for all Ukrainians," a department spokesperson told Hill.TV. "We have consistently said that Ukraine's long-term success and resilience depends on its commitment to reform, in particular the fight to address corruption. To succeed, Ukraine needs committed government officials and strong anti-corruption institutions. The United States is committed to engaging with our partners in Ukraine, including on efforts to roll back the persistent corruption that continues to threaten Ukraine's national security, prosperity, and democratic development." Hill.TV has also reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, NABU, and Clinton's spokesperson for comment. "According to the member of parliament of Ukraine, he got the court decision that the NABU official conducted an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign," Lutsenko said. "It means that we think Mr. Sytnyk, the NABU director, officially talked about criminal investigation with Mr. [Paul] Manafort, and at the same time, Mr. Sytnyk stressed that in such a way, he wanted to assist the campaign of Ms. Clinton," he continued. Solomon asked Lutsenko about reports that a member of Ukraine's parliament obtained a tape of the current head of the NABU saying that he was attempting to help Clinton win the 2016 presidential election, as well as connections that helped release the black-ledger files that exposed Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's wrongdoing in Ukraine. "This member of parliament even attached the audio tape where several men, one of which had a voice similar to the voice of Mr. Sytnyk, discussed the matter." First deliveries of the Javelins to Ukraine were announced on April 30, 2018. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has instructed Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak to accelerate talks on the procurement of a new batch of Javelin anti-tank missile systems from the United States. "Our capabilities of countering the enemy will increase significantly after [Ukraine's] Armed Forces receive Bayraktar drones," Poroshenko said on March 20 during a working tour of Khmelnytsky region, where he attended a test flight of Turkish UAVs, according to the presidential press service. "They say the delivery of U.S. Stinger systems to Afghanistan once became a turning point in the Soviet Union's reckless campaign in that country. I believe that the Turkish military drones, American Javelin systems, other equipment supplied by our partners, as well as locally manufactured military equipment will significantly increase the costs of the Kremlin's explicit aggression against Ukraine." Read alsoUkraine could receive another batch of Javelins Volker The president praised successful tests of a Bayraktar drone, which hit the target with less than a one-meter error. "I am instructing the Chief of General Staff, the Minister of Defense to take all the necessary measures to speed up the training of Ukrainian soldiers [to fly Bayraktar UAVs], including in Turkey. The whole cycle of putting [the drones] into service [at the army] should be completed as soon as possible and I should be informed when the strike drones reach the front line [in Donbas]," he said. "The same will have to be done with the Javelin anti-tank complexes. I am instructing you, Mr. Minister [Stepan Poltorak], to speed up negotiations on new purchases from our American partners." The president assured that the work to put into operation new armaments, including missiles, would continue. As UNIAN reported, late in 2017, the U.S. Donald Trump Administration decided to sell lethal weapons, including Javelin systems, to Ukraine. On March 2, 2018, the U.S. Department of State approved the sale of 210 Javelin missiles and 37 launchers to the tune of about US$47 million. On April 30, 2018, Poroshenko announced that the Javelins had arrived in Ukraine. On May 22, 2018, Ukraine tested the systems. He won't even be allowed to board the plane, Avakov says. Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has ruled out the return to Ukraine of Mikhail Saakashvili, ex-Governor of Ukraine's Odesa region and former President of Georgia. "It's PR. PR for $300 a day on April Fool's Day. He has decided he will pay you this way for the airing time on your channel. Saakashvili will not even board a plane, he will not be allowed to, because an entry ban has been imposed on him by Ukraine. It's a judicial ban," Avakov said in an interview with Dmytro Gordon. Read alsoSaakashvili confirms his plans to return to Ukraine As UNIAN reported earlier, Saakashvili confirmed his plans to return to Ukraine on April 1, 2019. At the end of July 2017, Poroshenko signed a decree on terminating Saakashvili's Ukrainian citizenship he had been granted earlier before he took up the top post at Odesa State Regional Administration. According to Anton Gerashchenko, a member of the Council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Saakashvili was deprived of citizenship after it was proved he had provided inaccurate information while applying for it, in particular, in terms of his criminal record back in Georgia. On September 10, 2017, Saakashvili, earlier deprived of Ukrainian citizenship, managed to cross into Ukraine at the Shehyni checkpoint. A crowd of the politician's supporters broke through the cordons of the Ukrainian law enforcers, took Saakashvili and a number of MPs and public figures accompanying Saakashvili in a tight ring, and literally forced the group's entry to the territory of Ukraine evading standard border control routine. Read alsoUkraine border guards remind Saakashvili of entry ban until 2021 following "comeback" statement According to Anton Gerashchenko, Saakashvili was accompanied by Members of Parliament Yulia Tymoshenko, Serhiy Vlasenko, Yury Derevianko, Pavlo Kostenko, Dmytro Dobrodomov, and former SBU chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko. Poroshenko said that the border guards during penetration of the state border by Saakashvili along with his entourage had full right to use weapons, but did not allow to "spark fire sought by populist politicians." On December 5, law enforcers detained Saakashvili in Kyiv but later the same day his supporters managed to get him released from a convoy vehicle. On December 11, a district court in Kyiv refused to satisfy the prosecution's petition to order a two-month house arrest. The Kyiv Court of Appeal four times postponed the consideration of the appeal against the said court decision. The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine put Saakashvili on the wanted list on charges of assisting members of criminal organizations and concealing their criminal activities (Part 2 of Article 256). According to Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, Saakashvili organized protests to seize state power in Ukraine and assist members of the criminal gang of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and businessman Serhiy Kurchenko in halting their criminal prosecution. On February 12, 2018, Saakashvili was transferred to Poland under the readmission procedure. Border guards will help the police verify data. Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has said the law enforcers will be able to see if someone tries to unlawfully use votes of Ukrainian labor migrants now working abroad. According to him, about 5 million Ukrainians are working in other countries at the moment. "Someone will vote at the embassy, some will come to vote in Ukraine. But most people won't be coming... It is important to understand that when a member of the election commission hands a ballot to a voter, they sign it, so it is clear who issued it. If you issue the ballot to his relatives, since the voter is now abroad, this will be easy to check," Avakov said in an interview with Dmytro Gordon. Read alsoUkraine's interior minister rules out Saakashvili's return to Ukraine He said the State Border Guard Service through the register of voters would be able to verify whether a voter is in Ukraine or beyond on election day. Avakov also stresses there should not be deceased persons in the register of voters and people should report to law enforcers if they see such names in voter lists. The head of state has warned that is the Russian president's intention to sow discord. President of Ukraine has urged Ukrainians not to fall for provocations and electoral technologies intended to split people's unity. During a meeting with Khmelnytskyi residents, Petro Poroshenko stressed the importance of preserving unity on the eve of the elections and remembering that the Kremlin will never reconcile with the path chosen by Ukraine towards membership in the European Union and NATO. "Shelling and provocations in the east take place every day. Almost every day Ukraine buries its heroes ... The Kremlin refuses to fulfill its international obligations ... Putin continues the hybrid war against Ukraine," Poroshenko said, according to the presidential administration press service. The president noted that he reminded all that on the eve of March 31: "We need to feel the real stakes in these elections. Perhaps, not everyone sees them behind the names of the candidates. Putting a mark in the ballot paper, each of us will answer the question: can we preserve independence from Russia; can we resist the attempts of the Kremlin to pull Ukraine back into the empire; can Ukrainians prevent Putin's revenge; will they reject the candidates suitable for him at the elections of the President and the Verkhovna Rada". Read alsoKremlins plan to sow chaos in Ukraine The head of state once again warned that the Russian president intended to split the unity of Ukrainians. "Demonstrative provocations have become more frequent in recent weeks. For it became clear that patriotism and common sense of Ukrainians beat the parade of political technologies. Now they clearly want to transform the electoral campaign in the format of street clashes. The enemy seeks to shed Ukrainian blood. This is no longer a technology. This is an attempt to disrupt the elections. And this is definitely not a Ukrainian scenario," Petro Poroshenko said. The president emphasized: "Our Ukrainian scenario is to conduct a transparent and fair election process, to ensure a fair vote count. Only then will we be able to continue the course of the last five years. Only this way will we build a great Ukraine, a country of free, happy and wealthy people". Read alsoUkraine's Foreign Intel Service: Russia to spend US$350 mln for meddling in Ukraine elections "My first appeal to all Ukrainians is the following: do not fall for provocations or false promises of heavenly paradise tomorrow. Do not think that Putin will believe those candidates who already say that they will come to him on their knees begging for forgiveness with tears in their eyes. Remember: Moscow does not believe tears," he said, adding that the Kremlin respects strength only and it will not overcome the strength of Ukrainians unless it splits people's unity. CALGARY, Alberta and NORWALK, Conn., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Eguana Technologies (TSX.V: EGT) (OTCQB: EGTYF) and PurePoint Energy are pleased to announce that the Evolve Home Energy Storage System is immediately available to residences located in Connecticut. The Evolve Energy Storage system allows new or existing residential solar system owners to store excess solar power generation for use in the evening, maximizing their solar investment while increasing their level of energy independence. In the event of grid failure, the Evolve Energy Storage system will keep the solar system operating while managing the home loads, ensuring that power is available in the event of either short or long duration power outages. PurePoint Energys residential clients are looking for affordable modular energy storage solutions that offer reliability, as well as flexibility. In addition to having backup power, PurePoint and our clients alike will appreciate the service that is provided post installation with Eguana technical support, stated Tom Wemyss, VP Business Development at Pure Point Energy. Priding ourselves on having earned a five-star rating in service, we are thrilled to know that Eguanas technical support team will give an extra piece of mind and comfort to homeowners when purchasing an energy storage unit. Traditional standby generators are well integrated into the residential market throughout New England. It is becoming an increasingly popular trend for homeowners to install advanced energy storage systems in conjunction with solar PV systems to replace these traditional solutions. The Evolve Energy Storage system, when coupled with a new or existing solar system, offers a perpetual, low-cost, clean backup power source. Further, the system will allow the homeowner to increase their energy independence by storing excess solar power for use in the evening, said Livio Filice, Director of Sales, North America, PurePoint is a well-established, market leading provider of high-quality solar systems with over a decade of experience in Connecticut. We are thrilled to be working with a company that is focused on quality and customer satisfaction. PurePoint is scheduled to become an Eguana certified installer in April with initial installations to commence shortly thereafter. Evolve energy storage systems will continue to be deployed throughout the balance of this year. Evolve Home Energy Storage Systems Evolve is a fully-integrated residential energy storage system that includes the companys proprietary power electronics system, LG Chem low-voltage battery modules, and a comprehensive user interface. The system is rated at 5KW AC output with a modular battery design based on a 6.5 kWh battery, which is scalable from 13 to 39kWh in storage capacity. The NEMA 3R wall-mounted package is suitable for indoor and outdoor installations. The package is backed by a 10-year standard warranty. The Evolve supports grid-connected solar self-consumption, time of use, and backup power. It is now available in the United States and in Caribbean markets, with certification standards matching UL1741, Californias Rule 21, and Hawaiis Rule 14H. Interested parties may contact: Eguana Technologies Livio Filice Director of Residential Sales, North America Livio.Filice@EguanaTech.com +1.905.929.7522 PurePoint Energy Michael Dowling Business Development Manager mdowling@purepointenergy.com +1.203.642.4105 About PurePoint Located in Norwalk, CT, PurePoint Energy is a local leader in agricultural, commercial, and residential solar design and installation. We hang our hats on excellent customer service, and choose to only offer the highest quality and best performing products. Our energy solutions are turnkey and fully customizable. Our mission is to help our clients become more energy independent, lower their cost of energy consumption, and reduce their carbon footprint to improve the environment. About Eguana Technologies Inc. Based in Calgary, Alberta Canada, Eguana Technologies (EGT: TSX.V) (OTCQB: EGTYF) designs and manufactures high performance residential and commercial energy storage systems. Eguana has two decades of experience delivering grid edge power electronics for fuel cell, photovoltaic and battery applications, and delivers proven, durable, high quality solutions from its high capacity manufacturing facilities in Europe and North America. With thousands of its proprietary energy storage inverters deployed in the European and North American markets, Eguana is one of the leading suppliers of power controls for solar self-consumption, grid services and demand charge applications at the grid edge. To learn more, visit www.EguanaTech.com or follow us on Twitter @EguanaTech Company Inquiries Justin Holland CEO, Eguana Technologies Inc. +1.416.728.7635 Justin.Holland@EguanaTech.com Forward Looking Information The reader is advised that some of the information herein may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning assigned by National Instruments 51-102 and other relevant securities legislation. In particular, we include: statements pertaining to the value of our power controls to the energy storage market and statements concerning the use of proceeds and the Company's ability to obtain necessary approvals from the TSX Venture Exchange. Forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and involves a number of risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements, or future events or developments, to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which speaks only as of the date hereof. Readers are also directed to the Risk Factors section of the Companys most recent audited Financial Statements which may be found on its website or at sedar.com. The Company does not undertake any obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking information contained herein to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as may be required under applicable securities laws. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The MPs decided to appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers to remove cannabis from the list of "narcotics, psychotropic substances, and precursors." The Verkhovna Rada's Human Rights Committee has backed an e-petition earlier launched on the parliament's website on the legal regulation of medical cannabis. The petition had already gained over 25,000 votes in its support, Hromadske reports The Committee backed the motion unanimously. At the meeting, it was decided to create a working group attracting representatives of other relevant committees. It will develop a draft law on the regulation of the medical use of cannabis. Read alsoAbout 200 kg of cocaine found in vessel at Yuzhny seaport near Odesa The committee also decided to appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers with a request to remove cannabis from the list of "narcotics, psychotropic substances and precursors." Members of public organizations also attended the meeting. In particular, Chairman of the "Athena. Women against Cancer" association Nina Reznichenko said cannabis could relieve pain for cancer patients. As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine's Acting Health MinisterUlana Suprun stood up for the legalization in Ukraine of medical cannabis the move already made by some governments worldwide and widely endorsed by both doctors and patients. The visa-free regime is applicable to visits for up to 30 days. Thailand has cancelled visas for Ukrainians who plan short-term travel from April 14. "From April 14, 2019, citizens of Ukraine will be able to travel to the Kingdom of Thailand for tourist purposes without visas," the consular service of Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. Travelers should have a travel passport (biometric or non-biometric) and the period of visa-free travel will be up to 30 days. Read alsoUkraine, Georgia citizens may use ID cards to freely visit both countries as of March 1 "To stay in Thailand for a period of more than 30 days, regardless of the purpose of the trip, one must obtain a visa at the appropriate diplomatic mission or consular office," the Foreign Ministry said. In addition, citizens of Ukraine should be insured while traveling abroad. Two invaders were killed and another five were wounded on Wednesday, intelligence reports say. Russia's hybrid military forces in the past 24 hours mounted 11 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas, with three Ukrainian soldiers reported as wounded in action. "Three Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in the past day. According to intelligence reports, two invaders were killed and another five were wounded," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation said in an update published on Facebook as of 07:00 Kyiv time on March 21, 2019. What is more, Ukrainian troops destroyed an enemy ammunition depot and a military vehicle. Read alsoOfficer uploads another video of JFO strike on terrorists' positions in Donbas Russian occupation forces opened fire from 120mm and 82mm mortars, an anti-tank missile system, weapons installed on infantry fighting vehicles, grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns, and sniper and small arms, attacking the defenders of the town of Maryinka, and the villages of Lebedynske, Novoluhanske, Stariy Aidar, Katerynivka, Troyitske, Pishchane, Stanytsia Luhanska, and Khutir Vilniy. "Since Thursday midnight, Russian-led forces haven't attacked Ukrainian positions yet," the report said. Three senior North Korean officials made back-to-back visits to Russia earlier this month. A former U.S. intelligence official said in the wake of the Hanoi summit breakdown, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may visit Russia in order to boost ties. Andrew Kim, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Korea Mission Center, made these comments on Wednesday at a lecture, according to Yonhap News Agency, Business-Insider reports. Speculations have been rife regarding Kim's visit to Russia, especially after three senior North Korean officials made back-to-back visits to Russia this month. Read alsoActivity at 2nd North Korean missile site indicates possible launch preparations media The second summit between North Korea and the U.S. ended abruptly in Hanoi, Vietnam, last month without any agreement regarding further steps in the denuclearization process. Many have perceived the Hanoi summit to be a failure, even as U.S. President Donald Trump maintains that the relationship between the two states remains at a good level in the wake of the meeting. Pyongyang sought a partial relief in sanctions during last month's summit, according to North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho a demand which was allegedly turned down by the United States which reiterated its stand on easing sanctions only after complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula has been achieved. Putin, whose term ends in 2024, hasn't anointed anyone as his heir, while saying repeatedly that he won't change the constitution to extend his rule. That didn't stop Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, raising the possibility of constitutional reform in December. An aging leader steps down as president but keeps a firm grip on the reins of power. For many in the Kremlin, the choreographed events unfolding in neighboring Kazakhstan are a model for Russian President Vladimir Putin to consider. Unlike his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev, however, nobody's certain Putin could pull off a transfer of power without triggering destabilizing infighting among rival Kremlin camps that currently is held in check by his rule. The political and personal risks to Putin are high, Bloomberg reports. A transition similar to the one under way in Kazakhstan has been actively discussed in Moscow, said Andrei Kolyadin, a former presidential administration official who now works as a political consultant for the Kremlin. "The Nazarbayev scenario could suit the political elite, which wants to have an arbiter who can influence the process after the successor takes over," he said. This week's decision by Nazarbayev, 78, to hand the presidency to a trusted ally, while retaining key powers as Kazakh security council chief and leader of the nation for life, has thrown the issue into sharp relief. Putin, 66, won a fourth and presumably final term with a record 77 percent in elections last year. He's crushed political opposition and centralized power in his own hands since he was first elected in 2000, becoming so dominant that many Russians find it hard to name potential successors even as his popularity has declined. Putin, whose term ends in 2024, hasn't anointed anyone as his heir, while saying repeatedly that he won't change the constitution to extend his rule. That didn't stop Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia's lower house of parliament, raising the possibility of constitutional reform in December. Read alsoStepping down without going: What to expect in Kazakhstan after Nazarbayev's resignation Some within the ruling elite are pressing the Russian leader to remain president for as long as possible, three people close to the Kremlin said, asking not to identified discussing internal matters. Options being explored include pressing neighboring Belarus into uniting with Russia to create a new state so that Putin can sidestep constitutional term limits. There's no agreed scenario for a transition, the people said. Even so, "Putin can't stay on forever - he's mortal," said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist who studies Russia's ruling elite at the State University of Administration in Moscow "If he doesn't prepare the ground for succession it will end badly. Everyone will be at each other's throats." Putin already once engineered a handover of the presidency to his protege Dmitry Medvedev to comply with the constitutional ban on more than two consecutive terms. Medvedev was president from 2008-2012 and Putin took over his role as prime minister, continuing to run the country until he returned to the Kremlin after four years. This time, Putin could transfer key presidential powers to the security council or an advisory body called the State Council, both of which he heads now, then use them to exercise influence once he leaves the Kremlin, according to political analysts in Moscow. Read also"Kazakhstan could have been torn apart if president died: Expert explains Nazarbayev's move to step down The Kremlin will monitor how much control Nazarbayev exercises in Kazakhstan and how power gets redistributed under the new arrangement, said Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. Russia and Kazakhstan have "a similar economic structure and type of authoritarianism," he said. Still, there are doubts whether Russia's feuding elites would continue to respect Putin's authority if he handed the presidency to someone else, said Sergei Markov, a political consultant to the Kremlin. While Kazakhs may allow Nazarbayev to be a mentor figure like Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, "in Putin's case, if he left, he would face an immediate challenge," he said. If the deal is not approved, the European Council says an extension until April 12 is possible. The European Council has drawn up a draft document agreeing to delay Brexit until May 22. "That is provided the UK Parliament approves Theresa May's deal in a third vote on it next week," the BBC said in a summary. Read alsoMay seeks Brexit delay If the deal is not approved, the European Council says an extension until April 12 is possible. "A longer extension may be possible if the UK is willing to take part in EU elections," the BBC said. Talks in Brussels are running "very, very late," the BBC's political editor says. HOUSTON, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Shepherd, Smith, Edwards & Kantas, LLP (SSEK Law Firm) is investigating claims involving William C. Gennity, a former broker, who has been barred indefinitely from the securities industry and penny stock trading by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Gennitys securities bars came as a result of multiple investigations into allegations of churning , unauthorized trading , unsuitability , and misrepresentation. These allegations arise from Gennitys time working as a broker for Alexander Capital, LP a New York-based brokerage firm where he worked from 2012 - 2014. Prior to Alexander Capital, Gennity worked for Legend Securities, National Securities Corporation, J.P. Turner & Co. and Joseph Stevens & Co. At the time of his disbarment, Gennity was working for First Standard Financial Company, LLC. On September 28, 2017, the SEC filed a complaint against Gennity along with two other Alexander Capital brokers (Rocco Roveccio and Laurence Torres) for various securities fraud violations, including churning in customers accounts, unauthorized trading, hiding material information, and making unsuitable recommendations. On March 1, 2019, the federal court for the Southern District of New York concluded the case through the entering of a final consent judgment against a broker [Gennity] who was charged with defrauding customers by making unsuitable and unauthorized trades and churning customers accounts that enriched the broker at the customers expense. As a result of this order, Gennity is required to pay $302,483, which includes $127,686 in disgorgement of commissions, $14,797 in interest, and a civil penalty of $160,000. According to FINRA BrokerCheck , the SEC censured Alexander Capital in June 2018 and ordered the firm to pay approx. $411,000 for failing to supervise its three registered representatives (Gennity, Roveccio, and Torres) who engaged in numerous acts of investment fraud. If you were a client of William C. Gennity or any of his former financial entities, please contact the law firm of Shepherd, Smith, Edwards & Kantas, LLP today for a free, confidential evaluation of your account(s). We have a team of attorneys, consultants, and staff with over 100 years of combined experience in the securities industry and in securities law that are ready to assist you in recovering your investment losses today. AURORA, Colo. and DENVER, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Exobox Technologies Corp. ( EXBX ) (EXBX or the Company), a public company trading under the ticker symbol EXBX, announced that Mr. James Roberts has assumed the position of Chief Executive Officer of the Company. Both Mark Kerzner and Sara Gellatly have also been replaced from the board. Mr. Roberts said, I am pleased for this opportunity to guide the Company in a new direction, the focus will be to execute the companys new business model which is in the CBD area. We want to develop a proprietary line of CBD products. Exobox Technologies Corp is also actively looking for acquisitions and mergers. Mr. Roberts added, We are also in the process of finishing the accounting to bring the Company current in its reporting with the SEC, NVSOS and OTC Markets. We look forward to bringing to market a unique, effective line of CBD products. Exobox Technologies Corp. will keep both its shareholders and public completely informed of the entire process as the details continue to develop. Please watch for regular press releases about the Companys progress. SAFE HARBOR ACT Forward-Looking Statements: This release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. These statements appear in a number of places in this release and include all statements that are not statements of historical fact regarding the intent, belief or current expectations of Exobox Technologies Corp. and its directors or its officers with respect to, among other things: (i) financing plans; (ii) trends affecting its financial condition or results of operations; (iii) growth strategy and operating strategy. The words "may," "would," "will," "expect," "estimate," "can," "believe," "potential" and similar expressions and variations thereof are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Exobox Technologies Corp. ability to control, and actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. More information about the potential factors that could affect the business and financial results is and will be included in Exobox Technologies Corp. filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Investor Relations Exobox Technologies Corp. DG777@mail.com SOURCE: Exobox Technologies Corp. Press Release Car2MEC project, funded by Bavarian Ministry for Economic Affairs, started 2016 Edge Computing critical for driving safety on the path to fully automated driving 21 March 2019 Munich, Germany - Local cloud computing (Multi-access Edge Computing - MEC) is a key enabling technology for connected driving, specifically for driving safety. It is vitally important that the industries involved in connected driving work closely together to turn the concepts into sustainable business for all parties involved. These are the main conclusions of the Car2MEC project after two years of intensive trialing and testing by Continental, Deutsche Telekom, Fraunhofer ESK, MHP and Nokia on the A9 motorway digital test track in Germany. Car2MEC was funded by the Bavarian Ministry for Economic Affairs. The goal of the project was to gain insights into the value of MEC for connected driving with regards to technology and network architecture as well as economically. The project partners tested a number of different use cases on the A9 motorway, including "emergency warning", "end of jam warning", "variable speed limit assistant" and "HD maps". Ronald Hain, backend team leader, Interior Systems & Technology, Continental: "In the future, Multi-access Edge Computing will be a very important communication technology for the connected vehicle. By closing the gap between local real-time applications and cloud services it will allow us to enhance automated driving and enable vehicles to cooperate with each other. In addition, local services effectively utilize the data rate of LTE or 5G networks. Continental is currently working on a vehicle architecture that takes this communication technology into account." Deutsche Telekom deployed a project specific infrastructure with two locally separated MEC in the test area at the A9 motorway. The testbed shared resources with the LTE live network and had been operated for 12 months allowing for extensive test drives. This set up was a unique opportunity to assess MEC technology in a real-world environment: public road and commercial cellular network with many parallel users. "The project results validate the performance of edge computing over our 4G networks as a potential enabler for automotive cases that require low latency and ultra-high reliability," says Alexander Lautz, Senior Vice President 5G, Deutsche Telekom. "Going forward, we will continue to collaborate with partners in the automotive sector on the evolution of the technology and its application in connected and automated driving solutions that will deliver the best driving experience." In the project, Fraunhofer ESK's hybrid communication units enabled time-sensitive applications for connected vehicles with proven, standardized protocol and message sets. A highly efficient distributed messaging service (GeoService) deployed on the multi-access edge nodes provided low-latency connectivity between the vehicles and a direct link to localized services. In combination with Fraunhofer ESK's adaptive networking algorithms, which select the most suitable communication path at runtime, the complementary strengths of different technologies can be exploited to provide optimized Quality-of-Service (QoS) for each application and context. Karsten Roscher, senior scientist at Fraunhofer ESK: "This project gave us the chance to evaluate and enhance our hybrid ETSI ITS solution in a commercial cellular network with future 5G additions in mind. While the edge cloud improved end-to-end latency by more than 20ms, the 4G radio access network is still a limiting factor for more demanding future services. However, we believe the combination of edge cloud and 5G will shape a completely new landscape of connected and distributed applications." MHP provided insights into MEC's value for connected driving from a business perspective. MHP identified critical success factors for potential commercial ecosystems driven by the new technology. The business opportunities MEC offers to the automotive industry are ambiguous, yet promising. Several possible areas of action were identified in the project. Cooperation and partnerships, in addition to standardization and a clear value proposition for each stakeholder's investment, are seen as crucial for future development. Olaf Kleindienst, partner at MHP: "Everybody is talking about the connected car and, in some ways, the connected car is already there. But it still has some way to go and many questions remain, particularly around the fully connected car. The fully connected car represents a new environment for the automotive industry and the established key players must reinvent themselves, with new business models. We see projects like Car2MEC as an excellent opportunity to think ahead and discuss questions around this new environment at an early stage, with different perspectives." Nokia's Multi-access Edge Computing technology (MEC) brings cloud computing resources closer to the roadside, enabling much faster reaction times (latency) in the network compared to centralized cloud architectures. This is crucial for applications like emergency warning or end-of-jam warning where milliseconds can make a big difference. The testing confirmed that time critical information can be delivered from one car to another in less than 30 ms in an LTE network combined with a MEC based Edge Cloud. Also, the performance of latency critical and data intense applications like HD positioning and maps improved significantly when supported by an Edge Cloud infrastructure. Uwe Puetzschler, Car2MEC project lead and head of Car2X at Nokia : "The results from this project mark a big step forward on the way to safe and automated driving. We have demonstrated that the Edge Cloud on top of 4G and 5G networks allows to deploy distributed applications that meet the requirements of the automotive industry in terms of latency and reliability. This will accelerate a commercial deployment of the technology." About Nokia We create the technology to connect the world. We develop and deliver the industry's only end-to-end portfolio of network equipment, software, services and licensing that is available globally. Our customers include communications service providers whose combined networks support 5.7 billion subscriptions, as well as enterprises in the private and public sector that use our network portfolio to increase productivity and enrich lives. Through our research teams, including the world-renowned Nokia Bell Labs, we are leading the world to adopt end-to-end 5G networks that are faster, more secure and capable of revolutionizing lives, economies and societies. Nokia adheres to the highest ethical business standards as we create technology with social purpose, quality and integrity. nokia.com Media Inquiries: Nokia Communications Phone: +358 10 448 4900 Email: press.services@nokia.com Exclusive Distributor for Ilo Vapor in Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Delaware Initial Availability to All MD Dispensaries; Other States to Follow Offers Patients Easy, Clean, Convenient, Precision Dosed Cannabis Concentrates NORWOOD, MA, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MariMed Inc. (OTCQB: MRMD) a leading multi-state cannabis and hemp operator, today announced an agreement with Ilo Vapor whereby MariMed is an exclusive distributor of the companys flagship product, DabTab brand dablets. The product is available now to all cannabis dispensaries in Maryland. It will be introduced to Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Delaware dispensaries later this spring. What is a DabTab brand dablet and why is it revolutionary? First introduced at the MJBizCon conference in Las Vegas in November of 2018, DabTab is a completely new way to consume cannabis concentrate that is precision dosed, clean, and delivers vapor, not smoke. DabTab preserves all the flavor and effects of conventional dabbing, while also providing a new level of convenience and cleanliness for concentrate consumption. A proprietary natural ceramic tablet is precision-infused with cannabis oil holding exactly 50mg of concentrate by weight per DabTab. They eliminate the mess of handling, burning and cleaning conventional concentrates and shatter, but can still be used in many conventional vaporizers. DabTab brand dablets are offered in Sativa, Indica, and Hybrid strain-specific varieties that come in packs of either 10 or 20, .5g and 1g respectively. For their Maryland debut, DabTab brand dablets are infused with premium concentrate from MariMed's Nature's Heritage brand." According to a BDS Analytics and ArcView Market Research report, cannabis concentrates have been the fastest growing segment in the cannabis market, growing from 10% in 2010 to 27% of the overall market in 2018, when sales neared $3B. Sales are expected to reach $8.5B by 2022. It notes, For consumers, its a discreet and healthier choice that will likely make cannabis consumers of people who would never dream of inhaling smoke. That will cause the category to represent ever more retail display space MariMed CEO Bob Fireman noted, ilo Vapor is one of the most innovative companies I have encountered in the cannabis industry. The DabTab brand dablet is truly revolutionary and will likely accelerate growth in the concentrates sector, particularly among medical users, women, seniors and others attracted by the convenience, precise dosage and smokeless features. The product also fully supports MariMeds focus on providing our growing consumer base with convenient, safe and precision dosed products that help them enjoy the health and wellness benefits cannabis compounds can deliver. Initial orders validate a strong interest by Maryland patients in DabTabs and that dispensaries will benefit from carrying this compelling and game changing product. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with ilo Vapor. Michael Lindars, President and Co-founder of ilo Vapor added, Our products are designed from the ground up to focus on providing true vaporization, along with unmatched convenience and reliability. Initial DabTab sales have been very promising. We share many values with MariMed and are delighted with this agreement. MariMed Inc. will be showcasing its full range of products at the NECANN Conference, March 22-24, 2019 at the Hynes Convention Center, Boston, MA, booth 1210. ABOUT ILO VAPOR: ilo Vapor, a division of Iconic Ventures, Inc., is a Portland, Oregon based technology, brand and product development company. Its patent pending devices are reinventing vaping. Through cutting edge technology and innovative design, ilos mission is to create clean, reliable and convenient products that deliver the optimal vaporization experience. Follow us on Instagram @ilo.vapor and on LinkedIn . A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/875fd21d-cbe8-4118-9a98-83ef71667e53 ABOUT MARIMED, INC.: MariMed, Inc. is dedicated to improving health and wellness with the highest quality hemp and cannabis products. The company offers a full range of cannabis products, operates state of the art medical and adult-use cannabis dispensaries in six states, and has recently announced the formation of a separate division, MariMed Hemp, focused on the development of industrial hemp-derived CBD products. In late 2018 the Company announced a $30MM investment in Kentucky-based GenCanna, a recognized genetic innovator in industrial hemp. Across its branded products, including Kalm Fusion and Bettys Eddies, MariMed is in the forefront of precision dosed branded products for the treatment of specific medical conditions. MariMed currently distributes its branded products in select states and is expanding licensing and distribution to numerous additional markets encompassing thousands of dispensaries. For additional information, visit www.MariMedAdvisors.com . S earch MariMed and post on social media with the hash tag #MedicatedByMarimed: Twitter: @MariMedInc Facebook: @MariMedInc Instagram: MariMedInc YouTube: MariMedInc Forward Looking Statements: This release contains certain forward-looking statements and information relating to MariMed Inc. that is based on the beliefs of MariMed Inc.s management, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Such statements reflect the current views of the Company with respect to future events including estimates and projections about its business based on certain assumptions of its management, including those described in this Release. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risk and uncertainties that are difficult to predict, including, among other factors, changes in demand for the Company's services and products, changes in the law and its enforcement and changes in the economic environment. Additional risk factors are included in the Company's public filings with the SEC. Should one or more of these underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as "hoped," "anticipated," "believed," "planned, "estimated," "preparing," "potential," "expected," looks or words of a similar nature. The Company does not intend to update these forward-looking statements. None of the content of any of the websites referred to herein (even if a link is provided for your convenience) is incorporated into this release and the Company assumes no responsibility for any of such content. Media: Julie Shepherd, Accentuate PR Julie@accentuatepr.com 847-275-3643 Investors: Jon Levine, CFO, MariMed info@MariMedAdvisors.com 781-559-8713 #### Attachment September 3 2015 Scottish Borders Council has given the final go ahead for construction to commence on a new 8.6m Duns Primary School within the former Berwickshire High School building, including a support centre for children with special needs.Conversion of the B-listed building will be undertaken by Graham Construction to designs by Aitken Turnbull Architects, with completion expected in early 2017, creating a new education campus alongside a new high school built over the road.In their design statement Aitken Turnbull observed that limited space requirements and cost constraints meant that the best course of action was to preserve as much of the existing school as possible.The practice stated: Although it is unfortunate that some of the original structure will be lost, it is considered that this is justified in order to preserve the main part of the building and the imposing south facing frontage on Langtongate.A 1980s extension will also be retained to accommodate a new nursery. March 21 2019 Plans for a new cafe, visitor centre and community space at a Perthshire mill have taken shape with the submission of plans by Studio East Architects. College Mill Trout Farm is seeking to renovate the Victorian Beetling Mill, currently used as storage, in order to diversify the current business with a cafe and workshop to attract more visitors and locals. Outlining the case for the build the architects wrote in a planning statement: Situated within the mill, the Tickled Trout Cafe will offer a truly unique setting with the existing lade flowing through the mill along with information display boards and photos explaining the history of the Beetling Mill, local area and workings of the farm. The workshop, situated above the cafe will provide essential classroom space for visiting schools and community groups. The proposed work will entail fabric repairs to the slate roof, stone walls and new timber windows. March 21 2019 North Ayrshire Council has taken ownership of a 6.4m housing development in the town of Saltcoats following delivery of the courtyard complex by Hub South West and Ashleigh Construction. Canal Court was created by the councils own in-house design team to meet the needs of older occupiers the development and includes its own private courtyard and social services hub. Councilor Jim Montgomerie said: This is an amazing facility which will allow our residents to live in high quality, sustainable and fully accessible homes. "Our ambitious council Housing programme has already delivered hundreds of modern, energy-efficient homes across North Ayrshire and we are well on track to build more than 1300 new council homes by 2024. Residents have already moved into the 36-home block, located just yards from the towns harbour. President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leona, visited on Thursday Wahat Al Karama, Abu Dhabis national and cultural landmark designed to commemorate the sacrifices and heroic deeds of UAE martyrs to defend their homeland and protect its achievements ABU DHABI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 21st Mar, 2019) President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leona, visited on Thursday Wahat Al Karama, Abu Dhabis national and cultural landmark designed to commemorate the sacrifices and heroic deeds of UAE martyrs to defend their homeland and protect its achievements. Upon his arrival, President Bio who was accompanied by his wife, the First Lady, Fatima Maada Bio, were welcomed by Sheikh Khalifa Bin Tahnoun Al Nahyan, Executive Director of the Martyrs' Families' Affairs Office, at the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince's Court. He attended the Guard of Honor ceremony, then laid a wreath at Martyrs' Monument, made up of 31 panels leaning on one another in a symbol of solidarity between the leadership, people and soldiers of the UAE. He then went on a tour across Wahat Al Karama and listened to a detailed explanation by Sheikh Khalifa Bin Tahnoun Al Nahyan about the different sections in Wahat Al Karama, which embody the bravery and heroism of UAE heroes, as well as the nations noble values. At the end of the tour President Bio wrote in the visitors log, expressing his utmost respect and appreciation for the brave martyrs of the UAE. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Another anti-government rally in the Albanian capital of Tirana on Thursday led to clashes between protesters and police outside the country's parliament when the demonstrators attempted to break through to the building, local media reported BELGRADE (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2019) Another anti-government rally in the Albanian capital of Tirana on Thursday led to clashes between protesters and police outside the country's parliament when the demonstrators attempted to break through to the building, local media reported. Some of the protesters have made several attempts to break through the police cordon, throwing flares and other objects at the law enforcement officers. The police are ready to use tear gas and a water cannon against the demonstrators. "It is the time for entering the Parliament and dragging all those who have stolen [from] Albanians. The citizens are those who decided on the continuation of the protest, We don't except to dialogue with gangs, just like the US doesn't accept to dialogue with terrorists," former lawmaker from the opposition Democratic Party, Klevis Balliu, was quoted as saying by the Albanian Daily News portal. The news portal also reported that one protester has suffered injuries in the clashes, while two police officers were injured by firecrackers. A similar demonstration was held in the Albanian capital on March 16, with police resorting to tear gas and water cannons as thousands of protesters tried to break through to the parliament. Criminal cases have been launched against 33 people for their aggressive actions during the rally. The Democratic Party has been accusing Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and the government of corruption, criminal activities and manipulation of the 2017 parliamentary elections, demanding that the head of the government should resign. In late February, opposition parliamentarians gave up their seats in the legislature in protest and called for early elections. FRANKFURT, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Farmako will import 50 tonnes of pharmaceutical cannabis from Pharmacann Polska into the European market over the next four years. This provides the basis for a reliable supply of pharmaceutical cannabis for millions of patients in the European healthcare system. The company expects a total revenue of several hundred million Euros from the agreed exclusive partnership. Founded in September 2018, Farmako now has grown to 40 employees and is distributing high-quality pharmaceutical cannabis to German pharmacies since March 2019. This is the biggest Cannabis contract to date, and the first big contract without participation of a Canadian LP. Farmako has signed an exclusive and binding agreement to import and distribute 50 tons of pharmaceutical cannabis over four years. Farmako and Pharmacann Polska enter strategic partnership to develop custom tailored strains for European patients. Farmako has been selling pharmaceutical cannabis to German pharmacies since March 2019 generating over 100k EUR revenue in the first week of operations. Sebastian Diemer, Founder and Chairman of Farmako: This is a big leap forward for millions of patients in Europe. The market for pharmaceutical cannabis is the fastest growing market worldwide. In Canada, the industry grew from 170 million to a 30 billion industry within three years. We aim to provide cost efficient and custom tailored cannabinoid therapies to support a similar success story for the European markets. When future historians write a history of entrepreneurship, the market liberalization of pharmaceutical cannabis will get a separate chapter. Dozens of investors are waiting in line to be a part of this story. Niklas Kouparanis, Founder and CEO of Farmako: This first step enables us to build a reliable distribution network in all European jurisdictions with a legal basis for pharmaceutical cannabis. The German is twice as big as the Canadian market, and additional European markets like the United Kingdom markets are opening up. We are in the unique position of reaping the full benefits of a second mover advantage: We adapt the smart moves of our predecessors and do not repeat their mistakes. Pharmacann Polskas representative - Yuval Soiref, the Co-Founder, CEO and International Business Development: This exclusive agreement is a great success and not only ensures stable supply of pharmaceutical cannabis, but also a beginning of research-based development of innovative cannabis strains for better and more targeted medical treatment. Thanks to our sophisticated growing systems and pharmaceutical-grade extraction, we are one of the very few players worldwide who are able to guarantee the highest quality cannabis in the largest amount ever seen in European history. Together with Farmako, we enter into an exclusive and promising partnership to move cannabinoid-based healthcare forward. Farmako and Pharmacann Polska have agreed on a deep partnership in research and development. It focuses on the joint development of new custom-tailored cannabis strains, while using the full advantage of producing at a substantially lower cost in the eastern part of the EU. Kouparanis: We will produce a higher quality medicine at a lower price than our Canadian competitors. The first pharmaceutical cannabis shipment is expected to be in German pharmacies by June 2019. For the next four years, Pharmacann Polska will provide pharmaceutical Cannabis exclusively for Farmako. This finally ensures a stable supply for the German patients which Canadian suppliers could not guarantee in the past year. Germany will not be the only country to benefit from high-quality therapies with pharmaceutical cannabis. Kouparanis: "We will be active in every European jurisdiction that creates a legal basis. In the United Kingdom, Denmark and Luxembourg, pharmaceutical cannabis was also approved. Many more European countries will follow soon. We plan to become Europe's leading pharmaceutical cannabis company and to ensure security of supply in these countries as well. We guarantee that European cannabis for European patients is not only legal, but also affordable and available. Background to the pharmaceutical cannabis shortage in Europe The current pharmaceutical cannabis shortages in Europe are a consequence of the legalization of cannabis for recreational use in Canada in October 2018. Canada and the Netherlands had been the most important suppliers of pharmaceutical Cannabis for German patients. One consequence was that German patients were often unable to redeem their medical prescriptions which jeopardizes sustainable therapies and damaged the reputation of existing market participants. Cultivation in Germany itself is uncertain and will be too little, too late. An invitation to tender for the domestic cultivation of pharmaceutical cannabis was initiated as early as 2017. However, it was overturned in 2018 by the Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court. A final decision is expected in April 2019. The first harvest is expected in 2021 at the earliest. Moreover, the total amount of this tender is 10.4 tonnes over four years. The total volume of the tender is only one fifth of the import agreement now closed by Farmako. Aim of research and development Sebastian Diemer, Managing Director of the holding company 'The Good Company': "This milestone enables us to help more patients reliably and better. Often, therapies with pharmaceutical cannabis have fewer side effects than the alternatives. In addition, they relieve the health system because they cost less." Patrick Schmitt, Co-Founder and CSO: "Cannabinoids have not been part of pharmaceutical research for over 80 years. Neither the manufacturing, processing nor the pharmaceutical application has made any significant progress. We want to lead the catch-up. We already know that cannabinoids such as THC or CBD work better in many cases than current commercial drugs. Be it in severe pain, insomnia or nervous diseases or even in cancer treatment." Dr. Lena Mueller, a physician specializing in clinical trials at Farmako, explains: "We are only just at the beginning of empirical, evidence-based research in medicine. Many patients will be relieved. They are finally certain that they can rely on pharmacies to switch to pharmaceutical cannabis therapy." About Farmako GmbH Farmako GmbH is a research-based pharmaceutical company based in Frankfurt. The company relies on the distribution of pharmaceutical cannabis and research in order to catch up on the research backlog in the field of pharmaceutical cannabis. Farmako plans to become a vertically integrated market leader in every European country in this market with the appropriate legal basis. About PharmaCann Polska Sp. z o.o. Pharmacann Polska Sp. z o.o. is an international pharmaceutical company that applies global standards in production of cannabis-based pharmaceutical raw materials. Using the Israeli and Canadian markets experience, our mission is to ensure the availability of products containing cannabinoids of natural origin while maintaining strictly controlled pharmaceutical quality and to disseminate knowledge about their medicinal use. Website Press Contact: Marcus Ewald marcus.ewald@farmako.de +49 176 22824218 (@FahadShabbir) Prime Minister of the Central African Republic (CAR) Firmin Ngrebada said Thursday that talks in Ethiopia between the government and militants settled differences they had over a deal on an inclusive cabinet CAIRO (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2019) Prime Minister of the Central African Republic CAR ) Firmin Ngrebada said Thursday that talks in Ethiopia between the government and militants settled differences they had over a deal on an inclusive cabinet "Today I can confirm that these misunderstandings have been cleared. We return satisfied from the consultations organized by the African Union in Addis Ababa," Ngrebada was quoted as saying by the state news agency, ACAP. The government and 14 armed groups struck a peace accord last month after almost two weeks of talks in the Sudanese city of Khartoum, followed by a deal on a new cabinet makeup published earlier in March, which drew criticism over not being inclusive enough. The car has been suffering from a drawn-out conflict since a coup in 2013. Much of the fighting in recent years has been between Muslim-majority Seleka and Christian Anti-Balaka militias. Ethiopia and Eritrea will sign an agreement to rebuild the road infrastructure connecting the two countries as part of an EU-funded project in a few months, Mehreteab Mulugeta, the director general for European affairs at the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry, told Sputnik in an interview MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2019) Ethiopia and Eritrea will sign an agreement to rebuild the road infrastructure connecting the two countries as part of an EU-funded project in a few months, Mehreteab Mulugeta, the director general for European affairs at the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry, told Sputnik in an interview. Back in February, the European Union earmarked 20 million Euros ($23 million) for a project to rebuild the road connection between the two countries. The announcement came several months after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed signed a peace deal that put an end to the two decade-long Ethiopian-Eritrean territorial conflict. "The two sides are discussing now and as soon as the preparation of the agreements is ready, then, we will sign these project agreements between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Then, we will proceed and that I think will be soon, in the coming months, in a month or two," Mulugeta said. He specified that work on revamping road infrastructure had not yet started, with both sides anticipating to restore traffic as well as free movement of people and goods. "For the last 20 years, [roads] have been useless, so we have to repair them and make them ready or usable again. We are preparing our roads; they are doing their part in Eritrea. But we need assistance because we need to build roads, expand roads to make them usable by big trucks. We need to build railways and other facilities so we can have smooth people-to-people movement. Goods should come and go out," Mulugeta explained. The diplomat added that the "involvement of any partner, not only the European Union, including the Russian government is welcome." According to Mulugeta, such projects will be "very useful" for strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries in the wake of the years-long conflict. In early June, Ethiopia's ruling People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) decided to fully accept and implement the ceasefire deal concluded by the governments of the two countries in 2000. The Algiers Agreement, as it was called, recognized some disputed areas, including the town of Badme, as Eritrea's territories. As part of the agreement, Ethiopia had to withdraw its forces from the territories that the agreement considered as Eritrean, a process it began in late 2018. Eritrea split from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, leaving the parent nation landlocked. This sparked a war between the two countries in 1998-2000, which killed around 80,000 people. (@ChaudhryMAli88) Hungary has lost some $7 billion in revenues from trade with Russia since the European Union imposed sanctions on it, Hungarian Foreign and Trade Minister Peter Szijjarto said Thursday MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2019) Hungary has lost some $7 billion in revenues from trade with Russia since the European Union imposed sanctions on it, Hungarian Foreign and Trade Minister Peter Szijjarto said Thursday. "I think we are on the right track and will soon see our trade rise to $10 billion. It's not our fault we are still short of this mark. The European sanctions have thrown off our projections ... We estimate that the Hungarian economy has missed out on around $7 billion in lost export revenues," he said. Speaking at a meeting in Moscow with Nikolai Fedorov, the first deputy chair of the upper house of the Russian parliament, Szijjarto said that the Central European country had to take extra efforts to achieve the current level of trade with Russia after the EU sanctions kicked in in 2014. Ties between Russia and the European Union soured after a war broke out in eastern Ukraine, with Brussels blaming it on Moscow's meddling. Russia has denied the claim. The 28-nation bloc has imposed economic sanctions on Russia and been extending them every six months. (@ChaudhryMAli88) The Latvian State Security Service considers that the use of the Latvian public television studio LTV to record an interview with former Foreign Minister Janis Jurkans to RT broadcaster poses risks to the security of the country's information space, local media reported MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2019) The Latvian State Security Service considers that the use of the Latvian public television studio LTV to record an interview with former Foreign Minister Janis Jurkans to RT broadcaster poses risks to the security of the country's information space, local media reported. According to Skaties.lv news portal, the interview with Jurkans was released on March 15. Talking to reporters, the ex-minister, in particular, said that constant demonization is the evidence of absence of political culture in Latvia. The security service was informed about this case and is now engaged in clarification of circumstances, the media outlet said. The security service believes that similar practice, when a public media, financed from the state budget, supports the media, which spreads "Russian propaganda," is unacceptable and is associated with risks to the security of the Latvian information space, according to the publication. Sputnik Latvia reported that despite the silence of the LTV leadership, the broadcaster's employee Harijs Lavkinaitis is responsible for renting the studio for RT needs. He did not reportedly deny his involvement and said that the leadership of LTV had received all the explanations. According to Sputnik Latvia, the LTV leadership has denied the allegations and said that they new nothing about the planned interview or about those who were going to rent the studio. The Baltic States repeatedly undertake attempts to restrict the presence of Russian media. In September 2017, Estonia refused to let Rossiya Segodnya reporters cover the EU foreign ministers' meeting in Tallinn. Three reporters were denied accreditation in what became the first time the agency faced such restrictions in getting access to EU ministerial meetings. Russian cable and satellite channel RTR Planeta, which was suspended from broadcasting in Lithuania due to alleged violations of broadcasting rules and "inciting ethnic hatred" in early 2017, again ran into trouble in August after it aired Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky's remarks suggesting that Russia should demand all Baltic states to clear NATO troops within a 300-kilometer zone near the Russian border and threaten to undertake certain "measures" if they failed to do so. The broadcaster was banned for half a year. The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly condemned such actions by Baltic States' authorities, which it said violate the basic democratic values of media freedom. CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd March, 2019) Moldovan authorities need to discuss export of goods, gas tariffs and migration with Russia, Moldovan President Igor Dodon said on Thursday. "Export, gas tariffs and migrants are three topics that are extremely vital for Moldova. A lot will depend on the future government, Russia should trust it, which is why, I can openly say that some problems may occur if there are no Socialists in the parliamentary majority or the Cabinet of Ministers," Dodon told the NTV Moldova broadcaster. He added that if the new government consisted of those who would be ready to cooperate with Russia, it would pave the way to new discussions about gas price reduction. It comes extremely necessary regarding an upcoming decline of Russian gas transit through Ukraine that will happen in eight months, the president emphasized. According to Dodon, the elimination of customs duties is still operating for certain categories of Moldovan goods but this will end on July 1.The Moldovan president stressed that Russian experts are welcomed to check how the agreements are being respected at the end of March. Migration issue is also relevant as the period of the amnesty granted by Russian authorities to Moldovan citizens has already expired while hundreds of thousands of Moldovans are still living and working in Russia with their rights to be protected. As a result of the election that took place on February 24, four parties won parliamentary mandates in Moldova's general elections. The Party of Socialists, which is supporting Dodon and close cooperation with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union, gained 35 mandates. The pro-European ACUM bloc got 26 mandates, the Democratic Party secured 30, and the SOR Party - 7, the Central Election Commission stated. Besides, three independent candidates also joined the parliament. As none of the parties managed to secure the parliamentary majority in 101-member Moldovan parliament, a new coalition must be formed in order to create a new government. CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 22nd March, 2019) Moldovan President Igor Dodon is going to meet with the leaders of all parties in order to discuss the possibility of establishing the parliamentary majority, the president said on Thursday. "I will meet with all the parties that entered the parliament; I want to understand whether it is possible to create the parliamentary majority. If there are those willing, we can invite them to the Presidential administration for negotiations," Dodon told the NTV Moldova broadcaster. The Moldovan leader also stressed that he considered the coalition based on the union of parties and the bloc to be legitimate. However, he will never accept the majority of scattered lawmakers that left their parties. Dodon is convinced that the society will never recognize such majority either. Four parties have won parliamentary seats in Moldova's general elections that took place on February 24. According to the commission results, the Party of Socialists, that is actively supporting incumbent President Dodon and close cooperation with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union, gained 35 mandates. The pro-European ACUM bloc got 26 mandates, the Democratic Party secured 30, and the SOR Party - 7. Besides, three independent candidates also joined the parliament. None of the parties managed to secure the parliamentary majority in a 101-member Moldovan parliament. That means a new coalition must be formed in order to create a new government. On multivariable analysis for PC diagnosis increasing age and rurality index were associated with higher PC diagnosis rate, while a more recent index year was associated with a lower diagnosis rate in both ever vs. never and cumulative models. The MV model for PCa deaths is below: For PCa death, hydrophobic statins were also associated with reduced mortality albeit attenuated compared to hydrophilic statins. The authors note that the separation of statins into hydrophobic and hydrophilic statins is a novel finding. While there have previously been studies demonstrating the potential benefits of statins as a class in PCa diagnosis, recurrence, and deaths, the effect has been weak. However, by separating into distinct categories, as only this type of dataset can, they identify a specific association with hydrophilic statins and reduced prostate cancer biopsies, PCa diagnosis and PCa deaths. This is a very intriguing study that potentially identifies a class of agents that may have a previously unknown significant impact of PCa prevention further work into the mechanism of action and utility in a prospective study is required. Presented by: Hanan Goldberg, MD, Urologic Oncology Fellow (SUO), University of Toronto, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, Canada Written by: Thenappan Chandrasekar, MD, Clinical Instructor, Thomas Jefferson University, twitter: @tchandra_uromd, @TjuUrology Ultimately, for all 3 outcomes, regardless of looking at medication use as bimodal (ever or never) or cumulative use (over 3 months), hydrophilic statins were the only predictor of receiving another biopsy, being diagnosed with PCa or dying of PCa even when accounting for all other medication classes, age, PSA. The MV analysis for PCa diagnosis is below:On multivariable analysis for PC diagnosis increasing age and rurality index were associated with higher PC diagnosis rate, while a more recent index year was associated with a lower diagnosis rate in both ever vs. never and cumulative models.The MV model for PCa deaths is below:For PCa death, hydrophobic statins were also associated with reduced mortality albeit attenuated compared to hydrophilic statins.The authors note that the separation of statins into hydrophobic and hydrophilic statins is a novel finding. While there have previously been studies demonstrating the potential benefits of statins as a class in PCa diagnosis, recurrence, and deaths, the effect has been weak. However, by separating into distinct categories, as only this type of dataset can, they identify a specific association with hydrophilic statins and reduced prostate cancer biopsies, PCa diagnosis and PCa deaths.This is a very intriguing study that potentially identifies a class of agents that may have a previously unknown significant impact of PCa prevention further work into the mechanism of action and utility in a prospective study is required.Presented by: Hanan Goldberg, MD, Urologic Oncology Fellow (SUO), University of Toronto, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, CanadaWritten by: Thenappan Chandrasekar, MD, Clinical Instructor, Thomas Jefferson University, twitter: @tchandra_uromd, @TjuUrology at the 34th European Association of Urology (EAU 2019) #EAU19, conference in Barcelona, Spain from March 15-19, 2019. Barcelona, Spain (UroToday.com) The authors of this study leverage the strength of the Canadian nationalized healthcare system (organized at the province level) to help address an important question in prostate cancer survivorship. As a relatively indolent disease in the older male population, often in patients that take medications for other comorbidities, there has long been an interest in the effect of these other medications on prostate cancer development and treatment. Indeed, there have been several observational and randomized studies have shown that use of commonly prescribed medications, including those used for the treatment of diabetes and hypercholesterolemia, is associated with improved survival in various malignancies, including PC. Unfortunately, there has not been any great study (with long follow-up and detailed recordings on specific medication subclass utilization) assessing the effect of various commonly prescribed medication classes on PCa development.As mentioned above, the authors utilized the Institute of clinical evaluative sciences (ICES) data which is a broad repository of clinical data of all patients treated in Ontario, with high level of granularity recorded. This was a retrospective population-based study using data from the Institute of clinical evaluative sciences (ICES), including all male patients aged 65 and above in Ontario who have had a negative first prostate biopsy between 1994 and 2016. In this population, they assessed the impact of commonly prescribed medications on risk of having an additional biopsy, risk of PC diagnosis and risk of PCa death. The analyzed medications included Statins (hydrophilic and hydrophobic), most commonly used diabetes drugs (metformin, insulins, sulfonylureas, and thiazolidinediones), PPIs, 5 alpha reductase inhibitors, and alpha blockers. Importantly, medication exposure was time-varying it was modeled as ever vs. never use or as cumulative exposure.A total of 51,415 men were analyzed over a mean (SD) follow-up time of 8.06 (5.44) years. Overall, 10,466 patients (20.4%) were diagnosed with PC, 16,726 (32.5%) had died, and 1,460 (2.8%) patients died of PC. Ultimately, following exclusions, 21,562 men were analyzed (49%) and of these, 24% were diagnosed with PCa and 3% died of PCa.The table below highlights the different medication classes utilized in this reduced cohort: A UTA mechanical engineer has partnered with a long-time friend from his home nation of South Korea to help find a more effective way for steelmaking companies to inspect and maintain their facilities. Daejong Kim, a University of Texas at Arlington associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was awarded an $80,000 grant in January from South Korea-based POSCOone of the worlds largest steelmakersto help fund a one-year feasibility study of intelligent robot systems for inspection and maintenance of steelmaking facilities. Daejong Kim Kim, who has worked at UTA since 2008, is collaborating closely with POSCO senior principal researcher Kihwan Kim on the project. The two have been friends for almost 25 years after meeting in graduate school at Seoul National University. Kihwan Kim, who has worked at POSCO for 10 years, has come to UTA and will be on campus for the entire year to help with the feasibility study as a business scholar. Steelmaking companies like POSCO have such large and complex production facilities, similar to petrochemical plants, Kihwan Kim said. The companies always seek to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of inspection and maintenance of those facilities. Recent developments of intelligent robot technologies have drawn our attention greatly. Through this project, I hope to find some great ideas of robot applications for steelmaking facilities. Particularly, we will focus on robotics for harsh and hazardous environments such as high temperature, strong radiation and severe dust. Daejong Kim said robots could certainly be valuable to help at steelmaking facilities. Underneath these plants is a huge maze of electrical wires, Daejong Kim said. When there is too much of an overload in electrical wires a fire can start, and once that happens its difficult to control because of the toxic gas undergroundits highly combustible. Even firefighters have difficulty going in. We want to develop some kind of robotic system that can go in and monitor the temperature, and if the wires get too hot the robot can detect and monitor the location of the high-temperature spot and avoid a fire hazard. The robot should be able to avoid obstacles in front of it, carry infrared cameras, and have arms and legs and multiple sensors to detect the problems. Were not developing an actual robot now, he continued. Once the feasibility study is done, the next step is to develop the robot. The study is identifying what kind of functionality is needed with the robot. Daejong Kim moved from South Korea to the United States in 2000 and received his doctorate degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Kihwan Kim believes Dr. Kim is the right person to lead this feasibility study. I would like to achieve practice results rather than just theoretical ideas, and Professor Kim has lots of experience in industrial application, which has been very successful, Kihwan Kim said. So, I found that his strength could fit nicely to our goal. I also found out that UTA has strong traditions of engineering, including great people and facilities. It has been a great pleasure to work together with UTA researchers so far. -- written by Brandon George The University of Texas at Arlington has reached another important milestone on its trajectory to becoming the model 21st-Century Urban Research University with the addition of two new national academy members to the universitys faculty. Florence Haseltine Florence Haseltine, a member of the National Academy of Medicine and former director of the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health, and Surendra Shah, an internationally renowned expert in cementitious materials and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, recently joined the faculty at UTA. The new researchers elevate the total number of national academy faculty members to five. UTA President Vistasp Karbhari said the duo highlights the University as a destination campus for renowned researchers. Landing two of the premier researchers in the country in their respective fields is significant for UTA and strengthens our standing as a premier research university, Karbhari said. Their choosing UTA is the result of increased recognition of the momentumof the expanding academic and research excellence and impact on the communitythat personifies UTA. Our family of scholars expands and becomes stronger with Drs. Haseltine and Shah becoming a part of our UTA fabric. Dr. Haseltine comes to UTA as a Presidential Distinguished Professor in the College of Nursing and Health Innovation and as executive director of health research. Dr. Shah will serve as the director of the new Center for Advanced Construction Materials and is a Presidential Distinguished Professor in the College of Engineering. Surendra Shah The recruitment of Shah was supported by a generous award of almost $2 million from the Governors University Research Initiative, which was established to assist Texas universities in recruiting members of the national academies to the state. The recruiting packages for Haseltine and Shah were each also supported by $1 million awards from the UT System Science and Technology Acquisition and Retention program. On behalf of the Maverick community, Id like to thank Gov. Greg Abbott for choosing to invest so purposefully in higher education in Texas, Karbhari said. The recruitment of national academy members to our universities enriches the educational environment, as well as contributes significantly to the prosperity and socio-economic development of our communities and the state. Duane Dimos, vice president for research, said the two researchers will be key contributors to UTAs research, which is guided by the Universitys Strategic Plan 2020 and its four broad themes: health and the human condition, sustainable urban communities, global environmental impact and data-driven discovery. These are two titans in their respective research fields who demonstrate a tremendous vision for discovery and passion for sharing knowledge that strengthens society, Dr. Dimos said. Drs. Shah and Haseltine bring with them expertise that will fortify the North Texas economy and serve the health of our communities, while also directly benefitting our faculty and the experience of our students. They will contribute mightily to the growing prestige of UTA research, and I am honored to have them join our team at such a remarkable time in our universitys history. Haseltine, who has been at the forefront of health technology since the early 1980s, has led the way for advances in contraception research and other critical health areas for over 27 years. Haseltine founded the Society for the Advancement of Womens Health Research and was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors for her innovations in the field of reproductive sciences. She works with the National Academy of Medicine to establish review panels evaluating the fields of obstetrics and gynecology, sex differences and contraceptive science. At UTA, Haseltine will focus on expanding research programs in population health and life sciences in womens health, genomics and disability studies. In an endorsement of her hire, Haseltines colleague Mary Lake Polan said, Florence Haseltine is the epitome of a Renaissance woman committed to the advancement of womens health issues and, perhaps more importantly, the advancement of womens careers. Polan is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has worked at the Yale University School of Medicine and Stanford University Medical Center. Shah is world-renowned for his research on cement-based materials, which focuses on fiber-reinforced composites, nondestructive evaluation, transport properties, processing, rheology, nanotechnology and use of solid waste materials. He is currently leading a revolution in nano-material applications to concrete, which will build upon UTAs prominent research programs in civil engineering infrastructure and advanced materials. Eric Landis, Distinguished Maine Professor at the University of Maine, praised Shah for his transformative work as he expressed support for Shahs recruitment to UTA. He has done more than any other single individual in the last 50 years to integrate different branches of science and engineering toward the goal of advancing knowledge of concrete properties and performance, Landis said. Shah previously served as founding director of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Advanced Cement-Based Materials and was the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Civil Engineering in the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. Haseltine and Shah join three other UTA national academy members, each reflective of the distinguished nature of their leadership and scholarship in their respective disciplines. Other UTA national academy members include: Kelowna, BC, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GTEC Holdings Ltd. (TSX-V:GTEC) (OTCQB:GGTTF) (FRA: 1BUP) (GTEC or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has closed its previously announced upsized private placement offering led by Sprott Capital Partners LP (the Agent) by issuing 11,582,869 units of the Company (each a Unit and collectively, the Units) at a price of $0.55 per Unit for gross proceeds of $6,370,577.95. The Company closed the first tranche of the private placement on February 28, 2019 by issuing 11,126,753 Units of the Company for gross proceeds of $6,119,714.15. In total, the Company has issued 22,709,622 Units for gross proceeds of $12,490,292 (the Offering). The aggregate gross proceeds raised includes the full exercise by the Agent of its option to increase the size of the private placement by up to 25%. Each Unit issuable under the Offering consists of one common share of the Company (the Common Shares) and one-half of one common share purchase warrant (each whole common share purchase warrant, a Warrant and collectively, the Warrants), with each Warrant exercisable at $0.90 for a period of 24 months from the date of issuance. The Warrants are subject to an acceleration clause that allows the Company to accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants to 30-days from delivery of such notice, in the event that the volume weighted average price of the Common Shares on the TSX Venture Exchange (the Exchange) equals or exceeds $1.50 for 20 consecutive trading days. The Company has agreed to pay the Agents, other than in respect of certain purchases, (i) a cash commission equal to 6% of the gross proceeds of the Offering and (ii) broker warrants (each a Broker Warrant) in a number equal to 6% of the number of Units sold under the Offering. Each Broker Warrant is exercisable to acquire one Unit at $0.55 for a period of two years from the closing date of the Offering. The net proceeds of the Offering will be used for general corporate and working capital purposes. All securities issued pursuant to the Offering will be subject to a statutory hold period lasting four months and one day following the closing date of each tranche. As part of the Offering, insiders of the Company subscribed for an aggregate of 1,073,869 Units. Norton Singhavon, Co-Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company subscribed for an aggregate of 280,869 Units (91,741 Units were subscribed through a holding company owned by Mr. Singhavon) and Michael Blady, the Co-Founder and Vice-President of the Company subscribed for 500,000 Units. In addition, Jeremy Wright, the Chief Financial Officer, David Lynn, the Chief Operating Officer and Aaron Dow, a director of the Company subscribed for 200,000, 20,000 and 73,000 Units respectively. Such participation is considered a related party transaction within the meaning of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions (MI 61-101). The related party transaction is exempt from minority approval, information circular, and formal valuation requirements pursuant to the exemptions contained in Sections 5.7(a) and 5.5(a) of MI 61-101, as neither the fair market value of the gross securities issued under the Offering nor the consideration paid by the insiders exceeds 25% of the Companys market capitalization. About Sprott Capital Partners LP Led by a team of seasoned investment banking professionals with extensive networks of industry contacts, Sprott Capital Partners, the Investment Banking division of Sprott Capital Partners LP, provides advice and capital raising services to its clients. Sprott Capital Partners was involved in over $1.5 billion of capital raises in 2017 and 2018. About GTEC GTEC Holdings is a specialized cannabis company dedicated to cultivating ultra-premium quality cannabis in purpose-built indoor facilities. The company is vertically integrated across all major sectors of the Canadian cannabis industry and is currently licensed by Health Canada for Standard Cultivation, Standard Processing and Analytical testing. The management team is comprised of a diverse skill set sourced from leading global food & beverage and premium alcohol companies. GTEC has completed three cultivation facilities and is currently cultivating and selling cannabis. The Company has two additional facilities coming on stream in the latter half of 2019, which will increase annual capacity from 4,000kg to 14,000kg. GTECs retail division is pursuing licensing for over 35 recreational cannabis stores across Western Canada. GTECs ultra-premium indoor flower will be marketed and sold under its flagship trademarked brands; BLK MKT, Tenzo, GreenTec, Cognoscente, Treehugger, and FN. The Company is actively pursuing sales and distribution opportunities across all major business channels: medical, recreational, B2B and export. GTEC is a publicly traded corporation, listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, OTCQB Venture Market and Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The Company is headquartered in Kelowna, British Columbia. To view more about the company or to request our most recent corporate presentation, please visit our website at www.gtec.co On behalf of the board, Norton Singhavon Founder, Chairman & CEO ns@gtec.co Michael Blady Co-Founder & Vice President mb@gtec.co Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The securities of the Company have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirement. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes certain forward-looking statements under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; delay or failure to receive board, shareholder or regulatory approvals, where applicable and the state of the capital markets. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Chicago, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Prevent Child Abuse America (PCA America), the nations oldest and largest nonprofit organization dedicated to the primary prevention of child abuse and neglect, announced today that Steven Harris, a partner at the Chicago-based law firm McDonald Hopkins LLC, has joined its national board of directors. The organization also announced the following new appointments on the board: Andrea Robertson, retired group executive, corporate treasurer of MasterCard Worldwide (chair); Robert Mayo, co-founder and vice chairman emeritus of Cancer Treatment Centers of America (co-vice chair); and Dr. Bruce Perry, senior fellow at the ChildTrauma Academy (co-vice chair). Ensuring happy, healthy childhoods requires a team effort, and Im thrilled to have such a talented roster of respected leaders guiding what we do, said PCA America President & CEO Dan Duffy. Each of these individuals brings deep and specific knowledge to our work, and their combined expertise in finance, governance, business, medicine, research and other fields will bolster our continued and strategic growth as an organization, allowing us to effectively and efficiently reach more children and families across the country and realize our collective vision of no child ever being abused or neglected. Harris, who served on his firms executive committee, has a national reputation as an advisor to business and professional organizations, counseling privately owned corporations and healthcare clients on contractual and regulatory issues, succession planning and related transactional matters. His civic duties include acting as mayor of the Village of Deerfield, Ill., and as a director of the Illinois State Tollway Authority. Robertson, who has served seven years on PCA Americas national board and previous terms as treasurer, brings significant experience in finance, occupying diverse roles in multiple industries with an emphasis on risk management, and board governance. Prior to her time at MasterCard, Robertson was treasurer at RR Donnelley & Sons Company, held various finance roles at IBM Corporation and was an auditor with Coopers & Lybrand. She is currently an independent director of Clean Harbors, a premier provider of environmental, energy and industrial services. Robertson succeeded T.J. Fox, senior vice president of the wireless business group for Verizon, who remains on the board as immediate past chair. We all share the responsibility for the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of every child in this country, and PCA America is making tremendous strides in realizing this ambitious vision, explained Robertson. Im excited to build on the foundation laid by T.J. and expand this important and impactful work with my fellow board members and the dedicated staff at PCA America. Over the past 30-plus years, Mayo, who co-founded Cancer Treatment Centers of America in 1988, has held positions of increasing responsibility at the company, including executive vice president and president and CEO. Mayos specific expertise is in the area of organizational growth and development, cancer program design and management, physician practice management, business development and mergers and acquisitions. Prior to Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Mayo had a distinguished and decorated 20-year career in the U.S. Navy, where he earned the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal and the Vietnam Service Medal. He is also a four-time recipient of the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. Joining Mayo as co-vice chair is Dr. Perry, a recognized national authority on child trauma and an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine, at Northwestern University, in Chicago. Dr. Perry has consulted on many high-profile incidents involving traumatized children, including the Columbine High School shooting, in 1999, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in 2012, among others. Dr. Perry received his masters and doctorate degrees from Northwestern University and completed a residency in general psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Chicago. With this extraordinary team in place, we will undoubtedly move closer to our ultimate goal of providing every child an equal and attainable opportunity for healthy growth and development, added Robertson. Our vision is a nation in which no child is ever abused or neglected, and we believe that with help from the public, policymakers and corporate partners this idea can become a reality. About Prevent Child Abuse America Founded in 1972, Prevent Child Abuse America is a national organization with chapters in all 50 states and nearly 600 Healthy Families America home visitation sites throughout the country. It promotes services that improve child well-being and develops programs that help to prevent all types of abuse and neglect. Ninety-four cents of every dollar spent goes directly into programs and services, which is why it is rated as one of the top charities for children by Consumer Reports and charity oversight organizations, including Charity Navigator, GreatNonprofits and GuideStar. Visit preventchildabuse.org to learn more. MIDWAY CITY, Calif., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American Family Housing (AFH) a nonprofit organization that provides housing and related services to low-income and homeless families and adults is pleased to announce the recent selection of Mark Hoover as the chair of its all-volunteer Board of Directors. With intimate knowledge of housing regulations and procedures, Hoover is uniquely qualified to guide AFH as it takes on housing initiatives. Possessing over 40 years of experience as vice president of sales and marketing for First American Corporations home building division in Southern California, Hoover has been a member of the American Family Housing board of directors since 2015. It is so important to provide permanent supportive housing so we can end homelessness and, in the meantime, provide for shorter-term options such as emergency shelters, Hoover said. Hoover plans to work with the Board to transition American Family Housing into a larger, regional contributor to ending homelessness in Southern California. The greater our reach, the greater our positive effect. The all-volunteer Board of Directors oversees the Chief Executive Officer, Milo Peinemann, and is tasked with steering AFH towards a sustainable future by making sure AFH has resources to fulfill its non-profit mission. From identifying the best collaborative partners to refining internal protocols, Hoover intends to ensure that AFH continues to fine-tune itself so that the organization remains strong and stable as it grows. Hoover has a personal passion for donating his time, energy and real estate knowledge to provide affordable housing to those who cannot meet market rates. No stranger to nonprofit organizations that strive to alleviate homelessness, Hoover also sits on the Board of Directors for Habitat for Humanity of Orange County and Jamboree Housing Corporation. Each organization is committed to produce housing, and hope, in support of their non-profit missions. Mark is extraordinarily qualified for this role, and we both see a similar future where no one has to be homeless and where, instead of looking away from our struggling neighbors, we as a society look toward them with practical, proven solutions and with kindness, Peinemann said. So I was pretty stoked when Mark said yes. Hoover is joined on the Boards Executive Committee by Glenn Williams as Vice Chair, Lauren Ellermeyer as Treasurer, and Father Bill Barman as Secretary. Peinemann also expressed his gratitude to outgoing Board Chair Tom Burnham, who will continue to work with Hoover and Peinemann on board recruitment and in support of a diverse board that is representative of the communities that AFH serves. For more information, visit www.afhusa.org . With media inquiries, please call Leslie Licano at 949-733-8679 ext. 101 or email Leslie@beyondfifteen.com . ABOUT AMERICAN FAMILY HOUSING: Founded in 1985, American Family Housing (AFH) is a nonprofit organization that provides a continuum of housing and a broad spectrum of services to vulnerable populations facing barriers to achieving housing stability, including war veterans and adults with disabilities and mental illness. Operating 63 housing sites with 282 units that serve more than 1,000 adults and children each year in Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties, AFH is committed to permanently ending the cycle of homelessness, helping low-income families and adults achieve a self-sustaining way of life and become active members of their communities. MEDIA CONTACT: Leslie Licano Beyond Fifteen Communications, Inc. 949.733.8679 leslie@beyondfifteen.com A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/72b21b0f-7569-441f-b547-468468b0988a On Wednesday morning, Opendoor announced new business metrics and $300 million in follow-on equity financing to continue to fuel growth, build new products and integrate services for customers (Pictured: CEO Eric Wu, CEO, Opendoor) TechCrunch, which first had the story, cited sources who pegged Opendoors valuation at $3.8 billion. Following a year of rapid growth, Opendoor is buying and selling close to 3,000 homes nationally every month, with more than 36,000 customers served to date. The company operates in 23 U.S. markets and said more than 800,000 people toured Opendoor homes in 2018. TechCrunch said the recent spate of funding suggests the housing market remains a major draw for both investors and consumers. Our business is designed to operate in up markets, down markets and flat markets, Opendoor co-founder and CEO Eric Wu told TechCrunch in an email. During a slowdown, it becomes increasingly more painful to sell a home, which impacts mobility for homeowners and increases the need for reliable home sales through products like Opendoor. It is our responsibility to manage that risk and charge the proper fees to account for the volatility. In Las Vegas, Opendoor: Has been operating since September 2016 Has more than 300 homes on the market Is hiring for a few open positions and expects to use the additional financing to keep expanding the local team. This follow-on round of funding comes from investors including homebuilder Lennar Corp., General Atlantic, Hawk Equity, SoftBank Vision Fund, Access Technology Ventures, Fifth Wall Ventures, SV Angel, Norwest Venture Partners, NEA, GGV Capital, Khosla Ventures, and GV along with other investors. This additional funding brings Opendoors total equity raised to more than $1.3 billion, with more than $3 billion in debt financing. In a Wednesday morning blog post, Wu said Opendoor is helping its clients start new life chapters in new homes. Every day, we hear from customers all over the U.S. who have been empowered by Opendoor to start the next chapter of their lives like Anne and Jim Nash from Roseville, California, who were ready to move to a new build home from our partners at Lennar but were also worried about the complexity of selling their current home, Wu wrote. We provided the couple with an offer to buy their house and the ability to move into their new community on their timeline, stress-free. On Wednesday, March 20, Cleveland Clinic Nevada hosted its third annual Spring Into Health Fare for more than 300 local Las Vegas residents. The sampling of wellness resources included a diverse group of community organizations representing many aspects of health services to help maximize attendees well-being. The fares complementary services included educational programming, a blood drive; mammograms; vision and hearing screenings; representation from care facilities, veteran and legal resources; memory screenings courtesy of Cleveland Clinic Nevadas HealthyBrains.org platform and much more. In addition to complementary health resources, visitors enjoyed swag bags and a few lucky attendees took home raffle prizes. Vietject would expand Dien Bien Airport in 24 months Building passenger terminal under BOT format In its recent report to the government related to the expansion of Dien Bien Airport in the north-western province of Dien Bien, the Ministry of Transport (MoT) said that Vietjet has proposed the Dien Bien Peoples Committee to use about VND1.210 trillion ($52.6 million) of the state budget for site clearance work and peoples relocation. The state funding will also cover the airports new facilities, such as runways, taxiways, and the apron area worth about VND1.340 trillion ($58.3 million) and a new air control station valued at VND60 billion ($2.6 million). The works at the proposed new passenger terminal at Dien Bien Airport are estimated to cost VND1.855 trillion ($80.7 million). Vietjet proposes to carry out the project under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) format with a contract term of 55 years. Besides, the investor will be prioritised when renting the new terminal for further exploitation after the contract termination. Vietjet envisages Dien Bien Airports expansion to take 24 months. Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV) Vietnams largest state-owned airport operator will continue to manage operations at Dien Bien Airport. In respect to the passenger terminal, parking lots and other associated works, ACV will team up with Vietjet in choosing staff members to work at the new terminal. Vietjet proposes to carry out the project under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) format with a contract term of 55 years. Besides, the investor will be prioritised when renting the new terminal for further exploitation after the contract termination. The two companies will sign a contract on the provision of new passenger terminal operation and management services. Besides, Vietjet will pay ACV a mutually agreed franchising fee annually. ACV not yet licensed to invest in Dien Bien Airport expansion A representative from ACV said that it has sufficient capital to invest in the entire airport system. However, after the company embarked on equitisation, airport traffic infrastructure investment remained in the hands of the state, so they are not allowed to invest in upgrading airport traffic infrastructure works. ACVs recent document submitted to the MoT reads that during 2018-2025, according to ACV, investment projects at Dien Bien Airport might not bring the expected financial results. However, looking on the airport networks general performance, investment at Dien Bien Airport and the companys other medium-term investment plans could be financially efficient. The MoT is preparing the plan on assigning ACV to operate and manage Dien Bien Airports traffic infrastructure works for submission to the prime minister for consideration. If approved, ACV will arrange capital sources for investment in the airport, the document said. Supporting Dien Bien to preside over Dien Bien Airports expansion plan Earlier, the Dien Bien Peoples Committee sent a document to the MoT affirming the necessity to upgrade and renew Dien Bien Airport. They have also expressed support for Vietjets plan and committed to taking the initiative in using the local budget for site clearance work in light of the projects schedule. In its recent report to the government, the MoT said that the central budget is facing constraints, whereas Dien Bien can balance its budget to serve the airports site clearance work, and the state budget only needs to support Dien Bien in building the airports traffic infrastructure works worth about VND1.340 trillion ($58.3 million). The MoT, therefore, proposed the prime minister to allow the Dien Bien Peoples Committee to represent the state in implementing the project (except the new air control station and other flight management works which will be invested by state-owned Vietnam Air Traffic Management Corporation). The MoT has also proposed the prime minister to assign the Commission for Management of State Capital at Enterprises and ACV to study and invest in expanding Dien Bien Airport under ACVs proposal, in case the state budget is constrained, after ACV is assigned to manage and exploit new airport infrastructure facilities by the government. The new mobile app designed to help concrete producers to produce quality concrete Intended for contractors, engineers, architects, and producers, the free MyConcrete app serves as a channel to a range of information on the fundamentals of concrete use. The app includes concepts and design factors, provides answers to questions on concrete slump, air, finishability, and set time, as well as offers information on BASF products for concrete producers. MyConcrete is like having a textbook in your hand, says Viswanath Mahadevan, director of Admixture Systems Business Management at BASF Construction Chemicals Asia-Pacific. We want our customers to get the information they need, when they need it, wherever they are. With MyConcrete on their mobile devices, they will always have access to information about our products and how to use them allowing them to achieve better productivity. MyConcrete app includes a Surface Evaporation calculator to determine the risk of shrinkage cracking and a Concrete Temperature calculator for freshly mixed concretes, which help professionals understand the effects of ambient conditions on concrete. Local weather conditions are considered in the calculators based on GPS or chosen location. MyConcrete can be downloaded free of charge from Apple and Google Play stores by searching for MyConcrete. The app is available in English, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Investigators in Ethiopia comb the site of the Boeing 737 MAX crash on Mar 16, while flight data information will be scrutinised for clues on the cause of the second accident of the aircraft in five months. (AFP/TONY KARUMBA) Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, called for a hearing of the Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation and Space, for Mar 27, with three transportation officials, notably the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration. They will likely be asked why the regulator agreed to certify the MAX planes in March 2017 without requiring extensive additional training. Cruz intends to hold a second hearing to question Boeing officials as well as pilots and others in the industry, according to the statement. The Senate hearing, at an unspecified date, would be the first time that a U.S. congressional committee has called Boeing executives to appear for questioning about 737 MAX passenger plane crashes in October in Indonesia and Mar 10 in Ethiopia. More than 300 people perished in the two crashes of 737 MAX 8s that occurred shortly after takeoff in Indonesia in October and in Ethiopia earlier this month. Boeing and the FAA are under investigation by the Transportation Department for how the rollout of the jet was handled, especially the a new flight system, the MCAS stall-prevention system, which was implicated in the Lion Air crash in October. Pilots have complained they were not informed about the new system, which can force the nose of the plane down if it gets an erroneous reading from a sensor making it appear the plane is at risk of stalling. The committee will hear next week from FAA acting chief Daniel Elwell, as well as the Transportation Department's chief investigator, Calvin Scovel, and National Transportation Board Chairman Robert Sumwalt. The FAA said Wednesday it will review the information from the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder from the Ethiopian Airlines accident as it becomes available. "Understanding the circumstances that contributed to this accident is critical in developing further actions and returning aircraft to service," the FAA said. SOFTWARE UPGRADE Meanwhile, the FAA on Wednesday sent a notification to global aviation authorities saying the installation of Boeing's new automatic flight software in the grounded jets and related training was a priority for the agency. Also on Wednesday, the Seattle Times reported the Federal Bureau of Investigation was joining the investigation into the MAX's certification. An FBI spokeswoman in Seattle would neither confirm nor deny that it was a part of any investigation. Criminal prosecutors at the U.S. Justice Department, who are also investigating the FAA's oversight of Boeing, have issued multiple subpoenas to Boeing in an effort to find out more about how the MAX was certified and marketed, CNN reported late on Wednesday, citing sources briefed on the matter. Meanwhile, the Pentagon Inspector General said it would investigate a complaint that Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, violated ethical rules by allegedly promoting Boeing while in office. Speakers speak at a seminar on AI Research and Application in HCM City held on Wednesday in the city.-VNS Photo Bo Xuan Hiep Though the city has applied AI technologies in a number of sectors, it lags behind other cities in the world in AI research and training, he said. It lacks AI experts, scientists and policymakers. Phong said the city should catch up with the global trend of AI. Such efforts include investment in training skilled workers and building an open-source database. In addition, training in the field remains limited because of a lack of funding, he said, adding that both State and business investments are badly needed. Although HCM City has paid great attention to AI, the city lacks a staff capable of accessing AI research at the global level, Phong noted. Linkages between the state, enterprises, scientists and investors should also be promoted, he said. AI is being used in many fields, including transport, public security, production, finance and e-commerce, among others. Prof. Ho Tu Bao of the Viet Nam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics said the city should build a digital infrastructure, issue incentive policies to encourage enterprises to apply AI, and improve human resources in AI. It also needs to speed up e-government and build a data sharing system for the city, he added. A survey of 500 Vietnamese firms conducted last year by Viet Nam Report found that only 13.6 per cent of the firms had invested in AI in production and business. More than 18 per cent said they were studying the model and 18.2 per cent had plans for investment in the coming two to three years. However, nearly 50 per cent of the surveyed companies had not developed plans for AI investment, according to the survey. Speaking at the seminar, Dr Vu Hai Quan, deputy director of the Viet Nam National University, HCM City, quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying a nation that leads in AI will be the ruler of the world. Quan said the city should focus on appying AI in healthcare, transport, automation, national defence and robotics. AI as well as big data, cloud computing and machine learning are all important. With big data, people will be able to teach machines to provide analyses based on AI through the cloud platform. The most important breakthroughs in AI technology are being made in the fields of image and speech recognition as well as natural language processing, he said. Take the increasing rate of cancer deaths in Vietnam, for example. With enough data, computers with artificial brains could help us detect cancer in the early stage, he said. Tran Minh Triet, vice dean of HCM City University of Technology, said that HCM City should focus on developing human resources, setting up open databases, and expanding connections between HCM City universities and international institutions to tap into the global wells of knowledge. He said it was vital to form AI research groups in areas such as market, data, application deployment, training and basic research. Experts have also recommended that AI scientists and experts build a strong network of AI think tanks in the city. The meeting was organised by the Peoples Committee in co-operation with the citys Department of Information and Communications and Department of Science and Technology. This was the first workshop in a series of three workshops to be held this year within the framework of the project Building an Artificial Intelligence Ecosystem in HCM City in the 2019 - 25 period. Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung (second from the right) meets German executives. - VNA/VNS Photo The Vietnamese delegation has visited a Siemens gas turbine factory, the SAP software company and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering. Minister Dung expressed his wish that Siemens, SAP and Fraunhofer would invest more in Vietnam by building solar panels and wind turbine plants to meet energy demand in the country and ASEAN, building new research and lab centres in Hoa Lac Hi-tech park. Leaders of Siemens, SAP and Fraunhofer expressed their interest in the Vietnamese market, saying they have taken steps to boost technological co-operation between the two nations. They spoke highly of the formation of the Viet Nam National Innovation Centre, saying it is a model to attract capital and brainpower from leading partners, including German companies. Siemens is Germanys leading multidisciplinary group, focusing on industry and high technology. After over 70 years of development, Siemens is now present in more than 190 countries, employs about 380,000 workers and generates more than US$90.8 billion in revenue. It is also a global leader in the gas turbine field. The 47-year-old SAP has become the biggest software maker in Europe and the fourth largest in the world. In Viet Nam, it has assisted enterprises in finance, banking and aviation. As one of the top research institutes of applied sciences, Fraunhofer forms close partnership with the State and businesses by commercialising products after successful research, bringing profit to firms and tax revenue to the State. NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bleichmar Fonti & Auld LLP (BFA) announces that it has published a letter on behalf of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) objecting to the proposed merger of SunTrust Banks, Inc. ( NYSE: STI ) and BB&T Corporation ( NYSE: BBT ), and urging the Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve System (Board or Fed) to reject the merger. The proposed merger of SunTrust and BB&T would be the largest since the financial crisis and it would create the sixth-largest bank in the United States. That the proposed merger is moving forward without a lending program to offer full banking services to black and other small scale farmers is unacceptable, said John Boyd, Founder and President of the NBFA. For decades the NBFA has raised the issue of a lack of loans to NBFA members by SunTrust and BB&T, it is time for regulators to take some action, Boyd concluded. The NBFA is concerned that the proposed merger will increase concentration of market power as measured in banking deposits in at least eleven markets in the Southeastern United States. The merger will result in highly concentrated markets in communities in Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida, diminishing consumer choice. In seven of these communities, the resulting increase in market share will be presumed to likely increase market power according to the U.S. Department of Justice & FTC Guidelines, measured through the HerfindahlHirschman Index. The merged bank will be less responsive to the needs of the communities it serves. In rural and economically disadvantaged areas the merger will have disproportionate effects, such as closing branch offices and reduction in staff that oversee compliance with the Community Reinvestment Act. The supposed benefits of the mergerthe increased investment in banking online or on mobile devicesare dubious because they are not tied to the introduction of new or improved products or services, but are premised on furthering industry-wide trends of realizing the cost savings associated with replacing customer service and consumer choice with technology. For these reasons, the NBFA urges the Fed to reject the proposed merger. The letter is addressed to Jerome H. Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Makan Delrahim, Assistant Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justices Antitrust Division, and Joseph J. Simons, Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Congressman James Sensenbrenner, Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator Amy Klobuchar were also provided copies of the letter. NBFA is a non-profit organization representing tens of thousands of African American farmers and their families in the United States. NBFA provides education services and advocacy efforts concerning civil rights, land retention, access to public and private loans, education and agricultural training, and rural economic development for black and other small farmers. NBFA has fought discrimination on all fronts and has been a driving force in remedying past discrimination by the United States government. You can find more information regarding NBFA at: http://www.nationalblackfarmersassociation.org/about_us . BFA is a law firm based in New York City with additional offices in Oakland, California and Toronto, Canada. The Firm focuses on securities fraud class actions and other investment-related matters. BFA currently serves as lead counsel in multiple securities class actions and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. A decade ago, poor decision-making led to a huge surplus in steel projects across the country Photo: Le Toan Steel makers were on edge after hearing that a new overseas investor submitted plans to invest in a cold-rolled stainless steel project in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, but the proposal was rejected after governmental agencies carefully evaluated the supply and demand, along with environmental issues in relate to the project. The move has swept away concerns that steel projects can be approved easily, even it is not named in the master plan as a whole for the industry, as it moves back from how it has originally been governed. The Law on Planning that took effect in January 1, 2019 abolishes master plans on specific industries and products. It is expected to reduce state intervention in the market through sectoral and product planning, and unify and increase transparency of spatial planning. Previously, in order to do business, enterprises would have to prepare investment projects compatible with many master plans in land use, construction, or local socio-economic development. When these master plans contradict one another, the business activities of the enterprises can be risky. In the case of the stainless steel scheme in Ba Ria-Vung Tau, local authorities pointed out reasonable evidence for the rejection saying that the local demand for stainless steel reached 490,000 tonnes, while the countrys total designed capacity hit more than 700,000 tonnes, making local makers run only about one-half of their designed capacity. Thus, continuing to attract investment into cold-rolled stainless steel will create fierce competition among enterprises and reduce efficiency of domestic enterprises and exports. Pham Chi Cuong, former chairman of the Vietnam Steel Association (VSA) said, The explanations and clear instruction, not only for this case, promote environmental-friendly business as well as remove concerns on licensing steel projects. It is because for most other industries, including steel, the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) is no longer responsible for carrying out the planning. Before the Law on Planning took effect on January 1, 2019, the MoIT was in charge of asssessing and appraising the planning of the sectors under its management. Licence tightening The VSA suggested that foreign investors should not be invited onto projects to create standard steel products where the supply is redundant. Instead, they should be encouraged to invest in production of alloy and high-quality steel. With the governments view that Vietnam will not trade off environmental integrity for economic growth, many localities are being cautious about licensing steel projects, some even refusing permission for new plants. If Vietnam is as determined to protect the environment as it claims, clean projects will come. After tightening the licensing, the quantity may be lower, but the quality will be higher, economic expert Pham Chi Lan said. The steel industry is a particularly energy-intensive sector, thus any new steel venture must avoid having significant negative impacts on the transmission system. In 2010, the steel sector witnessed a grievous surplus due to its failure to conform to planning, with over 30 steel ventures licensed beyond official plans for the industry. Together, these projects have injected an additional 60 million tonnes per year of extra capacity into the industry, with inadequate regulation and lax local authorities to blame. In 2007 and 2008 alone, dozens of steel investment projects, both domestic and foreign, were licensed and included the $1 billion Tycoon-E United Dung Quat steel complex in the central province of Quang Ngai, the $4 billion Van Phong steel complex, and a joint venture between South Koreas Posco group and Vinashin in the central province of Khanh Hoa, among many more. An inspection by the MoIT later found that of the countrys 65 steel projects with annual capacity of 100,000 tonnes or higher each, only 17 were under planning and 16 approved by the MoIT, while the remaining projects were licensed by localities outside planning, with as many as 24 of them licensed out with their authority. The surplus crisis led to supply 50 per cent higher than the demand. Since then, the surplus has become worse despite an annual 10 per cent growth of domestic demand. The market chaos at that time was attributed to the industrys unplanned development and lax management of steel investment licensing by state agencies, given localities eagerness to attract foreign investment. Licensing of unplanned projects also resulted from overlapping management among local agencies, analysts pointed out, citing Ba Ria-Vung Tau as an example. Because of this inconsistency, many localities were free to license steel projects valued at less than VND 1.5 trillion ($65.21 million) even though they were outside the industry planning scope. Learning from the past On past lessons, Cuong from the VSA said, The surplus crisis was taking a toll on the steel industry, which suffered falling prices and sluggish sales for months amid the construction season. As a result, the industry was operating at around 50-60 per cent of capacity, costing investors huge capital and wastefulness. But that was not all. Environmental pollution, power shortages, and lack of human resources were other challenges facing the industry. Rampant development of power-hungry steel plants also triggered an electricity shortage. In Ba Ria-Vung Tau, nine operating steel projects alone were consuming some 60 per cent of the provinces total electricity output. The government followed up by reviewing steel schemes, especially large and foreign-invested ones which were delayed due to financial difficulties, and revoked licences of those without sufficient explanations. A steel investor, who declined to be named, said, To ensure sustainable development for the steel industry, the appraisal and licensing of metallurgy complexes should not rest only on the local authorities but be consulted on by experts to properly select financially-viable and technologically-viable investors to ensure their feasibility. The Vietnamese government wishes to make it easier for foreign investors to develop vocational training schools, Photo: Le Toan Decree 15s Clause 9 stipulating the conditions to establish foreign-invested vocational tranining schools Any project would need to be in line with national planning of vocational training. The investor must obtain at least 1,000 square metres of land for a basic vocational training centre; 10,000sq.m for a secondary-level school in urban areas, or 20,000sq.m in suburbs or rural areas; 20,000sq.m for college-level schools in urban areas, or 40,000sq.m outside urban areas. The foreign investor would be required to possess at least VND5 billion ($217,400) in investment capital to open a vocational training school, and VND50 billion ($2.17 million) and VND100 billion ($4.34 million) to open a secondary vocational training school and vocational college, respectively. Planned training curricula would have to meet requirements of Item 1, Article 34 of the Law on Vocational Education, and not contain content that might threaten national defence and security, propagate religious ideology, or present warped views of history, and cause negative influence on Vietnamese morals, culture, and customs. Vocational training schools would need to make sure that Vietnamese trainees are taught obligatory subjects as per regulations by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs. The decree specifies conditions for establishment of a branch or another campus of a foreign-invested secondary vocational school and college, which include a project to establish said branch, with statements clarifying necessity; the name and scope of operations; and a development plan. The investors who wish to establish another branch of vocational training would need to present a contract or agreement on the lease of infrastructure and facilities for a minimum of five years, with investment capital reaching at least 25 per cent of that required to establish full-fledged vocational training schools of the corresponding levels mentioned above. According to the Ministry of Labour, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MoLISA), over the past few years, the local education and vocational training sector has seen a large number of foreign investors wishing to establish vocational training schools in Vietnam. However, due to a lack of specific regulations stipulating conditions on establishing such facilities, opening these schools has thus far met with support. Discussing the issue with VIR, Mac Van Tien, director of the MoLISAs National Institute for Vocational Education, said that there are currently around 300 foreign-funded education and vocational training schools, including training of foreign languages and informatics accounting for the majority, with a very few number in vocational training. The Korean International Cooperation Agency in Vietnam (KOICA Vietnam), which partnered with the Bac Giangs Peoples Committee to open the VietnamKorea Vocational College of Technology in 2012, has faced problems on procedures to open such schools. According to the Agency, the time to finish procedures and get school building permits was more than a month, but the introduction of Decree 15 hopes to change that. The project for establishment of the vocational college relate to some ministries and localities which are responsible for getting the project investment policy and project documentation approved. The biggest difficulty was the long delay to get such permit and approval, affecting the project progress and budget plan priorly agreed between donor and recipient partner., a KOICAs representative clarified. A new lifebuoy On February 1, 2019, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc issued Decree No.15/2019/ND-CP providing guidelines and implementation of the Law on Vocational Education, which will take effect on March 20, 2019 (see box for details). The decree is considered to be a new breakthrough in the educational sector as it is believed to help remove difficulties on investment procedures related to opening foreign-invested vocational training schools. Tien said before this change, Decree No.86/2018/ ND-CP was the only document outlining regulations on foreign-invested educational training schools, but with a focus on kindergarten and university. Therefore investors wishing to establish vocational training schools have been stuck with unsuitable regulations in the country. There were no certain legal basics to assure them with investment in vocational education. Therefore, the launch of Decree 15 aims to resolve these troubles, Tien said. Decree 15s new features mainly focus on specifying order and procedures for opening foreign-invested vocational training schools. The changes are expected to favour investors to adapt investment procedures. Under Decree 15, the time to complete procedures and grant a permit to carry out a venture will be 15 days. For invalid dossiers, the licensing agency takes the obligation to notify foreign investors for revising and supplementing dossiers within three days. Difficulties for foreign investors will be resolved more quickly, Tien added. Priority on tech sectors The government is also providing incentives to open schools specialised in international, regional, and national key sectors, as stipulated in Decision No.1839/QD-LDTBXH. Accordingly, new tech segments like Big Data, blockchain, and data mining, will receive priority to develop. In particular, the government is favouring foreign investors by facilitating a grant for 20,000 square metres of land, classed as a minimum area in order to open vocational training schools in suburbs or rural areas. Vingroups VinFast complex was exempted from import duties when it first established vocational school training automobile assembly in the northern port city of Haiphong, Tien said. He also said that international investors are highly interested in opening vocational schools training technology segments, following closely by fashion outlets, beauty services, and restaurant establishments. Over the past few years, Vietnam has housed several foreign-invested vocational education institutes like Boschs Technical Industrial Apprenticeship, and Hyundais KOICA Dream Centre. Jobs related to technology and Industry 4.0 are forecast to explode in the country over the next few years due to global trends and Vietnams participation in international integration. According to online recruitment service Navigos latest report, the trend on recruiting personnel working in data mining, blockchain, deep learning, machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), will continue to increase at a huge rate this year. In 2018, the demand for recruitment of positions related to blockchain has grown by 140 per cent compared to 2017, in finance, banking, e-commerce, and retail. Ngo Thi Ngoc Lan, regional director of Navigos Search, told VIR, Two-thirds of candidates surveyed said that businesses are interested in new technologies such as blockchain, AI, and machine learning, while a quarter said their companies plan to apply new tech in the near future, lifting the demand to recruit also. Experienced recruitment Improving the quality of local labourers to meet Industry 4.0 standards is one of the leading targets behind the launch of Decree 15. Over the past few years, the local market has suffered from a serious shortage of experienced labourers in related sectors. The latest VietnamWorks survey calculated that if the growth rate of IT personnel stays at 8 per cent in the next few years, Vietnam will be short of an extra 78,000 employees annually. By 2020, this shortage will exceed 500,000. Lan said that due to the tough recruitment arena of Vietnamese IT engineers, foreign enterprises operating in this field must recruit experts from abroad. Currently, human resources for new technology are still lacking of both quality and quantity. In the context of transition towards Industry 4.0 and the strong development of the digital trend, not only will technology-related businesses need relevant engineers, but other companies using tools or products related to technology platforms will require a team of tech engineers to grow, Lan added. Tien from the MoLISAs National Institute for Vocational Education stated, Our statistics show that Vietnamese labour quality ranks nearly bottom in Asia, with an average of 3.7 out of a 5-point scale. Companies require 4.5 points at least. While South Korean labourers points for foreign language are 7.0 out of a 10-point scale, Vietnamese sits at 4.0. To fulfil the shortage, improving quality of local labourers is necessary. According to Tien, foreign-invested vocational schools will help. We all know that Vietnam welcomes foreign investors but they will be selected carefully. Investors need to meet conditions and training in the priority category. Conditions are very strict about training programmes, training facilities, the trainer-trainee ratio, and advanced training technology tested by the host country, Tien added. Thailand's military chief, Prayut Chan-o-cha, is applying all resources to ensure his prime minister position remains unchallenged Sunday, when the first poll since 2011 is held here. Prayut says if he wins, voters would be returning his junta-led country to a "democracy." Prayut's biggest threat remains the exiled Shinawatra family and whether he can develop enough cross-party support to give his leadership the impression of legitimacy. Few doubt General Prayut will return as prime minister. A friendly constitution that grants the military unprecedented say in forming a civilian government will bolster that prospect alongside opposition parties that have been stymied by five years of harsh military rule. As the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations recently noted, "The kingdom looks unlikely to resolve its political tensions, no matter the result of the vote. "Instead, Thailand seems destined for continued political instability, although that instability could come in different forms, depending on the results of the election." About 52 million Thais will cast ballots for the 500-seat House of Representatives. There will be 350 members elected directly, and 150 seats will be awarded based on a party's popularity. Members in the 250-seat Senate will be appointed entirely by the armed forces. That gives Prayut and his Phalang Pracharat party the advantage. The next prime minister will be elected in a joint sitting of both houses, thus he needs as few as 126 seats to secure power, while other political parties need at least 376 seats. Titipol Phakdeewanich, dean of the Faculty of Political Science at Ubon Ratchathani University, said it was unlikely any of the opposition parties could earn enough votes to elect their own prime minister. "It will be very difficult because the constitution has already helped Prayut to remain in power by giving power to the senators to vote for prime minister after the election. So who decides?" Titipol said. "Not just the house of parliament but the senators will also have some say in this election of prime minister," he added. Almost 80 parties will field more than 2,700 candidates. The Phalang Pracharat Party also has the option of forging a coalition with the Ruam Palang Prachachat Thai Party and the People's Reform Party. That worries some Thais. Nongnapat Patcham, a registered voter in Los Angeles, said the sheer number of parties means there is not an equal opportunity for all of them to get their message out to the voters. She says the ruling party has an unfair advantage in this election. The Thai constitution gives expats the right to vote in the country's elections. This year, "around 120,000 Thais around the world have registered to cast their votes," Thani Thongpakdi, Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told VOA. He said about 15,000 Thais will be voting by mail-in ballots in the Unites States. Prayut's biggest challenge will stem from the Shinawatra-backed Pheu Thai Party, popular in the rural heartland, and Future Forward Party, led by young entrepreneur Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, who is hoping to win the youth vote. Titipol, however, said that is not guaranteed. "When we talk about the seven-, eight million new voters, they would actually mean a lot to the future of democracy if they vote. But that doesn't mean all their votes would actually go to the Future Forward Party; some of them grew up with families when Pheu Thai was in power," he said. Promised elections have been persistently delayed since Prayut ousted Yingluck Shinawatra in a 2014 coup, after months of political turmoil and a constitutional court ruling that removed her for abuse of power. Yingluck's brother, Thaksin, was pushed from leadership by the military eight years earlier. Both live in exile amid allegations of corruption. Despite that, parties aligned with the family have won every Thai election since 2001. Analysts said Pheu Thai and its allies can only be expected to win up to 160 seats, gaining a further 70 through alliances. That's not enough to form a government. The Democrat Party, however, remains in the mix and its leader and former prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, says he will not support Prayut's return. For the anti-military parties including Pheu Thai, the Democrats and Future Forward to defeat Prayut, they must win a combined majority. Observers say that is unlikely and that it would be almost impossible to find common ground to form a grand coalition, noting Thaksin and the Democrats are natural enemies and Future Forward is offering an alternative from the color-coded red shirt, yellow shirt politics of the past. They say Abhisit could emerge with a face-saving minor victory if Prayut falters and needs his votes. Reform-minded Democrats might then decide compromise and a deal are the better options. Historian Chris Baker, co-author of A History of Thailand, said opinion polls showed that more than half the people polled had not decided on whom they would vote for and drew comparisons to recent elections in the United States, France and the Brexit process in Britain. "The key to understanding this election is that the voting is going to be more emotional than rational. Why should that not be, after all we've seen [U.S. President Donald] Trump and Brexit and [French President Emmanual] Macron. They're essentially very emotional results of elections, so why should that not happen here?" he questioned. The lead-up to this poll was controversial. The National Election Commission cleared Prayut of being a "state official," which would have barred him from competing. It also cleared Future Forward's Thanathorn of allegations he posted misleading information online. The Shinawatra-friendly Thai Raksa Chart Party was not so lucky. It was dissolved and its executive board members banned from political activity for 10 years after they attempted to nominate Princess Ubolratana Mahidol as a prime ministerial candidate. Since 1932, Thailand has been riddled by at least 13 military interventions. Warrants have been issued for senior members of Cambodias former main opposition party linked to treason charges filed against the partys leaders. Former Cambodia National Rescue Party president Kem Sokha was charged with treason in late 2017 and remains under house arrest awaiting trial. Last week, authorities issued warrants for Sam Rainsy, Sokhas predecessor, along with two of its vice presidents, Mu Sochua and Eng Chhai Eang, and five other members. They were charged with incitement to commit a felony and plotting to commit treason, charges they deny. All of those charged are currently living abroad having fled the country after a widespread crackdown on the opposition and civil society in the lead up to and the aftermath of a general election last year. In late 2017, the Supreme Court banned the CNRP and ruled that 118 CNRP officials were barred from political life. The warrants were issued shortly after Rainsy made a public statement pledging to return to Cambodia despite the threat of arrest. He said Cambodia had become the private property of one individual and family, referring to the vast wealth accumulated by Prime Minister Hun Sens family. The individual and family have been dividing Cambodia to sell off in pieces to foreigners, he added. In the face of possible trade sanctions from the European Union and the United States, he said Cambodians should come together to liberate our nation from this individual and family who are robbing and destroying the nation. Chhai Eang said the party leaders had expected to be charged because Hun Sen does not want the CNRP to be active. Rainsy has repeatedly called for uprisings by the Cambodian people and the military to overthrow Hun Sen. Phay Siphan, a government spokesman, said the former opposition leaders had ignored the governments efforts to make a compromise, without elaborating on what efforts had been made. They are against the elections, Cambodian law, and even the constitution, he said. Human rights activist Suon Bunsak said the issuance of the warrants had only served to compound the increasingly serious political situation in Cambodia. I think the courts action in issuing these arrest warrants will make the situation more serious, he said. Cambodian politicians should find a way to come up with a political agreement to work together for the national interest. The court's action is contrary to the will and wishes of the international community, who want to see us working together well. Prime Minister Hun Sen has given a majority of the 118 banned officials until April to make a request to have their political rights reinstated and threatened to seize their wealth if they publicly insult him. So far nine ex-opposition officials have been pardoned. These people understand that their duty to participate in nation-building is through politics, said Siphan, the government spokesman. Those who proclaim themselves as Democrats but pressure others not to ask for a pardon by accusing them of being a traitor are themselves, dictators. As U.S.-backed forces fight to seize the last bit of territory held by the Islamic State (IS) in eastern Syria, the battle against jihadist influence is far from over. Counterterror experts warn that extremist groups may still try to recruit a rising generation of hundreds of millions of millennials to their ranks. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces on Tuesday announced full control over the remaining IS enclave of Baghuz in eastern Syria after hundreds of IS militants surrendered overnight. The capture was a significant step in the fight against IS, but not a complete victory over the terror group as fighting continued with some jihadists along the Euphrates River. Some experts said the final push in Baghuz was the end of Islamic State's self-declared caliphate, but IS and other radical Islamist organizations will continue to attract new members because the West has made little progress on the ideological battlefield. "In terms of what comes next, I think these movements adapt very quickly operationally," said Juan Zarate, a senior national security analyst who served as deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism in the George W. Bush administration. "We will see this with ISIS going underground. We have seen this with al-Qaida adapting and going underground. They will rationalize the loss in part because they have very long-term visions of their own movements in history. So they will see this as just one chapter, whereas we in Washington who are thinking in two-year cycles, maybe at most in four-year cycles, see this as the end of [IS], or the killing of [Osama] bin Laden as the ending of al-Qaida," Zarate said, speaking Tuesday at the Washington Institute. Zarate said the defeat will most likely encourage IS to revisit its actions and implement an al-Qaida-style strategy of insurgency while hiding among more vulnerable Muslim communities. "Part of the ideological clash between al-Qaida and Islamic State was al-Qaida saying, 'Look, we've learned lessons of how to go about doing these terrorist movements. We've learned some very hard lessons that if you pop your head up too much, if you expose yourself too much, you're going to get whacked by the American and the counterterrorism forces aligned with them,' " he said. Virtual caliphate Experts say the loss of IS territory or caliphate is likely to prompt the terror group to step up efforts to spread its ideology and recruit followers on the internet. That is because the lost caliphate was an effective tool for inspiring prospective recruits and spreading ideas, and the IS leadership will have to replace that if it is to survive. IS has shown considerable skill in online recruiting, and Western powers have been ineffective in countering IS propaganda, they say. IS online communication and propaganda over the years has declined as the group lost territory in Iraq and Syria. Nevertheless, the jihadists have continued to recycle old propaganda messages and even create new ones. IS on Monday released a 44-minute audio recording of its spokesman, Abu Hassan al-Muhajir, calling followers to take revenge for the two attacks targeting mosques in New Zealand that left 50 people dead last Friday. "The scenes of the massacres in the two mosques should wake up those who were fooled, and should incite the supporters of the caliphate to avenge their religion," he said. Al-Muhajir mocked the U.S. assertion that IS was defeated, claiming its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was still alive and urging the supporters of the caliphate to retaliate against the U.S.-led campaign in Baghuz. New Zealand attack Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert at the Washington Institute, said al-Muhajir's audio message after nearly six months of silence shows IS wanted to exploit the New Zealand attacks to incite hate and inflame its anti-Western propaganda. "They see the opportunity to affect people when they are feeling angry, vulnerable and emotional. And that presence in the virtual world is very, very real," Levitt said during a discussion on The Battle Against Extremism: Assessment and Prescriptions at the Washington Institute. Levitt said IS most likely would try to restore its image among the vulnerable Muslim communities. "As we get farther and farther away from what that [IS] caliphate really was in terms of the barbarism, et cetera, they will continue and will have a greater effect at presenting it as, 'Maybe we weren't perfect, but it was a caliphate. Therefore, you need to come and join us again and get back in line to be like the original followers of the Prophet Muhammad,' " he said. According to Farah Pandith, a former U.S. envoy to Muslim communities, the U.S. and other Western powers need to make sure they step up their efforts to fight back against IS and other extremist groups ideologically. Pandith said the counterterror strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks on the U.S. underestimated the importance of battling extremism on the ideological front, leading in part to the emergence of groups like IS. "We failed in large part because we didn't imagine what could happen. We thought we understood and we had things in a box. We need to reimagine the worst-case scenario ideologically and apply ourselves for that problem, not the problem that we are dealing with today," she said. Max Broby waited patiently in the heart of a snaking line of Britain-bound Eurostar passengers that barely seemed to budge. The 40-year-old Dane had arrived early at the Gare du Nord train station, in northern Paris. It didnt help. The immediate cause: an ongoing strike by French customs agents slowing border checks in what they warn might happen when Britain leaves the European Union. But Broby, an architect with businesses in Paris and London, is focused on bigger losses. As a Dane, I think its such a sad catastrophe seeing a country sort of self-destruct like this, he said of the Brexit turmoil roiling nearby Britain. It seems so unnecessary, so very sad on every level. Slow motion process For nearly three years, Europeans have been watching the chaotic Brexit process unfold with a mix of indifference, exasperation and, to a lesser extent, alarm. While every twist and turn in the tortured negotiations has grabbed British headlines, most other European media have covered the process only sporadically, concentrating on concerns closer to home. Indeed, a Euronews poll released in January found nearly one-third of French and Italians thought Brexit had already happened. Only now, as the official May 29 Brexit deadline approaches, are many Europeans beginning to focus sort of on what that might mean. And any sense of impending change is diluted by chances EU leaders meeting in Brussels Thursday and Friday may grant Britain a delay. People just have other priorities, said analyst Larissa Brunner, of the European Policy Centre in Brussels. Its seen as a kind of isolated issue of the British shooting themselves in the foot, with limited consequences for the rest of Europe. Whereas something like the migration crisis affects peoples everyday life. Brexit fallout Still, the Brexit process has nonetheless permeated European mindsets in sometimes subtle ways. Analysts cite a modest rise in public support for the EU. And some populist parties are toning down their anti-EU rhetoric. Frances National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, for example, no longer talks about a French-style Frexit, or even leaving the euro currency zone. Italys populist government is similarly silent. And while governments in Hungary and Poland continue to sharply criticize the EU, the populations of both countries are strongly pro-European. I think a lot of Europeans now see how difficult it is to achieve Brexit from the British perspective, and are a lot more cautious about wanting to follow suit, said Manuel Lafont Rapnouil, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations Paris office. Peace, democracy bureaucracy Still there are few Europeans loudly cheering the EU on. Many dismiss the bloc and its executive body as an overly bureaucratic and annoying roadblock in their daily lives. While the majority give the EU high marks for promoting peace, democracy and prosperity, they also consider it inefficient and intrusive, and lacking understanding about the needs of its citizens, according to a Pew Research Center survey, released this week. At the Gare du Nord, linking France to Britain and other northern destinations, French Eurostar passenger Dianna Hamadache said she understood pro-Brexit sentiments. We French like to keep our identity, just like Britain, she said. While considering herself moderately pro-European, Hamadache nonetheless blames the European Union for deepening French debts and indirectly contributing to the yellow vest protest movement over high living costs. Brexit is a bad idea, countered Jerome Huijsing from the Netherlands, before heading for an Amsterdam-bound train with no line, thanks to Europes passport-fee Schengen zone. We Europeans have lots of advantages. We have to pay for them, but we have them and thats good. Still, such sentiments are unlikely to translate into a strong boost for pro-EU parties in May European Parliament elections, analysts say. Turnout is traditionally low, said Brunner, of the European Policy Centre, and national issues tend to dominate. Will EU unity last? For a block that has squabbled over core issues like immigration and whether to forge stronger economic and defense bonds, the 27 other EU governments been surprisingly united when it comes to Brexit negotiations with the UK. But that unity risks unraveling if it comes to a potential no-deal scenario, Brunner said. It would be tempting for individual member states to circumvent the European Commission and strike separate deals with Britain, she said of the EU executive body. Similarly I would expect much more division during trade negotiations with Britain in which each member state would present its demands, making the final list impossibly long. Yet paradoxically, according to some observers, the Brexit process may have been good for the European Union. You have a lot of people who say theres a new dynamic on defense, foreign policy and other issues, said analyst Lafont Rapnouil. These may lose traction, he adds, if a divided Britain somehow remains part of the bloc possibly via a second referendum or an indefinitely extended departure. France and Germany also want to forge new bonds with a post-Brexit Britain in areas like defense, he added. But with political energy now consumed by a seemingly unending Brexit process, it prevents Europe and the UK from building something together, Lafont Rapnouil said. Baffled by how Britain got here At Gare du Nord, architect Broby is baffled at how Britain got into its current mess. Describing himself as an EU fan, he draws parallels with his native Denmark. Both countries negotiated with Brussels to keep key assets, including their national currency and certain veto rights that he believes answer domestic aspirations for greater autonomy. Obviously, the EU needs a lot of really critical reforms, Broby said. But surely you want to be around the table at times like this, and not burning your bridges. Residents and officials in Crimea have been staging events this week to mark the fifth anniversary of Russias forceful annexation of the region from Ukraine. The United States and its allies imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Moscow following the invasion. Analysts say the economic impact is denting approval ratings for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Thousands of heavily armed fighters, dubbed little green men for their anonymous uniforms, stormed Ukrainian military installations and government buildings in February 2014. The fighters were clearly backed by Russia, but Moscow denied involvement. On March 16, 2014, the new de facto authorities staged a referendum in which they claimed more than 95 percent of voters chose to return Crimea to Russian control. Putin hailed the annexation. After a hard, long, tiring trip, Crimea and Sevastopol are returning to their home port, to their native shore, homeward, to Russia, Putin said in a ceremony in Moscows Red Square five years ago to mark the annexation, just weeks after the country hosted athletes from around the world at the Sochi Winter Olympics. WATCH: Crimea Marks Anniversary of Russian Annexation Putin returned to Crimea this week and praised the progress made. New power stations have been built. A new bridge links Crimea to the Russian mainland, its limited height restricts shipping into Ukrainian ports. A rail service is to begin this year. Crimea residents appear supportive. Well, its all good. Giant construction sites everywhere, you can see that, one resident told VOA this month. Political cost In the aftermath of the Crimean invasion, Putins approval ratings soared. They are now falling fast. The U.S., Europe and several allies imposed economic sanctions in Moscow. Russian political analyst Maria Lipman said the economic noose has tightened. The Crimea syndrome, or Crimea consensus, is wearing out quite visibly, Lipman said. The announcement of the pension reform, and the raise of the retirement age, was a trigger when people began to realize not that they hadnt realized before but they really began to feel that things were not right. Ukraine is about to hold presidential elections. The leading candidates have pledged to continue Kyivs path toward European Union and NATO membership. So, could Putin attempt further military action? Unlikely, said Vladislav Inozemtsev, director of the Moscow-based Center for Post-Industrial Studies. Russian politics is much exhausted with Ukraine. I definitely exclude any kind of military intervention, the closure of the Azov Sea, or military provocations in Donbas, he said. The U.S. and the European Union said this week that Crimea will always be considered part of Ukraine. Critics say the Wests failure to confront Russia more robustly in 2014 led to Moscows intervention in other conflicts, including in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and in Syria. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Marifil Mines Limited (TSXV: MFM) (OTC: MFMLF) (Marifil or the Company) announces it has commenced work on generating a National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101) technical report (the Technical Report) with a mineral resource estimation for the Companys San Roque property (San Roque or, the Property). The Property contains a polymetallic mineral deposit containing gold as the principal economic commodity with significant values of silver, indium, lead and zinc. San Roque is a district scale project comprising 37,055 hectares of mine rights, of which 9,449 are perfected for exploitation (referred to as Pertinencias) and private royalty free claims, located near the Atlantic coast in the Province of Rio Negro, Argentina. The Property is held by Minas San Roque S.A., which is jointly owned by the Companys wholly-owned subsidiary Marifil Mines S.A. (51%) and NOVAGOLD RESOURCES INC.s (TSX: NG) (NovaGold) wholly-owned subsidiary, NovaGold Argentina Inc. (49%). The Company currently acts as project operator for the Property. To prepare the Technical Report, the Company has retained the services of Tetra Tech Canada Inc. (Tetra Tech). Tetra Tech is a prominent, global consulting firm with a reputation for high quality scientific and engineering work. In addition to the production of the Technical Report, the proposed scope of work includes a site visit for the collection of independent samples, data verification, the development of a geological model and the development of a resource estimate. The Company expects the Technical Report to be completed and publicized next fiscal quarter. Last year, the Company completed the latest of a series of drilling campaigns on the Property. The results of that work are presented in a report entitled San Roque Project 2018 Drilling Program dated December, 2018, which is now posted on the Companys website: www.marifilmines.com. This latest round of drilling brings the total number of exploration drill holes on the Property to 112 totaling 16,683 meters of drillings. Of these drill holes, 11 are of reverse circulation drilling and 101 are of diamond core drilling, which generates higher quality sampling data. Accordingly, the Company is of the view that a large volume of mineralized material exists on the Property. The Company is also currently commencing a program aimed at achieving bench-scale metallurgical recovery test results in the coming months, which the Company believes could add further value to the deposit. Mr. Robert Abenante, President and CEO of Marifil observed, We are very encouraged with the progress at San Roque and are excited to see the results of the NI 43-101. Ideal Infrastructure San Roque is comprised of 37,055 hectares in the mining friendly province of Rio Negro, Argentina. Unlike the high altitudes in the North Andes of Argentina, the Property sits at low elevation on very flat terrain. Further, the Property is only 65 kilometers from an ocean port, which can be reached via rail or high-volume highway, which both perimeter the Property. The Property is also perimetered by high voltage power lines. Qualified Person The expressed opinions and factual and other information contained within this document has been prepared and approved by Richard R. Walters, Executive Vice President, Exploration and a director of the Company. Mr. Walters is a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101, and is the person under whose directions the San Roque, Argentina mineral exploration program has been carried out over the last year. Mr. Walters is a certified Professional Geologist by the American Institute of Professional Geologists. ON BEHALF OF MARIFIL MINES LIMITED "Rob Abenante" Robert Abenante, President & CEO Contact Information: Phone:1-833-669-MINE (6463) Email: info@marifilmines.com Website: www.marifilmines.com For further information regarding Marifil Mines Limited, please refer to the Companys filings available on SEDAR (http://www.sedar.com) or at Marifils Website (http://www.marifilmines.com). Forward-Looking Statements Statements in this news release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical, and consist primarily of projections - statements regarding future plans, expectations and developments. Words such as expects, hopes, intends, plans, may, could, potential, should, anticipates, likely, believes and words of similar import tend to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release include: (i) statements regarding the Technical Report being completed and publicized by next fiscal quarter; (ii) statements regarding the proposed bench-scale metallurgical recovery tests on the Property; and (iii) statements regarding the nature and tenors of sulfide mineralization on the Property. All of these forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ from those expressed or implied, including, without limitation: (i) the risks that the Company may not find any minerals in commercially feasible quantities; (ii) that the Company may not raise enough money to fund its exploration plans;(iii) uncertainty of development plans and cost estimates; (iv) commodity price fluctuations; (v) political or economic instability and regulatory changes; (vi) currency fluctuations; (vi) the state of the capital markets; (vii) uncertainty in the measurement of mineral reserves and resource estimates; (viii) the Companys ability to attract and retain qualified personnel and management; (ix) potential labour unrest; (x) uncertainty as to reclamation and closure requirements for its mineral properties; (xi) unpredictable risks and hazards related to the development and operation of a mine or mineral property that are beyond the Companys control; (xii) and other risks and uncertainties identified under the heading Risk Factors in the Companys continuous disclosure documents filed on SEDAR. You are cautioned that the foregoing list is not exhaustive of all factors and assumptions which may have been used. The Company cannot assure you that actual events, performance or results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements, and managements assumptions may prove to be incorrect. The Companys forward-looking statements reflect current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or managements beliefs, expectations or opinions should change other than as required by applicable law. For the reasons set forth above, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This week marks the fifth anniversary of Russias forceful annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea. The United States and its allies imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Moscow following the invasion and analysts say the economic impact is denting approval ratings for Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Henry Ridgwell reports. Abdulkadir Ababora was sitting in the front row of a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, last week when a 28-year-old Australian gunman opened fire during Friday prayers. Fifty worshipers were killed in the March 15 attacks in two mosques, and the gunman appeared intent of taking as many lives as possible. Those who were hit with the automatic weapons fell, and he went and checked those who were breathing and started shooting at those who were already on the ground, Abdulkadir told VOAs Afaan Oromoo service. Abdulkadir, meanwhile, lay under a bookshelf, pretending to be dead. I pulled the Quranic bookshelf on top of me to hide my head under and held my breath so that he didnt detect I was alive, Abdulkadir said. The kinds of weapons used in the attack are now banned in the country. New Zealands prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced Thursday that the government would outlaw military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles, effective immediately. Abdulkadir said he saw blood flowing like a river as bullets pierced victims in his mosque. I didnt think it was real, and I thought it was something out of a cinema or a movie, he added. Originally from Ethiopia, Abdulkadir now works as a taxi driver in New Zealand. He left his wife, who gave birth two weeks ago, at home and his other children at school before heading to the mosque that ill-fated day. I am not sure if he passed me thinking I was dead, but he shot those who were on my left and right, Abdulkadir said. All I was thinking about was my wife and my three children. I was thinking that it was going to be my turn, and I lost hope at the moment. Victims families have begun receiving their loved ones bodies. On Tuesday, six victims bodies were returned to families, according to police, and the rest will soon get a place to rest. The victims included refugees from Syria, Somalia and Afghanistan, along with other people seeking refuge. Mike Bush, New Zealands commissioner of police, said Thursday that all of the victims have been identified and their families notified, earlier saying, this is for us an absolute priority for family reasons, for compassionate reasons and for cultural reasons. Among those killed was 3-year-old Mucaad Ibrahim, the youngest victim of the attacks. Despite the attacks and ongoing islamophobic sentiments, Abdulkadir remains hopeful. New Zealand is a peaceful place, and we have never seen anything like this before, he said. Migrants are now getting help more than anytime before and showing us support and strength. This story originated in VOA's Horn of Africas Afaan Oromoo service. The European Parliament faced calls Thursday to strip ExxonMobil lobbyists of their access badges after the US oil giant missed the assembly's first hearing into claims it knowingly misled the public on climate change. Greens deputy Molly Scott Cato told the hearing in Brussels she would formally make the request later Thursday to deny ExxonMobil its six registered parliament access badges. Activists and scientists told the hearing that ExxonMobil has for decades misled the public about the threat climate change poses to the world, comparing it the tobacco lobby's past campaign. Under parliamentary rules, Cato said, "lobbyists shall have their access badges denied" when they refuse without good reason to comply with a formal summons to attend a committee hearing or inquiry. "I believe this provides us with grounds we need to withdraw Exxon's lobby badges," the British MEP said, adding she would write a letter to that effect later Thursday. Her call was supported by MEP Eleonora Evi, who sits on the petition and environment committees that hosted the first EU public hearing into Exxon's approach to climate change. In a letter dated Wednesday, ExxonMobile said the oil company is "constrained from participating because of ongoing climate litigation in the United States." It said it was concerned that public commentary, including at the Brussels hearing, "could prejudice those pending proceedings," according to a copy obtained by AFP. Geoffrey Supran, a Harvard University researcher, told the panel that Exxon has known since 1959 that fossil fuel burning "was sufficient to melt the ice cap and submerge New York" but yet publicly cast doubt on the threat for years. A peer-reviewed study of nearly 200 documents spanning decades and co-authored by Supran found that four-fifths of scientific studies and internal memos acknowledged global warming is real and caused by humans. At the same time, a similar proportion of hundreds of paid editorials in major US newspapers over the same period cast deep doubt on these widely accepted facts, according to the study published last year. "The most fundamental thing this [Brussels] hearing does is start to put the evidence on record," Supran told AFP. "It also adds momentum and precedent to calls for US Congress and other governments to hold similar hearings into what Exxon and the entire fossil fuel industry knew and did about climate change," he said. In 2017, the European Parliament decided to deny access to Monsanto executives and lobbyists after the US agro giant turned down an invitation to a hearing over claims Monsanto influenced scientific research on a weedkiller's safety. Three explosions by landmines planted in the western part of Kabul killed at least six people and wounded more than 20 Thursday morning, as people were celebrating Nowruz, the first day of Persian new year. Kabul police spokesman Baser Mujahid told VOA four mines were planted in flower beds near Ali Abad hospital and police later diffused one of them. The area is also close to a Shiite shrine called Sakhi, where thousands of people gather every year to celebrate Nowruz. Eyewitnesses said the public was told to quickly vacate the area. Last year, 29 people were killed and nearly 50 wounded in Kabul on Nowruz near the same shrine. According to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, civilian and military deaths rose by 12 percent in Afghanistan last year. AIHRC statistics put the civilian casualties at 3010, with almost double that wounded in various attacks around the country. The Afghan Ministry of the Interior puts Taliban casualties in the hundreds, including 600 commanders and shadow governors of the group killed from March 21 of 2018 to the same date this year. Meanwhile President Ashraf Ghani, for the first time in his five years of government, attended a big new year celebration in Mazar-e-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province. Previously, his vice presidents attended this ceremony. Addressing a large gathering, he said the Afghanistan needed peace even more than oxygen and hoped the new year, 1398 on Afghan calendar, will bring that peace to the country. The United States Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation is engaged with the Afghan Taliban to try to find a resolution to an 18 year-long conflict that has also turned into Americas longest war. Facebook left millions of user passwords readable by its employees for years, the company said Thursday, an acknowledgement it offered after a security researcher posted about the issue online. By storing passwords in readable plain text, Facebook violated fundamental computer-security practices. Those call for organizations and websites to save passwords in a scrambled form that makes it almost impossible to recover the original text. There is no valid reason why anyone in an organization, especially the size of Facebook, needs to have access to users' passwords in plain text, said cybersecurity expert Andrei Barysevich of Recorded Future. Facebook said there is no evidence its employees abused access to this data. But thousands of employees could have searched them. The company said the passwords were stored on internal company servers, where no outsiders could access them. The incident reveals yet another huge and basic oversight at a company that insists it is a responsible guardian for the personal data of its 2.2 billion users worldwide. The security blog KrebsOnSecurity said Facebook may have left the passwords of some 600 million Facebook users vulnerable. In a blog post, Facebook said it will likely notify hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, millions of Facebook users and tens of thousands of Instagram users that their passwords were stored in plain text. Facebook Lite is a version designed for people with older phones or low-speed internet connections. It is used primarily in developing countries. Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg touted a new privacy-focused vision for the social network that would emphasize private communication over public sharing. The company wants to encourage small groups of people to carry on encrypted conversations that neither Facebook nor any other outsider can read. The fact that the company couldn't manage to do something as simple as encrypting passwords, however, raises questions about its ability to manage more complex encryption issues such in messaging flawlessly. Facebook said it discovered the problem in January. But security researcher Brian Krebs wrote that in some cases the passwords had been stored in plain text since 2012. Facebook Lite launched in 2015 and Facebook bought Instagram in 2012. Recorded Future's Barysevich said he could not recall any major company caught leaving so many passwords exposed internally. He said he's seen a number of instances where much smaller organizations made such information readily available not just to programmers but also to customer support teams. Security analyst Troy Hunt, who runs the `haveibeenpwned.com' data breach website, said that the situation is embarrassing for Facebook, but that there's no serious, practical impact unless an adversary gained access to the passwords. But Facebook has had major breaches, most recently in September when attackers accessed some 29 million accounts. Jake Williams, president of Rendition Infosec, said storing passwords in plain text is unfortunately more common than most of the industry talks about and tends to happen when developers are trying to rid a system of bugs. He said the Facebook blog post suggests storing passwords in plain text may have been a sanctioned practice, although he said it's also possible a rogue development team was to blame. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley found herself in a Twitter feud with the people of Finland on Thursday, after she commented unfavorably on their health care system. Haley, a savvy politician who as President Donald Trump's United Nations ambassador from 2017 until December 2018, regularly topped opinion polls as the most popular member of his administration, ignited the Finns when she tried to take a swipe at a tweet by Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders. Sanders, who has made universal health care one of his signature platforms, said it costs an average of $12,000 for a woman to have a baby in the United States, while in Finland it costs only $60. Haley, who is touted as a rising star in the Republican Party and a potential presidential candidate in 2024, shot back that, "Health care costs are too high that is true but comparing us to Finland is ridiculous. Ask them how their health care is. You won't like their answer." It is more likely that it is the former U.N. ambassador who does not like their answer. The reaction was immediate, with hundreds of people identifying themselves as Finns happy with their health care system offering statistics and anecdotes about how good it is. While personal income tax rates are very high 51.60 percent Finns get many services in return, not just health care. But for new mothers, the system offers comprehensive services. While the charge to the patient who gives birth is only $60, the government picks up the rest of the cost. In addition, new mothers receive a generous care package with clothes and baby care products. Mothers and their babies also get free medical checkups. Day care is heavily subsidized and mothers get at least four months' paid maternity leave. And according to the World Health Organization, Finland has the lowest maternal mortality rate in the world. South Carolina, which Haley governed from 2011-2017 when she left to join the Trump administration, has seen its maternal mortality rates drop slowly, but they still remain among the highest in the United States. There are also wide disparities in who is affected. Many more African-American mothers are likely to die from complications of childbirth than white mothers in the southern state. Haley's former counterpart at the United Nations, Finnish Ambassador Kai Sauer, also sent out a string of tweets touting his nation's health care system. He noted in addition to its strong record on preventing maternal mortality, Finland has the world's third-lowest infant mortality rate and the second-lowest mortality rate for cancer in the European Union. Sauer's tweets came several hours after Haley's original one and he apologized for that noting, "We were out celebrating our rank as the happiest country of the world." Since leaving her U.N. post at the end of December, Haley has been spending much of her time on the social media platform tweeting about lighter fare, including learning how to use the taxi service app Uber, her new favorite lipstick and her beloved dog, Bentley. She has also set up a new advocacy group, "Stand for America" that will focus on "promoting public policies that strengthen America's economy, culture, and national security." Last month, U.S. aerospace manufacturer Boeing announced that it had nominated Haley to join its board of directors. Company shareholders will vote on whether to give her a seat at their annual shareholders meeting on April 29. Boeing has recently come under intense scrutiny after two of its 737 Max aircraft crashed in the space of five months, killing all aboard. Haley, a strong advocate for Israel during her U.N. tenure, was recently honored by having a commemorative coin struck with her image on it by three Israeli religious organizations. According to the Associated Press, the coin features Haley's face set with the U.N. building in the background and goes for $65 in silver and $90 in gold. While at the U.N., Haley was a vocal supporter of Trump's decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; to slash funding to the U.N. agency that cares for Palestinian refugees; and to withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is seen by critics as overly focused on Israel. Haley is also hitting the lucrative speakers' circuit. Last week, she became the first woman to give the keynote address at the Society of The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, and June 3, she is scheduled to be the main speaker in Washington at the Campaign for Life Gala, which advocates against abortion. Last year, Trump delivered the keynote address. Haley's post at the United Nations remains unfilled nearly three months after her departure. Trump's first choice for the post, former State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, withdrew her name from the process. On Feb. 22, the president announced he would nominate Kelly Craft, a top Republican donor and U.S. ambassador to Canada, to the post, but her name has not yet been sent to the Senate for approval. Some 1,600 guests at hotels in 10 South Korean cities were secretly filmed and the footage livestreamed online for paying customers. South Korean police have arrested four men. Cameras were found hidden in digital TV boxes, wall sockets and hair dryers in 42 rooms in 30 hotels. The footage was sent to a site where more than 4,000 members paid $44.95 to watch. Police said it did not appear that the hotels were involved. There was a similar case in the past where illegal cameras were [secretly installed] and were consistently and secretly watched, but this is the first time the police caught where videos were broadcast live on the internet, police said in a statement. South Korea is no stranger to secret videotapings. In 2017, police received more than 6,400 complaints of illegal filming, up from 2,400 in 2012. Last year, tens of thousands of women protested across the country, under the slogan My Life is Not Your Porn. President Donald Trump said Thursday the United States is recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, the Syrian territory it captured in 1967's Six-Day War and has controlled since then. Trump, in a Twitter comment, said the Golan Heights "is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!" Trump's statement came while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Jerusalem, becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to visit the contested Western Wall in the holy city of Jerusalem accompanied by an Israeli leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The visit possibly signaled tacit U.S. recognition of Israeli control of the Jewish holy site, but it was quickly followed by Trump's specific announcement on the Golan Heights. WATCH: Trump: Time to Recognize Israeli Golan Heights Sovereignty Netanyahu has accused Iran of attempting to launch attacks on Israel from the Golan Heights, saying, "I think for this reason and many more, it is time that the international community recognizes Israel's stay on the Golan, and the fact that the Golan will always remain part of the State of Israel." The Israeli leader praised Trump's decision shortly after the president's announcement. "President Trump has just made history," Netanyahu said after calling the U.S. leader. "The message President Trump has given the world is that the United States stands by Israel. We are deeply grateful for the U.S. support." Last week, the U.S. State Department, in its annual human rights report, dropped the phrase "Israeli-occupied" from the Golan Heights section, instead calling it "Israeli-controlled." Pompeo told reporters the change in terminology was not accidental but rather a reflection of the reality on the ground that the Jewish state controlled the territory. In his visit to Jerusalem, Pompeo reaffirmed the long-standing U.S. friendship and support for Israel. Pompeo accused Tehran of seeking the "annihilation and destruction" of Israel. "With such threats a daily reality of Israeli life, we maintain our unparalleled commitment to Israel's security and firmly support your right to defend yourself," he told Netanyahu. The Golan Heights is about 1,800 square kilometers on the northeastern edge of Israel along its border with Syria, with about two-thirds of it controlled by Israel and the remainder under contested Syrian control. There have been numerous battles over the land during the eight-year Syrian Civil War. After the 1967 war, Israel formally annexed the territory in 1981. But the international community has not recognized that annexation and considers the Golan Heights as occupied territory. Trump and other former U.S. leaders and top U.S. officials have visited the Western Wall privately in the past but not with an Israeli leader. The Western Wall is located underneath the Old City's Muslim Quarter in eastern Jerusalem that was captured by the Israelis in the Six-Day War. But for decades, top U.S. officials have refrained from visiting the site with Israeli leaders to present a sense of impartiality in deciding eventual control of Jerusalem in the years of unresolved discussions over the creation of a Palestinian state. The Palestinians have sought to claim east Jerusalem as its capital of an eventual independent state, but Israel also considers Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital. "I think it's symbolic that a senior American official go there with a prime minister of Israel," Pompeo said. "It's a place that's important to many faiths, and I'm looking forward to it. I think it will be very special." Pompeo and Netanyahu viewed the wall and adjacent tunnels. The two officials stopped by a visitor's center to watch a virtual reality recreation of the Jewish temple that once stood on the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is revered by Jews as the holiest site in Judaism, which once housed the biblical temples. It is also home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, considered the third holiest site in Islam. The Western Wall website says that the tour of the tunnels "allows visitors to reach the segments of the Wall hidden from view, and to touch the original and special stones that tell the story of the Jewish nation." Pompeo's visit to the site and the recognition of the Israeli ownership of the Golan Heights could further inflame tensions between Palestinians and Israelis. The Palestinians have already severed ties with the U.S. over Washington's Jerusalem policies. Trump, early in his administration, abandoned long-standing U.S. policy by moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem after recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. When Trump did so, he said it did not determine the city's eventual borders, but Palestinians viewed the U.S. action as tipping the scales toward Israeli support and cut ties with the U.S. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, criticized Pompeo's visit to Israel absent any corresponding plans to meet with Palestinian officials. "While they are claiming to be trying to solve the conflict, such acts only make it more difficult to resolve," he said. Pompeo said, "The Israelis and Palestinians live side by side. We need to help them figure out how to do that. It's a fact, and this administration wishes well for the Palestinian people." While in the Old City, Pompeo, a devout Christian, also stopped at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where tradition says Jesus was crucified and resurrected. Pompeo visited Kuwait on the first leg of his five-day Middle East trip before heading to Israel and Lebanon, the last stop. Pompeo met formally with both Netanyahu and Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, reaffirming U.S. support for Israel and its right to defend itself against attacks. They also discussed how best to combat what the U.S. considers Iranian aggression in the Middle East. Trump is meeting with Netanyahu in Washington next week. Netanyahu's government is headed to a tough April 9 re-election contest as the prime minister is embroiled in a corruption investigation and faces allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Netanyahu has called the case against him a political "witch hunt." In comments to reporters en route to the Middle East, Pompeo dismissed the suggestion that his meeting with Netanyahu could be seen as the United States intruding in the Israeli election in support of the prime minister. A senior State Department official said last week that Pompeo would not be meeting with Netanyahu's opponents but with Netanyahu alone as the current head of the Israeli government. A day after Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced his resignation, the Central Asian nation south of Russia and northwest of China watched on live television as the outgoing president, seated at a position high above the stage, looked on as former chairman of the countrys Senate, Kassym-Jomart Kemelovich Tokayev, was sworn in as the countrys leader. Tokayev immediately took action to immortalize the name of our great contemporary by renaming the capital city and main avenues of cities and townships across the country after Nazarbayev, as well as erecting a monument in his honor. Another Nazarbayev on the rise The physical monument wont be the only reminder of the longtime rulers continued presence, according to observers. On the same day Tokayev took over the presidency, Nazarbayevs daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, who has held different roles within the Kazakh political establishment, was elected chairman of the Senate. The position is the first in line to assume the presidency should the current president step down or be removed, according to the constitution. Some experts see Nazarbayevs exit as less a graceful bowing out than a maneuver to exert continuing control over the countrys political process, as Joanna Lillis, a Kazakhstan-based journalist who authored Dark Shadows: Inside the Secret World of Kazakhstan, put it. William Courtney, an adjunct senior fellow at the RAND Corp. whose diplomatic career included serving as U.S. ambassador to both Kazakhstan and Georgia, categorizes the rise of Dariga Nazarbayeva as a setback for political development in Kazakhstan, adding opaque attempts to put in place dynastic rule unlikely to be popular or to endure. In an interview with VOA, Courtney, who credits Nazarbayev with helping his country achieve diplomatic and nonproliferation superstar status, raising Kazakhstans living standards and maintaining an openness to the outside world, thinks it is important now for Kazakhstan to begin allowing more open political debate and discussion. Some of the early steps to build confidence and foster consensus, in his opinion, ought to include releasing imprisoned journalists and allowing peaceful demonstrations and independent political parties. These steps will constitute a test of whether the Nazarbayev era is fading or only taking on a different structural form, Courtney said. Stepping up instead of down Even before Wednesdays announcements, some experts warned Nazarbayevs exit from the presidency is a step upward instead of downward, pointing to the Singapore model in which that countrys longtime ruler and founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, stayed behind the scenes as president mentor as his son, Lee Hsien Loong, rose to the nations top leadership position after an interlude in which a non-Lee governed Singapore. Dmitri Trenin, director of Carnegie Moscow Center, warns the president mentor models transcontinental reach may not end in Kazakhstan, but is also likely to be used in due course in Russia by Vladimir Putin. Nazarbayevs announcement to relinquish the presidency took many by surprise. Some experts believe that, despite his seeming intention to place his children in line to the presidency, Nazarbayev could have a largely positive legacy. Bruce Pannier, who has traveled in Central Asia extensively since 1990 and writes a blog for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, tells VOA that Nazarbayev enriched himself at the expense of his countrymen, rooted out legitimate political opposition and seriously curtailed the activities of independent media, Kazakhstan is not a free country. However, Pannier credits Nazarbayev with holding the multi-ethnic state together in the post-Soviet era that has witnessed much tumult in and around the region, and by balancing relations with Russia, China and the West, which is no easy feat. As Kazakhstan, along with many other nations in Central Asia and beyond, celebrate Nowruz, the start of spring and the beginning of a new year by the ancient Persian calendar, some experts caution that overdependence on Nazarbayevs legacy may not bode well in seasons to come. The sheer volume of joyful reactions (following Nazarbayevs announcement that he was stepping down as president) was startling and may be worrying news for those seeking to ride off the coattails of Nazarbayevs legacy, warns David Trilling, managing editor of Eurasianet. As former President Nazarbayev said in his farewell speech, delivered this past Tuesday, each generation has to tackle its own problems. The Kremlin on Thursday complained that flights by U.S. nuclear-capable B-52 strategic bombers across the Baltic Sea near Russia's borders were creating tensions in the region, but Washington said they were needed to deter potential adversaries. Russia's Defense Ministry said earlier on Thursday that it had scrambled two Sukhoi SU-27 fighter jets to intercept a U.S. B-52 strategic bomber which radar systems indicated was flying towards Russia's borders, albeit at a considerable distance. The ministry said the fighter jets had returned to base after the B-52 changed course and headed in the opposite direction. It did not say when the incident occurred. "In general, I will limit myself to only saying that of course such actions by the United States do not lead to a strengthening of an atmosphere of security and stability in the region that directly adjoins Russia's borders," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call. "On the contrary, they create additional tensions. Relations between Russia and NATO have been acutely strained since Moscow's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and its backing for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Russia accuses the Western military alliance of an unjustified military build-up near its borders, while NATO has condemned Moscow for building up its own forces in Crimea and the Black Sea region. The U.S. embassy in Poland said that B-52 bombers had flown to Lithuania and Poland on Wednesday to conduct interoperability training with NATO forces. It said the planes, which were temporarily based in Britain, had carried out simulated bombing runs. "Operating out of forward locations enables collective defense capabilities ... needed to deter adversaries and assure our allies and partners," it said in a statement. Russian media reported that a B-52 bomber was spotted close to the border with Russia's European exclave of Kaliningrad and the Leningrad region on Monday. At one point, the RBC news portal reported, the U.S. plane, which had flown from Britain, was less than 200 km (124 miles) from St. Petersburg. Another B-52 was spotted in the Baltic region on March 16, it added. Such flights, seen as a show of force designed to test response times and deter, are also carried out by Russia. Moscow sends its own nuclear-capable strategic bombers on similar missions, which NATO jets intercept in the same way. Middletown and Simsbury, Connecticut, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Liberty Bank, headquartered in Middletown, Connecticut and SBT Bancorp, Inc. headquartered in Simsbury, Connecticut (OTC: PNK: SBTB) jointly announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement for the merger of SBT Bancorp, Inc. and its subsidiary, The Simsbury Bank & Trust Company, with and into Liberty Bank. Under terms of the agreement, upon completion of the merger, each shareholder of SBT Bancorp, Inc. will receive $51.32 per share in cash, giving the transaction a value of approximately $71 million. The agreement has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Liberty Bank, SBT Bancorp, Inc. and The Simsbury Bank & Trust Company. SBT Bancorp, Inc., a bank holding company headquartered in Simsbury, Connecticut, is the parent company of The Simsbury Bank & Trust Company, a Connecticut chartered bank with assets of approximately $480 million and 5 full service branches in Hartford County. Liberty Bank is a Connecticut chartered mutual savings bank with $5.1 billion in assets and over $738 million in capital. Through its 55 branch network in Connecticut, Liberty Bank provides financial services to individuals, businesses, not-for-profit organizations and government entities through its commercial and consumer lending divisions, corporate services, retail banking and investment management services. The merger with The Simsbury Bank & Trust Company will expand our presence into new communities in Hartford County, including Avon, Bloomfield, Granby and Simsbury, said Liberty Bank President & CEO David W. Glidden. We look forward to the opportunity to expand our footprint, and through continued employee teamwork, will remain committed to exceeding the expectations of customers and giving back to the communities we serve. Simsbury Bank is an outstanding bank and we are excited to draw upon their talented team of banking professionals and their strengths in small business banking. The philosophy, culture, and footprint of these two franchises fit very well together. Martin J. Geitz, President and Chief Executive Officer, of SBT Bancorp, Inc. and The Simsbury Bank & Trust Company agrees and stated, In the years since Simsbury Bank opened its doors in April 1995, we have grown to become the leading bank by many measures in the markets we serve and one of the top performing banks in Connecticut. As we look to the future, we believe that in becoming part of Liberty Bank our shareholders, customers, employees and communities will benefit from Libertys commitment to Connecticut, and the advantages that its scale brings in technology, commercial lending capacity and competitiveness. The transaction is subject to approval by the shareholders of SBT Bancorp, Inc., as well as customary regulatory approvals, including the State of Connecticut Department of Banking and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The transaction is expected to close in September of 2019. Liberty Bank was represented by Cranmore, FitzGerald & Meaney, Hartford, CT. SBT Bancorp, Inc. was advised by Piper Jaffray & Co. and its legal counsel was Day Pitney, LLP, Hartford, CT. About Liberty Bank Established in 1825, Liberty Bank is Connecticuts oldest bank, with more than $5.1 billion in assets and 55 banking offices throughout the central, eastern, western and shoreline areas of the state. As a full-service financial institution, Liberty offers consumer and commercial banking, home mortgages, insurance, and investment services. Named in 2019 as one of the Worlds Best Banks, ranking 4th in the United States by Forbes and a Top Workplace by the Hartford Courant for seven consecutive years, Liberty maintains a longstanding commitment to superior personal service and unparalleled community involvement. For more information about Liberty Bank, visit www.liberty-bank.com. About SBT Bancorp SBT Bancorp, Inc. is the parent company of wholly-owned The Simsbury Bank & Trust Company, Inc., a Central Connecticut based independent community bank for businesses and consumers with assets of $480 million. SBT Bancorp, Inc. stock is traded on the OTC Pink marketplace under the ticker symbol SBTB. For more information, visit www.simsburybank.com. Special Note Concerning Forward-Looking Statements Forward-looking Information: Any forward-looking statements regarding Liberty Banks acquisition of SBT Bancorp, Inc. involve uncertainties. Those uncertainties include, but are not limited to: legislation or changes in regulatory requirements, shareholder actions, technical or systems issues affecting dates of consummation or conversion, costs or difficulties related to the integration, realization of expected synergies from the acquisition, and general economic conditions that are less favorable than expected. Neither Liberty Bank nor SBT Bancorp, Inc. undertakes any obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the date on which such statements are made. This press release does not constitute a solicitation of proxies. SBT Bancorp, Inc. will mail its shareholders a proxy statement and other relevant documents concerning the proposed transaction. Shareholders of SBT Bancorp, Inc. are urged to read the proxy statement and any amendments or supplements to such document, because they will contain important information which you should consider before making any decision regarding the transaction. You will be able to obtain a free copy of the proxy statement, as well as other filings containing information about SBT Bancorp, Inc. at its website (www.simsburybank.com). Copies of the proxy statement may also be obtained without charge, when available, by directing a request to SBT Bancorp, Inc., 86 Hopmeadow Street, Weatogue, CT 06089. SBT Bancorp, Inc. and its directors and executive officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the shareholders of SBT Bancorp, Inc. in connection with the acquisition. Information about the directors and executive officers of SBT Bancorp, Inc. and their ownership of SBT Bancorp, Inc. common stock is available at the SBT Bancorp, Inc. website noted above. Additional information regarding the interests of such participants in the transaction will be contained in the proxy statement when it becomes available. ### Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad arrived Thursday in Pakistan on an official three-day visit, where his high-powered delegation is expected to finalize investment deals worth nearly $900 million, officials said. The Malaysian leader will also be the chief guest at the Pakistan Day military parade Saturday, the Foreign Ministry announced. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's adviser on commerce told reporters that business leaders accompanying Mahathir would sign three memorandums of understanding on Friday covering up to $900 million worth of investments in information technology and telecom sectors. The adviser, Razak Dawood, said the deals with Malaysia would also provide Pakistan a new opening toward membership in the Association of South East Asian Nations. He said Malaysian businessmen had also indicated they would like to invest in other sectors, including energy and textiles, to help Pakistan improve its exports. Officials said that Malaysia's Proton carmaker signed an agreement late last year with a Pakistani partner to set up an assembly plant in the southern city of Karachi that would be its first facility in South Asia. Khan and his Malaysian counterpart are expected to officiate at a symbolic groundbreaking of the Proton plant Friday. Looking for investors Since taking office last August, Khan has approached nations that have warm relations with Pakistan, including China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Malaysia, to bring investment and financial deposits to help reduce a widening current account deficit and shore up foreign reserves. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have deposited or are in the process of depositing $6 billion in loans in recent months. The two countries have also agreed to allow Islamabad to import oil on deferred payments. China is expected to deposit more than $2 billion in the next few days. Beijing has invested more than $19 billion over the past six years in energy and infrastructure projects under what is known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, as part of its global Belt and Road Initiative. Last month, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman visited Islamabad and signed investment agreements worth $20 billion, including a $10 billion refinery and petrochemicals complex in the southwestern port city of Gwadar. Pakistani officials say they are also close to securing a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout package reportedly of up to $12 billion. Democratic congressional leaders have, for the time being, ruled out pursuing impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. That could all change depending on what is in the eagerly awaited report on the Russia investigation being prepared by special counsel Robert Mueller. On his way to Ohio Wednesday, Trump told reporters outside the White House that the public should have access to the Mueller report. Let it come out. Let the people see, Trump said. Lets see whether or not it is legit. The decision by Democratic congressional leaders to pass on impeachment seems to be mindful of recent history, especially the Republican-led impeachment effort against President Bill Clinton in 1998. In announcing her opposition to impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said simply that Trump wasnt worth it. Pelosi is sticking to her position despite pressure from liberal activists. Impeachment is a divisive issue in our country, and let us see what the facts are, what the law is, and what the behavior is of the president, Pelosi recently told reporters at the Capitol. WATCH: Mindful of History, Democrats Hold off on Impeaching Trump Trump: Great job For President Trump, the idea of impeachment is, not surprisingly, a non-starter. Well, you cant impeach somebody that is doing a great job. That is the way I view it, Trump said when asked about the issue in January. Late last year, Trump told Reuters that he was not concerned about impeachment. I think that the people would revolt if that happened, he said. Trumps Republican allies in Congress are also poised to leap to his defense. I dont think it is good for the country, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters last week. The Democrats made a decision (to want to impeach) on the day President Trump one. Some Democrats want to keep pushing, including former Hillary Clinton senior adviser Philippe Reines. Reines wrote recently in the New York Times that Democrats would be doing a civic duty to pursue impeachment. There is a mounting political cost to not impeaching Mr. Trump, Reines wrote last week. He will hail it as exoneration and he will go into the 2020 campaign under the banner, I Told You So. Polls say no Recent polls show most voters do not favor impeachment at this time. A Quinnipiac University poll earlier this month found that 59 percent of those surveyed do not think House Democrats should initiate impeachment proceedings against the president, while 35 percent support the idea. Given that the 2020 election cycle is underway, Democrats may prefer to have the voters try to oust Trump during next years election, according to George Washington University analyst Matt Dallek. By the time impeachment proceedings were even to ramp up, you are talking about the end of 2019 or early 2020, Dallek told VOA this week. That creates its own complication because there is another remedy for removing a president and it is called the election. Political risk Democrats clearly recall what happened to Bill Clinton in 1998. Clinton lied about and tried to cover up his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, which led to his impeachment by the House. Clinton remained in office after he was acquitted in a trial in the Senate. Historically, impeachment has been a rare event. Clinton was only the second president impeached by the House. Andrew Johnson was the first back in 1868. Johnson avoided removal by a single vote in the Senate. Presidential impeachments have been rare and that is by design, according to University of Virginia expert Larry Sabato. They (the founders) did not want presidents impeached and convicted and thrown out of office for minor offenses. They expected Congress to do it only in extreme circumstances. Republicans paid a price for the Clinton impeachment, losing five House seats in the 1998 midterm elections. And Sabato said that lesson could have resonance for Democrats today as they mull impeaching Trump. Given the fact that the Republicans took a wounded Bill Clinton and made him almost invulnerable for the rest of his term, it should serve as a warning to Democrats, he said. Experts also note that the damage to Republicans from the Clinton impeachment was not long-lasting. George W. Bush narrowly beat Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, and the political fallout from Clintons scandal may have cost Gore the presidency. Senate obstacle The biggest obstacle facing any impeachment effort of Trump is the Republican-controlled Senate. Democrats would have to bring over at least 20 Republican senators in any impeachment trial in order to get a conviction and remove the president from office. A vote to impeach a president only requires a majority vote in the House, now controlled by Democrats. But in a Senate trial, it would take 67 of 100 senators to vote for conviction in order to remove the president from office, and Democrats concede that is not a possibility at the moment. It has less than zero chance of passing the Senate, Sabato said. Why would you go through all this in the House of Representatives, torpedo your entire agenda to impeach Trump in order to send it to the Senate to have him exonerated and not convicted? Nixon case President Richard Nixon was not impeached over the Watergate scandal in 1974, but the process was well underway. The House began impeachment proceedings through the House Judiciary Committee and was preparing to move Articles of Impeachment to the House floor when Nixon decided to resign. Several Republican senators including Barry Goldwater went to the White House and made it clear to Nixon that he had lost Republican support and would not survive an impeachment trial in the Senate. Some analysts predict that President Trump could face renewed calls for his ouster depending on the findings of special counsel Robert Muellers report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election. I think if the Mueller report indicates some serious wrongdoing by the president and his campaign, it really empowers Democrats to begin deliberating how to move forward with impeachment proceedings, said Brookings Institution scholar John Hudak. But other experts caution that it would have to be something quite serious for Republicans to even consider abandoning the president. Given the lack of bipartisan support for impeachment at the moment, it does seem more likely that Trump will face the voters again in 2020 before he has to contend with a Democratic-led impeachment inquiry in the House. The government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is promising to free all protesters arrested in the last year within 90 days. The release of more than 700 opposition protesters had been the main demand of the opposition for continuing talks with the government. In return, the government is asking for the lifting of sanctions imposed against the Ortega administration. The announcement was made Wednesday by the two independent figures who are monitoring and assisting the talks. The papal nuncio in Nicaragua and a representative of the Organization of American States said the talks would resume Thursday, after several days of tension. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, at least 325 people have died in protests or related violence since April 2018. A Pakistani court sentenced a Czech national to over eight years in prison, more than a year after her being arrested in the eastern city of Lahore for allegedly trafficking eight and a half kilograms of heroin. Tereza Hluskova, a 22-year-old model, has denied the charges and announced plans to file an appeal against the decision following the court's decision on Wednesday. "We will file an appeal against the decision because I am sure that she has a very strong case, and hopefully, god willing... she will be acquitted from the charge," her lawyer Sardar Asghar Dogar told AFP Thursday. Hluskova was arrested in Lahore last January, with footage released by Pakistani customs officials showing authorities uncovering drugs hidden in her suitcase as she was trying to board a flight headed for the United Arab Emirates. Footage from the court showed Hluskova breaking down and crying as her sentence was read. Drug trafficking is considered a serious offense in Pakistan and arrests at airports with such cases are not uncommon. Pakistan shares a long porous border with Afghanistan, which is the world's largest illicit opium producer despite a decade of costly multi-billion U.S. and international counter-narcotics programs. Heroin continues to be trafficked from Afghanistan through Pakistan into Europe and North America. The country is also part of the smuggling routes to Central Asian countries with the restive tribal areas on Pakistan's border with Afghanistan convenient routes for traffickers to smuggle in narcotics undetected. The Gulf has become an increasingly important market for illicit drugs in recent years, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says, with Pakistani traffickers frequently executed in Saudi Arabia for the crime. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hopes to use his first visit to Lebanon this week to step up pressure on Iran and its local ally, Hezbollah. But he could face resistance even from Americas local allies, who fear that pushing too hard could spark a backlash and endanger the tiny countrys fragile peace. Hezbollah wields more power than ever in parliament and the government. Pompeo will meet Friday with President Michel Aoun and will also hold talks with Lebanons parliament speaker and foreign minister, all three of whom are close Hezbollah allies. He will also meet with Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a close Western ally who has been reluctant to confront Hezbollah. Well spend a lot of time talking with the Lebanese government about how we can help them disconnect from the threat that Iran and Hezbollah present to them, Pompeo told reporters earlier this week. Hezbollah outguns Lebanese army But isolating Hezbollah, whose military power dwarfs that of the Lebanese armed forces, could prove impossible. The Iran-backed group has an arsenal of tens of thousands of rockets and missiles. Its battle-hardened cadres fought Israel to a stalemate in 2006, and have fought alongside President Bashar Assads army since the early days of the Syrian civil war, securing a string of hard-won victories. Over the past year, the group has translated this power into major political gains unseen in the past. Hezbollah and its allies today control a majority of seats in parliament and the Cabinet, after it managed in 2016 to help Aoun, an allied Christian leader, be elected president. The group has three Cabinet seats, the largest number it has ever taken, including the Health Ministry, which has one of the largest budgets. Washington can't push too hard That has angered Washington, where U.S. officials have called on Hariris national unity government to ensure Hezbollah does not tap into public resources. Last month, U.S. Ambassador Elizabeth Richard expressed concerns over Hezbollahs growing role in the new Cabinet, saying it does not contribute to stability. Lebanon has long been a political battleground in the region-wide struggle between Washington and Tehran. But tensions have risen since President Donald Trump withdrew from Irans nuclear deal with world powers and re-imposed sanctions on Tehran. The United States backs a coalition of groups opposed to Hezbollah led by Hariris Sunni-led Future Movement and the right-wing Christian Lebanese Forces, but Washingtons local allies are proceeding with caution. Memories are fresh of the clashes that erupted in May 2008, when the Shiite Hezbollah rapidly defeated a group of Sunni opponents on the streets of Beirut. Washington should be careful not to push Lebanon to the brink, as Hezbollah would retaliate if its survival is at stake, said Joe Macaron, a resident fellow at the Arab Center in Washington. In the current status quo, the most effective way to restrain Hezbollah remains within the intricate parameters of the Lebanese political system, he said. The Trump administration appears to be aware of the difficulties it faces, and while it has talked tough about Hezbollah, it has done little beyond strengthening already tough sanctions on the group, which has long been blacklisted as a terrorist organization by Western countries. US supports Lebanese army The United States is a strong supporter of Lebanons national army, supplying it with arms and more than $1.5 billion in aid over the past decade. But Hezbollah, the only group that did not disarm after the 1975-1990 civil war, takes credit for ending the 18-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000 and says it is the only force capable of repelling another Israeli invasion. During his visit to Lebanon, Pompeo is expected to reiterate Washingtons support to the Lebanese army. In return, he is expected to demand that Lebanons Central Bank act to prevent Iran from using the countrys banking sector to evade sanctions. Asked by journalists on his way to the Middle East about his meetings with Aoun, who helped facilitate Hezbollahs rise to power, Pompeo responded: In my business we talk to a lot of people that were hoping to change their way. Aoun is scheduled to visit Russia later this month for talks with President Vladimir Putin. The two are expected to discuss a number of topics, including the return of Syrian refugees and oil and gas exploration in the Mediterranean, which has been a source of tension between Lebanon and Israel. Pompeo will likely offer continued U.S. mediation to try and resolve the maritime border dispute between Lebanon and Israel. Lebanon plans to begin offshore oil and gas exploration later this year. Passenger rail traffic along a popular Missouri route was suspended and evacuations continued Wednesday amid flooding along the Missouri River. Amtrak said Tuesday that it was temporarily halting its Missouri River Runner Service between Kansas City and St. Louis. Because of the flooding, it said, freight traffic was being diverted to tracks Amtrak uses. Buses were transporting passengers instead. Crews with Union Pacific worked for hours to get rail traffic back to normal in Nebraska and other states hit hard by floodwaters from a massive late-winter storm last week, said the company's spokeswoman, Raquel Espinoza. The Missouri River already crested upstream of Rulo, Neb., and the water was expected to make its way downstream in coming days, cresting Thursday in St. Joseph at its third-highest level on record. More than a dozen levees have breached in Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has handed out hundreds of thousands of sandbags to help with the flood fight. Three dead, two missing The surging waters have damaged hundreds of homes and been blamed for two deaths in Nebraska and one in Iowa. Two other Nebraska residents, including a man who was last seen on top of his car near a levee, remain missing, authorities said Wednesday. The flooding has also taken a heavy toll on agriculture, inundating tens of thousands of acres, threatening stockpiled grain and killing livestock. In northwest Missouri, a levee breached Tuesday and unleashed a torrent that overwhelmed a temporary berm that was built up with excavators and sandbags to protect the small town of Craig, where the 220 residents have been ordered to evacuate. "They've got water running down Main Street," said Tom Bullock, emergency management director of Holt County, where Craig is located. Water also was lapping at the edge of the tiny community of Fortescue, and another levee was at risk of breaching and potentially flooding Forest City. "Every levee we have just about is busted," Bullock said. Some of the levees have broken in multiple spots, with some breaches hundreds of feet wide, said Mike Dulin, emergency management specialist for the Army Corps of Engineers' Kansas City district. He said the agency also was monitoring several other levees between Holt County and Kansas City. The 130 residents of Missouri's Lewis and Clark Village continued evacuating Wednesday amid road closures. Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday surveyed flooded areas in Nebraska. He promised expedited action on presidential disaster declarations in that state and Iowa, where water is being trucked into several communities because floodwaters forced the shutdown of water treatment plants. Flooding also has forced the Air Force to cancel the 2019 Defenders of Freedom Open House and Air Show at Offutt Air Force Base south of Omaha. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Weather Prediction Center said Wednesday that flooding also is a concern across parts of the northwest, northern Rockies and High Plains as warm temperatures this week are leading to accelerated snowmelt and the potential for ice jams. The Red Cross says it its deploying two major emergency response units to the port city of Beira in Mozambique to provide services for thousands of people affected by last weeks Cyclone Idai, one of the most destructive storms to hit southern Africa in decades. One unit is expected to provide basic sanitation facilities for up to 20,000 people, and the other is expected to produce as much as 225,000 liters of clean water each day, enough to help 15,000 people struggling to survive the massive flooding that has followed the storm. Jamie LeSueur, head of Red Cross operations in Mozambique, said in a statement that aid workers are most concerned about preventing the spread of waterborne disease. She said the emergency response deliveries will help protect against that. More help is needed, and we are continuing to do all we can to bring in more resources and reach more people, she said. Helicopters are conducting food drops over villages that were destroyed and cut off from the outside world after the cyclone hit Beira, then swept inland to neighboring Zimbabwe and Malawi. Aid officials say an untold number of survivors are clinging to treetops or are trapped on rooftops of houses that remain submerged by floodwaters. Death toll expected to increase The combined death toll in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi has risen to at least 437 people, a number that is expected to climb as the floodwaters recede and search crews enter the damaged areas. The U.N. says the official death tolls from the governments are: Mozambique, 242; Zimbabwe, 39; and Malawi, 56. President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique has said he expects the death toll to exceed 1,000 in his nation alone. Mozambique began three days of official mourning Wednesday. Aid agencies said they were prepared for the cyclone but not the massive floods that followed. Mozambique was hardest hit as a result of rivers flowing downstream from its neighbors. In Beira, Manuel Jeque Francisco said he hopes to rebuild the private Young Leaders School that he directs. It serves 150 students from preschool through third grade. Since my school was all destroyed, the 30-year-old told VOA in a phone interview, he has begun a fundraising campaign on his Facebook page. Just help us bring back the smiles of our students, he asked. Aid donations The U.N. World Food Program said it was transporting enough aid for 600,000 people across the three nations. The U.N. said it has allocated $20 million from its central emergency response fund and urged other donors to contribute. Now that the flood waters are coming down, we are shifting to a different stage in the response, said Gemma Connell, the head of office of the U.N.s humanitarian regional office for Southern and Eastern Africa. This stage is that we have to get the response that we can to everyone in need through a combination of air and on ground, but we have to do that cognizant of the restraints we face. She said aid workers need fuel and other essentials to keep the response operation running smoothly. The African Union has contributed $350,000 to the three storm-stricken countries. The European Union announced an initial aid package valued at nearly $4 million. Britain and the United Arab Emirates have also promised aid. The Indian Defense Forces have sent a medical team and South Africas Air Force has been assisting with search and rescue operations. The U.S. State Department said the United States is supporting relief efforts in coordination with our partners. The U.S. Agency for International Development said in a statement Wednesday that it has mobilized $700,000 in total assistance to support emergency water, sanitation, hygiene and shelter needs in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Eye-witness accounts In Zimbabwes hard-hit eastern province of Manicaland, a teacher in the city and district of Chimanimani said the cyclone has left him totally traumatized at the moment. The man, who declined to give his name in his voicemail account for VOAs Zimbabwe Service, said he was sleeping when the rain began during the night. Then came strong winds, he said. That wind is what brought the heavy volume of water. I dont know how we managed to escape, but we managed to survive with the kids, but it was tough. There were other people who were with us at the school. It hurt, I dont want to lie to you! The cyclone also has uprooted Mai Manzu, whose home was in Buhera, another district in Manicaland. My house was taken by Cyclone Idai, she said in a voicemail, adding that her uncle also lost his home. Both had been staying in Gutu to help ailing relatives. While they were gone, Everything has been washed away, including the food. While Zimbabwes President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his administration have faced criticism over an alleged lack of preparedness for and slow response to the crisis, a caller in Bulawayo expressed only gratitude. Really, they are trying and the guys are on the ground, trying to do everything, a man named Mokem said in a WhatsApp voicemail to VOAs Zimbabwe Service. ... But of course there are some people who will always find wrong things out of everything youve done. I want to thank the government of Zimbabwe, I want to thank Mnangagwa for the effort. I mean, its evident that hes trying, left, right and center, to help the situation. Contributors include the VOA Africa Divisions Ndimyake Mwakalyelye (Zimbabwe Service), Amancio Vilanculos (Portuguese Service), Margaret Besheer at the United Nations and Carol Guensburg. The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. In Southern Thailand, a high voter turnout is expected for Sundays election, where anti-military sentiment prevails in the region. But voters and opposition politicians are concerned that a government curb on voices of dissent will result in another term of military rule. It may be almost over for the last enclave of Islamic State fighters in Syria, but the latest humanitarian crisis unfolding in the region is rapidly growing. On Wednesday, 2,000 more women and children arrived at al-Hol camp in northern Syria after evacuating the battle zone in Baghuz, and many were sick or injured. Aid groups say 12 people died and 60 more were immediately hospitalized, as they prepared for 3,000 more new arrivals. "These women and children are in the worst condition we have seen since the crisis first began," Wendy Taeuber, International Rescue Committee's Iraq and northeast Syria country director, said in a statement Thursday. "Many have been caught up in the fighting, and dozens have been burned or badly injured by shrapnel." The death toll among recent Baghuz evacuees is now close to 140, IRC says, with most of the victims being babies or small children. Aid workers say they "have stopped guessing" how many more people will come out of Baghuz as the crisis grows far beyond all expectations. Al-Hol camp was originally built to hold 10,000 people, according to the World Health Organization. The current population stands at more than 72,000 people, mostly women and children related to IS militants. Many of the families retreated with the fighters for months or years as Syrian, Iraqi and coalition forces took back the land IS called their "caliphate." "We had strict rules," said Umm Ibrahim, as her four children napped by their luggage in the desert near Baghuz, only hours after fleeing the battle in late February. "Women had to wear veils, and men could be beaten if they shaved their beards. But most people didn't have problems." Ideology lives on In recent days, internationally backed Syrian forces have closed in on IS fighters, who are now surrounded, on a sliver of land near the Euphrates River. The ideas and grievances that led to the creation of IS, however, are long from conquered, according to Sheikh Humaydi Daham Al-Hadi, a prominent tribal and provincial leader in northern Syria. And battles that were characterized by massive airstrikes and the current suffering of women and children in overcrowded camps could draw more sympathy for the group, which has continued to issue threats and stage attacks in Syria almost every day. "The battle may be ending, but the problem will continue in a different way," he said. "And individual attacks can be even more dangerous than fighting with a comprehensive enemy." Inside al-Hol camp, some wives and children of IS fighters are quick to vow to rebuild Islamic State. In the meantime, the women say they feel cast aside and accused as the forces that defeated their militants are now in charge of the camps and detention centers where they are all living. "We were much more comfortable inside Baghuz," said Intesar, a mother of four inside a large muddy tent at the camp in early March. "Even when there was more bombing, we felt safer because no one was watching our every move." Aid organizations say there is no grand plan to relocate the families to more permanent or comfortable homes. Unchecked, this isolation could be a factor in raising the next generation of extremists in the region, according to Rashid Darwesh Safti, a senior camp manager for the Barzani Charity Foundation in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq. "The next generation could be harder and more extreme than the last," he said in his office at the Hassan Sham camp in Iraq in late February. "I recently saw a small child making a doll from the mud," Safti added. "He took a stick and cut off the doll's head and said, God is Great.'" A report to the U.N. Human Rights Council says nascent peace talks in Afghanistan offer a glimmer of hope to a country that has been at war for decades. The United Nations said 2018 was a particularly deadly year in the war between the government of Afghanistan and Taliban insurgents. It said nearly 11,000 civilians were killed and injured, including 927 children, the highest number since 2009. The U.N. blamed the Taliban and other terrorist groups for most of the casualties. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour said, with the exception of Islamic State in Afghanistan, all parties to the conflict appear to be taking measures to mitigate harm to civilians. But he said additional concrete steps are needed. He welcomed the Afghan government's proposal last year for unconditional peace talks with the Taliban, saying this offers a glimmer of hope for peace. "The country witnessed a large-scale civic movement, demanding that the armed groups renounce violence and engage in peace negotiations," he added. "Civil society and women's groups also began mobilizing around human and women's rights concerns, pressing for the inclusion and meaningful participation of women in any peace process." That is unlikely to happen as the Afghan government has been cut out of the peace talks that began in the last quarter of 2018 between the United States and the Taliban. The militant group refuses to negotiate with the Afghan government, which it considers illegitimate. Afghan leaders are furious at not being included in the peace negotiations. They accuse the Afghan-born American diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad, who leads the talks, of blocking them from playing a role in planning their future. The U.S. government rejects the accusation. Gilmour made no mention of the claim. Instead, he weighed in on the importance of the talks to ensure human rights gains made by Afghans. He said no compromises must be made on issues of equality, non-discrimination, women's rights and the criminalization of torture. Under Taliban rule in the 1990s, women and girls were denied their human rights. They were forced to wear the burqa and be under the guardianship of a male. They were banned from going to school, to work, and engaging in politics. Afghan first secretary and Charge d'affairs Hamid Formuli said his country is committed to upholding and protecting women's rights. In response to criticism from Gilmour, he said the Afghan government has undertaken measures to prevent and combat violence against women. OAKVILLE, Ontario, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- For those who take the risk of driving after consuming alcohol, cannabis and/or other drugs, there could well be no tomorrow. That is the hard-hitting and emotional message delivered in a new School Assembly Program from MADD Canada and generously supported by Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI) and Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA). The program, titled No Tomorrow, educates students in Grades 7 12 about the risks and consequences of driving under the influence of alcohol, cannabis or other drugs. No Tomorrows tour of Saskatchewan schools is being highlighted with a special screening at Thom Collegiate in Regina on March 25. SGI and SLGA generously sponsor a total of 85 presentations to students and schools around the province. Media are welcome to attend the screening and speak with special guests, students and staff. Date: Monday, March 25 at 10:00 a.m. Location: Thom Collegiate, 265 Argyle St. N, Regina, SK S4R 4C7 Guests: The Honourable Joe Hargrave, Minister Responsible for SGI The Honourable Gene Makowsky, Minister Responsible for SLGA Dawn Regan, MADD Canada Chief Operating Officer No Tomorrow tells the story of bandmates Marcus, Corey, Trevor and Lee. After winning a contest to record a demo, they get an incredible chance to audition for a music school. Before their audition, Trevor has a few drinks. He is affected more than he thinks, and makes mistakes during the audition. Marcus is offered a spot at the school right away, and Corey and Lee are given an opportunity to re-apply next year. But Trevor, who was obviously impaired during the audition, is not offered a spot or chance to re-apply. The school has a zero tolerance policy for alcohol or drugs. Trevor storms off to the car. Marcus tries unsuccessfully to take the keys. Realizing he cant stop Trevor from driving away, Marcus jumps in the car. What happens next changes all of their lives forever. This fictional story is followed by powerful interviews with real-life victims who talk about their loved ones who were killed or seriously and permanently injured in impaired driving crashes. For more information, or to check out a clip from No Tomorrow, please visit https://madd.ca/pages/programs/youth-services/school-programs/no-tomorrow/ . The U.N. will sponsor a conference on Libya next month that could spell out the details of the long-awaited elections in the divided and troubled country. If the opportunity presented by the National Conference is not seized, then we will be faced with only two options: prolonged stalemate or conflict, special envoy Ghassan Salame told the Security Council by videoconference from Tripoli Wednesday. He said the conference scheduled for April 14-16 in Ghadames is an opportunity to step back from the edge of this precipice. The leaders of the two rival administrations have agreed to set the stage for general elections and have also discussed a possible power-sharing agreement. But a recent surge in violence and the threat of all-out military conflict has put a damper on any goodwill that might have developed. Salame told the Security Council that the humanitarian situation and infrastructure in Libya are deteriorating at an alarming rate and that water production in the largely desert country is particularly fragile. He said 823,000 people, including a number of migrants and children, need humanitarian aid. Libya has been in social and political turmoil since dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled and killed in 2011. A Western-backed administration in Tripoli and a rival pro-military government in the east are jockeying for power and control of the countrys oil wealth, along with a number of armed militias. A United Nations report finds migrants are being subjected to what it calls unimaginable horrors from the moment they enter Libya. The report by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights has been submitted to the U.N. human rights council in Geneva. U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Andrew Gilmour, who presented the report, says the accounts of torture and abuse suffered by refugees and migrants are among the most harrowing he has ever heard. He says a few weeks ago, in Niger, he met with migrants and refugees recently freed from detention in Libya. "Every one of them women, men, boys and girls had been raped, many repeatedly and tortured by electrocution," Gilmour said. "All testified about the widespread extortion technique, whereby the torturers force their victims to call their families, who are then subjected to the screams of their loved ones there which, they are told, will continue until they pay a ransom. He says the perpetrators of the atrocities include smugglers, traffickers, Libyan state officials and members of armed groups. Hundreds of thousands of African migrants have passed through Libya in recent years, trying to reach Europe. But European countries have grown increasingly hostile to the migration and work with the Libyan Coast Guard to intercept migrant ships in the Mediterranean. He warns that the migrants and refugees are returned to Libyan detention centers where they are tortured and subjected to other human rights violations. Gilmour is calling for an end to restrictions that prohibit nonprofit groups from rescuing the migrants at sea. He also urges the European Union to end its support of the Libyan Coast Guard. Libyan Charge daffaires Adel Shaltut reacted to Gilmours criticism with astonishment. He said he was surprised that the report shows no appreciation for the contributions his country was making in assisting migrants who transit through Libya. He says migrants are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse because they are illegal. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) denied a report Thursday that all of Islamic States final enclave has been captured after a Kurdish media outlet said the jihadist group had been finally defeated there. Combing continues in the Baghuz camp and there is no truth (to the report) about the complete liberation of the village, an SDF media official said, quoting the commanders of the offensive. Earlier, Hawar News reported the SDF had liberated all of Baghuz from the Daesh mercenaries and with that the campaign had ended with the defeat of Daesh and the victory of the SDF, quoting its correspondents. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. Islamic States final defeat at Baghuz will end its territorial rule that once spanned a third of Iraq and Syria. The SDF on Tuesday captured an encampment where the jihadists had been mounting a last defense of the tiny enclave, pushing diehard fighters onto a sliver of land at the Euphrates riverside. U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that a tiny spot of remaining IS territory would be gone by tonight. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, whose country has participated in the campaign, said Wednesday he expected the announcement of the final territorial defeat to be made in the next few days. A series of airstrikes late Thursday slammed into two pockets of Islamic State fighters trying to cling to the last scraps of land to be part of the terror group's self-declared caliphate. The strikes followed nearly two days of clearing operations in the northeastern Syrian town of Baghuz, where hundreds of IS fighters surrendered earlier this week to U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. A media official with the YPG, a Kurdish militia that has been supporting the SDF offensive, said some of the strikes targeted one group of IS fighters who had been pushed to the edge of the Euphrates River. The rest were aimed at a second group that had taken cover by a mountain on the outskirts of the town. 'Hard fight' But despite the bombardments, the U.S.-led coalition said late Thursday that IS was putting up a "hard fight." "Daesh is showing that they intend to keep fighting for as long as possible," the coalition said in a statement to VOA, using the Arabic acronym for the terror group. The coalition also accused IS of deliberately putting the remaining civilians in harm's way. "Daesh continues to resort to gruesome tactics like suicide attacks and using children as human shields," it said. Aid groups, like the International Rescue Committee, have called on the SDF and the coalition to minimize the danger to any women and children still in the IS-held areas. "Everything must be done to ensure that they are kept out of the line of fire," the IRC's Wendy Taeuber said in a statement early Thursday, noting that some of the thousands of women and children who evacuated Baghuz in recent days were now just arriving at the displaced persons camp in al-Hol. Other groups, like the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, alleged Thursday that hundreds of civilians had been killed in an earlier round of airstrikes. The coalition said it was aware of the allegations and would investigate, but "we have seen no signs that the numbers being reported are true." Earlier Thursday, SDF fighters swept through the rubble in what was left of the IS enclave. Sources close to SDF leadership told VOA that almost all of the area above ground had been cleared, but that the U.S.-backed troops were searching for additional IS fighters who might still be lurking in trenches and in a complex system of caves and tunnels. Long, large passageways The tunnels, which are thought to run for at least two kilometers, seemingly helped hide tens of thousands of people, mostly IS fighters and their families, through much of the early part of the SDF offensive. Officials said some of the tunnels were large enough to accommodate vehicles. And there were indications certain tunnels even might extend into neighboring Iraq. SDF officials said their advance had also been slowed at times by mines, as well as concerns that many areas would be booby-trapped. "Our forces are still conducting combing and search operations, and as soon as they are finished, we will announce the liberation," SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali said in a note to journalists. IS, though, remained defiant, releasing a new video Thursday showing scenes from inside Baghuz, while a fighter identifying himself as Abu al-Harith al-Ansari mocked U.S. efforts to destroy the terror group. "The banner has been elevated, and the Ummah, whose sons are racing to martyrdom, does not know defeat," al-Ansari said, according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group. "Those who are bewildered and think that our caliphate is over ... we will say that it's remaining and expanding, Allah willing, as long as it is on the right path," he added. Anticipation for a final declaration of victory has been building, especially in Washington, where President Donald Trump promised Wednesday that the IS caliphate would be "gone by tonight." But U.S. military officials have been wary of declaring victory too soon, pointing to numerous predictions over the past several months that all proved to be premature. "We will continue fighting with our partners and allies, hunting ISIS wherever they may be," Pentagon spokesman Charles Summers told reporters Thursday, using an acronym for the terror group. "The amount of territory they've held is smaller and smaller and smaller," he added. Thousands of SDF troops have massed around Baghuz for weeks, laying siege to the town in an effort to liberate the final IS enclave in Syria. Officials said Kurdish special forces from Iraq also had been brought in to help with the operations. Since then, SDF officials say, more than 5,000 IS fighters have surrendered or been captured, while another 1,300 have been killed. In all, upward of 30,000 civilians, mostly family members of IS fighters, have fled Baghuz since the offensive began, and 5,000 left in just the past week. Many fighters remain Even once an official announcement is made, U.S. military officials cautioned that IS still had "tens of thousands" of fighters working either as part of sleeper cells or as part of an active, clandestine insurgency. Additionally, senior officials said they thought most of the group's senior leadership, including its self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, remained at large. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb contributed to this report. Information from Reuters also was used in this report. China says a high-ranking U.S. delegation will travel to Beijing next week to resume negotiations aimed at resolving the ongoing trade war between the world's two leading economies. Commerce Ministry spokesman Gao Feng announced Thursday that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will visit the Chinese capital next Thursday and Friday, March 28 & 29, followed by a trip to Washington in early April by Chinese Vice Premier Liu He. The trade war between the United States and China began last year when President Donald Trump imposed punitive tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports to compel Beijing to change its trading practices. China has retaliated with its own tariff increases on $110 billion of U.S. exports. The Trump administration is also pushing China to end its practice of forcing U.S. companies to transfer their technology advances to Chinese firms. Trump had initially imposed a deadline of March 2 for both sides to reach a deal before imposing a hike in tariffs from 10 to 25 percent, but delayed the increase late last month citing "substantial progress" in the negotiations. But Chinese President Xi Jinping has reportedly cancelled tentative plans to visit Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida next month to sign a final deal, a sign that the talks have stalled. Trump issued a warning Wednesday that U.S. tariffs could remain in place for a "substantial period" to ensure that Beijing lives up to any agreement. A Vietnamese blogger who vanished in Thailand earlier this year is being held in a Hanoi prison, his friend and wife confirmed Thursday. Truong Duy Nhat wrote weekly posts about politics and current affairs for Radio Free Asia (RFA) and last posted about the prospects for change in Vietnam in light of major anti-government demonstrations in Venezuela. All independent media is banned in Vietnam and bloggers, activists and rights lawyers are routinely jailed. The one-party state has seen an uptick of arrests under a hardline leadership in charge since 2016, with nearly 60 put behind bars last year according to an AFP tally. Nhat, 55, fled to Thailand in January and applied for refugee status with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, according to RFA. His employer and family lost contact with him soon after and he has not been heard from since. The UN said it does not comment on individual cases. Nhat's friend Pham Xuan Nguyen said he visited Hanoi's T-16 jail on Wednesday and received confirmation Nhat was being held there. "I took Nhat's wife to the jail yesterday. I saw the book the jail gave to her to register future visits," he told AFP Thursday. "Inside the book, the date of his arrest was written January 28, 2019... it said that he was transferred to the jail the same day," the friend said, adding that they did not see Nhat. The blogger's wife Cao Thi Xuan Phuong confirmed the account to AFP, declining to comment further. His daughter Truong Thuc Doan, who lives in Canada, said she believes he was taken from Thailand against his will. "It's clear that my father did not voluntarily go back to Vietnam," she told RFA. The circumstances of Nhat's return have not been confirmed by Hanoi and he has not yet been formally charged. RFA spokesman Rohit Mahajan said Thursday the organisation remains "very concerned about our contributor and his treatment in detention". This is Nhat's second prison stint. He was jailed for two years in 2014 for "abusing democratic freedoms" after writing blogs critical of Vietnam's communist leadership. Hanoi has in the past forcibly returned corruption suspects, including a former state oil executive kidnapped by Vietnamese security agents from a Berlin park in 2017. Last year, a fugitive spy was sent back from Singapore to face trial for divulging state secrets. America is waiting for special counsel Robert Mueller's report. But anyone looking for a grand narrative on President Donald Trump, Russian election interference and all the details uncovered over the past 22 months could end up disappointed. The timing of Mueller's endgame is unclear. Attorney General William Barr, who oversees the investigation, has said he wants to release as much information as he can about the inquiry into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russia's efforts to sway the 2016 election. But during his confirmation hearing last month, Barr said he ultimately would decide what the public sees, and that any report would be in his words, not Mueller's. Some key questions: What happens when the investigation ends? Mueller will have to turn in a report of some kind when he's done. It could be a pretty bare-bones product. Justice Department regulations require only that Mueller give the attorney general a confidential report that explains the decisions to pursue or decline prosecutions. That could be as simple as a bullet point list or as fulsome as a report running hundreds of pages. Mueller has given no guidance on what it will be or when it will come, but signs a conclusion is coming soon have mounted in recent months. Matthew Whitaker, who was acting attorney general before Barr was confirmed, said in January that the investigation was nearly done. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, has been preparing to leave his post soon. The number of prosecutors working for Mueller has dwindled, and his team, which had sought an interview with the president, has not had meaningful dialogue with Trump's lawyers in months. Mueller also hasn't filed any new cases in two months. What does Barr say he'll do? Barr said he envisioned two reports, and only one for congressional and public consumption. Barr has said he takes seriously the ``shall be confidential'' part of the regulations governing Mueller's report. He has noted that department protocol says internal memos explaining charging decisions should not be released. During his confirmation hearing, Barr said he would draft, after Mueller turned in his report, a second one for the chairman and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees. But here again, the regulations provide little guidance for what such a report would say. The attorney general is required only to say the investigation has concluded and describe or explain any times when he or Rosenstein decided an action Mueller proposed ``was so inappropriate or unwarranted'' that it should not be pursued. Barr indicated that he expected to use his report to share the results of Mueller's investigation with the public, which the regulations allow him to do. But he hedged on specifics and said his plans could change after speaking with Mueller and Rosenstein. What will Trump do? Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has said the president's legal team wants to review any report before it's released. Giuliani also raised the prospect that Trump's lawyers could try to invoke executive privilege to prevent the disclosure of any confidential conversation the president has had with his aides. It's not clear whether the president's lawyers will get an advance look at Mueller's conclusions. Mueller, after all, reports to the Justice Department, not the White House. Barr himself seemed to dismiss that idea. When Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked Barr whether Trump and his lawyers would be able to put their own spin on the report before its release, Barr replied: ``That will not happen.'' Will there be a final news conference? It seems unlikely, especially if prosecutors plan to discuss people they never charged. Then-FBI Director James Comey broke from Justice Department protocol in extraordinary fashion with his July 2016 news conference announcing the FBI would not recommend criminal charges against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server. Barr has made clear his disapproval of Comey's public move. ``If you're not going to indict someone, you don't stand up there and unload negative information about the person,'' Barr said. There have been times when the department has elaborated on decisions not to pursue criminal charges. Also, there is some precedent for special counsels appointed by the Justice Department to hold news conferences. Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel who investigated the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame and who was granted even broader authority than Mueller, held a 2005 news conference when he charged I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. But even then, Fitzgerald drew a clear line. ``One of the obligations of the prosecutors and the grand juries is to keep the information obtained in the investigation secret, not to share it with the public,'' Fitzgerald said then. ``And as frustrating as that may be for the public, that is important because, the way our system of justice works, if information is gathered about people and they're not charged with a crime, we don't hold up that information for the public to look at. We either charge them with a crime or we don't.'' Can Congress subpoena Mueller and his report? Sure. Powerful Democratic committee chairmen have said as much. House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York has raised the prospect of subpoenaing the report and calling Mueller before Congress to ask him about his findings. So has Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Democrats also want all of Mueller's underlying evidence, including interview transcripts and documents. Schiff says he's watching Barr's moves carefully to see if he were ``to try to bury any part of this report.'' He says anything less than complete disclosure would leave Barr with ``a tarnished legacy.'' Many Republicans have also argued that the full report should be released. And the House voted 420-0 this month for a resolution calling for any final report to be made public. Still, many allies of the president have stopped short of saying it should be subpoenaed. Trump, as the leader of the executive branch, could direct the Justice Department to defy the subpoena, setting the stage for a court fight that would almost certainly go to the Supreme Court. Will Trump be able to see the report? It is unclear whether Trump will ask to see the report and under what circumstances he or his attorneys might be able to view it, especially because the document is meant to be confidential for Justice Department leadership. Barr said at his confirmation hearing that he would not permit White House interference in the investigation. But he also has voiced an expansive view of executive power in which the president functions as the country's chief law enforcement officer and has wide latitude in giving directives to the FBI and Justice Department. Democrats could seize on any disclosure to the president to argue that the report really isn't confidential and should be immediately provided to them as well. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte lauded the visiting Malaysian prime minister last week for his country's role in keeping peace in a restive Muslim region and predicted more good work ahead. Despite that praise for Mahathir Mohamad and a long-term bilateral friendship, Malaysia and the Philippines still share what some call Asias most dangerous sea. The Sulu Sea between Malaysias Sabah province and the southernmost Philippine islands remains unsafe because an independence-minded group of Muslims linked to a former sultanate has so much effective control that law enforcement vessels find it hard to stop an ever-present but increasingly obvious wave of crime. Its an area that has not been patrolled so much. The area is very porous. Its an area where traditionally people do not recognize national boundaries, so its easy to cross, said Maria Ela Atienza, a University of the Philippines political science professor. Illegal migrants, drug traders, weapons smugglers, pirates and terrorists all depend on the sea for movement, scholars say. De facto control A local Muslim group, backed by the ethnic Tausug, has exercised real or de facto rule for hundreds of years over the northeastern corner of Borneo, now mostly Malaysian territory, and Philippine islands across the 260,000-square-kilometer Sulu Sea from it. A political organization called the Sultanate of Sulu controlled much of the sea coast from 1578, but its power waned after the Philippines stopped recognizing its sultans in the 1970s. The Malaysian government still pays rent to heirs of the sultanate but has administrative control over the land on its side of the sea. Loss of Muslim political control has spawned unrest in the southern Philippines, leaving an estimated 120,000 dead since the 1960s. Both Malaysia and the Philippines have moved since 2017 to modernize their navies, but analysts say they lack the strength to stamp out crime. The lack of a grip on the sea means "dire consequences for regional stability, said Enrico Cau, associate researcher at the Taiwan Center for International Strategic Studies. The navy has always been very poor in terms of budget and maintenance, Atienza said. The regional database ReCAAP Information Sharing Center logged seven actual or attempted incidents in the Sulu-Celebes Sea in 2017 and 2018, making it the riskiest international waterway in Asia over that period. The problem of course is that as far as the Tausug are concerned, there is no border, said Ramon Casiple, executive director with the Philippine advocacy organization Institute for Political and Electoral Reform in Metro Manila. On a daily basis, they dont use passports. They can go back and forth between Sabah and Tawi Tawi, Sulu," he said, naming two Philippine provinces. Unchecked movement across the Sulu Sea caught Manilas attention in 2017 when it found Malaysian and Indonesian nationals fighting alongside Muslim rebels in the nearby Philippine city Marawi. Troops battled the rebels for five months, costing about 1,100 lives. In January, an Islamic State-backed local Muslim rebel group took credit for bomb blasts that killed 20 people and injured 111 at a church in Sulu province. Joint efforts to improve safety at sea Officials from Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia have talked at least since the 1990s about developing the coastal economy and improving joint security for the sea. In June 2017 the three countries launched joint maritime patrols based out of Indonesia and, five months later, joint air patrols out of Malaysia. But changes in leadership among the three countries, followed by shifting national priorities, have held up progress on economic development, said Song Seng Wun, an economist in the private banking unit of CIMB in Singapore. I think quite a lot to do with domestic politics overtaking these plans, Song said. Theres really a lot to do with the shifting (of) respective government focus. The three countries may prefer to avoid further talks on security in case any one party grows uncomfortable with the process, Cau said. In his meeting March 7 with Mahathir, Duterte called resolving security issues, particularly on terrorism, piracy, and transnational crimes an issue the two countries should pursue to improve their relations, the presidential website in Manila said. Duterte, who is from Mindanao, has tried to stop Muslim violence since he took office in 2016. I think the big concern for Duterte is to stabilize the maritime space between Malaysia and Mindanao, said Carl Baker, director of programs with the think tank Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu. The Red Cross says it its deploying two major emergency response units to the port city of Beira in Mozambique to provide services for thousands of people affected by last week's Cyclone Idai, one of the most destructive storms to hit southern Africa in decades. One unit is expected to provide basic sanitation facilities for up to 20,000 people, while the other is expected to produce as much as 225,000 liters of clean water each day enough to help 15,000 people struggling to survive the massive flooding that has followed the storm. Jamie LeSueur, head of Red Cross operations in Mozambique, said in a statement that aid workers are most concerned about preventing the spread of waterborne disease. She said the emergency response deliveries will help protect against that. "More help is needed, and we are continuing to do all we can to bring in more resources and reach more people," she said. Helicopters are conducting food drops over villages that were destroyed and cut off from the outside world after the cyclone hit Mozambique's port city of Beira, then swept inland to neighboring Zimbabwe and Malawi. Aid officials say an untold number of survivors are clinging to tree tops or are trapped on rooftops of houses that remain submerged by flood waters. Idai carried sustained winds of up to 170 kilometers an hour, making it one of the most destructive storms to strike southern Africa in decades. The combined death toll in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi has risen to more than 300 people, a number which is expected to climb as the flood waters recede and search crews finally enter the damaged areas. President Filipe Nyusi of Mozambique has said he expects the death toll to exceed 1,000 in his nation alone. Mozambique began three days of official mourning Wednesday. Aid agencies said they prepared for the cyclone but not the massive floods that followed. Mozambique was hardest hit as a result of rivers flowing downstream from its neighbors. The U.N. World Food Program said it was transporting enough aid for 600,000 people across the three nations. The U.N. said it has allocated $20 million from its central emergency response fund and urged other donors to contribute. The European Union announced an initial aid package for the storm-stricken countries valued at nearly $4 million. Britain and the United Arab Emirates have also promised aid. The U.S. State Department said the United States is supporting relief efforts "in coordination with our partners." The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. U.S. President Donald Trump has accused social media outlets, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, of being biased, and suggested that the situation needs scrutiny. In answer to a reporter at the White House Tuesday, Trump said digital platforms tend to suppress Republican and conservative views. English French VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APF Canada) is pleased to announce the launch of its 2019-2020 Media Fellowship Program. The APF Canada Media Fellowship Program, supported in part by Cathay Pacific Airways, offers two up-and-coming and established journalists the opportunity to spend time in Asia researching and preparing stories for Canadian audiences. The goal of the program is to help Canadian journalists become better informed about this dynamic part of the world in order to write and broadcast insightfully on Asia and the Canada-Asia relationship. Two 2019-2020 APF Canada Media Fellows will receive a two-night stopover in Hong Kong and fly Cathay Pacifics Premium Economy Class. The Fellowships are valued at up to C$10,000 each for in-country travel/expenses and coverage of trans-Pacific travel, with the support of Cathay Pacific Airways, Hong Kongs award-winning airline. Canadian journalists bring accuracy, integrity, and a spirit of enterprise to our national discourse, and provide a vital service to the public interest, said Michael Roberts, Communications Manager with APF Canada. With the generous support of Cathay Pacific and funds from our Foundations own Grants Program, it is our goal to connect Canadian journalists with the stories and issues of the Asia Pacific so they in turn can better connect Canadians with this dynamic and important region. The deadline for applications is April 26, 2019 . For more details on the APF Canada Media Fellowship Program and how to apply, please follow this link: http://www.asiapacific.ca/grants/media-fellowships About the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada is dedicated to strengthening ties between Canada and Asia with a focus on expanding economic relations through trade, investment and innovation; promoting Canadas expertise in offering solutions to Asias climate change, energy, food security and natural resource management challenges; building Asia skills and competencies among Canadians, including young Canadians; and, improving Canadians general understanding of Asia and its growing global influence. Visit APF Canada at www.asiapacific.ca Michael Roberts Communications Manager E: michael.roberts@asiapacific.ca P: 604-630-1527 Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa has declared two days of mourning this coming weekend, in observance of the lives lost and damage caused by Tropical Cyclone Idai. "President Mnangagwa has declared this Saturday and Sunday (23 & 24 March 2019) National Mourning Days," the Zimbabwe Ministry of Information tweeted. A day after Cyclone Idai hit Mozambique, President Mnangagwa declared a State of Disaster for the areas affected. The Zimbabwe information ministry issued a notice Thursday, setting the total number of people killed by the cyclone at 139, with the highest number of casualties coming from Chimanimani and Chipinge in the eastern province of Manicaland. The ministry also reported that 189 people were missing, 144 injured and 136 marooned. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which is co-ordinating food drops, said 200,000 Zimbabweans would need urgent food aid for three months. "Some 90 percent - and that is new - some 90 percent of the hardest hit district of Chimanimani has been significantly damaged," spokesman Herve Verhoosel of the World Food Program told journalists. "Assessment finding indicate that approximately 200,000 people require food assistance over the next three months in that region and those two numbers are new from today." said Verhoosel. Cyclone Idai lashed Mozambique's Beira with winds of up to 170 km per hour (105 miles per hour) a week ago, then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi, flattening buildings and putting the lives of millions at risk. The cyclone's torrential rains caused the Buzi River and the Pungue River, whose mouths are in the Beira area, to flood their banks. The scale of the flooding is huge - the U.N. satellite agency says floodwaters covered 2,165 square km (835 square miles) on March 20. The Christian charity Tearfund said the timing of the floods was disastrous, with harvesting due to start in coming weeks. Even before the floods, 5.3 million people had been experiencing food shortages, said its Zimbabwe director, Earnest Maswe. * Farmers seen selling up to 240 million kilograms this year, down 5% * Tobacco exports have earned $178 million since January (Adds no dollar payments for farmers) HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwean farmers are expected to sell up to 240 million kilograms of tobacco this year, a 5 percent dip from 2018 due to drought, an industry official said on Wednesday at the start of a selling season that could help ease a severe dollar shortage. The opening of tobacco auctions traditionally leads to improved foreign exchange inflows in the southern African nation as buyers bring in dollars to purchase the crop. In an official circular on Wednesday, the central bank said farmers would now be paid in the local transitional RTGS dollar currency, reversing a decision to pay them half their money in U.S. dollars. The biggest farmers group said it was studying the notice. That should not affect dollar flows into the country, as buyers will still import dollars to convert into local currency. Tobacco, which is grown by more than 170,000 mostly small-scale farmers, is Zimbabwes second-biggest earner of foreign exchange after mining, and last year brought in $892 million. Farmers are expected to produce between 220 and 240 million kg of the crop this year following a drought that hit yields in some areas. The lack of rain has also wilted other crops like the staple maize. Some of the crop was affected by drought but we are still conducting an assessment to see the actual extent of the damage, said a Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) official who declined to be named. Farmers had already harvested their crop by the time Cyclone Idai hit Mozambique and Zimbabwe last week, causing widespread devastation. One TIMB official said some farmers could have been affected post-harvest, but no figures were yet available. Last year, tobacco farmers delivered 252 million kg, an all- time record. This season some 40,000 new farmers have taken up growing tobacco, TIMB chairwoman Monica Chinamasa said during the official opening of tobacco auctions in Harare. Zimbabwe has been gripped by shortages of U.S. dollars, leading to a scarcity of fuel, food and medicines. Last month Harare ditched a discredited 1:1 official U.S dollar with its quasi-currency bond note and electronic dollars and merged them into the RTGS dollar. On the interbank market, one U.S. dollar bought 2.86 RTGS dollars. On the black market the rate was 3.9 per dollar. Growing demand from China, the worlds biggest smoking nation, and funding from private tobacco companies have helped boost output, which had plunged in 2008. Tobacco exports have already earned $178 million since January, with South Africa and China the top two importers, TIMB data showed. (Reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe; Editing by David Holmes and Jan Harvey) All I See Is You, The Aftermath, and Mudbound. Photo: Vulture Every decade gets the Ralph Bellamy it deserves. In the 90s, snarky Greg Kinnear habitually lost the girl to Hanksian nice guys. In the aughts, clean-cut James Marsden found himself overshadowed by sensitive brooders like Ryan Gosling and Wolverine. Recently, a new face of romantic failure has emerged: Australian actor Jason Clarke, whos managed to carve out a healthy sideline playing some of the most disappointing husbands in contemporary cinema. Clarkes presence is almost a walking spoiler alert at this point: If our heroine is married to him in the first act, by the end of the third you can almost guarantee that shell wind up having sex with another man. In a strange turn of events, this phase of Clarkes career has also coincided in a worldwide interest in cuckoldry. Cuck has become one of the defining political insults of our era, and if Pornhub is to be believed, its an increasingly popular sexual fetish for many men. Its a timely kink for our current anxieties around masculinity: The cuck has assembled some of the outward trappings of success by definition hes got a wife, and theres usually a house, some kids, and a car but theres a sense that he hasnt properly earned these advantages, that theres a better, stronger male who might deserve them more. Voluntary cuck play allows these men to play out a fantasy of debasement, without giving up the status they enjoy in their day-to-day lives. (No surprise that theres often a racial element to the kink.) How do these anxieties play out in Clarkes filmography? With the release of The Aftermath, a new film about Keira Knightley cheating on Clarke with Alexander Skarsgard, I decided to throw myself a small Jason Clarke cuckold film festival to find out. First impressions are everything in Hollywood, and Clarkes early American roles pegged the type hed go on to refine over the course of his career. His physique was rugged and masculine, but his features, those large cheekbones that dwarf his narrow eyes, suggested a certain weariness, even defeat. He was rarely the hero instead he played doomed henchmen, corrupt politicians, Feds who werent above getting their hands dirty. I havent yet determined the first time the actor was cuckolded onscreen, but it was happening as early as 2006, in the first season of Showtimes Brotherhood, where his wife slept with the mailman. In 2013 Clarke landed the part of one of literatures most famous cucks, the hapless George Wilson in Baz Luhrmanns adaptation of The Great Gatsby. As the physical embodiment of working-class despair, Clarkes soot-ridden auto mechanic cant provide the glitzy life that his wife Myrtle (Isla Fisher) dreams of, so she takes up with the wealthy Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), who delights in flaunting the affair in front of the oblivious Wilson. In many ways this was the UrJason Clarke role Wilson doesnt know a lot, but he knows on some level that he isnt enough for his wife, and its that bone-deep sense of inferiority that spurs his shocking act of violence at the end. (With that violence set in motion by a fatal car accident, Gatsby also introduced the trend of vehicular distress, which is oddly prominent in Clarkes filmography.) After Gatsby, Clarke tried his hand at a few franchises, popping up in a Planet of the Apes and a Terminator, and he wouldnt again be cuckolded onscreen until the little-seen romantic thriller All I See Is You. He plays James, the doting husband of Gina, who is both blind and played by Blake Lively, which should give you a good idea of what happens next: Gina gets surgery to restore her sight, which fills her with a renewed sense of joie de vivre and sexual exploration. James, too, sees his wifes horizons expanding beyond what hes able to provide Youre not how I imagined, she tells him and his response is first to turn inward in guilt and shame, then strike back with lies and manipulation. Hes simultaneously repulsed by and obsessed with the idea of Gina sleeping with someone more handsome and virile, which of course means that once their relationship breaks down, she has a torrid nooner with a friendly dog owner, who apparently has a very large penis. By the end of All I See Is You, James is pretty obviously a horrible husband, and I dont think there were too many crying eyes in the theater when he eventually drives headfirst into a tractor-trailer. Henry McAllan, Clarkes character in Mudbound, is slightly more subtle in his terribleness. Hes an engineer in Depression-era Mississippi who gives his wife Laura (Carey Mulligan) only three weeks notice that hes decided to move the family to a rural farm. There, their lives become entwined with those of the local black sharecroppers, the Jacksons. Henrys ineffectual as a farmer and a businessman, and he overcompensates by lording it over his tenants, to the dismay of the slightly more tolerant Laura. After one fight, he stops having sex with her. (I hadnt always enjoyed Henrys lovemaking, but it made me feel like a true wife, she says in voice-over.) Once Henrys charming brother, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), comes back after World War II, its over for him. Before you can say seventh commandment, Laura is finding comfort in the arms of her brother-in-law, with Henry none the wiser. Mudbound was a critically acclaimed film beloved for its grand scope and nuanced character work. Januarys Serenity was basically the opposite of that. But they do have one thing in common, and by now you can probably guess what it is. In this steamy sunshine noir, Matthew McConaughey is a fisherman visited by a femme fatale from his past (Anne Hathaway), who promises him boatloads of money if hell throw her husband (yep, its Clarke) overboard. The movie eventually goes off in another, completely bonkers direction, but before it does, these star-crossed lovers have a brief, bizarre moment of coitus on a yacht. You dont feel bad: Instead of an impotent loser who cant quite be the alpha he wants, Clarke here plays an incredibly hammy villain who lacks any sort of redeeming characteristics. Almost as if well, I wont spoil it for you. Now, I dont want to suggest that Jason Clarke gets cuckolded in every single movie, because thats just not true. Sometimes, as in last years Chappaquiddick, he merely plays an inept failson whose wife does not cheat on him onscreen. (Though given that hes Ted Kennedy in 1969, a car accident once again plays a pivotal role.) First Man, too, resists the trend. When Clarkes astronaut Ed White shows up with a pretty blonde wife in tow, its tempting to imagine whats about to go down, considering our heros played by Ryan Gosling, the bane of movie husbands everywhere. But no! This time Gosling is the emotionally closed-off loner; Clarke gets to be a warm, supportive presence, like a human St. Bernard. If you remember NASA history, you know what happens to White more vehicles in distress but at least he is spared the indignity of being a cuck. Alexander Skarsgard, Jason Clarke, and Kiera Knightley in The Aftermath. Photo: David Appleby/Fox Searchlight Pictures Watch enough Jason Clarke movies, and the postwar romance The Aftermath feels so familiar that its almost creepy. As in All I See Is You, where hes got a low sperm count, and Mudbound, where his wife suffers a miscarriage, fatherhood is a fraught subject here, too: Clarke and Knightleys son died during the Blitz, and in his grief hes withdrawn emotionally from the marriage and has thrown himself into the job of rebuilding Germany. All three films feature a musical instrument that symbolizes Clarkes wifes hopes and dreams, and they all include a scene where the wife tries desperately to rekindle things in the marital bed, only for Clarkes characters issues to get in the way. (A handy get-out-of-judgment-free card for the subsequent infidelity.) And of course, theres a nearby hunk who seems the more appealing partner in every respect in this case, Herr Lubert (Skarsgard), a kindly widower who knows all about art and architecture and definitely did not support the Nazis, no sir. But while The Aftermath is not the most original movie, it does flip the script in one respect. No, not the cuckolding: As the trailer promises, Keira Knightley does indeed get to sample the pleasures of Alexander Skarsgards flesh. But the film also lets Clarkes doofus husband be idealistic and heroic, too, and he even gets an action sequence. (It starts with Nazis shooting up his car, of course.) By the end, the movies come around to his view on how to treat the defeated Germans. Hes not the best partner in the world, but when Knightleys character makes a fateful decision about her marriage a decision inspired, like much in the film, by Brief Encounter you understand why she does it. So thats seven films, five of which include Jason Clarkes wife having sex with another man. If you need help following, I had our photo team create a handy visual aid to Clarkes recent filmography: Interestingly enough, few of these films showcase a cuck in the modern sense of the word. The closest is All I See Is You, where James seems to be getting off on his own insecurity; were he a less-terrible person, he and Gina might have eventually found a type of polyamory that worked for them. But usually, Clarkes husbands are just old-school schmucks, second-string alpha males that find themselves bedeviled by a world that is no longer under their thumb, as my colleague Emily Yoshida once put it. It takes guts to play a character like that, over and over and over again. As a casting director once told me about Kyle Chandler in Carol, another mid-century cuckold, there arent many actors out there comfortable taking that kind of unglamorous supporting role. So heres to you, Jason Clarke, and I wish you a long and loving onscreen marriage in your next film, Pet Sematary. Fulton, Md., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sonatype, the inventors of software supply chain management, today announced a partnership with HackerOne, the leading hacker-powered security platform, to create The Central Security Project (CSP). The first-of-its-kind program brings together the ethical hacker and open source communities to streamline the process for reporting and resolving vulnerabilities discovered in libraries housed in The Central Repository, the worlds largest collection of open source components. CSP is designed to be a centralized vulnerability reporting platform within the Java ecosystem. It will enable the community to report a vulnerability, receive quick feedback, and see all other disclosed vulnerabilities for the ecosystem, in a single platform fueled by HackerOne. Community members will also be able to track reported issues by status, keep score around quantity and severity of exploits identified, and get credit for their work. Going forward, vulnerabilities reported through the CSP will be rapidly examined by a world class team of researchers so that fixes can be quickly made available to project owners, and then responsibly disclosed to the public at large. When individual developers or ethical hackers try and report a new vulnerability to an open source project they often wait for months to get a response, with no guarantee theyll ever actually receive one, said Brian Fox, co-founder and CTO of Sonatype. As the stewards of the Central Repository, we saw a unique opportunity to partner with HackerOne to simplify the vulnerability reporting process for all involved, and help make open source safer for the world. Without a standard for responsible disclosure, even those who want to disclose vulnerabilities responsibly can get frustrated with the process and turn to public lists or social media, where bad actors can easily find the details before fixes are created. Similarly, open source projects often dont have the resources to validate that all vulnerabilities reported are real issues. Innovation happens faster when developers are able to share information, build on top of each others discoveries and learn from each other. The same is true within the security community, said Marten Mickos, CEO of HackerOne. The CSP brings together Sonatypes comprehensive repository of open source components with the worlds largest community of ethical hackers. By working together, the entire open source community benefits and software becomes safer for everyone. "We have a critical need to centralize security reporting in the open source industry especially given the proliferation of ecosystems like Github which encourage decentralization, said David Blevins, founder and CEO of Tomitribe. "The Central Security Project is a significant industry milestone that creates an open source reporting ecosystem that can function at Github scale." How The Central Security Project Works: Sonatype has added Report a vulnerability links to every project page within the Central Repository and OSS Index. The links will connect individual developers and ethical hackers to the HackerOne platform where they can easily report potential exploits. When vulnerabilities are reported, Sonatypes security research team will rapidly assess the report and, where appropriate, develop a fix HackerOne will communicate with relevant project owners and facilitate CVE assignment. Once the fix has been released, the vulnerability will be publicly disclosed through HackerOnes Hacktivity page, and the person who reported it will be credited for its discovery and submission. The program will initially focus on the Java ecosystem within the Central Repository, with the goal of expanding to other ecosystems over time. Additional Resources: About The Central Repository The Central Repository is the largest collection of Java and other open source components. It provides the easiest way to access and distribute software components to millions of developers. It is the default repository for Apache Maven, SBT and other build systems and can be easily used from Apache Ant/Ivy, Gradle and many other tools. Sonatype serves as the steward of the Central Repository and provides it as a free service supporting the development community. About Sonatype More than 10 million software developers rely on Sonatype to innovate faster while mitigating security risks inherent in open source. Sonatypes Nexus platform combines in-depth component intelligence with real-time remediation guidance to automate and scale open source governance across every stage of the modern DevOps pipeline. Sonatype is privately held with investments from TPG, Goldman Sachs, Accel Partners, and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Learn more at www.sonatype.com. About HackerOne HackerOne is the #1 hacker-powered security platform, helping organizations find and fix critical vulnerabilities before they can be exploited. More Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 1000 companies trust HackerOne than any other hacker-powered security alternative. The U.S. Department of Defense, General Motors, Google, Twitter, GitHub, Nintendo, Lufthansa, Panasonic Avionics, Qualcomm, Starbucks, Dropbox, Intel, the CERT Coordination Center and over 1,200 other organizations have partnered with HackerOne to find over 100,000 vulnerabilities and award over $48M in bug bounties. HackerOne is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in London, New York, the Netherlands, and Singapore. Attachment 21.03.2019: Borregaard ASA ("Borregaard", OSE ticker: BRG) Reference is made to the stock exchange notice of 1 March 2019 where Borregaard announced the intent to repurchase up to 300,000 of its outstanding common stock. Borregaard has today purchased 6,000 own shares through broker at an average price of NOK 85.65 per share. After this transaction Borregaard holds a total of 356,996 own shares, representing 0.36% of total shares outstanding. Contact: Lotte Kvinlaug, Investor Relations Officer, +47 922 86 909 This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to Section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act. FRESNO, Calif., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dr. Kathleen Behr of Behr Laser and Skin Care Center in Fresno, California announces the acquisition of the Vbeam PrimaTM Laser System by Candela, an advanced 595 nm pulsed dye laser (PDL). With the addition of a 1064 nm wavelength and a number of other new features, the Vbeam Prima device will effectively treat a broad range of skin conditions, including rosacea, port wine stains, acne, facial, leg and spider veins, scars, benign pigmented lesions and wrinkles, warts, stretch marks and photo aging. In a clinical study1 using the Vbeam Prima laser system, facial redness and rosacea symptoms were significantly reduced from moderate to mild after four treatments, said Dr. Behr. I am extremely excited about the new enhancements, especially the 50% greater power enabling a 15 mm spot size, both contact and spray cooling, once-a-day calibration and extended dye life thanks to a complete re-design, Dr. Behr added. The Vbeam device is a highly efficient PDL used by healthcare providers all over the world to treat a variety of indications for both face and body with high patient tolerability and a low incidence of side effects. The Vbeam laser has been long considered the gold standard for the device-based treatment of rosacea and has also been successfully used for the treatment of port wine stains and vascular anomalies in infants, as well as adults. It is currently used in nearly 700 universities and hospitals worldwide and has been included in hundreds of medical publications. The new Vbeam Prima laser system builds on that legacy of success by offering advanced features that will help physicians and their patients achieve better results, along with an improved treatment experience. Behr Laser and Skin Care Center will begin treating clients using the Vbeam Prima laser system on March 21, 2019. To schedule a consultation, please contact our office at (559) 435-7546. For more information about Dr. Behr, please visit www.435skin.com. For more information about the Vbeam Prima laser system, please visit https://syneron-candela.com/na/prima Behr Laser and Skin Care Center Located in Fresno, California, we offer the latest surgical and cosmetic dermatological care for patients of all ages. Our office is equipped with state-of-the-art technology, including multiple lasers to ensure our patients receive optimal, up-to-date care. We work with each patient individually and take a team approach in determining the treatment that is best for your specific needs and desires. We also believe in the importance of patient education and promise to keep you thoroughly informed of your treatment options and progress. Candela Candela is a leading global medical aesthetic device company with an extensive product portfolio and a global distribution footprint. The Company's technology enables physicians to provide advanced solutions for a broad range of medical aesthetic applications including hair removal, wrinkle reduction, tattoo removal, women's health treatments, facial resurfacing, traumatic and surgical scar treatments, body contouring, improving the skin's appearance through the treatment of benign vascular and pigmented lesions, and the treatment of acne, leg veins and cellulite. Candela has a wide portfolio of trusted, leading products, including Vbeam, the Gentle Family, CO2RE, CO2RE Intima, Profound, elos Plus, PicoWay, UltraShape, VelaShape, Nordlys, and other laser-based platforms. Acquired by Apax Partners in July 2017, the Company markets, services and supports its products in 86 countries. It has offices in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom and many international distributors. 1. Bernstein EF, Schomacker K, Paranjape A, Jones CJ. Pulsed dye laser treatment of rosacea using a novel 15 mm diameter treatment beam. Lasers Surg Med. 2018;doi:10.1002/lsm.22819 Media Contact: Kendra Winter P: (559) 435-7546 | E: behrderm@435skin.com NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Levi & Korsinsky announces it has commenced an investigation of Bloom Energy Corporation (NYSE: BE) concerning possible violations of federal securities laws. To obtain additional information, go to: https://www.zlk.com/pslra-1/bloom-energy-corporation-loss-form or contact Joseph E. Levi, Esq. either via email at jlevi@levikorsinsky.com or by telephone at (212) 363-7500, toll-free: (877) 363-5972. Levi & Korsinsky is a national firm with offices in New York, California, Connecticut and Washington D.C. The firms attorneys have extensive expertise in prosecuting securities litigation involving financial fraud, representing investors throughout the nation in securities and shareholder lawsuits. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. The growth of the market is driven by the increasing demand for plastics in the manufacturing of LED Lights, lightweight heat sinks, electric vehicles, medical devices, and lightweight automotive vehicles. Market Size USD 174.1 million in 2018, Market Growth - CAGR of 7.8%, Market Trends Technological advancements in the automotive industry and the evolution of smart electronics. NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Thermally Conductive Plastics (TCPs) Market is forecasted to grow from USD 174.4 Million in 2018 to USD 326.1 Million by 2026, at a CAGR of 7.8%, during the forecast period. Increasing demand for plastics in the manufacture of LED lights, lightweight heat sinks, electric vehicles, medical devices, and lightweight automotive vehicles is driving market growth. Request for PDF Sample at: https://www.reportsanddata.com/sample-enquiry-form/1203 Due to the strong presence of thermally conductive plastic manufacturers in the region, North America has a significant share in the market. Similarly, in the forecast period, Latin America and Europe are also emerging regions and are expected to experience remarkable growth, during the forecast period. New product developments, expansions, acquisitions and agreements, collaborations and partnerships were the major growth strategies that market players adopted to increase their regional presence and meet the growing demand for TCPs in emerging economies Further key findings from the report suggest The Thermally Conductive Plastics (TCPs) Market is forecasted to grow from USD 174.4 Million in 2018 to USD 326.1 Million by 2026, at a CAGR of 7.8%, during the forecast period. Increasing demand for plastics in the manufacture of LED lights, lightweight heat sinks, electric vehicles, medical devices, and lightweight automotive vehicles is driving market growth. The market for electrical & electronics is expected to grow the largest at USD 84.4 Million in 2026, at a CAGR of 8.3% during the forecast period. TCPs are used in connectors, mounting devices, heat sinks, cooling parts, interface materials, enclosures, and cooling systems. The global market for thermally conductive plastics is driven by the increased demand for smart systems in end-user industries such as electrical and electronics and automotive. Rising preference of the global consumer to light-weight products is also stimulating growth for the market. The market for lightning systems, by application, will hold largest market and is expected to reach USD 157.2 Million in 2026, at a CAGR of 8.7%. The worldwide market is driven by increasing demand for smart street lighting solutions. Other factors, such as the development of new wireless technology and the growing need for energy efficiency, also contributed to market growth. The market for Polyamide, by type, will hold largest market and is expected to reach USD 67.2 Million in 2026, at a CAGR of 8.8%, during the forecast period. Because of its superior properties such as impact resistance, high temperature resistance, abrasion resistance, excellent balance of strength, resistance to bases and heat conductivity, polyamide rapidly replaces metals in various applications. The market for Asia Pacific (APAC) is expected to reach USD 101.1 Million in 2026, at the highest CAGR of 8.6%, during the forecast period. Because of high disposable income and rising living standards in the region, demand for smart electronics and electric vehicles is expected to increase over the forecast period. The key players in the TCPs market are Celanese Corporation (US), PolyOne Corp. (US), RTP Company (US), SABIC (Saudi Arabia), Toray Industries (Japan), Royal DSM N.V. (Netherlands), Kaneka Corp. (Japan), and Mitsubishi Engineering Plastics Corp. (Japan) and others. To identify the key trends in the industry, click on the link below: https://www.reportsanddata.com/report-detail/thermally-conductive-plastics-market Segments covered in the report: This report forecasts volume and revenue growth at a global, regional & country level, and provides an analysis on the industry trends in each of the sub-segments from 2016 to 2026. For the purpose of this study, Reports and Data have segmented the market on the basis of type, carbon based solutions, application, end-user and regional analysis. Type (Revenue, USD Million; 2016-2026) Polyamide (PA) Polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) Polycarbonate (PC) Polyetherimide (PEI) Liquid Crystal Polymer Thermoplastic Polymer Polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) Others Carbon based solutions (Revenue, USD Million; 2016-2026) Natural Graphite powders Synthetic Graphite powders Conductive carbon blacks Silicon-carbon composites Water dispersions Others Application (Revenue, USD Million; 2016-2026) Lighting Systems Battery Modules Others End-Users (Revenue, USD Million; 2016-2026) Electrical & electronics Automotive Industrial Healthcare Aerospace Others Region (Thousand, Units and Revenue, USD Million; 2016-2026) North America US Canada Europe Germany France UK Italy Spain Rest of the Europe Asia Pacific China India Japan Rest of Asia Pacific Latin America Brazil Rest of LATAM Middle East & Africa Make an enquiry before buying this report at: https://www.reportsanddata.com/make-enquiry-form/1203 About Reports and Data Reports and Data is a market research and consulting company that provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. Our solutions purely focus on your purpose to locate, target and analyze consumer behavior shifts across demographics, across industries and help clients make a smarter business decision. We offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a multiple industries including Healthcare, Technology, Chemicals, Power, and Energy. We consistently update our research offerings to ensure our clients are aware about the latest trends existent in the market. Reports and Data has a strong base of experienced analysts from varied areas of expertise. Contact Us: John Watson Head of Business Development Reports And Data | Web: www.reportsanddata.com Direct Line: +1-800-819-3052 Historic English tea rooms at Rome's Spanish Steps. Babingtons, the traditional English tea shop and restaurant at the foot of the Spanish Steps, was established by two English women, Isabel Cargill and Anne Marie Babington in 1893. Their idea was to cater to the city's influx of English-speaking visitors, many of whom had taken up residence in Rome, as well as those just passing through. Babingtons provided these guests with refreshments and the chance to read English newspapers, at a time in Italy when tea could only be bought in pharmacies and when newspapers in English arrived days after publication in London. Originally the tea room was sited on Via dei Due Macelli, a sideroad off Piazza di Spagna, but the success of its first year saw it relocate to its current address, Piazza di Spagna 23, on the opposite side of the Spanish Steps to the Keats-Shelley House, established some 15 years later. Babingtons has survived two world wars, not to mention regular political and economic crises. Today it acts as a Roman institution and a tourist attraction, retaining its Victorian traditions of high tea, scones and light lunch in elegant surroundings.The current owners of the family-run tea rooms are cousins Chiara Bedini and Rory Bruce, the great-grandchildren of Isabel Cargill. In addition to afternoon teas poured from silver-plated pots, Babingtons serves light lunches, snacks, salads, icecreams and aperitifs. Its menu includes English breakfast, homemade English muffins and scones, Eggs Benedict with Scottish salmon, scrambled eggs, Victoria sponge cake, and its prized club sandwiches. Babingtons is open daily from 10.00 to 21.15. For more details of its history, menu and prices see website. An extensive implementation of isobutene in refineries in production of alkylate is estimated to boost the market growth. Market Size USD 20.00 billion in 2018, Market Growth - CAGR of 6.6%, Market Trends Rising cold chain market NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Global Isobutane Market is expected to reach USD 34.00 Billion by 2026, according to a new report by Reports and Data. Isobutane is a colorless gas with a slight petroleum-like odor. It is very inflammable and is denser than air. Among the five natural gas liquids, isobutane has a distinctive place in the market. Isobutane is produced from gas processing plants and refineries and is also the only NGL purposely produced from another NGL n-butane. Request for PDF sample at: https://www.reportsanddata.com/sample-enquiry-form/1205 Isobutane is principally used in refineries as a gasoline petrol additive. It is processed to make alkylate through the process of alkylation. It is used to produce isooctane, a high octane gasoline constituent, which increases the octane rating and anti-knock characteristics of gasoline. This extensive implementation of isobutane in refineries and petrochemical plants is forecasted to drive the market growth. Cold chain market where temperature control is an important aspect throughout the supply chain, seek the application of isobutane as a refrigerant. With a consistent rise in the cold chain market, there would be an increased demand for isobutene in the forecast period. Factors that may acts a restraint to the market growth are the inflammable nature of isobutane and the related safety issues. The market for isobutene in the Asia Pacific region is projected to observe the highest growth rate owing to an increase in the petroleum refineries and petrochemical plants especially in countries like China and India. The market demand is this region is also attributed to the surging demand of isobutane as refrigerants and aerosol propellants in various other industries. To identify the key trends in the industry, click on the link below: https://www.reportsanddata.com/report-detail/isobutane-market Further key findings from the report suggest Pure grade isobutane is forecasted to witness highest growth rate of 6.8% in the forecast period owing to the application of this grade of isobutane in alkylation process as well as in refrigeration systems. Technical grade isobutene is forecasted to reach USD 10.71 billion by 2026. Isobutane does not have the harmful characteristics of Freon and other related compounds. Thus, it is extensively used in all types of refrigeration systems, extending from small home solutions to massive commercial freezers. Isobutane is denoted as R-600a when it is applied as propellants in aerosols or as refrigerants. Petrochemicals is projected to capture more the 60% of the market in the forecast year reaching USD 20.77 billion by 2026. This can be attributed to the very high use of isobutane as feedstock which are used in the formation of the suitable atmosphere for production of isooctane. Researches are being done on various capabilities of isobutane as a feedstock in improving the production of numerous other compounds. Isobutane is one among the hydrocarbons which are liquefied under pressure and are used as fuel in the form of LPG. Asia Pacific is estimated to capture the largest market share in the with a growth rate of 6.7% during the forecast period due to the presence of large number of refineries in the region, especially in countries like China, India, Japan and South Korea. The market in North America is projected to reach USD 7.17 billion by 2026. Key participants include Conoco Phillips, Linde, Praxair Technology, Air Liquide, Shell Trading International Limited, Sirloong, Jinling Petrochemicals, Taiyo Nippon Sanso Corporation, Evonik and Sibur among others. For the purpose of this report, Reports and Data have segmented global isobutane market on the basis of type, grade, application and region: Type Outlook (Volume, Million Barrels per Day; 2016-2026 and Revenue, USD Million; 2016-2026) 99% Pure 5% Pure 7% Pure Others Grade Outlook (Volume, Million Barrels per Day; 2016-2026 and Revenue, USD Million; 2016-2026) Pure Grade Instrumentation Grade Technical Grade Application Outlook (Volume, Million Barrels per Day; 2016-2026 and Revenue, USD Million; 2016-2026) Refrigeration System Cosmetic Products Petrochemicals Aerosols Others Regional Outlook (Volume, Million Barrels per Day; 2016-2026 and Revenue, USD Million; 2016-2026) North America U.S. Europe Germany UK Asia Pacific China India South-east Asia Latin America Brazil MEA Make an enquiry before buying this report at: https://www.reportsanddata.com/make-enquiry-form/1205 About Reports and Data Reports and Data is a market research and consulting company that provides syndicated research reports, customized research reports, and consulting services. Our solutions purely focus on your purpose to locate, target and analyze consumer behavior shifts across demographics, across industries and help clients make a smarter business decision. We offer market intelligence studies ensuring relevant and fact-based research across a multiple industries including Healthcare, Technology, Chemicals, Power, and Energy. We consistently update our research offerings to ensure our clients are aware about the latest trends existent in the market. Reports and Data has a strong base of experienced analysts from varied areas of expertise. Contact Us: John Watson Head of Business Development Reports And Data | Web: www.reportsanddata.com Direct Line: +1-800-819-3052 Homeland Security officials want lawmakers to grant them new authorities to hold families in custody until their asylum claims are adjudicated. They have launched a limited, experimental program to require others to wait for their court hearings on the Mexican side of the border. But in private, they acknowledge that the migration surge is likely to continue with or without a wall, and they fear it possibly could accelerate without changes to the U.S. asylum system. This weeks contest was the idea of Hall of Fame Loser Mark Raffman, wholl be recounting the story of the Exodus, in some form or other, at a Passover Seder next month (just in time for this weeks results). This week: Tell or describe a Bible story, or another classical or folk tale, very briefly (75 words would be lengthy) in the voice of a particular author or other person, as in Marks examples above, which could be three different entries or one combined one (the Empress might choose). Arrests by ICE agents fell 12 percent to 34,546 between Oct. 1 and Dec. 29 of last year, the most recent period for which data is available. Though deportations by ICE rose 10 percent during that period in comparison with the previous year, the increase came from soaring numbers of detentions at the border not as a result of more arrests by ICE in the U.S. interior. They quickly found a key. Like any good gays in D.C., we broke the ice with talking about our predictions for RuPauls Drag Race All Stars, says Sam, referring to the reality-TV elimination show where drag queens compete in lip-sync contests. Danny and Sam had different favorites, but they were on the same page about who shouldnt win: Trinity, the only white contestant left. Drag Race has faced criticism in the past for how it has handled matters of race and representation, and Danny and Sam agreed that the show didnt need to crown another white queen. Feingold said Sirota told him during the second week of February that he was interested in working for the Sanders campaign. He said he didnt have enough facts to conclude that Sirota was simultaneously advising Sanders while working for Capital & Main but that the site would notify readers if it determined that was the case. He added, If we determine that Mr. Sirota was advising the Sanders campaign while working for Capital & Main, we would be very unlikely to publish his work in the future. He first came to this museum with his sister when he was a kid. He kept coming back again and again, enthralled by the planetarium permanent exhibit, which he says changed his life at 19. He was doing a big think then, as you do, about life and death and the meaning of it all when the vastness of the cosmos put everything into perspective. While this months 737 Max 8 grounding was a minor inconvenience for travelers, airline insiders say it created more chaos behind the scenes. American Airlines and Southwest, which operate the aircraft, scrambled to rebook passengers during spring break, one of the busiest travel times of the year. Most FAA airworthiness actions are so minor that they barely register with the flying public. And if not for the deadly crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, which ultimately prompted the FAAs action, this one might have escaped the glare of the media spotlight. The Brazilian government announced this week that travelers from the United States, Australia, Japan and Canada will no longer need a visa to enter the country of Carnival, caipirinhas and coffee. The change will go into effect on June 17. Travelers arriving before that date must still obtain an electronic visa for $40, plus service fee. Visitors can stay in the country for 90 days from the date of their first entry and request an extension to 180 days within a 12-month period. Woburn, Mass., March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LoyaltyExpress, a leading provider of SaaS-based lending and marketing automation solutions, today announced it has renamed the company to Volly. The new platform and name represent the powerful combination of innovative technology and extensive marketing services that substantially improve lending processes and the competitive necessity to deliver time-sensitive, high-impact communications and lending services from loan officers to consumers. One of the biggest challenges today for bank and mortgage executives is the inability to seamlessly manage end-to-end processes for digital and direct mail marketing, robust customer engagement, and compliant lending requirements, says Jerry Halbrook, CEO of Volly. As a result, enterprise-wide processes must currently be cobbled together through multiple vendor technology platforms and service providers. Volly is responding to these widespread inefficiencies by delivering a world-class, component-based platform that will seamlessly integrate marketing and customer engagement strategies with robust lending technologies to achieve an intelligent and consistent experience for each and every customer. The Volly Platform includes expansive technology and integrations that dynamically support marketing automation, CRM, point of sale, portfolio retention, digital and direct-mail marketing management all coupled with best-in-industry creative marketing services. Its all about enabling our clients to provide intelligent communications and lending services that are responsive to their consumers, Halbrook added. Thats why we chose Power the Journey for our corporate tagline. In todays ultra-competitive lending environment, borrowers demand and expect immediacy throughout the entire lending process which requires organizations to have one view of each customers entire relationship throughout divisions and departments. The Volly Platform will uniquely deliver this seamless experience and comprehensive profile so that each customers journey is satisfying and efficient. About[JH1] Volly Volly simplifies CRM and marketing automation for banks and mortgage companies, including one of the top three retail lenders in the nation. Volly eliminates the need to share sensitive customer data with multiple vendors and has a team of world-class marketing and branding experts with extensive experience in the mortgage industry. Its flagship solution, Volly CRM, is an enterprise-wide, Software-as-a-Service platform that combines lead management, email and direct mail campaigns with a 360-degree view of each loan officer's customers, partners and prospects. Volly MarketingCentral delivers a web-based, sales collateral store powered by custom content creation and integrated print fulfillment. Volly POS delivers world-class, flexible point-of-sale solutions, including custom mortgage websites. Volly Marketing Automation is an industry leader in the deployment of marketing automation to assist clients with lead conversion. Vollys Marketing Automation technology platform, campaign strategies, email and text deliverability and reporting allow for a steady stream of analytics required to maximize customer capture rates. For more information, visit loyaltyexpress.com or call 866.435.7050. MyVolly.com is coming soon. About New Capital Partners New Capital Partners (NCP) is a private equity firm headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama. NCP partners with niche, tech-enabled services companies in the healthcare, financial and business services industries. Leveraging its extensive operational experience, NCP helps create significant value in portfolio companies by focusing on one core goal: Building Great Companies. For more information, please visit www.newcapitalpartners.com. Press Contact Ron Anderson Public Relations Director 770.468.8121 Housing officials have made big promises before pledging to tear down thousands of the vacant buildings that attract crime and drive down property values only to fail to deliver. In 2013, city leaders said they were quadrupling their spending on demolitions. The number of vacants kept rising. In January 2016, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced a huge infusion of state funding for demolitions. Data the city Department of Housing and Community Development compiled at the Baltimore Suns request shows that the number of vacants dipped, then climbed. On Jan. 1, the city counted 16,962 vacant houses, barely any change from the 17,006 on Jan. 1, 2010. We know that parents trust schools to provide an environment in which students can learn and grow led by kind and caring professionals, Superintendent Scott Brabrand said in a statement. We want to ensure that all school-based personnel trained in the use of seclusion [and] restraint understand the appropriate use of the procedures. Zeheralis said teachers waiting outside the room heard their co-workers screaming and then were brought into the room and shot with the pellets. She said the teachers were told not to relay what happened to anyone. What fresh insanity is this? Its not even a story about politics in the bedroom. Its not even the saucy love triangle of the Districts beloved bald eagles Liberty and Justice with their third wheel, Aaron Burrd. Its a marital mess, and the president of the United States just put himself in the middle of it. And the weirdest thing of all about the Conways: Theyre both conservatives who started out on the same page about Trump and then diverged in fairly dramatic fashion. Manning told her military judge that she acted alone in giving secret diplomatic cables and war logs to WikiLeaks after she approached several news organizations and got no response. But she did not take the stand in her own defense and so was never cross-examined by a prosecutor. Ayala was among a group of six suspected gang members accused of stabbing Chicas on March 8 in the basement of an alleged MS-13 clique leader who lived in Landover Hills, police said. The group is accused of disciplining Chicas for reasons authorities have not publicly detailed. Several of the boards 27 members including Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh (D), who resigned this week from the board have had business deals with the hospital system they oversee, in some cases worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The deals, first reported last week by the Baltimore Sun, have been sharply criticized by Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and the Democratic leaders of the General Assembly. The agency said it will not pursue commercial development of the land. Much of the park remains open as the organization that ran the farm removes its property, although no public services are available. SEATTLE, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE -- CFN Media Group (CFN Media), the leading agency and financial media network dedicated to the North American cannabis industry, announces the publication of an article discussing Cardiol Therapeutics (TSX: CRDL), a Canadian biotech start-up developing targeted CBD-based therapies for both heart failure and cancer. The company is addressing some of the most pressing issues surrounding the science of medical marijuana, including bioavailability, targeted delivery, and management of dosing levels. To hear some advocates talk about it, cannabis is a miracle drug, capable of treating everything from chronic pain, nausea, chemotherapy side effects, muscle spasms, multiple sclerosis, and more. And its true. Medical marijuana and cannabidiol (CBD) have been used successfully to treat all of those things, and more. CBD is the most promising drug that has come out for neuropsychiatric diseases in the last 50 years, Dr. Esther Blessing, an assistant professor at New York University School of Medicine who is coordinating a study of CBD as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, told The New York Times. The reason it is so promising is that it has a unique combination of safety and effectiveness across of very broad range of conditions. Medical Marijuanas Bioavailability Issue Bioavailability is a common concept in pharmacology, and it refers to the degree and rate at which a substance (as a drug) is absorbed into a living system or is made available at the site of physiological activity. Its how quickly and effectively a drug is absorbed by the body so that it can begin doing its job. In order for a drug to work, it must reach its intended destination. This includes the amount of active compounds that survive the journey through the body, as well as the impact that those compounds have on whatever disease or disorder they are intended to treat once they get there. In the pharmaceutical industry, it is generally accepted that drugs that are administered intravenously, via syringe, have a bioavailability of 100%. But other methods can cut into that figure. For example, drugs that are taken orally cant go straight to the disease site via the bloodstream like those administered intravenously. They must pass through the digestive tract, the intestinal wall and then the liver before being released into the bloodstream. As a result of all this, many drugs can be metabolized before adequate concentrations are reached in the blood, lowering the impact they have on the patient by cutting into their bioavailability. This is most common with oral dosages of poorly water-soluble, slowly absorbed drugs (although age, sex, physical activity, genetics, and stress can also affect drug bioavailability). The solution? Increase the dosage until the desired result is reached. Thats all a fact of life in the pharmaceutical industry. But what many cannabis advocates dont discuss is that marijuana and its related cannabinoids have major bioavailability issues as well. In pill form, less than 10% of the CBD you consume makes it into your blood. And worse, even after it makes it there, it doesnt stick around. Your body quickly flushes most of it out. That leaves a tiny fraction of the CBD or medical marijuana dose that a patient takes actually able to go to work in their body. Typically, the solution to this is the same as it is for other pharmaceuticals: just take more. If you want cannabis to be medically useful, you must take enough to overcome all of the active compounds that are being screened out by the liver. But this isnt always an ideal solution. CBD Currently Not Practical for Many Indications First of all, larger doses cost more money, limiting the patient base for medical CBD to those who are able to afford these larger doses. In a recent GW Pharma study, an effective dosage for a 175-pound person suffering from Lennox-Gastaut syndrome was determined to be 1.58 grams of CBD per day. That course of treatment might cost as much as $35,500 per year, depending on the specific products used. Whats more, this fact limits the conditions that CBD can be used to treat, effectively leaving cannabinoids as so-called orphan drugs those pharmaceuticals that have been developed to treat rare medical conditions, rather than treating a wide range of disorders. These orphan indications are the only diseases for which CBD treatment currently makes economic sense. This is all despite the fact that CBD companies some with large valuations are touting the effectiveness of their products, without mentioning to investors that the high dosage requirements right now are limiting the potential market for cannabinoids. The Science of CBD This is a shame, because CBD and other medical cannabis compounds hold immense promise. In fact, CBD has become something of a buzzword lately, popping up in everything from lattes, to skin creams to gummies. For the most part this is happening due to the wave of cannabis legalization that is sweeping the U.S. and Canada; CBD is an adjunct product of the cannabis plant that, unlike THC, does not have any psychoactive properties. Cannabidiol can be taken via smoke or vapor, as an aerosol spray, as CBD oil, capsules, edibles and more. It offers many of the advantages of marijuana treating anxiety, pain, movement disorders, focus and more without getting the user high. All signs indicate the market is responding. According to a report by market intelligence firm Hemp Business Journal, the CBD market is estimated to grow 700% by 2020, reaching $2.1 billion in that time. For comparison, the CBD market was worth about $200 million in 2018. The entire legal cannabis industry is expected to hit $57 billion annually by 2027. Studies have shown a range of therapeutic benefits associated with CBD, including antioxidant and neuroprotective properties. It is also a powerful anti-inflammatory. But none of this matters if the bioavailability limitations of cannabis cant be solved. Introducing Cardiol Therapeutics Cardiol Therapeutics (TSX: CRDL) is a Canadian biotech start-up developing targeted CBD-based therapies for both heart failure and cancer. Thats exciting, but the real story here is the fact that Cardiol has figured out a way to solve cannabis bioavailability problem. Cardiol isnt just another medical marijuana company. Its a sophisticated nanotechnology biotechnology company, with a cutting-edge drug delivery platform that was developed in partnership with the University of Alberta over the last eight years and at a cost of more than $3.5 million. The scientists who invented it are part of an in-house team of leading cardiologists, immunologists, oncologists, and recognized authorities on drug delivery. The companys breakthrough is a novel molecule that gives drugs like CBD stealth properties to boost their bioavailability. The inner shell of this molecule is fat soluble, while the outer shell is water soluble. This design allows it to act like a smugglers cage, tricking the body into opening up access so the cannabinoids get where they need to go. Please follow the link to see an informative video about Cardiol's opportunity and innovative technology on Cardiol's site: http://bit.ly/2Fr0IlV This is all based on a patented family of biocompatible and biodegradable amphiphilic block co-polymers made from polyethylene glycol (PEG) and polycaprolactone (PCL). Both PEG and PCL have a long history of safe use in humans. A functionalized polyester based on PCL (PBCL) forms the lipophilic core of the nanoparticles, allowing both the solubilization and encapsulation of lipid-soluble drugs. PEG forms the water-compatible surface layer of the nanoparticles, enabling the encapsulated drug to circulate in the aqueous environment of the blood. Cardiols nanotechnology solution has not only improved the inherent stability and biocompatibility of CBD, it can also be customized to optimize the encapsulation and release characteristics of a broad range of pharmaceuticals. Cardiol is using this technology in its efforts to develop CBD and other anti-inflammatory drugs for the treatment of heart failure. At the same time, the company is pursuing an immunotherapeutics program in combination with cannabinoids for treating Glioblastoma Multiforme, the most malignant and deadly form of cancer of the central nervous system. In short, Cardiol is bringing the promise of CBD to the pharmaceutical industry, with an initial focus on heart failure and cancer, all based on this revolutionary delivery mechanism. Cardiol has research programs focused on developing nanotherapeutics to treat heart failure underway at the University of Alberta, the Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center and TecSalud del Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico. The company has also established an exclusive supply agreement with Dalton Pharma Services, a Health Canada approved, U.S. Food and Drug Administration registered, Continuing Good Manufacturing Practice manufacturer of pharmaceuticals, including cannabinoids, for supplying finished pharmaceutically-manufactured cannabidiol products. Whats more, Cardiol recently entered into an exclusive supply agreement with Noramco, Inc., a global leader in the manufacture and supply of controlled drug substance Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, to support Daltons manufacturing with cannabidiol at >99.5% purity and less than 10 ppm THC. Please follow the link to see Cardiol's corporate presentation and stay up-to-date on company news: https://promo.cfnmedia.com/crdl What Lies Ahead Look for Cardiol to take its technology and most promising drug candidates into clinical trials later in 2019. The company also plans to launch its synthetic pharmaceutical-grade CBD to the Canadian medical marijuana market in the second half of this year, bringing on Rx Drug Mart and Shoppers Drug Mart veteran Tom Moffatt as Chief Commercial Officer to lead the roll out. Cardiol sees its pharmaceutical CBD product, which is manufactured to the highest of standards with perfect consistency, as a commercially viable answer to the shortage of CBD medicine in the Canadian market right now. Taken all together, the commercial CBD product plus the nanotechnology delivery solution plus the development of clinical drug candidates makes Cardiol Therapeutics a major player in the rapidly developing medical cannabis space. Please follow the link to read the full article: https://www.cannabisfn.com/the-science-behind-medical-marijuana-is-flawed/ About CFN Media For Visitors and Viewers CFN Medias Cannabis Financial Network (CannabisFN.com) is the destination for savvy investors and business people profiting from the worldwide cannabis industry. Viewers will see breaking news, exclusive content and original programming involving the people, companies and investments shaping the industry. For Cannabis Businesses & Companies CFN Media is a leading agency and financial media network dedicated to the cannabis industry. We help private, pre-public and public cannabis companies in the US and Canada attract capital, investors and media attention. Our powerful digital media and distribution platform conveys a companys message and value proposition directly to accredited and retail investors and national media active in the North American cannabis markets. 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Please follow the link below to view our full disclosure outlining our compensation: http://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/ Frank Lane 206-369-7050 flane@cannabisfn.com Police did not describe any target at the school or the specific nature of the threat, but they said an unidentified subject posted an image about an online threat directed toward the high school, the statement read. During an emotional four-week trial in D.C. Superior Court, attorneys for El Hadji Alpha Madiou Toure offered various explanations for evidence linking him to the rape and stabbing of Corrina Mehiel. They argued that DNA evidence found at the crime scene was the result of a laboratory mix-up. And they said that Toure, who lived in various District shelters, had a romantic relationship with the victim, which also could have explained the presence of his DNA on her body. Investigators said the woman was staying at the home of a family member and the man arrived there Wednesday morning and shot her after they had an altercation. The man then shot himself, police said. In the 2016 case, a woman reported meeting Everett when she was 17 through a Facebook group designed for incoming freshmen, police said. Everett picked her up from her dorm, took her to his barbershop and gave her alcohol, police said. The girl got sick and passed out, later waking to Everett sexually assaulting her at his home, police said. Everett then took her back to her dorm, police said. Ayala was arrested in Arlington and is awaiting extradition to Prince Georges. Five others who police say were part of the clique that operates out of Virginia were earlier arrested and charged in addition to Ordonez-Zometa: Jonathan Castillo-Rivera, 20, of Annandale; Kevin Rodriguez-Flores, 18, and Jose Hernandez-Garcia, 25, both of no fixed address; and 16-year-old Christian Martinez-Ramirez of Falls Church, who was charged as an adult. When firefighters arrived at the home, neighbors told them Berkebile was probably inside. Crews attempted to rescue her, but there was a large amount of fire and exterior obstacles, such as brush, trees and debris, according to Fairfax County fire officials. All 140 seats in the state Senate and House of Delegates are on the ballot in November, when Virginia will be the only U.S. state in which the parties are in a competitive fight for control of the legislature. But for many in the devastated region, the start of the cleanup was coupled with a realization that the recovery could be prolonged, amid warnings that the current infrastructure of dams and levees will not be adequate to protect them from the increased frequency and severity of flooding that comes from climate change. Chicago, Illinois, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The John Marshall Law Schools Legal Writing program has again been ranked among the nations best in the 2020 U.S. News & World Reports Best Graduate Schools. John Marshalls Legal Writing Program, currently #8 in the nation, has continuously been in the top ten since the rankings began. John Marshalls Legal Writing program is known for its rigorous research and writing requirements and its robust faculty leadership. All students are required to take four semesters of lawyering skills courses, with options for specialization in the fourth semester. Many members of John Marshalls Lawyering Skills faculty have served in national leadership roles. Professor Kim Chanbonpin, Director of Lawyering Skills, recently completed a two-year term as President of the Legal Writing Institute. In 2017, John Marshall was named the new national headquarters for ScribesThe American Society of Legal Writers. Professor Mark Wojcik serves as the current President of Scribes, and Dean Darby Dickerson is a former president of the organization. Additionally, Dickerson is the author of the first four editions of the ALWD Citation Manual. Both Dickerson and Wojcik have won the Burton Foundations award for Outstanding Contributions to Legal Writing and Education. This summer, John Marshall will add two members to its legal writing faculty. Professor Shakira Pleasant will serve as Director of the law schools Writing Resource Center, the largest in-house writing resource center in the country. Pleasant currently teaches at the University of Miami and serves on the Board of the Legal Writing Institute. Professor Teri McMurtry-Chubb, who teaches at Mercer University School of Law, will join the John Marshall faculty for a year-long distinguished visitorship. McMurtry-Chubb serves on the Board of Directors of Scribes and was the first woman of color to serve as President of the Association of Legal Writing Directors. The law school routinely hosts major legal writing events and will host the 20th Anniversary of the Central States Regional Legal Writing Conference in September. The conference is held every two years at a member school in the Midwest region. On Thursday, Sayoc appeared in a Manhattan courtroom and read from a brief statement while pleading guilty to 65 counts, including charges of using a weapon of mass destruction and illegally mailing explosives with the intent to kill or injure people. Naming recipients of the packages, Sayoc acknowledged that he had created the devices intended to look like pipe bombs using materials that included powder from fireworks and sent them in the mail. SAN DIEGO, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Wilshire Quinn Capital, Inc. announced Thursday that its private lending fund, the Wilshire Quinn Income Fund, has provided a $540,000 purchase loan in Estero, Florida. The newly built single-family residence is comprised of 3,089 square-feet on a 10,368 square-foot lot and is located at The Preserve at Corkscrew, a 510 acre gated community in Estero. The property was appraised this month for $900,000, giving the Wilshire Quinn Income Fund a total loan-to-value ratio of 60 percent on the transaction. Wilshire Quinn, a California bridge loan lender, typically funds in 5 to 7 business days and originates bridge loans ranging from $200,000-$10,000,000. Wilshire Quinn works directly with real estate owners and mortgage professionals nationwide. As for Wilshire Quinns typical borrowers, their customer base is fairly diverse; borrowers range from builders looking for rehab financing, to individuals who are looking to purchase or refinance an investment property. Wilshire Quinn, a California hard money lender, provides financing to borrowers who are unable to obtain credit from traditional lending institutions or need to close quickly on a property. ABOUT WILSHIRE QUINN Wilshire Quinn is a San Diego hard money lender , Los Angeles hard money lender , and San Francisco hard money lender , and provides financing to borrowers who are unable to obtain credit from traditional lending institutions or need to close quickly on a property. Loans are made or arranged by Wilshire Quinn Income Fund, LLC pursuant to California Finance Lenders Law license #603J060. Wilshire Quinn Capital, Inc. serves as manager of the Wilshire Quinn Income Fund, LLC. The information above is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed. Portions of the loan described above may be sold to third party purchasers and does not necessarily reflect the amount held in the Fund's loan portfolio. Nothing contained in the information above is an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. Any such offer to purchase securities will be made only through the Private Placement Memorandum of Wilshire Quinn Income Fund, LLC. When there are situations that could potentially lead to really bad outcomes, we need to be out there and we need to be getting our veterans the care that they need, said Larry Albers, chief of psychiatry at the Long Beach VA. He believes lives have already been saved, though the program is too new for any studies of its outcomes. Afghan presidential election postponed to September: Afghanistan's presidential election has been postponed by two months to Sept. 28, the election board said, as authorities try to iron out problems with the voting process. The balloting was pushed back for the second time to allow time for changes to the voting system, a spokesman for the Independent Election Commission said. It was originally scheduled for April but was delayed to July 20 amid concerns about winter conditions and security. Suspect in Dutch tram shooting to face terrorism charge: The main suspect in a deadly tram shooting in the Dutch city of Utrecht will be charged with offenses including multiple murder or manslaughter with a terrorist intent, prosecutors said. They said investigations into Monday's shooting, which left three dead and three seriously injured, indicate that the shooter acted alone. The main suspect, Gokmen Tanis, a 37-year-old of Turkish descent, also faces charges of attempted murder or manslaughter and making threats with a terrorist intent. SOMETHING POSITIVE has come out of the otherwise troubling situation in which President Trump has managed so far to thwart the will of Congress and allocate funds to his proposed border wall. There is an increasing awareness on Capitol Hill that Mr. Trump is taking advantage of past lawmakers excessive delegation of power to the executive branch. Whether legislators override Mr. Trumps veto of their termination of his emergency declaration or as seems far more likely fail to override it, the legislative branch needs to take back its legitimate powers. LOS ANGELES, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP (GPM) announces an investigation on behalf of Bridgepoint Education, Inc. (Bridgepoint or the Company) (NYSE: BPI ) investors concerning the Company and its officers possible violations of federal securities laws. If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate. If you wish to learn more about this action, or if you have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Lesley Portnoy, Esquire, at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, or by email to shareholders@glancylaw.com , or visit our website at www.glancylaw.com . On March 7, 2019, Bridgepoint announced that it had "determined to restate the Company's previously issued unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements and advised that those financial statements should not be relied upon, for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2018." Bridgepoint stated that the process used for recording revenue for the Full Tuition Grant program portion of its student contracts "were not designed with sufficient precision," leading to "material" accounting errors related to revenue, provision for bad debts, accounts receivable and deferred revenue, which resulted in the overstatement of revenue and expenses. Bridgepoint also identified weaknesses in internal controls. On this news, shares of Bridgepoint fell $3.21, or 34%, to close at $6.22 on March 7, 2019, thereby injuring investors. If you purchased Bridgepoint securities, have information, or would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Lesley Portnoy, of GPM, 1925 Century Park East, Suite 2100, Los Angeles, CA 90067 at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9244, or visit our website at www.glancylaw.com . If you inquire by email please include your mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. How did this happen? What could have been done differently? The questions are simple and obvious. They are nonetheless still striking for the contrast they show between how New Zealand and the United States respond to mass shootings. Instead of asking questions or resolving to take action as politicians in New Zealand are doing, we have come to accept as inevitable that large numbers of people will be killed every year by madmen with guns. Routine was the lament used by President Barack Obama as he addressed the country in 2015 after nine people were murdered at a community college in Oregon; it was his 15th address after a mass shooting. At the very beginning of our nation, when the United States and France were fighting an undeclared war, the U.S. Navy was too weak to protect American vessels from attack. The high seas were an 18th-century version of cyberspace, with attackers lurking everywhere. So, as Chertoff notes, the U.S. Constitution mandated that Congress shall have power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water. But I found it strange that the tragic death of Army 2nd Lt. Richard Collins III, for whom a shrine sits at the College Park bus stop where he was stabbed, was ignored. Because The Post has apparently forgotten Collins: Collins, a black Bowie State University student visiting friends at the University of Maryland, was killed in an alleged hate crime. Last month, Collinss parents established a scholarship in their sons name for students at historically black colleges and universities. But that information was left out. Relevant Black Lives Matter. As an advanced-degree chemist, I guess I never got the civics lessons on how our country was formed and how we grew to where we are now. The contrast between liberal democracy and authoritarianism was beautifully described. I had read short pieces by Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates on the extreme menace that artificial intelligence poses, but I didnt get it. Now, after the Trump election and the Russian influence, all is becoming clearer. Responsible actions such as the removal of Alex Jones from the platforms when his videos were leading to real-life harm have been cast as part of a vast Silicon Valley conspiracy to kick conservatives off the Web. Platforms algorithmic tweaks to deprioritize misleading or inflammatory content have been decried as a systematic shadow banning based on ideology. So have their attempts to elevate reliable news sources. Congress held multiple hearings last session in which lawmakers grilled representatives from tech companies on this so-called suppression. Just Tuesday, President Trump accused Facebook, Twitter and Google of collusion against people . . . that happen to have won the election. The Post reported last summer that nervous tech executives had held meetings with Republican leaders to ease their worries. A lot of what we know about how detrimental mass incarceration is in communities particularly communities of color we just didnt know then, said John Roman, criminal justice expert and a senior fellow in the Economics, Justice and Society Group at NORC at the University of Chicago. At the time, we were coming off of 20 years of now-unthinkable levels of violence and grasping at ways to protect communities, and there was a raging debate about whether prison was the right answer. Democrats who have railed against President Trumps national emergency as a manufactured crisis are facing a political dilemma as border apprehensions have spiked and are on pace for the highest level since 2008. Since Trump took office, congressional Democrats have sought to counter his hard-line immigration agenda by pointing to federal data that showed unauthorized crossings had, in recent years, fallen to historic lows. But after 2017, when apprehensions were the fewest in 46 years, the head of Customs and Border Protection has warned that a recent surge of Central American families has left the agency at its breaking point. For Democrats eager to draw a sharp contrast with Trump ahead of the 2020 presidential election cycle, the growing number of migrants being apprehended threatens to puncture a reliable talking point and force them into a fraught choice: sound heightened alarms and risk affirming Trumps narrative of a border crisis, or play down the rising numbers and risk appearing indifferent or negligent. Yes, we are in a crisis situation at the border a humanitarian crisis, a refugee crisis. What Democrats are trying to deal with is: Is this an immigration crisis? Is this about illegal immigration? Not really, said Theresa Brown, a former CBP policy adviser who now works at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Neither side is characterizing this accurately. But its absolutely, 100 percent true that every part of our border management system is beyond capacity and completely overwhelmed right now. Over the first five months of fiscal 2019, CBP had apprehended 268,044 migrants, on pace for more than 643,300 this year. If reached, that total would be the most since 705,005 in 2008 and more than twice as high as the 310,531 migrants taken into custody two years ago. Trump and his supporters have been quick to use the new data to try to heighten tensions about threats at the border and paint Democrats as indifferent to an issue the president plans to make a central issue of his reelection campaign. Were on track for a million illegal aliens to rush our borders, Trump said, exaggerating the numbers, when he vetoed legislation last week that would have scuttled the national emergency he declared to secure funding for a wall. People hate the word invasion, but thats what it is. Democrats say they are determined to counter what they view as Trumps irresponsible fearmongering over the security risks of the migrants and slow his push for a border wall. Experts have said the barrier would do little to stop the flow of Central Americans who seek to surrender to authorities in hopes of winning asylum protections. In their fight, Democrats have pressed administration officials to acknowledge there is no emergency. During a Senate oversight hearing this month, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) asserted that border crossings are still at a historic low compared to other times in our nations history. No, senator, theyre not, CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan responded. Were on pace for over 700,000 crossings this year thats closer to historic highs than historic lows. After Blumenthal suggested the numbers were a fluke, McAleenan said: We have to confront whats happened in these five months. . . . This is new, different and potentially worsening. In fact, the high-water mark for unauthorized crossings came in 2000, when 1.68 million migrants were apprehended, according to CBP figures. During the peak rates in the 1990s and early 2000s, when having more than 1 million apprehensions in a year was common, the influx was driven largely by Mexican men sneaking across the border in search of jobs. But over the past decade, the average number has plummeted to 400,751 per year. Federal officials attributed the steep decline to the start of the economic recession in 2007 and beefed-up border enforcement during the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. And the makeup of the immigrants has changed radically. Immigration analysts emphasized that the families, mostly from Guatemala and Honduras, are in many cases fleeing poverty, hunger and political unrest and do not represent a national security threat, despite Trumps rhetoric. The Trump Administration is cooking the books to justify a vanity project that wont keep Americans safe. The fact is were far closer to the lowest number of border apprehensions weve ever seen than the highest, Blumenthal said in a statement. Ive long called for the Administration to step up and work with Congress to fix our broken immigration system and invest in strategic border security but the Administrations fraudulent fear-mongering does not work. Blumenthal is far from the only Democrat to make that argument. In recent weeks, Reps. Ted Lieu (Calif.), Steve Cohen (Tenn.), Bennie Thompson (Miss.) and Sean Maloney (N.Y.) have issued tweets citing historically low numbers. In his State of the State address last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said: Let us state the facts. We are currently experiencing the lowest number of border crossings since 1971. Nathan Click, a spokesman for Newsom, said the governor is not ignoring the situation at the border, noting he has put money in the states budget to build shelters for Central American families as they await their asylum court hearings. His point is these people are coming legally and using the system to flee violence and persecutions, Click said. While CBP might dismiss that and lump everyone together, these are two very different things. Thompson, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, defended the committees argument, made in a tweet on Feb. 15, that: Undocumented border crossings are at *near historic* lows. There IS no emergency. In a statement, Thompson acknowledged the rise in asylum-seeking families and said lawmakers should be addressing it as a humanitarian challenge we must take on, not using it to manufacture a nonexistent security crisis and drum up fear of immigrants. He criticized the Trump administration for making hypothetical projections about border crossings off of a very short window of time and for selectively presenting data in its bad-faith effort to foster an anti-immigrant agenda. But federal immigration authorities, including career officials who predate the Trump administration, have grown alarmed by the posture of Democrats. CBP and other federal agencies, including Health and Human Services, which provides shelter to migrant children, have reported operating at maximum capacity, with Border Patrol agents being pulled from the field to perform administrative tasks to process the families. Im concerned about the lack of factual grounding in our political debate, said one senior U.S. official whose career has spanned multiple administrations. Democrats are starting to not even believe data created by professionals, the official added, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal operations. Republicans have seized on statements from Democrats to paint them as turning a blind eye to the mounting problems and make the case that the rising numbers at the border have proved Trump right about a crisis even though the situation also threatens to highlight the presidents failure to make progress on his top campaign promise to reduce unauthorized immigration. The Republican National Committee posted a video clip of Blumenthals exchange with McAleenan on Twitter, where it has had more than 92,000 views. That arguments over, Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, said of the Democrats talking point. Nowrasteh emphasized that dealing with the migrant families requires different solutions from Trumps wall, but he added of Democrats: We should stop focusing on an argument that may have worked five years ago. We need to deal with reality now. The reality is that more than 66,000 migrants were apprehended at the southern border in February three times the number from the same month in 2017 and the numbers are on track to surpass that in March, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said this week. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy analyst at the American Immigration Council, said the Trump administration has failed to present the full picture. He noted that the number of undocumented immigrants in the country soared from an estimated 3 million to a peak of 11 million from 1993 through 2007 meaning that, in addition to those who were apprehended, millions more successfully sneaked through. A federal study found the number of immigrants who have evaded apprehension at the border has been cut dramatically over the past decade. Yes, were currently at a moment, due to the humanitarian crisis in Central America, where the apprehension numbers are higher now, Reichlin-Melnick said. But if youre looking at the broader context of just how insecure the border was pre-2008, compared to today, we are still at historic lows. Inside the powerful and populist wing of the party that is most loyal to Trump, McCain is not a revered war hero but a useful foil encapsulating everything his core voters have come to loathe about establishment Republicans, from their support for the Iraq War to their opposition to Trumps nativist agenda to their esteem for the Justice Department as it oversees the ongoing Russia investigation. She said she and her husband have certainly have had those conversations about his tweeting, and she suggested that the media gives him too much attention. I dont know when the feminists are going to write the story about the unusual situation of a man getting power through his wife, but thats what we have here, she said. NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 2018 was a record year for investment across the telecommunications industry with several of the largest merger valuations recorded in history. The TMT Finance USA Top 30 Comms M&A Dealmakers list 2019 recognizes the key players currently leading and facilitating the most significant mergers, acquisitions, IPOs, financings and new investments across the US, to create the definitive record of the key Investors, M&A Legal Advisors and Dealmakers for 2019. The US is an emerging market when it comes to privately financing infrastructure and 2018 saw new investment strategies develop within wireless towers, fiber, data centers and fixed infrastructure investment, alongside a new set of leaders reshaping major US cities. The rising stars of TMT are guiding strategy at corporate firms, building new business lines at private equity funds, as well as talented young dealmakers from the legal and advisory transactional communities. TMT Finance has selected the USA's Top 30 Comms M&A Dealmakers 2019 based upon analysis of their extensive online archives of North American TMT deals announced since 2017, as well as those currently taking place, together with each professionals deal execution track record. The list features 30 professionals comprising of 10 Comms M&A dealmakers, 10 Comms M&A Legal Advisors and 10 Infrastructure Investors. Access to the prestigious guide can be provided on request at tmtfinance.com/usa/dealmakers The 2019 US Top 30 Comms M&A Dealmakers list has been released in advance of the TMT M&A Forum USA 2019 where the leading investors, operators and dealmakers from across the US will gathering to discuss the current trends and opportunities in investing in digital communications infrastructure. The event, held in New York on April 11 2019, is sponsored by Bank Street Group, Santander, Tillman Infrastructure, WIS and MVP Capital, offers more than 250 M&A professionals the opportunity to engage with leading figureheads and discuss infrastructure, 5G investment, M&A strategy and changing trends including panels discussing how to establish a new generation of infrastructure and ways to invest in new infrastructure to deliver 5G. Over 80 key speakers have been announced for the event, which features CxOs and senior executives from Equinix, AT&T, Verizon, Telefonica, Tillman, GTT, Everstream, Discovery, Uber, Sony, EQT, Intel, Antin, Dell, Stonepeak, American Tower, M/C Partners, Ericsson, Vodafone, BT Group, Amazon Web Services, MVP Capital, C Spire, Fuze, Compass Datacenters, Databank, Vonage and more. For more information about TMT Forum M&A USA 2019 including tickets please visit www.tmtfinance.com/usa or contact enquiries@tmtfinance.com for speaker and sponsor opportunities. About TMT Finance TMT Finance was first launched in the UK in 2009 to connect and inform senior executives pursuing opportunities across M&A, investment, financing and advisory globally. Since then, TMT Finance has established 6 weekly news titles with a readership of 22,000, and 10 annual executive events gathering leaders in the US Europe, Asia and Africa. For more information on TMT Finance visit www.tmtfinance.com/events and follow on Twitter and LinkedIn A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/17f95149-16a2-40fe-88eb-8c58fcc506ee Lowell challenged aspects of Cummingss account, writing in his own letter that he did not say that Kushner used WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders. He also said he told Cummings and then-House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, who was also in the December meeting, that he was not familiar with the details of Kushners use of the messaging application and referred them to the White House counsel. I gave him the kind of funeral he wanted, which as president I had to approve, Trump said inaccurately during his remarks in Ohio, an apparent reference to allowing the use of military transport to carry McCains body to Washington. I dont care about this. I didnt get a thank-you; thats okay. We sent him on the way. But I wasnt a fan of John McCain. Trumps statement marks an important symbolic reversal of official U.S. neutrality on an issue that is akin to Israels occupation of the West Bank, which was also seized during the 1967 war and is claimed by Palestinians for a future independent state. It puts the United States at odds with most U.S. allies and the United Nations, which has declared the annexation of the Golan Heights an illegal occupation under international law. The president signed an executive order Thursday to withhold federal funds from universities found to restrict free speech on campus. While the guidelines which have not yet been written would ostensibly cover all types of speech, the impetus for the presidents actions was stories of conservative speakers being silenced. He first announced his plans at the Conservative Political Action Conference confab a few weeks ago. VA, with 1,200 hospitals and clinics, is the countrys largest health-care system. For conservatives who failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, rerouting veterans care to the private sector is the next front in the battle over U.S. health policy. For President Trump, giving veterans more choices will probably be a reelection theme next year as he seeks shorter waits and potentially better care for veterans, a crucial constituency. The Global BDS Movement, despite deceptively presenting itself as progressive and pro-peace, in reality, advances neither of these principles, the resolution sponsors wrote. The Global BDS Movements overly-simplistic and one-sided approach do a disservice to the cause of peace and stability by unfairly placing blame entirely on one side and by seeking to delegitimize one party on the world stage. This does nothing to encourage either party to resume negotiations or enhance a better understanding of each other or the complexity of the conflict. There are thousands of people who will be coming to Washington this week who are Democrats and Republicans who care deeply about the U.S.-Israel relationship and understand that it cant be used as a political wedge issue and that applies on both sides, said Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), who delivered an impassioned floor speech on the dangers of anti-Semitism during the Omar imbroglio this month. I think what the community wants is clear assurance that attacks on the Jewish community wont be tolerated and can never be normalized. Twenty years ago, when Freya Fisher was looking for a home, she knew what she wanted. But she didnt think it was possible in Northern Virginia. With her husbands new job in the District, she wanted a place that reminded her of her hometown in rural Ohio. When she stumbled upon the neighborhood of Vienna Woods, she was sold. TORONTO, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- FTI Foodtech International Inc. (TSXV: FTI) (the Company) announces it has signed an MOU with Stemtech (Stemtech) to develop a blockchain application for the Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) industry. The proposed structure of the deal would be as follows: FTI to issue 2,733,773 shares (20% of current outstanding shares of FTI) to Stemtech in exchange for 1,060,000 shares of Stemtech (20% of outstanding). Direct Investment Stemtech and its investors shall participate in a private placement with FTI for a total of CAD $500,000 at $0.25 per share, with an equal amount of warrants at CAD $0.45 per share with a one year expiry. FTI has the option to invest some of the proceeds of the warrants exercise at Stemtechs next round at 20% DTM (discount to market). It is contemplated that this will be laid out in two tranches of approximately CAD $250,000 each, approximately ten weeks apart. FTI shall purchase 350,000 Stemtech shares at USD $1.00 per share, for a total investment of USD $350,000. It is contemplated that this will be laid out in two tranches of approximately USD $175,000 each, approximately ten weeks apart. FTI shall issue up to an additional 2,000,000 shares and warrants to Stemtech on a performance basis based on net profit. The structure is to be determined with the final agreement. Stemtech shall initially nominate one qualified Board Member of its choosing to the Board of FTI. After the second $175,000 tranche, Stemtech shall nominate a second qualified Board Member. The final agreement is subject to approval from the TSX Venture Exchange. Stemtech is a Delaware based MLM company, focused on health and wellness products. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. For further information, contact: William Hullah, President, FTI at (416) 444-1058. In the first few days, we saw many dead bodies in the water, said Sugesh. It is hard to say how many, but the numbers will go up. The bodies are all in the sea, so it will take weeks or even years to know the real number. The Australian man accused of carrying out the March 15 attacks had five guns, two of which had been modified into assault rifles, essentially making them military-style weapons, police said. The time for the easy availability of these weapons must end, and today it will, Ardern said at a news conference Thursday afternoon, using her power to create rules under existing legislation to put the ban into immediate effect. In short, every semiautomatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country. The Indonesian news conference was called Thursday afternoon local time after Reuters reported that the Lion Air 610s pilots were scrambling to diagnose why the jets nose kept lurching forward, flipping through the manual as the aircrafts altitude and airspeed varied dramatically. Reuters and later the New York Times, citing investigators who had heard the audio and transcript, said that in the final seconds of the audio, the co-pilot said Allahu akbar, meaning God is great, and a prayer. The tragedy was the latest setback for a city that has struggled to rebuild after it became, in 2017, the center of the bloodiest battle against the Islamic State in Iraq. The militant group had occupied Mosul for three years and considered it the de facto Islamic State capital in Iraq imposing its harsh rule over more than 1.5 million people, by far the largest territory the Islamic State controlled. One leader after another went around a ring-shaped table to hammer May about her political strategy, her preparations for a no-deal departure and why she wanted three months more. On each question, they found her wanting, diplomats said, after she ate up much of her opening discussion time to read off a letter that leaders had already seen the day before. In all, she was grilled for nearly two hours an eternity in the tightly choreographed world of high-stakes summits. BERLIN Prosecutors said Thursday that the tram shooting this week in the Dutch city of Utrecht that left three people dead and five wounded may have been a terrorist attack. The 37-year-old Turkish-born suspect, Gokmen Tanis, is being investigated over several offenses, including manslaughter or murder with a terrorist motive. He will face a judge on Friday. Britain was never a part of the Schengen zone, the area of 26 European states that have a common visa policy and that ensures the freedom of movement for all those with E.U. visas or passports. But the ease of the Eurostar nevertheless brought the island nation closer to its continental counterparts than ever before. After simple security and passport checks, passengers could cross the English Channel in less time than it takes to travel from the north of England to the British capital. TORONTO, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The OEA wishes to congratulate the government for moving ahead with reforming the governance structure and accountability framework of the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) as recommended by the OEB Modernization Review Panel. The OEA looks forward to working with the provincial government in implementing its vision for the sector. The OEA commends the provincial government for taking action to modernize Ontarios energy regulator, said Vince Brescia, President & CEO of the OEA. The improved governance structure proposed for the Ontario Energy Board will help instill investor confidence and therefore promote innovation and job creation in a sector going through a technological transformation, said Brescia. The OEA proposed many of these reforms in its submissions to the OEB Modernization Panel and is pleased to see the provincial government being responsive to suggestions coming from the sector. With respect to the conservation reforms, the OEA recognizes the governments objectives to remove costs from Ontarios electricity system. Looking ahead, the OEA believes that conservation will be an important low cost resource for Ontarios energy system in the future. We look forward to working with the provincial government, the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) and the Ontario Energy Board to develop a long term strategy for conservation that ensures electricity customers can benefit from this low cost alternative to other resources, said Brescia. Additional Resources: ABOUT THE OEA The Ontario Energy Association (OEA) is the credible and trusted voice of the energy sector. We earn our reputation by being an integral and influential part of energy policy development and decision making in Ontario. We represent Ontarios energy leaders that span the full diversity of the energy industry. For more information: Leanne Ryan, Marketing & Communications Associate Vince Brescia, President & CEO Ontario Energy Association Ontario Energy Association 647.463.5244 416.961.8874 leanne@energyontario.ca vince@energyontario.ca Sessions, by contrast, was forced out in a day after working for months under the threat that Trump could fire him at any time over his decision to recuse himself from the investigation that would become special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs Russia probe, the conclusion of which could happen sometime soon. Sessions was replaced on an acting basis by Matt Whitaker, his chief of staff, who also attended the event Thursday. And the president continued to tweet about him. The Pentagon hasnt said which specific projects would be defunded. But it has ruled out taking money from military housing projects or contracts due to award before the end of the fiscal year. When those are stripped out, the refined list decreases to $4.35 billion worth of projects that are actually vulnerable. The Trump administration plans to take up to $3.6 billion, or 83 percent, for the wall, meaning most of the projects on the shorter list could be defunded. The investigation comes after the government accountability organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter to the inspector general saying that, according to news reports, Shanahan appeared to have made numerous statements promoting his former employer Boeing and has disparaged the companys competitors before subordinates at the agency. A spokeswoman with the FBI, when asked about its contacts with the secretive group, said it is our standard practice to neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation. However, the FBI enjoys a strong working relationship with our Spanish law enforcement partners that centers on information sharing and regular cooperation around matters of mutual assistance. Chairman Huynh Duc Tho and Pittsburgh city Mayor William M. Peduto exchange letters of congratulation. (Photo: cadn.com.vn) So said Chairman of the Da Nang city Huynh Duc Tho during his reception for Willian M. Peduto, Mayor of Pittsburgh city in Pennsylvania, US, on March 19 According to Mr. Tho, Da Nang city has welcomed many senior officials from the US Congress and Government, including US President Donald Trumps visit to Da Nang in 2017 for attending the APEC Summit. It has set up cooperative relationship with Pittsburgh, Oakland and Houston cities, he said, adding that there are currently 56 US projects with capitaliz of USD589 million in the city. Da Nang also witnesses diverse effective cultural, security and educational activities with US localities, forces and organizations, he went on to say. For the relationship with Pittsburgh city, since the establishment of friendly and cooperative relationship in 2009, the two cities have focused the cooperation in tertiary education and people-to-people relations. Some businesses from Pittsburgh city have come to Da Nang to study the investment environment while Da Nang citys leaders have come to the US city to gain experience in climate change adaptation. Appreciating the development of Pittsburgh city and the bilateral effective cooperation in education, non-governmental assistance and delegation exchanges, Mr, Tho suggested that Pittsburgh authorities continue to share experience in the administration of a modern city and the promotion of healthcare, educational and advanced training cooperation. Expressing his deep impression of Da Nang city, Mayor William M. Peduto pledged to continue to promote the relationship between the two cities in all areas, especially in high technology, information technology, logistics, tourism, trade and education. He appreciated the investment environment and policies of Da Nang city, expressing confidence that with its advantages, Da Nang will boost cooperation in investment and people-to-people diplomacy with the US side. He also said he hoped that direct flights between Vietnam and the US would open soon to boost tourism and trade cooperation./. Board Announcement - VAM PLC VAM PLC (Value Asset Management Plc) is a residential property developer within the Republic of Ireland and primarily within the Greater Dublin Area. The Board would like to announce that EUR 61,152 of new bonds have been issued and subscribed for. The total bonds in circulation are now EUR 378,152 with additional issuance expected in the coming weeks. The Company further expects to announce its first loan agreement within the next 30 days. The Board of Directors VAM PLC www.vamplc.com He occupied the highest office in the country and committed the gravest crimes in the penal code, federal prosecutor Eduardo El Hage told reporters in Rio de Janeiro. Just because hes a rich, white man does not mean we will be lenient given the crimes he committed inside the [presidential palace]. During the raid on his home, Marrero recorded a voice message that circulated on social media. In this moment, the SEBIN are in my house, he said. They, sadly, came for me. Keep fighting. Dont stop. Please take care of the president. And let it be what God wants. God bless you. NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of U.S. Xpress Enterprises, Inc. (U.S. Xpress or the Company) (NYSE: USX). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980. The investigation concerns whether U.S. Xpress and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices. [Click here to join a class action] On November 1, 2018, U.S. Xpress issued a press release announcing the Companys financial and operating results for the third fiscal quarter and nine months ending September 30, 2018. Therein, and in a conference call discussing the results, U.S. Xpress disclosed how unusual shipping patterns were impacting its segments and how market challenges for drivers resulted in a year-to-year tractor count decrease. The Company and its executives further disclosed higher driver wages and independent contractor costs, lower than expected recruitment levels, and a higher insurance expense. On this news, U.S. Xpresss stock price fell $3.04 per share, or nearly 30%, to close at $7.10 per share on November 2, 2018. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com. CONTACT: Robert S. Willoughby Pomerantz LLP rswilloughby@pomlaw.com NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES TORONTO, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canada House Wellness Group Inc. (CSE: CHV) (Canada House or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has closed its financing of units (Units) resulting in total gross proceeds to the Company of $3,300,000 (the Offering). The Offering was oversubscribed beyond the $3 million maximum Offering initially announced by the Company. Each Unit was sold at a price of $0.12 per Unit and is comprised of: (i) one common share (each a Common Share); and (ii) and one detachable common share purchase warrant of the Company (each, a Warrant). Each Warrant is exercisable into one Common Share at an exercise price of $0.30 for a period of 12 months; at an exercise price of $0.40 from 12 months to 24 months; at an exercise price of $0.60 from 24 months to 36 months; and at an exercise price of $0.80 from 36 months to 48 months following the closing date of the Offering. The Company paid finders fees to appropriately registered entities in respect of investors introduced to the Company by such finders in the aggregate amount of $21,900. The Company also issued in aggregate 182,500 warrants having terms substantially similar to the Warrants in respect of subscriptions introduced to the Company by such finders. The net proceeds from the financing are expected to be used to provide clinic expansion capital for Canada House Clinics; Acquisition and developments costs for the Issuers Vegreville and Pickering facilities; R&D capital for its Knalysis Technologies division, and support of Canada House Clinics new client acquisition program implementation, and for general working capital purposes. This fundraising strengthens our balance sheet and sets us up to pursue the next phase of growth initiatives which include materially expanding our production capacity and buildout of our extraction lab in partnership with Nutritional High which we expect will result in oils and extracts coming to market this calendar year. We were very pleased with the markets interest in the Offering which acknowledges the strength of our story as a growing and impactful medical cannabis company entering into full commercial production said Chris Churchill-Smith, CEO of Canada House. The Common Shares and Warrants (including Warrants issued to finders) issued pursuant to the Offering, and any common shares issued on the exercise of the Warrants will be subject to a statutory hold period in Canada of four months and one day following the closing of the Offering in accordance with applicable securities laws. Additional resale restrictions may be applicable under the laws of other jurisdictions, if any. Certain subscribers under the Offering were related parties to the Company and, accordingly, the Offering may be deemed to be a related party transaction as defined under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions (MI 61-101). Other than subscription agreements between such related parties and the Company relating to the issuance of the Units pursuant to the Offering, the Company has not entered into any agreement with an interested party or a joint actor with an interested party in connection with the Offering. The Offering is exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of MI 61-101 (pursuant to subsections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a)) as the fair market value of the related party transactions are not more than 25% of the market capitalization of the Company. This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein, and these securities will not be offered or sold in any jurisdiction in which their offer or sale would be unlawful. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the 1933 Act), or any state securities laws of the United States. Accordingly, these securities will not be offered or sold to persons within the United States unless an exemption from the registration requirements of the 1933 Act and applicable state securities laws is available. Canada House Wellness Group Inc. Canada House is the parent company of Marijuana for Trauma Inc., Knalysis Technologies and Abba Medix Corp. The Company's goal is to become a marketplace leader through strategic partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions to create a fully integrated cannabis therapy company. For more information please visit http://www.canadahouse.ca . or www.sedar.com For further information, please contact: Boom Capital Markets Steve Low 647-620-5101 steve@boomcapitalmarkets.com Canada House Wellness Group Inc. Chris Churchill-Smith, CEO 514-313-0102 chris.smith@canadahouse.ca Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information. This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements that relate to, among other things, the Companys clinic, production and technology businesses, its future plans, the Companys markets, objectives, goals, strategies, intentions, beliefs, expectations and estimates, and can generally be identified by the use of words such as may, will, could, should, would, likely, possible, expect, intend, estimate, anticipate, believe, plan, objective and continue (or the negative thereof) and words and expressions of similar import. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements involve risks and uncertainties, and undue reliance should not be placed on such statements. Certain material factors or assumptions are applied in making forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Material assumptions used to develop forward-looking information in this news release include, among other things, the regulations related to cannabis use under the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations and the act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts, passed by the Canadian Federal government, making cannabis legal for recreational use by October 17, 2018; Company liquidity and capital resources, including the availability of additional capital resources to fund its activities; level of competition; the ability to adapt products and services to the changing market; the ability to attract and retain key executives; and the ability to execute strategic plans. Additional information about material factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations and about material factors or assumptions applied in making forward-looking statements may be found in the Companys most recent annual and interim Managements Discussion and Analysis under Risk and Uncertainties as well as in other public disclosure documents filed with Canadian securities regulatory authorities. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the forward-looking statements contained in this document, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Australia's best-performing superannuation fund is going against the grain by avoiding cash and bonds, betting the 30-year investment horizon of its youthful members means it can ride out looming economic shocks. Hostplus, which represents swathes of the country's baristas and restaurant waiters, had about 53 per cent of its $40 billion invested in the sharemarket, and the remainder in unlisted assets including airports and water-cleaning plants, chief investment officer Sam Sicilia said. Hostplus looks after the retirement savings of Australia's baristas and restaurant waiters. Credit:Tamara Voninski It had "a lot of cash coming in, not a lot of cash going out," Mr Sicilia, 56, said in a recent interview in Melbourne. The firm's "demographic hasn't changed significantly to want to change the shape of our asset allocation". The investment strategy is at odds with the majority of the nation's super funds, which dialled back risk in recent years. Energy minister Angus Taylor said the government "owes it" to small businesses to enact a default market offer for energy prices. The government, Labor Party and the Australian Greens outlined their blueprints for small business energy stability at the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia energy summit in Melbourne on Wednesday. Energy minister Angus Taylor visits Melbourne manufacturer ANCA last week. . Credit:Simon Schluter Minister Taylor told the room current energy prices are stopping small businesses from "hiring, retraining, and paying their staff more". He championed the importance of setting default prices across the country, saying the default market offer would save some businesses up to $937 a year. Loading It was Ms Satie's job to determine if they were eligible for asylum, and after taking four weeks off in order to recover from a minor throat operation, she began the familiar routine of saying goodbye to her family. Working for the department meant Ms Satie's adult children Luke, Rebecca and Matt never knew how long she would be gone for, or where she was deployed. But this time, Ms Satie's daughter Rebecca wanted to make sure she would be back in time to celebrate her own 57th birthday on August 31. "But, as usual, she said she didn't know," Rebecca said. "Most of the time she'd never tell us where she was going. She wasn't allowed to even to her own kids." And while Rebecca said it was always hard to explain to her children particularly her daughter, who adored her nanna where Ms Satie was going, they understood she was a hard worker. Ms Satie's eldest son Matt, based in Canada, was also aware she was flying out, but his focus was on his partner who was about to give birth to their third child. Luke sent her a text message wishing her a safe flight before she left, and said he would see her when she returned. This was the last thing he ever said to his mother, who flew out to Christmas Island on August 27. Luke describes his reaction to the news of her death as a "snap". For five minutes he sat in his mother's living room, and the feeling of confusion and numbness slowly ebbed as the reality of what he had just been told came crashing down. He tried to call his sister Rebecca, who picked up on Luke's second attempt. "I called her and said, 'hey can you come round?' She said 'why, what's up?'" he said. "I said, 'just get over here'. She said, 'why? You're scaring me.'" "The way he was speaking, it was just odd," Rebecca said. "It was quiet, it was just sadness. I think about it now ... and it was just sadness." Rebecca and her husband left the house while Luke phoned his brother in Canada. His wife had just given birth, and they were on top of the world. "I said 'congrats, but I have bad news for you ... Mum's had a heart attack. She's died'," Luke said. "He said, 'you're talking shit'. I said, 'I wish'." With a dying phone battery, Matt was forced to hang up on his little brother just as Rebecca arrived. The family had no idea where their mum was, what she was doing and who she was with. All they knew was she had died hours before her 57th birthday, and before she had met her new granddaughter. 'Everything's a big secret' From official reports, Ms Satie had spent time working in the Department of Home Affairs office on the day of her death. Her scheduled interviews had been cancelled, but she was still busy with desk work with a colleague for some time before she retired to her accommodation in Poon Saan, a residential area for Department of Home Affairs employees. Locals later told The Australian they heard an ambulance rushing to the area about 7pm, responding to reports of a woman who had gone into suspected cardiac arrest. The AFP later confirmed they were on site and administering a defibrillator to Ms Satie within three minutes of the call, but they couldn't revive her. The family said this was the most they'd ever found out about Ms Satie's final moments. Accommodation at Poon Saan. Credit:James Brickwood According to the Department of Home Affairs they were given a single point of contact where they could direct all their questions, and they have had ongoing contact. But according to Rebecca and Luke, this hasn't been the case. Loading "The contact we had from the Department of Home Affairs, to put it politely, [was] useless,' Rebecca said. Department officials visited the family shortly after Ms Satie's death, but even then, details were scarce. "The only support they gave us was passing us on the details of the government's employee assistance program. That was it," Rebecca said. "That was the only support. I only heard from [them] on a regular basis from the time we made contact with [them] up until the funeral ... maybe two weeks. After that, there was nothing." The family signalled their intentions to file for a worker's compensation claim, with Luke now expected to pay off his mother's mortgage and her other debts. "There was a point where [the department] said it wasn't a worker's comp claim, as she didn't work that day," Luke said. Jaquelline Satie. "Well, how? She was there. She wasn't there on holiday. At the end of the day she was there for work. It wasn't for fun or pleasure. FIFO workers are covered from the moment they get on the plane to the moment they get off the plane back in Perth. "How are you going to sit there and tell us it's not the same?" 'Vicarious trauma' and the Australian Border Force Ms Satie had a history of post-traumatic stress disorder due to her job at the department. She was interviewing people at the Wickham Point detention centre in Darwin when a riot broke out, which forced both her and a co-worker to lock themselves in a room. "There were people trying to break into the interview rooms that they were in," Luke said. "They couldn't lock the doors properly. They basically just wedged a chair under the handle to stop them from getting in ... they were smashing chairs into the windows trying to break in. They even took off their hi-vis shirts ... to sort of hide that they're there." The Australian Border Force says it has measures in place to prepare officers for unique occupational challenges. Credit:AAP Ms Satie lodged a worker's compensation claim due to PTSD from the incident, and was in the process of building her case when she died. "They were going to go to the next step and give her a psych test so they could see what kind of impact it had had on her, but because she's died before that can happen, the case dies with it," Luke said. However, her family said they believed their mother was dealing with trauma far before her 2015 PTSD claim. Rebecca said there was no doubt in her mind the stress of the job had somehow contributed to her mother's unexpected death. "Given her role, she had to hear a lot of stories about why these people are coming to Australia, why they need protection," she said. "Trauma, rape, drugs all the rest of it. She had to deal with that every single time she interviewed these people and not let that affect her, and also put that information into the system and research as to whether they're telling the truth. "And then she'd have to make a decision a yes or no if they're going to get protection here or not." Community and Public Service Union national president Alistair Waters said it was imperative the department understood the impact the work could have on border force officials. "Home Affairs is a high pressure work environment where staff know the stakes are high as they deal with complex and sometimes also traumatic issues," he said. Loading "That's especially the case for frontline workers. The personal experiences of CPSU members in Home Affairs makes it clear the department often falls short in providing support, and has similarly failed to tackle problems with workplace culture that further add to the stress workers are under. "The department should be urgently tackling the cultural issues in the department, such as bullying, and ensuring adequate support is provided for staff struggling to deal with work pressure or trauma. "Indeed, short-staffing, budget cuts and recent cuts to the take-home pay of many home affairs workers mean this is a work environment that's getting worse, not better. The family has continually tried to reach out to the department, and has even written to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton for answers about their mother's death. Mr Dutton's office said they were preparing a response for the family, and the minister offered his sincere thoughts and condolences to the family. Regarding the family's claims, the department said all deployments undertaken by employees were "voluntary". "The department and the Australian Border Force take the safety and physical and mental well being of its employees very seriously," a spokesperson said. "The department and the ABF have measures in place that that prepare officers to meet unique occupational challenges. "These include mental and physical well being checks, access to on-the-ground and telephone-based counselling services, and debriefings before, during and after deployments. Mentally ill Victorians are being let down by an acute care system starved of funding, short of staff and operating in constant crisis mode, Victorias Auditor-General says. In a scathing report, Auditor-General Andrew Greaves also says the Department of Health and Human Services understands the extent of the problem but has no clear plan to fix it. Until the system has the capacity to operate in more than just crisis mode, DHHS cannot expect to be able to make meaningful improvements to clinical care models or the mental health of the Victorian population, Mr Greaves says. The Andrews government should not wait for its Royal Commission into Mental Health to conclude before taking steps to repair the mental health system, he writes in a report tabled in State Parliament on Thursday. After the government twice failed to get parliamentary approval for the Brexit divorce deal it has done with the European Union defeated by opposition MPs and also many on May's own side - the only options are now a damaging no deal Brexit, or a delay. An anti-Brexit campaigner stands outside the entrance to Downing Street with flags and a banner. Credit:AP May sent a letter to EU leaders on Wednesday setting out a plan to bring the divorce deal back to parliament for a third time before the end of the month: political pundits are tipping Monday. She asked for delay to the Brexit date to June 2019 to allow time for necessary legal consequences should it pass. She did not outline a plan for what would happen if the deal is again voted down. Previously the government has indicated a longer delay would be required to take stock and decide a new course. However in parliament on Wednesday May said as prime minister I could not consider a delay beyond 30th June, saying a long delay would mean endless hours and days of this House carrying on contemplating its navel on Europe. Loading This has been interpreted as saying she would resign rather than renegotiate or rethink the Brexit divorce deal. It could also mean she is resigned to embracing a no deal Brexit predicted to cause large economic damage to the UK and cause chaos at its borders including food and medicine shortages. Earlier this week the Commons speaker ruled that a "substantially" identical divorce deal could not come back for another vote, however there should be procedural ways the government could avoid this rule. The divorce deal, technically the Withdrawal Agreement agreed between the UK government and the EU in November, was designed to settle debts, separate EU and UK laws, keep the Ireland border free of new checkpoints and provide a long, smooth transition into the post-Brexit world for business and industry while a new trade and customs relationship is negotiated. A new poll released on Wednesday found that 90 per cent of Britons considered the Brexit process so far to have been a national humiliation. A poll found that 90 per cent of Britons considered the Brexit process so far to have been a 'national humiliation'. Labour MP Yvette Cooper said the blame for the stalemate rested with the prime minister who was in the worst state of denial, refusing to listen to anyone, just still doing the same thing again and again, no plan B, heading stubbornly towards the cliff edge. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said Wednesday marked 1000 days since the Brexit referendum and the government have led the country and themselves into crisis, chaos and division. Months of running down the clock and a concerted campaign of blackmail, bullying and bribery have failed to convince the House or the country that her deal is anything but a damaging national failure and should be rejected, he said. A member of the Conservative partys pro-Brexit wing, MP Mark Francois, said his colleagues were solid on rejecting the divorce deal again if it was put to another vote. An anti-Brexit placard outside the Houses of Parliament in London. Credit:AP Weve read it and we know it means we dont leave the EU, he said referring to fears the deal could leave the UK trapped in a customs union with the EU due to the complication of the Irish border. European Council president Donald Tusk said on Wednesday he had consulted with EU leaders and a short extension to the Brexit deadline would be possible, but it will be conditional on a positive vote on the Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons. The leaders will meet to formally take that decision later this week. Tusk did not specifically mention the option of a longer delay, however he held open the option of an emergency meeting of EU leaders next week. Loading Even if the hope for a final success may seem frail, even illusory, and although Brexit fatigue is increasingly visible and justified, we cannot give up seeking until the very last moment a positive solution, he said. Frances foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Wednesday France would oppose any Brexit delay that didnt come with a credible plan to ratify the withdrawal agreement. Without that the central scenario is a no-deal exit [and] we are ready for it, he said. Also on Wednesday, Commons speaker John Bercow opened the possibility of an emergency session of parliament this Saturday to deal with Brexit developments. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pretium Resources Inc. (TSX/NYSE:PVG) (Pretivm or the Company) reports that independent legal counsel and a consultant retained to investigate recent trading in its shares have reached two clear, main conclusions. First, the investigation found no evidence of an information leak by the Company. Second, there is evidence of instances of market manipulation in trading of Pretivm shares by an outside party or parties. The findings of the investigation, summarized below, have been turned over to the US and Canadian securities regulators for possible further action relating to the evidence of market manipulation. Pretivm initiated the external investigation into unusual trading of its shares Pretivm engaged independent legal counsel to examine unusual trading activity in its shares leading up to its news release dated January 9, 2019. The investigation comprised an examination of a) Pretivms internal and external communications, and b) trading in Pretivm common shares and derivatives. Independent legal counsel was provided with complete and unrestricted access to all Pretivm internal and external communications for the review. No evidence of information leaks from Company The independent investigation of Pretivms communications found no evidence of a leak of confidential information to market participants. In addition, Pretivms disclosure policies and procedures were reviewed and found to be compliant with all applicable laws and in conformance with best practices. As a result of the investigation, the independent legal counsel recommended minor revisions to the Companys policies and procedures. These recommendations have been adopted by the Company. Evidence of market manipulation through abnormal, high volume sell-side common share order cancellation during trading; sharp rise in open interest of short-dated put options leading up to September 6, 2018 As part of the investigation, the independent counsel retained a consultant to examine the trading in Pretivms shares and derivatives leading up to Pretivms January 9, 2019 news release, and additionally for trading leading up to and including September 6, 2018 when Pretivms share price decreased sharply. In the opinion of the independent consultant, there is evidence of market manipulation in trading of Pretivm shares based on a review of executed, created, cancelled and outstanding sell orders in Pretivms shares during both periods of review. In analyzing trading in Pretivms shares, the consultant identified an unusually high volume of odd-lot orders, and patterns of massive blocks of sell orders created and cancelled in rapid succession (within the same second) below and above the best offer. In one key finding in respect of the abnormal volume of order cancellations, on September 6, 2018 sell orders for over 700,000 PVG shares were created and cancelled within the two, one-minute intervals between 11:45 AM and 11:47 AM EST. (By way of comparison, sell orders for an average of 4,297 PVG shares were created and cancelled for each minute of trading between July 1 and July 31, 2018.) In reviewing PVG option trading from August 1, 2018 through to September 5, 2018, the consultant identified an unusually sharp rise in both the put-to-call ratio and short-dated put to long-dated put ratio leading up to the share price drop on September 6, 2018. Reports forwarded to US and Canadian securities regulators for possible further action The independent legal counsel retained by Pretivm has completed its investigation into the trading of Pretivm shares, and has forwarded all reports to US and Canadian securities regulators. Pretivm will cooperate with the securities regulators to its fullest extent in their review of trading in shares of Pretivm. About Pretivm Pretivm is a low-cost intermediate gold producer with the high-grade underground Brucejack Mine in northern British Columbia. For further information contact: Joseph Ovsenek Troy Shultz President & CEO Manager, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications WASHINGTON, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The following statement regarding todays Executive Order on Campus Free Speech issued by President Donald Trump can be attribute to Mike Berry, Chief of Staff for First Liberty Institute: Robust debate is essential to the college experience. President Trumps executive order ensures that college students are free from speech codes that stifle such debate, thwart religious expression, and limit education. First Liberty Institute commends the presidents action ensuring that students are exposed to new ideas and are free to profess and maintain their opinions on college campuses across America. About First Liberty Institute First Liberty Institute is the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious freedom for all Americans. To arrange an interview, contact Lacey McNiel at media@firstliberty.org or by calling 972-941-4453. Contact: Lacey McNiel media@firstliberty.org Direct: 972-941-4453 TORONTO and VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- World Class Extractions Inc. (World Class) (CSE: PUMP) and Quadron Cannatech Corporation (Quadron) (CSE: QCC) are pleased to announce that they have entered into a binding letter of intent (the LOI) to proceed with a business combination by way of a statutory plan of arrangement under the Business Corporations Act (British Columbia) pursuant to which World Class has agreed to acquire, either directly or through a wholly-owned subsidiary, all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Quadron (the Arrangement). Under the terms of the LOI, on completion of the Arrangement, the shareholders of Quadron (the Quadron Shareholders) will receive two common shares (the Exchange Ratio) of World Class (a World Class Share) for each common share of Quadron (a Quadron Share) held. On closing of the Arrangement, it is expected that the current Quadron Shareholders will receive approximately 143,300,894 World Class Shares. Concurrently with the closing of the Arrangement, the holders of options and warrants in the capital of Quadron will receive a proportionate number of options and warrants of World Class. Final terms of the Arrangement will be set out in an arrangement agreement (the Arrangement Agreement) to be entered into by the parties. The Arrangement Agreement will contain representations and warranties for the benefit of each of World Class and Quadron, conditions relating to shareholder, court and regulatory approvals, material adverse changes and compliance with the Arrangement Agreement as are in each case customary in comparable transactions of this nature. The Arrangement Agreement will include, among other things, a non-solicitation covenant on the part of Quadron (subject to customary fiduciary out provisions). In the event of a superior proposal, World Class will have the right to either match such superior proposal or receive a termination fee to be agreed by the parties in the Arrangement Agreement, commensurate with transactions of a similar size. Completion of the Arrangement is subject to a number of conditions being satisfied or waived by one or both of World Class and Quadron at or prior to closing of the Arrangement, including: entry into the Arrangement Agreement; approval of the Quadron Shareholders, together with any requisite minority approvals; and receipt of all necessary regulatory and court approvals and the satisfaction of certain other closing conditions customary for a transaction of this nature. Quadron intends to engage an independent financial advisor to assist the Board of Directors and to provide a fairness opinion, if advisable. Directors, officers and certain shareholders of Quadron representing 23% of the issued and outstanding Quadron Shares have agreed to enter into voting and support agreements under which they will agree to vote in favour of the Arrangement. Details of the Arrangement, including a summary of the terms and conditions of the Arrangement Agreement, will be disclosed in a management information circular of Quadron, which will be mailed to Quadron Shareholders and will also be available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com . Transaction Highlights The proposed Arrangement is intended to create a leading provider of extraction and processing solutions. The combined entities will leverage Quadrons technical expertise, established customer base and deep management team with World Classs unique patent-pending technology and strong cash position resulting from its recent $23,000,000 private placement. The proposed Arrangement would produce the following synergies: Quadrons extraction and processing systems, which are automated and have been simplified relative to comparable technologies; a deep roster of Quadron executives and employees that have been operating in the extraction and processing sector for over four years; an established and growing revenue stream, as demonstrated by Quadrons revenue increasing by 50.71% for the six months ended October 31, 2018 when compared to the same period in 2017; World Classs unique patent-pending technology, which World Class anticipates will provide higher yields of full spectrum cannabis oil at faster rates and larger volumes than current extraction technologies; and a strong cash position resulting from World Classs recently-closed private placement for gross proceeds of approximately $23,000,000. Rosy Mondin, CEO of Quadron, stated, "We are very excited to proceed with this strategic alliance with World Class and believe it marks a definitive shift in our business model. Since our launch, Quadrons focus has been the development of extraction and processing solutions to simplify and automate the very complex extraction process for cultivators. As the industry prepares for the legalization and regulation of cannabis concentrates and edibles in Canada, this transaction provides the necessary resources to increase sales, distribution and establish partnerships with leaders in industry with WCE, which will provide a significant growth opportunity for our shareholders. This merger combines the strength of both companies to strategically position them as leading global extractions solutions provider for cultivators and processors both within Canada and internationally to serve a rapidly growing cannabis oils market. Michael McCombie, Chief Executive Officer of World Class, added, The combination of our business with Quadrons gives us an opportunity to accelerate our goal of becoming the global leader in extraction and processing in general, with a particular focus on large-scale processing of CBD from hemp. We believe that our strong cash position and unique patent-pending technology, which can use both wet and dry cannabis and hemp as inputs, is the perfect complement to Quadrons experienced team of executives and employees, along with their proven year-over-year revenue increases. This transaction is transformative for World Class and its shareholders, and we couldnt be happier to be able to announce it on our first day of being listed on the CSE. The Arrangement is an arms length transaction pursuant to applicable regulatory policies. This announcement is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to purchase, a solicitation of an offer to sell any shares or a solicitation of a proxy. About Quadron: Quadron, through its wholly owned subsidiaries, provides turn-key extraction and processing solutions for the cannabis industry including proprietary industrial grade equipment, custom build processing facilities, ancillary products, and scientific services. Quadron delivers streamlined, cost-effective and innovative solutions to help licensed growers, producers and processors develop market ready products all to achieve quicker ROI. For more information, visit: www.quadroncannatech.com On behalf of the Board of Directors of QUADRON CANNATECH CORPORATION Rosy Mondin CEO rosy@quadroncannatech.com Investor Relations Contact: KIN Communications Inc. Caleb Jeffries, VP, Investor Relations 1-866-684-6730 QCC@kincommunications.com About World Class Extractions Inc. The Company is a Canadian based developer of an innovative extraction process for both the hemp and cannabis industry. The Company intends to provide single step continuous flow extraction services to the hemp and cannabis industry. Using patent pending technology, the Companys results produce higher yields and better quality crude hemp oil at faster rates. The technology allows the extraction of CBD Oil and other related extracts from wet or dried natural plants. The Company can save its clients floor space, utility drying costs, equipment and processing labour costs. For further information please contact: Michael McCombie Chief Executive Officer Email: mike@wcextractions.com Neither the CSE nor its Market Regulatory (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Statements included in this announcement, including statements concerning our plans, intentions and expectations, which are not historical in nature are intended to be, and are hereby identified as forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements may be identified by words including anticipates, believes, intends, estimates, expects and similar expressions, including the proposed Arrangement will receive the requisite corporate and regulatory approvals, the proposed Arrangement will successfully close as anticipated by management, the holders of, the directors, officers and insiders of Quadron will enter into voting support agreements to vote in favor of the proposed Arrangement and Quadron will hire financial advisors are forward-looking statements and contain forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are based on certain material assumptions and analysis made by World Class and Quadron and the opinions and estimates of management as of the date of this press release, including that the proposed Arrangement will receive the requisite corporate and regulatory approvals to close, the proposed Arrangement will successfully close on the timeline and on the terms as anticipated by management, market conditions will remain similar to present market conditions, that the directors, officers and insiders of Quadron will not object to signing an agreement to vote their shares in favor of the proposed Arrangement, Quadron will hire financial advisors and that the proposed synergies resulting from the combined entities will occur as stated or at all. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of World Class and Quadron to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or forward- looking information. Important factors that may cause actual results to vary, include, without limitation, the proposed Arrangement will not receive either the requisite corporate or regulatory approval to close, the proposed Arrangement will not close on the timeline or on the terms as anticipated by management, that the directors, officers and insiders of Quadron will object to signing an agreement to vote their shares in favor of the proposed Arrangement, Quadron will not hire financial advisors and the proposed synergies of the combined entities will not be realized as stated above or at all. Although management of Quadron and World Class have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward- looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned that reliance on such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. Quadron and World Class do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement, forward-looking information or financial out-look that are incorporated by reference herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Highlights Public consultation for the Tres Estradas Phosphate Project held in Lavras do Sul on the evening of March 20 th Comments from speakers and response from attendees were overwhelmingly positive Event was attended by +1,500 people with another 2,000 watching a livestream of the event online Attendees included the Mayors of Lavras do Sul and Cacapava do Sul, State Deputies, senior representatives of the Chamber of Commerce of Lavras, the Rural Syndicate, Union of Public Servers and other important local community associations FEPAM now has 30 days to request any final items or consider any further comments TORONTO, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aguia Resources Limited (ASX: AGR, TSXV: AGRL) (Aguia or the Company) is pleased to report the outcome of a highly successful community consultation event for the Tres Estradas Phosphate Project that took place on Wednesday, March 20th, 2019 in Lavras do Sul, Brazil. The meeting date was set at the beginning of the year by FEPAM, the environmental regulator for the State of Rio Grande do Sul and the event was open to members of the local community. It is estimated approximately 1,500 people were in attendance and the overall response throughout the evening was extremely positive. The Company also streamed the audience live on Facebook, which was accessed by 2,000 viewers during the event. The event was held at the public auditorium in Lavras do Sul and was at full capacity inside. Overflow attendees numbering in the hundreds were accommodated outside the auditorium and were able to watch the proceedings projected live on big screens. The event was opened by the FEPAM authorities, followed by a one-hour presentation of the Tres Estradas Phosphate Project by Aguia and finally a presentation of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) by Golder & Associates who produced the report. After the official presentations were finished, a 3-hour discussion took place with 50 individuals or groups stepping up to the microphone for questions and comments. This included the Mayor of Lavras do Sul who expressed his strong support for the project, the Mayor of the neighboring city of Cacapava do Sul, which has a long history of mining activity, State Deputies, representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, Public Servers Syndicate, Rural Syndicate, the Santa Maria Water Committee and other important associations from the local community. Most importantly, there was overwhelming support from the citizens of Lavras do Sul in attendance and online who strongly welcomed the project and Aguia to the community. Aguia has now completed all requirements to obtain the environmental permit (called the Preliminary License or LP in Brazil). FEPAM will consider the results of the event and will have 30 days to consider any further comments and advise if any further follow up items are required from Aguia. Approval of the LP will be a major milestone for the Company. The next phase of development will be obtaining the Installation Permit or LI. The LI requires implementation of the programs and requirements prescribed in the LP to ensure Tres Estradas has a minimal impact on the environment and social wellbeing of the community. During this time, Aguia will be finalizing the design and plans for the project site, negotiating offtake contracts and sourcing debt for construction. The LI is expected to take up to 12 months to obtain after which construction can commence. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2c5dc0f4-be14-4b1f-8f06-169af603cd3f Commentary Technical Director Fernando Tallarico commented: Our team in Lavras do Sul has been proactively engaged in intensive outreach for more than a year to provide a complete picture of the Tres Estradas project to members of the local community, politicians, educational institutions and any other interested parties. The very positive atmosphere at yesterdays community event sets the stage for a mutually beneficial future between Aguia and its neighbors. We want to thank all of the people who attended last nights event for their interest and support and in particular, Savio Prestes, the Mayor of Lavras do Sul and all of the local dignitaries in attendance. The support from members of the local community was beyond our expectations and we are very excited about moving forward and turning our phosphate deposit into a thriving business that will boost the local economy for many years to come. Managing Director Justin Reid added: The environmental permitting process is exhaustive, but the objective is to ensure a healthy project that contributes to the region over decades. We really appreciate all the support we have had from the community combined with the impressive efforts of our team and look forward to finalization of the environmental permit. In our teams collective history of community consultation events for mine permitting we have never experienced such an outpouring of support and we are highly appreciative of all the people who took the time to attend. We look forward to working with the local community as development of the project continues to advance. Photos accompanying this announcement are available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/02feaff0-7ced-45ec-85b3-77c5dc6cd7b9 http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/695c89db-8d3b-412f-a0ee-104dc5c20cbf For further information, please contact: Justin Reid, Managing Director E: jreid@aguiaresources.com.au T: +1 416-216-5446 Spyros Karellas, Investor Relations North America E: spyros@pinnaclecapitalmarkets.ca T: +1 416-433-5696 Released through: Ben Jarvis, Six Degrees Investor Relations: +61 413 150 448 Follow Aguia on Twitter: @ Aguia_Resources A b o u t A gu ia : Aguia Resources Limited, (Aguia) is an ASX and TSX Venture listed company whose primary focus is on the exploration and development of mineral resource projects in Brazil. Aguia has an established and highly experienced in-country team based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil with corporate offices in Sydney, Australia. Aguias key projects are located in Rio Grande do Sul, a prime farming area which is 100% dependent on phosphate imports. The Rio Grande phosphate deposits exhibit high quality and low cost production characteristics, and are ideally located with proximity to road, rail, and port infrastructure. Aguias experienced management team has a proven track record of advancing high quality mining assets to production in Brazil. Cautionary Statement on Forward Looking Information This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and Australian securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, without limitation, statements regarding the timing and impact of the scheduled consultation and the likelihood of successfully obtaining the preliminary license and/or the Installation license on the timeline predicted or at all, results of exploration activities, soil and assay results, plans for future drilling and exploration programs, the mineral resource estimates, production targets, the anticipated timetable, permitting, forecast financial information, bankable feasibility study and ability to finance the project, and the prospectivity and potential of the Tres Estradas project. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including risks inherent in the mining industry and risks described in the public disclosure of the Company which is available under the profile of the Company on SEDAR at www.sedar.com , on the ASX website at www.asx.com.au and on the Company's website at www.aguiaresouces.com.au. These risks should be considered carefully. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Persons reading this news release are cautioned that such statements are only predictions and there can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements whether as a result of new information, estimates, options, future events, results or otherwise and does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. NEITHER THE AUSTRALIAN STOCK EXCHANGE, TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR THEIR REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of investors in United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC or the Company) (NYSE: UMC) against certain of the Companys current and former officers and directors. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of New York, and indexed under 19-cv-02304, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons and entities, other than Defendants and their affiliates, who purchased or otherwise acquired publicly traded securities of UMC between October 28, 2015 and November 1, 2018, both dates inclusive (the Class Period), seeking to recover damages caused by Defendants violations of the federal securities laws and to pursue remedies under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act) and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder, against the Company and certain of its senior officials. If you are a shareholder who purchased UMC securities during the class period, you have until May 13, 2019, to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased. [Click here to join this class action] UMC purports to engage in the research, development, and manufacture of products in the solar energy and light-emitting diode industries. On May 13, 2016, the Company announced that it had entered into a Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM) Technology Cooperation Agreement with Fujian Jianhua Integrated Circuit Co. Ltd. (Fujian). Under the agreement, Fujian was to provide UMC with related equipment for its research and development, as well as service fees subject to the progress of the technology development. UMC was to develop DRAM related technologies for Fujian and deliver such development results to Fujian before May 12, 2021. The developed technologies were to be jointly owned by both parties. DRAM is a memory device product used in electronics to store information. DRAM is a technologically advanced commodity that is widely used in digital electronics, as well as leading-edge computing, consumer, networking, automotive, industrial, embedded, and mobile productions. At all relevant times, one of UMCs primary competitors has been Micron Technology, Inc. (Micron), a leading U.S. semiconductor company known for its development and production of DRAM products. Throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding UMCs business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) UMC conspired with Fujian to steal trade secrets from Micron relating to its research and development of DRAM; (ii) UMC hired former Micron employees for the purpose of stealing such information from Micron; (iii) the foregoing conduct placed UMC and certain of its employees at an increased risk of criminal and regulatory investigation by the U.S. government; and (iv) as a result, UMCs public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On November 1, 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted UMC, Fujian, and Chen Zhengkun a.k.a. Stephen Chen (Chen), a former Micron employee hired by UMC, for conspiracy to commit economic espionage, conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets, and economic espionage (receiving and possessing stolen trade secrets). The indictment stated that the companies conspired to steal trade secrets from Micron relating to its research and development of memory storage devices. According to the indictment, the conspiracy to commit economic espionage began in or around January 2016, the conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets began in or about October 2015, and the economic espionage (receiving and possessing stolen trade secrets) began in or about February 2016. According to the DOJs indictment, Chen, a Taiwanese national, resigned as the President of Microns subsidiary, Micron Memory Taiwan Co., Ltd. (MMT), in July 2015. Thereafter, Chen began working for UMC as its Senior Vice President and Fabrication Director in Taiwan in September 2015. According to the indictment, Chen, as well as agents of UMC, later hired additional former employees of Micron who stole Micron trade secrets and, at the direction of UMC employees, used such trade secrets to enhance UMCs DRAM technologies. As news of UMCs indictment reached the market, UMCs ADS price fell by $0.19 per share, or nearly 10%, over the following two trading sessions to close at $1.71 per share on November 5, 2018. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Paris, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com CONTACT: Robert S. Willoughby Pomerantz LLP rswilloughby@pomlaw.com 888-476-6529 ext. 9980 NEW YORK, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Bridgepoint Education, Inc. (Bridgepoint or the Company) (NYSE: BPI) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Southern District of California, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons other than Defendants who purchased or otherwise acquired Bridgepoint securities between March 8, 2016 and March 7, 2019, both dates inclusive (the Class Period), seeking to recover damages caused by Defendants violations of the federal securities laws and to pursue remedies under Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the Exchange Act) and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder, against the Company and certain of its top officials. If you are a shareholder who purchased Bridgepoint securities between March 8, 2016, and March 7, 2019, both dates inclusive, you have until May 10, 2019, to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com . To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased. [Click here to join this class action] Bridgepoint, together with its subsidiaries, provides postsecondary education services in the United States. The Company was formerly known as TeleUniversity, Inc. and changed its name to Bridgepoint Education, Inc. in February 2004. Bridgepoints academic institutions, Ashford University and University of the Rockies, offer associates, bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree programs in the disciplines of business, education, psychology, social sciences, and health sciences. Bridgepoint offers its programs primarily through online, and also at its campuses. As of December 31, 2017, its institutions offered approximately 1,200 courses and 80-degree programs, with 45,730 students enrolled. As a means of increasing enrollment, the Company formed various corporate partnerships with employers to offer their employees a way to pursue and complete a college degree without incurring any student debt, referred to as the Corporate Full Tuition Grant (FTG) program. In 2017, enrollments in the Companys FTG program accounted for approximately 10% of its total enrollment. The complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) Bridgepoints processes for recording revenue for its FTG program were inaccurate; (ii) Bridgepoint maintained deficient internal controls; (iii) due to the foregoing deficiencies, Bridgepoint was prone to and did commit material accounting errors related to revenue, provision for bad debts, accounts receivable and deferred revenue, which resulted in the overstatement of revenue and expenses; and (iv) as a result, Bridgepoints public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. On March 7, 2019, Bridgepoint announced that it had determined to restate the Companys previously issued unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements, and advised that those financial statements should not be relied upon, for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2018. Bridgepoint stated that the processes used for recording revenue for the FTG program portion of its student contracts were not designed with sufficient precision, leading to material accounting errors related to revenue, provision for bad debts, accounts receivable and deferred revenue, which resulted in the overstatement of revenue and expenses. Bridgepoint also identified weaknesses in internal controls. On this news, Bridgepoints stock price plummeted by $3.21 per share, or over 34%, to close at $6.22 per share on March 7, 2019, on unusually heavy trading volume. The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com . CONTACT: Robert S. Willoughby Pomerantz LLP rswilloughby@pomlaw.com WSU Science Professor Receives Fulbright Award March 21, 2019 OGDEN, Utah Weber State University Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences professor Marek Matyjasik has been named a Fulbright Scholar. He will spend February through June 2020 in Poland, where he will conduct research and teach two geosciences courses at Warsaw University. This wont be Matyjasiks first experience at Warsaw University; he received his bachelors and masters degrees there. Matyjasik is the 11th Fulbright recipient from Weber State in the last 20 years. His field of study focuses on chemical reactions with water and mineral surfaces. Matyjasik has been with the university for 21 years. He teaches geosciences and leads study-abroad courses in Iceland and Hawaii. Matyjasik hopes that his experience teaching in Poland next year will help advance Weber States international recognition. Over the last several years, Weber State has been trying to improve its international presence, Matyjasik said. I hope my time in Poland will be helpful because having more collaboration with international institutions gives us experience that will help us make more progress in that direction. In addition to his academic work, Matyjasik has been instrumental in securing funding for Weber State to assist students with a desire to study the physical sciences. Last year, the College of Science was awarded a National Science Foundation grant that will provide scholarships to 30 low-income, high-achieving students. Matyjasik was a part of the team of faculty from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences responsible for acquiring the grant. About the Fulbright Program Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright program is the most widely recognized and prestigious international exchange program in the world. The program awards approximately 8,000 grants annually between scholars and students from the United States and other participating countries. More than 380,000 recipients have participated in the program since its inception. Visit cies.org for more information about the Fulbright Program. For photos, visit the following links. photos.smugmug.com/Press-Release-Photos/2019-Photos/March-2019/i-Hc2GTnZ/0/e18ffa90/X2/IMG_2161%20%282%29-X2.jpg photos.smugmug.com/Press-Release-Photos/2019-Photos/March-2019/i-Pk9R5KR/0/c383246e/Th/marek-matyjasik-Th.jpg Visit weber.edu/wsutoday for more news about Weber State University. ST. JOHNS, Newfoundland and Labrador, March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fortis Inc. ("Fortis") hosted the Fortis Energy Exchange today, a gathering of industry leaders from across North America to discuss the opportunities that lie ahead for the electricity and natural gas sectors. "Todays discussion on cross-border partnerships and opportunities, sustainability, the role of natural gas in a balanced energy portfolio and our collective energy vision was substantive," said Barry Perry, President and CEO, Fortis. "It is this kind of compelling conversation that will help shape the future of the North American energy industry." In his keynote speech today Tom Kuhn, President of Washington-based Edison Electric Institute, said: We are excited and optimistic about the opportunities we have before us and are confident the transformation we are leading will deliver our energy future. Kuhn said industry is committed to putting customers first, maintaining reliability, and keeping prices affordable for all customers. Noteworthy themes arising from the Fortis Energy Exchange include grid resiliency and reliability risk management; integration of renewables into the energy grid; energy trade implications; forging strong business relationships with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal businesses; cyber and physical security vigilance; natural gas as a desirable energy source for consumers; emergency response; employee and public safety; climate change and sustainability; and navigating political shifts in energy policy. "We are embracing exciting opportunities in the gas and electric sector in North America," said Perry. "Constructive partnerships among industry, regulators and suppliers are more important now than ever and help us meet and exceed the needs of our customers." The Fortis Energy Exchange was held in partnership with the Canadian Electricity Association, Edison Electric Institute, the American Gas Association and the Canadian Gas Association. To learn more, visit www.fortisenergyexchange.com or follow us at @Fortis_NA with the hashtag: #fortisenergyexchange. A .pdf version of this press release is available at : http://ml.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/3349b4c1-b199-4b1a-b483-fa119cb3cab3 Media Enquiries Karen McCarthy Vice President, Communications & Corporate Affairs Fortis Inc. 709.737.5323 media@fortisinc.com About Fortis Fortis is a leader in the North American regulated electric and gas utility industry with 2018 revenue of C$8.4 billion and total assets of C$53 billion as at December 31, 2018. The Corporation's 8,800 employees serve utility customers in five Canadian provinces, nine U.S. states and three Caribbean countries. Fortis shares are listed on the TSX and NYSE and trade under the symbol FTS. Additional information can be accessed at www.fortisinc.com, www.sedar.com, or www.sec.gov. Photos accompanying this announcement are available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/79a7f16b-6370-44e6-9e3b-7b319ef07e98 http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/8b92e4e1-93b4-4d77-97ab-16023e441c9a On her father's farm in Bushnell, a young woman watches over a newborn calf that had a difficult delivery. The way she cradled his head with her hands was so tender and gentle. It was obvious it came from a place of love. This image is a finalist in a Smithsonian photo contest. A photo taken in the harsh winter months in the heartland of western Nebraska on a farm in Bushnell is rising to the top. Photographer Cerrina Smith of Cheyenne and her photo, "Guardian Angel," showing a young woman and a newborn calf on Todd Parson's farm in Bushnell, is a top 10 finalist in a Smithsonian photography contest under The American Experience, with nine other competitors. Finalists were picked out of 48,000 photo submissions. Nebraskans can vote for this photo on the Smithsonian's website and are allowed one vote per day until the deadline, next Friday, March 29 at 2 p.m. at smithsonianmag.com. He's outta here. Laivyn Morgan of Kimball Wrestling Club, left, with her arm raised, enjoys the outcome of her Pre-K 41 division match against Landen Laudenbach of Mitchell a whole lot more than Landen does during last weekend's Nebraska USA State Wrestling Tournament in Grand Island. Laivyn finished sixth in her division. Yet another big weekend of youth wrestling wrapped up Sunday afternoon, March 17. The Nebraska USA State Tournament was held in Grand Island with nearly 200 teams in the state competing for titles. Kimball Wrestling Club, the Banner County MatCats and the Tri-State Grapplers all had wrestlers who qualified during the District 1 tournament March 2 in Scottsbluff. KWC took 11 wrestlers, including Able Kuhns, Laivyn Morgan, Christian Soto-Young, Britton Culek, Kaysn Snyder, Logan Paxton, Trey Cook, Cameron McGinnis, Wyatt Cook, Hunter Lonsdale and Trey Schindler. Gabriel Teeple from Banner County made the trip to Grand Island, as well as Jax, Kyle and Makenna Thurin from the Tri-State Grapplers. Sierra Drake from Kimball (Sidney Red Raiders Wrestling) also attended the state tournament. Drake finished second in the Girls 6th-8th 109 division. Makenna Thurin of the Tri-State Grapplers brought home the champion title in the Girls 3rd-5th 82 division. In the first round, Makenna won by fall over Cassandra Bernshausen of Minden. Thurin's second round win was by fall over Kaylee Serevrin of Fremont. (For her performance, Makenna is this week's Clean Harbors Athlete of the Week. See Page B6.) Also for the Grapplers, Kyle wrestled in the 9th-12th 175 division, placed fourth and scored 20 team points. In the 1st-2nd 59 division, Jax scored six team points. Kimball finished the tournament in 82nd place with 41 team points. There were 200 teams and 1,866 wrestlers. "We were pleased with the tournament starting on time and not finishing too late both days," said Rob Sanders, executive director of NEUSA Wrestling. "But the most impressive part was that so many people made it despite the weather. The stories we heard and the obstacles that people overcame were incredible to say the least." Results for Kimball are as follows: Pre-K 40-41 division, Able Kuhns placed eighth and scored one team point. Pre-K 41 division, Laivyn Morgan placed sixth and scored six team points. 1st-2nd 53 division, Britton Culek placed sixth and scored 15 team points and Christian Soto-Young scored eight team points. 3rd-4th 75 division, Cameron McGinnis scored one team point. 7th-8th division, Trey Schindler placed eighth and scored 10 team points. Meanwhile, Cable Botha of the Tri-State Grapplers wrestled for the D1 team during the State Dual Tournament this past weekend in Grand Island "A team made up of youth from District 1 wrestlers in western Nebraska finished second in the toughest division of our state dual tournament," Sander said. "The division was 1st through 6th graders." Mother Nature sure knows how to put a damper on Nebraskas spring spirit, from blizzard conditions to flooding. The majority of the entire state saw school and road closures last week due to this well tracked storm. While local meteorologists are calling for a possible storm in the area at the beginning of next week, but do not believe it will produce as much snow. Drifts around Kimball county were reported as high as 10 feet tall. Then, with the warmer weather, snowmelt began Friday afternoon. There are still tens of thousands of people without resources due to massive flooding back east. Reports explain that flooding will continue down the Missouri River into Iowa and Illinois. Donations have poured in from throughout the country. They include livestock and animal supplies, food water and other necessities. We have not had a disaster that has been this widespread in the state, I dont think, ever, Gov. Pete Ricketts said Monday, March 18, while in Wood River. Weve had disasters where weve had a greater loss of life. But as far as how many places have been touched by this, I dont think theres ever been a disaster this widespread in Nebraska. According to a press release from the governors staff, recovery is beginning to occur in many places, and knowing where to turn for information on what to do next can be overwhelming. The Nebraska Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) website is continually updating information to answer the many questions on resources available. You can access that information at https://nema.nebraska.gov/. There are helpful documents that can answer many questions on what needs to be done. NEMA has established a hotline for questions from persons affected by the floods. You can reach that call center at 402-817-1551. For information on debris cleanup, contact the Crisis Cleanup Hotline at (402) 556-2476. Farmers who have lost machinery or livestock should report to the Farm Service Agency office. County office contact information can be found on the agencys website at https://www.fsa.usda.gov/state-offices/Nebraska/index. The press release also stated that Nebraska Strong is not just a hashtag; its a way of life. Nebraskans and people from throughout the country are offering their help. All donations monetary, goods and services, and volunteers are being coordinated through Nebraska 211. To access Nebraska 211, dial 211 within the state. Outside of Nebraska, call (866) 813-1731. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) representatives will be in Lincoln to work with Bryan Tuma, director of NEMA, on an expedited declaration of emergency to submit to the White House. In addition, Vice President Mike Pence was visiting to survey damage with Ricketts. Congressman Adrian Smith of Nebraska released a statement regarding the visit of Mike Pence to Nebraska on Tuesday to survey damage. I thank Vice President Pence for visiting Nebraska today and for delivering a message of solidarity on behalf of President Trump and his administration, Smith said. Severe weather and flooding have inflicted widespread difficulties across much of Nebraska, from high winds and snow in the west to historic flooding in the central and eastern regions. Having seen for myself the extent of this damage, I fully support Governor Rickettss request for a federal disaster declaration to allow additional federal support for the rebuilding process and I appreciate his leadership during this difficult time. The state of Nebraska, under the leadership of Ricketts, submitted its request for a federal disaster declaration to President Trump. Smith will join the rest of the Nebraska congressional delegation in sending a letter in support of this declaration, which will make additional federal funding available to support the recovery effort. While some in the state are able to return to their homes, the reality of the amount of devastation hits strongly. As of Tuesday, 75 cities and 65 counties made emergency declarations, bringing the number of counties under emergency declarations up to 70 percent of the 93 counties. St. Josephs Catholic Church in Kimball is housing donations to be sent. Donations can be dropped at the parish rectory, just north of the church in the alley in front of the garage. No date has been released yet as to when donations will make the trip back east as of now. Items needed include deodorant, toothbrushes/toothpaste, soap, shampoo/conditioner, womens sanitary items, incontinence pads, new blankets, new pillows, cases of bottled water, heavy duty trash bags, cleaning supplies, dog/cat food, individually wrapped snacks, granola bars, beef jerky, diapers (all sizes), baby formula, baby wipes, paper towels, toilet paper, 1-gallon zip lock bags and clothing. BRIDGEPORT A tussle between senior officers in the police chiefs office earlier this month is the subject of a criminal investigation, multiple police sources have said. The sources said the Chief States Attorney is reviewing details of the March 6 incident involving Capt. Brian Fitzgerald and Sgt. Charles Paris, the head of Bridgeports police union. A spokesman for the Chief States Attorney had no comment. Attorney Thomas Bucci confirmed he has been hired to represent Fitzgerald in the incident as a victim. On behalf of Capt. Fitzgerald I sent a letter to the citys director of labor relations about the incident and in the interim Ive been informed that the chief ordered an investigation by the Office of Internal Affairs, Bucci said. Bucci declined to comment on whether the details of the incident have been referred to criminal authorities. Chief Armando Perez confirmed Wednesday that he has asked the citys Office of Internal Affairs to investigate the incident. It was really nothing, the whole thing is being blown out of proportion, the chief said. I did the right thing referring it to OIA but its really nothing. Multiple sources said that during a meeting of senior officers in Perezs office, Paris got into a heated argument with Fitzgerald over the use of a drug-sniffing dog in the department. The sources said the argument ended when Paris lunged at Fitzgerald with his fist raised. Senior officers had to pull Paris off of Fitzgerald, they said. Paris would not comment. The incident comes at a time of turmoil in the Bridgeport Police Department as a result of the release of an internal investigative report detailing allegations of officers using excessive force and lying about their actions during a chaotic response to a noise complaint at a pre-Halloween party on Colorado Avenue in October 2017. Two officers cited in the report have committed suicide since the party. There has been no direct link found between the investigation and the suicides. The most recent of those deaths, that of Sgt. Mark Belinkie, who was found dead in his Milford home on March 2, resulted in further friction in the department. Two police officers who discovered Belinkies body, Lt. Ronald Mercado and Sgt. James Geremiah, were later suspended by Perez after, sources said, they turned their back to the chief at Belinkies wake in a protest. HARTFORD Gov. Ned Lamont told business leaders Wednesday that paid Family Medical Leave was going to pass, and on Thursday the Labor and Public Employees Committee forwarded his bill to the Senate. With little fanfare or debate, the Labor and Public Employees Committee voted along party lines to approve the measure, which creates a paid FMLA program for an estimated 103,600 employers with approximately 1,456,000 employees. Under the legislation, all employees in Connecticut would contribute 0.5 percent of their weekly paycheck to a state-run trust fund, which would pay them during their approved leave. The governors bill says an employee could earn 90 percent of their typical earnings up to $600 per week for anyone making around $15 an hour and 67 percent up to $900 for workers earning more than that. The other two pieces of legislation offer a wage replacement level of 100 percent, up to a maximum of $1,000, which is much higher than programs in other states. The program is an unsustainable program, Rep. David Rutigliano, R-Trumbull, said. He said he thinks its going to cost much more than originally proposed and employees are going to be on the hook for making up the difference through what essentially amounts to a payroll tax. The Office of Fiscal Analysis estimated that for the other two pieces of legislation, which were approved earlier this month by the committee, the state would be required to borrow $20 million $10 million in 2021 and $10 million in 2022 to get the program started. The total cost of those bonds would be about $30 million by the time they are repaid at a rate of about $500,000 per year. The ongoing administrative costs of the trust fund will be about $18.6 million, according to the fiscal note, and will be covered by employee contributions to the trust fund. The program would apply to every business in the state with at least one employee. Those who are self-employed could decide to pay into the program if they chose to opt in. Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, said she believes strongly that the program will benefit Connecticut and its economy. But the business community is divided. At the Connecticut Business and Industry Association meeting Wednesday, Mark Stewart Greenstein, a West Hartford businessman who also ran for governor last year, said he might be able to support it if it wasnt a 90 percent wage replacement rate. Ninety-percent guarantees those workers are going to take 12 weeks off every year, he said. He suggested a lower wage replacement rate of maybe 60 percent. The weekly benefit in Massachusetts is 80 percent of salary, capped at $850 per week. Lamont told a group of about 300 business executives that any program has to be rock solid in how it will be financed. GREENWICH A Greenwich employee who took and shared photos of the body of a murder victim found in town will be allowed to return to work following completion of an investigation into his conduct. James Clifford, a foreman for the Greenwich Department of Public Works, will not face any criminal charges but will face punishment from his employer, including demotion from his position as foreman for a minimum of six months, suspension without pay for five days and loss of five vacation days, according to a statement issued by officials Wednesday. Clifford also must complete a sensitivity training program. Clifford was disciplined for taking and sharing images of the body of Valerie Reyes, a 24-year-old resident of New Rochelle. Her body was found on Feb. 5 inside a suitcase that had been left in Glenville. Another town employee found the body and Clifford responded to the scene. His attorney, Lindy Urso, has called Cliffords actions an error in judgment but said his client had no ill will or bad intention and tried to assist police with their investigation. He said Clifford had been stunned and devastated by what he encountered that morning near Glenville Road. On Wednesday, Urso expressed surprise that the town announced the sanctions against Clifford, who has worked for Greenwich for more than 26 years. Although Mr. Clifford likely did not violate any town policies, he agreed in good faith to certain sanctions, which will remain confidential, to avoid a protracted legal battle and to get back to work, Urso said. I am surprised at the towns interpretation of those sanctions and I am frankly stunned that they think it is appropriate, or even legal, to publicly disclose personnel information when it knows full well that Mr. Clifford has already been identified in the press. Its wrong on every level. In the statement, town officials said the DPW worker admitted taking the photos, but it was determined has actions did not involve any criminality. The town never released Cliffords name, but Greenwich Time independently confirmed he was the employee. He has been on paid suspension while the town Department of Human Resources conducted the investigation. On Wednesday, First Selectman Peter Tesei said the statement spoke for itself and he did not add to it. In February, Tesei said, this thoughtless and insensitive behavior by an employee is inexcusable. Javier Da Silva, a former boyfriend of Reyes, was arrested last month in connection with her death, and charged with kidnapping resulting in death. When her body was found in Greenwich, her hands and feet were reportedly constrained with tape and twine and she had suffered a severe injury to her head. Da Silva told police Reyes fell to the floor and hit her head, after which he panicked, according to court documents. He faces the possibility of life in prison or even the death penalty if convicted of the crime. Da Silva has not yet entered a plea in answer to the charge. A hearing in federal court in White Plains was postponed last week. He has not yet been given a new court date. kborsuk@greenwichtime.com STAMFORD WWEs headquarters in Stamford is well-known to wrestling fans as well as any driver who cant help but notice the large glass buildings emblazoned with the companys logo as they drive past it at Exit 9 on Interstate 95. But soon those buildings, known as Titan Towers, will no longer house the company. On Wednesday, WWE announced it was relocating in Stamford to space at 677 Washington Blvd. WWE said it would be moving to the new location, which will be its headquarters, in early 2021. As part of this relocation, WWE said it expects to sell its distinctive corporate headquarters, located at 1241 E. Main St. in Stamford, as well as exit leased spaces it has at 1266 E. Main St. WWE said it will evaluate options for its production studio facilities which are located at 88 and 120 Hamilton Ave. in Stamford based on strategic, operating and financial considerations. The new setup on Washington Boulevard will house WWEs operations, including its production studios and corporate offices. One of the most important elements necessary to execute WWEs long-term growth strategy is world-class talent collaborating seamlessly to create compelling content, WWE co-president George Barrios said in a press release. Our workplace initiative will be the foundation to meet these objectives and underpins our ability to deliver long-term value. The company said the new headquarters will provide WWE with work space suited to its growing and evolving workforce. It cited the location in Stamfords central business district as having greater access from various means of transportation as well as floor plans for the headquarters that are well-suited to producing video content and greater flexibility in workplace design. According to WWE, the lease will be for an initial term of 16 and a half years and will commence no earlier than July 1. The lease agreement is with George Comfort & Sons, Inc. and WWE will take up 415,000 square feet in the three-building complex. The agreement announced today represents a major step forward in restoring the propertys standing as the commercial center of downtown Stamford, George Comfort & Sons said in a press release, adding that it had also recently signed leases for space at 677 Washington Blvd. for KPMG and Perkins Eastman. Comforts president and CEO Peter S. Duncan added, For the past 20 years, 677 Washington Boulevard has been regarded rightfully as downtown Stamfords commercial centerpiece. Its both logical and exciting to have WWE be located there. Local office market conditions are continuing to improve and our firm is pleased to play a major role in that progress. The announcement comes at a busy time for WWE as it prepares for its flagship event, WrestleMania, which will be held April 7 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. WWE is also preparing to move its popular Tuesday night program SmackDown to network TV on Fox in the fall. WWE is a publicly traded company founded by Greenwich resident Vince McMahon. The companys earliest days were in Greenwich with a headquarters on Holly Hill Lane. kborsuk@greenwichtime.com When I die, said theater critic Irene Backalenick, I hope Im sitting fifth row center. But, even at age 97, shes too busy to stop. Interviewed in her apartment at Watermark, Bridgeports retirement facility, Backalenick said, I often write about what I wish I had done and never did. I look back now and realize how much more I did do. Begin with Brown University, where she graduated first in her class, summa cum laude, earning a Phi Beta Kappa key. She also has a masters in elementary education, a Ph.D in theater, and has published three books: one on Jewish theater and two of her poetry. She has won many journalism prizes, been active in the League of Women Voters and became a respected theater critic, reviewing plays and musicals in both Connecticut and New York, during which time she co-founded the Connecticut Critics Circle, an association of theater reviewers. Oh, yes, she also managed, somehow, to give birth to four children with Bill, her late husband of 67 years. Born an only child in Providence, R.I., to Lydia and Max Margolis, she recalled, It was a lonely life. My mother was a loner and we really never had company. We were very poor. My father was a very quiet, shy guy, never thought much of himself and quite willing to be the family gofer. That affected my mentality and I didnt expect any career or any success for myself at all. Being a voracious reader saved her. When old enough to walk to the local library by herself, she wondered how shed be able to read every book. Devoted to the arts from an early age, she danced at age 4, recited poetry, wrote plays, auditioned for school productions (she was deemed too short). Ive had a lifelong dichotomy between adventure and security, she said. After a series of secretarial jobs, she had an idea that would change her life. I was 22 when I applied to Brown, she said. They said I was not prepared for college but, if I would get tutored in a language and math they would consider me. I took French and algebra that summer and Brown took me in, conditionally. The cost was $225 a semester; they gave me a $200 scholarship. Living at home, she rode the trolley to college (7 cents plus 2 cents transfer). An English honors student, she drew cartoons for the campus paper, maintained a straight-A record except for one B in, of all things, creative writing. She wept. Astronomy was a favorite, but physical education was not. Once, gasping for air, she had to be hauled out of the swimming pool. By taking courses in the summers, she graduated in less than three years. Now what? I should have written to every magazine, she said. I saw an ad for a position with Radio Inventions, a company that worked on faxes. Besides being a really dumb secretarial job, it led to her own #MeToo moment. The guy who ran the place hit on me. I couldnt believe it. Just instinctively I swatted him away. She continued searching for newspaper jobs until marriage with Bill and an eventual move to Westport for a 45-year stay. Later, as the children grew, she worked at local papers the Town Crier, the Westport News, the Trumbull Times, the Bridgeport Post learning how to write feature stories. At first I thought I cant do this. I had such little faith in myself. I used to cringe in a corner at parties and I wasnt a good networker. Then, luckily, I sent some story ideas to the New York Times and was hired as a freelancer. Suddenly I became a celebrity in town. No one ever paid any attention to me before that. Now people came to me with ideas. Her topics ranged widely; a story about widowed and divorced fathers who had child custody won her an award from the Times. She wrote on integration for Sepia magazine, on Jewish topics for a Zionist paper, on theater for Theatre Week and Back Stage; and interviewed actors, the winner of a sewing contest, alcoholic women, shoplifting adolescents and pregnant teenagers. An article on the time she took a bath in a Geneva train station W.C., likened the experience to being an embryo in its amniotic fluid. Widening her knowledge, she went for a summer program at Oxford. One of the courses was British drama and thats when I fell in love with theater. The first Shakespeare production I ever saw was A Midsummer Nights Dream outdoors in Londons Regents Park. Huddled under a blanket against the cold, I was entranced. After a chance meeting with someone enrolled in a Ph.D. program in theater, she thought Bingo! Since studying was always her way to get anywhere, she applied and was accepted at the City University of New York. Becoming a critic at last followed, as did membership in Drama Desk, the Outer Critics Circle and the American Theater Critics Association. Her advice to budding critics? Begin with a love of the arts. Then get a wide range of theater experiences and history so you have some basis for comparison. Go to a production in two ways. With everyone else, enjoy yourself, let it waft over you, let it hit you any way you want. As a critic, look at not only the play itself, but the acting, the direction, the stage sets, the lighting, the costumes. You have to immerse yourself and then think about what you saw. Be true to yourself. You have to deal with your own nature, life experiences and knowledge, she said. Im the kind of person who tries to find something good. Is that my Jewish background? Its like reading the Torah: On one hand, on the other hand. As critics, we set standards and help keep the theater arts alive. As long as there are human beings on the earth, exchanging language with each other, then theater will continue. Art shows us the world around us. At Watermark, she hasnt lost interest in either art or activism. She has written more than 300 poems, many of which are collected in the two-volume Rueful Reflections. Here are poems about her husband, about the daughter she lost to cancer, friends and friendships, aging. One poem wonders What happened to my family, that all are artists of one stripe or another: graphic artists, musicians, a novelist, a poet. Particularly incensed by the separation of border children from their parents, she wrote Little Children in which she compares the current situation with that engendered by the Nazis (Ripped from their mothers breasts. ... All are hustled into trains/Shipped across the USA/America, land of the free). In a two-part essay for the Rhode Island Jewish Historical Association, she looked back on her childhood years. I realize what a long, improbable journey my life has been encompassing not merely the few hundred miles between Rhode Island and New York City, but reaching across galaxies. How I, a child of the Depression, and a timid child at that, could have left the narrow restrictive world of my childhood, and moved on, remains forever a mystery. Such thoughts give me sudden moments of faith. Was someone up there, out in space, watching out for me? Two public passions, the arts and education, both a search for knowledge of the world and of herself. Irene Backalenicks mantra has always been, she said, just wanting to know about everything. David Rosenbergs column on the local theater scene appears monthly. WESTPORT A survey released just days before the announcement of Superintendent Colleen Palmers resignation shows widespread discontent, distrust and concern among Westport school administrators. The Westport Intermediate Administrators Association union sent the survey to its members, which include about 40 Westport principals, assistant principals, department heads and senior administrators from across the towns eight schools. About 30 administrators responded to each of the surveys 11 questions, and on March 8 the WIAA sent the survey results to the Board of Education, BOE Chairman Mark Mathias said. About a week later, on March 14, Palmer announced her resignation. Although the education board has not made the survey results public, the Westport News acquired the results from multiple sources familiar with Westport school operations. In response to the statement, I have concerns about the ethics and integrity of our current Central Office leadership, 90 percent of respondents said they agree, while only 10 percent said they disagree. Ninety percent of respondents also disagreed with the statement, I work in an environment that builds trust through clear communication and expectations, as well as two other statements that said there is a commonly owned plan for success and central office leadership focuses on team over self. Eighty percent of administrators who responded said their voice is not being heard, and 70 percent they would accept an administrative position elsewhere if an opportunity arose. On March 8, the same day the BOE received the survey, Staples High School Principal James DAmico did just that and announced he will be leaving Westport at the end of the year to become principal at New Fairfield High School. More Information Westport Intermediate Administrators Association union results: I have concerns about the ethics and integrity of our current Central Office leadership. (30 responses) -90% agree -10% disagree If I had an opportunity to accept an administrative position elsewhere, I would. (30 responses) -70% agree -26.7% disagree -3.3% neutral I feel supported by our Central Office leadership. (31 responses) -74.2% disagree -19.4% agree -6.4% neutral I work in an environment that builds trust through clear communication and expectations. (30 responses) -90% disagree -10% agree or neutral There is a commonly owned plan for success, and I know what it is. (33 responses) -90.9% disagree -9.1% agree or neutral Central Office leadership focuses on team over self. (30 responses) -90% disagree -10% agree or neutral Central Office leadership has a high sense of urgency for change that will lead to sustainable results in improving student achievement. (29 responses) -82.8% disagree -17.2% agree Central Office leadership is committed to continuous improvement for both individuals and the organization. (30 responses) -86.7% disagree -13.3% agree I feel included in appropriate meetings and communications. (32 responses) -81.3% disagree -12.5% agree -6.2% neutral I feel my voice is being heard. (31 responses) -80.6% disagree -19.4% agree I play an important role in the decision-making process (33 responses) -78.8% disagree -15.2% agree -6% neutral See More Collapse During the regular monthly meetings between our administrators union and district leadership and in the countless meetings that our Central Office team has had with administrators throughout the district this past year, any issue brought forward was taken seriously and addressed, Palmer said in an email Wednesday. With this survey, the entire Central Office team is committed to fully understand specific concerns and to work for a productive resolution, she added. Preparation to retire occurs well in advance, and after 35 years of CT service, it was the right time to make a decision for my family. Were starting a conversation to find out what it means as we do with all of our unions and employees. When they express concerns to us, we follow up with them, Mathias said of the survey results, noting the BOE established an ad hoc committee to look into workplace conditions. The committee, not yet named, includes six of the BOEs seven members, with only Vik Muktavaram opting not to join the group, Mathias said. Meanwhile, on Monday, the BOE established a search committee for the next superintendent, which Mathias said will be similar to the national search completed three years ago when then-Superintendent Elliott Landon left after a 17-year tenure and was replaced with Palmer. svaughan@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2638; @SophieCVaughan1 BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- China will become the world's largest 5G market, with 460 million users of the next-generation superfast network by 2025, China daily reported Thursday, citing a report given by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA). The user number in China is forecast to be higher than that of Europe (205 million) and the United States (187 million) combined. Backed by 5G, China's mobile ecosystem is expected to add 6 trillion yuan (about 895.92 billion U.S. dollars) in value to the national economy in 2023, up from 5.2 trillion yuan last year, said the GSMA report. "China's mobile industry has been a key driver of economic growth, inclusion and modernization , creating a new generation of digital consumers and transforming industry and society," the newspaper quoted Mats Granryd, director general of GSMA, as saying. Hu Houkun, rotating chairman of telecom equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co, is bullish on the future of 5G. "5G will play a vital part in triggering explosive growth in virtual reality and augmented reality because it can solve all the technological bottlenecks that blocking the industry's development." China's traditional sectors are said to have shown a strong interest in partnering with telecom companies to explore 5G, and the country can play a leading role in the process of the integration, said the newspaper, quoting Wang Jianzhou, former chairman of China Mobile, one of China's big three mobile service carriers, as saying. [ Editor: WPY ] Malvern, Pennsylvania (USA), March 21, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rajant Corporation, the exclusive provider of Kinetic Mesh wireless networks, has been certified as ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 9001:2015-compliant after an extensive audit of the companys internal operations. This ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System (QMS) certification was achieved on March 7, 2019. It demonstrates Rajants compliance with the development, technical support, and manufacturing of secure network radios at their Morehead, Kentucky facility. Rajant joined a consortium of Kentucky manufacturers put together by the Southeast Kentucky Economic Development Corporation (SKED) who partnered with the Advantage Kentucky Alliance (AKA) to assist participant companies, like Rajant, with the development and implementation of an ISO 9001 compliant quality management system. AKA provided Rajant with training and company-centric activities, such as group training, documentation writing, auditor training, and auditing to assist them with the development of a quality management system that met all the requirements of the ISO 9001 standard. According to SKEDs Executive Director Brett Traver, Appalachian Regional Commission contributed funding, which helped lower the cost of the consulting services for Rajants ISO certification. The funding came through SKED as part of our Supplier Education and Economic Development program as we work with companies in Eastern Kentucky to better position themselves for business with the federal government and large suppliers. Rajant completed the development of their QMS in six months and passed their certification audit to ISO 9001:2015 on their first pass. Advantage Kentucky Alliance (AKA) considers Rajant a collaborative success story of what AKA strives to do for many deserving companies within their region. Scott Broughton, AKAs Center Director, as well as AKAs Quality Program Manager Tom Ades worked closely with Rajant. Its been an honor to have played a part in this milestone achievement for our company, stated Dave Keeton, Rajants Morehead Manufacturing Manager. The dynamic combination of our world-class technology, amazing personnel, and globally certified Quality Management System, further enhances the excitement we have for our future. The Rajant Team, led by Dave Keeton, was exceptional to work with, shared Scott Broughton. Their senior management team made gaining ISO 9001:2015 certification a top priority enabling an efficient and systematic implementation schedule. #### About Rajant Corporation Rajant Corporation is the exclusive provider of private wireless networks powered by the patented Kinetic Mesh network, BreadCrumb wireless nodes, and InstaMesh networking software. With Rajant, customers can rapidly deploy a highly adaptable and scalable network that leverages the power of real-time data to deliver on-demand, mission-critical business intelligence. A low-latency, high-throughput and secure solution for a variety of data, voice, video, and autonomous applications, Rajants Kinetic Mesh networks provide industrial customers with full mobility, allowing them to take their private network applications and data anywhere. With successful deployments in more than 50 countries for customers in military, mining, ports, rail, oil & gas, petrochemical plants, municipalities, and agriculture, Rajant is headquartered in Malvern, Pennsylvania with additional facilities and offices in Arizona, Kentucky, and Alabama. For more information, visit www.rajant.com or follow Rajant on LinkedIn and Twitter. Attachments Waukesha, WI (53187) Today Windy. Snow ending this morning followed by clearing and some sunshine this afternoon. High 34F. Winds WNW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of snow 80%. Snow accumulations less than one inch. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.. Tonight A clear sky. Low 26F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Description GIS 21 March, 2019: Mauritius is among the leading countries on the African continent in Early Childhood Education and Development, stated the Minister of Ministry of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, this morning, at Voila Hotel, Bagatelle. She was speaking at the opening ceremony of the 1st Technical Meeting of the Continental Education Strategy for Africa Early Childhood Education and Development Cluster. The Head of Education Division, Department of Human Resources, Science and Technology of the African Union Commission, Dr Beatrice Njenga, and other personalities were present. Minister Dookun-Luchoomun highlighted that, in Mauritius, there is a link between the Ministry of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research, and other Ministries and departments such as the Ministry of Health and Quality of Life and the Child Development Unit of the Ministry of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare, which ensures good early childhood development. However, the diverse expertise of every participant in the cluster meeting is essential so as to further enhance early childhood education and development across the African continent, she added. The Education Minister underscored that political leaders around the world have pledged to ensure that by the end of 2030, all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for future education. She also recalled that, last year, at the Pan African high level conference on education, African leaders have reaffirmed their commitment to integrate policies pertaining to early childhood development, care, and education, as well as finance Early Childhood Education and Development programmes. For her part, Dr Njenga underlined that, in order to implement the Continental Education Strategy for Africa and to make sure that all stakeholders are onboard, the African Union Commission has established a cluster mechanism for every important thematic area. The early childhood cluster, launched six months ago, is one of the most important ones as it concerns the foundation of education and training, intellectual development, and human development in general, she added. Early Childhood Education and Development Cluster meeting The Early Childhood Education and Development Cluster meeting is being held on the 21 and 22 March 2019 and comprises participants from some 16 African countries. The key objectives of the meeting are to form a Technical Committee for the cluster with terms of references; develop the 2019-2020 work plan; and share knowledge and experience. Closing date: Monday, 1 April 2019 General Background Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) / Enterprise Application Centre-Bangkok (EAC-BKK) In 2014 EAC-BKK was established to serve as Asia-Pacific hub to build enterprise applications for the United Nations Secretariat. The staff being located both in New York and Bangkok, EAC-BKK oversees the development and maintenance of enterprise applications such as iNeed Customer Relationship Management system (iNeed), Electronic Fuel Management System 2 (eFMS-2), Electronic Contingency-Owned Equipment (eCOE), and Electronic Rations Management System (eRMS) among others. Core enterprise application solutions have been built upon Siebel CRM public sector, Oracle-based identity management systems, JEE Spring Framework, PeopleSoft, SAP and Android/iPhone mobile platforms. Purpose and Scope of Assignment The position is located in Valencia, Spain. This is a position in UNOPS for supporting projects carried out for the United Nations Secretariat and located in the United Nations Enterprise Application Centre- Bangkok (EAC - BKK). The incumbent of this position will be a consultant of UNOPS under its full responsibility. The incumbent gathers user requirements, prepares relevant documentation, configures SAP Material Management (MM) module, program using ABAP, participate in quality assurance and deployment activities. With the direction of a senior developer the incumbent is expected to undertake the following duties: Drafts functional specifications and implements detailed technical specifications based on the functional requirements; assists in providing integrations with other systems Writes and designs programs and reports in SAP ABAP to meet the technical specifications, particularly in Materials Management (MM) and Financial Accounting (FI) modules; Works on a portal for the SAP procure-to-pay process; Contributes to the project by identifying software gaps, proposing FRICEW items, performing unit testing, integration testing, defect resolution, training support and production support. Participates in field deployment and training Performs other duties as required Monitoring and Progress Controls In coordination with the team lead and senior developers, the incumbent is to monitor the progress and assure the on-time deliveries of assigned technical artifacts and documents The incumbent is expected to exercise flexibility in dynamically changing delivery requirements a. Education A Bachelors degree in computer science, information systems, mathematics, statistics or related field is required. Closing date: Monday, 1 April 2019 UNOPS is an operational arm of the United Nations, supporting the successful implementation of its partners peacebuilding, humanitarian and development projects around the world. Our mission is to help people build better lives and countries achieve sustainable development. UNOPS areas of expertise cover infrastructure, procurement, project management, financial management and human resources. Working with us UNOPS offers short- and long-term work opportunities in diverse and challenging environments across the globe. We are looking for creative, results-focused professionals with skills in a range of disciplines. Diversity With over 4,000 UNOPS personnel and approximately 7,000 personnel recruited on behalf of UNOPS partners spread across 80 countries, our workforce represents a wide range of nationalities and cultures. We promote a balanced, diverse workforce a strength that helps us better understand and address our partners needs, and continually strive to improve our gender balance through initiatives and policies that encourage recruitment of qualified female candidates. Work life harmonization UNOPS values its people and recognizes the importance of balancing professional and personal demands. UNOPS Hub in Amman The UNOPS Hub in Amman implements projects in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen, in partnership with bilateral donors, national governments, and other UN agencies. With an established presence across the region, the office runs operations including large-scale procurement, project development, and technical management, and provides financial, human resources, and infrastructure-related services. The functional objective of UNOPS Hub in Amman is to deliver its projects in an efficient and effective manner and in line with the principles, rules and regulations of UNOPS, in order to support the response to the current needs and national priorities in the region. Since 2012, UNICEF Jordan Country Office has been playing an integral part of the humanitarian response for Syrian refugees in Jordan. As WASH sector lead, UNICEF is leading the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene promotion assistance to the refugees in camps as well as in host communities, including schools and other institutions. Zaatari Refugee Camp is among the main locations where UNICEF is providing humanitarian WASH assistance which hosts more than 80,000 refugees. In Zaatari refugee Camp, UNICEF is providing water at a daily average of 3,800,000 litres. This is provided through three boreholes operated within the camp covering the whole the daily supply, and number of privately owned external boreholes, contributing the remaining daily supply. Currently, water is pumped from the boreholes to the distribution points through main pipelines and pump stations. The water supply from the network doesnot cover the needs of the NGOs and institutions inside the camp. In addition to water supply, UNICEF is also manging wastewater networks which collects a daily amount of 2000 to 2500 m3 through main pipelines and two pump stations. Collected wastewater is being pumped on 24 hours basis to the camp treatment plant. Description GIS - 21 March, 2019: A parcel containing synthetic drugs worth Rs 15 million was seized on Tuesday 19 March 2019 at the SSR International Airport following a joint operation led by the Customs Anti-Narcotics Section (CANS) of the Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA) and the Anti-Drug and Smuggling Unit (ADSU). The suspect, an inhabitant of Cite Atlee, Forest-Side, was arrested by officers of the CANS while he was trying to collect a parcel at the courier service of the Airport arriving from Hong Kong. A field test for synthetic drugs was carried out and the result was positive. The suspect has been arrested by ADSU. It is recalled that the MRA is committed to the fight against drugs and illicit trade in Mauritius. Its Stop Drug Platform remains open to members of the public who may report suspected drug and illicit activities. Wilkes is the highest ranked institution in Luzerne County and within the top 25 percent of independent institutions in the nation. Wilkes University is once again being recognized for its commitment to social mobility. In Former F1 driver Jaime Alguersuari says the top category of motor racing turns drivers into "a puppet". The Spaniard, now 28, raced for Toro Rosso until he was ousted in 2011. He is now a full-time DJ. "When I left, I felt hate," Alguersuari told the Spanish newspaper Ara. "When you're not ready and you go to a capitalist world like F1, you're a puppet. You represent a brand, you don't know who your friends are, you're living a lie. "In F1 you cannot have an opinion. I wanted to say mine, as I knew there was a difference between my car and the other." Alguersuari admits he was left bitter when his F1 career ended, as he believes Red Bull timed his ousting so that he couldn't switch to another team. "When it happened, it was easy to think 'These people are my enemies', but then later I realised that it was thanks to them that I came to F1 at all. They paid me to race and therefore I had to be grateful," he said. (GMM) Organisers of the Australian grand prix look set to proceed with a full resurfacing of the Albert Park track in Melbourne. Last weekend for the 2019 season opener, Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel urged against the resurfacing, saying the bumps are part of the character of the venue. "We will have to get the report back from (acting race director) Michael Masi, but I think we will be resurfacing in the next year or two," Australian Grand Prix Corporation chief Andrew Westacott told The Age. He also suggested that other "tweaks" to the circuit could be made, amid claims overtaking is too difficult at Albert Park. "As the cars keep evolving we will do what we can to evolve the circuit," said Westacott. The tweaks could involve changes to the camber, the width and the entry and exit of some corners. "Ross Brawn will also be consulted but no call will be made for six or nine months," said Westacott. (GMM) A crowd gathers outside the Union Bank of Canada on Main Street during the Winnipeg General Strike on June 21, 1919. Ralf Schumacher has hit back at claims that F1 gave birth to a "new" Valtteri Bottas in Melbourne. Disappointed with his performance in 2018 and fearing for his Mercedes seat, Finn Bottas reinvented himself over the winter, growing a beard and insisting he is determined to do anything to succeed. In Melbourne, he duly won. But Schumacher told Germany's motorsport-total.com: "I would say it was just a good weekend for him, no more and no less. "Without Hamilton's damaged underbody and the start, I'm pretty sure it would have been the usual picture," said the former Williams and Toyota driver. (GMM) TORONTO - Canada's two largest airlines have at least one of the optional safety features on their Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft that were reportedly lacking on the jets that crashed in Ethiopia and Indonesia. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. An Air Canada Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft departing for Calgary taxis to a runway at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond, B.C., on Tuesday, March 12, 2019. Air Canada says its grounded Boeing 737 Max aircraft have two optional safety features lacking in the doomed crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck TORONTO - Canada's two largest airlines have at least one of the optional safety features on their Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft that were reportedly lacking on the jets that crashed in Ethiopia and Indonesia. Air Canada and WestJet Airlines both say they purchased disagree lights used by the aircraft's software system during flight to avert stalls. The New York Times has reported the Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air jets involved in recent fatal crashes were not equipped with angle of attack indicators and disagree lights. The safety features are not standard on the aircraft and are offered by Boeing as upgrades. Air Canada spokeswoman Isabelle Arthur said the country's largest airline purchased both safety features for its fleet of 24 Max 8 planes. However, WestJet spokeswoman Morgan Bell said the Calgary-based airline's 13 Max 8 planes are not configured with the angle of attack indicators. She said the disagree light was purchased so the new aircraft will have common configurations with its Boeing 737 NG fleet. Neither airline would disclose the cost of purchasing these options. Neither Sunwing Airlines, which has four Max 8s, nor Boeing responded to requests for comment. Norwegian Air, which is preparing to launch Canadian service to Europe on March 31, says it hasn't added the optional extra because it is "not a critical safety feature nor is it a requirement by any aviation authority." "We are in close dialogue with Boeing and follow their and the aviation authorities' instructions and recommendations, we immediately implement all safety recommendations as required," stated acting chief operating officer Tomas Hesthammer. The discount carrier said it is working on using other aircraft to cover the route but said it is too early to tell how the grounding of the Boeing planes will impact its operations in the coming months. The safety indicators help pilots detect any erroneous readings from two vanelike sensors that determine the position of the plane's nose relative to oncoming air. The angle of attack indicator displays the readings of the two sensors while the disagree light is activated if the sensors don't provide the same information, the U.S. daily said. The MCAS system can automatically push the plane's nose down to prevent stalling if it determines it is pointing up at a dangerous level. The New York Times also said, citing unnamed sources, that Boeing will soon update the MCAS software and make the disagree light standard on all new 737 Max planes, but maintain the angle of attack indicator as an option. Boeing is rushing to complete the upgrades on jets by early next week, according to a person familiar with the changes. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because Boeing and federal regulators are still discussing details of the upgrade to the Max fleet, which was grounded worldwide after a second deadly crash this month in Ethiopia. The causes of the Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10 and the Lion Air crash five months earlier, both on takeoff, are being investigated. Investigators are looking at whether a new software system added to avoid stalls may have been a contributing factor. Air Canada has removed its grounded Boeing 737 Max 8 jets from service until at least July 1 in order to provide more certainty for passengers who wish to book flights in the coming months. Both Air Canada and WestJet have suspended their 2019 financial guidances. Companies in this story: (TSX:AC, TSX:WJA) With files from The Associated Press BRUSSELS - Worn down by three years of indecision in London, European Union leaders on Thursday grudgingly offered the U.K. more time to ease itself out of the bloc, delaying by several weeks but not eliminating the threat of a chaotic British exit. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. British Prime Minister Theresa May, center, speaks with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, right, and Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, left, during a round table meeting at an EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, March 21, 2019. British Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to persuade European Union leaders to delay Brexit by up to three months, just eight days before Britain is scheduled to leave the bloc. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein) BRUSSELS - Worn down by three years of indecision in London, European Union leaders on Thursday grudgingly offered the U.K. more time to ease itself out of the bloc, delaying by several weeks but not eliminating the threat of a chaotic British exit. After a meeting that stretched through the afternoon and over dinner, the bloc said Britain could postpone its March 29 departure to May 22 if the U.K. Parliament approves Prime Minister Theresa May's divorce deal with the bloc next week. If the twice-rejected deal is thrown out again, the bloc says Britain has until April 12 to "indicate a way forward." British Prime Minister Theresa May, right, speaks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker during a round table meeting at an EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, March 21, 2019. British Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to persuade European Union leaders to delay Brexit by up to three months, just eight days before Britain is scheduled to leave the bloc. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein) "Now it is finally up to the British political system to provide a clear answer," French President Emmanuel Macron said, adding that any final decision must come ahead of the May 23-26 European Parliament election. May who has spent almost three years telling Britons they will leave the EU on March 29, 2019 put a positive spin on the delay. She said the EU decision underlines "the importance of the House of Commons passing a Brexit deal next week so that we can bring an end to the uncertainty and leave in a smooth and orderly manner." EU summit host Donald Tusk expressed relief that a cut-off date had been delayed. "I am really satisfied, especially that we have still open so many options," Tusk said. "It is a good sign." Activists poses with their faces painted in the EU and Union Flag colors during an anti-Brexit campaign stunt outside EU headquarters during an EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, March 21, 2019. British Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to persuade European Union leaders to delay Brexit by up to three months, just eight days before Britain is scheduled to leave the bloc. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein) The late-night offer eased some of the deep uncertainty among leaders at an EU summit in Brussels, which was exceeded only by the high anxiety being felt by politicians, businesses and citizens in Britain. The British military has even set up a command post in a bunker under the defence ministry in London to help co-ordinate "no-deal" planning. The House of Commons is split, both among and within its political parties, over whether and how to leave the EU. It has twice rejected the deal May brokered with the bloc's leaders late last year. This week, May finally acknowledged the Brexit gridlock and asked the EU to delay Britain's departure until June 30, to create time to win parliamentary approval for her deal in a third attempt and then pass the legislation necessary for a smooth departure. But opposition to May's the agreement among British politicians appeared to be hardening, rather than softening, after she blamed Parliament for the Brexit impasse. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the Houses of Parliament, in London, Wednesday March 20, 2019. Exactly 1,000 days after Britain voted to leave the European Union, and nine days before it is scheduled to walk out the door, May hit the pause button Wednesday, asking the bloc to postpone the U.K.'s departure until June 30. (Victoria Jones/PA via AP) In a televised address Wednesday night, May accused lawmakers of "infighting," ''political games" and "arcane procedural rows," but acknowledged no personal error in creating the deadlock. A lawmaker from May's Conservative Party called the speech "toxic." Legislator Anna Soubry, of the breakaway Independent Group, described it as the "most dishonest and divisive statement from any prime minister." May struck conciliatory note at a late-night Brussels news conference, saying "I know MPs on all sides of the debate have passionate views, and I respect those different positions." "Last night I expressed my frustration. I know that MPs are frustrated too. They have difficult jobs to do," she added. Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a statement, at 10 Downing Street, in London, Wednesday, March 20, 2019. May says it's a matter of "great personal regret" that U.K. won't leave the EU with a deal on March 29. (Jonathan Brady/Pool Photo via AP) But May also refused to change course, calling on lawmakers to back her agreement and refusing to rule out a no-deal exit if they did not back her. May said that if the deal falls, by April 12, "we would either leave with no deal, or put forward an alternative plan" that involved participating in EU Parliament elections. "I believe strongly that it would be wrong to ask people in the UK to participate in these elections three years after voting to leave the EU," she said. Businesses and economists say a no-deal Brexit would cause huge disruptions and billions in costs to the economies of both Britain and the EU. European Council President Donald Tusk, left, and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, center, make their way to a media conference at an EU summit in Brussels, Thursday, March 21, 2019. Worn down by three years of indecision in London, EU leaders on Thursday were grudgingly leaning toward giving the U.K. more time to ease itself out of the bloc. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) Underscoring the sense of dread gripping the nation, one of Britain's biggest business lobbies and a major trade union federation said in a rare joint appeal that the "country is facing a national emergency." The Confederation of British Industry and the Trades Union Congress warned May that if Britain crashes out of the EU, "the shock to our economy would be felt by generations to come." Britain's military said the command post under the ministry of defence was set up as part of Operation Redfold, a plan to minimize disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The ministry said in a statement it had 3,500 troops on standby to help with any disruptions if the government asks for assistance. Worry about a chaotic departure has been rising among EU leaders, who fear May no longer has the clout in Parliament to get her way. French President Emmanuel Macron speaks at the end of an EU summit in Brussels, Friday, March 22, 2019. Worn down by three years of indecision in London, EU leaders on Thursday were grudgingly leaning toward giving the U.K. more time to ease itself out of the bloc. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys) "Nobody wants no-deal here," Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar told reporters. German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to work "until the last hour" to try to ensure that Britain doesn't leave without a deal, even though her government has enacted emergency measures to deal with such a scenario. May plans to make a third attempt to get her deal through Parliament next week. But many pro-Brexit legislators still oppose it, saying it does not deliver the clean break they long for. And Pro-EU lawmakers will try to derail May and wrest away control of the Brexit process to steer Britain toward a close relationship with the bloc. It's a struggle that has been going on for almost three years and brought the U.K. to within eight days of a chaotic Brexit. Macron said that risk remained. "The European Union is not holding all the cards because everything depends on the British vote," he said. "The European Union is clearly facing a British political crisis. British politicians are incapable of implementing what their people have asked for." Some EU leaders felt sympathy for May's quandary. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. "I have the highest respect for her," said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. "Her tenacity is enormous. But she is working in an extremely difficult situation. "It's not her mistake that we are where we are it's because too many people have so far played party politics on this issue." ___ Associated Press writers Samuel Petrequin and Lorne Cook in Brussels, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Danica Kirka and Gregory Katz in London and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed. ___ Follow AP's full coverage of Brexit at: https://www.apnews.com/Brexit European regulators on Wednesday slapped Google with a roughly US$1.7-billion fine on charges that its advertising practices violated local antitrust laws, marking the third time in as many years that the regions watchdogs have penalized the U.S. tech giant for harming competition and consumers. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. European regulators on Wednesday slapped Google with a roughly US$1.7-billion fine on charges that its advertising practices violated local antitrust laws, marking the third time in as many years that the regions watchdogs have penalized the U.S. tech giant for harming competition and consumers. Margrethe Vestager, the European Unions top competition commissioner, announced the punishment at a news conference, accusing Google of engaging in "illegal practices" in a bid to "cement its dominant market position" in the search and advertising markets. The new penalty adds to Googles costly headaches in Europe, where Vestager now has fined the tech giant more than US$9 billion in total for a series of antitrust violations. Her actions stand in stark contrast to the United States, where regulators facing a flood of complaints that big tech companies have become too big and powerful have not brought a single antitrust case against Google or any of its peers in recent years, reflecting a widening transatlantic schism over Silicon Valley and its business practices. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In 2018, Vestager took aim at the companys Android smartphone operating system, claiming that Google pressured mobile device-makers to pre-install the tech giants apps. A year before that, Vestager punished Google for giving its shopping-comparison service a better placement in search results over rivals offerings. In both cases, Google has started tweaking its business practices in Europe to comply with the law while appealing the EUs decisions in court. The companys changes include a new effort, detailed Tuesday, to help owners of Android smartphones find and use competing search and web-browsing services. But the update only applies to Europe, Google said in a blog post, without elaborating if it would alter some of mobile practices in the United States. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Vestagers latest punishment targets Googles relationships with third-party websites, from large retailers to small gossip blogs. Sites that participated in Googles "AdSense for Search" program could take advantage of Googles search tools on their web pages, and users who searched those sites would see results alongside ads served up by Google. But Google prohibited those third-party sites from using rival ad services, one of many restrictions on AdSense customers that led the European Commission to conclude in an initial complaint filed in 2016 that Google had acted anti-competitively. EU officials did acknowledge at the time that Google had changed its AdSense contracts to allow for "more freedom to display competing search ads." The EUs fine against Google is only its latest broadside against the tech industry. Vestager previously has acknowledged an ongoing antitrust investigation against Amazon, and earlier this month, she said the probe is in a "quite advanced" stage. Music-streaming site Spotify, meanwhile, has urged European regulators to take similar aim at Apple, alleging last week that the iPhone giant has an "unfair advantage" because of the subscription-related fees it charges certain app makers. And individual European countries emboldened with tough online privacy laws that took effect last year also have set their sights on Silicon Valley. A key regulatory agency in Ireland recently confirmed that it has opened 10 probes into Facebook and its data-collection practices. Google still could face additional penalties in the EU, where Vestager who has emerged as one of Silicon Valleys toughest regulators is set to finish her term as competition commissioner at the end of October. Regulators recently have started scrutinizing Googles handling of local search results, following a complaint brought by Yelp last year. Washington Post CALGARY - The leader of Alberta's United Conservatives says he believes humans are causing climate change and action is needed to tackle it, but those who disagree still have a place in the party. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Alberta UCP leader Jason Kenney speaks with workers at Total Energy Services in Leduc Alta. on Tuesday, March 19, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Amber Bracken CALGARY - The leader of Alberta's United Conservatives says he believes humans are causing climate change and action is needed to tackle it, but those who disagree still have a place in the party. "There's a spectrum of views about this. This is not a party with some kind of rigid, ideological orthodoxy that everybody has to sign up to," he said in Calgary on Thursday after laying out his plan to fight for the energy sector. "I think broadly the United Conservatives accept the scientific consensus around anthropogenic climate change." Kenney said his party would present a "common sense" plan to control carbon emissions later in the election campaign. He has said his first order of business, if elected premier April 16, will be to scrap the NDP's carbon tax. The governing party misled voters by making no mention of it in its 2015 platform, he added. Speaking at a senior's centre in Lethbridge, NDP Leader Rachel Notley lashed back at that contention. She said her party signalled all along that serious climate action was in the offing and the broad-based tax was one of an expert panel's recommendations months later. "This plan that we came up with was the right balance," she said. Kenney, meanwhile, accused Notley of selling Alberta out to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by imposing a carbon tax, but getting no coastal pipelines in exchange. Kenney said he would sue Ottawa if its overhaul to environmental reviews becomes law, block energy shipments to provinces that stand in the way of development and team up with other oil and gas-friendly provincial governments. A UCP government would also call a referendum on equalization if what he dubs the "no more pipelines" law hasn't been mothballed, and if there is still no progress on pipelines. The matter would be put to voters on Oct. 18, 2021, the same date as the next municipal elections in Alberta, he said. The federal equalization program is meant to even out fiscal disparities between so called "have" and "have-not" provinces. Despite its economic doldrums, Alberta remains a "have" province. Kenney said Albertans pride themselves of being able to share their wealth. "What we can no longer tolerate is governments and politicians in other parts of the country benefiting from Albertans' hard work and our resources while doing everything they can to block those resources." Ready, Pet, Go! Leesa Dahl looks at everything to do with our furry, fuzzy, feathered, fishy (and more!) pet friends. Arrives in your inbox each Monday. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Notley said earlier in the day that her government has fought from Day 1 to get pipelines like the Trans Mountain expansion and that the Trudeau government bought the project, saving it from likely death, at her urging. Also Thursday, the NDP released a 10-minute video showing decades-old footage of Kenney boasting about a campaign to overturn a law extending hospital visitation rights to gay couples during the 1980s AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. The video also showed recent interviews with people touched by the crisis reacting to Kenney. When asked if he had a message for LGBTQ Albertans today, Kenney told reporters that under a UCP government everyone will be accepted. "It's true that back when these were matters of political contention, that I supported the traditional definition of marriage, as did virtually every political party and political leader in every country in the democratic West," he said. "It's also true that ... the consensus on that question has changed dramatically and I accept that." Also Thursday, Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel said he would double the number of educational assistants in schools. Alberta Liberal Leader David Khan said he would improve child welfare, education and justice for Indigenous people. OTTAWA - Celina Caesar-Chavannes has informed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that she's leaving the federal Liberal caucus and will sit as an Independent MP. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of International Development Celina Caesar-Chavannes rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Friday, May 25, 2018. Celina Caesar-Chavannes has informed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that she will no longer be part of a the Liberal caucus and will sit as an independent MP. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang OTTAWA - Celina Caesar-Chavannes has informed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that she's leaving the federal Liberal caucus and will sit as an Independent MP. The Whitby, Ont., MP has been a vocal supporter of Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, two cabinet ministers who resigned over the SNC-Lavalin affair. In an interview with The Globe and Mail last week, she also accused Trudeau of yelling at her angrily when she informed him that she would not be seeking re-election this fall an accusation the Prime Minister's Office has denied. In a tweet Wednesday, Caesar-Chavannes said that interview "has had unintended effects on those I care about. Although that was not the intention, it was the consequence, and I am sorry. I no longer want to distract from the great work my caucus colleagues are doing." But Conservatives pounced on the defection, arguing that Caesar-Chavannes's exit, added to the departures of Wilson-Raybould and Philpott from cabinet, prove that Trudeau is a "fake feminist." Conservative House leader Candice Bergen said the "good old boys" in the Prime Minister's Office wanted Wilson-Raybould to avert a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin and when she refused, "she was promptly fired and silenced. "The prime minister is really good at yelling and screaming at women, as the member from Whitby knows, and he's also a very good actor. But, Mr. Speaker, he's a fake feminist," Bergen told the House of Commons. Trudeau said he'll take no lessons on feminism from Conservatives who "still want to challenge a woman's right to choose" to have an abortion. Caesar-Chavannes, first elected in 2015, has been a relatively high-profile backbencher, primarily as an advocate for the rights of black Canadians. She's gotten into several Twitter wars with Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada, who once accused her of thinking "the world revolves around your skin colour." On another occasion, she apologized to Bernier after telling him to "check your privilege and be quiet" when he questioned funding for minority groups. She also made news in 2016 when she openly talked about her battle with depression. At the time, Caesar-Chavannes, who was initially named parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, praised Trudeau's understanding of mental illness. She has since soured on his leadership. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Throughout the SNC-Lavalin saga, she has used social media to send messages of solidarity accompanied by a clenched-fist emoji to Wilson-Raybould and Philpott. A few hours after leaving the Liberal caucus on Wednesday, Caesar-Chavannes voted for a Conservative motion calling on Trudeau to waive cabinet confidentiality to allow Wilson-Raybould to testify more fully about the affair. In January, she used a speech at Parliament's annual dinner tribute to Scottish poet Robbie Burns to take a swipe at Trudeau for moving Wilson-Raybould out of the prestigious justice portfolio to Veterans Affairs in a small cabinet shuffle earlier that month, to be replaced by Montreal MP David Lametti. Wilson-Raybould resigned from cabinet a few weeks later, although both she and Philpott, who resigned subsequently from cabinet, remain members of the Liberal caucus. Had Burns been an MP, Caesar-Chavannes said, Wilson-Raybould would have been asked to remove him from Parliament. "If she didn't succeed, she would have been fired. If she succeeded in removing Robbie Burns, she would have been fired. You can't have an Indian doing that to the white man. Lametti can, you cant. The lads are better at that sort of thing," she said. MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada remains welcoming to newcomers even as his government takes steps to curb the influx of asylum seekers coming into the country at unofficial entry points. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. MISSISSAUGA, Ont. - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Canada remains welcoming to newcomers even as his government takes steps to curb the influx of asylum seekers coming into the country at unofficial entry points. Speaking at a news conference in Mississauga, Ont., on Thursday, the prime minister said Canadians continue to be "overwhelmingly in favour" of immigration even though the issue has become "politically charged" here and south of the border. "One of the reasons Canadians do have confidence in immigration as a positive force in our country is because they have confidence in our immigration system," he said. "We are dealing with larger than usual numbers and have had to make investments to account for that but the integrity of our immigration system continues to hold." More than 40,000 people have crossed into Canada on foot through fields and forests since 2017. Trudeau's comments come days after his government presented a budget that includes a new border-enforcement strategy aimed at detecting, intercepting and removing irregular migrants. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. The plan, which is expected to cost $1.18 billion over five years, includes more funding for the Canada Border Services Agency and the RCMP to beef up enforcement at the border, as well as money to speed up the processing of asylum claims. Some provinces, particularly Quebec and Ontario, have called on Ottawa to reimburse them for hundreds of millions of dollars in housing and other expenses they say have been incurred in accommodating the flow of asylum seekers. The budget did not set aside money for provincial immigration costs, but Trudeau said Thursday his government will continue to work with provinces and municipalities to relieve that pressure. Meanwhile, Border Security Minister Bill Blair said over the weekend he was in talks with lawmakers in the United States to close a loophole in Canada's border agreement with the U.S. that some say encourages asylum seekers to avoid official checkpoints. Under the Safe Third Country Agreement, asylum seekers can't claim refugee status in Canada if they arrive at an official border crossing from a country deemed to be safe, such as the U.S. but they can do so from inside Canada. Blair has said that extending the agreement to those who cross irregularly from the U.S. could help remove the incentive. Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman calls the first budget of his second term "a balanced and responsible blueprint" a sentiment not shared by one-third of city council. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman calls the first budget of his second term "a balanced and responsible blueprint" a sentiment not shared by one-third of city council. Council approved the 2019 budget Wednesday by a vote of 11-5. The plan consists of a $1.22-billion operating budget that will increase property taxes by 2.33 per cent for the fifth consecutive year, and a capital budget of $367.5 million. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Winnipeg mayor Brian Bowman addresses city council just before a vote on the 2019 budget which passed by an 11-5 margin, Tuesday. "Each budget year is a challenge, as requests for funds inevitably outstrip the availability of funds," finance chairman Coun. Scott Gillingham told council as he introduced the budget. "The aim is always to present a responsible budget that funds the services citizens of our great city needs while keeping property taxes, rates and fees affordable. "Overall, the 2019 budget strikes the balance between discipline, addressing immediate priorities and continuing to invest in key services and infrastructure." The operating and capital budgets were largely unchanged from the document tabled March 1 by Gillingham and Bowman. The only amendment proposed during the meeting came from Couns. Ross Eadie and Jason Schreyer, who advocated borrowing $10 million for local street work as a partial replacement of the $20-million cut in 2019 as a result of a funding dispute with the provincial government. The additional borrowing proposal was defeated, 13-3 vote, with Coun. Jeff Browaty joining Eadie and Schreyer in support of the amendment. How they voted Click to Expand On the 2019 operating and capital budgets: In favour Mayor Brian Bowman and Couns. Matt Allard, Jeff Browaty, Markus Chambers, Scott Gillingham, Cindy Gilroy, Brian Mayes, John Orlikow, Sherri Rollins, Vivian Santos, Devi Sharma Opposed Couns. Ross Eadie, Kevin Klein, Janice Lukes, Shawn Nason, Jason Schreye Coun. Janice Lukes used her time during the debate to criticize the budget process, which involved only nine members of council as members of the working group, and called on the seven other councillors to cast a symbolic vote against the budget. Couns. Kevin Klein, Shawn Nason, Schreyer and Eadie joined Lukes in protest. "I didnt vote against the good things in the budget, but I certainly voted against the lack of long-term thinking that is required to achieve fair city financing of the services we all need for our families," Eadie said later, in a statement. While Coun. Vivian Santos voted in favour of the budget, she used her time in the debate to deplore the citys lack of infrastructure investment in the North End and her Point Douglas ward, explaining more projects are being built in other areas of the city to the detriment of north Winnipeg. Wednesday also featured an appeal from Chris Lorenc, president of the Manitoba Heavy Construction Association, to temporarily allocate $20 million of the city's $2.5 billion in anticipated revenues for local street renewals, and then repay that money with the $40 million or more the city will receive from the Canadian government in a bonus gas tax payment (announced in Tuesday's federal budget). Gillingham ruled the move out, calling it "premature" to spend money the city hadn't yet received. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Bowman called the 2019 budget "a balanced and responsible blueprint... A plan that keeps property taxes affordable for Winnipeg families, while maintaining and investing in key infrastructure, services and technology that are important to Winnipeggers and are essential to building our city." The mayor later told reporters he would like to spend some of the bonus $40 million from Ottawa on local streets, but said there would be other projects where the funds could be allocated. Bowman also said it might be difficult or impractical to allocate any part of that money this year, if the funds don't arrive until May or later. In a question-and-answer exchange with reporters, the mayor expressed dismay five councillors voted against the budget and its low-income bus pass, freeze on transit fares, and a host of other initiatives. "Despite some challenges, this year's budget does a lot of good things for the city." aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca The fallout from the Manitoba advocate for children and youth's special report on the life and death of Tina Fontaine continued this week, with the provincial families minister accusing the advocate of not alerting her about other at-risk children. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The fallout from the Manitoba advocate for children and youth's special report on the life and death of Tina Fontaine continued this week, with the provincial families minister accusing the advocate of not alerting her about other at-risk children. On March 12, Daphne Penrose told media at the launch of her report on Tina that another 17 Manitoba youth were similarly in immediate danger because of drug addictions and lack of available treatment. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Daphne Penros, the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth, put together the report for the investigation into the death of Tina Fontaine. "Children are going to die if we dont make changes," Penrose said at the time. Families Minister Heather Stefanson said Wednesday she was disappointed Penrose didn't bring up those youth in a meeting they had to discuss the Tina report on Feb. 6. "These 17 individuals were not mentioned at all. I have serious concerns about that. I think that if were really out for whats in the best interest of children, we need to work together on these things," Stefanson said. The minister said she immediately sought the names of the 17 youth from the advocate and information about their well-being. She said the director of Child and Family Services reached out to the advocate for the list of names March 13, and received the information the next day. They shared the information with the respective child-welfare agencies and all the youth now have safety plans in place, the minister said. Asked whether the youth were actually at imminent risk of danger, Stefanson said media would have to ask the advocate. "Shes the one who came out with those allegations. Obviously, when we heard that, I was very concerned," she said. "This is unusual, I will say, where a childrens advocate will not share this kind of information. This is about the safety of children in our province." For her part, Penrose said she's been sharing information about Manitoba's at-risk youth for months, including a statement she issued in September 2018 about youth needing immediate access to mental health and addictions treatment, which is lacking provincially. "The youth who are at risk related to their addictions is not new this week, and it wasnt new last week when I put out the report about Tina, right?" the advocate said in an interview. "We all know in the province we have some really significant issues with addictions, and so the lives of these kids are really complicated, and kids are addicted and have co-occurring diseases. Again, this is not a situation thats only happened on March 12. Its been happening for years. And you see it in Tinas story." Tina, 15, was found dead in the Red River in August 2014, after falling through the cracks of the systems meant to keep her safe, including CFS and Winnipeg police. In her report, Penrose outlined Tina's addiction issues, which included use of cannabis and alcohol. Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont decried Stefanson's criticism of Penrose. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. "Its totally inappropriate for the minister to be treating the advocate that way. The advocate has been set out to be independent, its her job to stand up and be independent and challenge this government. And for the minister to call her into question on that is absolutely shameful," Lamont said. Penrose has been more vocal about issues affecting Manitoba youth than past advocates, thanks in part to her expanded powers legislated under the current government. The advocate now has the ability to release special reports and investigations to the general public, which previously only went to government and the affected child-welfare agencies. The advocate can also make recommendations to departments other than families, such as education, health and justice, for areas that need improvement. "Its tough for people to hear (and) to be investigated, right? To have these big reports come out," Penrose said of government's reactions to her reports. "I think its just people trying to digest everything." jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @_jessbu Diversity of Manitoba judges will be required by law as part of the provincial government's attempts to "streamline" the court system. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Diversity of Manitoba judges will be required by law as part of the provincial government's attempts to "streamline" the court system. Proposed legislation, announced last week by Justice Minister Cliff Cullen under the Court Modernization Act, aims to make the provincial-court judge selection process more transparent and efficient. It says new provincial court appointments must encourage "a diverse pool of candidates" and choose qualified people who "reflect the diversity of Manitoba" to become judges, justices of the peace and masters. If the bill is passed into law, it would legally mandate the need for diversity among those tasked with delivering justice on the provincial court. Superior court judges appointed by the federal government are already chosen with diversity requirements in mind, according to reforms introduced about three years ago. The roster on Manitoba's provincial court currently includes judges who are Indigenous and visible minorities, as well as judges who are openly gay or have disabilities. In 2015, Manitoba's provincial court made history by appointing the first openly transgender judge in Canada. Yet, the application form lawyers must fill out when they apply to become a judge doesn't ask whether they are a member of a minority group. A court spokeswoman said judges aren't asked to self-identify after they are appointed to the bench, and Manitoba doesn't keep statistics on the diversity of its judges or judicial candidates. That kind of data is required to be made public for federal judicial appointments, and other provinces, including Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, provided statistics to the Free Press on the race and gender of their provincial court judges. In British Columbia, data is published annually on the diversity of provincial-court judge applicants. "The court should reflect the diversity of society, and it should reflect the diversity of the make up of Manitobans. If it doesnt, theres two problems: firstly, the court may not have an appreciation for the diversity of individuals in the courtroom upon whom theyre passing judgment and, secondly, there needs to be a trust in the court process by the general public," said Mark Toews, president of the Manitoba Bar Association. "If the entire court does not reflect the diversity of the community, there will be a greater distrust that the court can adequately and fairly appreciate where theyre coming from in their circumstances." The legislation would establish a standing committee, which must be composed of members from diverse backgrounds, who will put together a list of qualified candidates. Under the existing process, a committee is formed each time there is a vacancy on the provincial court, with input from community members who live in the community where the new judge will serve. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Toews said the bar association wants to ensure regional representation isn't lost in the new selection process. The bill would require three community members to serve on the standing committee, but it doesn't specify where those individuals will be from. "I can understand the reason why theres a change in order to create a more efficient process, but the advantage to what we had in the past was two-fold. One is, it ensured that youre looking at the best person at the time that its needed. And the other advantage is, it would ensure that there would be community members from the centre where the vacancy has occurred," he said. Regardless of the proposed legislation, the selection committee has long taken diversity into account when it chooses new judges, said Kristin Dangerfield, chief executive officer of the Law Society of Manitoba. "So it is a pretty diverse court as it is. Having said that, its obviously a laudable goal to anchor that in statute so that its something that will be top of mind when appointments are made." katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries Corp. has announced sweeping changes for its Winnipeg liquor stores, aimed at rolling back a rising tide of brazen, sometimes violent thefts that have plagued employees, security guards and customers the past year. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries Corp. has announced sweeping changes for its Winnipeg liquor stores, aimed at rolling back a rising tide of brazen, sometimes violent thefts that have plagued employees, security guards and customers the past year. The Crown corporation unveiled its new multi-point anti-theft plan at a news conference Thursday morning. Both the Winnipeg police and Manitoba Government Employees Union welcomed the anti-theft measures as encouraging. (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press files) MLL director of corporate security Wayne Harrison delivered a dire warning to those whove been grabbing bottles off the shelves and skipping the till: "To those out there who are stealing from us... you will be caught." The anti-theft plan, which has been developed by Harrisons team, with input from the Winnipeg Police Service, has been in the works for months. New initiatives will be rolled out in Winnipeg Liquor Marts as early as Friday. MLL will hire and train loss-prevention teams allowed to follow alleged thieves outside the store and place them under citizens arrest, which marks a drastic departure from the Crown corporations past policy of non-physical intervention. Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries president and CEO Peter Hak announced new anti-theft strategies Thursday, including trained loss-prevention officer teams, a no-bag policy at certain stores and changes to store layouts. (Mikaela Mackenzie / Winnipeg Free Press) "Were quite confident that we will have the impact we want," Harrison said. MLL will also work with the WPS to expand its use of uniformed special duty constables at targeted Liquor Marts, since their presence has proven an effective deterrent on a trial basis. Additional changes include, but are not limited to, increased customer identification checks, bottle locks, dummy bottles, locked shelves, active alarm pedestals, a no-bag policy, and controlled entrances and exits. Just what will be implemented, at which stores, will depend on pilot projects to be rolled out in the coming weeks, Harrison said. Security measures taken at each store will vary depending on what MLL officials report at the location, he said. "The cost is yet to be determined, because it depends on how things roll out in the future; however, there will be no additional costs. We will find the means to enact these additional changes within our existing budget," Harrison said. WPS Chief Danny Smyth and Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union president Michelle Gawronsky were on hand for the announcement Thursday. Both the WPS and MGEU, which represents Liquor Mart employees, have been critical of MLL security practices in the past. Police have pointed to the drain on law enforcement resources the thefts have, while the union has repeatedly expressed concern for the safety of staff. Both Smyth and Gawronsky welcomed the new anti-theft measures as comprehensive and encouraging. "I havent seen social norms totally disregarded like this in a long, long time... Its not any one thing thats going to be the panacea here. Theres a layering of tactics," Smyth said. "Whether its a bag check, an ID check, a camera, extra security, having a cop in the store, all of this layered impact Im hoping will deter people." Gawronsky said the creation of loss-prevention teams is an important step, but added she would still like to see those employees conferred peace officer status to protect them from possible legal repercussions. "To those out there who are stealing from us... you will be caught." Wayne Harrison, MLL director of corporate security "Well be monitoring, watching how this is going to play out, what is going to happen out there. Well be taking our cue from our members. They will let us know if this is working or not," she said. Thefts at Liquor Marts have made consistent headlines during the past year, with a rise in incidents and store employees including security guards being told by MLL brass not to physically intervene. Harrison admitted Thursday even though theres been progress made (113 arrests since October 2018) staff members have felt threatened and frustrated. In 2018, MLL said it lost roughly $800,000 to "shrinkage," which includes both thefts and damaged product. ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @rk_thorpe Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. OTTAWA The Liberal governments promise to connect every household to high-speed internet by 2030 has major implications for Manitoba, which is one of the least-connected provinces. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA The Liberal governments promise to connect every household to high-speed internet by 2030 has major implications for Manitoba, which is one of the least-connected provinces. Tuesdays federal budget includes a pledge to bring high-speed connections to 90 per cent of Canadian homes by 2021, and all of them by 2030. That task will be particularly hard in Manitoba even in communities around Winnipeg said Rob Barlow, head of WireIE, a Toronto firm that installs Internet hook-ups in rural areas. "Manitobas one of the most under-served markets in Canada," said Barlow, who is part of a years-long project, called Wekitowak, to bring fibre-optic Internet from Brandon north to Churchill by 2021. Chris Kennedy, the chief operating officer of Virden-based firm RFNow, is leading that project, which aims to connect 72 communities and reserves through 3,000 kilometres of fibre optic cables, largely following Manitoba Hydro lines. "For the government, its a balancing act, between funding where private investment doesnt make sense" and areas where the state shouldnt interfere in an active market, he said. Kennedy said its obvious the north was too sparsely populated for the private sector, though its harder to make such a call about the Interlake and places east of Lake Winnipeg. Meanwhile, the private market has targetted the area around Brandon and southeast Saskatchewan. "Theres a lot of geography to cover," he said. "Sometimes you go 50 kilometres with no customers at all, and you have to cover that investment." The Liberals have pegged the cost of giving all households access to high-speed Internet from $5 billion to $6 billion, by way of grants to help launch low-orbit satellite connections. But Barlow estimates Canada needs closer to $9 billion to connect homes when faster broadband arrives in their area. "Theres a lot of work that still has to be done, even when you get fibre to a community," he said. "The last miles the issue." Barlow also said better broadband connections would likely improve Manitobas spotty cellular reception. Thats because mobile companies would have incentive to connect cellphone towers to fibre connections, instead of pinging through a chain of towers. A report this month by the mobile-data analytics firm Tutela found that Manitoba has the worst overall mobile connections in Canada, using its own calculation that looks at speed and quality. While Telus met a score of 75 per cent, the other main carriers fell short of Tutelas metric for consistent quality. The firm said part of the issue with both cellphone and landline connections in Manitoba is latency, with most Internet traffic having to reach servers on either coast of the country. That makes connections almost 20 per cent worse than most provinces during complex tasks such as a video call. Even communities around Winnipeg are struggling to get adequate Internet connections, said Colleen Sklar, head of the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region. Her group represents 18 communities from Selkirk to Niverville, many of which cant get reliable broadband. "The capital region (has) a huge issue with access to high-speed Internet," said Sklar, whose own daughter has had issues completing homework using their slow-loading connection. Her group has almost finished a proposal for public-private partnerships to encourage providers to install connections in areas theyve so far decided arent worth the cost. "When the (federal) funding does come through, were ready to get rolling," she said. "We really hope that Manitoba receives the share of funding that we so desperately need." Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. Sklar said agricultural areas need reliable Internet to keep up with developments such as crop management and automated equipment. Barlow made that same point in urging Ottawa to allocate adequate cash. "I think Manitoba should get more; its the bread box of agriculture, its our future." The lack of foreign competition means only a small number of Internet providers are in the market so prices remain high. Barlow warned that this could imperil the Liberal governments goals because of the high cost of connecting homes to new broadband. "There have been so many projects all over the world (where) these projects just didnt go anywhere because theres so much more (needed) to operate them." Internet advocacy group OpenMedia hailed the Liberals for setting benchmarks but urged them to provide more details about how the funding will roll out. dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca The sentencing of a former middle school teacher who was convicted of sexually abusing an eight-year-old girl has been delayed for a second time. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. The sentencing of a former middle school teacher who was convicted of sexually abusing an eight-year-old girl has been delayed for a second time. The hearing for Remi Dallaire, 34, has now been set for June, nine months after he was found guilty of sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching and making sexually explicit material available to a child. He repeatedly sexually abused an eight-year-old girl in June and July 2016, after becoming friends with her mother. At the time, he taught Grades 7 and 8 in Lorette but planned to move to Alberta after the school year was over. Dallaire's defence lawyer, Matthew Gould, told Court of Queen's Bench Justice Ken Champagne Wednesday that he is still trying to access material that would be "critical" to Dallaire's defence. The sentencing was previously set to go ahead in January, but it had to be delayed after Crown and defence lawyers learned of an RCMP investigation that took place at Headingley Correctional Centre, where Dallaire was being held prior to his last court appearance. No details about that investigation have been made public, but when pressed by the judge to complete the sentencing Wednesday, Gould said "it would be unethical to go forward today." katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay Manitobans generally do not see traffic enforcement as a serious legal issue, and were losing our rights because of it. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/3/2019 (996 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Opinion Manitobans generally do not see traffic enforcement as a serious legal issue, and were losing our rights because of it. Enforcement in Winnipeg generates $4 million per month in revenue. Such revenue generation depends on Manitobans to see traffic violations as simple matters. Simplistic publicity campaigns reinforce this belief by, for example, telling drivers to "just slow down." But traffic is a serious issue. It is a leading cause of injury and death, and depending on how its done, enforcement can increase or decrease safety. Traffic infractions are no small matter, either. Manitoba has the highest traffic fines in Canada, and typical fines of $300 to $700 constitute a considerable expense to most people. Its not acceptable to say "just slow down" because Winnipeg violates nearly every national engineering standard for traffic signage, amber light timing and speed limits, and has 173 missing school-zone signs that it refuses to replace. In this context, predatory enforcement can accumulate astonishing revenue because it can ticket people who are driving safely. The challenge for revenue-hungry police and government is that when large fines are given to thousands of reasonable drivers, there will be a lot of court challenges. In Manitoba, three main strategies have been adopted to deal with this, and they are costing Manitobans their rights. First, Manitobans have lost their right to be tried before a judge and to choose a representative. In 2006, the province created the Judicial Justice of the Peace (JJP) program. It hired several people and anointed them with judicial powers to preside in traffic court. The idea was to reduce the burden on provincial judges. However, JJPs do not require legal training and some are related to police officials or have historical connections with the Crowns office. Importantly, JJPs have been more likely than judges to rule in favour of the Crown on key issues, even when evidence and submissions are the same. The Crown has therefore often sought to kick critical cases from judges to JJPs. Court transcripts also identify a range of legal misapplications by some JJPs, such as disregarding precedent, subjecting representatives to involuntary bag searches and preventing arguments from the defence. JJPs have also been essential to the recent efforts of the prosecution to restrict the accuseds right to appoint another person to represent them. This right is spelled out in the Provincial Offences Act, as well as on the back of each ticket. Although the ticket also states that a representative may be excluded based on the justices "opinion," in the law there is a much higher standard for excluding a representative than the ticket suggests. Nevertheless, court transcripts indicate that the prosecution often moves to block representatives who win cases, and such motions have only been successful when a JJP is presiding rather than a judge. Second, in 2015 the province initiated what it calls the "pre-plea triage program." Its roots are problematic from the get-go because it is based on an exclusive partnership between Prosecution Services and the courts, which are supposed to be independent of one another. This program requires anyone who wants to challenge their ticket to go to 373 Broadway in person. Once there, they are required to go through a series of lineups and meetings before they can request a trial date. Want to get a head start on your day? Get the days breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign Up I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement. It is a violation of the law to require this process. The law gives the accused the right to request a trial from the courts without these steps. The program is designed to whisk thousands of drivers through, offering fine reductions if necessary but avoiding legal entanglements associated with predatory enforcement and traffic engineering deficiencies. The third strategy is the transformation of the law itself. Under the law, which was adopted in November 2017, several key rights have been eliminated. First, the court now uses "certificate evidence." This is where the accusing officer certifies their version of events and submits the certificate to the court. The content of the certificate is taken as proof until the accused proves their innocence. This is tied to a second problem, which is that the officer no longer attends the trial, and the accused no longer has the right to cross-examine them. By contrast, the prosecution has the right to cross-examine the testimony of the accused, as well as any witnesses they produce. Finally, the law eliminates the right to appeal decisions made in traffic court. Appeals now require permission from the court, and you cannot appeal the facts as interpreted by the presiding judge or JJP. Further exploitative policies are being planned, and if Manitobans continue to see traffic enforcement as a minor legal issue, our rights will continue to erode. Curt Pankratz is associate professor in the department of sociology at the University of Winnipeg. Grammy nominee and Dove Award winner Danny Gokey, announced that his fifth studio album " Haven't Seen It Yet," is available for pre-order now; and available for purchase at all major retail stores and digital retailers on Friday, April 12 th, 2019. The second digital single "New Day " has been released as part of the album launch campaign, and the accompanying high-energy lyric video is also available. Two additional album tracks will release prior to the album's release. Lifted from his upcoming fifth studio album, is the albums lead single of the same title, " Haven't See It Yet ." The single is currently sitting in the top 15 on the Christian Airplay Billboard Chart . The lead single's accompanying music video has received over 2 million+ views on Danny's official YouTube page, continuing to solidify Gokey as a staple in Christian Contemporary Music. Watch the music video for "Haven't Seen It Yet" here. Currently fans can continue to catch him on the " Winter Jam Tour. " Additionally, Gokey's extensive promotional tour for "Haven't Seen It Yet," will include stops at Good Day Dallas, Sirius XM , Good Day New York and more. For more information on Danny Gokey visit: DannyGokeyMusic.com . ABOUT DANNY GOKEY Grammy nominated, Capitol recording artist Danny Gokey became a favorite of millions of fans as a Top 3 finalist on Season 8 of "American Idol." Following Idol, Gokey released his debut album, My Best Days , which debuted at #4 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart. Since that time, Gokey has celebrated a series of #1s including his follow-up album release Hope In Front of Me , his latest full album release Rise , and his first Award-winning holiday album, Christmas Is Here . Spawning singles like "Hope In Front of Me," "Rise," "Masterpiece", "The Comeback," and his RIAA Gold certified single "Tell Your Heart to Beat Again," Danny has cemented his place on the radio charts with multi-week, multi-chart #1 runs both in the United States and in Canada. Danny is the founder of a newly formed non-profit organization, Better Than I Found It, that has a heart to partner with organizations already making a difference in their communities to help them grow into their next level of service to effect even greater change in their areas. Gokey is a native of Milwaukee and currently lives in Nashville with his wife, Leyicet and their three children. 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Brookfield Asset Management Inc. is a publicly owned asset management holding company. The firm specializes in early stage, acquisition, distressed investments, short-term financing to mid-market companies, corporate carve-outs, recapitalizations, convertible, senior and mezzanine financings, operational and capital structure restructuring, strategic re-direction, turnaround, and under-performing midmarket companies. The firm invest in attractive businesses through the public debt and equity markets or by providing financing. The firm invest in Business services, Industrials and Residential sectors. Through its subsidiaries, the firm invests in the property, power, and infrastructure sectors. Its property business includes owning and managing office properties, developing master planned residential communities, and offering clients bridge and mezzanine lending, alternative assets funds, and financial and advisory services. Through its subsidiaries, the firm operates hydroelectric power facilities, interconnections and transmission facilities in Northeast North America, and development of wind power in Canada. Through its subsidiaries, it invests in specialty funds including private equity and makes direct investments in real estate, energy, and resource assets. The firm launches and manages equity and fixed income mutual funds. It also manages real estate and hedge funds. The firm invests in equity and fixed income markets across the globe. It also invest in British Columbia, United States, Brazil, Australia, Chile, Uruguay, New Zealand. It prefers to invest between $2 million and $500 million in its portfolio companies. The firm also prefers to take both minority and majority stakes in its companies. It was formerly known as Brascan Corp. Brookfield Asset Management Inc. is based in Toronto, Canada with additional offices in Bogota, Colombia, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Calgary, Canada, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Gatineau, Canada, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, London, United Kingdom, Melbourne, Australia, Montreal, Canada, Mumbai, India, New York City, Perth, Australia, Shanghai, China, and Sydney, Australia. Read More